The death of the pathetic Dolon

Dolón atrapado por Odiseo y Diomedes. Museo Británico (Photo credit: elaios2008)

Oswald condenses 150 lines of Homer (the Doloneia) into 17, and includes pretty much everything essential.  (since she isn't interested in Odysseus or Diomedes).  She's skipped ahead 2 books, but nobody has died since Archeptolemos in Book 8: in the end of Book 8 the Greeks ran back to their ships, Book 9 is the embassy to Achilles, and Book 10 begins with the night councils. Finally two scouts sent out by Agamemnon, Diomedes & Odysseus, meet the scout sent out by Hector, Dolon, and Oswald picks up at the death scene.

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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the rainbow

Greeks and Troyans fighting for the corpse of Patroklos - detail (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

No more men die in book 6, so Oswald jumps to the beginning of Book 7, where Paris and Hector re-enter battle after visiting their wives and Paris has killed his man, Menesthius, in the first 10 lines.   She mentions his mother Phylomedusa but not his father, here as elsewhere emphasizing women wherever they're named (and it's rare enough) and describes Paris as "running in a love-rage towards him/ With the smell of Helen still on his hands".  And it's here that she uses the simile from book 17, of Athena coming to the Greeks like a rainbow, a "bright banner of disruption" sent by Zeus, to stir them up to fight for Patroclus' body.  And again, what?

In context, aside from (again) assimilating a simile from a famous death, Patroclus, to the death of someone who gets 3 lines in the Iliad and that is all, ever, his name is mentioned only here once at his death - but in context, it seems as if Paris, or perhaps indeed Helen, is the rainbow, the one that perhaps only portends a minor disruption of work, a summer storm; or perhaps portends a war.  If Paris, he portends both a war, and the death of Menesthius; more than a minor disruption.  you can't tell until the omen, a rainbow, Helen, Paris running across a field towards you, is fulfilled.

Or ... (later thought) ... obviously Helen is an interruption to Paris' work, a 'bright banner of disruption' - as we are reminded by Hector, scolding him for running off to shag Helen when he should be out here killing people.  As we are reminded by Oswald, who has Paris running towards poor Menesthius with Helen still on his hands.  Duh. Helen is Paris' rainbow; Paris is Menesthius'; Athena has not yet come to the Greeks.

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• Rainbow! Quick get the camera!

• A Trojan Love Story (thedailybeast.com)