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Book Twelve
dAAov at 248 is actually Hektor's justification, the Aaos being the regular
target of such threats (2.391, 13.232, 15.348). (The shirkers of rank at 4.336
and 4.368 were not so menaced.) Like other intemperate threats in the Iliad
it is nowhere carried out.
250 =11.433 = 16.861 = 18.92 with variations in the first foot.
251-64 A remarkable passage of siege-poetry without parallel in the
Iliad: one could wish for more in exchange for tired passages of spearfighting.
Siege-poetry naturally had its typical motifs and vocabulary of
which such passages as this furnish a brief glimpse. The siege is at the heart
of the stories of Oikhalia, Thebes, and Kaludon, and must have formed a
large part of doi5f| from the earliest times. We must expect it to have
developed a diction as rich as that deployed for open warfare in the Iliad.
For siege scenes in the graphic art of the Mycenaean age see io8-72n.;
unfortunately none shed light on the problems posed by the Trojan attack
on the Achaean wall.
252 The Trojans charge en masse with a great war whoop, cf. the lieydArj
\ayj\ m tne similar scene at 15.379-84, where the Trojan advance is likened
to a pieya Kuiaa 6aA&(7crns.
256 This verse echoes the pattern of 135, yz\pzoo\ TT£TTOI06T6S T)6E (3iT|9i,
cf. also 153. (3ir| is of course the Trojans' strength of arm not that of Zeus.
Like prudent soldiers at any time they back up their trust in god with
practical measures. At this point Hektor's force has somehow passed the
ditch that gave them so much pause without our being told a word about
their surmounting that formidable obstacle. This is one indication of many
in this Book that the poet's faultless fluency in handling the battle on the
open plain does not extend to the special context of fighting from or against
fortifications.
257 A force attacking a wall hopes either to scale it or breach it. Scaling,
unless the wall has a batter (cf. 16.702) or is very roughly made, requires
ladders, KAijiocKes, or something similar, as envisaged at Aesch. Th. 466, Eur.
Phoen. 180-1, 488-9. Unless these lurk under the mysterious Kpocraas of 258
(see n. ad loc.) they are absent from the narrative of the Trojan assault, for
the goal of the attacking force is consistently expressed by Teixos priyvuvai
(12.90, 198, 223-4, 2 57? 261-2, 418, 440), 'make a breach'. They do this
by levering out key parts of the structure, OTTJACCS eiaoxAeov (259), a detail
that is not taken up subsequently, probably because the great heroes could
not be represented as labouring like sappers; or they could demolish the
battlements protecting the fighting platform (397—9), after which in the
present narrative they can swarm over. But sometimes at least Teixos includes
the gates pierced in the wall in that sector; thus at 443 Hektor's
division rushes the Teixos and Hektor himself smashes the gate. The professional
way to do this would presumably be to ram it (cf. Thuc. 2.76), fire
344