THE JUDGMENTS OF THE HUMANE SKEPTIC
The Iliad is dominated by its unforgettable heroes and heroines: most notably, Hector, Priam, Andromache, Agamemnon, Hecubae, Helen, Odysseus, and, of course, Achilles. Homer brings these heroes and heroines to life above all through their vivid, moving, and dramatic speeches: most prominently, the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon in Book I; the successive exchanges between Hector and his mother Hecubae, his sister-in-law Helen, and his wife Andromache in Book VI; the discussion between Achilles and his friends Odysseus, Phoenix, and Ajax in Book IX; the exchanges between Hector and his parents and, ultimately, Achilles in Book XXII; and the interview between Achilles and Priam, as well as the funeral speeches of Andromache, Hecubae, and Helen, in Book XXIV.
Indeed, while almost 45 percent of the lines in the poem are in direct discourse (7,Qi8 of 15,690),[224] [225] in those five books the clear majority of lines are in direct discourse.8Z Thanks to the dramatic power of those books, we naturally focus on them and teachers of the Iliad often excerpt those five books in particular, along with Book XVI, in preference to the long, detailed accounts of fighting and competition that dominate the other books. It is especially on the basis of the dramatic speeches of Books I, VI, IX, XXII, and XXIV that Plato judged Homer to be “the first teacher and leader” of all the “tragic” poets and “the most poetic and first of the tragic poets.”[226] Jasper Griffin goes so far as to suggest that, “without the example of Homer, showing the heroes and heroines of myth conversing in dialogue in a high style, Attic tragedy would never have come into existence in the form that it did” (2004,156).When the Iliad is viewed in the light of its characters’ speeches, as a proto-tragedy dominated by tragic heroes, Homer seems altogether hidden, as hidden as are Aeschylus and Sophocles in their tragedies and, we may add, Plato in his dialogues.
And yet, if we widen our focus to encompass, not only the dramatic speeches in the most dramatic books, but the poem as a whole, we see that Homer is not as hidden as he first seems. For in sharp contrast to the tragic poets and, for that matter, in sharp contrast with Plato, Homer addresses us directly, in his own narration, in most of the Iliad, in 55 percent of the lines of the poem (8,672 of 15,690), and in the clear majority of lines in 15 of the 24 books of the poem.[227] It is also important to note that Homer addresses us far more directly in the Iliad than in the Odyssey, of which almost 70 percent of the lines are in direct speech (8,225 of 12,103); Homer is therefore more hidden in the Odyssey than in the Iliad. It is in the less dramatic lines and the less dramatic books of the Iliad that Homer steps out of the shadow of his heroes and offers us more directly a picture of himself. More precisely, it is through his rare explicit judgments, his numerous detailed accounts of death, and his numerous similes, that Homer distinguishes himself from his heroes and offers himself as a distinctive model of human excellence. For in stark contrast with Homer, his heroes offer frequent judgments,85 no detailed accounts of death, and relatively few similes (3386 compared to 30987 by Homer).88It is Homer’s first explicit judgment, in his own name, after the opening lines of the poem, in Book II, that most clearly distinguishes him from his heroes. Our very first picture of Homer, in the very opening of the poem, is of a pious human being who humbly looks to a goddess, evidently one of the all-knowing Muses, for knowledge and wisdom.89 Like the other human characters in the poem, Homer begins by trusting in the wisdom and beneficence of the gods. He turns to the goddess for assistance in Book I just as Chryses turns to Apollo and Achilles turns to Zeus for assistance in Book I. However, in Book II, Homer departs from this trusting stance toward the gods and thereby breaks from all the other characters in the poem.
There Homer, in his own name, calls Agamemnon a “fool” for trusting in the beneficence of Zeus:85 See Griffin 2004, 167. Consider, for example, Iliad 1.106-108, 1.122, 1.149-160,
I. 176-187, 1.225-231, 1.244.
86 These numbers are according to a somewhat more expansive method of counting similes than that which I used previously (cf. Ahrensdorf 2014, 62 n65, 254 nιoo). There are 33 similes in the Iliad spoken by heroes and 9 similes spoken by gods: 5 by Achilles (9.323-327, 16.6-10, 18.107-110, 21.281-283, 22.262-267); 4 by Hector (7.235-236, 20.371-372, 20.432, 22.125-127); 4 by Nestor (1.265, 2.337, 10.547, ιι.746-747); 4 by Aeneas (20.200, 20.211-212, 20.244, 20.251-255); 2 by Paris (3.59-63,
II. 382-383); 2 by Sarpedon (5.472-477, 5.487-489); 1 by Odysseus (2.289-290); ³ by Priam (3.195-198); 1 by Antenor (3.221-223); ι by Helen (3.230); 1 by Agamemnon (4.243-246); 1 by Glaucus (6.146-150); 1 by Phoenix (9.481); 1 by Dolon (10.436-437); ³ by Diomedes (11.389-390); 1 by Asios (12.167-172); 1 by Idomeneus (13.292-293); 1 by Menelaus (17.20-23); 3 by Apollo (5.459, 21.462-466, 24.39-45); 2 by Poseidon (13.52-54, 13.99-110); 2 by Thetis (18.56-57, 18.437-438); ³ by Iris (2.798-801); ³ by Ares (5.885).
87 Here, by my count, is the number of similes given by Homer directly (not through a character) in each book: I (3), II (18), III (6), IV (12), V (16), VI (4), VII (7), VIII (6), IX (2), X (7), XI (29), XII (16), XIII (27), XIV (¿¿), XV (20), XVI (24), XVII (24), XVIII (8), XIX (¿¿), XX (9), XXI (14), XXII (16), XXIII (ιι), XXIV (5). For an extremely useful catalogue of all the similes in the two poems, see Scott 1974, 190-205; consider also Edwards 1991, 24; Stanley 1993, 264. On the challenge of counting the similes, see Buxton 2004, 146-147; Edwards 1991, 24; 1987, 102-103; Scott 1974, 190-212; 2009, 189-205. Edwards notes that similes are distinctive to Homer’s own narration (or speech) and are consequently “much less common in direct speech...
Akhilleus has more than anyone else” of Homer’s characters “and his long similes are all strikingly original in content and highly effective” (1991, 39).88 Another indication that Homer is more hidden in the Odyssey than in the Iliad is that he himself provides far fewer similes in the Odyssey, only 54. Here, by my count, is the number of similes given by Homer, not through a character, in each book: I (î), II (³), III (³), IV (5), V (7), VI (6), VII (2), VIII (3), IX-XII (0), XIII (4), XIV (î), XV (³), XVI (3), XVII (3), XVIII (2), XIX (3), XX (³), XXI (5), XXII (5), XXIII (3), XXIV (ι).
89 I.I-7, 2.484-487, 2.761-762.
So he [the dream] spoke and went away, and left there one [Agamemnon] who believed things in his spirit that were not to be accomplished. For he thought that he would take Priam’s city on that day - fool! - who did not know what deeds Zeus was devising. For he was to put woes and groaning on both the Trojans and the Achaians through mighty conflicts. (2.35-40)
By calling Agamemnon here a fool for trusting in Zeus, the greatest of the gods, the Father of Gods and Men, Homer implies that it is foolish for any of the other human characters, for Achilles, for example, simply to trust in Zeus or indeed in any of the other gods (see 2.55-72).
Now, Homer does not repeat in the rest of the poem the explicit judgment he makes concerning the folly of Agamemnon’s trust in the gods. And he does, as we have seen, note the many times that the gods do heed the prayers of humans and assist them.[228] However, as we have also seen, Homer proceeds in Books III and IV to reveal, through his account of the gods’ decision to sabotage the efforts of the Achaians and Trojans to end their bloody war by arranging for a violation of the truce both sides prayed to the gods to enforce, just how unwise it is to place one’s faith in the gods.[229] Moreover, as we have noted, Homer highlights five other key moments in the poem when the gods refuse to heed prayers made by humans.92 In each of these cases, Homer sharply contrasts the credulity of his characters with his own clear-eyed skepticism with respect to the gods: “So he [Agamemnon] spoke, but the son of Cronus did not accomplish any of it; he accepted the sacrifices but increased the unenvied toil” (2.419-420); “So they [the Achaians and Trojans] spoke, but the son of Cronus would not accomplish any of these things for them” (3.302); “So she [the Trojan priestess of Athena] spoke, praying, but Pallas Athena refused her” (6.311); “They [Hector and the Trojans] acted and made a great sacrifice to the immortals...
but the blessed gods would not take any part of it, nor did they wish to. For sacred Ilion, both Priam and the people of Priam of the strong ash spear, greatly incurred their hatred” (8.548-552); “So he [Achilles] spoke praying [both that Patroclus win glory and that he return from battle safely], and Thoughtful Zeus heeded him. The Father granted him one [prayer], but refused him the other” (16.249-250). By highlighting these particular instances, Homer harkens back to and generalizes his original, explicit judgment that it was foolish for Agamemnon to rely on the providence of Zeus. In this way, Homer indicates, quietly but clearly, that, in contrast with all the other human characters of the poem, with the partial exception of Achilles in Book IX and XXIV, he, Homer, does not trust in divine providence and that he considers such distrust a key component of wisdom.[230]After Book II, Homer continues to make explicit judgments, in his own name, and these judgments spotlight two other ways in which he distinguishes himself from the other human characters in his poem. In the first place, on ten occasions,[231] Homer calls men “fools” for rashly risking death and unreasonably hoping that they can avoid it:[232] the Trojan ally Nastes who trusted that his gold ornaments would deter Achilles from killing him (2.872-875); the Trojan ally Asios who refuses to heed Poulydamas’s advice to postpone a headlong cavalry attack on the Achaian fortifications (12.108-117; see 13.383-393); Asios’s men, who follow him (12.124-140); Patroclus, who asks Achilles to send him into battle (16.46-47); Patroclus again, who refuses to heed Achilles’ command against attacking the Trojans on the Trojan plain, up to the walls of Troy (16.686-687); the Trojans, who “were hoping” to drag the corpse of Patroclus away from mighty Ajax (17.233-236); the Trojans Chromios and Aretos, who hope to take the horses of Achilles away from Automedon without losing their lives (17.494-539); the Trojan Polydorus who trusts that his speed will save him on the battlefield (20.411-412); the Trojan Tros, who hopes that the wrathful Achilles might show mercy to him (20.463-472); and, most emphatically, the Trojan warriors, who follow the bold - and pious - Hector’s rejection of Poulydamas’s “noble counsel” that they withdraw behind the walls of Troy now that Achilles has returned to the war.[233] Through these particular judgments of these characters, Homer signals his judgment that it is foolish to indulge in the hope that, through one’s own strength or the compassion of others or the providence of the gods, one can cheat death, and hence foolish to underestimate one’s vulnerability to death - a judgment that would seem to apply to other characters as well, including such seemingly prudent ones as Odysseus (see 11.401-464).
In this way, Homer indicates that, in contrast to the tendency of virtually all the heroes of his poem, with the partial exception of Poulydamas (but consider 14.449-475), he himself is wisely mindful of his vulnerable, mortal nature and is therefore appropriately cautious. As Homer states explicitly near the center of the poem, he is fully aware that he is not a god (12.176-179). This acute awareness of his mortality also appears to be a key component of his wisdom.Homer’s explicit judgments draw attention to his compassion as well as his sagacity. For Homer explicitly criticizes Achilles in particular for asking his mother to offer a prayer to Zeus - that he inflict suffering on Agamemnon and the Achaians - that was “beyond measure” in its harshness; for his “disgraceful” treatment of Hector’s corpse; and for his “evil” beheading of 12 Trojan youths.[234] All of these inhumane actions were inspired by Achilles’ wrath, first against Agamemnon and the Achaians, and then against Hector and the Trojans, a wrath that Homer describes as “destructive” in the opening lines of the poem (1.1-7). By explicitly condemning the inhumanity of his greatest hero, and the wrath that inspires it, Homer draws attention to his own humanity and balance, qualities that his narrative, with its sympathy throughout for both Achaians and Trojans, bears witness to, and thereby draws attention to his own superiority to Achilles.
the Scilntihc poet of death
Homer highlights most vividly both his own clear-sighted awareness of his mortality and his humane sympathy for the sufferings mortality inflicts on humans through his many, remarkably detailed, poetic accounts of death. Homer makes many references to the deaths of an unspecified number of warriors throughout the Iliad, beginning with the opening lines of the poem - “Sing, goddess, of the wrath of Peleus’s son, Achilles... that sent forth many mighty souls of heroes into Hades, and prepared them as food for dogs and for all birds” (1.1-5)[235] - but he also specifically identifies, beginning in Book IV, 290 battlefield deaths, as well as the deaths of 12 Trojan youths slaughtered by Achilles at the funeral of Patroclus (23.175-177).[236] Of these 290 battlefield deaths, only 51 are not named.[237]
In addition to naming 239 killed in battle, Homer offers physical descriptions of how 134 of the 239 died,[238] beginning with the first of the 239 - “First Antilochus took a commander of the Trojans, noble among them in the forefront of battle, Thalysias’s son, Echepolos. He struck him first, on the crest of the horse-haired helmet, and the bronze spear point fixed in his forehead and passed through into the bone. Darkness covered his eyes, and he fell as a tower in a mighty battle” (4.457-452) - and ending with the last of the 239 -
He [Achilles] was looking at his [Hector’s] beautiful skin, where it might yield most. The rest of his skin was covered by the beautiful bronze armor that he stripped once he killed the strength of Patroclus. But it showed where the collarbone holds the neck from the shoulders, the throat, where the destruction of a soul is swiftest. There divine Achilles eagerly drove in his spear and the spear point drove straight through the tender neck. (22.321-327)
The 134 physical descriptions of how the warriors are killed reveal Homer to be a keen observer of how death occurs, a careful student of the anatomy of death, and acutely interested in the causes, the experience, and the human significance of death.102 Taken as a whole, Homer’s detailed, medically accurate accounts of the battlefields deaths in the Iliad1°3 remind one of, and perhaps inspired, Thucydides’ detailed, medically accurate account of the deadly plague that afflicted Athens during the Peloponnesian War (2.47-51).
Homer’s physical accounts of death range from relatively brief accounts of the piercing of the chest, back, belly, shoulder, collarbone, side, navel, liver, or groin with spears, arrows, or javelins (45, by my count)104 - for example, “He spoke and thrust Thrymbaius from the horses onto the ground, having cast his spear below the left nipple” (11.320-321) - to more detailed, complicated, and vivid accounts of heads being stabbed (18),105 lopped off (8),106 or smashed (4),107 or of other parts of the body - including throats,108 buttocks,109 and private parts110 - being pierced or hewn: for example, “The son of Phyleus, the spear-famed, having come close, struck him with a sharp spear on the back of his head at the tendon, and the bronze cut straight through the teeth and under the tongue. He toppled into dust and seized the cold bronze with his teeth” (5.72-75); “Antilochus, having watched Thoon as he turned about, leapt at him and stabbed him, and he sheared away the entire vein that runs all the way up the back and arrives at the neck. He sheared it all away. He fell backward into the dust, reaching out both hands to his beloved companions” (13.545-549); “He stabbed him with his sword at the liver. The liver slipped out and from it the black blood drenched the fold of his tunic. Darkness covered his eyes as he was deprived of his spirit” (20.469-472).
102
103
104
As Griffin puts it, “Homer describes hundreds of killings in battle, many of them in pitiless detail, without sliding either into sadism or into sentimentality” (1995, 36; see also 1980, 143).
As Lateiner notes, “Most of the pathophysiological causes of death are precisely recorded and medically sound” (2004, 13). See as well Graziosi 2016, 76.
4.469, 4.48o-481, 4.489-492, 5.18-19, 5.4o-41, 5.45-46, 5√5-58, 5.145, 5√37-539, 5.579, 5.615-616, 6.64, 7.15, 8.119-121, 8.258-259, 8.302-303, ιι.320-321, 13.185-186, 15.419-420, 16.311-312,
II.420-421, ¿¿.423-425, 11.447-448, 11.578,
13.370-372, 13.41o-412, 13.516-520, 14.449-452,
15.523, 15.542-543, 15.575-577, 15.649-65o,
16.317-319, 16.343-344, 16.399-400, 16.463-465,
11.143-144,
12.188-189,
i5.34i-342,
16.289-290,
l6.597-598,
1o5
106
17.347-349, 20.485-486, 20.487-489.
4.457-462, 4.494-503, 5.290-296, 6.5-11, ιι.95-100, 12.181-186,
13.576-580, 13.610-617, 13.671-672, 15.429-435, 16.345-350,
16.603-607, 17.293-303, 17.616-618, 20.386-387, 20.395-400, 20.473-474.
13.177-178,
16.4o1-41o,
107
108
10.454-457, ιι.259-261, 14.463-468, 14.489-500, 16.330-334, 16.337-341,
20.474-477, 20.478-483.
12.379-386, 16.411-414, 16.577-580, 16.734-743.
5.655-659, 13.541-3 54, 22.327. 109 5.59-68, 13.650-655. 110 4.489-493.
Homer’s accounts of death are not only sensually vivid, including on occasion even the warmth of the blood spilt - “He then struck with his hilted sword Echeclos, son of Agenor, in the middle of his head, and his sword was altogether warmed with his blood”[239] - or the sound of the dying - “he breathed out his spirit and belched it forth, as when a bull belches forth as he is dragged around the Heliconian Lord, while youths are dragging him.... So then was he belching and his manly spirit left his bones”[240] - but also analytical. Homer is careful to distinguish between blows to parts of the body that are not mortal and blows to those parts that are mortal. Blows to the eye, shin, knee, or elbow, for example, are not necessarily mortal in and of themselves:
He stabbed him beneath the brow at the bases of the eye, and thrust out the eyeball. The spear went straight through his eye and through the neck bone, and he sat himself down, reaching out with both hands. And Peneleus drew his sharp sword and drove it into the middle of his neck and smote off his head to the ground with its helmet on. Still the heavy spear was in the eye. (14.493-499)
There fate gripped Amaryngkeus’s son, Diores. For he was struck with a stone beside his ankle, a jagged one, on the right shin.... The shameless stone crushed completely both tendons and bones. He fell down backward into the dust, reaching out both hands to his beloved companions, breathing away his spirit. And the one who cast it, Peiros, ran up to him and stabbed him with a spear in the navel. And all his guts poured out onto the ground, and darkness covered his eyes.[241]
However, as these examples show, cutting off the head or stabbing the navel is mortal, as is, for example, stabbing the heart:
Idomeneus stabbed him in the middle of the chest with his spear, and smashed the bronze armor about him, which kept away the destruction from his skin. He fell down, crashing, and the spear was fixed in his heart, which was quivering and shaking off the butt end of the spear. Then and there, mighty Ares sent away his spirit.114
Homer also notes, as we have seen, in what spot on the body a blow takes one’s life most quickly - “the throat, where the destruction of a soul is swiftest” (22.327) - and in what spot it causes most pain - “he struck him with a spear between his genitals and his navel, there where especially painful Ares comes to be among woeful mortals.”[242] Homer evidently not only observes death but also reasons about death, about the causes and the nature of death.
Ill
113
114
The overpowering, inescapable conclusion driven home by Homer’s many detailed accounts of death is that human life depends for its very existence on the physical integrity of certain vital parts of the body. As Homer highlights over and over again, once the head is stabbed, lopped off, or broken, or once the belly, chest, liver, throat, or heart is pierced, “his spirit left him”;[243] “he took the spirit out of him”;[244] “And his soul and fury were there released”;[245] “he drew out at once both his soul and the spear” (16.505); “his spirit left his bones”;[246] “Swiftly his spirit went away from his limbs, and hateful darkness took him”;[247] “He himself lost his spirit on account of man-slaughtering Hector; he struck him under the jaw and the ear and pushed his spear out of the base of his teeth, and cut through the middle of his tongue”;[248] “His soul, moving quickly, rushed off down the wound of the spear-stab and darkness covered both of his eyes”;122 “He breathed away his spirit, like an earthworm that lies stretched out on the ground. Out flowed the black blood and it wet the earth”;123 “Idomeneus pierced Erymantas in the mouth with pitiless bronze. The bronze spear passed straight through beneath the brain and shattered the white bones. His teeth were shaken out and both eyes filled with blood, and, gaping, he blew it [blood] out through his mouth and nostrils. And a black cloud of death covered him”.124 To be sure, as we have noted, in the opening lines of the poem and in his accounts of the deaths of two heroes, Patroclus and Hector, Homer does apparently affirm that humans survive their deaths. But as we have seen, these accounts are exceptional in the Iliad and they are quite ambiguous, inasmuch as they distinguish the surviving “souls” of the dead from their selves, their “spirit,” and their “manhood” and “youth” (1.1-5, 16.855-857, 22.361-363, 16.827, 22.235).125 The other three hundred deaths specified by Homer in the Iliad offer no account whatsoever of any life after death. Thus does Homer impress upon his audience the finality of death.
115
117
118
120
121
123
125
The recognition that death means the end of one’s existence might seem obvious. And yet Homer’s human characters, including most emphatically the very ones who repeatedly inflict death, shrink from recognizing the finality of death. One sees this reluctance to view death as the end most clearly in their treatment of corpses. In the first place, on 13 occasions, Homer’s human characters address corpses, as though they were somehow still alive: Idomeneus (13.370-382), Hector (16.858-861), Briseis (19.282-300), Hecubae (24.747-759), Helen (24.761-775) once each; Andromache twice;[249] and Achilles six times.[250] On three occasions, Homer highlights the unreasonableness of his heroes’ speaking to the lifeless corpses. Homer explicitly notes that Hector and Achilles each address the warrior he has slain - respectively, Patroclus and Hector - “even though he was dead” (16.858, 22.364). Moreover, Homer frames Achilles’ speaking to the corpse of the Trojan warrior Asteropaius by first recounting that Achilles “wrested away his spirit with his sword. For he struck him in the belly next to the navel and all his guts poured out onto the ground, and the darkness covered his eyes as he gasped” and then, after presenting Achilles’ speech to the corpse, by offering a startlingly vivid description of the lifelessness of the corpse he is addressing: “He spoke and drew his bronze spear out of the steep bank, and he left him behind there, once he had wrested away his beloved heart, lying in the sand, and the black water drenched him. The eels and fish worked about him, biting off the fat over the kidneys, tearing at him” (21.179-204).
Furthermore, the warriors of the poem fight strenuously and risk their very lives in order to recover corpses. Now, one might think that they do so simply in order to pay homage to the memory of their slain comrades. And yet Homer suggests that the warriors do so more specifically because they do not accept the finality of the deaths of their comrades and hence persist in identifying their slain comrades with the now lifeless corpses. In his account of the fight over the body of Sarpedon, Homer remarks:
No longer would a man, even an observant one, recognize divine Sarpedon, since he was covered with shafts and blood and dust from his head through to the ends of his feet. They were ever gathering around the corpse, as when flies in a stall buzz down around the milk pails filled with milk, in the season of spring, when the milk moistens the pails. So did they gather around the corpse. (16.633-644)
Homer here juxtaposes the warriors’ risking their lives to seize the body of Sarpedon, on the one hand, with the utter lifelessness of the body - the unrecognizable corpse - and, on the other hand, with flies’ seemingly natural and reasonable desire to nourish themselves with milk. In this way, Homer invites his audience to wonder how reasonable it is for humans to make such efforts and take such risks, not for the sake of life, but for the sake of a lifeless, unrecognizable thing. Similarly, Homer compares the seemingly frenzied Hector and Patroclus fighting over the mangled corpse of Cebriones - each trying to kill the other, with Hector pulling at the head of the corpse, while Patroclus pulls its foot - to two seemingly reasonable lions, “both hungry,” battling over a slain deer (16.739-764).
Homer brings more sharply into focus why the warriors fight so strenuously for the corpses in his account of the efforts made by Menelaus and Ajax to protect the corpse of Patroclus: Menelaus “went through those in the forefront of the battle, armed in shining bronze, and he bestrode him, as over a calf, the mother lows, having given birth for the first time, she who has known no offspring before. So did the fair-haired Menelaus bestride Patroclus” (17.3-6); “Ajax covered the son of Menoitios with his broad shield and stood, like a lion over his offspring whom, as he leads the infants along, men who are hunters encounter in the wood. He exults in his strength and draws down altogether his eyebrows, covering his eyes. So did Ajax bestride the hero Patroclus” (17.132-137). By comparing the efforts of Menelaus and Ajax to protect the lifeless body of Patroclus with the efforts of a mother cow and a father lion to protect their living offspring from harm, Homer suggests that the heroes do not accept that Patroclus is dead but cling to the illusion that he lives on, somehow, after death.
The character who comes closest to accepting, as Homer does, the finality of death is Achilles.[251] In Book IX, he affirms, “He still goes down to death, the man who has done no deeds and the one who has done many” (9.320) and
For not worth my life [or soul] are all that they say Ilion, that well inhabited city, possessed in the old days, when there was peace, before the coming of the sons of the Achaians, nor all that the stone threshold of the archer, Phoebus Apollo, encloses, in rocky Pytho. For cattle and fat sheep can be taken by plunder and tripods and the fair heads of horses may be acquired, but for the life [or soul] of a man to come back, this cannot be taken by plunder or seized, once it has crossed the barrier of the teeth. (9.400-409)
After the death of Patroclus, Achilles' words to his mother betray an acute awareness of the natural decomposition of his friend's corpse, the way of all flesh: “But very dreadfully do I fear, in the meantime, for the mighty son of Menoitios, that flies will go down into his wounds beaten by bronze and may engender worms and they may disfigure the corpse - the life[252] is slain out of him - and all his flesh may rot” (19.23-27). Achilles later remarks to Lycaon, the son of Priam,
But, friend, die, even you. Why do you mourn so? Patroclus also died, who was better by far than you. Do you not see what kind of man I am, how noble and great? I am of a good father and a goddess, my mother, bore me, but for me, as for you, there is death and an overpowering fate. There will be, either a dawn or a late afternoon or a mid-day when someone, with Ares, will take the spirit out of me, either striking with a spear or with an arrow from a bow string. (21.106-113)
Finally, in Book XXIV, Achilles says to Priam, who grieves for his dead son Hector: “Endure, and do not mourn unceasingly in your spirit. For you will accomplish nothing at all, grieving for your son. You will not resurrect him” (24.549-551). And yet after speaking to Lycaon, and killing him, Achilles speaks to the lifeless corpse and even after speaking to Priam, Achilles addresses the dead Patroclus.[253] Even the lionhearted warrior shrinks from the truth of our mortality that the clear-eyed poet calmly accepts.
Homer combines what might seem to be a cold recognition of the finality of death with evident compassion for the sufferings of both the bereaved and those who die. Most obviously, and most dramatically, Homer both expresses and inspires compassion through his moving portrayals of the lamentations of Achilles for his beloved Patroclus and of Priam, Hecubae, and Andromache for their beloved Hector.[254] But Homer’s sympathy extends well beyond the loved ones who grieve for these two heroic warriors to those bereaved of ordinary, even anonymous warriors.[255] In the first place, Homer evokes, in a general and powerful way, the anxiety and grief especially of the women of Troy:
As Hector arrived at the Skaian gates and the oak tree, the wives and daughters of Trojans ran about him to ask about their children and brothers and neighbors and husbands. Then he bid them, in turn, to pray to the gods. But sorrows were impending for many. (6.237-241)
As when an annihilating fire comes down on an uncut forest, and the whirling wind carries it everywhere, and bushes fall, root and branch, oppressed by the attack of the fire, so the heads of the fleeing Trojans fell beneath the son of Atreus, Agamemnon, and many strong-necked horses rattled through the lanes of the war, longing for their blameless charioteers. But they were lying on the ground, more beloved by vultures than by their wives. (11.155-162)
Moreover, in 17 of his accounts of death, Homer draws attention to the grief of the bereaved family members and companions, beginning with the third death he describes in Book IV and ending with the fourth death he describes in Book XX:
There Telamonian Ajax struck the son of Anthemion, Simoesius, a blooming youth, whose mother once bore him, going down from Ida to the banks of the Simoes, when she had followed her parents together with the flocks to watch them. On account of this they called him Simoesius. Nor did he pay back his beloved parents for having reared him, but a short lifetime came to him who was broken by the spear of great-spirited Ajax.... Such was the son of Anthemion, whom Ajax, born of Zeus, killed. (4.473-479, 4.488-489)[256]
He [Achilles] went with his spear after godlike Polydorus, son of Priam. His father would not let him go into battle because he was the youngest offspring among his children, and was also the most beloved, and he vanquished all with his feet. At that time, in his folly, displaying the virtue of his feet, he rushed through those in the forefront to battle, when he destroyed his beloved spirit. As he was leaping by, divine Achilles, swift-footed, struck him in the middle of the back with a javelin, as he was leaping by, where the gold clasps held together the belt and the double corselet met. The head of the spear went straight through his navel and he dropped on one knee, wailing, a dark cloud covered him and, sinking down, he caught his bowels in his hands, in front of him.134
Homer also recounts, on ιι occasions, the anger and the pity warriors feel when they see their beloved comrades slain.135 In these ways, Homer stresses to his audience the human significance of death for those who lose their loved ones.i36
Even more remarkably, Homer vividly describes the experience of death, not only from the perspective of the onlooker or the killer but also from the perspective of the one dying, beginning with the first of the 302 deaths specified in the poem: “First Antilochus took a commander of the Trojans, noble among them in the forefront of battle, Thalysias’s son, Echepolos. He struck him first, on the crest of the horse-haired helmet, and the bronze spear point fixed in his forehead and passed through into the bone. Darkness covered his eyes, and he fell as a tower in a mighty battle” (4.457-462 - emphases added). Homer uses this or similar phrases concerning darkness repeatedly, 20 times in all, in order to convey the lived experience of the moment of death - as he imagines it - the moment that light, and with it life, is extinguished, from the perspective of the one perishing.137 Similarly, Homer describes the attempt of the dying man to cling to his living comrades: “He fell down backward into the dust, both hands reaching out to his beloved companions, breathing away his spirit” (4.522-524 - emphases added). Homer uses this phrase once again to depict the dying man’s final attempt to grasp the living, from the perspective of the one dying (see 13.549). In this way too, Homer both expresses and inspires sympathy for the expiring warrior.
134
i35
i36
20.407-518; see 22.45-55; see also 5.69-75, 5.152-158, 8.124-125, 8.309-319, ιι.221-247, 11.328-334, 13.643-659, 14.488-506, 15.636-652, 16.548-551, i6.569-58i, i6.593-600, i7.293-303, i7.575-59i, i7.694-699.
4.494-503, 5.56i-564, 5.6i0, i3.i97-205, i3.660-662, i4.458-460, i4.486-489, i5.435-44i, i6.552-553, i6.585, i7.345-346.
As Griffin notes regarding Homer’s accounts of these deaths,
The “obituaries” allow the poet to show us parents, wives, and children, who could not otherwise be brought onto the battlefield and seen in their suffering and pain. It is the universality of the Homeric vision which led to this highly exceptional device, which confers significance of the victims of the great heroes, who in most warlike epics count for nothing. (i980, i39)
i37 4.50i-503, 4.524-526, 5.47, 5.659, 6.ii, i3.575, i3.580, i3.672, i4.5i9, i5.578, i6.3i6, i6.325, i6.344, i6.350, i6.607, 20.393, 20.4i7-4i8, 20.47i-472, 2i.i8i; see also 5.68, i4.438-439, 22.466.
Through his accounts of death - a veritable “poetry of death”[257] - that are at once analytical and humane - at once austerely cognizant of the finality of death and sensitive to the sufferings that accompany death - Homer not only bears witness to the possibility of combining wisdom with compassion but suggests that they properly go together. For only by understanding the suffering entailed by death - felt by both the bereaved and the dying - as well as the biological finality of death, can one understand fully the phenomenon of death. And only by experiencing the suffering entailed by death for oneself, either directly or imaginatively, can one understand that suffering with one’s mind.