Second Post For The Iliad

There are two passages I would like to comment/analyze for this post. I'll only type up one passage though, the other passage I'll mention.
"The son of Kronos took pity on them as he watched them mourning
and immediately spoke in winged words to Athene:
'My child, have you utterly abandoned the man of your choice?
Is there no longer deep concern in your heart for Achilleus?
Now he has sat down before the steep horned ships and is mourning
for his own beloved companion, while all the others
have gone to take their dinner, but he is fasting and unfed.
Go then to him and distil nectar inside his chest, and delicate
ambrosia, so the weakness of hunger will not come upon him.'
Speaking so, he stirred Athene, who was eager before this,
and she in the likeness of a wide-winged, thin-crying
hawk plummeted from the sky through the bright air. Now the Achaians
were arming at once along the encampment. She dropped the delicate
ambrosia and the nectar inside the breast of Achilleus
softly, so no sad weakness of hunger would come on his knees,
and she herself went back to the close house of her powerful
father, while they were scattering out away from the fast ships.
As when in their thickness the pride of the helms bright shining
were carried out from the ships, and shields massive in the middle
and the corselets strongly hollowed and the ash spears were worn forth.
The shining swept to the sky and all earth was laughing about them
under the glitter of bronze and beneath their feet stirred the thunder
of men, within whose midst brillant Achilleus helmed him.
A clash went from the grinding of his teeth, and his eyes glowed
as if they were the stare of a fire, and the heart inside him
was entered with sorrow beyond endurance. Raging at the Trojans
he put on the gifts of the god, the Hephaistos wrought him with much
toil.
First he placed along his legs the fair greaves linked with
silver fastenings to hold the greaves at the ankles.
Afterward he girt on about his chest the corselet,
and across his shoulders he slung the sword with the nails of silver,
a bronze sword, and caught up the great shield, huge and heavy
next, and from it the light glimmered far, as from the moon.
And as when from across water a light shines to mariners
from a blazing fire, when the fire is burning high in the mountains
in desolate steading, as the mariners are carried unwilling
by storm winds over the fish-swarming sea, far away from their loved
ones;
so the light from the fair elaborate shield of Achilleus
shot into the high air. And lifting the helm he set it
massive upon his head, and the helmet crested with horse-hair
shone light a star, the golden fringes were shaken about it
which Hephaistos had driven close along the horn of the helmet.
And brilliant Achilleus tried himself in his armour, to see
if it fitted close, and how his glorious limbs ran within it,
and the armour became as wings and upheld the shepherd of the people.
Next he pulled out from its standing place the spear of his father,
huge, heavy, thick, which no one else of all the Achaians
could handle, but Achilleus alone knew how to wield it,
the Pelian as spear which Cheiron had brought to his father
from high on Pelion, to be death for fighters in battle.
Automedon and Alkimos, in charge of the horses,
yoked them, and put the fair breast straps about them, and forced the bits
home
between their jaws, and pulled the reins back against the compacted
chariot seat, and one, Automedon, took up the shining
whip caught close in his hand and vaulted up to the chariot,
while behind him Achilleus helmed for battle took his stance
shining in all his armour like the sun when he crosses above us,
and cried in a terrible voice on the horses of his father:
'Xanthos, Balios, Bay and Dapple, famed sons of Podarge,
take care to bring in another way your charioteer back
to the company of the Danaans, when we give over fighting,
not leave him to lie fallen there, as you did to Patroklos.'
Then from beneath the yoke the gleam-footed horse answered him,
Xanthos, and as he spoke bowed his head, so that all the mane
fell away from the pad and swept the ground by the cross-yoke;
the goddess of the white arms, Hera, had put a voice in him:
'We shall still keep you safe for this time, o hard Achilleus.
And yet the day of your death is near, but it is not we
who are to blame, but a great god and powerful Destiny.
For it was not because we were slow, because we were careless,
that the Trojans have taken the armour from the shoulders of Patroklos,
but it was that high god, the child of lovely-haired Leto,
who killed him among the champions and gave the glory to Hector.
But for us, we two could run the blast of the west wind
who they say is the lightest of all things; yet still for you
there is destiny to be killed in force by a god and a mortal.'
When he had spoken so the Furies stopped the voice in him,
but deeply disturbed, Achilleus of the swift feet answered him:
'Xanthos, why do you prophesy my death? This is not for you.
I myself know well it is destined for me to die here
far from my beloved father and mother. But for all that
I will not stop till the Trojans have had enough of my fighting.'
He spoke, and shouting held on in the foremost his single-footed horses."

In one sense, I think that this passage is a form of third person characterization, where someone else is describing Achilles and therefore his character becomes more defined. Both in this book and in Book 18 where Hephaistos is making Achilles' new armour- the descriptions are very real, very intense. The fact that Homer took so much time in describing Achilles' armour and his final moments before going into battle let the reader know that these are the defining moments, the important moments of Achilles. It's interesting to me that so many gods at once pity and try to help Achilles before he dies- why is he so important to all of them? Zeus tells Athene to give Achilles nectar and ambrosia; Hephaistos gives Achilles new armour, glorious armour; Thetis sees to it that Achilles gets his honor, armour, and support from her along with Zeus; and Hera makes Achilles' horses talk to Achilles! Out of all the things that could happen before a man goes into a battle- man is that something! Is it because in the end Achilles is a hero, just like Patroklos and Hector for that matter, in this story that the gods give him so much support and pity him so much as he gets ready to enter the battlefield? We'll see what this means for Achilleus in the end...
-katthegreat08

First Iliad Post

Passage:

"Now Dawn the yellow-robed scattered over all the earth. Zeus

who joys in the thunder made an assembly of all the immortals

upon the highest peak of rugged Olympose. There he

spoke to them himself, and the other divinities listened:

'Hear me, all you gods and all you goddesses: hear me

while I speak forth what the heart within my breast urges.

Now let no female divinity, nor male god either,

presume to cut across the way of my word, but consent to it

all of you, so that I can make an end in speed of these matters.

And any one I perceive against the gods' will attempting

to go among the Trojans and help them, or among the Danaans,

he shall go whipped against his dignity back to Olympos;

or I shall take him and dash him down to the murk of Tartaros,

far below, where the uttermost depth of the pit liew under

earth, where there are gates of iron and a brazen doorstone,

as far beneath the house of Hades as from earth the sky lies.

Then he will see how far I am strongest of all the immortals.

Come, you gods, make this endeavour, that you all may learn this.

Let down out of the sky a cord of gold; lay hold of it

all you who are gods and all who are goddesses, yet not

even so can you drag down Zeus from the sky to the ground, not

Zeus the high lord of counsel, though you try until you grow weary.

Yet whenever I might strongly be minded to pull you,

I could drag you up, earth and all and sea and all with you,

then fetch the golden rope about the horn of Olympos

and make it fast, so that all once more should dangle in mid air.

So much stronger am I than the gods, and stonger than mortlas.'

So he spoke, and all of them stayed stricken to silence,

stunned at his word, for indeed he had spoken to them very strongly."



analysis:

I think this passage is important because it helps with the characterization of Zeus. Up until this point (well at least in the books we've read so far) Zeus isn't mentioned that much. Yeah, we have the "mortals" in the books calling out to Zeus or whatever, but we don't really get to know Zeus very well. Here, Zeus is shown as a strong character with an even stonger personality, very much the father figure, the man of the house, whatever you want to call it- that's Zeus in this passage. Zeus is saying that he has the muscle power to back up what he's saying (quite literally) and he's ready to do whatever it takes to keep the unruly children (the other gods) in line. Personally, I thought this passage was very interesting. Someone once told me that in almost every play or story that had Zeus in it, Zeus was almost always portrayed as a weak god who can't make up his mind and always wants to get in the ladies' pants (well I guess togas in this case). So far this is the Zeus that I've read about and the Zeus I've experienced in the other stuff I've read. So it was interesting, refreshing if you will, to read about a Zeus that was completely different, who is actually being a stern father figure and a god that the mortals seem to pray to or look up to the most.
-katthegreat08