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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more Trojans die

Achilles between Diomedes and Odysseus at Scyros. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Agastraphus, (Agastrophus in Homer), Thoon, Ennomus, Chersidamas, Charops, Socus.  


Again, we aren't told which side these men are on (they're all Trojans), or who killed them ( Diomedes killed the first one, was shot in the foot by Paris and withdrew, wounded; Odysseus, surrounded by Trojans, kills the rest, fighting desperately).  Oswald is only concerned with the deaths.


Agastraphus gets no simile, and the next three are given in a list;  they get more of a description in Homer, especially Chersidamas, whom Odysseus stabs under his shield as he leaps down from his chariot, and he falls in the dust (ἐν κονίῃσι), clutching the earth with his hand.  Oswald uses a simile to supply this bit of narrative, taking it from Book 23, Patroclos' funeral games, when Epeios strikes Euryalos so hard that he leaps up like a fish thrown out of the water by the north wind, that lands on the shore: 

" Like a fish in the wind
Jumps right out of its knowledge
And lands on the sand"    (Oswald p. 42) 

Marvellous translations as usual; for example,  Odysseus taunting the dead Socus "φθῆ σε τέλος θανάτοιο κιχήμενον, οὐδ’ ὑπάλυξας.", "The end of death got ahead of you, and you didn't evade it" turns into 

"poor Socus
Trying to get away from his own ending
Ran out his last moments in fear of the next ones". (Oswald p. 43)

Nicely encapsulates Socus running away (he was caught in the back by Odysseus' spear), trying to evade the ending that caught him anyway.


There follows a very interesting interaction between narrative and simile, and I'm struggling with it.  In Homer Odysseus taunts Socus that birds will strip his flesh, beating their wings around him, and his parents will never close his eyes for him in death.  Oswald describes the birds eating him mouthful by mouthful, and then this simile:

"Like when the wind comes ruffling at last to sailors adrift
Trying to manage the broken springs of their muscles
And lever and lift those well-rubbed oars
Making tiny dents in the ocean"(Oswald p. 43)

My first reaction is, what does this have to do with anything?  The simile comes from the beginning of Book 7, where the brothers Hector and Paris re-enter the battle, as welcome to the weary Trojans as a fresh breeze to sailors worn-out with rowing.   To add to the confusion, in context, the ruffling wind seems to refer most immediately to the vultures, gathering to strip their dead flesh.  Oswald has here done what she frequently does, and flipped the simile around, so what was subject becomes object and what was object becomes - something else entirely.  I think it goes something like this:

simile	in Iliad	in Memorial
breeze	the two Trojan brothers, Hector and Paris	the fluttering ("ruffling") of the birds around the dead Socus (and Charops)
weary with rowing	weary with fighting	weary with fighting (or running from death?)
sailors	Trojan warriors	the two Trojan brothers, Charops and Socus

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So two Trojan brothers as subject, longed-for helpers,  become two Trojan brothers as object, helpless dead; the weariness of fighting is increased and the activity is futile ("making tiny", i.e. futile, "dents in the ocean"), and the helping breeze becomes the ruffling feathers of the vultures around the bodies; the end of death is welcome.  Except not, because Socus was running, and the breeze doesn't help the sailors, though it does, I suppose, end their labour.

Inclined to wonder if I'm over-thinking.  I am assuming, for one thing, that every time Oswald uses a simile from elsewhere in the Iliad,  we can reasonably consider as significant both its present and its previous context and referents; she has placed the simile where it makes sense in her poem, but has also chosen it from a context that also casts light on its meaning in its present position.  Perhaps however she just picks similes that make sense where she puts them, and doesn't much care where they come from.  Or perhaps she doesn't always care.  I'm dubious about that, though; the context seems significant far too often.  I think the problem I'm having here is that it doesn't make a lot of sense to me in its present context in Memorial.  Well, mark for later consideration.

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Hippodamos and Hypeirochos

Diomedes and Athena attacking Ares (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We are in the middle of Hector's interrupted aristeia.  He has killed a list of people, and now the Greeks are regrouping, or at least Diomedes and Odysseus are. Odysseus kills these two.

Homer gives one line for both: "Ἱππόδαμον δ’ Ὀδυσεὺς καὶ Ὑπείροχον ἐξενάριξεν" - "and Odysseus stripped Hippodamos and Hypeirochos" - and only half a sentence at that, with the other half taken up by Diomedes.  Oswald gives each of the dead a line ("And Hippodamos died ... And Hypeirochos died ...".  She doesn't say who killed them or which side they were on, and each one gets his own simile, but (unusually) not repeated.

The similes are interesting.  One is drawn from the break in Diomedes' aristeia, Iliad 5.596-600, where Diomedes, after he's been wounded by Pandaros, sees Hector coming with Ares beside him and like any sensible man, is brought up short - like a man crossing a plain who stops and steps back at the bank of a foaming river.  The second is drawn from Achilles' fight with the river Scamander, Iliad 21.281-283:  he's calling on the gods as the river chases him and threatens to overwhelm him (Oswald has already used the simile just previous to this one, about a man gardening and loosening a stream). He complains that he wishes he was going to get killed by a hero instead of being swept away in a river like a swineherd's boy trying to cross in a storm.

Diomedes and Achilles escape their rivers, metaphoric and real; Hippodamos and Hypeirochos do not.

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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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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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