The War That Killed Achilles by Caroline Alexander Page A

others return
home
to horse-pasturing Argos, and Achaea the land of fair women.”
    On hearing his brother’s suggestion—the fantasy of all fighting men that the individuals personally responsible for a war be the ones who actually fight it—Hektor “was happy.” Striding into the dangerous open space between the advancing armies, he “forced back the Trojan battalions / holding his spear by the middle until they were all seated.” Gradually the Achaeans see that he is trying to speak, and Agamemnon shouts for quiet.
    In the silence, Hektor proclaims Paris’ offer. The Achaean reaction to the prospect of a duel between young Paris and the older Menelaos is ambiguous: “all of them stayed stricken to silence.” This could be simply because they are stunned at this unexpected development—or it could reflect the epic’s several gentle hints that brave Menelaos may not rank among the very top tier of warriors; the stricken silence is perhaps a symptom of the Achaeans’ instinctive alarm for him. Menelaos himself, however, does not hesitate to accept the challenge and rises to speak to the assembly, urging that whether it is he or Paris who is killed, “ ‘the rest of you be made friends with each other.’ ”
    So he spoke, and the Trojans and Achaeans were joyful, hoping now to be rid of all the sorrow of warfare.
    Not trusting the word of frivolous young men, Menelaos demands that Priam himself be summoned to cut the oath sanctifying the terms of the duel. While they wait for the aged king to come, the men of both armies pull their chariots into line and dismount, stripping off their armor and settling on the field “so there was little ground left between them.” Leaving them to wait, the epic shifts the action dramatically away from the plain to a chamber in the palace complex inside the walls of Troy, an inner sanctuary removed from the world of dust and men. Here, sitting at her loom, is Helen of Troy, the prize sought by both armies and the prize shortly to be fought over by the two men who both claim her. Iris, the tireless messenger of Zeus, once again in the guise of a mortal, in this case Laodike, “loveliest looking of all the daughters of Priam,” comes to Helen with a message:
    She came on Helen in the chamber; she was weaving a great web,
a double folded cloak of crimson, 25 and working into it the
numerous struggles
of Trojans, breakers of horses, and bronze-armoured Achaeans,
struggles that they endured for her sake at the hands of the war god.
Iris of the swift feet stood beside her and spoke to her:
“Come with me, dear girl, to behold the marvellous things done
by Trojans, breakers of horses, and bronze-armoured Achaeans,
who just now carried sorrowful war against each other,
in the plain, and all their desire was for deadly fighting;
now they are all seated in silence, the fighting has ended;
they lean on their shields, the tall spears stuck in the ground beside
them.
But Menelaos the warlike and Alexandros will fight
with long spears against each other for your possession.
You shall be called beloved wife of the man who wins you.”
    Elsewhere in the Iliad, warriors are said to “weave” speeches and counsels, plots and schemes; by setting certain events in motion, such masculine weaving, then, shapes reality. 26 The women of Troy weave only the representations of events. The gentleness of all imagery in this scene—the quiet chamber where Helen sits spinning the story of her own life and the calm delivery of Iris’ shattering news—places the domestic world of Troy and its women at an almost surreal remove from everything that exists on the plain outside. For this moment, from within these walls, even the actual war appears peaceful, as the soldiers sit unarmed together in unnatural passivity. The remoteness of this inner world of spinning and weaving from the rending and tearing that is the work