Mnemosyne 64 (2011) 1-20 brill.

nl/mnem

The Beginning of the Iliad: The ‘Contradictions’ of

the Proem and the Burial of Hektor

Brian Satterfield
Jack C. Miller Post-Doctoral Fellow, Ryan Center and Villanova Center for
Liberal Education, Villanova University, Villanova, PA 19085, USA
brian.satterfield@villanova.edu
Received: November 2008; accepted: June 2009

Abstract
“The Beginning and End of the Iliad: The ‘Contradictions’ of the Proem and the
Burial of Hektor” treats three ‘discrepancies’ between the story apparently prom-
ised in the proem of the Iliad and the story that the poem goes on to tell. Dis-
cussed extensively by the Analysts of the past century, these discrepancies were
construed as evidence of the Iliad’s origins in multiple sources. More recently, oral
theorists have seen them as signs of a singer composing rapidly and relatively
unreflectively in performance, indifferent to self-contradiction. The present article
argues instead that we can approach the proem as a prayer, addressed by Homer
to the Muse—and the main story of the poem as her answer. On such a reading,
we can construe the contradictions as evidence for the view that while Homer has
asked for one story, the Muse has given him another slightly different story. While
this suggestion has had advocates in the literature, none has attempted to work it
out with reference to the discrepancies between the Iliad’s proem and main story.
The article argues that once we examine the discrepancies, we find that they point
us toward a new interpretation of the significance of Hektor’s burial.

Keywords
Iliad, proem, discrepancies, burial, Muse

“We must keep in mind that the poet attributes all of his poem except the
prologue . . . to the Muse.”1) So writes J.S. Clay in the introduction to her
1)
Clay 1997, 9.
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011 DOI: 10.1163/156852511X504980
2 B. Satterfield / Mnemosyne 64 (2011) 1-20

The Wrath of Athena—and she is not alone. For generations of Homeric

scholars the assertion of the Muse’s narratorship has been an important
one.2) But what actual impact ought it to have on how we read the poems?
Writing in 1938, Samuel Bassett made the case that the effect should be
little if any:

It seems very questionable whether commentators are justified in basing argu-

ments on the consciousness of the hearer that the Muse is telling the story.
Once convinced that the tale was of a real past, the audience could forget its
source and feel only that the story told itself.3)

There is, he writes, “no evidence in either poem for the rather common
statement that in Homer the poet is the ‘spokesman of the Muse,’ that is,
possessed and inspired by her, as the Pythian prophetess was by Apollo”.4)
A similar case is made by W.W. Minton in 1960:

Invocations of the Muses in the Homeric poems must be considered as tradi-

tional elements in the oral poet’s equipment. They are building blocks of his
language and art along with other units of formulaic composition, from indi-
vidual formula to repeated motif or stock theme. As such they cannot safely
be approached as genuine appeals, but only as the ossified remains of such
appeals, their vitality dulled through long continued use by generations of
epic singers.5)

Mere “ossified remains”, the proems offer little evidence to such scholars
that Homer is the “spokesman of the Muse”.
Not all have agreed, of course. In her narratological study of the Iliad,
I.J.F. de Jong has argued that the presentation of the story is to be analyzed

2)
The view is repeated frequently in German scholarship especially, as in, e.g., Falter 1934,
Lenz 1980, but also in more recent works such as Ford 1992. See also S. Richardson 1990,
Ahl and Roisman 1996, Rabel 1997, 1-31. For S. Richardson (1990, 2; cf. also 178-82),
indeed, the narrator of the Iliad is “a fictional character of sorts”, a “metacharacter”, who
“plays his role not on the level of story, but on the level of the discourse, the telling of the
story”. According to Rabel (1997, 1-31), there is support for the view even in the Poetics
1460a9-11. In support of this, see also Ridgeway 1912, 238.
3)
Bassett 1938, 31.
4)
Ibid. 30.
5)
Minton 1960, 292.
 B. Satterfield / Mnemosyne 64 (2011) 1-20 3

in terms of double motivation: the narrator and the Muse together tell the
story, without a sharp division of labor.6) More provocative still is the view,
upheld explicitly by only a handful of scholars,7) that the Muse is not only
the narrator of the story requested by Homer, but actually alters the story
asked for. For as J.S. Clay observes, an invocation is a species of prayer;
the poem proper, the Muse’s answer.8) Might it not be the case, then—as
V. Pedrick puts it—that the Muse not only answers Homer’s initial
request, but in fact ‘corrects’ it?9)
The question would be academic—if it were not for the fact that there
are a number of discrepancies between the story seemingly promised in the
proem, and the story that the main poem actually tells.10) For older Ana-
lytic scholarship, these discrepancies were a key whereby to break up the
poem into its component strata. More recent scholarship has been less
interested in such discrepancies, often viewing them as an inevitable
byproduct of oral composition in performance.11) In the present article, I
would like to look at three such discrepancies between the proem and the
poem of the Iliad, arguing that we can indeed read them as the Muse’s ‘cor-
rections’ of Homer.

1. The First Discrepancy: The ‘Wrath-Tale’ and its ‘Appendix’

The first of the discrepancies was described by Friedrich Wolf in 1795 in
his groundbreaking Prolegomena:

. . . even if the exordium has the widest possible sense (I suppose that descrip-
tions of a couple of battles that took place in Achilles’ absence would have

6)
De Jong [1987] 2004, 45-53.
7)
In addition to Clay 1997, see Pedrick 1992, Rabel 1997, and Benardete 1997.
8)
Clay 1997, 9.
9)
Pedrick 1992.
10)
Although awareness of these has faded from more recent scholarship, B.A. van Gronin-
gen (1946, 283) could write in 1946 that it was “a well-known fact that the indications of
the contents [of the proems of the Iliad and Odyssey] do not tally with the contents them-
selves”. Indeed, few Analysts of the past century disagreed with the pronouncement of
Robert (1901, 213): “Dass das Prooemium nicht zur Urilias gehört, betrachte ich als
selbstverständlich und keines Beweises bedürftig . . .”.
11)
Cf., e.g., Notopoulos 1964, 48.
4 B. Satterfield / Mnemosyne 64 (2011) 1-20

sufficed for these lines), nevertheless it will never be irrefutably proven that
those seven verses promise anything more than eighteen books. The remain-
der do not contain the wrath of Achilles against Agamemnon and the Greeks,
but a new wrath, quite different from the earlier one and not in the least
harmful to the latter: that is, an appendix to that first wrath which is the only
one sketched by those verses.12)

The proem seems to promise a story about wrath, Wolf writes; but that
wrath could only be the anger of Achilles against Agamemnon.13) About
his subsequent anger with Hektor, Wolf concluded, the proem (1.1-7)
shows no awareness. That the poem went beyond the original limits pro-
posed for it, Wolf suggested, was good evidence that it was comprised of
different original source stories that had later been joined by a redactor.14)

12)
Wolf [1795] 1985, 119-20; cf. also 132 ff.
13)
At least one linguistic point strengthens Wolf ’s view: μῆνιν (‘anger’), the first word of
the poem and the theme which Homer asks the Muse to sing, is only ever used (of the
angers of Achilles) in reference to the first anger that Achilles experiences—his anger toward
Agamemnon. It therefore cannot refer to Achilles’ super- and sub-human rage over the
death of Patroklos.
14)
Wolf was not alone. For nearly all of the Analysts this discrepancy constituted a major
internal contradiction, most concluding that the discrepancies showed the quarrel of
Agamemnon and Achilles to be the oldest layer of the epic. Thus, Grote (1853) considers
the original μῆνις tale to consists of 1, 8, 11-22; Fick (1886) similarly, considers the main
stratum to extend (with excisions) from 1-22 (ending with 393); Jebb (1887) of 1, 11,
16-22; Wilamowitz (1887), of 1-7.321; 11-23.256; Leaf (1892 and 1895) holds that that
μῆνις tale consists of Iliad 1; 2.1-53, 443-83; 11.56-665, 762-805; 15.592-746; 16;
19.356-424; 20.252-503; 21.34-138; 540-611; 22.1-404. Bechtel (in Robert 1901), simi-
larly, (with excisions) that it extends up to 22.212. For Croiset (quoted in van Groningen
1946, 283), thus, the proem’s failure of ‘precision’ regarding the events that followed Book
1 showed it to be an early composition by the author of ‘the quarrel’, unaware of subse-
quent additions. For Bethe (1914, 311 n. 1; cf. also 23 ff., 171 ff.), similarly, the events
narrated in the proem only covered the Menisgedicht, showing it to the oldest vein of the
poem. And for Grote (1853, 176) as well, “the primitive frontispiece, inscribed with the
anger of Achilles, and its direct consequences, yet remains after it has ceased to be coexten-
sive with the poem”. Wilamowitz (1916, 258), however, regards it as a later addition.
Whatever the differences, however, the reasoning was in all cases essentially the same as that
spelled out by Bethe (1914, 311 n. 1; cf. also 23 ff., 171 ff.): “A 1-7 passen zum Menisge-
dicht durchaus. Es gab wirklich nur die Menis und ihre Folgen, die Achaierniederlage,
Patroklos’ Tod und Achills Rache; wirklich vollendete sich in ihr Zeus’ Ratschluß . . .”. (See
also Bowra 1930, 10, who argues against Bethe regarding the question of whether the
 B. Satterfield / Mnemosyne 64 (2011) 1-20 5

Is the discrepancy a real one? It has been observed that ‘misdirection’ is

common feature of epic.15) And yet the proem of the Odyssey furnishes a
striking parallel that may induce us to accept that discrepancies between
proem and poem are one especially lively form of misdirection; for in it
Homer asks the Muse to tell the story of the man ‘of many wiles’, who
sacked the sacred city of Troy, etc., starting ‘from somewhere or other’:
(τῶν ἁμόθεν γε, θεά, θύγατερ ∆ιός, εἰπὲ καὶ ἡμῖν, Od. 1.10). As τῶν
ἁμόθεν γε suggests, where the story is to start is up, not to Homer, but the
Muse.16) The line which stresses the Muse’s divinity, her knowledge, and
her capacity to communicate it to ‘us too’ καὶ ἡμῖν), also stresses her abil-
ity to begin where she wills; it seems at least reasonable, thus, to wonder
whether she can end where she wills; and if so, whether the narrative fram-
ing of the epic as a whole is in fact being represented as under her control
rather than the singer’s.
But why would she alter the story in this way? One way to pursue this
question would be to imagine the Iliad we would have if it terminated
where Wolf (and at least some others) supposed it would—with the end of
Achilles’ μῆνις in Book 19 (61 ff.). In important respects, it would resem-
ble the one we know: it would still tell the story of Achilles’ anger with
Agamemnon; it would still contain many stories of battle and heroes’
deaths, indeed the full measure of suffering promised in Iliad 1.1-7. (It
might—or might not—contain the embassy and Achilles’ refusal; and it
might or might not tell the death of Patroklos.) But, insofar as it would be
a story about Achilles’ μῆνις only, it would necessarily end with the end of
his μῆνις, i.e., with the end of his anger against Agamemnon. It would be
a story about how Achilles and Agamemnon quarreled, what devastation
and destruction came about as a result, and how, finally, the quarrel was
patched up and brought to an end.

proem is integral to the poem.) Or again Leaf 1892, 32, for whom, similarly, the first eigh-
teen books were the real nucleus of the ‘wrath tale’. Note, incidentally, that Wolf may have
been anticipated on this particular point by his sometime teacher C.G. Heyne, who pub-
lished his own monumental and long-prepared commentary on the poem seven years after
Wolf. See Heyne 1802, 5.
15)
Morrison 1992.
16)
On the reading of some scholars, it is the vagueness of ἁμόθεν which requires vss.
11-19, still considered a part of the Odyssey’s proem. See Bassett 1923, 343.
6 B. Satterfield / Mnemosyne 64 (2011) 1-20

Coincidentally or not, this Achillean ‘wrath-tale’ resembles the ‘Melea-

gris’ told by Phoinix in Book 9. And Homerists have taken this story to be
typical of a ‘withdrawal-devastation-return’ pattern said to be traditional
among Indo-European peoples,17) a typological analysis whereby the Iliad
can be broken up into three large-scale story-patterns of which Iliad 1
through the beginning of 19 (or so) constitutes a ‘wrath-devastation-re-
turn’ tale, followed by 19-22, a ‘revenge’ tale, followed by 24, a ‘consola-
tion’ tale. Thus, as Mark Edwards breaks down the Iliad’s major themes:
“The ‘withdrawal-devastation-return’ structure is the obvious foundation
of the Iliad plot, too, with revenge and consolation tales added at the
end”.18)
Were our Iliad like the more traditional story apparently proposed in
the proem,19) however, it would be a fundamentally different story. It
would end before Achilles reenters the battle to kill Hektor; it would never
show Achilles’ rage in which he refuses suppliants, sacrifices twelve Trojan
youths over Patroklos’ pyre, and fights with the god of the river; it would
end before he defiles the corpse of Hektor and drags it relentlessly around
the city of Troy; we would never see the funeral games in which Achilles
seems to preside vicariously over his own funeral. And finally, we would
never see the face-to-face meeting of Achilles and Priam in which Achilles
sees in Priam a human being like his father and at last agrees to return
Hektor’s corpse for burial (24.507 ff.). One major consequence of the
Muse’s corrections thus stands out: by shifting the focus from Achilles’
anger to the funeral games and his meeting with Priam, the epic human-
izes and pities its Trojan enemy, ultimately replacing rage and enmity—
first toward the Greeks and then toward a foreign ‘other’—with empathy
toward an ‘other’ who turns out to be more like Achilles than he imag-

17)
See here in particular M.L. Lord 1967, 241-48; Nagy 1979, 72 ff., 317 ff.; Edwards
1987, 61 ff.; Nagler 1974, 131 ff.; Eliade 1971.
18)
Edwards 1987, 63. It is, thus, not surprising to find that the case has even been made
by some scholars that it is in his handling and joining of such traditional material that one
sees Homer’s original contribution to the epics, and again, the epic’s increase in complexity
and sophistication over its source material. See here Stanley 1993, 28 and the bibliography
cited on 319 n. 79, especially notable being Sale 1963.
19)
Pedrick 1992 also considers the story outlined in the Odyssey’s proem a more traditional
version, which the poet has amplified with a considerable increase in subtlety.
 B. Satterfield / Mnemosyne 64 (2011) 1-20 7

ined.20) For quite a few scholars, this focus of epic on the humanity of the
Trojans represents a distinctive innovation;21) but if we are correct, the
singer himself attributes it to the Muse.22)

2. The Second Discrepancy: The Birds, Dogs, and Heroes’ Selves

A second difficulty is more concrete: if we look to lines 1.4 ff. of Rich-
mond Lattimore’s translation of the Iliad, we read the following: Achilles’
anger, as Lattimore renders, ‘gave the bodies of heroes to be the delicate
feasting of dogs, and of all birds’. And yet the translation covers over a seri-
ous difficulty in line 3: αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν / οἰωνοῖσι τε
πᾶσι; for what does αὐτούς mean here? Translated in accordance with
conventional understandings of the word’s semantic range in epic, αὐτούς
ought to mean something like ‘selves’ so that we would render: Achilles’
anger ‘gave the heroes’ selves to be the delicate feasting . . .’. The resulting
translation is so jarring, however, that it is not surprising that Homerists
have allowed their natural sense of what the lines ought to mean (together
with the manifest contrast with ψυχάς [‘souls’] in line 3), to override their
sense of lexical strictness, in some cases even suggesting that αὐτούς is
‘Homeric’ for ‘bodies’.23) Tempting as this solution may be, however, it has
no real support, either in linguistic analysis of the meaning of αὐτός,24) or
in epic usage, or again, in later Greek. Given that the word is extraordi-
narily common both within epic and without, further, to place upon it

20)
That the Iliad had to humanize its enemy, in this manner is by no means a given.
Cf. e.g. Stanley 1993, 293; N. Richardson 1993, 16. For additional bibliography on the
Trojans see de Jong 1987, 250, and Stoevesandt 2004.
21)
See e.g., Gomme 1954, 30, Sale (1963, 86-100) and Scott 1921, 226, who even goes so
far as to argue that Hektor himself was Homer’s invention.
22)
There is one further, admittedly slight, yet suggestive piece of textual evidence that we
might also consider in this connection: in Homer’s second invocation to the Muses (2.484
ff.), Homer asks that the Muse tell him who were the leaders of the Danaeans, and again
later in the same catalogue (760 ff.) who was best, both of the men and the horses—but he
never asks about the Trojans, and seems indifferent. It is the Muse who supplies their
names, apparently on her own and unsolicited.
23)
Cf. e.g. Nagy 1979, 208: “In Homeric diction, autós designates the hero’s body after
death”. Nagy cites in support Büchner 1937, 116.
24)
Cf. Pagliaro 1963, 10 n. 7 and also Redfield 2001 for discussion.
8 B. Satterfield / Mnemosyne 64 (2011) 1-20

singular or exotic uses in such a context appears untenable. And there is

an even worse problem: while, on any rendering of αὐτούς the proem
seems to be promising that heroes’ bodies (or selves) will be fed to the
birds and dogs, scholars have long noted that no corpse, Achaean or Tro-
jan, is ever fed to the birds and dogs in the course of the poem.25) Why,
then, does the proem seem to promise that heroes’ corpses (or selves) will
be devoured by birds and dogs and then not deliver?26)
One possibility, of course, is that Homer’s omission is due to delicacy, a
reluctance to depict directly what epic regards as the non plus ultra of
human degradation (more on this momentarily). But since the Iliad does
not scruple to show Asteropaios nibbled by eels and fishes ‘snatching at the
fat and tearing at the upper liver’ (δημὸν ἐρεπτόμενοι ἐπινεφρίδιον
κείροντες, 21.203-4), or the Odyssey Telemakhos’ cutting off of Melan-
thios’ nose and ears, and pulling off of his genitals to feed to the dogs (Od.
22.474-7), squeamishness seems a poor explanation. Had the Iliad wished
to do so, its dramatic and linguistic resources were fully adequate to the
most gruesome depictions of corpses being mutilated and eaten by birds
and dogs.
As James Redfield suggests in his discussion of the proem, on the other
hand, something more interesting may be going on; some sort of state-
ment, he suggests, is being made about epic’s understanding of the body-
soul relation.27) In characterizing the bodies as αὐτούς, and speaking of
ψυχαί being hurled into Hades, the proem, as Redfield interprets the sig-
nificance of their juxtaposition, is suggesting that it is the corpses that are
“the heroes themselves”, “the psuchai . . . mere accessories”.28) As Redfield
notes (but does not attempt to explain how or why), further, this notion is
“peculiar to the proem”. But this only reframes our question at another
level: even if it is correct that the proem evinces one understanding of the
body-soul relationship, and the body of the poem another, why would it
do so?

25)
Many scholars have observed the oddity, but see, exempli causa, Pagliaro 1963, 31. Cf.
also Bethe 1914, 311 n. 1.
26)
According to the scholiast, it was the combination of these difficulties that led Zenodo-
tus to athetize 1.4-5. See Bolling 1929, 43-4.
27)
For extensive discussion, suggesting that the body-soul relation is a thematic concern of
epic, see Clarke 1999.
28)
Redfield 2001, 466.
 B. Satterfield / Mnemosyne 64 (2011) 1-20 9

We may do well to approach this question within the context of what

Charles Segal has called the “theme of the mutilation of the corpse”.29) For
as Segal argues, the theme is not only recurrent, but a major structuring
motif of the epic; the rising stakes of its battles are measured, he suggests,
not only by the increasing savagery of its ἀνδροκτασίη, but by the increas-
ing frequency of its heroes’ threats to defile their enemies’ bodies. Thus,
even as it is true that the epic never actually depicts any hero being fed to
the birds and dogs, there is one place where it seems all but certain to
happen—where, indeed, the epic seems to be driving toward such corpse-
feeding as a grisly climax—and that is when Achilles kills Hektor. Indeed,
they have a stunning exchange as Hektor lies dying and Achilles tells him
point-blank that he means to feed his corpse to the birds and dogs:

. . . σὲ μὲν κύνες ἠδ’ οἰωνοὶ

ἑλκήσουσ’ ἀϊκῶς, τὸν δὲ κτεριοῦσιν Ἀχαιοί. (22.335-6)
. . . the dogs and birds
will tear you foully; but him the Achaeans will bury with rites.

Not quite dead, Hektor entreats Achilles by ‘his parents’ to ransom his
body in order that the Trojan wives may ‘give him his due of fire in death’
(ὄφρα πυρός με Τρῶες καὶ Τρώων ἄλοχοι λελάχωσι θανόντα, 22.342-3).
But Achilles’ reply is unyielding:

μή με κύον γούνων γουνάζεο μὴ δὲ τοκήων·

αἲ γάρ πως αὐτόν με μένος καὶ θυμὸς ἀνήη
ὤμ’ ἀποταμνόμενον κρέα ἔδμεναι, οἷα ἔοργας,
ὡς οὐκ ἔσθ’ ὃς σῆς γε κύνας κεφαλῆς ἀπαλάλκοι (22.345-8)
Dog! Do not entreat me by my knees and parents!
Would that my fury and anger would set me on
to flay and eat your flesh raw seeing what you’ve done,
as surely as there is none to ward the dogs from your head!

Not only will he feed Hektor’s body to the birds and dogs, he says, but he
wishes that his fury would drive him to literal cannibalism!
Why, given the epic’s initial promise, its subsequent investment into
building the theme, and seemingly carefully prepared climax, does it never

29)
Segal 1971, 18.
10 B. Satterfield / Mnemosyne 64 (2011) 1-20

make good? Why does Achilles not feed Hektor’s corpse to the birds and
dogs? Two experiences of Achilles, I suggest, ultimately dissuade him; and
as I want to argue in what follows, they are connected with the funny use
of αὐτοὺς in the proem, helping to shed light, too, on the apparent dis-
crepancy between proem and poem.
The first experience is Achilles’ dream in Book 23. For as he sleeps, the
‘soul’ (ψυχή) of Patroklos comes to him, complains that Achilles has ‘for-
gotten’ him (ἐμεῖο λελασμένος ἔπλευ, Ἀχιλλεῦ): though Achilles did not
‘fail to care’ (ἀκήδεις, a word connected with the regular term for giving
burial tendence) for him when he was alive, Patroklos says, he does not
tend him now that he is dead (23.69-70). For his part, Achilles, promises
that he will do what Patroklos asks but when he stretches out his arms to
embrace him, cannot ‘get ahold of him’. Instead, Homer tells us, Patroklos’
soul ‘like smoke’ ‘went beneath the earth, gibbering’ (23.101-2). Waking,
Achilles then crystallizes the experience he has just had with an extraordi-
nary pronouncement:

ὢ πόποι, ἦ ῥά τι ἔστι καὶ εἰν Ἀίδαο δόμοισι

ψυχὴ καὶ εἴδωλον, ἀτὰρ φρένες οὐκ ἔνι πάμπαν. (23.103-4)30)
Ah me! so the soul and image are after all something even in Hades’ house,
but there is no mind within it at all.

What, then, is the news here? Foremost, there is, it seems, Achilles’ revela-
tory discovery—as Achilles’ use of ῥά (ἄρα) in line 103 suggests31)—that
the soul is, after all, ‘something’ (τι) even in Hades’ house. At the first level,
thus, Achilles’ pronouncement reflects his drawing the ‘natural conclusion’
that ‘after all there is some kind of existence after death’ and that “the ψυχή
and an image (εἴδωλον) of the person does survive”.32) In effect, it is an
expression of surprise that something of the person persists after death—a
point given emphasis in Homer’s description of the ψυχή as ‘in all respects,

30)
Many of the MSS read τίς here instead of τι, though it does not affect the meaning. For
discussion, see N. Richardson 1993, 178, who observes that Propertius 4.7.1 sunt aliquid
manes appears to be an echo. Republic 386b4-b6 suggests that τι was also Plato’s reading.
On either reading, however, Achilles’ pronouncement is an affirmation that there is some
sort of existence after death.
31)
For this use, see Denniston 1954, 35 under ἄρα II. See also Schnaufer 1970, 77-9.
32)
N. Richardson 1993, 177.
 B. Satterfield / Mnemosyne 64 (2011) 1-20 11

in height and beautiful face, and voice like himself ’ (23.66-7). Even the
dead, Homer is at pains to emphasize, on some level retain their individu-
ality and personhood. Equally surprising to Achilles, on the other hand, is
that Patroklos’ ghost does not care about or desire the elaborate and grue-
some vengeance that Achilles has in mind;33) he only wants, as he tells
Achilles, burial, and as soon as may be:

θάπτέ με ὅττι τάχιστα πύλας Ἀΐδαο περήσω.

τῆλέ με εἴργουσι ψυχαὶ εἴδωλα καμόντων,
οὐδέ μέ πω μίσγεσθαι ὑπὲρ ποταμοῖο ἐῶσιν,
ἀλλ’ αὔτως ἀλάλημαι ἀν’ εὐρυπυλὲς Ἄιδος δῶ. (23.71-4)
Bury me soon as may be that I may cross the gates of Hades.
Far off they keep me, the souls, images of those done with toil,
nor do they allow me yet to mingle with them beyond the river,
but at random I wander throughout the wide-gated house of Hades.

When Patroklos’ ψυχή comes to Achilles, complaining that it has not been
buried yet, thus, it is effectively telling him to abandon his vow not to bury
the body before having brought Hektor’s severed head and armor to him
(18.333-42). As long as he is unburied, Patroklos makes clear, the souls of
the dead keep him away, and do not permit him to cross ‘the river’. Appar-
ently indifferent to Achilles’ promised spectacular vengeance on Hektor,
Patroklos’ ψυχή cares only about the burial of his body, urging Achilles to
see to it as soon as possible.
To connect this with line 4 of the proem: where Homer in his prayer
had appeared to believe that the bodies of the heroes were in some sense
their selves while their ψυχαί are—in Redfield’s words—“mere accesso-
ries”, the Muse has instead told a story which culminates with Achilles’
recognition that the ‘soul and image are after all something even in Hades’
33)
This may be the meaning of Achilles’ otherwise puzzling pronouncement that there are
‘no φρένες in it’. For as scholars have pointed out, if φρένες has here its frequent sense of
‘wits’ or ‘intelligence’, it is puzzling that Patroklos seems to have made a reasonable and
intelligent speech. See N. Richardson 1993, 178 as well as van der Valk 1963, 540-2. Cf.
alternatively, the view of Böhme (discussed in Schnaufer 1970, 68-9): “Die Bedeutung von
φρένες hat BÖHME untersucht. Nach seinem Ergebnis sind sie der Sitz von Affekten,
Willensregungen und intellektuellen Vorgängen. Wenn Achill der ψυχή des toten Patroklos
die φρένες abspricht, so heißt das also, daß sie keiner Gefühls-, Willens- oder Verstandsre-
gung fähig ist.”
12 B. Satterfield / Mnemosyne 64 (2011) 1-20

house’—but, at least as important, that this something does not care about
vengeance; it cares only about joining the other dead ‘across the river’,
which is, in turn, shown to be dependent on what happens to its corpse.
Achilles’ ‘discovery’ thus has consequences on a number of levels. On the
one hand, it undercuts the urgency of Achilles’ vow of vengeance; while
not sufficient to dissuade him from abusing Hektor’s corpse, Patroklos’
statement of his indifference to vengeance seems to be a necessary precon-
dition of his ultimately agreeing to ransom the body to Priam.
Some confirmation that Homer was thinking along these lines is found
in the speech of Apollo in Book 24. For at the heart of Apollo’s appeal to
Zeus to bury Hektor is a kind rhetorical of double-vision. On the one
hand, he attempts to arouse pity by stressing the corpse’s personhood; it is
somehow Hektor himself, and the gods are ‘cruel’ (σχέτλιοί ἐστε, 32) and
‘destroyers’ (δηλήμονες, 32) for forgetting the many thighs of bulls and
goats that Hektor burnt to them. On the other, Apollo stresses that it is
now only a thing, and their failure to save it that much more unaccount-
able, since ‘you do not bring yourself to save him, even though he is a
corpse’ (τὸν νῦν οὐκ ἔτλητε νέκυν περ ἐόντα σαῶσαι, 35).34) Similarly,
Apollo instances Achilles’ rage as an example of gross irrationality and sav-
agery, a rhetorical paradeigma of a kind of behavior that the gods should
avoid. For in continuing to abuse what is, after all, no more than a corpse
(νέκυν περ ἐόντα) his thoughts are not in their proper sphere (οὔτ᾿ ἂρ
φρένες εἰσὶν ἐναίσιμοι, 24.40):

κωφὴν γὰρ δὴ γαῖαν ἀεικίζει μενεαίνων (24.54)

Look! Achilles in his fury defiles the senseless clay!35)

34)
Note the similar περ in τεθνηότα περ in line 20.
35)
In translations, γαῖαν is sometimes taken to refer to the earth, on the understanding
that Achilles abuses or defiles the earth in dragging a corpse over it. There is, however, good
authority for suspecting that in antiquity γαῖαν would have been read as the ‘earth’ which,
together with water, was held to comprise the body. (Cf. 7.99 ἀλλ᾿ ὑμεῖς μὲν πάντες ὕδωρ
καὶ γαῖα γένοισθε, and again Hesiod, Th. 571, Op. 61, Xenophanes fr. 33). Thus, e.g.,
Sophocles may well have had the lines in mind at El. 244 ὁ μὲν θανὼν γᾶ τε καὶ οὐδὲν ὢν
κείσεται τάλας; and again Euripides in fr. 522: κατθανὼν δὲ πᾶς ἀνὴρ γῆ καὶ σκιά· τὸ
μηδὲν εἰς οὐδὲν ῥέπει.
 B. Satterfield / Mnemosyne 64 (2011) 1-20 13

The point of calling Hektor ‘clay’ (or ‘earth’) can only be to say that Hektor
cannot feel, or be aware of, any of Achilles’ degradations; he is dead, his
ψυχή departed; his body ought therefore, to be insensate (κωφήν), imper-
vious to the worst that Achilles can do.36) It is mere clay, and Achilles’ anger
at it—and so by implication the continued anger of Hera, Athena, and
Poseidon—a kind of senseless vindictiveness inflicted on one who can no
longer feel it.
Paradoxically, on the other, the fact that the body is not the self also
ends up providing at the same time a critical rationale for the tendence of
the corpse. For it is the fact that there is a ψυχή in Hades whose fate
depends on proper burial that makes that burial important.37) The burial is
thus not, as we are often told today, ‘for the living’, but really and truly for
the soul of the dead man. Only where the ψυχή continues in Hades, in
effect, does the tendence given the body assume importance for the dead
man himself. The revelation that Patroklos’ ψυχή continues in Hades, and
that it retains something of his selfhood, thus places a premium on his
receiving burial at Achilles’ hands, and as soon as possible.
And yet, if we reflect on the internal logic of the account being offered,
we realize that there is an astonishing corollary; for if how one treats the
body is determinative for the soul’s fate in the afterlife, then possibilities
of revenge too are amplified. For if it is true that where burial is denied,
the soul is condemned to wander restlessly forever, then it follows that an
enemy who inflicts such loss of burial upon his foe has secured eternal tor-
ment for him. Thus, even while Patroklos in his vision no longer cares for
revenge, it is clear that this vision is not sufficient to guarantee respect for
the corpse of Hektor. Indeed, if the logic of Patroklos’ revelation is fol-
lowed through, it suggests that if Achilles wishes, he has it within his
power to deny Hektor burial—and so to cause his soul to wander restless
eternally, just as Patroklos did before receiving burial. Achilles’ vision of
Patroklos, thus, is not enough to stop him from continuing to abuse Hek-
tor’s corpse, or from continuing to plan feeding it to the birds and dogs;
36)
κωφήν too is problematic. Though employed once in Herodotus to denote dumbness
and deafness, its three occurrences in Homer, here, of a missile (11.390) and of the wave
that swells without breaking (14.16) suggests to Cunliffe (Lex. Hom. sub κωφός) that its
original sense may be ‘blunt’.
37)
This view is consistent with the argument of Vernant (1985, 330) that the ψυχή mani-
fests an inherent tension between identity and non-identity.
14 B. Satterfield / Mnemosyne 64 (2011) 1-20

for even after Book 23 he continues to outrage Hektor’s corpse into Book
24, until finally ordered by Zeus to stop. Achilles’ dream has thus shed
light on the epic’s conception of why one owes it to a friend or φίλος to
provide burial; but the rationale that it provides offers, to say the least,
very little reason to bury an enemy. There is, thus, every need for the sec-
ond of Achilles’ two experiences: his being ordered by Zeus to return the
corpse of Hektor lest he himself become an object of divine μῆνις
(24.114, 135; cf. 22.358), an order which anticipates the fifth-century
law of burial—the teaching, apparently unique to the Greeks, that an
enemy must to be allowed burial; and which, on their own view, distin-
guished them from barbarians as making them uniquely civilized or
humane.38)

3. The Third Discrepancy: ἐξ οὗ

The last discrepancy is the most frequently noted, for in contrast to the
previous discrepancies, there is no question that there exists here a genuine
textual contradiction (discussed since the time of Aristarchus) that must
either be accepted as a blemish within the text, or, alternatively, resolved
through interpretation. The difficulty, simply, is this. In lines 5 and 6 we
read:

∆ιὸς δ’ ἐτελείετο βουλή

ἐξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα διαστήτην ἐρίσαντε (1.5-6)

But to what antecedent time does ἐξ οὗ refer? For many readers, including
Aristarchus,39) the natural way of taking it was as referring to the origins of
the quarrel itself, so that we might translate: ‘Sing, Muse, the wrath of
Achilles . . . and the plan of Zeus was being brought to fulfillment from the

38)
The number of relevant passages from classical literature is vast, but among the more
important are Sophocles Ant. 450-5, 511, 745, 1070; OC 1606.; Aj. 1129-30, 1154, 1343
ff.; Euripides Supp. 301-15, 524-7, 671; Hec. 136; Ph. 1663; Alc. 1060; HF 708; Thucy-
dides 4.98.8; Demosthenes 24.107; Xenophon Mem. 2.2.13; Isocrates Panegyricus 55,
Panathenaicus 169. For scholarly overviews, see in particular Bremmer 1983, 89-94; Parker
1983, 43-8; Garland 1985, 101-3.
39)
Aristarchus: schol. Arn/A ad loc.
 B. Satterfield / Mnemosyne 64 (2011) 1-20 15

time when Agamemnon and Achilles first stood apart in strife’. Or in other
words, the natural way of taking it, for many readers, is as a request to the
Muse to explain how the ∆ιὸς . . . βουλή (‘will’ or ‘plan’ of Zeus) was being
accomplished ‘from the time’ Agamemnon and Achilles first quarreled.
If adopted, however, this reading involves us immediately in a fairly seri-
ous discrepancy;40) for as commentators point out, the plan of Zeus is not
shown as either originated, or in progress, ‘from the time when’ the two
heroes first quarreled. The quarrel is initiated by Apollo, not Zeus; and it
is only some time after it is in progress that Zeus begins to be involved.
There is, on this reading, thus, a serious contradiction, described by James
Redfield:

. . . if we take ἐξ οὗ (from that time when) with ἐτελείετο (was coming to

completion), the statement will, by this interpretation, be untrue: the inter-
vention of Zeus does not immediately follow the quarrel but occurs only
after a lapse of many days (cf. Iliad I.423-7). Zeus does not finally take
charge of the battle until the beginning of Book 8.41)

Indeed, arguably, the contradiction is more striking than even Redfield

describes it; for it is not only that Zeus does not intervene for twelve days
after the Muse has been asked to be shown how his ‘plan’ or ‘will’ was being
fulfilled ‘from the time when’ Achilles and Agamemnon first quarreled. On
the surface, rather, as Pierre Carlier observes, it seems as though the request
is to be shown how the quarrel itself is a consequence of this ‘will’ or ‘plan’:

Dès le début de l’Iliade, un problème surgit: quel est ce ‘dessein de Zeus’?

S’agit-il de l’accomplissement de la promesse que le dieu a faite à Thétis de
tuer beaucoup d’Achéens pour venger l’outrage subi par Achille? Cette expli-
cation ne suffit sans doute pas, car la formulation du texte suggère que la
colère d’Achille elle-même est un effet du ‘dessein de Zeus’.42)

And so, apparently, Wilamowitz reads it as well, similarly describing the

“Groll” of Achilles as stemming from the plan of Zeus:

40)
Serious enough, e.g., to motivate efforts to excise the lines. See Düntzer 1872, 170
(quoted in Pagliaro 1963, 11).
41)
Redfield 2001, 471.
42)
Carlier 1999, 119.
16 B. Satterfield / Mnemosyne 64 (2011) 1-20

Den Groll des Achilles gibt der Dichter als Gegenstand seines Vortrages an,
den verderblichen, der nach dem Ratschlusse des Zeus unzähligen Achäern
den Tod brachte. Gleich mit dem nächsten Verse, ‘seitdem Agamemnon und
Achilleus sich nach einem Streite voneinder trennten,’ beginnt die Erzählung,
die ohne Exposition mitten in einer Handlung einsetzt.43)

And so, many others.44) If this reading is correct, however, it only heightens
the contradiction: how are we to understand the proem’s apparent claim
that the quarrel was a result of Zeus’ plan, when compared with the story
of the poem itself, which appears to show Zeus’ actions as a response to
these events which are not originally set in motion by him?
A number of solutions have been urged. The most popular involves tak-
ing ἐξ οὗ with the initial imperative ἄειδε in 1.1, so that we would trans-
late: ‘Sing, goddess, [the story of ] Achilles’ anger . . ., [beginning your song]
from the point when he and Agamemnon first stood apart in strife’.45) This
interpretation has been contested vigorously by Pagliaro, however, who
argues, “Quest’interpretazione è inaccettabile”; for elsewhere—and he
offers a learned discussion of instances (q.v.)—“Invece ἐξ οὗ ha sempre
nell’uso omerico valore specificamente temporale, introducendo un’azione
che precede o condiziona temporalmente l’azione espressa nella prin-
cipale”.46) Further observing that the particle δή directly joined to ἐξ οὗ in
line 6, “serve a determinare la nozione temporale, dando l’atto come com-
piuto”, Pagliaro concludes: “Dato ciò, è palese che ἐξ οὗ non può ricolle-
garsi ad ἄειδε, poiché il valore di sequenza temporale del complesso male
si adatta a indicare la nozione piuttosto locale (ἔνθεν, τῶν ἁμόθεν, . . .)
che si richiederebbe”.47)
Pagliaro’s claim that ἐξ οὗ will not bear a ‘local’ sense is vigorously
argued and his examination of occurrences a necessary philological step.
But given parallels such as τῶν ἁμόθεν . . . εἰπέ from Od. 1.10, it cannot be
decisive. For Pagliaro’s parallels notwithstanding, the genitive in ἐξ οὗ is a

43)
Wilamowitz 1920, 257.
44)
See among more recent commentators Lynn-George 1988, 39, Edwards 1987, 175.
45)
As Pagliaro (1963, 12)—whose whole discussion here see—sums up the scholarly view
to that time: “. . . i traduttori moderni intendono: ‘canta . . . cominciando da quando’ (Festa),
‘pars du jour où’ (Mazon), ‘take up the song from the point when’ (Leaf )”.
46)
Ibid.
47)
Ibid., 13.
 B. Satterfield / Mnemosyne 64 (2011) 1-20 17

simple partitive, and to see it as ‘spatial’ would be perfectly in accord with

its basic grammatical meaning.48) Even so, Pagliaro’s opposition to constru-
ing ἐξ οὗ with ἄειδε seems well taken, if for no other reason than the great
distance that separates them, and the proximity of ἐτελείετο. If, in effect,
we reject taking it with ἐτελείετο, it will be by adopting a less natural and
even strained construction primarily out of concern to avoid the contra-
diction that we can see will result.
To continue with our own line of argument, however: what if this ἐξ οὗ
should again be understood as part of Homer’s request? Rather than try to
resolve the discrepancy through grammatical contortions, we could then
accept it as narratively significant. For we might then understand the dis-
crepancy as arising from Homer’s request that the Muse do one thing in
her story—show that everything that happened was due to Zeus’ agency—
and the Muse’s showing that in fact only some of the events that occurred
were in Zeus’ power.49) Where Homer thus seems to be asking the Muse to
show how the events that inflicted horrible devastation on the Greeks were
in fact the result of some larger plan by Zeus, and so that divine justice and
providence were behind everything that transpired, the Muse shows that
Zeus does exercise a kind of providence—but that that providence is lim-
ited, conditioned by necessities outside of his control. Far from being the
unconditional ruler of all, Zeus has to cope with other gods, and their
competing agendas and necessities. The difference between the story that
Homer asks for and the story that the Muse tells, thus, would be that the
Muses draw our attention to the political nature of the pantheon. For
in marked contrast to a monotheistic conception in which there is no
48)
See, however, Pagliaro’s counterargument (ibid., 13): “La differenza è stata avvertita dal
Von der Mühll [1952, 15] (‘Das ἐξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα ist klärlich etwas anderes als das ἔνθεν
ἑλών des Demodokos θ 500 und das τῶν ἁμόθεν . . . εἰπέ des Odysseedichters B α 10’); ma
le conclusioni che egli ne trae (‘Zwar wählt der Dichter aus einem grossen . . . Zusammen-
hang eine Episode aus, aber diese selber verspricht er von Anfang zu erzählen’) non sono
conformi a tale premessa.”
49)
Interestingly, Redfield (2001, 471) notes that such a possibility seems immanent within
the words and the theme that they concern—and yet also acknowledges that he does not
see a ‘motivation’ for it: “. . . the language of the proem seems to imply the initiative of Zeus
himself; the ∆ιὸς . . . βουλή is mentioned as a primary fact about the poem to follow,
whereas within the poem it is a secondary result of other events. Such misrepresentation of
the poem by the proem is (as we have seen) far from impossible, but it should be motivated
and I see no clear reason for it here.”
18 B. Satterfield / Mnemosyne 64 (2011) 1-20

essential obstacle to the divine will, Zeus’ rule consists not in uncondi-
tioned fiat, but in the harmonization or even tempering of competing
necessities. If Apollo, Achilles, and Agamemnon were, at least in their ini-
tial actions, free agents, acting on their own, then Zeus’ actions were, at
best, a superlative response to the requirements of circumstances beyond
his control and already in motion by the time he began to act. The provi-
dence that the epic reveals thus emerges as complex, problematic, and at
times horrifyingly at odds with human aims or demands.
If this suggestion is even roughly correct, there may be a closer connec-
tion between the end of the Iliad and Zeus’ plan than scholars have gener-
ally appreciated. For while the path to Troy’s fall is cleared through Zeus’
actions in the Iliad as a whole, granting burial to Hektor plays an impor-
tant role in bringing the war among the gods to an end. As Iliad 24 opens,
the gods remain divided—and yet, curiously, the seeds of a new concord
are present as well. For watching Achilles ‘defile bright Hektor in his fury’
(Ἕκτορα δῖον ἀείκιζεν μενεαίνων, 22), Homer tells us, they—meaning
apparently all of the gods without differentiation—‘pitied’ him: τὸν δ᾿
ἐλεαίρεσκον μάκαρες θεοὶ εἰσορόωντες (24.23; ‘and as the blessed gods
looked on they pitied him’). Even in their pity, however, Homer reminds
us that the divisions among them still obtain; for while the rest were ready
to have Hermes ‘steal him away’, Hera, Poseidon, and Athena were unwill-
ing because of Paris’ folly (ἄτης, 28) in having given preference to Helen
in the judgment of Paris. Following Apollo’s appeal, however, Hera effec-
tively acquiesces to Hektor’s burial, thus opening the door to Zeus’ subse-
quent accommodation, insisting only on the caveat—which Zeus picks up
(24.66)—that Achilles and Hektor are not to be held in ‘equal honor’
because the one is a mere mortal, the other the ‘offspring of a goddess’. The
consequences of Hera’s assent and the accommodation that Zeus devises
are thus momentous, even epochal. For in this—the last divine scene of
the epic—something extraordinary has happened: from divisions that are
initially as deep and refractory as the causes of the war itself, the gods have
been brought to agreement around the basic proposition that Hektor is to
be buried.
Do these three discrepancies and my own efforts to see narrative signifi-
cance in them comprise evidence of the Muse’s inspiration? Certainly not
evidence that skeptics would regard as dispositive. And yet those who dis-
miss the proems as hollow conventions offer an unappealing alternative.
 B. Satterfield / Mnemosyne 64 (2011) 1-20 19

Faced with a choice between viewing the proem as a mere “ossified” for-
malism, or a deliberate narrative strategy of evoking interest through the
lively interplay between an internal narrator—the Muse—and an equally
internal ‘Homer’, it seems preferable to regard the subtlety as intentional.
Equally, faced with discrepancies between proem and poem, it seems bet-
ter to embrace a path of interpretation that sees them as the poem’s way of
drawing attention to the Muse’s corrections of Homer; and, if the interpre-
tation offered here is correct, thereby highlighting the new humanism of
epic revealed in Hektor’s right to receive burial.

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