Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths(37)

So when Penthesilea is introduced to us as the daughter of Ares, it is meaningful not just because now we know her lineage, but because it boosts her heroic status. The other gods may be less partial than Hera: Zeus explains that Hector was the gods’ favourite Trojan because he offered them the most pleasing sacrifices. The king of the gods is less concerned by whose child a hero might be, so much as by how devout and generous the hero has been, a characteristically self-absorbed piece of (relative) egalitarianism. But the gods do tend to look after their own: the Trojan Aeneas is saved on the battlefield by his mother, Aphrodite, for example.

By any measure we might use to define a hero of the Trojan War, Penthesilea scores highly. She is a warrior and, as we’ve seen, the inventor of the type of axe used by Amazons in battle. She is the daughter of a god, specifically the god of war: there is no finer pedigree for a fighter. She battles the greatest Greek warrior of all, Achilles, which puts her on a par with Hector. Not only that, but she seeks out this battle, unlike Hector, who runs away when he sees Achilles on the rampage in Book Twenty-Two of the Iliad. Penthesilea is fighting for glory, just like Achilles. And she is fighting to defend a city, just like Hector. Except that the city she fights for – Troy – is not hers. She chooses this battle, chooses to be an ally to the Trojans after they have lost their most staunch defender, Hector. Homeric heroes usually look out for themselves, but for us, Penthesilea is perhaps a more sympathetic character, one who stands up for the underdog.

So why does Penthesilea choose to fight in someone else’s war? Pseudo-Apollodorus gives us an answer:26 she had accidentally killed her sister, Hippolyta. Obviously, we have looked at Hippolyta’s death at the hands of Heracles (and seen that her name is also sometimes connected to Theseus, although that Amazon is usually called Antiope), but here is another version of her story. As noted above, this multiplicity of fates for Hippolyta suggests that she was an enormously popular figure, whose story was told across the Greek world by many storytellers: we find multiple and contradictory versions of Achilles in just the same way. There is more detail about Penthesilea’s tragedy in Quintus Smyrnaeus’ poem.27 He explains that Penthesilea was filled with penthos – grief – because she had killed her sister by accident. Aiming her spear at a deer, she missed her mark and killed her sister by mistake. As we can see, her name holds the word for grief within it, as though the tragedy was waiting to happen. Fearing the pursuit of the Furies for the terrible crime of killing her sibling, Penthesilea seeks to cleanse herself by fighting and ultimately dying, rendering herself a human sacrifice, a life for a life.

Again, this is an extraordinary decision for anyone to make. When Ajax kills livestock rather than his comrades (he has been made mad by Athene to save the lives of his fellow Greeks), he kills himself rather than live with the shame of his wrongdoing, and the knowledge that his enemies will laugh at him. When Orestes is pursued by the Furies – dark goddesses of vengeance – for the crime of killing his mother, Clytemnestra, he tries to outrun them. They pursue him across the Greek world until (in Aeschylus’ play Eumenides) they eventually agree for him to stand trial in Athens. Both these men have the option of doing something less self-centred in response to their murdering. Ajax could make amends for the attempted slaughter of his erstwhile friends by, say, defending an outnumbered ally. Orestes could similarly try to assuage the Furies for his crime. But Ajax is too ashamed and Orestes relies on Apollo and Athene (always available to assist a hapless Greek man, it seems) to help him out.

Penthesilea feels a different kind of responsibility for her accidental crime. She blames herself far more than Orestes ever seems to, although he murders his mother in cold blood. So would the Furies pursue Penthesilea with an extra vigour, or is she just more remorseful than other killers? Whatever her reasons, she determines to try to use her death for someone else’s good – the defence of the Trojans. According to Pseudo-Apollodorus, Priam, the king of Troy, offers her absolution for her crime.28 The word he uses is kathartheisa, ‘to cleanse’, from which we derive the word ‘catharsis’.

According to Quintus, Penthesilea is accompanied by twelve named Amazons. As is usual with Amazons, she does not fight alone. Again, this is an interesting distinction. Orestes is pursued by the Furies and eventually stands trial alone, although he is aided by Apollo and Athene. Ajax dies alone: his wife Tecmessa cannot save him and his brother Teucer arrives too late to do so.29 Penthesilea is also guilty of a crime, however accidentally it was committed (the story of Oedipus tells us that ignorance is no excuse when it comes to divine retribution). And yet she is not shunned by her Amazon sisters, she is not abandoned to seek absolution alone. They all ride with her from Thermodon to Troy; they all fight together.

And when Amazons fight, they fight to the death. Pseudo-Apollodorus tells us that Penthesilea kills many Greeks, including Machaon. And Quintus tells us about her battle in a lot more detail. For him, Penthesilea is as much a hero as any man, and he treats her accordingly in his narrative. When she and her twelve Amazon companions arrive, the people of Troy are overjoyed; Quintus compares them to drought-ravaged lands finally receiving rain. Priam – king of Troy – is compared to a blind man seeing light again. This is the salvation he and his people have been waiting for. Thirteen highly skilled warriors are potentially enough, it seems, to swing the odds of the war in Troy’s favour. And Penthesilea sees herself as the equal of her male Greek counterparts: she promises Priam that she will take on Achilles and kill him. Quintus calls her nēpiē – ‘crazy’, ‘a fool’.30 Interestingly, it is the same word Homer uses to describe Patroclus, when he begs Achilles to let him wear his friend’s armour and fight in his stead, in Book Sixteen of the Iliad. He too is a madman, begging for his own death, though he doesn’t know it. Is Quintus deliberately echoing Homer here? It seems more than likely. Patroclus is mad because his request to borrow Achilles’ armour will result in his death: he will die at the hands of Hector, once the latter realizes that it is Patroclus he is fighting, and not his more skilful comrade, Achilles. Penthesilea is having her own death foreshadowed by this choice of word, and by the parallels between her and Patroclus. They have confidence in their abilities, which are considerable. But the confidence is misplaced even so, and they will both be cut down by a superior fighter. It is another way in which we are told that Penthesilea is the equal of male warriors: the same language reflects the same situation.