Iliad by Homer - Join iZDOT

Homer’s Iliad
The sun would have gone down upon their mourning had not
Achilles presently said to Agamemnon, “Son of Atreus, for it is to
you that the people will give ear, there is a time to mourn and a
time to cease from mourning; bid the people now leave the pyre
and set about getting their dinners: we, to whom the dead is
dearest, will see to what is wanted here, and let the other princes
also stay by me.”
When King Agamemnon heard this he dismissed the people to
their ships, but those who were about the dead heaped up wood
and built a pyre a hundred feet this way and that; then they laid the
dead all sorrowfully upon the top of it. They flayed and dressed
many fat sheep and oxen before the pyre, and Achilles took fat
from all of them and wrapped the body therein from head to foot,
heaping the flayed carcases all round it. Against the bier he leaned
two-handled jars of honey and unguents; four proud horses did he
then cast upon the pyre, groaning the while he did so. The dead
hero had had house-dogs; two of them did Achilles slay and threw
upon the pyre; he also put twelve brave sons of noble Trojans to
the sword and laid them with the rest, for he was full of bitterness
and fury. Then he committed all to the resistless and devouring
might of the fire; he groaned aloud and callid on his dead comrade
by name. “Fare well,” he cried, “Patroclus, even in the house of
Hades; I am now doing all that I have promised you. Twelve brave
sons of noble Trojans shall the flames consume along with yourself,
but dogs, not fire, shall devour the flesh of Hector son of Priam.”
Thus did he vaunt, but the dogs came not about the body of
Hector, for Jove’s daughter Venus kept them off him night and day,
and anointed him with ambrosial oil of roses that his flesh might
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