Homer, ‘The Iliad’, Book Twenty-Four

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A Very Simple Reading Guide to The Iliad

Despite the purification by fire and the collective commemoration of the funeral games, Achilles continues to be consumed by grief. After sleepless nights tormented on the seashore, he straps Hector’s corpse behind his chariot and drags it around the funeral mound. While Apollo continues to protect the body from corruption, Hera and Athena prevent any further divine intervention, maintaining their contempt for Troy because of Paris’ original sin of choosing Aphrodite over them. In divine council on the twelfth day after Hector’s death, Apollo denounces the two goddesses’ endorsement of Achilles’ shameless behaviour. Hera’s objection invokes Achilles’ superior status as the son of a goddess over Hector’s inferiority as a wholly mortal man. Zeus’ compromise solution is that, rather than the gods spiriting away the body of Hector, Achilles must be persuaded to surrender it of his own free will in a manner acceptable to Thetis and compliant with Zeus’ original promise to her.

Iris summons Thetis who is consumed by prospective grief for her son who is doomed to die at Troy. At the divine council on Mount Olympus, Thetis is seated in Athena’s position beside Zeus and offered nectar to drink by Hera. Zeus explains to her that she must persuade her son to accept a ransom for Hector’s body from Priam. For the third time, Thetis visits her son at Troy to comfort him, but this time she also instructs him. In the short time left to him he must return to the pleasures of the body in the world such as food and sex, and he must immediately obey Zeus and surrender Hector’s body. What Achilles must learn is that renouncing his rage and surrendering the body will enable him to return to the pleasures of life. Iris is then sent to Priam with instructions and reassurances that he will safely be able to enter the Greek camp, visit Achilles and redeem Hector’s body.

Mourning continues unabated in Troy where Priam has neither slept nor fed. He remains caked in the animal shit he has smeared across his face and head. Iris’ message inspires him to instruct his sons to prepare the wagon while he visits the royal storeroom and consults with Hecuba. The bereaved parents argue, Hecuba preferring to devour Achilles’ liver raw, Priam determined to visit him, despite the possibility of death which he no longer dreads. Priam spares no effort or expense in assembling a rich array of gifts with which to secure the body of his favourite son. First privately to Hecuba and then publicly in front of his people, Priam calls on death to take him soon, before the destruction of his city and the annihilation of his people. His life, like his surviving sons, is worthless to him now, such is his grief for Hector and his fear for Troy.

Priam will leave the city that night accompanied by his elderly attendant, Idaeus, driving a simple flatbed wagon drawn by a pair of horses and a pair of mules, the king of Troy a passenger in a trading cart. On the way out, a travel basket strapped down on the wagon will carry Priam’s priceless gifts. On the way back it will carry Hector’s body. Realising his intransigence, Hecuba brings wine for Priam to pour a libation and pray to Zeus. Answering the prayer, Zeus sends an eagle flying on the right-hand side as a sign of his divine protection. Zeus also sends Hermes to guide and protect them on their mission. Hermes appears to Priam and Idaeus disguised as a handsome young Myrmidon of whom both the older men are afraid. This false-Myrmidon assures Priam that Hector’s body has neither been fed to the dogs by Achilles nor begun to decompose. Sitting beside the two mortals, Hermes takes the whip and reins and guides the wagon across the ditch, through the gates to Achilles’ bivouac where he leaves Priam with advice about how best to appeal to Achilles’ heart.

Priam walks alone into Achilles’ shelter, prostrating himself before the man who killed Hector, entreating him to imagine his own father, Peleus, in his position. Priam speaks of Hector in terms that Achilles would approve, as a man who died defending his country. The grieving father asks for pity: “I have / endured what no man yet on earth has done – / I pressed my mouth into the hand of him / who killed my son.” (Wilson, 24: 626-629) Seeing his own father’s pain in Priam’s pain, Achilles reaches out to him and they weep together, Priam for Hector, Achilles for Peleus and Patroclus.

Finally, Achilles’ capacity for grief expires and he attends to Priam, offering him a chair and speaking with him, explaining what he understands of the human condition:

“The gods have spun for all unlucky mortals

a life of grief, while nothing troubles them.

Two jars are set upon the floor of Zeus –

from one, he gives good things, the other bad.

When thundering Zeus gives somebody a mixture,

their life is sometimes bad and sometimes good.

But those he serves with unmixed suffering

are wretched…”

(Wilson, 24: 651-658)

Achilles lists the many good fortunes of his father and the great misfortune that his only son will not live long. He then likens Priam’s lot to that of Peleus, and counsels him to bear his pain and subdue his grief. Achilles reminds Priam that while they are both obeying the will of Zeus, they must avoid offending each other. He and his attendants unyoke the animals from the wagon, seat Idaeus inside and bring in all of the ransom gifts except for a precious tunic and two cloaks which will be used to wrap the body which Achilles gives to his slave women to wash, anoint with oil, and dress. Achilles and his attendants then place Hector’s body on the wagon. As if speaking to Patroclus, Achilles excuses himself for surrendering Hector despite the fact that Patroclus would never have endorsed the desecration of Hector’s body or the torment of Hector’s parents. Telling Priam that he can see his son at dawn and take him home, Achilles then invites Priam first to eat and then to sleep so that – despite their griefs – these two men can return to life’s daily patterns and rituals. Before they go to sleep, Achilles offers Priam a truce long enough for the Trojans to mourn Hector for eleven days. How bereft of hope and yet still hoping is Priam’s response: “Then on the twelfth day, we will fight again, / if that must be.” (Wilson, 24: 836-837)

This final detail of the truce stretches the timespan of Homer’s epic poem to a total of fifty-one days. While Priam and Idaeus sleep in privacy on the porch, Achilles sleeps indoors with Briseis whose seizure by Agamemnon in Book One had initiated the rage of Achilles, his withdrawal from the war and the deaths of Patroclus and Hector.

Returning to his duties as guide and protector, Hermes wakes Priam and Idaeus in the middle of the night, prepares the animals and wagon and steers them out of the Greek encampment. In darkness he leaves them at the River Xanthus and they reach the city at dawn on the thirteenth day since Hector’s death. Their approach to the city with Hector’s corpse is first observed by Cassandra who calls the Trojans out to receive her brother home. Once Hector is removed from the catafalque and laid in state for public viewing, the mourning of Troy for him begins again, the men chanting their lamentations, the women ululating.

Three women speak their grief aloud over Hector’s body. For his wife Andromache, Hector’s death is both a public and a private calamity. Public, because Troy’s loss of its greatest defender means the inevitable destruction of the city by the Greeks. Private, first of all, because she can foresee her own inevitable enslavement and the probable death of Astyanax, their infant child. Private also, because of her genuine emotional and sexual love for her husband. For Hecuba, Hector’s death occupies the similar context of a turning point in the war. Before it, Achilles had sold the captured sons of Troy into the slave trade from which they could be redeemed. After it, there is at least the miracle of Apollo’s protection of the body from corruption, but nothing more. For Helen, Hector is to be remembered for the same defining characteristic that the Greeks remember Patroclus: Kindness. Despite the fact that Hector disapproved of Helen’s residence in Troy and blamed Paris’ love or abduction of her as the cause of the war, Helen remembers how he prevented members of his own royal family from slandering her.

Trusting to Achilles’ word that the Trojans will be allowed the time required to mourn their warrior-prince, Priam orders the collection of timber and the building of a funeral pyre outside the city. On the tenth day of his return, the Trojans cremate the body of Hector, and on the eleventh day they bury his collected bones and build a mound above his grave.

WORKPOINTS:

1. It is very difficult to come to The Iliad, without the expectation that it will be an epic poem about the war at Troy. Instead, we are thrown in media res into an argument between two warlords about a war bride. In other words, our expectations about the narrative content and, therefore, the narrative structures are challenged from the outset. While reading the early books, I found myself wondering why there was nothing about the judgement of Paris between Hera, Athena and Aphrodite, nothing about the abduction of Helen from Sparta, nothing about the rallying of the loose confederation of the Greek forces, nothing about the first nine years of the war, and nothing about the gruelling Trojan experience of a nine-year siege. Once we accommodate ourselves to a text that isn’t what we’ve been told so many times it is, we can begin to better appreciate the narrative structures and content, to the point that it makes perfect sense that we might not learn anything about the judgement of Paris until Book Twenty-Four. Raised in the context of a debate between Apollo and Hera about how to respond to Achilles’ abhorrent behaviour, it becomes part of the resolution of the story rather than one of its triggers.

2. Consider the compromise solution offered by Zeus to curb Achilles’ rage and return Hector’s body. As part of Homer’s brilliant resolution of his narrative, these things will be achieved not by overt intervention of the gods but by Achilles making the correct moral choice which will also enable him to realise how much humanity he shares with Priam. Achilles’ surrender of Hector’s body is – at last – the greater realisation of Achilles’ character.

3. As Homer returns us to the human dimension and we leave behind the domain of legendary superheroes, we notice the return of one of the most consistent stylistic features of the text: Repetition. We have Thetis’ repetition to Achilles of Zeus’ proposed ransom of Hector’s body. We have Iris’ repetition to Priam of Zeus’ instructions and reassurances. And, we have Priam’s repetition of the prayer to Zeus recommended to him by Hecuba. This is the more familiar human world of pattern and repetition. Resuming their more everyday human lives, Achilles and Priam weep together, eat and talk together, and sleep in the same camp. Another fixture in this return to the daily and nightly patterns of human life is the very explicit detail about Achilles being able to resume his sex life, this time with Briseis. Whilst this is a detail which today is impossible for us to approve of, we can still understand why it is included. It accords with Thetis’s advice that choosing the morally correct course of action now, renouncing his all-consuming, all-defining rage, will enable him to return again to the life of the senses and the body.

4. The secret meeting between the father of the second false-Achilles and the real Achilles in Book Twenty-Four is one of the most profound defining moments of The Iliad. For a modern reader, the entire amazing episode is unputdownable. Everything about it invites our sympathy and understanding, our recognition of Priam and Achilles as actual human beings. We see this in the establishing shot of Priam seated behind a pair of mules on a flatbed wagon. We see it in the passage through the Scaean Gates under the cover of darkness. We see it in the fear of Priam and Idaeus that they have been discovered by a Myrmidon warrior rather than the god Hermes who has come to guide and protect them. We see it in the initial supplication performed by Priam as he prostrates himself before the enemy warrior Achilles. But most of all, we see it in their mutual recognition of each other as fellow human beings. Homer frames this as a recognition defined by Achilles’ grief for his long-suffering father and Priam’s grief for his son. Priam can see something of Hector’s magnificence mirrored in the youthful athletic build and beauty of Achilles, while Achilles can see his own father’s longing for his son’s return in Priam’s grief for Hector. And then – before they eat and drink together – we see it in the way they weep together, two enemies sharing and mutually recognising each other’s grief and suffering. In The Shield of Achilles, one of the most important poems of his career, W.H. Auden captures precisely this as the defining element of the meeting between these two men. In Auden’s words, this extraordinary meeting takes place in a moment of time and art incomprehensible to those of us, ‘who’d never heard / Of any world where promises were kept, / Or one could weep because another wept.’ Once again, there are these moments when we can turn to The Iliad as a book of wisdom: The coming together of Priam and Achilles and Achilles’ parable of the two jars are obvious examples. How fascinating and how truthful that Achilles attempts no explanation of why everyone receives their variously allotted portions of happiness and misery. Achilles’ genius here is to recognise that the unequal allotment of happiness and misery to human beings is an observable and universal truth that defies explanation.

AFTERWORD

I embarked on this guided reading of Emily Wilson’s translation of The Iliad with a question. Is it possible for a reader to conduct such a reading without being influenced by their social, cultural, theoretical or political values and beliefs? This is, of course, a false question because no reader exists without a context and every reader does in fact bring themselves, their world and their worldview to their reading. This was probably most obvious to me and to you when I found myself describing Zeus as a tyrant-god, thus revealing my abhorrence at authoritarianism. Or my repeated use of the expression ‘the catalogue of killing’ not only to indicate that battle raged on but to register my disapproval of militarism and organised violence on a military scale. Or my focus on the lack of agency and sexual freedom accorded to women in the world of Homer’s text which clearly reflects current societal concerns about gender inequality, sexual consent and domestic violence. These are ways in which I have brought the social, cultural and political values and concerns of the world I inhabit to the world of Homer’s epic poem. Yours do not have to accord with mine.

The other question which really got me embarked upon this project was whether or not one could come from a position of relative ignorance about bronze age Greece, ancient Greek languages, and the literary history of the text, and still enjoy and appreciate The Iliad. I was the perfect test pilot for this investigation. I have never studied Homer at school or university and I have never studied either ancient or modern Greek; I am by no means an expert on ancient Greek religious beliefs or practices and I have nothing to contribute to the question of Homeric authorship or the transition from the oral to the written form of the poem; I hadn’t dipped into The Iliad since reading the Penguin edition of the Robert Fagles translation in the late 1990s. However, I think it is clear from the Workpoints following every book that I have answered this hypothesis in the affirmative. My method has been very simple. I worked my way through one book at a time, reading the Fagles translation first, during which I took no notes but just focused on the storyline. Then I read the same book in the Wilson translation, taking notes and writing the synopses and Workpoints that you have been reading. You do not need to be equipped with two thousand years of scholarship to enjoy, understand and even love this magnificent poem.

In terms of wisdom, what actually struck me more than anything else about The Iliad is the figurative language, specifically the use of nature and animal imagery on almost every page. First of all, it made me wonder what we have lost in terms of our lack of connection with the natural world compared to the author and original audience of The Iliad. Our disconnection from the natural world upon which we live probably explains our lack of care for it. Pursuing that a little further, I found myself asking where exactly The Iliad places human life and it seems to me that the Homeric domain of human life is absolutely terrestrial and bodily. We are on and of the world that gives us life and sustenance, that feeds and nurtures our bodies and gives us pleasure and pain. And that terrestrial domain places us midway between the natural world of meteorological phenomena, natural disasters, animals, seasons, landscapes and seascapes, the elements of earth, water, air and fire and – to put it bluntly – death. Or, less bluntly, Hades, the shadowy afterlife of intangible shades in which our bodies are extinguished. That is where bodily human life is situated in the Homeric universe, between life in the natural world and death.

Building on Idomeneus’ distinction between cowardice and courage and Polydamas’ and Epeus’ reflections on people’s different skills, the other great piece of wisdom I have taken from The Iliad is Achilles’ use of the two jars analogy when explaining to Priam the distribution of happiness and suffering to human beings. It is, I believe, an absolutely brilliant explanation of the human condition precisely because it offers no explanation of why some people’s lives are happier or more sorrowful than others. Why? Because, frankly, there is no explanation, no rationale. It makes absolutely no sense to believe that everything happens for a reason when, clearly, reason has nothing to do with the distribution of happiness and sorrow. It makes even less sense to believe that we are allotted our lives by a beneficent all-seeing god when children are being exterminated in Gaza. Yes, we can say and do something about the uneven and inadequate distribution of resources and opportunities in our societies and on a world scale, but we cannot rationally explain why one child is born into a life of good fortune while another is born into a life of misery. It is simply a matter of observable truth that some people are happier than others.

So, what do I think this epic poem called The Iliad is all about? Now, remember, this is where a reader brings themselves and their world experience to the text. So, this is a matter of opinion rather than of expertise or training. I’ve mentioned somewhere in the Workpoints how surprised I was that there is nothing about the origins and causes of the war between the Greeks and the Trojans at the beginning of the epic and precious little throughout it. At the end there is nothing about the final act of cunning – the Trojan horse which probably should be called the Greek horse – that secures victory for the Greeks, nothing about the complete destruction of the city of Troy, the murder of its royal family and the decimation of its people.

Before considering the extent to which The Iliad is an epic poem about Achilles, it is apparent from my latter Workpoints that it is well-nigh impossible for me to think about Achilles without also contemplating those other tragic figures, the two false-Achilles, Patroclus and Hector. Not only are they combined in the symbolism of the suit of armour they both wear which belongs to the actual Achilles. Not only do their deaths represent enormous hurdles that Achilles must overcome in order to realise himself as a more complete and harmonious human being. They also share a particular quality for which each of them will be remembered by their respective peoples: Kindness. And it is this quality that brings me closer to understanding what The Iliad is about for me. Not entirely a martial poem about the arts of war, it is also very much a human poem about the arts of peace as represented in that most extraordinary piece of physical and literary craftsmanship, the shield of Achilles. Despite their violent hideous deaths in combat, I like to think of Patroclus and Hector as champions of the primacy of the arts of peace and the necessity of kindness in human affairs.

Even though people often refer to The Iliad as Homer’s poem about the Trojan War, I think that is only really the case if The Iliad is about the Trojan War in a very particular way. It covers fifty-one days in a ten-year military campaign and siege conducted by the Greeks to destroy Troy. Even though he is absent from the action for almost all of them, those fifty-one days are very much the story of one combatant, Achilles, and his most powerful experiences at Troy which occur during those days: His humiliation by Agamemnon who takes Briseis from him; his consequent rage and the withdrawal of himself and his forces from the war; his loss of Patroclus, his closest most intimate friend; his vengeance against Hector, and his reconciliation with Priam. Through these experiences we observe the extraordinary practice of character development by Homer as Achilles evolves from the petulant boy and confused semi-divine being incapable of controlling his extreme anger and ferocity, to the poised warrior-philosopher who welcomes the enemy king into his home-away-from-home in the last book of the poem.

The Iliad is often also referred to as the story of Achilles’ rage and it is, but in very particular and interesting ways. It is Achilles’ rage which leads directly to the deaths of his lover-friend Patroclus and his enemy Hector – the two false-Achilles – which is the prequel to his own doom. For most of the duration of the poem Achilles’ rage against Agamemnon smoulders on until it is superseded by Patroclus’ death and his complicity in that death. For twelve days his wrath is unimaginable, so much so that on the twelfth day Zeus himself will no longer tolerate it. And, then, that night, Achilles abandons his rage altogether as he sits beside an elderly stranger who reminds him of his father whom he knows is missing him terribly. He is no longer just a confused adolescent demi-god, no longer a human killing machine. He has become a human being, complex and thoughtful, considerate and empathetic, a man of peace as well as a man of war. Beyond loving Patroclus and hating Hector, maybe, just maybe, he has come to understand their preference for kindness and civility over warfare and brutality. Maybe that is what The Iliad, the poem of force, is all about. Not only the extent of force but its limitations as well.

– Adrian D’Ambra, Melbourne, February 2024

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This project would have been impossible without the English language translations of The Iliad by Robert Fagles (Penguin Books, 1998) and Emily Wilson (W.W. Norton and Company, 2023), both of which provide accessible and enjoyable reading experiences. In the late 1990s I was impressed by the stately and compelling version rendered by Fagles. Early in 2021 I enlisted myself in the Emily Wilson fanbase as I read her translation of The Odyssey (W.W. Norton and Company, 2018) and was overjoyed to learn that she was working on The Iliad. To both she brings the swift and vivid eye of a master storyteller. Humble thanks to both of you for your knowledge, intellect and artistry. When I told my friend who works in AI about this project, he advised me to write the ultimate consumable version of The Iliad – the equivalent of approximately one page – and was dismayed by the cumbersome prospect of twenty-four instalments. Sorry, Steve, but thank you nonetheless for your advice about the hyperlinks in the online version!

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Homer, ‘The Iliad’, Book Twenty-Three

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A Very Simple Reading Guide to The Iliad

The two sides in this war may never have been further apart even as each side mourns the death of a hero, Patroclus the Greek, Hector the Trojan. The Iliad is dominated by the will of Achilles, his refusal to fight in the first nineteen books and his return to battle in the last five. In Book Twenty-Three he is the orchestrator of the funerary rights for Patroclus. At the end of the day’s fighting, he leads a procession of the Myrmidons past the body of his dead friend, leaving Hector’s corpse face-down in the dirt beside Patroclus’ bier and arranging a funerary feast to commemorate Patroclus. He rejects the entreaties of his fellow warlords to wash, eat or drink before the funeral. Achilles lies apart from his men on the beach where he is visited in his sleep by the spirit of Patroclus who makes two requests: To expedite the funeral so that his soul can enter Hades and to promise that their bones be stored together in a single urn as a final, eternal symbol of their relationship. Attempting to embrace the shade, Achilles’ arms enclose only emptiness.

At dawn on the twenty-eighth day of The Iliad the Greeks gather wood to build the funeral pyre while Achilles plans a single funeral mound for both of them. As Patroclus’ body is taken to the pyre, Achilles follows, holding his dear friend’s head in his hands. The soldiers cut locks of their hair and throw them on the body while Achilles places his in Patroclus’ hands. At Achilles’ request, Agamemnon disperses the troops, only the warlords remaining behind, arranging the massive pyre. Sheep, horses and dogs are sacrificed, Achilles covering Patroclus’ body with the sheep fat so that it will burn away to the bones. Achilles cuts the throats of the twelve adolescent Trojan boys he captured at the river and lights the fire. He keeps Hector’s body to be eaten by dogs, but Aphrodite and Apollo protect it from putrefaction. When the pyre does not ignite, Achilles prays for the winds to come and fan the flames and Iris successfully delivers his request. Throughout the night the pyre burns and Achilles walks around it shedding tears and pouring wine libations for his dead lover-friend.

On the following dawn, Achilles collapses into the sleep of the dead himself, only to be awoken by the warlords who collect Patroclus’ bones for him. Achilles tells them that his own bones will soon be stored in the same urn and that they should then build a funeral mound for both of them. Achilles then organises a day of commemorative games for which he provides rich prizes including cauldrons, tripods, iron, gold, animals and women. Five contestants draw lots to determine their starting positions in the chariot race. During the race Apollo conjures away Diomedes’ whip which is returned to him by Athena who sabotages Eumelus’ chariot. Antilochus dangerously closes in on Diomedes at a narrowing of the track, forcing him to pull back. Amongst the spectators, Idomeneus and Oilean Ajax argue about who is in the lead as Diomedes comes into view and wins the race. Achilles acknowledges the winner but then adjudicates that Eumelus deserves second place instead of Antilochus who challenges the call by refusing to surrender the pregnant mare awarded to him. The disagreement is satisfactorily resolved by Achilles. Menelaus then speaks up, denouncing Antilochus for foul play at the narrow pass. Antilochus responds by respectfully acknowledging Menelaus’ seniority and his own youthful indiscretion by handing over the mare to his superior. Pleased by the deference accorded him, Menelaus returns the horse to Antilochus, praising him for the maturity of his gesture. Achilles then gives the unclaimed fifth prize to a non-contestant, Nestor, in honour of his status as the elder statesman and father figure of the Greek forces. For one last time Nestor speaks about the physical vigour of his youth and the miseries of old age.

Achilles then convenes a boxing match and a bout of wrestling, the latter of which ends in a tie between Telamonian Ajax and Odysseus who goes on to win the footrace. Diomedes and Telamonian Ajax are tied in an armed duel and Polypoetes wins a throwing competition. Meriones wins at archery and Agamemnon does not even need to compete to be recognised as the finest javelin thrower.

WORKPOINTS:

1. There are extraordinary moments in The Iliad but none of them can possibly be more so than the visits paid to Achilles by Patroclus’ spirit in Book Twenty-Three and Trojan King Priam in Book Twenty-Four. For centuries poets and readers have felt their souls illuminated by the secret meeting between the father of the second false-Achilles and the real Achilles in Book Twenty-Four and the final meeting and conversation between Achilles and Patroclus in Book Twenty-Three, particularly the dialogue of the dead Patroclus who says the following to his living lover-friend:

“Are you asleep? Have you forgotten me,

Achilles? When I was alive, you never

failed to take care of me – but not in death.

Please hurry, bury me and let me pass

the gates of Hades. I am all alone.

The spirits of the dead, whose toils are over,

will not allow me yet to join with them,

and they refuse to let me cross the river.

I wander, lost and aimless, through the halls

of Hades where the gates are always open.

Give me your hand, Achilles, please, I beg you!

Never shall I come back from Hades’ house

after you grant me my due share of fire.

Never again will we sit down together

alive, apart from all our dear companions,

and form our plans together. Hateful doom,

the lot that I have had since I was born,

has opened wide to swallow me at last.

Godlike Achilles, even you are fated

to die beneath the wealthy Trojans’ wall.

And I have something else to ask of you,

if you will listen. Do not put my bones

apart from yours, Achilles, but together,

as we were raised together in your house.

When I was just a very little boy

back home in Opoeis where I was born,

Menoetius brought me from our land to yours

because of a disastrous homicide.

I killed the son of Acamas that day.

I was a fool. I did not mean to do it,

But I got angry at a game of dice.

The horse-lord Peleus accepted me

into his house and brought me up with kindness,

and named me as your steward and companion.

So let a single urn hold both our bones,

the golden vessel with the double handles

which you were given by your goddess mother.”

(Wilson, 23: 88-124)

How similar they are, this Patroclus and this Achilles, the first false-Achilles and the godlike actuality. In a way, both of them are exiles: Patroclus forced to live away from home due to a fatal indiscretion; Achilles the semi-divine, godlike warrior forced to live a wholly mortal life. Temperament has determined the shape of their lives, in particular, a quickness to anger. Patroclus kills a gambling partner. Achilles effectively betrays the Greeks by withdrawing from the war. In their grief at the separation forced upon them by Patroclus’ death, both of them wander lost and aimlessly, Patroclus before the gates of Hades, Achilles the heartsick lover along the night-time beaches of the Hellespont. And, in their grief, they miss each other equally, the past lives they shared, the way they lived together far away from home encamped upon the shores of Troy, and the plans they dared to dream together of a shared future in the kingdom of Phthia, where Achilles would be king and Patroclus the steward of his son. Both of them are doomed to early deaths and neither of them can bear the impossibility of further physical contact between their bodies. Those bodies which fought together sheathed in bronze and dirtied by the filth of war. Those bodies with which they slept together either man-to-man or sharing captive women between them. For them, the bodily world of the senses, the lived world of the body was something that they shared in absolute harmony and equality. The best that they can hope for now is that their spirits will encounter each other in the underworld and that their bones will be stored together in a single golden urn, a foot in both camps of eternity.

2. The Achilles of Book Twenty-Three is not yet ready for apotheosis and neither is he ready for unqualified status as a hero. He is not yet wholly integrated in his being, not yet fully aware of the moral dimension of his actions. The vengeful slaughter of the twelve Trojan youths as sacrificial offerings at the funeral pyre of Patroclus is dispensed with by Homer in a few lines in which Achilles first swears to do it, then abducts the boys at the river, and later slits their throats. But this action is no more dignified than the Greek soldiers’ mistreatment of the dead body of Hector with their spears or Achilles’ repeated attempts to defile that body. It is the abhorrent practice of human sacrifice and it happens uncommented upon by Achilles’ comrades without any restraining hand or moral suggestion of its barbarity.

3. Before the films Ben-Hur (1959) and Star Wars; Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace (1999), here in Book Twenty-Three of The Iliad is the original prototype of the chariot race, replete with intense rivalries, incredible driving derring-do, and reckless endangerment. In Homer’s narrative the race serves another purpose in the development of Achilles’ character. The man whose rage has led to so many Greek deaths in battle and almost saw the Greek fleet incinerated by Hector, is now the generous sponsor and adjudicator of the games, the good-humoured resolver of disputes, especially in his insistence that all competitors receive a prize rather than just the winners. Here Achilles begins to understand the necessity and value of restraint and moderation, of fair play, participation and inclusion.

Indeed, beyond commemorating Patroclus, what is the point of these sporting competitions? So much of The Iliad has been about the exercise of force, the exertion of physical power to dominate, subdue and kill others. These competitions of physical prowess represent the marshalling, controlling and channelling of brute force into an ordered activity with agreed rules, structures and limitations so that sport is to war what civilisation is to barbarism.

Ringo Starr once described himself as not being the best drummer in the world but the drummer in the best rock ’n’ roll band in the world. When Epeus nominates himself for the boxing competition he admits that he might not be the best soldier in the Greek army but he considers himself a worthy boxer: “No man can be the best at everything.” (Wilson, 23: 891) I sense that Homer is working towards the end of his narrative by removing us from the sphere of legendary heroism and returning us to the human dimension where both talents and deficits have to be acknowledged and accepted; where disputes have to be resolved rather than festering into gargantuan disagreements; where goodwill and compromise are preferable to brute force and intransigence. We can also read this into the tie between Telamonian Ajax’s brute strength and Odysseus’ cunning in the wrestling bout, and Homer’s decreased reliance on animal and nature imagery in the last two books of the epic poem. And, thus, we are also being prepared for the resolution of the tension between Achilles and Priam in Book Twenty-Four when Achilles will do something he would have been temperamentally incapable of doing at any time prior.

Go to Book Twenty-Four

Homer, ‘The Iliad’, Book Twenty-Two

Go to Book One

A Very Simple Reading Guide to The Iliad

As the Trojan survivors stream back into the city, Achilles pursues the false-Agenor, only to have Apollo reveal that he has been tricked yet again by a god. Whilst Achilles laments how Apollo has deceived him and thus enabled the Trojans to retreat unmolested, let us not forget that cunning and deception are highly valued qualities in the world of this poem. Disabused, Achilles runs towards the walls and gates of Troy where Hector has chosen to remain alone outside the sanctuary of his city, burdened by the guilt of his responsibility for so many Trojan deaths.

Priam and Hecuba implore their son to come inside the gates, foretelling disaster for their family, their forces and their people should Hector be killed. Watching from the ramparts above the Scaean Gates as Achilles approaches, Priam pre-emptively grieves for the death of Hector and its consequences: The sacking of Troy; the murder of all the remaining men including – of course – his surviving sons; the enslavement of the women; the horrid death of baby Astyanax hurtled from a high window, and his own humiliating death. The dogs of Troy and the vultures of the plain will feast upon their remains. Hecuba holds out a breast to her doomed son, repeating her husband’s entreaty for him to shelter inside the walls.

Hector cannot countenance retreat. His refusal of the best advice at his disposal – Polydamas’ insistence that they leave the plain the previous nightfall – has led to the Greek decimation of their forces by a rearmed Achilles. His choices now are stark as he lays them out in another one of those extraordinary Homeric interior monologues: Fight and kill Achilles and return a hero or fight and be killed by Achilles. He momentarily entertains a third option, that he approach Achilles as a diplomat rather than a warrior and negotiate a peaceful settlement. But everyone – Priam, Hecuba, Hector – knows that Achilles will not negotiate, he can only kill. Wearing Achilles’ and Patroclus’ original armour, Hector decides to stand his ground until Achilles’ approach causes him to lose his nerve and he flees.

Achilles chases Hector, both men running for Hector’s life, circling the city three times. On Olympus, Zeus expresses pity for Hector and asks the deities for their opinions. Athena reminds him that Hector is mortal and, therefore, doomed to die, and Zeus perfidiously gives her free licence to intervene. Apollo inspires Hector with an infusion of strength. However, when Zeus’ scales of destiny announce the doom of Hector, Apollo abandons him while Athena colludes with Achilles to kill him. Assuming the form of Deiphobus, another one of Hecuba and Priam’s royal sons, Athena offers to fight beside Hector. This false-Deiphobus swears brotherly love and fidelity to Hector, encouraging him to stand and challenge Achilles.

Seeking the same assurance from Achilles, Hector promises Achilles that if he kills him, he will return his undefiled body to the Greeks. In the language of a lion challenging a human or a wolf challenging a lamb, Achilles refuses any negotiation with Hector. Achilles’ first spear throw misses but Athena returns the spear to him. Hector’s first spear throw pierces Achilles’ shield but to no effect. He calls out for Deiphobus’ spear only to realise that he has been abandoned and deceived by Athena:

“The gods have called me to my death.

I thought Deiphobus was at my side.

But he is on the wall. Athena tricked me.

The horror of my death is near me now,

not far away, and there is no way out.

Zeus and the son of Zeus, the distant archer,

must have decided all this long ago –

the gods who used to be so kind to me,

who helped me in the past. And now my doom

has come at last. But never let me die

without a struggle and without acclaim.

Let me achieve some greatness and be known

to people in the days to come.”

(Wilson, 22: 399-411)

Knowing this is the moment of his doom, Hector confronts it as a warrior, leaping at Achilles with his sword drawn. Ready for the assault, Achilles drives his spear into Hector’s throat. As the man who fought him wearing his own armour is dying, Achilles claims the kill in Patroclus’ name. With his dying breaths Hector again implores that his body be returned to his parents. When Achilles once again refuses, one of the final things Hector says is: “I see you and I understand you…” (Wilson, 22: 479) We also see Achilles for who and what he is: a brutal, ruthless killer. And we see the men around him for who and what they are and the practice of war for what it is as they pierce Hector’s lifeless body with their spears for pleasure.

Achilles strips Hector of the armour Hector stripped from Patroclus. He further desecrates the body by piercing the ankles, threading them with a leather strap and dragging him by chariot, face-down in the dirt of the plain, displaying him thus to his people. Priam laments his son’s death and the Trojan women ululate his passing. These ululations echo throughout the chambers of the royal harem where Andromache is weaving and sewing cloth that is dyed in the royal purple of the murex shell. Her slaves are boiling water for Hector’s return so that he can wash off the filth of battle. However, the sounds of mourning make Andromache realise that something terrible has happened. She reaches the battlement – that same place where she had once already begged her husband to avoid danger – in time to see her husband’s corpse being dragged towards the Greek camp. She faints for a moment and then revives to speak her utter devastation, especially her dread concerning what will become of their baby son Astyanax. The women of Troy wail with her.

WORKPOINTS:

1. Achilles’ original armour has been worn by Patroclus and stripped from him by Hector who wears it in preference to his own. Eventually it is reclaimed by Achilles but, before that, it has been worn twice by two false-Achilles. The first false-Achilles is killed by the second false-Achilles who is killed by Achilles himself. What does it mean to us as readers that we have Achilles in duplicate, in triplicate? More importantly, what does it mean to him? Achilles is a young man who knows that he is renowned by others for his athleticism and courage. He is young and temperamental, impulsive and violent, and – in his youth – he does not know himself or understand his place in the world. A condition no doubt intensified by his mixed human and divine parentage.

Achilles transfers his glory to Patroclus by giving him his armour, thus bringing about the death of his lover-friend. Whilst acknowledging his responsibility for Patroclus’ death, his anger insists on blaming the second false-Achilles for the first false-Achilles’ death. Achilles’ glory is momentarily passed on to his greatest enemy as Hector claims and wears the armour stripped from Patroclus’ body. To win his glory back, Achilles requires the intervention of the gods as Thetis secures from Hephaestus an even greater suit of armour. But, in killing Hector, Achilles must also kill himself both metaphorically and in reality. Metaphorically because he must kill a man who is dressed as him. Actually, because Achilles knows full-well that Hector’s death has been prophesised as the prelude to his own.

But we might also reasonably hope that, by killing the second false-Achilles and regaining ownership of his original suit of armour, Achilles could also achieve some greater integration of the self, some greater grasp of his personhood and his place, some greater self-control. But, no, his anger – the anger of the petulant child who cannot have what it wants, the anger of the young person who does not know who they are and where they belong – Achilles’ anger still predominates, despite all the carnage that it has previously caused. His brutality continues to define him as he ties the thongs through Hector’s ankles and desecrates his body by dragging it through the dirt before the Trojan people.

2. And what of Hector? A man who makes mistakes and realises too late the mistake for what it is. All-too-human Hector, courageous for a moment when Achilles is still far off, then terrified by Achilles’ proximity. Hector, who should have gone inside the gates but stayed outside them for shame at the consequences of his most recent mistake. Hector, who is so cruelly sacrificed by Zeus, so cruelly abandoned by Apollo, and so cruelly deceived by Athena. Hector, who will no longer be able to be embraced by his parents, who will no longer be able to make love with Andromache or bounce baby Astyanax upon his lap. As Achilles’ comrades defile Hector’s corpse with their spears, I feel the urge both to condemn them and to understand that they do not know what they are doing. As Achilles drags the body, displaying it in front of the terrified city, I want Hector’s soul to look back from its journey to the underworld and say, “Do not touch me!”

3. What does it mean to feel a parent’s love for their child? What does it mean for parents when their children die before them? The lamentations of Hecuba and Priam before and after the death of Hector are wrenched from their hearts and they are heart-wrenching to read.

4. Priam’s public acknowledgement of Laothoe in front of Hecuba as the mother of Polydorus and Lycaon further reinforces our understanding of the polygamous nature of the Trojan royal household and the structure of their palace.

Go to Book Twenty-Three

Homer, ‘The Iliad’, Book Twenty-One

Go to Book One

A Very Simple Reading Guide to The Iliad

Achilles’ rage is now wholly the bloodlust of the warrior and its most important aspect in Book Twenty-One is not its heroism or success but its unchecked brutality, its ravaging violence which appears – at least to this modern reader – to become increasingly inexcusable as Achilles becomes increasingly irrational. Indeed, Achilles’ awareness of his own mortality, reinforced by the death of Patroclus, seems to have assuaged any moral qualms about taking others’ lives. Despite the ‘divine’ and ‘godlike’ appellations, he comes across as a man berserk. Where Hector swept the field the day before, Achilles now sweeps the Trojan forces before him, routing and dividing them, half running for their lives towards Troy, half driven into the river known both as Xanthus in its anthropomorphic state and Scamander in its geographic.

Armed with his slashing sword, Achilles leaps into the river, dismembering and disembowelling numerous Trojans who have already been disarmed by the raging river. He retains sufficient presence of mind to take twelve youths hostage, later to be sacrificed for Patroclus. On the riverbank Achilles takes a familiar prisoner, Lycaon, yet another son of Priam’s and brother of Polydorus whom Achilles killed the day before. Achilles had abducted Lycaon once before and sold him into the slave trade on the island of Lemnos where he was redeemed by a friend of Troy. This is only the twelfth day of Lycaon’s return and as Achilles watches him clamber out of the river the Greek wonders to himself if his Trojan kills will similarly return from Hades to challenge him again. Achilles puts the hypothesis to the test by refusing Lycaon’s entreaties and slaughtering him. Achilles throws Lycaon’s body into the river and vows to continue his rampage against the Trojans.

Xanthus, the godly embodiment of this river, is outraged by the extent of Achilles’ killing which has choked the river with corpses and decides to do more to protect Troy. Achilles gluts Xanthus with another victim, Asteropeus, the grandson of another river, Xanthus’ last straw. After Achilles’ rapid slaughter of half-a-dozen of Asteropeus’ countrymen, the river Xanthus demands moderation. Instead, Achilles, who still wants to know to what extent he will be thwarted by the gods, further provokes Xanthus by jumping back into the river and fully blocking it with a tree he uproots to steady himself. Realising that he has gone too far, Achilles climbs out of the river and sprints across the plain but the swollen river’s waters chase him.

Achilles appeals to Zeus for help and is aided instead by Poseidon and Athena, the former telling him to drive the Trojans inside Troy so that he can then challenge Hector. Emboldened, Achilles pushes the river water back across the plain. Further enraged, Xanthus rises above Achilles, ready to crush and drown him, until Hera sends her son, Hephaestus, god of fire, to challenge Xanthus. Aided by the winds, Hephaestus burns so hot he sets the water and all within it alight until Xanthus relents. As he does so, Xanthus also vows to Hera that he will never aid the Trojans again, even as their city burns.

To Zeus’ amusement some of the gods begin to fight each other: Ares against Athena; Athena against Aphrodite; Hera against Artemis. However, Apollo gently dissuades Poseidon from fighting him as Hermes dissuades Leto. Poseidon does question Apollo’s support for Troy, reminding him of their year of punishment in servitude to Priam’s father, Laomedon, who refused to pay their wages (Apollo as herder, Poseidon as wall-builder). Artemis is the first to retreat to Olympus where she cries upon her father Zeus’ lap. As the other gods return, Apollo remains behind to inspect the Trojan walls and Achilles continues on his rampage.

Priam orders that the Scaean Gates be opened to receive the surviving routed Trojans whom Apollo leads to safety. Apollo also emboldens Agenor to stand his ground and hold back Achilles from the open gates. Agenor’s spear glances off Achilles’ shin guard, a reminder perhaps of Achilles’ weak spot, his ankle. Apollo then removes Agenor from danger, assumes his form, holds back Achilles, and allows the surviving Trojans to re-enter the city and close the gates.

WORKPOINTS:

1. There is just so much here about the unavoidable consequences of our actions. Gone berserk on the battlefield, Achilles is challenged and nearly killed there, not because he is Greek or because Xanthus is Trojan but because Achilles has not checked himself. Even as a soldier he has offended what will one day become the classical Greek ideal of moderation. Achilles’ fury throughout the epic is so gargantuan, so unchecked and so out of proportion that he keeps on bringing disasters upon his own head: The death of Patroclus, the wrath of Xanthus. I even see the once again bizarre spectre of the gods fighting each other on a human battlefield in the same context. Warfare and murder, blood lust and vengeance are human behaviour at its most appalling. The consequences of that behaviour are complete disruption and discord. Indeed, it is so disruptive that, frankly, it even drives the gods mad.

2. In his interaction with Lycaon, Achilles reveals himself as a master of the slave trade and Homer reveals to us that this trade was apparently thriving. Not all the living human bodies plundered from defeated peoples were kept as slaves by their captors. They could readily be traded in exchange for other goods with the same people who were trading wine and other products across the Aegean.

3. Lycaon pleas for his life by reminding Achilles that he is not born from the same mother as Hector, but another of Priam’s presumably younger wives, giving us a little more insight into the structure of the royal family at Troy. Hecuba is Priam’s and the city’s queen because she is Priam’s chief wife, but Priam apparently has multiple other wives. The colonnaded sleeping quarters of Priam’s fifty sons and twelve daughters and their spouses mentioned in Book Six, appears now to be something more like a classical oriental harem – not the fabled brothel of orientalist imagination, but a housing arrangement designed to accommodate a polygamous royal family. Whilst the Greek warlords have their one wife and as many female slaves and war brides as they can accumulate, Priam has multiple wives, a point of cultural difference between these two Hellenic cultures.

Go to Book Twenty-Two

Homer, ‘The Iliad’, Book Twenty

Go to Book One

A Very Simple Reading Guide to The Iliad

With the aid of Themis, Zeus convenes an assembly of the gods far exceeding the principal deities of Olympus and extending to the river spirits and the water nymphs. Still belligerently challenging Zeus as he was in Book Fifteen when he claimed divine equality with him but was nonetheless forced to withdraw from supporting the Greeks, Poseidon speaks first, asking Zeus what his intentions are. Zeus responds by completely lifting the embargo imposed on the deities in Book Eight, announcing that he will enjoy a commanding view of the war at Troy from Olympus while the rest can visit and support the side of their choice. His only condition is that Achilles must not be allowed to exceed his allotted part.

Athena, Hera, Poseidon, Hermes and Hephaestus go to the Greeks, Ares, Apollo, Artemis, Leto, Xanthus and Aphrodite to the Trojans. Between Zeus’ thunder and Poseidon’s earthquakes, Athena and Ares howl their dreadful competing war cries and the opposing gods face each other one-on-one. Achilles seeks out Hector but is first encountered by Aeneas who is urged on by Apollo in the form of one of Priam’s sons. Having previously been humiliated by Achilles, Aeneas requires some prodding which Apollo provides by comparing the higher divine rank of Aeneas’ mother – Aphrodite, daughter of Zeus – with Achilles’ – Thetis, daughter of Nereus. Hera fears the potential danger Aeneas poses to Achilles while Poseidon reassures her that momentum is with the Greeks and with Achilles. The two sets of gods regroup in separate places to observe the battle.

Achilles pounces on Aeneas in a passage with one of Homer’s most cinematic and anthropomorphic uses of the lion motif:

‘… Achilles, son

of Peleus, confronted him and pounced,

like a devouring lion, whom the people

from all around are desperate to kill –

they gather to confront him, but the lion

ignores them and continues on his way

till one of the young warriors attacks

and hits him with a spear – he crouches low,

jaws open and foam frothing on his teeth –

his brave heart groans, and with his tail he lashes

his flanks from side to side, and goads himself

to battle, and with eyes ablaze, he hurtles

straight at the enemy, to kill some man

or else be killed himself amid the fray –

just so, Achilles’ bold, intrepid spirit

goaded him forward to come face to face

with valiant Aeneas.’

(Wilson, 20: 214-230)

As is often the case in the heraldic universe of this epic poem, the conflict is not only physical, it is verbal. Achilles tries to undermine Aeneas’ ardour, first by suggesting that Priam and the Trojans will never thank him for his efforts and, secondly, by recounting the details of their previous encounter when Achilles was sacking Briseis’ home city of Lyrnessus and Aeneas had to run for his life. Aeneas’ response to Achilles’ verbal assault provides Homer with the opportunity to outline Aeneas’ family pedigree. Aeneas traces his ancestry back through several generations, establishing himself as the son of Aphrodite and a descendant of Zeus. Through his human forefathers, he is descended from a line of kings, related to the Trojan royal family, and masters of their own Dardanian kingdom. Centuries later – of course, unknowable to Homer – this ancestry will be claimed as part of the foundation myth of Rome. Indeed, Poseidon soon explains that – despite his support for the Greeks – Aeneas must be protected to fulfil the prophecy that his future progeny will rule Troy.

Aeneas spears but fails to penetrate Achilles’ shield. Achilles’ spear badly damages Aeneas’ shield and Achilles leaps at him with sword drawn. Against Hera and Athena’s vow to see Troy completely destroyed, Poseidon recues Aeneas, advising him to draw back from the front line until Achilles has been killed. Recognising Aeneas’ divine protection, Achilles turns his attention to the slaughter of other Trojans, notching up four named kills including Polydorus, Priam’s youngest son. Enraged by Polydorus’ death, Hector ignores Apollo’s advice to hold back and charges at Achilles. Renouncing the heraldic war of words, Hector throws his spear which is deflected by Athena, falling back at his own feet. Hector is then spirited away by Apollo. Appalled by the divine interventions thwarting his success, Achilles throws himself at the Trojans, notching up another ten named kills.

WORKPOINTS:

1. I find it really interesting that Hera should share this thought with her fellow divine supporters of the Greeks at Troy: “… It is hard for humans / to face the gods when we reveal ourselves.” (Wilson, 20: 173-174) Whilst it is true that the most common way in which the gods interact with humans on either side of the conflict is to assume a human identity familiar to their interlocutor, it is not uncommon for the humans involved to realise very quickly, almost intuitively, that they are being visited and spoken to by a god or goddess in disguise. The difficulty for humans communicated with by the gods in The Iliad is not so much the meetings themselves but the content or consequences of those meetings. A fearless warrior finds it difficult being told to retreat or to avoid a particular opponent. Another warrior will be enraged by the divine deflection of a well-aimed spear or arrow which has come so close to killing an enemy combatant.

However, the idea that the gods walk among us and intervene or interfere in our affairs seems to come as no surprise to Homer’s all-too-human characters. After all, it is common knowledge that amongst the Greeks and Trojans there are warriors such as Achilles and Aeneas and others such as Helen whose parentage or ancestry includes divine figures. We are told on a number of occasions throughout the epic poem that people living at the time of the war at Troy were stronger and more capable than people are now, that these people belong to a different period of human history when it was not only understood but expected that human beings and divine figures interacted with each other. They constitute an heroic age, far different from our own. Of course, the gods were more powerful and had far greater agency in the interactions but the gods could and did listen on occasion to prayers and pleas for intercession from mortals such as when, in Book Eight, Zeus takes pity on the Greeks in direct response to Agamemnon’s prayer. Just as the gods are anthropomorphic in their weaknesses, their differences and desires, so too are human activities manifestations of the divine: War is a manifestation of Ares; sex a manifestation of Aphrodite; craftsmanship of Hephaestus; civilisation of Apollo; intelligence of Athena.

2. Another fascinating comment from Book Twenty is made by Aeneas to Achilles and, through them, by Homer to the reader:

“The tongues of human beings twist and turn

and there are many different types of speech.

The field of language spreads out far and wide.

People will talk of you as you of them.”

(Wilson, 20: 326-329)

This lesson in rhetoric is actually part of Aeneas’ roundabout way of telling Achilles that they need to stop talking and start fighting, but, despite that delicious irony, a lesson in rhetoric it is nonetheless. Without forgetting that I cannot read Homer in the original and that I can only rely upon the translation in front of me, I don’t for a moment think that Aeneas’ “People will talk of you as you of them”, means that you shouldn’t do or say unto others what you wouldn’t want them doing or saying unto you. It sits with me far more as a statement of an obvious but important truth about how we use language. We use language to communicate with each other and about each other as well as about ourselves. Which reminds me of a commonplace from a couple of decades ago that went along the lines of, ‘When you talk about someone else’s marriage, you’re really talking about your own.’ Indeed, every single statement made by Aeneas in this excerpt is a simple and profound truth. For example, our tongues do twist and turn. They do so physically to form the words and sentences we use. But they also do so metaphorically to twist the truth and turn it to our advantage. And, yes, there are many different types of speech and many different types of purposes: to inform and persuade, to describe and entertain, to explain and to question, to manipulate and deceive. Indeed, the field of language spreads out far and wide.

Go to Book Twenty-One

Homer, ‘The Iliad’, Book Nineteen

Go to Book One

A Very Simple Reading Guide to The Iliad

As ‘Dawn in her saffron-coloured dress’ (Wilson, 19: 1) delivers daylight, Thetis delivers Hephaestus’ armour to Achilles whose flaccid body remains draped over the dead body of Patroclus. Upon her arrival, her son is gripped by three powerful emotions: Awe at the immortal craftsmanship; rage at the death of Patroclus; fear that Patroclus’ decomposing body will be defiled by flies and maggots. Thetis opens the way ahead for him, preserving Patroclus’ body with nectar and ambrosia and advising him to call a council, reconcile with Agamemnon, and prepare for war.

Every available Greek down to the deckhands and mess cooks attends the council as do the wounded Diomedes, Odysseus and Agamemnon. Addressing Agamemnon in particular, Achilles renounces his rage and acknowledges that their enmity has only benefitted the Trojans. Whilst predisposed to accept Achilles’ offer of reconciliation, Agamemnon attempts to explain his own behaviour by saying that he was deluded by the gods: “… It is a god / who carries everything to its conclusion… Delusion… is the eldest child of Zeus… She passes through the minds of human beings / and damages them all…” (Wilson, 19: 118-124) Agamemnon further exonerates himself by explaining that even Zeus is not immune from Delusion by telling the story of how Hera prevented Heracles from being born into the charmed life proposed for him by Zeus by deceiving her brother-husband. Agamemnon repeats his earlier pledge from Book Nine to return Briseis untouched accompanied by a generous offering of gifts.

The reconciliation almost ends in disagreement as Agamemnon insists on publicly performing his gift-giving now and Achilles counters by insisting that they attack their enemy immediately. Odysseus adjudicates, telling Achilles it would be counter-productive to send the troops into battle on empty stomachs. They should allow time for Agamemnon’s gift-giving, the restoration of Briseis, and the army’s breakfast. Restitution is made and a boar is sacrificed by Agamemnon. Seeing the body of Patroclus in Achilles’ compound, Briseis wails and tears at her breasts. Recounting how Achilles sacked her city and slaughtered her people and family, she also recalls Patroclus’ kindness to her when he promised to persuade Achilles to marry rather than enslave her. The other enslaved women present wail again.

Several of the Greek leaders try to comfort Achilles in his grief, counselling him to eat. Remembering how Patroclus prepared food for them when the Greeks were fighting, Achilles insists that he will fast until evening: ‘The only comfort that his heart could feel / was entering the bloody mouth of war.’ (Wilson, 19: 409-410) In the company of Agamemnon, Menelaus, Idomeneus, Odysseus, Nestor and Phoenix, Achilles verbalises another lengthy lamentation in which he says that Patroclus’ death has hurt him more than news of his father’s or his son’s would do. Witnessing Achilles’ ‘intolerable grief’ (Wilson, 19: 479) and his refusal of food and wine, Zeus sends Athena to restore him with nectar and ambrosia. These and the sound of armies marching rouse him to battle-readiness and he puts his armour on, taking up his magnificent shield and spear. Adorned for war, Achilles sparkles like starlight and fish scales, he blazes in his bronze like fire, he shines like the sun. His shield glows like moonlight. Mounting his chariot with Automedon, he tells his divine horses to make sure that they do not leave him dead on the plain like Patroclus. Hera endows one of the horses with the gift of speech with which he offers first reassurance and then oracular reconfirmation that he cannot outrun his fate. Acknowledging this long-known truth that he will die at Troy, Achilles releases a war cry and positions himself in the front ranks.

WORKPOINTS:

1. Let’s reread and reconsider the lengthy lamentations of Achilles for Patroclus in Book Eighteen and Book Nineteen, the first presented in the presence of his mother, the second in the presence of his comrade-commanders alongside whom he has refused to fight for more than three weeks:

“Yes, Mother, Zeus has granted me that prayer.

But now what good to me is any of it?

My friend Patroclus, whom I loved, is dead.

I loved him more than any other comrade.

I loved him like my head, my life, myself.

I lost him, killed him. Hector slaughtered him,

and stripped from him the marvellous magic armour,

the lovely gifts the gods gave Peleus

the day they led you, an immortal goddess,

into a mortal’s bed. If only you

had stayed among the deathless goddesses

under the sea, and Peleus had taken

a mortal woman as his wife! Your marriage

brought never-ending sorrow to your heart

for your dead child, whom you will never welcome

home again now, because my heart forbids me

to live or be with people anymore,

unless my spear can strike down Hector first

and take his life away and make him pay

because he killed and looted my Patroclus,

son of Menoetius.”

(Wilson, 18: 97-117)

“My dearest love! My poor, unlucky friend!

You used to make us such delicious food,

preparing it yourself inside our hut

quickly and competently, any time

the Greeks were hurrying to bring the tears

of Ares to the Trojans, lords of horses.

But now you have been killed. You lie here, dead,

so I cannot taste any food or drink,

although there are such plentiful supplies,

because I miss you. Nothing else could ever

be worse for me than this. This is far worse

than if I found out that my father died

in Phthia – where he must be miserable,

shedding soft tears and missing me, his son.

And meanwhile, I am out here making war

against the Trojans in a foreign land

for Helen, who makes everybody shudder.

The loss of you is far more terrible

than if I learned that my dear son was dead,

the boy whom they are bringing up for me

on Scyros – godlike Neoptolemus –

if he is still alive. Till now, I thought

that only I would die out here in Troy,

far from the lands of Argos, grazed by horses,

and you would go back home to Phthia,

and fetch my son from Scyros in black ships

and show him everything – the wealth I won,

the captive women, and my high-roofed home.

In fact, I think that Peleus has either

already died, or barely clings to life,

suffering from the miseries of age,

and constantly expecting bitter news

of me – the day he learns that I am dead.”

(Wilson, 19: 412-444)

There are so many things to observe in each of these speeches, so many things that could be said, so many places to begin. Rereading them myself, I notice how a bridge is built between them, the former ending with “my Patroclus”, the latter beginning with, “My dearest love!” That these are declarations of love barely need be said because it is so crystal clear. In the second speech Achilles gives elaboration upon elaboration of his love for Patroclus in a eulogy addressed directly to his dead lover-friend. The first detail – how Achilles misses Patroclus’ cooking – speaks to us of a domestic life shared between two intimates. The intensity of this intimate loss is confirmed as Achilles shamelessly declares that the death of his father or his son would not have affected him as much as the death of Patroclus. It is a death standing between the departed and the bereaved who “cannot taste any food or drink” because it has not been prepared for him by Patroclus.

Wrenching up these images and feelings from his broken heart, Achilles also describes the future he had dared to imagine for Patroclus and Neoptolemus, a future in which Patroclus would bring Achilles’ son from Scyros to Phthia, revealing the wealth and grandeur of his patrimony to the “godlike” son. Knowing that he is doomed to die in Troy, Achilles had hoped that Patroclus would take responsibility for his fatherless child. Achilles finishes by speaking of his father and his son, not knowing if either of them are still alive. It is a speech declaring love and recognising uncertainty after uncertainty, confirming how provisional and unpredictable life is and all of it is spoken to his most intimate friend who is incapable of hearing him.

The earlier eulogy from Book Eighteen is also a declaration of love for Patroclus but it also clearly addressed to his mother rather than his lover-friend. To her, he confesses not only his love but his culpability. In the same line that he recounts how, “Hector slaughtered him,” he acknowledges that, “I lost him, killed him.” From here, Achilles’ speech takes a fascinating turn, as he speaks about his parents’ marriage. At first, we might take this as a fairly ordinary ‘If-only-I-was-never-born’ statement of regret or self-pity. However, that is not the case because Achilles’ pity is all for his mother Thetis. How terrible in Achilles’ view for an “immortal goddess” to be assigned without her consent and against her will to a “mortal’s bed” where she will be impregnated by a man who must die and give birth to a child who must die. “Your marriage,” Achilles acknowledges in a rare display of compassion and empathy, “brought never-ending sorrow to your heart”. With the cruelty of brutal honesty, the living Achilles declares himself already dead because he cannot bear the company of others and because he lives now only to precipitate his actual death by achieving Hector’s.

2. What to make of the talking horse? It may or may not be speaking in Hera’s voice, but it is Hera’s magic which enables it to speak, and the oracular message is already too well-known to its recipient who has now effectively renounced his life and claimed his doom.

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Homer, ‘The Iliad’, Book Eighteen

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A Very Simple Reading Guide to The Iliad

Without fully knowing that he knows it, Achilles is waiting for or at least fearing the worst possible news. From the Myrmidon ships he can see the Greeks being routed and he knows within his innermost thoughts and fears that Patroclus has not adhered to his clear instructions. A weeping Antilochus delivers the inevitable: Hector now wears Achilles’ armour while the two armies fight over Patroclus’ body. Achilles’ body writhes in dirt and ash, his hands tear at his hair, Antilochus fearing him capable of cutting his own throat in grief. In front of the grieving warrior, Achilles’ and Patroclus’ war brides ululate and beat their breasts in mourning.

For the second time, Achilles’ cries are heard by his mother Thetis beneath the sea in the cave of her sea god father, Nereus. Accompanied by a flotilla of Nereids, she swims to Troy where they come to shore between the Myrmidon ships. Weeping beside her prostrate son, Thetis asks him what is wrong while also reassuring him that his first request has been honoured by Zeus. Achilles agrees that the Greeks have been punished for Agamemnon’s insult to his pride. He will also not be the only member of his family to express regret in Book Eighteen for the marriage with Peleus forced on Thetis by Zeus. Both mother and son know that Hector’s death will be the prelude to Achilles’ but in Achilles’ view he has nothing left to live for without Patroclus. However, Achilles has sufficient sense to realise the lesson of Patroclus’ death by taking responsibility for it. It is the consequence of his anger, his refusal to fight, and his sending of Patroclus into battle in his stead when he should have been protecting him. Patroclus’ death has prepared him for his own. Thetis’ only restraint is that Achilles must not return to battle, must not seek out Hector until dawn tomorrow when she promises to return with a suit of armour from the forge of Hephaestus.

Sending the Nereids to inform their father Nereus of what is happening, Thetis rushes to Mount Olympus. Responding to Hector’s unabated efforts to seize the body of Patroclus, Hera secretly sends Iris to tell Achilles he must fight. In a strange example of omniscience, Iris tells Achilles that she and Hera know he will receive new armour and that, in the meantime, he could at least show himself to the Trojans. As soon as Iris disappears, Athena drapes Achilles’ shoulders in a protective aegis and crowns him with fire. From the Greek trench, goddess and warrior panic the Trojans, Achilles releasing three war cries. Their enemies amazed, the Greeks are able to retrieve the body of Patroclus. Hera then precipitates nightfall at the end of the twenty-sixth day and the two sides withdraw from battle, the Greeks in mourning for Patroclus, the Trojans in council on the open plain.

Polydamas counsels retreat within the Trojan walls, telling the Trojans it was one thing to spend the previous night exposed outside the walls of Troy when Achilles was not abroad but quite a different thing tonight. Hector rebuts Polydamas’ arguments, reminding him how the wealth of Troy has been depleted during the decade-long siege. Hector demands that they camp as close to the Greek ships as possible, attacking them at dawn. Homer gives this as an instance of a bad idea defeating a good idea in the court of Trojan public opinion and yet another instance of Hector’s poor judgement. Leading the mourning in the Greek camp, Achilles promises Patroclus that he will deliver Hector’s head and sacrifice a dozen Trojan children at his friend’s funeral pyre. For now, Patroclus’ comrades wash his body, anoint his wounds and wrap and cover him in white cloth.

In the divine realm, Zeus and Hera argue over the course of events and Thetis visits Hephaestus who is pleased to see her and to have the opportunity to repay an old debt, ‘because she saved me after my fall, / when I was hurt by my own dog-faced mother, / because I had a limp, and she was hoping / to hide me.’ (Wilson, 18:488-491) All Thetis need do is ask. Indeed, she begs Hephaestus to forge a shield and a suit of armour for her son, which he immediately does.

And, thus, we are ushered into one of the most amazing episodes of Homer’s poem by being given a guided tour of the poem’s most extraordinary and enduring artefact, the shield fashioned for Achilles by Hephaestus. As W.H. Auden would have it in his twentieth-century rebuttal of the wonders of civilisation, it is as if we are able to watch over the god’s shoulder as he creates his masterpiece, the Shield of Achilles. In tin, bronze, silver, gold and lapis-blue enamel, Hephaestus recreates the known universe of humankind.

Working outwards from the centre either in a series of concentric circles or flowing outward in a continuous spiral like the Minoan Phaistos Disc, Hephaestus provides the ultimate warrior Achilles with an indisputable catalogue of human experience, knowledge and culture. The master craftsman begins with the creation and human observation of the cosmos, consisting of Earth, Sun, Moon, the sky and stars. Although the gods are not named in this context, we have the domains of Zeus in the distant sky and of Poseidon in the bounding sea. The domain of humankind is, of course, the solid ground of Earth. The cosmos gives us night and day while human history gives us war and peace, represented on the shield by two splendid cities. In the city at peace there are wedding festivities, singing, dancing, music. There is a marketplace and there is the rule of law whose administration is conducted openly with the opportunity for civic participation. The city at war is besieged. The aggressors are divided while the starving defenders are desperately planning to ambush them. Hephaestus’ depiction of the battle scene is so lifelike that the mortals depicted in it ‘fought as if they were alive’. (Wilson, 18: 670)

As has sometimes been the case in The Iliad, this poem of force as Simone Weil described it in 1939, the arts of peace are given their due recognition. After the description of the two cities, come the depictions of the agricultural cycle of ploughing, planting and harvesting as well as the domestication of cattle and sheep against the backdrop of natural wilderness as represented by two lions savaging one of the bulls. But, in this undeniable realm of human potentiality, there is corn and barley, fruit and honey, meat and wine. Returning from the fields to the rituals of human beings, Hephaestus depicts a dance celebrating youth and life, friendship, marriage and family. And, finally, all of this human life and history as it is lived upon the Earth is bound by the River Ocean.

Hephaestus completes his work on all of Achilles’ battle kit and hands it over to Thetis that night.

WORKPOINTS:

1. Once again it is time to take up the slender threads and consider Homer on the lives of women. We recall, of course, that all of the Greek warlords whose bivouacs we’ve visited are attended upon by war brides plundered from their families and homes and enslaved during the decade of piracy and pillaging that predates the few months recounted in the poem. Who could forget the tragic spectre of Briseis being led unwillingly from the bondage of Achilles to the bondage of Agamemnon in Book One? Or, Hera’s ‘hate-fuck’ in Book Fourteen. Or, Paris’ Phoenician female slaves in Book Six? As a counterpoint we might remember Andromache who so clearly and dearly loves her husband, Andromache whose love and loyalty also highlight the misery and the lack of autonomy of almost every other woman in The Iliad. In Book Eighteen we now have the spectre of:

‘The women whom Achilles and Patroclus

had captured and enslaved [being] struck by grief.

They screamed and wailed and ran outside, surrounding

the warrior, Achilles. With their fists,

they pounded on their breasts, limbs weak with shock.’

(Wilson, 18: 34-38)

To what do we attribute these ululations? To the sincerity of grief or the socially expected role of woman as mourner? Did these women love Patroclus, one of the men who abducted and raped them, or are they performing as would be expected of them in order to safeguard their lives? How important is it that they should beat their breasts and keen their cries in the presence of Achilles? To what extent are they joining him in the solidarity of their loss, to what extent fearful of his wrath descending upon themselves? And then we have the further spectre of Thetis’ arranged marriage, imposed on her against her will by Zeus:

“… Of all the goddesses

submerged beneath the salty seas, he chose

me to be subjugated to a man,

and I endured a marriage with a human.

Entirely against my own desires

I went to bed with Peleus, the son

of Aeacus…”

(Wilson, 18: 535-541)

Profoundly, in my opinion, this objection to the imposition of an arranged marriage not only laments the lack of autonomy attributed to the female victim, it reminds us of the negation and abuse of her own sexual desire, making it clear that the consummation of such a marriage is rape. Thetis is telling Hephaestus that she is a sexual being who deserves sexual freedom and that sex without consent is precisely that. The memory of it disgusts her and her disgust is magnified by the fact that she has been forced to copulate with someone who is not of her kind, that the tyrant of the gods has given her, an immortal female, to a mortal man whose body will wither with age.

2. Hephaestus is not only a master craftsman, he is also a master of remote control, the animation of inanimate matter. The twenty tripods he is making when Thetis arrives will be able to wheel themselves to and from the divine councils they are being manufactured for. He is attended to by slave women who are actually automata made of gold by him. When manufacturing Achilles’ equipment, his bellows follow orders and assist him.

4. Consider the ironies of that mighty shield. It celebrates the arts of peace without which there can be no human enjoyment of life beyond subsistence and survival. And yet, all of this adorns a tool of war, admittedly a protective shield rather than a destructive weapon, but a tool of war nonetheless. And, again, all of this is to be put into the hands of Achilles whose primary motivations have been the rage and resentment inspired by Agamemnon and, now, the self-loathing and vengeance inspired by Hector’s killing of Patroclus. Unless we reinterpret Achilles’ motivations as shifting from his hatred of Agamemnon to his love for Patroclus? Nonetheless, this is the shield that will protect him as he kills Hector, securing a vital turning point in the war at Troy which will lead to the city’s complete destruction and the victory of the Greeks who will sail away with their treasure and slaves. If the shield represents the human aspiration and need for a civilised, ordered, law-abiding life, what is it representing as an artefact of war? Believe it or not, Achilles may have actually provided us with an answer. To some extent there is an element of The Iliad which can be understood as a bildungsroman in which Achilles – either regardless of his doom, or, possibly, even enabled by it – is required to learn and grow. Perhaps what he has learned as a consequence of his culpability in the death of the man he loves more than any other being is evidence of a growing moral awareness that may entitle him to carry the shield of Hephaestus into battle. This is what he says to his mother Thetis on the matter:

“If only conflict were eliminated

from gods and human beings! I wish anger

did not exist.”

(Wilson, 18: 134-136)

5. What could the shield represent to us today? In the middle of the twentieth-century W.H. Auden reverse-engineered and completely reconstructed its imagery to represent the totalitarianism and permanent warfare of his times in one of his finest poems, The Shield of Achilles. In Auden’s poem, Homer’s ideal, balanced and harmonious world is replaced by an ‘artificial wilderness’ populated by an ‘unintelligible multitude, / A million eyes, a million boots in line’. The rule of law has been replaced by arbitrary detention and execution, justice by the relentless logic of ideology and indoctrination, the shared celebration of social rituals by selfishness and violence, the dancing-floor by ‘a weed-choked field.’ Without direct reference to the shield itself, a very similar totalitarian dystopia has recently been reimagined for the twenty-first century in the speculative fiction of Hanya Yanagihara’s pandemic-inspired To Paradise (2022).

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