Delahoyde
Orpheus

HOMER'S ILIAD:
BOOK III

Questions for Book III:

"So he dissolved again in the proud Trojan lines,
dreading Atrides [Menelaus] -- magnificent, brave Paris" (3.40-41).

Another day, another battle, after a sequence of epic similes. Menelaus thrills to see Paris strutting in front of the Trojan lines, but when Paris realizes Menelaus is champing at the bit, he chickens out and blends himself into the general army: "magnificent, brave Paris," as Homer says with heavy irony (3.41). Hector rails against Paris, insisting on what an embarrassment he is to his family and to Troy: "Would to god you'd never been born" (3.45). Apparently it hasn't occurred to anyone these nine years to have Menelaus and Paris duke it out in single combat, and Paris himself proposes it here. Hector, though, is the one to announce the challenge to the Greeks. "Helen in her rooms....
weaving a growing web, a dark red folding robe,
working into the weft the endless bloody struggles,
stallion-breaking Trojans and Argives armed in bronze
had suffered all for her at the god of battle's hands"
(3.151-154). So current events are already becoming art. A few Trojan men gossip about Helen, "Beauty, terible beauty!" (3.190), on her way to the "teichoskopia": the viewing from the wall. King Priam invites Helen to speak with him: "I don't blame you. I hold the gods to blame" (199). He engages Helen in small talk, but it has the effect of introducing us to the cast of Greek characters and perhaps there's political advantage to be had as Priam innocently gathers this information from her about the key enemies: Agamemnon, Odysseus, Ajax, etc. Yet, it is nine years into the war, and surely the players are known by now. Might Priam also be subtly tormenting Helen, as she has to identify this series of brutalizers and silently acknowledge her responsibility?

The arrangement is spelled out: if Paris wins ... if Menelaus wins ... if Menelaus wins and the Trojans do not honor the deal.... Lambs' throats are slit in a sacrificial rite, so it must be deep and real.

"This is more than I can bear, I tell you --
to watch my son do battle with Menelaus
loved by the War-god, right before my eyes.
Zeus knows, no doubt, and every immortal too
which fighter is doomed to end all this in death" (3.361-365). So says Priam, about to preside over the combat between Paris and Menelaus. He then climbs into his chariot and disappears. "Thanks, Dad," Paris must be thinking. After the arming, the two fight. Menelaus, "Shaking his spear" (3.413), takes a shot, and soon gets a grip of Paris' helmet strap, "cut from a bludgeoned ox" (3.434), and swings him around, choking him, until Aphrodite whisks Paris away from the battlefield, leaves a swirl of mist, and sets him down in the bedroom. "Maddening one, my Goddess, oh what now?
Lusting to lure me to my ruin yet again?" (3.460-461). Aphrodite summons a reluctant Helen, who seems entirely burned out on love: "I'll never go back again. It would be wrong, / disgraceful to share that coward's bed once more" (3.474-475). The goddess has to resort to threats to get Helen to go to Paris. Helen then insults Paris: "So, home from the wars! / Oh would to god you'd died there, brought down / by that great soldier, my husband long ago" (3.499-501): kind of a turn-off, one would think. Nevertheless, Paris offers a view of sex that sounds escapist: "But come -- / let's go to bed, let's lose ourselves in love! / Never has longing for you overwhelmed me so" (3.516-518).

On the battlefield, all are dumbfounded, and the Greeks cheer for more battle -- nothing has been accomplished.

Iliad: Book IV
Iliad Index
Orpheus: Greek Mythology