This debate can be somewhat incoherent without knowing a little bit about Ancient Greek language. Early Greek at some point in its history had a full system of nominal and verbal endings for what we call the dual number.  To add to the number distinction between singular (I/ you, alone / she, he, it) and plural (We / you all / they), both Greek and Sanskrit have a dual form to describe pairs of things acting together: eyes, twins, people, etc. And these dual forms exist for the different ‘persons’: 1st person: we (two); 2nd person: the two of you, you (two); 3rd person: the two (people, things, etc). In most cases the sounds marking the dual is quite distinct: the combination wo in two and the long vowel in both are good examples of the vestigial dual persisting in English.

Classical Greek retained a limited use of the dual and Homeric Greek preserves it here and there. The most striking place where it shows up in the Iliad is in describing the movement of two heralds from one place to another. So, when Agamemnon sends heralds to retrieve the captive woman Briseis from Achilles in book 1 of the Iliad, we find dual forms for their pronouns and their verbal endings.

Let me start by setting out the problem. In Iliad 9, Achilles has been withdrawn from the conflict for 8 books of the epic and the situation looks pretty dire for the Achaeans. Agamemnon, at the advice of the elderly Nestor, sends an embassy to Achilles to plead with him to return, offering him compensation and further promises as inducement. Here’s the passage in English and Greek, with relevant plural forms in bold and dual forms in bold italics (Iliad 9.168-198):

Homer, Iliad 9.168-198

Let Phoinix, dear to Zeus, lead first of all
And then great Ajax and shining Odysseus.
And the heralds Odios and Eurubates should follow together.
Wash your hands and have everyone pray
So we can be pleasing to Zeus, if he takes pity on us.

So he spoke and this speech was satisfactory to everyone.
The heralds immediately poured water over their hands
And the servants filled their cups with wine.
And then they distributed the cups to everyone
And then they made a libation and drank to their fill.
They left from Agamemnon’s, son of Atreus’ dwelling.
Gerenian Nestor, the horseman, was giving them advice,
Stopping to prepare each one, but Odysseus especially,
How to try to persuade the blameless son of Peleus.

The two of them went along the strand of the much-resounding sea,
Both praying much to the earth-shaker Poseidon
That they might easily persuade the great thoughts of Aiakos’ grandson.
When the two of them arrived at the ships and the dwellings of the Myrmidons
They found him there delighting his heart with a clear-voiced lyre,
A well-made, beautiful one, set on a silver bridge.
Achilles stole it when he sacked and destroyed the city of Eetion.
He was pleasing his heart with it, and was singing the famous tales of men.
Patroklos was sitting there in silence across from him,
Waiting for Aiakos’ grandson to stop singing.

The two of them were walking first, but shining Odysseus was leading.
And they stood in front of him. When Achilles saw them, he rose
With the lyre in his hand, leaving the place where he had been sitting.
Patroklos rose at the same time, when he saw the men.
As he welcomed those two, swift-footed Achilles addressed them.

“Welcome [you too]–really, dear friends two have come–the need must be great,
When these two [come] who are dearest of the Achaeans to me, even when I am angry.”

Φοῖνιξ μὲν πρώτιστα Διῒ φίλος ἡγησάσθω,
αὐτὰρ ἔπειτ’ Αἴας τε μέγας καὶ δῖος ᾿Οδυσσεύς·
κηρύκων δ’ ᾿Οδίος τε καὶ Εὐρυβάτης ἅμ’ ἑπέσθων.
φέρτε δὲ χερσὶν ὕδωρ, εὐφημῆσαί τε κέλεσθε,
ὄφρα Διὶ Κρονίδῃ ἀρησόμεθ’, αἴ κ’ ἐλεήσῃ.
῝Ως φάτο, τοῖσι δὲ πᾶσιν ἑαδότα μῦθον ἔειπεν.
αὐτίκα κήρυκες μὲν ὕδωρ ἐπὶ χεῖρας ἔχευαν,
κοῦροι δὲ κρητῆρας ἐπεστέψαντο ποτοῖο,
νώμησαν δ’ ἄρα πᾶσιν ἐπαρξάμενοι δεπάεσσιν.
αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ σπεῖσάν τ’ ἔπιόν θ’ ὅσον ἤθελε θυμός,
ὁρμῶντ’ ἐκ κλισίης ᾿Αγαμέμνονος ᾿Ατρεΐδαο.
τοῖσι δὲ πόλλ’ ἐπέτελλε Γερήνιος ἱππότα Νέστωρ
δενδίλλων ἐς ἕκαστον, ᾿Οδυσσῆϊ δὲ μάλιστα,
πειρᾶν ὡς πεπίθοιεν ἀμύμονα Πηλεΐωνα.

Τὼ δὲ βάτην παρὰ θῖνα πολυφλοίσβοιο θαλάσσης
πολλὰ μάλ’ εὐχομένω γαιηόχῳ ἐννοσιγαίῳ
ῥηϊδίως πεπιθεῖν μεγάλας φρένας Αἰακίδαο.
Μυρμιδόνων δ’ ἐπί τε κλισίας καὶ νῆας ἱκέσθην,
τὸν δ’ εὗρον φρένα τερπόμενον φόρμιγγι λιγείῃ
καλῇ δαιδαλέῃ, ἐπὶ δ’ ἀργύρεον ζυγὸν ἦεν,
τὴν ἄρετ’ ἐξ ἐνάρων πόλιν ᾿Ηετίωνος ὀλέσσας·
τῇ ὅ γε θυμὸν ἔτερπεν, ἄειδε δ’ ἄρα κλέα ἀνδρῶν.
Πάτροκλος δέ οἱ οἶος ἐναντίος ἧστο σιωπῇ,
δέγμενος Αἰακίδην ὁπότε λήξειεν ἀείδων,
τὼ δὲ βάτην προτέρω, ἡγεῖτο δὲ δῖος ᾿Οδυσσεύς,
στὰν δὲ πρόσθ’ αὐτοῖο· ταφὼν δ’ ἀνόρουσεν ᾿Αχιλλεὺς
αὐτῇ σὺν φόρμιγγι λιπὼν ἕδος ἔνθα θάασσεν.
ὣς δ’ αὔτως Πάτροκλος, ἐπεὶ ἴδε φῶτας, ἀνέστη.
τὼ καὶ δεικνύμενος προσέφη πόδας ὠκὺς ᾿Αχιλλεύς·
χαίρετον· ἦ φίλοι ἄνδρες ἱκάνετον ἦ τι μάλα χρεώ,
οἵ μοι σκυζομένῳ περ ᾿Αχαιῶν φίλτατοί ἐστον.

The embassy includes three speakers, Odysseus, Achilles’ older ‘tutor’ Phoenix, and his cousin, the powerful warrior, Ajax the son of Telamon. The two heralds accompany them as well. Yet the pronouns and verbal forms that describe them move between dual and plural forms. The grammarian responds that this is incorrect because there are at least five entities involved here. Modern responses over the past century have been:

1. The text needs to be fixed, the duals have come from an older/different version of the poem that had a smaller embassy (with several variations)

2. The traditional use is imperfect, the dual is being used for groups. Some scholiasts suggest that audiences would have just used the dual for the plural

3. The dual herald scene is merely formulaic and has been left in without regard for changes in the evolution of the narrative

4. The text is focalized in some way, showing Achilles (e.g.) refusing to acknowledge the presence of someone he dislikes (Odysseus, see Nagy 1979) or focusing on two people he does like (Phoenix and Ajax, Martin 1989)

5. The text is jarring on purpose, highlighting that something is wrong with this scene

Ancient commentators seem less bothered by the alternation in forms: an ancient scholiast suggests that the first dual form refers to Ajax and Odysseus because Phoinix hangs back to get more instruction from Nestor (Schol ad. Il. 9.182). Of course, this interpretation doesn’t even try to explain what happened to the actual heralds who were sent along with the embassy. Yet the interaction of forms seems to give some support to a complex reading. The number and entanglement of the forms makes interpolation seem unlikely (if not ludicrous) as an explanation. Consider, for example this brief passage from book 7 where heralds step forward to stop the duel between Ajax and Hektor:

Homer Iliad 7.279-282

“Dear children, don’t wage war or fight any more.
Cloud-gathering Zeus loves you both,
And you are both warriors. All of us here certainly know this.
Night is already here: it is good to concede to night too.”

μηκέτι παῖδε φίλω πολεμίζετε μηδὲ μάχεσθον·
ἀμφοτέρω γὰρ σφῶϊ φιλεῖ νεφεληγερέτα Ζεύς,
ἄμφω δ’ αἰχμητά· τό γε δὴ καὶ ἴδμεν ἅπαντες.
νὺξ δ’ ἤδη τελέθει· ἀγαθὸν καὶ νυκτὶ πιθέσθαι.

Here we have a lone plural form (polemizete) paired with a dual imperative (makhesthon). The manuscript traditions show some effort to change the dual imperative to a plural to match with the first polemizete, but no record that I can see of attempts to correct the plural to a dual. Plural forms can apply to two. Indeed, in many cases where there are multiple dual forms used in a passage there tends to be frequent recourse to plurals.

But the issue here is not a plural form being used for two figures, but the unclear antecedents for the dual forms as they are. It is not common for dual forms to be applied to more than two figures. I have presented the responses above in a sequence that I see as both historical (in terms of traditions of literary criticism) and evolutionary. The first response–that the text is wrong–assumes infidelity in the transmission from the past and entrusts modern interpreters with the competence to identify errors and ‘correct’ them. The second response moves from morphological to functional, positing that ancient performers might have ‘misused’ the dual for present during a period of linguistic change. Neither of these suggestions are supported by the textual traditions which preserve the duals.

The final three answers depend upon the sense of error explored in the first two: first, a greater understanding of oral-formulaic poetry extends the Parryan suggestion that some forms are merely functional and do not express context specific meaning (#3) while the second option models a complex style of reading/reception that suggests the audience understands the misuse of the dual to evoke the internal thoughts/emotions of the character Achilles in one way or another. The third explanation is harder to defend based on how integrated the dual forms are in the passage: the dual is used to describe travel to Achilles’ tent, then the scene shifts to Achilles playing a lyre and Patroklos waiting for him to stop followed again by dual forms with what seems like an enigmatic line “and so they both were walking forth, and shining Odysseus was leading” (tō de batēn proterō, hēgeito de dios Odusseus).

Ancient commentary remains nonplussed: Odysseus is first of two, the line makes that clear, and Phoinix is following somewhere behind. Nagy’s and Martin’s explanations are attractive and they respond well to the awkward movement between dual and plural forms as well as Achilles’ specific use of the dual in hailing the embassy with a bittersweet observation. I like the idea of taking these two together, leaving it up to audiences to decode Achilles’ enigmatic greeting.

Responses #4 and 5 are not necessarily exclusive. The final option builds on the local context of the Iliad and sees the type scene as functioning within that narrative but with some expectation that audiences know the forms and the conventions. As others have argued, the use of the duals to signal the movement of heralds is traditional and functional in a compositional sense because it moves the action of the narrative from one place to another. In the Iliad, the herald scene marks a movement from one camp to another, building on what I believe is its larger conventional use apart from composition which is to mark the movement from one political space, or one sphere of authority to another. When Agamemnon sends the heralds in book 1 to retrieve Briseis, the action as well as the language further marks Achilles’ separation from the Achaean coalition. In book 9, the situation remains the same–Achilles is essentially operating in a different power-structure–but the embassy is an attempt to address the difference. The trio sent along with the heralds as ambassadors are simultaneously friends and foreign agents. Appropriately, the conventional language of epic reflects this tension by interposing the duals and reflecting the confused situation.

Most of the responses above except for the first two are valid from the perspective of ancient audiences.  The first two explanations–that the text is wrong or the usage is wrong–selectively accept the validity of some of the text but not that they find challenging for interpretive reasons or assume a simplicity on the part of ancient audiences (and many generations in between).  The subsequent responses, however, credit a creative intention rather than the collaborative ecosystem of meaning available to Homeric performance.

In the telling of epic tales, it may well have been customary to manipulate conventional language through creative misuse; and yet, if audiences are not experienced enough of the forms or attentive enough to the patterns, such usage would not likely be sustained. Audiences (like the ancient scholar) imagine Phoinix lagging behind, or Achilles focusing just on one character, or sense the pattern of alienation and separation that makes it necessary to treat Achilles as a foreign entity and not an ally. So, while the text relies on audience competency with epic conventions, this specific articulation also allows for depth of characterization in this moment: The final three interpretive options cannot be fully disambiguated. Although we may argue for greater weight to the typological argument–that audiences would understand the complicated marking of Achilles as a potential enemy through this disjuncture–we cannot dismiss the tension between that larger structural meaning and the immediate force of Achilles’ speech, inviting us to see the use of the dual as a character choice.

Bibliography

n.b this is not an exhaustive bibliography. If you’d like anything else included, please let me know. See Lesser 2022 for the most recent recent bibliography and discussion. Cf. Griffin 1995: 51–53. Scodel 2002: 160–71 and Louden 2006: 120–34 represent more recent readings.

Griffin, Jasper. 1995. Iliad, Book Nine. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Kazazis, Deborah B. & Kazazis, John N. (1991). Iliad 9, the duals and Homeric compositional technique. Επιστημονική Επετηρίδα της Φιλοσοφικής Σχολής [του Αριστοτελείου Πανεπιστημίου Θεσσαλονίκης]. Tεύχος Τμήματος Φιλολογίας, 1, 11-45.

Lesser, Rachel H. 2022. Desire in the Iliad. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Louden, D. Bruce (2002). Eurybates, Odysseus, and the duals in Book 9 of the « Iliad ». Colby Quarterly, 38(1), 62-76.

Louden, D. Bruce (2006). The « Iliad » :: structure, myth, and meaning. Baltimore (Md.): Johns Hopkins University Pr.

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

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

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

Segal, Charles (1968). The embassy and the duals of Iliad ix,182-198. Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, IX, 101-114.

Thornton, Agathe. “Once Again, the Duals in Book 9 of the Iliad.” Glotta 56, no. 1/2 (1978): 1–4. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40266418.

Wyatt, William F. “The Embassy and the Duals in Iliad 9.” The American Journal of Philology 106, no. 4 (1985): 399–408. https://doi.org/10.2307/295192.

Homer, Iliad 1.210-214

“But leave off the strife—don’t draw the sword with your hand.
Instead, rebuke him with words about how this will turn out.
I will explain this, and this will be fulfilled:
Then someday you’ll get three times as many shining gifts
On account of this insult. So, hold back, obey us.”

ἀλλ’ ἄγε λῆγ’ ἔριδος, μηδὲ ξίφος ἕλκεο χειρί·
ἀλλ’ ἤτοι ἔπεσιν μὲν ὀνείδισον ὡς ἔσεταί περ·
ὧδε γὰρ ἐξερέω, τὸ δὲ καὶ τετελεσμένον ἔσται·
καί ποτέ τοι τρὶς τόσσα παρέσσεται ἀγλαὰ δῶρα
ὕβριος εἵνεκα τῆσδε· σὺ δ’ ἴσχεο, πείθεο δ’ ἡμῖν.

One of the primary questions of book 9 is why Achilles refuses the Achaeans’ entreaties. The whole plot of Iliad 9 centers around the Achaean need for Achilles’ return, in response to the Trojans camping outside the city at the end of book 8. It starts with panic, turns to a plan to appeal to Achilles with gifts and soothing words, and results in something of a surprise when Achilles does not accede to their requests.

The book is split into 4 basic parts: (1) Agamemnon’s assembly, where he again suggests giving up; (2) the small council scene following it where the Greek leaders plan the assembly (under Nestor’s guidance); (3) the embassy scene with its three speeches/exchanges; and (4) the (inaccurate) report of the embassy. Note the chiastic (A-B-B-A) structure of public-private-private-public encounters. By the end of the book, the Achaean leadership (focused through Diomedes) has again restored something of a unified voice without Achilles. In a way, Book 9 integrates the themes and concerns of both books 1 and 2 in a similarly chiastic pattern: it opens with confusion and desperation, and clear echoes of book 2) returns to Nestor and Diomedes before getting to Achilles (book 1) and returning again to an Achaean front, united despite Achilles’ absence (book 2).

Iliad 9 is one of the most important books of the epic for understanding Achilles’ development and epic attitudes concerning ‘heroism’. While the plot of this book engages critically with the major themes I have noted to follow in reading the Iliad: (1) Politics, (2) Heroism; (3) Gods and Humans; (4) Family & Friends; (5) Narrative Traditions. But the central themes I emphasize in reading and teaching book 9 are politics, heroism, and narrative traditions.

This introductory post to book 9 addresses its general outline and the language of Achilles. There will be follow-up posts on the duals prior to the embassy and Diomedes’ speeches book-ending the conflict.

Book 9 and Homeric Speech

Book 9 has the highest proportion of direct speech of any book in the Iliad or Odyssey (provided we treat Odysseus’ own narrative in Od. 9-12 as a story and not direct speech). It provides a great opportunity to think about how speech works in different contexts: we see public speech in the assembly (the first and final parts of the book); semi-private political speech in the leaders’ small council (the second scene); and longer rhetorical attempts at persuasion during the assembly. 

The embassy to Achilles includes three people: Odysseus, Phoenix, and Alax (son of Telamon). Nestor lays out the plan of the embassy and induces Agamemnon to make an (egregiously generous) list of gifts to make amends. He sends Odysseus, as something of the Achaean consiglieri, Phoenix, as Achilles’ ‘tutor’ and surrogate father, and Ajax, Achilles’ cousin. So, at one level, the embassy is a combination of a political appointee and personal connections. On another level, we also have two figures who are extremely important to the heroic/mythic tradition of Troy (Odysseus and Ajax) and one who seems more-or-less tailored to this particular Iliad and this particular moment (Phoenix). The character interactions, then, can draw on audience inferences about their relationships and also their experiences of these characters in the wider tradition (and on that latter topic, Gregory Nagy’s The Best of the Achaeans remains the best of modern scholarship on teasing out narrative resonances).

The three members of the embassy make three different attempts to persuade Achilles. Odysseus amplifies the threat Hektor and the Trojans present in Achilles’ absence and recounts the large number of gifts Agamemnon is offering for his return; Phoenix makes an appeal to Achilles’ honor, sense of duty, and his personal relationship, capping it all with a paradeigma (persuasive example from myth) about Meleager; and Ajax takes a more personal and disguised approach, talking to Odysseus about Achilles, instead of addressing him directly at the start. The interpretive drama in book 9 is less in what these characters say and more in how Achilles’ responds to them. The ambiguity and shifting character of Achilles’ answers have long made this book one of the most debated in the epic. 

Leaving aside the content of Achilles’ speeches, the plot results are important for what follows. Each speech has Achilles taking an increasingly more specific position. To Odysseus, Achilles says that he is going to leave the next day with his troops; to Phoenix, Achilles adjusts and says that he will spend the night thinking about leaving and then decide in the morning; and after Ajax speaks, Achilles swears he will not return to battle until the Trojans reach his own ships. This last move cements Achilles’ course of action, confirms his continued separation from the Achaeans, and aligns his own intention with what Zeus declares for the plot (Patroklos’ death) in book 8.

That’s the plot. How we get there is even more intriguing.

The Language of Achilles

I have been interested in the language of Achilles since I started working on my dissertation in 2005 or so. Like many projects, mine started out of spite: a professor had told me that there was no such thing as rhetoric in Homer and that sent me on a multiyear path of vengeance. (Ok, not really John Wick-level comeuppance, but more like a slow, stubborn chipping away at the idea.) My general approach was that rhetoric in Homer should be defined by Homeric terms and ideas, not by post-oral expectations (like those from Aristotle on). I started out thinking about Nestor as a received ideal of speech whose model is eventually challenged by the epic itself. And, 9 chapters later, I ended with Achilles and the funeral games.

The language of few characters in literature has received the same attention in modern scholarship as that of Achilles. And approaches to his speech have been characterized as well the struggle of the 20^th century over what it means for creativity and meaning to say that Homeric poetry is oral and formulaic. In this vein, Adam Parry (1956; Milman Parry’s son) inaugurated a sub-field of Homeric studies with his paper “The Language of Achilles,” proposing that Achilles struggles to express what he means because the formulaic nature of Homeric language restricts the articulation of innovative notions or concepts contrary to the ethos of epic. While this reading has since been challenged by many (see, e.g. Reeve, Claus, Redfield and others below)

Homerists continued to investigate Achilles’ language in order to understand more clearly both the objections he makes to the Iliad’s world and the nature of Homeric speech in general. The debate may seem rather minor, but at its heart is whether or not ‘conventional’ language can be used to differentiate characters. Scholars responded by saying “no, it cannot, therefore Homeric poetry is not that formulaic” to “of course it can, people are misunderstanding what oral-formulaic means” and included pretty much everything in between. My sympathies are entirely with the extreme form of the second statement: the notion that Homeric speakers cannot be differentiated by language or are limited from saying “untraditional things” (which is, admittedly, the most extreme version of the statement) betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of oral-formulaic poetry and oral-derived epic as well as significant misapprehensions about the levels of freedom available from ‘natural’ languages.

The debate continued into the 21^st century, but two of the finer entries in the discussion came earlier. Richard Martin’s The Language of Heroes (1989) addresses the major questions surrounding Achilles’ use of speech. He suggests that “the rhetoric of Achilles—his heroic self-performance in an adversary relationship with the past and the present—is at the root of Homer’s own composition in performance.” Hilary Mackie’s Talking Trojan (1996) balances Achilles’ language against Hektor’s: Achilles speaks like a Hesiodic poet (from the Works and Days) and uses the language of wisdom poetry to question the Achaean hierarchy.

Achilles’ is an exceptionally evocative speaker whose use of language sets him apart as a character and as a political player. Second, his estrangement from the other characters and his status as the major player positions him to reflect on the epic’s entire world. The plot situates him as the one for whom an evaluation of political structures bears the most meaning. Book 9 shows him making some of his most challenging and interesting speeches, changing his tack from exchange to exchange. To take him at face value at any point in this book—not to mention the epic as a whole—is to tragically underestimate epic’s capacity for subtlety and misdirection. 

Achilles should be read from multiple perspectives simultaneously: he is a late adolescent, struggling to navigate between what he has learned of the world and the frustration he is experiencing; he is a warrior, trying to make sense of the balance between life and death and the rhetoric of eternal fame; he is a person stuck between the self and community, trying to balance his own titanic need for honor with the obligations he feels towards others; and he is a partly occluded mouthpiece for the poet, offering potential reflections on heroism, the mythical tradition, and what it means to be a person. Each of these personae (and more) rises to the surface during his responses and none of them provide clear answers. Achilles’ speeches operate like proto-Platonic dialogues, inviting audiences to think through his problems (and those they represent more widely) without coming to resolution. Instead, they should help to create discomfort and confusion, prompting conversation and thought long after the end of the poem.

Some guiding questions for book 9

 Compare the opening scene of this book to book 2’s assembly and flight to the ships. What are some of the differences?

How has the approach to the conflict between Agamemnon and Achilles changed among the Achaeans since book 1?

Why does Achilles reject Agamemnon’s offer?

Achilles receives three speeches and gives three separate responses to them. How do his plans change with each speech and why?

Bibliography on the language of Achilles

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Book 8 offers us our third vision of Hektor in as many books. In book 6, he takes us inside the city of Troy as he speaks to his mother, Helen, and Andromache. Book 7 shows him challenging Ajax to a duel before returning the focus on the city itself. In book 8, Hektor (eventually) takes control of the battlefield and leads the Trojans to remain outside the city walls over night for the first time in the war (according to the Iliad).

At first glance, Hektor seems to be one of the epic’s most straightforward characters: he is the leader of the Trojan war effort, a father and husband, and brother to the prince who started the conflict. The Greeks almost unanimously describe him as a danger on the field: Achilles evokes this by calling him “man-slaying Hektor” from the beginning. And his named-murder count supports his menace: he kills the most named heroes of everyone in the epic. But from our perspective, the Iliadic presentation isn’t without question: Hektor fails to match up to Ajax and Diomedes and ultimately runs when faced with Achilles.

This particular Hektor may be more complex than a stock Trojan leader from the mythical tradition. Compare, for example, the Hektor depicted in Euripides’ Rhesos: he is much more menacing and authoritarian—to the point of being tyrannical—than the Iliad version. Homer’s Hektor wistfully wishes for his son’s future, upbraids and then humors his brother, and is eulogized at the end of the epic as the only Trojan who was kind to Helen. Over a century ago, J. A. Scott argued that the remarkable nature of Hektor’s character was because he was a Homeric innovation, central and special to our Iliad. F. M. Combellack, writing decades later, diagnosed that much of this argument was based on Scott’s own love for the Trojan hero.

Indeed, readers seem to respond to Hektor: I frequently hear that he is the one noble character in the epic, the one person we root for no matter what. (There’s something about our psychological attraction for the victim, for the oppressed here, but I will leave that for another time). James Redfield and Lynn Kozak have both written about Hektor’s character in different ways, but I think both of them get something right: Hektor is different from all of the other characters in the epic.

I used to try to explain that difference with students by saying that Hektor isn’t divine like Achilles or surpassingly clever like Odysseus—he is closer to what a decent person can hope to be: steadfast and strong in the face of adversity, loyal and dear to his family. At the core, he is a clear instantiation of that archaic definition of justice, to help one’s friends and hurt his family. At the core, however, there’s a sadness, a withdrawal to Hektor. And I think we find this in his language, and his resistance to it.

Hilary Mackie (1996, 11 and 107-9) positions Hektor as the archetypal Trojan speaker even though many features of his speeches are idiosyncratic.  He is intensely concerned with his fame (kléos) and frequently imagines other people talking about him. His imagination produces a capacity for self-delusion, a desire for a different world, as he is forever trying to fit the world to his words with impossible wishes and paradoxical desires (8.165-6, 179 and 196-7). Hektor does not “converse” normally. Frequently he commands a subordinate or family member and then leaves without response (6.116, 6.286, 6.369, 6.494-5, 6.529-7.1, 12.442 and 17.491.); Hektor often reacts only with action, cf. 3.75, 5.493, 6.342, 12.80, 13.787, 20.379, 22.78, and 22.91). This summary of Hektor, however, goes against our typical emotional responses.

Il. 8.529-542

“But let’s keeps ourselves safe out here for the night,
Then at first light we will arm ourselves and
Wake up sharp Ares alongside the grey ships.
I will find out then if Tydeus’ son, strong Diomedes,
Will push me back to the wall from the ships
Or if I will savage him with bronze and carry away his bloody weapons.

Tomorrow will show the proof of our excellence, if he will stand
To face my spear’s approach. But I think that he will fall there
Struck among the first ranks and many of his companions
Will be there around him as the sun sets toward the next dear.
But I wish I were deathless and ageless for all time,
Then I would pay them back as Athena or Apollo might,
And now on this day bring evil to the Argives.”

So Hektor spoke and the Trojans cheered in response.

ἀλλ’ ἤτοι ἐπὶ νυκτὶ φυλάξομεν ἡμέας αὐτούς,
πρῶϊ δ’ ὑπηοῖοι σὺν τεύχεσι θωρηχθέντες
νηυσὶν ἔπι γλαφυρῇσιν ἐγείρομεν ὀξὺν ῎Αρηα.
εἴσομαι εἴ κέ μ’ ὁ Τυδεΐδης κρατερὸς Διομήδης
πὰρ νηῶν πρὸς τεῖχος ἀπώσεται, ἤ κεν ἐγὼ τὸν
χαλκῷ δῃώσας ἔναρα βροτόεντα φέρωμαι.
αὔριον ἣν ἀρετὴν διαείσεται, εἴ κ’ ἐμὸν ἔγχος
μείνῃ ἐπερχόμενον· ἀλλ’ ἐν πρώτοισιν ὀΐω
κείσεται οὐτηθείς, πολέες δ’ ἀμφ’ αὐτὸν ἑταῖροι
ἠελίου ἀνιόντος ἐς αὔριον· εἰ γὰρ ἐγὼν ὣς
εἴην ἀθάνατος καὶ ἀγήρως ἤματα πάντα,
τιοίμην δ’ ὡς τίετ’ ᾿Αθηναίη καὶ ᾿Απόλλων,
ὡς νῦν ἡμέρη ἧδε κακὸν φέρει ᾿Αργείοισιν.
῝Ως ῞Εκτωρ ἀγόρευ’, ἐπὶ δὲ Τρῶες κελάδησαν.

This is typical of Hektor’s speeches: he expresses an eagerness to fight that nears being boastful; like many Trojan speakers committed to the either/or proposition of kill or be killed. But he rallies his people. His wish to be immortal isn’t praised in the scholia: (“Praying for the impossible is barbaric” βαρβαρικὸν τὸ εὔχεσθαι τὰ ἀδύνατα, Schol. bT ad Hom. Il. 8.538-539b). Hektor’s language here evokes the ‘bipartite’ immortality that appears often in epic poetry. In Homer’s Thebes, Elton and I note:

“The quasi-magical formula with which the goddess offers Odysseus the chance to become immortal—“to be deathless and ageless for all days” (θήσειν ἀθάνατον καὶ ἀγήραον ἤματα πάντα, 5.136)—resonates through the epic cosmos. We hear it when Demeter tries to make Demophoon immortal in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter or when Eos succeeds in making Tithonus deathless but not ageless in the Hymn to Aphrodite. Homer’s Thebes 2020, 99

To see how Hektor’s wish here is different from these other instances, it is useful to look at a famous passage from a speech from Sarpedon.

Il. 12.322-328

“Oh, if the two of us could really escape this war,
And would somehow become ageless and deathless,
I wouldn’t fight among the foremost myself
Nor would I send you into man-ennobling battling.
But since death’s fates stand ready around us now
Countless, those ends no mortal is permitted to escape or avoid,
Let us go and give glory to someone else or take it ourselves.”

ὦ πέπον εἰ μὲν γὰρ πόλεμον περὶ τόνδε φυγόντε
αἰεὶ δὴ μέλλοιμεν ἀγήρω τ’ ἀθανάτω τε
ἔσσεσθ’, οὔτέ κεν αὐτὸς ἐνὶ πρώτοισι μαχοίμην
οὔτέ κε σὲ στέλλοιμι μάχην ἐς κυδιάνειραν·
νῦν δ’ ἔμπης γὰρ κῆρες ἐφεστᾶσιν θανάτοιο
μυρίαι, ἃς οὐκ ἔστι φυγεῖν βροτὸν οὐδ’ ὑπαλύξαι,
ἴομεν ἠέ τῳ εὖχος ὀρέξομεν ἠέ τις ἡμῖν. ”

The Scholia are a little more generous to Sarpedon’s wish:

Schol bT Ad Hom. Il. 12.322-328

“This is a noble statement. For he says that death is common to all, but dying with a good reputation is only for the good. For he means to say that there’s no ultimate safety or escape from death, just a minor delay in time with ignominy.

     ex. εἰ μὲν γὰρ πόλεμον περὶ τόνδε φυγόντε<— ἡμῖν>: εὐγενὴς ἡ γνώμη· τὸ μὲν γὰρ ἀποθανεῖν κοινὸν ἀποφαίνει πάντων (cf. 326—7), τὸ δὲ μετ’ εὐκλείας τῶν ἀγαθῶν μόνων. καὶ τὴν παραυτίκα σωτηρίαν οὐκ ἀπαλλαγὴν θανάτου, ἀλλ’ ἀναβολὴν χρόνου μικρὰν μετ’ ἀδοξίας γινομένην φησὶν εἶναι

Where Hektor imagines that if he were immortal, he would fight forever, Sarpedon imagines that if he were immortal, he would not fight at all. He most clearly articulates that essential notion of Homeric kleos, that human life has meaning because it is limited and that giving up so precious a thing, warriors may gain some qualified type of immortality through renown.

While Hektor flirts with this in his speech to the Achaeans in book 7, here in front of the Trojans he rallies them by promising that he would spend his immortality on an eternal war. Troy is fated to live only as long as Hektor lasts and fights; he imagines that his immortality might translate similarly into a city that cannot end, braced by him against a war that ever rages. 

At the core of the difference between Sarpedon and Hektor is the fiction of the choice, the very one Achilles claims he has in book 9. Here’s the inescapable sadness fundamental to Hektor’s characterization. Exchanging life for glory is meaningless, if not impossible, if everyone you loves dies without you there to protect them.

Short bibliography on Hektor

n.b this is not an exhaustive bibliography. If you’d like anything else included, please let me know. Follow-up posts will address kleos and Trojan politics

Clark, Matthew. “Poulydamas and Hektor.” College Literature 34, no. 2 (2007): 85–106. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25115422.

Combellack, Frederick M. “Homer and Hector.” The American Journal of Philology 65, no. 3 (1944): 209–43. https://doi.org/10.2307/291490.

Farron, S. “THE CHARACTER OF HECTOR IN THE ‘ILIAD.’” Acta Classica 21 (1978): 39–57. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24591547.

Lynn Kozak, Experiencing Hektor: Character in the Iliad. Bloomsbury Classical Studies Monographs. London; New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016. xiv, 307. 

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

W. R. Nethercut. “Hektor at the Abyss.” Classical Bulletin 49 (1972) 7-9.

Pantelia, Maria C. “Helen and the Last Song for Hector.” Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974-) 132, no. 1/2 (2002): 21–27. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20054056.

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

Scott, John A. “The Parting of Hector and Andromache.” The Classical Journal 9, no. 6 (1914): 274–77. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3287165.

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

Traill, David A. “Unfair to Hector?” Classical Philology 85, no. 4 (1990): 299–303. http://www.jstor.org/stable/269583.

Book 8 returns the Iliad to battle. It begins with a divine council, where Zeus attempts to control the actions of the other gods and by doing so, shapes the plot to come. The violence inspires Hera to try to disobey Zeus’ injunction, resulting in the flow of battle first favoring the Trojans and then the Greeks. Zeus has Iris prevent Athena and Hera from engaging further in the battle and the end of the book features two important moments: Zeus reveals his plan to the rest of the gods for the sides to struggle until Patroklos dies; Hektor has the Trojans camp outside the city for the first time in the conflict. The plot of this book engages critically with the major themes I have noted to follow in reading the Iliad: (1) Politics, (2) Heroism; (3) Gods and Humans; (4) Family & Friends; (5) Narrative Traditions. But the central themes I emphasize in reading and teaching book 8 are Gods and Humans and Narrative Traditions.

Zeus and the Plot of the Iliad

As I discuss in the introductory post on book 4, Zeus is instrumental in shaping the plot of the Iliad. The epic is cast as part of his “plan” in book 1, but he also articulates the plot of the epic at several key moments. There are different ways to think about Zeus’ intervention: As Bruce Heiden argues, we too often think about the Iliad as a text to be read, rather than one that was performed. The performance units are unknown to us: certainly, parts of epic narrative circulated as episodes (the teikhomakhia, “battle around the wall”; or teikhoskopia, “viewing from the walls”) but we can’t know from ancient references to such scenes whether they correspond to the same scenes we have in the written texts. Some have proposed that the book divisions we have were also performance units, but few of the books exhibit a kind of clear beginning, middle and end that would lend themselves to such performances.

Based on the three days of performances at the City Dionysia in Athens, some scholars have suggested a three-part sequence in a ‘monumental’ or ideal performance of the Iliad in some sort of a religious festival. There are several proposals, but the one I have always found most persuasive is Heiden’s: he remarks that Zeus has significant decisions and speeches in books 1 and 24, to begin and end and shape the plot, but that he also outlines the plot to come for the first time: in the latter part of book 8, and the latter part of book 15. Each of these moments could be seen as a ‘teaser’ for the next performance, outlining or anticipating the narrative to come in the same way a weekly television episode might end with “Next week, on [the Iliad]…” In this case, the performance units would be books 1-8, 9-15, and 16-24.

Now, even if we don’t subscribe to the tripartite performance structure, or, more importantly, if we acknowledge that the epic’s contents have not always been enjoyed in such a fashion, we can still see the effect that Zeus’s speeches have on the epic. He refocuses the action and dictates the plot.

Il. 8.469-483

“Then Zeus the cloud-gatherer answered Hera:
‘At dawn you will see the powerful son of Kronos,
If you want, cow-eyed Queen Hera,
Destroying the great host of spear-wielding Argives.
Hektor will not take a break from war until
The swift-footed son of Peleus rises among the ships
On that day when they battle among the prows
In the greatest strain over Patroklos who has died.
This is divinely decreed. I don’t care about whether
You are angry, not even if you run away to the ends
Of the earth and the sea, where Iapetos and Kronos
Sit and take pleasure neither in the rays of Helios
Nor in the winds, since Tartaros is steep around them.
Even if you go wandering there, I don’t care if you’re
Angry, since there’s no one more doglike than you.”

Τὴν δ’ ἀπαμειβόμενος προσέφη νεφεληγερέτα Ζεύς·
ἠοῦς δὴ καὶ μᾶλλον ὑπερμενέα Κρονίωνα
ὄψεαι, αἴ κ’ ἐθέλῃσθα, βοῶπις πότνια ῞Ηρη
ὀλλύντ’ ᾿Αργείων πουλὺν στρατὸν αἰχμητάων·
οὐ γὰρ πρὶν πολέμου ἀποπαύσεται ὄβριμος ῞Εκτωρ
πρὶν ὄρθαι παρὰ ναῦφι ποδώκεα Πηλεΐωνα,
ἤματι τῷ ὅτ’ ἂν οἳ μὲν ἐπὶ πρύμνῃσι μάχωνται
στείνει ἐν αἰνοτάτῳ περὶ Πατρόκλοιο θανόντος·
ὣς γὰρ θέσφατόν ἐστι· σέθεν δ’ ἐγὼ οὐκ ἀλεγίζω
χωομένης, οὐδ’ εἴ κε τὰ νείατα πείραθ’ ἵκηαι
γαίης καὶ πόντοιο, ἵν’ ᾿Ιάπετός τε Κρόνος τε
ἥμενοι οὔτ’ αὐγῇς ῾Υπερίονος ᾿Ηελίοιο
τέρποντ’ οὔτ’ ἀνέμοισι, βαθὺς δέ τε Τάρταρος ἀμφίς·
οὐδ’ ἢν ἔνθ’ ἀφίκηαι ἀλωμένη, οὔ σευ ἔγωγε
σκυζομένης ἀλέγω, ἐπεὶ οὐ σέο κύντερον ἄλλο.

Zeus’ control of the plot, in an echo of his language at the beginning of books 4 and 8, is somehow related to his physical might and reminders of a theomachy that led to the Titans (or someone like them) being exiled to Tartarus. At the beginning of 8, he reminds the gods that they cannot overpower him and threatens to hurl anyone who disobeys him into the underworld (10-20). In book 4, Zeus is not explicit in threatening Hera, but he does imply he will destroy one of her favorite cities as payback for the destruction of Troy (4.25-30). Book 5 is replete with echoes of divine war; but book 8 seems the most explicit in bookending the action with references to the consequences of opposing Zeus. By flexing his rhetorical muscle, Zeus both forestalls any further action against him and clarifies the epic’s plot.

If we are imagining books 1-8 as a performance unit, this final speech closes Zeus’ response to Achilles’ request in book 1: Achilles asks for the Achaeans to be punished; here Zeus makes it clear that Patroklos’ death is a part of his honoring of that request. Of course, there interpretive space for understanding Zeus’ action. A scholiast explains for the phrase “this is divinely decreed” that “[Zeus] is tossing out that this is fated, so that he doesn’t seem to play the part of tyrant” τὸ μοιρίδιον προβάλλεται, ἵνα / μὴ δοκῇ τυραννεῖν, Schol. bT ad Hom. Il. 8.477). As if that settles it all!

On the performance of the Iliad and book 8

n.b this is not an exhaustive bibliography. If you’d like anything else included, please let me know. Follow-up posts will address book 8 and other traditions

Cook, Erwin F. “On the ‘Importance’ of Iliad Book 8.” Classical Philology, vol. 104, no. 2, 2009, pp. 133–61. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.1086/605340

Fenno, Jonathan. “‘A Great Wave against the Stream’: Water Imagery in Iliadic Battle Scenes.” The American Journal of Philology 126, no. 4 (2005): 475–504. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3804872.

Foley, J. M. 1988. The Theory of Oral Composition: History and Methodology. Bloomington.

———. 1999. Homer’s Traditional Art. Philadelphia.

González, José M. 2013. The Epic Rhapsode and His Craft: Homeric Performance in a Diachronic Perspective. Washington, D.C.: Center for Hellenic Studies.

Heiden, B. (1996). The three movements of the iliad. Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 37(1), 5-22. Retrieved from https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/three-movements-iliad/docview/229178418/se-2

Bruce Heiden. “The Placement of ‘Book Divisions’ in the Iliad.” The Journal of Hellenic Studies 118 (1998): 68–81. https://doi.org/10.2307/632231.

Heiden, B. 2008. Homer’s Cosmic Fabrication: Choice and Design in the Iliad. Oxford.

Lord, Albert. 2000. The Singer of Tales. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

MORRISON, J. V. “‘KEROSTASIA’, THE DICTATES OF FATE, AND THE WILL OF ZEUS IN THE ‘ILIAD.’” Arethusa 30, no. 2 (1997): 273–96. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44578099.

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

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.

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

Homer, Iliad 7.81-93

“But I kill one of you—and Apollo grants me glory,
Then once I strip off your weapons, I will take them to holy Troy
And I will hang them on the temple of far-shooting Apollo.
But I will return the body to the well-benched ships,
And the Achaeans with the long hair will bury him.
They will heap him up a sign on the broad Hellespont
And then someone of the people who are born later will say
As they sail on the wine-dark sea in a many-benched ship,
“This is the grave of a man who died long ago,
Someone whom shining Hektor killed when he was the best”
So someone will say some day, and my fame will never perish”
So he spoke and everyone stayed quiet in the silence.
They were ashamed to refuse, but afraid to accept.”

εἰ δέ κ’ ἐγὼ τὸν ἕλω, δώῃ δέ μοι εὖχος ᾿Απόλλων,
τεύχεα σύλησας οἴσω προτὶ ῎Ιλιον ἱρήν,
καὶ κρεμόω προτὶ νηὸν ᾿Απόλλωνος ἑκάτοιο,
τὸν δὲ νέκυν ἐπὶ νῆας ἐϋσσέλμους ἀποδώσω,
ὄφρά ἑ ταρχύσωσι κάρη κομόωντες ᾿Αχαιοί,
σῆμά τέ οἱ χεύωσιν ἐπὶ πλατεῖ ῾Ελλησπόντῳ.
καί ποτέ τις εἴπῃσι καὶ ὀψιγόνων ἀνθρώπων
νηῒ πολυκλήϊδι πλέων ἐπὶ οἴνοπα πόντον·
ἀνδρὸς μὲν τόδε σῆμα πάλαι κατατεθνηῶτος,
ὅν ποτ’ ἀριστεύοντα κατέκτανε φαίδιμος ῞Εκτωρ.
ὥς ποτέ τις ἐρέει· τὸ δ’ ἐμὸν κλέος οὔ ποτ’ ὀλεῖται.
῝Ως ἔφαθ’, οἱ δ’ ἄρα πάντες ἀκὴν ἐγένοντο σιωπῇ·
αἴδεσθεν μὲν ἀνήνασθαι, δεῖσαν δ’ ὑποδέχθαι·

This speech comes near the beginning of Iliad 7 as Hektor is challenging one of the Greeks to fight him in single combat. Its position and content speak directly both to the characterization of Hektor, some problems of the structure of the Iliad, and the metapoetics of kleos (or, more appropriately, the occluded poetics of the epic “kleos function”). Let me try to address them in order.

First, Hektor is using this language not 45 minutes in performance time from his encounter with Andromache and Astyanax on the wall of Troy where he ends by praying for his son to be better than his father and to delight his mother’s heart by returning from nettle with another man’s weapons just as Hektor hopes for himself now (6.479-81). There as well, Hektor engages with what some have called “tis-speech” imagining the future words of others (de Jong 1987). Hilary Mackie refers to these moments as vignettes and notes that all but one of them appear in Hektor’s speeches (6.460-1; 6.479-50; 7.88-91; 7.300-2; and 22.107). For Mackie, these support Hektor’s tendency towards “an inward focus and absorption in the scenes he is creating” (1996, 98-99). This separation from reality, the rumination and the accompanying verbal tic of moving between a harsh assessment of reality (Hektor’s statements that he will in fact die) and flights of fancy, is supportive of a character in distress, I believe. Hektor is engaging in classic rumination, in delaying tactics, as he pushes against the reality of his situation. His decisions and his actions may be shaped by trauma. (Or, to put it less aggressively, his characterization may be such that it allows others to see him as responding erratically as one in a traumatized state may do.)

In a way, Hektor is a complement for Achilles’ contemplation of heroic valor and the promise of eternal fame. But he approaches it from a more shame-based perspective. (See Schein the Mortal Hero, 177-178 for more on hector as a hero shaped by shame and Redfield, Nature and Culture 119-126 for Hektor’s heroism as a function of responsibility and obligation.) In nearly every major speech that indicates a decision or a resistance/regret for one being suggested (see Hektor in book 6 and 22), Hektor worries of shame and reputation which may be considered part of the rhetoric of fame, since the latter is shaped to an extent by the meaning of the former. Hektor, as Richard Martin has noted (1989, 133), is particularly concerned with winning a reputation. This concern expands beyond the boundaries of the poem (in time and space) in a manner that is really only achieved elsewhere by Achilles. When he refuses Andromache’s plea to stay within the walls in book 6, he immediately claims he fears feeling shame in front of the Trojans and predicts, using language that recalls this speech, that some day someone will see Andromache enslaved and crying and that her pain will rise anew from the loss of a husband who can no longer save her.

The projections of objects into the future that attest to Hektor’s absence, his success in gaining fame, and his failure to protect his wife, must in some way hang together in the mind of the audience. While we often take Hektor’s comments in book 7 as signal words on Homeric fame, they are words shaped by the public context that is in and of itself about the shame of people witnessing your excellence or commemorating one’s fall. When Hektor speaks to Andromache a book earlier, he projects her into the future as a different sêma (marker) of his absence, but one that correlates to his failure. The personal, intimate nature of this and Hektor’s expression of pain—that he would rather the earth cover over him than have to hear her crying (6.459-465) both underscores Hektor’s conflicted feelings and also undermines the significance of his later claims.

Yet, perhaps this too is an overstatement. Hektor’s bluster in public is a function of his refusal to reject shame, to stand down or seem less-than in front of his people and his enemies. In the intimate wish to his wife, he doesn’t mention glory or a grave, but instead wishes for oblivion, to be covered by the earth and to have no news of the horrors that continue after his death. If anything, rather than being an indication of an inconsistent character, these two vignettes point to an emotional coherence and a deep complexity to Hektor’s character.

And I am so bold as to imagine that the structure of books 6 into 7 reflect this. Why does the Iliad need a second duel between heroes in its first half? Why, 10 years into the war, should Ajax and Hektor face each other in a single combat that is ultimately meaningless? And why, of all possible moments, have this be the one when Hektor points to the sema of his own grave as the guarantee of the continuity of memory for his own kleos? I may be as yet and as ever too modern in saying this, but I suspect the futility and the mundanity of the scene is the point. Hektor’s duel—and his fame to come—impact nothing of the world he cares about and may, at best, preserve a kleos that is as much a record of this as of all he could not protect.

The incoherence of the events that follow may support the coherence of this characterization. Hektor’s challenge inspires fear—and the response reported by the narrator echoes Hektor’s own concern with shame (αἴδεσθεν μὲν ἀνήνασθαι, δεῖσαν δ’ ὑποδέχθαι, 93). Nestor follows with the language shame reminds the Achaeans of their own boasts, Menelaos gets frustrated and is said by the narrator to be about to die (7.104) if he faces Hektor, only for Ajax to win a random drawing to face Hektor. Despite their fear of Hekor, Ajax seems to acquit himself quite well, save for an intervention by Apollo (7.272-273). The ‘draw’ is a stepping back from the conflict that has the Trojans relieved that Hektor survived and Agamemnon delighted at Ajax’s “victory” (7.312).

Throughout Hektor’s characterization in the Iliad we find a tension between the man we are told he should be and the figure we actually see in action. After returning to this speech again, I think that such tension is a direct function of Hektor’s relationship to kleos as clarified by his contrast with Achilles: he does not fight by choice, like Achilles; but he fights by obligation. His imagined futures change depending on whether they are public or private as he tries to play the part of a warrior prince who has learned to fight and die for his people while still struggling with the human part of knowing what his failure means for his city, spouse and child. Together, Achilles and Hektor can provide reflections on the limits of epic kleos and the conditions under which it matters and cannot. We just need to hear them as speaking in dialogue with each other, and us.

Short bibliography on Hektor

n.b this is not an exhaustive bibliography. If you’d like anything else included, please let me know. Follow-up posts will address kleos and Trojan politics

Clark, Matthew. “Poulydamas and Hektor.” College Literature 34, no. 2 (2007): 85–106. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25115422.

Combellack, Frederick M. “Homer and Hector.” The American Journal of Philology 65, no. 3 (1944): 209–43. https://doi.org/10.2307/291490.

Farron, S. “THE CHARACTER OF HECTOR IN THE ‘ILIAD.’” Acta Classica 21 (1978): 39–57. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24591547.

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

Irene J. F. de Jong. “The Voice of Anonymity. Tis-Speeches in the Iliad.” Eranos 85 (1987) 5-22.

Lynn Kozak, Experiencing Hektor: Character in the Iliad. Bloomsbury Classical Studies Monographs. London; New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016. xiv, 307. 

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

Van der Mije, Sebastiaan Reinier. “Bad herbs: the snake simile in Iliad 22.” Mnemosyne, Ser. 4, vol. 64, no. 3, 2011, pp. 359-382. Doi: 10.1163/156852511X505079

W. R. Nethercut. “Hektor at the Abyss.” Classical Bulletin 49 (1972) 7-9.

Oele, Marjolein. “Priam’s despair and courage: an Aristotelian reading of fear, hope, and suffering in Homer’s « Iliad ».” Logoi and muthoi : further essays in Greek philosophy and literature. Ed. Wians, William. SUNY Series in Ancient Greek Philosophy. Albany (N. Y.): State University of New York Pr., 2019. 297-317.

Pantelia, Maria C. “Helen and the Last Song for Hector.” Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974-) 132, no. 1/2 (2002): 21–27. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20054056.

Pucci, Pietro. “Divine protagonists in the « Iliad »: Hector’s death in book 22.” Yearbook of Ancient Greek Epic, vol. 1, 2017, pp. 175-205.

Ready, Jonathan L.. “Iliad 22.123-128 and the erotics of supplication.” The Classical Bulletin, vol. 81, no. 2, 2005, pp. 145-164.

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

Scott, John A. “The Parting of Hector and Andromache.” The Classical Journal 9, no. 6 (1914): 274–77. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3287165.

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

Traill, David A. “Unfair to Hector?” Classical Philology 85, no. 4 (1990): 299–303. http://www.jstor.org/stable/269583.

Book 7, as discussed in the introductory post, can be split into the following subsections: the divine orchestration of the duel, the duel between Hektor and Ajax, assemblies of the Trojans and the Greeks, and the building of the Achaean wall and the divine response. These events are part of an “analeptic” {retrospective or flashback)  movement in the epic’s first third, as the Iliad attempts to evoke the themes of the first nine years of the Trojan War. The assemblies in the latter half of the book provide a unique opportunity to compare Greek and Trojan political organizations.

As others have written, the political institutions in the Iliad reflect the basic organization of many Greek city-states: a small, mostly aristocratic/oligarchic council for governing and decision-making, and a larger public assembly for the adjudication of disputes and the performance of political relationships. The three distinct political groups in epic–the Achaeans, Trojans, and the Gods–all provide various versions of these institutions and the ‘success’ of each polity partly hinges on how they work.

Elsewhere, I have outlined the major ‘political’ activities in the Iliad. Apart from the repeated engagement between Poulydamas and Hektor, Antenor’s speech in book 7 is one of the few times the Trojans encounter dissent. The significance of these scenes is often missed between the more famous dual and the divine response to the construction of the Achaean walls.

Antenor is an interesting figure: in a way, he is positioned as something of an equivalent to Nestor. The larger poetic tradition, however, notes that he was known as being friendly to the Greeks and provides some ground for suspicion. 

Schol bT Il. 3.205a ex. 1-5

When they were coming out of Tenedos as ambassadors with Menelaos, Antênôr, the son of Hiketaos received them and saved them when they were almost killed through deceit. For this reason, during the sack of Troy, Agamemnon ordered that the household of Antênor be spared, and he signalled this by hanging a leopard’s skin in front of his home. 

ὅτε ἐκ Τενέδου ἐπρεσβεύοντο οἱ περὶ Μενέλαον, τότε ᾿Αντήνωρ ὁ ῾Ικετάονος ὑπεδέξατο αὐτούς, καὶ δολοφονεῖσθαι μέλλοντας ἔσωσεν· ὅθεν μετὰ τὴν ἅλωσιν τῆς Τροίας ἐκέλευσεν ᾿Αγαμέμνων φείσασθαι τῶν οἰκείων ᾿Αντήνορος, παρδάλεως δορὰν ἐξάψας πρὸ τῶν οἴκων αὐτοῦ.

 Schol. in Il. bT 7.335a ex. 1-4

Another Trojan assembly: for it was necessary to look at what should be done since the sons of the king were being beaten, the city was imperiled by Diomedes and, because of the transgression, they were in dire straits. [as] There was Nestor among the Greeks, the Trojans had Antênor.

Τρώων αὖτ’ ἀγορή: ἔδει γὰρ τῶν τοῦ βασιλέως υἱῶν ἡττωμένων καὶ κινδυνευσάσης τῆς πόλεως ὑπὸ Διομήδους, δυσελπίδων ὄντων διὰ τὴν παράβασιν, σκοπεῖν τι τῶν ἀναγκαίων. ἔστι δὲ ἐν τοῖς ῞Ελλησι Νέστωρ, ἐν δὲ Τρωσὶν ᾿Αντήνωρ.

Schol. in Il. bT 7.347a ex. 1-3

Antênor stands among them because he is was a patron of the Greeks, a public speaker, and a god-fearing man. And Hektor was silent because he is ashamed to end the war, lest he appear to be afraid because he was just defeated.

ex. τοῖσιν δ’ ᾿Αντήνωρ: ὡς πρόξενος ῾Ελλήνων καὶ δημηγορῶν καὶ θεοσεβής. ῞Εκτωρ δὲ σιωπᾷ αἰσχυνόμενος διαλύειν τὴν μάχην, ἵνα μὴ δοκῇ δεδοικέναι διὰ τὸ νεωστὶ ἡττῆσθαι.

What I find most interesting in the scenes that follow is how Priam is forced to accommodate Antenor’s dissent alongside Paris’ recalcitrance. Of course, Antenor’s suggestion to return Helen is against the poetic tradition and ultimately possible. At some level, there’s no reason for this scene to exist at all, unless it reflects in some way on the themes of this particular version of Achilles’ rage. As I argue in an article from a few years back, the exchanges in book 7 function as an index of the “limits on advice and deliberation” in the Trojan polity.

In the sequences of speeches below, note how Priam attempts to acknowledge the ‘plans’ of both speakers and then directs the herald Idaios to take the complex messages to the Achaeans. Rather than delivering Priam’s speech verbatim, Idaios modifies it, especially in the delivery of Paris’ proposals.

Opening of the Trojan Assembly, 7.345-353

Then the Trojan assembly was held on the city peak of Ilium,
terribly disordered, alongside the doorways of Priam’s home.
Among them prudent Antenor began to speak publicly:
‘Hear me Trojans, Dardanians, and allies
so that I may speak what the heart in my chest bids.
Come now, let us give Argive Helen and her possessions too,
to the sons of Atreus to take away; now we fight
even though we made false the sacred oaths; thus I do not expect
that anything advantageous for us will happen unless we do this.’

Paris’ Response, 7.354-64

‘Antenor, no longer do you speak these things dear to me—
you know how to think up yet another mûthos better than this.
If you say this truthfully in public and earnestly indeed,
then the gods themselves have surely already obliterated your wits.
But I will speak out publicly among the horse-taming Trojans:
I refuse this straight-out; I will not hand over the woman;
but, however many things I took from Argos to our home
I am willing to give them back and to add other things from my household.’

Priam’s Intervention, 7.365-79

And saying this he [Paris] sat down and among them rose
Dardanian Priam, a counselor equal to the gods—
well-intentioned towards them he spoke publicly and spoke among them:
‘Hear me Trojans and Dardanians and allies
so that I may say those things the heart in my chest bids.
Now, take your dinner throughout the city as you have before
and be mindful of the watch and keep each other awake.
At dawn let Idaios go to the curved ships
to repeat the plan of Alexandros, on whose account this conflict has arisen,
to Atreus’ sons, Agamemnon and Menelaos—
and also to propose this wise plan, if they wish
to stop the ill-sounding war until we have burned the corpses;
we will fight again later until the god separates us
and grants victory to one side at least.’
So he spoke and they all heard him and obeyed.

Idaios’ Report to the Achaians, 7.382-398

[Idaios] found the Danaans, Ares’ followers, in assembly
by the prow of Agamemnon’s ship. Then standing among them
in the middle the loud-voiced herald spoke:

‘Sons of Atreus and the rest of the best of all the Achaians,
Priam and the rest of the illustrious Trojans bid me
to speak, in the hope that it might be dear and sweet to you,
the múthos of Alexandros, on whose account this conflict has arisen:
However many possessions he took in the hollow ships
to Troy—I wish he had perished before that—
all those things he is willing to return and to add others from his household.
But the wedded-wife of glorious Menelaos
he says he will not give back—although the Trojans ask him to.
And they also ordered me to speak a speech—if you wish
to stop the ill-sounding war until we have cremated the corpses;
we will fight again later until the god separates us
and grants victory to one side at least.’

In a blend of original message and framing for his audience that is similar to Iris’ speeches to Poseidon in book 15 of the epic, Idaios reveals internal dissent about Paris’ stance. Such subtlety rings of a political realism, despite the heroic nature of epic. The suffering of the city and its people is laid at the feet of a selfish prince and a political organization incapable of restraining him.

On Homeric (and Trojan) politics

n.b this is not an exhaustive bibliography. If you’d like anything else included, please let me know. Follow-up posts will address kleos and Trojan politics

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Esperman, L. 1980. Antenor, Theano, Antenoriden: Ihre Person und Bedeutung in der Ilias. Meisen Heim am Glam.

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

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

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

—,—. “Homer, Tyranny, and Democracy.” GRBS 39 (1998b) 331-360.

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

Létoublon, Françoise. “Le bon orateur et le génie selon Anténor dans l’ Iliade : Ménélas et Ulysse.” in Jean-Michel Galy and Antoine Thivel (eds.). La Rhétorique Grecque. Actes du colloque «Octave Navarre»: troisième colloque international sur la pensée antique organisé par le CRHI (Centre de recherches sur l’histoire des idées) les 17, 18 et 19 décembre 1992. Nice: Publications de la Faculté des Lettres, Arts et Sciences Humaines de Nice, 1994, 29-40.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One of the most iconic scenes of the Iliad is the exchange between Glaucus and Diomedes in book 6. This scene comes in the middle of book 6, in part as a delaying technique while Hektor travels into the city. But it also continues part of the plot in book 6, where Diomedes wounded Athena and was warned not to attack any of the other gods.

Diomedes: Il. 6.123-129

“Bestie, who are you of mortal humans?
For I have never seen you before in this ennobling battle.
But now you stride out far ahead of everyone
In your daring—where you await my ash-wood spear.
Those who oppose my might are children of miserable parents!
But, if you are one of the immortals come down from the sky,
I don’t wish to fight with the sky-dwelling gods!”

τίς δὲ σύ ἐσσι φέριστε καταθνητῶν ἀνθρώπων;
οὐ μὲν γάρ ποτ’ ὄπωπα μάχῃ ἔνι κυδιανείρῃ
τὸ πρίν· ἀτὰρ μὲν νῦν γε πολὺ προβέβηκας ἁπάντων
σῷ θάρσει, ὅ τ’ ἐμὸν δολιχόσκιον ἔγχος ἔμεινας·
δυστήνων δέ τε παῖδες ἐμῷ μένει ἀντιόωσιν.
εἰ δέ τις ἀθανάτων γε κατ’ οὐρανοῦ εἰλήλουθας,
οὐκ ἂν ἔγωγε θεοῖσιν ἐπουρανίοισι μαχοίμην.

Glaukos, 6.145-151

“Oh, you great-hearted son of Tydeus, why are you asking about pedigree?
The generations of men are just like leaves on a tree:
The wind blows some to the ground and then the forest
Grows lush with others when spring comes again.
In this way, the race of men grows and then dies in turn.
But if you are willing, learn about these things so you may know
My lineage well—many are the men who know me.”

Τυδεΐδη μεγάθυμε τί ἢ γενεὴν ἐρεείνεις;
οἵη περ φύλλων γενεὴ τοίη δὲ καὶ ἀνδρῶν.
φύλλα τὰ μέν τ’ ἄνεμος χαμάδις χέει, ἄλλα δέ θ’ ὕλη
τηλεθόωσα φύει, ἔαρος δ’ ἐπιγίγνεται ὥρη·
ὣς ἀνδρῶν γενεὴ ἣ μὲν φύει ἣ δ’ ἀπολήγει.
εἰ δ’ ἐθέλεις καὶ ταῦτα δαήμεναι ὄφρ’ ἐὺ εἰδῇς
ἡμετέρην γενεήν, πολλοὶ δέ μιν ἄνδρες ἴσασιν

This scene certainly leaves an impression on people. One of my best friends spent years scheming to re-stage this scene on a paintball field. After may abortive events, some of us laid down covering fire so he and another could meet an exchange their equipment midfield. It was hilarious. And unsafe. But hilarious.

The exchange between these two heroes is marked by three things (among others!): (1) the establishment of xenia–the reciprocal exchange of hospitality–as an inheritable principle; (2) Glaukos’ telling of the story of Bellerophon (which establishes the aforementioned xenia status); and (3) the exchange of armor to signal their continuing friendship.

The exchange is marked with a strong note of judgment by the Homeric narrator.

Homer, Iliad 6.230-236

“Let’s exchange armor with one another so that even these people
May know that we claim to be guest-friends from our fathers’ lines.”

So they spoke and leapt down from their horses,
Took one another’s hands and made their pledge.
Then Kronos’s son Zeus stole away Glaukos’ wits,
For he traded to Diomedes golden arms in exchange for bronze,
weapons worth one hundred oxen traded for those worth nine.”

τεύχεα δ’ ἀλλήλοις ἐπαμείψομεν, ὄφρα καὶ οἷδε
γνῶσιν ὅτι ξεῖνοι πατρώϊοι εὐχόμεθ’ εἶναι.
῝Ως ἄρα φωνήσαντε καθ’ ἵππων ἀΐξαντε
χεῖράς τ’ ἀλλήλων λαβέτην καὶ πιστώσαντο·
ἔνθ’ αὖτε Γλαύκῳ Κρονίδης φρένας ἐξέλετο Ζεύς,
ὃς πρὸς Τυδεΐδην Διομήδεα τεύχε’ ἄμειβε
χρύσεα χαλκείων, ἑκατόμβοι’ ἐννεαβοίων.

Ancient commentators were intrigued by this judgment.

Schol. ad. Il. 6.234b ex.

“Kronos’ son Zeus took Glaukos’ wits away”. Because he was adorning him among his allies with more conspicuous weapons. Or, because they were made by Hephaistos. Or, as Pios claims, so that [the poet?] might amplify the Greek since they do not make an equal exchange—a thing which would be sweet to the audience.

Or, perhaps he credits him more, that he was adorned with conspicuous arms among his own and his allies. For, wherever these arms are, it is a likely place for an enemy attack.”

ex. ἔνθ’ αὖτε Γλαύκῳ <Κρονίδης> φρένας ἐξέλετο: ὅτι κατὰ τῶν συμμάχων ἐκόσμει λαμπροτέροις αὐτὸν ὅπλοις. ἢ ὡς ῾Ηφαιστότευκτα. ἢ, ὡς Πῖος (fr. 2 H.), ἵνα κἀν τούτῳ αὐξήσῃ τὸν ῞Ελληνα μὴ ἐξ ἴσου ἀπηλ<λ>αγμένον, ὅπερ ἡδὺ τοῖς ἀκούουσιν. 
ἢ μᾶλλον αἰτιᾶται αὐτόν, ὅτι λαμπροῖς ὅπλοις ἐκοσμεῖτο κατὰ ἑαυτοῦ καὶ τῶν συμμάχων· ὅπου γὰρ ταῦτα, εὔκαιρος ἡ τῶν πολεμίων ὁρμή. b(BE3E4)

I always thought that Glaukos got a raw deal from interpreters here. Prior to the stories Diomedes and Glaukos tell each other, Diomedes was just murdering everyone in his path. Glaukos—who already knew who Diomedes was before he addressed him—tells a great tale, gives Diomedes his golden weapons, and actually lives to the end of the poem. I think this is far from a witless move. And, if the armor is especially conspicuous, maybe the plan-within-a-plan is to put a golden target on Diomedes’ back.

But let’s back up a bit to make a few points:

1. Diomedes does not know who Glaukos is; Glaukos definitely knows who Diomedes is.

2. Everyone among the Trojans knows that Diomedes has been tearing it up in the field and that few can meet him.

3. Diomedes prefaces his question of Glaukos’ identity by telling him a story of how Lykourgos messed with the gods and regretted it, providing a bit of a proverbial lesson by concluding that no one lasts long “once they have become hateful to the gods” (ἦν, ἐπεὶ ἀθανάτοισιν ἀπήχθετο πᾶσι θεοῖσιν, 6.140).

4. Then, Glaukos tells an elaborate tale about his ancestry that links up with Diomedes’ grandfather, concluding that Bellerophon “became hateful to the gods” (using the same language as Diomedes at line 200)

5. This narrative confirms Diomedes’ sentiment that anyone can fall out of favor, while also bulking up Glaukos’ heroic profile and providing him an out clause (xenia)

6. Just as everyone knows who Diomedes is, they also seem to know his famous father as one of the failed Seven against Thebes

7. So, when Diomedes says that he doesn’t remember his father (222), we might be able to argue that Glaukos is counting on this: Diomedes knows some object left behind in his family’s home, but cannot confirm or deny the story Bellerophon says.

In my work on the Odyssey (The Many Minded Man: the Odyssey, Psychology and The Therapy of Epic) I argue, following authors like Lisa Zunshine and Palmer, that good storytellers exhibit mind-reading, by which they mean the ability to “ascribe states of minds to others and [themselves]”. While this is seen by modern authors as a sign of sophistication in novels, I think it is something we can see in the case of effective liars and persuaders like Odysseus. I summarize (2020, 150):

For Lisa Zunshine, the ability to ascribe to someone else “a certain mental state on the basis of her observable action” (2006:6)—what she calls “mind-reading”—is both an essential skill for “construct[ing] and navigat[ing] our social environment” and a foundational quality for the creation of fiction and literature.2 Such an ability is in part what makes Odysseus a great story-teller and a narrative agent; but it also allows him to subjugate and use others.

In short, I think there is a reading of Glaukos’ use of Bellerophon’s narrative that shows it works similarly to Odysseus’ lies: he weaponizes a story to achieve a complex outcome. In Glaukos’ case, he establishes a hereditary relationship with Diomedes that allows him to avoid fighting the most dangerous person on the battlefield.

Some things to read on book 6

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

Alden, M. J. “Genealogy as Paradigm: The Example of Bellerophon.” Hermes, vol. 124, no. 3, 1996, pp. 257–63. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4477146

Donlan, Walter. “The Unequal Exchange between Glaucus and Diomedes in Light of the Homeric Gift-Economy.” Phoenix, vol. 43, no. 1, 1989, pp. 1–15. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/1088537. Accessed 2 Oct. 2023.

Fineberg, Stephen. “Blind Rage and Eccentric Vision in Iliad 6.” Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974-), vol. 129, 1999, pp. 13–41. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/284423.

Gaisser, Julia Haig. “Adaptation of Traditional Material in the Glaucus-Diomedes Episode.” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, vol. 100, 1969, pp. 165–76. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2935907.

Harries, Byron. “‘Strange Meeting’: Diomedes and Glaucus in ‘Iliad’ 6.” Greece & Rome, vol. 40, no. 2, 1993, pp. 133–46. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/643154. 

Lowry, Eddie R.. “Glaucus, the leaves, and the heroic boast of Iliad 6.146-211.” The ages of Homer: a tribute to Emily Townsend Vermeule. Eds. Carter, Jane P. and Morris, Sarah P.. Austin (Tex.): University of Texas Pr., 1995. 193-203.

Palmer, Alan. 2010. Social Minds in the Novel. Columbus.

Scodel, Ruth. “The Wits of Glaucus.” Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974-), vol. 122, 1992, pp. 73–84. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/284365.

Tracy, Catherine. “The Host’s Dilemma: Game Theory and Homeric Hospitality.” Illinois Classical Studies, no. 39 (2014): 1–16. https://doi.org/10.5406/illiclasstud.39.0001.

Traill, David A. “Gold Armor for Bronze and Homer’s Use of Compensatory TIMH.” Classical Philology, vol. 84, no. 4, 1989, pp. 301–05. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4620748

Walcot, Peter. “Χρύσεα χαλκείων. A further comment.” Classical Review, vol. XIX, 1969, pp. 12-13. Doi: 10.1017/S0009840X00328311

Zunshine, Lisa. 2006. Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel. Columbus.

Aphrodite’s Mom in Iliad 5

Hom. Iliad 5.370-4

Then divine Aphrodite fell to the knees of Diône
Her own mother. She took her own daughter into her arms.
She touched her with her hand, named her, and spoke:
“Dear child, who of the Olympians has done these kinds of things to you,
Pointlessly, as if you were doing something wicked in the open?”

ἣ δ’ ἐν γούνασι πῖπτε Διώνης δῖ’ ᾿Αφροδίτη
μητρὸς ἑῆς· ἣ δ’ ἀγκὰς ἐλάζετο θυγατέρα ἥν,
χειρί τέ μιν κατέρεξεν ἔπος τ’ ἔφατ’ ἐκ τ’ ὀνόμαζε·
τίς νύ σε τοιάδ’ ἔρεξε φίλον τέκος Οὐρανιώνων
μαψιδίως, ὡς εἴ τι κακὸν ῥέζουσαν ἐνωπῇ;

Once Aphrodite tells her the story, her mother then goes on to provide her a catalogue of gods who had to endure wounding by mortals. While the passage is amusing, it produces a little dissonance based largely on the significant detail of Aphrodite having a mother.

Schol. D ad. Hom. Il. 5.374

“Note that according to Hesiod, Aphrodite is the product of Ouranos’ genitals and the sea, but according to Homer, she is from Diône and Zeus.

᾿Ιστέον δὲ, ὅτι, κατὰ μὲν ῾Ησίοδον, ἡ
᾿Αφροδίτη γίγνεται ἐκ τοῦ Οὐρανοῦ τῶν
αἰδοίων, καὶ τῆς θαλάσσης· κατὰ δὲ
῞Ομηρον, ἐκ Διώνης καὶ Διός.

An instructive detail here is that the scholion here doesn’t take a stance about whether either or not Homer or Hesiod are “correct” or one is prior to another, and I think this is pretty important. From a narrative perspective each genealogy makes sense for the story in question: Aphrodite is a powerful elemental force in Hesiod’s Theogony and there is both poetic and political logic behind her birth from Ouranos’ testicles. In the Homeric tradition, this is more complicated. Zeus needs to humiliate Aphrodite in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, where he ‘gets back’ at her for infecting the gods with lust by inducing her to have sex with the mortal Anchises. In the Iliad, Aphrodite is rendered subordinate to Zeus as one of his children. Aphrodite is often mentioned as a daughter of Zeus (as G. S. Kirk notes in his Cambridge commentary on the Iliad), but this is the only place we hear about her mother. To make it a little more bewildering, Diône seems top merely be a feminine form of Zeus (cf. the genitive Dios).

Frederick Combellack writes in his 1976 article “Homer the Innovator” that “any person who spends very much time in the study of the Homeric poems will almost certainly find himself involved, perhaps with regret, in the study of Homeric scholarship” (44). He drops this “diss track” by way of introducing an argument against the very idea that Homeric poetry could “innovate” or “invent” new detail, an assertion supported by many scholars in the twentieth century, dismissed by Combellack as being possible, but implausible based on our evidence.

While I don’t necessarily share Combellack’s aversion to reading Homeric scholarship, despite a weighty tradition mocking its pedantry going all the way back to Seneca (and likely earlier, given the evidence of Palladas the Alexandrian poet), I do think the asperity of his comments point to an important problem in thinking about Homeric poetry: making any sense of the relationship between our ‘Homer’ and what may have come before. 

The relationship between the Iliad and the Odyssey and antecedent ‘traditions’ is not just about mythological narratives: it pervades our view of Homeric language (the formula), devices (e.g. similes), as well as content. Indeed, a great deal of Homeric scholarship of the 20th century was engaged with this question in one way or another. (Sidenote, this is a topic that will always inspire debate: The first 45 minutes of my dissertation defense in 2007 was occupied by my readers debating among themselves the meaning of the word ‘tradition’ in relation to the Iliad.)

I have discussed neoanalytical approaches before, and I don’t really want to recap that. Here I am interested in two problems presented by the nature of Homeric poetry itself: First, Homeric poetry is generically meant to seem old and authoritative, without having to actually be so. Second, Greek poetry and myth in general have a very different approach to veracity or fidelity than a culture immersed in fixed textual traditions like ours might expect.

For the first problem, I always find it useful to flip our belief about Homeric poetry on its head: what if, instead of assuming that Homeric poetry stands as the authoritative origins of Trojan war narratives (and other myths) it stands at the end of a certain kind of flexible tradition, imposing an authoritative order only over time thanks to a privileged cultural position? I find starting from this approach useful especially with other archaic and classical age poets because we can’t actually know what ‘Homer’ they were exposed to and it is strange to think that epic performance was not shaped by other genres as well.

For the second challenge, I often think back to what Hesiod announces before the cosmogonic narrative of the Theogony even begins. The Muses approach ‘Hesiod’ while he is tending his flocks:

Theogony 26-28

“Rustic shepherds, wretched reproaches, nothing but bellies,
We know how to say many lies similar to the truth
And we know how to speak the truth when we want to.”

“ποιμένες ἄγραυλοι, κάκ’ ἐλέγχεα, γαστέρες οἶον,
ἴδμεν ψεύδεα πολλὰ λέγειν ἐτύμοισιν ὁμοῖα,
ἴδμεν δ’ εὖτ’ ἐθέλωμεν ἀληθέα γηρύσασθαι.”

When I teach myth I emphasize that while this passage can be taken as a disclaimer (i.e., you may know different stories than mine!) for communities of divergent, even conflicting narrative traditions, I think it is also a conditioning framework for setting aside concerns about veracity. Hesiod the narrator here attributes poetic authority to the Muses along with the ability to discern what is true from what is false. The result is that mortals simply cannot know and, therefore, probably shouldn’t worry about it.

But I have also taken recourse to ideas from scholars of memory to rethink moments like this. In studying memory systems, Martin Conway suggests that there are two forces in human memory: correspondence, which is about equivalence between details of ‘reality’ (or experience) and details of a story and coherence, which means that details make sense together in a narrative. When it comes to the way these systems operate in the human mind, not only does he argue that the memory systems have different neuro-anatomy, but he suggests that the episodic memory system (which prizes correspondence) developed earlier and is more basic to day-to-day survival than the autobiographical memory system which focuses more on coherence and is essential for the development of a goal or ‘identity’ driven self. The two systems are not exclusive—autobiographical memory selects from episodic memory in the creation of a coherent self.

In expanding these ideas to communities of audiences and narrative traditions, what I think we can say is that ancient audiences were accustomed to making sense of each story on its own terms, nonplussed by details that might conflict with other story traditions, because they belong to those other stories. The force of narrative coherence supersedes correspondence to ‘facts’ in other tales because what matters in each telling is the story in process. To an extent, these forces and the aesthetics they imply are operative throughout early Greek poetry (consider Pindar) and at play as well in the ‘innovations’ we see in Athenian Tragedy.

To return to book 5 of the Iliad: Aphrodite has a mother because it makes sense for the global context of the epic (where Zeus is the “father of gods and men”) and because it makes sense for this scene. Whether or not this is Homeric “invention” is almost beside the point. Certainly the simplicity of the name Diône and the lack of her presence in other narratives implies that this detail is important, even idiopathic to this (kind of) scene, but it tells us nothing about whether or not earlier versions of this theme including this detail or whether similar moments occurred in antecedent or parallel traditions. The challenge, as always, is to make sense of how this passage supports the Iliad we possess.

Cribbing from the Muses here: we cannot know if ‘Homer’ made something up, so should we bother worrying about it?

Short bibliography

Alden, Maureen Joan. “The rôle of Calypso in the Odyssey.” Antike und Abendland, vol. XXXI, 1985, pp. 97-107.

Barker, Elton T. E.. “The « Iliad »’s big swoon: a case of innovation within the epic tradition ?.” Trends in Classics, vol. 3, no. 1, 2011, pp. 1-17.

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

Berg, Nils and Haug, Dag Trygve Truslew. “Dividing Homer. 2,: Innovation vs. tradition in Homer : an overlooked piece of evidence.” Symbolae Osloenses, vol. 75, 2000, pp. 5-23. Doi: 10.1080/003976700300005811

Bruce K. Braswell. “Mythological Innovation in the Iliad.” Classical Quarterly 21 (1971) 16-26.

Christensen, Joel P.. “Innovation and tradition revisited: the near-synonymy of ἀμύνω and ἀλέξω as a case study in Homeric composition.” The Classical Journal, vol. 108, no. 3, 2012-2013, pp. 257-296.

Combellack, Frederick M.. “Homer the innovator.” Classical Philology, vol. LXXI, 1976, pp. 44-55.

Martin A. Conway. “Memory and the Self,” Journal of Memory and Language 53 (2005) 594-628.

Fantuzzi, Marco and Tsagalis, Christos. “« Kyklos », the Epic Cycle and Cyclic poetry.” The Greek Epic Cycle and its ancient reception : a companion. Eds. Fantuzzi, Marco and Tsagalis, Christos. Cambridge: Cambridge University Pr., 2015. 1-40.

Bernard Fenik. Homer: Tradition and Invention.  Leiden, 1978.

Ingalls, Wayne B.. “Linguistic and formular innovation in the mythological digressions in the Iliad.” Phoenix, vol. XXXVI, 1982, pp. 201-202.

Jones, Peter. “Poetic invention: the fighting around Troy in the first nine years of the Trojan War.” Homer’s world: fiction, tradition, reality. Eds. Andersen, Øivind and Dickie, Matthew W.. Papers from the Norwegian Institute at Athens; 3. Athens ; Bergen: Norwegian Institute at Athens, 1995. 101-111.

Mueller-Goldingen, Christian. “Tradition und Innovation: zu Stesichoros’ Umgang mit dem Mythos.” L’Antiquité Classique, vol. 69, 2000, pp. 1-19. Doi: 10.3406/antiq.2000.2419

Nussbaum, Alan J.. “The Homeric formulary template and a linguistic innovation in the epics.” Language and meter. Eds. Gunkel, Dieter and Hackstein, Olav. Brill’s Studies in Indo-European Languages and Linguistics; 18. Leiden ; Boston (Mass.): Brill, 2018. 267-318.

Ready, Jonathan L.. The Homeric simile in comparative perspectives : oral traditions from Saudi Arabia to Indonesia. Oxford: Oxford University Pr., 2018.

David C. Rubin. “The Basic-systems Model of Episodic Memory,” Perspectives on Psychological Science 1 (2006) 277-311.

M. M. Willcock. “Mythological Paradeigmata in the Iliad.” Classical Quarterly 14 (1964) 141-151.

—,—.  “Ad Hoc Invention in the Iliad.” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 81 (1977) 41-53.