116 pages • 3 hours read
Homer, Transl. Robert FaglesA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Menelaus and Euphorbus exchange threats and taunts over Patroclus’s body, then stab at each other. Menelaus kills Euphorbus. Apollo rouses Hector to challenge him. Realizing a god has inspired Hector, Menelaus retreats. Meanwhile, Hector strips Patroclus’s armor, intending to behead him and feed his trunk to Troy’s dogs, but Greater Ajax swoops in and protects his body. Glaucus berates Hector for failing to secure Sarpedon’s armor and Patroclus’s body and accuses him of being too cowardly to challenge Ajax. Hector rebukes him for being insolent, straps on the stolen armor, and rouses the Trojan allies. Reflecting that Hector will never return from this battle, Zeus resolves to give him “great power for the moment” (449).
Three Achaean leaders form a protective circle around Patroclus while Hector and the Trojans charge in “as a heavy surf roars in against the rip at the river’s mouth” (450). Not wanting to see Patroclus’s body defiled, Zeus covers the Achaeans in a dense mist. The brutal battle over the body rages on, with Ajax killing Hippothous and Apollo provoking Aeneas, while in his tent Achilles has no thought that Patroclus could be dead. His mother Thetis secretly revealed Zeus’s plans but never mentioned anything about Patroclus dying.
Achilles’s immortal horses weep for Patroclus and refuse to move. Zeus pities them, immortal beasts serving and grieving for mortal men. He decides not to allow Hector to have them and breathes strength into them. They gallop into battle with Automedon, and Hector and Aeneas attempt to capture them. The two Ajaxes and Menelaus join Automedon, and they battle brutally. Menelaus prays to Athena; she fills him with strength and courage, pleased that he prayed to her first among all the gods. Apollo stands with Hector, driving him on, and Zeus releases a thunder crack, giving Trojans victory and striking fear in the Achaeans.
The fight continues with deaths on both sides. Frustrated, Ajax weeps and prays to Zeus to remove the mist from the field that clouds the Achaeans’ vision. Pitying him, Zeus grants his prayer. Ajax tells Menelaus to send news of Patroclus’s death to Achilles. Menelaus and the Ajaxes fix a strategy to clear Patroclus’s body from the field. The fighting continues “wild as a flash fire,” but the Achaean leaders are determined “as mules” (465-66). The Ajaxes hold off the Trojans like “a wooded rocky ridge” holds back a flood (466). Hector and Aeneas are on their heels, like a falcon or hawk, while the Achaeans flee “like clouds of crows or starlings” (466).
Watching the Achaean retreat fills Achilles with foreboding. Antilochus bursts in, weeping, and delivers the tragic news. Achilles falls to the floor, tearing his hair and pouring dirt over his face. The women he and Patroclus captured feel his grief and join the lament. Fearing that Achilles will try to kill himself, Antilochus holds his hands. Achilles releases a “terrible, wrenching cry” that his mother hears (468). She cries out in response; her Nereid sisters gather around her, mourning with her. She sings a dirge foreshadowing Achilles’s death, then she and the Nereids go to Achilles.
He tells his mother that Patroclus has died and he has lost his will to live. He will seek retribution from Hector by killing him, which will lead to his death. Though he mourns his mother’s sorrow, he asks her not to hold him back. He wants a quick death because he did not save Patroclus. She tells him not to return to battle until she brings him new armor from Hephaestus.
Meanwhile, the fight for Patroclus’s body continues. Hera sends Iris to tell Achilles that he must show himself to frighten the Trojans away from Patroclus’s body. Athena drapes her shield over him and sets a burning cloud above his head. Achilles releases three piercing shrieks; the Trojans tremble in terror. Even their horses turn back. Twelve Trojans die on the spot, crushed or impaled by their own gear. The Achaeans pull Patroclus’s body to safety. Hera compels the sun to set early, ending the day’s fighting.
The Trojans hold a council. Polydamas recommends withdrawing into and securing the city. Hector angrily refuses to retreat, sure that Zeus has primed him for glory. The Trojans cheer, “lost in folly” (477). Meanwhile, Achilles leads ritual laments for Patroclus, though he refuses to hold funeral rites until he kills Hector. They wash and shroud Patroclus’s body and stay up all night lamenting.
On Olympus, Zeus notes that Hera has gotten her way: Achilles has returned to battle. Thetis visits Hephaestus and his wife, the Grace Charis, who welcome her as an “honored friend” (480). Recalling how Thetis saved him when his mother Hera threw him off Olympus, Hephaestus promises to help however he can. Thetis bursts into tears, recalling how Zeus forced her to marry a mortal against her will. She was given a son whom she will never again welcome home to Peleus’s house. She recounts his quarrel with Agamemnon and Patroclus’s death, lamenting her inability to help him. Achilles’s death is fast approaching, and he needs new armor. Hephaestus regrets that he cannot save Achilles from his destiny but agrees to make him gear that will inspire awe in “all the years to come” (482).
The poet provides an extended description of Achilles’s new shield, on which Hephaestus crafts images of the earthy, sky, and sea, two cities, a wedding with a feast and choirs singing and dancing. In the marketplace two men quarrel over “the blood-price for a kinsman just murdered” (483). The second city is under siege. The shield also depicts a field being farmed, a harvest being reaped, and “a thriving vineyard” (485). A boy plays a dirge on his lyre, accompanied by a choir and dancing. Additional images include a herd of cattle, a meadow with sheep and shepherds, and a dancing circle of boys and girls. Around the rim, Hephaestus forges “Ocean River’s mighty power” (487). When he finishes the shield, Hephaestus crafts a breastplate, helmet, and greaves, and lays the gear at Thetis’s feet.
At dawn, Thetis brings Achilles his new armor and finds him weeping over Patroclus. Achilles praises Hephaestus’s work and wants to dress for battle immediately, but he is concerned about Patroclus’s body decomposing. Thetis promises to protect it, breathing ambrosia and nectar into his nostrils and courage into her son.
Achilles calls a council and announces that he is ready to overcome his anger and return to battle. The Achaeans cheer. Agamemnon says that he is not to blame. Zeus, Fate, and Fury drove him to madness; gods bring “all things to their fulfillment” (491). He was powerless in the grip of Ruin, Zeus’s eldest daughter who even blinded her father in the past, when Hera schemed against Heracles, after which he expelled her from Olympus to “the world of men” (492). As Ruin blinded Zeus, she blinded Agamemnon, but now he is prepared to set things right. He offers all the gifts previously promised. Achilles interrupts him to reiterate his desire to return immediately to battle. Odysseus objects that the men have not eaten and need the sustenance to endure long days of grueling battle. He also insists that the gifts be displayed, that Agamemnon swear an oath that he never touched Briseis, and that a feast must be held. Agamemnon is pleased and accepts Odysseus’s council. Achilles repeats his desire to fight, with Odysseus again attempting to calm him by speaking of his comrades’ physical need for food.
The presents are displayed. Agamemnon sacrifices a boar to Zeus and swears his oath. Achilles credits his fury and rage to Zeus’s desire to slaughter Achaeans and commands his troops to feast so they can return to battle. He himself refuses to eat. Briseis enters and laments Patroclus’s death, recalling his kindness and his promise to ensure that Achilles married her at the end of the war. The women “wailed in answer”; grieving for Patroclus brings out “each woman’s private sorrows” (498). Achilles sings a dirge for Patroclus and his hopes that his beloved companion would survive. The leaders return the mourning. Their grief provokes Zeus’s pity. He scolds Athena for abandoning Achilles and instructs her to give him nectar and ambrosia to prevent him from becoming hungry.
Achilles arms himself in Hephaestus’s gear and picks up his spear, a gift to his father from Chiron that only Achilles has “the skill to weird” (501). Alcimus and Automedon yoke the immortal horses. Achilles tells them to “do better” and not abandon him as they did Patroclus (501). One of them replies that they will save him this time, but it is his fate to die soon, as Patroclus did, by a god’s hand. Achilles retorts that the horse need not waste its breath; he knows his fate. He releases a cry as he drives out “in the front ranks” (502).
Zeus summons all immortals to council and invites them to join the war effort on whichever side they wish, while he remains on Olympus. Achilles has roared back into battle, terrifying the Trojans, and Zeus fears that Achilles unchecked will defy his fate and sack Troy. Athena and Ares each release a war cry, Athena beside the Achaeans and Ares the Trojans.
Disguised as Lycaon, Apollo taunts Aeneas that he is afraid to face Achilles. Aeneas objects that gods always favor Achilles, and Apollo counters that Aeneas’s divine parent, Aphrodite, outranks Achilles’s mother, Thetis. Filled with courage, Aeneas charges toward Achilles, prompting Hera to rouse Athena and Poseidon to encourage Achilles. Poseidon counters that they should wait to see whether Apollo and Ares act on behalf of the Trojans. The immortals settle themselves in opposing camps, waiting to see who will make the first move.
Aeneas and Achilles close in on each other. Achilles taunts Aeneas that he is trying to curry favor with Priam but will not succeed since Priam prefers his own sons. He reminds Aeneas that he fled Achilles in fear at their last encounter. Aeneas recites his genealogy as a descendent of Zeus and Dardanus. They hurl their spears at each other. Aeneas’s hits its mark but cannot pierce Achilles’s divine shield. Achilles’s strike misses, but he rushes at Aeneas with his sword. Poseidon rallies the gods to save him since his destiny is to survive and carry on Dardanus’s line. Poseidon pours mist over Achilles’s eyes, hurls Aeneas out of danger, then warns him not to challenge Achilles or fight on the front lines for as long as Achilles lives.
Achilles and Hector rally their men. Apollo orders Hector not to duel Achilles, who begins slaughtering Trojans. The poet provides a catalogue of his victims, including Priam’s son Polydorus. His death prompts Hector to charge at Achilles, who urges him on, eager to kill him. Hector throws his spear, but Athena blows it back to him. Achilles charges, but Apollo whisks Hector away, wrapped in mist. Achilles resumes his slaughter. One young fighter, Tros, grasps Achilles’s knees, hoping for mercy; Achilles spears him. He rampages “like inhuman fire,” “like a frenzied god of battle,” “like oxen broad in the brow” (519).
Achilles’s shield, described at the end of Book 18, portrays the larger world to which the Iliad belongs. Though the poem revolves around the Trojan war, it weaves in all aspects of life beyond the battlefield, indicating that everything in the mortal world is interconnected. Events on the battlefield are not self-contained; they impact women, children, and the elderly, who may or may not (through their prayers to the gods or good advice to warriors) have control over their outcomes. This interconnection is further enacted through the poet’s similes that compare events on the battlefield to events in pastures, on farms, in families, and in the works of craftsmen. Through the scenes between Andromache and Hector earlier in the poem, through Thetis’s love for her son, the poem repeatedly demonstrates the interconnection of seemingly discrete social bodies. Modern readers may tend to elevate the war as the subject of the poem; it is perhaps more accurate to call it the setting. The Iliad seems concerned with all facets of mortal experience.
Upon hearing her son’s cry, Thetis and her sister Nereids initiate a ritual lament. Achilles’s grief prompts Thetis’s grief, as hers provokes her sisters’. After Patroclus’s body is returned to him, Achilles and his Myrmidons also perform dirges for Patroclus. Later still, Briseis performs one for Patroclus. In all three cases the poem portrays lament as a public and communal process that draws in the entire community: captives and captors, women and men—all participate in the ritual, and each is understood to be mourning their personal sorrows. Thetis’s sorrow is that she is an immortal mother who cannot save her mortal son from death. She will have to mourn her son. Thetis and Hephaestus’s meeting portrays her grief that she cannot alter his fate, and neither can Hephaestus. Whether Achilles dies at Troy imminently or many years on in Phthia, Thetis will lose him. Through epic song, however, he remains eternal in mortal memory.
The prolonged battle for Patroclus’s body prefigures the fight for Achilles’s body, though it does not happen in the Iliad. Patroclus is wearing Achilles’s armor, which Hector will strip and wear, and which Achilles will later recover, fusing all three warriors together. Though audiences would likely know Achilles’s fate, it is not fulfilled within the Iliad but implied through Patroclus’s death, which can be understood as a ritual substitute for Achilles’s.
The terror that Achilles inspires by unleashing his war cry is reminiscent of the effect of Ares’s screams when Diomedes injured him: It is capable of terrifying those who hear it and heightening the divine power coursing through Achilles. The significant difference, however, continues to be that Achilles is not whining about a flesh wound, as Ares was, but expressing his deep sorrow at the death of his beloved companion. His all-consuming grief puts him on a collision course with Hector, Troy’s most powerful defender. At the Trojan council, Polydamas proposes withdrawing into the city to ensure its protection. Defending the city is the prudent course, but Hector believes that he is on the brink of vanquishing the Achaeans, destroying them and the threat they pose. His refusal to turn back will prove to be a fatal mistake.
Achilles announces his intention to return to battle at an Achaean council. The personal motive that he previously lacked is retribution, exacting the blood price—which Ajax referred to during the embassy in Book 9 and which is depicted on Achilles’s new shield crafted by Hephaestus—for Patroclus’s death by killing Hector. That this will result in his own death and, after that, the fall of Troy does not concern Achilles. He wants only to avenge his beloved companion. This may suggest that the real pull to immortality for the hero is not glorying in fighting and violence, without personal concerns, but the hero’s love for those closest to him. Agamemnon offers all the same gifts and more, but they are of no consequence to Achilles. He only cares about exacting retribution for Patroclus’s death.
In the council Agamemnon does not take responsibility for committing an outrage by denying Achilles his prize. Instead, he tells a long story of how Ruin—Ate (άτε) in Greek, meaning reckless impulse and rendered as “Delusion” in other translations—foiled Zeus, again referencing Hera’s scheme to ensure Heracles was born second. Zeus threw Ruin out of Olympus and into the mortal world, a further instance of mortals paying the price when gods become fed up.
Zeus’s invitation to the immortals to join the war effort derives from his concern that Achilles will somehow manage to sack Troy, though he is not fated to do so. This presents another wrinkle around the issue of fate. Whereas it has previously been depicted as immutable, apparently mortals can defy it, hence the need for the gods to ensure it comes to pass. The gods rush to the battlefield to meddle, but as will be revealed in the final books, they fight on behalf of their personal favorites only insofar as it accords with the will of fate and Zeus. For example, though he fights on behalf of the Achaeans, Poseidon removes Aeneas to safety because he is fated to survive the fall of Troy and carry on the Dardanus family line.
At the beginning of this section, Achilles does not know that Patroclus has been killed. Despite his divine insight, via Thetis, his knowledge is incomplete. By the end of Book 20, however, Achilles’s emotional state—in this case battle rage—has propelled him beyond mortal limits, beyond even heroic limits. He cuts down Trojans even when they supplicate, no longer willing to spare them for lack of personal outrage. Every Trojan will pay for Patroclus’s death, not only the man who killed him. The poet layers simile after simile at the end of Book 20 to emphasize that Achilles has lost his respect for mortal limits: He is “like inhuman fire,” “like a frenzied god of battle,” “like oxen broad in the brow” (519).
Ancient Greece
View Collection
Books & Literature
View Collection
Fantasy
View Collection
Fate
View Collection
Historical Fiction
View Collection
Memorial Day Reads
View Collection
Military Reads
View Collection
Mortality & Death
View Collection
Mythology
View Collection
Novels & Books in Verse
View Collection