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| Menelaus Supporting the Body of Patroclus (Photo credit: rjhuttondfw) |
Hector's lost two charioteers in 200 lines now, Eniopeus and Archeptolemos, both when someone took a shot at Hector and missed, and he will lose
Cebriones in book 16 in the fight around
Patroclus. Might as well just paint a target on their armour (the breastplate, just under the nipple; that's how the first two went, at least).
Oswald uses a "burning city"
simile here, which she imports from the battle around Patroclus, which I couldn't place until I had a look at Bruce Louden's book, "The
Iliad: Structure, Myth and Meaning" (
Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 2006). Thank you,
Google Books. Must read the rest of it.
Oswald has already used the following simile from this scene, in which
Menelaus & Meriones are compared to mules, dragging a heavy log from a mountain. But the Trojans and the battle they bring are fire engulfing them like a city; and of course like the fire that is going to engulf their city as a result of the death of Patroclus, because now
Achilles is going to kill Hector, and after that, all falls. I must take a look at how many of the similes she uses are drawn from the fight around the body of Patroclus, the one whose death is the most greatly mourned of all, if you measure by "causing more deaths that are described in the Iliad". Beginning to wonder if where I started - that the whole Iliad can be read as a lament for Hector - was a misreading, and actually it can all be read as a lament for Patroclus, from which Hector's death (among others) results.
I am stunned as always by the brilliance of Oswald's retranslation. Here's a literal translation:
And the battle was stretched against them savage as fire
That rushing on a city of men rising up suddenly burns it up, and the houses diminish
in a great blaze; and the force of the wind makes it roar.
Now here's Oswald (p. 32):
Like fire with its loose hair flying rushes through the city
The look of unmasked light shocks everything to rubble
And flames howl through the gaps
So why this simile here? I think because she talks about Archeptolemos' absence, and then moves to the gaps in the walls caused by the fire, and the flame roars through the gaps; Archeptolemos' death is one of the gaps that's been created by the fire/war, and we can see the war through the gap in the defenses he's left behind. I think.
(Thinking about this next morning): The flame has fed on Archeptolemos, and can now burn even hotter and brighter, because it's been fed by his death, and because he is not there to help defend against it; so there's a gap in the wall for the fire to get in. But this is all in Homer too, whom I am daily appreciating more.
(After conversation with Lauren) Completely missed the coolest thing about this simile: the "loose hair flying" rushing through the city is an image of a woman in mourning; the "unmasked light" is the anakalupsis of the bride. The fire, like a woman in mourning, like a bride whose husband is lost, rushes through the city, howling. And so Oswald reintroduces women, and mourning women, into a part of Homer that only has men.
