James O'maley, Iliad 1 and 3: Politics, Characters and the Story of Troy

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James O'maley, Iliad 1 and 3: Politics, Characters and the Story of Troy Iliad 1 and 3: Politics, Characters, and the Story of Troy JAMES O’MALEY rage of Achilles (as its first words might suggest), but an epic of the entire Trojan War. At the end of the poem this is manifested in the repeated references he Iliad is a poem that has been argued over 2 for millennia, and to which there are as many to the death of Achilles, and to the eventual approaches as there are readers. This is, of destruction of Troy. Thus in Book 15 Zeus looks T forward to the course of the war after the death of course, its principal delight, and one of the reasons it continues to enthral those who encounter it. But Hector: it does make it difficult to sum up in a short essay. And then, from that day on, I’ll turn the tide of war: So, rather than attempting to do so, I will instead back the fighting goes, no stopping it, ever, all the way till Achaean armies seize the beetling heights of Troy highlight just a few ways of reading the poem that through Athena’s grand design. I think manifest themselves particularly clearly in Il. 15.87-90 [= 15.69-70] the two sections that are up for examination this year: Book 1 lines 1-356 (= 1.1-304),1 and Book 3. Similarly, the Iliad’s narrator himself looks ahead to This of course will not be an exhaustive look, or the time after the war’s end: ‘once the best of the even necessarily go deeply into some of the most Trojan captains fell,/and many Achaeans died as important themes of the epic as a whole, but I hope well while some survived,/and Priam’s high walls that the areas I will discuss today will provide some were stormed in the tenth year’ (12.16-18 [=12.13- useful ways of looking at the entire poem through 15]). Finally, towards the end of the poem the death the lens of the two sections provided. Thus, I will of Hector and the destruction of Troy seem to focus here on three particular points of interest in merge, so that on Hector’s death the narrator can the poem, as they are developed in Books 1 and comment that it seemed ‘for all the world as if all 3: the Iliad’s position within the Trojan War, and Troy were torched and smoldering/down from the within Classical myth as a whole; the political issues looming brows of the citadel to her roots (22.483- that the poem grapples with, both at its beginning 484 [= 22.410-411]), and in the poem’s final scene and throughout; and the characterisation of some of – Hector’s burial – the image of the cremated man the major figures of the poem’s early books, and the clearly evokes the burning city, and Troy’s ultimate insight this can shed on the ways in which the Iliad destruction is both anticipated by, and to some portrays its own particular version of traditional extent incorporated into, the Iliad’s conclusion. characters. The same is true of the beginning of the war in the To begin, then, at the beginning; or perhaps rather, early books of the poem. Just as a number of later in the middle, since of course the Iliad, in Horace’s passages either evoke, or refer directly to the death phrase, begins not ab ovo (Ars 147), but instead in of Achilles and the destruction of Troy, so too does medias res/… auditorem rapit (‘snatches the listener the beginning of the poem look back to events early into the middle of things’, Ars 148-149). The poem in the war, either through direct reference to them, opens when the Trojan War is already nine years or by more allusive means. Into the first category old and describes not much more than a month of fall statements like Antenor’s reminiscence at 3.247- its duration, so that by its end Troy is still standing, 269 (= 3.205-224), which recalls an encounter he Achilles remains alive, and the only major change had earlier in the war with Odysseus, who along in the military situation has come through the death with Menelaus conducted an embassy to Troy to of Hector. Yet within this brief chronological period seek Helen’s return. Antenor does not say precisely the poem looks both forwards and backwards in when this was, just that it happened ‘in the past’ order to make itself an epic not merely about the (3.247 [= 3.205]), but the subject of the embassy clearly suggests the start of the war, when such a 1 Fagles’ translation uses slightly different line numbers to Greek editions of Homer, and so when citing the Iliad I will include both 2 At eg. 18.102-118, 18.382-387, 18.513-514, 19.483-486, 20.384, Fagles’ line numbers and, in parentheses, the line numbers of the 22.422-424, 23.96-98, 23.165-174, 24.159-161 [= 18.88-101, Greek text in the Oxford Classical Texts edition on Monro and 18.329-335, 18.440-441, 19.408-410, 20.337, 22.358-360, 23.80- Allen. 81, 23.144-151, 24.131-132. 40 Iliad 1 and 3: Politics, Characters, and the Story of Troy journey would be likely. Elsewhere, meanwhile, a by Helen during the so-called Teichoskopia (‘View passage from Book 2, in between our two sections, from the Walls’, 3.193-291 [= 3.161-244]). Even the is worth quoting here for its simultaneous expansion tragicomic rescue and magical flight of Paris from backwards and forwards. At lines 354-394 (= 2.303- battlefield to bedroom, where he appears as though 332) Odysseus attempts to rouse his fellow Achaeans ‘off to a dance or slipped away/from the dancing’ to battle. He begins: (3.454-455 [= 3.393-394]), and his and Helen’s bitter lovemaking at Aphrodite’s instigation seems Why it seems like only yesterday or the day before to evoke Aphrodite’s original instigation of their when our vast armada gathered, moored at Aulis relationship, although it should be noted that the freighted with slaughter bound for Priam’s Troy. Il. 2.354-357 [= 2.303-304] extent to which time has soured Helen’s feelings is obvious. Odysseus then describes a portent which they all witnessed, a snake eating a sparrow and her eight Helen also offers us a glimpse of the poem’s children, before finishing with the interpretation remarkable self-awareness, and the extent to which given by the seer Calchas: it portrays itself as a poem of the entire war, not simply of a brief period towards its end. At her first As the snake devoured the sparrow with her brood, appearance in the Iliad, we come across her in her eight and the mother made the ninth, she’d borne them all, so we will fight at Troy that many years and then, room, weaving: then in the tenth we’ll take her broad streets. Il. 2.386-389 [= 2.326-329] And now a messenger went to white-armed Helen too, Iris, looking for all the world like Hector’s sister wed to Antenor’s son, Helicaon’s bride Laodice, These reminiscences by the Iliad’s characters are the loveliest daughter Priam ever bred. complemented by a group of scenes that evoke the And Iris came on Helen in her rooms … weaving a growing web, a dark red folding robe, beginning of the war in a more allusive fashion, even working into the weft the endless bloody struggles if they do not precisely refer to it. The initial quarrel stallion-breaking Trojans and Argives armed in bronze had suffered all for her at the god of battle’s hands. of Book 1, which I will be discussing further in a Il. 3.146-154 [= 3.121-128] moment, begins as a response to retribution dealt out over the capture of a woman (Chryseis), and The self-conscious artistry of this is astonishing: one culminates in Agamemnon’s theft of another woman of the war’s main subjects, or rather, and perhaps (Briseis), and thus bears significant similarities to more pertinently, the war’s chief object, in her first the elopement of Paris and Helen. The same is true appearance in the poem, is to be found depicting of the battle between the Lapiths and the Centaurs, visually the battle which is being waged just outside to which Nestor alludes in Book 1 (304-319 [= for possession of her. Moreover, as soon as we see 1.260-273]), since it also arose from the abduction her she changes from chronicler to spectator, since of a woman: Pirithous’ bride Hippodamia. Iris lures her out to the walls to see ‘what wondrous Similarly, the Catalogue of Ships in Book 2 (573- things they’re doing’ (3.157 [= 3.130]); the duel 863 [= 2.484-760]) evokes an initial muster at the between Menelaus and Paris, which is ‘all for you beginning of the war (perhaps the muster at Aulis – and the man who wins that duel,/you’ll be called that Odysseus recalls earlier in Book 2) and even his wife!’ (3.166-167 [= 3.137-138]). The spectacle contains references to those who, like Protesilaus of the war, and, of course, its equivalent auditory (2.793-802 [= 2.695-702]), had already died, or, immortalisation in the epic itself, is clear here, and like Philoctetes (2.817-826 [= 2.716-725]), had not through the figure of Helen (whose character will be yet even made it to Troy.
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