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THE CASUALTIES OF THE LATIN ILIAD

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2021

Fabian Horn
Fabian Horn*
Affiliation:
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich
*
[email protected]
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The so-called Latin Iliad, the main source for the knowledge of the Greek epic poem in the Latin West during the Middle Ages, is a hexametric poetic summary (epitome) of Homer's Iliad likely dating from the Age of Nero, which reduces the 15,693 lines of the original to a mere 1,070 lines (6.8%).

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Research Article
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The Classical Quarterly , Volume 70 , Issue 2 , December 2020 , pp. 767 - 773
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The so-called Latin Iliad, the main source for the knowledge of the Greek epic poem in the Latin West during the Middle Ages, is a hexametric poetic summary (epitome)Footnote 1 of Homer's Iliad likely dating from the Age of Nero,Footnote 2 which reduces the 15,693 lines of the original to a mere 1,070 lines (6.8%).

Homer's Iliad is an epic poem full of war, battle and death and long stretches of the poem, particularly the so-called ‘battle books’ (Iliad Books 5–8, 11–17, 20–2), consist of little other than fighting and a seemingly endless sequence of slaughter. These passages form the background of the narrative against which the story of Achilles’ wrath and its consequences can unfold, but hardly advance the plot. As is to be expected, many ornamental elements of the original were omitted,Footnote 3 and this brief study offers material to address the questions how the ‘Latin Homer’Footnote 4 treated other passages from his model which were not essential for the progression of the plot and in what manner he chose to adapt the copious Iliadic battle descriptions to his abridged version.

As a basis for further discussion, the following Table compiles and numbers the individually distinguishable battle deaths from the Latin Iliad with references to the original Iliadic passages. On the whole, the presentation of the battle follows the Iliadic model, with the type of ἀνδροκτασία, literally ‘man-slaughter’, the individual killing with both killer and victim named being the most common. However, there are also examples of killing catalogues, or ‘chain killings’, where a superior warrior dispatches a series of named enemies in a row (Il. Lat. 443–8, 747–50).Footnote 5 In cases where it is possible to determine the number of unnamed kills in abbreviated fighting scenes on the basis of the Homeric original, these have been added to the count (Il. Lat. 527–8, 729–32, 903–4), but descriptions of mass combat and summary slaughter (for example Il. Lat. 355–9) could not be considered for the count in the following Table. The letter in brackets indicates whether the slain individual is counted as a Greek (G) or Trojan (T) casualty. Obviously, the killer always belongs to the other side; there is no ‘friendly fire’ in ancient epic poetry.

On the whole, the individual scenes the poet of the Latin Iliad chose for his summary follow the order of the Homeric narrative quite faithfully, with only minor discrepancies,Footnote 9 and all casualties compiled in the list above have a complete or close Homeric equivalent, except for the three unnamed deaths in Il. Lat. 476–82 (a passage which is also unHomeric in other respectsFootnote 10 and therefore obviously an addition of the ‘Latin Homer’). Quite a few of the individual battle deaths presuppose the recipient's knowledge of the Homeric text, especially in cases where heroes are referred to only with a patronymic, their relation to another warrior, or a locality, and one needs to consult the Iliad to find out the proper name of minor heroes or even the number of warriors slain in summarized killings:

The first Table also makes it clear that a considerable portion of the Iliadic acts of war is represented in the summary: rather than merely summarizing battle scenes and the plot of the poem, the ‘Latin Homer’ was very much interested in the sanguinary slaughter of the Iliad, probably a hint of the prevailing literary taste in mid first-century c.e. Imperial Latin poetry (cf., for example, the tragedies of Seneca, Lucan's Civil War and Statius’ Thebaid, all of which present death and battle in an even more gruesome manner with a penchant for graphic violence). The unHomeric image of the dying warrior spewing his lifeblood from his mouth (Il. Lat. 365, 382–3, 412, 782–3)Footnote 13 is indicative of this taste for gruesome details, even though Flavian epic proceeds to offer much more drastic scenes of violence. Notably, most of the kills in the Latin Iliad are reproduced from the first half of the Homeric original, and the sequences of Iliad Books 4 and 5 are adopted almost without omissions (kills nos. 1–44, albeit sometimes without names), with some of the scenes taking up several lines, while the latter books are much less represented and only sometimes covered with descriptions of summary slaughter (for example Il. Lat. 784–5 fit maxima caedes | amborum et manat tellus infecta cruore). Thus it appears as if the ‘Latin Homer’ might have started out with a plan for a more ambitious summary, but then decided to cut down the original even more as he went along.Footnote 14

In contrast to the brevity of the Latin Iliad and considering that the poet made considerable cuts to more important episodes,Footnote 15 the number of kills adapted from the Iliad is astonishingly high and of the more than 300 individually identifiable Iliadic casualties, the ‘Latin Homer’ kept a total of 122 (more than a third),Footnote 16 even if sometimes only in nameless summaries (Il. Lat. 527–8, 670–1, 809–11, 903–5), and probably even more, since, for example, Il. Lat. 389–92 indicate a killing spree of Diomedes and lines 923–30 suggest a second rampage of Achilles against the Trojans before his final battle with Hector (both scenes with no equivalent in the Iliad). A closer look at the distribution of the named killings also yields another surprising result: the casualties in the Iliad encompass a total of 305 fighters (242 named, 63 unnamed),Footnote 17 of which 54 are Greeks (all named) and 251 Trojans (188 named), a ratio of approximately 1 to 4.6 (1 to 3.5 if only counting named kills).Footnote 18 In comparison, the Latin Iliad contains more or less explicitly the 122 kills listed above (50 named, 72 unnamed), of which only 16 are Greeks and 106 Trojans (with the three individual unnamed deaths in Il. Lat. 476–82 not attributable to any side), resulting in a ratio of approximately 1 to 6.4 (still 1 to 4 for named deaths). The skewed balance of casualties in favour of the Greeks and the consistent depiction of Greeks as more successful and superior in battle in the Iliad Footnote 19 has been explained as a pro-Greek bias on the part of the poet, but might also be interpreted as an implicit way to foreshadow the ultimate Greek victory and their sack of Troy. In comparison, the numbers for the Latin Iliad show that the ‘Latin Homer’ tipped the scales slightly more in favour of the Greeks and presented them as even more successful in battle, which is at odds with the Romans’ partiality for the Trojans (whose most influential testimony is Virgil's Aeneid).

Even though the ‘Latin Homer’ explicitly mentioned the future glory of Rome and the Julio-Claudian dynasty when the gods save the Roman ancestor Aeneas (who is credited with only two kills, nos. 27–8; Il. Lat. 483–5 contain no details and have no Iliadic equivalent)Footnote 20 from the wrath of Achilles,Footnote 21 he clearly does not unreservedly accommodate the Romans’ affinities with the Trojans—at least with regard to Aeneas, since Hector is the clear favourite of the poem, even though he also receives only two named kills (nos. 77, 98) after his extensive but inconclusive duel with Aiax in Il. Lat. 589–630, with the six unnamed summary kills nos. 39–44 barely noticeable and only detectable on the basis of the Iliad. The casualty list and the accentuation of the devastating effect of Hector's death, an aspect which is stressed several times (Il. Lat. 486 spes una Phrygum; 661 unum decus Phrygiae; 931 unus tota salus in quo Troiana manebat; 1019–20 ruit omnis in uno | Hectore causa Phrygum; also cf. 1040, 1051–6), present the prospects of the Trojan defenders as even more grim and hopeless than in the Iliad.Footnote 22 The death of Hector is the climax of the poem, and his importance as well as the impact of his death are heightened at the expense of the status of Aeneas, since all comments extolling Hector and his significance for Troy are inevitably implicit slights to Aeneas.

In conclusion, these numbers show that in consideration of the quantity of casualties, the Trojan cause is presented as even more desperate in the Latin Iliad than in its Homeric model. In this regard the numbers admittedly raise more questions than they can answer, but these lists hopefully provide material for further study and discussion as well as pose questions which future interpretations of the Latin Iliad as literature in an imperial Roman context will have to address.

Footnotes

This note collects material compiled for a paper delivered at the conference “Ilias Latina: Text, Interpretation und Nachleben eines singulären literarischen Phänomens” at the FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg on 25 January 2019. I am thankful to all participants of the event and particularly to Prof. Christiane Reitz (Rostock) for their helpful remarks and criticism. Any remaining mistakes are, of course, my own.

References

1 Cf. Reitz, C., ‘Verkürzen und Erweitern – Literarische Techniken für eilige Leser? Die „Ilias Latina“ als poetische Epitome’, Hermes 135 (2007), 334–51Google Scholar.

2 Cf. Scheda, G., ‘Zur Datierung der Ilias Latina’, Gymnasium 72 (1965), 303–7Google Scholar, or more recently Kennedy, G.A., Iliad., The Latin Introduction, Text, Translation, and Notes (Fort Collins, 1998), 8–9Google Scholar; Courtney, E., ‘The dating of the Ilias Latina’, Prometheus 27 (2001), 149–52Google Scholar; Reitz (n. 1), 335; and Glei, R., ‘The Ilias Latina as a Roman continuation of the Iliad’, in Simms, R.C. (ed.), Brill's Companion to Prequels, Sequels, and Retellings of Classical Epic (Leiden, 2018), 31–51, at 32–3Google Scholar.

3 Cf. W.A. Tilroe, ‘The Ilias Latina: a study of the Latin Iliad, including translation, commentary, and concordance’ (Diss., University of Southern California, Los Angeles, 1939), 30: ‘In epitomizing an epic, similes, speeches, and descriptive passages are among the first phases of content to suffer elimination or shortening.’ For more details on the techniques of shortening and adapting in the poem, see Reitz (n. 1).

4 The authorship of the poem is uncertain and a matter of debate, even though the acronym of the first lines has led to the attribution to P. Baebius Italicus (first century c.e.); also cf. the most recent full-scale commentary by Scaffai, M., Baebii Italici Ilias Latina. Introduzione, edizione critica, traduzione italiana e commento (Bologna, 1997 2), 13–29Google Scholar. Glei (n. 2), 32–3 discounts this attribution on the basis that Italicus might not even be a name, but offers no alternative argument. Since the question is of no relevance for the present study, I will keep referring to the author as ‘Latin Homer’.

5 The possibilities of presenting battle scenes will be investigated in greater detail in F. Horn, ‘Die „Schlachtenbücher“ in der Ilias Latina: Beobachtungen zu Gefallenen und Todesdarstellung’, in M.J. Falcone and Ch. Schubert (edd.), Ilias Latina. Text, Interpretation, Reception (Leiden and Boston, forthcoming).

6 On the basis of the Iliad, the slayer must be Agamemnon, even though Il. Lat. 424 alter Atrides might more approriately refer to Menelaus; for discussions, cf. Kennedy (n. 2), 61 n. 53 and Scaffai (n. 4), 292 ad loc.

7 There are no deaths, only the wounding of Aeneas and Aphrodite by the hand of Diomedes, between Pandarus being slain by Diomedes and Agamemnon dispatching Deicoon in the Iliad; cf. Stoevesandt, M., Feinde, Gegner, Opfer: Zur Darstellung der Troianer in den Kampfszenen der Ilias (Basel, 2004), 391Google Scholar. Also cf. Scaffai (n. 4), 304–5 ad loc., who cites no Iliadic parallels.

8 In the Iliad, none of the battlefield supplications is successful and suppliants are always immediately killed (and only Trojans ever plead for their life); cf. Stoevesandt (n. 7), 149–56. However, the scene in the Latin Iliad markedly deviates from the Homeric version and is listed (but not counted) here despite being a kill only in the original; cf. Scaffai (n. 4), 319 ad loc.: ‘[Bebio] trasforma Menelao in un generale romano che nel trionfo conduce i nemici vinti.’ The original design of the scene was probably cut for the sake of brevity (cf. E. Weber, ‘Ueber den Homerus Latinus’, Philologus 61 [1902], 528–39, at 532), but the version of the Latin Iliad makes Menelaus appear both merciful and superior in battle since he is able to capture his opponent Adrastus without a fight (despite his epithet ‘huge’, ‘mighty’: cf. Il. Lat. 539: uastumque capit Menelaus Adrastum).

9 For changes of details, cf. Venini, P., ‘Fedeltà e infedeltà a Omero nell’Ilias Latina’, RFIC 117 (1989), 316–24Google Scholar.

10 Cf. Tilroe (n. 3), 346 on Il. Lat. 479a: ‘cornipedis tergo: This passage is un-Homeric, as fighting was done from chariots, not from horseback. (…) In heroic times the horse was considered a noble animal, never to be used for menial labor or as a beast of burden. His use in war, however, was always connected with the chariot, a conception which is maintained in Aeneid.’ Having individuals slain in battle without naming either the killer or the killed also runs counter to the Iliadic interest in honouring the slayer and the slain as well as creating pathos: cf. Griffin, J., Homer on Life and Death (Oxford, 1980), 103–43Google Scholar as well as Horn, F., ‘Dying is hard to describe: metonymies and metaphors of death in the Iliad’, CQ 68 (2018), 359–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially 381–3.

11 In Il. Lat. 378, there is the possibility of restoring the proper name Piros for the manuscripts’ reading impiger, as adopted by Scaffai (n. 4), 119; while not necessary, this solution dispenses with the repetition of the adjective in line 372; also cf. the commentary of Scaffai (n. 4), 283 ad loc.

12 The phrasing suggests summary slaughter on both sides, but in this position, after the series of Trojans killed by Odysseus and Aiax killing Acamas, the Iliad lists only six Greeks slain by Hector and Ares; cf. Stoevesandt (n. 7), 392–3. Hence, these are the only summary kills where not even the slayer is named (apart from the completely anonymous but clearly identifiable deaths in Il. Lat. 476–82), which could be numbered and has therefore been included in the casualty list.

13 Cf. Tilroe (n. 3), 326: ‘The picture of the stream of blood issuing from the mouth of the dying warrior is Vergilian rather than Homeric.’ Also cf. Scaffai (n. 4) ad locc. for the Vergilian parallels. Note, however, that, while the image of spitting blood in itself is not unHomeric (cf. Il. 15.11 αἵμ’ ἐμέων—even though there the detail does not occur in a death description), what is decidedly unIliadic about this repeated imagery is its occurrence in a death-scene as well as the idea of the ‘soul’ being vomited out with the lifeblood in death (Il. Lat. 365, 412), since the Iliad strives to preserve the dignity of a fallen warrior by avoiding gruesome details at the last moment when death finally occurs and by switching to metaphorical language: cf. Horn (n. 10).

14 Vollmer, F., ‘Ilias Latina’, RE 9.1 (1914), 1057–60, at 1058Google Scholar noted that the first five books of the Iliad took up 537 lines (≈ 50%) of the Latin Iliad, before treating the rest more summarily. However, Reitz (n. 1) does not comment on the shift of balance in the summary, even though she appends a list of correspondences of the Latin lines to the books of the Iliad (pages 350–1), but notes that the poem generally increases in narrative pace.

15 Episodes arguably more important to the narrative of the poem than the battle scenes receive cursory treatment at best, such as Iliad Book 9, the embassy to Achilles (713 lines), which is cut to a mere 10 lines (Il. Lat. 686–95), and the reconciliation between Agamemnon and Achilles in Book 19 (424 lines), which is essentially omitted; also cf. Kennedy (n. 2), 9–10.

16 In light of the poem's length of only 6.8% of its model, the fact that the poet managed to retain 31.1% of the killings (while entirely omitting other elements, such as the teichoscopy; cf. Reitz [n. 1], 340–1) points to the conclusion that he was very interested in the battle scenes. Also cf. Tilroe (n. 3), 33: ‘Instead of omitting or abbreviating the numerous Homeric single contests, and from the four great battle scenes compiling one inclusive of all the essential details, he loses himself in minutiae, devoting over 600 hexameters to scenes of bloodshed and horror. Names and numbers seem important to him …’.

17 With the twelve Trojans ‘wounded’ by Aiax in Il. 15.746 counted as casualties since οὐτάω is a common metonymical euphemism for killing; cf. Horn (n. 10), 367 with n. 29.

18 For the counts of the Iliad material, cf. C.B. Armstrong, ‘The casualty lists in the Trojan War’, G&R 16 (1969), 30–1; S.E. Bassett, The Poetry of Homer (Berkeley, 1938), 256 n. 37; R.S.J. Garland, ‘The causation of death in the Iliad: a theological and biological investigation’, BICS 28 (1981), 43–60, lists at 52–3; and, most extensively, Stoevesandt (n. 7), 388–412.

19 Cf. Stoevesandt (n. 7) and T. Neal, The Wounded Hero: Non-Fatal Injury and Bloodspill in Homer's Iliad (Bern, 2006), 63–111.

20 Cf. Reitz (n. 1), 345: ‘Baebius teilt auch dem Ahnherrn der Römer, Aeneas, eine ,Sonderrolle‘ zu und lässt ihn im Kampfgeschehen, das dem in ,,Ilias“ E geschilderten entspricht, eine gewichtigere Rolle einnehmen als in der ,,Ilias“ (vgl. 483/5, anders E 514ff.). Der Epitomator nimmt also eigene inhaltliche Gewichtungen vor.’

21 Cf. Vollmer (n. 14), 1058: ‘(…) die troischen Sagen unter dem Gesichtspunkte der Romfreundlichkeit erzählte[n]. Die gleiche Tendenz des Gedichtes selbst zeigt sich am deutlichsten in den Versen, mit denen Italicus die Rettung des Aeneas aus der Hand des rachegierigen Achilles begleitet (v. 899ff.): quem nisi servasset magnarum rector aquarum, ut profugus Latiis Troiam repararet in arvis Augustumque genus claris submitteret astris, non clarae gentis nobis mansisset origo.’ Kennedy (n. 2), 10 notes without further elaboration that ‘(…) Hector is the clear hero (…), Aeneas, destined to bring Troy to Italy, is, of course, also favorably treated’; Venini (n. 9), 316 describes an ‘ottica filotroiana’; Reitz (n. 1), 345 also mentions a ‘trojafreundliche[n] Haltung des römischen Autors’; and Glei (n. 2), 43–5 notes the reference to Rome as a ‘panegyric feature’.

22 Also cf. Glei (n. 2), 48: ‘Undoubtedly, the I[lias]L[atina] ends on a pessimistic note, which, in a way, counterbalances the panegyric tendencies …’.