The Iliad Mortality Quotes

There the spear stuck. Hugging the shaft he writhed,
gasping, shuddering like some wild bull in the hills
that herdsmen shackle, trapping the beast with twisted ropes
and he fights them all the way as the men drag him off –
so he gasped with his wound. A little, not for long.

– Homer

The Iliad, Book 13, lines 659-663. The Trojan Adamas is killed when Meriones spears him in the groin. His dying moments are likened in an epic simile to the final gasps of a wild bull trapped and shacked by herdsmen.

So home you’ll run from our racing ships, by god,
all as corpses – see, you death-defying Trojans?
Never sated with shattering war cries, are you?
Nor do you lack the other brands of outrage,
all that shame you heaped on me, you rabid dogs!
No fear in your hearts for the quaking rage of Zeus,
the thundering god of host and welcome stranger –
one day he’ll raze your lofty city for you.
You Trojans who stole away my wedded wife
and hoards of riches too – for no reason, none –
my queen of the realm who hosted you with kindness.
And now you rampage on among our deep-sea ships,
wild to torch our hulls and kill our heroes – well,
you’ll be stopped, somewhere, mad as you are for combat!
Zeus, Father Zeus, They say you excel all others…
all men and gods, in wisdom clear and calm –
but all this brutal carnage comes from you.
Look how you favor them, these reckless Trojans,
their fury always in uproar – no one can ever slake
their thirst for blood, for the great leveler, war!
One can achieve his fill of all good things,
even of sleep, even of making love…
rapturous song and the beat and sway of dancing.
A man will yearn for his fill of all these joys
before his fill of war. But not these Trojans –
no one can glut their lust for battle!

– Homer

The Iliad, Book 13, lines 713-738. Menelaus cries out to the men of Troy and to Zeus after he kills the Trojan soldier Pisander. In a voice filled with anger and passion, he accuses the Trojans of having an insatiable thirst for blood and war, stealing his wife Helen and having no fear of the rage of Zeus. One day Zeus will raze Troy, he warns them. He appeals to Zeus from whom he says all this carnage comes and whom he claims favors the Trojans.

You fill me with contempt –
what are you saying? With the forces poised to clash
you tell us to haul our oar-swept vessels out to sea?
Just so one more glory can crown these Trojans –
god help us, they have beaten us already –
and the scales of headlong death can drag us down.
Achaean troops will never hold the line, I tell you,
not while the long ships are being hauled to sea.
They’ll look left and right – where can they run? –
and fling their lust for battle to the winds. Then,
commander of armies, your plan will kill us all!

– Homer

The Iliad, Book 14, lines 117-127. Odysseus attacks the weakness of Agamamnon’s leadership. He believes he is a terrible commander, because time and again he considers quitting the war. His troops will never hold the line while the ships are being hauled to sea and one more glory given to the Trojans, Odysseus warns. Odysseus expresses contempt for Agamemnon, whose plan he predicts will end up killing them all.

And let Apollo drive Prince Hector back to battle,
breathe power back in his lungs, make him forget
the pains that rack his heart. Let him whip the Achaeans
in headlong panic rout and roll them back once more,
tumbling back on the oar-swept ships of Peleus’ son Achilles.
And he, he will launch his comrade Patroclus into action
and glorious Hector will cut him down with a spear
in front of Troy, once Patroclus has slaughtered
whole battalions of strong young fighting men
and among them all, my shining son Sarpedon.
But then – enraged for Patroclus –
brilliant Achilles will bring Prince Hector down.
And then, from that day on, I’ll turn the tide of war:
back the fighting goes, no stopping it, ever, all the way.
till Achaean armies seize the beetling heights of Troy
through Athena’s grand design.

– Homer

The Iliad, Book 15, lines 75-90. Zeus is speaking to his wife Hera, laying out the plan for the events to come. There is not much room for free will here, with each character’s fate predetermined and controlled by the gods. Apollo will drive Hector back to battle, this will launch Patroclus into action, Hector will slay him with a spear, an enraged Achilles will take Hector down, Zeus will turn the tide of war and the Greeks will seize Troy through Athena’s grand plan. A great deal of things are foreshadowed here.

So now, I tell you, drop this anger for your son.
By now some fighter better than he, a stronger hand
has gone down in his own blood, or soon will go.
It is no small labor to rescue all mankind,
every mother’s son.

– Homer

The Iliad, Book 15, lines 167-171. When an angry Ares claims the right to avenge his son Ascalaphus, the Greek fighter killed by Deiphobus, Athena warns him about Zeus’s wrath and advises him that his attempts are useless. The father of the gods would only come to batter them on Olympus, she says.

Look – a genuine miracle right before my eyes!
Hector’s escaped again, he’s risen from the dead!
And just as each of us hoped with all his heart
he’d dropped and died at the hands of giant Ajax.
But again some god swoops down and saves this Hector –
and hasn’t he wiped out enough of us already?
Now he’ll make more slaughter, well I know.
He’d never be at the front, smashing our lines
unless Old Thunder, Zeus, had put him on his feet.

– Homer

The Iliad, Book 15, lines 339-347. The Greek Thoas is the first to comment when Hector, injured by a boulder, makes a remarkable recovery as if "risen from the dead" – he thought he was going to die. But Apollo filled Hector with new strength and he charges the Greeks with new vigor.

But Hector all afire,
blazing head to foot, charged at their main force,
bursting down as a wave bursts down on a veering ship,
down from under the clouds it batters, bred by gale-winds –
showers of foam overwhelm the hull, blot it all from sight,
the hurricane’s killing blast thundering into the sails
and scudding clear of death by the skin of their teeth
the sailors quake, their hearts race on with terror –
so the Achaeans’ courage quaked.

– Homer

The Iliad, Book 15, lines 722-730. Hector charges the main force of the Achaeans at their ships. This is dramatically described in an epic simile likening his assault to a great storm wave battering a ship where terrified sailors fear for their lives.

And Hector lunged again
like a murderous lion mad for kills, charging cattle
grazing across the flats of a broad marshy pasture,
flocks by the hundred led by an unskilled herdsman
helpless to keep the marauder off a longhorn heifer –
no fighting that bloody slaughter – all he can do
is keep pace with the lead or straggling heads,
leaving the center free for the big cat’s pounce
and it eats a heifer raw as the rest stampede away.
And so the Achaeans stampeded now, unearthly terror,
all of them routed now by Father Zeus and Hector.

– Homer

The Iliad, Book 15, lines 730-740. Hector is likened to a murderous lion attacking cattle and eating a heifer raw in an extended simile describing his charge at the Achaean troops. He routs the Greeks with the help of Zeus.

Prince Achilles, ranging his ranks of Myrmidons,
arrayed them along the shelters, all in armor.
Hungry as wolves that rend and bolt raw flesh,
hearts filled with battle-frenzy that never dies –
off on the cliffs, ripping apart some big antlered stag
they gorge on the kill till all their jaws drip red with blood,
then down in a pack they lope to a pooling, dark spring,
their lean sharp tongues lapping the water’s surface,
belching bloody meat, but the fury, never shaken,
builds inside their chests though their glutted bellies burst –
so wild the Myrmidon captains, Myrmidon field commanders
swarming round Achilles’ dauntless friend-in-arms.
And there in the midst Achilles stood like the god of war,
urging his charioteers and fighters bracing shields.

– Homer

The Iliad, Book 16, lines 185-198. Achilles prepares his Myrmidons, the soldiers he commands, for battle. They are said in an epic simile to be hungry as flesh-eating wolves that kill and gorge on a great antlered stag. Achilles himself is compared to god of war Ares standing in their midst, urging them on.

Patroclus rising beside him stabbed his right jawbone,
ramming the spearhead square between his teeth so hard
he hooked him by that spearhead over the chariot rail,
hoisted, dragged the Trojan out as an angler perched
on a jutting rock ledge drags some fish from the sea,
some noble catch, with line and glittering bronze hook.
So with the spear Patroclus gaffed him off his car,
his mouth gaping round the glittering point
and flipped him down face first
dead as he fell, his life breath blown away.

– Homer

The Iliad, Book 16, lines 480-489. The brutal barbarity of war is graphically and matter-of-factly presented by Homer, and indeed accepted as a normal part of life by the characters in his epic poem. In this passage the epic simile of an angler and his "noble catch" is used by the poet to describe the gruesome spearing and slaying of the Trojan Thestor by Patroclus.

My cruel fate…
my Sarpedon, the man I love the most, my own son –
doomed to die at the hands of Menoetius’ son Patroclus.
My heart is torn in two as I try to weigh all this.
Shall I pluck him up, now, while he’s still alive
and set him down in the rich green land of Lycia,
far from the war at Troy and all its tears?
Or beat him down at Patrodus’ hands at last?

– Homer

The Iliad, Book 16, lines 514-521. For the love of his son, the god Zeus considers defying cruel fate in order to save Sarpedon, destined to die at the hands of Patroclus.

Do as you please, Zeus…
but none of the deathless gods will ever praise you.
And I tell you this – take it to heart, I urge you –
if you send Sarpedon home, living still, beware!
Then surely some other god will want to sweep
his own son clear of the heavy fighting too.

– Homer

The Iliad, Book 16, lines 526-531. Zeus sees that his son Sarpedon is about to be killed in the war between Trojans and Achaeans. He considers saving his son, but here Hera argues that if he interferes it will open the door to other gods to meddle too much in human affairs. So Zeus puts his duty to the other gods before his love for his son.

He struck him right where the midriff packs the pounding heart
and down Sarpedon fell as an oak or white poplar falls
or towering pine that shipwrights up on a mountain
hew down with whetted axes for sturdy ship timber –
so he stretched in front of his team and chariot,
sprawled and roaring, clawing the bloody dust.

– Homer

The Iliad, Book 16, lines 569-574. Sarpedon, struck and killed by Patroclus’s spear, is described in an epic simile as falling down like a big tree axed by shipwrights for ship timber.

Grief for his dead companion seized Patroclus now,
he tore through frontline fighters swift as a hawk
diving to scatter crows and fear-struck starlings –
straight at the Lycians, Patroclus O my rider,
straight at the pressing Trojan ranks you swooped,
enraged at your comrade’s death!

– Homer

The Iliad, Book 16, lines 679-684. In a bid to avenge his dead companion Epeigeus, an enraged Patroclus tears through the Lycians and Trojan ranks. Homer in one of his many epic similes compares Patroclus to a hawk diving through crows and frightened starlings.

Look what a springy man, a nimble, flashy rumbler!
Just think what he’d do at sea where the fish swarm –
why, the man could glut a fleet, diving for oysters!
Plunging overboard, even in choppy, heaving seas,
just as he dives to ground from his war-car now.
Even these Trojans have their tumblers – what a leap!

– Homer

The Iliad, Book 16, lines 868-873. This is one of the most famous examples of an extended metaphor in The Iliad, describing how Patroclus kills Hector’s charioteer and half-brother, Kebriones. The charioteer’s body is hurled high into the air before it falls to the ground. Patroclus speaks of Kebriones as an acrobat and a diver for oysters in the extended metaphor.

So you sprang at Cebriones, full fury, Patroclus,
as Hector sprang down from his chariot just across
and the two went tussling over the corpse as lions
up on the mountain ridges over a fresh-killed stag –
both ravenous, proud and savage – fight it out to the death.
So over the driver here and both claw-mad for battle,
Patroclus son of Menoetius, Hector ablaze for glory
strained to slash each other with ruthless bronze.

– Homer

The Iliad, Book 16, lines 878-885. Pride, honor and glory are at stake as Patroclus and Hector fight over the body of Hector’s charioteer Cebriones. They are compared to two lions fighting to the death over a freshly killed stag.

Patroclus never saw him coming,
moving across the deadly rout, shrouded in thick mist
and on he came against him and looming up behind him now –
slammed his broad shoulders and back with the god’s flat hand
and his eyes spun as Apollo knocked the helmet off his head
and under his horses’ hoofs it tumbled, clattering on
with its four forged horns and its hollow blank eyes
and its plumes were all smeared in the bloody dust.
Forbidden before this to defile its crest in dust,
it guarded the head and handsome brow of a god,
a man like a god, Achilles. But now the Father
gave it over to Hector to guard his head in war
since Hector’s death was closing on him quickly.

– Homer

The Iliad, Book 16, lines 917-929. Apollo knocks Achilles’s helmet off Patroclus and Zeus gives it to Hector to protect his head, as Hector’s death is said to be closing on him quickly. This foreshadows that Hector has not long to live, for while he escapes immediate death at the hands of Patroclus, he will soon be killed by Achilles in revenge for his friend’s slaying.

Down he crashed – horror gripped the Achaean armies.
As when some lion overpowers a tireless wild boar
up on a mountain summit, battling in all their fury
over a little spring of water, both beasts craving
to slake their thirst, but the lion beats him down
with sheer brute force as the boar fights for breath –
so now with a close thrust Hector the son of Priam
tore the life from the fighting son of Menoetius,
from Patroclus who had killed so many men in war.

– Homer

The Iliad, Book 16, lines 958-966. The Achaean armies are horrified as Hector delivers the fatal blow to Patroclus, spearing him deep in the bowels and out through his back. The image of a lion overpowering a wild boat on a mountain summit is used to describe the slaying in an epic simile.

Hector! Now is your time to glory to the skies…
Now the victory is yours.
A gift of the Son of Cronus, Zeus – Apollo too –
they brought me down with all their deathless ease,
they are the ones who tore the armor off my back.
Even if twenty Hectors had charges against me
they’d all have died here, laid low by my spear.
No, deadly fate in league with Apollo killed me,
From the ranks of men, Euphorbus. You came third,
and all you could do was finish off my life.

– Homer

The Iliad, Book 16, lines 986-995. When Hector fatally stabs Patroclus with his spear, Patroclus calls into question the Trojan’s pride as a successful warrior in battle. He reminds Hector that he is only his third slayer, after being knocked down by Apollo and then wounded by Euphorbus. All Hector could do was finish off his life, he says. Hector’s victory and glory is a gift of Zeus and Apollo, he tells him.

There he lay
like an olive slip a farmer rears to strength
on a lonely hilltop, drenching it down with water,
a fine young stripling tree, and the winds stir it softly,
rustling from every side, and it bursts with silver shoots –
then suddenly out of nowhere a wind in gale force comes storming,
rips it out of its trench, stretches it out on the earth –
so Panthous’ stripling son lay sprawled in death,
Euphorbus who hurled the strong ashen spear…
Menelaus cut him down.

– Homer

The Iliad, Book 17, lines 59-68. Menelaus kills Euphorbus, by piercing him in the neck with a lance. An epic simile describes the Trojan being cut down like a young stripling tree ripped out of the earth by a gale force wind.

Menelaus fierce as a mountain lion sure of his power,
seizing the choicest head from a good grazing herd.
First he cracks its neck, clamped in his huge jaws,
mauling the kill then down in gulps he bolts it,
blood and guts, and around him dogs and shepherds
raise a fierce din but they keep their distance,
lacking nerve to go in and take the lion on –
the fear that grips their spirit makes them blanch.
So now not a single Trojan fighter had the spine
to go and face Atrides tensing in all his strength.

– Homer

The Iliad, Book 17, lines 69-78. The Trojans are afraid of the fierce warrior Menelaus, who in one of Homer’s extended similes is compared to a mountain lion seizing the choicest head from the herd, breaking its neck and gorging on its blood and entrails.

And Atrides gave ground, he left the corpse
but kept on turning round to face an attack –
like a great bearded lion the dogs and field hands
drive back from the folds with spears and sharp cries
and the brave, battling heart in his chest freezes tight
and the big cat, all reluctance, pulls back from the sheds.
So the red-haired captain backed away from Patroclus’ corpse.

– Homer

The Iliad, Book 17, lines 124-130. Menelaus gives ground to the waves of Trojan soldiers and backs away from the corpse of Patroclus. He is likened in Homer’s extended simile to a big bearded lion being driven back by dogs and field hands with spears.
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