Chapter 4, Section 2. PATROKLOS AT THE THRESHOLD

The type-scene for Visitation—describing the Arrival, Recognition, Greeting and Entertainment of a Guest—is among the most basic patterns in the formulaic inventory of the Homeric poems; and unsurprisingly so, since it encodes a praxis institutionalized (even ritualized) within Greek society itself.  As Edwards has shown, building on the work done by Arend in his early and influential Die Typischen Scenen bei Homer,the pattern of Visitation amounts to an elaboration of elements within a more generic type of scene, to which Arend gives the name Arrival (Ankunft).  It encompasses in turn a well-defined set of discrete narrative units that allow for a certain amount of variation within a fixed syntagmatic order. The complete pattern runs as follows:

§49
 (a) a Visitor stands at the entrance
 (b) someone (generally the Host) sees him
 (c) the Host gets up from his seat
 (d) the Host takes his hand and greets him
 (e) the Host conducts him inside
 (f)  the Host offers him a seat (usually in a place of honor)
 (g) food and drink are served
 (h) conversation ensues

Each of these elements, with the exception of §49(g)-(h), which can themselves be expanded into full-fledged Bath and/or Feast scenes,  generally fills no more than a single verse. The same is true of the entire sequence §49(d)-(f), which often appears as the formula and took him by the hand, led him in and told him to sit down (Il.11.646;778, Od.3.35). The offer of food at §49(g) generally allows for the greatest expansion, and may range from an almost cursory mention—e.g. and properly set out hospitality, as is the guest's right (Il.11.779), in which the final gnomic hemistich (6X, 4X) explicitly marks what precedes it as the "zero degree" of Hospitality, so to speak —to elaborate descriptions of the utensils and their setting, the preparation and serving of the meal.

In his 1975 study, Edwards charts the wide range of variations—in the form of omission, juxtaposition, condensation and expansion—admissable in this specific pattern and in those of Arend's more comprehensive types, with a view towards resolving apparent "inconsistencies" in the text of Homer. Insufficient attention has been paid, however, to a less common but significant divergence from the pattern of Visitation. The arrival of a Visitor at another's home follows the fixed and predictable syntax outlined in §49 only when (as in most cases) the Host's offer of entertainment is indeed welcomed and accepted. When it is not—in a narrative pattern that I will call Hospitality Declined—the regular sequence of elements is interrupted and issues are raised that are represented as far more compelling than the social and religious obligations that bind Guest and Host together.

The simplest instance of Hospitality Declined in the poems, and the one that most closely conforms to the sequence charted above, occurs in Book 11 of the Iliad. Patroklos has been sent by Akhilleus to discover the identity of the wounded soldier whom Akhilleus saw rush by in a chairot (Il.11.607-15). On his errand, he arrives at Nestor's tent (644-52):

§50
 (a) And Patroklos stood, godlike man, in the doorway.
 (b-c) Seeing him, the old man rose from his shining chair,
 (d-f) took him by the hand, led him in and told him to sit down,
 (*) but Patroklos from the other side declined, and said:
 (*) "No chair, old man nurtured by Zeus; you won't persuade me.
 (*) Honored and quick to find fault is he who sent me to learn
 (*) who this wounded man was you were bringing. Now I myself
 (*) know, and I see it is Makhaon, shepherd of the people.
 (*) Now I go back as messenger to tell Akhilleus."

 The sequence proceeds as far as Nestor's formulaic insistence that his guest take a seat (=§49[f]), at which point its normal course is interrupted when Patroklos turns the offer down. Asterisks mark the divergent elements in §50, resulting in the following schematic pattern for Hospitality Declined:

§51
(a) a Visitor stands at the entrance
(b)  someone (generally the Host) sees him
(c)  the Host gets up from his seat
(d)  the Host takes his hand and greets him
(e) the Host conducts him inside
(f)  the Host offers him a seat (usually in a place of honor)
(*g) address-formula indicating the Visitor's Refusal
(*h) the Visitor declines the offer of a seat (= Refusal to Sit)
(*i) he Visitor gives a reason for refusing (= Haste to Depart)

The Visitor's Refusal to Sit (§51[*h]) characterizes all other instances of this alternate type-scene in the poems, and in fact amounts to the formulaic "switch" or "pivot" on which Visitation turns into Hospitality Declined. Consider the scene (Il.23.198-211) in which the messenger Iris rejects a similar invitation from Zephyros and Boreas at the House of the Winds. Although this passage lacks the complete set of elements listed above (§§49/51), its conformity to the basic pattern of {Arrival at the Threshold}—{Recognition}—{Rise of the Host}—{Request to Sit}—{Refusal} is clear (Il.23.201-07):

§52
 (a)  ...and Iris stopped running and stood
 (a-b) on the stone sill; but when their eyes saw her,
 (c/f) all sprang to their feet, and each asked her to sit beside him.
 (*) But she in turn refused to sit, and she said:
 (*) "No chair; for I'm going back to the streams of Ocean
 (*) and the Aithopians' land, where they perform hekatombs
 (*) to the immortals, so that I too can partake of the sacrifices."

Three other scenes also merit consideration here, no less for the issues they raise than the responsion they exhibit. On his way to visit Andromakhe in Iliad 6, Hektor turns aside to enter the house of Alexandros; he pauses at the door of their room (Il.6.318-19) and rebukes the coward for hanging back from the fight, a charge his brother does not dispute. The latter urges him to wait until he has armed himself for battle (340) but Hektor does not reply.  Helen then contributes some famous words of her own by way of self-reproach, and concludes by offering Hektor the hospitality of a seat: But come now, enter and sit on this chair (354 = §51[f]). His response is to decline ( Il.6.360-63):

§53
 (*h) "Don't make me sit, Helen, though you love me. You won't persuade me.
 (*i) For already my heart is hastening to defend
 (*) the Trojans, who long for me greatly in my absence."

Hektor's refusal here is preceded some one hundred lines earlier by an essentially similar scene in his father's palace (Il.6.242-68).  There he is met by his mother Hekabe, who in a formulaic line (6X, 5X) clings to his hand and addresses him (253). Her subsequent offer is not of a seat but rather of wine—But stay while I bring you honey-sweet wine (258)—which he declines on the ground that to drink it would make him "forgetful of strength and courage" (cf. Il.22.282) and thus deflect him from his present aim (Il.6.264-68):

 §54
 (*h) "Lift me no honeylike wine, honored mother,
 (*i) lest you unnerve me, and I forget strength and courage.
 (*) To pour bright wine to Zeus with unwashed hands
 (*) would shame me; a man cannot pray to the dark-misted
 (*) son of Kronos if he is spattered with blood and mire."

 Finally, the same overall pattern informs Priam's initial refusal to sit and dine with Akhilleus in Iliad 24. Here Akhilleus' offer echoes Helen's in Book 6—But come, sit down upon this chair (Il.24.522; cf. 6.354 = §51[f])—and the old man's response is cast in much the same language used then by Hektor (Il.24.553-56):

§55
 (*h/i) "Don't make me sit on a chair, Zeus-nurtured one, while Hektor
 (*) lies abandoned among the shelters, but quickly
 (*) give him back, so my eyes may see him; and accept the ransom
 (*) we bring you, which is great."

....

More important than responsion at the level of line or phrase, however, are the narrative features these passages share in common. To begin with, in two scenes (§§50/52) the Arrival of the Visitor comes during the course of a meal already in progress. This is a fairly common occurrence, of course; it is frequently the case that a newcomer's appearance on the scene coincides with the performance of some ritual—feast (Od.1), sacrifice (Od.3), wedding celebration (Od.4), council meeting (Od.7) or ordinary mealtime activities (passim)—and this coincidence is worth brief comment. Whatever its extranarrative history and function, it is likely that the ceremonial context serves on the one hand, and within the tale itself, to identify the Host by displaying the kinds of rituals that define him. It situates him within a certain cultural and moral horizon, which can range from the urbane civility of the Spartan court (Od.4) to the inhospitable violence encountered in the Kyklops' cave (Od.9). One indeed thinks here especially of how prominent an issue this identity is in the Odyssey, where the character of each new potential Host is of no small concern to the traveller—Are they outlaws, savages without justice? Or kind to strangers, with a godfearing disposition? (Od.13.201-02; cf. 6.119-26, 9.172-76). On the other hand, participation in ritual is also the primary means whereby the Vistor first becomes assimilated; it helps negotiate his transition from Alien to Guest. The formulaic gestures of Offering and Accepting Hospitality both symbolize and practically effect his inclusion into the host community.

The appearance of Patroklos at Nestor's tent is preceded by the lengthy description (Il.11.618-43) of the return there of Nestor and Makhaon shortly beforehand, along with their ensuing entertainment and conversation. It could be argued that his Refusal of Hospitality is partly motivated here by narrative constraints, on the ground that the repetition of two meal scenes back to back within such a short space of verse would be tedious or awkward. This claim is not especially convincing, for reasons to be taken up presently. Iris likewise visits the house of Zephyros while the Winds are engaged in feasting, a fact indicated by a single line (Il.23.200-01)—again, an instance of a type-scene in its "zero degree." This is not true of Hektor's brief visit with his brother (§53), since his arrival merely interrupts routine domestic chores: Helen supervising the weaving, Paris toying idly with his bow (Il.6.321-24). The scene between Priam and Akhilleus in Iliad24 is remarkable in a number of respects that have been studied closely elsewhere.  For our purposes here it is enough to note that his arrival coincides with the end of a meal (whose preparation has not been described) enjoyed by Automedon and Alkimos (Il.24.471-76), but in which Akhilleus himself has not taken part.

Far more pertinent than any alleged desire on the storyteller's part to avoid repetition of meal scenes in too close proximity to each other—for after all, he was presumably under no constraint to serve dinner before the new Guest arrives—is the latter's function in each of these passages, along with the contrast of priorities revealed by his refusal to be entertained. The Visitor in all cases examined above in fact appears in the role of Messenger. With respect to Patroklos (§50), Iris (§52) and Priam (§55), each has been explicitly dispatched by someone else on an official mission (cf. Il.11.608-15, 23.192-99, 24.143-59;173). Hektor himself is under no special injunction to visit Paris (§53)—he merely drops in on his way to see Andromakhe—though both his rebuke of Alexandros (Il.6.324-31) and his response to Helen's Offer to Sit (360-62) make his own sense of mission quite clear. This suggests that the passages in question represent "mixed" types such as those studied by Edwards, namely the condensation of Arend's Arrival (Ankunft) + Visitation (Besuch) with Messenger (Botschaft) scenes. The initial sequence for "Simple Arrival" or Einfache Ankunft ({Setting Out—Arrival—Encounter}) + Besuch (§49[1-5]) proceeds as far as the Offer and Refusal of Hospitality, at which point the scene coalesces with the standard pattern for Botschaft. Here, in its purest form, the appearance of the Messenger is followed immediately by (1) his standing beside the addressee (not "at the threshold"), and (2) the delivery of the message, after which—with or (rarely) without the response of the addressee—(3) the Messenger departs.

This modulation—or better: this juxtaposition, given the abruptness of the shift between types—serves in each instance to focus attention on a conflict of priorities, thus highlighting the purpose by which the Visitor is motivated. For Hospitality Declined is in every case motivated by an equally formulaic expression of the Visitor's Haste to Depart (§51[*i]). The Offer to Sit is always refused in the interest of values deemed higher than the social obligation of allowing oneself to be entertained, and so a fortiori more urgent than the social and religious values that structure the relation between Host and Guest. Hektor's loyalty to the defense of Troy (§53), outlined more sharply by contrast with his brother's idleness, and no less explicit in his refusal of wine from Hekabe (§54); Patroklos' mission (§50) to report the identity of the wounded soldier to Akhilleus; the appeal of Iris to the Winds (§52) in response to Akhilleus' prayer, when the pyre of Patroklos will not burn and release him to death; the desperate dignity of Priam (§55), who will not sit with his son's killer while Hektor's corpse lies unattended and unburied, though he has only just (Il.24.477-79) kissed those murderous hands—all these scenes throw critical values into high relief, revealing commitments and duties from whose fulfillment nothing can deter the Visitor.

In three of the five passages now under review, these prior obligations are immediately honored. Hektor turns from Alexandros and Helen with no less resolve than he left his mother moments earlier, and goes on his way, while Hekabe hastens to offer prayer to Athene (Il.6.286-310) and Paris for once shakes off his erotic sloth and prepares to return to the battlefield (503-19). Iris speaks briefly and departs, and the Winds leap up from their seats to do her bidding (Il.23.212-16). In Priam's case, the higher values of reconciliation and forgiveness—more urgent than hatred, much harder to learn— require that he finally yield to Akhilleus' offer, and sit to dine with him. Despite his initial Refusal, the demands of Hospitality must prevail. Only through their participation in the ritual meal can any true healing come about.

With Patroklos (§49), however, the situation is markedly different. On the one hand, his Refusal to accept Hospitality— specifically, his decline of the Offer to Sit—is ostensibly honored by Nestor. In the absence of contrary indications, we must imagine that he remains standing throughout the monologue that ensues. On the other hand, the alleged urgency of his need to be on his way (Il.11.649-52) is ignored by his Host. Rather than being allowed to turn quickly and leave—as are Hektor (§§53-54) and Iris (§52)—Patroklos is detained an inordinate length of time from returning to Akhilleus by what amounts to Nestor's most extensive monologue (Il.11.655-803) in the poems, namely his tale of the cattle-raid against the Eleians, and his visit (along with Odysseus) to the house of Peleus, followed by his famous advice to Patroklos concerning Akhileus' armor.

This scene is worth considering in detail,  especially as it represents a striking instance of what the previous chapter identified as Ironic Mediation. Its narrative background is familiar. Book 11 of the Iliad recounts the steady reversal of Greek fortunes in the war. Agamemnon's aristeiain the first two hundred and fifty lines, though initially successful, stalls when he is hit by a spear cast by Antenor's son Koön (Il.11.248-54). Though the latter is killed in the exchange that follows, the wound soon compels Agamemnon to retire from the fighting (264-83); and his withdrawal marks the sign from Zeus—as conveyed to Hektor by Iris—that the Trojans will now enjoy power to prevail until they reach the Akhaian ships and the sun goes down (187-94 = 202-09). Their onslaught is temporarily checked when Diomedes and Odysseus both rally against them. Diomedes, however, is soon forced to retreat when struck by Alexandros' arrow (369-400); and Odysseus, sustaining a wound to the ribs, must be rescued by Menelaos and Aias (428-88). In the ensuing skirmish, the physician Makhaon is hit (502-20)—his conveyance off the field by Nestor forming a bridge to the scene in which Patroklos pays a visit to his tent—then Eurypylos (575-95), and Aias himself is beaten back into the ranks of his men. At this point, the narrative shifts to Akhilleus' perspective from high on the stern of his ship, as he watches Nestor rush by in a chariot, conveying someone off the battlefield. Patroklos answers his summons from inside the shelter—an action marked by the editorial prolepsis and this was the beginning of evil for him (604)—and is dispatched by Akhilleus to discover the wounded man's identity.

Arriving at Nestor's tent (§49), he finds him enframed in a tableau of domestic ritual: at table with Makhaon, served by his attendant Hekamede, engaged in the pleasure of talk over wine, pale honey, bread and onion (618-44). The curious fact that the physician, hurt seriously enough to require being taken out of battle (502-15), can nonetheless now enjoy a hearty meal without any apparent discomfort, has long been characterized as inconsistent;  and other elements in this and surrounding passages have likewise raised suspicions. The entire sequence of events—from the initial wounding of Makhaon (502) through Akhilleus' summons and Patroklos' visit (599-654), the old man's so-called Nestoris (655-803) and Patroklos' encounter with Eurypylos at the end of the book (806-48)—is indeed a troubled one in many respects, and has led some to brand the whole scene as a late interpolation.

Here as elsewhere, however, and despite whatever problems of motivation may exist at the level of the narrative, a functional approach will yield the best results, taking its lead from Wilamowitz' observation (1920:200) that Machaon’s sole purpose in the narrative is to occasion Patroklos’ visit to Nestor.  From this perspective, two interrelated questions need to be addressed; the first relatively easy to answer, the other somewhat more complex. Precisely why—and why precisely now—must Patroklos be sent to Nestor's tent by Akhilleus? And why is it specifically to Nestor rather than to some other character that Patroklos is sent?

To begin with, he is sent by an Akhilleus whose curiosity about the name of a wounded man implies anxiety that undercuts the firmness of his resolve to stay out of battle (cf. Il.16.17-19, 18.6-14).  This is in fact the first we have seen of the Hero since the close of Book 9, in which his final words to the embassy state his expectation to remain aloof until Hektor slaughters his way as far as the Myrmidonian encampment (Il.9.650-55):

§56
For I will not think again of bloody fighting
until brilliant Hektor, son of wise Priam
reaches the Myrmidons' ships and shelters,
killing the Argives and burning the ships with fire.
But around my own shelter and black ship
I think Hektor will be held, though hot for battle.

The interpretation that Diomedes puts on this message when it is delivered to the Council of leaders at the end of the same book (697-703)—that the offer of gifts has only stiffened Akhilleus' pride—concludes with the advice that the best plan is simply to ignore him, for he will fight again, whenever his heart in his breast urges him and the god impels (702-03). The scene two books later, where Akhilleus eagerly watches the steep work and sorrowful tumult (Il.11.601) of war from the deck of his ship, betrays the first signs of just such an urge; though the compulsion here has its ultimate source in no god's hand, but rather in that of the narrator himself. For the Hero's understanding of what he has seen leads him to think that the moment has arrived when the Greeks will supplicate him to return (Il.11.608-15):

§57
Splendid son of Menoitios, delight to my heart,
now I think the Akhaians will stay at my knees
in supplication, for an unendurable need has come upon them.
But go now, Patroklos beloved of Zeus, ask Nestor
who is this wounded man he brings out of battle.
From behind, at least, he looked in every way like Makhaon,
son of Asklepios, but I did not see the man's face,
since the horses racing ahead passed on by me.

Akhilleus' anticipation in lines 608-10 has been condemned on the ground that it ignores the Embassy of Book 9; or conversely, and with wider consensus, taken as evidence that Book 9 was a later addition to the "original" poem; and the scholarly response from some quarters has been to point out that the ambassadors do not actually get down on their knees to beg the hero.  This is hardly convincing. What is worth attending to here is the apparent abruptness—even awkwardness—with which Akhilleus proposes that Patroklos visit Nestor. Despite the fact that the basis for his proposal has been laid some one hundred lines earlier (Il.11.504-06) in the description of Makhaon's wounding, the transition between his reading of the situation (608-10) and his request to Patroklos (611-15) still seems sudden, almost a non sequitur. Can the fate of one doctor really be worth so much to the Greek war-effort that the injury to Makhaon can represent for Akhilleus an "unendurable need" that has smitten all the Akhaians?

As in other scenes already discussed, the logical gap between these two parts of his speech—symbolized by the inconsequential nature of this casualty —in fact exposes a rift between narrative levels, namely between the concrete tale and the abstract story that guides its progress. Makhaon's wound is exaggerated, nothing a good breakfast of bread, honey, onion and wine won't cure. The relation between what Akhilleus sees and what he is made to conclude from it is disproportionate, and can only be explained in terms of a disjunction between narrative motivation and the function it is meant to serve in the advancement of the story.

So much for both why and why now Patroklos is sent on his innocent errand—that is, as far as it is possible to account for any poet's choice of means and moment; ultimately, one can only acknowledge it and assess its plausibility in terms dictated by shifting verisimilitude. Diomedes' confidence at the end of Book 9 (Il.9.707-09) has proved groundless, thanks to the Plan of Zeus. The foremost warriors among the Akhaians have been wounded (Agamemnon, Diomedes, Odysseus)—and in this respect, the injury that Makhaon sustains may indeed legitimately symbolize the failure of their collective resistance. The others (Aias) are in dire straits; and Hektor ineluctably approaches the wall he will finally breach at the end of Iliad 12. It is time to prepare for Akhilleus' Return, now that the conditions of his claim in Book 9 (§56) seem on the verge of fulfillment; hence his inference—or wish?—at 607-09 in Book 11.  Precisely why that Return entails that another be led Nestor's tent must now be asked.

Why another goes, and not Akhilleus himself, has been addressed convincingly by Pedrick (1983). Her analysis of Nestor's tale of his own heroism in the Pylian border war with the Epeians (Il.11.670-761) focuses on the degree to which that account takes the traditional shape of an epic aristeia. With only slight variation, it exhibits most of the basic elements and formal conventions that characterize the narrated exploits of prominent fighters (Diomedes, Agamemnon, Patroklos, Hektor, Akhilleus) elsewhere in the Iliad, from his initial triumph over named opponents to his break of the enemy lines and wholesale rout of their troops.  Even more, his feats in fact eclipse those of his younger peers—or at least they do so in this telling.  The epic inflation that marks his account—specifically, his claim (746-48) to have killed fifty pairs of men in chariots, while the best anyone else can manage in the Iliadis to dispatch but three (Il.11.93;102;127)—will concern us shortly. What is important to note here is Pedrick's assessment (1983:66) of the part played by Nestor's tale within the development of Book 11 as a whole:

. . . just when the Greeks need a champion to step forth, when Aias and Eurypylos must retire, an aristeia occurs. A brilliant young warrior embraces his people's need and completely routs the enemy. It is a moment of grim irony, for we are not on the Trojan battlefield, but in the quiet of a tent, listening to an old man's voice. His aristeia is intoxicating, but it only underscores how desperate the Greeks' plight is. Their one victorious moment that day is there, their hope of relief as fleeting as the past. . . .

The ironic value of this movement from battlefield to shelter is especially significant because of the shift it represents from the sphere of action to that of speech, from direct experience to memory. Diegesis yields to mimesis —albeit to the mimesis of yet another diegetic act—and ergonis displaced into mythos. For just when the need is greatest, the tale of Akhaian misfortunes in war turns back on itself, so to speak, to its narrative origins—namely back to the paradigmatic function that tales of the valorized past aim to fulfill on every occasion of performance in "traditional" communities. At a moment of Crisis, formulaic narrative negotiates this shift, taking form in the words of an old man endowed with lucid speech, poetlike, from whose lips the voice ran sweeter than honey (Il.1.248-49). Immediacy recedes, and the narration of the past assumes again its undisputed value as the pattern in whose form the present should unfold. A welter of confusions relaxes its grip, giving way to an ancient tale told in the still space of a tent amid the simple objects and gestures of domestic ritual; what emerges thereafter is refigured and informed with new purpose. So he spoke, and stirred the feeling in the other's breast (Il.11.804). What ultimately stirs Patroklos is the vision of a bygone aristeia wholly constructed by words; its events—along with the values they embody—give shape to his present situation and suggest a course for future action.

Moreover, this shift also highlights the enframing tale's own status quanarrative. The strategy here is one of doubling or surrogation, and operates at a number of closely interwoven levels. In lieu of an act of heroism to rescue the Greeks from the brink, we find instead the mythos of a similar act, in the form of the so-called Nestoris. The relation between the main storyteller and his audience is thus mirrored in the narrative itself, as an agent within the tale becomes the addressee of another tale that purports to show him how his own life's tale should unfold. The fact that scholarship has so often been tempted to treat the Nestoris as an "independent" or "interpolated" epic lay —whatever the merits of that argument—at least implicitly acknowledges this mirroring of the frame-narrative in its embedded story. For in terms of performative situation, general content, horizon of values and even formulaic style,  Nestor's tale replicates that of the principal narrator. Moreover, it should be noted that Nestor's rhetorical credentials and authority as a narrator in his own right, especially as one whose advice deserves attention and approval, have already been obliquely established in the course of the biographical identification of the servant Hekamede, whom the Akhaians after sacking Tenedos gave Nestor because he always surpassed all others in counsel (Il.11.627). It remains to be considered at the conclusion of this chapter whether this mirroring also extends to the effect each story has on its respective audience.

At the same time, of course, this surrogation is also thematic to the tale of the Iliad itself. For in place of Akhilleus, whom Pedrick has shown is the proper addressee of Nestor's paradigm, it is instead Patroklos who hears and responds to its message (1983:67-68):

Achilles senses that Nestor's emergence from battle signifies a grave crisis and, he imagines, another appeal for his help. . . . But the appeal was not to be as Achilles imagined it; the Greeks are not coming to him in supplication. Once they sent Phoinix with the gloomy lesson of Meleager, but now Nestor is waiting in his tent with an exhortation. . . . Achilles misses this truth, for he does not go to hear it himself but sends his best friend. Patroklos goes and learns the lesson meant for someone else. . . . When the appeal Achilles expected finally comes, it is simply a choice from Patroklos: relent and go yourself, or send me.

At this point begins the doubling that will finally result in Patroklos' impersonation of Akhilleus in Iliad 16; the significance of the moment is marked by the proleptic editorial comment and this was the beginning of evil for him (Il.11.604). I have also suggested that this shift in agency appears to coincide with—or at least seems causally related to, perhaps metaphoric of—an equivalent detour made by the course of the narrative itself in Book 11 from battlefield to shelter, action to mythos. Before tracing out this path in any further detail, however, it will be best to retrace our steps a little and stand with Patroklos at the threshold of the old man's tent.

Here we rejoin our earlier discussion of the conventional patterns of Hospitality and its variant, Hospitality Declined. Though he initially turns down the Offer to Sit and be entertained (§50[*g]-[*h]), Patroklos is nonetheless detained by Nestor's longest reminiscence in the poem. The tale of his splendid aristeia at Pylos (Il.11.670-762) eventually comes full circle to recall his arrival once at the house of Peleus while the latter was performing sacrifice to Zeus (765-79):

§58
My child, this is certainly what Menoitios told you
on the day he sent you from Phthia to Agamemnon.
The two of us, brilliant Odysseus and I, were there inside
and listened carefully to everything he said in the halls.
For we had come to the strongly built house of Peleus
mustering troops throughout fertile Akhaia.
There we then found Menoitios the hero inside,
and you, and Akhilleus beside you; and the aged horseman  Peleus
was burning fat thighs of an ox to Zeus who loves to thunder,
in the enclosure of the courtyard. He was holding a gold tankard
and tipping out bright wine over the burning sacrifice.
You two were attending to the ox's meat, and we two then
came and stood at the threshold. Akhilleus rose up in wonder,
took us by the hand and led us in, and told us to sit down,
and set hospitality properly before us, as is the guest's right.

This passage is worth quoting in full if only for the richness of its details. Somewhat like the Beggar in the Odyssey, whose speeches enumerate particulars that lend an aura of credibility to what he says, Nestor recalls with special vividness the circumstances of his visit once to Phthia. At the same time, and unlike the Beggar's words, the representation here is more generic than unique. Its particulars—the courtyard, burning fat, the gold vessel, poured wine, both the stance and activity of the various characters present—all coalesce into a ritual, stylized scene of Sacrifice and Hospitality.  Nestor's entire speech is structured by ring-composition, beginning (Il.11.655-69) with reference to Akhilleus, and rounding off the Nestoris by returning to mention the Hero again (762-64). This has been noted before;  what has not been duly emphasized, however, is that the closing of this ring also intersects two different narrative levels—namely primary and secondary ("mimetic") diegesis—in the repetition of line 646 in line 778. The responsion here is exact, with Nestor's rising up to take Patroklos by the hand when he first appears (as related by the principal narrator) echoed in Akhilleus' reaction to Nestor in the old man's own (embedded) narrative: and took {him/us} by the hand, led {him/us} in and told {him/us} to sit down. In this respect, the details and circumstances of Nestor's recollection of Phthia more immediately and more properly recall those of the scene that Patroklos himself interrupts when he arrives at the old man's tent (Il.11.618-44) to find Nestor and Makhaon at table over sweet honey, wine, bread and onion. The bridge between heroic mythos and its performative situation is therefore literally built on the formulaic gesture with which a Visitor is received (§49[d]-[f]). Moreover, the traditional grip of that gesture is evident in the tag-line and set hospitality properly before us, as is the guest's right (779), which marks what was earlier described as the "zero degree" of Hospitality—the abbreviated reference to a panoply of familiar, ritual acts whose particulars the audience can easily supply for itself on the basis of its own direct experience, as well as its experience through narratives.

This formulaic bridge unfolds within the space of Hospitality (§49[h]). Across it, the tale of exemplary glory in the Nestoris moves next to recollection of Menoitios' charge to Patroklos to protect the young Akhilleus when they are at Troy (785-90):

§59
But Menoitios, Aktor's son, spoke to you in turn as follows:
"My child, by right of blood Akhilleus is higher than you,
though you are elder; but he is greater by far in strength.
Speak sound words to him, and give him good counsel,
and show him the way. If he listens it will be for his good."
This is what the old man said, but you have forgotten.

These lines have already been cited above (§22) as an instance of "tertiary focalization," the embedding of mimesiswithin yet another mimesisof a character's speech. Their exhortatory function makes Nestor's direct quotation of Menoitios that much more effective a rhetorical device than would a paraphrase of what the son of Aktor said to his own son in Peleus' halls.  "As if he were someone else"—(Plato, Rep. 3, 393c)—Nestor assimilates himself to Menoitios, adopting a paternal voice to lecture the young hero, with a view toward convincing him to fulfill the obligation enjoined on him then by his father. It is geared precisely to remind him of his duty as the elder and more experienced of the pair; and quotation verbis ipsis quite literally strengthens the point. Nestor's famous concluding advice (now in propria persona) is that, if Akhilleus proves intractable to persuasion, Patroklos should borrow his armor, impersonate the Hero, and so win for the Greeks some "breathing-space" in the fight to defend their ships (Il.11.794-803). The entire sequence of substitutions—Patroklos for Akhilleus as the addressee of the old man's tale, the Nestorisfor the expected aristeia, Nestor himself for Menoitios, and Patroklos once more for Akhilleus—is thereby completed; and this was the beginning of evil for him (604).

His response is given by the line So he spoke, and stirred the feelings in his breast (804); the formula (5X, 1X) often serves to denote a tumultuous or even distressed reaction to a speaker's words.  As a result of his staying to hear Nestor's reminiscence and the advice that follows it—which at the level of type-scenes amounts to a breach of the pattern Hospitality Declined + Haste to Depart—Patroklos is deflected from his original aim and set on a narrative path that leads ineluctably to his demise. Four books then intervene, recounting the fated advance of the Trojans against the Akhaian ships, before this line of the narrative resumes in Iliad 16 with the implementation of Nestor's advice. When Patroklos finally returns to the Myrmidonian camp after this "hiatus,"  it is not to report the information he was initially sent out to discover—namely, the identity of the wounded fighter glimpsed by Akhilleus. Indeed, the fact that his original mission has apparently been forgotten is often cited as further evidence of the suspect authenticity of the entire Makhaon-Patroklos- Nestor episode in Book 11.  Instead, it is to entreat Akhilleus to lend him his armor and allow him to fight in his place.

This lacuna is bridged by the simple device of repetition; except for the change of pronouns and the variation of a single line (Il.11.799/16.40), his appeal to Akhilleus precisely echoes the old man's earlier counsel (11.794-803 = 16.36-45). Repetition has the effect of collapsing the distance separating these two narrative moments, thus effecting a return to the initial situation in Iliad 11; at the same time, it also marks at least the formal coalescence of Nestor and Patroklos as speakers. It is in fact tempting to entertain the possibility that this merger of voice through one character's direct repetition of another's words when both speak in the narrative—itself the standard trope in messenger speeches —works here as the figure for a kind of merger of agency as well. For we saw that Patroklos' innocent route from Akhilleus' ship to Nestor's encampment simultaneously crosses a border between ergon and mythos, leaving present action on the battlefield behind and passing over into a mediated world of narrative, whose contours are defined by the walls of a tent and the ritual gestures of Hospitality. He emerges from that world "als ein Verwandelter" (Reinhardt 1961:264), inspired by a paradigm of heroic accomplishments that was meant for someone else to hear and act upon. Specifically, what inspires him is the folktale of the youngest son—alone surviving the death of his brothers (Il.11.690-93)—who, eluding his father's efforts to protect him from harm (717-19), rallies his people against their haughty and powerful enemy, kills their leader (737-46) and single- handedly slays another fifty men or more (747-49), thereby winning an unparallelled victory and such honor as belongs to an immortal (761).  Less relevant than the details, of course, is the general pattern of the triumph of the untried warrior at a moment of communal crisis and in the face of overwhelming odds. This is precisely the pattern that the old man's tale, in all its epic inflation,  implicitly sets for the young one to emulate, despite the fact that Nestor himself may only "see him as providing a moment's respite (11.800)" (Pedrick 1983:68, note 53). When Patroklos leaves the world of narrative, it is to assume the paradigm that narrative holds out him, to clothe himself in mythos by donning Akhilleus' armor.

Patroklos' request for that armor (Il.16.35-45) elicits an editorial comment that recalls the narrator's earlier prolepsis of doom (46-47; cf. 11.604):

§60
So he spoke, supplicating, the great fool; this was
his own death and evil destruction he was entreating.

The judgement mega nêpios (great fool) is a strong one.  It occurs in this precise form only here, though allomorphs of the phrase in the same position appear on four other occasions, with various particles filling out the space before the noun. In all but one case (Od.19.530), which describes an infant child, the comment adverts to utter foolishness portending catastrophe: Odysseus' crew drunk on the beach while the Kikonians muster their troops (Od.9.44); blind Polyphemos duped by the ruse of the sheep (Od.9.442); the suitors, who take the death of Antinoos from the Beggar's arrow for an accident (Od.22.32), and who stupidly devour Odysseus' stores, unmindful of the master's return (Od.22.370). The closing hemistich is likewise reserved for proleptic reference to unseen disaster. Its sense is contrafactual, drawing attention to grief or else total demise that is chosen unwittingly, hence to the ironic distance between expectation and outcome. The defensive wall of the Greeks proposed by Nestor (S5) was not destined to stop the Trojan assault (Il.12.3); Dolon's boast to return unscathed from his espionage behind enemy lines would prove a hollow one (Il.10.336); on the verge of death, Hektor acknowledges that his hopes for mercy from Akhilleus had been empty (Il.22.356); Odysseus' return from Troy was fated to be painful and prolonged (Od.4.107); the fair west wind that blew from Aiolos' island to Ithaka was only to fail him just within sight of home (Od.10.26); Eupeithes sought sweet vengeance but in so doing incurred his own death (Od.24.470).

What links these passages together, and to Patroklos' attempt to impersonate Akhilleus, is the rift they all signal between narrative motivation and function. In the present case, it also returns us to the typology of Mediation outlined in the previous chapter and, specifically, to the issue of Ironic Mediation. I have already styled Nestor's intercessory role as a sometimes ambiguous one, and have further suggested that it seems plausible to see the figure of Nestor as a cloaked authorial presence in the narrative, exercising control over its course from within its narration. This is corroborated by the part the old man plays in Iliad 11. For what emerges from the preceding analysis is that Nestor here ultimately acts in the service of the abstract story, despite how his actions are motivated in the tale itself. However dire the significance of Makhaon's wound is initially represented as being—for a physician is worth many men (Il.11.514-15)—and however credible Akhilleus' request for information about the injured soldier—for example, as a sign that he is not at all indifferent to the suffering of the Greeks—from the viewpoint of emplotment, Patroklos' mission is of course a bogus one.  Its actual function, as Wilamowitz (1920:200) saw, is to supply the pretext for his encounter with Nestor. In turn, Nestor's role at this critical juncture in the tale is to motivate the Sacrifice of Patroklos and the consequent Return of the Hero.

The intercession of Nestor in Book 11 thus emphasizes, even more strikingly than the other passages examined in Chapter 3, the function of the Mediator throughout the poems as a kind of "switch" located at a critical point in the narrative and—more than other character-types—in the direct employ of the story that guides the unfolding of the narrated events. Plague vs. remedy, social disruption vs. social harmony, defeat vs. victory, ritual propriety vs. neglect of obligations that bind mortals to the gods—the Mediator arises always and only whenever the course of events has reached a fork that leads the tale along divergent paths towards divergent ends: failure (often death) on the one hand, success—sometimes death too, but always measured by the specific closure toward which the story moves—on the other. The editorial comment mega nêpios in Iliad 16 therefore only announces more explicitly a prolepsis of disaster already inherent in the Mediator's advice four books earlier, and inhering potentially in all advice given, whatever the authority of its source, whenever another rises to speak or else to take a Visitor's hand in Hospitality, to lead him in and ask him to sit down.