Homer by Elton TE Barker

Author:Elton TE Barker [Barker, Elton, Christensen, Joel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781780742380
Publisher: Oneworld Publications

The meeting of Achilles and Priam

While Thetis visits her son, Zeus sends his messenger Iris to ready Priam for the task ahead. She finds him in desperate lamentation, his clothes smeared with animal dung, his mind unhinged by sorrow as he curses his remaining sons as useless. When he tells Hecuba that he’s going to Achilles to ask for their son’s body back, his wife thinks he’s lost it. Who on Earth could conceive of entreating their son’s killer for pity? (So consumed with hatred is she, that she longs to sink her teeth into Achilles’ liver.) Nevertheless, in spite of opposition from his wife, daughters, and sons, Priam is prepared to take a massive leap of faith. When he asks for a message from Zeus and an eagle flies by, he takes that as a sign of the gods’ trust and departs.

Homer increases the sense of foreboding with imagery suggestive of Priam going to his death. Hermes, in disguise as one of Achilles’ men, meets Priam to guide him across no-man’s land, just as he accompanies the souls of dead men to Hades. Adding to the gloom is the fact that Priam’s endeavour resonates with other journeys to Achilles’ tent. In Iliad 1, the two heralds sent by Agamemnon take Briseis away from Achilles; the embassy of Iliad 9 fails to persuade Achilles to return; on coming back to Achilles in Iliad 16, Patroclus succeeds in winning over his friend, but condemns himself to death. But the scene reverberating most strongly with Priam’s journey is the opening of the Iliad, when another old man sets out for the Achaean camp to plead for his daughter’s return. The fallout from that episode, which sets the tone of the epic, accounts for all the suffering in the Iliad up to this point – Achilles’ anger, his withdrawal from battle, Patroclus’s death, and his revenge against Hector.

The gods set up this meeting between vanquisher and vanquished. But the actual communication between the two takes place without the gods’ interference or even presence. Revealing his true identity to Priam, Hermes states that the gods must remain untouched by death, before duly departing. From this point on, the poem’s action and perspective will be all about humanity.

The scene is set for Priam’s grand entrance (477–84). To begin with, Homer compares Priam to an exile accused of murder in his own land who goes to a powerful man for help – a simile that seems hardly appropriate for Priam’s circumstances, given that he has committed no crime. Yet, ancient Greek myth is full of examples of exiled murderers, who escape the stigma of their crime by fleeing their homeland to receive a second chance in a new home – heroes such as Jason or Perseus. We have seen this too in the Iliad: both Phoenix (9.478–84) and Patroclus (23.83–90), though fugitives, were welcomed by no other than Achilles’ father, Peleus. The simile turns out to be highly pertinent and increases the tension still further. Will

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