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Book Eleven
with a short in the personal name (list in Wyatt, ML 186). TTpia|Jii6r)s etc.
is normally Hektor (25x ), but not exclusively, see 490n.
297 UTrepaEi Taos aeAAr): such images of violent destruction are freely
applied to Hektor, cf. 305-9 (AaTAccy), 13.137-42 (a boulder).
299 A whole-verse formula (= 5.703, 16.692, with a shortened variant
at 8.273) employed in each case to introduce a bare list of victims. The effect
in arresting the attention of an audience and directing it to what follows is
like that of an appeal to the Muses at 218. De Jong in fact goes so far as to
suggest that the question is addressed to the Muses [Narrators 49-50).
'Hektor' in the personalized narrative of the Iliad represents the Trojan
army, as 'Agamemnon' represented the Achaeans at 91 ff.
300 = 8.216 = 19.204, cf. 12.174 = 15.596. Thetis' request (1.521) was
that Zeus should Tpcoeaaiv apfjyeiv. In heroic narrative the anonymous
Tpcoes must be translated into a particular hero. Hence from the moment,
at the beginning of book 8, when Zeus bestirs himself to implement his
promise, his activity is described as 'giving K06OS to Hektor.'
301-3 Hektor's victims seem to be a random list, but in some cases bring
with them certain associations. Dolops son of Klutos has a double, a Trojan
Dolops son of Lampos (whose brother was Klutios) at 15.525 (see n.). There
is a Trojan Opheltios at 6.20, and a Suitor Agelaos at Od. 20.321 etc. An
Opheltes appeared in the Theban saga, and the name is known also in
Cypriot. The impression is that these lists are drawn from a stock of heroic
names rather than invented ex nihilo. Aisumnos on the other hand has,
for an Achaean, a very Asiatic name meaning 'prince' or the like, see
13.427-33^ But an Ionian poet could not be expected to know this;
aiauuvfirns {Od. 8.258, and with suffix -TTjp, //. 24.347) ls a common title
of civic officers in the area of Ionia. Agelaos certainly and Opheltes probably
occur as men's names in Mycenaean texts, see Ventris and Chadwick,
Documents 104-5, wno c i te 5& names thought certainly to be common to the
tablets and the epic; more than twenty are names assigned to Trojans or
their allies, for the poet of the Iliad, like the poet of Roland, had a stock of
traditional foreign names that was too limited for the scale of his narrative.
— Bare lists such as this occur at 5.677-8 (eight victims), 5.705-7 (six),
8.274-6 (eight), 16.415—17 (nine), 16.694-6 (nine), 21.209-10, and by
various victors 14.511 —16 (eight); 15.329-42 (eight) is similar but with
minimal added anecdote. Hektor's performance therefore is impressive and
made more so by the addition (305) of an anonymous TrA-nOOs.
304-5 Note that the slain are said to be fjysuovss and that the TTATJOOS do
not receive even a token named representative. The ostensible reason for
silence is practical, cf. 2-488ff. o05' £i uoi 8eKa UEV yAcbcaai ..., but the
truest cause is doubtless the social focus of the Iliad. The deaths of leaders
stand for the massacre of the Aocos.
259