It might seem paradoxical to approach the question of heroism in the Iliad by way of Aphrodite, thus giving sustained attention to episodes where the majority of the action occurs within the walls of Troy. Yet it is also a way to examine fundamental values of the Homeric universe. By initially abandoning the battlefields for the city of Troy it is possible to grasp a “problematic” rather than a “superhuman” heroism. But there is a correlation between warlike rage and separation from Aphrodite, and it is accompanied by cowardice and defined by an excessive proximity to the goddess or even an immersion into her world.

The fame of Paris has nothing to do with great deeds on the plains of Troy and everything to do with being favored by Aphrodite. This fact will serve as our starting point: heroic conduct is defined as much by what it is not as by what it must be. In this context, being close to or far from the “world” of Aphrodite during the siege of a city is one of the defining characteristics of the quality of a warrior.

For the heroes of the Iliad “everything pivoted on a single element of honor and virtue: strength, bravery, physical courage, prowess. Conversely, there was no weakness, no unheroic trait, but one, and that was cowardice and the consequent failure to pursue heroic goals.” [1] Hector is a hero without fault; his brother Paris, on the other hand, is a coward. Hector represents the model of warlike masculinity, Paris the opposite, both on the battlefield and inside the walls of the city of Troy.

Hector’s name speaks of his valor: “he who holds” [2] the ramparts of the city. He is also the main Trojan aggressor, the commander who is constantly inciting his companions and his troops to take on the Greeks. What matters for the hero is to be “far in front, foremost,” to “never remain with the body of his men” (Iliad 22.458). [3] This rule defines the position of the warrior on the battlefield as much as the wounds he inflicts or receives; the noble wound, which attests as much to the character of the one who inflicts it as to the one who receives it, is the blow that strikes “head on,” as Idomeneus says to Meriones (Iliad 13.288–289):

If you were struck by a dart or smitten in close combat, it would not be from behind, in your neck nor back, but the weapon would hit you in the chest or belly.

Hector asserts on multiple occasions his desire to fight head on and to battle “openly,” “face to face.” [4] Thus, catching Periphetes, who had just fallen “as he was turning back” (Iliad 15.645), “[Hector] then thrust a spear into his chest” and killed him (15.650); or later on, in response to Euphorbus’ wounding of Patroclus in the back, Hector finishes him off by striking him “in the lower part of the belly” (16.821). For the hero, it is a matter of exposing himself fully to the risks of combat as a man, unlike the coward, who resembles a woman or an infant (7.235–236).

Hector’s candid, loyal, and efficient attitude corresponds inversely with that of Paris. Even in battle, his exploits are recounted briefly by the poet, as if his true function is not related to the war. He kills two adversaries with his spear (goaded on in one case by Hector). [5] He kills one other Greek with his bow, [6] as well as one of Nestor’s horses. [7] All the rest of his arrows only cause injury. [8] When he tries his hand at single combat, he advances to the front lines only to be first to retreat. During the first confrontation of the two armies, confident in the strength of the Trojans around him, he dares to advance beyond the lines (promachiken; Iliad 3.16). He appears here to be particularly bold since, armed with two spears, a sword, and a bow, [9] he can take on the Greeks with any weapon. However, his armor is incomplete: just before the confrontation, he has to barter his panther skin for his brother Lycaon’s cuirass (3.322–323). His arrogance lasts only for the moment of the initial challenge: at the sight of Menelaus advancing, he “quailed … and shrank in fear of his life under cover of his men” (3.31–32). [10] His challenge would have ended there if Hector had not goaded him with insults to confront his adversary. The rest is well known. Aphrodite intervenes to bring her protégé to shelter inside the walls of his bedchamber, while a raging Menelaus continues to search for him on the battlefield. Commentators have always recognized a comic tone in this confrontation. Paris is decidedly not a noble warrior. While he may happen to kill and inflict injury, he does not first openly confront his enemies. For example, when he hits Diomedes with one of his arrows, he is hidden behind a pillar, which was erected in honor of Ilos, eponymous hero of Troy, and which, in a subtle way, recalls the walls of the city that Paris stays behind most of the time (Iliad 11.371–372). With Diomedes wounded, Paris “sprang forward from his hiding-place” (11.379) to triumph over him, but Diomedes dismisses the importance of this wound (11.386–391):

If you were to be tried in single combat fighting in full armor, your bow and your arrows would serve you in little stead. Vain is your boast in that you have scratched the sole of my foot. I care no more than if a girl or some inept boy had hit me. A worthless coward can inflict but a light wound.

In the world of the Iliad, where the model of combat is an open confrontation using identical weapons, Paris is not a true adversary. He is an archer, yet the bow is specifically excluded as the weapon of great warriors. [11] Archers, in fact, are duplicitous (Pandaros, Dolon) or considered bastards (Teucer) and cowards (the Locrians, whose weakness is stated explicitly at Iliad 12.712–716). Like the arrows that he fires while hidden, Paris always appears and disappears very quickly from the scene of battle, as if his function in the poem were not to be at the front with the other Trojans, but inside the walls of the besieged city, with the women and old men of Troy. It is possible, I think, to make sense of this set of polar opposites—Hector, best of the Trojan warriors, battling constantly on the plains of Troy, and Paris, paltry fighter, more at home inside the city walls—by considering the relation of the two brothers with the world of Aphrodite, and consequently with the feminine sphere.

In Iliad 6, when Hector returns to Troy and asks Hecuba to go with the Trojan women to plead for the aid of Athena, he does not attempt to linger in the city. He is on a mission, a “messenger” who has temporarily left the world of battle. [12] And it is perhaps here, far from combat, that his heroism reaches its greatest heights. Three types of temptation put him to the test inside the city of Troy; three women threaten his ardor.

The entire episode is situated under the signs of haste and shame. [13] Hector worries about allowing himself to become contaminated by the tenderness of these three women. He also fears that he will be taken for a coward for appearing within the city. As if struggling with a gnashing guilt, Hector constantly feels the need to return to his proper place, outside, with the men in battle. Indeed, other than Paris, Hector only encounters women: the women of Troy gathered together, his mother, his sister-in-law, his female servants, and finally his wife. [14] This is not the typical condition of a warrior, who usually speaks only with his comrades and his enemies. Moreover, it is telling that the order from the Trojan seer Helenus instructs Hector to address only Hecuba and the “matrons” (Iliad 6.87), whereas Hector presents his mission to the army in terms of “the old men of our council and our wives” (6.113–114). Any reference whatsoever to feminine intervention at the heart of the activity of war, even when advised by a seer, requires masculine backing.

Things go quite differently for Paris. In two rather long passages, Homer presents him in his bedchamber in the company of Helen (Iliad 3.382–448 and 6.321–366). He leaves the dust of the battlefield, with the help of Aphrodite, for his “his own perfumed bedchamber,” “his bed in his own room” that is “engraved” (3.382, 391, 448). [15] He is the only hero removed from the area of combat and placed in his thalamos ‘bedchamber’. At one point he makes love to Helen there while the battle is raging (3.447–448), and at another point he prepares his armor there (6.321). In both instances, his attitude is paradoxical: the thalamos is not the place for a man, especially during times of war, and especially in the middle of the day. Nor is it the place for a warrior to polish and look after his arms, surrounded by his wife and his female servants. [16]

Heroes shine, heroes are beautiful, but their luster shines on the battlefield. Paris is beautiful too, but in his bed. While elsewhere beauty is a visible sign of courage, Paris belies this sign. And the brilliance of Hector as he enters his home, the glow of his enormous spear and his sparkling helmet, [17] references the flickering beauty and clothing of Paris stretched out on his bed (Iliad 3.392). The grace that illuminates Paris’ body and his clothing calls to mind another ambiguous figure of the Greek imagination: Pandora, the first mortal woman, made by the gods. In a certain way, and on another level, Paris is also defined by his double nature: an exterior of beauty and seduction, a deceptive appearance that hides a nefarious and devious interior. [18] Hector evokes this duality when he is berating Helen’s spouse (Iliad 3.43–45):

Will not the flowing-haired Achaeans mock at us and say that we have sent one to champion us who is fair to look at but has neither might in his heart nor any strength?

Because Paris is entirely under the control of Aphrodite, because he is like a manifestation of the goddess, he is poorly suited for war, which is the ultimate masculine activity and which assures everlasting glory through the achievements it calls forth. The actions of war do not fall within the realm of Aphrodite, as Zeus makes clear when Aphrodite, in a pitiful condition, comes to him seeking solace for her wounds: “My child … it has not been given you to be a warrior” (Iliad 5.429). In addition, one might push the Pandora-Paris comparison further, or, to state it another way, one might specify more closely Paris’ feminine side. He is the object of Helen’s desire; Aphrodite praises his allure, and he demands the presence of his wife in his bedchamber (Iliad 3.390), where he waits having been brought by Aphrodite. In this episode, the reversal of gender roles appears clearly. He distinguishes himself from the other heroes, and especially from Hector, his exact opposite, as the “attendant” of Aphrodite and not Ares. [19] Even when meeting Andromache, Hector knows where his true place is. Challenged by three types of feminine temptation—maternal love, Helen’s seductive softness, [20] and his wife’s affection—he nevertheless keeps his distance from the powers of Aphrodite.

For Hector, his roles as spouse and father only emphasize his duty: to fully belong to the sphere of men, which subordinates the network of private relationships (or those of the city) to practice war in pursuit of kleos ‘glory’. At a fundamental level in the epic, the sphere of Aphrodite’s influence is in thinking from the perspective of the world of women. The code of heroic conduct demands that warriors protect themselves from this influence, as Hector does, because the powers of Aphrodite dissolve the warrior’s energy. For Paris, the feminine part of the man conquers his masculine qualities. More of an amorous partner than a warrior, he is more often the “husband of lovely-haired Helen” than the “son of Priam.” [21]

But this binary opposition alone is insufficient for the Iliad. For “mighty” Diomedes, only his warlike qualities are emphasized. The son of Tydeus, [22] fully aligned with manly pugnacity, is “the only one who is a warrior and nothing else, the entirely successful warrior,” [23] the same one who wounds Aphrodite and drives her from the battlefield. There is a great distance [24] between these two extremes—the femininity of Paris and the hyper-masculinity of Diomedes. It is difficult not to stumble over this major contradiction: the male model of war, which one might expect to find neatly laid out in the Iliad, is anything but a clearly formulated idea in the epic.

It is difficult to ignore the fact that figures as prominent as Paris and Diomedes, who are obviously opposites, [25] are also, and above all, fundamentally ambiguous. The former, through his complete subordination to the feminine world, finds himself below the heroic norm; the latter is so perfectly warlike that he oscillates between civilization and savagery. [26] In relation to these two types of extreme, the character of Hector is exemplary: he is as much the commander of the Trojan army as he is the prince of the city of Troy—that is, of a city where society is fully represented. Just as much as Hector’s accomplishments in battle, his progressive isolation from the familial community over the course of the Iliad’s plot establishes his heroism. While embodying the virtues of the son, the husband, and the father, he can be the adversary of Achilles and the symbol of Trojan andreia ‘manliness’ because he chooses to be, and to remain for posterity, a warrior who accepts death.