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Book Eleven
provides a useful discussion of earlier views and bibliography. The general
conclusion is that the poet has a clear enough general picture of the course
of battle and commanded a technique adequate for its description. Yet
it is a battle of heroes (only they are militarily significant, according to
Odysseus, 2.200-3), and it must be borne in mind that &01801 not only
preserved old tactics (chariots, tower shields) in old formulas but incorporated
the old tactics into newer systems of formulas. To the extent that this
took place (which remains unexplored) there is confusion already in the
detailed presentation of battle. For the general picture Latacz compares the
action before Syracuse described by Thucydides (6.69-70).
67-9 General descriptions of the fighting are regularly ornamented by
similes, cf. 67-9, 72-3, 86-9. For the Homeric harvest-field see W. Richter,
Arch. Horn, H 119-21 and the description of reaping at 18.550-6. There is
some confusion in the thought behind the present comparison. Each army
cut down the other, so the poet must combine the idea of reaping with that
of two sides. He pictures two teams of reapers working from opposite ends
of a field (evavTioi aAAfjAoiai, 67) to represent the Trojans and Achaeans,
but the crop must also at the same time represent the Trojans for the
Achaeans and the Achaeans for the Trojans, cf. Frankel, Gleichnisse 41. As
at 18.550-60 the fine crop belongs to a landlord, a u&Kccp here, a (3aaiA£us
in book 18. The metaphor of'mowing down' an enemy is surprisingly rare
in Greek (19.221-4, Soph. fr. 625 and then Ap. Rhod. 3.1187, 3.1382 -
where the victims had been sown), probably because Greeks fought most of
the time with the spear rather than with slashing weapons. Occupying as it
does an almost programmatic position in the book this simile sets the tone
of the following narrative. In books 3-8 there had been included glimpses
of the conventions of war (duels, truces, burial of the slain), of its chivalrous
side (Diomedes and Glaukos), even of its humorous aspects (the panics of
Aphrodite and Ares); in book 10 war brought fame and profit and little risk.
All that now disappears. Vultures not burial await the dead. There is a
horrendous list of casualties, in quantity on the Trojan side, in quality on
the Achaean. The brutal slayings of Agamemnon are followed by the nasty
incapacitating wounds of the leading Achaeans. This is guerre a I'outrance,
"TToAeiios TToA08on