Athena, the Helper of Heroes

Although she is the child of Mētis (Cunning, Intelligence) via Zeus and, thus, the Olympian goddess of wisdom, Athena is most popular in her warrior aspect. Pallas Athena is the Olympian goddess who fights and drinks beside warriors (heroes). In the Odyssey, she descends to earth to aid Odysseus and Telemachus on their quests. The Odyssey gives her credit for the conceit of the Trojan horse. She drinks with Herakles (below), guides Jason on his quest for the Golden Fleece, directs Theseus’ escape from Crete after slaying the Minotaur, aids Perseus against Medusa, and helps other heroes in the klea andrōn (hero tales). We witnessed her direct intervention amongst mortals in Book 1 when she prevented Achilles from slaying Agamemnon. She exerts a more sustained influence on human action in Book 5.

The subject of the book is announced in its opening lines. This parallels the organizational structure of the poem in which the first 20 lines of Book 1 announce the subject of the poem before the narration proper begins. Thus, the opening lines are not the point at which Athena bestows her gifts on Diomedes but, rather, a concise description of the events that will occur within the book:

After initial success on his own, Diomedes is wounded by an arrow from Pandarus, the Trojan who broke the treaty in Book 4. It is at this point that Diomedes formally prays to Athena for aid. This kind of prayer is not uncommon, and one does not necessarily expect the god to descend from on high in answer. We saw such a prayer by Menelaus in Book 3: “Lord Zeus, make Paris pay for the evil he’s done to me; Smite him down with my hands so that men for all time will fear to transgress against a host’s offered friendship” (3.375-7). However, in exceptional times and for exceptional heroes, gods will appear, and Athena is famous for appearing alongside Greek heroes:

Upon returning to the fray, Diomedes slays many Trojans, earning much glory and experiencing his finest moment as a warrior, his aristeia. Before we consider the issue of aristeia, let us examine the gifts Athena has given the Diomedes. She gives him two things: strength and sight. The former is an obvious enhancement; she has made him a stronger, or at least a sturdier/inexhaustible fighter.[1] The latter, however, is more interesting because it informs the position of humans in the cosmic order. 

Recall that one of the three fundamental differences between gods and humans is knowledge: gods have it and humans do not. Or, to fit the metaphor of the Iliad, gods enjoy access to absolute truth; they see the world as it is. Human knowledge is empirical; it is governed by our limited horizon – our eyes do not see everything that is before us. The poem articulates this relationship with mist. Humans live in ignorance. We walk about the world with our eyes shrouded in mist. It’s core to the understanding of human knowledge in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave.[2] Humans interact within the world every day, and we establish (empirical) truths based on our fumbling experiences the way Plato’s prisoners study shadow play on the cave wall. Humans in the Iliad have sight, but their sight is shrouded in mist. This mist hides some things and distorts others, keeping humans ignorant of the world in which they live.  

With the mist removed from his eyes, Diomedes can see the world as it truly is. He can see what Agamemnon could not in Book 2 when Dream deceived him, or Pandarus in Book 4 when Athena tricked him into breaking the truce. Diomedes can see the gods and, thus, avoid challenging them on the battlefield. For as Dione [3] will explain later, humans who strive against gods are doomed to short, unhappy lives: the violation of xenia was disrespectful to Zeus, and Apollo’s reaction to the insult from Agamemnon was a dire plague for all the Greeks. Before we consider the cost of crossing the gods, however, we will examine Diomedes’ aristeia. 

Glory on the Battlefield

Three Ways to View the Accumulation of Glory

Book 5 refers to “glory” (kudos or kleos) early and often. That it does so is reasonable. Glory is integral to the theme of the Book. It is not referred to the same way each time, however, and understanding how one earns glory is instructive to appreciating agency in the Homeric world.

There are three distinct lenses through which the poem views the accumulation of glory. In other words, the act is singular, but the way it is viewed is threefold. We encountered the first lens at the outset of the poem, and it is repeated by Aeneas at line 244, speaking about his horses: “They know how to eat up the plain…. And they will get us back to the city in safety if Zeus gives Diomedes the glory again” (241-4). Glory is given to the hero by divine favor. Nothing happens in the Iliad outside of daemonic (supernatural, divine) influence. The river, the forest, the wind, the outcome of events in every contest are influenced by the supernatural – they are the supernatural in many cases.

This world view is not so terribly archaic as one might initially think, and it has nothing to do with Judeo-Christian monotheism vs. Greco-Roman polytheism. In Hinduism, everything is a fragment of the divine whole; all the gods are one, and everything is divine (pantheism). The Abrahamic tradition is monotheistic, but even allowing for an uncomplicated concept of free will, nothing happens without the will of God. How many champion athletes or disaster survivors have praised God or Jesus for their good fortune? Thus, while it is strange for people raised in a Judeo-Christian world to identify with those living in a world populated by gods as numerous as stars in the night sky, the pervasive impact on human action that modern religions attribute to divine will is similar to that of the ancient Greeks. The act through which glory is given or earned is the same: heroic achievement. In the case of the Iliad, it takes the form of defeating an opponent in battle. Heroes are victorious or vanquished by the will of the gods, i.e., because a god favors a particular champion.

The other ways to view the accumulation of glory are that the hero seizes it (wins it) and that the opponent cedes it (gives it). The fact that glory is seized or won is almost too apparent to note, but if we look back to Athena’s deception of Pandarus in Book 4, she suggested that he “take a shot at Menelaus and win glory and gratitude from the Trojans” (4.106-7). The glory is “won” rather than given to him by god or opponent. At line 305, Pandarus boasts to Diomedes after his attack on the Greek hero, “you’ve handed me the glory.” The fallen opponent gives or cedes glory to the victor. The greater the status or reputation of the vanquished warrior, the greater the glory given to the hero who defeats him.

With this understanding of agency in the Iliad, we return to the confrontation between Diomedes and Pandarus in Book 5: Diomedes thrusts his spear back at Pandarus in the Homeric equivalent of a riposte. In doing so, he at once 1) is given glory by Athena, 2) wins/seizes glory through his innate skill, and 3) is given glory by his foe.

It is important that Pandarus dies at the hand of Diomedes. Pandarus violated the god-sworn truce between the Greeks and Trojans. In this way, the transgressor is punished, and cultural norms are affirmed – don’t break your oaths, especially those made before the gods! Such a lesson foreshadows the fate of Troy itself.

Agamemnon spoke poignantly about the importance of oaths when Pandarus broke the truce in Book 4:

An oath is a double-edged sword, and Agamemnon is not the only one to associate them with pain. Oaths are sacred. Interestingly, Oath (Horkos) is the child of Strife (Eris).[5] At first glance, it may seem odd that oaths, intended to facilitate peace and unity, would be so closely associated with strife, the antithesis of peace. However, strife is the inevitable outcome when oaths are broken, and Horkos is the enforcer of oaths; he punishes those who cause strife by breaking them and is thus associated with the Furies (Erinyes) and Nemesis as divine agents of retribution.

 Oaths mean something, and breaking them, like violating xenia, will incur the wrath of the gods. By slaying Pandarus, Diomedes not only enhances his reputation (kleos) by having defeated a significant foe, but he takes on the role of Horkos, the divine avenger of oaths. The contest between Diomedes and Pandarus consciously parallels the enmity between Greeks and Trojans in a war that is fought, at least ostensibly, over a violation of xenia. 

Contending with the Gods

Diomedes’ aristeia is tied to Athena’s favor. We reviewed his success against the Trojans in general and one of the better Trojan warriors in the person of Pandarus. This victory also served to liken him to the god Horkos (Oath). However, avenging both Menelaus and the Greeks on Pandarus is only the tip of the iceberg for Diomedes in Book 5. In the same encounter, he does battle with Aeneas and comes across Aphrodite herself. It is to these events that we now turn.

Aeneas, who was driving the chariot for Pandarus when Diomedes felled him, is portrayed in the Iliad as an ideal hero, much like Sarpedon, Hector, Diomedes, and others. He is the mortal child of Aphrodite and the Trojan lord, Anchises, making him a cousin to the princes of Troy. He is the subject of his own epic in the Roman period, the Aeneid by Virgil, some 700 years after the Iliad was composed. The Aeneid emphasizes Aeneas’ pietas,[6] his duty to family, country, gods. The seeds of pietas appear in his portrayal in the Iliad as well. After Diomedes slew Pandarus,  

Aeneas is the dutiful Trojan warrior. He prefigures Hector in later books, and his concern for the treatment of his fallen comrade’s corpse introduces a theme that will become central in the second half of the Iliad. At this point in the poem, however, Aeneas is in over his head. Diomedes is flush with the favor of Athena and is the superior warrior at the moment:

Thus, Diomedes purposely attacks a god on the battlefield and chases her away. Aeneas, meanwhile, is rescued by Apollo whom Diomedes was not given license to engage. That any mortal would purposely attack a god is the pinnacle of hubris (outrage). The fact that Diomedes does so is the exception that proves the rule, and three successive encounters follow to reinforce this fact: Dione’s consolation speech to Aphrodite, Diomedes’ encounter with Apollo, and Diomedes’ initial refusal to engage Ares.

Upon retreating to Olympus, Aphrodite complains to her mother, Dione, “The war has gone far beyond Trojans and Greeks. The Greeks are fighting the immortal gods” (410-3). It is at this point Dione explains that humans who strive beyond their place, (i.e., against the gods) are doomed to failure and suffering:

As Aphrodite retreats to Olympus, Apollo swoops-in to rescue Aeneas, but Diomedes forgets his place and attempts to slay Aeneas anyway:

In this sequence, Diomedes momentarily oversteps his bounds. Athena gave him leave to strike at one god, Aphrodite, and provided him with the ability to see other gods to avoid confrontation. When Diomedes loses sight of her instructions, Apollo easily deflects the mortal’s attacks and reinforces the third of our fundamental differences between gods and humans (strength) when he says, “Gods are to humans what humans are to crawling bugs.”

 The fact that Diomedes momentarily forgets himself, striking out at Aeneas despite Apollo’s protection, picks up another theme of the Iliad related to the heroic temper, emotions and battlefield behavior.[7] The poem alluded to this earlier when Aeneas jumped down from his chariot to defend the corpse of Pandarus. It was a tactically poor decision, leaving him exposed without an escape route, but in the moment on the battlefield, the moment is often all that matters. Reason or logic (logos) can become obscured in a similar manner that we witnessed in Book 1 between Agamemnon and Achilles in which the heroes’ respective tempers got the better of them. Diomedes restrains his temper in this encounter with Apollo in a way that Achilles and Agamemnon were unable to in Book 1, but it is a struggle for him:   

Apollo then sets Ares upon the now sober Diomedes, who retreats, mindful of Athena’s instructions not to fight against the gods. This is the state in which we find Diomedes when Athena descends to the battlefield to rally the Greeks whom Ares has sent scattering in retreat:

Athena cuts Diomedes to the bone in this speech. She derides him as an unworthy successor to his father and his father before him. In doing so, she calls Diomedes’ identity into question and frames him as an embarrassment to his family. She also suggests that Diomedes is paralyzed with fear, that he lacks the courage to press on in battle. The warrior’s relationship with his past, his ancestry, and his courage are core aspects to a Homeric hero’s identity, and Diomedes is quick to defend himself:

With Athena to drive his chariot, deflect Ares’ spear and guide Diomedes’ own javelin, the hero successfully wounds Ares, driving him off the battlefield. Yet, the rule is clear, and the narrative has gone out of its way to show this: humans must not strive against the gods. That Diomedes does so successfully is heavily influenced by multiple interventions on the part of Athena, and speeches by both Diomedes and Dione espouse the normative stance of the epic that such acts are outrageous (hubris) and doomed to failure.

With the aide of Athena, helper of heroes, Diomedes achieves his greatest glory on the battlefield, his aristeia, by slaying Pandarus, besting Aeneas, and wounding both Aphrodite and Ares. At the same time, he showed an ability to restrain his temper by withdrawing from battle when Apollo appealed to his better sense and again when Ares took to the field. Diomedes displays proper respect (and fear) for the gods, realizing his place in the cosmic order as a civilized human. The tragedy and horror of the Iliad in later Books will center around heroes in similar situations who succumb to their (all too human) emotions and lose track (or care) for the distinction between right and wrong; or human, divine, or savage. Both the tragedy and the horror of such actions resides in the fact that such choices pull on the sympathetic bonds of all humans. But that is looking far ahead. For Book 6, we continue to explore the hearts and minds of heroic figures in the civilized realm: both on the battlefield and in the oikos (household).

Notes

[1] The gift is more nuanced than “strength” and has to do with the role of one’s ancestors in conjunction with one’s own actions and identity, but for our purposes, it’s enough to say she makes him a mightier, tireless warrior.   

[2] The Iliad predates Plato by three centuries or more. The textual version of the poem that survives today may have been “finalized” within a century of Plato’s lifetime.  

[3] Mother of Aphrodite in the Iliad.  

[4] Although they are translated into English as synonyms, there is a difference in how the terms are deployed in Homeric literature. Kleos refers to everlasting fame in the stories told about the hero. Kudos is the more immediate celebrity one enjoys such as a stadium clapping and cheering for a victorious gladiator or athlete.  

[5] According to Hesiod’s Theogony and Works & Days, both epic works from the Archaic period.   

[6] Pietas (Latin) is defined as “dutiful conduct” towards the gods, one's parents, relatives, benefactors, country, etc., “sense of duty.” A Latin Dictionary. Founded on Andrews' edition of Freund's Latin dictionary. revised, enlarged, and in great part rewritten by Charlton T. Lewis, Ph.D. and Charles Short, LL.D. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1879.    

[7] The Homeric term is thumos, but its range of meaning is wide and overlaps with numerous ideas in Greek and English. It is often used in the Iliad in the sense of the psychological or spiritual core of a person. As such, it is associated with primal or emotional impulses. However, it is not exclusively emotional (in distinction from rational) and can represent the unified psychological and spiritual whole rather than the Platonic part that sometimes overrules reason. At various points in Homeric poetry, it is translated as “soul,” “spirit,” “passion,” “temper,” “courage,” “heart,” “mind,” etc.