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Appendices
Chronology 171
Speakers and speeches 172
Iliad: Outline
Book 1. The Quarrel lines
1. The proem 1
2. Chryses 9
a) Agamemnon & Chryses 11
b) The plague 43
3. The assembly 54
a) prelude: Achilles and Calchas (2 speeches each) 57
b) the quarrel: Agamemnon and Achilles (5 speeches) 101
c) interlude: Achilles and Athene 188
d) the crisis 223
(1) Achilles oath 225
(2) Nestors speech 245
(3) Agamemnons final speech 285
(4) Achilles final speech 292
4. Agamemnons action 304
a) the expedition to Chryse 308
b) the taking of Briseis 318
5. Achilles and Thetis 348
6. Chryse 428
a) The return of Chryseis 428
b) Chryses ends the plague 446
7. Olympus 493
a) Thetis and Zeus 493
b) Zeus and Hera 531
c) Hephaestus defuses the quarrel 571
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g) Agamemnons speech 369
h) The sacrifice 398
4. The Greek muster and catalogue 441
a) The similes 455
b) Invocation to the muse 485
c) The Catalogue of Ships 493
(1) the contingents 494
(a) central Greece 494
i) Boeotia 50 494
ii) Orchomenus 30 511
iii) Phocis 40 517
iv) Locris 40 (Ajax son of Oleus) 527
v) Euboea 40 536
vi) Athens 50 546
vii) Salamis 12 (Ajax) 557
(b) the Peloponnese 559
i) Argos 80 (Diomedes) 559
ii) Mycenae 100 (Agamemnon) 569
iii) Sparta 60 (Menelaus) 581
iv) Pylos 90 (Nestor) 591
v) Arcadia 60 603
vi) Elis 40 615
(c) western and central Greece 625
i) Dulichium 40 625
ii) Ithaca & western isles 12 (Odysseus) 631
iii) Aetolia 40 638
(d) southeastern islands 645
i) Crete 80 (Idomeneus) 645
ii) Rhodes 9 653
iii) Syme 3 671
iv) lesser islands 30 676
(e) northern Greece 681
i) Phthia 50 (Achilles) 681
ii) Phylace 40 (Protesilaus) 695
iii) Pherae 11 711
iv) Methone 7 (Philoctetes) 716
v) Oechalia 30 729
vi) Ormenius 40 734
vii) Argissa 40 738
viii) Dodona 22 748
ix) Magnesia 40 756
total Greek ships: 1186 (with 90120 men each)
(2) the Muse: Eumelus and Achilles 761
5. The Trojan muster and catalogue 786
a) Iris and Hector 786
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b) The Trojan catalogue 816
(1) Troy and the Troad 816
(a) Trojans (Hector) 816
(b) Dardanians (Aeneas) 819
(c) Trojan Lycia (Pandarus) 824
(d) Adresteians 828
(e) Hellespontines (Asius) 835
(f) Pelasgians 840
(2) Europe 844
(a) Thracians 844
(b) Cicones 846
(c) Paeonians 848
(3) Black Sea 851
(a) Paphlagonians 851
(b) Halizones 856
(4) northern inland Asia Minor 858
(a) Mysians 858
(b) Phrygians 862
(5) southern/coastal Asia Minor 864
(a) Maeonians 864
(b) Carians 867
(c) Lycians (Sarpedon) 876
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c) Zeus 30
d) Hera 50
e) Zeus 68
2. Pandarus wounds Menelaus 73
a) Athene tempts Pandarus 73
b) the bow and the shot 104
c) Agamemnons response 148
3. Agamemnons tour of the army 223
a) fighters and shirkers 232
b) Idomeneus 251
c) Ajax & Ajax 273
d) Nestor 293
e) Menestheus and Odysseus 327
f) Diomedes and Sthenelus 365
4. The first clash 422
a) The advance to battle 422
b) The first kills 457
(1) Antilochus kills Echepolus 457
(2) Ajax kills Simoeisius 473
(3) Odysseus kills Democoon 489
c) Apollo rallies the Trojans 505
d) lesser kills 516
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5. On Olympus 367
a) Aphrodite and Dione 370
b) Hera, Athene, and Zeus 418
6. Diomedes and Apollo 431
7. Ares rallies the Trojans 454
a) Sarpedon and Hector 471
b) Hector supports Aeneas 494
8. Pitched battle 519
a) Agamemnon 528
b) Aeneas 541
c) Menelaus & Antilochus 561
d) Diomedes withdraws before Hector & Ares 596
e) Hector 608
f) Ajax 610
g) Sarpedon v Tlepolemus 628
h) Odysseus 668
i) Hector presses forward 679
9. The wounding of Ares 711
a) Olympus: Hera, Athene, Zeus 711
b) the goddesses descend 767
c) Athene and Diomedes 793
d) the stabbing of Ares 846
e) Ares and Zeus 868
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(2) Hector on the fall of Troy 447
(3) Astyanax, and farewells 466
e) Hector and Paris go out to battle 503
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(1) Diomedes rescues Nestor 80
(2) Diomedes kills Eniopeus 116
(3) The thunderbolt 130
(4) The debate and flight 137
b) Hector 172
(1) Taunt, rally, and boast 172
(2) Hera and Poseidon 198
c) The Greek rally 212
(1) Agamemnon rallies the Greeks 217
(2) Diomedes 253
(3) The nine warriors 261
(4) Teucers sniper aristeia 273
(a) 9 kills 274
(b) Agamemnons praise 278
(c) Gorgythion (famous simile!) 300
(d) Archeptolemus 309
(e) Hectors revenge 315
3. The goddesses disobey 335
a) Hera & Athene 350
b) The goddesses arm 381
c) Zeus sends Iris 397
d) Back to Olympus 425
e) Zeus unfolds his plan 469
4. The Trojans occupy the plain 489
a) Hectors speech 497
b) The watchfires 553
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(2) Achilles reply 307
(a) the broken code 314
(b) home to Phthia 356
(c) Agamemnons terms rejected 369
(d) Thetis prophecy 410
(e) conclusion 421
(3) Phoenix speech 432
(a) Phoenixs story 444
(b) the allegory of the Prayers 502
(c) the story of Meleager 524
(d) the point spelled out 600
(4) Achilles reply to Phoenix 606
(5) Ajax speech 620
(6) Achilles reply to Ajax 643
4. Odysseus reports back to Agamemnon 670
a) Odysseus report 676
b) Diomedes response 693
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3. The Trojans muster 56
4. Battle joined 67
5. Agamemnons aristeia 91
a) two single kills 92
b) two paired kills 101
c) the Trojans retreat and regroup 163
d) Zeuss message to Hector 181
e) the Muse invoked 218
f) Iphidamas wounds Agamemnon, and is killed 221
g) Con killed over his brother 248
h) Agamemnons withdrawal 264
6. The woundings of the Greeks 284
a) Hector renews the assault 284
b) Odysseus and Diomedes strike back 310
c) Hector escapes Diomedes 343
d) Paris wounds Diomedes 369
e) Odysseus at bay 401
f) Socus wounds Odysseus, and is killed 425
g) Menelaus and Ajax 462
h) Paris wounds Machaon 502
i) Ajax at bay 521
j) Paris wounds Eurypylus 575
7. Achilles and Patroclus drawn in 596
a) At Achilles camp 599
b) Nestor and Patroclus 618
c) Nestors big speech 655
(1) the tale of the cattle raid 670
(2) Peleus and Achilles 762
(3) Nestors plan for Patroclus 790
d) Patroclus delays with Eurypylus 806
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(2) Polydamas advice rejected 210
(3) Ajax & Ajax defend 265
c) Sarpedon & Glaucus 290
(1) Menestheus summons Ajax 330
(2) Ajax defends the wall 370
(3) Teucer wounds Glaucus 387
d) stalemate 415
e) Hector breaks through 436
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b) Aeneas 541
c) Antilochus 545
d) Meriones kills Adamas 560
e) Helenus kills Deipyrus 576
f) Menelaus wounds Helenus 581
g) Menelaus kills Pisander 601
h) Meriones kills Harpalion 643
i) Paris kills Euchenor 660
5. Hector at the breach 673
a) the catalogue of defenders 685
b) the Ajaxes and their contingents 701
c) Polydamas advice accepted 723
d) Hector finds Paris 758
e) Hector returns to the breach 789
f) Ajax and Hector 809
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(2) individual kills 511
(a) Ajax 511
(b) Antilochus (2) 513
(c) Meriones (2) 513
(d) Teucer (2) 514
(e) Menelaus 515
(f) Ajax II (many) 520
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h) the Trojans reach the ships 592
(1) Zeus supports Hector 592
(2) Hector kills Periphetes 636
(3) Nestors appeal 657
(4) Ajax defends the ships 674
(5) Hector reaches Protesilaus ship 704
(6) Ajax holds off the fire-bearers 727
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(2) Glaucus rallies Lycians and Trojans 530
(3) Patroclus rallies the Greeks 553
(4) the clash 562
(a) Hector kills 569
(b) Patroclus kills 581
(c) Glaucus kills 593
(d) Meriones kills 603
(e) Aeneas misses Meriones 608
(f) the battle for the corpse continues 632
f) the death of Patroclus 632
(1) Zeuss policy 646
(2) Hector flees 655
(3) Apollo uplifts Sarpedon 666
(4) Patroclus disobeys Achilles 684
(5) Patroclus penultimate 9 kills 692
(6) Apollo checks Patroclus attack on the walls 698
(7) Apollo urges Hector 712
(8) Patroclus last kill (another charioteer down) 731
(9) the duel over Cebriones 751
(10) Patroclus death 777
(a) Apollo strikes 784
(b) Euphorbus strikes 806
(c) Hector strikes 817
(d) Hectors boast 830
(e) Patroclus prophecy 843
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h) Automedon rescues the corpse 412
(1) the horses of Achilles 426
(2) Zeus takes pity 441
(3) Automedon and Alcimedon charge 459
(4) Hector and Aeneas meet the charge 483
(5) Automedon kills Aretus 493
i) the gods step in 543
(1) Athene fortifies Menelaus 553
(2) Apollo rebukes Hector 582
j) the Greek flight 593
(1) Polydamas wounds Peneleus 597
(2) Hector wounds Letus, kills Coeranus 601
(3) Ajax and Menelaus 626
(4) Menelaus seeks out Antilochus 651
k) the Greeks retrieve the corpse 700
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b) the two cities 490
(1) the city at peace 491
(2) the city at war 511
c) three agricultural scenes 541
(1) the ploughmen 541
(2) the reapers 550
(3) the vintage 561
d) three pastoral & festive scenes 573
(1) cattle and lions 573
(2) the sheep-meadow 587
(3) the dancers 590
e) the rim: Ocean 607
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3. Aeneas v Achilles 75
a) Apollo (as Lycaon) urges Aeneas against Achilles 79
b) the gods withdraw 110
c) the duel 156
(1) Achilles challenge 176
(2) Aeneas reply 199
(3) the exchange of spearcasts 259
(4) Poseidons prophecy 288
(5) the rescue of Aeneas 318
(6) Achilles reaction 340
4. Achilles and Hector 353
a) Achilles rallies the Greeks 353
b) Hector rallies the Trojans 364
c) Apollo warns Hector off 375
d) Achilles aristeia begins 381
(1) Iphition 382
(2) Demoleon 395
(3) Hippodamas 401
(4) Polydorus 407
e) Achilles v Hector: the abortive duel 419
(1) the challenges 423
(2) the gods interfere 438
5. Achilles aristeia continues 455
a) Dryops 455
b) Demuchus 457
c) Dardanus & Laogonus 460
d) Tros 463
e) Mulius 472
f) Echeclus 474
g) Deucalion 477
h) Rhigmus 484
i) the double simile 490
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3. The wrath of Xanthus/Scamander 136
a) Asteropaeus 139
(1) the challenges 148
(2) the exchance of spearcasts 161
(3) the sword of Achilles 173
(4) Achilles boast 184
b) the river strikes back 200
(1) seven more kills (in 2 lines!) 209
(2) the river-gods plea to Achilles 211
(3) Achilles reply 222
(4) the river attacks 228
(5) Achilles flight, and the pursuit 246
c) the battle of the elements 272
(1) Achilles calls on Zeus 272
(2) Poseidon & Athene 284
(3) the river-gods threat 305
(4) Hera sends in Hephaestus 328
(5) fire and water 342
(6) divine truce and withdrawal 356
4. The other divine duels 383
a) Athene fells Ares & Aphrodite 391
b) Poseidon challenges Apollo, who refuses 435
c) Hera humbles Artemis 470
d) Hermes concedes to Leto 502
e) Artemis complains to Zeus 504
5. The flight into the city 514
a) Priam opens the gates 526
b) Agenors stand 544
(1) Agenors soliloquy 550
(2) Agenor challenges Achilles 583
(3) Apollo draws Achilles off 595
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3. The endgame 214
a) Athene encourages Achilles 214
b) and dupes Hector 225
c) Hectors challenge 248
d) Achilles response 260
e) Achilles spearcast (returned by Athene) 273
f) Hectors spearcast and realisation 289
g) the charge and death-blow 306
h) the speeches 330
(1) Achilles boast 330
(2) Hectors plea 336
(3) Achilles refusal 344
(4) Hectors prophecy 355
(5) Achilles response 364
4. The aftermath 367
a) Achilles speech 376
b) the mutilation of the corpse 395
c) Priams reaction 405
d) Hecubas reaction 429
e) Andromache learns the news 437
(1) in Hectors house 440
(2) her fears 447
(3) the view from the walls 432
(4) her lament 475
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(b) the race 362
i) Apollo obstructs Diomedes 382
ii) Athene thwarts Eumelus 387
iii) Antilochus applies Nestors tactics 402
iv) the home stretch 448
(1) Idomeneus & Ajax II 455
(2) Achilles makes peace 488
v) the result 506
(1) Diomedes 506
(2) Antilochus 514
(3) Menelaus 516
(4) Meriones 528
(5) Eumelus 532
vi) the award of the prizes 534
(1) consolation prize for Eumelus 536
(a) Antilochus disputes 539
(b) Achilles makes good 555
(2) Menelaus challenges Antilochus foul 566
(a) Antilochus yields the prize 586
(b) Menelaus returns it 596
(3) the spare prize awarded to Nestor 615
(a) Nestors speech of thanks 624
(2) the boxing 651
(a) Epeius challenge 664
(b) Euryalus responds 676
(c) a win by a knockout 685
(3) the wrestling 700
(a) Ajax v Odysseus 706
(b) the prize shared 734
(4) the footrace 740
(a) the contestants 754
(b) and theyre off 758
(c) Athene helps Odysseus 768
(d) Antilochus comment and reward 785
(5) the combat 798
(a) the prizes 798
(b) Ajax v Diomedes 811
(c) contest stopped; prize shared 822
(6) the shot-put 826
(a) the contestants 836
(b) Polypoetes victory 844
(7) the archery 850
(a) Teucers shot 859
(b) Meriones shot 870
(8) the javelin 884
(a) a prize for Agamemnon 889
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Book 24. Priam and Achilles
1. The gods take thought 1
a) Achilles grief and Hectors corpse 1
b) Divine debate 23
(1) Apollos proposal 31
(2) Heras objection 55
(3) Zeuss verdict 64
c) Thetis brought in 77
(1) Iris summons 77
(2) Thetis and Zeus 100
(3) Thetis and Achilles 120
(a) her speech 126
(b) his response 138
2. Priams mission 142
a) Zeus sends Iris to Troy 142
b) Iris appears to Priam 159
c) Priam and Hecuba 193
d) the ransom 228
e) Priam rebukes his sons 247
f) the wagon made ready 265
g) Hecubas libation and Priams prayer 282
h) the omen of the eagle 314
3. Priams journey 322
a) into the plain 328
b) Zeus sends in Hermes 331
c) the king and the stranger (9 speeches) 349
d) into the camp 440
e) Hermes unmasks 460
4. Priam and Achilles 469
a) the supplication 472
(1) the suppliant at the feast 472
(2) Priams speech 485
(3) Achilles speech 517
(a) the urns of blessing and sorrow 527
(b) Peleus and Priam 534
(4) Priams reply 552
(5) Achilles warning 559
b) the exchange of corpse and ransom 572
c) Achilles hospitality 596
(1) Achilles story of Niobe 602
(2) the meal 621
(3) Priam asks to retire 633
(4) Achilles response 643
(5) the truce 656
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5. the return to Troy 677
a) Hermes prompts Priam to leave 680
b) Cassandra 697
c) Priams reception 709
d) the mourning for Hector 719
(1) Andromaches lament 723
(2) Hecubas lament 747
(3) Helens lament 761
e) the funeral of Hector 777
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1. The Quarrel
This is the most important book in the first third of the poem. Its main function is to explain
the roots of the story it sets out to tell, the anger of Achilles. But it also takes the opportunity
to introduce us to some fundamental features of the Iliads world:
the three most strongly-developed Greek characters (Achilles, Agamemnon, and Nestor)
the major Olympian gods, and their interaction with one another and with mortals
the value system underpinning the Homeric warriors way of life, and the unresolved
tensions in that system that will drive the plot of the poem.
The books dominated by the great assembly scene which takes up most of the first half.
gods
Zeus king of the gods
Hera his wife, relentlessly hostile to the Trojans
Athene warrior daughter of Zeus, also active on the Greek side
Hephaestus smith-god, crippled son of Zeus and Hera
Thetis sea-nymph, mother of Achilles
other
Chryses priest of Apollo from Chryse, the only neutral character in the poem
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We also meet Patroclus, Achilles closest comrade; Apollo, the archer-god and principal
supporter of the Trojan cause; and Briseis of Lyrnessus, enslaved by Achilles on a raiding
expedition. Though none of these three speaks in book 1, the voices of all three will be heard
in later books.
A. The proem
Both epics start with an invocation to the Muse and a capsule summary of the story which is
as interesting for what it leaves out as for what it includes.
These addresses to the Muse mark challenging moments in the poem where the poets
skill claims to need a bit of supernatural help. One obvious such point is beginnings. It was
always a bit of a problem in Greek myth knowing where to begin and end a story, because the
stories were so interconnected that in principle you could trace the beginnings of any story
back to the creation of the world. Its the Muse who has to provide a starting-point for the
poet, who cant make that decision on his own. In this case, the poet asks the Muse to prompt
him with the name of the god who set it all in motion, and the answer Apollo acts as a
switch that turns on the tap of the story.
In the Greek, the first word of the poem is the word Lattimore translates as anger,
mnin. Mnis is a strong word, which is why others prefer translations such as wrath,
rage, or fury. In announcing this as the Muses theme, the poem defines its subject matter
closely as the episode which begins with Achilles quarrel with Agamemnon and ends with
the action by which Achilles finally lets go of the anger which has driven his actions
throughout the poem. By that stage, of course, the target of his anger has significantly shifted
from Agamemnon to Hector, but these opening lines stress that its all one process.
Notice how little were actually told of the plot here. Most of the emphasis is on the
avoidable suffering that resulted from Achilles anger, but its all in pretty general terms. In
particular, theres not a word about Patroclus, Hector, or the fate of Troy. This artful suspense
will be kept up till Zeuss speech at the start of book 15; its only then that we get any sense
of how the story is going to progress.
The tantalising reference to a plan of Zeus is an important signal that the human action
is part of a coherent divine purpose, and that the slaughter that seems so senseless on the
mortal plane has a higher level of explanation perceptible only to the audience or reader. This
split between two levels, and perceptions, of reality is fundamental to the Iliads worldview,
and to its power and subsequent influence.
B. Chryses
The narrative proper begins not with a mortals anger but with that of a god, Apollo, and goes
on to explain the background to his grievance against the Greeks. Agamemnon has rejected
the appeal of Apollos priest Chryses for the ransom and return of his daughter, who has been
captured and enslaved in one of the raiding parties around the Troad that have been so much a
part of this war. Rejecting a supplication, a formal religious appeal, is risky enough in the
eyes of the gods, but Agamemnon has compounded the offence by insulting Apollos own
priest. Chryses duly prays to his patron god for vengeance on the Greeks; and Apollo
responds by visiting them with a plague.
2. The plague
Apollo and his sister Artemis were particularly associated with invisible forms of death (by
disease, etc.), which are often described as the effects of these gods arrows. Here Apollo
manifests his anger at Agamemnons insult to his priest by visiting a plague on the whole
Greek army. Such epidemics, in life and in myth were often seen as the results of a divine
grudge, and the standard recourse (as here) was to try and find out by divination which god
was offended and how the victim community could appease him or her. Apollo is also the
principal supporter of the Trojans among the major gods.
C. The assembly
Now comes the key scene of the book, and one of the most important passages in the whole
poem: the great assembly scene in which Achilles and Agamemnon come by subtle degrees
into a conflict which will drastically affect the course of the whole war. Like all the greatest
scenes in Homer, most of its richness comes from its speeches, and the complex interactions
between the different characters whose personalities are presented through their words.
This is the longest assembly scene in Homer, comprising thirteen speeches from four
characters, and youll see from the outline that it falls into four main phases.
position is extremely difficult; as well see, his formal authority is very vaguely defined, and
highly dependent on how his authority is perceived by the rest of the army. Thats why he
insists on compensation for the loss of Chryseis: his position as supreme commander needs to
be shored up by some demonstrable token that his status has not been diminished by this
public (note line 120) humiliation. The word translated prize is the complex Greek word
geras: an item of booty publicly allocated as a mark of respect to an individual. In the Iliadic
world, where status is a matter of fierce competition and signalled by publicly visible actions
and possessions, the loss of such a prize is a loss of the status it measured and conferred.
But as Achilles now points out, Agamemnons condition for Chryseis return is
impractical. Perhaps surprisingly, Achilles doesnt dispute Agamemnons right to ask the
army for compensation. What he disputes is the practicality of providing a substitute prize
now rather than later. Instead, he asks Agamemnon to accept an IOU now in return for a
much greater reward from the future spoils of sacked Troy itself.
Agamemnon is not having this; he senses a slippage in his standing, and reiterates his call
for a prize now. If the army cant agree collectively on a way to proceed, Agamemnon will
simply make his choice from among the prizes of the other leading warlords, Achilles not
excluded. Then he suddenly backs off: another moment of psychological ambiguity. Does he
realise hes provoked Achilles too far? Or is he playing an ineptly manipulative game? Notice
the similarity between his list of nominees in 1456 to lead the expedition to Chryse and his
list of potential candidates from whom to choose his new prize (139). Does he want to get
Ajax, Odysseus, or Achilles himself off the scene so that he can appropriate their women?
Now its Achilles turn to raise the temperature, in the most important speech of the scene
and of the first third of the poem. As Achilles points out, Agamemnon has no formal
authority over the other warlords, who are there not because they are compelled to obey
Agamemnon but because they expect to be rewarded for joining his war. Allocation of booty
is an especially sensitive area, because Achilles is clearly the most effective fighter, yet
Agamemnon is constantly being awarded a larger share of the booty in accordance with his
status as the greatest king. (Nestor will explain about this shortly.) As far as Achilles is
concerned, Agamemnons present abuse of his already shaky authority is the final straw.
Agamemnon has broken the unwritten contract that keeps Achilles in the war, and Achilles
announces his intention to return home to Thessaly rather than continue with the war.
In that case, Agamemnon responds, Achilles has made the choice for him. If he abandons
the war, he has no claim on his favourite Briseis, and Agamemnon will choose her rather than
the geras of a more loyal commander. Notice Agamemnons continuing public insistence on
his need to be recognised as greater (Greek pherteros, literally more powerful). This isnt
just insecurity; if Agamemnons authority as supreme commander is disputed, the unity and
coherence of the war effort will fall apart.
4. the crisis
Finally, the assembly is unpaused, with four concluding speeches summarising the position
resulting from the quarrel.
a) Achilles oath
First, Achilles delivers a blistering verbal attack, in substitution for his aborted physical
assault, on Agamemnons right to command and his conduct as commander. He also swears a
public oath by the highly charged symbol of the assembly speakers staff or sceptre, that
Agamemnon will live to regret his actions when Hector, now unchecked by Achilles
superior prowess, slaughters the Greeks around him.
b) Nestors speech
Now comes the only intervention by a third speaker: the first of many great speeches by the
veteran warlord Nestor, whose experience, strategic intelligence, and skills of diplomacy
make him the one character unreservedly trusted by all the Greeks, Agamemnon included.
Nestor tends, as here, to play the role of a slightly rambling old man, prone to wander off into
seemingly irrelevant tales of his long-past heroic youth. In fact hes razor sharp, with an
unerring sense of others psychological weak spots, and at times (as with Patroclus in book
11) can be quite ruthlessly manipulative beneath his mask of meandering senility.
This speech is typical of Nestors technique. He begins with a diplomatic summary of the
present situation, and then by the technique of digression sometimes called ring-
composition launches into an exemplary tale from his copious memories of younger days,
softening up his listeners before hitting them with his uncomfortable recommendations,
which he neverthelss packages in acceptably tactful terms. It looks at first like mere heroic
namedropping, but theres a barb to it: Nestor has noted the way Agamemnon and Achilles
are throwing around terms like greatest and best of themselves, and Nestor gently
reminds them that theyve a long way to go before they can compete with the heroes of old
like Theseus. Nevertheless, he deftly adjudicates the claim: Achilles is the stronger man
(Greek karteros, referring to physical strength), but Agamemnon the greater (pherteros
again) in light of his larger kingdom. (Well actually get the statistics on this in the next
book.) And his advice is for both sides to back off: Agamemnon should leave Briseis be, but
Achilles should recognise Agamemnons greater authority. Its a brilliant piece of diplomacy,
and it nearly works; but the final speeches from Agamemnon and Achilles show that things
have gone just a little too far for either to back down now.
c) Agamemnons final speech
First to refuse Nestors terms is Agamemnon. This isnt surprising, since he was the one
addressed at the end of Nestors speech, but it does leave us wondering whether Achilles
would have accepted the compromise if Agamemnon hadnt pushed him further in this
speech. Agamemnon commends Nestors advice, but obliquely demands an apology from
Achilles who is now no longer addressed directly, but merely referred to sidelong in the
third person.
d) Achilles final speech
Achilles is merely irritated by this clumsy attempt to save Agamemnons face at the expense
of his own. But he does promise not to resist Agamemnons abduction of Briseis: a deft tactic
to present Agamemnon as the aggressor and Achilles himself as a passive respondent.
D. Agamemnons action
Now the promises of the assembly have to be put into action. First comes the matter of
returning Chryseis to her father, as even Agamemnon was grudgingly prepared to concede;
and then we return to the Greek camp for the scene of Briseis actual removal by
Agamemnons agents. The two scenes form a closely connected and contrasting pair, closing
off the phase of the action comprising the assembly and its immediate decisions, and opening
the way for the new and still more significant turn taken by events in the final section of the
book. The two storylines are interlaced, in the first separation of the narrative into multiple
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plotlines which the narrative repeatedly cuts between: an important device in much of the
later battle narrative.
F. Chryse
With events temporarily at a standstill both in Troy and in heaven, the narrative leaves the
Troad altogether for the first and last time in the poem, as we follow Odysseus and his ship to
the neighbouring town of Chryse. The episode is carefully constructed in two balanced
halves, showing the closely reciprocal relationship between the return of Chryseis on the one
hand and Chryses appeasement of Apollo in return.
Apollos wrath. Its also one of the poems rare scenes of peaceful community celebration, in
which both Greeks and locals participate together in healing festivity, before the grim return
to the plains of Troy and the violent events about to unfold there. Apollo even relaxes his
traditional enmity against Greeks to help Odysseus ship on its way with a favourable wind.
But this harmony will be broken once the story returns to its centre.
G. Olympus
Nine more days pass before the promised scene on Olympus. This is a major episode in the
poem: our first glimpse of the chief divine players Zeus and Hera, and of the Olympian world
and family to which they belong. A key function of the scene is to establish a set of pointed
contrasts between the mortal world of the warriors and the immortal world of the Olympians.
In both, we see a quarrel between the two most powerful figures in the inner circle of
command; in both, theres a challenge to the authority of the supreme commander which
jeopardises his control over a motley alliance of strong-willed, colourful individuals with
widely differing agendas. Zeus, as well see, is a more effective commander-in-chief than
Agamemnon, and yet even he is constrained by the limits of his own authority. He has to
honour his obligation to Thetis, act counter to his own policy while seeing off resistance from
within his own team.
the Iliad no longer touched by the war. At the end of the first book of the poem, weve had a
powerful glimpse of just how different is the world of the godlike heroes from the world of
the gods theyre supposed to resemble.
B. The council
Agamemnons first action is to summon an inner council: not an assembly such as we saw in
book 1, but a small gathering of commanders. Ordinarily, Achilles would be in this group;
now, well see how Agamemnon manages without him.
1. Agamemnons report
Agamemnon reports his dream to the council. (The verbatim quotation of earlier speech is
standard in Homer when reporting someone elses words, even a dreams.) But the last three
lines of his speech are a surprise. Instead of urging the army to attack the city in confidence
of victory, Agamemnon decides on a bizarre and near-disastrous scheme of his own: to play
games with the armys mass psychology, testing their morale by proposing that they flee back
to Greece. This is not part of the dreams instructions, and were clearly meant to think of it
as a strange misjudgment of Agamemnons own.
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2. Nestors response
Nestor, as ever, is diplomatic. If he feels any scepticism about the content or reliability of the
dream, he expresses it guardedly. He quotes line 72 approvingly, but makes no mention of
Agamemnons strange proposal to test the armys morale. This has the effect of distancing
him from Agamemnons misjudgment, whether or not thats his intention and sure enough,
itll be Nestor who has to come up with a solution to the situation Agamemnon has created.
C. Agamemnons ploy
Now Agamemnon puts his plan into action, with consequences that come close to throwing
away the war and making Zeus whole plan redundant. As youll see from the outline, Ive
divided this fairly complex episode into eight main sections to help give a sense of its shape.
1. The assembly
First, Agamemnon calls a full assembly of the army as a whole, in contrast to the inner
council we saw in the previous scene. Its the first of a number of scenes in this book which
try specifically to convey a sense of the appearance and behaviour of the army in its entirety,
and is marked by the first simile in Homer at 8790, comparing the armys massed movement
to a swarm of bees. Theres attention to the logistics of getting the entire army seated, silent,
and attentive, and Agamemnons performance is introduced with a famous account of the
long history of the family sceptre he wields to indicate his right to speak.
The speech itself is a brilliant composition, if counterproductive in its actual effect. We
know that Agamemnon intends the opposite effect to his words that he wants the army for
once to reject his advice, and go all-out for the capture of Troy. We can hear the heavy irony
in his arguments: the failure of Zeus to live up to his promise; the everlasting shame on the
Greeks if they give up now; the vastly superior numbers in the Greeks favour. (This is a
passage of great interest for the composition and strengths of the armies. Theyre roughly
equal in number, but the Trojans only make up about a tenth of their own army, the rest being
composed of allies from around the Troad and islands. Some of the implications of this will
be seen towards the end of this book.) Hes also less than encouraging about the
seaworthiness of their ships. Unfortunately, he conjures up just too effective a picture of the
families whove been waiting nine years for their return, and the army responds in exactly the
opposite way to that intended.
2. The retreat
At first its not clear which way the army is going to be swayed. The suspense is drawn out
by a second great simile of mass movement and feeling, which begins with the assembly
being stirred like grain by the wind, and only then reveals that what theyre stirred to do is
run straight back to the ships and try to launch them for Greece. Its a moment of near-
comedy. At a stroke, and without any help from delusive divine dreams, Agamemnon has
thrown away control of his army and the chance of winning his war.
4. Thersites
At the end of Odysseus efforts, just one dissident voice remains: the famous and rather
debated figure of Thersites, memorably revived in Shakespeares Troilus and Cressida.
Thersites is a bit of a mystery, though later tradition tried to flesh out his story. He appears
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only in this scene, and is notoriously the one soldier not to be acknowledged with a
patronymic. This has suggested to many that hes a common soldier rather than a member of
the aristocracy an example of the class of character Odysseus was addressing in 2006. If
so, Odysseus rough dismissal of Thersites sarcastic but perceptive complaints is a powerful
affirmation of aristocratic authority and ideology. But if Thersites is indeed a common
soldier, hes the only one to be granted a voice in the poem; and hes also the one character to
take Achilles side against Agamemnon, which is why Odysseus has to make an example of
him on the spot. The best treatment of all this is the article by W.G. Thalmann, Thersites:
Comedy, Scapegoats, and Heroic Ideology in the Iliad, TAPA 118 (1988) 1-28.
5. Odysseus speech
With Thersites silenced and the army cheered up by Odysseus treatment of the subversive,
Odysseus takes further advantage of Agamemnons sceptre to make a rallying speech to the
army. Its a masterly performance in all the ways that Agamemnons was misjudged. He
gauges the armys mood astutely, speaking sympathetically of the soldiers yearning for
home, and then carefully turns their feelings around using a variation of Agamemnons
argument about the shame and wasted effort of giving up after so many years. But instead of
Agamemnons bungled attempt at reverse psychology, Odysseus offers positive grounds for
optimism about an early end to the war. He takes their minds back to Calchas first prophecy
nine years earlier at Aulis, that Troy would fall in the tenth year. Its a clever choice, because
Calchas accuracy has just been vindicated by his advice on the plague. Odysseus involves
his audience in the episode by artful storytelling, drawing them in by a vivid, emotional
description of the bizarre and violent omen and only then demystifying it with Calchas lucid,
exhilarating prediction.
6. Nestors speech
Odysseus has already won the army around, but Nestor now comes in with a powerful
supporting speech. He starts with a rebuke to the army, of the kind Odysseus has carefully
avoided, for even considering abandoning the war at this stage. But then he too turns to
encouragement through past omens (3503) and an especially vivid, brutal evocation of the
rewards of victory (3546), before turning again to a darker, more specific threat against
anyone still contemplating flight (3569). As usual, though, Nestor saves his key point for the
end, after his audience have been softened up for the advice he now proposes: organise the
army by its original tribal contingents and the ships it originally sailed in, which will freshen
morale for battle and also make it easier to spot any shirkers. This of course is a slightly
contrived setup for the books big set piece, the Catalogue of Ships but more of that in a
moment.
7. Agamemnons speech
Agamemnon readily assents, and in an important moment expresses the first regrets for his
quarrel with Achilles, even acknowledging that the fault lies mainly with himself (378). The
second half of the speech shows us a side of Agamemnons character thats been largely
suppressed up until now: an infectious sense of purpose and energy at the approach of battle,
something well see makes him a highly effective battle leader despite his erratic strategic
sense and mood swings off the battlefield. This is just what the army needs in its present
mood; a third mass-action simile follows as the army disperses for brunch, and
Agamemnons war is back on track. But its been a close-run thing.
8. The sacrifice
Agamemnon now gathers his inner circle of warlords, including our first glimpses of
Idomeneus, Ajax I and II, Diomedes, and his own brother Menelaus. Together, they offer a
sacrifice and prayer, following the pattern weve already seen in the Chryse episode in book
1. Agamemnons prayer is a characteristically vivid, purposeful evocation of Troys
destruction, which he prays will indeed take place today in fulfilment of the dream. But its
immediately undercut by the narrators comment that Zeus appreciated the sacrifice but
rejected the prayer. As itll turn out, the war will indeed come close (a second time!) to
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ending that very day but on rather different terms from those Agamemnon expects, as well
see in the next book.
1. The similes
You may remember this famous passage from a first-year Greek Literature seminar, where
we used it to explore the workings of the Homeric simile in close-up. Seen now in its full
context, it follows on from the three similes earlier in the book as a continuation and climax
to the impression thats been built up of the movements and mood of this vast mass of
warriors. Youll probably remember that one of the things we looked at first time around was
the way each of the six main similes focussed in turn on a different aspect of the armys
advance, with a strongly cinematic movement from wide longshot to individual close-up. The
final shot of Agamemnon singles him out in his now somewhat rehabilitated role as a
genuinely impressive warrior and war leader.
in the first category, with Ajax as runner-up; this is part of a ranking of warriors on both sides
that will take on more detail in later books. The horseman is the otherwise inconspicuous
Eumelus surprisingly, as we hear a lot more about Achilles horses, who even at one
extraordinary moment get a speaking part.
same time, its another of a number of set pieces in these early books which help us to catch
up with the history and issues of the war as it enters its final phase. And though the duel itself
proves inconclusive in a way everyone had fatally failed to foresee, its ambiguous outcome
has consequences that will extend over the next four books. In particular, the making and (in
the next book) breaking of the truce will launch us into the first day of pitched battle, until its
conclusion in a second inconclusive duel in book 7.
C. The truce
With some difficulty (perhaps a touch of comedy here), Hector delivers Paris terms to the
Greek army, and Menelaus eagerly accepts. He proposes an elaborate sacrifice to seal the
terms of the agreement, insisting on Priam himself as the guarantor for the Trojans given the
treachery of his sons (a swipe at Paris, obviously, but perhaps also undeservedly at Hector).
This will take some organising, so the action pauses while the poet takes the opportunity to
introduce us to one of the most complex, poignant figures in the poem.
of physical description, with some interesting comments on the outward appearance of three
of the major Greek warlords.
1. Agamemnon
Explicitly refusing to judge Helen harshly for the war, Priam picks out Agamemnon, whom
he has never met. Helen breaks her long silence to name him as her former brother-in-law, in
a speech marked by bitter regret, brutal self-criticism, and a haunting final cadence that seems
to cast doubt on her own memories of the possibility of contentment. Priams response is
characteristically non-judgmental, of Helen and Agamemnon alike; he ignores her outburst,
and congratulates his deadly enemy on the extent and magnificence of his kingdom. Theres
an attractive Nestorian touch in the old mans reminiscence of youthful exploits, though
Priam is a much less calculating and manipulative character than his wily counterpart.
2. Odysseus
Next to catch Priams eye is Odysseus, who lacks Agamemnons arresting stature, but is
physically impressive and (in an evocative simile) exudes leadership. Helen characterises him
as clever and devious, an impression confirmed by the Trojan elder Antenor from his
involvement in early negotiations over Helens return. Odysseus presence on such a mission
comes as no surprise; weve seen Agamemnon choose him for the mission to Chryse, and
hell be first choice for the far more delicate job of approaching Achilles on Agamemnons
behalf in book 9. These famous lines say a lot about how effective speech was valued in
ancient culture; physically less striking than Menelaus, Odysseus greatness is apparent only
when he opens his mouth.
3. Ajax
Priam then singles out a third visually conspicuous figure, who turns out to be Telamonian
Ajax a character little glimpsed in the early books, but central to the narrative of the
longest day in books 1117. Helen is warming to the role, and spontaneously recognises
Idomeneus as she scans the crowd in search of her brothers. Typically of Helen, she
speculatively attributes their absence to shame at their sisters conduct; but the truth, we learn
in a poignant aside by the poet, is that both are already dead and Helen has been beyond the
reach of the news.
F. The oaths
Priam is now called away: the sacrifice is now ready, and the king is needed to ride out and
pledge the Trojans side of the oath. Its a nervous moment for Priam (259), but he rides into
his enemies midst in a way that anticipates the still deadlier journey he will make in the final
book. The oath-making is a variant of the pattern of sacrifice and prayer with which were by
now familiar, except that instead of the prayer Agamemnon dictates the formal terms of the
agreement to which both sides swear. It seems watertight, but notice that Agamemnon only
mentions two possible outcomes: either Paris kills Menelaus, or Menelaus kills Paris. Clearly,
Agamemnon cant imagine anything that would end the combat before the death of one or
other warrior; but his failure to cover other options will leave a fateful ambiguity in the terms
of the truce.
G. The duel
Now comes the duel itself, the first combat of any kind recounted in the poem. It follows a
pattern well quickly come to recognise as standard: first the combatants exchange spears,
and then if neither has scored a decisive wound theyll move in to close combat with their
swords. By convention its tempting to say by a basic law of narrative the first thrower
tends on average to be the loser. Its far from a hard and fast rule, but its sufficient to tension
all such single combats with a subtle sense of anticipation and imbalance.
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1. the lots
Normally on the battlefield spearcasts would be entirely opportunistic. But this is a formal
duel, so both combatants have the same opportunity to cast the first spear, and so (as in duels
with very different weaponry in later ages) they have to choose who goes first, in this case by
lot. Given the principle of first-throw-loses just mentioned, its not a great surprise that the
weaker Paris is chosen by the lot to go first. We must suspect that Paris cant possibly be
killed on this occasion, but the suspense lies in keeping us guessing how hes going to escape.
2. arming
The suspense is spun out further by the first of four arming scenes in the poem, all of which
follow a regular sequence beginning with the greaves and moving up the body to finish with
the helmet. Its a classic example of a so-called type scene, a sequence that follows a
traditional pattern of ordered actions as one level of the process of formulaic composition.
But there are always subtle variations such as the fact here that Paris has to borrow his
brother Lycaons corselet because he doesnt seem to have one suitable of his own.
3. exchange of spears
Now at last Paris gets to throw his spear. This being Paris, its a fairly weedy throw that
simply gets stuck in Menelaus shield without penetrating the armour. Menelaus is more
careful, as well as more formidable: he accompanies his throw with a prayer to Zeus in his
capacity as patron god of the sacred bond between host and guest, which Paris violated when
he abused Menelaus hospitality to carry off his wife. On a different day, Zeus might have
responded more favourably, but even as it is the spear passes through shield, corselet, and
even undershirt before Paris manages to wriggle out of the path of the point in the
microsecond between fabric and flesh. This first description of a weapon penetration, even
though harmless, is typical of such moments: the close, almost slow-motion description of the
moment of penetration, here exploited for deft suspense as layer after layer gives way to the
remorseless bronze point. Then the narrative snaps into an accelerated version of normal
speed, as Menelaus instantly moves in with the sword, and is only briefly deterred by the loss
of his sword when it shatters on Pariss helmet. Even barehanded, Menelaus is more than a
match for Paris; he simply hauls him helplessly off by the helmet towards his own ranks to be
despatched at leisure.
4. Aphrodite intervenes
But now we see how a warrior as hopeless as Paris has managed to stay alive so long. His
patron goddess Aphrodite now makes her first appearance in the poem, and first engineers a
non-accidental accident to deprive Menelaus of his prize. Then she spirits Paris away from
the battlefield entirely, teleporting him invisibly to his bedroom back in the city. To complete
her trio of miracles, she then disguises herself as a trusted mortal and goes to fetch Helen to
join him, while Menelaus rages baffled on the field of combat.
his cowardice, failure, and unworthiness in comparison with Menelaus. The tone of her final
lines (4326) is hard to judge: is she being sarcastic, or is she relenting to a degree, perhaps
influenced by Paris charms or Aphrodites unseen influence. (By this time the goddess has
quietly faded from the narrative.)
Paris dismisses her rebuke, making us think of his response to Hectors rebuke at the start
of the book, and merely urges her into bed. Helen is silenced now, and we leave them there as
the narrative cuts back to the bemused Menelaus still wondering what happened to his victim.
Agamemnon, however, seizes the opportunity to remind the Trojans of the terms of their
oath. Menelaus has won, even if he has not actually killed Paris as its wording stated. For
Agamemnon, this is enough to claim the right to take Helen back; but will the Trojans agree?
A. Council in Olympus
With Agamemnons challenge ringing in our (and the Trojans) ears, a response is artfully
delayed by the cut to Olympus and the reactions of the divine audience to the events of the
previous book. But its more than just a device of suspense; the gods themselves are about to
debate the decision facing the Greeks and Trojans below, and will agree to influence that
decision in a way none of the mortal characters have predicted, which will raise the stakes of
war still further.
1. Zeus
Zeus feels sufficiently confident of his authority to provoke Hera deliberately into an
outburst. The narrators introduction to his speech gives us to understand that Zeus is not
seriously proposing a peaceful end to the war, which would in any case conflict with his
promise to Thetis.
2. Hera
But Hera takes the bait, challenging Zeuss proposal on the unsettling grounds that shes put a
lot of work into making the Trojans lives unbearable and she doesnt intend to see it wasted.
Make a pasing mental note of line 29; its one of those lines well encounter again in a
significantly parallel-but-different context, which (intendedly or not) encourages us to
compare, contrast, and find meaning in the different uses in the two situations.
3. Zeus
Zeus reply includes a famous description of Heras remorseless hostility to Troy (line 35 is
especially memorable), contrasted here with Zeuss own affection for Priam and his city. We
never actually do find out explicitly in the text just why Hera is so set against the Trojans.
Later tradition traced it to the story of the judgment of Paris, but this is hinted at only once in
the Iliad, in the final book, and there in pretty ambivalent terms. If Zeus knows of a reason,
he never mentions it, though his silence could be tactful or teasing. Similarly, its hard to read
the tone of his offer to Hera to let her destroy Troy if he can have his pick of her own
favourite cities. Is he serious? Is he still trying to provoke her to anger, and if so why? Or is
he simply teasing her for his own amusement?
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4. Hera
In whatever case, Heras reply is fairly chilling. She casually nominates her all three of her
favourite Greek cities the kingdoms respectively of Diomedes, Menelaus, and Agamemnon!
for total destruction on Zeuss whim, so long as she can do the same to Troy. Having won
this apparent concession, she is then all conciliation and compromise: accepting Zeus
superior authority, but reminding him of her own near-equal status by birth and marriage
alike, so that it ill suits them to be seen at loggerheads. In this spirit of agreement so long as it
agrees with what she wants, Hera makes a suggestion: resolve the impasse over the status of
the truce by making someone from the Trojan side break it.
5. Zeus
Zeus briskly assents, and issues the order to Athene. In all this theres been no mention of his
promise to Thetis, and at this stage its unclear how his present action can help fulfil it. But
clearly a renewal of the fighting serves the common purpose of Zeus, Thetis, and Achilles as
much as it serves Heras, and he has tellingly made no commitment to support the Greeks
against the Trojans even if the Trojans put themselves in the wrong by breaking their oath.
3. Agamemnons response
This is the cue for a magnificent, yet almost comically undercut, reaction speech from
Agamemnon, who thinks that he is watching his brothers death at the hands of an
oathbreaking sniper. Its a crime he vows to repay in Trojan blood, in the powerful prediction
of Troys doom at 1637. (This is another passage that turns up in a later book with a very
different significance, but well come to that in a couple of lectures time.) Typically of
Agamemnon, though, his grief is not entirely unselfish; quite apart from losing a brother,
hell have lost the whole reason for continuing with the war, and he spends considerably
more lines on the damage thatll do to his own reputation than he does to the prospect of his
brothers death.
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During this whole melodramatic speech, Menelaus has been patiently waiting to report
what hes already realised at 151: that the wound is shallow and hes not going to die at all.
Not for the last time, Agamemnon has overreacted and jumped to conclusions. But his
anxiety over Menelaus in the following scenes seems genuine, as he first makes sure of his
brothers safety and then turns with renewed vigour to turn the full force of his anger on the
Trojans.
2. Idomeneus
Now we enter a series of encounters with named individual leaders, beginning with the
somewhat colourless figure of Idomeneus the Cretan, who nevertheless gets a speech crisply
articulating the very values of heroic reciprocity that Achilles claimed Agamemnon has
violated. Warriors fight well, risk their lives, and are repaid with public respect and pride of
place at the feast. This is the contract between a warrior and his society. Only Achilles sees
what shaky foundations it rests on.
4. Nestor
In a further variant, the next encounter is with Nestor, whom we first see passing on his
advice to the younger fighters in a combination of indirect and direct speech. Impressed,
Agamemnon stops to commend the old mans effectiveness despite being too old for combat
himself, and Nestor wistfully acknowledges (with one of his briefest reminiscences) that that
particular torch has passed.
Diomedes father Tydeus in the war of the Seven against Thebes, and comparing the sons
character unfavourably with his fathers. Diomedes bites his lip, and it is left to Sthenelus to
come to his defence rather astutely pointing out that the Seven never actually sacked
Thebes, whereas their sons did. But Diomedes silences him, asserting Agamemnons right to
do whatever he needs to hasten the capture of Troy. Later, Diomedes will have his chance to
turn the tables, charging Agamemnon himself with failing in his duty.
4. lesser kills
The book closes with a short sequence of minor victims: the gruesome death of the Greek
Diores at the hands of Peirus of Thrace, who is killed in turn by the Greek warrior Thoas. But
Peirus fellow Thracians end this sequence by rallying to the defence and driving Thoas
back
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Its also an important book about the relationships, and the boundaries, between mortals
and gods. Its the only book in which a mortal gets to shed divine blood, and the reasons why
hes able to (and why nobody else is able to in the rest of the poem) are important to
understanding the way this vital boundary operates in the Iliads world. More of that as we
go.
The structure of the book, as often with battle books, is quite complex, and youll
probably want to have the outline in view as we proceed. Youll see that it alternates between
scenes tracking Diomedes exploits with glimpses of events elsewhere on the battlefield, and
in Olympus.
C. Diomedes II
But as the elemental simile now powerfully reveals, all these Greek successes are outclassed
by the rampage of Diomedes, to whom we now return for the first major sequence of his
aristeia and the first of two such sequences that will each culminate in the wounding of a
god. The process starts, however, with a thread left dangling from the previous book: the fate
of the sniper Pandarus, following his ill-advised bowshot at Menelaus.
natural course of the war once today by spiriting her favourite Paris out of the duel he was
about to lose.
E. On Olympus
The narrative now tracks Aphrodite to Olympus, where a pair of scenes between the gods in
their own domain takes us away from the battle and marks the close of the first phase of the
book. The second will begin once we rejoin the battle, and will culminate in the wounding of
Ares.
a sign of the extreme level of divine intervention in this book, which will soon have a stop
put to it on Zeuss orders.
G. Pitched battle
The Greeks are on the defensive now, but they dont give way. A second nature-simile leads
into the books second montage sequence, as the narrative jumps rapidly from one warrior to
another, but this time alternating Greeks and Trojans unpredictably.
1. Agamemnon
Again we lead on Agamemnon, in his element now as a warlord leading from the front. A
brief speech of encouragement to those around him, and he takes down one of Aeneas own
men who has presumably been part of the battle over the phantom.
2. Aeneas
Aeneas counters by killing not one but two Greeks, the brothers Orsilochus and Crethon
who get both an extensive necrology and an interesting lion simile which casts the lions as
both predators (of human flocks) and victims (of human hunters). Theres still debate over
exactly when lions were hunted out of mainland Greece and Asia Minor, but its at least
possible that lions were still a real threat to mountain herds as late as the eighth century.
5. Hector
Hector seizes the advantage, with another double kill from a single chariot
6. Ajax
which draws in Ajax, who makes a single kill and then has to give way under the
ferocious assault which then follows as he tries to strip the armour. This is a typical Ajax
moment: a powerful defensive fighter, capable of taking enormous punishment, and forced to
give way only with great difficulty.
7. Sarpedon v Tlepolemus
Next comes a full-blown duel, between Sarpedon and the Rhodian leader Tlepolemus: a son
of Zeus against a grandson of Zeus (through Heracles). This is the books climactic combat,
and the first death of a hero from the Greek catalogue (2.653ff.). This is the poems first duel
to include the full exchange of speeches followed by two spearcasts, and (not surprisingly,
given the combatants ancestry) begins with an exchange of taunts about ancestry.
Tlepolemus challenge to Sarpedons divine paternity borders on hubris, and his challenge is
countered with impressive and characteristic restraint by Sarpedon, who (as a non-Trojan) has
no hesitation blaming Troys former king Laomedon for its sack at Heracles hands, rather
than allowing Heracles the credit claimed by his son. Theres a warning in this against
excessive pride, which its hard not to take as a dig at Tlepolemus own speech.
Unusually, both spears are thrown simultaneously; and both strike home, Sarpedons
fatally, Tlepolemus seriously. But its here that Sarpedons superior ancestry saves him, as
Zeus himself intervenes to prevent his death. As with the DiomedesApollo encounter earlier,
this is artful anticipation of the climax in book 16, where Zeus will be unable to save
Sarpedon a second time.
8. Odysseus
Now the camera picks out Odysseus, who has a typical Odyssean moment of decision where
two alternatives are weighed up, usually with the second, later, and better thought prevailing.
We saw one of these earlier from Achilles at 1.188ff., but on that occasion the decision was
made for him by Athene, and its a pattern more usually associated with the thoughtful
tactician Odysseus, no less in the Odyssey than in the Iliad. He opts not to pursue the
wounded Sarpedon, and instead makes this books high score of seven kills in two lines a
total matched only by Achilles at the height of his aristeia, at 21.21920.
effectively invincible. Sure enough, he now kills six named heroes in three lines, as well as
others left unnamed.
of the most famous episodes anywhere in Homer, Hectors moving scene with his wife
Andromache. The book falls into two halves, the first continuing the battlefield narrative and
the second following Hector on an emotionally-charged journey through the city of Troy and
a trio of encounters with the women closest to him, each of whom in turn tries in vain to turn
him from his warrior duty. Its a book in which not only the character of Hector, but also the
complex and irreconcilable tensions that drive the warriors sense of his responsibility, are
explored in fuller depth than weve so far seen, making it a key book in the poem as a whole
even though its frankly a detour in the plot.
Sisyphus
Bellerophon princess
Glaucus Sarpedon
Its hard not to see this as a desperate attempt to buy time with a filibuster, particularly
following the rather flabby (though much-quoted in antiquity) platitudes with which it opens.
But the content is fascinating, if puzzling in some details, and would become the basis for a
number of famous tragedies by Sophocles and Euripides. Its the story of Bellerophon, which
is built up from a series of so-called folktale motifs found widely in other traditions.
Theres a sexually predatory queen who turns against the hero who rebuffs her (think
Potiphars wife, or if you must Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat); theres a
series of impossible tasks set for the hero by the wicked king, all of which he survives to win
the kings daughter. But the most intriguing elements by far are the parts of the story that are
left only partly told. What happened to Bellerophon to make him hated by all the
immortals, and what happened to him in the end? (Later versions enjoyed filling in the gaps,
as they did with the story of Oedipus as told in Odyssey 11.) And above all, what were the
deadly symbols he carried in a tablet, that could convey a secret message unknown to the
bearer?
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The answer to the second question, at least, is clear: the symbols were writing, here
mentioned for the only time in Homer, and in terms that suggest the poet and his audience
seem to have had only a rather hazy idea of what writing was or did. Is this a last, distant
memory of the Linear B script of the Mycenaean age? If so, it seems to have been conflated
with more modern writing forms, as the clay tablets of the Mycenaean world were anything
but foldable. But that would surely strike Homers audience as a bizarre anachronism, as if
characters in Chaucer were to drive around in Model T Fords. Perhaps the Lycian setting
shows an awareness that a form of alphabetic writing, though a recent import in the Greek-
speaking world, had been around for a while in the eastern Mediterranean. Whatever the case,
its ironic that a text that depended on the invention of writing for its survival should show
such a semi-mystical sense of the technology that enabled it to be preserved.
C. Hector in Troy
So Diomedes rampage comes to an unexpectedly peaceful end; but Hector knows none of
this, and we catch up with him as he enters the city, in what will prove to be our last glimpse
of the world inside the walls for the next two-thirds of the poem. Theres a poignant little
touch as the families of the warriors still out there on the battlefield ask for news of their
loved ones, and he has to temporise. Then comes the first full description of the vast palace of
Priam and his huge extended family an important piece of scene-setting, as Hector will
have to find his way around this complex in search of his brother and wife.
1. Hecuba
Now comes the first of three encounters between Hector and the women of his family, each
of whom in turn will try to tempt him, with increasingly persuasive arguments, to put his own
safety before his sense of his duty on the battlefield. First up is his mother Hecuba, who
subtly tries to delay him for a drink; but Hector easily resists, tactfully begs off on religious
grounds, and goes straight to the reason for his visit. Instructing Hecuba in what needs to be
done for the offering and prayer to Athene, he takes the opportunity himself to find out
whats happened to his wastrel brother Paris since he vanished from the battlefield three
books ago.
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4. Andromache
This isnt in fact the final parting between Hector and Andromache it so vividly presents
itself as. Hector will be safely back in Troy that night, and indeed on the four subsequent
nights. (Have a look at the chronology of the poem, which Ive taken from my 2000 book The
Classical Plot and the Invention of Western Narrative. Well come back to this in detail the
lecture on structure.) But its the only scene we get to see between them, and it centres
strongly on the experience of the warriors parting from his wife for what he knows may be
the last time. This scene is the deepest we probe into Hectors motivation and choices, and
one of the key episodes for understanding the heroic value system that drives him and his
world. Its also the poems most powerful glimpse of the effect of the war on its non-
combatants, and the future that lies in store for the survivors.
a) Andromaches story
Andromaches speech powerfully presents the womens perspective on the war. To his
people, Hector is their strongest weapon against the Greeks; but to Andromache and her
child, Hector is the last thing left in their lives after Achilles has slaughtered all her other kin.
Her story is a grim one: her home city of Thebe sacked on one of Achilles devastating raids
around the Troad, and all her male family dead by Achilles own hand, most of them
apparently caught unawares and unarmed in the fields. As killing machines go, Achilles
retained some sense of honour: he gave her father a warriors funeral, and ransomed her
mother to Andromache in Troy, only for her to die soon after. This isnt the first weve heard
of this raid. It was also (1.3669) the occasion when Chryseis was captured, apparently by
Achilles himself, only to be awarded as a share of the spoils to Agamemnon; and at 2.6901
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we learned that on the same occasion Achilles sacked a second city, Lyrnessus, from which
he captured Briseis. (What Chryseis, a native of Chryse, was doing in Thebe is never
explained. But it raises the ironic reflection that if Agamemnon hadnt claimed Chryseis in
the first place the problem over her ransom would never have arisen, as Achilles himself
ransomed a captive from that very same expedition.) All that stands between Andromache
and Achilles is Hector.
b) Hector on the fall of Troy
Hectors reply is one of the key speeches in the poem: a central statement of the values that
determine the Homeric warriors choices. Its a carrot-and-stick life: the reward is a glorious
reputation, and the punishment for shirking is shame. The heros responsibility to his people
overrides his responsibility to his family, however painful the choice. But at the same time,
poignantly, Hector acknowledges that all he can do is delay the inevitable: that he will die,
Troy will fall, and Andromache will end her days in slavery. The one bitter consolation is that
at least hell die before that happens.
Hectors lines at 4479 are words weve heard before in a very different context, when
Agamemnon vowed the total destruction of Troy in retaliation for the wounding of Menelaus
at 4.1635. The sad fatalism here contrasts strongly with the grim resolve with which they
were spoken there. If this were a modern written text wed put it down to deliberate and
ironic repetition, but in an orally composed epic built from repeatable expressions the effect
is harder to pin down. Hardline oralists (well see what that entails in the composition lecture)
would say these are just prefabricated lines that have popped into the poets head as
appropriate at two very different moments in his song and got frozen in the text as it was
recorded (however exactly that happened, cough-cough), and that they shouldnt be given the
same weight of intention and significance as they would in a literate, more fully premeditated
composition. Others would say: why shouldnt they? What do you think? (Dont worry, you
dont have to answer that till the lecture on Composition, and not really then.)
c) Astyanax, and farewells
The doomy mood is broken by one of the most famous moments in Homer: Hector attempts
to give baby Astyanax a cuddle, but the child has never seen his dad come straight from the
battlefield in his armour and is understandably terrified by the apparition. (Bit of trivia: this
moment was in the shooting script of the 2004 film Troy, but didnt make it into the final
cut.) Amused, Hector abruptly lightens up: perhaps a first glimpse of the gung-ho
overconfidence that will prove his undoing in later books. At any rate he begins to entertain
the possibility that itll all turn out otherwise, that Troy will survive and his son grow up, and
prays to Zeus accordingly. Given Athenes response to the last such prayer we heard, the
prospects arent good; but Hector doesnt know that, and for a while itll look as if things are
indeed going his way at last.
1. The challenge
The first phase begins with a brief resumption of battle narrative and the re-entry of Hector
and Paris to the fighting; then the gods come up with the plan of a single combat to close the
days fighting, and the message is passed to earth through Helenus. Hector issues his
challenge, and the Greeks need to agree on a champion.
a) Battle rejoined
As often at moments when battle narrative resumes after a break, theres an impressionistic
general description of the state of fighting, coupled to a simile, and then we go into a series of
single encounters. Here the narrative continues to track Hector and Paris as they re-enter the
battle, and theyre joined in a trio of kills by Glaucus. Such a sequence of unbroken Trojan
kills is unusual in the fighting so far, especially after the flight of Ares: a sign that Hectors
return with Paris is turning the battle back on the Greeks.
b) Athene & Apollo
This impels Athene to seek an end to the fighting before the Greeks advantage is lost, and
she seeks out Apollo (who from now on will take over from Ares as Athenes opposite
number on the Trojan side). Apollo is only too ready to suggest a halt to the battle for the
day, and proposes a challenge to single combat by Hector, who is well matched against most
of the Greek heroes in Achilles absence. There seems little expectation of a fatal outcome,
though, and its clear the combat is more of a device to end the days fighting than the kind of
high-stakes clash we saw in book 3s duel between Menelaus and Paris.
c) Helenus & Hector
This is confirmed by Helenus the warrior-seer, who (unusually) relays the gods deliberations
instantly to Hector, and adds something that wasnt actually stated in the divine dialogue
itself: that Hector is not fated to die on this occasion, so can issue a challenge with
confidence. This defuses the tension a bit, especially after the grim emphasis on the
consequences of Hectors death in the previous book, and prepares us for a duel that is more
of a sporting test of prowess and ranking than a seriously life-threatening combat.
d) Hectors challenge
Nevertheless, Hector issues his challenge in stark terms: this will be a fight to the death, with
the fate of the losers corpse carefully agreed in advance. Unlike the terms of the duel in book
3, there are no larger stakes than the lives of the individual combatants and the prize of their
armour; its not a duel to determine the outcome of the war. But the terms nevertheless
foreshadow the terms Hector will attempt, and fail, to agree with Achilles in the final duel for
his life.
e) The Greeks respond
The silence that greets this challenge is an important sign of how formidable Hector is in the
eyes of the Greek leaders. Achilles could beat him and probably Diomedes, but Achilles is on
strike and Diomedes is wounded. Of the others, Ajax is a very close match, and Agamemnon
somewhere in the same bracket; the others are outclassed by a greater or lesser degree.
Menelaus Typically, its Menelaus who feels the situation most strongly and rashly
volunteers himself for a duel in which hes hopelessly outmatched. Its a
suicide mission, but its his war and he feels the obligation to stand up when
the call comes.
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Agamemnon Agamemnon, yet again, has to step in and stop his brother from committing
himself to an action which is certain to cost him his life and the war itself.
Hes frank about where Menelaus stands in the ranking of warriors, and
where Hector stands. Nobody else, of course, could or would speak to a
warrior like this, but weve seen that the complex relationship between these
brothers admits a certain amount of brusque elbowing-asideof his more
impetuous younger brother by the elder and more forceful Agamemnon.
Nestor Now its Nestors turn to speak up, as usual playing the role of the old man
reminiscing about the exploits of his lost youth, but tuning his story adroitly
to manipulate his audience to the needs of the occasion. Menelaus tried to
shame his comrades into standing up to Hector; Nestor more subtly evokes
how it will feel to be the one who stands up to the enemy champion and kills
him.
the nine This is what finally triggers the surge of volunteers: an interesting roll-call
volunteers of the mightiest of the Greeks in something approximating an order of
ranking from strongest to least. Its surprising to see Odysseus so far down
the list, and Eurypylus and Thoas are rather colourless figures elsewhere.
Menelaus would certainly complete the top ten, but hes closer to Odysseus
than to Ajax in prowess.
the lots This is confirmed by the prayers which accompany the drawing of the lots to
determine which of the nine will face Ajax. The three best qualified, by a
significant margin over the rest, are Ajax, Diomedes, and Agamemnon
perhaps in that order.
Ajax arms Ajax accepts the challenge, the first time hes spoken in the poem. As well
see in later speeches, this is typical of the straight-ahead, unreflective
simplicities in which he tends to think. Hes not the sharpest brain among
the heroes, but thats part of what makes him such a bulwark of the Greek
defence in later books, for which this duel is something of a rehearsal. Even
Hector has second thoughts at the sight of him; but its too late to back out
now.
2. The duel
As weve seen from book 3 onwards, theres a standard pattern to duels, whether formally
arranged like this one or spontaneously arising on the battlefield. First the combatants try to
psych one another out with a speech each; then they throw their distance weapons, and if
neither has struck decisively home they close in for hand-to-hand combat.
Ajaxs shield is another of those prized objects whose value and significance is
underlined by its having its own story. Its also a famous case of whats widely suspected to
be a surviving memory of Mycenaean warfare: Ajax is the only character whose shield is
described, three times, as like a wall, which seems to refer to the long full-body shield
shown in representations from Mycenaean tombs, though it fell out of use in the fifteenth
century BC. Maybe its reading too much into an isolated formula; but Hectors shield
bumped his ankles and neck simultaneously in the previous book (6.1178), and in book 8
Ajaxs own shield is big enough to shelter his archer brother Teucer as well as himself
(8.26772).
a) the speeches
Ajax speech and Hectors response play up their contrasting characters and moods. Ajaxs is
blunt, soldierly, subordinating the individual to the group; Hectors comes across as nervous,
defensive, acutely aware that Ajax is in danger of looking like the stronger performer.
b) the exchange of spears
Hector throws first no drawing of lots to determine this, as in book 3. This is a bad sign, as
weve seen first throwers generally come off worse, and sure enough Hectors spear fails to
penetrate Ajaxs massive shield, while Ajaxs comes within a hairsbreadth of striking flesh.
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c) close combat
Normally at this point the warriors would go straight to drawn swords for the deadly hand-to-
hand phase, but in this case an additional they each pull the enemys spear out of their shield
and use it as a stabbing weapon. Hector merely blunts Ajaxs spear on the great shield; Ajax
draws blood. Each then throws a rock, and again Hector goes first and comes off worse.
d) the heralds stop the duel
The Greek and Trojan heralds, Talthybius and Idaeus, both played a role in the arrangements
for the duel in book 3, and they now intervene together to stop the combat before it proceeds
to the assuredly lethal swordfight that must now follow. Ajax grunts assent to the proposal if
Hector, the challenger, accepts the lifeline. Its effectively an admission of defeat, as 312
makes clear, but Hector puts the best possible face on it by presenting it in terms of mutual
agreement, balance, and reciprocity, cemented by the exchange of gifts. Like the aborted duel
of Diomedes and Glaucus, its a moment where other heroic values seem to win out over the
pursuit of death and glory; but here as there it feels like an outclassed fighter buying himself
out of a corner. These two will meet again, for much higher stakes, in the assault on the
Greek camp and ships, so this first trial of their strength has been a useful benchmark. For
now, it allows the day to close on a note of amity and mutual respect, which will now
crystallise in the proposal for a formal truce.
to be uncannily prescient, because the next days fighting will see the tide of battle turn
decisively in the Trojans favour and the Greeks will need this wall to defend them in ways
you wouldnt have thought they could foresee. Most commentators wriggle around a bit
before admit that its slightly wobbly plotting that is nevertheless needed for the next act of
the poem to work. Can we do better? Why might Nestors proposal make sense at the
time?
Well, this council has a lot in common with the one in book 9 where Nestor delicately raises
the one subject that, pointedly, nobody seems to want to talk about: Achilles absence from
the fight. Nestor is the master strategist, and can see the implications of Achilles
continued absence. For this day, the Greeks have held the advantage, but even so there
have been some moments when the Trojans have rallied strongly during Ares support
for Hector, and again at the start of this book. In particular, this day has demonstrated that
while the Greeks still have strong fighters to oppose Hector, Achilles is the only man who
can consistently control this somewhat volatile, impetuous, and at times unstoppable force.
Nestor senses a change in the wind, and alone of the Greek commanders sees how lightly
theyve got off this day. He knows that itll need a greater setback to push things to the
point where Achilles becomes a topic he can mention in Agamemnons earshot; and
perhaps that point will never come. But Nestor is above all a planner, and this is as close as
he can come to articulating his anxieties and getting the rest of the Greeks to do something
about them. We know that Zeus is pledged to throw his weight behind Hector, and that
Nestors intuition is, as usual, correct.
d) The Trojan council
The Trojan council is a contrasting affair, riven with unresolved tensions and contradictions
over strategy. Perhaps significantly, Hectors voice isnt heard; unlike Agamemnon who is
both war-leader and high king, Hectors authority on the battlefield is overruled in matters of
politics by Priam and the Trojan elders.
Antenors First to speak is Antenor, the senior counsellor who was party to the original
proposal out-of-earshot discussion at 3.15660 about the prospect of giving up Helen,
even before the chaotic conclusion to the duel with Menelaus and the
unconscionable breaking of both the truce and the terms negotiated.
Paris Paris proposes a compromise: he keeps Helen, but the rest of his loot from
counter- Menelaus will be returned.
proposal
Priams Priam agrees to the putting of this proposal to the Greeks, with what cant be
terms any great optimism for its success, and adds a suggestion of his own for a truce
for the burial of the dead something neither of the other speakers seem much
concerned with.
The truce
Day breaks, and the previous evenings plans are put into effect: the delivery of Priams
proposals to the Greeks, the negotiation of a days truce, and the activities proposed to deal
with the aftermath of the first days fighting and preparations for the second.
a) Idaeus, Diomedes, and Agamemnon
The herald Idaeus delivers the terms to Agamemnon and the other Greek commanders, with
what sounds like a certain amount of foot-shuffling discomfort with the message. He curses
Paris behind his back, and explicitly confirms that the refusal to surrender Helen is Pariss
decision alone, against the judgment of the other Trojans. Agamemnon astutely leaves it to
others to react to this preposterous offer; Diomedes is the first to articulate the Greeks
incredulity, and only after his analysis has been confirmed by general acclamation does
Agamemnon deliver his formal rejection. But Agamemnon does pick up, as Diomedes failed
to, on the offer of a truce, which agrees neatly with Nestors proposal and his own intentions,
though hes shrewd enough to let the opportunity for building the wall seem like a Trojan
rather than a Greek initiative.
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1. Zeus ban
Zeus opens the book with the strongest assertion yet of his authority and means to enforce his
will on the other Olympians. He still holds back from stating openly that this is bound to
favour the Trojans, since the Greek side has the stronger divine lineup in support, but the
message to Hera and Athene is clear enough. His ban on any intervention in the battle will be
probed, tested, resisted, and undermined repeatedly over the next seven books. But it sets the
conditions under which the battle will now be fought, and one of the threads of plot in this
book is the failure of the first attempts to circumvent the ban.
2. Athenes response
A signal of things to come is Athenes guarded reaction, which stops short of outright
challenge but artfully seeks to dilute the ban by excluding purely strategic assistance. Zeus
chooses not to get into a debate, but instead installs himself where he can monitor the battle,
and the other Olympians actions, for himself.
of the battlefield action in contrast to the second-hand reports hes relied on until now.
Nothing can now slip past his attention, as well see when its put to the test.
5. The scales
This is our first glimpse of Zeuss scales of destiny, which determine which side will triumph
in the solo or collective encounter that follows. As well see in the lecture on the gods &
supernatural, these scales are the subject of considerable modern debate: do they have a
power separate from Zeus, and if so what is that power? or do they merely operate as a
symbol of his own will, and if so how? These issues become quite important when we get to
Sarpedons death in book 16, but here at least the verdict of the scales coincides with what we
already know to be Zeuss policy. At any rate its an important signal to the audience of the
general turn events are about to take, and the thunderclap that accompanies it signals as much
to the characters as well.
B. The rout
Now the Greek collapse begins. Diomedes is the focus for the first phase of the retreat; then
we cut to Hector as he seizes the advantae; and then the Greeks rally with a short-lived
fightback, before the ill-advised episode of Hera and Athenes attempted support backfires
and the Greeks are utterly routed.
1. Diomedes
Rather than the montage we might have expected, the Greek retreat is dramatically framed
around a single nailbiting episode: Diomedes rescue of the stranded Nestor through the thick
of the Trojan pursuit. As well as its intrinsic drama, it allows for some fine interaction
between these two strongly-drawn characters, counterpointing the ways in which each of
these fiercely committed warriors deals with the uncomfortable necessity of flight.
a) Diomedes rescues Nestor
Nestor is, as usual, in the thick of the fighting in his chariot even though he can only
contribute as a commander and strategist. Now we see the old mans vulnerability as one of
his horses is shot from under him by Paris so that he is left with just one to pull his chariot to
safety. Hector sees this, and closes in for the kill; Diomedes sees it too, and tries to enlist the
help of his close comrade Odysseus in coming to Nestors aid. But Odysseus seems not to
hear; the Greek is ambiguous, and Lattimores gave no attention tries to capture the perhaps
intentional uncertainty as to whether Odysseus was unable or unwilling to hear. At any rate
Diomedes is left to rescue Nestor alone, which raises a problem: a chariot can only carry two
men, and with their drivers Sthenelus and Eurymedon there are four of them to get out of the
battle. That means that two will have to ride in Nestors crippled chariot, and the other two
buy them time to escape by attacking the Trojans Diomedes chariot (drawn, in a nice touch,
by the horses he captured from Aeneas the day before yesterday).
b) Diomedes kills Eniopeus
So Sthenelus and Eurymedon take to Nestors chariot; Nestor takes over from Sthenelus as
Diomedes driver; and the two of them wheel to face the oncoming chariot of Hector.
Diomedes has only one shot: he throws his spear, and misses Hector but does kill his
charioteer Eniopeus. (As well soon see, charioteer to Hector is a job that carries the poems
lowest life expectancy.) Hector is slowed but not stopped; he enlists a new driver and swiftly
rejoins the battle before his quarry escapes entirely.
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c) The thunderbolt
Retreat doesnt come easily to Diomedes, who is for facing Hector again; but a terrifying
thunderbolt from Zeus signals that this would be a mistake, and reminds the audience that the
Greek retreat is being carefully monitored by its instigator.
d) The debate and flight
Even so, Nestor has to argue hard against Diomedes own instinct to stay and fight. He reads
the omen correctly, but Diomedes cant bear the thought of Hector calling him a coward.
Nestor deftly responds that Diomedes reputation is already so strong that nobody would
believe Hector if he were to make such a boast, but even so Diomedes hesitates.
2. Hector
Now Hector seems finally to have the Greeks on the run, and Diomedes and Nestor in his
sights. But Zeuss ban on support for the Greeks is about to be sternly tested.
a) Taunt, rally, and boast
Hector comes back into earshot, and sure enough he taunts the fleeing Diomedes for
cowardice. Diomedes is stung, and on the verge of turning again to confront him. Hectors
thoughts, meanwhile, are racing ahead, and he formulates the plan that will drive him through
the next eight books: to break through the Greek fortifications and burn their ships, cutting
off any last possibility of escape and trapping the Greeks to be slaughtered on the beach. Its
a typically overconfident plan, and well come to recognise Hectors vulnerability to these
excesses of confidence at moments when a volatile situation goes his way. By the end of his
second speech, hes aiming at stripping the corpses of both Nestor and Diomedes, which
itself will be just the prelude to a series of successes which will see the Greeks quit Troy
forever by this days sunset.
b) Hera and Poseidon
This is too much for Hera, who tries to enlist the support of the other top-ranking Olympian
Poseidon to revolt openly against Zeuss edict. But Poseidon isnt rash enough to accept
setting in train what will eventually take shape as an alternative plan to distract Zeus long
enough for Poseidon to operate undetected.
4. Back to Olympus
Hera recognises the game is up before its even begun, and the chariot goes back in the
garage. Zeus takes the opportunity to return to Olympus himself, the day having now gone
according to his plan, and confronts the goddesses to assert his authority in person. Hera
remains grudging, recycling Athenes original attempt at extracting permission at least to help
the Greeks with strategic prompts. But this time Zeus is having none of it.
1. Hectors speech
Hector acknowledges he was overoptimistic in hoping for an end to the war before nightfall,
but he still believes that the war is winnable and that any Greeks who do escape must suffer
such damage as to end any future threat to Troy. To that end, he proposes lighting up the
plain with watchfires so the Greeks cant slip away in the night. He looks forward to the
following days clash, especially the conclusion of his pursuit of Diomedes. But the coming
day will bring unpleasant surprises for Hector as well.
2. The watchfires
The book closes with one of the most famous descriptions, and similes, in Homer: the
Scamander plain lit up by a thousand watchfires like stars in a black sky, each one surrounded
by fifty warriors waiting for dawn and their opportunity to attack. Its an unsettling prospect
for the Greeks who until this morning occupied the plain themselves; and the night that
follows will be, in more senses than one, the longest in the poem.
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A. The assembly
As the first line suggests, the end of book 8 and the start of book 9 form a close pair,
contrasting the mood in the Trojan camp (end of 8) with that in the Greek camp at the start of
the new book. The previous book closed with the famous simile of the stars (8.55561), in
which the figure of the human observer was touched with joy. Now the wind simile, more
immediately and directly, describes the panic and restlessness in the hearts of the Greeks.
This will be, as well see, a sleepless night for many in the Greek camp, and a long one.
1. Agamemnon
Agamemnon calls an assembly of the army before the evening meal, and proposes exactly
what Hector predicted: abandoning the war, cutting their losses, and escaping back to Greece.
The remarkable thing about this speech is that its exactly the same words as his false speech
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in the earlier assembly at 2.11841, apart from the omission of a twenty-line passage in the
middle. But on that occasion we were explicitly told that he was only pretending and trying to
test the army. This time he seems to mean it; were given none of the cues from the narrator
that we had before, and even those who know him best take the speech at face value. As
elsewhere, the verbatim repetition of a passage with very different intentions is a powerful
ironic device, however it arose in the process of composition.
2. Diomedes
The silence is broken, as we might expect, by the one warrior whos shown himself most
reluctant to back away from a fight in the previous four books. Diomedes speech is a more
diplomatic performance than Achilles comparable critique of Agamemnon in book 1; notice,
for example, the careful lowering of the temperature in line 33. Nevertheless, the speech still
seethes with outrage and defiance, taking the opportunity to remind Agamemnon publicly of
his own accusation of cowardice on the part of Diomedes at 4.370ff., which at the time
Diomedes chose not to challenge and silenced Sthenelus when he did. Line 39 is an
especially direct dig, if not quite in the same league as Achilles wine sack with a dogs eyes
and a deers heart. The final lines throw down the gauntlet: if Agamemnon goes, Diomedes
and Sthenelus will stay to fight the war alone till they sack the city themselves.
3. Nestor
Nestor sees another book 1 developing, and knows that he must defuse the tensions before
they tear the army apart. In book 1, his intervention came too late in the debate to succeed in
cooling down the rivals anger. This time, hes more circumspect; he gently asserts his own
superior right of counsel over Diomedes on grounds of age this is the first passage to spell
out that Diomedes is the youngest of the major heroes while blandly commending his
argument. He urges unity, again without actually adjudicating between the two of them, and
then simply proposes that they end the assembly and get on with their supper. Only here does
he address Agamemnon directly at all, and his only tactical advice is to accept the best advice
offered: a hint at further discussion among a more select group later on.
Nestor is clearly holding something back, but his immediate plan is clear enough. A meal
will both boost morale, allow tempers time to cool, and give Nestor a chance to work on
Agamemnon privately over supper. He sees, as indeed does Diomedes, that Agamemnon is
especially sensitive to criticism in front of the assembled army; in private, hes much more
likely to take advice.
2. Agamemnons offer
Agamemnons reply is a brilliant exploration of the personality built up in the poem so far.
He concedes Nestors point immediately, but stops short of admitting full fault. His key word
is the verbal form of the noun ate, already used by Achilles at 1.412 to Thetis in summing up
Agamemnons behaviour. Its a much-discussed word, apparently denoting a kind of
temporary derangement of judgment attributed to the action of a god. And its the word that
Agamemnon will consistently use from this point on to describe his own error of judgment in
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taking Briseis and alienating Achilles. For Agamemnon, at least, its a way of hinting that
some outside force, rather than his own weakness of judgment and lack of self-control, was
responsible. Hell return to this theme at length in his great apology speech to Achilles
himself at 19.78144.
For now, Agamemnon thinks simply in terms of compensation. He reels off a catalogue
of treasures to be paid over now in addition to the return of Briseis, and a further catalogue of
promises to be delivered on after the city has fallen, with yet more to follow a successful
return to Greece. Its a magnificently constructed, jawdropping list, beginning modestly
enough with tripods and gold, and then moving up through the animal kingdom to its first
human climax in Briseis; then she in turn is surpassed by the promise of twenty more like her,
then marriage to Achilles pick of Agamemnons daughters, and seven cities out of
Agamemnons kingdom to rule over. Not a bad deal, given that all even Athene promised
only a 300% return (1.213). But its a nice touch, after all the concessions and grovelling, to
see the old Agamemnon flare up once more at the end with the final gruff insistence that
Achilles should acknowledge Agamemnons authority as both the older man and the bigger
king.
It all sounds great, if Achilles can be bought. Theres no reason why he shouldnt, over-
calculating though it may seem to us, because Homers is a culture founded on the principle
of reciprocity. Everything is understood to part of a vast system of barter; everything has its
price, so long as youre willing to haggle. Weve already seen that its possible to buy, or
ransom, your way out of death, and later in the book well see that a similar scheme of
material compensation exists for crimes up to and including murder. Agamemnons offer is
extravagant and generous, and it seems no warrior could refuse it.
2. The negotiations
The famous scene that follows features each of the spokesmen in turn, with a reply to each by
Achilles. This is the longest conversation in the poem, half as long again as the assembly in
book 1, but its built around just six speeches. First comes Odysseus, who delivers
Agamemnons terms formally and is answered by Achilles famous analysis of the reasons
why he cannot accept. Then Phoenix delivers his vast Nestorian performance, to which
Achilles responds in terms that suggest hes wavering. Finally comes the short speech of
Ajax, which extracts a further small concession from Achilles but leaves his mind unchanged
on the major point.
(a) Odysseus speech
Odysseus speech leads off, apparently stealing the moment out from under Phoenixs nose.
Such, at least, is the usual interpretation of 222, where Ajax seems to be signalling to Phoenix
as leader of the delegation that its time for him to speak, but Odysseus gets in first. But
perhaps this is part of Nestors plan (180).
His speech falls into five main sections. He begins by sketching a stirring picture of the
Greeks present crisis; then he appeals explicitly to Achilles to help; then he plays on
Achilles most vulnerable point emotionally, his feelings for his father Peleus; and only then,
once Achilles has been softened up by these tactics of Odysseus own devising, does he
deliver Agamemnons original message. Even so, he closes with reasons for Achilles to rejoin
the fighting whether or not hes receptive to Agamemnons own offer. The effect is to
package Agamemnons terms as part of a larger appeal by Odysseus himself on behalf of the
army as a whole so that Achilles will find it difficult to use his personal quarrel with
Agamemnon as sufficient grounds to hold out.
the crisis Odysseus delineation of the crisis deftly draws a contrast between the
comforts of Achilles hospitality and the emergency facing the other
Greeks. Rather than putting the weight on the Greeks destruction,
Odysseus stresses Hectors and the Trojans arrogance trying to build
Hector up as a potential opponent whose present success is a personal
gesture of defiance and affront to the one man who could easily stop him.
the appeal The appeal itself is brief by comparison, delicately hinting that Achilles
reputation may actually suffer if he postpones his intervention any longer.
Peleus advice Now Odysseus goes for the emotional jugular: by letting down the Greeks
now, Achilles is betraying the advice of his father Peleus. It seems from
this passage as though Odysseus is just inventing Peleus words; its not
till 11.766 that we learn that both Odysseus and Nestor were there at the
time, a detail which hints that enlisting Achilles and Patroclus wasnt an
easy task.
Agamemnons So elegantly does Odysseus segue from Peleus advice to Agamemnons
terms terms that it makes the deal on offer sound like an afterthought. The key
thing is to avoid anger; and, as it happens, Agamemnon can offer some
very attractive rewards for sticking to this advice. The catalogue itself is
quoted verbatim from Agamemnons own words, but we notice that
Odysseus has quietly edited out the surrounding parts of Agamemnons
message particularly its two closing lines, 9.1601.
other Perhaps Odysseus senses that Agamemnons offer alone will not sway
considerations Achilles (300), because he now adds two clinching arguments of his own:
the sufferings of the other Greeks, who are no part of Achilles quarrel,
and the chance to win the glory of killing Hector, with whom hes never
before been able to close decisively and who now (Odysseus artfully
implies) thinks he could beat even Achilles.
(b) Achilles reply
Achilles response to this masterful performance is the most famous, most complext, and
most widely-discussed speech in the poem. Much less artfully structured than Odysseus, it
nevertheless falls similarly into five fairly clearly-distinct sections. First, Achilles tries to
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explain the nature of his disillusion with the war; then he announces his own plan, of sailing
home to Phthia the following day; then he responds formally, and negatively, to
Agamemnons offer; then he reveals the famous and somewhat problematic choice offered
him by Thetiss prophecy at his sailing; and finally he summarises his position, adding a
small codicil inviting Phoenix to join him, at least for this night.
Among the large literature on this speech, perhaps the best single treatment is D.B. Claus,
Aidos in the Language of Achilles, Transactions of the American Philological Association
105 (1975) 1328, which in turn develops some suggestions by Adam Parry, Language and
Characterisation in Homer, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 71 (1972) 122. A good
older article is D.E. Eicholz, The Propitiation of Achilles, American Journal of Philology
74 (1953) 13748, and see more recently Jasper Griffin, Homeric Words and Speakers,
Journal of Hellenic Studies 106 (1986) 3657.
the broken code The first phase of the speech is the longest, and the most important,
following six introductory lines on the importance of straight talking that
could (but neednt) be read as a subtle dig at the artful speech of
Odysseus. There are various ways of trying to explain Achilles argument
in 312ff., but the essential point is clear: Agamemnons action has broken
the fragile system of tacit understandings about honour and rewards that
make it worth Achilles while to risk his life in another mans war, and no
amount of material compensation can put that back together. By
uncoupling any pretence at a correlation between effort in the war and
share of the reward, Agamemnon has done much more than simply claim
more than his share of the spoils; he has forced Achilles to question the
reasons why he risks his life in the first place. The standard heroic system
of reward is explained by Sarpedon in book 12: heroes put their lives on
the line, and are rewarded with material and intangible tokens of respect.
The moment that system is destabilised, the warrior has no more reason to
fight.
By comparison with Odysseus speech, its a passionate, free-form
speech, with some fairly forced argument notably the comparison of
Briseis to Helen, when one is a slave and the other a fugitive queen. He
rejects Odysseus attempts to present the crisis as the Greeks as a whole,
not just Agamemnons, and shows hes been keeping a close eye on
developments the previous day. He agrees hes the only one who can stop
Hector; but he refuses.
home to Phthia Now comes his bombshell: not only is he sticking to his original oath, but
he is abandoning the war altogether. While Hector sacks the Greek camp
the following day, Achilles will be sailing home to Phthia. Is this a bluff?
He modifies the position in response first to Phoenix speech and then to
Ajax, but Odysseus at least seems to think hes in deadly earnest when
he reports his words back to Agamemnon (6823), though he witholds
judgment on whether Achilles will actually go ahead. Agamemnons
promises doesnt tempt him, because hes satisfied with his estate and
property at home.
Agamemnons This theme is then expanded in an open rejection of Agamemnons terms,
terms rejected which are taken apart in turn. Agamemnon cant buy his way out of this
one; Achilles is no longer willing to barter a price for his life or his
honour. Its no longer about Briseis, or a share of the spoils, or material
reward; its about what his death is worth. In any case, IOUs dont carry
much weight with Achilles, for reasons he now explains
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Thetis Unlike other heroes, Achilles has a goddess for a mother; and this has
prophecy given him unique prophetic insight into his career choices. According to
Thetis, Achilles has a straightforward choice: long life and obscurity, or
early death and everlasting glory. Up until now hes opted for the second,
and expects never to live to see Troy fall or Agamemnon deliver on his
promises. But now that Agamemnons actions have broken the link
between death and glory, there seems no longer any reason to shorten his
life for a reward that cant even be guaranteed. Achilles makes it clear,
though, that he sees this implication as affecting every warrior, not just
Achilles himself. Agamemnon has shattered the foundations of their
world, and there can be no going back.
conclusion And so, says Achilles in a surprisingly low-key conclusion, the Greek
commanders had better think of a plan B. As a sign of his resolve, he
offers Phoenix the chance to sail home with him. This is a cue for
Phoenix to respond, and perhaps a device to move the conversation away
from further debate with Odysseus. But Odysseus doesnt speak again; he
knows hes played his best hand, and lost.
(c) Phoenix speech
Now comes the longest speech in the Iliad, and one of the most ambitious. Phoenix is not
Odysseus kind of rhetorician; his approach is much more like Nestors, in using storytelling
and suggestion to plant seeds in his listeners mind. The speech, though sprawling, is much
more clearly structured than Achilles, with four distinct parts: Phoenixs autobiography; an
unusual Homeric dip into allegory, with the fable of the Litai or Prayers; the long story of the
wrath of Meleager, with its pointed parallels to Achilles story and options; and a final
section in which the appeals that round off all three of the foregoing are summarised in a last
plea to Achilles to relent.
He begins by responding positively but conditionally to Achilles closing invitation: he
wont stay behind if Achilles leaves, but the implication is that he doesnt yet see this as quite
the certainty Achilles presents it as. Phoenix has a job to do, not just for Achilles but for the
father who entrusted him with it (another carefully-timed appeal to Achilles emotional weak
spot); and he intends to see it through.
(1) Phoenixs story
Now Phoenix tells his remarkable life story: how he escaped from being a prisoner in his own
ancestral palace, following a lurid and convoluted series of family intrigues involving
adultery, estrangement, cuckoldry of his own father, paternal curses, and a feud that nearly
drove him to patricide. So Phoenix fled to become a man without family and country, only to
find both vicariously in Peleus Phthia. Only after hes reminded Achilles of all this does he
deliver his appeal couching it not in terms of Agamemnon, Hector, or the other Greeks, but
of Achilles own inner nature and struggle.
(2) the allegory of the Prayers
This is then supported by the celebrated fable of the personified Prayers (Greek Litai), and
the race they run with the personification of Ate (which Lattimore here translates Ruin, but
is the same word used by Agamemnon for his madness, and is elsewhere translated
Delusion). Its quite a complex parable, with Ruin both the force that the Prayers try to
prevent and the agent that punishes those who reject them. The rather tortuous logic seems to
be driven by the attempt at a detailed symbolic fit with the present situation: Agamemnon has
been smitten with Ate, but the present delegation has come along behind as Prayers. Achilles
can choose to accept the Prayers, and avoid further disaster, or reject them, triggering Ate on
himself in turn. The whole passage is very reminiscent of Hesiodic poetry; the nearest thing
elsewhere in Homer is the parable of Zeuss urns recounted by Achilles to Priam at 24.527
33.
(3) the story of Meleager
Now for the longest section of Phoenix speech, and the longest inset story in the poem. As
with the allegory of the Prayers, Phoenix develops a close and pointed set of parallels
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between the present situation and a story told with a moral; but now the story is not a parable
but an episode from a past generation of heroes. Meleager is best known in myth for his role
in the Calydonian boar-hunt, but this story deals more with an event in the aftermath: his
refusal to help his people, the Aetolians, during the siege of Calydon by the Curetes, owing to
an estrangement from his mother after he killed her brother in a dispute over the boars hide.
(That, at least, is how later tradition told the story; Homers version is bafflingly condensed
and cryptic on the motivation.) Eventually Meleager gives in when his wife Cleopatra adds
her voice to the supplication, and he saves his city but too late to take advantage of the
generous terms offered him if hed rejoined the battle when he was asked.
All this, of course, has very obvious parallels with Achilles own situation. To spell it out,
the correspondences work like this:
Meleager Achilles
siege of Calydon siege of Greek camp
Aetolians Greeks
Curetes Trojans
Althaea Agamemnon
Oeneus Phoenix
Cleopatra Patroclus
The story as told here is far from self-explanatory, and later versions were keen to fill in the
gaps. In what became the standard version, Meleagers life was linked to a piece of wood in
the fire, which Althaea saved from the fire and locked in a chest, but then threw on the fire
deliberately after her brothers murder. But if that version was known to Homer, its been
significantly altered, either by the poet or by Phoenix, to fit Achilles situation here.
Particularly striking is the transformation of Patroclus into a character whose name is simply
a reversal of the same elements in Greek; the stuff about her alternative name Alcyone is
presumably an oblique acknowledgment that everyone else called her by a different name.
This is the clincher for those who argue that this story cant possibly have existed before
Homer, but rather has been tailor-made, at least in this version, to fit the specific situation of
the Iliad.
(4) the point spelled out
Phoenix ends his speech by explaining the parallels between Meleagers story and Achilles,
just in case the hero hasnt got the point. Shrewdly, he shows that he at least believes that
Achilles wont carry out his promise to sail home; sooner or later hell rejoin the battle, but if
its later he risks losing a lot more than hell gain from the delay.
(d) Achilles reply to Phoenix
Phoenix speech has clearly shaken Achilles resolve, but Achilles can at least reply to the
final point: as hes explained, tokens of honour no longer mean anything to him. But hes
troubled by Phoenix willingness, even implicitly, to side with Agamemnon against him, and
he uses the invitation to spend the night as a way of physically separating him from the rest of
Agamemnons mission. Tellingly, though, his final lines make a significant concession: now
he talks merely of making a decision in the morning whether to sail home or to stay.
(e) Ajax speech
The preparations for bed have been a signal that the conversation is effectively at an end, but
Ajax now intercepts the body language between Achilles and Patroclus as Odysseus had
earlier intercepted his own signal to Phoenix, and takes the opportunity to speak his mind
before theyre formally dismissed. He begins, with clumsy but effective indirectness, by
pretending not to address Achilles at all. Well, Odysseus, he says, it looks like its the two of
us who will have to tell our comrades that Achilles doesnt care about them. I frankly dont
see his problem; people accept blood-price for murder, so why should Achilles reject a
sevenfold profit on Briseis in compensation for his own wounded pride? Though hes savvy
enough not to mention Agamemnon and to be careful to present the offer as that of an
unspecified we, hes drifted at the end from the third person to the second and a direct
appeal to Achilles to change his mind.
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1. Odysseus report
Surprisingly, Odysseus doesnt report these later softenings of Achilles position back to
Agamemnon, but dutifully quotes the key lines from Achilles original reply to
Agamemnons offer. This is the last of many moments in this book where critics of all camps
get rather excited and frankly desperate. Analysts suspect a conflation of two different
versions; psychologists argue tortuously for a motive for Odysseus to misrepresent Achilles,
or Achilles later statements to misrepresent himself; while mealy-mouthed moderates try to
evade the issue by arguing that there may be no conceivable motivation for Odysseus to say
this, but the plot requires him to in order to preserve the suspense. As usual, I try hard to be
neutral between these positions, but Ill just say that, while all three of these seem absolutely
hopeless, the third is the kind of thing that annoys me most as if somehow explaining that
the plot demands something is a substitute for its making any kind of sense on its own terms.
Thats not to say its wrong, and I wish I had a better solution of my own; but this seems to
me one of those problems to which all existing solutions have a whiff of desperation.
2. Diomedes response
At any rate there are no such problems with Diomedes response to this news. Theres still
tension between Diomedes and Agamemnon, and he was notably silent when Nestor
suggested his plan. His proposal, which everyone adopts in the absence of anything better, is
to forget all about Achilles and to do what they can without him. As usual, Diomedes is
irrepressibly gung-ho, and the book closes on a somewhat more optimistic note than it began.
But the night isnt over yet; and Diomedes himself is about to play a central part in the
remarkable adventure that follows.
Theres no reference to the events of this book in any later episode, and indeed you could
cut it from the poem and not notice anything was missing between the end of 9 and the
start of 11.
At the same time, its clearly not an episode that could stand on its own, as the scholiast
seems to imply. The setting is specifically this night of the war, and the plot depends
essentially on the unique situation of the Trojans being camped out in the plain. Were
probably looking at an episode tailor-made for insertion into the Iliad itself, though
apparently based on a traditional story; later sources seem to know other versions of the story
of Rhesus in which he was killed under different circumstances.
The book is a little oddly-proportioned, with some longueurs in the early scenes, but with
a strong overall design: a pair of council scenes, as both the Greek and Trojan commanders
come up with plans for night expeditions, followed by a powerful and darkly farcical
encounter as the two parties clash in the night, and a gory scene of slaughter at the climax.
1. Agamemnon
We begin with an unusually intimate view of Agamemnon, whose inner turmoil is conveyed
first with a storm-simile and then with a powerful piece of narrative focalisation, viewing the
sights and sounds of the Trojan camp as they strike Agamemnon, glancing back and forth
between the two camps. Notice that even here his emotional reaction is largely externalised:
we see him tearing his hair and gazing imploringly to the sky. His decision to seek out Nestor
builds effectively on the relationship weve already seen between these two: Agamemnon
relies consistently on Nestor as his key strategist, and now bitterly regrets the one time he
failed to take his advice. The lionskin he dons is both symbolic of his kingly status its not a
normal item of Greek nightwear and the first of an interesting series of costume alternatives
to armour (whose shine and clank would be no use for the clandestine moonlit meetings from
which this book is built).
2. Menelaus
But Menelaus is also sleepless, and the parallels and contrasts between the brothers are nicely
drawn:
Where Agamemnon is restlessly eyeing the defences, Menelaus is brooding on his own
responsibility for the war and the evils about to befall his comrades.
Where Agamemnon seeks out Nestor, Menelaus seeks out his brother.
Agamemnon is a lion, Menelaus a leopard.
Menelaus adds a bronze helmet. (Im not sure what this signifies! Theres debate over
what Agamemnons armour in 34 refers to some think its just a back-reference to the
lionskin and spear of 234. It would be weird if he put on armour over all this, and unclear
why he should want to wear full battle armour anyway.)
In the conversation that follows, its Menelaus who first plants the seed of the idea to send
out a spying party. Agamemnon doesnt take this on board at first, but he does now expand
his plans to the convening of a full council. Since all the tribal contingents are camped along
the beach in a line, this involves a fair bit of running around, and Menelaus is dispatched to
the farthest encampments, which are those of Ajax and Idomeneus. (Its actually possible to
draw up an approximate map of the beach encampments from information here and there in
the text. Heres the most convincing reconstruction of the order.)
Ajax son of
Ajax Idomeneus Menelaus Agamemnon Nestor Odysseus Eurypylus Diomedes Meges Menestheus Podarces Achilles
Oleus
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If there seems a rather leisurely dwelling on humdrum practicalities in this part of the book, it
may be partly to make some dramatic use of the unusual and challenging circumstances of
trying to convene a council in pitch darkness.
3. Nestor
The scene where Agamemnon wakes Nestor is another nice moment. Nestor, of course, is
unable to recognise his visitor, but runs shrewdly through a rapid series of possibilities before
Agamemnon speaks. Agamemnon still hasnt much of a plan, and we know hes hoping that
Nestor will come up with something. But he doesnt say so, merely proposing lamely that
they check on the guards together. Nestor, however, is ahead of him, and in another moment
of convergent coincidence proposes the very council that Agamemnon has just called. After
the cross-purposes are cleared up, Nestor chooses his own nightwear: wool rather than
leather, since hes no longer a warrior-predator in his own right.
5. the assembly
Now that theyre all gathered, its significantly Nestor who takes charge at once, without
even the formality of Agamemnon consulting him.
(a) Nestors plan
His proposal is an expansion of the idea originally floated by Menelaus. Although the
audience know Hectors plans from being allowed the eavesdrop on them at the end of book
8, the Greeks have no such privileged information. To find out what the Trojans intend,
however, would take an act of unprecedented boldness: to infiltrate the Trojan camp itself,
unseen. Its a high-risk mission, so Nestor proposes a reward for successful volunteers.
(b) the volunteers
Nobody, least of all the audience, is surprised that the irrepressible Diomedes is the first to
jump up; but he asks for a companion. As with Nestors last call for volunteers (for the duel
with Hector, at 7.1618), theres no shortage of willing candidates, and Diomedes is given his
pick. In a nice touch Agamemnon, who offers the choice, is as usual anxious for Menelaus,
and secretly nervous that Diomedes might pick him; but Odysseus is clearly the obvious
candidate, on the combined grounds of friendship, tactical ingenuity, and sharing the favour
of own Diomedes patron goddess Athene.
Both heroes are Athenes favourites, and the goddess signals her unseen presence with a
bird-omen, to which both heroes astutely respond by offering a prayer and (in Odysseus
case) a vow. With confirmation to the audience that Athene is with them, the narrative now
leaves the Greek heroes in a dramatic cut to the other side of the story.
1. Hectors plan
Hector, too, has seen the possibilities presented by the combination of the cover of darkness
and their proximity to the Greek camp. As we saw at 8.5106, Hector has if anything better
reason than Agamemnon to want to know his enemies plans, because hes concerned that
they might try to slip away by sea. Unaware of the parallels with the scene in the Greek
council, Hector too proposes a reward for a volunteer: the choice of any chariot and horses
from the Greek camp. (Notice his characteristic overconfidence that hell be able to deliver
on this offer.)
2. Odysseus interrogation
Responding to this offer is a job for Odysseus, in the books most brilliant scene. Choosing
his opening words carefully to put Dolon at ease without actually agreeing to his request, he
questions him on his mission. To Dolons mention of Achilles horses as his reward,
Odysseus drily comments that hed probably have had his hands full trying to manage them.
But he immediately sees the real value of Dolon for their mission: he can tell them the layout
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and defences of the Trojan camp, and Hectors plans, without the original high-risk strategy
of positioning themselves to eavesdrop on the Trojan council themselves. Dolon spills the
beans, and in answering Odysseus question on the defences reveals a vulnerability: the
Thracian allies have arrived only recently, and arent enclosed in the main Trojan guard-
circle. (Quite where theyd be if the Trojans hadnt occupied the Scamander plain on the
previous day seems a question were not meant to ask.) Dolons evident eye for horses has
singled out the Thracian king Rhesus chariot and horses as especially enviable; surely this
information is ample payment to spare his life?
3. Dolons death
But Dolon has given away any bargaining power, and Diomedes sees straight to the ruthless
logic of the situation. They cant risk leaving him alive; and in a moment that recalls
Agamemnons execution of the suppliant Adrestus at 6.5265, he decapitates the hapless
Dolon at a single stroke (an unusual death in the Iliad) in the very act of trying to supplicate
him. They strip the corpse, and Odysseus has the presence of mind to offer the spoils as a
further token to Athene, as they move into the final and deadliest stage of their mission. A
very Odyssean touch is the thoughtful piece of foresight and improvisation: theyll need to
collect these spoils on the way back, so he improvises a marker to identify the spot in the
dark.
Nestors welcome
Nestor shrewdly identifies the distant sound as that of an approaching chariot, and draws the
correct inference about its occupants while recognising it could be bad news too. But hes
quickly reassured by the arrival of the two heroes with their spectacular prize, and a quick
debriefing is followed by the promised dedication to Athene, followed by a relaxing bath and
meal. This will, however, be the last such exploit by either Diomedes or Odysseus in the
poem, as the following book will see both incapacitated from further fighting. Agamemnon,
meanwhile, is nowhere to be seen; perhaps because any boost to his morale here would
unbalance the book that follows, where he will have his finest hour as a warrior and his
darkest as a leader.
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A. Agamemnon arms
The dawning of this momentous day is seen first from the Greek side, with the remarkable
installation of the goddess of strife, Eris (rather unhappily translated Hate in Lattimore), on
Odysseus ship in the middle of the camp. Though the Greeks will go down this day, they
begin it at a peak of energy and defiance.
The first third of the book is dominated by Agamemnon, whom Diomedes urged at 9.709
to lead from the front in the coming days struggle. Now he comes to the fore with the second
of the poems four great arming scenes a famous example of a so-called type-scene, a
sequence that recurs in the same order of events each time. Weve already seen a much more
minimal version of this sequence at 3.3308, when Paris armed for the duel with Menelaus.
Comparison of the two passages shows where the main expansions sit in this version, and just
how much more elaborate and impressive Agamemnons war-gear is. The corselet is
magnificently decorated, and has its own history as a heroic object; the shield has weight both
physically through its construction and psychologically through its decoration. Though the
gods are still bound by Zeus prohibition on intervention, it doesnt stop Agamemnons main
divine patrons, Hera and Athene, signalling their support with a rumble of thunder. As the
warriors of both sides approach the trench, Agamemnon is already being singled out for what
will prove an awesome display of power.
C. Battle joined
The clash is marked with a simile and a glimpse of divine machinery: Eris and Zeus,
watching the battle from their vantage points on Odysseus ship and Mount Ida respectively,
with the other gods still banished to Olympus. The first impressions of the fighting are just
that, impressions; no individual combats are singled out until the camera turns to
Agamemnon.
D. Agamemnons aristeia
Now begins the kings own aristeia, which proceeds from single to multiple kills and briefly
pushes the Trojans back, before Agamemnon becomes the first of the days high-profile
casualties.
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8. Agamemnons withdrawal
Agamemnon fights on for a while, but his wound (apparently in the left arm) catches up with
him, and eventually he has to retreat to camp in his chariot, with a parting exhortation to the
Greeks still fighting. This is a devastating blow; the days battle so far has been something of
a one-man show, with no other Greek warrior even named, and things are made worse by our
knowledge that Hector will see Agamemnons withdrawal as a signal to renew his attack.
5. Odysseus at bay
Odysseus is given to deliberative soliloquies, particularly in the Odyssey; its in his nature,
when caught alone at a moment of crisis, to mull over his alternatives aloud. Here he runs
through a classic example of the form: two options, here flight or a lone stand against the
overwhelming might of the Trojans. But Odysseus instinct for self-preservation doesnt yet
override his conditioning as a warrior, and he chooses to stand his ground and die like a hero.
Its an important moment: this is the Odysseus well see gradually retrained by the Odysseys
vastly more complex post-heroic world in a different set of priorities and survival skills.
Odysseus stand, like those of Agamemnon and Diomedes before him, begins well; he
scores five kills in quick succession. But the arrival of his last victims brother raises ominous
echoes of Iphidamas and Con, which turn out to be all too accurate.
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9. Ajax at bay
Hector, however, sees a better opportunity. His charioteer Cebriones has spotted Ajax routing
the Trojans in the area of the field recently vacated by Hector, and the two of them fight their
way across to confront Hector and stem the local retreat. Hes rightly wary of closing with
Ajax himself; but Zeus opens a way for him by undermining Ajax concentration and spirit
himself. A pair of brilliant animal similes describe the unprecedented moment of Ajaxs slow,
hard-fought retreat.
1. At Achilles camp
First we cut to Achilles own view of Nestors arrival with Machaon. He recognises Nestors
chariot, of course; but who is the wounded man it carries? Despite his resolve to stay out of
the battle, Achilles curiosity gets the better of him: will this defeat bring a renewed appeal
for his help? In a remarkable intervention, the narrator points out this moment as the
beginning of Patroclus doom: clearly were meant to keep an eye on this subplot as it
unfolds in the books to come.
the first time this is said), Patroclus has a duty to use his own better wisdom to influence
Achilles judgment.
c) Nestors plan for Patroclus
So Nestor proposes a two-level plan. Plan A, obviously, is that Patroclus speak to Achilles to
try and influence him where others have failed. If that doesnt work, perhaps because of
something Achilles knows from his goddess mother, Nestor proposes a fallback: that
Patroclus himself go out to battle in Achilles armour, and scare off the Trojans with the
pretence that Achilles is back in action. That belief alone could be sufficient to drive the
Trojans all the way back to the city. The hint of a prophecy from Thetis looks like an allusion
to Achilles words at 9.4106: does Nestor know about this from a previous occasion, or has
he been debriefed by Odysseus during the night, or is he simply making a shrewd guess that
theres more at stake than just the feud with Agamemnon?
The narrator lapses briefly into the first person at 176, in a line recalling his similar
comment in the introduction to the catalogue of ships at 2. 48890. Theres no appeal to the
muse here, though, and it may be an apology for failing to follow through the overambitious
project of keeping all five storylines in play. Instead, we stay with the Lapith gate as the
brothers enjoy a miniature aristeia, before moving on to the gate where the breakthrough will
ultimately be made.
At 177 we have our first glimpse of the fire that will become a key feature of the attack on
the Greek ships following the breakthrough
What drives heroes to risk their lives in battle is, paradoxically, the certainty of their own
mortality.
Given that they must die, they devote their lives to the competition for glory, Greek
kleos: fame, reputation, the way youre talked about and remembered.
For the successful warrior, this takes the form of honours both tangible and intangible from
his people.
Even, as here, when hes fighting in anothers war, this heroic system of kleos and time, glory
and honour still drives the warrior on to fight. This is precisely the system that Achilles can
no longer believe in; but here, now, in what will prove to be the last hours of his life, it makes
complete sense to Sarpedon.
a) Menestheus summons Ajax
Sarpedons gate is defended by the Athenian leader Menestheus: a minor hero, here
hopelessly outclassed. His only chance is to call for reinforcements from elsewhere on the
wall, and theres the usual relaying of a message verbatim from sender to recipient. Big
Ajax is now presented with a dilemma: any redeployment of key fighters from the central
gate will weaken defences there. In the end he leaves the lesser Ajax to manage the defence
against Hector, while he himself and his brother Teucer go to Menestheus aid against
Sarpedon. Its a risky move, but at first it seems to pay off.
b) Ajax defends the wall
With the arrival of Ajax and Teucer, the Lycians assault is stemmed. First Ajax kills his man
with a characteristic strongman display, by dropping a boulder on top of him.
c) Teucer wounds Glaucus
Then Teucers bow scores a major success by wounding Sarpedons co-commander Glaucus.
Glaucus withdraws surreptitiously from the fighting, keen to minimise any gift of glory to the
Greeks in the light of Sarpedons earlier homily. Sarpedon notices, but presses home his own
attack to the point where he actually destroys a section of wall and closes in on the brothers
hand-to-hand. An arrow from Teucer and a spearthrust from Ajax are both kept from
Sarpedons flesh by his father Zeus, playing the role that other gods have in protecting their
favourites in earlier books. For the moment Sarpedon is stalemated, unable to break through
but unwilling to give ground.
4. stalemate
Now for a second time the narrative camera pulls back and shows the same stalemate holding
all along the wall. A pair of unusual and fascinating similes from everyday human life gives
us two vignettes of the audiences world, and leave briefly behind the predator-centred
animal similes of the previous book.
A. Enter Poseidon
Poseidon has been kept in reserve for this moment: the most powerful of all the Olympians
after his brother Zeus, with whom he has a somewhat tense sibling relationship. He was
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glimpsed among the major Olympian supporters of the Greeks at 8.198211, where Hera
failed to persuade him to join her in challenging Zeus ban on battlefield intervention. The
brief scene there summed up the contrast between him and his sister Hera. Where Hera is
constantly seeking ways to challenge or sidestep Zeuss authority, Poseidon is much warier,
less impulsive, and reluctant to confront the power of Zeus head-on, aware that he cant stand
up to his brother in a contest of power. A solitary, independent figure among the major
Olympians, weve seen his capacity for brooding resentment at 7.44263, when he grudged
the Greeks the achievement of Nestors wall. Now, well see the same quality turned
increasingly against the power of Zeus himself.
1. Zeus withdraws
Like the audience, Zeus sees Hectors breach of the wall as the collapse of Greek resistance.
It seems nothing now stands between Hector and his goal, and so Zeus makes the fatal
mistake of relaxing his vigilance over the battlefield. Instead he turns his gaze to affairs in the
far north of the known world, confident that neither Hera nor Athene will dare to defy his
edict. In that, of course, hes right; but hes forgotten about his brother, precisely because
Poseidon has avoided direct confrontation so far.
2. Poseidon moves in
Just as Zeus has a vantage point on the summit of Mount Ida, Poseidon has his own mountain
sanctuary and watchtower, on the northern Aegean island of Samothrace, surrounded by his
element the ocean. Its there that he sees for the first time the extraordinary reversal of the
Greeks fortunes, and in an immediate demonstration of power crosses the ocean to his
sanctuary of Aegae (on the Greek mainland) in just three steps. There follows a version of the
divine chariot sequence we saw in its HeraAthene version at 8.381ff.; but Poseidon is a
solitary god, and needs no charioteer to drive him. Particularly magnificent is the glimpse of
the creatures of his domain the sea rising up to pay homage as he passes. In contrast to the
setting-out of Hera and Athene, we have a sense of an elemental force stirring. Hiding his
chariot in a cave, he moves in secretly on the battle.
his speech Where Poseidons speech to the Ajaxes focussed on their own power as
warriors, his speech to the lesser fighters uses a different tactic, playing to
their sense of shame at letting the Trojans run rings around them. The Trojans
havent changed, he argues; the present crisis is entirely the result of failures
on the Greek side, for which Achilles cant be singled out.
the Greeks The speech has its effect: the lesser heroes rally around the Ajaxes, and they
stand firm brace to meet Hectors charge.
B. Hectors attack
As the assault begins, we switch from the Greeks perspective to the Trojans for the actual
clash.
Hectors Sure enough, Hectors charge begins with a forceful nature-simile, but breaks
charge itself on the Greek resistance. Hector calls on the other Trojans to back him up
stopped as he attempts to push through, and the narrative moves to a series of solo
encounters.
Meriones First to support Hector is his brother Dephobus in an inconclusive encounter
repels with Meriones, who loses his spear to Dephobus shield and withdraws before
Dephobus Dephobus can strike back. At the time, this looks a rather uninteresting result;
but Meriones return to camp in search of a replacement spear is part of the
books longer-term plotting.
Teucer The next encounter results in a kill, and a Greek one: a turning-point marked
kills with both a necrology and a simile. Teucer is here fighting with spear in close
combat rather than his more distinctive weapon of the bow.
Hector Teucer goes in to strip the corpse, exposing himself to a spear-throw as often at
kills such moments; but Hectors spear misses, and kills a high-ranking Greek
warrior instead. Amphimachus was introduced as one of the Elean leaders in
the catalogue at 2.620; but were about to find out that he has a more signficant
status still, because his father Cteatus was a son of Poseidon himself.
Ajax Hector now tries to strip the corpse, but Ajax now closes in for the first time in
blocks the book, and Hector is forced to give way
Hector
the allowing the Greeks possession of both the Trojan and the Greek corpses. In
corpses a rare gesture evidently marking the intensity of his divinely-assisted battle-
retrieved fury, the lesser Ajax gratuitously mutilates the Trojan corpse as he strips it,
with the gruesome touch of the severed head landing at Hectors feet.
C. Idomeneus aristeia
The killing of his mortal grandson Amphimachus sends Poseidon in search of the last
available major hero, the elderly Cretan warlord Idomeneus, who now gets a full-blown
aristeia of his own.
3. The aristeia
Now comes Idomeneus aristeia itself, whose high point is the death of the major Trojan
warrior Asius, before culminating in an abortive encounter with Aeneas. A relatively brief
aristeia, its notable for the tightly-plotted connections between kills, with each leading
directly into the next by one or other of the standard segue techniques of revenge attacks or
followup kills. The sequence is made the more interesting from the outset by the casual
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information that Idomeneus is one of the oldest of the heroes still active. Idomeneus is an
experienced fighter, but he is no Diomedes.
(a) Idomeneus kills Othryoneus
First comes a minor kill, with a necrology and a boasting speech from Idomeneus marked by
the grim irony that particularly characterises such speeches by warriors in the grip of an
aristeia.
(b) Idomeneus kills Asius
Next comes Asius, whom we remember both from the Trojan catalogue (13.389) and more
recently from his ill-judged attempt in the previous book to break through the wall by forcing
the gate in his chariot. As with Pandarus in book 4, such a serious tactical error marks him
out for an imminent exit, and its just been a question of when and at whose hands his death
would come.
(c) Antilochus kills Asius charioteer
Antilochus now becomes the first of the original group of lesser Greek warriors to join
Idomeneus new second front in the defence. Over the coming books, Antilochus will
gradually emerge to a prominence he hasnt borne in the poem so far. Here he moves swiftly
enough in to kill Asius luckless charioteer and capture the chariot that dared to attack the
Greek wall.
(d) Deiphobus kills Hypsenor
Now a Trojan counterpart is also drawn in from the fighting around Hector. Dephobus,
whose shield earlier deprived Meriones of his spear, now throws at Idomeneus, misses, and
instead takes down the minor warrior Hypsenor. (This is one of those confusingly generic
names that gets used for characters on either side; Eurypylus killed a Trojan Hypsenor at
5.7683.) The lines describing the retrieval of Hypsenors corpse by Mecisteus and Alastor
seem to have been lifted from the rescue of Teucer at 8.3324 even down to the groaning,
though the Greek makes it clear that Hypsenor is already dead.
(e) Idomeneus kills Alcathous
Idomeneus next victim Alcathous is the most hauntingly described: in his poignant
necrology, his fatal moment of divinely-instigated battle shock, and his slow and painful
death after the spear has penetrated. (This is unusual in Homer, for whom spear-deaths are
nearly always instant.)
(f) Idomeneus challenges Deiphobus
Idomeneus boasting-speech over Alcathous is effectively a challenge to his main antagonist
Dephobus, responding to Dephobus boast over Hypsenor with a reminder of the tally on
either side.
(g) Deiphobus recruits Aeneas
Dephobus is aware that hes outmatched by Idomeneus, and will need the support of
someone more in Idomeneus class. Aeneas vanished from the narrative in the previous book,
and his mysteriously protracted absence is now explained: there is a tension between his
Dardanian branch of the royal family and the house of Priam, which has apparently flared up
in the course of the morning. Its the first weve heard or seen of any such feud, though there
are hints of rivalry at various points in book 20. Dephobus appeal sensibly hedges its
chances by appealing to the family bond in both directions: to himself and the Priamids, or if
that fails to the fallen Alcathous.
The approach of this first equal-ranking opponent to Idomeneus is signalled as a turning-
point both by the simile (boar versus hunters) and the speech of appeal to the other Greek
warriors, in which Idomeneus realistically assesses his rival as a serious match. But the
Trojans now rally behind Aeneas similarly, and the scene is set for one of the closest-matched
encounters in the poem.
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Meriones Now comes a famous Homeric nod. Menelaus in turn is attacked by the son
kills of one of his previous victims, the Paphlagonian leader Pylaemenes (5.5769),
Harpalion but its a doomed attempt. Not only can Harpalion not even penetrate
Menelaus shield, but he exposes himself to an arrow from Meriones bow,
which strikes him in another painful lower-body wound. So far, nothing
particular untoward. But look who turns up to transport the body away:
Harpalions father Pylaemenes, who was killed eight books ago. Hes not
named here, but the reference to Paphlagonians show its clearly the same man.
Theres a couple of even more glaring examples of this coming up in book 15,
but on the whole the surprising thing is perhaps that it doesnt happen more
often.
Paris kills Paris avenges the killing of his friend with an arrow, and his victim has one of
Euchenor the poems finest necrologies. Son of a seer, Euchenor is in the same position
as Achilles with his goddess mother: he has the unenviable foreknowledge that
if he goes to Troy he will die. But in Euchenors case, the choice is simplified
by the alternative if he stays at home: death anyway, but by a painful, lingering
illness. Its a beautifully-crafted little story, a tragedy in miniature that echoes
the poems big themes and choices about death and the hero.
2. The wounded
Its at this moment that the other wounded leaders come limping to meet Nestor, apparently
also drawn by the shouting, using their spears as improvised crutches. The unexpected
flashback on the arrangement of the ships, around the bay in rows several deep, is perhaps
included here to prepare the audience with a fuller picture of the setting of the battleground of
the next two books. Certainly its needed to understand Agamemnons escape plan a few
lines later. Nestors presence in camp comes as a surprise, of course, since he was still on the
battlefield when all three were wounded, and the obvious inference is that he too has been
injured.
3. The debate
Now comes an impromptu council of war in which Agamemnon has to be talked by the
others out of playing into Hectors hands. All four contribute highly characteristic speeches,
arranged in three pairs each composed of a speech by Agamemnon and a response by one of
the others in turn.
(a) Agamemnons speech
Its immediately apparent that Agamemnon is back in his defeatist mode. He is somehow
aware of Hectors boast to the Trojans at 8.526ff., though there were no Greeks present, and
sees (correctly) that Hector is in the process of delivering on his threat. His own authority is
collapsing; now that Achilles has shrugged off his command, whats to stop everyone else
doing the same?
(b) Nestors response
Nestor concedes that things look bad, and the failure of the wall is a personal blow. But
where Agamemnon is doomy, Nestor is constructive: here, after all, are the four key
strategists in the Greek high command, so its up to the four of them to come up with
something and something, Nestor perceptively adds, which doesnt involve all the wounded
heroes charging straight back into the fighting as their instinct suggests.
(c) Agamemnons proposal
Agamemnon comes up with a plan at once: give up and go home. This is the third time hes
suggested this, and the second time hes meant it seriously. The problem is that, with the
ships drawn up several deep on the beach, they cant launch the entire fleet, but he has the
bright idea that enough can escape out to sea from the first rank to be able to come back and
retrieve the rest after nightfall.
As plans go, this one comes close to farce. (Quite apart from the outrageous suggestion of
quitting and the obvious flaw pointed out by Odysseus, whats to stop the Trojans coming
after them in the other ships, or burning the ones that are left behind?) Its easy to imagine the
exchange of glances between the other three, and certainly Odysseus response comes with
one of the darkest looks in the poem.
(d) Odysseus rebuke
This is too much even for Odysseus, well used though he is to patiently cleaning up
Agamemnons messes. As he angrily points out, such an abdication of responsibility is
unworthy of a warchief, and if anyone but the three of them had overheard this moment of
weakness then Agamemnons rule would be over. Second, the plan has a hole in it you could
sail a warship through: once the Greeks holding the line see Agamemnon and his team
preparing to flee, theyll try and flee too.
(e) Agamemnons response
As often with these three (but no others), Agamemnon is willing to admit that his proposal
may not be the best idea hes ever had; but if anyone has a better plan, he wants to hear it.
(f) Diomedes proposal
Once again its Diomedes who speaks up, evidently picking up the hint in young or old that
Agamemnon is looking especially at him and at Nestor. Cautiously, aware that hes the baby
of the foursome, Diomedes states his credentials to be taken seriously, before revealing his
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proposal: that they return to the battle, out of range, and contribute what they can to the
troops morale by making a show of their commitment and authority in person.
2. Aphrodites girdle
Aphrodite is normally sympathetic to the Trojans, so needs some careful handling; but luckily
shes not the smartest of goddesses, and is readily taken in by Heras cover story of trying to
reconcile her mutually estranged foster parents. (The perfume and jewellery dont seem to
raise her suspicions.) The incongruously domestic vision of marital disharmony among these
primeval cosmic and elemental forces makes for a piquant combination, exploitingly the
weirdly dual nature of the Homeric gods as vast, ancient powers who are nevertheless
radically anthropomorphic. The story itself is a fabrication, of course, but its enough to
persuade Aphrodite to hand over her enchanted sex thong, with an unwittingly more
meaningful parting line than she herself is aware.
3. To Lemnos: Sleep
Now for phase three: enlisting the god of sleep himself to deepen and protract Zeuss post-
coital slumbers. (Quite why this encounter takes place in Hephaestus island of Lemnos,
where Sleep had no particular cult, was a puzzle to the ancient commentators as well as to
us.) Sleep, however, still remembers the last time he did Hera this particular favour, and was
one of the few gods to manage to hide from Zeuss fury when he awoke. (Well hear more of
what he did to the rest in the next book, at 15.1830.) The actual story of Heras
shipwrecking of Heracles is another of those that looks made up for the occasion, but its
interesting to us to see that epic tales of stormy returns from Troy didnt begin with the
generation of Odysseus.
Hera eventually wins Sleep round with a combination of dubious persuasion and sexual
bribery. Sleep doesnt even respond to the first, but the prospect of a Grace as his wife seems
to overcome all his doubts, and after securing the deal with an oath from Hera he joins her on
her expedition to Ida, hiding in the trees in bird form while she puts her own part of the plan
into action.
On the wonderful 285, Janko comments: It is a sadder world that no longer sees invisible
gods footsteps in the trembling of misty tree-tops.
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towed to a place on the open plain where he can get his senses and his breath back, but he
wont fight again in this book.
Zeuss prophecy at 8.4736, spoken to Hera on the occasion of her previous abortive attempt
to defy his will. From that we know that Zeus support for Hector will cease once Achilles
returns to the fighting, at which point Zeus will regard his promise to Thetis as fulfilled; that
Achilles and Hector will fight; and that the trigger will be the death of Patroclus. But that
passage also gave what turn out to be two false pointers: that the duel will take place over
Patroclus corpse itself, and that the location will be at the ships. And we still had no clear
idea how the story would progress from the duel, what the outcome would be, or how the
poem would end.
Now at last the sequence is foretold in detail:
Apollo will revive Hector, and drive his aristeia;
Hector will drive the Greeks back to the ships, their last line of defence;
Achilles will be prompted by the emergency to send Patroclus out to battle;
Patroclus will kill Zeus own son Sarpedon;
Hector will kill Patroclus not at the ships, but under the walls of Troy, implying that the
Trojans have been driven out of the Greek camp;
Achilles will kill Hector to avenge Patroclus;
with Hector dead, the Trojans will lose the war.
Nevertheless, there are a lot of things were still not told here. From this account, wed expect
the poem to end either with the death of Hector or with the sack of Troy itself; theres no hint
yet of the events of book 24. Nor is it clear how and by whom Troy will be taken, or what
will happen to Achilles, whose death at Troy has already been predicted in Thetis prophecy
and we might well expect to be part of the poem. In a way, of course, it is but thats just one
of the surprises the poem is keeping back for now.
Zeus closes by renewing his interdict on any further assistance to the Greeks. After
Achilles return to the battle, this ban will finally be lifted, and a second divine free-for-all
break out. For now, only the Trojans have gods on their side.
B. Hectors aristeia
Apollos boost to his strength triggers Hectors own aristeia, which in turn becomes the focus
for a rally by the other Trojan chiefs.
7. The standoff
Now comes a sequence of close combat at the fiercest point of Greek resistance, as Hector
tries to get close enough to the nearest ships to burn them.
(a) More kills
A rapid series of connected kills kicks off the sequence.
Hector First comes a pair of kills by the principal antagonists: Hector first
Ajax immediately followed by Ajax.
Polydamas Polydamas disregards Hectors prohibition on stripping the corpse of his own
victim, exposing him to a spearthrust from
Meges Meges, who instead kills a minor warrior in his place. Normally this kind of
substitute kill happens with spear throws, not thrusts. Despite the desperate
state of the Greek defence, Meges also pauses to strip the armour from his
victim, and duly attracts an attack of his own, though hes protected from the
initial thrust by his quality corselet (marked by the relating of its history, as so
often with treasured or significant objects). Meges counter-strike is similarly
inconclusive
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Menelaus but Menelaus gets Meges attacker in the back, and they stop to strip their
victims armour together. The persistent willingness of heroes to put this prize
before the survival of their people says much about heroic priorities, but also
perhaps about the extraordinary preciousness of bronze armour.
(b) Hector rebukes Melanippus
A further pair of exhortation speeches follow, with Hector picking on a kinsman of the fallen
Dolops whose very obscurity pretty much guarantees his imminent doom.
(c) Ajax calls on the Greeks
In contrast, Ajax appeals to the Greeks as a whole, couching his own speech in more
collective and soldierly terms of shame, discipline, and mutual responsibility. As the others
respond to the call, Menelaus singles out Nestors son Antilochus with Locrian Ajax, one of
the two speediest Greeks on his feet as one who stands the best chance of a counter-attack,
which will have to be lightning-fast to succeed.
(d) Antilochus kills Melanippus
Antilochus darts out and kills the hapless Melanippus, but any attempt to stop and strip
armour is thwarted by Hectors swift approach. The pair of three-way animal similes here, as
often, set up a tiered relationship between the three warriors being ranked: in the first, deer,
dog, and hunter; in the second, domestic animals, wild predator, and humans.
that is evidently meant not to seem fantastic to the audience. But Hector has his eye on one of
the ships, and Ajax cant defend them all. The narrator pulls back once more to a strongly-
viewpointed general view of both sides, tautening the suspense further in the process, before
contact is finally made.
Hector reaches Protesilaus ship
The ship Hector latches on to is the ship of Protesilaus, who was the first to land so his ship
will be furthest up the beach, and the easiest for Hector to reach. As we learned at 2.695710,
Protesilaus himself was killed during the landing, and his forty ships of troops from Phylace
have passed to the command of Podarces. As it happens, this is the adjacent encampment to
Achilles own, so that Achilles himself will be able to witness the climactic struggle. There
he clings, calling for the torchbearers to join him and burn the vessel. His reference to the
cowardice of advisers may be a dig at Polydamas, who has consistently (12.21050, 13.723
7) advised against risking an attack on the ships.
Ajax holds off the fire-bearers
Ajax, meanwhile, is feeling the pressure. Though he can stab with his pike, hes vulnerable to
Trojan missiles, and all he can do is fend off the torchbearers by stabbing them from the deck
as they approach (as they need to do to set the wood alight). As he urges to his comrades in a
final rallying-speech, this is the last line of defence. Theres nowhere else to fall back to, and
unless something dramatic happens to turn the battle around then even Ajax wont be able to
put out the flames. The Greeks are looking destruction in the face, and even Ajax knows it.
What he cant know is what we know, thanks to the foreshadowings in this book, about what
else that fire will bring.
1. Achilles question
Patroclus intense sympathy for his comrades suffering is powerfully conveyed by the image
presented in the opening lines: weeping (highlighted by a famous and unusual simile), and
apparently unable to speak. Though were told Achilles is sympathetic, his speech is
disingenuously framed. The tone of his simile of the little girl is hard to judge; its probably
not as dismissive as it sounds to us. But it recognises that Patroclus is implicitly appealing to
Achilles (as the girl to her mother) for some kind of support. He lists three possible things to
get upset about, of which the first two (the deaths of their respective fathers) can be ruled out.
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The third, which he evidently intuits as the real cause, he refuses to view sympathetically
continuing to blame Agamemnons own wilfulness, which he here attributes to the army as a
whole.
2. Patroclus reply
Patroclus speech is a combination of quotations from Nestors speech at 11.655ff. (247 =
11.65862, 3645 = 11.794803) with material of Patroclus own (213, 2935). He
carefully doesnt mention Nestor or his visit to him at all, but the additions are clearly his
attempt to carry out Nestors suggestion at 11.78992 to try and use his own influence over
Achilles to persuade him from his anger. Its a powerful performance: beginning by trying to
defuse Achilles resistance to his own sympathy for the Greeks suffering by listing named
individuals and wounds; drawing a rhetorical contrast between their healing and the
incurability of Achilles emotional wound; and culminating in the famous lines about his
inhuman hardness of heart. Perhaps he knows that hes not getting through, though, because
he then goes straight into Nestors plan B in Nestors own words: that Patroclus be allowed to
fight in Achilles armour. As the narrator now adds, this is a moment of heavy irony: what
Patroclus is begging for is his own death.
3. Achilles instructions
Achilles reply is typically troubled and difficult in places to unravel. He immediately rejects
the allusion to Thetis prophecy, in terms that have struck many analyst critics as so forceful
as to be incompatible with the original statement at 9.4106 which would imply that the
embassy in book 9 was a later addition to the poem. Psychological critics have no difficulty
wriggling out of this one: it could be just a forceful protestation that the prophecy isnt a
factor, or he could even have been making it up. But it remains a curious fact that the speech
makes only one reference to the events of book 9, and at times seems to talk as if
Agamemnons offer had never been made.
At any rate Achilles makes it clear that what keeps him from helping now is still anger
rather than fear of death. But now for the first time he talks openly of ending his anger, with
the problem now being that he promised Ajax at 9.6503 that hed do nothing till the
Myrmidon ships themselves were threatened with burning. He therefore gives Patroclus
permission to put plan B into action, but makes it all to clear how difficult hes finding it to
keep out of the battle himself. Despite his claimed indifference to the Greeks suffering, hes
clearly been listening closely, and has picked up Hectors voice and the absence of
Diomedes or Agamemnons.
Achilles sets a condition on Patroclus fighting: he can repel the threat to the ships, but no
more. The reason given is that hell be encroaching on what should be Achilles achievement,
and if Patroclus shows that he can do what it was thought only Achilles could, therell be no
reason left for Agamemnon to come grovelling to Achilles. But its not just a matter of his
own honour; theres real danger in pursuing the Trojans too aggressively. Apollo is out there,
leading them on, and is a lethal god to provoke too strongly. His wistful closing fantasy is a
powerful distillation of his feelings for war, for Patroclus, and implicitly for the deaths that
await them both before Troy will ever be sacked.
1. Ajax at bay
First comes a vivid evocation of the beleaguered Ajaxs weariness under the bombardment:
one of the most intense descriptions in Homer of the physical toll taken by the sustained
pressure of fighting in heavy armour, and all the more eloquent for being attached to the most
seemingly tireless of all the warriors. Notice the way the description moves progressively
from external to internal: the bombardment, the weight of his shield, his breath, his sweat, his
state of mind.
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3. Hectors triumph
Now the narrative cuts swiftly back and forth between Ajax and Hector. First, Hector slashes
at Ajaxs pike (here described as a spear, but a spear would be too short to stab from the deck
of a ship); then, in a brilliant cut, we see Ajax staring at the broken shaft and understanding
what it means. Now he can do nothing but retreat, and immediately the ship goes up in flames
behind him.
1. Patroclus arms
First comes the third of the poems four variations on the arming type-scene. As with Paris
(3.308) and Agamemnon (11.15ff.), the order is the standard one of greaves, corselet, sword,
shield, helmet, spears; but the variations are once again significant. In this case, Patroclus is
wearing another mans armour, and so he has to leave behind the spear, which is too heavy
for him; ironically, this will be the one item of Achilles armour not to be captured by Hector,
and indeed this is the spear that will eventually kill him.
Once hes armed, theres an additional sequence further describing the chariot-horses
Rhesus was so fatally keen on. Well see more of their significance later, and in one
extraordinary moment even hear their words. Did you spot that the trace-horse was yet
another prize from Achilles sack of Andromaches home city of Thebe?
we glimpse the events stretching before us locked into a divine plan, are growing particularly
frequent as the climax approaches: an effect that later ages will come to associate particularly
with tragedy.
4. Into battle
A famous simile accompanies the Myrmidons advance in their wasp-like swarm, and
Patroclus delivers a battle-speech notable for its egoless focus on Achilles as their true leader
and the true beneficiary of the glory they win this day. Though he cant know it, its another
piece of heavy dramatic irony that his final lines are a direct quotation from Achilles own
words in his request to Thetis at 1.4112. That request is about to be fulfilled, but not at all in
the way Achilles imagined.
Peneleus Peneleus duel with Lycon also comes to blows with swords, but in this
case because the spears of both have missed. Peneleus takes a helmet-blow,
but his Lycons sword breaks and Peneleus is able to strike back with a
gruesome decapitation.
Meriones Meriones victim is running away, which is why hes stabbed from behind
with a spear in the shoulder.
Idomeneus But the most violent blow is struck by Meriones comrade Idomeneus, the
most powerful of the Greeks in this sequence after Patroclus: an especially
violent and graphic spear-thrust that effectively explodes his victims head.
scene. Hera at least seems to take seriously the possibility that Sarpedons fate could indeed
be overthrown, and argues against it that
(i) itll diminish Zeuss credibility in the eyes of the other gods;
(ii) itll set a dangerous precedent for the other gods, who as Athene pointed out to Ares in
the previous book have sons all over the battlefield.
She proposes a compromise: allow him to be killed as fated, but teleport his corpse to Lycia
for the proper funeral rites, rather than leaving it to be fought over on the battlefield. Zeus
accepts this, and in a famous image weeps tears of blood that fall on the human world like
rain.
The question of Zeuss relationship with fate is really one for the seminar on the gods
later on, but the competing views can be quickly summarised here. One school of thought
argues that fate is indeed a separate force from Zeus, at least in the Iliad, and that other
details such as the scales of destiny can be read as confirming this. Others argue that
everything Zeus and Hera say here is consistent with the assumption that fate is simply what
Zeus has himself earlier decreed as, indeed, hes earlier announced Sarpedons death at
15.67. The latter may seem the simpler solution, but it then raises the question of why on
earth Zeus should gratuitously sacrifice his own son Sarpedon, causing himself such grief in
the process, rather than a more expendable antagonist for Patroclus moment of glory. Not
surprisingly, others again say were asking the wrong question here in expecting theological
coherence in what is clearly a scene motivated by dramatic rather than metaphysical logic;
but that seems to make all the talk of fate in the Iliad look dangerously close to meaningless.
For now, well have to leave it there.
(c) the duel
Each warrior has two spears, allowing the duel to open with an unusual preliminary exchange
in which Patroclus first throw kills one of Sarpedons men, and Sarpedons kills Patroclus
trace-horse. This threatens to send Patroclus chariot out of control, but Automedon his
charioteer still has the reins, and cuts the dying horse free while getting the main pair under
control.
In the second spear exchange, its Sarpedon who throws first the familiar losers move
and misses. Patroclus throw, however, strikes home, and Sarpedons fall merits a double
simile as well as the poems first death-speech: something reserved for the death of major
heroes, and first in a trilogy with the eerie dying prophecies of Patroclus and Hector
themselves.
(d) Sarpedons dying appeal to Glaucus
Sarpedon calls on his fellow Lycian commander Glaucus to defend his corpse against the
Greeks attempts to strip his armour. Though Glaucus is in earshot, Patroclus gets in first, and
retrieves his spear in a gruesome move that brings part of Sarpedons innards with it.
is devastating to the Trojans: this was the star warrior among the allies, and Glaucus appeal
hints once again at the tensions with the allies if the Trojans dont acknowledge their
contribution. This is the beginning of a process that will draw Hector back in as Patroclus
nemesis.
(c) Patroclus rallies the Greeks
But Patroclus is far from finished with Sarpedon himself. He in his turn appeals to the Ajaxes
to help him strip the corpse, and what was a rout turns now into a close-fought struggle
between the leading warriors on both sides.
(d) the clash
Now follows a series of alternating kills, Trojan and Greek, to indicate the closely-fought
state of the battle.
Hector The first kill is Hectors first Myrmidon victim, his head improbably split in two
kills by a stone to the helmet.
Patroclus Patroclus, characteristically moved by his comrades fate despite his own battle-
kills fury, moves in for revenge, but is unable to close with Hector and kills a Lycian
instead with a stone-throw of his own.
Glaucus Now its Glaucus turn to strike back with his renewed strength for the Lycians.
kills
Meriones But Meriones counters with a Trojan kill, narrowly dodging in his turn
kills
Aeneas the spear of Aeneas, leading to an exchange of bluster between the two which
misses Patroclus curtails by urging Meriones to the task in hand of gaining possession
Meriones of the corpse.
the battle After this series of individual close-ups, we pull back to the perspective first of
for the the narrator and then of Zeus himself. A pair of similes convey first the sound
corpse and then the sight of the battle, as Sarpedons corpse disappears under the
continues fighting.
The whole book is an adroit piece of suspense-building, deferring as long as possible the
moment when Achilles finds out about Patroclus. His absence is more insistent here than in
any other book, and when at last the news penetrates back to the Myrmidon camp we know it
will unleash a grief, anger, and power beyond anything yet imagined.
3. Zeus promise
The significance of this moment is underlined by a dramatic shift of perspective, as though
the narrative camera pulls back to reveal that the scene just described is what Zeus is
watching on his live video feed on Mount Ida. Putting on the armour seals Hectors fate, to
the point where Zeus will actually grant him one last surge of strength to enable him to go out
in glory. Zeuss closing lines are a slight piece of misdirection: Hector will in fact come home
for one last night in Troy, before his duel with Achilles the following day.
off and recover the corpse. Its a tall order, perhaps another moment of Hectors characteristic
overconfidence; Hectors possession of Achilles armour is unlikely to have to be divided.
The miniature catalogue of ten allied leaders includes six from the dwindling list of
survivors from the original Trojan catalogue: Mesthles (2.864), Glaucus (2.876), Hippothous
(2.840), Phorcys (2.862), Chromius or Chromis and Ennomus (both 2.858). Two of these will
meet their own doom in the following scene, and two more after Achilles returns to the
fighting.
5. Aeneas kills
With even Zeus helping both sides, the fight over Patroclus is renewed with still greater
intensity. Aeneas makes the first strike of the Trojan rally
6. Lycomedes reciprocates
but his kill is immediately balanced out by one of his victims comrades.
7. deadlock
Further Trojan counterstrikes are now blocked by a new tactic. Ajax coordinates the
defenders to create a shield-wall around Patroclus, suppressing the familiar patterns of
individual attacks for a more coordinated and defensive combat. This is one of the scenes
which shows an awareness of the importance of massed troops in disciplined ranks under a
commander: perhaps a sign of eighth-century awareness of the emergence of an early
prototype of hoplite warfare.
As deadlock is reached, the narrative camera pulls out to give a more impressionistic view
of the battle, no longer focussed on individual kills, but instead offering first a visual longshot
and then a powerful description of the fatigue and struggle as felt by the fighters themselves,
with a striking but notoriously obscure simile comparing what is now an actual tug-of-war
over the corpse to a crude technique of stretching a new-flayed hide. Nestors sons are
excluded by name from the scene, an aside which turns out to be a preparation for the later
arrival and involvement of Antilochus as a crucial link between the fighting and the camp.
Achilles unknowing
But of course the hero most pointedly absent from this fight is Achilles himself. Thanks to
Menelaus and then Ajaxs rallying-calls, all the Greek heroes within reach on the battlefield
have been drawn further away from the camp and ships and into the struggle over the corpse
itself. This means that all the movement between the battle and the camp is outward, and
likely to remain so until the deadlock over the corpse is broken. Achilles, the narrator now
tells us, continues to think Patroclus is simply fighting around the walls, having never been
informed of his doom even by Thetis. This is new information, but retrospectively consistent
both with Achilles decision to let Patroclus fight and with his wistful fantasy at 16.99100 of
the two of them sacking Troy together. That, Achilles knows, can never be; but hes always
thought it was because he himself was doomed to die before the citys fall, not because
Patroclus was similarly doomed.
8. Automedon joins in
Meanwhile, the stalemate under the walls of Troy continues, with a pair of speeches summing
up the collective attitude of both sides. But now were reminded of a thread of the plot left
carefully dangling when Hector abandoned the pursuit of Achilles chariot to return and strip
Patroclus corpse instead.
(a) the horses of Achilles
We learned in the previous book that Achilles horses, so coveted by Dolon and more
recently Hector, were actually immortal, a gift from the gods to his father Peleus (16.3801,
16.8667). Now they refuse to be driven away from their masters corpse. This explains why
Automedon, who was last seen driving the chariot back to camp with Hector in pursuit, has
been unable to complete the journey that would have brought the news to Achilles.
(b) Zeus takes pity
The uncanny sight of the horses weeping human tears is the cue for another cut to Zeuss
viewpoint on the action, and a speech of sympathy for the predicament of these immortal
creatures trapped in a world of men. In whats effectively a further piece of foreshadowing
for the audiences benefit, he promises that, though the Trojans success will continue till that
days sunset, Automedon will succeed in returning to the ships. The implication is that hell
return with the corpse, but thats carefully not spelled out as yet.
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opens up a new and extraordinary possibility: the overnight forging of a new set of armour by
the gods themselves. What comes out of this at the climax of the book is one of the greatest
sequences in Homer: the bravura montage of scenes depicted on Hephaestus miraculous
shield.
3. Achilles vow
Now at last Achilles finds words, in the speech of decision that marks the turning-point of his
story. He acknowledges that she has delivered, through Zeus on his request; but the
satisfaction he expected has been eclipsed by the loss of Patroclus. Even the divine armour, a
wedding present to Peleus from the gods, has been lost, as Achilles himself must soon be; the
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one thing keeping him alive (Antilochus was right to suspect suicidal impulses) is the urge to
kill Hector before he goes.
4. Thetis prophecy
Thetis reply is short and devastating: the final piece of the prophetic jigsaw, completing the
picture partly assembled by Zeus (15.6871), Apollo (16.709), and Achilles himself (17.406
7). For the first time, its revealed that Hectors death is inextricably tied to Achilles own:
that killing Hector will seal Achilles own doom. This is the moment when Achilles must
make the choice presented to him at 9.4106, between a long life and a short one.
5. Achilles acceptance
Achilles makes his choice: his life is worth nothing to him with Patroclus dead. Now at last
he sees the story of the Iliad in its dreadful entirety: the deadly consequences of his quarrel
with Agamemnon, which he now formally renounces. He will return to the fighting, kill
Hector, and accept his death when it comes.
evidently unable to sustain his attempt in the general chaos, and the Greeks are able to get the
corpse on to a stretcher and back to the camp.
With the last and toughest fight finally resolved, night falls at last on this longest of days. But
even this is Heras doing, not Zeuss, and we can expect a further confrontation on Olympus
on his return.
1. Polydamas strategy
The ever-cautious Polydamas sees, as usual, that the extraordinary successes of this day are
short-term gains only. Already theyve lost ground since the previous evening, when they
occupied the whole plain up to Nestors wall; now only the night stands between them and
the return of Achilles, whose absence made the past two days possible. If they camp in the
plain a second night, theyll expose themselves to Achilles attack in the morning; but if they
retreat now into the city, theyll be impregnable.
F. In Olympus
The rest of this book takes place in Olympus, and centres on the fulfilment of Thetis promise
to Achilles. After a brief but charged scene between Zeus and Hera, the narrative follows
Thetis on her mission to persuade Hephaestus to forge a new set of armour overnight, and
culminates in the great extended description of the arms themselves principally the scenes
from life that decorate the shield.
estate in person. Again the rostrum camera technique assembles a timeline out of the different
elements: reaping, binding, collection, preparing a feast and meanwhile feeding the workers.
(c) the vintage
The third scene is a tour de force of descriptive technique, beginning with a detailed account
of the rendering of different highlights in contrasting colours of metal, and then gradually
introducing more and more life, sound, and movement, climaxing in the figure of the bard
himself leading the whole community in a joyous swirl of dancing and song. The whole
effect is of a picture coming vibrantly to life before our eyes.
B. The assembly
Echoes of the first assembly now come thick and fast. Both are called by Achilles, who
accordingly is the first speaker; Agamemnon is drawn in, and the tensions between them
crackle; and then a third voice steps in to urge compromise and reason. Then it was Nestor,
and here its Odysseus, who had a somewhat different role in book 1 (as leader of the mission
to Chryse), but here builds directly on the work he did in book 9. Then the assembly closes
with Agamemnons return of the slave captive at the centre of the dispute.
But even as the assembly gathers, were reminded of how much has changed since the
last one. Agamemnon, Diomedes, and Odysseus are all limping from their previous days
wounds; none of them will be in a state to fight again in the poem, though Diomedes and
Odysseus will have recovered sufficiently to take part in the funeral games the following day.
One effect of this will be to eliminate competition on this day of Achilles glory: Diomedes
and Agamemnon are the two attack fighters closest to Achilles in power, and clearing them
off the scene allows Achilles a clearer run in what will be essentially a one-man war.
1. Achilles speech
If wed been expecting an irrational, impassioned Achilles half-deranged by grief and
vengeance, his speech comes as a surprise. Hes diplomatic, magnanimous, and conciliatory,
though the terseness of his speech suggests an impatience to be doing rather than talking. He
doesnt once mention Patroclus perhaps we sense its too painful and speaks only of the
consequences of the quarrel for the Greeks as a whole. He accepts an equal share of
responsibility for the quarrel, but unilaterally and unconditionally renounces his own anger,
with no mention of compensation. And he indicates his need for Agamemnons role as
commander-in-chief, to mobilise the rest of the army so that Achilles can have a battle to go
out into.
2. Agamemnons speech
Agamemnons response is much longer, and one of the poems supreme displays of
characterisation in speech. It builds masterfully on the complex, difficult personality weve
come to recognise: tense, volatile, uneasy in his own judgment, hes a clumsy reader of
others mood, painfully aware of the fragile underpinnings of his authority, and not a man to
whom admission of fault, let alone apology, comes easily. Now he finds himself in front of
the assembled Greek army, with no script from Nestor or Odysseus to help him through the
scene, and having to match Achilles apology with a suitably magnanimous concession of his
own, all without losing face.
He begins hesitantly, apparently impaired by his wound; the Greek of line 77 is
ambiguous, and may mean that he doesnt stand up at all, or just that he stands up and makes
his speech from where hes been sitting rather than moving out into the centre. When he
finally gets to the point, its to elaborate vastly on his private analysis of his error to Nestor at
9.11520. There, we could see him fastening on the idea of Ate, Madness or Delusion, as
an external force that clouds judgment disastrously on Zeuss orders. This displaces
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responsibility from Agamemnon himself to an outside agent, and even flatters himself by
claiming the personal attention of Zeus. This peculiar private mythology, which doesnt seem
to be shared by anyone else, is now developed as a full-blown paradeigma, mixing allegory
and storytelling in the manner of Phoenix to Achilles.
the story of Ate (Delusion)
Like Phoenixs Prayers at 9.502ff., Delusion is given both an allegorical physical form and a
divine pedigree as child of Zeus. To deflect any sense that a visitation by Delusion might
reflect badly on himself, Agamemnon immediately points out that not only is the goddess a
senior daughter of Zeus, but Zeus himself has fallen under her power in the past. This then
leads into the engaging and Hesiodic just-so story of why humans make mistakes: because
Zeus threw Delusion out of heaven after she worked with Hera against him to ensure
Heracles subservience to Eurystheus.
The story itself is engagingly told, with Zeus set up as the victim in the opening summary,
and Hera as the trickster were told will outwit him. Then the detailed narrative begins, with
Zeus making his announcement of Heracles birth in direct speech, and Hera trapping him
into sealing his words with an oath that fatally fails to name the child to be born that day.
Then we follow Hera to Argos, where she induces the premature birth of Sthenelus so that he
rather than Heracles fulfils the oath leading, as the audience would know, to Heracles
subservience to Eurystheus, who set him his labours. Zeus doesnt respond, but has one of his
throwing rages (as with the luckless Hephaestus at 1.591 and 15.234) and whirls the goddess
round by her hair before hurling her to earth. Curiously, the goddess hasnt been mentioned
in the body of the story itself, and this final little Hesiodic touch of parable looks like a bit of
an addition by Agamemnon himself.
Having made it as clear as he can that he doesnt accept any real blame for his gargantuan
blunder, Agamemnon can now proceed to make one of his ostentatiously magnanimous
pseudo-apologies (as at 9.1601). He renews his offer of compensation which would have
been hard to withdraw, despite the Phoenixs warning at 9.6025 but adds a characteristic
swipe at the end, implying that Achilles might be more interested in the gifts than in the
fighting. These are the only lines in which Agamemnon addresses Achilles directly; many
commentators read this as a sign of continuing resentment.
Incidentally, yesterday in 141 isnt a slip. Greek days began at sunset, so two evenings
ago from this morning was actually the beginning of the previous day. (Youll probably
have to read that a couple more times before it begins to make sense.)
3. Achilles reply
Achilles response is pointedly minimal. He responds to the barbed closing lines by
disavowing any interest in Agamemnons gifts, and disdains to waste any more time talking
when they could be fighting. There may be an implicit criticism here of the length of
Agamemnons speech. But Achilles main concern is to get the battle started, and as
Agamemnon still hasnt given the order, he urges the army to action on his own account. So
now hes first snubbed Agamemnon, and now tries to bypass him completely.
4. Odysseus proposals
Odysseus sees at once that this wont do. Far from being publicly reconciled, Agamemnon
and Achilles are barely communicating at all, and their words seem charged with rising
tension and mutual contempt. But Odysseus presents his intervention as a purely practical
one: Achilles called the assembly at dawn, so nobody has had any breakfast yet. If Achilles
wants an army at his back, hell have to behave like a member of that army and wait for the
rest of them to be properly fed. Achilles may be their best fighter, but hes not their
commander.
Then he turns to Agamemnon, and we see why he need to buy the time that preparing a
meal will bring. The vague, offhand proposal of delivering the gifts to Achilles ship is not
enough to demonstrate their reconciliation. If Agamemnon wants to show hes renouncing
the quarrel as Achilles has, he needs to make as public a demonstration of it as possible.
Odysseus insists on holding Agamemnon to his original deal, in full and now also in public.
That means a public ceremony of handing over the gifts, the return of Briseis (though neither
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party has even mentioned her this time around), and the oath that Agamemnon originally
offered to swear that he has not slept with her. Achilles, for his part, needs to signal his
reconciliation by sitting down to Agamemnons hospitality. His closing lines are masterly: an
apology, properly made, can actually be a kingly gesture in itself whereas nobody is going
to swallow Agamemnons protestations that he wasnt primarily to blame for the quarrel.
5. Agamemnons assent
One of Agamemnons stronger points is recognising good advice when its given. He readily
agrees to all Odysseus recommendations, and gives orders accordingly, putting Odysseus in
charge of the practical arrangements. He may be enjoying Achilles frustration more than he
should be; certainly he shows no more eagerness than he did before to address Achilles
directly.
1. Agamemnons oath
The last time we saw a ceremony like this was the oaths of truce at the duel of Menelaus and
Paris (3.267ff.). Here, as there, we have an act of sacrifice with Agamemnon, as officiant,
pronouncing the terms of the oath as he makes the sacrificial cut. But this time the oath is
about Agamemnons own past actions, and the ritual gesture has the effect of publicly
solemnising Agamemnons apology to Achilles.
2. Achilles speech
Achilles, for his part, shows himself more willing than before to play his part. He publicly
accepts the apology in the terms that Agamemnon himself has cast it: a visitation of Delusion,
from Zeus, as part of a master plan in which Agamemnon and himself are merely
instruments. And he concludes with an invitation to the army to go ahead with their meal,
though he makes it clear he sees all this as merely a preliminary to battle.
3. Briseis lament
Now comes an entirely unexpected scene, and one of the most moving in the poem. Weve
been thinking of Briseis, and Chryseis before her, as little more than an exchange of pawns,
and certainly Agamemnon and Odysseus have been bracketing her, and the other slave
women, with tripods and cauldrons. No slave speaks elsewhere in the Iliad, and weve no
reason to expect it here. But on being confronted with the corpse of Patroclus, Briseis gives a
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voice to the experience of the wars most voiceless victims: the enslaved survivors of
Achilles massacres, who prefigure the fate of Troy itself.
Briseis, we now learn, has a story very like Andromaches, except that her husband was
himself one of the victims of Achilles Phrygian raids, and she has had to endure being the
slave of her familys killer. Though its not spelled out, ancient commentators assumed that
Mynes, the king of Lyrnessus slain by Achilles, was Briseis husband, and she therefore a
former queen. And yet, despite all shes lost, Patroclus offered her a future of sorts:
promising to induce Achilles to marry her formally when they got back to Greece. How much
of this is true, and how much fond deception by Patroclus, Briseis, or both, is impossible to
gauge. But the impression weve had throughout of Patroclus sympathetic nature is more
vividly reinforced here than at any time during his life.
After she finishes, two famous lines brilliantly generalise from her own speech to the
universal experience of all the other slave women. Their role, as slaves of Achilles, is to join
in the mourning; but each has private sorrows of her own that, as in Briseis case, are the real
subject of lament. Such moments, where the narrator tells us explicitly of a secret thought
behind the public words, are more characteristic of the Odyssey than the Iliad; but in antiquity
this was the most famous of them all.
3. Achilles arms
Now the army musters, and Achilles is the subject of the poems fourth and final arming
scene. Its the most simile-rich of the quartet, with special emphasis on the gleam from his
armour (which is not only divine, but also brand new) in the similes that accompany each
item as he dons them. Only the spear is old, a family heirloom with a history of its own; we
remember that this was the one item Patroclus had to leave behind because he couldnt lift it
(16.1404, quoted again here).
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A. Council in Olympus
To begin this momentous final phase of the action, Zeus summons a full, formal conclave on
Olympus of all the gods, right down to the lowliest meadow-nymph. For the first time, the
full weight of the available divine machinery is brought to bear on the narrative, after Zeuss
promise to Thetis (now fulfilled) drove him to impose an ever-tighter ban on divine activity.
Zeuss command; below, the earth trembles at Poseidons; and down in hell, Hades fears that
the kingdom of the dead will be broken open. Its an awesome, apocalyptic moment. Its
going to be a day to remember.
C. Aeneas v Achilles
With the gods distracted with one another, the mortal action can proceed pretty much as
normal; but the gods can and will break off their combat to intervene at any suitable moment,
as we see in the great duel that dominates the book. Achilles, of course, has no interest in
anyone but Hector in his sights. But as well see, hell have a fight on his hands to get to that
point, because the first to cross his path is the scarcely less formidable Aeneas.
The story of Heracles alluded to here is part of the same cycle of the heros Trojan
adventures as his sack of Troy in the reign of Laomedon (5.63842) and his stormy
homeward journey thanks to Heras intrigues (14.24959, 15.2630). Poseidon and Apollo
had built the walls of Troy for Laomedon, who then refused to pay them; Poseidon then sent
a sea-monster, to which the Trojans were required to sacrifice Laomedons daughter (and
Priams sister) Hesione. Laomedon offered his horses as a reward to Heracles if he killed the
sea-monster and saved Hesione, but then welshed on this bargain too, whereupon Heracles
killed Laomedon and sacked Troy for the first time.
3. the duel
Now the two approach for the duel, and its pretty clear from the lion simile which of them
has the advantage. Theres a bit of a Glaucus-and-Diomedes quality to this encounter, with its
long genealogical speech from the weaker antagonist putting off a very unequal combat, only
for the episode to end with a twist that takes both parties by surprise.
(a) Achilles challenge
Achilles goads Aeneas expertly. First, he rakes up the tensions between Aeneas branch of
the family and the royal house of Priam (13.45961). Ironically, well shortly learn that
Aeneas is indeed destined to inherit from Priam, though neither of them can possibly know
this at the time.
Next he reminds him of their encounter on Mount Ida, of which more details now emerge:
it was Aeneas flight from Achilles to refuge in Lyrnessus that led to Achilles sack of that
entire city, the capture of Briseis and the slaughter of her family. Aeneas, clearly, was lucky
to escape; if he doesnt run again now, hes unlikely to be so fortunate this time.
(b) Aeneas reply
Like Glaucus even longer speech to Diomedes, Aeneas reply sounds like nervous
genealogising to put off a combat he can only lose. Unlike Glaucus, he doesnt even have the
excuse of having been asked. But hes evidently developing the idea planted by Apollo, that
at least in terms of divine parentage Aeneas can trump Achilles ancestry with ease. There
may also be a hint of defensiveness against Achilles dig at the status of his family line
relative to Priams, since he now gives a detailed and, it has to be admitted, fascinating
account of the Zeus
entire family tree
by branch and Dardanus
generation. It looks
like this adding in Erichthonius
the names of
Priams nephews
Tros
from book 15,
where all three
were killed, and the Ilus Assaracus Ganymede
hero of the later
epic A e t h i o p i s, Laomedon Capys
Memnon, who isnt
mentioned in the Tithonus Priam Lampus Clytius Hicetaon Anchises
Iliad.
Memnon Hector Dolops Caletor Melanippus Aeneas
(&c.)
Aeneas is thus Hectors third cousin, from the younger branch of the house of Tros, but far
outside the line of inheritance. The methodical genealogy is enlivened with glorious little
snippets of family history embedded: the love of the North Wind for Erichthonius mares; the
abduction of Ganymede to heaven. Despite the sense of temporising, theres a defiant feeling
of beat that to the whole virtuoso recitation.
Aeneas closes with an amusingly protracted expression of disdain for protracted speech.
But hes aware that he needs to end the conversation and get on with the fight, and he doesnt
give Achilles a chance to respond.
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speech, and instead frames his appeal in terms of his own relationship of mutual support with
the other soldiers. He needs them, and they can count on him.
2. Hector rallies the Trojans
Hector, in contrast, speaks only of Achilles, and makes dealing with him his business. But his
vague promise of partial victory and his formidable closing description dont sound like the
sentiments of a man likely to win such an encounter.
3. Apollo warns Hector off
Apollo is the first to spot the parallels with Aeneas near-fatal challenge, and sees that a
formal duel would be disastrous for his champion. Hectors best chance is to meet Achilles in
the general mele, with others around them.
4. Achilles aristeia begins
So begins Achilles slaughter, which will gather pace over the course of this book and the
next until the Trojans are completely routed and Hector alone left to face him. The first
sequence sees four kills in quick succession, which together give us our first glimpse of what
differentiates Achilles from his peers as a killing machine.
Iphition The first kill is a spearthrust of extraordinary power and violence that splits
his victims head in two. We did see the same effect once before, from
Patroclus at 16.412 but that was from a stone, whereas this one comes
solely from a stab of the spear. Its followed up with a Lie there pattern
of boasting-speech thats reserved for Achilles in his aristeia, and which
conveys a sense of the emotional energy Achilles invests in each kill, which
often needs to be discharged with a speech over the body. An unusual and
grisly touch of pathos comes with the final glimpse of the corpse
disappearing under the wheels of the chariots.
Demoleon Achilles second victim similarly dies from a skull-splitting spear-thrust
Hippodamas and his third gets one in the back as he tries to escape, with a poignant
simile comparing his dying screams to a bull being sacrificed. Now the
Trojans are running.
Polydorus Achilles top-scoring kill, though, is a son of Priam himself, with an
especially ironic and poignant story. Hes the baby of the family and Priams
favourite, and has joined the battle against his fathers orders. Polydorus,
like Hippodamas, is running away; but Achilles now throws his spear,
disembowelling him gruesomely from behind.
5. Achilles v Hector: the abortive duel
This is the sight that stings Hector into action, in defiance of Apollos instructions. Achilles is
galvanised by his approach, and things move fast now.
(a) the challenges
Achilles challenge is terse, minimal, grim. He has no words for Hector, but only the point of
his spear.
Hector responds with an inadvertent echo of Aeneas opening words at 2002 a little
signal to the audience of the artful parallels between these two duels, and thus of the
imminent outcome. He doesnt make rash boasts on this occasion; on the contrary, he frankly
admits that Achilles outclasses him, but is willing to take his chance anyway.
(b) the gods interfere
But no duel between these two can reach a conclusion while the gods are able to interpose
themselves freely. First Athene deflects Hectors spear from Achilles, and then, when
Achilles charges, Apollo swathes Hector in a protective mist. Achilles four charges recall
Patroclus three charges at the walls of Troy, his rebuff by Apollo, and his final assault on the
Trojan ranks that led to his death on the fourth attack. But unlike Patroclus, Achilles sees
when to back off, even though hes only a spears length away from the vengeance he craves.
As with Aeneas, he sees the handiwork of a god here, and that he wont be able to take
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Hector without clear divine backing of his own. How and when that will happen now
becomes a matter of suspense and conjecture for the audience, as Achilles finds himself
driven again to the slaughter of minor figures instead.
part of a more general increase in attention to landscape and detail as the climax under the
walls of Troy approaches.
B. Lycaon
The Lycaon episode is the centrepiece of Achilles aristeia: a grimly magnificent
demonstration of Achilles new attitude to warfare and death in the light of Patroclus loss,
his own quest for vengeance, and the newly-sealed certainty of his own doom.
1. his story
We havent met Lycaon in person before, though Paris borrowed some of his armour at 3.333
for the duel with Menelaus. Now, the narrative is paused while we learn his story: captured
from one of Priams orchards where he was working during a night raid by Achilles, and sold
as a slave on Lemnos to the Trojans main supplier Euneus son of Jason (7.46775). Later we
learn more about this deal (23.7409): Achilles agent in the sale of Lycaon to Euneus was
none other than Patroclus himself. Euneus then sold Lycaon on to an island ally of Priams,
Etion of Imbros, who returned him to his father via Arisbe on the Hellespont a roundabout
route perhaps devised to keep him out of Greek clutches. Hes only been home in Troy
twelve days, meaning that he must have arrived back during the early days of Achilles two-
week sulk (in 1.48892), so its not surprising that Achilles hasnt seen him since his return.
If this all seems pretty convoluted, heres a diagram which tries to explain what happened.
1
Priam Achilles
5
Etion Euneus
of 3 of
Imbros Lemnos
300 oxen
Lycaon
price
2. Achilles soliloquy
Achilles immediately recognises Lycaon because hes taken off his helmet to lighten him in
his escape from the river. The speech is presented as a (rare) soliloquy, but most
commentators read it as sardonic joking, presumably intended for Lycaons and other ears.
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As we learn in a moment from his own mouth, Lycaon is an extremely valuable captive: the
hundred oxen Achilles received for him is the value of Glaucus complete set of golden
armour at 6.236, and Euneus himself received three times that amount from Etion. That
Achilles is no longer interested in cashing in his value as a living prisoner speaks volumes
about how much has changed since their last encounter.
3. the supplication
Lycaon succeeds better than the hapless Tros (20.463ff.), who similarly made a dash at
Achilles to assume a suppliant posture, but was stabbed before he could make contact.
Lycaon manages to dodge the spear and get into position to deliver his speech, at the same
time restraining Achilles spear with his free hand. Having assumed the suppliant posture, as
he immediately explains, he has a right to be heard. First he reminds Achilles of the price he
fetched as a prisoner, and reveals the even greater price he could have fetched if Achilles had
sold him directly to Etion. Then, perhaps sensing that Achilles is not in a mood for financial
incentives, he tries to appeal to his pity for the mother whose other son he has already killed
(at 20.40718); and he tries to exclude himself from Achilles revenge by pleading that hes
only the half-brother, not a full brother, of Patroclus killer.
4. Achilles reply
But none of this cuts any ice with the new Achilles. His reply, and its followup, are among
the poems great speeches: a grim summary of how his world has been changed by the events
of the last 24 hours. The old Achilles would have happily ransomed his captive; but that was
before Patroclus death and Achilles decision to accept his own as the price to be paid for
vengeance. Patroclus is dead, and soon he will be too; if even such as these can die, in
Achilles case willingly, then nobody else has a right to make a fuss about it.
1. Asteropaeus
The gods first response is to present Achilles with his first serious opponent since Aeneas in
the previous book. Asteropaeus first appeared at 12.102 as the Paeonian leader of the allied
attack on the Greek wall, alongside the Lycian commanders Sarpedon and Glaucus. He seems
to have taken over the leadership of his contingent after their original catalogue leader
Pyraechmes (2.848) was killed by Patroclus at 16.287. Now, the river-god pits him as his
divinely-supported champion against Achilles: the beginnings of the books escalation of the
action from the mortal plane to the divine. Hes an apt choice of champion, as Asteropaeus is
himself descended from a river-god a fact that will prove crucial in what follows.
(a) the challenges
Achilles doesnt recognise Asteropaeus, and we quickly learn why: hes another figure whos
only arrived on the scene of battle during Achilles period on strike. Achilles terse challenge
and question carries the usual warning of certain death for any who stands against him; but
Asteropaeus doesnt flinch, and explains his genealogy (which Achilles needs to know for the
sequel) before advancing to meet the challenge.
(b) the exchance of spearcasts
Because Achilles hasnt encountered Asteropaeus before, hes unaware of the trick that
makes him especially formidable, which takes Achilles by suprise as much as it does the
audience. Though its quite common for a warrior to carry two spears, Asteropaeus is able to
throw them simultaneously instead of in succession, because he can throw with both hands
rather than just with his right. Its impossible for even Achilles to dodge more than one spear
at a time, and Asteropaeus is the one Trojan to succeed in drawing blood from him while
Achilles misses entirely with his counter-throw.
(c) the sword of Achilles
Unfortunately for Asteropaeus, hes thrown both his spears and now faces an Achilles
charging in for the second phase of the duel close combat with the sword, where Achilles is
unbeatable. Asteropaeus one hope is to throw Achilles spear back at him; but as we saw at
16.13944, Achilles spear is so heavy that even Patroclus couldnt lift it. The familiar three
times and then on the fourth pattern is powerfully used here to heighten the tension as
Achilles closes in and his sword makes its the inevitable strike.
This is the only time in this book that Achilles pauses in his killing to strip one of his
victims armour. His motive for doing so now is only apparent two books later: Asteropaeus
armour is destined to be part of the prizes awarded at Patroclus funeral games (23.5602,
23.8078).
(d) Achilles boast
Achilles now delivers his second boasting-speech of the book, using Asteropaeus boast of
his own river-god ancestry to compare lineages, further disparaging not just Asteropaeus
ancestor but the river-god watching this whole episode, whose power is now slighted for the
second time. This time were not told explicitly of the gods reaction, which can be
sufficiently imagined from the state of his anger even before this episode.
Athenes indestructible victims are humbled but not damaged, and the juxtaposition of this
scene with the merciless and terrifying aristeia of the mortal Achilles highlights the essential
triviality of all such clashes between god and god.
2. Agenors stand
Apollos strategy is a replay of the river-gods with Asteropaeus: he finds himself an
appropriate champion to send into action against Achilles. His choice is a Trojan commander
whos been frequently glimpsed in the thick of the action, but has so far been denied a
starring role: Agenor, the most powerful of the Trojan elder Antenors large if now decimated
brood of sons. Apollo both infuses Agenor with courage and conceals himself invisibly
nearby; but the parallels with the Asteropaeus episode still lead us to wonder whether even
this will be enough to save Agenor from a similar fate.
(a) Agenors soliloquy
Despite Apollos injection of valour, Agenor has doubts about facing Achilles. He expresses
his conflict of impulses in a soliloquy that closely prefigures Hectors great soliloquy in the
next book. For Agenor, in contrast to Hector, its not primarily a decision about honour.
Agenor would happily run if he thought hed be likely to survive, but he realises that merely
running for the city with the rest of them would simply identify him as a high-status target,
while running away from the city might attract Achilles attention with even less hope of
escape. His best chance is to stand and fight; and so, a leopard against spear-wielding hunters,
he advances to the duel. As well see, however, the speculations about the consequences of
running away are more than just a calculation of odds; all this has more of a part in Apollos
plan than we so far suspect.
(b) Agenor challenges Achilles
Agenors stand seems doomed, but his speech of challenge is a spirited display of defiance,
and his spear-throw is only deflected by Achilles impenetrable divine armour.
(c) Apollo draws Achilles off
But now Apollos plan becomes clear. Having caught Achilles attention with the challenge
and duel, he whisks the real Agenor invisibly away and takes his place in mortal disguise.
Then he promptly turns tail and runs away from the city and out into the plain as fast as
Achilles can pursue. Meanwhile, the remnants of the Trojan and allied army escapes
unscathed into the city gates, while Achilles is left chasing a decoy farther and farther from
the city. Only one Trojan warrior remains behind on the plain: the one whos been so
conspicuously absent from this book, but whose moment of truth is now come.
A. Achilles approach
Apollos ruse at the end of the previous book has lured Achilles away from his slaughter of
the fleeing Trojans, giving them time to escape into the city. Now we see the consequences of
this at four different points of the action in rapid succession.
Inside the city, the Trojans saved by Apollos action relax at last.
Outside on the plain, the Greek army reoccupies the battlefield and advances towards the
walls. So intense was the focus on Achilles in the previous book that the presence of the
rest of the army was barely acknowledged at all.
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Immediately outside the Scaean gates, Hector stands alone, ready to face Achilles to the
death.
And what, meanwhile, of Achilles himself?
2. Priam watches
As Achilles charges back towards the city, the camera angle changes: were back with Priam,
watching from his position on the battlements as the deadly figure approaches in the distance.
The famous simile compares the glitter from his armour to the light of Sirius rising the
brightest star in the sky, but also the star whose rising heralded the onset of the dog days of
high summer with their unbearable heat (and heatstroke, which may be the origin of Sirius
traditional association in Greek folk medicine with fever).
4. Hecubas appeal
Hector stands firm, and doesnt respond; well be taken into his actual thoughts in a moment.
But first his mother Hecuba now adds her own appeal, in a celebrated scene much imitated in
later literature. Her appeal is primarily emotional, using her own motherhood as a lever on
Hectors feelings. But in speaking on behalf of the women of the family, she picks up an
important theme from Priams speech: if Hector allows himself to be killed by Achilles,
Hector himself will suffer the fate Priam has just pictured for his own corpse. The women
will be denied even their rights of mourning; as weve already seen, the new Achilles is
beyond the niceties of releasing corpses back to their families for proper funeral rites.
Hector again makes no response, but merely waits for Achilles like a snake waiting to
strike. Whats going on in his mind? Why is he making a stand now?
5. Hectors soliloquy
Now at last we see into Hectors thoughts, and what impels him to face Achilles this day. We
saw a soliloquy very like this in the previous book when Agenor decided to make his own
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stand against Achilles. But he had Apollos support, and Apollo has so far been conspicuous
in this scene by his absence.
As Hector sees it, he has three options:
(i) Take refuge in Troy with the others, as his parents are urging. But weve seen all along
how reluctant Hector has been to throw away the advantage he won on the previous two
days. He recognises now that Polydamas was right to advise retreat into the city the
previous evening (18.254ff.); but if he does so now, hell have to live not only with the
final abandonment of the Scamander plain to the Greeks, but with the additional guilt of
having exposed his people to the slaughter and rout theyve suffered this day from
Achilles.
(ii) Try to negotiate a surrender: the return of Helen and the handover of all the treasures of
Troy, in exchange for the lives of his people. But Achilles is only interested in killing
Hector, and would hardly be likely to negotiate with Hector of all people, even if Helen
or Troy meant anything to him any more, and the result would only be the least heroic
death of all. A particularly fine touch is the wrily incongruous simile of a pair of lovers
billing and cooing: as Hector observes, Achilles isnt really in the mood for that kind of
conversation.
(iii) Stand and fight. Hectors instinct, and his fatal weakness, is that hed rather gamble and
lose than throw a chance away. He knows that sooner or later hell have to face Achilles
in combat, and he doesnt know, as Achilles does, that the outcome is predetermined. If
he has to take his chance, it may as well be now.
B. The pursuit
But as Achilles approaches, Hector does none of these things. The demonic blaze of light that
Priam first saw from the battlements is now seen again, this time through Hectors eyes,with
just the helmet and the colossal spear distinguishable against the glare.
2. the springs
The landscape around the city has been taking increasingly vivid and specific shape as the
battle moves closer to the walls. The fig tree was mentioned by Andromache (6.433) and
turned up in the topography of Agamemnons aristeia at 11.167. Now new landmarks join it:
a lookout point, a cart-track, and a remarkable pair of hot and cold springs. These famous
lines are one of the poems boldest moments of flashback. The narrative stops, lingers on the
springs, and fades briefly into an image from another time: the kind of innocent peacetime
activity now obliterated from the landscape around Troy. Then we suddenly snap back to the
present, and the narrator goes under the skin of the scene in an unusual structure of double
simile in which the comparison is introduced first as a negative (this was no ordinary
footrace) and then varied as a formal simile (it was like a chariot-race at a funeral games the
very event which forms the centrepiece of the next book). Finally, in a grand narrative coup,
the camera pulls back to reveal the whole scene being witnessed by all the gods on Olympus.
C. The endgame
From this point on, Hetor doesnt stand a chance. It would have been easy enough to give
Hector a heroic last stand in which he does the Hollywood thing and nearly succeeds in
overcoming the odds against him. Significantly, thats not how Homer plays it. Like
Patroclus at the moment of his death, Hector is completely overwhelmed from the start, and
the drama lies not in any defiance of his doom but in his failure to realise whats happening to
him.
The duel itself follows the familiar type-scene pattern of challenge, spearcasts, close
combat, and boasting-speech by the victim. But the pattern is enlivened by some artful
surprises which work unexpected variations on a sequence we think of as almost
mechanically predictable.
3. Hectors challenge
Hector is evidently the only one able to perceive the figure of Dephobus, who he thinks is
standing behind him as he stands to face Achilles at last and issue his final challenge. This
will be a duel to the death, but Hector proposes that they first agree to a deal on the outcome:
the winner is permitted to strip the victims armour, but swears to return the corpse to his
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people for burial. Hector offers this unilaterally, but asks for Achilles oath that he will do the
same: perhaps a sign that Hecubas warning has struck home.
4. Achilles response
Achilles refusal to agree is the clearest sign yet that the fate of Hectors corpse will be an
issue in need of further action to resolve it, whatever the outcome of the duel. But its worth
noting that he doesnt say anything about the specifics of Hectors proposal; his objection is
simply to the idea of any agreement between himself and his bitterest enemy. As his
memorable simile put it, it would be like men doing a deal with lions, or wolves with lambs.
Theyre different species, they cant communicate, and irreconcilable enmity is built into
their very natures. What Achilles will need to learn by the end of the poem is that the killing
of men is not like the killing of animals, and that in animalising their relationship as one of
predator to prey hes in a state of denial about basic realities of being human.
8. the speeches
The pointed parallels with the scene of Patroclus death continue now with a final exchange
of speeches, culminating in an eerie prophecy by the dying victim of his killers own death in
return.
(a) Achilles boast
Achilles delivers a coarse and brutal boasting-speech over the corpse, just as Hector had over
Patroclus. Now that the moment of his vengeance has come, it still isnt enough. Not content
with killing Hector, he promises to leave his body for wild creatures to feed on, whereas
Patroclus will receive a heros burial. Now we see the full significance of the hard-fought
recovery of Patroclus body in books 1718. If the Trojans had captured the corpse, theyd
have something to trade for Hector, and perhaps Hector himself would have escaped with his
life. Now, the Trojans have nothing to barter, and revenge has done nothing to dilute
Achilles anger, grief, and guilt, which will continue to play out in brutal disregard for normal
human standards of conduct towards the dead.
(b) Hectors plea
Hector makes one final attempt. He cant assume a suppliant posture, obviously, but he
activates the protocol and adds an appeal to Achilles known emotional weak spot for his
parents: accept a ransom for the corpse, and allow it a proper funeral, just as Patroclus will
have.
(c) Achilles refusal
Achilles is only enraged further by the appeal, and dismisses it in his most brutal and
vehement terms yet. Consciously or not, he reverts to the terms in which he rejected
Agamemnons compensation at 9.379ff. the clearest sign yet that Achilles present rage
hasnt tamed itself at all, but merely been redirected from one target to another. Now, at the
moment of what should be its end, all he can think about is further outlets for his seemingly
limitless reserves of fury, which will now be turned from the living Hector to his corpse.
(d) Hectors prophecy
Hector responds with the same kind of uncanny prophetic vision in the moment of his death
that we saw from Patroclus at 16.84454. His words are ambiguous in the Greek as in the
translation, so that its not clear whether the curse Hector speaks of is Achilles death or
some consequence thereof. But either way theres an implication that Achilles may still have
had a chance to defer his own death if hed accepted Hectors proposal, and that in spurning it
hes sealed his own fate.
Now, for the first time, Achilles is told precisely where and by whom hell be killed: in
the very gates where Hector made his own stand, and by the combination of Hectors brother
Paris and Apollo, in a scene pointedly reminiscent of the combination of divine and human
action that killed Patroclus. We already knew some of this from the divine horse Xanthus
prophecy at 19.417 (which merely specified a god and a mortal as Achilles slayers) and
21.2778 (where Achilles reported a prophecy of Thetis that hed die under Troys
battlements from the arrows of Apollo). But the naming of Paris and the Scaean gates are
both new. In the lost epic sequel the Aethiopis, Hectors prediction was fulfilled: Achilles
attempted to storm Troy and was shot down in the gateway by Paris and Apollo.
(e) Achilles response
Even Hector hasnt told him the most important information about his death, namely its
timing; but Achilles tersely accepts the consequences of his actions, and the inextricable
connection of his own death to Hectors. All this, however, only serves to underline the gap
between Achilles readiness to face his own death and his inability to deal with the
consequences of others.
D. The aftermath
Patroclus died in the thick of battle, with armies ready on either side to fight it out first for his
armour and then for the recovery of his corpse. But the Trojans have all fled back into the
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shelter of the walls, leaving Achilles possession of Hectors body unchallenged exactly as
Hecuba foresaw. Achilles accordingly strips his armour back off the corpse; but then hes
able to do what could never happen in a normal days battle, and turns the body over to his
troops for mutilation and abuse. A ghastly vignette follows of the Greek army trooping past
Hectors body to work out their own grievances against the dead man, who came so close
only the day before to destroying their camp, burning their fleet, and slaughtering the
survivors.
1. Achilles speech
An unusual speech follows from Achilles, proposing a followup plan and then abruptly
retracting it in mid-speech. But it works well as a psychological presentation of Achilles
divided instincts at this moment. The warlord in him knows that this is a pivotal moment in
the war, and that they ought to follow it up with an assault on the city; but he remembers his
vow to Patroclus, which for him must take priority, and proposes instead that they return to
camp for the promised funeral, satisfied with todays achievement.
3. Priams reaction
This sight is the trigger for a sequence of intense scenes of reaction in Troy itself. During the
actual combat, weve heard no more of Priam and Hecuba, but now each erupts in grief.
Priam, in particular, descends to the gates and babbles about throwing himself on Achilles
mercy to plead for the return of his sons corpse. At the time, this seems like a bereaved old
mans suicidal impulse; but for all his apparent derangement he already has an astute grasp of
how Achilles will need to be dealt with, if at all. As Hector found, he cant be bargained with;
but something might be done with his lingering emotional vulnerability on the subject of his
father, and Priam immediately realises that the only man who stands a chance of success is
himself.
4. Hecubas reaction
Now the spotlight turns on Hecuba, who as the matriarch of the family leads the formal
mourning. Her obituary speech for Hector here is a trailer for the full-scale send-off hell get
in the final scene of the poem.
1. that evening
The first phase of the ceremonies is the business of Achilles and Patroclus Myrmidons,
rather than of the army as a whole. Achilles plays his part in this, but remains somewhat
detached, having committed himself to break his fast not with them but with Agamemnon.
(a) the salute to the corpse
First, by Achilles order, comes a chariot procession around the bier on which Patroclus
body is laid out with Achilles chariot still dragging Hectors corpse, as he indicates in his
speech. He delivers a speech formally announcing the fulfilment of his vow at 18.3347: the
body of Hector, and the delivery for human sacrifice of twelve Trojan captives. Hectors
corpse is then roughly deposited in the dirt as an offering.
(b) the feast
Next, Achilles lays on a huge funeral feast for the Myrmidons from animals slaughtered in
some kind of blood ritual in the dead mans honour. The actual details of the ritual, and
especially of what is done with the blood, remain rather mysterious and debated. But Achilles
doesnt join in the feast, because he has unfinished business with Agamemnon.
(c) Achilles refuses to bathe
Achilles is now free to break his own fast on the terms originally proposed by Odysseus
(19.17980): a private feast laid on by Agamemnon, as part of the terms of their
reconciliation. Were told at the outset that Achilles is reluctant, and throughout the scene
Achilles demonstrates that his thoughts are still back there in the Myrmidon camp. The meal
begins awkwardly with Achilles refusal to wash, and thus to signal his full reintegration into
the group, until the formal process of the funeral is complete. And though he sits down to the
feast, hes already ordering Agamemnon about with instructions for the building of the pyre
to begin at dawn. This time, Agamemnon raises no protest, and its possible the task is
understood as something of an honour.
(d) the ghost appears in the night
After an uneasy meal, Achilles makes his way back, but instead of sleeping in his own shelter
he lays himself down on the open beach near the corpse. Now comes a famous scene: the
apparition of Patroclus ghost in his dreams to plead for a quick burial and a common urn and
grave-mound for their remains. Achilles postponement of the funeral may have been
intended as a gesture of respect, but for the dead it only delays the process of closure, as
without the proper rites the soul of the dead cannot cross over the underworld river to rest.
This idea, which also turns up in Odyssey 11, has of course implications for Hector if his
body is denied proper burial so the stakes are being subtly raised.
A moving touch here is the revelation, for the first time, of how Patroclus came to be
raised with Achilles. Weve heard tales of other refugees taken in by Peleus following
killings or near-killings at home (Phoenix at 9.47882, Epeigeus at 16.5706); but this is the
only one to have happened in childhood, and this posthumous tale of the young Patroclus
dark secret gives unexpected depth and resonance to his life-history.
Patroclus too knows now of Achilles imminent death and its destined circumstances,
prompting his request that they be buried together as theyre going to die so close together.
This is a powerful touch; it reminds us that, as Achilles prepares the remains of Patroclus for
burial, hes also knowingly preparing his own grave.
The scene closes with a famous moment, as Achilles tries to embrace the ghost in his
dream, only for it to melt away at his touch. Well see a repeat of this haunting image of
bereavement, a living man trying and failing to embrace a ghost, when Odysseus encounters
his dead mother in the underworld in Odyssey 11. There the sense of loss and frustration is
uppermost; here Achilles seems almost cheered in contrast by the encounter, though even he
doesnt take much consolation from the image of an afterlife presented.
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1. the prizes
First, all the prizes for the entire games are set out: an impressive personal display of wealth
and lavishness, but also an incentive to the assembled warriors to try their skill and prowess
against one another.
2. the events
There are eight events in total, of which the longest by far taking up nearly half the book in
itself is the first, the spectacular and dramatic chariot race. Thats followed by seven further
events: boxing, wrestling, footrace, combat, shot-put, archery, and javelin. All involve the
demonstration of essentially martial skills and techniques in a friendly competitive
framework, though with winners and losers just as in the real-life warfare on which the events
are based. This allows the characters whove been excluded from the battle narrative of the
past three books to return for one final demonstration of their prowess, both individually and
in competition with one another. As well as a brilliant display of narrative virtuosity in its
own right this is without question the most influential passage of sports writing in literature
the whole scene is a celebration of the competitive culture of the emerging world of archaic
and classical Greece, and the continuity it claimed with the military world both contemporary
and mythical.
(a) the chariot race
First up is the chariot race, a massive event with no fewer than five prizes on offer. It has
pride of place in the programme not just because its the most spectacular (and risky) event,
but because its the event that Patroclus himself would have been associated with in his
original capacity as Achilles own charioteer though of course we never had a chance to see
him in that role in the Iliad itself. For the same reason, though, Achilles himself wont be
competing, in this or in any other event; and with his unbeatable divine horses out of the
running, the field is suddenly wide open.
(1) the five contestants
The roll-call of contestants is something of a test of how much attention the audience has
been paying in earlier books. Who was Eumelus, where did we hear of him before, and why
is he the first to be named in this event? (A. At 2.7617 Eumelus was singled out by the
Muse at the end of the Catalogue of Ships as the owner of the best horses after Achilles
own.) Next to claim a place is Diomedes, using not his own chariot and horses but ones he
captured from Aeneas; which book was this in? (A. He captured the horses in 5.31927, and
later showed them off to the old connoisseur Nestor in his daredevil rescue at 8.1058.
Clearly Diomedes is very pleased with his capture, and keen to try them out in competition.
Notice that, like all the heroes wounded three days earlier, he seems to have recovered
sufficiently to take part in the events of this book.)
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The other three contestants are Menelaus (who borrows one of his horses from his brother
Agamemnon), Antilochus, and Meriones. A bookmaker would probably see Eumelus and
Diomedes as the odds-on favourites, with the others some way behind. Eumelus has the
Muses endorsement for quality of horses, while Diomedes has treated us to some spectacular
chariot action as both passenger and driver in earlier books and is described below as the
most skilful charioteer by a wide margin. But one of the other contestants has an advantage
that may yet cause an upset
Nestors advice to Antilochus
The acknowledged guru of Homeric charioteering is the veteran Nestor, who is too old to
drive in a race, but can give his son Antilochus the benefit of his long experience. Nestors
analysis of the lineup is frank and astute: Antilochus has the slowest horses of the five, but a
chariot race is only partly about speed, and if he can plan for a tight and tricky manoeuvre
hugging the turning-post, he can make up in tactics what he lacks in intrinsic speed. One of
the clever things about this speech is that it dramatises the race ahead of the actual event: we
go into it with a map of the course and someone a little unexpected to root for: a victory for
Antilochus will be a vindication for Nestor as well.
(2) the race
The contestants draw lots (shaken out of a helmet) for lanes, and Antilochus wins pole
position. This actually makes Nestors advice largely irrelevant, as he now needs do nothing
but hold his lane in order to make the tight turn advised. But Diomedes, who is now
confirmed by the narrator as the clear favourite, draws the outer lane: a significant handicap
that helps to compensate for his overwhelming advantage in skill. Achilles finds another
cameo role for Phoenix as a track official positioned at the turning-post, and the race gets
under way.
The out-run proceeds without drama, and if we were expecting a fracas at the turning-post
it doesnt in the event materialise. But as they approach the home stretch Eumelus advantage
in speed starts to tell, with only Diomedes keeping close behind him. It looks as though the
first two places are secure.
Apollo obstructs Diomedes
But weve forgotten that the gods like their favourites to win, and this turns out to apply in
the pseudo-combat of the racetrack as much as on the real battlefield. Apollo is no friend to
Diomedes, where as 2.7667 let slip that Eumelus legendary horses were bred by Apollo
himself. So Apollo introduces one of those divinely-instigated accidents that befell Teucer
and Ajax in book 15: he knocks the whip from Diomedes hand, allowing Eumelus to pull far
ahead.
Athene thwarts Eumelus
But as weve seen on the battlefield, one gods intervention is liable to provoke anothers;
and so it is here, as Diomedes patron Athene intervenes on his behalf to reverse Apollos
action (by returning Diomedes his whip) and countering with a move of her own against
Eumelus which even Apollo will be unable to reverse. By breaking the yoke that holds
Eumelus horses together as a pair, she uncouples his horses abruptly from the chariot so that
the pole strikes the ground with a sudden braking effect, precipitating a violent crash from
which Eumelus is lucky to emerge with only superficial injuries.
With Eumelus out of the race, it looks like a clear win for Diomedes, and Menelaus,
Antilochus, and Meriones a good way behind in that order. But there are more surprises in
store
Antilochus applies Nestors tactics
Antilochus realises that Diomedes is out of reach, but still has his eye on second place, if only
he can pull past Menelaus. As it happens, Nestors tactical advice about getting through on
the inside will turn out to be the key not, as Nestor himself anticipated, at the turning-post,
but as they come into the home stretch. First, however, Antilochus delivers a hugely
entertaining speech of exhortation and threat to the horses: (a) dont let a mare beat you, and
(b) if you lose, my father will have you slaughtered.
This, or his tone, is enough to spur the horses to catch Menelaus up; and now Antilochus
uses Nestors trick of eyeing up the terrain in advance to spot a moment to apply his
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manoeuvre. Menelaus steers to avoid a dip in the road, and Antilochus accelerates alongside
him, forcing Menelaus to give way as the road narrows. Its a dangerous manoeuvre, but
Antilochus has rightly gambled on Menelaus being the one to give way. A furious Menelaus
is left in third place, but vows to take the matter up with the referee at the end of the race.
the home stretch
Now we cut from the racers to the spectators at the finishing-line, who have seen nothing of
all this apart from clouds of dust in the distance. But now Idomeneus identifies the nearest
chariots driver as Diomedes, from a combination of his distantly-audible voice and the
distinctive colouring of his horses.
Idomeneus Idomeneus now gives the worlds earliest surviving sports commentary, as he
& Ajax II correctly concludes that Diomedes is in the lead and that Eumelus (who was
leading when the chariots were last distinguishable on the out-run) must have
suffered an accident. He invites others to corroborate, only to be challenged by
Locrian Ajax: how can Idomeneus ageing eyes make out so much at this
distance? In fact, as we know, Idomeneus has used a combination of visual
clues, hearing, and astute deduction to arrive at his conclusion, and is angered
by Ajaxs scepticism to the point of offering a wager on the accuracy of his
prediction. (This would be the first bet on a horse in western history, if it
werent for what happens next.)
Achilles Achilles sees the quarrel developing, and for the first of several times in this
makes book he steps in to ease tensions with his own considerable skills of
peace diplomacy. This is an Achilles we havent seen since the assembly he called in
book 1, only to be drawn personally into Agamemnons quarrel himself. Now,
however, he deftly defuses the rising tensions between these two other
warriors. Such quarrelling is beneath their dignity, and theyll find out soon
enough which of them was right about the winners identity.
the result
Now the chariots come in one by one, vindicating Idomeneus but presenting a further
challenge for Achilles as referee.
1. Diomedes First across the line, as expected, is Diomedes. A nice touch is that hes
greeted at the finish by his old chariot-mate Sthenelus, who served him so
well in his chariot-based aristeia in books 56.
2. Antilochus Next is Antilochus; but were reminded he owes his placing to tactics rather
than speed, and that a dispute is imminent over the manoeuvre.
3. Menelaus Menelaus, meanwhile, is so close behind that hes on the verge of regaining
his place as they cross the finish.
4. Meriones Meriones, on the other hand, has made no impression at all in this race, and
comes in well behind
5. Eumelus leaving the unlucky Eumelus to limp in on foot.
the award of the prizes
Now comes a further round of delicate umpiring by Achilles. He has to decide how to treat
Eumelus accident, and how to deal with the dispute over second place between Menelaus
and Antilochus all without rubbing any of these volatile egos the wrong way. How will he
manage it?
consolation prize for Eumelus
Achilles first proposal is generous but flawed: to award Eumelus, the clear favourite, the
prize of second place after Diomedes. Since he would have won but for his accident (which
we know was entirely the result of partisan divine meddling which backfired), this seems
eminently fair except that it pushes all the other finishers down a place.
Antilochus disputes
Antilochus, who has made the best showing in this event, challenges the proposal, in terms
that cant help stirring uneasy echoes in our memories. The word here translated prize
(aethlon) isnt actually the same as the word used at 1.118 (geras) and throughout the ensuing
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quarrel, but the very notion of taking one mans reward away from him without his
agreement to compensate another threatens a repeat of the original quarrel. Like
Agamemnon, but more so, Antilochus flatly refuses to give up his prize; if Achilles wants to
find a prize for Eumelus, hell have to come up with an extra one.
Achilles makes good
Another warrior might think twice before challenging Achilles in these terms; but Antilochus
has built up a good relationship with Achilles, and the two of them have bonded further over
the traumatic episode of reporting Patroclus death. Achilles cheerfully adopts Antilochus
proposal, and proposes as Eumelus prize part of the spoils from his recent days killing: the
armour he stripped two days earlier from Asteropaeus (21.183), which will also contribute a
prize to the combat event later on in the book.
Menelaus challenges Antilochus foul
But though Eumelus and Antilochus are now happy, Menelaus has his own grievance to raise.
In a further ominous echo of the quarrel in book 1, Menelaus instigates a formal assembly
with a herald and a staff for the speaker: this is to be a much more serious and formal
complaint. In the absence of witnesses, Menelaus cant use direct proof; but he calls on
Antilochus to swear in front of all the assembled witnesses that he didnt owe his placing to a
foul.
Antilochus yields the prize
This is a tense moment, but Antilochus handles it brilliantly. Were expecting him to stand up
to Menelaus as he did to Achilles, but he does exactly the opposite: deferring to Menelaus
age and status, and voluntarily yielding the second prize he fought for so doggedly a moment
ago with Achilles, without even getting into a discussion of what happened during the race.
In the end, a horse is just a horse; what matters among comrades at arms is mutual respect
and concord.
Its a generous gesture, and while Antilochus is wise not to get on the wrong side of
Agamemnons closely-protected brother, were clearly meant to take it at face value.
Menelaus returns it
Menelaus is caught completely offguard by the unexpected generosity of Antilochus
response, and immediately (and characteristically) softens. In another of the books reminders
of earlier action, he remembers all the times in the poem when he and Antilochus have
depended closely on one another most recently in getting word of Patroclus death to
Achilles in books 1718, but also in earlier books. At 5.56172 Antilochus saved Menelaus
life by supporting him when he went to face Aeneas alone; while at 15.56891 Menelaus
alerted Antilochus to an opportunity to use his speed effectively in the Greeks darkest hour.
Moved he acknowledges the gesture, and then trumps it by handing the mare back to
Antilochus in exchange for the third-prize cauldron.
the spare prize awarded to Nestor
All this has made for an engaging and instructive display of how status disputes among
Homeric warriors should be resolved. But theres a loose end left over: Achilles production
of a sixth prize has left the original prize for last place unclaimed. This is the opportunity for
an inspired coup of diplomacy from Achilles: he awards the prize on his own initiative to the
master charioteer whose expertise contributed so much to the race, unable though he is to
compete directly in this or any other event.
Achilles presentation speech to Nestor is ingeniously framed, if a little contorted. These
games commemorate Patroclus, a man none of them will see again; so its only fitting that the
athletic achievements of Nestor, which will likewise never be witnessed again by living man,
be rewarded as part of that commemoration.
Nestors speech of thanks
Nestor replies, of course, with a speech: his last in the poem, and a beautiful valedictory
performance. As usual, it uses the old mans pose of rambling reminiscence on his youthful
exploits to cloak some pertinent observations on the present situation. The tale is of a funeral
contest comparable to this one, with a core of five of the same events (chariot, boxing,
wrestling, footrace, javelin). The parallel is even closer if, as has been widely suspected, the
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other three events in this book (combat, shot-put, archery) are a later addition to the text. On
that occasion, Nestor won four out of five events, and was only pushed into second place by
an unfair (though far from clearly expressed) advantage on the part of the victors, who were
twins Siamese twins, according to later sources! The message for Menelaus and Antilochus
is clear enough: things like this happen in chariot races, and therell always be other events
for the loser to excel in instead. They should be grateful theyre of an age to take part, and
remember that the games are not about them but about Patroclus, his honour, and his
memory.
(b) the boxing
The main event over, the games continue with a rapid, action-packed series of lesser events,
beginning with the two major Greek contact sports of boxing and wrestling. The prizes for
these are less valuable than those for the chariot-race, and the events themselves offer a
parade of old and new characters. The boxing perhaps comes first in the sequence because
its the one sport in which both contestants are new to us, as well as the most light-hearted
and amusing event of the sequence.
(1) Epeius challenge
Epeius response to Achilles appeal for contestants is an entertaining and strangely modern-
sounding pre-match statement. He declares himself the champion, by default if need be, and
promises pulverisation for his opponent. If were wondering why we havent heard of this
character until now, he cheerfully clues us in: its because hes a far better boxer than he is a
warrior. In fact Epeius does have a moment of glory coming, as we learn in Odyssey 8 hes
the builder of the Trojan Horse.
(2) Euryalus responds
Epeius challenger Euryalus had a cameo in the Catalogue of Ships at 2.565 as Diomedes
third-in-command after Sthenelus, but this is his only appearance in the action of the poem.
He has an impressive record as a boxer, though, and as a joint contingent leader is a far more
senior figure than the obscure Epeius. Diomedes himself takes the role of trainer and second,
so we take this challenger seriously.
(3) a win by a knockout
Once he gets into the ring, though, its another story. The very first blow lands Epeius a win
by a knockout that lifts his opponent bodily into the air like a jumping fish, before (a nice
touch) Epeius himself catches him to prevent him from falling.
(c) the wrestling
The wrestling has a more valuable prize, and accordingly attracts a pair of major warriors
who havent so far put in an appearance in this book.
(1) Ajax v Odysseus
As the initial descriptions indicate, this will be a contest of brawn versus brain. Ajax is
colossal in build and strength, but Odysseus (whom we remember from 3.1934 is stockily
built himself) has the advantage in strategy. This is borne out by their tactics, where Ajax
tries to win by sheer force throughout, whereas Odysseus operates by trying to unbalance his
opponent.
Greek wrestling was about trying to force your opponent to the ground, and initially the
pair of them are deadlocked. Ajax then proposes that the fight goes to whoever can lift his
opponent, but on both attempts they both end up on the ground.
(2) the prize shared
Achilles steps in to pronounce a draw at this point, perhaps sensing (as does the audience)
that for either of this pair to defeat the other would be a slightly uncomfortable outcome, and
leaving the audience to make up its mind whether Odysseus plays did him credit or the
opposite. His proposal that they share the prizes (1 tripod and 1 slave woman) must have
caused a bit of puzzlement, though unusually were told the value of each in oxens worth
perhaps to allow us to assume something could be worked out.
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The funeral and games have done an impressive job of tying up many of the poems loose
ends. Weve seen an Achilles apparently reconciled with his peers andonce more at ease in
their world. Hes paid all the debt to Patroclus he can, and reconciled himself to the
inevitability of his own imminent death. But as in his feud with Agamemnon, no amount of
public display can eradicate the anger that continues to gnaw at him, and which finds its
lasting symbol in the unburied corpse of Hector, still lying there in the sand. Achilles
vengeance isnt over, even after theres nobody left to avenge himself on. Achilles needs
somehow to move beyond vengeance, beyond anger; but how, and to what?
The previous book has taken us away from the scenes of mourning in Troy, but this book
returns to the city and its grief as the principal outstanding problem that needs to be resolved.
After the large cast and expansive action of book 23, the bulk of this book is almost a two-
hander between the very different men whose dangerous meeting is its dramatic and
emotional climax.
The books famous for its echoes of book 1, though as I indicated in the Structure
handout we should probably be cautious of reading in elaborate correspondences and
parallels. Many of the connections are of a kind wed expect in a book which seeks to round
off the story that first book set in motion: an opening divine scene; the mediation of Thetis; a
further act of supplication and ransom that restores the balance disrupted in the poems first
scenes.
2. Divine debate
Once again we find ourselves watching the scene just described on a monitor in Olympus,
where the massed gods are increasingly ill at ease with Achilles conduct. A miraculous
teleportation, as with the body of Sarpedon, would be easy enough, and Hermes (=
Argephontes, his title Slayer of Argus) would be just the god to do it. But theres still the
implacable trio of Hera, Poseidon, and Athene, whose loathing for Troy is now partly
explained by the brief and cryptic reference to the story that in later versions became the
judgment of Paris.
(a) Apollos proposal
As Hectors consistent champion, its Apollo also the god who started things off in book 1
who puts the case most strongly. Nine more days have passed since the day of the funeral,
and Achilles is still pacing the cage of his grief, rage, and obsession. Hector has been
consistently pious and dutiful; hes done nothing to deserve such literally inhuman treatment.
Nor is Achilles doing anything to warrant their continuing support: on the contrary, hes
behaving like an animal rather than a human being, and abandoning the civilising human
qualities of pity and respect (aidos, translated by Lattimore shame). As Apollo points out,
dragging the corpse round and round the tomb isnt actually making things any better; on the
contrary, its just losing Achilles honour in comparison with the consistently humane and
pious Hector.
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3. Thetis brought in
Now comes the poems final episode with Thetis, which reverses the order of proceedings in
book 1 where a conversation with Achilles was followed by a journey to Olympus and
scene with Zeus. Here, shes summoned to Olympus first to relay Zeuss command back to
her son.
(a) Iris summons
Iris takes on the task of delivering Zeuss summons to Thetis, in a wonderful imaginative set
piece describing her plunging journey from air into ocean, with another of the unusual and
arresting similes that cluster especially in these final books.
In a telling touch, Thetis is already mourning Achilles, though he isnt yet dead (and in
later tradition survived the events of the Iliad by months rather than days). But Achilles spent
a good part of book 23 arranging his own funeral, so we dont need to take refuge in the
elaborate theories of the neoanalyst school well see more of in the Composition seminar.
(b) Thetis and Zeus
After a brief and reassuring scene of divine xenia, Zeus presents an executive summary of the
situation and mission. He says nothing of the disagreements among the other gods, and makes
no mention of Apollo or Hera. Instead, he diplomatically if questionably presents their failure
to intervene earlier as motivated by his own regard for Achilles and for Thetis herself. But
now its time to finish: let her take his command direct to Achilles, while (a new and
dramatic revelation) Iris instructs Priam to go in person to Achilles camp to negotiate the
ransom directly.
(c) Thetis and Achilles
As usual in Homer when such parallel missions are announced, theyre actually executed in
sequence; only when Thetis has finished with Achilles does Iris set out for her scene with
Priam. Like other divinities, Thetis appears to Achilles eyes and ears alone despite the
surrounding crowd and bustle. She arrives at a breakfast in which Achilles is pointedly not
taking part, which is what prompts her opening remarks.
her Thetis opens not with Zeuss command, but with a demonstration of motherly
speech concern that nevertheless manages to circle around and up to the point of her
mission. Achilles is treating himself like a dead man, denying himself the basic
human comforts of food, sleep, and sex. This isnt the way to spend his last days
on earth, and one of the things well see happen by the end of the book is
Achilles reconciliation to an acceptance of these simple reminders of his
humanity. But more to the point, Thetis reveals, Zeus is beginning to lose
patience. Achilles must accept a ransom for the body, or accept the consequences
of the gods anger.
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his Achilles response is terse, and as at other unexpectedly laconic moments there
response seems an invitation to read strong emotion into the words. But is it resentment?
relief? resignation? weariness? indifference? The reference to a He is rather
cryptic, as Thetis has said nothing at all about wholl bring the ransom, and
Achilles can hardly expect Priam to come in person. Commentators try to find a
way of making the expression indefinite, though its quite hard to get the Greek
to mean this.
B. Priams mission
Now the scene switches to the other side of the story, as we rejoin the scene in Troy twelve
days on from where we left it at the end of 22. Its Priam and the Trojans, rather than Achilles
himself, who from here on are the emotional centre of the action, and here that well fetch up
again for the poems moving finale.
4. the ransom
Now we stay with Priam as he solemnly gathers the treasures for the ransom. Its hard not to
be reminded of the parade of treasures Achilles brought out to be the prizes at Patroclus
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games: another point of connection and contrast between the two books, and the two dead
men at their centres. The confrontation with Hecuba has evidently put him in a tense, volatile
mood yelling at his people to leave him alone in his grief, and driving them out of his
presence with an old mans anger (and stick). Its a side of Priam we havent seen before, as
he faces this deadly mission entirely alone.
C. Priams journey
Now they set out on their perilous journey across the plain of battle and into the heart of the
Greek camp, with the faithful Idaeus driving the mule-cart in front and Priam riding his
chariot behind. Notwithstanding the eagle omen, however, Priams own family continue to
view this as a suicide mission; and even the audience must be wondering how on earth it can
be safely completed.
5. Hermes unmasks
Only now does he reveal his true identity, as his own role in the mission is fulfilled and he
leaves for Olympus. His protection wont continue inside, though gods do occasionally
accept mortal hospitality (in disguise) in the Odyssey. For the final and most dangerous phase
of his mission, Priam is on his own.
1. the supplication
Weve already seen Priams tactics sketched out: hes going to use the approach of formal
supplication to try to induce Achilles to accept the ransom hes brought and release the corpse
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to come home. We have some idea of the cards he can play: already at 22.41822 he was
thinking about playing on the fatherson relationship, and Hermes has suggested mentioning
his mother and son as well. But while we have a sense of where Achilles weak spots are,
Priam has never met him, and will have to rely on his native powers of oratory like no-one
else in the poem.
(a) the suppliant at the feast
Its the evening meal; Achilles has perhaps taken Thetis advice, as he seems to be dining
with the rest. Quite how Priam manages to slip past two alert young warriors and grab hold of
their commanders knees is wisely unexplained, but the climax is the famous line about
kissing the killers hands. On this image as Richardson comments on this line, the most
dramatic moment in the whole of the Iliad the narrative holds and freezes for a long,
suspenseful moment, as the situation is expanded in the Iliads most daring reverse simile.
Within the analogous situation of an unexpected and troubling arrival, Priam is remapped on
to the figure of the killer and Achilles on to the king; and the confounding of roles is picked
up as we cut rapidly between the viewpoints of each in turn as he gazes on the other with the
same complex mixture of astonished feelings.
(b) Priams speech
Now at last comes the great speech of supplication. He begins, as expected, with Achilles
father, and astutely expands on the troubles he must now be suffering without a son around to
protect him. Then he holds on the picture but switches himself into Peleus role and Hector
into Achilles, as his fathers last protector now permanently removed. The climax of the
appeal brackets the gods and Peleus, the two most forceful arguments he has, together, with a
brilliant finale on the reason why Priam deserves even more pity than Achilles must feel for
his own father. (In time it may be possible to think of these famous lines without a watery-
eyed Peter OToole delivering them to a bemused-looking Brad Pitt.)
Achilles is initially unable to respond in words at all. He breaks the suppliant contact, but
his body language makes it clear his feelings are of grief rather than violence, and the
narrative holds on the scene of the two of them momentarily united in mourning.
(c) Achilles speech
At last Achilles finds words, unknowingly quoting Hecuba at 2035 in his comment on
Priams iron resolve, and spelling out the connection Priam has left tactfully inexplicit about
exactly who killed the sons referred to. Crucially, he offers Priam hospitality, as he agrees to
try to move together beyond the futility of lamentation, drawing on the famous parable of
Zeuss urns.
the urns of This Hesiodic-style allegory recalls the parable of the Prayers used by Achilles
blessing old tutor Phoenix in book 9. The point of the parable is that nobody gets a life
and composed entirely of blessings; its either sorrows with a few blessings thrown
sorrow in, or sorrows without any blessings at all.
Peleus and Peleus has had a mixture from the two urns: a wealthy kingdom and a goddess
Priam for wife, but a single short-lived son. And Priam, he now sees, is the same: a
great king once, now facing the death of his people and the doom of his
kingdom. His advice to Priam is the lesson hes been needing to recognise for
himself: mourning has to stop, because it wont bring the dead back. But more
important still is the recognition of a fundamental likeness between himself and
Hector, Peleus and Priam: a common experience of loss that unites killer and
victim in a single, universal humanity.
(d) Priams reply
Priam notes, in all this, that Achilles has said nothing about Hectors body and the ransom,
and is uneasy at the invitation to hospitality. At best it looks like a delaying tactic, and at
worst a brush-off to his request and a trap that puts him in mounting danger. He needs an
answer to his request before he can accept.
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3. Achilles hospitality
The arrangements are made, and Priam could ride away into the night; but its important to
cement the deal by following through the invitation to hospitality. This is the final
demonstration of mutual acceptance and trust, even if Priam is no keener to linger with
Achilles than Achilles was to sit down to Agamemnons meal in the previous book. Ironically
but importantly, its Achilles himself who now lectures Priam on the point made earlier by
Thetis, the need for even the grieving to accept food.
(a) Achilles story of Niobe
The point is made through the story of Niobe, who in later versions turned to stone from grief
after her children were killed by Apollo and Artemis in punishment for her boast. Its usually
reckoned that the standard version was already current in Homers time, but has here been
adapted to create detailed parallels with Priams situation in the poem the nine days
mourning, the funeral, the breaking of the fast, all of which are actually incompatible with the
usual version. Willcocks famous 1964 article on mythological paradeigma argued that this is
Homers normal practice, and that this retooling of myth to fit the present situation can also
be seen in other major mythological parallels such as Phoenixs story of Meleager. The four
closing lines of the story are especially evocative and haunting.
(b) the meal
The sequence that follows is a common one in the peacetime setting of the Odyssey, but
relatively rare in the Iliad, where leisurely meals and the associated rituals of hospitality
between strangers have little opportunity to arise. In an oddly cinematic effect, the soundtrack
is turned off; were not told what passed between the two of them in their conversation, but
merely see the looks they exchange, or rather the way theyre seen through one anothers
eyes.
(c) Priam asks to retire
The meal has brought the two of them together in another way as well: Priam has now taken
the sleep and food that Thetis originally urged on Achilles to close his period of mourning,
though his request to turn in for the night may already be part of a covert plan to escape
before dawn.
(d) Achilles response
Achilles, at least, seems to understand what is about to happen, and what he needs to do to
make it possible. He offers a bed for Priam out in the porch, away from other eyes, and
invents a plausible reason why this might seem a good idea. But its clear that he knows this
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will be their farewell, and takes the opportunity to agree a truce for the duration of Hectors
funeral, which he guarantees himself on Agamemnons behalf.
The tone of this speech is difficult to pin down, but Lattimore is wrong to translate the
difficult Greek word epikertomeon as sarcastic. It ought to mean provoking, but
commentators have difficulty agreeing on what kind of provocation is being offered:
nervousness about being caught by Agamemnon and the other Greeks, so that Priam will flee
in the night? teasing irony about the charade, with which both play along, that hell stay the
whole night?
(e) the truce
Priam asks for nine days and two of funeral, exactly as weve had earlier in the book for
Patroclus; see the chronology. These two nine-day gaps correspond intriguingly to the similar
pair in the first book, though Ive suggested in the Structure handout that we should be wary
of grandiose claims of ring-compositional symmetry here.
With the truce agreed and shaken on, their business is concluded. Priams put to bed
outside as agreed, but now we see the last element of Thetis advice put into action, as for the
first time in nearly a month Achilles goes to bed with Briseis at his side. Its our last view of
him in the poem, and one chosen to symbolise the closure of the story that began with their
separation.
2. Cassandra
Its here that theyre spotted by the princess Cassandra, in her only appearance in the poem
(apart a mention in connection with the killing of one of her suitors at 13.3657). Theres no
sign yet in Homer of the later tradition about her prophetic skills, though that doesnt mean
they werent already part of her story. But her function here, in a scene that echoes
Idomeneus chariot-spotting in the previous book, is to whip up anticipation and relief at
Priams return.
3. Priams reception
The moment of the kings return with Hectors corpse is a powerful one for his family and
city, and Priam has to revert to his old commanding self to clear a way through even to get
the cart into the city at all. Its only with the entry to the city that the present informal
lamentation can give way to the formal family ritual of farewell which will give the poem its
great closing scene.