COMMENTARY ON THE ILIAD: BOOKS SIXTEEN TO TWENTY-TWO
(all quotations from the Iliad are from the
translation of
Richmond Lattimore, ©University of Chicago Press, 1951)
Like book nine, book sixteen marks a
crucial
turning point in the Iliad. While Achilleus still refuses to
return
to battle, his friend, Patroklos, persuades him to let him fight in his
place. Leading Achilleus’ men, the Myrmidons, Patroklos beats
back the Trojans and kills Sarpedon, the son of Zeus. Ignoring
Achilleus’ warnings, Patroklos presses forward only to be killed by
Hektor with the help of
Apollo and a minor Trojan warrior. Patroklos’ death arouses
Achilleus
to put aside his quarrel with Agamemnon (book 19), and it kindles his
anger in a furious rampage on the battlefield (books 20-21) that
culminates in the killing of Hektor and brutal abuse of his corpse
(book 22).
THE SETTING
After Achilleus rejected Agamemnon’s offer of
gifts (book 9), battle resumed between the Greeks and the Trojans (book
11). One by one, several great warriors of the Greeks -
Agamemnon, Diomedes and Odysseus - were wounded and forced to leave the
battlefield (book 11). Meanwhile, Hektor drove the Trojans to
storm the fortifications of the Greek camp and he sought to set their
ships on fire.
From his camp, Achilleus watched the battle
unfold. Although he had rejected Agamemnon’s offer of gifts, he
was evidently waiting to be asked again to join the battle. As he
saw the tide turn against the Greeks, he told Patroklos:
“‘now I think the Achaians will come to my knees and stay there
in supplication, for a need past endurance has come to them.
(11.608-09)’”
He sent Patroklos to Nestor to find out which of the Greeks he had seen
wounded and brought out of the battle. Nestor, in turn, urged
Patroklos to try to persuade Achilleus to return to battle and rescue
the Greeks. In addition, he proposed the fateful plan
(11.793-802):
if Achilleus was holding back because of some prophecy, he might at
least
allow Patroklos to wear his armor and lead his men into battle.
ACHILLEUS’ DILEMMA
At the beginning of book sixteen, Patroklos
presents Nestor’s plan to Achilleus. The book opens with the same
simile (16.3-4) that was used to describe Agamemnon’s tears at the
beginning of book nine (9.14-15). This is a reminder of that
important episode in which Achilleus rejected Agamemnon’s offer of
gifts, and it highlights the contradictions in Achilleus’
position. Achilleus is still angry over the taking of Briseis
(16.52-59), and he finds himself trapped by the pledge he made when he
spurned Agamemnon’s offer:
“‘...I have said
I would not give over my anger until that time came
when the fighting with all its clamour came up to my own ships.
(16.61-64)’”
Nonetheless, when he agrees to Patroklos’ plan, he wants to be sure
that he will win honor and gifts from Patroklos’ efforts:
“‘But obey to the end this word I put upon your attention
so that you can win, for me, great honour and glory
in the sight of all the Danaans, so they will bring back to me
the lovely girl, and give me shining gifts in addition.
When you have driven them from the ships, come back...
you must not set your mind on fighting the Trojans, whose delight
is in battle, without me. So you will diminish my honour.
(16.83-87, 89-90)’”
Ironically, he seems to be using Patroklos to win honor for himself in
much the same way that he complained Agamemnon had used him.
Still more perplexing is the irrationality of
Achilleus’ position. He says that he seeks the return of Briseis
and additional gifts, but, when Agamemnon had offered this to him, he
refused it. It is as if book nine had never occurred. In
fact,
one explanation of the apparent contradiction is that the Iliad may be
an expansion of an earlier and simpler tale that lacked Agamemnon’s
offer
of gifts and Achilleus’ refusal. Such a story would have been a
more
commonplace conflict over honor and prizes, but book nine added a
deeper
dimension to Achilleus’ struggle. There, he revealed that he had
a
choice of two fates: a long life without honor, or a short life with
glory.
For a moment at least, Achilleus questioned whether glory and honor
could
be adequate compensation for his fated death at Troy. Instead, he
toyed with the idea of returning home to enjoy a long life without
honor. By the end of book nine, he seems to have put that aside:
he will stay
at Troy and, eventually, he will fight and slay Hektor. At the
beginning of book sixteen, he says he wants prizes and the return of
his honor, but his earlier remarks about his two fates suggest that he
aspires to something more. A long life, however, is not enough:
Achilleus seeks nothing less than the immortal life that his mother and
the other gods enjoy.
Patroklos’ appeal at the beginning of book
sixteen hints at that deeper struggle fueling Achilleus anger.
Patroklos stresses Achilleus’ inhumanity:
“‘Pitiless: the rider Peleus was never your father
nor Thetis was your mother, but it was the grey sea that bore you
and the towering rocks, so sheer the heart in you is turned from
us. (16.33-35)’”
Achilleus is so pitiless that Patroklos can only describe him as
inhuman: born from the sea and the rocks. This signals what will
be a key theme in the last part of the poem: Achilleus must learn to be
human, and the most important part of that must be his acceptance of
the
mortality that defines human beings.
THE DEATH OF SARPEDON
Achilleus was not alone in being the son of an
immortal. Sarpedon, the son of Zeus, had also imagined
immortality, but he realized that this was impossible
(12.310-328). The poignant scene of his death - before his
father, Zeus, who was powerless to save him - is a reminder that this
fleeting dream of immortality is beyond
man’s reach, and it anticipates the issues that Achilleus must deal
with.
Patroklos drives the Trojans back and, in a
dramatic confrontation, he kills Sarpedon, son of Zeus. The scene
is an important one in several respects. Within the narrative,
it provides Patroklos, an important Greek warrior, with a glorious act
before he is killed by Hektor. More importantly, the scene casts
light on the role of Zeus, Sarpedon’s father and the most powerful of
the
gods. As the two men face off on the battlefield, Zeus recognizes
that his son is destined to be killed by Patroklos (16.433-434),
something
he had prophesied - or willed - earlier (15.59-71). For a moment,
he considers whether to rescue him and return him to his country
alive.
His wife, Hera, a partisan of the Greeks, objects strenuously:
“‘Do you wish to bring back a man who is mortal, one long since
doomed by his destiny, from ill-sounding death and release him?
Do it, then; but not all the rest of us gods shall approve you.
And put away in your thoughts this other thing I tell you;
if you bring Sarpedon back to his home, still living,
think how then some other one of the gods might also
wish to carry his own son out of the strong encounter...(16.441-47).’”
Reluctantly and with great sadness, Zeus allows his son to die with the
small consolation that his body may be spirited from the battlefield to
his homeland for a burial and memorial.
Zeus puts aside his personal interest in
saving his son for the larger purpose of not disrupting “destiny” or
setting the gods against one another. The scene reveals him
exercising
a degree of responsibility to ensure that events follow their appointed
course, and that chaos does not ensue. Whether that destiny is
“just”
or “moral” is not an issue, but there is at least some notion that the
most powerful of gods should act to maintain the order that the
destined
course of events represents. Later, when Achilleus is about to
unleash
his fury on the battlefield, Zeus urges the other gods and goddesses to
join the fray. He fears that Achilleus is so powerful that he
will
rout the Trojans and that “against destiny he may storm their fortress
(20.30)”. Once again, Zeus acts to preserve destiny. Not
surprisingly, in a
traditional story whose main lines cannot be altered, what must happen,
happens, but it happens through the actions of gods and mortals.
Most important of all, Zeus’ relationship with
his mortal son, Sarpedon, parallels that of Thetis and Achilleus.
As powerful as Zeus is, he must accept that his mortal son will die,
and, in his sorrow, he “wept tears of blood” (16.459). This
highlights the enormous gulf between mortals and immortals.
Thetis does a great deal for her son: she wins Zeus’ support early in
the poem, and, later, she gets him armor from the god,
Hephaistos. Still, as she acknowledges to Achilleus (18.95-96)
and to the god Hephaistos, she cannot save him from his fated death:
“‘...I shall never again receive him
won home again to his country and into the house of Peleus.
Yet while I see him live and he looks on the sunlight, he has
sorrows, and though I go to him I can do nothing to help him.
(18.440-43)’”
Sarpedon’s fate is a reminder of Achilleus’ fate, and, in this closest
of relationships between divine parents and mortal offspring, the
audience clearly sees what separates humans from the divine:
mortality.
Zeus and Thetis can only grieve for an experience that they will never
share.
THE DEATH OF
PATROKLOS
After slaying Sarpedon, Patroklos presses
forward towards Troy (16.684-91), ignoring Achilleus’ earlier advice to
drive the Trojans from the ships and return. The god, Apollo,
confronts Patroklos and warns him that neither he nor Achilleus is
destined to conquer Troy (16.707-09). With Apollo’s
encouragement, Hektor charges towards Patroklos. Patroklos kills
Hektor’s charioteer, Kebriones, and the two sides battle over the
body. In the aftermath, Apollo attacks Patroklos, strikes his
helmet from his head, splinters his spear, and knocks his shield
away. Left defenseless, Patroklos is struck in the back by a
Trojan warrior, Euphorbos, who runs away immediately. Only now is
Hektor
able to slay Patroklos, but, as Patroklos dies, he predicts Hektor’s
destiny: to fall at the hands of Achilleus.
The death of Patroklos is a messy affair, and,
as he says with his dying words, Hektor was merely his “third slayer”
(16.850). For the Greek audience of the epic, the poet is doing
his best to enhance Patroklos’ glory by portraying him as a warrior who
is only brought down when the gods have stacked the odds against
him. The complexity of the scene, though, and the involvement of
a god raise
the broader question of who bears responsibility for the death of
Patroklos. That, in turn, provides another instance of the
delicate balance between human and divine responsibility in all of the
events surrounding the Trojan War.
There are many figures, besides his killers,
who share responsibility for Patroklos’ death. Nestor first
suggested that Patroklos enter the battle on Achilleus’ behalf, and, of
course,
Patroklos was placed at risk by Achilleus’ persistent refusal to return
to battle, even though he sought the glory that Patroklos’ fighting
would
bring. Patroklos himself ignored Achilleus’ advice.
Achilleus
had told Patroklos not to go too far, because he wanted the Greeks to
restore
his own honor. He was also concerned for Patroklos’ safety, for
he anticipated that he might be struck down by Apollo or one of the
other
gods who supported the Trojans (16.91-95). Homer recalls
Achilleus’
command, even as Patroklos drives towards Troy and his death, but he
adds
words that appear to shift the responsibility to Zeus:
“Besotted: had he only kept the command of Peleiades [the son of
Peleus: Achilleus]
he might have got clear away from the evil spirit of black death.
But always the mind of Zeus is a stronger thing than a man’s mind.
He terrifies even the warlike man, he takes away victory
lightly, when he himself has driven a man into battle
as now he drove on the fury in the heart of Patroklos. (16.686-91)”
For his part, Zeus had prophesied - or even ordained - the death
of Patroklos and its consequences on several occasions (8.473-76,
15.58-68), and, in the heat of the battle, he “pondered hard over many
ways for the death of Patroklos...(16.647)”.
The similes offer some clues to an
understanding of Patroklos’ death. As Patroklos leads the
Myrmidons against the Trojans, they are compared with a swarm of wasps:
“The Myrmidons came streaming out like wasps at the wayside
when little boys have got into the habit of making them angry
by always teasing them as they live in their house by the roadside;
silly boys, they do something that hurts many people;
and if some man who travels on the road happens to pass them
and stirs them unintentionally, they in heart of fury
come swarming out each one from his place to fight for their children.
(16.259-65)”
The wasps are stirred to anger - and an innocent traveller is hurt - by
the folly of the silly boys. Further on, the battling Greeks are
compared with wolves:
“They as wolves make havoc among lambs or young goats in their fury,
catching them out of the flocks, when the sheep separate in the
mountains
through the thoughtlessness of the shepherd, and the wolves seeing them
suddenly snatch them away, and they have no heart for fighting.
(16.352-55)”
The comparison of the warriors to wild beasts is a common one, but,
here, the simile places particular emphasis on how the lambs were made
vulnerable by the “thoughtlessness” of the shepherd. Finally, as
Patroklos
drives Achilleus’ immortal horses across the moat surrounding the Greek
camp, another simile describes a flood and, unusually, refers to Zeus’
anger:
“As underneath the hurricane all the black earth is burdened
on an autumn day, when Zeus sends down the most violent waters
in deep rage against mortals after they stir him to anger
because in violent assembly they pass decrees that are crooked,
and drive righteousness from among them and care nothing for what the
gods think,
and all the rivers of these men swell current to full spate
and in the ravines of their water-courses rip all the hillsides
and dash whirling in huge noise down to the blue sea, out of
the mountains headlong, so that the works of men are diminished;
so huge rose the noise from the horses of Troy in their running.
(16.384-93)”
The explicit point of the simile is simply to compare the noise of the
rushing waters to that of the Trojan horses in flight. Like
many similes, though, it repays closer reading. Here, it is Zeus
who sends the storm, but he is provoked by the actions of mortals who
“pass
decrees that are crooked, and drive righteousness from among them and
care
nothing for what the gods think”.
The first two similes, of course, may have
most relevance for Hektor whose reckless boldness has set in motion the
chain of events that will bring Achilleus back to the battle and doom
him and his city. Together, though, the set of similes emphasizes
man’s folly and links divine action with the misconduct of
mortals. It is a reminder that, in Patroklos’ death and in so
many of the important events of the poem, human decisions were crucial
and divine action was often the result - not the cause - of human
deeds.
PATROKLOS’
DEATH AND
ACHILLEUS’ DEATH
Patroklos’ death is a
crucial turning point in the poem. It rouses Achilleus, leads him
to return to battle, and redirects his intensified rage against the
Trojans. It anticipates and eventually leads to his own
death. When Achilleus learns of Patroklos’ death, his grief and
rage are tremendous. His mother, Thetis, consoles him, but he is
determined to fight and avenge Patroklos’ death by killing
Hektor. Thetis reminds him that it is prophesied that, if he
kills Hektor, he is doomed to die shortly afterwards:
“‘Then I must lose you soon, my child, by what you are saying,
since it is decreed your death must come soon after Hektor’s.
(18.95-96)’”
Achilleus, himself, seems to recognize and accept this in his lament
over Patroklos’ body:
“‘Thus it is destiny for us both to stain the same soil
here in Troy; since I shall never come home, and my father,
Peleus the aged rider, will not welcome me in his great house,
nor Thetis my mother, but in this place the earth will receive me.
But seeing that it is I, Patroklos, who follow you underground,
I will not bury you till I bring to this place the armour
and the head of Hektor... (18.329-35)’”
Other prophecies from unlikely sources, ranging from Achilleus’
immortal horses (19.408-17) to the dying Hektor (22.358-60), all drive
home the point that Achilleus is now fated to die at Troy.
Patroklos’ death not only leads to Achilleus’
death, it foreshadows it as well. Patroklos dies fighting in
Achilleus’ place, wearing Achilleus’ armor, and leading Achilleus’
men. The enormous scale of the grief that surrounds Patroklos’
death suggests the mourning that would take place when Achilleus
himself is killed. Thetis, Achilleus’ mother, leads the chorus of
sea goddesses in a ritual lament for
Patroklos (18.35-64) and looks ahead to her own son’s death.
Later, the elaborate funeral games for Patroklos anticipate the
funeral of Achilleus, as the hero chooses a “place for a huge grave
mound, for himself and Patroklos (23.126)” and is described as
escorting his friend to Hades, the realm of the dead (23.137).
The same urn will hold both men’s ashes
(23.91-92), and Achilleus even gives instructions to the other Greek
warriors
for the completion of the funeral mound that will one day be his own
memorial
(23.245-48).
By foreshadowing Achilleus’ death, Homer
is able to allude to one of the great episodes in the larger story of
the Trojan War, even though the Iliad does not describe it
directly.
This is similar to the way he enlarged the scope of the poem in the
opening books by including material, like the Catalog of the Ships or
the duel between
Paris and Menelaos, that might properly have formed part of a poem
about
the beginning of the war. The allusions to Achilleus’ death,
however,
have special significance because they highlight the issue of his
mortality.
In the last books of the poem, Achilleus’ anger, more intense than
ever,
is re-directed against Hektor to avenge Patroklos’ death. This is
more than a drive for vengeance, for it is fueled by his struggle with
his own destiny, the very destiny he embraces by returning to the
battlefield.
ACHILLEUS’
ANGER:
STRIVING FOR IMMORTALITY
After Thetis brings her son the new armor made
by the god Hephaistos (19.8-11), Achilleus calls an assembly and tells
the assembled warriors that he is “making an end” of his anger
(19.67). In fact, he has put aside his quarrel with Agamemnon,
and seems almost indifferent to him. He is not concerned to get
the gifts or to get Briseis back; he even wishes she had been killed
(19.59-60). Nor is
he provoked by Agamemnon’s speech in which he explains away his
responsibility for the initial quarrel by comparing himself to Zeus
through the story of Delusion (19.83-138).
There can be no doubt, however, that Achilleus
is still angry: he wants to fight, and the sooner the better. His
anger is fueled as he looks upon the shield that Hephaistos has made
(19.16); it is as if its images of the world focus Achilleus’ rage, for
Achilleus is unable to accept the world as it is. Odysseus urges
Achilleus to take the gifts, to end the quarrel formally, and to eat
before battle (19.155-83). Most important, he is trying to tell
Achilleus that human beings must
accept that it is their lot to die:
“‘No, but we must harden our hearts and bury the man who
dies, when we have wept over him on the day, and all those
who are left about from the hateful work of war must remember
food and drink, so that afterwards all the more strongly
we may fight on forever relentless against our enemies. (19.228-32)’”
These scenes in which Achilleus refuses to eat
- and is fed by the gods - help to characterize Achilleus and his
anger as inhuman. Homer presents the conflict raging in
Achilleus’
head in stark terms. Here is a hero who, more than any other,
might
aspire to be immortal: he has a divine mother, is consoled by the sea
goddesses, wears divine armor, is fed by the gods, and has immortal
horses. Yet, all of this only serves to remind him of his
mortality. His mother prophesies his death and is unable to avert
it; his armor will not be able to prevent his death; and, in the most
unusual scene of all, even his immortal horses prophesy his death
(19.408-17) as he readies them for battle.
This tension between Achilleus’ desire to be
immortal - like the gods - and his fate to die at Troy culminates
in his rampage on the battlefield. Significantly, this battle
will take place before all of the gods and goddesses whom Zeus summons
to Mt. Olympus (20.4-12) and urges to take part in the battle, lest
Achilleus storm Troy against destiny (20.23-30). Achilleus’ first
encounter is with Aineias, the son of the goddess, Aphrodite.
This, too, emphasizes Achilleus’ own status as the son of a goddess,
and the two men boast of their ancestry. Aineias is saved by the
gods, because, as Poseidon says,
“‘...It is destined that he shall be the survivor,
that the generation of Dardanos [an ancestor of the Trojans] shall not
die, without seed
obliterated, since Dardanos was dearest to Kronides [Zeus, the son of
Kronos]
of all his sons that have been born to him from mortal women
(20.302-05)’”
This small incident would become the basis for the story - later told
by the Roman poet, Virgil, in the Aeneid - that Aineias escaped from
Troy, fled to the west, and, eventually, founded a city that would be
the forerunner of Rome. In the Iliad, what is important is that
Aineias’ destiny to survive highlights, by contrast, Achilleus’ fate to
die at Troy.
Achilleus’ inhuman rage is let loose in his
brutal rampage on the battlefield at the end of book 20 and at the
beginning of book 21. He is compared with the forces of nature,
“as inhuman fire...(20.490)”, and described as “something more than
mortal” (20.493, 21.18). Even in the context of the vivid
descriptions of blood and gore that fill the Iliad, these scenes stand
out for their graphic accounts of combat and bloodletting:
“Great Achilleus struck him with the spear as he came in fury,
in the middle of the head, and all the head broke into two pieces...
...and the running-rims of Achaian chariots cut him to pieces
(20.386-87, 394).”
“...Next from close in he thrust at Moulios
with the pike at the ear, so the bronze spearhead pushed through and
came out
at the other ear. Now he hit Echeklos the son of Agenor
with the hilted sword, hewing against his head in the middle
so all the sword was smoking with blood...(20.472-76)”
What’s more, Achilleus spurns any appeals for mercy or offers of ransom
for warriors taken alive (20.463-69).
The most callously brutal scene of all takes
place as Achilleus leapt into the Xanthos river "like some immortal"
(21.18). The battle in the river was an episode famous enough to
have been remembered
in the Catalog of the Ships (2.860-61, 874-75). First, Achilleus
takes twelve young Trojans alive to be offered as human sacrifices at
the funeral of Patroklos (21.26-33, 23.174-77); then, he meets Lykaon,
a man whom he had earlier captured and sold as a slave...
Lykaon had been ransomed out of slavery by his
family, and, now, he has just escaped from the river, naked and
defenseless (21.49-52). Achilleus marvels over his return, and
Lykaon reaches for Achilleus’ knees - the gesture of a suppliant who
begs to be spared - to appeal to be taken alive for ransom.
Achilleus is unmoved and his reply - described
as the “voice without pity”(21.98) - is cold and uncompromising:
“‘Poor fool, no longer speak to me of ransom, nor argue it.
In the time before Patroklos came to the day of his destiny
then it was the way of my heart’s choice to be sparing
of the Trojans, and many I took alive and disposed of them.
Now there is not one who can escape death, if the gods send
him against my hands in front of Ilion, not one
of all the Trojans and beyond others the children of Priam.
So, friend, you die also. Why all this clamour about it?
Patroklos also is dead, who was better by far than you are.
Do you not see what a man I am, how huge, how splendid
and born of a great father, and the mother who bore me immortal?
Yet even I have also my death and my strong destiny,
and there shall be a dawn or an afternoon or a noontime
when some man in the fighting will take the life from me also
either with a spearcast or an arrow flown from the bowstring.
(21.99-113)’”
At the simplest level, Achilleus is enraged by
the death of his friend, Patroklos. Driven, perhaps, by a sense
of shame at his own responsibility for Patroklos’ death, he is
determined to exact revenge upon Hektor and the Trojans.
Nonetheless, by closely linking Patroklos’ death with Achilleus’ own,
Homer portrays a hero whose anger over the death of his friend is
fueled by his inability to accept
his own death which is repeatedly foreshadowed. At first, that
might
seem like a contradiction. Over and over again, Achilleus asserts
that he is aware of his fate and that he is choosing a course of action
that will make it inevitable. He will avenge himself on Hektor,
though
he knows he is going to die. But Homer reminds us again and again
of Achilleus’ mortality in contexts that show precisely why Achilleus,
of
all persons, should have the most difficulty in accepting it. His
divine mother and his immortal horses, for example, only remind him of
his fate. It is as if everything which might fuel his desire for
immortality ends
up telling him that he is only a man, doomed to die.
This paradox emerges from Achilleus’ dramatic
battle with the river as well. The rivers of Troy have been
roused to anger because he has clogged their channels with corpses
(21.214-21), and, in a surreal scene, Achilleus battles with these
forces of nature as an almost supernatural figure. This famous
episode, alluded to it in the Catalog of the Ships, takes on new
meaning here. Even as Achilleus battles “like something more than
mortal” (21.227), the rivers rise up against him and threaten to drown
him. Suddenly, Achilleus must
not only confront the danger of death, but he must recognize that he
might
die the most inglorious of deaths, swept away like a small boy by a
flood:
“‘I wish now Hektor had killed me, the greatest man grown in this
place.
A brave man would have been the slayer, as the slain was a brave man.
But now this is a dismal death I am doomed to be caught in,
trapped in a big river as if I were a boy and a swineherd
swept away by a torrent when he tries to cross in a rainstorm.
(21.279-83)’”
He is rescued - for the moment - by the gods, but this climactic scene
sums up the tension of these final books: every time Achilleus’
superhuman strength or divine pedigree teases him into thinking he
might be more than mortal, he is forced to confront his own destiny.
MORTALS
AND
IMMORTALS
Achilleus’ reluctance to accept his mortality,
the trait that - for Homer - defines humans, might suggest a dim
view of humanity. Achilleus, after all, sees it as a weakness,
and the gods and goddesses certainly see human beings as insignificant
because of their short lives. After the death of Patroklos, for
example, Zeus saw Achilleus’ immortal horses, gifts to Peleus from the
gods, mourning for the dead warrior. He lamented their sorrow:
“‘...Poor wretches,
why then did we ever give you to the lord Peleus,
a mortal man, and you yourselves are immortal and ageless?
Only so that among unhappy men you also might be grieved?
Since among all creatures that breathe on earth and crawl on it
there is not anywhere a thing more dismal than man is. (17.442-47)’”
When the gods and goddesses square off after Achilleus’ battle with the
river, Apollo refuses to fight Poseidon over insignificant humans,
and he compares human beings to the leaves that bud in the spring and
fall
in the autumn:
“‘Shaker of the earth, you would have me be as one without prudence
if I am to fight even you for the sake of insignificant
mortals, who are as leaves are, and now flourish and grow warm
with life, and feed on what the ground gives, but then again
fade away and are dead... (21.462-66)’”
But is this Homer’s view of humanity? Is
it that of his audience - or ours? The battle of the gods seems
not only comic, but trivial, after the deadly seriousness of Achilleus’
rampage on the battlefield. The gods are immortal, and they’ll
carry on forever - there’s no denying that - but they can hardly
understand the deadly seriousness of battle. It may be that the
poem comes to teach its audience - and perhaps Achilleus - that being
mortal is not simply a
weakness. It is precisely the limits of a lifespan that,
uniquely, give human beings that chance to do some great thing before
they die, and to find the strength to deal with losses of a kind the
gods can never really know. However much we may think that the
gods cause many of the events in the poem, can anyone deny that this is
a poem about mortal men and women and not about gods?
THE DEATH OF HEKTOR AND
THE
END OF TROY
It is even harder to take the family squabbles
of the Olympian gods seriously once Homer has described Hektor taking
his last stand and falling before the eyes of his parents outside the
walls of Troy. Hektor’s parents make an anguished appeal that he
return
to the safety of the city, and the immediacy of their words contrasts
with
the reactions of Zeus or Thetis to the destiny of their mortal
children. Hektor, himself, debates several courses of
action. He is forced to acknowledge that his own recklessness may
have brought ruin to his people (22.104), and, as a result, he must
stand and fight. When Hektor panics and flees from Achilleus,
Homer suddenly offers a nostalgic flashback to the days of peace.
Describing the landscape of the battle, he says,
“...Beside these
in this place, and close to them, are the washing-hollows
of stone, and magnificent, where the wives of the Trojans and their
lovely
daughters washed the clothes to shining, in the old days
when there was peace, before the coming of the sons of the Achaians.
(22.152-56)”
The long description, the implied comparison of Hektor and Achilleus to
the hot and cold springs (22.147-52), the complex simile of the games
(22.158-64), and the account of all of the gods watching the combat
(22.166) serve to dramatize the confrontation and underscore how much
is at stake. It is, as the poet says, no game for “they ran for
the life of Hektor” (22.161).
To add to the drama, Homer links the death of
Hektor with the fall of Troy itself. This, too, permits the poet
to allude to the climax of the Trojan War, even though the capture of
the city does not form part of the Iliad. As Achilleus drives the
Trojans into the city, a simile provides an image of a burning city
that foreshadows the sack of Troy:
“...Meanwhile Achilleus
was destroying alike the Trojans themselves and their single-foot
horses;
and as when smoke ascending goes up into the wide sky
from a burning city, with the anger of the gods let loose upon it
which inflicted labour upon them all, and sorrow on many,
so Achilleus inflicted labour and sorrow upon the Trojans. (21.520-25).
When Priam appeals to Hektor to return to the safety of the city,
he imagines the destruction of Troy in extraordinarily graphic terms,
ending with the horrible image of his own dogs feeding on his corpse
(22.58-76). Finally, the lament of the Trojans over Hektor’s
death is described as “most like what would have happened, if all
lowering Ilion had been burning top to bottom in fire (22.
410-11).” It is no accident, perhaps, that
the poem ends with the burial of Hektor and the Trojan women lamenting
his
death, for this serves as a reminder of the end of Troy itself.