Study Day on Book 23 of the Iliad: Dramatic Form, Cypriot Burial Customs, and the Ghost of Patroclus

This first session of a study day on Book 23 of the Iliad at the University of Cyprus, given in Greek, combines philological papers, staged readings of lines 1 to 286 in the modern Greek translation of Dimitris Maronitis, and archaeological commentary.

Following a welcome from the director of the Archaeological Research Unit, Vassos Karageorghis introduces the aims of the colloquium. He explains that Book 23 was chosen because its first half describes burial customs and objects that correspond directly to archaeological discoveries of the Cypro-Geometric and Cypro-Archaic periods, particularly at Salamis and Palaepaphos. Dean Chris Schabel adds a brief greeting on the reception of the Trojan cycle in medieval Western Europe.

Chaired by Anna Panagiotou, the first paper is by Michalis Pieris on Book 23 as drama. Drawing on Plato, Aristotle, and Pseudo-Plutarch, Pieris examines how Homeric speeches and monologues anticipate classical tragedy, and how Book 23 acts as a structural counterpart to the Catalogue of Ships in Book 2. He reads passages from the dispute between Ajax, son of Oileus, and Idomeneus, and from the appearance of Patroclus to Achilles, to show that removing the narrator's framing lines leaves a theatrical script.

Actors from the University of Cyprus Theatre Workshop then recite lines 1 to 286, with Karageorghis intervening to comment on the material culture. He compares the tripods and cauldrons used to heat bathwater or awarded as prizes with bronze examples from the Aegean and Palaepaphos. On the funeral pyre of Patroclus, he shows an amphora from Tomb 3 of the Royal Tombs of Salamis inscribed with the Greek word for oil in the Cypriot syllabary, horse sacrifices in the dromoi of Salamis Tombs 79 and 2, and evidence for human sacrifice at Lefkandi, Eleutherna, Larnaca, Marion, and Salamis. He concludes with the construction of burial tumuli, showing the cenotaph of Nicocreon at Salamis and cremated bones wrapped in linen inside bronze cauldrons at Palaepaphos and Salamis.

Menelaos Christopoulos then presents a paper on the ghost of the unburied Patroclus. He analyses the twenty-three-line dream speech across past, present, and future, traces the motif of Achilles's early death through Thetis, the horse Xanthus, Hector, and Patroclus, and compares Patroclus with the unburied Elpenor in Book 11 of the Odyssey.

In the discussion that follows, Karageorghis answers a question on why surviving cauldrons are bronze whereas tripods were made in both bronze and iron, and Christopoulos and Pieris discuss why captive Trojan women mourn Patroclus and how Homeric epithets work.