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COMMENTARY
BOOK NINE
How the Iliad was created we shall never know. Even if the assumptions set
out in the Introduction to volume i of this Commentary are accepted and
we see in the poem the impact of an original genius on traditional sagas, an
attempt to dissect the plot of the Iliad is no more likely to command assent
than former attempts to dissect its text have been. But a commentator on
book 9 cannot duck the question, and it behoves him to make his suppositions
plain. The problem is that book 9 is well integrated into the idea of
the Iliad but not so well integrated into its text. On an intellectual level the
Book explores the moral stance that Akhilleus has adopted and is necessary
for the understanding of his position and the dangers that it holds in store
for him; on the other hand the role of Phoinix and the integrity of the Book
have been questioned, and at the level of what is done and said on the field
and in the camp the situation that the Book has created seems later to be
overlooked, cf. n.6o9n., 16.72-3, and 16.84-6.
An epic of Homeric quality must be a sequence of ideas as well as a
sequence of events. At the level of the characters that the poet has created
the epic ideas that Akhilleus embodies are those of glory, vengeance, foreknowledge,
and responsibility. The first three are each traditional ideas:
they are met with, for example, in loose combination in the fate of the
sons of Antenor, Iphidamas and Koon, at 11.221-63. Agamemnon slays
Iphidamas and loots his corpse (glory); Koon, grieved for his brother,
attacks Agamemnon and wounds him (vengeance); to attack against such
adverse odds is virtual foreknowledge of the ultimate result, Koon's death,
but the explicit idea of divinely revealed foreknowledge appears a little later
at 11.328-32.
The climax of the Iliad fittingly is a slaying: fipduedoc |i6ya K08OS* eirecpvoiJev
"EKTOpa 8Tov (22.393) is the fundamental idea of heroic poetry, but a mere
slaying devoid of further overtones is not the stuff that a great epic is made
of. Even as Akhilleus is made to utter those words he is made to remember
that it is not only a glorious deed that he has performed, but an act of
vengeance: TOU [TTaTpoKXou] 5' OUK 6TTiAf)ao|iai (22.387). The idea of heroic
glory is linked to that of heroic duty.
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