Delahoyde
Orpheus

HOMER'S ILIAD:
BOOK XXIV

Questions for Book XXIV:

"The games were over now. The gathered armies scattered,
each man to his fast ship, and fighters turned their minds
to thoughts of food and the sweet warm grip of sleep"
(24.1-3). But not Achilles. The now insomniacal Achilles all along has been stewing, crying to his mother, recognizing that he could have other women, but repeatedly deciding he's still ticked off. He has been living out bizarre extremes, fighting ferociously, sitting on his butt intensely, engaged in extremist behavior, sometimes extreme passive-aggressive behavior, or outwardly going to extremes in rending his hair in grief, starving himself, smearing himself with feces, essentially holding his breath until he turns blue, and screaming that he wants to hack the meat off Hector and eat it. Very dramatic, but mature? It's all rather self-absorbed, a lot of style standing in as substance.

Dragging Hector's corpse around (24.17ff) is a grim, babyish goofiness (possibly his "god" side coming out since they act like this, in extremes). After the circular stasis of the non-corrupting body being dragged for a dozen days now, even the gods say that enough is enough -- Achilles is too much an animal. He has absorbed himself in his own image instead of in the war. But he finally tempers himself during Priam's visit where we get moments of him acknowledging his potential lapse into wrath, and we see an actual change of spirit and self.

Priam's grief is "majestic" but human and manifested in the touchingly tragic wrath of a mourner when he lashes out at the Trojans "mobbing his colonnades" with good intentions (24.282f). Guided by Hermes, old Priam impressively sets out for the Greek camp. When he gets there, he's alone, and obviously vulnerable.

"The majestic king of Troy slipped past the rest
and kneeling down beside Achilles, clasped his knees
and kissed his hands, those terrible, man-killing hands
that had slaughtered Priam's many sons in battle"
(24.559-562). The we get an epic simile that lends us a pause for the tableau to sink in. Notice the importance of the silent moments in this book.
Achilles is moved by Priam's demeanor and appeal to him. In the unspoken moments conveyed by the stall of the simile, Achilles really sees Priam. Somewhere in here, Achilles turns inward to adjust himself, or it happens organically. They both have a good cry. Then Achilles surprises us by giving good advice that he himself ought to have been taking.
  • Achilles tries to dissuade Priam from grieving and lamenting (24.610f)!
  • Achilles promotes eating despite grief (24.707f)! The story of Niobe, which originally does not highlight the point about food, if it includes it at all, functions as a myth within a myth -- a story alluded to in order to provide needed wisdom in a crisis time.
  • Achilles advises sleep!
Achilles still fears his potential for rage (24.684f), but he has the capacity now truly to look at and listen to the old man (24.743f). The return of Hector's body and a twelve-day truce are the peaceful result. We follow Priam back to a grief-stricken Troy, leaving Achilles behind. "And so the Trojans buried Hector breaker of horses" (24.944). It is Hector, therefore, who earns the last line of the epic. Why is the final line a lament about Hector despite the invocation's identification of the theme?
  • Hector has real relationships with people and connects.
  • Hector is driven up the wall by his brother Paris the cheese-weenie, but he continues to have hope for him.
  • Hector is less guilty of blaming the gods, realizing he should have taken the advice of the seer. He has every reason and opportunity to blame the gods, but he doesn't; he refers to "my recklessness."
  • Hector represents "civilized responsibility and restraint" (Introduction 56).
So Hector's experience is far more human and accepting. His death is a greater loss to us, as he was a better example for us as human beings. "Homer is haunted by the threat of transience, by the way memory fails and meanings drift in the face of time. That slide into insignificance summons his tenderest and most lyrical moments" (Nicholson 100).

"for Homer, impermanence is life's central sorrow and the source of its most lasting pain" (Nicholson 101). "It is also what the poem itself is intended to cure. In scene after scene, Homer quietly shows its listeners that it knows more and remembers more than men usually know or are able to bring to mind.... The world forgets, but the poem remembers" (101).

"Though human memory last only three generations at best, the poem becomes an act of memorialization, fixing the past into an everlasting song" (Nicholson 102).


Iliad Index
Orpheus: Greek Mythology