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Summary
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Achilles drives the Trojans into the river Xanthus and kills them in the water. He takes twelve young men alive to be sacrificed for Patroclus.
Lycaon, a son of Priam whom Achilles had once spared, begs for his life and is killed. The river rises against Achilles, and Hephaestus sends fire to boil the water. On Olympus, the gods fight among themselves. The book is the Iliad’s most violent and most surreal.
Opening lines
But when they were now come to the ford of the fair-flowing river, even eddying Xanthus that immortal Zeus begat, there Achilles cleft them asunder, and the one part he drave to the plain toward the city, even where the Achaeans were fleeing in rout [5] the day before, what time glorious Hector was raging—thitherward poured forth some in rout, and Hera spread before them a thick mist to hinder them; but the half of… — Homer, Iliad XXI.1ff., trans. A. T. Murray (Loeb; Perseus Digital Library, CC BY-SA 4.0).
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