Odysseus’s questionable behavior in Iliad 8

By Douglas Frame, Associate Editor of the Homer Multitext

Stephanie Lindeborg’s study of the Homeric scholia shows how disturbing Odysseus’s behavior in Iliad 8 was to ancient scholars, and how it continued to occupy medieval scribes as well (see her series of three posts: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3). Whether Odysseus hears Diomedes and disregards him, or simply does not hear him, his brief appearance in the episode in Iliad 8, far from bringing him any glory, seems intended to undermine his reputation, and for no apparent reason. To be sure, there is no blame if Odysseus did not hear Diomedes, and this is how his reputation is defended in the scholia. The defense, however, is anything but iron-clad, and I side with those who understand the crucial words oud’ esakousen as “he did not listen,” and not “he did not hear” (the preverb es, in and of itself, indicates where Odysseus directed his attention, namely, not to Diomedes, and not what he did not hear from that direction). But this point, too, is uncertain, given counterexamples of the meaning of the compound verb in later authors. The difficulty with Odysseus’s action was not resolved in ancient or medieval times, and arguments continue to be made on both sides today as well. A scholar whom Stephanie cites presents both sides of the argument and concludes that “any audience is perfectly at liberty to assume that Odysseus ignores the cry, but it is impossible to be certain that this was the poet’s intention” (Adrian Kelly 2007; see Stephanie’s bibliography and the second installment of her study).

The poet’s intention in a wider sense is the real question here. Why does the poet put Odysseus in a position where “any audience is perfectly at liberty” to think the worst of him? Surely the poet was not so tone-deaf to his own poem as not to realize that this is absolutely the case, whatever may be said to defend Odysseus in this episode and in general. We can in fact tell that the poet knew that this episode risked blackening Odysseus’s name by the measures taken later in the poem to set the record straight. This does not happen immediately. In fact Odysseus is left out of account later in Book 8 when the retreating Greeks turn and make a stand (8.245–266). The Venetus A scholia, as discussed by Stephanie, took this second “no show” by Odysseus as confirmation that it was his deliberate choice to play the coward earlier as well. I don’t disagree with the scholia (Stephanie suggests it may have been the scribe himself who made the argument) that there is a connection between the two incidents in Book 8, but the object of the second incident, which is a non-incident after all, was not to draw attention to Odysseus for shirking yet again, but simply to leave him out of account for the time being, allowing him, as it were, to cool off after his disturbing action on the battlefield. It is not until Book 11 that Odysseus’s reputation is redeemed (Book 10, where Diomedes slays sleeping Trojan allies, but Odysseus is ready to do it, does not count, and in Book 9 words rather than deeds are at issue). In Book 11, during another Greek retreat, Odysseus has a peculiar soliloquy as he alone is left to face the oncoming Trojans, and he asks himself, Hamlet-like, whether to flee or not to flee, and then answers, with no Hamlet-like hesitation, that cowards (kakoi) flee but a champion stands his ground. He then awaits the Trojans as they surround him like hunters surrounding a wild boar. After showing his mettle by dispatching several Trojans he is finally wounded and helped from the field by others who come to his aid (Odysseus’s soliloquy, Iliad 11.404–410; note that in the immediately preceding lines the last to leave Odysseus in the lurch is the wounded Diomedes—tit for tat after Iliad 8).   

Calculated to remove any stain from Odysseus’s earlier behavior (if you thought he was a kakos, think again), the episode in Iliad 11 only deepens the mystery of that earlier behavior. Something must be going on that does not meet the eye. The episode in Iliad 8 has three protagonists, and Odysseus’s role is by far the shortest. Nestor and Diomedes are the main actors, and the scene that they play out together is apparently based on a similar scene in which Nestor’s son Antilochus dies. Antilochus’s death lies outside the time frame of the Iliad, but it is mentioned in the Odyssey, when Nestor receives Telemachus in Pylos and tells him of the Trojan war and its aftermath. The actual story of Antilochus’s death is not told in Homer, but we know it from fragments of the epic cycle and, especially, a Pindaric ode. Nestor’s horse is again shot by Paris’s arrow, and this time Antilochus instead of Diomedes rescues him. But Antilochus pays for his father’s life with his own when Memnon (who now champions the Trojans in place of the dead Hector) slays him standing at his father’s defense. Diomedes, who is young like Antilochus, reenacts the episode in advance (this can happen in traditional poetry), but with a crucial change of outcome. Together Diomedes and Nestor rout the Trojans on Diomedes’ chariot, which Nestor drives, until Zeus hurls a thunderbolt in front of them that stops the horses short, and Diomedes, persuaded by Nestor, reluctantly retreats. This episode ends the terrific run Diomedes has had on the battlefield since Book 5, when Athena herself was his charioteer and he wounded even immortals. But Zeus’s plan is to have the Greeks defeated, so that at the end of Book 8 the Trojans are able to camp outside their city walls for the first time. Nestor, who restrains Diomedes in Book 8, is a direct contrast to Athena, who incites him in Book 5, and this plays on Nestor’s own traditions, when he was young and impetuous himself. These traditions are evoked in his stories about his youth in Iliad 11 and Iliad 23, but the aged Nestor in Iliad 8 has long since learned his lesson, and he imparts that lesson to his young companion.

But there is more. The episode in Iliad 8, as mentioned, looks ahead to Antilochus’s death. It does so not by direct reference, but by poetic allusion—by the parallelism between the two situations. In the same way the episode in Iliad 8 looks even further ahead to Diomedes’ fate, which is not to be slain in Troy like Antilochus, but to return home. Unlike the death of Antilochus, this story is told in Homer, and it is Nestor himself who tells it. It is again in the Odyssey, when Telemachus visits Nestor to find out what happened to his father, that we hear the story. After the fall of Troy the Greeks, in a drunken and disorderly assembly, were divided as to their course, whether to return home immediately, or to stay at Troy to appease Athena, who was clearly angry about what some of the Greeks had done in their moment of victory. The brothers Agamemnon and Menelaos were themselves divided, Agamemnon keeping half the army at Troy to appease Athena, Menelaos leading the other half of the army to Tenedos, where a second quarrel broke out. Nestor, who went with Menelaos, was in no doubt about the right course to take at this point, and fled at once for home. Diomedes, we learn, went with him, and together they reached Lesbos, where again they made the right decision, taking the fast route across the Aegean rather than the slow route by way of islands—the slow route would have been the safe route except for Athena’s anger. Diomedes, accompanying Nestor, was home in Argos in a matter of days after leaving Troy. Diomedes in fact owed his swift, safe return to his older companion, who correctly read the signs at every turn on their way home—or so we can infer from clear indirect evidence. Nestor’s name, which is closely related to the noun noos, “mind,” makes him a bred-in-the-bone interpreter of signs. His name in fact means “he who brings back,” and this meaning, which did not survive after Homer, was still very much alive in Homer. In Iliad 8, when Diomedes saves Nestor—“he who brings home”—on the battlefield, he in effect saves his own nostos—“return home”—at the end of the war.

 

Nestor performing a sacrifice back home in Pylos after the war. Red-figure calyx crater by the Meleager painter, 400–380 BCE, photo by Marie-Lan Nguyen / Wikimedia Commons.

Odysseus, too, is part of this story. In Odyssey 3 Telemachus comes to Pylos to hear what happened to his father, and Nestor tells him all, but some of it only indirectly. Nestor explicitly narrates the quarrel between Agamemnon and Menelaos that split the army in two. The second quarrel, on Tenedos, is left vague, except for its immediate effect: when Nestor fled for home, taking Diomedes with him, Odysseus—this is the crucial point in Nestor’s account—turned around and returned to Troy and Agamemnon. The second quarrel must have been between Nestor and Odysseus, though Nestor does not say so directly to Odysseus’s son. But he does so indirectly when, at the very start of his account to Telemachus, he says that he and Odysseus never disagreed with each other in counsel during the war. After the war, as we learn at the end of his account, this was no longer the case. The disagreement between Nestor and Odysseus on Tenedos could not have been sharper to judge by their opposite actions.

When Odysseus does not respond to Diomedes’ call to save Nestor on the battlefield in Iliad 8, he completes the triad of characters who will replay everything in reverse in their return from Troy: Diomedes saves Nestor on the battlefield, but Nestor saves Diomedes in their nostos; Odysseus does not save Nestor on the battlefield, but Nestor—this is the point of his account in Odyssey 3—fails to save Odysseus in their nostos. For the triple allusion to the return home of all three heroes to work, Odysseus must be seen as pointedly not saving Nestor in Iliad 8, even if this risks Odysseus’s reputation in the short run. A bigger poetic point justifies the risk to Odysseus’s reputation: unlike Diomedes, who will stick with Nestor and reach home immediately without any great tale to tell, Odysseus, by separating from Nestor, will take ten years to find his own way home, and have an outstanding tale to tell. If he too had followed Nestor from Tenedos there would be no Odyssey, and this, it seems to me, is the underlying poetic motive for Odysseus’s questionable behavior in Iliad 8. To put it somewhat differently—and somewhat bluntly—Odysseus, unlike Diomedes, simply does not need Nestor.

If the episode in Iliad 8 alludes specifically to Nestor’s account in Odyssey 3, as I have argued (Hippota Nestor, chs. 6 and 11), it would mean that the Iliad and the Odyssey must have been composed together in performance. There are good indirect reasons for thinking that this was the case, but Iliad 8, if my argument is correct, constructs a point-for-point correspondence with the Odyssey, and that, I think, is unique.

    

Scholia to Iliad 14.506 in Two Manuscripts in Venice (Venetus A and Marciana 841)

Guest Post by Matthew Angiolillo & Christine Roughan

In this guest post by Angiolillo (College of the Holy Cross Class of 2013) and Roughan (College of the Holy Cross Class of 2014), the comparison of two manuscripts and their scholia leads to deeper understanding of how the system of the poetic language operates.

The tradition of the ancient Greek epic the Iliad is a long one—this is a work that has its origins in the 2nd millennium BCE. The Venetus A is a 10th century CE manuscript of the Iliad, and, at a thousand years old, it is our oldest complete source for the ancient epic. It also contains a wealth of scholia, some of which date as far back as the 3rd century BCE. As such, it has long been the object of study and scholarship.

In comparison, the Marciana 841 (= Marcianus Graecus Z. 458, referred to as U4 by Allen)– is a 12th or 13th century CE manuscript of the Iliad. The first half of this source has been lost – of the 24 books of the Iliad, the Marciana 841 contains only books 14-24. Compared to the Venetus A, the Marciana 458 contains far fewer scholia. It is slightly unusual in that it contains a later, Byzantine Greek translation of the Iliad written in prose alongside the poem. The Marciana 841 is one of the less well-known manuscripts of the Iliad, since it has received comparatively less scholarship.

When comparing the readings of these two manuscripts together, however, we find intriguing differences. One of these occurs in Iliad 14.506. As will be shown, the Venetus A and the Marciana 841 offer two different readings for line 506, but also acknowledge each other’s different reading in their scholia.

In the end of Iliad Book 14, the cycle of Greek and Trojan victories and retaliations comes to a halt when the Greek Peneleos strikes down Ilioneus, and in line 506 the tide of battle is turned against the Trojans. Looking first at the main text of the Venetus A, we read for line 506 ὡς φάτο τοὺς δ᾽ ἄρα πάντας ὑπο τρόμος ἔλλαβε γυῖα (“Thus he spoke, and trembling seized them all in respect to their limbs”). Note that we represent exactly what appears in the manuscript, with the punctuation and accentuation unchanged. (Click on the captions of the images to go to the full folio page with this line/scholion cited and highlighted.)

Iliad 14.506 from Venetus A

In the Marciana 841 manuscript, line 506 starts similarly but offers a different reading for the end of the line. Here we have ὣς φατο· τούς δ᾽ ἄρα πάντας ὑπὸ χλωρὸν δέος εἷλε (“Thus he spoke; and green fear seized them all”). Here, χλωρὸν δέος, green fear, is Homeric idiom for a particular type of fear. By investigating how it is used wherever it turns up, we can try to determine its meaning. The Marciana 458 substitutes this idiomatic ending: ‘green fear seized them all’ replaces ‘trembling seized them all in respect to their limbs.’

Iliad 14.506 from Marciana 841

Venetus A intermarginal scholion to Iliad 14.506

Even more interestingly, both manuscripts include scholia on line 506 acknowledging the alternate readings. In an intermarginal scholion, the Venetus A scribe notes that γράφεται τοὺς ἄρα πάντας ὑπὸ χλωρὸν δέος εῖλεν⁑ (“‘Green fear seized them all’ is written”).






In the Marciana 841, a scholion appears between the main text and the prose transcription, saying, γράφεται ὑ¨πο τρόμος ἔλλαβε γυῖα⁑ (“‘Trembling seized the limbs’ is written”).

Marciana 841 scholion to Iliad 14.506

Besides minor accenting and punctuating differences in ὡς φάτο τοὺς, line 506 is the same in the Venetus A and the Marciana 841 except for its ending: ὑπο τρόμος ἔλλαβε γυῖα versus ὑπὸ χλωρὸν δέος εἷλε. There are two possibilities for why the manuscripts record the lines differently: either a scribe at some point in the transmission of the Iliad erred and wrote the line incorrectly, or the two represent separate—but equally valid—readings and are multiforms of each other.

It is exceedingly unlikely that the variation we are investigating in line 506 was caused by scribal error. This hypothetical error would have had to have occurred much earlier than the 10th century Venetus A, since the variant was already known and recorded in the scholia by this point. Unfortunately, nothing about these scholia gives any hint as to their age. The difference also would have had to persist for two or three hundred years more, even with the knowledge that other manuscripts had a different reading, since the scribe of the 12th/13th century Marciana 841 is also aware of the variants.

Furthermore, the different reading is not a single changed word or a different form; rather, the last three words are changed. It is hard to envision why a scribe, tasked with copying the line, would end up with a completely different ending. This was not the scribe accidentally skipping or repeating a few lines, nor was it him having difficulty with confusing Greek and trying to correct it to something that makes better sense.

The only way the scribe might have accidentally followed ὡς φάτο τοὺς δ᾽ ἄρα πάντας ὑπο with χλωρὸν δέος εἷλε instead of τρόμος ἔλλαβε γυῖα (or vice versa) would be if he were accidentally recalling an identical line used elsewhere in Homer, such as Odyssey 22.42: ὣς φάτο, τοὺς δ᾽ ἄρα πάντας ὑπὸ χλωρὸν δέος εἷλεν. This Odyssey line, however, seems to be the only duplicate, drastically diminishing the chance that a scribe would have erroneously thought of it and started the variant in Iliad 14.506 by writing its ending instead of τρόμος ἔλλαβε γυῖα.

This different line ending is not the result of scribal error: it is a multiform. Both readings are metrically valid. Both make grammatical sense. Both fit in the context of the line and surrounding passage. Since we can consider this use of χλωρὸν δέος in line 506 to be intentional rather than an error by the scribe, we can also now investigate how its use in this context (and other contexts throughout Homer) help us understand the meaning of this particular idiom.

In Homeric poetry, the term “green (or pale) fear” (χλωρὸν δέος) has often presented difficulties for translators, as the formula implies much more than a literal translation such as “sallow fear” or “blanching terror” could hope to capture. After analyzing the occurrence of the phrase or “nugget of diction” as it is described in the words of John M. Foley, he concludes that “pale fear” is often associated with the supernatural, many times relating to the actions of the gods, which inspire terror (Foley 2002: 121,128). An example of such a usage occurs at Iliad 7.475–482, when the Greeks and the Trojans are feasting after a hard day of fighting and the single combat between Hector and Ajax has ended. At this time, Zeus, the counselor, is said to have “devised them evil, thundering in a terrible way. Then pale fear got hold of them.” In this instance, Zeus’ future plans are seen to directly affect both sides of combatants, inspiring terror in the Trojans and Greeks alike and consequently both sides immediately offer up sacrifices to Zeus.

“Pale fear” is also used when relating to the inhabitants of the underworld such as in Odyssey 11.42–43, where Odysseus recalls for the Phaeacians his journey to the underworld in order to hear the prophesy of Tiresias that will give him instructions as to how eventually he might reach his home in Ithaca. Odysseus describing the ghosts in the underworld reveals his fright: “These [phantoms] came thronging in crowds about the pit from every side, with a wondrous cry; and pale fear seized me.” These examples notwithstanding, there are also instances in the Iliad where pale fear is used without specific reference to supernatural activity. In Iliad 17, for example, Menelaus is compared to a mountain lion, easily devouring a heifer in its ferocity, but whom none of the surrounding herders will face “for pale fear had taken hold of them,” just as no Trojan is willing to fight Menelaus (Iliad 17.59–67). In addition, in Iliad 15, as the Trojans run from the advancing Greeks, they are stopped “pale with fear” next to their chariots (Iliad 15.1–4), a scene which continues the narrative from the end of Iliad 14, where the scholia of both manuscripts on 506 are located.  In each of these passages, there is no obvious direct influence of the gods on the action at play, however the phrase “pale fear” is still employed. The second example also uses the expression in a somewhat unorthodox way, as an adjectival phrase describing the Trojans in flight, as “green fear” in numerous other passages is the agent of terror, usually coming over an individual or group. The phrase is also used adjectivally in Iliad 10, describing Dolon, in another passage in which there does not seem to be any direct influence being initiated by the gods (Iliad 10.374–376).

However, the influences of the gods are often difficult to trace precisely and often times their forces are at work in certain passages without their presence being explicitly clear to the reader, unless she has a solid grasp of the surrounding context. The way “green or pale fear” is used at 14.506 in the Marciana 841 manuscript and seen in the Venetus A scholion, adds a new perspective on the formula, as an argument could be made that in the context of the end of Book 14, the influences of the gods are at work in a different way compared to examples mentioned above, augmenting our understanding of how the formula of “pale fear” is used, in that in this instance, the power of the gods is referred to in an indirect and more subtle way. Assuming that the multiform is employed, immediately after the Trojans are seized by “green fear” on hearing Peneleos’ threatening words after he strikes down Ilioneus, Homer invokes the Muses and embarks on a mini-catalogue announcing the Greek warriors who took advantage of the “Earth-shaker” Poseidon turning the tide of battle in favor of the Greeks. The gods, especially Poseidon, have also been very active in the Greek war effort throughout Book 14 in which, disguised as an old man, Poseidon tells the Greeks that the Trojans will not continue winning the war. Subsequently, the god screams a resounding yell to encourage the Greek battle effort, and then goes onto the battlefield himself to lead the Achaeans from the front.

Although the Trojans are only directly responding in terror to the words of Peneleos, they may also be responding to the prospective knowledge that the tide of the war has turned against them and that Poseidon is aiding the Greeks in their destruction. This possible conclusion can also be supported by Iliad 14.507, the next line, which states that all the Trojan men look for a way to “escape sheer destruction.” Since, according to the narrative, it is the tenth year of the war and the Trojan men have seen others of their comrades die in combat, it is doubtful that they believe that in reality Peneleos personally is going to slay every one of them. It seems that a greater knowledge of their imminent demise comes across the Trojan men, leaving battle-hardened warriors searching for a way out. The way that “green fear” is used in this instance adds a new perspective in the understanding of the formula that is not captured in the majority of other Homeric passages that employ the term. One exception that builds on how “pale fear” is used in Book 14 is in another Homeric passage, which is virtually identical to the reading of 14.506 found in the Marciana 841. In Odyssey 22.42, Odysseus, after returning to Ithaca, addresses the suitors whom he, by necessity, will eventually kill and whom are, reasonably, struck by pale fear at seeing the hero. Although there is no direct mentioning of the gods in the passage, Odysseus is aided by the goddess Athena, who makes him stronger and appear more attractive, which would indicate that pale fear can be employed in instances where the impact of the gods is only implicitly felt but imminent demise is inevitable.

The scholion employing the multiform “pale fear” in the Marciana 841 adds to the understanding of the term and also may allow an interesting comparison to the reading in the Iliad text given in Venetus A, which states that “trembling seized them all in respect to their limbs.” The trembling that the Trojans endure, can be interpreted not only as the result of a fear of destruction, the words of Peneleos, or that the war has turned against them, but also due to the fact that the Earth-Shaker Poseidon, who has been a key player in spurring on the Greeks, is, through his actions, shaking the Trojans’ limbs into trembling. This reading works nicely and gains strength when compared to the line in Marciana 841, given that the added understanding of the “pale fear” multiform indicates that the actions of a god, in this case Poseidon, that are not plainly affecting those feeling fear, can still be highly ominous. Supporting this reading, that in the mentioning of trembling limbs the power of divine forces might be at play, is that immediately after 14.506 in 14.509–515, Homer invokes the Muse, asking her who was “the first of the Achaeans to carry away the blood-stained spoils of warriors when once the famed shaker of the Earth had turned the battle.” The singer then goes on to list the series of Greek warriors and the Trojans whom they defeated and stripped, due in large part to Poseidon turning the tide of battle. This list, which appropriately ends Book 14, seems to bode ill for the hopes of the Trojans in the following books of the poem to achieve victory and lends credence to the Trojans’ trembling being indirectly induced by Poseidon. This view, which works nicely in conjuncture with the multiform presented by the Marciana 841 reading and the scholion to the Venetus A text, gives a new angle with which to understand the meaning and use of the green/pale fear formula.

Through this one elegant example of 14.506 in the Marciana 841 and Venetus A, we are able to grasp much concerning how the tradition of oral poetry shaped the Iliad over its history, and the possibilities for a greater understanding of the variations and transmission of the text that can be obtained through the study of these manuscripts, and especially their scholia. Many of the passages that are compared above would not be able to be referenced to line 506 if one were reading a standard edition, and if it were not for the scholion from a very different manuscript that pointed out an alternate reading, these parallels would not be able to be drawn.

Works Cited
Foley J.M. 2002. How to Read an Oral Poem. University of Illinois Press.

Hektor’s Variation on a Lament by Briseis

One of the topics that I am most interested in on this blog and in connection with the Homer Multitext more generally is the concept of multiformity. A primary research question addressed by the Homer Multitext is the extent to which the variation and multiformity that once characterized the performance and composition of the Homeric poems are still evident in the historical documents that transmit the text of these poems to us. As Albert Lord showed (see especially Lord 1960), in an oral epic song tradition like that in which the Iliad and Odyssey were composed, no song was ever sung the exact same way twice. The song was created anew each time, using the traditional building blocks of formula and theme, employed in varying degrees of expansion and compression. Every formula is traditional, but every formula carries with it many layers of accumulated meaning, meaning that resonates through time and even across geographical distances. What is “good” about such traditional poetry is not “newness,” but, as Milman Parry put it, putting tradition “to the best use” (Parry 1932, 12-14 [= Parry 1971, 334-35]).

Richard Martin built on the work of Parry and Lord to show how patterns and structures associated with different genres of poetry and speech outside of epic (such as boasting, lament, love song, etc) came to be incorporated into epic, and so formed building blocks with powerful resonance of their own (see especially Martin 1989). One of these genres that I have explored in my own research is that of the traditional lament for the dead, especially as performed by the captive (and soon-to-be captive) women of the Iliad, such as Briseis and Andromache. Laments have a traditional structure and have traditional content, themes, and imagery, but they are dynamic forms of song. They have particular relevance to the life of the woman singing the song and narrate her own personal experiences while at the same time drawing on universal patterns and the experiences of sorrow and grief within the community of mourners. In other words, every lament is a multiform of a notional or archetypal lament, but no two laments are ever the same.

This week I happened to be reminded of the laments for Achilles in the epic of Quintus of Smyrna, whose Posthomerica (which might be translated as “epic events after Homer”) narrates the death of Achilles and the sack of Troy. In that epic, Achilles’ prize of war Briseis gives the following lament (3.551-576):

πασάων δ’ ἔκπαγλον ἀκηχεμένη κέαρ ἔνδον
Βρισηὶς παράκοιτις ἐυπτολέμου Ἀχιλῆος
ἀμφὶ νέκυν στρωφᾶτο καὶ ἀμφοτέρῃς παλάμῃσι
δρυπτομένη χρόα καλὸν ἀύτεεν· ἐκ δ’ ἁπαλοῖο
στήθεος αἱματόεσσαι ἀνὰ σμώδιγγες ἄερθεν
θεινομένης· φαίης κεν ἐπὶ γλάγος αἷμα χέασθαι
φοίνιον. Ἀγλαΐη δὲ καὶ ἀχνυμένης ἀλεγεινῶς
ἱμερόεν μάρμαιρε, χάρις δέ οἱ ἄμπεχεν εἶδος.
τοῖον δ’ ἔκφατο μῦθον ὀιζυρὸν γοόωσα·
ὤ μοι ἐγὼ πάντων περιώσιον αἰνὰ παθοῦσα·
οὐ γάρ μοι τόσσον περ ἐπήλυθεν ἄλλό τι πῆμα,
οὔτε κασιγνήτων οὔτ’ εὐρυχόρου περὶ πάτρης,
ὅσσον σεῖο θανόντος· ἐπεὶ σύ μοι ἱερὸν ἦμαρ
καὶ φάος ἠελίοιο πέλες καὶ μείλιχος αἰὼν
ἐλπωρή τ’ ἀγαθοῖο καὶ ἄσπετον ἄλκαρ ἀνίης
πάσης τ’ ἀγλαΐης πολὺ φέρτερος ἠδὲ τοκήων
ἔπλεο· πάντα γὰρ οἶος ἔης δμωῇ περ ἐούσῃ,
καί ῥά με θῆκας ἄκοιτιν ἑλὼν ἄπο δούλια ἔργα.
νῦν δέ τις ἐν νήεσσιν Ἀχαιῶν ἄξεται ἄλλος
Σπάρτην εἰς ἐρίβωλον ἢ ἐς πολυδίψιον Ἄργος·
καί νύ κεν ἀμφιπολεῦσα κακὰς ὑποτλήσομ’ ἀνίας
σεῦ ἀπονοσφισθεῖσα δυσάμμορος. Ὡς ὄφελόν με
γαῖα χυτὴ ἐκάλυψε πάρος σέο πότμον ἰδέσθαι.
ὣς ἣ μὲν δμηθέντ’ ὀλοφύρετο Πηλείωνα
δμωῇς σὺν μογερῇσι καὶ ἀχνυμένοισιν Ἀχαιοῖς
μυρομένη καὶ ἄνακτα καὶ ἀνέρα·

(For a translation, see Theoi.com.)

In my 2002 book, Homeric Variations on a Lament by Briseis, I argued that this lament in Quintus of Smyrna may well reflect (however dimly) an archaic epic lament by Briseis for Achilles that has not survived. Instead, we have an echo of that lament in her lament for Patroklos in Iliad 19.282-302, a lament which seems to be in many ways a lament for Achilles himself. An ancient audience would have been able to connect the deaths of the two comrades, and so her lament for Patroklos would have resonated on multiple levels. (See Dué 2002: 1-16 and 74-76.) The traditional formulaic language of oral poetry (and indeed lament) would have evoked all at the same time the deaths of Briseis’ first husband, Patroklos, Achilles, and indeed all husbands who die in battle—including Hektor.

Many scholars, including myself, have noted that Briseis’ lament for Patroklos in Iliad 19 shares many features with the speech of Andromache to Hektor in Iliad 6 (405-432), in which Andromache attempts to persuade Hektor not to return to battle. And in fact, as John Foley has shown (1999:188-198), Andromache’s speech is a lament in every way, even though it is not explicitly called a goos or thrēnos. (Please see chapter four of Homeric Variations for a full analysis.) She first addresses Hektor in the second person directly, then narrates the deaths of her family members in the sack of her city, and then concludes by addressing Hektor once again. The content of Andromache’s speech in Iliad 6 likewise resonates with other traditional laments in the Iliad. For example, the reproach that has been noted as characteristic of laments often takes the form of an accusation of abandonment. Andromache does not reproach Hektor directly in this speech, but she does warn him not to leave her a widow and their son an orphan. Hektor admits he would rather die than see Andromache led off into captivity (6.464-465). Andromache herself expresses a wish to die if she loses Hektor (6.410-411), and this wish too is a common feature of laments. The accusation of abandonment in both ancient and modern Greek laments is typically accompanied by a description of the lamenting woman’s endangered position in the community. Andromache relates how she has lost the protection of all of her family members, and sets up Hektor as her last resource. Many of the traditional lament themes that are featured in Andromache’s speech recur when she learns of the death of Hektor in Iliad 22 and in her lament at Hektor’s funeral in Iliad 24. She relates how Hektor has left her a widow and their son an orphan. She describes the life of servitude that will be hers, and speculates that Astyanax will likewise be a slave or else hurled to his death from the walls (24.727-728, 732-735).

Andromache’s and Briseis’ laments are representative of the way that wives and women in general comment on their status in the community once the man whom they are mourning is dead. Michael Herzfeld has shown in his study of a modern Cretan funeral how women may actually manipulate their status by evoking the sympathy of their audience and warding off potential reproach. Mary Ebbott, following up on the work of Herzfeld, has analyzed Helen’s language of self-blame in the Iliad in order to show how Helen uses the language of lament in even non-lament contexts to voice a view of herself that other characters in the Iliad never express. We can see in Andromache’s speech a similar kind of positioning through lament language even before Hektor’s death.

Likewise, Briseis’ lament for Patroklos deals more with defining her relationship to Achilles than it does with Patroklos. Like Andromache, Briseis uses the medium of lament to narrate the pains of her life and manipulate her status within her community. Briseis sets up first Patroklos and then Achilles as her primary resource after the deaths of her brothers and husband. She mentions the kindness of Patroklos (19.300) in order to comment on her own vulnerability. When she notes that Patroklos always promised to make her Achilles’ “wedded wife” (kouridiê alokhos) she seeks to legitimize her position through lament. She creates a status for herself that might protect her in some way when Achilles himself dies.

With the laments of Book 24 that conclude the Iliad comes an awareness that Andromache, Hecuba, and every Trojan wife will soon be captive women. And just as Achilles’ death is constantly foreshadowed, but does not occur in the Iliad, so the capture of Andromache by Greek warriors, an event that is foretold in Books 6, 18, and 24, does not take place within the confines of the Iliad itself. Her capture is instead realized in the figure of Briseis, the “wife” of Achilles. Just as Patroklos and then Hektor are substitutes in death for Achilles within the poem, so Briseis can be a substitute for Andromache. And as the funeral of Hektor foreshadows that of Achilles, Andromache’s fears for herself in turn reverberate back to Briseis, whose story, upon the death of Achilles, will come full circle, and she will be a widow and a captive once more.

As you can see, I am fascinated by the way that the traditional diction of Homeric poetry creates meaning and interconnection between different characters and different parts of the poem. For me, the repetitiveness of the poetry allows for more meaning not less. The patterns and structures of lament that I have been discussing here would have been very familiar to an ancient audience, who would have grasped them on an unconscious level. When Andromache begins using what I have called the “language of lament,” the emotional power of that speech would have connected with an ancient audience in a particular and powerful way, just as it does, within the poem, with Hektor.

This brings me back to the lament of Briseis in the Posthomerica, and, in an interesting way, Hektor. Indeed the bulk of Briseis’ lament in the Posthomerica evokes her lament for Patroklos in Iliad 19, with her narration of the loss of her homeland, parents, and brothers, and her “wife”-like (ἄκοιτιν) status with Achilles. But the last part of her lament, in which she tells of her soon-to-be captive (once again) status to a master in Greece, and her longing for death before seeing him dead, recall above all the fears that Hektor expresses for Andromache, as he explains to her why he must return to battle. In a justifiably much admired passage (the first part of which is itself a repetition of Agamemnon’s words at Iliad 4.163-165) he says (6.447-465):

εὖ γὰρ ἐγὼ τόδε οἶδα κατὰ φρένα καὶ κατὰ θυμόν:
ἔσσεται ἦμαρ ὅτ᾽ ἄν ποτ᾽ ὀλώλῃ Ἴλιος ἱρὴ
καὶ Πρίαμος καὶ λαὸς ἐϋμμελίω Πριάμοιο.
ἀλλ᾽ οὔ μοι Τρώων τόσσον μέλει ἄλγος ὀπίσσω,
οὔτ᾽ αὐτῆς Ἑκάβης οὔτε Πριάμοιο ἄνακτος
οὔτε κασιγνήτων, οἵ κεν πολέες τε καὶ ἐσθλοὶ
ἐν κονίῃσι πέσοιεν ὑπ᾽ ἀνδράσι δυσμενέεσσιν,
ὅσσον σεῦ, ὅτε κέν τις Ἀχαιῶν χαλκοχιτώνων
δακρυόεσσαν ἄγηται ἐλεύθερον ἦμαρ ἀπούρας:
καί κεν ἐν Ἄργει ἐοῦσα πρὸς ἄλλης ἱστὸν ὑφαίνοις,
καί κεν ὕδωρ φορέοις Μεσσηΐδος ἢ Ὑπερείης
πόλλ᾽ ἀεκαζομένη, κρατερὴ δ᾽ ἐπικείσετ᾽ ἀνάγκη...
ἀλλά με τεθνηῶτα χυτὴ κατὰ γαῖα καλύπτοι
πρίν γέ τι σῆς τε βοῆς σοῦ θ᾽ ἑλκηθμοῖο πυθέσθαι.

For I know this well in my heart and soul,
a day will come when holy Ilium will be destroyed,
and Priam and the people of Priam of the good spear.
But the pain of the Trojans in the future is not so much a concern for me
nor that of Hecuba herself nor of Lord Priam,
nor that of my brothers, who many and noble
have fallen in the dust at the hands of enemy men,
as much as your pain, when some one of the Achaeans with their bronze khitons
leads you away weeping, having deprived you of your day of freedom.
And then being in Argos you will weave at the loom for another woman,
and carry water from the Middle Spring and Upper Spring,
treated very shamefully, and powerful necessity will lie upon you...
May the heaped up earth of my tomb cover me dead
before I learn of your shout and your being dragged away.

What Hektor fears for Andromache, as we all know, will indeed come true, and in the Posthomerica, for Briseis, it has come true once again. Rereading the lament of Briseis in the Posthomerica I now see that in the Iliad Hektor, like Andromache, draws on the powerful language of lament to make his case. We have in essence, dueling proleptic laments from these two characters, which dramatically adds to the emotional effect of this scene.

Although anthropological research has shown that women were the traditional performers of lament in antiquity, the male heroes of epic do sometimes lament. Achilles in particular has been shown to be versed in both women’s and men’s song-making traditions. (See especially Monsacré 1984.) Here we see that Hektor has heard Andomache’s lamentation, and responded with a traditional lament of his own. This is particularly striking to me in part because ancient laments seems to have been antiphonal, with the mourner and audience responding to one another. (On the antiphonal nature of Greek laments, already represented in the laments of the Iliad, see Alexiou 1974: 131-60 and Dué 2006: 12-14.) This kind of responsion between the doomed couple makes their words even more evocative of an actual funeral.

Hektor’s variation on the captive woman’s lament is powerful precisely because it is a multiform of a pattern of speech deeply imprinted on the audience. It is powerful because it repeats, because it draws on formulas that have evolved over centuries to express precisely this kind of otherwise inexpressible sorrow. And so we see that the laments of Briseis and Andromache and Hektor are all multiforms of one another, and yet each perfectly communicates the very individual pain of each one.

(The image at the top of this post is of a painting by Zoie Lafis, Threnouses [2005], based on an ancient Greek vase.)

Works Cited
Alexiou, M. 1974. The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition. Cambridge.

Carlisle, M., and O. Levaniouk, eds. 1999. Nine Essays on Homer. Lanham, Md.

Dué, C. 2002. Homeric Variations on a Lament by Briseis. Lanham, Md.

Dué, C. 2006. The Captive Woman’s Lament in Greek Tragedy. Austin.

Ebbott, M. “The Wrath of Helen: Self-Blame and Nemesis in the Iliad.” In Carlisle and Levaniouk 1999: 3-20.

Foley, J. M. 1999. Homer’s Traditional Art. University Park.

Herzfeld, M. 1993. “In Defiance of Destiny: The Management of Time and Gender at a Cretan Funeral.” American Ethnologist 20.2: 241-55.

Lord, A. B. 1960/2000. The Singer of Tales. Cambridge, MA. 2nd rev. edition, 2000.

Martin, R. P. 1989. The Language of Heroes: Speech and Performance in the Iliad. Ithaca, N.Y.

Monsacré, H. 1984. Les larmes d'Achille: le héros, la femme et la souffrance dans la poésie d'Homère. Paris.

Parry, A., ed. 1971. The Making of Homeric Verse: The Collected Papers of Milman Parry. Oxford.

Parry, M. 1932. “Studies in the Epic Technique of Oral Versemaking. II. The Homeric Language as the Language of Oral Poetry.” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 43 (1932): 1-50 [repr. in A. Parry 1971: 325-64].

Review of Poetics of Ambush

An incredibly kind review of Iliad 10 and the Poetics of Ambush appeared in Bryn Mawr Classical Review today. I was particularly pleased that the reviewer commented on the multitextual aspect of the book and linked to the HMT.

More on the Grief of War: Mother Ajax

The discussion that Casey and I had about Petry’s interview on The Daily Show and especially her beautiful consideration of the similes featuring mothers in these passages of the Iliad (see her post) has also led me to reconsider another such simile that I had previously examined in my published work. In Iliad 8, the coordinated fighting method of the half-brothers Ajax and Teucer is described, and that description includes a compressed simile of a child and his mother (Iliad 8.266–272):

Τεῦκρος δ’ εἴνατος ἦλθε παλίντονα τόξα τιταίνων,

στῆ δ’ ἄρ’ ὑπ’ Αἴαντος σάκεϊ Τελαμωνιάδαο.
ἔνθ’ Αἴας μὲν ὑπεξέφερεν σάκος· αὐτὰρ ὅ γ' ἥρως
παπτήνας, ἐπεὶ ἄρ τιν’ ὀϊστεύσας ἐν ὁμίλῳ
βεβλήκοι, ὃ μὲν αὖθι πεσὼν ἀπὸ θυμὸν ὄλεσσεν.
αὐτὰρ ὃ αὖτις ἰὼν πάϊς ὣς ὑπὸ μητέρα δύσκεν
εἰς Αἴανθ’· ὃ δέ μιν σάκεϊ κρύπτασκε φαεινῷ.

Teucer came ninth, bending back his curving bow,
and he stood under the shield of Ajax, son of Telamon.
Then Ajax was lifting his shield up and out. And then the hero
once he looked around, when he shoots someone in the crowd
and has hit him, that man falling down on the spot loses his life.
And then Teucer goes back, like a child runs behind his mother,
to Ajax. And Ajax hides him with his shining shield.

In my examination of the ways in which Teucer’s illegitimacy (his mother was the war captive of Telamon, Teucer and Ajax’s father, while Ajax’s mother was Telamon’s wife) is portrayed, I connect this simile to other images we find in Greek literature in which the nothos (‘bastard’) is pictured as a perpetual child (Ebbott 2003: 39–40) and then I explore other Indo-European myths of twins or pairs to think about how Teucer’s identity is connected to that of his brother (Ebbott 2003: 41–44). But considering this simile in conjunction with the other similes depicting mothers and their children (see Muellner 1990 for how studying the similes as a system reveals much more about their meaning), I now am wondering whether the mother-child simile here, especially in light of the obvious role Ajax is playing as his brother’s protector on the battlefield, is connected with the special relationship not only between these two, but between soldiers who fight together on the battlefield together generally. The fact that Teucer will end up as the protector when he protects Ajax’s corpse after Ajax kills himself out of shame (his suicide happens after the events of the Iliad but the audience would have been aware of it) adds poignancy to this image, but also reflects the possibility that the role of “mother” can change depending on the circumstances of battle.

We can’t know whether “real-life” ancient Greek warriors would have specifically used the analogy of being a “mother” to their comrades, but I think we can plainly see that the emotions the Iliadic warriors express about one another and the way that American soldiers feel about their comrades has much in common. As Casey mentioned, those poetics and the emotional connections they can evoke are the reasons why Homeric epic is meaningful to us still today. But the close and careful work on the epics that the Homer Multitext involves leads to a deeper appreciation of these poetics—realizing both how the poetry in its multiformity creates meaning, but also what meaning it carries in our lives and our world.

Ebbott, M. 2003. Imagining Illegitimacy in Classical Greek Literature. Lanham, MD.

Muellner, L. 1990. “The Simile of the Cranes and Pygmies: A Study of Homeric Metaphor,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 93: 59–101.

The Grief of War: Special Homeric Poetics Edition

This blog is primarily devoted to new research and developments connected with the Homer Multitext project. Moved by a recent interview, however, I was inspired to revisit a poetic topic that, while not directly connected to the multiformity of the Iliad, is nevertheless a testament to why we continue to find Homeric poetry so fascinating. 

              In book 9 of the Iliad, Achilles uses a striking simile to describe his feelings about the situation in which he finds himself. Believing that he has been disrespected and stripped of honor by Agamemnon, he has withdrawn from battle. The Greeks, now losing without him, beg him to return. He says:

ὡς δ’ ὄρνις ἀπτῆσι νεοσσοῖσι προφέρῃσι

μάστακ' ἐπεί κε λάβῃσι, κακῶς δ’ ἄρα οἱ πέλει αὐτῇ,

ὣς καὶ ἐγὼ πολλὰς μὲν ἀΰπνους νύκτας ἴαυον,

ἤματα δ' αἱματόεντα διέπρησσον πολεμίζων

ἀνδράσι μαρνάμενος ὀάρων ἕνεκα σφετεράων.

(Iliad 9.323-327)

Like a bird that brings food to her fledgling young

in her bill, whenever she finds any, even if she herself fares poorly,

so I passed many sleepless nights,

and spent many bloody days in battle,

contending with men for the sake of their wives.

In a previously published book and article (Dué 2005 and 2006), I argued that here Achilles is drawing on the suffering of mothers in order to articulate his own sorrow, as he struggles against his mortality and the pleas of his comrades that he return to battle. By using a traditional theme of women’s lament traditions, that of the mother bird who has toiled to raise her young only to lose them, Achilles connects on a very visceral level with the women that he himself has widowed, deprived of children, and enslaved in war.

One of the many passages that bring together the imagery of mother birds with the grief of war (and especially the lamentation of a mother for her fallen son) in Greek literature comes from Euripides’ tragedy the Trojan Women. This play tells the story of the women of Troy after the Greek victory, and it is structured as a series of laments by the principal characters and the chorus. In Hecuba’s opening monody, she compares herself to a mother bird, screaming over her lost young (Trojan Women 138-150):

ὤμοι, θάκους οἵους θάσσω,/σκηναῖς ἐφέδρους Ἀγαμεμνονίαις./δούλα δ' ἄγομαι/γραῦς ἐξ οἴκων πενθήρη/κρᾶτ' ἐκπορθηθεῖσ' οἰκτρῶς./ἀλλ' ὦ τῶν χαλκεγχέων Τρώων/ἄλοχοι μέλεαι,/καὶ κοῦραι ‹κοῦραι› δύσνυμφοι,/τύφεται Ἴλιον, αἰάζωμεν./μάτηρ δ' ὡσεί τις πτανοῖς/ὄρνισιν, ὅπως ἐξάρξω 'γὼ/κλαγγάν, μολπάν, οὐ τὰν αὐτὰν/οἵαν ποτὲ δὴ/σκήπτρῳ Πριάμου διερειδομένα/ποδὸς ἀρχεχόρου πληγαῖς Φρυγίους/εὐκόμποις ἐξῆρχον θεούς.

Alas what sort of seat is this that I have taken, I who am seated before the tents of Agamemnon? As a slave I am led away from my home, an old woman, my head shorn piteously in grief. Ah! wretched wives of the Trojans with their bronze spears and maidens, unfortunate brides, Ilium is smoldering, let us cry out! Like some mother-bird that over her fledglings screams, so I will lead off the shout, the song and dance; not the same as that I once conducted, as I leaned on Priam’s scepter and with loud-sounding beats led the dance for the Phrygian gods.

In large part because of passages like these, I have argued that Achilles’ comparison of his own feelings to those of a mother bird would have resonated with ancient audiences as a particular kind of grief, the grief of a mother who has lost her son in war. What I did not realize when I made those arguments initially is that the emotions conveyed by Achilles in that moment are shared by our soldiers fighting today in Iraq and Afghanistan.

            Last night on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Stewart interviewed a medal of honor winner from Afghanistan named Sgt. First Class Leroy Petry. Stewart asked Petry how it was possible for him, after being wounded in both legs (and later after his hand was blown off by a grenade), to be able to maintain his leadership role and continue to protect the other men and also communicate back with his commanders. In his spontaneous response he almost choked up, saying that his fellow soldiers were like brothers to him, but that it was even more than that. He said that the way he felt about the other guys is like how a bird cares for its young.

Sgt. Petry’s experience is in many ways the opposite of the situation of Achilles in Iliad 9. Sgt. Petry did not retreat, whereas Achilles has, to the extreme detriment of his comrades. But I’m fascinated that Sgt. Petry would use the same metaphor to describe war. Moreover, as my friend and colleague Mary Ebbott points out to me, Jonathan Shay has described the relationship between combat soldiers in similar terms in his book Achilles in Vietnam (p.42): “While the kin relationship of brother seems to be the most frequent symbol of the relationship between combat soldiers who are closest comrades, in our culture the powerful territory of feeling and symbolism of mother often seems to apply just as well.” He also writes (p. 49): “The terror and privation of combat bonds men in a passion of care that the word brother only partly captures. Men become mothers to one another in combat. The grief and rage that they experience when the special comrade is killed appear virtually identical to that of a child suddenly orphaned, and they feel that the mother within them has died with the friend.”

These accounts have caused me to reexamine Achilles’ words. I think what Achilles is trying to say, in his own soldierly way, is that he has experienced the same intensity of war that Sgt Petry attempts to describe, but that he has not gotten anything for it. He has been dishonored even so—he has not been awarded a medal of honor. He wants out. He wants to go home and live a normal life. Looking at it this way, we understand even better what it means for Achilles to return to battle after Patroklos’ death later in the epic. Achilles withdrew from battle, and the person who did not get protected as a result was his closest companion in the world.

Carroll Moulton has noted that the relationship between Achilles and Patroklos is several times described in the Iliad by similes that involve the parent/children motif, and Achilles is usually in the role of the protector. (See Moulton 1977, 100-104 as well as Mills 2000.) I think especially of a passage in Iliad 16, where Patroklos begs to be allowed to impersonate Achilles and return to battle, if Achilles won’t go himself. Achilles compares Patroklos here to a child:

“Why ever do you cry, Patroklos? (You are) like a

silly girl, who running along with her mother begs to be picked up,

grabbing onto her robe, and she hinders her as she is trying to go,

and tearfully she looks at her, in order that she be picked up.’ 

This pattern makes it all the more significant that Achilles draws on traditional imagery from women’s laments for children to describe himself in Iliad 9, given the central importance of Patroklos’ death (and Achilles’ avenging of that death) in the Iliad. As so often happens in Homeric poetry, larger themes and events of the poem are articulated by a character who should not have the omniscience to foretell them. The truncated mother bird simile of Iliad 9 foreshadows future events for an audience that knows all too well what is to come. In this way the simile unites Achilles’ grief for Patroklos with the grief of the mothers he himself has put in mourning.

The toil of the mother bird is, traditionally speaking, only half the story, however. The simile of Iliad 9 comes to an end just where we would expect it to narrate the subsequent loss of the nestlings and the bird’s lamentation. By leaving out this crucial segment of the bird’s story, Achilles does not yet seem to threaten the vengeance that is very often associated with lament. And yet I have to wonder whether the vengeance theme (that I have traced in my 2005 article and 2006 book) is any way relevant to this much earlier passage from epic about the mother bird. I believe that it is, and if you are interested in this question, I invite you to read my book (see especially chapter 5). I mention the theme of revenge because it is the next stage of grief, not only for the Homeric warrior, or for the ancient Greek mother to whom he is likened, but also today's soldiers, and it is just one more way that the grief of war transcends time or place. I mention it because I’d like to close this post by noting an incredibly moving interview that aired on NPR last year with Tim Hetherington, the creator of the documentary Restrepo. 

In the interview, Hetherington describes what it was like to be an imbedded reporter in Afghanistan with a platoon of the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team. Hetherington starts sobbing when telling the story, and in fact the whole point of his documentary had been to see war through the soldiers' eyes. It became his experience too—even though, as he says, he felt protected in a way by the camera. So there was a barrier between him as a narrator and his story, but it was a permeable one—which of course makes me the think of the Homeric narrator as well.

When talking about last night’s Daily Show interview of Sgt. Petry with Mary Ebbott, she too recalled Restrepo (and she was the one who first made me aware of the NPR interview of Hetherington last year). Mary reminded me that the thing that made Hetherington cry in the NPR interview was when he began describing what it was like when one of their comrades was killed in an attack and the enemy tried to drag his body away. In fact, Hetherington said it was the one time any of the soldiers told him to turn the camera off. Mary wrote to me about the documentary:

You see how distraught one soldier becomes when he learns that his comrade has been killed, and the captain of the unit goes into a cold and quiet revenge mode (you see him saying, “kill them all”). In later interviews, they talk about how he was their “best” soldier. I have told students that it was “okay” for Greek heroes to cry and that we have to understand the cultural differences, but now that I have seen this, we instead have to realize that it is just a true reaction of soldiers facing the loss of their comrades.

When Patroklos gets killed in the Iliad, the Greeks immediately move in to protect his body. Amazingly, Menelaos is compared in this moment to a cow protecting her first-born calf (Iliad 17.4-5). In Iliad 9, Achilles has only begun to experience the grief of war. It is only when his “child” Patroklos gets killed by the Trojans that his need for vengeance takes over. He cries and mourns and then he returns to battle, full of cold fury.

            Sadly, Tim Hetherington, the narrator that became so indistinguishable from his “characters” that their grief became his, is united with the soldiers he chronicled in more ways than one. This past April he was killed covering the fighting in Libya.

Dué, C. “Achilles, Mother Bird: Similes and Traditionality in Homeric Poetry.” Classical Bulletin 81 (2005): 3-18.

–––. The Captive Woman’s Lament in Greek Tragedy. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006.

Mills, S. “Achilles, Patroclus and Parental Care in Some Homeric Similes.” Greece and Rome 47 (2000): 3-18.

Moulton, C. Similes in the Homeric Poems. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1977.

Shay, J. Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character. Simon & Schuster, 1995.