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| Patroclo e Menelao (Photo credit: loungerie) |
Have got through the next bit. Oswald gives the deaths of two pairs of fighters, Orsilochus and Krethon, two brothers from Greece, and Pylaemenes and his charioteer Mydon from Paphlagonia, so a pair on either side, in the order also found in Homer Bk 5. There's information about Pylaemenes in the Catalog of Trojans (Bk 2) which she combines with his death scene in Bk 5, says "his heart was made of coarse cloth and his manners were loose like old sacking"; not sure where she's getting the second bit, but the description of his heart comes from 2. 851, "λάσιον κῆρ". The Catalog of Trojans also describes Paphlagonia as home to wild mules, which may suggest the simile she appends after the description of both deaths:
"Like two mules on a shaly path in the mountains/carrying a huge roof truss or the beam of a boat/go on mile after mile giving it their willingness/ until the effort breaks their strength". (Oswald, Memorial, p. 24).
This simile comes from the description of Menelaus and Meriones carrying the body of Patroclos away from the battle, defending it and themselves from attacks, as the two Aias' hold off the Trojans:
Iliad 17.742-746
οἳ δ’ ὥς θ’ ἡμίονοι κρατερὸν μένος ἀμφιβαλόντες
ἕλκωσ’ ἐξ ὄρεος κατὰ παιπαλόεσσαν ἀταρπὸν
ἢ δοκὸν ἠὲ δόρυ μέγα νήϊον· ἐν δέ τε θυμὸς17.745τείρεθ’ ὁμοῦ καμάτῳ τε καὶ ἱδρῷ σπευδόντεσσιν·ὣς οἵ γ’ ἐμμεμαῶτε νέκυν φέρον
There are several reasons it has special resonance here though:
- attaching the simile from the death of Patroclos to the deaths of 4 fairly minor characters (3 w e never hear of anywhere else at all, and the 4th only once, in the Catalog) increases the gravity of the deaths of the minor characters
- at the death scene of Orsilochus and Crethon, Menelaus & Antilochus drag the bodies back to the Greek line, being menaced only by Aeneas, who killed them both. In the death scene of Patroclos, Menelaus is on his own, since Antilochus is on the sidelines, held in reserve; but both Aeneas and Hector are leading the fight to claim Patroclos' body. So in both cases Menelaus drags the bodies back (eventually) and Antilochus is involved; in both cases there is a further pair of fighters (Menelaus & Antilochus vs. Aeneas & Hector); so, a pair of mules again, redoubled.
- the mules recall the Paphlagonian mules from the Catalog
- Most importantly, I think: in that the simile gives us a pair of mules, and we have just heard of two pairs of dead warriors, the simile is transferred from the work of those carrying the body to the even greater work of those who actually died, "until the effort breaks their strength" (as opposed to the Greek, which simply has Menelaus & Meriones worn out with toil and streaming with sweat). For Oswald, it's the sufferings and labours of the dead that matter, not the necessarily lesser sufferings of those who outlive them.
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