1ff. mvp-comment-1-1 10.1ff. The opening lines of this book follow what seems to be a traditional pattern in which a pressing situation causes an inability to sleep, which in turn results in the formulation of a plan of action. We can compare 10.1ff. to the beginnings of Books 2 and 9 for a more complete understanding of the workings and traditional structure of this theme. Iliad 2 begins:

The rest of the gods and the men who wear horse–hair helmets

slept all night long, but deep sleep did not hold Zeus.

Instead, he was divided in his mind how Achilles

he would honor, and cause the destruction of many at the ships of the Achaeans.

This is the plan that seemed best in his heart …

Iliad 9 similarly starts at night:

ὣς οἱ μὲν Τρῶες φυλακὰς ἔχον· αὐτὰρ Ἀχαιοὺς

θεσπεσίη ἔχε φύζα φόβου κρυόεντος ἑταίρη,

πένθεϊ δ᾽ ἀτλήτῳ βεβολήατο πάντες ἄριστοι.

ὡς δ᾽ ἄνεμοι δύο πόντον ὀρίνετον ἰχθυόεντα

5 Βορέης καὶ Ζέφυρος, τώ τε Θρῄκηθεν ἄητον

ἐλθόντ᾽ ἐξαπίνης· ἄμυδις δέ τε κῦμα κελαινὸν

κορθύεται, πολλὸν δὲ παρὲξ ἅλα φῦκος ἔχευεν·

ὣς ἐδαΐζετο θυμὸς ἐνὶ στήθεσσιν Ἀχαιῶν.

Ἀτρεΐδης δ᾽ ἄχεϊ μεγάλῳ βεβολημένος ἦτορ

10 φοίτα κηρύκεσσι λιγυφθόγγοισι κελεύων

κλήδην εἰς ἀγορὴν κικλήσκειν ἄνδρα ἕκαστον …

Iliad 9.1–11

So the Trojans kept holding watches. But the Achaeans

were held by awesome panic, the companion of chilling fear,

and all the best men were struck by unendurable sorrow.

As when two winds stir up the sea with all its fish,

5 the North wind and the West wind, which blow from Thrace

coming suddenly, and at the same time a dark wave

towers up, and it pours out much seaweed alongside the sea,

so the heart in the breasts of the Achaeans was torn.

And the son of Atreus, struck in his heart by great sorrow,

10 went about telling the clear-voiced heralds

to call each man by name to assembly …

The use of ἔχω ‘hold’ in all three passages suggests that even such a common verb can have a traditional poetic resonance in this context. The simile in 9.4–7 resembles the simile in 10.5–8 (discussed further below), in that both use an example from the natural world to convey a heightened emotional state. Whereas in Books 9 and 10 it is Agamemnon and/or the Achaean warriors who are in turmoil, in Book 2 it is Zeus who cannot sleep, as he turns over in his mind how best to accomplish what he has promised to Thetis in Book 1. (Agamemnon, by contrast, is sleeping soundly in this book, and the Dream sent by Zeus reproaches him for it at Iliad 2.23–24.) Zeus’ sleeplessness in Book 2 is not elaborated with a simile, but there the emotional state being conveyed is not one of great sorrow and fear, as it is in Books 9 and 10. The sorrow evoked by the similes of 9 and 10 marks in each case the beginning of a change in plan that will lead to a nighttime episode, a sequence that is in keeping with the incendiary power of lament. (For more on the similes’ associations with lament, see below. On the power of lament to spur action, see Dué 2006a:47 and bibliography ad loc.)

1ff. mvp-comment-1-2 The three passages together give us a sense of both the strongly felt structure and the flexibility of the traditional system in which they were composed. In Books 2 and 10, a single individual cannot sleep. In Book 9, the whole Achaean army remains awake, but once the simile is complete the focus shifts to an individual, Agamemnon, who is of course the same sleepless individual being described in Book 10. The heightened emotional situation in Books 9 and 10 leads to a simile describing that state. If we postulate that Books 9 and 10 are possible multiforms of one another (see above, p. 13), each introducing an alternative narrative that encompasses the same dramatic night, then it is illuminating to note that they begin in much the same way, following a traditional pattern that expresses anxiety or fear and the resultant sleeplessness as a prelude to nighttime action. This pattern seems to be related, though not identical, to descriptions of the cognitive process that leads to a decision being made (characterized by the verb μερμηρίζειν, as in Iliad 2.3 and also on 10.503 below, on which see Arend 1933:106–115) and/or a plan being formulated, for which we find the use of the word βουλή at both Iliad 2.5 and 10.17. (See also Iliad 9.75 and testimonium 1 of the Cypria [Bernabé] and below on 10.43–44 and 10.302.) It is instructive to compare the beginning of Book 24, where Achilles, unlike the other Greeks, cannot sleep because of his grief. There, no plan is being formulated, and the scene makes use of virtually none of the formulaic language that we find in 2, 9, and 10. This suggests that, as Lord has argued on the basis of comparative evidence, formulas are closely tied to particular themes (Lord 1960/2000:49). (For further analysis of the relationship between Books 2 and 10, as well as 1 and 9, see Haft 1990 and above, “The Poetics of Ambush”).

1ff. mvp-comment-1-3 Although Achilles’ sleeplessness in Book 24 does not follow the pattern that we have traced in Books 2, 9, and 10, there is a compressed version of the theme in Book 24, in which Hermes, like Zeus in Book 2, does not sleep as he ponders how to help a mortal. This theme appears after Priam has gone stealthily into the Achaean encampment to supplicate Achilles and ransom Hektor’s corpse. After Achilles has agreed both to ransom the corpse and to enforce a cease-fire so that a funeral for Hektor may be held, Priam and his herald go to sleep in the forecourt ( prodomos) of Achilles’ shelter, while Hermes, who escorted Priam to the Achaean encampment, ponders how to get him home safely:

They there in the forecourt of the home bedded down,

the herald and Priam having schemes one after the other [ pukina] in their minds.

675 But Achilles was sleeping in the inner room of the well-built tent,

and fine-cheeked Briseis lay next to him.

The rest of the gods and the men who wear horse-hair helmets [= Iliad 2.1]

slept all night long, overcome by gentle sleep [= Iliad 10.2],

but not Hermes the helper—sleep did not lay hold of him

680 as he pondered in his heart how king Priam

he would send back from the ships without the sacred guards of the gate noticing.

He stood over his head and addressed words to him:

“Old man, now no evil is a concern to you, seeing how you sleep

among enemy men, since Achilles allowed you to.

685 And now you have ransomed your dear son, and you have given much.

But to get you back alive they would give even three times as much,

those sons of yours whom you left behind, if Agamemnon

the son of Atreus were to recognize you, and all the Achaeans recognize you.”

So he spoke, and the old man was afraid and he got the herald up.

We find the same traditional language in 24.677–678 as we see in Iliad 2.1 and Iliad 10.2, respectively. One god or mortal is sleepless while everyone else rests. We do not find the term βουλή here as we do in Books 2 and 10, but we do have the verb ὁρμαίνω at 24.680 to indicate the formulation of a plan. The same verb is used at 10.4, as Agamemnon ponders many things in a state of sleeplessness. The astonishing situation in which this theme appears (that is, Priam sleeping among the enemy and needing to get out without the guards noticing or anyone recognizing him) may also have more in common with the plan that is ultimately formulated here in Book 10, an infiltration of the enemy camp. In other words, Hermes ponders how to achieve the all-important return to one’s own camp. Priam’s secret expedition to Achilles has much in common with the theme of a spying mission, including the need for stealth, the eluding of guards, and danger in general. If Priam is caught, Hermes tells him, he will need to be ransomed just as he ransomed Hektor from the enemy. We can compare this exchange to Dolon’s offer that his father will ransom him, which he makes to Diomedes and Odysseus after they have captured him (see below on 10.378–381). The thematic association between Priam’s situation and other nighttime missions for spying or ambush may help us to better understand 24.674, where Priam and his herald are described as “having schemes one after another in their minds.” Though it is Hermes who comes up with the plan and ensures their safe homecoming, the words πυκινὰ and μήδεα are so associated with this kind of action (see below on 10.5–9) that Priam and the herald are credited with them even though they go to sleep in the middle of their mission (cf. Iliad 24.282 for the use of this same phrase at the beginning of their mission). For a discussion of the poetic implications of other instances of the word pukinos in Iliad 24 see Lynn-George 1988:230–233 and 240.

2. mvp-comment-2-1 10.2 εὗδον In Homeric diction, past tense verbs frequently lack the past tense augment of later Greek. For more on the augment in Homer see on 10.47 below.

3. mvp-comment-3-1 10.3 Ἀτρείδην Ἀγαμέμνονα ποιμένα λαῶν The epithet ποιμένα λαῶν ‘shepherd of the warriors’ is used most often of Agamemnon, to whom it is applied twelve times in the Iliad and three times in the Odyssey. But the phrase is also used of Nestor (three times in the Iliad; three in the Odyssey), Menelaos (two times in the Iliad; one in the Odyssey), and a number of other heroes, including Diomedes, Hektor (see on 10.406), and, in the Odyssey, Odysseus. The traditional epithet is the subject of the first of Milman Parry’s two doctoral theses published in 1928, theses which would revolutionize Homeric studies (see also above, “Interpreting Iliad 10”). Parry’s early work on the Homeric poems focuses on the traditional nature of the diction. L’Épithète traditionelle dans Homère; Essaie sur un problème de style homérique (= The Traditional Epithet in Homer) does not propose that the Homeric poems were composed orally, but theorizes that their traditional diction was the result of a system that had developed over a long period of time. Parry demonstrates both the utility of noun-epithet combinations in the composition of hexameter verse and the economy of Homeric diction, which rarely has more than one way of conveying what Parry calls “an essential idea” in the same metrical configuration. The principle of economy is so pervasive that Agamemnon can be called “shepherd of the warriors” even in instances where his leadership is not being stressed. This type of epithet is what Parry calls “ornamental” (MHV 21, 123–127). Since the epithet is applied to multiple heroes, it is also in Parry’s terms a generic epithet (MHV 64, 84–95). With respect to generic epithets, Parry says that the quality they express is one associated with heroes in general, rather than a hero in particular, and that the language is traditional and thus has a larger meaning for a traditional audience (MHV 137–138). Albert Lord has expanded on that idea: “The tradition feels a sense of meaning in the epithet, and thus a special meaning is imparted to the noun and to the formula … I would prefer to call it the traditionally intuitive meaning” (1960/2000:66; see also below on 10.144).

3. mvp-comment-3-2 Therefore we need not make a choice between Parry’s groundbreaking revelations about the workings of Homeric diction and our appreciation of the beauty of this highly compressed metaphor, which names Agamemnon with reference to his role as the leader of the Achaean forces at Troy. As Parry’s student Albert Lord later shows, singers working within an oral composition-in-performance tradition can expand and compress their narratives under the influence of variety of factors. (See especially Lord 1960/2000:99–123.) In Homeric poetry, noun-epithet combinations are the ultimate compression of a hero’s story. (See Nagy 1990b: “A distinctive epithet is like a small theme song that conjures up a thought-association with the traditional essence of an epic figure, thing, or concept” [23], as well as Danek 2002:6.) For a traditional audience, these phrases conjure not just the present use but all previous performances, imbuing the language with what John Foley has discussed as “traditional referentiality” and “immanent art” (see especially Foley 1991 and 1999): “‘Grey-eyed Athena’ and ‘wise Penelope’ are thus neither brilliant attributions in unrelated situations nor mindless metrical fillers of last resort. Rather they index the characters they name, in all their complexity, not merely in one given situation or even poem but against an enormously larger traditional backdrop” (Foley 1999:18). Similarly, the metaphor of the shepherd is part of a traditional system of expanded associations whose more expanded implications are evoked even in this extremely compressed usage. (See Muellner 1990 and Edwards 1991:48–55.) For more on Parry’s work on generic epithets, see our extended discussion of them in connection with the epithet βοὴν ἀγαθός at 10.283.

3. mvp-comment-3-3 This particular traditional metaphor of the shepherd juxtaposes, as we so often find in Homeric similes, peaceful pastoral life and war. When the epithet is used of Agamemnon and other heroes, it places them in a category of warriors who are also leaders and rulers. When we consider the poetics of shepherds from traditional Homeric similes, we can see that the metaphor emphasizes their responsibility to the warriors who follow them. Note, as an interesting contrast, that the dream that Zeus sends to Agamemnon in Book 2 tells him that a man who is responsible for the laoi and has so many concerns should not sleep all night long (2.24–25), while here that same shepherd of the laoi is indeed lying awake and cannot sleep.

3. mvp-comment-3-4 By bringing their leadership into focus, this epithet also connects the heroes to other war narratives in which they play the leadership role. We can see why Agamemnon’s position as overall leader of the coalition at Troy attracts this particular formula twelve times in the Iliad. In the Odyssey, a poem that holds Agamemnon up as a negative exemplum for Odysseus throughout its narrative, the formula is only used of Agamemnon three times, and in all three of those cases Agamemnon is being remembered in his role as the leader of Achaean forces at Troy. Used of Diomedes, the epithet likely evoked for an ancient audience his role in the capture of Thebes as one of the Epigonoi; when it is used of Nestor, an association is made to the battles of the past that Nestor himself narrates at various points in the poem (see e.g. Iliad 11.668ff.). In this way the epithet has both paradigmatic significance, in that it places the hero in the category of leader, and syntagmatic meaning, in that it connects to specific expanded narratives about the hero in the larger epic tradition. (For more on the terms paradigmatic and syntagmatic, see Dué 2002:5–13.)

5-9. mvp-comment-4-1 10.5–9 ὡς δ᾽ ὅτ᾽ ἂν ἀστράπτῃ πόσις Ἥρης ἠϋκόμοιο/…/ ὡς πυκὶν᾽ ἐν στήθεσσιν ἀνεστενάχιζ᾽ Ἀγαμέμνων This simile has been condemned by previous editors as bad poetry and used as evidence that Book 10 was composed by an inferior poet. In his 1900 commentary, Leaf calls various aspects of the simile “so confused as to be practically unintelligible,” “a pointless comparison,” “turgid and tasteless,” and “an incompetent piece of expression.” Much more recently Hainsworth calls it “overstretched, to say the least” and “the first example of much strained thought and language in this book” (Hainsworth 1993 ad 10.5–9). In many ways, the response to this simile is emblematic of previous approaches to Book 10 as a whole. The arguments made in the introductory essays of this volume as to why a new approach to Book 10 is necessary are especially applicable here. The prominent position of the simile in this book and its highly compressed structure, which, like so many Homeric similes, defies traditional literary criticism, make it an ideal test case for the approach we have taken in this commentary.

5-9. mvp-comment-4-2 Similes can teach us a great deal about the system in which our Iliad was composed. Although similes were once thought to be some of the latest, least traditional passages in the poem, drawn from the poet’s real world experiences (see e.g. Shipp 1972:7–144 and 208–222), we now know that this view is incorrect. The similes within epics, like the stories they narrate, have been shown to be traditional and to carry traditional associations that go far beyond the mere words of the similes themselves. (See Notopoulos 1957, Scott 1974, Moulton 1977, Muellner 1990, Martin 1997, and Tsagalis 2008:272–285, as well as Fränkel 1921 and Coffey 1957.) Often in epic we find very compressed similes whose fuller meaning would have been obvious to an audience raised in the tradition. A good example is the description of Hektor at Iliad 13.754–755: “He then sped onward, like a snowy mountain, and with a loud cry flew through the ranks of the Trojans and their allies” ( ἦ ῥα, καὶ ὁρμήθη ὄρεϊ νιφόεντι ἐοικὼς/κεκλήγων, διὰ δὲ Τρώων πέτετ’ ἠδ’ ἐπικούρων). Mountains and snowstorms have particular associations, some of which are common to our culture, some which are not. For mountains, there is of course the association of height. But what are we to make of the adjective ‘snowy’? One possibility is that elsewhere in epic the flashing of armor is compared to the light reflecting off falling snowflakes, an association that would not perhaps come immediately to our minds. (See Janko 1992 ad 13.754–755 and Iliad 19.357ff.) But Edward Bradley (1967) has explored all references to snow in epic and found that the quality most often associated with it is “incessant movement,” a phrase that aptly describes Hektor in Iliad 13. So while for us the idea of comparing a quickly striding Hektor to a snowy mountain is almost comical, for an ancient audience the simile, compressed as it is, would no doubt have made perfect sense. It would have been part of a more expanded set of associations with snow and mountains but also more expanded versions of the same simile. So while we have to reconstruct those associations, an ancient audience would have made them effortlessly while listening to the performance. An ancient commentator called the effect of this comparison “savage and fearsome” and something about it must have struck Virgil, who adapts the simile in Aeneid 12.699ff.

5-9. mvp-comment-4-3 Combined with the snowy mountain metaphor is another one, that of a bird in attack mode: “with a loud cry he flew through the ranks of the Trojans and their allies.” Leonard Muellner has examined this second part of the simile as an example of the way that epic similes and metaphors operate within an expanded system of associations. By comparing this particular instance of bird imagery (“with a loud cry” and “flew”) to other bird similes in related contexts, Muellner is able to show that the narrator is drawing on conventional imagery depicting the rapid movements of mustering warriors and their horses—imagery that we can now see pairs well with a comparison to snow. (See Muellner 1990:68n19.)

5-9. mvp-comment-4-4 The traditionality of these similes and metaphors, which are themselves micronarratives within the larger narrative of the poem, allows them to operate in a very different way from similes in the poetry of our literate, text-based culture. For interpreting Homeric similes, we are not restricted to the printed page as we try to elicit the implications of a metaphor—we have the whole of Homeric poetry and even beyond to guide us. If we return now to the simile that opens Book 10, how can we use the corpus of Homeric poetry to understand what significance it might have summoned for an ancient audience?

5-9. mvp-comment-4-5 The idea being conveyed by the simile is the frequency of Agamemnon’s expressions of sorrow ( ἀναστενάχιζ’, 10.9), which are pukina ( πυκίν’, 10.9). The verb ἀναστεναχίζω is related to other verbs of lament. In Iliad 23.211, Iris describes Patroklos as “the one whom all the Achaeans are bewailing” ( Πάτροκλος, τὸν πάντες ἀναστενάχουσιν Ἀχαιοί; see also Iliad 18.315 and 18.355). στενάχω is the verb that describes what Achilles, having just learned of Patroklos’ death, is doing when his mother finds him in Iliad 18.70, and it is also used for the antiphonal cries of mourners who respond to the solo lamenters at Iliad 19.301 and 24.746.

5-9. mvp-comment-4-6 The cries of grief that accompany songs of lamentation are pukina because they come thick and fast, one close upon the next. In Iliad 18.318, Achilles’ expressions of grief ( στενάχων) for Patroklos are πυκνὰ, and, similarly, in Iliad 19.312 Achilles is described as grieving in a pukinos way ( πυκινῶς ἀκαχήμενον). Sorrow in overwhelming abundance can also be thought of as pukina. In Iliad 16.599, πυκινὸν ἄχος takes hold of the Achaeans when Bathykles is killed. In Odyssey 19.516–517, Penelope speaks of the πυκιναὶ […] μελεδῶναι that torment her as she weeps ( ὀδυρομένην, Odyssey 19.517). The adjective pukinos has a variety of meanings in Homer, all of which are linked by the idea of frequency, density, or closeness. One of the most common contexts for the adjective is in the natural world, where it describes the lairs of animals or places where animals hide. While a connection between natural hiding places for animals and the frequency of one’s cries might not seem elegant or logical, the adjective pukinos seems to link the two meanings so closely that it is difficult to ascertain which meaning is the primary one in the two extended descriptions of lament mentioned above. If we look at these passages more closely, we find that in both cases the adjective pukinos is elaborated upon by way of a simile.

5-9. mvp-comment-4-7 In Iliad 18, the frequency of Achilles’ cries are compared to the grief of a lion who discovers that his cubs have been killed by a hunter:

On the other side the Achaeans

315 all night long bewailed Patroklos, lamenting.

And among them the son of Peleus led off the ceaseless lamentation,

placing his man-slaying hands on the chest of his companion

with wails that came thick and fast, like a well-bearded lion

whose cubs a man who is a deer hunter has snatched away

320 from the thick woods. He grieves when he later returns

and he comes to many valleys searching after the tracks of the man,

if somewhere he can find him, since piercing fury takes hold of him.

So wailing deeply [Achilles] spoke among the Myrmidons.

On a conceptual level the comparison being made is between the grief of Achilles and the lion, but what unites the tenor and vehicle on a verbal level is the word pukinos, used in the simile of the woods in which both the hunter and lion lurk.

5-9. mvp-comment-4-8 The association made between these two semantic realms of the same word occurs in the same way in Odyssey 19:

“Stranger, I for my part would like to speak to you a little further.

510 For indeed soon will be the hour for going to bed, a pleasant thing,

at least for anyone whom sweet sleep takes hold of despite their cares.

As for me, a daimon has given immeasurable sorrow.

I spend my days delighting in mourning, lamenting,

as I look to my tasks and attend to the household.

515 But when night comes, and bedtime takes hold of all,

I lie in my bed, while thick and fast in my heart without end

sharp sorrows torment me as I weep,

as when the daughter of Pandareos, the vibrant nightingale,

sings a beautiful song when spring is newly arrived,

520 sitting among the thick leaves of the trees,

and she pours forth her resounding voice in one song after another,

lamenting her beloved child Itylus.”

Once again the frequency of one’s sobs and cries are compared by way of a simile to an animal in its haunts—in this case, the nightingale sings from amidst the dense foliage of trees. And much as in the description of Achilles, the point of comparison is the lamentation of Penelope and the sorrowful song of the nightingale, but what links tenor and vehicle verbally is the adjective pukinos.

5-9. mvp-comment-4-9 We will return to the idea of the lair momentarily. For the moment though, let us note that here Penelope describes the impossibility of sleep when one is troubled by sorrows, a situation that matches the opening of Iliad 10. So too at the beginning of Iliad 9, no one is sleeping, including Agamemnon, who is “struck in his heart by great sorrow” ( ἄχεϊ μεγάλῳ βεβολημένος ἦτορ, Iliad 9.9). He calls an assembly, and when he begins speaking he is crying:

He stood shedding a tear, like a spring whose water flows up from the depths,

a spring which pours dark water down from a steep rock,

so wailing deeply he addressed words to the Argives.

This passage recalls the iconic lamenter of Greek myth, Niobe, whose example is invoked by Achilles as he and Priam mourn for fathers and sons in lament-filled Iliad 24. Niobe in her grief for her twelve children was transformed into just such a weeping rock. (For more on Niobe as the prototypical lamenting woman in the Iliad, see Dué 2002:108–109, and on the metaphor of the spring, see Dué 2006a:160–161.)

5-9. mvp-comment-4-10 We do not find the word pukinos in the initial similes of Iliad 9, as we saw in Iliad 18 and Odyssey 19, but these similes share with Iliad 10 their use of the diction, metaphors, and imagery of lament in their depiction of the sorrow of the Greeks (especially Agamemnon) and their resultant sleeplessness. An explanation for the absence of the concept in Iliad 9, but its presence in Iliad 10, we argue, can be found in yet another semantic aspect of pukinos—its association with the lokhos ‘ambush’. The phrase πυκινὸν λόχον is found three times in the Iliad and Odyssey ( Iliad 4.392, 24.779; Odyssey 11.525). Ambush warfare is pukinos because of the cunning involved, and in fact cunning thoughts or schemes are mēdea pukna in Homeric epic. In Iliad 3, Helen describes Odysseus as the master of this kind cunning: οὗτος δ᾽ αὖ Λαερτιάδης πολύμητις Ὀδυσσεύς … εἰδὼς παντοίους τε δόλους καὶ μήδεα πυκνά (“That is the son of Laertes Odysseus who is crafty in many ways … he knows all sorts of tricks and schemes one after the other,” Iliad 3.200–202). Odysseus, as Helen’s description implies, is our ambush hero par excellence. (Like cunning schemes, shrewd counsel is also pukinos. See below on 10.43–44.)

5-9. mvp-comment-4-11 Later in Iliad 10 the plan that Hektor proposes to the Trojans (namely, to send a spy to the Achaean camp) is called a πυκινὴν … βουλήν (10.302). (For similar phraseology used in Book 2 of Agamemnon’s testing of the troops, see above, pp. 231–235.) As was noted above (see “The Poetics of Ambush”), ambush warfare is characterized by mētis, while the polemos is characterized by biē. For another collocation of pukinos, cunning, and ambush, we have the ambush of Bellerophon as it is described in Iliad 6:

But for him as he was going back he wove another close trick.

He selected the best men from broad Lycia

and sent them on an ambush. These men did not return back home:

Faultless Bellerophon slew them all.

One other element seen here (encapsulated in ἄλλον ‘another’) is that ambush is often used when other means to defeat the enemy have not worked. The king of Lycia has not been able to kill Bellerophon by sending him on various missions or into battle, so he resorts to ambush. A similar sense of desperation drives the plan formed here in Iliad 10.

5-9. mvp-comment-4-12 Ambushes are pukinos for another reason as well, as we alluded to above: they involve hiding in dark, enclosed spaces, not unlike an animal’s lair. In the story of ambush that Odysseus tells Eumaios in Odyssey 14, Odysseus and his companions hide in the ῥωπήϊα πυκνά ‘dense shrubbery’ before the walls of Troy. Here, we return to the similes that elaborate on the grief of Achilles and Penelope. In both of those similes, the word pukinos describes the place in which the lamenting creature seeks refuge. In another passage in Odyssey 19, the idea of the lair and the place of ambush are directly equated. In the narrative that explains the origins of the scar that Eurykleia recognizes, we find out that on a hunting expedition Odysseus was ambushed by a boar, who rushed forth from a λόχμῃ πυκινῇ and gashed his leg ( Odyssey 19.439).

5-9. mvp-comment-4-13 Two things remain to be noted. First, it is also likely that ambushes are imagined as pukinos because of the density of the men hiding together in a cramped space. The episode of the wooden horse, the lokhos (as it is termed at Odyssey 4.277 and 8.515) that results in the sack of Troy, involves many men enclosed in a small space. In the ambush of Tydeus narrated at Iliad 4.391–398 (called a πυκινὸν λόχον in 4.392), fifty-two men lay in wait for him. Second, a crucial aspect of ambush warfare (which usually happens at night in the cover of darkness) is the necessity of not going to sleep. Staying awake at night in a cramped hiding place surrounded by other men in a closely packed fashion is precisely the kind of endurance ambush requires, and all of these components are encompassed by the adjective pukinos.

5-9. mvp-comment-4-14 This exploration of the adjective pukinos suggests that the conceptual realms of lament and ambush can be merged in this word. In the simile that describes Agamemnon’s grief and sleeplessness, we find that there is no mention of an animal in his lair. Instead, the entire ambush episode that is about to unfold substitutes for such a simile, linked to Agamemnon’s sobs by the word pukinos. (For more on the traditional referentiality of the word pukinos, as used in the phrase pukinon epos, see Foley 1991:154–156.)

5-9. mvp-comment-4-15 There are still more parts of the simile that can be unpacked, once we understand the traditional connection between lamentation and ambush and the idea of frequency or closeness that unites them. The frequency of the nightingale’s laments in Odyssey 19 (they come one right after another) is conveyed by the word θαμά at 19.521. The adjectival form of this word is used of snowflakes (as at Iliad 12.278) and, like pukinos, of projectiles (arrows, spears, and rocks) thrown in abundance and in quick succession. When Agamemnon’s cries are compared to falling snow, the traditional resonance of the simile can be understood by a traditional audience. Both are θαμά. Similarly, in Iliad 3.222, Odysseus’ persuasive words in the Trojan assembly are compared, in an extremely compressed simile, to snowflakes ( νιφάδεσσιν ἐοικότα χειμερίῃσιν). For an audience on the inside of the tradition, this compressed simile would naturally draw on associations between the frequency and denseness of snowflakes and the close-packed nature of Odysseus’ mēdea (which are called pukna twenty lines before).

5-9. mvp-comment-4-16 Possibly related to the metaphor world of snowflakes is the metaphor in Iliad 4.274, where the mass of warriors following the two Ajaxes is called a “cloud of foot-soldiers” ( νέφος … πεζῶν). As Mark Edwards notes, the scholia on this line in several manuscripts explain that the metaphor is expressing the “denseness ( τὸ πυκνὸν) and frightening aspect of the phalanx” by likening it to “a black and threatening cloud” ( τὸ πυκνὸν καὶ καταπληκτικὸν τῆς φάλαγγος μιᾷ λέξει περιέλαβεν εἰκάσας μέλανι καὶ σκυθρωπῷ νέφει). (See Edwards 1991:48; the translation is his.) The lines following Iliad 4.274 actually go on to unpack the metaphor by way of a simile:

275 As when a goat-herding man sees from a lookout point a cloud

coming over the sea, driven by the rush of the West wind,

and to him being at a distance blacker than pitch

it appears as it comes over the sea, and it brings a great tempest,

and seeing it he shudders, and drives his flocks into a cave,

280 such were the young men nurtured by Zeus who were with the Ajaxes,

dense phalanxes moving into hostile war,

dark, bristling with shields and spears.

Here a single word, “cloud,” elicits an extended simile that conveys denseness by conjuring the image of a closely packed phalanx. But in what way is a cloud dense? If the simile were not present in our text, and we had only the compressed metaphor of Iliad 4.274, we might doubt the scholiast’s interpretation. The key must be in the rain portended by the νέφος, which like hail or snow or Agamemnon’s sighs—or indeed battle—is pukinos. This passage from Iliad 4 allows us to see the richness of this tradition, whose metaphors can be so highly compressed yet full of meaning for a traditional audience. So also does the adjective ἀθέσφατον, used to describe hail in 10.6, have traditional associations, in this case with abundance, but used elsewhere in Homer of rain, food, wine, and, most interesting for us, long winter nights (see Odyssey 11.373 and 15.392).

5-9. mvp-comment-4-17 Finally, as Hainsworth has pointed out in his discussion of these lines, the phrase “the great jaws of destructive battle” ( πτολέμοιο μέγα στόμα πευκεδανοῖο, 10.8) is a perfectly traditional metaphor (we can compare Iliad 19.313 and 20.359), but it is “unexpected as an alternative to rain, hail, or snow” (Hainsworth 1993 ad 10.8). The adjective πευκεδανός is found nowhere else in the archaic epic that survives, but the image, we submit, is unexpected and strained only for us—not for a traditional audience, for whom long-range connections of the kind we have argued for here are made on a subconscious level. Such connections are only possible within a traditional system, participated in by both performer and audience, in which meaning becomes possible with reference to the tradition. To put it another way, this simile only makes sense if we read it against the backdrop of the tradition in which it was created. It can be highly compressed because every word has resonance that links it to the other uses of that word in the tradition. Such a simile cannot be the work of an idiosyncratic poet trying to manipulate the oral tradition into a new, original style, as Danek, for example, has argued (see Danek 1988 and above, “Interpreting Iliad 10”), nor can we agree with Hainsworth that the metaphor we have just cited is “further instance of the pretentious usage of traditional language characteristic of this Book” (Hainsworth 1993 ad 10.8). In the system that created the Iliad and Odyssey—including, we are arguing, Iliad 10—the poet does not make use of tradition in an artificial way. When confronted with such a formulation on the part of scholars hostile to Iliad 10, it is instructive to consider the words of Albert Lord, who asserts that we must understand the poet to be working “inside an oral tradition of epic song”:

Lord 1960/2000:147

10. mvp-comment-5-1 10.10 τρομέοντο Zenodotus, the first head of the library at Alexandria and a well-known Homer scholar, knew of the reading φοβέοντο here, according to the scholia that survive in our medieval manuscripts, but the reading is not attested elsewhere. (The verb τρομέω is likewise used in the middle voice at 10.492. See also Iliad 6.151.) Hainsworth (1993 ad loc.) notes that Aristarchus, a successor of Zenodotus as head of the library and rival editor of Homer, asserted that “ φοβοῦμαι and its cognates signified flight,” whereas here φοβέοντο would have the Classical meaning ‘fear’. Hainsworth adds the qualification “but that [Aristarchus’] doctrine may not be binding on this Book.” Hainsworth’s comment reflects his understanding of Iliad 10 as likely a later composition than the rest of the Iliad (see “Interpreting Iliad 10”). We suggest instead that φοβέοντο’s lack of manuscript attestation indicates that it was not a particularly old or well-known version of the verse, but this is not necessarily indicative of the lateness of the entire book. A version with φοβέοντο may well have entered the formulaic performance language at a later phase in the Homeric tradition than τρομέοντο, eventually becoming part of the textual tradition known to Zenodotus several centuries later. The third-century CE Stoic philosopher Chrysippus (fragment 906 in the edition of von Arnim 1903) quotes this line with still another variation: περὶ γὰρ δίε νηυσὶν Ἀχαιῶν. This phrase is attested at Iliad 9.433 and 13.557 and is in no sense “un-Homeric,” though it, like φοβέοντο, is not attested here in the manuscript tradition. These variations highlight the dynamic nature of Homeric diction, which evolved through time and was in a constant state of flux in its early stages. For more on the Alexandrian editors of Homer see on 10.51–52 below.

11-13. mvp-comment-6-1 10.11–13 Agamemnon sees and hears that the Trojans are also awake, and this fact is confirmed later at 10.299–300. These lines convey a nighttime sensory experience: Agamemnon can see the fires, and he marvels at their number, indicating his anxiety at how large the Trojan army seems. The noise he hears reinforces that anxiety. Agamemnon’s perception of the playing of music may make the Trojans seem more relaxed—they are not fearful for their destruction, at least in Agamemnon’s imagination. (The Trojans are portrayed as noisy in contrast to the silent Achaeans at Iliad 3.1–9, 4.429–438, later in Book 10, and elsewhere, so these lines may also reinforce that common characteristic.) Seeing and hearing the Trojan camp from Agamemnon’s perspective provides additional insight into the concerns that keep him sleepless. Sensory experiences in the dark call for interpretation in a way that daytime experiences do not: because the sense of sight is limited, the fires are visible, but Agamemnon cannot see any further detail that would let him know what is happening near those fires. Hearing becomes much more important at night, but at this point, what he hears only seems to tell Agamemnon that the Trojans are awake, and perhaps that they are relaxed. These perceptions combine to provide a contrast to the Achaean camp, which is silent now. One motivation for nighttime spying raids, as we will see in more detail below, is that each side is guessing what the other will do, and they send out spies to confirm those guesses.

12. mvp-comment-7-1 10.12 πυρὰ πολλὰ τὰ καίετο These fires that Agamemnon wonders at now were ordered by Hektor to be set earlier in the evening (see Iliad 8.507–511). In his orders Hektor says that he wants the fires to burn all night long specifically so that he can see if the Achaeans are trying to sail away and thus escape the total destruction he wants to inflict on them. In other words, Hektor, too, is trying to see the enemy in the dark. It is this same motive that prompts Hektor to send a spy (see 10.311), and such details show continuity between the events of the narrative at the end of the day in earlier books and what happens here in Book 10. We also hear in Iliad 8.562–565 that the Trojans set a thousand fires, each of which has fifty men and their horses and chariots around it. We can therefore imagine the magnitude of the scene Agamemnon is gazing at here and understand why it inspires his anxiety.

12. mvp-comment-7-2 Dan Petegorsky (1982:47ff., 179) argues that there is a connection between these fires and the “atmospheric activity of Zeus alluded to in the simile” at 10.5–9. Both are visible signs, he contends, of “Zeus’ hostility towards the Achaeans, concrete tokens of Hector’s threat to bring fire against the Achaean camp and ships” (Petegorsky 1982:179). In the interaction between simile and narrative that Petegorsky perceives, we can also add this divine dimension to Agamemnon’s fears. That is, the lightening of Zeus not only reflects the storminess of Agamemnon’s worried mind, but also represents a further reason for him to indeed be anxious on this night.

12. mvp-comment-7-3 10.12 Ἰλιόθι πρὸ In a very early stage of the Greek language, prepositions were adverbs, and their placement is thus far more flexible in Homeric Greek than in Classical Greek. Here πρὸ is strictly adverbial. It is thought that tmesis, the separation of a prepositional prefix from its verb, ceased to be part of the spoken/written language before the Greek of the Linear B tablets (i.e. the thirteenth century BCE) but remained an important part of epic diction because of its deeply ingrained presence in the formulaic system and the flexibility it offered for the creation of new formulas (Horrocks 1997:201). The ending - θι of Ἰλιόθι is locative, a vestige of the Mycenaean Greek case system (attested in Linear B). (On the whole phrase see Chantraine 1988, GH I §112.)

17. mvp-comment-8-1 10.17 βουλή See on 10.43–44 below.

18. mvp-comment-9-1 10.18 ἐλθέμεν is an Aeolic infinitive form (Chantraine 1988, GH I §237). Although the language of Homer is primarily Ionic in nature, Aeolic dialect forms make up a considerable percentage of Homeric diction. Before oral composition-in-performance and dialect diffusion were well understood, a considerable amount of scholarly effort was devoted to finding an explanation for the mix of dialects (see MHV 326–327). In the 1880s August Fick ignited Homeric scholarship by proposing that the Iliad was composed in Aeolic Greek and later translated by Ionic singers into their own dialect, and he even went so far as to produce editions of the Iliad (1886) and Odyssey (1883) with the Aeolic dialect restored everywhere possible. Approximately fifty years later Milman Parry theorized that the oral tradition had passed through several distinct historical phases, one of which was an Aeolic phase. He argued that just as singers in the Homeric tradition would have naturally replaced older forms with more current ones, where meter and other strongly felt patterns allowed, but retained them where they did not, so also did Ionic singers, inheriting an Aeolic epic song tradition, replace Aeolic forms everywhere possible, but retained them where the formulas could not easily be adapted in performance. (See especially MHV, and on the theory of an Aeolic phase, see also Palmer 1962, Hoekstra 1965, Janko 1982, and West 1988.) So here the change of ἐλθέμεν to ἐλθεῖν (which is attested at 10.56 and various other places in the Iliad) would result in a spondee in the fifth foot (generally avoided in Homer, though not impossible). More recently an alternative theory has been proposed, namely, that Aeolic and Ionic epic traditions coexisted after the end of Bronze Age, but the Aeolic tradition was eventually assimilated into and eclipsed by the Ionic tradition in Asia Minor. (On this complex question see the overview in Horrocks 1997.) In any case, certainly an Aeolic tradition of epic poetry did flourish at one time, as is evidenced by such poems as Sappho 44 (on which see West 1973:191, Nagy 1974:134–39, Horrocks 1997:200, and Dué 2002:59).

19. mvp-comment-10-1 10.19 μῆτιν The plan that Agamemnon hopes Nestor will construct is called simply mētis. In Iliad 9.423, Achilles had in fact advised the Achaeans to come up with a “better mētis” ( μῆτιν ἀμείνω), since he was not going to accept Agamemnon’s offer. The plan that Nestor devises is to send someone on a nighttime spying expedition. Night raids and ambush warfare are linked in the epic tradition by their use of cunning or trickery ( mētis) and endurance of prolonged hardship as opposed to the outright brute force ( biē) of the battlefield (Edwards 1985:18 and above, “The Poetics of Ambush”). Many of the ambushes that are mentioned in epic occur at night: see e.g. Iliad 21.34–39 and Odyssey 14.468–503. Diomedes will be the hero who volunteers for this particular raid (10.219ff.), and he chooses as his companion Odysseus (10.243), the hero of mētis-style warfare. (For more on the relationship between Diomedes and Odysseus, see below on 10.243.)

21. mvp-comment-11-1 10.21 ἔνδυνε περὶ στήθεσσι χιτῶνα Here begins the first dressing scene of the book, which, as we have argued above (see “The Poetics of Ambush”), signals to the audience an entry into the narrative world of the night raid/ambush. The animal skins and other unusual items that the heroes put on seem to be special features of this type of story, and serve a practical purpose as well. The skins and leather caps are the equivalent of camouflage, a necessary precaution in warfare of this type. (See also below on κυνέην, 10.257.) We can compare what Agamemnon puts on here to his dressing scene in Iliad 2.42–46, where, of course, no night raid will take place:

He put on a soft khiton,

fine and newly made, and put around himself a great cloak.

Under his shining feet he fastened fine sandals

and around his shoulders he placed a silver-studded sword.

He took up the ancestral scepter which is always unwilting.

In Iliad 2, Agamemnon dresses for an assembly; in Iliad 10, he dresses for a night raid. Of course, ultimately it will be Diomedes and Odysseus who go on the raid, but this first dressing scene and those that follow set the stage for what is to come, signaling to the audience our entry into the narrative world of the night raid. (See also on 10.254–272.)

21. mvp-comment-11-2 In this book, each hero dresses for a night raid, and each hero has his own particular outfit with no doubt its own particular associations in the tradition. (See Reinhardt 1961:247.) Each subsequent dressing scene (there are five) builds our anticipation for the expedition to come. Agamemnon here fittingly puts on the red-gold skin of a large lion, and it seems that, even apart from the resonance of so many lion similes in epic, Agamemnon and Mycenae were especially linked with lions. Several artifacts featuring lions, including the monumental gateway to the citadel, grave steles, seals, and ceremonial daggers, have been excavated at Mycenae. From the Classical period, we can compare the rich lion imagery and metaphors in Aeschylus’ Oresteia (see e.g. Agamemnon 716–736, 821–828, 1223–1226, 1258–1260, Libation Bearers 935–938). Nevertheless, other heroes do wear lion skins, including, in this book, Diomedes (10.177), but also, most famously, Herakles, who wears the skin of the Nemean lion obtained during the traditional first of his twelve labors.

25. mvp-comment-12-1 10.25 See above at 10.1ff on the use of the verb ἔχε here. Verses 25–31 are a much more compressed version of the theme of the inability to sleep that leads to nighttime action, and they parallel the structure of 10.1–24.

29. mvp-comment-13-1 10.29 παρδαλέῃ μὲν πρῶτα μετάφρενον εὐρὺ κάλυψε In this second of the dressing scenes, Menelaos puts on a leopard skin. Outside of Book 10, the only hero who wears an animal skin is Paris, who likewise wears a leopard skin at Iliad 3.17 when he makes his challenge to the Achaeans. In that encounter, Menelaos does not wear an animal skin, but it is telling that, in the same passage, Menelaos is compared in a simile to a lion that suddenly finds the body of an animal to eat ( Iliad 3.23–26). Because of the way that duel comes to an end (Paris is ultimately whisked away to safety by Aphrodite), there is no chance for Menelaos to strip him and take the skin as spoils. Instead, Menelaos’ dressing scene here makes him parallel to Paris, Helen’s other husband. The two husbands have other common traits as well. As we will see below, Menelaos has a tendency to “give way” (10.121). This tendency is shared by this other younger brother of a leader (it is likewise his brother Hektor who describes Paris as one who gives way, Iliad 6.521–523). The connections between the two are a good example of what John Foley calls “traditional referentiality,” which is the kind of meaning made possible by tradition for an audience on the inside of that tradition.

29. mvp-comment-13-2 We should also note that Paris, our other wearer of leopard skin, has associations with ambush. He fights even in daytime battle as an ambushing archer (in Iliad 11 he wounds Diomedes, Machaon, and Eurupylos with his arrows), and, as we have explored above (see pp. 57–61), archery and ambush are conceptually and even visually linked. On the alterity of archer figures, see also Lissarrague 1990:13–34. On attitudes toward archery in the Iliad, see also Farron 2003, who disputes Lorimer’s (1950:289–305) claim that archery is lower class and ineffective. In several (primarily late) accounts of Achilles’ death, Paris ambushes him in the sanctuary of Thymbraion when he comes, unarmed, to arrange his marriage to Polyxena. (See Dictys of Crete 3.2ff, Dares 27, Hyginus 110, and Philostratus Heroikos 51.1. with Burgess 1995.) These late sources may preserve a vestige of a tradition about Achilles’ death at the hands of Paris by archery and ambush. At the very least, surviving evidence (including what we know of the now lost Aithiopis) indicates that in Archaic myth Achilles died after receiving an arrow wound to the ankle (Burgess 1995:225). It may be that Paris’ leopard skin is an iconographic sign of his archer status (cf. Naiden 1999: “Like the leopard, archery is crucial yet marginal, inferior yet effective” [200]), and the overlap between the conceptual realms of archery and ambush warfare, which we have explored in detail in “The Poetics of Ambush,” might explain why Paris wears a leopard skin even in a non-ambush context.

30. mvp-comment-14-1 10.30 ποικίλῃ The leopard skin is further described as poikilos, which in this case has meaning for its physical qualities: the spotted pattern makes it “intricate.” But, as we saw with the wide semantic range of pukinos, which joins many concepts that might seem quite disparate at first to us, so also in the case of poikilos there is another important meaning here. As Detienne and Vernant (1974/1978) have shown, there is an association of this word with mētis and with trickery (“la ruse”). In this way, too, the leopard skin in particular shares common associations with ambush. For more on mētis and ambush, see above on 10.19 and below on 10.43–44.

30-31. mvp-comment-15-1 10.30–31 αὐτὰρ ἐπὶ στεφάνην κεφαλῆφιν ἀείρας / θήκατο χαλκείην Menelaos wears a helmet that is unsuited to a spying mission or ambush. It is bronze, which, as we hear about the spear points in Diomedes’ encampment, shines even through the dark of night (see 10.152–154). Such armament is a liability, therefore, to stealth and to remaining undetected in the dark (see more on 10.257). Diomedes, Odysseus, and Dolon all wear leather caps to protect their heads on these missions (10.257–259, 10.261–265, 10.335). Although Menelaos is involved in other ambushes within the epic tradition, this subtle detail of his chosen dress here may indicate to a traditional audience that Menelaos is not going to be chosen for this expedition. We may note the anxiety expressed in Agamemnon’s words to Diomedes about his choice of partner; the narrator explicitly states that Agamemnon was afraid for his brother Menelaos (see 10.237–240). In the Odyssey, however, Menelaos is portrayed as an ambusher: he is inside the Trojan Horse with Diomedes and Odysseus ( Odyssey 4.280), he is one of the leaders of the night mission Odysseus describes to Eumaios ( Odyssey 14.470–471), and he successfully ambushes Proteus ( Odyssey 4.388–463; see above on pp. 72–73 for more on this ambush).

32. mvp-comment-16-1 10.32 βῆ δ᾽ ἴμεν This familiar Homeric expression is a good, straightforward example of a formula with a fixed metrical position. There is flexible variation within the formula: it can be expressed in the third-person singular, as here, as well as in the third-person plural (as at 10.297: βάν ῥ’ ἴμεν), and it can use either the conjuction δ’( ε) or the particle ῥ’( α). But in the more than thirty uses of all these permutations in the Iliad and Odyssey, the formula always begins the line, occupying the first foot. Thus this specific way of saying “he/she/they went/left” can be assumed to have been particularly useful at the beginning of the line for the singer as he composed in performance. The formula gains additional flexibility with the use of the later Aeolic infinitive form ἴμεναι (the Aeolic infinitive form ἴμεν is earlier), which extends the phrase into the second foot. We see that version of the formula at least fifteen times. Another version of the formula with the Ionic infinitive form ἰέναι (so either βῆ δ’/ ῥ’ ἰέναι or βάν δ’/ ῥ’ ἰέναι) likewise extends into the first syllable of the second foot, and this iteration shows up at least eighteen times in our texts: see examples at 10.136, 10.179, 10.273, and 10.336. The only case in which we see this phrase in a metrical position other than the initial position of the line is when it is part of a longer formula, an example of which we see at 10.73. In this longer formula (which also appears in Iliad 20.484 and Iliad 21.205), the line begins αὐτὰρ ὁ βῆ ῥ’ ἰέναι μετὰ and is completed by a name + epithet formula. This longer formula is used in cases of going after/for a specifically named person, while the various shorter versions can be used in a wide variety of situations of going, but always when the singer starts a new line. Because this formula is used seven times in Iliad 10, we can also see that many men are in motion during this night.

36. mvp-comment-17-1 10.36 βοὴν ἀγαθὸς Μενέλαος See below on 10.283 for more on this epithet, which is applied in Iliad 10 to both Menelaos and Diomedes.

37. mvp-comment-18-1 10.37 ἠθεῖε This word cannot be precisely translated into English. Its contexts suggest that it conveys both the affection and respect of younger person for an older one (as of Paris and Hektor in Iliad 6.518, Deiphobos and Hektor in Iliad 22.229 and 239, and Achilles and Patroklos in Iliad 23.94), or of a trusted servant for a respected master (Eumaios and Odysseus in Odyssey 14.147).

41. mvp-comment-19-1 10.41 νύκτα δι᾽ ἀμβροσίην We find night likewise described in 10.142. Ambrosia, the food of both the gods (see e.g. Odyssey 5.93, 5.199, 9.359) and their divine horses, is used by the gods for a variety of other purposes in Homer, including as perfume ( Odyssey 4.445), as a cosmetic ( Iliad 14.170), and as a preservative for the corpses of Sarpedon and Patroklos ( Iliad 16.670 and 16.680, and 19.38). At Iliad 1.529, Zeus’ hair is described as ambrosios, as is sleep at 2.19. In Iliad 18.268 and 24.363, night is again ambrosial. There is, as we can see, a wide range of associations for this word.

41. mvp-comment-19-2 In 10.83, 10.276, and 10.386, the metrically equivalent phrase νύκτα δι᾽ ὀρφναίην is used in the same position in the line. (See also on 10.142 below and the textual commentaries above on 10.386.) This phrase has a spondee where ἀμβροσίην has a dactyl, but both phrases occupy the same metrical space. νύκτα δι᾽ ὀρφναίην is also found at Odyssey 9.143 and the Homeric Hymn to Hermes 578. Although it is not impossible to have two metrically equivalent formulas expressing the same essential idea, such duplications are rare in Homer, so we should expect the two adjectives to convey different things. The context of νύκτα δι᾽ ὀρφναίην in Odyssey 9 is the ambush-like episode of the Cyclops (see above, “The Poetics of Ambush”), and its use of Hermes (whose nighttime thievery and cunning are celebrated in the Homeric Hymn) is likewise suggestive of an association between this word and nighttime escapades. Norman Austin (1975:71–73) sees ὀρφναίη as being particularly evocative of night’s darkness, which is of course appropriate for both ambush and thievery. Night is in general ambrosial, according to Austin, because of the welcome rest it brings at the end of the day, but it is particularly so in the Iliad: “Night [in the Iliad] means the end of a day’s fighting. It is relief from weary battle, but, more importantly for the Homeric hero, it means survival through another day.” But the night of Iliad 10 is marked by anxiety, fear, and a raid on the enemy camp, hence the appropriateness of νύκτα δι᾽ ὀρφναίην. (For alternate views on why night is ambrosial, see Hainsworth 1993 ad 10.41 and Heubeck, West, and Hainsworth 1988 ad 4.429, 4.445, and 5.93 with bibliography ad loc.)

41. mvp-comment-19-3 Georg Danek (1988:80) has interpreted the alternation between the formulas νύκτα δι᾽ ἀμβροσίην and νύκτα δι᾽ ὀρφναίην as an intentional variation on the part of the composer of this book. (On Danek’s arguments about the composer of Iliad 10, see “Interpreting Iliad 10.”) Danek views the attempt to vary traditional phraseology as a hallmark of this poet’s individual style. As we noted above, this approach is problematic from the standpoint of the methodology developed by Parry and Lord in studying oral traditions. It rests on the assumption that a singer within a traditional system would strive to “break free” of that tradition and compose in a new way. Austin’s approach is helpful, because it finds two different ways that night can be characterized and shows how context affects the choice of either formula. Throughout his 1975 work, however, Austin himself seeks to counter Parry’s demonstration of the economy of Homeric diction, and uses these words as an example of how the poet of the Iliad can achieve various literary goals, unconstrained by formulaic diction. But another way to look at it is to say that Austin’s account of the different conceptualizations of the night enhances and clarifies Parry’s arguments about the economy of Homeric diction, which Parry describes as “free of phrases which, having the same metrical value and expressing the same idea, could replace one another” (MHV 86). There is more than one way to say “night” here, because night is not a monolithic concept. When a poet wants to invoke night with its associations with relief and rest, νύκτα δι᾽ ἀμβροσίην would be easily summoned. The night encompassed by Iliad 10, however, is of a different sort, and as a result, the formula νύκτα δι᾽ ὀρφναίην is used three or four times. This interpretation seems strengthened by Iliad 24.363, which is identical to 10.83, with the exception of the formula for night:

“Who is this that comes down to the ships through the encamped mass of warriors all alone

through the dark night, when other mortals are sleeping?”

πῇ πάτερ ὧδ’ ἵππους τε καὶ ἡμιόνους ἰθύνεις

νύκτα δι’ ἀμβροσίην, ὅτε θ’ εὕδουσι βροτοὶ ἄλλοι;

Iliad 24.362–363

“Where, father, are you driving your horses and mules like this

through the ambrosial night, when the other mortals are sleeping?”

In Iliad 24, Priam is attempting to sneak into Achilles’ camp during the night undetected; the formula νύκτα δι᾽ ὀρφναίην would seem to be appropriate. (See above on 10.1ff. for more on how Priam’s journey has thematic associations with other nighttime missions to the enemy’s camp.) But the speaker of these lines is the disguised Hermes, talking to Priam in the form of a young man who should be unaware of Priam’s mission. Accordingly, he uses the more innocent-sounding and divine νύκτα δι’ ἀμβροσίην. Alternatively, we can interpret the absence of ὀρφναίην as significant within the system that generated the two formulas. As we have seen, the theme of the night raid/ambush attracts its own a subset of formulas, which are not typically found outside of this context in Homer. If Priam’s expedition to Achilles, though it takes place at night, is not being characterized as an ambush, night is therefore not dark, but the more generic “ambrosial.” (For more on Parry’s principle of economy and the attempts that have been made to refute its applicability to the Homeric epics, see the discussion below of Odysseus’ smile in 10.400.)

43-44. mvp-comment-20-1 10.43–44 χρεὼ βουλῆς ἐμὲ καὶ σὲ … κερδαλέης Here again we see a parallel with Iliad 9. Compare Nestor’s words at 9.74–76: πολλῶν δ’ ἀγρομένων τῷ πείσεαι ὅς κεν ἀρίστην/ βουλὴν βουλεύσῃ· μάλα δὲ χρεὼ πάντας Ἀχαιοὺς/ ἐσθλῆς καὶ πυκινῆς (“When many are gathered you can be persuaded to obey him who counsels the best plan. All of the Achaeans are especially in need of good, close [ pukinos] counsel”). In 10.17, Agamemnon, after tossing and turning with grief and worry, comes up with a plan ( βουλή), a sequence that, as we have seen, parallels the opening of Book 2. He decides that he will go to Nestor and ask him to come up with a plan (there called μῆτιν). Boulē is used therefore in several places in Iliad 2, 9, and 10 to denote a plan of action. As it happens, all three plans are conceived and carried out during the night, and it seems that in these contexts boulē is closely associated with mētis. (See also 10.302, where Hektor likewise conceives of a πυκινὴν … βουλήν in a line that matches Iliad 2.55 in our texts. According to the testimony that has survived about the Cypria [testimonium 1 Bernabé], that epic opened with Zeus in distress about the overpopulation of the earth. It is unfortunately not clear from the context whether Zeus is attempting to sleep or if these thoughts are in fact occurring during the day, but the thoughts that lead to the plan he formulates, called βουλή in line 7 of the surviving fragment, are termed πυκιναῖς πραπίδεσσιν [3].) Here in Book 10 Agamemnon says that their plan must be wily ( κερδαλέης); in Book 9 the adjective used is pukinos (as at 10.302; see also on 10.5–9 above). In Odyssey 13, Athena calls Odysseus “by far the best of all mortals in planning” ( βροτῶν ὄχ’ ἄριστος ἁπάντων βουλῇ, 13.297–298) and “crafty in intricate ways” ( ποικιλομῆτα, 13.293). In Odyssey 22.230, Athena tells Odysseus that the city of Troy was taken by his boulē ( σῇ δ’ ἥλω βουλῇ Πριάμου πόλις εὐρυάγυια)—another ambush that according to epic tradition occurred at night. This is how Menelaos describes Odysseus in the wooden horse when he tells Telemakhos the story in Odyssey 4:

I have become familiar with the planning and thinking

of men who are heroes, and I have traveled over much of the earth.

But I have not yet known with my eyes a man equivalent

to my friend Odysseus’ enduring mind.

The boulē of the wooden horse is arguably Odysseus’ signature mētis, on which see Haft 1990.

47. mvp-comment-21-1 10.47 οὐ γάρ πω ἰδόμην, οὐδ᾽ ἔκλυον Note the augment on ἔκλυον. Egbert Bakker (2005) has argued that in Homeric diction the verbal augment has a primarily deictic function, and signifies proximity or immediacy rather than emphasizing a past tense. For this reason we find it used more often in similes and in speeches than in narrative contexts. In speeches, augmented aorists are almost always best translated as perfects (Bakker 2005:116, with further bibliography ad loc.). Bakker points out that the use of negating particles like οὔ πω with aorist verbs similarly “effaces the distinctness of any past, making it come into the speaker’s present” (Bakker 2005:170). Indeed, our first instance of an augmented aorist in Book 10 is paired with an unaugmented aorist that is preceded by οὔ πω.

47-48. mvp-comment-22-1 10.47–48 οὐ γάρ πω ἰδόμην, οὐδ’ ἔκλυον αὐδήσαντος / ἄνδρ’ ἕνα τοσσάδε μέρμερ’ ἐπ’ ἤματι μητίσασθαι See also below at 10.289–290 and 10.524 for more on μέρμερα ἔργα. Agamemnon gives important details as to just what is “astounding” about what Hektor did on the battlefield. He has never seen or even heard tell of one man devising so many astounding deeds in one day. Hektor’s deeds on the battlefield are unprecedented in Agamemnon’s experience, and are of course the reason why he is sleepless this night. The language even juxtaposes the “one” and “so many”: mermera erga are accomplished by one man (or two men, as we shall see) who kill many more. In the next day’s battle, too, Hektor is reported to be accomplishing mermera erga and destroying phalanxes of young men ( Iliad 11.502–503). On mourning the loss of so many men in one day of battle cf. Aeschylus Persians 431–432.

51-52. mvp-comment-23-1 10.51–52 These lines were athetized by Aristophanes of Byzantium and Aristarchus, two great directors of the library in Ptolemaic Alexandria in the second century BCE. Aristarchus was considered the premier editor of Homer in antiquity, and the scholia that survive in our medieval manuscripts of the Iliad and Odyssey are full of references to him. As Gregory Nagy has demonstrated (see especially Nagy 2004), Aristarchus had available to him at the library of Ptolemaic Alexandria a great number of Homeric texts. Aristarchus’ practice was to collate the many texts known to him and to comment on the various readings that he found, often asserting which reading he felt to be the correct one. Unlike a modern editor, however, Aristarchus confined his opinions to his commentary, which was published in its own separate volume. The notes in the commentary were linked to the appropriate passages in the text by means of a system of critical signs. These signs are preserved in the Venetus A manuscript of Homer, and to a lesser extent elsewhere (see Bird 2009). So here, although both Aristarchus and his predecessor Aristophanes did not feel verses 51–52 were composed by Homer, they left them in the text, and indicated their judgment with the sign for athetesis (see Figure 4). The scholia in the margins of the Venetus A tell us that Aristarchus condemned 10.51 because it repeats the content of 10.49, and because δηθά and δολιχόν mean the same thing. There is a tendency among the Alexandrian editors to disapprove of verses that they feel to be repetitive, preferring compression over expansion. This preference for compression is rooted in the poetics of their day (see Dué 2001a), and does not offer us good grounds for condemning the lines. But it is noteworthy that these scholars did not impose their preferences on the text itself, with the result that much more Homeric poetry survives for us today than probably would have otherwise.

53. mvp-comment-24-1 10.53 Αἴαντα The Ajax being referred to here is the son of Telamon. (See below on 10.110–113.) Evidence from the Venetus A scholia indicates that Aristarchus may have known a reading Αἴαντε instead of Αἴαντα:

Didymus says that the Aristarchean reading is “ Αἴαντε” in the dual, but Telephos says that Didymus has misspoken, since Menelaos is not sent to both Ajaxes.

This disagreement in the scholia about Aristarchus’ reading may reflect an evolution in the meaning of the dual form Αἴαντε that has been noted by previous scholars. In some early stage of the Greek epic tradition, the dual Αἴαντε referred not to Ajax the son of Telamon and Ajax the son of Oileus as a pair, but rather to Telamonion Ajax and his brother Teucer (whose special fighting style is discussed above at p.60; see Ebbott 2003:41–43 with references ad loc.) The dual form of the name that Aristarchus knew here would be perfectly appropriate in a time when it was understood to refer to Ajax and Teucer. In any case, at 10.228 the two Ajaxes ( Αἴαντε δύω) volunteer to go on the spying mission with Diomedes, but it is not clear whether at that point both Ajaxes are volunteering, or whether it is the fighting pair of Ajax and Teucer. It is possible that the dual would have been understood differently by audiences of different periods.

53. mvp-comment-24-2 10.53 Ἰδομενῆα κάλεσσον It is significant that Idomeneus figures prominently here among the chief heroes, since he is the speaker of the most explicit description of ambush warfare in Homeric epic. He and Meriones discuss what it takes to succeed in ambush at Iliad 13.266–294 (discussed above, pp. 45–47). Idomeneus and Meriones are from Crete, and Odysseus links himself to both Idomeneus and Crete throughout his “Cretan lies” in the second half of the Odyssey, including a tale involving the ambush of the son of Idomeneus ( Odyssey 13.259–275). The alternative warfare of ambush, with its reliance on cunning and dissimulation rather than force, may have been traditionally a Cretan specialty or in some way associated with Cretans. Certainly in the Odyssey, mention of Crete functions as a narrative signal for the external audience, and possibly for the internal audience as well, since Odysseus seems to use these stories as a kind of coded message or ainos ( Odyssey 14.508), by which he gauges the recipient’s loyalty and character. Crete serves as a cloak for Odysseus’ true identity as he carefully and cleverly sets up his return, just as, in war, heroes camouflage themselves for a nighttime spying expedition or ambush. (For more on the concept of the cloak and its connection to Odysseus’ ainos in Odyssey 14, see below at 10.149.)

56. mvp-comment-25-1 10.56 ἐλθεῖν ἐς φυλάκων ἱερὸν τέλος ἠδ᾽ ἐπιτεῖλαι A night watch is explicitly set up in Iliad 9.80–88, where the guards assemble and take their post armed. There, we hear that the guard consists of seven leaders, each of whom is named, and each leader has a hundred young men with long spears. As we will see later (10.196–197), Meriones and Thrasymedes, named as two of the seven in Iliad 9 but given special mention here at 10.57–59, will join the leaders to deliberate about the plan, and, importantly, give Diomedes and Odysseus some of their armor. Back in Iliad 9.87, we are told that the guard takes up their post between the ditch and the wall (see further on 10.194). For more on the anxieties about the watch falling asleep, see on 10.98. See Singor 1992:403 for his arguments that the seven leaders of the night watch implies that the Achaean wall has seven gates, and that the adjective hieros is used here, as well as for both the gatekeepers of Troy ( Iliad 24.681) and the walls of Thebes ( Iliad 4.378), because defensive walls and the life-sustaining protection they provide are “sacred.”

58-59. mvp-comment-26-1 10.58–59 Ἰδομενῆος ὀπάων / Μηριόνης The relationship between Idomeneus and Meriones fits into an Indo-European mythical paradigm of the hero and his charioteer. In such relationships, the charioteer often loses his life, thereby saving the life of his more dominant other half. The concept of the opaōn is similar to that of the therapōn (defined by Gregory Nagy as ‘ritual substitute’), which is what Achilles calls Patroklos in Iliad 16.244. In that passage, Achilles prays that when Patroklos returns to battle he have the power to fight on his own, instead of as part of the closely linked fighting pair that Achilles and Patroklos normally form. Instead, however, Patroklos dies (at the hands of Apollo, Euphorbus, and Hektor), wearing Achilles’ armor and in many ways previewing Achilles’ own death, in some traditions at least, at the hands of Paris and Apollo. (On opaōn and its application to Meriones, we are indebted to an unpublished paper by Ellen Aitken. On the therapōn as a ‘ritual substitute’ for the hero, as Patroklos functions for Achilles, see Nagy 1979:33 and 292–293. On the relationship between Achilles’ and Patroklos’ death, see also Burgess 1997.) The night watch seems to be led by younger men in particular, like Meriones here: is there a suggestion that they can better endure the sleeplessness? See further on 10.259 for the association between young men like Meriones and ambush.

60. mvp-comment-27-1 10.60 βοὴν ἀγαθὸς See below on 10.283 for more on this epithet.

65. mvp-comment-28-1 10.65 ἀβροτάξομεν There are two different spellings of this verb (found only here in our Homeric texts) in the textual tradition: ἀβροτάξομεν and ἀμβροτάξομεν. Sources are nearly evenly divided between them. West (1997: 229) points out that the form ἀμβροτάξομεν “offers the unmetrical sequence ‒ ⏑ ‒, but the difficulty is resolved by going back to an ancient * hamṛtáxomen.” We might speculate, then, that the spelling without the mu came about because it seemed to solve the metrical difficulty by relying on a plosive + liquid exception to the rule that multiple consonants form a closed syllable (see West 1997: 220–221). In any case, ἀμβροτάξομεν belongs to the categories of older words West identifies that became unmetrical as their form evolved. They were preserved as part of the formulaic language even as these sound-changes occurred in the Greek language as a whole. The antiquity of this word could mean that concern about missing one another in the dark of night is a traditional idea, part of the poetics of night raids or nighttime spying missions.

73. mvp-comment-29-1 10.73 αὐτὰρ ὁ βῆ ῥ᾽ ἰέναι μετα See above on 10.32.

73. mvp-comment-29-2 10.73 ποιμένα λαῶν See above on 10.3.

75. mvp-comment-30-1 10.75 εὐνῇ ἔνι μαλακῇ· παρὰ δ᾽ ἔντεα ποικίλ᾽ ἔκειτο Nestor and Diomedes are described in the state in which they are found sleeping by the others, with the result that each is characterized as a warrior of a particular style. Nestor is an old man and sleeps on a soft bed, but his weapons are right beside him, which implies that he is ready for battle at a moment’s notice (see also 10.78–79). The battle gear that lies next to him is not the same as that he puts on to go out in 10.131ff. The shining helmet (10.76) would be inappropriate for a night mission (see below on 10.257). Rather, the armor serves to characterize Nestor as a warrior in his own right and give him distinction. Agamemnon here, as elsewhere in the Iliad, looks to Nestor first and foremost for strategy. At Iliad 7.325 and 9.84 he is Νέστωρ, οὗ καὶ πρόσθεν ἀρίστη φαίνετο βουλή (“Nestor, whose planning also before was manifestly the best”). Nestor orchestrates most of the events of Book 9, as he does here in Book 10. In Book 11, it is Nestor who sets in motion Patroklos’ fatal impersonation of Achilles. On Nestor’s role in the Iliad and in the larger epic tradition, see Frame 2009.

83. mvp-comment-31-1 10.83 ὀρφναίην See on 10.41 above.

84. mvp-comment-32-1 10.84 ἠέ τιν᾽ οὐρήων διζήμενος, ἤ τιν᾽ ἑταίρων The idea that someone would be out at night looking for a mule ( τιν᾽ οὐρήων) seemed odd to Alexandrian scholars, as it might to us. The A scholia indicates that Aristarchus athetized the line because of that word, suggesting that it should be some form of κοῦρος, to indicate the young men of the guard. Instead of assuming a mistake by the poet (as the scholiast does) or by a scribe, another approach would be to see if there are any traditional associations with mules getting loose at night. There are no examples in surviving Homeric poetry, but there may well have been in the larger tradition. In any case, mules are used in a variety of contexts in the Iliad, by both the Trojans and the Achaeans. (See Iliad 1.50, 23.111 and 115, 24.716 for οὐρεύς; the word ἡμίονος is also used in this book at 10.352 and throughout the Iliad and Odyssey.)

85. mvp-comment-33-1 10.85 φθέγγεο, μὴ δ᾽ ἀκέων ἐπ᾽ ἒμ᾽ ἔρχεο See “The Poetics of Ambush” on the sensory aspects of the night. In 10.67, Agamemnon told Menelaos to call out ( φθέγγεο as here) wherever he went, which in the dark would serve both to wake up his comrades and let them know that he was their fellow Achaean and not an enemy. So here Nestor tells his visitor not to sneak up on him in the dark, but to call out to let him know who he is and why he is there. See also Iliad 10.139 and 24.170.

85. mvp-comment-33-2 10.85 χρεώ As each hero is roused from sleep the theme of the great need the Achaeans find themselves on this night is emphasized. We saw in 10.43 that Agamemnon speaks to Menelaos of their need for a “plan,” boulē, just as Nestor does in the opening of Iliad 9. Here, Nestor naturally asks what need has caused him to be woken in the middle of the night. In 10.118, he advises Agamemnon to wake up the Greek leaders, citing the “unbearable need” ( χρειὼ … ἀνεκτός) that has come upon them. Likewise in 10.142 Odysseus asks what need so great ( χρειὼ τόσον) has driven Agamemnon and Nestor to wake him. Nestor asks him not to reproach them, since the situation really is that dire: “Such sorrow has come upon the Achaeans” ( τοῖον γὰρ ἄχος βεβίηκεν Ἀχαιούς, 10.145). In 10.172, we find χρεώ invoked by Nestor once again, in much the same language as at 10.142: “An especially great need has come upon the Achaeans” ( μάλα μεγάλη χρειὼ βεβίηκεν Ἀχαιούς). This theme runs throughout Books 9–11, as Robert Rabel (1991) has demonstrated. Rabel argues that each of these three books has a similar tripartite structure consisting of recognition of need, journey, and return and report.

98. mvp-comment-34-1 10.98 καμάτω ἁδηκότες The meaning of ἁδηκότες can be easily gleaned from context, but its derivation is disputed. This formula appears four times in this book (here, 10.312, 10.399, and 10.471), but with the exception of Odyssey 12.281 nowhere else in the Iliad or Odyssey. (See also Homeric Hymn to Apollo 460.) Here is another instance of a formula closely tied to the night that has been seen by previous commentators and scholars as evidence of the book’s unusual style. We have argued that Iliad 10 is essentially our only surviving extended narration of a night raid, and this accident of transmission makes these formulas seem more unusual than would otherwise be the case. If we examine the use of καμάτῳ ἁδηκότες in this book more closely, we can see why this formula would have been particularly useful for a poet composing a night raid, and for one composing this episode in particular.

98. mvp-comment-34-2 We have already observed that the necessity of staying awake is part of the hardship that characterizes ambush warfare. This necessity, as it happens, is likewise an important component of keeping a night watch. Because on this night the Trojans are encamped nearby—which we have seen is a cause of great anxiety for the Achaeans—the importance of the night watch is heightened. It is vital that the Achaean watches not fail in their duty; they must not fall asleep.

98. mvp-comment-34-3 In 10.312, Hektor proposes that someone find out if the Achaeans are keeping a proper night watch, or if in fact they are too worn out by the toil of battle to do so ( καμάτῳ ἁδηκότες αἰνῷ). In 10.399, Dolon repeats Hektor’s words to Odysseus virtually word for word, as so often happens in Homer when messages and information are relayed. In 10.420–422, Dolon reveals that the allies of the Trojans are not keeping night watches, and are instead leaving security to the Trojans, who have wives and children to protect. And so, in 10.471, we find that Rhesos and his men have done what the Achaeans must not do: they have fallen asleep, overcome by exhaustion ( οἱ δ’ εὗδον καμάτῳ ἁδηκότες). In Odyssey 12.281, Odysseus attempts to force his men to sail through the night, past the island of the sun god (where Teiresias had foretold disaster). The men refuse, saying that they are too worn out to do so ( καμάτῳ ἀδηκότας ἠδὲ καὶ ὕπνῳ). It seems clear that this formula occurs naturally when the hardship of staying awake is added to the weariness of a day’s toil, whether it be a day spent fighting in the polemos, or, in the case of the Odyssey, a day spent rowing at sea. (Cf. the simile at Iliad 7.4–7, which compares the relief that the Trojan soldiers feel when Hektor and Paris return to the battlefield to that experienced by sailors who, when their limbs are giving out from the toil of rowing [ καμάτῳ δ’ ὑπὸ γυῖα λέλυνται], hope for and receive a favorable wind.) It is not necessary to see these instances in Book 10 as idiosyncratic in their concentration, the work of a particular poet with his own personal and/or Odyssean style, as Danek and Hainsworth have most recently explained them. (See Danek 1988:84–86 and Hainsworth 1993 ad loc.) Rather, they are yet another example of the way that formulas and traditional themes go hand in hand.

101. mvp-comment-35-1 10.101 μάχεσθαι With the use of this verb ‘to fight’, we can see that the anxiety is so great among the Achaeans that they fear large-scale attack, and not just a spying mission or an ambush. The fact that they have put seven hundred men on guard duty also reflects their concern that the Trojans will make an all-out assault at night. During the intense battle that occurs the following day, Agamemnon also wonders if the Trojans will stop fighting when night falls ( Iliad 14.78–79).

102. mvp-comment-36-1 10.102 Γερήνιος ἱππότα Νέστωρ See Frame 2009 for an in-depth exploration of the epic tradition about Nestor and how it is encapsulated in the phrase hippota Nestor. That Frame could write a work of nearly 800 pages on the implications of this phrase in the epic tradition reveals just how much meaning can be encapsulated in a single epithet. (See also above on 10.3.) Of gerēnios Frame writes (2009:600n189):

The theory that gerēnios relates to the privileges of old age is strengthened by a notice in the Townley scholia to Iliad 16.196 that “some” have Γερήνιος ἱππότα Φοίνιξ in place of γέρων ἱππηλάτα Φοίνιξ. (Otherwise, the phrase is used exclusively of Nestor.)

103. mvp-comment-37-1 10.103 Ἀτρείδη κύδιστε ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν Ἀγάμεμνον On Nestor’s address of Agamemnon, see on 10.144 below.

104-107. mvp-comment-38-1 10.104–107 Leaf suggests that these lines “are at least somewhat out of place” because Achilles has just refused to return. This statement follows his argument that it is obvious that Iliad 10 “forms no essential part of the story of the Iliad” (Leaf 1900:423). Hainsworth (1993, ad loc.) similarly remarks, “The open condition, implying the possibility of Akhilleus reentering the fray, is unexpected when such a change of heart has just been ruled out of court. A remote condition … would certainly be more appropriate.” Petegorsky states, “Nestor’s reference to Achilles is curious; for it has the effect of conceding to Achilles the role of the hero who will put a stop to Hector, at the very moment when we would expect him to be suggesting an alternative” (1982:203). But, Petegorsky argues, Achilles’ refusal has in effect made the situation revert to what it was before the Embassy, and this deference to Achilles as the only way to stop Hektor in fact shows how much the Doloneia takes part in the Iliadic tradition, both thematically and in its narrative momentum towards Achilles’ eventual return (1982:177–185). The alternative strategy adopted in Iliad 10, one focused on mētis, spying, and ambush, will not change the Iliad’s traditional course of events, but will highlight through contrast the need for Achilles’ strength to save the Achaeans.

109. mvp-comment-39-1 10.109 ἠμὲν Τυδέιδην δουρὶ κλυτὸν ἠδ’ Ὀδυσῆα This line shows that, as we would expect, Diomedes and Odysseus are closely linked in the formulaic diction. For more on Odysseus and Diomedes as a fighting pair, see below on 10.243.

110-113. mvp-comment-40-1 10.110–113 Αἴαντα ταχὺν The swift Ajax is the son of Oileus, as we see also in Iliad 14.520–522: Ὀϊλῆος ταχὺς υἱός· οὐ γάρ οἵ τις ὁμοῖος ἐπισπέσθαι ποσὶν ἦεν/ἀνδρῶν τρεσσάντων, ὅτε τε Ζεὺς ἐν φόβον ὄρσῃ (“the swift son of Oileus—there is no one like him for following on foot when men are retreating in flight, whenever Zeus sets a rout in motion”). In 10.112–113, Nestor is referring to Ajax the son of Telamon, whose ships are on the far end of the line (see Iliad 11.7–9). In 10.175–176 Nestor tells Diomedes to go wake up the son of Oileus, but the mission itself is not described in our text, nor is the mission of Menelaos to Telamonian Ajax (see above on 10.53).

116. mvp-comment-41-1 10.116 πονέεσθαι There is a cluster of three occurrences of this verb: here, in 10.117, and in Agamemnon’s response in 10.121. It is also used in 10.70, and the noun from which it is derived, πόνος, appears at 10.89, 10.164, 10.245, and 10.279. These words are also used for the hardships of (daytime) battle, but see our essay “Poetics of Ambush” for a discussion of the associations that “hard labor” has with ambush fighting.

121. mvp-comment-42-1 10.121 πολλάκι γὰρ μεθίει Douglas Frame (2009:214–216) demonstrates that “giving way,” especially in deference to his brother, is a traditional characteristic of Menelaos. In addition to here, the verb μεθίημι is used of Menelaos in two other places: at Odyssey 4.372 and most tellingly at Iliad 23.434, where Menelaos gives way to Antilokhos in the chariot race. Frame connects that event in particular with Menelaos’ nostos, in which he displays hesitancy, lack of incitement, and a lack of noos. These same qualities will make him a poor choice for the spying mission: Agamemnon seems to know this, as we see in his fear that Diomedes will choose Menelaos based on status alone (see 10.237–240). As we have noted elsewhere (see 10.31), Menelaos is portrayed as a successful ambusher in the Odyssey, but that portrayal seems quite separate from his relationship with his brother, whom, as we have seen earlier on this night, he looks to for direction, even as he is the first to voice the idea of the spying mission.

133. mvp-comment-43-1 10.133 χλαῖναν Nestor does not put on an animal skin, but rather an impressive cloak ( khlaina). For the traditional language of these dressing scenes, compare 10.21–22. See also below on 10.149.

136. mvp-comment-44-1 10.136 βῆ δ᾽ ἰέναι See on 10.32.

137. mvp-comment-45-1 10.137 Ὀδυσῆα Διὶ μῆτιν ἀτάλαντον This is not the first time that Odysseus’ name is mentioned in Iliad 10 (see 10.109), but it is the first place that he appears in the narrative, and the first place in our text that he is given a description of any kind. Here and twice in Iliad 2, Odysseus is called “the equivalent of Zeus in craft [ mētis].” Odysseus rivals the gods in this kind of intelligence, by which he engineers alternative warfare and the daring escapes that are his specialty in the Odyssey. One of Odysseus’ most common epithets in the Iliad and Odyssey, πολύμητις (as at 10.148), likewise highlights this central aspect of Odysseus’ character. Odysseus is the hero who takes down the Cyclops by a carefully orchestrated ambush, and the attack on the suitors is structured like an ambush in many ways. We have noted as well that the sack of Troy is an ambush, of which Odysseus is the mastermind. (For more on mētis in the Doloneia, see on 10.19 and “The Poetics of Ambush” above. On Odysseus as the hero of mētis, see above on 10.5–9, Haft 1990, and Holmberg 1997:14–15. For Odysseus’ epithets in the Odyssey, see Austin 1975:25–53.

139. mvp-comment-46-1 10.139 φθεγξάμενος· τὸν δ᾽ αἶψα περὶ φρένας ἤλυθ᾽ ἰωή Note the emphasis on the sound of Nestor’s voice as he rouses Odysseus from sleep. On the aural aspects of this episode, see above pp. 62–68 and on 10.85.

141-142. mvp-comment-47-1 10.141–142 On the theme of “need,” see above on 10.85.

142. mvp-comment-48-1 10.142 νύκτα δι᾽ ἀμβροσίην In the Venetus A, the oldest complete medieval manuscript of the Iliad, ὀρφναίην is written in the margin next to νύκτα δι᾽ ἀμβροσίην at this line (see Figure 5), and a thirteenth-century manuscript (Vaticanus Graecus 26) prints ὀρφναίην here instead of ἀμβροσίην. On the significance of the two adjectives and the variation we find here, see above on 10.41.

144. mvp-comment-49-1 10.144 διογενὲς Λαερτιάδη πολυμήχαν’ Ὀδυσσεῦ Nestor, who is the most diplomatic of the heroes in the Iliad, addresses Odysseus in connection with both his lineage and with two of his traditional epithets, thereby using an entire hexameter to address him. He does the same with Agamemnon in 10.103 ( Ἀτρεΐδη κύδιστε ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν Ἀγάμεμνον), in precisely the way that Agamemnon instructs Menelaos to wake up the heroes in 10.68–69. And as with Agamemnon, Nestor chooses what is perhaps the most honorific of Odysseus’ traditional epithets. In the Iliad, the epithet διογενὲς ‘descended from Zeus’ is applied to several heroes, including Patroklos (1.337), Achilles (1.489), Ajax (4.489), and Menelaos (23.294), but in the Odyssey it is restricted to Odysseus. πολυμήχανος, on the other hand, is Odysseus’ distinctive epithet. It is used of him and him alone, and, with one exception, always in the vocative. That one exception is the signature description of Odysseus by Athena, who in the guise of Mentes tells Telemakhos that his father is on his way home, “since he is a man of many devices ( πολυμήχανος, Odyssey 1.205).”

144. mvp-comment-49-2 It is a testament to the economy of Homeric diction that other than the full verse phrase that appears here (and six other places in the Iliad, as well as fifteen times in the Odyssey) there are only three ways to address Odysseus in the vocative in our Iliad, each with a different metrical configuration: ὦ πολύαιν’ Ὀδυσεῦ μέγα κῦδος Ἀχαιῶν (9.673, 10.544), ὦ Ὀδυσεῦ πολύαινε (11.430), and [ ὦ] Ὀδυσεῦ (9.346, 14.104). This does not mean, however, that the epithets are without semantic weight (see especially the formulation of Lord 1960/2000:66, quoted on 10.3 above). The full verse formula is particularly flexible and can be used or not at a composer’s discretion. Its contexts suggest that it conveys formality and respect. In the Iliad, the goddess Athena and the heroes Agamemnon, Diomedes, Achilles, and Ajax address Odysseus this way. In the Odyssey, Athena, Calypso, and Circe do, as do the shades of Teiresias, Agamemnon, and Achilles.

144. mvp-comment-49-3 Diomedes, by contrast, does not get quite the same respect as Agamemnon and Odysseus. In 10.159, Diomedes is addressed as simply “the son of Tydeus.” In Iliad 9.32–49, Diomedes is the first to speak after Agamemnon’s address to the assembled warriors and is sharply critical of him. Nestor praises Diomedes for his abilities as a warrior and for his speaking ability but qualifies the latter: he is the best in counsel for his age group ( Iliad 9.54). It seems that Diomedes is still too junior in relation to Nestor to get the full honorific address. Three times, however, he is addressed by others with the affectionate full-line formula Τυδεΐδη Διόμηδες ἐμῷ κεχαρισμένε θυμῷ ( Iliad 5.242, by Sthenelos; Iliad 5.826, by Athena; Iliad 10.234, by Agamemnon).

145. mvp-comment-50-1 10.145 τοῖον γὰρ ἄχος βεβίηκεν Ἀχαιούς See also above on 10.85. The sorrow ( akhos) that Nestor cites here is of course ultimately the result of the withdrawal of Achilles and its disastrous consequences, and Nestor uses an equivalent phrase when the strife between Agamemnon and Achilles begins (see Iliad 1.254; see Nagy 1979:69–72, 94–95 for the equivalence of ἄχος and πένθος in Homeric diction). The Trojans have had a great deal of success in Achilles’ absence and are now encamped on the plain. This sorrow is what keeps Agamemnon and Menelaos awake at the opening of this book. Likewise, in Iliad 9.9, Agamemnon is “struck in his heart by great sorrow” ( ἄχεϊ μεγάλῳ βεβολημένος ἦτορ). Achilles had predicted that Agamemnon would feel sorrow ( ἀχνύμένος, Iliad 1.241) when the Greeks fell dying. The akhos that Achilles experiences when Agamemnon threatens to take and then in fact takes Briseis in Iliad 1 initiates his wrath, which in turn leads to the sorrow of the Achaeans. Nagy has argued that there is a “pervasive nexus between ἄχος and Ἀχιλ( λ) εύς” in Homeric diction that is “integrated in the inherited formulaic system and hence deeply rooted in the epic tradition” (Nagy 1979:79). This akhos seems to be the root of Achilles’ name, which Nagy etymologizes as * Akhí- lāṷos ‘whose host of men is sorrowful [= grieving]’. (See Nagy 1979:69–93 and Nagy 2004:131–137, as well as Palmer 1963:78–79 and Holland 1993.)

148. mvp-comment-51-1 10.148 πολύμητις Ὀδυσσεὺς On Odysseus’ associations with mētis, see on 10.5–9 and on 10.137 above. Polumētis ‘who is crafty in many ways’ is one of Odysseus’ most commonly used epithets. Other than Odysseus it is only used of Hephaistos ( πολυμήτιος, Iliad 21.355), who is the god of a different sort of craft. (The English word ‘craft’, like the Greek mētis, encompasses both meanings.) Milman Parry says of this particular epithet: “ δῖος and πολύμητις, for the audience, describe the Odysseus of all the epic poems which sang his deeds” (MHV 171). πολύμητις is one of the distinctive epithets of Odysseus, while δῖος is a generic epithet of heroes (see Parry MHV 145 for πολύμητις as a distinctive epithet, and MHV 84 for δῖος as generic). Parry writes:

Parry MHV 137–138 As we discussed on 10.3 in connection with the phrase ποιμένα λαῶν, the phrase πολύμητις Ὀδυσσεὺς can be used of Odysseus even in situations in which he is not being particularly crafty; the distinctive noun-epithet combination is, to quote the formulation of Nagy once again, “like a small theme song that conjures up a thought-association with the traditional essence of an epic figure” (Nagy 1990b:23). The phrase is not without significance in an ambush context, however, because Odysseus is a pre-eminent ambusher within the tradition as a whole. Odysseus is called πολύμητις just as he leaves his tent, which marks the beginning of what will become a spying mission/ambush episode that will prominently feature Odysseus’ mētis. Once that episode is well underway, Odysseus will be again called πολύμητις when he interrogates Dolon (10.382; see also 10.488, where he handles the horses so they are not spooked).

149. mvp-comment-52-1 10.149 ποικίλον ἀμφ᾽ ὤμοισι σάκος θέτο Agamemnon and Diomedes each wear a lion skin, Menelaos wears a leopard skin, Nestor wears a khiton and khlaina, and all take a weapon ( egkhos or doru), but Odysseus takes only a shield and leaves without putting on any outerwear of any kind. This seemingly mundane detail actually serves two significant narrative functions. First and foremost, it sets up the extended arming scene that takes place at the assembly, just before the raid itself (see below on 10.254–272). Odysseus’ lack of appropriate gear here means that he will have to borrow armor at the assembly. Second, Odysseus’ lack of an animal skin has an intriguing corollary the Odyssey, where, in one of his Cretan lies to Eumaios in Odyssey 14, Odysseus comes close to revealing his true identity, at least from the perspective of a traditional audience of epic. Odysseus describes how once on a cold night at Troy he went out on an ambush. All the other heroes were dressed for the weather, but he himself had no cloak, and had to come up with a clever scheme to get one from one of his companions on the lokhos. Odysseus’ Cretan lie may well be playfully alluding to a Doloneia tradition, in which case the story is a coded verbal message ( ainos) directed at both the internal audience (Eumaios) and the external audience, who will “get” the inside reference. Such a reference is possible if we understand the Iliad (including the Doloneia) and Odyssey to be co-existing oral traditions, evolving in conjunction with one another. (On the ainos as a coded verbal message in Odyssey 14, see both Muellner 1976:97 and Nagy 1979:234–237, with further reference ad loc.) On the multiple significances of the shield being “intricately patterned” ( poikilos), see above on 10.30.

151. mvp-comment-53-1 10.151 ἐκτὸς ἀπὸ κλισίης σὺν τεύχεσιν Diomedes and his comrades are so ready for battle that they are not even inside their tent. Agamemnon had earlier stated his concern that the Trojans might be planning a night attack (10.100–101), and the preparedness seen here may also reflect the same “state of emergency” that is also prompting the night meeting and spying mission.

152-154. mvp-comment-54-1 10.152–154 ἔγχεα δέ σφιν/ ὀρθ᾽ ἐπὶ σαυρωτῆρος ἐλήλατο, τῆλε δὲ χαλκὸς / λάμφ᾽ ὥς τε στεροπὴ πατρὸς Διὸς Their spears are planted in a kind of palisade, perhaps as a defense while they sleep on this dangerous night, or perhaps so that they are easy to reach in case of attack. The shining of the bronze like lightning is a frequent image in Homeric poetry (see Iliad 11.66, which is also an explicit simile, and the metaphorical uses of στεροπή with bronze at Iliad 11.83 and 19.363, and Odyssey 4.72 and 14.268 = 17.437). In most of those cases, just as here, the gleam of the bronze has a threatening or awe-inspiring quality to it. That the bronze shines this way at night is suggestive in terms of what is visible in the dark.

159. mvp-comment-55-1 10.159 ὄρσεο The manuscripts are divided between this reading and ἔγρεο. The scholia indicate that Aristarchus had both readings: ὄρσεο· διχῶς ὁ Ἀρίσταρχος, ἔγρεο καὶ ὄρσεο [A intermarginal scholia]; ἔγρεο· γράφεται καὶ ὄρσεο. διχῶς αἱ Ἀριστάρχου [T interlinear scholia]. This is possible because two separate editions or ekdoseis of the text of Homer were attributed to Aristarchus (= αἱ Ἀριστάρχου in the scholia), both of which were known to his student Didymus. From Didymus’ scholarly work many of the scholia derive. (On the ekdoseis of Aristarchus, see Montanari 1998 and Nagy 2004:85–86. On the sources for the Homeric scholia, see Nagy 2004:3–24 and Blackwell and Dué 2009.)

159. mvp-comment-55-2 The sources, both ancient and medieval, are perhaps divided here because both verbs are well attested in the formulaic diction. ἔγρεο occurs here and in two places in the Odyssey; ὄρσεο is attested four times in the Iliad and once in the Odyssey. Clearly, both verbs could be generated by a poet composing in performance. Here is a perfect illustration of the difficulty a modern editor of Homer faces when trying to choose between two or more equally Homeric (= formulaic) variations. We, as the editors of this volume, have for this very reason rejected a traditional text critical approach, and instead have advocated a multitextual approach that accounts for the multiformity of the Homeric poems at different historical points in their transmission. (See above, “ Iliad 10: A Multitextual Approach.”)

159. mvp-comment-55-3 10.159 Τυδέος υἱέ See on 10.144 above. See also Schnapp-Gourbeillon 1981:96–100 for more on Diomedes’ patronymic and his youth.

159a. mvp-comment-56-1 10.159a The third-century CE scholar and poet Diogenes Laertius relates an anecdote (6.53) that features the hexameter line μή τίς τοι εὔδοντι μεταφρένῳ ἐν δόρυ πήξῃ. This verse is probably a literary play on Iliad 8.95: μή τίς τοι φεύγοντι μεταφρένῳ ἐν δόρυ πήξῃ. The twelfth-century scholar Eustathius may be in fact thinking of Diogenes and not Homer when he writes (in 519.32 ) ὁ Νέστωρ τῷ Διομήδῃ κειμένῳ πού φησιν· ἔγρεο, μή τις τοι καθεύδοντι μεταφρένῳ ἐν δόρυ πήξῃ (“Somewhere Nestor says to the sleeping Diomedes, ‘Wake up, lest someone pierce you in the back with a spear while you sleep’”; cf. Diogenes Laertius’ ἐπέγειραι, ἔφη … ). It is possible that Eustathius had a text of the Iliad with this line following 10.159, but the verse is attested nowhere else in our manuscripts.

177-178. mvp-comment-57-1 10.177–178 ἑέσσατο δέρμα λέοντος / αἴθωνος μεγάλοιο ποδηνεκὲς, εἵλετο δ᾽ ἔγχος Verse 177, after the caesura, and 178 are also used to describe what Agamemnon wears in 10.23–24, which is indicative of their formulaic nature and also suggestive of their use in night raid contexts generally.

179. mvp-comment-58-1 10.179 βῆ δ᾽ ἰέναι See on 10.32.

180-189. mvp-comment-59-1 10.180–189 As we discuss in the introductory essay “The Poetics of Ambush,” this simile emphasizes the sounds that are made in the dark, as well as describing a scenario of being on the defensive against a nocturnal attack (see above, pp. 63–64).

183. mvp-comment-60-1 10.183 δυσωρήσωνται is another hapax legomenon, appearing only in Iliad 10, but we can understand why it might only appear once in our extant Homeric epics from the simile’s interaction with its context. Although in other parts of the poem there are similes describing predatory animals attacking domestic flocks at night, and the retaliation of men and dogs (see e.g. Iliad 11.546–557), here the simile is for a particularly “painful” night watch. It is painful both because the young men on guard duty have had an extremely hard day of fighting and because the Trojans are camped out for the first time, closer than ever, during this night. (See also the commentary on 10.331 for more on words that appear only in Iliad 10.)

194. mvp-comment-61-1 10.194 τάφροιο διέσσυτο The act of crossing the ditch for the meeting conveys a spatial significance to the need the Achaeans feel and the plan they will construct to meet it. In Iliad 7, the Achaeans created a new boundary on the landscape by building their wall and ditch. The wall was built in the dark, before the dawn ( Iliad 7.433). In the subsequent daytime battles, the boundary created by these two elements is of the utmost importance. M. L. West notes that “once they have been built they are frequently mentioned again, in every book from the eighth to the eighteenth, as well as in the twentieth and twenty-fourth” (1969:255). The boundary is mentioned either in order to indicate who is winning at that point or whenever the tide of battle turns. In the battle that takes place on the day before the night of Iliad 10, for example, Hektor pens in the Achaeans behind the wall so that the entire space is filled with men and horses ( Iliad 8.213–216). The Achaeans rally after some inspiration from the gods and cross the ditch on the offensive ( Iliad 8.253–265), but Hektor forces them back over the ditch as he once again takes the upper hand ( Iliad 8.340–343). And, of course, the boundary will become even more significant the day after the night of Iliad 10, as the Trojans themselves cross it and threaten the ships with fire (the Trojans pass over the ditch and wall at the end of Iliad 12). Since the wall and ditch act as a threshold between the camp and the battlefield, one way of understanding the leaders crossing the ditch to hold their meeting is as a shift toward being on the offensive. Only the ditch is mentioned here: Petegorsky (1982:238n13) suggests that the “absence” of the wall presages its breach the next day. (For more on the poetic possibilities and traditional associations offered by the Achaean wall, see Boyd 1995.)

199. mvp-comment-62-1 10.199 ἐν καθαρῷ, ὅθι δὴ νεκύων διεφαίνετο χῶρος Another significant feature of the landscape on this night is the number of corpses left on the battlefield. No truce has been allowed this time for the gathering of the dead (compare the truce agreed to at Iliad 7.407–411). The Trojan camp is also in a space specifically said to be free of corpses (this same line is also used at Iliad 8.491), and a picture of the landscape covered with corpses is repeatedly evoked (10.298, 10.343 = 10.387, 10.469). Such a detail is a reminder of the intense battle of the day before, which is the reason both for the embassy to Achilles and for this meeting, which will result in the spying mission and ambush. It is also a harbinger of the even greater battle that will happen on the next day, adding to the eerie atmosphere of the nighttime landscape.

205. mvp-comment-63-1 10.205 θυμῷ τολμήεντι For the importance of a “daring (or enduring) heart” for spying missions or ambush, see below on 10.231, 10.244, and 10.248, as well as “The Poetics of Ambush.”

206-210. mvp-comment-64-1 10.206–210 Fenik (1964:41) excoriates these lines, calling the idea that the Trojans might retreat into the city “wholly fatuous,” and he uses them to inquire “whether some special grounds, other than general incompetence, were responsible for the K poet’s extraordinary failure here.” But the assumption that a different, individual author composed these lines leads to the kind of evaluation that Fenik makes. Instead, using approaches based in oral poetics, we can see how these lines do not ignore the situation that the Iliad has presented, but rather resonate with what is to come. Diomedes and Odysseus will indeed capture (and kill, ἕλοι can mean both) someone at the edge of the enemy ( ἐσχατόωντα): in fact, this can allude to both Dolon, from whom they will get information, and Rhesos, whose army is described as encamped at the edge: ἔσχατοι ἄλλων (10.434). Just so, the Trojans will not consider retreating on this night, though they will the next night (see Iliad 18.243–313). Petegorsky (1982:225–230) argues that Nestor’s proposal anticipates the later Trojan council scenes, during the next day’s fighting, particularly that in Iliad 18, in anticipation of Achilles’ return.

211-212. mvp-comment-65-1 10.211–212 καὶ ἂψ εἰς ἡμέας ἔλθοι / ἀσκηθὴς When he proposes the spying mission, Nestor includes the crucial completion of the mission: namely, that the spy return to report what he has found out. The return of the spy ‘unscathed’ connects to the greater theme, and it shares concepts with the theme of the journey. One concern with any of these nighttime or secret operations, such as spying missions or ambushes, is that, if those who undertake them do not return, their comrades may never know what happened to them. Whether, how, and by whom a spy has been killed cannot be verified, and it is such knowledge that allows a warrior to be buried and honored after death. This lack of knowledge provides a strong contrast to daytime battle, in which one comrade will see another fall, and will subsequently go to protect his corpse or to attack his killer in retaliation. That sequence in battle is a pattern we see again and again in the Iliad. The same contrast between a death in open battle (bringing honor) and a death that occurs on a journey (resulting in an inability to bury and honor the person lost because of a lack of knowledge as well as the lack of the corpse) is expressed by loved ones of Odysseus in the Odyssey. The sentiment is first expressed by Telemakhos:

But now the gods have willed it otherwise, devising evils,

235 who have made that man [Odysseus] unseen beyond all

mortals, since I would not grieve this way at his death

if among his comrades he was subdued in the district of the Trojans

or in the hands of his friends, when he had finished war.

All the Achaeans would have made a burial mound for him,

240 and he would have won great fame [ kleos] even for his child in the future.

But now the Arpuiai whirlwinds have snatched him up without fame [ kleos].

He is gone, unseen, unheard of. And for me pain and laments

he left behind.

Later ( Odyssey 14.365–372), Eumaios says something very similar in response to the disguised Odysseus’ story about the fate of Odysseus. He, too, contrasts the unknown circumstances of Odysseus’ presumed death at sea with a death in battle, after which a man’s comrades can bury him. A known death in battle brings kleos, which, having as its root meaning ‘something heard’ (see Nagy 1979:16, §2n3), is contrasted in Telemakhos’ words not only with an “unglorious” death ( Odyssey 1.241) but also with Odysseus himself, who is “unseen” and “unheard of” ( Odyssey 1.242). In Iliad 10, in the same line as ἀσκηθής (10.212), Nestor promises kleos to the man who undertakes this mission, but the return is necessary for that kleos to come about. For if a man were to go out on a nighttime spying mission, or an ambush, and not come back, he, too, would be unseen, unheard of, and could not be buried or honored properly.

211-212. mvp-comment-65-2 So the need to complete the mission, the need for a return, is one way that a spying mission resembles a journey in epic diction. Coming back unscathed, ἀσκηθής, is used elsewhere in Homeric epic of a return home or of some other completion of a journey. It is used prominently in Odyssey 5 of the need to have both Telemakhos ( Odyssey 5.26) and Odysseus ( Odyssey 5.144, 5.168) return to their fatherland ( πατρίδα γαῖαν). At the very beginning of the story of his wanderings, Odysseus says that he would have returned home unscathed if the sea currents had not prevented him from making his way to Ithaka ( Odyssey 9.79–81). Thus arriving unscathed seems especially associated with sailing journeys, as Odysseus also uses it in one of his Cretan lies, in this case for an easy sailing from Crete to Egypt ( Odyssey 14.255; cf. Solon fr. 19 [West], who says that Kypris sent him home unscathed [ askēthēs] in a fast ship for a good homecoming [ nostos] to his own land). In one additional case in the Odyssey, Odysseus tells Achilles that Neoptolemos was very successful in battle and ambush (see pp. 47–48), and later adds that he was never hurt in the fighting—he was ἀσκηθής, never touched by a weapon. Although the context has referred to both battle and ambush, the word actually describes Neoptolemos as he boards his ship for the journey home, again displaying the connection between sailing journeys and nostos. The “Odyssean” language that many scholars have noted in Book 10, and have even cited as proof of its non-Iliadic nature, may be a thematic result, not only of the greater prominence of ambush in the Odyssey, but also of this thematic overlap between spying missions or ambushes and journeys, especially journeys home and those over the sea.

211-212. mvp-comment-65-3 In the Iliad, ἀσκηθής is used in one other context, and that is, in fact, daytime battle. As Achilles prays to Zeus that Patroklos will be successful in saving the Achaeans and their ships from the Trojan onslaught, he asks as well that Patroklos then return unscathed to him at the swift ships: ἀσκηθής μοι ἔπειτα θοὰς ἐπὶ νῆας ἵκοιτο ( Iliad 16.247). Patroklos is not going on an ambush here, and there is no concern that what happens to him will be unknown. Instead, the fact that he is going as Achilles’ substitute must also be a special kind of departure for battle, and the desire for the substitute to come back unscathed evokes this same word (see Nagy 1979:292–295 for Patroklos as a ritual substitute for Achilles in this battle). Zeus’ reaction is to grant the first part of Achilles’ prayer, but not the safe return: σόον δ’ ἀνένευσε μάχης ἐξαπονέεσθαι ( Iliad 16.252). Petegorsky (1982:220–221) argues that these two uses of ἀσκηθής in the Iliad highlight the isolation of Patroklos going into battle without Achilles, in contrast to the pairing of Diomedes and Odysseus.