“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.”
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.
When I was in graduate school, the late Seth Benardete used to tell students that you had never really read the Iliad unless you read it in a week (in Greek). For the longest time, I took this as a general baseline goal. I have accomplished it a few times, at first having to put in 8-10 hour days to finish in a week, but later being able of covering the daily portion in 4-5 hours of reading.
Being able to read Homer at that pace indicates a fluency that is about as close to my native reading pace as possible. Such fluency and the greater speed helps you see connections across books and sections that you might miss at a more leisurely pace. Moving through 4-6 books a day in Greek requires a mastery of both morphology and vocabulary. Yet, speed doesn’t always mean reading well. Indeed, there’s a bit of tension between Friedrich Nietzsche’s assertion that philology is the “the art of reading well” (die Kunst gut zu lesen) and Roman Jakobson’s later suggestion that “philology is the art of reading slowly.”
My current response to Benardete’s injunction is somewhat more complicated. I think he’s probably right that the mastery of language needed to really understand the Homeric epics and the capacious understanding of the whole poem are demonstrated through such a marathon-reading. (Indeed, while I do think for most topics in the ancient world, advanced language training is no longer required, I am on the record insisting that for literary study it is. One can talk about Homer without reading the epics in Greek, but any sustained engagement with the epics as narrative literature requires a study of the language as well.)
But I also think that there is something important in changing paces. One sees differently based on speed: I often try to impart this to students by getting them to think through what they notice and experience differently if they walk, run, or drive along the same route. Cognitively, we see different shapes and notice different patterns–and there’s an embodied effect to this too. We feel the world (and texts) through our own cadences. Checking in on both when our speed changes is like looking at a piece of visual art from different angles, in different light.
I have come to be more convinced that the most important way to engage with the Homeric epics is duratively, changing paces, changing focus from time to time. In part, this comes from an awareness that the “read it in seven days” goal is as much about developing and demonstrating linguistic mastery as it is about treating Homeric epic like a modern novel. Once the former is achieved, the appropriateness of the latter should be questioned.
I am more and more convinced that ancient readers rarely ever read the whole epic and that when they did ‘read’ the way we do, they read episodes and pre-selected passages. Similarly, when the Homeric epics were primarily part of performance culture, I think most audiences heard only bits and pieces over their lives with rare opportunities to think about the whole. So, to my mind, one should always be reading Homer, finding space for the bits and pieces where we can, and carving out time for the longer engagement too.
My practice has long been to think through problems in either epic, to sample episodes and passages trying to understand my intuitive response to certain issues, and then, once I think I have an idea, to test it by reading the epic from beginning to end (again). When I re-read in this way, I tend to read more slowly, because I am looking for different things, as if tracking an animal in the wild or re-tracing steps for something I have lost.
When I set up now, I use three screens like this.
I have an older application running the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, providing the Greek text, the Erbse edition of most of the scholia, the Van Thiel pdf of the D scholia, and then, just in case, the new version of Logeion (which is stupendous). For the most part, I can read without too much trouble, relying on glosses in the D scholia. What I have lost in vocabulary retention (all those hapax legomena!), I have gained in my greater knowledge of Greek outside Homer. So, like some monk in the Byzantine Renaissance, I can mostly make my way through things using the D Scholia. But Logeion is great for non-Homeric words and the odd form that has slipped this middle-aged mind.
But, wait, there’s more! As I discuss in the early post “Free Tools for Reading Homer’s Iliad,” the next generation of Perseus SCAIFE Viewer is really useful. In fact, it has the promise of one ay replacing most of what I have in my three screens above, although it still remains a bit clunky. The advantage over time will be the building of customizable widgets in the right-hand colum.
Much of what I can do using the TLG and the scholia is also possible combining the Scaife viewer with the Homer Multitext Project (HMT), which provides manuscript variants, different scholia, and the ability to choose different views.
Together with the SCAIFE viewer, the HMT can help address the most glaring problem of digital texts of Homer in the TLG and Perseus, and that is the singular nature of the text. Both formats present the epics as if the texts are standardized and simple. Here’s a picture of M. L. West’s Teubner.
The two sets of notes below the text themselves are testimonia (references to places where these lines are mentioned) and a more traditional textual apparatus that lists manuscript variants. None of this material is available from digital texts like the Loeb or TLG. Even this material is complicated, though: as anyone who does a deep study of the texts will learn, editors can ignore readings in some manuscripts, report a multiplicity of attestations for one reading in a misleading way, or ‘downgrade’ a reading by not representing how common it is. The apparatus gives the appearance of authority and inclusion, without actually having to be so.
So, when I sit down and start working through the Iliad to explore/test an idea, I create something like a hybrid-virtual medieval book wheel. I don’t always check all the sources, but I like to have the option to do so. And, to be honest, it is also a pleasure to work like this. Too often in modern discussions of reading and scholarly practices, we focus on the mission and the outcome, losing sight of the fact that many of us were drawn to this work because there is also a kind of pleasure in the process. For me, reading Homer becomes a bit of an unexpected journey on its own. When I am not applying the forced march method, I like to wander and meander, following up the paths and clues that speed forbids.
Bookwheel, from Agostino Ramelli’s Le diverse et artificiose machine, 1588
For those who want to download tools to a computer or tablet, here are some of my favorites:
This passage from Ennius is preserved in Cicero’s De Divinatione 1.48
“They were struggling over whether the city would be called Roma or Remora.
And worry about which one of them would rule infected all men.
They were awaiting the word as when the consul wishes to give the signal
And all men eagerly look to the wall’s border to see
How soon he will send out the chariots from the painted mouths—
This is the way the people were watching and holding their mouths
For which man the victory would elevate to a great kingdom.
Meanwhile, the white sun receded into the darkness of night.
When suddenly a white light struck the sky with its rays.
At the same time there came flying straight down the most beautiful
Bird from the left and then the golden sun rose.
Three times, four sacred forms of birds descended from the sky
And settled themselves in propitious and noble positions.
In this, Romulus recognized that the first place was granted to him,
A kingdom and place made certain by the signs of birds.”
Certabant urbem Romam Remoramne vocarent.
Omnibus cura viris uter esset induperator.
Expectant vel uti, consul cum mittere signum
Volt, omnes avidi spectant ad carceris oras,
Quam mox emittat pictis e faucibus currus:
Sic expectabat populus atque ora tenebat
Rebus, utri magni victoria sit data regni.
Interea sol albus recessit in infera noctis.
Exin candida se radiis dedit icta foras lux.
Et simul ex alto longe pulcherruma praepes
Laeva volavit avis: simul aureus exoritur sol.
Cedunt de caelo ter quattor corpora sancta
Avium, praepetibus sese pulchrisque locis dant.
Conspicit inde sibi data Romulus esse priora,
Auspicio regni stabilita scamna locumque.
Festus, Sextus Pompeius, On the Meaning of Words, p. 266 M. (= p. 326, 35 L.)
“Alcimus says that Romulus was the son born to Tyrrhenia and Aeneas and that Alba was Aeneas’ granddaughter from her, whose son, named Rhodius, founded the city of Rome.”
Alcimus ait, Tyrrhenia Aeneae natum filium Romulum fuisse, atque eo ortam Albam Aeneae neptem, cuius filius nomine Rhodius condiderit urbem Romam.
Servius Danielis, Aeneid, 1, 373
“The Annals were gathered in this way: the pontifex had a whitened tablet for each year on which he kept written the names of the consul and the rest of the magistrates and below which he typically kept notes of anything worthy of remembering which happened at home or abroad and at sea or on land on a daily basis. Ancient authorities edited the annual records kept with this care and they named them after the pontifices who assembled them, the Annales Maximi.”
ita autem annales conficiebantur: tabulam dealbatam quotannis pontifex maximus habuit, in qua praescriptis consulum nominibus et aliorum magistratuum digna memoratu notare consueverat domi militiaeque terra marique gesta per singulos dies. cuius diligentiae annuos commentarios in octoginta libros veteres rettulerunt eosque a pontificibus maximis, a quibus fiebant, Annales Maximos appellarunt.
Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights 11 .14
The most noble and chaste response of King Romulus on the use of wine
Lucius Piso Frugi displays the simplest elegance of phrase and style in the first book of his Annales when he writes concerning the lifestyle and diet of King Romulus. These are the words who he has written: “They say that when Romulus was invited to dinner he didn’t drink much because he had business the next day. His fellow dinners remarked, “Romulus, if all men acted like you, wine would be cheaper.” And Romulus replied, “No, it would be more dear: if each man drank as he much as he desired: for I drank what I wanted.”
Sobria et pulcherrima Romuli regis responsio circa vini usum.
1 Simplicissima suavitate et rei et orationis L. Piso Frugi usus est in primo annali, cum de Romuli regis vita atque victu scriberet. 2 Ea verba, quae scripsit, haec sunt: “Eundem Romulum dicunt ad cenam vocatum ibi non multum bibisse, quia postridie negotium haberet. Ei dicunt: “Romule, si istuc omnes homines faciant, vinum vilius sit”. His respondit: “immo vero carum, si, quantum quisque volet, bibat; nam ego bibi quantum volui”.
Plutarch, Theseus and Romulus 2
“A ruler’s first duty is to save the state itself. This is saved no less in refraining from what is not fitting than from pursuing what is fitting. But the one who shirks or overreaches is no longer a king or a ruler, but in fact becomes a demagogue or a despot. He fills the subjects with hatred and contempt. While the first problem seems to come from being too lenient or a concern for humanity, the second comes from self-regard and harshness.”
“From there for nine days I was carried by ruinous winds
over the fish-bearing sea. On the tenth we came to the land
of the Lotus-Eaters where they eat the florid food.
There we disembarked to the shore and we drew water;
soon my companions made dinner around the swift ships.
But after we had shared the food and drink
I sent out companions to go and discover
whatever men there were who ate the fruit of the earth.
I chose two men and sent a herald as a third.
They went and met the Lotus-eating men.
The Lotus-Eaters didn’t bring any harm to my companions,
but they gave them their lotus to share.
Whoever ate the honey-sweet fruit of the lotus
no longer wished to report back or return home,
but just longed to stay there among the Lotus-eating men
to wait and pluck the lotus, forgetting his homecoming.”
The scholia present reactions to this passage that are not altogether alien from some arguments in the debate about drug enforcement and addiction.
One scholiast quotes Heraclitus the Paradoxographer with approval, noting that this scene is about how the wise man can resist pleasure.
Schol. T ad. Od. 9 89
“From Herakleitos. If someone wishes to examine Odysseus’ wanderings precisely, he will find an allegorical tale. For he has set up Odysseus as something of a vehicle of every kind of virtue through which has philosophized: and then he resists the vices that corrupt human life: the land of the Lotus-eaters represents pleasure, a land of foreign corruption which Odysseus masterfully passes by, and then he settles the wild heart of each man with either chastisement or persuasion.”
Another commentator actually speaks of the Lotus-eaters as merely men. This author implies that Odysseus’ men choose to take the drugs. Therefore, the blame is on them.
Schol. Q ad Od. 9.92
“Because they are righteous men, the [Lotus-eaters] do not restrain anyone by force, but by persuasion. For in the word “they were devising” it is clear that the ruin which attends these men does not happen without their consent. For, because the Lotus-eaters are righteous men, they were detaining no one by force but they were bewitching them with words alone.”
And another comment explains that the men who partake of the lotus don’t actually forget their homecoming, but they merely stop worrying about it. Because, you know, it is their fault!
Schol. HQ ad Od. 9.97
“They forgot their homecoming” This follows from their nature, as it happens with the irrational animals, that the Lotus brings them forgetfulness and because of pleasure they spurn their homecoming. The sentiment is similar to the Iliad’s “they forgot their rushing valor”—they did not really forget it, but they stopped fostering it.”
In these three cases, drug addiction is treated as an individual responsibility and not as either a biological challenge [e.g. addiction as a disease] or a social problem [an act of oblivion in a society with no collective meaning or sense of belonging].
I also wonder about this: Odysseus saved his men from the horrors of the lotus, only for them to die at sea anyway. They had no agency either way. Perhaps they were better off without him.
Ancient Greek may not have had a word for the concept of addiction. And there is definitely a school of thought that sees drug use as being an issue of tolerance:
50 “In his work On Plants, in the last part of the material, Theophrastos says that Eunomos, the Khian and purveyor of drugs, did not [cleanse himself/die] while drinking many doses of hellebore. Once, even, when together with his fellow craftsmen he took over 22 drinks in one day as he sat in the agora and he did not return from his implements. Then he left to wash and eat, as he was accustomed, and did not vomit. He accomplished this after being in this custom for a long time, because he started from small amounts until he got to so many large ones. The powers of all drugs are less severe for those used to them and for some they are even useless.”
“…One could imagine the poet deciding that drugs, too, are a part of experience, and maybe one could learn even from them. And, that being granted, given the poem’s frequent points of contact with a drug culture of some kind, it is not altogether implausible that in book 11 the poet conducts his hero on a hallucinogenic trip to the Underworld precisely when and where it will do him the most good. But only then, and for very special reasons, does it earn something like his grudging respect”
-Douglas J. Stewart. The Disguised Guest. 1976, 212.
“The thing you were asking me about used to be clear enough because I had learned it so well. But I haven’t checked my memory for a while and it isn’t coming back to me so easily. I seem to have turned out like those books that are stuck together from sitting in place. My mind must be unrolled and what ever has been put there should be perused on occasion so it is ready whenever it needs to be used.
So, let’s talk about something else now, since that topic requires a lot of attention and hard work. Once I can spend a longer time in the same place, I’ll take up your question. There are some topics you can write about even when you are traveling; but others require a chair, time, and quiet.
But, still, something should be done even on days like these, filled as that are from beginning to end. There’s no time when new distractions won’t appear. We plant them and many shoots spring up from one. We keep closing our own tasks, claiming “As soon as I finish this, I will turn to serious work” or “If I ever complete this annoying task, I will dedicate myself to study.”
Quod quaeris a me, liquebat mihi, sic rem edidiceram, per se. Sed diu non retemptavi memoriam meam, itaque non facile me sequitur. Quod evenit libris situ cohaerentibus, hoc evenisse mihi sentio; explicandus est animus et quaecumque apud illum deposita sunt, subinde excuti debent, ut parata sint, quotiens usus exegerit. Ergo hoc in praesentia differamus; multum enim operae, multum diligentiae poscit. Cum primum longiorem eodem loco speravero moram, tunc istud in manus sumam. Quaedam enim sunt, quae possis et in cisio scribere. Quaedam lectum et otium et secretum desiderant. Nihilominus his quoque occupatis diebus agatur aliquid et quidem totis. Numquam enim non succedent occupationes novae; serimus illas, itaque ex una exeunt plures. Deinde ipsi nobis dilationem damus: “cum hoc peregero, toto animo incumbam “et” si hanc rem molestam composuero, studio me dabo.”
An Article by J. S. Clay and Thinking about Protest and Homer
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 mention in the final post in my book-by-book reading of the Iliad project, there’s a lot of work published about Homer. In classical studies’ primary bibliographical database, when you select for ancient author “Homerus” and specify “Iliad” in the textfield, there are 1481 entries. This does not include material published within the past 18 months or so.
As I move into my project of talking more about Homeric scholarship, I am going to start from the top of the list, and choose articles as they speak to me. My goal is direct people to conversations going on in Homeric scholarship; to highlight interesting work; to contextualize it within the framework of other conversations; and to comment, in brief, about why this work matters. My ancillary goal is to stray away from the oldodium philologicum and instead emphasize the interdependence of scholarship, how conversations move together and interweave and reshape the way we see the past.
When I was working on my dissertation, I used to print out articles and write abstracts by hand. Each article would have a cover sheet with key words, cross-references, and whatever thoughts came to mind. These blog posts are going to be something like that.
I am going to start with a short one, because it is rather recent and because it speaks to recent events from my own strange perch here in academia. Jenny Strauss Clay, who has written many important books about Homer, published ‘Achilles revolutionary ?: Homer, Iliad 1.191’ at the end of 2022. In this article she explores whether or not the phrase τοὺς μὲν ἀναστήσειεν at Iliad 1.191-2 (“whether he should raise up the people” vel sim.) is an indication of “ an Achilles at least momentarily contemplating fomenting a revolt on the part of the army against Agamemnon’s authority.”
In later Greek, forms of the word histēmi can at times indicate rebellion. Our English words apostate and apostasy are connected to the idea of “standing apart” from someone. Clay argues that the compound ἀναστήσειεν here shows Achilles thinking about disrupting the assembly and scattering the host. The entire deliberative phrase here would thus be “[he was thinking whether he should….] cause the army to revolt, and then kill Agamemnon or stop his outrage and hold back his anger” (τοὺς μὲν ἀναστήσειεν, ὃ δ’ Ἀτρεΐδην ἐναρίζοι, / ἦε χόλον παύσειεν ἐρητύσειέ τε θυμόν). Clay suggests that understanding the implication correctly here, also helps us as readers to comprehend why Agamemnon must test the army in book 2 and also functions to explain the extreme responses of both hero and king in their dispute.
Agamemnon intervening between the quarreling Ajax and Odysseus. Detail from an Athenian red-figure clay vase, c.5th century BCE. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum
Clay refers to the work of David Elmer, Kurt Raaflaub, and Dean Hammer here, and I think we can add Elton Barker and one of Hammer’s articles here. As Hammer shows, Achilles repeatedly uses the language of apostasy when he first declares that he will not obey Agamemnon and later when he asks “who should readily obey?” Agamemnon when he acts so outrageously. The ‘obedience’ here is also interesting: from the perspective of plebiscitary politics, obedience is perhaps less important than consent. Jakob Stensgaard has argued that forms of peitho in the Iliad may properly mean “give consent to” in Homer rather than indicating obedience as they would in later Greek. His discussion makes it clear how confusing and dynamic the political conversation is.
As I discuss in my post on politics and Iliad 1, the epic is keenly engaged with concerns of political organization. My friend Elton Barker has described in his book Entering the Agon how the Iliad is engaged in the process of institutionalizing dissent and creating contexts for political activities. Part of what Clay’s suggestion offers is the chance to see Achilles’ language as more manipulative and destructive than we had previously. In turn, this allows us to reread the events of book 2, following Clay, as a series of political actions aimed at harming the implicit and explicit damage Achilles causes. In particular, this clarifies the treatment of Thersites as a scapegoat. He functions to articulate a dissent similar to Achilles’ in book 1 while being subjugated and violently returned to order.
I chose this article today because I have been thinking about protest and the academy. One of the most deflating things I have witnessed in my years as an academic is the way the neoliberal university expropriates the values of social justice and inclusion for very particular ends and then, in recent years, violently springs back to silence voices rising to hold leaders to account. The protests and arrests at Columbia this week are good examples of it, but they are merely the most recent incidents that expose just to what extent higher ed functions to enforce a status quo all while engaging in a kind of social window dressing. We advertise for socially engaged, activist students; we promote engaging with the world; but what happens when students do precisely that?
Following work by Peter Rose and William Thalmann, I have long seen Homer as engaged in such double ideological moves. When I saw a headline saying that “more than 108” student demonstrators had been arrested at Columbia, I thought of some of my counter-readings of the Odyssey, imagining the suitors as provocative agents against a political system that had left them on the outside. The epic gives us just enough justification for their murders–alleged transgressions of xenia, insulting Odysseus in his HOME; planning to kill Telemachus–that any reasonable reader is justified in believing that their murders are justified, even if discomfiting. Yet, there are just enough indications of unease at the murder of 108 suitors, the mutilation of enslaved people, the hanging of enslaved women, and Odysseus’ abject failure as a leader, to sow just enough doubt that some of us (me) want to see Homeric epic as critiquing Homeric monarchy.
But what if, instead of buying this reading, we see the Homeric narrator as a centrist critic wringing hands over the public disruption caused by the youth pointing out the deep hypocrisy and imminent danger of their political structures? In an op-ed for the Guardian Moira Donegan wrote, “It is worth stating plainly what happened at Columbia: the raid was nothing less than the product of collusion between a university administration and rightwing politicians to suppress politically disfavored speech.”
Successful public narratives–whether we are talking about Homeric epics or journalism–interweave dissonant voices and dominant strains to speak to wider audiences while still not completely undermining the power structures that make their genres possible. I think there’s much more to be said about the concept of protest in the Homeric poems and how its forms–verbal, non-violent, confrontational–are mediated and mitigated by epic plots and characters. And, in this, there’s more to be said about audience relationship with protest and to what extent narrative art can–or will–function to serve its audiences or the structures of power than contain them.
Short Bibliography
n.b. this is not exhaustive. please let me know if there are other articles to include.
Barker E. T. E. 2004. “Achilles’ Last Stand: Institutionalising Dissent in Homer’s Iliad.” Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society: 92–120.
———. 2009. Entering the Agon: Dissent and Authority in Homer, Historiography and Tragedy. Oxford.
Elmer, D.F., The Poetics of Consent: Collective Decision Making in the Iliad (Baltimore, 2013), 66
Raaflaub, K., ‘Politics and interstate relations in the world of ancient Greek poleis: Homer and beyond’, Antichthon 31 (1997), 1–27.
Hammer, Dean C. “‘Who Shall Readily Obey?’: Authority and Politics in the ‘Iliad.’” Phoenix 51, no. 1 (1997): 1–24. https://doi.org/10.2307/1192582.
D. Hammer, The Iliad as Politics: The Performance of Political Thought (Norman, OK, 2002), especially 82–92
Haubold, J., Homer’s People: Epic Poetry and Social Formation (Cambridge, 2000)
Minchin, Elizabeth. “Men’s talk and women’s talk in Homer: rebukes and protests.” Mediterranean Archaeology, vol. 19-20, 2006-2007, pp. 213-224.
Rose, P. W.. “Thersites and the plural voices of Homer.” Arethusa, vol. XXI, 1988, pp. 5-25.
Rose, P. W.. “Divorcing ideology from Marxism and Marxism from ideology: some problems.” Arethusa, vol. 39, no. 1, 2006, pp. 101-136.
Rose, P. W.. “Ideology in the Iliad: polis, basileus, theoi.” Arethusa, vol. 30, no. 2, 1997, pp. 151-199.
Peter W. Rose, Class in Archaic Greece. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012. xiii, 439. ISBN 9780521768764. $120.00.
Jakob Stensgaard. “Peitho in the Iliad: A Matter of Trust or Obedience?” Classicalia et Medievalia 54 (2003) 41-80.
William G. Thalmann, The swineherd and the bow : representations of class in the Odyssey. Myth and poetics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998
Thalmann, William G.. “« The most divinely approved and political discord »: thinking about conflict in the developing polis.” Classical Antiquity, vol. 23, no. 2, 2004, pp. 359-399. Doi: 10.1525/ca.2004.23.2.359
“Don’t you engage in true evil in these plans
When you even admit that I treated you well
But instead of helping me you do as much harm as possible?
You are a thankless brood, you mob of wannabe
Politicians. I wish I didn’t know you
When you don’t care about harming your friends
As long as you say something the masses will like.”
“Inhabitants of Sparta, most hateful of mortals
To all people, masters of tricks,
Lords of lies, devious plotters of evils,
You never have a healthy thought but everything
Is twisted—oh, it is wrong that you’re lucky in Greece.
What don’t you do? Don’t you have the most murders?”
“No one can restart their progress at the point where they gave it up. So, let us keep on keeping on! More of the journey remains than we have finished–but wanting to proceed is the greater part of progress.
I am conscious of this matter; I want it and I want it with my whole spirit. I can see that you are interested too and are rushing with great speed toward the most beautiful things. So let’s rush together. Then life will be a good thing. Otherwise, there is a delay and it is a disgraceful one at that if we are lingering on shameful things..
Let’s make all time ours. This will not happen unless we are our own people first. And then, when will we earn the right to look down on any kind of fortune? When will it be our right to shout “I am victorious!” once we have overcome and controlled all our passions? Do you ask whom I have overcome? Well, not the Persians, nor the distant Medes, nor the bellicose people beyond the Dahae, but greed, ambition, and the fear of death that has beat down the world’s champions. Goodbye.”
Nemo profectum ibi invenit, ubi reliquerat. Instemus itaque et perseveremus. Plus, quam profligavimus, restat, sed magna pars est profectus velle proficere.
Huius rei conscius mihi sum; volo et mente tota volo. Te quoque instinctum esse et magno ad pulcherrima properare impetu video. Properemus; ita demum vita beneficium erit. Alioqui mora est, et quidem turpis inter foeda versantibus. Id agamus, ut nostrum omne tempus sit. Non erit autem, nisi prius nos nostri esse coeperimus. Quando continget contemnere utramque fortunam, quando continget omnibus oppressis adfectibus et sub arbitrium suum adductis hanc vocem emittere “vici”? Quem vicerim quaeris? Non Persas nec extrema Medorum nec si quid ultra Dahas bellicosum iacet, sed avaritiam, sed ambitionem, sed metum mortis, qui victores gentium vicit. Vale.
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While visual arts have been synonymous with classics for centuries, substantial research has connected the field of classics to performing arts, specifically theater, dance, and music. In his paper, The Novelty of Ovid’s Heroides, author Maurice P. Cunningham asserts that the originality of the Heroides lies in how they were written as “lyric-dramatic monologues to be presented on the stage with music and dancing.” I wish to take this argument one step further, for I believe that the Heroides are intrinsically connected to music, specifically the genre of lyrical jazz, through a shared emotional power that transcends language or form.
Jazz, a uniquely American folk art form, traces its lineage to the spirituals sung by enslaved Africans in the American South. Jazz arose organically from the experience of oppressed people, who had very little formal education, let alone access to classical literature. It seems ludicrous to compare the two art forms, but lyrical jazz resonates emotionally with Roman elegy. Whether it is Sulpicia or Etta James, artists reach into the abyss of the human experience to pull out captivating tales of loss and longing, considering how love and heartbreak are fundamental parts of the human condition. Both Ovid’s Heroides and lyrical jazz represent the vulnerability and heartache of the central female characters by portraying personal truth as reality, illustrating raw emotional reactions to abandonment, and appealing to shared common tropes.
The heroines of lyrical jazz narratives and of the Heroides both accept their own biased personal realities as the objective truth. In Ovid ‘Heroides’ V: Reality and Illusion, Edward M. Bradley notes how “the only formal expression of objective reality we encounter within each poem is defined exclusively by the turbulent flow of emotions running through the mind of the heroine” (159). We see this pattern clearly in Epistula V, a letter from Oenone to Paris, in which she acknowledges how he cruelly abandoned her in favor of Helen of Sparta, yet describes a scene featuring them together. She paints a picture of Paris and herself lying under a tree:
Epistula 5.15-18
Often you might gather between [where] we lay [under] the ceiling’s tree, And having been mixed when the grass presented the swelling to the leaves; Often above straw bedding and deep hay lying down the small wicker hut was kept off the frost”
Saepe greges inter requievimus arbore tecti
mixtaque cum foliis praebuit herba torum.
Saepe super stramen fenoque iacentibus alto
defensa est humili cana pruina casa
“Greges; you might gather,” a present subjunctive of characteristic, indicates that Oenone has built a fantasy world for herself in which Paris is still hers; she ascribes idealized behaviors to Paris that do not reconcile with his current actions. She describes a world that is peaceful, removed from the turbulent realities of her circumstances amidst the Trojan War, since she cannot cope with the loss of her idyllic life with Paris.
Paris and Oenone by Pieter Lastman, oil on panel, 1610, High Museum of Art
In accordance with Bradley’s observation, Ovid chooses to focus on Oenone’s emotional narrative, forgoing the objective sequence of events that his audience would be familiar with. Jazz lyricists have this exact focus. Jazz indeed is a “turbulent flow of emotions” represented in music, whose audience solely receives a subjective portrait of a story based on a highly emotional account rather than a clear factual report. In Nina Simone’s song “If I Should Lose You,” she presents numerous hypothetical scenes, describing what would happen if she lost her beloved. She cries that “If I should lose you, the stars would fall from the skies, if I should lose you, the leaves would wither and die.”
The lyrics do not provide the listener any information about Simone’s actual circumstances, but the listener does receive a rich portrait of Simone’s emotional landscape. In fact, the audience does not know that Simone’s beloved is actually gone until the song’s penultimate couplet: “I gave you my love, but I was living a dream.” Here, through the switch from conditional subjunctives earlier in the song to this indicative past tense, Simone recognizes that she deceived herself. The lyrics are too heavily invested in describing her heartache to give any tangible narrative details to the listeners until the end. Both Epistula 5 and this lyrical jazz piece are more interested in portraying emotional scenes with florid imagery than offering a clear sequence of events.
Another common theme between lyrical jazz and the Heroides is how women process abandonment in romantic relationships. Earlier in Phyllis’s letter, she relives the day her beloved abandoned her and wishes in hindsight that the night Demophoon left was her last night living. She cries, “Heu! Patior telis vulnera facta meis; Oh! I suffer wounds having been made by my own weapons!” (Epistula 2.48). Phyllis blames herself for Demophoon’s actions, and processes her own abandonment by punishing herself and assuming all responsibility. She further laments that “speravi melius, quia me meruisse putavi; I hoped for the best, because I thought that I deserved it,” (Epistula 2.61).
The sheer emotion in her speech clearly demonstrates the strength of her heartbreak and her overwhelming shame, especially when remembering her former naivete, her previous belief that merit would bring about ideal circumstances in love. The perfect tense of “speravi; I hoped,” “putavi; I thought,” and “meruisse; I deserved” alludes to a personal growth, as she reflects on a previous childish persona. Use of the perfect tense denotes completed past action, indicating that she is no longer the naive person who would trust traditional notions of love and relationships.
This type of character growth is also represented in Etta James’s “Fool That I Am,” where she regrets her past actions, calling herself a “fool that I am for falling in love with you and a fool I am for thinking you loved me too.” James laments her former naivete and her foolhardy belief that her beloved actually loved her back. The repetition of “fool that I am” and the past tense of “you loved me” both suggest feelings of shame surrounding her past innocence. Both heroines respond to abandonment by criticizing themselves; they are both ashamed of how they naively believed that their lovers would stay.
Beyond shared content, Ovid uses several direct tropes that carry over into jazz canon. In his paper Discourse Tendency: A Study in Extended Tropes, Don L. F. Nilsen observes that “tropes function at the levels of semantics (meaning) and pragmatics (interrelationships between language and culture),” noting that “some tropes… become so developed and so extended that they actually become the discourse.”Not only do both elegy and lyrical jazz discuss the same emotions, they also portray the same reactions to those emotions and eventually become synonymous with those emotions. We see such in Dido’s letter to Aeneas, where the traditional trope of sleeplessness invokes Dido’s infatuation with the young hero: “Aeneas oculis vigilantis semper inhaeret, Aenean animo noxque quiesque refert; Aeneas clings always to my sleepless eyes, both the night and serenity bring Aeneas back to my mind,” (Epistula 7.25-26). She depicts herself as literally unable to sleep since Aeneas is constantly at the forefront of her mind.
Andrea Sacchi, “The Death of Dido”. Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen. 17th CEntury
This image of the insomniac lover was a common trope in Roman elegy and remains a common representation of lovesickness in lyrical jazz. In Rodgers and Hart’s “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered,” many vocalists, including the likes of Ella Fitzegerald and Barbra Streisand, mourned how they “couldn’t sleep and wouldn’t sleep when love came and told me I shouldn’t sleep.” Similarly, in the song “Prisoner of Love,” Etta James sings about how “I’m not free, He’s in my dreams awake or sleeping.” Both representations of sleeplessness emphasize a lack of power; they cannot sleep because they are overwhelmed by the pressure of love. The representation of the sleepless nighttime lover contributes to the emotional landscapes of these women, and merges with the underlying messaging to such a deep degree that lyrical jazz reflects representations from antiquity.
While Roman elegy and lyrical jazz belong to two separate millenia, the similarities between the two art forms are overwhelming with regard to the heroines’ alternate perceptions of reality which lead to unfiltered emotional reactions to abandonment. Each heroine’s consuming emotions of love, fear, doubt, sadness, and anxiety are expressed in similar tropes. The narrators live in an emotionally skewed reality, fueled by tropes common to love, to heartache, and to abandonment.
Maya Martinez is a high school senior at Friends Seminary studying Latin and Spanish. She is particularly interested in the connections between antiquity and the modern world and aims to make the field of classics both accessible and exciting to the general public. She is fascinated by the way in which translation impacts the overall narrative and how history alters a work’s legacy, particularly: what is remembered, what is forgotten, and what is changed. In the fall semester, she will attend Brown University where she plans to continue her engagement with Classical Literature. This is her first publication.
Works Cited
“Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered.” Performance by Ella Fitzgerald. Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Rodgers and Hart Song Book, Verve Label Group, 1956. Spotify. Accessed 14 Oct. 2023.
Bradley, Edward M. “Ovid ‘Heroides’ V: Reality and Illusion.” The Classical Journal, vol. 64, no. 4, Jan. 1969, pp. 158-62. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3295901. Accessed 14 Oct. 2023.
Cunningham, Maurice P. “The Novelty of Ovid’s Heroides.” Classical Philology, vol. 44, no. 2, Apr. 1949, pp. 100-06. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/267476. Accessed 14 Oct. 2023.
D’Angelo, Frank J. “Prolegomena to a Rhetoric of Tropes.” Rhetoric Review, vol. 6, no. 1, fall 1987, pp. 32-40. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/465948. Accessed 14 Oct. 2023.
Farrell, Joseph. “Reading and Writing the Heroides.” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. 98, 1998, pp. 307-38. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/311346. Accessed 14 Oct. 2023.
“Fool That I Am.” Performance by Etta James. The Second Time Around, Argo Records, 1961. Spotify. Accessed 13 Oct. 2023.
Fulkerson, Laurel. “Writing Yourself to Death: Strategies of (Mis)reading in Heroides 2.” Materiali e discussioni per l’analisi dei testi classici, no. 48, 2002, pp. 145-65. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40236218. Accessed 14 Oct. 2023.
“If I Should Lose You.” Performance by Nina Simone. Wild Is The Wind, UMG Recordings, 1966. Spotify. Accessed 13 Oct. 2023.
Nilsen, Don L. F. “Discourse Tendency: A Study in Extended Tropes.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly, vol. 19, no. 3, summer 1989, pp. 263-72. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3885294. Accessed 14 Oct. 2023.
“Prisoner of Love.” Performance by Etta James. The Chess Box, UMG Recordings, 2000. Spotify. Accessed 14 Oct. 2023.
