Homer and The Iliad - Sri Aurobindo and Ilion - Sri Aurobindo and Ilion

Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo and Ilion

I

Sri Aurobindo was born on the 15th August 1872 at Calcutta. At an early age of seven, he was taken along with his elder brothers to England for education, since his father wanted him to have no Indian influence in the shaping of his outlook and personality. And yet, even though Sri Aurobindo assimilated in himself richly the best of the European culture, he returned to India in 1893 with a burning aspiration to work for the liberation of India from foreign rule. While in England, Sri Aurobindo passed the I.C.S. Examination, and yet he felt no call for it; so he got himself disqualified by remaining absent from the riding test. The Gaekwar of Baroda happened to be there at that time, and Sri Aurobindo accepted the proposal to be his Personal Secretary, and returned to India.

       Soon thereafter, however, Sri Aurobindo switched over to the Baroda College as Professor of French and then of English, and when in 1906, he left for Bengal, he was the acting Principal of the College. It was during the Baroda period that Sri Aurobindo assimilated in himself the spirit and culture of India and  prepared himself for his future political and spiritual work. Indeed, his political work had already begun in Baroda, but it was behind the scenes, largely of the nature of a preparation for an armed revolution for the liberation of India. Sri Aurobindo was the first among the Indian leaders to declare and work for the aim of complete Independence of India. In 1905, Bengal was divided, and Sri Aurobindo left

Baroda and, invited by the nationalistic leaders, he joined at Calcutta the newly started National College as its first Principal. It was here that Sri Aurobindo, while working secretly for the revolution, chalked out also a plan of outer action. This plan consisted of the programme of passive Resistance, Boycott and Swadeshi, which was later adopted as the policy of the struggle for freedom. It was here again that Sri Aurobindo wrote powerfully and boldly for Bande Mataram, and later for Karma Yogin; through his writings, he electrified the nation and surcharged the people with a new energy which ultimately led the nation to her freedom. It was, therefore, significant that when India attained her liberation in 1947, it was on the 15th August, the birthday of Sri Aurobindo.

The pioneering work that Sri Aurobindo did for the liberation of India was evidently a part of his larger work for the entire humanity and for the whole earth. For him, the liberation of India was an indispensable part of the new world order. Moreover, the practice of Yoga, which he had started in 1902, led him, even while in the thick of intense political and literary activity, to major realisations of the Brahmic Silence, Nirvana, and also of the universal dynamic Presence of the Divine. And, in 1908, when he was in Alipore jail during his trial under the charge of sedition, he received through numerous experiences and realisations the assurance of the liberation of the country and also the knowledge of the initial lines on which his own future work was to proceed. For he saw that even in the field of Yoga something was still lacking, something radical that alone would help resolve the problems of the world and would lead mankind to its next evolutionary stage. And so, in 1910, soon after his acquittal from the jail, he withdrew to Pondicherry to concentrate upon this new research work, to hew a new path. It has been a most dynamic work with the entire earth as its central field. It was in the course of this work that Sri Aurobindo declared that the Supramental is the Truth and that its advent on the earth is inevitable. To bring down the supramental consciousness and power on the

earth has been the central work of Sri Aurobindo.

       Sri Aurobindo has explained the nature of this work, the nature of the Supermind, the necessity of its descent, the process of this descent and the dynamic consequences of this descent for the solutions of the problems of mankind, in his voluminous writings most of which were written serially in the philosophical monthly, Arya, which was started in 1914, immediately after the first arrival of the Mother from France to Pondicherry. Some of the most important of these and other writings are: The Life Divine, The Synthesis of Yoga, The Ideal of Human Unity, The Human Cycle, The Foundations of Indian Culture, Essays on the Gita, On the Veda, The Upanishads, The Future Poetry, The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth, and the epic Savitri.

       Sri Aurobindo was a supreme poet, and his most famous poetical work, Savitri, presents a new kind of poetry, which has been termed as overhead poetry. This is an epic, the longest in English literature (about 24000 lines), a prophetic vision of the future. Sri Aurobindo has written a number of other short and long poems, among which Ilion (extending over 100 pages) is an innovative experimentation in an epic in quantitative hexameters in the history of English literature. Sri Aurobindo has also written five dramas, Perseus the Deliverer, Rodogune, Viziers of Bassora, Vasavdutta and Eric. He has also translated two plays of Kalidasa from the original Sanskrit into English. When Sri Aurobindo withdrew in 1926 into his room for concentrating in the required way on the 'Supramental Yoga', Mother organised and developed his Ashram. In 1943, a school for the education of children was founded, and after the passing of Sri Aurobindo in 1950, Mother developed that school into an international University Centre, where numerous original and bold experiments of education were carried out under her guidance. This educational work was a part of the Supramental Yoga, and we have rare insights into education and yoga in the volumes entitled Questions and Answers, which contain conversations of the Mother that took place in her classes. In 1958, Mother

withdrew to her room in order to come to terms with the research in the problems related to the supramental transformation of the physical consciousness at the cellular level. In 1968, Mother founded Auroville, an international city as a collective field for the material and spiritual researches required for realising human unity as a part of the supramental action on the earth. Mother's exploration into the body-consciousness and her discovery of a 'cellular mind' capable of restructuring the nature of the body is contained in a document of more than 6000 pages, published in 13 volumes. This is L'Agenda de Mère (Mother's Agenda), an account of her extraordinary exploration covering a period of more than twenty years, during which Mother slowly uncovered the 'Great Passage' to the next species by the supramental transformation of the physical consciousness and fulfilled the work that Sri Aurobindo had given to her.

II

       When exactly Sri Aurobindo wrote this epic in quantitative hexameters is not known, but a fragment of this epic running to 380 lines appeared in 1942 at the end of the second volume of Collected Poems and Plays. The whole work was published 15 years later in 1957. This work comprises 8 books and an incomplete 9th book. It appears that this poem had not received final revision at Sri Aurobindo's hands except the 380 lines which had appeared in 1942.

       Like Homer's Iliad, Sri Aurobindo's Ilion is also an incomplete work. Iliad is spread over eight days, ending with the death of Hector at the hands of Achilles. Sri Aurobindo's  Ilion covers the events of a single day, the last day of the doomed city of Troy. In Homer's Iliad, the action begins with the wrath of Achilles with Agamemnon. In Sri Aurobindo's Ilion, the action begins with the proposal of Achilles to Troy conveyed at the dawn by a messenger, "carrying Fate in his helpless hands and the doom of an empire." Eight books are

Apollo ( Detail of a painting by Gustave Moreau )

entitled respectively, The Book of the Herald; The Book of the Statesman; The Book of the Assembly; The Book of Partings;

The Book of Achilles; The Book of the Chieftains; The Book of the Woman; and The Book of the Gods. The ninth book does not bear any title, and it is left incomplete, although the end of the story of Troy is sufficiently indicated. The story of one single day, ending in the doom and ruin of Troy at the hands of Greeks appears to be the plan of the poem.

       At dawn, the proposal of Achilles is conveyed through his messenger to the leaders of Troy, including Deiphobus, Aeneas, Paris, Penthesilia and Priam; the proposal is rejected in the morning by Troy's assembled chieftains; there is then the call to arms and the narration of partings of the Trojan leaders, including the parting of Paris from Helen; and in the same morning, the messenger returns to Achilles to convey the reply of Troy, who also directs the messenger to the assembly of the kings; the message is delivered to the chieftains of the Greek army who, after the debate, rise with the decision to destroy Ilion (Troy), so that they can turn their ships to their children.

In the Book of the Woman, we have the parting dialogue between Breseis and Achilles, and in the Book of the Gods. we have the assembly of the Gods presided over by Zeus. In the ninth book, we have the battle where Penthesilea is in search of Achilles in order to slay him, and where Achilles appears, "loud as the outbursting thunder." The impending catastrophe was already foreshadowed at the end of the assembly of the Gods, when it was seen that "in the noon there was night. And Apollo passed out of Troya."

Ill

     An important element of this epic that strikes us forcefully is its unveiling of the profound meaning of the Siege of Troy and the fall of Troy. In Sri Aurobindo's vision of history one is required to look into the greater purposes which struggle to

realize themselves through a complex working out of forces by mutual shocks under the eye of supervening determination and action. In that context, the question that can be raised is: Why should Troy have fallen?

       Nature seeks multi-sided and integral perfection, not merely one-sided splendour or climax. When such a splendour is achieved, Nature seeks to integrate it with potentialities that may eventually grow into a more complex efflorescence and fruition, even though temporarily the higher may have to yield  to the lower or even though the one-sided splendour may have to be destroyed in order to make way for a greater and more comprehensive movement of development.      

As Sri Aurobindo reveals:  

 So when the Eye supreme perceives that we rise up  too swiftly,

 Drawn towards height but fullness contemning,  called by the azure,

 Life when we fail in, poor in our base and forget ting our mother,

 Back we are hurled to our roots; we recover our sap from the savage.¹

             Troy had reached splendid greatness; there were not only great palaces and shining domes and magnificent tower-tops, there were also love and laughter and flourishing highways and temples and sculptures of beauty; there was also the sunshine of mysteries of Apollo that had still survived from ancient luminous dawns. Priam ruled with might and Hector breathed noble heroism and Paris lived in joy and beauty and laughter, and Cassandra, one of the princesses, could divine in her visions Apollo's boons of light and knowledge of past, present and future.

      Achaeans, the most powerful of the Greek tribes, and all other Greeks, who had laid the siege of Troy, were less civilized than the Trojans, and the issue at heart was the direction in

Zeus (Bronze statue 470 - 460 BC)

which humanity had to advance in centuries to come. Troy was splendid, and great and had the halo of the light of Apollo, but this was only one-sided, a mere peak among many other actual and potential peaks of human culture. And Trojans or Dardans opposed the Achaeans, even when there was a possibility of a more harmonious and less destructive process of a joint progression. As Will Durant points out, "It was a pity that these noble Dardans stood in the way of an expanding Greece which, despite its multitude of faults, would in the end bring to this and every other region of the Mediterranean a higher civilization than they had ever known."²

       In Sri Aurobindo's Ilion, we hear the message of Achilles, the chief of the Achaean heroes, delivered to Trojans, a message of a conditional truce, which was rejected. We also hear in that epic the supreme Zeus and other Olympian gods who had watched the rejection revealing the deeper design of the unfolding of human history. Zeus, addressing the assembly of the gods, declares:

"Troy shall fall at last and the ancient ages shall perish. ... 
Let not one nation resist by its glory the good of the ages."

He continues:

 "Twilight thickens over man and he moves to his winter of darkness. 
Troy that displaced with her force and her arms the luminous ancients, 
Sinks in her turn by the ruder strength of the half-savage Achaians. 
They to the Hellene shall yield and the Hellene fall by the Roman. 
Rome too shall not endure, but by strengths ill shaped shall be broken,

Nations formed in the ice and mist, confused and crude-hearted.
So shall the darker and ruder always prevail o'er the brilliant
Till in its turn to a ruder and darker it falls and is shattered. ...
So shall it last till the fallen ages return to their greatness.
For if the twilight be helped not, night o'er the world cannot darken;
Night forbidden how shall a greater dawn be effected?" ³

In terms of the Greek Mythology, the. immediate issue was that of the departure of Apollo, the god of spiritual light, and enthronement of Athene, the goddess of Reason.
The beautiful mystic Apollo knows this and responds to Zeus:

"Zeus, I know that I fade; already the night is around me.
Dusk she extends her reign and obscures my lightnings with error.
Therefore my prophets mislead men's hearts to the ruin appointed,
Therefore Cassandra cries in vain to her sire and her brothers.
All I endure I foresee and the strength in me waits for its coming;
All I foresee I approve; for I know what is willed, 
O Cronion. ...
I will go forth from your seats and descend to the night among mortals
There to guard the flame and the mystery; vast in my moments
Rare and sublime to sound like a sea against Time

and its limits,
Cry like a spirit in pain in the hearts of the priest
and the poet,
Cry against limits set and disorder sanities bounded.
Jealous for truth to the end my might shall prevail
and for ever
Shatter the moulds that men make to imprison their
limitless spirits.⁴

And let us listen to the direction that Zeus gives to Athene:

"Girl, thou shalt rule with the Greek and the Saxon,
the Frank and the Roman.
Worker and fighter and builder and thinker, light
of the reason,
Men shall leave all temples to crowd in thy courts,
O Athene.
Go then and do my will, prepare men's tribes for
their fullness."⁵

It was then with the departure of Apollo from Troy and with
the fall of Troy, Hellas was created under the rule of Athene,
the goddess of Reason. But aware of her real role in shaping
human culture to its fullness, she had replied to Zeus:
"Zeus, I see and I am not deceived by thy words in my spmt.
We but build forms for thy thought while thousmilest down high o'er our toiling;
Even as men are we tools for thee, who are thy children and dear ones . . . .
This too I know that I pass preparing the paths of Apollo
And at the end as his sister and slave and bride I must sojourn

Rapt to his courts of mystic light and unbearable brilliance. ...

 Such the reward that thou keepst for my labour obedient always. 
Yet I work and I do thy will, for 'tis mine, O my father."⁶

     If we study human history and critical issues of today in the light of Sri Aurobindo's vision, we shall find that the line of development that began with the siege of Troy and culminated in the creation of Hellas, we shall find that the Periclean Athens was only a precursor of the Curve of Reason that re-emerged in the fifteenth Century (AD) in the Renascent Europe and which has guided and governed not only Europe but increasingly the entire globe and swept our times with momentous results in various fields of life. The contemporary crisis through which we are passing today is also the crisis of the rule of Reason, and we can perceive that this is the time when Athene is preparing herself to depart from her supremacy and to sojourn with Apollo.

IV

     Ilion is a continuous hymn of heroism. Every major character manifests some remarkable qualities of heroism, and in the case of Achilles, the central hero, these qualities combine together and rise to a high pitch of accomplishment. In the Book of the Herald, in the Book of Achilles, and in the Book of the Woman, the characterization of Achilles brings to our experience the living power of a hero actuated by uplifted will-force and the dynamic pulsation of strength, energy, courage, leadership, victory in every kind of battle, and will power that compels men and environment to accept its domination. He was, indeed, in an earlier phase aggressive and brutal, but his soul-power pushed him to higher grades of a noble and visionary hero. Already in the Iliad of Homer, the way in

Athena

which he responds to Priam's request to deliver Hector's dead body manifests a noble salute of a hero to a hero and a deeper perception and urge for harmonization.  

       The character of Achilles in Ilion portrays higher degrees of heroism. There is, firstly, high fearlessness which no danger or difficulty can daunt and which feels its power equal to meet and face and bear even the assault of fortune and adverse gods; secondly, dynamic daring which shrinks from no adventure or enterprise; thirdly, freedom from disabling weakness and fear; and, fourthly, love of honour which can scale the heights of the highest nobility and which stoops to nothing little, base, vulgar or weak. We perceive in him increasing embodiment of the ideal of high courage, straightforwardness, sacrifice of the lower to the higher self, unflinching resistance to injustice and oppression, noble leading, and warrior hood that seeks to accomplish the work that is to be done, to maintain the glorious results of the past or to destroy only to that limited extent which would be necessary to make clear the paths of the future. Let us read the words of Achilles where he describes his transition from the lower to the higher qualities of his warriorhood:

       "Fierce was my heart in my youth and exulted in  triumph and slaughter.
        Now as I grow in my spirit like to my kin the immortals,
        Joy more I find in saving and cherishing than in the carnage.
        Greater it seems to my mind to be king over men than their slayer,
       ...  The cup of my victory sweetens
       Not with the joys of hate, but the human pride of  the triumph."⁷

    The story of Ilion is the story of Achilles who has lost nothing of his earlier heroism but which has become much

greater, and much nobler by the experience of a higher vision and a higher impulse of love, peace and harmony. In the very first Book, the Book of the Herald, we find the old Talthybius carrying the message of Achilles, a message of peace and love and justice, the message that is sent to the leaders of Troy directly, "not as his vassal who leads, Agamemnon, the Argive, But as a ruler in Hellas, ... king of my nations." For he knows that the mighty is mightiest when he is alone, and when the strength within him is accompanied by the supreme strength of the Supreme. As Achilles declares later:

        ... "I with Zeus am enough. ...
        Need has he none for a leader who himself is the soul of his action.
        Zeus and his Fate and his spear are enough for the Phthian Achilles."⁸

      Let us listen to the conciliatory tone and atmosphere of the message of the great hero:

      "Princes of Troy, I have sat in your halls, I have slept in your chambers;
       Not in the battle alone, as a warrior glad of his foemen,
       Glad of the strength that mates with his own, in peace we encountered.
       Marvelling I sat in the halls of my enemies, close to the bosoms
       Scarred by the dints of my sword and the eyes I had seen through the battle,
       Ate rejoicing the food of the East at the tables of Priam,
       Served by the delicatest hands in the world, by Hecuba's daugher."⁹

       A little later, the message explains to the Trojan leaders his

yearning for peace in the following words:

"Long have I waited for wisdom to dawn on your violent natures. 
Lonely I paced o'er the sands by the thousand  throated waters 
Praying to Pallas the wise that the doom might turn  from your mansions 
Buildings delightful, gracious as rhythms, lyrics in  marble, 
Works of the transient gods; — and I yearned for the end of the war-din 
Hoping that Death might relent to the beautiful  sons of the Trojans."¹⁰

 The message also refers to Polyxena, daughter of Priam, whom Achilles loves:

"And for Polyxena's sake I will speak to you yet as your lover 
Once ere the Fury, abrupt from Erebus, deaf to your crying, 
Mad with the joy of the massacre, seizes on wealth and on women 
Calling to Fire as it strides and Ilion sinks into  ashes. 
Yield; for your doom is impatient."¹¹

And then comes the central part of the message:

"Princes of Pergama, open your gates to our Peace who would enter
Life in her gracious clasp and forgetfulness, grave of earth's passions,
Healer of wounds and the past. In a comity equal, Hellenic,

Asia join with Greece, our world from the frozen rivers
Trod by the hooves of the Scythian to farthest undulant Ganges.
Tyndarid Helen yield, the desirable cause of your danger,
Back to Greece that is empty long of her smile and her movements.
Broider with riches her coming, pomp of her slaves and the wagons
Endlessly groaning with gold that arrive with the ransom of nations.
So shall the Fury be pacified, she who exultant from Sparta
Breathed in the sails of the Trojan ravisher helping his oarsmen.
So shall the gods be appeased and the thoughts of their wrath shall be cancelled,
Justice contented trace back her steps and for brands of the burning
Torches delightful shall break into Troy with the swords of the bridal.
I like a bridegroom will seize on your city and clasp and defend her
Safe from the envy of Argos, from Lacedaemonian hatred,
Safe from the hunger of Crete and the Locrian's violent rapine.
But if you turn from my voice and you hearken only to Ares
Crying for battle within you deluded by Hera and Pallas,
|Swiftly fierce death's surges shall close over Troy and her ramparts
Built by the gods shall be stubble and earth to the tread of the Hellene. ...

Apollo (Temple of Zeus, Olympia, c. 470 BC )

Rest shall I then when the borders of Greece are fringed with the Ganges;
         Thus shall the past pay its Titan ransom and, Fate her balance
        Changing, a continent ravished suffer the fortune of Helen.
        This I have sworn allying my will to Zeus and Ananke."¹²

      There is in this message the heroism of a warrior whose heart is inspired by the fire that wants to burn away the Trojan act of injustice; but there is also here the noble aim to tread the path of peace and preservation rather than that of massacre and destruction. Achilles has a deep -appreciation of the greatness of Troy and of the beauty and grandeur of the Trojan palaces and sculptures. In fact, even when the message was rejected by the Trojans and war and destruction had become inevitable, Achilles sent to his own legions a warning that burns with his concern for "Ilion's marble splendours." These axe the fiery words of the warning:

         But when my arm and my Fate have vanquished their gods and Apollo,
         Brilliant with blood when we stand amid Ilion's marble splendours,
         Then let none seat deaf flame on the glory of Phrygia's marbles
        Or with his barbarous rapine shatter the chambers  of sweetness
        Slaying the work of the gods and the beauty the ages have lived for.
        For he shall moan in the night remote from the earth and her greenness,
        Spurred like a steed to its goal by my spear dug deep in his bosom;
        Fast he shall fleet to the waters of wailing, the

         pleasureless pastures.

         Touch not the city Apollo built, where Poseidon has laboured.
         Seized and dishelmed and disgirdled of Apollonian ramparts,
         Empty of wide-rolling wheels and the tramp of a turbulent people
         Troy with her marble domes shall live for our nations in beauty
         Hushed mid the trees and the corn and the pictured halls of the ancients,
         Watching her image of dreams in the gliding waves of Scamander,
         Sacred and still, a city of memory spared by the Grecians."¹³   

     It is rightly said that the great and noble heroes are softer than flowers and harder than steel. And this aspect is very well brought out in Ilion in the Book of the Woman, where Breseis "the fatal and beautiful captive," for whom the body of Achilles is her entire world, addresses him. Just when Achilles was striding forth to the battle, Breseis, who has already the premonition through her visions of the previous night that she would no more see him again, pours out her woman's heart and reveals her own image of the heroic Achilles:

        "Art thou not gentle, even as terrible, lion of Hellas?
         Others have whispered the deeds of thy wrath; we have heard, but not seen it;
         Marvelling much at their pallor and awe we have listened and wondered.
         Never with thrall or slave-girl or captive saw I thee angered,
         Hero, nor any humble heart ever trembled to near thee.
         Pardoning rather our many faults and our failures in service

          Lightly thou layest thy yoke on us, kind as the clasp of a lover
          Sparing the weak as thou breakest the mighty, O godlike Achilles.
          Only thy equals have felt all the dread of the deathgod within thee;
          We have presumed and played with the strength at which nations have trembled."¹⁴    

        What was Achilles' view of himself and his heroism? He sums it up in his parting advice to his son, Pyrrhus, in the following words:

     "Pyrrhus, be like thy father in virtue, though canst not excel him;
     Noble be in peace, invincible, brave in the battle,
     Stern and calm to they foe, to the suppliant merciful. Mortal
     Favour and wrath as thou walkst heed never, son of Achilles.
     Always thy will and the right impose on thy friend and thy foeman.
     Count not life nor death, defeat nor triumph, Pyrrhus.
     Only thy soul regard and the gods in thy joy or thy  labour."¹⁵

^V

      There is another heroic character in Ilion who commands our attention, even in this brief Note. This is Penthesilia. In Homer's Iliad, this heroine is the Queen of the Amazons; in Sri Aurobindo's Ilion, she is an Indian Queen, who has yearned for Achilles since her early years and wanted to meet that hero in a heroic situation and in a heroic manner, — to be seized in

the battle and to be united with him, even though slain by him or in the act of slaying him.

        We meet her first in the Book of the Herald, where she emerges from "her chamber of sleep where she lay in the Ilion mansion" to listen to Talthybius, the herald of Achilles, and to challenge him and to ridicule him. She is "noble and tall and erect in a nimbus of youth and of glory," and her voice is "mighty and dire in its sweetness."

        When the message is delivered by Talthybius, she notes, presumably, with the deep quenching of her great thirst, the throbbing words of Achilles that describe her courage and strength and the panic she has spread among her Greek enemies. Achilles had said:

   "... She is turbulent, swift in the battle.
Clanging her voice of the swan as a summons to  death and disaster, 
Fleet-footed, happy and pitiless, laughing she runs  to the slaughter; 
Strong with the gait that allures she leaps from her  car to the slaying, 
Dabbles in blood smooth hands like lilies. Europe  astonished 
Reels from her shock to the Ocean. She is the panic and mellay, 
War is her paean, the chariots thunder of Penthesilea."¹⁶

In her answer to the message, she hastens to confess and confront and declare her longing to meet Achilles in war. Her words are spoken "with a magical laughter sweet as the jangling bells upon anklets leaping in measure." The virgin Penthesilea speaks:

       "Long I had heard in my distant realms of the fameof Achilles,

Ignorant still while I played with the ball and ran in the dances
Thinking not ever to war; but I dreamed of the shock of the hero.
So might a poet inland who imagines the rumour of Ocean
Yearn with his lust for its giant upheaval, its dance as of hill-tops,
Toss of the yellow mane and the tawny march and the voices
Lionlike claiming earth as a prey for the clamorous waters.
So have I longed as I came for the cry and the speed of Achilles. 
But he has lurked in his ships, he has sulked like a  boy that is angry. 
Glad am I now of his soul that arises hungry for  battle, 
Glad, whether victor I live or defeated travel to the  shadows. 
Once shall my spear have rung on the shield of the Phithian Achilles."¹⁷

    Talthybius, in his report to Achilles, describes Penthesilea as "insolent, warlike, regal and swift" and delivers to him her message in these words:

 "Sea of renown and of valour that fillest the world with thy rumour, 
Speed of the battle incarnate, mortal image of Ares! 
Terror and tawny delight like a lion one hums or  is hunted! 
Dread of the world and my target, swift-footed glorious hero! 
Thus have I imaged thee, son of Peleus, dreaming  in countries

 Far from thy knowledge, in mountains that never have rung to thy war-cry.
O, I have longed for thee, warrior! Therefore today by thy message
So was I seized with delight that my heart was hurt with its rapture,
Knowing today I shall gaze with my eyes on that which I imaged
Only in air of the mind or met in the paths of my dreaming.
Thus have I praised thee first with my speech; with my spear I would answer.
Yet for thy haughty scorn who deeming of me as some Hellene
Or as a woman weak of these plains fit but for the distaff,
Promises! capture in war and fame as thy slave-girl in Phithia, —
Surely I think that death today will reply to that promise, —
Now I will give thee my answer and warn thee ere we encounter.
Know me queen of a race that never was conquered in battle!
Know me armed with a spear that never has missed in the combat!
There where my car-wheels run, good fruit gets the husbandman after.
This thou knowest. Ajax has told thee, thy friend, in his dying.
Has not Meriones' spirit come in thy dreams then to warn thee?
Didst thou not number the Argives over ere I came to the battle?
Number them now and measure the warrior Penthesilea.

Such am I then whom thy dreams have seen meek browed in Larissa,
And in the battle behind me thunder the heroes Eoan,
Ranks whose feeblest can match with the vaunted chiefs of the Argives.
Never yet from the shock have they fled; if they turn from the foeman,
Always 'tis to return like death recircling on mortals.
Yet being such, having such for my armies, this do I promise:
I on the left of the Trojans war with my bright armed numbers,
Thou on the Argive right come forth, Achilles, and meet me!
If thou canst drive us with rout into Troy, I will own thee for master,
Do thy utmost will and make thee more glorious than gods are,
Serving thy couch in Phthia and drawing the jar from thy rivers.
Nay, if thou hast that strength, then hunt me, O hunter, and seize me,
If 'tis thy hope indeed that the sun can turn back from the Orient,
But if thou canst not, death of myself or thyself thou shalt capture."¹⁸

   If Penthesilea is, in her speech, swift and sharp, even so is she in her action like a hissing spear that shatters her target. In the untitled and incomplete Book 9 we witness the war scene in which the heroine is advancing like the racing and whistling north-wind and when Zethus, the Hellene, cries out to her: "Curb, but curb thy advance, 0 Amazon Penthesilea!", she shots back:

         "Who art thou biddest to pose the horse-hooves of Penthesilea,
         Hellene, thou in thy strength who standest forth from thy shielders?
          Turn yet, save thy life; for I deem that thou art not Achilles.'¹⁹

  She did not have time for dialogue, and when Zethus asked her to turn back, she spoke a few sharp words but she rose high in action, and

        Forward swung to the blow and loosed it hissing and ruthless
        Straight at the Hellene shield, and it tore through the bronze and groaning
        Butted and pushed through the cuirass and split the breast of the hero.²⁰

Her shafts in their angry succession hardly endured delay between, and after slaying the other brothers of Zetus, and in her speed like the sea or the sea or the Storm-wind, she drove towards the ranks of the foe and her spear-shafts hastened before her.

"Hynamus fell, Admetusis was wounded, Charmidas slaughtered;
Cirrhes died, though he f faced not the blow while he hastened to shelter.
Itylus, bright and beautiful, went down to night and to Hades.
Back, ever back the Hellens recoiled from the shock of the Virgin,
Slain by her prowess fierce, alarmed by the might of her helpers."²¹

 The scene is well set for a climatic encounter between Achilles and Penthesilea, but the poem has remained incomplete; the

untold story is, however, well-known, and we can imagine Achilles overpowering Penthesilea, where the hero, the slayer, bestows on the heroine, the slain, the fulfillment of the mutual mingling of courage with courage, honour with honour, and undying heroism with heroism that lives for ever, despite death —which eventually dies. We glimpse heroism that is immortal.

VI

        The entire epic, even though incomplete, has yet a kind of completeness as a forceful song with uplifting hymns of heroism, supervening vision of a crucial struggle of human civilization at a critical juncture of transition, and overpowering sense of convergence of greatness and beauty.

        Passages after passages gallop with swiftness and upward flight, lines after lines punctuate invisible stress and drama, words after words fly before us like hissing spears that tear open the secret meaning of unfolding vistas of experience. The poem achieves a powerful union of intensities of rhythm, vision and varied shades of aesthetic beauty and joy.

       Above all, the greatness and supremacy of Homer revisits us here through the surpassing poetic genius of Sri Aurobindo.
There is here fresh youthfulness and enlivening revelations of the deeper springs of action that actuate gods, goddesses, heroes, heroines, and even the old and the young. Troy and Mount Ida are repainted here in their golden hues, and ships and tents seem to have sprung up anew on the sea coasts, and men and women of those ancient days appear to be breathing again with all their hopes and yearnings and anxieties. We witness here the contemporary living history.

       Let us also mention here that this great poem comes to us in the royal garment of hexameter in the contemporary  English language. Sri Aurobindo had suggested in his essay On Quantitative Metre that "The Hexameter, half a dozen of the greater or more beautiful lyrical forms and the freedom of

the use quantitative verse for the creation of new original rhythms would be enough to add a wide field to the large and opulent state of English poetry."^{22 I}n the successful experiment in which the ancient Homeric story is attempted to be told, Sri Aurobindo has bridged the old and the new, and opened a new chapter of the unfolding Future Poetry.

       Again, as Sri Aurobindo points out, the hexameter is made for nobler purposes, and it is a fit medium of epic or pastoral or of a powerful or forcefully pointed expression of thought and observation. Considering that the theme of Ilion requires great power and beauty and deals with the epic struggle of destinies of human civilization, the hexameter suits perfectly, and this poem succeeds greatly in imprinting in our consciousness a marvellous song of heroism and a vision of Time that Zeus and Hera can witness from their Olympian heights.

* * *

1 Sri Aurobindo, Ilion, in Centenary Edition, Vol.5, p.484-5
2 Will Durant, The Story of Civilization, Vol, p.367
3 Sri Aurobindo, Ilion, in Centenary Edition, Vol.5, p.497-8
4 ibid. p. 503-4
5 ibid, p. 506
6 ibid, p. 506-7
7 ibid, p.466-67
8 ibid, p.468
9 ibid, p.402-3
10 ibid, P-403
11 ibid, P.404
12 ibid, p. 405-6..
13 ibid, p. 468-69
14 ibid, p.488-89
15 ibid, P.488
16 ibid, P.404
17 ibid, P.406
18 ibid, P.465-66
19 ibid, P.514
20 ibid, P.515
21 ibid, p.515-16
22 Sri Aurobindo, Collected Poems and Plays, Vol.5 (Centenary Edition), p.387