To tell a single day of a war lasted ten years asked almost as much time, travel and work as the ones spent by the Achaeans to conquer the Ilion walls. I gathered and tested tens and tens of tales. I went in the Achaeans palaces and in the Colchis hovels, refuge of the exiles by the burned city. Sometimes, I had to win the reluctance of many witnesses to wake up grievous memories; otherwise, I had to dampen their enthusiasm, which made them boast about never happened deeds. I passed the Ionic Sea, directed to that Italy chosen as resting-place by many reduces of one and the other side.
Many of the fighters on the Scamander shores today are not able to give their version of facts, and I don't mean only the ones, like the brave and gentle Hector, or the quick-feet Achilles, fallen on the field and burnt with their arms on a pyre. Unfortunately, when I began my work, many of the Achaeans chiefs, who escaped the Parches so long to see the victory day, had already fallen, victims of a mocking destiny. So the commander Agamemnon, killed by his wife, or Ajax the Lesser, dead in a wrecking, or the astute Ulysses, a particularly precious witness, notwithstanding his fame as a liar, but about which, actually, I can't even say surely if he's alive or dead. (Not confirmed voices want him just came back to his Ithaca, after an adventurous travel.)
I must, dutifully, make clear a point. A poetical version of the battle, not coinciding with the mine in many points, runs for some time. I don't mean to make a polemic with its author (being him, furthermore, a gravely infirm person) but I must underline that any single word of my reconstruction is based on the facts or on an eyewitnesses.
I hinted, a little over, to the cruel destiny harassing the Greek winner chefs. Diomedes was among the few ones escaping it, but not wholly. Because an affair of conjugal dissension, that don't matter to report here, he let the native Argus and retired in Apulia, where he lives quietly and doesn't want speak or hear speaking about wars.
Luckily, Hypponax, a veteran of the Trojan War who followed his commander in the new country, has not such problems.
"Our king could not take part to that battle, because he was not again restored by the wounds of the former; but he was again able to take part to the Achaeans chiefs' council. I confess. Seeing Achilles passing, we the Argives wanted to split on his face. I mean, a guy let us in the crucial hour, let the Trojans slaughter us, and then, just because his friend suffered for it, he repents and wants to fight again. But I must say that, besides us needing him, he had a so suffering face that I, and everybody of us, forgave him at once. He made his excuses to Agamemnon for his excesses, Agamemnon made his excuses to him, and they sacrificed a boar to the gods, the usual rituals, in short. We the soldiers, having to go fighting and risking the skin, would have preferred to get the trouble out the way, but chefs, before the battle, always need a little of ceremonies. We waked up a little by boring, when we saw the passing of the eight female slaves gifted by Agamemnon to Achilles as peace sign, and before them the famous Briseis, the stone of the scandal. Sincerely, the big boss put in the basket a lot of other things too, but you understand that, after nine years spent far for home, a soldier who sees women passing, doesn't notice at all vases or horses. The slave women were all nice dolls, but the famous Briseis, with that sad expression on the face, had something of different. Seeing her, you almost understood why Achilles cared so much of her taking away.
Achilles was really heartily affected by his friend's death and wanted that we left for the battle immediately, without even eating. Luckily, there was Ulysses, the one you could accuse to everything, but not to be stupid. He made him understand that the son of a goddess, like him, could also go fighting empty stomach, but we poor soldiers had to put something in the bag to make it standing."
"As I see, you didn't like too much Quick-foot."
"If you want really know it, not at all. He was the strongest and the bravest of everybody of us, it's clear like the high noon sun, but we soldiers were forced to follow him among the Trojans and had always to pay the expenses of his heroism. However, I don't want to be unfair with him, seen his end.
We ate and drank, and many of us felt it to be our last meal. It was a stupid idea, seen that it could be then or any other day of that never-ending war, but we felt so. Perhaps, the Achilles' desperation, for his friend's death, infected us; or we realised that, if a strong, able and expert guy like Patroclus, had gave up his skin, nobody of us was sure."
Very different was the spirit in the Trojan camp. Let Hyppomedon tell it to us. Now he's breeding horses in Thrace; by then he was a member, as a coachman, of the contingent send by his nation to help the Trojan army.
"All of us were euphoric. We Thracians a little less, having lost both our chiefs in the battle of some day before; but we too followed the rule that, on your king's grave, it's better to spread not tears but the blood of his killer. Everybody of us felt that the war's fate would have been decided that day, and in our favour."
"Someone would call you blinded by pride for the victory of the day before."
"It's easy to say it now, ten years passed, and everybody knowing as it's ended. But consider what the situation was. We almost had won two of the last three battles, and we had won the third at all. After nine years spent besieged in the city, we were camped in the Scamander plain, so now the Achaeans were the ones besieged among the sea and us. We didn't get for an inch to repel them to the sea and to burn their ships. Patroclus died, Agamemnon, Ulysses, Diomedes were all wounded and unable to fight. Achilles too was unable to fight, lacking the arms (or so we believed). What was the most logical expectation? We would have attacked them again, but now to smash them like fleas."
"As I understand, it was the intervention by Achilles, with new arms, to make the difference."
"You can say it loudly, my friend. Also today, we war reduces ask to ourselves as he could get, in the space of a night, arm and armour perfectly working."
"Too, they say that Achilles, also unarmed, was a terrible enemy and that the bay before he had stopped the attack to the ships just crying three times..."
"About this I know nothing, I was fighting elsewhere."
As you see, Achilles could inspire the most contrasting feelings: respect in the adversaries, dislike in the warriors beside him. About this, it's precious the witness of Ephialtes, one of the Myrmidons fighting under his orders.
Now Ephialtes is a shoemaker in Argus and who sees his hands delicately cutting and sewing the leather or caressing the zither in the resting moments, hardly believes that once they could grasp, with ability and value, the heavy warriors' axe. He welcomed us with a great sense of hospitality, he willingly answered to our questions, but it was uneasy persuade him to express his dispassionate feelings about hi old commander.
"Who never has been in war could not understand it. We armed and went to the battle with a dark soul, sure that he would... (Ephialtes probably was to say he would have got everybody has killed, but corrected himself) that nobody of us would have come back. By the way, we saw the corpses of the day before, but, when we arrived in front of the Trojans, we were all enthusiasts the same, and ready to restart from where we had stopped. I don't know precisely the why. Perhaps the effect of the mar and the war cries, perhaps the fear to cut a poor figure in front of the friends aside you, all upright (also if you know very well that they are shivering too, and you don't see it only by the weight of the armour). Perhaps it's the old warriors' maxim, saying that, once started the battle, fighting is less risking than flying (admitted that in those moments you could reason enough to remember the old maxims.) But it's always the same: you leave the camp as a lamb, and get the battlefield as a lion. We Myrmidons, more, were following Achilles, nice like a god, in his new arms, but crying to the sky, as possessed by a daemon. Well, his madness a little infected us."
At this point, Ephialtes understood to have let a word too much escape and no more came back to the argument. Truly, Achilles is long time dead, and his son followed him in the grave, for a trivial women story, but Argus is again ruled by the Peleus' family that made of the greatest hero of Greece its tutelary deity.
Hypponax was more outspoken: "Achilles, surely, was somehow crazy. Our king Diomedes, Ajax, and also Patroclus were all very courageous, sometimes temerarious, but they never lost their head, in the way the Peleus' son lost his own."