The War That Killed Achilles

by Caroline Alexander

  Each of them with his chariotry,

  Equipped with their weapons of warfare:

  The chief of Arzawa and he of Masa,

  The chief of Irun and he of Luka,

  He of Dardany, the chief of Carchemish,

  the chief of Karkisha, he of Khaleb,

  The brothers of him of Khatti all together,

  Their total of a thousand chariots came straight into the fire.

  Translation from Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature: A Book of Readings (Berkeley, 1976), vol. 2: The New Kingdom, 66f. The “Dardany” of the list, incidentally, are almost certainly the Dardanians, one of the Homeric names for the Trojans: see Trevor Bryce, The Trojans and Their Neighbours (Abingdon, Oxon, 2006), 136.

  The Greek historical record has preserved tribute lists and lists of religious festival sites from the classical era and later, suggesting that the Catalogue’s original, prosaic function could have been along such census-taking lines. Giovannini, 53ff., discusses these political and religious lists from the fifth century B.C. onward, noting in particular the tours made by envoys to cities whose religious significance afforded them the status of “receivers of sacred envoys.” There are, then, a variety of known reasons that a compilation of place-names could have been composed in the late Bronze Age. Regarded with sufficient veneration to be safeguarded over the centuries, this Panhellenic overview of Mycenaean political geography would later have been adapted into poetic form, embellished with striking but often safely generic epithets—“strong-founded,” “of the great vineyards,” “the sacred”—and given a regal, nostalgic place in the developing Panhellenic epic.

  10 The weight the Catalogue gives to the various contingents does not accord with their importance in the Iliad: The Boiotians, who receive one of the most lavish entries in the Catalogue, are hardly referred to elsewhere in the Iliad, for example, while the entries for the Myrmidons and Salamis islanders, contingents led respectively by the Iliad ’s all-important heroes Achilles and Aias, receive markedly scant treatment. A Boiotian origin or influence has been speculated on the grounds that “catalogue poetry” was a favorite Boiotian genre. The Boiotian poet Hesiod was celebrated for poetry that is essentially long poetic lists: of the generations of the gods (Theogony), mythological genealogies (EHOIAI or Catalogue of Women), movements of the stars (Astronomia), farming lore (Works and Days).

  11 “To an aural audience [the Catalogue] would be the most impressive part, demonstrating the supreme technique of the singer, and giving information of the highest importance”: Minna Skafte Jensen, The Homeric Question and the Oral-Formulaic Theory (Copenhagen, 1980), 79.

  12 See Heiden, 127-54.

  13 See, for example, Ruth Finnegan, Oral Literature in Africa (Oxford, 1970), 122f.

  14 The scholia (Ab) is cited in Kirk’s commentary, sub. v. 776, 241f.

  15 Strabo, Geography 1.1.11, in Horace Leonard Jones, trans., Strabo: Geography, vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA, 1917), 179; his misplacing of Troy is at 13.1.34-36.

  16 One commentator has suggested that the Hellespont may be “boundless” (apeírōn) because its limit was simply not known: Luce, 44. For a survey of the Troad landscape, see Luce, 21ff., and also 236, note 10.

  17 Of the Hill of the Thicket, or more prosaically “Bramble Hill” as G. S. Kirk calls it, “the immortal gods have named it the burial mound of the much leaping or bounding Murine.” One scholium states that Murine was an Amazon, but this lone attestation is not very convincing. “Bounding,” dancing, or leaping, as Kirk speculates, “sounds like some ritual action” (Kirk, sub. vv. 813-14, 247). The Cypria is said to have included a catalogue of the Trojans’ allies: Cypria, argument 12, in M. L. West, ed. and trans., Greek Epic Fragments: From the Seventh to the Fifth Century B.C. (Cambridge, MA, 2003), 81. There is no way of knowing how expansive this was, but the Iliad ’s own scant catalogue follows here. The fact that the majority of leaders have been given Greek names is evidence that this list does not derive from some lost historical document but was created for the epic. The most accessible guide to the Trojan Catalogue, as for the Catalogue of Ships, is Kirk, 248ff. For its possible echo of west Anatolian alliances in the Bronze Age, see Michael Wood, In Search of the Trojan War, rev. ed. (London, 2005), 278f.

  18 Hektor’s name is first mentioned in the Iliad at 1.242, significantly in the words of Achilles: “ ‘Then stricken at heart though you be, you will be able / to do nothing, when in their numbers before man-slaughtering Hektor / they drop and die.’ ”

  19 For the Mycenaean origin of Hektor’s name, see Paul Wathelet, Dictionnaire des Troyens de l’Iliade, vol. 1 (Liège, 1988), 497ff.

  20 On the theme of unequal paired brothers, see K. Reinhardt, “The Judgement of Paris,” in G. M. Wright and P. V. Jones, trans., Homer: German Scholarship in Translation (Oxford, 1997), 184ff. In the Iliad, it is striking that Hektor’s primary role has been displaced by that of his brother Paris, who should by dramatic, not to mention moral, right be the defender of the city he has placed in jeopardy, as, similarly, Agamemnon displaces his brother Menelaos, who should also by dramatic and moral right be the leader of the army assembled to regain his wife, Helen.

  21 A concise overview of arguments for and against the Homeric invention of Hektor is given in Jonathan S. Burgess, The Tradition of the Trojan War in Homer and the Epic Cycle (Baltimore, 2001), 64ff. The theory was first presented by John A. Scott, “Paris and Hector in Tradition and in Homer,” Classical Philology 8, no. 2 (1913), 160-71; and most energetically rebutted by Frederick M. Combellack—apparently still smarting from the effects of an article written thirty years previously—“Homer and Hector,” American Journal of Philology 65, no. 3 (1944), 209-43.

  22 Aiólos defined in Richard John Cunliffe, A Lexicon of the Homeric Dialect (Norman, OK, 1963), 12.

  23 The term is also used once of the war god Ares, at 20.38. See Kirk’s discussion of the term (Kirk, sub. v. 816, 250f.).

  24 For “Paris/Alexander,” see Wathelet, 814ff.; and for “Priam,” ibid., 909f. Paris tends to be the preferred name for Trojans, Alexandros for Greeks. Irene J. F. de Jong, “Paris/Alexandros in the Iliad,” Mnemosyne 40 (1987), 124-28, suggests that Homer, “by keeping the ‘Trojan’ name ‘Paris,’ may have intended to introduce a ‘realistic’ element in the representation of the Trojans as speakers of a foreign language.” A treaty drawn up around 1300 B.C. between the Hittite king Muwattalli II and Alaksandu of Wilusa binds the latter, and his sons and grandsons after him, to an oath of loyalty, thus establishing Wilusa as a vassal state of the Hittite king. The question arises, then, as to why the ruler of Anatolian Wilusa—Wilios—Ilios—bore a Greek name? A possible explanation is hinted at in the treaty itself, in which the Hittite king stipulates that on Alaksandu’s death the treaty will continue to bind his heir—“In regard to the [son] of yours whom you designate for kingship—[whether he is by] your wife or by your concubine.” In other words, the adopted son of a foreign concubine could be the legitimate ruler of Wilusa. For the treaty, see Gary Beckman, Hittite Diplomatic Texts, 2nd ed. (Atlanta, 1999), section 5, 88. It has been suggested that the very particular language in this clause has been tailored to a specific circumstance—such as the possibility that Alaksandu was himself the son of a perhaps foreign concubine, or adopted: see Joachim Latacz, Troy and Homer: Towards a Solution of an Old Mystery (Oxford, 2004), 117f. Ironically, then, while the epic may have retained the exotic, Asiatic name “Paris” precisely because it suggested a realistic detail, it is the more familiar “Alexandros” that evokes a historic prince of Troy.

  25 Text adjusted from Lattimore’s “a red folding robe.”

  26 The verb “to weave” is huphaínō. Examples of the “masculine” use are found at Iliad 3.212; 6.187; 7.324.

  27 The domestic world of the Trojan women is explored by many scholars. See, for example, Maria C. Pantelia, “Spinning and Weaving: Ideas of Domestic Order in Homer,” American Journal of Philology 114, no. 4 (Winter 1993), 493-501. A discu
ssion of the role of women, as spinners and weavers and other skilled manual laborers, as gleaned from the Linear B documents, is given in Jon-Christian Billigmeier and Judy A. Turner, “The Socio-Economic Roles of Women in Mycenaean Greece: A Brief Survey from the Evidence of the Linear B Tablets,” in Helene P. Foley, ed., Reflections of Women in Antiquity (New York, 1981), 1-18.

  28 For ainōs, see Cunliffe, 12; and Kirk, sub. v. 158, 285.

  29 “At the same time a good king and a strong spearfighter”: This line was a favorite motto of Alexander the Great.

  30 It is interesting to consider what Hittite law made of Helen’s situation: 1. If a man seizes a woman in the mountains (and rapes her), the man is guilty and shall die, but if he seizes her in her house, the woman is guilty and shall die. If the woman’s husband catches them (in the act) and kills them, he has committed no offense (clause 197).

  2. If he brings them to the palace gate (i.e. to the royal court) and says: “My wife shall not die,” he can spare his wife’s life, but must also spare the lover. Then he may veil her (clause 198).

  From Trevor Bryce, Life and Society in the Hittite World (Oxford, 2002), 127f.

  31 The eídōlon, or phantom of Helen, was famously evoked in a lost poem by the sixth-century-B.C. poet Stesichorus, who, it was claimed, had earlier been struck blind for defaming her; for attestations of the lost poem, see David A. Campbell, Greek Lyric III: Stesichorus, Ibycus, Simonides, and Others (Cambridge, MA, 2001), fragment 192-93, 93ff. Herodotus claims he was told of Helen’s Egyptian sojourn when he was in Egypt (The Histories, 2. 116-20). In the Odyssey, Helen evidently has a close connection to Egypt, whether or not she had ever visited there (Odyssey 4: 219ff.). Otto Skutsch, “Helen, Her Name and Nature,” Journal of Hellenic Studies, 107 (1987), 188-93, suggests that “two mythological figures are fused in Helen,” the fertility goddess and the phenomenon of St. Elmo’s fire, destroyer of ships.

  32 Later in the Iliad, at 11.138ff., reference is made to the fact that the Trojan Antimachos advocated killing Menelaos “ ‘on the spot’ ” during his Embassy, but he would seem to have been a lone voice in the Trojan assembly.

  33 For a discussion of the similarities between Homeric agreements such as is sworn to between Achaeans and Trojans here, and Near Eastern treaty formats, see Peter Karavites, Promise-Giving and Treaty-Making: Homer and the Near East (Leiden, 1992); and Jaan Puhvel, Homer and Hittite (Innsbruck, 1991), 9ff.

  34 The whisking away of a hero by a deity in time of crisis is a traditional theme in many cultures; see, for example, M. L. West, The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth (Oxford, 1997), 99ff. West describes what appears to be a scene of divine rescue depicted on a silver Cyprian bowl dating to about 700 B.C., evidently based upon a Phoenician story. Others have conjectured that the Aphrodite-Paris-Helen nexus reflects the Indo-European archetype of the Dawn Goddess and her mortal lovers; see Ann Suter, “Aphrodite/Paris/Helen: A Vedic Myth in the Iliad,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 117 (1987), 51-58; and Deborah Dickmann Boedeker, Aphrodite’s Entry into Greek Epic (Leiden, 1974).

  35 Cypria, fragment 10, in West, Greek Epic Fragments, 89ff. For the many accounts of Helen’s parentage and birth, see Timothy Gantz, Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources, vol. 1 (Baltimore, 1993), 318ff.

  36 M. L. West, Indo-European Poetry and Myth (Oxford, 2007), 229ff.

  37 Helen’s speculated pre-epic Greek origins are discussed in Linda Lee Clader, Helen: The Evolution from Divine to Heroic in Greek Epic Tradition (Leiden, 1976); and Skutsch, 188-93.

  38 On Aphrodite, see Walter Burkert, Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical, John Raffan, trans. (Cambridge, MA, 1985), 152ff.

  39 Compare the depiction of Paris’ seduction of Helen, as given by the lyric poet Alcaeus, writing in the early sixth century B.C.:[Paris] . . .

  startled the heart of Argive Helen,

  fluttered it in her breast, and mad about

  that host-cheating Trojan guest she took ship

  and followed him over the sea,

  leaving behind her pretty child,

  leaving her husband’s sumptuous bed, for

  [Cypris/Aphrodite] had led her astray with lust,

  the daughter of Leda and Zeus.

  From Anne Pippin Burnett, trans., Three Archaic Poets: Archilochus, Alcaeus, Sappho (Cambridge, MA, 1983), 186.

  40 On the seduction, see M. W. Edwards, Homer: Poet of the “Iliad” (Baltimore, 1987), 196f.

  41 “Remembered their warcraft” (4.222)—Mnēsanto dè chármēs; chármēs is a vexed word, taken by some commentators to refer to the root char, or “ joy,” and thus meaning “joy in battle,” “eagerness for the fray,” as, for example, Georg Autenrieth, A Homeric Dictionary, Robert P. Keep, trans. (Piscataway, NJ, 2002), 328f. However, the notion of battle joy is so alien to the Iliad that most translators and scholars refer to “the primitive meaning of the root ghar (the Greek char), and explain it as the ‘glow,’ ‘burning flame’ of battle.” See Walter Leaf and M. A. Bayfield, The “Iliad” of Homer, vol. 1 (London, 1971), sub. v. 222, 346f. Thus “fighting, battle; spirit, stomach, ardour for the fight; the art of war, war, fighting” (Cunliffe, 418).

  42 Kirk, sub. vv. 51-53, 336, claims that Argos “was continuously inhabited from the Bronze Age on, and even seems to have escaped major damage at the end of LHIIIB” (circa 1200 B.C.), but this is a misleading quibble. Archaeological evidence shows that diminished populations hung on at a number of formerly important Mycenaean centers, such as Tiryns, Athens, and Argos, but that these, too, faded toward the end of the twelfth and beginning of the eleventh centuries 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), 1-31. Given the general collapse of all major centers in the Argolid and elsewhere on the mainland, the existence of a small, tenacious population hanging on in the ruins of a single settlement would in any case have done little to temper the belief of later generations that they had lost their world.

  43 The list of epithets is given in Walter Leaf, The Iliad, vol. 1 (London, 1900), sub. v. 222, 170.

  Enemy Lines

  1 See Wolf-Hartmut Friedrich, Wounding and Death in the “Iliad”: Homeric Techniques of Description, Gabriele Wright and Peter Jones, trans. (London, 2003), especially the appendix by Dr. K. B. Saunders, who is quoted in the text, 161ff.

  2 Both the Kazakh Epic of Manas and the Kalmyk Dzhangariada are quoted in C. M. Bowra, Heroic Poetry (London, 1961), 57f., in turn from Manas: Kirgizkii Epos (Moscow, 1946), 335, and Dzhangariada: Geroicheskaya Poema Kalmykov, S. A. Kozin, ed. (Moscow, 1944), 219.

  3 Seth L. Schein, The Mortal Hero: An Introduction to Homer’s “Iliad” (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1984), 72ff., gives an eloquent account of the Iliad’s insistence on its heroes’ mortality. For evidence of war injuries and their treatment in the Bronze Age, see Robert Arnott, “War Wounds and Their Treatment in the Aegean Bronze Age,” in Robert Laffineur, ed., POLEMOS: Le contexte guerrier en Égée à l’ge du Bronze (Liège, 1999), 499-507.

  4 On Aineias’ origins and destiny, see Timothy Gantz, Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources, vol. 2 (Baltimore, 1993), 713ff. Other sources for Aineias’ genealogy are the “Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite” vv. 196-98; and Hesiod, Theogony 1008-1010. His heroic tradition is revisited in the last chapter of this book, “Everlasting Glory”; see note 48. The recent DNA discoveries are reported in John Hooper, “Etruscan Mystery Solved,” Guardian, June 18, 2007, 23.

  5 The four instances of Aineias’ divine rescue are 5.311ff. (by Aphrodite), 5.445ff. (by Apollo), 20.92f. (an account of a past rescue by Zeus), and 20.318ff. (by Poseidon, who justifies his rescue by referring to Aineias’ destiny).

  6 The implications of these near misses, or places where the Iliad threatens to overturn a traditional story element, are examined by James V. Morrison, “Alternatives to the Epic Tradition: Homer’s Challenges
in the Iliad,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 122 (1992), 61-71.

  7 Diomedes’ kingship over Argos makes a muddle of heroic geography, as he would appear to be encroaching upon Mycenaean territory under Agamemnon. For the problems raised by the geography of Diomedes’ kingdom, see G. S. Kirk, The “Iliad”: A Commentary, Volume I: Books 1-4 (Cambridge, 1985), 180f.

  8 Thebaid, argument 9, in M. L. West, ed. and trans., Greek Epic Fragments: From the Seventh to the Fifth Century B.C. (Cambridge, MA, 2003), 51ff.

  9 For Diomedes’ old tribal origins, see Gilbert Murray, The Rise of the Greek Epic: Being a Course of Lectures Delivered at Harvard University (Oxford, 1924), 215ff.

  10 Paiëon occurs only in Book Five of the Iliad: Linear B texts from Knossos have a Pajawone. See G. S. Kirk, The “Iliad”: A Commentary, Volume II: Books 5-8 (Cambridge, 1990), sub. vv. 398-402, 102f.; also Walter Burkert, Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical, John Raffan, trans. (Cambridge, MA, 1985), 43.

  11 The terminology of death is paraphrased from Jasper Griffin, Homer on Life and Death (Oxford, 1983), 91, the most eloquent and moving scholarly account of death in both Homeric epics.

  12 The phrase aísima pareipōn, translated here as “since he urged justice” (Iliad 6.62), is more ambiguous in Greek. Aísima has various meanings, from “which is just or right” to “that which is decreed by fate.” See, for example, Richard John Cunliffe, A Lexicon of Homeric Dialect (Norman, OK, 1963), 14.

  13 Of the shield, “it is strange that a hero should set out on a three-mile run through country held by the Trojans carrying so great a weight, and that moreover in a position warranted to make it flay his ankles.” H. L. Lorimer, Homer and the Monuments (London, 1950), 184. Hektor’s shield represents the poetic memory of a genuine Mycenaean piece of armor that was, however, never used in the method described.