Fate, Jovian Omnipotence and the Walking Death of Sarpedon

Todd C. Clary (Cornell University)

Discussions about the opposition of fate and the omnipotence of Zeus in Homer, and by extension archaic Greek cosmology, almost invariably turn to the death of Sarpedon in Iliad 16. Here Zeus, in conversation with Hera, contemplates saving his son (433-8), but Hera warns that he should not circumvent fate (440-9). The standard conclusion gleaned from this interaction and Sarpedon’s subsequent death is that, while Zeus theoretically could override fate, he must comply with it to maintain order in his regime, not to mention the fabric of the epos.

I wish to add an important footnote to this interpretation by pointing out that a close reading of Iliad 5.696-8 reveals that Zeus has already resurrected Sarpedon once, and that he has literally been in a state of walking death for 11 books:

Ton d’ elipe psuche, kata d’ ophthalmōn kechut’ achlus
Autis d’ empnunthe, peri de pnoiā boreao
Zōgrei epipneiousa kakōs kekaphāota thumon.

A literal translation of these lines would read:

Then life breath left him and mist poured down on his eyes;
but he gasped in again, and the breath of Boreas breathing
took him as a living prisoner, even though he was in a wretched state of having coughed up his spirit.

Note that the compound verb Zōgrei usually translated here as revive (LSJ has a separate entry just for this passage), is unattested in Greek with this meaning, and in fact always means ‘to take a captive alive’ (zōon agreō). Also note the Hesychian gloss of kekaphe as tethneken which I take to preserve the original stative meaning of the perfect. Finally the vivid figura etymologica ‘breath of Boreas breathing’ with linking alliteration throughout the passage, emphasizes the point that henceforth Sarpedon will be breathing breath not his own.

Further parallels between the two deaths of Sarpedon invite close comparison. Tlepolemus is his killer in the first episode, while in the second episode he is the last one to die by Sarpedon’s spear before Patroclus in turn kills him. The scene in book 5 takes place in relative seclusion ‘under Zeus’ fair oak’ (693); when Sarpedon is slain in 16 he ‘falls like an oak’. Add to this that the narrative has already presumed the intervention of Zeus (662), and we see not only the agency of Zeus in both scenes, but the essential difference between the decision to artificially reanimate Sarpedon here and the refusal to continue to do so in book 16: the first action takes place silently and in private, the other would have been manifestly public and circumvented the words spoken in the conversation with Hera. We must then reformulate the view that Zeus, though he theoretically could alter fate, must not to preserve order, with the caveat that he actually is free and willing to bring his son back from the dead and keep him alive until it is spoken ‘in public’ that he has been fated to die. This buttresses the ancient connection between the spoken word and fate emphasized by the Greek formulation phēmēn phasthai ‘utter an omen’ and Latin fata fāri. Fundamentally, it brings into question whether there even existed any abstract notion of fate operating in Homer apart from the utterances of deities.