Study Leave: Occasional Posts on Research, Writing and Other Academic Matters: Menelaus

Showing posts with label Menelaus. Show all posts

Wednesday, 29 August 2012

Dolops, and whirlwinds

English: Menelaus (Ancient Greek: Μενέλαος) was a king of Sparta, the husband of Helen, and a central figure in the Trojan War. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A particularly dense passage today. In Homer, Dolops tries to kill Meges, remains hopeful of victory even after his spear bounces off Meges' armour and Meges slices off his helmet crest (or possibly yanks off the whole helmet), but is killed by Menelaus, who gets around him and rams a spear through him from behind. Oswald renders this as Dolops not believing he could die even after his spear fails, even after he loses his helmet:

"It was not until the beak of death
Pushed out through his own chest
That he recognized the wings of darkness".

She follows this with a short simile:

"Like when god unwinds his whirlwind
A single cloud moves into the middle sky "

which, like most weather similes, took awhile to locate; but it seems to be the beginning & end of a simile from book 16, where Patroclus has routed the Trojan army and the cloud of dust whirling up from their chaotic retreat is like a cloud sent by Zeus when he's sending a storm. There is a double shift here from Homer to Oswald.

First, the single cloud from Zeus heralding a storm = the 'beak of death' heralding Dolops' own death (the "wings of darkness").

But using a simile from the route of the Trojans in this passage, where they're still winning, reminds us of their coming defeat; so the spear through his chest heralds Dolops' death to him, as a single cloud augurs a storm; but Dolops' death, in turn, is the single cloud for us, that augurs the whirlwind of the coming Trojan rout.

Then spent the afternoon, or some of it, contemplating sacrificial virgins. We have decided to write the easy version of the paper - that is, the chunk that will be the easiest to write, about S1 Buffy - and see if we can find a journal that wants it.

Related articles

Tuesday, 29 May 2012

Asius the chickpea

I have forty deaths and a dozen similes after that to work through; at the rate of one a day, I'm - not going to be done by the end of May. But what Oswald does is always interesting. With Asius for example, she combines the four places he's mentioned in the Iliad, briefly in the Catalog and at some length in book 12 and 13, into 11 stripped-down lines that tell us everything we need. Asius had great horses; they brought him all the way from Arisbe; but he couldn't leave them behind when he should have, and that's what killed him.

But it's the simile, once again, that really nails it. It's the simile about beans and chickpeas getting blown away in all directions by the impact and the wind of the winnowing-shovel, and Homer uses it to describe how an arrow bounces off Menelaus' breastplate. What's it doing here, though? Once again, subject and object interchange. In Homer, chickpea = object = arrow, driven by the winnower/Helenos, and bouncing off Menelaus (the subject's) breastplate. Here, the chickpea = object = Asius, driven by his horses/the winds of fate/ his own foolish error, and bouncing off - well, in some direction, but not under his own control, and to his death.

Saturday, 5 May 2012

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.

Friday, 27 April 2012

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.

Saturday, 14 April 2012

Orsilochus, Krethon, Pylaemenes and Mydon

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.