“But there are some souls who live with us on the earth and have come to possess unjust profit, which is clearly inhuman. They implore the guards, whether they are shepherds or guard-dogs, or the highest of all masters as they beg them, trying to persuade them with pleasing words and enchanting spells—as the stories of evil men go. They are able to profiteer among human beings without suffering anything!
But we say that the crime we call now “profiteering” is the same as a disease in the body’s flesh, or what we would call a plague in some seasons and years, or what, once the word is translated, is injustice itself in cities and states.”
“Remember that Socrates’ body was thought to be orderly and in control of wisdom for this reason too. When the Athenians were suffering a pandemic and some were dying and others were near death, Socrates was the only one who was not sick. What mind do we think shared space with such a body?”
“Do these practices merely make a refinement of the senses or establish power over the greatest and most amazing forces? You need to see what I mean from different things, not the least of which were done during that epidemic in Ephesus.
When the disease was in the shape of an old beggar, I saw it and once I saw it I tackled it. I did not stop the disease but instead I destroyed it. The one I prayed to is clear as day in the temple which I built in thanks. It was for Herakles the Defender, the one I chose as a helper—because he is wise and brave, he once cleansed Elis of a plague and wiped away the waves of filth which the earth released when Augeas was tyrant.”
“The Death of Socrates” by Jacques-Louis David. c. 1782 Pen and black ink, with brush and gray wash over black chalk, with light squaring in black chalk
The funeral games occupy the majority of Iliad 23, but the book begins with Achilles mourning the lost of Patroklos. At the end of the book, everyone else returns to sleep. Book 24 begins again with Achilles where he was at the beginning of 23: alone, at night, missing Patroklos:
Iliad 24.3-20
“…but Achilles Was weeping while he recalled his dear companion, not even sleep, That master of everything overtook him, but he turned here and there Longing for Patroklos’ manliness and his spirit, And all those things he endured with him and the pains they shared In the wars of men and testing the troubling seas.
He let loose a warm tear as he recalled all this– First he was lying on his side, then again on his back And other times on his stomach. Then he stood straight up And went grieving along the shore of the sea. Dawn Was not yet about to sneak her way over the salt and sands. But Achilles the yoked his horses to his chariot And bound Hektor to be dragged behind the car And pulled him three times around the grave of Menoitios’ dead son. He stopped again near his dwelling and let Hektor lie there On his face, stretched out in the dust. Apollo was holding All disgrace back from the man’s skin, because he pitied Him, even though he was dead.”
There are many things I find striking about this passage. Structurally, in the arc of the epic as a whole, it takes us back to book 1 where Apollo appears early as a guarantor of some kind of divine justice. In book 1, Apollo is summoned by Chryses to punish transgression against the reciprocal rite of supplication and ransom exchange. This open transgression is resolved when Achilles accepts Priam’s ransom of Hektor’s body. Within this meta-structural ring another theme is established as well: the right of all mortals to burial, supported in part by the truce in book 7 and Hera’s comments in book 16 that funeral rites are the geras thanontôn (“the honor-prize of the dead”).
Painting depicting the marriage of Peleus and Thetis by Gillis van Valckenborch, ca. 1570 – 1622
Apollo serves a complementary but different role at the end of the epic: he appears again as an upholder of divine justice. This time, instead of punishing a transgression, he advocates for Hektor’s burial in a council of the gods that may anticipate or echo his juridical appearance in the story of the Oresteia (where he argues on Orestes’ behalf against the Furies). At the beginning and end of the epic, moreover, Apollo establishes the closest thing archaic poetry has on offer for a universal bill of human rights: the honoring of a suppliant and the burial of the dead. Note for modern comparison how children and parents are central in both instances.
A second thing to note about this passage is that ancient scholars marked some of the lines as spurious. The complaints fall into two broad categories: these lines are two simple or unpoetic; or they are in some way morally questionable.
Schol. A. ad Il. 24. 6-9 ex.
‘These four lines are considered suspect because they are simple and Achilles’ grief is more emphatic than it is depicted here [in lines 4-5]. People also complain that manliness and menos aren’t different at all. The poet rarely says manliness when he means braveness. It is also somewhat twisted up, when he ends with “remembering these things” when they already had “thinking of his companion” above.
“Those who marked these lines as spurious are not somehow crack-brained, since they take these lines as naughty and suspect verses like this—because he longs for a bed-mate, not in the style worthy of demigods nor even of half women? For if this is wholly suspect, then Patroklos would be his lover because he [Achilles] is younger and very beautiful.
The [verses are considered suspect] for these reasons. Manliness is the nature of the man. But he also says “noble menos” and the verb tolupeuse is not well put.”
The second passage combines normative statements about poetics and ethics to explain why some ancient scholars athetized (literally “marked as out of place”) four of these lines. I have discussed elsewhere the relationship between Achilles and Patroklos and don’t need to belabor it further other than to say that the epic is at times unclear about their relationship, but this passage seems about as clear as it gets and resistance to its meaning is rooted in the normative values of audiences not epic itself.
Detail from Bartolomeo di Giovanni’s Wedding of Peleus and Thetis, ca 1490 depicting Peleus greeting Thetis.
When it comes to the suggestion that these lines are “simplistic” in some way and therefore questionable, I am similarly skeptical of the scholia. I suspect in part that this claim is made as in indirect way of rejecting the depiction of Achilles longing for Patroklos in erotic or overly physical terms. Even if we take the criticism seriously, however, I think it falls apart. When I read this passage now, I find it to be a vivid depiction of a human being in grief, incapable of sleeping, turning over and over until they give up and go out and try to act in some way. Achilles is both unmoored by grief (he has no direction) but he is also stuck in sorrow’s time-loop: he keeps returning to the same actions (crying and then mistreating Hektor’s corpse) because he cannot move on.
There’s a psychological realism here rooted in human embodiment that reminds me of one of the fragments attributed to Sappho.
Sappho fr. 31
That man seems like the gods To me—the one who sits facing You and nearby listens as you sweetly speak—
and he hears your lovely laugh—this then makes the heart in my breast stutter, when I glance even briefly, it is no longer possible for me to speak—
but my tongue sticks in silence and immediately a slender flame runs under my skin. I cannot see with my eyes, I hear A rush in my ears—
A cold sweat breaks over me, a tremble Takes hold of me. Then paler than grass, I think that I have died Just a little.”\
Sappho’s language evokes the physical indica of desire and anxiety. It is vivid and serves to bridge a connection between the embodied experience of the audience and the poet’s song: The poem’s depiction of the body creates a common ground between the poet’s story and the audience’s experience. In the same way, I think that Achilles’ restless night attempts to bridge that gap between epic narrative and human life. The Homeric narrator’s language is less figurative and more direct than Sappho’s, but I think this is in part a function of the genre of lament, typically more staid and somber than lyric reflections on love imperiled. Life’s greatest losses leave us exhausted and empty, yet still rooted in that moment of separation. The bereft are locked between what was and the absence of what will be. The busy actions of rituals that are aimed at bringing initial closure to loss—funerals, funeral games, wakes, sitting shiva etc.—create a social framework for experiencing grief, but they don’t erase grief itself or fill the emptiness left behind.
This is a powerful moment because we see the epic hero undressed, in a way, bereft of the trappings of leadership, the actions of war, and the ritual frameworks that have kept him in motion right up until this moment. Achilles tossing and turning at night brings to bear on the audience the force of his loss in a way that anyone who has grieved can understand: no matter what happens during the day, night leaves us along with our grief, turning this way and that, trying to think of anything else and failing.
“Hektor Dragged through Troy by Pierre Subleyras,
This in part explains Achilles’ return to Hektor’s corpse, a kind of regression to rage that is no longer there because rage filled him. When the scholion objects to the repetitions of words of remembering (μεμνημένος…τῶν μιμνησκόμενος), it is missing out on the structural framing that homes in on the act of memorialization, the work of narrative. Achilles’ grief issues from his memory’s interaction with his loss and the parenthetical structure echoes the inside/outside experience of narrative memory. Achilles is an audience to his own grief.
If this assertion seems tenuous, consider that this scene almost immediately reminds us that audiences are in fact observing Achilles’ lament. Apollo watches and pities Hektor (ἐλεαίρων). The gods act as indices for external audiences. Just as we are reminded of this as an audience, we are invited to consider the emotional experience, to weigh what it means to pity another, and to understand the impact that grief has on the human body.
“How I wish that you had invited me to that most sumptuous feast on the Ides of March! We would now have no little scraps if you had. But now you have with them such difficulty in preventing that divine benefit which you bestowed upon the Republic from exciting some complaint. But, though it is hardly right, I am on occasion angry with you, because it was by you – a noble man indeed – it was by you and by your good service that this pest [Marc Antony] was led away and still lives. Now you have left behind more trouble for me alone than for everyone else.”
Quam vellem ad illas pulcherrimas epulas me Idibus Martiis invitasses! reliquiarum nihil haberemus. at nunc cum iis tantum negoti est ut vestrum illud divinum <in> rem publicam beneficium non nullam habeat querelam. quod vero a te, viro optimo, seductus est tuoque beneficio adhuc vivit haec pestis, interdum, quod mihi vix fas est, tibi subirascor; mihi enim negoti plus reliquisti uni quam praeter me omnibus.
“Caesar left certain of his friends the impression that he did not want or desire to live longer because of his worsening health. This is why he ignored what the omens warned and what his friends revealed. Others believe that he dismissed the Spanish guards who accompanied him with swords because he was confident in the Senate’s recent decree and their sworn oath. Others report that he preferred to face the plots that threatened him at once rather than cower before them. There are those who assert that he used to say that his safety should be of more importance to the state than to himself: he had acquired an abundance of power and glory already, but the state, should anything happen to him, would have no rest and would suffer civil war in a worse condition than before.
The following is generally held to be the case, however: his manner of death was scarcely against his desire. For, when he read Xenophon’s account of how in the final days of illness Cyrus gave the plans for his own funeral, Caesar expressed disdain for so slow a death and wished that his own would be sudden and fast. And on the day before he died during dinner conversation at the home of Marcus Lepidus on the topic of the most agreeable end to life, Caesar said he preferred one that was sudden and unexpected.”
Suspicionem Caesar quibusdam suorum reliquit neque uoluisse se diutius uiuere neque curasse quod ualitudine minus prospera uteretur, ideoque et quae religiones monerent et quae renuntiarent amici neglexisse. sunt qui putent, confisum eum nouissimo illo senatus consulto ac iure iurando etiam custodias Hispanorum cum gladiis †adinspectantium se remouisse. [2] alii e diuerso opinantur insidias undique imminentis subire semel quam cauere … solitum ferunt: non tam sua quam rei publicae interesse, uti saluus esset: se iam pridem potentiae gloriaeque abunde adeptum; rem publicam, si quid sibi eueniret, neque quietam fore et aliquanto deteriore condicione ciuilia bella subituram.
illud plane inter omnes fere constitit, talem ei mortem paene ex sententia obtigisse. nam et quondam, cum apud Xenophontem legisset Cyrum ultima ualitudine mandasse quaedam de funere suo, aspernatus tam lentum mortis genus subitam sibi celeremque optauerat; et pridie quam occideretur, in sermone nato super cenam apud Marcum Lepidum, quisnam esset finis uitae commodissimus, repentinum inopinatumque praetulerat.
The Death of Caesar (1867). Oil on canvas, 85.5 × 145.5 cm (33.7 × 57.3 in). Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland
At the end of the chariot race in Iliad 23, Achilles attempts to intervene when the man he thinks is best in the contest—Eumelos—comes in last (“The best man is driving his single-hooved horses last!” λοῖσθος ἀνὴρ ὤριστος ἐλαύνει μώνυχας ἵππους. 23.536) thanks to an accident during the contest. A scholion suggests that Achilles {or the poet} is “teaching us to pity those who suffer misfortune unaligned with their worth and not to allow chance to overpower excellence” (διδάσκει τοὺς παρὰ τὴν ἀξίαν ἀτυχοῦντας ἐλεεῖν καὶ μὴ τῆς ἀρετῆς ἐᾶν ὑπερτερεῖν τὴν τύχην, Schol. bT ad Hom. Il. 23.536-7). Achilles’ pity triggers a series of mini-conflicts with Antilochus and then Antilochus and Menelaos wherein Achilles tries to balance the expected outcome of the race based on the excellence of the horses and their driver and the actual results.
The responses to Achilles and the arguments among different characters echo the language of Iliad 1 where Achilles and Agamemnon fall out in disagreement over the distribution of goods. In that conflict, Agamemnon describes his loss of his prize (geras, here, Chryseis) as a slight to his honor (timê) that needs to be rectified by the addition of a future prize. In this system—which echoes the divine cosmos where honors and rights are stable—the amount of goods that signify one’s public position is limited by the availability of new goods to a zero-sum game. Achilles’ makes this point when he tells Agamemnon that all the prizes have been distributed, but there will be new wealth to be shared once the city is sacked. But Agamemnon is angered enough by Achilles’ insubordination and the insult to his position, that he eventually settles on taking Achilles’ prize to supplement his loss, thereby reducing Achilles’ symbolic position.
Leaving aside the dangerous logic of continuous and endless expansion—which is, in a way, the assumption of late-stage capitalism that thrives on the promise of ever more profit—the conflict of book 1 points to a signal difference between divine realms and mortal realms. Mortal affairs are limited in terms of time and substance; the divine realm does not change. When there is a shift in cosmic balance among the gods, it threatens the stability of the universe. But shifts among mortals are by necessity: people live and die. We change. The whole ideal of stable honor and expanding wealth is fundamentally against the laws of physics (nihil ex nihilo, entropy, etc.)
Prizes and events in the Funeral Games (from a handout I made nearly 20 years ago)
I have written before about the thematic structure of early Greek poetry, how eris or neikos (strife) develops from a conflict over the distribution of goods (dasmos) and continues until there is some redistribution or judgement (krisis). As I describe in the article “Eris and Epos…” this sequence is so fundamental to Greek epic that it shapes its form as well as its content. The Iliad is not complete thematically until it resolves the problems of distribution in book 1. This is partly done in the ‘reconciliation’ of book 19 where the scales are more-or-less balanced between Agamemnon and Achilles, but general questions remained unanswered: can you express a person’s value in symbolic wealth? What happens when events disrupt the distribution? Is there a place for community intervention to ensure that someone’s access to wealth is equal to their perceived worth?
Achilles’ intervention in the chariot race, characterized by the scholion as an act of pity to ensure that Eumelos’ virtue is supported symbolically, is met with the same kind of objection that he voices himself in book 1: by taking from others to support Eumelos, he is perpetuating a loss in the zero-sum game: honoring Eumelos means dishonoring someone else.
Instead, Achilles comes up with a different response:
Iliad 23.558-565
“Antilochus, if you’re asking me to give something from my own store To Eumelos, I will do that as well, I think. I will give him a breastplate which I took from Asteropaios A bronze one, which is decorated around the edge with shining tin. It will be worth a lot to him.”
So he spoke, and he told his dear companion Automedon To get it from his dwelling. He went and brought it back And placed it in Eumelos’ hands. The man accepted it gladly.”
Here, as someone outside the system, Achilles introduces new material wealth to resolve the conflict before it becomes too serious: he attempts to short-circuit the traditional theme of dasmos leading to eris. In a kind of heroic welfare, Achilles creates a positive-sum game by offering new material. Or, we could see it as a modification of the zero-sum game because he is willing to give up some of his own wealth to keep a community conflict free. In either case, we as an audience are left with two difficult models for addressing the traditional conflict: the addition of new wealth to a closed system (through expansion) or the largesse from someone who has so much wealth that it doesn’t make a difference. Neither option forces heroes to make hard decisions in ranking the material needs of a community.
The world of epic heroes overflows with material fantasy. As Adam Brown suggests in his 1998 article, the Homeric economy is symbolic and ‘literary’ rather than historical: Heroes never eat vegetables and rarely touch fish; instead they subsist on a diet of meat that is fundamentally impossible for the world of their audiences. Gold, silver, and bronze adorns their armor. But where did the wealth come from? This material fantasy is an echo of our entertainment today where characters in movies and televisions (generally) work very little and enjoy material wealth far greater than the average audience member. I think this partly explains Homeric wealth: no one wants to worry about semi-divine heroes not having enough to eat or, really, dealing with the indignities of bodies riven by scarcity.
photo of a chariot race scene on the shoulder of an Attic Black-figure hydria attributed to the Priam Painter. ca. 510 BC MET Accession: L.1999.10.12
And, yet, the Iliad is deeply invested in the problem of scarcity from its first few dozen lines. The conflict that drives the poem is embedded in the very difference between the fantasy world of myth and the gods and the basic problem of being human: there’s not enough time and for heroes, honor and possessions function as symbolic stand-ins for the fundamental limits of mortal lives. Certain images function throughout the epic to emphasize the impossibility of heroic abundance: consider the hecatomb sent to Apollo in book 1: 100 bulls (supplied from where) loaded onto a ship rowed by 20 men (1.309-311): Were they stacked on top of one another?
So, for me, the funeral games potentially introduce a paradox. On the one hand, they perpetuate the fantasy of endless wealth feeding the expansion of heroic esteem; on the other hand, they show Achilles trying to balance this with the kind of excellence and competition that he valued in book 1. One answer to the paradox is that, as with book 1, the dissonance is productive: the audience is supposed to think about the impossibility of what Achilles does in book 23 and rethink the questions and moves prior to it.
Another answer, which I am leaning towards, is that Achilles does not care about stuff or honor any more because of the horrible loss he suffered with Patroklos’ death. Achilles’ has set himself outside the system and gives from his own material wealth to keep other people whole. This act of understanding others’ needs prefaces his return of Hektor’s body and his weeping with Priam in book 24. And that act, renders the heroic material concerns meaningless. The fantasy of heroic abundance functions to set into relief the irremeable scarcity of human life.
Adamo, Sara. “ un posto per Omero ?.” Incidenza dell’Antico, vol. 20, 2022, pp. 221-233.
Brown, Adam. “Homeric talents and the ethics of exchange.” The Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. 118, 1998, pp. 165-172. Doi: 10.2307/632237
Christensen, Joel P.. “Eris and Epos: composition, competition, and the domestication of strife.” Yearbook of Ancient Greek Epic, vol. 2, 2018, pp. 1-39. Doi: 10.1163/24688487-00201001
Fox, Rachel Sarah. Feasting practices and changes in Greek society from the Late Bronze Age to Early Iron Age. BAR. International Series; 2345. Oxford: Archaeopress, 2012.
Haubold, Johannes (2000). Homer’s people: epic poetry and social formation. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Pr.
Jones, Donald W.. “The archaeology and economy of Homeric gift exchange.” Opuscula Atheniensia, vol. 24, 1999, pp. 11-24.
Karanika, Andromache. Voices at work: women, performance, and labor in ancient Greece. Baltimore (Md.): Johns Hopkins University Pr., 2014.
Kolb, Frank. “ a trading center and commercial city ?.” American Journal of Archaeology, vol. 108, no. 4, 2004, pp. 577-613.
Korfmann, Manfred. “ archaeological evidence for the period of Troia VI/VII.” Classical World, vol. 91, no. 5, 1997-1998, pp. 369-385.
Koutrouba, Konstantina and Apostolopoulos, Konstantinos. “Home economics in the Homeric epics.” Πλάτων, vol. 52, 2001-2002, pp. 191-208.
Lewis, David M.. “The Homeric roots of helotage.” From Homer to Solon : continuity and change in archaic Greece. Eds. Bernhardt, Johannes C. and Canevaro, Mirko. Mnemosyne. Supplements; 454. Leiden ; Boston (Mass.): Brill, 2022. 64-92. Doi: 10.1163/9789004513631_005
Lyons, Deborah J.. “ ideologies of marriage and exchange in ancient Greece.” Classical Antiquity, vol. 22, no. 1, 2003, pp. 93-134. Doi: 10.1525/ca.2003.22.1.93
Murray, Sarah C.. The collapse of the Mycenaean economy: imports, trade, and institutions, 1300-700 BCE. New York: Cambridge University Pr., 2017.
Olsen, Barbara A.. “The worlds of Penelope : women in the Mycenaean and Homeric economies.” Arethusa, vol. 48, no. 2, 2015, pp. 107-138.
Piquero Rodríguez, Juan. “« Blood-money » : la compensación por homicidio en la Grecia micénica.” Δῶρα τά οἱ δίδομεν φιλέοντες : homenaje al profesor Emilio Crespo. Eds. Conti Jiménez, Luz, Fornieles Sánchez, Raquel and Jiménez López, María Dolores. Madrid: Ed. de la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 2020. 221-229.
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Short bibliography on the Funeral games
n.b this is not an exhaustive bibliography. If you’d like anything else included, please let me know.
Deborah Beck. Homeric Conversation. Washington, D.C.: Center for Hellenic Studies, 2005.
Strauss Clay, Jenny. “Art, nature, and the gods in the chariot race of Iliad Ψ.” Άθλα και έπαθλα στα Ομηρικά Έπη: από τα πρακτικά του Ἰ Συνεδρίου για την « Οδύσσεια » (15-19 Σεπτεμβρίου 2004). Eds. Païzi-Apostolopoulou, Machi, Regkakos, Antonios and Tsagalis, Christos K.. Ithaki: Kentro Odysseiakon Spoudon, 2007. 69-76.
Walter Donlan. “The Structure of Authority in the Iliad.” Arethusa 12 (1979) 51-70.
Dunkle, Roger. “Nestor, Odysseus, and the μῆτις-βίη antithesis. The funeral games, Iliad 23.” Classical World, vol. LXXXI, 1987, pp. 1-17.
Ellsworth, J. D.. “Ἀγων νεῶν. An unrecognized metaphor in the Iliad.” Classical Philology, vol. LXIX, 1974, pp. 258-264.
Elmer, D.F. (2013). The Poetics of Consent: Collective Decision Making and the Iliad. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press., https://doi.org/10.1353/book.21075.
Evjen, Harold D.. “Competitive athletics in ancient Greece. The search for origins and influences.” Opuscula Atheniensia, vol. XVI, 1986, pp. 51-56.
Forte, Alexander S. W.. “The disappearing turn of Iliad 23.373.” Classical Philology, vol. 114, no. 1, 2019, pp. 120-125. Doi: 10.1086/700618
Garland, R.S.J. “‘GERAS THANONTON’: AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE CLAIMS OF THE HOMERIC DEAD.” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, no. 29 (1982): 69–80. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43646122.
Grethlein, Jonas. “Epic narrative and ritual: the case of the funeral games in Iliad 23.” Literatur und Religion: Wege zu einer mythisch-rituellen Poetik bei den Griechen. Eds. Bierl, Anton, Lämmle, Rebecca and Wesselmann, Katharina. MythosEikonPoiesis; 1.1-2. Berlin ; New York: De Gruyter, 2007. 151-177.
Dean Hammer.“ ‘Who Shall Readily Obey?” Authority and Politics in the Iliad.” Phoenix 51 (1997) 1-24.
Kelly, Adrian. “Achilles in control ? : managing oneself and others in the Funeral Games.” Conflict and consensus in early Greek hexameter poetry. Eds. Bassino, Paola, Canevaro, Lilah Grace and Graziosi, Barbara. Cambridge: Cambridge University Pr., 2017. 87-108. Doi: 10.1017/9781316800034.005
Kenneth F. Kitchell. “‘But the mare I will not give up’: The Games in Iliad 23.” The Classical Bulletin 74 (1998) 159-71.
Mouratidis, Ioannis. “Anachronism in the Homeric games and sports.” Nikephoros, vol. III, 1990, pp. 11-22.
Mylonas, George E. “Homeric and Mycenaean Burial Customs.” American Journal of Archaeology 52, no. 1 (1948): 56–81. https://doi.org/10.2307/500553.
Rengakos, Antonios. “Aethiopis.” The Greek Epic Cycle and its ancient reception : a companion. Eds. Fantuzzi, Marco and Tsagalis, Christos. Cambridge: Cambridge University Pr., 2015. 306-317.
Nicholas Richardson. The Iliad: A Commentary. Volume VI: Books 21-24. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Roller, Lynn E. “Funeral Games in Greek Art.” American Journal of Archaeology 85, no. 2 (1981): 107–19. https://doi.org/10.2307/505030.
Scott, William C.. “The etiquette of games in Iliad 23.” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, vol. 38, no. 3, 1997, pp. 213-227.
H. A. Shapiro, Mario Iozzo, Adrienne Lezzi-Hafter, The François Vase: New Perspectives (2 vols.). Akanthus proceedings 3. Kilchberg, Zurich: Akanthus, 2013. 192; 7, 47 p. of plates.
Oliver Taplin. Homeric Soundings: The Shape of the Iliad. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Christoph Ulf. “Iliad 23: die Bestattung des Patroklos und das Sportfest der “Patroklos-Spiele”: zwei Teile einer mirror-story.” in Herbert Heftner and Hurt Tomaschitz (eds.). Ad Fontes! Festschrift für Gerhard Dobesch zum 65 Geburtstag am 15. September 2004. Wien: Phoibos, 2004, 73-86.
Cedric Hubbell Whitman. Homer and the Heroic Tradition. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958.
Malcolm M. Willcock, ‘The funeral games of Patroclus’, Proceedings of the Classical Association, LXX. (1973) 36.
Donna F. Wilson. Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Soon after Hektor decides to face Achilles, he loses his nerve and runs. The epic lingers on the moment.
Homer, Iliad 22.157-170
“They both ran around that point: One chasing, one fleeing. In front, there was a good man trying to get away, but a much better man was pursuing. Quickly. They weren’t struggling over a sacred prize or an oxhide, The kinds of things that are prizes for men on their feet, But instead they were running for the soul of Hektor, tamer of horses. Just as when prize winning horses turn their feet Quickly around the bend and a great prize lies in wait— Either a tripod or a woman when some man has died, So too did these two men run around Priam’s city On their swift feet as all the gods were watching. The father of gods and men started a conversation among them: “Oh my fools, am I really watched a dear man pursued Around the walls with my eyes? My heart feels grief for Hektor….”
There are several reasons this passage draws my attention: first, the grammar elegantly advances some of the blending of the characters I mention in my post about Hektor imagining sweet-talking Achilles. The two are combined in duel verbs (the form that is just for two grammatical subjects like eyes, hands, and pairs) to frame the episode (παραδραμέτην δινηθήτην) but then this potential equality is undermined by the concession that one is good, but the other is much better. This serves in part to echo some of the interdependence of the pair, but also to illustrate their ultimate difference (echoed sweetly in the language of competition.
Berlin Painter – period / date: late archaic, ca. 490 BC –
Second, the comparison to men racing for a prize—as will happen in the following book—emphasizes the stakes of Hektor’s flight and, in a way, relativizes the competitions to come. The simile brings into question fundamental Iliadic themes of honor and reward, hearkening back to book 1, but leaving in direct contrast all that has transpired since: these heroes are not merely competing for a geras (prize) or time (honor), they are struggling over life itself (and, note, for the time being, kleos has been left aside. I have probably written too much on similes, but this one is especially powerful in the way it includes within in it images that connect the details of this particular moment to the broader epic themes.
Third, the position of the divine audience reminds us that the human audience is outside the poem. Zeus here—as he does throughout the epic—acts as an internal audience to guide the external gaze. His response of frustration and sorrow frames the scene and informs the audience (to an extent) how they should feel about this scene: it is sad, but the outcome is inevitable. No matter how good Hektor has been, he still must die. Both the simile and the divine reflection extend the narrative space of Hektor’s final moments.
What is also interesting about this passage is the specification of how many times they run around the walls. In an epic tradition where Achilles is famed for the swiftness of his feet, it seems somewhat suspect that it takes him three times around a wall (and then a divine trick) to catch up with a hero known for man-slaying and horse-taming (especially when the narrator tells the audience that Achilles is a lot better than his quarry.) A conventional answer offered in commentaries is that specific numbers like this (nine years of war, nine years of plague) represents the penultimate moment before a final turn. By that logic, mentioning three times anticipates a fourth and final turn around the wall that will be decisive. The delay here, then, creates additional suspense based on audience experience of the structure earlier in the poem (cf. 5.436-39).
ca. 490 BC – material: pottery (clay) – height: 34 cm – findspot: Vulci – museum / inventory number: München, Staatliche Antikensammlungen 2406 –
This type of repeated structure that facilitates both composition and audience understanding is typically called a “type scene” in the study of Homeric and oral poetry. In my book Storylife, I position type scenes as structures that help create far more complex compositions, building on formulas and other repetitions:
Type-scenes are repeated patterns in what we might think of as conventional or repeated scenes: moments of dining, arming, onset and conclusion to speaking, and other kinds of near-ritualized performances, especially in sacrifices. Many modern scholars have seen type scenes as evidence of what Albert Lord describes as “composition by theme.” These scenes can vary in length, but tend to present recurring actions. That is, they have a stock set of elements that can be altered to fit the needs of their narrative environment. As Katherine Hitch argues (following Egbert Bakker, 1997), type scenes are like formulae: conventional material used innovatively through different combinations and variation within a specific pattern is the expected way to create meaning in an oral poetic context. Type scenes are made up of motifs and formulae the way multicellular lifeforms are composed of individual cells: and in each case the overall form can have a very different function from those of its constituent parts and separate iterations of the ‘same’ form will have different characteristics and functions based on their local environments.
A general concern of Homerists—and literary theorists in general—from the 20th century was to figure out how to balance innovation in language against traditional forms. One of the more rigid and dull approaches to this is to imagine that oral poets function in a “poetry by number” environment that limited their creativity to chunking together pre-established units. My contention is that all language is to some extent limiting and that this facilitates understanding across different consciousnesses. It does not mean, however, that poets and audiences can’t press on prior structures to bend them or use them to create extrinsic meaning. In other posts I have introduced the term “productive dissonance” to describe how conventional forms can be used “incorrectly” or against expectation to produce new kinds of meanings (this is, essentially, my argument for the duals of Iliad 9).
But dissonance is not always the way: sometimes a lack of resolution or delayed resolution based on an expected pattern is useful as well. In her article “Emotional and thematic Meanings in a Repeating Homeric Motif”, Deborah Beck looks at this passage specifically. She sees the duals here as making “this chase into one deed and Achilles and Hector into a single actor….which “will eventually result in the death not only of Hector but also of Achilles, but not yet…” (2018, 162). The opening verses anticipate the repeated nature of the chase, but it is not until the close of the simile that the thrice+1 pattern is introduced. This structure, Beck suggests, creates a ring around the mention of the prize here, which is Hektor’s life. The shared grammar and the repeated pattern bring Achilles and Hektor closer together as characters while also heightening the emotional response of the audience. Beck summarizes the whole effect well:
The narrative of Achilles chasing Hector around and around the city of Troy before killing him might come across as repetitive, or even as pointless delay. Instead, the various elaborations that extend this τρὶς μέν … τρὶς δέ scene depict the two most important fighters in the Iliad as fundamentally the same, and the fates of both – but especially Hector – as a matter of the warmest interest to the gods both individually and collectively. The ‘length confers emphasis’ aesthetics of Homeric epic are particularly effective for depicting a pivotal event that the characters themselves experience as taking a long time. Moreover, the individual expansions that appear in this scene foster the audience’s emotional engagement with the characters and the story. These include: several similes, which depict Achilles and Hector both as predator and prey and also as essentially identical competitors (162–65, 189–93, 199–201); a conversation between the gods watching from Olympus, where we would expect a single speech by one of the τρίς characters (168–85);36 a counterfactual condition within a rhetorical question, which brings the audience vividly into the poem in a manner nearly unparalleled in Homeric epic (202–04); and, finally, the τέταρτον turn of events (208–13), which features a character who, about to fail in his τρὶς μέν attempt, chooses to renounce his endeavour rather than simply be overpowered by a hostile god. These techniques work together even – or especially – as Hector’s death approaches to depict him as a brave and admirable warrior fully deserving of sympathy from both the internal audience of gods and the external audience of the Iliad.
I think all of these effects are worth highlighting, but it is worth noting as well how much familiarity with Homeric language is needed to respond fully to these cues and to understand them. Homeric poetry has a grammar of meaning that rises above the level of the individual word and relies on composite structures and audience familiarity with both. While we as modern audiences can sense the impact from close reading and from the confluence of so many poetic indicators in this scene, one would be fair to wonder how much of the substance of Homeric poetry we continue to miss out on because of all the performances that were never recorded and all those that we’ve lost.
As modern readers, we need to work overtime to restore the nuance that is lost to us and to slough off modern ideas about how and what epic poetry makes meaning. In a way, this is similar to restoring the pigment and decoration to plain white marble statues, understanding that they were more dynamic in the past and that modern aesthetics have been (mis)shaped by misunderstanding. But the level of challenge is greater, I suggest: epic is a living, breathing statue that moved in response to audiences. Modern aesthetics and translation often presents a fossil or desiccated form, in need of color, breath, and movement.
From The New Yorker: “The Myth of Whitenes in Classical Sculpture.”
Beck, Deborah. 2005. Homeric Conversation. Washington, D.C.: Center for Hellenic Studies.
Bonfante, Larissa. “The judgment of Paris, the toilette of Malavisch, and a mirror in the Indiana University Art Museum.” Studi Etruschi, vol. XLV, 1977, pp. 149-167.
Collins, Leslie. “The wrath of Paris. Ethical vocabulary and ethical type in the Iliad.” American Journal of Philology, vol. CVIII, 1987, pp. 220-232.
Edwards, Mark W.. “The conventions of a Homeric funeral.” Studies in honour of T. B. L. Webster, I. Eds. Betts, John H., Hooker, James T. and Green, John Richard. Bristol, Eng.: Bristol Classical Pr., 1986. 84-92.
Edwards, Mark W.. “Type scenes and Homeric hospitality.” TAPA, vol. CV, 1975, pp. 51-72.
Faraone, Christopher A.. “Circe’s instructions to Odysseus (Od. 10.507-40) as an early Sibylline Oracle.” The Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. 139, 2019, pp. 49-66. Doi: 10.1017/S0075426919000028
Fenik, Bernard. 1968. Typical Battle Scenes in the Iliad. Wiesbaden: F. Steiner.
Gainsford, Peter. “Formal analysis of recognition scenes in the « Odyssey ».” The Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. 123, 2003, pp. 41-59. Doi: 10.2307/3246259
Grethlein, Jonas. “The poetics of the bath in the « Iliad ».” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. 103, 2007, pp. 25-49.
Hitch, Sarah. 2009. King of Sacrifice: Ritual and Royal Authority in the Iliad. Washington, D.C.: Center for Hellenic Studies.
Jurriaans-Helle, Geralda. Composition in Athenian black-figure vase-painting: the « Chariot in profile » type scene. Leuven ; Paris: Peeters, 2021.
Reece, Steve. 1993. The Stranger’s Welcome: Oral Theory and the Aesthetics of the Homeric Hospitality Scene. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Rood, Naomi Jennifer. “Craft similes and the construction of heroes in the « Iliad ».” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. 104, 2008, pp. 19-43.
Vouzis, Panagiotis. Οι ομηρικές τυπικές σκηνές του ταξιδιού στη θάλασσα: η τυπολογία του πλου στον Όμηρο. Vivliothiki Sofias N. Saripolou; 137. Athina: Ethniko kai Kapodistriako Panepistimio Athinon, Filosofiki Scholi, 2020.
Nossis is one of the best attested woman poets from the ancient world. Don’t feel bad if you haven’t heard of her.
Greek Anthology, 6.353
“Melinna herself is here. Look how her pure face
Seems to glance gently at me.
How faithfully she looks like her mother in every way.
Whenever children equal their parents it is beautiful.”
“Stranger, if you sail to the city of beautiful dances, Mytilene,
The city which fed Sappho, the the Graces’ flower,
Tell them that the land of Lokris bore for the Muses
A woman her equal, by the name of Nossis. Go!”
“I expect that Aphrodite will be pleased to receive
As an offering from Samutha, the band that held her hair.
For it is well made and smells sweetly of nektar,
That very nektar she uses to anoint beautiful Adonis.”
“Let’s leave for the temple and go to see Aphrodite’s
Sculpture—how it is made so finely in gold.
Polyarkhis dedicated it after she earned great
wealth from the native glory of her body.”
“It is necessary that a woman be completely good and well-ordered. Someone could never be like this without virtue. For the virtue which is proper to each thing causes the object which welcomes it to be more serious. The excellence of the eyes improves the eyes; that of hearing improves the ears; the horse’s virtue betters the horse and a man’s virtue improves the man. In the same way, a woman’s virtue ennobles a woman.
The virtue most appropriate to a woman is prudence. For through prudence a woman will be able to honor and take delight in her own husband. Many may in fact think that it is not fitting for a woman to practice philosophy, just as she should not ride a horse or speak in public. But I believe that while some things are particular to a man and others to a woman, there are some that are shared by both man and woman, even though some are more appropriate to a man than a woman and those better for a woman than a man.
For example, serving in an army or working in politics and speaking in public are proper for a man. For a woman, it is running the household, staying at home, and welcoming and serving her husband. In common I place bravery, an understanding of justice, and wisdom. For It is right that virtues of the body are proper for both a man and woman along with the virtues of the soul. And, just as having a healthy body is useful for both, so too is the health of the soul.
The virtues of the body are health, strength, good perception, and beauty. Some of these are better for a man to nourish and keep; and others are more appropriate for a woman. Courage and wisdom are certainly more proper for a man both die to the nature of his body and the power of his mind. But prudence is proper for a woman.
For this reason it is important to recognize what a woman trained in prudence is like, in particular from what number and kinds of traits this possession graces a woman. I propose that this comes from five things. The first is from respecting the sanctity and reverence of her marriage bed; the second is a sense of propriety for her body; the third is concerning the actions of those from her own household; the fourth is from not practicing the occult rites and the celebrations of the Great Mother; the fifth is in proper and moderate sacrifices to the divine.
Of these traits, the most important and vital for prudence in terms of her marriage bed is staying uncontaminated and fully separate from some other man. For, to start with, a woman who breaks this law does wrong against her ancestral gods, because she provides for her home and her family not true born allies but bastards.
The one who does this transgresses against the natural gods whose oath she took, following the practice of her forebears and relatives, “to participate in the common life and to produce offspring according to the law.” She also commits injustice against her country, because she does not stay with those who were assigned to her. Then she acts even beyond those for whom the greatest of penalties is assigned because of the excess of this injustice: this is because to commit an error or an outrage for the sake of pleasure is unlawful and the most unforgivable. Ruin is the outcome of all outrage.”
Bronze figure of a running girl, 520-500 BC. Spartan. Found in Prizren, Serbia. The short chiton baring one breast which the figure wears matches the outfit that Pausanias says was worn by athletes competing in the Heraean Games.
Book 21 continues the fierce violence that followed Achilles’ return to battle. If the central ‘set piece’ of book 20 is Achilles’ encounter with Aeneas and the clashing of those traditions, the central theme of book 21 is about the extent of Achilles’ rage, how it dehumanizes others and himself. The narrative explores this through Achilles’ refusal to ransom Lykaon and his struggle with the river god.
Both of these features are anticipated by a scene at the beginning of the book that also resonates themes from the beginning of the epic. As Achilles presses the Trojans into the river, he gets worn out “murdering people” and stops to select some of the Trojans for a sacrifice to e made later in the epic.
Iliad 21.21-33
“So the Trojans were cowering in the streams under the banks Of the terrible river. But when Achilles wore out his hands murdering people, He chose twelve youths still alive from the river To be a bloodprice for Patroklos, the dead son of Menoitious,. He led them away stunned like fawns. He bound their hands behind them in the well-cut belts they were carrying themselves for their soft tunics. He handed them over to his companions to lead to their hollow ships. But then he went back at it again, eager to kill.”
Achilles departing, the Nereid Kymothea holding a phiale and an oinochoe (all named). Detail, side B from an Attic red-figure kantharos. BnF Museum
I comment at further length on the sacrifice in a post on book 23. A scholion connects this action to book 23, but with some concern explaining what exactly Achilles is doing:
Schol. Ad Hom. Il. bT/b 21.27 ex
“He selected twelve youths” because he is going to prepare them for a sacrifice called a dozen. This provides a great excess through it, that he decides to select captured warriors, mentioning how many and of what sort, and then that he binds them all together, their hands stretched out as if they are enslaved.
Certainly, his companions are assisting him in all these things, but the whole of it comes from him.
In the post on book 23, I emphasize the strangeness of the sacrifice and how it fits into the Iliad’s narrative arc. When I returned to this passage, one of the things that stood out for me was the phrase “bloodprice for Patroklos”. The word poinē is related to our English word “penalty” from the Latin borrowing poena. Here, simply expressed in the grammar of the “youths as a ποινὴν Πατρόκλοιο,” a penalty for Patroklos.
From Beekes Etymological Dictionary of Ancient Greek.
Poinē has important thematic resonance for the Iliad. In her insightful monograph,Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad, Donna Wilson argues that Homeric characters distinguish between two different kinds of compensation: apoina, which is what Chryses offers at the beginning of the epic to ransom his daughter back (1.13), is a kind of exchange price that does not deprive the one who accepts it of honor, since the notional esteem of the exchange is more or less equal.
From West 2000
Poinē, on the other hand, is a price paid that detracts from the honor or cultural position of the one who grants it because they receive nothing in return. By giving poinē, a party concedes that they have done wrong or owe a debt that subtracts from their esteem and repairs or increases that of the recipient. Poinē is thus always cosmically destabilizing whereas apoina seeks to keep the universe balanced.
Wilson’s classic example of this is by way of explaining some of the conflict in Iliad 9: when Agamemnon sendsthe embassy in book 9, he instructs them to offer apoina (9.120), which would repair their relationship by making some amends, but would not signal a loss to Agamemnon. Achilles, Wilson argues, sees the harm to his position as deep enough to require poinē (although he does not articulate it as such).
Beekes on Apoina. The Glotta cited here is wrong, it should be 2000
What the Iliad does show, however, is that the breakdown in social exchange marked by the failure of Agamemnon to accept apoina from Chryses lasts until Achilles restores the stability of the system by accepting apoina instead of poinē from Priam in book 24 (24.139, 502, 579, 594, 686). In between these two events, there are several moments thattranslate the social failure of Agamemnon’s actions to start the epic to the larger context of the Iliad and the exceptional world of the Trojan War.
Consider the oath in book 3:
Il. 3.288-291
“But if Priam and Priam’s sones are not willing To pay me back after Alexandros has fallen, Then I will fight on afterward, staying here For the sake of a bloodprice, until I come to the end of war.”
Here, the oath marks the violence of war as the means to re-balance esteem and worth by demanding a penalty from the Trojans for theft of Helen. It would not be enough for the Trojans to return the woman and the stuff, instead, they have to give up something of themselves, something intangible but costly, to compensate the Greeks for the loss to their esteem done by Paris’ actions.
Even this system, however, shouldn’t commend Achilles’ internecine violence. Ajax attempts to connect the personal ethics of blood prices to the political when he speaks in the embassy.
Il. 9.632-638
“Pitiless man: someone may even accept a bloodprice For a murdered relative, even when his own son has died. And then the other remains in his country, once he paid back a lot. But this man’s heart and proud spirit prevents him From accepting a bloodprice: the gods gave him an intractable and evil Heart in his chest over a girl, only a girl.
Ajax is making the extreme argument that a man who has done wrong can still stay in his community if he accepts that he has done wrong and pays the price needed to satisfy the family of a dead loved one. Such a possibility makes it even more surprising, to Ajax, that Achilles is being so hard hearted about apoina when the conflict is about “only a girl” (like the Trojan War itself). But, as Wilson notes, Ajax has misread what Achilles is looking for: Achilles wants to harm the person who harmed him. He wants Agamemnon to lose as much as he wants to win.
A ransom exchange is in game theory terms a positive sum game because everyone keeps their social esteem and, in my opinion, gains benefit by not engaging in violence. The system of poinē, however, is zero sum: you cannot receive a penalty without someone else granting it. This is the torturous logic of most of the Iliad: When Agamemnon demands that his brother not ransom a prisoner in book 6 or when Achilles refuses to release Lykaon in 21, the logic is that of the whole Trojan War: retribution requires a form of justice that takes from others to penalize them for doing harm first.
If poinē requires retributive justice, could we pose the system of apoina as restorative or reparative? When I teach myth and the Iliad to students I focus on hospitality and exchange as being the only ethical systems outside of the confines of the city the the violence of the state. The Iliad shows that a system of exchange that preserves social position rather than harms it is, perhaps, preferable to one that necessarily damages others. But the extent to which this applies to the world outside the poem is for the audience to consider.
Part of the interest of both Homeric epics–and, indeed, Greek myth in general, is how to stop cycles of violence and revenge. A non-retributive system of justice is likely a good answer, but it leaves open the question of personal angst and grief: how many parents could truly accept a mere apoina for the loss of a child? This cuts to the heart of the Iliad’s questions about the balance of personal grief and political well-being. Note, that however much the actions of Achilles and Priam have political features, they remain at heart an agreement between individuals who don’t wholly reevaluate the logic of the war.
