The Iliad of Homer

by Richmond Lattimore

  379 Ironically, the Trojans mistake Zeus’ thunder, which was made in positive response to Nestor’s prayer, as an indication that he is still supporting their attack.

  461 Despite his encouragement after Nestor’s prayer (370), Zeus still protects Hektor. Teukros and Aias, however, are unsure as to which god is inhibiting their fight by frustrating their bow shots. Hektor acknowledges this to be the work of Zeus (489).

  582 The pairing of the youngest Greek (Antilochos) with the peaceful cowherd Melanippos, recently moved to Troy, is ripe for pathos. As with Menelaos and Patroklos, the poet addresses Melanippos in the second person at the emotional climax of his wounding. The prewar life of Melanippos is picked up by the ensuing simile comparing Antilochos to a wild beast that has slain a herdsman.

  595 One effect of the foreshadowing is to increase suspense: although the audience is given the plot outcome in outline, they await the exact details of battle and Hektor’s death with sustained interest.

  641 Naming alone offers the sign that Periphetes is better than his father Kopreus (“Dung man”). He carries a shield of the archaic Mykenaian type, as tall as the body.

  705 The choice of location, the ship of Protesilaos, who was first to land and killed instantly, must prompt some foreboding for the Greeks.

  721 The first we hear of Hektor’s blame directed toward his elders for excessive caution. At 6.431 it was his wife Andromachē who urged him to stay close to the city walls.

  BOOK SIXTEEN

  7 The picture of a young girl begging to be taken up by her mother is not a peaceful vignette, but (as shown in K. L. Gaca, “Reinterpreting the Homeric Simile of Iliad 16.7–11,” American Journal of Philology 129 [2008]: 145–71) a specific reference to the fate of families after the fall of cities, and thus an ominous image.

  18 At first Achilleus lumps together all Greeks with Agamemnon in speaking of their general arrogance. Later, he restricts blame to the individual who has injured him (54).

  100 The wish for exclusive glory, to be shared only with Patroklos, is somewhat broader than the self-absorbed desire for recognition that Achilleus has just expressed (84–90), but still remarkably harsh in dismissing Greek as well as Trojan suffering.

  124 A good example of “double motivation,” when the urges of gods and humans coincide. Zeus wants to drive back the Trojans once fire has touched the first ship (15.599). Simultaneously, Achilleus has decided to let Patroklos carry out Nestor’s independent suggestion about entering battle.

  143 Tradition held that Cheiron the half-man, half-horse tutor of heroes, presented the ash spear at the wedding of Peleus and Thetis. Although Patroklos has been entrusted with Cheiron’s medical knowledge (via Achilleus: 11.830), he cannot master fully the martial arts of the Centaur.

  154 Like Achilleus himself, his chariot team is a mixture of mortal and divine genealogy. Two of his Myrmidon comrades (Menesthios, 173, and Eudoros, 179) are similarly half divine.

  225 The special character of Achilleus is highlighted by what appear to be private or family rituals. Their extraordinary nature is further underlined by the reference to Dodona, a cult site of Zeus far in the northwest Greek territory. “Pelasgian” designates a semimythical pre-Greek population. The mysterious Selloi (Helloi, in some manuscripts, a name perhaps related to “Hellenes”) differ from the usual Greek priests. Their closeness to the earth might indicate earlier chthonic origins of the cult. The scene is unusual, finally, because elsewhere in the Iliad a god never grants only half a prayer.

  328 The king, Amisodaros, was not named when the Chimaira was introduced in the story of Bellerophontes (6.179).

  385 The flood tied to Zeus’ punishment of wrongdoing resembles the biblical account (Genesis 6–9). Although missing from Hesiod’s Theogony, the flood tale appears to be a regional commonplace, showing up in early Near Eastern literature, such as Gilgamesh.

  423 Sarpedon’s ignorance of the identity of the raging Patroklos seems inconsistent with the Trojans’ belief (281) that Achilleus has returned to battle; perhaps the Lykian contingent on the edges of the fight has not seen Patroklos’ initial foray.

  433 Although Zeus laments that it is fate (moira) for his son to die, he nevertheless considers saving him, thereby overriding the set course of events. Hera’s response affirms that Zeus is able to go against fate, but he risks the anger and disapproval of the other gods, in a lost cause (since Sarpedon, a mortal, must die sometime).

  482 Sarpedon’s end, the first of three extended death scenes that climax the poem, is accompanied by two similes (the tree and bull), a death speech with last words (492–501), but no speech by the killer (unlike the subsequent examples). The presence of Glaukos here foregrounds the theme of intense comradeship embodied by Achilleus and Patroklos: one man’s close companion has now slain another’s.

  584 The poet begins to increase the frequency of direct address to Patroklos, heightening the pathos and intensity of the episode and situating the audience on his side of the struggle.

  614 These two lines may have been interpolated from 13.504–5.

  682 This scene is reproduced on one of the finest, best-known Greek vases, a wine mixing bowl by Euphronios from about 515 BC, showing Sleep and Death with Hermes as they lift the wound-riddled body of Sarpedon. The prized piece was at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York until 2008, when it was repatriated to Italy (where it had been looted from a tomb in the early 1970s).

  765 An extended simile that well shows how the poet introduces a purely natural, uninhabited landscape to parallel the action or look of human events. At the same time, we are made aware that nature—in this case a wood of mixed trees struck by contending winds—can be thought to have its own warlike processes. Struggle is inescapable even off the battlefield.

  787 Apollo’s attack is the most direct and brutal of any god’s in the Iliad, as well as being deceptive. The gradual dissolution of Patroklos is like a prolonged slow-motion film sequence. Even the close-up of Achilleus’ helmet, now covered by dust, is highly cinematic.

  830 Hektor’s taunt to the dying Patroklos gets details wrong, and an audience realizes the grim irony. Achilleus, for example, did not tell him to slay Hektor. It is interesting that Hektor begins with mention of the capture of Trojan women, as if his parting conversation with Andromachē (book 6) remains foremost in his thoughts.

  853 The pervasive folk tradition that a dying person’s last words are prophetic can be seen already at work here. Cf. Socrates’ at his trial predicting punishment for the Athenians (Plato, Apology, 39c).

  BOOK SEVENTEEN

  4 As the struggle to claim Patroklos’ corpse begins, the hero is once more compared to young off spring needing protection, here a calf (cf. 16.7, a young girl).

  51 The poem humanely refuses to denigrate enemies. One of Patroklos’ killers can still be described in terms of beauty, with hair like the Graces (daughters of Zeus who embody all elegance and joy), resembling a lovely tree.

  92 Menelaos admits that it was his own quest to regain Helen that has led to the death of Patroklos. His defense of the corpse is motivated by shame as well as comradeship.

  126 Neither side are headhunters, but the intensity of grief over slain comrades leads both increasingly to consider decapitation. Compare the threat uttered by Euphorbos that he will console his parents, for his brother’s death, by taking home the head of Menelaos (38).

  147 Glaukos, who has once before shamed Hektor into fighting, uses exactly the words of Achilleus against Agamemnon (9.316–17) to complain that he and his men are treated unfairly by the Trojan prince and to threaten to leave. He wants Patroklos’ corpse as a bargaining chip to regain the armor of his friend Sarpedon—not as a prop for the glorification of Hektor.

  194 In the poet’s brief comment and Zeus’ speech, the armor becomes a portentous symbol of the mortality of Achilleus and Hektor, a sign of their imminent deaths.

  250 Like Hektor speaking to the Lykians (225), Menelaos baldly states the quid pro
quo for his insisting on help: he and his brother have wined and dined their fellow commander; now is time for payback.

  290 The recompense theme is kept going in a minor key as Hippothoös, in dying while doing a favor for Hektor (291), fails to return to his parents what he owes for his upbringing.

  404 The tragedy of partial knowledge (similar to the partial fulfillment of Achilleus’ prayer to Zeus at 16.250) corresponds to the hero’s half-mortal nature, as if he can never achieve divine omniscience. Although Achilleus realizes he will not take Troy, he has not known that Patroklos will die.

  434 The perfect relevance of this simile to the context is increased if the poet has in mind tombstones such as were made in Athens in the early sixth century BC. Scenes with sculpted or painted warriors and horses might have been familiar to the audiences for epic poetry; other stêlai depicted lamenting kinfolk. This image captures both aspects. Once more the tragic incompatibility of mortal and divine is stressed.

  570 The courage of the mosquito may seem a backhanded compliment. The image recalls 4.130 when Athene warded off a deadly missile from Menelaos like a mother swatting away a fly. Here the hero is at the other end of the simile, as it were—the persistent attacker rather than the helpless victim.

  631 The signs of lightning and thunder (595) must convince the Greeks that it is specifically Zeus rather than Apollo who is frustrating their shots at the Trojans. This does not prevent Aias from praying to Zeus to make clear the skies (645), and the prayer succeeds.

  709 Although Menelaos has told Antilochos (692) that Achilleus might help recover Patroklos’ corpse, he realizes that this is not possible, since Hektor now has the warrior’s armor (pending the manufacture of a new set in book 18).

  755 The image seems reversed: one would imagine the following crowd of Trojans to be noisy in pursuit. But the comparison hinges on the frantic movement of the fleeing Greek troops, and the cries, like those of small birds instead of raptors, emphasize their weak position.

  BOOK EIGHTEEN

  10 As usual, we learn from Achilleus of Thetis’ prophecies only in the face of a crisis or after the fact (cf. 9.410). The technique is more common in the Odyssey (e.g., Od. 9.507, 13.173).

  26 The description of Achilleus stretched in the dust matches that of warriors who have been slain (e.g., 16.775), a foreshadowing of his own death once he is drawn back into war. The image of clustering women who lament reinforces the idea that soon he, too, will be an object of grief (as Thetis acknowledges: 96).

  39 The names of the nymphs, daughters of Nereus, reflect their habitat. Most are epithets for the sea (Glauke, “Gray”; Kymothoë, “Wave-swift”), while some refer to the mythical character of their father as a wise old man of the sea (Nemertes, “Unerring”; Apseudes, “Without lie”). Thetis’ words are a lament for Achilleus rather than for Patroklos, whom she does not mention.

  72 The resemblance here to Thetis’ interview with Achilleus by the shore in book 1 underscores the irony that her son has now achieved what he begged her for, with unforeseen consequences. He now realizes that glory is less important than his companion’s life.

  117 Herakles died after being accidentally poisoned through a mistake by his wife Deianeira, who sent him a cloak thinking that the potion with which she had smeared it was a love charm (rather than a mixture of Hydra’s blood). The story is dramatized in Sophocles’ Trachiniae. After his incineration on a pyre, Herakles ascended to Olympos, where he was reconciled with Hera and given Youth (Hebe) as bride.

  206 The blaze that Athene makes rise from Achilleus begins a complex simile that is at once a foreshadowing of the fall of Troy (a city under siege) and a recollection of the hero’s wrath, just described as rising like smoke (109). Within the terms of the simile, the flame is a call for help, while the actual fiery warrior is the answer to such a call. A similar duality occurs in the trumpet simile (219).

  301 Hektor interprets Poulydamas’ words as demagogic pleading and so calls his bluff by challenging one who cares about possessions (by implication, one who urged immediate concern for the city) to distribute goods to the dêmos before the Greeks acquire them.

  373 The automatic tripods are almost allegories for the ease with which prestige goods, such as Hephaistos makes, take on a life of their own when circulating in a culture of gift-exchange through guest-friendship and inheritance. Their mobility is a striking contrast to their maker’s lameness.

  395 Another fall from Olympos, different from that described earlier (1.590), which was caused by Zeus, not Hera. Although they seem on good terms, Hera, according to her son, has tried to eliminate him.

  417 The golden robot maidens are described in terms similar to those used for Pandora (Hesiod, Works and Days, 70–82), gifted by all the gods with adornment and endowments.

  483 Archaeologists have not discovered anything as elaborate as this shield. The closest parallels are silver plates from Phoenicia and bronze shields from Crete (possibly imports from Asia Minor), both types having several concentric illustrated bands. The basic aesthetic principles—that big is beautiful, that the cosmos can be imitated in one epic work—apply to the Iliad as a whole. The divine craftsman stands in for the poet himself. It is worth noting, however, that Zenodotus, an early Homeric critic in Alexandria (third century BC), rejected the entire description as non-Homeric.

  497 The city at peace, along with its harmonies of music and marriage, also contains disputes, but has a legal framework to deal with them. The issue at law—whether to accept a blood price or demand a death in return—echoes the choice of Achilleus (to take compensation for being dishonored or let his companions die).

  510 The city at war is, like Troy, under siege, with the attacking army undecided as to whether it should take a ransom (half the city’s goods) or sack the entire place. Unlike Troy, the besieged have planned a foray outside in the form of an ambush, and unlike in the Iliad, Ares is on the same side as Athene (516).

  570 The Linos song was a lament for one who died young, perhaps because he rivaled Apollo. The story has Near Eastern parallels in worship of, for instance, Adonis. In modern Greek folk custom, stylized laments are still used as work songs.

  590 Pastoral and agricultural scenes are capped by the dance, itself modeled on what the ultimate mythical artificer, Daidalos, made at Knossos in Crete (home of Minos and the labyrinth). The intricate and rapid motions of the dance are described by yet another craft image.

  BOOK NINETEEN

  38 Infusion of the divine food and drink, nectar and ambrosia, gives a sort of immortality to Patroklos’ flesh. Ancient Egyptian embalming practice involved extractions and infusions through the nostrils (Herodotus, 2.86).

  60 Lyrnessos, a city sacked by Achilleus during his frequent coastal raids, yielded the war bride Briseis (2.690).

  77 It is unclear whether Agamemnon’s wound prevents him from standing or he stays seated as a form of abasement, symbolically lowering himself in the presence of the man he insulted.

  86 Agamemnon admits he made a mistake (not that he was guilty of an ethical breach), but at the same time saves face by blaming three divinities for leading him astray (Zeus, Destiny, Erinys). Atê (destructive blindness) is personified and then made into an instrument of the gods. Her power, even over her own father Zeus, is illustrated by the subsequent tale of Herakles’ delayed birth, a tale made more plausible by what the audience has already heard of Hera’s deceptiveness (book 14).

  141 Actually, the offer was made two days before. At this point the gifts can no longer be taken as a bribe (which they resembled in book 9), so Achilleus feels free to accept, though it is not his priority.

  155 Odysseus’ remarks on diet and exercise appear out of place. But they fit well with the Odyssey version of this hero, deeply involved with food and drink (see Pietro Pucci, The Song of the Sirens: Essays on Homer [Lanham, MD, 1998]). A contrast is also made with Achilleus’ own words in book 24, persuading Priam to put aside mourning and eat.

  197 Zeus and
the Sun are regularly invoked in oath-taking (3.276), since both hold commanding positions in the sky allowing them to observe right and wrong actions.

  210 A gulf of feeling opens between the grief-frenzied Achilleus and the defenders of institutional norms. The younger man makes revenge primary, an occasion for something like a ritual fast and vow, while his elders dwell on practicalities like breakfast (see further 305–8).

  282 The dramatic arrival of Briseis brings together the cause of the quarrel and its result (Patroklos dead). For the first time, we hear her own story as widow, survivor, and trophy. Patroklos’ gentle ways are recalled by reference to his consoling personal promise to her. The effect is amplified by the moving line (302) about public lament for private sorrows.

  327 Neoptolemos will be summoned from his maternal home on the island Skyros to Troy after Achilleus’ death to participate in the final attack (see section B above). Achilleus’ speech accurately captures the psychology of grief, remembering trivial events (cf. 316, on meals) while confusing personal distress with the imagination of how others might feel.

  353 As Thetis preserved Patroklos (38) so Athene nourishes Achilleus, making the pair of companions look identical in yet another aspect.

  389 An extended wordplay: Achilleus knows how to wield (pêlai) the spear of Peleus (Pêliada) received on Mount Pelion (Pêliou).

  409 Talking horses are not found elsewhere in Greek epic, although common in Central Asian sagas (such as the Manas epic of Kyrgyzstan). Xanthos’ words resemble the account by Agamemnon, earlier in this book, in shifting responsibility to Destiny and a great god (Apollo), the latter now named as Patroklos’ killer and, by implication, Achilleus’. The tragic outcome was known (18.95), but the details (death at the hands of a god and mortal) may be news to the hero.