Violence and Vulgarity of the Similes in Book 16

In the Stanley Lombardo translation of the Iliad, he highlights certain similes that are translated from the Homeric manuscripts as if they were a tiny vignette that flashes in our mind as we read. Obviously, this should encapsulate the point of a simile but the specific italic print he chooses really points it out for readers. Usually they are really poetic and beautiful, but they take a turn for the menacing in book 16.

Book 16 is described as the very very sad book as it captures the death of Patroclus at the hands of Apollo and Hector. However, it is also the same book where the similes get violent and graphic. Lines 166-175 are about a starving wolf pack. “Think of wolves/Ravenous for meat. It is impossible/To describe their savage strength in the hunt,/But after they have killed an antlered stag/Up in the hills and torn it apart, they come down/With gore on their jowls, and in a pack/Go to lap the black surface water in a pool/Fed by a dark spring, and as they drink,/Crimson curls float off from their slender tongues./ But their hearts are still, and their bellies gorged.” (166-175)

This is just one simile to describe the bloodlust the soldiers of the Myrmidon contingent. The sharp and precise imagery of the simile itself is terrifying because hungry wolves that hunt are desperate for food. And then to describe the blood that drips from their mouths while they’re having a post-slaughter drink? As if that was something else the reader needed to be terrified of if they would go to a creek and suddenly the water turned crimson.