Page 395 - the-iliad

She wept as she spoke, and the women joined in her la-
ment-making as though their tears were for Patroclus, but
in truth each was weeping for her own sorrows. The elders
of the Achaeans gathered round Achilles and prayed him to
take food, but he groaned and would not do so. ‘I pray you,’
said he, ‘if any comrade will hear me, bid me neither eat nor
drink, for I am in great heaviness, and will stay fasting even
to the going down of the sun.’
On this he sent the other princes away, save only the
two sons of Atreus and Ulysses, Nestor, Idomeneus, and
the knight Phoenix, who stayed behind and tried to com-
fort him in the bitterness of his sorrow: but he would not
be comforted till he should have flung himself into the
jaws of battle, and he fetched sigh on sigh, thinking ever of
Patroclus. Then he said—
‘Hapless and dearest comrade, you it was who would get
a good dinner ready for me at once and without delay when
the Achaeans were hasting to fight the Trojans; now, there-
fore, though I have meat and drink in my tents, yet will I
fast for sorrow. Grief greater than this I could not know, not
even though I were to hear of the death of my father, who is
now in Phthia weeping for the loss of me his son, who am
here fighting the Trojans in a strange land for the accursed
sake of Helen, nor yet though I should hear that my son is
no more—he who is being brought up in Scyros—if indeed
Neoptolemus is still living. Till now I made sure that I alone
was to fall here at Troy away from Argos, while you were
to return to Phthia, bring back my son with you in your
own ship, and show him all my property, my bondsmen,

The Iliad