Homer Iliad 12.1

Samuel Butler (Translator)

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Iliad. Homer. Samuel Butler (Translator). London. 1898.

Current edition Perseus

Iliad (English) (Homer. The Iliad of Homer, rendered into English prose for the use of those who cannot read the original. Butler, Samuel, 1835-1902, translator. London: Longmans, Green, and Co, 1898.)

Editions (1)
Ἰλιάς Perseus (Homer. Homeri Opera, Volumes 1-2. Monro, D. B. (David Binning), editor; Allen, Thomas W. (Thomas William), editor. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908-1920.) — 12.1 focus
Translations (8)
Iliad Perseus (Homer. The Iliad, Volume 1-2. Murray, A. T. (Augustus Taber), translator. London: William Heinmann; New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1924-1925.) — 12.1 focus
English (Butler, rev. Nagy et al., 2020) (OCR draft) Experimental (English (Butler, rev. Nagy et al., 2020)) — 12.1 focus
So the warlike son of Menoitios was attending to the hurt of Eurypylos within the tent, but the Argives and Trojans still fought desperately, nor were the trench and the high wall above it, to keep the Trojans in check longer. [5] They had built it to protect their ships, and had dug the trench all round it that it might safeguard both the ships and the rich spoils which they had taken, but they had not offered hecatombs to the gods. It had been built without the consent of the immortals, and therefore it did not last. [10] So long as Hector lived and Achilles nursed his anger [ mēnis], and so long as the city of Priam remained untaken, the great wall of the Achaeans stood firm; but when the bravest of the Trojans were no more, and many also of the Argives, though some were yet left alive [15] when, moreover, the city was destroyed in the tenth year, and the Argives had gone back with their ships to their own country—then Poseidon and Apollo took counsel to destroy the wall, and they turned on to it the streams of all the rivers from Mount Ida into the sea, [20] Rhesus, Heptaporos, Karesos, Rhodios, Grenikos, Aisopos, and goodly Skamandros, 22 and Simoeis, where many cowhide-shields and helmets 23 fell in the dust—as also a generation of demigods [ hēmitheoi]. Phoebus Apollo turned the mouths of all these rivers together [25] and made them flow for nine days against the wall, while Zeus rained the whole time that he might wash it sooner into the sea. Poseidon himself, trident in hand, surveyed the work and threw into the sea all the foundations of beams and stones which the Achaeans had laid with so much toil; [30] he made all level by the mighty stream of the Hellespont, and then when he had swept the wall away he spread a great beach of sand over the place where it had been. This done he turned the rivers back into their old courses.
English (William Cullen Bryant, 1870) (OCR draft) Experimental (English (William Cullen Bryant, 1870)) — 12.1 focus
THUS in the camp Menœtius' valiant son
1
Tended Eurypylus, and dressed his wounds;
While yet in mingled throngs the warriors fought, —
Trojans and Greeks. Nor longer was the trench
A barrier for the Greeks, nor the broad wall
5
Which they had built above it to defend
Their fleet; for all around it they had drawn
The trench, yet not with chosen hecatombs
Paid to the gods, that so it might protect
The galleys and the heaps of spoil they held.
10
Without the favor of the gods it rose,
And therefore was not long to stand entire.
As long as Hector lived, and Peleus' son
Was angered, and King Priam's city yet
Was not o'erthrown, so long the massive wall
15
Built by the Greeks stood firm. But when at length
The bravest of the Trojans had been slain,
And many of the Greeks were dead, -though still
Others survived, - and when in the tenth year
The city of Priam fell, and in their ships
20
The Greeks went back to their beloved land,
Then did Apollo and the god of sea
Consult together to destroy the wall
By turning on it the resistless might
Of rivers, all that from the Idæan heights
25
Flow to the ocean, - Rhesus, Granicus,
Heptaporus, Caresus, Rhodius,
Æsepus, and Scamander's hallowed stream,
And Simoïs, in whose bed lay many shields
And helms and bodies of slain demigods.
30
Phœbus Apollo turned the mouths of these
All toward one spot; nine days against the wall
He bade their currents rush, while Jupiter
Poured constant rain, that floods might overwhelm
The rampart; and the god who shakes the earth,
35
Wielding his trident, led the rivers on.
He flung among the billows the huge beams
And stones which, with hard toil, the Greeks had laid
For the foundations. Thus he levelled all
Beside the hurrying Hellespont, destroyed
40
The bulwarks utterly, and overspread
The long broad shore with sand; and then he brought
Again the rivers to the ancient beds
In which their gently flowing waters ran.
English (Alexander Pope, 1720, ed. Watson, 1857) (OCR draft) Experimental (English (Alexander Pope, 1720, ed. Watson, 1857)) — 12.1 focus
While thus the hero's pious cares attend
1
The cure and safety of his wounded friend,
Trojans and Greeks with clashing shields engage,
And mutual deaths are dealt with mutual rage.
Nor long the trench or lofty walls oppose;
5
With gods averse th' ill-fated works arose;
Their powers neglected, and no victim slain,
The walls are rais'd, the trenches sunk, in vain.
English (Thomas Hobbes, 1667, ed. Molesworth 1843) (OCR draft) Experimental (English (Thomas Hobbes, 1667, ed. Molesworth 1843)) — 12.1 focus
English (George Chapman, 1611, ed. Hooper 1857) (OCR draft) Experimental (English (George Chapman, 1611, ed. Hooper 1857)) — 12.1 focus
English (William Cowper, 1791, ed. Southey) (OCR draft) Experimental (English (William Cowper, 1791, ed. Southey)) — 12.1 focus
English (F. W. Newman, 1856) (OCR draft) Experimental (English (F. W. Newman, 1856)) — 12 focus

New Alexandria Commentaries

Gregory Nagy

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.

draft js image error“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)

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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’.

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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.

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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.

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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).

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The wish is expressed, on the Trojan side, that the invading Achaean warriors should die nōnumnoi ‘nameless’ at Troy. The same word nōnumnoi ‘nameless’ is used in the Hesiodic Works and Days, 154, to describe the truly nameless warriors of the Bronze Generation, who live a life devoted exclusively to martial violence and who deserve to earn no epic glory after their violent death, 146-155. At I.12.070, the Achaean warriors are viewed through such a Hesiodic lens, as it were.

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In the immediate context, the plural therapontes functions as a virtual synonym of a word used elsewhere, hēni-okhoi ‘chariot drivers’.

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Here is the first explicit reference to the objective of the Trojans to break through the Wall of the Achaeans. For further references, see the list in the comment for I.12.198.

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The immediate context shows that the hero Asios has a hēni-okhos ‘chariot driver’ who is also the therapōn ‘attendant, ritual substitute’ of Asios precisely because he is the chariot driver.

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Reference is made at I.12.118 to the left-hand side of the encampment protecting the ships of the Achaeans. So, in terms of the Master Narrator’s perspective, the positioning refers to the east side: see the comment on I.11.497–500. Described here at I.12.118–123 is the opening in the Achaean Wall through which the charioteers drive their chariots from the Achaean encampment to the scene of chariot fighting and then back again. The use of the word pulē ‘gate’ in the plural at I.12.120 does not necessarily point to the existence of more than one gate, since the function of the plural pulai here may be elliptic: ‘the gate and related things that belong to the gate’. There is a reference to the same pulai at I.07.339–340 and at I.07.438–439. On the concept of an elliptic plural, see the comment on I.04.196. And it is next to this gate that the sacred common tomb of the Achaean dead is located, I.07.336–337.

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Besides Hector (I.11.295, I.13.802), Patroklos (I.11.604), and Achilles (I.20.046), the hero Leonteus, mentioned here, is the only other Iliadic figure who is called īsos Arēi ‘equal to Ares’ (BA 33). Relevant to the fact that Leonteus qualifies here at I.12.130 as īsos Arēi ‘equal to Ares’ is the fact that he qualifies at I.12.188 as ozos Arēos ‘attendant of Ares’, also at I.02.745, I.23.841. For the etymology of ozos Arēos, see the anchor comment at I.12.188.

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Leonard Muellner

analysis of the application of isos Arēi (and variants) to heroes in their aristeiai and of the use of isos aellēi/lailapi in these contexts

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analysis of the application of isos Arēi (and variants) to heroes in their aristeiai (here, an exception, namely, Leonteus)

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hand as regular metonym for a warrior’s biē

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Richard Martin

Adjectives such as "painless" modify muthos but not epos, and denote speech that is meant to have an active role in resolving a crisis: "And the painless word pleased Hektor" (muthos apēmōn 12.80, 13.748), said of Polydamas addressing the Trojans (Martin 1993:16).

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