Homer Iliad 24.782

The Iliad ends with the funeral of Hector, not of Achilles. And it is Hector, not Achilles, who is lamented at the end. But it is Achilles who makes it all happen, since he has transcended his rage and has shown mercy to an old father. The tears of Priam had made Achilles think of his own old father, of his own ancestors—and of Patroklos, who embodied the glories of the ancestors. Achilles was looking bad at the beginning of Iliad 23 and even at the beginning of Iliad 24, but he looks very good by the time Iliad 24 comes to a close.

Mourners lament as Hector’s corpse is laid out in preparation for the funeral that closes Iliad Rhapsody 24. Copperplate etching (1795) by Tommaso Piroli, after a drawing (1793) by John Flaxman. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

It takes ten days inclusively for the people of Troy to gather the firewood needed to construct the funeral pyre for the cremation of Hector, I.24.784. See the comment on I.24.785–804 on the archaeological evidence showing the vast volume of firewood needed for a funeral pyre.

The corpse of Hector is placed on top of the funeral pyre, and then the pyre is lit, Ι.24.786–787. The next morning, the fires of the cremation are extinguished and the bones of Hector are gathered, Ι.24.792–795, to be placed into a larnax ‘repository’, Ι.24.795. A tumulus is heaped over the remains, I.24.799, and the tumulus itself is called a sēma ‘tomb’, I.24.799/801. What we see here in Iliad 24, in the conclusion to the entire epic narrative, is a perfect description of a perfect entombment after a perfect cremation—to be contrasted with the ritually flawed cremation of Patroklos as described in Iliad 23. Here I find it relevant to cite the archaeological background on the practice of cremation in the Mycenaean era. I quote a brief summary in Nagy 2015.07.22§31:

When I last considered the practices of cremation in a Mycenaean context [in 1990: GMP 85–86], those practices were barely attested archaeologically. But now, with the discovery of nine cremations at the site of Chánia, some three kilometers southwest of the acropolis of Mycenae [Palaiologou 2013], the picture has changed. I note with special interest the splendor of the tumulus that contained these cremations, dated to the 12th century BCE [Palaiologou 2013.274]. The archeologist of record describes as “monumental” the stone tumulus with its circular “cyclopean” enclosure, and she notes that the ritual moment of the actual cremation, which required vast pilings of firewood, must have been “spectacular” [Palaiologou 2013.251]. This splendid tumulus, situated on a plain contiguous with Argos, was most visible to all: “it served as a landmark for the control of the commercial route to Argos and the cultivated area simultaneously” [Palaiologou 2013:275]. By this time, in the 12th century BCE, the glory days of Mycenae and of its Achaean realm were becoming evanescent, but the vitality of Mycenaean culture was still a forceful presence, acknowledged and respected by the local population.

[epitome from HC 4§267]

The focus of the Iliad on Hector as the ultimate beau mort is evident at the conclusion of this epic. The Iliad as we know it ends with the funeral of Hector, not of Achilles. It is Hector, not Achilles, who is lamented at the end. Even the very last word of the Iliad as we have it is a signature for Hector: it is his ornamental epithet hippodamos, the ‘horse-tamer’, I.24.804 (Sacks 1987). So, the Homeric Iliad evolved in such a way as to highlight Hector as the primary point of interest in the poetics of terror and pity. To be contrasted is an alternative epic like the Aithiopis, attributed to Arctinus of Miletus, where the focus at the end is evidently on Achilles as the primary beau mort. Pindar’s reference to the dead Achilles in Isthmian 8 (56-60) alludes to this alternative epic tradition (PH 204–206). In the Iliad, the doomed figure of Hector has been substituted for the equally doomed figure of Achilles, who is the ultimate beau mort of epic. Hector in the Iliad prefigures Achilles as that ultimate beau mort. See also anchor comment at I.23.184–194.

[epitome from HC 4§268]

This foregrounding of Hector in the Iliad as we know it is a matter of politics as well as esthetics. The beautiful death of Hector, his belle mort, is for Athenians an expression of their empire. See the comment on I.15.494–499, where I made an epitome from HC 4§268. In what follows, I repeat the relevant parts of that epitome. The Athenian statesman Lycurgus says it best when he refers to the willingness of Athenian citizens to die in war not only for their own patris ‘fatherland’ but also for all of Hellas as a patris ‘fatherland’ that is koinē ‘common’ to all Hellenes (Against Leokrates 104). Lycurgus invokes as his prime example the belle mort of the Athenian citizen-warriors who fought at Marathon and who thereby won for Hellas a freedom from terror, an adeia ‘security’ that is koinē ‘common’ to all Hellenes (104). The Athenian statesman is making this reference to the imperial interests of Athens in the context of actually quoting the words of Hector in the Iliad, who says that he is willing to die for his fatherland in order to protect it against the Achaeans (Lycurgus Against Leokrates 103 lines 4-9). These heroic words of Hector correspond to I.15.494–499, and Lycurgus quotes them in the larger context of saying that the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey, as performed at the quadrennial Athenian festival of the Panathenaia, are the ancestral heritage of the Athenians and the primary source of their education as citizen-warriors (Against Leokrates 102). In this invocation of Homeric poetry as the most sublime expression of the Athenian empire, the statesman is quoting the words of a Trojan, not the words of an Achaean. It is the belle mort of Hector that motivates the Athenians to live up to the heroic legacy they learn from Homer.