Right before this scene, Adrastos has begged Menelaos to take him as a hostage and ransom him alive to his father
Homer, Iliad 6.52-65
“And then [Menelaos] was intending to give Adrastus
To an attendant to take back to the Achaeans’ swift ships
But Agamemnon came rushing in front of him and spoke commandingly
“Oh my fool Menelaos, why do you care so much about people?
Did your house suffer the best treatment by the Trojans?
Let none of them flee dread death at our hands,
Not even a mother who carries in her womb
a child that will be a boy, let not one flee, but instead
Let everyone at Troy perish, unwept and unseen.”
The hero spoke like this and changed his brother’s mind,
Since he advised properly. He pushed the hero
Adrastos away from him with his hand, but strong Agamemnon
Struck him in the throat. He was turned down and Atreus’ son
Stepped on his chest with his foot and retrieved his dark spear.
These words are despicable and ill-fit to a kingly character. Through them [Agamemnon] reveals his animal nature. The audience, because they are human, hate something excessively bitter and dehumanizing like this. This is why [poets] conceal people who do these kinds of things in tragedies off stage and they only signal what has happened through the voices that can be heard or through later messengers, so that they [the poets] might not be hated along with what is performed.
But note that if these words had been spoken before the oath, then there would be a reason for complaint. But since they follow the oaths and their breaking, Agamemnon is not problematic. For the audience also practically wants this: the disappearance of the race of oath breakers.”
Attic Black-figure Neck Amphora attributed to Group E – Workshop of Exekias, ca. 540 BCE, depicting Two Warriors Fighting Over a Corpse – possible the battle of Aias (Ajax) and Hektor over the body of Patroklos
“Many divergent things are said about the death of Theseus. Many say that he was bound in the underworld until Herakles restored him; but of the things I have heard, these are the most believable: Theseus attacked Thesprotia in order to kidnap the wife of the Thesprotian king and lost the majority of his army in the process.
In fact, both he and Peirithous—who went on the expedition also looking for a marriage—were captured and the Thesprotian king kept them imprisoned in Kikhuros. There are many other things in the Thesprotian land worthy of seeing—the shrine of Zeus at Dodona and an oak sacred to the god. Near Kikhuros is a lake called Akherousia and a river called Akheron. A really unpleasant river called the Kokutos flows there too. Homer must have seen these places and was emboldened to use their names for places in Hades, transferring the names for the rivers from the Thesprotian landscape.
While Theseus was imprisoned, the children of Tyndareus attached Aphidna, sacked it, and installed Menestheus as king. Menestheus had no thought for the children of Theseus who had retreated to Elephenor in Euboia; but because he knew that Theseus, if he ever were restored from the Thesprotians, would be a difficult opponent, he attempted to improve the affairs of the common people, so that when Theseus was released, he was expelled from the land. As a result, Theseus went to Deukalion in Crete—when he was carried by winds to the island of Skyros, the Skyrians treated him well because of the fame of his family and the worth of the deeds which he accomplished himself. For these reasons, Lycomedes planned his death.”
The details of Theseus’ death are reported elsewhere:
Plutarch, Life of Theseus 35.4
“When he came to [Lycomedes] he was seeking that his lands be returned to him so he might live there. Some report that Theseus was asking him for help against the Athenians. Lycomedes, either because he feared the man’s reputation or as a favor to Menestheus, led Theseus to the highest part of the land on the pretense of showing him the territory. Then he pushed him from the rocks and killed him. Others say that Theseus fell on his own, going on a walk after dinner.”
“Alas! I wish facts had a voice for people
So that clever speakers would be nothing.
Now instead men with turning tongues steal away
The truest things: and what should seem true cannot.”
Euripides’ lost Hippolytus Veiled allegedly detailed the deception of Theseus and the death of his son. His words sound idealist and almost noble, but as the story goes his wife Phaedra lies about sexual advances from her stepson Hippolytus and Theseus curses him. One of Theseus’ interlocutors replies (fr. 440):
“Theseus, I advise you that this is best, if you think through it:
Don’t ever believe that you hear the truth from a woman.”
“On the opposite wall are painted Theseus, Democracy and the People. Clearly, this painting shows Theseus as the founder of political equality for the Athenians. In other accounts the story has been popularized that Theseus handed the powers of the state over to the people and that the Athenians lived in a democracy from his time until Peisistratus rebelled and became a tyrant.
The majority of people repeat many things which are not true, since they know nothing of history and they believe whatever they have heard since childhood in choruses and tragedy. This is how it is with Theseus who actually was king himself and whose descendants continued ruling for four generations until Menestheus died.”
A few weeks ago, when I first announced the the plan for this substack, I declared I would soon start providing a post per book of the Iliad per week after first providing a series of posts about reading and teaching epic including one on the polyphonic nature of Homeric poetry, another providing tools for engaging with the Greek itself, one providing some background to the so-called “Homeric Problem[s]”, and then, finally one that provides eight concrete pieces of advice for reading the Iliad, One subject untouched–and which I may leave unaddressed–is the relationship between history and Homeric poetry. This is a personal preference for me, since I see the Homeric epics as mostly a fantasy of the past from which questions about the historicity of the Trojan War are primarily distractions. [See below for some resources on this topic].
Anyone who knows me would be unsurprised that I set out to start talking about the Iliad and took rather long to get to the point. Once, probably in 2003 or so, my wife asked me to tell her what the epic was about. After 45 minutes or so, she interrupted me and asked me what point of the poem I was talking about. She was somewhat unamused that I had not yet finished book 1.
Anyone who knows the Iliad well should not find this surprising. The epic is filled with action; but even the ‘simple’ scenes are full of associated meanings, replete with potential resonances, and deeper meanings based on what one knows (or think they know). On top of this there are thousands of years of interpretive traditions and engagements that are labyrinthine enough to make Reddit seem linear.
So, one of the things I find to be useful when teaching Homer or guiding people through the Iliad is to focus on a handful of themes. By nature of both the structure of the poem and the character of its plot, the Iliad presents a series of interwoven themes that ebb and flow as the epic progresses to its end. To return to the musical composition analogy I use in another post, I think it is helpful to imagine certain melodies or movements introduced early in the epic and reintroduced for new meaning and contrast as the plot moves us from one notional position to another. The repetition here is far from simple iteration: each return to familiar language and ideas is a repetition with difference: the audience and the characters are changed by the events that unfold, and the combination and reintroduction of themes in the changing contexts has a complicating if not generative effect.
I hope to highlight activations of these themes in posts on each book, but before I start on that project, I want to summarize them and anticipate their major movements. As a note, there are sub-themes I consider more like contributing motifs (e.g. ransom, xenia, mourning) or imagery (e.g. water, fire, laughter); and some of the themes I emphasize may be better posed as subordinate in some way. I think readers and teachers are free to identify and explore other themes as well. The five themes I like to emphasize are (1) Politics, (2) Heroism; (3) Gods and Humans); (4) Family & Friends; (5) Narrative Traditions. I will give brief introductions to each in this post and follow up with additional references when I focus on these themes in subsequent posts.
ingers at the Panathenaia: Papposilenoi holding lyres walking towards a flute-player. Side A of an Attic red-figure bell-krater. MET 25.78.66
Politics
“Really, may I be called both a coward and a nobody If I yield every fact to you, whatever thing you ask”
As everyone knows from the beginning of the Iliad, the epic is not about the Trojan War, it is a story set within it. It is, according to its own proem, a tale of how Achilles’ rage brought ruin on his own people. The Iliad is intensely political in that it asks questions about where authority should come from, who should wield it, how they should wield it, and what the consequences of dysfunctional politics may be. The primary ‘melody’ in this movement is of the conflict between Agamemnon and Achilles, but this reverberates through questions of how the war is prosecuted by the Greeks, how they maintain their coalition, and how their experimental polity compares to the governance of Olympos and and the politics of the city of Troy.
There has been a lot written about the political conflicts among the Greeks but much less on Trojan politics and even less on divine political arrangements. I have argued more than once that to really get into the political questions of the Iliad, we need to understand that the epic explores politics on three separate stages (the Greeks, Trojans, and Gods) that are both comparative and contrastive. The major political treatments of the Greeks occur in books 1, 2, 4, 9, 19, and 23. (People often miss that the Funeral Games of Patroclus are an attempt by Achilles to explore different allocations of goods and power). Trojan politics are really emphasized in books 2 (briefly in the catalogue of ships), in the contrast of assemblies in book 7, in the depiction of Hektor in books 6, 8, 12, 13, 18, 22 (especially in his engagement with Polydamas). The politics of the Gods are explored in assemblies/exchanges in books 1, 4, 8, 15, 16, and 24.
Heroism
“Homer made Achilles the best man of those who went to Troy, Nestor the wisest, and Odysseus the most shifty.”
It is really hard to talk about the Homeric epics without talking about “heroism”. I start by explaining to students that, rather than evoking notions of virtue and self-sacrifice, in epic poetry a “hero” can mean three things: (1) a person in their full bloom of strength (in accord with the etymology shared with the name Hera); (2) a member of the generation before ours, the race of Heroes as described in Hesiod’s Works and Days; or (3) a figure who follows a narrative pattern of withdrawal and return (see Oedipus, Perseus, etc. Note, I am not using the language Campbell’s Hero’s Journey.). Homeric heroes, as Erwin Cook describes them, are not savior figures, but are instead figures who suffer and cause suffering. These three ideas are oversimplifications as well: there is a religious/cult aspect to heroes outside the worlds of the poems, explored well by scholars like Greg Nagy.
I think that the Iliad emphasize that heroes are dangerous to communities and that the Iliad and Odyssey together work in concert to provide an etiology for the destruction of the race of heroes, a justification for their absence from our world, and an exploration of how we value human beings across sub-themes like words/deeds, community/individuals, destruction/construction, mortality and immortality, etc. There is almost no book of the Iliad that doesn’t address heroism in some way, but the chief ones follow Achilles and Hektor with some interludes treating characters like Aeneas (5 and 22), Sarpedon (12 and 16), or Lykaon (21). For Achilles and Hektor, see especially Books 1, 6, 9, 11, 16, 22, and 24
“Whenever the poet turns his gaze to divine nature, then he holds human affairs in contempt.”
ὅταν δὲ ἀποβλέψῃ εἰς τὴν θείαν φύσιν ὁ ποιητής, τότε τὰ ἀνθρώπινα πράγματα ἐξευτελίζει Scholion to Homer
As Barbara Graziosi and Johannes Haubold argue in their book Homer: The Resonance of Epic, the Homeric epics are part of a sequence with Hesiodic poetry that traces “cosmic history” from the foundation of the universe to the lives of archaic Greek audience. Part of this movement in Homer is to establish metaphysical ‘baselines’, the differences between gods and human beings, and what to expect from the human lives. The Iliad helps to explain why the worlds of gods and humans should be more separate, explores the relationship between divine will and human agency, and also provides a backdrop for the shared beliefs and customs of the Greeks that we might call ‘religion’ today.
The depiction of the gods can be difficult because they are at once characters in the narrative and reflections of actual Greek beliefs. Ancient and modern critics have been troubled by the less-than-positive depiction of the gods (Xenophanes and Heraclitus famously complained about it). But the general literary view is that the gods provide the framework for underscoring the importance of human behavior. Gods can misbehave, they can cheat, and lie and commit adultery because they are immortal. They don’t face the same level of consequences that human beings do because they have virtually limitless opportunities to screw up and try again. In line with the theme of heroism, the treatment of mortality and immortality in the Iliad helps audiences to understand that human lives have meaning because they are limited.
Interactions between the gods and humans happen throughout the epics, but some of the most critical moments are when the gods intervene in human actions or reflect on them in Books 1, 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 24. Of chief importance among these are the speeches of Zeus, the discussion about the death of Sarpedon, and the final divine assembly in book 24 that (re-)establishes the primacy of burial and mourning rites.
Lekythos, ca. 550–530 BCE. Attributed to the Amasis painter. Scenes of weaving, upright loom. Terracotta, H. 17.15 cm The Met
Family & Friends
Throughout the themes I have already discussed, the sub-theme or motif of violence is dominant. Indeed, one way of thinking about the Iliad is that it is a prolonged invitation to think about war and when to fight. The answer I think it gives is that we should fight to defend the people we love and for little else. Sub-themes within this are women and children in Homer and the relationship between Achilles and Patroklos. Indeed, just as violence could be its own theme, so too could the treatment and experience of women in Homeric epic. I generally discuss these topics as a group because they orbit around Homeric treatments of heroes, politics, and violence. The place of friends and enslaved women is central to the political questions of book 1, but we see them both especially in the depiction of Trojan families. Book 6 is a powerful opportunity to think about life during wartime for non-combatants, as are the laments of books 18 and 24.
One of the topics I have long been most interested in is how Homeric epic relates to other narrative traditions. (This is the motivating question at the core of the book I wrote with Elton Barker, Homer’s Thebes). I provide an overview of some of these issues in my post on Centaurs, but I think the question of how Homeric epic appropriates from and responds to other mythical narratives is key to understanding its composition, the date of its composition, and its eventual pre-eminence. A simple place to start is with the stories Homeric heroes tell (the paradeigmata), but there are moments of engagement with other traditions in nearly every line of Homeric epic. How we think about these engagements–whether they are allusions, intertexts, or something else–are important questions in current Homeric scholarship that also reflect how we think about the making of meaning and storytelling in general. One of the things I really like to emphasize is that the Iliad seems very conscious not just of other story traditions but of its own status as a story to be used as a (counter-)model for their lives.
Lekythos, ca. 550–530 B.CE. Attributed to the Amasis painter. Scenes of weaving, upright loom. Unrolled. The Met. Accession Number: 31.11.10
Some resources for thinking about Homer and History.
“Deukaliôn, in whose time the deluge happened, was the son of Prometheus and his mother—according to most authors—was Klymenê. But Hesiod says that his mother was Pronoê and Akousilaos claims that it was Hesione, the daughter of Okeanos and Prometheus. He married Pyrra who was the daughter of Epimêtheus and Pandôra the one who was given by Epimetheus in exchange for fire. Deukalion had two daughters, Prôtogeneia and Melantheia, and two sons, Ampiktuôn and Hellen, whom others say was actually an offspring of Zeus, but in truth he was Deucalion’s”.
This story is a bit strange but repeats the typical connection between man and Prometheus. Here, however, mortal man is descended from Prometheus via Deucalion. He married his cousin, which was not all that uncommon, and the rest of the story proceeds somewhat as is typical (leading to the birth of Hellen, the origin of the ethnonym Hellenes).
Dante Gabriel Rosetti, “Pandora”, 1869 Faringdon Collection Trust
The Schol. In Ap. Rhod. 3.1086 tells this part of the story, except, he gives us another mother:
“Deucalion was the son of Prometheus and Pandora, which is what Hesiod says in the Catalogue [Of Women] and that Hellen was the son of Deucalion and Pyrra, from whom the Hellenes and Hellas were named. He also said that Deukalion was king of Thessaly…”
This passage is, of course, more than a little messed up, since it makes Pandôra into Deukalion’s mother. West in the edition with Merkelbach (1967, 4) comments “locum funditus corruptum varie sanare conati sunt viri docti” (“learned men have tried to correct this deeply corrupt passage in different ways”)
The names given for Deucalion’s mothers are interesting. Hêsione is the same name as the Trojan princess rescued by Herakles but not the same figure. She appears in connection with Prometheus in Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound. Klymene—whose name may have something to do with weeping or flowing—may be associated with Deucalion because of his relationship with the flood (κατακλυσμὸς). And the other alternative, Pronoê, is merely a parallel formation for Prometheus (both mean forethought).
The problem of Deukalion’s mother goes on: Herodotus (4.45) makes her Asia. Thought the scholiast says that “most authors” make Klymenê Deukalion’s mother, this is a bit of a problem if we look to Hesiod’s Theogony (507-511):
“Iapetos took as wife the fine-ankled Okeanid
Klumenê and put her in his own bed.
She bore to him the strong-minded child Atlas.
She also bore overawing Menoitios and Prometheus
Fine and clever minded, and then messy-minded Epimetheus.”
So, it is clear that Klumenê is not likely to have been Prometheus’ mother and his wife. This also explains why Hesiod listed a different mother for Deukalion—Hesiodic poetrymade the Okeanid Prometheus’ mother. To generate a wife, it seems to have created one based on the idea of her husband’s name. It is thoroughly possible for different genealogical traditions in Greece to attribute offspring to different parents. Deukalion, as the survivor of a flood, makes sense as a son of an Okeanid.
Of course, this means we have no universal choice for his mother. Personally, I kind of like the choice of Pandôra…even if it it comes from a locum funditus corruptum. But the sensible choice, seems a compromise. If Klumene is Prometheus’ mother, then the Okeanid Hesione can be Deukalion’s mother, giving him all that association with the ocean.
Of course, this is not the end of it: in the Works and Days 159a, Epimetheus is made the father of Deucalion and Pyrra..
Works Consulted For This Mess:
R. L. Fowler. Early Greek Mythography. Volume 2: Commentary. Oxford, 2013.
R. Merkelbach and M.L. West. Fragmenta Hesiodea. Oxford, 1967.
“There is also another story about [Asclepius], that when Korônis was pregnant with him she had sex with Iskhus, Elatos’ son and that she was killed by Artemis who was defending the insult to Apollo. But when the pyre had been lit, they say that Hermes plucked the child from the flame.
The third story seems to me to be the least true—it makes Asclepius the child of Arsinoê, the daughter of Leucippus. When Apollophanes the Arcadian came to Delphi and asked the god if Asclepius was the child of Arsinoê and thus a Messenian citizen, the oracle prophesied:
Asclepius, come as a great blessing to all mortals,
Whom lovely Korônis bore after having sex with me—
The daughter of Phlegyas in rugged Epidauros.
This oracle makes it abundantly clear that Asclepius is not Arsinoê’s child but that Hesiod or one of those poets who insert lines into Hesiod’s poetry added for the favor of the Messenians.”
The standard details are reported in the Homeric Hymn to Asclepius:
“I begin to sing of the doctor of diseases, Asclepius,
The son of Apollo whom shining Korônis bore
In the Dotian plain, that daughter of king Phlegyas.
He’s a great blessing to mortal men, a bewitcher of painful troubles.
And hail to you lord. I am beseeching you with this song.”
Phlegyas is the father of Ixion and Corônis. His son Ixion was exiled as a murder and then, after Zeus cleansed him of his crime, he tried to rape Hera and was punished in Hades for eternity (spinning, crucified, on a wheel). One can easily imagine distancing Asclepius from this family…
The debate is treated by an ancient scholiast:
Schol. ad Pind. Pyth 3.14
“Some say Asklepios is the son of Arsinoê, others say he is the son of Korônis. Asclepiades claims that Arsinoê is the daughter of Leukippus the son of Periêros from whom comes Asklepios from Apollo and a daughter Eriôpis. Thus we have the line: “She bore in the halls Asklepios, marshall of men / after being subdued by Apollo, and well-tressed Eriôpis.” There is also of Arsinoê: “Arsinoê, after having sex withZeus and Leto’s son,bore Asklepios, blameless and strong.”
Socrates also claims that Asklepios is the offspring of Arsinoê and has been interpolated as the child of Korônis. The matters about Korônis have been reported in lines that were added into Hesiodic poetry….”
Later, the same scholion presents an attempt by a Greek historian to resolve the two narratives.
“Aristeidês in the text on the founding of Knidos reports this: Asclepios is the child of Apollo and Arsinoê but she was called Korônis when she was a maiden. She was the daughter of Leukippus of Amykla in Lakedaimon.”
In the tradition mentioned below, Korônis ‘cheats’ on Apollo with Ischys, the son of Elatus, a king of the Lapiths (Thessaly). Pindar’s version of the narrative (below) locates Ischys in Arcadia (in the Peloponnese) and the death of Korônis near a town called Lakeria which is in Thessaly near Dotium.
The earlier material I cited clearly seems to be negotiating between rival local claims to Asclepius—but Pindar’s account gives the story additional geographical range by making Ischys Arcadian. By the classical period, one of Asclepius’ most important cult sites was in Epidauros. So, it seems that the mythical narratives that develop strain to square its claim to be the god’s birth place with the narrative traditions that place him elsewhere.
The earliest mentions of the tale seem to have the core components:
H. Apollo, 209-211
“Shall I sing of your wooing and sex—
How you went courting Azan’s daughter
Along with godlike Iskhus, the son of well-horsed Elatus.”
Apart from the cryptic “Azan’s daughter”, this is clearly about Koronis. As Allen notes in his commentary on the hymns (1904, 93) Azanida may mean “Arcadian”). Others have suggestion that the text is corrupt and should be Abantida (from Abae, hence Phocian) or Atlantida (referring perhaps instead to the tale of Arsinoe whose father Leucippus was descended from Atlas). This may point to a different father or genealogy, however. According to a scholion to Pindar (Schol Pind O9 78d) there was a child of Lykaon named Azan who caused all the trouble with Zeus leading to the deluge (οἱ δὲ διὰ <τὸ περὶ> τὸν Λυκάονος παῖδα ῎Αζανα ἀσέβημα ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ τοῦ Λυκάονος, τοῦ Διὸς βουλομένου πάντα τῆς γῆς ἀποκαθᾶραι ἀσεβήματα). Of course, Lykaon is also from Arcadia….
In a fragment from Hesiod, we find the kernel of the popular aetiological narrative where the crow reports the deed—Korônis having sex with someone else—to Apollo:
Hes. Fr. 60
“Then a crow came as a messenger from the sacred feast
To fertile Pythia and announced the reckless deeds
To Apollo of the uncut hair that Iskhus married Korônis
The son of Eilatês, married the daughter of god-related Phlegyas”
But the most disturbing and prolonged account from early Greece is presented by Pindar who blames and shames Korônis in a fashion that is entirely disturbing. Whereas both Apollo and Iskhus are suitors of Korônis in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, in Pindar’s Pythian Ode, in Pindar, Korônis is pregnant and takes a new husband without taking her father. The result? Her and her townspeople are killed. Read this in horror:
Pindar, Pythian 3.8-44
“…Before the daughter of the well-horsed Phlegyas
Came to term with the mother-helper Eilethuia
Struck by the golden
Arrows of Artemis in her bedroom
She went down to Hades according to Apollo’s plans.
The rage of Zeus’ children is no light burden.
But she spurned him in the weaving of her thoughts
And sought a different husband without her father knowing.
Even though she had sex with Phoibos
And was bearing the god’s unsullied seed.
She did not wait for the bride’s banquet to come,
Nor the echo of the many-voiced marriage hymns
So sweet that maidens often sing them at night
To their girlfriends. But she longed for
Absent things—a suffering many have shared.
Among men we find the most foolish tribe
Who shame what is nearby in looking far afield,
Hunting empty things with hopes that go unrealized.
And willful, fine-robed Korônis certainly
Contracted that great delusion
When she stretched out in the bed
Of a man who came from Arcadia.
But she did escape her guard. Even though
Loxias was in flock-bearing Pytho as
King of his temple, he knew it—
Relying on the report from his truest companion,
His all-knowing mind.
He does not touch lies—no god or mortal
Can evade him in deeds or plans.
When he knew that of her
Shared bed and criminal deceit
With Elatos’ son Iskhus,
He sent his sister rushing with
Unquenchable force
To Lakeria, since the maiden was lived there
Near the shore of Lake Boibiades.
A changeful spirit
turned her to evil and damned her—many neighbors
shared her punishment and died with her,
Fire may leap from one flame on a mountain
And burn a great forest.
But when her relatives set the girl
In a wooden circle and the flickering flame
Of Hephaistos rushed around it, then Apollo said:
“I will not endure in my heart that my child
Should perish in this most pitiful death with his mother’s heavy suffering.”
So he said. With one stride he approached and ripped the child
From the corpse as the burning flame split for him.
From the Fragments of the Greek Historians–Mythical traditions record that Thetis hid Achilles at Skyros to prevent him from getting taken to fight at Troy where she knew he would die. Most retellings of this focus on how Odysseus tricked him into revealing himself. But it turns out Achilles also took on a girl’s name while he was there.
BNJ 57 F 1 Ptolemy Chennos, Novel History, Book 1 Photios, Bibliotheca 190, 147a18
Aristonikos the Tarentinian reports that Achilles, when he was living among the girls at Lykomedes’ place, was named Kerkusera, and Issa and Pyrrha. He was also called Aspetos and Promêtheus.
The names he takes on surely deserve a little more contemplation. Why did he also have male names while he was there?
Ken Dowden, in his commentary on this fragment, provides the following explanation of the female names:
“The name Pyrrha (red-head, like Pyrrhos the alternative name of his son Neoptolemos) is also found in Hyginus, Fabulae 96. The name Kerkysera is held to be a ‘joke’ (i.e., of Ptolemy Chennos) by A. Cameron, Greek Mythography in the Roman World (Oxford 2004), 141, presumably by association with κέρκος (a tail or penis). M. van der Valk, Researches on the Text and Scholia of the Iliad (Leiden 1963), 369 n. 228, regards the name as corrupt–it should, according to him, be Κερκουρᾶς (Kerkouras) ‘he who urinates by means of his tail’. Even if this is right, it does not, of course, show that the name was invented by Ptolemy Chennos. Cameron, Mythography, 141, views Issa as an out-of-place Latin term of endearment. But it appears in Greek as the name of a Dalmatian island and, more appropriately to Achilles, of a city on Lesbos (named after a daughter of Makar, Steph. Byz., s.v. Issa). ‘There is also a feminine form Issas on Lesbos found in Partheniosin his Herakles’ (ἔστι καὶ θηλυκὸν Ἰσσάς ἐπὶ τῆς Λέσβου παρὰ Παρθενίῳ ἐν Ἡρακλεῖ) according to Steph. Byz.ibid. A real Aristonikos, given the range of possible dates (see Biographical Essay), might well have been reading Parthenios, or even vice-versa.”
This text is from Brill’s new Jacoby, a collection of the Fragments of the Greek historians
Achilles at the court of Lycomedes; Late Roman (Byzantine), 4th–5th century AD Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas; anonymous loan; object number 4.1993.1.
here’s a song composed set in that time period
I really wish antiquity had bequeathed to us this entire poem…
Bion, The Wedding song of Achilles and Deidamia
Mursôn
Lukidas, will you sing me some sweet Sicilian song,
A love song full of sweetness and longing—the very kind
The Kyklôps Polyphemos once sang on the shore for Galatea?
Lucidas
I’d love to play too, Myrsôn, but what should I sing?
Mursôn
The love story of Skyros, which you used to be praised for singing,
Peleus’ son’s secret kisses, his secret love affair,
how the boy dressed in a robe to disguise his form
And how among those daughters of Lucomêdes who had no worries
Dêidameia knew Achilles in her bedroom.
Lucidas
When the cowboy Paris kidnapped Helen and took her to Ida
It was terrible for Oinônê. And Sparta was filled with rage,
Enough to gather the whole Achaean host—no Greek
From Mycenaea or Elis or Sparta was staying
At his own home to flee miserable Ares.
But Achilles all alone escaped notice among the daughters of Lykomêdes
Where he learned about weaving instead of weapons
And held a maiden’s tools in his white hand—he looked just like a girl.
For he acted as feminine as the daughters did—the bloom
Which reddened on his white cheeks was as great, he walked
With a maiden’s step, and he covered his hair with a veil.
But he possessed a man’s heart and he had a man’s lust too.
From dawn until dusk he used to sit next to Deidameia—
Then he used to kiss her hands and often he would
Lift the fine warp and compliment her intricate weaving,
He never ate with another friend and did everything he could
To get her to sleep with him. He actually used to say this to her,
“Other sisters sleep in bed with one another,
But I sleep alone and you, princess, you sleep alone.
We are two girls of the same age, two beautiful girls,
But we sleep along in separate beds—that wicked
Space keeps me carefully distant from you…”
“You should know that while Homer and many other authors say that the only child of Achilles and Deidameia was Neoptolemos, Demetrios of Ilion records that here were two, Oneiros [“dream”] and Neoptolemos.
They say that Orestes killed him in Phôkis accidentally and when he recognized that he did, he built him a tomb near Daulis. He dedicated the sword he killed him with there and then went to the “White Island”, which Lykophron calls the “foaming cliff”, and propitiated Achilles.”
BNJ 59 F 1b Ptolemy Chennos, Novel History, Book 3 = Photios, Bibliotheca 190, 148b21
“And [he says] that there were two children of Achilles and Deidamia, Neoptolemos and Oneiros. Oneiros was killed accidentally by Orestes in Phôkis while they fighting over erecting a tent.”
“In brief, since some other creatures also dream, things seen in sleep might not come from god . . . Dreams, to be sure, have a divine element, but that is because nature has a divine element without being divine itself.
The evidence [that prophetic dreams do not come from god]: since people of little worth foresee things [in sleep] and dream vividly, things seen in sleep cannot come from god.”
Karl Marx. Capital. I. Part I. Chapter 1. Section 3.3.
What Aristotle could not see because of his belief in inequality:
“When expressed in commodity form, all labor is equal human labor and therefore of equal quality.
Aristotle could not discern this in the value form because Greek society rested on slave labor, and therefore the inequality of persons and their labor power formed its natural foundation.
The secret of this way of expressing value–i.e., equality and the equal validity of all labor, simply because it is human labor–can only be deciphered when the concept of human equality already has the strength of a popular prejudice.”
Daß aber in der Form der Warenwerte Alle Arbeiten als gleiche menschliche Arbeit und daher als gleich ausgedrückt sind geltend konnte Aristoteles nicht aus der Wertform selbst herauslesen, weil die griechische Gesellschaft auf der Sklavenarbeit beruhte, daher die Ungleichheit der Menschen und ihrer Arbeitskräfte zur Naturbasis hatte. Das Geheimnis des Wertausdrucks, die Gleichheit und gleiche Gültigkeit aller Arbeiten, weil und insofern sie menschliche Arbeit überhaupt sind, kann nur entziffert werden, sobald der Begriff der menschlichen Gleichheit bereits die Festigkeit eines Volksvorurteils besitzt.
“Phanodikos says that Daidalos—on account of the aforementioned reasons—went on a ship as he was fleeing and when those who were pursuing him drew near, he spread wide a piece of cloth for gaining the help of the winds and escaped them in this way. When they got back, those who were following him said he had escaped them with wings.”
Phanodicos Deliacon Daedalum propter supradictas causas fugientem navem conscendisse et, cum imminerent qui eum sequebantur, intendisse pallium ad adiuvandum ventos et sic evasisse: illos vero qui insequebantur reversos nuntiasse pinnis illum evasisse.
Palaephatus, On Unbelievable Things 12
“People claim that Minos imprisoned Daidalos and Ikaros, his son, for a certain reason, but that Daidalos, after he fashioned wings as prosthetics for both of them, flew off with Ikaros. It is impossible to think that a person flies, even one who has prosthetic wings. What it really means, then, is the following kind of thing.
Daidalos, when he was in prison, escaped through a small window and hauled down his son too; once he got on a boat, he left. When Minos found out, he sent ships to pursue him. Then they understood that they were being pursued and there was a furious and driving wind, they seemed to be flying. And while they were sailing with the Kretan wind, they flipped over into the sea. While Daidalos survived onto land, Ikaros died. This is why the sea there is named Ikarion for him. His father buried him after he was tossed up by the waves.”
In one of my favorite modern pieces, the poet Jack Gilbert explores the theme of flying and falling in “Failing And Flying” (from 2005’s wonderful Refusing Heaven) where he begins and ends with a meditation on Icarus. The sentiments seem apt (the text comes from poetryfoundation.org):
Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It’s the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.
At the beginning of the Iliad, Agamemnon refusers to honor the ransom request of Chryses for his daughter Chryseis and this prompts the “rage of Apollo” and the plague that initiates the epic’s conflict. When Achilles calls an assembly after nine days of suffering, the poem introduces the seer Calchas:
Homer, Iliad 1.69-72
"Kalkhas the son of Thestor, the best of the bird-men readers
who knew what is, what will be, and what was before,
and lead the ships of the Achaeans to Troy
through the power of prophecy Phoibos Apollo granted him.
Κάλχας Θεστορίδης οἰωνοπόλων ὄχ' ἄριστος,
ὃς ᾔδη τά τ' ἐόντα τά τ' ἐσσόμενα πρό τ' ἐόντα,
καὶ νήεσσ' ἡγήσατ' ᾿Αχαιῶν ῎Ιλιον εἴσω
ἣν διὰ μαντοσύνην, τήν οἱ πόρε Φοῖβος ᾿Απόλλων·
The scholia to this passage suggest that Calchas led them to Troy and prophesied that it would take 10 years (a story told by Odysseus in Iliad 2). After Calchas speaks, however, Agamemnon’s aggressive response has prompted many questions:
Iliad 1.106-9
"Prophet of evils, you've never said anything good for me!
It's always dear to your thoughts to prophesy wicked things--
you never utter or complete any kind of noble word!"
μάντι κακῶν οὐ πώ ποτέ μοι τὸ κρήγυον εἶπας·
αἰεί τοι τὰ κάκ' ἐστὶ φίλα φρεσὶ μαντεύεσθαι,
ἐσθλὸν δ' οὔτέ τί πω εἶπας ἔπος οὔτ' ἐτέλεσσας·
Schol. T. ad Hom. Il. 1.106b
“The poet does not know the name Iphigenia. Since it is not known, then this is not an issue of a falsification, but [Agamemnon] is speaking his slander because of the delay of the victory.”
The D Scholia (to lines 108=109b) insist that the “younger poets” (neoteroi i.e., later accounts) tell the story of Calchas’ prophecy at Aulis. Whether or not ‘Homer’ ‘knew’ the tale is immaterial, I think, because later audiences certainly knew it and could have attributed the tension in book 1 to that event. The Homeric Iliad is perfectly capable of suppressing details that serve its own ends; and ancient scholars are equally capable of taking Homeric poetry at its face value. The question for me is how does it change our reading of the Iliad to imagine that we could be thinking about Iphigenia.
At one level, this might be too much: there’s already a sufficient thematic pattern in a leader (here, a king) at odds with an expert with unwanted knowledge (here, a prophet). Consider, for example, the similar beginning to Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannos. However, it seems to me highly unlikely that audiences of the fifth century did not think of Iphigenia at the beginning of the poem. Homer “not knowing” the name Iphigenia could mean simply that; or, it could be one of many examples of Homeric poetry downplaying details that are not convenient to its plot. A clear allusion to a sacrificed daughter might change the way we think of Agamemnon when he refuses to return a daughter at the beginning of the poem.
The sacrifice of Iphigenia is a pivotal moment in the tale of the House of Atreus—it motivates Agamemnon’s murder and in turn the matricide of Orestes—and the Trojan War, functioning as it does as a strange sacrifice of a virgin daughter of Klytemnestra in exchange for passage for a fleet to regain the adulteress Helen, Iphigeneia’s aunt by both her father and mother. The account is famous in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon and the plays Iphigenia at Aulis and Iphigenia among the Taurians by Euripides. Its earliest accounts, however, provide some interesting variations:
Hes. Fr. 23.13-30
“Agamemnon, lord of men, because of her beauty,
Married the dark-eyed daughter of Tyndareus, Klytemnestra. She gave birth to fair-ankled Iphimede in her home And Elektra who rivaled the goddesses in beauty. But the well-greaved Achaeans butchered Iphimede on the altar of thundering, golden-arrowed Artemis on that day when they sailed with ships to Ilium in order to exact payment for fair-ankled Argive woman— they butchered a ghost. But the deer-shooting arrow-mistress easily rescued her and anointed her head with lovely ambrosia so that her flesh would be enduring— She made her immortal and ageless for all days. Now the races of men upon the earth call her Artemis of the roads, the servant of the famous arrow-mistress. Last in her home, dark-eyed Klytemnestra gave birth after being impregnated by Agamemnon to Orestes, who, once he reached maturity, paid back the murderer of his father and killed his mother as well with pitiless bronze.”
This fragment presents what is possibly the earliest account of the tale of Iphigenia and contains the major elements: the sacrifice of Agamemnon’s daughter is tied to vengeance against Helen; the daughter is rescued by Artemis, made immortal and made her servant. [In some traditions she is either made immortal or made into a priestess of Artemis at Tauris]. Orestes kills the murderer of his father and his mother.
Note that several details are not spelled out, but assumed: namely, Agamemnon’s agency in the death of his daughter (either in angering the goddess or in arranging her sacrifice) and the murder of Agamemnon. Note as well, the name is different: here we have Iphimedê instead of Iphigeneia. Of course, the situation gets stranger: according to Pausanias (1.43.1) Artemis turned Iphigeneia into Hekate. According to Proclus (in his Chrestomathia, “useful knowledge”; 135-143), the story was told in the Kypria as follows:
“When the fleet gathered a second time at Aulis, Agamemnon struck a deer while hunting and claimed he had surpassed Artemis. The goddess, enraged, kept them from sailing by sending storms. When Kalkhas explained the origin of the goddess’s anger and called for Iphigeneia to be sacrificed to Artemis, they attempted to complete the sacrifice by sending for her with the pretext of a marriage to Achilles. But Artemis snatched her away and settled her among the Taurians and made her immortal; she put a deer in place of the girl on the altar.”
In the fifth century, the story becomes a little more consistent: Aeschylus’ account is probably the best known (Agamemnon, 229-249) but Pindar discusses it too (Pyth. 11.22-28)
“Was it the fact that Iphigeneia
was butchered far from her homeland at Euripos that incited [Klytemnestra’s] heavy-handed rage? Or did nocturnal sex, breaking her to another’s bed, lead her astray? That is most hateful and intractable in young wives—but it is impossible to hide because of other people’s tongues: Townsfolk are gossip-mongers.”
Sophokles, who also wrote an Iphigeneia (lost), has Elektra defend her father’s decision by portraying him as accidentally killing the deer and having no choice in the killing of his daughter (Elektra, 563-576).
The situation with the naming of the daughters of Agamemnon is a bit knotty. In the Iliad he declares: “I have three daughters in my well-made home / Khrysothemis, Laodikê, and Iphianassa” (τρεῖς δέ μοί εἰσι θύγατρες ἐνὶ μεγάρῳ εὐπήκτῳ / Χρυσόθεμις καὶ Λαοδίκη καὶ ᾿Ιφιάνασσα, 9.144-145) whereas the Hesiodic fragment cited above lists only two (Elektra and Iphimedê). Some scholars have assumed that Homer suppresses the sacrifice of Iphigeneia (although the events of the epic’s first book seem to rely on that tension). According to Aelian the name Elektra was a pejorative nickname for Laodikê (Varia Historia, 4.26):
“Xanthus the lyric poet—the one who was older than Stesikhoros—says that the daughter of Agamemnon Elektra did not have that name at first, but instead was Laodikê. After Agamemnon was killed and Aigisthos married Klytemnestra and was king, because she was “unbedded” (a-lektron) and was growing old as a virgin, the Argives called her Elektra because she didn’t have a husband and had no experience of a marriage bed.”
Aeschylus in his Libation-Bearers gives Agamemnon only Elektra. Sophokles and Euripides preserve Khrysothemis. Strangely, according to one scholion, the lost Kypria named both Iphigeneia and Iphianassa as Agamemnon’s daughters. West (2013, 110) concludes that in this tradition (following Homer’s Iliad, Agamemnon once had four daughters).
Fourth Style fresco depicting the Sacrifice of Iphigenia, from the House of the Tragic Poet in Pompeii, Naples National Archaeological Museum
Sources: Timothy Gantz. Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources. Baltimore, 1993. Bryan Hainsworth. The Iliad: A Commentary. III: books 9-12. Cambridge, 1993. R. Merkelbach and M. L. West. Hesiodea Fragmenta. Oxford, 1967. Glenn Most. Hesiod: The Shield, Catalogue of Women, Other Fragments. Cambridge, 2003. M. L. West. The Epic Cycle. Oxford, 2013.
CIRB 130 from the N. Black Sea ca. 50 BC-50 AD — GVI 1989
“Theophilê Hekataiou gives her greeting.
They were wooing me, Theiophilê the short-lived daughter of
Hekataios, those young men [seeking] a maiden for marriage.
But Hades seized me first, since he was longing for me
When he saw a Persephone better than Persephone.
[….]
And when the message is carved on the stone
He weeps for the girl, Theiophilê the Sinopian,
Whose father, Hekataios, gave the torch-holding bride-to-be
To Hades and not a marriage.
[…]
Maiden Theiophilê, no marriage awaits you, but a land
With no return; not as the bride of Menophilos,
But as a partner in Persephone’s bed. Your father Hekataios
Now has only the name of the pitiable lost girl.
And as he looks on your shape in stone he sees
The unfulfilled hopes Fate wrongly buried in the ground.
Theiophilê, a girl allotted beauty envied by mortals,
A tenth Muse, a Grace for marriage’s age,
A perfect example of prudence.
Hades did not throw his dark hands around you.
No, Pluto lit the flames for the wedding torches
With his lamp, welcoming a most desired mate.
Parents, stop your laments now, stop your grieving,
Theiophilê has found an immortal bed.”
Mentioning Persephone and Hades in a funerary epitaph for a young woman is a common trope:
IC II x 20 Crete, early Rom. Imp. period
“Mattia, the daughter of Loukios, says hello:
Hades stole away this pretty girl because of her beauty and form
Suddenly, this girl most desirable to all people alive.
Mattios fathered me and my mother Eutukhia
Nursed me. I have died at twelve years old, unmarried.
My name is Mattia, and now that I have left the light
I lie hidden in the dark chamber of Persephone.
I left a lifetime’s grief for my father and mother
Who will have many tears for the rest of time.”
