are me to
return home, Peleus will find me a wife; there are Achaean women in
Hellas and Phthia, daughters of kings that have cities under them; of
these I can take whom I will and marry her. Many a time was I minded
when at home in Phthia to woo and wed a woman who would make me a
suitable wife, and to enjoy the riches of my old father Peleus. My life
is more to me than all the wealth of Ilius while it was yet at peace
before the Achaeans went there, or than all the treasure that lies on
the stone floor of Apollo's temple beneath the cliffs of Pytho. Cattle
and sheep are to be had for harrying, and a man buy both tripods and
horses if he wants them, but when his life has once left him it can
neither be bought nor harried back again.

"My mother Thetis tells me that there are two ways in which I may meet
my end. If I stay here and fight, I shall not return alive but my name
will live for ever: whereas if I go home my name will die, but it will
be long ere death shall take me. To the rest of you, then, I say, 'Go
home, for you will not take Ilius.' Jove has held his hand over her to
protect her, and her people have taken heart. Go, therefore, as in duty
bound, and tell the princes of the Achaeans the message that I have
sent them; tell them to find some other plan for the saving of their
ships and people, for so long as my displeasure lasts the one that they
have now hit upon may not be. As for Phoenix, let him sleep here that
he may sail with me in the morning if he so will. But I will not take
him by force."

They all held their peace, dismayed at the sternness with which he had
denied them, till presently the old knight Phoenix in his great fear
for the ships of the Achaeans, burst into tears and said, "Noble
Achilles, if you are now minded to return, and in the fierceness of
your anger will do nothing to save the ships from burning, how, my son,
can I remain here without you? Your father Peleus bade me go with you
when he sent you as a mere lad from Phthia to Agamemnon. You knew
nothing neither of war nor of the arts whereby men make their mark in
council, and he sent me with you to train you in all excellence of
speech and action. Therefore, my son, I will not stay here without
you--no, not though heaven itself vouchsafe to strip my years from off
me, and make me young as I was when I first left Hellas the land of
fair women. I was then flying the anger of father Amyntor, son of
Ormenus, who was furious with me in