“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.”
“We are all hearing the reports that everywhere is filled with corpses—the fields, the roads, the hills, crests, caves, peaks, groves, and trenches—and that some of the corpses are feasts for birds and beasts while the rivers carry others to the sea.
I am sometimes surprised by this news but at other times I blame those who suffer it and I say that they have suffered what is right, that they have earned this for going into exile. You might even say that they invited upon themselves the swords of their murderers.
They would not have suffered these things if they stayed at home. They have met these events because they are wandering and are offering themselves as a feast to these men who have been criminals for a long time. Think of it like this: they have made others into bandits by making the inducement greater! Who could pity people who ruin themselves willingly?”
Adam and Eve Expelled from Paradise, from the Ahmed I Falnama; attributed to Nakkaş Hasan Pasha; Turkey, Ottoman Period, 1614-16; Opaque watercolor and gold on paper; 49 x 36.4 cm; Topkapı Palace Museum, Istanbul, H. 1703, f. 7v
“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.
“Aegisthus, why do you push me again into the deep
And re-kindle my rage which was just cooling down?
The victor has indulged himself a bit with a captive girl—
It befits neither a wife nor a mistress to acknowledge it.
The law for the throne is different from the one for a man’s bed.
Even with this, why does my mind not allow me
To bring the harsher laws to bear on my husband when I have been shamed?
It’s right for the one who needs forgiveness to grant it easily.”
Aegisthe, quid me rursus in praeceps agis
iramque flammis iam residentem incitas?
permisit aliquid victor in captam sibi:
nec coniugem hoc respicere nec dominam decet.
lex alia solio est, alia privato in toro.
quid, quod severas ferre me leges viro
non patitur animus turpis admissi memor?
det ille veniam facile cui venia est opus.
“Otanês was first urging the Persians to entrust governing to the people, saying these things: “it seems right to me that we no longer have a monarchy. For it is neither pleasing nor good. For you all know about the arrogance of Kambyses and you were a party to the insanity of the Magus. How could monarchy be a fitting thing when it permits an unaccountable person to do whatever he pleases? Even if you put the best of all men into this position he might go outside of customary thoughts. For hubris is nurtured by the fine things present around him, and envy is native to a person from the beginning.
The one who has these two qualities possesses every kind of malice. For one who is overfilled does many reckless things, some because of arrogance and some because of envy. Certainly, it would be right for a man who is a tyrant at least to have no envy at all, since he has all the good things. Yet he becomes the opposite of this towards his citizens: for he envies those who are best around him and live, and he takes pleasure in the worst of the citizens—he is the best at encouraging slanders.
He becomes the most disharmonious of all people—for if you admire him only moderately, then he is upset because you do not support him ardently. But if someone supports him excessively, he is angry at him for being a toady. The worst things are still to be said: he overturns traditional laws, he rapes women, and kills people without reason.”
“This would be similar to two people who lived in the same house and one of them despises the structure and the person who built it but still stays there any way. The other does not hate it but claims that the builder made it most skillfully, even though he longs for the time when he can leave because he will no longer need a house.
The first person thinks he is wiser and more prepared to leave because he knows how to claim that the walls are made of lifeless stone and wood and lack much in comparison to the true home. He does not understand, however, that he is only special because he cannot endure what he must—unless he admits that he is upset even though he secretly delights in the beauty of the stone.
As long as we have a body, we must remain in the homes which have been made for us by that good sister of a soul who has the power to build without effort.”
“These kind of things belong to poets; we, moreover, want to be philosophers, masters of facts not fables. And yet, these gods of poetry, if they know that these things would be ruinous for their children, would be considered to have sinned in conferring a favor.
It is just as if, according to that thing which Aristo of Chios used to say, that philosophers hurt their audiences when the things they say well are interpreted badly (for it was possible still to leave Aristippus’ school as a profligate or Zeno’s school bitter and angry).
If it is this way, and those who have heard them leave with twisted minds because they understand the philosophers’ arguments incorrectly, then it befits philosophers more to be quiet than cause their audiences harm. In this way, if people pervert the capacity for reason which was given by the gods to provide good council and used it instead for fraud and harm, then it would have been better if it had not been given to the human race at all.”
Poetarum ista sunt, nos autem philosophi esse volumus, rerum auctores, non fabularum. Atque hi tamen ipsi di poetici si scissent perniciosa fore illa filiis, peccasse in beneficio putarentur. Ut si verum est quod Aristo Chius dicere solebat, nocere audientibus philosophos iis qui bene dicta male interpretarentur (posse enim asotos ex Aristippi, acerbos e Zenonis schola exire), prorsus, si qui audierunt vitiosi essent discessuri quod perverse philosophorum disputationem interpretarentur, tacere praestaret philosophos quam iis qui se audissent nocere: sic, si homines rationem bono consilio a dis immortalibus datam in fraudem malitiamque convertunt, non dari illam quam dari humano generi melius fuit. Ut, si medicus sciat eum aegrotum qui iussus sit vinum sumere meracius sumpturum statimque periturum, magna sit in culpa, sic vestra ista providentia reprehendenda, quae rationem dederit
Internet pugilists take the following things very, very seriously. Form triumphs over content!
Marble portrait heads of four philosophers in the British Museum. From foreground: Socrates, Antisthenes, Chrysippos, Epicurus. All are Roman copies after Hellenistic originals.
