(from: The contest of Homer and Hesiod)
Ὑιὲ Μέλητος, Ὅμηρε, θεῶν ἄπο μήδεα εἰδώς,
εἴπ᾽ ἄγε μοι πάμπρωτα, τί φέρτατόν ἐστι βροτοΐσιν;
Ἀρχὴν μὲν μὴ φῦναι ἐπιχθονίοισιν ἄριστον,
φύντα δ᾽ ὅπως ὤκιστα πύλας Ἀίδαο περῆσαι.
"Homer, son of Meles, knowing the gods' counsels,
tell me first, what is best for mortal men?"
"First of all, not to be born is best.
Being born, to die as soon as possible."
This is the kind of black irony that is characteristic of Homer. It is unknown if the actual Homer had anything to do with this anecdote but it surely fits. Achilles, the most beautiful of men, says he wishes he was never born: "I wish Peleus had taken a mortal wife" (Il 18.87), "Let me die now" (Il 18.97), speaking to his mother after Patrocles' death. They are the climax of Achilles' learning-by-pathos experience. It brings to mind a famous line by the Spartan poet Tyrtaios (fr. 8):
ἰθὺς δ᾽ ἐς προμάχους ἀσπίδ᾽ ἀνὴρ ἐχέτω,
ἐχθρὰν μὲν ψυχὴν θέμενος, θανάτου δὲ μελαίνας
κῆρας ὁμῶς αὐγαῖς ἠελίοιο φίλας.
Let a man hold straight his shield, fighting in front,
thinking life hateful and loving black death
as much as the light of the sun .
Modern commentators find this line rather shocking and unimaginable. Fortunately Homer is able to explain it to us:
it is
shame (aidōs, a broader concept than shame alone) that brings us in this position. Better dead than a
coward.
The ancient Greeks had a word
'philozoös' meaning 'loving life' but it also means 'cowardly'. In our western world, shame is out of fashion but
for them, aidos was a force
stronger than the will to live. It had to be because from Sparta to Athens, their whole city-state constitution,
their whole existence, was based on it. A polis is basically a 'seated' army and it must be a functioning army to
survive. Not force or patronage or wealth to buy mercenaries but shame made the polis and freedom under the
rule of
Zeus possible.
See e.g. Il 5.528-,
Homer brings it in yet another ironical way: Achilles' shield. Normally, armor is designed to be impressive and to scare the opponent. The horsehair plume is an example of that, or the monsters like snakes or Gorgon's heads depicted on other shields. So Achilles' shield has the most scary thing of all: the whole world in all its glory and human life itself with all its good and bad. No wonder Achilles is the only one who dares to look at it (Il 19.14) and it drives him to even greater fury.
So how does one get to be Achilles? The strongest, bravest, youngest, most beautiful of the warriors. The fastest runner, largest spear, most god-like and noble son of a goddess, the epitome of Greek heroism. Outside of Homer, he had impenetrable armour, or even skin(1), but Homer takes that away from him. Two warriors are killed wearing Achilles' armour showing us clearly that no armour can completely protect us from death. Moreover, invulnerability like that clashes with the theme of Thetis' prophecy and his own knowledge of his death. He cannot be immortal and he knows it - at least after Patrocles' death. Why is he so beautiful? To see this we must look first at the real-world Achilles, Patrocles.
Good-natured young man, a therapon (we would say follower) of Achilles. In Homeric parlance this means
that he worships and obeys Achilles, as if A. were a god (well, he is a half-god...)(2).
We can say that at
some level, he fancies himself an Achilles; the poet conveys this to us by letting him go to battle in his heroes'
armour. For Homer, "Achilles" seems to be a kind of spirit that can take over people, making them fight without thinking of their own death. At first Patrocles does not take part in the fighting because Achilles will not have it. His "spirit" is not yet in him, you might say. Only when he sees and pities the dead and wounded and when he hears the heroic tales of Nestor, the right spirit possesses him. The
target of this imagery is an ordinary angry young man, not the brightest star in the sky, longing for battle and glory but now
angry, refusing to take part (there is no formal law obliging him to) because he is not getting
the honour he thinks he deserves, having all the reasons Achilles brings forward in the embassy in book 9. See Il
9.307-. We must realize that the person
the Iliad is aimed at, the listener, is a Patrocles: everything Achilles knows and learns, you, Πάτροκλε,
must learn and not forget, like a certain Elpenor ("Hopeful", Od 11.51-).
So he goes on a rampage like he imagines Achilles would do, thereby saving the Achaians from destruction and almost pushing the enemy back completely. This he does and it makes him the best of men. But of course he goes too far and forgets that he is not a god, and dies.
At the same time Patrocles is the comrade who dies because you were not there to help him which is the
reason for your shame and your hatred for his killer. Your only remedy is now to take a just revenge on
Hector, the murderer of your very best friend. But...
Homer is trying to tell us something here: Achilles is clearly wrong blaming it all on Hector. This has to do with the narrow view of justice as revenge. A more honest view would tell Achilles that there were many people who did Patrocles wrong, Achilles himself included. But fear of the deadly disease 'shame' probably prevents him from admitting this.
16.83 πείθεο δ' ὥς τοι ἐγὼ μύθου τέλος ἐν φρεσὶ θείω,
ὡς ἄν μοι τιμὴν μεγάλην καὶ κῦδος ἄρηαι
πρὸς πάντων Δαναῶν, ἀτὰρ οἳ περικαλλέα κούρην
ἂψ ἀπονάσσωσιν, ποτὶ δ' ἀγλαὰ δῶρα πόρωσιν.
16.87 ἐκ νηῶν ἐλάσας ἰέναι πάλιν: εἰ δέ κεν αὖ τοι
δώῃ κῦδος ἀρέσθαι ἐρίγδουπος πόσις Ἥρης,
μὴ σύ γ' ἄνευθεν ἐμεῖο λιλαίεσθαι πολεμίζειν
Τρωσὶ φιλοπτολέμοισιν: ἀτιμότερον δέ με θήσεις:
16.91 μὴ δ' ἐπαγαλλόμενος πολέμῳ καὶ δηϊοτῆτι
Τρῶας ἐναιρόμενος προτὶ Ἴλιον ἡγεμονεύειν,
μή τις ἀπ' Οὐλύμποιο θεῶν αἰειγενετάων
ἐμβήῃ: μάλα τούς γε φιλεῖ ἑκάεργος Ἀπόλλων:
ἀλλὰ πάλιν τρωπᾶσθαι, ἐπὴν φάος ἐν νήεσσι
θήῃς, τοὺς δ' ἔτ' ἐᾶν πεδίον κάτα δηριάασθαι.
16.83 Bring to fulfillment what I now order you to do, so that you may win me great honor from all the Danaans, and that they may restore the girl to me again and give me rich gifts into the bargain.
16.87 When you have driven the Trojans from the ships, come back again. Though Hera's thundering husband should put triumph within your reach, do not fight the Trojans further in my absence, or you will make me dishonourable.
16.91 And do not for lust of battle go on killing the Trojans nor lead the Achaians on to Ilion, lest one of the ever-living gods from Olympus attack you - for Phoebus Apollo loves them well: return when you have freed the ships from peril, and let others wage war upon the plain.
Here Patrocles (=Achilles) is defined as a defensive hero, "chase the Trojans away and then return. Do not go waging war on the plain." This is also what Achilles himself does after killing Hector. In the Aethiopis Achilles gets himself killed by going after Troy itself in his rage following Antilochos' death.
In the translation on this website it says (16.90): 'you will rob me of glory that should be mine'. My translation is more like what he actually says; it is also what happened: Achilles, being partly to blame for Patrocles' death, feels he lost his honour and therefore shame.