He sent the other princes away, keeping only the two sons of Atreus, Odysseus, Nestor, Idomeneus, and Phoenix. They tried to comfort him, but he would not be comforted until he had thrown himself into battle. He sighed without pause, thinking of Patroclus.
Dearest comrade, he said, you used to set a good meal ready for me when the Achaeans hurried to fight. Now though meat and drink are in my tents, I fast for sorrow. I could not know greater grief — not if I heard my father dead in Phthia, weeping for me who fight here for Helen's cursed sake, nor if I heard my son was gone, Neoptolemus being raised in Scyros, if he still lives. Till now I hoped I alone would die at Troy, and that you would sail home to Phthia and show my son all I had left — my servants and high-roofed house.
He wept as he spoke, and the elders sighed with him, each thinking of what he had left at home. Zeus looked down in pity and said to Athena that she had forgotten her hero. There he sat by the ships desolate for his dear comrade; the others had gone to dinner, but he would neither eat nor drink. Go drop nectar and ambrosia into his breast, so hunger will not waste him.
Athena was already of the same mind. She darted from heaven like a falcon on broad wings. While the Achaeans armed throughout the host, she dropped nectar and ambrosia into Achilles so no cruel hunger would fail his limbs, then returned to her father's house.
Thick as chill snowflakes Zeus sheds, driven on the north wind, so thick came gleaming helmets, bossed shields, strong breastplates, and ashen spears. The flash went up to heaven, and the earth laughed all round under the glitter of bronze. A din rose from the feet of men. In the midst Achilles armed, and his teeth gnashed, and his eyes shone like fire-blaze, and grief entered his heart past bearing. He put on the gifts of the god that Hephaestus had made with toil.
First he set the fine greaves with ankle-clasps, then the breastplate about his chest. He slung the silver-studded bronze sword from his shoulders and took up the great strong shield that shone like the moon. As sailors far at sea see a fire lit high in the mountains when storm has driven them from harbor, so the gleam of Achilles's wondrous shield struck up into the heavens.
He lifted the heavy helmet and set it on his head. It shone like a star, and the golden plumes Hephaestus had set thick around the crest waved terribly. Achilles tried himself in his armor to see if it fitted and if his glorious limbs moved freely; it became like wings and lifted him. He drew his father's spear from the stand — so great and heavy that none of the Achaeans but Achilles could wield it — the Pelian ash from the ridges of Pelion that Chiron had given Peleus, fraught with heroes' death.