As Achilles rejoins the battle, the Olympian gods are finally free of Zeus’ restraint and are able to support whichever side they choose.
Zeus commands Themis to call a council of the gods. All gods, nymphs, even gods of rivers and streams attend. Zeus commands the gods to descend to Troy and support whichever side they choose. He acknowledges that the Trojans now stand little chance against Achilles, even inside their city, if no god helps them to face his wrath.
Hera, Athena, Poseidon, Hermes and Hephaestus leave to support the Achaean forces. Phoebus Apollo, Artemis, Leto, Aphrodite and the River Xanthus intend to support the Trojans.
Achilles, meanwhile, has been terrifying the Trojans with the power of his assault. When Athena arrives on the battlefield she bellows a stunning war cry in support. On the other side Ares bellows his own war cry back in support of the Trojans. Zeus sends thunder from the skies while Poseidon shakes the earth so violently that Hades in the Underworld fears his realm will be exposed to the world in a great cataclysm. Now, the gods face off against each other, as though they might battle. Phoebus Apollo rears against Poseidon with his arrows. Athena faces off against Ares. Artemis faces off against Hera, while Hermes faces Leto and Xanthus, the river god also known as Scamander, opposes Hephaestus.
As the gods prepare for battle, Achilles looks for Hector upon the battlefield. Meanwhile, Phoebus Apollo appears to Aeneas in the guise of Priam’s son, Lycaon, and urges him to fight Achilles. But Aeneas is reluctant. He remembers a former encounter with Achilles the day Lyrnessus was sacked. Achilles chased him down Mount Ida with his spear. Aeneas only survived with Zeus’ intervention, who gave him greater speed. Aeneas believes Athena helped Achilles that day by clearing a safe path for him. He believes no mortal can beat Achilles while the gods look after him, and even then, he is a most deadly warrior. Apollo points out that Aeneas’ divine lineage is arguable greater than Achilles, since Achilles is only the son of lesser goddess, while Aeneas is the son of Aphrodite. Apollo urges him not to be turned back by Achilles’ contempt.
Aeneas is emboldened by Apollo and moves out to attack Achilles. Hera calls Poseidon and Athena to either waylay Aeneas or to help Achilles. She needs Achilles to understand that he is supported by the gods to give him the courage he needs. But Poseidon advises Hera that she should not be extreme in her help but to leave the fight to mortals while they watch over the battle. They should only engage if Ares or Phoebus Apollo helps on the Trojan side. So they retire to a fortress built by Heracles while the gods supporting the Trojans sit down upon Sunlight Hill, otherwise known as Mt Ida, to watch the battle. Neither side now wishes to make the first move.
On the plains the armies clash but Achilles and Aeneas meet in a ‘no man’s land’ where the action seems to be lighter. The two men charge each other, but as they come in range Achilles calls to Aeneas, questioning why he risks death in this fashion. He questions what inducements Priam has made him as reward for being so foolhardy. Achilles points out that even if Aeneas wins the encounter Priam will not make him the next king since he has sons. Achilles then recalls the time he chased Aeneas with his spear down Mt Ida. He encourages Aeneas to withdraw from the action and save his own life.
Emboldened by the urgings of Apollo, Aeneas refuses to be cowed by Achilles’ taunts, his reputation or parentage. Aeneas considers himself Achilles’ equal, at least, since he comes from divine stock, too, as Apollo has reminded him. In fact, in the middle of the battlefield he stops to tell the story of his lineage, starting with Dardanus, who founded Dardania, and recounts his family lineage which is equally as noble as Priam’s. Though he has been the one speaking, Aeneas then calls for their banter to stop and for fighting to begin. Aeneas hurls his spear at Achilles. It strikes Achilles’ shield full on, and Achilles’ momentarily fears the spear will pass through the shield to him. But the spear is stopped by the third of five layers in the shield. Achilles next hurls his spear and it passes clean through Aeneas’ shield. Luckily, it misses Aeneas and lands in the ground. Aeneas is fearful. When Achilles charges him Aeneas lifts a massive boulder in his hands to fend Achilles off. But the boulder would have failed against Achilles’ armour and Aeneas would have died, except at that moment Poseidon takes pity on Aeneas, since he has only acted recklessly at the urging of Apollo. He decides he and the other gods should rescue him. Zeus may be angered if he is killed, he says, and he is destined to lead Trojans in the future. But Hera refuses to help a Trojan. She says that she and Athena have sworn oaths against protecting Trojans, but she allows that Poseidon might act as he wishes. So, Poseidon blinds Achilles with a mist, pulls Achilles’ spear from Aeneas’ shield and lays it Achilles’ feet, and then flings Aeneas from the spot, to the very edges of the battle. Poseidon tells Aeneas not to fight Achilles – that Achilles is doomed, anyway. Poseidon tells Aeneas that no other fighter can kill him if he leaves Achilles alone. Meanwhile, Achilles is startled by Aeneas’ disappearance when the mist lifts from his eyes. He realises that Aeneas is also supported by the gods.
Now Achilles urges the Achaeans to fight the Trojans. He tells them that he can’t win the battle by himself, but he will fight with all his might if they do their part. On the other side, Hector boasts to his men that he will fight Achilles. But as the Trojans prepare for a full assault Apollo appears next to Hector and tells him not to fight Achilles ahead of his army’s ranks. Rather, he should await Achilles, protected by the ranks of his own men. So, Hector withdraws as instructed.
Achilles surges back into battle. He kills Iphition, splitting his skull in half with his spear. Next, he kills Demoleon, and then Hippodamus, who leaps from his chariot and tries to flee. Then Achilles confronts Polydorus, son of Priam, who has been instructed by Priam to avoid the fight. But Achilles sees him running along the front lines and spears him in the back.
Hector, seeing his brother killed, forgets the warning of Apollo, and charges at Achilles. Achilles relishes the prospect of facing Hector, the man who laid the killing blow against Patroclus. He taunts Hector, who in turn replies he is not afraid of Achilles, saying that any one blow could finish Achilles just as easily.
But the gods again intervene. When Hector throws his spear at Achilles, Athena blows it back with her breath. Achilles then charges Hector, but Phoebus Apollo whisks him away and wraps him in a mist. Achilles attacks four times but he is repelled each time by the god in the same manner. Frustrated, Achilles cries out that Hector has escaped this encounter, but that they will fight again, and Achilles intends to kill him, “if one of the gods will only urge me on as well.” [513] He then returns to the battle. He stabs Dryops through the neck, smashes Demuchus’ knee then kills him, and throws Laogonus and Dardanus, sons of Bias, from their chariot. He kills them both. Next, Tros, son of Alastor, crawls to Achilles and holds him by the knees to beg for his life. Achilles slits open his liver, then killed Mulius with a lance through the ear. He then splits Echeclus’ head in two. He lances Deucalion’s arm right through and splits the arm apart. Then Achilles chops his head off. He stabs Rhigmus in the stomach and kills his driver, Areithous, as he tries to drive the chariot away.
Achilles is described as a fire raging through dry wood, or like the oxen that crushes barley beneath its hoofs. As Achilles rampages through the battle in his chariot, he and his chariot are sprayed by the blood of corpses and armour that he rides over, so great is the slaughter.
In Book 19 we saw how Agamemnon was keen to be reconciled with Achilles. To do this he used the gods as a means to save face, arguing his actions that so angered Achilles were attributable to the interference of the gods. In this book we see the gods taking part in the course of the battle to a greater degree than we have for some time. Zeus frees the other gods to take sides as they will, and most of the key encounters in this book are either encouraged or instigated by an interfering god, or resolved by a god, thereby delaying the deaths of characters that might otherwise have been killed, particularly Aeneas and Hector, both of whom are saved from Achilles through divine intervention.
Part of Agamemnon’s digression in the last book concerned the story of Heracles. There is a minor allusion to Heracles in this book, too, which is worth considering. Poseidon argues that the gods supporting the Achaeans should be more restrained in their interference. They retire to watch the battle:
The interest in this small allusion lies with the significance it has for the story of Troy as well as the digression Aeneas later makes when explaining his family lineage to Achilles. The sea monster described in these lines is a Cetus, sent by Poseidon against Troy in the era when Heracles was completing his labours for King Eurystheus.
At this time Troy was ruled by King Laomedon, whom Aeneas mentions in his account to Achilles. The construction of the walls of Troy had been completed by the gods Poseidon and Apollo. However, Laomedon had refused to pay them for this. In retribution Apollo sent his plague arrows into the city and Poseidon raised the sea monster from the deep to prevent anyone escaping Troy by sea. Laomedon was told by Zeus’ oracle that he would have to sacrifice his daughter to appease the gods. He would have to leave her at the seashore for the sea monster to devour. His daughter, Hesione, was to be left for the creature. However, Heracles, having just completed another of his labours, offered to kill the monster. He would take the two horses given to Tros, Laomedon’s grandfather, by Zeus as a compensation for his rape of Ganymede. The fortress, referenced in the above lines from Homer, was made for Heracles by the Trojans to help him fight the creature.
However, when Heracles defeated the sea monster Laomedon was again parsimonious. He refused to pay Heracles with the immortal horses from Zeus. Heracles, angered, had to leave to take up his next labour for Eurystheus, but he later returned to Troy and sacked the city. He killed Laomedon and all his sons except Podarces, who had supported Heracles’ right to be paid. Podacres was enslaved, but he was saved by his sister, Hesione. Heracles allowed her to save whomever she wished by placing a golden veil about the person’s head. She chose her brother, Podacres. Heracles renamed him ‘Priam’, which is translated as ‘ransomed’ or ‘redeemed’. Heracles set Priam upon the throne of Troy.
So the allusion to the stronghold of Heracles and the sea-monster is also an allusion to the story of the ascension of Priam to the Throne.
It is a peculiarity in The Iliad that when two enraged heroes charge each other, that they tend to stop in the middle of the battle and exchange taunts, or even more weirdly, speak of their reputation or family. Book 20 is no exception. When Aeneas charges at Achilles, Achilles taunts him and Aeneas feels compelled to convince Achilles that he is someone important, just after the god Apollo has reminded him of this fact. So, he gives Achilles an account of his family lineage, going back several generations. There is a family tree of the Trojan royal house on page 617 if you happen to have the Fagles edition I am using. I have reproduced my own version of this family tree here, based upon the speech Aeneas makes to Achilles in lines 250-278.
You can follow the story of the sea monster and Heracles through this lineage from Laomedon to Priam. What this family tree shows is that Aeneas is of an equally royal descent as Hector, who would be heir to Priam’s throne: “That is the blood I claim, my royal birth.” The sections displayed in green are additions to the account given by Aeneas to help fill out the story: to help locate Hesione in the family diagram and to show Aprodite as the mother of Aeneas.
In fact, as the story of Heracles helps to illustrate, had Priam not been spared by Heracles in the first siege of Troy, Aeneas might well have been in line to the throne through his father, Anchises, descended from the second son of Tros, Assaracus.
One last thing is the name of Troy, itself, which comes from this family lineage. The name ‘Troy comes from Aeneas’ great great grandfather, Tros. The city also takes the name ‘Ilium’ from Tros’ first son, Ilus, which is where the title Iliad comes for Homer’s work: a story about Ilium, or Troy.
Zeus finally allows the other gods to descend to Troy and support whichever side they are inclined to support once Achilles finally re-enters the fight. Until now, it has been his intention of supporting Achilles in his feud with Agamemnon, but with that now over, Zeus reveals a more balanced concern for what is happening. He tells Poseidon, “These mortals do concern me, dying as they are” [line 26], and he further expands upon this thought to reveal a level of concern for the Trojans, also:
Zeus shows himself concerned with humanity as well as a natural balance in the universe. Achilles, unopposed, may bring great slaughter upon the Trojans, but he also risks overstepping the bounds of fate, itself, if he manages to storm the citadel.
This image from the workshop of Bernard Picart, was produced for the French translation of Homer's Iliad by Anne Dacier, published in 1711. Picart’s illustration are fascinating examples of book illustration from this time. They tend to be scultural in their portrayals of characters and scene. As an example, the clouds upon which the gods stand seem solid. Picart often uses clouds to delineate the divine and mortal realms, appearing in lines that form literal divisions across the image.
This image shows the gods unrestrained. They seem to gleefully interfere with the battle. Their arrows, tridents and swords are deployed with uncontrolled abandon, much like children released from restraint. The image does not capture the sharp camps into which the gods divide themselves, those supporting the Achaean forces and those supporting Troy. Instead, they appear in this image like an homogenous group with a single purpose. Nor does the image capture the sense of restraint exhibited by the gods, as evidenced in Zeus’ speech above, or the decision of the gods on both sides to act with restraint. Poseidon tells Hera:
Instead of entering the fray, the gods choose to sit aside and watch, only interfering when some important matter, like the likely death of Aeneas, is at stake.
The story of Heracles’ rescue of Hesione from the sea monster is not a part of the story of The Iliad but it is alluded to in book 20. Instead, the myth is part of the origin story for the city of Troy and King Priam’s reign.
Most versions of the story seem to have it that Hesione was to be offered to the sea monster naked. Young damsels being offered to monsters seems to have been a thing in Western culture for thousands of years. This story is similar to that of Andromeda, in which Poseidon also plays a part. In that story, Poseidon ordered Andromeda sacrificed to the sea monster after her mother, Cassiopeia, said her daughter was more beautiful than Poseidon’s sea nymphs. But Andromeda is rescued by Perseus who is returning from his quest to bring back the head of Medusa. In Desmond Davis’ 1981 film, The Clash of the Titans, Andromeda faces her fate after her mother boasts her daughter is more lovely than Thetis, the goddess whose son has been transformed into a hideous beast. She orders that Andromeda be sacrificed to the sea monster as retribution.
The damsel in distress scenario is common. Ann Darrow in Merian C. Cooper’s 1933 King Kong (and other versions that follow) is subjected to the same danger when she is offered as a sacrifice to King Kong.
In the above images we see Heracles fighting the sea monster directly. In the Grecian urn Hesione is fully clothed while Heracles uses a bow and arrow to dispatch the creature. In the later images Heracles uses clubs. Raoul Lefèvre’s image from an illuminated manuscript shows Heracles dressed as a medieval knight. The city of Troy is represented as a medieval fortress. None of the images represent the fortress mentioned in The Iliad to which Heracles is said to have sought protection from the sea monster.
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