Heroic Welfare
Abundance and Scarcity in the Funeral Games of Iliad 23
This post is a continuation of my substack on the Iliad. All proceeds from the substack are donated to classics adjacent non-profits on a monthly basis. Last year this substack provided over $2k in charitable donations. Don’t forget about Storylife: On Epic, Narrative, and Living Things. Here is its amazon page. here is the link to the company doing the audiobook and here is the press page. I am happy to talk about this book in person or over zoom.
At the end of the chariot race in Iliad 23, Achilles attempts to intervene when the man he thinks is best in the contest—Eumelos—comes in last (“The best man is driving his single-hooved horses last!” λοῖσθος ἀνὴρ ὤριστος ἐλαύνει μώνυχας ἵππους. 23.536) thanks to an accident during the contest. A scholion suggests that Achilles {or the poet} is “teaching us to pity those who suffer misfortune unaligned with their worth and not to allow chance to overpower excellence” (διδάσκει τοὺς παρὰ τὴν ἀξίαν ἀτυχοῦντας ἐλεεῖν καὶ μὴ τῆς ἀρετῆς ἐᾶν ὑπερτερεῖν τὴν τύχην, Schol. bT ad Hom. Il. 23.536-7). Achilles’ pity triggers a series of mini-conflicts with Antilochus and then Antilochus and Menelaos wherein Achilles tries to balance the expected outcome of the race based on the excellence of the horses and their driver and the actual results.
The responses to Achilles and the arguments among different characters echo the language of Iliad 1 where Achilles and Agamemnon fall out in disagreement over the distribution of goods. In that conflict, Agamemnon describes his loss of his prize (geras, here, Chryseis) as a slight to his honor (timê) that needs to be rectified by the addition of a future prize. In this system—which echoes the divine cosmos where honors and rights are stable—the amount of goods that signify one’s public position is limited by the availability of new goods to a zero-sum game. Achilles’ makes this point when he tells Agamemnon that all the prizes have been distributed, but there will be new wealth to be shared once the city is sacked. But Agamemnon is angered enough by Achilles’ insubordination and the insult to his position, that he eventually settles on taking Achilles’ prize to supplement his loss, thereby reducing Achilles’ symbolic position.
Leaving aside the dangerous logic of continuous and endless expansion—which is, in a way, the assumption of late-stage capitalism that thrives on the promise of ever more profit—the conflict of book 1 points to a signal difference between divine realms and mortal realms. Mortal affairs are limited in terms of time and substance; the divine realm does not change. When there is a shift in cosmic balance among the gods, it threatens the stability of the universe. But shifts among mortals are by necessity: people live and die. We change. The whole ideal of stable honor and expanding wealth is fundamentally against the laws of physics (nihil ex nihilo, entropy, etc.)
I have written before about the thematic structure of early Greek poetry, how eris or neikos (strife) develops from a conflict over the distribution of goods (dasmos) and continues until there is some redistribution or judgement (krisis). As I describe in the article “Eris and Epos…” this sequence is so fundamental to Greek epic that it shapes its form as well as its content. The Iliad is not complete thematically until it resolves the problems of distribution in book 1. This is partly done in the ‘reconciliation’ of book 19 where the scales are more-or-less balanced between Agamemnon and Achilles, but general questions remained unanswered: can you express a person’s value in symbolic wealth? What happens when events disrupt the distribution? Is there a place for community intervention to ensure that someone’s access to wealth is equal to their perceived worth?
Achilles’ intervention in the chariot race, characterized by the scholion as an act of pity to ensure that Eumelos’ virtue is supported symbolically, is met with the same kind of objection that he voices himself in book 1: by taking from others to support Eumelos, he is perpetuating a loss in the zero-sum game: honoring Eumelos means dishonoring someone else.
Instead, Achilles comes up with a different response:
Iliad 23.558-565
“Antilochus, if you’re asking me to give something from my own store
To Eumelos, I will do that as well, I think.
I will give him a breastplate which I took from Asteropaios
A bronze one, which is decorated around the edge with shining tin.
It will be worth a lot to him.”So he spoke, and he told his dear companion Automedon
To get it from his dwelling. He went and brought it back
And placed it in Eumelos’ hands. The man accepted it gladly.”᾿Αντίλοχ’, εἰ μὲν δή με κελεύεις οἴκοθεν ἄλλο
Εὐμήλῳ ἐπιδοῦναι, ἐγὼ δέ κε καὶ τὸ τελέσσω.
δώσω οἱ θώρηκα, τὸν ᾿Αστεροπαῖον ἀπηύρων
χάλκεον, ᾧ πέρι χεῦμα φαεινοῦ κασσιτέροιο
ἀμφιδεδίνηται· πολέος δέ οἱ ἄξιος ἔσται.
῏Η ῥα, καὶ Αὐτομέδοντι φίλῳ ἐκέλευσεν ἑταίρῳ
οἰσέμεναι κλισίηθεν· ὃ δ’ ᾤχετο καί οἱ ἔνεικεν,
Εὐμήλῳ δ’ ἐν χερσὶ τίθει· ὃ δὲ δέξατο χαίρων.
Here, as someone outside the system, Achilles introduces new material wealth to resolve the conflict before it becomes too serious: he attempts to short-circuit the traditional theme of dasmos leading to eris. In a kind of heroic welfare, Achilles creates a positive-sum game by offering new material. Or, we could see it as a modification of the zero-sum game because he is willing to give up some of his own wealth to keep a community conflict free. In either case, we as an audience are left with two difficult models for addressing the traditional conflict: the addition of new wealth to a closed system (through expansion) or the largesse from someone who has so much wealth that it doesn’t make a difference. Neither option forces heroes to make hard decisions in ranking the material needs of a community.
The world of epic heroes overflows with material fantasy. As Adam Brown suggests in his 1998 article, the Homeric economy is symbolic and ‘literary’ rather than historical: Heroes never eat vegetables and rarely touch fish; instead they subsist on a diet of meat that is fundamentally impossible for the world of their audiences. Gold, silver, and bronze adorns their armor. But where did the wealth come from? This material fantasy is an echo of our entertainment today where characters in movies and televisions (generally) work very little and enjoy material wealth far greater than the average audience member. I think this partly explains Homeric wealth: no one wants to worry about semi-divine heroes not having enough to eat or, really, dealing with the indignities of bodies riven by scarcity.
And, yet, the Iliad is deeply invested in the problem of scarcity from its first few dozen lines. The conflict that drives the poem is embedded in the very difference between the fantasy world of myth and the gods and the basic problem of being human: there’s not enough time and for heroes, honor and possessions function as symbolic stand-ins for the fundamental limits of mortal lives. Certain images function throughout the epic to emphasize the impossibility of heroic abundance: consider the hecatomb sent to Apollo in book 1: 100 bulls (supplied from where) loaded onto a ship rowed by 20 men (1.309-311): Were they stacked on top of one another?
So, for me, the funeral games potentially introduce a paradox. On the one hand, they perpetuate the fantasy of endless wealth feeding the expansion of heroic esteem; on the other hand, they show Achilles trying to balance this with the kind of excellence and competition that he valued in book 1. One answer to the paradox is that, as with book 1, the dissonance is productive: the audience is supposed to think about the impossibility of what Achilles does in book 23 and rethink the questions and moves prior to it.
Another answer, which I am leaning towards, is that Achilles does not care about stuff or honor any more because of the horrible loss he suffered with Patroklos’ death. Achilles’ has set himself outside the system and gives from his own material wealth to keep other people whole. This act of understanding others’ needs prefaces his return of Hektor’s body and his weeping with Priam in book 24. And that act, renders the heroic material concerns meaningless. The fantasy of heroic abundance functions to set into relief the irremeable scarcity of human life.
Other Posts on Iliad 23
That Mare is Mine! Introducing Iliad 23: Funeral games; Politics; Athletic Contests
Rage Won't Raise the Dead: The Ghost of Patroklos in Iliad 23: Achilles and Patroklos, again; tragedy; peripeteia
Achilles' Wicked Deeds: Framing Human Sacrifice in Iliad 23: Human sacrifice; grief; death
Wealth/Economy in Homer
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Short bibliography on the Funeral games
n.b this is not an exhaustive bibliography. If you’d like anything else included, please let me know.
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