Yo, Achilles

Apostrophe in Iliad 20

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.

Book 19 of the Iliad ends with a sharp focus on Achilles as he prepares to go to war. The narrow frame produces a bit of a surprise for the epic: Achilles horse, Xanthus, talks to him and tells him he is going to die. Achilles responds that he knows he will perish far from his homeland and then shouts and leads his chariot into the front ranks.

One of the things I have been interested in is the joins between books, how the different scenes fit together. Book 19 doesn’t shift immediately to a different place and time, instead it provides something of a generic transition before moving from the mortal realm to the gods. We get three lines of transition:

“So they were arming themselves among the curved ships,
Alongside you, son of Peleus, hungry for battle, the Achaeans,
But the Trojans were opposite, on the rising part of the field

῝Ως οἳ μὲν παρὰ νηυσὶ κορωνίσι θωρήσσοντο
ἀμφὶ σὲ Πηλέος υἱὲ μάχης ἀκόρητον ᾿Αχαιοί,
Τρῶες δ’ αὖθ’ ἑτέρωθεν ἐπὶ θρωσμῷ πεδίοιο·

This is one of the rare times in the epic that Achilles is apostrophized. A scholion offers one reason for this: “Note that [Achilles] is the leader of the army in the field” (ὅτι τῆς ὑπαίθρου στρατιᾶς ἡγεμὼν ἦν. Schol. bT ad Hom. Il. 20.2 ex). This answer seems wholly ill-fit to addressing the oddness of this choice at this time. (Note, there’s also a textual variant for ἀκόρητον: some traditions have ἀκόρητοι, modifying the Achaeans; but, as the scholion notes, Achilles is the one who has not had his fill of battle.)

Olpè (wine jug) showing the Greek hero Achilles receiving his armour from his mother Thetis. Pottery, comparable with the Louvre F 335 painter in Athens (Greece), c. 520 BC (inv. 13.346)

The subsequent scholion doesn’t do much to try to explain the sudden apostrophe either. Instead, it notes that five characters and one god are apostrophized in Homer.

Schol. T Ad Hom. Il. 20.2 ex

“The poet addresses five heroic characters [in this way]: Achilles, Menelaos, Melanippos, Patroklos, Eumaios, and, of the gods, Apollo”

προσφωνεῖ δὲ ὁ ποιητὴς ἡρωϊκοῖς μὲν προσώποις πέντε, ᾿Αχιλλεῖ, Μενελάῳ (cf. Δ 127. 146 al.), Μελανίππῳ (cf. Ο 582), Πατρόκλῳ (cf. Π 11. 20 al.), Εὐμαίῳ (cf. ξ 55 al.), θεῶν δὲ ᾿Απόλλωνι· „ἀμφὶ σέ, ἤϊε Φοῖβε” (Υ 152).

In an earlier post I discuss apostrophe in Homer. It is worth reviewing some ideas about it to make sense of this opening. Among literary devices, apostrophe is generally defined as direct-address to a character/person not present. (It shares the name with the punctuation mark because both the sign and the action are “turning away”, which is the meaning of the Greek word.) As early as Ps. Plutarch’s On Homer, we have the identification of the trope as apostrophe and the idea articulated that it “moves with pathos and makes an impact on the audience.” (ὅπερ ἰδίως ἀποστροφὴ καλεῖται. τῷ δὲ παθητικῷ κινεῖ καὶ ἄγει τὸν ἀκροώμενον, 620-621.)

While the scholion is certainly correct that several characters in Homer receive this treatment, only two receive it repeatedly: Patroklos in the Iliad and Eumaios in the Odyssey. The general argument I have always applied to this is that the act creates a sense of identification or sympathy with the character addressed in Homer, setting them and their experiences aside from the rest of the narrative as something special. From a narratological perspective, Irene J. F. De Jong has classed apostrophe as a kind of metalepsis, that is a device that breaks down the narrative, that draws the audience and narrator together to see the actions in a different way. The effect is both to single the apostrophized character out for special attention and to bring the audiences closer to the experience, to immerse them in it, as Rutger Allan suggests.

Achilles departing, the Nereid Kymothea holding a phiale and an oinochoe (all named). Detail, side B from an Attic red-figure kantharos.

Is the apostrophe of Achilles more sympathetic or metaleptic in some way? I have a hard time committing to this, but can imagine the address as getting us to think about Achilles, insatiate of battle. The problem I have is that other instances of apostrophe occur as the narrator lingers on the character addressed. Here, we find the apostrophe at the beginning of a book, moving on from Achilles to the assembly of the gods. (And this is assuming that we imagine the events of book 20 always following book 19. A secondary or tertiary question I have here is whether this beginning is too generic, despite the surprising apostrophe.)

But let’s stick to my basic conviction that things like this aren’t accidental. If metalepsis functions to mark—or create—difference, to direct the audience to some change in the narrative, then we should probably take the transitional moment of this scene seriously. The apostrophe to Achilles marks a movement from just thinking about Achilles to bringing the Achaeans and Trojans into the frame, as if moving from a close up of Achilles girding for war before panning out to the larger scene. The moment is doubly transitional as well: it shifts from the martial vista to the divine assembly where Zeus is about to rewrite the rules of the epic again and let the gods loose in the fog of war.

In a way, this takes us back to book 1: Zeus articulates his plan and Achilles’ place in it. Achilles, moreover, is an ideal figure for such a synoptic transition—he is a central mover of the plot; the themes of the epic turn around him; and his position between things makes him a natural fit, especially as he moves between stillness and action, life and death, the realm of mortals and the plans of gods. The apostrophe effects a brief pause, prefacing a significant shift in the action, telling the audience to watch Achilles and the impact he has on everything around him.

More on Iliad 20

1. Concerns For Those About To Die: Introducing Iliad 20: Zeus; Gods and humans; Zeus’s will

2. Spears and Stones will Break Your Bones But Words Will Always Shape You: Aeneas' Speech to Achilles in Iliad 20: Flyting; Insults; Aeneas and Achilles

3. The Gamemaster's Anger and Fear: Homeric Contrafactuals and Rescuing Aeneas: Counter-to-fact statements in Homer; Batman; Zeus and the Plot of the Iliad; Aeneas

A short bibliography on apostrophe in Homer

Allan, Rutger. “Metaleptic apostrophe in Homer: emotion and immersion.” Emotions and narrative in ancient literature and beyond: studies in honour of Irene de Jong. Eds. De Bakker, Mathieu, Van den Berg, Baukje and Klooster, Jacqueline. Mnemosyne. Supplements; 451. Leiden ; Boston (Mass.): Brill, 2022. 78-93. Doi: 10.1163/9789004506053_006

Allan, William. “Arms and the man: Euphorbus, Hector, and the death of Patroclus.” Classical Quarterly, N. S., vol. 55, no. 1, 2005, pp. 1-16. Doi: 10.1093/cq/bmi001

Block, E.. “The narrator speaks. Apostrophe in Homer and Vergil.” TAPA, vol. CXII, 1982, pp. 7-22.

Brown, H. Paul. “The grammaticalization of « daimonie » at Iliad 24.194.” Mnemosyne, Ser. 4, vol. 67, no. 3, 2014, pp. 353-369. Doi: 10.1163/1568525X-12341203

Dubel, Sandrine. “ sur l'apostrophe au personnage dans l'« Iliade ».” « Vox poetae »: manifestations auctoriales dans l'épopée gréco-latine : actes du colloque organisé les 13 et 14 novembre 2008 par l'université Lyon 3. Ed. Raymond, Emmanuelle. Collection du Centre d’Études Romaines et Gallo-Romaines. Nouvelle Série; 39. Paris: De Boccard, 2011. 129-144.

De Jong, Irene J. F.. “Metalepsis in ancient Greek literature.” Narratology and interpretation: the content of narrative form in ancient literature. Eds. Grethlein, Jonas and Rengakos, Antonios. Trends in Classics. Supplementary Volumes; 4. Berlin ; New York: De Gruyter, 2009. 87-115.

Klooster, Jacqueline. “Apostrophe in Homer, Apollonius and Callimachus.” Über die Grenze: Metalepse in Text- und Bildmedien des Altertums. Eds. Eisen, Ute E. and Möllendorff, Peter von. Narratalogia; 39. Berlin ; Boston (Mass.): De Gruyter, 2013. 151-173.

Mackay, Elizabeth Anne. “ narrative disjunction in early Greek poetry and painting.” Acta Classica, vol. 44, 2001, pp. 5-34.

Parry, A.. “Language and characterization in Homer.” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. LXXVI, 1972, pp. 1-22.

Schmitz, Thomas A.. “Epic apostrophe from Homer to Nonnus.” Symbolae Osloenses, vol. 93, 2019, pp. 37-57. Doi: 10.1080/00397679.2019.1648012

Yamagata, Naoko. “The apostrophe in Homer as part of the oral technique.” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies of the University of London, vol. XXXVI, 1989, pp. 91-103. Doi: 10.1111/j.2041-5370.1989.tb00564.x