The Iliad, Books 4-5

Summary, Book 4:

Book 4 opens with the gods hanging out in the “golden courtyard” drinking nectar.  Things seem to be going okay but Zeus decides he wants to mess with Hera and Athena a bit. Because… yeah, the gods are terrible. He mocks them for essentially kicking back and drinking while Menelaus and Paris were fighting, and points out that Aphrodite was down there helping Paris and saving his life.  After mocking them for their lack of commitment to the Achaeans, he suggest they discuss how to bring the war to an end.

“Athena sat there silently, so enraged she didn’t say a word.”  I feel you, Athena. Hera, on the other hand, argues back, and she and Zeus snap at each other for awhile.  Hera acknowledges that Zeus is more powerful than she is, but reminds him that she is both his sister and his wife.  Charming.  Anyway, they arrive at a conclusion that, from my perspective, seems to be a lose-lose.  He sends Athena, at Hera’s request, to inspire the Trojans to resume fighting. Athena is all too happy to oblige.  Oookay….

Athena convinces a Trojan archer named Pandarus to take a shot at Menelaus, as a means of restarting the fighting.  He takes perfect aim, but Athena deflects the arrow right as it hits him and “brushed it from [Menelaus’s] skin just as a mother brushes a fly off her child while he lies sweetly sleeping.”  What a gentle, sweet little image.  Menelaus is only mildly grazed by the arrow.  Agamemnon pretty much freaks out, but Menelaus reassures him that the wound is not fatal.  But while Achaeans are helping Menelaus with his wound, the Trojans press forward.  So we have a motivational speech from Agamemnon:

 “You cowards, worthless Argives, aren’t you ashamed?
      What are you doing just standing here,
      like dazed fawns exhausted after running
      over a large plain, now motionless,
      hearts drained of spirit—that’s how you stand,
      in a trance, not marching up to battle.
      Are you waiting for Trojans to come closer,
      up to the fine sterns of our ships beached here,
      on the grey sea shore, so you can see                                         
      if the hand of Cronos’ son will shield you?”

Not particularly wishing to be compared to fawns, the Achaeans go in for the kill.  Agamemnon calls out Odysseus for “hanging back’, which Odysseus furiously denies.  Agamemnon quickly retracts and pulls the same thing on Diomedes.  Diomedes is mortified, and is defended by Sthenelus.

Now we have the battle.  And quite honestly, battle scenes don’t do a ton for me.  The gods are getting involved with Ares helping the Trojans and Athena helping the Achaeans.  Some Trojans are killed, and actually some of the mini-bios of the Trojan casualties are quite touching:

“Then Ajax, son of Telamon, hit Simoeisius,
Anthemion’s son, a fine young warrior.                                               
He was born on the banks of the river Simoeis,
while his mother was coming down Mount Ida,
accompanying her parents to watch their flocks.
That’s why the people called him Simoeisius.
But he did not repay his fond parents for raising him.
His life was cut short on great Ajax’s deadly spear.”

So much for the war coming to an end.  “For on that day,many Trojans and Achaeans lay there side by side, stretched out together, face down in the dust.”

Summary, Book 5:

This book begins with Athena giving Diomedes strength and courage, but things start getting ugly fast.  Even Athena seems to have had enough, coaxing her brother, Ares, to leave the battlefield and let Zeus pick the winner.  The battle heats up and the Achaeans seem to be winning.  Diomedes has basically become a killing machine:

“As for Diomedes, you couldn’t tell where he belonged,
whether among the Trojans or Achaeans.
For he rushed across the plain like a swollen river,
like a swift winter torrent bursting dikes—
no dam put in its way can hold it back,                                                 
no barrier of fruitful vineyards check its current,                                            
as all at once it floods when storms from Zeus roar down.
It knocks aside all fine things built by farmers,
hard-working men. That’s how the son of Tydeus
drove the dense ranks of Trojans into mass confusion.
For all their numbers they could not contain him.”

As he is going about his killing he is shot by Pandarus who, without Athena’s interference, hits his mark this time.  He thinks he has killed Diomedes but he has not.  Diomedes is still very much alive, and he prays to Athena:

“Hear me, Athena, unwearied daughter
of aegis-bearing Zeus. If you’ve ever
loved my father, stood by his side
in murderous combat, be my friend now.
Grant that I kill this man, that I come
a spear’s throw from the one who hit me
unexpectedly and now boasts about it,
saying I won’t see daylight for much longer.”  

I guess Athena was bored of her little hiatus because she comes back to the battle and grants his wish, restoring his strength with a vengeance.  The one caveat is that he cannot fight any god who happens to join in the battle, except for Aphrodite.  I guess Athena is not a fan of her sexy sister.  Anyway, Diomedes’s strength is returned, and how.

“He was like a lion
slightly hurt by a shepherd guarding his sheep flock
out in the wilds, when it jumps the wall into the pen.
But he’s not killed it. The wound rouses the beast’s strength.
The shepherd can’t keep the charging lion from his sheep,
who, left unguarded, panic. Huddled in a mass,                                      
they crowd in on one another. So the lion,
in his hot rage, leaps over the wide sheep-fold wall.
That’s how strong Diomedes went to fight the Trojans
in his angry fury.”

Yowsa.  Anyway, Pandarus sees Diomedes charging at him on a horse and knows that he is screwed.  He bemoans the fact that he is on foot with nothing but a bow and arrow when he apparently had his choice of eleven different chariots which are in storage in his father’s house.  His father had suggested he take one, and a team of horses, but Pandarus declined.  Can I get a WTF on that one?  His father is giving him advice, and offering him a brand new chariot and strong horses, and he prefers to go on foot?  Well, he regrets the decision now.

I think we all know where this is headed, but here we go: Diomedes throws a spear at Pandarus and Athena guides it so that it hits him right in the face.  Aeneas, Pandarus’s buddy, is furious, but Diomedes throws an enormous boulder at him which injures him severely.  He almost dies, but Aphrodite sees him.  And… oh! Aphrodite is his mother.  As Aphrodite picks him up to tend to him, Diomedes stabs her and she screams, dropping her son.  Apollo catches him and protects him, and other gods help the injured Aphrodite to get to Mt. Olympus where her own mother tends her wound.  Zeus tells her in so many words to leave battle to the warriors (Ares and Athena) and to stick with romance.

Meanwhile, down on earth, Diomedes is still trying to kill Aeneas, and Apollo warns him to stop.  His aggression toward Apollo, however, kind of breaks his pact with Athena to harm no god but Aphrodite.  I’m sort of confused by this next part, but it seems that while some goddesses heal Aeneas, Apollo “makes a copy” of Aeneas and puts him where the Trojans can see him.  Is this to inspire the Trojans to fight harder?  He also begs his brother Ares to help the Trojans, which he does.

Sarpedon (I don’t have his name written down yet so I don’t know his precise role.  Any help?) berates Hector and insults his honor, so that he will get more involved in the battle.  He fights alongside Ares, and the tide begins to turn in favor of the Trojans.  Killing… killing… killing… and once again, some of the descriptions of the dead are rather powerful.

 “As two lions,
cared for by their mother in a deep thick forest
on a mountain peak, steal stout sheep and cattle
and plunder people’s farmsteads, until they perish,
killed by sharp bronze in the hands of men, so these two died,
cut down by Aeneas. They fell like lofty pines.”

Oh, apparently Sarpedon is Zeus’s son.  The whole genealogy thing here is a hot mess.

Hera and Athena are watching the battle, and are upset that the Achaeans are being slaughtered.  Hera ask Zeus if she can please, PLEASE go down to the battle and injure Ares for killing so many good Achaeans.  He agrees, but suggests Athena might be better since: “she’s the one who’s most accustomed to inflicting nasty pains on Ares.”  Okay then. 

Anyway, Athena seems to have forgiven Diomedes for breaking their pact, and she inspires him to stab Ares with a spear.  Ares rushes back to Mt. Olympus to complain to Zeus, but if he is looking for sympathy he came to the wrong place.  His father will hear none of it:

“You hypocrite, don’t sit there whining at me.
Among the gods who live on Mount Olympus,                                          
you’re the one I hate the most. For you love war,              
constant strife and battle. “

Nevertheless, Zeus heals him and the two hang out together until Hera and Athena get back, satisfied with their efforts.

Notes

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the gods are terrible.  But as someone very wise once told me, greek gods were there to explain why things are, not how to demonstrate how to live as in the case of Jesus Christ, the Buddha, or other spiritual figures.  From that perspective, it makes sense that they are arbitrary and random in their preferences.  Life is arbitrary and random, and must have seemed even more so back then.

Where is Achilles?  He pretty much started all this and now he is invisible.

As I said earlier, I’m not particularly moved by battle scenes.  I find them chaotic and hard to follow, so in that sense the author has done his job quite well.  Battles are chaotic and hard to follow!  I am grateful for the little memorials that break up the atrocities.  They make the battles more human and poignant.  They must have also been helpful memory devices for back in the days when the Iliad was passed down orally!

I need to pick up the pace here a bit; I’m not even a quarter done!  Anyway, maybe I’ll try to squeeze another book in tonight.

Happy New Year!

-Lily