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Poor fool [Hector], / death doesn’t loom in your thoughts, and yet before long / it will hurry toward you, even while you are wearing / the indestructible armor of that great man / who makes all others tremble. Now you have killed / his friend . . . and you took the armor / . . . something you shouldn’t have done.
My friends, it would be a disgrace to retreat and surrender / Patroclus’s corpse to the Trojans, for them to drag it / back to Troy and cover themselves with glory.
True, [Zeus] has indeed answered my prayers; / but what good can that do me, when my beloved friend / has been killed? – Patroclus, a man whom I held in such honor / and loved as much as my own life.
If only strife could vanish from gods and mortals, / and anger, which makes even sensible men flare up / and get caught in violent quarrels.
Then, when the master craftsman had finished his work, / he took it and put it in front of Achilles’ mother. / And she, like a hawk, came swooping down from Olympus / carrying the bright armor, the gift of Hephaestus.
