The War That Killed Achilles

by Caroline Alexander

  When at length Sarpedon is hit, he falls “as when an oak goes down or a white poplar, / or like a towering pine tree which in the mountains the carpenters / have hewn down with their whetted axes to make a ship-timber,” for ships like those that sailed to Troy. Dying, “raging,” Sarpedon “called aloud to his beloved companion” begging him to ensure that his body is not dishonored, nor his armor stripped from him; his is the first of what will be three dying speeches in the epic. His companion Glaukos hears him and, praying to Apollo for strength, rallies his companions, and a battle erupts over the body, and armor, of Sarpedon.

  So they swarmed over the dead man, nor did Zeus ever

  turn the glaring of his eyes from the strong encounter,

  but kept gazing forever upon them, in spirit reflective,

  and pondered hard over many ways for the death of Patroklos;

  whether this was now the time, in this strong encounter,

  when there over godlike Sarpedon glorious Hektor

  should kill him with the bronze, and strip the armour away from

  his shoulders,

  or whether to increase the steep work of fighting for more men.

  Zeus decides upon two strategies: he will allow Patroklos one more triumphant assault, and, as Hera had suggested, he instructs Apollo to aid Sleep and Death in bearing Sarpedon’s body to his home.21 The body is whisked away, and the mortal remains of Sarpedon are gone. He and his companion and kinsman Glaukos are the most prominent of the Trojans’ many allies, and Sarpedon’s death is the most significant casualty to befall the Trojan side. Together the two warriors have given the epic some of its most reflective moments, such as Glaukos’ speech on the generations of men in Book Six. In Book Twelve, toward the beginning of this longest day, it had been Sarpedon who uttered to Glaukos the simple statement that later ages would adopt as defining the Homeric warrior’s rationale for war:“Man, supposing you and I, escaping this battle,

  would be able to live on forever, ageless, immortal,

  so neither would I myself go on fighting in the foremost

  nor would I urge you into the fighting where men win glory.

  But now, seeing that the spirits of death stand close about us

  in their thousands, no man can turn aside nor escape them,

  let us go on and win glory for ourselves, or yield it to others.”22

  In short, the death of Sarpedon is an important landmark in the epic. A fully realized character, he will be missed. The grieving, loyal companion he leaves behind, the extraordinary attention he receives from Zeus, and the fight over his fallen body and armor are all motifs that will shortly be repeated as the Iliad moves relentlessly toward its tragic climax. 23

  Immediately following the gentle disposition of Sarpedon’s body, the action returns abruptly to Patroklos. His onslaught has been an unmitigated success; the Trojans have been driven back, and the ships are saved. By the terms of Achilles’ orders, he should now return to the Achaean camp; but, “besotted” with blind fury, he rages on: “Then who was it you slaughtered first, who was the last one, / Patroklos, as the gods called you to your death?”

  At the very threshold of Troy, Patroklos attempts to mount the angled walls; three times he tries, and three times he is batted down by the city’s menacing guardian, Apollo, who strides the ramparts and cries out to him “in the voice of danger: / ‘Give way, illustrious Patroklos: it is not destined / that the city of the proud Trojans shall fall before your spear / not even at the hand of Achilles, who is far better than you are.’ ”

  Patroklos is allowed one last victory, over Hektor’s charioteer and half brother, but as the sun sinks, his destiny claims him in the suddenly huge and terrifying apparition of Apollo:... there, Patroklos, the end of your life was shown forth,

  since Phoibos came against you there in the strong encounter

  dangerously, nor did Patroklos see him as he moved through

  the battle, and shrouded in a deep mist came in against him

  and stood behind him, and struck his back and his broad shoulders

  with a flat stroke of the hand so that his eyes spun. Phoibos

  Apollo now struck away from his head the helmet

  four-horned and hollow-eyed, and under the feet of the horses

  it rolled clattering, and the plumes above it were defiled

  by blood and dust. Before this time it had not been permitted

  to defile in the dust this great helmet crested in horse-hair;

  rather it guarded the head and the gracious brow of a godlike

  man, Achilles; but now Zeus gave it over to Hektor

  to wear on his head, Hektor whose own death was close to him.

  And in his hands was splintered all the huge, great, heavy,

  iron-shod, far-shadowing spear, and away from his shoulders

  dropped to the ground the shield with its shield sling and its tassels.

  The lord Apollo, son of Zeus, broke the corselet upon him.

  Disaster caught his wits, and his shining body went nerveless.

  He stood stupidly, and from close behind his back a Dardanian

  man hit him between the shoulders with a sharp javelin:

  Euphorbos, son of Panthoös, who surpassed all men of his own age

  with the throwing spear, and in horsemanship and the speed of his

  feet. He

  had already brought down twenty men from their horses

  since first coming, with his chariot and his learning in warfare.

  He first hit you with a thrown spear, o rider Patroklos,

  nor broke you, but ran away again, snatching out the ash spear

  from your body, and lost himself in the crowd, not enduring

  to face Patroklos, naked as he was, in close combat.

  Now Patroklos, broken by the spear and the god’s blow, tried

  to shun death and shrink back into the swarm of his own

  companions.

  But Hektor, when he saw high-hearted Patroklos trying

  to get away, saw how he was wounded with the sharp javelin,

  came close against him across the ranks, and with the spear

  stabbed him

  in the depth of the belly and drove the bronze clean through.

  He fell,

  thunderously, to the horror of all the Achaean people.

  Of the many deaths the Iliad records, no other resembles that of Patroklos. Nowhere is the pitiful vulnerability of a mortal so exploited as it is by the savage malevolence of Apollo’s blow and the hounding of the wounded man as he tries to shun death among his companions. The horror of this extraordinary scene is reinforced by the resonance of two disparate, submerged traditions. One of these concerns that magic armor, worn by the folktale predecessors of Achilles, whose fairy-tale function had undoubtedly been to render its wearer invulnerable. As has been said, Homer severely repressed any hint that the armor given by the gods to Peleus had supernatural properties, yet he allows one aspect of this ancient motif to surface here, turning it to electrifying effect—Patroklos must be stripped of the armor before he can be killed. Thus Apollo’s savage blow strikes off his helmet and breaks the corselet upon him.24 Patroklos is killed—slaughtered—naked.

  “To select a victim, to adorn it, and to drive it towards the enemies to be killed by them” in time of crisis—such is the ancient rite of substitution. 25 Patroklos has been made a scapegoat, a ritual substitute for his king, in whose distinctive armor—and in whose stead—he is driven to his death; Patroklos has become the literal alter ego of Achilles, his second self.26 The stunning blow that Apollo deals him, the stab between the shoulder blades and the final death stroke—these are more the actions of ritual slaughter, than of battle.

  Broken by the most malevolent of gods, and subsequently by two opportunistic mortals, Patroklos, dying, must endure Hektor’s hollow vaunt over him. Exalting, Hektor imagines—very wrongly, as we know—how Achilles must have instructed Patroklos to return with h
is bloodied tunic: “ ‘In some such / manner he spoke to you, and persuaded the fool’s heart in you.’ ” Poor Hektor can have no idea how badly he reads the unfolding events.

  And now, dying, you answered him, o rider Patroklos:

  “Now is your time for big words, Hektor. Yours is the victory

  given by Kronos’ son, Zeus, and Apollo, who have subdued me

  easily, since they themselves stripped the arms from my shoulders.

  Even though twenty such as you had come in against me,

  they would all have been broken beneath my spear, and have

  perished.

  No, deadly destiny, with the son of Leto, has killed me,

  and of men it was Euphorbos; you are only my third slayer.

  And put away in your heart this other thing that I tell you.

  You yourself are not one who shall live long, but now already

  death and powerful destiny are standing beside you,

  to go down under the hands of Aiakos’ great son, Achilles.”

  He spoke, and as he spoke the end of death closed in upon him,

  and the soul fluttering free of his limbs went down into Death’s house

  mourning her destiny, leaving youth and manhood behind her.

  Everything Hektor believes is false, just as everything Patroklos states with his last breath is true. For all his prowess, Hektor is an ordinary soldier, privy to no prophecies, blind to his own fate. Elated, drunk with triumph, Hektor allows himself to entertain an impossible notion—that perhaps Achilles, too, will fall to him.

  As Trojans and Achaeans previously swarmed over the body of Sarpedon, contending for his corpse and the prize of his armor, so now both sides converge to fight for Patroklos. Menelaos strides forward and stands over him, “as over a first-born calf the mother / cow stands lowing, she who has known no children before this.” This will be Menelaos’ finest hour in the epic, although soon, faced with the relentless onslaught of ranks of Trojans, he is forced to make a temporary retreat. Safe among his own companions, he looks around wildly for Aias: “ ‘This way, Aias, we must make for fallen Patroklos / to try if we can carry back to Achilles the body / which is naked; Hektor of the shining helm has taken his armour.’ ” At stake is the timeless credo “Leave no man behind.” The stakes are very high, as Hektor of the shining helm, the loving family man and dutiful patriot, having stripped the remaining armor from Patroklos, “dragged at him, meaning to cut his head from his shoulders with the sharp bronze, / to haul off the body and give it to the dogs of Troy.”27

  Aias, always reliable, joins Menelaos in returning to Patroklos, and while the two heroes mount a second, pitched defense over the corpse, Hektor briefly withdraws so as to put on the plundered armor of Achilles. For all of Book Seventeen, throughout the remainder of this long day, the battle rages over the body of Patroklos, which is soon obscured in an eerie mist. Waves of grief are set in motion by his death, washing over god, man, and even Achilles’ immortal horses, who stand apart from the fray in shock:... still as stands a grave monument which is set over

  the mounded tomb of a dead man or lady, they stood there

  holding motionless in its place the fair-wrought chariot,

  leaning their heads along the ground, and warm tears were running

  earthward from underneath the lids of the mourning horses

  who longed for their charioteer, while their bright manes were

  made dirty

  as they streamed down either side of the yoke from under the yoke

  pad. 28

  As the day draws at last toward dusk, Antilochos, Achilles’ other close companion, is dispatched to break the dreadful news to Achilles. Amid the din and confusion and the dusty mist that engulfs the toiling men, the fall of Patroklos has passed unnoticed for a few, and one of these few is Antilochos. Now he, too, learns the tragic news; he, too, like the immortal horses, stands stock-still in grief: “He stayed for a long time without a word, speechless, and his eyes / filled with tears, the springing voice was held still within him.”

  The shock waves of this one death reverberate through the heavens and across the plain, from Zeus to the horses of Achilles to Antilochos. The audience holds its breath while the news is at last carried by Antilochos toward the ships. Simultaneously, with momentous effort, Menelaos and Meriones of Crete hoist the body of Patroklos over their shoulders and, covered by great Aias and his companion, attempt a slow, dangerous retreat.

  At the ships, where he has been keeping an anxious watch, Achilles is gripped by a premonition, “thinking / over in his heart of things which had now been accomplished,” and noting that the Achaeans are once again retreating in confusion. As his fears mount, Antilochos appears and breaks the dreaded news: “the black cloud of sorrow closed on Achilles. / In both hands he caught up the grimy dust, and poured it / over his head and face, and fouled his handsome countenance.”

  As he lies sprawled in the dust, Thetis, from the depths of the sea, hears her son’s crying. Knowing what this forebodes, she, too, “cried shrill in turn.” From the deep recesses of the ocean throng about her the shadowy multitude of her sister Nereïds, daughters of Nereus, the old man of the sea. Filling the “silvery cave” where Nereus dwells, they beat their breasts and wail, their threnody echoing that of the handmaids of Achilles and Patroklos. “ ‘Hear me,’ ” Thetis wails to her sisters:“Ah me, my sorrow, the bitterness in this best of child-bearing, since I gave birth to a son who was without fault and powerful, conspicuous among heroes; and he shot up like a young tree, and I nurtured him, like a tree grown in the pride of the orchard. I sent him away with the curved ships into the land of Ilion to fight with the Trojans; but I shall never again receive him won home again to his country and into the house of Peleus.”

  So profound and affecting is Thetis’ grief that one could overlook the fact that she is mourning the wrong man; it is Patroklos who has died—not Achilles.

  Homer’s Iliad describes the events of a very few days in the last year of the Trojan War; these events do not encompass what was surely one of the most climactic moments of the entire Trojan War cycle—the death of Achilles. That the Iliad knew the body of tradition that did describe Achilles’ death, however, is evident from its striking parallels with key scenes in the other epics. In the Aethiopis, Achilles avenges the Trojan ally Memnon for the death of his close friend Antilochos, whose role resembles that of Patroklos in the Iliad. Then, having slain Memnon,Achilles puts the Trojans to flight and chases them into the city, but is killed by Paris and Apollo. At the Scaean Gates he is shot by Alexander and Apollo in the ankle. A fierce battle develops over his body, in which Ajax kills Glaucus. He hands over Achilles’ armor to be taken to the ships; as for the body, he takes it up and carries it towards the ships, with Odysseus fighting the Trojans off.

  Then they bury Antilochus, and lay out the body of Achilles. Thetis comes with the Muses and her sisters, and laments her son.29

  A telling counterpart of the Iliadic scene of Thetis’ mourning of Patro clos also occurs toward the end of Homer’s second epic, the Odyssey. There the ghost of Agamemnon tells the ghost of Achilles that when he, Achilles, died, “ ‘ your mother, hearing the news, came out of the sea, with immortal / sea girls beside her. Immortal crying arose and spread over / the great sea’ ” (24.47-49).

  For an audience of Homer’s days, then, knowledgeable of the wider epic tradition, the Iliad’s account of the death of Patroklos would have directly evoked the death of his alter ego, Achilles. Above all, the extended scene of Patroklos’ death, with its echoes of the traditional deaths of both Antilochos and Achilles—and Sarpedon’s death, in turn, with its foreshadowing of the fate of Patroklos—did more than ensure that the Iliad ’s audience was entertained with a subtle evocation of one of the most famous, possibly popular episodes of the Trojan war cycle.30 As each death presages the next, the sense of dreadful, impending fate is heightened. The Embassy of Book Nine is memorable for Achilles’ passionate
declaration that nothing offered on earth is more precious than life. Now the Iliad has reached that point where the death of Achilles is forecast as confidently as was the death of Patroklos. Having calibrated the value of his wrath and his honor against his existence, Achilles has been ambushed by guilt and love, and regardless of whether the Iliad covers the event or not, unambiguously, he will shortly die. Thetis mourns now because this tragic fact is already as good as accomplished.

  These background resonances are made explicit when Thetis comes to comfort her son. Rising from out of the sea with her grieving sisters, she comes to Achilles’ shelter. Crying out, she cradles his head in her arms and, weeping, reminds him that all the things he prayed to Zeus for “are brought to accomplishment.” He replies:“. . . there must be on your heart a numberless sorrow

  for your son’s death, since you can never again receive him

  won home again to his country; since the spirit within does not

  drive me

  to go on living and be among men, except on condition

  that Hektor first be beaten down under my spear, lose his life

  and pay the price for stripping Patroklos, the son of Menoitios.”

  Then in turn Thetis spoke to him, letting the tears fall: “Then I must lose you soon, my child, by what you are saying, since it is decreed your death must come soon after Hektor’s.”

  Then deeply disturbed Achilles of the swift feet answered her: “I must die soon, then; since I was not to stand by my companion when he was killed. And now, far away from the land of his fathers, he has perished, and lacked my fighting strength to defend him.”31

  The Patrokleia and the events of its immediate aftermath reflect some of the most masterful and sophisticated narrative structuring in the Iliad. Sarpedon and Glaukos; Antilochos and Achilles; immortal armor that cannot save the man who wears it; divine horses who could run with the West Wind but are stilled with grief, and the screaming death of the mortal horse who dared to run with them; ancient sacrificial ritual and echoes from Gilgamesh; a grieving mother whose son still lives—all these motifs and themes dramatically darken the last hours and death of Patroklos. In turn, the layered resonances of the therápōn’s death foreshadow the event the Iliad’s audience will never see—the death of Achilles.