Nestor, the wise old warrior of the Iliad, knows best what qualifies as heroic. It is he who raises the question to the assembled Greeks about whether any one of them would dare go among the Trojans and discover their plans.85 Nestor never abandons the heroic code and he would never encourage unheroic behaviour. Nestor declares that if anyone dared to spy on the Trojans and return unscathed, he would win ‘great kleos (glory) to the heavens’86 as well as many noble gifts87 and invitations to feasts from all nobility who command ships.88 Menelaus, too, says that scouting out the enemy during the night requires someone who is very bold at heart.89 There is glory for both capturing or killing a spy and for being one.90 Agamemnon says that such a mission is necessary in order to save the Greeks and their ships – the very outcome of the war depends upon it.91
Agamemnon selects Diomedes from among the many who are willing to volunteer92 and Diomedes declares that his heart and manly thumos urge him to volunteer.93 Diomedes, in turn, chooses Odysseus primarily for his courage, employing the same language that he uses to describe himself.94 Diomedes is considered to be third, after Ajax among the eight greatest warriors in the Iliad.95 The fact that many Greeks offer to undertake the task proposed by Nestor and that Diomedes cites his courage when he does are further indications that the mission of Book 10 was not considered to be either shameful or unheroic by the people who undertook it. Homer says that Agamemnon urges Diomedes to choose the ‘best man’ and not to leave behind a better man because of shame, but rather to be ashamed to pick a worse man. The use of the verbs of shame and honour are not random here. Agamemnon and the Greeks consider that whoever undertook the mission against the Trojans must be one of the best warriors and that it would be shameful if it were otherwise. It is a shame that requires and impels Homeric warriors in the Iliad to seek glory and to strive to become the best.96 There is no shame attached to the mission, the activities therein, or the people who undertake it even though it involves espionage, an ambush, killing and action at night.97 Even Athena is on the side of the Greek spies.98 She signifies through her omen that she approves of the undertaking and she keeps them safe by warning Odysseus and Diomedes to get away from the Thracian camp.99
The consistent language, narrative and imagery preclude any suggestion that the expedition or characters of Diomedes and Odysseus are contrary to fundamental heroic values in the Iliad. The use of espionage and reconnaissance to stage an ambush are not in themselves unworthy actions for a Homeric warrior. The goal is simply different – in this case not heroic conquest, but information. Any distinction between the heroic and the shameful will lie in the character and aims of the warrior. This difference is highlighted by the poet’s inclusion of the scene in which Hector asks for volunteers to spy on the Greek camps100 and Dolon agrees to be a spy,101 but only if he is well paid. Nestor focused on courage and glory; gifts for him are a sign of honour and are awarded after the attainment of glory. Nestor does not offer payment to his warriors so that they will volunteer, but rather asks for whoever is most brave and promises that such a man’s excellence and success will be honoured. Dolon on the other hand (whom the poet describes as ugly) is more contemptible because he is motivated entirely by greed.102 Dolon is not driven to help his community or eager to prove his valour. His only interest is in winning the rewards offered by Hector.103
The mission of Odysseus and Diomedes is one that is acceptable for heroes to undertake, and one that will enable them to win fame and glory because of the danger that is involved and the courage that is required to accomplish it. If they are successful, they will receive the standard form of recognition in conjunction with their glory: gifts and honours bestowed by the aristocracy of heroic warriors out of respect for their achievements on behalf of the community. This is appropriate because their effort will have been responsible for saving the Greek army. The Iliad consistently portrays individual human courage and effort that saves the community as deserving of honour and glory.
The intelligence provided by Dolon is of much greater importance than what a warrior captured in battle could give. Exactly because it is night, information on where the allies were sleeping and where the guards were posted made a deadly raid possible. The rules are obviously different than in the daytime, when everyone is awake and the guards are clearly visible. Even if such a raid is not depicted in the Iliad outside of Book 10, the night raid is not un-Homeric.104 The danger of a night infiltration or night raid was very real. It was what kept the two kings up at night worrying. Nestor urged Agamemnon to set guards along the wall and trench because the enemy campfires were so close to the Greeks105 and the guards do take their posts.106 It is significant that Nestor declares that ‘this night will destroy the army or save it’.107 A night raid is expected even before the commencement of the Doloneia, and Nestor repeatedly refers to the pressing crisis.108 Both sides are sleepless because of the proximity of the enemy. Agamemnon can see the Trojan fires and hear them.109 He roams about because he must be sure the guards have not fallen asleep in view of the probability of a night attack by the enemy.110 Nestor sleeps outside with his armour and weapons near,111 as does Diomedes,112 and Nestor is quick to rise in alarm when someone approaches at night.113 The fear that the enemy might sneak up in the dark is not confined to Book 10. In Book 8, Hector ordered the Trojans to keep watch at night and to guard against a night raid by the Greeks. Even the women are brought in on the action:
Now let heralds
dear to Zeus cry out through the streets of Troy
that boys in their prime and old grey-headed men
must take up posts on the towers built by the gods,
in bivouac round the city. And as for our wives,
each in her own hall must set big fires burning.
The night watch too, it must be kept unbroken,
So no night raiders can slip inside the walls With our armies camped afield.114
The danger is so very real that Hector orders boys, old men and women to be on alert. The Greeks have the same worry. All of the city must stay awake and watch for signs of enemy movement. The anxiety on both sides and the very real possibility of a night ambush is palpable in Book 10. Night raiders and spies are both expected and feared. The death of Dolon is not unusual. He is treated no differently than others elsewhere in the epic, especially when one recalls the brutality typically shown towards captives on the battlefield.115 Diomedes is hardly going to release Dolon to fight or spy again some other time.116 A released Dolon could proceed to kill sleeping Greeks and the two heroes could hardly continue their mission with a prisoner hindering them. Homer’s audience would have appreciated what the death of Dolon meant. Two brave men had saved the camp, and prevented a Trojan spy from returning to Hector with intelligence on the Greeks.117 Dolon’s death effectively stopped Hector’s attempted night attack.118
The Doloneia illustrates that success in war is not always a matter of brute strength. It also takes stealth and intelligence to stage ambushes. Such spying tactics or ambushes are born of a situation where the enemy has not been or cannot be beaten in conventional battle.119 The similarity between Iliad 10 and the Odyssey mentioned above is not the result having the same author or being composed at the same time but because they are both manifestations of the overarching theme of alternative warfare.120
If Hector had used a better man than Dolon (and had listened to Andromache), the outcome might have been different for the Trojans. Military intelligence gathering at night that is courageous, intelligent and favoured by the gods falls within the bounds of acceptable heroic behaviour. Neither night raids, nor espionage, nor ambush are despised in the Iliad nor are they considered cowardly. They involve great risk and require tremendous courage. The Greeks understood this. All else is modern commentary.
CHAPTER 3
Ambush in the Odyssey
THE MAIN PROTAGONISTS OF the Iliad and the Odyssey are often represented as two opposing archetypal warriors. Achilles is the quintessential daytime spearfighter in the
Iliad, while Odysseus is portrayed in the Odyssey as the hero of the nighttime ambush.1 This opposition is then carried over to strategy in warfare: the ambush is set up in opposition to heavy-infantry combat. Added to this polarisation is the value judgement that strength, force or power (kratos or bie) are the honourable characteristics of a warrior, while the ambush is just a variety of trickery and is demeaning to a Homeric hero.2
When proposing this ideology of Homeric warfare, scholars invariably quote the passage from Odyssey 9.408 where Polyphemus cries to his fellow Cyclopes: ‘Nobody’s killing me now by fraud and not by force!’3 Polyphemus sets up the two contrasting possibilities: being killed by trickery or by strength.4 It almost goes without saying that the situation Odysseus has got himself into in this episode requires trickery to overcome the strength of Polyphemus.5 The Cyclops episode contains two other important features of ambush warfare, namely the use of disguise/concealment and the endurance of hardship over a long period of time, usually during the night. Odysseus will continued to display these characteristics throughout the poem.
The drastic polarisation of the use of force or trickery, Achilles vs. Odysseus, and spearfighting vs. ambush is completely artificial. Both modes of fighting are integral parts of Homeric battle tactics.6 Scholars do us a disservice in suggesting that these categories are discreet or that they are embodied by one or another warrior. There are ambushes frequently attributed to Achilles, and Odysseus is portrayed as proud of his exploits as a spearfighter, so a single characterisation of them would never wholly suffice.7 The contrast in fighting styles is not a constant feature of characterisation in Homer, and scholars have begun to see that the two concepts are actually complementary in many respects.8 Norman Austin says this about Achilles and Odysseus:
Differentiation is within a stock of traditional heroic virtues which are the common possession. All have the qualities necessary for a warrior, but an individual might show some superiority over his peers in one or another particular. Since it is precisely around these slender differences that the two poems have been constructed the effect is to render Achilles and Odysseus as polar opposites. Polar opposites they are, but only within the circumscribed confines of the Homeric aristocracy.9
The ambush and the spearfight are not essences of Odysseus and Achilles as ethical types, but rather they are a partial but concrete manifestation within a field of warfare of what is essential to each. The best description of Odysseus’ ability to do both kinds of fighting comes in Odyssey 14.217–223 where he claims that Ares and Athena gave him ‘courage and man-breaking power’ but he is using it to choose comrades to set an ambush for his enemies.10
Ambush is certainly a more prominent theme in the Odyssey than it is in the Iliad because there are no set-piece battles in the story. The poem is organised around its central figure, Odysseus, who is presented as the master of the stratagem, of trickery in all its forms. His greatest fame, according to Quintus of Smyrna, is from the ambush that brought down Troy, and he consistently identifies himself with this strategy in the stories he constructs about himself.11 Among his other traits, he has been compared to a spear-thrower, a hunter, an archer, a runner, a wrestler, a carpenter, a sail-maker, a lyre-stringer and a bard.12 He is truly the ‘man of many devices’. He often uses stratagems to defeat his enemies, but he can also display the ethos of a spearfighter. His strength and bravery can be used in either context.13
The Personality of Odysseus
The first reason that the fighting in the Odyssey differs from that in the Iliad is the character of its hero. Odysseus’ personal traits are revealed in the stories he tells about himself. Posing in the Odyssey as a wanderer, he explains, above all, that he is an expert in night ambush.14 He has all the physical and emotional characteristics suitable for the job. He is repeatedly singled out for his endurance, his capacity to last to the end, and his great daring.15 Other useful characteristics are his patience and his ability to show restraint. Heroes such as Achilles are expected to show a willingness to overstep limits, i.e. to be shameless as well as unshameable in order to achieve their glory. On the other hand, Odysseus may be diverse and many sided, but he is never excessive. When he does overstep his boundaries and limits, he is successful because he does so by controlled calculation. Odysseus has internalised Athena’s crafty quality. While someone such as Diomedes must be checked from without, Odysseus is self-regulated because of his ability to keep his eye on his goals.16 We can see in this the characteristics of a man who can control himself in an ambush.
Odysseus seeks neither glory nor loot with uncontrolled abandon. He keeps his eye on the mission; what he wants to do is to finish the job. Odysseus captures personal equipment only once during a night ambush and that is in the Doloneia. He is thus distinguished from both the base and noble warriors in Book 10 of the Iliad. Dolon and Diomedes both want the valuable horses. When Odysseus stops to pick up Dolon’s bloody spoils, however, his concern is at least partly connected with his intent to dedicate them and honour Athena.17 Another military concern is not leaving a trail behind him to be discovered by any enemies who might follow him. Odysseus understands this better than Diomedes and Dolon. Although he is not averse to the idea of increasing his possessions, he is not acquisitive. Another characteristic he shares with ambushers is that he goes on foot. Odysseus does not battle from a chariot, nor is there any indication that Odysseus has horses. That is why the Thracian steeds he captures in the Doloneia are stabled with Diomedes.18 He is no horse-tamer. When he finally triumphs at Troy, it is because the ‘horse-taming’ Trojans were unable to resist the temptation to take an enormous wooden horse within their walls. This is the only ambush in Homer which makes use of a horse.
Odysseus is the only warrior besides Menelaus who remembers the original purpose of the war. After the spying mission in Iliad 10, he claims no special credit for his success. His self-containment contrasts sharply with Achilles’ continual need for visible and audible recognition of his excellence. Odysseus has qualities that set him apart from the spearfighters who crave public glory. It is interesting that in the Odyssey Menelaus is also portrayed as an ambusher. We see him inside the Trojan horse with Diomedes and Odysseus.19 He is one of the leaders of the night mission Odysseus describes to Eumaeus20 when he successfully ambushes Proteus.21
There is no question that Odysseus can be, at times, unethical. To realise the ends to which Odysseus would go to achieve his goals, one need only recall the story of how he tricked Palamedes, another crafty Greek hero of the Trojan war.22 The rivalry between Palamedes started at the time when Odysseus feigned insanity to avoid being ‘drafted’ into the army against Troy. It was Palamedes who revealed his malingering and Odysseus never forgave him. During the Trojan war, Odysseus compelled a Trojan prisoner to write a letter supposedly sent to Palamedes from the Trojan king, Priam, offering gold for information and action which would betray the Greeks.23 He arranged for the letter to be dropped in the camp just after he had buried the exact amount of gold mentioned in the letter, under the tent of Palamedes. Odysseus claimed to have had a dream that warned him to have the Greek camp moved. He convinced Agamemnon to move the Achaean camp for one day. When the camp was moved, the Greeks found the gold where the tent of Palamedes had been. They took this as evidence of treachery and were furious. They ordered Palamedes to be stoned to death as a spy, in spite of his protestations of innocence.24 This story of Palamedes is a study in the depths of deceit to which a man such as Odysseus might stoop. And what better way to destroy his rival than with a charge of espionage which, in the ancient world, was usually punished as a capital crime. So staging an ambush is the least of his moral qualms. Even Hermes, who has close ties with and is a helper to Odysseus in the poem, has a special affinity for ambush warfare.25
If Odysseus were really the polar opposite of Achilles in both his methods and his morals as portrayed in the Iliad, we would have to assume that the Greeks had lost all sense of morality by the time the Odyssey was composed.
It is much more realistic to assume there had always been room for two kinds of activities in Greek warfare with different standards of behaviour. As we have seen in the first two chapters, ambush, espionage and intelligence gathering were known to Homer and are described many times in the Iliad along with direct combat. The same range of activities exists in the Odyssey where ambush is used as an effective means for the outnumbered, isolated hero to fight a just combat against scheming, unethical adversaries.
The Ambushes of the Odyssey
Ambushes can be found in the Odyssey in the same way they can be found in the Iliad. The noun lochos and the verb lochao appear twenty times in reference to eight individual ambushes. This compares with only nine occurrences in the Iliad.26 We do not have to rely entirely on the appearance of the exact word ‘ambush’ (as a noun or verb) in the text in order to find an ambush in Homer. The ambush theme can be operative even if the word lochos is not explicitly used to describe it, and there are numerous examples of ambushes where the exact word is not used.27 The Doloneia was one example in the Iliad, and many have suggested Book 22 of the Odyssey (the so-called Mnesterophonia) is another. Both books describe ambushes without exactly calling them such. There is a whole range of situations where this label can be used. When viewed in this way, the theme of the ambush takes a central role in the Odyssey where it is associated with its hero, Odysseus.
The most important ambush in the Odyssey is the use of the Trojan horse to cause the fall of Troy. In Odyssey 11.525ff. there is a reminiscence about the stratagem that (according to Quintus of Smyrna) made Odysseus famous. The Argives approach the Trojan horse where they will ‘open and close the door of our stout-built ambush’.28 No one criticises Odysseus or his morals here for the tricky manoeuvre that won the war for the Greeks. The Odyssey makes another reference to the fall of Troy in the part of the poem called Demodocus’ first song (Od. 8.84–95) which tells of a quarrel between Achilles and Odysseus. Although scholarly opinion is sharply divided over the sources and implications of Demodocus’ song, the explanation of the Odyssey scholia that the quarrel is over whether Troy will fall by force or trickery is generally accepted.29 The contrast between Achilles and Odysseus in terms or force and trickery is cast in the form of an argument. The dispute over how Troy will fall appears as a dispute over modes of warfare, the spearfight or the ambush. In the end, however, the ambush won the war.30
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