Black Ships Before Troy

“Lastly, Aphrodite drew near, her eyes as blue as deep-sea water, her hair like spun gold wreathed around her head, and, smiling honey-sweet, whispered that she would give him a wife as fair as herself if he tossed the apple to her.”

Aphrodite’s beauty is unparalleled; still, unsure that she will win the golden apple, she lures Paris’s vote by correctly guessing that the vain young man would be swayed by promises of the world’s fairest woman over those of honor or wisdom.

“If you go forth now with the fighting men, you will make for yourself a name that shall last while men tell stories round the fire, even to the end of the world. But you will not live to see the first gray hair in your beard, and you will come home no more to your father’s hall.”

One of the story’s prophecies is about Achilles’s destiny: He can choose early glorious death or obscure old age. By committing to Agamemnon’s war, Achilles seals his fate.

“It is this: that I wish you had died out there between the war-hosts, at the hand of my true marriage-lord, who is a better man than you will ever be!” 

After seeing Paris’s cowardly and dishonorable soldiering, Helen wishes to return to Menelaus and their child. This repentance and change of heart allows her to regain her honor and keep her life.

“There, in the high chamber, he found his brother fussing over his armor and playing with his great bow, like a girl making ready for a party, instead of arming himself for the war-host.”

Because Paris is a coward who leaves the fighting to other men despite having started the war in the first place, he is coded as female, playing at war “like a girl.” Unlike Achilles, whose warrior nature comes out even when he is in hiding as a maiden, Paris never becomes manly. The irony of course, is that this doesn’t prevent him from killing Achilles—a fact that complicates the story’s treatment of masculinity.

“Dear, cease the weeping. Go back to your women and set them to women’s work. War is the work for men.”

Comforting his wife Andromache, Hector draws clear lines between the responsibilities of men and women have different responsibilities. His by-the-book approach to gender roles gibes with the steadfast and duty-bound way he conducts the war.

“And so terrible was the slaying among them that Athene, seeing the slaughter as she looked down from the peaks of Olympus, paid no heed to the jeweled robe newly laid across the knees of her statue in the great temple of the high city of Troy.”

Athene favors the Greeks so much that she ignores the sacrifice the Trojan women offer her. The goddess values the cunning, strategic minds of warriors like Odysseus to the material lucre of the offering. 

“And he knew that these things were his brother Poseidon’s doing. There was little enough he could do about Poseidon, who was almost his equal in power.”

The Trojan War is not only a battle between mortals, but also a battle between gods. It continues the argument of three goddesses, and is a proxy conflict for gods undermining each other. Mortals are pawns used to settle divine scores. 

“It is not for their own folly that they die, but for the ill-doing of one man; and he has already offered you full amends­—which you have refused.”

Patroclus rebukes Achilles for his pride and anger; Patroclus wants Achilles to fight for the Greeks again after seeing the carnage the Trojans have wrought. Achilles’s pride in not accepting Agamemnon’s restitution will lead to Patroclus’s death.

“Lord Zeus, send glory with him, strengthen the heart within him. And when he has driven the fighting back from the ships, let him return to me unharmed, and his sword-companions with him.” 

Achilles prays to Zeus for Patroclus’s safe return, but Zeus, furious with Achilles, refuses to grant the prayer in full. Instead, Zeus only gives Patroclus “glory,” sparking the battle madness that ultimately leads to Patroclus’s death. 

“But Zeus saw their grief and, for the sake of their father the west wind, put fire back into their hearts and power into their legs and their arched necks; and then Automedon found himself another warrior to be his charioteer and, with him, plunged back into the struggle.” 

Zeus consoles Achilles’s two horses as a courtesy to their divine father. Even though Zeus is responsible for their grief—he made Patroclus climb the walls of Troy until Hector killed him—the god recognizes his mistake and soothes them. That even the ruler of the gods can reverse himself like this is a rebuke to Achilles, whose obstinacy is unyielding.

“Then, coming to herself again, she took up the lament, wailing for her babe, left without a father, and for Hector, who was worse than slain, for lacking proper burial rites, he would not pass free to realms of Hades, but must wander lonely and uncomforted in the borderlands between the living and the dead.”

Andromache weeps for Hector’s passing, concerned with his inability to enter the afterlife because Achilles won’t allow his body to be buried. Her dismay highlights how immensely important funerary rites and honorable burials are in Trojan and Greek beliefs.

“But they did not seal the stone chamber, for Achilles gave orders that when he also was dead, they should mingle his ashes with the ashes of his friend in the same cup.” 

Though we often hear of their love for one another, we truly see Achilles devotion to Patroclus when he mourns and wishes them to be intertwined in death—typically, an honor reserved for spouses like Paris and Oenone, who are likewise together in the afterlife. 

“And at the end of that time, the gods in anger agreed that the great Achilles was dishonoring himself, his friend, and the earth itself in his madness, and the thing must cease.”

The gods value honor above all else. Now that Achilles has lost control of his grief, giving in to bloodlust and madness, his status as a darling of the gods is in jeopardy. Only the mercy he will display to King Priam will restore his lost honor. 

“He raised the old king from his knees and spoke kindly to him, and they wept, both of them together, Priam for his son, and Achilles for his father and for Patroclus his friend.” 

King Priam’s kneeling plea shakes Achilles free from the madness of grief. This moment of Achilles with King Priam, an elderly man that reminds the young warrior of his own father, is one of the most famous moments of the story. Their connection highlights the increasingly meaningless war and its unbearable losses.

“The Amazons were a tribe of women warriors who lived far away, in the lands watered by the river Thermodon.”

The Amazons are women warriors who fight ferociously, pushing back against the strict gender norms that have been apparent throughout the novel. Despite being defeated quickly, their horseback fighting style unsettles the men so much that Ajax and Achilles resort to mockery to deal with their feelings of emasculation. 

“Penthesilea lay in the churned dust, like a young poplar tree that the wind has overthrown. Her helmet had fallen off, and the Greeks who gathered round marveled to see her so young and so fair to look upon, with her bright hair spilled about her. And the heart of Achilles, who had killed her, was pierced with grief and pity, and he wept over her, now that she was dead.” 

In death, Penthesilea “pierces” Achilles heart in a way that her arrows could not. Seeing another young, beautiful, bright-haired warrior full of self-assurance and a sense of destiny cut down in her prime, Achilles cannot help but see himself and his fate in her. His grief is for the young queen and for the future he has chosen for himself. 

“In a while King Memnon came, the most beautiful of all men save for Paris and Achilles, and leading a great war-band of men who had nothing white about them but their teeth.” 

The appearance of the Ethiopian King Memnon and his men is interesting because only our modern sensibility injects racially charged overtones to what is a neutral description in an ancient world that had not formed current ideas of race.

“It struck into Achilles’ ankle in the unprotected place below the leg guard, the place where his mother Thetis had held him when she dipped her babe in the river Styx, the one spot that water had not touched and so could let death in.”

Achilles’s death marks a near defeat of the Greeks. It also marks the end of power as a war tactic—only cunning can bring Greek victory. 

“They knew that, though they had slain Hector and defeated the Amazons and the dark army of Memnon, and had the Luck of Troy in their keeping, they had lost too many of their own champions and were no nearer to taking the city and Helen than they had been ten years ago.” 

Though the Greeks are initially certain of their ability to defeat the Trojans, the war has grown increasingly futile over ten years and countless lives have been lost for no reason. Each success the Greeks have feels only like a Pyrrhic victory. 

“She pulled her veil close over her head like a bride, and speeding through the crowd that parted to let her pass, she leapt upon the high-piled fire, into the very midst of it, where the flame tongues leapt as though to lick the stars, and flung herself down beside the body of Paris, clasping it in her arms.”

Oenone throws herself into the flames to unite in death with Paris, she takes solace in the fact that an afterlife together waits for them. Their ashes are intermingled, just as Achilles and Patroclus’s are.

“Now therefore, let us learn from the hawk, and since by strength we can do nothing more against Troy, let us turn to cunning.”

Relying on brain over brawn turns the tide of the war. Cunning is Odysseus’s strong suit, and his intellect, along with Athene’s blessing, leads to the wooden horse that ensures Greek victory.

“But if we both live through this night, there is another gift that I may ask of you. One that will cost you neither land nor gold nor men in the giving.” 

Odysseus’s honor and kindness are apparent when he chooses to save Helen’s life over any amount of land or gold. Odysseus’s desire to preserve marital union makes sense: He will spend the next ten years trying to return to his own wife, Helen’s cousin Penelope—that journey is the plot of the Odyssey, Homer’s other epic. 

“Only Helen, who, after Eris with her golden apple, had been the cause of it all, was led with honor, as a queen and not a slave, to the ship of her husband Menelaus.” 

Helen is redeemed from her role as the cause of the Trojan War. She is the only woman who escapes from Troy with dignity; she is not stripped of her honor, but it has in fact been returned to her.