Hera could bear no more. She urged Athena to think of the Argives, saying they would all perish under one man's fury. Athena answered that Hector would have lost strength and life long ago if her father had not been raging with evil purpose, remembering Thetis and honoring Achilles.
The two goddesses prepared the horses and chariot. Hera, golden-throned, harnessed the immortal team; Athena threw down the soft robe she had made with her own hands, put on Zeus's cloud-gathering tunic, armed herself for tearful war, and took the massive spear with which she breaks ranks of men.
They drove through the gates of heaven, which the Seasons guard. But Zeus saw them from Ida and was terribly angry. He sent Iris with a swift message: turn back, for he would lame their horses, smash the chariot, and hurl them from the car. Ten years would not heal the wounds of his thunderbolt.
Iris found them before they passed Olympus and spoke Zeus's word. Athena was silent in grief, but Hera answered that they would not fight Zeus over mortals. Let him give death or life as his heart pleased. They turned the horses back toward Olympus.
The Seasons unyoked the team and leaned the chariot against the shining wall. The two goddesses sat among the immortals, grieving, and did not speak. Zeus came from Ida in his chariot, entered the assembly, and Hera and Athena trembled before him.
Zeus mocked them for their failed eagerness. If he had struck them, he said, they would not soon have come home to Olympus. Athena held her anger against her father in silence. Hera answered that they knew his strength, yet could not help pitying the Argives. Still, they would obey.
Zeus declared what the next dawn would show. Hector would not stop until swift-footed Achilles rose by the ships, on the day when the fighting reached Patroclus over the dead. That was fate; he cared nothing for Hera's anger, even if she went to the lowest edges of earth and sea.
Night came, and with it the fighting stopped. The Trojans were sorry to see darkness, but to the Achaeans it was welcome. Hector called the Trojans to assembly away from the ships, beside the river, in a clear place free of corpses. They climbed down from their chariots and listened.