The Other Way 'Round - Page 14
© Michael Martinez
And pledged him to give many more, so she
Would save the Trojans from the imminent doom.
And she such deeds she promised as no man
Had hoped for, even to lay Achilles low,
To smite the wide host of the Argive men,
And cast the brands red-flaming on the ships.
Ah fool! -- but little knew she him, the lord
Of ashen spears, how far Achilles' might
In warrior-wasting strife o'erpassed her own! The Amazons' arrival is very similar to that of Beowulf and his men. They arrive unlooked-for and seek out the king, promising to rid him of his greatest foe. As Hrothgar bestows gifts and praise upon Beowulf, so Priam showers Penthesileia with favor, and both hero and heroine are treated to a royal feast. Eowyn is given short shrift in the catalogue of heroic introductions. She stands silently beside Theoden and is then dismissed when Gandalf and the boys arrive at Meduseld. In fact, the only time she is treated with distinction is when Theoden leaves her in charge of Edoras. Then he gives her a mail shirt and sword. Nonetheless, the procession of Penthesileia sleeps in Priam's hall on the eve of battle, just as Beowulf sleeps in Hrothgar's hall to await Grendel's nightly attack. But whereas Beowulf seeks out Grendel in order to help Hrothgar's beleaguered people, Penthesileia acquires her ambition to slay Achilles from a dream. And Eowyn only seeks death in battle, because she has become so filled with despair she has lost her will to live. At this point, Beowulfian foreshadowings vanish from Quintus' poem, but Tolkien continues to walk in Quintus' and Homer's footsteps. As Homer's Achaeans don helms with horse-hair plumes, so Quintus has Penthesileia take up a helmet with a golden-haired plume. And Eomer, when he greets Aragorn for the first time, rides forward wearing a helm adorned with a white horsetail crest. The "horse-taming Trojans" also wear horse-hair plumes in Homer's "Iliad". Horses are important to both the Achaeans and Trojans, for the great beasts draw the war-chariots of both armies. Yet Penthesileia merely rides her horse into battle (a classical trait of the Amazons, according to centuries of Greek artwork).
...Swiftly all
Hearkened her gathering-ery, and thronging came,
Champions, yea, even such as theretofore
Shrank back from standing in the ranks of war
Against Achilles the all-ravager.
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