Book XIX of the Iliad consists mostly of speeches.
- Thetis
-
Do not grieve so, Achilles. It was a god who killed your friend, and the will of god is law. However, a god has also provided this new armor.
- Achilles
-
That’s jolly good armor. I’ll use it, but I’m worried about the flies on this corpse.
Thetis will watch over Patroclus’s body. She embalms it with nectar and ambrosia. Meanwhile, Achilles calls a general council.
- Achilles
-
Hector, it’s too bad we fought over a woman. Would that Diana had gored her with a javelin. Fire consumes all of its fuel, but men should curb their rage. Let’s go fight the Trojans.
- Agamemnon
-
Greeks, be quiet and listen; not everybody can speak at such a meeting. I’m talking to Achilles mainly, but you all should hear.
Achilles, people blame me for taking your woman; but really, it was the gods that did it: Jove, and Erinys, and especially Até, through whom all things are done. Look what she did to Jove, by allowing Juno to trick him into making his son Hercules subject to his great grandson Eurystheus.
Note by DAP added September 6, 2024: I reviewed Agamemnon’s story in more detail in “Responsibility (Iliad Book XIX).” We should note too that the story
- does not only give an example of Juno’s tricking Jove,
- but also alludes to the example in Book XIV, by involving two of the eight loves that Jove mentioned then.
As for Até or Atê (Ἄτη), she came up in Book IX as being followed by Prayers, Litae (Λιταί), at least according to Phoenix.
Jove grieved for what Hercules suffered, as I grieve for what the Greeks have suffered. Now I offer you the gifts that I did before, through Ulysses.
- Achilles
-
Give the gifts or keep them; it’s all the same to me. This is a council of war.
- Ulysses
-
We gotta eat! Let the men be fed; let Atrides give his gifts; let him swear not to have touched the woman; and let yourself accept it.
I am glad that Ulysses speaks up for the men here. A problem I have overcome in my life is being a picky eater, as I discussed in “Desire.” When I suffered from the condition, I wished I could be fed as Achilles is going to be, by having nectar and ambrosia placed magically inside him, when he refuses to eat. Note added September 6, 2024.
- Agamemnon
-
I couldn’t have said it better myself. After all that, Talthybius shall sacrifice a boar to Jove and Apollo.
- Achilles
-
Feed your men if you want, but I still say we should fight now, eat later.
- Ulysses
-
Look, man, I’m smarter than you. Don’t ask the Greeks to mourn with their bellies.
Ulysses selects noble youths to transfer the gifts.
- Agamemnon
-
I did not have sexual relations with that woman.
- Achilles
-
Father Jupiter, Agamemnon did not take that woman from me; you did. Now let everybody follow Ulysses’s advice and eat.
- Briseis
-
Patroclus, I mourn your death, because when Achilles killed my husband and three of my brothers, you promised to have him make it up by marrying me.
- Achilles
-
Look, folks, I’m not gonna eat. When we were doing well against the Trojans, you would give me good breakfasts; but now I could not be worse off if I heard of the death of my father or of my son Neoptolemus on the island of Scyros.
- Jove
-
Minerva, go fill up Achilles with nectar and ambrosia.
The Greeks march out like a blast of sleet from the north. Achilles’s new armor gives him wings. Automedon and Alcimus put the horses in harness.
- Achilles
-
You horses, Xanthus and Balius, don’t leave me in the field the way you did Patroclus.
Juno gives voice to Xanthus.
- Xanthus
-
We won’t; but you’re gonna die anyway.
- Achilles
-
Don’t remind me.
To blame the gods for a dispute may be convenient. It may even be a way of accepting responsibility for previous egotism, as discussed in the context of Book IX.
“The way Agamemnon takes responsibility for having offended Achilles: it continues to be strange to me”: I wrote that in “Responsibility (Iliad Book XIX),” but I no longer feel that way. One may atone for a wrong by agreeing with the wronged party that it was not one’s own fault. The agreement is important, and Agamemnon gets it from Achilles.
Let us see though the full tally of blame (lines 85–96):
Oft haue our Peeres of Greece, much blam’d, my forcing of the prise,
Due to Achilles; of which act, not I, but destinies,
And Ioue himselfe; and blacke Erynnis (that casts false mists still
Betwixt vs, and our actions done, both by her powre, and will)
Are authors: what could I do then? The very day, and howre,
Of our debate, that furie stole, in that act, on my powre.
And more; All things are done by strife: that ancient seed of Ioue
Ate, that hurts all, perfects all. Her feete, are soft; and moue
Not on the earth; they beare her still, aloft men heads; and there,
The harmefull hurts them. Nor was I, alone her prisoner;
Ioue (best of men, and gods) hath bene. Not he himselfe hath gone
Beyond her fetters: no she made, a woman put them on.
I wondered whether strife here was Eris (ἔρις), renounced along with Anger (χόλος) by Achilles in Book XVIII. However, Chapman rendered Eris then as Contention. Moreover, strife now is his addition, along with the perfecting of Ate; at least these things are absent from the relevant lines of the Loeb text (90–2) and thus Murray’s translation (broken by into verses corresponding to Homer’s):
ἀλλὰ τί κεν ῥέξαιμι; θεὸς διὰ πάντα τελευτᾷ.
πρέσβα Διὸς θυγάτηρ Ἄτη, ἣ πάντας ἀᾶται,
οὐλομένη· τῇ μέν θ᾽ ἁπαλοὶ πόδες· οὐ γὰρ ἐπ᾽ οὔδει …But what could I do? It is God that bringeth all things to their issue.
Eldest daughter of Zeus is Ate that blindeth all –
a power fraught with bane; delicate are her feet, for it is not upon the ground …
As the third verse here, so the second verse of the whole Iliad begins:
μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος
οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί᾽ Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε᾽ ἔθηκε,The wrath do thou sing, O goddess, of Peleus’ son, Achilles,
that baneful wrath which brought countless woes upon the Achaeans …
That all things are done by strife is attributed by Aristotle, in Nicomachean Ethics VIII.i.6, not to Homer, but to Heraclitus:
Ἡράκλειτος
- τὸ ἀντίξουν συμφέρον καὶ
- ἐκ τῶν διαφερόντων καλλίστην ἁρμονίαν καὶ
- πάντα κατ᾽ ἔριν γίνεσθαι·
Heraclitus [scil. says]
- that what is opposed converges, and
- that the most beautiful harmony comes out of what diverges, and
- that all things come about by strife.
One may find this to be borne out by the Iliad in anybody’s translation.
The bullets in the Aristotle quotation are mine, but the translation is by Laks and Most in the Loeb volume Early Greek Philosophy Volume III, Early Ionian Thinkers Part 2, citing “Arist. EN 9.2 1155b4–6.” The book and chapter seem to be wrong, while the Bekker number is correct.
Note added September 6, 2024.
It continues to be a problem today that men blame their wrongdoing on women. “Honor” killings are excused this way. Among the meditations of “The Istanbul Seaside,” I noted the absurdity of suggesting, as some men did, that a woman could in any way cause herself to be raped.
Achilles suggests that the killing of a woman might have solved his problems; and the killing would have been by impalement, a metaphor for rape, though it would have been performed by a female god. Here is the relevant part of his speech (lines 487–53).
Atrides, had not this
Conferd most profite to vs both? when both our enmities
Consum’d vs so? and for a wench? whom, when I chusde for prise,
(In laying Lyrnessus ruin’d walls, amongst our victories)
I would to heauen (as first she set, her daintie foote abord)
Dianas hand had tumbl’d off, and with a iauelin gor’d.
Looking up impalement as a method of torturing to death, I do find perhaps a worse, described by Plutarch as performed by the Persians, though Plutarch’s source, Ctesias of Cnidus, is considered unreliable. Somebody’s twisted mind imagined this torture, at least. It is called scaphism, and I refrain from describing it. (I see also that Ctesias’s Indica may be an ultimate source for the Dufflepuds of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader of C. S. Lewis.)
I really don’t know whether the Achilles of Book XIX is an improvement on the Achilles of Book IX, who had good reason for not fighting. Now, perhaps, since he wants to fight, he finds reason for that. This may be good, if “Be who you are” is good advice, and who Achilles is is a warrior. At any rate, he continues his speech, introducing fire as something not to be like, even as he burns to be on the battlefield (lines 54–68).
For then, th’vn measurable earth, had not so thick bene gnawne,
(In deaths conulsions) by our friends; since my affects were drawne
To such distemper. To our foe, and to our foes chiefe friend
Our iarre brought profite: but the Greeks, will neuer giue an end
To thought of what it preiudic’t them. Past things yet, past our aide;
Fit griefe, for what wrath rulde in them; must make th’amends repaid
With that necessitie of loue; that now forbids our ire;
Which I with free affects obey. Tis for the senslesse fire
Still to be burning, hauing stuffe; but men, must curbe rage still,
Being fram’d with voluntarie powres, as well to checke the will,
As giue it raines. Giue you then charge, that for our instant fight,
The Greeks may follow me to field; to trie if still the Night
Will beare out Troians at our ships. I hope there is some one,
Amongst their chiefe encouragers, will thanke me to be gone;
And bring his heart downe to his knees, in that submission.
In wanting the Trojans to submit, Achilles does not even explain this as revenge for the death of Patroclus.
In Book XVIII, again, Achilles renounced Contention and Anger, or at least denounced them. Now he takes up again at least Anger (χόλος; lines 15–8):
Cold tremblings tooke the Myrmidons; none durst sustaine, all fear’d
T’oppose their eyes: Achilles yet, as soone as they appear’d,
Sterne Anger enterd. From his eyes (as if the day-starre rose)
A radiance terrifying men, did all the state enclose.
This is the fault of gods again:
- Thetis, for bringing the arms that excite her son;
- Mulciber, for making them;
- Jove, for creating the need for them.
Indeed, as Thetis explains (lines 7–12):
Made these short words. Though we must grieue, yet beare it thus; (my son)
It was no man that prostrated, in this sad fashion
Thy dearest friend; it was a god, that first laid on his hand;
Whose will is law: the gods decrees, no humane must withstand.
Do thou embrace this Fabricke of a god; whose hand, before,
Nere forg’d the like; and such as yet, no humane shoulder wore.
When somebody is grieving today, one may be advised not to tell them that it is all a part of God’s plan, and good things always follow bad. This is precisely what Thetis does tell Achilles, and it seems to work; or at least the distraction of having shiny new armor works.
Briseis will explain how Patroclus worked on her as Thetis does on Achilles (lines 287–92):
Felt all, in that blake day of death. And when Achilles hand
Had slaine all these, and rac’t the towne, Mynetes did command;
(All cause of neuer-ending griefes, presented) thou took’st all
On thy endeuour, to conuert, to ioy as Generall;
Affirming, he that hurt, should heale; and thou wouldst make thy friend
(Braue Captaine that thou wert) supply, my vowed husbands end.
Thus
Patroclus’s death : new arms :: Briseis’s husband’s murder : marriage to the murderer.
Meanwhile, if Achilles grew in Book XVIII, perhaps he reverts now. As I noted in returning to Book XIII, I have been pondering remarks of Eva Brann in Homeric Moments (pages 50–1, the transition from “Odysseus: His Looks and Transformations” to “Odysseus: His Nature”):
Odysseus is in both poems too mature to develop as might the hero of some novel; if anything he oscillates between ways of being.
It’s all right to describe who Odysseus is up front because he really does not change … He is a grown-up, a man who is what he is … Of course he learns a great deal … but he is the embodiment of a truth obscured in our infantilistic age: Learning begins when development ends, for growing into oneself absorbs all the cognitive energies which, once “identity” is achieved, are free to turn to the world.
Brann may be explaining why I prefer
- Star Trek to Star Wars,
- Iliad to Odyssey.
In each case, in the former work, one actually sees progress, or at least its possibility; not really in the latter work, although one may count it as progress that the Death Star is destroyed or Odysseus gets home. I suppose I am looking for moral progress. Perhaps that makes me a “progressive,” while, as Miss Brann points out in her introduction (page 25):
Odysseus is, to be sure, a king, and what we might call a conservative, who despises that ill-favored and low-bred incendiary Thersites.
I tend to dispise Odysseus for that.
There is always more to say. Miss Brann herself continues, with an ironical conclusion:
But he repossesses his island realm with the aid of a swineherd and a ranch hand, whom he regards, out of gratitude and plain feeling, as sons; his relations with women could not be more complex were they the invention of a contemporary novelist, and his wife is his one and only mortal equal. Primitive!
Note added September 6, 2024.
Edited September 6, 2024
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