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| Dolón atrapado por Odiseo y Diomedes. Museo Británico (Photo credit: elaios2008) |
I haven't been saying much about the death scenes, which are the whole point, or so I thought the first time I read Memorial. Here Oswald begins with the mourning of women ("What was that shrill sound/Five sisters at the grave/ Calling the ghost of Dolon"), tells remarkably compactly the story of Dolon, "ugly but quick", caught by Odysseus and Diomedes and desperately telling them everything he knows, where the Trojans are, where the allies are, where Rhesus and his beautiful chariot and armour and wonderful horses are, offering a ransom, offering anything, and then they kill him anyway ("And was still pleading for his head/ When his head rolled in the mud"). She doesn't mention Odysseus or Diomedes; here as frequently elsewhere, the identity of the killer is not what Memorial focusses on.
The simile, of the fly that keeps coming back to bite some more no matter how often it's warded off, is initially from the battle over the body of Patroclus (again); Menelaus is given the courage and persistence of an especially irritating fly by Athena. This simile is transferred to the persistent and irritating Dolon, who however gets squashed.
This is the first place where I've found Homer's use of a simile a little more interesting than Oswald's, only because giving Menelaus the courage and persistence of a fly - meant positively - is so counter-intuitive; where describing Dolon, who does keep trying, desperately, over and over, to save his own life by telling them absolutely everything, and in Homer as in Oswald is both pathetic and contemptible, an insect in his little ferret-skin cap, it's an obvious comparison. Perhaps I'm missing something.
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