Polytropy

In Book XVII of the Iliad, Zeus pitied the immortal horses, Xanthus and Balius, as they wept for the slain Patroclus: “For in sooth there is naught, I ween, more miserable than man among all things that breathe and move upon earth.”

In Book XXI, Achilles casts the body of Lycaon into the Xanthus River, saying, “Lie there now among the fishes that shall lick the blood from thy wound, nor reck aught of thee” (lines 122–3). That’s Murray’s translation, in the old Loeb edition; Wyatt turns the relative clause into “which will lick the blood from your wound and think nothing of you.”

Each fish that will lick the blood is an ἰχθύς, as in the notorious Christian symbol. I suppose the original word applies to whales, of which there are some in the Mediterranean. I don’t know whether any of them should be called killers, but it seems killer whales will hunt and eat even the largest of their fellow cetaceans. This is from the Guardian Weekly (vol. 206, no 6, 4 February 2022):

From snatching sea lions off beaches to stunning fish with a strike of their tails, orcas are renowned for their highly specialised hunting techniques passed down over generations. Now, for the first time, killer whales have been recorded hunting the planet’s largest animal—the blue whale—in coordinated and brutal attacks … This research is the first to officially document these killings, including details about how orcas swim inside the mouth of the blue whale to eat its tongue just before it dies.

Possibly then blue whales fear killer whales; however, I suppose it must be “in a matter-of-fact, indifferent way.” This was how the mermaid feared them, in the account of Randall Jarrell in The Animal Family, in a passage I recalled in “Poetry and Mathematics,” in the first summer of the Covid-19 Pandemic.

There is no cruelty in the attack of an orca, or in fishes’ feeding off the blood of Lycaon. There is cruelty in what Achilles does to the man.

We met Lycaon in Book XX, except it was Apollo in disguise, telling Aeneas to go fight Achilles. Lycaon himself had already had dealings with Achilles. It happened one night, when Lycaon was in the orchard of his father Priam, cutting olive shoots for use in a chariot. Achilles took him and sold him as a slave to the son of Jason. I suppose this is the son called Euneus, borne of Hypsipyle, mentioned at the end of Book VII as sending from Lemnos a thousand measures of wine for the sons of Atreus. Those measures sound like a gift, in return for permission to sell wine to the other Achaeans, in exchange for bronze, iron, hides, whole cattle—and slaves.

Lycaon must have been one of those slaves; but then he was redeemed by a guest-friend, Eetion of Imbros (today’s Gökçeada). Or perhaps this redeeming was only a buying; for Homer tells us Eetion sent Lycaon to Arisbe, but then he fled secretly and came home, only eleven days ago.

A man called Crosley Green spent thirty-two years in an American prison, but a judge had him released to house arrest in 2021, because of evidence unseen at the original trial. Now he is back in prison, because a merciless court of appeals has decided the evidence would not have been admissible.

Achilles is no longer interested in money or mercy. As he vowed to do in Book XVIII, he has already collected twelve Trojan youth, to be kept alive until killed on the pyre of Patroclus, who was a better man than Lycaon. Achilles will die, everybody will die; and Achilles will help at this by seeking vengeance for the deaths of Patroclus and of all the other Achaeans whom the Trojans killed while Achilles was not fighting. It’s an interesting moral calculus.

Achilles is merciless; and yet, after he jumps into the Xanthus, he is going to pray to Zeus for the mercy of not drowning. He prefers to be killed by Hector, the best man around.

Before that, Xanthus has to get angry for being filled with the bodies of men slain by Achilles. I don’t know whether Homer is embellishing an old story of a spring flood. He tells us Xanthus encourages an attack on Achilles by the son of another river, the Axius in Paeonia. Asteropaeus is ambidextrous, and Achilles is cut in the forearm by one of the two spears that Asteropaeus hurls at once. Achilles misses with his own spear; however, either he is absurdly strong, or the mud by the river is soft and deep, for the spear sinks half its length into the ground. When Asteropaeus tries to pull it out, Achilles kills him by sword. He points out his own descent, through his grandfather Aeacus, from Zeus, who is greater than any river, even Achelous, not to mention Ocean himself.

Achilles now goes killing other Paeonians along the Xanthus. The river takes the shape of a man, in order to tell Achilles to at least go do his killing elsewhere. This only provokes Achilles to attack the river itself.

The river fights back. When Achilles tries to flee, it pursues him like the water of a spring that a farmer directs to his crops. Poseidon and Athena come as men to take Achilles by the hand, reassuring him that drowning will not be his fate.

If Achilles does not drown, this is not for lack of will on the part of Xanthus, who calls for the help of his brother, the Simois, and vows to bury Achilles under sand and shingle.

If we have forgotten, we should remember how the gods paired off to fight in Book XX. Xanthus then faced Hephaestus, whom Hera now tells to get to work. She will bring West and South Wind to fan the flames with which her son is to burn the Xanthus.

Now the plain is dried out like an orchard at harvest time by the North Wind, and this is something to gladden the farmer. Xanthus boils like water in a cauldron for rendering lard. When he swears not to help the Trojans any more, Hera tells Hephaestus to dowse the flames, since a god must not strike a god for mortals’ sake.

Gods go on to strike gods for their own sake, and Zeus is glad. Ares reminds Athena how she made Diomedes wound him in Book V. Ares is no match for her. she knocks him out with an old boundary stone (lines 403–6).

ἣ δ᾽ ἀναχασσαμένη λίθον εἵλετο χειρὶ παχείῃ
κείμενον ἐν πεδίῳ μέλανα τρηχύν τε μέγαν τε,
τόν ῥ᾽ ἄνδρες πρότεροι θέσαν ἔμμεναι οὖρον ἀρούρης·
τῷ βάλε θοῦρον Ἄρηα κατ᾽ αὐχένα, λῦσε δὲ γυῖα.

But she gave ground, and seized with her stout hand a stone that lay upon the plain, black and jagged and great, that men of former days had set to be the boundary mark of a field. Therewith she smote furious Ares on the neck, and loosed his limbs.

As Athena tells Ares, she is the more warlike, and he is now paying back the Erinyes, invoked by his own mother, Hera, for his taking the Trojan side.

When Aphrodite leads Ares away, Hera sends Athena, whom she calls now Atrytone; and Athena knocks Aphrodite down.

Paired off with Apollo before, Poseidon tells him they should get down to business, and he should start it, since he’s younger. It sounds like a friendly wrestling match. Poseidon recalls how he and Apollo shared the abuse of Laomedon, when Zeus sent them to him as laborers for a year. Aeneas named Laomedon as Priam’s father in Book XX.

Apollo agrees with what Hera said, that gods should not fight over mortals. His sister Artemis rebukes him for this. Hera then beats her, saying she is fit to fight only other women. She flies off like a dove.

Hera must resent Artemis for being her husband’s daughter by another woman. Argeiphontes was supposed to fight with that woman, Leto; but now he begs off, saying it is hard to fight a wife of Zeus. She can say she won, Hermes says. Like a good mother, Leto just picks up her daughter’s dropped bow and arrows.

Hermes is going to be Priam’s guide in Book XXIV, but meanwhile, we have not seen him much.

• Hermes sired Eudorus, one of the five commanders of Myrmidons whom Achilles selected in Book XVI.
• Hermes loved Phorbas, the severed head of whose son Ilioneus, Peneleos held up on a spear like a poppy in Book XIV.
• When Diomedes had wounded Aphrodite in Book V, and Dione was comforting her, pointing out all of the woes that immortals had suffered from mortals, and Ares was one of those immortals, she mentioned Hermes as helping him out.
• At the council he called in Book II, Agamemnon took up the scepter (σκῆπτρον) that had passed from its maker, Hephaestus, to Zeus, Argeiphontes, Pelops, Atreus, Thyestes, and finally to him.

I don’t see anything to mark Hermes as a “liminal deity.” There may be no reason to associate him with that boundary stone that Athena smote Ares with. Perhaps Homer called it a boundary stone because a big stone cannot just be lying around, but it has to be where it is for a reason. After all, people love to say that earthquakes happen for a reason; that’s what Michael Attaleiates said of the one here in Constantinople on September 23, 1063, as I contemplated in “Early Tulips” and again in “Effectiveness.”

The Byzantium Blogger says Michael Psellus described the 1063 earthquake too, but I have not been able to confirm this. The earthquake happened during the reign of Constantine X, whom Michael likens to our hero, writing in the Chronographia (translated by E. W. A. Sewter as Fourteen Byzantine Rulers, Penguin, 1966),

And just as Achilles, descended from the famous Aeacus and Peleus, won more renown than they, so this emperor also, having before him such examples in his own family, not only followed their pattern, but far surpassed his forefathers, being himself conspicuous for all the virtues.

As for our reasons for doing things we don’t want, I took them up in the context of Book XVII of the Iliad.

In Book XXI now, back in Olympus, Zeus laughs at the tears of his daughter Artemis, who tells on Hera.

All of the other gods come back to Olympus except Apollo, who goes to Troy. Achilles is outside, killing Trojans and their horses, causing trouble like smoke from a burning city (I’m not sure how to read this simile). Watching from the wall, Priam asks for the gates to be opened to men who are fleeing Achilles.

This is Apollo’s cue. He goes out to rouse Agenor, son of Antenor, who thinks things over.

• He could hide out till evening, then enjoy a refreshing bath before going home.
• Achilles would probably catch him anyway.
• Maybe he should just face Achilles like a man.
• After all, Achilles is mortal too.

Agenor does confront Achilles, even managing to strike him on the greave. Then Apollo takes his guise and leads Achilles away from the other Trojans, who can now get inside the walls.