24.372–404

As we have seen, when Homer lingers over a journey, we have something to learn. Priam is drawn to the beautiful young stranger, calling him φίλον τέκος (373) in response to his φίλῳ δέ σε πατρὶ ἐΐσκω (371). After Hermes takes his hand, the king imagines that “some god must be holding his hand over me” (374), and assumes that the young man must the son of μακάρων … τοκήων (cf. μάκαρες θεοὶ, 99). The irony and light tone here and throughout the encounter are characteristic of the many encounters between deities and unknowing mortals in the Odyssey, where chance meetings with mysterious helpers are frequent.

The charming atmosphere continues as Hermes pretends not to know the reason for Priam’s mission, then lavishes praise on Hector. Priam presses for more information: since you speak so kindly of my son, who are your parents? The god deflects with some teasing (390): “Testing me, are you, old man?” He has seen Hector in action, driving toward the seashore, killing Greeks. “We stood there, amazed” (394). Slowly, he slips in more clues: he is Greek, one of Achilles’s Myrmidons, the son of Polyktor (“rich man”) a wealthy man like Priam, the youngest of seven sons who lost the sibling lottery and had to come to Troy. The emerging parallels suggest a series of syllogisms:

Polyktor : young stranger :: Priam : Hector.

Polyktor (mortal father) : Hermes (god) :: Priam (mortal father) : Achilles (god?).

We are heading toward the most important iteration:

Polyktor (mortal father) : Hermes (god) :: Peleus (mortal father) : Achilles (god? mortal?)

These parallel relationships reflect Homer’s practice of using repeated structures to build meaning through accretion. The encounter on the plain summons a certain music—to use the analogy we invoked in the Introduction (p.1)—and we need to listen carefully as the poet draws together the major motifs of his story. For the full impact of the composition, we return to its beginnings.

The bond between parents and children frames the Iliad: beginning with Chryses and his daughter in the poem’s opening scene and ending with two fathers and their short-lived sons, beginning with the failed ransom of one child, ending with the successful ransom of another. In between, the bond appears as part of the ongoing negotiation between mortality and immortality, with Zeus declining to prevent Sarpedon’s death by contravening fate in Book 16 and Thetis acquiescing to Achilles’s mortality in Book 24. Both divine parents lament the coming death of the children they have created with mortal partners; both finally agree to let go. In each case, the poet focuses on the decision, making it the vehicle for exploring issues central to the poem’s meaning.

The death of Zeus’s son by a mortal woman, Sarpedon, at the hands of Patroclus in Book 16 (426–507) shows the poet’s careful planning. The Trojan ally has appeared earlier in Book 12 delivering a striking reflection on the nature of Homeric heroism. Pausing there in the midst of a furious battle, Sarpedon speaks to his friend Glaucus, pondering why it is that certain warriors are honored as heroes, given the best meat and wine at the banquet, awarded choice land for their estates, and looked upon like gods. They are honored because they fight in the front of the battlelines and—perhaps even more importantly, they are seen to do so by others (Iliad 12.318–21). They have glory because they are seen doing glorious things. So far, so good. But now Sarpedon arrives at the crucial point:

ὦ πέπον εἰ μὲν γὰρ πόλεμον περὶ τόνδε φυγόντε
αἰεὶ ὴ μέλλοιμεν ἀγήρω τ᾽ ἀθανάτω τε
ἔσσεσθ᾽, οὔτέ κεν αὐτὸς ἐνὶ πρώτοισι μαχοίμην
οὔτέ κε σὲ στέλλοιμι μάχην ἐς κυδιάνειραν:
νῦν δ᾽ ἔμπης γὰρ κῆρες ἐφεστᾶσιν θανάτοιο
μυρίαι, ἃς οὐκ ἔστι φυγεῖν βροτὸν οὐδ᾽ ὑπαλύξαι,
ἴομεν ἠέ τῳ εὖχος ὀρέξομεν ἠέ τις ἡμῖν.

Friend, supposing that we, fleeing this battle,
would be able to live forever, ageless and immortal,
then neither would I myself fight in the front ranks,
nor would I urge you toward the battle where men win glory.
Now, since the spirits of death stand all around us
in their multitudes, which it is not given to flee or avoid,
let us go and strive for glory or yield it to others.

Iliad 12.322–28

Here is the key to understanding why Homer’s heroes fight on, even in the face of certain death. The Iliad has no firm concept of an afterlife, so the glory that warriors win is the only part of them that survives death. If, Sarpedon says, we were immortal, with no limits on our actions, he would not fight. Why bother? Turning the thought around, we encounter the reason that mortals are the significant moral agents in the story, not the gods, for whom nothing matters. The carefree life of the gods is held up in the poem as the ultimate goal that humans strive for, but that existence is finally meaningless and morally trivial. Only the fact of mortality requires us to have virtues.

By putting such an important set of reflections in his mouth, the poet is building up Sarpedon in our minds as a prominent figure. (One problem for the poet creating a long battle narrative is providing his heroes with victims worthy of their prowess without killing off prominent warriors in the story.) At the same time, he establishes some telling associations he will exploit going forward, beginning with Patroclus’s last day of battle in Book 16. Zeus knows Sarpedon is fated to die at Patroclus’s hands and ponders whether he should intervene and save his son. The cosmic implications of this choice seem large: can the gods change fate? But the poet is not interested in exploring metaphysical subtleties here. His reasons are artistic, and we can understand the poet’s aims in creating this interlude if we consider it in the larger context of the poem’s meditation on the relationship of parents and children. Zeus, like Apollo’s priest Chryses in Book 1, is trying to protect his child. He seems in the immediate context of the battle to have failed, since Sarpedon dies on the battlefield. But viewed from another perspective, we can say that by allowing Sarpedon’s life to end, Zeus allows him to fulfill his true nature as a mortal, which is exactly what Thetis does for Achilles, however reluctantly. This small episode points fleetingly in the direction that the entire poem has been headed since its first verses, the affirmation of the need for humility, the knowledge of who we are and where fit in the larger order of the universe as the first step toward becoming a fully realized human being. The deep implications of its conclusions remain to be worked out in the final scenes.

Further Reading

Edwards, M. 1987. Homer: Poet of the Iliad, 306–308. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press.