The longest day under the Troyan walls

The fight on the Scamander

That day, among the ones facing Craeton there was also a soldier of the contingent send by Lycia to help the Trojans. The soldier now is a respected potter in the town of Patara. One of his pots, on which girls taking water by a spring are painted, serves the papyrus rolls that I'm writing. (Strange as it seems, none of his pot is decorated by one of the war scenes witnessed by the author.) The potter asked me to not say his true name, because some of his telling could damage his reputation to town's elders. So, we call him Ephesius.

"The gods played a dirty trick to me, by the war. Not just to me, actually, but to the whole Greece and Troy too. I was in Patara, being a learning potter, and I already planned to start a shop and a family. A day, the king sends his herald on the streets, to say that Ephesius and al the young men of his age had to let the work, wear armour and go to Troy. And everything for a woman, who, in so many years spent in that town, I could not even to see by far.

After a month, I understood that Trojans and allies had no possibilities against the Greeks, ant that we the soldiers could hope to come back home with an intact skin, and nothing else, and in the art of saving the skin I became very skilled. As a matter of fact, I m' here, turning pots, and the heroes are walking on the Scamander shores. I learnt every little trick. In case of battle, I offered volunteer for sending the messages, and of course every time I lost the way, coming back to the camp only the fight ended. Otherwise, I looked carefully at the battlefield, searching a disk or a rock where to repair, till the end of the storm. Otherwise, lacking any other alternative, I got to take a wound, bloody enough to have an excuse to retreat by the combat. Surely, the system had its risks, but a little courage is needed to everything, also to be a professional coward.

But then I at once understood that it was a special day, where usual tricks were useless. Hector ordered to advance and then, before we had time to contact the Greeks, Achilles ran on his car against us. I at once understood that the better was to be far from him, but running away, I found the advancing Achean infantry. In other circumstances, I should have tried to rend me, but the warrior rage infected the footmen too, who butchered everybody on their way, also who raised his hands. I had, at the same time, to fight, to run and to care about not being run over by a car or transfixed by an arrow. I so went ahead, blindly, till I didn't hear the orders in Trojan language. It was a little group of three or four warriors, behind a car trying a counter-attack. I joined them and repelled the Achaeans (don't believe I can not to fight, if I really need it) till the car (I don't know who the pilot was) withdrew e we went behind it, with my great relief. We got the most of the army and straight away we hear the bad news. Achilles ran over one by his car, pierced another one's head by his lance, and took a third one on the shoulders. He butchered by sword the ones who he did not kill by lance, cut the head to the ones who did not run through the guts. The only one to escape his claws was hector, by then. Someone says that one of the Priam's sons too is among the fallen.

Hearing this tales (exaggerated by the soldiers, as their usual) at first my legs shiver but then I began some strategic thinking. If Achilles is there at his height, all the Greeks will go behind him, because he cared to open the way, so we can stay here quietly. But someone says. "We can't stay here inertly, while the Peleus' son heaps up the bodies of our mates. Let's withdraw beyond the Scamander and make a wall against him. No man, not even a goddess' son, can face alone a whole army". Imagine, as I wanted to be in front of the furious madman, who not even Hector and Aeneas had could stop. But I did not even want someone caressing my neck with the sword edge, as punishment for insubordination, so I too went towards the Scamander."

Unlike Ephesius, Hypponax was an eyewitness of the slaughter by Achilles.

"In ten years of war, we had seen many awful things, but the seeing of the battlefield, after the Achilles' passing, made us recipe the same. His car had smashed the dead bodies, so its wheels let on the sand red by blood stripes. There were not only the killed in the fight, but also many people unarmed or with raised hands upon the head, but he didn't take any prisoner. A guy walking besides me said: - How many lost ransoms!

My king Diomedes never did such a slaughter, and it was not only a matter of ransoms, of having slaves at his disposal or hostages for an exchange of prisoners. Imagine that, some day sooner, before duelling with the king of Phrygia, he discovered that their grandfathers were friends, and then he sheathed the sword, swore eternal friendship with his enemy of the previous moment and exchanged his arms with him."

The charioteer Hippomedon too was involved in the rout of the Trojan army.

"I leaded the chariot of Dryops, who that day got the sort of many other Trojans. His throat was transfixed by the Achilles' lance. I didn't see his death personally, because my chariot was in the second line. I could turn the pole at once and run towards the walls, because, being Achilles so unchained, a chariot more or less changed nothing, and instead I wanted to follow the charioteer's code and stay on my place, waiting the comeback of my lord. Perhaps so it was the better. Almost every my mate, in the retreat, ended among the Scamander River and the Achaeans, and everybody knows the slaughter done on that shores.

When I saw the wave of the battle coming to my place, I kneeled, well covered by the chariot's edges, but holding the bridles of the horses well fixed in my hand. Being in such a position, I heard the noise of the Greek chariots, the neigh of the horses, the music of the bronze shields stricken by lances, the inhuman cries of the warriors, but my whole attention was centred on my hand holding the ropes. My horses, in such hurly-burly, were almost unruly, and I had to take care of not letting them run away, but without tightening the holding too much, risking to make the Achaeans conscious of someone in the car handling the bridles. I don't know how, I was able to not discover myself, but perhaps it was not my merit. The Greeks were so bloodthirsty to noticing the movements of two horses fastened to a chariot. At least, I feel the wave passed and I dare to put my head out the edges. The hands blooding, I take forth the whip and give the sign of starting to the horses.

To come back in Troy, I had to cross the Greek lines, but my uneasy position had an advantage. I could have an idea of the situation on the field better than people in the middle of the battle could. I saw the mass of the fighters, by the one and the other side, thick on the Scamander River, and it was the place of the slaughter. By the other side, in the plain, there was some Trojan escaping and some Greek following him. At least, so I thought, because by my place you could not distinguish the ones and the others ones.

I believed to hear a voice whispering in the wind: - If you don't want to put yourself in the middle of the storm and get to be vainly killed, be the most possible far by the river. Make a longer way and come back by the plain. – I don't know if it was some god's voice. Usually, the gods give such advises to the princes and not to the charioteers. Anyway, it was a good advice. Once got the plain, I loosened the horse's bridles and passed besides who knows how many Achaeans, nobody noticing that I was an enemy. After all, if you see a chariot running and raising a cloud of dust, how do you can distinguish the enemy and the friend?

It's also true that, in such circumstances, you can not even to distinguish the friend and the enemy. Indeed, the first Trojans I met cast a lance against me, and luckily they were not exceptional casters. We were to fight among us, but, with the Greeks on our heels, it was not the right moment, so we fixed a truce. I let jump on the chariot as many people could do it (one was wounded) and I went to the walls. They let us enter and told me to be ready for a coming back on the first line, but that day the Trojans no more counterattacked. They were slaughtered, and nothing else.

I confess that, rethinking to that battle, I don't feel to have been defeated. I have been able to take back in Troy skin, chariot and horses. I have won my battle."