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.
english literature teacher 
One thought on “Homer, ‘The Iliad’, Book Twenty-Three”