Hector and Ajax fought in single combat until nightfall and exchanged gifts, the armies buried their dead under truce — and on the next day Zeus turned the war against the Achaeans until the Trojans camped among the ships and the host built a wall with a trench before their camp.1
Hector's challenge
When the battle stalled, Hector stepped forth and challenged the best of the Achaeans to single combat — the victor's side to take the day. Nine captains drew lots; the lot fell to Telamonian Ajax, bulwark of the host. The two heroes fought with spears and stones until heralds stopped them for night — equals in valour, though Hector had the edge in casting. They parted with gifts: Ajax gave a sword with silver studs, Hector a war-belt — guest-friendship between enemies for a single evening.2
Burial under truce
Hector proposed a truce to burn the dead; the Achaeans agreed, and for one day Trojans and Danaans gathered their slain without battle. The Trojans burned their dead on the plain and raised a cairn; the Achaeans burned theirs and raised a barrow on the shore. It was the last calm before Zeus fulfilled Thetis' request in earnest — the gods would soon forbid open intervention, but the human cost of the war was already heaped on both sides.3
Zeus turns the tide
On Olympus Zeus weighed the fates of Troy and Achaea in his golden scales; the Achaean side sank. He forbade gods and goddesses to join the field and drove the Trojans forward behind Hector. Agamemnon's aristeia failed before the storm; Diomedes and Odysseus were wounded; the Achaean line broke toward the ships. Nestor rallied the captains, but the day ended with the Trojans camped on the plain and watch-fires burning like stars along the ridges — Troy's best day while Achilles still sat idle.4
The Achaean wall
That night the beaten host dug a trench and raised a wall with towers and gates — work they should have done at the war's beginning, Poseidon would later say. They drove stakes into the ditch and piled earth; the wall stood through the rest of the Iliad until Troy fell. The nested episode on the Embassy tells Book 9, when Agamemnon would try to buy Achilles back; here the story ends with the siege works that could not save the ships without the son of Peleus.5
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