The time has come for Hector to die at the hands of Achilles, and his final moments of life are singularly grim. Achilles shows him no mercy, expressing the most brutal thoughts even before he vengefully finishes off the killer of Patroklos. Hector is forced to know in advance, before he loses consciousness to the death blow from Achilles, that his executioner intends to mutilate his corpse instead of allowing for a proper funeral. And the form of this mutilation is particularly horrific and morally shocking: attaching the body of Hector to the back of his chariot, Achilles will drag it around the walls of Troy for all to see the humiliation of his hated enemy. Is there any hope, then, for transcending such degradation? Only divine intervention, in the story yet to be told, could prevent the disfigurement of a heroic body’s beauty in death. But the story of transcendence must wait. For now, the focus is on the horror and the sorrow of a heroic death as seen through the eyes of Hector’s lamenting widow Andromache.

Copperplate etching (1795) by Tommaso Piroli, after a drawing (1793) by John Flaxman. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

Although Priam and Hecuba, the parents of Hector, have already seen with horror and sorrow what has happened to him at the hands of Achilles, Andromache does not yet know, I.22.437–439. She is in her private quarters, weaving, I.22.440–441, and she calls out to her handmaidens to prepare a bath for Hector’s expected arrival, I.22.442–444, not knowing what has already happened to him, I.22.445–446. Then and only then does she hear the sound of wailing, I.22.447, and now she starts to feel emotionally and physically undone, as her legs and arms start shaking and her weaving pin drops from her trembling hand, I.22.448. She calls out to her handmaidens, telling them to accompany her to the walls of Troy, so that she may see for herself what is happening, I.22.449–450, and then she starts to express her premonitions about the fate of Hector, which are already becoming a part of the lament that formally gets underway only at I.22.477, lasting all the way to I.22.515. While she expresses her premonitions, she is feeling more and more undone, I.22.450–459. Now her heart is in her throat, I.22.451–452. As she rushes up to the walls of Troy, where she will see what has happened, Andromache is compared to a mainás or ‘maenad’, that is, a frenzied woman possessed by Dionysus, I.22.460. Then, finally, she and her handmaidens get to see the grim scene, I.22.261–265: Hector is dead, and his corpse is being dragged behind the speeding chariot of Achilles. At the ghastly sight, Andromache faints, I.22.466–467, and her elaborate headdress comes undone, falling to the ground, I.22.468–472. The women of her immediate family surround her as she comes out of her swoon, I.22.473–475, and now she begins her lament in earnest, I.22.476–515.

Like Helen at I.03.125–128, Andromache is shown here at I.22.440–441 in the act of pattern-weaving. And, like Helen, she is not pictured as singing while weaving: rather, she weaves her song into the web that she pattern-weaves. The song that she weaves into her web is pictured as throna, which can mean ‘flower patterns’ or ‘love charms’. It can be argued that both meanings apply in the present context. A similar argument can be made in the case of the epithet poikilo-thronos applied to the goddess Aphrodite in Sappho Song 1.1: this word can mean either ‘with varied [poikilo-] flower patterns [that are pattern-woven on your robe]’ or ‘with varied [poikilo-] love charms’. I have more to say about these details in MoM 2§76 (also PasP 101n40). Further, at I.22.441, there exists a variant epithet for the web that Andromache weaves: this diplax ‘pattern-woven fabric that folds in two’ is described in some medieval manuscripts as porphureē ‘purple’ but in others as marmareē ‘gleaming’. And we find the same variation of epithets for the web that Helen weaves at I.03.126: this diplax too is described in some medieval manuscripts as porphureē ‘purple’ but in others as marmareē ‘gleaming’. Similarly, the antux ‘rim’ that is being made for the Shield of Achilles at I.18.479 is described as triplax ‘threefold’ and marmareē ‘gleaming’ at I.18.480. In Eustathius Commentary on the Iliad vol. 4 p. 218 lines 14–17, the commentator draws attention to the morphological parallelism of triplax ‘threefold’ with diplax ‘twofold’. So, Eustathius recognizes here a crossover between the artistic worlds of metalwork and weaving. See the comment on I.18.479–480. See also the comment on I.09.130, where it is argued that 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. Finally, in the case of the two textual variants porphureē ‘purple’ and marmareē ‘gleaming’ as applied to the web of Helen at I.03.126 and to the web of Andromache at I.22.441, we learn from the scholia for I.03.126 that porphureē ‘purple’ happened to be the reading preferred by all three major Alexandrian editors of Homer—Zenodotus, Aristophanes, Aristarchus (see also HPC 274nn3, 4).

This word en-passein ‘sprinkle’ conveys a metaphor for the process of pattern-weaving. As we learn from the AT scholia for I.22.441, (en-)passein in the Cypriote dialect means poikillein ‘pattern-weave’. Metaphorically, Andromache is sprinkling flowers as love charms into her story by way of pattern-weaving floral patterns into a web that tells her story of love. By extension, the metaphorical world of pattern-weaving applies also to the process of making the kind of poetry that tells about the pattern-weaving of Andromache.

The wording here at I.22.444 is part of the lead-up to the lament of Andromache, which formally gets underway only at I.22.476. And the wording in this part of the lead-up, I.22.444, is prefigured by the wording of Zeus himself at I.17.207 in expressing the Will of Zeus regarding the sorrows of Andromache. To say it another way: the narrative arc represented by the Will of Zeus extends from the wording of the god’s plan all the way to the wording of the widow’s lament, I.22.476–515. See the comment on I.17.194–214.

At I.22.460, just as she is about to see with her own eyes the corpse of Hector, the distraught Andromache is already pictured as īsē ‘equal’ to a mainás ‘maenad’ (μαινάδι ἴση), that is, she is being compared to a woman possessed by Dionysus. Earlier, in an analogous context at I.06.389, Andromache is pictured as ‘looking like a woman possessed’ (μαινομένῃ ἐϊκυῖα) when she rushes toward the walls of Troy to see for herself the fate of the Trojans on the battlefield. In the case of the present context, I.22.460, the comparison of Andromache to a maenad is relevant to the undoing of her hair when her elaborate headdress falls from her head at the moment when she goes into a swoon, I.22.468–472. The undoing of a maenad’s hair is a traditional Dionysiac theme, as we see for example in a painting on a vase made in Athens sometime in the decade of 480–470 BCE (Munich, Antikensammlungen no. 2416): this painting shows a maenad transfixed by the gaze of Dionysus, who is looking directly into her eyes, and the maenad’s loose strands of flowing curls of hair are seen cascading down from behind her ears at either side of her head garlanded with the ivy of Dionysus. As we look at the maenad’s hair coming undone, we see a distinctive sign of her starting to lose control to Dionysus, of becoming possessed by Dionysus, of surrendering the self to Dionysus. See also Nagy 2007c:252–253, citing further examples from the visual arts. Andromache looks similarly maenadic when she falls into a swoon, I.22.466–467, while at the same time letting her elaborate headdress fall from her head to the ground, I.22.468–470. What follows is an epitome of further analysis in Nagy 2007c:249–251. In the dramatic context of Andromache’s swoon, I draw attention to the evocative word krēdemnon ‘headdress’, I.22.470. It refers to the overall ornamental hair-binding that holds together three separate kinds of ornamental hair-binding that serve to keep Andromache’s hair in place, under control, I.22.469: in this verse, the three separate terms for ornamental hair-bindings are ampux ‘frontlet’, kekruphalos ‘snood’, and anadesmē ‘headband’. The overall hair-binding or ‘headdress’ that keeps it all in place is the krēdemnon, I.22.470. Similarly, Varro (On the Latin language 5.130) speaks of three separate terms for ornamental hair-bindings traditionally used by Roman matrons: lanea ‘woolen ribbon’, reticulum ‘net-cap’ or ‘snood’, and capital ‘headband’. To these three words Varro (7.44) adds a fourth, tutulus (derived from the adjective tutus ‘providing safety’), which seems to be an overall term for the generic headdress worn by brides and Vestal Virgins as well as matrons. When Andromache lets drop from her head her elaborate krēdemnon ‘headdress’, I.22.470, thus causing her hair to come completely undone, she is ritually miming her complete loss of control over her own fate as linked with the fate of her husband: we see here a ritually eroticized gesture that expresses her extreme sexual vulnerability as linked with the violent death and degradation of her husband. For Andromache to do violence to her own krēdemnon is to express the anticipated violence of her future sexual humiliation at the hands of the enemy. Pointedly, the goddess Aphrodite herself had given this krēdemnon to Andromache on her wedding day, I.22.470–471 (further analysis by Dué 2006:4, 78). Another example of such ritual miming is the moment in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, verses 40–42, when Demeter tears off her krēdemnon in reacting to the violation of her daughter Persephone by Hādēs. The explicit association of the krēdemnon with Aphrodite reveals its erotic properties. The undoing of a woman’s hair, caused by the undoing of her krēdemnon, produces what I will call an Aphrodisiac effect. So long as a woman’s krēdemnon is in place, her sexuality is under control just as her hair is under control. When the krēdemnon is out of place, however, her sexuality threatens to get out of control. This ritual symbolism is part of a “cultural grammar of hair” (Levine 1995:95). Such a “grammar” helps explain why the virginal Nausikaa would not think of going out in public without first putting on her krēdemnon, O.06.100. She won’t leave home without wearing her headdress. Her gesture here is hardly a signal of being married. Clearly, she is unmarried. So, we see that unmarried women as well as married women like Andromache wear the krēdemnon in public. The gesture is simply a signal of propriety. Such a “grammar” is in fact typical of the Mediterranean world in general. A striking point of comparison is the figure of the sotah ‘errant woman’ in Hebrew Bible traditions, who is marked by the ritual dishevelment of her hair (Numbers 5:11–31). In this case, the ‘errant woman’ is a foil for the properly married woman.

in a list of parallels to the opening of formula (A) hōs ephat’ eukhomenos… occurring in the last 9 books of the Iliad (with participles after phanai categorizing the speech, here as lament), in the context of analyzing formula (A) and the meaning of eukhesthai

analysis of the development of Greek posis compared with Vedic pati-

The word epos consistently applies to what the addressee hears: Andromakhe says she wants to be out of hearing of Hektor's death—"May the epos be away from my ear" (22.454). The vocal quality of epos also underlies the phrase at 17.695: amphasiē epeō (Martin 1993:16).