The Iliad and the Odyssey (Classics of World Literature) (6 page)

He, fainting, said: ‘Let me implore, ev’n by thy knees and soul,

And thy great parents, do not see a cruelty so foul

Inflicted on me: brass and gold receive at any rate,

And quit my person, that the peers and ladies of our state

May tomb it . . . ’

Achilles, implacable, refuses to countenance the humane request of returning his body for burial; rather, ‘rage would let me eat thee raw’. He rehearses his refusal to ransom his body to his parents so they can ‘hold solemnities of death’. Rather he will deface his corpse. Hector’s dying words prophesy Achilles’ imminent death; Achilles replies that he will bear his fate. He strips the armour; the Greeks, rushing to see the naked body of their main enemy, comment on its softness as they repeatedly spear it.

Achilles remembers Patroclus. He sends the young men back to sing of their triumph and the imminent downfall of Troy. He devises a terrible, unworthy treatment for the corpse – dragging it by pierced ankles behind his chariot, to the distress of Hector’s mother and father. In anguish, they lament, Priam desperate to beg the body from Achilles, Hecuba forseeing her life of suffering. But Andromache, who mourned him while he was still alive, does not know of his death; she is preparing a bath for his return when she hears the cries. Seeing how he is being treated, she faints and her wedding coronet falls from her head. When she recovers, she laments for herself and bewails the harsh treatment her fatherless son will experience.

Book 23

Book 23 is about the proper treatment of the dead – about the splendid funeral games, the tomb, the ritual of remembrance and celebration of the dead’s fame. But for Achilles these are not sufficient to come to terms with Patroclus’ death. He has to find some compensation to offer him: Trojan dead, twelve princes as a human sacrifice, Hector’s death, despoliation and degradation, his own going without food, drink, washing and shaving. The Achilles who refused compensation from Agamemnon for the slight to his honour, because possessions, ‘though lost, may come again’, but the soul, ‘once gone, never more To her frail mansion any man can her lost pow’rs restore’, now seeks to offer recompense:

‘Now I pay to thy late overthrow

All my revenges vow’d before. Hector lies slaughter’d here

Dragg’d at my chariot, and our dogs shall all in pieces tear

His hated limbs. Twelve Trojan youths, born of their noblest strains,

I took alive; and yet enrag’d, will empty all their veins

Of vital spirits, sacrific’d before thy heap of fire.’

His fury comes from not being able to find anything sufficient. His sleep is disturbed by the ghost of Patroclus, complaining that he is prevented from taking up his proper place among the dead, asking not for revenge but for speedy burial, and that their ashes should in due course lie together in a single urn. Achilles tries to embrace him, but the spirit slips away and Achilles awakes in sorrow.

Preparations for the funeral are completed. There is a chariot procession and a ritual offering of locks of hair. Achilles cuts the lock which was dedicated for a safe return to the river of his home – Patroclus’ death means he will not now return.

The chief mourners stay to build a huge pyre, and the body is wrapped in the fat of sacrificial animals and laid on it. Achilles kills the twelve young nobles, and the pyre is lit with supernatural fire. A tomb, which will also house Achilles, is made over the urn holding the cremated bones, and the funeral games begin.

Achilles provides prizes from his store – cauldrons, tripods, horses, women and iron – for the best in each of the events. In these funeral games, foreshadowing his own, he will preside over others’ demonstrations of prowess rather than demonstrate his own excellence. The first is the chariot race, to be run around a mark in the ground that may be a grave marker now long forgotten [so fragile, it seems, is the hero’s renown]. Nestor gives his son, Antilochus, advice on how to use his skill to excel, even though his horses are not the best – to such good effect that he is second. Diomedes, the favourite, is helped by the gods to come in first. Achilles judges that the best man came in last, because he was fouled, and proposes to award him second place. Antilochus hotly disputes the justice of this. [Achilles of all people should think before taking someone’s publicly awarded prize away from him!] Achilles smiles and diplomatically awards an extra prize of spoil he himself has taken. But then Menelaus objects that Antilochus beat him by cunning, not by being intrinsically better: he judges that he himself deserves second prize because he is superior in power and greatness. When Antilochus submissively owns his inferiority, Menelaus graciously allows him to keep second prize. The unawarded fifth prize Achilles presents to Nestor, as he is no longer able to compete. Nestor remembers with relish the prizes he won when he was in his prime. So the difficult negotiation of who is best is played out and this time resolved, with prizes not lives at stake. Achilles has been reintegrated into society.

The next contest is boxing. Epeius claims to be the best at boxing, even though he falls short in battle. He proves to be right. In the next competition, wrestling, Odysseus and Greater Ajax are the contestants [as they will to be for the arms of Achilles]. They are locked together for so long that the onlookers get restive, and they make a final attempt to throw each other. Odysseus remembers his craftiness and trips Ajax, but Achilles intervenes to award the prize equally.

The foot race is next, in which, like the chariot race, Achilles would be preeminent if he had entered. Odysseus is lying second to the lesser Ajax when after a prayer to Athene, Ajax slips in some dung. Everyone laughs, but he still comes in second. Antilochus ruefully accepts being beaten by a much older man, reminding everyone of Achilles’ speed. Achilles repays the compliment by an extra prize.

The fifth contest is a gladiatorial duel over the armour of Sarpedon, with a sword to the man who gets in a vital thrust. Achilles awards the contest to Diomedes before serious injury.

The single prize for the discus is a precious five year supply of iron. Ajax comes second for the third time. Meriones steals the archery prize from Teucer by an extraordinary shot. The spear throwing is settled without a contest by Achilles, who acknowledges Agamemnon as the best without his having to compete. This compliment completes the games and Achilles’ reconciliation with the commanders.

Book 24

Alone, Achilles weeps for Patroclus, unable to sleep for memories. At dawn, he harnesses the horses and drags Hector’s corpse round Patroclus’ tomb before sleeping, ‘but with Hector’s corse his rage had never done’. The gods take pity on the violated body. Apollo condemns Achilles for being excessive, for lacking both restraining shame and the capacity to endure that is part of man’s lot. He is angering the gods and dishonouring the earth. Thetis, unable to face the gods in sorrow for a mortal, is summoned by Zeus to hear that Hector’s body must be ransomed. She tells Achilles, while Iris goes to Priam to reassure him and offer Hermes as guide. Priam asks his wife, Hecuba, what he should do, as if the message from the gods were immaterial and his earlier intention to beg the body from Achilles had come back to him. This, like many other turning-points in the action, is prompted in parallel both by the gods’ intervention and by the individual’s nature. Hecuba scorns his proposal, saying that Achilles is savage and will neither pity nor respect him. But Priam is determined. He goes with an omen, and Hermes as guide, into the enemy camp.

Trembling, he enters Achilles’ tent and in supplication grasps

. . . fast holding the bent knee

Of Hector’s conqueror, and kiss’d that large man-slaught’ring hand,

That much blood from his sons had drawn.

He speaks to him as a suppliant, reminding him of his father and offering gifts beyond number.

‘Achilles, fear the gods,

Pity an old man, like thy sire, different in only this,

That I am wretcheder, and bear that weight of miseries

That never man did, my curs’d lips enforc’d to kiss that hand

That slew my children.’

His words stirs a passion of grieving for his own father in Achilles, who cries now for him, now for Patroclus. A tragic sympathy binds the two bitter enemies: they grieve for their common, human lot. He sets the old man on his feet: ‘Sit, And settle we our woes, though huge, for nothing profits it. Cold mourning wastes but our lives’ heats.’ Achilles describes the way the gods spin life for unfortunate mortals, lying in unhappiness while the gods themselves have no sorrows. There are two urns at the door of Zeus, from which he dispenses evils and blessings. Peleus was given all blessings, but only one son:

‘One blossom but myself; and I, shaken as soon as blown.

Nor shall I live to cheer his age, and give nutrition

To him that nourish’d me . . . Thyself that did enjoy

(As we have heard) a happy life . . . but when the gods did turn

Thy blest state to partake with bane, war and the bloods of men

Circled thy city, never clear – sit down and suffer then,

Mourn not inevitable things; thy tears can spring no deeds

To help thee, nor recall thy son . . . ’

‘Give me no seat, great seed of Jove, when yet unransomed

Hector lies riteless in thy tents; but deign with utmost speed

His resignation, that these eyes may see his person freed,

And thy grace satisfied with gifts. Accept what I have brought.’

This request provokes Achilles, though already minded to give Hector back. He masters himself and thoughtfully orders that the corpse be washed, anointed and dressed, himself lifting the body on to the litter. He weeps, then:

Cried out for anger, and thus pray’d: ‘O friend, do not except

Against this favour to our foe (if in the deep thou hear),

And that I give him to his sire; he gave fair ransom.’

He provides food for them both. As even Niobe ate when she was worn out with grieving for the loss of her children, so must they. They gaze at each other in wonder, Priam at Achilles’ beauty and grace, Achilles at Priam’s dignity and power of speech. Priam asks for a bed, worn out as he is with lack of food and sleep; Achilles orders two to be made, asking Priam how long a truce he would like for the proper celebration of Hector’s funeral. Eleven days is agreed.

Priam returns with Hector’s body, which is lamented by Cassandra, Andromache, Hecuba and finally Helen, who remembers that he was always kind to her. During the truce they mourn for Hector, until on the eleventh day they build a grave barrow over the bones.

And so horse-taming Hector’s rites gave up his soul to rest.

Introduction to the
Odyssey

Much have I travelled in the realms of gold,

And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;

Round many western islands have I been

Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.

Oft of one wide expanse have I been told

That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne;

Yet never did I breathe its pure serene

Till I heard
Chapman
speak out loud and bold:

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken;

Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes

He stared at the Pacific – and all his men

Looked at each other with a wild surmise –

Silent upon a peak in Darien.

John Keats

The
Odyssey
is the story of all-experiencing Odysseus (Ulysses as Chapman, following Latin usage, called him) who insisted on hearing the Sirens sing – the adventurer among monsters, the lover of goddesses, the traveller flung on foreign shores, the teller of tales. It is the story of Odysseus’ travels, his visits to every sort of human and monstrous society, from those who eat fruit dropping from the trees to those who work a double agricultural shift; from the Aeolians who give divine gifts to their guest – Aeolus’ bag of winds to get them home – to the Cyclops whose guest gift is to eat the guest last. It is also the story of the hero’s return from Troy, being gradually stripped of his men and his standing, the victim of fate and the gods. He is driven to return home not because home is better than the delights of the Lotus eaters or of Calypso – Ithaca is rocky, only good for goats – but because it is where he belongs. Odysseus is stripped even of his name, but he still has a wife, son and father on Ithaca.

Calypso is blunt about their inferior charms – she is a divinely beautiful goddess who can offer him immortality and lordship of her domain; Odysseus agrees that his wife

‘In wit is far inferior to thee,

In feature, stature, all the parts of show,

She being a mortal, an immortal thou,

Old ever growing, and yet never old.

Yet her desire shall all my days see told,

Adding the sight of my returning day,

And natural home.’

Odysseus, gone nearly two decades, may still see Ithaca as his ‘natural home’ but the opening books show that he is on the edge of being displaced. His son is no longer a child but is coming into man’s estate; his wife, pursued by suitors presuming on his death, is being forced to give up her status as his wife and create an independent identity for herself. Odysseus’ identity is not sitting for him back home, waiting with his wife and son to be reclaimed; it must be forged anew in his relationships with an adolescent son and a newly independent, courted woman. The major part of the
Odyssey
is not about one-eyed monsters and clashing rocks, it is about the recognition of others and by Odysseus of who he is.

That recognition is complex and subtle – only for the old dog on the dungheap is recognition easy, only for him is his master the same person as he was twenty years ago. The idea of ‘the return home’, the
nostos
(the word that gives us nostalgia – the pain of longing for home and the past) which runs through the poem is rendered complex by setting it against questions of identity and of stability of personality. Odysseus is self-conscious; there are levels of thought, acuity and strategy in his projection of himself that deepen everything he does, every speech he makes, every tale he tells. His story is that of the ultimate story-teller (his actions at Troy and the accounts of his travels are nearly all presented within the narrative, by himself or a bard). The
Odyssey
is full of archetypal stories: various societies that are mirror images of the norm; various women who seduce or bewitch men; sailors’ tales – whirlpools and clashing rocks, nine-headed monsters and sacred cattle, wicked witches and sirens. The frame for the telling of these stories is the court of Nausicaa – the young princess dreaming (literally) of marriage who goes down to the shore and finds and saves a shipwrecked man. He is gradually discovered to be a great hero of Troy; her father offers him her hand and holds betrothal games at which the hero triumphs. There cannot be a fairy tale ending however, because the unknown hero has a life and wife elsewhere. In becoming part of Odysseus’ story Nausicaa, Calypso, Polyphemus the Cyclops and the rest, lose their control of the ending of their stories; they become figures in a story of one man’s encounter with myth.

Chapman’s
Odyssey

Odysseus’ characteristic quality in Homer is to be
polytropos, poikilometis
–
multifaceted, various-minded. The many sides of Odysseus’ (or Ulysses’) story have fascinated story-tellers from the time of Homer to the twentieth century’s James Joyce and Derek Walcott. Odysseus is the most represented as well as the most variously represented figure of European literature. In Greek tragedy he is the devious, amoral politician; in the Troy Tales popular in the Roman world he is a figure of romance; a long-established moralising tradition was concerned to interpret his story as exemplary (Odysseus bound to the mast a type of Christ’s crucifixion): his wanderings as expiatory and exemplifying the Roman and Christian virtues of patience, fortitude and prudence.

Chapman revered Odysseus and revelled in the richness and resonance of his stories. He responded to and could convey all the different sides of Odysseus – his craftiness and inventiveness, his ability to survive, his extraordinary venturesomeness, his passion and his careful reserve. He can render with wonderful ease the many shades of Odysseus’ experiences – the moments of searing emotion, such as when Odysseus tries to embrace his mother’s shade in the Underworld:

‘ . . . when I had great desire to prove

My arms the circle where her soul did move.

Thrice prov’d I, thrice she vanish’d like a sleep,

Or fleeting shadow, which struck much more deep

The wounds my woes made, and made ask her why

She would my love to her embraces fly,

And not vouchsafe that ev’n in hell we might

Pay pious Nature her unalter’d right.’

and moments of high fantasy: the Sirens

‘ . . . sit amidst a mead,

And round about it runs a hedge or wall

Of dead men’s bones, their wither’d skins and all

Hung all upon it . . . ’

the strange landscapes, such as Calypso’s magic isle:

A grove grew

In endless spring about her cavern round,

With odorous cypress, pines and poplars, crown’d,

Where hawks, sea-owls and long-tongu’d bitterns bred,

And other birds their shady pinions spread –

All fowls maritimal; none roosted there

But those whose labours in the water were.

A vine did all the hollow cave embrace,

Still green, yet still ripe bunches gave it grace.

Four fountains, one against another, pour’d

Their silver streams, and meadows all enflow’r’d

With sweet balm-gentle and blue violets hid,

That deck’d the soft breast of each fragrant mead.

Ithaca is a starker setting than the Phaeacia and Mycenae of the earlier books, both physically (Ithaca is economically and materially a Dark Age society) and morally – Odysseus is disguised as a beggar, bringing bloody revenge on the suitors. Chapman is at home in both settings – in both he moves from sensitive emotional perceptions to high drama; he is extraordinary in being able to follow Homer in endowing the everyday world of Ithaca with a sheen of graceful materiality. Chapman, like Homer and like Odysseus, delights in both a well-crafted door and a well-fabricated tale.

One description stands out as an example – Odysseus’ description of his making of the marriage bed out of a living olive tree. This is the central moment of the
Odyssey,
the final proof that Odysseus is who he is, the final recognition of Odysseus by Penelope after doubt, trickery and disguise. It is significant that Odysseus is recognised by his description of his act of craftsmanship; the bed, immovable, stands as the symbol of Odysseus’ return to the centre of his household, never to be dislodged; the olive tree stands for shelter and resource for generations past and future. All this resonates in Chapman’s description of the ‘masterpiece, a wonder done By me and none but me.’

‘There was an olive tree that had his growth

Amidst a hedge, and was of shadow proud,

Fresh, and the prime age of his verdure show’d,

His leaves and arms so thick that to the eye

It showed a column for solidity.

To this had I a comprehension

To build my bridal bow’r; which all of stone,

Thick as the tree of leaves, I rais’d, and cast

A roof about it nothing meanly grac’d,

Put glu’d doors to it, that op’d art enough.

Then from the olive every broad leav’d bough

I lopp’d away, then fell’d the tree, and then

Went over it both with my axe and plane,

Both govern’d by my line. And then I hew’d

My curious bedstead out; in which I shew’d

Work of no common hand. All this begun,

I could not leave till to perfection

My pains had brought it; took my wimble, bor’d

The holes as fitted, and did last afford

The varied ornament which showed no want

Of silver, gold, and polished elephant.

An ox hide dyed in purple then I threw

Above the cords . . . ’

Homer, and Chapman, are master story-tellers of an age now gone, an age of heroes and craft traditions now lost. Both inlay into the everyday, material world descriptions of the miraculous fashioning of the heirlooms from that heroic past. When Telemachus visits Sparta, Menelaus offers him a guest gift:

‘Of all my house-gifts then, that up I lay

For treasure there, I will bestow on thee

The fairest, and the greatest price to me.

I will bestow on thee a rich carv’d cup,

Of silver all, but all the brims wrought up

With finest gold: it was the only thing

That the heroical Sidonian king

Presented to me, when we were to part

At his receipt of me, and ’twas the art

Of that great artist that of heav’n is free –

And yet ev’n this will I bestow on thee.’

It seems likely that Homer not so much wrote as stitched together the
Odyssey
: bound Dark Age and Golden Age reflections into a multi-layered, beautifully crafted whole. Chapman had the versatility, responsiveness and poetic craft to convey those many layers and to set within and against them a variegated, various-minded, heroic Odysseus:

A much-sustaining, patient, heav’nly man

Whose genius turns through many ways to truth.

Chapman, drawing on the creative energy, language and ethos of an age opening itself up to the masterpieces of the past, felt particularly in tune with Homer. Coleridge said that Chapman’s translations were as Homer would have written if he had lived in Elizabethan England; Chapman’s translations make one feel moreover that Homer would have
enjoyed
living in Elizabethan England – that he would have felt at home and that his works would have been richly and popularly appreciated. Chapman’s Homer was not performed at the Globe, but maybe that omission can be rectified . . .

Books 1–4

The opening books of the
Odyssey
deal not with Odysseus himself but with what his absence means to those left behind. Odysseus has lost the battle to bring his men safe home from Troy and is alone with the nymph Calypso, who has trapped him in her caves. The story opens as the deadlock and inactivity on Calypso’s island and on Ithaca are about to be broken by the gods’ intervention – Odysseus is about to be released from his very pleasant gaol and go home.

On Ithaca Odysseus’ baby son of nearly twenty years ago is about to enter manhood. Both he and his mother Penelope are trapped by Odysseus’ disappearance – he is neither son nor king, she neither wife nor widow: they cannot move on until they hear news of Odysseus’ safety or death. In the absence of a head of the household a swarm of suitors have settled in the house, devouring Telemachus’ inheritance. From the perspective of Mount Olympus, the home of the gods, it is clear that it is time the stalemate is broken.

Hermes is dispatched to order Calypso to release Odysseus while Athene, disguised as Odysseus’ old friend Mentas, goes to Telemachus to give him self-confidence. Her very arrival prompts Telemachus’ first adult responsible act – looking up from musing on his absent father, he notes with displeasure that a guest is not being attended to. He hastens to greet and entertain him, as is proper to the master of the household. The goddess sits down to advise him, recommending that he set out to find what has happened to his father. In the course of talking to the goddess Telemachus grows from a despondent, unsure child to a young adult, encouraged by Athene/Mentas to take action in the same way that Apollo impelled the young Orestes to avenge his father King Agamemnon.

His new maturity is immediately evident to Penelope, who is told to look to her handiwork and leave discussion to the men, and especially to him who is now master of the house:

‘Go you then in, and take your work in hand,

Your web, and distaff, and your maids command

To ply their fit work. Words to men are due,

And those reproving counsels you pursue –

And most to me of all men, since I bear

The rule of all things that are manag’d here.’

Book 1 ends with Telemachus speaking sharply to the suitors, Book 2 starts with him exerting himself over the Assembly, called for the first time since Odysseus went away.

The suitors are minor lords of Ithaca and of surrounding areas. Those eligible to come to the Ithacan assembly protest against Telemachus’ complaints that for nearly four years they have eaten up house and home – it is Penelope, they claim, who is causing the delay:

‘Your mother, first in craft, is first in cause.