Human Suffering inflicted by Nature as Gods
Throughout the Iliad and the Odyssey, the gods enter the human realm in order to implement their desires for the outcome of particular events. However, they are careful to never appear in divine form, instead appearing in the likeness of specific characters or of various forces of nature. Homer’s construction of divine-mortal interaction consequently serves to engulf the receiver of divine benevolence in a natural shroud of self-conscious safety, while alternately evoking an intense devouring fear upon revelation of divine malevolence. The reader connects strongly to this latter experience especially when the god is manifested as a force of nature, which taps into an innate human sense of weakness in the face of raw natural power. The episode of the river Scamander assaulting Achilles is an eminent example of this, and the reflection of its precedence can be witnessed in Athena’s attack on Laocoon in the Aeneid through the use of twin serpents.
A sense of Achilles’ terrorized state is dramatically created through Homer’s masterful literary creation of vibrant imagery that enables the audience to place themselves at the scene of the event. This imagery is strengthened through word choice and hyperbole, as well as the use of similes and metaphors. Virgil imitates this technique in his tale of Laocoon, and makes the story even more compelling through his use of the narrative eyewitness account of Aeneas. In order to get an appropriate sense of the mechanisms used, as well as the psychological invocation of emotion, Homer’s passage is first shown:
The river attacked him with a rising flood,
stirring all his waters into seething turmoil,
sweeping up many corpses crowded in the shoals,
men slaughtered by Achilles. Roaring like a bull,
the river hurled these bodies up onto the shore,
preserving in its lovely stream those still alive
by hiding them in deep wide pools. Around Achilles, 290 [240]
huge waves towered threateningly, beating down
his shield. The breaking waters pushed him backwards.
Achilles lost his footing. His hand reached out to grab
a large elm tree, fully grown, but the tree came loose,
roots and all, tearing the whole river bank away.
As it fell in the river, its thick branches blocked
that lovely stream, damming its flow. In terror,
Achilles scrambled up out of the raging waters,
trying on his swift feet to run out to the plain.
But the great god wasn't done. With a dark wave, 300
he went after godlike Achilles, to prevent
the killing and to save the Trojans from destruction. [250]
Peleus' son ran off as far as one spear throw,
moving as fast as a black eagle plummets,
the hunting bird which is the strongest and the fastest
of all flying things—that's how Achilles ran.
The bronze armour on his chest was clanging fearfully
as he swerved out from underneath the flooding river,
desperate to escape. But with a tremendous roar,
Scamander's flood rushed on in pursuit behind him. 310
Just as a man laying out a ditch from a dark spring
to his plants and gardens digs a water channel,
mattock in hand, removing what obstructs the flow,
and the water, as it starts to run, pushes aside [260]
the pebbles, and then, gaining momentum, flows down
and overtakes the man who's guiding it—
that's how the flooding wave kept clutching at Achilles
for all his speed, since gods have much more strength than men.[1]
In this passage, the river is depicted as a quotidian force of nature that is extraordinarily directed with brutal power at Achilles in the hand of Scamander. The river “attacked him,” and “roaring like a bull” it continued “beating” him down until countered by Hephaestus. Homer makes it clear that a god’s wrath is the cause of this attack in the line “Scamander’s flood rushed on in pursuit behind him.” The evocation of intense imagery in the reader’s mind rivets him to the story. The reaction of Achilles is not surprising; he attempts to flee in “terror” from the great waves, but like in a dream when a victim cannot outrun his pursuer no matter how hard he tries, Achilles’ efforts to escape the river are futile. This is emphasized in the final extended simile that compares the river to the water that flows through a newly cleared ditch and cannot be stopped once it gains sufficient momentum. His helplessness is also reinforced through the idea that though he ran “as fast as a black eagle plummets,” Scamander successfully overtook him “since the gods have much more strength than men.”
The two primary themes of the force of nature in the hand of the gods and the terror and helplessness of the victim of that force are mirrored in Virgil’s account of the attack on Laocoon. The passage is as follows:
Laocoön, whom we'd elected by lot as Neptune's priest, Was sacrificing a great bull at the official altar, When over the tranquil deep, from Tenedos, we saw - Telling it makes me shudder - twin snakes with immense coils Thrusting the sea and together streaking towards the shore: Rampant they were among the waves, their blood red crests Reared up over the water; the rest of them slithered along The surface, coil after coil sinuously trailing behind them. We heard a hiss of salt spray. Next, they were on dry land, In the same field - a glare and blaze of bloodshot eyes, Tongues flickering like flame from their mouths, and the mouths hissing. Our blood drained away at the sight; we broke and ran. The serpents Went straight for Laocoön. First, each snake knotted itself Round the body of one of Laocoön's small sons, hugging him tight In its coils, and cropped the piteous flesh with its fangs. Next thing, They fastened upon Laocoön, as he hurried, weapon in hand, To help the boys, and lashed him up in their giant whorls. With a double grip round his waist and his neck, the scaly creatures Embrace him, their heads and throats powerfully poised above him. All the while his hands are struggling to break their knots, His priestly headband is spattered with blood and pitchy venom; All the while, his appalling cries go up to heaven - A bellowing, such as you hear when a wounded bull escapes from The altar, after it's shrugged off an ill-aimed blow at its neck. But now the twin monsters are gliding away and escaping towards The shrine of relentless Minerva, high up on our citadel, Disappearing behind the round of the goddess' shield, at her feet there.[1]
Like Homer’s account of the river, the snakes directed by Athena are depicted as horrific natural beings that are diabolically directed at Laocoon. They glare at their victims with “bloodshot eyes,” hiss “salt spray” and flicker their tongues “like flame” before they “embrace him” in the consummation of their assault. Virgil makes it implicitly clear that the snakes are directed by the divine Athena (Roman Minerva) as they escape “towards the shrine of relentless Minerva” to rest “at her feet.” Like with the waves in Homer, the reader’s knowledge of snakes in contradistinction with this unusual and infernal act creates a heightened fascination that binds them closer to the story. Laocoon instinctively tries to aid his sons, but his power fails under the divinely directed snakes as he is “spattered with blood and pitchy venom” and his “cries go up to heaven.” His physical trauma is crudely accentuated at the end of the passage with an extended simile comparing his heavenward bellowing with that of a wounded bull that has been hacked at the neck yet survives the incompetently implemented butchering and cries pitifully toward the sky.
The idea of nature assaulting mortals through the divine in the case of Laocoon can also be analyzed through the study of the Laocoon group, sculpted by the Greeks Athanadoros, Hagesandros, and Polydoros in the 1st century. According to the art historian J.J. Winckelmann, “Laocoon is a statue representing a man in extreme suffering who is striving to collect the conscious strength of his soul to bear it.”[1] Winckelmann considered the Laocoon sculpture to be one of the greatest of all Greek artworks. This is due not only to the beauty of its form but also because of profound pathos it conveys through the dramatic use of tension and expression.
Laocoon and His Sons - Athanadoros, Hagesandros, and Polydoros
The sculpture of Laocoon dramatically conveys the anguish and agony that he undergoes during the serpent attack in the Aeneid, as does Achilles in Scamander’s attack in the Iliad. The coils of the snake serve to confine and contract the figures that simultaneously try desperately to break free. The overpowering tension and stress in Laocoon are displayed through bursting muscles and enflamed veins that violently resist the strong grip of the serpents. Laocoon appears to realize his fate while simultaneously lamenting it. Instead of throwing his head in the air and screaming toward the eternal heavens,[2] he lifts his face to the sky in an expression of resigned agony as he gasps for his final forced breaths. His desperate expression and furrowed brow are framed by wildly tousled hair that gives the viewer opposing senses of both regality and helplessness that are echoed in the tension of the figure.
Detail of Laocoon’s face.
One of the serpents is poised to sink his venomous fangs into Laocoon’s hip as he vainly attempts to reel back and escape the fatal blow. This is balanced by a similar attack on the younger son to the viewer’s left of Laocoon. At the same time that the serpents try to inject death into the victims, they are poised to constrict the evanescent power from the torso of Laocoon and his younger son. The older son turns to him in a moment of terrible surprise and confusion, looking for impossible aid from his besieged father. He seems to realize that his fate is tied to that of his father, adding a dynamic sense of futility and struggle to the work as a whole. The physical and psychological presence of the work gives the viewer a visual aid to the imagination of the scene that complements and enhances the literary power of the passage.
BibliographyHomer, The Iliad. Trans. Ian Johnston, http://www.mala.bc.ca/~johnstoi/homer/iliad21.htm.Virgil, The Aeneid. Trans. C. Day Lewis, http://www.phespirit.info/places/2002_02_holysee_1.htm.J.J. Winckelmann, The History of Ancient Art. Trans. G. Henry Lodge (Boston: J.R. Osgood and company, 1880).[1] J.J. Winckelmann, The History of Ancient Art. Trans. G. Henry Lodge (Boston: J.R. Osgood and company, 1880). Vol. 2:230.
[2] This is the reaction given to him by Virgil in the Aeneid.
Back