THE HIKE THROUGH the circle of gluttons was long and cheerless. The ground was so littered with Cerberos’ victims that picking our way through was like walking a maze. And I couldn’t get over the feeling that in siding with Helen, Diomedes had betrayed our friendship. More important, it appeared that I had underestimated Helen herself. This bothered me in a particular way because I had always prided myself on being a good judge of character, and I had never judged Helen to be anything more than a beautiful face. Granted, she was an extraordinarily beautiful face—a powerfully beautiful face—but I had never stopped to consider that it might mask a thinking soul. I wondered if anyone ever had. If I missed that, what else was I missing? I glanced back at her now as she tiptoed through the carnage. She always seemed so empty-headed, even now.
Yet there had been signs, hadn’t there? Hadn’t she been the one to see through my disguise when I sneaked into Troy? Hadn’t she almost exposed the ruse behind my wooden horse? I remember well how Anticlos and I had struggled to keep silent, sitting in the belly of that wooden idol as she circled it, tested its joints, knocked, and called our names. Poor Anticlos was so shaken by the sound of her voice (it reminded him of his wife), I’d had to clamp both hands over his mouth to keep him from shouting a reply. I held on to him so tightly, he suffocated. Another unworthy death, and Helen to blame. She alone among the Trojans had suspected our treachery. Yet even then somehow it had never crossed my mind that she might have enough wit to outfox me, the Man of Twists and Turns. She was smart, that woman. Now that I thought of it, she had outsmarted me more than once.
And there was another thing too. She had been right about Cerberos. When the dog had looked up at me, I’d whispered a little blessing under my breath. I’d gazed into his eyes and prayed for him to the Parthenos. And there, beneath the shaggy brows of that infernal beast, I saw . . . emptiness. Brutality. Cruelty. All bound up in a look that said exactly nothing.
Over time, the carnage thinned out, and we came to another steep descent. Here, a winding path led us down to the fourth ring of Hell, the abode of hoarders and squanderers. At the time, of course, we had no idea where we were, except that it was lower than the level we’d come from, and therefore closer to our destination. Here the path took a sharp turn to the left, following the edge of a pit. Peering into it, I was presented with the most curious landscape of my journey thus far. At first glance, the ground itself seemed to tremble and shift like sand in a sieve, but looking more closely, I could see that each “grain” was in fact an enormous boulder, propelled by a single battered soul. It reminded me of a curious beetle I had once observed while in the land of the Lotus Eaters. For no apparent reason, this beetle spent its days rolling great balls of excrement from one end of the desert to the other. Now I was reminded of that bizarre insect as I watched these souls strain against the weight of their rocks. Each rolled his stone about the pit in a circle, gaining speed until with a crash he collided with that of another.
“Why do they keep it up?” I said. “What do you think is the point of it?”
Diomedes peered over my shoulder into the chasm. “Maybe those rocks are valuable.”
“Nothing is that valuable,” I said.
Diomedes shrugged. “I seem to remember you and Ajax had a pretty big row over a suit of armor.”
“I wouldn’t call it a row.”
“Ajax killed himself when you beat him!”
“That was a matter of honor. It was Achilles’ armor, after all.”
He grunted. “So I guess some things are that valuable after all.”
“To the crows with you,” I snapped. Lately, it seemed he was contradicting everything I said. “It wasn’t about the armor, it was about the honor.”
“Honor, eh? Just like you honored your wife?”
I turned to him with my hand on my sword. “Mention my wife again in that tone, and I’ll cut your tongue out.”
“Threaten me again,” he answered, stepping closer, “and I’ll cut off more than your tongue.”
“Boys! Boys!” said Helen. “Stop this nonsense. We have places to go. Come now.” She took Diomedes by the hand and led him up the path.
I took a deep, trembling breath and followed them. Worse than the insult to my honor, worse than seeing Diomedes walk hand in hand with Helen of Argos, worse even than being bullied by my best friend was the dawning suspicion that he could be right about me. And the more I thought about it, the more I had to agree with him, which rather undercut my anger. I’d never really understood what people meant when they used the word “honor”. At some point early in my life, I had come to the conclusion that it could be measured in wealth; so I did everything I could to acquire it.
But what good had Achilles’ armor done me in the end? I’d lost a friend over it. Dear Ajax wanted it so much, he’d killed himself for grief when I took it away. And did I use it even once? No, it was too large for me to wear, so I stuck it in a storeroom, where it sat rusting till the day I died. Sat rusting. Now I looked down on all those souls struggling against the weight of their stones and felt . . . well . . . a kinship with them.
“I suppose you’re right,” I answered ruefully. “There is much about my life that I regret.”
Diomedes groaned, “There you go again. When did you start having regrets?”
“In Limbo, I think. When I realized what I’d done to Penelope.”
“Give it up, Odysseus. Self-pity doesn’t suit you.”
“It’s not self-pity, Diomedes. It’s regret. But since you’ve brought up Achilles’ armor, I think I am sorry I fought Ajax for it.”
“Why?” asked Helen.
“Because I didn’t really need that armor, did I?”
“Food and sleep are the only things a man will ever need,” said Diomedes, “and he won’t need much of either.”
“That’s exactly it,” I said. “Ever since I talked to that old bard, I’ve been asking myself if all the horrible things I did in my life were really necessary. Did I need Achilles’ armor? Or King Rhesus’ horses? Or the Palladium or the Cicones’ gold or the Cyclops’ sheep?”
Helen shook her head. “Like you said, it was never about the things themselves. It was about the honor they brought us.”
“Honor. Glory. Timē. Kleos. Call it what you like. In the end, I can’t see how we’re much different from those fools in the pit. We never stopped to question whether we needed all the things we took, and we never let anything stop us from taking them.”
“Now you’re exaggerating,” said Diomedes.
“Am I, though? When we saw something we liked, we stole it. When we fancied a woman, we took her. When we saw a man we didn’t like, we killed him. And I don’t recall ever turning down a meal or a cup of wine my whole life.”
“Well now,” said Helen, “that’s just being alive, Odysseus.”
“But don’t you think we let ourselves be ruled by our passions?”
Helen fell silent then, but Diomedes spoke up. “Speak for yourself. I was always in control.”
“I see. You just never chose to restrain yourself. Well, it seems to me that we might not be where we are today if we’d shown a little moderation.”
Helen sniffed. “We were heroes. We had big lives to live.”
“Listen. When I arrived back in Ithaca after twenty years away and found those suitors in my home . . . you don’t think my reaction was just a little excessive?”
Diomedes stopped and turned to face me. “Those men had it coming. They mistreated you in your own home. They were courting your wife. Any man would have done the same.”
“And the twelve maidservants I hanged?”
“They were sleeping with your enemies.”
“So I had them executed. And you don’t think that was excessive.”
“Not excessive, heroic. It was what was expected of you. Remember, we were lords of Achaea, Odysseus. Heroes.”
“But the maidservants, Diomedes! How blameworthy could they have been?”
Helen nodded thoughtfully, but Diomedes continued, “The household needed to be purified. They were unfaithful to their master.”
“They were slaves. Women,” said Helen.
“I hanged all twelve of them,” I continued. “Even out in Apulia, you must have heard the story. All twelve of them. Strung up like doves on a snare. Some of them were just girls.”
“They had it coming,” said Diomedes.
“And the goatherd?” I added. “Was he more guilty than the others?”
Diomedes shrugged. “I don’t know why I’m defending you all of a sudden, but yes. If the stories they told about that goatherd were true, then yes. He was one of your household. He should have known better than to join with those thieves.” He gave his shield a thump for emphasis, but the words fell flat. I wondered if he was really defending me or if perhaps he was thinking of some of his own “heroic” deeds.
“Diomedes,” I said, “I cut off his nose and ears.”
Helen winced. “To be fair, was it not your son who did that?”
“Oh, now we’re talking about what’s fair, then? Telemachos did it under my supervision—at my insistence. Lopped off the slave’s nose and ears, his hands, his feet, his genitals . . . and I praised him for it. How long do you think it took that man to die out in the yard behind my house?”
“Fine, then,” conceded Diomedes. “It was excessive. But it was also heroic. Your name—your reputation as a hero—was at stake.”
“Reputation,” I gasped. “Kleos. Who wants a reputation for that? It wasn’t heroic, it was monstrous. And you were no better. None of us was—you, me, Ajax, Achilles, Agamemnon . . . We ate, drank, fought, and rutted the ground like animals. Our lives were an endless string of excess. We glutted ourselves on blood and glory. The only thing separating us from those miserable souls in that pit there is the goodwill of the gods.”
Diomedes growled and rapped his knuckles against the rim of his shield. “I’ve heard enough,” he said. “I’ve given up too much already. Now you want me to give up my honor?”
“If those acts define your honor, then yes, I think so.”
“Then what’s left?” said Helen.
I shook my head. “I don’t know. Some other kind of honor, maybe. Something you can’t measure in gold.”
That shut them both up, which made me feel rather good at first. But then the absurdity of what I was saying struck me. If you couldn’t measure honor, then what was the point of it? I was reminded of poor Cassandra, the prophetess of Troy whose curse it was to predict a future that no one would believe. Was this to be my punishment, then—to be cursed with an honor that no one could see?