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Location
Head
Neck
Trunk
Arms
Legs
Total
Result
Fatal
Not fatal
Uncertain
Fatal
Not fatal
Uncertain
Fatal
Not fatal
Uncertain
Fatal
Not fatal
Uncertain
Fatal
Not fatal
Uncertain
Stone
4 i
0
i
0
i
i
i
0
I
0
0
I
2
0
Book Eleven
Sword
O O 00
4
0
0
4
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
17
Weapon
Spear
0
0
8
0
59
5
3
0
6
1
O CO CO
106
Arrow
2
0
0
0
0
1
O CO CO
0
I
0
0
2
O
12
Total
the spear 4X , the sword 3X , and unspecified ix . The general statistics
for Homeric wounds are as shown in the table (after H. Frolich, Die
Militarmedizin Homers (Stuttgart 1879).
The spear, it is clear, is the weapon; recourse is had to the sword when no
spear is available or to give the coup de grace. The injuries immediately
inflicted are plausibly described, but the poetical image of war represents
these injuries, for the most part, as immediately fatal. The disquieting
picture of a battlefield strewn with wounded, or of men lingering in agony
until they were carried off by septicaemia or gangrene is thus avoided.
264-6 In spite of his arm's being run through Agamemnon does not feel
his wound in the heat of battle: at least that is how we (and Lucretius
3.642ff.) would put it. For Homer the explanation is put in physical terms,
a wound does not incapacitate so long as it bleeds, cf. the wounded deer,
474ff. It is odd that this aspect of hand-to-hand fighting should enter the
Iliad only in this incident. eTremoAeTTO orixocs dvSpcov recalls 4.231, etc., but
here the ranks along which Agamemnon passes weapons in hand, are those
of the Trojan army.
264-5 =540-1: stone-throwing is not unheroic, for special purposes
(12.445), or when nothing better is to hand, but it is not easy to picture
253
31
I
0
13
I
2
67
9
3
2
7
1
7
3
148