Abundance and Scarcity in the Funeral Games of Iliad 23

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

At the end of the chariot race in Iliad 23, Achilles attempts to intervene when the man he thinks is best in the contest—Eumelos—comes in last (“The best man is driving his single-hooved horses last!” λοῖσθος ἀνὴρ ὤριστος ἐλαύνει μώνυχας ἵππους. 23.536) thanks to an accident during the contest. A scholion suggests that Achilles {or the poet} is “teaching us to pity those who suffer misfortune unaligned with their worth and not to allow chance to overpower excellence” (διδάσκει τοὺς παρὰ τὴν ἀξίαν ἀτυχοῦντας ἐλεεῖν καὶ μὴ τῆς ἀρετῆς ἐᾶν ὑπερτερεῖν τὴν τύχην, Schol. bT ad Hom. Il. 23.536-7). Achilles’ pity triggers a series of mini-conflicts with Antilochus and then Antilochus and Menelaos wherein Achilles tries to balance the expected outcome of the race based on the excellence of the horses and their driver and the actual results.

The responses to Achilles and the arguments among different characters echo the language of Iliad 1 where Achilles and Agamemnon fall out in disagreement over the distribution of goods. In that conflict, Agamemnon describes his loss of his prize (geras, here, Chryseis) as a slight to his honor (timê) that needs to be rectified by the addition of a future prize. In this system—which echoes the divine cosmos where honors and rights are stable—the amount of goods that signify one’s public position is limited by the availability of new goods to a zero-sum game. Achilles’ makes this point when he tells Agamemnon that all the prizes have been distributed, but there will be new wealth to be shared once the city is sacked. But Agamemnon is angered enough by Achilles’ insubordination and the insult to his position, that he eventually settles on taking Achilles’ prize to supplement his loss, thereby reducing Achilles’ symbolic position.

Leaving aside the dangerous logic of continuous and endless expansion—which is, in a way, the assumption of late-stage capitalism that thrives on the promise of ever more profit—the conflict of book 1 points to a signal difference between divine realms and mortal realms. Mortal affairs are limited in terms of time and substance; the divine realm does not change. When there is a shift in cosmic balance among the gods, it threatens the stability of the universe. But shifts among mortals are by necessity: people live and die. We change. The whole ideal of stable honor and expanding wealth is fundamentally against the laws of physics (nihil ex nihilo, entropy, etc.)

I have written before about the thematic structure of early Greek poetry, how eris or neikos (strife) develops from a conflict over the distribution of goods (dasmos) and continues until there is some redistribution or judgement (krisis). As I describe in the article “Eris and Epos…” this sequence is so fundamental to Greek epic that it shapes its form as well as its content. The Iliad is not complete thematically until it resolves the problems of distribution in book 1. This is partly done in the ‘reconciliation’ of book 19 where the scales are more-or-less balanced between Agamemnon and Achilles, but general questions remained unanswered: can you express a person’s value in symbolic wealth? What happens when events disrupt the distribution? Is there a place for community intervention to ensure that someone’s access to wealth is equal to their perceived worth?

Achilles’ intervention in the chariot race, characterized by the scholion as an act of pity to ensure that Eumelos’ virtue is supported symbolically, is met with the same kind of objection that he voices himself in book 1: by taking from others to support Eumelos, he is perpetuating a loss in the zero-sum game: honoring Eumelos means dishonoring someone else.

Instead, Achilles comes up with a different response:

Iliad 23.558-565

“Antilochus, if you’re asking me to give something from my own store
To Eumelos, I will do that as well, I think.
I will give him a breastplate which I took from Asteropaios
A bronze one, which is decorated around the edge with shining tin.
It will be worth a lot to him.”

So he spoke, and he told his dear companion Automedon
To get it from his dwelling. He went and brought it back
And placed it in Eumelos’ hands. The man accepted it gladly.”

᾿Αντίλοχ’, εἰ μὲν δή με κελεύεις οἴκοθεν ἄλλο
Εὐμήλῳ ἐπιδοῦναι, ἐγὼ δέ κε καὶ τὸ τελέσσω.
δώσω οἱ θώρηκα, τὸν ᾿Αστεροπαῖον ἀπηύρων
χάλκεον, ᾧ πέρι χεῦμα φαεινοῦ κασσιτέροιο
ἀμφιδεδίνηται· πολέος δέ οἱ ἄξιος ἔσται.
῏Η ῥα, καὶ Αὐτομέδοντι φίλῳ ἐκέλευσεν ἑταίρῳ
οἰσέμεναι κλισίηθεν· ὃ δ’ ᾤχετο καί οἱ ἔνεικεν,
Εὐμήλῳ δ’ ἐν χερσὶ τίθει· ὃ δὲ δέξατο χαίρων.

Here, as someone outside the system, Achilles introduces new material wealth to resolve the conflict before it becomes too serious: he attempts to short-circuit the traditional theme of dasmos leading to eris. In a kind of heroic welfare, Achilles creates a positive-sum game by offering new material. Or, we could see it as a modification of the zero-sum game because he is willing to give up some of his own wealth to keep a community conflict free. In either case, we as an audience are left with two difficult models for addressing the traditional conflict: the addition of new wealth to a closed system (through expansion) or the largesse from someone who has so much wealth that it doesn’t make a difference. Neither option forces heroes to make hard decisions in ranking the material needs of a community.

The world of epic heroes overflows with material fantasy. As Adam Brown suggests in his 1998 article, the Homeric economy is symbolic and ‘literary’ rather than historical: Heroes never eat vegetables and rarely touch fish; instead they subsist on a diet of meat that is fundamentally impossible for the world of their audiences. Gold, silver, and bronze adorns their armor. But where did the wealth come from? This material fantasy is an echo of our entertainment today where characters in movies and televisions (generally) work very little and enjoy material wealth far greater than the average audience member. I think this partly explains Homeric wealth: no one wants to worry about semi-divine heroes not having enough to eat or, really, dealing with the indignities of bodies riven by scarcity.

And, yet, the Iliad is deeply invested in the problem of scarcity from its first few dozen lines. The conflict that drives the poem is embedded in the very difference between the fantasy world of myth and the gods and the basic problem of being human: there’s not enough time and for heroes, honor and possessions function as symbolic stand-ins for the fundamental limits of mortal lives. Certain images function throughout the epic to emphasize the impossibility of heroic abundance: consider the hecatomb sent to Apollo in book 1: 100 bulls (supplied from where) loaded onto a ship rowed by 20 men (1.309-311): Were they stacked on top of one another?

So, for me, the funeral games potentially introduce a paradox. On the one hand, they perpetuate the fantasy of endless wealth feeding the expansion of heroic esteem; on the other hand, they show Achilles trying to balance this with the kind of excellence and competition that he valued in book 1. One answer to the paradox is that, as with book 1, the dissonance is productive: the audience is supposed to think about the impossibility of what Achilles does in book 23 and rethink the questions and moves prior to it.

Another answer, which I am leaning towards, is that Achilles does not care about stuff or honor any more because of the horrible loss he suffered with Patroklos’ death. Achilles’ has set himself outside the system and gives from his own material wealth to keep other people whole. This act of understanding others’ needs prefaces his return of Hektor’s body and his weeping with Priam in book 24. And that act, renders the heroic material concerns meaningless. The fantasy of heroic abundance functions to set into relief the irremeable scarcity of human life.

Other Posts on Iliad 23

1. That Mare is Mine! Introducing Iliad 23: Funeral games; Politics; Athletic Contests

2. Rage Won’t Raise the Dead: The Ghost of Patroklos in Iliad 23: Achilles and Patroklos, again; tragedy; peripeteia

3. Achilles’ Wicked Deeds: Framing Human Sacrifice in Iliad 23: Human sacrifice; grief; death

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.

Short bibliography on the Funeral games

n.b this is not an exhaustive bibliography. If you’d like anything else included, please let me know.

Deborah Beck. Homeric Conversation. Washington, D.C.: Center for Hellenic Studies, 2005.

Strauss Clay, Jenny. “Art, nature, and the gods in the chariot race of Iliad Ψ.” Άθλα και έπαθλα στα Ομηρικά Έπη: από τα πρακτικά του Ἰ Συνεδρίου για την « Οδύσσεια » (15-19 Σεπτεμβρίου 2004). Eds. Païzi-Apostolopoulou, Machi, Regkakos, Antonios and Tsagalis, Christos K.. Ithaki: Kentro Odysseiakon Spoudon, 2007. 69-76.

Walter Donlan. “The Structure of Authority in the Iliad.” Arethusa 12 (1979) 51-70.

Dunkle, Roger. “Nestor, Odysseus, and the μῆτις-βίη antithesis. The funeral games, Iliad 23.” Classical World, vol. LXXXI, 1987, pp. 1-17.

Ellsworth, J. D.. “Ἀγων νεῶν. An unrecognized metaphor in the Iliad.” Classical Philology, vol. LXIX, 1974, pp. 258-264.

Elmer, D.F. (2013). The Poetics of Consent: Collective Decision Making and the Iliad. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press., https://doi.org/10.1353/book.21075.

Evjen, Harold D.. “Competitive athletics in ancient Greece. The search for origins and influences.” Opuscula Atheniensia, vol. XVI, 1986, pp. 51-56.

Forte, Alexander S. W.. “The disappearing turn of Iliad 23.373.” Classical Philology, vol. 114, no. 1, 2019, pp. 120-125. Doi: 10.1086/700618

Garland, R.S.J. “‘GERAS THANONTON’: AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE CLAIMS OF THE HOMERIC DEAD.” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, no. 29 (1982): 69–80. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43646122.

Grethlein, Jonas. “Epic narrative and ritual: the case of the funeral games in Iliad 23.” Literatur und Religion: Wege zu einer mythisch-rituellen Poetik bei den Griechen. Eds. Bierl, Anton, Lämmle, Rebecca and Wesselmann, Katharina. MythosEikonPoiesis; 1.1-2. Berlin ; New York: De Gruyter, 2007. 151-177.

Dean Hammer.“ ‘Who Shall Readily Obey?” Authority and Politics in the Iliad.” Phoenix 51 (1997) 1-24.

Kelly, Adrian. “Achilles in control ? : managing oneself and others in the Funeral Games.” Conflict and consensus in early Greek hexameter poetry. Eds. Bassino, Paola, Canevaro, Lilah Grace and Graziosi, Barbara. Cambridge: Cambridge University Pr., 2017. 87-108. Doi: 10.1017/9781316800034.005

Kenneth F. Kitchell. “‘But the mare I will not give up’: The Games in Iliad 23.” The Classical Bulletin 74 (1998) 159-71.

Mouratidis, Ioannis. “Anachronism in the Homeric games and sports.” Nikephoros, vol. III, 1990, pp. 11-22.

Mylonas, George E. “Homeric and Mycenaean Burial Customs.” American Journal of Archaeology 52, no. 1 (1948): 56–81. https://doi.org/10.2307/500553.

Rengakos, Antonios. “Aethiopis.” The Greek Epic Cycle and its ancient reception : a companion. Eds. Fantuzzi, Marco and Tsagalis, Christos. Cambridge: Cambridge University Pr., 2015. 306-317.

Nicholas Richardson. The Iliad: A Commentary. Volume VI: Books 21-24. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Roller, Lynn E. “Funeral Games in Greek Art.” American Journal of Archaeology 85, no. 2 (1981): 107–19. https://doi.org/10.2307/505030.

Scott, William C.. “The etiquette of games in Iliad 23.” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, vol. 38, no. 3, 1997, pp. 213-227.

H. A. Shapiro, Mario Iozzo, Adrienne Lezzi-Hafter, The François Vase: New Perspectives (2 vols.). Akanthus proceedings 3. Kilchberg, Zurich: Akanthus, 2013. 192; 7, 47 p. of plates.

Oliver Taplin. Homeric Soundings: The Shape of the Iliad. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Christoph Ulf. “Iliad 23: die Bestattung des Patroklos und das Sportfest der “Patroklos-Spiele”: zwei Teile einer mirror-story.” in Herbert Heftner and Hurt Tomaschitz (eds.). Ad Fontes! Festschrift für Gerhard Dobesch zum 65 Geburtstag am 15. September 2004. Wien: Phoibos, 2004, 73-86.

Cedric Hubbell Whitman. Homer and the Heroic Tradition. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958.

Malcolm M. Willcock, ‘The funeral games of Patroclus’, Proceedings of the Classical Association, LXX. (1973) 36.

Donna F. Wilson. Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Type-Scenes and the Chase in Iliad 22

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

Soon after Hektor decides to face Achilles, he loses his nerve and runs. The epic lingers on the moment.

Homer, Iliad 22.157-170

“They both ran around that point: One chasing, one fleeing.
In front, there was a good man trying to get away, but a much better man was pursuing.
Quickly. They weren’t struggling over a sacred prize or an oxhide,
The kinds of things that are prizes for men on their feet,
But instead they were running for the soul of Hektor, tamer of horses.
Just as when prize winning horses turn their feet
Quickly around the bend and a great prize lies in wait—
Either a tripod or a woman when some man has died,
So too did these two men run around Priam’s city
On their swift feet as all the gods were watching.
The father of gods and men started a conversation among them:
“Oh my fools, am I really watched a dear man pursued
Around the walls with my eyes? My heart feels grief for Hektor….”

τῇ ῥα παραδραμέτην φεύγων ὃ δ’ ὄπισθε διώκων·
πρόσθε μὲν ἐσθλὸς ἔφευγε, δίωκε δέ μιν μέγ’ ἀμείνων
καρπαλίμως, ἐπεὶ οὐχ ἱερήϊον οὐδὲ βοείην
ἀρνύσθην, ἅ τε ποσσὶν ἀέθλια γίγνεται ἀνδρῶν,
ἀλλὰ περὶ ψυχῆς θέον ῞Εκτορος ἱπποδάμοιο.
ὡς δ’ ὅτ’ ἀεθλοφόροι περὶ τέρματα μώνυχες ἵπποι
ῥίμφα μάλα τρωχῶσι· τὸ δὲ μέγα κεῖται ἄεθλον
ἢ τρίπος ἠὲ γυνὴ ἀνδρὸς κατατεθνηῶτος·
ὣς τὼ τρὶς Πριάμοιο πόλιν πέρι δινηθήτην
καρπαλίμοισι πόδεσσι· θεοὶ δ’ ἐς πάντες ὁρῶντο·
τοῖσι δὲ μύθων ἦρχε πατὴρ ἀνδρῶν τε θεῶν τε·
ὢ πόποι ἦ φίλον ἄνδρα διωκόμενον περὶ τεῖχος
ὀφθαλμοῖσιν ὁρῶμαι· ἐμὸν δ’ ὀλοφύρεται ἦτορ
῞Εκτορος, ὅς μοι πολλὰ βοῶν ἐπὶ μηρί’ ἔκηεν

There are several reasons this passage draws my attention: first, the grammar elegantly advances some of the blending of the characters I mention in my post about Hektor imagining sweet-talking Achilles. The two are combined in duel verbs (the form that is just for two grammatical subjects like eyes, hands, and pairs) to frame the episode (παραδραμέτην δινηθήτην) but then this potential equality is undermined by the concession that one is good, but the other is much better. This serves in part to echo some of the interdependence of the pair, but also to illustrate their ultimate difference (echoed sweetly in the language of competition.

Second, the comparison to men racing for a prize—as will happen in the following book—emphasizes the stakes of Hektor’s flight and, in a way, relativizes the competitions to come. The simile brings into question fundamental Iliadic themes of honor and reward, hearkening back to book 1, but leaving in direct contrast all that has transpired since: these heroes are not merely competing for a geras (prize) or time (honor), they are struggling over life itself (and, note, for the time being, kleos has been left aside. I have probably written too much on similes, but this one is especially powerful in the way it includes within in it images that connect the details of this particular moment to the broader epic themes.

Third, the position of the divine audience reminds us that the human audience is outside the poem. Zeus here—as he does throughout the epic—acts as an internal audience to guide the external gaze. His response of frustration and sorrow frames the scene and informs the audience (to an extent) how they should feel about this scene: it is sad, but the outcome is inevitable. No matter how good Hektor has been, he still must die. Both the simile and the divine reflection extend the narrative space of Hektor’s final moments.

What is also interesting about this passage is the specification of how many times they run around the walls. In an epic tradition where Achilles is famed for the swiftness of his feet, it seems somewhat suspect that it takes him three times around a wall (and then a divine trick) to catch up with a hero known for man-slaying and horse-taming (especially when the narrator tells the audience that Achilles is a lot better than his quarry.) A conventional answer offered in commentaries is that specific numbers like this (nine years of war, nine years of plague) represents the penultimate moment before a final turn. By that logic, mentioning three times anticipates a fourth and final turn around the wall that will be decisive. The delay here, then, creates additional suspense based on audience experience of the structure earlier in the poem (cf. 5.436-39).

This type of repeated structure that facilitates both composition and audience understanding is typically called a “type scene” in the study of Homeric and oral poetry. In my book Storylife, I position type scenes as structures that help create far more complex compositions, building on formulas and other repetitions:

Type-scenes are repeated patterns in what we might think of as conventional or repeated scenes: moments of dining, arming, onset and conclusion to speaking, and other kinds of near-ritualized performances, especially in sacrifices. Many modern scholars have seen type scenes as evidence of what Albert Lord describes as “composition by theme.” These scenes can vary in length, but tend to present recurring actions. That is, they have a stock set of elements that can be altered to fit the needs of their narrative environment. As Katherine Hitch argues (following Egbert Bakker, 1997), type scenes are like formulae: conventional material used innovatively through different combinations and variation within a specific pattern is the expected way to create meaning in an oral poetic context. Type scenes are made up of motifs and formulae the way multicellular lifeforms are composed of individual cells: and in each case the overall form can have a very different function from those of its constituent parts and separate iterations of the ‘same’ form will have different characteristics and functions based on their local environments.

A general concern of Homerists—and literary theorists in general—from the 20^th century was to figure out how to balance innovation in language against traditional forms. One of the more rigid and dull approaches to this is to imagine that oral poets function in a “poetry by number” environment that limited their creativity to chunking together pre-established units. My contention is that all language is to some extent limiting and that this facilitates understanding across different consciousnesses. It does not mean, however, that poets and audiences can’t press on prior structures to bend them or use them to create extrinsic meaning. In other posts I have introduced the term “productive dissonance” to describe how conventional forms can be used “incorrectly” or against expectation to produce new kinds of meanings (this is, essentially, my argument for the duals of Iliad 9).

But dissonance is not always the way: sometimes a lack of resolution or delayed resolution based on an expected pattern is useful as well. In her article “Emotional and thematic Meanings in a Repeating Homeric Motif”, Deborah Beck looks at this passage specifically. She sees the duals here as making “this chase into one deed and Achilles and Hector into a single actor….which “will eventually result in the death not only of Hector but also of Achilles, but not yet…” (2018, 162). The opening verses anticipate the repeated nature of the chase, but it is not until the close of the simile that the thrice+1 pattern is introduced. This structure, Beck suggests, creates a ring around the mention of the prize here, which is Hektor’s life. The shared grammar and the repeated pattern bring Achilles and Hektor closer together as characters while also heightening the emotional response of the audience. Beck summarizes the whole effect well:

The narrative of Achilles chasing Hector around and around the city of Troy before killing him might come across as repetitive, or even as pointless delay. Instead, the various elaborations that extend this τρὶς μέν … τρὶς δέ scene depict the two most important fighters in the Iliad as fundamentally the same, and the fates of both – but especially Hector – as a matter of the warmest interest to the gods both individually and collectively. The ‘length confers emphasis’ aesthetics of Homeric epic are particularly effective for depicting a pivotal event that the characters themselves experience as taking a long time. Moreover, the individual expansions that appear in this scene foster the audience’s emotional engagement with the characters and the story. These include: several similes, which depict Achilles and Hector both as predator and prey and also as essentially identical competitors (162–65, 189–93, 199–201); a conversation between the gods watching from Olympus, where we would expect a single speech by one of the τρίς characters (168–85);36 a counterfactual condition within a rhetorical question, which brings the audience vividly into the poem in a manner nearly unparalleled in Homeric epic (202–04); and, finally, the τέταρτον turn of events (208–13), which features a character who, about to fail in his τρὶς μέν attempt, chooses to renounce his endeavour rather than simply be overpowered by a hostile god. These techniques work together even – or especially – as Hector’s death approaches to depict him as a brave and admirable warrior fully deserving of sympathy from both the internal audience of gods and the external audience of the Iliad.

I think all of these effects are worth highlighting, but it is worth noting as well how much familiarity with Homeric language is needed to respond fully to these cues and to understand them. Homeric poetry has a grammar of meaning that rises above the level of the individual word and relies on composite structures and audience familiarity with both. While we as modern audiences can sense the impact from close reading and from the confluence of so many poetic indicators in this scene, one would be fair to wonder how much of the substance of Homeric poetry we continue to miss out on because of all the performances that were never recorded and all those that we’ve lost.

As modern readers, we need to work overtime to restore the nuance that is lost to us and to slough off modern ideas about how and what epic poetry makes meaning. In a way, this is similar to restoring the pigment and decoration to plain white marble statues, understanding that they were more dynamic in the past and that modern aesthetics have been (mis)shaped by misunderstanding. But the level of challenge is greater, I suggest: epic is a living, breathing statue that moved in response to audiences. Modern aesthetics and translation often presents a fossil or desiccated form, in need of color, breath, and movement.

Other Posts on Iliad 22

1. Hektor’s Body and the Burden: Introducing Iliad 22: Trauma and Homer; Characterizing Hektor, again; Fight or Flight

2. Laying My Burdens Down: Hektor Sweet-talks Achilles in Iliad 22: Hektor and Achilles; The Lions of Al-Rassan; PTSD

3. A New Widow and Her Orphan: Andromache’s Lament for Hektor in Iliad 22: Women in Homer; Andromache; Laments; Astyanax; PTSD; Trauma

Type Scene Bibliography

Bakker, Egbert J. 1997. Poetry in Speech: Orality and Homeric Discourse. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Beck, Deborah. “ Emotional and thematic meanings in a repeating Homeric motif: a case study” The Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. 138, 2018, pp. 150-172. Doi: 10.1017/S0075426918000095

Beck, Deborah. 2005. Homeric Conversation. Washington, D.C.: Center for Hellenic Studies.

Bonfante, Larissa. “The judgment of Paris, the toilette of Malavisch, and a mirror in the Indiana University Art Museum.” Studi Etruschi, vol. XLV, 1977, pp. 149-167.

Collins, Leslie. “The wrath of Paris. Ethical vocabulary and ethical type in the Iliad.” American Journal of Philology, vol. CVIII, 1987, pp. 220-232.

Edwards, Mark W.. “The conventions of a Homeric funeral.” Studies in honour of T. B. L. Webster, I. Eds. Betts, John H., Hooker, James T. and Green, John Richard. Bristol, Eng.: Bristol Classical Pr., 1986. 84-92.

Edwards, Mark W.. “Type scenes and Homeric hospitality.” TAPA, vol. CV, 1975, pp. 51-72.

Faraone, Christopher A.. “Circe’s instructions to Odysseus (Od. 10.507-40) as an early Sibylline Oracle.” The Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. 139, 2019, pp. 49-66. Doi: 10.1017/S0075426919000028

Fenik, Bernard. 1968. Typical Battle Scenes in the Iliad. Wiesbaden: F. Steiner.

Gainsford, Peter. “Formal analysis of recognition scenes in the « Odyssey ».” The Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. 123, 2003, pp. 41-59. Doi: 10.2307/3246259

Grethlein, Jonas. “The poetics of the bath in the « Iliad ».” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. 103, 2007, pp. 25-49.

Hitch, Sarah. 2009. King of Sacrifice: Ritual and Royal Authority in the Iliad. Washington, D.C.: Center for Hellenic Studies.

Jurriaans-Helle, Geralda. Composition in Athenian black-figure vase-painting: the « Chariot in profile » type scene. Leuven ; Paris: Peeters, 2021.

Reece, Steve. 1993. The Stranger’s Welcome: Oral Theory and the Aesthetics of the Homeric Hospitality Scene. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Rood, Naomi Jennifer. “Craft similes and the construction of heroes in the « Iliad ».” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. 104, 2008, pp. 19-43.

Vouzis, Panagiotis. Οι ομηρικές τυπικές σκηνές του ταξιδιού στη θάλασσα: η τυπολογία του πλου στον Όμηρο. Vivliothiki Sofias N. Saripolou; 137. Athina: Ethniko kai Kapodistriako Panepistimio Athinon, Filosofiki Scholi, 2020.

Retributive and Reparative Justice in Iliad 21

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

Book 21 continues the fierce violence that followed Achilles’ return to battle. If the central ‘set piece’ of book 20 is Achilles’ encounter with Aeneas and the clashing of those traditions, the central theme of book 21 is about the extent of Achilles’ rage, how it dehumanizes others and himself. The narrative explores this through Achilles’ refusal to ransom Lykaon and his struggle with the river god.

Both of these features are anticipated by a scene at the beginning of the book that also resonates themes from the beginning of the epic. As Achilles presses the Trojans into the river, he gets worn out “murdering people” and stops to select some of the Trojans for a sacrifice to e made later in the epic.

Iliad 21.21-33

“So the Trojans were cowering in the streams under the banks
Of the terrible river. But when Achilles wore out his hands murdering people,
He chose twelve youths still alive from the river
To be a bloodprice for Patroklos, the dead son of Menoitious,.
He led them away stunned like fawns.
He bound their hands behind them in the well-cut belts
they were carrying themselves for their soft tunics.
He handed them over to his companions to lead to their hollow ships.
But then he went back at it again, eager to kill.”

ὣς Τρῶες ποταμοῖο κατὰ δεινοῖο ῥέεθρα
πτῶσσον ὑπὸ κρημνούς. ὃ δ’ ἐπεὶ κάμε χεῖρας ἐναίρων,
ζωοὺς ἐκ ποταμοῖο δυώδεκα λέξατο κούρους
ποινὴν Πατρόκλοιο Μενοιτιάδαο θανόντος·
τοὺς ἐξῆγε θύραζε τεθηπότας ἠΰτε νεβρούς,
δῆσε δ’ ὀπίσσω χεῖρας ἐϋτμήτοισιν ἱμᾶσι,
τοὺς αὐτοὶ φορέεσκον ἐπὶ στρεπτοῖσι χιτῶσι,
δῶκε δ’ ἑταίροισιν κατάγειν κοίλας ἐπὶ νῆας.
αὐτὰρ ὃ ἂψ ἐπόρουσε δαϊζέμεναι μενεαίνων.

I comment at further length on the sacrifice in a post on book 23. A scholion connects this action to book 23, but with some concern explaining what exactly Achilles is doing:

Schol. Ad Hom. Il. bT/b 21.27 ex

“He selected twelve youths” because he is going to prepare them for a sacrifice called a dozen. This provides a great excess through it, that he decides to select captured warriors, mentioning how many and of what sort, and then that he binds them all together, their hands stretched out as if they are enslaved.

Certainly, his companions are assisting him in all these things, but the whole of it comes from him.

δυώδεκα λέξατο <κούρους>: ὡς εἰς θυσίαν μέλλων παριστάνειν τὴν καλουμένην δωδεκάδα. μεγάλην δὲ τὴν ὑπεροχὴν διὰ τούτου παρίστησιν, ἐπιλέξασθαι αὐτὸν τοὺς αἰχμαλώτους λέγων οἵους καὶ ὅσους ἐβούλετο, εἶτα καὶ τούτους καθ’ ἕνα συνδῆσαι, ὥσπερ ἀνδράποδα προτείνοντας τὰς χεῖρας (cf. Φ 30). τοίνυν συνυπούργουν αὐτῷ οἱ ἑēταῖροι ἐν τούτοις πᾶσι, τὸ δὲ ὅλον ἦν τὸ αὐτοῦ.

In the post on book 23, I emphasize the strangeness of the sacrifice and how it fits into the Iliad’s narrative arc. When I returned to this passage, one of the things that stood out for me was the phrase “bloodprice for Patroklos”. The word poinē is related to our English word “penalty” from the Latin borrowing poena. Here, simply expressed in the grammar of the “youths as a ποινὴν Πατρόκλοιο,” a penalty for Patroklos.

From Beekes Etymological Dictionary of Ancient Greek.

Poinē has important thematic resonance for the Iliad. In her insightful monograph, Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad, Donna Wilson argues that Homeric characters distinguish between two different kinds of compensation: apoina, which is what Chryses offers at the beginning of the epic to ransom his daughter back (1.13), is a kind of exchange price that does not deprive the one who accepts it of honor, since the notional esteem of the exchange is more or less equal.

Poinē, on the other hand, is a price paid that detracts from the honor or cultural position of the one who grants it because they receive nothing in return. By giving poinē, a party concedes that they have done wrong or owe a debt that subtracts from their esteem and repairs or increases that of the recipient. Poinē is thus always cosmically destabilizing whereas apoina seeks to keep the universe balanced.

Wilson’s classic example of this is by way of explaining some of the conflict in Iliad 9: when Agamemnon sends the embassy in book 9, he instructs them to offer apoina (9.120), which would repair their relationship by making some amends, but would not signal a loss to Agamemnon. Achilles, Wilson argues, sees the harm to his position as deep enough to require poinē (although he does not articulate it as such).

What the Iliad does show, however, is that the breakdown in social exchange marked by the failure of Agamemnon to accept apoina from Chryses lasts until Achilles restores the stability of the system by accepting apoina instead of poinē from Priam in book 24 (24.139, 502, 579, 594, 686). In between these two events, there are several moments that translate the social failure of Agamemnon’s actions to start the epic to the larger context of the Iliad and the exceptional world of the Trojan War.

Consider the oath in book 3:

Il. 3.288-291

“But if Priam and Priam’s sones are not willing
To pay me back after Alexandros has fallen,
Then I will fight on afterward, staying here
For the sake of a bloodprice, until I come to the end of war.”

εἰ δ’ ἂν ἐμοὶ τιμὴν Πρίαμος Πριάμοιό τε παῖδες
τίνειν οὐκ ἐθέλωσιν ᾿Αλεξάνδροιο πεσόντος,
αὐτὰρ ἐγὼ καὶ ἔπειτα μαχήσομαι εἵνεκα ποινῆς
αὖθι μένων, ἧός κε τέλος πολέμοιο κιχείω.

Here, the oath marks the violence of war as the means to re-balance esteem and worth by demanding a penalty from the Trojans for theft of Helen. It would not be enough for the Trojans to return the woman and the stuff, instead, they have to give up something of themselves, something intangible but costly, to compensate the Greeks for the loss to their esteem done by Paris’ actions.

Even this system, however, shouldn’t commend Achilles’ internecine violence. Ajax attempts to connect the personal ethics of blood prices to the political when he speaks in the embassy.

Il. 9.632-638

“Pitiless man: someone may even accept a bloodprice
For a murdered relative, even when his own son has died.
And then the other remains in his country, once he paid back a lot.
But this man’s heart and proud spirit prevents him
From accepting a bloodprice: the gods gave him an intractable and evil
Heart in his chest over a girl, only a girl.

νηλής· καὶ μέν τίς τε κασιγνήτοιο φονῆος
ποινὴν ἢ οὗ παιδὸς ἐδέξατο τεθνηῶτος·
καί ῥ’ ὃ μὲν ἐν δήμῳ μένει αὐτοῦ πόλλ’ ἀποτίσας,
τοῦ δέ τ’ ἐρητύεται κραδίη καὶ θυμὸς ἀγήνωρ
ποινὴν δεξαμένῳ· σοὶ δ’ ἄληκτόν τε κακόν τε
θυμὸν ἐνὶ στήθεσσι θεοὶ θέσαν εἵνεκα κούρης
οἴης….

Ajax is making the extreme argument that a man who has done wrong can still stay in his community if he accepts that he has done wrong and pays the price needed to satisfy the family of a dead loved one. Such a possibility makes it even more surprising, to Ajax, that Achilles is being so hard hearted about apoina when the conflict is about “only a girl” (like the Trojan War itself). But, as Wilson notes, Ajax has misread what Achilles is looking for: Achilles wants to harm the person who harmed him. He wants Agamemnon to lose as much as he wants to win.

A ransom exchange is in game theory terms a positive sum game because everyone keeps their social esteem and, in my opinion, gains benefit by not engaging in violence. The system of poinē, however, is zero sum: you cannot receive a penalty without someone else granting it. This is the torturous logic of most of the Iliad: When Agamemnon demands that his brother not ransom a prisoner in book 6 or when Achilles refuses to release Lykaon in 21, the logic is that of the whole Trojan War: retribution requires a form of justice that takes from others to penalize them for doing harm first.

If poinē requires retributive justice, could we pose the system of apoina as restorative or reparative? When I teach myth and the Iliad to students I focus on hospitality and exchange as being the only ethical systems outside of the confines of the city the the violence of the state. The Iliad shows that a system of exchange that preserves social position rather than harms it is, perhaps, preferable to one that necessarily damages others. But the extent to which this applies to the world outside the poem is for the audience to consider.

Part of the interest of both Homeric epics–and, indeed, Greek myth in general, is how to stop cycles of violence and revenge. A non-retributive system of justice is likely a good answer, but it leaves open the question of personal angst and grief: how many parents could truly accept a mere apoina for the loss of a child? This cuts to the heart of the Iliad’s questions about the balance of personal grief and political well-being. Note, that however much the actions of Achilles and Priam have political features, they remain at heart an agreement between individuals who don’t wholly reevaluate the logic of the war.

Iliad 21

1. What Do You Do With a Problem Like Achilles? Introducing Iliad 21: Achilles; Sacrifice; narrative judgment

2. You’re Gonna Die Too, Friend: Achilles’ Speech to Lykaon in Iliad 21: Achilles and Lykaon; Surrogacy; Death; Gilgamesh and Iliad

3. They’re Just Not That Into Us: On Mortals and Gods in Iliad 21: Gods and mortals; Cosmic history; Hesiod

Bibliography

West, Martin L. “Some Homeric Words.” Glotta 77, no. 1/2 (2001): 118–35. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40262722.

Donna F. Wilson, Ransom, revenge, and heroic identity in the Iliad. CUP 2003,

Apostrophe in Iliad 20

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

Book 19 of the Iliad ends with a sharp focus on Achilles as he prepares to go to war. The narrow frame produces a bit of a surprise for the epic: Achilles horse, Xanthus, talks to him and tells him he is going to die. Achilles responds that he knows he will perish far from his homeland and then shouts and leads his chariot into the front ranks.

One of the things I have been interested in is the joins between books, how the different scenes fit together. Book 19 doesn’t shift immediately to a different place and time, instead it provides something of a generic transition before moving from the mortal realm to the gods. We get three lines of transition:

“So they were arming themselves among the curved ships,
Alongside you, son of Peleus, hungry for battle, the Achaeans,
But the Trojans were opposite, on the rising part of the field

῝Ως οἳ μὲν παρὰ νηυσὶ κορωνίσι θωρήσσοντο
ἀμφὶ σὲ Πηλέος υἱὲ μάχης ἀκόρητον ᾿Αχαιοί,
Τρῶες δ’ αὖθ’ ἑτέρωθεν ἐπὶ θρωσμῷ πεδίοιο·

This is one of the rare times in the epic that Achilles is apostrophized. A scholion offers one reason for this: “Note that [Achilles] is the leader of the army in the field” (ὅτι τῆς ὑπαίθρου στρατιᾶς ἡγεμὼν ἦν. Schol. bT ad Hom. Il. 20.2 ex). This answer seems wholly ill-fit to addressing the oddness of this choice at this time. (Note, there’s also a textual variant for ἀκόρητον: some traditions have ἀκόρητοι, modifying the Achaeans; but, as the scholion notes, Achilles is the one who has not had his fill of battle.)

The subsequent scholion doesn’t do much to try to explain the sudden apostrophe either. Instead, it notes that five characters and one god are apostrophized in Homer.

Schol. T Ad Hom. Il. 20.2 ex

“The poet addresses five heroic characters [in this way]: Achilles, Menelaos, Melanippos, Patroklos, Eumaios, and, of the gods, Apollo”

προσφωνεῖ δὲ ὁ ποιητὴς ἡρωϊκοῖς μὲν προσώποις πέντε, ᾿Αχιλλεῖ, Μενελάῳ (cf. Δ 127. 146 al.), Μελανίππῳ (cf. Ο 582), Πατρόκλῳ (cf. Π 11. 20 al.), Εὐμαίῳ (cf. ξ 55 al.), θεῶν δὲ ᾿Απόλλωνι· „ἀμφὶ σέ, ἤϊε Φοῖβε” (Υ 152).

In an earlier post I discuss apostrophe in Homer. It is worth reviewing some ideas about it to make sense of this opening. Among literary devices, apostrophe is generally defined as direct-address to a character/person not present. (It shares the name with the punctuation mark because both the sign and the action are “turning away”, which is the meaning of the Greek word.) As early as Ps. Plutarch’s On Homer, we have the identification of the trope as apostrophe and the idea articulated that it “moves with pathos and makes an impact on the audience.” (ὅπερ ἰδίως ἀποστροφὴ καλεῖται. τῷ δὲ παθητικῷ κινεῖ καὶ ἄγει τὸν ἀκροώμενον, 620-621.)

While the scholion is certainly correct that several characters in Homer receive this treatment, only two receive it repeatedly: Patroklos in the Iliad and Eumaios in the Odyssey. The general argument I have always applied to this is that the act creates a sense of identification or sympathy with the character addressed in Homer, setting them and their experiences aside from the rest of the narrative as something special. From a narratological perspective, Irene J. F. De Jong has classed apostrophe as a kind of metalepsis, that is a device that breaks down the narrative, that draws the audience and narrator together to see the actions in a different way. The effect is both to single the apostrophized character out for special attention and to bring the audiences closer to the experience, to immerse them in it, as Rutger Allan suggests.

Is the apostrophe of Achilles more sympathetic or metaleptic in some way? I have a hard time committing to this, but can imagine the address as getting us to think about Achilles, insatiate of battle. The problem I have is that other instances of apostrophe occur as the narrator lingers on the character addressed. Here, we find the apostrophe at the beginning of a book, moving on from Achilles to the assembly of the gods. (And this is assuming that we imagine the events of book 20 always following book 19. A secondary or tertiary question I have here is whether this beginning is too generic, despite the surprising apostrophe.)

But let’s stick to my basic conviction that things like this aren’t accidental. If metalepsis functions to mark—or create—difference, to direct the audience to some change in the narrative, then we should probably take the transitional moment of this scene seriously. The apostrophe to Achilles marks a movement from just thinking about Achilles to bringing the Achaeans and Trojans into the frame, as if moving from a close up of Achilles girding for war before panning out to the larger scene. The moment is doubly transitional as well: it shifts from the martial vista to the divine assembly where Zeus is about to rewrite the rules of the epic again and let the gods loose in the fog of war.

In a way, this takes us back to book 1: Zeus articulates his plan and Achilles’ place in it. Achilles, moreover, is an ideal figure for such a synoptic transition—he is a central mover of the plot; the themes of the epic turn around him; and his position between things makes him a natural fit, especially as he moves between stillness and action, life and death, the realm of mortals and the plans of gods. The apostrophe effects a brief pause, prefacing a significant shift in the action, telling the audience to watch Achilles and the impact he has on everything around him.

More on Iliad 20

1. Concerns For Those About To Die: Introducing Iliad 20: Zeus; Gods and humans; Zeus’s will

2. Spears and Stones will Break Your Bones But Words Will Always Shape You: Aeneas’ Speech to Achilles in Iliad 20: Flyting; Insults; Aeneas and Achilles

3. The Gamemaster’s Anger and Fear: Homeric Contrafactuals and Rescuing Aeneas: Counter-to-fact statements in Homer; Batman; Zeus and the Plot of the Iliad; Aeneas

A short bibliography on apostrophe in Homer

Allan, Rutger. “Metaleptic apostrophe in Homer: emotion and immersion.” Emotions and narrative in ancient literature and beyond: studies in honour of Irene de Jong. Eds. De Bakker, Mathieu, Van den Berg, Baukje and Klooster, Jacqueline. Mnemosyne. Supplements; 451. Leiden ; Boston (Mass.): Brill, 2022. 78-93. Doi: 10.1163/9789004506053_006

Allan, William. “Arms and the man: Euphorbus, Hector, and the death of Patroclus.” Classical Quarterly, N. S., vol. 55, no. 1, 2005, pp. 1-16. Doi: 10.1093/cq/bmi001

Block, E.. “The narrator speaks. Apostrophe in Homer and Vergil.” TAPA, vol. CXII, 1982, pp. 7-22.

Brown, H. Paul. “The grammaticalization of « daimonie » at Iliad 24.194.” Mnemosyne, Ser. 4, vol. 67, no. 3, 2014, pp. 353-369. Doi: 10.1163/1568525X-12341203

Dubel, Sandrine. “ sur l’apostrophe au personnage dans l’« Iliade ».” « Vox poetae »: manifestations auctoriales dans l’épopée gréco-latine : actes du colloque organisé les 13 et 14 novembre 2008 par l’université Lyon 3. Ed. Raymond, Emmanuelle. Collection du Centre d’Études Romaines et Gallo-Romaines. Nouvelle Série; 39. Paris: De Boccard, 2011. 129-144.

De Jong, Irene J. F.. “Metalepsis in ancient Greek literature.” 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. 87-115.

Klooster, Jacqueline. “Apostrophe in Homer, Apollonius and Callimachus.” Über die Grenze: Metalepse in Text- und Bildmedien des Altertums. Eds. Eisen, Ute E. and Möllendorff, Peter von. Narratalogia; 39. Berlin ; Boston (Mass.): De Gruyter, 2013. 151-173.

Mackay, Elizabeth Anne. “ narrative disjunction in early Greek poetry and painting.” Acta Classica, vol. 44, 2001, pp. 5-34.

Parry, A.. “Language and characterization in Homer.” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. LXXVI, 1972, pp. 1-22.

Schmitz, Thomas A.. “Epic apostrophe from Homer to Nonnus.” Symbolae Osloenses, vol. 93, 2019, pp. 37-57. Doi: 10.1080/00397679.2019.1648012

Yamagata, Naoko. “The apostrophe in Homer as part of the oral technique.” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies of the University of London, vol. XXXVI, 1989, pp. 91-103. Doi: 10.1111/j.2041-5370.1989.tb00564.x

Two Updates about Storylife

This post is a continuation of my substack on the Iliad. All proceeds from the substack are donated to classics adjacent non-profits on a monthly basis. Last year this substack provided over $2k in charitable donations. I will return to regular Iliad posts later this week

I know I promised not to talk a lot about my book Storylife: On Epic, Narrative, and Living Things that came out on January 14th, but I did want to share two things: first, Yale University Press sponsored a blog post about conspiracies that builds on the book. And, second, the audiobook format was released on February 18th.

Conspiracies Among Us

In the post, I start by talking about weather related conspiracies from the fall, when the same groups that often deny the validity of human climate change were also claiming that hurricanes Helene and Milton were engineered by the Democrats to disrupt voting in swing states. I use that apparent contradiction to talk about how conspiracy theories rely on narrative forces of coherence and correspondence. We need to focus less on their ‘truth’ and more on why people are predisposed to accept worldviews that run contrary to nature and their own advantage.

I present my analogy of narrative as a living thing, as a kind of virus as a way of decentering the debate of fact and fiction and focusing more on what story does:

“The weak form of my argument is that narrative is something like a virus, which needs people to survive but whose mutations and adaptations are unpredictable. The stronger form of my argument is that narrative is essentially alive, with its own agency and interest in the world.”

Story is a human evolutionary characteristic that sets us apart from other animals; it is both a tool and a part of us, if we follow cognitive scientists who see narrative as instrumental not just in our sense of selves but in the development of consciousness. “Fake news” has been as instrumental in shaping human history as “facts”. And part of this is because of the relationship between narrative and a human sense of identity and agency:

Conspiracies develop in part as a rejection of a particular narrative that challenges communities’ sense of identity—they assert a view of causality and reality that at times is reaffirming and at other times creates a sense of belonging and a potential for regaining control of a world that is foreign or frightening. The problem, however, is that we treat conspiracies as if they are different and special. I believe that they are just a particularly damaging form of narrative.

It has been hard to promote a book while the world is falling apart. This is especially true when the content of the book addresses part of why the world is falling apart. The solution—a richer, deeper engagement with narrative from a young age and more—is not a quick fix and is ill-fit to facing up to the specter of actual fascism and the dangers of climate change.

Audiobook release

Storylife was released as an audiobook on February 18th from Tantor Media. Don’t worry (or hope or fear?), I am not the narrator. The narrator is Graham Rowat who speaks more energetically than I do.

I am really delighted that there is an audiobook for a few reasons. First, I think it is a nice nod to the performance context of Homeric epic (people didn’t stand around reading Homer!). Listening is very different from reading something—it engages with and activates memory in surprising ways. Second, this is also an accessibility issue for people who are sight impaired or have reading issues or are just two busy to sit down.

Third, I am an audiobook junkie. I have been a member of audible since 2011 and have spent over four months of continuous time listening to audiobooks over that period. I started listening while commuting from Round Rock, Texas to San Antonio and continued, often while doing errands or domestic tasks or even running (when I don’t mind being slow).

Take a listen, there’s a sample on YouTube.

Reactions to Weapons and Fun with the Homeric Scholia

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

Most of the time when I am working the Iliad or Odyssey in Greek I read them side-by-side with the Homeric Scholia, usually in a digital window that looks something like this:

This is a screenshot of a rather old program called Musaios which relies on a version of the TLG_E (a CD-ROM) to provide data. It is searchable, but a bit clunky and has no updated texts. The editions that are part of it are those that were edited and published in print (the Erbse edition of the Scholia and the Allen text of the Iliad above).

Often I mention or cite the scholia on substack, but I don’t believe I have defined the term or explain why they matter. Let me correct that now! Scholia are notes added to manuscripts. They can come in margins, in between lines of the text, all over the place. Most modern readers have access to them through digital editions or print editions that are edited to look like this:

But the scholia themselves are actually edited into shared volumes from multiple manuscripts that share different textual traditions. Scholars who edit volumes of scholia consult manuscripts and make choices about what should be included in them (which means that it is possible for a lot to be left out). Here is a page from the Homeric multitext project showing the beginning of book 19 (also above). Note, there are two sets of marginal notes (one in paragraph, another connected to individual signs like footnotes) as well as intralinear notes. The marginal paragraph gives the impression of being part of a editorial tradition that likely precedes this Byzantine manuscript, while the smaller marginal notes and the intralinear seem more temporally local to that period (or later use).

No single manuscript tradition has identical scholia with others. So, when an edition is printed and ends up digitized, it can often contain very different information. The Hartmut Erbse edition (shown above) was published from 1969 to 1988 and includes a smaller proportion of what is referred to as the D Scholia many would like to see but includes far more manuscripts than the previous edition edited by Dindorf (for more, read Stephanie West’s review.) To address Erbse’s downplaying of the D Scholia, we have Helmut Van Thiel’s free edition.

The scholia contain a range of information that is generally split into two categories: minora and maiora. The minora tend to be a collection of notes to make it easier at translating Homeric Greek into later dialects, but they also include mythographical information (some ascribed to the scholar Didymus, hence the name the D Scholia). The maiora exist in most medieval manuscripts and draw on a wide range of ancient scholars writing about Homer from the Hellenistic period onward (most of which is preserved only in the scholia.

(There is a lot more detail here about the four man commentary, the VMK, and the preservation of materials from early editors like Aristarchus, Zenodotus, Aristophanes of Byzantium, scholars like Heraclitus and Porphyry, and more. Read Schironi’s overview if you want to know more!)

I have been thinking about the scholia because of this passage from book 19:

Homer, Iliad 19.4-20

“[Thetis] found her dear son lying over Patroklos
Weeping clearly. His many companions were mourning
Around him. The shining goddess stood among them—
She took his hand, named him, and spoke these words:
“My child, let’s leave him there, even though we’re in pain
Since he was doomed by the will of the gods foremost.
You now, take these famous arms from Hephaestus,
beautiful, the kinds of weapons no man has worn on his shoulders.”

So speaking, the goddess put the weapons down
In front of Achilles. Those marvelous arms rang out—
Fear overtook all of the myrmidons, and no one dared
To look straight at it, no, they trembled. But Achilles,
When he saw them, well anger came over him more.
His two eyes shined out from beneath his brows like a flame
He took pleasure holding the shining gifts of the god in his hand.
But when he had taken pleasure in his thoughts as a looked at them….”

εὗρε δὲ Πατρόκλῳ περικείμενον ὃν φίλον υἱὸν
κλαίοντα λιγέως· πολέες δ’ ἀμφ’ αὐτὸν ἑταῖροι
μύρονθ’· ἣ δ’ ἐν τοῖσι παρίστατο δῖα θεάων,
ἔν τ’ ἄρα οἱ φῦ χειρὶ ἔπος τ’ ἔφατ’ ἔκ τ’ ὀνόμαζε·
τέκνον ἐμὸν τοῦτον μὲν ἐάσομεν ἀχνύμενοί περ
κεῖσθαι, ἐπεὶ δὴ πρῶτα θεῶν ἰότητι δαμάσθη·
τύνη δ’ ῾Ηφαίστοιο πάρα κλυτὰ τεύχεα δέξο
καλὰ μάλ’, οἷ’ οὔ πώ τις ἀνὴρ ὤμοισι φόρησεν.
Ως ἄρα φωνήσασα θεὰ κατὰ τεύχε’ ἔθηκε
πρόσθεν ᾿Αχιλλῆος· τὰ δ’ ἀνέβραχε δαίδαλα πάντα.
Μυρμιδόνας δ’ ἄρα πάντας ἕλε τρόμος, οὐδέ τις ἔτλη
ἄντην εἰσιδέειν, ἀλλ’ ἔτρεσαν. αὐτὰρ ᾿Αχιλλεὺς
ὡς εἶδ’, ὥς μιν μᾶλλον ἔδυ χόλος, ἐν δέ οἱ ὄσσε
δεινὸν ὑπὸ βλεφάρων ὡς εἰ σέλας ἐξεφάανθεν·
τέρπετο δ’ ἐν χείρεσσιν ἔχων θεοῦ ἀγλαὰ δῶρα.
αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ φρεσὶν ᾗσι τετάρπετο δαίδαλα λεύσσων

I find this passage fascinating for a few reasons. First, a simple observation: there’s nearly a grammatical anakolouthon as the narrative attempts to describe Achilles’ response. It starts with a typical shifting device from one subject to another, “But then Achilles” (αὐτὰρ ᾿Αχιλλεὺς), when he saw it, because anger overtook him more, his eyes…” The narrative begins with the whole person, but then shifts from him as a grammatical subject, to the object of kholos (‘anger’), to the terrible glint in his eyes.

That line is filled with movement: ὡς εἶδ’, ὥς μιν μᾶλλον ἔδυ χόλος, ἐν δέ οἱ ὄσσε has three different grammatical subjects (Achilles, the anger, the eyes) but all of them are different ways of seeing Achilles: first as a narrative subject, then as an object of anger, and then the impact of the anger through the glint in his eyes. The transition from here is surprising too: Achilles feels pleasure in the weapons. One of the last times the audience was asked to think about Achilles feeling pleasure was when the embassy came to him in book nine (τὸν δ’ εὗρον φρένα τερπόμενον φόρμιγγι λιγείῃ, 9,186). There, he was with Patroklos, but still separate, alone in feeling pleasure at the lyre. Here, he moves from mourning, to anger, to pleasure at the weapons that terrify his men.

The second thing that really interests me about this passage is the difference between Achilles’ reaction to the weapons and that of the Myrmidons. While Achilles feels delight, his men are overcome by fear and cannot look at the arms (Μυρμιδόνας δ’ ἄρα πάντας ἕλε τρόμος, οὐδέ τις ἔτλη / ἄντην εἰσιδέειν, ἀλλ’ ἔτρεσαν, Schol. B ad Il. 19.15). And here’s where the scholia come in. Zenodotus quibbles and thinks the word should be “rout” (φόβος) instead of “trembling” (τρόμος). (In one of the many places where Zenodotus is wrong, he makes this assertion but does not seem to correct the coordinate verb ἔτρεσαν which creates a nice repetition and ring in a very Homeric fashion).

The b Scholion for this passage explains that “The Myrmidons are awestruck by the beauty, but they can’t look at it.” (οἱ δὲ Μυρμιδόνες τὸ κάλλος ἐκπλήττονται, ἀντοφθαλμεῖν μὴ δυνάμενοι). I think that this interpretation is bonkers, personally. The language used by the narrator makes it very clear that weapons have a martial menace: the language of trembling in fear is what happens when warriors are about to run away, when they face a challenge they would rather avoid. There is a divine force imbued in the weapons that makes the Myrmidons tremble.

The contrast in reactions is a powerful reminder of the affective force of wrought objects. Hephaestus’ weapons inspire different reactions in different viewers because they mean different things. To the Myrmidons, they are a return to war, a return to the field where they just lost Patroklos. To Achilles, they are a means to fulfilling his rage. And, if we accept that the Shield itself as an ekphrasis is a representation of poetic art, of narrative’s power, this moment helps us understand that Homer knows that creative art has different effects on different people.

Other posts on Iliad 19

1. People Are Going to Tell Our Story: Introducing Iliad 19: Paradeigmata, again; cognitive approaches to reading, again; Achilles and Agamemnon; Politics

2. That Other Me: Achilles’ Lament for Patroklos in Iliad 19: Achilles and Patroklos, again; Achilles’ Second Lament; Surrogacy; Cognitive approaches to reading, again; Briseis

3. Dead and Gentle Forever: Briseis’ Lament for Patroklos in Iliad 19: Briseis; Laments; Scholia; Patroklos

Francesca Schironi has a good overview of the Homeric Scholia here (from the Cambridge Guide to Homer).

Helmut van Thiel’s edition of the D. Scholia: a clean and easy to read FREE pdf with far more of the D Scholia than are included in the TLG. Dindorff’s Scholia to the Iliad can also be downloaded

The best guide to the scholia is Eleanor Dickey, Ancient Greek Scholarship: a guide to finding, reading, and understanding scholia, commentaries, lexica, and grammatical treatises, from their beginnings to the Byzantine period. London and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

A few more suggestions from Justin Arft:

Schironi, F. 2018. The Best of the Grammarians: Aristarchus of Samothrace on the Iliad. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Schironi digs deep into the Homeric scholia to contextualize Aristarchus’ editorial style and goals. Exhaustive examples from the Iliad in particular (some from the Odyssey when appropriate) to determine his views on grammar, style, narrative, and especially his attitude toward other critics.

Nünlist, R. 2009. The Ancient Critic at Work: Terms and Concepts of Literary Criticism in Greek Scholia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Nünlist is more broadly focused on scholiasts writ large (across genres and authors) but spends a good amount of time on Aristarchus and Homeric speech, from epithets, type-scenes, narrative, and character, too. From the Intro: “The book is divided into two parts . The first part ( Chapters 1 to 12 ) deals with the more general concepts of literary criticism which ancient scholars recognised in various texts and did not a priori consider typical of a particular poet or genre . For the sequence of the chapters in this first part , an attempt has been made to proceed from the more general to the more specific ( but to keep thematically related chapters together ) . The second part deals with literary devices that were primarily seen as typical of a particular poet ( Homer , Chapters 13 to 18 ) or genre ( drama , Chapter 19 ).”