s. Palamedes had deserved the gratitude of his comrades by the invention of dice, with which they whiled away their time before Troy; and the first set of which he dedicated in the temple of Tyche at Argos. But all envied him his superior wisdom, because he had also invented lighthouses, scales, measures, the discus, the alphabet, and the art of posting sentinels.25
t. When Nauplius heard of the murder, he sailed to Troy and claimed satisfaction; yet this was denied him by Agamemnon, who had been Odysseus’s accomplice and enjoyed the confidence of all the Greek leaders. So Nauplius returned to Greece with his surviving son Oeax, and brought false news to the wives of Palamedes’s murderers, saying to each: ‘Your husband is bringing back a Trojan concubine as his new queen.’ Some of these unhappy wives thereupon killed themselves. Others committed adultery: as did Agamemnon’s wife Clytaemnestra, with Aegisthus; Diomedes’s wife Aegialeia, with Cometes son of Sthenelus; and Idomeneus’s wife Meda, with one Leucus.26
1. Cypria, quoted by Proclus: Chrestomathy 1; Tzetzes: Antehomerica 154 ff.; Scholiast on Homer’s Iliad iii. 206.
2. Dictys Cretensis: i. 4; Apollodorus: Epitome iii. 28–9; Homer: Iliad iii. 207.
3. Apollodorus: Epitome iii. 29–30; Hyginus: Fabula 103; Eustathius on Homer pp. 325 and 326.
4. Hyginus: loc. cit.; Eustathius on Homer p. 245.
5. Pausanias: i. 34. 2; Tzetzes: On Lycophron 532–3; Philostratus: Heroica iii. 1; Quintus Smyrnaeus: Posthomerica vii. 408 ff; Pliny: Natural History xvi. 88.
6. Hyginus: Fabulae 103 and 104; Cypria, quoted by Pausanias: iv. 2. 5; Ovid: Heroides xiii. 152; Eustathius on Homer p. 325; Apollodorus: Epitome iii. 30; Servius on Virgil’s Aeneid vi. 447.
7. Eustathius on Homer, loc. cit.; Hyginus: Fabula 104.
8. Conon: Narrations 13; Apollodorus: Epitome, quoted by Tzetzes: On Lycophron 941; Strabo: vi. 1. 12.
9. Apollodorus: Epitome iii. 31; Tzetzes: On Lycophron 245; Ovid: Metamorphoses xii. 70–145.
10. First Vatican Mythographer: 210; Tzetzes: On Lycophron 307.
11. Eustathius on Homer’s Iliad xxiv. 251, p.1348; Servius on Virgil’s Aeneid i. 478; Dictys Cretensis: iv. 9; Tzetzes: loc. cit.
12. Benoit: Le Roman de Troie.
13. Apollodorus: Epitome iii. 32; Homer: Iliad xxi. 34 ff. and 85–6; xxiii. 740–7 and vii. 467–8.
14. Apollodorus: Epitome iii. 32; Homer: Iliad ii. 690–3; xx. 89 ff. and 188 ff.; Eustathius on Homer’s Iliad iii. 58; Scholiast on Homer’s Iliad i. 184; Cypria, quoted by Proclus: Chrestomathy i; Dictys Cretensis: ii. 17.
15. Hyginus: Fabula 115; Homer: Iliad xiii. 460 ff. and xx. 181 ff.; Hesiod: Theogony 1007.
16. Homer: Iliad v. 305 ff.; xx. 178 ff. and 585 ff.; Philostratus: Heroica 13.
17. Homer: Iliad ix. 328–9; vi. 395–7; xvii. 575–7 and vi. 413–28; Apollodorus: Epitome iii. 33.
18. Dictys Cretensis: ii. 17; Homer: Iliad i. 366 ff and xvi. 149–54; Eustathius on Homer pp. 77, 118 and 119.
19. Dictys Cretensis: ii. 18; Sophocles: Ajax 210; Horace: Odes ii. 4. 5.
20. Heracleides Ponticus: Homeric Allegories pp. 424–5; Homer: Iliad vi. 196 ff.; Apollodorus: Epitome iii. 34–5; Eustathius on Homer p. 894.
21. Cypria, quoted by Proclus: loc. cit.; Servius on Virgil’s Aeneid ii. 81.
22. Apollodorus: Epitome iii. 8; Hyginus: Fabula 105.
23. Scholiast on Euripides’s Orestes 432; Philostratus: Heroica 10.
24. Dictys Cretensis: ii. 15; Cypria, quoted by Pausanias: x. 31. 1; Tzetzes: On Lycophron 384 ff. and 1097; Dares: 28.
25. Pausanias: x. 31. 1 and ii. 20. 3; Philostratus: loc. cit.; Scholiast on Euripides’s Orestes 432; Servius on Virgil’s Aeneid ii. 81; Tzetzes: On Lycophron 384.
26. Apollodorus: Epitome vi. 8–9; Tzetzes: On Lycophron 384 ff.; Eustathius on Homer p. 24; Dictys Cretensis: vi. 2.
1. The Iliad deals in sequence only with the tenth year of the siege, and each mythographer has arranged the events of the preceding years in a different order. According to Apollodorus (Epitome iii. 32–3), Achilles kills Troilus; captures Lycaon; raids Aeneas’s cattle; and takes many cities. According to the Cypria (quoted by Proclus: Chrestomathy i), the Greeks, failing to take Troy by assault, lay waste the country and cities round about; Aphrodite and Thetis contrive a meeting between Achilles and Helen; the Greeks decide to go home but are restrained by Achilles, who then drives off Aeneas’s cattle, sacks many cities, and kills Troilus; Patroclus sells Lycaon on Lemnos; the spoils are divided; Palamedes is stoned to death.
2. According to Tzetzes (On Lycophron 307), Troilus outlives Memnon and Hector. Similarly, according to Dares the Phrygian, Troilus succeeds Hector as commander of the Trojan forces (Dares: 30), until one of his chariot horses is wounded and Achilles, driving up, runs him through; Achilles tries to drag away the body, but is wounded by Memnon, whom he kills; the Trojans take refuge within the city and Priam gives both Troilus and Memnon a magnificent funeral (Dares: 33).
3. The Trojan War is historical, and whatever the immediate cause may have been, it was a trade war. Troy controlled the valuable Black Sea trade in gold, silver, iron, cinnabar, ship’s timber, linen, hemp, dried fish, oil, and Chinese jade. When once Troy had fallen, the Greeks were able to plant colonies all along the eastern trade route, which grew as rich as those of Asia Minor and Sicily. In the end, Athens, as the leading maritime power, profited most from the Black Sea trade, especially from its cheap grain; and it was the loss of a fleet guarding the entrance to the Hellespont that ruined her at Aegospotami in 405 B.C., and ended the long Peloponnesian Wars. Perhaps, therefore, the constant negotiations between Agamemnon and Priam did not concern the return of Helen so much as the restoration of the Greek rights to enter the Hellespont.
4. It is probable that the Greeks prepared for their final assault by a series of raids on the coasts of Thrace and Asia Minor, to cripple the naval power of the Trojan alliance; and that they maintained a camp at the mouth of the Scamander to prevent Mediterranean trade from reaching Troy, or the annual East-West Fair from being celebrated on the Plain. But the Iliad makes it clear that Troy was not besieged in the sense that her lines of communication with the interior were cut, and though, while Achilles was about, the Trojans did not venture by day through the Dardanian Gate, the one which led inland (Iliad v. 789); and the Greek laundresses feared to wash their clothes at the spring a bow’s shot from the walls (Iliad xxii. 256); yet supplies and reinforcements entered freely, and the Trojans held Sestos and Abydos, which kept them in close touch with Thrace. That the Greeks boasted so loudly of a raid on the cattle of Mount Ida, and another on Priam’s fig-orchard, suggests that they seldom went far inland. The fig-shoots used for the rail of Lycaon’s chariot were apparently designed to place it under the protection of Aphrodite. In the pre-Trojan-War tablets found at Cnossus, a number of ‘red-painted Cydonian chariots’ are mentioned, ‘with joinery work complete’, but only the wood of the rails is specified: it is always fig. Yet fig was not nearly so suitable a wood for the purpose as many others available to the Cretans and Trojans.
5. Agamemnon had engaged in a war of attrition, the success of which Hector confesses (Iliad xvii. 225 and xviii. 287–92) when he speaks of the drain on Trojan resources caused by the drying up of trade, and the need to subsidize allies. The Paphlagonians, Thracians, and Mysians were producers, not merchants, and ready to have direct dealings with the Greeks. Only the mercantile Lycians, who imported goods from the South-east, seem to have been much concerned about the fate of Troy, which secured their northern trade routes; indeed, when Troy fell, the trade of Asia Minor was monopolized by Agamemnon’s allies the Rhodians, and the Lycians were ruined.
6. The cold blooded treatment of women, suppliants, and allies serves as a reminder that the Iliad is not Bronze Age myth. With the fall of Cnossus (see 39. 7 and 89. 1) and the consequent disappearance of the pax Cretensis, imposed by the Cretan Sea-goddess upon all countries within her sphere of influence, a new Iron Age morality emerges: that of th
e conquering tyrant, a petty Zeus, who acknowledges no divine restraint. Iphigeneia’s sacrifice, Odysseus’s hateful revenge on Palamedes, the selling of Lycaon for a silver cup, Achilles’s shameless pursuit of Troilus and the forced concubinage of Briseis and Chryseis are typical of barbarous saga. It is proper that Palamedes should have been the innocent victim of an unholy alliance between Agamemnon, Odysseus, and Diomedes, since he represents the Cretan culture planted in Argolis – the inventions with which he is credited being all of Cretan origin. His murder in a well may have been suggested by ‘Truth, I mourn you, who have predeceased me!’ and by the familiar connexion of truth with wells. Palamedes means ‘ancient wisdom’ and, like Hephaestus, his Lemnian counterpart, he was an oracular hero. His inventions reveal him at Thoth or Hermes (see 17. g). Dice have the some history as cards: they were oracular instruments before being used for games of chance (see 17. 3).
7. The elm-tree, which does not form part of the tree-calendar (see 53. 3), is mainly associated with the Dionysus cult, since the Greeks trained vines on elm-saplings; but elms were planted by nymphs around the tombs of Protesilaus and Eëtion, presumably because the leaves and bark served as vulneraries (Pliny: Natural History xxiv. 33), and promised to be even more efficacious if taken from the graves of princes who had succumbed to many wounds.
8. Laodameia’s perverse attachment to Protesilaus’s statue may have been deduced from a sacred-wedding icon: in some Hittite marriage-seals, the procumbent king is carved so stiffly that he looks like a statue. The apple brought by a servant, and Acastus’s sudden entry, suggest that the scene represented a queen’s betrayal of a king to her lover the tanist, who cuts the fatal apple containing his soul – as in the Irish legend of Cuchulain, Dechtire, and Curoi.
Briseis (accusative case: Briseida) became confused with Chryses, or Chryseis, daughter of Chryses, who had borne a bastard to Agamemnon (see 116. h); and the medieval Latin legend of Criseis (accusative case: Criseida) developed vigorously until Henrysoun’s Testament of Cresseid and Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida.
9. Teuthrania may have been so called after the teuthis, or octopus, sacred to the Cretan Goddess (see 81. 1), whose chief priestess was Tecmessa (‘she who ordains’).
Though the Sarpedon myth is confused, its elements are all familiar. Apparently the kingdom of Lycia, founded by another Sarpedon, uncle of another Glaucus – Greek-speaking Cretans of Aeolian or Pelasgian stock, who were driven overseas by the Achaeans – was a double one, with matrilinear succession, the title of the Moon-priestess being Laodemeia (‘tamer of the people’). Its sacred king seems to have been ritually ‘born from a mare’ (see 81. 4 and 167.2) – hence his name, Hippolochus – and Isander (‘impartial man’) acted as his tanist. Sarpedon’s name (‘rejoicing in a wooden ark’) refers apparently to the annual arrival of the New Year Child in a boat. Here the Child is the interrex, to whom Hippolochus resigns his kingship for a single day; he must then be suffocated in honey, like Cretan Glaucus (see 71. d), or killed in a chariot crash, like the Isthmian Glaucus (see 90. 1), or transfixed with an arrow by the revived Hippolochus, like Learchus son of Athamas (see 70. 5).
10. To shoot an apple poised upon the head, or at a penny set in the cap, of one’s own son was a test of marksmanship prescribed to medieval archers, whose guild (as appears in the Malleus Maleficarum and in the Little Geste of Robin Hood) belonged to the pagan witch cult both in England and Celtic Germany. In England this test was, it seems, designed to choose a ‘gudeman’ for Maid Marian, by marriage to whom he became Robin Hood, Lord of the Greenwood. Since the northern witch cult had much in common with neolithic religion of the Aegean, it may be that the Lycians did not place the ring on a boy’s breast, but on his head, and that it represented a golden serpent (see 119. 4); or that it was the ring of an axe which he held in his hand, like those through which Odysseus shot when he recovered Penelope from the suitors (see 171. h). The mythographer has perhaps confused the shooting test demanded of a new candidate for the kingship with the sacrifice of an interrex.
11. Aethylla means ‘kindling timber’, and the annual burning of a boat may have originated the Scione legend.
Protesilaus (‘first of the people’) must have been so common a royal title that several cities claimed his tomb.
163
THE WRATH OF ACHILLES
WINTER now drew on, and since this has never been a battle season among civilized nations, the Greeks spent it enlarging their camp and practising archery. Sometimes they came across Trojan notables in the temple of Thymbraean Apollo, which was neutral territory; and once, while Hecabe happened to be sacrificing there, Achilles arrived on the same errand and fell desperately in love with her daughter Polyxena. He made no declaration at the time but, returning to his hut in torment, sent the kindly Automedon to ask Hector on what terms he might marry Polyxena. Hector replied: ‘She shall be his on the day that he betrays the Greek camp to my father Priam.’ Achilles seemed willing enough to accept Hector’s conditions, but drew back sullenly when informed that if he failed to betray the camp, he must swear instead to murder his cousin Great Ajax and the sons of Athenian Pleisthenes.1
b. Spring came and fighting was resumed. In the first engagement of the season Achilles sought out Hector, but the watchful Helenus pierced his hand with an arrow shot from an ivory bow, Apollo’s love gift, and forced him to give ground. Zeus himself guided the arrowhead; and as he did so decided to relieve the Trojans, whom the raids and the consequent desertion of certain Asiatic allies had greatly discouraged, by plaguing the Greeks and detaching Achilles from his fellow–chieftains.2 When, therefore, Chryses came to ransom Chryseis, Zeus persuaded Agamemnon to drive him away with opprobrious words; and Apollo, invoked by Chryses, posted himself vengefully near the ships, shooting deadly arrows among the Greeks day after day. Hundreds perished, though (as it happened) no kings or princes suffered, and on the tenth day Calchas made known the presence of the god. At his instance, Agamemnon grudgingly sent Chryseis back to her father, with propitiatory gifts, but recouped his loss by seizing Briseis from Achilles, to whom she had been allotted; whereupon Achilles, in a rage, announced that he would take no further part in the War; and his mother Thetis indignantly approached Zeus, who promised her satisfaction on his behalf. But some say that Achilles kept out of the fighting in order to show his goodwill towards Priam as Polyxena’s father.3
c. When the Trojans became aware that Achilles and his Myrmidons had withdrawn from the field, they took heart and made a vigorous sortie. Agamemnon, in alarm, granted them a truce, during which Paris and Menelaus were to fight a duel for the possession of Helen and the stolen treasure. The duel, however, proved indecisive, because when Aphrodite saw that Paris was getting the worst of it, she wrapped him in a magic mist and carried him back to Troy. Hera then sent Athene down to break the truce by making Pandarus son of Lycaon shoot an arrow at Menelaus, which she did; at the same time she inspired Diomedes to kill Pandarus and wound Aeneas and his mother Aphrodite. Glaucus son of Hippolochus now opposed Diomedes, but both recalled the close friendship that had bound their fathers, and courteously exchanged arms.4
d. Hector challenged Achilles to single combat; and when Achilles sent back word that he had retired from the war, the Greeks chose Great Ajax as his substitute. These two champions fought without pause until nightfall, when heralds parted them and each gaspingly praised the other’s skill and courage. Ajax gave Hector the brilliant purple baldric by which he was later dragged to his death; and Hector gave Ajax the silver-studded sword with which he was later to commit suicide.5
e. An armistice being agreed upon, the Greeks raised a long barrow over their dead, and crowned it with a wall beyond which they dug a deep, palisaded trench. But they had omitted to appease the deities who supported the Trojans and, when fighting was resumed, were driven across the trench and behind the wall. That night the Trojans encamped close to the Greek ships.6
f. In despair, Agamemnon sent Phoenix, Ajax, Odysseus an
d two heralds to placate Achilles, offering him countless gifts and the return of Briseis (they were to swear that she was still a virgin) if only he would fight again. It should be explained that Chryses had meanwhile brought back his daughter, who protested that she had been very well treated by Agamemnon and wished to remain with him; she was pregnant at the time and later gave birth to Chryses the Second, a child of doubtful paternity. Achilles greeted the deputation with a pleasant smile, but refused their offers, and announced that he must sail home next morning.7
g. That same night about the third watch when the moon was high, Odysseus and Diomedes, encouraged by a lucky auspice from Athene – a heron on their right hand – decided to raid the Trojan lines. They happened to stumble over Dolon, son of Eumelus, who had been sent out on patrol by the enemy and, after forcibly extracting information from him, cut his throat. Odysseus then hid Dolon’s ferret-skin cap, wolf-skin cloak, bow and spear in a tamarisk bush and hurried with Diomedes to the right flank of the Trojan line where, they now knew, Rhesus the Thracian was encamped. He is variously described as the son of the Muse Euterpe, or Calliope, by Eioneus, or Ares, or Strymon. Having stealthily assassinated Rhesus and twelve of his companions in their sleep, they drove offhis magnificent horses, white as snow and swifter than the wind, and recovered the spoils from the tamarisk bush on their way back.8 The capture of Rhesus’s horses was of the highest importance, since an oracle had foretold that Troy would become impregnable once they had eaten Trojan fodder and drunken from the river Scamander, and this they had not yet done. When the surviving Thracians awoke, to find King Rhesus dead and his horses gone, they fled in despair; the Greeks killed nearly every one of them.9
h. On the following day, however, after a fierce struggle, in which Agamemnon, Diomedes, Odysseus, Euryplus, and Machaon the surgeon were all wounded, the Greeks took to flight and Hector breached their wall.10 Encouraged by Apollo, he pushed on towards the ships and, despite assistance lent by Poseidon to the two Ajaxes and Idomeneus, broke through the Greek line. At this point Hera, who hated the Trojans, borrowed Aphrodite’s girdle and persuaded Zeus to come and sleep with her; a ruse which allowed Poseidon to turn the battle in the Greeks’ favour. But Zeus, soon discovering that he had been duped, revived Hector (nearly killed by Ajax with a huge stone), ordered Poseidon off the field, and restored the Trojans’ courage. Forward they went again: Medon killing Periphetes son of Copreus, and many other champions.11