“Alcman, a Laconian from Messoa, contrary to Krates who mistakenly claims he was a Lydian from Sardos. The son of Damas or Titaros. He lived around the time of the 27th Olympaid [=672-668 BCE] when Alyattes’ father Ardys was the Lydian king. Alcman, who was especially lusty, was the inventor of love songs. He descended from enslaved peoples. He wrote six books, Lyric Poems and The Woman Who Dived. He was the first to try singing poems apart from hexameters. Like other Spartans, he used the Doric Dialect. There was also another Alcman. One of the lyric poets too, whom Messene produced. The plural of Alcman is Alcmanes.”
“So great a pile of purple
Isn’t enough to ward off danger,
Nor is that well-wrought snake
Of gold, nor the Lydian
Crown, that sweet joy of
The young women nor even
Nanno’s hair nor
Divine Areta or nor even
Sulakis and Kleêsisêra–
No! You won’t go to Ainêsimbrota to say
“If Astaphis were mine
And Philulla would look at me
Along with gorgeous Damareta and Wianthemis.
Oh, but Hagêsikhora watches me…”
I like Angela, Pamela, Sandra and Rita
And as I continue you know they getting sweeter
So what can I do? I really beg you, my Lord
To me is flirting it’s just like sport, anything fly
It’s all good, let me dump it, please set in the trumpet
A little bit of Monica in my life
A little bit of Erica by my side
A little bit of Rita is all I need
A little bit of Tina is what I see
A little bit of Sandra in the sun
A little bit of Mary all night long
A little bit of Jessica, here I am
A little bit of you makes me your man
Roman mosaic of Egypt representing the Greek poet Alkman drinking wine. Jerash, Jordan. (late 2nd-3rd century AD)
[Hektor] smiled when he looked on his child in silence,
But Andromache stood near him, shedding tears.
She took his hand in hers and spoke, naming him,
“Husband, you’re wasting your strength–and you don’t pity
Your infant child or unlucky wife who will soon become
Your widow. The Greeks are going to kill you soon,
All of them attacking one after another. It would be better
For me to have die once I lose you. There’ll be no comfort at all
Once you have met your fate, only pain.
I don’t have a father or queen mother,
Glorious Achilles killed my father on that day
When he sacked the well-populated city of the Kilikians,
High-towered Thebes. He murdered Eetion,
But he didn’t strip him of his weapons, since he felt shame in his heart.
Instead he burned him with all of his fancy arms
And heaped a burial mound up over him then the nymphs
Those mountain daughters of aegis-bearing Zeus, planted elm trees in it.
I had seven brothers in my home.
They all went down to Hades’ realm in a single day.
Over the oxen with their shambling feet and the white sheep.
My mother–who was queen under forested Plakos,
He lead away with the rest of their possessions,
But he released her, after accepting incalculable ransom,
Only for dark-arrowed Artemis to strike her down in her father’s halls.
So Hektor, you are my father and queen mother,
My brother too, as well as my strong husband.
Take pity on me now and stay here on the wall,
Don’t orphan your son and make a widow of your wife.”
“Let’s imagine that we are called to an assembly: a law is on offer concerning outlawing wealth. Would we be advocating for or against it based on our philosophical arguments? Could we use our disputations to persuade the Roman people to request and praise poverty, that fundamental cause of our own empire, and also to fear their own wealth?
Could we make them see that they have discovered it among those they have conquered, to understand that from wealth ambition, corruption, and strife have disrupted a city once the most sacred and moderate, that thanks to it we show off the spoils of other nations excessively; and that whatever one people have stolen from all others can be easily taken back from the one by everyone else?
It is enough to advocate for the law and to control our own actions rather than to write our way around them. Let us speak more bravely, if we can; if we cannot, more honestly.”
Putemus nos ad contionem vocatos; lex de abolendis divitiis fertur. His interrogationibus suasuri aut dissuasuri sumus? His effecturi, ut populus Romanus paupertatem, fundamentum et causam imperii sui, requirat ac laudet, divitias autem suas timeat, ut cogitet has se apud victos repperisse, hinc ambitum et largitiones et tumultus in urbem sanctissimam et temperantissimam inrupisse, nimis luxuriose ostentari gentium spolia, quod unus populus eripuerit omnibus, facilius ab omnibus uni eripi posse? Hanc satius est suadere et expugnare adfectus, non circumscribere. Si possumus, fortius loquamur; si minus, apertius. Vale.
This post is a continuation of my substack on the Iliad. Following the completion of book-by-book postsentries will fall into three basic categories: (1) new scholarship about the Iliad; (2) themes: (expressions/reflections/implications of trauma; agency and determinism; performance and reception; diverse audiences); and (3) other issues of texts/transmission/and commentary that occur to me. As a reminder, these posts will remain free, but there is an option to be a financial supporter. All proceeds from the substack are donated to classics adjacent non-profits on a monthly basis.
As I work my way back through the Iliad in Greek, one of the things I am interested in thinking about is how the epic encodes and expresses what we might recognize as trauma. This can shape certain expressions, the characterization of individuals, and the structure of narratives themselves. I have written in the substack about how a trauma-informed approach to reading the Iliad can help us understand Hektor better, can help us see Andromache more clearly, and may also serve to explain aspects of Achilles’ character.
Our word trauma is related to the Ancient Greek word for wound. I think there’s already a strong sense of a wound as a physical locus of pain and a sign for narrative experience and psychological states as well in the Odyssey where Odysseus’ scar functions as both a metonym for his character and also a metaphor for the the impact that experiences have in shaping our identity. There’s some of this is the physiognomic logic of the Iliad as well, but it is less clear and more derogatory (as in the case of Thersites’ body especially).
But what does it mean to talk about trauma cross-culturally and over time? As many often object, psychological ideas are often culturally constitutive and ‘maladies’ are not often translatable in an easy way (as in the case of Japanese shut-ins or penis-thieves). Jonathan Shay was one of the first people to show the value of thinking about the Iliad alongside Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in his Achilles in Vietnam (with the follow-up, Odysseus in America). While his arguments developed out of using these narratives in clinical settings with veterans, they also stand up well as interpretive interventions in ancient texts, pushing back against any insistence that applying modern psychology to ancient narratives is too anachronistic to be worth doing.
I tried to push this a little further in my work on the Odyssey (culminating in my book The Many-Minded Man). One of my chief interests there was in exploring whether Shay’s ideas about trauma and the applicability of modern clinical studies to ancient minds worked beyond the central figure. While Shay’s books are excellent investigations of how Achilles and Odysseus are like modern veterans, they do not address the issue of whether the epics convey a psychological reality for other characters as well, including women, children, and enslaved people. If the human mind has not changed significantly in terms of its basic neurobiological framework in 3000 years and cultural differences are legible as ‘software’ installed in this biological structure, then differences conditioned by gender, age, and social role should be clear in the epic as well.
While Shay’s work opened up many conversations about Achilles, fewer scholars have made the leap to talk about other characters as well. Franco Maiullari’s article on Andromache (“Andromache, A Post-Traumatic Character in Homer”) sets out to correct this (coming out a few years before Fabian Horn’s excellent piece on Hektor). This article explores Andromache’s major scenes in the Iliad and identifies features that resonate with descriptions of PTSD focusing on diagnostic criteria for psychological trauma, acute traumatic reactions, and PTSD proper. Using indicators of PTSD, Maiullari re-reads each of Andromache’s speeches and argues how the details the epic presents helps us to see Andromache’s experiences as traumatic (in a modern sense). The discussion is clear and effective. I think there is still room for more, in comparing this discussion to different definitions of PTSD and specific case studies, but my sense is that Maiullari is ultimately right.
One of the things I also enjoy about his work is in the conclusion he provides both a larger framework within which to work and understand this work as not being anachronistic at all (26):
“Interpreting ancient works with modern criteria always needs to be done with caution and following a rigorous method rooted in textual analysis; in other words, the interpretation must carefully refer back to the text in order to support the argument and to avoid overinterpretations. The model for this work is that of the principles of Historical Psychology,2 based on an interdisciplinary method: philological and psychological (medical) expertise integrating their different skills while abiding by their different methodological principles. Philology must guarantee the reliability of the sources and the compatibility of the interpretation with linguistic, historical and cultural points of view; psychology and medicine, while adhering to the text try to promote new links and interpretative cues”
In my work, I use a concept called “folk psychology” from Jerome Bruner and others to argue that ancient epics present an implicit theory of mind. This works on the level of composition and generation, but Maiullari invocation of historical psychology is useful as well because it provides guidelines for the reception and interpretation of ancient works, centering the need for the modern interpreter to carefully test readings against the dangers of anachronism. This paper thus provides a good methodological foundation and a case study for thinking about trauma in the Iliad.
Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein , Hector’s Departure from Andromache, 1812
N.B. This is an incomplete bibliography. Let me know if there is anything else I should add to it.
Bowie, Angus. “Narrative and emotion in the « Iliad »: Andromache and Helen.” Emotions and narrative in ancient literature and beyond: studies in honour of Irene de Jong. Eds. De Bakker, Mathieu, Van den Berg, Baukje and Klooster, Jacqueline. Mnemosyne. Supplements; 451. Leiden ; Boston (Mass.): Brill, 2022. 48-61. Doi: 10.1163/9789004506053_004
Cairns, Douglas. “Homero, Aristóteles y la naturaleza de la compasión.” Circe, vol. 26, no. 2, 2022, pp. 45-74. Doi: 10.19137/circe-2022-260202
Christensen, Joel P.. The many-minded man: the « Odyssey », psychology, and the therapy of epic. Myth and Poetics; 2. Ithaca (N. Y.): Cornell University Pr., 2020.
Finglass, P. J.. “Narrating pity in Greek epic, lyric, tragedy, and beyond.” Emotions and narrative in ancient literature and beyond: studies in honour of Irene de Jong. Eds. De Bakker, Mathieu, Van den Berg, Baukje and Klooster, Jacqueline. Mnemosyne. Supplements; 451. Leiden ; Boston (Mass.): Brill, 2022. 181-196. Doi: 10.1163/9789004506053_013
Maiullari, Franco. “ANDROMACHE, A POST-TRAUMATIC CHARACTER IN HOMER.” Quaderni Urbinati Di Cultura Classica 113, no. 2 (2016): 11–27. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44123006.
Horn, Fabian. “The psychology of aggression: Achilles’ wrath and Hector’s flight in Iliad 22.131-7.” Hermes, vol. 146, no. 3, 2018, pp. 277-289. Doi: 10.25162/hermes-2018-0023
Oele, Marjolein. “Priam’s despair and courage: an Aristotelian reading of fear, hope, and suffering in Homer’s « Iliad ».” Logoi and muthoi : further essays in Greek philosophy and literature. Ed. Wians, William. SUNY Series in Ancient Greek Philosophy. Albany (N. Y.): State University of New York Pr., 2019. 297-317.
Pache, Corinne. “Women after war: weaving « nostos » in Homeric epic and in the twenty-first century.” Combat trauma and the ancient Greeks. Eds. Meineck, Peter and Konstan, David. New Antiquity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 67-85.
Raaflaub, Kurt A.. “War and the city: the brutality of war and its impact on the community.” Combat trauma and the ancient Greeks. Eds. Meineck, Peter and Konstan, David. New Antiquity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 15-46.
Race, William H. (2014). Phaeacian therapy in Homer’s « Odyssey ». In Meineck, Peter & Konstan, David (Eds.), Combat trauma and the ancient Greeks (pp. 47-66). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Russo, Joseph. “Re-thinking Homeric psychology: Snell, Dodds and their critics.” Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica, N. S., no. 101, 2012, pp. 11-28.
Russo, J. A. and Simon, B.. “Homeric psychology and the oral epic tradition.” Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. XXIX, 1968, pp. 483-498.
Shay, Jonathan. Achilles in Vietnam: combat trauma and the undoing of character. New York: Maxwell Macmillan, 1994.
Shay, Jonathan. Odysseus in America: combat trauma and the trials of homecoming. New York: Scribner’s, 2002.
“You are longing to know how I feel about the liberal arts. Well, I respect nothing–I include nothing among the good disciplines–that aims at making money. These arts are for profit–they’re useful to the point that they exercise the wit but do not occupy it forever. They should be studied only when it is impossible to attend to anything more important. These studies are basic, not our true work.
You see why the liberal arts have their name: they are worthy of a free person. But there is only one true liberal discipline, the study that makes you free. This is the study of wisdom, it is sublime, bold, and filled with a greatness of spirit. The other disciplines are minor and childish. You can’t believe that there’s anything good in those disciplines whose teachers you can see are of the most reprehensible and criminal kind? We should not be learning these things, but to have finished them. Some people have decided when it comes to the liberal arts that they make someone good–yet those very people neither demonstrate nor seek real knowledge of this material.”
De liberalibus studiis quid sentiam, scire desideras: nullum suspicio, nullum in bonis numero, quod ad aes exit. Meritoria artificia sunt, hactenus utilia, si praeparant ingenium, non detinent. Tamdiu enim istis inmorandum est, quamdiu nihil animus agere maius potest; rudimenta sunt nostra, non opera. Quare liberalia studia dicta sint, vides; quia homine libero digna sunt. Ceterum unum studium vere liberale est, quod liberum facit. Hoc est sapientiae, sublime, forte, magnanimum. Cetera pusilla et puerilia sunt; an tu quicquam in istis esse credis boni, quorum professores turpissimos omnium ac flagitiosissimos cernis? Non discere debemus ista, sed didicisse. Quidam illud de liberalibus studiis quaerendum iudicaverunt, an virum bonum facerent; ne promittunt quidem nec huius rei scientiam adfectant.
“By this holy tomb of the dead we daughters of Lykambes
Who received a hateful reputation, make this oath:
We didn’t shame our virginity or our parents
Nor Paros, the highest of the sacred islands.
No: Archilochus spat hateful rumor
And frightening insult against our family.
By the gods and the spirits: we never saw Archilochus
On the streets or in Hera’s great sanctuary.
If we were truly so lustful and reckless, that guy
Never would have wanted to have children with us.”
“Lycambes offered his daughter Neobule to Archilochus and promised a dowry which he refused to give later. So Archilochus composed invective in iambic meter about him and talked so savagely about him and his wife and his daughter that he compelled them to hanging. For they preferred dying over living with such foul abuses.”
Lycambes Neobulen, filiam suam, Archilocho desponsavit et dotem promisit; quam quia postea negavit, Archilochus in iambico metro invectivam in ipsum fecit et tam turpia de eo dixit quod ipsum et uxorem et filiam ad laqueos coegit: maluerunt enim mori quam sub turpibus obprobriis vivere.
Eustathius, Commentary in Hom. Od. 11.277 (1684.45)
“You should know that many have hanged themselves over grief. This is why the ancient account has the daughters of Lykambes doing so thanks to Archilochus’ poems because they could not endure the rumors from his insults. The man was skilled at offending. For this reason we have the proverb “you’ve tread on Archilochus” which is for people who are good at insults, as if someone claims you stepped on snake or a sharp thorn.”
“Once a dog has learned to chew leather it can’t stop. Another way is easier: not buying any more books. You are sufficiently educated, you have enough wisdom. You have all of antiquity nearly at the top of your lips.
You know all of history, every art of argumentation including their strengths and weaknesses and how to use Attic words. Your abundance of books has given you a special kind of wisdom and placed you at the peak of learning. Nothing stops me from messing with you since you enjoy being thoroughly deceived.”
“You are threatening to become my enemy if I leave you ignorant of what I am doing every day. Look how straightforward I am with you when I tell you even this. I am listening to a philosopher and I am on my fifth day listening to his lectures at school, starting at two in the afternoon.
“A fine time of life for that!” you say. What’s wrong with it? What’s more foolish than not learning because you haven’t done so in a while? “What, then? Should we act like the groupies and the kids?” Well, things are pretty good for me if this alone besmirches my old age.
This school accepts people from every age. “Should we grow old just to follow the kids?” I will enter the theater as an old man or get taken to the games and refuse any bout fought to the finish without me, but I should be embarrassed at attending a philosopher’s talk? As long as you are ignorant, you have to learn. If we trust the old saying, as long as you live! And nothing fits this situation better: as long as you are alive you must keep learning how to live.”
Inimicitias mihi denuntias, si quicquam ex iis, quae cotidie facio, ignoraveris. Vide, quam simpliciter tecum vivam: hoc quoque tibi committam. Philosophum audio et quidem quintum iam diem habeo, ex quo in scholam eo et ab octava disputantem audio. “Bona,” inquis, “aetate.” Quidni bona? Quid autem stultius est quam, quia diu non didiceris, non discere? “Quid ergo? Idem faciam, quod trossuli et iuvenes?” Bene mecum agitur, si hoc unum senectutem meam dedecet. Omnis aetatis homines haec schola admittit. “In hoc senescamus, ut iuvenes sequamur?” In theatrum senex ibo et in circum deferar et nullum par sine me depugnabit ad philosophum ire erubescam?
Tamdiu discendum est, quamdiu nescias; si proverbio credimus, quamdiu vivas. Nec ulli hoc rei magis convenit quam huic: tamdiu discendum est, quemadmodum vivas, quamdiu vivas.
“Now, you think I am going to offer examples of great men? I’ll talk about a boy. There’s a tale of that Spartan youth that people still tell. When he was captured, he was shouting, “I will not serve” in his own Doric dialect. And he kept his promise. As soon as he was ordered to carry out some basic and insulting service–he was ordered to empty a chamber pot–he bashed is head against a wall.
Freedom is so close, yet some people are still slaves? Wouldn’t you prefer your own child to die this way rather than through slow old age. Why are you upset when even a child can die bravely. Imagine you don’t want to follow this example? You will be taken there. Wrest control over what belongs to another! Won’t you take up the that boy’s spirit and say, “I am not a slave!”
Sad man, you are a slave to people, to things, to life. For life is slavery if you are not brave enough to die.”
Exempla nunc magnorum virorum me tibi iudicas relaturum? Puerorum referam. Lacon ille memoriae traditur inpubis adhuc, qui captus clamabat “non serviam” sua illa Dorica lingua, et verbis fidem inposuit; ut primum iussus est servili fungi et contumelioso ministerio, adferre enim vas obscenum iubebatur, inlisum parieti caput rupit. Tam prope libertas est; et servit aliquis? Ita non sic perire filium tuum malles quam per inertiam senem fieri? Quid ergo est, cur perturberis, si mori fortiter etiam puerile est? Puta nolle te sequi; duceris. Fac tui iuris, quod alieni est. Non sumes pueri spiritum, ut dicas “non servio”? Infelix, servis hominibus, servis rebus, servis vitae. Nam vita, si moriendi virtus abest, servitus est.
“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.”
