The victor, vanquished: desecration of corpses in the Iliad and its consequences (original) (raw)
Related papers
Death and Sacrifice in Homer's Iliad
This paper, which I wrote in 2010, discusses the relationship between death and sacrifice in Homer's Iliad by taking the reader through type scenes of sacrifice, from the sacrificial feast in Iliad 1 to the funeral sacrifice in Iliad 23.
Pictures of Death in Ancient Greek Epic
“A poppy before it ripens is cut by a newly sharpened scythe, mown down by the gleaming bronze when it was ready to grow with the dews of spring. Such was the son of Priam when killed by Achilles,” (Posthomerica 4.424-431; translation James 2004). Among the clatter of mythological swords and spears in the Homeric and Posthomeric epics about the Trojan war, similes pop up like flowers in cruel battle scenes, bringing a moment of relief from the bloody narrative, or on the contrary, strengthening its effect. They are a striking, somewhat puzzling yet typical feature of ancient epic from Homer onward. Other than their undeniably aesthetic effect, these images can also fulfil a wide range of narrative functions, establishing structural links in the epic, raising suspense, contributing to characterization or critically reflecting upon the events in the story. Queerly attractive are similes in the most bloody scenes. Buxton grasps their ever-lasting appeal: “sometimes there is no other word but ‘beautiful’ to describe the evocation of the death of an otherwise insignificant warrior” (2004, 151-152). This paper will look into that particular kind of similes about death in battle. From Homer onward, falling trees and raging lions alike have been used to depict victim and victor, highlighting the two different sides of warrior death. In the later reception of these images, however, focus shifts to a critical reception of that Homeric heroic ideal. The Posthomerica of Quintus of Smyrna (3rd AD), otherwise an explicit sequel to the Iliad, adopts the similes of Homer, but establishes an innovative contrast between the joyful mass-killing of heroes in their pursuit of honour, and of the despair of their helpless victims. Also Ausonius' Epitaphs On The Heroes Who Took Part In The Trojan War incorporate this ancient vanity reflection in a series of Latin epigrams. These reworkings thus provide a modern evaluation of an ancient model: as the same war rages on, new poppies grow in Trojan fields.
The Death and Mutilation of Imbrius in Iliad 13
Yearbook of Ancient Greek Epic, 2017
Homerists, following the lead of Charles Segal's The Theme of the Mutilation of the Corpse in the Iliad (1971), have largely argued that corpse mutilation in the poem is threatened, feared, even attempted, but ultimately unfulfilled. Due to the overwhelming emphasis on corpse preservation in the Iliad, scholars have almost universally ignored the case of Imbrius in Book 13. My discussion of Locrian Ajax's post mortem decapitation of Imbrius (Il. 13.201-205) aims to problematize this picture of corpse preservation, and I offer some larger structural, thematic, and metapoetic insights into the functioning of this scene in the epic.
“To be Buried or Not to be Buried?” Necropolitics in Athenian History and Sophocles’ Antigone
Myth and History: close encounters, MythosEikonPoiesis, De Gruyter, 2022
I place my reading of Sophocles’ Antigone against the background of two historical cases of necropolitical violence in fifth-century Greece drawn from Thucydides and Douris of Samos: the oligarchic coup of 411 BCE with the condemnation of three of the leaders of the 400; and the execution of the Samian trierarches and marines following the failed revolt in Samos in 438 BCE. In both events we have dishonouring of the dead and / or prohibition of burial – it is highly probably that Sophocles played a certain role in both.
The paper aims at reassessing the chronology of Euripides' Suppliant Women and at undermining its potential use as proof of 'necropolitics' in the aftermath of the battle of Delion (424 BCE). The Athenian recovery of the Argive heroes fallen against Thebes belonged to the patriotic core of Athenian self-presentation: its presence in the epitaphios logos and the depiction on the Stoa Poikile in the half of the Fifth Century BCE document the central place of this myth in Athens. Scholarship has thus been eager to accept that Euripides' treatment of the episode in his Suppliant Women constitutes a chronological hint to date the tragedy after the battle of Delion (424 BCE). During that clash, the Boiotians refused to immediately grant the recovery of the Athenian corpses: Thucydides (4.97-99) reports in indirect speech the contacts between the Boiotians and the Athenians in the aftermath of the battle. Far from being a likely historical antecedent, the many differences between the narratives cannot represent a proof that Euripides echoed Thucydides. The two parties held different views on the necropower of the Athenian dead. Yet, of relevance for both the armies was the legal possessor of the battlefield, more than the treatment of the corpses. As a comparison with the other sources on the battle will prove, the Suppliant Women still echo a rhetorical use of the fallen corpses, in contrast with the actual attitude of the Athenians in the Peloponnesian War.
'Reading'Greek Death: To the End of the Classical Period (review)
American Journal of Philology, 1996
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From Homer’s Iliad to the Athenian funeral oration and beyond, the ‘beautiful death’ was the name that the Greeks used to describe a combatant’s death. From the world of Achilles to democratic Athens, the warrior’s death was a model that concentrated the representations and the values that served as masculine norms. This should not be a surprise: the Iliad depicts a society at war and, in the Achaean camp at least, a society of men, without children and legitimate wives. Certainly, the Athenian city-state distinguished itself from others by the splendour that it gave the public funeral of its citizens that had died in war and especially by the repatriating of their mortal remains. In a society that believed in autochthony, this repatriation was, undoubtedly, significant. Since the beautiful death crys