New Books on Heroines in Myth

This post is a continuation of my substack on the Iliad. All proceeds from the substack are donated to classics adjacent non-profits on a monthly basis. Last year this substack provided over $2k in charitable donations. Don’t forget about Storylife: On Epic, Narrative, and Living Things. Here is its amazon page. here is the link to the company doing the audiobook and here is the press page.

Over the past few years, while I have been working on this substack, my interests have fallen into three broad categories: how the whole of the epic we have integrates earlier performance traditions and forms into its capacious presentation; how the epic reflects an understanding of trauma and the importance of empathy; and how to recuperate the experiences and interpretive impact of diverse audiences through re-reading and interpretation today.

On many occasions, I have characterized a range of approaches to Homeric epic as “supply side poetics” for focusing on poetic intention or composition and structure without reference to audience engagement or influence on the shape of the performance. This problem is exacerbated by the history of Homeric scholarship which was, until the last quarter of the 20th century, dominated by men from rather specific backgrounds. Over the past few years, I have begun to think that methods for modeling how diverse audiences responded to Homeric epic.

In her book, Warriors’ Wives, Emma Bridges expresses some pessimism about being about to do so:

“A key point of context to note here is that the Homeric epics and Athenian tragic plays were produced by male authors and performed by men. The performers of epic poetry were rhapsodes–professional reciters who performed to the accompaniment of an instrument–and the action on stage in Athens were all male. Similarly, ancient evidence suggests the Athenian theatre audiences were predominantly, if not exclusively male….Therefore, although these texts depict a range of female experiences in wartime contexts, undeniably, they represent male perspectives on women’s behavior and associated assumptions about gender roles. As a result it is impossible to assert that we can access authentic female experiences and voices by reading these texts” (12)

Of course, one of the strengths of Emma’s book is that despite acknowledging this methodological difficulty, she goes on to show that we can talk about relationships, psychology, and the limited agency granted to women in epic poetry. In her Mythica: A New History of Homer’s World, Through the Women Written out of It, Emily Hauser takes a different approach to the problem by retelling the stories of the women in epic, centering their experiences.

Over the past two versions of my myth course, I have started given lectures on heroic women, shifting the way I talk about figures of myth, so I was really happy to see Emily’s book when it first came out. But Emily’s approach is deeper–she sees a connection between the depiction of Homeric women and historical women outside the poem. Her work, then, is broadly recuperative: ‘In looking at the women of the past, I am setting out to dig deeper, to keep challenging and refining the way we think, acknowledging that, in exploring the variety and complexity of women’s experiences, there will always be more to learn” (13).

She continues on her next page with an expansion

“I am bringing women to the foreground, but neither am I idealizing or generalizing them, pretending that they were always powerful or always extraordinary or always the same. Instead, I’m arguing, above all, that women’s experiences deserve to be examined in all their diversity, that every voice deserves to be heard. But I’m also suggesting that we can find interesting moments at the boundaries, where at some points ancient women were more powerful or more complex than we thought, and others where they came up against constraints– all the while exploring how the conversation around gender, the ebb and flow of power and the accounts that make it into the history books have echoed down the ages. In other words, what I’m arguing is that Homer’s women are the jumping-off point to investigate a bigger picture, that they’re ‘good to think with’ – that they can push us to reflect on gender, on ourselves, on how we’ve interpreted the past, in new ways”(14)

Emily’s book splits into two parts, combining readings of the epics, myth, and information from archaeology to tell stories about women in war (the Iliad) and women at home (the Odyssey). She focuses in each chapter on what we can say about individual heroines based on their social roles. Mythica is essential reading for anyone interested in myth, but even more so for those who want to start thinking about how our stories have been shaped by silence and exclusion.

Hauser’s book shares space with a growing body of scholarship and literature opening space in the past to restore the voices and bodies that we have lost. I think it works well with other scholarly books like Lilah Canavero’s Women of substance in Homeric epic (2018) or Cristina Franco’s Shameless: The Canine and the Feminine in Ancient Greece and Emma Bridges Warriors’ Wives. At the same time, Emily’s sensibility as a writer of fiction makes this work more creative and experimental, making it good to read alongside Margaret Atwood’ Penelopiad, Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls, and Madeline Miller’s Circe, or The Song of Achilles.

Here’s a link to purchase the book!

A Short Bibliography on women in Homer

Aguilar Fernández, Rosa María. “Las mujeres de Odiseo.” Χάρις διδασκαλίας: studia in honorem Ludovici Aegidii = homenaje a Luis Gil. Eds. Aguilar, Rosa María, López Salvá, Mercedes and Rodríguez Alfageme, Ignacio. Madrid: Ed. de la Universidad Complutense, 1994. 199-207.

Arthur, M. B.. “The divided world of Iliad VI.” Reflections of women in antiquity. Ed. Foley, Helene Peet. New York: Gordon & Breach Science Publ., 1981. 19-44.

Beye, Charles Rowan. “Male and female in the Homeric poems.” Ramus, vol. III, 1974, pp. 87-101.

Bridges, Emma. Warriors’ Wives: Ancient Greek Myth & Modern Experience. Oxford. 2023

Canevaro, Lilah Grace. Women of substance in Homeric epic: objects, gender, agency. Oxford: Oxford University Pr., 2018.

Christensen, Joel P.. “Revising Athena’s rage : Cassandra and the Homeric appropriation of « nostos ».” Yearbook of Ancient Greek Epic, vol. 3, 2019, pp. 88-116. Doi: 10.1163/24688487-00301004

Cox, Fiona and Theodorakopoulos, Elena, editors. Homer’s daughters: women’s responses to Homer in the twentieth century and beyond. Classical Presences. Oxford: Oxford University Pr., 2019.

Davidson, Olga. “Women’s lamentations and the ethics of war.” Donum natalicium digitaliter confectum Gregorio Nagy Septuagenario a discipulis collegis familiaribus oblatum. Eds. Bers, Victor, Elmer, David, Frame, Douglas and Muellner, Leonard. Washington (D. C.): Center for Hellenic Studies, 2012. non paginé.

Delana, Alice & KATZ Phyllis B.. “Women in the worlds of Homer.” New England classical newsletter & journal, vol. 18, no. 4, 1990-1991, pp. 10-14.

Doherty, Lillian Eileen. “ a feminist narratological reading.” Texts, ideas and the classics: scholarship, theory and classical literature. Ed. Harrison, Stephen J.. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Pr., 2001. 117-133.

Dué, Casey. “ similes and traditionality in Homeric poetry.” The Classical Bulletin, vol. 81, no. 1, 2005, pp. 3-18.

Farron, Steven. “The portrayal of women in the Iliad.” Acta Classica, vol. XXII, 1979, pp. 15-31.

Fletcher, Judith. “Women’s space and wingless words in the « Odyssey ».” Phoenix, vol. 62, no. 1-2, 2008, pp. 77-91.

Franco, Cristina. 2012. “Women in Homer.” In A Companion to Women in the Ancient World, edited by Sharon L. James and Sheila Dillon, 55–65. London.

———. 2014. Shameless: The Canine and the Feminine in Ancient Greece. Translated by Michael Fox. Berkeley and Los Angeles.

Fuhrer, Therese. “Teichoskopia : female figures looking on battles.” Women and war in Antiquity. Eds. Fabre-Serris, Jacqueline and Keith, Alison M.. Baltimore (Md.): Johns Hopkins University Pr., 2015. 52-70.

Fulkerson, Laurel. “ gender and transgression in Odyssey 22.465-72.” The Classical Journal, vol. 97, no. 4, 2001-2002, pp. 335-350.

Fulkerson, Laurel. “ remorse and the opacity of female desire.” Emotion, genre and gender in classical antiquity. Ed. Munteanu, Dana LaCourse. London: Bristol Classical Pr., 2011. 113-133.

Gaca, Kathy L.. “Ancient warfare and the ravaging martial rape of girls and women : evidence from Homeric epic and Greek drama.” Sex in antiquity : exploring gender and sexuality in the ancient world. Eds. Masterson, Mark, Rabinowitz, Nancy Sorkin and Robson, James. Rewriting Antiquity. London: Routledge, 2015. 278-297.

García Sánchez, Manel. Las mujeres de Homero. Monografías del SEMA; 1. Valencia: Pub. Universitat de València, 1999.

Ghiano, J.. “Las mujeres en la Iliada.”.

Heinrichs, Johannes. “« Royal » women in the Homeric epics.” The Routledge companion to women and monarchy in the ancient Mediterranean world. Eds. Carney, Elizabeth D. and Müller, Sabine. Abingdon ; New York: Routledge, 2021. 271-282.

Karanika, Andromache. Voices at work: women, performance, and labor in ancient Greece. Baltimore (Md.): Johns Hopkins University Pr., 2014.

Karanika, Andromache. “Materiality and ritual competence : insights from women’s prayer typology in Homer.” Women’s ritual competence in the Greco-Roman Mediterranean. Eds. Dillon, Matthew, Eidinow, Esther and Maurizio, Lisa. Routledge Monographs in Classical Studies. London ; New York: Routledge, 2017. 32-45.

Karanika, Andromache. “ perceptions of continuity and rupture in female temporality in Homer.” Narratives of time and gender in antiquity. Eds. Eidinow, Esther and Maurizio, Lisa. London ; New York: Routledge, 2020. 13-27.

Lesser, Rachel H.. “ Helen in the « Iliad » and Penelope in the « Odyssey ».” American Journal of Philology, vol. 140, no. 2, 2019, pp. 189-226. Doi: 10.1353/ajp.2019.0013

Lorimer, H. L.. “Defensive armour in Homer, with a note on women’s dress.” Annals of Archeology and Anthropology (University of Liverpool), vol. XV, 1928, pp. 89-129.

Lyons, Deborah J.. Dangerous gifts: gender and exchange in ancient Greece. Austin (Tex.): University of Texas Pr., 2012.

Mancilla, Cristian. “The gift of Aphrodite in Iliad 24.30.” Antichthon, vol. 54, 2020, pp. 18-31. Doi: 10.1017/ann.2020.8

Marquardt, Patricia A.. “Love’s labor’s lost : women in the Odyssey.” Daidalikon : studies in memory of Raymond V. Schoder. Ed. Sutton, Robert F.. Wauconda (Ill.): Bolchazy-Carducci, 1989. 239-248.

McHardy, Fiona. “ gossip as a female mode of revenge.” Revenge and gender in classical, medieval and Renaissance literature. Eds. Dawson, Lesel and McHardy, Fiona. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Pr., 2018. 160-172. Doi: 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474414098.003.0009

Minchin, Elizabeth. “ rebukes and protests.” Mediterranean Archaeology, vol. 19-20, 2006-2007, pp. 213-224.

Mossé, Claude. “La femme dans la société homérique.” Klio, vol. LXIII, 1981, pp. 149-157.

Mueller, Melissa. “ weaving for κλέοω in the « Odyssey ».” Helios, vol. 37, no. 1, 2010, pp. 1-21.

Murnaghan, Sheila. “Penelope’s ἄγνοια. Knowledge, power, and gender in the Odyssey.” Helios, XIII,2 Special Issue: Rescuing Creusa. New methodological approaches to women in antiquity. Ed. Skinner, M.. 1986. 103-115.

Murnaghan, Sheila. “Maternity and mortality in Homeric poetry.” Classical Antiquity, vol. XI, 1992, pp. 242-264. Doi: 10.2307/25010975

Nelson, Thomas J.. “ Penelope vs. the « Catalogue of women ».” Yearbook of Ancient Greek Epic, vol. 5, 2021, pp. 25-57. Doi: 10.1163/24688487-00501002

Nappi, Marella. “Women and war in the « Iliad » : rhetorical and ethical implications.” Women and war in Antiquity. Eds. Fabre-Serris, Jacqueline and Keith, Alison M.. Baltimore (Md.): Johns Hopkins University Pr., 2015. 34-51.

Nobili, Cecilia. “Female lyric voices in the « Odyssey ».” Philologia Antiqua, vol. 16, 2023, pp. 65-81. Doi: 10.19272/202304601006

O’Gorman, Ellen. “A woman’s history of warfare.” Laughing with Medusa: classical myth and feminist thought. Eds. Zajko, Vanda and Leonard, Miriam. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Pr., 2006. 189-207.

Olsen, Barbara A.. “The worlds of Penelope : women in the Mycenaean and Homeric economies.” Arethusa, vol. 48, no. 2, 2015, pp. 107-138.

Pache, Corinne (2014). “Women after War: weaving « nostos » in Homeric epic and in the twenty-first century. In Meineck, Peter & Konstan, David (Eds.), Combat trauma and the ancient Greeks (pp. 67-85). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Pantelia, Maria C.. “ ideas of domestic order in Homer.” American Journal of Philology, vol. 114, 1993, pp. 493-501.

Pantelia, Maria C.. “Helen and the last song for Hector.” TAPA, vol. 132, 2002, pp. 21-27.

Pedrick, Victoria. “The hospitality of noble women in the Odyssey.” Helios, vol. XV, 1988, pp. 85-101.

Redfield, James M.. “ the woman as a speaking sign.” Scripta Classica Israelica, vol. 40, 2021, pp. 1-13.

Sanz Morales, Manuel. “Were the Homeric poems the work of a woman ? : Ptolemy Chennus and the di­verse faces of a theory.” More than Homer knew: studies on Homer and his ancient commentators. Eds. Rengakos, Antonios, Finglass, Patrick and Zimmermann, Bernhard. Berlin ; Boston (Mass.): De Gruyter, 2020. 217-234. Doi: 10.1515/9783110695823-012

Schein, Seth L.. “Female representations and interpreting the Odyssey.” The distaff side: representing the female in Homer’s Odyssey. Ed. Cohen, Beth. New York: Oxford University Pr., 1995. 17-27.

Skafte Jensen, Minna. “ a discussion of Homeric narrative from an oralist point of view.” Contexts of pre-novel narrative: the European tradition. Ed. Eriksen, Roy. Approaches to semiotics; 114. Berlin ; New York: De Gruyter Mouton, 1994. 27-45.

Skempis, Marios and Ziogas, Ioannis. “ etymology, « ehoie »-poetry and gendered narrative in the « Odyssey ».” Narratology and interpretation: the content of narrative form in ancient literature. Eds. Grethlein, Jonas and Rengakos, Antonios. Trends in Classics. Supplementary Volumes; 4. Berlin ; New York: De Gruyter, 2009. 213-240.

Slatkin, Laura M.. The power of Thetis and selected essays. Hellenic Studies; 16. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Pr., 2011.

Thalmann, William G.. “Female slaves in the « Odyssey ».” Women and slaves in Greco-Roman culture: differential equations. Eds. Joshel, Sandra R. and Murnaghan, Sheila. London: Routledge, 1998. 22-34.

Zanetto, Giuseppe. “ Antikleia and her son.” Ο επάνω και ο κάτω κόσμος στο ομηρικό και αρχαϊκό έπος: από τα πρακτικά του ΙΓ’ Διεθνούς Συνεδρίου για την « Οδύσσεια » : Ιθάκη, 25-29 Αυγούστου 2017. Eds. Christopoulos, Menelaos and Païzi-Apostolopoulou, Machi. Ithaki: Kentro Odysseiakon Spoudon, 2020. 199-212.

Warwick, Celsiana. “ gender and « kleos » in the « Iliad ».” American Journal of Philology, vol. 140, no. 1, 2019, pp. 1-28. Doi: 10.1353/ajp.2019.0001

Wathelet, Paul. “Les femmes de Priam.” « Meta Trôessin »: hommages à Paul Wathelet, helléniste. Ed. Barbara, Sébastien. Collection Kubaba. Série Antiquité. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2020. 69-77.

Wohl, Victoria Josselyn. “ the creation of sexual ideology in the Odyssey.” Arethusa, vol. 26, 1993, pp. 19-50.

Worman, Nancy. “ Helen’s verbal guises in Homeric epic.” Making silence speak: women’s voices in Greek literature and society. Eds. Lardinois, André Pierre M. H. and McClure, Laura K.. Princeton (N. J.): Princeton University Pr., 2001. 19-37.

Ziogas, Ioannis. “Life and death of the Greek heroine in Odyssey 11 and the Hesiodic « Catalogue of women ».” Aspects of death and the afterlife in Greek literature. Eds. Gazis, George Alexander and Hooper, Anthony. Liverpool: Liverpool University Pr., 2021. 49-68. Doi: 10.3828/liverpool/9781789621495.003.0003

Thinking about Homer as the Borg

This post is a continuation of my substack on the Iliad. All proceeds from the substack are donated to classics adjacent non-profits on a monthly basis. Last year this substack provided over $2k in charitable donations. Don’t forget about Storylife: On Epic, Narrative, and Living Things. Here is its amazon page. here is the link to the company doing the audiobook and here is the press page.

One of the many questions about Homeric poetry that interests me is its engagement with other genres. There are some basic assumptions about how epic works in relation to other kinds of poetry that can restrict how we talk about epic, think about how audiences engaged with the poetry in performance, and how it influenced (and was influenced by) other kinds of song.

Before discussing some of these assumptions, it may be helpful to give some examples of what I mean. First, repeated language (words, formulae, even longer phrases) may not count as intergeneric engagement, since the genres of early Greek poetry really hail from a song culture that shared a special language. While some forms of Greek song are marked by dialectical differences (see Sappho or Corinna, e.g.), Greek poetry leaned on traditional forms and shared language as part of performance culture.

What I mean by intergeneric engagement is when we can see longer lines, motifs, or ideas at play within and across our evidence from Greek performance culture. Here are two examples from Homer and Mimnermus (a poet traditionally placed in the 6th century BCE). Homer, in describing the spirits of deaths has:

Homer, Iliad 12.326-8

“But now, since the spirits of death stand fast around us
By the thousands, and there is no way any mortal can escape them,
Let us go and offer a reason to boast to someone else, or take it for ourselves”

νῦν δ’ ἔμπης γὰρ κῆρες ἐφεστᾶσιν θανάτοιο
μυρίαι, ἃς οὐκ ἔστι φυγεῖν βροτὸν οὐδ’ ὑπαλύξαι,
ἴομεν ἠέ τῳ εὖχος ὀρέξομεν ἠέ τις ἡμῖν.

Mimnermus has language that is similar, using the same noun and verb in a combination that an Indo-Europeanist like Calvert Watkins would be “formulaic” in a way that would inform both composition and reception. That is, the noun-verb combination implies a sharing of an image/idea that attends a particular domain. Note, the traditionality of the image in Homer is expanded with more vivid personified language in Mimnermus.

Mimnermus, 2 [=Stobaeus 4.34.12]5-8

“The dark spirits of death are standing beside us.
One holds eventual old age, in pain,
The other has death. The fruit of youth is brief,
As long as the sun’s light stretches across the earth.”

…Κῆρες δὲ παρεστήκασι μέλαιναι,
ἡ μὲν ἔχουσα τέλος γήραος ἀργαλέου,
ἡ δ᾿ ἑτέρη θανάτοιο· μίνυνθα δὲ γίνεται ἥβης
καρπός, ὅσον τ᾿ ἐπὶ γῆν κίδναται ἠέλιος.

Another, more famous example, comes from Glaukos’ speech to Diomedes in Iliad 6 where he parries Diomedes’ question about lineage.

Homer, Iliad 6.146-149

The generations of men are just like leaves on a tree:
The wind blows some to the ground and then the forest
Grows lush with others when spring comes again.
In this way, the race of men grows and then dies in turn.

οἵη περ φύλλων γενεὴ τοίη δὲ καὶ ἀνδρῶν.
φύλλα τὰ μέν τ’ ἄνεμος χαμάδις χέει, ἄλλα δέ θ’ ὕλη
τηλεθόωσα φύει, ἔαρος δ’ ἐπιγίγνεται ὥρη·
ὣς ἀνδρῶν γενεὴ ἣ μὲν φύει ἣ δ’ ἀπολήγει.

The comparison of the generation of human lives to the growth and shedding of leaves appears as well in Mimnermus.

Mimnermus, fr. 2

“BUT we are like the leaves that spring of many flowers
Produces, when they grow quickly thanks to the sun’s rays”

ἡμεῖς δ᾿, οἷά τε φύλλα φύει πολυάνθεμος ὥρη
ἔαρος, ὅτ᾿ αἶψ᾿ αὐγῇς αὔξεται ἠελίου,

In this instance, the comparison is shared, but the language itself doesn’t necessarily lend itself to a formulaic comparison, unless we look at the core comparative word (οἵη/οἷά) + noun (φύλλων/φύλλα) + verb (φύει) sequence as indicative of a common articulation or a generative metaphor that is part of a traditional repertoire of ideas. This takes us right up to those assumptions I mentioned earlier. I’ll separate these into two categories I’ll call “priority trap” and the “generic fallacy”. Both of these categories are rooted in objections I have against supply side poetics–the tendency to privilege authorial intent/practice over what audiences do with poems (songs, etc.).

Let’s start with the priority trap. In my brief comments about Homer and Mimnermus I have operated on the assumption that Homer and Mimnermus draw on a shared corpus of language and image. This is what I would call a networked and non-hierarchical model of reading Greek poetry. It functions in contrast to hierarchical models that imagine Mimnermus “quoting”, “alluding to” or otherwise responding to an extant Homeric text.

Elton Barker and I started to think about these problems two decades ago in our article on the New Archilochus Fragment and Homer. In it, we emphasize that both Homer and Archilochus are likely drawing on shared traditions, using common language to produce different ‘takes’ on shared inheritance. While we believe that Homer was performed/composed prior to Archilochus, we don’t know for sure that the ideas presented within Homer and/or Archilochus were presented in the texts we have for the first time. Indeed, considering the iterative nature of performance culture, it is possible that the texts we have represent ideas that were explored many different times in many different forms. We have no way of actually knowing how the songs engaged with each other over time and how this influenced the final forms we have. This means that it is methodologically as important to ask if Homer is ‘responding’ to Archilochus as it is to invert the question or to consider if they are both responding to something else.

This takes me to another challenge: the generic fallacy. There’s an old and stubborn notion that the poetic genres of ancient Greece had firewalls between them and that there were restrictive rules about the contents and form. All of the imagined rules are eventually undermined: the New Simonides poems showed that elegy could in fact be historical; the new Archilochus demonstrated that elegy could contain narrative myth. (Prior to these publications, very respectable scholars insisted that these poems would not happen).

I have always found restrictions about interpretive flow between and across genres or restrictive use of genres to be suspect. Think of the way people use music today: I have often found myself listening to dance music while doing dishes, exercising, or driving the car. I think this is far from atypical. Song culture in ancient Greece was persistent and permeating, but the boundaries between kinds of songs and their occasions were not fixed and hard. Instead, they moved and were squishy, accommodating audience use and changing cultures over time.

I started thinking about this recently because I have been reading Stephen A. Sansom’s article “Achilles and The Resources of Genre: Epitaph, Hymnos, and Paean in Iliad 22.386-94”. In it, Sansom builds on an earlier article by Christopher Faraone, proposing that Homeric singers integrated other hexametric genres into their creations. Farone suggests that singers do this in order “to enhance a dramatic or narrative situation by fulfilling or upsetting the audience’s generic expectations.” Faraone uses literary theory (Bakhtin) to talk about embedded genres (similarly Melissa Mueller uses Eve Sedwick’s reparative reading to talk about Sappho and Homer). I am a big fan of theoretical approaches, especially when they undergird a pragmatic reality. In this case, I am not sure we need literary theory to make a very basic proposition: Greek singers used the full range of language, music, and ideas at their disposal in order to engage with their audiences. It is my belief that as a ‘master genre’ of Greek song, Homeric epic regularly absorbed and integrated features from other genres.

I first started thinking about this when working on my dissertation and reading A. P. Lardinois’ work on the integration of proverbs into Greek epic. If we can ignore questions of priority and disregard the restrictive definition of genre that posits that elegy and epic and lyric are different poetic universes, it is easier to imagine a performance context where an epic rhapsode would adapt or otherwise integrate words, sounds, and ideas from other forms that audiences would know.

There is an interpretive payoff for this at micro-and macro levels. Sansom shows that Achilles uses language akin to hymnic epitaphs in thinking about Patroklos, indicating a characterization of Achilles that shows a consciousness of other genres and a humanizing move: the hero reflects on death the way ancient audiences did with their funerary epitaphs. This has a reinforcing as well as reflective impact on the shared culture of audience and song. There are structural aspects to this as well indicating group and individual songs, the beginning and end of ritual, and the overall shape and arc of the poem. Here’s what Sansom says

Achilles’ call for the paean in Book 22 repeats most of line 1.473 (ἀείδοντες παιήονα κοῦροι Ἀχαιῶν, the only other instance in the epic corpus) and seeks to inspire a similar or perhaps the same group of Achaians to sing (υἷες Ἀχαιῶν, 22.369; κοῦροι Ἀχαιῶν, 22.391). Considering the generic qualities of Achilles’ recollection of Patroklos, hymnos also precedes and works in conjunction with both paeans. From a wider view, then, we can observe that the Iliad thus begins and initiates its ending with embedded hymns: the first, a hymn from local cult; the second, a hymnic epitaph that prototypes the hero-cult of Patroklos. In doing so, it makes use of two of the formal functions associated with hymns: that of preface or prooimion in the epichoric hymn of Book 1, and as a transitional device between songs, themes, or locales in Achilles’ hymn of Book 22.’

There’s a lot more detail to support his argument–the whole piece is certainly worth reading. This joins a growing body of work that acknowledges that Homeric poetry is in a way trans-generic, or, perhaps less clunkily, that the genre of epic poetry is actively engaged with other song genres. Of course, there is a less positive way to think about it as well. As Elton and I have argued in Homer’s Thebes, there is a leveling, almost imperial character to Homeric poetry as it exerts its force on other genres. Like the Star Trek’s Borg, Homeric epic seeks to integrate themes and ideas from other traditions into its song, which it means to make the final one. And, resistance can indeed be futile: Homeric poetry makes its meaning as much by silencing ideas as sampling them.

A Short Bibliography on Homer and Other Genres

Alexandrou, Margarita. “Mythological narratives in Hipponax.” Iambus and elegy : new approaches. Eds. Swift, Laura and Carey, Chris. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Pr., 2016. 210-228.

Baratz, Amit. “The roots of divination in archaic poetry.” Classical Philology, vol. 117, no. 4, 2022, pp. 581-602. Doi: 10.1086/721576

Barker, Elton and Christensen, Joel. “ the new Archilochus fragment and its resonance with Homeric epic.” Materiali e Discussioni per l’Analisi dei Testi Classici, no. 57, 2006, pp. 9-41.

Blondell, Ruby. “Refractions of Homer’s Helen in archaic lyric.” American Journal of Philology, vol. 131, no. 3, 2010, pp. 349-391.

Currie, Bruno. Homer’s allusive art. Oxford: Oxford University Pr., 2016.

Dalby, Andrew. “ lyric and epic in the seventh century.” Archaic Greece: new approaches and new evidence. Eds. Fisher, Nick and Van Wees, Hans. London: Duckworth, 1998. 195-211.

Evans, Stephen. Hymn and epic: a study of their interplay in Homer and the « Homeric Hymns ». Annales Universitatis Turkuensis. Ser. B, Humaniora; 244. Turku: Turun yliopisto, 2001.

Faraone, Christopher A.. “On the eve of epic : did the Chryses episode in Iliad 1 begin its life as a separate Homeric « Hymn » ?.” Persistent forms : explorations in historical poetics. Eds. Kliger, Ilya and Maslov, Boris. Verbal Arts : Studies in Poetics. New York: Fordham University Pr., 2016. 397-419. Doi: 10.5422/fordham/9780823264858.003.0015

Griffith, Mark. “Man and the leaves, a study of Mimnermos fr. 2.” California Studies in Classical Antiquity, vol. VIII, 1975, pp. 73-88. Doi: 10.2307/25010683

Harden, Sarah J. and Kelly, Adrian. “Proemic convention and character construction in early Greek epic.” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. 107, 2013, pp. 1-34.

Hendricks, Amy N.. Approaching chorality : literary representations of the chorus in archaic Greek poetry. [S. l.]: [s. n.], 2020.

Janko, Richard (2016). the archetype of the Orphic gold leaves. Classical Quarterly, N. S., 66(1), 100-127. Doi: 10.1017/S0009838816000380

Kousoulini, Vasiliki. “Alcmanic Hexameter: Alcman’s poetry in its oral context.” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, vol. 53, no. 3, 2013, pp. 420-440.

Lardinois, André Pierre M. H.. “ the orality of Greek proverbial expressions.” Speaking volumes: orality and literacy in the Greek and Roman world. Ed. Watson, Janet. Mnemosyne. Supplements; 218. Leiden ; Boston (Mass.): Brill, 2001. 93-107.

Lardinois, André Pierre M. H.. “Characterization through gnomai in Homer’s « Iliad ».” Mnemosyne, vol. 53, no. 6, 2000 Ser. 4, pp. 641-661.

Lavigne, Donald. “Archilochus and Homer in the rhapsodic context.” Iambus and elegy : new approaches. Eds. Swift, Laura and Carey, Chris. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Pr., 2016. 74-98.

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A podcast on on Storylife

This post is a continuation of my substack on the Iliad. All proceeds from the substack are donated to classics adjacent non-profits on a monthly basis. Last year this substack provided over $2k in charitable donations. Don’t forget about Storylife: On Epic, Narrative, and Living Things. Here is its amazon page. here is the link to the company doing the audiobook and here is the press page. I am happy to talk about this book in person or over zoom.

So, I published Storylife: On Epic, Narrative, and Living Things in January. I promised not to make this substack about it, but I have been remiss in promoting it (except the note at the beginning of all the posts. I have done precious little, much to the chagrin, I imagine, of my publisher! With everything going on in the world, it is hard to focus on promoting a book, even if the book speaks directly to some of the reasons the world is so messed up.

And, yet. Part of what I explore in Storylife is how narrative takes on a life of its own and how it appeals to people, not through logic or reason, but by building upon closely held beliefs about the world. People believe in stories thanks in part to basic psychological needs like belonging and a sense of agency. Look at any cultural group believing things that seem incredible or doing things that seem horrible, and they likely have a narrative that casts them as the victim, the martyr, the hero, or the misunderstood good.

This is part of what I think we can learn from Homer. None of the heroes think they’re wrong; everyone has a story that makes their actions make sense to them. Communities live or die based on their ability to create composite narratives that bring them together; this togetherness, however, is often built on degrading, undermining, or dehumanizing others. The Iliad impresses upon its audience the dangerous cost of this by presenting the Trojans as human and depicting the precarious nature of the Achaean coalition, built around a specious claim to vengeance, an extractive approach to conquest, and a super-narrative prioritizing honor and glory over human life. In a complimentary way, the Odyssey individualizes the sailors and suitors and complicates Odysseus’ homecoming to motivate the end of the heroic age and prompt questions about balancing the needs of the people and the political framework that elides the wealth of its leaders with the health of the state. (An argument I make in the last few chapters of The Many-Minded Man.).

I haven’t necessarily been paralyzed by the political and economic events of 2025. I have written a few things in Neos Kosmos about political events, most recently about a Utah Bill legislating Homer into the curriculum, Elon Musk’s absurd comments about empathy as the weakness of the ‘western tradition’, and, perhaps cleaving most closely to the spirit and concern of Storylife, a piece on how the Trump administration is redesignating the meaning of words to match its story about reality. But I haven’t been pushing the work, because it seems so small an effort in such an unending roil of crises.

Fortunately, there are others to help! The Partial Historians were kind enough to invite me to talk about the book on their podcast. Yale University Press sponsored a blog post about conspiracies that builds on the book. And, second, the audiobook format was released on February 18th. And, last week Liv Albert had me on her podcast to talk about Storylife.

If you don’t know Liv’s work, check out her work. She brings enthusiasm, insight, and humor to talking about the ancient world.