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- 1. JuneW. Allison, Narrative Construction 7-23
2. Φάνης I. Κακριδής, Παρατηρήσεις στην ποιητική του Και- σάριου Δαπόντε 25-38
3. Γεώργιος Π. Τσομής, Ο θάνατος της Οινώνης 39-61
4. Μαίρη Μάντζιου, Σχέση δράματος και αμφίεσης 63-99
5. Ε. Γκαστή, Οι Μύγες και τα τραγικά του πρότυπα 101-112
6. Φ.Κ. Πολυμεράκης, Το επεισόδιο της μονομαχίας Πάρη-Μενέ- λαου στη Λατινική Ιλιάδα 113-156
7. Δημήτριος Μαντζίλας, Τα ονόματα των προσώπων στην κωμω δία «Mostellaria» του Πλαότου 157-181
8. Ε.Γ. Καψωμένος, Από την αφηγηματική στην ιδεολογική διά σταση του κειμένου 183-196 9. Γιάννης Μότσιος, Έλληνες ποιητές των ημερών μας 197-212
10. Γεωργία Λαδογιάννη, I. Καμπανέλλη Ο Δείτννος, μια ανάγνωση 213-225 11. Απόστολος Μπενάτσης, Νικόλαος Κάλας: Σε αναζήτηση της ποιητικής Ουτοπίας 227-237 12131415
12. Γεώργιος Γιαννάκης, Η (κλασσική) φιλολογία από τη σκοπιά του (Ιστορικοσυγκριτικού) Γλωσσολόγου 239-267
13. Γεώργιος Ξυδόπουλος, Τροπικά επιρρήματα στα Νέα Ελληνικά 269-280 14. Γ. Σαββαντίδης, P ortus / P orticus 281-284
15. Χρονικό ακαδημαϊκού έτους 2004-2005 285-310 JUNE W. ALLISON
NARRATIVE CONSTRUCTION: THE SIEGE WALLS AT TROT AND AT SYRACUSE
Throughout the History Thucydides refers repeatedly to both the Trojan War and the Persian Invasions; they are particularly striking when held up against the narrative of the Sicilian Expedition. In all three cases the invaders have come over a great distance with a large naval contingent, expeditions that historical memory has preserved, and for two reasons: they were in fact impressive in size and purpose and all three had authors capable of recounting them in memorable language.1 Many scholars have commented on reminiscences of the Homeric poems found in the History. For Thucydides Homer is a va luable source for the distant past, especially for the development of naval power.2 In places he quotes Homer and includes references that carry epic power and pathos into his narrative. His criticism of Homer has primarily to do with poetic excesses, not the historicity of the Trojan War or the the existence of Agamemnon.3 In fact Thucydides views
1. This paper has had its own Odyssey, with earlier versions given at the Uni versity of Ioannina in Greece and at La Trobe University in Melbourne. It has be nefited from the suggestions of several people, some of whom were my traveling companions from Greece to China and Australia. I thank them all: Ariadni Ga- rziou-Tatti, Simon Hornblower, Chris Mackie, Nike Makris, Elaine Matthews, Ron Stroud, Steve Tracy, and, patricularly, Michael Osborne. 2. The historicity of the Trojan War is irrelevant for this discussion. Thu cydides never denies the reality of what he takes to be reasonably historical in Homer. Although he had at his disposal the entire Trojan “cycle,” when he is specific he looks to the Iliad and the Odyssey. 3. Only when Homer seems to exaggerate or includes too much of the my thological does the historian attribute the excesses to the poet in him (1.9 he corrects the account about Helen, 10.3, 11.3 and 21 regarding poets in general). But see S. Hornblower, Thucydides (London 1987), on Homer as a source and Thu cydides’ general appreciation of Homer (93, 113-14, 103 n. 27). Δωδώνη: Φιλολογία 34 (2005) 7-23 ^ 8 JuncW . Allison the poems of Homer as he does his own logoi: words - whether of poetry or prose - are a delosis; they reveal their authors* perceptions (dokesis) of actions and speech (erga and logoi).4. The revelation, the delosis, is what the listener/reader apprehends in both cases. Thus, the mission of those who preserve the past, whether poet or historian, is the same for Thucydides. Events exist solely as words. As it turns out, the Trojan War survives most vividly through the logos of Homer and our only clear understanding of the Peloponnesian War depends on th e logos of Thucydides. In an AJP (1997) article I examined explicit verbal borrowings from Homer, particularly at the close of Book 7 where they are clustered.4 5 6 There I noted that most of the purely Ho meric words are hapax legomena in Thucydides and often in Homei, one of the sure indications of deliberate use. I repeat two here not just to remind the reader of how precise the borrowings are, but because they seem to me now to have acquired additional meaning. The first every careful reader of the Sicilian narrative notices.* Aponosteein at 7.87.6 is hapax legomenon in the History and the last word of the rhetorically rich final evaluation of the disaster in Sicily within the Sicilian narrative proper: "In everything in every way they had been defeated and what they had suffered was, if one word could express it,7 nothing short of 'pandestruction*, the army as well as the ships, nothing escaped destruction and few from many made the re turn trip back home (όλίγοι από πολλών επ' οϊκον άπενόατηοαν).” This recalls two instances in Homer which reinforce the motif of the few from many who will survive. Near the beginning of the Uiady in his first sentence, Achilles fronts Agamemnon by suggesting that they go home since everything is so bad: "Although driven wandering back wards I think that we might even now return home again (νϋν άμμε
4. I have discussed the process in Word and Concept in Thucydides (Atlanta 199?) 180-81, 188-89, and especially 246-50. 5. "Homeric Allusions at the Close of Thucydides* Sicilian Narrative,** AJP 118 (1997) 499-516. See the notes there for a summary of earlier work on Thucydides and Homer. Two articles to which I am indebted appeared simultaneously: S. A. Fran- goulidis, MA Pattern from Homer’s Odyssey in the Sicilian Narrative of Thucy dides” QIJCC 44 (1993), 95-102, and C. J. Mackie, “Horner and Thucydides: Corcyra and Sicily”, CQ 46 (1996) 103-113. 6. AJP 512-515 and Prangoulidis, 101-02, Hornblower, 116. 7. My translation of άή τό λιγόμζνον is intended to highlight Thucydides* crea tion of a new word to embrace the enormity of the disaster, which he wants his reader to recognize. Narrative Construction 9
παλιμπ?<χχγχθένταζ oloj f άψ άπονοστήσειν) if in fact we manage to escape death” (1.59-60). The words are repeated at Odyssey 13.4 where home coming is secured for Odysseus by Alcinous as he sends him off on the eve of his return to Ithaca in the pivotal book /moment of the poem: 'T think that you will not be driven off course again, but will return home, even if you have suffered much.” It answers the Iliad passage. Thucy dides, knowing both, used aponosteein with heavy intent:8 there will be no Odyssean homecoming for these Athenians.9 At 7.81.4-5 Thucydides describes the hopeless position of Demo sthenes’ troops as they retreated from the shocking defeat in the Great Harbor of Syracuse:
άνειληθέντες γάρ ες τι χωρίον ω κύκλω μεν τειχίον περιήν, οδός δε ενθεν [τε] καί ένθεν, ελάας δέ ούκ όλίγας εϊχεν, έβάλλοντο περιστα- δόν. τοιανταις δέ προσβαλαΐς καί ον ξνσταδόν μάχαις οι Σνρακόσιοι εικότως εχρώντο.
They were trapped in a place that was circular with a wall run ning round, a road on each side and abounding in olive trees, where they were hit from all sides {ττερισταδόν). The Syracusans used this approach of shooting at a distance rather than fi ghting close in {ξνσταδόν).
The hapax legomenon, ττερισταδόν, like other -stadon words, is Homeric in nature; this one also occurs hapax in Homer. At Iliad 13. 551 Antilochos fights off the Trojans who attack him περισταδόν as he tries to strip the armor from the corpse of Thoon. Thucydides seems to point the reader to the extraordinary word by adding the word ξνσταδόν in his next sentence to describe the Syracusans’ refusal to fight hand to hand (they in fact feared the crazed and desperate Athe nians caught in this trap), ξνσταδόν — this word is surely a Thucydidean
8. The final clause in each of these Homeric passages, "if in fact we manage to escape death” and "even if you have suffered much”, is particularly appo site to the ending of the Sicilian expedition. Could Thucydides have expected his reader to recall the ends of these two very meaningful Homeric lines? 9. Frangoulidis, 101-02, and Mackie, 111-13. Frangoulidis discusses the inclu sion of the Cyclopes and the Laestrygonians among the ancestors of the inhabi tants of Sicily at the opening of Book 6 that sets up the ring composition, which ends with the Odyssean nostos (95-98, 102). Thucydides has provided a mytho logical and epic context from the beginning, which broadens "the scope of the folly on which the Athenians embark” (Mackie, 106). 10 JuneW. Allison creation — occurs again only in late authors, imitators of Thucydides, Procopius and Dio Cassius. Thus we are meant to catch περισταδόν. It is used in a military setting, and in all cases (it is hapax legomenon in Euripides and Herodotus as well; see AJP pp. 510-12) it is the spe cific Homeric type scene of the fight over a body —except in this case of Thucydides where the Athenians are not dead yet —it is master ful; it predicts the end. The poignant vignette he paints here is unfor gettable: there is a disturbing disjuncture between the quaint olive grove and the hideous slaughter that invades it. It seems to be part of a theme that Thucydides fills out by invoking another Homeric parallel. The subtext that contains the Trojan and Persian wars contains an interesting and ironic message: in the Homeric account the Greek naval invaders will defeat the barbarians besieged in their city; in Herodotus* narrative the Persian barbarian naval invaders lose to the Greeks and, dramatically at Salamis, to the Athenians, who refuse to remain besieged in their city, but entrust themselves, at Themisto- cles’ insistence, to the wooden walls of ships. In Thucydides* account, the Athenian Greek naval invaders lose to the besieged Syracusan Greeks, who also in the end leave their city in order to man their ships.10 In all three the assault on a city is made possible by use of naval expe rtise. And while success will bring epic kleos to the victors, these expe ditions have at the same time within them the seeds of possible destru ction on the same large scale as success. In the Archaeology Thucydides establishes the importance of a navy as a weapon of power against city as the reservoir of power, the one dynamic, the other solid and unmoving. Alcaeus had expressed the sentiment that became a slogan: a city is defined as men, not walls (άνδρες γάρ πόλιος πύργος άρενιοι [Men in arms are the towers of a city] fr. LP 112.10).11 What Themistocles engendered by his interpretation of the oracle to rely on the wooden walls, and hence to move the city walls as concept to the walls of ships, was to make the physical city a dynamic. What it comes to mean for the Athenians is that the navy is perceived of as a city on the move; all this even as Athens rose under
10. For parallels of strategy see Mackief (107-112). 11. Heading άρενιοι with one of the two scholiasts instead of άρεύιος. Not only does it suit the shape of the line better, bracketing the city with άνδρες, but tow ers are by definition military. And of course Aeschylus, Persians 349: Athens' "stronghold remains safe while her men exist." Narrative Constructuion 11
Pericles* direction with its new walls advertising power and self-confi dence. The notion appears repeatedly in the History and it is espe cially realized with awe and grand expectations as citizens, country folk and even foreigners watched the fleet sail out of the Piraeus for Sicily. The slogan itself is uttered in the History, not at a moment of Athenian success, not by Pericles, but with depressing impact by - Nicias, after the loss of the ships in the Great Harbor, to his dishearte ned men on their perilous retreat from Syracuse, and particularly to the Athenians among them: "Tou who are Athenians will rise up again, although the great power of the city has fallen: men are a city, not walls nor ships empty of men (άνδρες γάρ πόλις, καί ον τείχη ουδέ νήες άνδρών κεναί)” (7.77.7).12 Thucydides thus has Nicias equate the loss of the ships with the loss of one’s city, as if Athens itself had already fallen.13 These are the final words of Nicias in the final speech of the Sicilian narrative. In Book 7 it seems to me that Thucydides examines the definition of city and challenges the slogan’s validity. Thucydides credits Minos with the earliest exhibition of naval superiority (1.4), and the Trojan expedition, he tells us, is the earliest remembered naval undertaking of any great size (1.8-10). If the fa mous sea-fight fresco from Thera or the Mycenaean crater from Ata- landi (in the museum there) are indications, Bronze Age warriors did on occasion actually fight from the decks of the ships. For the Greeks who attacked Troy, however, the enterprise was a siege accompanied by battles on the plain before the walls of the city. In fact in these early naval exploits the battles regularly occurred on land after the ships had procured landfall. The battle of Salamis was unusual, the battle of Naupactos was a singular event, and the final battle in the Great Harbor at Syracuse was fought out of necessity. Regularly, even naval invaders built a wall around the city they were investing as the Athenians did at Melos or as at Potideae when they walled off access to the city. It is one of the failings, among many, of the Sicilian stra tegy, that the Athenians do not force the issue with their superior
12. The phrasing is artful: recollection of Alcaeus and allusion to Themisto- cles, but undercut by the additional clause, para prosdokian, and the reserva tion of κεναί till the end, with the wooden walls, νήες... κεναί, uselessly now, hol ding in the ανδρες. Further, the line is a ponderous one of seventeen long sylla bles—almost a pair of [cretojpaeonics — with only three shorts. 13. It ie one of those remarks that, we imagine, written after the end of the war, is full of the historian’s personal sorrow, disbelief, and faint hope. 12 JuneW. Allison ships and engage the Syracusans, who admit to having no navy to speak of in 415, in the Great Harbor soon after they arrived. Once Alcibiadee is forced to leave the enterprise, something the historian roundly blames the Athenians at home for causing, a more conventional siege method is assumed, but it is not as Gomme and others think, like other sieges in the History. The walls that are built in Sicily by the Athenian invaders are not constructed around the oity they intend to besiege, but around the Athenians* own camp. The circular wall of the Athenians, specifically called a kyklos, is designed for their own defense.14 In this respect the walling outside Syracuse has more in common with the Achaean wall(s) on the plain outside of Troy than any siege of the Peloponnesian War. In th e Iliad these walls play a significant enough role to provide a title for the most desperate fighting of the war, namely, the Teicho- machia. Thucydides is not unaware of the walls outside of Troy: com menting in the Archaeology at 1.11 on the problems Agamemnon faced, he says that the Achaeans built a wall when they arrived in Troy.
Because of the difficulty in getting food supplies they took a rather small force and because they expected to live off the same land they were finghting on. But after they arrived and had prevailed in a battle-this is clear: for they could not have built the wall as a defense for the campfimu5ή δέ άφιχό- μενοι μάχη έχράτησαν [δήλον δέ* τό γάρ ίρνμα τω (Χτρατοπέδψ ούχ άν έτειχίσαντο]) (1.11.1).
Scholars worry more about the problems with the passage than any thematic importance it may have. Nearly everly commentator, both Homeric and Thucydidean, notes the problem: the wall in the Iliad is built at the suggestion of Nestor in the tenth year of the siege and comes in Book 7. The solutions come in every form. Gomme suggests
14. A.W.Gommo, A. Androwes, and K.J.Dover, A Historical Commentary on Thucydides (Oxford 1945-1981). At vol. 4, 466-84 isa thorough discussion of the location and construction of the walls. It is interesting to note that the Athe nians in Sicily build a double wall from the "circle” wall of their camp towards Syracuse and the sea, making of their setup a miniature of Athene with its double wall to the Piraeus running from the circular wall of the city. See Allison (Word and Concept) 40-44 on terms for walling in these books. Narrativ Construction 13
that Thucydides got his information about an initial wall from the Cypria where the Greek arrival would have been recounted.15 Denys Page, predictably, treated all of Book 7 as a later addition that Thu cydides did not have, so the historian thought the wall mentioned in later books had been there from the time of the Achaean arrival.16 Willcock and Paley claimed there must have been two walls, the initial -one and the one Nestor asks for. This is an idea recently resurrected by Kirk and Maitland, although the walls are not the same two; there is in fact a third wall.17 Perhaps there is simply a conflation of walls from different layers of the poem: a wall that is raised around the sterns
15. HCT 1945-1981, vol. 1 ad loc. Thucydides may have cited an episode from the Cypria as "Homer.” 16. HCT 1945-1981, vol. 1, 114-15; G.S.Kirk, The Iliad: A Commentary Vo lume Π: Books 5-8 (Cambridge 1990) 276-78. Kirk includes a clever conjecture of D.S. Robertson: ούκ άν <έτει ί> έτειχίσαντο, has problems. Even with this read ing Kirk suggests we could understand: "that is clear - for they would not have fortified it ls. Tho wull appears in Book 24 as Priam, led by Hermes, reached "the towers at the ships and the trench" (443). 19. In a paper, "Thucydides Book 7 and the Fall of Troy," Sydney, July 9, 2005. Narrative Construction 15 dition to Troy had, since they are taking a huge force and grain tran sports with them; the idea being that the Athenians intend to avoid the protracted stay that Agamemnon endured. This of course all comes to naught. The Athenians and their allies end up by the second sum mer entrenched in Sicily with the hulls of their ships rotting, since they cannot, like their Achaean ancestors, beach them, and not able to se- -cure enough food. It is likely, therefore, that Thucydides’ comment —the seed—about the defensive walls of the Achaeans outside Troy might also come into play in the impending disaster in Sicily. The construction of the narrative of destruction is marked in a systematic way by the construction of walls by the invader and destru ction of those walls by the besieged in both works in a graduel reversal of the roles of Athenians and Achaeans as invaders and Syracusans and Trojans as the besieged. Once the irony is perceived through the tension between forces inside and those outside the defensive walls, the entire walling episode of the Iliad and the subsequent teichomachia, seem to be echoed in the long, difficult struggle outside Syracuse.20 Both attacking forces, Achaeans, and Athenians, constructed the walls for the same reason, namely, as defensive bulwarks. The subse quent walls outside Syracuse are erected as a result of the Athenians being unable to do anything significant against the besieged city, even though they have won every skirmish in the first year of the invasion. In the Iliad the Achaeans (like the Athenians) have been faring well in the immediate battles up to Book 7, but, as Nestor observes, it is the tenth year of this protracted siege and many have died (7.328-30). Tsagarakis credits the wise old Nestor with the foresight to realize that the Achaeans were gradually being put on the defensive: "He foresees the extreme danger and to avert it he proposes... the wall.”21 The wall he advises is defensive (εΙ?.αρ νηών τε καί αυτών, 338), w ith 20. S. Constantinidou of the University of Ioannina reminded me that Hector refuses to stay inside Troy, not wanting to be put in the position of passive defender, but comes outside the walls to take a stand in defense of his city. 21. 130. Many have observed, because the immediately previous battle went to the Achaeans, that Nestor’s wall has no real inspiration from the text. Nestor does not see it that way. Even without his wall it would make sense to stage a battle over an initial wall, especially if it were a formidable one, without inserting a description of the actual construction of it. See M. Davies, "Nicias* Advice in Iliad 7,” Eranos 84 (1986) 69-75, who concludes that Homer wants the poem to embody "the story of the entire Trojan war.” 46 JuneW. Allison which we might compare Thucydides' ίρνμα τφ στρατοπίδφ; &ρυμα is a modern equivalent^ the purely Homeric είλαρ.aa Later, as Agamem non bemoans the destruction of the wall, he repeats Nestor’s under standing of its worth: "an invulnerable defense for the ships and our selves” (14.68). In the case of the Athenians at no point in the planning stages is a wall for the camp discussed, but neither is any precise strategy for the fleet. Thucydides tells us, once the fleet is at sea, that on board are stonemasons and workmen and all the tools necessary for wall building (6.44.1).What does it mean then to attack Syracuse? Most of our under standing depends on previous expeditions to Sicily and elsewhere, from which we would be mistaken if we assumed that the armada with the triremes in the lead was going to sail into the Great Harbor of Syracuse upon arrival. It is clear from Nicias* speech at 6.20-23 (and the summary at 25, and 43-44) that there are to be significant hoplite forces, archers, javelin throwers, much grain and bakers. He summarizes his concept of the endeavor: it is as if they were going to found a city amongst strangers and enemies (6.23). The reader imagines, however, that this is just a simile, one of the tropes Nicias uses in his attempt to make the expedition seem an impossibly huge undertaking. Ominously, as it turns out, he warns the Athenians that on the first day on which they put in they must command the land right away or know that, if they fail, they will discover everything hostile (23.2). Thucydides makes a reference to his own earlier narrative and the passage at 1.11, since it is exactly what he thinks that the Achaeans had done at Troy. It appears that a precise strategy is not discussed-or reported-by Thu cydides because everyone knew how this kind of thing worked. The famous account of the opinions of the three generals (6.46.5-50.1) co mes after they have arrived and the Segestan deceit has been disco vered. Lamachus' advice to attack immediately while they were impre ssive "under the walls of the city” also does not specify naval action. His is the advice usually touted by scholars as the most reasonable, but we forget that at 6.45 the Syracusans have responded to some degree: they have manned garrisons in neighboring territory and made sure the 22 22. In Iliad, 1. 436-7 the soldiers bring in stuff (Ακριτον) (see Kirk, ad loc. on this interpretation) from the plain to build tho wall. Athonians gather plinlhia (6. 88.0), perhaps material to make bricks, but certainly not bricks brought overland or by ship (see, HL'T vol. 4, ad loc.). Still, it is an amazing thing for this grand armada to be doing at all. Narrative Construction 17 horses and armament were in good condition. It would not entirely be the surprise Lamachus imagines; in fact the Syracusans expected them to do just that and recognized how hard it would be to have to fend them off (6.63). Alcibiades* advice to divide the allies, secure those they could and then atack, may actually have been the saner plan; but with his departure, we will never know.23 So there has never been a - plan to attack immediately from the sea side of the city. The seafaring Athenians are forced into a sea battle in the end because they have no choice: they are attempting to break out of the harbor. On arrival outside Syracuse and after the departure of Alcibiades, like their Achaean ancestors, they attempt to get a foothold near Sy racuse.24 The Athenians, now under Nicias* cosmmand, move by land to just west of the city in the plain under Epipolae and begin to build "the circle” (έτείχισαν τον κύκλον) a defensive 'circumvallation* to protect themselves. Here, Dover observes significantly that the word κύκλος is normally "used of a wall which contitutes the perimeter of a city.” 25 A flurry of activity by both sides in each narrative is aimed at at tacking and defending the wall.26 Both authors return repaetedly to the walls to measure the distance of the enemy threat. In the Iliad the inevi table failure of the invaders* wall to hold is clearly marked by the pro gressive wounding of the Achaean leaders, until by the end of Book 11 most are off the field of battle and Hector gradually approaches 23. In fact the failings in the speech to the Camarineans by the unknown Euphemus seem too obvious. C.Orwin (The Humanity of Thucydides [Princeton 1994], 133) cleverly observes that, while the suspiciously named Euphemus addre sses the session, Alcibiades would actually have been the appropriate person to deliver the speech, presumably of a very different sort, had he not been forced to leave. 24. It is worth noting that initially the Syracusans build the kind of wall that the besieging forces normally did, a second wall around the city they intend to invest At 6.75 they build out the city wall to take in Temenites and thus enlarge the city, "so that they would not be so susceptible to being invested if they were worsted.” Athenians do build a palisade around the camp at Naxus (6.74) and opposite the ships off Thapsus (6.97); Nicias builds another "city” when he walls Plemmyrium (7.4). It too is besieged (7.21). 25. HCT 1945-1981, vol. 4, 473. 26. The speed of the Athenians at building the wall surprises the Syracusans, who gather material to build a counter wall, which the Athenians then destroy; the ships do not move (6.100). 18 JuneW. Allison breaching the wall. It had begun back in Book 8.177-83 when he had called the Achaeans fools for building the wall, which he calls, "an insignificant affair of no account." He promises to drive his chariot across the trench and torch the ships. At 9.349 Achilles seems to reply to Hector as he tells the Embassy that Agamemnon does not need him for he has his wall, complete with a ditch dug out in front, broad and huge with stakes fixed all around; but he adds, it will not stop Hector. In repeated attempts Hector and his troops try to undermine the Achaean wall as if they were besieging a city (12.256ff.);27 two of his allies, in fact, Asius (12.120ff.)28 and Sarpedon (12.397-99), nearly succeed.29 But Zeus has preserved the glory for Hector (12.436).30 Si milarly, the Syracusans repeatedly block construction with walls of their own and, like Trojans, rejoice in breaking through the outer de fenses and demolishing a sizeable length of the outer wall of the circle, but Nicias defends the actual perimeter by setting fire to the scaffol ding and timber that were lying in front (6.102). Later in the account, at 7.43 the Syracusans, again like the Trojans at the ships, torch the siege engines at the Athenian wall. The Athenians, however, win a battle outside their walled circle. At this point, when, like the Achae ans, the Athenians were still winning, Nicias, like Nestor, orders a wall, this a double wall from Epipolae to the sea (6.103). Just as the Athe nians are on the verge of completing this wall, only a short distance from the sea, Gylippus, the Spartan general, like Hector, appears, boding ill. Thucydides comments with one of his typically dramatic observations, here with pointed personification of the city: παρά το- ύουτον μέν al Σνράκουσαι ήλΟον κινδύνου (Thus did Syracuse come to the verge of destruction) (7.2.4). It is worth while remembering that Gy lippus has been sent by the Spartans at the urging of AJcibiades, whe reas, Hector’s success comes as a result of the promise to Thetis by Zeus to make the Achaeans regret Achilles’ absence. But Gylippus, now every bit a Hector, makes no headway at first and, as Hector does 27. The Achaeans try to fill breaches with oxhide shields and throw stones down on tho Trojans. 28. Against Asius* assault tho two Lapith defenders tear rocks from the wall to protect the ships and camp; the rocks fell liko snow (156); some were boulders as large as millstones (160-61). This wall is of grand proportions. 29. Sarpedon toars opon a huge hole in the wall, "a path for many”. 30. "Then glorious Hector leapt through, his face like night coming on fast. But he shone in dire-reflecting bronze...’ (462). Narrative Constructuion 19 at Troy, blames himself for the Syracusan defeat in a battle and their failure to take the wall (7.5). Homer, likewise, tells us that even after Sarpedon’s failed attempt on the wall the battle was even again (12. 436), Achaeans still winning, but Hector ever pressing on. From this point the Syracusans and the Athenians struggle back and forth, the ones to finish the walls, the others, by a counter wall - and attack on weak areas, to stop them (7.3-6). Nicias and the Athe nians ponder dire results if the Syracusan counter wall intercepts their own: "it would be all the same whether they fought day after day and won or did not fight at all33 (7.6.1). The prediction is fulfilled: the Syracusans at night run their wall past the Athenian walls and so the Athenians, says Thucydides, "were totally deprived of any longer walling off (investing) the Syracusans, even if they were to prevail in battle’3 (7.6.4). The obvious end that both authors desire is to reverse the pro cess entirely.31 The walled camp becomes a city under siege. The re sult is the opposite of the original intentions; the defensive walls of the attackers become their city walls breached by those they came to invest. In his letter home to Athens Nicias, who claimed the armada was like a founding city (6.23), now openly acknowledges the extent of their predicament: ξυμβέβηκέ τε πολιορκεΐν δοκοϋντας ημάς άλλους αυτούς μάλλον, δσα γε κατά γην, τούτο πάσχειν (As a result we who inten ded to besiege others are ourselves, at least when it comes to the land, suffering the siege) (7.11.4).32 When the ships left Athens they appea red to be the shining culmination of the Themistoclean directive; these walled ships were a city on the move, but the Athenians in a sense abrogated their naval dynamism when they abandoned the ships to rot and created a walled city, the kyklos, inland. When both attacking forces find themselves effectively besieged (the Athenians have also failed in the extraordinary night battle on Epipolae), their walling efforts failures, a pivotal meeting of the lea- 31. At the outset of the war Thucydides records another type of reversal when the attacking Thebans are in a sense besieged inside Plataea when they are caught inside the walls (2.4). 32. Thucydides makes the sentiment truly noticeable through artful word placement by which πο)ΛορκεΙν and τοϋτο πάσχειν surround the Athenians and the land, ημάς.,, όσα γε κατά γην, and the others they were supposed to besiege are placed farther into the center, ημάς άλλους αυτούς. These ‘others’ are besieged only in words. 20 June W. Allison ders takes place to discuss the desperate situation.83 The meeting of the Achaean leaders at Iliad 14.37-134 has its counterpart in the reason ing of the Athenian generals in Sicily at Book 7.47-49.84 To begin, both authors present the understanding of the situation primarily as the thoughts and words of the characters, not through third person narrative. Common to both meetings and appearing in the same order in both are: an expression of despair by the commanders, concern about the condition and morale of the troops, a will to keep the plan secret, a debate about whether or not to leave, and finally, a decision to rem ain. The Achaean leaders are "weighed down with worry” (14.38-39). Agamemnon fears Hector’s assault and that his own men resent him. The men clearly do not want to fight at the ships (47-51). He further bemoans the loss of the wall and their suffering. He therefore advises that they take the first line of ships from the shore out to sea and then at night, if the Trojans break off fighting, they "haul the rest down to the sea and so escape” (65-80). As we expect, since this is not the first time Agamemnon has come up with a plan that involves retreat, Odysseus is enraged. They cannot give glory to Troy, he protests. The men, he argues, will never maintain their positions if they see the lea ders openly dragging the ships to the sea (83-102). Agamemnon asks for a better plan. Diomedes suggests that, although wounded, they stay, go back to the front and command and encourage the men. This is the plan adopted. At the council of the Athenians, the generals, like their Achaean counterparts, are "discouraged by their misfortune and inability of the troops” to make headway. The soldiers are aggrieved by the exten ded stay (7.47.1). Demosthenes argues for their departure — like Aga- mamnon — for a second time, "seeing that the wall cannot hold off” 3334 33. An interesting aside: once the Trojans have broken through the wall and the battlo is raging among the ships, Zeus, not dreaming that any of the gods would interfere at this stage, "turns his flashing eyes far off to the land of the Thracians, hordors of horses,” among other places (13.4-5). Leaving the Athenians in a simi larly desperate plight, Thucydides turns to the activities at home, among which is the slaughter at Mycalessus by the Thracian mercenaries (6.29-30). 34. A. V. Zadoronjnyi draws some telling similatrities between Nicias and Agamemnon from Nicias* letter and Agamemnon at Iliad 2.110-141 and finds a kind of pessimistic dullness in both men that damages their effectiveness as leaders ("Thucydides’ Nicias and Homer's Agamemnon,” CQ 48 (1998) 298-303. It conti nues here. Narrative Construction 21 the Syracusans. But they should leave now "while it was still possible to sail out” (47.2-4). Nicias here does not want "to show weakness openly before the men” and so he argues they could not depart secretly (48.1). Further, he thinks he understands the situation and is awaiting the right word from his informers in Syracuse that they are about to offer terms (48.2-3). They should therefore stay. The tragic peripeteia, the - reversal, is starting to unfold. The crucial differences that emerge from these similar delibera tions are chilling. It is clear that Agamemnon’s recommendation to leave is wrong as it turns out, Odysseus’ sensitivity to the soldiers’ reaction is astute and Diomedes’ advice, therefore, right, but only accidentally successful. He had no reason to imagine they would begin winning simply by having the leaders reappear on the battlefield, and they don’t. Thucydides’ generals, by contrast, pressed in the same way, succumb to the wrong argument, that of Nicias, so they stay and fail miserably.35 36* Why do the Achaeans succeed where the Athenians do not? In the end the Achaeans will be saved, not because Diomedes was right, but because Achilles returns to battle. The Athenians, with no such salvation, will be defeated. I already noted Gylippus’ affinities with Hector and the similar positions of Nicias and Nestor as devisers of the walls. The major factor that prompted the extensive walling in of the attackers, both Achaeans and Athenians, and the subsequent lack of progress by both to invest Troy and Syracuse, or to hold their own walls, is the removal from the action of the key figures, Achilles and Alcibiades. Many, ancient and modern, maybe even Alcibiades himself, have enjoyed drawing loose analogies between the two.38 Both men are the youngest of the leaders, both have been insulted by their own people and both have removed themselves (however compulsorily) from their positions as the men most admired by the soldiers. Their withdrawal aids the enemy and results in severe hardships for their comrades. The other leaders left in the field make crucial mistakes in their absence. Had they re mained at the front, the respective authors lead us to imagine, the war 35. Of course the procrastination, faulty judgment and superstitious nature of Nicias acerbate the wretched situation. 36. The affinities between Alcibiades and Achilles and Socrates with Achilles or Odysseus are derived primarily from the Platonic figures, Ap. 47, Hp. ML 364-367 and Symp. 221c6-d, and enlarged upon by Plutarch, See S. Rosen, Plato's Sympo sium (New Haven 1968), 204, 300-1. 22 JuneW . Allison would have been concluded successfully for the attackers in a much shorter time and the defensive walling would not have been necessa ry .87 Beyond being the prime movers in devising the defensive wall(s) Nicias and Nestor share other traits: both are the more careful, older, conservative figures. I do not want to dwell excessively on this compa rison, since in part it is an odious one. Both men pride themselves on their pasts, their long-standing devotion to the wellbeing of the whole, their reliance on tradition and the gods. Age itself commands respect in their views. Perhaps the comparison gains in pathos by the diffe rences. Nicias might have liked to hear the comparison drawn.37 38 In fact Thucydides in his epitaph for Nicias attributes to him the old epic arete even as it resonates against the mourning and pleading of the wounded and dying he has left at Syracuse. Nestor’s sage wisdom over the course of the Iliad is usually on target, whereas, as the siege in Sicily drags on, Nicias* strategies are proven not only wrong, but deadly. For the Athenians there is no hero who will return to battle bran dishing his youth, and energy, his irresistible eros, and his philonfe]· ikia. Thucydides allows the awfulness to run its course. As the river Scamander was clogged with Achilles* victims, the Assinarus is fouled with the bodies of dying Athenians. The failure of the walled camp of the Athenians, the kyklos, th a t became a besieged city, is recalled in the end, at 7.81.4-5, the passage with which I began, as the Syracusans massacre the Athenians trap ped in a second kyklos. This kyklos, subject to Thucydides* sensi tivity to the visual, becomes a metaphor: it is a miniature city of peace with its little city wall running round (κύκλω μέν τειχίον περιήν), streets (ώΜς δέ ένθεν [τε] καί ένθεν), and abounding with the town’s commodity, olive trees (έλάας δέ ονκ όλίγας είχεν), which suffers a hellish and intense siege. At this point Thucydides elicits from his reader, as it were, a gasp of recognition, the recollection of Nicias* words to his demora- 37. Hornblower has outlined what appear to be references to the fall of Troy that may owe their imagery in part to paintings such as Polygnotus’ Iliupersis (above n. 19). 38. One may readily imagino a typical 'Nestorian’ preface behind Nicies’* opening remarks to the Ecclesia (6.9.2). lie explains how war bestows honor, how the good citizen is willing to give up of himself for the good of the city, how he had not in the past given advice or spoken contrary to his convictions out of a desire for recognition. Narrative Construction 23 lized men as they began their retreat into the countryside. It is not merely the slogan, men make a city not walls, that now seems empty, but the sentiments that paved the way for its utterance are now rea lized almost too vividly: "and consider this that you yourselves imme diately become a city wherever you stop... that on the spot in which each of you is compelled to fight, this, if you win, will be your home- - land, this your city wall” (7.77.4).