—Act II, scene iii, lines 10-14
Jupiter (Zeus) was, in all likelihood, a storm god originally. His home would naturally be on a mountaintop where the clouds gather. Olympus was the one chosen by the Greeks, and it was a logical choice, for it is the highest mountain in Greece-although not so terribly high at that, only 1.8 miles. It is located in northern Thessaly, about 170 miles northwest of Athens.
As a storm god, Jupiter would naturally be in charge of the lightning. He would therefore be a thunder-darter, or, more correctly, a thunderbolt-darter.
Mercury (Hermes) was, in many myths, the messenger of the gods, a kind of male version of Iris (see page I-67). It is because of Mercury's swiftness in fulfilling his errands that he is usually pictured with small wings on his sandals and hat.
In carrying the messages of Jupiter, he was acting as Jupiter's herald or substitute and therefore carried with him the aura of Jupiter's majesty. In token of that he carried a staff, as earthly heralds did. In earliest times, the staff may have had flexible twigs at the end which would be wound back over the body of the staff.
In later times, these twigs, shown in representations of Mercury and misunderstood, became serpents. It is this serpent-bound staff, called the caduceus, which became a characteristic mark of Mercury. The caduceus was further confused in still later times with a magical wand, the agent by which Mercury, at the behest of Jupiter, brought about supernatural effects. Thersites therefore speaks of the "craft of thy caduceus."
Having wished evil on Ajax and Achilles specifically, Thersites goes on to curse the Greeks generally:
—Act II, scene iii, lines 18-21
The "Neapolitan bone-ache" is syphilis. This was not recognized as a serious, contagious disease until the early sixteenth century. Indeed, the story arose that it first appeared in Italy during battles at which some of Columbus' sailors were present. It therefore seemed that those sailors had picked up syphilis in the New World from the Indians and brought it back to Europe. (Europe sent the Indians smallpox in return.)
This may not be so and the disease may have occurred in Europe earlier, and been considered one of the forms of leprosy, perhaps; but if so, syphilis occurred less frequently then and less virulently. If the sixteenth century did not find it a new disease, it found it at least a more serious version of an old one, and it still required a new name.
This was difficult to find, for it was early recognized that contagion most easily resulted through sexual intercourse, so that it became shameful to admit the disease or even discuss it. It was natural for any group to consider it characteristic of a neighboring group. The French, for instance, would call it the "Neapolitan bone-ache," while the Italians would call it the "French disease."
In 1530 an Italian physician, Girolamo Fracastoro, wrote a Lathi epic poem which was a mock myth about a shepherd who offended Apollo and who fell victim to what Fracastoro called the "French disease." The shepherd's name was the Greek-sounding one (but not real Greek) of Syphilis, and it is this which gave the present name to the disease.
In Shakespeare's time the disease was still less than a century old in European consciousness. It had the doubtful virtue of novelty and of being associated with sex. Any reference to it, then, was good for a laugh, especially if it was arranged to have the laugh at the expense of foreigners. Thersites not only affixes it to the Neapolitans (making the reference doubly anachronistic, since Naples was not to be founded till some five centuries after the Trojan War) but makes use of the sexual angle as well by insisting it is to be what is expected for any army that wars for a placket (a petticoat, and therefore a coarse term for a woman).
References to syphilis abound in Shakespeare, usually at the expense of the French, but since moderns don't find the subject as humorous as the Elizabethans did, I shall pick up such references as infrequently as I can.
Thersites assumes, in this scene, a totally un-Homeric role. He is a jester; a man of quick wit (or perhaps slightly addled brains) whose remarks and responses are a source of amusement. He had apparently fulfilled that function for Ajax but Ajax had beaten him and he was now seeking employment with Achilles instead.
In return for amusing his master (in days when amusement was not yet electronified and easy to come by at the flick of a dial) a jester was allowed extraordinary leeway in his mockery and much more freedom of speech than anyone else might have. Naturally, this worked best when the jester's patron was powerful and could suppress the hurt feelings of underlings who might otherwise break the jester's neck.
Thus, when Thersites begins to perform for Achilles, Patroclus reacts with the beginnings of violence to one of Thersites' scurrilous remarks and Achilles restrains him by saying:
-Act II, scene iii, line 59
Such a jester was often called a "fool" and many a Shakespearean play has someone listed as "Fool" in the cast of characters. This was not necessarily because they were foolish, but because very often they hid their sharp satire behind oblique comments in such a way that the points were not immediately apparent and therefore seemed foolish to the dull-witted. It also helped keep the jester from broken bones if he played the fool so that those he mocked might not be certain whether his remarks were deliberately hurtful or whether they were perhaps just the aimless maunderings of a lackwit.
Thersites is given this name a little later in the scene when Ajax is inveighing against Achilles and Nestor is surprised at the spleen of those remarks. Ulysses explains:
—Act II, scene iii, line 93
Thersites' bitter jesting for the benefit of Achilles, and largely at the expense of Patroclus, is interrupted by the arrival of a deputation from the Greeks. Achilles promptly retires into the tent, unwilling to talk to them, and before leaving himself, Thersites expresses his opinion of both sides of this inter-Greek friction:
—Act II, scene iii, lines 73-75
The whore is Helen, of course, and the cuckold (that is, the deceived husband) is Menelaus.
Why cuckold? The word is a form of "cuckoo." The common European species of cuckoo lays its egg in the nest of another and smaller bird, leaving to the foster parents the task of rearing the cuckoo fledgling. The male adulterer also lays his egg in the nest of another, to use the ribald analogy that must have occurred as long ago as Roman times, for the Romans called an adulterer a "cuckoo." The word shifted to "cuckold" and the name passed from the adulterer to the adulterer's victim. The name, or any guarded reference to it, was as sure-fire a source of laughter in Elizabethan times as any remark concerning horns (see page I-84).
The deputation of Greeks who have arrived at Achilles' tent intend to urge him to fight more vigorously.
This parallels, in a way, Book Nine of the Iliad, where the Greeks, having had some trouble in an immediately preceding battle, gloomily anticipate more and decide to try to win over Achilles once again.