Iliad, Homer - Bruce Heiden (essay date spring 1998)

Bruce Heiden (essay date spring 1998)

SOURCE: Heiden, Bruce. “The Simile of the Fugitive Homicide, Iliad 24.480-84: Analogy, Foiling, and Allusion.” American Journal of Philology 119, no. 1 (spring 1998): 1-10.

[In the following essay, Heiden emphasizes Homer's comparison of the supplicating Priam to a murderer seeking refuge as the thematically definitive moment in the Iliad.]

Homer elaborates “the most dramatic moment in the whole of the Iliad”1 with a unique, disturbing, and pathetic simile. Only in the scene of Priam's unheralded arrival in Achilles' lodging does the predicament of a murderer seeking refuge in a strange land ever provide the material for a Homeric illustration.

τοὺs δ' ἔλαθ' εἰσελθoν Πϱίαμοs μἐγαs, ἄγχι δ' ἄϱα στὰs
χεϱσὶν 'Αχιλλῆοs λάβε γούνατα aαὶ aύσε χεῖϱαs
δεινὰs ἀνδϱοϕόνουs,...

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