Four times Achilles

1: Impossible Achilles

Nestor on 'fighting alone' (Il 4.303-):

Achilles to his men (Il 20.356-9): "You, too, must fight, because..

And then he proceeds to do exactly that. Here the poet is, what Aristotle would call 'imitating an impossibility'. Achilles' climactic rampage is a vast overstatement, producing in the Achaian listener a sense of gratification and awe but also, hopefully, a clash with reality. Everywhere else Homer is always careful to leave out traditional details that are not realistic for humans, such as impenetrable armour or skin, or magic in general. Achilles' killing spree is a revenge fantasy and Homer sets a number of red flags such as the one above to make us realise that - eventually.
All the great heroes in Ancient Greece were above and beyond the range of human capabilities (and morality), witness Heracles. Mere humans were supposed to know better than to compare themselves with that. But if the young heroes in his audience were anything like the Elpenors that he describes,

2: 8 little birds and their mother

1. Agamemnon and Menelaos: the old and the young king

   Agamemnon is not presented very favourably. He has to be obeyed of course because he is the leader and that is how armies work. But the poet shows him:
   • refusing Chryses, keeping Chryseis “because I prefer her to my wedded wife” (Il 1.113). This may be honesty but then as now, you cannot say such things without condemning yourself.
   • mishandling the Achilles situation
   • accepting the wrong advice (Nestor and the Evil Dream)
   • being harsh (Adrastos episode, Il 6.37)
   • giving up too easily: in Il 11.264- he is wounded but fights on until the pain becomes "like the pain of a woman in childbirth". Winning a war demands more than that, certainly more than quitting on a pain that every woman has to go through. Besides, he does not pray to the gods like Diomedes or Glaucos (Il 16.513-). See also Il 14.74-.
   • As shown in book 11, Agamemnon works on a 'first-in, first-out' principle. He is the first to attack, he himself is also the first to withdraw.
   Like Achilles, he boasts of being the best of the Achaians (Il 1.91), like Achilles he does foolish things when he is in the grip of anger (Il 1.101-, 19.85-). Rhetorically of course his greatest sin is the insulting of our greatest hero.
   Menelaos is one of the addressee figures of the poem(2). He is "you" because "you" are young, going out to war and capture girls, and dream of honor and great victories (like Achilles). In short, you are the addressee of the Helen-myth. The basic ironical contrast between your naive expectations and the actual situation you will find yourself in, is the main point of Menelaos' Aristeia (book 17): instead of winning honor and prizes, you will be fighting desperately for your life and to recover the dead body of your friend. In the Odyssey he is not very happy about the whole affair (Od 4.97-).
   Part of the rhetorical picture is that he is young, but a dutiful soldier: he never shirks and he is always there when older, cleverer soldiers such as Agamemnon, Idomeneus, and Odysseus leave him to do the work. Old soldiers never die, but you will...

2. Idomeneus and Diomedes: the old and the young warrior

   Idomeneus seems to be the type of the older, highly aristocratic 'professional soldier'. He is honored most by Agamemnon (Il 4.255-), traces his lineage back to Minos himself. Idomeneus is not a shining example of eagerness to fight (like Antilochos for instance), see the humorous exchange he has with his therapon Meriones in his aristeia (Il 13.206-). He does know how to fight well, he also knows to get out before things get too rough, leaving his therapon to do the fighting (as Achilles does).
   Diomedes is learning the survival-knowledge of an Idomeneus. In Homeric terms, this is "recognizing the gods" and drawing one step back before they kill you. Diomedes is an ironical fantasy, in that the basic conundrum of Homeric warfare: how to find the very narrow middle between "not far enough" and "too far"(3) is not a problem for him: with the help of Athena, the goddess of know-how and know-when, he can easily do this. He can be very brave and take great risks, but at the crucial time he is found with the wounded warriors at the back. We all know no harm will ever come to him, as is proved by his easy sailing home in the Odyssey. He is of perfect behaviour: unlike Achilles, when he is slighted by Agamemnon (Il 4.370-) he keeps his mouth shut and swallows the rebuke (though he does not forget it: Il 9.32-). He also learns, from Nestor, to be victorious in speech: to say the right heroic things at the right time (Il 9.29-).

3. The Aiantes

   Telamonian Aias gets a very positive picture: he is the 'bulwark of the Achaians', he is always there where the situation is dire and he is near-unbeatable. He symbolizes the defensive strength and never-giving-up of Homer's people. It is Aias with his laconic remarks who almost gets Achilles to fight again. Without him, the Achaians would have been wiped out. Yet he is not a winner. He gets unmanned by Hector in defense of the ships, he loses to Odysseus in the contest for Achilles' armor. The goddess of Victory never helps him. He is the part of Achilles that speaks in Il 9.316-: 'I do all the work and get nothing for it'. All this makes sense: defensive strength is indispensable, noble, but it does not give us victory. It only keeps us alive.
   The Greater Aias is not a runner, but his companion, the son of Oileus, is. He is known most of all for his skill in pursuing enemies on the run (Il 14.520-). Apart from that he is shown to be a brave warrior. Both of them are aspects of Achilles: Achilles is 'greater' in the sense that he is a hero of the counter-attack: he frees a beleaguered city from the enemy so he is a defensive hero. In Achilles' aristeia however, his main occupation is 'running': slaughtering enemies on the run. This is useful in war and gives you a reputation, but Homer makes the silent point that it is not quite as honorable.
   

4. Nestor and Odysseus, the two councillors

   Nestor represents the 'sweet voice' of heroism. In this capacity he rules the young generation (Il 1.252). He appears as an old man telling tall tales but he is more than that: as Achilles is the best man in battle, Nestor is the best in assembly, winning every debate. He wins because if you dispute Nestor's advice, you are open to being called a coward, weakling or traitor; If you obey, it makes you feel good. We cannot understand the Iliad if we do not understand Nestor. This, however, is really quite simple:
   - Courage is the greatest force(4). See below.
   - There are no excuses
   - Zeus is always on our side. To say otherwise is treason.
   In the modern world, we still love to hear this voice ("when the going gets tough, the tough get going"). We do need this voice to keep us going but Homer has a few reflections to show us, perhaps to ensure that it is not the only voice that we listen to:
   
   • He is often wrong. It is no accident that the 'Deadly Dream' of book 2 comes in the likeness of Nestor. Clearly Homer is pointing out that "now" is not the time to take Troy.
   • His advice is often of the "I cannot do it, you must do it" kind. This is because Nestor is an old man and has an excuse, but this is also a typical characteristic of heroic advice.
   • He is harsh. Not just to his enemies, but to his own: his father's name Neleus (the pitiless) is quite fitting: Nestor is the only survivor of 12 brothers. How hard it must be to be a son of Nestor, is shown in the picture of his brave son Antilochos (the first to kill a man, Il 4.457). It is almost ensured that the latter will get himself killed in his drive to prove himself. Antilochos is one explanation of "the" Achilles.
   • It is Nestor who brings out the slogan "let no one go home before having slept with the wife of some Trojan..." (Il 2.354-). This is the crux of the Helen myth. He really knows how to motivate the men. Homer tries to counter this with the Andromache picture.
   • Nestor and his pupil Diomedes think that "courage (or fighting spirit, ἀλκή) is the greatest force (Il 9.39)": if you have enough fighting spirit, you can do anything. This is a common form of magical thinking in which the will can shape reality, if we just will it hard enough. The poets are here to remind us that Zeus is the greatest force in determining our fate.
   • The picture of Nestor also reminds us that in the real world, it is more effective to talk heroically than than to actually be a hero.
   • The 'voice of heroism' may not always be a completely sober voice: Il 11.632-7, 8.227-35, 7.467-
   
   Odysseus the calculating hero (Il 11.401-), the champion of Athena and of metis (cleverness). Unlike Nestor, he is usually right. In the Iliad he does not yet have the prominence that he has in the Odyssey and where he does (in the Doloneia for instance, or in the second assembly) there is some suggestion of later addition by the poet. Here I will limit the view to the Iliad.
   Like Achilles, Odysseus is slighted by Agamemnon (Il 4.349-). This irritates him a little and he also has a wrath, albeit a short one (Il 4.494-). When Achilles obeys Athena in book 1, he is making a calculating move, aimed at his own advantage. At this moment he is acting like an Odysseus. This strategy fails because it causes the death of Patrocles and thus indirectly his own death.
   This difference between Odysseus and Achilles shows why Achilles is the greater hero: Achilles, like Hector, is a hero of shame. Odysseus does not seem to know any (Il 8.92). There is no questioning Achilles' greatness or his beauty and he is honoured by Zeus. Or at least, he received from Zeus what he asked for. But as for happiness...

So we come to the conclusion: not only is Achilles greater than any of the other heroes, he is all of them .

3: The (im)mortal hero

At the beginning of the Iliad (Il 1.52-), during the plague sent by Apollo, Achilles is moved to call the troops to assembly. This is in response to the bad situation the Achaians are in. It is important to note that it was the goddess Hera who caused him to do that.
It cannot be appropriate for a soldier, even a noble one, to call an assembly of the troops himself and certainly not without calling a council of the king and the chief warriors first, to have a preliminary discussion of the problems. Any king, any commander-in-chief must take this as an attack on his authority. And that is what it is: Achilles’ first speech (Il 1.59-) “Now that we have been rebuffed” followed by “let’s go home” (probably ironical but he says it anyway) is a statement meaning nothing less than “you, Agamemnon, have failed”; consequently, he proposes a solution for that problem as if he is the leader. So, he invites Kalchas the seer to speak and promises to protect him against the king. The seer tells Agamemnon that Apollo wants him to relinquish his prize girl and send her back to her father; the king sees this as an attack on his status and honor and wants compensation. Note the nice irony of Achilles’ answer: “when we sack Troy”. It is of course the king’s role to divide the loot when a town is taken: all the warriors have joined the expedition in return for a promise of a share in the booty and it is the king who has to dispense those. Achilles is now making that promise. In this light there is a further irony in Agamemnon’s response: “don’t deceive me”, as if a promise of loot is a deception.

This is Achilles’ first choice offered: kingship, or status. This is Hera’s domain; she is the goddess who is never quite satisfied with her place as nr. 2 in the Olympic hierarchy (Il 1.540-). But, as developments show, he cannot have this: Agamemnon already has it.
Both Achilles (Il 1.412) and Agamemnon see themselves as “the best of the Achaians” i.e. the one who should really be the leader. Nestor’s speech (Il 1.254-) confirms this and he tells Achilles in no uncertain terms that Agamemnon is better because “he rules more people” (Il 1.280-). Another clear explanation of this is in the sentence that Odysseus leaves out when he presents the list of gifts from Agamemnon to Achilles in book 9: “let him submit to me” (Il 9.158). In book 19 (Il 19.40-) Achilles kind of submits to him, Homer illustrates this by his digression about the birth of Heracles. Admittedly, Achilles is not a Heracles: Heracles is a servant who “ought to be” a king; Achilles is a king who “ought to be” a servant.
During Patrocles’ funeral games Achilles finally reaches that high status, ironically again: he is “king for a day”. He awards prizes (even to Agamemnon), is judge, settles quarrels, in short: he is best of all, without himself taking part in the competition.

The next offer Achilles receives from a goddess is Athena’s promise (Il 1.212-) “if you obey me, you will receive three times as many gifts”. She is the goddess of victory, of loot, when attained by cleverness. Cleverness here means know-how and know-when so it includes being bold, seizing your chance. She is the daughter of the goddess Mētis. If you are a favorite of hers, you will have your victories in war, and survive. Diomedes and Odysseus are the prime examples of this. Both know how to fight and be brave, they also know how to not be there when things are getting too hot. Diomedes, the ironical “too good to be true” hero, was taught by Athena to distinguish gods from men, i.e. to know when to fight and when to stop. Fight bravely, never stop, if you know you can win. Otherwise, make yourself scarce without showing cowardice. Fighting a losing battle is not Athena’s way(1).

The survival part is crucial for understanding Athena’s offer. It is the explanation of Achilles’ refusal in book 9, he says it pretty clearly in his angry speech. He knows he will die; his mother told him so but in book 9 he is not yet ready to accept that, he still thinks he can escape. Before Agamemnon’s offer of gifts, one could think he refuses to fight because of his anger with the king. But the nature of Odysseus’ appeal apparently makes one thing clear to him: this is a trick, and he says so. They are “thinking one thing and saying another”. He is not wrong; the whole situation is explained by the parallel story of Patrocles’ return to the fighting. This is a large subject which needs its own essay, but I will deal with it in short here. The point is: the other Achaian heroes, esp. Agamemnon, Diomedes, Idomeneus and Odysseus, have not been fighting as heroes should. True, they are (lightly) wounded but I have a strong suspicion that in a heroic society that is not good enough an excuse. To win a war takes more than that, we expect them to give everything they got. To illustrate this, Homer says of the wounded Agamemnon (Il 11.269-): “when the pain became like that of a woman in labor…” he leapt into his chariot and drove back to the ships. A pain that women have to go through, is too much for the leader of the Achaians? One of the major themes of the Great Day of Battle of books 11-17 is the eternal conundrum of warfare: how to find the very narrow middle between “not going far enough” (Il 11.1 – 14.135) and “going too far (Il 15.220 – 17.1, Patrocles’ aristeia). In the former part the Achaians clearly fail to go to the limit and they lose; young Patrocles goes beyond the limit and is killed. Hector has that very same problem.

Old soldiers never die. They know how to get out in time. The high-ranked have the eyebrow-raising option of “leaving your therapon to do the fighting", such as Idomeneus and Meriones, but it is also what Achilles does when he sends out Patrocles. This act, illustrated by Achilles’ prayer to Zeus (Il 16.233-48) “I stay home but I send my comrade out to battle…” is clearly wrong in a heroic society and it is the root of Achilles’ misery to come. All this does not diminish his status as a semi-divine hero but as a human act it is against the unwritten law of the polis.

But then what? We leave it to the young and inexperienced ones, like Menelaos and Antilochos(2). We also know how to get some shirkers to go into battle by promises of honor and loot and by appealing to their love for their comrades (Il 14.128-). As Nestor successfully does with Patrocles but Odysseus fails to do in book 9. But both will die and they die for our sins: they are scapegoat sacrifices. In this way they become healers. They give their lives (voluntarily even) because we do not want to do this. The fact that Patrocles is tricked into this, first by Nestor’s “sweet voice of heroism” and then by his seeing his comrades wounded, diminishes his sacrifice not at all. For, make no mistake, these two are the greatest of all because they die.

All this destroys Athena’s promise. What good are gifts when you are dead? Besides, in that light Agamemnon’s list of gifts takes on another very Homeric irony. Achilles is offered:

1. 7 tripods, 20 kettles, 10 talents of gold, 12 horses and 7 women.
2. When Troy has been sacked: a ship full of gold and bronze, plus 20 women.
3. When they reach home again: a royal daughter to marry, a dowry of 7 towns.

But Achilles already knows that he will never come home, he will die before they capture Troy. That leaves only the first part of the list which seems a bit meagre for such a hero’s life.

Incidentally, a remark made by dr. Elizabeth Vandiver in a TTC lecture alerted me to another parallel of the Paris judgement: Achilles is offered 1) lots of booty (->Athena), 2) Kingship over 7 towns (->Hera) and 3) Agamemnon’s daughter in marriage (->Aphrodite). He could have it all. Additionally, the names of the king’s daughters, viewed as significant names, are: Chrysothemis (“golden law”: she is on top, for her 'themis' is avery good arrangement. see Hera); Laodikē (“popular right” or “army right”: whoever wins is right and just. see Athena); Iphianassa (“rules by strength”: she is the least martial of gods, but she can sometimes be stronger than Zeus himself. see Aphrodite). This makes a nice image of the three most powerful goddesses.

Her keywords are “beauty” and “desire” (and sex of course) which at first sight means women (to men at least). Beauty, to the Greeks, is “what we desire”. This is the crux of the Paris myth: what prize can you offer this young aristocratic shepherd who is not the eldest son (he will never be king), has no chance of making a decent marriage and spends his time herding sheep or working in his father’s asphodel fields(3), so that he will come overseas with you and be a soldier in your army? Kingship? No, someone else already has that. Booty? When push comes to shove, not worth dying for. A woman...?

Paris did it first, he kidnapped the most beautiful woman in all of Hellas. So the Achaians have all the right to repay them by taking Trojan women. Homer’s heroes are quite explicit about this. Nestor (il 2.355-): “Let no one hurry home before having slept with some Trojan woman…”. Our poet does not like this one bit. He can accuse his countrymen of 'fighting women' as if they are women themselves. In male-heroic parlance it is of course not unusual to mock each other or the enemy as 'women' (e.g. Hector to Diomedes (Il 8.163): "γυναικὸς ἄρ' ἀντὶ τέτυξο", 'you're equal to a woman' with double meaning) but Homer can do this with an extra layer of meaning. the whole Chryseis-Briseis story is appealing to us: “what if they did this to you, listener?” and the woman to be raped, of course, is Andromache who is painted as the most lovable and loyal wife imaginable. Apollo and therefore the poet appear extremely angry about these goings-on; my suspicion is that it is a major driving force behind the Iliad.

Two major episodes, one in the Iliad and one in the Odyssey, present us with a further discussion of this topic: the episode where Diomedes chases Aphrodite off the battlefield (Il 5.330-) shouting 'εἶκε Διὸς θύγατερ πολέμου καὶ δηϊοτῆτος' (retreat, daughter of Zeus, from war and battle-strife). Zeus agrees with this (Il 5.428). If you let hunger for sex determine your choices in war, you are 'letting Aphrodite drive Ares' chariot' (Il 5.352-).
The other episode is the song of 'Ares and Aphrodite' in the Odyssey (Od 8.266-) which shows us in a humorous but no less serious way how sexual desire and war are inextricably bound together. This is no less true today.

The original version of the “abduction of Helen" must have had Paris taking Helen by force from Menelaos' home. Indeed the whole expedition against Troy would make no sense if that were not the case. If she went voluntarily, it would be a private matter between the two men to be settled properly by a duel between them. The fact that the poet describes Helen as falling in love with Paris (she falls for his beauty, Aphrodite's gift) indicates that Homer is rewriting the myth making it unusable as a charter myth (see here.

But the temptation of 'Woman' is hard to resist. History tells us that the link between going to war and grabbing women is very strong worldwide. In fact it has been shown that the whole Indo-European expansion of the third millennium BC is based on it so it is not strange to see that the Achaians have kept some of their forefathers’ traditions alive. How could they not if even Zeus is not immune to the lure of Aphrodite (il 14.159-)? All it takes is her girdle and the Father of Gods and Men, who knows right from wrong and who is supposed to be in control, is conquered by her power and then by Sleep. Iphianassa indeed! Her lure is so strong that the men will tolerate any suffering as long as there is a “Helen” at the end of it. Witness (od 4.219-) Helen’s “clever medicine” (4.227) that will make a man forget the most horrific scenes. This was given to her by Polydamna ('conquers all'), which could have been an epithet of Aphrodite.

This could be the original meaning and the purpose of the Paris-and-Helen myth. It is a charter-myth created (probably generations before Homer) for the political purpose of getting young superfluous men to join in the attempt to conquer “Troy” - this is a major hypothesis underlying my analysis of “what kind of poem” the Iliad is. Troy here means at least the two great and fertile flood plains of Western Anatolia, of the rivers Hermus and the Meander. Smyrna (and Colophon)’s eyes were on the Hermus plain (ref. the poet Mimnermos' writings), Miletus must have dreamed of conquering the Maeander plain where the Carians live(5). These are better lands than anywhere in mainland Greece. If Old Smyrna was Homer’s town, their “Troy” must have been the high and almost impregnable citadel of Sardis(6). This was the purpose of the Ionian Migration. Not an all-at-once army expedition led by an angry Neleus, but a slow ‘emigration policy’ to send men east with the aim of gradually building enough military power to conquer the rich river plains there(7). The powerful (Neleïd?) family who organized this, if successful, would have a very strong powerbase with which to (re)gain kingship of all of Hellas. This is speculation of course but it does make sense, especially since the family claims to be descended from Poseidon, the god who “has the sea” but “wants the land” and who had a base in Athens, through which much of the emigration flowed (Herodotus I 147). This role of Poseidon is completely compatible with the Iliadic Poseidon (and Nestor). Unfortunately for them, it failed. The locals, the Carians and what would later be called the Lydians, were simply too numerous and powerful to conquer(7). I would say that the Iliad probably dates from the time that this failure became clear. Emigration to Ionia had to be halted and redirected elsewhere.

There is no direct interaction between Achilles and Aphrodite. That does not mean that Achilles, like Paris, is not “choosing Beauty“. As Homer pictures it, Paris, wanting the most beautiful woman, received his wish because Aphrodite made him the most beautiful man. “Pretty boy Paris” wearing his panther skin to battle (il 3.17) is not a hero of the battlefield but rather of the dance floor. So there are two kinds of beauty: “to have” beauty and “to be“ beauty. Both heroes choose first the former and then receive the latter. Paris chooses Helen and the goddess makes him beautiful/desirable; Achilles first just wants Briseis but in the end he chooses a very different, very Greek, kind of beauty. Ultimately he becomes the most desirable of all the heroes due to the fact that he will be forever young, like an eternal bridegroom (Sappho 105b, 115) and ready to give his life for us. That is the beauty he chooses. It is not happiness though.

Homer is fully aware of this. He makes use of the not to be underestimated force of this picture to make a few adjustments: first of all, he lets Achilles stop at the critical moment, i.e. when he has just killed Hector (Il 22.376-). His first impulse is to go on and attack Troy itself, but immediately corrects himself: first bury the dead and sing a healing song. He knows how far to go, this time at least. Defeat the besiegers of your city and then stop; Troy is not to be had (yet). This makes him the hero of the counterattack, a defensive hero like Telamonian Aias. Secondly, he tries to convince the young man (and with that, all the young heroes in his audience) not to be so pitiless and hard-hearted and to let go of his hatred: that is the function of his meeting with Priam in book 24. Homer endeavors to do all this without any lecturing or preaching, just by the force of his images.

But whether the poet succeeded in these aims or not, the idea of Achilles as the most beautiful of heroes remained. Achilles chose this fate out of shame(4), and because there was nothing else, but that still does not diminish his sacrifice.

We have taken a look at the three divine gifts that may be offered to a man. Perhaps my description suggests that I see the gods as mere abstractions, personifications of psychological phenomena. This is not so. Homer takes the gods very seriously and is concerned to teach us about them. That he is often irreverent has to do with the very nature of the gods as being both more and less than humans. Much more about this here.

There is another point to be made about the gods: many heroes, most notably Heracles and Achilles, are “hemitheos”, half-gods. This must mean that they are driving powers, like the gods but nearer to us. That must be a reflection of the enormous sway they held over people, witness the offerings of votive gifts to the heroes that we see roundabout Homer’s time. The story of Patrocles, beyond its surface, suggests that “Achilles” is something like a spirit,a driving force, that can come over people, as symbolized by the ordinary person wearing Achilles’ armour. So in the Iliad, Patrocles is “the Achilles” just as in the Aethiopis, it is Antilochos. This, as I shall argue elsewhere, is why Achilles is like a snake: he may die but he just turns up elsewhere in a new skin.