“Who Was the First, and Who the Last?”:
Counting the Named Victims of Homeric Warriors

Jonathan Fenno (University of Mississippi)

In this paper I shall investigate how many named victims are killed by individual warriors within the Iliad, exploring in particular the patterns behind those numbers and their apparent significance. One might reason that, since each casualty credited to an individual hero increases his glory, the total number of victims slain by him may function as a rough measure of his heroic stature in the poem. But in addition to such general considerations, the poem itself gives various indications that such numbers are important from a poetic perspective, especially since the Muse is sometimes involved (e.g., 11.218, 14.508, cf. 5.703). Furthermore, later authors such as Pindar (fr. 135) and Hyginus (fab. 114-15) show a similar interest in what might be called morbid statistics, giving evidence of a long tradition that can be traced back at least to the Iliad. The three heroes who slay by far the most men in the Iliad are Patroclus, his killer Hector, and his killer Achilles. Their own careers and deaths are intimately interconnected not only by the action, but also by the symbolic value of the number of prominent casualties which the poet has carefully chosen to assign them.

We begin with Patroclus, who goes on a killing rampage in Book 16. Soon before his death, Patroclus leads three attacks against Troy, but heeds Apollo's warning and does not try a fourth assault (16.702-11). However, shortly thereafter he makes three final attacks on the Trojans, killing nine anonymous men each time; but on the fourth attack he himself is slain (16.785). One cannot resist doing the math: three times nine is of course twenty-seven, or three to the third power. This number is extremely interesting, for several reasons. As suggested by this passage, it equals three times three thrice. And the number three is elsewhere in the poem treated as especially significant (as others have demonstrated at both the micro and macro levels). At this weighty moment, Patroclus' death, we also see a counting technique that the poem effectively employs elsewhere, namely, reaching a certain number and then failing to make the next one, or hesitating before doing so. For example, the Trojans hold off the Greeks for nine years, but in the tenth the city is fated to fall; this total is symbolically represented by a serpent that devours eight young birds and their mother as the ninth (2.295-329).

Patroclus’ feat of killing nine anonymous warriors three times draws attention to the number three as well as to its square, nine. Not only is nine a significant number elsewhere in the Iliad, but it also turns out to be an ideal compositional unit in terms of recounting named victims. Though the poet is not so explicit elsewhere as at the death of Patroclus, a little reckoning will show that Hector slays nine men in Books 5-7, nine in Books 11-13, and nine in Books 15-17, for a total of twenty-seven. (For a convenient catalogue of combat deaths, see the appendix to Lombardo’s translation.) Odysseus similarly dispatches nine named warriors in Books 4-6, and nine in Book 11, for a total of eighteen. In like manner, just before killing Hector, his final victim, Achilles slays nine named Trojans in Book 21 (neatly framed by the two passages 21.18-26 and 21.520-25, each of which refers to many anonymous victims and is enhanced by a simile). One could also compare Diomedes: after he is wounded by Pandarus in Book 5, his rage triples (5.136), and he slays nine more men within that book, including, as the last victim, the one who had shot him. Such persistent patterns cannot reasonably be attributed to chance. It would seem that the oral poet traditionally employed nine as a kind of mnemonic and artistic device, keeping track of the kills of major heroes and limiting them to that number in each section. Skeptics who doubt that a preliterate bard could or would want to manage such statistics as the poem unfolded must suppose that some literate poet exploited the art of writing to polish the work.

The issue becomes even more interesting once we realize that the total number of named men slain by Patroclus is twenty-seven. Under these circumstances, the reference to his killing three times nine unnamed men at 16.785 hardly seems random or accidental; it not only reveals a compositional technique used elsewhere in the poem, but it also serves as a kind of subtotal, strongly suggesting that the poet is quite aware of Patroclus’ total kills. Nor does it seem accidental that Hector also slays a total of twenty-seven named men in the Iliad. By this measure, at least, the two warriors earn comparable glory.

The total number of men killed by Achilles in the Iliad is problematic, but the most obvious count is twenty-four within the main narrative (excluding the Catalog of Ships and Pre-Iliadic exploits). However, this is not the only such catalog associated with the great hero, repeatedly referred to as ptoliporthos, "sacker of cities." As Achilles himself asserts, he has captured twelve cities by ship, and eleven on foot (9.328-29). The total of twenty-three is of course glaringly incomplete: by Homeric reckoning, twelve is a satisfyingly round number (examples abound), while eleven stands out as odd. The twelfth city taken by land would be Troy, but Achilles’ catalog of conquered cities is destined to remain out of balance, since he will die before the city falls. The poet does allow him, however, to take Troy at least figuratively in a brilliant simile: when Achilles kills Hector, all the Trojans begin to wail, as if the city itself had been destroyed (22.410). Hector stands for Troy, here and elsewhere, and when he falls as the twenty-fourth victim named since Achilles entered battle, the poet symbolically balances the accounts.