The fight over Patroclus's body

Hector strips Patroclus's body of Achilles's armor — the famous breastplate, the helmet, the greaves — and pulls back to put them on. The transformation is unsettling. Hector in Achilles's armor is not Hector and not Achilles; he is something almost grotesque, and Zeus himself, watching, says so. He gives Hector one last day of glory before the death he will earn.

Then the long struggle over the body begins. Menelaus is the first to defend it; he kills Euphorbus, the Trojan who threw the first spear, with a single stroke. Ajax comes up beside him; the two together hold the corpse for a time. The Trojans pour forward. The fighting becomes a blur of named men and small biographies and small deaths — the densest stretch of close-quarters killing in the poem. The body is dragged a few feet, then dragged back. The Greek captains converge. Idomeneus, Meriones, the lesser Ajax, all come up. None of them yields easily. The afternoon goes on.

Antilochus, Nestor's son and one of Achilles's young friends, is finally chosen to run the news to Achilles. He runs across the plain. He reaches Achilles's tent. Achilles has been growing uneasy — he has had a feeling. Antilochus says it: Patroclus is dead. Hector has the armor. The Greeks are fighting over the body. The book closes with the body still in Greek hands, with Ajax holding the line, and with the runner having delivered the news that will turn the rest of the poem.