Achilles’ Lament for Patroklos in Iliad 19

This is one of a few posts dedicated to Iliad 19. 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.

Following the political reconciliation, book 19 of the Iliad shifts back to the personal, exploring further the impact of Patroklos’ death on others.

Homer, Iliad 19. 309-340

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

῝Ως εἰπὼν ἄλλους μὲν ἀπεσκέδασεν βασιλῆας,
δοιὼ δ’ ᾿Ατρεΐδα μενέτην καὶ δῖος ᾿Οδυσσεὺς
Νέστωρ ᾿Ιδομενεύς τε γέρων θ’ ἱππηλάτα Φοῖνιξ
τέρποντες πυκινῶς ἀκαχήμενον· οὐδέ τι θυμῷ
τέρπετο, πρὶν πολέμου στόμα δύμεναι αἱματόεντος.
μνησάμενος δ’ ἁδινῶς ἀνενείκατο φώνησέν τε·
ἦ ῥά νύ μοί ποτε καὶ σὺ δυσάμμορε φίλταθ’ ἑταίρων
αὐτὸς ἐνὶ κλισίῃ λαρὸν παρὰ δεῖπνον ἔθηκας
αἶψα καὶ ὀτραλέως, ὁπότε σπερχοίατ’ ᾿Αχαιοὶ
Τρωσὶν ἐφ’ ἱπποδάμοισι φέρειν πολύδακρυν ῎Αρηα.
νῦν δὲ σὺ μὲν κεῖσαι δεδαϊγμένος, αὐτὰρ ἐμὸν κῆρ
ἄκμηνον πόσιος καὶ ἐδητύος ἔνδον ἐόντων
σῇ ποθῇ· οὐ μὲν γάρ τι κακώτερον ἄλλο πάθοιμι,
οὐδ’ εἴ κεν τοῦ πατρὸς ἀποφθιμένοιο πυθοίμην,
ὅς που νῦν Φθίηφι τέρεν κατὰ δάκρυον εἴβει
χήτεϊ τοιοῦδ’ υἷος· ὃ δ’ ἀλλοδαπῷ ἐνὶ δήμῳ
εἵνεκα ῥιγεδανῆς ῾Ελένης Τρωσὶν πολεμίζω·
ἠὲ τὸν ὃς Σκύρῳ μοι ἔνι τρέφεται φίλος υἱός,
εἴ που ἔτι ζώει γε Νεοπτόλεμος θεοειδής.
πρὶν μὲν γάρ μοι θυμὸς ἐνὶ στήθεσσιν ἐώλπει
οἶον ἐμὲ φθίσεσθαι ἀπ’ ῎Αργεος ἱπποβότοιο
αὐτοῦ ἐνὶ Τροίῃ, σὲ δέ τε Φθίην δὲ νέεσθαι,
ὡς ἄν μοι τὸν παῖδα θοῇ ἐνὶ νηῒ μελαίνῃ
Σκυρόθεν ἐξαγάγοις καί οἱ δείξειας ἕκαστα
κτῆσιν ἐμὴν δμῶάς τε καὶ ὑψερεφὲς μέγα δῶμα.
ἤδη γὰρ Πηλῆά γ’ ὀΐομαι ἢ κατὰ πάμπαν
τεθνάμεν, ἤ που τυτθὸν ἔτι ζώοντ’ ἀκάχησθαι
γήραΐ τε στυγερῷ καὶ ἐμὴν ποτιδέγμενον αἰεὶ
λυγρὴν ἀγγελίην, ὅτ’ ἀποφθιμένοιο πύθηται.
῝Ως ἔφατο κλαίων, ἐπὶ δὲ στενάχοντο γέροντες,
μνησάμενοι τὰ ἕκαστος ἐνὶ μεγάροισιν ἔλειπον·
μυρομένους δ’ ἄρα τούς γε ἰδὼν ἐλέησε Κρονίων…

This speech follows Briseis’ lament for Patroklos and provides opportunities for thematic and metapoetic reflection. First, when it comes to the content of the speech, Achilles moves through a range of motifs that echo Briseis’ invocation of her dead relatives and the re-location of her hopes for continued life in Achilles (as promised by Patroklos). As Casey Dué observes, these themes are echoes of what Andromache says to Hektor in book 7. There is a significant difference in Achilles’ rumination, however: where Andromache and Briseis invest a single person with the lost hopes of larger families, Achilles projects the loss of a single person on his living father and son. Andromache and Briseis try to find some comfort in life for the loss of many in the hopes of one while Achilles allows the loss of one to articulate his separation from everyone else.

In doing so, Achilles articulates a collapse between himself and Patroklos. His speech is remarkable because he does not mourn his own loss of life (as is clear from his speech in Iliad 18) but instead shows that his hope for life after death was based in Patroklos out-living him. And the way he talks about this frames them as replacements for each other, inverting what actually happens in the Iliad. In book 16, Patroklos literally takes Achilles’ place in battle, wearing his armor as one might a lover’s clothes and facing death in his stead. In book 19, Achilles shows that he expected Patroklos to replace him in life, to take his place as a surrogate father to Neoptolemos, returning him to the home he has never seen to meet the grandfather he has never known.

The elision of identity in Achilles’ speech is facilitated in part by the way he uses Homeric language. There are ambiguities that may leave the audience briefly lost, but they also point to the overlap in Achilles’ mind: consider line 314/5 where Achilles says of Peleus that he is “bereft of a son like this, but he [I]  am fighting in a foreign land….” (χήτεϊ τοιοῦδ’ υἷος· ὃ δ’ ἀλλοδαπῷ ἐνὶ δήμῳ / εἵνεκα ῥιγεδανῆς ῾Ελένης Τρωσὶν πολεμίζω). It is very difficult to convey in English the postponement of meaning in these lines. The qualitative demonstrative τοιοῦδ’ (“of this kind of…”) modifies the word “son” (υἷος), yet, given the context it is unclear whether Achilles is referring to himself as the kind of person Peleus mourns over or Patroklos.

The following words make it clear to me that he likely means Patroklos, at first. After using the demonstrative, Achilles shifts to the nominative singular article ὃ followed by what Egbert Bakker has called the discourse shifting particle δ’. The significance of this technical terminology is that in Homer the combination of a stated article with the particle (ὃ δ’) frequently indicates a subject change. In this case, it increases the case that we are supposed to imagine Achilles as in some way contrasting the referent of the demonstrative “someone like this” with pronoun.

But it is even more dizzying, because it is not clear from that ὃ δ’ that Achilles is talking about himself and not another person until the end of the following line when we get to the first-person verb πολεμίζω. The closest English approximation would be something like “bereft of a son just like this while this guy in a foreign land, for the sake of horrible Helen, I, am fighting the Trojans”. And if it is somewhat unconvincing that the movement from the demonstrative to the pronoun χήτεϊ τοιοῦδ’ υἷος· ὃ δ’ indicates a shift in thinking about Patroklos to Achilles, some lines later Achilles moves back to Patroklos clearly in contrasting them when he imagines that he was going to die “here in Troy, but you [Patroklos] would return home…” The adverbial αὐτοῦ ἐνὶ Τροίῃ breaks at the same metrical position in the line as χήτεϊ τοιοῦδ’  and is followed with σὲ δέ just as the earlier was followed by ὃ δ’. And I don’t think the impact is unclear: Achilles struggles in that first part of the speech to distinguish between his grief and the object of his grief, but when he articulates his lost hopes from the past he can clearly say that he expected to die but that Patroklos would live in his place.

The unfolding associations of replacement and surrogacy should make us, as an audience, reconsider what happens in Iliad 16. Lenny Muellner long ago shared with me an unpublished talk in honor of his Steven Lowenstam who passed away too early. In it, he builds from Lowenstam’s dissertation The Death of Patroclus: A Study in Typology to make observations on the relationship of Achilles and Patroklos. Lowenstam’s dissertation in part explores how the therapon (attendant, ‘henchman’, assistant) may be related to an ancient Hittite practice of a figure who takes a king’s place and dies in his place in battle. Here, Achilles shows that he imagined himself as the one to die in battle and Patroklos as the one to live on in his place. Lenny explains:

 “The origin, in fact, of the modern psychological term alter ego is Patroklos himself. It is actually a Latin translation of a Greek proverb that defines the Greek word philos, the word that we translate ‘friend,’: ti esti philos? the proverb goes, ‘what is a friend?’; the answer is allos ego, ‘another I,’ an alter ego. And the epic tells us that Patroklos is Achilles’s philtatos hetairos, ‘most philoscompanion.’ The German Classicist Erwin Rohde applied this designation to Patroklos in his masterpiece, Psyche; from there it apparently entered the vocabulary of Freud and Jung, perhaps via Nietzsche.”

Lenny goes on to explore via the work of the child psychologist D. W. Winnicott the tension between Achilles treating Patroklos as a metaphor for himself (when he goes in his place in book 16) and as a metonym, when Achilles sees Patroklos’ death as in fact his own and not a representation of it in book 18. This follow up speech in book 19 (which Lenny leaves for others to figure out) shows Achilles roiling with pain at the violent resolution of this tension: when he articulates his hope that Patroklos would have been his therapon in life. As Lenny writes, the pain Achilles expresses in book 18 is related in part to the core meaning of philos, “friend, near and dear” to indicate something so close and important as to be a part of oneself.

Despite all this, what I think is missing from Achilles at this moment is the realization that in his imagined future, Patroklos would have been as broken and fragmented without Achilles as Achilles is without him now. And the ability to understand this, to see other’s realness through one’s own grief is the space Achilles has still to travel before he meets Priam in book 24.

It is in this potential for narrative to bridge that space between oneself and others that I think this scene has more yet to teach us. Achilles’ speech is also amazing for its internal and external framing and what they both reveal about how Homeric poetry works. For the first, consider Achilles’ rejection of food. Scholars often write that once Patroklos has died, Achilles symbolically enters the realm of the dead—he refuses to eat or engage with the living. I don’t think this is at all wrong, but the Homeric narrative also offers a more immediate cause: Achilles says he does not want to eat because Patroklos is the one who used to feed him. A scholion is particularly insightful here in sensing the associative leaps in Achilles’ grief.

Schol. bT ad Hom. Il.19.316a ex

    “you offered me a sweet meal”: the lament [responds]to what has just happened. For they were begging him to eat, and he was reminded of the table on which his friend used to serve him often. . It is customary to talk to the dead as if to the living. And what he means is that what is sweet is a meal offered to him by the hands of someone he loves.”

ex. λαρὸν παρὰ δεῖπνον ἔθηκας: ἀπὸ τῶν γινομένων ὁ θρῆνος· ἐπεὶ γὰρ ᾔτουν αὐτὸν φαγεῖν, ὑπομιμνῄσκεται τραπέζης, ἣν ὁ φίλος αὐτῷ παρετίθει πολλάκις. ἠθικὸν δὲ τὸ ὡς ζῶντι διαλέγεσθαι τῷ νεκρῷ. καὶ λαρὸν δεῖπνον φησὶ τὸ ὑπὸ τῶν τοῦ φιλουμένου χειρῶν παρατεθειμένον.

As anyone who has ever lost a loved one knows, the magnitude of death is inconceivable. We absorb the basic fact of it but the shape of someone’s absence in a life built around them is impossible to grasp at once: we lose them again in countless different ways as we witness our lives without them. Achilles does not care about the food, he is undone by the reminder of living with Patroklos and the future meals he will never share with him.

Grief is associative and unpredictable, it moves like water, filling the space open to it, dripping, trickling, relentless. This passage helps us see as well how Achilles’ grief is metonymic for his own loss and others as well, and this is part of the external poetics I mentioned above. Note how the speech’s introduction positions Achilles as mourning constantly “as he recalled” (μνησάμενος δ’ ἁδινῶς…). The end of the speech reminds us that other people are listening to him as well and are changed and moved in turn by his mourning. The Greek elders mourn in addition (ἐπὶ δὲ στενάχοντο γέροντες) and not because of Patroklos, but as they recall what they have left behind (μνησάμενοι τὰ ἕκαστος ἐνὶ μεγάροισιν ἔλειπον).

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

Narrative Blends, Audiences inside and out

I have written on several occasions about Mark Turner’s approach to narrative in The Literary Mind. He suggests that what happens when we experience stories is that we don’t recreate the world the story comes from but instead create a blend between the world of our stories and our own experiences. In doing so, we transform narratives and are transformed by it. Another step I usually emphasize is that while our own blending of narratives and the world are idiopathic, connected to our own unique and embodied experiences, we can bring our narrative worlds closer together by sharing them with other people, by measuring our responses to theirs: the iterative, collective responses to Achilles’ lament are poised on that shift from the realization of the other in the individual and the (re)creation of a shared understanding in collectivized reactions.

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

Achilles’ lament for Patroklos has more than one internal audience. First, as we have just seen, the elders of the Achaeans join Achilles’ mourning and move through it to reflecting on their own lives. Such a move is anticipated right before Achilles’ speech when the women around Briseis join her in mourning:

Homer, Iliad 19.301-308

“So she spoke in mourning, and the woman joined them in grieving
Over Patroklos as a beginning [prophasis], but each of them [then] their own pains.
Then the elders of the Achaeans gathered around him
As they were begging him to eat, but he was denying them as he mourned:
‘I am begging you, if anyone of my dear companions is listening to me,
Not to tell me to fill my dear heart with either food or drink
When this terrible grief [akhos] has come over me.
I will wait and I will hold out steadfastly until the sun goes down.”

῝Ως ἔφατο κλαίουσ’, ἐπὶ δὲ στενάχοντο γυναῖκες
Πάτροκλον πρόφασιν, σφῶν δ’ αὐτῶν κήδε’ ἑκάστη.
αὐτὸν δ’ ἀμφὶ γέροντες ᾿Αχαιῶν ἠγερέθοντο
λισσόμενοι δειπνῆσαι· ὃ δ’ ἠρνεῖτο στεναχίζων·
λίσσομαι, εἴ τις ἔμοιγε φίλων ἐπιπείθεθ’ ἑταίρων,
μή με πρὶν σίτοιο κελεύετε μηδὲ ποτῆτος
ἄσασθαι φίλον ἦτορ, ἐπεί μ’ ἄχος αἰνὸν ἱκάνει·
δύντα δ’ ἐς ἠέλιον μενέω καὶ τλήσομαι ἔμπης.

Briseis’ mourning is something of gateway for the women who mourn along with them. The Homeric narrative did not have to be this specific about the content of their mourning. And the language itself is somewhat uncommon for Homer: the only other time the word prophasis appears in Homer is under 100 lines previous when Agamemnon swears he never had sex with Briseis (οὔτ’ εὐνῆς πρόφασιν κεχρημένος οὔτέ τευ ἄλλου, 262). Here, we might translate prophasis as a ‘pretext’ or ‘excuse’. But in the narrative of the women mourning, these English translations seem too dismissive or pejorative. Perhaps ‘prelude’ is more appropriate, but even this seems insufficient convey the sense of beginning and transition, that slippage from looking outward to inward, that movement from someone else’s story to your own.

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

A short Bibliography on Patroklos and Achilles

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

Allan, William. “Arms and the man: Euphorbus, Hector, and the death of Patroclus.” Classical Quarterly, N. S., vol. 55, no. 1, 2005, pp. 1-16. Doi: 10.1093/cq/bmi00

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.

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

Burgess, Jonathan. “Beyond Neo-Analysis: Problems with the Vengeance Theory.” The American Journal of Philology 118, no. 1 (1997): 1–19. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1562096.

Clark, Mark Edward, and William D. E. Coulson. “Memnon and Sarpedon.” Museum Helveticum 35, no. 2 (1978): 65–73. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24815318.

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

Gaca, Kathy L. “Reinterpreting the Homeric Simile of ‘Iliad’ 16.7-11: The Girl and Her Mother in Ancient Greek Warfare.” The American Journal of Philology 129, no. 2 (2008): 145–71. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27566700.

Karakantza, Efimia D.. “Who is liable for blame ? : Patroclus’ death in book 16 of the « Iliad ».” 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. 117-136.

Kesteren, Morgan van. “ERASTES-EROMENOS RELATIONSHIPS IN TWO ANCIENT EPICS.” CrossCurrents 69, no. 4 (2019): 351–64. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26851797.

Ledbetter, Grace M. “Achilles’ Self-Address: Iliad 16.7-19.” The American Journal of Philology 114, no. 4 (1993): 481–91. https://doi.org/10.2307/295421.

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.

Lowenstam, Steven. 1981. The Death of Patroclus: A Study in Typology.

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

Muellner, L. Unpublished Paper in Honor of Steven Lowenstam.

Paton, W. R. “The Armour of Achilles.” The Classical Review 26, no. 1 (1912): 1–4. http://www.jstor.org/stable/694771.

Porter, D. (2010). The Simile at Iliad 16.7–11 Once Again: Multiple Meanings. Classical World 103(4), 447-454. https://doi.org/10.1353/clw.2010.0016.

Ready, Jonathan. 2011. Character, Narrator, and Simile in the Iliad. Cambridge.

Scott, John A. “Paris and Hector in Tradition and in Homer.” Classical Philology 8, no. 2 (1913): 160–71. http://www.jstor.org/stable/262449.

Scodel, Ruth. “The Word of Achilles.” Classical Philology 84, no. 2 (1989): 91–99. http://www.jstor.org/stable/270264.

Sears, M. (2010). Warrior Ants: Elite Troops in the Iliad. Classical World 103(2), 139-155. https://doi.org/10.1353/clw.0.0182.

Warwick, C. (2019). The Maternal Warrior: Gender and Kleos in the Iliad. American Journal of Philology 140(1), 1-28. https://doi.org/10.1353/ajp.2019.0001.

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.

Introducing Iliad 19

This post is a basic introduction to reading Iliad 19. Here is a link to the overview of Iliad 18 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.

The 19^th book of the Iliad joins books 17 and 18 in postponing Achilles’ return to war and the transfer of his rage from the Achaeans to Hektor. While it is certainly true that the further delaying of the main event creates suspense in audiences, it would be a mistake to insist that this is all the book does. One of the important tasks for book 19 is to resolve the political conflict among the Greeks just enough to get them to return to battle. Thematically, however, it is too early in the plot to dispense with political themes altogether. So the book we get is an odd combination of ‘reconciling’ Agamemnon and Achilles and preparing the rest of the Greeks for battle.

In between these plot points there’s a little more, of course. Achilles tries not to fully engage with the public resolution, but must; he tries to avoid joining the community, and despite Odysseus’ attempts to convince them, he remains apart from them even while confirming he is a part of them. Once the public reconciliation is over, we get to hear Briseis speak for the first time in the epic, Achilles’ horses neigh, I mean, weigh in on affairs, and Athena ‘juices’ Achilles up with nektar and ambrosia because he refuses to eat until he has avenged his friend’s death. Oh, in the middle of all of this Agamemnon gives his most rhetorically effective speech in the epic. And soon after Achilles laments Patroklos again, did I mention that his horse tells him that he’s doing to die?

Each of these sections 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 19 speaks most directly to narrative traditions, politics and heroism.

The Stories We Tell; the Stories We Are

One of the things that is most remarkable about the political exchange at the beginning of Iliad 19 is the way the first two significant speeches engage with concerns about stories and storytelling. Achilles arrives and seems to indicate that he understands that he and Agamemnon are in a narrative other people will talk about in the future and then Agamemnon tells a story to explain/excuse his own behavior that may also contain a coded message about how to understand his relationship with Achilles.

Achilles starts the conversation:

Homer, Iliad 19.56-64

‘Son of Atreus, was this really better at all
for you and me, that we, even though we were upset,
raged with heart-rending strife because of a girl?
I wish that Artemis had killed her among the ships with an arrow
on that day when I took her after destroying Lurnêssos;
that way, so many Achaians wouldn’t have bitten the dust
at the hands of wretched men while I was raging.
That was more profitable for Hektor and the Trojans, but I think
that the Achaians will remember your and my strife for a long time.’

᾿Ατρεΐδη ἦ ἄρ τι τόδ’ ἀμφοτέροισιν ἄρειον
ἔπλετο σοὶ καὶ ἐμοί, ὅ τε νῶΐ περ ἀχνυμένω κῆρ
θυμοβόρῳ ἔριδι μενεήναμεν εἵνεκα κούρης;
τὴν ὄφελ’ ἐν νήεσσι κατακτάμεν ῎Αρτεμις ἰῷ
ἤματι τῷ ὅτ’ ἐγὼν ἑλόμην Λυρνησσὸν ὀλέσσας·
τώ κ’ οὐ τόσσοι ᾿Αχαιοὶ ὀδὰξ ἕλον ἄσπετον οὖδας
δυσμενέων ὑπὸ χερσὶν ἐμεῦ ἀπομηνίσαντος.
῞Εκτορι μὲν καὶ Τρωσὶ τὸ κέρδιον· αὐτὰρ ᾿Αχαιοὺς
δηρὸν ἐμῆς καὶ σῆς ἔριδος μνήσεσθαι ὀΐω.

One of the things I emphasize about this passage in an article about strife and epic is that the repeated use of eris indicates something of a ‘titling’ function. There are other epic motifs and traditions that are marked by this word and when Achilles uses it with a word for recalling/remembering, he is giving the impression that his actions will be part of someone else’s story. This is the kind of compressed language that is used to mark stories that are part of the klea andrôn discussed in posts on book 9. I think that Achilles is showing that he knows other people are already using his actions as a cautionary tale even as the Iliad is anticipating or announcing its own status as a paradigmatic narrative. In conjunction with this, Achilles offers an interpretation for internal and external audiences: this whole conflict was foolish because it was over a girl. And, it was better for their opponents. The reference to a “girl” is ambiguous to the point that any reasonable audience member could make the leap from the plot of the Iliad to the cause of the whole war.

So, Achilles’ speech metapoetically positions the Iliad as the kind of tale people should be judging for its effects on the world and which people should recall to make sense of their own lives or to use as a (counter)-example for their choices. This swift sequence prepares the audience for thinking about narrative interactions and how individuals and events in one story (or life) can map onto another to bring the meaning of both into relief.

And with this priming action made, Agamemnon arrives for his most dynamic speech of the epic. Once Achilles makes his statement, he basically insists on letting bygones be bygones because he wants to take the fast track to large-scale slaughter. The problem with this is that Agamemnon needs to go through the performance of reconciliation to reestablish his authority over Achilles before they return to war.  Agamemnon ruminates a bit on public speaking—after making a show of not being able to stand because of his injury suffered in battle, and then launches into a dizzying and remarkable speech

‘Atê is the oldest daughter of Zeus, the one who blinds everyone,
the ruinous one—her feet are light, for she never touches
the ground, instead she walks over the heads of men
and harms people as she goes, therein she binds one or another.
For, even Zeus indeed was once blinded, even though they say
that he is the best of men and gods; but really, Hera
since she’s female, deceived him with tricky-thoughts
on that day when Alkmene was about to give birth
to powerful Herakles in well-garlanded Thebes.
Truly, Zeus was boasting among all the gods then:
‘Hear me all you gods and all you goddesses
so that I may speak what the heart in my chest bids.
Today labor-bringing Eileithuia will show to the light of day
a man who will rule over all those who live around him,
an offspring of men who is also from my bloodline.’
Queen Hera, who was deceit-minded, then addressed him:
‘You lie and will not ever bring a completion to your plan.
Come now, swear a strong oath to me, Olympian,
that the man will really rule over all his neighbors
who on this day falls between the feet of a woman
from men who are offspring from your blood.’
So she spoke, but Zeus did not notice that she was being deceitful,
and he swore a great oath and thereupon was much blinded.
Then Hera leapt up and left the peak of Olympos
and quickly came to Achaian Argos where she found then
the strong wife of Sthenelos the son of Perseus
who was bearing a dear child and he was at his seventh month;
she led him to the life even though he was premature
and stopped the labor of Alkmene—she held back Eileithuia.
Then, she herself went as a messenger and addressed Zeus, Kronos’ son:
‘Zeus-father who delights in lightning, I will put a word in your thoughts;
for already a fine man who will rule over the Argives has been born,
Eurystheos, the child of Sthenelos, Perseus’ son,
your offspring—it is not unseemly for him to rule the Argives.’
So she spoke and a sharp grief cut through his deep mind.
Immediately he grabbed Atê by her well-tressed head
as he raged in his thoughts and swore a great oath
that she who blinds all would never come again
to Olympos and the starry sky.
As he said this he threw her from starry heaven,
once he had his hands around her, and she soon came to the works of men.
He lamented her always whenever he saw his own dear son
taking up the unseemly work of labors under Eurystheos.
So I too, when again and again great Hektor of the shining helm
was destroying the Argives near the prows of the ships,
I was not able to forget Atê by whom I was first blinded.
But since I was blinded and Zeus deprived me of my wits,
I wish to reconcile and to give a shining ransom.’

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Zeus starts with a story about “Atê” that seeks to exculpate him for his actions. At some level, we can accept his claim as being as verifiable as claiming “the devil made me do it” but he expands the comparison to say that even Zeus was blinded by Atê. So far, he makes the implicit claim that he is like Zeus and should be pardoned a disastrous mistake because even the king of the universe has screwed up. But then he shifts the tale, and this is where I think most people miss the point.

In the story Agamemnon tells, the specific instance of Zeus’ blindness was in boasting about the birth of a son who was going to be greater than everyone else. Hera tricked him into swearing an oath about it, and then through this oath and her machinations it turned out that Eurystheos—a distant descendent—was born in the appointed place of Herakles—the demigod destined to be the best hero ever. The story explains how even the king of the gods can lose control over the situation (as Agamemnon did) but it also offers what I see as a coded apology or explanation to Achilles about their situation.

The conflict in book 1 set a traditional king with a lot of power against a powerful demigod. Part of their conflict arose from a struggle over their respective honors given the difference in their implicit authority (Agamemnon) based on nobility of birth and place and their acquired authority, based on ability and performance. Achilles loses faith in the entire system of honor and in the Achaean community itself when his disproportionally extraordinary abilities are not matched with proportionally exceptional honors.

Of course, that last sentence is an overstatement. Achilles loses his wits in book 1 when he discovers that his ability and performance cannot safeguard him against abuse by someone of lesser ability in a greater position of power. When Agamemnon tells the story of Zeus’ mistake, he focuses on a similar injustice: even though Herakles is better by birth and ability, the exigencies of chance and fate set him as subordinate to a lesser man of greater political position. But beyond that is the issue of Herakles himself: he serves Eurystheos because of his own mistakes and excesses (and the anger of Hera). But, we can’t overlook the fact that Agamemnon/Eurystheus suffers in this equation too.

So one interpretation of Agamemnon’s story is that he means for Achilles to understand that the two of them are in analogous positions, that while Achilles is the greater warrior and more exceptional man, Agamemnon is the “kinglier”. Their positions are neither of their faults, but both of their responsibilities to understand. Whether the internal audience of the poem comprehends these comparisons and whether or not Achilles himself is meant to understand the implication that he too, like Herakles, suffers because of his own actions, cannot be known. But the comparisons sit there in space and time, waiting for us to hear them resonate.

A short Bibliography on Achilles and Agamemnon in Iliad 19

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

Barker, Elton and Christensen, Joel. “Even Heracles had to die: Homeric « heroism », mortality and the epic tradition.” Trends in Classics, vol. 6, no. 2, 2014, pp. 249-277.

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

Bolter, J. D.. Achilles’ return to battle. A structural study of Books 19-22 of the Iliad. Univ. of North Carolina Chapel Hill, 1977.

Christensen, Joel P.. “« Eris » and « epos »: composition, competition, and the domestication of strife.” Yearbook of Ancient Greek Epic, vol. 2, 2018, pp. 1-39. Doi: 10.1163/24688487-002010

Davies, Malcolm. “Agamemnon’s apology and the unity of the Iliad.” Classical Quarterly, vol. 45, no. 1, 1995, pp. 1-8. Doi: 10.1017/S000983880004163X

Davies, Malcolm. “« Self-consolation » in the « Iliad ».” Classical Quarterly, N. S., vol. 56, no. 2, 2006, pp. 582-587. Doi: 10.1017/S0009838806000553

Gazis, George Alexander. Homer and the poetics of Hades. Oxford: Oxford University Pr., 2018.

Heath, John. “Prophetic horses, bridled nymphs: Ovid’s metamorphosis of Ocyroe.” Latomus, vol. 53, 1994, pp. 340-353.

Johnston, Sarah Iles. “Xanthus, Hera and the Erinyes : (Iliad 19.400-418).” TAPA, vol. CXXII, 1992, pp. 85-98.

Dieter Lohmann. Die Komposition der Reden in der Ilias. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1970.

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

Postlethwaite, Norman. “Akhilleus and Agamemnon: generalized reciprocity.” Reciprocity in ancient Greece. Eds. Gill, Christopher, Postlethwaite, Norman and Seaford, Richard A. S.. Oxford: Clarendon Pr., 1998. 93-104.

Rinon, Yoav. “A tragic pattern in the « Iliad ».” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. 104, 2008, pp. 45-91.

Strauss Clay, Jenny. “Agamemnon’s stance: (Iliad 19. 51-77).” Philologus, vol. 139, no. 1, 1995, pp. 72-75.

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

Achilles’ Shield and Homeric Ekphrasis

This is one of a few posts dedicated to Iliad 18. 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 literary studies Ekphrasis has acquired a specialized meaning as a description of a work of art within a verbal or textual creation. Ekphrasis has been singled out for the perspective it offers on a text’s consciousness of its status as a literary object and for the reflections it offers on the poetics of the work in question. This means that we imagine that there is some kind of correlation between the creative acts depicted within the poem and the logic/aesthetics of the poems themselves.

Epic ekphrasis occurs elsewhere (e.g. the description of Agamemnon’s scepter, Il. 1.234-9 and 2.100-9) or longer, (e.g. the shield in the Hesiodic Aspis). Described objects may impact the characterization of human actors. For example, Agamemnon’s scepter marks the magnitude of Achilles’ alienation (1.234-9) or emphasizes Agamemnon’s association with traditional kingship (2.100-9).

Achilles’ shield in the Iliad (18.462-613) encompasses the entire cosmos and defies accurate visualization. While we see characters responding to the shield, there’s no clear indication of what it means to them. (Although Robert Rabel has suggested that Hektor “reads” the shield and its scenes shape his speeches in book 22). Like similes, an ekphrasis compares the world inside the poem to potential worlds outside it. In book 18, Achilles’ shield contrasts the Iliad with other possible realities: a city at peace and a conflict resolved without violence (discussed below).

But one of the most fascinating scenes, for me, happens within the city of peace. Here, Hephaestus creates the image of an assembly where a killing is being judged:

Homer, Il. 18.496-508

“The people where gathered, crowded, in the assembly where a conflict (neîkos)
had arisen: two men were striving over the penalty for
a man who had been killed; the first one was promising to give everything
as he was testifying to the people; but the other was refusing to take anything;
and both men longed for a judge to make a decision.
The people, partisans on either side, applauded.
Then the heralds brought the host together; the elders
sat on smooth stones in a sacred circle
as they held in their hands the scepters of clear-voiced heralds;
each one was leaping to his feet and they pronounced judgments in turn.
In the middle there were two talents of gold to give
to whoever among them uttered the straightest judgment.”

λαοὶ δ’ εἰν ἀγορῇ ἔσαν ἀθρόοι• ἔνθα δὲ νεῖκος
ὠρώρει, δύο δ’ ἄνδρες ἐνείκεον εἵνεκα ποινῆς
ἀνδρὸς ἀποφθιμένου• ὃ μὲν εὔχετο πάντ’ ἀποδοῦναι
δήμῳ πιφαύσκων, ὃ δ’ ἀναίνετο μηδὲν ἑλέσθαι•
ἄμφω δ’ ἱέσθην ἐπὶ ἴστορι πεῖραρ ἑλέσθαι.
λαοὶ δ’ ἀμφοτέροισιν ἐπήπυον ἀμφὶς ἀρωγοί•
κήρυκες δ’ ἄρα λαὸν ἐρήτυον• οἳ δὲ γέροντες
εἵατ’ ἐπὶ ξεστοῖσι λίθοις ἱερῷ ἐνὶ κύκλῳ,
σκῆπτρα δὲ κηρύκων ἐν χέρσ’ ἔχον ἠεροφώνων•
τοῖσιν ἔπειτ’ ἤϊσσον, ἀμοιβηδὶς δὲ δίκαζον.
κεῖτο δ’ ἄρ’ ἐν μέσσοισι δύω χρυσοῖο τάλαντα,
τῷ δόμεν ὃς μετὰ τοῖσι δίκην ἰθύντατα εἴποι.

When we write about this scene in Homer’s Thebes, Elton Barker and I emphasize the following:

Equally clearly, however, the scene on the shield depicts an institutional framework far more developed than anything represented in the story-world of the Iliad.  Two plaintiffs testify to the people (demos) in the assembly (agora); the people (laos) support either side; an arbitrator (histor) adjudicates; elders pass judgment; prizes are “in the middle,”  ready to be given to the elder who passes the “straightest judgment.” Given this picture of a community working together to resolve strife without a role for named individuals (far less for heroes), this seems to be a far cry from Homer’s world of warring heroes. In fact, the emphasis on communal performance, to the erasure of individual identities, amounts to something of an anti-heroic-epic aesthetic.

I think this probably needs a little more unpacking, though. When I read this now—in line with the themes I have been exploring book-by-book—I think there are two aspects of this scene to be explored: (1), intra-textual resonance; and (2) metapoetic reflection. The first aspect engages with the epic’s political concerns; the second reflects its interest in storytelling.

One of the important questions from the beginning of the epic is how to adjudicate and resolve conflict without violence. This is directly related to the conflict between Achilles and Agamemnon in book 1, but it also invites consideration of the entire Trojan War. Indeed, one of the themes that unites both the Iliad and the Odyssey is the danger of cycles of vengeance and punishment. The shield imagines a world where actual violence has been done and a community resolves it without further bloodshed. Yet, even in Homer’s world, we hear from characters that there are other options when a conflict arises. During the embassy to Achilles, Ajax complains:

Homer, Iliad 9.632-638:

“You are relentless: someone might even accept payment
for the murder of a brother or the death of his own child.
and after making great restitution, the killer remains in his country,
and though bereft, the other restrains his heart and mighty anger
once he has accepted the price. But the gods put an untouchable
and wicked rage in your heart over only a girl…”

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

The resonance in this passage with the larger framework of myth and the war is clear (“over only a girl….”), but the language Ajax uses is suffused with concerns about Honor, payback, and vengeance. The scene within the shield is a companion piece to this moment and it completes it by inviting the audience to imagine the situation Ajax describes, where someone provides restitution for a harm done and thereby keeps a community whole. In the shield, there is a conflict over the restitution (…εἵνεκα ποινῆς) using the same noun Ajax emphasizes (ποινὴν).

The second aspect of this scene—the metapoetic one—is clearer if we specify what is missing in the embassy speech. Ajax frames an idea—that one offers and accepts restitution—but he does not imagine a process or institution to make it happen. The shield creates an institution and centers the prize in gold for those who are making the judgments, who are evaluating the claims. When Ajax speaks in book 9, the audiences are the judges about the rightness of what he says.

I use plural audiences here to indicate that Ajax is speaking to an internal audience (Achilles, the other members of the assembly) as well as to an external audience (us!). We don’t know if any audiences internal to the poem see and reflect on this scene of dispute on the shield; but we do know when we, the external audience, makes the connection. The highest value the Iliad places in this intratextual move is on the ability to interpret the story and render some judgment about what is right or wrong in it. Achilles had the chance, and it seems pretty much like he failed.

In a way, this move is like that scene near the beginning of the movie Willow where the elderly wizard asks a group of potential apprentices which of his fingers holds the power to control the world. Each of the contestants fails, but we find out in a subsequent scene that Willow, the eponymous character, wanted to say the right answer: his own. The Iliad prizes the ability to judge and interpret at a critical moment in its tale. This is both a message about the importance of judgment for politics and the critical nature of interpretation for narrative.

An ancient Narrative Motif?

When the Iliad contrasts a city at peace with a city at war, it may be engaging—or creating—a tradition of comparing the fates of cities governed well. A similar passage from a fragment attributed to Hesiod and some Medieval Italian art help us think through this.

In the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, Italy there are a series of Frescoes referred to as “The Allegory of Good and Bad Government” painted from 1338 to 1339 by Abrogio Lorenzetti. One panel shows a good government, and to the right the effects of a city governed well where the people seem free of the threat of war and their lives are full with good things–children, marriages, dancing.

The other city facing it is ruled by a tyrant; soldiers wander the streets and the law of might seems to be in effect.

Here’s a short video giving you an idea of the whole composition. The City of Bad Government is more fragmentary, but the state of all three Frescoes communicates well the oppositions between Good Rule and Bad Rule, what ancient Greeks might call eunomia and dusnomia.

 237-247; 270-285; cf. the two Cities in Iliad 18 (below)

“..Beyond them
Men in arms of war were struggling—
Some fought, warding destruction away from their city
and their parent; others were eager to sack it.
Many were dead; but many more still struggled in strife.
On the well-built bronze walls of the city their wives
cried sharply and they tore at their cheeks,
so much like living women, this work of famous Hephaestus.
The elders, the men whom age had bent,
Stood close together outside the walls, holding their hands
To the blessed gods, because they feared for their children….”

…. οἳ δ’ ὑπὲρ αὐτέων
ἄνδρες ἐμαρνάσθην πολεμήια τεύχε’ ἔχοντες,
τοὶ μὲν ὑπὲρ σφετέρης πόλιος σφετέρων τε τοκήων
λοιγὸν ἀμύνοντες, τοὶ δὲ πραθέειν μεμαῶτες.
πολλοὶ μὲν κέατο, πλέονες δ’ ἔτι δῆριν ἔχοντες
μάρνανθ’. αἱ δὲ γυναῖκες ἐυδμήτων ἐπὶ πύργων
χαλκέων ὀξὺ βόων, κατὰ δ’ ἐδρύπτοντο παρειάς,
ζωῇσιν ἴκελαι, ἔργα κλυτοῦ ῾Ηφαίστοιο.
ἄνδρες δ’ οἳ πρεσβῆες ἔσαν γῆράς τε μέμαρπεν

ἀθρόοι ἔκτοσθεν πυλέων ἔσαν, ἂν δὲ θεοῖσι
χεῖρας ἔχον μακάρεσσι, περὶ σφετέροισι τέκεσσι
δειδιότες…

“Next to [that city] was a well-towered city of men,
Seven gates were fitted in gold to their frames around it.
The men were engaged in pleasure at festivals and dances.
Some were conveying a wife home to her husband
On a well-wheeled cart as a great hymn arose;
And in the distance the light of burning torches waved
In maidens’ hands. They walked in front, flushed with joy
At the festival, as the playful choruses followed them.
The men rang out a song to the clear-voiced flutes
With their tender lips, and the echo rang around them.
Others led the lovely dance to the lyre’s songs.
On the other side youths paraded to the aulos;
Others plays in turn in the dancing floor to a song;
More were laughing near them as each went forth
At the flute-player’s lead. And the whole city was full
Of dance, and singing, and pleasure…”

… παρὰ δ’ εὔπυργος πόλις ἀνδρῶν,
χρύσειαι δέ μιν εἶχον ὑπερθυρίοις ἀραρυῖαι
ἑπτὰ πύλαι· τοὶ δ’ ἄνδρες ἐν ἀγλαΐαις τε χοροῖς τε
τέρψιν ἔχον· τοὶ μὲν γὰρ ἐυσσώτρου ἐπ’ ἀπήνης
ἤγοντ’ ἀνδρὶ γυναῖκα, πολὺς δ’ ὑμέναιος ὀρώρει·
τῆλε δ’ ἀπ’ αἰθομένων δαΐδων σέλας εἰλύφαζε
χερσὶν ἐνὶ δμῳῶν· ταὶ δ’ ἀγλαΐῃ τεθαλυῖαι
πρόσθ’ ἔκιον, τῇσιν δὲ χοροὶ παίζοντες ἕποντο·
τοὶ μὲν ὑπὸ λιγυρῶν συρίγγων ἵεσαν αὐδὴν
ἐξ ἁπαλῶν στομάτων, περὶ δέ σφισιν ἄγνυτο ἠχώ·
αἳ δ’ ὑπὸ φορμίγγων ἄναγον χορὸν ἱμερόεντα.
[ἔνθεν δ’ αὖθ’ ἑτέρωθε νέοι κώμαζον ὑπ’ αὐλοῦ.]
τοί γε μὲν αὖ παίζοντες ὑπ’ ὀρχηθμῷ καὶ ἀοιδῇ
[τοί γε μὲν αὖ γελόωντες ὑπ’ αὐλητῆρι ἕκαστος]
πρόσθ’ ἔκιον· πᾶσαν δὲ πόλιν θαλίαι τε χοροί τε
ἀγλαΐαι τ’ εἶχον….

The three sets of images (the Shields and the Frescoes) obviously convey different specific values and draw on separate moralizing traditions, but the attendant imagery and the distinction between a city governed-well and one beset by strife is striking. I do not mean to imply in any way that I think there is a direct relationship between them, but rather that they are both the natural outcome of cultures steeped in dichotomous representations.

And, in each case, the important contribution comes from the audience and our judgment.

Short bibliography on Ekphrasis and Achilles’ Shield

Allen, Nicholas J.. “The shield of Achilles and Indo-European tradition.” Cuadernos de Filología Clásica. Estudios Griegos e Indoeuropeos, vol. 17, 2007, pp. 33-44.

Kenneth Atchity. Homer’s Iliad: The Shield of Memory. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1978.

Roland Barthes. “The Reality Effect.” in R. Howard (trans.). The Rustle of Language. New York: Hill and Wang, 1986, 141-8.

Andrew Sprague Becker. The Shield of Achilles and the Poetics of Ekphrasis. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1995.

Calvin S. Byre. “Narration, Description, and Theme in the Shield of Achilles.” The Classical Journal 87 (1992-1993) 33-42.

Cullhed, Eric. “Movement and sound on the shield of Achilles in ancient exegesis.” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, vol. 54, no. 2, 2014, pp. 192-219.

Jaś Elsner. “Introduction: The Genres of Ekphrasis.” Ramus 31 (2002) 1-18.

D. P. Fowler. “Narrate and Describe: The Problem of Ekphrasis.” The Journal of Roman Studies 81 (1991) 25-35.

Francis, James A.. “Living images in the ekphrasis of Homer and Hesiod.” Papers of the Langford Latin Seminar: Fifteenth volume 2012. Eds. Cairns, Francis, Cairns, Sandra and Williams, Frederick. ARCA; 51. Prenton: Cairns, 2012. 113-141.

Paul Friedländer. Johannes von Gaza, Paulus Silentiarius, und Kunstbeschreibungen justianischer Zeit. Leipzig: Teubner, 1912.

P. R. Hardie. “Imago Mundi: Cosmological and Ideological Aspects of the Shield of Achilles.” JHS 105 (1985) 11-31.

De Jong, Irene J. F.. “The shield of Achilles: from metalepsis to « mise en abyme ».” Ramus, vol. 40, no. 1, 2011, pp. 1-14.

Murray Krieger. Ekphrasis: The Illusion of the Natural Sign. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.

George Kurman. “Ekphrasis in Epic Poetry.” Comparative Literature 26 (1974) 1-13.

Minchin, Elizabeth. “Visualizing the shield of Achilles: approaching its landscapes via cognitive paths.” Classical Quarterly, N. S., vol. 70, no. 2, 2020, pp. 473-484. Doi: 10.1017/S0009838820000671

Alessandro Perutelli. “L’inversione speculare. Per una retorica dell’ecphrasis.” Materiali e discussioni per l’analisi dei testi classici 1 (1978) 87-98.

Robert J. Rabel. Plot and Point of View in the Iliad. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1997.

Stephen Scully. “Reading the Shield of Achilles: Terror, Anger, Delight.” HSCP Philology 101 (2003) 29-47.

Leo Spitzer. “The ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn,’ or Content vs. Metagrammar.” Comparative Literature 7 (1955) 203-55.

Ruth Webb. “Ekphrasis Ancient and Modern: The Invention of a Genre.” Word & Image 15 (1999) 7-18.

Hektor, Polydamas, and Trojan Politics in Iliad 18

This is one of a few posts dedicated to Iliad 18. 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.

One of the clearer examples of narrative judgment in the Iliad comes in the midst of book 18. After Achilles has announced his return by screaming three times, the Trojans retreat and hold an impromptu assembly. The assembly forms without a command; Polydamas addresses it first and suggests a strategic retreat to the city (not dissimilar to Andromache’s own advice to Hektor in Iliad 6) and then Hektor forcefully rejects his advice, insisting they will stay outside the city walls where he will face Achilles. There is a rather pointed disjuncture between the response of the Achaeans and the narrator’s evaluation

“So Hektor spoke and the Trojans shouted their assent in response.
Fools! Pallas Athena deprived them of their wits.
For they praised Hektor even though he devised bad things,
and no one praised Polydamas who counseled a noble counsel.

῝Ως ῞Εκτωρ ἀγόρευ’, ἐπὶ δὲ Τρῶες κελάδησαν
νήπιοι· ἐκ γάρ σφεων φρένας εἵλετο Παλλὰς ᾿Αθήνη.
῞Εκτορι μὲν γὰρ ἐπῄνησαν κακὰ μητιόωντι,
Πουλυδάμαντι δ’ ἄρ’ οὔ τις ὃς ἐσθλὴν φράζετο βουλήν.

The line of praise used here for the Trojan reaction to the speech is identical to the Trojan praise for Hektor when he first announces their new, more aggressive strategy in book 8 (8.542). In a way, these two assemblies bookend Trojan success and Hektor’s glory in the middle part of the epic. Indeed, Hektor’s bluster in book 8 could in part be switched out with his claims in book 18 and some readers might never sense the difference—but there’s a desperate aggression in his response to Polydamas and a seeping pessimism that is all the stronger in the second speech.

This assembly is marked as out-of-the ordinary in a few ways (18.245-248): they assemble before eating and standing, rather than sitting, frightened by Achilles. In addition, as others have noted, the majority of assemblies in the Iliad are marked by an attention to time and space: they happen in the morning in an authoritative position (e.g. by Agamemnon’s ship, for the Achaeans, and outside of Priam’s palace, for the Trojans). As I mention in earlier posts, the world of epic reflects the basic political institutions that were common in Ancient Greece, including a smaller, oligarchic council with advisory functions (in historical cities, often called a boulê or a gerousia and a larger public assembly (often, the ekklêsia). The Trojans appear to have both institutions, but each is less functional than the Achaean counterpart in clear ways. The Trojan assemblies are primarily audiences for Hektor or (Priam and Paris) and the council has little function at all. Part of the political drama of the Iliad, I think, is the exploration of the limits of advisory counsel in Troy. And this occurs primarily through the relationship of Polydamas and Hektor.

The Trojan assembly in book 18 certainly contributes to a characterization of Hektor, but it is a culmination of a movement that started much earlier in the epic, anticipated in part by the Trojan assembly in book 7, where Paris dismisses Antênor’s advice rather quickly. While the phrase “the personal is the political” did not become proverbial in modern politics until the 1960s, it is certainly applicable in a different way to ancient monarchies where the political emerges from the autocratic person (and their family). In the Trojan acclamation for Hektor I see a metaphor for the subsuming of Trojan hopes into one body and the representation of Hektor’s desperation in the delusion of the mob. Polydamas—whose very name can be seen as a kind of ancient Greek ‘everyman’—is provided as a lone voice calling out the collective madness.

The conflict between Polydamas and Hektor has long been posed as one between different forms of political authority (see, e.g. Wuest 1955). As Matthew Clark has argued, however, there may be other thematic dimensions that map on to the same relationship: Polydamas is a double—more of a mirrored reflection or refraction, than a copy of Hektor. Polydamas and Hektor may be considered among the epic’s other heroic pairs, like Diomedes and Sthenelos, Sarpedon and Glaukos, or even Achilles and Patroklos. And yet Hektor is not paired with Polydamas alone, he and Paris are also reflections of the Greek brothers, Agamemnon and Menelaos. Hektor and Polydamas, however, seem to maintain an uneasy relationship at best. In part, this seems characteristic of Hektor, whose rapport with Paris is best called ‘complicated’. Hektor’s position—if not his personality—isolates him and places him in opposition to other figures. (For the pattern between Polydamas and Hektor see Dickson 1995, 133-43, especially the charts on 134-5. Cf. Redfield 1975, 143-53 and Elmer 2013, 137-138.)

In part, as others have noted, the epic marks Trojan political difference by marginalizing the deliberative council. In book three, the only time we ‘see’ the Trojan council, the elders sit by the city’s walls reflecting on whether Helen is really worth it (a debate that anticipates the content of the assembly in book 7). In book ten, when they gather to discuss espionage (as the Achaeans have just done), Hector merely calls the leaders to execute a plan he has already devised. Shortly afterwards, in book thirteen, when Polydamas calls for the best of the Trojans to aid in deliberation (13.740-741), Hector largely ignores him. In fact, the marginalization of good advice and the absence of a productive advisory council coalesce thematically around Hektor’s engagement with Polydamas. In these exchanges, Polydamas complains about the exclusion of good advice and debate in Troy: Hector rebukes him in the assembly despite the value of his advice (12.211-15) and imagines that, since he’s best in war, he also trumps everyone in council (13.726-34). But Polydamas perseveres in asserting his right to give advice based on the idea that people have different skills (13.726-34):

 ‘Hektor you are impossible to persuade with words.
Since the god grants you to excel in the works of war
you also wish to know better than the rest in council
but you could not ever claim everything for yourself at once—
for god grants the works of war to one
and dancing to another, and the lyre and song to another,
and in another wide-browed Zeus sets a mind—
a fine one because of which many men will profit,
and it saves many, and I myself know this for sure.’

And earlier, he echoes Greek speakers like Nestor and Diomedes in insisting that even he is correct to provide good advice in public (12.211-15):

‘Hektor, always, all the time, you rebuke me in the assembly
even though I counsel fine things, since it is not ever at all seemly
that one who is a commoner argue differently, neither in council
nor ever in war, but one must always increase your power;
but now, once again, I will speak out how things seem to me to best.’

The narrator echoes Polydamas in two significant ways before he opens the assembly in book 18: it affirms both that he has the foresight/knowledge to speak with authority and that he is better than Hektor when it comes to speeches (18.249-252):

Then among them inspired Polydamas began to speak,
Panthoös’ son, for he alone saw before and after.
He was Hektor’s companion, and they were born on the same night,
although the one excels much in múthoi and the other with the spear.

A quick word about the word muthos here. Our English myth comes from the same root but the semantic field has shifted over the years. As early as Thucydides—who seemingly maligns historians like Herodotus as muthologoi, mere ‘storytellers’—the root had gained some fictive aspect. But in early Greek poetry, as Richard Martin argues in The Language of Heroes (1989), a muthos can be a speech, a speech-act, or a plan. This means that a Homeric muthos can impact or change the world through its utterance or present a plan of action that would change things as well. By asserting that Polydamas excels in muthoi just as Hektor excels with the spear, the narrative is granting not just that Polydamas is exceptional, but that he can wield words as weapons or tools.

Polydamas’ ensuing speech acknowledges their dangers, predicts (quite reasonably) what will happen on Achilles’ return, and then enjoins the assembled Trojans to return to the city and ward Achilles off from the safety of the walls. At the center of this, Polydamas emphasizes protecting the city and the woman and predicts that the Trojans as a group will have strength in the assembly and the walls of the city (νύκτα μὲν εἰν ἀγορῇ σθένος ἕξομεν, ἄστυ δὲ πύργοι, 18.274). This offers a different model for both the politics and the protection of the city, one that relies on a collective effort instead of individual heroism.

Hektor’s speech falls into two parts, criticism of Polydamas and an address to the Trojans.  First, he attempts to undermine Polydamas’ authority and question his motives:

Then, looking darkly bright-helmed Hektor addressed him:
‘Polydamas, you no longer argue things that are dear to me,
you who call us to go into the city and crowd together again.
Have you never tired of being shut up in the towers?
for, mortal men all used to say before that
Priam’s city was full of gold, full of bronze—
but now indeed his house has lost the noble treasures
and many of its possessions have gone to Phrygia and Maeonia
sold off since great Zeus has aggrieved it.
But now, when the child of crooked-counseled Kronos actually grants
For me to gain glory near the ships and drive the Achaians to sea,
fool, no longer speak these thoughts among the people,
for none of the Trojans will obey you, I will not allow it.’

Share

Hektor reveals his own frustration here, compressing years of inaction into a rather simple question: aren’t you sick of this? Hektor’s characteristic claiming of Zeus’ favor is certainly delusional from our perspective (we know the plot!), but given the events of the Iliad and what Hektor has recently experienced, it is not completely bizarre to believe that, despite all odds, the Trojans have a reasonable chance of winning at this point. Hektor clings to that reading of events, no matter what else happens.

Hektor closes with simple advice (eat, get ready for tomorrow) and then closes with a rhetorical flourish:

If shining Achilles truly rises from the ships,
if he is willing, it will be more harrowing for him. I will not
avoid him in the ill-sounding battle, but I will stand right
in front of him, either he will bear great strength or I will.
War is shared and common, and he also kills the one who is killing.

εἰ δ’ ἐτεὸν παρὰ ναῦφιν ἀνέστη δῖος ᾿Αχιλλεύς,
ἄλγιον αἴ κ’ ἐθέλῃσι τῷ ἔσσεται· οὔ μιν ἔγωγε
φεύξομαι ἐκ πολέμοιο δυσηχέος, ἀλλὰ μάλ’ ἄντην
στήσομαι, ἤ κε φέρῃσι μέγα κράτος, ἦ κε φεροίμην.
ξυνὸς ᾿Ενυάλιος, καί τε κτανέοντα κατέκτα.

Hektor leans on a series of tropes available in his other speeches: he expresses doubt about Achilles’ actually returning (εἰ δ’ ἐτεὸν), vaunts that it will be worse for him (ἄλγιον), returns to his oft-repeated assertion that a fight can go either way, and then ends with a compressed proverbial statement, that war is shared, and someone kills the killer. This kind of ‘eff it, we all day someday’ attitude has the sound of a cowboy’s bravado but communicates the spirit of someone who is truly uncertain.

Over the years, I have changed my mind several times about the significance of Hektor’s abiding sense of uncertainty beneath his insistent behavior. Although I think the ambiguity of his behavior opens it to productive interpretation (and misinterpretation), I am increasingly convinced that insight into Hektor’s uncertainty has psychological valence. Modern studies have shown a strong correlation between emotions of fear/anxiety and uncertainty. Hektor’s boasting and rhetorical flexing can be seen both as an attempt to cope with these feelings and as an attempt to allay them in others. He is trying to be a good leader, trying to give his people something to rally around in the face of so much bleakness.

Hektor’s violent rejection of Polydamas’ advice here can be seen in many ways. It is an affirmation of the plot of the poem (and the larger Trojan War), where Hektor must die. At that same time, it is an indictment of a heroic approach to keeping a people safe and also a critique of a simple autocracy. Some readers may object that such critiques are outside the bounds of Homeric epic—and the primary rejoinder I have for this is that the Iliad did not need to include the range of Trojan political scenes that it does if they were not important in some way. And, as is the custom of epic, these scenes reflect on multiple themes at once: the epic’s exploration of heroism as much as its engagement with the larger mythical tradition alongside themes of contemporary concern for its ancient audiences.

The final Trojan assembly provides the clearest analogy to the Achaean assembly in book 1—it forms with everyone standing, without any agent convening it (18.243-313). Polydamas stands to propose retiring the walls now that Achilles has returned. Hector rejects his proposal and threatens violence should anyone heed him.

A short Bibliography

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

Barker, Elton T. E. “Achilles’ Last Stand: Institutionalising Dissent in Homer’s Iliad.” PCPS 50 (2004) 92-120.

—,—. Entering the Agôn: Dissent and Authority in Homer, Historiography and Tragedy. Oxford, 2009.

Christensen, Joel P. “The End of Speeches and a Speech’s End: Nestor, Diomedes, and the telos muthôn.” in Reading Homer: Film and Text. Kostas Myrsiades (ed.). Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 2009: 136-62.

Christensen, Joel P.. “Trojan politics and the assemblies of Iliad 7.” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, vol. 55, no. 1, 2015, pp. 25-51.

Clay, J. S.  Homer’s Trojan Theater: Space, Vision and Memory in the Iliad (Cambridge, 2011)

Courtieu, Gilles. “Thersite et Polydamas: le masque et le double des héros homériques.” Les exclus dans l’Antiquité: actes du colloque organisé à Lyon les 23-24 septembre 2004. Ed. Wolff, Catherine. Collection du Centre d’Études Romaines et Gallo-Romaines. Nouvelle Série; 29. Paris: De Boccard, 2007. 9-25.

Clark, Matthew Campbell. 2007. “Poulydamas and Hektor.”in Reading Homer in the 21st century, special issue of College literature 85-106.

Dickson, Keith. Nestor: Poetic Memory in Greek Epic. New York: Garland, 1995.

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

—,—. “The Relations of Power in the Pre-State and Early State Polities.” In The Development of the Polis in Archaic Greece. Lynette Mitchell and P. J. Rhodes (eds.). London, 1997, 39-48.

“Achilles the Ally.” Arethusa 35 (2002) 155-72.

Edwards, Mark W.  “Homeric Speech Introductions.” HSCP 74 (1970) 1-36.

 —,—. “Homer and Oral Tradition: The Type Scene.” Oral Tradition 7 (1992) 284-330.

Ellsworth, J. D.. “An Unrecognized Metaphor in the Iliad.” CP 69 (1979) 258-64.

Elmer, David. The Poetics of Consent: Collective Decision Making and the Iliad. Baltimore, 2013.

Hall, Jonathan M.  “Polis, Community, and Ethnic Identity.” In H. A. Shapiro (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Archaic Greece. Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2007: 40-60.

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

—,—. “The Politics of the Iliad.” CJ (1998) 1-30.

—,—. The Iliad as Politics: The Performance of Political Thought. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002.

de Jong, Irene J.F. Narrators and Focalizers: The Presentation of the Story in the Iliad. London, 1987.

Kirby, John T. “Rhetoric and Poetics in Hesiod.” Ramus 21 (1992) 34-50.

Kirk, G. S.. The Iliad: A Commentary. Volume I: Books 1-4. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

—,—. The Iliad: A Commentary. Volume II: Books 5-8. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Lohmann, Dieter. Die Komposition der Reden in der Ilias. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1970

Hillary Mackie. Talking Trojan: Speech and Community in the Iliad . Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996.

Pralon, Didier. “L’ honneur du vaincu: l’altercation entre Hector et Poulydamas : Iliade XVIII 243-313.” Ktèma, vol. 20, 1995, pp. 233-244.

Raaflaub, Kurt A., Josiah Ober, and Robert W. Wallace. Origins of Democracy in Ancient Greece. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.

—,—. “Homer and the Beginning of Political Thought in Greece.” Proceedings in the Boston Area Colloquium Series in Ancient Philosophy 4 (1988) 1-25.

—,—.  “Homer, the Trojan War, and History.” The Classical World 91 (1997-1998) 386-403.

Redfield, James. Nature and Culture in the Iliad: The Tragedy of Hektor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975.

Rose, P. W.  “Thersites and the Plural Voices of Homer.” Arethusa 21 (1988) 5-25.

—,—. “Ideology in the Iliad: Polis, Basileus, Theoi.” Arethusa 30 (1997) 151-99.

Sale, William M. “The Government of Troy: Politics in the Iliad. GRBS 35 (1994) 5-102.

Schiappa, Edward. The Beginnings of Rhetorical Theory in Classical Greece. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999.

Schulz, Fabian. Die homerischen Räte und die spartanische Gerusie. Berlin: Wellem, 2011.

Scodel, Ruth.  Listening to Homer: Tradition, Narrative and Audience. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002.

Sealey, R. “Probouleusis and the Sovereign Assembly.” CSCA 2 (1969) 247-69.

Tandy, David W. Warriors into Traders: The Power of the Market in Early Greece. Berkeley, 1997.

van Wees, Hans. Status Warriors: War, Violence, and Society in Homer and History. Amsterdam: J. C. Gieben, 1992.

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

Wuest, E.. “Hektor und Polydamas. Von Klerus und Staat in Griechenland.” Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, vol. XCVIII, 1955, pp. 335-349.

Introducing Iliad 18.

This post is a basic introduction to reading Iliad 18. Here is a link to the overview of Iliad 17 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.

Iliad 18 brings us to the end of the Iliad’s longest day: since book 11, the battle has raged on the field between the city of Troy and the Achaean ships, moving all the way into the ships until Patrokos entered the battle in Achilles’ armor and pushed the Trojans back. Book 12 features the breaching of the Achaean walls, book 13 has the Achaean captains getting injured, then Books 14 and 15 are primarily occupied with the seduction of Zeus and its aftermath, and book 16 brings Patroklos into the fray.

The cumulative action, aimed at transferring Achilles’ rage from Agamemnon and the Greeks to Hektor and the Trojans, goes through several delaying mechanisms. Patroklos first speaks to Nestor in book 11 but does not arrive to speak to Achilles until book 16. Antilochus is dispatched at the end of book 16 to tell Achilles what happened. And then in book 18 we get another delaying device: Achilles arms have been lost, Thetis goes to replace them near the beginning of the book, arrives 2/3 of the way through, and then the final quarter of the book is the description of Achilles’ shield.

There is so much in book 18. But here’s the basic structure:

1.       Achilles learns the truth (Thetis counsels him), 1-242

2.       Trojan Assembly, 243-315

3.       First lament for Patroklos, 310-342

4.       Divine Interlude, 343-366 (Hera and Zeus)

5.       The Shield Scene, 367-617 (Thetis requests; the actual shield-making: 477-617)

Each of these sections 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. The central themes I emphasize in reading and teaching book 18 are family & friends as well as heroism (in Achilles’ responses and the first laments for Patroklos), politics in the characterization of Hektor and the final Trojan assembly, and narrative traditions in the creation of Achilles new weapons. There’s a lot to be said about Gods and Humans as well from the exchanges in this book. But nobody has time for that: we’ve got to get Achilles back to war!

Was It was all his fault? Burdening the Earth with Heroes

In the first section of book 18 as I outline it above, Achilles receives the news about Patroklos and soon has a pretty immediate impact on the battle: his screams cause the Trojans to rush back toward the city and hold an impromptu assembly. But before his grief gets so public, he has a conversation with his mother who starts off by asking him why he is weeping, when “all these things were done by Zeus / the way you prayed when you raised your hands before  and asked that the Achaeans would all hide among the ships because they lacked you and suffer terrible things” (18.74-77). Achilles responds by acknowledging what his mother has said, but asking how he can continue to live if he does not kill Hektor. Thetis responds that Hektor’s death will quickly lead to his own.  Achilles responds with a memorable, gut-wrenching speech.

Homer, Iliad 18.97-126

“Swift footed Achilles then addressed her, glaring sharply:
‘May I die right away, since I was not ready to defend my friend
As he was being killed. He (men) died so very far from his homeland
and (de) he lacked me as someone to defend him from harm.
So now I will not return to my dear paternal land,
Since I was not a saving light for Patroklos nor any of the rest
of our companions, those many indeed killed by shining Hektor
No, I sat here alongside the ships, a useless burden on the earth,
When I am the kind of person no other Achaean can match
In war. Well, there are others who are better in the assembly.
I wish strife would perish from the worlds of gods and men
Along with anger, that force that makes even a prudent man mean,
And somehow grows more sweetly than dripping honey
In the chests of men something like smoke.
So Agamemnon the lord of men made me angry.
But now let’s leave all these things in the past, even though we are aggrieved,
Battering down the dear heart in our chests with necessity.
I am going to find the murderer of my dear love,
Hektor. I will accept death at the time whenever Zeus
And the rest of the immortal gods want to give it to me.
For not even violent Herakles escaped his fate,
though he was most dear to lord Zeus, son of Kronos,
but fate tamed him and the anger of Hera, hard to endure.
That’s how it is for me too, if my fate is similar.
I’ll lie down when I die. But now I would claim noble fame
And make any of the Trojan Women and the deep-bosomed Dardanians
Streak their tender cheeks with both of their hands
As they wipe away tears in constant mourning—
May each know that I have taken myself from war for long indeed.
Don’t try to keep me from battle, even though you love me. You won’t convince me.”

Achilles’ language is remarkable throughout the Iliad—as I discuss when writing about book 9, Achilles has been compared to a Hesiodic poet and has rightly been identified as one of epic’s most forceful and varied speakers. This speech alone contains several similes, complex grammar, a compressed comparison to another god, and vivid language like that at the end  where he imagines the lamentation of Trojan Women.

But, for thinking about the core story of the rage of Achilles, this speech is especially useful. Following on his mother’s rather direct words that this is kind of what Achilles asked for in book 1, Achilles responds in turn to her warning that he will die if he faces Hektor by saying that he wants to die because he failed to protect his friend. A scholion sees this as a positive lesson: “This is a good example for friendship: [Achilles] was unpersuaded by gifts over his choices, but chooses death on behalf of a friend.” (τεθναίην: καλὸν πρὸς φιλεταιρίαν παράδειγμα, εἴγε τοσούτοις μὴ πεισθεὶς δώροις δίχα τούτων καὶ θάνατον αἱρεῖται ὑπὲρ φίλου, [Schol. bTAd. Hom. Il. 18.98d]). But I think there is more going on here than that. As Lenny Muellner explores in an article about metonymy and simile, Achilles and Patroklos are marked in Homer as part of the same whole. (And he builds on the work of his own friend, Steven Lowenstam, who passed away far too young himself)

As I will mention in discussing Achilles’ other laments, he seems to imagine Patroklos as his permanent replacement as a surrogate. But as Lenny has written elsewhere, key to the root meaning of the word philos (“dear, beloved”) is something as important or crucial to you as a family member or a limb, something part of yourself. Achilles’ self-consignment to death after the loss of Patroklos explores such intercedence and deep abiding love, but this speech already echoes much of it. See, for example, the initial expression of contrast at the beginning of the speech: The μὲν… δὲ contrast (sometimes translated as “on the one hand…on the other hand” is additive/complementary rather than fully contrastive (although I think there is a powerful implicit contrast in the comparison Achilles offers between himself and Patroklos). One has died far from his homeland and the other lacked a defender from ruin. But upon deeper consideration the implicit contrast collapses as well, or at least will collapse once Achilles makes his decision (or, properly, now that he has made a decision).

So, Achilles has decided he is already dead. And we know what he wants to do while dead: he wants to kill Hektor. But what happens before then? Why do we need to continue listening to Achilles?

There’s much more to be said when we get to his other laments for Patroklos, but I did want to speculate in part about the language Achilles uses here to talk about himself. He says that instead of defending his people, he was a “useless burden on the earth” (….ἐτώσιον ἄχθος ἀρούρης). My translation here is somewhat inexact because the Greek noun arourê means “plowed earth” or “worked land” and the only other time a Greek hero is called a “burden on the earth” is in the Odyssey when the suitors are criticizing Telemachus for allowing the beggar (Odysseus in disguise) into his household, because he, someone who doesn’t work, is a “burden on the earth” (Od. 20.379). There may be additional resonance here for Achilles too: when Odysseus (according, of course, to Odysseus) sees him in the underworld, Achilles tells him not to bullshit him about death, since he would “wish instead to be a farmhand, to serve another….” (βουλοίμην κ’ ἐπάρουρος ἐὼν θητευέμεν ἄλλῳ) rather than be a lord among the dead note in the word eparouros, the root of the same word for arable land.

I think there is something going on about the utility of heroes, compressed in Achilles’ language. The word akhthos, “burden” is related to a verb of being a burden to something and it tends to be used in Homer to relay being annoying to the gods. Aphrodite describes herself as “burdened” by the wound she received from Diomedes (λίην ἄχθομαι ἕλκος ὅ με βροτὸς οὔτασεν ἀνὴρ, 5.361) and both Diomedes and Glaukos describe figures who transgressed the gods as being “burdensome” to all of them (ἐπεὶ ἀθανάτοισιν ἀπήχθετο πᾶσι θεοῖσιν· 6.141’ ἀλλ’ ὅτε δὴ καὶ κεῖνος ἀπήχθετο πᾶσι θεοῖσιν, 6.200). Diomedes speaks this way of Lykourgos, who chased a baby Dionysus until Thetis rescued him; Glaukos describes Bellerophon in the same way. At the end of the Iliad, the gods who oppose Troy are summarized as “sacred troy was a burden to them first, along with Priam and his army, thanks to the recklessness of Alaexandros” (ἀλλ’ ἔχον ὥς σφιν πρῶτον ἀπήχθετο ῎Ιλιος ἱρὴ  /  καὶ Πρίαμος καὶ λαὸς ᾿Αλεξάνδρου ἕνεκ’ ἄτης, 24.27-8).

I think this pattern, with the exception so far of Achilles’ comments, fits into a cosmic thematic framework that we see in the fragment from the beginning of the fragmentary Kypria. This poem positions the cause of the Trojan War as the burden that the races of human beings put on the earth. The lexical marker akhthos is not part of this, but the language of lightening and emptying is repeated. (And it is directly connected to the plan of Zeus.)

Kypria, Frag. 1

“There was a time when the myriad tribes of men
wandering pressed down on the thick chest of the broad earth—
And when Zeus saw this, he pitied her and in his complex thoughts
He planned to lighten the all-nourishing earth of human beings
By fanning the great strife of the Trojan War,
So that he might lighten the weight by death. And then in Troy
The heroes were dying, and the will of Zeus was being fulfilled.”

ἦν ὅτε μυρία φῦλα κατὰ χθόνα πλαζόμεν’ αἰεὶ
βαρυστέρνου πλάτος αἴης,
Ζεὺς δὲ ἰδὼν ἐλέησε καὶ ἐν πυκιναῖς πραπίδεσσι
κουφίσαι ἀνθρώπων παμβώτορα σύνθετο γαῖαν,
ῥιπίσσας πολέμου μεγάλην ἔριν ᾿Ιλιακοῖο,
ὄφρα κενώσειεν θανάτωι βάρος. οἱ δ’ ἐνὶ Τροίηι
ἥρωες κτείνοντο, Διὸς δ’ ἐτελείετο βουλή.

Achilles’ combination of the world etôsion with the phrase akhthos arourês combines an adjective used for weapons that have missed the mark with an image of a human being who does not pull his own weight or contribute to the good of working the earth for a living. The Achilles of the Odyssey seems to directly countermand his former heroic existence as useless, preferring something that is productive not destructive. So, while he laments his own loss and criticizes himself for sitting idly by while his friends died, Achilles may also be provided a coded critique of his position, of the heroic ability to ask for so much and provide so little in the end.

Bibliography on the language of Achilles

n.b this is not an exhaustive bibliography. If you’d like anything else included, please let me know. Follow-up posts will address the political framework of book 9 and the duals.

Arieti, James A. “Achilles’ Alienation in ‘Iliad 9.’” The Classical Journal 82, no. 1 (1986): 1–27. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3297803.

Brenk, F. 1984 “Dear Child: the Speech of Phoinix and the Tragedy of Achilles in the Ninth Book of the Iliad.” Eranos, 86: 77–86.

Claus, David B. “Aidôs in the Language of Achilles.” Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974-) 105 (1975): 13–28. https://doi.org/10.2307/283930.

Hammer, D. 2002. The Iliad as Politics: The Performance of Political Thought. Norman.

HAMMER, DEAN. “THE ‘ILIAD’ AS ETHICAL THINKING: POLITICS, PITY, AND THE OPERATION OF ESTEEM.” Arethusa 35, no. 2 (2002): 203–35. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44578882.

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

Griffin, Jasper. “Homeric Words and Speakers.” The Journal of Hellenic Studies 106 (1986): 36–57. https://doi.org/10.2307/629641.

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

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

Lloyd, Michael. 2004. “The Politeness of Achilles: Off-Record Conversation Strategies.” JHS, 124: 75–89.

LOWENSTAM, S. The Death of Patroklos: A Study in Typology. Königstein/Ts.: Hain, 1981.

Mackie, H. 1996. Talking Trojan: Speech and Community in the Iliad. Lanham, MD.

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

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

Steve Nimis. “The Language of Achilles: Construction vs. Representation.” The Classical World 79, no. 4 (1986): 217–25. https://doi.org/10.2307/4349869.

Reeve, M. D. “The Language of Achilles.” The Classical Quarterly 23, no. 2 (1973): 193–95. http://www.jstor.org/stable/638171.

Parry, Adam. 1956. “The Language of Achilles.” TAPA, 60: 1–8.

—,—. 1972. “Language and Characterization in Homer.” HSCP, 76: 1–22.

Roochnik, David. 1990. “Homeric Speech Acts: Word and Deed in the Epics.” CJ, 85: 289–299.

Scodel, Ruth. 1982. “The Autobiography of Phoenix: Iliad 9.444-95.” AJP 103.2: 128–136.

Scodel, Ruth. “The Word of Achilles.” Classical Philology 84, no. 2 (1989): 91–99. http://www.jstor.org/stable/270264.

Scully, Stephen. “The Language of Achilles: The OKHTHESAS Formulas.” Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974-) 114 (1984): 11–27. https://doi.org/10.2307/284136.

if you made it this far you won’t mind the randomness. The language of burden in Achilles’ speech always makes me thing of the song “Cumbersome” by Seven Mary Three. if this song had a scent, it would likely be a sweaty summer garage in Tennessee during the early 1990s.

Thinking about the Epic Cycle, Neoanalysis, and Introducing Iliad17

This post is a basic introduction to reading Iliad 17 Here is a link to the overview of Iliad 16 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 17 of the Iliad is likely one of the most skimmed or skipped books in the reading of epic. And this is not because there is anything wrong with it! On the contrary, it is a masterpiece of expansion and suspense. I think it tends to get ignored because so much of what it does is keyed into the aesthetics of performance. The book starts with Menelas “not failing to notice the death of Patroklos” and centers around a struggle over his armor, and his body. But it also includes mourning immortal horses, Zeus inspiring a charioteer, Hektor and Aeneas chasing after horses, and Ajax defending Menelaos and Meriones as they carry Patroklos’ body away from the ships and Antilochus, Nestor’s son, rushes to tell Achilles what has happened. Book 18 starts with Achilles finding out what has happened.

At the end of book 15, the audience knows the plot of the rest of the epic. They know what will happen, but they don’t know how it will unfold. There are universes of stories to be told in the how of the events of the Iliad anticipated by Zeus: the deaths of Sarpedon, Patroklos, and Hektor could unfold in myriad ways and most audiences listening to the performance of the ‘rage of Achilles’ would know the basic plot details, but not the connective tissue between them. The 761 lines of book 17 create suspense for the audience as they await Achilles’ response, but at the same time they also provide opportunities to characterize the heroes in this specific telling of the epic and to engage with other narratives traditions.  The plot of this book engages critically with the major themes I have noted to follow in reading the Iliad: (1) Politics, (2) Heroism; (3) Gods and Humans; (4) Family & Friends; (5) Narrative Traditions, but the central themes I emphasize in reading and teaching book 17 are heroism, politics  and Narrative Traditions.

Book 17, the Epic Cycle, and Neoanalysis

Let me start by talking about Narrative traditions. When I summarize book 17 above, I mention Menelaos, Hektor, Aeneas, and then Ajax and Antilochus. The collocation of characters here would, for many audiences, likely recall events from outside the Iliad as we know it, from narrative traditions authors like Proclus (in his Chrestomathia) and earlier scholars placed in the so-called epic cycle. As I have written about before, I think that the Epic Cycle is in many ways “a scholarly fiction.” It posits that there was a fixed group of poems that told the whole story of the Trojan War from beginning to end. I think that both the notion of telling the whole story and having one set of poems doing this work is out of touch with how performed songs worked in antiquity while also ignoring that there were many other narrative traditions that aren’t included in the small group of poems in the Trojan Cycle.

One of the reasons I am rather committed to this point of view has to do with what subsequent generations of scholars have done with the idea of the epic cycle, which is to reconstruct the content of the poems and then spend a good deal of time trying to figure out the relationship between such reconstructions and the poems we actually possess. This is dangerous in a few ways: First, almost everything we have about the so-called cycle has been preserved because of its similarity or relevance to our Homeric epics. So, we can’t trust that this material has been represented well or fully. Second, any speculation on the relationship between these reconstructions and the poems we have is complicated by the performance history of the narrative traditions that we have to try to separate from the fixed texts that have come down to us. Many different versions of the ‘rage of Achilles’ could have circulated in antiquity and influenced other poetic traditions, which in turn ended up influencing or shaping the Rage-song that survived for us.

(Elton Barker and I discuss a lot of this in our book Homer’s Thebes)

I don’t want to be dismissive of Neoanalysis entirely, however. Anyone who knows me as Homerist knows the approach gets under my skin, but I have tried to be fairer in years with what it can contribute. At its best–if it adopts a kind of epistemic humility about the actual relationship between texts we have and those we have reconstructed or lost–neoanalysis retains the ability to show us how complex the narrative backgrounds of the Iliad and the Odyssey are and how much our understanding of the poems can be enriched by thinking through these other traditions. This value is attenuated, however, by overly positivistic assertions that a specific passage in the Iliad or Odyssey was modeled on a specific moment in another poem. Such moves, I believe, underappreciate how many story traditions there were drawing on similar motifs while also failing to take into account the many possible versions of a given tradition. In addition, and this is probably what makes me the most irrational, such a positivistic approach also typically does not consider what audiences knew or could have known.

These considerations bear significantly on book 17 because it is possible to frame the book from its echoes of other narratives, foremost the struggle over Achilles’ body, rescued by Ajax, and, second, the relationship between Antilochus and Achilles in the Aithiopis. According to our ancient sources, the Aithiopis begins after the end of the Iliad and includes juicy details like Achilles allegedly falling in love with Penthesilea and killing her,  only to kill Thersites too for accusing him of it. Then, Memnon, the son of Dawn, arrives to support the Trojans, kills Antilochus, which sends Achilles into another rage, that leads to him slaughtering Memnon. Once he has killed Memnon, Achilles pushes too far pursuing the Trojans into the city, and is killed by Apollo and Paris, near the very gate where Patroklos fell.

There are, from this summary, innumerable parallels between books 16 and 17 of the Iliad and the lost Aithiopis. I have shifted to the word “parallel” here instead of my usual “echo” or “resonance” because it is a visual metaphor, common in setting texts side-by-side. I am suspicious of taking such parallels too seriously because they are made up of the same very basic plot detail as Zeus’ outline of the events of the Iliad in book 15: they are just dots on a map, as yet unconnected by the detail that gives epic its force. Even if we assume that the plot of the lost Aithiopis has been faithfully transmitted and not ‘juiced’ or crafted to match the Iliad better, we have no way of knowing whether one poem or narrative tradition influenced the other and have not really developed the scholarly language to describe two closely related traditions influencing each other over time as their stories are told and retold and as they come in contact with other traditions.

We can say, I think, that the Iliad seems conscious of the importance of Antilochus and the basic details of his story (note how much he and Achilles engage in book 23, for example). We also know that the Odyssey is conscious of the fallout over the rescue of Achilles’ body and the awarding of his arms to Ajax instead of Odysseus. (Odysseus acts all surprised that Ajax won’t talk to him in the underworld!) But we can’t say with any confidence to what extent the Iliad we have relies on audience knowledge of the rescue of Achilles’ body in the drama of book 17. 

Book 17 works because of its detail, not because of its plot: the horses mourning, Menelaos striving, Hektor making some bad decisions, Glaukos laying into Hektor, the length of the expansion straining the suspension of our disbelief. All of these things put flesh on what would be pretty bare bones with just the basic outline of Achilles’ death.  The rescue of Achilles’ body, indeed, was a popular motif, appearing in greek art well before the textualization of the Iliad as we know it. But it–and the judgment of the arms, and the rage of Achilles over Antilochus–all could have been episodes in a fluid and living oral tradition from which both the Iliad and the Aithiopis emerged.

(Provided, of course, we believe there was an Aithiopis with the scenes reported by Proclus, and that such summaries did not merely collocate all of the major episodes from the Trojan War later scholars dug up in order to tell the whole story.)

Some reading questions on book 17

Why is the Iliad a better epic with book 17 than without it?

What do Hektor’s actions in book 17 contribute to our understanding of his character?

Why does the narrative spend so much time on the struggle for Patroklos’ body?

A short Bibliography on the epic cycle and neoanalysis

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

Barker, Elton T. E., and Joel P. Christensen. 2019. Homer’s Thebes: Epic Rivalries and the Appropriation of Mythical Pasts. Hellenic Studies Series 84. Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies. 

Degener, Michael. “Euphorbus’ plaint and plaits: the unsung valor of a foot soldier in Homer’s « Iliad ».” Phoenix, vol. 74, no. 3-4, 2020, pp. 220-243. Doi: 10.1353/phx.2020.0037

Fenno, Jonathan Brian. “The mist shed by Zeus in Iliad XVII.” The Classical Journal, vol. 104, no. 1, 2008-2009, pp. 1-9.

Harrison, E. L. “Homeric Wonder-Horses.” Hermes 119, no. 2 (1991): 252–54. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4476820.

Kozak, Lynn. “Character and context in the rebuke exchange of Iliad 17.142-184.” Classical World, vol. 106, no. 1, 2012-2013, pp. 1-14.

Moulton, C.. “The speech of Glaukos in Iliad 17.” Hermes, vol. CIX, 1981, pp. 1-8.

Neal, Tamara. “Blood and hunger in the « Iliad ».” Classical Philology, vol. 101, no. 1, 2006, pp. 15-33. Doi: 10.1086/505669

Schein, Seth L.. “The horses of Achilles in Book 17 of the « Iliad ».” « Epea pteroenta »: Beiträge zur Homerforschung : Festschrift für Wolfgang Kullmann zum 75. Geburtstag. Eds. Reichel, Michael and Rengakos, Antonios. Stuttgart: Steiner, 2002. 193-205.

West, M. L. “‘Iliad’ and ‘Aethiopis.’” The Classical Quarterly 53, no. 1 (2003): 1–14. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3556478.

A short Bibliography on the epic cycle and neoanalysis

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

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

Barker, E.T.E. 2008. “ ‘Momos Advises Zeus’: The Changing Representations of Cypria Fragment One.” In Greece, Rome and the Near East, ed. E. Cingano and L. Milano, 33–73. Padova.

———. 2008. “Oedipus of Many Pains: Strategies of Contest in Homeric Poetry.”

Leeds International Classical Studies 7.2. (http://www.leeds.ac.uk/classiscs/lics/)

———. 2011. “On Not Remembering Tydeus: Diomedes and the Contest for Thebes.” Materiali e discussioni per l’analisi dei testi classici 66:9–44.

———. 2015. “Odysseus’ Nostos and the Odyssey’s Nostoi.” G. Philologia Antiqua

87–112.

Albertus Benarbé. Poetorum Epicorum Graecorum. Leipzig: Teubner, 1987.

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

Cingano, E. 1992. “The Death of Oedipus in the Epic Tradition.” Phoenix 46:1–11.

———. 2000. “Tradizioni su Tebe nell’epica e nella lirica greca arcaica.” In La città

di Argo: Mito, storia, tradizioni poetiche, ed. P. A. Bernardini, 59–68. Rome.

———. 2004. “The Sacrificial Cut and the Sense of Honour Wronged in Greek

Joel Christensen. “Revising Athena’s Rage: Kassandra and the Homeric Appropriation of Nostos.” YAGE 3: 88–116.

Malcolm Davies. Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta. Göttingen : Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1988.

Malcolm Davies. The Greek Epic Cycle. London: Bristol, 1989.

Fantuzzi, M., and C. Tsagalis, eds. 2014. The Greek Epic Cycle and its Ancient Reception: A Companion. Cambridge.

Margalit Finkelberg. The Cypria, the Iliad, and the Problem of Multiformity in Oral and Written Tradition, ‹‹CP›› 95, 2000, pp. 1-11. 

Lulli, L. 2014. “Local Epics and Epic Cycles: The Anomalous Case of a Submerged Genre.” In Submerged Literature in Ancient Greek Culture, ed. G. Colesanti and Giordano, 76–90. Berlin and Boston.

L. Huxley. Greek Epic Poetry from Eumelos to Panyassis, Cambridge 1969.

Richard Martin. Telemachus and the Last Hero Song, ‹‹Colby Quarterly›› 29, 1993, pp. 222-240.

Jasper Griffin. “The epic cycle and the uniqueness of Homer.” Journal of Hellenic Studies 97 (1977) 39-53.

Ingrid Holmberg “The Creation of the Ancient Greek Epic Cycle”

Marks, J., ‘‘Alternative Odysseys: The Case of Thoas and Odysseus’’, TAPhA 133.2 (2003) 209-226.

Gregory Nagy. The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek poetry. Baltimore 1999.

Nagy, G., “Oral Traditions, Written Texts, and Questions of Authorship”, in: M. Fantuzzi / C. Tsagalis (eds.), Cambridge Companion to the Greek Epic Cycle, Cambridge 2015, 59-77.

Nelson, T. J., ‘‘Intertextual Agōnes in Archaic Greek Epic: Penelope vs. the Catalogue of Women’’, YAGE 5.1 (2021) 25-57.

Rutherford, I., “The Catalogue of Women within the Greek Epic Tradition: Allusion, Intertextuality and Traditional Referentiality”, in: O. Anderson / D. T. T. Haug (eds.), Relative Chronology of Early Greek Epic Poetry, Cambridge 2012, 152-167.

Albert Severyns. Le cycle épique dans l’école d’Aristarque. Paris: Les Belles Lettres 1928.

Albert Severyns. Recherches sur la Chrestomathie de Proclos. Paris: Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres, Liége, 1938.

Giampiero Scafoglio. La questione ciclica, ‹‹RPh››78, 2004, pp. 289-310.

Laura Slatkin. The Power of Thetis: Allusion and Interpretation in the Iliad. Berkeley 1991.

Michael Squire. The Iliad in a Nutshell: Visualizing Epic on the Tabulae Iliacae. Oxford: 2011.

Tsagalis, C., Early Greek Epic Fragments I: Antiquarian and Genealogical Epic, Berlin / Boston 2017.

Marco Fantuzzi and Christos Tsagalis. “Introduction: Kyklos, Epic Cycle, and Cyclic Poetry.” In M. Fantuzzi and C. Tsagalis (eds.). ACompanion to the Greek Epic Cycle and Its Fortune in the Ancient World. (Brill, 2014).

Martin L. West. The Epic Cycle: A Commentary on the Lost Troy Epics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.