ὣς ἔφατο κλαίουσʼ, ἐπὶ δὲ στενάχοντο γυναῖκες.
τῇσιν δʼ αὖθʼ Ἑκάβη ἁδινοῦ ἐξῆρχε γόοιο·
"Ἕκτορ ἐμῷ θυμῷ πάντων πολὺ φίλτατε παίδων,
ἦ μέν μοι ζωός περ ἐὼν φίλος ἦσθα θεοῖσιν·
οἳ δʼ ἄρα σεῦ κήδοντο καὶ ἐν θανάτοιό περ αἴσῃ.750
ἄλλους μὲν γὰρ παῖδας ἐμοὺς πόδας ὠκὺς Ἀχιλλεὺς
πέρνασχʼ ὅν τινʼ ἕλεσκε πέρην ἁλὸς ἀτρυγέτοιο,
ἐς Σάμον ἔς τʼ Ἴμβρον καὶ Λῆμνον ἀμιχθαλόεσσαν·
σεῦ δʼ ἐπεὶ ἐξέλετο ψυχὴν ταναήκεϊ χαλκῷ,
πολλὰ ῥυστάζεσκεν ἑοῦ περὶ σῆμʼ ἑτάροιο755
Πατρόκλου, τὸν ἔπεφνες· ἀνέστησεν δέ μιν οὐδʼ ὧς.
νῦν δέ μοι ἑρσήεις καὶ πρόσφατος ἐν μεγάροισι
κεῖσαι, τῷ ἴκελος ὅν τʼ ἀργυρότοξος Ἀπόλλων
οἷς ἀγανοῖσι βέλεσσιν ἐποιχόμενος κατέπεφνεν."
ὣς ἔφατο κλαίουσα, γόον δʼ ἀλίαστον ὄρινε.760
τῇσι δʼ ἔπειθʼ Ἑλένη τριτάτη ἐξῆρχε γόοιο·
"Ἕκτορ ἐμῷ θυμῷ δαέρων πολὺ φίλτατε πάντων,
ἦ μέν μοι πόσις ἐστὶν Ἀλέξανδρος θεοειδής,
ὅς μʼ ἄγαγε Τροίηνδʼ· ὡς πρὶν ὤφελλον ὀλέσθαι.
ἤδη γὰρ νῦν μοι τόδε εἰκοστὸν ἔτος ἐστὶν765
ἐξ οὗ κεῖθεν ἔβην καὶ ἐμῆς ἀπελήλυθα πάτρης·
ἀλλʼ οὔ πω σεῦ ἄκουσα κακὸν ἔπος οὐδʼ ἀσύφηλον·
ἀλλʼ εἴ τίς με καὶ ἄλλος ἐνὶ μεγάροισιν ἐνίπτοι
δαέρων ἢ γαλόων ἢ εἰνατέρων εὐπέπλων,
ἢ ἑκυρή, ἑκυρὸς δὲ πατὴρ ὣς ἤπιος αἰεί,770
ἀλλὰ σὺ τὸν ἐπέεσσι παραιφάμενος κατέρυκες
σῇ τʼ ἀγανοφροσύνῃ καὶ σοῖς ἀγανοῖς ἐπέεσσι.
τὼ σέ θʼ ἅμα κλαίω καὶ ἔμʼ ἄμμορον ἀχνυμένη κῆρ·
οὐ γάρ τίς μοι ἔτʼ ἄλλος ἐνὶ Τροίῃ εὐρείῃ
ἤπιος οὐδὲ φίλος, πάντες δέ με πεφρίκασιν."775
notes
Hector and his family embody the great civilization of Troy on the brink of extinction.
read full essay
Hector is dead, Andromache soon to be enslaved, Astyanax about to be flung to his death from the city walls, but Priam has at least brought his son’s body back home. Seen through the lens of the katabasis myth, he has completed the archetypal heroic mission, traveling to the land of the dead and returning with precious gifts. We will now hear once more from two women, each powerful in her own way, both vivid figures created with a few telling verses.
Hecuba’s lament is more measured than her passionate outburst in Book 22 (431–36) but animated by her fierce pride in the greatest of her sons and enduring hatred of Achilles, whose liver she would have gladly eaten (24.212–13). There is, in her final words, a grim satisfaction:
ἀνέστησεν δέ μιν οὐδ᾽ ὧς.
νῦν δέ μοι ἑρσήεις καὶ πρόσφατος ἐν μεγάροισι
κεῖσαι, τῷ ἴκελος ὅν τ᾽ ἀργυρότοξος Ἀπόλλων
οἷς ἀγανοῖσι βέλεσσιν ἐποιχόμενος κατέπεφνεν.
He [Achilles] did not raise him up that way.
And now you lie fresh with dew and unharmed
in the halls, like one whom silver-bowed Apollo
has killed, attacking with his gentle arrows.
Iliad 24.756–59
No amount of violence will bring Patroclus back, and try as he might, Achilles could not disfigure her son, whom the gods loved and protected.
Helen gets the last word. Her lament completes a masterful portrait, created with relatively few verses. She enters the poem as a notorious adulteress, whose actions brought ruin to an entire civilization. And yet the power of her beauty can override the resentment it generates. We first meet her when a group of old codgers catches sight of making her way toward the city walls to meet Priam:
οἳ δ᾽ ὡς οὖν εἴδονθ᾽ Ἑλένην ἐπὶ πύργον ἰοῦσαν,
ἦκα πρὸς ἀλλήλους ἔπεα πτερόεντ᾽ ἀγόρευον:
‘οὐ νέμεσις Τρῶας καὶ ἐϋκνήμιδας Ἀχαιοὺς
τοιῇδ᾽ ἀμφὶ γυναικὶ πολὺν χρόνον ἄλγεα πάσχειν:
αἰνῶς ἀθανάτῃσι θεῇς εἰς ὦπα ἔοικεν:
ἀλλὰ καὶ ὧς τοίη περ ἐοῦσ᾽ ἐν νηυσὶ νεέσθω,
μηδ᾽ ἡμῖν τεκέεσσί τ᾽ ὀπίσσω πῆμα λίποιτο.
These men, when they saw Helen coming along the wall,
softly spoke winged words to one another:
“Surely one cannot not blame the Trojans and well-greaved Achaeans
for suffering pains for so long over a woman like this:
in the beauty of her face, she seems like the immortal gods;
but even if she is such, let her go back on the ships,
lest she be left behind, a grief to us and our children hereafter.
Iliad 3.156–60
We might expect such a woman to be selfish and vain. Instead, from her first appearance on the walls, she is filled with remorse and self-loathing, regretting her rashness twenty years before, treating Paris with coolness, even contempt. When Aphrodite, thinly disguised as an old woman, comes to lead her to Paris in their bedroom, Helen recognizes the goddess and delivers a startling reply:
δαιμονίη, τί με ταῦτα λιλαίεαι ἠπεροπεύειν;
ἦ πῄ με προτέρω πολίων εὖ ναιομενάων
ἄξεις, ἢ Φρυγίης ἢ Μῃονίης ἐρατεινῆς,
εἴ τίς τοι καὶ κεῖθι φίλος μερόπων ἀνθρώπων:
οὕνεκα δὴ νῦν δῖον Ἀλέξανδρον Μενέλαος
νικήσας ἐθέλει στυγερὴν ἐμὲ οἴκαδ᾽ ἄγεσθαι,
τοὔνεκα δὴ νῦν δεῦρο δολοφρονέουσα παρέστης;
ἧσο παρ᾽ αὐτὸν ἰοῦσα, θεῶν δ᾽ ἀπόεικε κελεύθου,
μηδ᾽ ἔτι σοῖσι πόδεσσιν ὑποστρέψειας Ὄλυμπον,
ἀλλ᾽ αἰεὶ περὶ κεῖνον ὀΐζυε καί ἑ φύλασσε,
εἰς ὅ κέ σ᾽ ἢ ἄλοχον ποιήσεται ἢ ὅ γε δούλην.
κεῖσε δ᾽ ἐγὼν οὐκ εἶμι: νεμεσσητὸν δέ κεν εἴη:
κείνου πορσανέουσα λέχος: Τρῳαὶ δέ μ᾽ ὀπίσσω
πᾶσαι μωμήσονται: ἔχω δ᾽ ἄχε᾽ ἄκριτα θυμῷ.
Strange goddess, why do wish to deceive me?
Will you lead me further on to some one of the well-settled
cities, either in Phrygia or lovely Maeonia,
if some mortal man there is also dear to you?
Is it because Menelaus has now beaten brilliant Alexandros
and wishes to lead me, hateful though I am, to his home,
that you now stand close to me, weaving treachery?
Go sit beside him yourself, forsaking the ways of the gods,
and turn your feet away from the path of Olympus,
always worrying about him and guarding him,
until he makes you his wife or his slave girl.
I will not go there! It would be hateful to me,
serving his bed. The women of Troy will all
scorn me, and I have countless sorrows in my heart.
Iliad 3.399–412
No other mortal in the poem talks to a god this way. There is in these bitterly sarcastic words a degree of recklessness but also self-reflection, an awareness of the consequences of her actions that is entirely missing from her feckless paramour. We might be tempted to see these words as part of an interior dialogue that Helen is having with the part of herself that Aphrodite embodies, but the vividness of both characters makes it hard to dismiss the exchange as symbolic. The encounter with Hector in Book 6 reinforces these first impressions: here is mature woman who has learned from others’ suffering and her own. Much like Hector, we might say. It seems fitting that we see him now through her eyes, a counterpoint to the celebration by Andromache and Hecuba of his fierce warrior spirit, not ruthless but gentle.
749 μοι: dative of feeling (ethical dative) (Smyth 1486).
752 πέρνασχ᾽ “would sell into slavery,” = πέρνασκε, third singular iterative imperfect active from πέρνημι. We know from Homer of at least one son of Hecabe, Lycaon, whom Achilles sold into slavery in Lemnos (Iliad 21.40).
752 ὅν τιν᾽ ἕλεσκε “whomever he would seize,” in apposition to ἄλλους παῖδας ἐμοὺς.
754 ἐξέλετο “he took (accusative) away from (genitive),” the genitive, σεῦ, is a genitive of separation, or "ablatival genitive." See Monro 152. Verbs compounded with ἐξ, ἀπό and the like are often construed with this kind of genitive. See Cunliffe, especially sense 3a under ἐξαιρέω, Monro 152 note, and Smyth 1392.
755 πολλά: the initial ρ- of the following word permits the final -α to have the metrical value of a long syllable. This example is unusual because lengthening of this kind is usually confined to the syllable at the start of a foot. There are three other examples of lengthening at the end of a foot in the Iliad, and all of them affect πολλά at the beginning of a line (Monro 371).
755 ῥυστάζεσκεν: third singular iterative imperfect active from ῥυστάζω. Supply an object such as σε. Notice the lack of a conjunction between lines 754 and 755, an example of asyndeton (Smyth 2165).
756 ἀνέστησεν “raised (accusative) up,” causal from ἵστημι.
757 μοι: dative of feeling (ethical dative) (Smyth 1486).
758 τῷ: = τινί (indefinite).
758 ἴκελος: the final syllable scans long, as sometimes occurs at the start of a foot (= "in arsis"), usually before a pause. In half of the examples found in Homer, this lengthening occurs (as here) before the third-foot caesura (Monro 375).
762 δαέρων: in line 769 the same form falls at the start of the line, so the first two vowels are scanned long by synezesis (Monro 378). Here, occupying the latter half of the third foot, the first two vowels may scan as two shorts or one long (so Richardson, 1993). Beekes (2009), along with Cunliffe, assumes that in both places the form scans as a spondee.
763 μοι: a dative serving almost as a possessive adjective (Monro 143.1).
764 πρίν “first,” “before then,” adverbial.
764 ὤφελλον “I should have . . . ,” “if only I had . . ." Just as in standard Attic (Smyth 1781), past tenses of ὀφέλλω (Attic ὀφείλω) with an infinitive express "a wish that something had been the case" (so Cunliffe sense 3 under ὀφέλλω 1). The line is nearly identical to 7.390 where the Trojan herald Idaeus laments that Alexander (Paris) did not die before bringing Menelaus' treasure to Troy.
765 εἰκοστὸν ἔτος: The events of the Iliad fall in the tenth year of the war. Some scholiasts and commentators have suggested that Helen includes the time required to assemble the Greek forces. Richardson (1993) argues that she means simply "a very long time."
766 ἐξ οὗ “since.”
766 ἀπελήλυθα: first singular perfect active indicative from ἀπέρχομαι, with genitive (governed by the ἀπ(ό)– prefix in ἀπελήλυθα).
767 σεῦ “from you,” the genitive with verbs of hearing may express the person from whom the sound comes (Monro 151(d)(1)), a type of ablatival (separative) genitive (Smyth 1411), that falls under the "quasi-partitive" heading in Monro's classification.
768 εἴ τίς . . . ἐνίπτοι . . . κατέρυκες . . . “whenever anyone should reproach … you would restrain . . . ” The use of εἰ with the optative to express "whenever" is found only here in Homer (Monro 311). The form is that of the past general condition common in later Greek (Smyth 2295.2).
769 δαέρων ἢ γαλόων ἢ εἰνατέρων εὐπέπλων: partitive genitives with τίς ἄλλος (line 768).
770 ἑκυρὸς . . . αἰεί: this is a parenthetical remark.
772 τόν “him,” “that person,” referring to τίς (τις) in line 768.
773 ἔμ᾽: ἔμε, “myself.”
775 με πεφρίκασιν “shudder at me,” third plural perfect active indicative from φρίσσω (LSJ φρίσσω II.2). The verb is used for feeling a chill, of feeling one’s hair stand up on end, of getting goosebumps. For the perfect translated as a present, see Smyth 1947a.