θαλερῶν αἰζηῶν ‘flourishing, vigorous young men’: Botanic imagery is used here to describe the warriors whose heads are protected by these helmets. The imagery of the hero as a plant that blossoms beautifully and dies quickly is an important theme in Greek lament traditions, as we see in Thetis’ lament for Achilles in Iliad 18.54–60 and in other passages throughout the Iliad. It is also a metaphor that encapsulates what glory means in the Iliad. One of the primary metaphors for epic song in the Iliad is that of a flower that will never wilt:
410 μήτηρ γάρ τέ μέ φησι θεὰ Θέτις ἀργυρόπεζα
διχθαδίας κῆρας φερέμεν θανάτοιο τέλος δέ.
εἰ μέν κ’ αὖθι μένων Τρώων πόλιν ἀμφιμάχωμαι,
ὤλετο μέν μοι νόστος, ἀτὰρ κλέος ἄφθιτον ἔσται·
εἰ δέ κεν οἴκαδ’ ἵκωμι φίλην ἐς πατρίδα γαῖαν,
415 ὤλετό μοι κλέος ἐσθλόν, ἐπὶ δηρὸν δέ μοι αἰὼν
ἔσσεται, οὐδέ κέ μ’ ὦκα τέλος θανάτοιο κιχείη.
Iliad 9.410–416
410 My mother the goddess Thetis of the shining feet tells me
that there are two ways in which I may meet my end.
If I stay here and fight around the city of Troy,
my homecoming is lost, but my glory in song [kleos] will be unwilting:
whereas if I reach home and my dear fatherland,
415 my kleos is lost, but my life will be long,
and the outcome of death will not soon take me.
Here Achilles reveals not only the crux of this choice of fates around which the Iliad itself is built, but also the driving principle of Greek epic song. The unwilting flower of epic poetry is contrasted with the necessarily mortal hero, whose death comes all too quickly. (See especially Nagy 1979:174–184 and Dué 2006a:64–69. Nagy shows that the root phthi- in the Greek word aphthiton ‘unwilting’ is inherently connected with vegetal imagery, and means ‘wilt’.) The Iliad quotes within its narration of Achilles’ kleos many songs of lamentation that highlight the mortality of the central hero, as well as underscoring the immortality of song. The traditional imagery of these quoted laments spills over into epic diction itself, with the result that similes, metaphors, and other traditional descriptions of heroes are infused with themes drawn from the natural world, as here.
With Diomedes, Meriones, Neoptolemos, and even Achilles as examples, we might also argue that ambush is associated with younger men in particular, and thus the cap that is good for ambush is worn by young men. In the “Tradition and Reception” essay above we noted Gernet’s (1936) work on the Dolon myth, in which he argues that the episode is suggestive of initiation rituals in which young men must spend a period of time apart from society as well as other rites of initiation that take place at night. (See also Johnston 2002 on cattle raiding as a form of initiation; we have explored above in “The Poetics of Ambush” the thematic overlap between cattle raiding and ambush in Homeric epic.) The word thaleros used in this line to describe the young men may be important here. This word is used several times in Homer of husbands or young men and women on the verge of marriage. See e.g. the Homeric Hymn to Demeter 79, where Persephone is called a θαλερὴν ἄκοιτιν; Iliad 6.430, where thaleros is used of Hektor by Andromache and 8.190, used by Hektor of himself as the husband of Andromache; Iliad 4.474, where it is used of Simoesios, who dies before marriage—i.e. at the age when he should have been getting married; Iliad 3.26, where it is used of young hunters, who are likewise αἰζηοί; Iliad 8.156, where it is used of the Trojan husbands whom Diomedes has killed; Odyssey 6.66, where it is used of Nausikaa’s impending marriage; and Odyssey 20.74, where it is used of the requested marriage of the daughters of Pandareus. In the Theogony, it is used of Gaia’s first “husband” Ouranos, but there he is being described as the parent of Zeus. If we posit that ambush expeditions could serve as a rite of passage or form of initiation, it would explain why fear is said to be such an important factor: the success or failure of the mission would hinge on how the young men handled that fear. (See e.g. Iliad 13.277–278, where ambush is described as “the place where the merit of men most shines through, where the coward and the resolute man are revealed” and Odyssey 11.528–530. Both passages are discussed in “The Poetics of Ambush” above.)