“Writing the Waves: John Tzetzes and the Allegory of Book 18 of the Iliad”

In Book 18 of the Iliad, Achilles mourns the death of Patroclus. Thetis, his mother and goddess of the sea, consoles him and then leaves to procure him new armor from Hephaestus. John Tzetzes’ Homeric Allegories, a poem written in twelfth-century Constantinople, offers an allegorical reading of Book 18. There are neither gods nor goddesses; Thetis is simply the sea, with waves crashing on the Trojan shore while Achilles mourns his loss. Tzetzes’ text is hard to navigate, advancing with a wave-like pace. The reader is constantly drawn back to previous events and then pushed forward, until the final allegory: a cosmogony that ends in Achilles’ new armor. Once the sky is reached, the reader can finally land.