Iliad (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

1 (p. 1) Sing, 0 Goddess ... godlike Achilles: The first seven lines of the Iliad are called the proem. The performing poet calls upon the immortal Muse to inspire his own voice. The Muses are the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosune, goddess of Memory—an especially evocative genealogy for a poet performing within an oral tradition. The bard’s topic is the “wrath of Achilles” and its devastating effect upon Achilles’ comrades. The Greek word menis, which is conventionally translated as “wrath” (as in line 1 of the Iliad), elsewhere in Homer always denotes a specifically divine wrath (for example, V.499, and see Muellner’s Anger of Achilles; find this and other titles in “For Further Reading”). Achilles’ wrath is thus associated with the avenging anger of the gods that is consequent upon a transgression of the proper, divinely sanctioned order of both society and the cosmos. The macabre promise to sing of the heroes’ bodies made prey for the beasts (in line 5) is literally unfulfilled within the Iliad, but the dehumanization that is implicit in the image is literalized in the murderous fury and vicarious cannibalism of Achilles’ eventual return to battle in books XX-XXII (see, for example, XXII.404—414, and Segal’s Theme of the Mutilation of the Corpse in the “Iliad”) .

2 (p. 1) the two sons of Atreus: Agamemnon and Menelaus are Atreus’ sons. Agamemnon, the older, rules over Mycenae; he is the commander—king of kings—of the entire Achaean army. Agamemnon is married to Clytemnestra (who will murder him upon his eventual return home). Menaelaus’ domain is Sparta (often called Lacedaemon). His wife is Helen (the half-sister of Clytemnestra), whose flight to Troy, whether willing or unwilling, precipitates the Trojan War.

3 (p. 2) “Chryse ... Cilla ... Tenedos ... the tears I have shed”: Greek prayers often invoke the places where the god’s presence is especially potent; and the one praying often reminds the divinity of what deeds he or she has previously performed for the god. Apollo is especially associated with pestilence; see, for example, the opening of Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus.

4 . (p. 5) “I didn’t come... because of the Trojan spearmen”: Achilles’ rhetoric contains some truth. All the heroes but Achilles are bound to Agamemnon by the Oath of Tyndareus. At the wedding contest of Helen, Tyndareus, the nominal father of Helen (her actual father is Zeus), bound all the suitors by oath to honor his choice of a husband for Helen (Tyndareus eventually chooses Menelaus, who brought the most gifts); Tyndareus further obliged Helen’s suitors to defend her marriage should it be violated. The Achaean army at Troy is, thus, comprised of her former suitors. Achilles, however, did not participate in the marriage contest for Helen, because he was too young (see Hesiod’s Catalogue of Women frag. 204.87-89); as the youngest of all the Achaean heroes, he has come to Troy, as he says, to “gratify” the sons of Atreus—and, we might suspect, for the adventure itself.

5 (p. 5) Briseis: As with the name Chryseis, the name Briseis is a patronymic: “daughter of Chryses,” “daughter of Brises”—the parallelism between the names underscores the status of each as a “prize” within the Achaean camp of warriors. Both Chryseis and Briseis were captured during Achaean raids on other cities in the region of Troy; each was then “redistributed” by the collectivity of the camp, the former to Agamemnon, the latter to Achilles (we might assume that Chryseis was judged best in appearance and in domestic talents, while Briseis was deemed second best). Within the heroic economy, women are the paramount signs of a warrior’s honor; the loss of Briseis is, thus, a public diminution of Achilles’ status within the camp, of his very social being. In book IX, Achilles will assert that Briseis was more than a sign of honor—indeed, that he loved her. Briseis herself will speak of her own hopes for a marriage with Achilles at XIX.325-340.

6 (p. 6) “the monstrous mountain Centaurs, and the slaughter they there / Performed was terrible indeed”: Nestor recalls the battle of the Lapiths and the Centaurs. Perithous, king of the Lapiths, invited the Centaurs (a breed of creatures half-man, half-horse) to the wedding of his daughter Hippodameia. The drunken Centaurs attempted to rape the bride; the ensuing battle is depicted on the frieze of the Athenian Parthenon, where the victory of the Lapiths is presented as a victory of civilization over barbarism, akin to (for the Athenian viewer) the Greek victory over the Persians in the wars of 490 and 480 B.C.E.

7 (p. 11) his goddess mother / Heard him: Thetis is a sea-nymph, the daughter of Nereus—the Old Man of the Sea—and the wife of Peleus. From Pindar (Isthmian Ode 8.26-57), we learn that Thetis was desired by both Zeus and Poseidon, but Themis—a prophetic goddess—revealed that Thetis was destined to bear a son greater than the father. Thetis is then married off to the mortal Peleus, and their child is Achilles, who will be greatest of mortals, but who will not become a threat to Zeus. Thetis, by “marrying down” (to a mortal) effectively preserves Zeus’ order from a son who would overthrow him. Thetis’ shaming marriage to a mortal thus explains her hold over Zeus as well as the tormented “semi-divine” status of Achilles (see Slatkin’s Power of Thetis for a full exploration of the mythic background and thematic centrality of Thetis within the Iliad).

8 (p. 17) “after my fall”: Hephaestus’ lameness is perhaps explained at XV.20-26: Zeus, enraged with Hera for driving his son Heracles to Cos in a threatening storm, had hung her from Olympus with anvils tied to her feet; Zeus then threatened to hurl from Olympus anyone who came to Hera’s aid. The ancient commentators attributed Hephaestus’ lameness to just such an attempt—punished as threatened by Zeus—to aid Hera. There is, though, a second account of Hephaestus’ laming at XVIII.448-452, where Hephaestus is thrown from Olympus by Hera, who wished to conceal having given birth to a lame child; in this account, he is rescued by Thetis.

Book II: Trial of the Army and the Catalogue of Ships

1 (p. 21) “try them with words and bid them flee”: Agamemnon abruptly decides to test the troops—a plan not instructed by the Dream and a near-disaster. When Agamemnon has told the Achaean troops to take flight, the other commanders are to then endeavor to check their flight. But only Odysseus—and only with the assistance of Athena—is able to turn the troops back to Troy. Agamemnon persists in his role as a bad king (he is utterly dependant upon the efforts of Odysseus, as indispensable enforcer), even as we see the overwhelming desire of the troops—if left to themselves—for a homecoming.

2 (p. 22) “great Zeus... has bound me now in woeful blindness of spirit”: It is characteristic of Agamemnon to blame his errors upon the “blindness of spirit”—in Greek, ate—that Zeus sends (see also IX. 20 and XIX.105). Here, Agamemnon, as part of his deceptive testing of the troops, castigates Zeus for the ate he sends, even as he is himself being deceived by Dream: a fine example of Homeric irony.

3 (p. 25) Thersites: The name Thersites is derived from the Greek for “boldness” or “rashness.” He is the only Homeric character to lack both a patronymic and a homeland, which might indicate that he is a common soldier, here giving voice to the resentment of the people; his ugliness might also be taken as a sign of his lower-class status: The peasants are revolting, as the old joke goes. His base appearance, however, might also place him within a tradition of blame poetry, in which ugly speakers raise a laugh at the expense of the kings; their speech reveals the harm—the “ugliness”—that the kings have done to the community. In Greek poetry, this tradition is represented by the work of Archilochus and Hipponax.

4 (p. 32) Tell me now, 0 Muses ... : With this new invocation of the Muses, the poet embarks on the Catalog of the Achaeans, in which he sings of the leaders, homelands, and ships of the twenty-nine contingents that comprise the Achaean army. The Catalog has been the subject of much scholarly dispute as to whether it reflects the geographical and political world of the Mycenaean palace-kingdoms (the mid to late thirteenth century B.C.E.) or of the Early Iron Age (c.1025-950 B.C.E.) or of the eighth and even seventh centuries B.C.E. While the Catalog surely does transmit some Mycenaean elements (though largely from sites where there was continuity of habitation from the Mycenaean period to the Archaic period), it is also marked by the inclusion of later historical settlements, as well as by the omission of earlier, Mycenaean elements that would have been anachronistic or incomprehensible to an audience of the early Archaic period. Though daunting to the modern reader, the Catalog’s compendium of geographical, political, and mythical lore—delivered with great poetic virtuosity—was of great fascination for its contemporary audiences.

5 (p. 35) Thamyris the Thracian: The Homeric bard includes a digression of especial poetic relevance: Thamyris boasts that his own singing would surpass even that of the Muses in a contest, whereupon they “damage” him and take away his memory. An analogy between hero and bard is, perhaps, suggested: Just as the hero, in his battlefield accomplishments, becomes like to a god, and thus tempts their deadly anger, so too, the poet sings himself into a condition like to the immortal Muses, at which point he might likewise tempt their jealous vengeance.

6 (p. 37) warlike Protesilaus: As in the case of the entry for Philoctetes immediately below (lines 811-820), the bard gives an account of a well-known figure who set out on the expedition to Troy, but who is now not fighting: Protesilaus was the first Achaean killed at Troy; Philoctetes and his bow will have to be brought to Troy from Lemnos before the city can be conquered. The entries for Protesilaus and Philoctetes might be compared to that for Achilles (lines 779-787), who is now also absent from the fighting.

7 (p. 39) ... forty black ships: The Achaean Catalog is now complete; the grand total is: 44 leaders, 1,186 ships, and 60,000 troops (assuming an average ship-load of 50); these numbers are from the commentary of G. S. Kirk. The poet would surely object to the historian Thucydides’ slighting assessment of the troop strength at Troy (History of the Peloponnesian War, 1.11—12).

8 (p. 41) Bright-helmeted Hector led the Trojans: With Hector, the principal Trojan defender, the poet begins the Catalog of Trojans, which consists of twenty-six leaders and sixteen contingents. For the roughly tripartite political division of the Trojan force, see the note below.

9 (p. 41) Anchises’ brave son Aeneas: This is the very Aeneas who will escape from Troy to found Rome. Aeneas is the son of Aphrodite and Anchises, whose liaison dangereuse is recounted with much charm and wit in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, which also foretells Aeneas’ escape from the ruins of Troy so that he might re-found Troy in the west (a prophecy that the Iliad-poet also knows, XX.334-341). The genealogy of the entire Trojan royal house is recited by Aeneas himself at XX.233-268. Both Aeneas and Hector are descendants of Dardanus (Aeneas through the line of Assaracus, Hector through that of Ilos), but while Hector is the supreme commander, with especial charge over the contingents from Troy and its environs, Aeneas commands the Dardanians, who inhabit the foothills of Ida that lie outside the Troy region proper; the third group at Troy is the allies, who come from farther afield: from the Northern Troad, extending to the Hellespont and the Propontis; and from the south, especially from Maeonia (about Sardis) and Caria.

Book III: The Duel of Paris and Menelaus

1 (p. 46) Helen she found in the hall, weaving... on her account: The poet introduces Helen with an image of extraordinary metapoetic implication. The web that Helen weaves is the color of “purple” (Greek porphureos), which is elsewhere in the Iliad associated with blood and with death; the “battles” (Greek aethla) that she weaves into her cloth might also be translated as “sufferings” or “contests” (and the latter might include the contests of her suitors). Helen weaves her own epic.

2 (p. 47) “Yonder Achaean is Atreus‘son”: Beginning with the scholar-critics of Alexandria in the late third century B.C.E., Helen’s identification and description of the Achaean leaders has been known as the Teichoskopia, the “Viewing from the Walls.” The scene has often been charged with anachronism, as it would seem that, nine years into the war, Priam would have little need of the information that Helen provides. True enough, but it is preferable to regard the Teichoskopia as one of a series of episodes in books III through VIII that serve to fill in the background of the Trojan War and some of the events of the prior nine years. The single combat of Paris and Menelaus—which will soon be narrated—would also “better” belong to the first year of the War; but, again, the poet narrates “past” events so that his audience might better understand the present disposition of his characters and his plot. Other examples of the past-in-the-present include: Paris’ recollection of his first night with Helen, which concludes book III (and where we might also ponder the difference, for Helen, between past and present); Agamemnon’s mustering and inspection of the troops in book IV, as well as the depiction of Trojan oath-breaking in that same book; the Battle of Champions between Ajax and Hector in book VIII, which might, again, resolve the dispute, followed by the rejected offer of ransom and the building of the Achaean Wall.

3 (p. 51) Put on his beautiful armor: This is the first of four arming-scenes in the Iliad: Agamemnon also arms at XI.18-47, Patroclus at XVI. 156—167, and Achilles at XIX.414-43 9. In each instance, the armor, weaponry, and order of dress are the same: greaves, corslet, sword, shield, helmet, spear; this is an example of the oral poet’s use of a type-scene (as are scenes of sacrifice and of hospitality). Greaves cover the area between the knee and ankle. As a light-armed archer, Paris has no “breastplate” (corslet) of his own and so must borrow one from his brother Lycaon; single-combat is not Paris’ métier.

Book IV: Agamemnon’s Inspection of the Army

1 (p. 57) “how many horrible / Wrongs ... level / Their mighty stronghold?”: Zeus’ question has some force, as it is only Paris who has offended Hera (and Athena)—though perhaps the entire city of Troy is implicated in the defense of Helen. At the Judgment of Paris, Paris was asked to choose the fairest from among the trio of Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite; he chose Aphrodite, thus gaining the prize of Helen, but also the fierce enmity of the rejected goddesses. Homer, however, does not explicitly recount the Judgment of Paris until XXIV.34-38, at which point the fall of the city is imminent. The poet’s immediate emphasis is upon the implacable, savage wrath of Hera: In place of the divine meal of ambrosia, she would eat Priam and his sons raw—a violation, in the realm of humans, of a fundamental boundary between men and beasts; gods and beasts are equally unconstrained by the culture-defining taboos of the Greeks (the gods are, for instance, incestuous).

2 (p. 58) the Father of gods ... by no means ignored her: Hera does succeed in gaining Zeus’ assent to her plan to break up the truce that has still held—shakily—from the end of book III. Greeks and Trojans will not be reconciled; moreover, the Trojans will now be re-characterized as oath-breakers.

3 (p. 62) You would not then have found / The great Agamemnon napping ... : After the debacles of leadership that marked books I and II, Agamemnon reasserts himself in an episode that the ancient critics called the epipolesis, the “Tour of Inspection.” Agamemnon inspects the troops and offers speeches of praise and of blame; this will be the last major episode before the long-delayed outbreak of full combat between Achaeans and Trojans.

4 (p. 66) Prince Polyneices: Polyneices is the brother of Eteocles; both are sons of Oedipus, and both have been cursed by their father. The curse is active in the dispute of the two brothers over the rule of Thebes. Polyneices looks for aid to his father-in-law, Adrastus, and assembles five other heroes (and their followers) to march against Thebes: These are the Seven against Thebes; their attack upon the city will fail (see the following note). The story of the failed mission was recounted in an oral tradition know as the Thebais, of which only the barest scraps of fragments survive, as well as in a Thebaid by the Latin poet Statius (91/92 C.E.). Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes of 467 B.C.E. also tells of the attack upon Thebes; it focuses upon Eteocles and the defense of the city.

5 (p. 67) “So don’t compare our merits / With theirs”: Sthenelus speaks intemperately but truthfully: Tydeus’ generation did fail to capture Thebes, and their failure was a direct consequence of their “reckless folly” and contravention of divine signs. Indeed, Tydeus’ death is especially distinguished for its transgressive cannibalism: Tydeus—while writhing in his death throes—attempted to eat the brains of the mortally wounded Theban defender Melanippus. Athena, who had intended to confer immortality upon Tydeus, changes her mind upon seeing Tydeus’ final act of blood-thirst. Sthenelus’ allusive account of Tydeus’ bestiality thus tops Agamemnon’s prior account of Tydeus’ deeds and, more generally, casts a skeptical light upon the oft-repeated claim that fathers are better than sons.

Book V: The Valiant Deeds of Diomedes

1 (p. 72) ... she sent him into / The thickest part of the battle: Diomedes’ aristeia—his “excellent deeds” on the battlefield—begins with Athena’s kindling of his war-strength. In the absence of Achilles, Diomedes emerges as the single greatest offensive warrior of the Achaeans (Ajax is the greatest defender). Book V narrates his ever-increasing martial successes, which lead him into a state “like to a god” or even “like something more than a god.” During this period of heightened physical prowess, Diomedes even wounds Aphrodite and Ares, thus putting himself in great danger of suffering divine vengeance; his martial exultation becomes such that he threatens to overstep the boundary between mortal and divine, to “fight Father Zeus himself,” as Aphrodite will later claim (V.400). The aristeia of Diomedes provides an interpretative template for the battlefield glories and dangers of the other heroes, including both Patroclus (in book XVI) and Achilles (at the start of book XXII, Achilles is also likened—ominously—to the brightest of late summer stars, which is the dog-star Orion).

2 (p. 77) “... what the horses of Tros are like”: The horses of Tros are of a divine breed, initially a gift of Zeus to Tros (in recompense for Zeus’ abduction of his son Ganymede). The horses are particularly valuable booty; as such, they especially command the actions of Diomedes (assisted by Sthenelus) in the following narrative.

3 (p. 83) “... horse-taming Diomedes”: Dione’s threat that Diomedes will die for his attack upon Aphrodite is not fulfilled, though it does illustrate the danger into which his aristeia has inevitably led him: death-provoking contention with the gods themselves (the preceding example of Heracles, who is not killed by the gods, but himself immortalized, is a strictly one-time exception). Diomedes, upon his safe return home after the fall of Troy, will discover that his wife Aegialeia has been unfaithful—perhaps this is Aphrodite’s belated revenge. Diomedes sails from his native Argos and ends his days in northern Apulia, among the Daunians.

4 (p. 89) “... he leveled the city of Troy and plundered / Her streets”: Laomedon (the father of Priam) had promised Heracles a reward of his partly divine horses (from the same breed as those that Diomedes earlier won from Aeneas; see also note 2 above), as Heracles had saved his daughter Hesione from a sea-monster. Laomedon reneged on the deal, and Heracles sacked the city; this is the first Sack of Troy. (The poet tells of a marker of Heracles’ battle with the sea-monster at XX.161—167.)

5 (p. 90) “... Zeus who bears the aegis”: The Homeric aegis is a kind of shield, perhaps covered in goat-skin (its etymology connects it to the Greek for “goat”: aig-) , perhaps suspended from the shoulders. In classical art, Athena’s aegis is a shawl-like skin wrapped around the shoulders. In addition to its protective function, the aegis, when shaken, can put an army to flight or produce storms.

Book VI: Hector and Andromache

1 (p. 97) clutching the knees of his captor: Grasping the knees of the victor while begging for mercy (while also promising a ransom) is the regular gesture of battlefield supplication in the Iliad; it is never successful (though we will hear of Achilles’ positive response to supplications in the past—for example, at XI. 115-118). Other examples of supplication include the appeals of Dolon (X.42 7—431), of the sons of Antimachus (XI.145-150), of Lycaon (XXI.95-121), and, finally, of Hector (XXII. 3 95-401). The following threat of Agamemnon to kill even the unborn children of Troy foreshadows the general fate of the city and casts a particularly grievous shadow upon the upcoming scene between Hector and Andromache.

2 (p. 99) “But if you are some immortal... I will not fight you... Not even ... brawny Lycurgus”: Diomedes, who in the prior book fought with three gods—Aphrodite, Apollo, and Ares—now claims that he would not fight with an immortal. A lesson learned or words of consummate self-satisfaction? Diomedes’ negative paradigm is Lycurgus, a Thracian king who attempted to resist the spread of Dionysus (who is both “mad” and “maddening”) and his cult; he is punished by the Olympians with blindness and early death (the exemplum of Lycurgus is otherwise mentioned at line 955 of Sophocles’ Antigone, and compare the deeds and punishment of Pentheus in Euripides’ Bacchae) . The nurses of Dionysus received the baby god from his father, Zeus, and nurtured him on Mount Nusa in Thrace.

3 (p. 99) “... so one generation of men / Gives way to another”: The comparison of human generations to leaves is one of the most famous and most imitated of Iliadic similes—see, for example, Mimnermus 2.1-2, Simonides 19, and Aristophanes’ Birds 685; see also the Iliad XXL.526-528, where the simile is recast by Apollo from a divine perspective. Human life is as evanescent (and as unredeemed) as that of the leaf that falls in season; nature cares nothing for the life of the individual, only for the survival of the species. Yet Glaucus proceeds to recite the names and exploits of his ancestors (“listen and hear what many know / Already”) ; some mortals do, it seems, through their adventures, gain a place within the collective memory, thus rescuing their name from the anonymity and sameness of the leaves—a rescue of meaning all the more valuable for its very uncertainty.

4 (p. 100) “Anteia ... lusted madly to lie with Bellerophon”: The tale of the Queen who longs for her husband’s guest-friend and who, upon being rebuffed, makes false and potentially deadly accusations to her husband is a folktale found in many cultures—it is often referred to as the Potiphar’s-wife theme, after the story of the false accusation of Joseph (see the Bible, beginning at Genesis 39:7 ff.). The most familiar version in Greek is found in Euripides’ Hippolytus (where Hippolytus is Phaedra’s stepson); see also the story of Peleus and the wife of Acastus (Apollodrus 3.13.3 and Pindar Nemean 4.54-58). In the Homeric version, the reluctance of Proetus to kill Bellerophon probably reflects a family connection between Proetus and Glaucus, the father of Bellerophon—a guest-host relation that, if violated, would provoke a blood-curse or a vendetta or both. Proetus instead sends Bellerophon on the series of death-defying adventures that become the basis of his fame: a vindication of his name against the false charges of Anteia and an immortalization of his name through heroic deeds.

5 (p. 101) “... he roamed alone the Aleian Plain, / Consuming his soul and avoiding all human tracks”: The end of Bellerophon is mysterious and haunting. The poet avoids recounting the most famous (and notorious) of Bellerophon’s exploits, which is his attempt to storm Olympus on the back of Pegasus, the immortal winged horse; the gods hurl him from his mount. Rather, the poet emphasizes the final wandering unto death of Bellerophon, who ends his life, apart from men and gods, upon the Plain of Wandering (“Aleian” is a pun on the Greek word for “to wander”). All the heroic deeds and rewards seem insufficient for Bellerophon, whose centripetal wandering leads him onto a plain that might well be an image of his own consciousness. During the Renaissance, Bellerophon became a defining type of the melancholic, the man born under the sign of Saturn; see [Aristotle] Problem 30, as reread by Marsilio Ficino in the late fifteenth century.

6 (p. 102) ... golden armor / For bronze, or a hundred oxen for nine: The unequal exchange of armor affects a jolt in ethos and tone following the joyous chivalry of the pact that Diomedes and Glaucus just agreed upon. Ancient and modern critics have expended enormous ingenuity upon explaining the shift in tone; perhaps we should simply acknowledge a (somewhat mystifying) Homeric joke.

7 (p. 107) “... where the city / Is best assaulted and the wall most easily scaled”: Andromache pleads that Hector remain close to the city wall. Andromache’s claim that there is a weak spot in the Trojan defense may reflect a tradition that the Wall of Troy was built in its entirety by Apollo and Poseidon except for one section, which was built by the mortal Aeacus and which is, in consequence, vulnerable to attack (Pindar Olympian 8.31-46; see also VII.491—494, where Poseidon recollects his part in building the Trojan Wall).

8 (p. 107) “But how could I face the men of Troy, or their wives ... if I were to skulk like a coward”: In response to Andromache’s plea that he remain near to the Trojan Wall and mindful of wife and child, Hector invokes his sense of aidos—of reverence, of respect, of shame. In Homeric Greek, aidos is a responsiveness to the ethical judgments of others within the community; it is a social emotion provoked by the perception of one’s place in the social structure and of the obligations that accompany that place. Hector’s sense of aidos before the entirety of his community does not permit him to rank the claims of wife and son above those of his community. In being preeminently responsive to the claims of his community, Hector must set aside the claims of those who are most his own. (For an illuminating reading of this extraordinarily moving passage, see Redfield, Nature and Culture in the “Iliad,” pp. 113-127.)

Book VII: The Duel of Hector and Ajax

1 (p. 113) “... and my glory will not be destroyed”: Hector imagines funeral rites for the defeated man that include the heaping of a great barrow over his grave. The tumulus will itself be a mighty memorial sign to those who pass by of the name of Hector—a visual analog to the “glory forever” provided by epic poetry itself, which Achilles invokes at IX.475.

2 (p. 114) “... if only / I were as young as when ...”: This is the second of four autobiographical recitations by Nestor: Earlier, at I.303—317, he told of his comradeship with the Lapiths; at XI.653—853, he will tell of his youthful exploits in the battles between Pylians and Epeians; and at XXIII.726—743, he will recall his victories at the funeral games of Amarynceus. In this instance—as also in the example from book XI—Nestor asserts the excellence of his prior deeds as a foundation upon which to base his exhortation to the present generation of heroes—here, to the front-fighters of the Achaeans; in book XI (where Nestor’s intervention will be decisive), to Patroclus and, he hopes, Achilles.

3 (p. 119) So they turned back ... : With this exchange of pledges of friendship and gifts, Hector and Ajax bring their strife to an end. The elaborate courtesies of the heroic code are enacted for a final time in the Iliad; there will be no further peaceable resolutions in the fighting to come.

4 (p. 119) “... land of our fathers”: With the establishment of a truce and the collection of the bones of the dead, the “First Great Day of Battle” comes to an end, as does the first narrative movement of the Iliad: The past, including prior attempts at resolution, has been re-represented; the principal heroes have been richly characterized; the dispositions of the Achaean and Trojan armies have been dramatized. With the building of the Achaean wall and the refusals of Paris to return Helen and of the Achaeans to accept ransom that immediately follow, the hostilities of the narrative present are set to be rejoined, as is the plan of Zeus (first announced in book I) to honor Achilles by turning the tide of battle against the Achaeans.

Book VIII: The weakening Achaeans

1 (p. 124) “That’s how much stronger I am than you gods and all mortals”: With this vivid assertion of his own preeminence, Zeus clears the mortal battlefield of the Olympians. Zeus can now—through the martial successes of Hector—fulfill his promise to Thetis to bring the Achaeans to grief in the absence of Achilles. (For the futility of resistance by the other gods to Zeus, see also the exchange between Hera and Poseidon at VIII. 224—240, as well as Zeus’ threatening speech to Hera at VIII.534-553, with note 3 below.)

2 (p. 127) ... the old King mounted the car /With Diomedes: The epic tradition also knows a version of the rescue of Nestor in which the old man is saved by his son Antilochus, who sacrifices his own life for his father’s. The poet Pindar (Pythian 6.28ff.) makes of that telling a paradigm of filial piety.

3 (p. 137) “For massive Hector... about the corpse of Patroclus”: Zeus, having dramatically quelled any rebellion against his rule by Hera and Athena, now foretells the fulfillment of his promise of book I to honor Achilles: Hector and the Trojans will continue to have martial success until the death of Patroclus, after which Achilles will rejoin his comrades. As well, we now see that Zeus’ honoring of Achilles will bring enormous grief to Achilles himself—the loss of Patroclus.

Book IX: Agamemnon’s Offers to Achilles

1 (p. 140) “... since his is the greatest power”: Agamemnon urges flight upon the Achaeans with the same words he used in book II, when he was under the influence of the deceptive Dream sent by Zeus (II.19—41, and IX.18—28); here, his words are in earnest (and Zeus is now responsible for his plight), but his counsel of retreat is met not with a rush to the ships (as in book II), but with Achaean resistance and refusal. The reuse of speech-blocks and type-scenes is a technique of the oral poet; here, that technique is in the service of a (rather ironic) characterization of a persistently despondent Agamemnon, as well as of an intensification of the dramatic urgency of the present moment: The deliberations that follow are of the utmost consequence, wholly lacking the dream and comic elements of the “retreat” of book II.

2 (p. 143) “I acted blindly”: Agamemnon claims he was struck with a moral blindness or an infatuation of mind that diminished his capacity for reasoned action—what the Greeks call ate, and which always leads to disaster. In book XIX (lines 104—167), Agamemnon will offer a lengthy account of ate (“Sweet Folly”). Earlier, in book I (lines 478—485), Achilles had asked Thetis to appeal to Zeus for a Trojan victory so that Agamemnon “might know his ate” (“that Atreus’ son ... may know how blind he was”). Achilles’ appeal to Zeus is now reaching fulfillment.

3 (p. 145) ... there they found him / Soothing his soul with a resonant lyre... Part of the loot he had taken when he himself sacked / Eëtion’s city: Achilles is reintroduced into the narrative with an extraordinarily suggestive image. He now sits apart, playing the role of the bard, singing of “warriors’ fame”; he is no longer the doer of martial deeds but is the commemorator of those deeds. The lyre is itself an object and instrument of beauty, even as it was captured in bloody warfare; so, too, Homeric poetry makes a beauteous song out of carnage.

4 (pp. 146-147) “... your father Peleus was talking / To you... ‘be reconciled quickly / That Argives young and old may respect you still more”’: The parting of father and son in Phthia is also recalled in book XI (lines 881-884) by Nestor, who recollects the same occasion, though with a somewhat different version of Peleus’ words; Nestor will also include the parting words of Menoetius (Patroclus’ father) to Patroclus. At XVIII. 368—373, Achilles will recall his own final words to Menoetius. In the present passage (and in the book XI passage), Peleus’ knowledge of his son’s quick temper is evident.

5 (p. 148) “All of these gifts are yours, if only / You’ll stop being angry”: Up to this point, Odysseus has faithfully reported Agamemnon’s offer of gifts, but he now omits Agamemnon’s conclusion, which contained an implicit comparison of Achilles to Hades and a command to Achilles to recognize Agamemnon’s greater rank and age (IX.179-183). Instead, Odysseus first appeals to Achilles’ sense of pity for his comrades, then to his desire for glory by offering up Hector, who now fights in the front-ranks. Achilles, however, will fully (and furiously) understand that an acceptance of Agamemnon’s gifts (and especially an acceptance of Agamemnon’s offer to make him his son-in-law!) amounts to a recognition of Agamemnon’s greater authority; to accept the king’s gifts is to acknowledge the (greater) social position that they concretize.

6 (p. 148) “I, then, will say what seems to me best”: In book I, Athena stopped Achilles from killing Agamemnon with the promise of receiving “three times as much as what you may lose” (line 248). Achilles has now been offered much more than that (and Agamemnon has acknowledged his ate, note 2 above). All expectation is that Achilles will accept the gifts and return to his comrades, yet Achilles refuses. It is at this point that the Iliad ventures into previously unexplored thematic terrain; and Achilles, in the emotionally roiling, bitterly sarcastic, and relentlessly reevaluating speech that now follows, is the primary explorer of that new terrain—no longer a hero (only) of deeds, but of consciousness. (See the introduction for further discussion of some aspects of Achilles’ great speech.)

7 (p. 151) “The knightly / Old Peleus made me your guardian ...”: In the first part of his response to Achilles’ refusal of Agamemnon’s gifts and to his threat to depart at sunrise, Phoenix recounts his own youthful autobiography and how he came to be Achilles’ tutor (a role that the poetic tradition more often attributes to the kindly centaur Cheiron) and surrogate father. As a young man, Phoenix, too, was embroiled in a potentially deadly dispute over a mistress—in this case, his father’s. Amyntor will curse his son with sterility, driving Phoenix to flee his homeland rather than become a parricide. In Phthia, Phoenix, now an exile, receives an act of extraordinary grace: Peleus not only offers him refuge (which is obligatory in the case of exiles), but a kingdom and the nurturance of a son. Peleus, in effect, rectifies the curse that Amyntor had placed upon Phoenix: Peleus loved Phoenix as a “father loves / His only son and heir”; in return for this act of generosity beyond expectation, Phoenix will love Achilles as his own son. (Peleus’ Phthia seems to be a notable place of refuge; the homicides Epeigeus and Patroclus also find refuge there—see XVI.651—659, and XXIII. 98—104).

8 (p. 153) “Even the gods can yield...” : The second part of Phoenix’ speech features the allegory of the Prayers. Following inevitably, if at a slower pace, upon instances of “Sin,” which here translates the Greek ate (an impaired mental state that leads to moral error and further folly; see above, note 2), the Prayers offer a chance of healing, of brooking disaster before it fully erupts. If the Prayers are rejected, they themselves (as Phoenix presents it) pray to Zeus for vengeance, which takes the form of further and decisive ate. Though others in the Iliad speak of ate (most prominently, Agamemnon at lines 19.104-167), Achilles himself will never explain his own actions in terms of ate.

9 (p. 154) “We’ve all heard similar stories / About the old heroes...”: In the third and final part of his speech, Phoenix recounts the old story of Meleager, a traditional tale that would have been part of the repertoire of the performing bard. Meleager’s successful killing of the Calydonian Boar is succeeded by two tales of strife: Fighting breaks out between Curetes and Aetolians (Meleager’s people) over the spoils of the Boar, and anger erupts between Meleager and his mother Althaea over Meleager’s killing of Althaea’s brother, perhaps also in a dispute over the spoils of the Calydonian Boar. Althaea calls upon the Fury to avenge her brother, and Meleager—in anger—withdraws from the battle against the Aetolians to retire with his wife, Cleopatra. In other versions of the Meleager tradition, Althaea takes hold of a magical firebrand that represents Meleager’s life and casts it into the fire; as the firebrand diminishes, so too does Meleager’s strength (see Bacchylides 5.94-154, Ovid’s Metamorphoses 8.273-525,and Apollodorus 1.8.1-3).The other tellings of Meleager’s story also relate his death in battle at the hands of Apollo, a death similar to that of Achilles (see Hesiod’s Catalog of Women, frag. 25.11-13 and 280)—a not insignificant part of the story, though not told by Phoenix.

10 (p. 156) “Her lurid account stirred Meleager’s / Soul ... he went out and donned / His flashing armor”: Meleager is supplicated first by priests and elders, then by father, mother, and sisters, then by comrades, and finally by his wife, Cleopatra. The order of supplication enacts a traditional scale of ascending affection: fellow citizens, parents and siblings, spouse; into this order, Phoenix inserts the “friends”—the martial companions—between family and spouse. In terms of the embassy to Achilles, we might understand Odysseus to represent the army, Phoenix the father, and Ajax the companions. Crucial to an interpretation of the Meleager paradigm is to note that the name of Meleager’s wife is Cleopatra, which simply reverses the two elements that are also found in the name of Patroclus (in Greek, Kleo-patre and Patro-kleos). In the Iliad, it is Patroclus’ plea (in book XVI) that will finally move Achilles, though even then Achilles will send—much to his own grievous loss—Patroclus to fight in his place. Finally, the name of Patroclus—so much in play at the climax of Meleager’s story—is itself a “speaking name,” signifying “the fame of the ancestors” (from Greek kleos “poetic fame” and patre “father/ancestor”). Patroclus thus has the exemplary heroic name, as it signifies epic poetry itself, which transmits the fame of the prior generations. Patroclus—as comrade and as concept—thus stands at the summit of Achilles’ “scale of affection”—though both meanings cannot finally coexist, and each will experience revaluation.

11 (p. 157) “... whether we / Should go back to our own or stay where we are”: Though Achilles warns Phoenix that his supplication on behalf of Agamemnon risks a permanent alienation of his love, he now makes a first concession: They will consider in the morning whether to stay or to go; compare IX.489-491, where Achilles had asserted that he would definitely sail home on the coming morning.

12 (p. 158) “But Hector... Will stop his advance... when he reaches my lodge / And looming black vessel”: Achilles now makes a second and crucial concession: He will not sail in the morning, and he will fight when Hector brings fire to his ships. Though Ajax’ just preceding speech was the shortest of the three, its appeal to the “love of friends” proves to be the most effective. The degree to which Ajax’ appeal to the love and respect of the martial collective both succeeds (Achilles will not now return home) and fails (but Achilles will not yet honor the supplications of his friends and return to battle) presents some concluding measure (in book IX) of the volatile state of Achilles’ mind. (See the introduction for further discussion of Ajax’ speech.)

Book X: The Night Adventure

1 (p. 160) ... no sweet sleep held... Agamemnon, so worried was he / By the many problems of war: Book X begins with a sleepless Agamemnon calling a council, as he did in book II; the result, however, will not be a full-scale mobilization of the troops, but the dispatch of Diomedes and Odysseus under cover of night to spy upon the Trojans. Beginning with the first ancient commentators and continuing to present-day scholar-critics, book X has often been judged to be an interpolation within the overall design of the Iliad. Nothing in book X advances the overall plot of the poem; it has also been ejected from the monumental Iliad for its folkloristic qualities, for its depiction of Odysseus and Diomedes as murderous liars, for its nighttime setting, and for its culmination in an Achaean victory (which is inconsistent with the full activation in book VIII of Zeus’ plan to bring honor to Achilles by aiding Hector and the Trojans). Book X has also been scorned for numerous atypical linguistic features (words and phrases found in the Odyssey but not otherwise in the Iliad), as well as anomalies of religious practice (gilding the horns of sacrificial cattle, X.329) and of heroic headgear (Diomedes’ leather helmet, Odysseus’ boar-tusk cap, X.288-295).Critics who have retained book X have found respite from the solemnities of book IX in its grim humor and, when humor fails (as in the killing of Dolon and of the sleeping Rhesus and his men), have praised the book for its depiction of the brutality that lurks just beneath the heroic code, ready to erupt under cover of night—and, perhaps most tellingly, in the absence of Achilles. Finally, we might note that the treacherous deceit of Diomedes and Odysseus foreshadows the Fall of Troy itself, which will succumb not to the daytime force of the Achaeans but to nighttime tricks.

2 (p. 169) Then he put on his head / A ferret-skin cap: While Diomedes wears the helmet of a bull and Odysseus that of a boar, Dolon wears the helmet of a ferret (or weasel) and the skins of a wolf. While the clothing and caps are disguises (the heroes have shed their conventional attire), they seem also to communicate something essential about the characters of those who put them on.

3 (p. 171) “... the Thracians, newly arrived, and among them / Their King, Rhesus”: Dolon, in his terror, discloses more than he was asked; and, at Dolon’s revelation of the exceptional horses and chariot of Rhesus, Diomedes and Odysseus set aside their original intent of reconnaissance so that they might capture such rich booty. The epic tradition knew of at least two other versions of the Rhesus story: In one, an oracle foretells that Rhesus and his horses will be invincible if they should drink of the waters of the Scamandrus (see Virgil’s Aeneid 1.472-473);in another, Rhesus’ actual deeds are so extraordinary that Hera grows alarmed—in both versions, Diomedes and Odysseus are dispatched to kill Rhesus.

Book XI: The Valiant Deeds of Agamemnon

1 (p. 176) Strife shouted a loud and terrible war-scream, which stirred ... the Achaeans ... to fight / Without ceasing: With the new dawn and the war-cry of Strife, Zeus further enacts his intention to bring honor to Achilles through a defeat of the Achaeans (see VIII.536-544, and note 3 to book VIII above). The Great Day of Battle now begins; the battle itself is in two primary movements—books XI—XII and XIII—XV—and though each movement begins with an Achaean success, each ends with a resounding Achaean defeat. The day itself does not come to a close until book XVIII (lines 254—257), where Achilles’ supernatural shriek at the trench (many translators and commentators use the term “ditch”) echoes the opening cry of Strife. Achilles’ cry will be so disordering that Hera will compel the Sun to set early.

2 (p. 183) ... such were the sharp and bitter / Pangs that racked Agamemnon now: With a startling simile that compares the pain of Agamemnon’s wound to that of a woman in labor, Agamemnon’s brutal aristeia comes to an abrupt end; the great king will now be led off like a woman to her accouchement (Achilles is surely somewhere laughing). Agamemnon’s aristeia is followed by that of Hector, just as Zeus had earlier promised (XI.212-216); and indeed, the pace of Zeus’ plan now accelerates: In short order, Diomedes, Odysseus (neither any longer protected by Athena, as they were in book X), Machaon, and Eurypylus are wounded, and finally, Ajax is forced to retreat (see XI.621—639, where Ajax is compared first to a lion, then—uniquely and rather touchingly—to a donkey being cudgeled by boys).

3 (p. 187) Deeply troubled, / He spoke to his own great heart: Odysseus’ monologue is the first in the Iliad, though two more will follow in this book and ten more in books XVII-XXII (among the most striking are those of Menelaus at XVII.104-123, Agenor at XM.629-647, and Hector at XXII.117-149). The lone warrior debates with himself the contrary possibilities of fight and retreat. Odysseus’ speech moves beyond the now familiar motives of worldly honor and posthumous glory (and the converses of blame and shame) to a consideration of the moral obligations of the “brave” (or “excellent”) man as opposed to the coward. Under duress from the wound that he will soon receive from Socus, the pragmatic Odysseus—“insatiably wily”—will reemerge in retreat.

4 (p. 188) “But carrion birds shall pick the flesh from your bones ... Whereas ... The noble Achaeans will surely bury me / With all due funeral rites”: The threat that the heroes’ bodies will be made prey for wild beasts was first expressed in the Iliad’s proem. Odysseus now makes explicit an opposition that thematically structures the poem: Funeral rites, which serve both to close a wound within the community and to memorialize the name of the dead, are contrasted to a horrific “anti-funeral,” in which the body, treated as mere meat (or as mere nature), is consumed by wild beasts—and so made to vanish without trace.

5 (p. 192) ... thus marking the start of evil / For him: This is a crucial turning point: Achilles has been observing the Achaean rout from the stern of his ship, and he now sends forth Patroclus to gather further information. Patroclus’ embassy to the Achaeans sets in motion the series of events that will lead to Patroclus’ death and to Achilles’ return to battle. The referent of “him” is double: The “start of evil” is surely for Patroclus, but it is for Achilles as well. Achilles’ call to Patroclus is motivated by a wound to Machaon, who—like Achilles—learned the healing art from Cheiron. Book XI will conclude with Patroclus, who in turn learned his medical skills from Achilles, tending to the wounded Eurypylus (XI.904-913).

6 (p. 194) “If only I were / As young and my strength as unyielding as once...”: Nestor now uncorks a loquacious reminiscence of his own youth. His tale is one of heroic coming-of-age through cattle-raiding; indeed, it has been convincingly argued that the defining initiatory adventure for an Indo-European hero is the cattle-raid, in which the boy must display the bravery and the stealth that the adult male hero requires. Nestor’s adventure takes place in the context of ongoing strife between the Pylians and the Epeans, in which the latter have had by far the greater success; Nestor’s eleven older brothers have been killed in the previous battles. Nestor’s coming-of-age—in which, crucially, he must also overcome the opposition of Neleus, his father—is both a personal achievement and the revivification of his community. Upon emerging from his disguise among the foot-soldiers with his triumphant leap upon a chariot and now wielding a deadly spear, Nestor is the new ruler of Pylos, surpassing and supplanting his father—and saving his own people by so doing. Nestor offers his tale as a goad to action for Achilles (via Patroclus), but an audience might also sense that the past was a simpler (if already oedipalized) time.

7 (p. 197) “Let him send you at the head of the Myrmidon host”: Nestor now formulates the fatal plan that Patroclus should fight in Achilles’ stead and in Achilles’ armor, and Patroclus, greatly moved, sets off to return to Achilles’ shelter. His progress, however, is immediately halted by the wounded Eurypylus, who provokes Patroclus’ pity (XI.904—913). Patroclus will not return to Achilles until book XVI.

Book XII: The Storming of the Wall

1 (p. 200) Where they before had poured their bright-flowing streams: Book XII begins with an extraordinary reflection upon the destruction of the Achaean Wall, which was proposed and constructed in book VII (lines 367-374 and 472-481), where its destruction was also foretold by Zeus (in response to Poseidon’s complaints, VII.482-494). In the proem to book XII, that destruction is now narrated, but—uniquely in the Iliad—from the point of view of the poet’s historical audience, for whom the epic heroes are half-divines (see line 24), a term used only here in the Iliad and a word appropriate to civic cult-practice—that is, to an audience for whom the heroes are now recipients of cult-offerings rather than, or in addition to, the subjects of epic verse. Moreover, the poet’s insistence upon the complete disappearance of any sign of the Achaeans from the beach of the Hellespont might itself be understood as responsive to an audience that now wonders about the historical remains of Troy: Where’s the evidence? The poet’s boldly self-confident answer is to destroy any traces of the Wall; all an audience needs in order to know the story of Troy is the bard’s own song. (A quip of Aristotle’s well captures the bard’s world-creating-and -destroying-power: “The poet who invented it destroyed it,” frag. 162.

2 (p. 200) ... Polydamas came up / To daring Hector and spoke to him and the others: Polydamas has the role of counselor to Hector; this is the first of four speeches of advice; see also XII.223—245, XIII.835—860, and XVIII.284-317. All four of Polydamas’ speeches are guided by a concern for the collective safety—and not with individual honor or glory; contrast, for example, Odysseus’ speech at XI.458-468 (see book XI, note 3 above) or Sarpedon’s upcoming speech at XII.330-351. Hector’s subsequent rejections of Polydamas’ advice (XII.223—268 and, especially, in book XVIII) underline his increasing recklessness, driven by the fatal delusion that Zeus’ favor will last.

3 (p. 206) “Glaucus, why is it that we above all are honored... as though we were gods?”: Sarpedon’s speech on the motives of the hero is among the finest in the Iliad. In the first part of his speech, Sarpedon speaks of heroism as a social obligation: The hero receives special honors—land grants, prominent places at the communal feast—from his community, for which he must ultimately show himself worthy by fighting in defense of his community; or, as in the case of the Lycian Sarpedon at Troy, the hero must fight elsewhere so as to show himself deserving of the rewards he receives at home; a role that begins in the community’s need for defense thus generates a necessity for martial aggression. In the second part of his speech (beginning with “Ah, my friend ...”), Sarpedon shifts to individual motives: The hero’s heightened sense of death (Sarpedon speaks as if the Death-spirits are right behind his back)—his knowledge that he will not be “deathless and ageless forever”—leads him to venture knowingly into battle, where he might gain the compensatory immortality that epic poetry promises. (See Redfield, Nature and Culture in the “Iliad,” pp. 99-101 and Schein, The Mortal Hero, pp. 70-72, for two exemplary readings of Sarpedon’s speech.)

Book XIII: Fighting Among the Ships

1 (p. 212) ... that any immortal would dare come down / To strengthen either the Trojan or Danaan forces: Following the headlong narrative rush that culminated with Hector’s bursting through the gate to the Achaean camp, the opening of book XIII directs Zeus’ gaze—and the audience’s attention—to regions far to the north of Troy: The milk-drinking Hippemolgi are nomadic Scythians (like Herodotus’ Massagetae in his Histories 1.216), while the utopic Abii, whose name signifies “without violence” in Greek, inhabit the nether northern regions. Zeus’ averted gaze permits the intervention of Poseidon into the battle and a (temporary) revival of Achaean fortunes. The careless ease of Zeus—even as he risks, but never loses, his rule—is not untypical.

2 (p. 216) Like a ruthless, death-bearing boulder that bounds down the slope... and rolls to a stop: The boulder to which Hector is now compared recalls that with which Hector burst open the gate of the Achaean defenses at the end of book XII (lines 481-497). But the simile of the boulder also suggests the increasing degree to which Hector, caught up in his own momentum, in his own certainty of Zeus’ favor, becomes less the agent of his own choices than the object borne along by the now uncontrollable rush of events that he himself has set in motion.

3 (p. 218) He met ... Meriones / On his way to fetch a bronze-headed spear: Idomeneus and Meriones come upon each other in a situation of potential mutual embarrassment, for each discovers the other well behind the fighting line. With relieved good humor, each asserts his own valor and accepts the correspondent claims of the other. With their spears restored, they return to the battlefield.

4 (p. 224) ... standing / In back of the battle, for Aeneas was always angry / At royal Priam: Aeneas’ absence from the battle is explained in terms of rivalry between the two branches of the Trojan royal house—one represented by Priam and Hector, the other by Anchises and Aeneas (see note 9 to book II above). The cause of the dispute is an offense to “honor” that goes unexplained, but Aeneas’ anger is expressed by a (verbal) form that derives from the word for Achilles’ anger (menis); and like Achilles after Patroclus’ death, Aeneas ends his withdrawal for the sake of one who is dear to him.

5 (p. 232) “... I’ll come back as soon as I’ve given my orders”: Polydamas concludes his third speech of advice to Hector with a first Trojan premonition of the return of Achilles. Hector does not acknowledge that point, but he does (for the first and only time) heed Polydamas’ advice to call a council of the Trojan leaders. A council, however, is not possible, as it turns out that the principal Trojan fighters are wounded or dead. Polydamas’ advice is good, but circumstance has rendered it inapplicable; caution is no longer permitted Hector.

Book XIV: The Tricking of Zeus

1 (p. 236) The cries of battle were not unheard by Nestor, / Though at his wine: This opening scene of Nestor at his wine, accompanied by Machaon and attended by Hecamede, picks up immediately upon the scene where we last saw Nestor (in book XI, immediately before the dispatch of Patroclus). The ancient commentators express some shock at the amount of time that Nestor has been drinking while his fellow Achaeans have been fighting—ever since XI. 720, some three books earlier. But at issue is less Nestor’s heroic tippling than Homer’s narration of simultaneous actions as consecutive. A scene that the poet puts aside is picked up where it was left off, while the intervening actions are conceived of as concurrent with that scene. The battlefield action framed by Nestor’s bout of drinking is simultaneous with it—that is, the drinking of book XIV is temporally continuous with the drinking of book XI (no intervening time has elapsed), and the scenes in Nestor’s shelter are simultaneous with the fighting of books XII and XIII.

2 (p. 238) “Far better to flee and escape / Than stay and be taken”: Agamemnon proposes, now for the third time, a retreat to the ships and a sailing from Troy—though a launching of the ships while under attack risks a total disaster, as Odysseus will point out. When Agamemnon falsely and foolishly proposed a retreat in book II (131-138), it was Odysseus who succeeded in regrouping the army; following Agamemnon’s call for retreat in book IX (lines 18-26), it was Diomedes who rallied the leaders with a speech. In the present instance, both Diomedes and Odysseus will intervene to prevent an Achaean retreat.

3 (p. 240) And then she considered, the heifer-eyed / Queenly Hem, how she might best trick the wits / Of aegis-great Zeus: Hera, delighting from afar in Poseidon’s aid to the Achaeans, resolves that Zeus should remain indolent for as long as possible; she will seduce her husband. The ensuing “Deception of Zeus” is an episode of darkly glittering humor that burlesques the tradition of the hierogamia, or Sacred Marriage. The holy union of Zeus and Hera was imagined to take place upon a mountaintop and to produce the divine, fertilizing dew upon which the seasonal success of the crops was dependent; this divine marriage was reenacted and celebrated at various festival-rites throughout the Greek world from as early as the Mycenaean period (see lines 394—399 for an eruption of fecund nature at the climax of the hierogamia of Zeus and Hera). In the Homeric parody, neither Zeus nor Hera retain much—or any—of their cultic aura and awe. Hera, driven by hatred, perverts her role as protector of the domestic hearth: She must seduce her own husband; her conjugal “duty” is itself a trick. Zeus’ role as husband of Hera (and guardian of guest-friendship) is surely vitiated by his catalog of prior seductions (lines 360-370), while his recitation of past amours—each an occasion of strife with Hera—seems calculated to repel rather than attract (though Hera, if her seduction is to succeed, must swallow any of the gall that Zeus’ recitation of former lovers surely induces).

4 (p. 241) And slyly Queen Hera replied: “Give me now, then, / Love and desire...”: Hera’s seduction of Zeus requires an initial deception of Aphrodite; if Hera is to succeed, she will need the love-charms that Aphrodite can provide. The less-than-astute goddess of love is easily duped by Hera’s tale that she is on a mission to restore conjugal relations between the squabbling Oceanus and Tethys (who are here conceived of as primeval, cosmogonic parents), for domestic harmony is, after all, Hera’s divine concern. But, of course, the outcome of Hera’s seduction will be an increase in strife between her and Zeus, a further sharpening of Olympian divisions. Oceanus and Tethys—whose union might bode a cosmic harmony—will not be reconciled.

5 (p. 243) “And now /You want me to do this other impossible thing”: Sleep initially refuses Hera’s request with a recollection of a prior occasion on which he had aided Hera’s plans by charming Zeus to sleep. While Zeus was held under Sleep’s dominion, Hera caused Heracles—as he departed from Troy, following the first Sack of the city (V.715-716, and see note 4 on book V above)—to be swept away to the island of Cos (Zeus himself will give further details at XV. 28-32);on Cos, Heracles will have to fight several Giants (Pindar’s Nemean 4.25-27 and Isthmian 6.31-33), who are also among the opponents of Zeus’ rule. The entire narrative of the “Deception of Zeus” is shot through with allusions to prior cosmic strife (note Zeus’ response upon waking up from Sleep’s first spell)—and will itself precipitate an intensification of Olympian discord.

6 (p. 247) And as when a huge oak / Falls... Hector crashed to the dusty earth: The battle of Hector and Ajax has been forestalled from the end of book XIII (lines 956-960). The simile of the felled oak—toughest of trees—leads an audience to think that Hector has been slain. Hector, however, though badly stunned, is carried off the field and revived, if with difficulty, by his comrades. In Hector’s absence—and as Zeus slumbers contentedly on—the Trojan rout begins (and is soon accelerated by the gruesome, panic-inducing slaughter of Ilioneus, at XIV.561-573). The battle will not be reversed until Hector’s return to battle in book XV (beginning at line 301); the Greeks will respond to Hector as to a man miraculously restored to life (beginning at line 327).

Book XV: The Achaeans Desperate

1 (p. 252) “... how little real good it does you / To ... Seduce me to lie with you and make love”: Zeus, roused from his post-coital slumber, quickly realizes the implication of Hera’s perfidy; she no longer simply resists his will (as she did in books I, II, and VIII) but actively plots against it. In response, Zeus invokes the very same rebellion that Sleep had earlier cited in his initial refusal of Hera’s plans: the stormy transport of Heracles to Cos (XIV.281-290, with note 5 to book XIV above); but the emphasis now falls not upon Sleep’s fear of punishment, but upon Zeus’ extravagant prior punishment of Hera: his hand-to-foot binding of her by a golden chain. Though Zeus’ response to Hera retains some of the comic energy of the “Deception of Zeus,” his description of lashing and binding Hera likely references an underlying myth of cosmic strife between sky-god and earth-goddess. The “anvils” (Greek akmones) attached to Hera’s ankles are themselves meteorites, signs of Zeus’ punishing thunderbolt.

2 (p. 252) “... it is by no will of mine that Poseidon ... does damage to Trojans and Hector / And nothing but good for their foes”: Hera once again swears by the Styx (as she did in her persuasion of Sleep), but her words carefully sidestep essentials: Poseidon had intervened on the Achaeans’ behalf of his own accord; she says nothing of her own actions to aid Poseidon. Perjury is avoided, and so is the truth.

3 (p. 253) “... Thetis... pleading with me to honor her son, / Achilles, taker of towns”: In response to Hera’s oath, Zeus foretells his overarching plan in the greatest detail yet—now including the death of Sarpedon, his own son. No longer immobilized by Hera’s trick, Zeus reasserts his own authority as he prophecies the progress of his plan to honor Thetis. Zeus’ speech, however, is unexpectedly conciliatory: He will not beat Hera or hang her from her ankles but will instead seek to incorporate her into his plans: She is to be the agent of Poseidon’s acquiescence to Zeus’ plan; the goal is now an Olympian unanimity in Zeus’ will. Zeus’ inclusion of the death of Sarpedon in his unfolding of events is itself a sacrifice to the cause of Olympian conciliation. All the immortals, Zeus included, must lose someone or something dear to them; thus, we next see that Ares must reconcile himself (under Athena’s harsh tutelage) to the loss of his son Ascalaphus (XV.148-166).

4 (p. 257) “... then truly the rancorous breach between us / Will not be subject to healing!”: Poseidon is reconciled to Zeus’ rule with more difficulty than was Ares. He acquiesces only after a second reminder from Iris that Zeus is the elder—now given threatening force by an invocation of the Furies, enforcers of familial order and respect. Poseidon’s sticking point of contention is the threat that Zeus poses to the balance of divine power. Though younger than Zeus, Poseidon stakes his claim on his brotherly equality with Zeus, as well as with Hades. According to the story of the drawing of lots, each of the three brothers received as their own the respective realms of the Sea, the Heavens, and the Underworld (with earth and Olympus as shared territory). Poseidon claims that he would stay in his realm if only Zeus would remain in his, but Iris’ reiteration of the link between primogeniture and power finally prevails, and Poseidon abruptly retires into the sea—in much less grandiose fashion than that with which he emerged at the start of book XIII (lines 49-50).

5 (p. 261) ... 0 powerful Phoebus / You undid the Achaeans’ hard toil and filled them with panic: The Achaeans’ hard labor in the building of their wall and the Trojans’ grueling campaign against that wall and its defenders in book XII stand in marked contrast to the ease with which Apollo now breaches the wall—like a boy gleefully knocking down his sand castles. The present passage surely recalls the proem of book XII (see endnote 1 to book XII above).

6 (p. 262) Patroclus ... groaned aloud and slapped his thighs / With the flat of his hands... : Slapping the thighs expresses extreme and pressing grief. Earlier in the poem, Asius (XII.170), then Ares, in grief for his son Ascalaphus (XV. 129-130), used this gesture; this linked series will culminate at XVI. 149, when Achilles slaps his thighs at the sight of fire on the Achaean ships. The present scene of Patroclus tending to Eurypylus rejoins that at the end of book XI (lines 902-920), where Patroclus’ return to Achilles was interrupted by his pity for the wounded Eurypylus; his concern for the entirety of the Achaeans now sets him back in motion.

7 (pp. 267-268) Zeus... was waiting to see the glare from a flaming ship, / For then ... he would... give the Danaans glorious victory: The poet prefaces the great and fearful victory of Hector with a recapitulation of Zeus’ plan: Even as the poet anticipates Hector’s coming triumph, he also reminds his audience that Hector’s glory (coupled with Zeus’ favor) will be temporary, subordinate to Zeus’ overarching plan to honor forever Thetis and her son.

Book XVI: The Death of Patroclus

1 (p. 272) ...Patroclus / Came up to Achilles... weeping like a spring / Whose dark streams trickle down the rocky face of a cliff: Patroclus’ interrupted return to Achilles is now complete (see endnote 6 to book XV above). The comparison of Patroclus’ tears to a spring of dark water recalls the tears of Agamemnon that began book IX (lines 15-16); and as in book IX, a supplication of Achilles now follows, which itself evokes two examples from Phoenix’ book IX speech: First, as Meleager was supplicated by Cleopatra, so Achilles is now supplicated by the one dearest to him, Patroclus (see endnote 10 to book IX above); second, Patroclus’ plea to Achilles might well be construed as analogous to the intervention of the Prayers, who (in Phoenix’ allegory), if scorned, pray to Zeus for a renewed and decisive ate (see endnote 8 to book IX above). But we should also keep in mind that Achilles, in book IX, seems—in his concentrating wrath—to contemplate understandings and actions that, though shaped by the old stories and allegories, are no longer wholly in agreement with, or guided by, those same stories.

2 (p. 273) “But if your heart is set on escaping some dire word / From Zeus, revealed to you by your goddess mother...”: Patroclus, in his concluding appeal to Achilles, takes up the very words of Nestor’s exhortation to Patroclus in book XI, which follows upon the old man’s account of his youthful exploits (lines 877-884): Is Achilles inhibited by some prophecy? If so, then let Patroclus go forth in Achilles’ armor. In place of Nestor’s account of boyhood cattle-raids, Patroclus charges Achilles with pitilessness: His parents are not Thetis and Peleus (whom he has just claimed to love), but the sea and the cliffs, so bereft is he of mortal care. Responsiveness to others, which Patroclus has exemplified in his healing and tendance of Eurypylus in books XI and XV (lines 904-913 and 447—451, with notes above), is now also the ground of Patroclus’ indictment of Achilles and of his fatal appeal that he himself be permitted to return to the fight.

3 (p. 273) “... nor has my goddess mother brought to me / Any such word from Zeus”: This is an interpretative crux: Some readers, ancient and modern, have charged Achilles with a lack of full candor in his denial of any prophetic word from his mother, for at IX.471-478—the “Choice of Achilles,” itself one of the most famous of Iliadic passages—Achilles spoke of Thetis’ prophecy of alternate fates: a long life without renown in Phthia or a youthful death at Troy recompensed by “glory forever”; other readers, however, have stressed the human motivations of Homer’s characters: They do not seek, and are not influenced by, prophetic advice, for such would diminish their mortal responsibility; prophecies are directly referred to only when their recollection is too late (see XVIII.8-12: “Olet it not be ...”) ; full revelation of Zeus’ plan for Achilles does not take place until XVIII.109-111 , when Achilles, “greatly moved,” acknowledges his coming death.

4 (pp. 273-274) “I will not, it seems, / Be filled with fierce anger forever, though I said I would not / Change my mind till the fighters were screaming about my own vessels”: Another interpretative crux: Achilles acknowledges that he cannot remain ceaselessly wrathful, and yet he still does not return to battle but rather assents to Patroclus’ plan (which originated with Nestor) to send Patroclus forth in his stead. One interpretation proposes that Achilles is simply holding himself to his word, as he announced it to Ajax and the Embassy at IX. 747-7 59 (and see endnote 12 to book IX): He will not fight until the fire reaches his ships, which has not yet happened; Achilles, then, suffers for his own ethic of honesty. A second interpretation holds that Achilles, even while acknowledging that his wrath cannot be perpetual, clings relentlessly to his hatred of Agamemnon, who treated him as “some lowly contemptible tramp”; the price paid for Achilles’ intransigence, his “tragic error,” is the death of Patroclus. A final interpretative possibility is that Achilles recognizes that the moment to put aside his wrath has arrived, even as he honors Patroclus’ request to aid the Achaeans; Achilles relinquishes his wrath by means of an act of friendship.

5 (pp. 274-275) “... Deeply I wish... That just myself and Patroclus might live and alone / Succeed in reducing this... sacred city / To rubble and dust”: To Patroclus’ earlier question about what profit Achilles might be to men to come (XVI.35-36), Achilles responds with a demonic prayer for the destruction of all Achaeans and Trojans except for himself and Patroclus. And to Patroclus’ appeal to the love or comradeship of the army (Greek philotes), Achilles responds that the only love that now binds—the only love worthy of existence—is that between himself and Patroclus. In Achilles’ prayer, the unconscious—where love and death intertwine, which knows neither yes nor no—erupts.

6 (p. 276) ... and Patroclus / Put on the glittering bronze: For arming scenes, see endnote 3 to book III above. The assemblage of Patroclus’ borrowed regalia highlights elements that likely derive from the folktale motif of three magical gifts: invincible armor, a spear that always returns to its hero, and immortal horses. Achilles’ armor will have to be knocked from Patroclus before he can be killed (XVI.913-931), while Achilles’ mighty ash spear proves too weighty for Patroclus to lift, foretelling Patroclus’ doomed effort to take over Achilles’ role. To Achilles’ immortal horses, Automedon adds, as a trace-horse, the mortal Pedasus, who will be killed by Sarpedon: The mix of mortal with immortal horses surely also bodes ill, even as it also suggests something of Patroclus’ own unstable admixture of elements.

7 (p. 279) “I pray let him come back to these swift ships and me ... And with him bring back his close-fighting Myrmidon comrades”: In his solemn prayer, Achilles reminds Zeus of his positive response to Achilles’ prayer from book I: The Achaeans have, indeed, been smote (Achilles’ present prayer to Zeus follows the model set by Chryses’ second prayer to Apollo in book I, following Apollo’s striking of the Achaeans with plague [see lines 531-537]). By invoking Zeus’ prior favorable response, Achilles hopes again to influence Zeus, to bring Zeus into accord with his own desire. But Zeus’ plan no longer aligns with Achilles’ desire, nor with the possibilities of the traditional hero’s life. Achilles prays that Patroclus might gain, in the fighting, both glory and a safe return—the two poles of Achilles’ “choice” in book IX and two elements that cannot both structure a hero’s life. In another sense, Achilles prays to Zeus to affirm Achilles’ own prior double injunction to Patroclus upon sending him forth to battle (XVI. 104-107): “to win great glory,” but not to “get carried away / In the heat of conflict and slaughter”; as we will soon see, the two commands cannot coexist.

8 (p. 284) “... and you / Will surely stir up fierce resentment among the immortals”: The death of sons and the grief of fathers has been a recurrent source of pathos in the Iliad’s account of fallen warriors; that theme is now enacted on the divine level. In response to Zeus’ sorrow and vacillation about the death of Sarpedon (which Zeus himself foretold at XV.71-74; see also V.733-738 and XII.434-435, where Sarpedon is, in each instance, saved for his present fate), Hera invokes the finality of human mortality, and, crucially, she holds Zeus to the divine compromise that was enunciated in book XV: All the gods must lose something beloved; Zeus, as ruler of the gods, must make a paradigmatic sacrifice of his own beloved son. If Zeus should fail to uphold the order of the cosmos, itself predicated upon an irreversible human mortality, chaos would ensue: All the gods would take to the battlefield.

9 (p. 290) “... the dead’s due rites, a proper / Entombment, with mound and memorial pillar”: Sarpedon’s body was earlier described as unrecognizable, covered by weapons, blood, and dust (XVI.728-730);the befouling of Sarpedon’s body anticipates the mutilation with which Patroclus’ corpse will be threatened as well as the actual savagery inflicted upon Hector’s corpse. Sarpedon’s corpse is, however, rescued by Apollo and by Sleep and Death, under orders from Zeus. The terrifying violence of the battlefield, in which warriors are not only killed but their corpses mutilated, gives way to divine cleansing and to a mysterious transport as gentle (and welcome) as sleep. The “mound and memorial pillar” that Zeus promises foresee the establishment of a heroic tomb in Lycia, at which cult honors will be dedicated to Sarpedon; later literary and epigraphical evidence does, indeed, attest to local honors in Lycia for Sarpedon (and for Glaucus).

10 (p. 291) Three times Patroclus / Sprang up ... and three times / Apollo battered him back ... : Patroclus’ triple attack upon the Wall of Troy, countered by Apollo’s triple defense, is a narrative pattern that we first saw at V.482-496, in Diomedes’ attack upon Apollo; we will see the same pattern again, at XX.497-498, where Apollo has already swept Hector away. In each instance, the hero is said to be “like a demon”—or, “like something more than a man”—upon his fourth charge. To make the fourth charge is, then, to surpass a mortal limit, to bring oneself into direct conflict with the god—who is, in all three cases, Apollo. In book V, Diomedes retreats following Apollo’s warning at the fourth charge (thus barely saving his life); here, in book XVI, Patroclus too retreats after the fourth charge, but only temporarily, for the pattern will soon repeat itself at lines 910-914, where Apollo proceeds to contrive Patroclus’ death. Achilles—whose permanent condition is “like something more than a man”—will also be killed through Apollo’s machinations (though outside the Iliad itself).

11 (p. 292) “I had no idea they had / Such performers in Troy”: If Patroclus’ pity—his healing capacity—has been the leading element of his prior characterization, his cruel taunt over the body of Cebriones, as well as the escalating blood-frenzy of his killings, dramatizes that Patroclus is no less susceptible than his comrades to the berserker aspects of the warrior. Achilles’ parting advice to Patroclus—to “come back” once the Trojans have been driven from the ships (XVI. 101-102)—proves fatally impossible, for the trajectory of the warrior in his aristeia moves inevitably toward a furious transgressive violence that wreaks death even as it pollutes the warrior himself. The warrior who is “like something more than a man” is also like something less than human—defiling and finally defiled: This is the state that epic poetry itself must purify.

12 (p. 295) “... while Hector came third in my slaying”: In his death throes, Patroclus knows exactly who his slayers were, which he could not have known at the climax of battle itself, for Apollo was invisible, while Euphorbus struck from behind, then disappeared into the ranks. The nearness of death makes Patroclus prophetic, and the accuracy of his account of his own death vouchsafes his prophecy that Hector will die at Achilles’ hands. Hector’s victory precipitates Hector’s death.

Book XVII: The Valiant Deeds of Menelaus

1 (p. 300) “So something, at least, would be saved”: On the form of the warrior’s monologue, see Odysseus’ speech at XI.459-468, with endnote 3 to book XI above. Menelaus begins with an acknowledgment of his own responsibility for Patroclus’ death—beneath which might also lurk a deeper sense of his own responsibility for the war as well as his own ineffectiveness in prosecuting it. He further acknowledges the blame that others would cast upon him for now abandoning Patroclus, but then—extraordinarily, and in marked contrast to the other monologists cited above—he withdraws, seeking the help of Ajax. The general pattern of withdrawal and call for aid will recur throughout book XVII, as will the use of rebuke as a goad to action.

2 (p. 301) “... for he is much stronger than you”: Sarpedon’s dying words were an appeal to Glaucus, his comrade from Lycia, to recover his armor (XVI.561-572); following Sarpedon’s death (and after being healed by Apollo), Glaucus rallied the Trojan forces. In this speech of rebuke, Glaucus’ grief for his lost comrade leads to angry abuse of Hector and to the threat to return home with the remaining Lycians. Glaucus’ conviction of the cowardice and ingratitude of Hector and the Trojans, freely developed amid thoughts of the lost beloved, bears comparison to Achilles’ response to Odysseus in book IX.

3 (p. 302) ... armor he had from his father: The armor of Achilles was a gift from his father, Peleus, who himself received the panoply (full suit of armor) from the gods. Hector, like Patroclus before him, secures his own doom by donning the immortal armor (as Zeus’ immediately following prophecy reiterates). The gifts of the gods are, it seems, intended only for their original recipients (and their descendants); but the divine arms also prove irresistible for those who would “be” Achilles, whether first for Patroclus in his beneficent desire to save the Achaeans and now for Hector, who is driven by a densely compacted set of emotions and motives: resentment at Glaucus’ chastening rebuke, the desire to claim (and extend) divine favor, desperate need to save Troy, and heroic vainglory.

4 (p. 304) Zeus ... hated to see / His body become the delight of his enemies’ dogs: With this evocation of Zeus’ care for Patroclus as well as of the dread fate that threatens the unprotected body, the battle for Patroclus’ corpse recommences in earnest; it will not be settled until XVIII.238, by Achilles’ intervention. The extraordinary length of the battle for Patroclus’ corpse, in its brutality and animal similes, well dramatizes the tendency of Homer’s warriors to become the beast—preeminently, the dog or jackal—that they themselves most fear (the extraordinary simile of the Myrmidons and the wolves at XVI. 184—192 anticipates this theme); as well, an audience remains in prolonged anticipation of Achilles’ response to his comrade’s death (Achilles’ ignorance of Patroclus’ death at lines XVII.474—485).

5 (p. 309) ... still / As a pillar of stone on the grave of some dead man or woman, / Bowing their heads to the ground: At the very center of book XVII stand Achilles’ immortal horses, as immobile as a grave stele in their mourning for Patroclus (which foreshadows their inevitable mourning for Achilles) . Zeus then proceeds to read (as it were) that central stele in his following reflections upon the “wretched” condition of humans, so keenly aware of their own mortality. Zeus’ pity, however, is more for the horses than for the humans, for the immortal horses have permitted themselves to grieve for mortals.

6 (p. 317) And there was no respite at all from the horrible war: With the sending-forth of Antilochus to Achilles and with this final chaotic scene of fighting, the absence of Achilles is drawing to a close, as is the battle narrative that has dominated the previous ten books, with the exception of book IX. The impasse evident in the fighting over Patroclus’ corpse is set to be broken by the vengeful return of Achilles.

Book XVIII: The Shield of Achilles

1 (p. 318) Truly, / Gallant Patroclus must now be dead: We have not seen Achilles since his prayer to Zeus for Patroclus’ safe return (XVI. 2 74—291, with endnote 7 to book XVI above). In the monologue that opens book XVIII, Achilles fears what an audience has long known: Patroclus is dead. The evident rout of the Achaeans signals to Achilles that Patroclus must have perished. As well, Achilles now recalls Thetis’ prophetic words that Patroclus would die at Troy before Achilles—a clarification of the prophecy as reported at XVII.480-483, where it was understood to mean that Achilles and Patroclus would not take Troy together (and where Achilles seemed to understand that he himself would die first). The full recollection and clarification of Thetis’ prophecy—namely, that Patroclus will die first—only comes when it is devastatingly too late. The confusion and late memory that surrounds Thetis’ prophecy serves to ensure that Achilles’ motivations are only human—limited by partial knowledge and expectant hopes.

2 (p. 319) ... Antilochus ... held / The hands of heart-grieved Achilles, for fear that he might / Draw a blade and cut his own throat: Gestures of mourning and intimations of Achilles’ own death now merge. The befouling of head and of clothes while rolling in the dust is a sign of mourning, even as it is also suggestive of the warrior’s death. The lamentation of the Nereid chorus that follows, as well as the particular lament of Thetis at lines 59—67: (“Here me, 0 Nereids ...”), also suggests that it is Achilles who is now mourned as much as Patroclus. Thetis’ cradling of Achilles’ head upon her arrival at the ships is also a gesture of mourning ; she holds Achilles as if he were already a corpse.

3 (p. 320) “Then soon let me die! since I was not there to help / My friend when he died”: With these terse lines, among the most moving in the poem, Achilles accepts his own death; the meaning of Thetis’ prophecy is now crystalline, as is Achilles’ acceptance of it. He will return to battle not for gifts or kingships but to avenge the loss of his beloved. As Achilles acknowledges in his prior exchange with Thetis, Zeus has granted Achilles’ prayers, but only with the sacrifice of the one companion whose love bound Achilles to the mortal world. Apart from Patroclus—and now forever separated from Patroclus—Achilles is, as he goes on to assert, “just so much / Useless weight to burden the earth” (lines 116-117).

4 (p. 321 ) “... for I will have made them / Know what it means for me to be present in battle”: Achilles speaks of the coming mourning of the Trojan widows even as he himself lies prostrate, surrounded by the grieving Nereids. Achilles reasserts his place as warrior—and his image foreshadows the Fall of Troy—but in his grief for Patroclus he seems also to identify himself with the inconsolable widow. Our perspective oscillates rapidly between the heroic battle for glory and the devastation that the battle wreaks.

5 (p. 321) Then Zeus-loved Achilles / Got up, and about his shoulders Athena flung / The bright-tasseled aegis ... : As he rises from his prostrate position of mourning, Achilles’ withdrawal comes to an awe-filled end. This is Achilles’ apotheosis, the momentary culmination of his desire for immortality Athena herself arms the naked Achilles with the divine aegis, and the goddess wreathes his head with a golden cloud, which is otherwise only associated with divinities; the fire that burns from Achilles’ head is elsewhere used by Zeus to subdue the Titans. The triple-scream of Achilles (XVIII. 2 5 4-2 5 8) is itself a deadly force, killing twelve Trojans and throwing their army into rout (thus freeing Patroclus’ corpse); and the scream is a response to the loss of the beloved Patroclus—an intensification of the mourning cries upon the beach. The force that Achilles’ scream unlooses is so daemonic that the cosmos itself is disrupted : Hera, fearful of utter chaos, pushes the Sun down early—and, at last, the Great Day of Battle comes to a stunning conclusion.

6 (p. 326) They lauded / Hector and his bad advice, but not one man / Had praise for Polydamas, although his counsel was wise: The poet unambiguously signals Hector’s error. Exulting in the victories of the day and still confident of Zeus’ favor, Hector vaunts that he can now defeat even Achilles—if Achilles really has even returned. Borne along by Hector’s hopes, the Trojans assent to his counsel to remain on the Trojan plain rather than to retreat behind the safety of the city-wall. And so the Trojans are destroyed by Achilles on the following day.

7 (p. 331) He made lovely images there / Of earth and heaven ... : For Achilles, Hephaestus forges a great round shield upon the model of those that the other heroes have carried: a shield of multiple layers stretched over a lighter frame, fronted by decorated bronze. But the divinely wrought Shield of Achilles quickly leaves its precedents behind so as to become a dazzling display of the poet’s own art—now deployed not in the representation of the heroic order, but of a non-heroic world, which we have previously glimpsed only in the similes. On the Shield of Achilles, the disparate abundance of similes scattered throughout the poem is shaped into a coherent and ordered whole. Hephaestus begins his work with the central ring of the Shield, which depicts the heavenly bodies. These are the fixed signs, whose regular, observable progress through the heavens orders the rhythms and regularities of human life and the seasons of the agricultural year.

8 (p. 331) On it he wrought / Two beautiful cities ... : The second ring of the Shield (from the center) depicts a city at peace and a city at war. The emphasis falls upon cultural and political practice and mediation: The wedding and adjudication scenes present the possibility of political unity through, first, the making of kinship, then through the possibility of political adjudication of communal strife. In the city at war, we also see the possibility of collective action in the debates of the council and in the planning and execution of the ambush. For further interpretative suggestions on this ring of the Shield, see the introduction.

9 (p. 333) And there on the shield / He depicted the huge estate of a king, whereon / His workers were reaping ... : On the third and central ring of the concentric design, Hephaestus depicts the farmer’s year: ploughing, reaping, vintage, and fallow seasons. While the first ring presented the world of nature and the second the world of human culture (as kinship and as politics), the middle ring displays man’s potentially productive relation with the natural world—a relation wholly excluded from the main narrative of the Iliad.

10 (p. 334) And on it the famous lame god / Made with great skill a dancing-floor: On the fourth and penultimate ring, Hephaestus returns to the depiction of the cultural world, but now as art. The dance is pure motion; the community depicted is a joyous one. It is the genius of the Iliad-poet to remind us that if the cultural work depicted on the second ring—the wedding and the court—is what we need to live with each other in something close to peace (in private and in public), we yet also need artful communion and release; while the second ring depicts the culture that we need, the fourth ring depicts the culture that we want.

11 (p. 334) ... all about the rim of the massive shield / He put the powerful stream of the river Oceanus: The final, encircling ring of the Shield repeats the pure motion of the fourth ring, though now in the realm of nature, and presents a contrast to the first ring, which depicted nature in its fixity and regularity.

Book XIX: The Reconciliation

1 (p. 337) “Now I ... shall put an end / To my wrath. It would hardly become me to go on this way / Forever”: Achilles’ language and sentiment is quite close to that at XVI.72—74 (and see endnote 4 to book XVI) . In the earlier passage, the recognition that anger cannot be fierce forever led to the sending forth of Patroclus. With Patroclus now dead, and with Achilles suffering for that death, Achilles himself will venture forth. Though Achilles’ speech is one of reconciliation with Agamemnon and with the Achaean camp (he does not speak of Patroclus or of the motive of revenge in this speech), his imperiousness remains: It was Achilles who called the Assembly, and it is Achilles who now gives a battle-order to Agamemnon.

2 (p. 337) “Very often you men of Achaea have had / Your say and spoken against me, though really I am not / To blame”: Agamemnon, in response to Achilles’ expression of remorse to the assembled Achaeans, pronounces himself blameless: Zeus, Fate, the Fury, and, most especially, Ate (“Sweet Folly”) gained control of him; Agamemnon has blamed Ate before, in his false account of Zeus in book II and in his sincere and desperate proposal to flee Troy in book IX (see II.131-132 and IX.132, with endnotes to each passage). In hindsight, a foolish and disastrous act, otherwise inexplicable, is blamed upon an impulse from without. Agamemnon proceeds to offer a lengthy etiology of Ate—and why she wanders among mortals—in his retelling of the birth and bondage of Heracles. Throughout his account, Agamemnon draws a parallel, doubtless displeasing to Achilles, between himself and Zeus, but ignores the parallel suggested by the story of Heracles and Eurystheus—the man of better nature enslaved to the man of kingly power.

3 (p. 339) “Renowned ... Agamemnon, / The gifts are yours to give or withhold”: Though Ate is to blame, Agamemnon does offer gifts to Achilles; the social practice of compensation—the acceptance of juridical responsibility—needs still to be enacted. Achilles, however, no less than in book IX, is unmoved by the old stories and will not accept Agamemnon’s gifts. No less than before, Achilles’ acceptance of Agamemnon’s compensatory gifts would legitimate Agamemnon’s authority, as well as the underlying economy of heroic honor. The desire for revenge drives Achilles’ return to the Achaean camp, but he remains resistant to the social forms and obligations that construct and govern that camp.

4 (p. 340) “It would be much better... to take care of these things / At some other time ... when my own spirit is somewhat appeased”: Odysseus has diplomatically proposed a transfer of gifts and a swearing of oaths; he has also vigorously and at surprising length asserted the necessity of the feast so as to refresh and fortify the troops for the coming battle; Agamemnon approves. Achilles again defers the gifts and, now, the oaths (when the gifts are brought to his shelter, he makes no acknowledgment of them); as for the feast, whose practical necessity is so passionately described by Odysseus, Achilles will not join in that either. To Odysseus’ appeals to the life-sustaining necessity of food, Achilles, now death-bound, is impervious. The feast, for Achilles, is neither an occasion of collective commensality nor even of biological sustenance; what does sustain is the desire for revenge.

5 (p. 343) “Hence I weep / For your death without ceasing, for you the forever gentle”: Briseis, the object of the initial dispute between Achilles and Agamemnon, previously a mute sign of the honor of male heroes, now speaks. The history that she recounts is one of escalating loss, including that of her husband. But Patroclus, “forever gentle” in his healing role, had assuaged Briseis’ grief with the promise of a wedding in Phthia to Achilles, where she might have recovered a social place and a social world. With the death of Patroclus and, soon, that of Achilles, Briseis’ displacement and grief—her suffering of the depredations of war—becomes, again, her fixed fate.

6 (p. 344) ... my own Neoptolemus, / If indeed that godlike boy is still alive: Achilles makes the extraordinary assertion that the death of Patroclus is more grievous to him than that of father or of son. The prior limit of imaginable grief, the loss of male kin, is here surpassed by the loss of the companion in love. To eat would, in Achilles’ formulation, be a betrayal of that love, for it would be a tacit admission that life goes on in the absence of the beloved.

Book XX: The Gods at War

1 (p. 347) But powerful Zeus ... BadeThemis call the gods to a meeting ... : At the end of book XIX, Achilles had armed in his new panoply, had mounted his chariot, and was setting off to lead the Achaeans (who have by now had their feast) into battle. His aristeia is now interrupted by a council of the gods, at which Zeus revokes the prohibition that he had established at the divine council that began book VIII: The gods are now free to enter the melee. Zeus’ reasons are twofold: Without the gods on the field, Achilles will too soon, earlier than is fated, take Troy; and Zeus, who now watches from the Olympian heights, anticipates a spectacularly entertaining contest: the comedic struggles of the gods; the piteous, tragic struggles of the mortals. We might also suggest that the disordering presence of the gods upon the battlefield—at XX.67-73, Hades itself might burst open—is especially appropriate to the return of Achilles: As the overthrowing son that Zeus avoided by marrying Thetis to Peleus (see endnote 7 to book I above), Achilles, in his return to battle, with its cosmic and potentially chaos-inducing response, evokes the cosmos-overturning battle that Zeus has forever precluded—and that Zeus now manages, as if the artist-director of a private spectacle.

2 (p. 349) So gods advanced to meet gods: With the gods now paired off against each other, like boxers awaiting the bell, the poet suddenly returns our attention to Achilles. The narrative of the Theomachy, “The Battle of the Gods,” will not resume until XXI.431 (where it will take a rather more comic turn). Achilles’ aristeia—the hero himself is searching relentlessly for Hector—is now rejoined, but only to be interrupted again: Rather than the usual series of successful duels, Achilles is now involved in a lengthy and inconclusive battle with Aeneas (on whom, see endnote 9 to book II and endnote 4 to book XIII above).

3 (p. 352) “But I claim descent from courageous Anchises, my father, / And Aphrodite herself”: Achilles has just taunted Aeneas for his lack of favor within the Trojan ruling house (“Priam would not give the kingship to you. King Priam / Has sons of his own,” lines 205-206). Aeneas, following his complaints about needless verbosity, responds to Achilles with an extended discourse on genealogical themes. He first matches his descent from Aphrodite against Achilles’ descent from Thetis (both heroes are “half-divines”), then offers a full recitation of the Trojan genealogical line. Aeneas’ recitation, coming at a point in the poem where images of Troy’s impending destruction have been cumulating (most impressively in the similes on the fire that shoots from Achilles’ head upon his appearance at the trench, XVIII.232-239), serves as a memorial of the entire Trojan line, which is soon to be utterly destroyed—with the exception of Aeneas himself (see note immediately below).

4 (p. 355) “... Aeneas shall soon rule / The Trojans, and after him the sons of his sons, / Great princes yet to be born”: Poseidon’s prophecy of Aeneas’ coming rule over the Trojans reverses the lack of honor in which his line is now held. Though the line that descends from Ilus through Priam and his sons will be destroyed for Paris’ abduction of Helen, the descendants of Aphrodite through the blameless line of Anchises and Aeneas will be saved (see, too, the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite 196-197, which likewise prophecies the survival of Aeneas’ line) . The contrast between the fates of Achilles and Aeneas, both goddess-born, is instructive: Achilles dies as a youthful hero and will be immortalized in the honor—the poetic fame—that the bard bestows; Aeneas, in contrast, will survive Troy’s fall so as to be immortalized in the city-founding and cultural work of his own descendants; the former is immortalized in the timelessness of art, the latter in the ongoing works of history. (Virgil’s version of Poseidon’s prophecy is: hic domus Aeneae cunctis dominabitur oris / et nati natorum et qui nascentur ab illis (“There the house of Aeneas will reign over all lands, even his children’s children and those who will be born of them”) , Aeneid 3.97-98).

5 (p. 357) ... Achilles ... charged / Mid the Trojans, screaming his awesome war-cry: Achilles’ aristeia, much interrupted, now begins in earnest with a massacre ; the mounting carnage is vividly evoked by the image of the chariot wheel that lacerates the corpse beneath (an image reiterated in greater detail in the final lines of this book). Achilles’ killing of the especially youthful, especially beloved Polydorus, son of Priam, draws Hector back to the forefront of the battle.

6 (p. 359) ButApollo caught Hector up, with all the ease / Of a god, and wrapped him in cloud: Achilles is, once again, thwarted by divine intervention; even Achilles’ power, it seems, is limited by the fated time for the Fall of Troy. On the immediately following triple attack, see endnote 10 to book XVI. While the fourth attack has, in our prior examples, placed the hero in fatal danger, Achilles will emerge from Apollo’s mist baffled, but with his killing energy redoubled; “like a demon,” he will slaughter the Trojans until, as is prophesied—but deferred—within the Iliad, Apollo (and Paris) will kill him before the gates of Troy.

Book XXI: The Struggle of Achilles and the River

1 . (p. 363) Lycaon then pleaded, with one hand clasping / Achilles’ knees, with the other his sharp-pointed spear: For prior scenes of supplication, see endnote 1 to book VI above. Achilles’ encounter with Lycaon is the culmination of supplication scenes involving “minor” characters; as well, it prepares the audience for the plea of Hector in book XXII. Lycaon, moreover, has a prior claim upon Achilles’ religious scruples: While Lycaon was Achilles’ captive (as both Achilles and Lycaon recount, Achilles did—in the time before the death of Patroclus—respect the pleas of suppliants), he received hospitality (“Demeter’s bread”) from him; the breaking of bread between captor and captive creates a bond of guest-friendship between the two; this aspect of Lycaon’s story perhaps anticipates the shared meal in book XXIV between Achilles and Priam (who is Lycaon’s father).

2 (p. 364) “One morning or evening or noon / Will surely come when some man shall kill me in battle, / Either by hurling his spear or shooting a shaft / From the bowstring”: Achilles acknowledges Lycaon’s claims as suppliant and guest-friend by calling Lycaon “friend” (line 132, Greek philos) . Yet, in Achilles’ present logic, all are preeminently “friend”—or “dear”—to death. Claims of religious scruple, as also claims of rank and status—Achilles, after all, is a goddess’ son—are rendered meaningless by the brute fact of death itself: As Patroclus has died, so must Hector; as Hector, so Achilles; as Achilles, so all mortals. Achilles, in his demonic presence upon the battlefield, has himself become death for the Trojans, the agent of their fate as mortals.

3 (p. 364) “... and many a wave-hidden fish shall dart up / Beneath the dark ripple to eat the fat of Lycaon”: Though the haunting threat that the hero’s body will be devoured by dogs and birds is never literally fulfilled in the Iliad, Achilles does feed the body of Lycaon (and of Asteropaeus, soon to follow) to the eels and the fishes. If death in the river perhaps holds some possibility of purification that might lessen the horror of consumption by the fishes, that possibility is quickly eliminated by the complaint of Xanthus, the river-god, that his waters have been polluted by the slaughter that Achilles has wreaked within it.

4 (p. 366) “Very hard it is for the son / Of a river to vie with a child of Cronos‘son”: Achilles, vaunting over the corpse of the ambidextrous Asteropaeus, now responds to his opponent’s initial boast of being born of a river goddess: Achilles is a son of Zeus, with whom no mere son of a river can contend; even Oceanus, the source of all the world’s rivers, is no match for Zeus’ lightning. Achilles’ attempt to assert Zeus’ paternity is, perhaps, motivated by the success of Aeneas’ claims of superior descent from Aphrodite, which were acknowledged by Poseidon’s rescue. By invoking his grandfather Aeacus’ descent from Zeus, Achilles would play a genealogical trump card, though he can do so only by ignoring his mother’s association with the element of water and by invoking his grandfather rather than his father.

5 (p. 368) “0 Father Zeus, why is it / That none of the gods will pity my plight and save me / From this dread river?”: Achilles’ boast of genealogical superiority to any river has been put to the test by the enraged Scamander and has been proven false. The river has overwhelmed him, seemingly sweeping away even the possibility of a hero’s death before Troy; what awaits is an ignoble death no better than that of “some poor pig-herding boy”—so much for Achilles’ genealogical boasts! Likewise, Achilles’ prayer to Zeus, of whose paternity he just boasted, will not be answered; rather, Poseidon and Athena, in mortal form, will offer Achilles encouragement. The defeat of Achilles’ claims to be the son of Zeus again evokes the underlying mythology of Zeus’ avoidance of union with Thetis (on which see endnote 1 to book XX and endnote 7 to book I); if Achilles were the son of Zeus, he would be the ruler of the cosmos. The battle with the river, in all its disordering and polluting force, evokes the possibility of Achilles’ descent from Zeus, only so as to reject it decisively.

6 (p. 369) ... he sent his towering wave, churning / With foam and blood and corpses, raging down / On Achilles: The process begun by Achilles’ slaughter-drive of half the Trojans into the river and by his feeding of Lycaon and Asteropaeus to the fishes reaches a pitch of pollution, which then provokes yet more pollution. Only the fire of Hephaestus—which now engages in an elemental battle with the water of the river—can finally succeed in purifying the Scamandrus’ streams; the higher purifying element burns the corpses and restores the prior beauty of the river (XXI.427-428).

7 (p. 371) And Zeus, from where he sat high up on Olympus, / Heard the clashing and laughed to himself, delighted / To see the immortals at odds with each other: With the laughter of Zeus, the Theomachy, which was interrupted at XX.84, where the gods were paired off and champing for action, resumes. The bouts that follow, with the exception of that between Apollo and Poseidon, prove well worthy of Zeus’ laughter. The knockabout antics of the gods offer a brief respite from the defilement of Achilles’ battle with the river and the upcoming duel with Hector. The essential frivolity of the Homeric gods is contrasted to the heroizing efforts of the mortals (a point acknowledged at the conclusion of the one non-comic encounter, between Poseidon and Apollo, where the brevity of human life becomes the reason for the gods’ withdrawal). Finally, the comic battles present a last defeat of the pro-Trojan gods (Ares, Aphrodite, Artemis, Hermes) prior to the Fall of Troy. Only Apollo retains his dignity; he departs to protect the fleeing Trojans, but even his role is limited to assuring that Achilles does not sack Troy before its appointed time (XXI.586-589).

Book XXII: The Death of Hector

1 (p. 380) “... surely nothing more foul than this can come upon / Wretched mortals”: Priam concludes his appeal to Hector with a vivid description of the very worst death that can befall a Homeric man: to be devoured by his own dogs before his own house, exposed and disgraced among his own people; the proper orders of both house and community are betrayed and overturned. The warrior’s role, which finds its origin in the necessity of the community’s defense, is also associated with a savagery that reduces humans to predatory dogs and that destroys the constituent values of civilization itself. In his appeal to Hector to return within the walls of Troy rather than to face Achilles, Priam threatens Hector with the guilt of killing a parent; so too—in the following speech—does Hecuba, who, in exposing her breast to her son, makes her appeal in the most literal of ways.

2 (p. 381) “ ‘Great Hector put all / Of his trust in his own brute strength and destroyed the whole army’ ”: In the first portion of his soliloquy, Hector recalls his error in rejecting the advice of Polydamas at XVIII.353-355 (on which see endnote 6 to book XVIII): The Trojans did remain on the Trojan plain, where they were then destroyed on the following day by Achilles. Hector’s sense of shame before his community causes him now to remain outside the wall. His words also recall his dialogue with Andromache at VI.486-487 (on which, see endnote 8 to book VI). Hector had rejected Andromache’s plea that he remain within the wall by invoking his sense of aides—of reverence and shame before the community. He now invokes that same sense of aidos—before Polydamas, before the women of Troy, before the nameless inferior man—to explain his inability to return within the walls of Troy; as Andromache had foreseen, Hector’s own strength will be his downfall.

3 (p. 381) “... such as / A boy and his girl might have with each other—boy / And his girl indeed”: As Hector feels himself isolated from the community, the preeminent source of his strength and identity, he falls into fantasy: first, of somehow arranging a settlement between Trojans and Achaeans, then—most startlingly—of approaching Achilles as a virgin girl approaches a boy in a scene of courtship. Having lost his social identity as warrior of Troy, he imagines himself to be “some hopeless woman.”

4 (p. 386) “There are no faithful oaths between lions and men ... But they are always at fatal odds with each other”: To Hector’s proposal that each pledge to the other that he will return the vanquished man’s corpse, Achilles responds that oaths are not possible between beings of different species; Achilles will treat Hector as the wild animal treats his prey. Hesiod, in his Works and Days (275-279), provides one commentary upon Achilles’ claims: “Cast these things into your heart / And listen now to justice; forget about force. / This law the son of Cronos set out for people: Fish and beasts and winged birds / eat each other, since they have no justice. / To men he gave justice; it is best by far.”

5 (p. 387) ... the beautiful / Gear he had stripped from mighty Patroclus when he / Cut him down: When Achilles looks at Hector, he sees his own armor (which Hector had put on at XVII. 2 2 5-231, and see endnote 3 to book XVII). He is, thus, reminded of Patroclus, even as he puts the spear to an image of his former self. Virgil recalls and transforms this scene at the close of the Aeneid, when Aeneas kills Turnus upon catching sight of the belt that Turnus had stripped from Pallas (Aeneid 12.940-952).

6 (pp. 387-388) “I only wish I were savagely wrathful / Enough to hack up your corpse and eat it raw ... but dogs and birds shall devour you, / Bones and all”: This is perhaps the most horrific speech in the Iliad, though one for which we have been well prepared; see Achilles’ preceding image of the lion at XXII. 301, his treatment of the bodies of Lycaon (XXI. 151-156) and Asteropaeus (XXI.234-238), as well as Zeus’ ascription to Hera of the desire to eat “old Priam raw / Along with ... all the rest of the Trojans” at IV.40-41 ; finally, Hecuba will express a desire to eat Achilles’ liver at XXIV.250-251. In Achilles’ present speech to Hector, he addresses Hector as “dog”; but note that in a preceding simile, the poet has compared Achilles to a dog (XXII.213-216, “as when a hound ...”) . The relation between predator and prey is continuous and reversible: As the warrior marshals from within himself the predatory energies that his role requires, he becomes himself a beast—and always potential prey to another.

7 (p. 389) ... and the once so handsome head was defiled / With foul dust: The evocation of Hector’s prior godlike beauty and status in Troy is immediately followed by Achilles’ defiling of Hector’s body. For Achilles, it is as if killing Hector is not enough to satisfy his desire for vengeance, but he must again and again enact the conquest of Hector by continually despoiling his body (which the gods will protect). The resolution of this impasse—the release of Hector—is, then, central to the final book of the poem.

8 (p. 390) ... far from all baths strong fire-eyed Athena had cut / Hector down by the hand of Achilles: Andromache was last seen in the final scene of book VI, where Hector had instructed her to return to her loom and to her supervision of the household maids, while he returned to the battle (lines 541-544). These are precisely the activities in which Andromache is now engaged, with the further detail—of excruciating pathos—that she has ordered the water for Hector’s bath to be heated. With the casting off of the headdress that she had received at her wedding and with her imagining of the fate of Astyanax, the full desolation of her future is vividly anticipated.

Book XXIII: The Funeral Games for Patroclus

1 (p. 394) ... wash from his flesh the horrible gore: The inconsolable, irresolvable quality of Achilles’ grief, even after the slaying of Hector, is suggested by his unwillingness to wash the gore of the battle from his body. Achilles insists, as it were, upon his own impurity, his own distance from the purifying activities of his comrades. Likewise, he remains apart from the feast and its commensalities, even as he now arranges a sacrifice and feast for the other Achaeans. And, finally, he continues in his despoliation of Hector’s body, futilely seeking resolution through the repetition of his own violence and anger.

2 (p. 395) “But bury me soon as you can, that I / May get within Hades’ gates”: In the opening of his speech, Patroclus’ ghost states the ancient belief that cremation or burial permitted the ghost to enter Hades; once the body was buried, the ghost could no longer depart Hades. Throughout the speech, Patroclus’ ghost recalls, if enigmatically, details that evoke the quality of his former life with Achilles: In life, the two “sat apart” from their comrades, where they made private plans; in death, Patroclus’ ghost now asks that that separate unity be maintained: The ashen remains of the two should be mingled in a single urn. Patroclus’ ghost concludes his speech with a recollection of his own boyhood arrival in Phthia, as a fugitive from the slaying of a playmate over a game a dice (an ironic commentary on “gentle Patroclus”?). Once in Phthia, Patroclus—like Phoenix before him (see IX.500-508, with endnote 7 to book IX)—received far more from Peleus than the conventions of asylum required: While Phoenix received a surrogate son to love, Patroclus receives a friend who will be beloved.

3 (p. 398) And killing with bronze twelve valiant sons of the Trojans—/ An evil act he had planned in his heart ... : Achilles’ premeditated sacrifice of the twelve Trojans (prepared for at XVIII.382-384 and XXI.29-30) is an act of exceptional violence, going far beyond anything that Patroclus’ ghost instructed and further dramatizing the irremediable quality of Achilles’ mourning: The blood-price of Patroclus is paid by the lives of twelve others, yet still Achilles remains without peace, lacking any relation to the world that is not articulated through violence; even after the sacrifice of the twelve Trojans, Achilles continues his boast that he will feed Hector to the dogs.

4 (p. 400) But Achilles restrained them and seated the troops in a large / Open space where the funeral games were to be: Following the cremation of Patroclus’ body and the heaping up of the grave-barrow, Achilles brings forth the prizes for the funeral games, which will occupy the remainder of book XXIII. The events will be the chariot-race (lines 336-751—by far the longest of the events), boxing (752-812), wrestling (813-861), running (862-928), warrior’s duel (929-959), putting the shot (960-987), archery (988-1024), and spear-throwing (1025-1043). The events are themselves imitations of aspects of combat; at the games, the contestants deploy the skills and strengths that also serve them on the battlefield, but the victor is restrained by the rules of the contest, while the loser is not victimized, is not made the victor’s prize. In the context of the funeral of Patroclus, the games are an opportunity for a wounded and grieving community to reassert, within a controlled arena, some of its constituent strengths and potential unities. Achilles himself, however, remains remote, a detached, god-like convener of the contests and an arbiter of disputes. The sustaining passion of Achilles remains the dragging and defiling of Hector’s body, an action in excess of any mortal rules, yet not beyond mortal capacity.

5 (p. 412) And up got huge Telamonian Ajax and with him / Resourceful Odysseus, skilled at tricks and contriving: The wrestling contest of Ajax and Odysseus perhaps foreshadows the contest of the same two heroes, at the post-Iliadic funeral games of Achilles, for the hero’s arms—a contest that will be won by Odysseus by treachery and one that will lead to Ajax’ suicide. Here, Achilles, with the mediating, strife-dispelling tact that he displays throughout the games precludes such a disaster by declaring both heroes to be the victor (so, too, does the poet of the Iliad forestall Odysseus’ coming victories over a heroism of strength by one of craft).

6 (p. 417) “Atrides, we all / Know well how far you surpass all others ... so the basin is yours without a contest”: If Agamemnon were to lose the spear-throwing contest, the ability of games to disguise and regulate the harder violence and inequities of the social order would be sorely taxed; it is best not to put Agamemnon’s prowess to the actual test, but instead to simply acknowledge his preeminence. Thus, in the realm of games, does Achilles avoid an outbreak of the resentments and angers that ignited the strife of book I.

Book XXIV. Priam and Achilles

1 (p. 418) Achilles, then, madly raging, / Foully dishonored the body of noble Hector ... : For Achilles, nothing has changed. Though he convened and adjudicated the rituals of the games with extraordinary grace, those rituals have accomplished nothing for him: He remains restless and disconsolate in his grief and longing for Patroclus; he continues futilely to wreak his inexhaustible vengeance upon Hector’s corpse. We move, then, from the realm of social practice (the games) to divine intervention.

2 (p. 419) “... But when he has wept and fittingly mourned / For him, he ends his grieving, for surely the fates / Have given to men a tough and patient spirit”: Apollo, in his complaint to the other gods about the savage mourning of Achilles (he is like a “lordly lion”), describes Achilles as having destroyed pity and shame (Greek aidos, on which see endnote 8 to book VI); he is responsive to his community neither as one recognizing a shared mortal lot nor as one guided by that community’s norms. Moreover, Achilles’ mourning—claims Apollo—exceeds that appropriate for blood-kin, and even the loss of blood-kin is one that mortals, with their “tough” spirits, are able to bring to an end. Apollo’s claim about blood-kin is earlier contradicted by Achilles’ claim that Patroclus’ death is more painful than that of father or son (XIX.371-374, with endnote 6 to book XIX). Finally, the truth of Apollo’s claim about the tough, enduring spirit of mortals remains at issue in the following encounter of Achilles and Priam and, especially, in Achilles’ retelling of the story of Niobe.

3 (p. 427) And Priam went on toward the ships, nor were they unnoticed / By far-seeing Zeus: Priam’s nighttime journey to visit Achilles contains many elements of a katabasis, or Journey to the Underworld. Even before setting out, Priam has been bewailed as a dead man by Hecuba and by his kin and household. His crossing of the Trojan plain to the shelter of Achilles is guided by Hermes, who is traditionally a psychopompos, a conductor of the souls of the dead to Hades. Together, Priam and Hermes pass by a tomb (that of Ilos) and cross over a river. Night, Hermes, the crossings of tomb and of river—these are four mythical boundaries of Hades. The elaborate and emphatically heavy door of Achilles’ shelter is also suggestive of the entrance to Hades’ palace. Achilles, then, who has slain so many of Priam’s sons, plays the role of King of the Dead (or, perhaps, that of Minos, rich judge of the Underworld).

4 (p. 431 ) ... so now Achilles was seized / With exceeding amazement at the sight of sacred Priam, / And those who were with him marveled and looked at each other: This is the Iliad’s final and most magnificent scene of supplication: The familiar gesture of grasping the knees is here followed by Priam’s kissing of the man-slaying hands of Achilles; in the crossing of a taboo boundary, there is, perhaps, some new possibility of healing. In the simile that follows, Priam is the murderer, while Achilles is the wealthy man who might offer refuge; for a moment each takes on the role of the other (of refugee and of king, of father and of son)—an occasion of wonder, which opens each to the experience of the other’s grief; it remains uncertain whether, as Apollo claims, mortals, with their tough hearts, can put their grief away, but between Achilles and Priam grief can now be shared. So, too, can a meal now be shared, as well as the telling of stories, within which Achilles and Priam might locate and make sense of their common humanity.

5 (p. 434) ... Achilles himself / Lifted it onto a bier and helped his companions / Lift it onto the wagon: Having shared in Priam’s grief for Hector, Achilles now supervises the washing of Hector’s body and, with his own hands, places the body upon the wagon that will carry it to the bier; this is the traditional task of the mother of the dead. Thus, Achilles inaugurates and participates in the burial of Hector, with which the Iliad is complete.

Book I: The Quarrel

Book II: Trial of the Army and the Catalogue of Ships

Book III: The Duel of Paris and Menelaus

Book IV: Agamemnon’s Inspection of the Army

Book V: The Valiant Deeds of Diomedes

Book VI: Hector and Andromache

Book VII: The Duel of Hector and Ajax

Book VIII: The weakening Achaeans

Book IX: Agamemnon’s Offers to Achilles

Book X: The Night Adventure

Book XI: The Valiant Deeds of Agamemnon

Book XII: The Storming of the Wall

Book XIII: Fighting Among the Ships

Book XIV: The Tricking of Zeus

Book XV: The Achaeans Desperate

Book XVI: The Death of Patroclus

Book XVII: The Valiant Deeds of Menelaus

Book XVIII: The Shield of Achilles

Book XIX: The Reconciliation

Book XX: The Gods at War

Book XXI: The Struggle of Achilles and the River

Book XXII: The Death of Hector

Book XXIII: The Funeral Games for Patroclus

Book XXIV. Priam and Achilles