Scroll I. Attica
subject heading(s): Pyrrhos the hero, Pyrrhos the king
Pausanias at 1.11.1 begins here his narrative about
Pyrrhos-son-of-Aiakidēs, king of Epeiros. I have already noted that
Pyrrhos claimed as his ancestor, counting twenty generations backward in
time, the Greek hero Pyrrhos-son-of-Achilles. (Pausanias complicates the
numbering by starting with an ancestor that goes five generations back
and then adding fifteen generations more.) This hero was otherwise known
as Neoptolemos, meaning ‘renewer of war’. As for his name Pyrrhos, it
means ‘fiery red’. Both names are most apt, because the hero
Pyrrhos/Neoptolemos is traditionally pictured in the verbal and visual
arts of the ancient Greeks as a veritable killing machine—whose fiery
temperament in war replicates and thus renews the deadliest wartime
moments of his father. In the case of Achilles, we find a horrific
example of such a moment
at Iliad 21.328–384,
where the hero goes berserk as he proceeds to slaughter, one after the
next, all the fleeing Trojan warriors whom he overtakes in his murderous
progression of martial fury: the more blood he spills, the more furious
he gets—until he becomes the embodiment of fire itself, since the poetry
of the Iliad now merges this
warrior’s rage with the cosmic power of Hephaistos as the god of raging
fire. In the case of Pyrrhos/Neoptolemos, such horrific moments of
martial fury are further augmented and multiplied: examples include the
fiery hero’s slaughtering of Priam the old king, of Polyxena the
beautiful princess, and of prince Astyanax, hapless child of Hector and
Andromache.
A moment ago, I described the hero Pyrrhos as ‘fiery’ in such contexts
of martial fury. I will now elaborate, epitomizing from an earlier work
(BA 122, 7§5; 330–332, 20§12).
My description ‘fiery’ matches the hero’s name Púrrhos, deriving from
the adjective purrhós, meaning ‘fiery red’, which in turn derives from
the noun pûr ‘fire’. The description matches also the association of
this hero with a kind of war dance known as the purrhíkhē—a word that
likewise derives from the adjective purrhós. Here is a basic
definition of the purrhíkhē as we find it in the ancient
lexicographical tradition attributed to Hesychius (under the entry
πυρριχίζειν): τήν ἐνόπλιον ὄρχησιν καὶ σύντονον πυρρίχην ἔλεγον ‘the
word for energetic dancing in armor was purrhíkhē’. In the work that I
am epitomizing, I offered detailed evidence to show that this kind of
war dance was a ritual dramatization of biē ‘force, violence’ in
warfare. I hold back on repeating the details here, except to add that
the noun purrhíkhē is appropriate to the name Púrrhos, not only to
the adjective purrhós, since there are myths that derive the name of
the war dance from the name of the hero. According to the poetry of
Archilochus (F 304W), for example, the word purrhíkhē refers to a war
dance because Púrrhos danced such a war dance for joy after he killed
the hero Eurypylos in the Trojan War. According to another tradition,
mentioned by Lucian (On
dance 9) and by other sources, Púrrhos not only “invented”
the purrhíkhē: he also captured Troy through the ignition of this war
dance, since he started the fire that burned down the city when he leapt
out of the Wooden Horse, already dancing his dance and thus igniting the
fire.
As we have already seen, the hero Pyrrhos/Neoptolemos is traditionally
pictured in the verbal and visual arts of the ancient Greeks as a
veritable killing machine—whose fiery temperament in war replicates and
thus renews the deadliest wartime moments of his father. And yet, before
the Trojan War begins, Pyrrhos can be pictured as a most contemplative
young man. He turns into a fiery killing machine only after he arms
himself with the armor of Achilles. As we know from the plot summary of
the Little Iliad, which is
part of the so-called epic Cycle, this armor is handed over to Pyrrhos
by Odysseus (p. 107 lines 29–30 ed. Allen 1912). I show here a close-up
from a vase painting by Douris, dated at around 490 BCE, which pictures
a moment when Pyrrhos the hero reaches out to receive the helmet of his
dead father, Achilles. The expression on the hero’s face is still
composed and collected as he contemplates the helmet that he holds
delicately in his hand. But the profile of the helmet that is facing him
seems to have a face of its own, a dead face that is staring back at
Pyrrhos, returning the young man’s gaze. The dead face is radiating its
own vision of death in war.
[Pyrrhos holding the helmet of Achilles as he receives the armor of
Achilles from Odysseus. 500–450 BCE, by the painter Douris. Image via
Wikimedia Commons.]
