The Wrath Of Achilles

WINTER now drew on, and since this has never been a battle season among civilized nations, the Greeks spent it enlarging their camp arid practising archery. Sometimes they  came across Trojan notables in the temple of Thymbraean Apollo, which was neutral territory; and once, when Hecabe happened to be sacrificing there, Achilles arrived on the same errand and fell desperately in love with her daughter Polyxena. He made no declaration at the time but, returning to his hut in torment, sent the kindly Automedon to ask Hector on what terms   he might marry Polyxena. Hector replied: ‘She shall be his on the day that he betrays the Greek camp to my father Priam.’ Achilles seemed willing enough to accept Hector’s conditions, but drew back sullenly when informed that if he failed to betray the camp, he must swear instead to murder his cousin Great Ajax and the sons of Athenian Pleisthenes.

b. Spring came and fighting was resumed. In the first engagement of the season Achilles sought out Hector, but the watchful Helenus pierced his hand with an arrow shot from an ivory bow, Apollo’s love gift, and forced him to give ground. Zeus himself guided the arrow-head; and as he did so decided to relieve the Trojans, whom the raids and the consequent desertion of certain Asiatic allies had greatly discouraged, by plaguing the Greeks and detaching Achilles from his fellow-chieftains. When, therefore, Chryses came to ransom Chryseis, Zeus persuaded Agamemnon to drive him away with opprobrious words; and Apollo, invoked by Chryses, posted himself vengefully near the ships, shooting deadly arrows among the Greeks day after day. Hundreds perished, though (as it happened) no kings or princes suffered, and on the tenth day Calchas made known the presence of the god. At his instance, Agamemnon grudgingly sent Chryseis back to her father, with propitiatory gifts, but recouped his loss by taking Briseis from Achilles, to whom she had been allotted; whereupon Achilles, in a rage, announced that he would take no further part in the War; and his mother Thetis indignantly approached Zeus, who missed her satisfaction on his behalf. But some say that Achilles kept out of the fighting in order to show his goodwill towards Priam as Polyxena’s father.

c. When the Trojans became aware that Achilles and his Myrmidons had withdrawn from the field, they took heart and made a vigorous sortie. Agamemnon, in alarm, granted them a truce, during which Paris and Menelaus were to fight a duel for the possession of Helen and the stolen treasure. The duel, however, proved indecisive, because when Aphrodite saw that Paris was getting the worst of it, she wrapped him in a magic mist and carried him back to Troy. Hera then sent Athene down to break the truce by making Pandarus son of Lycaon shoot an arrow at Menelaus, which she did; at the same time inspired Diomedes to  kill Pandarus and wound Aeneas and his mother Aphrodite. Glaucus son of Hippolochus now opposed Diomedes, but both recalled the close friendship that had bound their fathers, courteously exchanged arms.

d. Hector challenged Achilles to single combat; and when Achilles sent back word that he had retired from the war, the Greeks sent Great Ajax as his substitute. These two champions fought without pause until nightfall, when heralds parted them and each praised the other’s skill and courage. Ajax gave Hector the brilliant purple baldric by which he was later dragged to his death; and Hector gave Ajax the silver-studded sword with which he was later to commit suicide.

e. An armistice being agreed upon, the Greeks raised a long barrow over their dead, and crowned it with a wall beyond which they dug a deep, palisaded trench. But they had omitted to appease the deities supported the Trojans and, when fighting was resumed, were driven across the trench and behind the wall. That night the Trojans encamped close to the Greek ships.

f. In despair, Agamemnon sent Phoenix, Ajax, Odysseus and two heralds to placate Achilles, offering him countless gifts and Briseis (they were to swear that she was still a virgin) if only he would fight again. It should be explained that Chryses had meanwhile brought back his daughter, who protested that she had been very well treated by Agamemnon and wished to remain with him; she was pregnant at the time and later gave birth to Chryses the Second, a child of doubtful paternity. Achilles greeted the deputation with a pleasant smile, but refused their offers, and announced that he must sail home next morning.

g. That same night about the third watch when the moon was high, Odysseus and Diomedes, encouraged by a lucky auspice from Athene-a heron on their right hand- decided to raid the Trojan lines. They happened to stumble over Dolon, son of Eumelus, who had been sent out on patrol by the enemy and, after forcibly extracting information from him, cut his throat. Odysseus then hid Dolon’s ferret-skin cap, wolf-skin cloak, bow and spear in a tamarisk bush and hurried with Diomedes to the right flank of the Trojan line where, they  now knew, Rhesus the Thracian was encamped. He is variously described as the son of the Muse Euterpe, or Calliope, by Eioneus, or Ares, or Strymon. Having stealthily assassinated Rhesus and twelve of his companions in their sleep, they drove off his magnificent horses, white as snow and swifter than the wind, and recovered the spoils from the tamarisk bush on their way back. The capture of Rhesus’s horses was of the highest importance, since an oracle had foretold that Troy would become impregnable once they had eaten Trojan fodder and drunken from the river Scamander, and this they had not yet done. When the surviving Thracians awoke, to find King Rhesus dead and his horses gone, they fled in despair; the Greeks killed nearly every one of them.

h. On the following day, however, after a fierce struggle, in which Agamemnon, Diomedes, Odysseus, Eurypylus, and Machaon the surgeon were all wounded, the Greeks took to flight and Hector breached their wall. Encouraged by Apollo, he pushed on towards the ships and, despite assistance lent by Poseidon to the two Ajaxes and Idomeneus, broke through the Greek line. At this point Hera, who hated the Trojans, borrowed Aphrodite’s girdle and persuaded Zeus to come and sleep with her; a ruse which allowed Poseidon to turn the battle in the Greeks’ favour. But Zeus, soon discovering that he had been duped, revived Hector (nearly killed by Ajax with a huge stone), ordered Poseidon off the field, and restored the Trojans’ courage. Forward they went again: Medon killing Periphetes son of Copreus, and many other champions.

i. Even Great Ajax was forced to yield ground; and Achilles, when he saw flames swirling from the stern of Protesilaus’s ship, set on the Trojans, so far forgot his grudge as to marshal the Myrmidons an hurry them to Patroclus’s assistance. Patroclus had flung a spear into the mass of Trojans gathered around Protesilaus’s ship and transfixed Pyraechmes, king of the Paeonians, At this the Trojans, mistaking him for Achilles, fled; and Patroclus extinguished the fire, saving the of the ship at least, and cut down Sarpedon. Though Glaucus tried to rally his Lycians and so protect Sarpedon’s body from despoiling, Zeus let Patroclus chase the whole Trojan army towards the city, Hector being the first to retire, wounded severely by Ajax.

j. The Greeks stripped Sarpedon of his armour, but at Zeus’s order Apollo rescued the body, which he prepared for burial, whereupon Sleep and Death bore it away to Lycia. Patroclus meanwhile pressed the route, and would have taken Troy single-handed, had not Apollo hastily mounted the wall, and thrice thrust him back with a shield as he attempted to scale it. Fighting continued until nightfall, when Apollo wrapped in a thick mist, came up behind Patroclus and buffeted him smartly between the shoulder blades. Patroclus’s eyes started from head; his helmet flew off; his spear was shattered into splinters; shield fell to the ground; and Apollo grimly unlaced his corslet. Euphorbus son of Panthous, observing Patroclus’s plight, wounded him without fear of retaliation, and as he staggered away, Hector, who had returned to the battle, despatched him with a single blow.

k. Up ran Menelaus and killed Euphorbus-who is said, by the way to have been reincarnate centuries later in the philosopher Pythagoras and strutted off to his hut with the spoils; leaving Hector to strip Patroclus of his borrowed armour. Menelaus and Great Ajax then reappeared and together defended Patroclus’s body until dusk, when they contrived to carry it back to the ships. But Achilles, on hearing news, rolled in the dust, and yielded to an ecstasy of grief.

l. Thetis entered her son’s hut carrying a new suit of armour, which included a pair of valuable tin greaves, hurriedly forged by Hephaestus. Achilles put the suit on, made peace with Agamemnon (who delivered Briseis to him inviolate, swearing that he had taken her in anger, not in lust) and set out to avenge Patroclus. None could stand against wrath. The Trojans broke and fled to the Scamander, where he divided them into two bodies, driving one across the plain towards the city and penning the other in a bend of the river. Furiously, the River-god rushed at him, but Hephaestus took Achilles’s part and dried up the waters with a scorching flame. The Trojan survivors regained the city, like a herd of frightened deer.

m. When Achilles at last met Hector and engaged him in single combat, both sides drew back and stood watching amazed. Hector turned and began to run around the city walls. He hoped by this manoeuvre to weary Achilles, who had long been inactive and should therefore have been short of breath. But he was mistaken. Achilles chased him thrice around the walls, and whenever he made for the shelter of a gate, counting on the help of his brothers, always headed him off. Finally Hector halted and stood his ground, but Achilles ran him through the breast, and refused his dying plea that his body might be ransomed for burial. After possessing himself of the armour, Achilles slit the flesh behind the tendons of Hector’s heels. He then passed leather thongs through the slits, secured them to his chariot and, whipping up Balius, Xanthus, and Pedasus, dragged the body towards the ships at an easy canter. Hector’s head, its black locks streaming on either side, climbed up a cloud of dust behind him. But some say that Achilles dragged the corpse three times around the city walls, by the baldric which Ajax had given him.

n. Achilles now buried Patroclus. Five Greek princes were sent to Mount Ida in search of timber for the funeral pyre, upon which Achilles sacrificed not only horses, and two of Patroclus’s own pack of nine hounds, but twelve noble Trojan captives, several sons of Priam among them, by cutting their throats. He even threatened to throw Hector’s corpse to the remaining hounds; Aphrodite, however, restrained him. At Patroclus’s funeral games Diomedes won the chariot race, and Epeius, despite his cowardice, the boxing-match; Ajax and Odysseus tied in the wrestling match.

o. Still consumed by grief, Achilles rose every day at dawn to drag Hector’s body  three times around Patroclus’s tomb. Yet Apollo protected it from corruption and laceration and, eventually, at the command of Zeus, Hermes led Priam to the Greek camp under cover of night, and persuaded Achilles to accept a ransom. On this occasion Priam showed great magnanimity towards Achilles whom he had found asleep in his hut and might easily have murdered. The ransom agreed upon was Hector’s weight in gold. Accordingly, the Greeks set up a pair of scales outside the city walls, laid the corpse on one pan, and invited the Trojans to heap gold in the other. When Priam’s treasury had been ransacked of ingots and jewels, and Hector’s huge bulk still depressed the pan, Polyxena, watching from the wall, threw down her bracelets to supply the missing weight. Overcome by admiration, Achilles told Priam: ‘I will cheerfully barter Hector against Polyxena. Keep your gold; marry her to me; and if you then restore Helen to Menelaus, I undertake to make peace between your people and ours.’ Priam, for the moment, was content to ransom Hector at the agreed price in gold; but promised to  give Polyxena to Achilles freely if he persuaded the Greeks to depart without Helen. Achilles replied that he would do what he could, and Priam then took away the corpse for burial. So great an uproar arose at Hector’s funeral-the Trojans lamenting, the Greeks trying to drown their dirges with boos and cat-calls-that birds flying overhead fell down stunned by the noise.

p. At the command of an oracle, Hector’s bones were eventually taken to Boeotian Thebes, where his grave is still shown beside the lot-retain of Oedipus. Some quote the Oracle as follows:

Hearken, ye men of Thebes, who dwell in the city of Cadmus,

Should you desire your land to be prosperous, wealthy and blameless, Carry the bones of Hector, Priam’s son, to your city.

Asia holds them now; there Zeus will attend to his worship.’

Others say that when a plague ravaged Greece, Apollo ordered the reburial of Hector’s bones in a famous Greek city which had taken part in the Trojan War.

q. A wholly different tradition makes Hector a son of Apollo, who Penthesileia the Amazon killed.

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1. According to Proclus (Chrestomathys), Homerus means ‘blind’ rather than ‘hostage’, which is the usual translation; minstrelsy was a natural vocation for the blind, since blindness and inspiration often went together. The identity of the original Homer has been debated for some two thousand five hundred years. In the earliest tradition he is plausibly called an Ionian from Chios. A clan of Homeridae, or ‘Sons of the Blind Man’, who recited the traditional Homeric poems and eventually became a guild (Scholiast on Pindar’s Nemean Odes), had their headquarters at Delos, the centre of the Ionian world, where Homer himself was said to have recited (Homeric Hymn). Parts of the Iliad date from the tenth century BC; the subject matter is three centuries older. By the sixth century unauthorized recitals of the Iliad were slowly corrupting the text; Peisistratus, tyrant of Athens, therefore ordered an official recension, which he entrusted to four leading scholars. They seem to have done the task well but, since Homer had come to be regarded as a prime authority in disputes between cities, Peisistratus’s enemies accused him of interpolating verses for political ends (Strabo).

2. The twenty-four books of the Iliad have grown out of a poem called The Wrath of Achilles-which could perhaps have been recited in a single night, and which dealt with the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon over the possession of a captured princess. It is unlikely that the text of the central events has been radically edited since the first Iliad of  about 750 BC. Yet the quarrels are so unedifying, and all the Greek leaders behave so murderously, deceitfully, and shamelessly, while the Trojans by contrast behave so well, that  it is obvious on whose side the author’s sympathy lay. As a legatee of the Minoan court bards he found his spiritual home among the departed glories of Cnossus and Mycenae, not beside the camp fires of the barbarous invaders from the North. Homer faithfully describes the lives of his new overlords, who have usurped ancient religious titles by marrying tribal heiresses and, though calling them godlike, wise, and noble, holds them in deep disgust. They live by the sword and perish by the sword, disdaining love, friendship, faith, or the arts of peace.  They care so little for the divine names by which they swear that he dares jest in their  presence about the greedy, sly, quarrelsome, lecherous, cowardly Olympians who have turned the world upside down. One would dismiss him as an irreligious wretch, were he not clearly a secret worshipper of the Great Goddess of Asia (whom the Greeks had humiliated in this war); and did not glints of his warm and honourable nature appear whenever he is describing family life in Priam’s palace. Homer has drawn on the Babylonian Gilgamesh epic for the Achilles story; with Achilles as Gilgamesh, Thetis as Ninsun, Patroclus as Enkidu.

3. Achilles’s hysterical behaviour when he heard that Patroclus was dead must have shocked Homer, but he has clothed the barbarities of the funeral in mock-heroic language, confident that his overlords will not recognize the sharpness of the satire-Homer may be  said, in a sense, to have anticipated Goya, whose caricature-portraits of the Spanish royal family were so splendidly painted that they could be accepted by the victims as honest likenesses. But the point of the Iliad as satire has been somewhat blunted by the Homeridae’s need to placate their divine hosts at Delos; Apollo and Artemis must support the Trojans and display dignity and discretion, in contrast at least with the vicious deities of the Hellenic camp. One result of the Iliad’s acceptance by Greek city authorities as a national epic was that no  one ever again took the Olympian religion seriously, and Greek morals always remained barbarous-except in places where Cretan mystery cults survived and the mystagogues required a good-conduct certificate from their initiates. The Great Goddess, though now officially subordinate to Zeus, continued to exert a strong spiritual influence at Eleusis, Corinth and Samothrace, until the suppression of her mysteries by early Byzantine emperors. Lucian, who loved his Homer and succeeded him as the prime satirist of the Olympians, also worshipped the Goddess, to whom he had sacrificed his first hair-clippings at Hierapolis.

4. Hector’s bones were said to have been brought to Thebes from Troy, yet ‘Hector’ was a title of the Theban sacred king before the Trojan War took place; and he suffered the same fate when his reign ended-which was to be dragged in the ‘wreck of a circling chariot’, like Glaucus, Hippolytus, Oenomaus, and Abderus. Since ‘Achilles’ was also a title rather than a name, the combat may have been borrowed from the lost Theban saga of Oedipus’s Sheep, in which co-kings fought for the throne.