The Iliad

Achilles pursues the retreating Trojans into the Xanthus River, choking it with men and horses, then leaps in, slaughtering wildly. He captures 12 Trojan youths alive, instructing a comrade to take them to his ship. Resuming his slaughter, he encounters Lycaon, a son of Priam whom Achilles previously captured and sold into slavery. Lycaon begs for mercy, pointing out that he has a different mother than Hector. Achilles replies that no son of Troy, especially of Priam, will escape him alive, and even he, Achilles, has to die, so “[w]hy moan about it” (523). Achilles drives his sword into Lycaon’s collarbone.

Achilles duels with Asteropaeus, grandson of the river Axius, who wounds Achilles’s arm, but Achilles kills him, boasting about his superior lineage. Achilles chases down and kills a large group of Asteropaeus’s comrades. The Xanthus rises up and objects that Achilles is choking him with corpses. Achilles refuses to stop killing, and the river fights him, repeatedly pounding him with a great wave. When Achilles runs away, the river pursues him, crashing down on his shoulders as Achilles dodges and weaves. He cries out to Zeus in reproach at the ignominy of dying in the river “like some boy” (529).