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| English: Historic reconstruction of the landscape of Troy from Vol.2 of Alexander Popes The Iliad of Homer (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Like a stone
Stands by a grave and says nothing
This is the first simile that I cannot locate in the Iliad. It's too short for me to get a grip on it using Perseus, and I just don't have that encyclopedic knowledge of the Iliad that would enable me to fish it out of my own brain. There are two stones marking a grave in the funeral games for Patroclos but they don't say nothing. I mean, they do say nothing, but they aren't mentioned as saying nothing.
Sad now. So far I've been batting 100%.
Several more Trojans have died, and one Greek. Interesting simile that reveals, on close examination, that Homer knew all about Heisenberg and certainty deriving from collapsing wave formations (Bk 14).
Several more Trojans have died, and one Greek. Interesting simile that reveals, on close examination, that Homer knew all about Heisenberg and certainty deriving from collapsing wave formations (Bk 14).
ETA: must be Achilles' horses, standing still as a gravestone and weeping for their charioteer, because that's the only simile in the Iliad that is about gravestones. Which makes it very interesting, because the horses are standing stock still and weeping, in Homer. Here, it's the sea: Amphimachos has just died, who's descended from Poseidon, and you'd think Poseidon could do something, but the sea (says Oswald) just "lifted and flattened, lifted and flattened". Doing, apparently, nothing, like a stone. But actually Poseidon (in Homer) is very upset at Amphimachos' death; can't do anything about his death, but goes and riles up Idomeneus and other Greek warrios to go kill a lot of Trojans as a result. So the sea/Poseidon seems to be doing nothing, but is doing a lot; and the horses seem to simply be standing there silently, but in fact they're mourning.
Or maybe it's Achilles' horses?
ReplyDeleteOr the stones possibly used to mark an anonymous grave, and used as the turning-post of the chariot race in the funeral games for Patroclos.
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