“And his armour clattered upon him”

From childhood, I have been a fan of Greek mythology. The majesty of Olympus; the noble, lusty, quarrelsome immortals; the assortment of demigods, heroes, and monsters. As such, I enjoy reading The Iliad - by which I mean the Richmond Lattimore translation. I am reading it again, and am stirred as always by the lyricism (though I wouldn’t know dactylic hexameter from a pterodactyl’s parameter), the overwrought drama, the graphic brutality, the glorying in terrible warcraft - and the trash talk, the dissing and boasting worthy of avid sports fans:

First to Diomedes called out the shining son of Lykaon:
‘Valiant and strong-spirited, o son of proud Tydeus,
you were not beaten then by the bitter arrow, my swift shot.
Now I will try with the throwing-spear to see if I can hit you.’
So he spoke, and balanced the spear far-shadowed, and threw it,
and struck the son of Tydeus in the shield, and the flying
bronze spearhead was driven clean through and into the corsolet,
and the shining son of Lykaon cried aloud in a great voice:
‘Now are you struck clean through the middle, and I think that you will
not
hold up for much longer; you have given me great claim to glory.’
Then strong Diomedes answered, not frightened before him:
‘You did not hit me, you missed, but I do not think that you two
will go free until one or the other of you has fallen
to glut with his blood Ares the god who fights under the shield’s guard.’
He spoke, and threw; and Pallas Athene guided the weapon
to the nose next to the eye, and it cut on through the white teeth
and the bronze weariless shore all the way through the tongue’s base
so that the spearhead came out underneath the jawbone.
He dropped then from the chariot and his armour clattered upon him,
dazzling armour and shining, while those fast-running horses
shied away, and there his life and his strength were scattered.

Meanwhile, the most dangerous man alive - the wrathful Brad Pitt Achilles - sits and sulks in the shadow of his hollow ship. But not for long!

For classic literature combined with unremitting violence, I thank you, Homer (or, as I read somewhere, some other ancient Greek poet with the same name).

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