“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.
As I write in the first post on book 15, action of the book is split into two basic movements: Zeus’ conversations with the gods to threaten or cajole them and the resulting actions taken to rally the Achaeans. The book is in part about resetting the disorder introduced in book 15 and preparing us to return to the main plot of the Iliad: Achilles’ anger and the conflict between the Achaeans and the Trojans.
The process is not as simple as I imply in that earlier post. Hera doesn’t simply accept Zeus’ return and reversal of events. After the other gods have been upbraided, she makes sure that Ares learns about the death of his own son, Askalaphos.
Iliad 15.113-122
“I expect right now that Ares, at least, is feeling some pain: For his son, the dearest of men, died in battle— Askalaphos, the one strong Ares claimed as his own” So she spoke, and Ares pounded on his powerful thighs, Working his hands into them, and he spoke a word in mourning. “Don’t you criticize me, all of you who have Olympian homes, Because I pay back the murder of my son who went among the ships of the Achaeans, Even if it is my fate too to be struck by Zeus’ lightning And to lie there in the blood and dust among the corpses.” So he spoke, and he called for his horses Fear and Rout To be yoked and he put on his shining armor himself Then there would have been another harsh anger [kholos] And rage among the immortals from Zeus and rage [mênis] too…”
Hermes, Athena, Zeus with thunderbolt seated on block, Hera, Ares seated; Beazley Archive Pottery Database 301672
Hera really ‘tweaks’ Ares a bit here by dropping the information in this way and, perhaps, by casting some doubt on the parentage. It works because Ares gets upset and gets ready to go to war. What really stands out for me in this passage is the contrafactual that anticipates two kinds of anger
A scholion reports that these words are “parallel and possessing the same meaning” (Ariston. <χόλος καὶ μῆνις:> ὅτι ἐκ παραλλήλου ὡς ἰσοδυναμοῦντα τὸν χόλον καὶ τὴν μῆνιν.) The doublet (and the passage) reminds me of the alternate version of the proem of the Iliad
“Tell me now Muses who have Olympian homes How in fact rage and anger overtook Peleus’ son And the shining son of Leto…for he was angry at the king”
As Lenny Muellner shows in his book, mênis is marked as divine anger over a cosmic rupture. For Achilles in the Iliad, mênis indicates that his anger is super-charged (because he is semi-divine) and also emerging from a breakdown in social/political organization equivalent to a transgression against the basic assumptions of individual rights and place in the community.
In the alternate proem we can imagine the doublet as characterizing both Achilles’ and Apollo’s responses to the events of Iliad 1: the social anger of kholos describes the onset of anger from the breakdown of expected practices, while mênis conveys Apollo’s rage over the dishonoring of his priest as well since the rights and honors given to the gods are part of the stability of the Olympian realm. Thomas Walsh has argued that kholos indicates anger that is socially motivated, generally among peers. In book 1 of the Iliad, according to Achilles, kholos overtakes Agamemnon (1.387) because Achilles took action and called for them to propitiate the god in response to the plague. In the combining of the two, I suggest we see both a complementary pair (one is universal and capacious, the other is local and capricious) but also a doublet that anticipates compounding outcomes.
Let me try to explain this through doublet in book 15 and the doublet that appears in the alternative proem: they suggest that there are different kinds of anger and that they have different consequences. The initial kholos may indicate the conflict itself, the manifestation of anger that is violence. The subsequent mênis is an anticipation based on who is part of the conflict. Were Ares to challenge Zeus, it would have cosmic implications: the death of Ares would disrupt the distribution of goods and rights among the gods and promise future conflict (especially between Zeus and Hera). I think there is some confirmation here of the difference implied by Athena’s intervention. She rushes down from Olympus and warns Ares not to engage in this destructive behavior. When she asks him directly to put his anger down, she says “I am thus asking you now to put aside the kholos over your son” (τώ σ’ αὖ νῦν κέλομαι μεθέμεν χόλον υἷος ἑῆος, 15.138). The kholos-anger here is over the loss of a mortal child, whose presence or absence from the divine perspective cannot have cosmic relevance unless Ares challenges his father (or the other gods) over it.
As I have explored before, the Iliad presents some shared language between Ares and Achilles. When Ares challenges Zeus in book 5 and Zeus dismisses him there are echoes that could lead some audience members to imagine Ares as Achilles and Agamemnon as Zeus. The parallels are incomplete and jagged, to an extent, but the cast each conflict as one that has the potential to destroy the communities that depend upon their kings and leading warriors. But in each case, there is the chance that anger (kholos) can slide into a paradigm shifting/shattering rage (mênis) if the players do not understand the stakes of their own stories.
Ares between Castor (left) and Pollux (right) fighting the Giants. 5th Century BCE. Archaeological Museum of Athens
A (way too) Short bibliography
Christensen, Joel P. 2012. “Ares: ἀΐδηλος: On the Text of Iliad 5.757 and 5.872.” Classical Philology 107.3, 230-238.
Patroklos leaves Achilles in book 11 to go investigate the wounded Achaeans and does not return until book 16. When he appears, he is described as weeping. And we hear two similes to describe how he weeps, one from the narrative and another from Achilles himself.
Homer, Iliad 16.1-11
“That’s how they were fighting around the well-benched ship. Then Patroklos stood right next to Achilles, shepherd of the host, Letting warm tears fall down his face as a dark-watered spring would, One that pours murky water down a steep rock face. When Achilles saw him, he pitied him And spoke to him, addressing him with winged words. “Patroklos, why are you crying just like a girl, A young one, who rushes after her mother asking to be picked him, Always grabbed her clothes and holding her back as she rushes— She looks at her mother while crying so she will pick her up. Patroklos, you’re shedding a tender tear like her.”
The first simile is a repetition of sorts (and may be formulaic): Agamemnon is said to be crying like a stream before he speaks at the beginning of book 9 (14-15). The second part is somewhat more remarkable: from my experience, readers often infer the kinds of misogynistic statements that are typical in Homer (e.g. “Achaean women, not Achaean men, since you are cowards!…”) and in our own time (“fight like a girl”). One could be forgiven for assuming a kind of emasculation intended here on Achilles’ part.
The language outside the simile, however, may countermand such a reading. The narrator tells us that Achilles is pitying Patroklos (ᾤκτιρε) and the ‘winged words’ speech introduction often includes speech-acts that try to do things (although the fill intention of this speech is unclear). The content of the speech may have surprised ancient audiences as well: a scholion reports that Aristarchus preferred θάμβησεν (“felt wonder at”) instead of pitied. The scholia also question whether or not it is strange for Achilles to mock Patroklos for crying when Achilles himself was lamenting over losing a concubine (ἄτοπός ἐστιν αὐτὸς μὲν ἕνεκα παλλακίδος κλάων (cf. Α 348—57), τὸν δὲ Πάτροκλον κόρην καλῶν ἐπὶ τοιούτοις δεινοῖς δακρύοντα, Schol. bT ad Hom. Il. 16.7 ex).
Lekyth (oil flask) depicting a mother holding up her little boy who reaches out to her. c. 460 BC (inv. 15002)
But how does our reception of this scene change if we don’t focus on the routine misogyny? One crucial thing the structure of the speech does for us–in addition to providing us a framework that shows this is not straight invective–is provide the contrast between how the narrator asks us to view Patroklos and how Achilles does. The narrator provides a repeated somewhat bland comparison to a fountain. But Achilles enlivens and personalizes the comparison. We cannot forget that in this simile, Achilles makes himself the mother.
One of my favorite takes on this comes from Celsiana Warwick’s great article “The Material Warrior: Gender and “Kleos” in the Iliad”. Warwick combines this with Achilles’ description of himself in book 9 as a mother bird trying to bring food to her chicks. In that simile, Achilles compares the whole army to the chicks looking to him for food. Warwick writes:
The image of the mother ignoring the needs of her child represents the way in which Achilles at this point in the poem is ignoring the needs of the Achaeans, whom he described as his children at 9.323–7. Achilles’ use of this simile here should thus not be regarded as incidental, but rather as part of his larger pattern of maternal identification. In Book 9 the mother bird is self-sacrificing, directing all of her attention towards her chicks. In the second simile, a change has taken place in Achilles’ conception of himself as a mother; now he has turned his back on the child and moves away from her. The scene, although domestic and familiar rather than destructive or threatening, highlights Achilles’ refusal in Book 16 to take up his protective role. It foreshadows the destructive consequences of this refusal, especially when juxtaposed with the simile of the mother of the chicks. The gender dynamics of this image are also intriguing; although the comparison of Patroclus to a foolish girl appears to be negative, Achilles does not seem to impugn his own masculinity by associating himself with the mother.
Greek; Votive relief fragment with goddesses, mother, nurse, and infant; Stone Sculpture MET 5th Century BCE
By situating this image along with other comparisons to women in Homer–e.g. Heroic pain compared to women in childbirth, or heroes compared to animal mothers and offspring–Warwick argues that maternity is associated with protection in Homer, implying, perhaps, an obligation to shelter others that yields a greater level of pain and suffering when warriors fail to do so. Consider the existential pain felt by Thetis in response to her inability to save her son or the emphasis Andromache puts on imagining her son’s (impossible) futures. The language of each simile, moreover, strengthens these connections: As Casey Dué demonstrates, Achilles’ similes resonate with women’s laments in the epic tradition. In a way, they are proleptic, priming an audience that already knows the events of the story to see Achilles’ actions in a certain way. The associations may be broader than this too–Cathy Gaca has suggested that the simile recalls the image of a mother and child fleeing a warrior during the sack of a city.
This associative framework is especially effective for exploring Achilles’ actions because he fails in his role as a protector. Warwick adds, “It is particularly appropriate for Achilles to compare himself to a mother because maternity, unlike paternity or non-parental divine protection, is closely linked in Homeric poetry with the mortal vulnerability of human offspring.” Achilles becomes a “murderous mother” who is a direct cause of Patroklos’ death.
This simile and Achilles’ own self-characterization increases the pathos of his story. This is echoed and reinforced–as Emily Austin argues well in her article (Grief as ποθή )–when Achilles’ grief over Patroklos’ death is compared to a mother lion’s sorrow over the loss of her cubs. In addition to these powerful connections between women and the life cycle, these images also underscore the impact that heroic violence has on familial relationships. The Achaeans at Troy do not have their families with them (with some exceptions): the consequences of war fall most heavily on women and children. This simile can both humanize Achilles and vilify him. The greater we understand his feelings of love and responsibility for Patroklos, the more horrifying it is when we understand that Achilles himself ultimately prayed for his own people to die.
We also have to attend to the impact on Patroklos: if Achilles is trying to do something with this speech, what is it? Jonathan Ready suggests that Achilles is letting Patroklos know that he is there and, like a mother, will eventually take care of her child. I like this reading, but I wonder if there isn’t a clash between Achilles’ belief that he can comfort Patroklos and the image itself which remains unresolved. The child in the simile goes on, tugging, wanting to be picked up, but never fully heard. We must imagine, I think, that Achilles sees these actions as being completed outside the simile when he listens to Patroklos and responds. As Rachel Lesser suggests, Patroklos is not fully heard. Patroklos’ “appeal represents a challenge to [Achilles’] will” (175). Achilles is troubled and upset by his friend being upset; but he is also conflicted by what he asks. Like a frustrated, harried mother who finally picks up the persistent child, Achilles concedes to Patroklos, but with demands and limits that will make neither of them happy.
I think this passage provides a great sample of how hard it can be to interpret Homer and how many different ideas need to be balanced at once. The scholars I have mentioned weigh cultural ideas about gender and relationships against what actually happens in the Homeric poems and generate a series of responses that point to the sensitivity and open-endedness of the simile. Achilles frames himself and Patroklos as a matter of expressing their relationship to one another, his view of the situation, and, perhaps more deeply, a troubled sense of responsibility. The lack of resolution in the simile and the striking image itself draws the audience’s attention to the moment, encouraging us to think through the image and make sense of it on our own.
Harvard Museums 1960.342 440 BCE Hydria with Family scene
A short bibliography on this simile
Austin, Emily. “Grief as ποθή : understanding the anger of Achilles.” New England Classical Journal, vol. 42, no. 3, 2015, pp. 147-163.
Dué, Casey. “Achilles, mother bird: similes and traditionality in Homeric poetry.” The Classical Bulletin, vol. 81, no. 1, 2005, pp. 3-18.
Gaca, Kathy. 2008. “Reinterpreting the Homeric Simile of Iliad 16.7–11: The Girl and Her Mother in Ancient Greek Warfare.” AJP 129: 145–71.
Lesser, Rachel. 2022. Desire in the Iliad. Oxford.
Mills, Sophie. 2000. “Achilles, Patroclus and Parental Care in Some Homeric Similes.” G&R 47: 3–18.
Pratt, Louise. 2007. “The Parental Ethos of the Iliad.” Hesperia Supplements 41: 25–40.
Ransom, Christopher. 2011. “Aspects of Effeminacy and Masculinity in the Iliad.” Antichthon 45: 35–57.
Ready, Jonathan. 2011. Character, Narrator, and Simile in the Iliad. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Warwick, Celsiana. “The maternal warrior: gender and « kleos » in the « Iliad ».” American Journal of Philology, vol. 140, no. 1, 2019, pp. 1-28. Doi: 10.1353/ajp.2019.0001
Book 13 splits almost easily into three parts. Poseidon’s actions echo the events of book 13 and Hera’s seduction of Zeus, which involves Poseidon to the extent that he will be rallying the Greeks during Zeus’ distraction, seems almost as if it could be an entirely independent episode. There are some interwoven themes, however: the foolishness of Agamemnon at the beginning of the book could be seen to anticipate Zeus’ own failures as a leader during the seduction scene, while the coalition of wounded Greek leaders joining together at the book’s beginning is balanced by the efforts of the second rank of Trojan leaders (especially Sarpedon and Polydamas) to defend Hektor and lead the Trojans after Hektor falls).
Structure of Iliad 14
1-133 Nestor and the Council of Kings
134-360 Seduction of Zeus
361-522 Rallying of Greeks, wounding of Hektor
The first portion of this book echoes two earlier scenes that help to characterize the Achaean political organization. In both books 2 and 9, Agamemnon expresses a desire to depart and this triggers a response that reaffirms a larger will to stay. In book 2, he ‘tests’ the army and they run to the ships, only to be restrained and rallied by Odysseus and Nestor. In book 9, he again suggests fleeing, only to be opposed by Diomedes and then redirected by Nestor. At the beginning of book 14, all of the best of the Achaeans are sidelined from battle. Here, Nestor is drawn into action by the sound of battle and when he asks Agamemnon for a plan, that glorious son of Atreus, proposes that the wounded leaders withdraw into a ship and row out into the bay and await nightfall.
Elton Barker and I wrote an article comparing Agamemnon’s claim that “there’s no criticism for running away, not even in the night” (οὐ γάρ τις νέμεσις φυγέειν κακόν, οὐδ’ ἀνὰ νύκτα, 14.80) with the new Archilochus fragment where the speaker runs away from Telephos along with Archilochus’ shield poem. We argue that the common strains are evidence of something of a poetic tradition of debating bravery and self-preservation, emphasizing that Homer and Archilochus are engaged with rhetorical repositioning in response to each other.
Masque funéraire, connu sous le nom de « masque d’Agamemnon ». Or massif, trouvé dans la Tombe V du site de Mycènes par Heirich Schliemann en 1876.
(As Melissa Mueller effectively argues in her recent book on Sappho and Homer, there’s great interpretive advantage to putting Lyric/Elegiac poets in a non-hierarchical relationship with each other. In our work, Elton and I have tried to emphasize that because of the nature of composition in performance and the many versions of any tale that were told previous to textualization, it is just as likely that our version of Homer is responding to ideas extant in Archilochus and Sappho as it would be that Sappho and Archilochus are responded to the Homeric text we have.)
Agamemnon presents an unheroic plan unbecoming to the leader of the army. He attempts to use proverbial sounding language justifying retreat in the face of considerable danger in a context in which his retreat would doom the army. Rather than presenting a Tyrtaeus/Callinus shaming speech, declaring that only cowards run and they’re likely to die anyway, Odysseus focuses on the larger picture:
Iliad 14.83-102
‘Son of Atreus, what kind of word has escaped the bulwark of your teeth? You’re a disaster, I wish that you would order some other unfit army, that you didn’t rule us, those for whom Zeus has assigned work over harsh wars from youth right up to old age, until each of us perishes. Do you really desire to abandon in this way the wide-wayed city of the Trojans, for which we have suffered many evils? Be quiet! Lest any one else of the Achaeans hear this plan which no man, at least, would ever release from his mouth, a man who knows how to utter fit things in his thoughts, a scepter-bearing man and one to whom the host assents, the size of the host you rule over among the Achaeans. Now I question your thoughts altogether, what sort of thing you have spoken, you who call us, when the war and strife have been joined, to drag the well-benched ships to the sea, so that more still to boast over might occur for the Trojans who have already overpowered us, and harsh ruin might fall over us. For the Achaeans will not withstand the war while the ships are dragged to the sea, but they will look back at us and forget their battle-lust. There, then, leader of the host, your plan will destroy us.’
Agamemnon seated on a rock and holding his sceptre, identified from an inscription. Fragment of the lid of an Attic red-figure lekanis by the circle of the Meidias Painter, 410–400 BC. From the contrada Santa Lucia in Taranto. Stored in the Museo Nazionale Archeologico in Taranto (Italy).
Odysseus warns Agamemnon that this is the kind of man that will lead to the very outcome he has lamented on more than one occasion (that he will destroy his own Army). His language is aggressive and also transgressive: he uses bare imperatives, repetitions, insults, and rhetorical questions to reprimand Agamemnon. This scene is, in a way, an inversion of book 2: Nestor starts the questions, Agamemnon says something foolish, and Odysseus puts him in his place. Odysseus can be harsher here because this is the equivalent of a small council (a boulê) where the leaders speak more frankly and directly to each other than if the entire army were listening. Agamemnon backs down quickly in the face of Odysseus’ onslaught:
Iliad 14. 103-108
“Then, Agamemnon the Lord of Men answered him. “Odysseus, you’re laying into me with reproach so hard! For my part I won’t order the unwilling sons of the Achaeans To drag their well-benched ships back into the sea. But I wish there were someone here who could lay out a plan Better than this one. Someone young or old. This would be welcome to me.”
Earlier in the epic speakers have been valued for their age—as Nestor himself makes clear when he responds to Diomedes in book 9 and tells him that he “has not reached the end of speech” since he is so young. Here, in a moment of desperation, Agamemnon basically says he needs a good idea and he doesn’t care where it comes from. The hero who stands up with a better idea is none other than Diomedes. And he’s has a little bit to say first.
Iliad, 14.109-133
Then among them spoke Diomedes, good at the war-cry: ‘The man is near, let us not waste any more time; if you wish to consent, then may none of you entertain anger because I am indeed the youngest by birth among you. I also claim to be the offspring of a noble father, Tydeus, whom the heaped-up earth covers in Thebes. For, three blameless children were born to Portheus and in Pleurôn and steep Kalydon lived Agrios and Melas, and the third child was the horseman Oineus the father of my father—and he was conspicuous among them for virtue. Although he remained there, my father lived in Argos, driven there, for this, I guess, is how Zeus and the other gods wished it. He married one of Adrêstos’ daughters, and inhabited a house rich for living—he had sufficient grain-bearing ploughlands and around these there where many orchards full of fruit, and he possessed many flocks. He surpassed all the Achaeans with the spear—you all must have heard these things, if they’re true. Hence, do not, by claiming that my birth, at least, is low and cowardly, disregard the speech that is offered, the one I will speak. Let us go again to the war, even though we are wounded by necessity. But, when there, let us keep ourselves out of the strife of the missiles, lest anyone somehow receive a wound on top of a wound. Let us rally the others and send them into battle, even those who before gave into their impulse to hang back and not fight.’
Where Diomedes starts his response to Agamemnon in book 9 by complaining about how the king has impugned his bravery and fighting effort before, here he also talks about his genealogy. Diomedes may be responding in part to Agamemnon’s earlier use of Tydeus as an example to shame him to fight harder. But he is also setting his story alongside the famous tales of these famous heroes’ families. Genealogical bona fides occupy the vast majority of these speech even after Agamemnon has so directly said he just needs a better plan.
I would go so far as to suggest that Diomedes is working within the confines of the previous speeches: he has been qualified as a warrior not up to his father’s measure in book 4, and yet in book 9 he was criticized for being too young. Here he seems to imply again that his father’s excellence is a necessary but insufficient quality for his own authority to speak. What he specifies about his father’s place is his acceptance into another city and people (Argos, closer to Agamemnon in the Peloponnese) and his high position in that new kingdom. For me, the key to this somewhat unclear logic is the superlative “youngest”—perhaps, Diomedes is saying that just as his father proved himself a useful stranger among the Argives, so too Diomedes’ difference in youth marks him out among the Achaean leaders.
Busts of Achilles, Agamemnon, and Hector in Conference (from Scenes from The Story of The Trojan War), South Netherlandish, probably produced through Pasquier Grenier of Tournai (MET, 55.39)
As I write in my dissertation, this scene is one of several that shows the difference in Greek politics in the Iliad is that there are multiple leaders endowed with the authority to speak and advise (in contrast to the Trojans). In revisiting this exchange, moreover, I think it shows much more internal echoing with the earlier political scenes and Diomedes’ exchange with Agamemnon in book 4. Following Odysseus’ abuse, I would dare argue that Agamemnon says “either young or old” because he wants to hear from someone else and might be apologetically opening the door to Diomedes.
A Short bibliography on Diomedes
n.b this is not an exhaustive bibliography. If you’d like anything else included, please let me know.
Andersen, Öivind. 1978. Die Diomedesgestalt in der Ilias. Oslo.
Barker, Elton T. E. “Achilles’ Last Stand: Institutionalising Dissent in Homer’s Iliad.” PCPS 50 (2004) 92-120.
—,—. Entering the Agôn: Dissent and Authority in Homer, Historiography and Tragedy. Oxford, 2009.
Burgess, Jonathan. 2001. The Tradition of the Trojan War in Homer and the Epic Cycle. Baltimore.
—,—. 2009. The Death and Afterlife of Achilles. Baltimore.
Christensen, Joel P. 2009. “The End of Speeches and a Speech’s End: Nestor, Diomedes, and the telos muthôn.” in Kostas Myrsiades (ed.). Reading Homer: Film and Text. Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 136-62.
Christensen, Joel P. and Barker, Elton T. E.. “On not remembering Tydeus: Agamemnon, Diomedes and the contest for Thebes.” Materiali e Discussioni per l’Analisi dei Testi Classici, no. 66, 2011, pp. 9-44.
Christensen, Joel P. 2015. “Diomedes’ Foot-wound and the Homeric Reception of Myth.” In Diachrony, Jose Gonzalez (ed.). De Gruyter series, MythosEikonPoesis. 2015, 17–41.
Gantz, Timothy. 1993. Early Greek Myth. Baltimore.
Griffin, Jasper. 1980. Homer on Life and Death. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
—,—.2001. “The Epic Cycle and the Uniqueness of Homer.” in Cairns 2001: 363-84.
Hammer, Dean.“‘Who Shall Readily Obey?” Authority and Politics in the Iliad.” Phoenix 51 (1997) 1-24.
—,—. “The Politics of the Iliad.” CJ (1998) 1-30.
—,—. The Iliad as Politics: The Performance of Political Thought. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002.
Irene J. F. de Jong. “Convention versus Realism in the Homeric Epics.” Mnemosyne 58, no. 1 (2005): 1–22. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4433613.
Kakridis, Johannes Th. 1949. Homeric Researches. Lund.
Kakridis, Phanis, J. 1961. “Achilles’ Rüstung.” Hermes 89: 288-97.
Lohmann, Dieter. 1970. Dieter Lohmann. Die Komposition der Reden in der Ilias. Berlin.
Mühll, Peter von der. 1952. Kritisches Hypomena zur Ilias. Basel.
Nagy, Gregory. 1979. The Best of the Achaeans. Baltimore.
Nickel, Roberto. 2002. “Euphorbus and the Death of Achilles.” Phoenix 56: 215-33.
Pache, Corinne. 2009. “The Hero Beyond Himself: Heroic Death in Ancient Greek Poetry and Art.” in Sabine Albersmeir (ed.). Heroes: Mortals and Myths in ancient Greece. Baltimore (Walters Art Museum): 89-107.
Redfield, James. 1994. Nature and Culture in the Iliad: The Tragedy of Hektor. Chicago.
—,—. 2001. “A ‘Beautiful Death’ and the Disfigured Corpse.” in Cairns 2001: 311-41.
Rose, P. W. “Thersites and the Plural Voices of Homer.” Arethusa 21 (1988) 5-25.
—,—. “Ideology in the Iliad: Polis, Basileus, Theoi.” Arethusa 30 (1997) 151-99.
