When I was in the third grade, I was discussing global politics with some of my classmates. The Cold War was on and had heated up in Czechoslovakia, Vietnam, and elsewhere. None of us knew much about the Cold War or the Soviet Union, but of course that didn’t stop us from loudly declaiming on it. “What we should do,” said Randy Parker, “is take our biggest guy and their biggest guy and put them on some island alone together and let them fight it out.”
We nodded, impressed. This passed for serious wisdom at age 8.
So this chapter, in which the battle-weary Trojans and Achaeans agree to a fight between champions, makes a certain kind of elementary schoolyard sense.
But really, neither Randy Parker’s nor Hector’s proposal of single man-to-man combat is remotely rational. If Johnny beats Ivan, would the Soviets really just say OK, we give up? If Ivan beats Johnny, would the Americans really just content themselves to Soviet rule?
That’s why this chapter is so familiar and yet so frustrating. The whole battle-of-the-champions thing is NOT set up to settle the Trojan War. It’s staged for the amusement of the gods, who as an afterthought feebly try to justify it by observing that at least the mass battlefield slaughter will stop for a day. In other words, it’s intended as entertainment. I half-expected Athena and Ares to set up a Mount Olympus office betting pool on the outcome.
Maybe that’s Homer’s point: it’s just as senseless for the Achaean army to battle the Trojan army as it is for Ajax to battle Hector.
A subplot about morale issues in the Achaean army gets some attention here. They’ve been at war for nine years with nothing to show for it. So when big brave bold beautiful Hector issues his challenge to fight a single Achaean soldier, the Achaean army just consults its footwear. Only when Nestor, the old Achaean soldier, calls them out do volunteers come forward.
Nestor’s speech could be read as a call to honor. But it could also be read by more cynical types (who, me?) as another instance of old men urging young men to go off to die in pointless wars.
So the battle begins—and I have to say, Homer’s at the top of his game in describing the fighters and their combat. But then—spoiler alert!—there’s a major anticlimax. Ajax gets Hector on the ropes and is about to finish him off when Apollo swoops in, picks Hector up, and declares the battle over. Miraculously, everyone is OK with this ambiguous ending. Hector and Ajax hug it out and exchange gifts. It seems like no matter what the gods do, the mortals in this story (Diomedes excepted) are cool with it.
Then Homer returns to another subplot, namely, how Paris touched off this whole pointless war by abducting Helen. The Trojan leaders, desperate to stave off defeat, suggest to Paris that he give back all the plunder he took from the Achaeans, including Helen.
Paris says he’ll give back the booty–just not Helen’s booty.
Sheesh.
I could understand this if there was any real indication that Paris was deeply in love with Helen and couldn’t live without her. But Paris seems to love no one except himself.
I could even understand this if there was some indication that Helen was a sexual dynamo with a magic pussy. But all she seems to do is sit around moping and cursing the day she was born, which is not very sexy at all, really.
And so the chapter ends with both sides taking advantage of the tenuous lull in the fighting to bury their dead.
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