Book Twenty-one

Xanthos vs. Achilles

The strangest thing happened today while I was down by the river. A water nymph, astray from her usual route, was wandering near me. She told me a most intriguing tale of the river, Xanthos. She was very shaken up, for Hephaestus had boiled the river alive. I asked why he had done such a thing, and she could not tell me.

I called for Apollo after my encounter with the nymph, and he told me that Xanthos had been upset with Achilles, for his stream was being clogged with too many bodies from Achilles victories. When the great river had asked him to stop, Achilles denied his request of killing people; he starts attacking Xanthos, but the great river drags Achilles under with his unrelenting force. That is where Hephaestus comes in, boiling the water until Xanthos is forced to let Achilles go.

I was talking to my father in law, Priam, and he said he had opened the gates earlier letting in the warriors fleeing from battle. Though, I don't believe my husband came in with the others.


Picture from: http://www.humanities360.com/index.php/the-god-scamander-in-greek-mythology-39860/

Lattimore, Richmond, trans. The Iliad of Homer. Chicago: The University of
     Chicago Press, 2011. Print. This book was the base of which I got the
     majority of the information in my characters blog post.