Retributive and Reparative Justice in Iliad 21

This post is a continuation of my substack on the Iliad. All proceeds from the substack are donated to classics adjacent non-profits on a monthly basis. Last year this substack provided over $2k in charitable donations. Don’t forget about Storylife: On Epic, Narrative, and Living Things. Here is its amazon page. here is the link to the company doing the audiobook and here is the press page. I am happy to talk about this book in person or over zoom.

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.”

ὣς Τρῶες ποταμοῖο κατὰ δεινοῖο ῥέεθρα
πτῶσσον ὑπὸ κρημνούς. ὃ δ’ ἐπεὶ κάμε χεῖρας ἐναίρων,
ζωοὺς ἐκ ποταμοῖο δυώδεκα λέξατο κούρους
ποινὴν Πατρόκλοιο Μενοιτιάδαο θανόντος·
τοὺς ἐξῆγε θύραζε τεθηπότας ἠΰτε νεβρούς,
δῆσε δ’ ὀπίσσω χεῖρας ἐϋτμήτοισιν ἱμᾶσι,
τοὺς αὐτοὶ φορέεσκον ἐπὶ στρεπτοῖσι χιτῶσι,
δῶκε δ’ ἑταίροισιν κατάγειν κοίλας ἐπὶ νῆας.
αὐτὰρ ὃ ἂψ ἐπόρουσε δαϊζέμεναι μενεαίνων.

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.

δυώδεκα λέξατο <κούρους>: ὡς εἰς θυσίαν μέλλων παριστάνειν τὴν καλουμένην δωδεκάδα. μεγάλην δὲ τὴν ὑπεροχὴν διὰ τούτου παρίστησιν, ἐπιλέξασθαι αὐτὸν τοὺς αἰχμαλώτους λέγων οἵους καὶ ὅσους ἐβούλετο, εἶτα καὶ τούτους καθ’ ἕνα συνδῆσαι, ὥσπερ ἀνδράποδα προτείνοντας τὰς χεῖρας (cf. Φ 30). τοίνυν συνυπούργουν αὐτῷ οἱ ἑēταῖροι ἐν τούτοις πᾶσι, τὸ δὲ ὅλον ἦν τὸ αὐτοῦ.

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.

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 sends the 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).

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 that translate 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.”

εἰ δ’ ἂν ἐμοὶ τιμὴν Πρίαμος Πριάμοιό τε παῖδες
τίνειν οὐκ ἐθέλωσιν ᾿Αλεξάνδροιο πεσόντος,
αὐτὰρ ἐγὼ καὶ ἔπειτα μαχήσομαι εἵνεκα ποινῆς
αὖθι μένων, ἧός κε τέλος πολέμοιο κιχείω.

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.

νηλής· καὶ μέν τίς τε κασιγνήτοιο φονῆος
ποινὴν ἢ οὗ παιδὸς ἐδέξατο τεθνηῶτος·
καί ῥ’ ὃ μὲν ἐν δήμῳ μένει αὐτοῦ πόλλ’ ἀποτίσας,
τοῦ δέ τ’ ἐρητύεται κραδίη καὶ θυμὸς ἀγήνωρ
ποινὴν δεξαμένῳ· σοὶ δ’ ἄληκτόν τε κακόν τε
θυμὸν ἐνὶ στήθεσσι θεοὶ θέσαν εἵνεκα κούρης
οἴης….

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.

Iliad 21

1. What Do You Do With a Problem Like Achilles? Introducing Iliad 21: Achilles; Sacrifice; narrative judgment

2. You’re Gonna Die Too, Friend: Achilles’ Speech to Lykaon in Iliad 21: Achilles and Lykaon; Surrogacy; Death; Gilgamesh and Iliad

3. They’re Just Not That Into Us: On Mortals and Gods in Iliad 21: Gods and mortals; Cosmic history; Hesiod

Bibliography

West, Martin L. “Some Homeric Words.” Glotta 77, no. 1/2 (2001): 118–35. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40262722.

Donna F. Wilson, Ransom, revenge, and heroic identity in the Iliad. CUP 2003,

Apostrophe in Iliad 20

This post is a continuation of my substack on the Iliad. All proceeds from the substack are donated to classics adjacent non-profits on a monthly basis. Last year this substack provided over $2k in charitable donations. Don’t forget about Storylife: On Epic, Narrative, and Living Things. Here is its amazon page. here is the link to the company doing the audiobook and here is the press page. I am happy to talk about this book in person or over zoom.

Book 19 of the Iliad ends with a sharp focus on Achilles as he prepares to go to war. The narrow frame produces a bit of a surprise for the epic: Achilles horse, Xanthus, talks to him and tells him he is going to die. Achilles responds that he knows he will perish far from his homeland and then shouts and leads his chariot into the front ranks.

One of the things I have been interested in is the joins between books, how the different scenes fit together. Book 19 doesn’t shift immediately to a different place and time, instead it provides something of a generic transition before moving from the mortal realm to the gods. We get three lines of transition:

“So they were arming themselves among the curved ships,
Alongside you, son of Peleus, hungry for battle, the Achaeans,
But the Trojans were opposite, on the rising part of the field

῝Ως οἳ μὲν παρὰ νηυσὶ κορωνίσι θωρήσσοντο
ἀμφὶ σὲ Πηλέος υἱὲ μάχης ἀκόρητον ᾿Αχαιοί,
Τρῶες δ’ αὖθ’ ἑτέρωθεν ἐπὶ θρωσμῷ πεδίοιο·

This is one of the rare times in the epic that Achilles is apostrophized. A scholion offers one reason for this: “Note that [Achilles] is the leader of the army in the field” (ὅτι τῆς ὑπαίθρου στρατιᾶς ἡγεμὼν ἦν. Schol. bT ad Hom. Il. 20.2 ex). This answer seems wholly ill-fit to addressing the oddness of this choice at this time. (Note, there’s also a textual variant for ἀκόρητον: some traditions have ἀκόρητοι, modifying the Achaeans; but, as the scholion notes, Achilles is the one who has not had his fill of battle.)

The subsequent scholion doesn’t do much to try to explain the sudden apostrophe either. Instead, it notes that five characters and one god are apostrophized in Homer.

Schol. T Ad Hom. Il. 20.2 ex

“The poet addresses five heroic characters [in this way]: Achilles, Menelaos, Melanippos, Patroklos, Eumaios, and, of the gods, Apollo”

προσφωνεῖ δὲ ὁ ποιητὴς ἡρωϊκοῖς μὲν προσώποις πέντε, ᾿Αχιλλεῖ, Μενελάῳ (cf. Δ 127. 146 al.), Μελανίππῳ (cf. Ο 582), Πατρόκλῳ (cf. Π 11. 20 al.), Εὐμαίῳ (cf. ξ 55 al.), θεῶν δὲ ᾿Απόλλωνι· „ἀμφὶ σέ, ἤϊε Φοῖβε” (Υ 152).

In an earlier post I discuss apostrophe in Homer. It is worth reviewing some ideas about it to make sense of this opening. Among literary devices, apostrophe is generally defined as direct-address to a character/person not present. (It shares the name with the punctuation mark because both the sign and the action are “turning away”, which is the meaning of the Greek word.) As early as Ps. Plutarch’s On Homer, we have the identification of the trope as apostrophe and the idea articulated that it “moves with pathos and makes an impact on the audience.” (ὅπερ ἰδίως ἀποστροφὴ καλεῖται. τῷ δὲ παθητικῷ κινεῖ καὶ ἄγει τὸν ἀκροώμενον, 620-621.)

While the scholion is certainly correct that several characters in Homer receive this treatment, only two receive it repeatedly: Patroklos in the Iliad and Eumaios in the Odyssey. The general argument I have always applied to this is that the act creates a sense of identification or sympathy with the character addressed in Homer, setting them and their experiences aside from the rest of the narrative as something special. From a narratological perspective, Irene J. F. De Jong has classed apostrophe as a kind of metalepsis, that is a device that breaks down the narrative, that draws the audience and narrator together to see the actions in a different way. The effect is both to single the apostrophized character out for special attention and to bring the audiences closer to the experience, to immerse them in it, as Rutger Allan suggests.

Is the apostrophe of Achilles more sympathetic or metaleptic in some way? I have a hard time committing to this, but can imagine the address as getting us to think about Achilles, insatiate of battle. The problem I have is that other instances of apostrophe occur as the narrator lingers on the character addressed. Here, we find the apostrophe at the beginning of a book, moving on from Achilles to the assembly of the gods. (And this is assuming that we imagine the events of book 20 always following book 19. A secondary or tertiary question I have here is whether this beginning is too generic, despite the surprising apostrophe.)

But let’s stick to my basic conviction that things like this aren’t accidental. If metalepsis functions to mark—or create—difference, to direct the audience to some change in the narrative, then we should probably take the transitional moment of this scene seriously. The apostrophe to Achilles marks a movement from just thinking about Achilles to bringing the Achaeans and Trojans into the frame, as if moving from a close up of Achilles girding for war before panning out to the larger scene. The moment is doubly transitional as well: it shifts from the martial vista to the divine assembly where Zeus is about to rewrite the rules of the epic again and let the gods loose in the fog of war.

In a way, this takes us back to book 1: Zeus articulates his plan and Achilles’ place in it. Achilles, moreover, is an ideal figure for such a synoptic transition—he is a central mover of the plot; the themes of the epic turn around him; and his position between things makes him a natural fit, especially as he moves between stillness and action, life and death, the realm of mortals and the plans of gods. The apostrophe effects a brief pause, prefacing a significant shift in the action, telling the audience to watch Achilles and the impact he has on everything around him.

More on Iliad 20

1. Concerns For Those About To Die: Introducing Iliad 20: Zeus; Gods and humans; Zeus’s will

2. Spears and Stones will Break Your Bones But Words Will Always Shape You: Aeneas’ Speech to Achilles in Iliad 20: Flyting; Insults; Aeneas and Achilles

3. The Gamemaster’s Anger and Fear: Homeric Contrafactuals and Rescuing Aeneas: Counter-to-fact statements in Homer; Batman; Zeus and the Plot of the Iliad; Aeneas

A short bibliography on apostrophe in Homer

Allan, Rutger. “Metaleptic apostrophe in Homer: emotion and immersion.” Emotions and narrative in ancient literature and beyond: studies in honour of Irene de Jong. Eds. De Bakker, Mathieu, Van den Berg, Baukje and Klooster, Jacqueline. Mnemosyne. Supplements; 451. Leiden ; Boston (Mass.): Brill, 2022. 78-93. Doi: 10.1163/9789004506053_006

Allan, William. “Arms and the man: Euphorbus, Hector, and the death of Patroclus.” Classical Quarterly, N. S., vol. 55, no. 1, 2005, pp. 1-16. Doi: 10.1093/cq/bmi001

Block, E.. “The narrator speaks. Apostrophe in Homer and Vergil.” TAPA, vol. CXII, 1982, pp. 7-22.

Brown, H. Paul. “The grammaticalization of « daimonie » at Iliad 24.194.” Mnemosyne, Ser. 4, vol. 67, no. 3, 2014, pp. 353-369. Doi: 10.1163/1568525X-12341203

Dubel, Sandrine. “ sur l’apostrophe au personnage dans l’« Iliade ».” « Vox poetae »: manifestations auctoriales dans l’épopée gréco-latine : actes du colloque organisé les 13 et 14 novembre 2008 par l’université Lyon 3. Ed. Raymond, Emmanuelle. Collection du Centre d’Études Romaines et Gallo-Romaines. Nouvelle Série; 39. Paris: De Boccard, 2011. 129-144.

De Jong, Irene J. F.. “Metalepsis in ancient Greek literature.” Narratology and interpretation: the content of narrative form in ancient literature. Eds. Grethlein, Jonas and Rengakos, Antonios. Trends in Classics. Supplementary Volumes; 4. Berlin ; New York: De Gruyter, 2009. 87-115.

Klooster, Jacqueline. “Apostrophe in Homer, Apollonius and Callimachus.” Über die Grenze: Metalepse in Text- und Bildmedien des Altertums. Eds. Eisen, Ute E. and Möllendorff, Peter von. Narratalogia; 39. Berlin ; Boston (Mass.): De Gruyter, 2013. 151-173.

Mackay, Elizabeth Anne. “ narrative disjunction in early Greek poetry and painting.” Acta Classica, vol. 44, 2001, pp. 5-34.

Parry, A.. “Language and characterization in Homer.” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. LXXVI, 1972, pp. 1-22.

Schmitz, Thomas A.. “Epic apostrophe from Homer to Nonnus.” Symbolae Osloenses, vol. 93, 2019, pp. 37-57. Doi: 10.1080/00397679.2019.1648012

Yamagata, Naoko. “The apostrophe in Homer as part of the oral technique.” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies of the University of London, vol. XXXVI, 1989, pp. 91-103. Doi: 10.1111/j.2041-5370.1989.tb00564.x

Two Updates about Storylife

This post is a continuation of my substack on the Iliad. All proceeds from the substack are donated to classics adjacent non-profits on a monthly basis. Last year this substack provided over $2k in charitable donations. I will return to regular Iliad posts later this week

I know I promised not to talk a lot about my book Storylife: On Epic, Narrative, and Living Things that came out on January 14th, but I did want to share two things: first, Yale University Press sponsored a blog post about conspiracies that builds on the book. And, second, the audiobook format was released on February 18th.

Conspiracies Among Us

In the post, I start by talking about weather related conspiracies from the fall, when the same groups that often deny the validity of human climate change were also claiming that hurricanes Helene and Milton were engineered by the Democrats to disrupt voting in swing states. I use that apparent contradiction to talk about how conspiracy theories rely on narrative forces of coherence and correspondence. We need to focus less on their ‘truth’ and more on why people are predisposed to accept worldviews that run contrary to nature and their own advantage.

I present my analogy of narrative as a living thing, as a kind of virus as a way of decentering the debate of fact and fiction and focusing more on what story does:

“The weak form of my argument is that narrative is something like a virus, which needs people to survive but whose mutations and adaptations are unpredictable. The stronger form of my argument is that narrative is essentially alive, with its own agency and interest in the world.”

Story is a human evolutionary characteristic that sets us apart from other animals; it is both a tool and a part of us, if we follow cognitive scientists who see narrative as instrumental not just in our sense of selves but in the development of consciousness. “Fake news” has been as instrumental in shaping human history as “facts”. And part of this is because of the relationship between narrative and a human sense of identity and agency:

Conspiracies develop in part as a rejection of a particular narrative that challenges communities’ sense of identity—they assert a view of causality and reality that at times is reaffirming and at other times creates a sense of belonging and a potential for regaining control of a world that is foreign or frightening. The problem, however, is that we treat conspiracies as if they are different and special. I believe that they are just a particularly damaging form of narrative.

It has been hard to promote a book while the world is falling apart. This is especially true when the content of the book addresses part of why the world is falling apart. The solution—a richer, deeper engagement with narrative from a young age and more—is not a quick fix and is ill-fit to facing up to the specter of actual fascism and the dangers of climate change.

Audiobook release

Storylife was released as an audiobook on February 18th from Tantor Media. Don’t worry (or hope or fear?), I am not the narrator. The narrator is Graham Rowat who speaks more energetically than I do.

I am really delighted that there is an audiobook for a few reasons. First, I think it is a nice nod to the performance context of Homeric epic (people didn’t stand around reading Homer!). Listening is very different from reading something—it engages with and activates memory in surprising ways. Second, this is also an accessibility issue for people who are sight impaired or have reading issues or are just two busy to sit down.

Third, I am an audiobook junkie. I have been a member of audible since 2011 and have spent over four months of continuous time listening to audiobooks over that period. I started listening while commuting from Round Rock, Texas to San Antonio and continued, often while doing errands or domestic tasks or even running (when I don’t mind being slow).

Take a listen, there’s a sample on YouTube.

Reactions to Weapons and Fun with the Homeric Scholia

This post is a continuation of my substack on the Iliad. All proceeds from the substack are donated to classics adjacent non-profits on a monthly basis. Last year this substack provided over $2k in charitable donations. Don’t forget about Storylife: On Epic, Narrative, and Living Things. Here is its amazon page. here is the link to the company doing the audiobook and here is the press page. I am happy to talk about this book in person or over zoom.

Most of the time when I am working the Iliad or Odyssey in Greek I read them side-by-side with the Homeric Scholia, usually in a digital window that looks something like this:

This is a screenshot of a rather old program called Musaios which relies on a version of the TLG_E (a CD-ROM) to provide data. It is searchable, but a bit clunky and has no updated texts. The editions that are part of it are those that were edited and published in print (the Erbse edition of the Scholia and the Allen text of the Iliad above).

Often I mention or cite the scholia on substack, but I don’t believe I have defined the term or explain why they matter. Let me correct that now! Scholia are notes added to manuscripts. They can come in margins, in between lines of the text, all over the place. Most modern readers have access to them through digital editions or print editions that are edited to look like this:

But the scholia themselves are actually edited into shared volumes from multiple manuscripts that share different textual traditions. Scholars who edit volumes of scholia consult manuscripts and make choices about what should be included in them (which means that it is possible for a lot to be left out). Here is a page from the Homeric multitext project showing the beginning of book 19 (also above). Note, there are two sets of marginal notes (one in paragraph, another connected to individual signs like footnotes) as well as intralinear notes. The marginal paragraph gives the impression of being part of a editorial tradition that likely precedes this Byzantine manuscript, while the smaller marginal notes and the intralinear seem more temporally local to that period (or later use).

No single manuscript tradition has identical scholia with others. So, when an edition is printed and ends up digitized, it can often contain very different information. The Hartmut Erbse edition (shown above) was published from 1969 to 1988 and includes a smaller proportion of what is referred to as the D Scholia many would like to see but includes far more manuscripts than the previous edition edited by Dindorf (for more, read Stephanie West’s review.) To address Erbse’s downplaying of the D Scholia, we have Helmut Van Thiel’s free edition.

The scholia contain a range of information that is generally split into two categories: minora and maiora. The minora tend to be a collection of notes to make it easier at translating Homeric Greek into later dialects, but they also include mythographical information (some ascribed to the scholar Didymus, hence the name the D Scholia). The maiora exist in most medieval manuscripts and draw on a wide range of ancient scholars writing about Homer from the Hellenistic period onward (most of which is preserved only in the scholia.

(There is a lot more detail here about the four man commentary, the VMK, and the preservation of materials from early editors like Aristarchus, Zenodotus, Aristophanes of Byzantium, scholars like Heraclitus and Porphyry, and more. Read Schironi’s overview if you want to know more!)

I have been thinking about the scholia because of this passage from book 19:

Homer, Iliad 19.4-20

“[Thetis] found her dear son lying over Patroklos
Weeping clearly. His many companions were mourning
Around him. The shining goddess stood among them—
She took his hand, named him, and spoke these words:
“My child, let’s leave him there, even though we’re in pain
Since he was doomed by the will of the gods foremost.
You now, take these famous arms from Hephaestus,
beautiful, the kinds of weapons no man has worn on his shoulders.”

So speaking, the goddess put the weapons down
In front of Achilles. Those marvelous arms rang out—
Fear overtook all of the myrmidons, and no one dared
To look straight at it, no, they trembled. But Achilles,
When he saw them, well anger came over him more.
His two eyes shined out from beneath his brows like a flame
He took pleasure holding the shining gifts of the god in his hand.
But when he had taken pleasure in his thoughts as a looked at them….”

εὗρε δὲ Πατρόκλῳ περικείμενον ὃν φίλον υἱὸν
κλαίοντα λιγέως· πολέες δ’ ἀμφ’ αὐτὸν ἑταῖροι
μύρονθ’· ἣ δ’ ἐν τοῖσι παρίστατο δῖα θεάων,
ἔν τ’ ἄρα οἱ φῦ χειρὶ ἔπος τ’ ἔφατ’ ἔκ τ’ ὀνόμαζε·
τέκνον ἐμὸν τοῦτον μὲν ἐάσομεν ἀχνύμενοί περ
κεῖσθαι, ἐπεὶ δὴ πρῶτα θεῶν ἰότητι δαμάσθη·
τύνη δ’ ῾Ηφαίστοιο πάρα κλυτὰ τεύχεα δέξο
καλὰ μάλ’, οἷ’ οὔ πώ τις ἀνὴρ ὤμοισι φόρησεν.
Ως ἄρα φωνήσασα θεὰ κατὰ τεύχε’ ἔθηκε
πρόσθεν ᾿Αχιλλῆος· τὰ δ’ ἀνέβραχε δαίδαλα πάντα.
Μυρμιδόνας δ’ ἄρα πάντας ἕλε τρόμος, οὐδέ τις ἔτλη
ἄντην εἰσιδέειν, ἀλλ’ ἔτρεσαν. αὐτὰρ ᾿Αχιλλεὺς
ὡς εἶδ’, ὥς μιν μᾶλλον ἔδυ χόλος, ἐν δέ οἱ ὄσσε
δεινὸν ὑπὸ βλεφάρων ὡς εἰ σέλας ἐξεφάανθεν·
τέρπετο δ’ ἐν χείρεσσιν ἔχων θεοῦ ἀγλαὰ δῶρα.
αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ φρεσὶν ᾗσι τετάρπετο δαίδαλα λεύσσων

I find this passage fascinating for a few reasons. First, a simple observation: there’s nearly a grammatical anakolouthon as the narrative attempts to describe Achilles’ response. It starts with a typical shifting device from one subject to another, “But then Achilles” (αὐτὰρ ᾿Αχιλλεὺς), when he saw it, because anger overtook him more, his eyes…” The narrative begins with the whole person, but then shifts from him as a grammatical subject, to the object of kholos (‘anger’), to the terrible glint in his eyes.

That line is filled with movement: ὡς εἶδ’, ὥς μιν μᾶλλον ἔδυ χόλος, ἐν δέ οἱ ὄσσε has three different grammatical subjects (Achilles, the anger, the eyes) but all of them are different ways of seeing Achilles: first as a narrative subject, then as an object of anger, and then the impact of the anger through the glint in his eyes. The transition from here is surprising too: Achilles feels pleasure in the weapons. One of the last times the audience was asked to think about Achilles feeling pleasure was when the embassy came to him in book nine (τὸν δ’ εὗρον φρένα τερπόμενον φόρμιγγι λιγείῃ, 9,186). There, he was with Patroklos, but still separate, alone in feeling pleasure at the lyre. Here, he moves from mourning, to anger, to pleasure at the weapons that terrify his men.

The second thing that really interests me about this passage is the difference between Achilles’ reaction to the weapons and that of the Myrmidons. While Achilles feels delight, his men are overcome by fear and cannot look at the arms (Μυρμιδόνας δ’ ἄρα πάντας ἕλε τρόμος, οὐδέ τις ἔτλη / ἄντην εἰσιδέειν, ἀλλ’ ἔτρεσαν, Schol. B ad Il. 19.15). And here’s where the scholia come in. Zenodotus quibbles and thinks the word should be “rout” (φόβος) instead of “trembling” (τρόμος). (In one of the many places where Zenodotus is wrong, he makes this assertion but does not seem to correct the coordinate verb ἔτρεσαν which creates a nice repetition and ring in a very Homeric fashion).

The b Scholion for this passage explains that “The Myrmidons are awestruck by the beauty, but they can’t look at it.” (οἱ δὲ Μυρμιδόνες τὸ κάλλος ἐκπλήττονται, ἀντοφθαλμεῖν μὴ δυνάμενοι). I think that this interpretation is bonkers, personally. The language used by the narrator makes it very clear that weapons have a martial menace: the language of trembling in fear is what happens when warriors are about to run away, when they face a challenge they would rather avoid. There is a divine force imbued in the weapons that makes the Myrmidons tremble.

The contrast in reactions is a powerful reminder of the affective force of wrought objects. Hephaestus’ weapons inspire different reactions in different viewers because they mean different things. To the Myrmidons, they are a return to war, a return to the field where they just lost Patroklos. To Achilles, they are a means to fulfilling his rage. And, if we accept that the Shield itself as an ekphrasis is a representation of poetic art, of narrative’s power, this moment helps us understand that Homer knows that creative art has different effects on different people.

Other posts on Iliad 19

1. People Are Going to Tell Our Story: Introducing Iliad 19: Paradeigmata, again; cognitive approaches to reading, again; Achilles and Agamemnon; Politics

2. That Other Me: Achilles’ Lament for Patroklos in Iliad 19: Achilles and Patroklos, again; Achilles’ Second Lament; Surrogacy; Cognitive approaches to reading, again; Briseis

3. Dead and Gentle Forever: Briseis’ Lament for Patroklos in Iliad 19: Briseis; Laments; Scholia; Patroklos

Francesca Schironi has a good overview of the Homeric Scholia here (from the Cambridge Guide to Homer).

Helmut van Thiel’s edition of the D. Scholia: a clean and easy to read FREE pdf with far more of the D Scholia than are included in the TLG. Dindorff’s Scholia to the Iliad can also be downloaded

The best guide to the scholia is Eleanor Dickey, Ancient Greek Scholarship: a guide to finding, reading, and understanding scholia, commentaries, lexica, and grammatical treatises, from their beginnings to the Byzantine period. London and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

A few more suggestions from Justin Arft:

Schironi, F. 2018. The Best of the Grammarians: Aristarchus of Samothrace on the Iliad. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Schironi digs deep into the Homeric scholia to contextualize Aristarchus’ editorial style and goals. Exhaustive examples from the Iliad in particular (some from the Odyssey when appropriate) to determine his views on grammar, style, narrative, and especially his attitude toward other critics.

Nünlist, R. 2009. The Ancient Critic at Work: Terms and Concepts of Literary Criticism in Greek Scholia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Nünlist is more broadly focused on scholiasts writ large (across genres and authors) but spends a good amount of time on Aristarchus and Homeric speech, from epithets, type-scenes, narrative, and character, too. From the Intro: “The book is divided into two parts . The first part ( Chapters 1 to 12 ) deals with the more general concepts of literary criticism which ancient scholars recognised in various texts and did not a priori consider typical of a particular poet or genre . For the sequence of the chapters in this first part , an attempt has been made to proceed from the more general to the more specific ( but to keep thematically related chapters together ) . The second part deals with literary devices that were primarily seen as typical of a particular poet ( Homer , Chapters 13 to 18 ) or genre ( drama , Chapter 19 ).”