Paris had his answer ready. ‘My dear,’ he said, ‘do not try to put me on my mettle by abusing me. Menelaus has just beaten me with Athene’s help. But I too have gods to help me, and next time I shall win. Come, let us go to bed together and be happy in our love. Never has such desire overwhelmed me, not even in the beginning, when I carried you off from lovely Lacedaemon in my seagoing ships and we spent the night on the isle of Cranae in each other’s arms – never till now have I been so much in love with you or felt such sweet desire.’

As he spoke, he made a move towards the bed, leading her to it. His wife followed him; and the two lay down together on the well-made wooden bed.

Meanwhile Menelaus was prowling through the ranks like a wild beast, trying to find Prince Paris. But not a man among the Trojans or their famous allies could point him out to the warrior Menelaus. Not that if anyone had seen him he would have hidden him for love: they loathed him, all of them, like death. In the end King Agamemnon made a pronouncement: ‘Trojans, Dardanians and allies, listen to me. The great Menelaus has won: there is no disputing that. Now give up Argive Helen and her wealth, and compensate me suitably on a scale that future generations shall remember.’

Atreides had spoken. The Achaeans all applauded.

The truce, alas, does not last. The gods ensure that it is broken and that the Trojan War continues until many more people have lost their lives.

HECTOR VERSUS ACHILLES

Iliad, Book XXII

Homer

Translated by Martin Hammond, 1987

Hector’s parents, Priam, King of Troy, and Hecuba, have tried to dissuade him from meeting Achilles (Achilleus) in combat. Hector (Hektor) feels he has no choice. For Achilles, too, the decision to fight Hector in a duel is fraught. He knows from his mother, a nymph named Thetis, that his own death is sure to follow that of Hector. Achilles’ father, Peleus, was only mortal. This passage comes from the twenty-second of the twenty-four books of Homer’s Iliad but is very much the dramatic finale of the poem. It contains some of the most beautiful similes in the epic. It begins with Hector criticising himself for Troy’s ill fortunes and his failure to heed the advice of his friend Poulydamas, who favoured caution over direct attack. Hector shoulders far too much of the blame. If any man is guilty of ‘arrant folly’ it is his brother Paris (‘Alexandros’) who ran off with Helen in the first place.