The War That Killed Achilles (42 page)

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:

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,
December 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 wolf 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.

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.