Moving Forward with Painful Signs

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.

As of last week, this substack completed another tour of the Iliad, ending with the beginning of book 24. There’s more to be said, of course, but I will probably wait until September to start yet another tour of the Iliad from beginning to end. But don’t fear! The ‘stack must go on. I am going to try to continue posting weekly (at least), returning to highlighting scholarship on Homer in general, commenting on passages as they grab my interest, and returning to the Iliad as much as I can in a really mad and maddening world.

Why, might one fairly ask, continue reading the Iliad when the world seems to be spiraling out of control? I have two answers. First, Elton Barker and I just signed a contract to write an introduction to the Iliad for Routledge (due in June 2026). The chapters from the proposal are as follows:

Introduction: The Iliad through Time

Chapter 1: Zeus’ Plan–Gods, and Mortals, Agency and Fate

Chapter 2: Heroic Pain–Violence and Mortality

Chapter 3: Heroic Coalitions, Politics

Chapter 4: The Human City–Families, Women, Children, and Enslaved People

Chapter 5: Immortal Stories–narrative traditions and the message of the poem

Conclusion: Homeric Afterlives

As Elton and I start working on this, some of the posts will likely be “overflow” material or offshoots of investigations.

The second answer to why read Homer when the world is burning is this: it brings me peace. I have returned to the Iliad and the Odyssey throughout my life both as a touchstone for world events and as a type of therapy. I started grad school in NYC right before 9/11 and turned away from all my school work just to work on Homer. There’s no accident that my dissertation ended up being on Rhetoric and Politics in the Iliad–I was only dimly aware of responding to world events through my work. Similarly, following my father’s sudden death at 61, I immersed myself in the Odyssey. When the COVID-19 Pandemic hit, I teamed up with Lanah Koelle and Paul O’Mahony to start Reading Greek Tragedy Online, which culminated in a 24 hour, round the world reading of the Odyssey.

I used to think of these responses as escapist, at best providing some indirect ways of working through the challenge of ‘real’ life. But a conversation with one of the founders of the Sportula, Stefani Echeverria-Fenn, helped me understand that there is more going on than that. As Stefani wrote at the time, the slow reading of Greek or Latin can help rearrange reality, providing a therapeutic method of reasserting agency on the world. The slow reading of philology, of communing with the dead through their languages, can help produce what psychologists call a “flow state”.

There are important neurobiological aspects to such a state: when we are fully engaged on a task that takes us outside of ourselves, it can have positive effects on mental and physical health. It can slow down the heart-rate and calm a racing mind. There are studies that show similarities with the neurophysiology of prayer or other meditative practices. The deliberative practice of reading intensely creates space outside of time and the daily self. The space and the process can be therapeutic.

Years ago, when I was an undergraduate, I studied poetry with the translator and poet Olga Broumas. I distinctly remember a meeting when I told her I was an atheist and she calmly responded that I was not. How, I asked, could she say that? She told me I just hadn’t learned the words to talk about the universe in a way that made sense yet and that I was too spiritual to be an atheist. I can’t say that this much has changed in a quarter century, but I can say that when the world gets dark, I somehow find light in Homer. And that’s a pretty good start.

“Just like a prayer, / *Homer* can take me there”

New Book Alert!

Homer’s not just useful for mental health! Greek epic also provides a way to think about how humanity got where it is and what we need to do to survive. In addition to the resurgence of fascism, the stupidity of modern technology and its claims to intelligence, the horrors of ongoing conflicts, and rising income inequality, we may be facing an extinction level event from climate change over the next century. Not to be an alarmist–there is hope! But the hope diminishes with each passing year of inaction.

Ecocriticism is a cross–disciplinary theoretical approach to literature. While the term was first coined in the 1970s, the approach has seen slow adoption in past-focused disciplines like Classics. Ecocriticism can characterize a lot of work that looks at the interaction between human beings and the environment, and it can also apply to individual works like Richard Powers’ novel The Overstory that speaks directly to ecological concerns and humankind’s relationship with nature.

When it comes to classical studies and Homer, ecocritical approaches can have an important historicizing contribution. Just as post-colonial studies of Homer can help us understand the systems of values that have shaped Homeric reception and help us to understand epic’s fundamental relationship to enslavement, misogyny, political power, etc, and how these values have influenced later cultures and Homer’s appeal, so too can ecocritical studies help us understand how our modern relationship to the natural world draws on ancient beliefs.

The last decade has seen increasing interest in the depiction of the environment Homer. William Brockliss’ book on Homeric Imagery and the Natural Environment is a great resource for thinking through the presentation of the environment in Homer. Wayne Mark Rimmer has suggested that Homeric warriors function as an index of humanity’s ‘precarious place in a delicate natural world”. Julio Vega Payne does a great job in his dissertation of developing the way that Homer uses the natural world as a character to explore human-environmental dynamics. In her blog post “Bring Timber Into The City”: Reading The Iliad Against The Grain” Lindsay Davies concludes

“A human ecological reading of the Iliad requires us to recognize that in the world of the poem, humans, in their mobility of mind and body—remember swift-footed Achilles—are greater than trees and beasts. They transcend the earth through their imagination and ingenuity, if not in their bodies. Their eyes are cast upwards to the sky for meaning, not downwards to the earth. In this context, as Robert Pogue Harrison argues in his great study of the meaning of forests in culture, it becomes imperative to clear the trees, for “Where divinity has been identified with the sky, or with the eternal geometry of the stars, or with cosmic infinity, or with ‘heaven,’ the forests become monstrous, for they hide the prospect of god” (6, italics in original). This association of the sky with transcendence also explains the significance of Homer’s poor pigeon whose death causes warriors to wonder. For the bird struck down while striving to fly skyward potently symbolizes the quest for heroic glory, that which appeared to turn a man into a god yet simultaneously guaranteed that he would bite the dust.”

A little earlier, Jason Bell argued for a reading of the Odyssey that centered environmental ethics (see Elizabeth Schulz’s article on the Odyssey and ecocriticism too); and Sam Cooper’s article on “Speculative Fiction, Ecocriticism, and the Wanderings of Odysseus” shows how “Ecocritical readings of the Odyssey that wander purposefully between that epic and its receptions (let it be clear that the one I offer is by no means exhaustive) may help us to stay with its ecological troubles, and with those of later periods, and with our own.”

I think there is definitely more work to be done on the Odyssey’s relationship with the natural world, especially if we position the Odyssey in cosmic history as a text moving from a world of fantastic abundance (consider the endless feasting of the Iliad or the meals in the early part of the epic itself) to one of comparative scarcity (the suitors’ unchecked eating is a major concern). Given current interest in abundance and inequity, epic’s arc from the zero-sum game of Achaean honor in Iliad 1 to the premise that “wealth and peace should be enough” to avoid conflicts in book 24 of the Iliad is worth tracing. But I have been thinking about ecocriticism and Homer because I finally received a copy of Edith Hall’s most recent book Epic of the Earth: Reading Homer’s Iliad in the Fight for a Dying World.

I am going to say very little about this book right now, except that I think it should be one of the most important books written about Greek poetry of the year, if not the decade. I hosted Edith for a talk at Brandeis last year where she presented some of the research for this book and I immediately recognized its importance. It forces us to reconsider the natural world presented in Homer and to think as well about how the heroic world and its values contain the seeds of our own destructive relationship with the planet.

The book unfolds in part by looking at the poetics and the contents of the Iliad, following chapters about interpreting the poem, historical contexts, and ecocritical approaches. Hall traces the work of Loggers, Farmers, and Smiths, through chapters that blend history, archaeology, and philology to ask readers to confront the consumptive deforestation that Homeric epic presupposes as a necessity for heroic (if not Human) life. In the Epilogue, she notes that “central to the ideology of the Iliad is the idiom of infinitude, an assumption that the physical Earth, its contents, and the resources needed by humans, somehow limitless” (202). Homeric culture, as it were, is founded upon a need to continually expand to add new resources to fuel the machine of human war and politics. As Hall continues, “The Iliad shows that the seeds of environmental capacity were already sown by warfare at the dawn of human civilizations less than ten thousand years ago” (203). The military industrial complex is the largest driver of climate change today; and this has always been the case.

And, yet, Hall does not with total despair. She reads the Iliad as a record and a lament. It is “not only the poem of the Anthropocene; it has the potential to become the epic of the Earth–the poem for the Anthropocene” (205). By bearing witness, the Iliad advocates for all that has been lost to the blades of war; by learning from this witness, modern audiences have a chance to contemplate the nature of things in truth.

The world burning is not inevitable. It is a product of the way human beings choose to live. According to Hall, epic can help us choose to live a bit longer.

Or, How the Scholia are Wrong about Iliad 24

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.

Last year, I wrote seven posts about book 24. Certainly, there can’t be more to say?

The funeral games occupy the majority of Iliad 23, but the book begins with Achilles mourning the lost of Patroklos. At the end of the book, everyone else returns to sleep. Book 24 begins again with Achilles where he was at the beginning of 23: alone, at night, missing Patroklos:

Iliad 24.3-20

“…but Achilles
Was weeping while he recalled his dear companion, not even sleep,
That master of everything overtook him, but he turned here and there
Longing for Patroklos’ manliness and his spirit,
And all those things he endured with him and the pains they shared
In the wars of men and testing the troubling seas.

He let loose a warm tear as he recalled all this–
First he was lying on his side, then again on his back
And other times on his stomach. Then he stood straight up
And went grieving along the shore of the sea. Dawn
Was not yet about to sneak her way over the salt and sands.
But Achilles the yoked his horses to his chariot
And bound Hektor to be dragged behind the car
And pulled him three times around the grave of Menoitios’ dead son.
He stopped again near his dwelling and let Hektor lie there
On his face, stretched out in the dust. Apollo was holding
All disgrace back from the man’s skin, because he pitied
Him, even though he was dead.”

ὕπνου τε γλυκεροῦ ταρπήμεναι· αὐτὰρ ᾿Αχιλλεὺς
κλαῖε φίλου ἑτάρου μεμνημένος, οὐδέ μιν ὕπνος
¿ρει πανδαμάτωρ, ἀλλ’ ἐστρέφετ’ ἔνθα καὶ ἔνθα
Πατρόκλου ποθέων ἀνδροτῆτά τε καὶ μένος ἠΰ,
ἠδ’ ὁπόσα τολύπευσε σὺν αὐτῷ καὶ πάθεν ἄλγεα
ἀνδρῶν τε πτολέμους ἀλεγεινά τε κύματα πείρων·
τῶν μιμνησκόμενος θαλερὸν κατὰ δάκρυον εἶβεν,
ἄλλοτ’ ἐπὶ πλευρὰς κατακείμενος, ἄλλοτε δ’ αὖτε
ὕπτιος, ἄλλοτε δὲ πρηνής· τοτὲ δ’ ὀρθὸς ἀναστὰς
δινεύεσκ’ ἀλύων παρὰ θῖν’ ἁλός· οὐδέ μιν ἠὼς
φαινομένη λήθεσκεν ὑπεὶρ ἅλα τ’ ἠϊόνας τε.
ἀλλ’ ὅ γ’ ἐπεὶ ζεύξειεν ὑφ’ ἅρμασιν ὠκέας ἵππους,
῞Εκτορα δ’ ἕλκεσθαι δησάσκετο δίφρου ὄπισθεν,
τρὶς δ’ ἐρύσας περὶ σῆμα Μενοιτιάδαο θανόντος
αὖτις ἐνὶ κλισίῃ παυέσκετο, τὸν δέ τ’ ἔασκεν
ἐν κόνι ἐκτανύσας προπρηνέα· τοῖο δ’ ᾿Απόλλων
πᾶσαν ἀεικείην ἄπεχε χροῒ φῶτ’ ἐλεαίρων
καὶ τεθνηότα περ….

There are many things I find striking about this passage. Structurally, in the arc of the epic as a whole, it takes us back to book 1 where Apollo appears early as a guarantor of some kind of divine justice. In book 1, Apollo is summoned by Chryses to punish transgression against the reciprocal rite of supplication and ransom exchange. This open transgression is resolved when Achilles accepts Priam’s ransom of Hektor’s body. Within this meta-structural ring another theme is established as well: the right of all mortals to burial, supported in part by the truce in book 7 and Hera’s comments in book 16 that funeral rites are the geras thanontôn (“the honor-prize of the dead”).

Apollo serves a complementary but different role at the end of the epic: he appears again as an upholder of divine justice. This time, instead of punishing a transgression, he advocates for Hektor’s burial in a council of the gods that may anticipate or echo his juridical appearance in the story of the Oresteia (where he argues on Orestes’ behalf against the Furies). At the beginning and end of the epic, moreover, Apollo establishes the closest thing archaic poetry has on offer for a universal bill of human rights: the honoring of a suppliant and the burial of the dead. Note for modern comparison how children and parents are central in both instances.

A second thing to note about this passage is that ancient scholars marked some of the lines as spurious. The complaints fall into two broad categories: these lines are two simple or unpoetic; or they are in some way morally questionable.

Schol. A. ad Il. 24. 6-9 ex.

‘These four lines are considered suspect because they are simple and Achilles’ grief is more emphatic than it is depicted here [in lines 4-5]. People also complain that manliness and menos aren’t different at all. The poet rarely says manliness when he means braveness. It is also somewhat twisted up, when he ends with “remembering these things” when they already had “thinking of his companion” above.

Ariston. | Did. Πατρόκλου ποθέων (6) ἕως <τοῦ> τῶν μιμνησκόμενος (9): ἀθετοῦνται στίχοι τέσσαρες, ὅτι εὐτελεῖς εἰσιν, ἀρθέντων δὲ αὐτῶν καὶ ἐμφαντικώτερον δηλοῦται ἡ τοῦ ᾿Αχιλλέως λύπη· „ἀλλ’ ἐστρέφετ’ ἔνθα καὶ ἔνθα” (Ω 5), „ἄλλοτ’ ἐπὶ πλευράς” (Ω 10). καὶ τοῖς αὐτοῖς καταχρᾶται, ἀνδροτῆτα, μένος (6)· οὐδὲν γὰρ διαφέρει. καὶ οὐδέποτε ἀνδροτῆτα (6) εἴρηκε τὴν ἀνδρείαν, ἀλλ’ ἠνορέαν. ἔχει δὲ καί τι δυσεξέλικτον, τῶν μιμνησκόμενος (9)· καὶ γὰρ ἄνω εἴρηκεν „ἑτάρου μεμνημένος” (Ω 4).

Schol. bT. ad Il. 24. 6-9 ex.

“Those who marked these lines as spurious are not somehow crack-brained, since they take these lines as naughty and suspect verses like this—because he longs for a bed-mate, not in the style worthy of demigods nor even of half women? For if this is wholly suspect, then Patroklos would be his lover because he [Achilles] is younger and very beautiful.

The [verses are considered suspect] for these reasons. Manliness is the nature of the man. But he also says “noble menos” and the verb tolupeuse is not well put.”

οἱ δὲ ἀθετοῦντες τοὺς στίχους πῶς οὐκ ἐμβρόντητοι, ῥηματίων κακοσχόλως ἐχόμενοι καὶ τοιούτων ἐπῶν κατηγοροῦντες b(BE3E4)T ὅτι ὡς σύγκοιτον ποθεῖ, οὐχ οἷον ἡμιθέων, ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ ἡμιγυναίκων ἄξιον <ὄν>; εἰ γὰρ ὅλως τοῦτο ὑπονοεῖν δεῖ, ἐραστὴς ἂν εἴη Πάτροκλος ὡς νεωτέρου καὶ περικαλλεστέρου. T ἀθετοῦνται δὲ διὰ ταῦτα· ἀνδροτὴς γάρ ἐστιν ἡ τοῦ ἀνδρὸς φύσις· εἶπε δὲ καὶ μένος ἠΰ (6). καὶ τολύπευσε (7) δ’ οὐκ εὔκαιρον·

The second passage combines normative statements about poetics and ethics to explain why some ancient scholars athetized (literally “marked as out of place”) four of these lines. I have discussed elsewhere the relationship between Achilles and Patroklos and don’t need to belabor it further other than to say that the epic is at times unclear about their relationship, but this passage seems about as clear as it gets and resistance to its meaning is rooted in the normative values of audiences not epic itself.

When it comes to the suggestion that these lines are “simplistic” in some way and therefore questionable, I am similarly skeptical of the scholia. I suspect in part that this claim is made as in indirect way of rejecting the depiction of Achilles longing for Patroklos in erotic or overly physical terms. Even if we take the criticism seriously, however, I think it falls apart. When I read this passage now, I find it to be a vivid depiction of a human being in grief, incapable of sleeping, turning over and over until they give up and go out and try to act in some way. Achilles is both unmoored by grief (he has no direction) but he is also stuck in sorrow’s time-loop: he keeps returning to the same actions (crying and then mistreating Hektor’s corpse) because he cannot move on.

There’s a psychological realism here rooted in human embodiment that reminds me of one of the fragments attributed to Sappho.

Sappho fr. 31

That man seems like the gods
To me—the one who sits facing
You and nearby listens as you
sweetly speak—

and he hears your lovely laugh—this then
makes the heart in my breast stutter,
when I glance even briefly, it is no longer possible
for me to speak—

but my tongue sticks in silence
and immediately a slender flame runs under my skin.
I cannot see with my eyes, I hear
A rush in my ears—

A cold sweat breaks over me, a tremble
Takes hold of me. Then paler than grass,
I think that I have died
Just a little.”\

φαίνεταί μοι κῆνος ἴσος θέοισιν
ἔμμεν’ ὤνηρ, ὄττις ἐνάντιός τοι
ἰσδάνει καὶ πλάσιον ἆδυ φωνεί-
σας ὐπακούει

καὶ γελαίσας ἰμέροεν, τό μ’ ἦ μὰν
καρδίαν ἐν στήθεσιν ἐπτόαισεν,
ὠς γὰρ ἔς σ’ ἴδω βρόχε’ ὤς με φώναι-
σ’ οὐδ’ ἒν ἔτ’ εἴκει,

ἀλλ’ ἄκαν μὲν γλῶσσα †ἔαγε λέπτον
δ’ αὔτικα χρῶι πῦρ ὐπαδεδρόμηκεν,
ὀππάτεσσι δ’ οὐδ’ ἒν ὄρημμ’, ἐπιρρόμ-
βεισι δ’ ἄκουαι,

†έκαδε μ’ ἴδρως ψῦχρος κακχέεται† τρόμος δὲ
παῖσαν ἄγρει, χλωροτέρα δὲ ποίας
ἔμμι, τεθνάκην δ’ ὀλίγω ‘πιδεύης
φαίνομ’ ἔμ’ αὔται·

Sappho’s language evokes the physical indica of desire and anxiety. It is vivid and serves to bridge a connection between the embodied experience of the audience and the poet’s song: The poem’s depiction of the body creates a common ground between the poet’s story and the audience’s experience. In the same way, I think that Achilles’ restless night attempts to bridge that gap between epic narrative and human life. The Homeric narrator’s language is less figurative and more direct than Sappho’s, but I think this is in part a function of the genre of lament, typically more staid and somber than lyric reflections on love imperiled. Life’s greatest losses leave us exhausted and empty, yet still rooted in that moment of separation. The bereft are locked between what was and the absence of what will be. The busy actions of rituals that are aimed at bringing initial closure to loss—funerals, funeral games, wakes, sitting shiva etc.—create a social framework for experiencing grief, but they don’t erase grief itself or fill the emptiness left behind.

This is a powerful moment because we see the epic hero undressed, in a way, bereft of the trappings of leadership, the actions of war, and the ritual frameworks that have kept him in motion right up until this moment. Achilles tossing and turning at night brings to bear on the audience the force of his loss in a way that anyone who has grieved can understand: no matter what happens during the day, night leaves us along with our grief, turning this way and that, trying to think of anything else and failing.

This in part explains Achilles’ return to Hektor’s corpse, a kind of regression to rage that is no longer there because rage filled him. When the scholion objects to the repetitions of words of remembering (μεμνημένος…τῶν μιμνησκόμενος), it is missing out on the structural framing that homes in on the act of memorialization, the work of narrative. Achilles’ grief issues from his memory’s interaction with his loss and the parenthetical structure echoes the inside/outside experience of narrative memory. Achilles is an audience to his own grief.

If this assertion seems tenuous, consider that this scene almost immediately reminds us that audiences are in fact observing Achilles’ lament. Apollo watches and pities Hektor (ἐλεαίρων). The gods act as indices for external audiences. Just as we are reminded of this as an audience, we are invited to consider the emotional experience, to weigh what it means to pity another, and to understand the impact that grief has on the human body.

Other posts Iliad 24

1. Disfiguring the Fallow Earth: Introducing Iliad 24: Divine Politics; the trial of Achilles; Apollo; Hesiod’s Theogony

2. “As If He Were Going to His Death”: Priam and Katabasis in Iliad 24: Katabasis; Ransom; Structural echoes; Hermes and Orphism

3. “Blow Up Your TV”: Thetis, Achilles, and Life and Death in Iliad 24: Thetis and grief; Gilgamesh; John Prine

4. Priam And Achilles, Pity and Fear: A ‘tragic’ end to Homer’s Iliad: Cognitive approaches to Homer; Tragedy and Epic; Aristotle

5. Starving Then Stoned: Achilles’ Story of Niobe in Iliad 24: Paradeigmata, again; cognitive approaches to reading

6. “Better off Dead”: Helen’s Lament for Hektor in Iliad 24: Laments; Praise; Memory; Helen

7. The Burial of Horse-Taming Hektor: Ending the Iliad: Hektor; Aithiopis; Ending Epic; Ibycus; Pindar; Kleos

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.