suggestion that Hirēn poiēssan “grassy Hire” should perhaps be read as hirēn Poiēssan “sacred Poieessa”

presupposing a Spartan conquest of territory on the Messenian Gulf as possibly explaining Agamemnon’s offer of 7 cities there to Achilles (here, Phērai)

presupposing a Spartan conquest of territory on the Messenian Gulf as possibly explaining Agamemnon’s offer of 7 cities there to Achilles

The Master Narrator now approaches what can surely be seen as the highest point so far in the narrative arc of the Homeric Iliad. Achilles has not spoken since Rhapsody 1. Now, in Rhapsody 9, he will speak again. And what he says will define what can and cannot happen in the rest of the Iliad.

The embassy to Achilles, featuring Phoenix and Odysseus in front of Achilles. Attic red-figure hydra, circa 480 BCE. Public domain image via Wikimedia Commons.

Agamemnon here at I.09.115 admits that it was atē for him to dishonor Achilles. In such a context, the noun atē can be translated as an ‘aberration’. The noun is used here in the plural, atai, indicating specific instances of aberration, not just an overall error. After all, in his quarrel with Achilles, Agamemnon insulted the prime hero of the Iliad in multiple ways. Agamemnon goes on to say that he is ready to pay apoina ‘compensation’, I.09.120, for his aberrations. For Achilles to reject this compensation has its own risks, as we see in the comment on I.09.502–512: here too, there is a danger of atē ‘aberration’, Ι.09.512.

Agamemnon here formulates the terms of the compensation that he offers to Achilles. The last four verses of his formulation, I.09.158–161, bluntly reassert his claim to be superior to Achilles. When Odysseus restates to Achilles the terms of Agamemnon, Ι.09.260–299, he omits what Agamemnon claims about his superiority to Achilles. It can be argued that Achilles, if he had accepted the terms of Agamemnon as reasserted by Agamemnon himself, would have put at risk his own epic stature in the Iliad.

Among the prizes that Agamemnon at I.09.128–131 offers as compensation to Achilles are seven captive Aeolian women who were captured by Achilles when he conquered the Aeolian island of Lesbos. The story about these women as it is told here is then retold at I.09.270–272. The significance of the Aeolian identification of these women will be analyzed in the anchor comment that follows. The focus in the present comment, by contrast, is on the moral problems that are raised in the story about the actual capture of these women—and of other women in the Iliad who suffer the same fate of captivity. Two prominent examples are Briseis and Chryseis, captured by Achilles when he conquered the cities of Lyrnessos and Thēbē respectively, as noted in the anchor comment at I.02.689–694. All these women—the seven unnamed ones and the two named ones—evidently became the common property of the Achaeans after being captured by Achilles, and it appears that Agamemnon as the Achaean over-king originally had a say, ostensibly by way of public deliberation with the rest of the Achaeans, in deciding which woman was allotted as a war-prize to which Achaean man. Even though all these women were captured by Achilles alone, they were thereafter to be distributed as war-prizes among the Achaean men as a group. In terms of this reconstruction of the story as outlined here, the role of Agamemnon in having a say about the awarding of these captive women as war-prizes is morally problematic. Likewise problematic is this over-king’s role in the original awarding of the captive woman Briseis, with the approval of the Achaeans, as a war-prize to Achilles—and in the parallel awarding of the captive woman Chryseis to himself. Moreover, the seizing of Briseis by Agamemnon after his loss of Chryseis is even more problematic. Here, then, is the overriding question to be asked about the treatment of all these women as war-prizes: is Agamemnon entitled to have a say in deciding which Achaean man will have sex with which woman? And the question can be broadened: are the Achaeans as a group entitled to make such decisions? Such a broader question extends also to Achilles.

The story that is being told here at I.09.128–131 and retold at I.09.270–272 centers on one single stunning event: Achilles captured the entire island of Lesbos. By implication, this island became Aeolian precisely because it was captured by the principal hero of the Aeolians. The vastness of this story is even broader in scope, since we can see in the Iliad occasional references to other such conquests accomplished by Achilles. Most prominent are the Iliadic references to his capturing of two cities located on the Aeolian mainland of Asia Minor: they are Lyrnessos and Thēbē. In the Iliad, the conquest of Lyrnessos by Achilles and his capturing of Briseis are mentioned for the first time at I.02.690–691. What then follows at I.02.691 is a mention of his conquering the walled city of Thēbē as well. Thēbē is mentioned already at I.01.366: it was there that Achilles captured another woman, Chryseis, when he conquered that city, I.01.366–369. For background on Briseis and on Chryseis, I again strongly recommend the work of Dué 2002 and 2006, listed in the Bibliography. Another native of Thēbē was Andromache, who had been married off to Hector at Troy before the beginning of the Trojan War: she was taken captive only later, after Troy was captured, and she was then allotted as a war-prize to the son of Achilles, Neoptolemos: the story was told in an epic that was part of the epic Cycle and was known as the Iliou Persis ‘Destruction of Ilion’, attributed to Arctinus of Miletus, plot summary by Proclus p. 108 line 9 (ed. Allen 1912). That said, I now elaborate further on the argument initiated in the anchor comment at I.02.689–694: the conquests of these territories by Achilles, especially his capture of Lesbos, can be interpreted as a charter myth that aetiologizes a prehistoric or even non-historical “colonization” of east Aeolis, as it were, by west Aeolian migrants from Thessaly, situated in the European mainland, which was the reputed birthplace of Achilles. See Nagy 2011b:171–173. In using the term “east Aeolis” here, I am referring to the islands of Lesbos and Tenedos, together with the facing mainland of northern Asia Minor. The “colonization” of this area has conventionally been described as the “Aeolian Migration,” and the term ‘migration’ here matches neatly the appropriate Greek word, apoikiā as used in Strabo 9.2.3 C401 and elsewhere (see Nagy 2011b:161). The reference at I.09.129 to the captive women from Lesbos can be correlated with the poetic traditions of Lesbos as later attested in the songs of Sappho and Alcaeus, both dated around 600 BCE. These poetic traditions, which are decidedly Aeolian, derive not only from the island of Lesbos but also from the island of Tenedos and from the mainland of northern Asia Minor facing these two islands. See HPC 184–185. Traces of these Aeolian poetic traditions can be seen in the Iliadic references to such figures as Briseis, Chryseis, Andromache, and the seven unnamed captive women from Lesbos. All these figures derive from Aeolian poetic traditions, and the same can be said about the figure of Achilles himself: in terms of his poetic heritage, he is Achilles the Aeolian. See Nagy 2011b:171–172. But there is an important difference to be highlighted here: Achilles is an Aeolian from European Thessaly, while the captive women are Aeolians from Asia Minor and from the offshore islands of Lesbos and Tenedos (on the captive woman Hekamede from Tenedos, see the anchor comment at I.11.624–627). In the Ionian poetic traditions of epic as exemplified by Homeric poetry, we can track the early influence of corresponding Aeolian poetic traditions as exemplified at a later period, around 600 BCE, by the songmaking of Sappho and Alcaeus. See also anchor comment at I.02.689–694 on: Aeolian women in the Iliad, part 1 and anchor comment at I.11.624–627 on: Aeolian women in the Iliad, part 3.

The description of the women from Lesbos as victorious over other women in their beauty can be interpreted as a reference to a local tradition at Lesbos known as the Kallisteia, which was a kind of ritualized beauty contest for girls and for women. The scholia D for the Iliad give details, with specific reference to I.09.130: this beauty contest was a seasonally recurring event that took place in a federal space that was shared by five cities on the island of Lesbos, and this space was sacred to the goddess Hērā. See Nagy 2015§§135–159. There are occasional references to this space in what remains of the songs of Sappho and Alcaeus (again, Nagy 2015). Also, as we see at I.09.128, the beauty of the women of Lesbos is matched by the beauty of their handiwork, which externalizes their aristocratic charisma. Such handiwork, as we will see in another comment, comes to life in the skillfulness displayed by women in practicing their art of pattern-weaving: a prime example is Andromache the Aeolian, described at Ι.22.440–441 in the act of pattern-weaving. There and elsewhere, the craft of pattern-weaving by Aeolian women is linked with the power of the craft of Homeric poetry to make contact with the Bronze Age. See MoM 2§§69–81.

Here is where Agamemnon reasserts his claim to be superior to Achilles. See the comment on the whole passage, I.09.120–161.

analysis of Phoenix’ speech to Achilles and atē leading to mēnis

analysis of the interconnections of timē and philotēs

analysis of Achilles’ refusal to accept apoina and comparison with the litigation scene on the Shield and Ajax’s plea (with poinē)

demonstration that there is no gap between statements of superiority in age and statements of superiority in prestige, physical prowess, and physical beauty (in the context of demonstrating the contextual unity of eukhesthai einai + superlative/comparative formulas and their relationship with genos eukhesthai einai formulas)

comparison of Agamemnon and Achilles in terms of basileuteros and progenesteros (also, of Zeus and Poseidon in same terms)

Agamemnon's most noticeable rhetorical miscalculation comes in his instructions to the embassy: "Let him be subdued—Hades you know is unappeasable and unconquerable—for which reason it is most hateful of gods to men. And let him be subservient to me, inasmuch as I am more kingly and claim to be more advanced in ancestry" (9.158-61). The gibe at the end of a speech recurs in other contexts, as when Agamemnon tries to save the life of Menelaos (supposedly) but reminds his brother that "even Achilles feared to meet this one {Hektor} in glorifying battle, and he is far better than you" (7.113-14), cutting two victims at once with flyting rhetoric that is disconcerting in the context. In some passages, it appears that Agamemnon uses the tactics of neikos to the wrong audience. The general resort to the language of neikos by Agamemnon betrays an uncertainty about his power at speech which, in circular fashion, only makes his rhetoric more nervous and deficient (Martin 1993:116-17).

For the broader analysis of Agamemnon's style, see the comment on Iliad 4.336-421.

References

Martin, R. P. 1993. The Language of Heroes: Speech and Performance in the Iliad. Ithaca.