205It would take long to relate the things I usefully did with counsel and with hand in the long span of the war. 207After the first battles the enemy kept themselves within the city walls for a long time, and there was no opportunity for open warfare: only in the tenth year did we fight. 210What do you do meanwhile, you who know nothing but battles? 211What use were you? 211For if you ask about my deeds, I lay ambushes for the enemy, I surround the trenches with a rampart, I console our comrades, so that they may bear the weariness of the long war with calm minds, I teach how we are to be fed and armed, I am sent wherever need demands.
216See, at Jupiter's prompting, deceived by the image of a dream, the king orders us to give up our concern with the war we had begun. 218He can defend his words by their author: let Ajax not allow this, let him demand that Pergamum be destroyed, and, what he can do, let him fight! 220Why does he not hold back those about to go? 221Why does he not take up arms? 221let him give the wandering crowd something to follow! 222This was not too much for one who never speaks except of great things. 223What of the fact that he himself fled too? 223I saw it, and I was ashamed to see it, when you were turning your back and preparing dishonourable sails.
225At once I said: "What are you doing? 225What madness," I said, "drives you, comrades? 226Let Troy go, then, when it is already taken! 227Or what are you bringing home in the tenth year, except disgrace?" 228With such words and others, in which grief itself had made me eloquent, I brought them back from the fleeing fleet, though they had turned away. 231nor does the son of Telamon dare to utter anything even now, yet Thersites had dared to assail the kings with words, though not unpunished by me for his insolence! 234I rise and urge the frightened citizens against the enemy, and with my voice I demand back their lost courage.
236From this time on, whatever he can seem to have done bravely is mine, since I dragged him back when he was turning his back. 238Finally, which of the Danaans praises you or seeks you out? 239But Tydeus' son shares his deeds with me, approves of me, and always trusts in Ulysses as his comrade. 241It is something, out of so many thousands of Greeks, to be chosen alone by Diomedes (and no lot was ordering me to go!); yet even so, scorning the danger of night and of the enemy, I kill Dolon of the Phrygian race, who had dared the same as we, but not before I had forced him to betray everything and learned what treacherous Troy was preparing.
247I had learned everything and had nothing more to spy out, and I could already have returned with the promised praise. 249Not content with that, I made for the tents of Rhesus, and in his own camp I killed him and his companions, and so, victorious and master of my wishes, I ride in a captured chariot in imitation of a joyful triumph; 253deny me the arms of the man whose horses the enemy had demanded as his price for the night, and let Ajax have shown himself the kinder! 255Why should I tell of the ranks of Lycian Sarpedon laid waste by my sword? 256With much bloodshed I laid low Coeranus son of Iphitus, and Alastor and Chromius, Alcander and Halius, Noemon and Prytanis, and I gave to destruction Thoon together with Chersidamas, and Charops, and Ennomus driven by pitiless fates, and others less famous who fell by my hand beneath the walls of the city.
262I too have wounds, citizens, fine in their very position; 263and do not trust empty words: look, here!' 264and with his hand he drew down his garment and said, 'This is the breast that has always been toiling in your affairs. 266But in so many years the son of Telamon has spent no blood for his comrades, and has a body without a wound! 268Yet what does it matter, if he declares that he bore arms for the Pelasgian fleet against both the Trojans and Jupiter? 270And I admit it, he did (for it is not my way spitefully to disparage good deeds), but let him not seize alone what is shared, and let him give some honour to you too: the grandson of Actor, safe under the likeness of Achilles, drove back the Trojans, together with their defender, from the ships about to burn.
275He thinks too that he alone dared to meet Hector's weapons, forgetting the king and the leaders and me, he who was ninth to offer for the task and was preferred only by the gift of the lot. 278But yet what, bravest of men, was the outcome of your fight? 279Hector goes away harmed by no wound! 280Wretched me, with what grief am I forced to remember that time when Achilles, the wall of the Greeks, fell! 282Neither tears nor grief nor fear kept me from carrying his body high from the ground. 284On these shoulders, on these shoulders, I say, I bore the body of Achilles, 285and the arms along with it, which now too I strive to bear!
286I have strength enough for such weights, and I certainly have a mind that will appreciate your honours. 288Was it for this, of course, that his sea-blue mother was so ambitious on her son's behalf, that heavenly gifts, the work of such great art, should be put on by a rough soldier without wit? 291for he does not understand the engravings of the shield, the Ocean and the lands and the stars with the lofty sky, the Pleiades and the Hyades and the Bear that never touches the sea, and the different cities and the shining sword of Orion: and what of the fact that he accuses me of shunning the duties of harsh war and coming late to the task already begun, and does not realise that he is slandering great-souled Achilles?
299If you call pretence a crime, we both pretended; 300if delay counts as a fault, I was earlier than he. 301A loving wife detained me, a loving mother Achilles, and the first part of our time was given to them, the rest to you. 303I do not fear, even if I cannot now defend it, a charge shared with so great a man: yet he was found out by the wit of Ulysses, but Ulysses not by the wit of Ajax! 306And lest we wonder at him pouring out on me the insults of his stupid tongue, he casts at you too things worthy of shame. 308Or is it shameful for me to have accused Palamedes on a false charge, and honourable for you to have condemned him?
310But neither was the son of Nauplius able to defend so great and so open a crime, nor did you merely hear the charges against him: you saw them, and they lay open in the money exposed.