The War That Killed Achilles Page 6

  Tedious as it can be to modern audiences, the Catalogue with its grave roll call of long-deserted places was undoubtedly warmly received by audiences who knew these names from folk and family lore, an anticipated feature, perhaps, of performances relating the saga of bygone times—and one that a professional singer of tales would omit only at his peril.11 Striking, too, is the epic’s apologetic disclaimer of not being able to cite the names of “the multitude,” or the troops—possibly a hint that this set piece received its final shape at a late stage, when the audience’s sympathetic interest in a huge military venture extended beyond the top tier of kings to the common soldier.12 Relocated here, as a prelude to the Iliad’s first specifically martial action, the Catalogue magnificently evokes the massed and varied army and the high cost in manpower of commitment to this cause:They who held Arkadia under the sheer peak, Kyllene,

  beside the tomb of Aipytos, where men fight at close quarters,

  they who dwelt in Orchomenos of the flocks, and Pheneos,

  about Rhipe and Stratia and windy Enispe;

  they who held Tegea and Mantineia the lovely,

  they who held Stymphalos, and dwelt about Parrhasia . . .

  One thousand one hundred and eighty-six ships, under the guidance of forty-four named leaders, are cited. With the average complement of a ship estimated at fifty, the Achaean force was at a minimum approximately sixty thousand men strong. Together with a more abbreviated list of Trojan allies, emphasizing the many languages spoken among them, the Catalogue conjures the epic nature of this almighty war; all the gods in heaven will be involved, and many, many nations of men. This, the Iliad asserts, was not some backwater campaign between undistinguished peoples; this was the war of wars.

  Tell me then, Muse, who of them all was the best and bravest,

  of the men, and the men’s horses, who went with the sons of Atreus.

  Best by far among the horses were the mares of Eumelos . . .

  The list of horses that the invocation seems to promise concludes abruptly, begging the question whether there was at one time a Catalogue of Horses; traditional songs in praise of domestic animals are attested in other cultures.13 As it is, the brief citation of the two perfectly matched mares is followed awkwardly by the notice that “among the men far the best was Telamonian Aias / while Achilles stayed angry,” which in turn leads by association to the observation that Achilles’ own horses are now as unoccupied as he is: “standing each beside his chariot, / champed their clover and the parsley that grows in wet places, / resting, while the chariots of their lords stood covered / in the shelters”; it is a pleasant image. One ancient commentator notes that this marshland parsley (sélinon) differs from parsley that grows in rocks, an insight into how zealously Homer’s works have been scoured and fathomed since ancient times. 14 Curtailed and clumsily placed as the “list” of horses is, it and its aftermath draw attention away from the ships that have been so thoroughly cataloged, back down to the plain of the “horse taming” (hippódamos) Trojans, where so much of the Iliad ’s action will take place.

  The Trojan plain and its surroundings are a landscape that commentators, past and present, agree that the poets of the epic tradition, if not Homer himself, knew at first hand. Writing in the early first century B.C., Strabo declared Homer to be “the first geographer” based upon his descriptions of the Troad, which Strabo himself had traveled (erratically; he was led by a local authority to misplace the actual site of Troy).15 “As much as Lesbos . . . out to sea holds within its bounds / and Phrygia inland, and the boundless Hellespont” is the characterization Achilles gives of the territory of the Trojans. Possibly “the boundless Hellespont” referred not only to what is in fact the narrow modern Dardanelle Straits but to the entire surrounding sea—off Thrace to the north, off the Trojan plain to the south.16 As the Hellespont, or Dardanelles, accounts for the northwest border, Mount Ida inland anchors the Troad’s southeast corner. These and other landmarks, such as the hulking outlines of the islands of Tenedos and Lesbos and, on a very good day, Samothrace in the blue distance, are all as the Iliad describes. Below and around the actual city of Troy extends the level floodplain of the Skamandros and the Simoeis rivers, edged with rushes. While the Iliad’s grasp of the geography of Greece is hazy, notwithstanding the confident Catalogue of Ships, in both grand overview and telling detail, its acquaintance with “Troy land,” and the northern Troad in particular, is secure.

  So as to hasten the reengagement of the armies, Iris, the messenger of the gods, is sent from Olympos “with the dark message from Zeus of the aegis” to the Trojans. She finds them in assembly “gathered together in one place, the elders and the young men” in the city, and in the likeness of one of the many sons of Troy’s King Priam she announces that the Achaeans are on the march and urges the Trojan hero Hektor to rouse his company:“In my time I have gone into many battles among men, yet never have I seen a host like this, not one so numerous. These look terribly like leaves, or the sands of the sea-shore, as they advance across the plain to fight by the city. Hektor, on you beyond all I urge this, to do as I tell you: all about the great city of Priam are many companions, but multitudinous is the speech of the scattered nations: let each man who is their leader give orders to these men, and let each set his citizens in order, and lead them.”

  She spoke, nor did Hektor fail to mark the word of the goddess. Instantly he broke up the assembly; they ran to their weapons. All the gates were opened and the people swept through them on foot, and with horses, and a clamour of shouting rose up.

  And so we meet the enemy. Surging onto the plain, the Trojans and their many foreign allies are mustered not far from the city, by “the Hill of the Thicket.”17

  “ ‘Hektor, on you beyond all I urge this, to do as I tell you’ ”: the words of Zeus’ messenger serve as the best possible introduction to the Trojan hero who will be Achilles’ greatest antagonist.18 His name is Greek, at least as old as the Linear B tablets, where it appears as e-ko-to, derived from échein—“to hold,” “to hold together,” “to hold back,” “to hold ground.”19 While it is his brother, Paris, who is responsible for causing the war, and his father, Priam, who rules the Trojans, it is on Hektor that the burden of the war falls most squarely—“on you beyond all,” as Iris salutes him.

  Hektor’s Greek name and the fact that he features in no stories except the Iliad have led to the speculation that his character was Homer’s own brilliant invention. But the role of the heroic defender is a traditional one and wholly necessary to a story of a besieged city. Moreover, in keeping with his status as an Asiatic king, Priam has, by many concubines, many sons: “ ‘Fifty were my sons, when the sons of the Achaeans came here,’ ” Priam says later in the epic. “ ‘Nineteen were born to me from the womb of a single mother, / and other women bore the rest in my palace.’ ” The establishment of so many warrior princes opens dramatic possibilities, as there is now scope, if not necessity, for them to play opposing roles. “ ‘I have had the noblest / of sons in Troy,’ ” Priam declares, but also “ ‘the disgraces, / the liars and the dancers, champions of the chorus, the plunderers / of their own people in their land of lambs and kids.’ ” The motif of paired brothers, one shining and one dark (like Abel and Cain), is also a common one in folklore and mythology.20 It is possible that Priam’s traditionally established, sprawling household provided both the inspiration and the latitude to expand the roles of different ones of his many sons. “ ‘You said once / that without companions and without people you could hold this city / alone, with only your brothers and the lords of your sisters,’ ” a Trojan ally reminds Hektor, and the exchange suggests that there may have been an older tradition in which the sons of Priam formed a fighting band of brothers. Hektor is probably not a Homeric invention, then, but a brilliant Homeric development.21

  Standing by the Hill of the Thicket, surrounded by the best and bravest fighting men, Hektor is formally presented as leader of the Trojans by the epithet that will mos
t frequently describe him—koruthaíolos— from kórus, “helmet,” and aiólos, “the notion of glancing light passing into that of rapid movement”;22 in the Linear B tablets, “Aiólos” is the name of what one must imagine was an affectionately regarded ox. “Of the shimmering helm” gives good sense of Hektor’s epithet, evoking the changeable play of light off his glistening bronze, plumed helmet. Presumably many warriors at Troy have bronze helmets, but this term, used repeatedly (thirty-eight times) of Hektor, is associated with no other man.23

  With the Achaeans roused by Athene and the Trojans stirred by a direct message from Zeus, the two armies advance across the plain to meet each other, the Trojans “with clamour and shouting, like wildfowl,” the Achaeans in silence, with renewed, deadly intent. Suddenly Paris springs from the ranks, dressed in elaborate battle finery—a leopard skin is flung across his shoulders, and he is equipped with a bow, a sword, and two javelins, which he brandishes at the Achaeans, challenging the best to combat. Spying the man who stole his wife, Menelaos strides forth, ready to oblige, and at the sight of him Paris’ courage falters and, like “a man who has come on a snake in the mountain valley,” he shrinks back into the ranks:But Hektor saw him and in words of shame rebuked him:

  “Evil Paris, beautiful, woman-crazy, cajoling,

  better had you never been born, or killed unwedded.

  Truly I could have wished it so; it would be far better

  than to have you with us to our shame, for others to sneer at.

  Surely now the flowing-haired Achaeans laugh at us,

  thinking you are our bravest champion, only because your

  looks are handsome, but there is no strength in your heart, no

  courage.

  Were you like this that time when in sea-wandering vessels

  assembling oarsmen to help you you sailed over the water,

  and mixed with the outlanders, and carried away a fair woman

  from a remote land, whose lord’s kin were spearmen and fighters,

  to your father a big sorrow, and your city, and all your people,

  to yourself a thing shameful but bringing joy to the enemy?

  And now you would not stand up against warlike Menelaos?

  Thus you would learn of the man whose blossoming wife you have

  taken.

  The lyre would not help you then, nor the favours of Aphrodite,

  nor your locks, when you rolled in the dust, nor all your beauty.

  No, but the Trojans are cowards in truth, else long before this

  you had worn a mantle of flying stones for the wrong you did us.”

  Alone of the Iliad ’s heroes, Paris bears two names: the Greek “Alexandros,” which is the epic’s name of preference (an ancient name appearing in Linear B tablets), and “Paris,” which like “Priam” is likely to have originated in pre-Greek Asia Minor: tantalizingly an “Alaksandu” of Wilusa is named in Hittite texts.24

  The encounter between Paris and Menelaos through the dust of impending battle is, like a number of events of Book Three, more reasonably suited to the first weeks than to the tenth year of the war. But certain iconographic scenes, such as the encounter between the two most personally inimical protagonists—the cuckolded husband and the interlop ing lover—are necessary to the emotional, if not the logical, completeness of this story. Moreover, the introduction of Paris in this manner, his cowardice directly contrasting with Menelaos’ old-fashioned, lionhearted courage as he steps from the ranks to meet the young pretender, is particularly effective and naturally leads to one of the most determinedly presented realities of this war—the hatred and contempt with which Paris is held by his own people.

  “ ‘Evil Paris,’ ” says his own brother Hektor, “ ‘. . . better had you never been born.’ ” Disparagement of the Trojan responsible for the war is to be expected, of course, in a Greek epic performed before mostly Greek audiences. The vehemence of the disparagement, however, is striking, as is the fact that it comes from his brother. In the entire epic, no Trojan ever attempts to mitigate or diminish either Paris’ crime or the unfair, intolerable burden it has placed on the Trojan people: “ ‘the Trojans are cowards in truth, else long before this / you had worn a mantle of flying stones for the wrong you did us,’ ” as Hektor says—in other words, Paris should have been stoned. Bound by tribal and familial bonds of unyielding if resentful loyalty, the whole of Troy is engulfed in a war fought for what is universally acknowledged as a wrongful, hateful cause.

  Paris’ response to his brother’s contemptuous rebuke is entirely characteristic of his response to the several stinging rebukes he receives throughout the epic. Swiftly, almost agreeably, he acknowledges the correctness of Hektor’s words—“ ‘you have scolded me rightly, not beyond measure’ ”—demurring only with the scorn his brother shows for his beauty and infatuation with the fair sex: “ ‘do not / bring up against me the sweet favours of golden Aphrodite. / Never to be cast away are the gifts of the gods.’ ” Paris never exerts the energy of a defense and instead evinces languid self-acceptance that he is only as the gods have made him and does only what the gods direct. That the gods initiate and direct all human events is, in fact, a view supported by the epic. Paris is unheroic, however, not because of his religious belief in divine agency but because of his passive acquiescence to it; as will be seen, heroism is achieved by striving in the face of unconquerable destiny.

  Now, languidly, Paris offers up to his brother one of his intermittent acts of courage; as he is without shame, so Paris is sometimes without fear, again on the principle that the gods alone will in any case determine the outcome. His suggestion is that he and Menelaos fight a duel, man to man, for “ ‘Helen and all her possessions’ ”:“That one of us who wins and is proved stronger, let him

  take the possessions fairly and the woman, and lead her homeward.

  But the rest of you, having cut your oaths of faith and friendship,

  dwell, you in Troy where the soil is rich, while those others return

  home

  to horse-pasturing Argos, and Achaea the land of fair women.”

  On hearing his brother’s suggestion—the fantasy of all fighting men that the individuals personally responsible for a war be the ones who actually fight it—Hektor “was happy.” Striding into the dangerous open space between the advancing armies, he “forced back the Trojan battalions / holding his spear by the middle until they were all seated.” Gradually the Achaeans see that he is trying to speak, and Agamemnon shouts for quiet.

  In the silence, Hektor proclaims Paris’ offer. The Achaean reaction to the prospect of a duel between young Paris and the older Menelaos is ambiguous: “all of them stayed stricken to silence.” This could be simply because they are stunned at this unexpected development—or it could reflect the epic’s several gentle hints that brave Menelaos may not rank among the very top tier of warriors; the stricken silence is perhaps a symptom of the Achaeans’ instinctive alarm for him. Menelaos himself, however, does not hesitate to accept the challenge and rises to speak to the assembly, urging that whether it is he or Paris who is killed, “ ‘the rest of you be made friends with each other.’ ”

  So he spoke, and the Trojans and Achaeans were joyful, hoping now to be rid of all the sorrow of warfare.

  Not trusting the word of frivolous young men, Menelaos demands that Priam himself be summoned to cut the oath sanctifying the terms of the duel. While they wait for the aged king to come, the men of both armies pull their chariots into line and dismount, stripping off their armor and settling on the field “so there was little ground left between them.” Leaving them to wait, the epic shifts the action dramatically away from the plain to a chamber in the palace complex inside the walls of Troy, an inner sanctuary removed from the world of dust and men. Here, sitting at her loom, is Helen of Troy, the prize sought by both armies and the prize shortly to be fought over by the two men who both claim her. Iris, the tireless messenger of Zeus, once again in the guise of a mortal, i
n this case Laodike, “loveliest looking of all the daughters of Priam,” comes to Helen with a message:She came on Helen in the chamber; she was weaving a great web,

  a double folded cloak of crimson,25 and working into it the

  numerous struggles

  of Trojans, breakers of horses, and bronze-armoured Achaeans,

  struggles that they endured for her sake at the hands of the war god.

  Iris of the swift feet stood beside her and spoke to her:

  “Come with me, dear girl, to behold the marvellous things done

  by Trojans, breakers of horses, and bronze-armoured Achaeans,

  who just now carried sorrowful war against each other,

  in the plain, and all their desire was for deadly fighting;

  now they are all seated in silence, the fighting has ended;

  they lean on their shields, the tall spears stuck in the ground beside

  them.

  But Menelaos the warlike and Alexandros will fight

  with long spears against each other for your possession.

  You shall be called beloved wife of the man who wins you.”

  Elsewhere in the Iliad, warriors are said to “weave” speeches and counsels, plots and schemes; by setting certain events in motion, such masculine weaving, then, shapes reality.26 The women of Troy weave only the representations of events. The gentleness of all imagery in this scene—the quiet chamber where Helen sits spinning the story of her own life and the calm delivery of Iris’ shattering news—places the domestic world of Troy and its women at an almost surreal remove from everything that exists on the plain outside. For this moment, from within these walls, even the actual war appears peaceful, as the soldiers sit unarmed together in unnatural passivity. The remoteness of this inner world of spinning and weaving from the rending and tearing that is the work of war is also a symptom of its powerlessness. 27 At the very moment Helen sits calmly weaving her own story, she is entirely ignorant of the fact that her story is being changed yet again—her fate rewoven, as it were, by Paris’ off-the-cuff offer and Menelaos’ acceptance. The hosts of two entire armies, thousands of men, know the terms of her fate before she does. “ ‘You shall be called beloved wife of the man who wins you,’ ” says gentle Iris, and her categorical matter-of-factness has a sinister ring.