The Iliad

Zeus’s scales are a source of some debate. They appear at few but significant life-or-death moments in the poem and seem to represent Zeus’s power, though whether this power is to determine fate or simply ensure that it is executed remains unclear. In Book 8, when Zeus decides to give the Trojans victory, he holds out “his sacred golden scales” and places “two fates of death that lays men low,” one for the Trojans and the other for the Achaeans (233). Zeus holds up the scales, allowing the losing side to drop: “gripping the beam mid-haft the Father raised it high / and down went Achaea’s day of doom, Achaea’s fate / settling down on the earth that feeds us all / as the Fate of Troy went lifting toward the sky” (233).

Almost identical language is used when Zeus lifts his scales at the moment of Hector’s death: “Father Zeus held out his sacred golden scales; / in them he placed two fates of death that lays men low— / one for Achilles, one for Hector breaker of horses” (548). As with the Achaeans and Trojans, the falling of the scales indicates whose death has arrived: “gripping the beam mid-haft the Father raised it high / and down went Hector’s day of doom, dragging him down / to the strong House of Death” (548). The scales do not exist to demonstrate balance and harmony, as the goal is not to achieve equality between two but to announce who will die.

The Homeric poems are striking for their repetition, evident in the repeated use of epithets (descriptive phrases attached to characters, e.g., “Hector breaker of horses”) and type scenes (e.g., descriptions of duels that march chronologically through the same steps) as well as repeated grammatical formulations. Groundbreaking research by Milman Parry in the 1930s explained this repetition in terms of oral poetic composition. Poets who compose orally, especially in performance, may rely on formulaic phrases and patterns that allow them to improvise in performance while remaining inside the boundaries of their form. In this sense, repetition is essentially understood as a mnemonic device.

The poem also demonstrates awareness of repetition as a naturally occurring phenomenon in which mortals participate. References to the heroes’ peacetime lives place them within that cycle: Mortals are born, grow up, and die, ideally succeeded by offspring who experience that same cycle, in perpetuity. Mortals also participate in the seasons through the endeavors they undertake, planting and farming being the most obvious examples, another being the formation of families through marriages, births, and deaths.

Conscious acceptance of mortal experiences’ cyclicality can provide perspective on tragedy. Achilles tells Lycaon not to moan about being killed because all men must die. Priam implores Achilles to see the repetition of his plight in that of Achilles’s father. Cyclicality also provides continuity. Mortals die bodily deaths, but their stories continue to be passed down through their surviving lines.