The Iliad, Book XX [The Warrior’s Return]

^{translated from the ancient Greek by Emily Wilson}

Achilles killed Deucalion. He struck 
his elbow, where the tendons meet, and sliced 
right through the arm with his bronze spear. The victim, 
impeded by his injury, could not move 
out of his killer’s way, but looked directly 
towards impending death. Then with his sword 
Achilles struck his neck and chopped his head off 
and threw it far away, helmet and all. 
The marrow burst out from the vertebrae. 
The torso lay stretched out upon the ground. 
Then he pursued the son of Piros, Rigmus, 
who came from fertile Thrace. Achilles threw 
his bronze spear at his middle, and it pierced 
his belly. From the chariot he fell. 
The charioteer, Arethous, was turning 
the horse round, but with his sharp bronze spear 
Achilles struck his back and made him fall 
out of the chariot. The horses panicked. 
As fire from heaven rages through deep glens 
on a parched mountainside and forests burn 
and wind whirls everywhere and whips the flames, 
pursuing those he killed. The ground flowed black 
with blood. As when a farmer yokes two oxen 
with flat, broad faces, so that he can garner 
white barley in a well-built threshing floor— 
they bellow as they work, and soon the grain 
is turned to husks beneath their hooves—just so 
the strong-hoofed horses driven by Achilles 
trampled the shields and corpses, and the axle 
beneath the chariot was doused in blood, 
as were the rails around it. They were splattered 
by droplets from the wheels and horses’ hooves. 
Achilles, son of Peleus, still yearned 
to win himself more glory and success. 
His lethal hands were always drenched in gore.