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The Other Way 'Round - Page 16

© Michael Martinez

By Aphrodite glorious-crowned, the
Bride Of the strong War-god, to the end that he,
The son of noble Peleus, might be pierced
With the sharp arrow of repentant love.
The warriors gazed, and in their hearts they prayed
That fair and sweet like her their wives might seem,
Laid on the bed of love, when home they won.
Yea, and Achilles' very heart was wrung
With love's remorse to have slain a thing so sweet,
Who might have borne her home, his queenly bride,
To chariot-glorious Phthia; for she was
Flawless, a very daughter of the Gods,
Divinely tall, and most divinely fair. Achilles' bittersweet vengeance leaves him wracked with love and loss. It is an eery scene, disturbing and deeply tragic. Tolkien seems almost determined to set right this ancient wrong when, as Prince Imrahil rides out from Minas Tirith to support the Rohirrim on the Pelennor Fields, he comes upon the carnage where Theoden and his knights have fallen before the Lord of the Nazgul:

Then the prince went from his horse, and knelt by the bier in honour of the king and his great onset; and he wept. And rising he looked then on Éowyn and was amazed. 'Surely, here is a woman?' he said. 'Have even the women of the Rohirrim come to war in our need?' 'Nay! One only,' they answered. 'The Lady Éowyn is she, sister of Éomer; and we knew naught of her riding until this hour, and greatly we rue it.' Then the prince seeing her beauty, though her face was pale and cold, touched her hand as he bent to look more closely on her. 'Men of Rohan!' he cried. 'Are there no leeches among you? She is hurt to the death maybe, but I deem that she yet lives.' And he held the bright-burnished vambrace that was upon his arm before her cold tips, and behold! a little mist was laid on it hardly to be seen. 'Haste now is needed,' he said, and he sent one riding back swiftly to the City to bring aid. But he bowing low to the fallen, bade them farewell, and mounting rode away into battle.

There are other images Tolkien probably lifted from the Greek poets: the omens and portents represented by eagles, as when an eagle drops a snake over the Trojan army in the "Iliad", and Legolas sees an eagle (Gwaihir) flying far off over the fields of Rohan. The Greek gods assume mortal forms and join Achaeans and Trojans in combat, and their presence immediately restores the morale of warriors; Gandalf, an angelic Maia, has come to Middle-earth in the form of a Man, and when he and Prince Imrahil make their rounds in the besieged city of Minas Tirith, men take heart and sometimes break out into song. And Tolkien delights in describing siege after siege: Helm's Deep, Minas Tirith, and Aragorn's last stand around the two knolls just north of Mordor.

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