Iliad by Homer - Join iZDOT

Homer’s Iliad
And Achilles answered, “Why, true heart, are you come hither to
lay these charges upon me? will of my own self do all as you have
bidden me. Draw closer to me, let us once more throw our arms
around one another, and find sad comfort in the sharing of our
sorrows.”
He opened his arms towards him as he spoke and would have
clasped him in them, but there was nothing, and the spirit vanished
as a vapour, gibbering and whining into the earth. Achilles sprang
to his feet, smote his two hands, and made lamentation saying, “Of
a truth even in the house of Hades there are ghosts and phantoms
that have no life in them; all night long the sad spirit of Patroclus
has hovered over head making piteous moan, telling me what I am
to do for him, and looking wondrously like himself.”
Thus did he speak and his words set them all weeping and
mourning about the poor dumb dead, till rosy-fingered morn
appeared. Then King Agamemnon sent men and mules from all
parts of the camp, to bring wood, and Meriones, squire to
Idomeneus, was in charge over them. They went out with
woodmen’s axes and strong ropes in their hands, and before them
went the mules. Up hill and down dale did they go, by straight
ways and crooked, and when they reached the heights of manyfountained
Ida, they laid their axes to the roots of many a tall
branching oak that came thundering down as they felled it. They
split the trees and bound them behind the mules, which then
wended their way as they best could through the thick brushwood
on to the plain. All who had been cutting wood bore logs, for so
Meriones squire to Idomeneus had bidden them, and they threw
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