24.405–439

Zeus has sent Priam to ransom his son’s body from Achilles, but what, the old king wonders, will he receive? Perhaps the body is intact, lying beside the ships, but in his anxiety he conjures a gruesome image, of Hector chopped into pieces to feed Achilles’s dogs. The horrid specter of unburied bodies strewn around as food for dogs and birds rises in the poem’s opening verses, the product of Achilles’ anger. The souls of dead heroes will be sent off to the god Hades, but the bodies will remain to rot as carrion (1.1–4). Unburied corpses, as Patroclus reminds Achilles in Book 23, cannot pass into their final state in Hades but are trapped in a limbo state, wandering restlessly between life and death (Il. 23.69–74). As such, they symbolize in a concrete way the various unresolved processes at play in the final stages of Achilles’ journey in the last third the poem.

By clinging to the dead bodies of Patroclus and then Hector, Achilles attempts to stop the process by which any mortal can find rest after death. In both cases, divine intervention further retards the proper flow of nature, as Thetis preserves Patroclus’s dead body with ambrosia, while Apollo wraps the corpse of Hector in a golden shield and Aphrodite embalms it to keep corruption away, protecting it from damage while Achilles drags it behind his chariot (19.38–39; 23.184–91; 24.18–21). Achilles’ holding actions block the regular flow of nature not only for Patroclus and Hector, but for himself. As we have seen, the passage of Achilles’ armor marks an intimate relationship between Patroclus, Hector, and Achilles, reflected in various ways at the end of the poem (Book 24 Introduction). Thus, when Achilles denies Hector the final rest that burial would bring, he holds out against a final confirmation of his own mortal nature; when he abuses the corpse, he expresses hatred for his enemy but also for his own mortality (see essay on 24.120–58). This is one aspect of the self-loathing that grips Achilles in the wake of Patroclus’s death.

The poet has invited us to view Priam’s journey across the plain through three different lenses, the trip to the underworld, the love of parents for their children, and the unburied corpse. Each paradigm will inform the encounter to come in the Greek camp. Now Hermes steps behind the horses and the plot moves forward with them toward Achilles’s hut. The katabasis motif has featured Hermes in the role of the god who leads mortals to the Underworld, raising troubling expectations about what roles Priam and Achilles will play during their meeting. Meanwhile, Hermes begins to play the second of his two major personae, the trickster, putting the men who guard the Greek camp to sleep and driving the chariot with Priam and his treasure through the gates.

We have arrived at the moment we have been waiting so long for, as the old king is about to come face-to-face with his principal tormentor, a man who has left him without so many sons, a dangerous, primal force like the evil Dog Star, whom he would gladly see torn apart by dogs and birds (22.25–55). Somehow, he must convince this sworn enemy to spare his life and release Hector’s body. As the story reaches this dramatic high point, we have many questions, but among them is not, “Exactly how is Achilles’s hut constructed?”

ἀλλ᾽ ὅτε δὴ κλισίην Πηληϊάδεω ἀφίκοντο
ὑψηλήν, τὴν Μυρμιδόνες ποίησαν ἄνακτι
δοῦρ᾽ ἐλάτης κέρσαντες: ἀτὰρ καθύπερθεν ἔρεψαν
λαχνήεντ᾽ ὄροφον λειμωνόθεν ἀμήσαντες:
ἀμφὶ δέ οἱ μεγάλην αὐλὴν ποίησαν ἄνακτι
σταυροῖσιν πυκινοῖσι: θύρην δ᾽ ἔχε μοῦνος ἐπιβλὴς
εἰλάτινος, τὸν τρεῖς μὲν ἐπιρρήσσεσκον Ἀχαιοί,
τρεῖς δ᾽ ἀναοίγεσκον μεγάλην κληῗδα θυράων
τῶν ἄλλων: Ἀχιλεὺς δ᾽ ἄρ᾽ ἐπιρρήσσεσκε καὶ οἶος.

But at last they came to the shelter of Peleus’s son,
the towering house the Myrmidons had built for their king;
cutting the pine timbers, they roofed it over,
having gathered the shaggy reeds from the meadow;
and around it they made a great courtyard for their king
with close-set posts; and a single latch secured the gate,
of pine, which three Achaean men could slam shut
and three could open the huge bolt of the gateway
three of the others, that is, but Achilles could slide it alone.

Iliad. 24.448-55

Again, the poet makes us wait. Like the meticulous description of the old king’s wagon (269–74), this pause lets the suspense build as we wait on the threshold with Priam. That Achilles should have an especially grand dwelling is no surprise. That Greeks have been on the shores of Troy for nine years, plenty of time to build something substantial. But more importantly, the house is an extension of Achilles himself, big, strong, and hard to get into. The great door bolt, like the ash spear from Peleus, is an emblem of his unique strength. Only he can wield it. The poet imbues the hut with as much grandeur as he can because mysterious things with cosmic consequences are about to happen inside it.

Hermes now reveals himself and takes his leave of Priam. Epiphany scenes like this one offer the storyteller an opportunity to highlight the unfathomable chasm between the gods and mortals (see also the essay on 24.159–99). Here, however, Hermes maintains his respectful, filial persona as he advises Priam on how to approach Achilles. He declines to go further himself, because the work of the reconciliation must be done by mortals, not gods, who have no need to reconcile themselves to anything in the human realm. Strictly speaking, the god’s role in the journey should not be a total surprise to Priam, since Iris’s message included the pledge from Zeus that he would send Hermes to escort the old king (24.181–87). But as we have noted, the drama in the episode would be lost if Priam were confident that he was under divine protection. Likewise, the intensity of the coming encounter between Priam and Achilles depends on the enforced intimacy of two men driven by a complex mix of human and divine imperatives to face the one person they ought to hate most. One of the great mysteries of the Iliad is how all that hatred funneled into the meeting in Achilles’s hut can finally be redeemed by love.

Further Reading

Segal, C. 1973. The Theme of the Mutilation of the Corpse in the Iliad, 18–29. Mnemosyne 17. Leiden: Brill.