(Day 39 of the poem's main action; the Underworld, Laertes's orchard on Ithaca, the town assembly-place, the field outside the walls)

Hermes Kyllenios takes up his golden wand — the wand with which he draws sleep over men's eyes or lifts it from them again — and gathers the souls of the slain suitors. They follow him, whining like bats in the inner part of a great cave when one of them has fallen out of the cluster, the rest squeaking after each other. He leads them past the streams of Ocean, past the white rock and the gates of the Sun and the people of dreams, to the meadow of asphodel where the souls of the heroes dwell.

There they find Achilles and Patroclus and Antilochus and Ajax sitting together. To them comes Agamemnon with the comrades murdered with him at the welcome-feast. The two great Greek shades greet each other. Son of Atreus, Achilles says, of all heroes we said Jove loved you best — and look at your end: it would have been better to die at Troy as I did, where the Greeks gave you the funeral that befits a king. Then he tells him in detail the funeral of Achilles himself, eighteen days of mourning, the ashes of Achilles mixed with the ashes of Patroclus in a great golden urn the work of Hephaestus that Thetis brought, the great barrow raised on the headland of the Hellespont so that sailors will see it for ever, the funeral-games with Thetis's unmatched prizes. Thus even in death, Achilles, your fame is not lost. Mine has gone down with me.

Agamemnon then sees the new arrivals — the suitors, freshly dead — and recognises among them Amphimedon son of Melaneus of Ithaca, whose house he had once been guest in long ago when recruiting Ulysses for Troy. Amphimedon, what has brought you and all this fine company down here so young? Did the sea take you, or pirates on the mainland? Amphimedon tells the whole story from a suitor's viewpoint, in compressed form: how they came to woo Penelope; how she put them off three years with the loom-trick, weaving Laertes's pall by day and unpicking it by night; how at last a maid betrayed her; how the disguised Ulysses arrived; how the weapons were removed; how the bow-contest was set; how Ulysses strung the bow and shot through the axes; how then he turned on them and killed them in the hall, with some god helping him plainly, for one man could not have done it. And our bodies are lying still in his house unwept and unburied, and our kin do not yet know. Agamemnon, when the tale is told, blesses Ulysses and praises Penelope: fortunate son of Laertes — you have got a wife of greatness. The daughter of Icarius did not forget Ulysses her husband; her kleos will never die, and the gods themselves will make a song among men in honour of patient Penelope. As different from her as light from darkness was Tyndareus's daughter, who killed her husband at his welcome-feast; her name shall be a song of hate to mortal women, and shall make even good wives ill-thought-of.

The scene cuts to Ithaca. Ulysses with Telemachus, Eumaeus, and Philoetius walks across the country, leaves the town behind in Athena's mist, comes up at last to the high country orchard where Laertes has been living since the suitors took the palace. The farm is modest: a thatched hut, a small ring of slave-quarters, an old Sicel slave-woman who keeps house for him, the orchard he has worked all his old life. Ulysses sends the others into the hut: go in, choose the best of the swine for our dinner; I shall go alone first to my father in the orchard to see whether he will know me.

He walks down the rows of vines and finds Laertes alone — an old man in a torn dirty tunic patched at the elbows, his shins bound in ox-hide thongs against the brambles, a goat-skin cap on his head, gloves of hide on his hands, digging round the root of a sapling with his hoe; the picture of a man who has given up. Ulysses stands under a tall pear-tree and weeps to see him. Shall I go and embrace him at once, or shall I sound him out first? He chooses to sound him out. He walks up and addresses him in the high old guest-tone: old man, you have skill in your orchard — there is not a single tree, no vine, no fig, no apple, no pear, no olive, that does not show your care; only the master himself shows none. Forgive me — your own clothes are not those of a gardener; you have the look of a king reduced. Tell me, what land is this? Is this Ithaca? I had a guest once at my own court in Alybas, the son of Apheidas son of Polypemon, who said he was from Ithaca — Ulysses son of Laertes — to whom I gave seven talents of gold, a silver bowl with chased flowers, twelve cloaks, twelve rugs, four working women — and he set sail for home. Has he ever come back?

Laertes drops the hoe, scoops up dirt and pours it over his white head, weeping. Stranger, you are in Ithaca, but you have come among savage and lawless men who have killed your friend my son for nothing — for he died far away from his country, and we could not pay him the last rites. — Tell me your name, your father, your city. Ulysses can hold off no longer. Father, the man you ask after is here. I am he. I am Ulysses. I have come back at last after twenty years. Stop your weeping. There is no time. I have killed the suitors in our hall today; I have paid them for the wickedness they did to our house. Now we have other work. Laertes: if you are my son and not a god come to mock me, give me proof. Ulysses: first the scar — see, here, above the knee, where the boar took me on Parnassus when I went up to grandfather Autolycus. Second, the orchard. When I was a boy you walked me down this very orchard and gave me the trees one by one — thirteen pear trees, ten apple trees, forty fig trees, and you promised me fifty rows of vines, with corn standing between every row. I remember every tree. Laertes's knees give way; his heart fails. He recovers, throws his arms round his son's neck. Father Jove, then there are still gods in heaven, if the suitors have been paid for their pride. — But now their kin will come; the town will rise; what shall we do? Ulysses: do not be afraid; come up to the hut and eat with us; the gods will help us.

Up at the hut Telemachus has made the meal. The old Sicel woman bathes Laertes — for the first time in years — rubs him with oil, gives him fresh clothes; Athena pours grace over him and makes him taller and stronger than before, and his cheeks fill out and his shoulders broaden. He comes out of the bath like a god. Telemachus stares. Father — some god has touched you; you are taller and stronger and more like a king than I ever saw you. Laertes: would I were the man I was when I led the Cephallenians against the citadel of Nericus on the mainland and took it; then I would have stood by you yesterday in your fight, and laid out my share of the suitors with my own hand. Dolius the old orchard-slave, the father of Melantho and Melanthius, comes in with his six sons fresh from the day's work in the vineyard, sees Ulysses, drops his hoe in shock. Master, you have come back — has the queen heard? Ulysses: she has, old man; sit down with us; we have work for you in a moment.

In the town, the news of the slaughter has by now spread. The kin of the dead suitors have gathered the bodies from the hall and carried them out — some buried in Ithaca itself, others sent on ships to their families in Same and Dulichium and Zacynthus — and have come to the assembly-place in fury and grief. Eupeithes father of Antinous rises and speaks. Friends, this man has done the people of Ithaca great wrong already — he sailed off with all our best youths to Troy twenty years ago and lost the ships and lost the men, and now he comes home and kills the next generation of our best as well. Let us go after him before he can escape to Pylos or to Elis; let us avenge our sons and our brothers, or we shall be a shame for ever. He weeps; the assembly is moved.

But Medon the herald and Phemius the bard, the two spared from the slaughter, have come from the palace; Medon stands up: men of Ithaca, what Ulysses did he did not do alone. I myself, standing close, saw an immortal god in the form of Mentor encouraging him and going through the suitors in his front. There was a god in that hall today. A chill goes through the assembly. The old seer Halitherses son of Mastor — who knew the past and the future better than any man there — rises next: men, the fault is all our own. You would not listen to me earlier, when I and Mentor warned you to make your sons restrain themselves and stop the wasting of an absent man's house. Now do not march against Ulysses, for you will only bring fresh evil on yourselves. Half the assembly, more than half, hears him and goes home. The rest, led by Eupeithes, arm and march out toward the orchard.

On Olympus, Athena consults Zeus. Father, what do you mean to do? Will you make war between them, or peace? Zeus: daughter, it was your plan from the start — that Ulysses come home and take his revenge. The vengeance is done; let it end now. Let there be a sworn covenant between them, let him be king as he was before, and let us cause forgetting in the people of the killing of their sons and brothers, that the country may live again in peace and plenty. Athena flies down toward Ithaca.

Outside Laertes's hut a watcher reports the marching column. Ulysses and Telemachus and Eumaeus and Philoetius arm; Laertes also arms, and Dolius's six sons, eight in all. They go out at the gate. Athena comes to Ulysses in the form of Mentor; he recognises her with quiet joy. He turns to Telemachus: now you fight in your first battle; do not shame the lineage of Arcesius and Laertes and your father. Telemachus: you will see how I conduct myself, father. Laertes lifts his hands to heaven: what a day this is, what a day — my son and my grandson contesting which is the more valiant in front of me.

Athena puts strength into Laertes. He prays to Athena and to Zeus, casts his spear; it strikes Eupeithes through the bronze cheek-piece of his helmet, drives through, and Eupeithes goes down in his armour with the great clash of all his bronze around him. Telemachus and Ulysses charge in. They cut down the front rank. The little band of eight would have killed the lot — but Athena cried out from the field in the great voice of the goddess: stop, men of Ithaca, lay down your arms; this is enough; go home without further bloodshed. The townspeople drop their weapons; pale fear takes them; they turn back toward the city in flight. Ulysses, with a great cry like a screaming eagle, runs after them — and Zeus drops a thunderbolt at Athena's feet to warn him. Athena turns to Ulysses: Ulysses son of Laertes, hold your hand; the war is over; do not anger Zeus. Ulysses, glad in his heart, stops.

Athena, in the form of Mentor, lays a sworn covenant of peace between Ulysses and the men of Ithaca: no more killing on either side; no blood-feud carried on; the killings of today and the killings of years are wiped from memory; Ulysses is king of Ithaca as before; the people are his people; the gods give a renewed prosperity to land and house. The two sides swear it. Mentor walks them through the words. And on that oath the Odyssey ends — the man come home, the wife in his bed, the son armed at his side, the father standing tall again under the spear, the household his, the kingdom his, the war of twenty years closed by a goddess's word in the open field.

Analysis

Chapter 0074 — Analysis

The book that closes the cycle

Book 24 is not just the last book of the Odyssey but the last book of the whole four-poem Trojan cycle as our project has been reading it. The Iliad gave us the wrath; the Posthomerica gave us the sack; the Aeneid gave us the founders' flight to Italy; the Odyssey gives us the homecoming. The four poems have been pointing at this single final scene — the king back in his country, the household reassembled, the cycle of vengeance closed by a goddess's command in the open field. The poem ends not with another killing but with a sworn covenant.

The second Nekyia and the closure of the suitor-arc

The book opens with one of the most-disputed passages in the Homeric corpus. The second Nekyia — Hermes leading the suitors's souls down to Hades, the meeting with Achilles and Agamemnon — has been suspected since antiquity (the Hellenistic scholarchs Aristarchus and Aristophanes of Byzantium proposed it might be a later addition) on three grounds: the device of Hermes leading the souls is not used elsewhere in Homer; the Underworld geography differs slightly from book 11's; the meeting of Achilles and Agamemnon already happened in book 11. Modern scholarship has mostly defended the passage as authentic by argument from structural necessity: the suitor-arc requires closure, and the only available closure is the dead suitor's report of his own killing.

The passage is, in any case, magnificent. Amphimedon's compressed account to Agamemnon of the loom-trick and the bow-contest and the slaughter is the Odyssey's own summary of itself, told by the loser. Agamemnon's response — fortunate son of Laertes, you have got a wife of greatness — is the cycle's closing judgement on the Penelope-vs.-Clytemnestra contrast that has run through the poem since book 1. The Aegisthus-paradigm is finally closed: book 1 set it up, books 3 and 4 and 11 told it, book 24 judges it. Penelope's kleos will never die is the cycle's closing benediction on the wife.

The third great recognition

The recognition of Laertes is the third of the back half's three great recognitions (after Telemachus in book 16 and Penelope in book 23). Like the others, it is delayed; like the others, it is conducted through tokens (the scar plus the orchard-tree list). The orchard-tree list — thirteen pear trees, ten apple trees, forty fig trees, fifty rows of vines, with corn standing between every row — is the most quietly affecting piece of botanical inventory in Western literature. The number-list is the small boy's memory of the day his father walked him through the orchard and gave him the trees one by one. The scar is the body; the orchard is the memory.

The figure of Laertes himself is the poem's most carefully drawn picture of grief-induced self-reduction. He has left the palace, given up his rights, dressed himself in a torn tunic and ox-hide leggings and a goat-skin cap, and works alone in the orchard with the Sicel slave-woman keeping house for him. He has not given Ulysses up for dead in language; he has done so in the form of his life. The recognition restores him not only to his son but to himself — the bath, the new clothes, Athena's enhancement, the cry would I were the man I was when I led the Cephallenians against Nericus. The hero returns to the hero in him.

The political crisis

The third movement of the book is the political crisis: the families of the slain suitors gathered in the assembly under Eupeithes father of Antinous, calling for revenge. The crisis is the necessary remainder the slaughter has left. The Odyssey is one of the few Greek texts to face the question explicitly: when a king restores himself by killing the heirs of every great house, what does the kingdom do next? The honest answer is blood-feud: the relatives must take revenge or be shamed. The text gives the answer in detail. Eupeithes weeps; the assembly is moved; Medon and Halitherses speak against the march; half the men go home; the other half arm and march out.

Halitherses the seer is one of the poem's quiet political figures. He has spoken before — in book 2 he warned the assembly of Ithaca about the suitors and was ignored — and he speaks here again. The fault is your own; you would not listen earlier; do not march now. The Odyssey grants the prophet a moral authority that the political will cannot accept. The pattern — the prophet who is ignored — is the foundational topos of every later political tragedy.

The divine intervention as ending

The poem cannot end with another battle, and so it does not. Athena consults Zeus; Zeus authorises peace; Athena flies down to enforce it. The detail that Zeus drops a thunderbolt at Athena's feet to warn Ulysses to stop is the poem's final divine gesture: even the goddess who has helped Ulysses through twenty-three books must be reminded by her father not to push too far. The killing has been done; the war is over; the divine machine itself imposes the peace.

The sworn covenant is the poem's chosen closure. No more killing on either side; the killings of today and of years are wiped from memory; Ulysses is king as before; the people are his people. The choice to end on a peace-oath rather than on a triumphal scene has been read in two ways. The pessimistic reading (Bernard Williams, Shame and Necessity) sees the ending as the poem's admission that revenge does not close itself; the gods have to step in because the human characters cannot. The optimistic reading (Jenny Strauss Clay, The Wrath of Athena) sees the ending as the poem's gift of political grace — the moment when the cycle is closed not by force but by oath. Both readings are open.

Laertes throwing the spear

The single most affecting small moment in the book is Laertes throwing the spear that kills Eupeithes. The father of Ulysses kills the father of Antinous. The symmetry is exact: Antinous was the first suitor Ulysses killed (book 22); Eupeithes is the last enemy Laertes kills (book 24). The two fathers stand for the two generations the poem has been keeping in account. Laertes's throw is given Athena's strength; the spear goes through the cheek-piece of the helmet; the man falls with the great clash of all his bronze around him, the Iliadic formula transposed into the Odyssey's final battle. The poem grants Laertes the last hero's-death-stroke of the cycle, would I were the man I was, and I am, for this one throw.

The closing image

The Odyssey ends with Athena in Mentor's form binding the two sides in oath. There is no battle-tableau, no royal coronation, no funeral games, no marriage-feast. The poem ends in the quiet middle of an oath being sworn. The choice has been read as the poem's most subtle gesture: the ending is the moment of binding by word, not by sword. Ulysses, who has spent twenty-three books surviving by mētis and by silence and by lies, ends his poem by being held to an oath. The cunning man is, at the very last, sworn.

Butler's prose at the close

Butler's prose handles the book with appropriate range. The second Nekyia is rendered with the same flat dignity as book 11. Amphimedon's compressed re-narration of the bow-and-slaughter is rendered cleanly. The Laertes recognition is one of Butler's most affecting passages — the dirty old shirt, the patched elbows, the legs bound in ox-hide thongs against the brambles — the practical-material detail that Butler does best. The political crisis is rendered as a politician's prose, without elevation. The divine ending is rendered without heightening, and Ulysses obeyed her gladly. The whole book closes without ceremony, which is what its closing requires.

What to watch for

• The second Nekyia — Amphimedon's compressed re-narration is the poem's summary of itself told by the loser.
• Agamemnon's benediction on Penelope and condemnation of Clytemnestra — the Aegisthus-paradigm finally closed.
• The recognition of Laertes by scar plus orchard-tree list — the most affecting recognition because grounded in childhood memory.
• Laertes restored to himself by bath, Athena's gilding, the prayer for renewed youth.
• The political crisis as the necessary remainder of the slaughter — blood-feud honestly named.
• Halitherses as the ignored prophet — the foundational pattern of every later political tragedy.
• Laertes killing Eupeithes — the symmetrical close of the suitor-father killings.
• The covenant of peace as the poem's chosen closure — no more killing, the cycle closed by oath not by force.
• The Odyssey ends with the cunning man sworn — mētis held by word.

Echoes across the cycle

Chapter 0074 — Echoes Across the Cycle

Backward echoes

Book 24 is the cycle's closing book; it gathers all four poems into one final scene. The second Nekyia replays book 11 of the Odyssey itself (Achilles and Agamemnon in the meadow of asphodel) — but with the Trojan war's most discussed paradigm finally closed. The Aegisthus-paradigm, set up in book 1, told in book 3 by Nestor, told in book 4 by Menelaus's account of Proteus, told in book 11 by Agamemnon himself, is judged here at the last moment. Penelope is the woman Clytemnestra wasn't; Ulysses is the nostos-hero Agamemnon wasn't. The cycle's central female contrast is given its closing benediction.

Achilles's funeral, narrated by Agamemnon's recollection — the eighteen days of mourning, the golden urn of Hephaestus, the mixing of his ashes with Patroclus's, the great barrow on the Hellespont, the funeral-games of Thetis — reaches all the way back to the Iliad's Patroclus-funeral in Iliad 23 and forward to Posthomerica 3 and 4 (Quintus Smyrnaeus's narration of Achilles's death and funeral). Our project's chapters 0027–0028 (Posthomerica 3 and 4) gave the full version; the Odyssey here gives the after-the-fact account from Agamemnon's mouth in Hades. The two accounts are complementary: Quintus tells the funeral as it happens, Agamemnon tells it as it is remembered. The cycle's largest funeral has its own narrative closure here.

The recognition of Laertes by scar reactivates the scar of Eurycleia in book 19. The scar is the body-token of three recognitions (Eurycleia, Eumaeus-and-Philoetius, now Laertes); the bed of olive was the secret-knowledge token (Penelope); the orchard-tree list is the shared-memory token (Laertes alone). The four tokens make the four recognitions: body, secret, memory, song. The poem has exhausted the kinds of recognition by the end.

The political crisis of the suitor-kin reaches back into the long political history the poem has been quietly accumulating: book 2's assembly where Halitherses warned in vain; book 14's account of how Antinous's father Eupeithes was once saved by Ulysses; book 16's Antinous-Eupeithes connection in Penelope's rebuke; book 22's killing of Antinous. The whole political arc closes here when Eupeithes leads the march and Laertes kills him.

Forward echoes

• The covenant-of-peace ending is the foundational text for the European tradition of the deus ex machina resolution. Euripides uses it most famously (Orestes, Helen, several others); Roman drama and Renaissance drama follow; the modern term is Aristotle's coinage in the Poetics (commenting partly on this passage). The Odyssey's choice to close on a god-imposed oath rather than on a hero-imposed killing has been read as the cycle's most subtle moral gesture.
• The Laertes-restored-by-bath-and-divine-enhancement is the model for every later "old man restored to himself by intervention" — Aeson restored by Medea in the Argonautica tradition; Aeneas's father Anchises (almost, but he is dead before the moment); the Christian topos of the senex puer (the old man made young again) in the patristic and medieval traditions.
• The orchard-tree list as the most affecting recognition-token is the foundational text for every later "shared-childhood-memory" recognition. The pattern recurs in Aeneid 6 (Anchises's catalogue of Roman heroes is a kind of future-orchard); in medieval romance (the catalogue of items from a shared past); in modern novel (the Proustian madeleine is structurally the orchard-tree-list — an item that calls back the whole shared past). Heaney's Digging (the cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge through living roots awaken in my head — but I've no spade to follow men like them) is the modern poet's direct echo of Laertes-in-the-orchard.
• The second Nekyia — the device of Hermes leading the dead souls to the meeting with the heroes — is the foundational text for the medieval and Renaissance tradition of the summary-judgement-after-death. Dante's Inferno and Purgatorio gather the dead by the souls's account of their own deaths; the late-medieval De casibus virorum illustrium tradition (Boccaccio, then Lydgate, then Chaucer's Monk's Tale) catalogues falls by the dead man's own account.
• The Aegisthus-paradigm closed — Penelope is the not-Clytemnestra, Ulysses is the not-Agamemnon — is taken up by Aeschylus's Oresteia trilogy (which dramatises the alternative the Odyssey rejects: the family curse continued, the matricide, the founding of the Athenian court by Athena to break the cycle). The Odyssey's closure-by-oath and the Oresteia's closure-by-court are the two foundational Greek-literary models for ending the blood-feud.
• Athena's binding-by-oath is the model for every later covenant ending in Western literature. The Hebrew Bible's covenant-traditions (the rainbow after the flood; the Abrahamic covenant) sometimes read as echoing this trope, sometimes simply share the ancient near-Eastern oath-form. The Roman foedus and the medieval concordia and the modern peace-treaty share the form.
• The poem ending with the cunning man sworn — Ulysses, who has survived by mētis and lies, ends his poem held to an oath he cannot break — is the Odyssey's most subtle final gesture. The trope of the trickster bound by his own word survives into the Roman fides tradition, into the medieval romance's parole d'honneur, into Don Juan's last refusal to repent in the Tirso de Molina version where the oath holds him.
• The four-poem cycle ends here. The Iliad's wrath ended with Hector's funeral; the Posthomerica's sack ended with the storm at sea scattering the Greek fleet; the Aeneid's foundation ended (abruptly) with Aeneas standing over Turnus; the Odyssey's homecoming ends with the oath. The cycle ends not with a single resolution but with four different closures, each appropriate to its poem. The Matter of Troy is whole.

Cast in this chapter

Chapter 0074 — Cast In This Chapter

On stage

• Odysseus — "Ulysses"; walks up to Laertes's orchard, tests him with the Alybas/Apheidas lie, recognises him with the scar and the orchard-tree list, fights at the head of the eight, stops at Athena's command, sworn to the covenant of peace
• Telemachus — at his father's side at the orchard meal, fights at his father's right in the open-field skirmish, accepts the closing covenant
• Athena — "Minerva"; consults Zeus on whether to make peace, descends to enforce it, comes again in the form of Mentor at the open field, gives Laertes the spear-throw, cries the great cry that stops the killing, lays the covenant of oath
• Zeus — "Jove"; authorises the peace, drops a thunderbolt at Athena's feet to warn Ulysses to stop the chase
• Hermes — "Mercury Kyllenios"; leads the souls of the suitors down to Hades with the golden wand
• Agamemnon — in the Underworld with Achilles and the others; recognises Amphimedon's shade among the new arrivals, hears the slaughter-narrative, blesses Penelope and Ulysses, contrasts them with Clytemnestra and himself
• Achilles — in the Underworld with Patroclus and Antilochus and Ajax; the long account of his funeral-rites is given by Agamemnon's recollection
• Patroclus — among the heroic shades around Achilles; ashes mixed with his in the golden urn at his funeral as Agamemnon recalls
• Antilochus — among the heroic shades around Achilles
• Ajax Greater — among the heroic shades around Achilles (note: silent here, as he was when Ulysses tried to address him in book 11)
• Laertes — Ulysses's old father; found in dirty tunic at the orchard, recognises his son by scar and orchard-list, restored by Athena's gilding, throws the killing spear at Eupeithes
• Eurycleia — implied present in Penelope's upper chamber; the household-knowledge of recognition

Mentioned / off-stage

• Penelope — Amphimedon's account to Agamemnon retells her loom-trick; Agamemnon's closing blessing names her kleos-forever
• Clytemnestra — Agamemnon's contrast figure (as different from her as light from darkness); the woman who killed her husband at the welcome-feast
• Thetis — named in Agamemnon's account of Achilles's funeral: brings the golden urn, offers the funeral-games prizes

Non-cast named figures: Eumaeus, Philoetius (with Ulysses through the book); Dolius the orchard-slave with his six sons (eight men against Eupeithes's column); the Sicel slave-woman who keeps Laertes's hut; Amphimedon son of Melaneus (the suitor-shade in the Underworld, gives the suitor's-view summary of the slaughter); Eupeithes father of Antinous (leads the suitor-kin march, killed by Laertes's spear); the Muses (chant the dirge at Achilles's funeral in Agamemnon's account); Hephaestus (made the golden urn); Medon the herald and Phemius the bard (the two spared from the slaughter; testify in the assembly that a god in Mentor's form was helping Ulysses); Halitherses son of Mastor (the seer who tries in vain to dissuade the assembly); Mentor (Athena's chosen mortal form at the close); Eurymachus (named as one of the slain); Antinous (named as the first slain, his father is Eupeithes); the Cephallenians and Nericus (named in Laertes's reminiscence of his fighting days); Apheidas son of Polypemon and Alybas (the false king of the Cretan lie to Laertes); Arcesius (Ulysses's grandfather, named in Ulysses's pre-battle exhortation to Telemachus).

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This post is part of Reading Troy, a slow daily readalong through the four canonical Trojan-cycle epics — Homer's Iliad, Quintus Smyrnaeus's Posthomerica, Virgil's Aeneid, and Homer's Odyssey — read in chronological narrative order.