A Confluence of Funerary Practices

By Bermicourt — Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37502478

Separated by more than a thousand years and at least as many miles, two authors in vastly different cultures nevertheless described strikingly similar treatments for their heroic dead. The earliest of the two appears in Book 7 of The Iliad, where Hector is issuing his challenge for single combat to the Achaeans.

“But if I kill him and Apollo grants me glory,
I’ll strip his gear and haul it back to sacred Troy
and hang it high on the deadly Archer’s temple walls.
But not his body: I’ll hand it back to the decked ships,
so the long-haired Achaeans can give him full rites
and heap his barrow high by the Hellespont.
And some day one will say, one of the men to come,
steering his oar-swept ship across the wine-dark sea,
‘There’s the mound of a man who died in the old days,
one of the brave whom glorious Hector killed.’
So they will say, someday, and my fame will never die.”

Compare with Beowulf’s deathbed instructions and note the distinct similarities.

“Order my troop to construct a barrow
on a headland on the coast, after my pyre has cooled.
It will loom on the horizon at Hronesness
and be a reminder among my people —
so that in coming times crews under sail
will call it Beowulf’s Barrow, as they steer
ships across the wide and shrouded waters.”

I have little to offer in the way of commentary here. Both accounts must be products of militaristic sea-faring cultures who also burn their dead before burial, and the intent, though directed quite differently and provided in different contexts, is to honor fallen heroes. That the details between the two match so precisely is of mild curiosity to me.

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Triumphant Achilles. Source

My post-Beowulf lull allowed the new month to steal upon me and catch me unawares. I am therefore underprepared this time around and haven’t yet had a chance to put together a proper introduction. This brief post will have to suffice.

The cruellest month is dedicated to The Iliad, one of the two great epics of Classical Greece, attributed to Homer. It tells the story of the final weeks of the ten year long Trojan War, and begins with a focus on a feud between Achilles and Agamemnon. Just as important, however, is what it doesn’t cover. Those who should know better, but have for whatever reason only pretended to read The Iliad, cite the Trojan horse as a favorite scene, but this of course does not appear anywhere this month’s text. It makes a brief appearance in The Odyssey (which is May’s text), but we will have to wait until June to get a fuller account by way of Virgil, in the Aeneid.

Thematically, The Iliad shares much with other epics. Glory in battle is, perhaps unsurprisingly, among the most prominent of these, followed by honor, homecoming, and fate. But the opening lines of the epic set the overall tone:

Rage — Goddess, sing of the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles,
murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,
hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls,
great fighers’ souls, but made their bodies carrion,
feasts for the dogs and birds,
and the will of Zeus was moving toward its end.

Rage is where we begin, and rage is what informs the events that follow.

This is my second reading of The Iliad. I will be using the Fagles translation, which presents the epic in a delightfully readable language that should engage most modern readers.

Note: This is part of a series of posts dealing with the reading of one sacred/epic work per month in 2017. See below for more information on what I’m doing and how to follow along.

2017 Sacer-Epic Reading Journey

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