ILIAD Death Gets Personal

1. ILIAD Death Gets Personal

2. Patroklos has been tending Machaon’s wounds since the end of Book 11.

3. In Book 16, Patroklos returns to Achilles and pleads with him to return to battle to save the Greeks. 􀂄 Patroklos convinces Achilles to allow him to fight in support of the Greeks. 􀂉 Achilles allows Patroklos to wear his armor and lead his men into battle. 􀂉 Achilles gives him specific instructions to do no more than fight long enough to save the ships from the Trojan attack.

4. Book 16 is, in effect, Patroklos’ aristeia as he fights bravely.

5. Carried away by his success, Patroklos rashly attacks Hector. He is killed and Achilles’ armor is captured. At this point, the tie-in between Achilles’ armor and death becomes explicit. After Patroklos dies, Hector puts on the armor while Zeus watches and comments on his impending death.

6. The Fight for Patroklos’ Body

7. Menelaos defends and ultimately rescues the body of Patroklos after Hektor has stripped Achilles’ armor from the corpse.

8. Achilles’ immortal horses weep for Patroklos, a human. Automedon, Patroklos’ charioteer, rescues the horses of Achilles from the Trojans.

9. Achilles learns of Patroklos’ death. 􀂄

10. Achilles’ Reaction On hearing of Patroclus’ death, he sprawls in the dirt with grief, appearing dead himself. When Thetis arrives at Achilles’ tent she cradles his head, mimicking the Greek artistic convention of mourning the dead.

11. Thetis Bringing Armor to Achillesby Benjamin West

12. For himself, Achilles shuns food and drink and other normal human activity. • Athena infuses Achilles with ambrosia and nectar to offset his fasting. While this seems to associate him with god-like activity, it also resembles Thetis’ treatment of Patroklos’ body with ambrosia and nectar in order “to make his flesh stand firm” and not decay.

13. Achilles: dead or god-like? At this point Achilles seems anything but human. At times, the language used to describe Achilles portrays him as lifeless, while at other times he turns his back on life and death. • He refuses to bury Patroklos until he has killed Hector, in a sense not accepting his death (although Thetis also encourages him to do this). • At other times, Achilles is so far beyond normal or acceptable behavior, his anger diffused toward everything around him. His rage, supplemented with help from the gods, makes Achilles appear like a force of nature.

14. Achilles Returns to Battle • 18.196 Iris: Go to the ditch and show yourself at sunset, and shout. • 18.205-25 Athene encircles Achilles’ head with a golden cloud of flame and shouts with him to instill terror into the Trojans, who flee. • 18.127-9 Achilles shouts 3 times and the Trojans are routed.

15. Achilles appears uttering his battle cry, which frightens the Trojans.

16. Book 20: The gods join the battle; Achilles tries to kill Aeneas

17. Achilles and Flames The use of flame imagery has been used in The Iliad several times up to this point, but starting with Book XVII the description of Achilles or his armor in terms related to fire is repeatedly hammered home. Fire was a stolen gift from the gods, useful to man when controlled but dangerous when out of control. Achilles’ actions take him well beyond any sort of control.

18. Examples: • Flame-capped Achilles appearing before the Trojans, • Achilles “blazing armor,”armor made by the god Hephaestus, • Similes likening Achilles to nature “like inhuman fire raging on through the mountain gorges.”

19. The repetition adds to the feeling that Achilles is beyond human, a force of nature. In an interesting foreshadowing when the gods choose sides and line up against each other now that they are free to enter the fray (early in Book XX), Hephaestus lines up against the river god of the Scamander.

20. Book 21: Achilles fights with the river Scamander

21. Achilles encounters Hector in front of the Trojan gates

22. The death of Patroclus, Achilles' dearest friend, at the hands of Hector, brings Achilles back to the war for revenge, and he slays Hector.

23. Book 22: Achilles kills Hector and drags his body back to the Greek camp

24. Later Hector's father, King Priam, comes to Achilles disguised as a beggar to ransom his son's body back, and Achilles is moved to pity; the funeral of Hector ends the poem.