This is one of a few posts dedicated to Iliad 24. 

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

Let’s start with the scene

Homer, Iliad 24.477-512

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

Homer, Iliad 19. 309-340

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Aristotle, Poetics 1449b21-27

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

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

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

Plato, Ion 535d-e

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

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

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

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

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

 

Rhapsode singing: c 490 BCE, attributed to the Berlin painter MET

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

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

A short bibliography

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is one of a few posts dedicated to Iliad 24.

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

Homer, Iliad 24. 322-333

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Short bibliography on the Book 24

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This post is a basic introduction to reading Iliad 23. 

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

Iliad 23 is actually anything but fun and games, even if it appears to be a bit of a diversion (or what some have dismissed as a “mere interlude”). The burial is an important part of heroic honors for the dead, yet is marked by a strange sacrifice and the ongoing mutilation of Hektor’s corpse; the games echo the political questions of Iliad 1, 2, 9, and 19; and the funeral games themselves may also be engaging with traditions both of the death of Patroklos outside the Iliad and of the games that were held following Achilles’ death. As such, each of part the book adds something to the themes I have outlined in reading the Iliad: (1) Politics, (2) Heroism; (3) Gods and Humans; (4) Family & Friends; (5) Narrative Traditions. Among these, however, I think book 21 speaks most directly to politics, heroism, and narrative traditions.

Contextualizing the Funeral Games

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reading Questions for book 23

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

How does Achilles run the funerary games?

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

Short bibliography on the Funeral games

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s an image

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

This is one of a few posts dedicated to Iliad 22. 

The most memorable details of Iliad 22 are probably Hektor running away from Achilles, then being tricked to facing him by Athena, and, finally, the mistreatment of his corpse before the book’s end. Before the antagonists face each other, however, Hektor has a remarkable speech where he chides himself for not taking advice to retreat within the walls earlier. He confesses that fear of shame—both for cowardice and for wasting so many Trojan lives—keeps him from returning to the city at this point.

In the final moments before he faces Achilles, when the narrative describes him as a coiled snake, Hektor imagines a different outcome. His dream-world can help us understand what happens in the rest of the book.

Iliad 22.111-128

“I wish I could put my embossed shield down
Along with my mighty helmet, then lean my spear against the wall,
And go face-to-face with blameless Achilles.
I’d promise him Helen and the possessions along with her,
Everything that Alexander took in his hollow ships
When he went to Troy, the very beginning of our conflict,
To give her back to the sons of Atreus and in addition
To divide up all the things this city has kept safe.
Then I would have an oath sworn among the Trojan elders
Not to hide anything at all, but to divide up everything,
Every possession the lovely city keeps inside.
But why does my dear heart discuss these things?
I can’t go forward and approach him—he wouldn’t pity me
Nor feel any shame at all, but he will kill me even unarmed
Just the way he would a woman, once I lay my weapons down.
There’s no way at all from oak or stone
To sweet-talk him, the way that a young woman and a young man
or a young man and a young woman sweet talk one another.”

εἰ δέ κεν ἀσπίδα μὲν καταθείομαι ὀμφαλόεσσαν
καὶ κόρυθα βριαρήν, δόρυ δὲ πρὸς τεῖχος ἐρείσας
αὐτὸς ἰὼν ᾿Αχιλῆος ἀμύμονος ἀντίος ἔλθω
καί οἱ ὑπόσχωμαι ῾Ελένην καὶ κτήμαθ’ ἅμ’ αὐτῇ,
πάντα μάλ’ ὅσσά τ’ ᾿Αλέξανδρος κοίλῃς ἐνὶ νηυσὶν
ἠγάγετο Τροίηνδ’, ἥ τ’ ἔπλετο νείκεος ἀρχή,
δωσέμεν ᾿Ατρεΐδῃσιν ἄγειν, ἅμα δ’ ἀμφὶς ᾿Αχαιοῖς
ἄλλ’ ἀποδάσσεσθαι ὅσα τε πτόλις ἧδε κέκευθε·
Τρωσὶν δ’ αὖ μετόπισθε γερούσιον ὅρκον ἕλωμαι
μή τι κατακρύψειν, ἀλλ’ ἄνδιχα πάντα δάσασθαι
κτῆσιν ὅσην πτολίεθρον ἐπήρατον ἐντὸς ἐέργει·
ἀλλὰ τί ἤ μοι ταῦτα φίλος διελέξατο θυμός;
μή μιν ἐγὼ μὲν ἵκωμαι ἰών, ὃ δέ μ’ οὐκ ἐλεήσει
οὐδέ τί μ’ αἰδέσεται, κτενέει δέ με γυμνὸν ἐόντα
αὔτως ὥς τε γυναῖκα, ἐπεί κ’ ἀπὸ τεύχεα δύω.
οὐ μέν πως νῦν ἔστιν ἀπὸ δρυὸς οὐδ’ ἀπὸ πέτρης
τῷ ὀαριζέμεναι, ἅ τε παρθένος ἠΐθεός τε
παρθένος ἠΐθεός τ’ ὀαρίζετον ἀλλήλοιιν.

Hektor paints a vivid scene of disarming and meeting Achilles to make a truce. The language throughout is filled with references to pity and shame, those softer cultural correctives against the worst behavior. He also emphasizes redistributing goods, perhaps reaching back to the beginning of the epic when Achilles and Agamemnon fought over war spoils, but ultimately, Hektor knows neither his disarming nor the redistribution of goods is going to make a difference. Achilles is not merely upset; he is enraged. His loss of honor in book 1 led him to question and perhaps abandon the entire system of shame and esteem to which Hektor alludes. The death of Patroklos at Hektor’s hands, moreover, shook Achilles’ cosmic reality.

Schol. Ad Il. 22.126 bT

”There’s no way from oak or stone to sweet-talk him” to describe  ridiculous ancient sayings: it is either from the generation of humans who were in the mountains, or it is because early people said they were ash-born or from the stones of Deukalion. Or it is about providing oracles, since Dodona is an oak and Pytho was a stone. Or it means to speak uselessly, coming from the leaves around trees and the waves around stones. Or it is not possible for him to describe the beginning of the human race.

<οὐ μέν πως νῦν ἔστιν> ἀπὸ δρυὸς οὐδ’ ἀπὸ πέτρης / τῷ ὀαριζέμεναι: ληρώδεις ἀρχαιολογίας διηγεῖσθαι, ἢ ἀπὸ τοῦ τὸ παλαιὸν ὀρεινόμων ὄντων τῶν ἀνθρώπων ἐκεῖσε τίκτεσθαι ἢ ἐπεὶ μελιηγενεῖς λέγονται οἱ πρώην ἄνδρες καὶ <λαοὶ> ἀπὸ τῶν λίθων Δευκαλίωνος.  ἢ χρησμοὺς διηγεῖσθαι (Δωδώνη γὰρ δρῦς, πέτρα δὲ Πυθών). ἢ περιττολογεῖν, ἀπὸ τῶν περὶ τὰς δρῦς φύλλων καὶ περὶ τὰς πέτρας κυμάτων. ἢ οὐκ ἔστιν αὐτῷ τὴν ἀρχὴν τοῦ γένους διηγεῖσθαι τῶν ἀνθρώπων.

When Hektor declares that “There’s no way at all from oak or stone…” to talk to Achilles, he uses a proverbial comment to tap into a cosmic/metaphysical assertion: Achilles is beyond shame and pity, he is beyond seeing anyone else in the world as more than an obstacle to his ends. But he still ruminates and fantasizes. In my first post on book 22, I suggest that we see Hektor as frozen in that moment of fight or flight for years, wrangling with the trauma of inaction and desperation. Fabian Horn, in an article from 2018, argues similarly that Hektor exhibits a combat stress reaction along with post-traumatic stress disorder—that he runs not from death but from a world lost in fear and out of his control

To add to these readings, I think we also need to think about what Hektor longs for, what he desires. Rachel Lesser considers Hektor and Achilles at some length in her recent book, Desire in the Iliad  (2022, 208-214). In discussing lines 123-138, Lesser suggests that “When Hektor concludes, “he will kill me naked, just like a woman,” he acknowledges Achilleus’ unstoppable aggression and imagines himself as a vulnerable and passive victim” (209), emphasizing that Hektor imagines a equal relationship, one not of assault but of courtship (following Owen 1946’s observation that Hektor echoes his exchange with Andromache in that book—the language of intimate conversation Hektor uses here (e.g., ὀαρίζετον) appears there as well (cf. Il. 6.516). Such an image of romance, I think, dials back the story of the Iliad to the time before the beginning of the trouble. His repetition of youth and maiden, maiden and youth, shows him stumbling over the image, nearly trying to will it into being despite its impossibility.

Lesser argues that this erotic—in terms of courtly or romantic—language is operative throughout the faceoff between Achilles and Hektor, pervading the former’s eagerness and passion and helping us to understand the heightened language to describe Hektor and “[providing] a window into Achilleus’ psychology that supports the interpretation of Achilleus’ libidinal fixation on Hektor as an external displacement of his ambivalent longing for Patroklos. The final death blow to Hektor is a kind of “sexual consummation” as Achilles’ spear enters his enemy’s neck” (211).

I really like the formulation of understanding Achilles’ “displacement” of his intensity for Patroklos onto the fire of his rage towards Hektor. There is a slippage that occurs in intense emotions we can observe here as Achilles identification with Patroklos moves from an acceptance of surrogacy in book 16 to a lamentation about what that surrogacy actual means in books 18 and 19 to redirecting it towards Hektor. Hektor becomes the reason Achilles lost part of himself but also a target for the emotional immensity so characteristic of Peleus’ only son. In addition to displacement, however I think there is also a kind of complementarity modeled by Hektor’s speech itself.

When Hektor imagines himself and Achilles as young lovers, he may make himself passive to Achilles’ agent, but he also positions them in a complementary stance to negotiate a different outcome to their conflict. Both in the repetition of identities near the end and in the overall scenario, Hektor imagines an egalitarian relationship where Achilles pursues him through speech, in a less aggressive and less destructive way than the actual outcome. For us as modern readers, however, it can be easy for us to misunderstand some of the assumptions attending marriage for Homeric audiences. One of the most well-known quotes about marriage from antiquity is the blessing Odysseus offers to Nausikaa in Odyssey 6 (6.180-185)

“May the gods grant as much as you desire in your thoughts,
A husband and home, and may they give you fine likemindedness,
For nothing is better and stronger than this
When two people who are likeminded in their thoughts share a home,
A man and a wife—this brings many pains for their enemies
And joys to their friends. And the gods listen to them especially”

σοὶ δὲ θεοὶ τόσα δοῖεν ὅσα φρεσὶ σῇσι μενοινᾷς,
ἄνδρα τε καὶ οἶκον, καὶ ὁμοφροσύνην ὀπάσειαν
ἐσθλήν: οὐ μὲν γὰρ τοῦ γε κρεῖσσον καὶ ἄρειον,
ἢ ὅθ᾽ ὁμοφρονέοντε νοήμασιν οἶκον ἔχητον
ἀνὴρ ἠδὲ γυνή: πόλλ᾽ ἄλγεα δυσμενέεσσι,
χάρματα δ᾽ εὐμενέτῃσι, μάλιστα δέ τ᾽ ἔκλυον αὐτοί.

This passage is often viewed as a positive statement on marriage, while it also articulates a notion of justice (hurting friends/helping enemies) that is debated in Plato’s Republic as well. As James Redfield argues in his book The Locrian Maidens, the language of marriage and political stability overlap in emphasis in similarity of thought (more often homonoia). But as the story of the Odyssey shows, what this often means is the occluding of the desires and the interests of the passive/subordinate group by the values and interests of the group in power. Hektor gives up the possessions of Troy as something like a bridegift, yielding to Achilles what he wishes Achilles would desire in place of his blood and life.

There’s another angle to the moment that it took me a modern novel to see more clearly. Guy Gavriel Kay’s The Lions of Al-Rassan uses a medieval fantasy world to retell the story of Muslim Spain during the time of El Cid. Two of the primary characters, the cavalry captain Rodrigo Belmonte and the warrior/poet Ammar ibn Khairan end up on opposite sides of the war as the ‘foreigners’ are driven back across the sea. The two men start out as uneasy allies and are driven apart by diverging loyalties until they lead armies against each other.

One of the most memorable scenes in a remarkable book comes near the end when Rodrigo and Ammar face each other on the field in single-combat. When the two approach that final moment, Kay leaves a silence to be filled by the audience: “No one escorted either man, so no one knew what it was that Rodrigo Belmonte and Ammar ibn Khairan said to each other when they stopped their horses a little distance apart, alone in the world.” Their former intimacy remains private, informing and anticipating the action to come.

The unfolding duel is watched by a woman named Jehane who loves them both. As she watches, the narrative moves and obscures their identities. One of the men thinks as the scene moves on:

It would have been pleasant, the thought came to him, to be able to lay down their weapons on the darkening grass. To walk away from this place, from what they were being made to do, past the ruins, along the river and into the woods beyond. To find a forest pool, wash their wounds and drink from the cool water and then sit beneath the trees, out of the wind, silent as the summer night came down.

As she observes this scene, Rodrigo’s wife, Miranda remembers, “But she had never, ever heard Rodrigo speak of another man—not even Raimundo, who had died so long ago—the way he’d talked about Ammar ibn Khairan during the long, waiting winter just past. The way the man sat a horse, handled a blade, a bow, devised strategies, jested, spoke of history, geography, the properties of good wine. Even the way he wrote poetry.”

Rodrigo and Ammar are different men in many ways, but they are united in their dedication to their people and their sense of duty. When Hektor briefly imagines chatting with Achilles and sharing a world outside of war with him, I imagine him, the breaker of horses, as occupying such a complementary space, where one fills the space left by another. Indeed, as Owen Lee argues, Hektor and Achilles are both versions of heroes who change the world, who bring a new reality into being. They mirror and refract, but do not perfectly overlap. As the duel continues in The Lions of Al-Rassan, it becomes difficult to trace who strikes and who defends and, in the final moments, it is left briefly unclear which warrior survives.

The interplay of love and death, of longing and fear, in the final moments between Rodrigo and Ammar has led me to see more of what Rachel Lesser sees in Hektor’s final moments. Achilles, Patroklos, and Hektor represent something of a trans-mortal triangle, as each represents life and/or death for the others and a series of replacement and displacement that alters the world they all briefly shared. The greatness of either hero is measured by the other—Hektor’s death matters in part because of Achilles’ life, their stories are entwined in the Iliad to the point that the differences are nearly obscured. As Kay writes of the duel in The Lions of Al-Rassan: “Most of the time, eyes narrowed against the sun, Jehane could tell them apart. Not always, though, as they overlapped and merged and broke apart. They were silhouettes now, no more than that, against the last red disk of light.”

The signal difference in Lions, however, is that dreadful balance between duty and rage. The heroes of Kay’s world are driven by the loyalties to face one another; Achilles and Hektor are driven by their roles into a series of choices that upends duty and common sense and leads them both to their deaths. But in Hektor’s speech we find a different desire that anticipates the very elision Kay describes: when he speaks contra-factually of Achilles’ ability to pity him or feel shame in his treatment, he echoes the very language Priam uses of Achilles in book 24 (503-504):

“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

Priam, even if briefly, becomes for Achilles what rage makes impossible for Hektor: another human being whose love and brief light in the world reminds him of his own. The tragedy of Rodrigo and Ammar is that they find this in each other but then must leave it behind; Hektor and Achilles never have the time to find this in each other and Priam and Achilles are allowed only a brief glimpse before they return to their final days.

A short bibliography

Bassett, S. E.. “Achilles’ treatment of Hector’s body.” TAPA, 1933, pp. 41-65.

Kay, Guy Gavriel. The Lions of Al-Rassan. Viking Canada. 1995.

Jasper Griffin, ‘Achilles kills Hector’, Lampas, XXIII. (1990) 353-369.

Hadjicosti, Ioanna L.. “Hesiod fr. 212B (MW): death at the Skaean gates.” Mnemosyne, Ser. 4, vol. 58, no. 4, 2005, pp. 547-554.

Horn, Fabian. “The psychology of aggression: Achilles’ wrath and Hector’s flight in Iliad 22.131-7.” Hermes, vol. 146, no. 3, 2018, pp. 277-289. Doi: 10.25162/hermes-2018-0023

Lee, M. Owen. “Achilles and Hector as Hegelian heroes.” Échos du monde classique = Classical views, vol. XXX, 1981, pp. 97-103.

Lesser, Rachel. 2022. Desire in the Iliad. Oxford.

Owen, E. T. 1946. The Story of the Iliad. Toronto.

Rabel, Robert J.. “The shield of Achilles and the death of Hector.” Eranos, vol. LXXXVII, 1989, pp. 81-90.

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

Vermeule, Emily D. Townsend. “The vengeance of Achilles. The dragging of Hektor at Troy.” Bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, vol. LXIII, 1965, pp. 34-52.