The Center for Hellenic Studies

12/04/14 20:16The Center for Hellenic Studies

Página 1 de 19http://chs.harvard.edu/wa/pageR?tn=ArticleWrapper&bdc=12&mn=3972

Welcome Publications DiscussionSeries Resources Outreach Fellowships Virtual Center Our Campus

and Library

Our Campus and Library

About Us

CHS Library

CHS Director

CHS Personnel

CHS Project Portfolio

Gallery

IRIS

Contact CHS

Philippe Rousseau[This article first appeared in French as "L'intrigue de Zeus," in Europe 79 (no. 865, May2001), 120-158. In this online version, the original page-numbers will be indicated withinbrackets (“{“ and “}”). For example, “{51 | 52}” indicates where p. 51 of the original articleends and p. 52 begins. These indications will be useful to readers who need to look upreferences made in previous scholarship to the original printed version of this article.]{120} Many of the particular idiosyncrasies of the Iliad which have troubled its critics, fromthe Alexandrian period on, were clarified in the work of Milman Parry, Albert Lord and theirfollowers. They showed that the poem was the product of an “oral” tradition (which hadalready long been suspected), and, most of all, that “oral” epic obeyed different rules ofcomposition, and that its understanding assumed alternate aesthetic norms to those ofwritten works. The developments which the discoveries of the Parry school have enabledare considerable. These concern, principally, two aspects of Greek archaic poetry: theconditions and systems of the production of the “song”, on the one hand, and the analysisof bardic technique and the poetic forms developed within the oral tradition on the other. Inthe last few years, attention has been focused more closely on the ways in which a return tolooking at “performance” might affect our understanding of the poetic texts coming out ofthe oral tradition. [1] What interpretive abilities should one attribute to the audience of epicpoets? What degrees and types of complexity does orality support, or even render possible,within the organisation of its narrative discourse? What role do the specific forms of dictionand poetic composition play in the reception and understanding of the oral “text” for itspublic? Some recent studies have drawn attention to the manner in which the constructionof the lines or phrases, the order of the words, the relation between themes and formulas,the organisation of the discourse, the usage of comparisons and {120 | 121} metaphors,etc., obey certain rules which allow a practised audience to understand the meaning andappreciate the virtuosity of the recitation. They rely, in this analysis, on the comparisonbetween archaic Greek epic with other oral traditions, on in-depth analysis of the poeticpractice of Homer, and the image which certain scenes of the Iliad and the Odyssey sketch,directly or indirectly, of the poetic communication between the bard and his public. [2]It should not, however, be concluded from this observation that previous research hasbecome obsolete, as some scholars who subscribe to “Oral Poetry” sometimes have thetendency to suggest. It is not true that there is no more to be got from the “medley” ofdebates between Analysts, determined to take the Homeric poems apart, and Unitarians,joined in defending its unity. [3] The energy of their arguments, and the well-argued critiqueof their objections to the traditional conception of Iliad and Odyssey’s unity, require one totake account of the observations on which the Analysts’ doctrine was founded, going backto their fundamental principles: in particular, that of the organic conception of poetic unity,and the anti-intellectualist prejudice which underpins the positions of the two camps. Byhighlighting the processes of composition peculiar to Greek archaic poetry – to which theresearch of “Oral Poetry” made a major contribution from the outset –, a solution to anumber of difficulties raised by High Criticism is certainly supplied; [4] and yet this morerecent criticism, itself, primarily depends on questions posed by the former, withoutautomatically interrogating the aesthetic premises which raised these issues in the firstplace. The irony with which the earlier period of Homeric interpretation is sometimestreated, when it does not simply render the contempt of aesthetes for the pedantry of“science”, implicitly represents the “Homeric question” as an incidental episode, withoutseeing how these critical positions are, themselves, a part of the intellectual structureswhich it denigrates.The Analysts draw attention to real problems, which need to be solved through aninterpretation focused on the meaning of the particular work which has been transmitted tous, and not, simply, on the ways in which the poetic tradition functions, with this text as bothits product and representative. They bring to the fore the breaks and leaps in the narration,the poorly motivated episodes, the redundant passages and the {121 | 122} ellipses, therepetitions and irregularities of diction, the faults of character construction and theincoherence or improbabilities of the action. This attentive study to the finer details of thetext provides the material for their discussions. It reveals, as if beneath a magnifying glass,what distinguishes the Iliad or the Odyssey from the aesthetic canons of the writtentradition. Its error is to remove these textual instances from the poetic tradition to which thetwo epics belong, and from the sphere of control of the poems themselves, in order to readthem instead as unintentional traces of the poems’ genesis.I shall introduce an example to clarify my meaning.

The Plot of Zeus

http://chs.harvard.edu/wb/1/wo/ak8Bb8pNpmEHPGMMhuQtR0/0.0.0.0.19.1.7.15.1.1.0.1.2.0.0.1.3.3.1









http://chs.harvard.edu/wa/pageR?tn=ArticleWrapper&bdc=12&mn=3972#n.1






In the first event of the funeral games in honour of Patroclus (Il. XXIII.262-652), HighCriticism has spotted the indications of a modification (or interpolation) in an apparentinconsistency of the narrative. When, at Achilles’ call (272-286), the contestors enter thecompetition, old Nestor gives his son Antilochus, whose team of horses is considerablyslower than that of the others, some advice on how to approach the race (306-348). Hiswhole argument turns around a crucial moment of the course, the turning post, whosedangerous circuit could be the occasion for the young man to snatch victory from hisquicker opponents. This sign – séma –, so strongly underlined in his speech (326-333), isevoked another time by the narrator before the start of the race (358-361), and once by oneof the spectators as he waits for the chariots at the finish line (462, 465-468). But in thenarration of the race proper – despite the fact that first an accident caused by the gods, andthen a deceptive manoeuvre, achieve a double inversion of the expected ranking, giving thevictory to Diomedes over Eumeles and to Antilochus over Menelaos – neither of these twodramatic events happen at the foreshadowed place: that is, the turning post. This is the rootof the Analysts’ hypothesis that the speech of Nestor, which they deem too long, was aninterpolation.In response to this critical position, the defenders of the transmitted text have adopted two“unitarian” strategies, which both essentially negate this difficulty through variousarguments. The strong defence upholds, at the cost of impossible contortions, that, of thetwo incidents, the second at least (that is to say, that which counts more in terms of theargument - the trickery of Antilochus), does occur at the place where Nestor’s instructionspredicted it would: during the turn around the terma (the scholia show that this reading ofthe text was already practised in Antiquity). [5] The {122 | 123} weak one recognizes wellenough that there is an irregularity in the construction, but substantially reduces its scope,sometimes explaining the length of Nestor’s speech through the poet’s desire to add anamusing side to the characterisation of this rather loquacious old man, and sometimes –which does not contradict the first reading – through his anxiety to insist on the tacticallesson on métis, which his son goes on to apply in his own way.This open-mindedness, which makes the Analyst a contrario appear as a rather ridiculouspedant, claimed to have found its basis in a classic interpretation of “oral” theory. This wouldbe that, in demanding that the poet pay attention to the weaknesses of the compositionwhich were not perceptible from every point of view during the flow of the recitation, theconstraints of this particular type of poetry have been underestimated. Surely, the structureof an oral poem is inevitably looser than that of a work produced at the writing desk, whereits author has the leisure to go back a hundred times over his work? [6]There is certainly no doubt that an oral poem of the Iliad’s monumental size, however onevisualizes its transmission and translation into writing, could not have been subject to theminute revisions which are possible in writing. It should be noted that there are blundersmade in some of the great works of written literature (Dickens’ Pickwick, for example, is acelebrated instance, and a critic recently pointed some out in Derek Walcott’s Omeros). It is,therefore, not surprising that one of Homer’s minor characters could kill himself in one bookand reappear in tears, eight books and 5178 lines later, amongst the warriors who arecarrying the corpse of his son (Il. V.576 and XIII.658).But should one conclude from these few misprints, which are still very rare, that the oralityof the poem forms a barrier to paying attention to the detail of an episode’s construction,under the pretext that the conditions of the production of the song should render suchirregularities imperceptible and insignificant to the audience, as well as the bard? Theargument must be weighed with care, for it is precisely the evident complexity of the Iliadwhich the opponents of the oral theory invoke in order to adduce that the poem could nothave been composed without the help of writing. [7]What we can glimpse of the intellectual life of archaic Greece obliges us to admit that thepublic of the bards was a cultivated public, [8] that their knowledge of the resources andrules as well as the repertoire {123 | 124} of the poetic tradition put them in a better positionthan us to perceive the allusions and subtleties of the composition presented to them. Weshould not imagine the ideal audience, conjured up by Odysseus amongst the Phaeacians,as being “fascinated” by the songs which they hear, but rather watchful and attentive to anobject which they are able to interpret and appreciate (Od. ix.5-11). The virtuosity of therhapsodes in handling their idiom and conventional forms of the composition (narrativeschemes, type scenes, oval or ring compositions, comparisons, etc.) testifies to thecompetence and sophistication of the public before which they performed.I will now return to the episode which I used as an example. In the chariot race, it is not theopen-mindedness of the Unitarians (whether oralists or not) which draws attention to theunusual features of the recitation and enables decipherment of their meaning; it is thescrupulous thoroughness of the Analysts. For there does exist a discontinuity between the“programme” drawn up by Nestor and its realisation. This gap is a sign, which the “strong”







defence tries to fill in and the “weak” one ignores; both making the narrative unreadable.Nestor’s description of the séma around which the chariots will turn was not introduced inorder to exempt the poet from returning to it later in the narrative, as a recent commentarysuggests; [9] it contradicts the Iliad’s choice to recount, and then interpret, the events of therace in a different, perhaps more conventional, way. If Eumeles’ chariot had broken near theturning post, as Idomeneus at one point believes (Il. XXIII.465-468); if it was in turningaround the post that Antilochus had overtaken Menelaus, as his father recommended (344-345), [10] the ranking of the contestants at the finish line would not have posed a problem.But that is not what happened. Diomedes and Antilochus owe their place less to thesuperiority of their team or to their skill in driving than to the arbitrary intervention of thegods, in the case of the first, and to a violation of the rules of the course in the second. Theimportance of the result derives from an ambivalent and disputable move. This is the causeof the discussion that follows, which, it must be remembered, is started by Achilles (534-539).But that isn’t all. It very quickly becomes apparent that the two dramatic episodes of therace are organised around two antithetical paradigms, both written into the narrative of theevent. The first, expressed by Achilles (XXIII.274-278), makes victory depend only on thespeed of the horses; the second, expressed by Nestor (306-348), on the tactical skill withwhich the charioteer is able to take {124 | 125} the bend. Let us accept, as can be shown,that the narrative of the chariot race is a mirror in which the Iliad questions, at the sametime, its meaning, and which elements of the poetic tradition it will absorb within itsmonumental framework. The polarity of the paradigms of Nestor and Achilles reflects that ofheroic values, conventionally designated, with G. Nagy, [11] as “force”, bié, and “cunning”,métis, studied by Detienne and Vernant. [12] Both are at the roots of the exploits celebratedby the epics of the Trojan Cycle. The first is Achilles’ quality, which he uses in his victoryover Hector in the Iliad or over Memnon in the Ethiopis – to give only the two most famousexamples. The second is embodied most notably in the epic tradition in Odysseus, thearchitect of the sacking of Troy, the hero of the Ilioupersis.If this interpretation of the episode is correct, it is the epic “genre” itself, in celebrating heroicvalues within the exploits of heroes, which becomes the problematic object of the poem’sthought at that particular moment of the recitation, in a sequence of scenes submitted fordecipherment by an educated audience, capable of perceiving the unusual features of acomposition entirely traditional in its method.* * *Cultivated Greeks of the archaic period were particularly well versed in the narrativesfrom which the bards drew the subject matter for their songs. It is difficult to represent toourselves the form in which this fluid material was known to them. To the repertoire ofhexameter epics, which certainly did not “exist” as such – at least for the most part, in that itwas continually reconstructed in the shifting forms of a “song” in the thread of its successive“performances” – must be added the multiples usages which lyric poetry or genealogies, inall the diversity of their respective genres, made of these legends: the examples applied intheir discourse, tales of ordinary lives or banquets, stories of the women of old, etc. TheOdyssey recalls the fame which some of these songs had gained, [13] whilst the speakersof the Iliad rest their arguments on such narratives in order to persuade their listeners. [14]But references to the narrative heritage of gods, giants and heroes are not limited, in theIliad, to {125 | 126} allusions to, or occasional citations of, the poems or poetic traditionsthat were fashionable at the time. They are present throughout, and form part of asystematic program. Aristotle, in the twenty-third chapter of the Poetics, praises Homer forhis – “divinely inspired” – choice of plot: “Even though the Trojan War had a start and anend, he did not try to formulate the whole story (it would have been too extensive to becovered at a single glance), nor to reduce its extent, which would have made itincomprehensible due to its diversity. What he did, in fact, was to take out a single part, andto draw from numerous episodes for the rest, such as the catalogue of the ships or otherepisodes, which he scatters through his composition.” [15]It is true that, if one situates the action recounted in the Iliad within the sequence of events– from Earth’s complaint at the start of the Cypria, overwhelmed by the weight of thedemigods, to the immortal marriages of Telemachus and Penelope at the Telegony’s end,which structure a virtual narrative of the poems of the Trojan Cycle -, then the plot of theIliad is nothing more than a short episode, limited in its content and brief in its duration,within this longer story. [16] Fifty-two days pass by between the arrival of Chryses at thecamp of the Achaeans and the end of Hector’s funeral; and all of the events which occurwithin this period are subsumed by the bard under a single theme, that of ménis [17] – the“anger” of Achilles, announced in the first word of the poem.But the apparent simplicity of the subject matter is misleading. What is more, critics, fromAntiquity on, have taken care to point out everything which appears only to tie into thethread of the main action by an arbitrary or tenuous link: the first day of fighting, [18] the













night foray of Odysseus and Diomedes into the Trojan camp, [19] Poseidon’s interventionalongside the Achaeans and Hera’s trick to protect him, [20] to say nothing of a largenumber of episodes of more limited extent. In only one case does their evaluation actuallyappear to have legitimate grounds. There are, in fact, good reasons to believe that book X,the “Doloneia”, does not actually belong to the Iliad, despite the fact that its theme fits intothat of the poem – in other words, that it was not a part of the same “performance” as therest of the work. In every other case, the variety of the subject matter is one of theindications of the “composite” – or systematically composed – character of the poem. Theaesthetic unity of the Iliad is not the “organic” unity which the Analysts, as well as theUnitarians, demand. It is constructed, it is an artefact, whose virtuosity {126 | 127} andcomplexity the bard’s audience was able to appreciate, and which was performed so thatthey could understand – that is, decipher – its implicit discourse.* * *The theme of the anger of Achilles enables the poem to reconstruct the mass of Trojansubject matter, recreating it in condensed form and exploring its significance. Its thinkingfocuses not so much on celebrating the glory, kleos, of its own hero, as on unravelling thelogic of a chain of events, a story, which has led to the disappearance of the age of heroes.Archaic epic was well versed in this interpretation of the Trojan War. The first fragment ofStasinos’ Cypria attributes to Zeus the aim of relieving the Earth, emptying it of theburdensome weight of the heroes through their deaths. [21] Hesiod’s Works and Days hasthe race of heroes disappearing in the wars which gave the Theban and Trojan Cycles theirtheme (164ff.). W. Kullmann [22] has highlighted a significant number of allusions to thismotif in the Iliad, where the comparison with other Indo-European poetic traditions suggeststhat it is perhaps perpetuating a very old theme of eschatological warfare. [23]This reading of the Trojan legend would not, therefore, have been overlooked by therhapsode who composed (possibly in “dictation”) the Iliad which we read – no more than itwas by his potential audience. But the poem does not limit itself to evoking this tradition in afew scattered allusions, nor to relating it to the general framework of the story, of which,according to Aristotle’s Poetics, its narrative only presents a portion. It reinterprets it, andintegrates it into the plot by absorbing it into its monumental structure, so as to summarizethe entire war, including the essential appendix of the “returns”.* * *This articulation is realised in two ways.The first works to connect the action of the Iliad to its past and future by a complex networkof analepses and prolepses – for which the narrator sometimes takes responsibility, butwhich he also often places in the mouths of his characters. It is sometimes difficult todiscern what kind of presence or {127 | 128} real importance events which are “recalled” inthis way would have had in the epic tradition, around the time when the Iliad was cominginto being. Episodes that appear to belong to a “recent” phase of the war in particular cometo mind: the capture and sack of Thebes-under-Plakos, recollected by Achilles andAndromache (I.366-369; VI.414-428); of Lyrnessos and Pedasos, recalled by the bard,Achilles and Aeneas (II.691; XIX.60; XX.92 and 191); the adventures of Lycaon (XXI.35-44),etc. Proclus’ Chrestomathia mentions the two former episodes in his summary of theCypria, but ignores the city of Eëtion. Thebes is certainly important for the Iliad, in that it isthe last city to have been taken by Achilles, so that its fall prefigures and anticipates, byopposition, the fall of Troy. But this observation is not enough to assume that this episode ofthe legend was an ad hoc invention of Homer’s.On the other hand, some major episodes of the story of the origins and beginnings of thewar are also recalled: the wedding of Thetis and Peleus, Paris’ judgement, the abduction ofHelen, the gathering at Aulis, the death of Protesilaus, Menelaus and Odysseus’ fruitlessembassy to the Trojans, the murder of Troilus, etc. And there are predictions, too: the deathof Achilles, the capture of the city and its destruction, Aeneas’ future kingship, the departureof the fleet and the destruction of the Achaean wall, etc. [24]But this observation does not affect the essential point – that is, first and foremost, the wayin which the Iliad projects the relationship between the story which makes up its own theme,and the story of the war entire. A whole series of indications underline the fact that thequarrel between the king and the most glorious of his warriors breaks out, along with thedisasters which follow in its wake, at a decisive moment in the development of the war, at atime marked by fate for the downfall of Priam’s city. Odysseus’ recollection of the omen atAulis (II.299-332), for example, does not only fulfil the intradiegetic function of persuadingthe Achaeans to reassemble around Agamemnon to launch the decisive attack againstTroy; it also functions as a sign, through which the bard invites his audience to interpret theevents presented to them in his recitation. Calchas, he suggests, was not mistaken. Theking’s dream is not entirely misleading. The illusions which he brings into being, and thedisaster which they help prepare for the Achaeans, are also tied, by a fundamental bond, tothe future destruction of Troy. [25]In the Iliad’s interpretation, the anger of Achilles becomes the decisive event of the war.










Achilles’ retirement, the stunning {128 | 129} (though shocking) victories of Hector and theTrojans, the capture of the Achaean camp and the burning of the ships, the murder ofPatroclus, could appear on reflection, in the concatenation of episodes, as the cause of theTrojan rout, the death of Hector and the imminent fall of the city, bereft of the warrior whoprotected it. [26] It matters little that Achilles should die before taking Troy. From the point ofview of the Iliad, the hero’s task is achieved and the outcome of the war clear-cut. Thepoem remains silent on the events which lead to the death of Achilles (the subject matter ofthe Ethiopis), and says almost nothing of those which take place between his death and thetaking of the city (the subject matter of the Little Iliad and the Ilioupersis). [27]The absence of any reference to the death of the Amazon queen, the murder of Thersites,the duel between Achilles and Memnon, the judgement of the weapons, the theft of thePalladion and the wooden horse does not mean that Homer was ignoring the poetictraditions preserved in the summaries and scattered fragments of the Cycle poems. Theresearch done by the Neo-Analysts has, besides, drawn attention to the passages in theIliad which seem to echo or imitate scenes from the lost epics. But it should instead beconcluded that this deliberate silence, which the bards’ public was meant to understand,was intended directly to connect the fall of Troy with Hector’s death, thus underlining thatthe crisis set in motion by the quarrel of Achilles and Agamemnon comprised the nodalepisode of the whole war.This narrative strategy has another implication. The “imminent” death of Achilles certainlypreserves, in negative, the traditional version of the capture of the city; but there is no spacegiven to the episodes leading up to it in the Ethiopis, or the other poems which wouldbecome lost to remembrance. Such a polemical move must be categorically interpreted asa denial of the value, or “truth”, of rival poetic traditions. One could make a similar remarkwith regards to the poems recounting the last days of Troy. The Iliad essentially only retainsfuture events whose entire impact has to do with the actions it recounts, and keeps silent onthe episodes and characteristic themes belonging to other songs – the particular “path”which gives each tradition its poetic identity. This observation, which applies to the future,also applies to a certain extent to the past, and could explain the complete absence of anyreference to the Mysian episode and the character of Telephus, both of which are {129 |130} central to the plot of the Cypria, but useless for gaining an understanding of the actionof the Iliad and the war as a whole.* * *I come now to the second method used by Homer to reinterpret the story of the TrojanWar in the light of the anger of Achilles. It is directly linked to the first, and comprises theabsorption of the essential narrative substance of the other Trojan Cycle epics into thepoem’s plot. Not only does the Iliad recount the determining episode of the outcome of thewar, but its monumental narrative is built in such a way that it offers, in miniature, asynthetic image of the whole story, replaying its key moments. At the end of the poem, allhas been told – all, that is, which really deserved the telling.This “interjection” of legend into the Iliadic narrative comes out most noticeably in thecomplex interplay between two types of narrative tropes, which could be described asthematic metonymy, on the one hand, and reconfigurations of episodes (or sequences ofepisodes) on the other. These would be clearly intelligible only to a public fairly well versedin the repertoire (and thus able to pick up on allusions or fainter echoes), and fairly used tointerpreting the narratives it hears, in order to be able to both recognize and unravel thesedevices within the thread of the poem’s recitation.I shall limit myself to four examples.1. When Achilles, at the start of book eighteen, learns the news of Patroclus' death fromAntilochus, the violence of his grief throws him to the ground, where he stays stretched outin the dust, his face, tunic and hair fouled, like the corpse of his lost friend. The women hehas captured run out from the hut and crowd around him, beating their chests inaccordance with the customary ritual. His mother responds to his cry with a funerarylament, to which the tears and ritual movements of the Nereids reply in turn. During theconversation which follows between Thetis and Achilles, the mother holds her son's headas if she were holding his corpse. This pathetic image of Achilles' grief provides theframework for the prediction of the hero's imminent death. There is little doubt that thecontext of this episode - replicating, as it does, death and the grief it causes - underlines thesubstitutive bond which exists between the two friends. Achilles substitutes himself, inimitation, for the "naked" corpse of Patroclus, soiled by dust, {130 | 131} just as Patroclussubstituted himself in imitation of Achilles, when he borrowed his armour to go to the aid ofthe harassed Achaeans and their ships. But this scene explains more than the hero's grief,or the nature of the relationship between the two friends. The two accounts which we stillhave as evidence of the way in which the death of Achilles was narrated in archaic epic -the summary of the Ethiopis in Proclus' Chrestomathia, and Agamemnon's speech in thefinal book of the Odyssey - suggest that the audience of the Iliad would have seen, in the





description of the grief of Achilles, a foreshadowing of the lamentations which wouldaccompany the funeral after his death, predicted in this passage by Thetis' conditionalprolepsis. [28] The death of Patroclus is, at the same time, the cause of Achilles'approaching death, and the mainstay of the Iliad's reconfiguration of that death and thescenes of mourning which marked it out in other traditions.The text does not merely project this incumbent death into the future; it shows it as, in asense, accomplished. The hero who raises himself at Iris’ call, and appears suddenly at theedge of the trench, clouded in a mirror image of the fire which was threatening the Achaeanfleet, and who goes on to destroy Priam’s city, is at the same time the double of the soiledbody of Patroclus and the prefiguration of his own corpse. The murderer of Hector andscourge of Troy no longer belongs to the land of the living.The halo of flames with which Athena crowns his bare head is likened in a famous simile(XVIII.207-214) to the smoke and raging fires of a besieged city. But we should not be toohasty, in deciphering this motif, to connect the image directly and unilaterally to the futuredestruction of Troy. The threat is certainly there, and will be acted out. Another simileechoes it, in this sense, at the end of book XXI. [29] But, putting book XVIII in context, thetransmitted text makes a digression in the form of an intervention with vital consequencesfor its interpretation, namely, the firing of Protesilaus’ ship by Hector in book XVI (114-123).This was the fire which gave the signal for Patroclus’ fatal expedition (124-129). Itrepresents the raging of the Achaean’s distress, just as the death of Patroclus – which isconnected to it – represents raging grief for Achilles. It is this flame, most of all, which burnson the hero’s head and which will go on to light the fire which will melt away Troy. In thedialectic of the Iliad, true to the boulé (the plan of Zeus), it is the grief of the Achaeans in thetwo complementary figures of the burning of the ships and the death of Patroclus, whichleads Hector to his death and Troy to its fall. {131 | 132}2. An apparent metonymic economy ensures the integration of the future destruction of Troyinto the themes of the Iliad in its own right. The poem – most notably in book XXII – doesmore than simply lay out the coming catastrophe, pronouncing it as the inevitableconsequence of the death of the city’s main defender. It underlines the symbolic identity ofthe two events. Priam, in anticipation, paints the picture of the sack of Troy in terms whichsum it up in all its horror, in his fruitless supplication to his son not to wait for Achilles’attack, and to take shelter behind the walls so he can protect them (XXII.59-76).Andromache, too, has her own vision of the lot which will fall to Astyanax when theAchaeans have taken over the city of which his father was the sole defender (XXIV.734-738). A simile compares the grief of the Trojans at the moment of Hector’s death to smokefrom a fire (XXII.410-411). These textual signs would have provided the means for anaudience well versed in narratives of the sack of Troy to comprehend how the Ilioupersiscould be reconfigured, even within the Iliadic episode of the fight between Hector andAchilles. It is certain that the gaps in our education place us in a less favourable positionthan that of the bards’ public, to perceive the sophistication and richness of thisreconstruction. But there is another clue which should not escape us: Hector gives in to hisadversary when, abandoned by Apollo, he allows himself to be caught in Athena’s trap,deceived by a disguise which the goddess assumes in order to put the Trojan at the mercyof his enemy (XXII.227-247). This deception, which so profits Achilles, certainly pointstowards the strategem which enabled Odysseus and the other leaders of the army, underthe inspiration and with the help of the goddess, to take Troy for their own. [30]3. In terms of the opening scenes, the Iliad similarly integrates Helen’s abduction by Parisinto the interpretive logic of its plot. At the start of book III, the two armies, in the midst ofpreparing to launch the decisive (and long deferred) battle, decide to restore peaceamongst themselves, and to leave the task of resolving their quarrel to the heroes whoseanimosity had incited the war in the first place, by means of a duel. As if men could controlthe disputes caused by the gods amongst themselves, and escape the misfortune to whichthey are doomed by destiny! This poetic fiction, designated as such, [31] relies on thedelusion fostered in the sequence of episodes which opens the meeting between Paris andMenelaos, and at the same time provides the means to take things back “to the beginning”.To enumerate: as soon as the conditions for peace have been agreed on, Iris goes to find{132 | 133} Helen in Paris’ palace, and sends her, reawakening her desire for her formerhusband, to a place which should be recognised as a symbolic equivalent to her country oforigin, Lacedaimon, within the fictional conditions of the Iliad. [32] Throughout the episode,the narrative highlights, through a series of signs and allusions, this figurative return whichnegates the first voyage (tenuously within the narrative, but highly effectively within thepoetic construction), the source of all difficulties. [33]The resulting pact between the Trojans and the Achaeans establishes a friendly relationshipbetween the two armies comparable, in the obligations which it entails, to that which bindsguest and host. [34] Both are placed under the protection of Zeus, and transgressions of the










laws governing them are punishable by the same exigencies. This similarity is what makesthe reconfiguration of the original transgression of Paris within the Iliad possible.The entire episode is played out in five scenes, articulated in such a way as to provide anoutline of the event’s significance.The wounding of the son of Atreus provokes the resumption of hostilities.Let us examinebriefly, to begin with, the way in which the narrative presents the temporal positioning ofthese five “moments” of the action. The “seduction” of Helen [B] naturally follows (III.383)Paris’ removal [A], and Pandarus’ betrayal [E] is a result of the deliberation of the gods [D].But the concatenation, in lines 448 and 449, of scene [B] followed by the tableau of theaction on the plain [C], leaves the temporal relationship between the events reported {133 |134} in the two episodes more indeterminate, without at any point in the narrative signallinga flashback (which would contravene a well-established convention of Homeric narration).The juxtaposition of the aorist in the offer which closes the first scene, and the imperfect ofduration in the introduction to the second, effectively leaves the audience free to constructthe temporal relation between the two actions as they wish. Agamemnon’s pronouncement(III.456-460) could now have preceded, followed or been simultaneous to Paris’ breaking ofthe pact.The divine scene which follows, on the other hand, although it does not formally violate“Zielinski’s law” – for the narrator does not state that he is returning to the thread of his plotat a point in the development of the action later than that reached at the end of scene [B] –nevertheless incorporates a marked sign, which obliges the audience to reflect on thesense in which the chronology of the diegesis and the narrative organisation relate. Itconsists of an observation which the bard does not directly account for, but places insteadin the mouth of the principal actor in his cast: Zeus. Trying to provoke Hera and Athena, the“son of Cronos” essentially reflects that, even if the two protectresses of Menelaos seemcontent to view the combat from their Olympian seat, Aphrodite, for her part, is keepingclose to Paris’ side and is again going to save him at the moment when he thought to die(IV.7-12). To which he adds that the victory belongs to Menelaos (IV.13), in terms close tothose used by Agamemnon a few lines before (III.457). The situation which Zeus’ speechenvisages thus corresponds to the end of the duel [A], before the goddess goes looking forHelen. The action which results from the gods’ deliberation – that is, Pandarus’ betrayal [E]– is thus exactly contemporaneous with [B], Paris’ seduction of Helen with the help ofAphrodite. The two episodes are conceived so that the audience understands that theyunfold in parallel, in contrasting positions but in direct correlation, as shown most notably inthe symmetry of the scenes built around the visits of Iris and Aphrodite to Helen at the startand end of the third book. The intimacy of Paris’ bedroom lies on one side, the space of thefuture battlefield, open to the gaze of all, on the other. Pandarus’ crime is the palpablecounterpart to that of Paris. The first is induced by Aphrodite, the second by Hera andAthena, who thus work together (though in confrontation) towards the disaster which willdestroy Troy and the race of heroes. All under the supervision of Zeus… It should be notedin passing {134 | 135} that, for the development of the Iliad’s plot, that is, initiating thereprisal of war, only Pandarus’ betrayal was necessary; the secret union between Paris andHelen could not, by itself, have produced this effect.There is no reason to suppose that the significance of this complex construction shouldhave escaped Homer’s audience. The scene of the seduction should be recognised forwhat it is: the reconfiguration within the Iliad of Helen’s abduction. The assistance which thegoddess provides Paris at every turn, as Zeus pointedly remarks, is newly demonstrated inthe rescue of the Trojan prince (IV.10-12). In the tradition of the Cypria, this favouritism waspresented as the consequence of the Judgement, and manifested itself in particular in thehelp given to Paris by Aphrodite in the conquest of Helen. The goddess’ promise, which hadearlier secured the young shepherd’s vote, is the cause – which the audience of the Iliadneeded no further prompting to recall – of the vehemence with which she forces Helen toreturn to Paris’ bed and bedroom. He himself, in fact, recalls the abduction and the unionwhich followed in inviting his wife to sleep with him, thus signalling the profoundidentification of the Iliadic episode with the original scene that it replays (III.441-446). [36]This reconfiguration has a double purpose. It allows the Iliad, as we have alreadymentioned above, to integrate the event which began the war within its plot, and thus topresent itself as the monumental summation of traditional knowledge concerning thedisappearance of the race of heroes (along with the implications this might have for rivalpoetic traditions). But it also enables it to impose an interpretation of this mythic event,which ties in with the reading that the poem proposes of the story of the Trojan War. Theinitial abduction was one aspect of it, as Paris recalls, [37] and its reconfiguration underlinesthat he was guided by the design and with the help of a divinity whose power is not defiedby mortals without punishment. The episode of Pandarus, which makes up the visible frontof the transgression whose mythic significance is recalled in the seduction of Helen,





completes the analysis. If the archer is described by the narrator as “out of his senses”when he gives in to Athena’s persuasion (IV.104), his folly throws light in retrospect on thatof Paris, elsewhere condemned by other characters, [38] and made manifest in the scene ofthe seduction in his oblivious response to {135 | 136} the sarcasm of his wife. [39] Paris andthe Trojans are to blame, even though the whole affair was planned by the gods – or rather,by one of them. Now, this culpability is important within the dialectic of the Iliad. It makes thetrials and defeat which Zeus initially inflicts on the Achaeans more paradoxical, but at thesame time explains the lot which lies in wait for Troy: the annihilation of the city, for whichHector’s death is the metonymic expression.The organisation of the episodes narrating the breaking of the pact thus reveals itsmeaning. The two complementary transgressions can certainly be parallel according to thechronology of the diegesis; but in terms of the order of cause and effect, it is Paris’transgression which comes first. It is effectively this which governs everything; and, throughit, the divine trap in which the Trojan prince allows himself to be caught – establishing theoriginal transgression –, and the plans of the god who conceived it. K. Reinhardt and G.Dumézil have clearly shown, by different methods, that the judgement of Paris waspresupposed in the layout of the interventions of the three goddesses in this part of thepoem, contrary to the opinion of Aristarchus and most modern critics before them. Theinitiative of Aphrodite has as its counterpart the essentially complementary action of her tworivals. The allusions would have been clear enough that there was no need to underlinethem for the audience.But the presentation of the divine interventions reveals another aspect of this metonymicuse, and interpretation, of the mythic material. The repetition of the abduction followsimmediately on from the deliverance of Paris, and seems to unfold entirely separate fromthe rest of the gods and Zeus’ authority. Pandarus’ betrayal apparently results from anagreement made between the supreme god and the goddesses of the Achaean party. I willreturn later to the negotiation between the divine husband and wife, and will content myselfhere by drawing attention to the role which the narrative awards Zeus, and which is notlimited to the assembly at the start of book IV. The god acts alongside Aphrodite as well asAthena, in an oblique but different way in both cases. He hedges and disguises [40] his trueobjectives when he addresses Hera, proposing that she recognise the peace madebetween the two armies. What he really wants is for the war to resume, but with somethingin addition, which I will for the moment set aside for later investigation. His interlocutor fallsfor it, thinking she will be able to snatch from Zeus the destruction of a city which she hadnot for an instant dreamt {136 | 137} of saving. Athena leaves on her mission and theTrojans dedicate themselves to the death – delayed for four days! – which attends perjury,in the hand of Pandarus. [41]The part played by the “son of Cronos” in the breaking of the pact, within the sequence ofevents leading to the abduction of Helen, is evoked in a more subtle manner, by signs(often in negative form) which the narrator leaves for the listener to identify andcomprehend. The first can be found in line III.302, in the indication that the god “did not yetgive his assent” to the oath which the warriors in the two armies offer up, dedicatingwhichever of the two sides first violates the sworn pact to utter destruction. The departure ofPriam (III.303-313), after the drawing of lots which gives Paris the advantage (324-325) –as follows in the duel, with the ironic answer that the pattern of events gives, twice, toMenelaos’ prayer to Zeus [42] – prepare for the intervention of Aphrodite, described as the“daughter of Zeus” in the phrase which recounts her action (373-374).This submission, conscious or unconscious, of the divinities of the two camps to the secretdesign of the supreme god plays a part in the fundamental themes of the Iliad; but we must,at the same time, read into it an echo of the legends around the divine plan which beganthe Trojan War. The lack of symmetry which we have noted between the methods of Zeus’action in the first and second part of the narrative of the breaking of the pact, divulges itsmeaning both within the action of the Iliad and through an analysis of the traditionalnarrative material, which reveals the construction of the poem’s plot. The cosmic crisis, ofwhich the Iliad provides a condensed image, never goes out of the control of the universalregulator, “father of men and gods”, who only brings it about in order thus to reestablish theequilibrium of the world he governs. I will return later to this essential aspect of thestructuring of the Iliad’s plot. But it is interesting to observe that Zeus’ action in Aphrodite’sand, apparently, Paris’ favour, takes a silent and negative form in the narrative of the dueland events immediately following it, whilst Athena’s intervention is the result of anagreement, which he makes sure is explicitly taken up by Hera – the goddess who, with hertwo allies, [43] defends a “normal” visualisation; that is, within the situation of the crisiswhich the poem’s action describes, a unilateral and rigid (not dialectic) visualisation of thedivine and human order. {137 | 138}4. I will start my final example with the unusual negotiation which leads to the resumption of









hostilities between the Trojans and Achaeans. It has been as badly assessed as it has beenunderstood, its critics oddly scandalised by its clever bargaining.Let us recall the terms of the agreement! The explosion of Hera’s anger (IV.25-29) at theidea that the gods might sanction the peace concluded between the armies and savePriam’s city, elicits an even stronger reply from Zeus, whose style displays a bettercalculation of its content (31-49). It contains two sentiments, carefully balanced at the startand end: Hera’s sworn hatred against Priam and his people, and the partiality which Zeushas for their city (31-36; 43-49). In the middle comes the deal, whose implications in, andfor, the action of the Iliad, Hera – and the Homeric critics with her – does not immediatelygrasp. Zeus gives way (36-37) in a move which imitates, and perhaps parodies, the “do it!”with which Hera had ended her protestation (29), and justifies this concession with a motivewhich takes up a similar quality to the veiled threat which accompanied his wife’s apparentsubmission. But he indicates straight away the price of his surrender – which should not betaken solely as a threat. Hera, in her turn, must give up to him, without resistance when thetime comes, an equivalent to what was so precious to him, but which he neverthelesssurrendered to her hatred. The sack of a city which you care for, in return for that of Priam’scity which I loved so much!Hera falls for it and immediately agrees that she will no longer be able to shelter them fromharm: three cities for one, three cities in one (51-54). If the proposal to save Troy is really apretence, as the bard states (anxious to prevent his audience misinterpreting the meaningof this central scene), there can only be one reason: to manipulate the goddess into herselfprecipitating the resumption of war, in implicitly agreeing to the continuation of defeat, whichthe promise to Thetis assigns to the Achaeans. Such is, indeed, the result which Zeusobtains. The three “cities” which Hera hands over to the destructive rage of her husband arerepresented by only one within the Iliad: that is, the Achaean camp, raised up andmetamorphosed into a kind of counter-city, when, on the evening of the first day, Nestorrealises that the battle has not upheld the promises of the dream, and that danger islooming. [44] Argos, Sparta and Mycenae (the last taking up the second half of line 52 withits epithet): that is to say, Diomedes, Menelaos and Agamemnon. {138 | 139}The Catalogue of the Ships provides the key to this construction, and to the strategem ofthe king of the gods: the contingents of Diomedes and the two Atrides follow each other, ina slightly different order which puts Agamemnon at the centre. [45] The three cities loved byHera are none other than the Achaean army, in that Zeus has chosen to oppress them, tohonour Achilles. The choice of the Atrides is a given. They are the leaders, the titledrepresentatives of the coalition. But Diomedes? He seems to me to be associated with thetwo kings because he is the warrior, within the Iliad, whose exploits seem to promise victoryto the Achaeans, the imminence of which the dream paints in glowing colours. In otherwords, it is because he is the apparent substitute for Achilles and claimant to his title – ashis name suggests; the involuntary witness to this “plan of Zeus”, who dedicates theAchaean army to disaster in spite of his bravery.The Iliad does not recount the taking and sack of Troy, which will happen in the future, northe capture of the twenty-three cities (Trojan or Trojan allies) which Achilles has seized atthat point. Even so, it evokes them, giving an increasingly prominent position as the plotprogresses to images of besieged, attacked or incinerated cities. There is nevertheless one“city” described in the poem whose ramparts are assailed and whose gates are forced, in afierce fight put up by the defenders trying to expel the invading enemy from their walls, andto quench the flames of the spreading fire. It is the Achaean camp. Mirroring the plan ofZeus, its fortifications are designed as a paradoxical reflection of the walls of Troy. Poseidoneven takes exception to it for a moment (VII.446-453), and Achilles is right when heidentifies in it the material impact of his anger and his absences (IX.348-350). It is, in otherwords, something like a poetic code within the Iliad, which a persistent tradition of criticismhas tried to vanish away – without ever considering that the poem has already given itselfthat task (XII.10-33).This counter-city does not shut its women and children away in its houses, with itstreasures, like Hector’s city – it protects its ships. The Iliad itself underlines the symmetry ofthese concerns in presenting, in the form of a diptych, the contrasting addresses of Hectorand Ajax at the critical moment of the battle. [46] The survival of the Achaean army is tied totheir ships, just as that of Troy is connected to the walls protecting them. For the Achaeans,their hopes for the future are tied to the possibility of “return”. Achilles knows it just as wellas {139 | 140} his older comrades, and it is in order to protect the fleet that he sendsPatroclus and the Myrmidons in to fight, when Protesilaos’ ship is set on fire (XVI.80-82 and126-129).The transformation of the shore where the invaders beached their ships into a besieged cityis more than a convenient method of introducing the development of traditional themes, inan epic which seems to exclude them in the outline of its subject. It is the consequence and






the manifestation of an essential aspect of the poetic inventio of the Iliad. The assault onthe Achaean camp and the burning of the ships are, at the same time, the counterpart andthe cause of the ruin of Troy, just as the murder of Patroclus prefigures and brings about thedeath of Hector. The disaster which the anger of Achilles brings upon the army of theAtrides provides, at the centre of the poem, the inverse image of and the key to the futuredestruction of the city of Priam.I will have occasion later on to take a look at the relationship which this narrative figuremaintains, within the structuring of the Iliad’s plot, with the design of Zeus, the Dios boulé inquestion in the fifth verse of the proem. But I would like at this point to draw attention to anunexpected aspect of the poetic “inversion” which the poem of anger effects on the epictradition. In the Trojan Cycle, the capture of the city was not the end of the story. TheAchaeans who had survived the war still had to encounter the trials which the gods haddevised for them on their return home. The conquerors pay the price of victory withwandering and death, on the sea, or upon arrival in their homeland. Nostos, theforegrounded image of salvation (as D. Frame has shown), thus becomes the “sinisterreturn” of which Phemios sings in Odysseus’ palace, trying to please the queen’s Suitors.I suggest that it is this general structuring of the Trojan legend which the Iliad inserts into itsplot construction, by means of the “inversion” briefly noted above. The suffering and deathwhich the anger of Achilles brings upon the Achaeans in the Homeric poem are themetonymic equivalent to the suffering and death which the anger of Athena, [47] accordingto a tradition which the Odyssey echoes, inflicted upon the conquerors when they took tosea after their victory. What happened after the fall of Troy, and as its direct result in thegeneral economy of the legend, is reproduced in our poem before the event, as its cause.{140 | 141}This interpretation allows for clarification of a difficulty which critics have often pointed out inthe proem of the Iliad. After describing in the second line the innumerable sufferings, algea,inflicted on the Achaeans by the anger of Achilles, it goes on to state that it “sent a greatnumber of valiant souls of heroes down to Hades, making them (that is, their bodies) preyfor dogs and birds of all kinds”. The position assigned to the word ‘heroes’, in the middle ofthe phrase and carried over to the start of the fourth line, is without doubt a subtle sign thatit is the disappearance of this race of men which will be in question during the poem. Whatthe first phrase says about the destiny of their psuchai does not pose a problem, but the lotassigned to their corpses has somewhat troubled readers of the poem. In fact, if oneignores a brief tableau in book XXI (where fish are added to the list of scavengers), and thethreats placed by Homer in the mouths of some of the heroes, the Iliad does not anywhereshow corpses exposed to the dogs and birds. The expression is thus figurative, but themeaning of the metonymy is unclear. Why give such prominence to an image which J.Redfield has defined, in his book on The Tragedy of Hector, as that of the “anti-funeral”?The expression is explained, it seems to me, through an understanding – as I havesuggested – of the relation between the theme of the suffering imposed on the Achaeans bythe anger of Achilles and that of the ultimate disappearance of the conquerors of Troyduring their return. The image of a body abandoned to the fury of the wild animals signalsthat the war, which the poem tries to represent synthetically, is a cataclysmic event, theultimate disaster in which an entire age of humanity is destroyed. It does not indicatenarrative content: it suggests its meaning.In this interpretive reconfiguration of an essential aspect of the Trojan legend, the role of theAchaean wall is a determining factor. It is the symbol of Achilles’ absence, the place wherethe destruction of Agamemnon’s army unfolds in all its horror, and a trap broken into by theTrojans – despite Polydamas’ warnings (XII.210-229) – to their detriment. The opening ofbook XII, which tells of the assault conducted on the wall by Hector and his allies, alsopredicts its imminent flooding by the combined waters of the rivers (directed by Apollo) andthe sea, raised by Poseidon. The first few lines closely link the subsequent two events: theinadequacy of the fortification during the Trojan attack and its obliteration by the {141 | 142}gods (XII.3-9). The form of this cataclysm is interesting. The great deluge – the flood – is,effectively, one of two “natural” eschatological catastrophes which Greek mythologypreserves in its memory. [48] The other, connected to the names of either Typhoeus orPhaethon, is the conflagration of the universe. The Iliad, which evokes lesser versions ofthese disasters in its similes, [49] describes the confrontation of the two in the openingscene of the battle of the gods (XXI.328-378). And there, things are clear: the interventionof Hephaistos, at Hera’s request, saves Achilles from the whirlpool in which the Scamanderand the Simoïs are about to swallow him. For the Achaean, the threat comes from thewater, from the fury of a river in flood, [50] just as fire is the agent of Troy’s futuredestruction. [51] The implication of Apollo and Poseidon, of the rivers and sea in thedescription of the flood which will destroy the Achaean wall – anticipated by the sea-god’sprotests before the fortification of the camp – enables a link to be made between the scenes








of books XII and XXI. If fire is the metonymic symbol of the ruin of Troy, then submersion inwater figures for the disappearance of the conquerors during the return journey.The flames which Hector uses to threaten the fleet [52] and which engulf Protesilaos’ ship[53] become charged with a double significance, in the inverse image of the city formed bythe Achaean camp. They predict, at the same time as they cause, the fire which will destroyTroy; but they also reveal to or remind the audience that the death which awaits theAchaeans on the sea in the course of their sinister return [54] will itself be the result of thefires which they will set alight.This dialectic method of constructing the progression of events presents a considerationwhich is worth examining for a moment, in an extension of the analysis developed by H.Lloyd-Jones in the first chapter of his book on the justice of Zeus. [55] The Odyssey,reflecting in its turn on the story of the Trojan War, has Nestor say (in the passage referredto above) that Zeus was preparing a sinister return for the Argives, because they were farfrom all being intelligent and just. [56] Nor does the Iliad ignore this theme, I believe. But theallusions made do not directly present themselves as predictions of what will happen at themoment of the fall of Troy. Instead, they take on the form of two series of reconfigurations,in a duplication which conforms to the logic of the plot. {142 | 143}To start with Agamemnon: in two scenes in books VI and XI, connected by the resumptionof motifs and repetition of lines (VI.37-65; XI.122-147), the son of Atreus displays asavagery towards the Trojans which prefigures the atrocities of the sack. The first is themore significant, because the murder of the suppliant Adrastes is presented as a model ofthe destiny promised to the city (VI.57-60), and because it intrudes into a moment when theAchaeans are still under the illusion that the victory announced by the dream is within theirreach. [57] The second is part of Agamemnon’s aristeia, where it is possible to detectfeatures similar to the situation in book VI, in the depiction of the terrible defeat which hastaken place in the interval (narrated in book VIII). It should be noted that the king, in the twopassages, justifies the vehemence with which he rejects his victims’ supplication byrecalling the crimes representative of the Trojans’ guilt. It should also be observed that inboth cases, the fortunes of the battle turn at the same moment as, or just after, the son ofAtreus thought he would gain victory.Achilles’ aristeia also has its own moments of rage and savagery, which the poem suggests– or says explicitly – will bring their own retribution. The passages are well known, and I willat this point simply bring them to mind briefly. The first to be looked at is obviously thatconcerning the fate of Hector’s corpse. The words exchanged by the two enemies beforethe duel (XXII.262-266), then after the wounding of the Trojan (330-366), as well as theoutrages sworn against or inflicted on the corpse [58] are presented by the narrator anddenounced by the gods [59] as transgressions for which Achilles will have to pay the price.But there is another passage, connected by a recurring motif to the first, and which does notconcern Hector but rather the Trojans as a whole. I am referring to the massacre whichAchilles unleashes on the banks and in the waters of the Scamander in book XXI. At theheart of the episode, framed by generalised descriptions of the massacre of the Trojans inthe riverbed and the flight of the Paeonians along its banks, and forming a diptych eitherside of a brief passage reporting the god’s anger during the exactions imposed by theAchaean (XXI.136-138), two scenes recount the pathetic death of Lycaon, a son of Priam(34-135), killed by Achilles despite his pleas, and the heroic end of the giganticAsteropaeus, grandson of Axios (139-204). The two narratives complement each other. Thefirst ends with {143 | 144} Achilles’ cry of triumph as he abandons Lycaon’s corpse to thefish to devour, the second with the tableau of the eels and fish nibbling at the fat ofAsteropaeus’ eviscerated corpse. The savage violence of the murderer, the horror of hisbehaviour as well as the outrages which he does not flinch from hurling at the river-god, soinflame the god’s anger that he swells his tide and would have drowned the hero without theintervention of Poseidon and Athena, followed by Hephaistos. We should add that there is amotif connecting this episode to the fate of Hector’s corpse: the capture of the twelve youngTrojans which Achilles will later kill, keeping to his promise, on Patroclus’ funeral pyre. [60]In this set of brutal scenes, the excesses of the Achaean hero are not only justified, withinhis speeches, by the desire to avenge Patroclus, but are also directly linked to this motif inrecollecting the massacre to which Hector’s Trojans abandoned themselves in the Achaeancamp.It should be added that some significant echoes link the narrative of Lycaon’s death to theepisode of the murder of Adrastes in book VI – the violence of Achilles to that ofAgamemnon. The excesses of the sack of Troy are anticipated, even in the course of theIliad, by the overwhelming cruelty of the two principal actors in the drama on the Achaeanside, and in both cases the poem suggests that it is inscribing a reconfiguration of thecrimes committed by the conquerors of Troy during the city’s capture within its plot, alongwith the disasters earned by these transgressions on their return.












* * *I have advanced the idea that one of the purposes of this method of evoking andassimilating the key legendary episodes, by an allusive game of thematic metonymy andreconfigurations, was to make this monumental poem the summation of the epic traditionson the Trojan War. The other narratives, whether or not they formed a part of the repertoryof “epic” songs, became superfluous, anecdotal or untruthful. Gregory Nagy has interpretedthe relationship of the Iliad (and the Odyssey) with the traditions fixed in the epics of theCycle, by creating an opposition between the traditions of “Panhellenic” scope (those whichwere formalised in the “Homeric” poems which we have now), and {144 | 145} more directly“epichoric” (or less Panhellenic) traditions. [61] His explanation is illuminating and should beupheld; but in representing the poetic mode of panhellenisation, he tends to place greateremphasis on eliminating the aspects most tied to “local” traditions, and to neglect slightly toobserve that this is a positive signifier of the process of interjecting traditional material withinthe Iliadic project.The allusions and reconfigurations which introduce the essential thematic substancetraditionally attached to the Trojan War into the plot instigated by the anger of Achilles, allowthe Iliad to unfold a global interpretation of this paradigmatic story within its plot. But this iscompletely different from, for example, the Cypria, to judge from the testimonials andfragments which have been passed down to us. The poem attributed to Stasinos effectivelybegins with a scene in which Zeus is seen deliberating with Thetis on the means to relievethe Earth, overwhelmed by the weight of the heroes. He announces the divine plan beforeits realisation. The message thus precedes the story, which can then simply be listened toas a narrative.In the Iliad, on the other hand, events seems to throw the gods into disarray. Not a singledivine deliberation prepares for Chryses’ arrival at the Achaean camp. When Apollointervenes, it is in response to a prayer from his priest, insulted by Agamemnon. Wait: theplague is threatening the future of the expedition? Hera acts in her turn and pushes Achillesforwards. She then dispatches Athena to prevent the quarrel turning into a disaster. Thetisseems surprised when her son calls on her, and Zeus himself stays silent at first when sheasks him to pay honour to Achilles. Although he approves her request the second time, andsettles upon a plan during the following night to fulfil it, the fact still remains that everythingwhich has happened up until that point has occurred without his knowledge. It is as if thecourse of events, the initiatives of men as much as the reactions which they elicit from theother gods, had anticipated his plans and his plot!Further, when the implementation of his project is set in motion, its realisation isimmediately countered by events as unexpected as they are inexplicable: a rhetorical moveby Agamemnon throws his army into confusion, and they disperse; will the Trojans andAchaeans confront each other? They soon conclude a peace among themselves {145 |146}, which empties the promise to Thetis of meaning, and which the god himself seemsinclined to ratify, had he not come up against the resolute opposition of Hera; when battleresumes, it does not bring the predicted disaster to Agamemnon’s army, and Zeus evensmilingly encourages his wife and daughter to give Diomedes and his companions strengthwhen they are forced into retreat by Ares and the Trojans. And we find many otheranalogous examples in the narrative that follows, including, within the next few books, themoment when the supreme god sends the rest of the gods off the battlefield, in order totake up sole control of operations.This presentation of events does not reflect either the poem’s unsteady evolution, or theinevitable clumsiness of an art form, where the conditions of production would have blindedit to the problems we have noted. Nor does A. Lesky’s theory of “double motivation” comeany closer to an explanation. This is, on the one hand, because the question is not strictlyrelated to the way in which the divine game is articulated alongside the responsibility ofhuman actors in the examples listed above, and, on the other, because this theory leavesthe essential problem of the relationship between the supreme god and the other gods(Olympian or otherwise) to one side, as well as that with mortals.The Iliad does not simply say that its story follows a course imparted to it through the designof Zeus. It makes it appear within the texture of its plot. But its method is not didactic. Theeconomy of the divine plan is only revealed to the poet’s audience, and to the actors of thedrama, on reflection, for reasons pertaining to its fundamental character. It is not linear, butis essentially double and intertwined, working underhand towards different ends than thosewhich it advertises, at the same time as it consents to declare them. The hesitation whichZeus shows in replying to Thetis’ prayer (I.511f.), as well as the manner of his promise (518-527) and the conception of the plan which enables its realisation (II.3ff.) are prime examplesin this respect. Achilles discovers too late (XVIII.79-82) that the demands his mother hadmade to the god on his behalf with redoubled insistence, effectively incorporated the deathof Patroclus and its consequences; Hector, that his victories and the confidence theyinspired in the promises of the lord of Ida have led him to disaster, and his people with him;




Hera, that the plan which she opposed from the moment that she suspected its existence,has in the end produced the result which she was fighting for, etc. If Thetis’ demand {146 |147} is formulated in explicit terms, Zeus’ response does not express the content of thepromise, represented by a demonstrative pronoun in the neuter plural, but rather isaccompanied by a solemn commitment that what he plans will be realised.As for the plan itself, all we know of it (excepting that it is the product of a deliberationwhose terms are not given at this early stage) is the dream which the god sends toAgamemnon to persuade him to reassemble his army and engage a decisive battle aroundTroy. Nothing is said about the premises of this decision, nor of the effects awaiting itsrecipient. But there is no reason not to think, as commentators have so often done, thatwhat follows does not, could not, enter into the plan of Zeus. The episodes are constructedand link together in such a way that the audience, aided by the fifth verse of the proem, candecipher the design directing them.The events of the first day form a trap, which the human and divine actors of the story fallinto one after another. The Achaeans reassemble around Agamemnon, conjuring acaricature of Achilles’ protests in the person and complaints of Thersites, and thus bindthemselves up in the injury which their king inflicted on the former. Peace is only concludedin order to give Paris and Pandarus the opportunity to break it, and the Trojans the chanceto join in liability for their crime, making them entirely aware of the reason for Diomedes’ensuing attack: first Aeneas, when the archer reminds him of the arrow which he shot atMenelaos (V.180-216), then Hector, when, despite his initial doubts, he gives way toSarpedon’s reproach and leads his troops into battle (V.494-497), before returning to Troyand bringing back Paris, undeterred by his meeting with Helen in his brother’s bedroom(VI.321-369 and 503-529). On the eve of battle, Priam and the Trojans seal the fate of theircity in bending to Paris’ will (despite Antenor’s advice) (VII.345-380), and the Achaeans, inDiomedes’ words (399-402), accept the lot awaiting them in spite of Nestor’s caution, hisawareness of danger demonstrated in his project of fortifying the camp (323-344).The same is true of the gods: it is Hera who, in book two, ensures that the army reassemblearound their king (II.156-165), just as she provokes the resumption of war at the start ofbook four, thus accepting in anticipation (even though she has no knowledge of it) the {147 |148} disaster which Zeus is preparing for the Achaeans (IV.24-72). Finally, Poseidon, at theend of this prolonged prelude, himself complains to Zeus of the Achaeans’ constructionwork, and obtains from his brother the promise of its destruction, whose implications withinthe metonymic network of the poem we have seen above (VII.443-463). The scene is, then,prepared for the carnage to follow. A thunderstorm rumbles for the whole night, portendingthe fate alloted to the Trojans and Achaeans by Zeus (476-482).It is not useful to explore in more detail here the logic of the divine plan which governs theIliad’s plot. It is made apparent in the constant turns of fortune in battle, and the advancesand retreats of the armies between the opposite poles of the city and the ships (or thecamp). It would be possible to describe this mechanism as resulting, in principle, from theintegration of the two “promises” which determine the general course of the Trojan War, onthe one hand, and the anger of Achilles on the other. Both were sanctioned by a particulargesture of Zeus’, the force of which he himself explains to Thetis when he agrees to herrequest. The first promise is recalled several times within the poem by gods and men, andis the determining factor in the final destiny of Troy. The other is Zeus’ promise to Thetis.They are apparently contradictory, since one promises victory to the Achaeans, whilst theother grants it temporarily to their enemies.The plan of Zeus and the plot of the poem articulate these themes in a double sense. It is infulfilment of the original promise that the dream persuades Agamemnon to call theAchaeans to arm for battle, that Hera asks Athena to prevent the flight of the fleet, andopposes the proposition to sanction the peace made between the armies and to spare Troy;that Diomedes, after the first day of fighting and on the evening of the second, encourageshis comrades-in-arms to pursue the war; that Poseidon can fear seeing the work of hishands, the Trojan walls, supplanted in men’s memory by the fragile rampart of theAchaeans, etc. The Trojan War functions on this level as the means, the motor of theimplementation of the plan conceived by Zeus to give Achilles satisfaction, and to makeAgamemnon (and the army which identifies with him) pay the price for the injury inflicted onthe hero.In reciprocation, the anger of Achilles, his retreat from the battlefield and the disaster whichthese cause to the Achaeans, all of which {148 | 149} are connected to the promise made toThetis, arose as the means of realising the first promise. The trials and deaths of theAchaeans – by drawing Hector and the Trojans outside the protection of the impenetrablecity walls [62] , and encouraging them to camp in the plan instead of returning within theirwalls after Achilles’ reappearance – become, in their turn, the cause of Hector’s death andthe fall of Troy. [63]





* * *Let me conclude this basic survey of a few aspects of the poetic construction of the Iliadwith two remarks.The first has bearing on the meaning of the unusual dialectic which we find employed in theconstruction of the plot. Apart from Zeus himself, the principal actors of the drama (includinggods) follow the plan of the supreme god in a circuitous route, the whole course of whichthey are unable to appreciate. They are, then, the agents of the story, and if eventsregularly turn out differently from how they envisaged, and produce outcomes different tothose they thought or expected, it is no less a consequence of their actions. Achilles can tellhis mother that he caused the loss of his friend, [64] in a reply which throws light on thedifference between the way in which the god granted his prayer, and what he thought heasked for; and Hera, with an ironic naïveté which she is careful to highlight, can make Zeusrecognise that the sufferings of the Achaeans (to which she involuntarily contributed) led theTrojans to the disaster which her resentment had laid in store for them. But theconsequences are clearly not the same for mortals and immortals. The latter play, lose andrecover unharmed in the full radiance of their condition. The former suffer and die, as aresult of their own decisions (or those of the leaders they follow and thus support, both onthe Achaean and Trojan sides) without the possibility of prediction, though it waspremeditated by Zeus.The confusing turn taken by events, dooming mortals to death, is not presented in the Iliadas the effect of a trap set by an arbitrary and despotic king of the gods. The strategem hasits reasons, which the poem exposes in two complementary aspects.First of all, its purpose in underlining the responsibility of the heroes for their owndisappearance. The Trojans are blamed {149 | 150} for their crimes and for siding with Parisand Hector, the authors of their misfortune, at two crucial moments in the plot where theycould have reacted differently. [65] Their fatal mistake also has older roots – even beyondthe episode of Menelaos and Odysseus’ embassy to Troy which the poem also recounts,and which is recalled in turn in the first of these two scenes [66] – in the transgressions ofLaomedon and Heracles which made them guilty against the gods. [67]If the Achaeans are responsible for the outbreak of the war – as demonstrated by thereconfigurations of books III and IV, and the achievement of the Iliadic narrative in creatinga symbolic image of the fall Troy [68] –, the violence of Agamemnon against first the priestof Apollo and then Achilles, “justifies” the former’s humiliation and the misfortunes of theAchaeans who stay by his side; whilst Achilles pays for his refusal (in spite of theobligations governing friendship between comrades-in-arms) to the Achaeans come to offerhim “splendid presents” to try to obtain his help (IX.630ff.), with the death of Patroclus – andsoon enough, with his own death. To say nothing of the violence with which the two heroestreat their enemies in the fury of battle or after victory – in particular, the contempt whichboth show towards suppliants, who are protected by Zeus: it is a trait which we haverecognised above as an Iliadic reflection of the crimes committed by the Achaeans duringthe sack of Troy, and punished by the gods during the conquerors’ return to their homeland.Even if the wrong originates on the Trojan side, both camps are responsible for significanttransgressions against the order which Zeus, above all, guarantees. The death of heroes isthat of a “generation”, where the weight of their crimes – despite their courage and heroicexploits – has made the earth unable to support them, according to an interpretation ofeschatological myth which is manifestly that of the Iliad. The plan of Zeus, and thedeception intrinsic to it, are a means of reestablishing the rule of right.But this return to order – which forms the second aspect of the narrative’s inherent logic – isnot immediately effected according to the standards it serves to reestablish. It is assumedthat the world is passing through a moment of crisis, symbolised by the anger of Achillesand the paradoxical, but temporary, Trojan victory. The sovereign god is made manifest intwo forms, whose deep connection {150 | 151} remains briefly elusive: that of “father of menand gods”, on the one hand, and that of “son of Cronos” on the other. The first is theOlympian, keen to maintain the order which he himself set in place. The other has worrying– despotic – features; and the gods who embody most strictly the original division of thedivine and human cosmos – Hera, Athena and Poseidon – perceive in it the threat of aviolent challenge to the principles on which the rule of the gods was founded. He leavesOlympus and sets himself up on Ida, away from the gods, [69] refusing to communicate theintricacies of his plans to his wife, and daring to stand by the Trojans’ cause and Achilles’withdrawal – against his own former judgements, as Hera and Poseidon bitterly recall. Theblatant use of the patronymic “son of Cronos” in the vocative, as an apostrophe, is afamiliarity which only Hera allows herself, of all the gods, six times in the Iliad. [70] It isused, each time, to denounce an abuse of power, where the god’s conduct raises or recallsfears. The two cardinal moments of Zeus’ sovereignty – his right to rule, and the violencewhich established that right after the theogonic conflicts – are evoked within the poem in thestaging of the divine game, [71] and thus ostensibly become disassociated from each other











during the crisis initiated by Thetis’ request. But the realisation of Zeus’ design during thecourse of the plot’s evolution brings into the foreground the (deeply disturbing) dialecticunity between the order of law and the violence on which it rests.

Philippe ROUSSEAU

* * *With regards to the content of this divine plan, I have stated above that it was notformulated in advance. But the audience is invited to take an interest in it as early as theIliad’s proem. Indeed, in the fifth verse, after the description of the subject of the song –Achilles’ anger and its deadly consequences for the heroes – we read a clause (tied to itsprecedents through relatives), Dios d’eteleieto boulé: “and the plan of Zeus was beingfulfilled”. The meaning of this phrase, and its relation to the rest of the sentence, have beenthe subject of lively discussions since Antiquity. Interpreters have been principally opposedon the identification of the referent of “the plan of Zeus”. The question of the syntax of thephrase has effectively been subordinated to the latter problem. Two positions haveconfronted each other from the Hellenistic period on. Critics who compared the proem ofthe Iliad to that of the Cypria, where they observed the same expression, concluded that theplan of Zeus described by {151 | 152} Homer must have been the one which, according toStasinos, determines the whole course of the Trojan War – that is, the project to relieve theearth of the heroes’ weight by a war of extinction. Aristarchus and his pupils, disregardingon principle all use of the poems of the Cycle in explaining the Homeric poems, contendedthat this boulé could only be the one conceived by Zeus at the start of book II to fulfil thepromise made to Thetis at the end of the first book. Modern critics have mostly followed theAlexandrian view, until an article by W. Kullmann revived the opposing explanation, upheldby Welcker in the previous century. This interpretation (provided that not too muchimportance be attributed to the literal comparison with Stasinos’ poem) certainly has theadvantage over the other, in that it offers a wider perspective, and takes better account ofthe poem’s complexity. But it misses an essential aspect of the Homeric poem. If the proemdoes not define the divine project more explicitly, and if the phrase which concerns us fits asan incidental clause within the sentence defining the theme of the Muse’s song, it isbecause it aims at saying more than simply recalling the legendary framework within whichthe Iliadic episode writes itself. It has an impact, as does the rest of the phrase around it, onthe poem as a whole, and invites the audience to interpret it correctly. It would certainly bewrong to think that it provides a sort of general theological explanation, with the course ofevents obeying the will of the sovereign god. [72] But it must, without a doubt, be awardedan “open” reference. The content of this boulé is not announced by the narrator at the startof the performance. Nor is its comprehension a given. It depends on the audience’s thoughtprocess, like a riddle which they must learn to decode, as the narrative progresses.Because it is thus that they will be able to understand how the plot of Zeus, within the Iliad,

leads the age of heroes into extinction.

[ back ] 1. I am thinking in particular of the recent work of Gregory Nagy, Richard Martin,John Miles Foley, etc., whose interest in this essential dimension of poetic activity relatesdirectly to the great work of A. B. Lord, The Singer of Tales, Cambridge Mass. 1960 [2ndedition 2000, edited by S. Mitchell and G. Nagy, with an introduction and reproduction ofrecordings and photos of traditional singers in what was then still Yugoslavia]. Thecontributions to the 1994 colloquium at the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington D.C.,published by E. Bakker and A. Kahane in Written Voices, Spoken Signs: Tradition,Performance, and the Epic Text, Cambridge Mass. 1997, give an interesting overview ofthis research.[ back ] 2. Some narratives ask their intradiegetic audience to interpret them. This is thecase, most clearly, in the epic tales used as examples by the speakers of the Iliad (thedeeds of Meleager reported by Phoinix in IX.524-599, or the youthful exploits which Nestorrecounts in XI.670-761). One finds in the Odyssey a particular version of this narrativepractice in the story invented by Odysseus to obtain a cloak from Eumaeus (xiv.462-506),and identified by his listener as an ainos (xiv.508).[ back ] 3. For a useful commentary on this important question, see the classic study ofJean Bollack, “Ulysse chez les philologues”, Actes des la recherche en sciences sociales,5-6, 1975, p.9-35 [reproduced in Jean Bollack, La Grèce de personne, Paris, 1997, p.29-59].[ back ] 4. This is the (revealing) name, by which the discipline practised by the Analysts isdesignated.[ back ] 5. Ph. Rousseau, “Fragments d’un commentaire antique du recit de la course deschars dans le XXIIIe chant de l’Iliade”, Philologus, 136, 1992 p. 158-180.[ back ] 6. This manner of conceiving the workings of oral tradition was already advocatedby the philologists who began, at the start of the 19th century, to draw a connectionbetween the idiosyncrasies/poetic weaknesses of Homeric epic and its oral nature. Itcontinued into the 20th century in the work of dedicated oralists.

Footnotes


http://chs.harvard.edu/wa/pageR?tn=ArticleWrapper&bdc=12&mn=3972#noteref_n.1








[ back ] 7. A poem recorded in dictation (oral dicatated text) does not make use of writing inits composition.[ back ] 8. This idea comes out well in Bruno Gentili’s book, Poesia e pubblico nella Greciaantica: da Omero al V secolo. Rome-Bari, 1985 (English translation by Th. Cole, under thetitle Poetry and its Public in Ancient Greece: From Homer to the Fifth Century, Baltimore &London, 1988).[ back ] 9. N. Richardson, The Iliad: A Commentary, vol. VI. Cambridge, 1993, p. 209.[ back ] 10. The particle ge in line 344 underlines that it is at the turning post that the youngcharioteer should pass by his opponent, if he wants to take first place. The condition isstrict.[ back ] 11. The Best of the Achaeans, Baltimore, 1979 (French translation by J. Carlier andN. Loraux under the title Le Meilleur des Achéens, Paris, 1994), passim.[ back ] 12. Les Ruses de l’intelligence. La mêtis des Grecs, Paris, 1974 (the first chapter isdevoted to Antilochus’ race).[ back ] 13. Il. VIII.74, and the remarks made by Telemachus at Od. I.351. See P. Pucci’scommentary in Ulysse Polutropos, Lille, 1995, p.278ff.[ back ] 14. See especially the exempla of Lycurgus (VI.130-140), Meleager (IX.527-599),and Niobe (XXIV.602-617), as well as those which Nestor uses in his own tale (I.260-273;VII.132-157 [cf. IV.319]; XI.670-762; XXIII.629-643). The famous exemplum mythologicumof I.396-406 has more the function of an analepsis than of an “example” in its own right. Forgenealogies, see for example VI.150-211 and 216-233, and XX.213-241.[ back ] 15. 1459a.31-37. The translation is that of Roselyne Dupont-Roc and Jean Lallot,Paris, 1980, p.119 (see, for the formulation of the first phrase, note 4 in their commentary,p.371).[ back ] 16. I shall leave to one side the question of the epics’ dating. It is enough to notehere that this manner of considering the relation of the Iliad to the rest of the Cycle has,without doubt, its roots in an “edition” of the epic corpus, in which Homer’s poem followedthe Cypria and preceded the Ethiopis. As evidence for this, there exists an alternativewording of the proem (for which the scholiasts found an attestation in a treatise byAristoxenus of Tarentum [fr. 91a Wehrli]), and the poem’s conclusion.[ back ] 17. This noun, marked by opposition to other denominations for anger in epiclanguage, normally applies to the formidable resentment of the gods towards mortal errors.[ back ] 18. Books II to VII.[ back ] 19. Book X.[ back ] 20. Books XIII to XV.[ back ] 21. “There was a time when the innumerable tribes [of men] wandered about theworld, and crushed the surface of the earth’s broad chest. Zeus, seeing this, took pity onher and decided, in his subtle mind, to relieve the nourishing earth of men, by stirring up thegreat conflict of the war for Ilium, in order to vanish this burden by their deaths.” For thetext, see A. Bernabé ed., Poetae epici graeci. Testimonia et fragmenta. Part 1, 2 ed.,Stuttgart and Leipzig, 1996, p.43ff. An allusion made by Proclus’ Chrestomathia and themore detailed summary of a mythographer, conserved among the scholia on the Iliad, offerslightly different versions, perhaps, of the same story.[ back ] 22. See especially, in addition to his fundamental work, Die Quellen der Ilias,Wiesbaden, 1960, the two articles published in Philologus, 99, 1955.167-192, and 100,1956.132-133.[ back ] 23. See G. Dumézil, Mythe et épopée, 1, Paris, 1968, p.208-237 (the first part,dedicated to the Mahabharata, has the title “The Unburdened Earth”).[ back ] 24. These allusions have been studied thoroughly by W. Kullmann from theunitarian Neo-Analytical perspective, of which he certainly provides the best example. Itmight perhaps be asked if his idea of the weight of the Cypria in the pre-Homeric epictradition does not lead him to rely on the slightest signs to pinpoint the echo of a motifattested in Proclus’ summary. The traditions which led to Stasinos’ poem were able to bepresented in a far more fluid format than in the period when our version of the Iliad was inthe process of formation. The place which the ill-fated expedition of the Achaeans to thekingdom of Telephus holds here seems to me to be uncertain, despite the detailedarguments put forward in Die Quellen der Ilias.[ back ] 25. The substance of the illusion is not the capture of the city, it is the timeanticipated by Zeus, in the potential optative: “now”, or, in the narrative, “on this day” (Il.12.19 and 66; 36-40). The insistence on the time of these predictions’ fulfilment endorsesrecognition of the significant temporal value of the enclitic adverb po – “yet” – in line II.419and III.302. The son of Cronos does not yet grant the prayers which are addressed to him.A similar example can be found in the signs through which the bard invites his audience tounderstand his intention, in Achilles’ reckoning of the victories which he achieved, before hisquarrel with Agamemnon made him withdraw from combat (IX.328-329): the twelve citiestaken in the course of the naval expedition are set against the eleven captured during theland operation; subtracting them points towards the destiny of Troy, at the same moment






















that the hero invites his former (and future) fellow warriors to give up hope of taking the city.[ back ] 26. Andromache seems to comment on the etymology of Hector’s name in herlamentation over his corpse (XXIV.728-732): “… this city will be destroyed from top tobottom. Because you are dead, you, her guardian; it is you who defended her and whoprotected her chaste wives and young children; hollow ships will soon take them away, andI will be among them…”[ back ] 27. The only explicit references to the events which we know from the poems of theCycle, apart from the particular circumstances surrounding the death of Achilles, which weknow belong to the tradition of the Ethiopis, are the return of Philoctetes to Troy (II.724-725;the previous lines take up an episode celebrated in the Cypria), the story of which was inthe Little Iliad, and the saving of Aeneas (XX.300-308), of which the Ilioupersis gives aversion.[ back ] 28. Il. XVIII.95f. The connection between the death of Patroclus in the Iliad, and thatof Achilles in the pre-Homeric traditions of the Ethiopis or the Achilleid, was first made, tothe best of my knowledge, by D. Mülder, Die Ilias und ihre Quellen, Berlin, 1910, p.159ff.(cf., amongst other significant works on the explanation of this scene, J. T. Kakridis,Homeric Researches, Lund, 1949, p.85f.; W. Schadewalt, Von Homers Welt und Werk, 4thedition, Stuttgart, 1965, p.168; W. Kullmann, Die Quellen der Ilias, p.38, and the commentsmade by J. de Romilly in Perspectives actuelles sur l'épopée homérique, Paris, 1983, p.26-29).[ back ] 29. Lines 522-525. In the latter comparison, the smoke which rises to the sky iscaused by the burning of the city, and the first should certainly be understood in the sameway (the two lines are almos identical, in the text of the manuscripts).[ back ] 30. It is interesting to note, too, that the hero whose form Athena takes, Deiphobus,had an important role in the tradition of the Ilioupersis. The Odyssey associates him with thehesitation of the Trojans inside the Wooden Horse, which was without doubt a dramaticmoment of the narrative (iv.276).[ back ] 31. Critics are often surprised by the “unlikelihood” of the unexpected meetingbetween Paris and Menelaos, and have therefore concluded that this joining of episodesbetrays the heavy-handedness of the compiler/composer of the monumental poem. But a“composite” does not try to disguise itself. It displays itself, predominantly, in order to bedeciphered.[ back ] 32. Iris’ visit to Helen (III.121-138) adheres to an often misunderstood requirement.The veil which the Argive princess weaves in Paris’ bedroom (or megaron) can only beadorned with feats of war, which the weaver does not reproduce, as scholars generally say,but rather produces. When peace seems on the verge of being reestablished, even thoughthe chances of its being so are entirely illusory, the weaving inevitably stops. It matters littlethat it is only for a short time. The desire for Menelaos which Iris breathes into Helen leadsher back in thought to Lacedaimon (239, cf. 244; the earth which holds her brothers fromthen on marks the distance which separates human hopes from their reality, that is, fromtheir destiny as arranged by the gods).[ back ] 33. Helen comes out of her bedroom (142): it was her presence there which wasthe cause of the war, as the old men seated at the city gates underline in their comments(156-160); Priam invites her to sit near him so that she can see her first husband and herparents (163); she sadly recalls the world which she left behind to follow Paris (173-175);her gaze takes her, finally, beyond the Achaeans whom she sees on the plain, to the homewhich she calls “ours” and the life which she lived with Menelaos before Paris came (232-233).[ back ] 34. This philotés is regularly referred to when the Trojans define the conditions ofthe pact: line 73ff., 94, 256ff. It is evoked again by Zeus when he pretends to weigh theconclusion which the gods should draw from the duel (IV.16). This usage of the word findsan ironic echo in the philotés which unites the two lovers, in spite of the pact, at the end ofbook III (lines 441 and 445).[ back ] 36. Il. III.441-446. The intended proximity of the expressions used to denote the tworeprehensible unions should be noted, in lines 441 and 445: philotèti… eunèthenté andphilotèti kai eunèi.[ back ] 37. III.444 harpaxas.[ back ] 38. See especially what Helen says about him to Hector (VI.349-353).[ back ] 39. Il. III.438-446. When the disaster is fully realised, at the start of book XXIV, theIliad directly attributes its cause to the caprice which drove Paris to choose Aphrodite overher two rivals in the Judgement (29-30).[ back ] 40. The narrative is explicit on this point (IV.5-6).[ back ] 41. Pandarus pays his debt straight away (V.275-296). Failing to understand thatDiomedes and his exploits are essential to the construction of the Iliad, the Analysts havedoubted that his death had anything to do with his crime, and reject the line in which the


















archer mentions the arrow fired at Menelaos (V.206ff.). The link which the narrativeestablishes, through Aeneas, between the punishment of perjury and the wounding ofAphrodite, should be noted in passing.[ back ] 42. Il. III.349-368. Menelaos here questions, as in book XIII (631-635), the justice ofZeus, conforming to a characteristic trait of his epic description. I allow myself to return tothis point in my article on “Le deuxième Atride” [The second Atrides] in M.-M. Mactoux andE. Geny ed. Anthropologie et société. Mélanges Pierre Lévêque, volume 5. Paris, 1990,p.325-354.[ back ] 43. Athena and Poseidon.[ back ] 44. Il. VII.327-343. The conclusion of the speech provides the explanation, ascommonly happens in ring composition, when compared to the first line. The bard’saudience would have been well practised in unravelling this kind of composition.[ back ] 45. II.559-568 (Diomedes), 569-580 (Agememnon), 581-590 (Menelaos). Theprivileged place awarded to Mycenae in the second hemistich of IV.52 corresponds to theposition of Agamemnon in this section of the Catalogue.[ back ] 46. XV.486-499 (Hector) and 502-513 (Ajax).[ back ] 47. Od. iii.134ff. and 145.[ back ] 48. Plato outlines its operation in the introduction to the Timaeus, 22c ff. (cf. J.Bollack, La Grèce de personne, p.155ff. [revised translation in an article published inGerman in 1971] and, from a different perspective, the observations of M. Detienne,L’Invention de la mythologie, Paris, 1981, p.163ff. [who only takes an interest in the flood,and leaves Phaethon’s fire to one side]).[ back ] 49. For the violence and devastation of the flood, see among others: V.87-94 and597-600; XI.492-496; XVI.384-393; XVII.747-752; XXI.281-283. For the fire: II.780 and 781-785; XI.155-162; XVII.737-741; XVIII.207-214; XX.490-494; XXI.12-16 and 522-525;XXII.410-411. It is possible to see a tendency within the poem to associate fire with thedamage inflicted by the Achaeans and water with the Trojans, with the exceptions perhapsthemselves arising from the same convention.[ back ] 50. Il. XXI.212-327. See especially, alongside the description of the flood, Achilles’fears (272-283) and the threats of the river-god (316-323).[ back ] 51. Il. XX.315-317 and XXI.374-376.[ back ] 52. Il. VIII.180-183 (along with the echo which these threats afterwards meet with,for example: IX.241-243; XI.666 ff.; XII.440 ff.; XIV.44-47; XV.718).[ back ] 53. Il. XVI.122 ff.[ back ] 54. This is the title of the poem which Phemios sings to the suitors in Odysseus’palace (Od. i.326 ff.), and the expression which Nestor uses to define the design whichZeus contemplates against the Achaeans after the destruction of the city (Od. iii.132).[ back ] 55. The Justice of Zeus, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1971, p.1-27.[ back ] 56. Od. iii.132 ff.[ back ] 57. See Nestor’s speech after the description of the murder: VI.67-71.[ back ] 58. Il. XXII.354; 396-404 (and 464f.); XXIII.21 and 182f.; XXIV.14ff. This theme wasthe subject of C. Segal’s incisive study: The Theme of the Mutilation of the Corpse in theIliad, Mnemosyne Suppl., 17, Leyde, 1971.[ back ] 59. Il. XXII.358-360; XXIV.33-54 and 112-116. One naturally thinks that this pricemust be the hero’s death, clearly announced in this context by Hector, and that this will bethe manifestation of the gods’ anger. The predictions of Thetis and the horse Xanthusrequire us to acknowledge that Achilles’ acts of violence were just as inevitable as thecrimes of the Achaeans during the sack of Troy. In order to avoid this conclusion, one wouldhave to imagine that the threats of Hector and Apollo are making allusion to somethingother than Achilles’ death.[ back ] 60. Il. XVIII.336f.; XXI.26-32; XXIII.20-23 and 175-183.[ back ] 61. See The Best of the Achaeans, p.7 §14 n.4, with the illuminating explanationson pages 115ff., 117-121, 139-141.[ back ] 62. The Iliad draws particular attention to this component of its plot. Andromachesees the danger straight away (VI.407-410) and asks Hector not to draw up his armyoutside the shelter of the walls (431-439: these lines, crucial for the poem’s comprehension,have drawn the critics to suspect and athetise them from antiquity on): she thus preparesfor Polydamas’ double warning to Hector, before the decisive assault on the camp (XII.211-229) and during the nocturnal deliberation of the Trojans after the reappearance of Achilleson the battlefield (XVIII.254-283). His threatening prediction (I.240-244) and Nestor’s fears(I.282-284) are realised (IX.232-246), and Achilles underlines the fact to the army’s envoys(IX.351-355, after a sarcastic description of the camp fortifications which stresses thethematic relation between the two walls; see further XVI.64-79). It is because he sees theterrible situation into which his victories have led him, and the disaster brought upon hisarmy, that Hector, in an ultimate error, refuses to take shelter in the walls of Troy andcauses the sack of his city in confronting Achilles (XXII.99-110).
























[ back ] 63. A note in the exegetic scholia on line 55 of book one attests that ancientcommentators (perhaps belonging to the Pergamene school) were already aware of thisinternal dialectic within the poem’s plot.[ back ] 64. Il. XVIII.82. The verbal form is ambiguous, and is sometimes also understood,more simply, to mean that the hero has lost his companion without taking any action.[ back ] 65. During the night assembly in book VII, the Trojans, against the advice ofAntenor, endorse Paris’ refusal to give Helen back to the Achaeans (VII.345-380), andloudly applaud Hector’s misguided response to Polydamas on the night following Achilles’return (XVIII.243-311). Within the thread of the narrative, Hector, if he was set in contrast tohis brother at the opening of the poem, ends up becoming the scourge of Troy which heaccused Paris of being, before leaving him to Helen’s rebukes (cf. III.46-51 and VI.280-285). This merging of the two sons of Priam is made curiously apparent in the application,in book XV.263-268, of a lengthy comparison to Hector which the bard had used to describeParis running at the end of book VI.506-511. The article “Hector”, in Paul Wathelet’sDictionnaire des Troyens de l’Iliade (Liège, 1988), makes important comments on thissubject.[ back ] 66. See III.205-224 and XI.123-125 and 138-141.[ back ] 67. The first is recalled by Poseidon (XXI.441-457), the other by Heracles’ grandsonTlepolemus, and his enemy, Sarpedon (V.640ff. and 648-651).[ back ] 68. The final line of the Iliad, in the manuscript tradition, closes with a formula whichmakes “Hector tamer of horses” the primary representative of the Trojans, “tamers ofhorses”. The choice of this apparently neutral formula is even more significant, becauseelsewhere the Iliad uses the formula “murderous Hector” (in the same case and the samemetrical position), connecting the Trojan hero to the god Ares (to whom he has similarities),but which would have ended the poem with the individual fate of the murderer of Patroclus.It should be noted, moreover, that the epithet androphonoio is used to qualify Ares in thealternative version of the conclusion preserved in the scholia to manuscript T (thiseffectively consists of a transition between the Iliad and the Aethiopis, in an ancient editionof the Trojan Cycle). On the interpretation of apparently formulaic “doublets”, see G. Nagy,“Formula and Meter: The Oral Poetics of Homer”, Greek Mythology and Poetics, Ithaca andLondon, 1990, p.18-35 (revised version in an article published in 1976 in A. Stolz and R. S.Shannon ed., Oral Literature and the Formula, Ann Arbor, 1976).[ back ] 69. He leaves Olympus after the assembly of the gods at the beginning of bookVIII.41-52, to return the same evening after having suppressed Hera and Athena’s tentativerevolt, lines 438f. He makes his way to Ida again at the beginning of book XI.181-184, at themoment when the battle is about to change direction after Agamemnon is wounded. It isfrom there that he directs the Achaean rout (see, among other passages, XII.252-255), andthere that Hera comes to distract him from worrying over the fighting in the episode of theApaté (XIV.153-351, with Zeus waking up and the consequences of his doing so at thebeginning of book XV). And he is also there when he raises the aegis, causing the flight ofthe Achaeans grouped around Patroclus’ corpse (XVII.593-596). But it is interesting to notethat the semantic opposition between the two mountains seems to weaken after Protesilaos’ship is set on fire, as the unsituated dialogue that takes place between Zeus and Hera, forexample, in the middle of book XVI.431-461, shows, or Athena’s strange mission, whichprecedes and precipitates the Achaeans’ last rout, XVII.543-581. The return of the god toOlympus is predicated in the divine scene described in book XVIII.356-368, but is notdescribed.[ back ] 70. Il. I.552; IV.25; VIII.462; XIV.330; XVI.440; XVIII.361.[ back ] 71. See, in particular, VIII.477-483, and the recurrent use of the theogonic theme inthe episode of Hera’s seduction of Zeus (XIV.202ff., 274f., 279f., 295f.).[ back ] 72. Kullmann refutes this attempt at compromise, in observing that the word boulécannot designate will in archaic language.

EnglishLogin

v.

Trustees for Harvard University Contact CHS

© 2012 The Center for Hellenic Studies 3100 Whitehaven Street, NW. Washington, DC 20008 202-745-4400











http://chs.harvard.edu/wb/1/wo/ak8Bb8pNpmEHPGMMhuQtR0/0.0.0.0.19.1.7.19.1.5.1

http://chs.harvard.edu/wa/pageR?tn=Contact%20Us&bdc=12&mn=0

The Center for Hellenic Studies

Documents

Transcript of The Center for Hellenic Studies