Battle at the ships

Zeus, watching the wall break, considers his promise to Thetis kept and turns his attention away from the field for a moment. Poseidon, who has been watching from Samothrace, takes the opportunity. He travels in three strides to his palace under the sea, takes his chariot up to the Greek camp, hides the horses, and walks among the men in the disguise of the old captain Calchas. He goes from contingent to contingent, prodding, encouraging, putting strength back into the wavering captains.

The battle inside the camp shifts. The Greeks rally. The book is one of the densest fighting books in the poem; Homer's signature method — each man named, given a small biography, then killed — runs continuously through it. Idomeneus, the king of Crete, an older man, has his day of glory: kills several Trojans, including a young son-in-law of Priam. Meriones, his second-in-command, kills more. The two Ajaxes hold a section of the line shoulder to shoulder. Hector pushes from his side.

The fight rolls back and forth among the wagons and the prows of the ships. The Trojans are inside the camp; the Greeks are not yet broken. Each side gains a few feet, then loses them. By the end of the book the line has not moved very far, but the casualties are extraordinary on both sides. Hera, on Olympus, watches and begins to plan her own intervention. The book ends with the fight still in the balance — and the Greek wives, in Homer's small comparison, weeping at home for husbands who will not return.