165 The befouling of head and neck symbolically expresses the wish for the living lamenter to be close to the corpse’s condition.
248 The depiction is psychologically apt—a grief-maddened father recklessly turns on the living to take out his resentment.
291 Hekabē’s pious insistence that Priam entreat Zeus for an omen contrasts with her son’s attitude toward bird signs (12.237). Elsewhere, only in the Odyssey are signs elicited (e.g., Od. 20.100). Usually the gods send them unbidden.
334 Hermes the psychopompos (“soul-conductor”) was credited with accompanying spirits to and from the realm of the dead, a role related to the knack of inducing sleep. Priam’s journey resembles a trip to the underworld.
480 Interesting reversals mark the simile: Achilleus, whose manslaughtering hands were just mentioned, rather than being the suppliant killer is compared to the crowd who marvel at him. At the same time, the autobiography of Patroklos (23.85–90) is evoked by this mention of an outlaw exile.
486 Priam’s plea that Achilleus remember his father makes psychological sense to the audience that has heard the hero recall him with increased frequency over the last days, at 16.15, 18.87, 18.331, and 23.144.
527 The parable of the jars, meant to console Priam, presents a bleak view of life’s hardships, but one not unique in archaic Greek literature: compare the story of Pandora and her jar (Hesiod, Works and Days, 47–105). Rather than doling out good to one and evil to another, the best Zeus can offer humans is a mixture, while the worst comprises evil undiluted.
560 Achilleus’ dangerously rapid change of mood is triggered by Priam’s well-meaning wish that he return home, since the hero knows well that he is doomed never to go back to Phthia. He draws back, in reaction, from the human sympathy just witnessed to a divine framework, saying that only the gods’ command makes him surrender the corpse. In taking care that the body be prepared out of sight, Achilleus shows acute sensitivity to the limits of his own self-control (584).
602 A second consolatory narrative selects an example from myth, the tale of Niobē’s boast of superiority to the goddess Leto and its consequence. Achilleus does not draw a moral about hubris but points instead to the necessity for food even in extreme grief. Niobē’s transformation to stone seems a reward for endurance, a natural memorial to her eternal mourning (since water must run down the rock face).
649 The sarcasm has as its object the sons of Atreus, as Achilleus knows they are of the sort to try to contravene his wishes even now.
699 Kassandra, fairest of Priam’s daughters (13.366), in other sources is said to have spurned Apollo’s love, and as punishment her warnings to the Trojans were never believed. At the fall of Troy, she is dragged away from her refuge at Athene’s altar, although clasping the statue of the goddess, and raped by Aias the son of Oïleus.
720 The singers (male, as the Greek text makes clear) as professional lamenters lead the mourning ritual. The less formal lament by women is described in descending order of closeness (mother, wife, sister-in-law), but in ascending dramatic order, concluding with the woman whose fate started the war.
735 For the fist time, Andromachē envisions the possibility that her son Astyanax will be killed at Troy, as finally happens.
765 While Andromachē and Hekabē dwelt on the effect of Hektor’s death and his appearance, respectively, only Helen captures the essence of his personality, his generosity and gentle protection. Furthermore, only Helen admits openly that she laments for herself as well (773). Her remark that it has been twenty years since coming to Troy is an odd slip, unless it is a rhetorical exaggeration, or the remnant of another version (traces of which are found later) according to which the Greeks took ten years after their initial expedition (which went astray, to Mysia) before regrouping and mounting a second.
782 The poem ends with a glimmer of hope: the doomed Achilleus relents long enough to allow the enemy to bury their champion. That the emotional climax should center not on Achilleus but his victim Hektor (shown to be every bit as heroic as the Greeks) speaks for the deep humanity of the whole composition.
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RECEPTION
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