The War That Killed Achilles: The True Story of Homer's Iliad and the Trojan War, Caroline Alexander, c. 2009.
Caroline Alexander:
- a Rhodes scholar
- lecturer at the University of Malawi where she established a department of classics (Malawi: a very, very small landlocked country in southeast Africa; at one time a protectorate of Britain)
- doctorate in classics at Columbia University where she was a Mellon Fellow in the Humanities
- contributing writer for National Geographic and has written for The New Yorker, Smithsonian, and Outside.
- own translation of the Iliad, 2015.
August 6, 2024: if I had to choose only one book on the Iliad this would be it.
A book on mythology, like that of Edith Hamilton or Robert Graves can only be really enjoyed as reference books. A more rewarding way to become familiar with Greek mythology might simply to jump right into the Iliad and sort things out as one goes along.
Family houses (or trees).
Most (?) Greek heroes were demigods; many were daughters of Zeus and a mortal women. Male demigods of mortal men and lesser gods.
Some background I added to this page before the actual notes of Caroline Alexander's book.
First mention of Asia / Europe?
The closest we get in Greek sources to the original ‘Europe’ and ‘Asia’ as geographical terms is in two poems of the 7th and 6th centuries BCE.
First: Asia appears in Homer as a place in western Anatolia (Iliad 2.461). The line refers to the ‘Kaystrian river in the meadow of Asias’, or possibly ‘in an Asian meadow’. The Kaystros (modern Küçük Menderes) is a river in western Anatolia to the south of Izmir. In antiquity it had the city of Ephesus at its mouth.
And second: Europe appears as a relatively small region in northern Greece in the Hymn to Apollo. Cynaethus put the Hymn in its final form in the 520s BCE, but it’s pretty clear he used large chunks of older poetry. The Hymn refers twice to the people who live in the rich Peloponnesos, and those in Europe, and in the islands surrounded by sea Cynaethus, Hymn to Apollo 250–251 = 290–291.
This checklist seems to indicate the original state of things. Cynaethus isn’t listing continents, but chunks of the Greek mainland and the islands. The Peloponnesos and Europe are the southern and northern mainland respectively.
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From another post elsewhere, from 2020: [I forgot to add this. May find it again, later.]
Rediscovering Homer: Inside the Origins of the Epic, Andrew Dalby, c. 2006.
Finally, a book that really, really explains how we got from the oral version of the Iliad and the Odyssey to the written works.
For the "reader's digest" version, two links:
The War That Killed Achilles: The True Story of Homer's Iliad and the Trojan War, Caroline Alexander, c. 2009.
Preface.
Note to the Reader
The Things They Carried
Chain of Command
Notes:
- Agamemnon: first among equals
- they were all kings; but they looked to Agamemnon as their leader
- but that did not mean Achilles followed him blindly
- some say Achilles "sulked and went back to his tent." Caroline Alexander views Achilles' actions completely different.
Agamemnon was first among equals, but both Agamemnon and Achilles were kings. I see
General Eisenhower (US) : General Bernard Montgomery (UK) :: King Agamemnon : King Achilles
King Achilles: He is king of Phthia, or 'Hellas and Phthia', in southern Thessaly, and his people are the Myrmidons.
King Agamemnon: king of Mycenae or Argos. Mycenae and Argos are though to be different names for same area. Just a bit southwest of Athens.
Posted not for the Peloponnesian War, but for the map:
Terms of Engagement
Agamemnon: Iphigenia sacrifice; prayers to Zeus; Nestor reminds Agamemnon of his duties; Athene, the warrior goddess, sweeps through the Achaeans; prepare for battle
Käystrian waters: see above; in western Turkey; near Izmir.
The Skamandros River, also western Turkey.
"host": the Greek army
description of the aegis
"The descent of Athene to the field and the shadow of her terrifying aegis -- like the rousing speeches of Nestor and Odysseus -- are part of Zeus' plan to honor his vow to Thetis.
Change of images -- p. 40 - 41.
"The Catalogue of Ships": 226 verses: names each of the 29 contingents that make up the Achaean army.
The list is a bit confusing according to the author -- p. 42.
Aulis: from where the Achaean armada was launched -- p. 42.
1,186 ships cited; 44 named leaders. With average complement of a ship estimated at 50, the Achaen force was at a minimum ~60,000.
Who was the bravest of the men, and the men's horses, who went with the sons of Atreus (Agamemnon and Menelaus). Best by far among the horses were the mares of Eumelos ...
Does not list the horses; begs the question ... was there originally a list that has disappeared?
"Among the men far the best was Telamonian Aias (Ajax son of Telamon).
Ajax or Aias is a Greek mythological hero, the son of King Telamon and Periboea, and the half-brother of Teucer.
Robert Graves, 81.e. Telamon and Peleus
On the death of his wife Glauce, Telamon married Periboea of Athens, a grand-daughter of Pelops, who bore him Great Ajax; and, later the captive Hesione, daughter of Laomedon, who bore him equally well-known Teucer.
Marshland parsley, p. 44. Wetland parsley is different than parsley that grows in rocks.
horse-taming Trojans: hippodamos
Strabo says Homer was the first geographer based on Homer's description of the Troad, the Trojan plain.
Achilles gives the territory of the Trojans as:
to Lesbos, out to sea, the far west boundary of the Trojans;
to Phrygia inland;
to Hellespont (or Dardanelles); the northwest border of Trojans
"Possibly "the boundless Hellespont" referred not only to what is in fact the narrow modern Dardanelle Straits but to the entire surrounding sea -- off Thrace to the north, off the Trojan plan to the south. As the Helllespont, or Dardanelles, accounts for the northwest border, Mount Ida inland anchors the Troad's southease corner. These and other landmarks, such as the hulking outlines of the islands of Tenedos and Lesbos and, on a very good day, Samothrace in the blue distance, are all the Iliad describes. The plains around Troy: the floodplain of the Skamandros and the Simoeis rivers.
Iris, messenger of the gods -- a message from "Zeus of the aegis" to the Trojans: the Achaeans are on the march and urges the Trojan hero Hektor to rouse his company.
From wiki:
The aegis, Ancient Greek: as stated in the Iliad, is a device carried by Athena and Zeus, variously interpreted as an animal skin or a shield and sometimes featuring the head of a Gorgon. There may be a connection with a deity named Aex, a daughter of Helios and a nurse of Zeus or alternatively a mistress of Zeus (Hyginus, Astronomica 2. 13).
The modern concept of doing something "under someone's aegis" means doing something under the protection of a powerful, knowledgeable, or benevolent source. The word aegis is identified with protection by a strong force with its roots in Greek mythology and adopted by the Romans; there are parallels in Norse mythology and in Egyptian mythology as well,[citation needed] where the Greek word aegis is applied by extension.
Aegeus -- goatish, Robert Graves.
Hektor rouses the Trojans -- and so they meet the enemy -- p. 45.
Hektor: to be Achilles' greatest antagonist.
Hektor: is a Greek name! -- p. 46.
Hektor is not mentioned anywhere else despite a Greek name suggesting this (Hektor) was a brilliant invention by Homer!! -- p. 46.
Again, often in folklore, two brothers, one dark, one light, Cain and Abel, here it's Hector and Paris.
The author suggests that Hektor is not a brilliant invention by Homer but rather a brilliant Homeric development.
Most frequent epithet that describes Hektor: koruthaiolus -- "light bounding off his brilliant helmet."
The Achaeans had been roused by Athene and the Trojans stirred by a direct message from Zeus.
Menelaos spots Paris.... p. 47. And Paris shrinks back into the ranks.
Start on page 48 --- Paris bears two names ... Alexandros and Paris. Tantalizingly, an "Alaksandu" of Wilusa is named in Hittite texts.
Paris defends Aphrodite, p. 49.
"... to horse-pasturing Argos, and Achaea the land of fair women."
Metaphor of weaving -- p. 51.
Skaian Gates: one of two named entrances to the city. -- p. 52.
Helen's beauty: terrible -- ainōs --all the Trojans want her to leave with the Greek ships. -- p. 52/53
Helen's first words -- first words she utters in the epic, p. 53
Nestor -- p. 52. An apparition? In wiki, interesting ... in late accounts, Nestor had a daughter, Epicaste, who became the mother of Homer by Telemachus. Wow. Telemachus, son of Odysseus and Penelope. Wow.
Teichoskopia: viewing from the walls. An extended scene involving Agamemnon, the regal warrior.
Priam and Helen viewing from the walls. -- p. 54.
Helen and Priam see:
- Agamemnon, son of Atreus; and,
- Odysseus, son of Laertes; man raised to know every manner of shiftiness and crafty counsels.
Priam's counselor: Antenor -- p. 54. Antenor's famous characterization of one of the most enduring heroes in all mythology (Odysseus) drops a casual reference to what had evidently been an attempt by bothparties to avoid the war. -- p. 55.
Menelaos would have quickly killed Paris, but Aphrodite intervened, whisking Paris to his bedchamber -- p. 57.
Then, Aphrodite disguises herself as a wood dresser whom Helen had known in Sparta, the goddess then addresses Helen, p. 57.
No other of the Iliad's characters so directly confronts any of the dieties who toy with their lives -- p. 57. Helen sees through this: the goddess of desire herself desires Paris and is pimping Helen to him (Paris) as her surrogate.
In Greek mythology, Helen's origins are bizarre, p 58 [one forgets how many famous Greeks were demi-gods, particularly sons and daughters of Zeus and a mortal:
- mother Leda, raped
- father Zeus, in the guise of a swan
- In Greek mythology, Leda was an Aetolian princess who became a Spartan queen. According to Ovid, she was famed for her beautiful black hair and snowy skin.
- mountainous region of Greece on the north coast of the Gulf of Corinth
- notice ... association with trees -- p. 58 -- see Robert Graves, The Battle of the Trees
- important paragraph on page 58
Back on the plain of Troy, Menelaos still rages, searing for Paris.
But now a quandary: Zeus wonders what to do next?
Zeus' pledge to Thetis and Achilles seems to have slipped his mind -- p. 60.
Zeus looks for bloodless end, but Hera's appetite for this war never flagged -- Zeus reluctantly gives in.
Hera's most cherished cities (p. 61): Argos, Sparta, and Mycenae.
Events unfold quickly. Athene instructed to get the ball rolling. And to do in a way that makes the Trojans appear as offenders.
Athene encourages a Trojan Pandaros, son of Lykaon, shoot the first arrow. Athene, the double agent, deflects the arrow so it harmlessly hits the belt buckle of Menelaos. Harmless grazes skin and draws some blood.
The sight of his brother's blood unnerves Agamemnon. Says the Trojans will pay dearly for this. p. 61.
Zeus, to please Hera, will sacrifice the Trojans whom he loves beyond all other peopls, and Hera will sacrifice the Achaean cities she holds most dear in order to glut her hatred.
A war that would cause severe distress to both Hera and Zeus.
End of Book Four, the Iliad. The vast plains of death, Hera says, "Did this ever happen?"
Enemy Lines
p. 64
Begins Book Four.
Deaths of some 250 warriors are graphically described.
p. 67: the parentage of Aineias by Aphrodite and his mortal father, Anchises, is established by Aineias himself later in the epic, when he relates in exhaustive detail the genealogy to Achilles, as one demigod to another.
Aineias prophecies that he will be the survivor of the house of Priam when Ilion eventually falls.
His descendants will inherit the Troad -- it was in deference to this tradition that the Romans claimed Trojan Aineias as their founder- a tradition that has recently received new consideration in view of DNA findings that indicate that hte Etruscans (on peninsula of Italy), the first rulers of Rome, originated in Anatolia. -- p. 68.
Aineias rescured foru times from certain death -- far more than any other hero. Rescued from both Diomedes (Book Five) and Achilles (Book Twenty).
The few demigods that were saved, like Aineias were saved by direct intervention of a patron divinity, not by any special ingredient of their own semidivine nature.
Example: the epic's most outstanding demigod -- Achilles.
Book Five: belongs to Diomedes. This is his aristeía. See book beginning page 69.
Aristeía.a scene in the dramatic conventions of epic poetry as in the Iliad, where a hero in battle has his finest moments (aristos = "best"). Aristeia may result in the death of the hero, and therefore suggests a "battle in which he reaches his peak as a fighter and hero."
Cults honoring Diomedes invariably assoc with horses.
Diomedes accidentally slices Aphrodite's hand with his hand -- draws ichōr -- the "blood" in the veins of gods.
Can go back to this later. Every page, every paragraph there is something to offer.
Land of My Fathers
Dusk of the third day. Wow, that's all the farther we've gotten!
Zeus: makes his speech that gods will not get involved. Honors his pledge to Thetis: the Achaeans cannot win without Achilles.
Momentum shifts toward the Trojans.
Greeks driven back to their ships.
But Homer, through Zeus, foretells the ending of this tragedy.
p. 87: Achilles has not yet moved.
"In plain genealogy, Achilles is, of course, the son of a goddess, the sea nymph Thetis, and a mortal man, Peleus. In heroic society, all warriors are defined by their patrimony; Achilles is Pēleídēs -- son of Peleus, whose biography and career can be pieced together from the usual collection of fragments of lost epics, references in other poetry, as well as compilations of traditional genealogy and mythology made by later writers of antiquity."
"From these variegate sources we learn that Peleus was the son of Aiakos, the ruler of the island of Aigina, off the coast of Attica....." -- p. 87+.
... Peleus, then, stands in a somewhat similar relation to troubled men as Thetis does to troubled gods -- p. 89.
Thetis is credited with saving Dionysos, Hephaistos, and of course, most famously, Zeus.
See page 103: Phthia, The Waste Land.
Skip ahead.
In God We Trust
Book 11 in the Iliad?
From Mount Ida, war is pure spectacle.
25th day of the Iliad, the longest day in the epic.
Night does not come until well into Book Eighteen.
Man Down
At the Achaean camp, now under siege by Hektor and the Trojans.
Achilles on the stern on one of the boats; he has apparently not yet returned to Phthia.
Mentioned in previous chapter: he had two choices -- to return to Phthia, his home, his Waste Land, to live out his life as an old man, or die at Troy.
Here, the author says the longest day began in Book 11 and ended with Book 18 -- this chapter has the episode in which the Iliad turns, and which was categorically predicted b Zeus to Hera, as early as Book 8.
The extended sequence will culminate with the fall of Patroklos ... Achilles' companion-in-arms.
Years ago, Nestor had come to Phtia with Odysseus "assembling fighting men" for the war that was just beginning at Troy across the sea...p. 125.
The death of Achilles -- yet to come .. p. 145 -- I actually had tears reading this passage about the grief of his mom, the sea nymph Thetis.
The Patrokleia and the events of its immediate aftermath reflect some of the most masterful and sophisticated narrative structuring in the Iliad. --p. 146
Absolutely amazing how well this epic was written in 800 BC for an event that occurred 1200 BC.
The relationship between comrades-in-arm -- p. 147. Vietnam.
The death of Patrocles.
Skip ahead.
No Hostages
One last attempt to stop Achilles -- Thetis.
Thetis to Mount Olympus to Hephaistos to get get armor for Achilles.
Hera dispatches Iris to implore Achilles to join the battle, avenge the death of Patrocles.
The Iron Age audience; the technology of Achilles' shield.
This is really, really cool.
The fall of Troy was the end of the Bronze Age.
The audience listening to Homer were of the Iron Age.
They heard from Homer the exact moment man moved from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age -- perhaps not -- a bronze shield for Achilles ... "blacksmiths" can work in other metals than just iron.
But, apparently, the shield was bronze, even though Hephaistos was an "ironworkder, a blacksmith."
Achilles "returns" to battle: p. 158.
Mēnis: a charged word, the first word of the Iliad.
Briseis: last seen when led unwillingly from Achilles' shelter, now makes a startling reappearnce. Confronted with Patroklos' torn body, she cries aloud and tears her face in mourning. This is the last that will be seen of Briseis, the innocent cause of so much destruction -- p. 161 - 162.
Page 162: from the moment of his speech of reconciliation, Achilles is intent only on war and urges immediate action.
Page 164: meanwhile, Zeus does the same on Mount Olympus ... to address the pivotal developments on the Trojan plain.
Page 167: the Iliad does not rgains its high tone and gravitas until the end of Book Twenty, when Achilles' aristeía is under way in earnest.
Page 170: Hera calls on her lame son, Hephaistos, for help. He makes a spectacular appearance and an unexpected appearance as pure Fire.
Page 173: Achilles and Hektor meet.
The Death of Hektor
The ninth chapter of this book, "The Death of Hektor," is the author's own translation of the Iliad's Book Twenty-two. The translation was not made because it was felt that Lattimore's work could be improved upon, but because this Book is too perfect to be fragmented by commentary, and it seemed an impertinence to life an entire chapter of another scholar's work. -- p. xix in "Note to the Reader."
The Everlasting Glory
Achilles has killed Hektor -- page 192.
The funeral of Patroklos.
Funeral games, p. 199.
Among the watching gods, a plan to send Hermes to steal the body from Achilles is rejected by the powerful alliance of Hera and Athene. Those two absolutely detest Troy, because of Paris -- p. 202.
Return of Hektor's body. Priam and Achilles meet in the very twilight of their lives, p. 213.
The fate of these heroes and the Iliad's few heroines were to be the stuff of later legends. Poets of the epic cycle strode roughshod over the Iliad's chosen time frame to chronicle remorselessly the full and complete events of the remainder of the war.
Aethiopis: around 650 BC -- the Iliad's immediate sequel; lost but some lines may remain -- p. 216.
In that sequel the "apocryphal" myth / folk tradition of Paris shooting Achilles in the ankle.
Two later epics in the Trojan Cycle, the Little Iliad and the Ilias Persis, or The Sack of Ilion, both of which related the stratagem of the Trojan Horse; it is possible that the "horse" reflects a memory from the Bronze Age of Assyrian siege machines, battering rams surmounted by a boxlike casing that protected the men inside as they advanced against a city.
Others:
Paris was killed by the Greek hero Philoktetes, p. 217.
Like Paris, Philoktetes was renowned as an archer.
Priam was slain in his courtyard by Achilles' son Neoptolemos whose name means "new war."
Priam's daughter Kassandra raped at Athene's alter by the lesser Lokrian Aias and then taken as booty by Agamemnon to Mycenae, where she met her death at the hands of Agamemnon's wife, Clytemnestra.
Priam's wife, Hekabe, was turned into a dog, and her grave became a landmark for sailors, known as Cynossema -- "the bitch's tomb."
Andromache, whom the death of Hektor caught while she was at her loom, weaving as her own fate unraveled, was enslaved, too as she had long feared, handed as a prize to Achilles' son, to whom according to some versions she bore a son. Astyanax, her son by Hektor, was dashed to death from the walls of Troy.
Diomedes, delayed homecoming; unfaithful wife; he went west to Italy.
Tellingly, the Iliad's most outstanding Achaean heroes are unambiguously cast as villains in the works of later writers. Agamemnon, Menelaos, and Odysseus make multiple appearances in the plays of ASE as bullying, duplicitous, cold-blooded tyrants; Helen, apart from Euripides' tragicomedy in her name, is usually cursed, especially by other female characters, as an outright whore. Strikingly the line of Peleus alone generally retains its epic nobility. This is true not only of the reluctant warrior Achilles and Peleus himself but also, unexpectedly, of Achilles' son Neoptolemos, who certainly had blood on his hands.
See page 220 for how the epic now perceived: a martial epic glorifying war is one of the great ironies of literary history. How did this happen: the Iliad mostly read in the elite schools whose classically-based curriculum was dedicated to "dying well" for king and country.
In fact, Homer's insistent depiction of the war as a pointless catastophe that blighted all it touched was simply and adroitly circumvented. Interesting.
A true poet.
Final paragraph of the book:
But the Iliad also never betrays its subject, which is war. Honoring the nobility of a soldier's sacrifice and courage, Homer nonetheless determinedly concludes his epic with a sequence of funerals, inconsolable lamentation, and shattered lives. War makes stark the tragedy of mortality. A hero will have no recompense for death, although he may win glory.
Makes me think of a movie title by Quentin Tarantino.
(Ptolemy -- Egyptian)
Acknowledgments
Notes: pp. 229 - 272
Selected Further Reading: pp. 273 - 277
Most faithful translation of the Iliad: Richmond Lattimore's.
The "Homeric question": modern scholarship is securely dated to the work of Milman Parry, whose methodical analysis of the function and economy of the formulaic language of Homeric poetry securely established the epics' debt to tradition oral-compositional technique. Parry's later work with guslars, or professional poets, of Serbo-Croatian heroic poetry, in what was then Yugoslavia, in partnership with his colleague Albert B. Lord, appeared to substantiate his earlier linguistic work.
Index: pp. 279 - 296
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