The Arms of Achilles

250 Pages·2014·2.17 MB·English

by  Eirene Seiradaki

Iliad
The Arms of Achilles: Re-Exchange in the
by
Eirene Seiradaki
A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements
for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Graduate Department of Classics
University of Toronto
© Copyright by Eirene Seiradaki (2014)
“The Arms of Achilles: Re-Exchange in the Iliad”
Eirene Seiradaki
Doctor of Philosophy
Department of Classics
University of Toronto
2014

Abstract

This dissertation offers an interpretation of the re-exchange of the first set of Achilles’
arms in the Iliad by gift, loan, capture, and re-capture. Each transfer of the arms is
examined in relation to the poem’s dramatic action, characterisation, and representation
of social institutions and ethical values. Modern anthropological and economic
approaches are employed in order to elucidate standard elements surrounding certain
types of exchange. Nevertheless, the study primarily involves textual analysis of the
Iliadic narratives recounting the circulation-process of Achilles’ arms, with frequent
reference to the general context of Homeric exchange and re-exchange. The origin of the
armour as a wedding gift to Peleus for his marriage to Thetis and its consequent bequest
to Achilles signifies it as the hero’s inalienable possession and marks it as the symbol of
his fate in the Iliad. Similarly to the armour, the spear, a gift of Cheiron to Peleus, is later
inherited by his son. Achilles’ own bond to Cheiron makes this weapon another
inalienable possession of the hero. As the centaur’s legacy to his pupil, the spear
symbolises Achilles’ awareness of his coming death. In the present time of the Iliad,
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Achilles lends his armour to Patroclus under conditions that indicate his continuing
ownership over his panoply and ensure the safe use of the divine weapons by his friend.
Patroclus’ transgression of the terms of the loan of the arms leads to his death, but also
signals Achilles’ return to the battlefield and to his traditional fate. Hector kills Patroclus
and acquires the arms in accordance with the Homeric mechanism stipulating the
despoilment of defeated warriors. Interestingly, however, his acquisition constitutes an
improper exchange, because he did not obtain the arms from Achilles, their legitimate
owner. Achilles defeats Hector on the battlefield and repossesses his arms. The
restoration of the arms to Achilles confirms them as his inalienable possessions and
corroborates the principles of the Homeric exchange mechanisms. Yet it leaves Achilles
without spoils from his military victory. This study suggests that the ransom that Priam
offers to Achilles for the release of Hector’s corpse symbolises the spoils from the sack
of Troy, which chronologically will happen after the death of Achilles. Thus the re-
exchange of the arms leads to the exchange between Achilles and Priam, which in turn
compensates the former for the loss of honour caused by Agamemnon’s confiscation of
Briseis that happens in Book 1. In Book 24, Troy has figuratively fallen, while countless
Trojan riches are carried to Achilles’ tent.

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Acknowledgments

During my time as a doctoral student in the Department of Classics at the University of
Toronto, I have been thrice and four times blessed with the help and support of a large
number of people. My thanks go first and foremost to my dissertation supervisor,
Jonathan Burgess. A few words here cannot suffice to convey my abiding gratitude. He
first steered my interest toward the topic and the pattern of exchange in the Iliad and
constantly guided my thinking throughout my dissertation. His enthusiasm, criticism,
insight, and dedication made the completion of this project possible. In his unstinting
support of me, he continued going above and beyond what anyone would be expected to
do. His excellent scholarship has been both a great influence and an inspiration at every
stage of this project and has made a big difference in my intellectual development.
Professors Martin Revermann and Victoria Wohl, as members of my committee,
helped improving my thesis in countless ways and provided crucial help at crucial
moments. Martin Revermann has kindly given me feedback not only on various drafts of
the manuscript, but also on my academic teaching. He has my heartfelt thanks. Victoria
Wohl has patiently commented on my work already since my dissertation proposal and
has constantly pushed my thinking in new directions. Her probing questions, her detailed
feedback, and her own fascinating research on exchange have sharpened my ideas and
have led me to a clearer understanding of the topic of re-exchange. I owe her my deepest
gratitude. Hugh Mason, my internal-external reviewer, has given me advice and
encouragement in all matters of research and teaching throughout graduate school. In
addition, his stylistic comments on the final draft of my dissertation saved me from
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various infelicities. Seth Schein, my external reviewer, took an immediate interest in my
dissertation. He devoted a great deal of time into reading my dissertation and offered me
generous and prolific comments on issues of exchange and Homeric epic. Furthermore,
his countless editing suggestions were invaluable in the final revision of my thesis and
his advice on my future scholarly work was indispensable.
I am particularly grateful to a few other scholars of my department for their
tireless efforts on my behalf. Christer Bruun, Regina Höschele, Alison Keith, and Jarrett
Welsh have offered me unfailing encouragement and assistance through various stages of
my graduate studies. I would also like to thank my colleagues in the department of
Classics for providing intellectual engagement and enhancing my graduate experience.
Finally, it is impossible adequately to express all that I owe to my parents,
Antigoni and Dimitrios, and to my brother, Konstantinos, for their unconditional love and
their unwavering support throughout my doctoral studies. Although from afar, their
unflagging guidance and stimulating discussions have made an incalculable contribution
to this project from its earliest stages. Their boundless encouragement has shepherded my
dissertation to its final completion.

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Table of Contents

Abstract ii
Acknowledgements iv
Introduction 1
Chapter 1: Re-Exchange in the Iliad 44
Chapter 2: The Fabula of Achilles’ Arms 65
Chapter 3: The Homeric Origin of Achilles’ Arms 86
Chapter 4: Cheiron and Achilles’ Spear 123
Chapter 5: The Loan to Patroclus 155
Chapter 6: The Spoils of Hector and the Spoils of Achilles 187
Conclusion 225
References 233

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INTRODUCTION

Methodology and Outline

Exchange permeates Homeric epic in various modes and forms to such an extent that it
often seems a self-evident, expected, and casual feature of the plot. Offers of gifts,
parental inheritances, personal loans, property thefts executed individually or
collectively, organised plundering expeditions, raids, and war are some instances
involving exchange between two parties. The multiplicity of distinct circumstances that
appear to cause or accommodate transferences of tokens in the Iliad and the Odyssey
signify that exchange, in general, is a very inclusive and complex operation. The
diversity and ubiquity of the phenomenon in Homeric society combined with the limited
sources of wealth featured in the epics inevitably require that certain tokens change hands
more than once. They are exchanged once, and then re-exchanged, and possibly re-
exchanged again, frequently under different circumstances and expectations each time.
That is, their disposition does not constitute a single one-time action, but a longer process
of continuing circulation.
This dissertation explores the phenomenon of re-exchange in Homer, exhibited in
a variety of forms, ranging from voluntary permanent re-gifting or temporary re-
assignment of possessions to re-appropriation through the use of violence. The extent to
which re-exchange recurs in the Iliad and the Odyssey and the emphasis that it receives
from the characters and the narrator each time indicate the importance of this
phenomenon for both the community depicted in the poems and the story of the poems
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weaved around this community. The present study illustrates how Homeric epic employs
re-exchange in order to construct its poetic society, which in turn it uses as a foundation,
in order to build its plot. In this sense, re-exchange lies at the intersection of Homeric
society and Homeric poetics.
There have been many excellent previous studies on exchange in antiquity with
special attention to Homer in particular. Yet most focus only on gift-giving, or the
exchange of women as a form of gift exchange.1 A few studies isolate other types of
exchanges, such as inheritance bestowals, or ransom and spoils.2 And some types of
Homeric exchange, such as loan stipulations, have been overlooked. This selective and
inconsistent treatment of exchange is to be expected, given its versatility and dynamism
in Homer. Reconstruction and analysis of individual manifestations of exchange deepen
our understanding of certain transactions, but pose the risk of misleading extrapolations
concerning the literary phenomenon of exchange as a whole. Evaluation of a transfer
between two parties strictly on the basis of general transferring patterns might overlook
the peculiarities of the structure in question. This might result in extending principles
from a certain exchange type to interpret a transaction that is not completely relevant to
it. In order to properly assess a particular example of exchange, this study will pay
attention both to the wide systems of exchange operating within the epics at large as well
as to the individual exchange context of the case in question.
My particular emphasis is on re-exchange, which is often neglected in Homeric
studies. Its distinct and composite mode, fashioned collectively by a series of separate,

1 On gift exchange, see Finley 1979; Donlan 1981, 1989, 1993; Morris 1986a, 1986b; Seaford 1994; von
Reden 1995; Gill, Postlethwaite, and Seaford (eds.) 1998. On the exchange of women in particular, see
Lacey 1966; Snodgrass 1974; Kurke 1991, 1999; Wohl 1998; Lyons 2003, 2012.
2 On inheritance, see Rose 1992:58-64, 75-77. On ransom and spoils, see van Wees 1992; Ready 2007;
Wilson 2002.
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but inter-dependent, transactions is either overlooked or interpreted by hermeneutic tools
that fail to capture its scope and idiosyncratic particularities. Looking at its process
illuminates the dynamics of its generative force and the degree of its impact in forming
Homeric epic as a socio-literary construct.
Although re-exchange occurs to a great extent in the Homeric epics, this project
will focus on the Iliad and one of the major protagonists of the poem, Achilles.
Specifically, the successive exchanges of Achilles’ first set of immortal arms will be
analysed in detail. Aside from their importance for Achilles’ peculiar heroic identity, the
arms have one of the longest circulation-processes in Homeric epic both in temporal and
spatial terms. As gifts to Peleus, they originate in an exchange that takes place in the past
yet is recounted in the poem. Their final exchange, on the other hand, happens after
Achilles’ death and exceeds the temporal framework of the Iliad. It is thus recounted in
the Odyssey and in non-Homeric works that draw themes from the story of the Trojan
War. Spatially, the exchanges of the arms that occur in the Iliadic present and their
consequences span from Book 16 to the end of the poem. Their role is so integral to the
final part of the narrative that their potential absence would result in a much shorter
version of the Iliad.
The narratives explicating the circulation-process of Achilles’ arms are not
arranged in chronological sequence in the poem. The events involved in this process
unfold during the present action of the Iliad as well as during flashbacks to the past and
projections to the future. This study will undertake to disentangle these narratives, aiming
to disclose a strict, large-scale system of principles consistently underlying the society
and guiding the plot of the poem.
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More specifically, the following chapters will consider separately each
transitional stage of the re-exchange of the arms and will attempt to reconstruct the
regulatory framework of the distinct mechanisms responsible for each transference that
these objects are reported to go through. This framework will provide the basis against
which each of the consecutive exchanges will be evaluated as an individual transaction
and as a part of a wider circulation-process. In addition, it will help to assemble a unified
system, predicating social interaction, and thereby justify the direction, the development,
and stalemates of the Iliad.
Given the multiformity of individual exchange and the complexity of re-exchange
in Homer, this project can benefit from the insights of modern theoretical discussions of
economic exchange. A comparative methodology, consisting of an anthropological as
well as an economic approach will be adopted, where necessary, to confirm, clarify, and
explain standard elements surrounding certain types of exchange. Each of these two
approaches, when applied individually to Homeric society, tends to be lacking in
flexibility and scope. A combined use of them will provide more perspectives and, thus,
will address the depth of Homeric exchange and re-exchange more adequately.
But this methodology sometimes needs to be modified by careful attention to the
nature of Homeric poetry. Although modern approaches to exchange often explain the
general disposition of the Homeric heroes towards giving and receiving, they can ignore
the particular characteristics of Homeric society or impose connotations that are absent
from this society. Furthermore, their rigid application to Homer would entail the risk of
confusing Homeric poetics with actual reality. An expectation of historical truth might
result in disregard of the literary aspects of the Iliad. Homeric society constitutes a
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