Breach

From Iliad Book XII

The fleet is anchored at the shore. There are huts and tents and other dwellings set up for the Greeks.

The accommodations for the generals and the camp’s defenses are significant.

Achilles, in his hut with Patrocles, has maid servants to prepare a bed for Phoenix to spend the night after turning down the embassy trying to get him back in the fighting. This "hut" even has an inner room, where Achilles lay with his captive woman, lovely Diomede on one side of the room, while Patroclus has his own captive woman, fair Iphis, on the other side.

Nestor's spacious tent is served by his prize captive woman, Hecamede, excellent in counsel and fair as a goddess, who mixes wine, goat's cheese and barley meal in an exquisite huge four handled cup, for his guests. Before Nestor gives Patroclus his fatal advice.

Beyond all these "huts" and tents, are earthworks, with towers and battlements. Beyond those is a moat with sharp spikes sticking up.

And yet, after Troy is destroyed and the Greeks sail once more for home, all will be washed away by the gods to the sea, as if none of it had ever existed.

Sarpedon, King of the Lycians allied to Troy, finds a way around the moat and is the first to breach the walls of the Argives.

Siege of the Greek Camp, Crispijn van de Passe (I), 1613 print

Siege of the Greek Camp, Crispijn van de Passe (I), 1613 print. Sarpedon, the son of Jupiter and Laodamia, destroys the entrance gate of the Greek camp. In the margin a four-line caption , in two columns, in Latin. Utrecht paper engraving the Trojan war (94C - 94H)Rob

Then Hector himself brings down the entrance gate. Homer says that: "No one could stop him, none but the gods, his eyes burning.¹"

The Trojans follow him, over the walls and through the gate.

"And the Danaans broke for their long ships in an uproar always rising." [See ref for footnote 1.]

1. Both excerpts are from the translation of the Iliad by Robert Fitzgerald, the end of Book Twelve.