The Personal Political
Hektor, Polydamas, and Trojan Politics in Iliad 18
This is one of a few posts dedicated to Iliad 18. 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.
One of the clearer examples of narrative judgment in the Iliad comes in the midst of book 18. After Achilles has announced his return by screaming three times, the Trojans retreat and hold an impromptu assembly. The assembly forms without a command; Polydamas addresses it first and suggests a strategic retreat to the city (not dissimilar to Andromache’s own advice to Hektor in Iliad 6) and then Hektor forcefully rejects his advice, insisting they will stay outside the city walls where he will face Achilles. There is a rather pointed disjuncture between the response of the Achaeans and the narrator’s evaluation
“So Hektor spoke and the Trojans shouted their assent in response.
Fools! Pallas Athena deprived them of their wits.
For they praised Hektor even though he devised bad things,
and no one praised Polydamas who counseled a noble counsel.῝Ως ῞Εκτωρ ἀγόρευ’, ἐπὶ δὲ Τρῶες κελάδησαν
νήπιοι· ἐκ γάρ σφεων φρένας εἵλετο Παλλὰς ᾿Αθήνη.
῞Εκτορι μὲν γὰρ ἐπῄνησαν κακὰ μητιόωντι,
Πουλυδάμαντι δ’ ἄρ’ οὔ τις ὃς ἐσθλὴν φράζετο βουλήν.
The line of praise used here for the Trojan reaction to the speech is identical to the Trojan praise for Hektor when he first announces their new, more aggressive strategy in book 8 (8.542). In a way, these two assemblies bookend Trojan success and Hektor’s glory in the middle part of the epic. Indeed, Hektor’s bluster in book 8 could in part be switched out with his claims in book 18 and some readers might never sense the difference—but there’s a desperate aggression in his response to Polydamas and a seeping pessimism that is all the stronger in the second speech.
This assembly is marked as out-of-the ordinary in a few ways (18.245-248): they assemble before eating and standing, rather than sitting, frightened by Achilles. In addition, as others have noted, the majority of assemblies in the Iliad are marked by an attention to time and space: they happen in the morning in an authoritative position (e.g. by Agamemnon’s ship, for the Achaeans, and outside of Priam’s palace, for the Trojans). As I mention in earlier posts, the world of epic reflects the basic political institutions that were common in Ancient Greece, including a smaller, oligarchic council with advisory functions (in historical cities, often called a boulê or a gerousia and a larger public assembly (often, the ekklêsia). The Trojans appear to have both institutions, but each is less functional than the Achaean counterpart in clear ways. The Trojan assemblies are primarily audiences for Hektor or (Priam and Paris) and the council has little function at all. Part of the political drama of the Iliad, I think, is the exploration of the limits of advisory counsel in Troy. And this occurs primarily through the relationship of Polydamas and Hektor.
The Trojan assembly in book 18 certainly contributes to a characterization of Hektor, but it is a culmination of a movement that started much earlier in the epic, anticipated in part by the Trojan assembly in book 7, where Paris dismisses Antênor’s advice rather quickly. While the phrase “the personal is the political” did not become proverbial in modern politics until the 1960s, it is certainly applicable in a different way to ancient monarchies where the political emerges from the autocratic person (and their family). In the Trojan acclamation for Hektor I see a metaphor for the subsuming of Trojan hopes into one body and the representation of Hektor’s desperation in the delusion of the mob. Polydamas—whose very name can be seen as a kind of ancient Greek ‘everyman’—is provided as a lone voice calling out the collective madness.
The conflict between Polydamas and Hektor has long been posed as one between different forms of political authority (see, e.g. Wuest 1955). As Matthew Clark has argued, however, there may be other thematic dimensions that map on to the same relationship: Polydamas is a double—more of a mirrored reflection or refraction, than a copy of Hektor. Polydamas and Hektor may be considered among the epic’s other heroic pairs, like Diomedes and Sthenelos, Sarpedon and Glaukos, or even Achilles and Patroklos. And yet Hektor is not paired with Polydamas alone, he and Paris are also reflections of the Greek brothers, Agamemnon and Menelaos. Hektor and Polydamas, however, seem to maintain an uneasy relationship at best. In part, this seems characteristic of Hektor, whose rapport with Paris is best called ‘complicated’. Hektor’s position—if not his personality—isolates him and places him in opposition to other figures. (For the pattern between Polydamas and Hektor see Dickson 1995, 133-43, especially the charts on 134-5. Cf. Redfield 1975, 143-53 and Elmer 2013, 137-138.)
In part, as others have noted, the epic marks Trojan political difference by marginalizing the deliberative council. In book three, the only time we ‘see’ the Trojan council, the elders sit by the city’s walls reflecting on whether Helen is really worth it (a debate that anticipates the content of the assembly in book 7). In book ten, when they gather to discuss espionage (as the Achaeans have just done), Hector merely calls the leaders to execute a plan he has already devised. Shortly afterwards, in book thirteen, when Polydamas calls for the best of the Trojans to aid in deliberation (13.740-741), Hector largely ignores him. In fact, the marginalization of good advice and the absence of a productive advisory council coalesce thematically around Hektor’s engagement with Polydamas. In these exchanges, Polydamas complains about the exclusion of good advice and debate in Troy: Hector rebukes him in the assembly despite the value of his advice (12.211-15) and imagines that, since he’s best in war, he also trumps everyone in council (13.726-34). But Polydamas perseveres in asserting his right to give advice based on the idea that people have different skills (13.726-34):
‘Hektor you are impossible to persuade with words.
Since the god grants you to excel in the works of war
you also wish to know better than the rest in council
but you could not ever claim everything for yourself at once—
for god grants the works of war to one
and dancing to another, and the lyre and song to another,
and in another wide-browed Zeus sets a mind—
a fine one because of which many men will profit,
and it saves many, and I myself know this for sure.’
And earlier, he echoes Greek speakers like Nestor and Diomedes in insisting that even he is correct to provide good advice in public (12.211-15):
‘Hektor, always, all the time, you rebuke me in the assembly
even though I counsel fine things, since it is not ever at all seemly
that one who is a commoner argue differently, neither in council
nor ever in war, but one must always increase your power;
but now, once again, I will speak out how things seem to me to best.’
The narrator echoes Polydamas in two significant ways before he opens the assembly in book 18: it affirms both that he has the foresight/knowledge to speak with authority and that he is better than Hektor when it comes to speeches (18.249-252):
Then among them inspired Polydamas began to speak,
Panthoös’ son, for he alone saw before and after.
He was Hektor’s companion, and they were born on the same night,
although the one excels much in múthoi and the other with the spear.
A quick word about the word muthos here. Our English myth comes from the same root but the semantic field has shifted over the years. As early as Thucydides—who seemingly maligns historians like Herodotus as muthologoi, mere ‘storytellers’—the root had gained some fictive aspect. But in early Greek poetry, as Richard Martin argues in The Language of Heroes (1989), a muthos can be a speech, a speech-act, or a plan. This means that a Homeric muthos can impact or change the world through its utterance or present a plan of action that would change things as well. By asserting that Polydamas excels in muthoi just as Hektor excels with the spear, the narrative is granting not just that Polydamas is exceptional, but that he can wield words as weapons or tools.
Polydamas’ ensuing speech acknowledges their dangers, predicts (quite reasonably) what will happen on Achilles’ return, and then enjoins the assembled Trojans to return to the city and ward Achilles off from the safety of the walls. At the center of this, Polydamas emphasizes protecting the city and the woman and predicts that the Trojans as a group will have strength in the assembly and the walls of the city (νύκτα μὲν εἰν ἀγορῇ σθένος ἕξομεν, ἄστυ δὲ πύργοι, 18.274). This offers a different model for both the politics and the protection of the city, one that relies on a collective effort instead of individual heroism.
Hektor’s speech falls into two parts, criticism of Polydamas and an address to the Trojans. First, he attempts to undermine Polydamas’ authority and question his motives:
Then, looking darkly bright-helmed Hektor addressed him:
‘Polydamas, you no longer argue things that are dear to me,
you who call us to go into the city and crowd together again.
Have you never tired of being shut up in the towers?
for, mortal men all used to say before that
Priam’s city was full of gold, full of bronze—
but now indeed his house has lost the noble treasures
and many of its possessions have gone to Phrygia and Maeonia
sold off since great Zeus has aggrieved it.
But now, when the child of crooked-counseled Kronos actually grants
For me to gain glory near the ships and drive the Achaians to sea,
fool, no longer speak these thoughts among the people,
for none of the Trojans will obey you, I will not allow it.’
Hektor reveals his own frustration here, compressing years of inaction into a rather simple question: aren’t you sick of this? Hektor’s characteristic claiming of Zeus’ favor is certainly delusional from our perspective (we know the plot!), but given the events of the Iliad and what Hektor has recently experienced, it is not completely bizarre to believe that, despite all odds, the Trojans have a reasonable chance of winning at this point. Hektor clings to that reading of events, no matter what else happens.
Hektor closes with simple advice (eat, get ready for tomorrow) and then closes with a rhetorical flourish:
If shining Achilles truly rises from the ships,
if he is willing, it will be more harrowing for him. I will not
avoid him in the ill-sounding battle, but I will stand right
in front of him, either he will bear great strength or I will.
War is shared and common, and he also kills the one who is killing.εἰ δ’ ἐτεὸν παρὰ ναῦφιν ἀνέστη δῖος ᾿Αχιλλεύς,
ἄλγιον αἴ κ’ ἐθέλῃσι τῷ ἔσσεται· οὔ μιν ἔγωγε
φεύξομαι ἐκ πολέμοιο δυσηχέος, ἀλλὰ μάλ’ ἄντην
στήσομαι, ἤ κε φέρῃσι μέγα κράτος, ἦ κε φεροίμην.
ξυνὸς ᾿Ενυάλιος, καί τε κτανέοντα κατέκτα.
Hektor leans on a series of tropes available in his other speeches: he expresses doubt about Achilles’ actually returning (εἰ δ' ἐτεὸν), vaunts that it will be worse for him (ἄλγιον), returns to his oft-repeated assertion that a fight can go either way, and then ends with a compressed proverbial statement, that war is shared, and someone kills the killer. This kind of ‘eff it, we all day someday’ attitude has the sound of a cowboy’s bravado but communicates the spirit of someone who is truly uncertain.
Over the years, I have changed my mind several times about the significance of Hektor’s abiding sense of uncertainty beneath his insistent behavior. Although I think the ambiguity of his behavior opens it to productive interpretation (and misinterpretation), I am increasingly convinced that insight into Hektor’s uncertainty has psychological valence. Modern studies have shown a strong correlation between emotions of fear/anxiety and uncertainty. Hektor’s boasting and rhetorical flexing can be seen both as an attempt to cope with these feelings and as an attempt to allay them in others. He is trying to be a good leader, trying to give his people something to rally around in the face of so much bleakness.
Hektor’s violent rejection of Polydamas’ advice here can be seen in many ways. It is an affirmation of the plot of the poem (and the larger Trojan War), where Hektor must die. At that same time, it is an indictment of a heroic approach to keeping a people safe and also a critique of a simple autocracy. Some readers may object that such critiques are outside the bounds of Homeric epic—and the primary rejoinder I have for this is that the Iliad did not need to include the range of Trojan political scenes that it does if they were not important in some way. And, as is the custom of epic, these scenes reflect on multiple themes at once: the epic’s exploration of heroism as much as its engagement with the larger mythical tradition alongside themes of contemporary concern for its ancient audiences.
The final Trojan assembly provides the clearest analogy to the Achaean assembly in book 1—it forms with everyone standing, without any agent convening it (18.243-313). Polydamas stands to propose retiring the walls now that Achilles has returned. Hector rejects his proposal and threatens violence should anyone heed him.
A short Bibliography
n.b this is not an exhaustive bibliography. If you’d like anything else included, please let me know.
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