Iliad 24.014–018

In these four verses, there is a compressed narration of what Achilles does over and over again during a sleepless night. He harnesses his chariot and drives it around the tomb of Patroklos three times while dragging the corpse of Hector. The tomb is called the sēma at I.24.16. The Master Narrator states here that this tomb belongs to Patroklos, as if the ultimate ownership of the tomb by Achilles were still in doubt. But the statement is justified, since the size of the tomb has not yet been adjusted to fit the prestige of Achilles himself: on this point see the anchor comment at I.23.245–248 and 256–257. Achilles drives his chariot around the tomb three times, then rests in his klisiē ‘shelter’, I.24.017, and then drives around three times again, and so on. Each time he rests inside his shelter, he leaves the body outside, lying prone in the dust, face down, I.24.017–018. The body has been shown before in this same degraded state: see the comment on I.22.395–405. Once again here, it is left to the imagination whether the body is horribly disfigured. It cannot be known, however, whether the body that Achilles is intending to degrade has in fact already been disfigured. Once again, the face is not visible. But, once again, it will become clear that the face and the head and in fact the whole body of Hector cannot be disfigured. This time, the clarification happens immediately, in the verses that follow.