Ashamed and Afraid
The Rhetoric of Kleos in Iliad 7
Homer, Iliad 7.81-93
“But I kill one of you—and Apollo grants me the right to boast,
Then once I strip off your weapons, I will take them to holy Troy
And I will hang them on the temple of far-shooting Apollo.
But I will return the body to the well-benched ships,
And the Achaeans with the long hair will bury him.
They will heap him up a sign on the broad Hellespont
And then someone of the people who are born later will say
As they sail on the wine-dark sea in a many-benched ship,
“This is the grave of a man who died long ago,
Someone whom shining Hektor killed when he was the best”
So someone will say some day, and my fame will never perish”
So he spoke and everyone stayed quiet in the silence.
They were ashamed to refuse, but afraid to accept.”εἰ δέ κ’ ἐγὼ τὸν ἕλω, δώῃ δέ μοι εὖχος ᾿Απόλλων,
τεύχεα σύλησας οἴσω προτὶ ῎Ιλιον ἱρήν,
καὶ κρεμόω προτὶ νηὸν ᾿Απόλλωνος ἑκάτοιο,
τὸν δὲ νέκυν ἐπὶ νῆας ἐϋσσέλμους ἀποδώσω,
ὄφρά ἑ ταρχύσωσι κάρη κομόωντες ᾿Αχαιοί,
σῆμά τέ οἱ χεύωσιν ἐπὶ πλατεῖ ῾Ελλησπόντῳ.
καί ποτέ τις εἴπῃσι καὶ ὀψιγόνων ἀνθρώπων
νηῒ πολυκλήϊδι πλέων ἐπὶ οἴνοπα πόντον·
ἀνδρὸς μὲν τόδε σῆμα πάλαι κατατεθνηῶτος,
ὅν ποτ’ ἀριστεύοντα κατέκτανε φαίδιμος ῞Εκτωρ.
ὥς ποτέ τις ἐρέει· τὸ δ’ ἐμὸν κλέος οὔ ποτ’ ὀλεῖται.
῝Ως ἔφαθ’, οἱ δ’ ἄρα πάντες ἀκὴν ἐγένοντο σιωπῇ·
αἴδεσθεν μὲν ἀνήνασθαι, δεῖσαν δ’ ὑποδέχθαι·
This speech comes near the beginning of Iliad 7 as Hektor is challenging one of the Greeks to fight him in single combat. Its position and content speak directly both to the characterization of Hektor, some problems of the structure of the Iliad, and the metapoetics of kleos (or, more appropriately, the occluded poetics of the epic “kleos function”). Let me try to address them in order.
First, Hektor is using this language not 45 minutes in performance time from his encounter with Andromache and Astyanax on the wall of Troy where he ends by praying for his son to be better than his father and to delight his mother’s heart by returning from nettle with another man’s weapons just as Hektor hopes for himself now (6.479-81). There as well, Hektor engages with what some have called “tis-speech” imagining the future words of others (de Jong 1987). Hilary Mackie refers to these moments as vignettes and notes that all but one of them appear in Hektor’s speeches (6.460-1; 6.479-50; 7.88-91; 7.300-2; and 22.107). For Mackie, these support Hektor’s tendency towards “an inward focus and absorption in the scenes he is creating” (1996, 98-99). This separation from reality, the rumination and the accompanying verbal tic of moving between a harsh assessment of reality (Hektor’s statements that he will in fact die) and flights of fancy, is supportive of a character in distress, I believe. Hektor is engaging in classic rumination, in delaying tactics, as he pushes against the reality of his situation. His decisions and his actions may be shaped by trauma. (Or, to put it less aggressively, his characterization may be such that it allows others to see him as responding erratically as one in a traumatized state may do.)
In a way, Hektor is a complement for Achilles’ contemplation of heroic valor and the promise of eternal fame. But he approaches it from a more shame-based perspective. (See Schein the Mortal Hero, 177-178 for more on hector as a hero shaped by shame and Redfield, Nature and Culture 119-126 for Hektor’s heroism as a function of responsibility and obligation.) In nearly every major speech that indicates a decision or a resistance/regret for one being suggested (see Hektor in book 6 and 22), Hektor worries of shame and reputation which may be considered part of the rhetoric of fame, since the latter is shaped to an extent by the meaning of the former. Hektor, as Richard Martin has noted (1989, 133), is particularly concerned with winning a reputation. This concern expands beyond the boundaries of the poem (in time and space) in a manner that is really only achieved elsewhere by Achilles. When he refuses Andromache’s plea to stay within the walls in book 6, he immediately claims he fears feeling shame in front of the Trojans and predicts, using language that recalls this speech, that some day someone will see Andromache enslaved and crying and that her pain will rise anew from the loss of a husband who can no longer save her.
The projections of objects into the future that attest to Hektor’s absence, his success in gaining fame, and his failure to protect his wife, must in some way hang together in the mind of the audience. While we often take Hektor’s comments in book 7 as signal words on Homeric fame, they are words shaped by the public context that is in and of itself about the shame of people witnessing your excellence or commemorating one’s fall. When Hektor speaks to Andromache a book earlier, he projects her into the future as a different sêma (marker) of his absence, but one that correlates to his failure. The personal, intimate nature of this and Hektor’s expression of pain—that he would rather the earth cover over him than have to hear her crying (6.459-465) both underscores Hektor’s conflicted feelings and also undermines the significance of his later claims.
Yet, perhaps this too is an overstatement. Hektor’s bluster in public is a function of his refusal to reject shame, to stand down or seem less-than in front of his people and his enemies. In the intimate wish to his wife, he doesn’t mention glory or a grave, but instead wishes for oblivion, to be covered by the earth and to have no news of the horrors that continue after his death. If anything, rather than being an indication of an inconsistent character, these two vignettes point to an emotional coherence and a deep complexity to Hektor’s character.
And I am so bold as to imagine that the structure of books 6 into 7 reflect this. Why does the Iliad need a second duel between heroes in its first half? Why, 10 years into the war, should Ajax and Hektor face each other in a single combat that is ultimately meaningless? And why, of all possible moments, have this be the one when Hektor points to the sema of his own grave as the guarantee of the continuity of memory for his own kleos? I may be as yet and as ever too modern in saying this, but I suspect the futility and the mundanity of the scene is the point. Hektor’s duel—and his fame to come—impact nothing of the world he cares about and may, at best, preserve a kleos that is as much a record of this as of all he could not protect.
The incoherence of the events that follow may support the coherence of this characterization. Hektor’s challenge inspires fear—and the response reported by the narrator echoes Hektor’s own concern with shame (αἴδεσθεν μὲν ἀνήνασθαι, δεῖσαν δ' ὑποδέχθαι, 93). Nestor follows with the language shame reminds the Achaeans of their own boasts, Menelaos gets frustrated and is said by the narrator to be about to die (7.104) if he faces Hektor, only for Ajax to win a random drawing to face Hektor. Despite their fear of Hekor, Ajax seems to acquit himself quite well, save for an intervention by Apollo (7.272-273). The ‘draw’ is a stepping back from the conflict that has the Trojans relieved that Hektor survived and Agamemnon delighted at Ajax’s “victory” (7.312).
Throughout Hektor’s characterization in the Iliad we find a tension between the man we are told he should be and the figure we actually see in action. After returning to this speech again, I think that such tension is a direct function of Hektor’s relationship to kleos as clarified by his contrast with Achilles: he does not fight by choice, like Achilles; but he fights by obligation. His imagined futures change depending on whether they are public or private as he tries to play the part of a warrior prince who has learned to fight and die for his people while still struggling with the human part of knowing what his failure means for his city, spouse and child. Together, Achilles and Hektor can provide reflections on the limits of epic kleos and the conditions under which it matters and cannot. We just need to hear them as speaking in dialogue with each other, and us.
Other Posts on Iliad 7
Divine Plots and Human Plans: Reading Iliad 7: Homeric decision making and free will (“double determination”)
Erasing the Past: The Achaean Wall and Homeric Fame: Time and permanence in Homer; The Greek Fortifications and Fame
Give Helen Back!: Trojan Politics in Book 7 of the Iliad: Trojan Politics and the assemblies of Book 7
Short bibliography on Hektor
n.b this is not an exhaustive bibliography. If you’d like anything else included, please let me know. Follow-up posts will address kleos and Trojan politics
Clark, Matthew. “Poulydamas and Hektor.” College Literature 34, no. 2 (2007): 85–106. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25115422.
Combellack, Frederick M. “Homer and Hector.” The American Journal of Philology 65, no. 3 (1944): 209–43. https://doi.org/10.2307/291490.
Farron, S. “THE CHARACTER OF HECTOR IN THE ‘ILIAD.’” Acta Classica 21 (1978): 39–57. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24591547.
Horn, Fabian. “The psychology of aggression: Achilles’ wrath and Hector’s flight in Iliad 22.131-7.” Hermes, vol. 146, no. 3, 2018, pp. 277-289. Doi: 10.25162/hermes-2018-0023
Irene J. F. de Jong. “The Voice of Anonymity. Tis-Speeches in the Iliad.” Eranos 85 (1987) 5-22.
Lynn Kozak, Experiencing Hektor: Character in the Iliad. Bloomsbury Classical Studies Monographs. London; New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016. xiv, 307.
Hillary Mackie. Talking Trojan: Speech and Community in the Iliad . Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996.
Van der Mije, Sebastiaan Reinier. “Bad herbs: the snake simile in Iliad 22.” Mnemosyne, Ser. 4, vol. 64, no. 3, 2011, pp. 359-382. Doi: 10.1163/156852511X505079
W. R. Nethercut. “Hektor at the Abyss.” Classical Bulletin 49 (1972) 7-9.
Oele, Marjolein. “Priam’s despair and courage: an Aristotelian reading of fear, hope, and suffering in Homer’s « Iliad ».” Logoi and muthoi : further essays in Greek philosophy and literature. Ed. Wians, William. SUNY Series in Ancient Greek Philosophy. Albany (N. Y.): State University of New York Pr., 2019. 297-317.
Pantelia, Maria C. “Helen and the Last Song for Hector.” Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974-) 132, no. 1/2 (2002): 21–27. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20054056.
Pucci, Pietro. “Divine protagonists in the « Iliad »: Hector’s death in book 22.” Yearbook of Ancient Greek Epic, vol. 1, 2017, pp. 175-205.
Ready, Jonathan L.. “Iliad 22.123-128 and the erotics of supplication.” The Classical Bulletin, vol. 81, no. 2, 2005, pp. 145-164.
James Redfield. Nature and Culture in the Iliad: The Tragedy of Hektor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975.
Scott, John A. “The Parting of Hector and Andromache.” The Classical Journal 9, no. 6 (1914): 274–77. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3287165.
Scott, John A. “Paris and Hector in Tradition and in Homer.” Classical Philology 8, no. 2 (1913): 160–71. http://www.jstor.org/stable/262449.
Traill, David A. “Unfair to Hector?” Classical Philology 85, no. 4 (1990): 299–303. http://www.jstor.org/stable/269583.
Please forgive if I’m being a pest… This speech of Hector’s also caught my eye in book 7, though for me it was his stress on stripping armor that seemed remarkable.
Armor (τεῦχος) comes up a lot in the first part of this book. During the duel, the narrator takes the trouble to tell us how Menelaus put on, then removed his armor; then we’re told that Aias puts his on. (Are we ever told, by the way, why they had their armor off in the first place?)
Armor is a theme of Nestor’s speech: how Lycourgos stripped the armor from Areithoos and then gave it to his henchman Ereuthalion, whom Nestor defeated as a young man.
Also, these mentions of stripping armor come a book after Diomedes and Glaukos have so dramatically exchanged theirs in token of friendship.
Prospectively the theme of armor resonates with Patroclus using Achilles’ armor and the fight over it once he is slain — and this speech, in which Hector emphasizes the importance of returning the body of the fallen, both reminds us of what is to happen to his own corpse, and resonates with the end of book 7 itself, where they have a truce to collect bodies. (We’re lead to think that when a warrior is killed he becomes these two things, a corpse and armor, as opposed to say body and soul).
I am so very curious about the two duels, in 3 and 7, which are such obvious book ends, so ripe for contrast but what are we to take from it? As you say, this second duel is much more meaningless and futile than the first, which latter might have really ended the war had the gods not interfered and whisked Paris off. This second duel the gods were responsible for, but there were no stakes — honor and armor is all. Neither single combat nor a negotiated settlement will solve this conflict.
Something I noticed about the duel between Ajax and Hector, pertaining to armor: they attack each other three times a piece — a cast spear, a jabbed spear, and a thrown stone — and none are misses or, say, glancing blows from the helmet; but *each time* Aias’ shield is hit and *resists* the attack, and Hector’s shield is hit and *compromised* by the attack, until finally the stone thrown by Aias causes Hector’s shield to crumple in on itself entirely. What does that suggest?
Also notable is that Aias wounds Hector in the neck in this passage, which is where Achilles later wounds him. If this is how Hector fares against the Achaean’s *second* best, we’re lead to wonder, how is he likely to fare against the first?