The War That Killed Achilles

by Caroline Alexander

  27 Thucydides 1.11-12, in History of the Peloponnesian War, Rex Warner, trans., rev. ed. (New York, 1972), 42.

  28 Iliad 9.328-29. On the traditions associated with these other raids and their sublimation to the Panhellenic Iliad, see Gregory Nagy, The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry (Baltimore, 1979), 140f. For the numerous associations of Lesbos in particular with the Trojan War tradition, see Emily L. Shields, “Lesbos in the Trojan War,” Classical Journal 13 (1917-18), 670-81.

  29 For the end of the Mycenaean world and the Dark Age that followed, see Carol G. Thomas and Craig Conant, Citadel to City-State: The Transformation of Greece, 1200-700 B.C.E. (Bloomington, IN, 1999); and Robin Osborne, Greece in the Making: 1200-479 B.C. (London, 1996). A classic study of the archaeological evidence of this period of great transition is V.R.d’A. Desborough, The Last Mycenaeans and Their Successors: An Archaeological Survey c. 1200-1000 B.C. (Oxford, 1966). For the Dark Ages, see again V.R.d’A. Desborough, The Greek Dark Ages (New York, 1972); and A. M. Snodgrass, The Dark Age of Greece: An Archaeological Survey of the Eleventh to Eighth Centuries B.C., rev. ed. (Edinburgh, 2000). For Mycenaean Boiotia, see John M. Fossey, Topography and Population of Ancient Boiotia, vol. 1 (Chicago, 1988), especially 424ff.; for Thessaly, Bryan Feuer, The Northern Mycenaean Border in Thessaly (Oxford, 1983). Also Desborough, The Greek Dark Ages, 87ff., discusses the Thessalian migration. The evidence for the arrival of the Mycenaeans on Lesbos and their apparent coexistence with the Lesbian population is discussed in Spencer, “Early Lesbos between East and West,” 269-306, and especially 275f.

  30 For the evolution of the epic and the Aeolic phase, see especially West, “The Rise of the Greek Epic,” 151-72; and Paul Wathelet, “Les phases dialectales de l’épopée grecque et l’apport de l’éolien,” Eikasmos 14 (2003), 9-26. A succinct précis of this complex linguistic history is given with much clarity in Richard Janko, The “Iliad”: A Commentary, Volume IV: Books 13-16 (Cambridge, 1992), 15ff. (“The Aeolic Phase of the Epic Tradition”).

  31 On the import of Troy’s proximity, see, for example, Bryce, The Trojans and Their Neighbours, 189.

  32 For Anatolian phraseology in the Iliad, see, for example, Emile Benveniste, Indo-European Language and Society, Elizabeth Palmer, trans. (Coral Gables, FL, 1973), 371ff., on the Aeolo-Phrygian word for “the people” of the king in Homer; and Jaan Puhvel, “An Anatolian Turn of Phrase in the Iliad,” American Journal of Philology 109 (1988), 591-93. Intriguingly, despite waves of migrations that continued over several generations, the archaeological record indicates that the Mycenaean newcomers did not displace native Lesbian culture, and one must surmise that the immigrant usurpers were not wholly intolerant of Anatolian ways. The relationship between the native inhabitants of Lesbos and the Aeolian colonizers in the Archaic Age, but with implications for the late Bronze/Dark Ages, is also examined in Nigel Spencer, “Multi-dimensional Group Definition in the Landscape of Rural Greece,” in Nigel Spencer, ed., Time, Tradition and Society in Greek Archaeology: Bridging the “Great Divide” (London and New York, 1995).

  33 Contacts between Lesbos and Ionic Euboia, the long, thin island that parallels mainland Greece, makes the latter a likely site for this transference, a likelihood borne out by certain elements in the Iliad itself: West, “The Rise of the Greek Epic,” 166f. For compelling evidence of Euboian diffusion of the Homeric epics, see Thomas and Conant, The Trojan War, 65ff.

  34 Similar transferences across languages of other cultures are described in West, “The Rise of the Greek Epic,” 171f.

  35 For the Homeric poets: Demodokos, at the court of the Phaecians, is found at Odyssey 8.43ff., 8.254ff., and 8.486ff.; Phemios, in Ithaka, at 1.153ff. and 22.330ff.

  36 The “Homeric” “Hymn to Delian Apollo” also perpetuates this tradition: “Think of me in future, if ever some long-suffering stranger comes here and asks, ‘O Maidens, which is your favorite singer who visits here, and who do you enjoy most?’ Then you must all answer with one voice . . . ‘It is a blind man, and he lives in rocky Chios: all of his songs remain supreme afterwards. ’ ” (vv. 166ff.); in West, Homeric Hymns, 85.

  37 But see Andrew Dalby, “The Iliad, the Odyssey, and Their Audiences,” Classical Quarterly 45 (1995), 269-79, who argues that the audiences were more humble.

  38 On the Book divisions, see Nicholas Richardson, The “Iliad”: A Commentary, Volume VI: Books 21-24 (Cambridge, 1996), 20f.; for the argument that the poet himself made the Book divisions, see Bruce Heiden, “The Placement of ‘Book Divisions’ in the Iliad,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 118 (1998), 68-81.

  39 Herodotus, The Histories, 2.116.

  40 The principal source of our knowledge of the lost epics is Proclus’ Chrestomathy, or “compendium of useful knowledge,” reproduced in M. L. West, ed. and trans., Greek Epic Fragments: From the Seventh to the Fifth Century B.C. (Cambridge, MA, 2003). It is clear from the distribution of the subjects of these epics that they were carefully composed around the Homeric poems; in other words, these poems deferred to Homer. For a survey of the possible dates and authorship of the Trojan War epics, as well as what can be gleaned of the lost epics themselves, see West, ibid., 12ff. The relationship of the lost epics to the poems of Homer is discussed in Jonathan S. Burgess, The Tradition of the Trojan War in Homer and the Epic Cycle (Baltimore, 2001). A succinct overview of the cycle is given in Malcolm Davies, The Greek Epic Cycle (London, 2003).

  41 The seeds of Homer’s tragic vision of the war appear to have been inherent in the wider body of epic tradition. In the lost epic Cypria, for example, it is stated that Zeus’ plan was “to relieve the all-nurturing earth of mankind’s weight by fanning the great conflict of the Trojan War, to void the burden through death.” Cypria, fragment 1, in West, Greek Epic Fragments, 81f.; see also Hesiod, Catalogue of Women or EHOIAI, vv. II.3ff., in Glenn W. Most, ed. and trans., Hesiod: Volume 2, The Shield. Catalogue of Women. Other Fragments (Cambridge, MA, 2007), fragment 155 (continued), 233. The Iliad itself appears to allude to this tradition; see G. S. Kirk, The Iliad: A Commentary, Volume I: Books 1-4 (Cambridge, 1985), sub. v. 5, 53, for echoes between the Cypria and the Iliad’s proem; and R. Scodel, “The Achaean Wall and the Myth of Destruction,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 86 (1982), 33-50; and also J. Marks, “The Junction Between the Kypria and the Iliad,” Phoenix 56 (1-2) (2002), 1-24. The Eastern antecedents of “the myth of destruction” are also discussed in M. L. West, The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth (Oxford, 1997), 480ff.; and Walter Burkert, The Orientalizing Revolution, Margaret E. Pinder and Walter Burkert, trans. (Cambridge, MA, 1992), 100ff. The application of this myth to the story of the Trojan War “must date from the time when it had become obvious that the Trojan war, though successful, was the beginning of the end for the Mycenaean age”: T.B.L. Webster, From Mycenae to Homer (New York, 1964), 181. Evidence that the Trojan War was perceived as pointless and destructive by the wider Trojan War Epic Cycle, as well as by the Iliad, has recently been examined by Ruth Scodel, “Stupid, Pointless Wars,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 138 (2008), 219-35.

  42 Iliad 1.152ff.; 1.277ff; 1.293ff.

  Chain of Command

  1 G. S. Kirk, The Iliad: A Commentary, Volume I: Books 1-4 (Cambridge, 1985), sub. vv. 29-31, 56, quotes Aristarchus and is the modern commentator.

  2 Ibid., sub. v. 39, 57; Apollonius Sophistes is the scholiast. For Apollo Smintheus, see Simon Pulleyn, Homer: “Iliad” I (Oxford, 2000), sub. v. 39, 134ff.

  3 On the cycle, see “The Things They Carried,” note 41. For the epic theme of neîkos, or quarrel, between heroes, see Gregory Nagy, The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry (Baltimore, 1979), 22ff.

  4 Quotes are respectively Cypria, argument 9, p. 77; Aethiopis, argument 1, p. 111; Aethiopis, argument 4, 113; all in M. L. West, ed. and trans., Greek Epic Fragments: From the Seventh to the Fifth Century B.C. (Cambridge, MA, 2003).


  5 Hesiod, Catalogue of Women or EHOIAI, in Glenn W. Most, ed. and trans., Hesiod: Volume 2, The Shield. Catalogue of Women. Other Fragments (Cambridge, MA, 2007), fragment 155 (continued), 231f.; the story is also told by Stesichorus, in David A. Campbell, Greek Lyric III: Stesichorus, Ibycus, Simonides, and Others (Cambridge, MA, 2001), fragment 190, 91.

  6 On the scepter, see Kirk, sub. vv. 234-39, 77f.

  7 “Fifty were the fast-running ships wherein Achilles / beloved of Zeus had led his men to Troy, and in each one / were fifty men, his companions in arms, at the rowing benches” (Iliad 16.168-70). Cypria, argument 12, refers to “Zeus’ plan to relieve the Trojans by removing Achilles from the Greek alliance”; West, Greek Epic Fragments, 81. This indicates an entirely different dramatic motivation for the absence of Achilles, one in which there is no quarrel, no anger, and no intervention by Thetis.

  8 On the best-guess meaning of “hecatomb,” see Kirk, sub. v. 65, 60.

  9 On Homer’s reticence for the outlandish, see Jasper Griffin, “The Epic Cycle and the Uniqueness of Homer,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 97 (1977), 39-53. Briareus is named, along with two other monstrous brothers, by Hesiod, in his Theogony (“The Genealogy of the Gods”), as an essential ally of Zeus in his battle for supremacy with the Titans; see, for example, Theogony, 149, in Glenn W. Most, ed. and trans., Hesiod: Volume 1, Theogony. Works and Days. Testimonia (Cambridge, MA, 2006), 15. Another tradition, preserved in a fragment of a lost epic entitled Titanomachy (“The Battle of the Titans,” by Eumelus), states that Aigaion “fought on the side of the Titans” against Zeus, not for him. West, Greek Epic Fragments, 225f.

  10 In Greek mythology, Zeus’ father, Kronos, learning that one of his children was destined to overthrow him, swallowed them all—save Zeus, for whom his wife substituted a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes to deceive him. Later Kronos was induced to vomit back his children, and, led by Zeus, they indeed overpowered him. Kronos in his turn had come to power by overthrowing and castrating his father, Uranus; the entire intricate story is related in Hesiod, Theogony, 453ff., in Most, Hesiod: Theogony, 39ff. The Hittite Song of Kumarbi relates some of the same themes of the duping and castration of a primordial god; see M. L. West, The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth (Oxford, 1997), 277ff.

  11 On the function of stories of the men of old, particularly of a hero’s father, in heroic society, see Bruce Karl Braswell, “Mythological Innovation in the Iliad,” Classical Quarterly, n.s., 21, no. 1 (1971), 16-26; and Caroline Alexander, “Appeals to Tradition in the Iliad, with Particular Reference to Achilles,” dissertation, Columbia University, 1991.

  12 The Odes of Pindar, C. M. Bowra, trans. (London, 1969), 52f.

  13 The implications of this transforming myth were exposed and movingly explored in a landmark work by Laura M. Slatkin, The Power of Thetis: Allusion and Interpretation in the “Iliad” (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1991); for the validity of drawing upon a reference as late as Pindar for evidence of an Iliadic tradition, see her note 26, p. 76f. Thetis’ destiny is also an important dramatic element in Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound, vv. 907ff.

  14 Similar delusional dreams attend many military ventures; compare the report of a U.S. Marine commander from Task Force Tarawa that, on their approach to Nasiriya, in southern Iraq, in March 2003, they had been led to believe that the city’s defenders would lay down their weapons and “put flowers in our gun barrels, hold up their babies for us to kiss and give us the keys to the city.” Tim Pritchard, “When Iraq Went Wrong,” New York Times, December 5, 2006.

  15 Xíphos=qi-si-pe-e in the Linear B tablets; see Kirk, sub. vv. 2.45, 118.

  16 The testing of the army is a motif found in literature and mythology of the ancient Near East, where it functions as a method of weeding out cowards before engaging in battle. See, for example, West, The East Face of Helicon 207f.

  17 It was Thersites who featured in another epic quarrel with Achilles; the Aethiopis states that “Achilles kills Thersites after being abused by him and insulted over his alleged love” of the Amazon queen (Aethiopis, argument 1), and the Iliadic passage is undoubtedly an allusion to a well-established epic hatred between the two men. For Thersites as the mirror opposite of Achilles—the worst (aískhistos) of the Achaeans as opposed to the best—see Nagy, 259ff.

  18 On the origins of Thersites, see P. Chantraine, “À Propos de Thersite,” L’Antiquité Classique 32 (1963), 18-27.

  19 James F. McGlew, “Royal Power and the Achaean Assembly at Iliad 2.84-393,” Classical Antiquity, 8, no. 2 (October 1989), 290.

  20 “Agamemnon’s leadership is so disastrous, and his blunders often so obvious, that it has seemed unnecessary to inquire any further into Homer’s point.” Dean C. Hammer, “ ‘Who Shall Readily Obey?’: Authority and Politics in the Iliad,” Phoenix 51, no. 1 (1997), 4.

  21 On changing leadership patterns in the eighth century B.C., see, for example, Carol G. Thomas and Craig Conant, Citadel to City-State: The Transformation of Greece, 1200-700 B.C.E. (Bloomington, IN, 1999), 132ff.

  Terms of Engagement

  1 “The Asian meadow beside the Kaÿstrian waters” where the wildfowl gather can be identified with the floodplain of the river that still bears this name flowing just outside of Ephesus, on the Aegean coast of Turkey. J. V. Luce, Celebrating Homer’s Landscapes: Troy and Ithaca Revisited (New Haven, CT, 1998), 15ff.

  2 For the various explanations of the aegis and its association with the thunder god, see Richard Janko, The “Iliad”: A Commentary, Volume IV: Books 13-16 (Cambridge, 1992), sub. vv. 308-11, 260f.

  3 For the Homeric similes, see William C. Scott, The Oral Nature of the Homeric Simile (Leiden, 1974). Less technical and more accessible is G. P. Shipp, Studies in the Language of Homer, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 1972). Also Carroll Moulton, Similes in the Homeric Poems (Göttingen, 1977), especially 27ff., on the cascade of images in Book Two.

  4 This line, the translation of 2.488, is a substitution for Lattimore’s translation, which reads (with preceding verse), “Who then of those were the chief men and the lords of the Danaans? / I could not tell over the multitude of them nor name them.” The emendation makes less ambiguous the fact that “the multitude” (plēthùn) does not refer to “a multitude of leaders” but to “the multitude,” the masses—i.e., the troops. For this clarification and its implications, see Bruce Heiden, “Common People and Leaders in Iliad Book 2: The Invocation of the Muses and the Catalogue of Ships,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 138 (2008), 127-54.

  5 For the range of scholarly opinion, see A. Giovannini, Étude historique sur les origines du catalogue des vaisseaux (Berne, 1969), who believes that the Catalogue dates from around the seventh century B.C.; and R. Hope Simpson and J. F. Lazenby, The Catalogue of Ships in Homer’s “Iliad” (Oxford, 1970), whose balanced presentation of the archaeological evidence leads them to advocate a Mycenaean origin for the record of place-names, later reworked by the tradition. Similarly, Mark W. Edwards, “The Structure of Homeric Catalogues,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 110 (1980), 81-105, argues that while a list of place-names is authentically Mycenaean, the descriptive elements attached to them are not. A succinct but detailed survey of the scholarship and Catalogue itself is made by G. S. Kirk, The “Iliad”: A Commentary, Volume I: Books 1-4 (Cambridge, 1985), 168-240.

  6 Recently, Linear B tablets found at Thebes confirm the existence of a previously unlocatable site—Elēon—which is named in the Catalogue: “they who held Eleon and Hyle and Peteon” (Iliad 2.500). For the names recorded in the Theban tablets and the region they describe, see Louis Godart and Anna Sacconi, “La géographie des états mycéniens,” Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (1999), 2:527-46; for the individual towns, see E. Visser, Homers Katalog der Schiffe (Stuttgart and Leipzig, 1997), 261-66.

  7 A list of late forms is given in Shipp, 235ff. On the Catalogue’s use of the late Ionian nées for “ship”; se
e Kirk, 171.

  8 The possibility of such a muster roll, on the other hand, is hinted at by other Bronze Age documents. Linear B tablet #53 An12 from Pylos gives “a list of the numbers of rowers to be provided by various towns for an expedition to Pleuron”: e-re-ta pe-re-u-ro-na-de i-jo-te (for the Greek erétai Pleurōnáde ióntes”)—“rowers to go to Pleuron”; thirty men are listed, a figure suggestive of a ship’s complement. See M. Ventris and J. Chadwick, Documents in Mycenaean Greek, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 1973), 183f.; also given in Kirk, 239.

  9 The Catalogue is organized into three tours, or circuits: central and southern Greece; Crete, Rhodes, and the Dodecanese Islands; and, with vaguer precision, northern Greece and Thessaly. Lists reminiscent of the Catalogue survive in records and documents from other parts of the Bronze Age world. A poem commemorating the feats of Ramses II in the Battle of Kadesh, fought between Egyptians and Hittites around 1275 B.C., for example, contains a battle list not of ships but of chariots: Then he caused many chiefs to come,