The Epics Want You To Remember Some Guys

"I beg you by those you left behind, so far from here, / ... my lord, remember me, I beg you! Don't sail off / and desert me, left behind unwept, unburied, don't." - Elpenor, 'The Odyssey'

Nazis unwelcome: here’s my post about moving this blog off of Substack soon. I might put this stinger on every post until then to try to irritate Nazi Sympathizer Hamish McKenzie. I might forget/get bored and stop. Not today though!

Cotton Xenomorph’s “Cryptids and Climate Change” issue continues, with “Morning Routine” by Ben Gibbons getting us more in touch with nature as we journey on our literary Nostromo.

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With apologies to David Roth and Drew Magary over at Defector, I’d like to highlight one of my favorite aspects of the Homeric bloodfests: the “This Stanza Is Here To Honor This Guy” stanza. The Iliad is framed by the rage of Achilles, as I talked about—a few Fridays ago and on yesterday’s The Line Break podcast—but in between is nonstop brutal war and everyone has have their family lineages and brief eulogies shouted out.

What I was trying to get at on the podcast was: if you’re writing the rage the Achilles in the 21st century, well, Achilles and his grievances are conspicuously absent from a huge chunk of the poem. You’d trim a bunch of this fat off. What

Bob Sykora

called “that one book where they’re listing off everybody and their ships.” The texts seem insistent on giving as many people their due as possible, though. The only way I can think to read it is that this had some import in a society with a mostly oral tradition, and certainly in a society so concerned with lineages. You have to remember your neighbors, allies, those past.

Let’s look at a few and see if we learn anything.

From The Iliad, Book 4, “The Truce Erupts In War”(translated by Robert Fagles)

And Telamonian Ajax struck Anthemion’s son, 

the hardy stripling Simoisius, still unwed…

His mother had borne him along the Simois’ banks

when she trailed her parents down the slopes of Ida 

to tend their flocks, and so they called him Simoisius.

But never would he repay his loving parents now

for the gift of rearing—his life cut short so soon, 

brought down by the spear of lionhearted Ajax. 

At the first charge he slashed his right nipple 

clean through the shoulder went the brazen point

and down in the dust he fell like a lithe black poplar

shot up tall and strong in the spreading marshy flats, 

the trunk trimmed but its head a shock of branches. 

A chariot-maker fells it with a shining iron ax

as timber to bend for handsome chariot wheels

and there it lies, seasoning by the river…

So lay Anthemion’s son Simoisius, cut down 

by the giant royal Ajax. 

Look, your son? Simoisius? We all liked him. He was beautiful, like a tree. How did he fare on the battlefield? Like a tree that a chariot-maker cuts down. But he makes a beautiful spoke on the chariot wheel!

“look at this well-wrought urn! See that chariot? Yr man was under that!” (credit: Wikimedia Commons, Getty Museum, Kleophrades Painter)

Book 5, “Diomedes Fights The Gods,” has a litany of seconds-after-they’ve-fallen elegies. Really could just type up the whole book to illustrate my point. Here’s one:

Meriones killed Phereclus—son of Tecton, 

son of the blacksmith Harmon—the fighter’s hands

had the skill to craft all kinds of complex work 

since Pallas Athena loved him most, her protégé

who had built Paris his steady, balanced ships, 

trim launchers of death, freighted with death

for all of Troy and now for the shipwright too: 

what could the man know of all the gods’ decrees? 

Meriones caught him quickly, running him down hard

and speared him low in the right buttock—the point

pounding under the pelvis, jabbed and pierced the bladder—

he dropped to his knees, screaming, death swirling round him. 

Skilled enough to build Paris’s ships (I assume he did? Could be reading antecedents wrong?), present enough to die in Paris’s war. Ignore those military recruiters in your high school cafeteria, kids! The United States Government—like coward Paris—does not give one single rat’s ass about you and your service. Speaking of asses, poor Phereclus. Recorded by the poet for all of history as dying thanks to an ass-stab.

shoutout to the artist Starline Hodge, who you might remember from Cracked’s After Hours series, and who has a delightful series of pop art butts in her Etsy shop (credit: Starline Hodge)

From The Odyssey, the main inspiration for this article. This dude is perhaps the second-most pathetic figure in Homer (after Paris)—yet also the most relatable for the 16-24 demographic. Elpenor is a guy with a name that feels like you got a stress ball stuck in your throat, and he’s introduced in Book 10: “The Bewitching of Queen Aeaea” like this:

There was a man, Elpenor, the youngest in our ranks, 

none too brave in battle, none too sound in mind. 

He’d strayed from his mates in Circe’s magic halls

and keen for the cool night air, 

sodden with wine he’d bedded own on her roofs. 

But roused by the shouts and tread of marching men, 

he leapt up with a start at dawn but still so dazed 

he forgot to climb back down again by the long ladder—

headfirst from the roof he plunged, his neck snapped

from the backbone, his soul flew down to Death. 

Great work, everybody. Hey, you go to war with the army you have, right Rumsfeld?

American Elpenor (photo credit me, I can’t remember if this was at Barrington Farms or where. Some apple-picking place around Chicago/Indiana)

In the very next book, “The Kingdom of the Dead,” Odysseus has to travel—you’re not gonna believe this—to the underworld, where the dead live. Who is the first person he speaks to? His mother, maybe? His fallen comrades from the war? Nah, dude, itchaboi Elpenor! I’ll copy his speech in full, since it’s all he goddamn gets in these codexes:

‘Royal son of Laertes, Odysseus, old campaigner, 

the doom of an angry god, and god knows how much wine—

they were my ruin, captain…I’d bedded down

on the roof of Circe’s house but never thought

to climb back down again by the longer ladder—

headfirst from the roof I plunged, my neck snapped

from the backbone, my soul flew down to Death. Now, 

I beg you by those you left behind, so far from here, 

your wife, your father who bred and reared you as a boy, 

and Telemachus, left at home in your halls, your only son. 

Well I know when you leave this lodging of the dead

that you and your ship will put ashore again 

at the island of Aeaea—then and there, 

my lord, remember me, I beg you! Don’t sail off

and desert me, left behind unwept, unburied, don’t, 

or my curse may draw god’s fury on your head. 

No, burn me in full amor, all my harness, 

heap my mound by the churning gray surf—

a man whose luck ran out—

so even men to come will learn my story.

Perform my rites, and plant on my tomb that oar

I swung with mates when I rowed among the living.’

What does it mean to include this passage? The intentionalist critic would probably say something about how important it was to ancient Greeks that people get proper funeral rites. How Odysseus, as king, has an obligation to even the most dip of shit and dumb of ass members of his crew. “Hey, I got drunk and forgot I was on a roof. I forgot you had to use a ladder to get off of a roof. I forgot so hard I broke my neck. Please don’t condemn me to an eternity of torment because I woke up in a strange place and hadn’t had my coffee yet.” Okay, quick funeral rites, bathroom breaks for everyone, and then I have got to get home to my wife and son, please.

What I’ll say, as a socialist doing reader response criticism for a blog, is this: what you do to the least among you, so too you do unto Jesus. Everyone matters, none are more exalted than the other, and you know what? Accidents happen. Elpenor’s been condemned to an eternity of having his balls busted, but that eternity should happen at a nice hot spring with all his homies and plenty of ouzo or raki, not Hell. You take the time out of your epic journey to go back to the beach and bury Elpenor, because he was your friend, neighbor, comrade—because he was a person, too. Even though he was none too bright or brave in battle, he was still something:

A guy.

A guy worth remembering.

I’ve been Rick Reilly, thanks for reading Sports Illustrated.

Sorry you got an email,

Chris