“A person of learning always has wealth on their own.
Simonides, who wrote exceptional lyric poems,
Thanks to this, lived more easily with poverty
He began to go around Asia’s noble cities
Singing the praise of victors for a set price.
Once he had done this to make a wealthier life
He planned to make a seaward journey home.
For it was on Ceos people claim he was born.
He climbed aboard a ship which an awful storm
And its advanced age caused to break apart in the sea.
Some grabbed their money-belts, others their valuable things,
Safeguards for their life. A rather curious man asked
“Simonides, you are saving none of your riches?”
He responded, “Everything that is mine is with me”
Few swam free, because most died weighed down by a drowning burden.
Then thieves arrived and seized whatever each man carried.
They left them naked. By chance, Clazomenae, that ancient city,
Was nearby. The shipwrecked men went that way.
There lived a man obsessed with the pursuit of poetry
Who had often read the poems of Simonides,
He was his greatest distant admirer.
Once he recognized Simonides from his speech alone
He greedily brought him home, and decorated him
With clothes, money, servants. The rest were carrying
Signs asking for food. When Simonides by chance
Would see these men he reported “I said that all my things
Were with me: and you lost everything you took.”
Homo doctus in se semper divitias habet.
Simonides, qui scripsit egregium melos,
quo paupertatem sustineret facilius,
circum ire coepit urbes Asiae nobiles,
mercede accepta laudem victorum canens.
Hoc genere quaestus postquam locuples factus est,
redire in patriam voluit cursu pelagio;
erat autem, ut aiunt, natus in Cia insula.
ascendit navem; quam tempestas horrida
simul et vetustas medio dissolvit mari.
Hi zonas, illi res pretiosas colligunt,
subsidium vitae. Quidam curiosior:
“Simonide, tu ex opibus nil sumis tuis?”
“Mecum” inquit “mea sunt cuncta.”Tunc pauci enatant,
quia plures onere degravati perierant.
Praedones adsunt, rapiunt quod quisque extulit,
nudos relinquunt. Forte Clazomenae prope
antiqua fuit urbs, quam petierunt naufragi.
Hic litterarum quidam studio deditus,
Simonidis qui saepe versus legerat,
eratque absentis admirator maximus,
sermone ab ipso cognitum cupidissime
ad se recepit; veste, nummis, familia
hominem exornavit. Ceteri tabulam suam
portant, rogantes victum. Quos casu obvios
Simonides ut vidit: “Dixi” inquit “mea
mecum esse cuncta; vos quod rapuistis perit.
Wreck of a small boat in Nea Artaki, Euboea, Greece
“He also levied a tax of three on every thousand so that people, distressed by these charges, would note that families of equal wealth whose lives were modest and simple paid less to the public treasury and so repent from their behavior.
Both those who paid the taxes because of luxury and those who gave up their luxury because of the taxes were angry with him. For most people believe that hindering the display of their wealth deprives them of it and also that the display comes from their luxuries not their necessities.
This is what they say really surprised Ariston the philosopher, that those who possess superficial excess are thought to be luckier than those who are well-supplied with what is needed and useful.”
“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
“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.
“[in this case] the soul and the body would experience things together, but they would not have the same reactions as one another. But, now, it is entirely clear that one follows another. This is especially obvious from the following. For madness seems to be a matter of the mind; doctors, however, respond to it by cleansing the body with medicines and also by telling them to pursue certain habits in life which may relieve the mind of madness.
So, the form of the body is relieved by treatments to the body at the very same time that the soul is freed from madness. Since they are both relieved together, it is clear that their reactions are in synchrony. It is also clear from this that the forms special to the body are similar to the capabilities of the mind, with the result that all similarities in living things are clear signs of some kind of sameness.”
“While I live, I love to sing these songs and when I die
Put a pipe above my head and a lyre near my feet.
Play a song for me.
Who could find a limit to wealth or cure for poverty?
Or who among the human race knows an end to gold?
Now one who has money wants more money still
And even though he’s rich, he’s tortured like the poor!
Play a song for me.
Whenever you see a corpse or pass by quiet tombs
You’re glancing at a shared mirror: the dead expected this.
Time is on loan and the lender is mean.
When he asks for payment in full, you render it with pain.
Play a song for me.”
Achilles does not receive the news of Patroklos’ passing until the beginning of book 18 thanks to the prolonged struggle over the bodies in book 17. Antilokhos (Antilochus, Nestor’s son), who, according to other traditions, plays a role similar to Patroklos in the lost Aithiopis when Memnon kills him and incites Achilles’ rage anew, comes running to Achilles to tell him the “painful message”. When he finds Achilles, the scene is somewhat guided through his eyes (what narratologists might call ‘focalized’, see de Jong below), but the information is a strange variation on the kind a narrator usually provides.
Homer, Iliad 18.2-17
“Swift-footed Antilokhos came as a messenger to Achilles. He found him in front of the straight-prowed ships, Considering through his heart what things could have happened. He was deeply troubled then and spoke to his own great heart:
“Oh, my heart, why are the long-haired Achaeans again Clustering around the ships, horrified from the plain? I hope the gods haven’t brought the evil pains to bear on my heart As my mother once warned me and told me that The best of the Myrmidons would be torn from the light of the sun by Trojan hands while I was still alive. Is it really that the bold son of Menoitios has died, The fool. I really was telling him just to push the fire From the ships and come back, and not to battle in force with Hektor.” While he was going over those things in his thoughts and heart, Then the son of glorious Nestor was coming near, Shedding warm tears when he spoke his painful message.”
This passage is remarkable to me for a few reasons. First, we have the application of Achilles’ epithets (“swift-footed”) to Antilochus, but in such a close proximity that any reasonable listener might feel the tension between Antilochus’ urgent message and Achilles’ lack of motion. This contrast is in part proleptic, since Achilles is about to burst back into action and become the kind of hero of force more appropriate to the conventional epithet. As Elton Barker and I have explored (Homer’s Thebes; See Roger Dunkle’s work as well and Storylife for another take) the depiction of Achilles in the Iliad plays on the tension between his traditional heroic identity, marked by swiftness, and his actions in the Iliad, where he is swift to anger but stalled in action for two-thirds of the epic. His swiftness in the Iliad is related both to the dynamic force of his anger and the swiftness (or brevity) of his life. Achilles, ironically or not, is described as swift-footed right before he permits him to lead out the Myrmidons in his stead (16.48) and he regains the epithet in his grief when he speaks to his mother soon after Antilochus arrival (18.78).
Second, there’s also an interesting angle in thinking about the Iliad and narrative time. One might imagine this scene as representing Achilles’ concern throughout Patroklos’ absence rather than just at the moment of this conflict. The join in the action is this: Hektor and Aeneas have routed the Danaans and they are fleeing across the ditch constructed to defend the ships. The book begins acknowledging, almost generically, “so they were struggling like a burning fire” and then Antilochus arrives. For me, the structure of the line recalls the beginning of the embassy in book 9 when “they find him delighting his thoughts in the clear-voiced lyre” (τὸν δ’ εὗρον φρένα τερπόμενον φόρμιγγι λιγείῃ, 9.186): here, the idea is spread into two lines, first noting where he is (in front of the ships) and what he is doing (i.e., thinking about what has happened). In each case, the action ascribed in a participle (“delighting” “wondering”) to Achilles is likely the interpretation from the internal audience (the embassy, then Antilochus) framed by the narrator.
Yet, there is a potential tension between the ongoing nature of the participle (here, present and probably progressive) and the tense of the speech introduction which tends to imply a one-time action. In fact, the speech introduction and conclusion used for this speech is elsewhere used to show contemplation and deliberation over a course of action before a choice is made.
As I explore elsewhere, this combination is used four times in a row in book 5 of the Odyssey with the expletive ὤ μοι ἐγώ (essentially, FML), to show Odysseus struggling with options and forced to make a choice. Indeed, throughout Homer, this speech introduction seems to mark a deliberation on options or a contemplation of the situation. With Achilles, however, there may be a pattern of reflection rather than choice. In book 20, this marks Achilles reacting to Aeneas escaping him (20.243 ff.) and in book 21, it prefaces his killing of Lykaon (cf. 21.54) but in each of those cases, the first utterance is a kind of expletive about other people’s foolishness or bad luck (ὢ πόποι) rather than his own.
In this scene, Achilles considers two options over which he has no control: whether or not Patroklos has been injured or killed is something of a coin flip, a Schrödinger’s hero kind of situation from one perspective. But the combination of Antilochus’ vision of the hero trying to figure out what happened and a speech and speech introduction sequence that usually signals choice produces what I have been thinking of as “productive dissonance” (a kind of poetic resonance built on contrast instead of echoing). A clear example of “productive dissonance” to my mind is the use of the duals in Iliad 9: a traditional form (the duals of two messengers going to an enemy or outsider) is applied to an unconventional situation (a friend/ally acting like an enemy or outsider) to emphasize its extraordinary nature.
At the beginning of book 18, we have a pattern used to mark one situation applied to something that doesn’t quite fit. What I think this means here is that the juxtaposition of a form typically used for Homeric figures deciding between two possible options (even if one is clearly not realistic) with the audience and Antilochus’ knowledge of what has occurred raises the stakes and further characterizes his denial about what he already suspects. Achilles is ruminating, he is pre-lamenting, and he is in the denial phase of grief as he calls his loved one a “fool”. In a way, this tension between his suspicion and the actual events may reflect, at times, a similar tension between audience desire for the outcomes of the action and the plot as it unfolds.
Ceiling Mural depicting Achilles mourning Patroclus as Thetis brings him the new weapons forged by Hephaistos ca 1802-1805 by Francesco and Gian Battista Ballanti Graziani In the Galleria d’Achille Palazzo Milzetti, Faenza, Italy
Confirming much of this is the revelation of another prophecy from Thetis that is nowhere else reported. The productive dissonance combines with the echoes of the embassy and Achilles own claim in book 9 that he has two fates (to live a long, ignoble life, or die with ternal glory, 9.410-416). No audience outside the poem believes that this is actually a choice. The dissonance produced here reflects not just the complexity of Achilles’ anticipatory grief, and the protective human response of denial, but it also may signal in part an understanding of how audiences engage with this story (and others).
The ancient scholarship on this passage speaks to some of these issues. First, one scholiast notes that it is understandable that Achilles would be in denial here.
Schol. A ad Hom. Il. 18.4
“People who are struggling for their loved ones fall into desperation among dangers. Their minds fall into misfortune in advance.”
There’s also some concern about what it means for Achilles to talk about the future death of the Best of the Myrmidons while Achilles is still alive. Some ancient scholars insisted that Achilles could be correct in being surprised at Patroklos’ death, since Automedon is actually the best of the Myrmidons.
Schol. A ad Hom. Il. 18.10-11a ex
“According to Rhianos [fr. 1M] the issue isn’t that there are two [who are the best of the Myrmidons] but that Patroklos is not one of the Myrmidons, since he is a Lokrian from Opos. So, Aristarchus claims that that one should know from this that he is the best of the Myrmidons after him. According to some of those who follow Homer, Aktôr the father of Menoitios allegedly took Aigina and Menoitios was born from her and lived in Opos. So, Patroklos is a Myrmidon by origin. Patroklos can be said to be a Myrmidon for other reasons as well, thanks to the fact that he leads the Myrmidons after Achilles.
But how is it, some ask, that after Achilles learned this fact from his mother he still sent Patroklos to war? One might ay that it is because she didn’t speak the name or the time clearly, that there was some forgetting of these kinds of things at the right time. But once it happened, they recall it.”
Barker, E.T.E. and Christensen, Joel P. 2019. Homer’s Thebes. Hellenic Studies 84. Washington, DC.
Christensen, Joel P. The many-minded man: the « Odyssey », psychology, and the therapy of epic. Myth and Poetics; 2. Ithaca (N. Y.): Cornell University Pr., 2020.
Homer, Iliad 18.2-17 [for more on this passage, go here]
“Swift-footed Antilokhos came as a messenger to Achilles.
He found him in front of the straight-prowed ships,
Considering through his heart what things could have happened.
He was deeply troubled then and spoke to his own great heart:
“Oh, my heart, why are the long-haired Achaeans again
Clustering around the ships, horrified from the plain?
I hope the gods haven’t brought the evil pains to bear on my heart
As my mother once warned me and told me that
The best of the Myrmidons would be torn from the light of the sun
by Trojan hands while I was still alive.
Is it really that the bold son of Menoitios has died,
The fool. I really was telling him just to push the fire
From the ships and come back, and not to battle in force with Hektor.”
While he was going over those things in his thoughts and heart,
Then the son of glorious Nestor was coming near,
Shedding warm tears when he spoke his painful message.”
“According to Rhianos [fr. 1M] the issue isn’t that there are two [who are the best of the Myrmidons] but that Patroklos is not one of the Myrmidons, since he is a Lokrian from Opos. So, Aristarchus claims that that one should know from this that he is the best of the Myrmidons after him. According to some of those who follow Homer, Aktôr the father of Menoitios allegedly took Aigina and Menoitios was born from her and lived in Opos. So, Patroklos is a Myrmidon by origin. Patroklos can be said to be a Myrmidon for other reasons as well, thanks to the fact that he leads the Myrmidons after Achilles.
But how is it, some ask, that after Achilles learned this fact from his mother he still sent Patroklos to war? One might ay that it is because she didn’t speak the name or the time clearly, that there was some forgetting of these kinds of things at the right time. But once it happened, they recall it.”
“When some musician or scholar has died, then their music or writing dies with them; but their basic contributions persist and, in some way, live as long as the universe does. Those who are scholars and musicians now or who will be in the future will continue to develop thanks to these previous works in an undying procession.
In the same way, whatever is prudent, wise, brave, just, or just simply wise in an individual may perish, but it nevertheless remains as immortal thought and all excellence is safeguarded against decay in the immortal nature of the whole [universe]. Through this advantage people today and those of tomorrow will also become civilized—unless we believe that the death of one individual person in turn visits ruin upon humankind.”
“Whoever destroys a soul [of Israel], it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whoever saves a life of Israel, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.”
This composite image contains X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the ROSAT telescope (purple), infrared data from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope (orange), and optical data from the SuperCosmos Sky Survey (blue) made by the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope.
At the end of Iliad 16, Patroklos dies. As Patroklos himself puts it in his final speech, Hektor was merely the third responsible for his death, after Apollo, and Euphorbos (16.850). Euphorbos, who is introduced in book 16 for the first time in the epic as “the son of Panthoos who excelled his age group in the spear, horsemanship, and swift feet” (16.808-9). There’s little information about Euphorbos—a scholion reports that his brother is Polydamas (which makes this pairing with Hektor weird). He is also described in book 16 as a “Dardanian man” (Δάρδανος ἀνὴρ, 16.807), which seems to have caused some consternation to ancient scholars who assert that “In Homer, Troy is one thing and Dardania is another” καθ’ ῞Ομηρον γοῦν ἄλλη ἐστὶν ἡ Τροία καὶ ἄλλη ἡ Δαρδανία, schol. T ad Hom. IL. 15.449-551b) and elsewhere that Panthoos is a foreign ally. Euphorbos echoes Paris’ role in Achilles’ death. In some traditions, the philosopher Pythagoras claimed that he was Euphorbos in an earlier life.
Those details aside: Eurphorbos does not linger for long in the Iliad. In book 16, he faces Menelaos and follows Paris into the gloom. What interests me about this passage is the simile that follows the death and an explanation of it.
Homer, Iliad 17.61-69
“That’s the way the well-limbed son of Panthos, Euphorbos, was When Atreus’ son Menelaos killed him and took his weapons” “As when a mountain lion bred in the mountains and trusting in its own strength Seizes a cow from a grazing herd, whichever one is best. It takes her and breaks her neck with his strong teeth, first And then gulps down all her blood and organs as he rages. Around him the dogs and men, the shepherds wail aloud but standing from afar because they do not wish to stand in his way—once pale fear overcomes them. In that way, the heart in no man dared to stand and face glorious Agamemnon.”
Menelaos and Hector fighting over the body of Euphorbos. Middle Wild Goat style. 600 BCE
Lion similes abound in Homer. The image of a single lion surrounded by humans or domesticated animal is common, and it can mark extreme danger to an isolated hero (surrounded by hunters) or, conversely, a moment of surpassing glory as a hero is described as a lion having its way among defenseless animals. The language is fairly formulaic to start—the mountain-bred lion who trusts in his strength marks Menelaos out as preeminent at this moment.
But, as with many other similes, the tenor (the thing compared) and the vehicle (the comparison) shift as the image unfolds. The narrator’s gaze moves from the attacking lion to the act of despoiling Euphorbos’ weapons, compared to the lion breaking and consuming the hero as other animals (dogs) and humans (shepherds) watch in horror from a distance. While the narration is visual, we can’t forget the verb ἰύζουσιν is rare in Greek literature and seems to correlate to animal or animalistic sounds (although a scholiast is sure to let readers know that the dogs are actually barking, οἱ δὲ κύνες ὑλακτοῦσι).
When the narrator leaves the simile, the “pale fear” that overtakes them, that prevents them from facing the rampaging lion, seems to be compared to the heart in each of the Trojan warriors that will not allow them to face him. The concatenation of images is dizzying: the Trojans are at once other cattle, dogs, and humans witnessing the lion who began as the focal point of the simile. Menelaos’ eventually abortive despoiling of Euphorbus’ corpse leaves almost a vivid crunching sound, even though it never happens.
This simile creates a narrative space within epic that is like a fantasy within a fantasy. I have discussed similes a few times before (Patroklos crying like a girl; Hektor as a beast; Hektor as a snowy mountain; the similes of Iliad 12). As I mention in several points, I think that the way similes unfold echo the associative and unpredictable ways that narrative blends unfold in our minds. In a talk I gave in 2024 at Vanderbilt University (presenting part of Storylife), I compared similes to the bounded forms of ring composition. These parenthetical structures have also developed a cooperative function of inviting audiences to think about the characteristics of the speech in a particular way. Similarly, similes are bounded by “just as” and “just so” statements that separate narrative or speech from comparison, directing audiences to follow through the comparison both at its beginning and end. These comparisons are rarely 1:1 and perfectly clear, they often shift and move from one element inside the simile (a vehicle) to a different corresponding element outside the simile (the tenor).
Before getting into a few details, I want to offer an exam type analogy: the tenors and vehicles of Homeric similes are to each other what external audiences and epic are outside of the poem. That is, they replicate pars pro toto the blending and movement that happens when audiences hear and begin to interpret the stories. Two things I would like to emphasize in the similes I have selected are the slippage or blending of detail between the domains of tenor and vehicle and the movement within the simile from the initial comparison to include a greater part of a world than one might expect. Two examples help show this.
Iliad 6.503‑514
“Paris did not then linger in his lofty halls, But, once he had put on his shining weapons, inlaid with bronze, Then he hurried through the city, fully trusting his swift feet. As when some cooped up horse, fully fed at the manger, Breaks his bond and rushes out, luxuriating in the field, Glorying in his habit of bathing in the fine-flowing river– How he holds his head up high and his hair darts Around his shoulders, and as he trusts in his glory, His light limbs carry him to the hangouts and pasture of mares– That’s how the son of Priam, Paris, went to the top of Pergamon, Shining in his armor like the shining sun Exulting, and his swift feet were carrying them….
The first example is about Paris finally dressed to go to war in Iliad. The verbal repetitions link the tenor and vehicle for us, and the effect of comparing Paris to a show-horse is comedic and pointed. But what I find interesting here is the bleedover of human-traits to the horse in the simile: the horse’s extravagant hair evokes as much a dandy princeling tossing his hair as that of a stallion. The bathing, the swift feet, the jaunting off for mares, all speaks to a horse compared to Paris as much as a prince compared to a horse. The bleedover is, I think, a species of the very kind of cognitive blending that happens when we absorb any narrative and try to process it through the language and experiences that are familiar to us
Iliad 7.1-7
So he spoke and shining Hektor rushed out of the gates And his brother Alexandros went with him. Both of them Were truly eager in their heart to go to war and fight. As when a god grants a wind to sailors who are just Waiting for it, after they have worn themselves out By driving their smooth oars into the sea, and their limbs have been wearied, That’s how these two appeared to the Trojans awaiting [them].”
Simpler, but no less interesting is the simile from book 7: When Hektor and Paris leave the gates, we are not sure what the relationship between the tenor and the vehicle is: we start out, perhaps wrongly, thinking that they are the sailors but find out as we move through the simile that the tableau of them returning to battle is being seen by the Trojans, who are the at first unexpressed tenor to the simile’s sailors. Hektor and Paris are the favorable wind sent to relieve them. This shifting, this re-blending of space through the unfolding of the narrative, aims our mental gaze first at the princes returning to war, then to an imagined vessel, then to the Trojans altogether, moving us through the narrative and to a new place in the tale. The details left unexplored may strike different audience members: the inversion of Trojans as sailors, the emphasis on the toil of their work, the implication of divine agency, so crucial throughout Hektor’s characterization from this moment until Achilles’ return. The simile refracts and bends, leaving listeners to recompose its meaning. All of this occurs in a way that is deeply akin to the cognitive blend proposed by Mark Turner in The Literary Mind.
Ancient testimony indicates that similes like this have caused audience confusion over time.
Schol. Ad Hom. Il. 17.60-69 ex
“Everything [in the simile] is compared to everything [without]: the mass of the Trojans is the herd of cattle; Eurphorbos who us the best is compared to the best of the cattle. The poet acknowledges that he is the best earlier [Il. 17.80]. Menelaos [is compared] to the lion as he kills him and the uselessness of the best of the Trojans [is compared] to the cowherds and dogs who are not able to defend [the cow].”
The takeaway, I think, should be that devices like this in Homer follow organic growth rules rather than the rigid structures of parallels and allusions that dominate literate/literary art. The images move where the inspiration takes them, adding ideas (paratactically) to create complex layers of meeting that respond to diverse perspectives and invite audiences to disentangle them. They are less puzzles to be solved, than landscapes to be explored and worlds to inhabit.
