Book XVIII - Page 2

breasts while Thetis led them

in their lament.

"Listen," she cried, "sisters, daughters of Nereus, that you may

hear the burden of my sorrows. Alas, woe is me, woe in that I

have borne the most glorious of offspring. I bore him fair and

strong, hero among heroes, and he shot up as a sapling; I tended

him as a plant in a goodly garden, and sent him with his ships to

Ilius to fight the Trojans, but never shall I welcome him back to

the house of Peleus. So long as he lives to look upon the light

of the sun he is in heaviness, and though I go to him I cannot

help him. Nevertheless I will go, that I may see my dear son and

learn what sorrow has befallen him though he is still holding

aloof from battle."

She left the cave as she spoke, while the others followed weeping

after, and the waves opened a path before them. When they reached

the rich plain of Troy, they came up out of the sea in a long

line on to the sands, at the place where the ships of the

Myrmidons were drawn up in close order round the tents of

Achilles. His mother went up to him as he lay groaning; she laid

her hand upon his head and spoke piteously, saying, "My son, why

are you thus weeping? What sorrow has now befallen you? Tell me;

hide it not from me. Surely Jove has granted you the prayer you

made him, when you lifted up your hands and besought him that the

Achaeans might all of them be pent up at their ships, and rue it

bitterly in that you were no longer with them."

Achilles groaned and answered, "Mother, Olympian Jove has indeed

vouchsafed me the fulfilment of my prayer, but what boots it to

me, seeing that my dear comrade Patroclus has fallen--he whom I

valued more than all others, and loved as dearly as my own life?

I have lost him; aye, and Hector when he had killed him stripped

the wondrous armour, so glorious to behold, which the gods gave

to Peleus when they laid you in the couch of a mortal man. Would

that you were still dwelling among the immortal sea-nymphs, and

that Peleus had taken to himself some mortal bride. For now you

shall have grief infinite by reason of the death of that son whom

you can never welcome home--nay, I will not live nor go about

among mankind unless Hector fall by my spear, and thus pay me for

having slain Patroclus son of Menoetius."

Thetis wept and answered, "Then, my son, is your end near at

hand--for your own death awaits you full soon after that of

Hector."

Then said Achilles in his great grief, "I would die here and now,

in that I could not save my comrade. He has fallen far from home,