At the very beginning of Iliad 12, we modern readers may find that we have suddenly hit a wall—the Achaean Wall. It seems difficult for us to understand what the Master Narrator of the Iliad is really saying when he foretells the future destruction or deconstruction of this structure. And the main obstacle to our understanding here is not the presence of the Achaean Wall in the Iliad but rather its foretold absence—after all is said and done in the narrative. For the ancients who heard the Iliad narrated to them, by contrast, the future absence of the Achaean Wall was perfectly understandable in terms of the narration itself. And that is because the Master Narrator presupposes that there is no Achaean Wall to be seen in the Trojan landscape at the time of narration. Such a presupposition shapes the narrative of Iliad 12—and in fact it shapes the whole narrative of the Iliad. The setting for this narrative remains the world of heroes, which is larger-than-life because it is situated in the heroic past, but the setting for the actual narration of this narrative is the post-heroic world of a present time as figured by the Master Narrator himself. The staging of the heroic world by the Master Narrator is comparable to what is called the mise-en-scène in the traditions of French theater and film. And the predominant feature of the Iliadic mise-en-scène or scenery is the Achaean Wall, not the Trojan Wall. That is why the building of this structure by the Achaeans in Iliad 7 had been opposed by the gods Poseidon and Apollo, the original builders of the Trojan Wall. But the Achaean Wall needed to be built by the Achaeans to protect them and their ships from the fire of Hector—which would not be threatening them if Achilles had not been insulted by Agamemnon in Iliad 1. If we think of the overall plot of the Iliad as a scenario, then the Achaean Wall can be seen as an integral feature of the scenery for this scenario.

“Siege of the Greek Camp.” Crispijn van de Passe (I) (1613). Public domain image, via Rijks Museum. (https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/RP-P-OB-16.043)

The Achaeans built the Wall to protect themselves and their beached ships from the Trojans: see the comments on I.07.336–343 and I.07.433–465. But this Achaean Wall is doomed to disappear without a trace in the future, since it was built ‘against the will of the immortal gods’, I.12.008–009 (θεῶν δ’ ἀέκητι τέτυκτο | ἀθανάτων). That is, the Wall was built against the will of the gods Poseidon and Apollo: see the comment on I.07.433–465. And when will it happen, that the Achaean Wall disappears? The timespan of the Wall, says the Master Narrator, depends on the timespan of narrating the story of the Iliad: ‘while Hector was still alive and while Achilles had-his-anger [mēniein]’, I.12.010 (ὄφρα μὲν Ἕκτωρ ζωὸς ἔην καὶ μήνι’ Ἀχιλλεὺς). But then, in the very next verse, the timespan is extended further: the Wall of the Achaeans will not be destroyed while Troy, that mighty city of the king Priam, is not yet destroyed, I.12.011 (καὶ Πριάμοιο ἄνακτος ἀπόρθητος πόλις ἔπλεν). Why the extension? It is because the epic fame of the Achaean Wall depends on the epic fame of the Iliad, and the narration of the Iliad is still in progress. Once the Iliad is narrated, there will be no further need for the Achaean Wall. But there will still remain a further need for the Wall of Troy, which will not yet be destroyed when the narration of the Iliad is completed. Meanwhile, the epic fame of the Achaean Wall, which depends of the narration of the Iliad, still in progress, is threatening the older epic fame of the Trojan Wall, as we can observe already at I.07.448–453: there we see that the Trojan Wall had been built by the gods Poseidon and Apollo for the former king of Troy, Laomedon, who was predecessor of the current king, Priam, and, in the words of Poseidon himself, the Wall built by the Achaeans has an epic glory or kleos, I.07.451, which now threatens to eclipse the corresponding glory of the Trojan Wall built earlier by the two gods, I.07.452–453. The wording at I.07.451 already highlights the epic glory or kleos of the Iliad, which concentrates on the Achaean Wall, as distinct from the kleos conferred by earlier epic traditions that concentrate on the Trojan Wall, I.07.458, as noted in the comment on I.07.433–465. After the story of the Iliad is told—or, more precisely, after Troy is destroyed and the Achaeans are already departing for home, I.12.13–16—then the gods can finally remove this Iliadic threat to the kleos of the Trojan Wall: now Poseidon and Apollo will let loose all the rivers in the region of Troy, which will then flood away all traces of the Achaean Wall, I.12.17–33. This divine action, as foretold here, of removing the mis-en-scène or scenery of the Iliad is already foretold at an earlier point by Zeus himself, at I.07.455–463. Relevant to these prophecies is what we read in Strabo 13.1.36 C598: νεωστὶ γὰρ γεγονέναι φησὶ τὸ τεῖχος (ἢ οὐδ’ ἐγένετο, ὁ δὲ πλάσας ποιητὴς ἠφάνισεν, ὡς Ἀριστοτέλης φησίν) ‘the Poet [= Homer] says that the Wall [= the Achaean Wall] had only recently come into existence, or it never existed at all, and the Poet made it up [plattein] and then made it disappear, as Aristotle [F 162 ed. Rose] says’. To paraphrase Aristotle: Homeric poetry foretells the non-existence of the Achaean Wall in a future time of its own performance, and such a future time will be a post-heroic age (HPC 155n16). On the Homeric conceptualization of a post-heroic age, see the comment on I.12.023 below, featuring the word hēmitheoi ‘demigods, half-gods’.

This reference here to the future destruction of Troy leaves the question open: was the Wall of Troy totally destroyed or only partially so? See the comment on I.07.433–465.

Not only heroes (and their horses) but also forces of nature—such as rivers, as here—can have menos. In the comments so far, menos has been consistently translated as ‘mental power’, not just ‘power’, and this translation can apply even in the present context, I.12.018. Forces of nature can have a mind of their own, as it were, because they are connected to the mental power of divinities who control the cosmos and to whom humans using their own mental power can pray for the activation of such control. Besides rivers, as here, other natural forces that have menos include the sun (I.23.190), fire (I.06.182, I.17.565), and winds (O.19.440). Like heroes, cosmic forces have to be reminded of their menos, and this is precisely what gets done by worshippers who use their own mental power in praying to divinities controlling such cosmic forces, as we see for example in Indic traditions centering on the word mánas-, which I likewise translate as ‘mental power’ and which is actually a cognate of Greek menos.

As the rivers of the Trojan landscape flood away all traces of the Achaean Wall, they also obliterate all traces of the epic battles fought by the Achaean heroes in the mise-en-scène or scenery of that landscape. These heroes are called hēmitheoi ‘demigods, half-gods’ here at I.12.023, and we find no other attestation of this word hēmitheoi in either the Iliad or the Odyssey: in both epics, the word for ‘heroes’ is consistently hērōes. Unlike hēroēs, the word hēmitheoi is appropriate to a style of expression that looks beyond epic. The use of this word to mark the Achaean heroes here belongs not to the epic tradition of the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey but to alternative poetic traditions having to do with cosmogony and anthropogony, as we see when we consider the attestations of hēmitheoi in Hesiodic poetry, F 204.100 and Works and Days 160; relevant too are the attestations of this word in the poetry of the Homeric Hymns, 31.19 and 32.19 (Nagy 2006§66). In the Hesiodic Works and Days, 160, the word hēmitheoi signals the last generation of heroes, who were obliterated in the time of the Theban and the Trojan Wars, 161–165, but who were preserved after death and immortalized by being transported to the Islands of the Blessed, 167–173. It can be said in general that the theme of heroic immortalization is central to myths and rituals related to hero cult, and so the use of the word hēmitheoi ‘demigods’ in this Hesiodic context is highly significant (BA 342-343): yes, all epic heroes must die, but then, by way of becoming cult heroes, they are mystically immortalized after death (Nagy 2006§§80–108). And the significance of such a theme is further heightened by the idea of divine parentage as built into the meaning of word hēmitheoi as ‘half-gods’, which shows a genetic understanding of the hero. The heroic potential is programmed by divine genes, as it were. There has to be a god involved in any hero’s “family tree.” Still, the literal meaning of the word hēmitheos as ‘half-god’ does not imply an exact half-and-half distribution of immortals and mortals in a hero’s genealogy. Rather, this meaning marks a tenuous balancing of immortality with mortality in the hero’s self. In the case of the hero Achilles, for example, the divinity of his mother is not the only ‘half’ of immortality that he inherits, since his mortal father Peleus is descended, by way of that man’s own mortal father Aiakos, from the immortal father Zeus himself. But the bitter fact remains that Peleus is a mortal. And, since Peleus as one of the two parents of Achilles is mortal, Achilles must be mortal as well, even though his other parent is Thetis, who is not only immortal but even endowed with limitless cosmic powers (BA 346–347). So Achilles, despite the limitless potential he inherits from Thetis, is subject to death. The same can be said about all other Homeric heroes: even though they are all descended in some way or another from the gods, they are all mortals. They all have to die, like ordinary mortals. No matter how many immortals you find in a heroic “family tree,” the intrusion of even a single mortal will make all successive descendants mortal. Mortality, not immortality, is the dominant gene (GN 2006§70). So, the meaning of hēmitheoi as ‘half-gods’ can cut both ways: the ‘half-divinity’ of the hero can point downward to the grim facts of mortality just as it can point upward to the sublime hopes for immortalization after death. The scenario of obliteration followed by immortalization for the hēmitheoi in Hesiodic poetry, Works and Days 161–173, must be contrasted with the scenario of obliteration followed by no mention of immortalization for the hēmitheoi in Homeric poetry, I.12.17–33. The inevitability of death for the hero enhances the pathos of hoping for immortalization after death. Such a pathos is visible in the exceptional Homeric occurrence of hēmitheoi at I.12.023, where we see a correspondingly exceptional shift in the Homeric narrative perspective: instead of viewing heroes through the lens of the heroic age, seeing them as they were back then, alive and hoping to be remembered, the poetry now views them through the lens of a post-heroic age, seeing them as already dead and hopefully immortalized after death (Nagy 2006§67).