Antilochus? Huh.

Antilochus. Side A from an Attic red-figure neck-amphora, ca. 470 BC. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Oswald is still working through Book 6, and gives us the list of Trojans each of whom is killed by a different Greek - Astyales, Pidutes, Aretaon, Antilochus, Elatus, Phylakos and Melanthius.   But which of these boys is not like the others?  Antilochus is Greek, and doesn't die here; we don't hear of his death until the Odyssey in fact.  Antilochus kills a Trojan, Ablerus, whose name his replaces.

And so I'm wondering if this is just a mistake - she missed the fact that Antilochus was in the nominative - but no; Antilochus is a major figure, everybody's best friend, well-regarded by all, major part in the funeral games for Patroclus 17 books from now, she knows he doesn't die here.  So, error? Or is she inserting Antilochus here as an illustration of her general theme, that the deaths of the great and the deaths of those whose names are only mentioned once, in a list, deaths on the winning and the losing team, are equally significant?

The simile comes originally from Iliad 10.1-10, where Agamemnon can't sleep, his mind is as disturbed as the sky when it's disturbed by lightning before a storm.  But here she's transferred it to the experience of the almost-nameless about-to-die Trojans; the victims are jolted awake (to the reality of their situation?) by the flash of a spear, as the "god keeps the night awake with lightning" before a storm.  Perhaps also significant here that Agamemnon kills one of them - Eletaon - in the company of many other Greeks, Odysseus, Antilochus, Teucer, Polypoites, each of whom kill one.  The Greeks are still functioning as a winning team, at this point; but Agamemnon (in the simile) is so worried that he can't sleep.

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