Noa Latham

9/5/01

I The Homeric Causal Picture

II The Homeric Notion of Fate

III Human Agency and Fate

IV Human Agency and Divine Intervention

1. There in the future he must suffer all that Fate and the overbearing Spinners spun out on his life line the very day his mother gave him birth. (Od 7.235)

[Od refs give Fagels’ line numbers]

2. Afterwards he [Achilles] shall suffer such things as Destiny wove with the strand of his birth that day he was born to his mother. (Il 20.127)

3. [Poseidon:] "Outrageous! Look how the gods have changed their minds about Odysseus." (Od 5.315)

4. Such is the way the gods spun life for unfortunate mortals, that we live in unhappiness, but the gods themselves have no sorrows. Here are two urns that stand on the door-sill of Zeus. They are unlike for the fits they bestow: an urn of evils, an urn of blessings. If Zeus who delights in thunder mingles these and bestows them on man, he shifts, and moves now in evil, again in good fortune.

(Il 24.525)

5. [Athena:] But the great leveler, Death: not even the gods can defend a man, not even one they love, that day when fate takes hold and lays him out at last. (Od 3.270)

6. [Zeus] pondered hard over many ways for the death of Patroklos…. In the division of his heart this way seemed best to him, for the strong henchman of Achilleus, the son of Peleus, once again to push the Trojans and bronze-helmed Hektor back on their city, and tear the life from many. In Hector first of all he put a temper that was without strength. He [Hector] climbed to his chariot and turned to flight, and called to the other Trojans to run, for he saw the way of Zeus’ sacred balance. (Il 16.646)

7. [Zeus:] Ah, me, that it is destined that the dearest of men, Sarpedon, must go down under the hands of Menoitios’ son Patroklos. The heart in my breast is balanced between two ways as I ponder, whether I should snatch him out of the sorrowful battle and set him down still alive in the rich country of Lykia, or beat him under at the hands of the son of Menoitios. (Il 16.440)

8. [Skamandros:] Beloved brother, let even the two of us join to hold back the strength of a man, since presently he will storm the great city of lord Priam. The Trojans cannot stand up to him in battle. But help me beat him off with all speed…. For I say that his strength will not be enough for him nor his beauty nor his arms in their splendour, which somewhere deep down under the waters shall lie folded under the mud; and I will whelm his own body deep, and pile it over with abundance of sands and rubble… (Il 21.308)

9. Then once more, might the Trojans have climbed back into Ilion’s wall, subdued by terror before the warlike Achaians, and the Argives, even beyond Zeus’ destiny, might have won glory by their own force and strength, had not Apollo in person stirred on Aineias… (Il 17.320)

10. [Zeus on Achilles:] …and now, when his heart is grieved and angered for his companion’s death, I fear against destiny he may storm their fortress. (Il 20.30)

11. When a man, in the face of divinity, would fight with another whom some god honours, the big disaster rolls sudden upon him. Therefore, let no Danaan seeing it hold it against me if I give way before Hektor, who fights from God. Yet if somewhere I could only get some word of Aias of the great war cry, we two might somehow go and keep our spirit of battle even in the face of divinity... (Il 17.98)

12. [Achilles:] For my mother Thetis the goddess of the silver feet tells me I carry two sorts of destiny toward the day of my death. Either, if I stay here and fight beside the city of the Trojans, my return home is gone, but my glory shall be everlasting; but if I return home to the beloved land of my fathers, the excellence of my glory is gone, but there will be a long life left for me, and my end in death will not come to me quickly. (Il 9.410)

13. [Hellenos to Hector:] Make the rest of the Trojans sit down, and all the Achaians, and yourself call forth one of the Achains, their bravest, to fight man to man against you in bitter combat. Since it is not your destiny yet to die and encounter fate. For thus I heard it in the speech of the gods everlasting. (Il 7.49)

14. [Menelaus:] I myself will arm against this man. While above us the threads of victory are held in the hands of the immortals. (Il 7.100)

15. [Priam to Helen:] Come over where I am, dear child, and sit own beside me, to look at your husband of time past, your friends and your people. I am not blaming you: to me the gods are blameworthy who drove upon me this sorrowful war against the Achaians. (Il 3.162)

16. [Agamemnon:] This is the word the Achaians have spoken often against me and found fault with me in it, yet I am not responsible but Zeus is, and Destiny, and Erynys the mist-walking who in assembly caught my heart in the savage delusion on that day I myself stripped from him the prize of Achilles. Yet what could I do? It is the god who accomplishes all things. (Il 19.850)

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