1
The Helplessness of Thetis
In a key passage in Book 1 of the Iliad Achilles, in order to obtain from Zeus the favor that will determine the trajectory of the plot, invokes not Athena or Hera, those powerful, inveterate pro-Greeks, but his mother. The Iliad's presentation of Thetis, as we recall, is of a subsidiary deity who is characterized by helplessness and by impotent grief. Her presentation of herself is as the epitome of sorrow and vulnerability in the face of her son's mortality. Consider her lament to her Nereid sisters at 18.54-62.
Alas for my sorrow, alas for my wretched-best-
childbearing,
since I bore a child faultless and powerful,
preeminent among heroes; and he grew like a young
shoot,
I nourished him like a tree on an orchard's slope,
I sent him forth with the curved ships to Ilion
to fight the Trojans. But never again shall I
welcome him
returning home to the house of Peleus.
Still, while he lives and looks on the sunlight
he grieves, and I, going to him, am all unable to
help him.
We can hardly fail to question, then, why a figure of evidently minor stature—whose appearances in the poem are few—serves such a crucial function in its plot. Why, that is, does the poem assign to Thetis the awesome role of persuading Zeus to set in motion the events of the Iliad , to invert the inevitable course of the fall of Troy? Our initial answer to this might be, because Achilles is her son, and this poem is his story; but a methodologically more fruitful way of posing the question is, why has the Iliad taken as its hero the son of Thetis?
Let us begin by recalling the specific terms of Achilles' appeal to his mother in Book 1. He asks Thetis to make his request of Zeus, reminding her of how she saved Zeus when the other Olympians wished to bind him:
(1.393-412)
But you, if you are able to, protect your own son:
going to Olympos, pray to Zeus, if in fact you ever
aided the heart of Zeus by word or action.
For I have often heard you in my father's halls
avowing it, when you declared that from Kronos'
son of the dark clouds
you alone among the immortals warded off
unseemly destruction
at the time when the other Olympians wanted to
bind him,
Hera and Poseidon and Pallas Athena;
but you went, goddess, and set him free from his
bonds,
quickly summoning the hundred-handed one to
high Olympos,
the one whom the gods call Briareos, but all men
call
Aigaion—for he is greater in strength than his
father—
who, rejoicing in his glory, sat beside the son of
Kronos.
And the blessed gods feared him, and ceased
binding Zeus.
Reminding him of these things now sit beside him
and take his knees,
in the hope that he may somehow be willing to help
the Trojans
and the others—the Achaeans—to force against the
ships' sterns and around the sea
as they are slaughtered, so that they may all benefit
from their king,
and so that the son of Atreus, wide-ruling
Agamemnon, may realize
his disastrous folly, that he did not honor the best of
the Achaeans.
Here we see the Iliad alluding to aspects of Thetis's mythology that it does not elaborate and that do not overtly reflect the subject matter of heroic poetry. Why does it do so? The question is twofold: why does it allude to Thetis's power, and why does its reference remain only an allusion? Why does it, moreover, present us with an apparent contradiction: if the mother of Achilles is so helpless, why was she able to rescue Zeus; and if she rescued Zeus, why is she now so helpless?
Why does the Iliad remind us of Thetis's efficacious power in another context while it presents her to us in an attitude of lamentation and grief without recourse?
In order to establish the proper framework for answering these questions, we begin our poetic archaeology. If we can set the Homeric use of Thetis into the perspective of her mythology, we may be led, as suggested earlier, to a deeper comprehension of Homeric poetics as well as to a richer appreciation of the specific themes associated with Achilles' divine origin. Our best initial index of comparison with the Iliad's Thetis is afforded by Thetis's role in another epic treatment, the Cycle's Aethiopis , where we are presented not only with Thetis and Achilles but with a strikingly similar relationship, namely that of the divine Dawn Eos and her son Memnon.
The heroic identity of the Trojan ally Memnon was established in the Aethiopis , whose now-lost five books related his single combat against Achilles, among other events.[1] In the Aethiopis , the confrontation between Achilles and Memnon seems to have made use of the same narrative features that characterize the climactic duel of Iliad 22: the contest followed upon the death of Achilles' close friend at the hands of his chief Trojan ad-
[1] See Proclus's summary in Allen, Homeri opera , vol. 5, 106. For a discussion of the range of its contents, see Severyns, Cycle épique , 313-27; also G. L. Huxley, Greek Epic Poetry: From Eumelos to Panyassis (London, 1969), 144-49. On the structure and style of the Cycle, see Kullmann, Quellen der Ilias, 204ff., esp. 212-14.
versary and was preceded by Thetis's prophecy of the outcome.
In the Aethiopis Achilles avenged the killing of Nestor's son Antilokhos, whose death at the hands of Memnon is referred to at Odyssey 4.187-88. Proclus's summary of this section goes as follows:
[2]
So Memnon, the son of Eos, wearing armor made by Hephaistos, arrives to aid the Trojans; and Thetis prophesies to her son things about Memnon. In the encounter that takes place Antilokhos is killed by Memnon, whereupon Achilles kills Memnon. Then Eos, having asked Zeus for immortality for Memnon, bestows it on him.
Memnon, although functioning in a role like Hector's, is a mirror image of the Iliadic Achilles. The association of these two heroes, not principally as adversaries but as parallel figures, is reflected in the poetry of Pindar, who more than once describes Memnon in terms appropriate to Achilles in the Iliad —singularly so, as they are the terms Achilles uses of himself—calling him
[2] See Allen, Homeri Opera , vol. 5, 106.
not return home again").[3] Preeminent among his allies, bearing armor made by Hephaistos, Memnon is the child of a divine mother, Eos, and a mortal father, Tithonos. This last feature was apparently given emphasis by the narrative shape of the Aethiopis : the actual presence of the two goddesses Eos and Thetis on the field of battle, contrasting the mortal vulnerability of the opponents with their equal heritage from the mother's immortal line, may have generated the poem's narrative tension.[4] What the Iliad treats as a unique and isolating phenomenon, the Aethiopis developed along alternative traditional lines, giving prominence to the theme of mortal-immortal duality by doubling its embodiment, in the two heroes Memnon and Achilles.
Iconographic evidence supplements the version of the myth given by the Aethiopis . The symmetry of the two heroes is reflected in numerous examples of archaic pictorial art.[5] Vase paintings illustrating the monomachia
[3] Nem . 6.50. See also Ol . 2.83 and Nem . 3.63. References are to the Oxford edition of Pindar by C. M. Bowra (1947; reprint, 1961).
[4] To precisely what effect the Aethiopis used this traditional parallelism is of course a matter for speculation; in any case, as the iconographic evidence indicates (see note 6 below), the poem very likely transmitted this inherited confrontation without special innovation. W. Burkert, Greek Religion (Cambridge, Mass., 1985), 121, observes, "When Achilles fights with Memnon, the two divine mothers, Thetis and Eos, rush to the scene—this was probably the subject of a pre-Iliad epic song."
[5] Pausanias (3.18.12) reports that their confrontation in single combat was depicted on the decorated throne in the sanctuary at Amyklae in Laconia. See the discussion in A. Schneider, Der troische Sagenkreis in der ältesten griechischen Kunst (Leipzig, 1886), 143ff; also Pestalozzi, Achilleis als Quelle der Ilias, 11.
of Memnon and Achilles significantly portray Eos and Thetis facing each other, each at her son's side.[6] The parallelism persists even in the outcome of the duel, although ultimately one hero will win and the other will lose. Vase painting corroborates the existence, in the tradition also shared by the Aethiopis , of a kerostasia in which Hermes weighs the keres of Memnon and Achilles in the presence of Eos and Thetis.[7] In the Aethiopis ,
[6] In his important study The Iliad in Early Greek Art (Copenhagen, 1967), K. Friis Johansen, referring to "a well-known type of picture that was very popular in early Greek art, a conventional monomachy framed by two standing female figures," points out that "there can be no doubt that this type was originally invented for the fight between Achilles and Memnon in the presence of their mothers Thetis and Eos" (200-201). According to Pausanias (5.19.2), the scene was also represented on the relief-decorated chest of Kypselos at Olympia: the two heroes duel, each with his mother at his side. M. E. Clark and W. D. E. Coulson discuss the iconography of the Aethiopis and its adaptations in painting, as well as the poem's relation to the Iliad , in "Memnon and Sarpedon," MH 35 (1978): 65-73. See also K. Schefold, Myth and Legend in Early Greek Art (London, 1966), 45, together with plate 10 (Athens National Museum 3961.911).
[7] On the iconography of this subject, see RE 23.2 (1959), 1442, s.v. "Psychostasie" (E. Wust); G. E. Lung, "Memnon: Archäologische Studien zur Aethiopis " (Diss., Bonn, 1912), 14-19; and the discussion in Johansen, Iliad in Early Greek Art , 261. The weighing of the fates of Memnon and Achilles is not specifically mentioned by Proclus in his summary, although it provided the subject for Aeschylus's lost play Psychostasia , as we learn from schol. A ad 8.70 and Eust. 8. 73.699.31, among others. For views in support of its existence in the Aethiopis , see Clark and Coulson, "Memnon and Sarpedon"; B. C. Dietrich, "The Judgment of Zeus," RhM 107 (1964): 97-125, esp. 112-14; Severyns, Cycle épique , 318-19.
the paired mothers are equated in their involvement in the struggle, each present to protect her son.
The efforts of Thetis and Eos in the Aethiopis are essentially identical. In only one respect are Thetis and Eos distinguished in Proclus's summary of the Aethiopis . Unlike Eos, Thetis communicates to Achilles some foreknowledge about his adversary:
Eos requests of Zeus, and obtains, immortality for Memnon. Thetis does not actually ask Zeus for immortality for Achilles; but she herself "having snatched her
[8] Schoeck, Ilias und Aethiopis, 38-48, contributes the interesting observation that the Iliad makes reference to a prophecy from Thetis precisely at those junctures where the question of Achilles' return to battle arises, e.g., 11.790ff.; 16.36-50. He argues that the Iliad in this way adverts to a "Memnonis" prototype, in which Thetis's prophecy was the specific cause of Achilles' absence from battle; that is, Achilles absented himself from battle at his mother's request.
son away from the pyre, transports him to the White Island."[9] Like Elysion, the White Island represents the refuge of immortality for heroes, where they live on once they have not avoided but—even better—transcended death.[10] The Aethiopis , then, emphasized the hero's divine heritage as a way of separating him from ordinary human existence and his access to communication with the gods as a way of resolving the conflict between heroic stature and mortal limitation.
The tradition represented by the Aethiopis and by our iconographic examples thus posits an identity not only between Achilles and Memnon but between Thefts and Eos, based on their roles as immortal guardians and protectors of their mortal children. From a narrative standpoint this parallelism is more than an instance of the Cycle's fondness for repetition or doublets.[11] The
[9] See Allen, Homeri opera , vol. 5, 106.
[10] The use of the White Island motif, like that of Elysion at Odyssey 4.563, is an acknowledgment of the religious and social phenomenon of the hero-cult, which is generally excluded from direct reference in epic. E. Rohde, Psyche: Seelencult und Unsterblichkeitsglaube der Griechen , vol. 2, 4th ed. (Freiburg, 1898; Tübingen, 1907), 371, calls Leuke a "Sonderelysion" for Achilles. Rohde offers a discussion of the thematic equivalence of Leuke, Elysion, and the Isles of the Blessed on pp. 365-78. On Elysion as a cult concept, see W. Burkert, "Elysion," Glotta 39 (1961): 208-13; and Th. Hadzisteliou Price, "Hero-Cult and Homer," Historia 22 (1973): 133-34. On the traditional poetic diction of "snatching," or abducting, used (at least by Proclus) to describe Thetis's action here, see note 28 below.
[11] E. Howald examines doubling as a feature of the evolution and transmission of myth in Der Mythos als Dichtung (Zurich, 1937); on doublets in the Cycle in particular, see Howald's Der Dichter der Ilias (Erlenbach-Zurich, 1946), 125.
Aethiopis shows us not a recapitulation of a prior situation by a subsequent one, but a rendering of the mythological equation between the two figures as a simultaneous juxtaposition, a mirroring, in which each reflects, and must assume the dimensions of, her counterpart.
The virtual identity of the two mothers asserted by the tradition transmitted by the Aethiopis as well as by pictorial representations reinforces the uniqueness of Thetis in the Iliad , the incomparable singularity of her position, to which the poem explicitly calls attention at 18.429-34:
Hephaistos, is there anyone, of all the goddesses on
Olympos,
who has endured so many baneful sorrows in her
heart,
as many as the griefs Zeus the son of Kronos has
given me beyond all others?
Of all the daughters of the sea he forced on me a
mortal man
Aiakos' son Peleus, and I endured the bed of a
mortal man
Utterly unwilling though I was.
But if the Iliad treats Thetis's position as unparalleled, then an examination of its treatment in the light of the sources of the Thetis-Eos equation can serve as an introduction to the Iliad's process of interpreting and selectively shaping its mythology, preserving for us aspects of Thetis that elucidate her role in the Iliad even when Eos is not present to help evoke them.
Comparative evidence indicates the connection of several female deities who are notable in Greek and Indic mythologies to the prototype of an Indo-European Dawn goddess, *Ausos.[12] The representatives of this important Indo-European figure who most closely assume her functions in their respective poetic traditions are Indic Usas and Greek Eos. The shared attributes of these Greek and Indic Dawn goddesses, which link them to their prototype, yield a still more productive legacy in Greek epic, however, where they are inherited by Aphrodite, among others.
In analyzing the elements that Aphrodite and Eos share and that identify them (with Usas) as descendants of the Indo-European Dawn goddess, we recognize motifs that are significant in the story of Thetis.[13] Chief
[13] The evidence for the Indo-European origins of Aphrodite, Eos, and Usas is presented in D. D. Boedeker, Aphrodite's Entry into Greek Epic (Leiden, 1974), whose subject is Greek epic's integration of Aphrodite's inherited features, through diction and theme, into its development of her character and role. See also the observations in P. Friedrich, The Meaning of Aphrodite (Chicago, 1978), who holds that "the Proto-Indo-European goddess of dawn was one of several main sources for the Greek Aphrodite" (31).
among these is the association of the immortal goddess with a mortal lover.[14] Like Usas in the Vedic hymns, Eos unites with various lovers, among whom Tithonos is prominent in epic; Aphrodite has union with several, notably Anchises; and Thetis is joined to Peleus. Although the outcome of a love relationship between immortal and mortal may be benign, the potential for extraordinary pathos in such a story is clear. In these instances the inherent tension resulting from the juxtaposition of immortal and mortal is involved with a specific and fundamental connection between the timeless goddesses and time itself.
The function of the Dawn goddess in Indo-European religious traditions, and hence the inherited function of Eos, is the model for this connection. Eos brings the day into being: in a sense she creates time, as at Odyssey 5.390:
but when beautiful-haired Dawn had accomplished
the third day.
[14] Boedeker, Aphrodite's Entry , 67, notes: "The tradition of the mortal lover of the Dawn-goddess is an old one; in Greek epic it is surely the most obvious aspect of Eos' mythology. Comparative evidence from the Rg-Veda indicates that this feature of solar mythology dates back to common Indo-European, although in Greek myth it may have been amplified beyond its original importance." See also C. P. Segal, "The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite: A Structuralist Approach," CW 67 (1974): 205-12.
As she brings the day into existence and, in effect, controls time, time controls the lives of men, by aging them; yet the goddess herself is unaging, ever-renewed.[15] Eos's epithet
Eos and her lovers serve as the model for goddess-mortal relationships, with their essential antithesis between the timelessness of the goddess and the temporality of her lover.[16] Eos and her lovers are even cited by characters within epic as exemplary of such relationships. Aphrodite herself tells Eos's story (Hymn. Horn. Aphr . 218-38); Kalypso knows it as well, even though, as the Odyssey points out, she lives very far away (Od . 5.121); and both compare it to their own stories. The marriage of Thetis to Peleus exhibits the same antithetical pattern. Because Eos typifies such goddess-mortal relationships, Thefts is perceived synchronically as being connected with her, as in the Aethiopis , and thus shares dictional features associated with her—although Thetis cannot definitively be shown, as Eos has been, to be a direct descendant, or hypostasis, of the Indo-European
[15] On the similarly ambivalent nature of the Indic Dawn Usas, see A. K. Coomaraswamy, "The Darker Side of Dawn," Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections 94.1 (1935): 1-18, esp. 4-6.
[16] See Boedeker, Aphrodite's Entry , 69.
Dawn goddess; their relationship is structurally homologous, rather than historical.
In Greek epic, the themes attached to the goddess and her mortal lover are recapitulated, with much greater emphasis, in the relationship between the goddess and her son, the offspring of her union with her mortal lover. Eos and Memnon, as an instance of this, reinforce the Eos-Thetis parallel. But in the case of Eos, the pattern of whose relationship with Tithonos is repeated in part with Memnon—when she requests and obtains his immortality—the erotic aspect of her mythology dominates. Thetis's erotic aspect, discernible (as we shall see) in the tradition followed by Pindar and Aeschylus, where both mortal and immortal partners woo her, is subordinated to her maternal aspect, as she appears in the Iliad .
In the Iliad , the collocation of Thetis's activities with early morning may reflect the association with Eos and her time-related function, inherited from Indo-European tradition. At 18.136, Thetis tells Achilles that she will seek armor from Hephaistos for him at dawn:
(1.496-97)
[17] This association is recalled by Apollonius (Argon . 4.841).
she rose from the sea's wave
and early in the morning ascended to the great sky
and Olympos.
Later, Hera rebukes Zeus for conferring with Thetis at the latter's request, saying:
(1.555-57)
But now I fear dreadfully that she won you over,
silver-looted Thetis, daughter of the old man of
the sea,
for early in the morning she sat with you and
clasped your knees.
Apart from being used of Thetis,
The use of
The reason that such diction and the motifs to which it is attached have worked their way into the narrative is to be found in the themes of the epic as a whole.[19] A preeminent concern of our Iliad is the problem of mortality. While it is characteristic of epic not to confine its thematic expression to its principal character, the Iliad centers definitively in the monumental figure of Achilles, whose life represents the fullest embodiment of this theme.[20] In our Iliad , the mainspring of Achilles' developing sense of values is his consciousness of the
brevity of human life, and especially the extreme brevity that the war enforces. He finds the meaning of any situation by measuring it against the irreducible fact of the brevity of life. In the course of the poem, the value that he assigns to such meaning will be transformed. Because his life will be short, his dishonor at the hands of Agamemnon is initially seen to be all the more important; later, with Achilles' increased perspective on what it means to have a short life, honor from Agamemnon will have no value for him.
From the outset, the Iliad presents Achilles as possessing a powerful, personal sense of his own mortality. His first assertion of this is to Thetis, when he originally invokes her assistance at 1.352:
Mother, since you did bear me to be short-lived.
That the adjective
[21] Hektor and Lykaon are the two characters to whom Achilles expresses the necessity of recognizing and accepting death; as he himself has done it, so they must do it as well. The adjective is used otherwise only of two Trojan warriors, Simoeisios and Hippothoos, at the precise point at which each meets his death (4.478 = 17.302).
(15.612-14)
So Hektor was to be minunthadios ;
for now Pallas Athena was already driving his death
day
upon him, beneath the strength of the son of Peleus.
Thetis's reply in Book 1 more than confirms the insight that ultimately, in Book 24, enables Achilles to place his brief existence in the context of others' lives— but through which, initially, he is isolated as epic poetry isolates no other single hero. His role and his self-perception converge, whereby the plot of the Iliad is multiply determined. Thetis's response at 1.416,
since now your destiny is brief, of no length,
uniquely then speaks of an
to" or "beyond, in contravention of" aisa —or he can have an evil aisa , but only Achilles has a brief aisa —a destiny that is nothing other than the span of his life.[22]
Equally remarkable is Thetis's use of the compound
(1.417-18)
For now you are swift in fate and wretched beyond
all men.
Like aisa , the word okumoros acquires a new meaning when used of Achilles. Its principal meaning appears at 15.441, where Ajax uses it of the arrows belonging to the archer Teucer:
(15.440-41)
Where now are your arrows
of quick death and the bow that Phoibos Apollo
gave you?
Here the original meaning, "bringing swift death," is evident.[23] But elsewhere in the poem this adjective is applied only to Achilles and only by Thetis, who repeats it
[22] See page 104.
[23] This meaning is confirmed by the Odyssey's use of the adjective at 22.75, where it is used of the arrows aimed against the suitors by Odysseus.
at 18.95, replying or prophesying in response to Achilles' declaration to avenge Patroklos's death:
Then you will be swift in fate, my child, from what
you say.
Later in Book 18, requesting the aid of Hephaistos, she says:
(18.457-58)
if you are willing to give a shield to my son swift
in fate.
Used of Achilles, the word describes not the agent but the victim of moros . In effect both functions are joined in Achilles, who participates in bringing about his own swift death. Because moros can mean destiny as well as death, okumoros characterizing Achilles could be said to mean "swiftly fated" and to denote the same idea expressed by aisa minuntha , namely, that for Achilles destiny is a synonym for life span.
Achilles, then, has special diction that distinguishes his experience as the limiting case of the experience of mortality. Its use by Thetis lays great stress on this; it is the essence of her appeal to Zeus:
(1.505-6)
Honor my son who is swiftest in death of all
mortals.
The poem uses Thetis to view Achilles' life from a cosmic perspective that enhances its stature as it throws into relief its brevity. Her close connection with Achilles' recognition of his mortal condition—and with all the most human aspects of his nature—contrasts sharply with the role shared by Eos and Thetis in the Aethiopis , which emphasized their sons' access to divinity. It shows as well how Achilles has been developed in the Iliad beyond the stage in which he and Memnon were correspondingly parallel and minimally differentiated from each other.
The Iliad establishes Achilles as the limiting case of human brevity and thus insists on the disparity between his situation and the timelessness of Thetis.[24] Unlike the Aethiopis , however, the Iliad does so not in order to value more highly the acquisition of immortality, but to define the boundaries of human life that it accepts as final. Thetis and her mythology are put to radically different use in the Iliad . Through her the Iliad offers not the immortality of the Aethiopis , but a conception of heroic stature as inseparable from human limitation and of
heroic experience as a metaphor for the condition of mortality, with all its contradictions. No hero in the Iliad is given immortality, which would be utterly incompatible with such a perspective; the possibility is entirely absent. The premise of the poem, as conveyed through the characters' own perceptions, is that the idea of immortality expresses only the extreme of imagination against which the reality of human potential and limitation is measured and comprehended.[25]
Achilles' discovery of identity—of values, of morality—is inseparable from the apprehension of mortality; that discovery becomes necessary and has meaning only if immortality is precluded. The battle as a context for events to be celebrated in epic may well have originated as a setting for descriptions of extraordinary exploits involving physical prowess and designating a hierarchy of heroes. But where the life-and-death import of the action may in other epic treatments have been only a framework, in the Iliad it becomes the subject itself. The heroism of Achilles emerges not so much because his exploits distinguish him as because the battle serves as a setting in which every choice, every action, becomes all-important—an arena where one's life is most closely bound to the lives of others and where, for that rea-
[25] As expressed, for instance, in the famous speech of Sarpedon to Glaukos at 12.309-28. On this subject, see the penetrating discussion of Whitman, Homer and the Heroic Tradition , 181-220; see as well the insights in S. L. Schein, The Mortal Hero: An Introduction to Homer's Iliad (Berkeley, 1984), 67-84.
son, the definition of the self comes urgently into question. Prowess becomes peripheral to the crisis of the self relative to one's own expectations and the lives of others.
To speak of the evolution of the Iliad , therefore, is to speak of the growth of the idea of the hero. The very story the poem tells embodies that evolution, describing the coming into being of the new hero. It tells the story of the making of its own subject matter. This is what Thetis's request to Zeus in Iliad 1 signifies, in contrast to Eos's in the Aethiopis . For in this sense, what Thetis asks Zeus to give Achilles is the opportunity to become the hero of the Iliad , to create the terms by which heroism will be redefined.
The Iliad explores the theme of mortality precisely by evoking and transforming an important traditional motif in such a way that the transformation expresses the premise of the poem. Placed in the context of the tradition the Iliad evokes, the equation of Thetis and Eos seeking immortality for their sons, Thetis's appeals to Zeus and later to Hephaistos on behalf of Achilles' vulnerability can be understood as significant examples of how the poem develops its major theme.
Certain elements in the constellation of motifs common to the divinities sharing the mythology of the Dawn goddess are preserved by the Iliad ; others are significantly reworked. The motif of the goddess's protection of the mortal hero she loves is a central traditional feature shared by the immortal mothers (and lovers) who inherit, or are assimilated to, the mythology of the
Dawn goddess.[26] Its variations, apart from Eos and Thetis in the Aethiopis , include Kalypso in the Odyssey and Aphrodite in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite as well as in the Iliad .[27] This tradition is well known to the Iliad , where in two dramatic episodes Aphrodite acts to protect her favorites from imminent danger, snatching them away from battle at the crucial moment. In Book 3 she rescues Paris as he is about to be overpowered by Menelaos:
(3.380-82)
But Aphrodite snatched him up
easily as a god may, and enclosed him in a dense
mist
and put him down in his fragrant bedchamber.
[26] Sinos, Meaning of Philos, has shown in detail that the kourotrophos or nurturing function of the goddess, revealed in the diction of vegetal growth, as, for example, at Iliad 18.437-38, is apparent in the relationship in cult between the kourotrophos goddess and the kouros . The protection motif is a correlate of this function in myth. See also R. Merkelbach, "KOPOS ," ZPE 8 (1971): 80; and P. Vidal-Naquet, "Le chasseur noir et l'origine de l'éphébie athénienne," Économies-sociétés-civilisations 23 (1968): 947-49.
[27] On the related attributes of these goddesses, see Boedeker, Aphrodite's Entry , 64-84. Apart from the Dawn goddess hypostases, Demeter in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter appears in the role of kourotrophos to Demophon; see the commentary ad 231-55 (esp. 237ff. with remarks on Achilles and Thetis) in N. J. Richardson, ed., The Homeric Hymn to Demeter (Oxford, 1974; reprint, 1979), 231ff.
In Book 5 it is Aeneas whom she saves, from the onslaught of Diomedes:
(5.314-18)
and around her dear son she threw her white arms,
and in front of him she wrapped a fold of her
shining robe,
to be a shield against weapons, lest any of the
Danaans with quick horses
should take his life from him, striking bronze into
his chest.
So she bore her dear son away from the battle.
To snatch a hero from danger, to protect him from death, however, offers a paradox of which the Iliad and Odyssey are conscious: that preserving a hero from death means denying him a heroic life.[28] Thus Kalypso, who compares her intention toward Odysseus with Eos's abduction of Orion,[29] wants by sequestering Odysseus to
[28] For an analysis of the structure and diction of similar episodes of abduction and "preservation," especially the ambivalence inherent in such episodes' use of the particular terminology of snatching, kidnapping, and concealing, see Nagy, Greek Mythology and Poetics , 223-62, esp. 242-57. This same terminology (as transmitted by Proclus, at any rate) is used to designate Thetis's action in the Aethiopis in snatching Achilles from the pyre (N.B. the use of anarpasasa ), after which she "preserves" him on the White Island.
[29] Od . 5.121-24.
offer him immortality; but this would inevitably mean the loss of his goal, the impossibility of completing the travels, the denial of his identity. From a perspective that is as intrinsic to the Odyssey as to the Iliad , it would mean the extinction of heroic subject matter, the negation of epic. Kalypso, "the concealer," uses persuasive arguments in her attempt to hide Odysseus from mortality. Her ultimate failure measures the hero's commitment to his mortal existence—not, as she believes, the Olympian gods' jealousy, but their participation in human values.
Aphrodite, on the other hand, is a successful concealer, shielding her favorites by hiding them, Paris in the cloud of mist and Aeneas in her flowing robe.[30] She enters the battle swiftly at the critical moment to save the life of her son, or, in the case of Paris, her protégé:
(5.311-13)
And now Aeneas lord of men would have perished
there
if the daughter of Zeus, Aphrodite, had not quickly
noticed him,
his mother, who bore him to Anchises the oxherd.
[30] It is perhaps significant, however, that while both Aphrodite's beneficiaries do escape destruction and survive the Iliad , their individual heroism, from an epic standpoint, has been permanently compromised.
She is expressly credited with protecting Aeneas from death, just as earlier she contrives Paris's escape from Menelaos at the fatal instant:
(3.373-75)
And now [Menelaos] would have dragged him off
and won an indelible triumph,
if the daughter of Zeus, Aphrodite, had not quickly
noticed him.
She broke for him the oxhide chinstrap.
Thetis, like Kalypso and Aphrodite, is associated by the Iliad with impenetrable clouds and with veils and with concealment. But the Iliad does not pursue the parallelism of this aspect of their mythology. Thetis never spirits Achilles away from danger, and she never tempts him with immortality. On the contrary, it is she who states the human limits of his choice. Repeatedly, the absoluteness of the Iliad's rejection of the idea of immortality emerges from its treatment, in relation to Achilles, of this protection motif, which figures so importantly in the immortal goddess-mortal lover or son stories and which has a preeminent place in Thetis's mythology.
Thetis acts on behalf of Achilles in the Iliad only after asserting repeatedly the knowledge that he must die and finally, in Book 18, the certainty that it is to happen soon. It is only then, after establishing her awareness of Achilles' vulnerability, her understanding that he cannot be saved, that she makes her gesture toward protecting
him. She asks Hephaistos to create new armor for him, to replace the old armor worn by Patroklos and lost to Hektor. In contrast to the rescue efforts by which Aphrodite removes her man from danger, Thetis "protects" Achilles by providing him with the means to reenter the battle from which he will not return. The shield, supreme implement of "safety," becomes the instrument of his fatality. In its implications, this favor from Hephaistos corresponds to the initial one requested of Zeus: much as Zeus's acquiescence to Thetis commits Achilles to his death at Troy, so Hephaistos's repayment of what he owes Thetis equips her son for destruction and brings him closer to it.[31]
The Iliad's treatment of the hoplopoiia is underscored by the evident existence of a similar scene in the Aethiopis , in which Memnon entered the battle wearing
In the Iliad , the implement of protection made by Hephaistos at Thetis's request is the shield, which only
[31] As we shall see below, Thetis is similarly owed a favor by Dionysos, whom she is said to have rescued as she did Hephaistos. Strikingly, his antidoron equally does nothing other than attest to Achilles' mortality: it is the golden urn in which Achilles' bones will lie with those of Patroklos.
[32] See Griffin, "Epic Cycle and Uniqueness of Homer," 39-53, esp. 42-43 on immortality as a feature of the Cycle poems.
Achilles can endure to look at when Thetis brings it to him. But it precisely does not fulfill for Achilles, as it did for Memnon, the promise of ultimate divine preservation through the agency of his mother.[33] The Iliad's rejection of this outcome for Achilles, and hence for its conception of heroism, is expressly stated. Thetis prefaces her request of Hephaistos with a summary of the Iliad up to that juncture; the Iliad recapitulates itself here from Thetis's viewpoint, so that it represents itself as a mother's narrative about her son:
[33] Much has been written on the importance of a hero's armor as an emblem of his warrior identity; see Ph. J. Kakridis, "Achilleus Rüstung," Hermes 89 (1961): 288-97, esp. 292-93; on the shield in particular see W. Leaf, ed., The Iliad , vol. 1, 2d ed. (London, 1902), 470. In The Arms of Achilles and Homeric Compositional Technique (Leiden, 1975), R. Shannon makes these connections: "Peleus' spear links Achilles with his mortal ancestry; his new armor links him with his immortal parent and, through her, with Hephaistos, its forger, and his attribute, fire" (31).
(18.444-56)
The girl whom the sons of the Achaeans picked out
for him as a prize,
the ruler Agamemnon took back from his hands.
Grieving for her he was wearing away his heart; but
the Trojans hemmed in the Achaeans by the ships'
sterns
and were not allowing them to go beyond; and the
Achaean elders
beseeched him, and named many splendid gifts.
He himself then refused to ward off destruction,
but he dressed Patroklos in his armor
and sent him into battle, and supplied many people
with him.
All day they fought around the Skaian gates,
and on that same day would have sacked the city, if
Apollo had not
killed the powerful son of Menoitios when he had
caused much harm,
in the front ranks, and given the victory to Hektor.
The Olympian reply, however compassionate, reconfirms the inevitability of Achilles' imminent death; divine collaboration on his behalf may honor him and enhance his stature, but it cannot save him and does not propose to. Hephaistos replies:
(18.463-67)
Take heart; do not let these things distress your
thoughts.
If only I were able to hide him away
from grievous death, when dire fate overtakes him,
as surely as there will be beautiful armor for him,
such as
anyone among many mortal men will marvel at,
whoever sees it.
Through Thetis the Iliad evokes this constellation of traditional elements—the divine armor, the protection motif—in order to violate conventional expectations of their potency, and it does so for the sake of the primacy of the theme of mortality, as Thetis's lament to the Nereids at 18.54-64 explicitly and deliberately reminds us:
Alas for my sorrow, alas for my wretched-best-
childbearing,
since I bore a child faultless and powerful,
preeminent among heroes; and he grew like a young
shoot,
I nourished him like a tree on an orchard's slope,
I sent him forth with the curved ships to Ilion
to fight the Trojans. But never again shall I welcome
him
returning home to the house of Peleus.
Still, while he lives and looks on the sunlight
he grieves, and I, going to him, am all unable to
help him.
But I shall go, so that I may see my dear child, and
may hear
what grief has come to him as he waits out the
battle.
The semidivine hero is inextricably associated with nonhuman perfection and scope, but instead of conceiving of him as elevated by this into the realm of divinity, the Iliad's vision is of an exacting mortal aspect that exerts its leveling effect on the immortal affiliations and expectations of the hero. These retain their authenticity, but no longer their overriding authority as guarantors of immortal stature.
There is thus an additional dimension to the poem's evocation and adaptation of the aspects of Thetis's mythology and attendant motifs discussed above. The "violation of expectations," which is so effective on a formal level, provides the material of Achilles' own experience, as the poem represents it. In the Iliad's characterization, Achilles lives the violation of expectations, of the assumption of what it means to be the goddess's son: to be
beyond compromise. Achilles' expectations, which this assumption underlies—of the inevitable success of Thetis's intervention with Zeus, of the unambiguous privilege of being
(18.73-75)
Child, why are you crying? What grief has come to
your heart?
Speak it, do not conceal it. Indeed, these things have
been accomplished for you
by Zeus, just as you prayed for earlier, lifting up
your hands
To which Achilles responds:
(18.79-80)
My mother, these things the Olympian brought to
fulfillment;
but what good is there in them for me, since my
dear companion is dead
The dislocation of which Achilles speaks here—and which constitutes his portion of suffering and of moral challenge—corresponds to the larger experience of the poem itself, in which individuals are compelled to revise drastically their formulations of their values and actions. Not only are the heroic code and the rationale of the war called into question, but central characters are repeatedly displayed in those moments of crisis that come to be recognized as typically Iliadic: the crisis of identity undermined by adamant revision of the expected and the familiar, a revision that assaults old roles and dissolves the continuity of the future. Helen on the walls of Troy or Hektor before them, Andromache preparing the bath, Patroklos storming the city: these figures are stamped with the poem's overriding theme. Achilles is preeminent among them, and his relation to this theme is both the most profound and the most fully documented of the poem. In its action the Iliad objectifies this preoccupation with inexorable events as a test of value, but the structure of the epic is studded with inner mirrors of this thematic concern. We read this larger question in every strategic violation of a "set" motif, as in the displaced outcome of the apparently traditional episode of the divine armoring.[34] The character of the particular altered expectation gives us its meaning, as the Iliad's themes enforce it; the device of dislocation itself gives that meaning strength. Finally, the accumula-
[34] See the analysis of J. I. Armstrong, "The Arming Motif in the Iliad," AJP 79 (1958): 337-54.
tion of characteristic incidents—sharing this revisionary quality of form and of theme—gradually establishes a distinctive tone that is yet another manifestation of the pervasive and unifying power of the determining themes. But the Iliad draws on tradition in order to assert as well as to alter convention, initiating its audience into an epic world at once familiar and unprecedented.
Thus the Iliad's rejection of the possibility of Achilles' salvation through Thefts results in its emphasis on her helpless status, which is put into relief as a radical contrast to her part in the tradition of divine protectresses—one might even say, to her role as protectress par excellence ; for the Iliad , in such provocative allusions as Achilles' speech at 1. 394-412, depicts Thefts as the efficacious protectress not of heroes but of gods.[35]
[35] M. Lang, "Reverberation and Mythology in the Iliad," Approaches to Homer , ed. C. A. Rubino and C. W. Shelmerdine (Austin, 1983), 153-54, suggests that "hurlings out of heaven and rescues by Thetis seem to have been popular motifs," noting that Thetis "made a specialty of rescue (witness her deliverance of Zeus in 1.396ff., and her rescue of Dionysus in 6.130ff.)."