24.746–775

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.