Book 17 opens with Menelaos noticing that Patroklos has been killed. He immediately moves to protect the body, bestriding it like mother cow over her first-born calf. The scholia on these opening verses of the book note that it is particularly appropriate that Menelaos is the first to notice that Patroklos has died, for both are “gentle” (ἤπιοι). I’ll have more to say about the simile in the corresponding note on 17.4.
That Patroklos is a gentle soul is well established in the Iliad. At Iliad 17.670–672 Menelaos urges his companions to remember Patroklos, who was “gentle”:
νῦν τις ἐνηείης Πατροκλῆος δειλοῖο
μνησάσθω· πᾶσιν γὰρ ἐπίστατο μείλιχος εἶναι
ζωὸς ἐών· νῦν αὖ θάνατος καὶ μοῖρα κιχάνει.
νῦν τις ἐνηείης Πατροκλῆος δειλοῖο
μνησάσθω· πᾶσιν γὰρ ἐπίστατο μείλιχος εἶναι
ζωὸς ἐών· νῦν αὖ θάνατος καὶ μοῖρα κιχάνει.
Now let everyone call to mind the wretched Patroklos, who was gentle.
For he knew how to be kind to to all,
when he was alive. Now, however, death and fate have caught up with him.
Zeus likewise describes Patroklos gentle at 17.204, when he watches Hector put on Achilles’ armor, which he stripped from Patroklos:
τοῦ δὴ ἑταῖρον ἔπεφνες ἐνηέα τε κρατερόν τε
You slew his companion who was gentle and powerful
So too in her lament does Briseis remember Patroklos as being always kind (μείλιχον αἰεί; 19.300). The commentary by Hellenist and Roman scholars that survive in our Medieval manuscripts discuss Patroklos’ gentleness at numerous points. (See Richardson 1980:268–269 and 272 and the scholia on 11.616, 670, 677–678, 814, 12.1, and 19.297. See also the introductory note to this book for more on Patroklos.)
But Menelaos too is gentle. In the Venetus B manuscript of the Iliad (folio 231r), we find the following comment in the scholia at the beginning of this book:
εὖ Πατρόκλου πεσόντος πρῶτος αἰσθάνεται Μενέλαος· φησὶ γάρ· “ὃς κεῖται ἐμῆς εἵνεκ' ἐνθάδε τιμῆς” [Iliad 17.92]. καὶ ὅτι ὁμότροποι· ἄμφω γὰρ ἤπιοι· ὁ δὲ Μενέλαος οὐ μόνον πρὸς τοὺς ἀρχομένους πρᾷος ἦν, ἀλλ’ ἤδη καὶ πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους, ἢ ὅτι καὶ περὶ πάντας σπουδαῖος ὁρᾶται· ὃς καὶ Ὀδυσσέως καταπονουμένου ἧκεν ἄγων Αἴαντα [Iliad 11.463–88]. καὶ τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ προανέστη [Iliad 10.25–33]. ἢ προθυμότερον σύμμαχον ἑαυτῷ ποιῶν Ἀχιλλέα. ἄλλως τε οἱ ἄλλοι τραυματίαι εἰσὶ πλὴν Αἴαντος, ὃν νῦν οὐκ ἔδει ὑπείκειν Ἕκτορι.
It is a good thing that Menelaos is the first to notice that Patroklos has fallen, for he says “he lies here dead because of my honor” [Iliad 17.92]; and because they have similar characters, for both are gentle [ἤπιοι]; and Menelaos was gentle [πρᾷος] not only to those under his command, but also to his enemies; or because he is seen as zealous with respect to everyone; he who, also when Odysseus was in trouble, came and brought Ajax [Iliad 11.463–88]. And he got out of bed before his brother [Iliad 10.25–33]; or because he made Achilles a more eager ally for himself. Alternatively the others are wounded with the exception of Ajax, who did not have to give way to Hektor. (Translation is adapted from that of Victoria Ydens and Lisa Seldenthuis for the Homer Multitext.)
The Townley manuscript of the Iliad (folio 186v) has a longer version of same note with even more citations of the Homeric epics:
ὅς τις τοῦ γε [= 17.8]: αὐτοῦ τοῦ Μενελάου ἢ Πατρόκλου. εὖ Πατρόκλου πεσόντος πρῶτος αἰσθάνεται Μενέλαος· φησὶ γάρ· “ὃς κεῖται ἐμῆς εἵνεκ’ ἐνθάδε τιμῆς” [Iliad 17.92]. καὶ ὅτι ὁμότροποι· ἄμφω γὰρ ἤπιοι· “νῦν τις ἐνηείης Πατροκλῆος δειλοῖο / μνησάσθω” [Iliad 17.670–1]. ὁ δὲ Μενέλαος οὐ μόνον πρὸς τοὺς ἀρχομένους πρᾷος ἦν, ἀλλ’ ἤδη καὶ πρὸς τοὺς πολεμίους, ὥστε Ἄδραστον ζωγρήσας σώζειν ἐβούλετο [Iliad 6.37–53]. ἢ ὅτι καὶ περὶ πάντας σπουδαῖος ὁρᾶται. αὐτόματος ᾔει πρὸς τὴν δαῖτα [Iliad 2.408–9], προανέστη τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ [Iliad 10.25–33], Ὀδυσσέως καταπονουμένου ἧκεν ἄγων Αἴαντα [Iliad 11.463–88), ἔμεινεν ἐν τῷ Σουνίῳ “ἐπειγόμενός περ ὁδοῖο, / ὄφρ’ ἕταρον θάπτοι” [Odyssey 3.284–5]. ἢ προθυμότερον ποιῶν ἑαυτῷ σύμμαχον Ἀχιλλέα. ἄλλως τε οἱ ἄλλοι τραυματίαι εἰσὶ πλὴν Αἴαντος, ᾧ νῦν οὐκ ἔδει ὑπείκειν Ἕκτορι.
The αὐτοῦ refers to Menelaos or Patroklos. It is a good thing that Menelaos is the first to notice that Patroklos has fallen, for he says “he lies here dead because of my honor” [Iliad 17.92]; and because they have similar characters, for both are gentle [ἤπιοι]: “Now let everyone call to mind the wretched Patroklos who was gentle [ἐνηείης]” [Iliad 17.670–1]. And Menelaos was gentle [πρᾷος] not only to those under his command, but also to his enemies, such that he wanted to keep Adrastos alive after capturing him [Iliad 6.37–53]; or because he is also seen as zealous with respect to everyone: he came of his own accord to the feast [Iliad 2.408–9], he got out of bed before his brother [Iliad 10.25–33], when Odysseus was in trouble, came and brought Ajax [Iliad 11.463–88], he waited in Sounion “although very eager for the journey, in order that he bury his comrade” [Odyssey 3.284–5]. Or because he made Achilles a more eager ally for himself. Alternatively the others are wounded with the exception of Ajax, who did not have to give way to Hektor.
And finally the Venetus A manuscript also preserves a slightly more compressed version of this same idea with some variation (folio 223v):
οὐδ᾽ ἔλαθ᾽ Ἀτρέος υἱὸν: Πατρόκλου πεσόντος πρὼτος αἰσθεται Μενέλαος φησὶ γὰρ “ὃς κεῖται ἐμῆς ἔνεκ’ ἐνθάδε τιμῆς” [Iliad 17.92]. καὶ ὅτι ὁμότροποι ἄμφω γὰρ ἥπιοι. ὁ δὲ Μενέλαος οὐ μόνον πρὸς τοὺς ἀρχόμένους ἤπιος ἦν, ἀλλ’ ἤδη καὶ προς τὸυς πολεμίους ὥστε Ἄδραστον ζωγρήσας σὼζειν ἐβούλετο ἢ ὅτι καὶ περὶ πάντα σπουδαῖος ὁρᾶται. δεόντως τὸν Μενέλαον ἐν τῷ νῦν παρεισήγαγε καιρῷ βοηθοῦντα καὶ ἀγωνιζόμενον, μάλιστα μὲν διὰ τὸ τετρῶσθαι τοὺς αριστεῖς. ἔπειτα δὲ καὶ δίκαιον ἡγεῖτο τὸυς δι’ αὐτῶν τελευτήσαντας μὴ καταλιπεῖν, ἀλλὰ βοηθεῖν παντὶ σθένει.
Menelaos first notices that Patroklos has fallen. For he says “he lies here dead because of my honor”; and because they have similar characters, for both are gentle; and Menelaos is not only gentle to those under his command, but also to his enemies, similar to the way he wanted to keep Adrastos alive after having captured him or because he is seen as zealous in every way. He [the poet] necessarily introduced Menelaos at this critical moment as someone who is helpful and who participates in the competition, especially because the leaders [= “the best men”] were wounded. Moreover, he [the poet] thought that it is right that he not leave behind those who died on their account, but that he help them with all his strength. (Translation is adapted from that of Victoria Ydens and Lisa Seldenthuis for the Homer Multitext.)
The wide range of citations in the Townley manuscript in particular suggests that there is indeed a systematic characterization of Menelaos as gentle in the epic tradition. He possesses a kind of tenderness and duty of care that his prowess on the battlefield does not negate. This may come as a surprise to modern readers raised on cinematic and television portrayals of Menelaos as cruel and violent, someone that Helen would naturally forsake in favor of the handsome and less warlike Alexander.
There are a number of passages in the Iliad that show Menelaos to be someone that Agamemnon in particular fears for on the battlefield. In book 4, Athena reignites the battle by inciting Pandaros to shoot an arrow at Menelaos. The arrow does in fact hit him, but it is not a mortal wound, because Athena deflects it:
Οὐδὲ σέθεν Μενέλαε θεοὶ μάκαρες λελάθοντο
ἀθάνατοι, πρώτη δὲ Διὸς θυγάτηρ ἀγελείη,
ἥ τοι πρόσθε στᾶσα βέλος ἐχεπευκὲς ἄμυνεν.
ἣ δὲ τόσον μὲν ἔεργεν ἀπὸ χροὸς ὡς ὅτε μήτηρ
παιδὸς ἐέργῃ μυῖαν ὅθ’ ἡδέϊ λέξαται ὕπνῳ,
αὐτὴ δ’ αὖτ’ ἴθυνεν ὅθι ζωστῆρος ὀχῆες
χρύσειοι σύνεχον καὶ διπλόος ἤντετο θώρηξ.
But the blessed, immortal gods did not forget you, Menelaos,
and the daughter of Zeus who drives off spoils [=Athena] was the first,
who took a stand in front of you and warded off the piercing missile.
She kept it far from your skin, as when a mother
keeps a fly from her child when he lies in sweet sleep,
and she guided it to where the golden clasps
of the belt joined and the two parts of the breastplate met. (Iliad 4.127–133)
Here we see that Athena herself is maternally protective of Menelaos even as she herself initiates his wounding. (For more on this passage see Dué and Ebbott 2012 and the next note.)
Agamemnon’s reaction to seeing the superficial wound is to shudder in fear, and his thumos momentarily leaves his body before being gathered back in again (4.152: ἄψορρόν οἱ θυμὸς ἐνὶ στήθεσσιν ἀγέρθη). As Kirk (1985 ad loc) points out, this is precisely what happens to Andromache, when she recovers from fainting in the shock of learning of Hektor’s death (ἔμπνυτο καὶ ἐς φρένα θυμὸς ἀγέρθη, 22.475). But what Kirk does not note is that that recovery segues immediately in the next line to Andromache’s lament for her fallen husband (ἀμβλήδην γοόωσα μετὰ Τρῳῇσιν ἔειπεν). So too Agamemnon holds Menelaos by the hand and makes a sound that elsewhere accompanies lament (βαρὺ στενάχων 153), and their comrades echo him in an antiphonal response (ἐπεστενάχοντο δ’ ἑταῖροι 154; cf. Iliad 19.301, 22.515, 24.722, 24.746, 24.776, Alexiou 1974:131–160 and Dué 2002:70–71 and 80–81). His speech that follows begins very much like a lament as well:
φίλε κασίγνητε θάνατόν νύ τοι ὅρκι᾽ ἔταμνον
οἶον προστήσας πρὸ Ἀχαιῶν Τρωσὶ μάχεσθαι,
ὥς σ᾽ ἔβαλον Τρῶες, κατὰ δ᾽ ὅρκια πιστὰ πάτησαν.
Beloved brother, death to you were the oaths I cut,
when I set you up alone to fight before the Achaeans with the Trojans,
since the Trojans have struck you, and trampled on trusty oaths. (4.155–157)
As Alexiou demonstrates in her seminal study (1974/2002), surviving examples of ancient Greek laments in literature have a typical structure that begins with a direct address followed by a narrative about the past and/or future. Agamemnon briefly tells what has just occurred to cause Menelaos’ wounding, but he also invokes the future. That future is somewhat curiously the sack of Troy, a moment that should be full of triumph for Agamemnon, but it becomes instead a source of shame if Menelaos dies. Essentially, Agamemnon says, Troy is definitely going to fall, but I will experience terrible grief if you fall too, and shame for returning home without you:
εὖ γὰρ ἐγὼ τόδε οἶδα κατὰ φρένα καὶ κατὰ θυμόν:
ἔσσεται ἦμαρ ὅτ᾽ ἄν ποτ᾽ ὀλώλῃ Ἴλιος ἱρὴ
καὶ Πρίαμος καὶ λαὸς ἐϋμμελίω Πριάμοιο,
Ζεὺς δέ σφι Κρονίδης ὑψίζυγος αἰθέρι ναίων
αὐτὸς ἐπισσείῃσιν ἐρεμνὴν αἰγίδα πᾶσι
τῆσδ᾽ ἀπάτης κοτέων. τὰ μὲν ἔσσεται οὐκ ἀτέλεστα·
ἀλλά μοι αἰνὸν ἄχος σέθεν ἔσσεται ὦ Μενέλαε
αἴ κε θάνῃς καὶ πότμον ἀναπλήσῃς βιότοιο.
καί κεν ἐλέγχιστος πολυδίψιον Ἄργος ἱκοίμην.
αὐτίκα γὰρ μνήσονται Ἀχαιοὶ πατρίδος αἴης.
κὰδ δέ κεν εὐχωλὴν Πριάμῳ καὶ Τρωσὶ λίποιμεν
Ἀργείην Ἑλένην· σέο δ᾽ ὀστέα πύσει ἄρουρα
κειμένου ἐν Τροίῃ ἀτελευτήτῳ ἐπὶ ἔργῳ.
καί κέ τις ὧδ᾽ ἐρέει Τρώων ὑπερηνορεόντων
τύμβῳ ἐπιθρῴσκων Μενελάου κυδαλίμοιο:
αἴθ᾽ οὕτως ἐπὶ πᾶσι χόλον τελέσει᾽ Ἀγαμέμνων,
ὡς καὶ νῦν ἅλιον στρατὸν ἤγαγεν ἐνθάδ᾽ Ἀχαιῶν,
καὶ δὴ ἔβη οἶκον δὲ φίλην ἐς πατρίδα γαῖαν
σὺν κεινῇσιν νηυσὶ λιπὼν ἀγαθὸν Μενέλαον.
ὥς ποτέ τις ἐρέει: τότε μοι χάνοι εὐρεῖα χθών.
For I know this well in my heart and soul,
a day will come when holy Ilium will be destroyed,
and Priam and the people of Priam of the good ash spear.
And Zeus himself the son of Kronos who sits on high dwelling in the aether
will shake his dark aegis before all
in pent up anger for this deception. These things will not go unaccomplished.
But I will have terrible grief for you, Menelaos,
if you die and fulfill your allotment of life.
And most worthy of reproach would I be when I reach thirsty Argos.
For straightway if you die the Achaeans will remember their fatherland,
and we would leave behind something to boast about for Priam and the Trojans,
namely, Argive Helen. The ploughland will rot your bones
while you lie dead in Troy for a task that went uncompleted
And so someone of the exceedingly manly Trojans will say,
as they leap upon the tomb of glorious Menelaos,
“Would that Agamemnon bring his anger to fulfillment against all this way,
as even now he led an army of the Achaeans here in vain
and he went home to his dear fatherland
with empty ships after leaving behind brave Menelaos.”
So someone will speak. And at that point may the earth gape open wide for me. (4.163–182)
Agamemnon’s imagined grief and future shame and longing for death in fact closely resemble Hektor’s own lament-like speech to Andromache in Iliad 6, with which Agamemnon’s speech shares entire verses, phraseology, and structure. Hektor has returned to Troy, and Andromache seizes the opportunity to persuade him to stay within the walls. He replies that he would rather die in battle than live to see her enslaved:
εὖ γὰρ ἐγὼ τόδε οἶδα κατὰ φρένα καὶ κατὰ θυμόν:
ἔσσεται ἦμαρ ὅτ᾽ ἄν ποτ᾽ ὀλώλῃ Ἴλιος ἱρὴ
καὶ Πρίαμος καὶ λαὸς ἐϋμμελίω Πριάμοιο.
ἀλλ᾽ οὔ μοι Τρώων τόσσον μέλει ἄλγος ὀπίσσω,
οὔτ᾽ αὐτῆς Ἑκάβης οὔτε Πριάμοιο ἄνακτος
οὔτε κασιγνήτων, οἵ κεν πολέες τε καὶ ἐσθλοὶ
ἐν κονίῃσι πέσοιεν ὑπ᾽ ἀνδράσι δυσμενέεσσιν,
ὅσσον σεῦ, ὅτε κέν τις Ἀχαιῶν χαλκοχιτώνων
δακρυόεσσαν ἄγηται ἐλεύθερον ἦμαρ ἀπούρας.
καί κεν ἐν Ἄργει ἐοῦσα πρὸς ἄλλης ἱστὸν ὑφαίνοις,
καί κεν ὕδωρ φορέοις Μεσσηΐδος ἢ Ὑπερείης
πόλλ᾽ ἀεκαζομένη, κρατερὴ δ᾽ ἐπικείσετ᾽ ἀνάγκη…
καί ποτέ τις εἴπῃσιν ἰδὼν κατὰ δάκρυ χέουσαν·
Ἕκτορος ἥδε γυνὴ ὃς ἀριστεύεσκε μάχεσθαι
Τρώων ἱπποδάμων ὅτε Ἴλιον ἀμφεμάχοντο.
ὥς ποτέ τις ἐρέει· σοὶ δ᾽ αὖ νέον ἔσσεται ἄλγος
χήτεϊ τοιοῦδ᾽ ἀνδρὸς ἀμύνειν δούλιον ἦμαρ.
ἀλλά με τεθνηῶτα χυτὴ κατὰ γαῖα καλύπτοι
πρίν γέ τι σῆς τε βοῆς σοῦ θ᾽ ἑλκηθμοῖο πυθέσθαι.
For I know this well in my heart and soul,
a day will come when holy Ilium will be destroyed,
and Priam and the people of Priam of the good ash spear.
But the pain of the Trojans in the future is not so much a concern for me
nor that of Hecuba herself nor of Lord Priam,
nor that of my brothers, who many and noble
have fallen in the dust at the hands of enemy men,
as much as your pain, when some one of the Achaeans with their bronze khitons
leads you away weeping, having deprived you of your day of freedom.
And then being in Argos you will weave at the loom for another woman,
and carry water from the Middle Spring and Upper Spring,
treated very shamefully, and powerful necessity will lie upon you...
And someone who has seen you will say, shedding a tear:
“This is the wife of Hektor, who used to be the best at fighting,
the best of the horse-taming Trojans, when they fought around Troy.”
So someone will say. And it will be a fresh source of pain for you
to lack such a man to ward off the day of slavery.
May the heaped up earth of my tomb cover me dead
before I learn of your shout and your being dragged away. (6.447–465)
Whereas Agamemnon only imagines Menelaos’ death, what Hektor fears for Andromache, as we all know, will indeed come true. Hektor, like Andromache in her speech before him, draws on the powerful language of lament to make his case for returning to battle. (For more on Andromache’s lament see Foley 1999:188–198 and Dué 2002:68–73 with additional references ad loc.) We have then in Iliad 6 dueling proleptic laments from these two characters, which dramatically adds to the emotional effect of this scene. Hektor hears Andomache’s lamentation, and responds with a traditional lament of his own. This kind of responsion between the doomed couple makes their words even more evocative of an actual funeral.
Hektor’s variation on what I have elsewhere called “the captive woman’s lament” (Dué 2002) is powerful precisely because it is a multiform of a pattern of speech deeply imprinted on the audience. It is powerful because it repeats, because it draws on formulas that have evolved over centuries to express precisely this kind of otherwise inexpressible sorrow. The laments of Andromache and Hektor and of the captive Briseis in Iliad 19 are all multiforms of one another, and yet each perfectly communicates the very individual pain of each one. Agamemnon’s fears about Menelaos are yet another striking variation on this kind of lament. It is quite possible that for an ancient audience, the speech with its invocation of the certain fall of Troy would have evoked, with its shared formulaic language, Hektor’s own words in Iliad 6—words which have not yet been spoken yet in the Iliad as it has been handed down to us—and would have resonated with similar emotion. In other words, Agamemnon’s anxiety and fear and love for Menelaos, as well as his concern for his own legacy, are made analogous with that of the doomed Hektor. If the encounter between Hektor and Andromache was as celebrated in antiquity as it is today, this analogy must have conferred even greater tenderness and intensity of feeling on the words of Agamemnon than they have at face value.
There is another place in the Iliad where we can observe Agamemnon’s protectiveness of Menelaos. In Iliad 10, when Diomedes has to choose a partner for the night mission against the Trojans (which becomes an ambush of Rhesus and his men), Agamemnon encourages him not to think about rank, but rather who would be the best man for the job (τὸν ἄριστον, Iliad 10.234–239). The narrator explicitly tells us that Agamemnon is worried he will choose Menelaos: ἔδεισεν δὲ περὶ ξανθῷ Μενελάῳ (10.240). Elsewhere in the epic tradition Menelaos is in fact a skilled ambusher: he is inside the Trojan Horse with Diomedes and Odysseus (Odyssey 4.280), he successfully ambushes Proteus (Odyssey 4.388–463), and he is one of the leaders of the night mission Odysseus describes to Eumaios (Odyssey 14.470–471). It seems that Agamemnon is afraid not about Menelaos’ lack of ability then, but about the danger of the mission. He is worried that Menelaos will not make it back.
These passages from Iliad 4 and 10, together with the citations in the scholia on 17.1, paint a picture of Menelaos that resembles Patroklos. Patroklos, while a fierce warrior in his own right, is the more kind and gentle other half of the Achilles-Patroklos fighting pair. Like Agamemnon, Achilles worries when Patroklos enters battle without him, and prays to Zeus that he make it home unscathed (Iliad 16.233–248). (The poem notes both here at 16.252 and at 18.238 that Patroklos does not in fact make it home safe.) So too is Menelaos the brother who typically gives way to Agamemnon, and for whom Agamemnon feels extremely protective (see also Frame 2009:214–216). But Menelaos, like Patroklos, is also concerned and protective of others: he is in the words of the scholia περὶ πάντας σπουδαῖος. He looks out for his comrades.
Patroklos and Menelaos are linked in another way: they are the two characters to elicit the most sympathy from the narrator in the Iliad through the use of apostrophe. Patroklos is addressed in the second person eight times in the Iliad, while Menelaos is twice addressed in the second person in this book (at 679 and 702), and seven times in the Iliad as a whole (Yamagata 1989, Edwards 1991.3 and ad 17.679–80, Jong 2004:16). These moments are usually quite dramatic moments in the story; in Patroklos’ case they cluster around his impending death.
There has been historically some controversy (outlined in Yamagata 1989) as to the poetic significance of these apostrophes, with some seeing their origin in metrical convenience as opposed to a desire on the part of the poet to express special sympathy. But such explanations imply that poets working with the epic tradition were constrained by epic diction and forced to express themselves other than how they would wish because of it. In fact, as Milman Parry and Albert Lord show through their field work, the formulaic diction in which oral poets compose evolved over centuries to serve their needs (not the other way around), and functions in that way much like a living language, with its own vocabulary and structure. In Lord’s discussion of the training of the singer, he observes that the singers learn the language of oral performance of poetry holistically, as a child learns a language. Thought, meter, and language are not separate in the process of composing-in-performance (Lord 1960/2000:31–36). John Foley, whose work has continued the comparative study of the South Slavic oral tradition that Parry and Lord began (see e.g. Foley 1999:37–111), has built on this idea to arrive at his general dictum that “oral poetry works like language, only more so” (Foley 2002:127–128). As in language generally, Foley argues following Lord, the poet’s thought, not meter, is the driving force of expression. I am therefore persuaded by those who see a special affinity for these characters in the poem as we now know it.
In conclusion, it appears that Menelaos and Patroklos are viewed as kindred spirits within the Homeric epic tradition, and that in antiquity it was therefore appreciated that Menelaos is the one to lead the charge to save Patroklos’ body after he has been killed. This book is in many ways Menelaos’ aristeia—though he relies heavily on the help he seeks out from Ajax and others—as he rallies the troops and refuses to let their spirits fail over the course of a long day of fighting in which the momentum constantly shifts, and no one is a clear winner. Although it requires assistance from Achilles in the end, the credit for saving Patroklos belongs largely to Menelaos. Why these two have been paired for this emotionally charged book (on which, see the introductory note for book 17, still forthcoming as of this initial posting) now seems clear.
Works consulted and cited in this post:
Alexiou, M. 1974/2002. The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition. Cambridge. 2nd edition, Lanham, MD, 2002.
Bowie, A., I. de Jong, and R. Nünlist, eds. 2004. Narrators, Narratees, and Narratives in Ancient Greek Literature: Studies in Ancient Greek Narrative, Volume One. Leiden.
Brügger, C. 2018. Homer’s Iliad: The Basel Commentary. Book XVI. Trans. B. Millis and S. Strack. Göttingen.
Dué, C. 2002. Homeric Variations on a Lament by Briseis. Lanham, MD.
Dué, C. and M. Ebbott, eds. 2010. Iliad 10 and the Poetics of Ambush: A Multitext Edition with Essays and Commentary. Cambridge, MA, and Washington, DC.
–––. 2012. “Mothers-in-Arms: Soldiers’ Emotional Bonds and Homeric Similes.” War, Literature & the Arts 24 (2012): http://wlajournal.com/wlaarchive/24_1-2/DueEbbott.pdf.
Edwards, M. W., ed. 1991. The Iliad: A Commentary. Vol. 5, Books 17–20. Cambridge.
Foley, J. 1999. Homer’s Traditional Art. University Park, PA.
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[Note: The texts I have quoted from manuscripts have been normalized to fill out abbreviations and provide modern punctuation and accents.]