“Finally, what great and vile desire for life compels us
To quake so much amidst doubts and dangers?
Mortals have an absolute end to our lives:
Death cannot be evaded—we must leave.
Nevertheless, we move again and still persist—
No new pleasure is procured by living;
But while what we desire is absent, that seems to overcome
All other things; but later, when we have gained it, we want something else—
An endless thirst for life grips us as we gasp for it.
It remains unclear what fortune life will offer,
What chance may bring us and what end awaits.
But by extending life we do not subtract a moment
Of time from death nor can we shorten it
So that we may somehow have less time after our ends.
Therefore, you may continue as living as many generations as you want,
But that everlasting death will wait for you still,
And he will be there for no less a long time, the man who
Has found the end of life with today’s light, than the man who died
Many months and many years before.”
Denique tanto opere in dubiis trepidare periclis
quae mala nos subigit vitai tanta cupido?
certe equidem finis vitae mortalibus adstat
nec devitari letum pote, quin obeamus.
praeterea versamur ibidem atque insumus usque
nec nova vivendo procuditur ulla voluptas;
sed dum abest quod avemus, id exsuperare videtur
cetera; post aliud, cum contigit illud, avemus
et sitis aequa tenet vitai semper hiantis.
posteraque in dubiost fortunam quam vehat aetas,
quidve ferat nobis casus quive exitus instet.
nec prorsum vitam ducendo demimus hilum
tempore de mortis nec delibare valemus,
quo minus esse diu possimus forte perempti.
proinde licet quod vis vivendo condere saecla,
mors aeterna tamen nihilo minus illa manebit,
nec minus ille diu iam non erit, ex hodierno
lumine qui finem vitai fecit, et ille,
mensibus atque annis qui multis occidit ante.
Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 1.1:
“Act thus, my Lucilius: justify yourself, collect and save all of the time which to this point has been taken off, or stolen, or simply slipped away. Persuade yourself that the matter stands as I write: some time is stolen from us, some is drawn off, and some just flows away. The most shameful loss, though, is the one which occurs through negligence. If you wish to take note, you will see that a large part of life slips away from those who act badly, the greatest portion slips away from those who do nothing, and all of life slips away from those who are busy doing something else. What person can you cite who places a price upon his time, who takes an account of the day, who understands that he is dying every day? We are deceived in this, that we look forward to death: a large part of it has already gone by, and whatever part of our lives is in the past is death’s property now. Therefore, act as you claim to do, and embrace every hour; thus it will happen that you weigh out less of tomorrow, if you throw your hand upon today.
Life runs away when it is delayed. All things, my Lucilius, are foreign to us: time alone is ours. Nature has granted us the possession of this one fleeting, slippery thing, from which she expels whoever wishes it. The stupidity of humans is so great that they allow the smallest, most worthless things (certainly, those which can be retrieved) to be added to their account when they have accomplished them, but no one thinks that he owes any debt when he receives time, though this is the one thing which no one is able to pay back readily.
You will perhaps ask how I act, I who deliver these precepts to you. I will confess honestly: as happens among the diligent partaker of luxury, I keep an account of the cost. I can not say that I have wasted nothing, but I can give an account of why and how I wasted it. I will explain the causes of my poverty. But it happens to me as to many who have been reduced to poverty through no fault of their own: all ignore him, no one helps him.
What then? I do not consider a man poor if whatever is left to him seems enough to him. I advise you, though to hold on to what is yours, and do it in good time. For, as the ancients say, ‘Parsimony is too late on the ground,’ for not only is the remaining portion at the bottom the smallest, but it is also the worst. Goodbye.”
Ita fac, mi Lucili: vindica te tibi, et tempus quod adhuc aut auferebatur aut subripiebatur aut excidebat collige et serva. Persuade tibi hoc sic esse ut scribo: quaedam tempora eripiuntur nobis, quaedam subducuntur, quaedam effluunt. Turpissima tamen est iactura quae per neglegentiam fit. Et si volueris attendere, magna pars vitae elabitur male agentibus, maxima nihil agentibus, tota vita aliud agentibus. [2] Quem mihi dabis qui aliquod pretium tempori ponat, qui diem aestimet, qui intellegat se cotidie mori? In hoc enim fallimur, quod mortem prospicimus: magna pars eius iam praeterit; quidquid aetatis retro est mors tenet. Fac ergo, mi Lucili, quod facere te scribis, omnes horas complectere; sic fiet ut minus ex crastino pendeas, si hodierno manum inieceris. [3] Dum differtur vita transcurrit. Omnia, Lucili, aliena sunt, tempus tantum nostrum est; in huius rei unius fugacis ac lubricae possessionem natura nos misit, ex qua expellit quicumque vult. Et tanta stultitia mortalium est ut quae minima et vilissima sunt, certe reparabilia, imputari sibi cum impetravere patiantur, nemo se iudicet quicquam debere qui tempus accepit, cum interim hoc unum est quod ne gratus quidem potest reddere.
[4] Interrogabis fortasse quid ego faciam qui tibi ista praecipio. Fatebor ingenue: quod apud luxuriosum sed diligentem evenit, ratio mihi constat impensae. Non possum dicere nihil perdere, sed quid perdam et quare et quemadmodum dicam; causas paupertatis meae reddam. Sed evenit mihi quod plerisque non suo vitio ad inopiam redactis: omnes ignoscunt, nemo succurrit. [5] Quid ergo est? non puto pauperem cui quantulumcumque superest sat est; tu tamen malo serves tua, et bono tempore incipies. Nam ut visum est maioribus nostris, ‘sera parsimonia in fundo est’; non enim tantum minimum in imo sed pessimum remanet. Vale.
“Just as a lash or a prod that immediately follows a stumble or a misdirection straightens out a horse and compels it to the right path, but if you annoy the creature and pull on the reins or flick the whip later on and at length, such an action seems more like torture than teaching because it seems to have some other purpose than instruction, so too a cruelty that is doled out at each stumble and dip and hammered home by punishment might barely render you humble and thoughtful and mindful of god because he makes no delay in the dispensation of justice in his governing of human affairs and passions.
But justice that comes upon evil people with a gentle step, slowly, and in her own time–as Euripides explains–seems more like luck than fate because of any lack of clear correlation, of timeliness, and good order. For this reason I can’t see anything good in those repeated words about the slow grinding of divine mills: it renders punishment imposed unclear and lightens the fears of the wicked.”
“Yet when the maiden [Athena] rescued that dear man [Perseus]
From his labors, she composed a song with every note of the pipes,
So she might recall the resounding wail elicited from *Euryale’s
Gasping cheeks with musical instruments.
The goddess created this, but she made it for mortal men to possess
And she named it the tune of many heads,
The well-famed reminder of the contests that attract people,
The sound that issues through fine bronze and reeds
That grow near to the city of beautiful dancing grounds,
The city of the Graces, in the precinct of Kephisos, trusty audiences for dancers.
If humankind has any happiness at all, it never shows up
Without hard work. But what is fated cannot be escaped–
A god will make it happen, maybe today, but
There will be a time that finds someone completely surprised
And give them one thing, but not another.”
She invented an aulos melody and handed it over for humans and named it the “many headed song”. This is because there were many hissing heads of snakes around [Euryale’s] head.
Some people call this many-headed and explain that there were fifty men in the chose that performed the song as an aulete led them. Others claim that the heads are preludes. They claim that an ode is made up of many preludes and that Olympos was the first to invent them”
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.
One might be forgiven for asking what I could possibly have left to say about Iliad 12. The big topics are the future discussion of the destruction of the walls around the Achaeans’ ships, the conflict over bird omens between Polydamas and Hektor, Sarpedon’s famous speech to Glaukos in the middle of the book about fame and death, and some amazing similes at the book’s end right before Zeus allows Hektor to break through the fortifications. But, even in merely listing these topics, I can imagine commenting further on how Polydamas interprets the omen, or on Zeus’ scales and his plan at the center of the epic, the series of apostrophes in the book that have not been addressed, the importance of a larger group of leaders with authority to conduct the war on the Achaean side, the weirdness of the two Ajaxes fighting together.
Structure of Iliad 12:
1-35 The walls and their future destruction
36-87 Achaean response to Trojan attack and Hektor; Polydamas’ first speech (don’t drive the chariots and horses across the ditch
88-174Trojan leaders, Asios ignores the advice
175-265 Bird omen and debate with narrative judgment
265-414 Ajaxes rally the GReeks, Sarpedon philosophizes with Glaukos
415-471 Similes: Farmers, Weaving Woman, Zeus tips the scales; Hektor breaks through the walls
Ancient Greek Art Gallery, Museum of Cycladic Art, Athens, Greece.
There’s a lot going on in this book, but at the same time, not that much happens. The entirety of the action really amounts to the Trojans approaching the Greek fortifications and then one of them (Hektor) breaking through. But there is a lot going on. And much of it happens in the similes. It may be clear to anyone who has read a few posts here that I see similes as an important device to help us understand the structure and interpretation of Homeric poetry. If I have a Homerist-origin story, one particular moment that stands out is a conversation I had with Lenny Muellner in 2000 or so. Note, this is part of a book coming out in January (Storylife: On Epic, Narrative, and Living Things), so I will quote it as such.
When I was an undergraduate, exploring ideas for a senior thesis, I became fascinated by Homeric similes, especially those comparing heroes to people doing everyday things, as when the sides of the battle in Iliad 12 are compared to two men arguing over a boundary marker in their fields.[ Iliad 12.421–426.] I remember pouring out theories about how these comparisons were more sophisticated than animal comparisons only to be stopped by my advisor, Lenny, when I claimed it was obvious that complex similes arose out of simple ones. Lenny asked gently why it could not be the other way around, that simple similes—e.g. “Hektor was like a lion”—did not contain within them the potential of much longer ones. And, further, should not we distinguish between what an audience listening to the Homeric poems likely knew and expected from similes and how they developed over time?
This conversation remained with me for over twenty years. I take two essential lessons from it: first, not to forget the difference between the development of a thing (here a simile) and an audience’s experience of it; and, second, how the ecology of stories contains relationships and potentials far beyond what is immediately seen. To stay with the case of similes for a moment, let’s take an extended one from Iliad 12. As the battle between the Greeks and the Trojans rages around the wall protecting the Greek ships, two captains rally their troops:
So those two yelled out to encourage the Greeks to fight And just as waves of snow fall thick on a winter’s day When Zeus the master of all urges it to snow On human beings, showing them what his weapons are like— And he reins in the winds to pour it constantly So that he covers the high mountains and the jutting cliffs As well as the flowering meadows and men’s rich fields, Snowing onto the harbors and the promontories of the gray sea, Even as the wave resists it when it strikes. But everything else Is covered beneath it whenever Zeus’ storm drives it on. That’s how the stones fell thick from both sides, Some falling against the Trojans, others from the Trojans against the Greeks and a great din overwhelmed the whole wall.[Iliad 12.277–89.]
Here, the weapons falling down from the Greek wall on the Trojan attackers are compared to snow. To a modern audience, a snowfall might seem peaceful or even romantic, but in Homeric poetry snow is dangerous. The comparison in this simile conveys a blanketing and overpowering blizzard of conflict, made clearer to us from a typological study of Homeric language. But contrast this with a shorter snow simile such as “Hektor went forward like a snowy mountain.”[Iliad 13.754.] This simile creates a tension between what it says literally and the meaning it conveys based on associations unarticulated at this moment. It is not that Hektor moves like some abominable snowman or stands immobile like a wintry crag, but that the ferocity of his attacks is like the blizzards raging around a mountain. Ancient commentators add that Olympus, where the gods live, is snowy and mountains are big like Hektor, while snow is terrifying.
[…]
Lenny’s response to my assumptions about similes contains a kernel of a theory of narrative, of the importance of metonymy, and the crucial contribution audiences make to the creation of meaning.
Out in 2025 from Yale University Press
Here’s an an exam type analogy: the tenors and vehicles of Homeric similes are to each other what external audiences and epic are outside of the poem. That is, they replicate pars pro toto the blending and movement that happens when audiences hear and begin to interpret the stories. Two things I would like to emphasize in the similes I have selected are the slippage or blending of detail between the domains of tenor and vehicle and the movement within the simile from the initial comparison to include a greater part of a world than one might expect.
Here are two examples from different books that I find useful
Iliad 6.503‑514
“Paris did not then linger in his lofty halls, But, once he had put on his shining weapons, inlaid with bronze, Then he hurried through the city, fully trusting his swift feet. As when some cooped up horse, fully fed at the manger, Breaks his bond and rushes out, luxuriating in the field, Glorying in his habit of bathing in the fine-flowing river– How he holds his head up high and his hair darts Around his shoulders, and as he trusts in his glory, His light limbs carry him to the hangouts and pasture of mares– That’s how the son of Priam, Paris, went to the top of Pergamon, Shining in his armor like the shining sun Exulting, and his swift feet were carrying them….
The first example is about Paris finally dressed to go to war in Iliad. The verbal repetitions link the tenor and vehicle for us, and the effect of comparing Paris to a show-horse is comedic and pointed. But what I find interesting here is the bleedover of human-traits to the horse in the simile: the horse’s extravagant hair evokes as much a dandy princeling tossing his hair as that of a stallion. The bathing, the swift feet, the jaunting off for mares, all speaks to a horse compared to Paris as much as a prince compared to a horse. The bleedover is, I think, a species of the very kind of cognitive blending that happens when we absorb any narrative and try to process it through the language and experiences that are familiar to us.
Iliad 7.1-7
So he spoke and shining Hektor rushed out of the gates And his brother Alexandros went with him. Both of them Were truly eager in their heart to go to war and fight. As when a god grants a wind to sailors who are just Waiting for it, after they have worn themselves out By driving their smooth oars into the sea, and their limbs have been wearied, That’s how these two appeared to the Trojans awaiting [them].”
Simpler, but no less interesting is the simile from book 7: When Hektor and Paris leave the gates, we are not sure what the relationship between the tenor and the vehicle is: we start out, perhaps wrongly, thinking that they are the sailors but find out as we move through the simile that the tableau of them returning to battle is being seen by the Trojans, who are the at first unexpressed tenor to the simile’s sailors. Hektor and Paris are the favorable wind sent to relieve them.
This shifting, this re-blending of space through the unfolding of the narrative, aims our mental gaze first at the princes returning to war, then to an imagined vessel, then to the Trojans altogether, moving us through the narrative and to a new place in the tale. The details left unexplored may strike different audience members: the inversion of Trojans as sailors, the emphasis on the toil of their work, the implication of divine agency, so crucial throughout Hektor’s characterization from this moment until Achilles’ return. The simile refracts and bends, leaving listeners to recompose its meaning.
And here’s another one from book 12: (39-51):
“Because they were fearing Hektor, that powerful master of fear. But he was fighting on as he had before, like a whirlwind. As when a boar or lion turns in the midst of dogs and men, Hunters, reveling in his own strength, And they group themselves together like a fortification To stand opposite him, hurling down a rain of spears From their hands. But his proud heart never Feels fear nor thinks of turning—it is his bravery that kills him— Then he turns, testing himself against the barrage and the ranks of men. Wherever he heads, the ranks yield to him. So Hektor was rushing forward through the throng Turning back to encourage his companions to cross the ditch.”
This simile engages with the local and general contexts of the poem. It is hard to follow because it comes right on the heels of a short simile, whose comparison of Hektor to a whirlwind certainly has some resonance with Zeus as a sky god and his control over the action in this part of the poem. But in the shift to the simile, we find Hektor compared to what seems like a rather typical scene: a group of hunters (with dogs) corralling a single dangerous animal. Here the vehicle—the boar or lion amidst a group of hunters—is rather simple to unpack at first. Just as the Achaeans have built a wall around the ships, so too do the hunters form a kind of wall against the rampaging boar/lion who is attacking them. (Of course, we don’t know how the violent animal came into contact with the hunters, we only know that their natures are incompatible.)
East Greek (Ionia? / Rhodos?) – period / date: early / high archaic, ca. 600-550 BC
It is the action and language of the simile that shows both the importance of the “bleedover” from tenor to vehicle and the characterization available from such a moment. First, the dangerous beast is never disambiguated. The boar-or-lion seems equally fit for the situation’s needs. Second, the peril in the simile really seems to be for the animal—the hunters retreat, but there is a dissonance between their actions and the panicked, frantic defense mounted by the Achaeans in the book. The simile evokes the larger narrative world where everyone knows that the boar/lion/Hektor will eventually fall. The choice of language to draw the tenor-vehicle pair together (here’ “like a fortification”, purgêdon) increases these ties, while the statement that “it is his bravery that kills him” would make any reasonable audience member think of Hektor.
That reasonableness is part of what I think is fascinating about this simile. We don’t know why the boar/lion is surrounded and under attack; but we can’t be surprised that it is doing so. I read a mismatch, something of a single or double dissonant note, sounding through the composition asking the audience to think a little longer about the aptness of the scene. As a single moment in time, it strains to evoke the collective nature of a group against a single assailant. Can it be true for Hektor or the beast that his bravery kills him if he has no choice?
There are other questions here. I think a simplistic reading of this simile—and others—would be that the traditional language doesn’t fit the scene as well as it could and the dissonance is accidental. But I wonder what it does to consider this an image-schematic clash that invites the audience to re-consider Hektor’s position at during this book. The key, I suspect, may be the stacking of similes: Hektor is both the trapped beast and the divine whirlwind. The conflict of images, rather than being sloppy or ill-considered, instead produces a deeper response in the audience, potentially yielding a deeper understanding of Hektor’s plight and all the troubles Zeus has to offer.
n.b this is not an exhaustive bibliography. If you’d like anything else included, please let me know.
Bassett, Samuel E. “The Function of the Homeric Simile.” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 52 (1921): 132–47. https://doi.org/10.2307/282957.
Ben-Porat, Ziva. “Poetics of the Homeric Simile and the Theory of (Poetic) Simile.” Poetics Today 13, no. 4 (1992): 737–69. https://doi.org/10.2307/1773297.
Minchin, Elizabeth. “Similes in Homer: image, mind’s eye, and memory.” Speaking volumes: orality and literacy in the Greek and Roman world. Ed. Watson, Janet. Mnemosyne. Supplements; 218. Leiden ; Boston (Mass.): Brill, 2001. 25-52.
Muellner, Leonard. “The Simile of the Cranes and Pygmies a Study of Homeric Metaphor.” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. 93, 1990, pp. 59–101. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/311283. Accessed 6 Jan. 2024.
Naiden, Fred S.. “Homer’s leopard simile.” Nine essays on Homer. Eds. Carlisle, Miriam and Levaniouk, Olga Arkadievna. Greek Studies. Lanham (Md.): Rowman and Littlefield, 1999. 177-203.
Notopoulos, James A. “Homeric Similes in the Light of Oral Poetry.” The Classical Journal 52, no. 7 (1957): 323–28. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3294076.
Pache, Corinne. “Mourning lions and Penelope’s revenge.” Arethusa, vol. 49, no. 1, 2016, pp. 1-24.
Porter, David H. “Violent Juxtaposition in the Similes of the ‘Iliad.’” The Classical Journal 68, no. 1 (1972): 11–21. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3296022.
Ready, Jonathan. 2011. Character, Narrator and Simile in the Iliad. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Ready, Jonathan L. “The Comparative Spectrum in Homer.” The American Journal of Philology 129, no. 4 (2008): 453–96. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27566727.
Scott, William C. 2009. The Artistry of the Homeric Simile. Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College Press.
Andreas Thomas Zanker, Metaphor in Homer: time, speech, and thought. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019. x, 263 p.. ISBN 9781108491884 $99.99.
Crapulous:def. 2: Sick from excessive indulgence in liquor.
From the Suda:
“Kraipalê: The pounding that comes from drinking too much wine. We also have the participle “carousing” which is when someone acts poorly because of drinking, or just being drunk. It derives from the word “head” (kara) and “pound” (pallein). Or, it could also come from screwing up (sphallesthai) timely matters (kairiôn)
Kraipalôdês: “Prone to drunkenness”: The ancients knew well the weaknesses of the spirit, weather it was a person who was prone to excessive drinking or a love-seeker who has his brain in his genitals.”
“If only we got hangovers before we drank
Then no one would ever drink more
Than is good for them. But now, because
We do not expect to escape drinking’s penalty,
We too eagerly drink unmixed wines”
“Wine (being of a wet nature) stretches those who are slow and makes them quick, but it tends to restrain those who are quick already. On that account, some who are melancholic by nature become entirely dissipated in drunken stupors (kraipalais). Just as a bath can make those who are all bound up and stiff more readily able to move, so does it check those who are already movable and loose, so too does wine, which is like a bath for your innards, accomplish this same thing.
Why then does cabbage prevent drunkenness (kraipale)? Either because it has a sweet and purgative juice (and for this reason doctors use it to clean out the intestines), even though it is itself of a cold nature. Here is a proof: doctors use it against exceptionally bad cases of diarrhea, after preparing it by cooking it, removing the fiber, and freezing it. It happens in the case of those suffering from the effects of drunkenness (kraipalonton) that the cabbage juice draws the wet elements, which are full of wine and still undigested, down to their stomachs, while the body chills the rest which remains in the upper part of the stomach. Once it has been chilled, the rest of the moist element can be drawn into the bladder. Thus, when each of the wet elements has been separated through the body and chilled, people are likely to be relieved of their drunkenness (akraipaloi). For wine is wet and warm.”
“If someone has head pain from a hangover, have him drink a cup of unmixed wine. For different head pains, have the patient eat bread warm from unmixed wine.”
“Those who are suffering bodily from drinking and being hungover can find relief from sleeping immediately, warmed with a cover. On the next day, they can be restored with a bath, a massage, and whatever food does not cause agitation but restores the warmth dispelled and lost from the body by wine.”
“But why am I standing here, a sweating fool?
Maybe I should leave here for Venus’ temple to sleep off this hangover
I got because I drank more than I intended?
Neptune soaked us with the sea as if we were Greek wines
And he hoped to relieve us with salty-beverages.
Shit. What good are words?”
sed quid ego hic asto infelix uuidus?
quin abeo huc in Veneris fanum, ut edormiscam hanc crapulam,
quam potaui praeter animi quam lubuit sententiam?
quasi uinis Graecis Neptunus nobis suffudit mare,
itaque aluom prodi sperauit nobis salsis poculis;
quid opust uerbis?
Plautus, Stichus 226-230
“I am selling Greek moisturizers
And other ointments, hangover-cures
Little jokes, blandishments
And a sycophant’s confabulations.
I’ve got a rusting strigil, a reddish flask,
And a hollowed out follower to hide your trash in.”
uel unctiones Graecas sudatorias
uendo uel alias malacas, crapularias;
cauillationes, assentatiunculas,
ac periuratiunculas parasiticas;
robiginosam strigilim, ampullam rubidam,
parasitum inanem quo recondas reliquias.
Advice more useful the day before
John of Damascus, Sacra Parallela 96.161:
“When the membranes become full of the vapors which wine produces when it is vaporized, the head is stricken with unbearable pains. No longer can it stay upright upon the shoulders, but it constantly drops this way and that, slipping around upon its joints. But who would say such things to those stricken by wine? Their heads are heavy from drunkenness (kraipale), they nod off, they yawn, they see through a fog, and they feel nauseous. On that account, they do not listen to their teachers yelling out to them all of the time. Don’t get drunk on wine, in which there is profligacy. Therein lie trembling and weakness, the breath is beaten out by immoderate indulgence in wine, the nerves are slackened, and the entire mass of the body is put into disorder. “
A woman holding the head of a man who is vomiting. Gouache painting.
“Thus one thing never ceases to arise from another,
and life is given to no one for ownership, but to all for rent.”
sic aliud ex alio numquam desistet oriri
vitaque mancipio nulli datur, omnibus usu
Seneca, Moral Epistles 42.7-8
“Our stupidity is clear from the fact that we think we are purchasing only those things we spend money on. We consider those things free we pay for with our very selves. These are the kind of things we would refuse to buy if our home had to be given in exchange, if some profitable or pricy holding were required, yet we are super eager to acquire them through anxiety, danger, giving up all shame and freedom and our free time–so much so that there’s nothing anyone treats more cheaply than themselves.
So, let us behave this way in all our plans and actions: just as we usually act when we approach some conman for a purchase, let us see how much is asked for what we want. Often the highest price is paid for nothing. I can show you many things for which searching and acquiring takes away our very freedom. We would be our own, if we did not have these things.”
Ex eo licet stupor noster appareat, quod ea sola putamus emi, pro quibus pecuniam solvimus, ea gratuita vocamus, pro quibus nos ipsos inpendimus. Quae emere nollemus, si domus nobis nostra pro illis esset danda, si amoenum aliquod fructuosumve praedium, ad ea paratissimi sumus pervenire cum sollicitudine, cum periculo, cum iactura pudoris et libertatis et temporis; adeo nihil est cuique se vilius.
Idem itaque in omnibus consiliis rebusque faciamus, quod solemus facere, quotiens ad institorem alicuius mercis accessimus; videamus, hoc quod concupiscimus, quanti deferatur. Saepe maximum pretium est, pro quo nullum datur. Multa possum tibi ostendere, quae adquisita acceptaque libertatem nobis extorserint; nostri essemus, si ista nostra non essent.
“The human race, then, labors uselessly and in vain
as we always consume our time in empty concerns
because we don’t understand that there’s a limit to having—
and there’s an end to how far true pleasure can grow.
This has dragged life bit by bit into the deep sea
and has stirred at its bottom great blasts of war.
But the guardian of the earth turns around the great sky
and teaches men truly that the year’s seasons come full circle
and that all must be endured with a sure reason and order.”
Ergo hominum genus in cassum frustraque laborat
semper et [in] curis consumit inanibus aevom,
ni mirum quia non cognovit quae sit habendi
finis et omnino quoad crescat vera voluptas;
idque minutatim vitam provexit in altum
et belli magnos commovit funditus aestus.
at vigiles mundi magnum versatile templum
sol et luna suo lustrantes lumine circum
perdocuere homines annorum tempora verti
et certa ratione geri rem atque ordine certo.
Epicureanism doesn’t do it for you? Here’s something else;
“These statements are illogical: “I am richer than you and therefore better than you. I am more articulate than you and therefore better than you.” But these conclusions are more fitting: “I am wealthier than you, therefore my possessions are greater than yours. I am more articulate than you, therefore my speech is better than yours.” You are neither your property nor your speech.”
“Can something good be bad for anyone, or is it possible for someone not to be good in the abundance of goods? But indeed, we see that all of those things we mentioned are of such a sort that the wicked have them, but the good do not. For that reason, anyone at all may laugh at me if they wish, but true reasoning will possess more power with me than the opinion of the common mob.
Nor will I ever say that someone has lost their goods if they should lose their cattle or furniture. I will always praise the wise man Bias who, as I think, is numbered among the seven sages. When the enemy had seized his fatherland of Priene, and the other citizens were fleeing while carrying many of their possessions with them, Bias was advised by another to do them same himself. Bias responded, ‘I am doing just that – I carry everything I own with me.’”
Potestne bonum cuiquam malo esse, aut potest quisquam in abundantia bonorum ipse esse non bonus? Atqui ista omnia talia videmus, ut et inprobi habeant et absint probis. Quam ob rem licet inrideat, si qui vult, plus apud me tamen vera ratio valebit quam vulgi opinio; neque ego umquam bona perdidisse dicam, si quis pecus aut supellectilem amiserit, nec non saepe laudabo sapientem illum, Biantem, ut opinor, qui numeratur in septem; cuius quom patriam Prienam cepisset hostis ceterique ita fugerent, ut multa de suis rebus asportarent, cum esset admonitus a quodam, ut idem ipse faceret, ‘Ego vero’, inquit, ‘facio; nam omnia mecum porto mea.’
Anton Goubau (1616–1698), “Market Amidst Ancient Ruins”
The training regimen of Philoxenus of Leucus (Athenaeus, Deipnosophists 1.9.1-19)
“Certain flat-cakes were eventually named ‘Philoxenian’ from a man named Philoxenus. Chrysippus says of him: ‘I know of a certain foodie who fell so far from worrying about what people thought of his actions that he publicly tried to get used to heat in the public baths by plunging his hands in the hot water or gargling with it so that he couldn’t be moved from the hot plates! People claimed that he was pressuring the cooks to serve the food as hot as possible so that he could swallow it alone, since no one else would be able to keep up with him.’
The same accounts are given of Philoxenus the Cytherean, Archytas and many others—one of them says the following in a comedy by Crobylus (fr. 8):
A. ‘For this dish that is beyond hot
I have Idaean finger tips
And it is sweet to steam my throat with fish steaks!
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.
Book 11 of the Iliad is filled with action. But it begins with a sunrise. This particular dawn resets the action for the poem and is a good example of how much resonance with myth and other traditions the Homeric narrator can create with just a few words.
Iliad 11.1-14
Then Dawn rose from her bed alongside glorious Tithonos In order to bring light to the immortal and mortals alike. But Zeus sent Strife to the swift ships of the Achaeans, Harsh strife, clutching an omen of war in its hands. It stood on the dark sear-faring vessel of Odysseus, And then bellowed in the middle in both directions. First to the shelters of Ajax, the son of Telamon And then to those of Achilles—they had pulled their ships up At the farthest ends, because they trusted in their bravery and strength. She stood there tall and shouted terribly, loudly, And imbued the heart of each Achaean who hear her With the great strength needs to fight and battle without end. For them, war became sweeter than returning home In their hollow ships to their dear fatherland.”
When I returned to this passage, I was at first a bit perplexed by the beginning. It is not uncommon to reset the plot or mark changes in the action with daybreaks in Homer. Indeed, dawn often anticipates the beginning of an assembly (divine or mortal, cf. Iliad 8.1 “When yellow-robed Dawn stretched over the whole earth…” ᾿Ηὼς μὲν κροκόπεπλος ἐκίδνατο πᾶσαν ἐπ’ αἶαν [cf. 19.1; 24.295]). There are some variations in the expressions, and the introductory dawn is much more regular in the Odyssey (see, e.g. ἦμος δ’ ἠριγένεια φάνη ῥοδοδάκτυλος ᾿Ηώς, 4.306) But there’s really no parallel for what happens in this passage: the mention of Tithonos, followed by the immediate divine intervention described here.
There are a few ways to understand what this passage is doing, I think. First, this exceptional re-beginning marks the epic’s longest day. As I discuss in a post on book 13, books 11-18 comprise a majority of the central action of the epic, but cover a single day in the action (day 29, depending on how you count). So, an exceptional introduction would be called for here. But I don’t think that covers it.
In addition to the length of the day, Zeus sending Eris may have thematic and generic implications as well. As I discuss in an article from YAGE, eris is both a thematic marker and a titling function in Greek epic. It is the kind of story that is typical of Homeric epic while also being characteristic of the cultural force that generated epic. Here, I think we can imagine the reinvocation of eris here as emphasizing the conflict about to come, but also as refocusing the cosmic nature of this poem.
The proem to the Iliad mentions eris twice: first, it asks the Muse to start the tale from a time when “those two men first fell out in strife” (ἐξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα διαστήτην ἐρίσαντε, 1.6) and then “what god first set them to struggle in strife” (Τίς τάρ σφωε θεῶν ἔριδι ξυνέηκε μάχεσθαι; 1.8). The answer to the second question is disharmonious with what happens after book 1, when Zeus takes over the plot and causes the Greeks to lose in order to honor Achilles. This redeployment of a personified strife here, at the beginning of book 11, re-instantiates the conflict at Zeus’ behest and between the Greeks and Trojans, rather than between Agamemnon and Achilles. This reinitiates questions about the relationship between human agency and Zeus’ plan as well.
But wait, there’s more! Note as well the pains taken to describe Achilles’ and Ajax’s dwellings as on either end of the Greek fleet with Odysseus in the middle. As Jenny Strauss Clay shows in Homer’s Trojan Theater (2011), the battle books following Iliad 11 are consistent in the way they lay out the actions across the imagined geography of the poem. This opening resituates the audience in time and space before the most complex and prolonged violence of the poem.
From the Homer’s Trojan Theater Website
And the last question, the one that got be started to begin with, is why is Tithonos invoked here and not elsewhere in the poem. The scholia to the Iliad are not incredibly helpful here, but they do bring up some salient points: first, Tithonos was a Trojan, and famously so. Second, he is known from the story told in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite for being the unwitting victim of an apotheosis gone wrong. Dawn famously asked Zeus to make Tithonos immortal (that is, deathless) but not eternally young (or ageless). In the poetics of Greek myth, divine immortality is bipartite, requiring both deathlessness (a-thanatoi, immortals, literally means deathless ones) and agelessness (a-gerws). As a result, Tithonos grows older and older until he turns into (something like) a cicada and can only be heard.
Attic red-figure kylix (drinking cup) with Eos and Tithonos in the tondo. c. 550 BCE
It is hard to see at first glance how this can be appropriate for the beginning of book 11, but I suspect it works like this. Tithonos is a Trojan and he is in a place in mediasres in relationship to his overall narrative, the story most people know. He is not a cicada yet, because he is still glorious and in bed with dawn. His appearance both invokes the closeness of the Trojans to the gods but also subtly implies that their story too is in the midst of its telling and everyone knows it is going to turn out badly.
(Some may suggest that this also recalls the child of Dawn and Tithonos, Memnon, who leads the fight for the Trojans after Hektor’s death. The Iliad and the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite both seem rather uninterested in Memnon’s very existence.)
Hydria with the Fight of Achilles and Memnon, The Walters. c. 560 BCE
If my interpretation is right, there may also be a connection to Zeus here: as an agent he is uniquely responsible for Trojan prominence (lover of Ganymede, judge who caused Apollo and Poseidon to build the Trojan walls) and as the chief god he is also uniquely responsible for the mixed promises and tricky plans that yield unexpected consequences. There’s a warning here, but also a metaphysical reinforcement. Like the old man who briefly lived alongside a goddess, the Trojan successes will be brief. The cicada’s song remains alongside Troy’s tragic fame, after the worse part of the stories have ended.
One might reasonably ask whether this is simply a reflection on the mortal condition.
112 “When Antagoras was about to cast a capital vote against someone he cried. Someone asked him “Why do you vote to condemn and cry?” He responded “It is necessary by nature to give our sympathy; the law demands my vote.”
211 “Demosthenes used to say that the laws are the sinews of democracy”
῾Ο αὐτὸς ἔφησε τοὺς νόμους δημοκρατίας νεῦρα.
229 “Demosthenes used to say that the laws are the soul of the state. “just as the body dies when bereft of the soul, so too the city perishes when there are no laws”
“But when a person comes around with sufficient nature, he shakes off and shatters all these things [laws], escaping them. He tramples all over our precedents and edicts, our pronouncements and all the laws that a contrary to his nature, and our slave rises up to become our master and clearly shows the justice of nature. This is what Pindar seems to indicate in that song when he says…”
Nothing is more hostile to a city than a tyrant.
Where one exists, there’s no law for one and all:
One man captures the law and rules by himself.
And that’s the end of equal justice.
