Delahoyde Orpheus HOMER'S ILIAD: BOOK IV

Questions for Book IV:

• What gods are on what side in the war and why?
• What formulaic phrases are becoming repetitive regarding death?

"Now aloft by the side of Zeus the gods sat in council,
conferring across Olympus' golden floor as noble Hebe
poured them rounds of nectar....
But abruptly Zeus was set on infuriating Hera,
courting her fire with cunning, mocking taunts" (4.1-6).

Zeus intentionally irks Hera about events below, she and Athena being enemies of Troy. After some bickering in which Zeus asserts his power and authority, he sends Athena down to manipulate a Trojan breaking of the truce. Athena tempts archer Pandarus to take a pot-shot at Menelaus. It's an attractive moment. I'd have tried it too. But the gods cheat. Athena deflects the arrow so that it merely wounds Menelaus (4.152f).

So the melee is back on. Agamemnon rallies his troops in a series of goadings of individual warriors, and old Nestor gives some advice about how best to use spears when you're in chariots. Agamemnon taunts Odysseus, possibly during another flare-up of his wrath, but Odysseus calls him on this: "Now what's this, Atrides, / this talk that slips through your clenched teeth?" (4.406-407). And Agamemnon backpedals quickly.

Then a lot of guys get butchered on the battlefield and go down to the House of Death. "The first fighting does not begin until 2,380 lines into the Iliad, but thereafter the blood flows, increasingly, with an increasing intensity and savagery, until the climax comes in the crazed berserker frenzy of Achilles's grief-fueled rampage through the Trojans" (Nicholson 184).

"That day ranks of Trojans, ranks of Achaean fighters / sprawled there side-by-side, facedown in the dust" (4.629-630).

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Iliad: Book V
Iliad Index
Orpheus: Greek Mythology