Aias told Idaeus to have Hector speak first, since he had issued the challenge. Hector said Zeus loved them both; let them stop for the night and fight another day until a god judged between them. Let them exchange gifts so both armies could say they fought in heart-eating strife and parted in friendship.
Hector gave Aias a silver-studded sword with sheath and baldric; Aias gave Hector his shining purple belt. The Trojans rejoiced to receive Hector alive, and the Achaeans led Aias in triumph to Agamemnon.
Agamemnon sacrificed a five-year-old bull to Zeus. They flayed and dressed it, roasted the pieces carefully, and feasted, and no heart lacked a fair share. Atreus’s son honored Aias with the whole long chine. When they had put from them desire for food and drink, Nestor advised them: many long-haired Achaeans had died, whose dark blood Ares spilled about Scamander, and their souls had gone to Hades. At dawn they should pause battle, gather the bodies with oxen and mules, burn them a little way from the ships so each man might take bones home to his children, heap one common mound about the pyre, and against it quickly build high towers as defense for themselves and their ships, with well-fitted gates for chariots, and outside dig a deep ditch to hold back horses and people if the Trojans pressed them hard.
The Achaean kings approved. In Troy the people gathered disturbed and full of discord by Priam’s doors. Wise Antenor urged them to give back Argive Helen and her possessions, for they were fighting after proving false to trustworthy oaths, and he saw no profit otherwise. Paris answered that those words were no longer pleasing; if Antenor said them in earnest the gods had destroyed his wits. He refused outright to give back the woman, but was willing to return the possessions he brought from Argos and add more from his own goods.