by Homer
No one need suffer that fate today.
NOTES
1. Aristotle, Poetics 1459a; on the beach the Greeks are said to be living in klisiai, literally ‘lean-tos’, presumably wooden shacks, shelters or huts built next to their ships. Achilles’ is surprisingly grand (24.449–56); THETIS’ marriage: 24.60–62; Achilles as baby: 9.485–91; his education: 11.831; Patroclus: 23.85–90; Paris’ looks: 3.39, 54–5, 64–6; Paris and APHRODITE: 24.27–30; Helen’s beauty: 3.156–8; Paris abused hospitality: 13.620–27; Paris’ seduction of Helen: 3.442–6; Hector’s attitude: 3.39–66; recruiting mission: 7.127, cf. 11.769 ff.; catalogue of ships: 2.494–779; omens: 2.299–332. It is worth observing that Homer makes no reference to Agamemnon’s need to sacrifice his daughter Iphigeneia to raise a favourable wind for Troy, a major theme of ancient Greek tragic poets (e.g. Aeschylus’ Agamemnon). Note how the past is nearly always ‘focalized’ (see p. xxx) through the mouths of the characters, not ‘objectively’ reported by Homer.
2. Protesilaus: 2.701–2; failed negotiation: 3.205–24; proposed mur der: 11.141; unsuccessful siege: 2.134–8; past incidents: e.g. 2.721–4, the banishment of Philoctetes to the island of Lemnos; Chryseis’ capture: 1.366–9; Briseis: 2.688–93; division of spoils: e.g. 1.162–8, 9.328–33.
3. Wealth and respect: timê, literally ‘valuation, worth’, shading into ‘honour, status, respect’, is what Homeric heroes seek from their peers; material rewards: the warriors take extraordinary risks to strip the armour off an opponent, but they need the armour to show they have won, and as their reward (armour is extremely expensive) (see e.g. the severe consequences for Diomedes at 11.370–400); social rewards: e.g. 4.256–63; Achilles’ worth: e.g. 9.607; insult: it is worth emphasizing here that expertise at giving good advice is rated as highly as military prowess (see e.g. 2.370–74; 9.440–43; 11.783–91); heroes would rather not fight: 12.322–5; Hector’s admission: 20.434 (Aeneas feels the same at 20.87–100); Diomedes: 4.412–18; 9.34–6; failure and death: see 12.310–28, where Sarpedon, a Trojan ally, discusses his ‘contract’ with his community – wealth and an agreeable life-style in exchange for risking his life in battle. Compare Odysseus at 11.404- 10; A RE S: 5.888; painful war: see 13.343 for the horror the battlefield evokes, and cf. 2.401, 3.111–12 and the realism of 17.91–105; family: e.g. 2.292–7 (the deaths of warriors often prompt visions of the families they will never see again, e.g. 5.410–15,17.300–303); immortal glory: e.g. Hector at 22.297–305; Hector and Andromache scene: 6.390–502.
4. Agamemnon’s troops: 1.281, 2.576–80; speakers: 9.439–42 – for debate, see e.g. 9.69–78, 14.83–108; ZEUS’ superiority: 8.5–27, 15.105–8; Achilles’ short life: 1.352–4 (he offers an alternative prospect at 9.410–16, but the option of a long and tedious life is hardly a convincing one except for the sake of his argument at this stage in the plot); Achilles’ threat: 1.169–71; Agamemnon and Briseis: 1.172–87; ATHENE and compensation: 1.212–14; Agamemnon’s admission: 2.378, 9.115–20, 19.86–138.
5. Agamemnon gets rewards: 9.331–3; no compensation adequate: 9.379–87; value of life: 9.401–9; embassy baffled: e.g. 9.515–23; Diomedes’ view: 9.697–703; Patroclus’ view: 16.31–2; the insult: 9.387; Aristotle on Achilles: Poetics 1454b.
6. Greeks need Achilles to return: 11.608–10; Patroclus should fight: 16.64; avenging Patroclus: 18.90; Hector’s death pointless: 22.386- 90; Agamemnon reconciled: 23.890; Hector’s mutilation: 24.1–21; Achilles’ awareness of fate: 18.94–100; Hector’s fate: 22.297–305 -we have known of it for certain since 15.68, though 6.486–502 and 8.473–7 hint at it; tragic markers of Patroclus’ doom: 16.46–7, 91 ff., 250, 684; tragic irony 16.38 ff.,97, 246;’now I see’: 16.844; cf. ZEUS at 8.470 ff., 15.64 ff.
7. Achilles’ feat of arms: 18.121; loves conflict: 1.177; almost bestial:21.542, 22.346–7, 23.176; like a lion: 24.39–45; revenge achieves nothing: 24.1–21; glory for Achilles: 24.110; will of ZEUS: 24.133- 40; Achilles consoles Priam :24.518–51; life both good and ill: 24.5 25- 48; Priam’s loss of Hector: 24.521, 541–2, 547–8; Achilles’ loss: 24.511–12, 540; mutual admiration: 24.629–32.
8. Herodotus, Histories 2.53.
9. Gods quarrel: e.g. 1.539, 4.506, 8.5–17, 15.12–33, 21.385–513;go to bed: 1.597–611; HERA’s sweat: 4.27–9; APHRODITE’s wound: 5.426–30; ARES stabbed: 5.856, 889.
10. The contrast with the Odyssey here is notable. There is no need to worry about whether Homer ‘really means it’ when he introduces a god, i.e. whether it was just another way for Homer to say that something happened naturally. Homer was perfectly capable of saying something happened naturally. When he introduces a god, he introduces a god.
11. It is notable that heroes are hardly ever said to fear the gods. When ZEUS talks to Achilles’ mother THETIS about Achilles releasing Hector’s body, he adds the condition ‘if he will somehow fear me’ (24.116) ! A veiled threat, of course, but there is a certain truth there.
12. Nor does it detract from the heroes when gods help them. Gods support only winners. Divine help proves the hero is worthy of it, and the hero rejoices in it. Look, for example, at Achilles’ reaction when ATHENE says she will trick Hector into fighting him: he is delighted (22.224).
13. See e.g. Achilles’ encounter with ATHENE at 1.197–207.
14. APOLLO strips Patroclus: 16.786–817; HERA barters towns:4.51–3; IRIS comforts Priam: 24.169 ff.; POSEIDON’s chariot: 13.17–31; ZEUS nods: 1.528–30.
15. Plato, Republic 386b ff.
16. Longinus, On the Sublime 9.7, transl. by D. A. Russell, in Ancient Literary Criticism (Oxford, 1973).
17. E.g. 9.702, where Diomedes says Achilles will return to the fighting ‘when his heart tells him to, and the god moves him’.
18. E.g. ZEUS over the death of Sarpedon at 16.459.
19. See M. L. West, The East Face of Helicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), a brilliant account of near-Eastern influences on early Greek literature.
20. Herodotus, Histories 2.120.
21. See C. M. Bowra, Heroic Poetry (London, 1952).
22. I do not mean to imply that Homer invented the story of the Iliad:I use ‘Homer’ here to mean ‘the oral epic tradition in Ionia’.
23. See H. Strasburger, ‘The sociology of the Homeric epics’ in Peter Jones and G. M. Wright (eds.), Homer: German Scholarship in Transla tion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), pp. 47–70. One must stress that the aristocrats of Homer’s day did not depend on cattle-raising and raiding quite as much as the Homeric heroes do. Overseas trade and grain-production formed the basis of their wealth.
24. Bucolion: 6.25; Paris 24.29; Anchises: 5.313 – APHRODITE, no less!; Andromache’s brothers: 6.423–4; Diomedes’ horses: 5.271; Hector’s horses: 8.187–9; Pandarus’ horses: 5.180 ff.; Priam’s sons: 24.262; Priam rolls in dung: 22.414; value in oxen: e.g. 6.236; farmers and fighting: e.g. 12.299–306; farming a proud calling: 18.556–7.
25. See e.g. David Traill, Schliemann of Troy: Treasure and Deceit (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1995).
26. Cf. 18.288–9.
27. Historically, of course, it is absurd that Homer’s inhabitants of Ilium do not appear to possess a fleet.
28. On all this, see L. Foxhall and J. K. Davies (eds.), The Trojan War: Its Historicity and Context (Bristol: Bristol Classical Press, 1984).
29. E.g. 2.167–72, 19.3–7.
30. E.g. (i) 5.15–9; (ii) 11.231–40 (iii) 8.117–23. See B. Fenik, Typical Battle Scenes in the ‘Iliad’ (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1968).
31. See, for example, 6.407–32.
32. Virgil, Aeneid 2.170–72, transl. David West (Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics, 1990). Consider, by contrast, how Homer deals with Helen who, full of moving self-reproach as she is, has still been seen by some as a self-serving hypocrite. Penelope in the Odyssey is equally difficult to interpret.
33. See I. J. F. de Jong, Narrators and Focalizers: The Presentation of the Story in the ‘Iliad’ (Amsterdam: B. R. Gru¨ner, 1987). See note 1 above for ano
ther example.
34. E.g. 1.352,415–18, 505–6.
35. Speeches are made by 77 characters (28 Greek, 29 Trojan and allies, 19 gods and a horse). Achilles speaks the most (87 speeches, 965 lines in all); then Hector (50 speeches, 530 lines), Agamemnon (43 speeches, 445 lines), ZEUS (37 speeches, 337 lines), Nestor (31 speeches, 489 lines), HERA (29 speeches, 238 lines), Diomedes (27 speeches, 239 lines), Odysseus (26 speeches, 342 lines), Priam (25 speeches, 213 lines), Menelaus (22 speeches, 152 lines), ATHENE (20 speeches, 159 lines). Statistics from N. J. Lowe, The Classical Plot and the Invention of Western Narrative (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 116–18.
36. 19.287–300. It is worth remarking here that Homer’s male and female characters inhabit quite different worlds without generating any sense that one world is inferior and the other superior. The worlds are just different and make their different demands.
37. See Hans van Wees, in A. B. Lloyd (ed.), Battle in Antiquity (London: Duckworth, 1996). There are 170 encounters in which we are given some information about the participants and weapons used – the spear is by far the most favoured weapon – and 130 others in which we know only the names or numbers of the dead. Only eighteen encounters involve more than one blow, only six involve more than one exchange of blows. See Introduction to Book 4.
38. E.g. 16.284 ff. and 20.455 ff
39. In all, 281 Trojans are killed, 61 Greeks. There is a continuing debate about the extent to which Homer’s pro-Greek bias is simply chauvinism or an essential ingredient of the moral universe of the poem. It has been argued that Homer becomes more sympathetic to the Trojans as more are killed.
40. Prolegomena ad Homerum has now been translated from its original Latin, with introduction and notes by A. Grafton, G. Most and J. Zetzel (Princeton, 1985).
41. H. W. Clarke, Homer’s Readers: A Historical Introduction to the ‘Iliad’ and ‘Odyssey’ (Associated University Presses, 1981), a brilliant account of the way Homer has engaged readers’ imaginations over two millennia, gives analytical detail of the battles in Chapter 4.
42. When Alexander the Great died in 323 BC, the generals he had left in charge of the various regions of his vast, rickety ‘empire’ soon assumed local control and turned themselves into kings. Ptolemy (Pto- lemaios) made himself King of Egypt, and decided to turn Alexandria into an intellectual centre to rival Athens. The Alexandrian Library and Museum were the result (we would call them humanities and scientific research centres today), funded in such a way as to attract the very best scholars to work there.
43. The Iliad’s relationship to the Odyssey is another fascinating question which cannot be explored here.
44. The ‘collapse’ of the empire in the West meant that Rome was no longer able to tax and control centrally. The result was that the Western empire fragmented into local, autonomous kingdoms, the seeds of modern Europe. But the Roman empire had been effectively divided into western and eastern administrative blocks in the fourth century AD, and the empire in the East (which came to be known as the Byzantine empire) survived until its capital, Constantinople (ancient Greek Byzantium), fell to Ottoman Turks on 29 May 1453.
45. See Clarke, Homer’s Readers, p. 57.
Introduction to the 1950 Edition
THE Greeks looked on the Iliad as Homer’s major work. It was the Story of Achilles, and not the Wanderings of Odysseus as might have been expected, that Alexander the Great took with him as a bedside book on his adventurous campaigns. I myself used not to accept this verdict, and I felt that many modern readers would agree with me. It was therefore with some trepidation that I bade farewell to the Odyssey and braced myself for the task of translating the Iliad, which I had not read through as a whole for twelve years. I soon began to have very different feelings, and now that I have finished the work I am completely reassured. The Greeks were right.
It is a question, not of any difference in skill, but of artistic levels. The Odyssey, with its happy ending, presents the romantic view of life: the Iliad is a tragedy.* To paint the Odyssean picture, convincing, just, and beautiful as it is, Homer took his easel to the lower slopes of Mount Olympus, which are pleasant, green, and wooded. It was a good spot, for the Muses certainly come down and play there. But to compose the Iliad, he moved higher up the mountain-side, nearer to the eternal snows and to the very homes of the Muses and the other gods. From there he had a different and a clearer view of the same landscape. Some of the mists had dissolved, the sun beat pitilessly on the snow, and a number of new things, many of them very terrible and lovely, came into sight. Homer himself became, if possible, even more human. He had climbed high; he had faced and solved some of the ultimate enigmas; and he could afford to smile both at the ant-like activities of men and the more awe-inspiring pageant of the gods. I am therefore very confident when I assure those who already know the Odyssey that they will be brought closer to tears by the death of a single horse in the Iliad than by the killing of the whole gang of Suitors; closer too to laughter; and closer, if they follow Homer to the Olympian eminence from which he looks out on the world, to the heights where tears and laughter cease to count.
The plot of the Iliad is simple. King Agamemnon the imperial overlord of Greece (or Achaea, as Homer calls it) has, with his brother Menelaus of Sparta, induced the princes who owe him allegiance to join forces with him against King Priam of Troy, because Paris, one of Priam’s sons, has run away with Menelaus’ wife, the beautiful Helen of Argos. The Achaean forces have for nine years been encamped beside their ships on the shore near Troy, but without bringing the matter to a conclusion, though they have captured and looted a number of towns in Trojan territory, under the dashing leadership of Achilles son of Peleus, Prince of the Myrmidons, the most redoubtable and the most unruly of Agamemnon’s royal supporters. The success of these raiding parties leads to a feud between Achilles and his Com-mander-in-Chief. Agamemnon has been allotted the girl Chry-seis as his prize, and he refuses to give her up to her father, a local priest of Apollo, when he comes to the camp with ransom for her release. The priest prays to his god; a plague ensues; and Agamemnon is forced by the strength of public feeling to give up the girl and so propitiate the angry god. But he recoups himself by confiscating one of Achilles’ own prizes, a girl named Briseis. Achilles in high dudgeon refuses to fight any more and withdraws the Myrmidon force from the battlefield. After an abortive truce, intended to allow Menelaus and Paris to settle their quarrel by single combat, the two armies meet, and as a result of Achilles’ absence from the field the Achaeans, who have hitherto kept the Trojan forces penned up in Troy or close to their own city walls, are slowly but surely put on the defensive. They are even forced to make a trench and a wall round their ships and huts. But these defences are eventually stormed by Hector the Trojan Commander-in-Chief, who succeeds in setting fire to one of the Achaean ships. At this point Achilles, who has remained obdurate to all entreaties, yields to the extent of permitting his squire and closest friend Patroclus to lead the Myrmidon force to the rescue of the hard-pressed Achaeans. Patroclus brilliantly succeeds in this mission, but he goes too far and is killed under the walls of Troy by Hector. This disaster brings Achilles to life. In an access of rage with Hector and grief for his comrade he reconciles himself with Agamemnon, takes the field once more, hurls the panic-stricken Trojans back into their town, and finally kills Hector. Not content with this revenge, he savagely maltreats the body of his fallen enemy. Hector’s father, King Priam, in his grief and horror, is inspired by the gods to visit Achilles in his camp by night, in order to recover his son’s body. * Achilles relents; and the Iliad ends with an uneasy truce for the funeral of Hector.
Such is the framework of the story. Unlike those who describe the plot of a thriller on its dust-cover, I have disclosed the end. And I have done this, with no fear of spoiling the tale, in order to bring out the fact that the Iliad is a fine example of the Greek method of constructing a story or a play. In most cases, since the matter was traditional, the en
d was already known to the audience when they sat down to the beginning, and the author had to secure his effects by other methods than that of surprise. He could of course show a greater or lesser degree of originality in the details of his composition. In the Odyssey, for instance, it was a stroke of dramatic genius to break the narrative by causing Odysseus to recite his own adventures to the Phaeacian nobles in the shadowy hall of King Alcinous. And in the case of the Iliad, Homer’s first audiences must have been delighted by the daring humour with which he presented the comedy of Olympus; for I believe this to have been one of his major contributions to the old story of the Trojan War. But apart from such innovations, Homer employs two devices, both of which are typical of Greek art. First, like the Attic dramatists, far from feeling that his hearers’ foreknowledge is a handicap, he makes capital out of it by giving them confidential asides. The ominous remark that follows Hector’s promise to Dolon of the horses of Achilles is a case in point. Again, the effect of the magnificent speech in which Achilles repudiates Agamemnon’s overtures is heightened by the fact that Achilles really thinks that Destiny leaves him free to go home unscathed, whereas we know that he will be dragged back into the war by the killing of his dearest friend and in the end (or rather beyond it) will himself be killed. Which brings me to a further point. The action of the Iliad covers only fifty days in a ten years’ war. But by a skilful extension of the device I am discussing, Homer causes two shadows to add their sombre significance to every page, that of the past and that of what is yet to come.