The Death and Afterlife of Achilles
Publication Year: 2009
Published by: Johns Hopkins University Press
Cover
Frontmatter
Contents
Acknowledgments
My 2001 book, The Tradition of the Trojan War in Homer and the Epic Cycle, can be understood as a methodological introduction for the present book, which focuses on the character of Achilles, both within and outside of Homeric epic. I have explored the topic in various publications over the past decade (Burgess 1995, 1999, 2001b, 2004b, 2004c, 2006a, 2006b, 2006c), parts of which have now been revised and reconstituted with much new material to form the whole
Note to Reader
For ancient proper names, I employ traditional, Latinized spellings for the most familiar names but routinely use direct transliterations (apologies for the inconsistency). Somewhat differently than before, the term cyclic when capitalized refers to the specific poems of the Epic Cycle and their earlier versions or performance traditions; uncapitalized, it refers to oral epic poems of their type (countless and mostly undocumented).
Introduction
The death and afterlife of Achilles would seem to have little to do with Homer: Achilles does not die in the Iliad, and the Homeric poem is decidedly reticent about any special afterlife for the hero. The other Homeric poem, the Odyssey, puts the hero squarely in Hades. The Homeric poems, however, developed within mythological traditions that included extensive material about Achilles....
1 The Early Life of Achilles
Before we proceed to an examination of the death of Achilles, episodes from earlier in his mythological biography need to be considered. Talking of the hero’s “biography” may seem misguided when in surviving early Greek epic Achilles is just one character in the larger story of Troy. And surveying episodes in Achilles’ life that often seem obscure, contradictory, and post-Homeric may appear antiquarian....
2 The Death of Achilles
In the previous chapter, rather than proposing a pre-Homeric version of the earlylife of Achilles, I employed a thematic exploration of the various tales of his youththat survive. The greater amount of evidence for the death of Achilles encourages a bolder approach, although I do not aim to reconstitute a lost poem (such as the Aithiopis) or any specific account of Achilles’ death. I remain rather cautious...
3 The Destiny of Achilles in the Iliad
Chapter 2 established the outlines of the pre-Homeric story of Achilles death; inthis chapter, the Iliad’s direct references to the death of Achilles are examined.The poem seems to assume preexisting traditions that are known to its audience.The relevant passages are incomplete and at times seemingly contradictory, butnonetheless it became clear that the Iliad displays awareness of a traditional tale...
4 Intertextuality and Oral Epic
Neoanalysts have often thought that the story of the death of Achilles influenced the Iliad’s composition. They have conceived of the Iliad’s source as a pre-Homeric epic, now often reconceived as an oral prototype of the Cyclic poem Aithiopis. That issue needs further discussion, as does, more importantly, the significance of the Iliad’s reflection of Achilles’ death. Should the relationship...
5 The Death of Achilles in the Iliad
We have established how the death of Achilles could have been narrated in pre-Homeric myth (chapter 2), examined direct references to the death of Achilles in the Iliad (chapter 3), and considered the nature of intertextuality in the Archaic Age (chapter 4). Now it is time to examine possible reflections of the fabula of the death of Achilles in the Iliad, as effected through “motif transference.” This...
6 Motif Sequences in the Iliad
As demonstrated in chapter 5, the Iliad alludes to the fabula of the death of Achilles through motif transference. A further line of inquiry is to explore the possible arrangement of these transferred motifs. Chapter 4 has shown that Iliadic reflection of the whole war seems to involve some conglomeration of transferred motifs; a series of motifs about the beginning of the war occur in the first part of the...
7 Burial and Afterlife of Achilles
The story of Achilles does not end with his death. Although the Iliad stresses heroic mortality, Achilles was usually thought to have an afterlife (see motif G in chapter 2). Books 11 and 24 of the Odyssey place the shade of the hero in Hades, but the Homeric view should not be assumed to be primary or even especially authoritative; most mythopoetic accounts gave a paradisiacal setting for the hero’s...
8 Tomb and Cult of Achilles
After focusing in earlier chapters on mythopoetic accounts of Achilles, we now consider other perspectives. Whereas the preceding chapter discussed Achilles’ burial mound and his translation to Leuke, this chapter focuses on the real-world locations associated with his tumulus and translation, the Troad and the Black Sea. The death and afterlife of Achilles were of interest outside of early Greek epic and long after the Archaic Age.Cult worship of Achilles in the...
Conclusion
The death and afterlife of Achilles were traditional narratives that should not beexcluded from the Homeric poems. The Iliad, it is true, narrates just one episode from the Trojan War: the withdrawal and return of Achilles.1 But the poem contains and reflects the larger story of Achilles’ life and death. Non-Homeric mythology about Achilles is a thematically consistent body of traditional stories that...
E-ISBN-13: 9781421403618
E-ISBN-10: 1421403617
Print-ISBN-13: 9780801890291
Print-ISBN-10: 0801890292
Page Count: 208
Illustrations: 23 halftones, 3 line drawings
Publication Year: 2009
OCLC Number: 794701452
MUSE Marc Record: Download for The Death and Afterlife of Achilles
