Part 1: Violence and Lament

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 missed a week of posting, thanks to a whirlwind of work and a trip to Winnipeg, Canada to present a talk at the Classical Association of Canada Annual Meeting. To make up for the skipped week, I will present the talk here in three parts.

Violence

Homer, Iliad 6.53-62

“And then [Menelaos] was intending to give Adrastus
To an attendant to take back to the Achaeans’ swift ships
But Agamemnon came rushing in front of him and spoke commandingly
“Oh my fool Menelaos, why do you care so much about people?
Did your house suffer the best treatment by the Trojans?
Let none of them flee dread death at our hands,
Not even a mother who carries in her womb
a child that will be a boy, let not one flee, but instead
Let everyone at Troy perish, unwept and unseen.”

The hero spoke like this and changed his brother’s mind,

καὶ δή μιν τάχ᾽ ἔμελλε θοὰς ἐπὶ νῆας Ἀχαιῶν
δώσειν ᾧ θεράποντι καταξέμεν: ἀλλ᾽ Ἀγαμέμνων
ἀντίος ἦλθε θέων, καὶ ὁμοκλήσας ἔπος ηὔδα:
‘ὦ πέπον ὦ Μενέλαε, τί ἢ δὲ σὺ κήδεαι οὕτως
ἀνδρῶν; ἦ σοὶ ἄριστα πεποίηται κατὰ οἶκον
πρὸς Τρώων; τῶν μή τις ὑπεκφύγοι αἰπὺν ὄλεθρον
χεῖράς θ᾽ ἡμετέρας, μηδ᾽ ὅν τινα γαστέρι μήτηρ
κοῦρον ἐόντα φέροι, μηδ᾽ ὃς φύγοι, ἀλλ᾽ ἅμα πάντες
Ἰλίου ἐξαπολοίατ᾽ ἀκήδεστοι καὶ ἄφαντοι.

ὣς εἰπὼν ἔτρεψεν ἀδελφειοῦ φρένας ἥρως

At the beginning of Iliad 6, Menelaos has captured the Trojan Adrastus alive and is about to send him to the ships to be ransomed later. But his brother, Agamemnon intervenes and tells him to “Let everyone at Troy perish,” even the babies in their mothers’ wombs and stabs the man before Menelaos can act. I have struggled with how to understand this scene. Perhaps it is characteristic of Agamemnon whose refusal to honor the convention of supplication in book 1 set the epic’s conflicts into action. Or, we could imagine the privations of a long conflict undermining even basic conventions. Achilles also refuses a suppliant in book 22 (Lykaon) and proceeds to capture 12 Trojan youths alive in order to sacrifice them at Patroklos’ pyre. Indeed, one of the main thematic arcs of the Iliad is the reaffirmation of social conventions of exchange (ransom/xenia) and the rites of the dead, resolved powerfully in book 24.

We could also pose this as an exploration of the impact of violence beyond voluntary combatants. The invocation of infanticide sets the audience up for seeing Astyanax at the end of the book. Hektor’s young son, conceived and born during the siege and likely confined to the city for his entire existence, is later killed by either Neoptolemus or Odysseus, dashed to the ground or hurled from the city walls. From this perspective, the structure of Iliad 6 progressively reframes Agamemnon’s words for the audience: Astyanax is a metonym for all the children who die at the fall of Troy.

But what does it do to an audience member who bears witness to these events? The way we tend to read and talk about Homeric epic can sanitize its contents in favor of abstract talk of honor and glory. An analogy I have been contemplating is the tension between the nearly comical top image of the Mykonos vase and the panels below.

For most of my teaching career, I have shown this early image of the Trojan horse to myth classes, entirely ignoring narrative that plays out in the lower sequence. The terrible violence on the lower part of the vase below seems a consequence of the actions of the warriors inside the horse. Michael Anderson (1997, 183-191) identifies the images as part of the sack of troy: the panels follow the action of a single warrior and woman with a male child in different poses, indicating a narrative. He compares the panels to Priam imagining the future death of his sons and enslavement of daughters in book 22 (62-65) and adds “… the warriors on the pithos are determined to eradicate the entire race of Trojans, and all the male children must die, even the sons still in the womb, as Agamemnon coldly threatens in Iliad 6” (187). And for ancient audiences, as Kathy Gaca has argued, the act of killing those who know how to fight and enslaving/taking those who do not (women and children) was a practice observed in many different ways in Ancient Greece. Agamemnon’s words and the Mykonos vase must surely reflect these practices. But how can we reconstruct what such reflections meant to their ancient audiences?

I want to linger on what the Iliad has to say about how we react to suffering, loss, and violence. I am going to offer close readings of lament in Iliad 19 and the meeting of Priam and Achilles in book 24 with some insights from cognitive approaches to literature and a sprinkling of ideas from tragedy to argue that the Iliad provides models for empathy in response to suffering within its own narrative. In this provision, it also outlines an approach to the function of mimetic art and anticipates just how hard it is to become and stay human by acknowledging the reality of others beyond the self.

Lament

The Iliad offers one continuous day of violence from book 11-18. One third of the epic is a sprawling killing field punctuated by the death of Patroklos and the redirection of Achilles’ rage. But following the political reconciliation, Iliad 19 shifts back to the personal, exploring further the impact of Patroklos’ death on others. Here, we see a refraction of some of the themes from Hektor’s visit to Troy. Briseis, in something of a surprise appearance, weeps for Patroklos, recalling how she witnessed the death of her husband and brothers and somehow he persuaded her not to mourn, to imagine a different future with the very man who slaughtered her family.

Homer Iliad 19. 281-302

“Then when Briseis, like golden Aphrodite herself,
Saw Patroklos run through with sharp bronze,
Poured herself over him while she wailed and ripped
At her chest, tender neck, and pretty face with her hands.
And while mourning the woman spoke like one of the goddesses:

“Patroklos, you were the dearest to wretched me and
I left you alive when I went from your dwelling.
And now I find you here dead, leader of the armies,
When I return. Troubles are always wresting me from troubles.
The husband my father and mother gave me to
I watched run through with sharp bronze in front of the city,
And then the three brothers my mother bore,
Dear siblings, all met their fate on that day.
But you would not ever let me weep when swift Achilles
Was killing my husband and when he sacked the city of divine Munêtos—
No, you used to promise to make me the wedded wife
Of divine Achilles, someone he would lead home in his ships to Phthia,
where you would light the marriage torches among the Myrmidons.
So now I weep for you, dead and gentle forever.”
So she spoke, while weeping….

Βρισηῒς δ’ ἄρ’ ἔπειτ’ ἰκέλη χρυσέῃ ᾿Αφροδίτῃ
ὡς ἴδε Πάτροκλον δεδαϊγμένον ὀξέϊ χαλκῷ,
ἀμφ’ αὐτῷ χυμένη λίγ’ ἐκώκυε, χερσὶ δ’ ἄμυσσε
στήθεά τ’ ἠδ’ ἁπαλὴν δειρὴν ἰδὲ καλὰ πρόσωπα.
εἶπε δ’ ἄρα κλαίουσα γυνὴ ἐϊκυῖα θεῇσι·
Πάτροκλέ μοι δειλῇ πλεῖστον κεχαρισμένε θυμῷ
ζωὸν μέν σε ἔλειπον ἐγὼ κλισίηθεν ἰοῦσα,
νῦν δέ σε τεθνηῶτα κιχάνομαι ὄρχαμε λαῶν
ἂψ ἀνιοῦσ’· ὥς μοι δέχεται κακὸν ἐκ κακοῦ αἰεί.
ἄνδρα μὲν ᾧ ἔδοσάν με πατὴρ καὶ πότνια μήτηρ
εἶδον πρὸ πτόλιος δεδαϊγμένον ὀξέϊ χαλκῷ,
τρεῖς τε κασιγνήτους, τούς μοι μία γείνατο μήτηρ,
κηδείους, οἳ πάντες ὀλέθριον ἦμαρ ἐπέσπον.
οὐδὲ μὲν οὐδέ μ’ ἔασκες, ὅτ’ ἄνδρ’ ἐμὸν ὠκὺς ᾿Αχιλλεὺς
ἔκτεινεν, πέρσεν δὲ πόλιν θείοιο Μύνητος,
κλαίειν, ἀλλά μ’ ἔφασκες ᾿Αχιλλῆος θείοιο
κουριδίην ἄλοχον θήσειν, ἄξειν τ’ ἐνὶ νηυσὶν
ἐς Φθίην, δαίσειν δὲ γάμον μετὰ Μυρμιδόνεσσι.
τώ σ’ ἄμοτον κλαίω τεθνηότα μείλιχον αἰεί.
῝Ως ἔφατο κλαίουσ’…

The postponed weeping, evoked in part by the enjambment and postponement of the infinitive klaien comes at last as Patroklos stands as a fulcrum over which her past losses and future hopes collapse. She has been a witness to death and we are witnesses to her mourning.

But we aren’t permitted to contemplate too long. Achilles takes his turn and moves through a range of motifs that echo Briseis’ invocation of her lost relatives and the re-location of her hopes for continued life in Achilles (as promised by Patroklos).

Homer, Iliad 19. 309-340:

“He said this and dispersed the rest of the kings,
But the two sons of Atreus remained along with shining Odysseus,
Nestor, Idomeneus, and the old horse-master Phoinix
All trying to bring him some distraction. But he took no pleasure
In his heart before he entered the jaws of bloody war.
He sighed constantly as he remembered and spoke:
‘My unlucky dearest of friends it was you who before
Used to offer me a sweet meal in our shelter
Quickly and carefully whenever the Achaeans were rushing
To bring much-lamented Ares against the horse-taming Achaeans.
But now you are lying there run-through and my fate
Is to go without drink and food even though there inside
Because I long for you. I couldn’t suffer anything more wretched than this
Not even if I learned that my father had died,
Who I imagine is crying tender tears right now in Pththia
Bereft of a son like this—but I am in a foreign land,
Fighting against the Trojans for the sake of horrible Helen.
Not even if I lost my dear son who is being cared for in Skyros,
If godlike Neoptolemos is at least still alive—
Before the heart in my chest always expected that
I alone would die far away from horse-nourishing Argos
Here in Troy, but that you would return home to Phthia
I hoped you would take my child in the swift dark ship
From Skyros and that you would show to him there
My possessions, the slaves, and the high-roofed home.
I expect that Peleus has already died or
If he is still alive for a little longer he is aggrieved
By hateful old age and as he constantly awaits
Some painful message, when he learns that I have died.”
So he spoke while weeping, and the old men mourned along with him
As each of them remembered what they left behind at home.
And Zeus [really] felt pity when he saw them mourning.”

῝Ως εἰπὼν ἄλλους μὲν ἀπεσκέδασεν βασιλῆας,
δοιὼ δ’ ᾿Ατρεΐδα μενέτην καὶ δῖος ᾿Οδυσσεὺς
Νέστωρ ᾿Ιδομενεύς τε γέρων θ’ ἱππηλάτα Φοῖνιξ
τέρποντες πυκινῶς ἀκαχήμενον· οὐδέ τι θυμῷ
τέρπετο, πρὶν πολέμου στόμα δύμεναι αἱματόεντος.
μνησάμενος δ’ ἁδινῶς ἀνενείκατο φώνησέν τε·
ἦ ῥά νύ μοί ποτε καὶ σὺ δυσάμμορε φίλταθ’ ἑταίρων
αὐτὸς ἐνὶ κλισίῃ λαρὸν παρὰ δεῖπνον ἔθηκας
αἶψα καὶ ὀτραλέως, ὁπότε σπερχοίατ’ ᾿Αχαιοὶ
Τρωσὶν ἐφ’ ἱπποδάμοισι φέρειν πολύδακρυν ῎Αρηα.
νῦν δὲ σὺ μὲν κεῖσαι δεδαϊγμένος, αὐτὰρ ἐμὸν κῆρ
ἄκμηνον πόσιος καὶ ἐδητύος ἔνδον ἐόντων
σῇ ποθῇ· οὐ μὲν γάρ τι κακώτερον ἄλλο πάθοιμι,
οὐδ’ εἴ κεν τοῦ πατρὸς ἀποφθιμένοιο πυθοίμην,
ὅς που νῦν Φθίηφι τέρεν κατὰ δάκρυον εἴβει
χήτεϊ τοιοῦδ’ υἷος· ὃ δ’ ἀλλοδαπῷ ἐνὶ δήμῳ
εἵνεκα ῥιγεδανῆς ῾Ελένης Τρωσὶν πολεμίζω·
ἠὲ τὸν ὃς Σκύρῳ μοι ἔνι τρέφεται φίλος υἱός,
εἴ που ἔτι ζώει γε Νεοπτόλεμος θεοειδής.
πρὶν μὲν γάρ μοι θυμὸς ἐνὶ στήθεσσιν ἐώλπει
οἶον ἐμὲ φθίσεσθαι ἀπ’ ῎Αργεος ἱπποβότοιο
αὐτοῦ ἐνὶ Τροίῃ, σὲ δέ τε Φθίην δὲ νέεσθαι,
ὡς ἄν μοι τὸν παῖδα θοῇ ἐνὶ νηῒ μελαίνῃ
Σκυρόθεν ἐξαγάγοις καί οἱ δείξειας ἕκαστα
κτῆσιν ἐμὴν δμῶάς τε καὶ ὑψερεφὲς μέγα δῶμα.
ἤδη γὰρ Πηλῆά γ’ ὀΐομαι ἢ κατὰ πάμπαν
τεθνάμεν, ἤ που τυτθὸν ἔτι ζώοντ’ ἀκάχησθαι
γήραΐ τε στυγερῷ καὶ ἐμὴν ποτιδέγμενον αἰεὶ
λυγρὴν ἀγγελίην, ὅτ’ ἀποφθιμένοιο πύθηται.
῝Ως ἔφατο κλαίων, ἐπὶ δὲ στενάχοντο γέροντες,
μνησάμενοι τὰ ἕκαστος ἐνὶ μεγάροισιν ἔλειπον·
μυρομένους δ’ ἄρα τούς γε ἰδὼν ἐλέησε Κρονίων…

As Casey Dué observes, these themes recall Andromache’s comments in book 6, marking some connection between the impact of violence on non-combatants and the laments in book 19. There is a significant difference in Achilles’ rumination, however: where Andromache and Briseis invest a single person with the lost hopes of larger families, Achilles projects the loss of a single person on his living father and son. Andromache and Briseis try to find some comfort in life for the loss of many in the hopes of one; Achilles allows the loss of one to articulate his separation from everyone else.

In doing so, Achilles articulates a collapse between himself and Patroklos. His speech is remarkable because he does not mourn his own loss of life (as is clear from his speech in Iliad 18) but instead shows that his hope for life after death was based in Patroklos out-living him. And the way he talks about this frames them as replacements for each other, inverting what actually happens in the Iliad. In book 16, Patroklos literally takes Achilles’ place in battle, wearing his armor as one might a lover’s clothes and facing death in his stead. In book 19, Achilles shows that he expected Patroklos to replace him in life, to take his place as a surrogate father to Neoptolemos, returning him to the home he has never seen to meet the grandfather he has never known.

Language facilitates Achilles’ elision of identities. Ambiguities may leave the audience briefly lost, but they also point to the overlap in Achilles’ mind: consider line 314/5 where Achilles says of Peleus that he is “bereft of a son like this, but he [I] am fighting in a foreign land….” (χήτεϊ τοιοῦδ’ υἷος· ὃ δ’ ἀλλοδαπῷ ἐνὶ δήμῳ / εἵνεκα ῥιγεδανῆς ῾Ελένης Τρωσὶν πολεμίζω). It is very difficult to convey in English the postponement of meaning in these lines. The qualitative demonstrative τοιοῦδ’ (“of this kind of…”) modifies the word “son” (υἷος), yet, given the context it is unclear whether Achilles is referring to himself as the kind of person Peleus mourns over or Patroklos.

The following words make it clear to me that he likely means Patroklos, at first. After using the demonstrative, Achilles shifts to the nominative singular article ὃ followed by what Egbert Bakker has called the discourse shifting particle δ’. The combination of a stated article with the particle (ὃ δ’) frequently indicates a subject change. In this case, it strengthens the case that we are supposed to imagine Achilles as in some way contrasting the referent of the demonstrative “someone like this” with pronoun.

But it is even more dizzying, because it is not clear from that ὃ δ’ that Achilles is talking about himself and not another person until the end of the following line when we get to the first-person verb πολεμίζω. The closest English approximation would be something like “bereft of a son just like this, while this guy in a foreign land, for the sake of horrible Helen, I, am fighting the Trojans”. And if it is somewhat unconvincing that the movement from the demonstrative to the pronoun, the sequence χήτεϊ τοιοῦδ’ υἷος· ὃ δ’ indicates a shift from thinking about Patroklos to Achilles. Some lines later Achilles moves back to Patroklos clearly in contrasting them when he imagines that he was going to die “here in Troy, but you [Patroklos] would return home…” The adverbial αὐτοῦ ἐνὶ Τροίῃ breaks at the same metrical position in the line as χήτεϊ τοιοῦδ’ and is followed with σὲ δέ just as the earlier was followed by ὃ δ’. The impact is not unclear: Achilles struggles in that first part of the speech to distinguish between his grief and its object, but when he articulates his lost hopes he admits that he expected Patroklos would live in his place.

The unfolding associations of replacement and surrogacy should make us, as an audience, reconsider what happens earlier in Iliad 16. In an unpublished talk, Lenny Muellner builds from his late friend Steven Lowenstam’s dissertation The Death of Patroclus: A Study in Typology to make observations on the relationship of Achilles and Patroklos. Lowenstam’s dissertation in part explores how the Homeric function of the therapon (attendant, ‘henchman’, assistant) may be related to an ancient Hittite practice of a figure who takes a king’s place and dies in his place in battle. Lenny explains the origin of the term alter ego:

“The origin, in fact, of the modern psychological term alter ego is Patroklos himself. It is actually a Latin translation of a Greek proverb that defines the Greek word philos, the word that we translate ‘friend,’: ti esti philos? the proverb goes, ‘what is a friend?’; the answer is allos ego, ‘another I,’ an alter ego. And the epic tells us that Patroklos is Achilles’s philtatos hetairos, ‘most philoscompanion.’ The German Classicist Erwin Rohde applied this designation to Patroklos in his masterpiece, Psyche; from there it apparently entered the vocabulary of Freud and Jung, perhaps via Nietzsche.”

Lenny goes on to explore via the work of the child psychologist D. W. Winnicott the tension between Achilles treating Patroklos as a metaphor for himself (when he goes in his place in book 16) and as a metonym, when Achilles sees Patroklos’ death as in fact his own and not a representation of it. This follow up speech in book 19 shows Achilles roiling with pain at the violent resolution of this tension: when he articulates his hope that Patroklos would have been his therapon in life. As Lenny writes, the pain Achilles expresses is related in part to the core meaning of philos, “friend, near and dear” to indicate something so close and important as to be a part of oneself.

Achilles’ ragged emotional response belies an as yet unarticulated understanding. Notably missing from Achilles at this moment is the realization that in his imagined future, Patroklos would have been as broken and fragmented without Achilles as Achilles is without him. And the ability to understand this, to see another’s realness through one’s own grief, is the space Achilles has still to travel before he meets Priam in book 24.

This potential for narrative to bridge that space between oneself and others that I think this scene has more yet to teach us. Achilles’ speech also has internal and external framing that provides important reflections for how Homeric poetry works. For the first, consider how Achilles refuses to share a meal with the Achaeans and refrains from food. Scholars often argue that once Patroklos has died, Achilles symbolically enters the realm of the dead—he refuses to eat or engage with the living. I don’t think this is at all wrong, but the Homeric narrative also offers a more immediate cause: Achilles says he does not want to eat because Patroklos is the one who used to feed him. A scholion is particularly insightful here in sensing the associative leaps in Achilles’ grief.

Schol. bT ad Hom. Il.19.316a ex

“you offered me a sweet meal”: the lament [responds]to what has just happened. For they were begging him to eat, and he was reminded of the table on which his friend used to serve him often. It is customary to talk to the dead as if to the living. And what he means is that what is sweet is a meal offered to him by the hands of someone he loves.”

ex. λαρὸν παρὰ δεῖπνον ἔθηκας: ἀπὸ τῶν γινομένων ὁ θρῆνος· ἐπεὶ γὰρ ᾔτουν αὐτὸν φαγεῖν, ὑπομιμνῄσκεται τραπέζης, ἣν ὁ φίλος αὐτῷ παρετίθει πολλάκις. ἠθικὸν δὲ τὸ ὡς ζῶντι διαλέγεσθαι τῷ νεκρῷ. καὶ λαρὸν δεῖπνον φησὶ τὸ ὑπὸ τῶν τοῦ φιλουμένου χειρῶν παρατεθειμένον.

As anyone who has ever lost a loved one knows, the magnitude of death is inconceivable. We absorb the basic fact of it, but the shape of someone’s absence in a life built around them is impossible to grasp at once: we lose them again in countless different ways as lives unfold without them. Achilles does not care about the food, he is undone by the reminder of living with Patroklos and the future meals he will never share with him.

Grief is associative and unpredictable, it moves like water, filling the space open to it, dripping, pooling, and relentless. Note how the speech’s introduction positions Achilles as mourning constantly “as he recalled” (μνησάμενος δ’ ἁδινῶς…). But this is not the only thing the narrative tells us. The end of the speech reminds us that other people are listening to Achilles as well and are changed and moved in turn by his mourning. The Greek elders mourn in addition (ἐπὶ δὲ στενάχοντο γέροντες) and not because of Patroklos, but as they recall what they have left behind (μνησάμενοι τὰ ἕκαστος ἐνὶ μεγάροισιν ἔλειπον).

Achilles’ grief–in both the words of his lament and their performance–presents a narrative they can see themselves in; they project their experiences into his pain and grieve alongside him, anticipating to a great part that powerful moment in book 24 when Achilles and Priam find in each other a reminder to weep for what they have individually lost. I will shortly talk about Mark Turner’s approach to narrative in The Literary Mind. He suggests that what happens when we experience stories is that we don’t recreate the world the story comes from but instead generate a blend between the world of stories and our own experiences. Another step I usually emphasize is that while each blending of narratives and the world is idiopathic, connected to our own unique and embodied experiences, we can bring our narrative worlds closer together by sharing them with other people, by measuring our responses to theirs: the iterative, collective responses to Achilles’ lament are poised on that shift from the realization of the other in the individual and the (re)creation of a shared understanding in collectivized reactions.

This moment foregrounds a Homeric expectation that what people witness should (and does) prompt reflection on their own lives (as well as the situation in general). The sequence also anticipates other audiences as well. A simple but extremely useful distinction from narratology (the way narratives are structured and work) is between internal and external audiences. Internal audiences are characters within a narrative who observe and (sometimes) respond to what is going on. External audiences are those outside the narrative (mostly those in the ‘real’ world). A theoretical suggestion from this is that the responses of internal audiences can guide or often complicate the way external audiences receive the narrative.

Homer, Iliad 19.301-308

“So she spoke in mourning, and the woman joined them in grieving
Over Patroklos as a beginning [prophasis], but each of them [then] their own pains.
Then the elders of the Achaeans gathered around him
As they were begging him to eat, but he was denying them as he mourned:
‘I am begging you, if anyone of my dear companions is listening to me,
Not to tell me to fill my dear heart with either food or drink
When this terrible grief [akhos] has come over me.
I will wait and I will hold out steadfastly until the sun goes down.”

῝Ως ἔφατο κλαίουσ’, ἐπὶ δὲ στενάχοντο γυναῖκες
Πάτροκλον πρόφασιν, σφῶν δ’ αὐτῶν κήδε’ ἑκάστη.
αὐτὸν δ’ ἀμφὶ γέροντες ᾿Αχαιῶν ἠγερέθοντο
λισσόμενοι δειπνῆσαι· ὃ δ’ ἠρνεῖτο στεναχίζων·
λίσσομαι, εἴ τις ἔμοιγε φίλων ἐπιπείθεθ’ ἑταίρων,
μή με πρὶν σίτοιο κελεύετε μηδὲ ποτῆτος
ἄσασθαι φίλον ἦτορ, ἐπεί μ’ ἄχος αἰνὸν ἱκάνει·
δύντα δ’ ἐς ἠέλιον μενέω καὶ τλήσομαι ἔμπης.

Achilles’ lament for Patroklos has more than one internal audience. First, as we have just seen, the elders of the Achaeans join Achilles’ mourning and move to reflecting on their own lives. Such a move is anticipated right before Achilles’ speech when the women around Briseis join her in mourning. Briseis’ mourning is something of a gateway for the women who mourn alongside her. And the language itself is somewhat uncommon for Homer: the only other time the word prophasis appears in Homer is under 100 lines previously when Agamemnon swears he never had sex with Briseis (οὔτ’ εὐνῆς πρόφασιν κεχρημένος οὔτέ τευ ἄλλου, 262). Here, we might translate prophasis as a ‘pretext’ or ‘excuse’. But in the narrative of the women mourning, these translations seem too dismissive or pejorative. Perhaps ‘prelude’ is more appropriate, but even this seems insufficient to convey the sense of beginning and transition, that slippage from looking outward to inward, that movement from someone else’s story to your own.

And these women are far from the scene’s final audience. Another internal audience appears when we learn that Zeus too is watching the scene and he feels pity: together the women, the elders, and Zeus present a range of potential reactions for external audiences: the mortals reflect on their own lives and the losses they suffer or those to come. Zeus watches it all and feels pity and tries to do something to help, sending Athena to provide Achilles with the sustenance he will not take on his own. Here, we might even imagine the narrative offering an ethical imperative to respond to other’s stories. It is not enough to think about yourself or to be moved to pity by seeing the reality that others may feel as deeply and painfully as you. Zeus suggests that if you are in power and can do something to intervene, even something minor, when you notice another’s suffering, then you should do what you can.

Sound and Sense in Homer

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.

When Odysseus tests his restrung bow, the process is compared to someone stringing a lyre. The metapoetic content of this scene has not been missed: at a moment when Odysseus turns from using stories (=songs) to effect his homecoming, when he transforms from ‘singer’ back into warrior, the simile briefly collapses identities, reflecting the singer in the warrior’s pose. There’s more to the scene too: after the stringing, Odysseus plucks the string and the narrator tells us that it sings “like a swallow”. The verb for singing is often marked in Homeric poetry as the act of a bard like Phemios, Demodokos, or even Achilles, and it also introduces epic itself, famously in the first line of the Iliad “sing [aeide], Goddess, of the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles”.

Homer, Odyssey 21.407-412

“Just as a man who knows both lyre and song
easily stretches a string on a new peg
as he attaches the twisted sheep-gut to both sides
just so, without haste, Odysseus strung the great bow.
He took the string and tested it with his right hand.
And it sang beautifully with a voice like a swallow.
Then, a great grief overcame the suitors, and everyone skins’ turned.”

ὡς ὅτ’ ἀνὴρ φόρμιγγος ἐπιστάμενος καὶ ἀοιδῆς
ῥηϊδίως ἐτάνυσσε νέῳ περὶ κόλλοπι χορδήν,
ἅψας ἀμφοτέρωθεν ἐϋστρεφὲς ἔντερον οἰός,
ὣς ἄρ’ ἄτερ σπουδῆς τάνυσεν μέγα τόξον ᾿Οδυσσεύς.
δεξιτερῇ δ’ ἄρα χειρὶ λαβὼν πειρήσατο νευρῆς·
ἡ δ’ ὑπὸ καλὸν ἄεισε, χελιδόνι εἰκέλη αὐδήν.
μνηστῆρσιν δ’ ἄρ’ ἄχος γένετο μέγα, πᾶσι δ’ ἄρα χρὼς

The sound does not stop there: the poem’s internal audience responds to the sound. It inspires grief among the suitors as their skin grows pale. This moment confirms, to an extent, that Homeric poetry anticipates an emotional response to sound and offers, perhaps, a synaesthetic aspect as well as we move through senses from sound, to emotions, to the sight of skin turning under the influence of anxiety and fear.

One of the ironies of Homeric studies since the advent of oral-formulaic theory is how little prepared most of us who write from this perspective are to talk about Homeric poetry as part of a sound scape, from an aural perspective. This is, of course, not universally true. Ancient authors like Dionysius of Halicarnassus or Eusthathius often remarked on the sound quality of Homeric poetry. Dio Chrysostom insists that Homer had ample control over the sounds of words to shape their impact and meaning (12.69). Prior to oral-formulaic theory, the debate largely attended the tension between traditional word shapes and sounds and the possibility of ‘Homer’ intending a specific effect (see Shewan 1925 on alliteration and assonance). There is some interest in such questions following the work of Parry and Lord too.

David Packard argued, for instance, that Homeric poetry manipulates the “harshness” of consonants for different contexts and meaning, against the claims of Walter Leaf and W.B. Stanford that many of the sound effects in Greek poetry are incidental or accidental. (Of course, these approaches focus overmuch on what performers may have been trying to do rather than the impact of the sounds on audiences.) I would insist that the sounds of Homeric poetry were no more accidental or incidental than word choice and poetic structures: but rather than being a specific feature of a performer’s intention, they had to have been part of the reciprocal development of performance in a song culture. W.B. Stanford, who is dismissive of what modern readers can hear in Homeric verse, nevertheless asserts that “Until the fifth century B.C., all Greek poets made their poems for hearing, not for seeing, for the ear and not for the eye. Poetry was social rather than private being usually sung, recited, or performed at religious ceremonies, festivals, feasts, or entertainments” (1981, 127).

Sound is certainly not incidental to meaning! Homeric poetry is invested in different kinds of wordplay that makes associative and non-linear connections (see the overview in Louden 1995 and Ahl 2002). Amy Lather (2017) supports the compositional importance of sound in exploring the depiction of music in early Greek hexameter–meaning arises from patterns and contrasts that are available to us from careful reading (and speaking aloud) but would have been implicit for audiences trained in hearing the music of Homeric poetry. We have little we can say about the performance itself: beyond the shape of words and the impact of consonants and vowels, I can also imagine the sonic repertoire available to any musician as part of bardic practice: changes in volume, speed, pitch, and rhythm stir the emotions and animate the space between the singer and their audience.

Tanvi Solanki writes persuasively of the importance of aural philology in her article about Johann Gottfried Herder’s experience of reading Greek aloud. Tanvi cites Herder: Herder goes on to write that ‘every one of Homer’s pictures is musical: the tone reverberates in our ears for a little while; if it should begin to fade, the same string is struck and the tone rings out once more, this time with greater force; and all the different tones combine to create the harmony of the picture’. Solanki argues that listening may help collapse cultural differences: “The practice makes explicit the insight that the act of listening was enculturated; the degree to which acoustic nuances could or could not be perceived varied among distinct peoples, which differentiated it too from the haptic and the optical. These variations among ‘ears’ served as the basis to unite, divide, and hierarchize communities. ”

I started thinking about sound in Homer again while reading Bill Beck’s recent “Homer’s Verbal Mimesis in the Iliad’s Exegetical Scholia” (GRBS, 2023). Beck provides a really interesting survey of comments on Homeric use of sound in the scholia. Beck divides this summary into three parts: scholia that look at the potential impact of tmesis (when compound words are split up, with other elements interposed), the correspondence between the sounds of words and what they describe (onomatopoeia), and the potential effects of rhythm in the Homeric line.

Beck shows how ancient scholars see disorder or constraint in grammar/diction as indicating disordered actions or disrupted psychology or compressed/constrained actions respectively. Ancient commentators, according to Beck, also saw correspondence between harsh sounds and harsh actions, sonorous sounds and the sea, and liquid (l/r) with the water. Beck observes that ancient critics were less interested in rhythm than modern readers are (implying, I might imagine, less attention to exactitude of prosody that we see in some modern scholarship, and more tolerance for variation). Still, there are some trends—largely dactylic lines implying faster movement or continuing action while spondaic lines (those with fewer dactyls or ending with all long syllables).

My favorite example here comes from a scholiastic comment on the meter of Iliad 12.208 (Τρῶες δ᾽ ἐρρίγη-σαν ὅπως ἴδον αἰόλον ὄφιν), which is ‘defective’ (ending in a trochaic rhythm). The T scholion suggests that rather than being a mistake, this line is intentionally affective, aimed at prompting a different response in the audience:

In other words, by making the line metrically defective, so that its final foot not only defies expectations but also demands explanation, Homer inspires in his audience a feeling analogous to the perplexity felt by the Trojans when presented with an anomalous and portentous phenomenon. What the metrical shape of ὄφιν elicits in readers is precisely what its referent provokes in the Trojans. (2023, 101).

Regardless of whether we accept this argument and don’t dismiss it as creative misreading, the moment asks that we take the sounds of Homeric poetry more seriously.

Short bibliography on Homeric Sounds

AHL, FREDERICK. “WORDPLAY AND APPARENT FICTION IN THE ‘ODYSSEY.’” Arethusa 35, no. 1 (2002): 117–32. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44578452.

Barea Torres, Cristóbal. “« Tanto como alcanza un grito » : voces y ruidos en la épica homérica.” Faventia, vol. 43, 2021, pp. 7-20.

Calero, Luis. “El paisaje sonoro en la « Odisea ».” Graeco-Latina Brunensia, vol. 25, no. 2, 2020, pp. 33-45. Doi: 10.5817/GLB2020-2-3

Cullhed, Eric. “Movement and sound on the shield of Achilles in ancient exegesis.” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, vol. 54, no. 2, 2014, pp. 192-219.

Kondylaki, Vasiliki. “Les paysages sonores des funérailles d’Achille : à propos des Néréides et des Muses dans l’« Odyssée » et dans les « Posthomériques » de Quintus de Smyrne.” Gaia, vol. 22-23, 2020, pp. non paginé.

Lather, Amy. “The sound of music : the semantics of noise in early Greek hexameter.” Greek and Roman Musical Studies, vol. 5, no. 2, 2017, pp. 127-146. Doi: 10.1163/22129758-12341296.

Louden, Bruce. “Categories of Homeric Wordplay.” Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974-) 125 (1995): 27–46. https://doi.org/10.2307/284344.

Packard, D. W.. “Sound-patterns in Homer.” TAPA, vol. CIV, 1974, pp. 239-260.

Russo, J. A.. “Is oral or aural composition the cause of Homer’s formulaic style?.” Oral literature and the formula. Eds. Stolz, B. A. and Shannon, R. S.. Center for the Coordination of Ancient & Modern Stud.. Ann Arbor (Mich.): University of Michigan, 1976. 31-71.

Sansom, Stephen A.. “ Divine Resonance in Early Greek Epic, knowledge, affect.” American Journal of Philology, vol. 142, no. 4, 2021, pp. 535-569. Doi: 10.1353/ajp.2021.0019

Shewan, A. “Alliteration and Assonance in Homer.” Classical Philology 20, no. 3 (1925): 193–209. http://www.jstor.org/stable/263057.

Stanford, W. B. “Varieties of Sound-Effects in the Homeric Poems.” College Literature 3, no. 3 (1976): 219–27. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25111142.

Stanford, W. B. “Sound, Sense, and Music in Greek Poetry.” Greece & Rome 28, no. 2 (1981): 127–40. http://www.jstor.org/stable/642860.

Tanvi Solanki, ‘ Herder hears Homer singing’, Classical Receptions Journal, 12..4 (2020) 401-424. Doi: 10.1093/crj/claa007

Tsagalis, Christos. “ Style and construction, sound and rhythm: Thetis’ supplication to Zeus (Iliad 1.493-516).” Arethusa, vol. 34, no. 1, 2001, pp. 1-30.

Tsagalis, Christos C.. “The dynamic hypertext: lists and catalogues in the Homeric epics.” Trends in Classics, vol. 2, no. 2, 2010, pp. 323-347.

Epic: The Musical

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.

A few years ago, people started asking me if I had heard about Epic: The Musical. Among my many annoying tendencies is to be dismissive when someone tells me I am going to like something. There are some good reasons for this (anyone who works on the past and had to live through the initial popularity of The Davinci Code knows what is is like to have someone recommend you total trash with the best intentions). There are some bad reasons for this too–I retain a bit too much of the GenX pose that nothing popular can be cool. (I rejected Greenday straight out when Dookie was released because “punk is dead” and, well, I guess I am in my fourth decade of being very wrong about things.)

So, when students started telling me I should listen to a musical in progress based on the Odyssey I was skeptical. But I also figured, let them do their thing and enjoy it. I tend to be something of a curmudgeon with adaptations of the Odyssey anyway. But, then, last year, my oldest child, Aalia, discovered it and asked me and I could no longer use professional indifference as an excuse to hide.

Here’s the thing: Epic: The Musical is pretty good. People should check it out. Seriously.

A few weeks ago, I joined Christine Vogler and Joe Goodkin on a (friendly) takeover of Liv Albert’s Let’s Talk About Myths, Baby! Podcast to talk about Epic: The Musical.

I think we cover a lot of what is really engaging about Epic: The Musical in the podcast (although I don’t think we ever resolve whether or not it could actually be performed), but I do want to share a little here about why I think it is worth taking some time to listen to. (And how it may be more insightful than a lot of scholarly engagement with the epic…). But, first, let’s talk about what it is.

Epic: The Musical is a series of short albums (called “sagas”) based on the Odyssey and started in 2019 by Jorge Rivera-Herrans while he was an undergraduate. The songs became something of a TikTok phenomenon. The last Saga was released in December 2024. What makes it difficult to define is its status as a social media performance piece. Not only are the songs released on streaming platforms, but videos of the performers were released on TikTok with commentary from Rivera-Herrans. There’s a Wiki that includes information about the music, the performers, and the lyrics, but the official website emphasizes that this is also a community piece:

The EPIC community is comprised of over 410,000 people on TikTok, 15,000 people on Discord, and more across other platforms. This positive and supportive community comes together every day to make fan art, perform song covers, create animatics, and spread the word about the development of EPIC.

The YouTube page includes official songs, videos of the cast listening to the songs, and versions of the songs in development and conversations about the process. Fans have created art, animation, music videos. Read some of the comments and you will get a sense of how engaged the audience is.

There are nine sagas in total adding up to 40 songs. (I don’t believe it has ever been performed live and in person.) The story is not strictly the Odyssey. It starts with the “Troy Saga” then moves through the Cyclops scene and towards the hero’s homecoming. It is more of a linear telling of the story that basically works like this: Troy Saga (Sack of Troy to the arrival on Cyclops’ island); Cyclops Saga (book 9); Ocean Saga (Book 10); Circe Saga (Book 10); Underworld Saga (Book 11); Thunder Saga (Book 12?): Wisdom Saga (Books 1-5); Vengeance Saga (Book 11 again); Ithaca Saga (Books 21-23).

This summary shows the Epic: The Musical spends the most time on Odysseus’ own version of his story (what is often can called the apologos or apologoi) in Homeric scholarship. Most engagements with the Odyssey privilege the legendary events of books 9-12. I have always found this intriguing because ancient artwork indicates that most of these events were already well-known before the Odyssey we have was written down. (Some of our earliest Greek art shows Odysseus with the Cyclops.). But our Odyssey’s version of these famous tales is less than heroic. As Jonathan Shay argues–and as I have also explored myself–Odysseus comes out pretty badly if you read the events of the apologoi closely.

The Odysseus in Epic: The Musical shares some kinship with The Return’s Odysseus. Both seem to be traumatized by their experiences. A primary difference with Epic’s Odysseus is that he struggles with moral decisions (killing the infant Astyanax in The Troy Saga) and the cause of his suffering at sea is his opposition to Athena: Athena chastises him for blinding but not killing Polyphemos in “My Goodbye” (from the Cyclops Saga). This Odysseus is tortured by the actions he has taken and turns out to be haunted by the loss of his companions.

I listened to each saga with my children while driving them to school over a few weeks. My oldest brought Gareth Hinds’ graphic novel of the Odyssey in the car to match the songs to the events and we each developed our own favorite songs and details. My favorite thing about the songs are how they interpret the Odyssey and their hero in different ways. Each song is, in a way, an intervention in our collective text of the Odyssey. They are scholarly in the traditional sense of not being in the service of daily labor, but instead in reflection of human experience and creations.

(Also, I am viscerally vulnerable to music theater. My children have seen me cry watching The Greatest Showman and Disney’s Zombies)

I’ll give one example of what struck me as both insightful and creative. The song “Love in Paradise” is mostly a conversation between Odysseus and Calypso. It begins with a montage of previous songs from his travails and then transitions to a lighter musical number roughly based on book 5.

The conceit seems to be that Odysseus is at the moment of the song trying to understand how he has been their seven years and sifting through his memories. Odysseus ends up on a ledge, thinking about his mistakes and experiences. The production integrates fragments from other songs and provides the spirit, if not the content, of Odysseus’ final conversations with Calypso.

Time can take a heavy toll

[CALYPSO, spoken]
Odysseus?

[ODYSSEUS]
All I hear are screams

[CALYPSO, spoken]
Ody, get away from the ledge!

[ODYSSEUS]
You don’t know what I’ve gone through
You don’t know what I’ve sacrificed
Every comrade I long knew
Every friend, I saw them die
And all I hear are screams

[CALYPSO]
It will be fine, dear
Come back inside, dear
Love of my life, come back to paradise

What I really appreciate about this song–and which extends in general to the whole Musical–is the way Rivera-Herrans reads into the seams of the epic and between the lines to flesh out the inner workings of the characters. By my interpretation, this entire song reads into a famously opaque set of lines from the Odyssey. When we first see Odysseus’ in the Odyssey, he is not heroic by any means

Homer, Odyssey (5.151–159)

Kalypso found [Odysseus] sitting on the water’s edge. His eyes were never dry
of tears and his sweet life was draining away as he mourned
over his homecoming, since the goddess was no longer pleasing to him.
But it was true that he stretched out beside her at night by necessity
In her hollow caves, unwilling when she was willing.
By day, however, he sat on the rocks and sands
wracking his heart with tears, groans and grief,
Shedding tears as he gazed upon the barren sea.

τὸν δ’ ἄρ’ ἐπ’ ἀκτῆς εὗρε καθήμενον· οὐδέ ποτ’ ὄσσε
δακρυόφιν τέρσοντο, κατείβετο δὲ γλυκὺς αἰὼν
νόστον ὀδυρομένῳ, ἐπεὶ οὐκέτι ἥνδανε νύμφη.
ἀλλ’ ἦ τοι νύκτας μὲν ἰαύεσκεν καὶ ἀνάγκῃ
ἐν σπέεσι γλαφυροῖσι παρ’ οὐκ ἐθέλων ἐθελούσῃ·
ἤματα δ’ ἂμ πέτρῃσι καὶ ἠϊόνεσσι καθίζων
[δάκρυσι καὶ στοναχῇσι καὶ ἄλγεσι θυμὸν ἐρέχθων]
πόντον ἐπ’ ἀτρύγετον δερκέσκετο δάκρυα λείβων.

There is no indication in the epic itself about the source of Odysseus’ sorrow. One might imagine from the context that he is upset about his endlessly prolonged nostos, his homecoming. Yet, there’s a strange disjunction between that and his behavior, what I have called his anhedonia. Instead of making this all about his longing for home, spouse, and child, Rivera-Herrans has interpreted this moment as one shaped by the trauma of losing his men, of all his suffering at war and sea, and his struggle to understand his place in the world. It is a creative and insightful reading that made me reconsider the events of book 5.

This is chiefly what I find important about creative receptions like Epic: The Musical. They both update ancient narratives for modern audiences and provide reinterpretations. In the latter capacity, Epic does as well–if not better–than a lot of scholarship. You could do a lot worse with 2 hours and 20 minutes than listening to these sagas.

While looking around, I found that there are other Odyssey based musicals. Somehow I missed that Prince produced a series of songs for Glam, Slam, Ulysses

Here’s the song for the Cyclops scene, “interactive”

Possessions and Identity in the Iliad

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.

There’s a proverb attributed to the Spartan Aristodemus–but also to the poet Alcaeus– “a man is [his] money and no one poor is noble or honored” (χρήματ᾿ ἄνηρ, πένι-/ χρος δ᾿ οὐδ᾿ εἴς πέλετ᾿ ἔσλος οὐδὲ τίμιος; Alcaeus, fragment 360, 3). The line deserves some glossing for those who don’t know a lot of Greek. The ancient word for money here is khrêmata, the plural of the word for “thing”. If we could imagine that this might not mean money the way we imagine it, we could translate this more as “a man is his stuff”, or, more broadly, “you are what you own”.

We don’t actually get this line directly from Alcaeus or Aristodemus, however. It shows up in the epinician poet Pindar and is recording in the scholia to that poet as being proverbial

Pindar, Isthmian 2.1-15

“Thrasyboulos: people in the past
Used to climb onto the chariot
Of the gold-crowned Muses
Armed with a fame-bringing lyre.
Then they would quickly aim their sweet-voiced hymns
At the boys–whoever was cute and
in that sweetest summer season
Of well-throned Aphrodite.

That’s because the Muse wasn’t yet
Too fond of profit nor yet
A working girl.
And sweet songs
From honey-voiced Terpsichore
Weren’t yet sold as pricey tricks.

So now she invites us to remember
The word of the Argive that’s closest
To the truth: “Money,
A man is his money”–
As someone claims when he’s lost
His possessions along with his friends.”

Οἱ μὲν πάλαι, ὦ Θρασύβουλε,
φῶτες, οἳ χρυσαμπύκων
ἐς δίφρον Μοσᾶν ἔβαι-
νον κλυτᾷ φόρμιγγι συναντόμενοι,
ῥίμφα παιδείους ἐτόξευον μελιγάρυας ὕμνους,
ὅστις ἐὼν καλὸς εἶχεν Ἀφροδίτας
εὐθρόνου μνάστειραν ἁδίσταν ὀπώραν.
ἁ Μοῖσα γὰρ οὐ φιλοκερδής
πω τότ᾿ ἦν οὐδ᾿ ἐργάτις·
οὐδ᾿ ἐπέρναντο γλυκεῖ-
αι μελιφθόγγου ποτὶ Τερψιχόρας
ἀργυρωθεῖσαι πρόσωπα μαλθακόφωνοι ἀοιδαί.

νῦν δ᾿ ἐφίητι <τὸ> τὠργείου φυλάξαι
ῥῆμ᾿ ἀλαθείας <⏑–> ἄγχιστα βαῖνον,
“χρήματα χρήματ᾿ ἀνήρ”
ὃς φᾶ κτεάνων θ᾿ ἅμα λειφθεὶς καὶ φίλων.

Here’s the scholion to this poem that explains the repetition χρήματα χρήματ᾿ ἀνήρ.

Schol. Pind. Isthm. 2. 17 (iii 215–16 Drachmann)

“Money, money is the man.” This is counted among proverbs by some, but it is a saying of Aristodemus as Chrysippus reports in his work On Proverbs. Pindar does not name this Aristodemus, but instead makes it clear when he says where he is from, he says only his country, that he is Argive. But Alcaeus names both the man and his country, not Argos but Sparta. For he says that Aristodemos said it smartly in Sparta when he explained, “money is the man, no one poor is noble nor honored”

χρήματα, χρήματ’ ἀνήρ: τοῦτο ἀναγράφεται μὲν εἰς τὰς παροιμίας ὑπ’ ἐνίων, ἀπόφθεγμα δέ ἐστιν ᾿Αριστοδήμου, καθάπερ φησὶ Χρύσιππος ἐν τῷ περὶ παροιμιῶν. τοῦτον δὲ τὸν ᾿Αριστόδημον Πίνδαρος μὲν οὐ τίθησιν ἐξ ὀνόματος, ὡς προδήλου ὄντος ὅς ἐστιν ὁ τοῦτο εἰπών, μόνον δὲ ἐσημειώσατο τὴν πατρίδα, ὅτι ᾿Αργεῖος· ᾿Αλκαῖος δὲ (fr. 49) καὶ τὸ ὄνομα καὶ τὴν πατρίδα τίθησιν, οὐκ ῎Αργος, ἀλλὰ Σπάρτην· ὣς γὰρ δή ποτέ φασιν ᾿Αριστόδημον ἐν Σπάρτᾳ λόγον οὐκ ἀπάλαμνον εἰπεῖν· χρήματ’ ἀνήρ· πενιχρὸς δὲ οὐδεὶς πέλετ’ ἐσλὸς οὐδὲ τίμιος

There’s a great blog post about this that lays it all out here.

Many-moneyed Men

I want to linger for a minute on the fragment while thinking about Homer. The words χρήματ’ ἀνήρ· πενιχρὸς δὲ οὐδεὶς πέλετ’ ἐσλὸς οὐδὲ / τίμιος provide a way for thinking about the elision of character and attributes in the epic’s first book and, by doing so, for reconsidering how the Iliad invites audiences to think about material wealth, identity, and the obligations between individuals and their communities

Let’s start with the first two words, a nominal sentence χρήματ’ ἀνήρ. Today, we translate it as “money is the man,” or” man is money” when it could also mean something like “a man is his things–so no one poor is noble nor honored”. As a Homerist, I cannot help but hear these lines and think of Iliad 1 where the value statements of esthlos (“noble, good”) and timios (“honored”) are asserted and reinterpreted during conversations Agamemnon complains that Calchas’ speech is never “good” (esthlon, 1.08) and the gods worry about the feast being disrupted by strife, depriving them of “noble pleasure” (1.576). Achilles accuses Agamemnon of expecting the Achaeans to “gather up honor [timê]” for him and Menelaos (1.159), while Agamemnon points out that others will honor him (timêsousi, 1.175) and Nestor later asserts that the two men are not of the same honor (timês, 1.278) and Achilles asks Thetis to ensure that Zeus will provide honor for him (timên, 1.353) to make up for his lost esteem.

Focusing on just the terms translated here as “noble” and “honor” leaves out an essential metaphorical step in the fragment. The slight to Achilles’ timê is concrete–he, the narrator, and others point to the removal of his prize possession (geras), the captured woman Briseis, as an alteration of his esteem. A way to rephrase the situation in book 1 might be: a man is his things [geras]: and no one poor is noble or honored. So, by depriving Achilles of a thing, Agamemnon has undermined his social standing as well as his esteem.

The social standing part probably needs a little more attention. To gloss this with one more step, the word for poor, penikhros, is derived from a verbal root that has to do with toil and work. The semantic range is likely that people who have to labor are not already worth the goods that would qualify them for a specific class and a level of honor. (Or, more generously, if you don’t have wealth, you need to work; there’s also the additional resonance of ponos as suffering to consider.)

But wait, there’s more: it isn’t just that a person is their money, it is a gendered man who is defined by his possessions and in the world of the Iliad, possessions include other people, especially women. It would, then, not be an unfair reading of the Iliad’s view of the Trojan War that, just as Achilles loses honor by being deprived of Briseis, so too Menelaos lost honor when Helen departed.

Origins, Thoughts

So, what happens in Iliad 1 is, to my taste, crystallized in the fragment attributed to Alcaeus. I can phrase what I think is important in this in two ways: first, I posed this as an elision between a metaphorical esteem (timê) and its concrete representation (geras), both of which are additional symbolic indications of a person’s value and class (i.e., whether or not they need to work). The second way to put it is that there is a collapse of signifier and signified and then a subsequent replacement of the thing itself by its symbolic representation.

In these moves, the money/things cease to be a symbol of a person’s value or worth and end up becoming first a representation of the person and then the persons in fact.. The shifting is not insignificant for the plot of the Iliad: one way to read Achilles’ speeches in book 9 is as a probing of that very collapse between esteem (fame, reputation, social position) and the things that are supposed to represent it. His rejection of the gifts promised by the embassy is in part a rejection of the proposition that, regardless of what you do in the world, your worth is defined by the possessions other people permit you to have.

This interpretive thread interests me for two reasons: first, it provides, as I start to indicate above, a slightly different way of reading Achilles’ alienation and the Iliad’s reflection on heroism, politics, and human communities. The second reason resides in the history of ideas, or, perhaps better, a notional genealogy of the values explored in Homer and how they are selected and received in subsequent generations.

I have been inspired by scholars who have recently explored the origins of certain aspects of modern culture in epic. Edith Hall has argued that the Iliad’s extractive and consumptive relationship with the environment foreshadows and informs modernity’s destruction of the environment. Similarly, Jackie Murray and Patrice Rankine have traced modern approaches to race and enslavement back to ancient epic, in its casualization of class violence, proto-racialization with races of heroes and demigods, and the implicit cultural structure that facilitates the domination of one person over another based on gender, class, and race.

When I look at the extreme inequality of late-stage capitalism, its subverting of participatory systems of governance, and the casual violence it perpetuates both domestically and internationally, I can’t help but follow the model of these scholars and look for the history of the values that enable and encourage our current march toward self-destruction. There is a symbolic harmony as well between a system of human value that equates persons with things and downgrades actual human labor and the extractive and exploitative systems of oppression and environmental devastation. One could argue that the Iliad contains the structures and ideas that have led to the rampant inequality and extractive expansion characteristic of modern, state-abetted capitalism.

The Structures of Poems and (mis)Reading

The final sentence of the last paragraph, however, is not the whole story. It would be simplistic to say that epic is the root of modern capitalism. It would be better, but still insufficiently nuanced, to say that epic reflects the roots of our modern world. Instead, I would return to what I have written before that Homeric epic is both a product and producer of culture. It reflects and embeds a system of values in its own narrative, but not without pressing on them, questioning them, and asking audiences to do the same.

In an article in the Yearbook of Ancient Greek Epic (2018), I argue that early Greek epic both embeds a thematic pattern in its narratives and is shaped by the basic aesthetics of that pattern. Homer and Hesiod both provide themes of strife (eris, neikos) issuing from conflicts over the division or distribution of goods (dasmos), and requiring a judgment or resolution (krisis) that also expects audiences to make additional determinations through the act of interpretation. The conflict of Hesiod’s Theogony is in part resolved by the stabilization and concretization of divine timai and gerai when Zeus assigns rights and spheres of influence to the gods.

The problem is that stability is not possible for human communities because we are constantly in a process of change. There is death-cult aspect to what is on offer in the Iliad that relates to this problem. Achilles, as he famously articulates it, is offered the choice of a long life in ignominy or a short one with kleos aphthiton. The vegetal aspect of the adjective “imperishable” here is important: this kind of kleos cannot wither and die like the mortal substance it is linked too. The transformation from a moneyed-man who can lose the tokens of esteem that become that esteem itself into an eternal tale strives in part to face the challenge of the continual redistribution of human life. Yet, as I have suggested elsewhere (most recently, Storylife, chapter 4), Achilles doesn’t make that choice and no one in the Iliad seems to support such a vision for kleos, with the exception of figures who have no other option (like Hektor).

The discussion of kleos, however, is something of an aside. What early Greek poetry shows is that the distribution of things creates conflict that leads to the need for human beings to make judgment about the world, both in terms of the division of goods and the meaning of human life relative to that distribution. If we follow the thematic arcs of both epics, they challenge a simplistic approach to wealth–that man is indeed his possessions–but they do not fundamentally question whether or not a human being can and should be a possession contributing to someone else’s honor; or whether it is right to commit violence and end human lives for excess wealth (although the Iliad shows that’s pretty stupid).

Each epic does ask us to think about the tension between how someone is valued in a community for their wealth and power and what they actually do in the world. This doesn’t undercut the notion that a person is what they possess; instead, it acknowledges the structure of a world where many accept that definition and asks audiences to see the fundamental limitations of attaching a person’s worth to the things they own.

A few thins to read

Brown, Adam. “Homeric talents and the ethics of exchange.” The Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. 118, 1998, pp. 165-172. Doi: 10.2307/632237

Christensen, Joel P. “Eris and Epos: Composition, Competition and the ‘Domestication’ of Strife.” YAGE 2: 1–39.

De Cristofaro, Luigi. “Reading the raids : the sacred value of the spoils : some considerations on Il., 2, 686-694, Il., 9, 128-140 and Il., 19, 252-266.” Rivista di Cultura Classica e Medioevale, vol. 61, no. 1, 2019, pp. 11-41. Doi: 10.19272/201906501001

Murray, Jackie. 2021 “Race and Sexuality: Racecraft in the Odyssey” in Denise McCoskey, ed., Bloomsbury Cultural History of Race. Volume 1: Antiquity. 137-156

Mark Peacock, Introducing Money. Economics as social theory 33. London; New York: Routledge, 2013. xii, 212. ISBN 9780415539883. $45.00 (pb).

Rankine, Patrice. “Odysseus as Slave: The Ritual of Domination and Social Death in Homeric Society,” in Reading Ancient Slavery, eds. Richard Alston, Edith Hall, and Laura Proffitt. New York: Bristol, 2011: 34-50.

Ready, Jonathan L. (2007). “Toil and Trouble: the acquisition of spoils in the « Iliad ». TAPA, 137(1), 3-43.

Seaford, Richard, Money and the Early Greek Mind: Homer, Philosophy, Tragedy, Cambridge University Press, 2004, 382pp, $28.99 (spbk), ISBN 0521539927.

Wealth/Economy in Homer

Adamo, Sara. “ un posto per Omero ?.” Incidenza dell’Antico, vol. 20, 2022, pp. 221-233.

Brown, Adam. “Homeric talents and the ethics of exchange.” The Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. 118, 1998, pp. 165-172. Doi: 10.2307/632237

Christensen, Joel P.. “Eris and Epos: composition, competition, and the domestication of strife.” Yearbook of Ancient Greek Epic, vol. 2, 2018, pp. 1-39. Doi: 10.1163/24688487-00201001

Fox, Rachel Sarah. Feasting practices and changes in Greek society from the Late Bronze Age to Early Iron Age. BAR. International Series; 2345. Oxford: Archaeopress, 2012.

Haubold, Johannes (2000). Homer’s people: epic poetry and social formation. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Pr.

Jones, Donald W.. “The archaeology and economy of Homeric gift exchange.” Opuscula Atheniensia, vol. 24, 1999, pp. 11-24.

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

Kelly, Adrian. “ Iliad 9.381-4.” Mnemosyne, Ser. 4, vol. 59, no. 3, 2006, pp. 321-333. Doi: 10.1163/156852506778132400

Kolb, Frank. “ a trading center and commercial city ?.” American Journal of Archaeology, vol. 108, no. 4, 2004, pp. 577-613.

Korfmann, Manfred. “ archaeological evidence for the period of Troia VI/VII.” Classical World, vol. 91, no. 5, 1997-1998, pp. 369-385.

Koutrouba, Konstantina and Apostolopoulos, Konstantinos. “Home economics in the Homeric epics.” Πλάτων, vol. 52, 2001-2002, pp. 191-208.

Lewis, David M.. “The Homeric roots of helotage.” From Homer to Solon : continuity and change in archaic Greece. Eds. Bernhardt, Johannes C. and Canevaro, Mirko. Mnemosyne. Supplements; 454. Leiden ; Boston (Mass.): Brill, 2022. 64-92. Doi: 10.1163/9789004513631_005

Lyons, Deborah J.. “ ideologies of marriage and exchange in ancient Greece.” Classical Antiquity, vol. 22, no. 1, 2003, pp. 93-134. Doi: 10.1525/ca.2003.22.1.93

Murray, Sarah C.. The collapse of the Mycenaean economy: imports, trade, and institutions, 1300-700 BCE. New York: Cambridge University Pr., 2017.

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

Piquero Rodríguez, Juan. “« Blood-money » : la compensación por homicidio en la Grecia micénica.” Δῶρα τά οἱ δίδομεν φιλέοντες : homenaje al profesor Emilio Crespo. Eds. Conti Jiménez, Luz, Fornieles Sánchez, Raquel and Jiménez López, María Dolores. Madrid: Ed. de la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 2020. 221-229.

Rose, P. W.. Class in archaic Greece. Cambridge Books Online. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Pr., 2012.

Scodel, Ruth. “Odysseus’ dog and the productive household.” Hermes, vol. 133, no. 4, 2005, pp. 401-408.

Seaford, Richard A. S.. Money and the early Greek mind: Homer, philosophy, tragedy. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Pr., 2004.

Tandy, David W.. Warriors into traders: the power of the market in early Greece. Classics and contemporary thought; 5. Berkeley (Calif.): University of California Pr., 1997.

Thomas, Carol G.. “Penelope’s worth ; looming large in early Greece.” Hermes, vol. CXVI, 1988, pp. 257-264.

Van Wees, Hans (1992). Status warriors : war, violence and society in Homer and history. Amsterdam: Gieben.

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 &amp; 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 &amp; KATZ Phyllis B.. “Women in the worlds of Homer.” New England classical newsletter &amp; 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&nbsp;&amp; 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.

Larson, Stephanie. “ τεθνάκην δ᾽ἀδόλως θέλω: reading Sappho’s « confession » (fr. 94) through Penelope.” Mnemosyne, Ser. 4, vol. 63, no. 2, 2010, pp. 175-202. Doi: 10.1163/156852510X456129

Levaniouk, Olga Arkadievna. “« Αἴθων », Aithon, and Odysseus.” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. 100, 2000, pp. 25-51.

Lulli, Laura. “Elegy and epic : a complex relationship.” Iambus and elegy : new approaches. Eds. Swift, Laura and Carey, Chris. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Pr., 2016. 193-209.

Martin, Richard P.. “ enigmas of the lyric voice.” 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. 55-74.

Maslov, Boris. “The genealogy of the Muses: an internal reconstruction of archaic Greek metapoetics.” American Journal of Philology, vol. 137, no. 3, 2016, pp. 411-446.

Mueller, Melissa. “ Re-centering epic « nostos »: gender and genre in Sappho’s Brothers poem.” Arethusa, vol. 49, no. 1, 2016, pp. 25-46.

Mueller, Melissa. Sappho and Homer: A Reparative Reading. Cambridge. 2023.

Nobili, Cecilia. “ il nuovo Archiloco.” Maia, vol. 61, no. 2, 2009, pp. 229-249.

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

Purves, Alex. “Who, Sappho ?.” Defining Greek narrative. Eds. Cairns, Douglas L. and Scodel, Ruth. Edinburgh Leventis Studies; 7. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Pr., 2014. 175-196.

Sbardella, Livio. “The Trojan War Myth: rhapsodic canon and lyric alternatives.” Submerged literature in ancient Greek culture: an introduction. Eds. Colesanti, Giulio and Giordano, Manuela. Berlin ; Boston (Mass.): De Gruyter, 2014. 61-75.

Strauss Clay, Jenny. “The new Simonides and Homer’s ἡμίθεοι.” The new Simonides: contexts of praise and desire. Eds. Boedeker, Deborah and Sider, David. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Pr., 2001. 182-184.

Swift, Laura. “Negotiating seduction : Archilochus’ Cologne epode and the transformation of epic.” Philologus, vol. 159, no. 1, 2015, pp. 2-28.

Toohey, Peter. “Archilochus’ general (fr. 114 W). Where did he come from?.” Eranos, vol. LXXXVI, 1988, pp. 1-14.

Walsh, Thomas R.. “Some refractions of Homeric anger in Athenian drama.” A Californian hymn to Homer. Ed. Pepper, Timothy. Hellenic Studies; 41. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Pr., 2010. 105-129.

Watkins, Calvert. “Let us now praise famous grains.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol. CXXII, 1978, pp. 9-17.

Watkins, Calvert. How to Kill a Dragon: Aspects of Indo-European Poetics. 1995.

Węcowski, Marek. “Homer and the origins of the symposion.” Omero tremila anni dopo: atti del Congresso di Genova : 6-8 luglio 2000. Eds. Montanari, Franco and Ascheri, Paola. Storia e Letteratura; 210. Roma: Ed. di Storia e Letteratura, 2002. 625-637.