The War That Killed Achilles

by Caroline Alexander

Heavy with bronze as it was, the ash spear did not sever the windpipe,

  so that he could speak, making an exchange of words.

  He fell in the dust. And shining Achilles vaunted:

  “Hektor, you surely thought when you stripped Patroklos

  that you were safe, and you thought nothing of me as I was absent—

  pitiable fool. For standing by, his far greater avenger,

  I remained behind by the hollowed ships—

  I who have broken the strength of your knees. You the dogs and birds

  will rip apart shamefully; Patroklos the Achaeans will honor with

  funeral rites.”

  Then with little strength Hektor of the shimmering helm addressed

  him:

  “By your soul, by your knees, by your parents,

  do not let the dogs devour me by the ships of the Achaeans,

  but take the bronze and abundance of gold,

  the gifts my father and lady mother will give you;

  give my body back to go home, so that

  the Trojans and the Trojan wives will give my dead body its portion of

  the fire.”

  Then, looking at him from under his brows, Achilles of the swift feet

  answered:

  “Do not, you dog, supplicate me by knees or parents.

  Would that my passion and spirit would drive me

  to devour your hacked-off flesh raw, such things you have done;

  so there is no one who can keep the dogs from your head,

  not if they haul here and weigh out ten times and twenty times the

  ransom and promise more,

  not if Dardanian Priam seeks to pay your weight in gold,

  not in any way will your lady mother

  mourn you laid out upon your bier, the child she bore;

  but the dogs and the birds will devour you wholly.”

  Then, dying, Hektor of the shimmering helm addressed him:

  “Knowing you well, I divine my fate; nor will I persuade you.

  Surely the soul in your breast is iron.

  Yet now take care, lest I become the cause of the god’s wrath

  against you,

  on that day when Paris and Phoibos Apollo

  destroy you, great warrior though you are, at the Skaian Gates.”

  Then the closure of death enveloped him as he was speaking,

  and his soul flew from his limbs and started for Hades,

  lamenting her fate, abandoning manhood and all its young vigor.

  Shining Achilles addressed him, dead though he was:

  “Lie dead. I will take death at that time when

  Zeus and the other deathless gods wish to accomplish it.”

  He spoke and pulled his bronze spear from the dead body,

  and, laying it aside, he stripped the bloodied armor from Hektor’s

  shoulders.

  But the other sons of the Achaeans ran up around him

  and admired Hektor’s physique and beauty,

  nor was there a man who stood by him without inflicting a wound.

  And thus each would speak, looking at his neighbor:

  “Well, well; he is softer to handle, to be sure,

  this Hektor, than when he torched our ships with blazing fire.”

  Thus they would speak, and stabbed him as they stood by.

  But when shining Achilles of the swift feet had stripped him of arms,

  he stood amid the Achaeans and pronounced winged words:

  “O friends, leaders, and counselors of the Achaeans;

  since the gods gave me this man to break,

  who committed evil deeds, more than all the other Trojans together,

  come, let us go under arms and scout around the city

  so that we may learn the disposition of the Trojans, what they have in

  mind,

  whether they will abandon their high city now this man is dead,

  or desire to remain, although Hektor is no longer with them

  —but why does my spirit recite these things?

  There lies by the ships a dead man, unmourned, unburied

  —Patroklos. I shall not forget him as long as I am

  among the living and my own knees have power in them.

  And if men forget the dead in Hades,

  I will remember my beloved companion even there.

  But come now, Achaean men, singing a victory song,

  let us return to our hollowed ship and bring him along.

  We have achieved great glory; we have slain shining Hektor,

  whom the Trojans worshipped throughout their city as a god.”

  He spoke, and conceived a shocking deed for shining Hektor:

  behind both feet he pierced the tendon

  between heel and ankle and fastened there ox-hide straps,

  and bound him to his chariot and let the head drag along.

  Lifting his glorious armor, Achilles mounted his chariot

  and whipped the horses to begin, and they two, not unwilling, took off.

  A cloud of dust rose as Hektor was dragged, his blue-black hair

  fanning around him, his head lolling wholly in the dust

  that before was handsome; so Zeus gave him to his enemies

  to be defiled in the land of his own fathers.

  His head was wholly befouled by dust; and now his mother

  ripped her hair and flung her shining veil

  far away, shrieking her grief aloud as she looked on her child.

  His beloved father cried out pitiably, and around them the people

  were gripped by wailing and crying throughout the city

  —it was as if the whole of

  lofty Ilion, from its topmost point, were consumed with fire.

  With difficulty the people restrained old Priam in his grief

  as he strove to go forth from the Dardanian Gates.

  Thrashing in the muck, he entreated all,

  calling off each man by name:

  “Hold off friend, for all your care for me, and let me

  leave the city to go to the ships of the Achaeans.

  I will entreat this reckless man of violent deeds,

  if somehow he may respect my age and pity

  my years. Even his father is of such years,

  Peleus, who bore him and raised him to be a destruction

  to the Trojans; and beyond all men he has inflicted hardship on me.

  For so many of my flourishing sons he killed;

  I did not mourn as much for all of them, for all my grief,

  as for this one, bitter grief for whom will carry me down to the house

  of Hades—

  Hektor. Would that he died in my arms.

  We would have glutted ourselves with crying and weeping,

  his mother, she, ill-fated woman, who bore him, and I.”

  Thus he spoke lamenting, and thereupon the people mourned.

  And Hekabe led the Trojan women in the close-pressed lament:

  “My child, I am nothing. Why should I live now, grievously suffering,

  when you are dead? You who were night and day my

  triumph through the city, a blessing to all,

  to the Trojans and the Trojan women throughout the community,

  who used to receive you like a god.

  For you were to them, indeed, their glory,

  while you lived; and now death and fate have overtaken you.”

  Thus she spoke, crying. But Hektor’s wife knew nothing.

  For no trusty messenger had come to her

  announcing that her husband remained outside the walls,

  and she was weaving at her loom in the corner of her high-roofed

  house

  a double-folded cloak of crimson and working intricate figures in it.

  She called through the house to her attendants with the lovely hair,

  to set a great tripod over the fire, so that

  there would be a warm bath for Hek
tor when he returned home from

  battle—

  poor wretch, she did not know that far from all baths

  gray-eyed Athene broke him at the hands of Achilles.

  Then she heard the keening and groaning from the tower,

  and her limbs shook, and the shuttle fell to the ground,

  and she called back to her maids with the beautiful hair:

  “Come, both of you follow me; I will see what trouble has happened.

  I hear the voice of Hektor’s worthy mother,

  the heart in my own breast leaps to my mouth, my limbs beneath me

  are rigid; something evil is come near the sons of Priam.

  May my word be far from all hearing, but terribly

  I fear that shining Achilles has cut my bold Hektor

  from the city, on his own, and driving him toward the plain

  has stopped him of that fateful ardor

  which possessed him, since he never remained in the ranks of men

  but rushed far to the front, yielding in his courage to no one.”

  Thus speaking, she raced through the hall like a madwoman,

  her heart shaking, and her two maids ran with her.

  But when she reached the tower and the crowd of men,

  she stood on the wall, staring around her, and saw him

  dragged before the city. Swift horses

  dragged him, unconcernedly, to the hollow ships of the Achaeans.

  Dark night descended over her eyes,

  she fell backward and breathed out her soul;

  far from her head she flung her shining headdress,

  the diadem and cap, and the braided binding,

  and the veil, which golden Aphrodite gave her

  on that day when Hektor of the shimmering helm led her

  out of the house of Eëtion, when he gave countless gifts for her dowry.

  In a throng around her stood her husband’s sisters and his brothers’

  wives,

  who supported her among themselves, as she was stricken to the point

  of death.

  But when then she regained her breath and the strength in her breast

  was collected,

  with gulping sobs she spoke with the Trojan women:

  “Hektor, I am unlucky. For we were both born to one fate,

  you in Troy, in the house of Priam,

  and I in Thebes, under forested Plakos,

  in the house of Eëtion, who reared me when I was still young,

  ill-fated he, I of bitter fate. I wish that he had not begotten me.

  Now you go to the house of Hades in the depths of the earth,

  leaving me in shuddering grief,

  a widow in your house. The child is still only a baby,

  whom we bore, you and I, both ill-fated. You will

  be, Hektor, no help to him, now you have died, nor he to you.

  For even if he escapes this war of the Achaeans that has caused so

  many tears,

  there will always be for him pain and care hereafter.

  Other men will rob him of his land;

  the day of orphaning cuts a child off entirely from his agemates;

  he is bent low in all things, his cheeks are tearstained.

  In his neediness, the child approaches his father’s companions;

  he tugs one by the cloak, another by his tunic;

  pitying him, one of them offers him a little cup,

  and he moistens his lips yet does not moisten his palate.

  But a child blessed with both parents will beat him away from the

  feast,

  striking him with his hands, reviling him with abuse:

  ‘Get away—your father does not dine with us’—

  and, crying, the boy comes up to his widowed mother

  —Astyanax, who before on his father’s knees

  used to eat only marrow and the rich fat of sheep,

  then, when sleep took him and he left off his childish play,

  he would slumber in a bed in his nurse’s embrace,

  in his soft bedding, his heart filled with cheery thoughts.

  Now he will suffer many things, missing his dear father

  —Astyanax—‘little lord of the city’—whom the Trojans called by this

  name,

  for you alone defended their gates and long walls.

  Now beside the curved ships, away from your parents,

  the writhing worms devour you when the dogs have had enough

  of your naked body; yet there are clothes laid aside in the house,

  finely woven, beautiful, fashioned by the hands of women.

  Now I will burn them all in a blazing fire,

  for they are no use to you, you are not wrapped in them,

  —I will burn them to be an honor to you in the sight of the Trojan men

  and Trojan women.”

  So she spoke, crying, and the women in response mourned.

  Everlasting Glory

  Achilles has killed Hektor. He has won the climactic battle of this great epic, as he has won his confrontation with Agamemnon. The wrath of Achilles was the dramatic theme of the Iliad, and that wrath has now been retired and “unsaid.” Surely, by all convention, the Iliad will end here, with the triumphant return of its vindicated hero. But the Iliad is not a conventional epic, and at the very moment of its hero’s greatest military triumph, Homer diverts his focus from Achilles to the epic’s two most important casualties. Patroklos and Hektor: it is to the consequences of their deaths, especially to the victor, that all action of the Iliad has been inexorably leading.

  At the Achaean camp, Achilles has dumped Hektor’s corpse “on his face in the dust” by Patroklos’ bier. While the other Achaeans returned to their ships, the Myrmidons, under Achilles’ direction, have been processing around the body of Patroklos, weeping. Achilles himself orchestrates a stupendous sacrifice, and oxen, sheep, pigs, and bleating goats are slaughtered for the funeral feast and their blood “ran and was caught in cups” as an offering to Patroklos, a gesture possibly calculated to return to him his life and color.1 Still filthy with blood and grime from battle, Achilles refuses to wash until he has cremated Patroklos, and he gives orders for work teams to set forth “ ‘with the dawn’ ” to cut timber for the funeral pyre. At last, worn with weariness and grief, he falls asleep by the seashore, with the sound of the waves washing over him:and there appeared to him the ghost of unhappy Patroklos

  all in his likeness for stature, and the lovely eyes, and voice,

  and wore such clothing as Patroklos had worn on his body.

  The ghost came and stood over his head and spoke a word to him:

  “You sleep, Achilles; you have forgotten me; but you were not

  careless of me when I lived, but only in death. Bury me

  as quickly as may be, let me pass through the gates of Hades.

  The souls, the images of dead men, hold me at a distance,

  and will not let me cross the river and mingle among them,

  but I wander as I am by Hades’ house of the wide gates.

  And I call upon you in sorrow, give me your hand; no longer

  shall I come back from death, once you give me my rite of

  burning.

  No longer shall you and I, alive, sit apart from our other

  beloved companions and make our plans, since the bitter destiny

  that was given me when I was born has opened its jaws to take me.

  And you, Achilles like the gods, have your own destiny;

  to be killed under the wall of the prospering Trojans.”

  The ghost of Patroklos begs a last request: that his bones and ashes be placed with those of Achilles, when he, too, dies. In his sleep, Achilles responds to Patroklos, imploring him to stay, “ ‘if only for a little’ ”—but the spirit vanishes, going “underground, like vapour, / with a thin cry.” Starting awake, Achilles wonders aloud, “ ‘Even in the house of Hades there is left s
omething, / a soul and an image, but there is no real heart of life in it.’ ”

  In the Iliad, the act of dying is described in close detail, as is the treatment of the corpse, the act of mourning, and the state of mind and actions of those left to grieve. The fate of the deceased warrior himself, however, his “essence” as opposed to his corpse, is touched upon directly only here, with the appearance of Patroklos’ psychḗ and eídōlon—his soul and image.2 Historically, the Greek practice of cult worship of heroes kept a hero’s identity potent after his death, through the worshippers’ belief that the dead had power to assist the living; but although hero cults became widespread following the end of Homer’s Iron Age, there is no evidence of this practice in the Iliad.3

  More particularly, in the case of its two most important dead heroes, the Iliad strenuously eschews any hint that the state of death can in any way be mitigated or that the hero retains any abilities after death. Once the soul, or life force, flees, the inanimate body becomes matter, which, although tenderly handled, washed, anointed, and shrouded, will—barring some rare act of divine intervention—rot and breed flies. The soul departs, going “ ‘down under the gloom and the darkness,’ ” and although possessions and gifts are cremated along with the corpse, these are only tributes to the dead warrior, not objects he will have any capacity to use in his “journey” to the next existence. In the Odyssey, the dreadful impotence and nonbeing of the dead is made explicit; here one learns only that the “ ‘images of dead men’ ” flutter on the far shore of the unnamed river of the Underworld, presumably the Styx, and that burial or cremation is required to release them wholly.4 Thus Patroklos does not exist anymore; only his eídōlon, or likeness, briefly flickers, caught between memories of Patroklos’ life on earth and the urgent need to reach the gray world that now claims him. The simple words of Patroklos’ ghostly image ensure that the audience understands, whatever may be said or done afterward in his memory, that death brings the warrior “himself ” no reward or glory.

  The funeral of Patroklos is performed with barbaric splendor, led by an honor guard of Myrmidons, mounted in full armor behind their chariots, who are followed by “a cloud of foot-soldiers / by thousands.” Amid this magnificent procession, the body of Patroklos is borne by the hetaroi—the companions—blanketed with their hair that they have cut as an act of mourning. At the place of the pyre, Achilles cuts his own hair, “which he had grown long to give to the river Spercheios,” in Phthia, in fulfillment of a vow Peleus had made to commemorate his son’s homecoming; Peleus had lived in expectation of his son’s eventual return, it seems, as Thetis had lived in expectation of his imminent death.