24.93–119

It might seem unnecessary for a goddess, even a minor one, to cover herself when among fellow immortals, but Thetis has other reasons to be reticent in this case. She is, as she says, “ashamed” (αἰδέομαι, 90) to mingle with the gods, because she is full of sorrow. The Olympians are “blessed forever,” μάκαρες θεοὶ αἰὲν ἐόντες (99) and do not like their merriment disturbed. The cruelty inherent in their priorities is clear at the end of Book 1, when a spat breaks out between Zeus and Hera. Hephaestus offers comic relief by limping around, inviting the other gods to laugh at him, and they oblige (1.599-600). The full import of the fishing simile becomes clear now: Iris delivers death to Thetis, who brings it with her to Olympus.

We know that Zeus’s immediate goal is to get Achilles to agree to return Hector’s corpse to Priam and accept ransom for it. Thetis is Zeus’s liaison to Achilles, so he begins with her, but only after a curiously polite little welcoming ceremony. As in the detailed description of Iris’s underwater journey, so here we should pay careful attention to these gestures:

ἣ δ᾽ ἄρα πὰρ Διὶ πατρὶ καθέζετο, εἶξε δ᾽ Ἀθήνη.
Ἥρη δὲ χρύσεον καλὸν δέπας ἐν χερὶ θῆκε
καί ῥ᾽ εὔφρην᾽ ἐπέεσσι: Θέτις δ᾽ ὤρεξε πιοῦσα

She sat beside father Zeus, and Athena made way for her.
Hera put a beautiful golden cup in her hand
and spoke comforting words to her; Thetis took the cup and drank.

Iliad 24.100-2

The offer of a seat and a drink to someone who is mourning the loss of a loved one is part of a ritual of consolation that appears in the earliest strata of Near Eastern myth and extends into the literary traditions long after Homeric epic (e.g., Homeric Hymn to Demeter, 180–211). Accepting the seat and drink signals acceptance of the loss and the beginning of healing. We have seen that both Gilgamesh and Achilles respond to the death of a loved one by pulling away from ordinary participation in human life and trying to keep the dead with them somehow. Gilgamesh leaves the city and roams the wilderness in animal skins, mimicking his lost friend Enkidu. Achilles foreswears food, sleep, and sex while refusing to let the body of Patroclus be buried.

Thetis is the target of consolation here, so we wonder what loss she is grieving, since Achilles is still very much alive. But Thetis has already predicted that his life will be “short and bitter” (ὠκύμορος καὶ ὀϊζυρὸς) in her first appearance in the poem (1.417–18), and when she returns after Patroclus’s death to console her son, the prophecy is more specific:

ὠκύμορος δή μοι τέκος ἔσσεαι, οἷ᾽ ἀγορεύεις:
αὐτίκα γάρ τοι ἔπειτα μεθ᾽ Ἕκτορα πότμος ἑτοῖμος.

Then you will be short-lived, my child, for what you are saying,
since your death must come soon after Hector’s.

Iliad 18.95-96

This will turn out to be a proleptic consolation, for a death that is sure to come soon. And why is it necessary now if Thetis has known for some time? As we will see, consoling Thetis is a part of a larger process, which has been unfolding throughout the poem, affirmed and reaffirmed through various characters and situations. Thetis must accept that her son is mortal because the inevitability of human mortality is the bedrock truth that the Iliad offers to us, from which follow all the moral and ethical quandaries it addresses. Achilles has always been the primary vehicle in the poem for this truth, but when his actions prompt the gods to invest in the outcome of his story, the scope of its resolution spreads to the entire cosmos. The movement that begins with Thetis’s consolation will sweep us forward to the poem’s final, hauntingly tranquil banquet, δώμασιν ἐν Πριάμοιο διοτρεφέος βασιλῆος, “in the halls of Priam, the king nourished by Zeus” (24.803).

Zeus begins gently, expressing compassion for Thetis’s grief. Though we know that Zeus has already decided what must happen, he takes care to explain his decision. The quarrel over Achilles’s treatment of Hector’s corpse has disturbed the quiet on Olympus. “They” (presumably the gods who support the Trojans) have been urging Hermes to steal the corpse, but Zeus has been careful, he says, to accord glory to Achilles, respecting her reverence and love for him going forward. We might be surprised to hear the head male of the universe handling any other being deferentially. He is, after all, omnipotent. But in practice, Zeus regularly behaves as if he must take the feelings of others in his family into consideration when making decisions like this one. He professes fear at the prospect of Hera discovering that he has been talking to Thetis “behind her back” (1.517–18); he wavers over whether he ought to intervene to save his son Sarpedon from death at Patroclus’s hands, because Hera says that if he does so, the other gods will disapprove (16.543). Though in theory he has the ultimate power to do whatever he wants, Zeus usually appears more like a father trying to handle a fractious family than the Lord of the Universe.

Zeus launches his plan by sending Thetis to convince Achilles and at the same time dispatching Iris to get Priam on his way to the Greek camp to ransom the body of Hector. The same kind of two-pronged initiative jump-starts the plot of the Odyssey, when Zeus sends Athena to Ithaka to push Telemachus into action and Hermes to Calypso’s island to release Odysseus. In both poems, the poet putting two plot lines into motion at once signals to us that major events are to follow. Thetis’s encounter with Achilles will remove a powerful obstacle to his progress toward spiritual wholeness, while Hermes’s mission brings Priam toward the encounter that will ultimately return his son’s body for burial and bring the poem to a close.

Further Reading

Griffin, J. 1980. Homer on Life and Death, 190–191. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Nagler, M. 1974. Spontaneity and Tradition: The Oral Art of Homer, 44–60; 174–177. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Van Nortwick, T. 1992. Somewhere I Have Never Travelled: The Second Self and the Hero’s Journey in Ancient Epic, 25–28. New York: Oxford University Press.