The War That Killed Achilles (9 page)

Standing by the Hill of the Thicket, surrounded by the best and bravest fighting men, Hektor is formally presented as leader of the Trojans by the epithet that will most frequently describe him—
koruthaíolos—
from
kórus,
“helmet,” and
aiólos,
“the notion of glancing light passing into that of rapid movement”;
²²
in the Linear B tablets, “Aiólos” is the name of what one must imagine was an affectionately regarded ox. “Of the shimmering helm” gives good sense of Hektor's epithet, evoking the changeable play of light off his glistening bronze, plumed helmet. Presumably many warriors at Troy have bronze helmets, but this term, used repeatedly (thirty-eight times) of Hektor, is associated with no other man.
²³

With the Achaeans roused by Athene and the Trojans stirred by a direct message from Zeus, the two armies advance across the plain to meet each other, the Trojans “with clamour and shouting, like wildfowl,” the Achaeans in silence, with renewed, deadly intent. Suddenly Paris springs from the ranks, dressed in elaborate battle finery—a leopard skin is flung across his shoulders, and he is equipped with a bow, a sword, and two javelins, which he brandishes at the Achaeans, challenging the best to combat. Spying the man who stole his wife, Menelaos strides forth, ready to oblige, and at the sight of him Paris' courage falters and, like “a man who has come on a snake in the mountain valley,” he shrinks back into the ranks:

Alone of the
Iliad
's heroes, Paris bears two names: the Greek “Alexandros,” which is the epic's name of preference (an ancient name appearing in Linear B tablets), and “Paris,” which like “Priam” is likely to have originated in pre-Greek Asia Minor: tantalizingly an “Alaksandu” of Wilusa is named in Hittite texts.
²⁴

The encounter between Paris and Menelaos through the dust of impending battle is, like a number of events of Book Three, more reasonably suited to the first weeks than to the tenth year of the war. But certain iconographic scenes, such as the encounter between the two most personally inimical protagonists—the cuckolded husband and the interlop ing lover—are necessary to the emotional, if not the logical, completeness of this story. Moreover, the introduction of Paris in this manner, his cowardice directly contrasting with Menelaos' old-fashioned, lionhearted courage as he steps from the ranks to meet the young pretender, is particularly effective and naturally leads to one of the most determinedly presented realities of this war—the hatred and contempt with which Paris is held by his own people.

“ ‘Evil Paris,' ” says his own brother Hektor, “ ‘. . . better had you never been born.' ” Disparagement of the Trojan responsible for the war is to be expected, of course, in a Greek epic performed before mostly Greek audiences. The vehemence of the disparagement, however, is striking, as is the fact that it comes from his brother. In the entire epic, no Trojan ever attempts to mitigate or diminish either Paris' crime or the unfair, intolerable burden it has placed on the Trojan people: “ ‘the Trojans are cowards in truth, else long before this / you had worn a mantle of flying stones for the wrong you did us,' ” as Hektor says—in other words, Paris should have been stoned. Bound by tribal and familial bonds of unyielding if resentful loyalty, the whole of Troy is engulfed in a war fought for what is universally acknowledged as a wrongful, hateful cause.

Paris' response to his brother's contemptuous rebuke is entirely characteristic of his response to the several stinging rebukes he receives throughout the epic. Swiftly, almost agreeably, he acknowledges the correctness of Hektor's words—“ ‘you have scolded me rightly, not beyond measure' ”—demurring only with the scorn his brother shows for his beauty and infatuation with the fair sex: “ ‘do not / bring up against me the sweet favours of golden Aphrodite. / Never to be cast away are the gifts of the gods.' ” Paris never exerts the energy of a defense and instead evinces languid self-acceptance that he is only as the gods have made him and does only what the gods direct. That the gods initiate and direct all human events is, in fact, a view supported by the epic. Paris is unheroic, however, not because of his religious belief in divine agency but because of his passive acquiescence to it; as will be seen, heroism is achieved by striving in the face of unconquerable destiny.

Now, languidly, Paris offers up to his brother one of his intermittent acts of courage; as he is without shame, so Paris is sometimes without fear, again on the principle that the gods alone will in any case determine the outcome. His suggestion is that he and Menelaos fight a duel, man to man, for “ ‘Helen and all her possessions' ”:

On hearing his brother's suggestion—the fantasy of all fighting men that the individuals personally responsible for a war be the ones who actually fight it—Hektor “was happy.” Striding into the dangerous open space between the advancing armies, he “forced back the Trojan battalions / holding his spear by the middle until they were all seated.” Gradually the Achaeans see that he is trying to speak, and Agamemnon shouts for quiet.

In the silence, Hektor proclaims Paris' offer. The Achaean reaction to the prospect of a duel between young Paris and the older Menelaos is ambiguous: “all of them stayed stricken to silence.” This could be simply because they are stunned at this unexpected development—or it could reflect the epic's several gentle hints that brave Menelaos may not rank among the very top tier of warriors; the stricken silence is perhaps a symptom of the Achaeans' instinctive alarm for him. Menelaos himself, however, does not hesitate to accept the challenge and rises to speak to the assembly, urging that whether it is he or Paris who is killed, “ ‘the rest of you be made friends with each other.' ”

Not trusting the word of frivolous young men, Menelaos demands that Priam himself be summoned to cut the oath sanctifying the terms of the duel. While they wait for the aged king to come, the men of both armies pull their chariots into line and dismount, stripping off their armor and settling on the field “so there was little ground left between them.” Leaving them to wait, the epic shifts the action dramatically away from the plain to a chamber in the palace complex inside the walls of Troy, an inner sanctuary removed from the world of dust and men. Here, sitting at her loom, is Helen of Troy, the prize sought by both armies and the prize shortly to be fought over by the two men who both claim her. Iris, the tireless messenger of Zeus, once again in the guise of a mortal, in this case Laodike, “loveliest looking of all the daughters of Priam,” comes to Helen with a message:

Elsewhere in the
Iliad,
warriors are said to “weave” speeches and counsels, plots and schemes; by setting certain events in motion, such masculine weaving, then, shapes reality.
²⁶
The women of Troy weave only the representations of events. The gentleness of all imagery in this scene—the quiet chamber where Helen sits spinning the story of her own life and the calm delivery of Iris' shattering news—places the domestic world of Troy and its women at an almost surreal remove from everything that exists on the plain outside. For this moment, from within these walls, even the actual war appears peaceful, as the soldiers sit unarmed together in unnatural passivity. The remoteness of this inner world of spinning and weaving from the rending and tearing that is the work of war is also a symptom of its powerlessness.
²⁷
At the very moment Helen sits calmly weaving her own story, she is entirely ignorant of the fact that her story is being changed yet again—her fate rewoven, as it were, by Paris' off-the-cuff offer and Menelaos' acceptance. The hosts of two entire armies, thousands of men, know the terms of her fate before she does. “ ‘You shall be called beloved wife of the man who wins you,' ” says gentle Iris, and her categorical matter-of-factness has a sinister ring.

The goddess's words, the speaking of Menelaos' name, stir Helen:

Going out onto the roof above the Skaian Gates, one of two named entrances to the city and of all features of Troy the most fated, Helen passes Priam and the Trojan elders, men too old to fight, who remain now inside the gates with the women and children:

Helen's timeless beauty is evoked with not a single physical attribute—her hair, her features, her eyes—but by the reaction of those who should hate her most. “Terrible”—
ainōs
—“is the likeness of her face to immortal goddesses”; the word
ainōs
carries the same double edge as its literal English counterpart—“in an extreme degree,” “strongly,” but also “to such a degree as to cause apprehension,” “dreadfully.”
²⁸
This charged word and the men's conclusion—“ ‘Still . . . let her go away in the ships' ”—eloquently establishes Helen's precarious existence in the city of her people's enemy.

The only man to turn to her with wholehearted warmth is Priam himself, who calls her to join him in watching her “ ‘husband of time past' ” and inquiring as to the identity of one of the Achaean warriors, who given his splendid, lordly appearance “ ‘might well be royal.' ” Helen's response, the first words she utters in the epic, is roundabout, and tellingly begins with a devastating self-characterization:

The fate Hektor wishes on Paris is the fate Helen calls down upon herself: “ ‘I wish bitter death had been what I wanted.' ” Other traditions characterized Helen's elopement with Paris as a rape and an abduction; it was in this vein that Nestor called for the Achaeans to put aside all thoughts of home and to “avenge Helen's longing to escape and her lamentations.”
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Yet another tradition held that Helen never came to Troy but spent the war in Egypt, while men unwittingly fought over a ghostly cloud of her image.
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Nestor's wishful thinking apart, the
Iliad
consistently, if sympathetically, portrays Helen as the remorseful agent of her own disastrous decision. “ ‘Did this ever happen?' ” are her wondering words.