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.

Danek, Georg. “Achilles hybristēs ? : tisis and nemesis in Iliad 24.” Έγκλημα και τιμωρία στην ομηρική και αρχαϊκή ποίηση : από τα πρακτικά του ΙΒ’ διεθνούς συνεδρίου για την Οδύσσεια, Ιθάκη, 3-7 Σεπτεμβρίου 2013. Eds. Christopoulos, Menelaos and Païzi-Apostolopoulou, Machi. Ithaki: Kentro Odysseiakon Spoudon, 2014. 137-152.

Ebbott, Mary. “The wrath of Helen: self-blame and nemesis in the « Iliad ».” Plato’s « Laws » and its historical significance: selected papers of the I International Congress on Ancient Thought, Salamanca, 1998. Ed. Lisi, Francisco Leonardo. Sankt Augustin: Academia, 2001. 3-20.

Felson, Nancy. “« Threptra » and invisible hands: the father-son relationship in Iliad 24.” Arethusa, vol. 35, no. 1, 2002, pp. 35-50.

Franko, George Fredric. “The Trojan horse at the close of the « Iliad ».” The Classical Journal, vol. 101, no. 2, 2005-2006, pp. 121-123.

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

Heath, Malcolm. “Menecrates on the end of the Iliad.” Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, vol. 141, no. 2, 1998, pp. 204-206.

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

Kiss, Dániel. “Iliad 22.60 and 24.487: Priam on the threshold of old age.” Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, vol. 153, no. 3-4, 2010, pp. 401-404.

Knox, Ronald A.. “Iliad 24. 547-549: blameless Achilles.” Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, vol. 141, no. 1, 1998, pp. 1-9.

Kyriakou, Poulheria. “Reciprocity and gifts in the encounters of Diomedes with Glaucus and Achilles with Priam in the « Iliad ».” Hermes, vol. 150, no. 2, 2022, pp. 131-149. Doi: 10.25162/hermes-2022-0009

Mackie, Chris J.. “Iliad 24 and the judgement of Paris.” Classical Quarterly, N. S., vol. 63, no. 1, 2013, pp. 1-16. Doi: 10.1017/S0009838812000754

MacLeod, C. W., editor. Iliad, Book XXIV. Cambridge: Cambridge University Pr., 1982.

Most, Glenn W.. “Anger and pity in Homer’s « Iliad ».” Yale Classical Studies, vol. 32, 2003, pp. 50-75[JC1] .

Murnaghan, Sheila. “Equal honor and future glory: the plan of Zeus in the « Iliad ».” Classical closure: reading the end in Greek and Latin literature. Eds. Roberts, Deborah H., Dunn, Francis M. and Fowler, Don P.. Princeton (N. J.): Princeton University Pr., 1997. 23-42.

Pantelia, Maria C.. “Helen and the last song for Hector.” TAPA, vol. 132, 2002, pp. 21-27.

Perkell, Christine G.. “Reading the laments of Iliad 24.” Lament: studies in the ancient Mediterranean and beyond. Ed. Suter, Ann. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Pr., 2008. 93-117.

Karl Reinhardt. Die Ilias und ihr Dichter. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1961.

Rabel, Robert J.. “Apollo as a model for Achilles in the Iliad.” American Journal of Philology, vol. CXI, 1990, pp. 429-440.

Race, William H.. “Achilles’ κῦδος in Iliad 24.” Mnemosyne, Ser. 4, vol. 67, no. 5, 2014, pp. 707-724. Doi: 10.1163/1568525X-12341406

Nicholas Richardson. The Iliad: A Commentary. Volume VI: Books 21-24. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Strauss Clay, Jenny. “Iliad 24.649 and the semantics of κερτομέω.” Classical Quarterly, N. S., vol. 49, no. 2, 1999, pp. 618-621. Doi: 10.1093/cq/49.2.618

Taplin, Oliver. “A word of consolation in Iliad 24, 614.” Studi Italiani di Filologia Classica, 3a ser., vol. 20, no. 1-2, 2002, pp. 24-27.

Thalmann, William G.. “« Anger sweeter than dripping honey »: violence as a problem in the « Iliad ».” Ramus, vol. 44, no. 1-2, 2015, pp. 95-114. Doi: 10.1017/rmu.2015.5[JC2] 

Cedric Hubbell Whitman. Homer and the Heroic Tradition. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958.

Xian, Ruobing. “The dramatization of emotions in Iliad 24.552-658.” Philologus, vol. 164, no. 2, 2020, pp. 181-196. Doi: 10.1515/phil-2020-0105[JC3] 

Zanker, Graham. “Beyond reciprocity: the Akhilleus-Priam scene in Iliad 24.” Reciprocity in ancient Greece. Eds. Gill, Christopher, Postlethwaite, Norman and Seaford, Richard A. S.. Oxford: Clarendon Pr., 1998. 73-92.

Framing Human Sacrifice in Iliad 23

This is one of a few posts dedicated to Iliad 23. 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 first post on Iliad 23, I provide a good deal of framing for understanding the funeral games from Patroklos from a thematic/political perspective. At some point, I think I planned to write a second post on that topic, detailing the exchanges during the chariot race as a recapitulation of the events in Iliad 1 and 2. I think that this work has largely been done and would refer to the bibliography there for further reading.

I remain interested—if not stuck—in how to understand the run-up to the games, which includes a lengthy burial ritual. This process is crucial for understanding Achilles’ character, but I think it can also help us think more about how epic poetry, about how much it tells and how much we assume it tells. The most prominent part of this, for me, is the human sacrifice that was promised in book 21. As I mention in that post, the seemingly casual presentation of the human sacrifice always reminds me of the murder of the suitors and the mutilation of the enslaved people in the Odyssey. Just as in that case, however, I think part of my/our sense that the acts are downplayed is connected to our cultural distance from ancient audiences.

As modern readers, we often find ourselves at a loss when it comes to evaluating epic actions without seeming terribly anachronistic or facing criticism for projecting our values on the past. The solution to this challenge is not maintaining neutrality, but allowing our responses to surface, interrogating them alongside the narrative, and using both ancient evidence and modern theoretical frameworks to ‘triangulate’ values. The point is not to cede evaluative ground, but to proceed with care, using transparency and owning our own perspectives to engage in a dialogue with the past rather than issuing a summary judgment.

My basic argument for both is that the non-combat murders that occur at the end of the Iliad and the Odyssey are certainly framed as excessive, if not transgressive, by each epic. These scenes contribute to an exploration of the dangers of the heroic figure who suffers and causes suffering. In the Odyssey, the slaughter functions, I think, to indicate the extremity of Odysseus’ vengeance and the stark violence endemic to autocracy. In the Iliad, we find the sacrifices as part of a narrative arc that takes Achilles far away from the realm of ‘civilized’ people and returns him again, if only briefly, to practices of reciprocity in book 24.

When I make arguments like this, I often encounter doubt, if not derision. This is why I think it is important to look at what the text does. In the case of the sacrifice of the twelve Trojan youths, the epic narrator marks it as “wicked” twice, once when the young men are captured in book 21 and again at the moment of their sacrifice in book 23. In between, Achilles calls them  “glorious children of the Trojans, I am ready to sacrifice because I am angry over your death” (23.22-23). When we get to the act nearly two hundred lines later, the narrator is subtle, but to my mind clear.

Homer, Il. 23.161-191

Once Agamemnon, the lord of men, heard [Achilles]
He immediately dispersed the army to their fine ships,
While those who were close to Patroklos stayed by and piled the wood.
They made a pyre one-hundred strides wide to all sides,
And placed the body on the top of it, as they grieved in their hearts.
They flayed and butchered many sheep and in addition
Many ambling cattle in front of the pyre. Then great-hearted
Achilles took the fat from all of them and covered the corpse.
He heaped it over the body from head to toe.
Then he added to the rest large jars of honey and oil,
Leaving them next to the platform. He toppled four, high-necked horses
On the pyre quickly while he groaned outloud.
There were nine dogs who waited at the table for the lord,
And Achilles added two of them to the pyre, after cutting their throats.
He slaughtered the twelve sons of the great-hearted Trojans
With bronze. He was contriving wicked things in his thoughts.
And he kindled the iron-strong power of the fire, so he could spread it around.
Then, indeed, he mourned out loud and called his friend by name.
“Hello, my Patroklos, mine even in Hades’ home.
I am finishing everything that I promised to you before.
The fire is consuming all of these men for you—the twelve
Fine sons of the great-hearted Trojans. I will not give Hektor
Up to Priam to put in the fire. I’ll give him to the dogs.”

So he threatened. But the dogs did not descend on Hektor.
No, Zeus’ daughter Aphrodite protected him from the dogs
All day and all night, keeping him anointed with rosy-olive oil,
Ambrosial stuff, so that he would not rip while being dragged.
And Phoebus Apollo cast over him a dark cloud
From the sky to the ground, and covered the whole land
Where the corpse stretched out, to stop the sun’s intensity
From drying out the skin still set on his muscles and limbs.

Αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ τό γ’ ἄκουσεν ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν ᾿Αγαμέμνων,
αὐτίκα λαὸν μὲν σκέδασεν κατὰ νῆας ἐΐσας,
κηδεμόνες δὲ παρ’ αὖθι μένον καὶ νήεον ὕλην,
ποίησαν δὲ πυρὴν ἑκατόμπεδον ἔνθα καὶ ἔνθα,
ἐν δὲ πυρῇ ὑπάτῃ νεκρὸν θέσαν ἀχνύμενοι κῆρ.
πολλὰ δὲ ἴφια μῆλα καὶ εἰλίποδας ἕλικας βοῦς
πρόσθε πυρῆς ἔδερόν τε καὶ ἄμφεπον· ἐκ δ’ ἄρα πάντων
δημὸν ἑλὼν ἐκάλυψε νέκυν μεγάθυμος ᾿Αχιλλεὺς
ἐς πόδας ἐκ κεφαλῆς, περὶ δὲ δρατὰ σώματα νήει.
ἐν δ’ ἐτίθει μέλιτος καὶ ἀλείφατος ἀμφιφορῆας
πρὸς λέχεα κλίνων· πίσυρας δ’ ἐριαύχενας ἵππους
ἐσσυμένως ἐνέβαλλε πυρῇ μεγάλα στεναχίζων.
ἐννέα τῷ γε ἄνακτι τραπεζῆες κύνες ἦσαν,
καὶ μὲν τῶν ἐνέβαλλε πυρῇ δύο δειροτομήσας,
δώδεκα δὲ Τρώων μεγαθύμων υἱέας ἐσθλοὺς
χαλκῷ δηϊόων· κακὰ δὲ φρεσὶ μήδετο ἔργα·
ἐν δὲ πυρὸς μένος ἧκε σιδήρεον ὄφρα νέμοιτο.
ᾤμωξέν τ’ ἄρ’ ἔπειτα, φίλον δ’ ὀνόμηνεν ἑταῖρον·
χαῖρέ μοι ὦ Πάτροκλε καὶ εἰν ᾿Αΐδαο δόμοισι·
πάντα γὰρ ἤδη τοι τελέω τὰ πάροιθεν ὑπέστην,
δώδεκα μὲν Τρώων μεγαθύμων υἱέας ἐσθλοὺς
τοὺς ἅμα σοὶ πάντας πῦρ ἐσθίει· ῞Εκτορα δ’ οὔ τι
δώσω Πριαμίδην πυρὶ δαπτέμεν, ἀλλὰ κύνεσσιν.
῝Ως φάτ’ ἀπειλήσας· τὸν δ’ οὐ κύνες ἀμφεπένοντο,
ἀλλὰ κύνας μὲν ἄλαλκε Διὸς θυγάτηρ ᾿Αφροδίτη
ἤματα καὶ νύκτας, ῥοδόεντι δὲ χρῖεν ἐλαίῳ
ἀμβροσίῳ, ἵνα μή μιν ἀποδρύφοι ἑλκυστάζων.
τῷ δ’ ἐπὶ κυάνεον νέφος ἤγαγε Φοῖβος ᾿Απόλλων
οὐρανόθεν πεδίον δέ, κάλυψε δὲ χῶρον ἅπαντα
ὅσσον ἐπεῖχε νέκυς, μὴ πρὶν μένος ἠελίοιο
σκήλει’ ἀμφὶ περὶ χρόα ἴνεσιν ἠδὲ μέλεσσιν.

We should start by noting how much this passage is doing. Consider the multiple mentions of grief and lamentation, making it clear that Achilles is in an extreme state of mind. The focus on the process of sacrifice may in part be a reflection on the importance of the ritual for processing grief. As anyone who has lost a loved one has learned, the concrete steps funerary rituals give us in the immediate days after our loss provides us with a feeling of control, of agency at a moment when we have been reminded that we ultimately have anything but that (over death). Rituals provide an outlet for grief, but they also importantly provide us with something to do. From a neurobiological perspective, sudden loss and extreme grief triggers a survival impulse: Achilles’ lashing out and slaughter is probably too ordered to simply be this, but his adaptation of ritual and his slowness to proceed may be a reflex of traumatic shock.

But to focus on the possibility of narrative judgment: the poem itself increases the importance of the human sacrifice by placing it in an ascending scale with the other victims. We start with the normal sheep and cattle, followed by the surprise dogs, ending with the twelve Trojan youths who are called “fine sons” of the great-hearted Trojans here, when they were referred as boys in book 21 and mere children before. The relevance of that choice increases for me: the label of sons enters them into families, into relationships that are torn by Achilles’ acts and the use of the adjective recalls the heroic language of nobility in the exchange with Lykaon in book 21 as well. Achilles repeats this line when he mourns later on, and a scholion reports that the adjective esthlous may have been replaced in some texts with a simple demonstrative toutous “these sons”).

Regardless of the repetition (or lack thereof), the narrative’s description is followed by the clearest line of judgment in the epic, the statement that Achilles is “devising wicked deeds” (κακὰ δὲ φρεσὶ μήδετο ἔργα·). If there is any doubt that there is something off about this sequence, following the speech, Achilles has trouble lighting the pyre and must appeal to the gods for help.

The cumulative effect of the rhetorical treatment (placing the slaughter at the end of a list, in the longest description), the familial and qualitative description of the youths, in contrast with earlier lines, the narrative judgment on the deeds, and the appearance of divine dissatisfaction, is to mark the sacrifice as extreme and as a feature of Achilles’ particular excess in his grief.

The view from outside

My reading of this scene requires a little more work to support. The cultural meaning of human sacrifice may be different for ancient audiences, and it is important to measure our response against what we can reconstruct from theirs. As Dennis Hughes writes in his introduction to Patroklos’ funeral (1991, 49), ancient authors were perplexed, if not horrified by this scene: “This incident so distressed Plato that he simply denied that Achilles had committed the deed, and the reactions of many modern Homeric scholars have been similar: shock and distaste (reactions sometimes projected back onto the psyche of Homer himself), a quick dismissal, or, more often than not, complete silence”.

The specter of human sacrifice overshadows the Iliad. The Trojan War narrative centers the sacrifice of Iphigenia to start the war, but other traditions also have the Trojan Polyxena sacrificed for/to Achilles as well. War itself demands a kind of sacrifice from soldiers, but the Iliad in particular sets up the Achaeans to be ‘sacrificial victims’ to Achilles’ honor while the surrogacy of Patroklos has something of a ritual substitution sacrifice to it. (Margo Kitts’ work is particular good at summarizing issues regarding sacrifice in the Iliad)

There have been questions for some time about to what extent Achilles’ sacrifice echoes historical practices. In addition to myths of human sacrifice in Athens, as well as in Sparta and Syracuse, and more broadly in myth among the family of Lykaon, or the self-sacrifice of the Lokrian Maidens, there is some archaeological evidence of human sacrifice in ancient Greece and theoretical speculation that ‘scapegoat’ narratives may have been related to ancient sacrificial practices. Herodotus mentions it too, but as an extreme. There is some caution here though: As Albert Henrichs suggests, the evidence for human sacrifice outside of Greece is far better than inside it, during the bronze age.

As Dennis Hughes argues, our interpretations have tended to imagine that this sacrifice was like other animal sacrifices or performed to provide Patroklos attendants in the Underworld and that the Iliad’s composers had lost knowledge about the practice. The other possibility—that Achilles’ act is meant as extreme, as an extension of his rage, is reconcilable with human sacrifice as an actual or forgotten practice. As Hughes notes, it seems difficult to argue that Homer is “downplaying” the incident when he mentions it three times, goes to great length to describe it, and then leaves the human portion of the sacrifice in the rhetorically marked, final position. It is perfectly possible that Achilles’ sacrifice is both an extreme outlet for his rage and a recognizable ‘ritual killing’ with real world antecedents.

This last point is important: As Henrichs argues, from the perspective of Greek myth and tradition, human sacrifice can happen but it is extreme and ritual killing “is something which uncivilized men inflict upon one another but which no Greek in his right mind with contemplate” (2019, 63). Achilles is steadily depicted throughout the Iliad as someone who has withdrawn from the communion of human beings, flirting with the excesses of the god of war when he is not descending to the animal realm. Tamara Neal demonstrates that Achilles has a particular blood-lust, marked even for the Iliad, shared with Ares and predatory animals in similes. His rage pushes him to animalistic and supernatural extreme, but at this moment in the epic, the sense seems more of irresolvable grief.

The excess of the sacrifice functions in part to characterize the agent of the act. As Sarah Hitch argues, sacrifices in the Iliad are subject to a system of reciprocity that emphasizes the status of the doer. The sacrifice in Iliad 23 is an evocation not just of the magnitude of Achilles’ grief, but the otherworldliness of his character. To my mind, it is part of a larger motif exploring the threat that figures like Achilles represent to their communities. Achilles’ life (and death) is one of cosmic proportion and significance. This sacrifice shows that his loss is too.

A short Bibliography on the sacrifice

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

Emily P. Austin, Grief and the hero: the futility of longing in the Iliad. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2021.

Bremmer, J. (1978) “Heroes, Rituals and the Trojan War,” Studi storico-religiosi 2, 5–38.

Burkert, W. (1966a) “Greek Tragedy and Sacrificial Ritual,” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies7, 87–121.

Clement, P. (1934) “New Evidence for the Origin of the Iphigeneia Legend,” L’Antiquité classique 3, 393–409.

Compton, Todd M. 2006. Victim of the Muses: Poet as Scapegoat, Warrior and Hero in Greco-Roman and Indo-European Myth and History. Hellenic Studies Series 11. Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies. 

Graf, F. (1978) “Die lokrischen Mädchen,” Studi storico-religiosi 2, 61–79

Henrichs, Albert. “3. Human sacrifice in Greek religion: Three case studies”. II Greek Myth and Religion, edited by Harvey Yunis, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2019, pp. 37-68. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110449242-003

Hitch, Sarah. 2009. King of Sacrifice: Ritual and Royal Authority in the Iliad. Hellenic Studies Series 25. Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies.

Hughes, Dennis. 1991. Human Sacrifice in Ancient Greece. Routledge.

Kitts, Margo. “KILLING, HEALING, AND THE HIDDEN MOTIF OF OATH-SACRIFICE IN ILIAD 21.” Journal of Ritual Studies 13, no. 2 (1999): 42–57. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44368561.

Kitts, Margo. “SACRIFICIAL VIOLENCE IN THE ILIAD.” Journal of Ritual Studies 16, no. 1 (2002): 19–39. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44368624.

Lesser, Rachel. 2022. Desire in the Iliad: The Force That Moves the Epic and Its Audience. Oxford.

Mylonas, George E. “Homeric and Mycenaean Burial Customs.” American Journal of Archaeology 52, no. 1 (1948): 56–81. https://doi.org/10.2307/500553.

Neal, Tamara. “Blood and Hunger in the Iliad.” Classical Philology 101, no. 1 (2006): 15–33. https://doi.org/10.1086/505669.

Redfield, James R. The Locrian Maidens: Love and Death in Italy. Princeton, 2004.

Seaford, Richard. “Homeric and Tragic Sacrifice.” Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974-) 119 (1989), 87-95

The Ghost of Patroklos in Iliad 23

This is one of a few posts dedicated to Iliad 23. 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.

Book 23, as I discuss in the first post, revisits political and heroic themes from books 1 and 2 and offers an opportunity for the epic’s participants and audience alike to reconsider issues of honor, distribution, and institutional order through Achilles’ chairmanship of the funeral games for Patroklos. Often these games are seen as “filler” or a digression following the violence and deaths of books 20-23; but as many others have noted, the whole book is a matter of ritual performance with deep ties both to the material experiences of ancient audiences and to myth in general.

One of the harder things for modern audiences to sense is the extent to which Patroklos’ death in the Iliad is anticipation of or in surrogacy for Achilles’ outside of the Iliad (usually located in the lost cyclic poem the Aethiopis). As I have written about before, I get a little nervous about some of the approaches that fall under the scholarly rubric of “neoanalysis”—the general approach that explores how the Iliad relates to ‘prior’ or, in better cases, ‘other’ narrative traditions. It makes me anxious because, while in its best form it can provide us with an idea of how the Iliad absorbs and responds to other motifs and stories, it too often provides the impression of hierarchical relationships between tales and that certain episodes were fixed in specific ‘poems’ to which ancient audiences had access.

There’s a lot of uncertainty in such assumptions about the relationship among various narratives and what audiences knew. When it comes to the funeral games in particular, this approach surfaces because they are often seen as an echo/doubling/recapitulation of/model for the funeral games for Achilles. As a general rule, I am not opposed to the idea that there is a significant relationship between the episodes, I just think it more likely that an epic grammar of funeral games developed around retelling of tales that centered the death of a great hero and, further, that the depictions of the burial honors for Patroklos and Achilles were so interdependent in their development over time that any ancient audience member would be hard-pressed to articulate clearly where one began and another ended.

This presupposes the timelessness of performance, the space that is created outside a hierarchy of what story was told when by the ever pressing now of the story being told. I think part of the power of the Iliad’s funeral games resides in how much we understand them as anticipating Achilles’ own death and burial. But given how much Achilles is central in the games and how thorough the political theme is, it is really hard to imagine how to evaluate this power. We would need to know what audiences knew, and that is at some level impossible.

Before we get to the games, however, we have the issue of the burial itself. One of the surprising things about book 23 is its setup: most people remember the elaborate games; I think far fewer remember clearly the continued mutilation of Hektor’s body at the book’s beginning, the slaughter of the 12 Trojan youths, or Patroklos appearing as a ghost to chide Achilles for not burying him already.

Homer, Iliad  23.59-92

Peleus’ son was lying there on the strip of the much-resounding sea,
Groaning deeply among the many Myrmidons,
In a cleared space where the waves were lapping at the sand.
There sleep found him, softening the concerns in his heart,
Once it fell around him, sweet. His powerful limbs were exhuasted
From chasing Hektor toward windy Troy.
Then the soul of pitiful Patroklos arrived
Alike to himself in every way, in size and his beautiful eyes-
His voice too, and he had similar clothes enveloping him.
He stood above Achilles’ head and addressed him.
“You are sleeping? Then you have forgotten me, Achilles.
You were never careless when I was alive, but now I am dead.
Bury me as quickly as possible so I can enter Hades’ gates.
The souls, those little ghosts of worn out men, are holding me far off—
They will not allow me to join them beyond the river at all,
But I am wandering like this through the home of wide-gated Hades.
Give me your hand too. I am in sorrow, since I will never again
Return from Hades, once you have granted me fire.
We will never again sit alive, apart from our dear companions,
Making our own plans together. Now a hateful fate has
Swallowed me whole, the allotment given as I was born.
This is your fate too, Achilles, even though you are like the gods,
To die in front of the walls of the wealthy Trojans.
But I am going to tell you something, I’ll ask you, if you’ll listen.
Don’t keep my bones apart from yours, Achilles,
But just as we were raised together in your home,
When I was just a young child and Menoitios send me
From Opoeis to your home because of a painful murder,
On that day when I killed the son of Aphidamas, the fool I was,
I did it unwillingly, sent into a rage over a game of dice.
Then the horseman Peleus welcomed me into your home
And raised me in a kind way and named me your attendant.
So have one vessel safeguard our bones together,
A golden chamber with two handles, the one your mother gave you.”

ἦλθε δ’ ἐπὶ ψυχὴ Πατροκλῆος δειλοῖο
πάντ’ αὐτῷ μέγεθός τε καὶ ὄμματα κάλ’ ἐϊκυῖα
καὶ φωνήν, καὶ τοῖα περὶ χροῒ εἵματα ἕστο·
στῆ δ’ ἄρ’ ὑπὲρ κεφαλῆς καί μιν πρὸς μῦθον ἔειπεν·
εὕδεις, αὐτὰρ ἐμεῖο λελασμένος ἔπλευ ᾿Αχιλλεῦ.
οὐ μέν μευ ζώοντος ἀκήδεις, ἀλλὰ θανόντος·
θάπτέ με ὅττι τάχιστα πύλας ᾿Αΐδαο περήσω.
τῆλέ με εἴργουσι ψυχαὶ εἴδωλα καμόντων,
οὐδέ μέ πω μίσγεσθαι ὑπὲρ ποταμοῖο ἐῶσιν,
ἀλλ’ αὔτως ἀλάλημαι ἀν’ εὐρυπυλὲς ῎Αϊδος δῶ.
καί μοι δὸς τὴν χεῖρ’· ὀλοφύρομαι, οὐ γὰρ ἔτ’ αὖτις
νίσομαι ἐξ ᾿Αΐδαο, ἐπήν με πυρὸς λελάχητε.
οὐ μὲν γὰρ ζωοί γε φίλων ἀπάνευθεν ἑταίρων
βουλὰς ἑζόμενοι βουλεύσομεν, ἀλλ’ ἐμὲ μὲν κὴρ
ἀμφέχανε στυγερή, ἥ περ λάχε γιγνόμενόν περ·
καὶ δὲ σοὶ αὐτῷ μοῖρα, θεοῖς ἐπιείκελ’ ᾿Αχιλλεῦ,
τείχει ὕπο Τρώων εὐηφενέων ἀπολέσθαι.
ἄλλο δέ τοι ἐρέω καὶ ἐφήσομαι αἴ κε πίθηαι·
μὴ ἐμὰ σῶν ἀπάνευθε τιθήμεναι ὀστέ’ ᾿Αχιλλεῦ,
ἀλλ’ ὁμοῦ ὡς ἐτράφημεν ἐν ὑμετέροισι δόμοισιν,
εὖτέ με τυτθὸν ἐόντα Μενοίτιος ἐξ ᾿Οπόεντος
ἤγαγεν ὑμέτερον δ’ ἀνδροκτασίης ὕπο λυγρῆς,
ἤματι τῷ ὅτε παῖδα κατέκτανον ᾿Αμφιδάμαντος
νήπιος οὐκ ἐθέλων ἀμφ’ ἀστραγάλοισι χολωθείς·
ἔνθά με δεξάμενος ἐν δώμασιν ἱππότα Πηλεὺς
ἔτραφέ τ’ ἐνδυκέως καὶ σὸν θεράποντ’ ὀνόμηνεν·
ὣς δὲ καὶ ὀστέα νῶϊν ὁμὴ σορὸς ἀμφικαλύπτοι
χρύσεος ἀμφιφορεύς, τόν τοι πόρε πότνια μήτηρ.

The sequence of events that leads up to this speech is remarkable enough that a scholiast felt the need to comment on the sudden change. At one moment, we are witnessing Achilles mourning on the sea, and then he is asleep and a dream is looming over him.

Schol. bT ad Hom. Il. 23.65a

“The sudden change is credible: for, after Achilles’ lamentations, the poet has devised something rather new, and he has provided words for someone who died through a dream.”

πιθανὴ ἡ περιπέτεια· μετὰ γὰρ τοὺς ᾿Αχιλλέως θρήνους ἐξεῦρέ τι καινότερον, καὶ τῷ τετελευτηκότι λόγους περιτιθεὶς διὰ τοῦ ὀνείρου.

The language the scholiast uses here—peripateia—is reminiscent of the terminology Aristotle uses for tragedy. In Greek drama, from an Aristotelian perspective, the peripateia is a reversal, a sudden inversion of fate or outcomes that (sometimes) drives audience and/or character towards a recognition (anagnorisis). The sudden turnabout here is nearly akin to a divine intervention. Patroklos appears, but as George Gazis notes, he is not an envoy of the dead in the same way that is represented in book 11 of the Odyssey. Instead, he appears as a dream. The immediacy of it and the rapid transition leaves us little time to think about the other dream in the Iliad, the false dream sent by Zeus in book 2 to persuade Agamemnon to lead his people to war that day (in part to honor Achilles’ request and advance the ‘plan’ of the Iliad).

I bring up that first dream for thematic and structural reasons. Thematically, dreams elsewhere are sent by the gods. Here, we have no agent, no spoken reason. Unbidden, a supernatural force appears to Achilles and confirms his course of action, providing additional information to the audience. It is tempting to read this, as some do, as an exploration of Achilles’ guilt rather than a literal ghost in a dream; but the vividness and detail leads me to believe that ancient audiences would have taken this as a literal dream. Again, thematically, this makes sense for where we are in the epic.

Dreams and sleep are often paired in early Greek myth as moving between the realms of the seen (the world of the living/day) and the unseen (the underworld/night). Achilles, moreover, has been depicted directly and indirectly as separated from the realm of the living, so much so that when Priam travels to meet him in Iliad 24, he is guided by Hermes, whose role as the psychopompos (the “marshal of souls”) is to guide the dead to Hades’ realm. Perhaps we can imagine Achilles in a space where the fabric between the realms is thinning, frayed, and Patroklos can reach him thanks to their indelible bond, stretching across life’s final boundary.

(Although, to be fair, this sounds a bit too much like a tagline for the movie Ghost.)

Whether we see Patroklos as an actual ghost or an outlet for Achilles’ conscience, the speech provides some background for their relationship and an implicit critique of Achilles. The story Patroklos tells about how they came to know one another is explained in another scholion.

Schol. D ad Il. 12.1 [see Apollodorus 3.13.8]

“Menoitios’ son Patroklos grew up in Opos in Locris but was exiled for an involuntary mistake. For he killed a child his age, the son of the memorable Amphidamas Kleisonumos, or, as some say, Aianes, because he was angry over dice. He went to Phthia in exile for this crime and got to know Achilles there because of his kinship with Peleus. They cemented a deep friendship with one another before they went on the expedition against Troy. This story is from Hellanicus.”

Μενοιτίου ἄλκιμος υἱός] Πάτροκλος ὁ Μενοιτίου τρεφόμενος ἐν ᾿Οποῦντι τῆς Λοκρίδος περιέπεσεν ἀκουσίωι πταίσματι· παῖδα γὰρ ἡλικιώτην ᾿Αμφιδάμαντος οὐκ ἀσήμου Κλ<ε>ισώνυμον, ἢ ὥς τινες Αἰάν<ην>, περὶ ἀστραγάλων ὀργισθεὶς ἀπέκτεινεν· ἐπὶ τούτωι δὲ φυγὼν εἰς Φθίαν ἀφίκετο, κἀκεῖ κατὰ συγγένειαν Πηλέως ᾿Αχιλλεῖ συνῆν. φιλίαν δὲ ὑπερβάλλουσαν πρὸς ἀλλήλους διαφυλάξαντες ὁμοῦ ἐπὶ ῎Ιλιον ἐστράτευσαν. ἡ ἱστορία παρὰ ῾Ελλανίκωι.

The detail I think is really interesting here and in the speech is that Achilles and Patroklos were brought together by a rage-induced mistake that shattered one community only to create a new one. Patroklos starts out by telling Achilles that he is still suffering, that he cannot rest because Achilles has not cared for his body. Achilles’ rage, then, has been entirely for himself. It had no hope of raising the dead and only has increased the amount of bodies to be buried.

Patroklos reminds Achilles of his own story only after he asks him to make sure that their bones are interred together in one vessel. When he reminds Achilles of how they came to be together, he uses a thematic word for anger (kholôtheis) that should remind audiences of all the damage anger has done in the Iliad’s world. I suspect that Patroklos’ story redounds on Achilles as well, inviting him (and us) to think about the other actions undertaking “unwillingly” and their outcomes, the way Achilles’ anger led him to pray for his people to suffer, the way his people suffering meant Patroklos’ death too.

The point, I think, is an analogical one: the union in death following rage and its ruin is a remaking of life, but in a final fashion. Just as Patroklos’ childhood error led to an adolescent life with Achilles, so too will Achilles’ adult mistake still lead to a kind of eternal life with Patroklos. It is a small solace and no replacement for a life together, but it is something. And it is something Achilles, now, has to create on his own. If there is a peripateia in this moment, it is to be found both in the plot (a move from lament to action) and in the character who drives the plot.

The blending of the Achilles and Patroklos in death—both through the metaphorical overlapping of tales and the literal blending of bones—should remind us of the powerful themes of surrogacy that bind Achilles and Patroklos further together. In this near-final articulation, however, I wonder how much we need to consider Achilles response and the subtle narrative revelation that Achilles reached out to him, but could not grab him, because his spirit “like smoke”. Achilles’ request for an embrace is unfulfilled, yet he turns almost immediately to start the process of burial.

One of the things I emphasize when talking about Achilles’ amazing second lament for Patroklos is that he still seems to be expressing his own sense of loss primarily. This is, of course, a realistic representation of grieving and I may be mistaken in believing that it is only a step toward a broader sense of loss in the world. When my father died suddenly at 61, I don’t know that I started to grieve for what he lost until years later and it was prompted mostly by feelings of joy, tempered by his absence. In times of loss I have come to think more about what the missing miss out on: for my father and his mother, getting to see my children born and grow, taking joy at their joy in the world, and comfort with a world born anew through them.

In my reading of the multiple audiences to Achilles’ speech about his disappointed expectation that Patroklos would be the one to live on and take his place in the world, I think the Iliad is anticipating the epic’s end, when Achilles ever so briefly sees Priam as real through their intersecting yet separate pain. Part of the point of dramatic narrative, I think, is to give us an access to a world outside ourselves, to help us fill our bodies and minds with others’ light and love, both so we can be more unto ourselves and we can make a better world alongside others because we know they are real.

But even this approach, as magnanimous as it might sounds, runs the risk of instrumentalizing others’ pain for the sake of individual gain. Just as easily as someone can mourn what a loved one misses out on, we could take the opposite corollary, to celebrate all they will not suffer. Such a pessimistic view is not far off from the so-called “wisdom of Silenus,” that the best fortune is not to live long or die in glory, but never to have been at all.

And yet, for all it’s apparent logic, this seems too bleak. An epic so invested in showing us the power of loss, can’t possibly be telling us that a superior alternative is never feeling love at all.

A short Bibliography on the Ghost of Patroklos

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

Anderson, Warren D. “Achilles and the Dark Night of the Soul.” The Classical Journal 51, no. 6 (1956): 265–68. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3292885.

Arft, J., and J. M. Foley. 2015. “The Epic Cycle and Oral Tradition.” In Fantuzzi and Tsagalis, 78–95.

Emily P. Austin, Grief and the hero: the futility of longing in the Iliad. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2021.

Jonathan Burgess. The Tradition of the Trojan War in Homer and the Epic Cycle. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. 

Fantuzzi, M. 2012. Achilles in Love. Oxford.

Devereux, George. “Achilles’ «suicide » in the Iliad.” Helios, vol. VI, no. 2, 1978-1979, pp. 3-15.

G

azis, George Alexander, ‘The Dream of Achilles’, Homer and the Poetics of Hades (Oxford, 2018; online edn, Oxford Academic, 24 May 2018), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198787266.003.0003, accessed 19 Mar. 2024.

Lesser, Rachel. 2022. Desire in the Iliad: The Force That Moves the Epic and Its Audience. Oxford.

Lowenstam, Steven. “Patroclus’ death in the Iliad and the inheritance of an Indo-European myth.” Archaeological News, vol. VI, 1977, pp. 72-76.

Mouratidis, Ioannis. “Anachronism in the Homeric games and sports.” Nikephoros, vol. III, 1990, pp. 11-22.

MUELLNER, L. Metonymy, Metaphor, Patroklos, Achilles. Classica: Revista Brasileira de Estudos Clássicos, [s. l.], v. 32, n. 2, p. 139–155, 2019. DOI 10.24277/classica.v32i2.884

Mylonas, George E. “Homeric and Mycenaean Burial Customs.” American Journal of Archaeology 52, no. 1 (1948): 56–81. https://doi.org/10.2307/500553.

Paschalis, Sergios. “The Epic Hero as Sacrificial Victim: Patroclus and Palinurus.” Hermathena, no. 199 (2015): 135–58. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26921696.

Rengakos, Antonios. “Aethiopis.” The Greek Epic Cycle and its ancient reception : a companion. Eds. Fantuzzi, Marco and Tsagalis, Christos. Cambridge: Cambridge University Pr., 2015. 306-317.

Roller, Lynn E. “Funeral Games in Greek Art.” American Journal of Archaeology 85, no. 2 (1981): 107–19. https://doi.org/10.2307/505030.

Russo, Joseph. “The Ghost of Patroclus and the Language of Achilles”. Euphrosyne: Studies in Ancient Philosophy, History, and Literature, edited by Peter Burian, Jenny Strauss Clay and Gregson Davis, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2020, pp. 209-222. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110605938-012

Warwick, C. (2019). We Two Alone: Conjugal Bonds and Homoerotic Subtext in the Iliad. Helios 46(2), 115-139. https://doi.org/10.1353/hel.2019.0007.

Malcolm M. Willcock, ‘The funeral games of Patroclus’, Proceedings of the Classical Association, LXX. (1973) 36.

Introducing Iliad 23

This post is a basic introduction to reading Iliad 23. Here is a link to the overview of Iliad 22 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.

Book 23 of the Iliad provides a break in the relentless action following Achilles’ return. It is entirely dedicated to the honoring of Patroklos, both through his burial and the funeral games in his honor. But I suspect that many audiences miss out on the sustained rituals for Patroklos because the games become such an engrossing distraction. The book starts with a reminder that Patroklos remains unburied (through a conversation with a ghost!), then moves through the preparations for his cremation and burial, and then proceeds through a long series of athletic contests in his honor. Along the way, we have some human sacrifice when Achilles kills the twelve Trojan youths he selected in book 21 to slaughter over Patroklos’ pyre.

Iliad 23 is actually anything but fun and games, even if it appears to be a bit of a diversion (or what some have dismissed as a “mere interlude”). The burial is an important part of heroic honors for the dead, yet is marked by a strange sacrifice and the ongoing mutilation of Hektor’s corpse; the games echo the political questions of Iliad 1, 2, 9, and 19; and the funeral games themselves may also be engaging with traditions both of the death of Patroklos outside the Iliad and of the games that were held following Achilles’ death. As such, each of part 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 book 21 speaks most directly to politics, heroism, and narrative traditions.

Contextualizing the Funeral Games

Funeral games are an important context in Greek narrative from myths around the foundation of the four major Panhellenic contests (Olympian, Nemean, Pythian, and Isthmian games) to providing settings and inflection points for myths in general.. Funeral games feature in narrative traditions around Thebes (especially Oedipus and Laius) and Pelias (which leads to the voyage of Jason and the Argonauts) and extend to less well-known traditions like those of Erginos of Orchomenos. Of course, by the classical age, games had become a significant ritualized part of aristocratic culture in Greece.

It is that groundedness of athletic contests in elite/aristocratic culture that can provide some perspective for modern audiences to understand how ancient audiences saw games in the Homeric epics. In the Archaic and Classical periods, Panhellenic games developed as the context for aristocrats from individual city states to compete against each other outside of war, to assert/establish their worth vis a vis their peers (for themselves and for people back in their cities), and to explore a shared elite culture across city-boundaries. Athletic competitions are the kinds of things that ‘heroes’ do when they aren’t in war or some civil conflict.

There’s some disagreement about how much of what is represented would have been at home in the world of Homeric audiences. Ioannis Mouratidis suggests that the Iliad includes material from the oral tradition going all the way back to the Mycenaen age but including elements through the Archaic age as well, reflecting the movement from an autocratic model to the city-state that shaped the perspectives of most ancient audiences. Jonas Grethlein adds to this the recognition that the burial and the games are ritual acts too—as such, they are doubly removed from political ‘reality’ but serve even more as a metanarrative device, another mirror to allow internal and external audiences to work through interpretations of the epic.

As such, games in ancient Greek culture and in Homeric epic are never just play—they are opportunities to create and establish individual identities in a competitive yet not destructive context. Within Homer, then, the games provide a familiar, albeit likely still fantastic, context for ancient audiences while also offering a context for participants in epic to revisit the political rancor of book 1. As William Scott (1997) notes, the games create a cooperative atmosphere where Achilles is in charge to enforce a particular order of games and of valuing other people. In its structures and discussions, however, it corresponds both to the break of Iliad 1 and the reunification of the Achaean assembly in book 2 (As Richardson points out [1993, 164-6]. Cf. Whitman 1958, 261-4). As several scholars have point out, there is a close connection between the institutional structure of the assembly throughout the Iliad and context of the Funeral Games. See, for example, Wilson 2002, 57 and Hammer 2002, 134ff. Deborah Beck (2005, 233-41) makes explicit the connection between the Achaean assembly and the funeral games.

The games function both as a space for re-imagining politics and for putting Achilles in a position to lead. For the former, Hammer offers five reasons for this (Hammer 1997, 14-16; cf. Ulf 2004.): (1) The burial rites are performed by the Achaeans as a community; (2) The subsequent games performed at the gravesite of a dead hero evokes cult-hero practices; (3) Public challenges regarding prize distribution are offered and answered; (4) Formal procedures for adjudicating disputes appear; and (5) Zeus is invoked as a guarantor of distribution in a different way.  Good analyses of the games (see below) look at the way the disputes between characters are played out, the language they use, and what happens when someone intervenes or mediates.

While some see Iliad 23 as a collective effort to reimagine Greek political activity (see, e.g. Donlan 1979), many others have seen the games as being particular to Achilles’ efforts to rethink and rework the events that dominated the epic’s beginning. Kenneth Kitchell (1998) argues that Achilles’ settlement of the disputes in the games as well as his treatment of the wrestling match and spear-contest illustrate his profound character change while Oliver Taplin has suggested that “one of the main poetic functions of the funeral games [is] to show Achilles soothing and resolving public strife, instead of provoking and furthering it” (1992, 253). Recently, Adrian Kelly has emphasized that the funeral games are the last opportunity for Achilles to demonstrate excellence in speaking and action, straining for that heroic ideal of surpassing everyone. And the results, according to Kelly, are mixed: “It is entirely fitting, then, that Achilles’ arbitrations in the Funeral Games show his shortcomings, and his exceptionalism, all too clearly, both in terms of what he does and what others achieve without him” (108).

As I will discuss in one of the subsequent posts about this book, the funeral games for Patroklos are a fantasy of political redistribution that help audiences think through just how difficult it is to resolve the tensions left over from book 1. If they demonstrate anything, it is that maintaining a status quo without coercive violence is hard work, but perhaps a more possible goal than a world where everyone is valued as they think they should be.

Reading Questions for book 23

How does the conversation with Patroklos’ ghost shape our understanding of his relationship with Achilles?

How does Achilles run the funerary games?

How do the debates in the games reflect/refract the conflicts of book 1

Short bibliography on the Funeral games

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

Deborah Beck. Homeric Conversation. Washington, D.C.: Center for Hellenic Studies, 2005.

Walter Donlan. “The Structure of Authority in the Iliad.” Arethusa 12 (1979) 51-70.

Dunkle, Roger. “Nestor, Odysseus, and the μῆτις-βίη antithesis. The funeral games, Iliad 23.” Classical World, vol. LXXXI, 1987, pp. 1-17.

Ellsworth, J. D.. “Ἀγων νεῶν. An unrecognized metaphor in the Iliad.” Classical Philology, vol. LXIX, 1974, pp. 258-264.

Elmer, D.F. (2013). The Poetics of Consent: Collective Decision Making and the Iliad. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press., https://doi.org/10.1353/book.21075.

Garland, R.S.J. “‘GERAS THANONTON’: AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE CLAIMS OF THE HOMERIC DEAD.” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, no. 29 (1982): 69–80. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43646122.

Grethlein, Jonas. “Epic narrative and ritual: the case of the funeral games in Iliad 23.” Literatur und Religion: Wege zu einer mythisch-rituellen Poetik bei den Griechen. Eds. Bierl, Anton, Lämmle, Rebecca and Wesselmann, Katharina. MythosEikonPoiesis; 1.1-2. Berlin ; New York: De Gruyter, 2007. 151-177.

Dean Hammer.“ ‘Who Shall Readily Obey?” Authority and Politics in the Iliad.” Phoenix 51 (1997) 1-24.

Kelly, Adrian. “Achilles in control ? : managing oneself and others in the Funeral Games.” Conflict and consensus in early Greek hexameter poetry. Eds. Bassino, Paola, Canevaro, Lilah Grace and Graziosi, Barbara. Cambridge: Cambridge University Pr., 2017. 87-108. Doi: 10.1017/9781316800034.005

Kenneth F. Kitchell. “‘But the mare I will not give up’: The Games in Iliad 23.” The Classical Bulletin 74 (1998) 159-71.

Mouratidis, Ioannis. “Anachronism in the Homeric games and sports.” Nikephoros, vol. III, 1990, pp. 11-22.

Mylonas, George E. “Homeric and Mycenaean Burial Customs.” American Journal of Archaeology 52, no. 1 (1948): 56–81. https://doi.org/10.2307/500553.

Rengakos, Antonios. “Aethiopis.” The Greek Epic Cycle and its ancient reception : a companion. Eds. Fantuzzi, Marco and Tsagalis, Christos. Cambridge: Cambridge University Pr., 2015. 306-317.

Nicholas Richardson. The Iliad: A Commentary. Volume VI: Books 21-24. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Roller, Lynn E. “Funeral Games in Greek Art.” American Journal of Archaeology 85, no. 2 (1981): 107–19. https://doi.org/10.2307/505030.

Scott, William C.. “The etiquette of games in Iliad 23.” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, vol. 38, no. 3, 1997, pp. 213-227.

H. A. Shapiro, Mario Iozzo, Adrienne Lezzi-Hafter, The François Vase: New Perspectives (2 vols.). Akanthus proceedings 3. Kilchberg, Zurich: Akanthus, 2013. 192; 7, 47 p. of plates.

Oliver Taplin. Homeric Soundings: The Shape of the Iliad. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Christoph Ulf. “Iliad 23: die Bestattung des Patroklos und das Sportfest der “Patroklos-Spiele”: zwei Teile einer mirror-story.” in Herbert Heftner and Hurt Tomaschitz (eds.). Ad Fontes! Festschrift für Gerhard Dobesch zum 65 Geburtstag am 15. September 2004. Wien: Phoibos, 2004, 73-86.

Cedric Hubbell Whitman. Homer and the Heroic Tradition. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958.

Malcolm M. Willcock, ‘The funeral games of Patroclus’, Proceedings of the Classical Association, LXX. (1973) 36.

Donna F. Wilson. Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Here’s an image

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kleitias_e_vasaio_ergotimos,_cratere_fran%C3%A7ois,_570_ac_ca._giochi_funebri_per_patroclo_02.JPG