Here is another simile that links pastoral/domestic life with the violence/fighting of war. Homer compares the balance of war with a woman weighing wool. Is this comparison meant to emphasize the stark differences between these two spheres of life or illustrate their unexpected similarities? Are experiences from war life as universal as those from home life?

Also, the comparison of a widow struggling to make ends meet to support her children to a scene of war was especially interesting as the Trojan war is almost exclusively being fought by men, many of whom are presumably married to women and whose deaths would make their wives widows who would then be forced to financially support their families by themselves...

Maddie

As the Trojan and Achaian forces rage against each other on the blood-soaked battlefield littered with bodies from both sides, Zeus grants Hektor the glory of being the first to break the wall of the Achaians--a glory he earlier denied to another Trojan warrior, Aias. With the blessing of Zeus, Hektor rallies the Trojans, and as he approaches the gates of the Achaian wall, he lifts a great stone with the intention to break down the wall as “easily carries the fleece of a wether” by a shepherd to carry home, comparing the ease with which Hektor moves toward his destructive goal with the domesticity of the task of a shepherd in peacetime. The domestic task of a shepherd tending to his flock is paralleled with the violent work of the warrior Hektor to knock down the Achaian wall. This comparison illustrates the tension between these seemingly disparate spheres of Greek life, and so by paralleling the shepherd’s care with Hektor’s burden, Homer links pastoral life with war life and perhaps implies that the two are more closely related than they may seem. Is the work of a warrior as universal as that of a shepherd? In this way, are violence and glory expected to be as much a part of life as domesticity and home?

This connection reminds me of the epithet “shepherd of the people” which is awarded to different leaders in the war and which also overlays the realm of domestic life with that of war.

Maddie