Homer Odyssey 24.85

Before the Odyssey comes to an end, the Singer of Tales reaches back to what seems to be the beginning of the Iliad. It is as if the second epic, the Odyssey, could now restart before it ends by reaching back into the first epic, the Iliad. Still, there will be no restart here. The plot of that first epic had started with a grand feud between Achilles and Agamemnon, but the plot of the second epic will now come to an end with a resolution of that feud. The feuding is over, so that the two main characters of the Iliad can now take time to review not only what happened in the Iliad but also, beyond the Iliad, how the two of them died, each his own way. Since they are now dead, they have to speak ghost to ghost, but that is not enough for Agamemnon. He must also speak with the new ghosts, the suitors, who will now give him a retrospective on the Odyssey. This way, Agamemnon can compare the story of his own life with the stories of both Odysseus and Achilles. And the comparison must be most depressing for him. But the Odyssey does not end with the sad thoughts of Agamemnon. Odysseus still has to reconnect with his own ancestors, and so there needs to be a final recognition scene between the son and his father Laertes. But even after this reconnection of the generations is finally achieved, the story is still not done. The feuding that has been triggered by the killing of the suitors must end; otherwise, the story cannot end.

“Mercury Conducting the Souls of the Suitors to the Infernal Regions” (1805). John Flaxman (English, 1755–1826). Purchased as part of the Oppé Collection with assistance from the National Lottery through the Heritage Lottery Fund 1996. Image via the Tate.

Although the gender of psūkhē ‘spirit’ in referring here to the spirits of Achilles and Agamemnon is feminine, O.24.023 and O.24.035, the pronouns referring to the two dead heroes in the narrative that frames their dialogue continue to show the masculine gender, and the use of the feminine gender is discontinued altogether in the wording of the actual I-you dialogue: instead, as Achilles and Agamemnon proceed to speak to each other at O.24.024–034 and at O.24.036–097 respectively, they revert in their I-you dialogue to the masculine gender that they once had owned as speakers in Homeric narrative. The dialogue between the psūkhē ‘spirit of Achilles and the psūkhē ‘spirit’ of Agamemnon frames a retrospective retelling of stories, taken separately, about what the two heroes had achieved at Troy—after all is said and done. In the case of Agamemnon, the retelling centers on his ultimate failure as a character in his own story. In the case of Achilles, on the other hand, the retelling centers on his ultimate success—despite his death. The verses at O.24.024–034 are spoken by the psūkhē ‘spirit’ of Achilles, O.24.023, who is addressing the psūkhē ‘spirit’ of Agamemnon: too bad, Achilles says without gloating, that things did not work out well for you. Then the verses at O.24.036–097 are spoken by the psūkhē ‘spirit’ of Agamemnon, O.24.035, who in turn addresses the psūkhē ‘spirit’ of Achilles: without attempting to detract from the glory in store for Achilles, Agamemnon retells, in second-person narrative, the death and funeral and entombment of Achilles. You were killed; we arranged for your funeral and for funeral games in your honor; and then we made a tomb for you.

(What follows is an epitome of the comments in Nagy 2012:49–51.) The narrative here at O.24.036–097 is pervaded by references to the hero cult of Achilles. I offer here a brief inventory of some of these references:

—O.24.036, ὄλβιε Πηλέος υἱέ, θεοῖσ’ ἐπιείκελ’ Ἀχιλλεῦ ‘O you olbios son of Peleus, godlike Achilles’. So, Agamemnon here addresses Achilles as olbios, which would mean ‘fortunate’ on the surface. Beneath the surface, however, olbios here can be interpreted as ‘blessed’, referring to the sacred status of a cult hero: see the comment at O.19.107–114, with special reference to uses of olbios in the sense of ‘blessed’, as at verse 172 of the Hesiodic Works and Days.

—O.037–039, ἀμφὶ δέ σ’ ἄλλοι | κτείνοντο Τρώων καὶ Ἀχαιῶν υἷες ἄριστοι | μαρνάμενοι περὶ σεῖο ‘On all sides of you [= your corpse], the rest of them | were being slaughtered, sons of both Trojans and Achaeans, the best, | as they were fighting over you [= your corpse]’. The Achaeans and the Trojans are battling here over the possession of the corpse of Achilles. The mentality of needing to possess the body of the dead hero, whether he was a friend or an enemy in life, is typical of hero cults, in that the corpse of the cult hero was viewed as a talisman of fertility and prosperity for the community that gained possession of the hero’s body. Details in PH 32, 178; also Nagy 2006§97.

—O.24.039–40, σὺ δ’ ἐν στροφάλιγγι κονίης | κεῖσο μέγας μεγαλωστί ‘There you were, lying in a swirl of dust. | You lay there so huge in all your hugeness’. The corpse of Achilles is described here as larger than life. This wording applies to Achilles also at I.18.026–027, where he stages himself as a corpse in mourning the death of Patroklos and where he is mourned by Thetis as if he were already a corpse: see the comment at I.018.070–071 (see also BA 113, especially with reference to I.18.071). At I.16.775–776, cognate wording applies to the corpse of the hero Kebriones. The corpse of Achilles is described as nine cubits long in the Alexandra of Lycophron (860). As we see from lore preserved in the historical period about cult heroes, they were conventionally pictured as far larger in death than they had been in life. Among the most striking examples is the corpse of Orestes as cult hero, described in Herodotus 1.68.

—O.24.059, περὶ δ’ ἄμβροτα εἵματα ἕσσαν ‘They [= the Nereids] dressed you [= your corpse] in immortalizing clothes’. At the funeral of Achilles, his divine mother and her sister Nereids dress the hero’s corpse in ‘immortalizing’ clothes. On the vital importance of understanding ambrotos as ‘immortalizing’ as well as ‘immortal’, see the comments at I.16.670 and I.16.680; details in GMP 141.

—O.24.073–077. After the cremation of the corpse of Achilles, his bones and those of the already cremated corpse of Patroklos are placed into a golden jar that had been given by the god Dionysus to the goddess Thetis. This jar, as we know from the comparative evidence of other poetic references (especially Stesichorus PMG 234), is a sign of the hero’s immortalization after death. See BA 209; also Dué 2001.

—O.24.085–086. After the making of the tumulus which will be the tomb shared by Achilles and Patroklos, O.24.080–084, funeral games are held in honor of Achilles. The details of this description match closely the details we can gather from historical evidence about athletic contests held in honor of cult heroes. Details in BA 116–117.

—O.24.091. The athletic contests at the funeral games of Achilles and the prizes to be won in these contests are instituted for the purpose of compensating for his death, and, in this verse, such an act of compensation is expressed by way of the prepositional phrase epi soi (ἐπὶ σοί), which can be translated roughly as ‘in your honor’. As we can see clearly from a variety of prose sources, the syntactical construct combining the preposition epi with the dative case of a given hero’s name refers to the cult of that hero. (Details in PH 121.) Perhaps the most striking example is this entry in the dictionary attributed to Hesychius: ‘balletus: a festival event at Athens, held in honor of [epi plus object in dative case] Demophon son of Keleos’ (Βαλλητύς· ἑορτὴ Ἀθήνησιν, ἐπὶ Δημοφῶντι τῷ Κελεοῦ ἀγομένη).

The expression ep’ anthrōpous ‘throughout humankind’ is conventionally associated with words referring to remembrance by way of song. See the anchor comment at I.10.213.

There is an irony here in the reference to the dead suitors as aristoi ‘the best’, since they have all been already bested by Odysseus in his role as the best of the Achaeans in the Odyssey.

This retelling accentuates one more time the victory of Odysseus over his inferior rivals.

in a list of eukhesthai einai + social relationship (xeinos, hiketēs)

analysis of the functional overlap between hiketēs and xeinos, argument that in Homer hiketēs still means ‘he who comes, arrives’ and that the only difference between xeinos and hiketēs de toi eukhomai einai is that the speaker of the second has yet to receive hospitality

example of where xeinos de toi eukhomai einai is used to justify asking a host for a special favor