A Companion to The Iliad

ACHILLEUS

Preface

The reader of Homer’s Iliad in Greek has a choice of commentaries to help him understand the text. Readers in translation, whose numbers must be a hundred or even a thousand times as large, have no such assistance. It is to fill that gap that the present book has been written. It is primarily intended for those reading the Iliad for the first time, although more advanced students also may, it is hoped, find interest and elucidation in it.

For separate notes it was always evident that a precise point of reference, and therefore a particular translation, had to be chosen. The only known predecessor is A Companion to the Iliad by W. Leaf (Macmillan, 1892), which was based on the prose translation by Andrew Lang, Walter Leaf, and Ernest Myers. Through an admirable combination of qualities, including readability, dignity, and simplicity, Richmond Lattimore’s translation is the outstanding one for the present age, even more so than Lang, Leaf, and Myers was for the end of the nineteenth century. Consequently, and with the kind encouragement of the author, the present commentary uses his text. It may, of course, be employed with other translations, but less easily, for the precise wording of the references will be different, and the line numbers may slightly vary.

The reader in translation is in some ways in a better position to appreciate the whole Iliad than the reader in Greek, in that he can read more easily, more quickly, and without concern for linguistic problems. The notes here are directed mostly toward the explanation of words, expressions, and allusions in the text; but they also include summaries of books and sections, and assistance toward the appreciation of Homer’s broader composition, by drawing attention to the implications of the narrative and the very effective characterization of the major heroes. The traditional Homeric Question—the question of the genesis and authorship of this huge epic, disputed by generations of enthusiastic scholars—is not forgotten.

I have not felt it desirable to repeat the information about Homer, his story, characters, and historical background, that is given in Lattimore’s Introduction to his translation (pp. 11–55). Rather, I have supplemented it by four appendixes on special topics, which will be found on pp. 277–87. There is also an Index, referring to discussions in the notes and supplementing the Glossary of Proper Names in Lattimore.

Some of the notes have already appeared in my Commentary on Homer’s Iliad, Books I–VI, published by Messrs. Macmillan, and are repeated here with the publishers’ permission; I am also indebted to the same publishers, and to Dr. Stubbings, for permission to reproduce the maps on pp. 25, 29, and 36 from A Companion to Homer, edited by A. J. B. Wace and F. H. Stubbings.

BOOK ONE

The Greek commander, Agamemnon, is forced by the arguments of Achilleus at a public assembly to agree to return his captive, Chryseis, to her father, a local priest. This leads to a violent quarrel, during which Agamemnon uses his superior rank to inform Achilleus that he will replace Chryseis with Achilleus’ own captive, Briseis. Achilleus publicly withdraws from the army and asks his goddess mother, Thetis, to persuade Zeus to help the Trojans. After an interlude, in which Odysseus sees to the formal return of Chryseis to her father, Zeus undertakes to do as Thetis asks; there is then a bad-tempered scene on Olympos between him and his wife, Hera, which is settled by the efforts of Hephaistos.

It is evident from the way the poet moves straight into his story after the briefest of introductions that the general tale of the war against Troy was familiar to his audience, as were the characters. The Iliad plot is treated as an episode in the long story of that war.

The composition of Book 1 is simple and natural; it falls into three sections:

1. The goddess is the Muse, the personification of the poet’s inspiration. The oral poet did not consciously compose his verses. They came into his mind unbidden; and he believed, or affected to believe, that the Muse had told him what to say. She is asked to sing, because this heroic verse was not spoken but was intoned to a musical accompaniment. (What was a reality for Homer became a convention for later poets: I sing of arms and the man [Virgil]; Sing, heavenly Muse [Milton].)

And the subject that the Muse is to sing of, the subject of the Iliad, is—we should note—the anger of Achilleus. In other words, the plot of the Iliad is human and psychological; we are not going to hear a simple chronicle of the events of the Trojan War but the causes and consequences of a quarrel between the Greek leaders.

2. The Greeks in the Iliad are called indiscriminately by three names: Achaians, Argives, and Danaans (LATTIMORE 19).

3. Hades: the god of the underworld.

4–5. It is a common threat in the Iliad that one will give the enemy’s body to the dogs and birds to eat, not allowing his friends to bury him. In practice, however, no corpses are specifically said to be eaten by these scavengers; and in Book 7 the two sides will make a truce for the burial of the dead.

The will of Zeus is a key phrase, meaning, in effect, the plot of the Iliad. His will is to fulfill the promise he makes to Thetis in the scene starting in line 498. See also 15.61–77 n.

7. Atreus’ son. Atreus was the father of the two brothers, Agamemnon and Menelaos; but when one person is described as Atreus’ son, it will naturally be the elder of the two, the commander-in-chief of the army, Agamemnon. Such referring to people by their father’s name (their patronymic) is a common feature of the Iliad.

Lines 1–7 are all that there is of introduction to the Iliad. The poet now proceeds straight to the quarrel and its cause. We may notice that, in these introductory lines, the city of Troy has not even been mentioned; it is worth repeating that the theme of the poem is the anger of Achilleus, and the disastrous effects it had for the Achaians.

9–10. Apollo is the most important divine supporter of the Trojans. He is the archer god, he who strikes from afar (15, 21), the god of disease and healing. The pestilence (plague) which he sends is further described in 50–52.

13. his daughter. The daughter’s name (Chryseis) is given in 111; the details of her story, in 366–69.

14. The ribbons were the loose ends of a band of wool (with religious significance) attached to the top of the staff which the priest carried in virtue of his sacred office. He is here simultaneously a suppliant and a priest and so is doubly to be respected. It is quite possible that the ribbons were literally those of Apollo, i.e., that they were normally part of the adornment of his statue in the temple and had been brought by Chryses to confirm his status in relation to the god.

17. Greaves were shin guards, worn particularly as a protection against low-flying stones or arrows.

strong-greaved is an example of the Homeric stock epithet—a descriptive adjective which has a general application to its noun but no special significance for the present circumstances. Thus we find hollow ships in 26–27 and the murmuring sea in 34.

18. The Homeric gods live on Olympos, the towering mountain in northeast Greece.

19. Priam’s city: Troy.

30. The name Argos is used rather casually in the poem. Sometimes it indicates the famous city of Argos (home, in fact, of Diomedes); sometimes, as presumably here, the northeast Peloponnese; sometimes the whole Peloponnese; and sometimes Greece (just as Argives is used as a general term for Greeks [2 n.]).

31. It is cruel and insensitive of Agamemnon to speak in these terms to the girl’s father. Already here at the beginning the poet has given a little touch toward the delineation of the king’s character.

going up and down by the loom: i.e., weaving, a major task of the women in the house. The phrase shows that an upright loom is envisaged, as in the simile of 23.760–63.

37–38. Chryse (home, of course, of Chryses) and Killa are towns near Troy; Tenedos is an island off the coast.

39. The title Smintheus is of considerable interest. It means mouse god, from a word for mouse which survived in the Cretan dialect in historical times. It is generally believed that this unique name for Apollo derives from a time when he was worshiped in animal form, as Hera was, in the form of a cow, and Athene, of an owl (551 n.). The mouse was perhaps associated with bubonic plague (which is carried by rats), so that the title Smintheus may be particularly appropriate to the present appeal by Chryses. (At 1 Samuel 6:4–5, the Philistines are instructed to make golden images of mice to help remove a plague.)

This line begins a common prayer formula: If I have ever pleased you in the past, help me now.

40. rich thigh pieces. The practice at sacrifices was to wrap the thigh bones of the animal in folds of fat and then burn these, as symbolic of the whole animal, as an offering to the god. The more nutritious parts were eaten by the worshipers.

42. The arrows of the god indicate the plague (9–10 n.).

Danaans (cf. 2 n.) is an ancient tribal name whose origins are totally lost. It is no doubt connected with the mythological figures Danaos and his daughters, the Danaïds, and with Danaë, the mother of Perseus. As to whether the name is to be identified with the Danuna, found in a list of peoples of the sea who attacked Egypt in about 1172 B.C., opinion is divided (PAGE 22).

54. Achilleus takes the initiative and so exposes himself to the possibility of a clash with Agamemnon.

55. Hera, wife of the supreme god, Zeus, is, with Athene, the most constant divine supporter of the Greeks and inveterate enemy of the Trojans.

65. for the sake of: i.e., for the lack of, for the nonfulfillment of. A hecatomb is a large sacrifice of animals to a god.

71. Ilion: Troy. Kalchas had been the prophet of the Greek army from the beginning (2.300), and had apparently directed the course of the fleet when they came to Troy nine years before.

84. of the swift feet: another example of the stock epithet (17 n.). Achilleus’ agility has no relevance to the present situation.

91. claims. This word perhaps gives a wrong impression in English. This line is not an attack on Agamemnon. He is the greatest of all the Achaians, i.e., the most powerful and kingly, and Achilleus does not dispute this. All the same, Achilleus’ promise of support for Kalchas is hardly conciliatory to Agamemnon, who was obviously referred to in 78–79.

111. Chryseis is more a description than a name, as it merely means Chryses’ daughter. Later romances corrupted it eventually to Cressida (cf. note on Troilos, 24.257); but that is all long after Homer.

113. The overt comparison of a slave girl with his wife portrays the same insensitivity in Agamemnon as he showed in his words to Chryses (31 n.).

118. The real reason for the quarrel is that the king is not big enough for his position. He needs recognition and so takes the view that it is improper that he alone should be without a share of this particular lot of booty. Achilleus’ reply is perfectly reasonable, apart from the personal remarks in the first line.

125. what we took from the cities by storm. The Achaians, while besieging Troy, had made a number of expeditions against nearby towns. Achilleus claims in 9.328–29 to have personally led the attack on twenty-three.

138. Aias, when mentioned without further identification, is normally the greater Aias, the son of Telamon. He and Odysseus are named here as the two most important leaders of the Achaians, apart from Agamemnon and Achilleus himself.

It is simply assumed that each chief has a female captive from the booty of the captured city.

145. Idomeneus, another of the chief leaders, had the powerful Kretan contingent under his command.

146. The sneer in the second half of the line is an answer to Achilleus’ greediest for gain of all men in 122.

149–71. Achilleus, who seems hardly to have heard the second half of what Agamemnon said, is now very angry. This speech shows a combination of rhetoric and intense feeling which is reserved to Achilleus in the Iliad; one may compare his tremendous outburst in reply to Odysseus in the Embassy scene, in 9.308–429, and his speech to his mother at 18.98–126.

155. Phthia (in Thessaly, in northern Greece) is the home of Achilleus; the Myrmidons (180) are his troops.

159. The purpose of the expedition was to recover Helen, the wife of Menelaos, stolen from him by Paris. Agamemnon, the great king of Mykenai, took action to support his brother; the other Greeks are present out of deference to Agamemnon.

163. when the Achaians sack some … citadel. See 125 n.

184. Briseis, like Chryseis (111), is merely a descriptive name, for she is the daughter of Briseus (392). Achilleus had captured her after killing her husband and brothers when the town of Lyrnessos was taken (2.690, 19.291–96); it was on this same expedition that he took Hypoplakian Thebe (2.691), made numerous captives, including Chryseis (1.366), and killed the father and brothers of Hektor’s wife Andromache (6.416–24). (On the similarities between the fates of Briseis and Andromache and on other obscurities about Briseis in the Iliad, consult REINHARDT 50–57.)

188. Peleus’ son: Achilleus (1). For the use of the father’s name on its own like this, see 7 n.

194. Athene descended. Athene comes down from the sky to stop Achilleus from attacking Agamemnon. Visible only to him, she takes him by the hair. It is not easy for us (because we are unbelievers) to understand or accept the activities of the gods in the Iliad. They act as independent agents but nevertheless preserve a specific power, each in relation to his or her own separate function. The function of Athene is to be the pro-Greek goddess of organized, disciplined warfare. She normally acts through heroes who are natural winners—Odysseus, Diomedes, Achilleus. Here she instigates, and in some sense represents, the self-control of Achilleus.

201. The phrase winged words does not imply anything special in what is said. It is part of an ancient formula, based on the simple fact that words pass through the air from the mouth of the speaker to the ear of the hearer.

202. The aegis is a supernatural weapon of Zeus. It is normally defensive and may be thought of as a shield; but it can be used offensively, because, when shaken in the face of the enemy, it strikes terror into their hearts.

The words once more do not mean that Athene has come down in this way previously. What Achilleus means is that here is another reason for annoyance: Have you come here, too?

206. grey-eyed. See 551 n.

207. but will you obey me? Notice how Homer preserves the human dignity of his characters. They are not pawns in the hands of these powerful gods. Athene can advise, but she does not compel. The decision and the responsibility remain with Achilleus.

211. The words and it will be that way mean that what Achilleus says in his abuse of Agamemnon will in practice come to pass.

213. In other words, Achilleus will in due course get material compensation for the present loss of his gift of honor (Briseis).

224. Atreides: the commonest form of the patronymic, meaning son of Atreus (7).

234. sceptre. We learn elsewhere in the Iliad (23.568) that a speaker in the assembly held a scepter handed to him by one of the heralds.

242. man-slaughtering Hektor. The reference to Hektor is a kind of foreshadowing of later events, for he is to be the major threat to the Achaians in the Iliad.

247–48. Nestor now intervenes in the quarrel. He is the oldest by far of the Achaian leaders and thus a figure to whom respect is due. He is portrayed as clearheaded and a good adviser, if a little given to reminiscing about his youth. He is one of Homer’s favorite characters.

Nestor is king of Pylos, a city on the west coast of the Peloponnese, in an area unimportant in later Greece but one of the two or three strongest kingdoms in Mycenaean times (11.681 n.). He is represented (250–52) as having lived through two generations and now being king in the third; i.e., he was in his sixties or seventies.

255. Priam, the patriarchal king of Troy, had fifty sons and numerous sons-in-law (6.244).

259–74. Nestor produces a mythological example, or paradeigma, to increase the persuasiveness of his words—a device used several times in the Iliad, notably in the example of Niobe in Achilleus’ speech to Priam in 24.601–19. It is characteristic of such examples that they are constructed according to the principle of ring composition, which can best be explained here by a schematic summary:

Ring composition probably originated as a mnemonic method for the oral bard. It is very common indeed in speeches in the Iliad; for other examples, see the Index.

The central myth is from the war between the Lapiths and the centaurs, familiar perhaps from the Parthenon sculptures, now in the British Museum. The centaurs were half-human creatures (the beast men of 267) who lived around Mount Pelion in Thessaly; the Lapiths were a human tribe. The war is referred to again in 2.742–44.

It is not at all probable that before Homer there was a story of Nestor going all the way north from Pylos to assist the Lapiths. As in other, similar, cases, it appears that our poet was willing to invent mythology when he needed it. The Lapith/centaur war was part of the legends; Nestor’s involvement in it is an invention for the purpose of the present speech.

263–64. These are names of Lapiths; Peirithoös was their king.

265. Theseus was in legend the friend and comrade of Peirithoös; he was also the traditional hero of Athens. It is a strange fact that this is the only mention of him in the Iliad; and this line is so poorly attested (missing from the best manuscripts and not referred to in the ancient scholia) that it is generally believed to be a post-Homeric addition to the text.

275–76. Nestor appeals to Agamemnon; 277–81, to Achilleus; 282–84, to Agamemnon again. Nestor is doing his best.

280. the mother who bore you immortal. See 351 n.

307. Patroklos is Achilleus’ second-in-command, charioteer, and close friend. As his death in Book 16 is a direct result of Achilleus’ refusal to fight, and the major factor in Achilleus’ personal tragedy, the poet takes care to introduce him to us at this early stage.

311. Odysseus, the most capable of the Greeks for any job that needs to be done properly, is the natural choice to see that Chryseis is duly returned to her father.

crafty is a translation of one of Odysseus’ regular epithets, but the Greek word is more complimentary; clever would be better.

314. The army engages in a ritual purification after the plague.

342. makes sacrifice is a mistranslation; the word means storms, rages.

351. Achilleus’ mother is Thetis, a sea goddess or Nereid, daughter of Nereus, the old man of the sea (358). The marriage of Peleus and Thetis was the most glorious in Greek mythology, with the gods themselves present as wedding guests (24.60–63). But the couple had only one child, Achilleus, who was fated to die young (352); and Thetis was no longer living with her now aged husband but had returned to the sea.

353. Zeus is god of the sky and the weather—one reason why the home of the gods is on Mount Olympos.

366. Thebe. This is not the important Greek city of Thebes but the so-called Hypoplakian Thebe, near Troy, home of Hektor’s wife Andromache, whose father, Eëtion, had been king (cf. 184 n.). Chryseis had apparently been taken among the captives there rather than from her own home town of Chryse.

371–75 = 12–16; 376–79 = 22–25. This repetition of lines is a natural feature of oral poetry. The forms of expression are more or less fixed by the meter; and when the same thing is to be said again, it is automatically said in the same words.

371. bronze-armoured. Although iron was in common use in Homer’s own day, the epic tradition is very consistent in keeping bronze as the metal for armor and weapons, as it had been in the Mycenaean Age.

396–406. This story of a revolt on Olympos, which Thetis helped to prevent by bringing Briareus/Aigaion to defend Zeus, is not attested anywhere else. Every consideration makes it probable that we have here the free invention of the poet, not an allusion to preexisting myth. Homer requires a reason for Zeus to be under an obligation to Thetis and therefore creates one, in the same way he invented Nestor’s assistance to the Lapiths (259–74).

The introductory statement, many times in my father’s halls I have heard you making claims, is used in the same way at 21.475, where the verisimilitude of the alleged recollection is no greater than here.

398. Kronos’ son: Zeus.

400. Hera, Poseidon, Pallas Athene. Those who assume that Achilleus is quoting an existing myth have great difficulty in explaining why these three gods in particular should have opposed Zeus. If we accept that the whole story is a Homeric invention, the reason becomes obvious: these three gods are the helpers of the Greeks in the Iliad; they would therefore do their best to oppose Thetis’ request that Zeus should assist the Trojans (408). By a sort of mirror effect, they take the role of the opposition in the invented myth.

402. creature of the hundred hands. Kottos, Briareus, and Gyas, each with a hundred arms and fifty heads, were a distinct group of monstrous creatures from the early dawn of the world. Hesiod tells how they helped Zeus and the Olympian gods in the war against the Titans (Theogony 617–735). Briareus’ role here, supporting Zeus, may be an echo of that other story.

403–4. On four occasions in the Iliad different names are quoted from the languages of gods and men. They are

(Gods’ names first). The accepted explanation is that the gods’ language is the poetic vocabulary transmitted from the past, while the language of men is the common and everyday terminology known to the poet.

The Homeric text gives the second name as Aigaion, which might indeed means Aigaios’ son, as Lattimore translates it; cf. Kronion in the next line. The name seems likely to be that of a sea divinity connected with the Aegean Sea, but no certain information about this person can be obtained from ancient sources. Homer’s identification of him with the hundred-handed Briareus is unexplained and adds to the impression that these lines are sheer invention.

Similarly, if there are any facts behind the statement that Aigaion (or Aigaios’ son) was stronger than his father, they are not available to us.

405. it refers to his strength. Kronion (son of Kronos) has the suffix-ion, which has the same effect as the suffix-ides in Atreides (224).

407. The attitude of a suppliant was to clasp the knees of the person appealed to with one hand and reach for his chin with the other; cf. 500–501.

408. We should not fail to notice that Achilleus is now asking Zeus to help the Trojans, his enemies, to kill the Greeks; his personal honor means more to him than the lives of his friends.

423–24. The absence of the gods at a feast given by the Aithiopians makes a pause in the story, during which Chryseis may be returned to her father. And the interval of eleven days before Thetis can fulfill her errand has the effect of isolating the action of the Iliad from the continuum of the Trojan War, especially as there is exactly the same interval at the end of the epic; for such is the length of the truce which Achilleus agrees to with Priam so that the Trojans may mourn and bury Hektor (see 24.31 n.).

The Aithiopians are a god-loving people far to the southeast, at the Ocean, because the Homeric view of the world was of a flat disk around which ran a river called Ocean.

426. bronze-founded. The house of Zeus had a floor of bronze.

436. Ships were moored facing out to sea. The anchors were heavy stones thrown out at the prow, while the stern was tied to the shore by cables.

449. barley. Grains of barley were sprinkled between the horns of the sacrificial victim.

451–56. Chryses calls off the curse with a prayer very similar to the one with which he invoked it (36–42).

458–66. These lines contain a complete description of the procedure at a sacrifice. After a prayer, and the scattering of the grains of barley (449 n.), they pulled back the animal’s head to expose the neck, cut the throat, and skinned the carcass. They then cut out the thigh bones, covered them with a layer of fat above and below, and laid on top of them pieces of flesh, to symbolize the offering of the whole animal (cf. 40 n.); these were burnt while libations of wine were poured to the god. They then lightly roasted the entrails (the vitals: heart, liver, lungs, kidney, stomach), and ate these as a first course. Finally, they cut up the rest of the meat, put it on spits, and roasted it. The whole procedure is described again, in almost exactly the same words, at 2.421–29.

470. It was rare in the ancient world to drink wine neat. It was usually diluted with water, and this was the purpose of the mixing bowl.

471. Before the company drank its wine, a small amount was put into each man’s cup and was poured out by him on the ground as a libation to the god.

488–92. These lines show the passing of time (the twelve days until the gods should return from the Aithiopians) and indicate that the fighting was going on, but without Achilleus.

493. after this day means from the time when Thetis told her son that the gods would return in twelve days; in other words, it refers back to 425.

500–501. For the attitude of a suppliant, see 407 n.

518–19. Zeus in the Iliad is a strange amalgam of

a) The supreme god, without whose will nothing important happens in the world below (5)

b) The sky and weather god (420,