Astyanax is called nēpios almost every time he is mentioned (VI 365, 400, 408 [here nēpiachos], XXII 484, XXIV 726). When Hektor meets Andromache and the child in its nurse’s arms on the wall, Astyanax is described in the following way:

The word agapētos (translated above as ‘‘the admired”), a derivative of agapaō (“to regard with affection, be pleased with”), in the Iliad and Odyssey is used exclusively as a description of only sons. LSJ define it: “that wherewith one must be content.” In addition to its occurrence in VI 401, the word appears four times in the Odyssey, {30|31} always of Telemachos. Each time it is feared by the speaker that Telemachos is about to be destroyed (ii 365, iv 727, iv 817, v 18). The sense of impending doom may reverberate in VI 401 also.

Besides Astyanax, four other people and four things are compared to stars. Except in VI 401, when a person is compared to a star, it is an explicit indication of ill omen. Athene “like a star” is an omen of war to the armies (IV 75 ff.); Achilles is like Sirius, a portent of evil (XXII 26); Diomedes is like Sirius (V 5); Hektor is “like a baneful star” (XI 62). The crest on Achilles’s helmet (XIX 381) and his spear, with which he is about to kill Hektor (XX 317), are compared to stars. On the other hand, the robe the Trojan women offer to Athene and the robe Helen presents to Telemachos at Sparta are both described in the same phrase:

This last simile is more like the comparison of Astyanax to a star. Astyanax is a household treasure. But again, there may be reverberations of ill-omen.

The nēpia tekna associative unit does not by any means exhaust the range of the word nēpios. In Chapter Four, I discuss nēpios as applied to adults, where the word seems to express a particular mental deficiency. The one action performed in the Iliad by Astyanax, the archetypal nēpion teknon, gives an indication of the nature of this mental deficiency. Astyanax takes fright at his father’s crested helmet. The helmet was designed to frighten and he is frightened by it. He reacts to the present illusion of danger, while Andromache speaks of past destruction wrought by Achilles and Hektor speaks of his own future fame.

Hektor fails to recognize, or chooses to ignore, that his own death will destroy his son also. He prays to Zeus and the other gods that Astyanax will be like him, strong in battle and ruler over the Trojans. Furthermore, he prays: {32|33}

Hektor, like Andromache, seems to have a presentiment of his own death. And he seeks either to comfort Andromache or to excuse himself for abandoning her by saying that his son will take his place. Astyanax will be the warrior, and Astyanax will make Andromache glad.

Elsewhere Athene puts in the breast of Diomedes menos patrōion (“the strength of your father,” V 125). Machaon inherited his knowledge of medicine from his father who received it from Cheiron (IV 219). Achilles inherited his arms (XVII 194–196) and his spear (XIX 390–391) and his horses (XXIII 276–277) from his father, who got them from the gods. Similarly, Agamemnon got his sceptre (called patrōion “his father’s” at II 46), which was made by Hephaistos and had belonged also to Zeus and Hermes, from his father (by way of his uncle Thyestes), who had received it also as a family heirloom (II 101–108).

It could be said that a warrior is connected to his warrior status through the warrior status of his father. Or, to put it another way, a son replaces his father as a warrior. He is, or ought to be, identical with him. All those aspects of his father that, unlike his body, are immortal—namely, divine gifts and protection and kleos— are assumed by the son. It appears, however, that if a man dies when his son is still young, the epic destiny of the son is thwarted.

He is nēpios, disconnected from his father before him and his own future as a warrior. There are, of course, exceptions. Achilles’s son Neoptolemos followed him to Troy and fought there after his father’s death. But the only mention of Neoptolemos in the Iliad is in the context of Achilles’s lament for the fallen Patroklos. He says that neither the death of his father (the past) nor the death of his son (the future) would affect him as much. It is through father and son that he is connected to life. If Neoptolemos were to have been introduced into the Iliad as someone who had transcended the condition of the nēpion teknon, Achilles’s choice between present life and eternal fame would have been less stark.

In the nēpia tekna associative unit, children are nēpios when their fathers have gone off, not to return, leaving them with their mothers and disaster. This is a virtually fatal condition. Such a nēpios child does not ordinarily grow up to become a warrior. There are exceptions, however, and chief among them is Telemachos. When Athene visits him at the beginning of the Odyssey she tells him:

And Telemachos seems to take this advice. Four times in the Odyssey he says that he used to be nēpios and now he is not:

Penelope is slow to recognize the change in Telemachos. When she discovers that he has gone off to Pylos, she is worried and speaks of him as:

But even she eventually recognizes the difference:

A contrast is made in these passages between someone who is nēpios and someone who has adult characteristics. For example, in ii 313–315 there is a contrast between nēpios and punthanomai (“I learn the truth”). In xviii 228–229, the contrast is between nēpios and knowing better and worse. In xix 17–20 nēpios is contrasted with being able to take care of personal property. But there is also a contrast between being nēpios and being, simply, full grown (as in xix 530–534). Telemachos used to be nēpios, but now he is grown up and has adult characteristics, or rather, virtues. All this seems to have been achieved merely by the passage of time; he is no longer tēlikos (“of such an age,” i 297), he has reached hēbēs metron (“maturity’s measure,” xix 532). And he has had no father to guide him.

Diomedes, Orestes, and Telemachos all managed to grow up in their fathers’ absence. But the links between them are stronger than that. First, most obviously, Orestes provides the paradigm that Telemachos is exhorted to follow (i 298–302, iii 306–316). He has returned to his home, killed a man (a relative) who had taken over his father’s throne and wife and possessions. Telemachos is being exhorted to return to his home (he first has to go on a journey, i 284–285) and kill the men (i 295–296) who are taking his father’s possessions and trying to take his father’s wife. Diomedes, although this story is not told by Homer, after the death of his father, returned to his home and killed the men (relatives) who had taken over his father’s throne (Hesiod, Ehoiai, frag. 14 M-W; Apollodorus 1.8.6). He did not take possession of the throne himself, but returned it to his grandfather, Oineus or, alternatively, because of Oineus’s great age, to Oineus’s son-in-law. Thus, like Telemachos and Laertes, Diomedes and his grandfather both appear in the story. Like Orestes, Diomedes kills a relative who has taken over the throne that should have descended to him.

Diomedes, sure of his ancestry, uses it as a call to action. Telemachos, unable to act at the beginning of the Odyssey, remarks diffidently:

During the course of the Telemachy, he and his ancestry become progressively more firmly attached. Nestor makes this remark:

Helen is even more sure of the resemblance:

Menelaos is certain:

Just as Diomedes does not want to be thought a worse man than his father, Homer does not leave the impression that Telemachos is a lesser man than Odysseus. Telemachos would have strung the bow if Odysseus had not signalled to him to stop (xxi 128–129).

It is customary for the mothers of novices who are beginning their initiation to mourn for them as if they were dying. When Penelope hears that Telemachos has gone on a voyage to hear word of his father, she says, among other things, the following:

Furthermore, when Telemachos has safely returned, Penelope seems alienated from him and confused by his behavior as if he were, indeed, a different person:

The contextual sphere of the phrase nēpia tekna suggests the generalization that Homeric children who are left without their fathers when they are still nēpios die without fulfilling their epic destiny. Telemachos and Diomedes (and Orestes), apparent exceptions to this rule, are each surrounded by a complex of initiatory motifs. One of the most important aspects of initiatory symbolism is that the novice dies and is reborn as an adult. Hence, if Diomedes and Telemachos are like all other initiates, then they are also no different from all other nēpia tekna. They do die, symbolically, without fulfilling their epic destiny. The difference between Diomedes and Telemachos and the other nēpia tekna is that they are reborn, and as warriors. {53|54}

The usual, standard translation of the word nēpios is “child.” This study is proceeding on the premise that “child” is neither the root meaning of nēpios nor a very precise translation of its sense in the Iliad and Odyssey. There is no doubt, however, that nēpios did, eventually, come to mean simply “child” in Greek. Does the word nēpios in Homeric Greek ever mean simply “child” in an uncharged sense? Although some examples seem to suggest this possibility, their contexts show that nēpios belongs to the conceptual and semantic framework established earlier in this chapter.

There are four similes in which children appear and in which a nēp- word might seem to refer to childhood simply as a period of life with typical activities. In one of these similes, a child is building sandcastles. Here a derivative of the word nēpios seems to mean “playfulness”:

In this simile the ease with which Apollo will obliterate the fortifications of the Achaians is compared to the ease with which a child knocks down his sand castles. The child builds and then he knocks down. The Achaians built and Apollo will knock down. The nature of Homeric similes does not permit the automatic conclusion that “therefore, the Achaians built their fortifications in a nēpios way.” But compare the following words of Hektor:

The Achaians built their walls, as Poseidon complains (VII 446–453), without offering sacrifices to the gods. There must be some essential similarity (expressed by the same word in both cases: nēpieēsin and nēpioi) between the attitudes of the Achaians building their walls and the child building his sand castles. But the Achaians did not build “playfully” nor the child “foolishly.” The similarity is that both were ineffectual in that they produced impermanent structures.

The second and third similes are mutually explanatory. One concerns Patroklos and the other the Myrmidons. Patroklos, approaching Achilles, is compared to a young girl pulling on her mother’s skirts, weeping and asking to be picked up (XVI 7–10), The child is called nēpios. There is no reason to accuse this child of anything other than childish behavior. But another child appears in the Iliad crying and clinging to an adult, namely Astyanax, who is frightened by his father’s helmet. Unlike Andromache, who is all too clearly aware, at the time, of what the future will bring, Astyanax cannot see beyond the present and cannot see through the illusion of the helmet (which was constructed to be fearful). Although there is no mention in XVI 7–10 of the cause of the child’s weeping, Patroklos himself is like Astyanax in fretting about something other than the ultimate disaster that is approaching. Patroklos, as we shall see later, is particularly subject to the epithet nēpios. An important instance is the following:

Unlike Achilles at this particular moment, Patroklos does not have a clear view of the future. The two separate meanings LSJ assign to the word nēpios, “child” and “without foresight,” seem to overlap in this simile, which likens Patroklos to a child.

The Myrmidons, whom Patroklos leads into battle, are compared to wasps in the following simile:

The poetic force of the simile is in the image. The wasps and the troops are alike in activity, in anger, and in the singleness of purpose which unites the many members of the group, as well as in the danger they present to those in their way. But the Myrmidons, too, were aroused by someone who was nēpios —not a playful child, but Patroklos. Both the children who stirred up the wasps and Patroklos were unaware of the consequences of their actions and, for this reason, both are called nēpios. Intellectually, in respect to the thing each is doing at the moment, they are disconnected from past and future.

The fourth and last of the similes involving children concerns Ajax, who is compared to a donkey in a field of corn. Children are beating the donkey with sticks, trying to get him out:

The ineffectuality conveyed by the word nēpios is evident here. Although the Trojans are attacking Ajax with spears, they are not fighting like warriors. Many of them fight against one of him, and they defeat him not by any great deeds but by wearing him down. Furthermore, they are all nameless in this passage. They fight, but without winning fame and glory.

In four other passages, a nēp- word refers to the childhood of a character in the Iliad or Odyssey, and superficially (as in the similes) the reference seems to be to a time of life and its characteristic activities. {56|57}

In the first example, Andromache is speaking of Astyanax:

It appears that nēpiacheuōn is what a child does when he is awake, hence the usual translation of this word “playing.” But the passage in which these lines occur defines Astyanax as a child who, in losing his father, loses his epic destiny. What he does as a child (nēpiacheuōn) is ineffectual; it cannot win him kleos nor any more immediate advantage.

Another possible example of nēpios meaning, simply, “child” is Phoenix’s complaint that when Achilles was a baby he often at dinner soiled Phoinix’s clothes nēpieē alegeinē (“in troublesome nēpios behavior,” IX 491). In comparison with other uses of alegein- (of fire, the north wind, a river, the pain of a wound, a message from Zeus, etc.), the collocation of this word with “ nēpios behavior” seems humorous and affectionate. Yes, Achilles was troublesome, but it was a completely impermanent and unimportant kind of troublesomeness.

The suitor Antinoos refers to his own childhood when he recalls having seen Odysseus shoot the great bow. He says:

There is a sinister irony here. Antinoos’s speech also begins with the word nēpios. He taunts the swineherd and cowherd with these words:

Antinoos himself, not Eumaios and Philoitios, is ephēmeria phroneōn (“thinking thoughts of a moment”). The woman who has lost her husband is about to get him back. When Antinoos praises Odysseus he thinks his words are empty courtesy; in fact, they are about to prove far truer than he would wish to know. Antinoos not only was, but still is, nēpios, and it will soon prove to be, for him, a fatal condition.

Finally, Patroklos uses the word nēpios in referring to his own childhood when he speaks to Achilles in a vision. He tells how he had killed another child when he was young:

Lattimore translates the word nēpios here “I was a child only,” but the key is ouk ethelōn (“not intending it”). The use of nēpios in XXIII 88 follows a pattern (discussed in the next chapter) in which nēpios is clearly a term of reproach, as when Odysseus’s men who ate the cattle of the sun god and thus ensured their own destruction are called nēpios (i 7–9).

The remaining passage to be discussed in which children are called nēpios, is also a context of reproach. Nestor is speaking to the assembled Achaians:

All these things which the Achaians have forgotten—covenants, oaths, counsels, meditations, treaties, and promises—are the guarantees for the future which men can make among themselves. Children, being essentially ephemeral, disconnected from past and future, have no part in them.