11.487-537

"μὴ δή μοι θάνατόν γε παραύδα, φαίδιμ᾽ Ὀδυσσεῦ. 
βουλοίμην κ᾽ ἐπάρουρος ἐὼν θητευέμεν ἄλλῳ, 
ἀνδρὶ παρ᾽ ἀκλήρῳ, ᾧ μὴ βίοτος πολὺς εἴη, 
ἢ πᾶσιν νεκύεσσι καταφθιμένοισιν ἀνάσσειν."

"Don’t console me for being dead, shining Odysseus. 
I would rather follow a plow, a serf for another man, 
who is allotted no land and has little to live on, 
than to rule as king over all the wasted dead."

Odyssey 11.488–91

This is another man entirely than the one in the Iliad who chooses glory over a long life, who strives always to have the highest status, willing to let his fellow Greek warriors die in his absence rather than back down to Agamemnon. Now, he yearns for life at any cost. The Achilles of the Iliad values his τιμή, the honor given him by others that certifies his status among his peers, above all else. Now, he would gladly sink to the lowest rung on the social ladder, that of a day laborer working for a tenant farmer who owns no land. (A slave, though owned by another, is at least a part of a household.)

That Achilles would rather not be dead is hardly surprising—wouldn’t we all?—but the pointed rhetoric of his speech prompts further thought about the fit between a hero and the story he inhabits. Like the bitter reflections of Agamemnon, Achilles’s words here signal the dominant message of this katabasis, the superiority of Odysseus’s particular kind of heroism. He, not his former comrades, not even the great Achilles, is the hero this story needs. We are accustomed to describing famous characters in the Homeric epics as if their attitudes and behavior were consistent across both works: Achilles is always passionate in pursuit of what he thinks he deserves, regardless of the effects of his actions on himself and others; Odysseus exemplifies intelligent caution and self-restraint, in the service of manipulating others. But in fact, the portraits of both heroes in their respective poems reflect the interplay of those traits with the dominant rhetoric of each epic. The form of the story influences how characters, even the most famous ones, behave in it.

Achilles in the underworld reflects this interplay, valorizing with his speech the dominant values of the poem. Likewise, the version of Odysseus we find in the Iliad is not the man we’ve been prompted to admire in the Odyssey as he plots his homecoming. He is noted for his speech-making (Il.3.204-24) and takes part in a secret night raid in Book 10, but elsewhere he is honored for the same martial qualities as his fellow warriors. Faced with the prospect of imminent death at the hands of the Trojans, he ponders:

"ὤ μοι ἐγὼ τί πάθω; μέγα μὲν κακὸν αἴ κε φέβωμαι 
πληθὺν ταρβήσας: τὸ δὲ ῥίγιον αἴ κεν ἁλώω 
μοῦνος: τοὺς δ᾽ ἄλλους Δαναοὺς ἐφόβησε Κρονίων. 
ἀλλὰ τί ἤ μοι ταῦτα φίλος διελέξατο θυμός; 
οἶδα γὰρ ὅττι κακοὶ μὲν ἀποίχονται πολέμοιο, 
ὃς δέ κ᾽ ἀριστεύῃσι μάχῃ ἔνι τὸν δὲ μάλα χρεὼ. 
ἑστάμεναι κρατερῶς, ἤ τ᾽ ἔβλητ᾽ ἤ τ᾽ ἔβαλ᾽ ἄλλον."

"Alas, what will happen to me? A great evil if I should flee 
in fear of the enemy throng; but worse still if I am taken 
alone. The son of Kronos has routed the rest of the Danaans. 
But why does my heart within me debate these things? 
For I know that cowards run from the fighting, 
but he who would win honor in battle must 
stand his ground strongly, whether he be struck or strike down another."

Iliad 11.404–11

This monologue is one of four in the Iliad that follow the same basic pattern (see also Il. 17.91–105; 21.553–570; 22.99–130). A soldier faces the prospect of imminent death on the battlefield at the hands of the Trojans. He pauses to weigh his options: Should he run and live to fight another day, or stand and fight, preferring an honorable death to the shame of being branded a coward? The common language in all four speeches is the opening exclamation, ὤ μοι ἐγὼ(ν), and the phrase ἀλλὰ τί ἤ μοι ταῦτα φίλος διελέξατο θυμός, when the speaker breaks off his rumination and resolves to either run or stand firm. The most famous by far of the four is the last, Hector’s monologue before the walls of Troy, as Achilles bears down on him relentlessly across the plain. Those anguished reflections could be taken as a supreme example of the warrior’s code in the Iliad, as far from the cautious calculations of Odysseus in the Odyssey as can be imagined.

Like Agamemnon, Achilles turns away from painful reflection about his powerlessness by asking about his son and father, both emblems of his masculine power. Their survival guarantees the continuation of his kleos. Thinking about Peleus leads him, however, to dark thoughts about his father’s own possible powerlessness before the attacks of his enemies. Is the old man still honored in Thessaly, or is he suffering because his son is not there to protect him? These gloomy thoughts recall verses from Achilles’s great speech to Priam in Iliad 24:

"ὣς μὲν καὶ Πηλῆϊ θεοὶ δόσαν ἀγλαὰ δῶρα 
ἐκ γενετῆς: πάντας γὰρ ἐπ᾽ ἀνθρώπους ἐκέκαστο 
ὄλβῳ τε πλούτῳ τε, ἄνασσε δὲ Μυρμιδόνεσσι, 
καί οἱ θνητῷ ἐόντι θεὰν ποίησαν ἄκοιτιν. 
ἀλλ᾽ ἐπὶ καὶ τῷ θῆκε θεὸς κακόν, ὅττί οἱ οὔ τι 
παίδων ἐν μεγάροισι γονὴ γένετο κρειόντων, 
ἀλλ᾽ ἕνα παῖδα τέκεν παναώριον: οὐδέ νυ τόν γε 
γηράσκοντα κομίζω, ἐπεὶ μάλα τηλόθι πάτρης 
ἧμαι ἐνὶ Τροίῃ, σέ τε κήδων ἠδὲ σὰ τέκνα."

"So the gods gave splendid gifts also to Peleus 
from his birth, for he stood out among all men 
in wealth and good fortune, and ruled over the Myrmidons, 
and the gods gave him a divine wife, though was mortal. 
But they also put evil upon him, because no 
generation of strong children was born to him in his halls, 
only one child, doomed to an untimely death. And I do not 
care for him as he grows old, since far away from my fatherland 
I sit in Troy, troubling you and your children."

Iliad 24.534–42

In the Iliad, Achilles’s concern for Peleus is evidence of his movement toward accepting his own mortality, the goal he must reach to be made whole on the poem’s terms. He has been led to thinking about his father by Priam, who urges him to see the parallels between himself and Peleus, two old men who have lost the protection of their sons, and thus show compassion toward him. The context in the Odyssey is different. Achilles’s worry is part of his sorrow over losing his own power, and compassion for others carries little weight in his lament.

Odysseus has no news of Peleus but delivers a lengthy encomium to Achilles’s son Neoptolemus. Handsome, brave, and a ruthlessly effective killer of Trojans, he was the best speaker among the Greeks after Nestor and Odysseus himself. The praise ends with an anecdote about the Trojan horse, as Odysseus recalls how Neoptolemus agitated to be released from the horse’s belly, so he could kill more Trojans. What goes unsaid is that the success of that gambit depended on Odysseus restraining Neoptolemus’s impetuous urges. There, as everywhere in the Odyssey, self-control is the key to victory, not unrestrained emotion. Odysseus, not Achilles.

Further Reading

Clay, J. 1983. The Wrath of Athena: Gods and Men in the Odyssey, 96–112. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Edwards, A.T. 1985. Achilles in the Odyssey. Beitrage zur klassischen Philologie 171.

Pache, C.O. 2000. “War Games: Odysseus at Troy.” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 100, 15–23.