The Ambush of Achilles by Apollo and Agenor in the Iliad

Jonathan Fenno (University of Mississippi)

The Iliad shows a profound preoccupation with the death of its leading hero, which is predicted repeatedly, more than any other event, and with increasing intensity, accuracy, and clarity, but in the end is deferred for a later day. In addition to the many passages that forecast Achilles’ death in more or less direct terms, the event is also partially prefigured through the action, as will be argued in this paper, in an important but relatively neglected episode at the very end of the poem’s battle scenes, where the hero participates in a kind of virtual pre-enactment of his destiny just before he finally avenges Patroclus’ death on Hector, thus sealing his own doom. As Achilles ignores his mother’s warnings about Hector, and about Troy, as he drives the routed enemies into their city—creating concerns among gods and mortals that it will fall before fated—he is ambushed just outside the Scaean gates by Apollo and Agenor, who forecasts his death at this spot and then strikes him with a spear in the lower leg, a rare kind of blow. While scholars have focused on linking this episode to the one immediately following (Agenor's initially hesitant monologue resembles doubts expressed by Hector before his confrontation with Achilles), the scene as a whole, bridging Books 21 and 22, contributes more broadly to the growing impression that our hero will soon be ensnared by fate. In fact, the episode, which places a thematic emphasis on foot-speed (e.g., 21.557, 564, 601, 605; 22.8), concludes with the swift-footed hero’s complaint that Apollo has impeded him, or tripped him up (blaptô, 22.14-15). At this strategic point in the narrative, Achilles’ imminent death occupies the forefront of the poetic imagination, coloring as a sort of filter the conception and depiction of events.

Achilles’ assault on Troy ominously recalls verbatim Patroclus’ earlier attack (21.544=16.698, 21.545a=16.700a), which had led to his death at the hands of Apollo working in tandem with mortals. In fact, the god had asserted that neither Patroclus nor Achilles is fated to sack the city (16.707-9). Apollo’s lurking in the shadows is especially foreboding: he is covered in much mist (21.549), just as when he had attacked Patroclus from behind (16.790). The danger posed by Apollo’s lying in wait in Book 21 also recalls an ambush earlier set by Paris. Just as the divine protector and eventual impersonator of Agenor now leans invisibly against an oak (21.549), so too did Paris lean on a tombstone (11.371) when he shot Diomedes with an arrow in the foot and put an end to his battlefield career within the Iliad. Thus the two slayers of Achilles, god and mortal, assume an identical but otherwise unparalleled pose in separate scenes, each of which involves a unique shot at a lower leg. While the two earlier incidents might be said to anticipate the later one, each in its own way, at another level all three seem to represent proleptic variations on Achilles’ eventual death. At any rate, motifs shared by these three Iliadic episodes also happen to appear in Quintus’ account of Achilles’ death in the late Posthomerica.

The suggestion that Agenor functions in the ambush of Achilles as a kind of doublet for Paris/Alexander is supported by various considerations, including their vaguely similar names. While the second part of Alex-andros (“Valiant Defender of Men”) is reflected in Ag-ênôr (“Very Manly”), the first portion is featured as a leitmotif in Book 21 (21.138, 250; 528, 539, 548, 555, 572, 578, 586), where both Scamander/Xanthus, who assumes the appearance of a man (213), and Agenor attempt to defend the Trojan troops from Achilles in the total absence of Alexander. For instance, Agenor warns Achilles that he will perish before the city, as it has many valiant men (alkimoi aneres or “Alcanders”). To be clear, then, I am proposing that the poet, in summoning up a figure to play a supporting role analogous to that of a more important character, might readily resort to one with a similarly sounding name. Such composition by association, which finds a rough parallel in the Odyssey (e.g., Eurycleia, nurse of Odysseus, and Eurynome and Eurymedousa, nurses of Penelope and Nausicaa), appears to have influenced the collocation of Paris, Alcathous, and Agenor at 12.93, where both halves of Alexandros are echoed by the names of his two colleagues. Furthermore, to return to Book 21, valiant Agenor is compared to a valiant leopard (pardalis), an animal that may be considered emblematic of the Iliadic Paris, who rather extravagantly wore a pard’s skin at his first appearance (3.17). (Another doublet of Paris, Euphorbus, is also likened, negatively, to a leopard et al. by Menelaus at 17.20ff.) Incidentally, the association of pard and Paris is also supported by a similarity in sound: par(dal)is ≈ Paris.