Cassandra the deer

Ajax drags Cassandra from Palladium (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Oswald p. 47:

Like a deer in the hills wounded

Keeps running in pain

There are dogs following her bloodprints

But she goes on and on escaping into loneliness

To the very breaking of her being

Until it happens in some shadowy wood on a hilltop

She gives up

And the dogs set about eating her

But at last at evening a lion appears

A huge angel wandering the hills laying claim to the dead

And the dogs scatter

This is Oswald's translation of the simile from book 11 when Odysseus is fighting desperately, on his own, surrounded by Trojans, until Ajax (the greater) gets there to save his bacon.  And it's a weird simile in Homer, because the wounded deer, in Homer, has run as far as it can, and died, and is being eaten by the jackals. The lion (sent by a god, says Homer) isn't there to save the deer, which is dead anyway. The lion scatters the jackals so it can devour the deer itself.  But the deer is Odysseus, the jackals are the Trojans he's fending off, and the lion, Ajax, arrives to save, not kill him; so Odysseus is not the victim at all, and may even be the lion.

Oswald makes two changes that shift everything.  One is the placement of the simile, which Oswald puts after the death of Othryoneus, who came to Troy and offered to drive off the Greeks in exchange for the hand of Cassandra, and went off to battle and died, "and everyone laughed and laughed, except Cassandra".  And second, Oswald makes the deer feminine; in Homer it's masculine.  So the deer is Cassandra, wounded and bleeding, attacked by jackals - Ajax the lesser - and finally made a meal of by the lion, Agamemnon, who scatters the other rapists and takes her home to the slaughter.  In fact Oswald didn't have to change this simile at all, in her usual fashion; all she had to do was re-point it, towards an actual victim.

Have a look at the Poem of the Week (below).  A more sympathetic look at Penelope than Atwood gave us, but that's not hard.

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Adrestus and Amphius, the sons of Merops

Rainbow and storm cloud over factory in Indiana USA (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Oswald  Memorial  p. 40

Also Adrestus and Amphius
Everyone knew they were going to die
They were the sons of Merops the prophet
He begged them to stay at home but they couldn't listen
Their own ghosts were calling them to Troy
Immaculate in clean linenThey set out together but Death
was already walking to meet them 

Like a goatherd stands on a rock
And sees a cloud blowing towards him
A black block of rain coming closer over the sea
Pushing a ripple of wind inland
He shivers and drives his flocks into a cave for shelter

A couple of interesting things going on here.  The "immaculate in white linen" line is a loose translation of "λινοθώρηξ", but has connotations of "walking to Troy in their shrouds", as in the cowboy in Streets of Laredo, "wrapped up in white linen and cold as the grave".  They are walking to their deaths and this is already known; they're dead men walking. Oswald gets the names from the Catalog of Ships; the rest of the lines are repeated in book 11.

The "goatherd" simile comes from Book 4 after the Paris/Menelaus incident. Agamemnon has just accused a bunch of Greeks of being like stunned fawns, and now moves on to where the two Aiantes are marshalling a bunch of boys who are dark and foreboding like a storm cloud about to bring a storm.  Here the storm cloud seen by the goatherd is the cloud Merops saw over his son's lives, the black Keres already leading them; this is the cloud that will engulf his sons, like stunned fawns,  in book 11. (Okay, they aren't actually described as stunned fawns.) Later a dozen Trojan boys "like stunned fawns" will be led out of the river by Achilles and bound to be sacrificed on Patroclus' funeral pyre.

but their ghosts said nothing

Agamemnon (Photo credit: kameraadpjotr)

The death scenes are becoming more interesting as they get longer.  Oswald describes the deaths of Peisander and Hippolochus during Agamemnon's aristeia; their horses run away from them, they stand in the chariot and offer a ransom, their father is a rich man.  But Agamemnon says in case you hadn't noticed, kids, I'm having an aristeia, and kills them.  Well, no, he doesn't; he says "your father tried to get my brother killed by treachery", and then he slaughters them.  Homer is quite graphic about the method of their deaths; Oswald is not.  Oswald ends (p. 37)

But Agamemnon remembered
Their father was that sly old man
Who tried to murder Menelaus
Antimachus assured them
He had acted in good faith
But their ghosts said nothing

Simile, of rocks standing against a wild sea, is used of the Greeks fending off Hector at the ships in book 15; here it seems to be Peisander and Hippolochus, standing against Agamemnon, or standing stunned as he rushes towards them to overwhelm them, more like.

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Rhesus, Isos, and Antiphos

Odysseus (wearing the pilos hat) and Diomedes stealing the horses of Thracian king Rhesus they have just killed. Apulian red-figure situla by the Lycurgus Painter, ca. 360 BC. Stored in the Museo Nazionale Archaeologico in Naples. Français : Ulysse (portant le pilos) et Diomède volant les chevaux du roi thrace Rhésos qu'ils viennent de tuer. Situle apulienne à figures rouges du Peintre de Lycurgue, vers 360 av. J.-C. Conservé au Musée national archéologique de Naples. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The improbable exploit of Diomedes and Odysseus against Rhesus is next.  (I say improbable, because how likely is it that one man could kill thirteen men with an edged weapon, I don't care how tired they are, without the screams and thrashings of at least one of them waking up the rest? Also, Rhesus and his men were sleeping closest to the enemy ships; why on earth didn't they post a sentry? But I digress.)

Oswald's translations, as always, vivid and spot-on.  Homer describes the Thracian weapons as κάλα and κέκλιτο εὖ κατὰ κόσμον, 10.472; she translates as ""cleaned and layed down like cutlery" (κέκλιτο εὖ κατὰ κόσμον, 10.472), quite wonderful, as is her description of Diomedes killing the Thracians, "red faced quietly like a butcher keeping up with his order/Got rid of them", instead of "As a lion springs furiously upon a flock of sheep or goats when he finds them without their shepherd" as Homer has it.  (ὡς δὲ λέων μήλοισιν ἀσημάντοισιν ἐπελθὼν

αἴγεσιν ἢ ὀΐεσσι κακὰ φρονέων ἐνορούσῃ, 10.485-486),.  However then Oswald goes on to use a sheep image involving wolves for Odysseus & Diomedes; ; this one from Patroclus' aristeia and the Greeks are chasing the Trojans all the way back to Troy and the Trojans are scattering terrified.  Odysseus & Diomedes are presumably the wolves; the sheep are the Thracians, their shepherd is Rhesus; but they're all asleep.  Perhaps "wolves" rather than lions in a gesture towards the wolf-skin poor craven Dolon was wearing.

Oswald skips the first two deaths in Agamemnon's aristeia in book 11, Bienor and Oileus his charioteer, and moves on to Isos and Antiphos, whom she doesn't mention are sons of Priam, one legitimate, one not.  They're farmboys, who got taken on a great adventure once when Achilles captured them and took them to meet Agamemnon. They came home "proud as astronauts", joined the army, and were killed by Agamemnon.

The wave-simile she then uses is used in Homer of Hector at the ships in book 15, raging around the Greeks; in Oswald the focus isn't the wave, but the sailors engulfed in it, "star(ing) at mid-air"; poor Isos and Antiphos, never expecting this.

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death of Adrestus; axe and spear

Antalya Archaeological Museum. Ancient Roman sarcophagus of Aurelia Botania Demetria ( 2nd century AD ): Aphrodite is concealing Paris who is defeated by Menelaos. Odysseus is looking at the szene. Deutsch: Archäologisches Museum in Antalya. Römischer Sarkophag der Aurelia Botania Demetria ( 2.Jhdt.n.Chr. ): Aphrodite verbirgt Paris, der von Menelaos geschlagen worden ist. Odysseus sieht zu. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

More and more I'm finding that the use of the similes is engaging me; when I originally read this poem I barely noticed them and couldn't figure out what they were for.  Here Oswald tells us about the death of Adrastus at Menelaus' hands; he begged for his life and nearly persuaded Menelaus but Agamemnon came up and told him to show Trojans no mercy; after all, had Trojans been good to his house?  Better to kill them all.  And that was that. Menelaus' spear swung like a sundial indicator, the decision wavering in the balance, but then it fell.

 She continues with the simile of an axe, that a shipwright uses to cut timbers for a boat, and it swings his arm for him as "an iron decision", as Menelaus' spear is an 'iron decision' for Adrestus, and swung Menelaus' wavering heart.  But the interesting thing is that the simile of the shipwright's axe shows up in the Iliad, only this time it is unwavering and unflinching; Paris uses this image to describe Hector's heart, constantly under Hector's control, adding force to his will - and how unlike Paris' heart, which tends to lead him to sneak off home to shag his wife.  But then, Aphrodite's like that, and there's no point complaining.

So the simile, originally spoken by Paris, to describe another Trojan hero's unwavering heart, is used by Oswald to describe the wavering weapon of Helen's last (Greek) husband, who has to be talked into killing by Agamemnon; eventually the axe/spear makes the decision for the man.  How does this fit the overall strategy?  That Adrastus could have lived; it underlines how indecisive and impotent Menelaus is, rather like Paris in fact; huh - got it - in both cases we are looking at 2 brothers, and the leader/warrior one has to talk the other one into fighting.  And in both cases the second brother is or has been married to Helen.That's the association that connects the two.

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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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