2020.07.17 | By Gregory Nagy
§0. In this brief essay, I talk about a book that can help get you started if you wish to make a personal commitment to read the Homeric Iliad, all of it, in translation. It is a book of mine that was first published in 2013 by The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press under the title The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours. Thanks to the Press, this book is also available online, for free. Alternatively, readers can order, from Harvard University Press, an abridged second edition of the printed version, published as a paperback in 2020. And how is this book helpful to those who are tempted to read the Iliad of Homer? In my essay, I claim that the illustration on the cover of the book, in both the printed and the online versions, offers a good answer. To say it another way: sometimes you can in fact judge a book by its cover.
§1. What we see being pictured here is the ancient Greek hero Achilles, dying of an uncurable wound. He has been shot, mortally wounded in his “Achilles Heel” by an unerring arrow that was aimed at him, with deadly accuracy, by a skilled archer, the rival hero Paris, also known as Alexandros, who was aided by Apollo, god of archery. This same Apollo, who is the divine body double of Achilles, is the god in charge of so many other things that are linked with the dying hero, including the music and the singing and dancing of the Muses. According to one myth, Apollo in his role as choreographer of the Muses is also the father of the mythologized Homer who sings the song of Achilles in the Homeric Iliad. Attending Achilles at the moment of his beautiful death—the French call it his belle mort—is a “Cupid” (in Greek, such a cupid is called an “Eros”). This “Cupid” is trying in vain—maybe all too half-heartedly—to extract the deadly arrow from the hero’s mortal wound.
§2. Here is a set of five built-in questions that I ask myself about what we see being pictured here:
(1) What is the symbolism that seems be operating in this picture?
(2) Why is the mortal wound of Achilles, who has just been wounded in his “Achilles Heel,” linked with Eros, who is the incarnation of eroticism?
(3) Why would I (GN), as the author of a book about ancient Greek heroes, choose for the cover of this book a picture that links Eros with the death of a hero?
(4) Most important, where do we find the “Achilles Heel” of Achilles when we are reading the Homeric Iliad?
(5) A different way of asking the fourth question is this fifth question: what is the “Achilles Heel” of Achilles in the Homeric Iliad?
§3. My way of thinking about an answer, or, better, about the best possible answer for Question Five can be summed up most simply: You will not be able to answer this question without having read all the Iliad.
§4. To my mind, the best answer to my Fifth Question was formulated not by me but by a Harvard College student in an essay written after this student had finished reading the Iliad for the very first time. This particular student, like the vast majority of persons who have taken or audited my course about the ancient Greek heroes over the years, did not know Greek and was reading the Iliad only by way of an English-language translation.
§5. But here is where my mind fails me: I cannot for the life of me remember who the student was and when this person took my course about ancient Greek heroes. All I recall is that it happened long ago, a very long time ago. The one thing I do remember, though—and here my mind does not fail me—is the actual answer that this person formulated. I have total recall of that answer, but I don’t want to spoil the impact of the answer by revealing it to those who have not yet committed to their first-ever reading of the Homeric Iliad. Even in translation, though, the answer will leap at you.
§6. That said, I must now admit, in the same breath, that the answer I have in mind may not be the very best of all possible answers. All I am saying is that it’s the best answer, to my mind. And I must now add: maybe some new reader will come up with a new answer that is even better than the old answer. Who knows?
§7. In this brief essay, I have added in the margins some annotations pointing to places in my other online publications where I have already thought about the wordings that I use here. Some of these places, indicated by the annotations that function as placeholders, involve simply the relevant words, while, in other places, I show pictures that evoke what I am still trying to put into words.
About the myth that tells about the conception of Baby Homer, fathered by the god Apollo, I refer to one of my all-time favorites when it comes to writing footnotes—which does not have to be a tedious thing to do. The footnote I am thinking about is at p. 259 of my book Homer the Preclassic,
https://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/3278.9-further-variations-on-a-theme-of-homer#n.20.
I should add that the French term "la belle mort" figures prominently in The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours, https://chs.harvard.edu/chapter/part-i-hour-5-when-mortals-become-equal-to-immortals-death-of-a-hero-death-of-a-bridegroom/, as for example at the paragraph that you find at 5§108.
A favorite example for me is a statue of Apollo’s head with hair made of gold leaf, pictured at §1 of
https://classical-inquiries.chs.harvard.edu/comments-on-comparative-mythology-1-about-apollo/.
For an example of at attempt at reading the whole Iliad in just three days (!), I cite a remark made by Georges Dumézil, an expert in linguistics, who is advising other experts, as well as himself, to re-read the Iliad every year or so. I talk about this piece of advice in §5 of https://classical-inquiries.chs.harvard.edu/comments-on-comparative-mythology-1-about-apollo/:
While giving his advice, at p. 73 of his book Apollon sonore, Dumézil shows time and again that he has read the Iliad most carefully, following the example of a great French poet to whom he alludes in this way...
Conseil: en trois jours ou en vingt-quatre, chaque année, relire l’Iliade pour le plaisir, sans lui poser de questions.
Here is my free translation:
A word of advice: whether it takes you three days or twenty-four, you should re-read, every year, the Iliad—just for the sheer pleasure of it all—and don’t go on asking it to give you answers.
The French poet whom Dumézil obviously has in mind here is Pierre de Ronsard (1524–1585):
Je veus lire en trois jours l’Iliade d’Homere,
Et pour-ce, Corydon, ferme bien l’huis sur moy.
Si rien me vient troubler, je t’asseure ma foy
Tu sentiras combien pesante est ma colere.
Je ne veus seulement que nostre chambriere
Vienne faire mon lit, ton compagnon, ny toy,
Je veus trois jours entiers demeurer à requoy,
Pour follastrer apres une sepmaine entiere.
Mais si quelqu’un venoit de la part de Cassandre,
Ouvre lui tost la porte, et ne le fais attendre,
Soudain entre en ma chambre, et me vien accoustrer.
Je veus tant seulement à luy seul me monstrer :
Au reste, si un Dieu vouloit pour moy descendre
Du ciel, ferme la porte, et ne le laisse entrer.
—
Here is my attempt at a translation:
I want to read in three days the Iliad of Homer
and so, Corydon, I want you to shut that door on me, shut it really tight.
There had better be nothing that comes and troubles me, or else, I swear,
You will feel just how heavy it is, the weight that comes down on you, that weight of my rage.
I don’t just want her, I mean, that chambermaid of ours, not to
come and make my bed, that companion of yours, and you neither,
I just want three days, three full days, where I just stay in peace and quiet,
and then I can fool around after that for a whole week even.
But if someone comes with a message from her, from Cassandre,
then open up for him right away the door, don’t make him wait,
and, quick quick, come into my chamber and get me all dressed up.
I so want this and only this, to show myself to that one, and to no one else.
Otherwise, why, even if a god should want to come down to me
from the heavens above, just close the door on him. Don’t let him come in.