37 Apollo’s association with the lyre is given poetic explanation in the Homeric Hymn “To (Delian) Apollo,” vv. 130ff., and “Hymn to Hermes,” vv. 499ff. Hera’s words, however, appear to refer to a tradition touched upon in a surviving fragment of a lost tragedy by Aeschylus, in which a heartbroken Thetis recalls how Apollo knew of Achilles’ tragically destined short life but, dissembling at her wedding, “sang that I would be blest with a son / who would live a long life, unacquainted with suffering,” as Thetis cries out, in this fragment:“And, saying all this, he sang a paian in praise of my great good fortune cheering my heart.
And I thought the mouth of Apollo could not lie,
rich as it is with prophetic skill.
But he who sang of this, he who was there at the feast,
he who said these things, he it was who killed
my son.”
Translation from Jennifer R. March, “Peleus and Achilles in the Catalogue of Women,” Proceedings of the XVIII International Congress of Papyrology, Athens 25-31 May 1986 (Athens, 1988), 345-52. The fragment is in Stephan Radt, ed., Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, vol 3. Aeschylus (Göttingen, 1985), fragment 350, 416ff.; the verses are also quoted by Plato in the Republic (2.383b). For the argument that the Aeschylean fragment is incompatible with the Iliad’s depiction of Thetis as a mother possessed of unwavering foreknowledge of her son’s early death, see Jonathan S. Burgess, “Untrustworthy Apollo and the Destiny of Achilles: Iliad 24.55-63,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 102 (2004), 21-40; this argument, however, does not take into account the keen sense of betrayal that Thetis bears throughout the epic, nor the fact that although she might indeed have known of her son’s early death all the days of his actual life, Apollo’s prophecy was sung before his conception.
38 Both also share a shadowy and mostly unexamined relationship with wolves. For Apollo’s numerous associations with wolves, see Daniel E. Gershenson, Apollo the Wolf-god (McLean, VA, 1991). Achilles’ association comes through his grandfather Aiakos; for the sources to this obscure tradition, see Gantz, vol. 1, 227.
39 Robert J. Rabel, “Apollo as a Model for Achilles in the Iliad,” American Journal of Philology 111, no. 4, 429-40. The use of the same diction to describe the ability of Apollo and Achilles (and Zeus and Thetis) to dispatch or ward off destruction is examined by Laura M. Slatkin, “The Wrath of Thetis,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 116 (1986), 1-24, especially 15f.
40 The proem is discussed in G. S. Kirk, The “Iliad”: A Commentary, Volume I: Books 1-4 (Cambridge, 1985), 52f.
41 Burkert, Greek Religion, 202. A number of explanations for the hostility between the two have been offered; the ritual antagonism is examined by Nagy, The Best of the Achaeans, 61ff. and 289ff. The possibility of Achilles’ anger having been caused by his murder of Trojan Troilos in a sanctuary of Apollo is raised by Malcolm Davies, “The Judgement of Paris and Iliad Book XXIV,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 101 (1981), 56-62, especially 60.
42 Other predictions of his death specifically at the hands of Apollo are given at 19.416f. by Xanthos (who refers to the agents as “ ‘a god and a mortal’ ”), and at 22.359f. by Hektor. In one tradition, Apollo is also the slayer of Meleager, hero of Phoinix’s endlessly tactless paradigm; see Hesiod, Catalogue of Women or EHOIAI, in Most, fragment 22.10ff., 75.
43 Achilles’ chase under the walls of Troy closely parallels the circumstances of his own death: “Achilles puts the Trojans to flight and chases them into the city, but is killed by Paris and Apollo,” records the blunt summary of the lost Aethiopis; West, Greek Epic Fragments, argument 3, 113.
44 Lord Moran, The Anatomy of Courage (London, 2007), 67.
Everlasting Glory
1 Walter Burkert, Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical, John Raffan, trans. (Cambridge, MA, 1985), 60.
2 Indirectly, it has been evoked in the pathetically beautiful words that describe the moment death descends upon both Patroklos and Hektor, when the “soul flew from his limbs and started for Hades, / lamenting her fate, abandoning manhood and all its young vigor” (16.855ff. and 22.362). These verses are also noteworthy for containing a notable archaism: the phrase lipous’ androtēta kaì hēbēn—“leaving manhood and its young vigor”—does not scan, or fit the hexameter meter, as it stands but was shaped for the Mycenaean or possibly even earlier form *an.rtāta, suggesting that poets were singing of dying warriors from very ancient times. See Richard Janko, The “Iliad”: A Commentary, Volume IV: Books 13-16 (Cambridge, 1992), sub. vv. 855-58, 420f.
3 Archaeology shows that at the end of the Dark Ages, hero-cult worship spread throughout Greece, into the emerging city-states. The many later descriptions given in surviving literature show that worship at these hero cults was essentially chthonic, or relating to the Underworld—rites that involved the sacrifice of black animals and libations of blood, enacted at dusk around a low hearth. Sometimes the heroes worshipped by the cults were the inventions of a later age, pragmatically calculated to suit a particular location or need, or revered historical personages awarded this ultimate honor; but the most common cults were those for heroes named in epic. For the appearance of hero cult at the end of the Iron Age, see Peter G. Calligas, “Hero-cult in Early Iron Age Greece,” in Robin Hägg, Nanno Marinatos, and Gullög C. Nordquist, eds., Early Greek Cult Practice (Stockholm, 1988), 229-34; Calligas believes that the contemporary emergence of both hero cult and epic may represent parallel developments rather than be causal. The complexities of different types of cults are reviewed through the archaeological record by A. Mazarakis Ainian, “Reflections on Hero Cults in Early Iron Age Greece,” in Robin Hägg, ed., Ancient Greek Hero Cult (Stockholm, 1999), 9-36, who argues for epic as the shaping force. For the argument that hero cults arose under the influence of epic but were also related to local burial practices, see J. N. Coldstream, “Hero-Cults in the Age of Homer,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 96 (1976), 8-17. For discussion of different types of such cults, see Lewis Richard Farnell, Greek Hero Cults and Ideas of Immortality (Oxford, 1921); a list of cults named in ancient sources is at 403ff. An examination of the evidence for blood offerings at hero cults suggests that the offering was made as an extension and modification of the common thysia, or sacrifice of a burnt offering; “In those cases, the blood may have functioned as a reference both to the battlefield sphagia [sacrificial slaughter] and to the fact that the hero had died, and thus acquired his heroic status, as a consequence of war”; G. Ekroth, “Offerings of Blood in Greek Hero-cults,” in V. Pirenne-Delforge and E. Suárez de la Torre, eds., Héros et héroïnes dans les myths et les cultes grecs: actes du Colloque organisé à l’Université de Valladolid du 26 au 29 mai 1999 (Liège, 2000), (Kernos; supplement 10), 263-80; quoted passage is on p. 279. As discussed, some scholars have seen evidence of cult ritual in the description of the death of Sarpedon and the transference of his body to his homeland (16.456f.); see chapter “Man Down,” note 22.
4 The Styx is the only river of Hades named in the Iliad (2.755, 8.369, 14.271, and 15.37). The Odyssey, however, gives a clearer picture of Underworld geography: “There Pyriphlegethon and Kokytos, which is an off-break from the water of the Styx, flow into Acheron. There is a rock there, and the junction of two thunderous rivers.”
—Odyssey 10.513-15
5 The interment of Patroklos’ bones is closely parsed, with a speculative sketch of how the tomb was placed over the pyre, by Angeliki Petropoulou, “The Interment of Patroklos (Iliad 23.252-57),” American Journal of Philology 109 (1988), 482-95.
6 No armor, however, is cremated with Patroklos; see chapter “No Hostages,” note 1.
7 M. L. West, Indo-European Poetry and Myth (Oxford, 2007), 496f.; West points out that in all probability the Indo-Europeans “did not practice cremation, which first appears among the Hittites and spreads into Greece and northern Europe from the thirteenth century B.C.E.” Quote is on p. 498.
8 “Rare Mycenaean Grave Unearthed,” Friends of Troy Newsletter, Dece
mber 2007, p. 2.
9 Trevor Bryce, The Trojans and Their Neighbours (Abingdon, Oxon, 2006), 22f.; and Trevor Bryce, Life and Society in the Hittite World (Oxford, 2002), 176ff.
10 For the heroic burial of Lefkandi, see Mervyn Popham, E. Touloupa, and L. H. Sackett, “The Hero of Lefkandi,” Antiquity 56 (1982), 169-74 and plates xxii-xxv. The burials and grave goods are described in more detail by M. R. Popham, P. G. Calligas, and L. H. Sackett, eds., Lefkandi II: The Protogeometric Building at Toumba, Part 2: The Excavation, Architecture and Finds (Oxford, 1993), especially 19ff., and plates 15-22. Evidence of the sacrifice of domestic animals, perhaps on their master’s pyre, predates Homer; see, for example, the remarkable late Middle Helladic horse burial described by Evangelia Protonotariou-Deilaki, “The Tumuli of Mycenae and Dendra,” in Robin Hägg and Gullög C. Nordquist, eds., Celebrations of Death and Divinity in the Bronze Age Argolid (Stockholm, 1990), 85-102. Examples of Iron Age tumuli built over pyres are given in Nicholas Richardson, The “Iliad”: A Commentary, Volume VI: Books 21-24 (Cambridge, 1996), sub. vv. 245-48, 198f.; and cremations, sub. v. 254, 199f. That despite archaeological matches with individual elements of Patroklos’ funeral, “no one burial containing all of the elements or on anywhere near the scale” has yet been discovered is emphasized by Dennis D. Hughes, Human Sacrifice in Ancient Greece (London, 1991), 66.
11 This outrage was widely covered; see, for example, “Greek Antiquities: Victims of Demand for Housing,” New York Times, October 2, 1980, p. A12.
12 Again, Mycenaean practices are the least certain: sixteenth-century-B.C. grave stelae, or markers, found at Mycenae depicting a warrior mounted behind a chariot pulled by a straining horse may possibly commemorate athletic contests for the deceased; they may also, however, represent hunting or military scenes; Emily Vermeule, Greece in the Bronze Age (Chicago, 1964), 90ff. Other possible evidence of Bronze Age competitions in footracing, boxing, and charioteering is described in Eva Rystead, “Mycenaean Runners—including APOBATAI,” in E. B. French and K. A. Wardle, eds., Problems in Greek Prehistory (Bristol, 1988), 437-42.
13 Charles Carter, “Athletic Contests in Hittite Religious Festivals,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 47, no. 3 (July 1988), 185-87.
14 Many of these festal contests were choral or poetic. In his Works and Days, a dour farmer’s almanac in verse, Hesiod records how he had sailed across the sea “for the games of valorous Amphidamas—that great-hearted man’s sons had announced and established many prizes—and there, I declare, I gained victory with a hymn, and carried off a tripod with handles.” Hesiod, Works and Days, 654f., in Glenn W. Most, ed. and trans., Hesiod: Volume 1, Theogony. Works and Days. Testimonia (Cambridge, MA, 2006), 141.
15 On the social function of the games, see, for example, James M. Redfield, Nature and Culture in the “Iliad”: The Tragedy of Hector (Chicago, 1975), 210.
16 When Apollo’s son Asklepios was killed by a thunderbolt, Apollo revenged himself by killing the Cyclops, a son of Zeus, who had made the bolt. As punishment for this crime, Apollo was sentenced to serve a year as a laborer to a mortal, and it was Eumelos’ father, Admetos, who became his—respectful and kind—employer. The horses Eumelos drives were a gift from Apollo to his father; Iliad 2.763ff., and see Timothy Gantz, Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources, vol. 1 (Baltimore, 1993), 92.
17 For Meriones’ Minoan associations, see T.B.L. Webster, From Mycenae to Homer (New York, 1964), 104f., 117f.
18 In the Iliad’s immediate sequel, the Aethiopis, Antilochos fulfills the role of Patroklos in the Iliad, being Achilles’ closest companion, whose death Achilles avenges. Some scholars believe that Achilles’ smile for Antilochos here is a nod toward this future role; see M. M. Wilcock, “The Funeral Games of Patroclus,” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies of the University of London 20 (1973), 1-11.
19 The political implications of the games are well discussed in Dean C. Hammer, “ ‘Who Shall Readily Obey?’ Authority and Politics in the Iliad,” Phoenix 51, no. 2 (1997), 1-24, especially 13ff.
20 The authenticity of lines 23 to 30, which include this passage, has been hotly contested since antiquity on account of both linguistic features and sense (i.e., would the gods countenance the stealing of a body? Athene and Hera should not engage in a beauty contest with Aphrodite, and so forth). For a summation of the arguments for and against their inclusion, see Richardson, sub. vv. 23-30, 276ff., whose conclusion is that “it is probably fair to say that the passage as a whole should be regarded as part of the original poem.”
21 Bryce, The Trojans and Their Neighbours, 124.
22 “To Hermes,” in M. L. West, ed. and trans., Homeric Hymns. Homeric Apocrypha. Lives of Homer (Cambridge, MA, 2003), vv. 13-15, 115.
23 The term “is usually rendered as ‘slayer of Argos,’ although this would constitute an unusual linguistic formation (argei- instead of argo-), and we must allow for the possibility that the myth was generated by the (no longer understood) epithet.” Gantz, vol. 1, 109. Several alternative readings are offered: for “dog slayer,” watchdogs being the enemy of the night thief, see M. L. West, Hesiod: Works and Days (Oxford, 1980), 368f.; and for “dragon” or “serpent slayer,” see S. Davis, “Argeiphontes in Homer—The Dragon-Slayer,” Greece & Rome 22, no. 64 (February 1953), 33-38.
24 Walter F. Otto, The Homeric Gods: The Spiritual Significance of the Greek Religion (Boston, 1964), 109.
25 Burkert, Greek Religion, 158. On Hermes as the god of boundaries, and breaker of boundaries, see ibid., 156ff.; on herms and their “animal ritual” origins, see Walter Burkert, Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1982), 39ff.
26 For Priam’s journey to Hades, see, for example, Cedric H. Whitman, Homer and the Heroic Tradition (New York, 1965), 217f. The “Odyssean” overtone of Book Twenty-four is discussed in Richardson, 21ff.
27 The passage is discussed by Bruce Heiden, “The Simile of the Fugitive Homicide, Iliad 24.480-84: Analogy, Foiling, and Allusion,” American Journal of Philology 119 (1998), 1-10.
28 Pindar, Isthmian 8.21-24 and Nemean 8.7-8, respectively, in C. M. Bowra, trans., The Odes of Pindar (London, 1969), 52, 215.
29 Plato, Gorgias 524a, where Aiakos is the judge of the dead of Europe, as the others are of the Asian dead; also Gantz, vol. 1, 220f., for other sources.
30 A linguistic anomaly underscores Achilles’ relationship with his distinguished grandfather. Priam is instructed to come “to the son of Peleus,” a phrase in the Greek rendered by the single word Pēleōnáde.” The use of -de to indicate the direction of something is employed by Homer with no other personal name—but is paralleled by the common phrase Aïdósde—“to the house of Hades”; see Richardson, sub. v. 338, 308. Achilles’ association with Phthia—“the Waste Land”—his Underworld appearance in the Odyssey, and the notable chthonic elements of his role in this last book of the Iliad have led some scholars to conjecture that he was once a god of the dead; see Hil debrecht Hommel, Der Gott Achilleus (Heidelberg, 1980), especially 25ff.
31 The number of Niobe’s children varies; different ancient citations report variously that Hesiod sang of “ten sons and ten daughters” and “nine and ten”; Hesiod, Catalogue of Women or EHOIAI, in Glenn W. Most, Hesiod: Volume 2, The Shield. Catalogue of Women. Other Fragments (Cambridge, MA, 2007), fragments 126 and 127, respectively, 195. For the possibility that the inconsistency between Homer and Hesiod points to two traditions, see Edm. Liénard, “Les Niobides,” Latomus 2 (1938), 20-29. The numerous sources for this story are given in Gantz, vol. 2, 536ff.
32 Bruce Karl Braswell, “Mythological Innovation in the Iliad,” Classical Quarterly, n.s. 21, no. 1 (1971), 16-26.
33 For a close examination of the paradigm, see Richardson, sub. vv. 596-632, 339ff.
34 That “the people” were turned to stone is a detail undoubtedly inspired by the petrification of Niobe herself, yet it is interesting that there was a tradition that Thetis caused a wo
lf to be turned to stone for devouring cattle of Peleus; in another version, the lithification was caused by the wife of Aiakos, Psamathe, who was, like Thetis, a daughter of Nereus; see Gantz, vol. 1, 227.
35 The excerpt from this letter is quoted from Lawrence Van Gelder, “Singer Buys Rare World War I Letter,” New York Times (November 9, 2006), reporting on the purchase of the anonymous letter by the Irish singer Chris de Burgh. See also Malcolm Brown and Shirley Seaton, Christmas Truce: The Western Front, December 1914 (London, 2001).
36 The possibility of a continuous habitation of Troy from its fall until Homer’s age, and the “narrative” implications, is raised by Michael Wood, In Search of the Trojan War, rev. ed. (London, 2005), 298f.
37 Calvert Watkins, “The Language of the Trojans,” in Machteld J. Mellink, ed., Troy and the Trojan War (Bryn Mawr, PA, 1986), 45-62 (for quotation see 58f.).
38 Strabo, Geography 13.1.27, in Horace Leonard Jones, trans., Strabo: Geography, vol. 6 (Cambridge, MA, 1929), 53. The traveler was Demetrius of Scepsis, whose lost work on some sixty lines of the Trojan Catalogue was said to have filled sixty books.
39 Philostratus, Life of Apollonius, 4.11-13.
40 Aethiopis, fragment 1, in M. L. West, ed. and trans., Greek Epic Fragments: From the Seventh to the Fifth Century B.C. (Cambridge, MA, 2003), 115.
41 But what part of his foot? Achilles’ ankle is most commonly mentioned, although later writers refer to the sole of his foot. The latter accords with Paris’ wounding of Diomedes in the flat of his foot in Book Eleven (11.369ff.), which is often taken to be a doublet of his later striking of Achilles; see Bryan Hainsworth, The “Iliad”: A Commentary, Volume III: Books 9-12 (Cambridge, 1993), sub. vv. 369-83, 267. On the exact place and cause of Achilles’ death, see Gantz, vol. 2, 625ff. Achilles’ heel is referred to only in the work of the first-century-A.D. poet Statius; Achilleid 1.133-34, 1.268-70, and 1.480-81.
The War That Killed Achilles Page 31
