"A Great Wave against the Stream": Water Imagery in Iliadic Battle Scenes

Abstract

This article investigates the figurative role of water in martial similes, metaphors, and personifications in the Iliad. Such imagery, it is argued, is generally informed by a thematic association of Greeks and their camp with the sea, and Trojans and their territory with rivers; as heroes sound and move like waves and streams, bodies of water become sympathetically animated warriors, and gods of sea and river rush into battle. The conclusion is that an ancient antithesis between saltwater and freshwater lends the Iliad a sense of unity in setting and plot and endows heroic action with greater cosmic and theological significance.