Hopefully the final word

We'll see by tomorrow. In any case:

Aside from taking swipes at me, 20-somethings, and comp-lit grad students, BC does nothing but reassert his questionable premise at more than sufficient length.

> [W]hat is it about our age that prevents us
> from
> seeing Achilles as the tragic figure he is?

Well if some of us happen to think that Achilles is not the tragic hero of the Iliad, then BC should either be willing to engage with us or else desist from accusing others of having views impervious to reconsideration. Not that I would level that accusation myself; he hasn't repeated his false claim that the Iliad begins and ends with Achilles, so I will take that point as conceded---and add further that
the comparison between the rage of Achilles, which transfers from one target to another throughout the poem but remains essentially unchanged, as against the occasion of Hector's death, which is the symbolic death of the city of Troy itself, points in favor of the latter as being Homer's true tragic hero.

> [Hector] _is_
> one-dimensional.
> His loyalty to family, tribe and country is absolute
> and absolutely defining for him.

This is BC's first huge error. As he should well know, those are loyalties that are rarely in harmony in the Greek tradition, and indeed, the conflict between such loyalties is the very subject matter of Greek tragedy. Conflict of right against right, as a philosopher and interpreter smarter than me or BC noticed. Hector's duties as a father and husband---witness Andromache's pleadings---point him in one direction, his duties as defender of Troy, in another. And Hector is tragically and ironically aware of the trajectory of his fate. He understands that fate is inexorable, and nevertheless continues to struggle against it until he is finally killed. Hector is duty-bound to conflicting ends, and stands finally, yes, as an individual before Achilles and before the doom that the gods have decreed for him.That is, in short, the life of a tragic hero.

BC continues to speak about Achilles' "choice" as if there were ever a choice for him to make. What obvious nonsense this is. Does he actually believe that there is a possibility that Achilles could ever have departed Troy? All that ever motivates him is the pursuit of his own honor---whether injured by Agamemnon's sleight, or Hector's slaying of Patroclus. (See Auden's poem "The Shield of Achilles," which ends "Man-slaying Achilles/ Who would not live long.") He moves from one point to the next essentially unchanged, undergoing no tragic transformation; what changes is everything around him. Achilles is thus a necessary convention of classical epic poetry, a "character" in a sense far different from our modern notion of character, representing not even an archetype so much as a force of nature. (Heraclitus recognized this when he said a man's character is his fate.) He does not represent radical individualism because he is not an individual. He is fate's representative, named as such at the outset of the poem, whereas Hector is the hero exalted at its conclusion.

That last point also reveals what's wrong with BC's casual dismissal of Robert Fagles. Whatever BC's talents, and they are of course many, I will still bet absolutely anything at all that he does not have the same expertise in the intricacies of Homeric Greek as the translator of the Iliad and the Odyssey. And it is through his language that Homer himself reveals his sympathies and makes manifest the structure of the Iliad's tragedy. Yes, Achilles has an indispensible role in the unfolding of that tragedy, but not as the tragic hero---that role belongs to Hector, of whose downfall Achilles, still alive and unfallen at the poem's end, is the instrument.

BC's insistence on Achilles having a choice reveals his inability to understand either Achilles or the interpretation of Greek literature---which as Robert Fagles could tell him if he had a bit more respect for the important scholarship on the subject, ultimately comes back to language. Homer deliberately uses the word "anangke," which conveys inescapable necessity as well as fate, rather than "moira," which implies a destiny that is at least unknowable and occluded if not still open. The relevant question is not what choice did this or that character make---such an emphasis is fundamentally post-Homeric---but how clearly could he understand his role in the unfolding of anangke.

Why, one has to ask finally, does BC toss modern political categories around so liberally? They have absolutely no bearing on the Homeric worldview---ideas of radical individualism, much less "unreflective family values conservatism," or "collectivism," simply have no place. The Iliad has to be appreciated in its own terms and under its own conventions or it cannot be appreciated at all. One must ask in exhaustion, with the German classicist Wilamowitz, "Kann man doch nicht lesen?"