“So it seemed to me, he said, that after these travails, since I had come away with nothing while examining reality, that I should be careful not to suffer the very thing which people who gaze at the sun during an eclipse do.
For some of them go blind, I think, unless they examine the sight in water or something like that. I mulled over this sort of thing and I feared that my soul might be similarly blinded should I try to grasp these matters with my eyes and each of my other senses. That’s why it seemed right to me to retreat into ideas and use them to examine the truth of reality.”
“Xenophanes [says eclipses] come from flames going out and that a different one happens again in the east. He reports in addition that there was an eclipse for an entire month and also a total eclipse that made the day seem like night.”
“Xenophanes says that there are many suns and moons arrayed along the earth’s latitudes, segments and zones. At certain times, he says, the disk falls out of the sky to some uninhabited place of the earth and an eclipse appears because it left empty space.”
“Anaximander says that the [moon] is a wheel nineteen times larger than the earth, like the wheel of a chariot it has a hollow rim filled with fire similar to that of the sun, situated at an angle, like that one. It has a single exhalation point like the mouth of bellows. An eclipse happens when the wheel turns.”
“Herakleitos and Hekateios say that the sun is a burning specter from the sea and that it is bowl-shaped and curved on one-side. They say an eclipse happens because of the turn of the bowl shape so that the hollow side turns up and the curved side turns down to our vision.”
“Empedocles says that an eclipse happens when the moon moves under the sun”
D133 = Aët. 2.24.7 (Stob.) [περὶ ἐκλείψεως ἡλίου]
ἔκλειψιν δὲ γίνεσθαι σελήνης αὐτὸν ὑπερχομένης.
Antiphon fr. D21 and D24
“Antiphon says that [the sun] is made of fire that feeds on the wet mist around the earth and that its rising and setting come from it leaving air that has been consumed as it attaches to air with moisture.”
“Anaxagoras says that the moon eclipses when the earth is in the way and sometimes because of the celestial bodies below the moon; the sun eclipses because the moon gets in the way during its new phase.”
D4 (< A42) Ps.-Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies
Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, II 90a (On Lunar Eclipses)
“What is an eclipse? The stealing of light from the moon by the superposition of the earth. Saying “what is an eclipse” is the same thing as saying “why does the moon eclipse”. Because the light of the sun leaves it when the earth gets in the way.”
“The sun has no audience unless it starts to disappear. No one looks at the moon unless it is eclipsing. Then, cities scream together and everyone makes a ruckus because of silly superstition.”
Sol spectatorem, nisi deficit, non habet. Nemo observat lunam nisi laborantem; tunc urbes conclamant, tunc pro se quisque superstitione vana strepitat.
“And so they were completing the burial of horse-taming Hektor”
῝Ως οἵ γ’ ἀμφίεπον τάφον ῞Εκτορος ἱπποδάμοιο.
Schol. bT ad. Hom. Il. 21.804
“Menekrates claims that because he sensed his own weakness and inability [to tell their stories] equally, the poet decided to stay silent about the events after Hektor. The rest of the story is served up well in [the stories] told in the Odyssey. There is really only a summary about the house of Odysseus there. The leftovers remain in the stories Odysseus, Nestor, Menelaus, and lyre-playing Demodokos relate. The brief sack of the city is not worth describing”
This photograph shows a section of the GISP2 ice core from 1837-1838 meters in which annual layers are clearly visible. The appearance of layers results from differences in the size of snow crystals deposited in winter versus summer and resulting variations in the abundance and size of air bubbles trapped in the ice. Counting such layers has been used (in combination with other techniques) to reliably determine the age of the ice. This ice was formed ~16250 years ago during the final stages of the last ice age and approximately 38 years are represented here. By analyzing the ice and the gases trapped within, scientists are able to learn about past climate conditions.
“I admit that I now have a bit of a different opinion from what I believed before. Perhaps it would be safest for my reputation to change nothing which I not only believed but also approved for many years. But I cannot endure knowing that I misrepresent myself, especially in this work which I compose as some help for our good students. For even Hippocrates, famous still for his skill in medicine, seems to have conducted himself very honorably when he admitted his own errors so his followers would not make a mistake. Marcus Tullius did not hesitate to condemn some of his own books in subsequent publications, the Catulus and Lucullus, for example.
Prolonged effort in research would certainly be useless if we were not allowed to improve upon previous opinions. Nevertheless, nothing of what I taught then was useless. These things I offer now, in fact, return us to basic principles. Thus it will cause no one grief to have learned from me. I am trying only to collect and lay out the same ideas in a slightly more sensible fashion. I want it made known to all, moreover, that I am showing this to others no later than I have convinced myself.”
Ipse me paulum in alia quam prius habuerim opinione nunc esse confiteor. Et fortasse tutissimum erat famae modo studenti nihil ex eo mutare quod multis annis non sensissem modo verum etiam adprobassem. Sed non sustineo esse conscius mihi dissimulati, in eo praesertim opere quod ad bonorum iuvenum aliquam utilitatem componimus, in ulla parte iudicii mei. Nam et Hippocrates clarus arte medicinae videtur honestissime fecisse quod quosdam errores suos, ne posteri errarent, confessus est, et M. Tullius non dubitavit aliquos iam editos libros aliis postea scriptis ipse damnare, sicut Catulum atque Lucullum et… Etenim supervacuus foret in studiis longior labor si nihil liceret melius invenire praeteritis. Neque tamen quicquam ex iis quae tum praecepi supervacuum fuit; ad easdem enim particulas haec quoque quae nunc praecipiam revertentur. Ita neminem didicisse paeniteat: colligere tantum eadem ac disponere paulo significantius conor. Omnibus autem satis factum volo non me hoc serius demonstrare aliis quam mihi ipse persuaserim.
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. This will be the penultimate post on book 24. All proceeds from the substack are donated to classics adjacent non-profits on a monthly basis.
Once Hektor’s body is brought back to Troy, Priam and his family prepare for the term of burial promised by Achilles. Following the preparation of the body, three women of the household stand to sing laments in Hektor’s honor. Helen is the last.
Homer, Iliad 24.761-775
“Among them then Helen was the third to take up the lament” ‘Hektor, you were by far the dearest of my in-laws— My husband was actually godlike Alexandros, The one who brought me to Troy. I wish I had died before that. This is the twentieth years since I arrived from there And I left my own homeland. But I have never heard an evil or cruel word from you. But if anyone else in our home would criticize me, One of your brothers or sisters or one of their spouses Or my mother in law—since your father was always as gentle as my own Then you would hold them back by persuading them with words, With your very kindness and your kind words. So, I am weeping for you now and my unlucky self, aggrieved in my heart. No one else in the wide land of Troy will be here for me, As gentle and as dear, and everyone else is rough to me.’ ”
Helen’s speech has the appearance of being rather simple and personal, absent the kinds of rhetorical flourish one might expect from a Periklean funeral oration or a modern eulogy. She offers something of an odd balance between personal reflections and echoes of the larger war. As we saw earlier in book 6, she marks Hektor out for her kindness to him—which has led to speculation among some that she manipulated him or that there is something more going on between them—but notice that Hektor’s character in caring for her is consonant with his identity as a protector. Within Troy, he kept her safe from her in-laws with kind and persuasive words. The softness she recalls may help us imagine a Hektor who was ill-at-ease with the language of rebuke and invective, perhaps centering more the man who spent some of his final moments fantasizing about talking to Achilles the way young lovers do.
The three laments taken up in turn can be seen as the beginning of generating Hektor’s kleos. The language of the speech introduction, “taking turn, or taking lead” (ἐξῆρχε) evokes singers/or speakers taking turns in the telling of the tale. Yet each woman in the series tells a story of Hektor that is not about his martial glory. Instead, they focus on what he provided and what they will miss in their loss. Andromache looks ahead to a future where she and Astyanax are enslaved (or worse) after the fall of Troy. Hecuba laments all of her other dead sons and the way Achilles mistreated Hektor’s body.
As with the laments for Patroklos, we find a tension between mourners lamenting the loss of life and what they see in their own life in the wake of this ‘new’ experience. Andromache, his wife, sees herself and her son in the future, imagining the consequences of Hektor’s absence. Hecuba sees the immediate present and the past, enrolling Hektor into a catalogue of losses in which he is the final entry and the most painful. Helen expands and personalizes: she provides the audience with a different picture of Hektor and then sees their grief as joined: when she says “So, I am weeping for you now and my unlucky self, aggrieved in my heart”(τὼ σέ θ’ ἅμα κλαίω καὶ ἔμ’ ἄμμορον ἀχνυμένη κῆρ) we could imagine her in the vein of Andromache, imagining her own suffering without Hektor their to protect me. But I think we also find a rather direct and significant articulation of the tension we all face in mourning the dead, the tension I mentioned Achilles inhabiting when he laments the loss of Patroklos—navigating the pain of the loss of a loved one from your life while also starting to conceive of the full meaning of a life lost for a loved one.’
Abduction of Helen vase
Helen also provides several phrases that connect her intensely personal testimony to the larger cosmic framework of their shared suffering. She asserts—almost regretfully—that she is Alexander’s (Paris’) spouse, but wishes she had died before he took her from home (ὡς πρὶν ὤφελλον ὀλέσθαι). The language she uses here echoes when Hektor wishes Paris had died unmarried in book 3 (αἴθ’ ὄφελες ἄγονός τ’ ἔμεναι ἄγαμός τ’ ἀπολέσθαι, 3.40), when Helen herself wishes Paris had died on the battlefield in book 3 (ἤλυθες ἐκ πολέμου· ὡς ὤφελες αὐτόθ’ ὀλέσθαι, 3.428), when the trojan Herald addresses the Achaeans in book 5 and similarly wishes Paris had died (ἠγάγετο Τροίηνδ’· ὡς πρὶν ὤφελλ’ ἀπολέσθαι, 7.390) and, less clearly, when Achilles wishes Briseis had died before he brought her to Troy in book 19 (τὴν ὄφελ’ ἐν νήεσσι κατακτάμεν ῎Αρτεμις ἰῷ, 19.59). In echoing these lines, Helen downplays her agency while also prompting the audience to think of the larger framework of the conflict. Helen’s tendency to self-deprecate, as Ruby Blondell argues, is a way to reclaim agency. Book 24
When she says, “this is the twentieth year since I left my homeland”, I think she is invoking the whole arc of the Trojan War, from her marriage to this moment in time. While the scholia take pains to explain the reference to twenty years as including the time it took to muster the Greek army, I would be tempted to read the line “since I went from there and my dear homeland” (ἐξ οὗ κεῖθεν ἔβην καὶ ἐμῆς ἀπελήλυθα πάτρης) as going back to Helen’s marriage and including a reference to the broader world of myth. (to be clear, though, this is not an easy argument to make.
But Helen’s capacity both by her presence and her words to remind audiences of the larger arc of myth remains important regardless of how we count up to twenty. Consider again the wish she makes to have died before she left home: this wish echoes Achilles’ wish that he had never taken Briseis and multiple characters’ wish that Paris had died before he could have caused all this trouble. Epic is deeply interested in considering the causes of things. When it toys with contrafactual statements it invites audiences to consider causal chains and the interdependence of events and our notions of agency and goodwill. Here, instead of wishing for Paris’ death and ascribing him the agency for the war, Helen regrets her own existence and traces Hektor’s death to the moment she left home.
Helen’s function as a sign of the larger story helps also to explain her position in the order of the laments. Typically in early Greek rhetoric, the most important element is reserved for the final position rather than the initial ones. (Johannes Kakridis called this an “ascending scale of affection” (1949, 19-20 So, doublets tend to put greater emphasis on the second entry and tricola feature both increasing length of phrase and amplified importance. This works on the level of phrases and lines, but it also is important in larger structures as well.
nelaus intends to strike Helen; struck by her beauty, he drops his swords. A flying Eros and Aphrodite (on the left) watch the scene. Detail of an Attic red-figure crater, ca. 450–440 BC, found in Gnathia (now Egnazia, Italy).
The clearest parallel to help us understand the oddness of the laments at the end of book 24 are the conversations in book 6 of the Iliad. There, Hektor moves towards the most important conversation and through what appears to be greater degrees of intimacy as he speaks first to Hecuba, then to Helen, and finally to Andromache, who has the longest and most charged exchange in the book. Similarly, Hektor’s death is known last to Andromache in book 22. At the end of the epic, however, we start with Andromache, then hear from Hecuba, and finally end with Helen. The speeches are roughly the same length and, as we have already seen, are all about Hektor in a more-or-less intimate way. The difference this time, I think, is that we move from the most local, intimate relationship, steadily focusing our gaze outward, away from Hektor’s corpse to a view of the larger world. The increasing emphasis, then, is away from the parochial to the bigger picture, away from Hektor’s burial to remind us of the whole of which it is merely a representative part.
In her essay on Helen’s lament, Maria Pantelia notes that Helen’s presence and position in the laments is “problematic” in part because she is the cause of his death and the other women have been characterized as hostile to her. Pantelia notes first that Hektor’s mourning already started in 22 with speeches by Priam, Hecuba, and Andromache (and, to my taste, these speeches are more moving than the rather limited laments in 24). Following the groundbreaking work of Margaret Alexiou on mourning traditions, Pantelia suggest that those first speeches are characteristic of “spontaneous and personal expressions of pain and grief” (24) while those from 24 are similar in shape as well as size to one another.
Helen’s position as the final speaker, emphasizes a move from “the human and the personal to the universal and transcendent” (25). And this works in part because Helen herself has a unique connection to the generation of epic fame: she tells stories to confirm people’s identities in book 3; she is weaving her own story for people to come to learn about in book 6, and she contests and retells stories from the Trojan War tradition in book 4 of the Odyssey. “Helen’s lament”, Pantelia suggests, is not about what Hektor can no longer do for Troy, but about the greatness of a human being who deserves to be remembered”.
And I think it is so very important that she remembers him for his kindness, for protecting her against the anger of others. This is in a way a distinct thing about Hektor’s character: he acts for what is right no matter how much it is going to hurt him. In addition, the focus on his simple, personal glory, leaves the question of heroic renown in the dust of the burial ground. Hektor is memorialized here not as some man-killing hero, but simply as a man. While he predicts in book 7 that the future will know him by the names of the people he killed, the story Helen tells after his death is of the small kindnesses that made life easier to live.
n.b this is not an exhaustive bibliography. If you’d like anything else included, please let me know.
Alexiou, M. 1974. The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition. Cambridge
Austin, N. 1994. Helen of Troy and her Shameless Phantom. Ithaca: Cornell
BLONDELL, RUBY. “‘Bitch That I Am’: Self-Blame and Self-Assertion in the Iliad.” Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974-) 140, no. 1 (2010): 1–32. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40652048.
Carvounis, Katerina. “Helen and Iliad 24. 763-764.” Hyperboreus, vol. 13, no. 1-2, 2007, pp. 5-10.
Due, C. 2002. Homeric Variations on a Lament by Briseis. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Ebbott, M. 1999. “The Wrath of Helen: Self-Blame and Nemesis in the Iliad” In Carlisle, M. and Levaniouk, O. eds. Nine Essays on Homer. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. 3-20.
Graver, M. 1995. “Dog-Helen and Homeric Insult.” ClAnt 14: 41-61
Groten, F. J. 1968. “Homer’s Helen.” G&R 15: 33-39.
Pantelia, Maria C. “Helen and the Last Song for Hector.” Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974-), vol. 132, no. 1/2, 2002, pp. 21–27. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20054056. Accessed 4 Apr. 2024.
Shapiro, Harvey Alan. “The judgment of Helen in Athenian art.” Periklean Athens and its legacy: problems and perspectives. Eds. Barringer, Judith M. and Hurwit, Jeffrey M.. Austin (Tex.): University of Texas Pr., 2005. 47-62.
“Among them then Helen was the third to take up the lament”
‘Hektor, you were by far the dearest of my in-laws—
My husband was actually godlike Alexandros,
The one who brought me to Troy. I wish I had died before that.
This is the twentieth years since I arrived from there
And I left my own homeland.
But I have never heard an evil or cruel word from you.
But if anyone else in our home would criticize me,
One of your brothers or sisters or one of their spouses
Or my mother in law—since your father was always as gentle as my own
Then you would hold them back by persuading them with words,
With your very kindness and your kind words.
So, I am weeping for you now and my unlucky self, aggrieved in my heart.
No one else in the wide land of Troy will be here for me,
As gentle and as dear, and everyone else is rough to me.’ ”
“The twentieth year? Wrong. This can’t be the twentieth year. From the time Helen went to Troy it is established that the gathering of the army happened but that in the twentieth, Odysseus returned to Ithaka.
There was a lot of time wasted in wandering then too.
It is asserted that they spent ten years getting the army together and then they were slowed down by a storm on their own and then once they came to Aulis. So, now is the 20th year since the theft of Helen.
Ten years for the gathering of the army must be added to the Odyssey.”
“When I utter the word “forgetfulness” and I similarly see what I am naming, how would I acknowledge it if I have not remembered it? I don’t mean the word’s sound, but the thing that it means. If I had forgotten it, I would not be able to connect the meaning with the sound. So when I remember memory, then it is present in itself for itself at that moment. But when I recall forgetfulness, both memory and forgetfulness are there at the same time. Memory in allowing me to remember and forgetfulness is the thing I recall.
But what is forgetfulness if it isn’t the negation of memory? How can it be there in order to be remembered when I cannot remember it in its true presence? But if we retain what we have remembered in our memory, then if we did not remember forgetfulness, we would never be able to acknowledge that that word means when we hear it spoken. Forgetfulness is preserved by memory.”
16. (24) Quid, cum oblivionem nomino atque itidem agnosco quod nomino, unde agnoscerem nisi meminissem? non eundem sonum nominis dico, sed rem quam significat. quam si oblitus essem, quid ille valeret sonus agnoscere utique non valerem. ergo cum memoriam memini, per se ipsam sibi praesto est ipsa memoria. cum vero memini oblivionem, et memoria praesto est et oblivio, memoria qua meminerim, oblivio quam meminerim. Sed quid est oblivio nisi privatio memoriae? quomodo ergo adest ut eam meminerim, quando cum adest meminisse non possum? at si quod meminimus memoria retinemus, oblivionem autem nisi meminissemus, nequaquam possemus audito isto nomine rem quae illo significatur agnoscere, memoria retinetur oblivio.
John Martin, “Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion” 1812
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.
“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.”
Català: Níobe a la cúpula del palau del marqués de Dosiagües, València.
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.”
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.”
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
Roman sarcophagus showing the massacre of Niobe’s children. Ca 160. Glyptothek, Munich. Photo by Mont Allen.
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.
Niobe, in an agony of grief, which is in the marble tempered and idealized, tries to protect her youngest daughter from destruction. (Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence)
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] .
“The Athenians preserved the boat—a thirty-oared ship—on which Theseus sailed with his companions and came back safely until the time of Demetrius of Phalerus, changing out the older wood and replacing it with strong, new parts until the ship became a famous example to philosophers of the problem of growth. Some say that it remained the same ship, others claim it did not.”
So. “Heraclitus, I guess you know, says that everything flows and nothing stays the same. He compares reality to a flowing river, saying that you cannot step into the same river twice.”
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.”
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 TheLiterary 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.
A heroic blend: Original artwork by Brittany Beverung
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.”
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).
Thank you for reading Painful Signs, Or, Joel’s Substack. This post is public so feel free to share it.
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.”
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 4th 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!”
Rhapsode singing: c 490 BCE, attributed to the Berlin painter MET
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.
