This post is one of a few on Iliad 23.

A few years ago I posted a bit from Plato’s Ion, discussing the proposition that there is something about laughter that is alien to the expectations of Homeric performance. In doing so, I perhaps was not specific enough in focusing just on Homer. There was an entire tradition of epic parody that was predicated on people knowing epic forms and norms. Athenaeus, in his Deipnosophists, has one of his speakers trace the founding of parody to the iambic poet Hipponax:

Polemon, in the twelfth book of his To Timaios, writes about his studies on the authors of parody “I would call Boeiotos and Euboios word-smiths since they play deftly with multiple meanings and they surpass the poets who preceded them in earlier generations. But it must be admitted that the founder of this genre was Hipponax, the iambic poet. For he writes as follows in hexameter:

“Muse, tell me the tale the sea-swallowing
Stomach-slicing, son of Eurymedon, who eats without order,
How he died a terrible death thanks to a vile vote
in the public council along the strand of the barren sea.”

Parody is also accredited to Epicharmus of Syracuse in some of his plays, Cratinus the Old Comic poetry in his play The Sons of Eunêos, and also to Hegemon of Thasos, whom they used to call “Lentil Soup”, as he says himself.”

Πολέμων δ’ ἐν τῷ δωδεκάτῳ τῶν πρὸς Τίμαιον περὶ τῶν τὰς παρῳδίας γεγραφότων ἱστορῶν τάδε γράφει ‘καὶ τὸν Βοιωτὸν δὲ καὶ τὸν Εὔβοιον τοὺς τὰς παρῳδίας γράψαντας λογίους ἂν φήσαιμι διὰ τὸ παίζειν ἀμφιδεξίως καὶ τῶν προγενεστέρων ποιητῶν ὑπερέχειν ἐπιγεγονότας. εὑρετὴν μὲν οὖν τοῦ γένους ῾Ιππώνακτα φατέον τὸν ἰαμβοποιόν. λέγει γὰρ οὗτος ἐν τοῖς ἑξαμέτροις

Μοῦσά μοι Εὐρυμεδοντιάδεα τὴν ποντοχάρυβδιν,
τὴν ἐν γαστρὶ μάχαιραν, ὃς ἐσθίει οὐ κατὰ κόσμον,
ἔννεφ’, ὅπως ψηφῖδι κακὸν οἶτον ὀλεῖται
βουλῆι δημοσίηι παρὰ θῖν’ ἁλὸς ἀτρυγέτοιο.

κέχρηται δὲ καὶ ᾿Επίχαρμος ὁ Συρακόσιος ἔν τισι τῶν δραμάτων ἐπ’ ὀλίγον καὶ Κρατῖνος ὁ τῆς ἀρχαίας κωμῳδίας ποιητὴς ἐν Εὐνείδαις καὶ τῶν κατ’ αὐτὸν ῾Ηγήμων ὁ Θάσιος, ὃν ἐκάλουν Φακῆν. λέγει γὰρ οὕτως.

There were many forms of epic parody between the performance of Homeric epics and when Athenaeus composed his work: Animal epic, like that of the Batrakhomuomahkia, gastronomic parody, like that of Matro of Pitane, or the work of Hegemon the parodist. We have evidence for the performance of parody at competitions in the 4th century BCE.

There’s a sense of secondariness to parody that leads most reasonable thinkers to insist that parody follows the original. How can something be mocked if it does not already exist? But this common sense believe doesn’t accord either with the way epic developed in performance or with human behavior. Thanks to fragments from Panyasis or Aristeas we know that archaic epic could be ‘unheroic’ and more fantastic. We also know from early Greek art that there was little off limits: consider the Oedipus parody vases that show absurd figures and masturbating monsters.

But could it be funny? Howard Clarke sums it up thus: “the Odyssey has more laughs than the Iliad, 23 to 11. But the Iliad has more smiles, 14 ” (1969, 246). There’s laughter in Homer, but there’s general agreement that there’s a cruel streak to it. Joseph William Hewitt puts things a bit more starkly (1928, 437):

Neither Iliad nor Odyssey contain much of what we might call healthy, happy laughter. The sinister elements predominate heavily. One of these is scorn, aroused by a prophet’s warning or by what is thought to be a beggar’s braggadocio ” or bluff. The giggling of the maidens in the palace of Odysseus was inspired by scorn of the helpless beggar.6 There is also cruel scorn of an opponent’s weakness, a laugh of exultation over a fallen foe.’ Such laughter has a basis that is perfectly intelligible and, to a considerable degree, justifiable. Laughter often comes with the relief from tension.

One might wonder what a definition of happy and healthy laughter could be in a time of war, but that’s a different question altogether. Anyone who has been a teenager (or has watched Goodfellas) knows that laughter can be sinister, harmful. Humor, like most human reactions, is rife with opportunities for misunderstanding

When Hewitt identifies the relief from tension, I think he is probably thinking of that striking passage in Iliad 2 where there Achaeans laugh at Odysseus’ abuse of Thersities, “even though their aggrieved” (οἳ δὲ καὶ ἀχνύμενοί περ ἐπ’ αὐτῷ ἡδὺ γέλασσαν, 2.170). That concessive phrase gives Homerists interpretive fits because we don’t know at what they are aggrieved. The passage gets stranger too because the generic Achaean conversation insists that while Odysseus has done numberless good things (ὢ πόποι ἦ δὴ μυρί’ ᾿Οδυσσεὺς ἐσθλὰ ἔοργε, 272) this is the best thing he has done by far (νῦν δὲ τόδε μέγ’ ἄριστον ἐν ᾿Αργείοισιν ἔρεξεν, 274).

There’s certainly an edge to Homeric laughter. The two passages that always stick out for me are near the beginning and end of the Iliad. In the first, the gods laugh at Hephaestus as he limps around the Olympian party (1.595-600). It seems a cruel response to someone with a disability, but the laughter may have multiple purposes. It is certainly a relief from tension—Hera and Zeus were arguing dangerously prior to Hephaestus’ comic play—and it may rely as much on the role Hephaestus adopts as a cup-bearer as on his physical abilities. Even a physically able blacksmith god delivering drinks during a feast could seem inapposite when that role is usually reserved for a younger, more attractive servant/lover (as in Ganymede).

Humor often functions as a type of social control, laughing-at enforces cultural norms as a replacement for or prelude to violence. But sometimes bad luck is funny too. The second example is from the end of the funeral games when Ajax son of Oileus:

“Ajax then slipped while running, for Athena sabotaged him,
In that place where the manure from the loud bulls who had been killed
When swift-footed Achilles sacrificed them for Patroklos.
His mouth and nose filled with bull shit when he fell.
Much-enduing Odysseus took the bowl because he was first
And shining Ajax was awarded the bull
Because he came second. And he stood with his hands
On its horns and addressed the Achaeans while spitting out manure:
‘Fools, the goddess sabotaged me, that one who before
Always stood like a mother on Odysseus’ side, helping him.”
So he spoke, and everyone laughed sweetly at him.

ἔνθ’ Αἴας μὲν ὄλισθε θέων, βλάψεν γὰρ ᾿Αθήνη,
τῇ ῥα βοῶν κέχυτ’ ὄνθος ἀποκταμένων ἐριμύκων,
οὓς ἐπὶ Πατρόκλῳ πέφνεν πόδας ὠκὺς ᾿Αχιλλεύς·
ἐν δ’ ὄνθου βοέου πλῆτο στόμα τε ῥῖνάς τε·
κρητῆρ’ αὖτ’ ἀνάειρε πολύτλας δῖος ᾿Οδυσσεύς,
ὡς ἦλθε φθάμενος· ὃ δὲ βοῦν ἕλε φαίδιμος Αἴας.
στῆ δὲ κέρας μετὰ χερσὶν ἔχων βοὸς ἀγραύλοιο
ὄνθον ἀποπτύων, μετὰ δ’ ᾿Αργείοισιν ἔειπεν·
ὢ πόποι ἦ μ’ ἔβλαψε θεὰ πόδας, ἣ τὸ πάρος περ
μήτηρ ὣς ᾿Οδυσῆϊ παρίσταται ἠδ’ ἐπαρήγει.
῝Ως ἔφαθ’, οἳ δ’ ἄρα πάντες ἐπ’ αὐτῷ ἡδὺ γέλασσαν

There are several funny things here: first, the physical and visual humor of a man slipping in dung and getting it all over his face. Second, I can’t help but find the fact that his prize for coming in second is another bull. Perhaps a promise of eternal bullshit. Third, there are metapoetic/traditional resonances at play. Athena is antagonistic against Ajax in the stories of the homecomings because he rapes Kassandra. The Odyssey makes it very clear: Ajax dies because of sacrilege; but Odysseus, favored by Athena, makes it home. I also suspect that there’s meaning in calling Achilles swift-footed here, when he is overseeing the race and witnessing a man who professes to be slow in the Odyssey defeating a younger hero in madcap fashion.

There is, then, something judgmental about the humor. We might even imagine an ethical consideration. What we laugh at tells us something about what we value and who we are. How we use humor also helps us understand harsher, meaner emotions. These scenes strike me as well as being about watching and judging things. Each scene capitalizes upon the metatheatrical effect of being external audiences witnessing internal audiences having unpredictable responses. The Olympian laughter papers over an irreconcilable difference; Thersites’ beating is a reassertion of a political order—the laughter seals his place as a scapegoat. And Ajax’s ill-luck foreshadows some of the concerns that pace the Odyssey: that tenuous relationship between who we are, what we do, and the fate that takes us.

I started thinking about this again, in part, after reading through Oliver Thomas’ “The Mocking Homer of the Exegetical Scholia to the Iliad” (2022). While some of the framing of the question—e.g. what “kind of person” made the Iliad—differs from how I would put it, there’s real value in looking at how earlier interpreters understood the tone of the Homeric narrator. Thomas traces specific words in the scholia, starting with a case study of διασύρει. The first discussion, of whether Homer or Hektor are really mocking Paris (according to Plutarch and Eustathius) is a good introduction to the problem of narrative frames. The scholia seem much clearer on the ethical import of mocking Thersites, however. Surprising in the article is the degree to which some ancient scholars saw the depiction of Hektor as one of biting mockery.

Most valuable in the piece, for thinking about how ancient scholarship may have reshaped the Homeric poems, is the penultimate section where Thomas discusses the evidence for ancient critics like Aristonicus and Zoilos objecting to lines on the grounds that there were too silly or comedic, following earlier scholars like Aristotle who try to separate between the comic and the tragic. Thomas ends by rightly noting the tension between what these critics assert and what a majority of other comments show. Homeric poetry may not be farce, but it is engaged with a wide array of human experiences and emotions. Tears, violence, and range without laughter lack that ring of truth that makes art so moving.

Short Bibliography

n.b. this is not exhaustive. please let me know if there are other articles to include.

Benson, R. D. (2021). Homeric Epithets that Seem to Be Humorously Ironic. Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics, 29(1), 35–62. https://doi.org/10.2307/arion.29.1.0035

Brown, Christopher G.. “Ares, Aphrodite, and the laughter of the gods.” Phoenix, vol. XLIII, 1989, pp. 283-293.

Caleb M. X. Dance, ‘Laughing with the gods : the tale of Ares and Aphrodite in Homer, Ovid, and Lucian’, Classical World, 113.4 (2019-2020) 405-434. Doi: 10.1353/clw.2020.0037

Clarke, Howard W.. “The humor of Homer.” The Classical Journal, vol. LXIV, 1969, pp. 246-252.

Colakis, Marianthe. “The Laughter of the Suitors in ‘Odyssey.’” The Classical World 79, no. 3 (1986): 137–41. https://doi.org/10.2307/4349839.

Guidorizzi, Giulio. “The laughter of the suitors: a case of collective madness in the Odyssey / transl. by Lowell Edmunds.” Poet, public, and performance in ancient Greece. Eds. Edmunds, Lowell, Wallace, Robert W. and Bettini, Maurizio. Baltimore (Md.): Johns Hopkins University Pr., 1997. 1-7.

Halliwell, F. Stephen (2008). Greek laughter: a study in cultural psychology from Homer to early Christianity. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Pr.

Halliwell, Stephen. “Imagining divine laughter in Homer and Lucian.” Greek laughter and tears : antiquity and after. Eds. Alexiou, Margaret and Cairns, Douglas. Edinburgh Leventis Studies; 8. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Pr., 2017. 36-53.

Hewitt, Joseph William. “Homeric Laughter.” The Classical Journal 23, no. 6 (1928): 436–47. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3289782.

Hoffer, Stanley E.. “Telemachus’ « laugh » (Odyssey 21.105): deceit, authority, and communication in the bow contest.” American Journal of Philology, vol. 116, no. 4, 1995, pp. 515-531.

Hunt, W. Irving. “Homeric Wit and Humor.” Transactions of the American Philological Association (1869-1896) 21 (1890): 48–58. https://doi.org/10.2307/2935808.

Konstan, David. “Laughing at ourselves: gendered humor in ancient Greece.” Laughter, humor, and the (un)making of gender: historical and cultural perspectives. Eds. Foka, Anna and Liliequist, Jonas. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. 13-29.

Donald E. Lavigne, ‘Bad Kharma: a « fragment » of the « Iliad » and iambic laughter’, Aevum Antiquum, N. S., 8. (2008) 115-138. Doi: 10.1400/210042

Levine, Daniel B.. Γέλῳ ἔκθανον. Laughter and the demise of the suitors. Univ. of Cincinnati, 1980.

Levine, Daniel B. “Homeric Laughter and the Unsmiling Suitors.” The Classical Journal 78, no. 2 (1982): 97–104. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3297058.

Levine, Daniel B. “Penelope’s Laugh: Odyssey 18.163.” The American Journal of Philology 104, no. 2 (1983): 172–78. https://doi.org/10.2307/294290.

Mason, H. A. “Fine Comedy in the ‘Iliad.’” The Cambridge Quarterly 9, no. 1 (1979): 17–38. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42965298.

Minchin, Elizabeth. “From gentle teasing to heavy sarcasm: instances of rhetorical irony in Homer’s « Iliad ».” Hermes, vol. 138, no. 4, 2010, pp. 387-402.

Miralles, Carles. “Laughter in the Odyssey.” Laughter down the centuries. 1. Eds. Jäkel, Siegfried and Timonen, Asko. Annales Universitatis Turkuensis. Ser. B, Humaniora; 208 – Annales Universitatis Turkuensis. Ser. B, Humaniora; 208. Turku: Turun Yliopisto, 1994; 1994. 15-22.

Shorey, Paul. “Homeric Laughter.” Classical Philology 22, no. 2 (1927): 222–23. http://www.jstor.org/stable/263522.

Siegfried Jäkel, ‘The phenomenon of laughter in the Iliad’, in Laughter down the centuries. 1, ed. by Siegfried Jäkel and Asko Timonen, Annales Universitatis Turkuensis. Ser. B, Humaniora, 208 – Annales Universitatis Turkuensis. Ser. B, Humaniora, 208 (Turku: Turun Yliopisto, 1994; 1994), pp. 23-27.

Sikes, E. E. “The Humour of Homer.” The Classical Review 54, no. 3 (1940): 121–27. http://www.jstor.org/stable/703172.

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

Soon after Hektor decides to face Achilles, he loses his nerve and runs. The epic lingers on the moment.

Homer, Iliad 22.157-170

“They both ran around that point: One chasing, one fleeing.
In front, there was a good man trying to get away, but a much better man was pursuing.
Quickly. They weren’t struggling over a sacred prize or an oxhide,
The kinds of things that are prizes for men on their feet,
But instead they were running for the soul of Hektor, tamer of horses.
Just as when prize winning horses turn their feet
Quickly around the bend and a great prize lies in wait—
Either a tripod or a woman when some man has died,
So too did these two men run around Priam’s city
On their swift feet as all the gods were watching.
The father of gods and men started a conversation among them:
“Oh my fools, am I really watched a dear man pursued
Around the walls with my eyes? My heart feels grief for Hektor….”

τῇ ῥα παραδραμέτην φεύγων ὃ δ’ ὄπισθε διώκων·
πρόσθε μὲν ἐσθλὸς ἔφευγε, δίωκε δέ μιν μέγ’ ἀμείνων
καρπαλίμως, ἐπεὶ οὐχ ἱερήϊον οὐδὲ βοείην
ἀρνύσθην, ἅ τε ποσσὶν ἀέθλια γίγνεται ἀνδρῶν,
ἀλλὰ περὶ ψυχῆς θέον ῞Εκτορος ἱπποδάμοιο.
ὡς δ’ ὅτ’ ἀεθλοφόροι περὶ τέρματα μώνυχες ἵπποι
ῥίμφα μάλα τρωχῶσι· τὸ δὲ μέγα κεῖται ἄεθλον
ἢ τρίπος ἠὲ γυνὴ ἀνδρὸς κατατεθνηῶτος·
ὣς τὼ τρὶς Πριάμοιο πόλιν πέρι δινηθήτην
καρπαλίμοισι πόδεσσι· θεοὶ δ’ ἐς πάντες ὁρῶντο·
τοῖσι δὲ μύθων ἦρχε πατὴρ ἀνδρῶν τε θεῶν τε·
ὢ πόποι ἦ φίλον ἄνδρα διωκόμενον περὶ τεῖχος
ὀφθαλμοῖσιν ὁρῶμαι· ἐμὸν δ’ ὀλοφύρεται ἦτορ
῞Εκτορος, ὅς μοι πολλὰ βοῶν ἐπὶ μηρί’ ἔκηεν

There are several reasons this passage draws my attention: first, the grammar elegantly advances some of the blending of the characters I mention in my post about Hektor imagining sweet-talking Achilles. The two are combined in duel verbs (the form that is just for two grammatical subjects like eyes, hands, and pairs) to frame the episode (παραδραμέτην δινηθήτην) but then this potential equality is undermined by the concession that one is good, but the other is much better. This serves in part to echo some of the interdependence of the pair, but also to illustrate their ultimate difference (echoed sweetly in the language of competition.

Second, the comparison to men racing for a prize—as will happen in the following book—emphasizes the stakes of Hektor’s flight and, in a way, relativizes the competitions to come. The simile brings into question fundamental Iliadic themes of honor and reward, hearkening back to book 1, but leaving in direct contrast all that has transpired since: these heroes are not merely competing for a geras (prize) or time (honor), they are struggling over life itself (and, note, for the time being, kleos has been left aside. I have probably written too much on similes, but this one is especially powerful in the way it includes within in it images that connect the details of this particular moment to the broader epic themes.

Third, the position of the divine audience reminds us that the human audience is outside the poem. Zeus here—as he does throughout the epic—acts as an internal audience to guide the external gaze. His response of frustration and sorrow frames the scene and informs the audience (to an extent) how they should feel about this scene: it is sad, but the outcome is inevitable. No matter how good Hektor has been, he still must die. Both the simile and the divine reflection extend the narrative space of Hektor’s final moments.

What is also interesting about this passage is the specification of how many times they run around the walls. In an epic tradition where Achilles is famed for the swiftness of his feet, it seems somewhat suspect that it takes him three times around a wall (and then a divine trick) to catch up with a hero known for man-slaying and horse-taming (especially when the narrator tells the audience that Achilles is a lot better than his quarry.) A conventional answer offered in commentaries is that specific numbers like this (nine years of war, nine years of plague) represents the penultimate moment before a final turn. By that logic, mentioning three times anticipates a fourth and final turn around the wall that will be decisive. The delay here, then, creates additional suspense based on audience experience of the structure earlier in the poem (cf. 5.436-39).

This type of repeated structure that facilitates both composition and audience understanding is typically called a “type scene” in the study of Homeric and oral poetry. In my book Storylife, I position type scenes as structures that help create far more complex compositions, building on formulas and other repetitions:

Type-scenes are repeated patterns in what we might think of as conventional or repeated scenes: moments of dining, arming, onset and conclusion to speaking, and other kinds of near-ritualized performances, especially in sacrifices. Many modern scholars have seen type scenes as evidence of what Albert Lord describes as “composition by theme.” These scenes can vary in length, but tend to present recurring actions. That is, they have a stock set of elements that can be altered to fit the needs of their narrative environment. As Katherine Hitch argues (following Egbert Bakker, 1997), type scenes are like formulae: conventional material used innovatively through different combinations and variation within a specific pattern is the expected way to create meaning in an oral poetic context. Type scenes are made up of motifs and formulae the way multicellular lifeforms are composed of individual cells: and in each case the overall form can have a very different function from those of its constituent parts and separate iterations of the ‘same’ form will have different characteristics and functions based on their local environments.

A general concern of Homerists—and literary theorists in general—from the 20^th century was to figure out how to balance innovation in language against traditional forms. One of the more rigid and dull approaches to this is to imagine that oral poets function in a “poetry by number” environment that limited their creativity to chunking together pre-established units. My contention is that all language is to some extent limiting and that this facilitates understanding across different consciousnesses. It does not mean, however, that poets and audiences can’t press on prior structures to bend them or use them to create extrinsic meaning. In other posts I have introduced the term “productive dissonance” to describe how conventional forms can be used “incorrectly” or against expectation to produce new kinds of meanings (this is, essentially, my argument for the duals of Iliad 9).

But dissonance is not always the way: sometimes a lack of resolution or delayed resolution based on an expected pattern is useful as well. In her article “Emotional and thematic Meanings in a Repeating Homeric Motif”, Deborah Beck looks at this passage specifically. She sees the duals here as making “this chase into one deed and Achilles and Hector into a single actor….which “will eventually result in the death not only of Hector but also of Achilles, but not yet…” (2018, 162). The opening verses anticipate the repeated nature of the chase, but it is not until the close of the simile that the thrice+1 pattern is introduced. This structure, Beck suggests, creates a ring around the mention of the prize here, which is Hektor’s life. The shared grammar and the repeated pattern bring Achilles and Hektor closer together as characters while also heightening the emotional response of the audience. Beck summarizes the whole effect well:

The narrative of Achilles chasing Hector around and around the city of Troy before killing him might come across as repetitive, or even as pointless delay. Instead, the various elaborations that extend this τρὶς μέν … τρὶς δέ scene depict the two most important fighters in the Iliad as fundamentally the same, and the fates of both – but especially Hector – as a matter of the warmest interest to the gods both individually and collectively. The ‘length confers emphasis’ aesthetics of Homeric epic are particularly effective for depicting a pivotal event that the characters themselves experience as taking a long time. Moreover, the individual expansions that appear in this scene foster the audience’s emotional engagement with the characters and the story. These include: several similes, which depict Achilles and Hector both as predator and prey and also as essentially identical competitors (162–65, 189–93, 199–201); a conversation between the gods watching from Olympus, where we would expect a single speech by one of the τρίς characters (168–85);36 a counterfactual condition within a rhetorical question, which brings the audience vividly into the poem in a manner nearly unparalleled in Homeric epic (202–04); and, finally, the τέταρτον turn of events (208–13), which features a character who, about to fail in his τρὶς μέν attempt, chooses to renounce his endeavour rather than simply be overpowered by a hostile god. These techniques work together even – or especially – as Hector’s death approaches to depict him as a brave and admirable warrior fully deserving of sympathy from both the internal audience of gods and the external audience of the Iliad.

I think all of these effects are worth highlighting, but it is worth noting as well how much familiarity with Homeric language is needed to respond fully to these cues and to understand them. Homeric poetry has a grammar of meaning that rises above the level of the individual word and relies on composite structures and audience familiarity with both. While we as modern audiences can sense the impact from close reading and from the confluence of so many poetic indicators in this scene, one would be fair to wonder how much of the substance of Homeric poetry we continue to miss out on because of all the performances that were never recorded and all those that we’ve lost.

As modern readers, we need to work overtime to restore the nuance that is lost to us and to slough off modern ideas about how and what epic poetry makes meaning. In a way, this is similar to restoring the pigment and decoration to plain white marble statues, understanding that they were more dynamic in the past and that modern aesthetics have been (mis)shaped by misunderstanding. But the level of challenge is greater, I suggest: epic is a living, breathing statue that moved in response to audiences. Modern aesthetics and translation often presents a fossil or desiccated form, in need of color, breath, and movement.

Other Posts on Iliad 22

1. 1. Hektor’s Body and the Burden: Introducing Iliad 22: Trauma and Homer; Characterizing Hektor, again; Fight or Flight
   2. Laying My Burdens Down: Hektor Sweet-talks Achilles in Iliad22: Hektor and Achilles; The Lions of Al-Rassan;  PTSD
   3. A New Widow and Her Orphan: Andromache’s Lament for Hektor in Iliad 22: Women in Homer; Andromache; Laments; Astyanax; PTSD; Trauma

Type Scene Bibliography

Bakker, Egbert J. 1997. Poetry in Speech: Orality and Homeric Discourse. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Beck, Deborah. “ Emotional and thematic meanings in a repeating Homeric motif: a case study” The Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. 138, 2018, pp. 150-172. Doi: 10.1017/S0075426918000095

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

Bonfante, Larissa. “The judgment of Paris, the toilette of Malavisch, and a mirror in the Indiana University Art Museum.” Studi Etruschi, vol. XLV, 1977, pp. 149-167.

Collins, Leslie. “The wrath of Paris. Ethical vocabulary and ethical type in the Iliad.” American Journal of Philology, vol. CVIII, 1987, pp. 220-232.

Edwards, Mark W.. “The conventions of a Homeric funeral.” Studies in honour of T. B. L. Webster, I. Eds. Betts, John H., Hooker, James T. and Green, John Richard. Bristol, Eng.: Bristol Classical Pr., 1986. 84-92.

Edwards, Mark W.. “Type scenes and Homeric hospitality.” TAPA, vol. CV, 1975, pp. 51-72.

Faraone, Christopher A.. “Circe’s instructions to Odysseus (Od. 10.507-40) as an early Sibylline Oracle.” The Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. 139, 2019, pp. 49-66. Doi: 10.1017/S0075426919000028

Fenik, Bernard. 1968. Typical Battle Scenes in the Iliad. Wiesbaden: F. Steiner.

Gainsford, Peter. “Formal analysis of recognition scenes in the « Odyssey ».” The Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. 123, 2003, pp. 41-59. Doi: 10.2307/3246259

Grethlein, Jonas. “The poetics of the bath in the « Iliad ».” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. 103, 2007, pp. 25-49.

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

Jurriaans-Helle, Geralda. Composition in Athenian black-figure vase-painting: the « Chariot in profile » type scene. Leuven ; Paris: Peeters, 2021.

Reece, Steve. 1993. The Stranger’s Welcome: Oral Theory and the Aesthetics of the Homeric Hospitality Scene. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Rood, Naomi Jennifer. “Craft similes and the construction of heroes in the « Iliad ».” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. 104, 2008, pp. 19-43.

Vouzis, Panagiotis. Οι ομηρικές τυπικές σκηνές του ταξιδιού στη θάλασσα: η τυπολογία του πλου στον Όμηρο. Vivliothiki Sofias N. Saripolou; 137. Athina: Ethniko kai Kapodistriako Panepistimio Athinon, Filosofiki Scholi, 2020.

This is one of a few posts dedicated to Iliad 20. 

Schol. T Ad Hom. Il. 20.307-8

“Some people say that [the children of Aeneas live on] through the Romans, which the poet knew from the oracles of the Sibyl, while others claim that the Aiolians expelled the descendants of Aeneas. But those who claim that Aphrodite devised the Trojan War because she knew this are wrong”

οἱ μὲν διὰ ῾Ρωμαίους φασίν, ἅπερ εἰδέναι τὸν ποιητὴν ἐκ τῶν Σιβύλλης  χρησμῶν, οἱ δέ, ὅτι Αἰολεῖς ἐξέβαλον τοὺς ἀπογόνους Αἰνείου. πταίουσι δέ, ὅσοι φασὶ τοῦτο εἰδυῖαν ᾿Αφροδίτην μηχανήσασθαι τὸν Τρωϊκὸν πόλεμον.

The greater portion of book 20 is dedicated to the faceoff between Achilles and Aeneas, one I have described earlier as a kind of heroic Superman vs. Batman. (And, yes, I think this Aeneas is more Ben Affleck Batman than a Michael Keaton….). Books 20 and 21 together work to delay the inevitable meeting of Hektor and Achilles, but they also provide something of a deliberate tour through different kinds of heroism. In book 21, Achilles challenges divine beings and wrestles a river, turning into his most Heraklean self. In book 20, he faces Aeneas, a hero of a different shape altogether.

As I discuss in the earlier post, Aeneas and Achilles engage in heroic flyting that is more or less an elaborate ‘meta-flyting’. Metapoetic moments in literature invite audiences to think about the rhetorical content of the forms that are entertaining them, both in a critical way and in one that invites enjoyment from those who recognize play and engagement with other traditions. Meta-moments, when they are successful, work on different levels, responding to audience capacity to catch references to other narratives or to understand comparisons in motif, trope, and genre.

When Achilles and Aeneas meet, the audience is invited to a series of meta-motifs: the heroic boast, followed by shifts in type scenes, and hints that there is a world larger than the already very large one contained within the Iliad. For the Iliad, such moments allow it to appropriate from other traditions without becoming them, by subordinating them to its own story.  (The Odyssey does this constantly too!) But the act of appropriation itself is adaptive and integrative: it always carries within it the potential for recursive doubling of meaning, for multiple, even contradictory ideological frames to coexist, in tension, producing meaning only when the audience resolves the tension by leaning toward one or the other.

When Achilles encounters Aeneas, there is a problem: Achilles is on a murderous rampage and gets to kill everyone he wants. Aeneas is the son of a goddess who is supposed to live. What in the world is the epic to do?!

Homer, Iliad 20.288-308

Then Aeneas would have struck [Achilles] as he rushed at him
With a stone in the helmet or shield, which would have projected him from ruin,
But Peleus’s son would have robbed him of his life with his sword near at hand—
If Poseidon the earth-shaker had not sharply noticed it all.
Immediately, he spoke this speak among the immortal gods:
“Shit! Truly, I have grief for great-hearted Aeneas
Who soon will go to Hades overcome by Peleus’ son,
All because he listened to the words of far-shooting Apollo,
The fool, that god will not be of any use against harsh ruin.
But why should this guy who isn’t at fault suffer grief now
Without any reason because of other people’s pain when he always
Gave cherished gifts to the gods who hold the wide sky.
But come on, let’s lead him away from death
So that Kronos’ son won’t get enraged somehow if Achilles
Kills him. It is his fate to escape
So that the race of Dardanos won’t go seedless and erased,
Dardanos whom the son of Kronos loved beyond all his children
Who were born to him from mortal women.
Kronos’ son has already turned against Priam’s offspring.
Now, mighty Aeneas will be lord over the Trojans
Along with the children of his children who will be born later on.”

ἔνθά κεν Αἰνείας μὲν ἐπεσσύμενον βάλε πέτρῳ
ἢ κόρυθ’ ἠὲ σάκος, τό οἱ ἤρκεσε λυγρὸν ὄλεθρον,
τὸν δέ κε Πηλεΐδης σχεδὸν ἄορι θυμὸν ἀπηύρα,
εἰ μὴ ἄρ’ ὀξὺ νόησε Ποσειδάων ἐνοσίχθων·
αὐτίκα δ’ ἀθανάτοισι θεοῖς μετὰ μῦθον ἔειπεν·
ὢ πόποι ἦ μοι ἄχος μεγαλήτορος Αἰνείαο,
ὃς τάχα Πηλεΐωνι δαμεὶς ῎Αϊδος δὲ κάτεισι
πειθόμενος μύθοισιν ᾿Απόλλωνος ἑκάτοιο
νήπιος, οὐδέ τί οἱ χραισμήσει λυγρὸν ὄλεθρον.
ἀλλὰ τί ἢ νῦν οὗτος ἀναίτιος ἄλγεα πάσχει
μὰψ ἕνεκ’ ἀλλοτρίων ἀχέων, κεχαρισμένα δ’ αἰεὶ
δῶρα θεοῖσι δίδωσι τοὶ οὐρανὸν εὐρὺν ἔχουσιν;
ἀλλ’ ἄγεθ’ ἡμεῖς πέρ μιν ὑπὲκ θανάτου ἀγάγωμεν,
μή πως καὶ Κρονίδης κεχολώσεται, αἴ κεν ᾿Αχιλλεὺς
τόνδε κατακτείνῃ· μόριμον δέ οἵ ἐστ’ ἀλέασθαι,
ὄφρα μὴ ἄσπερμος γενεὴ καὶ ἄφαντος ὄληται
Δαρδάνου, ὃν Κρονίδης περὶ πάντων φίλατο παίδων
οἳ ἕθεν ἐξεγένοντο γυναικῶν τε θνητάων.
ἤδη γὰρ Πριάμου γενεὴν ἔχθηρε Κρονίων·
νῦν δὲ δὴ Αἰνείαο βίη Τρώεσσιν ἀνάξει
καὶ παίδων παῖδες, τοί κεν μετόπισθε γένωνται.

This passage is interesting because of the way it plays upon so many different Homeric motifs. To start, the battle scene is upended: an outcome of the fight is predicted but then denied, twice, as each hero’s next moves are anticipated, but denied. The denial proceeds through a somewhat regular motif in Homeric epic that goes by various names such as “if not-situations” (de Jong 2004, 68-71), “reversal passages” (Morrison 1992) and “pivotal contrafactuals” (Louden 1993, 181). Mabel Lang was one of the first to focus on these ‘unreal conditionals’ that provide the Homeric narrator and characters alike to express what would (or could) have happened, had events turned out different. Like English, Greek grammar marks unreal conditionals—in this case, contrary to fact—with clear signs, such as the use of specific particles in conjunction with particular verb forms (in this case, the aorist indicative in each clause with the Greek modal particle (a short word indicating that the situation is unreal) κε and introductory “if then not/unless” (εἰ μὴ).

It is one thing to describe the grammatical and semantic nature of a construction like this, however, and a wholly different thing to outline the use of a construction in a particular narrative. Unreal conditionals in Homer seem in particular to create a space wherein Homeric epic flirts with deviating from the external constraints. Morrison, for example,  argues that these scenes constitute moments where the traditional story or plot is nearly upended as Homer challenges and distinguishes himself from the tradition.

Morrison divides “reversal passages” into three types: (a) violations of the sack of Troy motif; (b) violations of the Iliad’s plot; and (c) minor variations during battle and in the funeral games (61). Lorenzo Garcia agrees that “in such instances Homer appears to challenge the very tradition in which he is working—which we may think of as a kind of “destiny” for the narrative in its own right…and asserts his own authority for the direction the narrative takes. Such events, As Gregory Nagy puts it, would be “untraditional”. Bruce Louden, however, suggests that commentators have overemphasized the tendency for this device to raise violations of the tradition. Across the 33 instances of this construction in the Iliad, 15 are “corrected” by divine intervention; 15 are addressed by mortals.

I think an undervalued aspect of the construction is its ability to draw attention to an event as contrary to patterns and expectations. It indicates a breaking of suspense and invites audiences to view this event as a course correction. In this way, a small measure of chaos is admitted into an ordered text, acknowledging the instability of narrative even as exerting control over it. This is an appropriate structure, then, for pointing to the potentially tradition-rattling encounter of Achilles and Aeneas.

Such tension intrigues me with this case in particular because we have pretty good evidence for extra-Iliadic traditions of Aeneas surviving the fall of Troy from archaeological and iconographic evidence. There are black figure vases from the sixth century BCE that depict Aeneas carrying his father Anchises from Troy. The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, which centers Anchises, appears to be one of the ‘older’ hymnic tradition; yet in this speech, Poseidon focuses on the future and omits such a reference to the past. The iconography and this speech both point to Aeneas’ survival as a basic fact of the narrative universe, but other than that there is no good reason to imagine these passages as in any way responding to each other, unless we imagine the Homeric epic as leaning away from such a common image, doing the very Homeric thing of making its own space and meaning in between the immutable lines of the larger tradition. As I usually emphasize, there’s no good reason to insist that the images and text are engaging directly with each other or existing in some sort of a temporal—therefore interpretive—hierarchy rather than to understand them as both variations on a shared narrative theme. Instead, it is interesting to go through the process in multiple directions, leaving space as well for the stories we have lost in between.

Divine interest in supporting fate—if we can call it that rather than the narrative instrumentalization of divinity to allow the story to both diverge and converge with what is known—leads me to some final observations on this speech. The presence and the absence of the gods are both felt keenly here. For example, a scholiast asks why Aphrodite isn’t the one to save him and answers it is because she is afraid of Athena ( ἡ ᾿Αφροδίτη τὸν υἱὸν οὐ σῴζει;  δέδιεν ᾿Αθηνᾶν, Schol. T ad Il. 20.291a1). When Poseidon worries about the impact of Apollo’s words on Aeneas, I wonder if we can imagine a general anxiety about how the ‘words of Apollo (prophecy and poetry especially) may lead people to ruin.

There may also be wordplay as well around the name Achilles or at least the importance of ‘grief’ for the plot. Poseidon notes that akhos (“grief, woe”), a word often associated with etymologies of Achilles (e.g akhos + laos, “woe for the people”) comes over him when he hears about Aeneas and that Aeneas is suffering because of “other peoples akhos”. I may be so bold as to suggest that Poseidon feels the very same reaction that audiences might be feeling at this moment but also in response to the events of the Iliad. At the same time, he is extending the impact of the same emotion on ‘players’ in the epic itself: akhos drives the plot of the Trojan War, but it also reshapes the plot of the Iliad even as it flirts with diverging from that larger narrative structure.

But we are not yet done with emotional responses to these. In discussing the earlier passage in book 20 where Zeus claims that he is going to sit apart taking pleasure in watching the unfolding events, I suggested that king of gods and men derived this feeling from the sense that the narrative was moving toward a particular end, to a closure he had anticipated, if not arranged. Here, Poseidon notes Zeus’ potential displeasure at a particular outcome’s failure: Zeus will “be angry”( κεχολώσεται) if Achilles should kill Aeneas. Kholos, as I discuss in other posts, drawing on Thomas Walsh’s work, is anger that is socially motivated, among peers. It is an operative word in the conflict between Achilles and Agamemnon in book 1, strife among the gods in books 13-15, and during the funeral games in book 23. (It contrasts, in a complementary way, with menis, which tends to signal rage at cosmic disorder, as Lenny Muellner argues). Indeed, to connect this back to the introductory form, the “pivotal contrafactual”, Tyler Flatt has argued that this structure appears in moments where we may be expected to consider the overlap between the need to mourn and the need to hear further narrative. Poseidon’s concern for Zeus’ emotions foreground the affective nature of narratives that go where we don’t want them to go.

It is almost as if Zeus is presented as both audience and author of the narrative unfolding and, while we could imagine him as indicating the swings of the poem’s external audience, we could also frame this theologically. Zeus is something like an especially keen game master (or DM, dungeon master for the older crowd). He knows where he wants the story to go: he takes pleasure in the players finding their way there, and gets angry when they try to change his plans.

A Short bibliography

BECK, DEBORAH. “EMOTIONAL AND THEMATIC MEANINGS IN A REPEATING HOMERIC MOTIF: A CASE STUDY.” The Journal of Hellenic Studies 138 (2018): 150–72. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26575923.

Bouxsein, Hilary. “That Would Have Been Better: Counterfactual Conditions in Homeric Character Speech.” Mnemosyne 73, no. 3 (2020): 353–76. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26989141.

De Jong, Irene J. F. Narrators and Focalizers: The Presentation of the Story in the Iliad. 2^nd Edition. London: Bristol, 2004.

Tyler Flatt. “Narrative Desire and the Limits of Lament in Homer.” The Classical Journal 112, no. 4 (2017): 385–404. https://doi.org/10.5184/classicalj.112.4.0385[JC1] .

Garcia, Lorenzo F., Jr. 2013. Homeric Durability: Telling Time in the Iliad. Hellenic Studies Series 58. Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies.

Lang, Mabel L.. “Unreal conditions in Homeric narrative.” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, vol. XXX, 1989, pp. 5-26.

Bruce Louden. “Pivotal Contrafactuals in Homeric Epic.” Classical Antiquity 12 (1993) 181-98.

James V. Morrison. Homeric Misdirection: False Predictions in the Iliad. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1992.

—,—. “Alternatives to the Epic Tradition: Homer’s Challenges in the Iliad.” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 122 (1992) 61-71.

Muellner, Leonard. 1996. The Anger of Achilles: Mênis in Greek Epic. Cornell.

Nagy, Gregory. The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry. Revised ed. Baltimore. Orig. pub. 1979. 1999

SAUSSY, HAUN. “WRITING IN THE ‘ODYSSEY’: EURYKLEIA, PARRY, JOUSSE, AND THE OPENING OF A LETTER FROM HOMER.” Arethusa 29, no. 3 (1996): 299–338. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26309735.

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

Books 20 and 21 are really a complementary pair moving Achilles and the audience through various heroic battle motifs: The first book matches him against another famous heroic tradition while the second is more defuse, taking Achilles out of the more familiar into the realm of theomachy. Each of these movements 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 20 speaks most directly to narrative traditions, Gods and humans, and heroism.

Zeus’ speech to open book 20 redraws the boundaries for the gods on the field. It reverses his earlier prohibition against divine interference in books 4, 8 and 15, and intentionally sends the gods to delay Achilles’ advance. In addition to manipulating the plot, as Zeus does earlier, this passage also has some curious reflections on divine interest in human beings and the limits of fate.

Homer, Iliad 20.13-30

“So they were gathered in Zeus’ home. Not even the earth-shaker
Disobeyed the goddess’s summons. But he came from the sea
And sat among them in the middle. He asked about Zeus’ plan
“Why have you called us to assembly, god of lightning?
Are you really contemplating something about the Trojans and Achaeans?
Now the battle and the war ranges closest between them.”
In answering, cloud-gathering Zeus addressed him.

“Earth-shaker, you know the plan in my thoughts, the reasons why
I have gathered you. These people concern me, even though they are about to die.
So I will remain here myself, seated on the ridge of Olympos,
This place from where I will take some pleasure watching. But the rest of you
Go until you arrive among the Trojans and the Achaeans
And help both sides in whatever way your mind inclines.
For if Achilles fights alone against the Trojans,
Well, they will not withstand the swift-footed son of Peleus for long.
Even before they used to shrink back in fear when they saw him—
And now when his heart is awfully enraged over his friend,
I fear that he will breach the wall beyond what is fated.”

῝Ως οἳ μὲν Διὸς ἔνδον ἀγηγέρατ’· οὐδ’ ἐνοσίχθων
νηκούστησε θεᾶς, ἀλλ’ ἐξ ἁλὸς ἦλθε μετ’ αὐτούς,
ἷζε δ’ ἄρ’ ἐν μέσσοισι, Διὸς δ’ ἐξείρετο βουλήν·
τίπτ’ αὖτ’ ἀργικέραυνε θεοὺς ἀγορὴν δὲ κάλεσσας;
ἦ τι περὶ Τρώων καὶ ᾿Αχαιῶν μερμηρίζεις;
τῶν γὰρ νῦν ἄγχιστα μάχη πόλεμός τε δέδηε.
Τὸν δ’ ἀπαμειβόμενος προσέφη νεφεληγερέτα Ζεύς·
ἔγνως ἐννοσίγαιε ἐμὴν ἐν στήθεσι βουλὴν
ὧν ἕνεκα ξυνάγειρα· μέλουσί μοι ὀλλύμενοί περ.
ἀλλ’ ἤτοι μὲν ἐγὼ μενέω πτυχὶ Οὐλύμποιο
ἥμενος, ἔνθ’ ὁρόων φρένα τέρψομαι· οἳ δὲ δὴ ἄλλοι
ἔρχεσθ’ ὄφρ’ ἂν ἵκησθε μετὰ Τρῶας καὶ ᾿Αχαιούς,
ἀμφοτέροισι δ’ ἀρήγεθ’ ὅπῃ νόος ἐστὶν ἑκάστου.
εἰ γὰρ ᾿Αχιλλεὺς οἶος ἐπὶ Τρώεσσι μαχεῖται
οὐδὲ μίνυνθ’ ἕξουσι ποδώκεα Πηλεΐωνα.
καὶ δέ τί μιν καὶ πρόσθεν ὑποτρομέεσκον ὁρῶντες·
νῦν δ’ ὅτε δὴ καὶ θυμὸν ἑταίρου χώεται αἰνῶς
δείδω μὴ καὶ τεῖχος ὑπέρμορον ἐξαλαπάξῃ.

A few things jump out at me from this exchange. First, notice the change in Poseidon as a character. Where he was much more of an active participant in book 13 and a complainant of sort in books 7 and 15, here he is less of an agent and more of a mere character. Of course, this changes almost as soon as he enters the fray. Up to that point, however, he arrives here as something of a secondary internal audience. By this I mean he asks the very question that the external audience may be asking: what exactly is the plan for the rest of the epic? Zeus is shifting from an internal audience guiding our viewing in book 19, to an author of the narrative for a brief moment, before he recedes again to watch the action unfold. When Poseidon asks him what is going to happen, he elicits a response that helps to shape the narrative to come and provide more information.

The language used in this passage may recall the opening of the poem (“the proem”). At the very least the repeated invocation of “the plan” (βουλήν x2;) plus the mention of people dying (ὀλλύμενοί) echo the opening concerns of the proem that make it clear that Achilles’ rage is killing myriad Achaeans as part of Zeus’ plan. ‘Re-tuning’ is appropriate here especially because Achilles’ anger is specifically invoked as not just in action but in danger of subverting the action away from where Zeus wants it to go.

This danger of subverting Zeus’ will brings me to the second point I find interesting in Zeus’ speech. When Zeus says “they are a concern to me even though they are dying”, many interpreters have taken to mean that it is because he cares about people. (Indeed, the scholia assume that this is part of his role as the “father of men and gods”). But what this concern really means is unclear. I think that μέλουσί μοι ὀλλύμενοί περ not a concern because of sympathy for their fates—all men die and Zeus seems more or less ok with myriad deaths—but because of the danger it may represent to his plans, as Bill Beck persuasively argues, and the course of fate in the larger Trojan war narrative.

This connects in part to a third aspect of this speech that is important, which is the final concern Zeus expresses, that Achilles’ rage is such that it might result in actions that are “beyond fate” (ὑπέρμορον) points both to Achilles’ actions in general and may anticipate the subsequent endangerment and rescue of Aeneas. Although there is some debate in the textual tradition about this phrase—others have suggested that the correct reading is ὑπέρβιον, “super violently”—it seems sound to me that Zeus would use this phrase here: his concern is with any action that may disrupt the basic facts of the Trojan War narrative as they have to be. Achilles cannot enter Troy because everyone knows that he will die outside of it.

Other events that were labeled as “beyond fate” include the Achaean return home in book 2 (which would have ended the war), the breaching of the walls in 21.517, human beings suffering beyond their measure because of stupidity (Od. 1.34), Aigisthus marrying Klytemnestra (Od. 1.35), or Odysseus dying without getting home (Od. 5.436). Of these, the Aigisthus case is the hardest, but according to Zeus he was warned by Hermes not to do what he did. So, in all these cases, the phrase huper moron seems to indicate a transgression against the outline of a story or the rules of a story as they have been articulated.

David Konstan suggests that “As the internal spectator, Zeus’ delight cues the audience as to how the scene is to be appreciated: this is for fun, not serious like the mortal conflict” (2015, 10) And, in part, Pietro Pucci supports this when he draws attention to Hera and Athena “delighting” in the conflict in book 4. As Pucci writes, “terpein is also the verb for the enjoyment derived from poetry, and it resonates even in the name of the Odyssean bard Phemius Terpsiades” (23). When it comes to the passage in book 24, Pucci notes a common reading: “Critics have tried to reduce Zeus’s cynicism by an appropriate reading: it has been suggested that he is getting pleasure mainly from watching the fighting gods, as is stated explicitly at 21.388–90, and it has been noted that Zeus in our passage at line 21 says: “I am concerned with them, though they perish.” Pucci goes on to argue that the pleasure in part derives from the completion of Zeus’ plan to end the race of heroes.

I think there may be more to this, however. In the Odyssey we find an interesting relationship between pleasure and grief and storytelling. In book 19, Penelope describes herself as spending her days taking pleasure in mourning (ἤματα μὲν γὰρ τέρπομ’ ὀδυρομένη γοόωσα, 19.513) and she and Odysseus take pleasure in telling each other stories (τερπέσθην μύθοισι, πρὸς ἀλλήλους ἐνέποντες, 23.301). While Eumaios invites Odysseus to take pleasure in telling each other their past tales (Od. 15.398–401):

“Let us take pleasure in calling to mind each other’s terrible pains
while we drink and dine in my home.
For a man may even find pleasure among pains
when he has suffered many and gone through much.”

νῶϊ δ’ ἐνὶ κλισίῃ πίνοντέ τε δαινυμένω τε
κήδεσιν ἀλλήλων τερπώμεθα λευγαλέοισι
μνωομένω· μετὰ γάρ τε καὶ ἄλγεσι τέρπεται ἀνήρ,
ὅς τις δὴ μάλα πολλὰ πάθῃ καὶ πόλλ’ ἐπαληθῇ

As I argue in my book on the Odyssey, The Many Minded Man, this pleasure comes from knowing a tale has ended, from resolving the suspense, and finding the end of something the way we often cannot in real life (2020, 247-249). In book 19, the Achaean kings try to get Achilles to feel some pleasure, but they fail (19.312-313) and I think it is because he is torn between what he needs to do (wait), what he wants to do (kill Hektor), and the impossibility of these actions addressing his real pain. Here, I think we can imagine that Zeus takes pleasure in the narrative unfolding because he is moving it toward a definitive end, he knows what that end is, and it is a fulfillment of the plan he has had all along. If we, as the external audience watching Zeus watching the action feel pleasure too, it may be from the poem reaching its long anticipated denouement, even as it may also have to do with the vicarious experience of violence, death, and release.

Some reading Questions for Book 20

What does the confrontation between Achilles and Aeneas add to our understanding of the Iliad?

Why does Zeus let the gods run wild in book 20?

How does book 20 anticipate the battle between Achilles and Hektor?

A Short Bibliography for Iliad 20

Ballesteros, Bernardo. “On « Gilgamesh » and Homer: Ishtar, Aphrodite and the meaning of a parallel.” Classical Quarterly, N. S., vol. 71, no. 1, 2021, pp. 1-21. Doi: 10.1017/S0009838821000513

Beck, Bill. “Harshing Zeus’ μέλω: reassessing the sympathy of Zeus at Iliad 20.21.” American Journal of Philology, vol. 143, no. 3, 2022, pp. 359-384. Doi: 10.1353/ajp.2022.0015

Cramer, David. “The wrath of Aeneas: Iliad 13.455-67 and 20.75-352.” Syllecta classica, vol. 11, 2000, pp. 16-33.

Fenno, Jonathan Brian. “The wrath and vengeance of swift-footed Aeneas in Iliad 13.” Phoenix, vol. 62, no. 1-2, 2008, pp. 145-161.

Hesk, Jon. “Homeric flyting and how to read it: performance and intratext in Iliad 20.83-109 and 20.178-258.” Ramus, vol. 35, no. 1, 2006, pp. 4-28.

Konstan, David. “Homer answers his critics.” Electryone, vol. 3, no. 1, 2015, pp. 1-11.

Pucci, Pietro. “Theology and poetics in the « Iliad ».” Arethusa, vol. 35, no. 1, 2002, pp. 17-34.

Reece, Steve Taylor. “σῶκος ἐριούνιος Ἑρμῆς (Iliad 20. 72): the modification of a traditional formula.” Glotta, vol. 75, no. 1-2, 1999, pp. 85-106.

Smit, Daan W.. “Achilles, Aeneas and the Hittites : a Hittite model for Iliad XX, 191-194 ?.” Talanta , vol. XX-XXI, 1988-1989, pp. 53-64.

Wakimoto, Yuka. “Aeneas in and before the « Iliad ».” Journal of Classical Studies, vol. 45, 1997, pp. 28-39.

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

Following the political performance of reconciliation in Iliad 19, the narrative turns back to the personal. We see the resumption of mourning for Patroklos and as the epic moves towards Achilles’ return to battle, it starts to foreshadow Achilles’ death. The plot-link between these two movements is Briseis as she moves from Agamemnon’s possession to Achilles’. We—along with the Achaeans—witness Briseis’ surrender and then we get to see her mourn Patroklos.

Homer Iliad 19. 281-302

“Then when Briseis, like golden Aphrodite herself,
Saw Patroklos run through with sharp bronze,
Poured herself over him while she wailed and ripped
At her chest, tender neck, and pretty face with her hands.
And while mourning the woman spoke like one of the goddesses:

“Patroklos, you were the dearest to wretched me and
I left you alive when I went from your dwelling.
And now I find you here dead, leader of the armies,
When I return. Troubles are always wresting me from troubles.
The husband my father and mother gave me to
I watched run through with sharp bronze in front of the city,
And then the three brothers my mother bore,
Dear siblings, all met their fate on that day.
But you would not ever let me weep when swift Achilles
Was killing my husband and when he sacked the city of divine Munêtos—
No, you used to promise to make me the wedded wife
Of divine Achilles, someone he would lead home in his ships to Phthia,
where you would light the marriage torches among the Myrmidons.
So now I weep for you, dead and gentle forever.”
So she spoke, while weeping….

Βρισηῒς δ’ ἄρ’ ἔπειτ’ ἰκέλη χρυσέῃ ᾿Αφροδίτῃ
ὡς ἴδε Πάτροκλον δεδαϊγμένον ὀξέϊ χαλκῷ,
ἀμφ’ αὐτῷ χυμένη λίγ’ ἐκώκυε, χερσὶ δ’ ἄμυσσε
στήθεά τ’ ἠδ’ ἁπαλὴν δειρὴν ἰδὲ καλὰ πρόσωπα.
εἶπε δ’ ἄρα κλαίουσα γυνὴ ἐϊκυῖα θεῇσι·
Πάτροκλέ μοι δειλῇ πλεῖστον κεχαρισμένε θυμῷ
ζωὸν μέν σε ἔλειπον ἐγὼ κλισίηθεν ἰοῦσα,
νῦν δέ σε τεθνηῶτα κιχάνομαι ὄρχαμε λαῶν
ἂψ ἀνιοῦσ’· ὥς μοι δέχεται κακὸν ἐκ κακοῦ αἰεί.
ἄνδρα μὲν ᾧ ἔδοσάν με πατὴρ καὶ πότνια μήτηρ
εἶδον πρὸ πτόλιος δεδαϊγμένον ὀξέϊ χαλκῷ,
τρεῖς τε κασιγνήτους, τούς μοι μία γείνατο μήτηρ,
κηδείους, οἳ πάντες ὀλέθριον ἦμαρ ἐπέσπον.
οὐδὲ μὲν οὐδέ μ’ ἔασκες, ὅτ’ ἄνδρ’ ἐμὸν ὠκὺς ᾿Αχιλλεὺς
ἔκτεινεν, πέρσεν δὲ πόλιν θείοιο Μύνητος,
κλαίειν, ἀλλά μ’ ἔφασκες ᾿Αχιλλῆος θείοιο
κουριδίην ἄλοχον θήσειν, ἄξειν τ’ ἐνὶ νηυσὶν
ἐς Φθίην, δαίσειν δὲ γάμον μετὰ Μυρμιδόνεσσι.
τώ σ’ ἄμοτον κλαίω τεθνηότα μείλιχον αἰεί.
῝Ως ἔφατο κλαίουσ’…

This scene is remarkable for both its contents and its place in the poem. It is the only place in the Iliad where Briseis speaks. The emotion she shows for Patroklos helps in part to prime us for Achilles’ subsequent lament and also to help to further characterize Patroklos to help us to understand the scale of his loss. Briseis’ evocation of his tenderness as an intermediary, as Achilles’ gentler, kinder counterpart both re-centers his concern for others as explored prior to his entry into battle in book 16 and anticipates Achilles’ revelation that he always imagined Patroklos would be the one to live, to care for Achilles’ son, and to return to Peleus in Phthia.

But all of this summary serves to redouble the way the Iliad instrumentalizes Briseis to serve Achilles’ needs and the plot of the Iliad. Indeed, even the way we refer to her is indirect: her name is her father’s name.

D Scholia to the Iliad:

“The Poet seems to use their patronymic names and not their personal ones, for other ancient accounts notes that [Chryseis] was named Astynomê and [Briseis] was named Hippodameia.”

ἔοικε δὲ πατρωνυμικῶς τὰ ὀνόματα αὐτῶν σχηματίζειν ὁ Ποιητὴς, καὶ οὐ κυρίως. ὡς γὰρ οἱ ἄλλοι ἀρχαῖοι ἱστοροῦσιν, ἡ μὲν, ᾿Αστυνόμη ἐκαλεῖτο, ἡ δὲ, ῾Ιπποδάμεια.

Briseis’ story connects to other themes in the epic. As Casey Dué shows in her Homeric Variations on a Lament by Briseis., Briseis’ lament recalls Andromache’s speech in book 6 and also foreshadows the deaths of Hektor and Achilles.

There’s some lack of clarity in the Iliad itself about Briseis’ ‘relationship’ with Achilles. It should be clear beyond a doubt that ancient audiences could have assumed that Briseis was subject to sexual violence as a war captive. Her husband, brothers, relatives all died when Achilles sacked her city. Yet some scholars have seen ambiguity here. When the heralds arrive in book 1 to take Briseis to Agamemnon the narrative reads “she went along with them, unwilling, and Achilles sat, apart from his companions, weeping…” ἣ δ’ ἀέκουσ’ ἅμα τοῖσι γυνὴ κίεν· αὐτὰρ ᾿Αχιλλεὺς / δακρύσας ἑτάρων ἄφαρ ἕζετο νόσφι λιασθείς, 1.348-139).

Ancient scholars seem less interested in Briseis’ feelings here than in Achilles. A scholion hedges its bets about whether or not Briseis is upset because she just loves Achilles so much or because she acts this way (generically) as a war prize. Here’s the commentary on this scene from the scholia on book 1:

“unwilling”: This is because she loves her man, as her appearance makes clear. As another explanation, this distinguishes her as a war prize and through one phrase the whole nature of her character has been clarified.

ἔστι γὰρ φίλανδρος, ὡς τὸ πρόσωπον αὐτῆς δηλοῖ. δευτέραν δὲ ταύτην ὁρίζεται εἶναι αἰχμαλωσίαν καὶ διὰ μιᾶς λέξεως ὁλόκληρον ἡμῖν ἦθος προσώπου δεδήλωκεν.

“Cried about from his companion”…otherwise this also shows that because he is covetous of honor he is upset about the insult and is deprived of the customary intimacy, but perhaps he also pities the woman being taking away unwillingly. This characterizes him loving extremely.”

δακρύσας ἑτάρων: …ἄλλως τε καὶ φιλότιμος ὢν ἀνιᾶται τῇ ὕβρει παλαιᾶς τε συνηθείας στέρεται, ἴσως δὲ καὶ τὸ γύναιον ἀκουσίως ἀπαλλαττόμενον ἐλεεῖ. ἄκρως δὲ ἐρῶντα χαρακτηρίζει·

Here, the scholia echo the epic in seeing the movement of Briseis as an opportunity to characterize Achilles rather than give any insight into the experience of a woman who ends up suffering even as she becomes the cause of a conflict that brings harms to others. The denial of any agency to Briseis or concern about her experiences differs from the two other primary women in the text—Andromache and Helen—but we may be able to see her treatment as a metonym to help frame the epic’s presentation of those more fully-realized characters. If the conflict between Achilles and Agamemnon is relativized as “about a girl” in a way that implies a judgment on the whole Trojan War, then the cumulative impact may be to limit or deny agency to women in general and Helen in specific.

So one question is how we can understand the Briseis’ relationship to Achilles in the epic’s terms. The evidence about their relationship in the poem is mixed as well, but easier to understand if we think about the rhetorical context. Achilles in book 9 claims that Briseis is a “wife fit to my heart” (ἄλοχον θυμαρέα , 9.336) but then at the beginning of book 19 when speaks to Agamemnon wishes that “Artemis had killed her among the ships with an arrow / on that day when I took her after sacking Lurnessos” (τὴν ὄφελ’ ἐν νήεσσι κατακτάμεν ῎Αρτεμις ἰῷ / ἤματι τῷ ὅτ’ ἐγὼν ἑλόμην Λυρνησσὸν ὀλέσσας,19.59-60).

Some might suggest that Achilles has changed his mind during the course of the epic, that he has gone from weeping over losing Briseis to wishing she were dead after losing Achilles. However, it seems clear to me that Achilles is rhetorically amplifying his loss (and a scholion agrees, writing “he amplified the insult by calling her his wife and fit to his heart in additino” (ηὔξησε τὴν ὕβριν ἄλοχον αὐτὴν  εἰπὼν καὶ θυμαρέα). This claim, however, does not totally undermine a possibility that Achilles is actually fond of Briseis: if he is rhetorically amplifying his loss in book 9, could he not also be rhetorically diminishing his attachment in book 19 in service of his desire to go immediately to war?

It is nearly impossible to disentangle these possibilities—indeed, I think the ambiguity is important for audiences to be able to choose their interpretation of Achilles’ feelings. One note that is useful from the scholia is the recognition that here Achilles calls her a girl (κούρην) here instead of a “prize” (γέρας). The shift in language both assists in connecting this conflict to the larger Trojan War and it also downplays the conflict between Achilles as personal instead of political (καὶ κούρην, οὐ γέρας αὐτὴν καλεῖ). Another scholion adds that Achilles amplifies this because of the death of Patroklos.

In other traditions, like Ovid’s Heroides 3, Briseis is depicted as desperately writing to Achilles for his attention. In the post-classical retelling of the stories after the Iliad, Quintus of Smyrna presents Briseis as leading the mourning for Achilles. The language and motifs Quintus chooses show an integration of themes from the speeches of Andromache in the Iliad. Yet even here, it seems that Briseis is still instrumentalized in service of Achilles’ story.

Quintus, Posthomerica 3.551-573

“Of all the women, Briseis felt the most terrible grief
in her heart within, the companion of warring Achilles.
She turned over his corpse and tore at her fine skin
With both hands and from her delicate chest
Bloody bruises rose up from the force of her blows—
You might even say it was like blood poured over milk.
Yet she still shined even as she mourned in pain
And her whole form exuded grace.
This is the kind of speech she made while mourning:

“Oh what endless horror I have suffered.
Nothing that happened to me before this was so great
Not the death of my brothers nor the loss of my country,

Nothing exceeds your death. You were my sacred day
And the light of the sun and the gentle life,
My hope for good and tireless defense against pain—
You were better by far than any gift, than my parents even—
You were everything alone for me even though I was enslaved.

You took me as your bedmate and seized me from a slave’s labor.
But now? Some other Achaean will take me away in his ships
To fertile Sparta or dry and thirsty Argos
Where I will again suffer terrible things working away,
Apart from you and miserable. I only wish that
The earth had covered over me before I saw your death.”

πασάων δ’ ἔκπαγλον ἀκηχεμένη κέαρ ἔνδον
Βρισηὶς παράκοιτις ἐυπτολέμου Ἀχιλῆος
ἀμφὶ νέκυν στρωφᾶτο καὶ ἀμφοτέρῃς παλάμῃσι
δρυπτομένη χρόα καλὸν ἀύτεεν· ἐκ δ’ ἁπαλοῖο
στήθεος αἱματόεσσαι ἀνὰ σμώδιγγες ἄερθεν
θεινομένης· φαίης κεν ἐπὶ γλάγος αἷμα χέασθαι
φοίνιον. ἀγλαΐη δὲ καὶ ἀχνυμένης ἀλεγεινῶς
ἱμερόεν μάρμαιρε, χάρις δέ οἱ ἄμπεχεν εἶδος.
τοῖον δ’ ἔκφατο μῦθον ὀιζυρὸν γοόωσα·
“Ὤ μοι ἐγὼ πάντων περιώσιον αἰνὰ παθοῦσα·
οὐ γάρ μοι τόσσον περ ἐπήλυθεν ἄλλό τι πῆμα,
οὔτε κασιγνήτων οὔτ’ εὐρυχόρου περὶ πάτρης,
ὅσσον σεῖο θανόντος· ἐπεὶ σύ μοι ἱερὸν ἦμαρ
καὶ φάος ἠελίοιο πέλες καὶ μείλιχος αἰὼν
ἐλπωρή τ’ ἀγαθοῖο καὶ ἄσπετον ἄλκαρ ἀνίης
πάσης τ’ ἀγλαΐης πολὺ φέρτερος ἠδὲ τοκήων
ἔπλεο· πάντα γὰρ οἶος ἔης δμωῇ περ ἐούσῃ,
καί ῥά με θῆκας ἄκοιτιν ἑλὼν ἄπο δούλια ἔργα.
νῦν δέ τις ἐν νήεσσιν Ἀχαιῶν ἄξεται ἄλλος
Σπάρτην εἰς ἐρίβωλον ἢ ἐς πολυδίψιον Ἄργος·
καί νύ κεν ἀμφιπολεῦσα κακὰς ὑποτλήσομ’ ἀνίας
σεῦ ἀπονοσφισθεῖσα δυσάμμορος. ὡς ὄφελόν με
γαῖα χυτὴ ἐκάλυψε πάρος σέο πότμον ἰδέσθαι.

I imagine that in antiquity there were other narrative traditions that engaged with Homer’s women differently, centering their experiences. But we don’t have them. We do have Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls. As a remarkable anonymous essay on Briseis shows (“Just a Girl: Being Briseis”) just how strongly Briseis’ treatment can resonate with audiences today. It is hard for me to imagine that there weren’t similar responses among Homeric audiences over time.

A short bibliography on Briseis

Clark, W. P.. “Iliad IX,336 and the meaning of ἄλοχος in Homer.” Classical Philology, 1940, pp. 188-190.

Dué, Casey. Homeric variations on a lament by Briseis. Greek Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches. Lanham (Md.): Rowman and Littlefield, 2002.

Fantuzzi, Marco. Achilles in love: intertextual studies. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Pr., 2012.

Fisher, Rachel R.. « Homophrosyne » and women in the « Iliad ». [S. l.]: [s. n.], 2018.

Lambrou, Ioannis L.. “Achilles and Helen and Homer’s telling silence.” Mnemosyne, Ser. 4, vol. 73, no. 5, 2020, pp. 705-728. Doi: 10.1163/1568525X-12342656

Pucci, Pietro. “Antiphonal lament between Achilles and Briseis.”. Colby Quarterly 258-272.

Wright, Ian. “The wife of Achilles.” Mnemosyne, Ser. 4, vol. 69, no. 1, 2016, pp. 113-118. Doi: 10.1163/1568525X-12341949