Brief Intermission: Funeral Games
...in The Aeneid serve as diversion from calamity and anguish for both the characters and the readers. In The Iliad, after the horrid bloodshed against the Trojans, the funeral games serve as a light relief from an arduous battle. As for Aeneas and his men in The Aeneid, after a long defeat and weary travels, they are thrown off course by the gods and as well take part in the interlude of funeral games. For both poems, the games were a time to commemorate a loved one through their feasting and healthy sporty competitions. The games still convey the competitive edge of these warriors: “You’re big on insults, Ajax, but short on brains/ And stubborn, which is why you’re such a loser. /Why don’t we bet something, a tripod or cauldron” (Iliad, Book 23, lines 502-504), without the cravings for bloodshed and annihilation. The games are mainly physical competitions of games, rather than lives. Though Virgil borrows this idea of funeral games from Homer, he places the games and the reasons for them in quite a different context than Homer. The funeral games for Patroculus are found near the end of Homer’s epic whit the funeral games for Anchises are near the beginning of the poem in Virgil’s poem. In The Iliad, Patroculus appears to Achilles in a dream pleading him to “bury [him] quickly/ So [he can] pass through Hades’ gates” (Iliad, Book 23, lines 76-77). The funeral games in Homer’s epic occur shortly after the burial of Patroculus. However, in Virgil’s poem, Aeneas holds the funeral games in memory of his father one year after “his ashes and his bones” have already been buried (Aeneid, Book 5, line 4). Differences in the placements of these funeral games can perhaps be attributed to their different functions according to the plot of the poems. Patroculus’ death occurs near the end of The Iliad and is perhaps a climactic event. It is thus the death of Patroculus that stirs the outrage in Achilles and brings about Hector’s death. Thus, the funeral games can be said to function as an integral event in the poem. Throughout the epic Homer offers us a selfish, prideful, and impulsive Achilles. Even after the death of his friend Patroculus, he does not let down his pride to honor Hector’s dead corpse: “Hear me, Patroculus, even from Hades All that I promised you I am completing now. Twelve Trojans, sons of good families, The fire consumes with you. Hector, though, I will not give to the fire to eat, but to dogs” (Iliad, Book 23,lines 195-199) However, by the very end, Achilles shows relent and sympathy when Hector’s father, Priam, comes to plea for his son’s dead body: “Your son is released, sir, as you ordered. /He is lying on a pallet” (Iliad, Book 23, lines 646-647). Homer writes of wars and warriors, yet ends his epic with the emphasis on the heart of a warrior. Achilles, a temperamental and wrathful warrior, is by the end softened and succumbed by pity. It is as if the light-heartedness of the funeral games prepares the readers for Achilles’ change of heart. The funeral games serve as somewhat of a midpoint between these two peak events of change in Achilles. Overwhelmed by grief for the death of his friend, he holds a burial then the funeral games in his honor, and soon enough ...