Iliad: Book Seven

This is a translation of the seventh book of Homer’s Iliad and continues the sequence of six books already available. 


It largely deals with the conflict between Ai-as and Hektor which arises when Hektor challenges any Greek to single combat. Ai-as is chosen by lot from the volunteers who eventually respond. Incidentally these volunteers include Dio-madas who doesn’t appear to be suffering too much in the way of ill-effects from his intersection with an arrow from  Pandaros. One of several instances where wounds are magicked into oblivion. 


What follows is a confrontation of which the corresponding episode in Book Three between Alexandros and Menelaos is a caricature. That degenerated into farce, and although this again involves divine intervention it leaves honour on both sides decidedly intact. 


The Book ends with an uneasy calm broken by omens from Zeus, after a day of collecting the dead and cremating the bodies on enormous pyres.