The death of Acamas

Ajax and Hector exchange gifts, woodcut in Andreas Alciatus, Emblematum libellus, 1591. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Oswald gives the death Acamas the Thracian (beginning of book 6) a few lines, saying Aias 'stopped' him.  She then uses the "weaver woman" simile that Homer uses in the battle at the ships (12.432ff).

The original simile is about the battle at the ships being evenly balanced between Trojans and Lycians,  the way a weaver woman holds the scales being careful to get the weight exactly right, get (payment for?) the last ounce of wool, to barely support her children; and at the same time, she's holding on against adversity, fighting her own battle against it the way the warriors are fighting with each other, and like them, she is barely holding the line, all but at at a standstill; her wages are pitiful, she is barely eking out a living.

  But Oswald focusses instead on the fact that you have to make the scales stop swaying back and forth to weigh something; weighing doesn't occur when the scales are still in motion, but when they stop.  So Aias stops Acamas the way the weaver stops weaving, after working all night (as Aias has been fighting all day?), and then stops the scales so they will give an accurate and final reading of her labour.

So the simile is no longer about holding the battle lines even the way the woman holds the scales even.  It's about Aias 'stopping' Acamas the way the hard-working woman "stops" spinning and "stops" the scales.  The "stop" is the moment of killing; her work as a spinner is made equal to his work as a warrior; she isn't like a god - like Zeus, holding the battle lines even - she's like a soldier, like Aias, fighting against want, and momentarily winning.

Related articles

• The most sensitive weight scale ever can weigh individual protons [Mad Science] (io9.com)
• "Reinterpreting the Simile of Homer Iliad 16.7-11: The Girl and Her Mother in Ancient Greek Warfare", Kathy L. Gaca AJP 2008 (129.2) 145-171.