The Iliad: Structure, Myth, and Meaning

CHAPTER TWO: The Overture

chapter two www The Overture Book 3 is usually thought to serve a retrospective function, recounting episodes through which the Iliad replays and evokes issues associated with the beginning of the war. Though it undoubtedly does serve such a function , this is not its only purpose.While evoking earlier events, book 3 simultaneously introduces many of the poem’s central structures, the motifs and type-scenes that recur in later episodes, even in the conclusion of the epic. In this sense, as Edwards (1987: 188) notes, book 3 introduces ‘‘the future as well as the past,’’ or, as Owen (28) puts it, it is ‘‘retrogressive and progressive at the same time’’ and contains ‘‘the shadows of coming events.’’ Book 3 is almost entirely composed of motifs from the narrative pattern as analyzed in chapter 1, the string of motifs and type-scenes that underlies books 4–7 and 20–24. But since book 3 precedes these two sections of the poem, it introduces these motifs and, hence, serves as an overture by acquainting the audience with central components of the Iliad’s plot. Each of the five sections of book 3, Paris’ duel with Menelaos (3.1–120, 314–82), Helen and the teikhoskopia (3.121–244), Priam’s participation in the sacrifice and oaths (3.245–313), and the aftermath of the duel (3.383–461), presents, in miniature, relevant selections of the principal narrative pattern . Paris’ duel with Menelaos, though looking back to the root cause of the war, also provides an initial statement of those portions of the narrative pattern depicting Hektor’s duel with the best of the Akhaians, but with Paris in Hektor’s role. The teikhoskopia (a frequently criticized section of book 3) contains motifs from the narrative pattern involving reactions to Hektor’s death, with Helen in Andromakhe’s role, anxious at the Trojan wall in book 22. Priam’s trip outside the city in book 3 to witness the oath-taking ceremony on the battlefield employs the same motifs that will be developed on much larger scale in books 22 and 24 (and the brief instance in book 7), when he sets the terms of mourning and retrieves Hektor ’s corpse. Book 3 provides a sketch of the narrative pattern, with special emphasis on it’s conclusion: Priam, concerned over the mortal combat of his son, meeting with the leader of the Greek camp. By noting how much of the narrative pattern underlies Paris’ duel with Menelaos, and the other episodes that make up book 3, we can better understand book 3’s relation to book 7 and to the concluding books of the poem. If book 3 is an overture, why doesn’t it occur at the very beginning of the Iliad? As Stawell argues (50), the narrator is eager ‘‘‘to secure a hearing’ by a vivid scene at the outset’’: to ensure that it has our attention, the Iliad first gives us ‘‘a sudden fierce and hasty action, which we feel is bound to have momentous consequences,’’ the quarrel between Akhilleus and Agamemnon . Having accomplished this task in book 1, the poem addresses other necessities in book 2 (discussed in chapter 3). Then, by replaying the roots of the war and sketching out the larger design of the rest of the epic, book 3 skillfully interweaves elements that serve opposite functions, retrospective and premonitory. While the encounter between Paris and Menelaos is paradigmatic for the war, at the same time it serves as foil for most of the poem’s fighting. Though neither man is in the first rank of fighters, in having the two warriors with competing claims to Helen fight each other, the narrative offers simultaneously a version of the war’s cause and its possible conclusion.Yet in having Paris defeated so easily in the first duel, the narrative points ahead to eventual Trojan defeat, to Akhilleus’ easy defeat of Hektor in the concluding duel, itself the embodiment of Troy’s fall. Though not a first-rate warrior, Menelaos nonetheless embodies the Greeks, and the greater justice of their cause, as Paris embodies the Trojans’ greater culpability and recklessness in provoking the war. The poem underscores this by selecting their duel for the most prominent articulation of Zeus as guarantor of the sanctity of hospitality (3.354). At one level Paris’ easy defeat exemplifies the moral that hospitality myths illustrate, punishment for those who transgress the sanctity of hospitality (discussed in chapter 6...