“Her gray eyes clear, the goddess Athena answered, "Down from the skies I come to check your rage if only you will yield”

“Come, weave us a scheme so I can pay them back!Stand beside me, Athena, fire me with daring, fierceas the day we ripped Troy's glittering crown of towers down.Stand by me - furious now as then, my bright-eyed one -and I would fight three hundred men, great goddess,with you to brace me, comrade-in-arms in battle!”

“Rage - Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles,murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls,great fighters' souls, but made their bodies carrion,feasts for the dogs and birds,and the will of Zeus was moving toward its end.Begin, Muse, when the two first broke and clashed,Agamemnon lord of men and brilliant Achilles.”

“Beauty! Terrible Beauty! A deathless Goddess-- so she strikes our eyes!”

“For they imagined as they wished--that it was a wild shot,/ an unintended killing--fools, not to comprehend/ they were already in the grip of death./ But glaring under his brows Odysseus answered:'You yellow dogs, you thought I'd never make it/ home from the land of Troy. You took my house to plunder,/ twisted my maids to serve your beds. You dared/ bid for my wife while I was still alive./ Contempt was all you had for the gods who rule wide heaven,/ contempt for what men say of you hereafter./ Your last hour has come. You die in blood.”

“Still, we will let all this be a thing of the past, though it hurts us, and beat down by constraint the anger that rises inside us.Now I am making an end of my anger. It does not become me, unrelentingly to rage on”

“Come, Friend, you too must die. Why moan about it so?Even Patroclus died, a far, far better man than you.And look, you see how handsome and powerful I am?The son of a great man, the mother who gave me life--A deathless goddess. But even for me, I tell you,Death and the strong force of fate are waiting.There will come a dawn or sunset or high noonWhen a man will take my life in battle too--flinging a spear perhapsOr whipping a deadly arrow off his bow.”