The War That Killed Achilles

by Caroline Alexander

  42 For Near Eastern siege machinery, see Sarah P. Morris, “The Sacrifice of Astyanax: Near Eastern Contributions to the Siege of Troy,” in Jane B. Carter and Sarah P. Morris, eds., The Ages of Homer: A Tribute to Emily Townsend Vermeule (Austin, TX, 1995), 227ff.

  43 Little Iliad, argument 4, in West, Greek Epic Fragments, 123.

  44 Sack of Ilion, fragment 1, ibid., 147.

  45 Ibid., arguments 1 and 2, 145.

  46 The return of Philoktetes was a favorite subject of tragedy; only Sophocles’ play of his name has survived. Other traditions have a former wife of Paris play a role in his death; see Gantz, vol. 2, 635ff.

  47 On Hekabe’s fate, see H. J. Rose, A Handbook of Greek Mythology (London, 2000), 235ff. The debasement of Hekabe is the subject of Euripides’ fearful tragedy, Hecuba, in which her designated master is Odysseus.

  48 “A scattering of Classical and later writers recorded their own or others’ belief that he [Astyanax] survived Troy’s fall and, often in company with Aineias’ son Askanios, founded one or more cities in the Troad”: Peter M. Smith, “Aineiadai as Patrons of Iliad XX,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 85 (1981), 17-58, especially 53ff.

  49 “Odysseus kills Astyanax, Neoptolemus receives Andromache as his prize, and they divide up the rest of the booty. . . . Then they set fire to the city, and slaughter Polyxena at Achilles’ tomb”; Sack of Ilion, argument 4, in West, Greek Epic Fragments, 147. In the Little Iliad it is Neoptolemus who kills Astyanax. See page 81 of this work.

  50 Both Pindar, Nemean 8.23ff., and Sophocles’ Ajax treat Aias’ humiliating loss and death. The Iliad declares that Aias was “far the best . . . while Achilles stayed angry” (2.278f.); yet when, in Book Three, Helen identifies key Achaean figures to Priam, her offhand dismissal of Aias—“That one is gigantic Aias, wall of the Achaeans, / and beyond him there is Idomeneus (3.229f.)—seems pointedly slighting.

  51 The details of Diomedes’ journey westward are obscure and confused, as is the tradition that in Italy his men were transformed into birds. See Gantz, vol. 2, 699f., for the various versions and sources; and Irad Malkin, The Returns of Odysseus: Colonization and Ethnicity (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1998), 234ff.

  52 Odyssey 4.238ff.

  53 Odyssey 3.103ff.

  54 Euripides, Andromache, 341ff., in David Grene and Richmond Lattimore, eds. and trans., Euripides III (Chicago, 1958), 87.

  55 Strabo, Geography 1.3.2.

  56 For the date of the pendant see Irene S. Lemos, The Protogeometric Aegean: The Archaelogy of the Late Eleventh and Tenth Centuries B.C., (Oxford, 2002), 131f. The significance of the exotic quality and antiquity of the Lefkandi burial goods is discussed in Jan Paul Crielaard, “Basileis at Sea: Elites and External Contacts in the Euboean Gulf Region from the End of the Bronze Age to the Beginning of the Iron Age,” in Sigrid Deger-Jalkotzy and Irene S. Lemos, eds., Ancient Greece: From the Mycenaean Palaces to the Age of Homer (Edinburgh, 2006), 271-97, especially 286f.

  57 See Ione Mylonas Shear, Kingship in the Mycenaean World and Its Reflection in the Oral Tradition (Philadelphia, 2004), 82.

  58 Quoted from Bryce, Life and Society in the Hittite World, 99; and also p. 31 on the quality of royal mercy.

  59 Gilbert Murray, The Rise of the Greek Epic: Being a Course of Lectures Delivered at Harvard University (Oxford, 1924), 92.

  60 The transcendence of death through poetic renown is a complex and vast subject. A landmark work on Greek epic’s role in immortalizing dead heroes is Gregory Nagy, The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry (Baltimore, 1979), especially 174ff. A succinct overview of the Indo-European evidence, and a less formulaic approach, is given by West, Indo-European Poetry and Myth, 396ff. and 403ff. Challenging the premise that kléos áphthiton is in fact a formulaic survival from Indo-European heroic poetry is Margalit Finkelberg, “Is ΚΛΕΟ∑ АФѲІТОΝ a Homeric Formula?,” Classical Quarterly 36, no. 1 (1986), 1-5. While Anthony T. Edwards, “ΚΛΕΟ∑ АФѲІТОΝ and Oral Theory,” Classical Quarterly 38, no. 1 (1988), 25-30, concurs that this key phrase does not represent a Homeric formula, as the term is usually understood, he also suggests that oral theory of poetics, as is it increasingly refined, indicates that formulaic status neither proves nor disproves the antiquity of a phrase.

  61 A decision in favor of glory has wrongly been ascribed to Achilles since ancient times; see Bruno Snell, Scenes from Greek Drama (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1964), 1-22.

  62 Aethiopis, argument 4, in West, Greek Epic Fragments, 113. The tradition that a pleasant fate awaits chosen heroes after death is also found in the Odyssey, where Menelaos is told that: “. . . it is not the gods’ will

  that you shall die and go to your end in horse-pasturing Argos,

  but the immortals will convoy you to the Elysian

  Field, and the limits of the earth, where fair-haired Rhadamanthys

  is, and where there is made the easiest life for mortals,

  for there is no snow, nor much winter there, nor is there ever

  rain, but always the stream of the Ocean sends up breezes

  of the West Wind blowing briskly for the refreshment of mortals.

  This, because Helen is yours and you are son-in-law therefore

  to Zeus.”

  —Odyssey 4.561ff.

  That the Homeric epic knowingly, as it were, withheld this happier end from Achilles is significant and consistent.

  63 This small scene is also dense with allusions to Achilles’ remarkable ancestry. Odysseus’ reference to Achilles’ exceptional authority in the Underworld evokes the exceptional authority awarded his forebear, Aiakos, for example (see note 30). Also striking is the exchange between Achilles and Odysseus concerning Peleus, who still lives: to Achilles’ moving request that Odysseus “tell me anything you have heard about stately Peleus, / whether he still keeps his position among the Myrmidon / hordes, or whether in Hellas and Phthia they have diminished / his state,” Odysseus replies simply, “I have no report to give you of stately Peleus.” The Iliad’s striking silence about Peleus’ deeds, then, is also carried into the Odyssey. The tradition that brought Achilles, so to speak, to Troy, was that of the Thessalian refugees. Does the often-expressed concern for affairs back in Phthia, and for the fate of its old rulers, together with Achilles’ wistful yearning to return home, reflect the nostalgia of these immigrant exiles for the land they would never see again? “The men of the Migrations had left their fathers’ graves behind them. The ghosts whom they ought to have fed and cared for were waiting in the old lands helpless.” Murray, The Rise of the Greek Epic, 71.

  SELECTED FURTHER READING

  While a detailed bibliography can be gleaned from the chapter notes, the following is intended as a guide to works on major themes that are readily obtainable and mostly accessible to the general reader.

  TEXTS

  T. W. Allen and D. B. Monro, eds., Homeri Opera, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1920), reprinted 1976.

  M. L. West, ed., Homeri Ilias (Stuttgart and Leipzig, 1998-2000).

  COMMENTARIES

  The most comprehensive, thorough, and handy commentary is the six-volume series published by Cambridge University Press, of which the late G. S. Kirk was general editor. While the line-by-line commentary can be technical, the series’ many essays on general themes (“The Gods in Homer,” “Typical Motifs and Themes”) are clear and readable. The different volumes are:

  G. S. Kirk, The “Iliad”: A Commentary, Volume I: Books 1-4 (Cambridge, 1985).

  —, The “Iliad”: A Commentary, Volume II: Books 5-8 (Cambridge, 1990).

  Bryan Hainsworth, The “Iliad”: A Commentary, Volume III: Books 9-12 (Cambridge, 1993).

  Richard Janko, The “Iliad”: A Commentary, Volume IV: Books 13-16 (Cambridge, 1992).

  Mark W. Edwards, The “Iliad”: A Commentary, Volume V: Books 17-20 (Cambridge, 1991).

  Nicholas Richardson, The “Iliad”: A Commentary, Volume VI: Books 21-24 (Cambridge, 1993).

&
nbsp; Valuable single-book commentaries are:

  Jasper Griffin, Homer: “Iliad” IX (Oxford, 1995).

  Simon Pulleyn, Homer: “Iliad” I (Oxford, 2000).

  TRANSLATIONS

  Richmond Lattimore, The “Iliad” of Homer (Chicago, 1961): the most faithful to Homer’s Greek of all translations available in English, both in literal word sense and in epic gravitas. All translations in this book (with the exception of “The Death of Hektor,” which is by the author) are from Lattimore’s landmark translation.

  Robert Fagles, The “Iliad” (New York, 1990): colloquial and modern, a translation that many readers have found to be the most accessible.

  Simeon Underwood, English Translators of Homer: From George Chapman to Christopher Logue (Plymouth, UK, 1998), gives a succinct (seventy-nine-page) discussion of the most important translations and changing sensibilities.

  OTHER EARLY GREEK POETRY CITED IN THIS WORK

  Epic Cycle: M. L. West, ed. and trans., Greek Epic Fragments: From the Seventh to the Fifth Century B.C., Loeb Classical Library 497 (Cambridge, MA, 2003); see also Malcolm Davies, The Greek Epic Cycle, 2nd ed. (London, 2003), a short (ninety-one-page) overview of the many issues associated with these lost poems.

  Hesiod: Glenn W. Most, ed. and trans., Hesiod: Volume 1, Theogony. Works and Days. Testimonia, Loeb Classical Library 57 (Cambridge, MA, 2006); and Hesiod: Volume 2, The Shield. Catalogue of Women. Other Fragments, Loeb Classical Library 503 (Cambridge, MA, 2007).

  Homer, The Odyssey: translations by Richmond Lattimore (New York, 1967), used in this work, and Robert Fagles (New York, 1996) are to be recommended.

  Homeric Hymns: M. L. West, ed. and trans., Homeric Hymns. Homeric Apocrypha. Lives of Homer, Loeb Classical Library 496 (Cambridge, MA, 2003).

  Pindar: C. M. Bowra, trans., The Odes of Pindar (London, 1969).

  THE BRONZE AGE AND THE TROJAN WAR

  Greece and Mycenae

  John Chadwick, The Mycenaean World (Cambridge, 1976).

  —, The Decipherment of Linear B (Cambridge, 1990).

  Nic Fields, Mycenaean Citadels c. 1350-1200 B.C. (Botley, Oxford, 2004).

  K. A. and Diana Wardle, Cities of Legend: The Mycenaean World (London, 1997).

  Anatolia and Troy

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

  —, The Trojans and Their Neighbours (Abingdon, Oxon, 2006).

  Nic Fields, Troy c. 1700-1250 B.C. (Botley, Oxford, 2004).

  H. Craig Melchert, ed., The Luwians (Leiden, 2003).

  Studia Troica: interdisciplinary periodical dedicated to Troy and the Troad through all their many historical phases; includes the annual report of excavations at Troy. Copies can be ordered through the Project Troia Web site: www.unituebingen.de/troia/eng/sttroica.html.

  Trojan War

  G. S. Kirk, “History and Fiction in the Iliad,” in The “Iliad”: A Commentary, Volume II: Books 5-8 (Cambridge, 1990), 36-50.

  Joachim Latacz, Troy and Homer: Towards a Solution of an Old Mystery, translated from the German by Kevin Windle and Rosh Ireland (Oxford, 2004).

  Carol G. Thomas and Craig Conant, The Trojan War (Westport, CT, 2005).

  Michael Wood, In Search of the Trojan War, rev. ed. (London, 2005): an excellent, exciting, and well-written overview that navigates the Mycenaean and Hittite sources, modern archaeological findings, and the history of the discovery of the primary sites.

  DARK AGE

  M. I. Finley, The World of Odysseus, rev. ed. (New York, 1982).

  Ian Morris, ed., The Dark Ages of Greece (Edinburgh, 2009).

  Robin Osborne, “Homer’s Society,” in Robert Fowler, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Homer (Cambridge, 2007), 206-19.

  A. M. Snodgrass, The Dark Age of Greece: An Archaeological Survey of the Eleventh to the Eighth Centuries B.C., rev. ed. (Edinburgh, 2000): a detailed and necessarily technical overview of the archaeological evidence.

  Carol G. Thomas and Craig Conant, Citadel to City-State: The Transformation of Greece, 1200-700 B.C.E. (Bloomington, IN, 1999).

  ORAL POETRY AND TRANSMISSION OF THE HOMERIC POEMS

  No aspect of Homeric scholarship is more vexed or contentious than the so-called Homeric question, which in fact encompasses several central questions regarding authorship and compositional technique of the Iliad and the Odyssey: Was “Homer” an individual poet, or is the name a misleading term for the long poetic tradition that passed through many anonymous hands? How faithfully, or innovatively, was this tradition passed on? How and when was it finally recorded? In other words, did Homer write? Did he dictate to a scribe? Was the text of the Iliad finally fixed, by writing, centuries after “Homer”? Did the same poet compose the Iliad and the Odyssey?

  While many of these questions were raised even in ancient times, modern scholarship is securely dated to the work of Milman Parry, whose methodical analysis of the function and economy of the formulaic language of Homeric poetry securely established the epics’ debt to traditional oral-compositional technique. Parry’s later work with guslars, or professional poets, of Serbo-Croatian heroic poetry, in what was then Yugoslavia, in partnership with his colleague Albert B. Lord, appeared to substantiate his earlier linguistic work. Parry’s legacy is most accessible in a single-volume collection of his papers, The Making of Homeric Verse: The Collected Papers of Milman Parry, Adam Parry, ed. (Oxford, 1997); due to the necessarily technical nature of his work, nonspecialist readers may find these landmark papers more complex and obscure than rewarding. More suitable for the general reader is Lord’s summation, below.

  Once taken as conclusive evidence of the strict orality of the Homeric poems themselves (as opposed to their undisputed but still-enigmatic debt to traditional oral poetry), Parry’s thesis has come to receive more critical scrutiny; in particular, the expertise of nonclassicists with wide experience in living oral traditions has weighed in on the central arguments. Among the questions raised are the extent to which conclusions about Homeric diction are relevant to oral poetic traditions of our own era, the suitability of semiliterate guslars performing in urban cafés as a model for a Dark Age poet such as Homer, and the vast and conspicuous gulf between Serbo-Croatian narratives and the monumental epic poems of Homer. Also of greater interest today is the significance of the Iliad as an end-of-tradition composition. Such questions are fruitfully addressed, in particular, in the essays of the collection edited by Stoltz and Shannon, below.

  The following list of works, many contradicting one another, will stimulate further thought, rather than provide definitive answers to the important, if irresolv able, “Homeric question”:

  Robert Fowler, “The Homeric Question,” in Robert Fowler, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Homer (Cambridge, 2004), 220-32.

  Richard Janko, “The Origins and Evolution of the Epic Diction” and “The Text and Transmission of the Iliad,” in The “Iliad”: A Commentary, Volume IV: Books 13-16 (Cambridge, 1992), 8-19 and 20-38, respectively.

  Minna Skafte Jensen, The Homeric Question and the Oral-Formulaic Theory (Copenhagen, 1980).

  G. S. Kirk, The Songs of Homer (Cambridge, 1962).

  Albert B. Lord, The Singer of Tales (Cambridge, MA, 1981).

  Gregory Nagy, Homeric Questions (Austin, TX, 1996).

  Barry B. Powell, “Homer and Writing,” in Ian Morris and Barry Powell, eds., A New Companion to Homer (Leiden, 1997), 3-32.

  —, Homer and the Origin of the Greek Alphabet (Cambridge, 1994).

  Benjamin A. Stoltz and Richard S. Shannon, eds., Oral Literature and the Formula (Ann Arbor, 1976); see especially Ruth Finnegan, “What Is Oral Literature Anyway? Comments in the Light of Some African and Other Comparative Material,” 127ff.

  CRITICAL STUDIES

  As indicated by the chapter Notes, there are many prisms through which to view the Iliad. The six-volume Cambridge Commentary, as noted above, has valuable essays on specific themes central to Homeric studies. The works cited below represent particularly insightful, a
nd often moving, treatments of what could be called the epic’s defining issues:

  Jasper Griffin, Homer on Life and Death (Oxford, 1983).

  Katherine Callen King, Achilles: Paradigms of the War Hero from Homer to the Middle Ages (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1987).

  Gregory Nagy, The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry (Baltimore, 1979).

  James M. Redfield, Nature and Culture in the “Iliad”: The Tragedy of Hector (Chicago, 1975).

  Seth L. Schein, The Mortal Hero: An Introduction to Homer’s “Iliad” (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1984).

  Jonathan Shay, Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character (New York, 1995).

  Laura M. Slatkin, The Power of Thetis: Allusion and Interpretation in the “Iliad” (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1991).

  Simone Weil, “The Iliad, or the Poem of Force,” translated by Mary McCarthy, in Christopher Benfey, ed., War and the “Iliad” (New York, 2005), 1-37.

  INDEX

  Abel and Cain

  Achaeans

  Achilles’ control of Achaeans’ fate

  Agamemnon’s testing of

  Ahhiyawa as

  assemblies of

  Aulis launch of

  camp of

  Catalogue of Ships and

  Chryses’ reception by

  fortifications of