Outward Flourishes

Ajax and Achilles indulge in a game of dice. The latter is winning with a 4.

Still very much intrigued by some of the closing sections of the Odyssey.

Noble Odysseus’ readiness to check Eurycleia’s bursts of joy is apparently at odds with the execution of twelve servant girls deemed unfaithful, just a few verses below. To make matters worse, this Ulysses exacts their names from Eurycleia mere moments after he has checked her jubilous streak, as if establishing a puzzling double standard.

Let’s just say, of course, that the reference to the number twelve is no accident on its own, twelve being the young sons of Troy sacrificed by Achilles in Patroclus’ funeral pyre at the end of the Iliad. Formally, the presence of this number in the Odyssey calls attention to the prevalent circular or geometric mode of composition in Homeric poetry. In narrative terms, only the material deeds of the heroes move irrevocably forward; everything else is platonically locked away in a mortal coil of harmonious repetition.

At any rate, the passage in question is as follows:

When she saw the corpses and all the blood, she made as if to shout loud in triumph at the great deed she saw achieved. But Odysseus stopped her and checked her impulse. ‘Old nurse’, he said, ‘let all rejoicing rest in your heart; do not go too far; utter no cry of exultation. Vaunting over men slain is a monstrous thing. These men have perished because the gods willed it so and because their own deeds were evil. They had no regard for any man, good or bad, who might come their way; and so by their own presumptuous follies they brought on themselves this hideous end. But now you must tell me the whole truth about the women in my palace, which of them are disloyal to me and which are innocent.’

Odyssey XXII 375-466 (in Walter Shewring’s formidable prose rendition).

Lovely, isn’t it? Since this execution effectively alludes to the closing books of the Iliad, let’s just look for a moment at the exact verses in which the sacrifice takes place:

It seems the son of Peleus could have hardly been any more cruel in either actions or words. No other hero in the Iliad, especially one as great as Hector, is ever treated with such venomous contempt.

Comparing both speeches then, we reach the conclusion that Odysseus’ tone happens to be almost conciliatory in nature. He even risks faint irony in ascribing the death of the suitors to the design of the gods, even though those men were “evil“, “presumptuous” and had “no regard for any man“. Athene’s aid to Telemachus and Odysseus no more makes the massacre of the suitors a divine plan than Zeus’ passive support for Achille’s revenge throughout the Iliad. In both instances, the plans of the gods are truly the best laid plans of men (except one of them backfires in the end).

By contrast, the iliadic valediction impresses with its strong words (“pitiless might of fire“, “fire will devour twelve noble sons” and “[Hector eaten] by wild dogs“. ) The words used by Odysseus in his cursive judgement of the suitors now begin to bear upon Achilles, who has in fact performed extremely malignant deeds (outrageous ones, in fact, if you consider his seditious challenge of the river god Skamandros and the pitiless massacre of the Trojan hosts — even those begging for mercy in exchange for a ransom — not to mention the defiling of Hector’s corpse). In essence, Achilles has displayed frightening disregard for any living creature, the same inhumane fault that in Odysseus’ perspective came to justify the demise of the suitors in his palace.

So perhaps this is the difference between the two heroes. Until redemption is achieved with Priam, Achilles’ conduct is intently over the top, an expected extension of his savagery and disregard for humanity following the death of his beloved little Myrmidon (well beyond what would be necessary to achieve glory — kleos – or fulfill a simple flight of retribution). Also noteworthy is how Achille’s bloodlust is one of the few instances in the Iliad in which inhuman practices towards fellow heroes — however minor — explicitly appear. The vague allusion to the taboo of cannibalism is a good example: Achilles spitefully wishes he could eat Hector’s dead flesh raw, but he does not — and could not — perform such uncivilised gesture. Nevertheless, he utters itt.

Odysseus’ punishment of the traitorous servants can still be seen as belonging to the wider scope of his  revenge on the suitors. In fact, he seems to want to make sure that anyone listening to his reprimand is left with no doubt of such fatality of fate. Hence his open allusion to the will of the gods and the subordination of the death of the servants to the misdeeds of the suitors, an inexistent link between Hector’s putative crime and the twelve young Trojans Achilles so eagerly fought, captured, and then burned.