Chapter 4. Single Speeches and Variations on the Battlefield

In each case, the two participants take one turn apiece composed of speech and then action. However, a particular turn may include more than one speech. Length of turn (i.e. how many segments the turn has) does not seem to be associated with whether the speaker is the winner or the loser in an encounter.

Variations on this typical pattern of one turn each for two adversaries on the battlefield generally take two forms. Sometimes two characters or two groups of characters may attack each other in a sequence of more than two turns, but following the usual patterns just described. These scenes vary in length from the common pattern described above, but not in structure, in that speech does alternate with action in the attacks that each side makes. However, there are more than two turns in such lengthened encounters, either because several different characters each take one turn, or because one or both enemies get more than one turn in an encounter between two warriors. In such scenes, typical battlefield {168|169} speech conventions do not undergo any essential change. Alternatively, two enemies may exchange speeches as though they were having a non-battlefield conversation, without any action taking place between the speeches. In contrast to the lengthened but essentially typical structures just mentioned, these conversations transcend the typical patterns of battlefield interactions. Normally, these interactions are not talk-based, but rather include talk as one of several activities. This in itself, besides the content of the conversation, creates emphasis in the scene in which it appears. This strategy appears in some of the most dramatic and significant death scenes in the Iliad in order to highlight the linkages between these different deaths, the depth of hostility between the Greek and Trojan heroes, and the costs these hostilities have for Greeks and Trojans alike.

This is the first of two pairs of Trojan-Greek attack-vaunt turns. In an exchange of vaunts between two individual warriors, which is the normal pattern, this would be the end of the encounter and the narrative would move on to a different aspect of the fighting. In this scene, however, a second pair of turns follows the first one. The sequence proceeds as follows: Polydamas kills Prothoenor and vaunts over him (turn 1); Ajax kills Archelochus in mistake for Polydamas and vaunts (turn 2); Acamas kills Promachus and vaunts over him (turn 3); Peneleus tries to attack Acamas, kills Ilioneus instead, and vaunts over him (turn 4). End of sequence marked by address to the Muses (508). This clash between the Greeks and the Trojans, which marks the high point of the Greeks’ success in battle before their fortunes take a dramatic turn for the worse, consists of four turns of attack-cum-vaunt instead of the usual pair of turns that we find in meetings between enemies. At the end of this unusual series, the address to the Muses further calls the attention of the audience to the Greeks’ success.

This address, like the unusual series of vaunts it follows, emphasizes the point at which the Greeks as a group (as opposed to Achilles as an individual later on in the poem) achieve their greatest success on the battlefield during the course of the Iliad. However, it also reminds the audience that their current success is dependent on the help of Poseidon, and this help is about to be withdrawn.

More Than Two “Speech + Action” Turns: Iliad 21 The extended battlefield exchanges between individuals, as opposed to the group scene I have just been discussing, all relate to the central plot line of the last third of the Iliad: the death of Patroclus and i) its effect on Achilles from an emotional standpoint as well as ii) its connection with both the death of Hector in Book 22 and the death of Achilles after the events of the Iliad. Some of these individual meetings, which will be the focus of this section, take place between Achilles and the Trojans whom he kills in Book 21 during his aristeia. These encounters follow typical patterns for battlefield exchanges, but at greater length, often in such a way as to dramatize the extraordinary nature of Achilles’ rage and alienation from the most basic norms of behavior on the battlefield. Others depart from the usual battlefield speech type and contain conversations. The presence of conversation, as we will see at the end of this chapter, is one of the many unusual features that link the deaths of Patroclus in Book 16 and Hector in Book 22.

The meeting between the Trojan youth Lycaon and Achilles departs from typical patterns for battlefield encounters between enemies in several ways. Basically, this is an example of the “speech + action” turn type. However, Achilles has two turns, although one of them is extremely short and lacks a speech component. In addition, the action component of Lycaon’s turn is not an attack. Lycaon is one of the last of the unfortunate Trojan youths whom Achilles meets in his bloodthirsty rampage in Books 20-21 after he returns to the battlefield following the death of Patroclus. The moment when Achilles first sees Lycaon occasions a narrative flashback: it describes a previous encounter between the two, when Achilles had sold Lycaon into slavery, and refers to the misfortune of the young man in falling into Achilles’ hands so soon after returning home from this period of slavery (34-52). Indeed, Achilles is so surprised at the appearance of Lycaon before him that he exclaims to himself in amazement (53-63). {172|173} This extensive prelude to the actual meeting between the two fighters greatly increases the prominence of the episode and focuses the attention of the audience more closely on the meeting when it does occur.

This unusual couplet, which extends Lycaon’s turn right up to the first words of Achilles’ turn, is the last reference to Lycaon as the central actor. Now Achilles takes his turn, and the Lycaon with whom the audience has been invited to sympathize becomes just one of a possibly endless series of victims of the bereaved and relentless Achilles. Achilles’ turn has several parts. First he speaks to his enemy, but not to threaten Lycaon with his own bravery or employ any of the other motifs we have become accustomed to seeing in pre-attack challenges. Instead he tells Lycaon that now that Patroclus has died, any Trojans whom Achilles meets will be killed, including Lycaon himself (99-106). Achilles refers in the same unemotional, matter-of-fact way to his own eventual death on the battlefield (108-113), which is almost unimaginable in the usual threats and boasts of such speeches.

The turn structure in the Lycaon scene is basically regular, with the exception of Achilles’ very brief first turn (failed attempt to cast his spear) that is essentially simultaneous with Lycaon’s turn. In his turn, Lycaon physically and verbally supplicates Achilles rather than attacking his enemy. Achilles then has a more lengthy turn constructed in the common manner for a battlefield turn. However, the speeches that bracket his fatal attack on Lycaon show an unusual lack of emotion about the notion of being killed on the battlefield, whether it is himself or Trojan youths who are dying. They also generalize this particular encounter to any and all Trojans whom Achilles may meet. This generalizing strain in Achilles’ remarks exists in tension with the various ways in which the narrative highlights the experiences of Lycaon in the first part of the episode and makes him vivid and meaningful to the audience. The audience is invited to participate in this encounter from Lycaon’s perspective at the same time that Achilles sees Lycaon as a fungible representative of a large and indistinguishable class of victims. This contrast in perspectives shows the audience Achilles’ own sense of disengagement from what is happening. {175|176}

Once again, the narrative before the meeting says something about the Trojan whom Achilles is about to meet: we learn about Asteropaeus’ genealogy, which includes the river Axius (140-143) and that Asteropaeus was inspired by the angry river Xanthus to meet Achilles bravely (144-147). Once the actual encounter begins, Achilles asks who Asteropaeus is (150-151) and Asteropaeus tells him (153-160). The subsequent physical attacks are unusually long and furious. First Asteropaeus throws two spears at once. He hits Achilles’ shield with one of them and grazes his arm with the other (161-168). Then, Achilles throws his spear at Asteropaeus and misses (169-172, note especially κατακτάμεναι μενεαίνων “in a fury to kill him” [170]). Undaunted, Achilles unsheathes his sword (173-174). Again, the narrator emphasizes the ferocity of his relentless attack: ἆλτ’ ἐπί οἱ μεμαώς, “[he] sprang upon him in a fury” (174). Meanwhile, Asteropaeus is trying repeatedly and fruitlessly to get Achilles’ spear unstuck from the riverbank where it has landed (174-178). At length Achilles strikes Asteropaeus with the sword and kills him (179-182). Each warrior attacks his opponent more than once (or tries to) instead of the more usual “one attack each” that normally {176|177} follows an exchange of challenge speeches. Now Achilles vaunts over the fallen Asteropaeus (184-199). The content of this vaunt is much more in line with the usual structure of such speeches than what Achilles said to the dead Lycaon: he boasts that his own descent from Zeus has proven more powerful than Asteropaeus’ descent from the river Axius and asserts the power of Zeus over any and all bodies of water.

In the episode with Lycaon, in contrast, the usual turn structure for battlefield encounters appears virtually unchanged but the content of these turns is very unusual. The Lycaon episode exploits common forms to highlight unusual content; the Asteropaeus scene arranges normal content in an unusual sequence. These contrasting narrative techniques are used to represent different aspects of Achilles’ feelings. Together, these two episodes depict the magnitude of Achilles’ alienation now that Patroclus is dead by means of both his detachment as he kills Lycaon and his ferocity against Asteropaeus. When Achilles’ aristeia reaches its climax in his meeting with Hector, he feels both extraordinary detachment and great ferocity. He will display both of these qualities when he meets and kills Hector in Book 22. {177|178}

In the battle scenes discussed up to this point, more than the usual number of turns occurs, or the individual turns are arranged in an unusual order. However, there is never a series of more than two speeches without intervening action. These scenes, however unusual they may be, follow the typical pattern of battle scenes in which speech exchange is part of an ongoing fight, not the sole medium of exchange between the two speakers. Sometimes, on the other hand, two enemies may meet and exchange not simply a vaunt or a series of vaunts that accompany physical attacks, but a series of several speeches without any physical assaults intermingled. In other words, they may have a conversation. Given the rarity of conversation on the battlefield, such conversations draw attention to themselves simply because they exist, and the longer they are, the more attention they command. Indeed, in the books of the Iliad that Fenik 1968 focuses on as representative of battle scenes study (5, 11, 13, 16, and 17), there are 62 single speeches out of 151, or 41% single speeches. This is noticeably higher than the Iliad’s overall percentage of single speeches (28%) and over three times the percentage of single speeches in the Odyssey (13%), where battle scenes are almost entirely absent. To put it another way, the cooperative exchange of conversation is in a basic sense antithetical to the hostilities of battle; when a conversation appears during a fight, the scene thereby transcends rather than simply lengthening or adapting the typical conventions of battle. This only happens in two scenes, both of which have paramount importance for the story as a whole.

Patroclus and Hector, Iliad 16 In Book 16 over half of the speeches are single (13 of 24). This is the highest percentage of single speeches in any book in either the Iliad or the Odyssey. Given this backdrop of single speeches, especially predominant even for battle narrative, the one-on-one conversation that occurs at the end of the book between Hector and the dying Patroclus stands out particularly strongly. When Patroclus meets his doom at the end of Book 16, he is struck down by Apollo (788-806), wounded by Euphorbus (806-817), and finally killed by Hector (818-863). This means that the usual “attack” sequence, in which both enemies make some kind of attack on the other, does not occur here. Instead, Patroclus is wounded and trying to creep away when he is hit by Hector’s spear (818-822). Both this sequence of events, and the conversation that takes place between Patroclus and Hector, dramatize not simply the fact of Patroclus’ death but the process of dying. {178|179}

Before Patroclus dies, he responds to Hector’s vaunt (844-854). This speech stands out for its awareness of the broader framework in which Patroclus’ death takes place. Patroclus begins his speech with Hector’s “now,” in which he is vaunting over a defeated foe (ἤδη νῦν, Ἕκτορ, μεγάλ’ εὔχεο, 844); he reminds Hector that he was the third in a series of adversaries who wounded Patroclus (implying that this is not as impressive a feat as being solely responsible for killing one’s foe); and he ends by saying that death at the hands of Achilles awaits Hector (852-854). In this final speech, Patroclus describes an arc or a dynamic for Hector of victories followed by death that closely mirrors the one that Book 16 depicts for Patroclus himself. The narrative focuses primarily on this dynamic for Patroclus, while the dying hero posits such a cycle for his victorious adversary.

Hector and Achilles, Iliad 22 The death of Hector is one of the high points of the Iliad, both because of its superlative pathos and vividness and because it links together so many past and future deaths of Homeric heroes. As is well known, Hector’s death is linked to Patroclus’, in that Achilles sets out to kill Hector because he was responsible for Patroclus’ death. Indeed, it shares many formulas and structural features with the end of Book 16. Hector’s death is also connected to Lycaon and Asteropaeus’ because Achilles kills them during his aristeia, which reaches its high point when he meets Hector. Hector’s death in turn will lead to Achilles’ own after the events of the Iliad. Fittingly for such a pivotal part of the story, the longest and most famous battlefield conversation in the Iliad occurs when Hector meets his end in Book 22. Although the structure, content, and imagery of many of the individual speeches in this episode have attracted a great deal of attention, neither the unusual presence of a conversation during a fight nor the unique length of this interchange have received much notice. This conversation is one of the longest in the Iliad, battlefield or not, and it includes many elaborations of various kinds. It contains both more turns than usual within a basically normal battlefield sequence and an extended one-on-one conversation. The norms of both conversation and battle types inform this scene, and we can appreciate its effects more fully if we view them against both of these two backdrops simultaneously.

However, the tide is about to turn. When Hector’s spear cast does not injure Achilles and he turns to Deiphobus for another spear, he finds no one there. At this point Hector realizes that he has been tricked, accepting that death is all but upon him. The soliloquy that he gives at this point is the only departure from the alternating turn structure that consistently governs the speeches and attacks in the encounter between Hector and Achilles. Both the disruption of typical conversational structures and the content of the speech itself emphasize the crucial moment at which Hector accepts the inevitability of his own death.

His words here contrast noticeably with the self-confident tone of his reply to the dead Patroclus at the end of Book 16. Moreover, he realizes—as Patroclus did when he made his dying speech—that the gods have been instrumental in his defeat. He ends, as did Patroclus, with a comment about his future: Patroclus’ last words predicted Hector’s death at Achilles’ hands (16.852-854); now Hector resolves that once his death has occurred, it will be a cause of future repute for him.

The regularity of the alternating turn structure elsewhere in this long series of speeches (three turns before this point, five turns afterwards) gives this exceptional speech added prominence. In fact, this soliloquy marks a decisive point in the episode: heretofore, the two heroes speak and attack one another as equals. After the soliloquy, Achilles fatally wounds Hector, and the remainder of their encounter takes place in the context of Hector’s imminent death. Moreover, the presence of Hector’s voice in particular here attracts the sympathy and the attention of the audience to him just before he sustains his fatal wound. The audience gets a vivid and moving glimpse of his thoughts at a brief transitional moment when he is still as strong physically as his adversary is, but he knows that his death is upon him. Although Hector draws his sword and is compared to a mighty bird of prey as he awaits the attacking Achilles (306-311), he expresses no doubt about his imminent death in his soliloquy and the audience could not have felt any either. By allowing the audience to experience Hector’s thoughts directly, and by violating a consistent alternating turn structure to do so, the narrator gives great prominence and vividness to this crucial moment in the story and in particular to Hector’s perspective on his own death.

Having now reached the end of this long and varied sequence, let us review the overall turn structure and locations of the elaborations or variations in this scene:

The first part of this scene (turns 1-3) displays common motifs and turn structures associated with battlefield encounters. Hector’s soliloquy at 4 marks a change: after the fatal attack of Achilles following this speech, a sequence of five speeches in a one-on-one conversation appears. This represents an especially long elaboration on the single vaunt that we would expect to find here. In addition, the narrator skillfully varies the participles modifying the dying Hector in reply introductions for him so as to map out in detail his progress toward death. Finally, the passage describing the death itself between the penultimate speech in the series and the final one uses an expression of great antiquity that appears only in this scene and in the very similar death of Patroclus. The scene focuses on Hector as he grapples with his own death, treating him with both sympathy and nobility as he meets his end. This way of treating Hector is a key {189|190} part of the Iliad’s unique approach to its subject, which underlines throughout that the costs of war fall equally on both sides in a conflict.

The Iliad, unlike the Odyssey, most commonly contains conversations as elaborations or expansions on single speech contexts. In the Epipolesis in Book 4, the normally single genre of the exhortation becomes a series of conversations between Agamemnon and his men. This episode depicts Agamemnon as ineffectual in his speaking and his leadership: when he uses praise, he consistently fails to say anything that changes the behavior of the men to whom he speaks, and no one to whom he gives a rebuke accepts the substance of his remarks. While Agamemnon is shown as an ineffective leader at the beginning of sustained fighting, the various heroes to whom he speaks behave in ways typical for them: Ajax remains silent; Nestor gives advice to his own men; Odysseus disputes with Agamemnon. Thus, the expansion here of the typically single genre of exhortation creates apposite portraits of several of the major Greek fighters. Exhortation, as a genre most typically found on the battlefield, provides a particularly effective lead-in to the fighting that is about to begin.

Once the fighting does get under way, conversations occur almost entirely to dramatize the emotions and behavior of Achilles during his aristeia in Books 21 and 22. Other than the death of Patroclus, whose connections to the death of Hector and to Achilles himself have already been discussed, conversation in battle shows us the tremendous fury and unique detachment that Achilles feels when he returns to battle after Patroclus is killed. These scenes between Achilles and his victims use conversation for several complementary effects. The speeches that the victim makes, and the descriptions of him in the speech frames, depict the victim in a sympathetic light and/or dramatize the scene from his point of view. This implicitly casts Achilles as the unsympathetic figure in these interactions regardless of how he himself behaves. In addition, his own speeches and actions show his rage to be so great that ultimately the gods refuse to sanction it, insofar as Thetis is sent down by Zeus to tell Achilles that he must cease maltreating the body of Hector and return it to Priam for burial. In each of these scenes, conversation appears where a single genre of speech (usually a vaunt) would typically be found. This departure from typical patterns emphasizes the content of the conversation. Moreover, the interchange inherent in conversation provides a striking and effective vehicle for portraying some of the most hostile and intense conflict in the poem. In the Iliad, one-on-one conversation emphasizes the conflict that characterizes all the key relationships in the poem. {190|}