Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

In the fury after Patroclus’s death and the return to battle, Achilles drives half the Trojans into the stream of Scamander (Xanthus) and fills the channels with corpses. He takes twelve youths alive for Patroclus’s pyre and slaughters others in the water—among them Lycaon and Asteropaeus—until the river-god, choked with dead and angered for his streams, speaks in human form from the eddies. Scamander bids Achilles cease fouling his waters and slaughtering Trojans in the flood; Achilles refuses, swearing to drive Hector and the Trojans until Troy falls or he himself is stopped. The river rises in a towering wave, sweeps the dead toward the sea, and hurls itself at Achilles. Achilles loses footing, clings to an elm that tears away, and flees across the plain with the flood at his heels, calling on Zeus. Poseidon and Athena appear in mortal shape to hearten him: he is not fated to die by the river; they urge him on against the Trojans once the water yields. Scamander calls his brother Simois to join the assault and vows to bury Achilles under silt and shingle so that his bones need no tomb. The flood covers the plain; Achilles can neither stand nor fight. Hera, fearing for him, summons Hephaestus to burn the river into submission—the sequel of Book 21’s divine fire (entry 109). Catalogue the Scamander fight as the climax of Achilles’ river aristeia: mortal hero against a god of place, rescued only when Olympian fire answers Olympian water.