Book 6 Essays

We begin to see how Homer paces his story in order to hold our interest. The plan of Zeus runs counter to the overarching theme of Troy’s ultimate doom, which is always in the background. This tension allows the poet to create expectations, which he can fulfill or delay. We have been told that the Greeks will pay for their treatment of Achilles and we look for it, but the poet makes us wait, filling in the cast of characters on both sides. We are also aware of Achilles’s absence and wonder when he might return. Diomedes is a surrogate for Achilles here, and his sense of duty, shown in his deference to Athena’s instructions, forms a contrast with the latter’s arrogant behavior, something that Homer will use in his portrait of Achilles’s rampage in Books 20—22. At the same time, the Greeks’ success is the impetus for getting Hector to Troy. It is a measure of how well the poet keeps our attention on the immediate business at hand that we do not pause to reflect on the Trojans’ doubtful strategy of responding to peril in battle by sending their best fighter off the field. 

Book 6 begins with more battle narrative. The gods have left the battle for the moment under orders from Zeus, who had become annoyed with their meddling in Book 5. Though the interactions of the gods with each other can often be comic in the Iliad—since nothing can change them, nothing they do to each other really matters—it is always a good idea to pay attention to how and when they enter the world of mortals. For instance, when Zeus turns away from the battle, it is a signal to us that his plan is on hold and the Greeks are going to prosper, as happens in Book 14 when Hera beguiles him into a midday tryst. When Zeus allows the gods to fight each other in Book 21, we know that nothing serious can happen and that Zeus is taking a break.

In these first duels, Homer underscores the gravity of the Trojans’ situation by showing us all of the principal Greek warriors, Ajax, Diomedes, Odysseus, and Agamemnon, killing Trojans. Translations can sometimes make battle narratives seem dull and repetitive, but reading the Greek lets us see the marvelous variety and inventiveness in these encounters. A third of the Iliad is taken up with battle scenes and Homer had to hold his audience. Tedium was not an option for oral poets. Note, for instance, the number of ways that the poet uses to say “x killed y,” in this short stretch. Sometimes he does speed things up, mentioning only killer, victim, and verb (cf. 6.21, 29–31), but more often, he takes the moment of death as an opportunity for a short vignette, training his eye, and so ours, on the life the loser forfeits. Diomedes kills Axylos, we are told, whose father was Teuthras. Axylos was known as a good neighbor back in Arisbe, where he entertained travelers in his house by the road. But none of those neighbors can help him now, as he faces his death. His friend and charioteer Kalesios dies too, and they both go under the earth. Euryalos kills four men, the last two of whom, Aesepos and Pedasos, a nymph named Abarbare bore when she met a man named Boukolion, a shepherd tending his flocks. Boukolion was the son of Laomedon, a haughty man, and his mother bore him secret. But now Euryalus kills them both and strips off their armor (6.12–28).

These victims, none of whom we have heard of before or will ever hear about again, exist only to be killed, but Homer makes us pause before the little window of life that he opens before us, happy days now lost forever. The details of these lives have no bearing on the main plot of the poem, but their loss sounds a persistent knell, a melancholy music that pervades the entire poem. And at the center of every encounter lies the moment that defines that kind of perspective we call tragic, a man facing his own death. Tragic stories take many forms, but they all point us toward the need to acknowledge the fact of human mortality and to think about how that fact defines what it means to be human. If we are tempted to call the Iliad a celebration of war, these little biographies say otherwise.

Let us pause to admire Ajax, son of Telamon, one of Homer’s most arresting creations. His epithet here, ἕρκος Ἀχαιῶν (6.5), “bulwark of the Achaeans,” captures the essence of his role in the Iliad. Huge, powerful, and plain-spoken, he suffers no fools. Here he “shatters the ranks” of the Trojans (6.6), but his most characteristic act in the poem is to hold the line for his fellow Greeks. He does so for the entire stretch from Books 11–15, slowly, grudgingly giving way, as all the other principal Greek fighters are wounded and leave the field for triage. Homer’s double simile for his holding action is one of the more memorable ones in the Iliad. Ajax is compared first to a marauding lion, surrounded by snarling dogs, and then to a donkey feeding in the fields. The donkey stubbornly munches away while boys beat him with sticks, trying to drive him away. Only when he has had his fill does he move (11.545–65).

Of all the prominent heroes of the poem, only Ajax thrives without the support of a particular god. He is splendidly self-sufficient and impatient with the querulous self-regard of other heroes. When he agrees to fight a duel with Hector in Book 7 and appears to be winning, heralds break in and announce that the light is failing. Do the fighters want to go on, or call it a day? Ajax answers first, with characteristic brevity: Ask Hector. If he wants to quit, I will. It’s up to him. Hector decides maybe they should stand down (7.273–302). Then in Book 9, Ajax is one of three ambassadors who go to Achilles to convince him to come back to the fighting, since the Trojans are about to overrun the Greek camp. Odysseus and Phoenix, Achilles’s old childhood tutor, each give lengthy and rhetorically accomplished speeches that fail to move Achilles sufficiently. Ajax does not address Achilles directly, instead turning to Odysseus to say that they should just return to the camp and deliver the bad news. If Achilles is too proud to help his friends, so be it (9.624–42). The portrait of Ajax is characteristic of Homer’s ability to create a vivid, rounded personality using a few brief strokes. We will see the same technique at work in the scenes between Hector and his family in Troy.

Further Reading

Edwards, M. 1987. Homer: Poet of the Iliad, 78-81; 90; 229-30. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Fenik, B. 1968. Typical Battle Scenes in the Iliad: Studies in the narrative techniques of Homeric battle description. Wiesbaden: Steiner.

Graziosi, B. and Haubold, J. ed. 2010. Homer: Iliad, Book VI, 24-26. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.

Griffin, J. 1980. Homer on Life and Death, 103-43. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Owen, E.T. 1946. The Story of the Iliad, 55-56. Toronto: Clark and Irwin.

Redfield, J. 1975. Nature and Culture in the Iliad, 99-102. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.

Van Nortwick, T. 2008. Imagining Men: Ideals of Masculinity in Ancient Greek Culture, 77-79. Westport, CT: Praeger.

We are not meant to care particularly about Adrastus, but Menelaus and Agamemnon are central to the story, so Homer creates this opportunity to develop each man’s portrait and the relationship between the two brothers. Menelaus we have seen in Book 3, dueling inconclusively with Paris. He is clearly the superior fighter there, and Paris only escapes when Aphrodite rescues him. In Book 4, Menelaus’s wounding by the sneaky archer Pandarus gives us a window into his relationship with his more illustrious brother, Agamemnon. Menelaus sustains a minor flesh wound, the occasion for a lovely simile comparing the blood on his leg to the red stain an artist applies to ivory (4.141–47). Agamemnon’s reaction is somewhat operatic in response to what is basically a big scratch, a long speech expressing his fears for his brother (4.155–82). What if he were to die? What would Agamemnon say to the people back in Argos? It turns out that what worries him is in part the specter of someone seeing him as an inadequate commander, but there is genuine alarm and brotherly affection there as well. Menelaus is a good fighter, but not, apparently, a great fighter, and must be handled with some care. When Menelaus comes forward to duel Hector in Book 7, Agamemnon immediately steps in and dissuades him. The rest of the Greeks are relieved. Ajax, the eventual choice, not Menelaus, is clearly the right man for this assignment.

We note an interesting symmetry: both Menelaus and Paris, who ought to be the principal antagonists of the war, have more powerful brothers who take the lead. In each case, the less powerful sibling is a problem for his brother. Paris, as we learn in Book 3, brings shame on his family and in particular on Hector, whose sense of responsibility for his fellow Trojans contrasts starkly with Paris’s fecklessness. Menelaus, meanwhile, is an honorable man and a good fighter, who has been shamed by his wife’s betrayal (or at least her abduction: Homer never tips his hand about what her motives might have been for leaving her family). He is eager to do his part in cleaning up the mess, in contrast to Paris, who seems largely unconcerned about the terrible suffering he has brought on the Trojans. Agamemnon frets about his brother’s safety, apparently feeling the need to protect his brother from overreaching. Each pairing resonates with the other in Homer’s brief and economical characterizations.

By the time Agamemnon weighs in here, we know him well. His insecurity and arrogance in the poem’s opening scene paint an unattractive picture. He bullies the priest of Apollo, who has come to beg for the release of his daughter, now Agamemnon’s concubine, with disastrous results for the Greeks. Apollo, angered by the mistreatment of his priest, sends a plague through the Greek camp. Even Achilles, himself no slouch in the arrogance department, seems initially at least to have more solicitude for the Greek warriors than does Agamemnon, the leader of the expedition, suggesting that they consult a seer about the causes of the plague. The seer Calchas correctly identifies the source of Apollo’s anger, and it would seem that the wise thing for Agamemnon to do would be to return the priest’s daughter and choose another concubine. He eventually gets to that decision, but not before bullying Calchas for delivering bad news, and antagonizing Achilles, who storms out of the camp, insuring that many more Greeks will die. Agamemnon’s bungling of Zeus’s false dream at the beginning of Book 2 (1–181) again shows him to be insecure about his position and out of touch with his troops, qualities on display yet again during his attempts, often clumsy, to rally his men when the battle resumes in Book 4 (326–418). Taken together, the portrait of Agamemnon in the first four books of the poem shows us a man who often seems out of his depth, lacking a sure instinct for leading his troops. Faced with his inadequacy, he tends to resort to bravado and bullying, which further undermine his credibility as a leader. More humiliation awaits him in Book 19 (74–153) when Achilles brushes aside his lame apology, which in the glare of the former’s rage can only appear petty and self-serving .

Agamemnon’s brutal injunction to Menelaus here, that no Trojan should be spared, even the unborn child in a mother’s womb, jars us yet further. Perhaps if it came in a moment of peril, when force was necessary for survival, we might see it as more understandable. But Adrastus poses no threat to either man, so killing him (let alone an unborn child) is hardly heroic. And yet, because Homer has been careful to shine a light on Agamemnon’s tender feelings for Menelaus, our revulsion is tempered to some degree by our recognition that he can be motivated by something other than his self-regard. Like Hector’s continuing concern about his impossible brother, crosscurrents of emotion here give the character depth and vulnerability, forestalling easy judgments.

Nestor appears at the end of the Adrastus episode, urging the Greeks not to let a desire for spoils divert them from their primary mission, killing Trojans and taking Troy. Nestor is one of three important old men in the poem, along with Phoenix and Priam, and each one is different. Phoenix was  Achilles’ childhood tutor, having arrived as a fugitive at the home of Peleus (9.434–95). He is one of the three ambassadors who go to Achilles in Book 9 to ask him to relent and return to battle. He softens  Achilles’ stance slightly there by playing on their long friendship. His history with  Achilles’ family echoes that of Patroclus, another old friend who came to Peleus as a fugitive and took up the role of older adviser. Priam will form the most crucial relationship with Achilles, engaging his sympathy and moving him to release Hector’s body at the end of the poem. Like Phoenix, Priam exemplifies the softening effects of a long perspective colored by suffering, appealing to Achilles’ compassion.

Not so Nestor. Best known for his lengthy speeches, usually about himself and other glorious fighters from an earlier time, Nestor always calls on traditional heroic virtues, fighting strength and an unflagging thirst for victory, to motivate the Greek warriors. Though too old to fight himself, he is nevertheless always around the battle, modeling heroism, ready with a pep talk. His brief appearance here is part of Homer’s careful modulation of tone.  After the disturbing speech of Agamemnon, Nestor’s call for self-restraint in the pursuit of victory returns the narrative to more familiar territory. At the same time, by having Nestor urge soldiers to resist self-aggrandizement in favor of the common goal of taking Troy, Homer invites us to think again about the more unsavory aspects of Agamemnon’s demands, which might reflect, like almost everything he does, his own insecurity.

These portraits, as we have said, point us toward the scene between Hector and Andromache: Agamemnon’s troubled leadership and personal weakness throw into relief Hector’s nobility and the terrible dilemma he faces; both Menelaus’s broken relationship to Helen and her toxic bond to Paris are the negative image of what we will see at the Skaian Gates.

Further Reading

Greenberg, N.A. 1993. “The Attitude of Agamemnon.” Classical World 86.3: 193–205.

Owen, E.T. 1946. The Story of the Iliad, 57. Toronto: Clark and Irwin.

Roisman, H.M. 2005. “Nestor the Good Counselor.” Classical Quarterly 55: 17–38.

Van Nortwick, T. 2008. Imagining Men: Ideals of Masculinity in Ancient Greek Culture, 123–28. Westport, CT: Praeger.

Wilson, D. 2002. Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad, 165–67. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Nestor rouses the Greeks, and the Trojans are on the verge of fleeing back into the city. At this moment another one of Priam’s many sons, Helenos the seer, steps forward to assume the role of adviser to Hector and his cousin Aeneas. His plan has several parts: because they have borne so much defending Troy, Hector and Aeneas should be the ones to rouse the Trojans, lest they “fall into the arms of their wives” (6.81–82). Meanwhile, the rest of the Trojan warriors will stay and fight. Finally, Hector must go back to Troy to get his mother to lead the older Trojan women in offering sacrifices to Athena, so the goddess will protect the city.

The passage repays careful attention. We might begin by looking at Helenos. Though he is a seer, we are not told whether a vision has prompted what he says to Aeneas and Hector. He offers what looks like some sound advice in the face of the imminent threat from the Greeks: get moving and hold the city. But as we have said, the idea of sending your best fighter off the field at this critical moment might seem questionable, so he opens with detailed battlefield tactics, always an acceptably heroic discourse. Only after he has apparently arranged to cover for Hector’s absence—without saying so directly—does he urge the return to Troy.

The exchange between Hector and Helenos is an “adviser scene,” a recurring motif in the poem. Here Hector follows the advice of his brother. Later in the story, Poulydamas will assume the adviser role and Hector will ignore his urging of caution, plunging after the Greeks and eventually facing death at Achilles’ hands in Book 18 (249–309). In his poignant monologue at 22.99–130, Hector says it would have been much better for him to follow Poulydamas’s advice, since his recklessness will now destroy his people.

In these scenes, Homer is not inviting us to judge Hector so much as to dramatize a significant moment of choice, in which we see a character faced with making a decision from which will follow significant consequences, for him and for others. Rather than simply telling us that Hector is a good man who takes his responsibilities seriously, the poet shows him doing so. We observe that, faced with this kind of situation, he is the sort of person who chooses to act in a certain way. We form our opinion of moral character by witnessing such moments, and Hector’s character is the one we will be most concerned with for the rest of Book 6.

Helenos’s fear that the Trojan fighters will flee and “fall into the arms of their wives” is significant on more than one level. Since this is exactly what Hector seems about to do, we wonder what Homer is up to in having Helenos suggest it. Though the seer seems to be implying that the men who flee before the Greeks here are unmanly, hiding behind the city walls with their wives, are we to see Hector as cowardly too? What we in fact have here is a good example of Homer’s rich and subtle understanding of human character. Hector will flee before Achilles in the last moments of his life in Book 22. We will not be invited to think of him as a coward there, but simply human, in the face of the demonic ferocity of Achilles. But the resonance of the phrase in question here also sounds more immediately, pointing toward the terrible dilemma Hector will find himself facing in his last moments with Andromache, to stay inside the walls with his wife and child or return to battle.

Helenos’s use of the phrase is yet more ambiguous if we consider that the usual way for soldiers in the Iliad to end up in the arms of their wives is as a corpse, being prepared for burial by women. While soldiers always face the specter of death on the battlefield, Homer seems to be suggesting that there is more than one way to die, bravely, defending one’s city, or of shame, the avoiding of which is ultimate motivation for Homeric soldiers. If we follow the implications of Helenos’s ambiguous phrase, allowing the possibility that even Hector might be found wanting in manliness, and that this quality is for a Homeric warrior a kind of death, our ears will be attuned to an important motif that runs through Hector’s visit to Troy and then resurfaces in Book 24: the consolation of those who are grieving someone’s death.

Helenos tells Hector that he must get his mother to arrange an offering of beautiful clothing to Athena in her temple, so that the goddess might hold off the “powerful spearman” Diomedes, who he says is the “most powerful of the Achaeans,” even more feared than the semi-divine Achilles. Diomedes “raves” (μαίνεται, 6.101) too much and no one can equal his strength (6.96–101).

Again, we can discern multiple purposes here. Diomedes is about to come before us again, after a brief hiatus. The peaceful end of his impending encounter with Glaucus, which is also the end of his aristeia, will be all the more striking because he is referred to here as a madman on the battlefield. At the same time, we are reminded that Achilles is out of action and again wonder when he will return. As previously noted, the parallels between Diomedes in Books 5 and 6 and Achilles in Books 18–22 are an important part of Homer’s characterization of the latter as he rages across the battlefield in search of Hector. Where Diomedes is a fierce fighter who nonetheless observes certain limits, Achilles always goes too far, challenging the very contours of human existence in his thirst for vengeance. When Athena tells Diomedes in Book 5 that he may pursue any human opponent but must not challenge gods except Aphrodite and Ares (5.124–32), he dutifully complies, backing away from a confrontation with Apollo. In Book 21, Achilles will not back down before the god of the river Scamander, though he nearly dies as a result (21.214–26).

Further Reading

Graziosi, B. and Haubold, J. ed. 2010. Homer: Iliad, Book VI, 17; 34. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.

Horsfall, N. 1979. “Some Problems in the Aeneas Legend.” Classical Quarterly 29: 372–90.

Owen, E.T. 1946. The Story of the Iliad, 58. Toronto: Clark and Irwin.

He will be impatient to get back to his men the whole time he is in Troy, adding urgency but also increasing his pain as he is torn between his family and his duty. This last picture of him, growing smaller in the distance, will stay with us, reminding us that while we are hearing all about the genealogies of Diomedes and Glaucus, crucial things are happening in Troy, things we will have to wait a little longer to hear about. While Hector returns to Troy, Diomedes encounters the Lycian Glaucus and professes not to know who he is. Diomedes declines to fight him if he is a god, recalling the story of the Thracian king Lycurgus, who fought against the god Dionysus and his followers and was severly punished. Glaucus at first discounts the importance of genealogy, since human generations are as ephemeral as the leaves in the forest, but then begins to trace his own ancestry.

Diomedes’ exchange with Glaucus concludes his aristeia begun in Book 5. The entire encounter feels like a digression from the main plot, because Homer has made us feel the urgency of Hector’s mission. Classical scholars have speculated in the past that the episode was once an independent poem, which Homer incorporated into his narrative. That may be so, but this version was clearly crafted by the poet to fit his own purposes.

A parallel passage in Book 20 is instructive. There, Achilles has vowed to hunt down Hector to avenge Patroclus’s death. He meets Aeneas on the battlefield and the poet teases us:

The whole plain was filled with men and horses,
shining with bronze; and the earth shook with their feet
as they swarmed together. Two of the best men by far
came together in the middle, eager to fight,
Aeneas, son of Anchises and brilliant Achilles.

Iliad 20.156–60

By the time we hear these lines, we are hungry for the climactic duel between Achilles and Hector, which has been dangled before us since Book 15 (61–68). Now Homer delivers a big build-up and delays the names for four verses. Finally, as we listen eagerly for Hector, the poet gives us Aeneas, an estimable warrior but not the one we want. We are then treated to an exceptionally lengthy disquisition by Aeneas on his genealogy. Family connections are the principal mode of identification in the Iliad, so Aeneas’s family tree is not in itself unimportant, but the sheer length of this one is challenging. Perhaps only his family and those especially interested in the dynastic history of the Near East would find it absorbing.

But maybe that is the point. Both digressions come at a time in the story when we are looking toward events that the poet has freighted with dramatic interest. Both settle into a leisurely pace, full of incidental detail that contrasts with the urgency surrounding the episodes we know will eventually follow. If we are impatient with the delay, it does not mean that we are unengaged with the material. Homer holds out the promise of an emotional payoff and keeps us looking for it.

Though the Glaucus and Diomedes episode has the effect of slowing things down, Homer keeps important themes before us. Diomedes is confident that he will win the duel, unless of course Glaucus happens to be a god in disguise. This possibility takes us back to the beginning of Diomedes’ aristeia in Book 5, where Athena gives him the power to recognize divinities in disguise, a gift apparently not still in force here. Diomedes does engage Aphrodite and Ares, but only because Athena has told him to do so, and he refrains from fighting Apollo, restraint, as we have said, not found in Achilles. The association of the two heroes surfaces again in the mythical example Diomedes gives to illustrate the dangers of incurring the hatred of the gods. Lycourgos attacked the nurses tending to the baby Dionysus, a heinous and, as it turned out, disastrous act of arrogance. Dionysus fled in terror, straight into the arms of—wait for it— Achilles’ mother! Though Achilles never appears directly between Books 2 and 9, Homer keeps him and the question of his return constantly before us, another carrot to keep us attentive.

Glaucus waxes philosophical when answering Diomedes’s challenge, opening with the justly famous simile comparing the generations of humans to leaves on the trees, growing to ripeness and then dying away. Like all similes in the Iliad, this one has the effect of changing the venue, widening the scope of the story to include some slice of experience not directly related to war, and often providing some relief from the tension of battle. Two aspects of this simile are especially significant. First, a character delivers the simile, as opposed to the omniscient narrator, which gives some insight into the mind of the speaker. Since the serenely detached tone of the observations comes from within Diomedes, we have perhaps a foreshadowing of the happy outcome of the duel. Secondly, the melancholy tone of the simile becomes part of a series of contrasting moods in Book 6 as a whole, leading up to the powerfully emotional encounter between Hector and Andromache, where Hector’s delight in his wife and son occurs in the shadow of his impending death.

Immediately following the simile, Diomedes delivers two verses that signal a return to a more conventional perspective:

εἰ δ᾽ ἐθέλεις καὶ ταῦτα δαήμεναι ὄφρ᾽ ἐῢ εἰδῇς
ἡμετέρην γενεήν, πολλοὶ δέ μιν ἄνδρες ἴσασιν:

If you wish to know these things, so as to understand well
my family history, there are many men who know it.

Iliad 6.150–51

These lines appear verbatim in Book 20, when Aeneas launches his lengthy discussion of his lineage (Il. 20.213–14). This repetition suggests that both family histories are examples of a Homeric type scene, describing a recurring event or experience and using some identical language. As we will see, in the Diomedes and Glaucus episode as in so much of his poetry, Homer uses repeated conventional forms as part of a sophisticated and highly original story.

Further Reading

Edwards, M. 1987. Homer: Poet of the Iliad, 102–110; 201–206. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Gaisser, J. Haig. 1969. “Adaptation of Traditional Material in the Glaucus-Diomedes Episode.” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 10: 165–176.

Graziosi, B. and Haubold, J. ed. 2010. Homer: Iliad, Book VI, 5–6; 36–40. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.

Kirk, G.S. 1990. The Iliad: A Commentary, vol. I, 172–173. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Martin, R. 1989. The Language of Heroes: Speech and Performance in the Iliad, 126–128. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.

The Bellerophontes episode is a version of a common folktale about an amorous wife scorned and her revenge against the man (not her husband) who refuses her. Examples include Joseph and Potiphar’s wife in the Bible and Hippolytus and Phaedra in Euripides’s Hippolytus. There are several other stories about Bellerophontes elsewhere in Greek literature and myth, his capture of Pegasus, the winged horse, his killing of a family member, the cause of his exile to the court of Proitos in the first place, and his arrogant attempt to ride to heaven on the back of Pegasus, which drew the hatred of the gods and caused his subsequent wandering over the earth in exile. The absence of this material from Glaucus’s version shows how relatively elliptical Homer’s story is. The poet uses his material advisedly, picking out the parts of the myth that suit his purposes in this part of the poem, leaving the rest unsaid. So what can we discern about his purposes in this digression?

We may approach what Glaucus does tell us in two ways. First, the elements in the story of Bellerophontes of duplicity, suspicion, and malign intent, which contrasts with the openness and generosity between Diomedes and Glaucus. Though Bellerophontes is not only heroic but morally upright, he will eventually be rewarded for his goodness by exile. Seemingly victorious over those with baser motives, he wins no renown for his actions. Glaucus and Diomedes, meanwhile, though both estimable warriors, choose finally to forego the quest for glory in favor of a friendly alliance prompted by filial piety. These kinds of contrasts in tone work to keep us engaged, our imagination refreshed, always a primary goal for Homer.

At the same time, the content of both parts resonates with both past and future events in the poem. The benign conclusion of the duel will take its place alongside other events in the narrative, in particular the serene funeral of Sarpedon in Book 16 (450–57; 667–75) and Hector’s funeral in Book 24 (788–804), which form a counterpoint to the destructive violence of the dominant narrative. The treachery, erotic and otherwise, of both Anteia and Proitos looks back to the original abduction of Helen and forward to the encounters that Hector will have with Paris and Helen and then Andromache. The two relationships revealed in these latter exchanges could not be more different. One is clearly toxic, the other warm and loving. One mirrors the suspicion and betrayal of the epyllion, the other the generosity and largeness of spirit that inform its frame.

Note also that Anteia is said to be “maddened” ἐπεμήνατο (160) with lust for Bellerophontes, echoing the “madness,” μαίνεται (101), of Diomedes on the battlefield.

The connection between sex and war is a continuing, if muted theme in the Iliad. The more familiar notion that sex is like war finds vivid expression in the famous seduction of Zeus in Book 14 (153–351), where Hera’s toilette before approaching her husband parodies a warrior’s arming scene (14.169–86). That battle is like sex is hinted at more subtly. The verb μίγνυμι, to describe the “mingling” of bodies, is used of both sex and battle (sex: 6.165, 9.133, etc.; battle: 4.354, 5.143, etc.) A more obscure verb, ὀαρίζειν, also has a suggestive array of connotations in the poem. From the same root as the noun, ὄαρ, “wife,” the verbal form is used, as we will see, of Hector’s exchanges with Andromache in Book 6 (516) and later by Hector himself in his wistful monologue before facing Achilles (22.127–28). In those cases, the verb is usually translated “to chat,” or “to gossip.” In other words, to “talk like a wife.” Two other nouns are derived from the same root. Ὀαρίστες seems to mean “dear, intimate friend,” and is used of the friendship of Odysseus and Idomeneus in the Odyssey (19.169). Ὀαρίστυςdescribes the power of sexuality that emanates from Aphrodite’s girdle when she seduces Zeus (14.216). But two other uses of ὀαρίστυς seem to reverse the metaphor, suggesting that battle is like sex: Iliad 13.291, where the noun is used with προμάχων, “fighters in the forefront of battle,” and Iliad 17.228, where it is limited by πολέμου, “battle.” In these cases, the poet creates a brilliant and disturbing metaphor, comparing the chaos of battle, where men mingle with their enemies, to an intimate, often sexual encounter. Finally, the scene of Paris’s eventual seduction of an initially unwilling Helen in Book 3 (421–46) is followed immediately by the description of Menelaus—who was about to drag Paris off to his death in their duel when Aphrodite whisked Paris away in a magical cloud—raging around the battlefield like a wild beast, looking for his prey (448–54). It is as if the primal force that animates the tryst in Paris and Helen’s bedroom has leaked out onto the battlefield and possessed Menelaus.

The tablets sent by Proitos, with their mysterious “baneful signs,” (σήματα λυγρὰ) have been much discussed by Classical scholars. It may be that this is the first mention of writing we have in extant Greek literature, obviously important if we are trying to establish the method of composition for the Iliad itself. But the verb, γράψας (169) means “to scratch,” not necessarily “to write,” so it’s possible that the σήματα are symbols or some kind of drawing, rather than what we think of as writing.

The account of Bellerophontes’s three challenges, with triumph or death at the end, follows a familiar folktale pattern. The Chimaera appears in several other places in early Greek literature and is proverbially hard to defeat. In its tripartite form it resembles the Sphinx that Oedipus must defeat in order to enter Thebes. As a combination of three usually distinct animals, lion, snake, and goat, the creature embodies the disruption of natural categories, the kind of chaos demon often encountered by ancient Mediterranean culture heroes. The Solymoi are rather more obscure in origin. Apparently a tribe in the territory of the Lycians, they were known as fierce fighters, as were the Amazons, the third opponent.

The style of the “three labors” section is typical of folktales, the pace relatively swift, the diction relatively unadorned, the moral judgments straightforwardly black and white. All of this contrasts with the typical style of Homeric poetry, characteristically expansive, leisurely, and rich in moral subtlety.

Further Reading

Bassi, K. 1997. “Orality, Masculinity, and the Greek Epic.” Arethusa 30: 327–329.

Hansen, W. 2002. Ariadne’s Thread: A Guide to International Tales Found in Classical Literature, 332–352. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.

Owen, E.T. 1946. The Story of the Iliad, 59–61. Toronto: Clark and Irwin.

Steiner, D.T. 1994. The Tyrant’s Writ: Myths and Images of Writing in Ancient Greece. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Van Nortwick, T. 2001. “Like a Woman: Hector and the Boundaries of Masculinity.” Arethusa 34.2: 21–22.

To have both a mortal and a divine father is not unknown in Greek myth, and in fact this is another way, beside the labors, that Bellerophontes resembles Heracles. We never hear from Glaucus who the divine father is—another example of Homer’s selective narration—though other Greek sources identify Poseidon.

The genealogy continues as we learn that Sarpedon, an important Lycian ally of the Trojans, is Glaucus’s cousin and himself the son of Zeus. The two will appear together in Book 12, when Sarpedon delivers to Glaucus a famous speech on the nature of heroism (310–328). Sarpedon then becomes Patroclus’s most prominent victim in Book 16 and Hector in turn kills Patroclus, setting off a deadly chain of events that culminates in Hector’s death at the hands of Achilles. Though the significance of what Glaucus reports to us is sometimes obscure, Homer has a use for everything he puts in his poem, playing out threads that he will gather later.

Diomedes is delighted by Glaucus’s story, because he realizes that ξεῖνος πατρώϊός ἐσσι παλαιός, “you are a guest friend of mine from our fathers’ time” (215). Like Bellerophontes, Glaucus will win some temporary peace and respite because of his family history. Details follow, giving us a glimpse of Diomedes as a boy, further distancing us from the violence of battle. The two parts of the digression come together when we learn that Diomedes still has the beautiful golden cup that Bellerophontes gave to his grandfather. Now the two men who were planning to fight to the death vow to avoid each other on the battlefield and themselves exchange gifts.

In the last glimpse we have of the two warriors, Homer brings us abruptly back from the warmth of the fairytale world we have been visiting to a more cold-eyed perspective: Glaucus “loses” after all, seduced by the good feeling of the moment into making a bad bargain.

We have finally arrived at the dramatic climax Homer has been dangling before us since the beginning of Book 6. We may now pause to reflect on how the book as a whole has been constructed up to this point and how the apparently disparate elements in the material are all aimed in one way or another toward the moving scenes to come in Troy. The most obvious function of the Diomedes and Glaucus encounter is to bring the aristeia of Diomedes, which has been the focal point of battle narrative since the beginning of Book 5, to a satisfying conclusion. In fact, having used it as a motivation for sending Hector to Troy, Homer has no further immediate use for the story or its hero. But rather than abruptly dropping the narrative thread, the poet uses the digression to: 1) further tantalize us as we await news about Hector; 2) give the portrait of Diomedes a portentous finale that rounds off the aristeia and lends it an organic unity; 3) remind us of the absence of Achilles by focusing on his surrogate; 4) establish variation in the emotional and dramatic tone of the two parts of the digression, which will be echoed in and enriched by the scenes that follow in Troy; and 5) create an island of serenity and peace as a counterpoint to the ongoing violence of battle, the first in a series that includes comic episodes, like the beguiling of Zeus, but also resonates with the burials of Sarpedon, Patrolcus, and finally Hector.

Along the way, Homer expands the portraits of other prominent heroes, Ajax, Agamemnon, Menelaus, Nestor, Glaucus, Sarpedon, Paris, and of course, Hector. Lesser characters also appear briefly, each playing his or her part in the larger design and then fading from sight, Adrastus, Helenos, Proitos, Anteia, Bellerophontes, and all the victims from the battle narratives. As we have seen, many incidents foreshadow people and events to come in the poem, with Diomedes’s restraint setting the stage for Achilles’ excesses, or Ajax’s austere self-sufficiency as a foil for the solipsism of Paris. In particular, the Diomedes and Glaucus encounter offers various examples of human relationships, marked by either malicious treachery or open-hearted generosity, deep affection or shallow self-regard, all of which serve as prologue to Hector’s interactions with loved ones in Troy. Helen’s original erotic betrayal is echoed in Anteia’s treachery, while Agamemnon’s anxious solicitude for his brother resonates in various ways with the uneasy bond between Hector and Paris; at the same time, Agamemnon’s vicious attitude toward the unborn children of his enemies contrasts poignantly with Hector’s tender affection for his infant son.

The scenes leading up to Hector’s visit to Troy are a good example of certain characteristics of Homeric storytelling, crucial to the poem’s impact and yet challenging to describe. This stretch of the story is packed with disparate incidents that flow swiftly by, and yet each element receives the poet’s full attention, its particular details giving it a tone of naturalism—why would the poet tell us all this unless it actually happened? As Hector recedes from view on his way to Troy, the picture of his shield banging off his legs and shoulders as he runs makes pause a little longer, wondering perhaps how long it will take him to get home at that pace. This quality is in part surely a reflection of the Iliad’s origins in oral poetry, performed before an audience of listeners, not solitary readers. As each incident passes before us, we participate in a continuous present tense, only moving on when the poet’s eye falls on the next thing. There is also a quality of fullness to the style, as ornamental epithets (themselves an artifact of the poem’s origins in oral composition) fill out the verse and contribute to the blend of the generic and the particular that is unique to Homeric poetry.

And yet, though Homer can sometimes seem to be simply bouncing along from one thing to the next, throwing in material as it comes to mind, by the time we reach the end of the poem we realize that everything serves the poet’s purpose, contributing to the vast and intricate tapestry, a work of art whose richness is almost beyond our ability to grasp. When we listen to Achilles give his magisterial speech to Priam at the end of the poem, as he describes how the quality of each person’s life is not the product of what he or she has done and suffered but is finally a gift from powers beyond his or her power to control (24.527–33), we may hear a faint echo:

μή μοι δῶρ᾽ ἐρατὰ πρόφερε χρυσέης Ἀφροδίτης:
οὔ τοι ἀπόβλητ᾽ ἐστὶ θεῶν ἐρικυδέα δῶρα

do not throw in my face the lovely gifts of golden Aphrodite,
which are glorious and may not be refused;

Iliad 3.65–66

Straining to remember when we heard these verses, we realize that the speaker was, of all people, Paris. And then we think again about the unexpected crosscurrents of emotion that tie humans together.

Further Reading

Edwards, M. 1987. Homer: Poet of the Iliad, 102–110; 29–40. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Graziosi, B. and Haubold, J. ed. 2010. Homer: Iliad, Book VI, 8–23. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.

Owen, E.T. 1946. The Story of the Iliad, 36. Toronto: Clark and Irwin.

We might wonder why these scenes appear where they do, why in particular Homer put the poignant exchange between Hector and Andromache here and not closer to the final duel with Achilles. The answer is that all of this pain must be in our minds as we see Hector make his way toward death. The theme of the entire episode is the doom of Troy. Hector is the heart of what is good and noble about the city, and the three encounters bring out his essential nature. When he finally waits for Achilles in front of the walls of Troy in Book 22, he will revisit in his own mind much of what happens here, as he struggles to accept what his life has finally come to.

The crushing burden he bears is immediately obvious when he arrives at the city gates, where he is besieged by the families of soldiers, eager for news. Giving what comfort he can, he rushes on to the palace of Priam, the centerpiece of Troy’s rich and sophisticated civilization. Homer pauses to describe the buildings in some detail, the gleaming halls and adjoining bedrooms, sixty-two of them, that shelter Priam’s children and their families. The entire scene exudes abundance, of material wealth, regal virility, and spectacular beauty. As Hector begins his final visit to his city and its people, we are reminded what is at stake out on the battlefield. In the symbolic economy of the poem, Troy stands for human civilization at its most evolved, magnificent and fragile, about to be crushed by the forces of war.

The wealth and fecundity displayed in the palace reflect Priam’s power, the legacy that Hector would inherit and must live up to. Now Hector meets his mother, the source of a different kind of power and a different set of obligations. The hero’s bond to his mother is a potent and sometimes ambiguous force in Greek and Roman literature and myth. Her role is to offer unquestioning support and nurture, even when her attentions seem to work against her son’s best interests. In the typical hero story, a son who fails to separate from his mother’s nurture and come to terms with the hard wisdom of his father’s world cannot reach maturity as a man (see Oedipus). As a particularly powerful mother, Thetis presents a serious obstacle to Achilles growing up, intervening with Zeus to ensure that the Greeks will be punished for not giving her son what he wants, then securing armor made by Hephaestus, so that he can pursue his self-destructive vendetta against Hector. Only at the very end of the poem, under orders from Zeus, does she step back.

Hector’s role in the poem does not reflect the same story patterns associated with life cycle issues for males in hero stories that Achilles’ does. Indeed, he is the most conspicuous example of a mature, responsible man in the Iliad. He suffers precisely because he takes his responsibility to others so seriously and is consequently torn between his role as leader of the Trojan army and his love for his family. That particular tension animates everything he does during his visit to Troy, beginning with this encounter with his mother.

Hecabe is surprised to see him in Troy and not out on the battlefield. Surely those cursed Greeks must be wearing him out with fighting around the city. She speculates that his heart must have urged him to come to the city and pray to Zeus. If he will wait, she can bring him some sweet wine for the libation and he can himself be refreshed and regain his strength. We look at the two forces pulling at Hector through a mother’s eyes here, protecting the city through sacrifice, but also pleasing his mother by taking care of himself.

The epithet used of Hecabe, ἠπιόδωρος, “kindly giving,” appears only here in the Iliad. Andromache, the other powerful woman in Hector’s life, is described twice as πολύδωρος, “rich in gifts” (6.393; 22.88), the only two uses of that epithet in the poem. Though loving generosity pervades all of Hector’s encounters with these two women, their largess is not without complications for him. Precisely because they love him, each woman embodies a challenge to the masculine imperative to fight in the forefront of battle and win glory, one of the qualities that define him as a man. In his lonely monologue before the walls of Troy in Book 22 (99–130), as Achilles races toward him across the plain, we see him still struggling to satisfy the competing forces tugging at him.

Gifts from the gods and the obligations they carry are a crucial part of the Iliad’s meditation on the meaning of human life. When mortals offer gifts, they may be refused. Not so divine gifts, which must be accepted, no matter the consequences. Indeed, as we have seen, the necessity to take what the gods give and do what we can in response is the heart of Achilles’ great speech of consolation to Priam in Book 24. In his mythical paradigm, the quality of any life reflects the amount of good and evil that Zeus has allotted at birth, a gift that may not be refused. The implications of this view are profound, directly challenging the heroic ethic of individual achievement as a measure of human worth.

Both Hecabe and Andromache offer gifts to Hector, perishable and precious. That he can and sometimes does refuse them makes his choices all the more poignant, his suffering the more intensely human.

Further Reading

Graziosi, B. and Haubold, J. ed. 2010. Homer: Iliad, Book VI, 5–6; 40–41. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.

Owen, E.T. 1946. The Story of the Iliad, 61–63. Toronto: Clark and Irwin.

Redfield, J. 1975. Nature and Culture in the Iliad, 109–10. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.

Van Nortwick, T. 2008. Imagining Men: Ideals of Masculinity in Ancient Greek Culture, 7–8. Westport, CT: Praeger.

 Nor can he offer a libation, as he is afraid to make an offering to the gods with unwashed hands, stained as he is by “blood and filth.” Instead, she should gather women around her and go to the temple with a gift for Athena, hoping that the goddess will protect Troy from Diomedes and the Greeks. These objections might not seem insurmountable. Why not wash his hands? And wouldn’t resting in Troy make up for the debilitating effects of wine? But Homer is also working on a symbolic level here. What we see are the first signs of Hector’s alienation from the people he loves, for whom he will soon give his life. The blood of battle makes him ritually unclean, but also symbolizes his status as a warrior, whose strength is always problematic for his city. He can be a source of protection, but might also bring deadly violence to the fragile civilization he defends. This dilemma continued to preoccupy Greek poets down through the Classical period, reflected in figures like Sophocles’ Ajax or Euripides’ Heracles. Hector’s separation from his loved ones will be symbolized in various ways throughout his visit to Troy, despite his efforts, and theirs, to overcome it.

By offering Hector a drink, Hecabe initiates a traditional narrative sequence, which will be completed later when Helen invites him to sit down in her bedroom. In the traditional art language that Homer uses, the offer of a seat and a drink are part of the effort to console someone who has lost someone dear to him or her. By accepting the tokens, the grieving person signals that he or she is ready to accept the loss of a loved one and move on with life. The pattern appears in two other places in the Iliad, when Zeus summons Thetis to Olympus at the beginning of Book 24 (100–19) and then later in the encounter of Priam and Achilles in the Greek camp (512–627). (The Homeric Hymn to Demeter,191–211, probably composed about a century after the Homeric epics, also features a consolation, suggesting that the form is part of the traditional style that Homer uses, and not peculiar to his poems.) In both of these instances, the person grieving eventually accepts the tokens. Zeus wants Thetis to tell Achilles to release the body of Hector to Priam. That order might well have been simply reported by the poet or delivered to Thetis via messenger. Instead, Zeus sends Iris to bring Thetis to Olympus, where she finds the gods happily at their ease:

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 next to her father Zeus and Athena made room for her.
Hera put a lovely golden cup in her hand
and greeted her kindly; Thetis took the cup and drank.

Iliad 24.100–2

The particular form of this welcome would alert an audience familiar with Homeric style that the gods were consoling Thetis for the loss of a loved one, and that she was accepting their gestures. We think immediately of Achilles, but he is conspicuously alive at this point, so why the consolation?

The answer takes us to events central to the thematic resolution of the Iliad. First of all, the consolation is proleptic. That is, it looks ahead to something that has not yet happened, namely the death of Achilles, which has been decreed by fate to occur soon after Hector’s death (18.95–96). But more immediately, the message to Thetis is that she must accept the very fact of Achilles’ mortality. As she has said earlier in the poem, she is bitter at the thought that her son will have a short life (1.413–18). From her actions on his behalf throughout the poem, we might go further. Why can he not have whatever he wants? Why, indeed, since she is divine, must he die at all? By acceding to Zeus’s command and urging the release of Hector’s body, Thetis lets go of her son and resigns herself to the fact that he, like all mortals, must die (see Introduction: The Hero’s Return and the Gift of Life).

The exchange between Achilles and Priam is informed by the same narrative pattern. After Achilles’ first speech of consolation to Priam (24.517–51), he urges the old man to sit down and rest. Priam’s reply is telling:

τὸν δ᾽ ἠμείβετ᾽ ἔπειτα γέρων Πρίαμος θεοειδής:
“μή πω μ᾽ ἐς θρόνον ἵζε διοτρεφὲς ὄφρά κεν Ἕκτωρ
κεῖται ἐνὶ κλισίῃσιν ἀκηδής, ἀλλὰ τάχιστα
λῦσον ἵν᾽ ὀφθαλμοῖσιν ἴδω;"

Then the godlike old man Priam answered him:
“Do not, beloved of Zeus, make me sit in a chair while Hector
lies uncared for in your dwelling, but as soon as may be
release him, that I may see him with my own eyes.

Iliad 24.552–54

Priam is not ready to end his grieving. After a brief flare of anger, Achilles goes to the next room where the body lies and helps prepare the body for the journey home, lifting it onto the wagon himself, then delivers his second speech of consolation (617–42) to Priam. Finally, the two men eat a meal together, signifying their mutual consolation, Achilles for Patroclus, Priam for Hector.

Viewed in the light of the traditional narrative pattern, Hector’s refusal of wine in the present passage takes on yet another dimension. Though the full import of this gesture will not be realized until the next scene with Paris and Helen, we might wonder how the theme of consolation applies to Hector. Why does he need to be consoled?

Hecabe and the Trojan matrons make their way to the temple, bearing the beautiful robe that the queen has brought from the storeroom. The description of the robe is in Homer’s characteristically full style, inviting us to imagine its splendor and including its history (289–95). Paris, it seems, brought several from Sidonia, as he made his way back from Sparta with Helen, a detail that fits seamlessly with the narrative’s characteristic fullness, while subtly reminding us of the act that brought all this suffering in the first place.

The final verses of this section add further shading to the portrait of Hector. He sends Hecabe off to offer a lavish gift to Athena. Meanwhile,

ἐγὼ δὲ Πάριν μετελεύσομαι ὄφρα καλέσσω
αἴ κ᾽ ἐθέλῃσ᾽ εἰπόντος ἀκουέμεν: ὥς κέ οἱ αὖθι
γαῖα χάνοι: μέγα γάρ μιν Ὀλύμπιος ἔτρεφε πῆμα
Τρωσί τε καὶ Πριάμῳ μεγαλήτορι τοῖό τε παισίν.
εἰ κεῖνόν γε ἴδοιμι κατελθόντ᾽ Ἄϊδος εἴσω
φαίην κε φρέν᾽ ἀτέρπου ὀϊζύος ἐκλελαθέσθαι.

I will go to find Paris, so that I might speak to him,
if he will listen to anything I say. Oh that the earth
would open beneath him, for the Olympian god has brought
great pain to the Trojans and great-hearted Priam and his children.
If I could see that man going down into Hades’ house,
then I could say that my heart had forgotten this joyless misery.

Iliad 6.280–285

These words are startling, coming from the man we are accustomed to seeing as a paragon of selflessness, thinking only of others. We have seen Hector irritated with his feckless brother, frustrated that Paris will not step up and take responsibility for his actions, but this dark wish reveals a new level of deeply personal resentment and anger, which he, as “the good son,” feels keenly. As Homer’s portrait evolves, we will see that Hector is anything but a cardboard hero. His humanity is precisely what allows us to feel close to him as we never can with Achilles. The image of being swallowed up by the earth will recur twice more in Book 6, in the moments of deepest intimacy between Hector and Andromache, as each envisions losing the other. In those visions, as here, oblivion beckons as a way of escape from the misery to come.

Further Reading

Nagler, M. 1974. Spontaneity and Tradition: The Oral Art of Homer, 174–77. 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, 79–88. New York: Oxford University Press.

———. 2008. Imagining Men: Ideals of Masculinity in Ancient Greek Culture, 74–77, 91–92. Westport, CT: Praeger.

In contrast to the expansive style of this section, Homer’s description of Athena’s response is brutally terse: ὣς ἔφατ᾽ εὐχομένη, ἀνένευε δὲ Παλλὰς Ἀθήνη, “So Hecabe spoke, praying, but Athena turned away” (311). Troy’s doom continues to knell in our ears as Hector makes his way through the city.

Having failed to connect with his mother, Hector goes in search of Paris. He finds his brother and sister-in-law sitting amid opulent splendor in their boudoir. Homer tells us that Paris himself worked with the best builders in the kingdom to create his part of the palace, his care in tending to his own comfort and magnificence standing in marked contrast to his disregard for the safety of the rest of the Trojans. As Hector crosses the threshold, we are reminded of the last time we saw Paris and Helen in their bedroom, in Book 3. Then, rescued by Aphrodite from certain defeat at Menelaus’s hands, Paris waited at his ease for Helen, whom Aphrodite compelled to join him:

"Come here! Alexandros wants you to come home.
He waits in the bedroom with its carved bed,
glistening in beauty and fine clothes; you would not
say that he had just come from fighting, but from
dancing, sitting there as if he’d just left the chorus."

Iliad 3.390–94

Helen protests, clearly repelled by her husband’s breezy selfishness, but he hardly notices. He calls her to bed and she follows in silence.

Now Hector finds them right where we left them, luxuriating. Paris shines his armor, Helen sitting silently among her handmaidens. As Hector crosses the threshold, the crosscurrents of meaning in the scene intensify. Covered in blood and filth, holding in front of himself a spear, eleven cubits long with a bronze point, Hector encounters Paris, polishing his own armor, which gleams as he himself did when Helen came to him in Book 3. This moment sums up the essence of each man: Hector carrying the stains of a war that he did not want and yet still leads to protect his family and city, Paris admiring himself in the mirror of his narcissism, breezily oblivious to the terrible suffering his selfishness has brought down on his people. The relationship of appearance to reality, inner substance to outer show, is an important theme in the Iliad. Both Paris and Helen represent the danger of alluring but potentially destructive beauty. Their glossy presence in Troy forms a counterpoint to Hector’s longsuffering virtue.

A warrior’s armor is a special case of the appearance/reality theme. There are four extended arming scenes in the poem, involving Paris (3.328–38), Agamemnon (11.17–44), Patroclus (16.130–44), and Achilles (19.365–91), each preparing for battle. Paris’ arming is the least elaborate, showing the basic components of what is clearly a traditional Homeric “type scene,” a series of words and actions that recur, usually verbatim, several times in the course of the poem:

Then bright Alexandros, husband of well-coiffed Helen,
put his beautiful armor over his shoulders.
First, he fitted to his calves the handsome greaves,
joined together by silver fastenings.
Next, he covered his chest with the breastplate
from his brother Lykaon, and it was molded to him.
Over his shoulder he hung the silver-studded sword,
made of bronze, then the shield, broad and strong.
On his mighty head he set the well-made helmet
with horse-hair crest, and its frightful plumes nodded down.
Then he took up the strong-shafted spear, fitted to his hand.

Iliad 3.328–38

The components of the armor and the order they are donned remain the same in all four passages, usually expressed in exactly the same language as they are here. But in the other three passages, this basic core is expanded to add details specific to the characters and situation. What the armor shows on the outside may or may not reflect what is inside the warrior.

Agamemnon’s arming (11.15–46) is the longest and most elaborate, adding a lengthy description of the decoration on the breastplate, with cobalt snakes writhing up toward the throat opening and on the shield, with an image of monstrous Gorgon, staring ferociously. The decoration is clearly meant to frighten an enemy, but given what we know of Agamemnon’s difficulties in living up to his leadership role in the army, we might almost find the lengthy description faintly ironic, more show than substance. Patroclus’ arming (16.130–44) comes next in the sequence, and is already unusual in that he is donning not his own armor but Achilles’. The interplay of appearance and reality is prominent in this case, since Patroclus is in fact disguising himself in the hope that the Trojans will think he is Achilles and fall back. Homer points insistently to the problem with this strategy, noting that Patroclus put on all of Achilles’ armor, but did not take up the spear, with its ash wood shaft, a gift to Achilles from his father Peleus:

That weapon, made of ash wood from Mount Pelion,
no other of the Achaeans could handle; only Achilles
knew how to wield it; Chiron brought it to Achilles’ father
from the peaks of Pelion, an instrument of death for heroes.

Iliad 16.141–44

The message is clear: Patroclus is not Achilles, no matter how he may appear from the outside.

The arming of Achilles (19.367–91) is, not surprisingly, the dramatic climax of the series. Thetis comes through for her son by getting Hephaestus to make armor to replace what Hector stripped off Patroclus. She wafts down from Olympus with her gifts, which frighten the Myrmidons, but not Achilles:

Trembling gripped all the Myrmidons, nor did anyone dare
to look at the armor; they were afraid of it. But when Achilles
saw it, his anger came on stronger, and his eyes
shone terribly under his brows, like sunflare.
Taking the god’s gifts in his hands, he was delighted.

Iliad 19.14–17

The armor, glittering and beautiful but also menacing, seems to stir something elemental in Achilles. The divine part of him is about to be tapped, releasing a terrible power the moral import of which is not easy to fix. As he arms himself, the fire remains in his eyes and his heart is full of rage. The standard elements of the scene are all there, but expanded by similes that feature light and fire. The last lines of the scene return to the famous sword, bringing death to warriors. The use of armor to reflect something of the character of its wearer is a continuing theme in the Iliad, coming to a crescendo in the armor of Achilles. Homer introduces the motif when Hector crosses the threshold of Paris’s bedroom.

Frustrated as usual with his brother’s indifference to the threat facing Troy, Hector lashes out. It is not a good thing, he says, to keep χόλος, “anger,” “gall,” in your heart. People are fighting and dying all over the city, and it is Paris’s fault that war has surrounded the city. Δαιμόνιε, the term Hector uses to address Paris, is telling. It is used by several characters in Homeric poetry, always in direct address, to show bewilderment and sometimes frustration with another person to whom he or she is emotionally tied. The etymology, from δαίμων,“divine being,” suggests that the speaker finds the other person strange or uncanny, inscrutable as gods are to mortals. It will appear three more times in Book 6, used by Andromache of Hector (407), Hector of Andromache (486) and finally Hector of Paris again (521). The tone always seems to contain a varying mixture of frustration and bemused affection, but its use in these encounters always signals the same thing: the estrangement of Hector from those he loves.

Further Reading

Armstrong, J. 1958. “The Arming Motif in the Iliad.” American Journal of Philology 79: 337–54.

Edwards, M. 1987. Homer: Poet of the Iliad, 71–77. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Lord, A. 1951. “Composition by Theme in Homer and Southslavic Epos.” Transactions of the American Philological Association 82: 71–80.

Owen, E.T. 1946. The Story of the Iliad, 35–36. Toronto: Clark and Irwin.

Redfield, J. 1975. Nature and Culture in the Iliad, 113–15. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.

Van Nortwick, T. 2008. Imagining Men: Ideals of Masculinity in Ancient Greek Culture, 63, 72. Westport, CT: Praeger.

Ἕκτορ ἐπεί με κατ᾽ αἶσαν ἐνείκεσας οὐδ᾽ ὑπὲρ αἶσαν…

Hector, since you have rebuked me justly and not beyond measure…

Once again, as in Book 3, Hector attacks Paris for staying out of the fighting and Paris responds with breezy detachment. He has not, as Hector claims, been hanging back because of any resentment, but rather to tend to his own sorrow. It is hard not to hear a large dose of self-pity in these words, to which, “Hector answered nothing,” (6.342), a telling silence. But never mind, Paris says. His wife has been cajoling him with soft words, urging him to return to battle, and he will do just that. Hector should go on ahead and Paris will catch up.

Helen has so far been silent. Speaking to Hector as if Paris were not in the room, she now revisits the tone of her initial appearance in Book 3, self-loathing, regret, and bitter denunciation of Paris. The poisonous dynamic between husband, wife, and brother-in-law intensifies here. We know how Hector feels about his brother, and how Helen views her husband. Now a new element is added, as Helen invites Hector to sit and rest:

Come in now and sit down on this couch,
dear brother-in-law, since grievous toil has befallen you
because of me, bitch that I am, and Alexandros’ blind folly,
we upon whom Zeus has put an evil fate, that we may hereafter
be a topic of song for people in the years to come.

Iliad 6.354–57

The self-loathing remains, but there also runs underneath these words a certain seductiveness, as if Helen hopes to hurt Paris by flirting with his brother in front of him. The undercurrent in Helen’s words is not lost on Hector:

Then great Hector of the shining helm answered her:
Do not ask me to sit, Helen, though you love me; you will not persuade me.
For already my heart is urging me to stand with
the Trojan warriors, who long for me when I am away.

Iliad 6.359–62

Hector senses trouble here. We can almost see him backing away toward the doorway. His own words betray the familiar tension in him, between love for his family and the need to be fighting for his city. The use of the word ποθή, “desire,” “yearning,” to describe the soldiers’ feelings toward him even seems to acknowledge on some level the sensual undercurrent in Helen’s words: they too desire him. His entrance into the bedroom, holding his long spear in front of him, now takes on new significance. It is as if he feels the need to protect himself in the company of Helen, his phallic spear at the ready.

With Hector’s refusal of Helen’s offer to sit, the consolation motif introduced by Hecuba’s offer of wine is complete. The question remains, for what loss does Hector need to be consoled? At this point in the episode, the answer is clear: everyone and everything he loves, his family, his friends, his city. The consolation here looks to a future loss, as when Thetis is called to Olympus by Zeus (24.100–2, with essay on 6.263–96). By invoking the narrative pattern explicitly at this moment, Homer ups the emotional stakes for Hector in the coming scene with Andromache yet further. If we are listening to the stylistic signals, we sense that this will be the last time Hector sees his wife and child.

This encounter essentially completes Homer’s portrait of Paris and Helen. Their initial appearance in Book 3, with the tryst enforced by Aphrodite, has the effect of replaying the cause of the war as we witness the suffering that it has brought to Troy. The verbal and thematic parallels between that scene and those in Book 6 suggest that Homer wants that original betrayal in our minds again as we watch Hector making his way through the city for the last time. The Paris we find there seems to be basically unchanged from Book 3. In a few telling scenes, Homer presents us with the portrait of a perfectly selfish man, unable to summon up the slightest remorse for what his actions have cost Troy and his family. When Hector and Helen attack him, the words seem to roll off, leaving no mark. He cannot be shamed; he cannot hold a grudge, because that would require caring about the other person; he is the perfect foil for his noble, over-burdened brother.

Helen, too, represents a stark contrast to Paris’ shallow narcissism. By turns remorseful, angry, sarcastic, and, as we have seen, (perhaps unconsciously) seductive, she is, along with Achilles and Agamemnon, among Homer’s most complex creations. Though she is famous for her beauty, Homer never describes her. Instead, we view her through others’ eyes, as when three old codgers catch sight of her as she makes her way to Priam in Book 3:

They, when they saw Helen going toward the tower,
softly spoke winged words to each other:
“There is no blame on the Trojans and well-greaved Achaeans
that they have suffered pains for so long over this woman.
Terribly her face resembles those of the immortal gods.But even so, let her sail back home again,
lest she leave pain behind for our children.”

Iliad 3.154–60

Helen’s beauty is dangerous, to her and to others. Homer might have left it at that, showing her from the outside, as something that happens to other people. Instead, in a few brief scenes, he lets us see into her troubled heart, revealing unexpected depths of feeling. Homer’s audience might well have come to the story expecting to find in Helen a shallow, selfish woman, who gave in to her lust and betrayed the Greeks. The poet plays against these expectations, showing her to be thoughtful and self-aware, full of shame for her actions and scorn for her feckless husband.

By giving us a more nuanced portrait of Helen, Homer complicates any easy understanding of her motives for leaving Sparta with Paris. In fact, he declines to settle the issue of blame for the catastrophic events of the past nine years. Though full of remorse for her actions and their consequences, she says that it was Zeus who “put an evil fate” on her and Paris (3.357). Priam, who we feel would be entirely justified in hating Helen, instead blames not her but the gods for what has happened (3.164–65). Leaving the matter unresolved is typical for Homer. We might like to have things settled, to know whether Helen went of her own free will or was abducted, but storytellers will often prefer to leave major issues unresolved as we struggle to find answers, which keeps their options open and us more engaged.

If there is one hint as to how Homer might have viewed the dynamics of the original abduction, it might be the remarkable scene in Book 3, when Aphrodite, disguised as an old woman, comes to fetch Helen back to Paris’s side after he escapes Menelaus. Typically for such encounters, the goddess’s extraordinary powers show through the disguise. Helen, discerning the true identity of the old woman, startles us by insulting Aphrodite (calling her δαιμονίη, a peculiar, perhaps ironic usage, since she is in fact speaking to a goddess, whose disguise she has penetrated), suggesting that the goddess go and stay by Paris’s side instead. Perhaps he will make her his bedmate or his slave, she says. These are dangerous words to speak to an omnipotent being. No one else in the poem except Achilles addresses deities in this way, and like him, Helen might be viewed as either courageous or reckless. In any event, Aphrodite is not amused and issues a threat, telling Helen not to make her angry, which might cause her love to turn to hate. Helen is frightened and follows silently along to the bedroom with the old crone (3.396–417).

How are we to understand what happens here? We can take it straight, as Homer tells it. Helen is defiant at first but eventually frightened into obedience. But could we also hear Helen’s words as a reflection of her shame and anger at herself for giving in to Paris? That is, she hates the part of herself that gives in to the power of sexuality that Aphrodite embodies and rails at the goddess as a form of self-reproach? I might be reading the passage anachronistically of course, imputing psychological subtlety where it is not strictly required for the passage to make sense. But this is not an isolated instance of a character in Homeric epic behaving in ways that we might view as evidence for moral and/or psychological complexity. The Iliad, like all great works of art, endures because it resists easy answers to the questions it poses.

Further Reading

Bergren, A. 1983. “Language and the Female in Early Greek Thought.” Arethusa 16: 69–95.

Graziosi, B. and Haubold, J. ed. 2010. Homer: Iliad, Book VI, 5–6; 41–44. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press

Redfield, J. 1975. Nature and Culture in the Iliad, 35–36. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.

She has heard bad news from the battlefield and has rushed off, μαινομένῃ ἐϊκυῖα, “like a madwoman” (389) toward the city walls with their son and his nurse. Even before she meets Hector, we see the destructive power of the war he brings with him into to the city engulfing Andromache, separating her from her family and neighbors, driving her mad.

He goes after her, along the wide streets, past impressive buildings, through the great city to the Skaian Gates. Homer has been leading Hector and us toward the meeting with Andromache since the beginning of Book 6, and he makes the most of it:

When he went through the great city and came to the gates,
the Skaian gates, right where he was about to go back out to the plain,
there his richly-giving wife came running to meet him,
Andromache…

Iliad 6.392–95

When Hector and Andromache meet, at the last possible moment, builds up the tension in what we already know will be a highly-charged meeting; where they meet is just as important, right on the boundary between the beautiful, civilized spaces of Troy and the grinding chaos of the battlefield. We have seen Hector lingering near the threshold before, when he goes to see Paris and when he looks for Andromache, as if he were reluctant to give himself over to the comforts of the palace. Drinking the wine his mother offers, putting down the long spear and sitting down in Paris’s bedroom, entering his own house to wash off the filth: all this would sap him of his will to fight. We have said that the consolation motif seems to portend the loss of everyone he loves. We may go further: by giving in and fully inhabiting the city, he would, in his mind at least, be giving in to the unavoidable, ultimate necessity, his own death.

During his increasingly poignant visit to Troy, Hector has become a “liminal” figure, from the Latin, līmes, “boundary.” Suspended between two worlds, he cannot fully give himself over to either. Isolated and increasingly alienated from the people and places he loves, he and his family keep reaching across boundaries, but cannot connect. Hecabe is “sweetly giving” (251), Andromache is “richly giving,” (394), but finally Hector cannot receive comfort from either of them. From the poet’s perspective, such a figure is a potent resource for storytelling. By drawing our attention to fundamental boundaries that define our existence as humans, heroes remind us where those boundaries are, and prompt further thought about the nature of reality. In the last six books of the poem, Achilles will continually push against the limits of human existence, upward toward the gods, and downward toward the savagery of wild animals. But whereas Achilles’ excesses make him a repellent if fascinating character, Hector is pulled apart by his own decency and deep sense of responsibility, sacrificed to the relentless masculine imperative to define himself through action, which inevitably separates him from those he would protect.

As husband and wife reunite, Homer deepens the pathos by inviting us to contemplate the very beginning of their life together, when Eëtion, Andromache’s father, gave her to Hector in marriage. That happy day in turn gives way in the poet’s vision to their child, Astyanax, whose name leads us to the most important of his father’s qualities, his role as protector of Troy. Here we arrive at what is most dear to Hector, the two people he must protect. The rest of the encounter shows us how brutally difficult that assignment will be.

Andromache gets to the heart of her husband’s dilemma immediately: δαιμόνιε φθίσει σε τὸ σὸν μένος, “strange man, your own strength will destroy you” (407). His mother has asked him to rest, but he has refused, because wine will rob him of his μένος (265). Now the other of the two most important women in his life tells him that very strength will be his undoing. Her use of δαιμόνιε highlights his continued alienation, from her, from his mother, from Paris. He is mysterious to his own wife, made strange by his need to be out on the battlefield. She would have him protect his family from close by and now she turns up the pressure yet further: does he not pity his infant son? Looking into a bleak future, she sees herself widowed as the Greeks swarm over his dead body. Better for her to “go under the earth” (411) than to lose him, since there will be no comfort for her once he is gone, only pain. Her parents are gone and she, like Hector, will be utterly alone.

It is the nature of heroes in Greek literature to be a mixed blessing to their city, their family, their friends. Because Achilles is such a brutally effective fighter, he is of great value to his fellow Greek warriors. But his outsized appetites and excessive self-regard eventually make him an agent of death and destruction to the army. Sophocles’ Oedipus comes to Thebes and defeats the Sphinx, saving the citizens and becoming their king. But his ignorance about his true identity and arrogant dependence on his own flawed judgment bring sickness and death to his subjects. For all his great-hearted solicitude and virtue, Hector too becomes just such an ambivalent force in his own city and family.

Further Reading

Edwards, M. 1987. Homer: Poet of the Iliad, 208–210. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Graziosi, B. and Haubold, J. ed. 2010. Homer: Iliad, Book VI, 5–6; 41–44. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.

Owen, E.T. 1946. The Story of the Iliad, 65–67. Toronto: Clark and Irwin.

Redfield, J. 1975. Nature and Culture in the Iliad, 122–127. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.

He killed Andromache’s father, but did not strip off his armor to keep as a trophy, the standard practice in poem’s battle scenes. Instead, he “respected him in his heart” (417), burning Eëtion’s body with his armor and piling up a funeral mound over it. He killed all of her brothers, as they were tending flocks on a hillside, then took her mother as a war prize, but later sold her back for ransom, allowing her to die a gentle death at home. We are reminded that the world was not always a place without pity, that Achilles, though relentless as a warrior, once recognized limits. A serene vignette from Eëtion’s burial captures the fleeting change in mood:

And nymphs from the mountains, daughters
of aegis-bearing Zeus, planted elm trees all around the grave.

Iliad 6.419–20

Burial scenes, as opposed to the battles that necessitate them, are moments of rest in the Iliad. The terrible strain of battle subsides in death’s aftermath, when single combat gives way to communal suffering and the prospect of healing. This fleeting moment of peace foreshadows the string of burials, of increasing importance to the poem’s meaning, in Books 16–24, as Sarpedon, Patroclus, and finally Hector are laid to rest.

Andromache’s memories are for us, since Hector presumably knows about her past life. Now we know that the stakes for Hector are even more personal than we thought. As if to drive that point home, Andromache ratchets up the pressure on her husband yet more:

Hector, you are my father and my revered mother
and my brother; you are my young husband.

Iliad 6.429–30

The viselike grip of Hector’s responsibilities tightens as Andromache drives home her utter dependence on him. Using this emotional leverage, she crosses into his world by giving him tactical advice. Why not pull back to the most defensible place on the city walls? That way he can protect his family while staying near them. The advice seems sensible. Apparently the Greeks, led by the best of their warriors, have tried unsuccessfully three times to breach the wall at that spot.

Hector will not even consider this promising plan, for reasons that take us to the heart of his torturous dilemma:

My dear, all these things are a care to me also, but I would be
deeply ashamed before the Trojans and the Trojan women with trailing robes,
if like a coward I were to shrink back from battle;
nor does my heart so urge me, since I have learned to be brave
and always to fight in the forefront of battle with the Trojans,
winning glory for myself and for my father.

Iliad 6.440-46

Hector is not going to argue tactics with his wife. There may, in fact, be more than one way to defend the city and its people, but for him this is about something much more personal. To retreat to the city would be a betrayal of his very identity as a man. Avoiding shame by winning glory, and thus the admiration and approval of one’s fellows, is the strongest imperative in the masculine code of conduct that informs the Iliad. Hector cannot stay with the people he loves most and still think of himself as a man.

The word ἐσθλός (443) carries tremendous weight here, encompassing the whole complex of masculine heroic values, the need to separate from the mother and come to terms with the world of the father, understanding your identity as the product of imposing your will on the world outside yourself, becoming the person you are supposed to be by working your will in the world (see Introduction: The Hero’s Return and the Gift of Life). Achilles is the most egregious example of this code in the poem, but Hector’s words and actions here place him squarely in the same arena. What makes his story so painful is that unlike Achilles, whose arrogance and willfulness blind him (until the very end of the poem) to the suffering he is visiting on himself and others in pursuit of these goals, Hector knows the consequence yet still feels he must carry on.

As if following this line of thought out to its inevitable conclusion, Hector now affirms what we already know: one day, Troy will be destroyed and along with it, Priam and his people. Not only do we know that Troy is doomed, but Hector knows it too. From now on, everything he says and does will be in the shadow of his impending death. In this sense, Hector’s story is the essence of a tragic narrative, showing us an admirable man doing his best against the backdrop of the inevitable fact of human mortality. In this crucible, the impact of every act is intensified, pointing us toward a richer understanding of the meaning of human existence.

Just such an intensity seems to invest Hector’s mind now, as he looks ahead to the world he will leave behind in death. No loss is as painful for him to contemplate as the specter of Andromache, a captive of some Greek warrior, under a κρατερὴ ἀνάγκη, “powerful necessity” (458), a polite way to describe sexual slavery. His next words are revealing:

And then someone, seeing you weeping, would say,
“This was the wife of Hector, who was the bravest fighter
of the horse-taming Trojans, when they fought around Ilion.”

Iliad 6.459–61

Even as he contemplates the most wrenching of all his losses, the thought of what someone else will say about him surfaces. Such is the grip of the heroic shame culture. He ends his dismal vision with the now familiar wish to be buried before he can hear her screams as she is dragged away. Burial, at least, would bring rest.

Yet even this fleeting moment of relief is shadowed by the unrelenting sadness of Hector’s isolation from those he loves. The helmet becomes, in this scene, a symbol of the war and its terrors, which Hector has brought with him into the city. When he takes it off, we understand that he is attempting to shed the persona of warrior for these few precious moments, to make contact with his wife and child, as he has not been able to do with Hecabe, Paris, or Helen. The helmet will sit on the ground, shining with latent menace, while Hector and Andromache try one last time to connect with each other.

Hector kisses and dandles his son, a relatively rare instance of physical affection in the poem, then prays to Zeus:

Zeus and you other gods, allow this my son to become
distinguished, as I am among the Trojans, strong
and brave, and to rule forcefully over Ilion.
Then let someone say, seeing him returning from battle,
“This man is much better than his father”; let him kill
his enemy and bring back bloody armor, delighting his mother’s heart.

Iliad 6.474–81

As if to counterbalance the intimate contact with his son, Hector steps back into his heroic persona. In the midst of the pain that suffuses his last visit with his family, he envisions his son as he himself is in this moment, returning from battle, covered in gore. Even as Andromache stands next to him fighting back tears, he imagines that she too would be delighted to see her son following in his father’s footsteps, bringing home more blood, more pain.

Hector hands Astyanax back to Andromache, who is “smiling through her tears” (485). In another intimate gesture, he caresses her and offers reassurance: he will not die before his fated time; no one, cowardly or brave, has ever been able to escape that moment, which is assigned at birth. Not perhaps the most gentle way to put it, but as we have seen, Hector seems to be unable to step outside the tragic heroic perspective, even to comfort those he loves. His first word to her, δαιμονίη (486), gives him away. Andromache is “strange, uncanny,” to him, as he is to her (407). Try as they might, neither husband nor wife can break through the barrier between their intimate, shared space in Troy and the world of battle.

Resigned to his isolation, Hector now sends Andromache back to her proper sphere, to see to the household and her maidservants. The work of war, he says, belongs to the men of Troy, and especially to him. Andromache has tried to cross over into his world, offering strategic advice, but he now closes that door firmly, picking up his helmet.

We understand that by putting on his helmet again, Hector seals himself off from the life he had in Troy, turning back toward the death he and we know is coming for him. The symbolism is confirmed when Hector kills Patroclus in Book 17, and the latter’s helmet—actually Achilles’ helmet—rolls in the dust:

The helmet clattered under the horses’ hooves,
four-horned and hollow-eyed, its plumes crusted
with blood and dust. Before this time it was not permitted
to defile the helmet, crested in horse hair;
rather, it covered the graceful head and brow
of a godlike man, Achilles. But then Zeus gave it
to Hector to wear, and death was near him, too.

Iliad 16.794–800

Homer now invites us to watch Andromache as she makes her sorrowful way back home:

His dear wife set off toward home,
turning back again and again, weeping.

Iliad 6.495–96

The participle, ἐντροπαλιζομένη, “turning around frequently,” appears only three other places in Homeric epic, twice of warriors under attack (11.546, 17.109), once in a mock battle between two goddesses (21.492). Its use here is a brilliant adaptation, capturing Andromache’s anguish, while perhaps carrying a little of the flavor of combat, as if Hector’s wife is herself besieged by the forces of war. Andromache arrives home and her maidservants, once they see her, break into mourning for Hector, “though he was still alive” (500). They do not expect him to return alive from battle. To his family and all the citizens of Troy, Hector is already dying.

Further Reading

Edwards, M. 1987. Homer: Poet of the Iliad, 210–212. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Van Nortwick, T. 2001. “Like a Woman: Hector and the Boundaries of Masculinity.” Arethusa 34.2: 21–35.

———2008. Imagining Men: Ideals of Masculinity in Ancient Greek Culture, 75-93. Westport, CT: Praeger.

As when a stalled horse, fed from the corn crib,
breaks free of his tether and gallops across the plain
to his regular bathing spot in the sweet-flowing river,
glorying; trusting in his splendor he holds his head high
and his mane bounces on his shoulders, while his quick knees
carry him to the familiar haunts of horses.

Iliad 6. 506–11

It’s hard to imagine a more perfect image to capture Paris’ joyful, preening narcissism, his hair flowing over his shoulders, blown by the breeze as he runs along. If Troy had glass windows, we could easily envision him admiring his reflection. Surprisingly, the very same six lines appear verbatim at 15.263–68, describing, of all people, Hector. There Zeus has awakened from his midday tryst with Hera to discover that in his absence the Greeks have rallied with their divine allies and driven the Trojans back, thus stymying his plan to punish the Achaeans for not giving Achilles what he wants. Hector has been briefly out of action, but now Zeus has Apollo rouse him. Excited by the chance to reenter the battle, Hector strides forth, prompting the identical simile.

Verbatim repetition of short passages is not unusual in a poem the style of which reflects the influence of oral composition. But though the repeated lines convey certain images and ideas that carry over more or less intact from one place to another in the narrative, the surrounding context always adds meaning. In Book 6, the quality of “shininess” resonates most with Paris’s armor, as he polishes it in his boudoir, and with Hector’s helmet, the symbol of war’s destructive power in the encounter of Hector and Andromache. The simile resonates with both passages, pointing to Paris’s shallow self-display, made all the more appalling when we know that he is heading into the horror of war beyond the city gates, for which he bears the ultimate responsibility. The last two lines of the simile in his case add another comparison, to the sun, to drive home the point about shininess. Perhaps not by coincidence, the only other use of the word ἠλέκτωρ, “sun,” is in reference to Achilles, about to launch his destructive quest to kill Hector (19.398).

By contrast, Hector’s return to battle in Book 15 occurs about two hundred verses after Zeus lays out the terrible chain of events that will lead to Hector’s death at the hands of Achilles in Book 22: Apollo will rouse Hector and stir panic in the Achaeans, who will be driven back to their ships; Achilles will send Patroclus into battle and Hector will kill him; then Achilles will kill Hector (15.58–71). Hector’s spirited return to the fighting lies in the shadow of this somber prophecy, enriching our sense of his doomed nobility, drawing a painful contrast to his brother’s feckless insouciance.

Even particular words can change meaning under the influence of the local context.

For instance, the word ἀγλαΐηφι, which I have translated above as “splendor,” is the noun cognate with ἀγλαός, “shining,” “brilliant,” an appropriate quality for Paris’s shallow preoccupation with appearances. To use this word to describe Hector would seem to be problematic, as Homer has been at pains to portray him as the polar opposite of his vain brother. By doing so, the poet pushes the word’s connotations toward not outward display, but inner strength, which shines forth when Hector races out to battle.

As Paris finally catches up to Hector, Homer gestures once more to the intimacy that has bound husband and wife together and which, we sense, they will never be able to enjoy again:

                                                                  Τhen suddenly
he came upon bright Hector, his brother, where he was about
to turn from the spot where he had talked to his wife.
Then godlike Alexandros addressed him first:
“Dear brother, surely I’ve delayed you in your haste
by lingering, and have not come on time as you urged.”

Iliad 6.514–19

The meeting of brothers is to occur right at the place where Hector has just said goodbye to Andromache and Astyanax for what looks like the last time. As I have said (see essay on 6.156–190), the verb ὀάριζε (“talked to,” 516) seems to carry the connotation of an intimate exchange between spouses. Using it here, Homer marks the spot with the lingering fragrance of deep, shared emotion. The verb will appear only once more in Homeric epic, in Hector’s wistful monologue in Book 22, as Achilles bears down on him.

When Paris arrives, breezily tone-deaf as usual, apologizing yet again for falling short of his brother’s expectations, the effect is jarring. His greeting, ἠθεῖ’, which I have translated as “Dear brother” (511), is cognate with ἤθεα, the “familiar haunts” of horses in the simile. Other uses of the greeting are all by younger men, usually brothers, speaking to their elders (see 10.37; 22.229; 22.239; 23.94). Once again context is important. The apparently affectionate tone of the greeting is tinged with earlier edgy exchanges between the brothers (see 3.59; 6.333), where Hector’s frustration and resentment seem to roll off of Paris. In my ears, ἠθεῖ’ here carries the false heartiness of something like, “old buddy” (“dude”?) in English, preserving the poisonous dynamic between siblings.

Hector’s reply preserves the uncomfortable atmosphere of the encounter. Paris is δαιμόνι(ε), “strange,” “uncanny,” to him, as he was earlier (6.326), an able but reluctant fighter. And once again, this reflection brings pain to Hector, who is ashamed of his irresponsible little brother (see 3.39–42). Nevertheless, he ends with a hopeful wish: perhaps Zeus will grant them victory over the Greeks after all. In light of what we know and what we have seen in Troy, the words sound a final tragic note.

Further Reading

Edwards, M. 1987. Homer: Poet of the Iliad, 212–213. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Scott, W. 1974. The Oral Nature of the Homeric Simile, 127–140. Leiden: Brill.