Achilles’ Story of Niobe in Iliad 24

This is one of a few posts dedicated to Iliad 24. As a reminder, these posts will remain free, but there is an option to be a financial supporter. All proceeds from the substack are donated to classics adjacent non-profits on a monthly basis.

In the last post on book 24, I wrote about how pity and wonder drive the actions of the epic’s close, furnishing both a resolution to many of the poem’s conflicts while also providing models for interpretation and ‘reading’, if not a foundation for ethical humanism. I focused in part on the mirroring and blending that happens in our relationship with narratives and proposed as well that the core function of pity in facilitating identification between Achilles and Priam through their recognition of each other’s suffering may also help to explain the ‘tragic’ core of the Iliad. By this I don’t mean simply that the Iliad follows a tragic arc, but that it also produces tragic effects in Aristotelian terms. Homeric epic, by modeling people seeing their own experiences and sufferings in other peoples’ lives and then articulating narratives with new understanding, clarifies the potential for narrative art to help us see more than ourselves in the world while also framing ourselves as part of a human and cosmic continuum.

This post follows on earlier posts positioning the meeting between Achilles and Priam as in a liminal space between life and death and on the importance of Thetis to the Iliad, especially when she gives advice to her son about taking the remaining time he has to enjoy what pleasure life has to offer. I bring these topics up because I think they are linked to the story Achilles tells Priam about Niobe and how we should interpret it.

Once Achilles and Priam have had their (temporary) fill of weeping, Achilles tries to encourage Priam to stay and share a meal with him. This meal-sharing is critical for Achilles on a symbolic level as a step in his return to acting like a human being instead of some kind of a wild animal or a god of war.  Priam is reluctant because he wants to get Hektor’s body home for burial and he is rightly wary of being around Achilles too long. Achilles uses an interesting narrative of myth to ‘persuade’ Priam to join him.

Iliad 24.596-620

“And then shining Achilles went back into his dwelling
And sat on the finely decorated bench from where he had risen
near the facing wall. Then he began his speech [muthon] to Priam:

‘Old man, your son has been ransomed as you were pleading—he
Lies now on the bedding. You will see him at dawn yourself
When you lead him away. But now, we should remember our meal.
For fair-tressed Niobê, too, remembered to eat,
Even though her twelve children perished at home.
Six daughters and six sons.
Apollo killed them with his silver bow
Because he was angry at Niobê, and Artemis helped too,
Because their mother had considered herself equal to fair-cheeked Leto.
She claimed that Leto birthed two children while she had many.
And so those mere two ended the lives of many.
They lingered in their gore for nine days and no one went
To bury them—Kronos’ son turned the people into stone.
On the tenth day, the Olympian gods buried them.
And she remembered to eat, after she wore herself out shedding tears.
And now somewhere in the isolated crags on the mountains
Of Sipylus where men say one finds the beds of goddesses,
Of the nymphs who wander along the Akhelôis,
She turns over the god-sent sufferings, even though she remains a stone.
So, come, now, shining old man, let’s the two of us remember
Our meal. You can mourn your dear son again
After you take him to Troy—he will certainly be much-wept.”

῏Η ῥα, καὶ ἐς κλισίην πάλιν ἤϊε δῖος ᾿Αχιλλεύς,
ἕζετο δ’ ἐν κλισμῷ πολυδαιδάλῳ ἔνθεν ἀνέστη
τοίχου τοῦ ἑτέρου, ποτὶ δὲ Πρίαμον φάτο μῦθον·
υἱὸς μὲν δή τοι λέλυται γέρον ὡς ἐκέλευες,
κεῖται δ’ ἐν λεχέεσσ’· ἅμα δ’ ἠοῖ φαινομένηφιν
ὄψεαι αὐτὸς ἄγων· νῦν δὲ μνησώμεθα δόρπου.
καὶ γάρ τ’ ἠΰκομος Νιόβη ἐμνήσατο σίτου,
τῇ περ δώδεκα παῖδες ἐνὶ μεγάροισιν ὄλοντο
ἓξ μὲν θυγατέρες, ἓξ δ’ υἱέες ἡβώοντες.
τοὺς μὲν ᾿Απόλλων πέφνεν ἀπ’ ἀργυρέοιο βιοῖο
χωόμενος Νιόβῃ, τὰς δ’ ῎Αρτεμις ἰοχέαιρα,
οὕνεκ’ ἄρα Λητοῖ ἰσάσκετο καλλιπαρῄῳ·
φῆ δοιὼ τεκέειν, ἣ δ’ αὐτὴ γείνατο πολλούς·
τὼ δ’ ἄρα καὶ δοιώ περ ἐόντ’ ἀπὸ πάντας ὄλεσσαν.
οἳ μὲν ἄρ’ ἐννῆμαρ κέατ’ ἐν φόνῳ, οὐδέ τις ἦεν
κατθάψαι, λαοὺς δὲ λίθους ποίησε Κρονίων·
τοὺς δ’ ἄρα τῇ δεκάτῃ θάψαν θεοὶ Οὐρανίωνες.
ἣ δ’ ἄρα σίτου μνήσατ’, ἐπεὶ κάμε δάκρυ χέουσα.
νῦν δέ που ἐν πέτρῃσιν ἐν οὔρεσιν οἰοπόλοισιν
ἐν Σιπύλῳ, ὅθι φασὶ θεάων ἔμμεναι εὐνὰς
νυμφάων, αἵ τ’ ἀμφ’ ᾿Αχελώϊον ἐρρώσαντο,
ἔνθα λίθος περ ἐοῦσα θεῶν ἐκ κήδεα πέσσει.
ἀλλ’ ἄγε δὴ καὶ νῶϊ μεδώμεθα δῖε γεραιὲ
σίτου· ἔπειτά κεν αὖτε φίλον παῖδα κλαίοισθα
῎Ιλιον εἰσαγαγών· πολυδάκρυτος δέ τοι ἔσται.

One scholiast notes that the comparison is aimed at persuasion and that the adduction of similar suffering “lightens Priam’s” (ἐπικουφίζεται γὰρ τὰ πάθη, bT ad Il. 24.601 ex. 2) while another focuses on the logical way in which Achilles unfolds the tale. Yet the overwhelming ancient response is incredulity:

Schol. A ad. Il. 24.614-617a ex

“These four lines have been athetized [marked as spurious] because it does not make sense for her to “remember to eat” “after she wore herself out shedding tears.” For, if she had been turned into a stone, how could she take food?

Thus, the attempt at persuasion is absurd—“eat, since Niobê also ate and she was petrified, literally!” This is Hesiodic in character, moreover: “they wander about Akhelôion. And the word en occurs three times. How can Niobê continue pursuing her sorrow if she is made out of stone? Aristophanes also athetized these lines.”

Ariston. | Did. νῦν δέ που ἐν πέτρῃσιν<—πέσσει>: ἀθετοῦνται στίχοι τέσσαρες, ὅτι οὐκ ἀκόλουθοι τῷ „ἡ δ’ ἄρα σίτου μνήσατ’, <ἐπεὶ κάμε δάκρυ χέουσα>” (Ω 613)· εἰ γὰρ ἀπελιθώθη, πῶς σιτία προ<σ>ηνέγκατο; καὶ ἡ παραμυθία γελοία· φάγε, ἐπεὶ καὶ ἡ Νιόβη ἔφαγε καὶ ἀπελιθώθη. ἔστι δὲ καὶ ῾Ησιόδεια τῷ χαρακτῆρι, καὶ μᾶλλόν γε τὸ ἀμφ’ ᾿Αχελώϊον ἐρρώσαντο (616). καὶ τρὶς κατὰ τὸ συνεχὲς τὸ ἔν (614. 615). πῶς δὲ καὶ λίθος γενομένη θεῶν ἐκ κήδεα πέσσει (617); | προηθετοῦντο δὲ καὶ παρ’ ᾿Αριστοφάνει.

Schol. bT ad Il. 24. 614-617

“these four lines are athetized. For how could a stone taste food? Also, why does the poet place a river from Aetolia on Sipylos?”

ex. νῦν δέ που ἐν πέτρῃσιν<—πέσσει>: ἀθετοῦνται τέσσαρες· b(BCE3)T πῶς γὰρ ἡ λίθος τροφῆς ἐγεύσατο (cf. Ω 602. 613); b(BCE3E4)T τί δὲ ὁ Αἰτωλῶν ποταμὸς ἐνΣιπύλῳ ποιεῖ (cf. 616); T πῶς τε λίθος οὖσα κήδεα πέσσει (617)

The scholia note that the lines were athetized because it makes no sense for Niobê to stop eating during her destructive mourning; or, it is impossible to eat for one who has been turned to stone. And worse—one cannot mourn post petrifaction! In Achilles’ defense, he has selected an example from myth of a parent mourning the loss of a child; the loss has come at the hands of the gods who have sought to punish human transgression. In Achilles’ application of the tale, Niobê stops to eat—is this altogether absurd?

The effect of the scholiastic comments and the dissonance between what Achilles says here and what he has attributed to Niobê has led many scholars to argue that the lines about Niobê turning to stone are later “interpolations” by editors trying to explain the whole story. Authors like Johannes Kakridis (1930) and Thomas Pearce (2008) have made strong thematic arguments about why these lines shouldn’t be there. I think that some of what they say is reconcilable with multiform approaches to Homer like that explored by Casey Dué in Achilles Unbound, that these lines are legitimately part of telling the story of the Iliad, but perhaps were not present for all audiences. To my taste, these lines are necessary if people don’t know the story of Niobê because her turning into a stone is critical to the impact of the comparison. This is a very different perspective than others have offered, so I want to take a moment to explain.

Schol. bT ad. Hom. Il. 24.602a ex

“Some say that this Niobê is the daughter of Pelops; others say she is the daughter of Tantalos. Others claim that she is the wife of Amphion or of Zethus. Still more claim that she is the wife of Alalkomeneus. Among the Lydians she is called Elumê. And this event occurred, as some claimed, in Lydia; or, as some claim, in Thebes.

Sophokles writes that the children perished in Thebes and that she returned to Lydia afterwards. And she perished, as some claim, after she swore a false oath about the dog of Pandareus because [….] or later when she had been ambushed by the Spartoi in Kithaira. There were two Niobes, one of Pelops and one of Tantalus. He explains the whole tale because the story is Theban and unknown to Priam.”

ex. | ex. <καὶ γάρ τ’ ἠΰκομος Νιόβη:> τὴν Νιόβην οἱ μὲν Πέλοπος, οἱ δὲ Ταντάλου· γυναῖκα δὲ οἱ μὲν ᾿Αμφίονος, οἱ δὲ Ζήθου, [οἱ δὲ] ᾿Αλαλκομένεω. ἐκαλεῖτο δὲ παρὰ Λυδοῖς ᾿Ελύμην. ἡ δὲ συμφορὰ αὐτῆς, ὡς μέν τινες, ἐν Λυδίᾳ, ὡς δὲ ἔνιοι, ἐν Θήβαις. Σοφοκλῆς (cf. T.G.F. p. 228 N.2; II p. 95 P.) δὲ τοὺς μὲν παῖδας ἐν Θήβαις ἀπολέσθαι, νοστῆσαι <δὲ> αὐτὴν εἰς Λυδίαν. ἀπώλετο [δέ], ὥς τινες, συνεπιορκήσασα Πανδάρ[εῳ] περὶ τοῦ κυνός, ὡς δὲ [..], ἐνεδρευθεῖσα ὑπὸ τῶν Σπαρτῶν ἐν Κιθαιρῶ[νι]. οἱ δὲ δύο Νιόβας, Πέλοπος καὶ Ταντάλου. T | ὡς Θηβαῖον ὄντα τὸν μῦθον καὶ ἀγνοούμενον Πριάμῳ ἐπεξεργάζεται.

Yoshinori Sano (1993) has argued that the full account of Niobê helps to explore the isolation and loneliness of both Priam and Achilles. I think this is a really good argument and what I would like to add is that this isolation is in a crucial way synonymous with death. Homeric narrative provides multiple meanings—its polysemy is connected to a dynamic model of reading that I have tried to emphasize throughout the process of posting on the Iliad.

As I have discussed in earlier posts, paradeigmata like this—examples from myth offered to persuade an audience member—respond well to interpretations that use notions of cognitive blending like those presented by Mark Turner. Rather than assume a logical comparison between the worlds of the speaker, the audience, and the story, we have to see them as creative separate narrative blends

It certainly does not make logical sense for Niobê to eat—but there are other details in the narrative that can produce through projection from the target space a latticework within the creative blend. For instance, the pairing of a sequence of nine followed by resolution on the tenth recalls for the audience locally the recent delay of the gods in their argument over the burial of Hektor (24.108–109) and generally the nine and ten days of the plague at the epic’s inception (1.53–54) as well as the nine and ten years of the Trojan war itself. The looming finality of the tenth unit of time is emphasized through the petrifaction of the people in Achilles’ tale—an image that easily coalesces with Iliadic language about grave markers standing in place for a man after his death.

The clear input source from Achilles is that Niobê and Priam are similar—they have both lost children thanks to divine anger over human action. Achilles does not specify any wrongdoing on Priam’s fault (that occurs in Priam’s notional blend and in the audience’s imagination). In the repeated first-person plural injunction to eat (νῦν δὲ μνησώμεθα δόρπου… μεδώμεθα…/ σίτου, 601/618), moreover, there is an invitation to Priam (and to us) to allow Achilles himself into the creative blend—especially since he has so strongly refused to eat earlier in the poem (in book 19).

When we admit Achilles into the blend alongside Priam we as audience members may sense his (1) acknowledgment of impending death; (2) acceptance of some responsibility for his loss. If Niobê’s absurd break from mourning to eat creates an image-schematic clash, it may be an effective one: Priam lost more children over a longer period of time and will lose more still. Achilles is acknowledging the magnitude of their combined losses and that their story is not yet at its end. In now encouraging another to eat, Achilles offers another lesson about the necessity of living on despite the pain until life reaches its final closure.

It is this last step where I think we can really understand how Achilles has learned, in this book alone. Recall the advice his mother gives him just 500 lines earlier: she tells him that it is good to take time to eat, to have sex, to enjoy life before its over. She offers this when everyone knows that Achilles’ life is foreshortened following the death of Hektor. But when Achilles applies similar wisdom to Priam through the story of Niobê, the jarring contrast is intentional: it uses a very extreme case to make a more general point.

Achilles has adapted his mother’s lesson to his understanding of an an earlier tale. Audiences knowing the story of Niobê turning to stone increases the force of the passage. Yes, she stopped mourning to eat. We all continue living amid scars, losses, and grief. Life goes on during war. Children are born during sieges and famines. People fall in love as their worlds fall apart. Life continues right up to the moment of death and whether the end is 5 minutes from now or five decades it is uncertain. We should take the time we can to eat and enjoy the pleasures life offers, where and when they appear.

Achilles forgot this after Patroklos died—in fact, we might even argue that he never learned this or else wouldn’t have lost his mind at a slight to his honor in book 1. To be fair, we all forget these truths in the repetitive busyness of life. Whether we have one day left or most of a lifetime, what matters is making it matter. But this doesn’t have to mean dying in glory for eternal renown. It can mean sharing a meal with another, stopping to feel the earth turn.

Achilles’ wisdom is hard won and brief and all the more precious for it. Book 24 shows him adapting a narrative to try to share a moment of life with his bitter enemy’s father despite every force trying to keep him from doing so. He can do this because he has learned to see himself in Priam’s world. And the lesson of the Iliad for us is twofold: we too should take what life gives us while we can—but we need to see ourselves in others to truly do so.

A short bibliography

n.b this is not an exhaustive bibliography. If you’d like anything else included, please let me know.

Ahern, Charles F.. “Two images of « womanly grief » in Homer.” Essays in honor of Gordon Williams: twenty-five years at Yale. Eds. Tylawsky, Elizabeth Ivory and Weiss, Charles Gray. New Haven (Conn.): Henry R. Schwab Publ., 2001. 11-24.

Andersen, Øivind. 1987. “Myth Paradigm and Spatial Form in the Iliad.” In Homer Beyond Oral Poetry: Recent Trends in Homeric Interpretation, edited by Jan Bremer and Irene J. F. De Jong. John Benjamins

Braswell, B. K. 1971. “Mythological Innovation in the Iliad.” CQ, 21: 16-26.

Combellack, F.M. 1976. “Homer the Innovator.” CP 71: 44-55.

Dué, Casey. 2018. Achilles Unbound: Multiformity and Tradition in the Homeric Epics. Hellenic Studies Series 81. Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies.

Edmunds, L. 1997. Myth in Homer, in A New Companion to Homer, edited by I. Morris and B. Powell, 415–441. Leiden.

Friedrich, Paul and Redfield, James. 1978. “Speech as a Personality Symbol: The Case of Achilles.” Language 54: 263–288.

Held, G. 1987. “Phoinix, Agamemnon and Achilles. Problems and Paradeigmata.” CQ 36: 141-54.

Johannes Theophanes Kakridis, ‘Die Niobesage bei Homer. Zur Geschichte des griechischen Παράδειγμα’, Rheinisches Museum für Philologie (1930) 113-122[JC1] .

Knudsen, Rachel Ahern. 2014. Homeric Speech and the Origins of Rhetoric. Baltimore.

Martin, Richard. 1989. The Language of Heroes: Speech and Performance in the Iliad. Ithaca.

Nagy, Gregory. 1996. Homeric Questions, Austin.

—,—. 2009. “Homer and Greek Myth.” Cambridge Companion to Greek Mythology, 52–82.

Thomas E. V. Pearce, ‘Homer, Iliad 24,614-17’, Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, 151.1 (2008) 13-25[JC2] .

Pedrick, V. 1983. “The Paradigmatic Nature of Nestor’s Speech in Iliad 11.” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Society, 113:55-68.

Walter Pötscher, ‘Homer, Ilias 24,601 ff. und die Niobe-Gestalt’, Grazer Beiträge , XII-XIII. (1985-1986) 21-35.

Turner, Mark. 1996. The Literary Mind: The Origins of Thought and Language. Oxford.

Willcock, M.M. 1967. “Mythological Paradeigmata in the Iliad.” Classical Quarterly, 14:141-151.

____,____. 1977, Ad hoc invention in the Iliad, HSCP 81:41–53.

Yoshinori Sano, ‘An interpretation of the Niobe-paradeigma: Iliad XXIV 602-620’, Journal of Classical Studies, 41. (1993) 14-23[JC3] .

A ‘tragic’ end to Homer’s Iliad

This is one of a few posts dedicated to Iliad 24. As a reminder, these posts will remain free, but there is an option to be a financial supporter. All proceeds from the substack are donated to classics adjacent non-profits on a monthly basis.

In an earlier post, I wrote about how Priam’s journey to Achilles invokes themes of crossing to a liminal space between life and death. This space is also one where the regular boundaries between nations and peoples may not apply—it is a zone potentially open to different ways of engaging, of viewing the world. Once Priam arrives there, he receives rather specific advice from Hermes about supplicating Achilles, generating one of the most memorable scenes from ancient literature. I think that there is something special going on with how this scene achieves its impact that has something to tell us about how epic works in general and can answer in part why Aristotle thinks the Iliad is the most tragic of epics, not in form (as most assume) but in function and effect.

Let’s start with the scene

Homer, Iliad 24.477-512

Great Priam escaped the notice of [Achilles’ companions] when he entered the room
And he stood right next to him, clasping his knees and kissing his hands
Those terrible [deinas] murderous hands that had killed so many of his sons.
As when bitter ruin overcomes someone who killed a man
In his own country and goes to the land of others
To some rich man, and wonder [thambos] over takes those who see him.
So too did Achilles feel wonder [thambêsen] when he saw godlike Priam.
The rest of the people there were shocked [thambêsan] and they all looked at one another
Then Priam was begging as he addressed him.
“Divine Achilles, remember [mnêsai] your father—
The same age as I am, on the deadly threshold of old age.
The people who live around him are wearing him out,
I imagine, and there is no one there to ward off conflict and disaster.
But when that man hears that you are alive still,
He rejoices in his heart because he will keep hoping all his days
That he will see his dear son again when he comes home from Troy.
But I am completely ruined. I had many of the best sons
In broad Troy, but I think that none of them are left.
I had fifty sons when the sons of the Achaeans arrived here.
Nineteen of them were mine from the same mother,
And other women bore the rest to me in my home.
Rushing Ares loosened the limbs of many of them,
But the one who was left alone for me, who defended the city and its people
You killed as he warded danger from his fatherland,
Hektor, for whom I have home now to the Achaeans’ ships
To ransom him from you. And I am bringing endless exchange gifts.
But feel fame before the gods, Achilles, and pity [eleêson] him
Once you have remembered [mnsêsamenos] your father. I am more pitiful [eleeinoteros] still,
I who suffer what no other mortal on this earth has ever suffered,
putting the hand of the man who murdered my son to my mouth.’
So Priam spoke and a desire for mourning his father rose within him.
He took his hand and pushed the old man gently away.
The two of them remembered [tô mnêsamenô]: one wept steadily
For man-slaying Hektor, as he bent before Achilles’ feet,
But Achilles’ was mourning his own father, and then in turn
Patroklos again—and their weeping rose throughout the home.”

τοὺς δ’ ἔλαθ’ εἰσελθὼν Πρίαμος μέγας, ἄγχι δ’ ἄρα στὰς
χερσὶν ᾿Αχιλλῆος λάβε γούνατα καὶ κύσε χεῖρας
δεινὰς ἀνδροφόνους, αἵ οἱ πολέας κτάνον υἷας.
ὡς δ’ ὅτ’ ἂν ἄνδρ’ ἄτη πυκινὴ λάβῃ, ὅς τ’ ἐνὶ πάτρῃ
φῶτα κατακτείνας ἄλλων ἐξίκετο δῆμον
ἀνδρὸς ἐς ἀφνειοῦ, θάμβος δ’ ἔχει εἰσορόωντας,
ὣς ᾿Αχιλεὺς θάμβησεν ἰδὼν Πρίαμον θεοειδέα·
θάμβησαν δὲ καὶ ἄλλοι, ἐς ἀλλήλους δὲ ἴδοντο.
τὸν καὶ λισσόμενος Πρίαμος πρὸς μῦθον ἔειπε·
μνῆσαι πατρὸς σοῖο θεοῖς ἐπιείκελ’ ᾿Αχιλλεῦ,
τηλίκου ὥς περ ἐγών, ὀλοῷ ἐπὶ γήραος οὐδῷ·
καὶ μέν που κεῖνον περιναιέται ἀμφὶς ἐόντες
τείρουσ’, οὐδέ τίς ἐστιν ἀρὴν καὶ λοιγὸν ἀμῦναι.
ἀλλ’ ἤτοι κεῖνός γε σέθεν ζώοντος ἀκούων
χαίρει τ’ ἐν θυμῷ, ἐπί τ’ ἔλπεται ἤματα πάντα
ὄψεσθαι φίλον υἱὸν ἀπὸ Τροίηθεν ἰόντα·
αὐτὰρ ἐγὼ πανάποτμος, ἐπεὶ τέκον υἷας ἀρίστους
Τροίῃ ἐν εὐρείῃ, τῶν δ’ οὔ τινά φημι λελεῖφθαι.
πεντήκοντά μοι ἦσαν ὅτ’ ἤλυθον υἷες ᾿Αχαιῶν·
ἐννεακαίδεκα μέν μοι ἰῆς ἐκ νηδύος ἦσαν,
τοὺς δ’ ἄλλους μοι ἔτικτον ἐνὶ μεγάροισι γυναῖκες.
τῶν μὲν πολλῶν θοῦρος ῎Αρης ὑπὸ γούνατ’ ἔλυσεν·
ὃς δέ μοι οἶος ἔην, εἴρυτο δὲ ἄστυ καὶ αὐτούς,
τὸν σὺ πρῴην κτεῖνας ἀμυνόμενον περὶ πάτρης
῞Εκτορα· τοῦ νῦν εἵνεχ’ ἱκάνω νῆας ᾿Αχαιῶν
λυσόμενος παρὰ σεῖο, φέρω δ’ ἀπερείσι’ ἄποινα.
ἀλλ’ αἰδεῖο θεοὺς ᾿Αχιλεῦ, αὐτόν τ’ ἐλέησον
μνησάμενος σοῦ πατρός· ἐγὼ δ’ ἐλεεινότερός περ,
ἔτλην δ’ οἷ’ οὔ πώ τις ἐπιχθόνιος βροτὸς ἄλλος,
ἀνδρὸς παιδοφόνοιο ποτὶ στόμα χεῖρ’ ὀρέγεσθαι.
῝Ως φάτο, τῷ δ’ ἄρα πατρὸς ὑφ’ ἵμερον ὦρσε γόοιο·
ἁψάμενος δ’ ἄρα χειρὸς ἀπώσατο ἦκα γέροντα.
τὼ δὲ μνησαμένω ὃ μὲν ῞Εκτορος ἀνδροφόνοιο
κλαῖ’ ἁδινὰ προπάροιθε ποδῶν ᾿Αχιλῆος ἐλυσθείς,
αὐτὰρ ᾿Αχιλλεὺς κλαῖεν ἑὸν πατέρ’, ἄλλοτε δ’ αὖτε
Πάτροκλον· τῶν δὲ στοναχὴ κατὰ δώματ’ ὀρώρει.

In a few posts I have riffed on my take on how storytelling works, in the world and in the Iliad, using Mark Turner’s concept of the cognitive blend from The Literary Mind. When we hear narratives, we don’t replicate them in our minds, instead we create overlays and blends between our own experiences and the stories we hear. This is part of what just happens naturally based on how stories work, but it is also a feature that facilitates sympathy and empathy.

In the speech above, I have tried to emphasize Greek words that signal poetic creation/memory (words of remembering) in setting up a parallel (Priam relating his loss to Achilles’ father’s potential loss; both heroes seeing their own pain in another. At the same time, I have focused on the affective emphasis in the passage and the set-up, in particular on feelings of “pity” and “wonder” or ‘fear”. Wonder/surprise is operative in characterizing Achilles’ response and his ability to feel pity, which in this context seems to correlate to what happens in the narrative, which is that Priam and Achilles together engage in a creative act of remembering that stems from a shared performance (Priam’s speech) but extends to their individual experiences and a very real difference in the way they internally narrativize their brief common ground.

The situation is set up in a way that prizes pity. Prior to the supplication, Hermes provides Priam with very specific instructions (Iliad 24.354-357)

“Think carefully, Son of Dardanus, this is made for careful thought:
I see a man I think would tear us apart quickly—
Let’s either escape on the horses or instead
Embrace his knees and beg him to have pity.”

φράζεο Δαρδανίδη· φραδέος νόου ἔργα τέτυκται.
ἄνδρ’ ὁρόω, τάχα δ’ ἄμμε διαρραίσεσθαι ὀΐω.
ἀλλ’ ἄγε δὴ φεύγωμεν ἐφ’ ἵππων, ἤ μιν ἔπειτα
γούνων ἁψάμενοι λιτανεύσομεν αἴ κ’ ἐλεήσῃ.

And this follows a very specific mention of Zeus sending Hermes to Priam to begin with because he pitied him (“When [Zeus] saw the old man, he pitied him and / Quickly addressed his own son Hermes…”, ἐς πεδίον προφανέντε· ἰδὼν δ’ ἐλέησε γέροντα, / αἶψα δ’ ἄρ’ ῾Ερμείαν υἱὸν φίλον ἀντίον ηὔδα, 24.354-57). And this is far from the first time where common ground is established through mourning. As I discuss in a post on book 19 and Achilles’ lament for Patroklos there,  we find evidence of people witnessing witnessing others’ acts of mourning and remembering as a beginning of their own remembrance and reflections. First, the women who grieve for Patroklos turn from him to their own pains (῝Ως ἔφατο κλαίουσ’, ἐπὶ δὲ στενάχοντο γυναῖκες / Πάτροκλον πρόφασιν, σφῶν δ’ αὐτῶν κήδε’ ἑκάστη, 19.302-303), then Achilles himself moves from topic to topic, comparing his loss in one instance to other possible losses, finally inspiring the other old men to mourn along with him, using his pain kindling for their own fires of memory and loss.

Homer, Iliad 19. 309-340

“He said this and dispersed the rest of the kings,
But the two sons of Atreus remained along with shining Odysseus,
Nestor, Idomeneus, and the old horse-master Phoinix
All trying to bring him some distraction. But he took no pleasure
In his heart before he entered the jaws of bloody war.
He sighed constantly as he remembered and spoke:
‘My unlucky dearest of friends it was you who before
Used to offer me a sweet meal in our shelter
Quickly and carefully whenever the Achaeans were rushing
To bring much-lamented Ares against the horse-taming Achaeans.
But now you are lying there run-through and my fate
Is to go without drink and food even though there inside
Because I long for you. I couldn’t suffer anything more wretched than this
Not even if I learned that my father had died,
Who I imagine is crying tender tears right now in Pththia
Bereft of a son like this—but I am in a foreign land,
Fighting against the Trojans for the sake of horrible Helen.
Not even if I lost my dear son who is being cared for in Skyros,
If godlike Neoptolemos is at least still alive—
Before the heart in my chest always expected that
I alone would die far away from horse-nourishing Argos
Here in Troy, but that you would return home to Phthia
I hoped you would take my child in the swift dark ship
From Skyros and that you would show to him there
My possessions, the slaves, and the high-roofed home.
I expect that Peleus has already died or
If he is still alive for a little longer he is aggrieved
By hateful old age and as he constantly awaits
Some painful message, when he learns that I have died.”
So he spoke while weeping, and the old men mourned along with him
As each of them remembered what they left behind at home.
And Zeus [really] felt pity when he saw them mourning”

This passage helps us see as well how Achilles’ grief is metonymic for his own loss and others as well. Note how the speech’s introduction positions Achilles as mourning constantly “as he recalled” (μνησάμενος δ’ ἁδινῶς…). The end of the speech reminds us that other people are listening to him as well and are changed and moved in turn by his mourning. The Greek elders mourn in addition (ἐπὶ δὲ στενάχοντο γέροντες) and not because of Patroklos, but as they recall what they have left behind (μνησάμενοι τὰ ἕκαστος ἐνὶ μεγάροισιν ἔλειπον). This repeated participle mnêsamenoi is often connected with the poetic power to remember and tell the stories of the past.

Achilles’ grief presents a narrative others see themselves in, they project their experiences into his pain and grieve alongside him, anticipating to a great part that powerful moment in book 24 when Achilles and Priam find in each other a reminder to weep for what they have individually lost. And this is clear from Priam’s own language, echoing the narrator’s Zeus: “But revere the gods, Achilles, and pity him, / thinking of your own father. And I am more pitiable still…”(ἀλλ’ αἰδεῖο θεοὺς ᾿Αχιλεῦ, αὐτόν τ’ ἐλέησον / μνησάμενος σοῦ πατρός· ἐγὼ δ’ ἐλεεινότερός περ, 24.503-4).

This moment is a crucial confirmation of the Homeric expectation that words and experiences people hear should (and do) prompt reflection on their own lives (as well as the situation in general). The sequence also anticipates other audiences as well. A simple but extremely useful distinction from narratology (the way narratives are structured and work) is between internal and external audiences. Internal audiences are characters within a narrative who observe and (sometimes) respond to what is going on. External audiences are those outside the narrative (mostly those in the ‘real’ world).

A theoretical suggestion from this is that the responses of internal audiences can guide or often complicate the way external audiences receive the narrative. Another internal audience appears when we find out Zeus is watching the scene and he feels pity: together the women, the elders, and Zeus present a range of potential reactions for external audiences: the mortals reflect on their own lives and the losses they suffer or those to come. Zeus watches it all and feels pity and tries to do something to help, sending Athena to provide Achilles with the sustenance he will not take on his own. Here, we might even imagine the narrative offering an ethical imperative to response to other’s stories. It is not enough to think about yourself or merely to be moved to pity by seeing the reality that others may feel as deeply and painfully as you. Zeus’s model suggests that if you are in power and can do something to intervene, even something minor, when you notice another’s suffering, then you should do what you can.

The exchange between Priam and Achilles is the culmination of this narrative arc and it has individual ramifications as well as potential information for how we should understand the epic genre. One of the fascinating things in this movement is the sustained importance of pity. Scholars have taken different approaches to this. Dean Hammer (2002) has emphasized how Achilles’ view of his relation to other dominates his “ethical stance”, arguing for a transformation that allows him to feel pity for Priam because his experiences within the epic have changed how he views suffering. Graham Zanker makes a similar argument in The Heart of Achilles where he emphasizes that it is important that Achilles came to this change on his own, that the gods did not support him: His present behavior is therefore a pole apart from his cruel rejection of the supplications of men like Tros, Lykaon, and Hektor. Homeric theology allows Achilles’ present generosity, or rather magnanimity, to be based on his own volition” (Zanker 1996, 120). Glenn Most (2003) has seen the thematic core of the Iliad as relying not merely on rage but on the dynamic between anger and pity. Jinyo Kim’s full study The Pity of Achilles traces the language of pity throughout the Iliad to demonstrate that this theme is part of what signals the epic’s unity. For Kim, “Achilles’ pity for Priam constitutes no incidental detail, but is instead the thematic catalyst of the reconciliation’ (2000, 12).

Marjolein Oele (2011) has suggested that when Priam and Achilles cry together they come to identify with each other in a way that anticipates Aristotle’s comments throughout his work—their unique moment isn’t merely pity, but instead it is a shared experience of suffering and wonder that helps them accomplish what Aristotle would call recognition. While most scholars see some relationship between the dramatic personae of epic and tragic performances (see especially Irene J. F. De Jong’s 2016 essay, Stroud and Robertson’s essay, or Emily Allen-Hornblower’s 2015 book), I think there has been less focus on the affective impact modeled within epic poetry. Epic’s gradual but persistent emphasis on creative acts of memory as loci for exploring one’s own experiences in a shared common frame reminds me of Aristotle’s famous focus on “pity and fear”.

Aristotle, Poetics 1449b21-27

“We’ll talk later about mimesis in hexameter poetry and comedy. For now, let’s chat about tragedy, starting by considering the definition of its character based on what we have already said. So, tragedy is the imitation (mimesis) of a serious event that also has completion and scale, presented in language well-crafted for the genre of each section, performing the story rather than telling it, and offering cleansing (catharsis) of pity and fear through the exploration of these kinds of emotions.”

Περὶ μὲν οὖν τῆς ἐν ἑξαμέτροις μιμητικῆς καὶ περὶ κωμῳδίας ὕστερον ἐροῦμεν· περὶ δὲ τραγῳδίας λέγωμεν ἀναλαβόντες αὐτῆς ἐκ τῶν εἰρημένων τὸν γινόμενον ὅρον τῆς οὐσίας. ἔστιν οὖν τραγῳδία μίμησις πράξεως σπουδαίας καὶ τελείας μέγεθος ἐχούσης, ἡδυσμένῳ λόγῳ χωρὶς ἑκάστῳ τῶν εἰδῶν ἐν τοῖς μορίοις, δρώντων καὶ οὐ δι᾿ ἀπαγγελίας, δι᾿ ἐλέου καὶ φόβου περαίνουσα τὴν τῶν τοιούτων παθημάτων κάθαρσιν.

There are several other passages throughout his work where Aristotle adds to his conceptualization to include reversal (peripateia) and recognition (anagnorisis), but in the steady focus on memory/narrative (mimesis and memory), as well as the experience of pity and fear/wonder I have emphasized in book 24, I see a much stronger tragic/dramatic potential within Homer. And this is supported in part by one of the few scenes we have from the 4^th century that describes the work of a rhapsode, a performer of Homeric poetry. In his dialogue, the Ion, Plato has his rhapsode describe what he feels and sees when performing Homer:

Plato, Ion 535d-e

Ion: Now this proof is super clear to me, Socrates! I’ll tell you without hiding anything: whenever I say something pitiable [ἐλεεινόν τι], my eyes fill with tears. Whenever I say something frightening [φοβερὸν ἢ δεινόν], my hair stands straight up in fear and my heart leaps!

Socrates: What is this then, Ion? Should we say that a person is in their right mind when they are all dressed up in decorated finery and gold crowns at the sacrifices or the banquets and then, even though they haven’t lost anything, they are afraid still even though they stand among twenty thousand friendly people and there is no one attacking him or doing him wrong?

Ion: Well, by Zeus, not at all, Socrates, TBH.

Socrates: So you understand that you rhapsodes produce the same effects on most of your audiences?

Ion: Oh, yes I do! For I look down on them from the stage at each moment to see them crying and making terrible expressions [δεινὸν], awestruck [συνθαμβοῦντας] by what is said. I need to pay special attention to them since if I make them cry, then I get to laugh when I receive their money. But if I make them laugh, then I’ll cry over the money I’ve lost!”

Note how Ion uses language we see in the Iliad itself and the passage where Priam and Achilles meet. Where the internal evidence of epic shows its own audiences (the women, the old men, and Zeus) internalizing and responding to the narrative, Plato’s Ion features a performer expecting the same kinds of reactions from his audience (even if for less than noble reasons). When it comes to pity in particular, Emily Allen-Hornblower suggests that “The emotional charge that comes with the act of watching a loved one suffer (or die) is directly apparent in the phraseology of the Iliad…” (2015, 26) and suggests later that Achilles’ position as a spectator during most of the epic is an important part of his development. This provides, to me, another signal of what epic audiences were expected to be doing: watching, listening, feeling, and changing in turn.

My point here has a few parts: first, I think the Iliad expects people to respond to suffering with pity that reminds them of their own suffering; second, I think the epic models this process as something that is potentially humanizing, even if it is not necessarily so; third, I think the dramatic scope within the epic combined by some evidence for similar expectations outside the epic helps to support both a dynamic model of reading for Homer itself and also a shared performative ground for epic and ancient tragedy, helping to provide a different reason for why the Iliad is the most tragic of ancient epics.

A short bibliography

n.b this is not an exhaustive bibliography. If you’d like anything else included, please let me know.

Emily Allen-Hornblower, From agent to spectator : witnessing the aftermath in ancient Greek epic and tragedy, Trends in Classics. Supplementary Volumes, 30 (Berlin ; Boston (Mass.): De Gruyter, 2015).

Irene J. F. De Jong, ‘Homer : the first tragedian’, Greece and Rome, Ser. 2, 63.2 (2016) 149-162. Doi: 10[JC1] .1017/S0017383516000036

Hammer, Dean C.. “The « Iliad » as ethical thinking: politics, pity, and the operation of esteem.” Arethusa, vol. 35, no. 2, 2002, pp. 203-235.

Heiden, Bruce. “The simile of the fugitive homicide, Iliad 24.480-84: analogy, foiling, and allusion.” American Journal of Philology, vol. 119, no. 1, 1998, pp. 1-10.

Kim, Jinyo. 2000. The Pity of Achilles: Oral Style and the Unity of the Iliad. Rowman & Littlefield.

Glenn W. Most, ‘Anger and pity in Homer’s « Iliad »’, Yale Classical Studies, 32. (2003) 50-75.

Rinon, Yoav. Homer and the dual model of the tragic. Ann Arbor (Mich.): University of Michigan Pr., 2008[JC2] .

Rutherford, Richard. “Tragic form and feeling in the Iliad.” The Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. CII, 1982, pp. 145-160. Doi: 10.2307/631133

Marjolein Oele, ‘Suffering, pity and friendship: an Aristotelian reading of Book 24 of Homer’s « Iliad »’, Electronic Antiquity, 14.1 (2010-2011) 15.

Stroud, T. A., and Elizabeth Robertson. “Aristotle’s ‘Poetics’ and the Plot of the ‘Iliad.’” The Classical World 89, no. 3 (1996): 179–96. https://doi.org/10.2307/4351783.

Zanker, Graham. 1996. The Heart of Achilles: Characterization and Personal Ethics in the Iliad. University of Michigan.

Thetis, Achilles, and Life and Death in Iliad 24

This is one of a few posts dedicated to Iliad 24. Some of the material near the end is from a book coming out at the end of this year from Yale University Press, Storylife: On Epic, Narrative, and Living Things. As a reminder, these posts will remain free, but there is an option to be a financial supporter. All proceeds from the substack are donated to classics adjacent non-profits on a monthly basis.

In an earlier post, I wrote about Priam’s journey to Achilles as a passage to a liminal space, but one dominated by death. This katabasis, guided by Hermes, is part funerary procession and part dream-like reverie. But before Priam starts his night-time crossing of the battlefield, we get to see Achilles in his place with his mother, who tries ever so briefly to remind him of life.

Homer, Iliad 24.128-37

Then his queen mother sat very close to him,
And she reached him with her hand as she spoke and named him:
“My child, how long will you consume your heart
Mourning and grieving [akheuon] and thinking nothing of food
Or bed. It is a good thing to have sex with a woman—
For you will not live much longer, since already now
Do death and strong fate stand right beside you.
But listen to me quickly, for I am here as a messenger from Zeus.
He says that the gods are angry with you, and that he
Is especially enraged of all the gods, because you are keeping
Hektor [hektor ekheis] along the curved ships in your crazy thoughts—
You do not let him go. Come now, let him go. Take payment for his corpse.”

ἣ δὲ μάλ’ ἄγχ’ αὐτοῖο καθέζετο πότνια μήτηρ,
χειρί τέ μιν κατέρεξεν ἔπος τ’ ἔφατ’ ἔκ τ’ ὀνόμαζε·
τέκνον ἐμὸν τέο μέχρις ὀδυρόμενος καὶ ἀχεύων
σὴν ἔδεαι κραδίην μεμνημένος οὔτέ τι σίτου
οὔτ’ εὐνῆς; ἀγαθὸν δὲ γυναικί περ ἐν φιλότητι
μίσγεσθ’· οὐ γάρ μοι δηρὸν βέῃ, ἀλλά τοι ἤδη
ἄγχι παρέστηκεν θάνατος καὶ μοῖρα κραταιή.
ἀλλ’ ἐμέθεν ξύνες ὦκα, Διὸς δέ τοι ἄγγελός εἰμι·
σκύζεσθαι σοί φησι θεούς, ἑὲ δ’ ἔξοχα πάντων
ἀθανάτων κεχολῶσθαι, ὅτι φρεσὶ μαινομένῃσιν
῞Εκτορ’ ἔχεις παρὰ νηυσὶ κορωνίσιν οὐδ’ ἀπέλυσας.
ἀλλ’ ἄγε δὴ λῦσον, νεκροῖο δὲ δέξαι ἄποινα.

As I have mentioned in earlier posts on book 24, we find themes and motifs from book 1 echoed and closed as the epic nears its end. This speech makes a few of these moves clearer. Where book 1 has (1) Achilles get angry (using forms of kholos) after (2) a ransom has been refused to a father leading to him sending (3) Thetis as a messenger to Zeus with (4) a request/plan from Achilles, book 24 could be seen to invert it insofar as it has (1′) Zeus angry over (2′) Achilles not releasing/ransoming a body then (3′) sending Thetis as a messenger (4′) to give Achilles a plan from Zeus. But, then, this inversion flattens out to focus on the relieving of the kholos (which Thomas Walsh has argued is anger over social disorder) through the acceptance of apoina (the ransom from book 1).

Thetis’ speech also has some interesting word play that relies on etymologies. Major names in the Homeric tradition have some pretty opaque etymological origins. But folk etymologies (really any ‘false’ etymologies that are important to the reception of myths in performance) are viable objects of study both for what they tell us about Greek thoughts on language and for what they tell us about the life of myths outside our extant poems. Some of these are ridiculous–as in “lipless Achilles” or the story of an Odysseus who was born on the road in the rain. But they all tell us something about how audiences responded to traditional tales.

This speech has two points that may remind us of traditional identities before the beginning of the end of the tale. First, consider the verb/noun combination: “you are holding Hektor” (hektor ekheis). This could be a play on the meaning of Hektor’s name as “the protector” coming from a reflex of the verb ekhô (“to have, hold”) the ringing sound of Hektor ekheis may remind audiences of the irony/inversion of the man who held everything together being held prisoner, holding up the resolution of the poem by the opponent who ended his life. Second, while the speech introduction anticipates that Thetis will “name” her child, she does not, but characterizes him with a participle akheuôn, “grieving” that may remind audiences of his name’s etymology.

As Gregory Nagy has emphasized, Achilles’ name, made up of roots for “grief/woe” (akhos) and the “army/people/host” (laos) likely indicates a traditional association between the hero and pain. Some scholars have emphasized that akhos’ semantic field may also include “fear” and that his name may be important as well for his role as a lord among the dead (see Holland 1993). The major adjustment I would make here is to note yet again that we cannot know what audiences knew, but we can deduce from the internal evidence of poets like Homer and Hesiod that they were well-versed in etymological word-play and not averse to revisionist or ahistorical takes.

For me, this indicates that audiences over time (and even those in the same space) might ‘read’ Achilles’ name differently: he could be a man of sorrow, because of his own suffering; he could be one of grief, because he feels it and causes it; he could also be a cult-figure god of death, depending on what audiences knew and expected. As we can see from the Iliad, his realization in a single epic can embrace all of these identities on a continuum, as he moves from feeling akhos among/because of the people, to inspiring akhos among and across many people, to being the focal point for the experience of grief and its resolution.

One of the topics I have not written about at length in this series of posts is on the identity and the importance of the character Thetis. This omission is mostly due to my belief that nearly everything important about Thetis has already been said by Laura Slatkin in her (now classic) book The Power of Thetis. Slatkin’s book wasn’t the first of Homeric scholarship I read as an undergraduate (Richard Martin’s The Language of Heroes and Lenny Muellner’s The Meaning of Homeric EUKHOMAI Through Its Formulas have that privilege) but it is the first I ever read cover to cover without much of a pause. I took it with me on the train ride from Boston to NYC when I went on my PhD admissions interview at NYU. It changed the way I thought about the Iliad and about how to write scholarship in general. It is a sustained look at the way the Iliad integrates and toys with traditional narratives about a figure like Thetis without always acknowledging them. As a close reading of the epic, Slatkin’s book gives a glimpse into the complexity of the narrative backgrounds that make Homeric epic possible alongside an elegant demonstration of how to interpret the constant shifting ground between the story being told and the (possible) worlds it relies on.

In commenting on this passage, Slatkin summarizes “ Thetis must accept the mortal condition of Achilles, of which, as Isthmian 8 explains, she is the cause. This acceptance means the defusing of μῆνις, leaving only ἄχος. It is thus comprehensible thematically that Thetis should be the agent of Achilles’ returning the body of Hektor, of his acceptance not only of his own mortality but of the universality of the conditions of human existence as he expounds them to Priam in Book 24.” As she argues in this chapter, the Iliad in a way presupposes Thetis’ own mênis over the death and loss of her son as part of its overall thematic framework: “The Iliad is about the condition of being human and about heroic endeavor as its most encompassing expression. The Iliad insists at every opportunity on the irreducible fact of human mortality, and in order to do so it reworks traditional motifs, such as the protection motif, as described in Chapter 1. The values it asserts, its definition of heroism, emerge in the human, not the divine, sphere.” As such, I take this scene as a kind of ‘hand-off’, a turn away from the mother’s rage and the realm of the immortal, to focus ever more closely on human life.

And this is part of what Thetis does in her comments to her son. While it may seem somewhat awkward to have your mother encouraging you to have sex, there’s a symbolic sense to this. As a mother, Thetis has unique knowledge about her child’s mortality. Because she is immortal, however, this knowledge is terribly wrapped up with the anticipation that she will witness his death and live with the loss forever. One could, perhaps, see Thetis’ advice as coded for reproduction, looking to continue Achilles’ life through yet another surrogate. But I think instead there’s far more a sense of resignation and a message for all mortals. Death is inevitable, whether it comes today or forty years from now, postponing engaging in the matters of living is always a mistake.

In a rather naive paper earlier in my career, I explored the similarities in the treatment of life, death and the rhetoric of immortal fame in the Iliad and the Gilgamesh poems. One of the shared themes focused on is a turn that happens in both traditions when a woman on the margins of life gives advice to the main character to enjoy life while it lasts. Part of my inspiration for this was Thetis’ advice to Achilles and the way it seems to resonate with one variant in the Gilgamesh narrative.

In a fragment from the Old Babylonian version of the Gilgamesh story,  Gilgamesh recounts to the boatman Ur-Shanabi his experiences with Shiduri, the innkeeper. In the standard version of the story, the innkeeper/barmaid bars the door and excludes Gilgamesh. In a Tablet from Sippar, dated to the 18-17th century BCE, Shiduri listens to Gilgamesh’s lament and responds:

But you, Gilgamesh, let your belly be full,
enjoy yourself always by day and by night!
Make merry each day,
Dance and play day and night!
Let your clothes be clean,
let your hair be washed, may you bathe in water!
Gaze on the child who holds your hand,
Let your wife enjoy your repeated embrace.’ (Sippar Tablet III 6-13; Trans. George 1999, 124.)

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This passage, in a way, echoes the famous epitaph attributed to Ashurbanipal in the Greek tradition, “I keep whatever I ate, the insults I made, and the joy / I took from sex”. And it has a pattern familiar to what we see in the Iliad:

1 Woman on sea/margins

2 Hears heroic lament

3 Gives advice about enjoying life (eating and sex)

The advice given about enjoying life echoes also sentiments from the biblical Enoch and Qoheleth (Ecclesiastes). In a book coming out from Yale at the end of this year, I look at these passages using frameworks from evolutionary biology to think about their possible interactions.

We could easily imagine a general diffusion of the motif throughout the eastern Mediterranean. The pattern of ideas in the heroic context makes this comparison striking. But too often our interest in comparing cultural elements like this resides in creating a kind of theoretical genealogy that establishes the originary nature of one text over another. I think it is better to start from an agnostic position regarding hierarchy and focusing instead on what we learn from differences and what we can surmise of the immediate function of narrative elements for their audiences (who are likely wholly ignorant of cultural diffusion over time).

A significant difference between the two scenes, however, is the emphasis on children in the Gilgamesh fragment. Such an acknowledgement is not absent from the Homeric epics, but it is downplayed–perhaps pointedly–in the Iliad where the loss of children and parents is repeatedly lamented. I think the similarities are due in part to(1) human mortality and our consciousness of it and (2) a trope of investing women with special knowledge about life and death. Consider, as comparison, the lyrics from John Prine’s “Spanish Pipedream” (1971). The narrative of this song presents a soldier who goes to a bar and encounters a dancer/stripper who gives repeated advice to his disenchantment: 

Blow up your TV
Throw away your paper
Go to the country
Build you a home
Plant a little garden
Eat a lot of peaches
Try an’ find Jesus on your own

The chorus repeats between verses until on the third round it turns from the quoted advice into a statement of action:

We blew up our TV
Threw away our paper
Went to the country
Built us a home
Had a lot of children
Fed ’em on peaches
They all found Jesus on their own

Here, the turning away from news and the noise is a withdrawal from martial life, from the chaos of worldly events. Prine’s narrator moves on from his youthful uncertainty to a life of food, presumably sex, and caring for offspring. Each of the three examples provide advice about abandoning mourning, providing what has been called “a prescription for healing”. Now, while one might suggest that John Prine was familiar with the Old Babylonian version of Gilgamesh or Thetis’ advice in the Iliad, I would argue instead that his narrative is a reflex of ‘traditional’ advice relying on a cultural structuration of gender and an attitude towards death that is similar enough to that of the ancient eastern Mediterranean to yield themes that seem familiar.

Achilles, on the seashore, becomes a locus of shifting meaning, like so many elements in Homeric poetry. At this moment, when death stands literally and figuratively around him, his mother reminds him and us that this case is always so for mortal beings. Whether we are looking ahead for days or years, the end that comes is final and, in the words of Ashurbanipal, all we take with us is the memory of the things we did. Thetis centers this, perhaps unsettingly so, prior to the epic’s most memorable moment and the beginning of the creation of Hektor’s immortal renown through his funerary laments. Everything in book 24, this suggests, should be considered from the perspective of the life we have, always under the shadow of the death that will never leave us.

Short bibliography

n.b this is not an exhaustive bibliography. If you’d like anything else included, please let me know.

Abusch, Tzvi. 2001. “The Development and Meaning of the Epic of Gilgamesh: An Interpretive Essay.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 121 (4): 614–22.

———. 2015. Male and Female in the Epic of Gilgamesh: Encounters, Literary History, and Interpretation. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns.

Bachvarova, Mary R. 2016. From Hittite to Homer: The Anatolian Background of Ancient Greek Epic. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Christensen, Joel P. 2008. “Universality or Priority? The Rhetoric of Death in the Gilgamesh Poems and the Iliad.” In Quaderni Del Dipartimento Di Scienze Dell’Antichità e Del Vicino Oriente Dell’Università Ca’ Foscari, 4, edited by E. Cingano and L. Milano, 179–202. Padova: S.A.R.G.O.N.

George, A.R. 1999. The Epic of Gilgamesh. New York: Penguin Books.

———. 2003. The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

———. 2007. “The Epic of Gilgamesh: Thoughts on Genre and Meaning.” In Gilgameš and the World of Assyria, edited by J. Azize and N. Weeks, 37–66. Leuven: Peeters.

Helle, Sophus. 2021. Gilgamesh: A New Translation of the Ancient Epic. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Higbie, Carolyn. 1995. Heroes’ Names, Homeric Identities. Ann Arbor.

Holland, G. B. 1993. “The Name of Achilles: A Revised Etymology.” Glotta 71:

Hommel, H. 1980. Der Gott Achilleus. Sitzungsberichte der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften 1980.1. Heidelberg: Winter.

Kanavou, Nikoletta. The Names of Homeric Heroes : Problems and Interpretations, De Gruyter, Inc., 2015

Konstantopoulos, Gina, and Sophus Helle. 2023. The Shape of Stories: Narrative Structures in Cuneiform Literature. Leiden: Brill.

Herrero de Jáuregui, Miguel. “Priam’s catabasis: traces of the epic journey to Hades in Iliad 24.” TAPA, vol. 141, no. 1, 2011, pp. 37-68. Doi: 10.1353/apa.2011.0005

Nagy, G. 1979. The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University

John Peradotto. Man in the Middle Voice: Name and Narration in the Odyssey. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990

Pryke, Louise M. 2019. Gilgamesh. London: Routledge.

Walsh, Thomas. Feuding Words, Fighting Words: Anger in the Homeric Poems. Washington, D. C.: Center for Hellenic Studies. 2005

Priam and Katabasis in Iliad 24

This is one of a few posts dedicated to Iliad 24. As a reminder, these posts will remain free, but there is an option to be a financial supporter. All proceeds from the substack are donated to classics adjacent non-profits on a monthly basis.

After the gods have decided to force Achilles to return Hektor’s body, Thetis is dispatched to talk to her son and Iris tells Priam to go with a ransom to Achilles. Priam meets resistance from his family, but eventually he begins his journey across the plains of war.

Homer, Iliad 24. 322-333

“The old man climbed quickly into his chariot
And drove through the foregate and the resonating passage,
The miles drove the four-wheeled cart
And wise Idaios guided them in turn. Then the horses
Were coming from behind. The old man was striking them with a goad
Moving them quickly through the city. All of his loved ones
Were following him. Mourning as if he were going to his death.
Then they descended down from the city and came to the meadow.
But they family members turn back again and arrived in the city,
The sons and sons-in-law, and the two of them [Idaios and Priam]
Did not escape the notice of wide-browed Zeus as they entered the plain.
He saw them and felt pity. Quickly he turned to his dear son Hermes
And addressed him:

Σπερχόμενος δ’ ὃ γεραιὸς ἑοῦ ἐπεβήσετο δίφρου,
ἐκ δ’ ἔλασε προθύροιο καὶ αἰθούσης ἐριδούπου.
πρόσθε μὲν ἡμίονοι ἕλκον τετράκυκλον ἀπήνην,
τὰς ᾿Ιδαῖος ἔλαυνε δαΐφρων· αὐτὰρ ὄπισθεν
ἵπποι, τοὺς ὃ γέρων ἐφέπων μάστιγι κέλευε
καρπαλίμως κατὰ ἄστυ· φίλοι δ’ ἅμα πάντες ἕποντο
πόλλ’ ὀλοφυρόμενοι ὡς εἰ θάνατον δὲ κιόντα.
οἳ δ’ ἐπεὶ οὖν πόλιος κατέβαν, πεδίον δ’ ἀφίκοντο,
οἳ μὲν ἄρ’ ἄψορροι προτὶ ῎Ιλιον ἀπονέοντο
παῖδες καὶ γαμβροί, τὼ δ’ οὐ λάθον εὐρύοπα Ζῆν
ἐς πεδίον προφανέντε· ἰδὼν δ’ ἐλέησε γέροντα,
αἶψα δ’ ἄρ’ ῾Ερμείαν υἱὸν φίλον ἀντίον ηὔδα·

This speech is filled with the language of burial and death. One could almost imagine that when Priam’s sons and sons-in-law accompany him out of the city, they are engaging in a funerary procession, taking Priam himself to his final resting place. Even more, the language evokes heroic journeys: when the narrative says “they went down from the city”, it uses the word kateban (κατέβαν), about as close as possible to katabasis, a term for a trip “down-country”, or to the underworld.

The middle section of book 24 is the movement from the city to the sea, from the confines of besieged Troy to the marginalized outpost of Achilles’ dwelling where Hektor’s mistreated body lies preserved by divine intervention. The length of this episode has multiple motivations with structural, dramatic, and symbolic forces. Structurally, the passage corresponds to the embassy to Chryses in book 1, building on that in a kind of doublet that expands to place greater emphasis on the subsequent scene.

As a feature of narrative structure, the movement through the space creates a kind of ‘real time’ delay, postponing the highly anticipated confrontation with suspense but also putting the audience through something of a transformative passage. Priam’s movement from the city to Achilles in the dead of night is dangerous: the atmosphere of the scene brings the audience along on that trip, narrowing in nearly on each step that it takes to bring these two together. The role-playing of Hermes as one of Achilles’ ‘henchmen’ provides another moment to think about divine and mortal double motivation: from one perspective we could tell the story without a god at all, imagining the scene from Priam’s point of view as an odd intersection between luck and desperation.

From the opposite perspective, this changes the way gods engage with men: Hermes and Apollo are brothers with complementary aspects (negotiated humorously in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes). They appear together in the Odyssey during Demodokos’ song of Ares and Aphrodite, audience members laughing at their humiliation. In this epic, Hermes has been mostly absent, but I suspect there are ritual/religious echoes in the change from book 1 where Apollo begins as a righteous god of rage, punishing the Greeks, to book 24 where he argues for the right of all humans to a burial and then is followed by Hermes’ intervention to help ensure that one particular human is buried. (Indeed, Malcolm Davies has seen a transformation in Hermes during the epic, see Davies 2020)

This is where we get into the symbolic too. It is significant in many ways that Hermes is the god selected to lead Priam to Achilles. Hermes is a god of the threshold, a divinity who represents the movement between different realms. He is in nearly every aspect a liminal god, one who has influence over the passage between different states and who can occupy the space between them. In this capacity, Hermes can ‘trigger’ some critical associations. As the psychopompos, “the marshal of the dead”, Hermes is the deity who leads souls from the realm of the living to Hades. In book 24 then, his appearance reinforces that Achilles is still in the realm of the dead: when he leads Priam from the city to the sea, he is taking him to a liminal place between worlds. Achilles is between the land and the sea, between the living and the dead, and between mortals and gods. It is almost as if the two ‘opposites’—the old and the young, the aggressor and the defender, the father and the son—can only meet in a place between worlds. And this betweenness is transitional. Through their pairing they move from an opposing to a binary pair, two men united in the certainty of their coming deaths and the pain of their losses.

Hermes’ intervention confirms that Priam and Achilles can only meet in an otherworldly place and confirms, on many different levels, the exceptional nature of the epic’s penultimate scene. Ancient audiences would have sensed much of this, but there is a good chance we modern audiences miss even more. As a friend of mine, Miguel Herrero de Jáuregui shows, this scene engages with a tradition of “katabasis”, the mythological motif of entering the underworld to complete some heroic tasks. Earlier authors (e.g. Robert 1950) imagined some version of the story where Priam goes to save his son from death. This line of thinking brings Homer together with stories of Orpheus.

Orphism in the ancient world denotes a likely loosely associated set of practices and beliefs about death and rebirth, named for the mythical singer Orpheus. We have many fragments and texts from orphic practices in antiquity, but they have traditionally not been paired with so-called literary texts like epic, as if ancient audiences possessed some kind of cognitive ‘firewall’ between the stories of heroes and gods and the stories of….heroes and gods? But it is pretty clear that there is significant resonance between the language and traditions of orphism and key scenes in Homeric epic.

As Miguel notes, book 24 is replete with the language and motifs of a journey to the world of the dead, shared not just with Greek religion and myth, but with Near Eastern motifs as well. (Think of aspects of the tales of Odysseus in Odyssey 11, Heracles in his labors, or the journey of Gilgamesh after the death of Enkidu.) Priam enters the world of the dead at 24.349-353 and exits it again later (692-95). Miguel even argues that Achilles’ home is “clearly constructed on the model of the house of hades” (46):

“This helps explain why Achilles’ tent or hut (448:) in a soldier s camp is nevertheless described as a large dwelling-place, with roof, courtyard, and bolted gates (448-56). These gates, we are told, only Achilles can open by himself (456), which recalls the description of Hades as “fastener of the gate”;, precisely in the context of Heracles’ catabasis: 8.367).28 This transformation of a warrior s hut into a megaron complex is best explained by the association with the House of the King of the Underworld.”

The Iliad’s Achilles is something of a god of death—he deals it out from the beginning of the poem and like Hades himself has distributed pain without prejudice, ending the lives of his near and dear as much as those of his enemies. He ends up “figuratively playing Hades’ role at the end” of the epic (Herrero de Jáuregui 2011, 48) creating a potentially ironic intertext with the Achilles of the Odyssey who wishes to be a farmhand rather than prince of the dead. As king of the dead, though, Achilles receives a ransom that echoes rites in myth and reflected in the Orphic tablets, the supplication of Hades and Persephone for the soul of the dead. The process of the laying out of Hektor’s corpse followed by his transport back to his home may echo burial practices of the prosthesis (“laying out”) and the funerary procession (“ekphora”) as well.

Miguel also notes the overlap between narratives of katabasis and rituals connected with death. The domains are interconnected and co-influencing, but not in a fixed way. Even as Iliad 24 draws on narrative and ritual traditions concerning the transition from the world of the living to the dead, it also changes these traditions and becomes yet another cultural intertext for thinking about them. In a way, this recreation of a traditional story through Priam is a follow-up to Apollo’s declaration of Hektor’s rite to burial and even Hera’s insistence in book 16 (when speaking of Sarpedon) that funeral rites are the geras (prize of honor) of the dead.

The whole framework of book 24 is to ensure that Hektor receives this prize, which closes the theme of honors opened in book 1 when Achilles was deprived of his own prize. The performance of time and the echoes of an underworld journey serve in part to create a geras equal to Hektor’s status and Priam’s emotional loss. By making Achilles the agent who delivers on this obligation, the social-cosmic rupture of book 1 is closed. It is not enough for Achilles to repair his own honor, he must be in a position to guarantee that someone else’s geras is returned, even in death.

Short bibliography on the Book 24

n.b this is not an exhaustive bibliography. If you’d like anything else included, please let me know.

Bernabe, A. and Jimenez, A. 2008. Instructions for the Netherworld: The Orphic Gold Tablets. Trans, by M. Chase. Leiden: Brill

Malcolm Davies, ‘From night to night: Apollo, Artemis and Hermes in Homer’, in Ο επάνω και ο κάτω κόσμος στο ομηρικό και αρχαϊκό έπος: από τα πρακτικά του ΙΓ’ Διεθνούς Συνεδρίου για την « Οδύσσεια » : Ιθάκη, 25-29 Αυγούστου 2017, ed. by Menelaos Christopoulos and Machi Païzi-Apostolopoulou (Ithaki: Kentro Odysseiakon Spoudon, 2020), pp. 383-392.

Herrero de Jáuregui, Miguel. “Priam’s catabasis: traces of the epic journey to Hades in Iliad 24.” TAPA, vol. 141, no. 1, 2011, pp. 37-68. Doi: 10.1353/apa.2011.0005

De Jong, Irene J. F.. “Homerische verteltechniek : de ontmoeting tussen Hermes en Priamus in Ilias 24.” Lampas, vol. XXIII, 1990, pp. 370-383.

Hooker, J. T. 1988 “The Cults of Achilles.” RhM 131:

Mayhew, Robert. “Aristotle on Hermes’ sandals in Schol. T Iliad 24.340: a neglected « fragment » ?.” Classical Quarterly, N. S., vol. 66, no. 2, 2016, pp. 777-780. Doi: 10.1017/S0009838816000628\

Most, G. W. 1992. “II poeta nell’Ade: catabasi epica e teoria dell’epos tra Omero e Virgilio.” SIFC 10: 1014-26.

Nagy, G. 1979. The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University

Poulheria Kyriakou, ‘Reciprocity and gifts in the encounters of Diomedes with Glaucus and Achilles with Priam in the « Iliad »’, Hermes, 150.2 (2022) 131-149. Doi: 10.25162/hermes-2022-0009

Robert, E 1950. Homere. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France

Segal, C. 1971. The Theme of the Mutilation of the Corpse in the Iliad. Leiden:

Shiffman, Gary Adam. “« Going alone » at Iliad 24. 198-205.” Classical Quarterly, vol. XLII, 1992, pp. 269-270. Doi: 10.1017/S0009838800042750

Sourvinou-Inwood, C. 1981. “To Die and to Enter the House of Hades: Homer, Before and After.” In Whaley, J. ed. Mirrors of Mortality. London: Europa

Wathelet, P. 1988. “Priam aux Enfers ou le retour du corps d’Hector.” LEC

West, Stephanie. “Priam’s cup: a note on Iliad 24.429-36.” Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, vol. 40, no. 1-4, 2000, pp. 489-494. Doi: 10.1556/AAnt.40.2000.1-4.45

Introducing Iliad 24

This post is a basic introduction to reading Iliad 24. Here is a link to the overview of Iliad 23 and another to the plan in general. As a reminder, these posts will remain free, but there is an option to be a financial supporter. All proceeds from the substack are donated to classics adjacent non-profits on a monthly basis.

How does one bring the Iliad to a close? How does one begin to write about this epic’s end? Do we start with the image of Priam kissing the hands of the man who killed his son? Do we try to make sense of the story Achilles tells of a Niobe who stopped to eat while she was weeping en route to her transformation to stone? Do we interweave all of the ends that are tied up alongside those left dangling in the completion of this overwhelming tapestry?

One of the finest scholarly responses is C.W. MacLeod’s commentary on the book. I tend to think that there is so much going on that a line by line response is the only way to make sense of what the book achieves: it addresses the major tensions lingering since book 1 without resolving them altogether by providing an understated coda to the political plot, offering transitional movement from the world of the living to the dead and back again, arranging for the themes of reciprocity and ransom to be revisited in the meeting of Priam and Achilles, providing an ambiguous yet moving testimony to Achilles’ change in character, and revisits the generative power of mourning with the women’s lament for Hektor and his funeral.

Of course, much of the action of the Iliad’s final book is forgotten because of the power of its most famous scene, the meeting of Achilles and Priam for the ransoming of Hektor’s body. The iconography of this scene is widespread enough in early Greece for me to believe that it was an episode independent of our Iliad—so how it is integrated into our particular epic is of great moment here. The book starts with Achilles’ unrelenting abuse of Hektor’s corpse, followed by a divine assembly to decide what to do over his behavior. Hera and Apollo argue against each other and Zeus intercedes on Hektor’s behalf. Hermes guides Priam at some length (and in secret) to Achilles’ dwelling where the famous meeting takes place. Priam returns with a guarantee for an armistice to arrange a funeral; Andromache, Hekuba, and Helen provide funerary laments for Hektor and the epic ends with his burial

Each the book adds something to the themes I have outlined in reading the Iliad: (1) Politics, (2) Heroism; (3) Gods and Humans; (4) Family & Friends; (5) Narrative Traditions. Among these, however, I think for book 24 to do its job, it needs to resonate with all five of these themes. And, I think I will likely do more than three posts to bring this epic to a close.

The ‘Trial’ of Achilles

To start, let’s take a closer look at the opening deliberative scene in book 24. It addresses the relationship between Gods and Humans and also adjusts our expectations for heroic life (and death). [N.B. I have repurposed some unpublished material from my dissertation for what follows.] But most importantly, it signals a different approach to politics. As I have discussed before, the Iliad examines politics on three separate stages, one each for the Achaeans and Trojans, and the third is among the gods. Divine power operates differently because Zeus’ authority (allegedly) guarantees every god’s place in a fixed universe.

The message of the Iliad’s political interest is in part that human institutions cannot mirror divine ones because humans collectively change and individuals are subject to our torrent of self-interest and emotions. In addition to the thematic echoes/resonances, there are also some important structural returns. We find out at the beginning of Iliad  24 that there has been a nine-day neîkos among the gods, mirroring the nine-day plague at the beginning of the epic. And this creates something of an epic long chiastic [AB B’ A’] structure. Ransom [denied]: 9 days of divine wrath [culminating in Achilles’ rage] :: 9 days of divine strife : Ransom [accepted, final resolution of Achilles’ rage] (Whitman and Reinhardt are really good on these structural correspondences.)

The epic’s final book, however, has to answer general issues remaining with the gods, while also responding to the structure of the first: foremost, how their own self-interest has perpetuated violence in the form of the Trojan War and the Iliad itself and, second, whether Homer’s gods can hope to stand for justice the way the divinities of the external audiences are expected to in later years. These questions are addressed in part by the final divine assembly where they guarantee the right of burial to all mortals, regardless of their lineage.

The divine conflict over the corpse has been about just how transgressive Achilles’ behavior has been and whether or not the gods should intervene to preserve Hektor for burial. Since he died in book 22, Hektor’s body has been preserved by the gods, but the emotional impact of his mutilation has not been limited. The internal human audience does not know that Hektor’s flesh has been preserved. With the exception of Hera, Poseidon, and Athena, the gods long for Hermes to steal him away. Apollo stands to address them all (24.33-54):

‘Gods, you are cruel, baneful. Didn’t Hektor always
burn the thigh pieces of bulls and full-grown goats for you?
Now you do not dare to save him, even as a corpse,
for his wife and mother and child to see,
and his father Priam and the host, who soon would
cremate him in fire and offer him a burial.
But you gods decide to help ruinous Achilles,
who has neither fateful thoughts nor flexible intention
in his heart, but he’s like a wild lion
who, after he gives in to his great force and proud heart,
goes after the flocks of mortals to take his feast,
so Achilles obliterates pity and has no shame
that thing that does so much in helping men.
Someone else would lose one so dear, I suppose,
either a brother of the same womb or a son,
but surely, after mourning and crying, he sets this aside;
for the Moirai gave men an enduring heart.
But this man, at least, after he has tied his horses
to shining Hektor, whose dear heart he extinguished,
he drags him around the grave marker of his dear companion—
that surely will not be better or finer for him.
Let us not be chastised by him even though he his noble;
For, indeed, he disfigures the fallow earth in his rage.’

Apollo speaks to show both that there is a clear majority for rescuing Hektor and that the majority is right with a poetic tour de force. As Richardson (1993, 280) notes in his commentary on the Iliad, this version of Apollo differs from the vengeful god of plague we meet in book 1 and closer to the god of prophecy and law who is more prominent in later years. First, he assails all the gods and appropriates Zeus’ language from book 4 in asking, rhetorically, whether or not Hektor was pious in his sacrifices. The implication is that, if Hektor was pious when alive, then he deserves the rites of burial. Apollo poetically expands this statement as he enumerates each member of Hektor’s funeral party (wife, mother, son, father, people). Then, he insists that, instead of helping Hektor, the gods help Achilles, a destructive man whose thoughts are not fitting and whose inhuman behavior he evokes with a surprising simile. By comparing Achilles to a lion who knows “wild” things, Apollo points to the politically destabilizing force he has had on the Achaeans and the uncivilized manner in which he is behaving. Not only does Apollo appropriate a theme from Zeus’ speech in book 4 (cf. 4.7) but instead of naming just those who have helped the Achaeans, he implicates all of the gods and insults them by their connection with ruinous acts against fate. Apollo, in the application of poetic devices, the appropriation of motifs from Zeus, and the manipulation of verbal persons, exploits a performance context where his ‘success’ depends conceptually on a majority approval, but realistically only on persuading Zeus.

The scene appears to proceed in the fashion of litigation. This is Apollo Lykaios, Apollo the barrister-god who appears in Aeschylus’ Oresteia, arguing against the Furies. The sought-after compromise between this particular, younger god, and an older figure of the earth and the matriarchy, Hera, would offer obvious parallels to ancient audiences. In her rebuttal, Hera defends inaction and attempts to manipulate the same performance dynamics (24.56-63):

‘This would only be your word, silver-bow,
if, indeed, you would set the same timê for Achilles and Hektor.
Hektor is mortal and nursed from a mortal woman and breast;
but Achilles is the offspring of a goddess whom I myself
raised and reared and I gave her as a wife to a man,
Peleus, who is dear to the heart of immortals.
You all attended the wedding; and you feasted among them,
holding your lyre, companion of evils, always untrustworthy.’

Hera claims, in a strange conditional, that if Apollo’s word were accepted, Hektor and Achilles would garner the same timê.  Hera changes addressees during the speech, but her alteration is sudden (during the conditional), which may heighten the angry (if not irrational) tone of her speech. Hera aims the political language of valuation at the sensitivities of her audience. She attempts to depict a settlement as ridiculous through antithesis: Hektor is a mortal and was nursed by one, Achilles is not the same. Then, she accuses all the gods of being disingenuous since they all attended the wedding of Achilles’ parents. In closing, she calls Apollo a liar and implies that he is a hypocrite, because he performed at the wedding of Peleus and Thetis. Hera’s argument is posterior-focused—it emphasizes the relationships of the past, of a world that mixed gods and men. Apollo’s is anterior—he looks to a world in which the gods can authorize and champion some very basic values for mortals.

In his summary judgment, Zeus succinctly offers a verdict on the contest before him and occupies a more distant position from his engagement earlier in the epic, as if he never responded to Achilles’ plea at all. He briefly reflects the threat of neîkos inherent to Hera’s speech and then sets things in order quickly. Hera has little to say because Apollo has already won over Zeus, as his response makes clear (24.65-71):

‘Hera, really, don’t be completely angry with the gods.
Their timê [honor], at least, will not be the same. But Hektor
is also dearest to the gods of the mortals who live in Troy,
so he is to me, since he never missed dear gifts.
For my altar never lacked a fine feast,
both smoke and libation; for that is the share we have obtained.
But, certainly, we will not allow you to steal bold Hektor away
from Achilles in secret, there is no way. For his mother
always watches over him night and day the same.
But let someone of the gods call Thetis near me,
so I may speak some wise word, that Achilles
will accept gifts from Priam and ransom Hektor.’

Zeus starts with a negative imperative ἀποσκύδμαινε, a hapax legomenon (a word that occurs only once), to characterize the anger of Hera’s speech. The verb resonates well with the themes of irrational anger and political strife. Lexically, it appears to be related to éris. After depicting Hera as a politically dangerous and irrational speaker by using this verb, Zeus quickly dismisses her complaint about Achilles and Hektor earning the same timê and confirms that Apollo delivered the suggestion closest to his own perspective (Hektor is due funeral rites) by repeating his words from book 4 (4.48-9 = 24.69-70). Zeus’ response, however, is not a complete valorization of Apollo’s speech. Instead of relenting and having Hektor’s body stolen away, Zeus offers something of a compromise. At the same time, he retains his control over the narrative, his support of a world in which human sacrifices are observed, and the place of the basic right to burial.

The opening scene of Iliad 24 further justifies the separation between mortals and gods while also carving out a different kind of role for Zeus outside of this particular narrative. The importance of this scene is easier to appreciate if we consider the unfolding of events in this particular epic where leaders have repeatedly failed to resolve conflict. This movement repositions the gods to serve as examples for human beings and centralizes Zeus as the deity of justice more familiar from the Zeus presides over this scene as the king from Hesiod’s Theogony and Greek tragedy.

Hesiod Theogony, 80-93:

[Kalliope] is the Muse who attends to kings and singers.
Whomever of the god-raised Kings the daughters of great Zeus
Honor and look upon when he is born,
On his tongue they pour sweet dew
And gentle words flow out of his mouth. Then the people
All look upon him as he judges the laws
With straight decisions. He speaks confidently
And quickly resolves a conflict with skill.
For this reason, kings are intelligent, so that they
May effect retributive actions in the assembly when men are harmed,
And with ease as they persuade everyone with gentle words.
When he walks into the contest ground people propitiate him
Like a god with gentle reverence, and he stands out among the assembled.
Such is the gift of the muses for men.

ἡ γὰρ καὶ βασιλεῦσιν ἅμ’ αἰδοίοισιν ὀπηδεῖ.
ὅντινα τιμήσουσι Διὸς κοῦραι μεγάλοιο
γεινόμενόν τε ἴδωσι διοτρεφέων βασιλήων,
τῷ μὲν ἐπὶ γλώσσῃ γλυκερὴν χείουσιν ἐέρσην,
τοῦ δ’ ἔπε’ ἐκ στόματος ῥεῖ μείλιχα· οἱ δέ νυ λαοὶ
πάντες ἐς αὐτὸν ὁρῶσι διακρίνοντα θέμιστας
ἰθείῃσι δίκῃσιν· ὁ δ’ ἀσφαλέως ἀγορεύων
αἶψά τι καὶ μέγα νεῖκος ἐπισταμένως κατέπαυσε·
τούνεκα γὰρ βασιλῆες ἐχέφρονες, οὕνεκα λαοῖς
βλαπτομένοις ἀγορῆφι μετάτροπα ἔργα τελεῦσι
ῥηιδίως, μαλακοῖσι παραιφάμενοι ἐπέεσσιν·
ἐρχόμενον δ’ ἀν’ ἀγῶνα θεὸν ὣς ἱλάσκονται
αἰδοῖ μειλιχίῃ, μετὰ δὲ πρέπει ἀγρομένοισι.
τοίη Μουσάων ἱερὴ δόσις ἀνθρώποισιν.

In the public space, subordinates offer competing visions and engage in verbal strife as evinced by Hera’s insults. Zeus listens to their speeches and then offers his own; his language presents a solution previously unavailable to prevent actual strife from developing. These parallels, however, quickly begin to collapse—the exchange loses its luster when compared to earlier conflicts in the Iliad. First of all, since the dispute is over men, the course of divine conflict in the Iliad has already determined that the stakes of such a contest are diminished. Second, the conflict is not with Zeus, but between factions of gods who spar with one another and expect him to orchestrate a resolution. Finally, the decision itself is a simple one. Although Zeus’ speech amounts to something of a compromise, he explains that there is a co-dependence between honors from men and honoring men. The import of this scene is undermined and left under-determined. And this is because there is still more work to be done. It is one thing to know that Achilles will return Hektor’s body; it is another to see it happen.

Short bibliography on the Book 24

n.b this is not an exhaustive bibliography. If you’d like anything else included, please let me know.

Bowie, Angus. “Narrative and emotion in the « Iliad »: Andromache and Helen.” 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. 48-61. Doi: 10.1163/9789004506053_004

Carvounis, Katerina. “Helen and Iliad 24. 763-764.” Hyperboreus, vol. 13, no. 1-2, 2007, pp. 5-10.

Currie, Bruno. “The « Iliad », the « Odyssey », and narratological intertextuality.” Symbolae Osloenses, vol. 93, 2019, pp. 157-188. Doi: 10.1080/00397679.2019.1648002

Burgess, Jonathan Seth. “Untrustworthy Apollo and the destiny of Achilles: Iliad 24.55-63.” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. 102, 2004, pp. 21-40.

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