A Doublet Disposed

Time Travel Paradoxes and the Death of Euphorbus

This is one of a few posts dedicated to Iliad 17. As a reminder, these posts will remain free, but there is an option to be a financial supporter. All proceeds from the substack are donated to classics adjacent non-profits on a monthly basis.

At the end of book 16, Patroklos dies and prophesies the death of Hektor. Book 17 opens with Menelaos ‘noticing’ Patroklos fall and then turning to attack one of his killers, the Trojan Euphorbus. This character seems to be created for the moment, although he has something of a life outside of Homer. In the Iliad, he is described as someone with gold and silver in his hair and understood by some as a doublet for Paris, in the reading that makes the killing of Patroklos an echo of the killing of Achilles. Outside of Homer, the story goes that Pythagoras claimed he was Euphorbus reincarnated (according to Diogenes Laertius).

In the Iliad, Euphorbus has a brief narrative: he appears for the first time to kill Patroklos (at 16.808) and dies under 200 lines later. His death is marked by a quick exchange with Menelaos and then a remarkable pair of similes.

Homer, Iliad 17.43-60

“So he spoke and struck his evenly balanced shield,
But the bronze did not pierce, instead the tip bent back
On the strong shield. Then Atreus’ son, Menelaos, attacked
Again with his bronze, following a prayer to father Zeus.
He struck Euphorbus near the bottom of his throat
As he backed away, and he pressed forward, trusting his heavy hand.
The point travelled straight through his tender neck.
The man made a sound as he fell and his armor clattered around him.
His hair was dyed with blood something like the locks of the Graces,
Hair interwoven with silver and gold.
It’s like when a man nourishes an olive shoot
In some isolated place, where there’s plenty of water,
A good, healthy sapling. But then even as gusts of wind
Make it shake, it still blooms in white flower.
But a sudden storm overcomes it with a fierce wind
Rips it up from the furrow and lays it flat on the earth.
That’s how Menelaos, Atreus son killed Euphorbus
The son of Panthous, And then he stripped him of his arms.”

῝Ως εἰπὼν οὔτησε κατ’ ἀσπίδα πάντοσ’ ἐΐσην·
οὐδ’ ἔρρηξεν χαλκός, ἀνεγνάμφθη δέ οἱ αἰχμὴ
ἀσπίδ’ ἐνὶ κρατερῇ· ὃ δὲ δεύτερος ὄρνυτο χαλκῷ
᾿Ατρεΐδης Μενέλαος ἐπευξάμενος Διὶ πατρί·
ἂψ δ’ ἀναχαζομένοιο κατὰ στομάχοιο θέμεθλα
νύξ’, ἐπὶ δ’ αὐτὸς ἔρεισε βαρείῃ χειρὶ πιθήσας·
ἀντικρὺ δ’ ἁπαλοῖο δι’ αὐχένος ἤλυθ’ ἀκωκή,
δούπησεν δὲ πεσών, ἀράβησε δὲ τεύχε’ ἐπ’ αὐτῷ.
αἵματί οἱ δεύοντο κόμαι Χαρίτεσσιν ὁμοῖαι
πλοχμοί θ’, οἳ χρυσῷ τε καὶ ἀργύρῳ ἐσφήκωντο.
οἷον δὲ τρέφει ἔρνος ἀνὴρ ἐριθηλὲς ἐλαίης
χώρῳ ἐν οἰοπόλῳ, ὅθ’ ἅλις ἀναβέβροχεν ὕδωρ,
καλὸν τηλεθάον· τὸ δέ τε πνοιαὶ δονέουσι
παντοίων ἀνέμων, καί τε βρύει ἄνθεϊ λευκῷ·
ἐλθὼν δ’ ἐξαπίνης ἄνεμος σὺν λαίλαπι πολλῇ
βόθρου τ’ ἐξέστρεψε καὶ ἐξετάνυσσ’ ἐπὶ γαίῃ·
τοῖον Πάνθου υἱὸν ἐϋμμελίην Εὔφορβον
᾿Ατρεΐδης Μενέλαος ἐπεὶ κτάνε τεύχε’ ἐσύλα.

When I was discussing book 17 with Mimi Kramer, a friend and author of the great substack Unrelatable, the first thing she mentioned was the hair simile. It is remarkable, among many reasons, for the comparison to the graces and the sense that the dyeing of the hair darkened it to match that of the Graces. The comparison itself may stand to mark Euphorbus as effeminate, or at least falling short of martial exemplarity, like Paris. Yet, when he is introduced, Euphorbus surpassed the men of his age “at the spear, horse-riding, and with his swift feet” (ἔγχεΐ θ' ἱπποσύνῃ τε πόδεσσί τε καρπαλίμοισι).

With respect to Mimi, I actually find the subsequent simile fascinating. The basic image is of an olive shoot planted in an extreme place, cared for but cut off young by an extreme blast of wind. Menelaos ends up compared to the wind while Euphorbus is the shoot. One really straightforward way to understand the simile, then, is to see it as marking Euphorbus’ youth, his growth despite hostile circumstances, and his death in response to larger forces.

As I have written about before, I am pretty interested in the way Homeric similes engage with contextual themes and advance the plot  as well. In earlier posts, I have placed similes in the same categories as other devices and narrative itself, as providing blended spaces between the story and the world of the audience (leaning on cognitive ideas about narrative outlined by authors like Mark Turner in The Literary Mind). I think this simile creates the potential for audience members to think about the tension between the overall narrative of the Trojan War and the particular details of the Iliad.

A heroic blend: Original artwork by Brittany Beverung

Let me try to sketch this out in a way that makes sense. The Homeric epics work within the framework of a larger narrative system that restricts how much they can change the details or ‘innovate’. So, Achilles and Hektor always die and they always die in particular ways, but the journey between the points on the narrative archipelago can differ each time we take it. What needs to happen when the story being told goes too far, however, is a course-correction. So, if a detail is introduce that may in some way complicate or undermine the immutable feature of the Trojan War narrative, then the Homeric narrative has to resolve or at least reduce the tension.

When Euphorbus is involved in killing Patroklos, he may increase the echoes between Patroklos’ death and Achilles’ and he may also serve to soften or alter Hektor’s reputation, but he also introduces the threat that Achilles’ rage may go the wrong way. Euphorbus is immediately a loose end and the tradition abhors loose ends. And, so, the narrative introduces a rapid way to ‘snip’ a wild strand out of existence. Menelaos, compared to the wind, is an extension of fate or the sky-god Zeus’ ultimate responsibility for maintaining cosmic order.

Menelaos and Hector fighting over the body of Euphorbos. Middle Wild Goat style.

In writing this way, I am thinking a little bit about causal sequences and time travel paradoxes. I recently watched the show Bodies and was intrigued by its time travel loop and the nearly divine power granted to the universe to erase paradoxes. In a way, it reminded me of “All You Zombies” by Robert Heinlein. In both stories, the supreme agent who can control time is someone who somehow gets outside of time, to establish a causal loop that centers around them. Reestablishing a ‘proper’ or ‘natural’ narrative sequence requires the dissolution of that loop, the erasure of that agency. Homeric poetry, for all of his agentive power, is still beholden to a temporal sequence with specific causes and outcomes and can only work within those limits in telling its story. (And, indeed, often becomes the most interesting when pressing against or expanding those limits.)

So, I have begun to think of moments like the brief life and death of Euphorbus as akin to resolving a temporal paradox. Instead, we find Homeric poetry working in the creases of narrative traditions, adapting as much as possible, and deviating to the point that some people notice. And then, in a truly performative fashion, marking the moment of return with something surprising. To lay on even more to this: there is a metapoetic motif in Homeric poetry that may link trees and plants to narrative traditions.

Elton Barker and I have followed scholars like John Henderson and Alex Purves in seeing trees as a potential metaphor for poetic creation, if not for actual traditions of narratives and poetic traditions. From the leaves of trees for generations of heroes to the orchard of Laertes where Odysseus and his father recount their shared past, trees and their substance can be stand ins for sequences, for identity, and for the stories that put these things in context. When Euphorbus is compared to a shoot of an olive tree, flourishing and isolated, plucked and laid to rest before it is grown, the Iliad is really marking him as an abortive narrative tradition, snuffed out by the force of a storyworld that has no space its growth and expansion.

still from Bodies 2023

A Starter Bibliography on Similes in Homer

n.b this is not an exhaustive bibliography. If you’d like anything else included, please let me know.

Bassett, Samuel E. “The Function of the Homeric Simile.” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 52 (1921): 132–47. https://doi.org/10.2307/282957.

Ben-Porat, Ziva. “Poetics of the Homeric Simile and the Theory of (Poetic) Simile.” Poetics Today 13, no. 4 (1992): 737–69. https://doi.org/10.2307/1773297.

Mandel, Oscar. “Homeric Simile.” Prairie Schooner 69, no. 2 (1995): 124–124. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40633938.

Minchin, Elizabeth. “Similes in Homer: image, mind's eye, and memory.” Speaking volumes: orality and literacy in the Greek and Roman world. Ed. Watson, Janet. Mnemosyne. Supplements; 218. Leiden ; Boston (Mass.): Brill, 2001. 25-52.

Moulton, Carroll. “Similes in the Iliad.” Hermes 102, no. 3 (1974): 381–97. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4475864.

Muellner, Leonard. “The Simile of the Cranes and Pygmies a Study of Homeric Metaphor.” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. 93, 1990, pp. 59–101. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/311283. Accessed 6 Jan. 2024.

Naiden, Fred S.. “Homer's leopard simile.” Nine essays on Homer. Eds. Carlisle, Miriam and Levaniouk, Olga Arkadievna. Greek Studies. Lanham (Md.): Rowman and Littlefield, 1999. 177-203.

Notopoulos, James A. “Homeric Similes in the Light of Oral Poetry.” The Classical Journal 52, no. 7 (1957): 323–28. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3294076.

Pache, Corinne. “Mourning lions and Penelope’s revenge.” Arethusa, vol. 49, no. 1, 2016, pp. 1-24.

Porter, David H. “Violent Juxtaposition in the Similes of the ‘Iliad.’” The Classical Journal 68, no. 1 (1972): 11–21. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3296022.

Ready, Jonathan. 2011. Character, Narrator and Simile in the Iliad. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Ready, Jonathan L. “The Comparative Spectrum in Homer.” The American Journal of Philology 129, no. 4 (2008): 453–96. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27566727.

Scott, William C. 2009. The Artistry of the Homeric Simile. Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College Press.

Andreas Thomas Zanker, Metaphor in Homer: time, speech, and thought. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019. x, 263 p.. ISBN 9781108491884 $99.99.