Iiiiiiit's Hammer Time!
The Five-Minute Iliad, #7
This is another ongoing series as I do a slow-read of THE ILIAD by Homer, translated by Rouse. Previous installments: book 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |
A Little Bird Told Me…
Hector and Paris ride out, thinking of their body counts. (Paris is Aphrodite’s pretty boy, so he’s thinking of a different count.) They’re in battle now so it’s the actual body count on the menu, and they start stacking corpses. It’s The Iliad so these corpses have names and big lineages behind them. Glaucos, whose name I misspelled twice in part 6, joins them for the festivities, and they have themselves a merry time.
Up in Olympus, Athena sees her precious Greeks getting folded by this Trojan Boy Band, so she jumps down there to help. Not to be outdone, Apollo (who favors Troy) gets in her way and is like brooooo I mean hoooooooe, what is you doing? Caught red-handed, Athena pretends she was just coming down to tell everyone to pause for the evening. (For sure, for sure.)
They decided to inspire the armies so that they don’t obliterate each other, and will instead resort to single combat, which is how this whole stupid thing should have concluded between Menelaus and Paris, except Aphrodite (that skank) meddled and prevented Paris from getting his just desserts.
The new plan: Hector will fight the Greeks one at a time. The gods pull some tricks and plant this idea in a Trojan’s mind, and he suggests it to Hector, who agrees.
Next Man Up
Hector, the Josh Allen of Troy, steps into the ring and tells Greece the deal. At first nobody steps up to accept the challenge, and Menelaus calls them all p*ssies. (Literally he says You boasters, you women—I cannot call you men!)
Menelaus then suits up and offers to fight Hector, causing King Agamemnon to protest— “Dude, you’re old and he’ll kill you to death”—and that finally draws some volunteers. The lot falls on Aias (Rouse uses his original Greek name but I’m gonna go with Ajax from here on out.)
Ajax is freaking huge and often portrayed in art as holding a giant hammer. Homer doesn’t describe this weapon in his arsenal, but Ajax does use giant freaking rocks the same way that Diomedes does, which is awesome and I’m really starting to root for the Greeks here.
Ajax and Hector say their prayers, armor up, and enter the ring. Everyone is hyped. Even Hector is a little nervous because Ajax is an alpha unit. His shield is seven ox pelts thick and dipped in bronze, and he carries a spear in his other hand. The weight alone is exhausting and he’s gonna throw these aside in favor of a boulder later, just to make a statement. Hector’s “buckler” (round shield) is comparatively smaller and thinner. They’re gonna chuck spears at each other and Hector will come off the worse for it.
That said, the (relatively) little guy holds his own against Ajax. Hector’s rep is not for nothin’. The aforementioned spears are traded, swords are drawn and blows exchanged, until Hector finds himself on the ground bereft of weapons and only has a (somewhat sizeable) rock to throw. So he throws it. It dings off Ajax’s shield, and Ajax—ever the gentleman—responds by throwing an even bigger rock that crushes Hector’s buckler.
This prompts their assistants to step in and be like “Okay, well done gentlemen, we’re all winners here and that means nobody has lost [yet] but it’s getting dark so everyone has to put their toys away and come home for dinner. You can fight more to the death tomorrow.”
Ajax and Hector don’t jump for joy at this, because ChadFace.jpg, but they are rather complimentary toward one another and even exchange gifts, promising to (respectfully) put feet in butts tomorrow.
Nestor’s Proposal
While both armies clear their numerous dead from the battlefield, the Trojan man called Nestor suggests that they can put an end to all this nastiness if they just, yanno, give Helen back to the Greeks, which Paris (horndog) opposes because, well, she’s hot and stuff, but Paris says he’ll meet Nestor halfway and give Helen’s fortune to Agamemnon, and even throw in a couple of bucks of his own as a nice gesture. Weak sauce, but King Priam endorses this plan, and they pitch it to the Greeks.
They consider this for about .02 seconds before it’s immediately shot down by Diomedes, who is kicking so much arse that his feet are starting to hurt. He’s poetic about it, but his reply boils down to “Ha! Gay! We’re already beating you!”
The Trojans realize this and they go back to burning their dead, clearing the battlefield for more destruction.
The Gods
Zeus and Poseidon watch as the Greeks start fortifying their position, digging moats and such, which confuses Poseidon because they’re doing so without making offerings to the gods. This implies that they’re planning on doing something based on their own wits and skills, and they expect victory. Poseidon wants the Greeks to seek his favor as they have done in the past.
Zeus tells him to stop being a ninny about it, that it doesn’t matter—which is all well and good for him to say, because he’s the most powerful of the gods, and he favors Troy. In the end Zeus placates Poseidon by saying that once this is all over, he can personally send an earthquake to destroy the Greek fortifications, which will send a message about remembering to say your prayers.
Go read my boy’s adventure novel FOSSIL FORCE, set in the Utah desert, featuring four friends who use ancient power armors to defend the surface from a hollow-earth invasion.
"Ajax/the foaming cleanser..."
To say nothing of Ajax, Ontario, Canada.