Book 23 of the Iliad describes the funeral of Patroklos, followed by games held in his honour. The funeral proper takes three days (1–61, 109–225, and 226–57). In the night after the first day, Patroklos appears to Achilles and begs to be buried (65–107). The funeral games in honour of Patroklos bring the book to a close (257–897). My focus here will be on the first part of the book, the funeral of Patroklos.

It has long been suggested that the rites for Patroklos in some sense also represent the funeral of Achilles, which lies outside the Iliad's time frame.Footnote ¹ The Iliadic narrative of Patroklos’ funeral, it has been argued, has its source in pre-existing material depicting the burial of Achilles, material that has been subsequently inserted into the Iliad but betrays its foreign origin by certain details that would be appropriate for the heroic funeral of an Achilles but incongruous for Patroklos. As will emerge, I find such explanations inadequate but intend to propose a rather different approach to what I see as a purposeful conflation of the two funerals. Moreover, I suggest that each action of Achilles in carrying out Patroklos’ funeral can be read as a blueprint or a script, the legomena, so to speak, for the rituals that will henceforth constitute the dromena of a future joint cult of Achilles and Patroklos. While I do not claim that the rituals envisaged by the epic were actually performed, I do attempt to demonstrate that the poet and his audience would understand those acts, as an aition inaugurating a hero cult.

In making my argument, I will first show how Homer merges, or superimposes, the rites for Achilles with those of Patroklos; but the technique I discern here is not a palimpsest where the original text has been overwritten with a new one, but instead a fusion of two narratives that mirror each other with a double resonance. This technique, moreover, is also operative elsewhere in the poem. I will then argue that the Iliad poet shows an awareness of hero cult, before turning to an examination of the rituals described in Iliad 23.1–257, and conclude with a glance at the description of Achilles’ own funeral in the final book of the Odyssey.

It must be confessed at the outset that the Iliad is not a handbook of rituals – my argument depends both on archaeological evidence from different periods as well as much later literary sources – and the Homeric poems, as has been maintained, may themselves be the source of certain conceptions and practices. Thus, my conclusions must remain speculative, but I hope to marshal enough evidence at least to make a persuasive case.

Book 22 closed with the laments of Priam, Hecuba, and Andromache as they watch the dead body of Hector dragged in the dust across the Trojan plain by Achilles. Book 23 opens with the Greeks returning to the Hellespont and their ships. Achilles, however, refuses to allow his Myrmidons to scatter, but insists that they remain on their chariots, still in their armour, and make a procession mourning the corpse of Patroklos ὃ γὰρ γέρας ἐστὶ θανόντων (‘for this is the honour due the dead,’ 23.9). Only afterwards should they unyoke their horses and take their supper. Achilles leads the way, and they circle the corpse three times while μετὰ δέ σφι Θέτις γόου ἵμερον ὦρσε (‘among them Thetis aroused the desire for lamentation’, 23.14).

The mention of Thetis here has been considered not only abrupt, but also superfluous; the Greeks seem perfectly capable of mourning Patroklos without divine motivation. Moreover, Thetis’ presence here has seemed to be a pale imitation of her more elaborate intervention at the beginning of Book 18 (35–114) where, from the depth of the sea, she and her Nereid sisters first hear Achilles’ wailing. Arriving at the Trojan shore with shrill keening and leading off the lament of her sisters, Thetis there asks her son the cause of his grief; after all, Zeus has fulfilled his promise to visit suffering on the Greeks.Footnote ² That pledge, however, means nothing to Achilles, who now wishes he had never been born, but lives only to avenge the death of Patroklos. She, in turn, announces that Achilles’ death will follow soon upon the death of Hector. This intervention of Thetis in Book 18 has long been regarded as ‘one of the oldest and most central planks of Neoanalysis’.Footnote ³

Allow me a short digression here. While focusing on the scene in Book 18, Adrian Kelly has laid out in detail both the older and more recent versions of Neoanalysis in relation to the Homeric problem; both constitute a kind of Quellenforschung, where inconsistencies or incoherences in the Iliad reveal something not quite appropriate, the incorporation of a foreign body into a new context.Footnote ⁴ The older approaches posited the sources in pre-existing texts from the Epic Cycle, in the present case, especially, the Aethiopis or its precursor; the newer form (Neo-neoanalysis) discerns the incorporation not of texts but of adaptations of traditional motifs, or what Burgess has called ‘motif transference’.Footnote ⁵ He sums up the oralist position:

Nevertheless, both approaches have in common the notion that inconsistencies can be detected and arise from the assimilation or transference of imported material; the difference, as Kelly points out,

Kelly goes on to argue that the scene of Thetis’ arrival in Book 18 should not be considered as borrowed or adapted from another source, but instead be understood as a variant of a typical pattern of what he calls ‘proleptic mourning’ whose multiple occurrences in the Iliad he proceeds to analyze. But while Kelly's rejection of Neoanalytic interpretations is persuasive, in this particular case, his own survey of the parallel passages demonstrates that the intervention of Thetis here remains exceptional. First, as Kelly recognizes, Thetis is always proleptically mourning her son's death, of which she, as goddess, has certain knowledge.Footnote ⁸ Second, as already mentioned, Θέτις δ’ ἐξῆρχε γόοιο (‘Thetis led off the lament’, 18.51) is a technical term for ritual mourning, and third, Thetis’ gesture of holding Achilles’ head is not elsewhere found in cases of proleptic mourning.Footnote ⁹ Moreover, Achilles’ posture, ‘grand and grandly stretched out in the dust’ (ἐν κονίῃσι μέγας μεγαλωστὶ τανυσθείς, 18.26), is described as if he were a dead warrior.Footnote ¹⁰ Finally, while there is no need to resort to an external source, the scene does in fact allude to, or perhaps better, adumbrates a future funeral of Achilles as envisaged by the Iliad. As Edwards puts it: ‘few artists have so skilfully superimposed the present action and the future result’.Footnote ¹¹

The merging of the two funerals, begun in Book 18, resumes in Book 23. Here the mention of Thetis arousing mourning among the Myrmidons should not be viewed as an intrusion grafted onto the funeral of Patroklos from its original context (again from the Aethiopis);Footnote ¹² rather, lines 17–18 recall the passage in Book 18 as if to remind us of the earlier scene.Footnote ¹³ It is, however, surprising that Burgess, the leading proponent of the oralist form of Neoanalysis, maintains in this case that the phrase μετὰ δέ σφι Θέτις γόου ἵμερον ὦρσε does not necessarily indicate Thetis’ physical presence – which would in fact be expected at the funeral of her son.Footnote ¹⁴ According to Burgess, then, it ‘would seem to be an insignificant conflation between the mourning for Patroklos and the mourning for Achilles’, but ‘not a purposeful allusion . . . the line suggests that the emotional state of the Myrmidons was inspired by a divinity, as often in Homer; it is not necessary to conclude that Thetis was actually present among the Myrmidons’.Footnote ¹⁵ Agreed, but Thetis is not some generic divinity, and her mention here invites us to glimpse a purposeful conflation between the two funerals, what Burgess elsewhere calls ‘allusive triggers’, but here intra-textual rather than extra-textual.

Just as the early books of the Iliad re-enact the beginnings of the Trojan War, the final books allude to its end with the fall of Troy and its aftermath. We can point to whole episodes – the Catalogue of Ships, the duel between Paris and Menelaus, and the breaking of the truce – that logically belong to the earliest stages of the Trojan expedition, and which have also been subject to Neoanalytic interpretations as being smuggled into the Iliad from external sources. Priam's speech in Book 22 offers a vivid image of the horrors accompanying Troy's fall. More subtle are the foreshadowings in the wrestling match in Book 23.708–34 of Odysseus’ impending defeat of Telemonian Ajax in the contest over the arms of Achilles; similarly, tripped up by Athena in the footrace, Locrian Ajax's ignominious fall, with his mouth filled with dung, alludes to the boasting which will be his undoing (23.773–7, cf. Od. 4.499–511).Footnote ¹⁶ But to my mind the closest parallel to the mention of Thetis in Book 23 is an incident from the beginning of the Iliad, when in Book 3 Aphrodite appears to Helen in the guise of an old wool-working woman who had accompanied her mistress on her journey to Troy (3.383–9). Her presence here harks back to Sparta and the locus of Helen's first seduction by Paris. When Aphrodite summons Helen to the bedchamber, by evoking that moment that will become the casus belli, the poet invites us to recognize the allusion to the past and its re-enactment in the following scene when Helen is willy-nilly seduced all over again.

The mention of Thetis at the opening of Book 23 serves a similar function, but there it alludes not to the past but to the future and to the double function of the rites for Patroklos. We have here, then, neither an insignificant conflation nor an awkward sign of borrowing from an episode from Achilles’ funeral; rather, the allusion evokes a kind of superimposition of two episodes, creating a double perspective. The goddess's presence constitutes a typically Homeric sema, if I can call it that, a sign that already signals the double function of the rites for Patroklos, which simultaneously inaugurate the rites for her son.

Book 23 offers another indication of such a double function, one whose significance has not to my knowledge been recognized. A striking feature of the funeral games for Patroklos is the distribution of prizes. Every contestant receives a prize no matter how he fared in the competition; moreover, the prizes are unceremoniously carried off – or rather snatched up – by the participants.Footnote ¹⁷ The purpose of these procedures is to put the possessions of the deceased – often valuable property, frequently with a significant history – back into circulation, thereby not only commemorating the occasion, but also perpetuating the memory of the deceased, while also adding another chapter to the object's history. As Grethlein puts it:

Here, however, the position of the host and the deceased are blurred. Unlike the practice of gift-exchange that characterizes Homeric xenia, the function of the prizes at funerary events thus has a different purpose. As Redfield notes:

In the aftermath of the chariot race, Achilles awarded Eumelus, whose chariot was broken by Athena, Asteropaios’ breastplate, the ambidextrous warrior he had slain by the Scamander (23.560–2, cf. 21.140–204); he also gives away an iron throwing weight he sacked from the city of Eetion, father of Andromache (23.826–9), whom Achilles had slain (6.414–417). Finally, for the spear-throwing contest between Ajax and Diomedes, Achilles announces that both participants will share in the arms of Sarpedon won by Patroklos in his aristeia with the Lycian king, but the winner will receive an additional prize: a silver-studded dagger which Achilles says, ‘I stripped from Asteropaios’ (23.805–9). The contest is cut short when Diomedes is on the point of doing grievous bodily harm to his opponent, but he nevertheless receives Asteropaios’ dagger.

Thus, Achilles is giving away, not only the property of his dead friend, but also his own, acquired by his force of arms. His gesture in distributing his own belongings would have averted Homer's audience that Achilles intends to make Patroklos’ funeral also his own. He is, so to speak, a dead man walking.Footnote ²⁰ To be sure, the full distribution of Achilles’ possessions, most notoriously his arms, is deferred for now. But neither will the phiale containing Patroklos’ bones be sealed nor the grave tumulus fully erected until Achilles’ remains are added, as the Odyssey tells us, in a golden urn (24.74–7).Footnote ²¹ The rituals surrounding Patroklos’ funeral thus point ahead to the future establishment of Achilles’ own cult, which will eternally be linked with his friend Patroklos.

It is useful to pause here to give a general, if skeletal, definition of hero cult in order to differentiate it from funerary rituals and ancestor worship with which it shares many features.Footnote ²² I define hero cult as the recurring ritual worship of the dead, but one not limited to the relatives of the deceased, often performed at the burial site, but celebrated by the larger community. Moreover, unlike the ordinary dead, the hero maintains some power, whether for good or ill, so that the community can invoke his aid or attempt to avoid his displeasure. Plutarch's description (Arist. 21) of the cult for the fallen heroes of Marathon fulfills these three criteria with public sacrifice at the tumulus of the fallen warriors and its annual recurrence on a specified date. Admittedly, the earliest indications, which rely on archaeological evidence, pose special problems: how can one distinguish private burials from ancestral cults involving families or clans practised over an extended period from hero cults? With difficulty.Footnote ²³ Moreover, when discussing Homer and hero cult, the lack of consensus on the dating of Homer (eighth century? seventh? sixth?) creates further problems.Footnote ²⁴ However, later evidence – whether literary, archaeological, or inscriptional – for such cults dedicated to mythical heroes, founders, and civic heroes is well documented. Such annual festivals could include processions, libations, a variety of sacrifices and/or holocausts, public banquets, and athletic contests.Footnote ²⁵ Not long ago, it was the scholarly consensus that hero cult evolved under the influence of heroic epic, and indeed the eighth century bears witness to a proliferation of ritual activity at Mycenaean sites, especially at tombs.Footnote ²⁶ But to make epic responsible for the ‘invention’ of hero cult seems inherently implausible. Hero cult is local, celebrated and moulded by the need to create civic bonds within a local community; epic, on the other hand – or at least Homeric epic – is, or bills itself to be, Panhellenic. It seems far more likely that the heroes of epic were adopted or assimilated to local practices of veneration than the other way around.Footnote ²⁷

Long ago, Rohde argued that Seelencult (cult of the dead) both pre-dated and post-dated the development of the Homeric poems. In the offerings, especially the holocausts in honour of the deceased, Rohde saw a contradiction to the Homeric view of the afterlife in which the dead, once cremated, no longer have any power, especially over the living;Footnote ²⁸ and he detected traces of pre-Homeric hero cult in the description of Patroklos’ funeral.Footnote ²⁹ The discoveries at Lefkandi and Mycenean sites, which demonstrate continuity of ritual sites from Late Helladic IIIc into the early Geometric period, as well as a more nuanced understanding of the nature of hero cult have now rendered the picture more complex.Footnote ³⁰ While there may have been an upsurge in hero cult in the eighth century, it may be due as much to the related contemporary phenomena of Panhellenism, colonization, and the ‘rise’ of the polis as to the influence of epic.

Thus, the archaeological evidence no longer insists on hero cult as a post-Homeric phenomenon. As a result, Homeric epic has received renewed scrutiny for embedded traces of hero cult. Specific indications have been detected in several passages.Footnote ³¹ Hector's boast at Il. 7.84–91 suggests some form of hero cult localized at a mound overlooking the Hellespont.Footnote ³² However, the tomb beside the Hellespont that Hector imagines will not contain his defeated enemy; rather, as we learn at Odyssey 24.80–4, it will become the communal tumulus of Achilles and Patroklos. The unusual fate of Sarpedon, who dies on the Trojan plain, but is airlifted to Lycia (Il. 16.431–57, 666–83), also suggests hero cult;Footnote ³³ we know he received heroic honours in the historical period. Only in these two Homeric passages does the verb ταρχύω (to bury solemnly) occur; it may in fact be, as Nagy has argued, the vox propria for the performance of heroic cult.Footnote ³⁴

The absence of explicit reference to hero cult could be considered an example of the phenomenon of ‘epic distancing,’ which seeks to differentiate the world of the epic heroes from the lived space of the epic's audience.Footnote ³⁵ In a recent discussion, Currie reviews the issue of hero cult in Homer and argues that the ‘reason why hero cult is virtually absent from Homeric epic is because it has been suppressed, not because it was unknown. This suppression calls for an explanation.’Footnote ³⁶

He then lists two views to account for the epic's apparent downplaying of hero cult: first, since its heroes are considered living characters, it would be anachronistic to depict them as figures of cult; second, Homeric epic avoids allusion to hero cults because such cults are inherently localized, whereas the epic is Panhellenic. Currie's own explanation insists on the ‘literary aims of Homeric epic’, that ‘hero cult is incompatible with the whole outlook of the Homeric poems’ and that ‘the elevated, tragic, and pathetic effect aimed at . . . requires that death be total and not compromised, as it would be by reference to posthumous cults’.Footnote ³⁷

Currie's discussion inspired Nagy to restate his view, which goes back to the beginnings of his career, of the centrality and pervasiveness of hero cult in Homer:

While Nagy and Currie have substantial disagreements concerning the character and development of the Homeric poems, they nevertheless agree that hero cult is contemporaneous with Homer, but also that it is ‘suppressed’ (Currie) or left ‘implicit’ (Nagy) within the epics; nevertheless, as I have argued, its traces are by no means completely obliterated.

I would be inclined to reformulate and perhaps to render more precise both Nagy's thesis and Currie's formulation (‘literary aims of Homeric epic’) by drawing a parallel of the marginalization of hero cult in Homer to a passage at the beginning of Book 12 concerning the destruction of the Achaean wall – a move that at first glance may seem paradoxical. This unique Homeric glimpse into the future occurs at the midpoint of the Iliad (12.9–33). The Achaean wall, around which the battle between Greeks and Trojans rages from Book 12–15, had been built in Book 7, despite Poseidon's displeasure. Touchy, as always, about his prerogatives, Poseidon there complained to Zeus that the Greeks built the wall without proper sacrifice to the gods, yet its fame will endure ‘as far as the dawn is scattered’ while the one that he and Apollo built will fall into oblivion (7.445–53). Zeus reassures Poseidon; he should not worry: his wall ‘will endure as far as the dawn is scattered’. Accordingly, after the fall of Troy, the poet tells us, and the Greeks have departed, not only Poseidon, but also Apollo (the two gods on opposing sides in the war) and Zeus will join together in diverting the rivers of the Troad to blot out all traces of the wall along with the shields and helmets of the race of the demigods, the ἡμιθέων γένος ἀνδρῶν (12.23) – the only time the term ἡμίθεοι is used in the epic. As the great epic reaches its midpoint, all signs of the Achaean wall on the Trojan plain will disappear. Nevertheless, the kleos of the wall will indeed abide – ‘as far as the dawn is scattered’ – through Homer's poetry. The wall as well as the marginalization of hero cult point in the same direction: the epic lays claim to and insists on its exclusive prerogative to confer kleos aphthiton, imperishable glory, upon its heroes, who must die to acquire it, a kleos that, like the epic itself, transcends the local character of traditional hero cult in order to achieve Panhellenic status.

The Homeric poet emphasizes the superiority of his medium to memorialize the heroic dead,Footnote ³⁹ and he emphasizes the shortcomings of hero cult even within the context of Book 23 with its focus on the rituals meant to commemorate Patroklos and, by implication, the future rites for Achilles. Before the chariot race, Nestor indicates to his son Antilochus a σῆμα that will serve as the turning post: a piece of wood with two stones on either side (23.326–33); it is, he says easily discernible: the stones are white and the wood hard enough to be impervious to the weather. Nevertheless, Nestor can only guess whether it was once the tomb, the σῆμα, ‘of a man who died long ago’ or if it was used by earlier generations as a turning post (for funeral games?); in either case, the monument fails to commemorate; it ends up being a σῆμα with no meaning, consigned to anonymity. The anonymity of a mere physical object bolsters the claim that only the epic can bestow imperishable fame.Footnote ⁴⁰

Be that as it may, if Homeric epic did not invent hero cult, admittedly, it may nevertheless have played a role in the foundation, proliferation, and perhaps even the conduct of many geometric and archaic hero cults. Antonaccio summarizes:

Such cults were often localized at the grave and dedicated to epic heroes as well as to oikists (founders) and benefactors of various kinds. But many of the rituals appear to have a propitiatory function, often to appease the anger of the buried hero – and which hero above all others in the Greek tradition is characterized by his menis, his godlike anger, but Achilles?

We do know a fair amount about the historical worship of Achilles, now usefully summarized by Burgess.Footnote ⁴² The tumulus on the Hellespont that was thought to hold both the bones of Achilles and Patroklos in a golden urn was visited in historical times by Xerxes and the Persian army, Alexander, and later by Caracalla and the Emperor Julian; the battle between the Athenians and the Lesbians of Mytilene, in which Alcaeus took part, was fought at a town named Achilleion, presumably at the site of the mound (Hdt. 5.94). Moreover, Philostratus’ Heroikos (53.8) describes an annual pilgrimage to the site by Achilles’ Thessalian compatriots. Most intriguing is the evidence that Achilles was not just venerated with a localized hero cult at the site of his tumulus, but also worshipped as a god at many other sites in the Greek world, and especially in the area of Olbia on the northern coast of the Black Sea. Archaeological evidence for the cult of Achilles Pontarches (‘Ruler of the Sea’) dates as far back as the second half of the sixth century bce and continues through to the third century ce. This cult of a divine Achilles appears to derive from the story in the Aethiopis in which, after his death, his mother Thetis makes him immortal and settles him on the White Island, Leuce, which the Greeks who colonized the northern coast of the Black Sea identified with Berezan, ancient Borysthenes.

To be sure, the Iliad breathes not a word about Achilles’ immortalization. This omission might be explained by assuming that the tradition of Achilles’ divinity is post-Homeric.Footnote ⁴³ Yet even if the poet of the Iliad was aware of a tradition of his hero's apotheosis, he would have avoided explicitly incorporating it into his composition. For the Iliad's Achilles may be godlike in his strength, his beauty, and his menis, but he is not divine; the Iliad, and Iliadic heroism is predicated on human mortality. From its perspective, even Heracles died, and Sarpedon, Zeus's own son, cannot be rescued from death. For Homer, as we argued, immortality comes first and foremost from the epic itself, from the kleos aphthiton that it alone can confer. While, as we have seen, the epic may show an awareness of remembrance through cult, it nevertheless marginalizes that possibility. This paradoxical acknowledgement of hero cult and its simultaneous suppression in the interest of the self-aggrandizement of epic as the vehicle of heroic kleos is, I would argue, most manifest in the ritual activity surrounding Patroklos’ funeral. The hero of the Iliad who most self-consciously chooses the imperishable glory that epic alone confers simultaneously alludes to his imperishable honour, time aphthitos, as a hero of cult.Footnote ⁴⁴ The opposition between these two forms of remembrance is maintained, but also accommodated, as the Iliad draws to a close.

The actions of Achilles in carrying out Patroklos’ funeral constitute a complex ritual which I have called a blueprint for a future cult that eternally links the two heroes in ritual. We cannot know if the rituals described in the epic were ever actually practised. But the audience of the Iliad would have recognized in the depiction of the sequence of actions a ritual performance whose elements were familiar to them from the conduct of hero cults; and they would have recognized that the ritual choreography surrounding Patroklos’ funeral constituted a foundation or aition, the legomena (things said), for the dromena (things done, ritual actions) of a future cult of Achilles. The Homeric text allows us to reconstruct such a ritual activity, using both internal and historical evidence.

In what follows I will be relying on the work of Gunnel Ekroth, who has provided an exhaustive review of the literary and epigraphic evidence for hero cult.Footnote ⁴⁵ Inevitably, her evidence spans the period of the archaic period up to 300 bce and acknowledges some of the changes involving hero cult over that time period. Nevertheless, while phenomena such as the deification of rulers can have significant impact on religious practices, all in all rituals tend to be conservative. Another important facet of Ekroth's work is her attempt to distinguish hero cult from funeral rituals for the ancestors and the ordinary dead, which is relevant for my discussion here. Thus, with due caution I will be invoking some of her conclusions in the following discussion.

Now, ritual involves a specified sequence of actions by specified individuals at a specified time. The Iliadic text presents just such a recognizable sequence. First, after the Greek army has scattered to its various camps, Achilles orders his still-armed Myrmidons to mourn and to make a procession with their chariots three times around the body of Patroklos (23.4–14).Footnote ⁴⁶ This is accompanied by ritual lamentation (goos), led by Achilles (τοῖσι δὲ Πηλεΐδης ἁδινοῦ ἐξῆρχε γόοιο, ‘among them the Son of Peleus led off the lament,’ 23.17), but there is already something slightly off here.Footnote ⁴⁷ First, Achilles is the only non-female character to utter a formal lamentation. In his review of Iliadic laments, Tsagalis omits this passage despite its formulaic introduction as an epic goos, nor does he try to explain its anomalous character.Footnote ⁴⁸ Achilles’ lament neither praises his dead friend, nor expresses his sense of loss at his demise; he merely describes his revenge: first, his killing of Hector and then his contemplated slaughter of the Trojan youths on the pyre σέθεν κταμένοιο χολωθείς (‘angered on account of your death,’ 23.23). Anger takes the place of lament; revenge takes the place of mourning.

Achilles then arranges for a feast for his Myrmidons: ὃ τοῖσι τάφον μενοεικέα δαίνυ (‘for them he prepared an abundant funeral feast,’ 23.29). Oxen, sheep, goats, and pigs are sacrificed; ἀμφὶ σιδήρῳ | σφαζόμενοι (‘slaughtered around the iron [blade],’ 30–1) emphasizes the throat cutting, and blood, we are told, flows around the corpse in cupfuls (23.29–34).Footnote ⁴⁹ Here there appears to be an inversion of the usual order of funerary ritual: as a rule, the Totenmahl follows rather than precedes cremation (cf. 24.802, Od. 3.309).Footnote ⁵⁰ The feasting here appears to be displaced from its normal sequence serves to bring an end to the period of mourning and not only signifies a return to the basic needs of the body, but also serves to reintegrate the mourners into the community of the living through a shared meal. The funeral of Hector that brings the Iliad to a close seems to follow the normal sequence in which the Totenmahl signals the end of the period of communal mourning.Footnote ⁵¹ The apparent displacement of the feast and some of the other unusual features may point us in another direction and reinforces my suggestion that we are here dealing with the features of hero cult. In short, what is described here is neither a Totenmahl nor even the rituals commemorating the ordinary dead by their relatives and families; instead, it resembles the thysia typical of hero cult. As Ekroth has demonstrated, the thysia for heroes does not differ from normal sacrifices to Olympian divinities; it involves animal sacrifices and dining on the sacrificial meats.Footnote ⁵² Animal sacrifice as well as enagismata (holocausts) involving blood rituals for the non-heroic dead are, according to Ekroth, exceedingly rare.Footnote ⁵³ In our passage, the emphasis on bloodletting and the pouring of cupfuls of blood over the corpse of Patroklos is unprecedented. Even in hero cult, special treatment of sacrificial blood is unusual and may, according to Ekroth, relate either to war, where blood sacrifices were common, or as a means of establishing communication with the dead.Footnote ⁵⁴ Both aspects are clearly relevant to the context of Patroklos’ funeral, and it is striking that the ghost of the hero appears to Achilles shortly thereafter (23.65–107).

I have dwelt at some length on the lines describing the feast Achilles arranges for his men because I believe it reveals that we are not dealing with ordinary funeral practice, but already points in the direction of hero cult, the joint cult Achilles is here establishing for himself and Patroklos. Another topic that (re)emerges at the beginning of Book 23 is the theme of eating, which had previously surfaced in Book 19 where Achilles’ impatience to fight is rebuffed by Odysseus who insists on the army's need for sustenance before joining battle. Achilles, however, has vowed not to eat until he has avenged Patroklos; there, his departure from normal human necessities was underlined by his being nourished on ambrosia and nectar (19.352–4). Here, the return of the role of eating signals its importance throughout the last books of the Iliad. At 23.29 while Achilles plays the host for the feast, whether he partakes or not is left unclear. Scholars have debated whether Achilles eats or continues to fast throughout Book 23, but the important point is that the poet does not show us Achilles eating until he shares a meal with Priam at 24.618–28.

At any rate, shortly after the sacrificial feast for the Myrmidons, Achilles is summoned to a feast at Agamemnon's encampment, where, despite the urgings of the basileis Achaion, he refuses to bathe, claiming that it is ou themis (‘not ritually correct’) for him to wash – but indeed a ritual custom that he is now establishing.Footnote ⁵⁵ Pollution, to be sure, arises from contact with the dead, but I suggest Achilles’ continued state of pollution has a cultic dimension; as Parker notes, Achilles ‘speaks of this refusal to wash as a religious obligation.’Footnote ⁵⁶ This may also be related to hero cult; to quote Parker again, ‘the cult of heroes was celebrated at their tombs; the participants were sometimes required to purify themselves afterwards’.Footnote ⁵⁷ Washing, at the very least the hands, is a ritual prerequisite before eating as the many scenes of Homeric banqueting attest. The refusal to wash before eating renders Achilles somehow subhuman, like an animal; Achilles has not rinsed off the gore of battle and remains polluted by the blood of Hector; washing constitutes the necessary prelude to feasting. But finally, Achilles ‘gives in to the hateful feast’Footnote ⁵⁸ (ἀλλ’ ἤτοι νῦν μὲν στυγερῇ πειθώμεθα δαιτί, 23.48). The dais that implies equality and philia has become loathsome, στυγερή.Footnote ⁵⁹ Achilles declares the particularly human institution which unites its participants hateful and thereby distances himself from human society. Aristotle might call him apolis, floundering in the interstices between god and beast. The dais among the chieftains was intended to reintegrate Achilles into the community; it does not succeed. Homer indicates as much when, forgoing the usual formulas for communal feasting, he tells us: ‘preparing their meal in haste, each of them feasted’ (ἐσσυμένως δ’ ἄρα δόρπον ἐφοπλίσσαντες ἕκαστοι δαίνυντ(o), 23.55–6);Footnote ⁶⁰ the proprieties that characterize a shared feast are omitted. It is merely a meal. Achilles is here inaugurating a period of ritual impurity which cannot be ended – until Patroklos is cremated, and Achilles has cut his hair.Footnote ⁶¹ Here again we cannot be sure whether Achilles eats or continues his fast.Footnote ⁶²

Achilles now orders Agamemnon to arrange for the Greeks (but apparently not the Myrmidons) to gather wood and whatever else is necessary for the funeral pyre. Achilles returns and spends the night mourning on the beach with his Myrmidons. Accusing him of neglect, Patroklos’ ghost – perhaps attracted by the abundant blood – appears to him and begs to be cremated after which he will not return (23.65–105). Prophesying Achilles’ imminent death, he insists that they be together in death as they were in life and that their bones be joined in the golden amphora Achilles received from his mother (23.59–92). Attempting in vain to embrace his friend, a stunned Achilles proclaims: ‘There is something even in the house of Hades, a breath (psyche) and a shade (eidolon), but the phrenes are not entirely there’ (23.103–4).Footnote ⁶³

The next day, the Greeks gather wood for the pyre whose place Achilles indicates will form the mound for both Patroklos and himself (23.126). In the meantime, Achilles has his Myrmidons arm and again make a carefully choreographed procession carrying Patroklos to the pyre (ekphora); the horsemen and chariots precede the corpse, and the foot soldiers follow behind with the bier in the middle where Achilles holds Patroklos’ head, as we have seen, a maternal gesture of mourning.Footnote ⁶⁴ All the Myrmidons then cut their hair and place it on the body, but Achilles, who had once promised to offer his hair to the river Sperchios if he returned home safely, puts his hair in Patroklos’ hands (23.140–53).Footnote ⁶⁵ Achilles knows his fate is sealed; he will never return home. The poet has here taken two types of hair-cutting ritual, an offering for kourotrophia and the gesture of mourning, and conflated the two.Footnote ⁶⁶ This duality, combining a rite of passage and mourning, seems, I suggest, particularly characteristic of the whole ceremony; it is also attested in hero cult; in the cult for Hippolytus both hair-cutting and mourning by brides (another rite of passage?) is attested (cf. Eur. Hipp. 1423–30; Paus. 2.32.1).

Achilles now abruptly orders Agamemnon to send off the rest of the Greek army to have their dinner (23.158)Footnote ⁶⁷ – striking in view of his own fasting – so that those who were closest to the dead man may attend to the cremation itself (23.154–83). This involves a holocaust of sheep and cattle, whose fat is used to cover the corpse, along with the placement of amphoras of honey and oil around the pyre. Four horses and two of Patroklos’ dogs as well as, most scandalously, twelve Trojan youths are slaughtered and burned.Footnote ⁶⁸ Sacrificial horses and dogs are attested in other post-Homeric burials and also have been found at Lefkandi.Footnote ⁶⁹ The killing and cremation of the youths may be ascribed to heroic amplification, although the mound at Lefkandi was even larger than Patroklos’ 100-foot pyre. But again, at least in the historical record, holocausts did not seem to play a role in the cults of the ordinary dead.Footnote ⁷⁰ An unusual feature of Patroklos’ cremation may also be the use of fat to cover the body, for if there were no sacrificial animals in normal funeral rites, there would also not be any available fat. But fat plays an important role in thysia sacrifice where, ever since Prometheus, it covers the bones to be burned and dedicated to the gods. It is tempting to think that the fat surrounding the bones of Patroklos, like other aspects of his funerary rituals, alludes to a connection to hero cult.

At this climactic moment, the ceremony is interrupted; when the funeral pyre does not ignite, Achilles prays to the winds, and Iris flies off to their cave where the winds are enjoying their feast, and summons their help. The winds arrive and blow on the fire, so it finally burns (23.192–216). This scene is puzzling; whether it has any ritual counterpart remains obscure, but here too Neoanalysis attempted to account for its presence. Kakridis, among others, argued that the scene was imported from the Aethiopis where the winds, as brothers of Memnon, Dawn's son, at first refused to light the pyre of Achilles.Footnote ⁷¹ Unfortunately, as Kelly points out, while perhaps ben trovato, there is no evidence for such an episode.Footnote ⁷² The scene and its tone remain puzzling. It has been suggested that this interruption lends dignity to the proceedings (which I do not see), or that it gives relief, even comic relief, from the emotional intensity of the actions that culminate in the horrendous slaughter of the Trojan youths; Richardson comments on the episode's ‘almost baroque quality’.Footnote ⁷³ To be sure, the winds’ carousing in their distant cave along with their slightly louche invitation to Iris – who is in a hurry to join the other gods to feast with the Aethiopians – contrasts mightily with the violence, the gore, and the unrestrained mourning on the shores of Troy. The juxtaposition here of the gods ‘who live easy’ with humanity's mortal sorrow is reminiscent of the scene at the end of Iliad I where the gods’ feasting, laughter, and song on Olympus contrast with the catastrophic consequences of the quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles just unleashed on the Trojan plain. Are we then to see the gods as remote and indifferent to human suffering? Yet just before this, Aphrodite and Apollo have intervened to preserve the body of Hector (23.184–91); and later Apollo will protest Achilles’ inhuman actions (24.18–21) and again protect the corpse (24.418–23). I suggest, very tentatively, that the Olympians’ involvement with human norms and their transgression which unleashes menis is here juxtaposed with another, but still divine, order, the elemental order of nature – here personified by the winds – that remains indifferent to human life, its mortality, and suffering.

The funeral pyre burns all night after which Achilles pours libations of wine over it. At dawn, the rest of the Greeks return, and Achilles orders them again to pour libations on the pyre as well as to collect the bones of Patroklos; these are to be covered with a layer of fat – another Promethean touch? – and stored in a golden phiale until Achilles’ own death when their bones will be intermingled and sealed in the tumulus.Footnote ⁷⁴ The tomb and the sema likewise are not to be completed until Achilles joins his friend. At this point, Achilles rather abruptly detains the army as it begins to scatter (23.257), announcing the funeral games – unexpectedly, I might add, for they are anomalous for Patroklos, but fully appropriate to the status of a hero like Achilles.

I hope this summary has not been too lengthy, but I believe it constitutes the aetiology for the performance of the future cult envisaged by the Iliad. The entire funeral has taken three days and two nights; it apparently involves both thysia sacrifice (23.29–33) and holocausts (23.170–7).Footnote ⁷⁵ It also features a reversal of normal human activities: the refusal to bathe and ritual impurity, fasting, a hair offering, not sleeping, and solitary eating. It also includes a procession in armour around the tumulus, accompanied by ritual lamentation, feasting before rather than after cremation,Footnote ⁷⁶ a second procession and a second night of mourning with a sacrificial holocaust at the pyre and libations. Perhaps also of cultic significance is the alternation of ritual actions between the entire Greek army and the smaller contingent of the Myrmidons alone; possibly, the latter should be considered to stand in for the closer relatives of the dead man. But if the cutting of hair is not only a sign of mourning, but also a rite of passage between youth and adulthood, then perhaps the division of participants may be based on age groups, with the Myrmidons, like Achilles, representing ephebes.Footnote ⁷⁷

We do not know that an actual cult on the Hellespont followed the scenario outlined in the Iliad. More generally, the basic components – mourning, feasting, ritual impurity, hair offering, holocausts including horses and dogs, libations of wine, and funeral games – can be paralleled in historically attested hero cults. And, as so often in such aetiologies, the myths behind the cult provide a version that will be considerably watered down in actual practice, in the dromena as opposed to the legomena, i.e., no human sacrifice, of which the poet makes clear his disapproval. Philostratus, however, confirms one detail: in describing the annual rites of the Thessalians at Achilles’ tomb, he emphasizes that the hero receives both thysia sacrifice and holocaust (Her. 53.8–9): this combination is not unparalleled and of course well suited to Achilles who was worshipped both as a hero and a god.Footnote ⁷⁸ In Philostratus, Achilles is also characterized by his angry and punitive nature, his continuing menis oulomene. This points to an additional anomalous feature of Patroklos’ funeral. As already mentioned, Achilles’ mourning focuses not on his dead friend and the customary praise of Patroklos’ outstanding qualities, but rather on Achilles’ own desire for revenge, a desire that will only be assuaged after he breaks bread with Priam. This omission points to the incompleteness, the lack of closure at the end of the funeral rites, even after the necessary rituals, including the games, have been carried out.

And this brings me to an element of funerary ritual, which is significantly absent from the Iliadic description: the ritual goos by women.Footnote ⁷⁹ Such a goos by Hecuba, Andromache, and Helen precedes the cremation of Hector. One could argue that the lament for Patroklos by women, above all, by Briseis, has occurred previously in Book 19. But even so, its absence from the ceremony itself is remarkable, and it is striking that the formulaic line usually introducing women's lament is used of Achilles himself at the beginning of Book 23 (17). Anomalous, too, as we have seen, is Achilles’ refusal to bathe and his continued refusal to participate fully in the rituals of commensality. The omission of reconciliation, of reintegration, of a return to the living, is not fulfilled in the course of Book 23, as is clear from Achilles unrelenting mistreatment of Hector's corpse at the opening of Book 24. Even after the encounter with Priam and the return of Hector's body, a sense of incompleteness abides. It and the full threnos (‘lament’) for Achilles can only be accomplished with the death of the hero, foreshadowed but not depicted in the poem, but somehow proleptically enacted through the funeral of Patroklos that envisages their joined cult.

As we have seen, many other events in Book 23 allude to subsequent episodes in the heroic tradition. Thus, the strands that emanate from Book 23 form part of a larger whole. By pointing both forward and backward and incorporating events both prior and subsequent to its own narrative, the Iliad itself manages to present indirectly but comprehensively the whole story of the Trojan War. The Wrath of Achilles simultaneously encompasses not only the entire Trojan War, but also an even larger tradition and vision that recognizes the war at Troy as a world historical event that signals the demise of those half-gods whom we call heroes:Footnote ⁸⁰ half-gods because they sprang from the gods, half-gods because of their intimacy with the gods.

The Odyssey already looks back at the Age of Heroes as part of a vanished era. The Cypria, another lost cyclic poem that recounted events preceding our Iliad, began from a plan of Zeus. One of the first steps to its realization took place at the marriage of Peleus and Thetis, the union that all the gods attended, which produced Achilles. It is no accident that this wedding is alluded to only once in the Homeric poems, at the end of the Iliad (24.61–2). So too the Judgment of Paris that precipitates the war (24.28–30). Thus, the end of the Iliad looks back to the ultimate cause of the war while its middle (the passage about the Achaean wall) points, as we have seen, forward to its consequences. Nor is it fortuitous that the very end of the Odyssey gives an elaborate description of what was foreshadowed, but already present in Iliad 23: the death and funeral of Achilles (Od. 24.36–92). There, Thetis with her Nereids and the Muses intone a threnos in honour of the hero. It is as if the full ritual cannot take place until the hero's vow is fulfilled, and Achilles has joined Patroklos in death. The Odyssey also recounts how Thetis brings to the funeral the golden urn, already mentioned at 23.92, that will contain the mingled bones of the two inseparable heroes. We learn that it was the work of Hephaestos and the gift of Dionysos. That both these divinities were rescued by Thetis enhances the pathos of her inability to rescue her mortal son. And the Greek army that participates in the rites that honour the hero here – and here alone in the Homeric poems – is called a ἱερὸς στρατός (Od. 24.81).Footnote ⁸¹ The omitted dirge can finally be sung, and, if we feel bold, we can surmise its contents: the Muses’ threnos for Achilles and his comrade is none other than the monumental Iliad itself.