purple motes

According to the Iliad, nine years into the Trojan War’s massive violence against men, Greek and Trojan men faced each other on the battlefield outside Troy. Prince Paris, son of the Trojan king Priam, moved forward from the Trojan line and challenged the Greek men to a face-to-face fight. The Greek king and fearsome warrior Menelaus eagerly leaped down from his chariot and sought to kill Paris. Menelaus’s wife had left him to become Paris’s wife, Helen of Troy. Punishment for adultery, like the institutionalized violence of war, has long been gender-biased against men. Both Paris’s brother Hector and his wife Helen goaded him to fight Menelaus. Paris’s self-abasing responses underscore deeply entrenched disregard for men’s lives.

When Paris saw Menelaus coming towards him, he retreated back into the line of Trojan men. The leading Trojan warrior Hector, seeing his brother retreating, castigated him:

Evil Paris, excellent in appearance, mad for woman, deceiver —
if only you were impotent and had died unmarried.
This I would wish, and it would be much better
than being both an outrage and mockery to others.
The long-haired Greek men must be laughing at you,
saying you’re an eminent champion only because you have a beautiful
appearance, for you don’t have force in your guts, nor strength.

{ Δύσπαρι εἶδος ἄριστε γυναιμανὲς ἠπεροπευτὰ
αἴθ᾽ ὄφελες ἄγονός τ᾽ ἔμεναι ἄγαμός τ᾽ ἀπολέσθαι:
καί κε τὸ βουλοίμην, καί κεν πολὺ κέρδιον ἦεν
ἢ οὕτω λώβην τ᾽ ἔμεναι καὶ ὑπόψιον ἄλλων.
ἦ που καγχαλόωσι κάρη κομόωντες Ἀχαιοὶ
φάντες ἀριστῆα πρόμον ἔμμεναι, οὕνεκα καλὸν
εἶδος ἔπ᾽, ἀλλ᾽ οὐκ ἔστι βίη φρεσὶν οὐδέ τις ἀλκή. }[1]

Men’s beauty should be appreciated, not ridiculed. Wishing a man to be impotent is truly wicked. Men too often are devalued as lovers and directed to be instruments of violence. Hector thus taunted his brother Paris:

Can’t you face Menelaus, beloved of Ares?
Then you would know the sort of man whose lively wife you have.
You wouldn’t be helped by your cithara or your gifts of Aphrodite —
your hair and your appearance — when you would be mingling with dust.
But the Trojans — they are very afraid. Otherwise, you would already
be dead with a stone tunic because of all the bad deeds you have done!

{ οὐκ ἂν δὴ μείνειας ἀρηΐφιλον Μενέλαον;
γνοίης χ᾽ οἵου φωτὸς ἔχεις θαλερὴν παράκοιτιν:
οὐκ ἄν τοι χραίσμῃ κίθαρις τά τε δῶρ᾽ Ἀφροδίτης
ἥ τε κόμη τό τε εἶδος ὅτ᾽ ἐν κονίῃσι μιγείης.
ἀλλὰ μάλα Τρῶες δειδήμονες: ἦ τέ κεν ἤδη
λάϊνον ἕσσο χιτῶνα κακῶν ἕνεχ᾽ ὅσσα ἔοργας. }

Paris in response didn’t vigorously claim his own beauty and his personal worth. He instead proposed that he and Menelaus fight for Helen, as if she were a priceless prize for him, rather than he being a priceless prize for her:

Hector, you rebuke me rightly, not beyond what’s right.
…
But don’t fling into my face lovely gifts of Aphrodite,
which are glorious and may not be refused,
like gifts of the gods themselves, which one wouldn’t willingly choose.
But now, if you want me to battle and fight,
make the other Trojans and all the Greeks sit down,
and set between the armies me and Menelaus, beloved of Ares,
to fight for Helen and all her property.
Whoever of us two proves himself better and wins,
let him rightly take home the woman and all her wealth.

{ Ἕκτορ ἐπεί με κατ᾽ αἶσαν ἐνείκεσας οὐδ᾽ ὑπὲρ αἶσαν
…
μή μοι δῶρ᾽ ἐρατὰ πρόφερε χρυσέης Ἀφροδίτης:
οὔ τοι ἀπόβλητ᾽ ἐστὶ θεῶν ἐρικυδέα δῶρα
ὅσσά κεν αὐτοὶ δῶσιν, ἑκὼν δ᾽ οὐκ ἄν τις ἕλοιτο:
νῦν αὖτ᾽ εἴ μ᾽ ἐθέλεις πολεμίζειν ἠδὲ μάχεσθαι,
ἄλλους μὲν κάθισον Τρῶας καὶ πάντας Ἀχαιούς,
αὐτὰρ ἔμ᾽ ἐν μέσσῳ καὶ ἀρηΐφιλον Μενέλαον
συμβάλετ᾽ ἀμφ᾽ Ἑλένῃ καὶ κτήμασι πᾶσι μάχεσθαι:
ὁππότερος δέ κε νικήσῃ κρείσσων τε γένηται,
κτήμαθ᾽ ἑλὼν εὖ πάντα γυναῖκά τε οἴκαδ᾽ ἀγέσθω }[2]

Women don’t have greater intrinsic human value than do men. Women should buy beloved men dinners and give them expensive gifts, if only as reparations for the terrible anti-men gender injustices that the Iliad illustrates.

The goddess of love Aphrodite loved men. Just as Menelaus was about to drag Paris by his head to sure death, Aphrodite snatched Paris away. She wrapped him in mist and transported him to his sensuous bedroom. Helen was then viewing the horrific violence against men from her protected, privileged position high up on a Trojan fortress wall.[3] Aphrodite summoned Helen to enjoy conjugal relations with her husband Paris, still alive thanks only to that goddess of love:

Helen, come this way. Paris calls you to come home.
He’s there in the marital bedroom, on the bed with inlaid rings.
He’s gleaming with his beauty and robes. You wouldn’t say
he came from fighting a foe, but rather he was going to a dance,
or from a dance having recently returned, he was resting.

{ δεῦρ᾽ ἴθ᾽: Ἀλέξανδρός σε καλεῖ οἶκον δὲ νέεσθαι.
κεῖνος ὅ γ᾽ ἐν θαλάμῳ καὶ δινωτοῖσι λέχεσσι
κάλλεΐ τε στίλβων καὶ εἵμασιν: οὐδέ κε φαίης
ἀνδρὶ μαχεσσάμενον τόν γ᾽ ἐλθεῖν, ἀλλὰ χορὸν δὲ
ἔρχεσθ᾽, ἠὲ χοροῖο νέον λήγοντα καθίζειν. }

Even when tired, men strive to fulfill as best they can their sexual obligation to their wives. Helen, however, viciously taunted Aphrodite about loving Paris.[4] Helen then declared that she wouldn’t go to her husband for fear of what other women would think of her:

There I will not go. It would be shameful
to continue to share that man’s bed, for all the Trojan women
would blame me afterwards. I have measureless griefs at heart.

{ κεῖσε δ᾽ ἐγὼν οὐκ εἶμι: νεμεσσητὸν δέ κεν εἴη:
κείνου πορσανέουσα λέχος: Τρῳαὶ δέ μ᾽ ὀπίσσω
πᾶσαι μωμήσονται: ἔχω δ᾽ ἄχε᾽ ἄκριτα θυμῷ. }[5]

Helen was a brazen adulterer in relation to her first husband Menelaus. In relation to her second husband Paris, she was a cowardly wife.

The prospects of a sexless marriage between Helen and Paris infuriated Aphrodite. She castigated Helen:

Don’t provoke me, wicked woman, or in anger I’ll desert you.
I can hate you, just as I now excessively love you.
and I can devise grievous hatred of you from both sides,
Trojans and Greeks alike. Then you would perish under an evil fate.

{ μή μ᾽ ἔρεθε σχετλίη, μὴ χωσαμένη σε μεθείω,
τὼς δέ σ᾽ ἀπεχθήρω ὡς νῦν ἔκπαγλα φίλησα,
μέσσῳ δ᾽ ἀμφοτέρων μητίσομαι ἔχθεα λυγρὰ
Τρώων καὶ Δαναῶν, σὺ δέ κεν κακὸν οἶτον ὄληαι. }

Helen thus agreed to go with the goddess of love to Paris in their marital bedroom.

In their marital bedroom, Helen viciously taunted her current husband Paris as being a loser relative her former husband Menelaus. As if she were a Spartan mother speaking to her warrior son, Helen expressed contempt for Paris’s life:

You have returned from the war. I wish you had died there,
vanquished by the mighty man who was my former husband.
Once you boasted that, compared to Menelaus, beloved of Ares,
you were stronger with your hands and better with your spear.
But go now and challenge Menelaus, beloved of Ares,
to a duel again.

{ ἤλυθες ἐκ πολέμου: ὡς ὤφελες αὐτόθ᾽ ὀλέσθαι
ἀνδρὶ δαμεὶς κρατερῷ, ὃς ἐμὸς πρότερος πόσις ἦεν.
ἦ μὲν δὴ πρίν γ᾽ εὔχε᾽ ἀρηϊφίλου Μενελάου
σῇ τε βίῃ καὶ χερσὶ καὶ ἔγχεϊ φέρτερος εἶναι
ἀλλ᾽ ἴθι νῦν προκάλεσσαι ἀρηΐφιλον Μενέλαον
ἐξαῦτις μαχέσασθαι ἐναντίον }

Rather than dueling with Menelaus, Paris sought to have sex with his wife Helen. She, however, preferred him dead because he had shown himself to be a weaker fighter than her former husband. With cutting mockery, she reversed herself and advised him not to fight Menelaus:

But I myself
ask you to refrain, not to duel with fair-haired Menelaus
face-to-face, not to battle or fight with him without thought,
for soon he might vanquish you with his spear.

{ ἀλλά σ᾽ ἔγωγε
παύεσθαι κέλομαι, μηδὲ ξανθῷ Μενελάῳ
ἀντίβιον πόλεμον πολεμίζειν ἠδὲ μάχεσθαι
ἀφραδέως, μή πως τάχ᾽ ὑπ᾽ αὐτοῦ δουρὶ δαμήῃς. }

In the context of the brutalization of men’s sexuality, Helen’s reference to the superior power of Menelaus’s spear sexually belittles Paris. What husband would want to have sex with his wife after she wished him dead and taunted him as sexually inferior to her former husband?[6]

Like a battered husband, Paris continued to love Helen despite her verbal abuse of him. He protested her abuse only mildly. It apparently spurred his sexual desire for her:

Dear woman, don’t disparage me with harsh, reviling words.
This time Menelaus has vanquished me with Athena’s aid,
but another time I will vanquish him. On our side too, gods will help.
Come, let us have joy, sleeping together in love,
for sexual desire has never so enveloped my mind,
not even when I first swept you up from lovely Lacedaemon,
sailed away with you on my sea-going ships,
and on the island of Cranae mingled with you in love’s embrace.
Now I love you more, so sweet desire enraptures me.

{ μή με γύναι χαλεποῖσιν ὀνείδεσι θυμὸν ἔνιπτε:
νῦν μὲν γὰρ Μενέλαος ἐνίκησεν σὺν Ἀθήνῃ,
κεῖνον δ᾽ αὖτις ἐγώ: πάρα γὰρ θεοί εἰσι καὶ ἡμῖν.
ἀλλ᾽ ἄγε δὴ φιλότητι τραπείομεν εὐνηθέντε:
οὐ γάρ πώ ποτέ μ᾽ ὧδέ γ᾽ ἔρως φρένας ἀμφεκάλυψεν,
οὐδ᾽ ὅτε σε πρῶτον Λακεδαίμονος ἐξ ἐρατεινῆς
ἔπλεον ἁρπάξας ἐν ποντοπόροισι νέεσσι,
νήσῳ δ᾽ ἐν Κραναῇ ἐμίγην φιλότητι καὶ εὐνῇ,
ὥς σεο νῦν ἔραμαι καί με γλυκὺς ἵμερος αἱρεῖ. }

The divinity helping on Paris’s side was the goddess of love Aphrodite. He would have been better off hating like the goddess Hera.

Paris’s embrace of Helen, who rightly called herself a “shameless bitch {κυνώπης},” shows the same bad judgment that caused the Trojan War’s massive violence against men. Menelaus should have considered himself fortunate when Helen ran off with Paris. Instead he gathered a huge army of Greek men to fight and die with Trojan men for that one nasty woman. Paris’s embrace of Helen after she wished him dead and disparaged him sexually indicates the folly of Greek and Trojan men — all men — more generally.[7]

The gender trouble is even worse. If Paris had fought with Menelaus before the start of the Trojan War, and the killing of one of those men would have prevented the killing of many more men, at least their duel would improved men’s welfare in aggregate. In reality, Hector goaded Paris into fighting with Menelaus during the ninth year of the horrific Trojan War. Moreover, Hera manipulated her husband Zeus into having the Trojans break their agreement with the Greeks to turn over Helen and her wealth if Menelaus defeated Paris. The Trojan War’s horrific violence against men thus continued even after Menelaus and Paris’s duel.

Having read the Iliad, Virgil understood gender trouble. You should, too.

* * * * *

Read more:

• horrific violence against men: context for Hera’s deception of Zeus
• Helen and Paris’s love affair in medieval imagining
• ancient Mesopotamian women strove to overcome men’s impotence

Notes:

[1] Homer, Iliad 3.39-45, ancient Greek text and English translation (modified) from Murray (1924). Subsequent quotes from the Iliad are similarly sourced. Although Hector was a fearsome warrior, his rebuke of Paris is milder than Helen’s rebuke of Paris. Minchin (2010) p. 390. On Hector’s rebukes in the Iliad, Driscoll (2010).

To help the general reader, I use “Greek men” for “Achaean men {Ἀχαιοί}” in the English translations. I similarly replace “Alexander” with “Paris.” Alexander was another name used for the Trojan prince Paris, although the two names were associated with different characterizations and perhaps different sources. Suter (1993) p. 2.

The Chicago Homer, which includes Richmond’s Lattimore’s English translation, provides a useful resource for studying the ancient Greek text of the Iliad. Lattimore’s introduction reviews the literary context and poetic style of the Iliad. Numerous other English translations of the Iliad are freely available online, including those of Butler (1898), Johnston (2002), and Kline (2009).

The Iliad’s editors and translators, who have been predominately men, haven’t adequately recognized the tragedy of men’s impotence. Commenting on Iliad 3.40, Kirk astutely observed:

ἄγονος could be taken either in a passive sense (‘unborn’) or in an active one, not so much ‘childless’ (as the emperor Augustus evidently meant when he used the verse against his daughter) as ‘unable to produce children’ — and then not because sterile but because impotent. There is no particular meaning of ἄγονος which makes Hektor’s wish absolutely logical and self-consistent — it is, after all, a highly rhetorical formulation; but what he wishes is that Paris had not been able to be γυναιμανής (as in 39) and so become involved in disastrous sexual unions (for that, rather than legal marriage, is the implication of ἄγονος here). Nearly all editors understand ‘unborn’, nevertheless.

Kirk (1985) p. 271. For Iliad 3.40, Murray has the (inconsistent) translation: “I wish that you had never been born and had died unwed.”

The subsequent quotes above are Iliad 3.52-7 (Can’t you face Menelaus…), 3.59, 64-72 (Hector, you rebuke me rightly…), 3.390-4 (Come this way…), 3.410-2 (There I will not go…), 3.414-7 (Don’t provoke me, wicked woman…), 3.428-33 (You have returned from the war…), 3.433-36 (But I myself…), 3.438-46 (Dear woman, don’t disparage me…), 3.180 (shameless bitch).

[2] Iliad 3.70 and 3.72 literally refer to the winner of Menelaus and Paris’s duel taking Helen and “the possessions {κτήμᾰτᾰ}.” As Lattimore and Murray’s English translations recognize, the possessions in context are best understood as Helen’s possessions. Reversing the direct sense of the pun on Helen’s name in Iliad 3.72 and drawing upon the deeply entrenched social practice of gender-biased criminalization of men, Blondell asserted that “the possessions” are goods that Paris stole from Menelaus when Helen and Paris eloped. Blondell (2010) pp. 3, 8. Critically thinking persons should recognize the prevalent gender bias in penal punishment.

Ancient scholars better appreciated Helen’s agency in taking possessions. Proclus’s summary of the Cypria, attributed to Stasinus of Cyprus and probably originating in the Hellenistic period, has Helen and Alexander together loading up their ship with valuables and sailing away in the night. Apollodorus has Helen alone putting property on board the ship. Helen also abandons Hermione, her nine-year-old daughter with Menelaus. Apollodorus, Epitome 3.3.

[3] From up on the Trojan city wall, Helen viewed the Greek and Trojan men preparing to attack each other and the duel of Menelaus and Paris. That section of the Iliad is known as the “viewing from the wall {teichoscopia / τειχοσκοπία}.” Summoning Helen to the τειχοσκοπία, the messenger goddess Iris explained that the Trojan and Greek men had ceased their battle:

But Paris and Menelaus, beloved of Ares,
will fight with their long spears for you.
You will be called the beloved wife of the one who wins.

{ αὐτὰρ Ἀλέξανδρος καὶ ἀρηΐφιλος Μενέλαος
μακρῇς ἐγχείῃσι μαχήσονται περὶ σεῖο:
τῷ δέ κε νικήσαντι φίλη κεκλήσῃ ἄκοιτις. }

Iliad, 3.136-8. Women are deeply implicated in epic violence against men. Women must do more to lessen violence against men. Not regarding violence against men as a spectating opportunity would help to devalue such violence.

Michael Delahoyde observes:

This book {Iliad, Book 3} contains the famous “teichoskopia”: the viewing from the wall. (Is this even a thing? Where else in any form of literature or film does one find a “viewing from the wall”?)

From high up on a fortress wall, women viewing men engaged in horrific violence against men is a common scene in medieval European literature. It’s closely associated with the men-devaluing tradition of chivalry. For an example of a leading classicist ignoring the role of women in encouraging stupid, pointless wars, Scodel (2008).

Voluminous scholarly cant about men’s “objectification” of women and men “trafficking” in women has tended to trivialize violence against men and innumerable killings of men. For example, a scholar declared:

In the Iliad, the objectification of Helen as “bride” is most obvious in the duel that Menelaus and Paris fight over her while she looks on from the walls of Troy.

Blondell (2010) p. 3. From her protected, privileged position, Helen is gazing down upon men attempting to kill each other. The concept of Helen’s “objectification” here is, most obviously, obfuscatory. Helen’s female gaze is actively bestializing men and objectifying them as tools of gynocentric values.

[4] Helen describes Aphrodite encouraging her to have sex with her husband Paris as deceptive. Helen then essentially suggests that Aphrodite herself go have sex with Paris. Helen’s words are cold and vicious. Bowie commented:

Helen’s words here are among the strongest criticisms addressed to a divine figure in Greek literature. … Characters in Greek literature regularly complain about the gods, but none uses language as free and downright rude as this…

Bowie (2019) p. 160. Helen expresses “insolence and sarcasm” toward Aphrodite. Minchin (2008) p. 390. In the second century BGC, the influential Homeric scholar Aristarchus of Samothrace athetized these verses. Hunter (2018) p. 69. Readers have often failed to accept the full breadth of women’s humanity.

[5] Based on detailed philological analysis of this passage, Bonifazi (2016) concludes:

Helen is jealous of Aphrodite’s vouchsafing to Alexander {Paris} not only safety but also charm and beauty. Through her pronominal choices and their host clauses she conveys that she would like to keep distance from Alexander, while acknowledging, at the same time, his beautiful appearance.

Philology is vitally important. Nonetheless, this conclusion seems to me misleading without keen understanding of the broader context of Helen’s relations to Menelaus and Alexander / Paris.

The Iliad never explicitly describes a marriage ceremony or marriage agreement between Helen and Paris. Helen is usually called Paris’s “ἄλοχον,” which can mean “mistress” rather than “wife.” Bowie (2019) p. 164, discussing Helen taunting Aphrodite in Iliad 3.409. Helen, however, clearly shares Paris’s bed, apparently exclusively. She has high status among Priam’s ruling family. See, e.g. Iliad 3.361-5 (King Priam addressing Helen). Helen calls King Priam “beloved father-in-law {φίλος ἑκυρός}.” Iliad 3.172. Book 3 of the Iliad suggests symmetry between Menelaus and Paris as Helen’s former and current husbands, respectively. Helen refers to Paris’s brother Hector as her “brother-in-law {δαήρ}.” Iliad 6.344, 24.762. Hector in turn describes Helen as having an affectionate relationship with him. Iliad 6.360. Helen similarly describes her relationship with Hector. Iliad 24.767-72. Helen refers to Alexander / Paris as her “πόσις {husband}.” Overall, the literary evidence overwhelming indicates that throughout the Iliad, Helen and Paris are married as marriage was understood in the archaic Greek world.

[6] Helen’s words here are “bitterly sarcastic and hostile.” Kirk (1985) p. 327. Helen “upbraids her husband.” She has a “hostile, unwelcoming mood.” Minchin (2008) pp. 391, 392. Some scholars nonetheless interpreted Helen’s words as “a genuine outburst of concern for Paris.” Hunter (2018) p. 70.

Helen’s unwillingness to have sex with her husband Paris has often been moralistically misinterpreted. Ancient scholars, as well as modern anti-meninists, have interpreted women’s sexual passion for men as folly. Hunter (2018) pp. 77-8, citing Heraclitus, Homeric Problems 28.4-7, and Euripides, Trojan Women 983-92. A husband and wife having sex in the afternoon was also apparently regarded as shameful. Id. p. 79, citing Plutarch, Moralia 18f, 655a. Within the context of the Iliad, Helen’s sense of shame in having sex with her husband Paris is best interpreted as responding to Paris being socially regarded as the loser of his duel with Menelaus.

[7] In the teichoscopia, Helen calls herself a “shameless bitch {κυνώπης}” in describing her relation to Menelaus. Iliad 3.180. She subsequently calls herself a “horrible, evil-intriguing bitch {κῠ́ων κᾰκομήχᾰνος ὀκρυόεις},” or in short, a “bitch {κύων}.” Iliad 6.344, 356. In the Odyssey, Helen characterizes herself as a “shameless bitch {κυνώπης}” in relation to Menelaus. Odyssey 4.145. Understood less literally, Helen substantively calls herself a “shameless whore.”

A strand of ancient thought regarded the Trojan War as foolish. E.g. Herodotus, Histories 1.4. More generally, Scodel (2008) p. 220. But men too often have passively accepted the social construction of men’s disposability. For example, elderly chief men of Troy saw Helen looking upon the Trojan and Greek men prepared to do battle. The elderly chief men of Troy declared:

Surely the Trojan men and the well-greaved Greek men cannot be blamed
that they have long suffered woes on account of such a woman.
To look upon her is terribly like looking upon immortal goddesses.
Although she is like them, even so let her go home on the ships,
and not be left here to be grief to us and to our children after us.

{ οὐ νέμεσις Τρῶας καὶ ἐϋκνήμιδας Ἀχαιοὺς
τοιῇδ᾽ ἀμφὶ γυναικὶ πολὺν χρόνον ἄλγεα πάσχειν:
αἰνῶς ἀθανάτῃσι θεῇς εἰς ὦπα ἔοικεν:
ἀλλὰ καὶ ὧς τοίη περ ἐοῦσ᾽ ἐν νηυσὶ νεέσθω,
μηδ᾽ ἡμῖν τεκέεσσί τ᾽ ὀπίσσω πῆμα λίποιτο. }

Iliad, 3.156-60. The elderly men associate mythic punishment for the male gaze with gazing upon Helen. Men should be blamed for not vigorously asserting all persons’ freedom to gaze and imagine as they so choose. Men should also be blamed for gyno-idolatry. Within the Iliad, Paris is blamed for the Trojan War. Suter (1993). Elderly chief men of Troy at least recognized the merit of simply sending Helen away.

Classical scholars have striven to excuse and justify Helen’s behavior amid men’s reluctance to criticize her. A peer-reviewed work of gynocentric ideological contortions justified not blaming Helen on the basis of modern academic myth asserting “the male” to have a larger scope of agency than women:

The objectification of Helen therefore dovetails with the well-known fact that blame directed towards her by Iliadic characters other than herself is muted or non-existent. It is Paris who takes the blame, from Achaeans and Trojans alike, in acknowledgment of the larger scope for agency assigned to the male.

Blondell (2010) p. 4. Classical literature amply documents the classical pattern of men taking the blame, and women taking the credit. Another literary scholar more expansively declared:

The dazzling question after the ‘Teichoscopia’ concerns the value inherent in listening to a song tradition that deals with the struggle of two armies for the possession of a woman (Helen) who is the symbol of blame. The Iliadic tradition thus questions the very ontogeny of its subject matter and, by extension, of the genre it belongs to. Skillfully enough, there is a way out of the impasse. As only Helen can blame Helen, so only is the Iliad allowed to question its own validity.

Tsagalis (2008), from Chapter 6 (footnote omitted). The “dazzling question” is actually a tendentious question. Readers can and should blame Helen for massive violence against men. Moreover, the “validity” of the Iliad depends inextricably on the critical intelligence of the hearer or reader.

A recent Ph.D. thesis in classics argues that “central to the thematic program of the Iliad is a feminine-coded critique of masculine warrior values.” Warwick (2018) p. 3. On gender-stereotypical analysis of the Iliad, Dayton (2018). In contrast to superficial stereotypes, women have a directing role in epic violence against men. One might much more interestingly argue that central to the thematic program of the Iliad is a masculine-coded critique of feminine warrior values. Ausonius and Proba in the fourth century and Walafrid Strabo in the ninth century had similar critical views of violence against men.

More generally, young classicists would do well to learn from medieval Latin literature. They might ponder a medieval proverb preserved in Piers Plowman:

Alas for me, what a barren, useless youth I led!

{ Heu michi quia sterilem duxi vitam iuvenilem! }

William Langland (attributed), Piers Plowman / William’s Vision of Piers Plowman {Visio Willelmi de Petro Ploughman} 1.139, Middle English text (B version) from Schmidt (1978) via Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse, my English translation. This Latin leonine verse apparently was proverbial. It also survives in the proverb collection of John Rylands Library, Latin MS 394, written early or in the middle of the fifteenth century. Alford (1975) p. 392. For proverbs in Rylands MS 394, Pantin (1930).

[images] (1) Menelaus pursues Paris as the goddesses Aphrodite and Artemis watch. Painting on Attic red-figure kylix from Capua in southern Italy, c. 490–480 BGC. Preserved in the Louvre Museum (Paris) as accession # G 115. Source image thanks to Bibi Saint-Pol and Wikimedia Commons. Here’s another image of this vase painting. (2) Aphrodite saving Paris from Menelaus as Odysseus watches. Carving on marble sarcophagus of Aurelia Botania Demetria from second century GC. Preserved in the Antalya Archaeological Museum (Turkey). Source image thanks to Wolfgang Sauber and Wikimedia Commons. (3) Greek prince Paris standing nude and holding an apple behind his back. Marble sculpture designed by Antonio Canova in 1812 and completed by his workshop in 1822-23. Preserved as accession # 2003.21.2 in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York). Credit line: Bequest of Lillian Rojtman Berkman, 2001. Source image generously contributed to the public domain by the Metropolitan Museum. (4) Helen and Paris in their bedroom. Painting (excerpt) by Jacques-Louis David in 1788. Preserved as accession # Inv. 3696 in the Louvre Museum (Paris). Source image thanks to Livioandronico2013 and Wikimedia Commons. Here’s another detail view.

References:

Alford, John A. 1975. “Some Unidentified Quotations in Piers Plowman.” Modern Philology. 72(4): 390–99.

Blondell, Ruby. 2010. “‘Bitch That I Am’: Self-Blame and Self-Assertion in the Iliad.” Transactions of the American Philological Association. 140(1): 1–32.

Bonifazi, Anna. 2016. “Helen’s mixed feelings for Alexander in Iliad 3: the cognitive, pragmatic, and emotional significance of third-person pronouns.” Classical Inquires. Guest post dated May 2, 2016.

Bowie, Angus M. 2019. Homer. Iliad. Book III (Commentary). Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. Reviews by Christina Kraus, by James V. Morrison, and by Anthony Verity.

Dayton, John. 2018. “Eros and Polemos: Eroticized Combat in the Trojan War Myth.” Pp. 65-80 in John T. Grider and Dionne Van Reenen, eds. Exploring Erotic Encounters: The Inescapable Entanglement of Tradition, Transcendence, and Transgression. Leiden: Brill. Alternate source.

Driscoll, David F. 2010. Gentle reproach: Hektor’s hortatory and goading rebukes in the Iliad. Master of Arts Thesis, University of Georgia.

Hunter, Richard. 2018. The Measure of Homer: The Ancient Reception of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kirk, G. S. 1985. Homer. The Iliad: A Commentary. Volume 1, Books 1-4. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Minchin, Elizabeth. 2010. “From Gentle Teasing to Heavy Sarcasm: Instances of Rhetorical Irony in Homer’s Iliad.” Hermes. 138 (4): 387–402.

Murray, A. T., trans. Revised by William F. Wyatt. 1924. Homer. Iliad. Loeb Classical Library 170 and 171. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Alternate source for Murray’s translation.

Pantin, W. A. 1930. “A Medieval Collection of Latin and English Proverbs and Riddles from the Rylands Latin MS 394.” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library. 14(1): 81–114.

Scodel, Ruth. 2008. “Stupid Pointless Wars.” Transactions of the American Philological Association. 138(2): 219–35.

Suter, Ann. 1993. “Paris and Dionysos: Iambos in the Iliad.” Arethusa. 26(1): 1–18.

Tsagalis, Christos. 2008. The Oral Palimpsest: Exploring Intertextuality in the Homeric Epics. Hellenic Studies Series 29. Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies.

Warwick, Celsiana. 2018. For Those Yet to Come: Gender and Kleos in the Iliad. Classics Ph.D. Thesis, University of California, Los Angeles.

The goddesses and gods in the ancient Homeric Iliad are as deceitful and violent as humans. Hera, the powerful and demonically raging queen-goddess, supported Greek men besieging Troy. Her spouse Zeus, in contrast, aided Trojan men attacking Greek men. Zeus could scarcely control with words Hera’s anger, and he was inferior to her in guile. She deceived and seduced him in order to help Greek men kill Trojan men. Passionate entanglements of ancient Greek divinities, both female and male, push forward the Iliad’s horrific violence against men. Even now, under a much different polytheistic, intersectional religion, many still believe that men don’t deserve mercy.

The god Poseidon, Hera’s brother, intervened directly in the fighting to help Greek men attack Trojan men. He rallied Greek men and led them into battle against Trojan men:

So urging, across the plain Poseidon swept, shouting mightily,
as loud as the cry of nine-thousand men, or ten-thousand men,
in battle as they join in the war god’s strife.
So mighty did Lord Poseidon, Shaker of Earth, shout
from his lungs that in the heart of every Greek man he roused
great strength to war and to fight without ceasing.

{ ὣς εἰπὼν μέγ᾽ ἄϋσεν ἐπεσσύμενος πεδίοιο.
ὅσσόν τ᾽ ἐννεάχιλοι ἐπίαχον ἢ δεκάχιλοι
ἀνέρες ἐν πολέμῳ ἔριδα ξυνάγοντες Ἄρηος,
τόσσην ἐκ στήθεσφιν ὄπα κρείων ἐνοσίχθων
ἧκεν: Ἀχαιοῖσιν δὲ μέγα σθένος ἔμβαλ᾽ ἑκάστῳ
καρδίῃ, ἄληκτον πολεμίζειν ἠδὲ μάχεσθαι. }[1]

From the high peak of Olympus, Hera on her golden throne looked down with joy at her brother Poseidon leading Greek men in killing Trojan men. That’s grotesque.[2] Men’s deaths should be cause for sadness and regret, not joy.

From her position of divine privilege, Hera thought only of her side winning. She would do whatever she could to continue the killing of Trojan men:

Zeus was then seated at the topmost peak of Ida with its many springs.
Hera saw him, and he was hateful to her in her heart.

{ Ζῆνα δ᾽ ἐπ᾽ ἀκροτάτης κορυφῆς πολυπίδακος Ἴδης
ἥμενον εἰσεῖδε, στυγερὸς δέ οἱ ἔπλετο θυμῷ. }

Hera felt hate toward her husband Zeus because he would help fleeing Trojan men. Preparing to attack him in his vulnerability, she went to her luxurious bedroom and anointed her lovely body with the soft, rich fragrance of ambrosial oil. Then she armed herself further:

When she had thus anointed her beautiful body,
she combed her hair. With her hands she arranged the shining,
beautiful, ambrosial curls streaming from her immortal head.
Then she clothed herself in an ambrosial robe that Athena
had crafted and smoothed for her, a robe with many embroideries.
At her breast she pinned the robe with brooches of gold.
She circled her waist with a belt of a hundred tassels
and in her pierced ears she put earrings
having triple drops of fine clusters, shining full of grace.
With a covering veil, the beautiful goddess veiled herself,
with a bright, beautiful veil, glistening as white as the sun.
Beneath her shining feet she bound beautiful sandals.

{ τῷ ῥ᾽ ἥ γε χρόα καλὸν ἀλειψαμένη ἰδὲ χαίτας
πεξαμένη χερσὶ πλοκάμους ἔπλεξε φαεινοὺς
καλοὺς ἀμβροσίους ἐκ κράατος ἀθανάτοιο.
ἀμφὶ δ᾽ ἄρ᾽ ἀμβρόσιον ἑανὸν ἕσαθ᾽, ὅν οἱ Ἀθήνη
ἔξυσ᾽ ἀσκήσασα, τίθει δ᾽ ἐνὶ δαίδαλα πολλά:
χρυσείῃς δ᾽ ἐνετῇσι κατὰ στῆθος περονᾶτο.
ζώσατο δὲ ζώνῃ ἑκατὸν θυσάνοις ἀραρυίῃ,
ἐν δ᾽ ἄρα ἕρματα ἧκεν ἐϋτρήτοισι λοβοῖσι
τρίγληνα μορόεντα: χάρις δ᾽ ἀπελάμπετο πολλή.
κρηδέμνῳ δ᾽ ἐφύπερθε καλύψατο δῖα θεάων
καλῷ νηγατέῳ: λευκὸν δ᾽ ἦν ἠέλιος ὥς:
ποσσὶ δ᾽ ὑπὸ λιπαροῖσιν ἐδήσατο καλὰ πέδιλα. }

As beautiful, young immortals, Hera and Zeus had embraced in bed “without their parents knowing {φίλους λήθοντε τοκῆας}.” To recreate that passion, Hera now was dressed to kill. Many men yearn to die with a smile on their face. Men lives should matter more.

Hera knew what she wanted and how to get it. She went to the goddess Aphrodite and said:

Give now to me love and yearning, by which you subdue
all mortal and immortal men.

{ δὸς νῦν μοι φιλότητα καὶ ἵμερον, ᾧ τε σὺ πάντας
δαμνᾷ ἀθανάτους ἠδὲ θνητοὺς ἀνθρώπους. }

Hera mendaciously claimed that she sought to promote peacemaking between her foster father Oceanus and her foster mother Tethys. Mired in endless strife, that couple had sunk into a sexless marriage. Aphrodite readily agreed to help Hera, “for you sleep in the arms of Zeus, the mightiest {Ζηνὸς γὰρ τοῦ ἀρίστου ἐν ἀγκοίνῃσιν ἰαύεις}”:

So Aphrodite spoke and unbound from her breasts an embroidered lappet,
inlaid, fashioned with all manners of allurements.
It held love and desire and seductive talk,
such as steals the senses of even wise men.

{ ἦ, καὶ ἀπὸ στήθεσφιν ἐλύσατο κεστὸν ἱμάντα
ποικίλον, ἔνθα δέ οἱ θελκτήρια πάντα τέτυκτο:
ἔνθ᾽ ἔνι μὲν φιλότης, ἐν δ᾽ ἵμερος, ἐν δ᾽ ὀαριστὺς
πάρφασις, ἥ τ᾽ ἔκλεψε νόον πύκα περ φρονεόντων. }

Hera, truly the mightiest, tucked this lappet between her own breasts. She thus was fully armed to overwhelm Zeus.

Hera went to the god Sleep, the brother of Death. She needed his help to carry out her conspiracy against her husband:

Lull to sleep for me Zeus’s gleaming eyes beneath his brows
as soon as I have laid beside him in love.
I will in turn give you a beautiful throne, forever enduring,
one of gold. Hephaestus, my own son, he with both legs crippled,
will skillfully make it and set beneath a stool for feet.
You may rest your shining feet on that when you drink your wine.

{ κοίμησόν μοι Ζηνὸς ὑπ᾽ ὀφρύσιν ὄσσε φαεινὼ
αὐτίκ᾽ ἐπεί κεν ἐγὼ παραλέξομαι ἐν φιλότητι.
δῶρα δέ τοι δώσω καλὸν θρόνον ἄφθιτον αἰεὶ
χρύσεον: Ἥφαιστος δέ κ᾽ ἐμὸς πάϊς ἀμφιγυήεις
τεύξει᾽ ἀσκήσας, ὑπὸ δὲ θρῆνυν ποσὶν ἥσει,
τῷ κεν ἐπισχοίης λιπαροὺς πόδας εἰλαπινάζων. }[3]

Sleep hesitated. In the past, he put Zeus asleep to help Hera assail her step-son Heracles. But Zeus awoke and furiously attacked both Sleep and Hera. She nonetheless was undaunted. A woman who trafficked in women, Hera sweetened her offer to Sleep:

Come now, do it, and I’ll give you one of the youthful Graces
to marry and be called your wife —
Pasithea, for whom you have been longing all your days.

{ ἀλλ᾽ ἴθ᾽, ἐγὼ δέ κέ τοι Χαρίτων μίαν ὁπλοτεράων
δώσω ὀπυιέμεναι καὶ σὴν κεκλῆσθαι ἄκοιτιν.
Πασιθέην, ἧς αἰὲν ἱμείρεαι ἤματα πάντα. }

Women themselves abuse women. Thrilled with the thought of embracing Pasithea, Sleep immediately agreed. He thus went with Hera to waylay Zeus on Mount Ida.

As soon as Zeus saw Hera, lust for her enveloped his heart. Hera mendaciously claimed that she was going to her foster parents to urge them to put aside their strife and come them together in conjugal embrace. Zeus begged her not to hurry. As if seeking to enact the pattern of Hera’s story about her foster parents, Zeus suggested that they bed down and lose themselves in love. Zeus was so lacking in guile that he described his desire for Hera as now exceeding what he felt in his numerous extra-marital affairs that produced numerous extra-marital children:

Never before has such desire for a goddess or mortal woman
poured around and overpowered the heart within my breast,
not even when I was seized with love for Ixion’s wife,
who gave birth to Peirithous, peer of gods in counsel,
nor when I loved lovely ankled Danaë, Akrisios’s daughter,
who gave birth to Perseus, preeminent above all warriors,
nor when I loved far-famed Phoenix’s daughter,
who gave birth to Minos and godlike Rhadamanthys,
nor when I loved Semele, nor when I loved Alcmene in Thebes,
who gave birth to my son Heracles the stout-hearted,
and Semele gave birth to Dionysus, the joy of mortals,
nor when I loved Demeter, the fair-haired queen,
nor when I loved the glorious Leto, nor yet so much you
as now I love you, for so has sweet desire seized me.

{ οὐ γάρ πώ ποτέ μ᾽ ὧδε θεᾶς ἔρος οὐδὲ γυναικὸς
θυμὸν ἐνὶ στήθεσσι περιπροχυθεὶς ἐδάμασσεν,
οὐδ᾽ ὁπότ᾽ ἠρασάμην Ἰξιονίης ἀλόχοιο,
ἣ τέκε Πειρίθοον θεόφιν μήστωρ᾽ ἀτάλαντον:
οὐδ᾽ ὅτε περ Δανάης καλλισφύρου Ἀκρισιώνης,
ἣ τέκε Περσῆα πάντων ἀριδείκετον ἀνδρῶν:
οὐδ᾽ ὅτε Φοίνικος κούρης τηλεκλειτοῖο,
ἣ τέκε μοι Μίνων τε καὶ ἀντίθεον Ῥαδάμανθυν:
οὐδ᾽ ὅτε περ Σεμέλης οὐδ᾽ Ἀλκμήνης ἐνὶ Θήβῃ,
ἥ ῥ᾽ Ἡρακλῆα κρατερόφρονα γείνατο παῖδα:
ἣ δὲ Διώνυσον Σεμέλη τέκε χάρμα βροτοῖσιν:
οὐδ᾽ ὅτε Δήμητρος καλλιπλοκάμοιο ἀνάσσης,
οὐδ᾽ ὁπότε Λητοῦς ἐρικυδέος, οὐδὲ σεῦ αὐτῆς,
ὡς σέο νῦν ἔραμαι καί με γλυκὺς ἵμερος αἱρεῖ. }

That’s an obtuse way for Zeus to flatter his wife Hera. She hated his strong, independent sexuality. She persecuted the illustrious children he had with other women. Although he was nominal head god in charge of the cosmos, Zeus lacked Hera’s relational sophistication.

In order to advance her conspiracy, Hera pretended not to be insulted by Zeus’s extra-marital affairs. She told him that she was too modest to have sex on Ida’s heights, where others might observe their intercourse. Of course, there’s nothing shameful about a wife having sex with her husband. Zeus promised to envelop their conjugal intercourse with a golden cloud. That happened with the now nearly unimaginable erotica of archaic Greece:

With those words Cronos’s son Zeus clasped his wife in his arms.
Beneath them the bright earth made fresh-sprung grass
and dewy lotus and crocus and hyacinth,
thick and soft, that bedded them on the ground.
There they lay, clothed about with a beautiful
golden cloud. Glistening dew drops fell from it.

{ ἦ ῥα καὶ ἀγκὰς ἔμαρπτε Κρόνου παῖς ἣν παράκοιτιν:
τοῖσι δ᾽ ὑπὸ χθὼν δῖα φύεν νεοθηλέα ποίην,
λωτόν θ᾽ ἑρσήεντα ἰδὲ κρόκον ἠδ᾽ ὑάκινθον
πυκνὸν καὶ μαλακόν, ὃς ἀπὸ χθονὸς ὑψόσ᾽ ἔεργε.
τῷ ἔνι λεξάσθην, ἐπὶ δὲ νεφέλην ἕσσαντο
καλὴν χρυσείην: στιλπναὶ δ᾽ ἀπέπιπτον ἔερσαι. }[4]

Zeus slept with Hera in his arms. Men so dream in love.

Hera’s conspiracy against Zeus prompted horrific violence against men. The god Sleep immediately rushed to the Greek warships. He urged Poseidon:

Now, Poseidon, earnestly help Greek men
and give them glory, though for a little time while still sleeps
Zeus, since over him I have blanketed soft slumber.
Hera has tricked him to sleep with her in love.

{ πρόφρων νῦν Δαναοῖσι Ποσείδαον ἐπάμυνε,
καί σφιν κῦδος ὄπαζε μίνυνθά περ, ὄφρ᾽ ἔτι εὕδει
Ζεύς, ἐπεὶ αὐτῷ ἐγὼ μαλακὸν περὶ κῶμ᾽ ἐκάλυψα:
Ἥρη δ᾽ ἐν φιλότητι παρήπαφεν εὐνηθῆναι. }[5]

Poseidon went to the front line and ordered Greek men to attack Trojan men. They obeyed that bloodthirsty god:

Not so loudly roars the sea’s surf on the shore,
driven up from the deep by the dread blast of the North Wind,
nor so loud is the roar of blazing fire
when it leaps to burn the forest in mountain glades,
nor so loudly does the wind shriek among the high crests
of the oaks, when the wind roars the loudest in its rage —
as was the sound of Trojan men and Greek men
screaming in attacking each other.

{ οὔτε θαλάσσης κῦμα τόσον βοάᾳ ποτὶ χέρσον
ποντόθεν ὀρνύμενον πνοιῇ Βορέω ἀλεγεινῇ:
οὔτε πυρὸς τόσσός γε ποτὶ βρόμος αἰθομένοιο
οὔρεος ἐν βήσσῃς, ὅτε τ᾽ ὤρετο καιέμεν ὕλην:
οὔτ᾽ ἄνεμος τόσσόν γε περὶ δρυσὶν ὑψικόμοισι
ἠπύει, ὅς τε μάλιστα μέγα βρέμεται χαλεπαίνων,
ὅσση ἄρα Τρώων καὶ Ἀχαιῶν ἔπλετο φωνὴ
δεινὸν ἀϋσάντων, ὅτ᾽ ἐπ᾽ ἀλλήλοισιν ὄρουσαν. }[6]

The Greek Telamonian Ajax speared the Trojan Archelochus in the neck. Archelochus fell dead. Archelochus’s brother Acamas then killed the Greek ally Promachus, son of Alegenor. The Greek Peneleos in turn charged Acamas, who ran away. Peneleos then speared the Trojan Ilioneus:

He struck this man beneath the brow at the root of the eye
and drove out the eyeball. The spear went completely through the eye-socket
and the neck’s nape. Ilioneus sank down backward, stretching out both
hands. Peneleos, drawing his sharp sword,
struck mid-neck and cut to the ground the man’s
head with its helmet on. The mighty spear nonetheless remained
in his eye. Lifting the spear high, like the head of a poppy,
Ilioneus’s head he displayed to the Trojans and vaunted over it:
“Trojans, do me a favor and tell Ilioneus’s
dear father and mother to weep for him in their halls,
since the wife of Promachus, son of Alegenor, also will not
rejoice at the arrival of her dear husband when we
Greek sons return in ships from the land of Troy.”

{ τὸν τόθ᾽ ὑπ᾽ ὀφρύος οὖτα κατ᾽ ὀφθαλμοῖο θέμεθλα,
ἐκ δ᾽ ὦσε γλήνην: δόρυ δ᾽ ὀφθαλμοῖο διὰ πρὸ
καὶ διὰ ἰνίου ἦλθεν, ὃ δ᾽ ἕζετο χεῖρε πετάσσας
ἄμφω: Πηνέλεως δὲ ἐρυσσάμενος ξίφος ὀξὺ
αὐχένα μέσσον ἔλασσεν, ἀπήραξεν δὲ χαμᾶζε
αὐτῇ σὺν πήληκι κάρη: ἔτι δ᾽ ὄβριμον ἔγχος
ἦεν ἐν ὀφθαλμῷ: ὃ δὲ φὴ κώδειαν ἀνασχὼν
πέφραδέ τε Τρώεσσι καὶ εὐχόμενος ἔπος ηὔδα:
εἰπέμεναί μοι Τρῶες ἀγαυοῦ Ἰλιονῆος
πατρὶ φίλῳ καὶ μητρὶ γοήμεναι ἐν μεγάροισιν
οὐδὲ γὰρ ἣ Προμάχοιο δάμαρ Ἀλεγηνορίδαο
ἀνδρὶ φίλῳ ἐλθόντι γανύσσεται, ὁππότε κεν δὴ
ἐκ Τροίης σὺν νηυσὶ νεώμεθα κοῦροι Ἀχαιῶν. }[7]

Sex need not be associated with violence. Hera’s sexual deception of Zeus, however, is deeply enmeshed in horrific violence against men. Mothers and fathers, wives and sisters and brothers, all should notice and care about violence against men.[8]

War has long been gender-instituted as violence against men. In the ancient Greek Iliad, both female and male gods show little concern for men’s lives as they push forward horrific violence against men. Even in our time of intense concern about gender equality, men’s deaths in war typically generate no thought about gender injustice. That terrible failure of reason indicates fertile soil for war.

* * * * *

Read more:

• Zeus should have rejected Thetis’s plea for her son Achilles
• Lysistrata leads men’s strike: “Not while I’m bleeding!”
• medieval feminine power: divine to demonic in elite discourse

Notes:

[1] Homer, Iliad 14.147-52, ancient Greek text and English translation (modified) from Murray (1924). The Chicago Homer provides a useful resource for studying the ancient Greek text of the Iliad.

Subsequent quotes above are similarly sourced. They are Iliad 14.157-8 (Zeus was then seated at the topmost peak of Ida…), 14.175-86 (When she had thus anointed her beautiful body…), 14.296 (without their parents knowing), 14.198-9 (Give now to me love and yearning…), 14.213 (for you sleep in the arms of Zeus, the mightiest), 14.214-7 (So Aphrodite spoke and unbound from her breasts…), 14.236-41 (Lull to sleep for me Zeus’s gleaming eyes…), 14.267-9 (Come now, do it, and I’ll give you one of the youthful Graces…), 14.315-28 (Never before has such desire for a goddess or mortal woman…), 14.346-51 (With those words Cronos’s son Zeus clasped his wife in his arms…), 14.357-60 (Now, Poseidon, earnestly help Greek men…), 14.357-60 (Not so loudly roars the sea’s surf…), 14.493-505 (He struck this man beneath the brow…).

[2] Hera is highly significant in the Iliad:

her unremitting lust for vengeance provides the divine model for the inhuman excesses of the final battle books {of the Iliad}. … Hera is prominent as a savage goddess who, in Zeus’ words ({Iliad} 4.34ff), lusts to “raw-eat” the flesh of Priam and of all Troy. This Hera is, finally, to triumph over the divine pity which Zeus comes to represent. The lust for raw-eating or omophagia, applied to her in Book 4, is the epic’s primary image of moral degeneration, just as a meal roasted and shared with others is the primary metaphor for the best of human behavior.

O’Brien (1990) p. 106. Zeus berated the war-god Ares as being like his mother Hera:

You have the unbearable, overpowering rage of your mother,
Hera. With my words I can scarcely control her.

{ μητρός τοι μένος ἐστὶν ἀάσχετον οὐκ ἐπιεικτὸν
Ἥρης: τὴν μὲν ἐγὼ σπουδῇ δάμνημ᾽ ἐπέεσσι }

Iliad 5.892-3. Zeus calls Hera “incorrigible {ἀμήχανε}.” Iliad 15.14. Exasperated with her manipulation and abuse of him, Zeus tells her, “surely there’s no more bitch-like one than you {οὐ σέο κύντερον ἄλλο}.” Iliad 8.483.

Hera isn’t subordinate to Zeus. Although they have different personalities, Hera and Zeus are equal partners and equal in honor. Pirenne-Delforge, Pironti & Guess (2022) pp. 1-4, 21-2. Hera and Zeus have a “productive antagonism {antagonisme productif}.” Pironti (2017) p. 83. Hera is “Zeus’ staunch competitor for influence and power.” McCall (2013) p. 35. The modern myth of ancient Greek patriarchy has grossly distorted understanding of Hera:

Hera is the most under-appreciated deity in the pantheon of Homer’s Iliad. Inseminating mortals with thoughts and understanding the secret plans of Zeus, Hera proves to be a goddess of the mind. Hera’s characteristic sphere of action is the phrénes, the realm of physiological, emotional, and intellectual activity. Hera’s own creative vision enlarges the imaginative scope of the epic – for her noetic mode of seeing brings unity to what is otherwise disparate and heterogeneous, including the community of gods themselves. In effect, Homer’s Hera solves the political riddle of Hesiod’s Theogony and thus stabilizes the Olympian regime.

Ali (2015), Abstract.

[3] The god Sleep (Hypnos / Ὕπνος) was then on the island of Lemnos under the rule of King Thoas. Scholars have questioned why Sleep was on Lemnos. Hunter (2021) pp. 66-72. Bringing Hera to Lemnos in her conspiracy against her husband associates her with the husband-killing Lemnian women. Virgil, a perceptive reader of the Iliad, similarly included the husband-killing Danaids on Pallas’s sword-belt.

[4] Hera and Zeus embraced on a meadow filled with flowers: “this is a youthful, secret, and extremely eroticised union.” Pirenne-Delforge, Pironti & Guess (2022) p. 34. The imagery evokes the life-giving potential of men’s sexuality:

With the cloud to cover them, the earth, unasked, throws up a carpet of spring flowers beneath the lovers, as if inspired by their divine potency and fecundated by the gleaming dew that drips down; this is a bold phrase, since we are not told outright that the dew comes from the cloud!

Janko (1994) p. 206. Scholars have seen in the story of Hera’s deception of Zeus influence of ancient eastern literature, including literature of ancient Mesopotamia, including Gilgamesh’s catalog of Ishtar’s lovers. No such influence is necessary to account for any aspect of the story. Kelly (2008).

Ancient adherents of traditional Greco-Roman religion disparaged Hera’s deception of Zeus in the Iliad. Arguing that the Iliad and the Odyssey should be banned from the ideal city, Plato regarded the story of Hera’s deception of Zeus as not “conducive to being under self-control {ἐπιτήδειον εἶναι πρὸς ἐγκράτειαν ἑαυτοῦ}.” Plato, Republic 3.390b. Plato’s teacher Socrates similarly sought to suppress discussion of castration culture.

Underscoring men’s vulnerable position in relation to women, Plutarch objected to Hera overly beautifying herself:

when she picks up those gold brooches and finely wrought earrings, and, lastly, turns to the witchery of Aphroditê’s magic band, it is plainly a case of overdoing things and of wanton conduct unbecoming to a wife.

{ ὅταν δὲ τὰς χρυσᾶς περόνας ἀναλαμβάνῃ καὶ τὰ διηκριβωμένα τέχνῃ ἐλλόβια καὶ τελευτῶσα τῆς περὶ τὸν κεστὸν ἅπτηται γοητείας, περιεργία τὸ χρῆμα καὶ λαμυρία μὴ πρέπουσα γαμετῇ γέγονεν. }

Plutarch, Moralia, Book 8, Table Talk {Quaestiones convivales / Συμποσιακά} 6.693c, ancient Greek text and English translation from Clement & Hoffleit (1969). Men typically don’t object to women beautifying themselves as long as women do so not at men’s expense and beautify themselves solely and sincerely to motivate men’s sexual labor on behalf of women.

[5] Zeus himself complained bitterly of Hera’s deceptions. After recounting his fury at her guileful persecution of his extra-marital son Heracles, Zeus told Hera:

I remind you again of these matters, so that you will cease your deceptions.
Don’t think that you will be protected by love-making in bed with me,
as when you came from among the gods and deceived me.

{ τῶν σ᾽ αὖτις μνήσω ἵν᾽ ἀπολλήξῃς ἀπατάων,
ὄφρα ἴδῃ ἤν τοι χραίσμῃ φιλότης τε καὶ εὐνή,
ἣν ἐμίγης ἐλθοῦσα θεῶν ἄπο καί μ᾽ ἀπάτησας. }

Iliad 15.31-3.

[6] This accumulating simile formally parallels Zeus’s expressed desire to have sex with Hera. It underscores the connection that the Iliad makes between women’s sexual manipulation of men and epic violence against men. On the men-obscuring translation of these verses in Wilson (2023), see note [9] in my post of Thetis’s plea to Zeus for Achilles.

[7] While showing no gendered concern for horrific violence against men, modern scholars have interpreted the Iliad with anachronistic, tendentious language of extreme violence. A peer-reviewed, scholarly article tendentiously and absurdly depicted Hera as a wife abused into compliance to her husband. This article claimed that “a paramount aspect of the relationship between Zeus and Hera” is “terrorism by physical abuse on the part of the husband and the compliant surrender of the wife.” Synodinou (1987) p. 22. Cf. e.g. O’Brien (1990), Pirenne-Delforge, Pironti & Guess (2022) pp. 1-4, 21-2, and Ali (2015).

Hera participated in a conspiracy to overthrow Zeus, the nominal head god in charge of the cosmos. Iliad 1.396-412. Hera’s deception of Zeus sexually is plausibly interpreted as another instance of treason:

Hera poses a challenge to Zeus and his ‘plan’, one that has undertones of the succession motif with all its entailed violence and destruction.

Garcia (2013) p. 205. Treason throughout history has typically entailed harsh punishment. Zeus scarcely punishes Hera for her attempted treason. Zeus’s physical threats against Hera have much less effect than the horrific violence against men in the Iliad.

In her introductory essay to her translation of the Iliad, Wilson describes women captured in war as enslaved and raped. Both Achilles and Agamemnon are thus an “enslaving rapist” in relation to Briseis. Wilson (2023) p. xlviii. The Iliad text itself provides no evidence that Achilles and Agamemnon treated Briseis worse than they did men who were subordinate to them. Achilles in his emotional simplicity seems to have been affectionately attached to Briseis. Moreover, being enslaved and raped is a grotesquely misleading characterization of Helen’s status in relation to Paris. More generally, captive women such as Ausonius’s Bissula had extensive freedom, high status, and high welfare, especially relative to men brutally killed in war. The relation of classical Arabic caliphs to their slave-girls provides more insight into captured women in the Iliad than does modern ideas of women enslaved and raped. Such violent language invokes oppressive, sexist stereotypes of rape, and supports vastly gender-disproportionate incarceration of men.

[8] Scholars haven’t adequately appreciated the significance of Hera’s deception of Zeus in the context of epic violence against men in Iliad 14. Ancient scholars labeled this story “the deception of Zeus {Dios apate / Διὸς ἀπάτη}.” Janko (1994) p. 149. They thus elided Hera, the vitally significant actor who deserves blame for her deception of Zeus. A leading modern scholarly commentary on the Iliad states:

The Deception of Zeus is a bold, brilliant, graceful, sensuous and above all amusing virtuoso performance, wherein Homer parades his mastery of the other types of epic composition in his repertoire. Its merits have made this episode all the more offensive to those, from Xenophanes and Plato (Rep. 3.390c) onward, who do not expect gods to take part in a bedroom farce. Many of the ancients tried to explain it as an allegory… .

Janko (1994) p. 168. In its context of epic violence against men, Hera’s deception of Zeus is much more significant than merely “bedroom farce.” A scholar without any apparent concern for gender observed:

Thus the despair of the heroic generals in the first scene of book 14 and the cruel deaths in battle of brave warriors in the third episode of that book are powerful indications of the pathos of the human condition; and what makes that pathos especially poignant and unbearable is the fact that while men are dying so pitifully, Hera and Zeus, without a thought or care for the deep distress of humanity, enjoy a romantic mountain top tryst amid all the pleasurable trappings of lust and seduction.

Golden (1989) p. 8. The pathos and distress that provides the context for Hera’s deception of Zeus particularly affects men. That pathos and distress poignantly indicates gender injustice that men endure with little social concern.

[images] (1) Zeus and Hera (Jupiter and Juno) seated as co-rulers of the cosmos. Painted by Cornelis de Vos in 1635. Preserved as accession # 5122 in Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen (KMSKA) {Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp}. Via Wikimedia Commons. A painting by Frans Wouters in 1635 is similar. (2) Hera and Zeus embracing. Painted by Frans Christoph Janneck in the eighteenth century. Via Wikimedia Commons. (3) Zeus and Hera having sex on Mount Ida. Painted by James Barry in the 1790s. Preserved as accession # VIS.2742 in the Graves Art Gallery (Sheffield, England). Via Wikimedia Commons. (4) Greek and Trojan men at Troy fight over dead body of Patroclus. Painted by Antoine Wiertz in the nineteenth century. Via Wikimedia Commons. (5) In battle at Troy, Achilles tramples Hector’s dead body. Painted by Antonio Raffaele Calliano in 1815 for the throne room of the Royal Palace of Caserta {Reggia di Caserta} in Southern Italy. Via Wikimedia Commons.

References:

Ali, Seemee. 2015. “Seeing Hera in the Iliad.” CHS Research Bulletin. 3(2).

Clement, P. A. and H. B. Hoffleit, ed. and trans. 1969. Plutarch. Moralia, Volume VIII: Table-Talk, Books 1-6. Loeb Classical Library 424. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969.

Garcia, Lorenzo F., Jr. 2013. Homeric Durability: Telling Time in the Iliad. Hellenic Studies Series 58. Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies.

Golden, Leon. 1989. “Διἐς Ἀπάτη and the Unity of Iliad 14.” Mnemosyne. 42(1-2): 1–11.

Hunter, Richard. 2021. “Some Problems in the ‘Deception of Zeus.’” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies. 64(1): 59–72.

Janko, Richard. 1994. The Iliad: A Commentary. Vol. 4: Books 13-16. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kelly, Adrian. 2008. “The Babylonian Captivity of Homer: The Case of the Διοσ Απατη.” Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, Neue Folge. 151(3/4): 259-304. Alternate online source.

McCall, Joshua B. 2013. Plot and Power in the Iliad. Master of Arts Thesis, University of Georgia.

Murray, A. T., trans. Revised by William F. Wyatt. 1924. Homer. Iliad. Loeb Classical Library 170 and 171. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Alternate source for Murray’s translation.

O’Brien, Joan. 1990. “Homer’s Savage Hera.” The Classical Journal. 86(2): 105–25.

Pirenne-Delforge, Vinciane, Gabriella Pironti, Raymond Geuss. 2022. The Hera of Zeus: Intimate Enemy, Ultimate Spouse. Classical Scholarship in Translation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Originally published in 2016 as Héra de Zeus (Paris: Les Belles Lettres). Review by Patricia Johnston.

Pironti, Gabriella. 2017. “De l’éros au récit: Zeus et son épouse.” Chapter 3 (pp. 63-83) in Gabriella Pironti & Corinne Bonnet, eds. Les dieux d’Homère. Polythéisme et poésie en Grèce ancienne. Presses universitaires de Liège. Alternate online source.

Synodinou, Katerina. 1987. “The Threats of Physical Abuse of Hera by Zeus in the Iliad.” Wiener Studien. 100: 13–22.

Wilson, Emily R., trans. 2023. Homer. The Iliad. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company.