On the Slopes of Mount Ida

Inspired by Book IV of the Iliad

I am fascinated by how actual events from the siege of Troy could have been preserved, to some extent, by mourning customs and laments, eventually making their way into the Iliad in particular. This is a fictionalized version of how the story of Simoeisios could be imagined as an actual remembered and mourned event from the battle of Troy.

Reconstruction of how the Iliad may have been sung

Stefan Hagel sings the beginning of the Iliad (the very first words of the Iliad are cut off in this recording)

Anthemion and Palmetta

10 years before the landing of the Greeks

Palmetta¹ had taken the sheep partway down the mountain, to a valley below the snowline. Since it was winter, the snow line was lower than in the summer. The people further down the mountain hardly ever saw her in the summer, unless she came down to the little clutch of estates and shopkeepers at the bottom, from time to time, to buy or sell. But in the winter, she came down far enough with the sheep that a lad with free time on his hands could make the walk up and see her.

She was a decent shot with the sling – she had to be, to keep the wolves from her charges. Including the human ones. One of her brothers was often in the area, as well, hunting or engaged in other woodcraft. Once a lad got too close and was killed by a stone from her sling. Lord Demokoon absolved the girl of all guilt – he was a good lord, and noble, a son of King Priam, though not by a wife. She lost her maidenhood when one of the king’s other sons took an interest in her. The king was just, and though no child came of it, he still made a payment to her father.

Anthemion was old enough to marry and had a skilled trade from his father, the cartwright. He began going up to where Palmetta tended the sheep that winter, to see if she might favor him. He sat on a hillock in full view of her sling, outside of the shelter of the wood and whittled.

She swung her sling and a stone fell to one side of him. It was not a miss, just the usual warning that a shepherdess gives a stranger. It meant she’d seen him and had his range. He didn’t go back into the woods, but he didn’t come any closer either. He sang and he whittled. And then went back down the mountain before sunset.

He continued coming up the mountain to see her, moving a little closer each time. Each time, she threw the stone. After a while, her brother came by, and noted that Anthemion was there, but didn’t warn him off. And that’s where Simoeisios was conceived, that winter, on that mountain, by the Simoeis river they named him for. Since Palmetta had already been picked, without issue, he didn’t take her home or make the sacrifices until the child was born.

Simoeisios Goes to War

Tenth year of the siege

Anthemion was a cartwright, like his father, who lived with his family down in the plain at the foot of Mount Ida, next to the Simoeis River. It was war-season, and the Greeks were on the move again. He checked the curved poplar wood seasoning by the river, that would be used for the rims of chariot wheels. He didn’t fell his own trees anymore. The black poplar had been harvested by the in-laws – his wife’s brothers.

His right foot was gone – lost in the first year of the siege when their eldest, Simoeisios, was eight and lord Demokoon had called him up to fight. He supposed he’d gotten off easy. He hadn’t seen it that way at the time – no one had expected things to drag on as they had. But it kept him from being called up to fight again, as the conflict kept flaring up again, year after year. And the peg he used for a right foot was good enough for lumbering around short distances, slowly, for his woodwork.

But now his eldest was old enough and lord Demokoon had called him up for this season’s fighting. He did not return. The women lamented. And remembered.

The Bard

Many years after the fall of Troy

The lambs were slaughtered. There was no room in any one hut, so the families in the small group of dwellings at the foot of the mountain gathered around the fire outside. When the meal was done, the singing began.

They had a traveling bard who was singing about the fall of Troy at the hands of the Greeks. He had gotten to the tenth year of the siege, when both sides had agreed to end the fighting with a duel between the aggrieved Greek husband, King Menelaus, and the Trojan prince who had stolen his wife, Paris, called Alexandros.

He saw signs that these people had laments from that war. They gasped and wept as he sang how Pandarus broke the truce, and the Greeks marshalled their troops to fight once more.

“Don’t forget Simoeisios, son of Anthemion!” someone called.

He listened to the women sing the lament of Simoeisios, telling the story of Anthemion and Palmetta, the birth of their son, how he had gone to war, and been killed by the bronze spear of Aias Telemonion piercing his chest. And this is what he added to the song:

From the Iliad, Book IV

Then Aias Telamonios knocked down
the son of Anthemion, Simoeisios,
in the full bloom of youth. On slopes of Ida
descending, by the banks of clear Simoeis,
his mother had conceived him, while she kept
a vigil with her parents over flocks;
he got his name for this. To his dear parents
he never made return for all their care,
but had his life cut short when Aias’ shaft
unmanned him. In the lead, as he came on,
he took the spear-thrust squarely in the chest
beside the nipple on the right side; piercing him,
the bronze point issued by the shoulder blade,
and in the dust he reeled and fell.

                                                             A poplar
growing in bottom lands, in a great meadow,
smooth-trunked, high up to its sheath of boughs,
will fall before the chariot-builder’s ax
of shining iron – timber that he marked
for warping into chariot tire rims –
and, seasoning, it lies beside the river.
So vanquished by the god-reared Aias lay
Simoeisios Anthemides.

Translated by Robert Fitzgerald
from Book IV of the Iliad

1. The only name I made up. All other names are from the Iliad.