Achilles Drags the Body of Hector to the Greek Camp

Achilles Drags the Body of Hector to the Greek Camp

Iliad

Book XXII

  Now,

come, you sons of Achaea, raise a song of triumph!

Down to the ships we march and bear this corpse on high—

we have won ourselves great glory. We have brought

magnificent Hector down, that man the Trojans

glorified in their city like a god!”

                                                            So he triumphed

and now he was bent on outrage, on shaming noble Hector.

Piercing the tendons, ankle to heel behind both feet,

he knotted straps of rawhide through them both,

lashed them to his chariot, left the head to drag

and mounting the car, hoisting the famous arms aboard,

he whipped his team to a run and breakneck on they flew,

holding nothing back. And a thick cloud of dust rose up

from the man they dragged, his dark hair swirling round

that head so handsome once, all tumbled low in the dust—

since Zeus had given him over to his enemies now

to be defiled in the land of his own fathers.

      So his whole head was dragged down in the dust.

And now his mother began to tear her hair . . .

19th.century

Franz Sales Lochbihler.

German,

1777-1854