Book 12
my brother's sons, with me you built in vain
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the walls of Troy: you must be lost in grief,
when you look on those towers so soon to fall?
Or do you not lament the multitudes
slain in defence of them—To name but one:
“Does not the ghost of Hector, dragged around
his Pergama, appear to you? And yet
the fierce Achilles, who is bloodstained more
than slaughtering war, lives on this earth,
for the destruction of our toil. Let him
once get into my power, and I will make
him feel the action of my triple spear.
But, since I may not meet him face to face,
do you with sudden arrow give him death.”
The Delian god, Apollo, gave assent,
both for his own hate and his uncle's rage.
Veiled in a cloud, he found the Trojan host
and, there, while bloody strife went on, he saw
the hero Paris shoot at intervals
his arrows at the nameless host of Greeks.
Revealing his divinity, he said:
“Why spend your arrows on the common men
if you would serve your people, take good aim
at great Achilles and at last avenge
your hapless brothers whom he gave to death.”
He pointed out Achilles—laying low
the Trojan warriors with his mighty spear.
On him he turned the Trojan's willing bow
and guided with his hand the fatal shaft.
It was the first joy that old Priam knew
since Hector's death. So then Achilles you,
who overcame the mighty, were subdued
by a coward who seduced a Grecian wife!
Ah, if you could not die by manly hands,
your choice had been the axe.
Now that great terror of the Trojan race,
the glory and defence of the Pelasgians,
Achilles, first in war, lay on the pyre.
The god of Fire first armed, then burned, his limbs.
And now he is but ashes; and of him, so great,
