Iliad - Book 6 ("Hector Returns to Troy")

The Fright of Astyanax (Hector Bidding Farewell to Andromache), Benjamin West, 1797

Discussion points:

1. What is the hidden figure, image, in the book's opening stanza? How is battle depicted? How do you know (195.1-5)?
2. At the beginning of a book that highlights how hospitality establishes pacts of peace and friendship, Homer reports, "A shattering war cry! Diomedes killed off Axylus, / Teuthras' son who had lived in rock-built Arisbe, / a man of means and a friend to all mankind, / at his roadside house he'd warm all comers in. / But who of his guests would greet his enemy now, / meet him face-to-face and ward off grisly death? / Diomedes killed the man and his aide-in-arms at once / . . . both at a stroke he drove beneath the earth" (196.14-22). How does this little authorial interpolation (insertion) play into any themes you see Homer developing? Is this wasted space, or is Homer doing something larger here?
3. Read 196.23-33 and note any ironies you see there. What is Homer reporting on the relationship between love and war, sex and violence? Does it remind you of any passages from Theogony dealing with love and war?
4. After a series of slaughters by various warriors of various warriors, Menelaus considers showing mercy to a Trojan who is on his knees, offering a ransom. How does this episode play into the trajectory of a chapter that focuses on the effects of hospitality (196.43-77)?
5. When Glaucus and Diomedes meet "in the no man's land between both armies," a knowledge of the other's genealogy is cause of permanent peace between them. What is Homer doing here as he continues the "hospitality" trajectory (199.138-282)? 
6. What is Homer suggesting with the following sections that bookend the Glaucus-Diomedes hospitality episode: 
1. Just after Menelaus and Agamemnon destroy the appealing Trojan, Nestor speaks, "My comrades-- / fighting Danaans, aides of Ares--no plunder now! / Don't lag behind, don't fling yourself at spoils / just to haul the biggest portion back to your ship. / Now's the time for killing! Later, at leisure, / strip the corpses up and down the plain!" (197.78-83).
2. ". . . let's trade armor. The men must know our claim: / we are sworn friends from our fathers' days till now! / Both agreed. Both fighters sprang from their chariots, / clasped each other's hands and traded pacts of friendship" (203.276-9).
7. What is the irony that Helen identifies (207.421-6)? 
8. Why would Hector and Andromache's laughter concerning their screaming son ultimately curdle in readers' stomachs (211)?
9. How is Hector's attempt to reassure his wife no comfort (212.579-84)?
10. What does Homer achieve by juxtaposing Andromache and Paris's respective responses to the war (212.589-612)?