The War That Killed Achilles (36 page)

14
The scholia (Ab) is cited in Kirk's commentary, sub. v. 776, 241f.

15
Strabo,
Geography
1.1.11, in Horace Leonard Jones, trans.,
Strabo: Geography,
vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA, 1917), 179; his misplacing of Troy is at 13.1.34-36.

16
One commentator has suggested that the Hellespont may be “boundless” (
apeírōn
) because its limit was simply not known: Luce, 44. For a survey of the Troad landscape, see Luce, 21ff., and also 236, note 10.

17
Of the Hill of the Thicket, or more prosaically “Bramble Hill” as G. S. Kirk calls it, “the immortal gods have named it the burial mound of the much leaping or bounding Murine.” One scholium states that Murine was an Amazon, but this lone attestation is not very convincing. “Bounding,” dancing, or leaping, as Kirk speculates, “sounds like some ritual action” (Kirk, sub. vv. 813-14, 247). The
Cypria
is said to have included a catalogue of the Trojans' allies:
Cypria,
argument 12, in M. L. West, ed. and trans.,
Greek Epic Fragments: From the Seventh to the Fifth Century B.C.
(Cambridge, MA, 2003), 81. There is no way of knowing how expansive this was, but the
Iliad
's own scant catalogue follows here. The fact that the majority of leaders have been given Greek names is evidence that this list does not derive from some lost historical document but was created for the epic. The most accessible guide to the Trojan Catalogue, as for the Catalogue of Ships, is Kirk, 248ff. For its possible echo of west Anatolian alliances in the Bronze Age, see Michael Wood,
In Search of the Trojan War,
rev. ed. (London, 2005), 278f.

18
Hektor's name is first mentioned in the
Iliad
at 1.242, significantly in the words of Achilles: “ ‘Then stricken at heart though you be, you will be able / to do nothing, when in their numbers before man-slaughtering Hektor / they drop and die.' ”

19
For the Mycenaean origin of Hektor's name, see Paul Wathelet,
Dictionnaire des Troyens de l'Iliade,
vol. 1 (Liège, 1988), 497ff.

20
On the theme of unequal paired brothers, see K. Reinhardt, “The Judgement of Paris,” in G. M. Wright and P. V. Jones, trans.,
Homer: German Scholarship in Translation
(Oxford, 1997), 184ff. In the
Iliad,
it is striking that Hektor's primary role has been displaced by that of his brother Paris, who should by dramatic, not to mention moral, right be the defender of the city he has placed in jeopardy, as, similarly, Agamemnon displaces his brother Menelaos, who should also by dramatic and moral right be the leader of the army assembled to regain his wife, Helen.

21
A concise overview of arguments for and against the Homeric invention of Hektor is given in Jonathan S. Burgess,
The Tradition of the Trojan War in Homer and the Epic Cycle
(Baltimore, 2001), 64ff. The theory was first presented by John A. Scott, “Paris and Hector in Tradition and in Homer,”
Classical Philology
8, no. 2 (1913), 160-71; and most energetically rebutted by Frederick M. Combellack—apparently still smarting from the effects of an article written thirty years previously—“Homer and Hector,”
American Journal of Philology
65, no. 3 (1944), 209-43.

22
Aiólos
defined in Richard John Cunliffe,
A Lexicon of the Homeric Dialect
(Norman, OK, 1963), 12.

23
The term is also used once of the war god Ares, at 20.38. See Kirk's discussion of the term (Kirk, sub. v. 816, 250f.).

24
For “Paris/Alexander,” see Wathelet, 814ff.; and for “Priam,” ibid., 909f. Paris tends to be the preferred name for Trojans, Alexandros for Greeks. Irene J. F. de Jong, “Paris/Alexandros in the
Iliad,
”
Mnemosyne
40 (1987), 124-28, suggests that Homer, “by keeping the ‘Trojan' name ‘Paris,' may have intended to introduce a ‘realistic' element in the representation of the Trojans as speakers of a foreign language.” A treaty drawn up around 1300 B.C. between the Hittite king Muwattalli II and Alaksandu of Wilusa binds the latter, and his sons and grandsons after him, to an oath of loyalty, thus establishing Wilusa as a vassal state of the Hittite king. The question arises, then, as to why the ruler of Anatolian Wilusa—
Wilios
—
Ilios
—bore a Greek name? A possible explanation is hinted at in the treaty itself, in which the Hittite king stipulates that on Alaksandu's death the treaty will continue to bind his heir—“In regard to the [son] of yours whom you designate for kingship—[whether he is by] your wife or by your concubine.” In other words, the adopted son of a foreign concubine could be the legitimate ruler of Wilusa. For the treaty, see Gary Beckman,
Hittite Diplomatic Texts,
2nd ed. (Atlanta, 1999), section 5, 88. It has been suggested that the very particular language in this clause has been tailored to a specific circumstance—such as the possibility that Alaksandu was himself the son of a perhaps foreign concubine, or adopted: see Joachim Latacz,
Troy and Homer: Towards a Solution of an Old Mystery
(Oxford, 2004), 117f. Ironically, then, while the epic may have retained the exotic, Asiatic name “Paris” precisely because it suggested a realistic detail, it is the more familiar “Alexandros” that evokes a historic prince of Troy.

25
Text adjusted from Lattimore's “a red folding robe.”

26
The verb “to weave” is
huphaínō.
Examples of the “masculine” use are found at
Iliad
3.212; 6.187; 7.324.

27
The domestic world of the Trojan women is explored by many scholars. See, for example, Maria C. Pantelia, “Spinning and Weaving: Ideas of Domestic Order in Homer,”
American Journal of Philology
114, no. 4 (Winter 1993), 493-501. A discussion of the role of women, as spinners and weavers and other skilled manual laborers, as gleaned from the Linear B documents, is given in Jon-Christian Billigmeier and Judy A. Turner, “The Socio-Economic Roles of Women in Mycenaean Greece: A Brief Survey from the Evidence of the Linear B Tablets,” in Helene P. Foley, ed.,
Reflections of Women in Antiquity
(New York, 1981), 1-18.

28
For
ainōs,
see Cunliffe, 12; and Kirk, sub. v. 158, 285.

29
“At the same time a good king and a strong spearfighter”: This line was a favorite motto of Alexander the Great.

30
It is interesting to consider what Hittite law made of Helen's situation:

31
The
eídōlon,
or phantom of Helen, was famously evoked in a lost poem by the sixth-century-B.C. poet Stesichorus, who, it was claimed, had earlier been struck blind for defaming her; for attestations of the lost poem, see David A. Campbell,
Greek Lyric III: Stesichorus, Ibycus, Simonides, and Others
(Cambridge, MA, 2001), fragment 192-93, 93ff. Herodotus claims he was told of Helen's Egyptian sojourn when he was in Egypt (
The Histories,
2. 116-20). In the
Odyssey,
Helen evidently has a close connection to Egypt, whether or not she had ever visited there (
Odyssey
4: 219ff.). Otto Skutsch, “Helen, Her Name and Nature,”
Journal of Hellenic Studies,
107 (1987), 188-93, suggests that “two mythological figures are fused in Helen,” the fertility goddess and the phenomenon of St. Elmo's fire, destroyer of ships.

32
Later in the
Iliad,
at 11.138ff., reference is made to the fact that the Trojan Antimachos advocated killing Menelaos “ ‘on the spot' ” during his Embassy, but he would seem to have been a lone voice in the Trojan assembly.

33
For a discussion of the similarities between Homeric agreements such as is sworn to between Achaeans and Trojans here, and Near Eastern treaty formats, see Peter Karavites,
Promise-Giving and Treaty-Making: Homer and the Near East
(Leiden, 1992); and Jaan Puhvel,
Homer and Hittite
(Innsbruck, 1991), 9ff.

34
The whisking away of a hero by a deity in time of crisis is a traditional theme in many cultures; see, for example, M. L. West,
The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth
(Oxford, 1997), 99ff. West describes what appears to be a scene of divine rescue depicted on a silver Cyprian bowl dating to about 700 B.C., evidently based upon a Phoenician story. Others have conjectured that the Aphrodite-Paris-Helen nexus reflects the Indo-European archetype of the Dawn Goddess and her mortal lovers; see Ann Suter, “Aphrodite/Paris/Helen: A Vedic Myth in the
Iliad,
”
Transactions of the American Philological Association
117 (1987), 51-58; and Deborah Dickmann Boedeker,
Aphrodite's Entry into Greek Epic
(Leiden, 1974).

35
Cypria,
fragment 10, in West,
Greek Epic Fragments,
89ff. For the many accounts of Helen's parentage and birth, see Timothy Gantz,
Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources,
vol. 1 (Baltimore, 1993), 318ff.

36
M. L. West,
Indo-European Poetry and Myth
(Oxford, 2007), 229ff.

37
Helen's speculated pre-epic Greek origins are discussed in Linda Lee Clader,
Helen: The Evolution from Divine to Heroic in Greek Epic Tradition
(Leiden, 1976); and Skutsch, 188-93.

38
On Aphrodite, see Walter Burkert,
Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical,
John Raffan, trans. (Cambridge, MA, 1985), 152ff.

39
Compare the depiction of Paris' seduction of Helen, as given by the lyric poet Alcaeus, writing in the early sixth century B.C.:

40
On the seduction, see M. W. Edwards,
Homer: Poet of the “Iliad”
(Baltimore, 1987), 196f.

41
“Remembered their warcraft” (4.222)—
Mnēsanto dè chármēs; chármēs
is a vexed word, taken by some commentators to refer to the root
char,
or “ joy,” and thus meaning “joy in battle,” “eagerness for the fray,” as, for example, Georg Autenrieth,
A Homeric Dictionary,
Robert P. Keep, trans. (Piscataway, NJ, 2002), 328f. However, the notion of battle joy is so alien to the
Iliad
that most translators and scholars refer to “the
primitive
meaning of the root
ghar
(the Greek
char
), and explain it as the ‘glow,' ‘burning flame' of battle.” See Walter Leaf and M. A. Bayfield,
The “Iliad” of Homer,
vol. 1 (London, 1971), sub. v. 222, 346f. Thus “fighting, battle; spirit, stomach, ardour for the fight; the art of war, war, fighting” (Cunliffe, 418).

42
Kirk, sub. vv. 51-53, 336, claims that Argos “was continuously inhabited from the Bronze Age on, and even seems to have escaped major damage at the end of LHIIIB” (circa 1200 B.C.), but this is a misleading quibble. Archaeological evidence shows that diminished populations hung on at a number of formerly important Mycenaean centers, such as Tiryns, Athens, and Argos, but that these, too, faded toward the end of the twelfth and beginning of the eleventh centuries B.C.; see, for example, Carol G. Thomas and Craig Conant,
Citadel to City-State: The Transformation of Greece, 1200-700 B. C.E.
(Bloomington, IN, 1999), 1-31. Given the general collapse of all major centers in the Argolid and elsewhere on the mainland, the existence of a small, tenacious population hanging on in the ruins of a single settlement would in any case have done little to temper the belief of later generations that they had lost their world.

43
The list of epithets is given in Walter Leaf,
The Iliad,
vol. 1 (London, 1900), sub. v. 222, 170.

1
See Wolf-Hartmut Friedrich,
Wounding and Death in the “Iliad”: Homeric Techniques of Description,
Gabriele Wright and Peter Jones, trans. (London, 2003), especially the appendix by Dr. K. B. Saunders, who is quoted in the text, 161ff.

2
Both the Kazakh
Epic of Manas
and the Kalmyk
Dzhangariada
are quoted in C. M. Bowra,
Heroic Poetry
(London, 1961), 57f., in turn from
Manas: Kirgizkii Epos
(Moscow, 1946), 335, and
Dzhangariada: Geroicheskaya Poema Kalmykov,
S. A. Kozin, ed. (Moscow, 1944), 219.

3
Seth L. Schein,
The Mortal Hero: An Introduction to Homer's “Iliad”
(Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1984), 72ff., gives an eloquent account of the
Iliad
's insistence on its heroes' mortality. For evidence of war injuries and their treatment in the Bronze Age, see Robert Arnott, “War Wounds and Their Treatment in the Aegean Bronze Age,” in Robert Laffineur, ed.,
POLEMOS: Le contexte guerrier en Égée à l'Âge du Bronze
(Liège, 1999), 499-507.