As I write in the first post on book 15, action of the book is split into two basic movements: Zeus’ conversations with the gods to threaten or cajole them and the resulting actions taken to rally the Achaeans. The book is in part about resetting the disorder introduced in book 15 and preparing us to return to the main plot of the Iliad: Achilles’ anger and the conflict between the Achaeans and the Trojans.

The process is not as simple as I imply in that earlier post. Hera doesn’t simply accept Zeus’ return and reversal of events. After the other gods have been upbraided, she makes sure that Ares learns about the death of his own son, Askalaphos.

Iliad 15.113-122

“I expect right now that Ares, at least, is feeling some pain:
For his son, the dearest of men, died in battle—
Askalaphos, the one strong Ares claimed as his own”
So she spoke, and Ares pounded on his powerful thighs,
Working his hands into them, and he spoke a word in mourning.
“Don’t you criticize me, all of you who have Olympian homes,
Because I pay back the murder of my son who went among the ships of the Achaeans,
Even if it is my fate too to be struck by Zeus’ lightning
And to lie there in the blood and dust among the corpses.”
So he spoke, and he called for his horses Fear and Rout
To be yoked and he put on his shining armor himself
Then there would have been another harsh anger [kholos]
And rage among the immortals from Zeus and rage [mênis] too…”

ἤδη γὰρ νῦν ἔλπομ’ ῎Αρηΐ γε πῆμα τετύχθαι·
υἱὸς γάρ οἱ ὄλωλε μάχῃ ἔνι φίλτατος ἀνδρῶν
᾿Ασκάλαφος, τόν φησιν ὃν ἔμμεναι ὄβριμος ῎Αρης.
῝Ως ἔφατ’, αὐτὰρ ῎Αρης θαλερὼ πεπλήγετο μηρὼ
χερσὶ καταπρηνέσσ’, ὀλοφυρόμενος δ’ ἔπος ηὔδα·
μὴ νῦν μοι νεμεσήσετ’ ᾿Ολύμπια δώματ’ ἔχοντες
τίσασθαι φόνον υἷος ἰόντ’ ἐπὶ νῆας ᾿Αχαιῶν,
εἴ πέρ μοι καὶ μοῖρα Διὸς πληγέντι κεραυνῷ
κεῖσθαι ὁμοῦ νεκύεσσι μεθ’ αἵματι καὶ κονίῃσιν.
῝Ως φάτο, καί ῥ’ ἵππους κέλετο Δεῖμόν τε Φόβον τε
ζευγνύμεν, αὐτὸς δ’ ἔντε’ ἐδύσετο παμφανόωντα.
ἔνθά κ’ ἔτι μείζων τε καὶ ἀργαλεώτερος ἄλλος
πὰρ Διὸς ἀθανάτοισι χόλος καὶ μῆνις ἐτύχθη,

Hera really ‘tweaks’ Ares a bit here by dropping the information in this way and, perhaps, by casting some doubt on the parentage. It works because Ares gets upset and gets ready to go to war. What really stands out for me in this passage is the contrafactual that anticipates two kinds of anger

A scholion reports that these words are “parallel and possessing the same meaning” (Ariston. <χόλος καὶ μῆνις:> ὅτι ἐκ παραλλήλου ὡς ἰσοδυναμοῦντα τὸν χόλον καὶ τὴν μῆνιν.) The doublet (and the passage) reminds me of the alternate version of the proem of the Iliad

“Tell me now Muses who have Olympian homes
How in fact rage and anger overtook Peleus’ son
And the shining son of Leto…for he was angry at the king”

ἕσπετε νῦν μοι Μοῦσαι ᾿Ολύμπια δώματ’ ἔχουσαι,
ὅππως δὴ μῆνίς τε χόλος τ’ ἕλε Πηλεΐωνα
Λητοῦς τ’ ἀγλαὸν υἱόν· ὃ γὰρ βασιλῆϊ χολωθεὶς

As Lenny Muellner shows in his book, mênis is marked as divine anger over a cosmic rupture. For Achilles in the Iliad, mênis indicates that his anger is super-charged (because he is semi-divine) and also emerging from a breakdown in social/political organization equivalent to a transgression against the basic assumptions of individual rights and place in the community.

In the alternate proem we can imagine the doublet as characterizing both Achilles’ and Apollo’s responses to the events of Iliad 1: the social anger of kholos describes the onset of anger from the breakdown of expected practices, while mênis conveys Apollo’s rage over the dishonoring of his priest as well since the rights and honors given to the gods are part of the stability of the Olympian realm. Thomas Walsh has argued that kholos indicates anger that is socially motivated, generally among peers. In book 1 of the Iliad, according to Achilles, kholos overtakes Agamemnon (1.387) because Achilles took action and called for them to propitiate the god in response to the plague. In the combining of the two, I suggest we see both a complementary pair (one is universal and capacious, the other is local and capricious) but also a doublet that anticipates compounding outcomes.

Let me try to explain this through doublet in book 15 and the doublet that appears in the alternative proem: they suggest that there are different kinds of anger and that they have different consequences. The initial kholos may indicate the conflict itself, the manifestation of anger that is violence. The subsequent mênis is an anticipation based on who is part of the conflict. Were Ares to challenge Zeus, it would have cosmic implications: the death of Ares would disrupt the distribution of goods and rights among the gods and promise future conflict (especially between Zeus and Hera). I think there is some confirmation here of the difference implied by Athena’s intervention. She rushes down from Olympus and warns Ares not to engage in this destructive behavior. When she asks him directly to put his anger down, she says “I am thus asking you now to put aside the kholos over your son” (τώ σ’ αὖ νῦν κέλομαι μεθέμεν χόλον υἷος ἑῆος, 15.138). The kholos-anger here is over the loss of a mortal child, whose presence or absence from the divine perspective cannot have cosmic relevance unless Ares challenges his father (or the other gods) over it.

The Iliad presents some shared language between Ares and Achilles. When Ares challenges Zeus in book 5 and Zeus dismisses him there are echoes that could lead some audience members to imagine Ares as Achilles and Agamemnon as Zeus. The parallels are incomplete and jagged, to an extent, but the cast each conflict as one that has the potential to destroy the communities that depend upon their kings and leading warriors. But in each case, there is the chance that anger (kholos) can slide into a paradigm shifting/shattering rage (mênis) if the players do not understand the stakes of their own stories.

A (way too) Short bibliography

Christensen, Joel P. 2012. “Ares: ἀΐδηλος: On the Text of Iliad 5.757 and 5.872.” Classical Philology 107.3, 230-238.

Muellner, Leonard. 1996. The Anger of Achilles: Mênis in Greek Epic. Cornell.

Walsh, Thomas. Feuding Words, Fighting Words: Anger in the Homeric Poems. Washington, D. C.: Center for Hellenic Studies. 2005

Book 15 revisits themes of theomachy (“divine war”) without actually showing the gods at war. The two primary conflicts are between Zeus and Hera and then Zeus and Poseidon. In a way, the first pairing echoes conflicts between gendered gods in the Theogony while the latter resonates with intergenerational strife or, perhaps, different models for authority among the gods. I outline some of how this engages with the themes of politics in the Iliad in the first post on book 15, but there are more connections here with other narrative traditions as well. In this post I will focus on Zeus’ responses to Hera and Poseidon.

Zeus and Hera

Hera’s rage and behavior, as Joan O’Brien (1990) argues, anticipates the disorder and chaos of the following books of the Iliad. (And accordingly, the forced resolution of her rage in book 24 is an echo of the force ending of Achilles’ rage.) O’Brien emphasizes how Hera becomes a “tutelary god” for Achilles and notes that they both have associations in this poem with kholos, anger that is socially motivated. (See Walsh’s 2005 book for more on anger words in the Homeric poems.)

The transferal of irrational violence from an elemental male god in the Theogony to the Queen of the Olympians in the Iliad may be another reflex of the resolution of tensions in Hesiod’s poem: Zeus balances out and overrules Hera in a manner that relies on the threat of force but not its activation and it is in Zeus’ role as an arbiter that Hera’s rage against the Trojans is put to rest. (Or, at least forestalled: Any reader of the Aeneid knows that wrathful Juno will be there after the city falls.)

One of the important features of Hera’s anger and her conflicts with Zeus is that they help to bring a clarification to his ‘plan’ for the poem. The moments in books 4, 8, and 14/15 when Hera opposes Zeus result in clearer articulations of his plan. At the beginning of 15, after he awakens and threatens Hera, Zeus offers a clear foreshadowing of events to come including the deaths of Sarpedon, Patroklos, and Hektor (15.63-71). And as James Morrison shows (1997), this is also connected to the larger arc of the Trojan War. Zeus, in his response to Hera and the conflict of the war, outlines where the events of the Iliad fit in the larger picture: the death of Hektor will be followed by the Greeks surging from the Greek ships until they capture the city.

Zeus’ speech to Hera is interesting for its forcefulness and the details it claims:

Homer, Iliad 15.11-35

When he saw Hektor, the father of men and gods pitied him;
then, glaring terribly, he spoke his speech to Hera:
‘Impossible Hera, your trick really was so wily—
it kept shining Hektor from battle and routed his troops.
I truly do not know whether you will take part in
this harsh defiance again and I will flog you with blows.
Do you really not remember when I hung you from on high
and attached two anvils from your feet and bound around your hands
a golden chain, unbreakable? Then you hung in the sky and the clouds
and the gods raged over great Olympos at your side
but they could not free you—whomever I caught
afterwards I would seize and throw from the threshold so he would fall
to the earth powerless. So, then the ceaseless grief
over godlike Herakles did not leave my heart,
the one you, by persuading the breezes, sent with the wind Boreas
over the barren sea as you devised evils for him,
then you even sent him to well-inhabited Kos.
I saved him from there and led him back again
to horse-nourishing Argos even though he had suffered so many things.
I will remind you again so that you will stop your deceiving,
so you know whether sex and the bed will be of any use to you,
the sex you had when you departed from the gods and deceived me.’
So he spoke, and ox-eyed queen Hera shivered.

This is not the only time in the Iliad that Zeus claims the physical power to counter all the other gods together, but the scene he describes here is so specific that it seems bizarre. The D Scholia to the Iliad suggest that Zeus’ description of his punishment of Hera is some kind of a coded philosophical message about the relationship between the air, the aether, and the earth and that the anvils are water and land that depend on the sky and the golden bonds are the ethereal fire that sky (here, really Zeus) uses to bind the elements together.

I don’t know much about that! But the specificity of the image seems conducive to some kind of an allusion to another tradition. The second important comment here is the echo of conflict over Herakles. For Zeus, who is helping Achilles, the whole dynamic is a replay of the trials of Herakles and in this instance he is intervening to keep Hera at bay. Note that Hera does not respond in any significant way. She retreats and is more or less compliant for the rest of the epic.

As part of the dynamic of their marital relationship, Zeus’ repeated threats to Hera (here, in book 1 and book 4) are somewhat unsettling. As Katerina Synidinou shows, however, these threats are not actualized in the epic and they don’t seem to move Hera completely, since she ignores him right up through the seduction in book 14 which prompts his strongest language. Some authors have seen the back-and-forth between Zeus and Hera as a representation of a conflict between diverging religious systems (a patriarchal sky father winning over an ancient earth-mother) but this simplistic model has been successfully challenged. Hera definitely appears to lose status in the Iliad, as Walter Burkert observes, but this movement may also convey echoes of sacred marriage rituals (the so-called hieros gamos), emphasizing the power of seduction and in many cases the importance of fertility.

Zeus and Poseidon

In the first post for book 15, I mentioned the divine theme of the division of honors and the stability of the divine universe. Divine anger over threats to such stability is an important theme of early Greek poetry–the Homeric Hymn to Demeter is in part a rumination on how to maintain cosmic balance. (For some of these echoes see Erwin Cook’s essays below). The language of division, conflict, and judgment emerge clear in Poseidon’s response to Iris.

The ancient story that Poseidon alludes to fills in some of the details from the Theogony. We know from the Homeric Hymn to Demeter that the story of Poseidon, Hades, and Zeus splitting control of the cosmos is not peculiar to the Iliad. There is of course some awkwardness in Zeus’ relationship to his brother. As G. M. Calhoun (and others) argues, Zeus is positioned as both father and king in the Iliad. The problem is that he is technically younger than Poseidon and Hades but qualifies as older on the technicality that Kronos ate Poseidon and Hades when they were born and Zeus later forced them to be vomited up in a kind of twisted second birth. The father role is complicated: Benveniste (1969, 210-1) argues that the IE term *pəter does not carry with it the notion of reproductive paternity but contains a semantic notion of rulership and cosmic order connected to the supreme IE god. It is combined with an interesting position for Zeus in the Iliad: he is never called a king, even though gets that title in Hesiod’s Theogony (886).

One of the chief features of the exchange in book 15 is that Zeus does not deign to engage with Poseidon directly. Instead he sends Iris to tell him to stop messing around.

Homer, Iliad 15.162-6

‘And if he will not obey my words, but disregards them,
let him consider, indeed, in his heart and mind
that he does not dare to face me coming on even though he is strong;
since I say well that I am far better in strength
and older by birth; and his dear heart does not shirk from saying
he is equal to me whom even the other gods fear.’

Zeus characterizes his power as residing in his superior strength and his greater age. Implicit in this combination is the ability to punish Poseidon along with the right to do so. When Poseidon responds to Iris’ message, he addresses force first:

Homer, Iliad 15.185-99

‘Alas, even though he is noble he has spoken presumptuously,
if he will restrain me, unwilling, with force, when I have equal timê.
For there are three of us, brothers, whom Rhea bore to Kronos,
Zeus and I, and the third, Hades, rules over the underworld.
But everything was divided in three parts, each was allotted his timê.
I drew my lot to inhabit the gray sea always,
when we drew lots Hades drew the misty gloom
and Zeus took the wide sky in the heaven and the clouds.
But the earth is still common to all and so is great Olympos.
So I will in no way walk in step with Zeus’ thoughts,
let him, even though he’s stronger, remain in his allotment at peace.
Let him not at all try to abuse me shamefully with his hands,
for it is better for him to chastise his daughters and sons
with terrible words, those children he fathered himself,
they will listen to him urging them on and by compulsion too.’

Poseidon’s dismissal indicates that he conceives of Zeus’ authority in two independent systems. First, as he states, Zeus drew lots in the division of the world with his brothers and maintains control over one realm of three (four if you count the “neutral” zone of earth). Second, as patêr, Zeus is the head of his family, the children he fathered (and his wife). From Poseidon’s point of view, he is subordinate to Zeus in neither system. He rejects the notion that Zeus can and should abuse him and attempts to reduce his authority to his own household.

The story of the three-fold division of the world among a group of gods may be one that is consciously (or less so) shared with Ancient Near Eastern myth, as Bruce Louden, Walter Burkert, and Andre Lardinois have argued (among others). Here, I think, Poseidon is allowed to voice this world-view even as the perspective is subordinated to a single-god in authority model.

The resolution of this conflict points to the very impossibility of anything but a patriarchal order on Olympos: Poseidon attempts to lay claim to some sort of oligarchic power structure, a claim that he bases on a denial of Zeus’ paternity. Iris seems to respond to this by emphasizing both Zeus’ imminent threat and his age. She also appeals to his sensibility, his desire to keep things from falling into a greater state of disorder.

‘Dark-haired earth-shaker, should I really report in this way

this harsh and forceful language to Zeus,

or will you change your mind a bit? The thoughts of the noble are flexible.

You know that the Furies always follow the elders.’ 

Iris, by emphasizing Zeus’ age, reasserts paternity within the frame of the threat of Poseidon’s rebellion which, in essence, pales in comparison with the threat of Zeus’ force. Like Milton’s Satan, Poseidon attempts to claim a share in the control of the universe. Unlike Lucifer, Poseidon relents because he knows he will fail. Nevertheless, his threatened future rebellion bears an intriguing resemblance to Satan’s: it is a coalition aimed at obliterating the supreme god’s powers. Poseidon’s response confirms that what is really going on here are hurt feelings:

Poseidon’s Response 15.209-17

‘Iris, goddess, you especially speak this word according to fate;
good also comes whenever a messenger knows proper things.
But this grief overcomes my heart and chest
whenever he wishes to taunt me with wrathful words,
since I am of equal lot and assigned to the same fate.
But now surely, even though I am angry, I will yield.
However, I will tell you another thing, and I threaten this in my heart:
if without me and Athena the forager,
and without Hera, and Hermes, and lord Hephaistos,
he spares lofty Troy, if he does not wish
to sack it and give great strength to the Argives,
then let him know this, that our anger will be incurable.’

Poseidon occupies a strange place in early Greek poetry: we know that he is a god of some importance, but his significance seems to be waning in comparison to gods like Zeus, Apollo, and Athena. Some of the meaning of this exchange is tied up in the earlier conversation between Zeus and Poseidon in book 7 where the latter expresses his anxiety about the destruction of the walls of Troy and the eradication of his fame. Poseidon is, at some basic level, a deity worried about his place in the pantheon. In book 7 he looks to Zeus to confirm his importance, his place of honor.  We could imagine that he turns against Zeus, even if briefly, because he has lost faith. At the same time, it is not beyond the imagination to speculate that the Iliad is also trying to figure out how a god like Poseidon fits into the world of its audience.

Poseidon speaks to confirm a certain status quo. His retreat here anticipates Achilles’ reconciliation with Agamemnon for the sake of a larger goal. His language throughout echoes the conflict between the two Greeks but models a capitulation to a shared goal, namely the destruction of Troy. The audience knows that this has always been Zeus’ plan and the impact of this should not be understated. Regardless of how overwhelming Zeus’ power is, the events of the Iliad have demonstrated that he can be overcome through certain means. But the poem has also shown that his reign does not rely only on his authority through age and his overwhelming force. Zeus’ ability to plan, to manipulate the plot, and see further than the other gods is an attribute of his intelligence and, in a way, a confirmation of the resolution of the conflict in the Theogony.

A short Bibliography on Zeus, Poseidon, and Hera

n.b this is not an exhaustive bibliography. If you’d like anything else included, please let me know.

Adkins, A. W. H. “Threatening, Abusing and Feeling Angry in the Homeric Poems.” The Journal of Hellenic Studies 89 (1969): 7–21. https://doi.org/10.2307/627461.

Burkert, W. 2004. Babylon, Memphis, Persepolis: Eastern Contexts of Greek Culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Bermejo Barrera, José Carlos. “Zeus, Hera y el matrimonio sagrado.” Quaderni di Storia, vol. XV, no. 30, 1989, pp. 133-156.

Calhoun, G. M.. “Zeus the Father in Homer.” TAPA, 1935, pp. 1-17.

Clark, Isabelle. “The « gamos » of Hera: myth and ritual.” The sacred and the feminine in ancient Greece. Eds. Blundell, Sue and Williamson, Margaret. London: Routledge, 1998. 13-26.

Cook, Erwin F.. “Structure as interpretation in the Homeric « Odyssey ».” Defining Greek narrative. Eds. Cairns, Douglas L. and Scodel, Ruth. Edinburgh Leventis Studies; 7. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Pr., 2014. 75-100.

Cook, Erwin F.. “Epiphany in the « Homeric Hymn to Demeter » and the « Odyssey ».” Papers of the Langford Latin Seminar: Fifteenth volume 2012. Eds. Cairns, Francis, Cairns, Sandra and Williams, Frederick. ARCA; 51. Prenton: Cairns, 2012. 53-111.

Lardinois, André. “Eastern myths for western lies : allusions to Near Eastern mythology in Homer’s « Iliad ».” Mnemosyne, Ser. 4, vol. 71, no. 6, 2018, pp. 895-919. Doi: 10.1163/1568525X-12342384

López-Ruiz, C. 2010. When the Gods Were Born: Greek Cosmogonies and the Near East. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Louden, Bruce. “Iapetus and Japheth: Hesiod’s Theogony, Iliad 15.187-93, and Genesis 9-10.” Illinois Classical Studies, no. 38 (2013): 1–22. https://doi.org/10.5406/illiclasstud.38.0001.

Maitland, Judith. “Poseidon, Walls, and Narrative Complexity in the Homeric Iliad.” The Classical Quarterly 49, no. 1 (1999): 1–13. http://www.jstor.org/stable/639485.

MORRISON, J. V. “‘KEROSTASIA’, THE DICTATES OF FATE, AND THE WILL OF ZEUS IN THE ‘ILIAD.’” Arethusa 30, no. 2 (1997): 273–96. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44578099.

O’Brien, Joan. “Homer’s Savage Hera.” The Classical Journal 86, no. 2 (1990): 105–25. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3297720.

SYNODINOU, KATERINA. “The Threats of Physical Abuse of Hera by Zeus in the Iliad.” Wiener Studien 100 (1987): 13–22. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24747703.

Walsh, Thomas. Feuding Words, Fighting Words: Anger in the Homeric Poems. Washington, D. C.: Center for Hellenic Studies. 2005

Book 14 splits almost easily into three parts. Poseidon’s actions echo the events of book 14 and Hera’s seduction of Zeus, which involves Poseidon to the extent that he will be rallying the Greeks during Zeus’ distraction, seems almost as if it could be an entirely independent episode. There are some interwoven themes, however: the foolishness of Agamemnon at the beginning of the book could be seen to anticipate Zeus’ own failures as a leader during the seduction scene, while the coalition of wounded Greek leaders joining together at the book’s beginning is balanced by the efforts of the second rank of Trojan leaders (especially Sarpedon and Polydamas) to defend Hektor and lead the Trojans after Hektor falls).

Structure of Iliad 14

1-133 Nestor and the Council of Kings

134-360 Seduction of Zeus

361-522 Rallying of Greeks, wounding of Hektor

The first portion of this book echoes two earlier scenes that help to characterize the Achaean political organization. In both books 2 and 9, Agamemnon expresses a desire to depart and this triggers a response that reaffirms a larger will to stay. In book 2, he ‘tests’ the army and they run to the ships, only to be restrained and rallied by Odysseus and Nestor. In book 9, he again suggests fleeing, only to be opposed by Diomedes and then redirected by Nestor. At the beginning of book 14, all of the best of the Achaeans are sidelined from battle. Here, Nestor is drawn into action by the sound of battle and when he asks Agamemnon for a plan, that glorious son of Atreus, proposes that the wounded leaders withdraw into a ship and row out into the bay and await nightfall.

Elton Barker and I wrote an article comparing Agamemnon’s claim that “there’s no criticism for running away, not even in the night” (οὐ γάρ τις νέμεσις φυγέειν κακόν, οὐδ’ ἀνὰ νύκτα, 14.80) with the new Archilochus fragment where the speaker runs away from Telephos along with Archilochus’ shield poem. We argue that the common strains are evidence of something of a poetic tradition of debating bravery and self-preservation, emphasizing that Homer and Archilochus are engaged with rhetorical repositioning in response to each other.

(As Melissa Mueller effectively argues in her recent book on Sappho and Homer, there’s great interpretive advantage to putting Lyric/Elegiac poets in a non-hierarchical relationship with each other. In our work, Elton and I have tried to emphasize that because of the nature of composition in performance and the many versions of any tale that were told previous to textualization, it is just as likely that our version of Homer is responding to ideas extant in Archilochus and Sappho as it would be that Sappho and Archilochus are responded to the Homeric text we have.)

Agamemnon presents an unheroic plan unbecoming to the leader of the army. He attempts to use proverbial sounding language justifying retreat in the face of considerable danger in a context in which his retreat would doom the army. Rather than presenting a Tyrtaeus/Callinus shaming speech, declaring that only cowards run and they’re likely to die anyway, Odysseus focuses on the larger picture:

Iliad 14.83-102

‘Son of Atreus, what kind of word has escaped the bulwark of your teeth?
You’re a disaster, I wish that you would order some other unfit army,
that you didn’t rule us, those for whom Zeus has assigned
work over harsh wars from youth right up
to old age, until each of us perishes.
Do you really desire to abandon in this way
the wide-wayed city of the Trojans, for which we have suffered many evils?
Be quiet! Lest any one else of the Achaeans hear this plan
which no man, at least, would ever release from his mouth,
a man who knows how to utter fit things in his thoughts,
a scepter-bearing man and one to whom the host assents,
the size of the host you rule over among the Achaeans.
Now I question your thoughts altogether, what sort of thing you have spoken,
you who call us, when the war and strife have been joined,
to drag the well-benched ships to the sea, so that more still
to boast over might occur for the Trojans who have already overpowered us,
and harsh ruin might fall over us. For the Achaeans will not
withstand the war while the ships are dragged to the sea,
but they will look back at us and forget their battle-lust.
There, then, leader of the host, your plan will destroy us.’

᾿Ατρεΐδη ποῖόν σε ἔπος φύγεν ἕρκος ὀδόντων·
οὐλόμεν’ αἴθ’ ὤφελλες ἀεικελίου στρατοῦ ἄλλου
σημαίνειν, μὴ δ’ ἄμμιν ἀνασσέμεν, οἷσιν ἄρα Ζεὺς
ἐκ νεότητος ἔδωκε καὶ ἐς γῆρας τολυπεύειν
ἀργαλέους πολέμους, ὄφρα φθιόμεσθα ἕκαστος.
οὕτω δὴ μέμονας Τρώων πόλιν εὐρυάγυιαν
καλλείψειν, ἧς εἵνεκ’ ὀϊζύομεν κακὰ πολλά;
σίγα, μή τίς τ’ ἄλλος ᾿Αχαιῶν τοῦτον ἀκούσῃ
μῦθον, ὃν οὔ κεν ἀνήρ γε διὰ στόμα πάμπαν ἄγοιτο
ὅς τις ἐπίσταιτο ᾗσι φρεσὶν ἄρτια βάζειν
σκηπτοῦχός τ’ εἴη, καί οἱ πειθοίατο λαοὶ
τοσσοῖδ’ ὅσσοισιν σὺ μετ’ ᾿Αργείοισιν ἀνάσσεις·
νῦν δέ σευ ὠνοσάμην πάγχυ φρένας, οἷον ἔειπες·
ὃς κέλεαι πολέμοιο συνεσταότος καὶ ἀϋτῆς
νῆας ἐϋσσέλμους ἅλαδ’ ἑλκέμεν, ὄφρ’ ἔτι μᾶλλον
Τρωσὶ μὲν εὐκτὰ γένηται ἐπικρατέουσί περ ἔμπης,
ἡμῖν δ’ αἰπὺς ὄλεθρος ἐπιρρέπῃ. οὐ γὰρ ᾿Αχαιοὶ
σχήσουσιν πόλεμον νηῶν ἅλα δ’ ἑλκομενάων,
ἀλλ’ ἀποπαπτανέουσιν, ἐρωήσουσι δὲ χάρμης.
ἔνθά κε σὴ βουλὴ δηλήσεται ὄρχαμε λαῶν.

Iliad 14. 103-108

“Then, Agamemnon the Lord of Men answered him.
“Odysseus, you’re laying into me with reproach so hard!
For my part I won’t order the unwilling sons of the Achaeans
To drag their well-benched ships back into the sea.
But I wish there were someone here who could lay out a plan
Better than this one. Someone young or old. This would be welcome to me.”

Τὸν δ’ ἠμείβετ’ ἔπειτα ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν ᾿Αγαμέμνων·
ὦ ᾿Οδυσεῦ μάλα πώς με καθίκεο θυμὸν ἐνιπῇ
ἀργαλέῃ· ἀτὰρ οὐ μὲν ἐγὼν ἀέκοντας ἄνωγα
νῆας ἐϋσσέλμους ἅλα δ’ ἑλκέμεν υἷας ᾿Αχαιῶν.
νῦν δ’ εἴη ὃς τῆσδέ γ’ ἀμείνονα μῆτιν ἐνίσποι
ἢ νέος ἠὲ παλαιός· ἐμοὶ δέ κεν ἀσμένῳ εἴη.

Earlier in the epic speakers have been valued for their age—as Nestor himself makes clear when he responds to Diomedes in book 9 and tells him that he “has not reached the end of speech” since he is so young. Here, in a moment of desperation, Agamemnon basically says he needs a good idea and he doesn’t care where it comes from. The hero who stands up with a better idea is none other than Diomedes. And he’s has a little bit to say first.

Iliad, 14.109-133

Then among them spoke Diomedes, good at the war-cry:
‘The man is near, let us not waste any more time; if you wish
to consent, then may none of you entertain anger
because I am indeed the youngest by birth among you.
I also claim to be the offspring of a noble father,
Tydeus, whom the heaped-up earth covers in Thebes.
For, three blameless children were born to Portheus
and in Pleurôn and steep Kalydon lived
Agrios and Melas, and the third child was the horseman Oineus
the father of my father—and he was conspicuous among them for virtue.
Although he remained there, my father lived in Argos,
driven there, for this, I guess, is how Zeus and the other gods wished it.
He married one of Adrêstos’ daughters, and inhabited a house
rich for living—he had sufficient grain-bearing ploughlands
and around these there where many orchards full of fruit,
and he possessed many flocks. He surpassed all the Achaeans
with the spear—you all must have heard these things, if they’re true.
Hence, do not, by claiming that my birth, at least, is low and cowardly,
disregard the speech that is offered, the one I will speak.
Let us go again to the war, even though we are wounded by necessity.
But, when there, let us keep ourselves out of the strife
of the missiles, lest anyone somehow receive a wound on top of a wound.
Let us rally the others and send them into battle, even those who before
gave into their impulse to hang back and not fight.’

Τοῖσι δὲ καὶ μετέειπε βοὴν ἀγαθὸς Διομήδης·
ἐγγὺς ἀνήρ· οὐ δηθὰ ματεύσομεν· αἴ κ’ ἐθέλητε
πείθεσθαι, καὶ μή τι κότῳ ἀγάσησθε ἕκαστος
οὕνεκα δὴ γενεῆφι νεώτατός εἰμι μεθ’ ὑμῖν·
πατρὸς δ’ ἐξ ἀγαθοῦ καὶ ἐγὼ γένος εὔχομαι εἶναι
Τυδέος, ὃν Θήβῃσι χυτὴ κατὰ γαῖα καλύπτει.
Πορθεῖ γὰρ τρεῖς παῖδες ἀμύμονες ἐξεγένοντο,
οἴκεον δ’ ἐν Πλευρῶνι καὶ αἰπεινῇ Καλυδῶνι
῎Αγριος ἠδὲ Μέλας, τρίτατος δ’ ἦν ἱππότα Οἰνεὺς
πατρὸς ἐμοῖο πατήρ· ἀρετῇ δ’ ἦν ἔξοχος αὐτῶν.
ἀλλ’ ὃ μὲν αὐτόθι μεῖνε, πατὴρ δ’ ἐμὸς ῎Αργεϊ νάσθη
πλαγχθείς· ὡς γάρ που Ζεὺς ἤθελε καὶ θεοὶ ἄλλοι.
᾿Αδρήστοιο δ’ ἔγημε θυγατρῶν, ναῖε δὲ δῶμα
ἀφνειὸν βιότοιο, ἅλις δέ οἱ ἦσαν ἄρουραι
πυροφόροι, πολλοὶ δὲ φυτῶν ἔσαν ὄρχατοι ἀμφίς,
πολλὰ δέ οἱ πρόβατ’ ἔσκε· κέκαστο δὲ πάντας ᾿Αχαιοὺς
ἐγχείῃ· τὰ δὲ μέλλετ’ ἀκουέμεν, εἰ ἐτεόν περ.
τὼ οὐκ ἄν με γένος γε κακὸν καὶ ἀνάλκιδα φάντες
μῦθον ἀτιμήσαιτε πεφασμένον ὅν κ’ ἐ¿ εἴπω.
δεῦτ’ ἴομεν πόλεμον δὲ καὶ οὐτάμενοί περ ἀνάγκῃ.
ἔνθα δ’ ἔπειτ’ αὐτοὶ μὲν ἐχώμεθα δηϊοτῆτος
ἐκ βελέων, μή πού τις ἐφ’ ἕλκεϊ ἕλκος ἄρηται·
ἄλλους δ’ ὀτρύνοντες ἐνήσομεν, οἳ τὸ πάρος περ
θυμῷ ἦρα φέροντες ἀφεστᾶσ’ οὐδὲ μάχονται.
῝Ως ἔφαθ’, οἳ δ’ ἄρα τοῦ μάλα μὲν κλύον ἠδὲ πίθοντο·

Where Diomedes starts his response to Agamemnon in book 9 by complaining about how the king has impugned his bravery and fighting effort before, here he also talks about his genealogy. Diomedes may be responding in part to Agamemnon’s earlier use of Tydeus as an example to shame him to fight harder. But he is also setting his story alongside the famous tales of these famous heroes’ families. Genealogical bona fides occupy the vast majority of these speech even after Agamemnon has so directly said he just needs a better plan.

I would go so far as to suggest that Diomedes is working within the confines of the previous speeches: he has been qualified as a warrior not up to his father’s measure in book 4, and yet in book 9 he was criticized for being too young. Here he seems to imply again that his father’s excellence is a necessary but insufficient quality for his own authority to speak. What he specifies about his father’s place is his acceptance into another city and people (Argos, closer to Agamemnon in the Peloponnese) and his high position in that new kingdom. For me, the key to this somewhat unclear logic is the superlative “youngest”—perhaps, Diomedes is saying that just as his father proved himself a useful stranger among the Argives, so too Diomedes’ difference in youth marks him out among the Achaean leaders.

As I write in my dissertation, this scene is one of several that shows the difference in Greek politics in the Iliad is that there are multiple leaders endowed with the authority to speak and advise (in contrast to the Trojans). In revisiting this exchange, moreover, I think it shows much more internal echoing with the earlier political scenes and Diomedes’ exchange with Agamemnon in book 4. Following Odysseus’ abuse, I would dare argue that Agamemnon says “either young or old” because he wants to hear from someone else and might be apologetically opening the door to Diomedes.

A Short bibliography on Diomedes

n.b this is not an exhaustive bibliography. If you’d like anything else included, please let me know.

Andersen, Öivind. 1978. Die Diomedesgestalt in der Ilias. Oslo.

Barker, Elton T. E. “Achilles’ Last Stand: Institutionalising Dissent in Homer’s Iliad.” PCPS 50 (2004) 92-120.

—,—. Entering the Agôn: Dissent and Authority in Homer, Historiography and Tragedy. Oxford, 2009.

Burgess, Jonathan. 2001. The Tradition of the Trojan War in Homer and the Epic Cycle. Baltimore.

—,—. 2009. The Death and Afterlife of Achilles. Baltimore.

Christensen, Joel P. 2009. “The End of Speeches and a Speech’s End: Nestor, Diomedes, and the telos muthôn.” in Kostas Myrsiades (ed.). Reading Homer: Film and Text. Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 136-62.

Christensen, Joel P. and Barker, Elton T. E.. “On not remembering Tydeus: Agamemnon, Diomedes and the contest for Thebes.” Materiali e Discussioni per l’Analisi dei Testi Classici, no. 66, 2011, pp. 9-44.

Christensen, Joel P. 2015. “Diomedes’ Foot-wound and the Homeric Reception of Myth.” In Diachrony, Jose Gonzalez (ed.). De Gruyter series, MythosEikonPoesis. 2015, 17–41.

Donlan, Walter. “The Unequal Exchange between Glaucus and Diomedes in Light of the Homeric Gift-Economy.” Phoenix, vol. 43, no. 1, 1989, pp. 1–15. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/1088537. Accessed 2 Oct. 2023.

Dunkle, Roger. 1997. “Swift-Footed Achilles.” CW 90: 227-34

Elmer, David. The Poetics of Consent: Collective Decision Making and the Iliad. Baltimore, 2013.

Fineberg, Stephen. “Blind Rage and Eccentric Vision in Iliad 6.” Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974-), vol. 129, 1999, pp. 13–41. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/284423.

Gaisser, Julia Haig. “Adaptation of Traditional Material in the Glaucus-Diomedes Episode.” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, vol. 100, 1969, pp. 165–76. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2935907.

Gantz, Timothy. 1993. Early Greek Myth. Baltimore.

Griffin, Jasper. 1980. Homer on Life and Death. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

—,—.2001. “The Epic Cycle and the Uniqueness of Homer.” in Cairns 2001: 363-84.

Hammer, Dean.“‘Who Shall Readily Obey?” Authority and Politics in the Iliad.” Phoenix 51 (1997) 1-24.

—,—. “The Politics of the Iliad.” CJ (1998) 1-30.

—,—. The Iliad as Politics: The Performance of Political Thought. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002.

Irene J. F. de Jong. “Convention versus Realism in the Homeric Epics.” Mnemosyne 58, no. 1 (2005): 1–22. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4433613.

Kakridis, Johannes Th. 1949. Homeric Researches. Lund.

Kakridis, Phanis, J. 1961. “Achilles’ Rüstung.” Hermes 89: 288-97.

Lohmann, Dieter. 1970. Dieter Lohmann. Die Komposition der Reden in der Ilias. Berlin.

Mühll, Peter von der. 1952. Kritisches Hypomena zur Ilias. Basel.

Nagy, Gregory. 1979. The Best of the Achaeans. Baltimore.

Nickel, Roberto. 2002. “Euphorbus and the Death of Achilles.” Phoenix 56: 215-33.

Pache, Corinne. 2009. “The Hero Beyond Himself: Heroic Death in Ancient Greek Poetry and Art.” in Sabine Albersmeir (ed.). Heroes: Mortals and Myths in ancient Greece. Baltimore (Walters Art Museum): 89-107.

Redfield, James. 1994. Nature and Culture in the Iliad: The Tragedy of Hektor. Chicago.

—,—. 2001. “A ‘Beautiful Death’ and the Disfigured Corpse.” in Cairns 2001: 311-41.

Rose, P. W. “Thersites and the Plural Voices of Homer.” Arethusa 21 (1988) 5-25.

—,—. “Ideology in the Iliad: Polis, Basileus, Theoi.” Arethusa 30 (1997) 151-99.

Scodel, Ruth. “The Wits of Glaucus.” Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974-), vol. 122, 1992, pp. 73–84. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/284365.

Willcock, M. 1977. 1977. “Ad hoc invention in the Iliad.” HSCP 81: 41-53.

Wilson, Donna F. Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

One of the remarkable things about Homeric poetry is the potential for any detail to open up a new world of story. The Iliad doesn’t endow every named character with a backstory or fuller narrative, but it does meander at times and provide sketches of stories that give context and content to a larger world.

This feature of Homeric poetry is one of the primary characteristics discussed in literary theory outside of Homer, thanks in part to Erich Auerbach’s use of Odysseus’ scar in the Odyssey in his influential book Mimesis. For Auerbach, Homer’s paratactic style lends itself to the extreme digression of focusing on the story of how Odysseus got his scar at the moment Eurykleia sees it and demonstrates a commitment to the part to the detriment of the whole. This perspective imagines a poetic narrative not in control of itself, growing in whatever direction works at the time, like twisted branches searching for light.  (see Egbert Bakker’s discussion and adjustment of this here.)

How or why Homer does this has been debated for some time. Prior to rather general acceptance of theories of oral composition and performance, the so-called ‘digressions’ in Homer were sometimes seen as a fault. Modern authors rarely make this claim any more. Instead, there are questions of what the digressions and narrative explorations indicate about the authorship of the poems (and probably too little concern about what they mean for audiences!).

For instance, Maureen Alden has argued that the intricacy and interconnectedness of the “paranarratives” indicate a highly sophisticated author, interweaving stories over a process of many years. This argument has been attractive to those who want to struggle against Auerbach’s implicit criticism of Homeric poetry as in some way uncontrolled, unfinished, or imperfect. From this perspective, the problem is on the part of interpreters who are too ill-informed to understand Homeric genius.

Bakker, cited above, and others, provide a different way out: for Bakker, Homeric poetry is more like speech than something directly visualized, and the process of unfolding an experience. Norman Austin suggests that digressions come at moments where “the dramatic and psychological concentration is the most intense” (312). They amplify the emotion or the themes. Elizabeth Minchin sees many of these narratives as causal: they shouldn’t be seen as digressive (especially in the case of the scar) and, while others are indeed thematic,  they also reflect what we now know about how human memory works. For Minchin, and others, there is a cognitive aspect to Homeric narrative: its tendency to explore the part is not to the detriment of the whole but instead serves to support our understanding of the whole. Not only is this kind of paratactic and telescoping narrative more apt for the way human brains work, but it also helps audiences understand the forest through the exploration of the trees.

For me, Auerbach’s description fails to represent Homeric poetry accurately on a very fundamental level: the description of the scar is momentous, thematically critical, dramatic, and engaged with the plot and movement of the Odyssey. But approaches that assume that such complexity is due to the long term effort of a master storyteller also pay short shrift to the complexity available from a poem that develops in performance and in response to human audiences. 

There are a few interesting digressions in book 13. One of them occurs during Idomeneus’ aristeia.

Iliad 13.361–369

“There, though his hair was partly grey, Idomeneus called
Out to the Danaans and drove the Trojans to retreat as he leapt.
For he killed Othryoneus who was there from Kabesos—
He had just arrived in search of the fame of war.
He asked for the most beautiful of Priam’s daughter’s
Kassandra, without a marriage-price, and he promised a great deed,
That he would drive the sons of the Achaians from Troy unwilling.
Old Priam promised this to him and nodded his head
That he would do this. Confident in these promises, he rushed forth.

῎Ενθα μεσαιπόλιός περ ἐὼν Δαναοῖσι κελεύσας
᾿Ιδομενεὺς Τρώεσσι μετάλμενος ἐν φόβον ὦρσε.
πέφνε γὰρ ᾿Οθρυονῆα Καβησόθεν ἔνδον ἐόντα,
ὅς ῥα νέον πολέμοιο μετὰ κλέος εἰληλούθει,
ᾔτεε δὲ Πριάμοιο θυγατρῶν εἶδος ἀρίστην
Κασσάνδρην ἀνάεδνον, ὑπέσχετο δὲ μέγα ἔργον,
ἐκ Τροίης ἀέκοντας ἀπωσέμεν υἷας ᾿Αχαιῶν.
τῷ δ’ ὁ γέρων Πρίαμος ὑπό τ’ ἔσχετο καὶ κατένευσε
δωσέμεναι· ὃ δὲ μάρναθ’ ὑποσχεσίῃσι πιθήσας.

This passage is more than a little enigmatic. The narrative that unfolds tells the story of a hopeful suitor for Kassandra who is killed by Idomeneus. The details seem rather straightforward. Othryoneus has come to fight for the promise of marrying Kassandra. What separates this brief obituary from others are the details. Othryoneus is marked out for his recent arrival, his pursuit of glory, his promise of a “big deed” and his desire to wed Kassandra without a bride gift.

A scholion pays some attention to this last detail.

Schol. bT ad Il. 13 365-6 ex

“He was asking to marry the most beautiful of Priam’s daughters without a bridegift”

This is also foreign. For we can find no place in Greece where they go to war for pay and posit before that they will not be allies without a contract. Also, consider the payment. For he came, asking for the girl, not because she was royal, but because she was the most beautiful. Certainly the most intemperate suitors among the Greeks “strive because of [her] excellence” [Od 2.366] But “without bridegifts” [Il.13.366] is cheap: even the most unjust suitors offer bridegifts to Penelope.”

ex. ᾔτεε δὲ Πριάμοιο <θυγατρῶν εἶδος ἀρίστην / Κασσάνδρην ἀνάεδνον>: βαρβαρικὸν καὶ τοῦτο· οὐδέποτε γὰρ εὑρήσομεν παρ’ ῞Ελλησι τὸ ἐπὶ μισθῷ στρατεύειν καὶ πρότερον αἰτεῖν καὶ χωρὶς ὑποσχέσεως μὴ συμμαχεῖν. ὅρα δὲ καὶ τὸν μισθόν· κόρης γὰρ ἐρῶν ἧκεν, οὐχ ὅτι βασιλική, ἀλλ’ ὅτι εἶδος ἀρίστη. καίτοι παρ’ ῞Ελλησιν οἱ ἀκολαστότατοι μνηστῆρές φασιν „εἵνεκα τῆς ἀρετῆς ἐριδαίνομεν” (β 206). καὶ τὸ ἀνάεδνον (366) γλίσχρον, ὅπου γε οἱ ἀδικώτατοι μνηστῆρες ἕδνα τῇ Πηνελόπῃ προσφέρουσιν.

So the Scholiast marks Othryoneus’ proposal as odd, if not improper. If we could imagine some notional summary of Othryoneus’ character, he would be something like a Dolon, asking for far more than is proper. But, taken altogether, the brief narrative is not wholly different from the heroic setup in general. Did not all the Achaeans come to Troy in search of kleos and a girl? 

In addition to this somewhat strained thematic resonance, the quick resolution of his story (by which, I mean his death) coupled with whose hands deliver it (Idomeneus, the third string QB trying to rally the Achaeans when everyone else is sidelined (Achilles) or wounded (Diomedes, Odysseus, Agamemnon, Menelaos…) renders  Othryoneus’ death even more pathetic. At the same time, it amplifies Idomeneus. Note the strange detail about Idomeneus grey hair, implying advanced age. He seems to re-enter the field, late in the day at a time of great need, a Joe Flacco to the Achaean Browns.

(For those who don’t follow the NFL, Joe Flacco is a quarterback who had an unlikely resurgence)

The cumulative effect in the middle of a book that rages back and forth with death and confusion is to further relativize war and the promise of glory. It seems foolish if not futile to fight at all.

For me, such resonance and connected meaning develops because of my familiarity with Homer and in response to a style of composition and performance that prioritizes repetitions and meaningful sequences. My interpretation is possible because of the Iliad tendency to layer scenes (the paratactic structure again) and return to motifs (thematic rings), but it is not guaranteed. One can hear the Iliad without getting that Othryoneus was important at all (adding to the pathos) or linger as I have and come to a greater understanding of the whole. But this greater understanding relies on an audience receptive to the methods of meaning-making.

To return to the question of digression: Homeric poetry builds itself out of repetitive structures that are formed in part through performance and audience reception/response. Such intricate meanings are unlikely the result of a master plan and more likely a collaboration in a dynamic context where composer and audience unfold the story together. This method reflects and capitalizes upon human memory and cognition.

Bonus: Stories Tapped by this telling

As I explore in an article about Kassandra in the Odyssey, some narrative details in a story like Othryoneus’ do seem to draw on other narrative traditions. There are traces of a larger story tradition that positions Kassandra as an attractive yet ultimately unattainable bride, an inverse Helen of sorts.

The travel author Pausanias has someone else coming to Troy to seek Kassandra’s hand.

Pausanias 10.27.1-2 (see Benarbe Il. Parvae 15)

“Koroibos came to seek a marriage with Kassandra, but he died. According to a greater tale, she was taken by Neoptolemus; but Lesches gave her to Diomedes.”

ἀφίκετο μὲν δὴ ἐπὶ τὸν Κασσάνδρας ὁ Κόροιβος γάμον, ἀπέθανε δέ, ὡς μὲν ὁ πλείων λόγος, ὑπὸ Νεοπτολέμου, Λέσχεως δὲ ὑπὸ Διομήδους ἐποίησεν.

Alcidamas, an orator, provides us with an imagined speech performed by Odysseus prosecuting Palamedes. In myth, it was Palamedes who revealed that Odysseus was just pretending to be crazy to avoid going to war. Odysseus held a grudge and framed Palamedes as a traitor when they arrived in Troy by planting gold and a letter in his dwelling.

Alcimadas, Rhetor fr. 16.72-7 (4th Century BCE)

“After calling Sthenelos and Diomedes to witness, I was showing them the contents. The letter clearly said these things:

“Alexandros [writes] to Palamedes. You will have all the things promised to Telephos and my father will give you Kasandra as a wife, just as you asked. But do those things you offered quickly.”

These were the things which were written, and when you approached me and witnessed it you took the bow.”

πράγματι, προσκαλεσάμενος Σθένελόν τε καὶ Διομήδη ἐδείκνυον αὐτοῖς τὰ ἐνόντα. ἡ δὲ γραφὴ ἐδήλου τάδε· ‘᾿Αλέξανδρος Παλαμήδει. ὅσα συνέθου Τηλέφῳ, πάντα σοι ἔσται, ὅ τε πατὴρ Κασάνδραν γυναῖκα δίδωσί σοι, καθάπερ ἐπέστειλας· ἀλλὰ τὰ ἀπὸ σοῦ πραττέσθω διὰ τάχους.’ ἐνεγέγραπτο μὲν ταῦτα· καί μοι προσελθόντες μαρτυρήσατε οἱ λαβόντες τὸ τόξευμα.

The Trojan War tradition has Kassandra awarded to Agamemnon after the sack of Troy and killed by Klytemnestra when they return home.

A short bibliography for this post.

Alden, Maureen 2000. Homer Beside Himself: Para-Narratives in the Iliad (Oxford 2000).

Austin, Norman. 1966. “The Function of Digressions in the Iliad”. Greek Roman and Byzantine Studies 7:295-312.

Bakker, Egbert J. 2005. Pointing at the Past: From Formula to Performance in Homeric Poetics. Hellenic Studies Series 12. Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies.

J. P. Christensen. “Revising Athena’s Rage: Kassandra and the Homeric Appropriation of Nostos.” YAGE  3: 88–116.

Minchin, Elizabeth. “Voice and Voices: Homer and the Stewardship of Memory.” in Niall W. Slater, Voice and Voices in Antiquity. Orality and Literacy in the Ancient World, 11; Mnemosyne supplements. Monographs on Greek and Latin language and literature, 396. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2017.

Near the end of the epic, we find one that’s quite remarkable.

Homer, Iliad 12.421-426

“But, just as two men strive over boundary stones,
As they hold their yardsticks in hand in a shared field
and they struggle over a fair share of the limited earth,
So did the fortifications separate them.
But over them still they struck one another
On their oxhide circles and winged shields.”

ἀλλ’ ὥς τ’ ἀμφ’ οὔροισι δύ’ ἀνέρε δηριάασθον
μέτρ’ ἐν χερσὶν ἔχοντες ἐπιξύνῳ ἐν ἀρούρῃ,
ὥ τ’ ὀλίγῳ ἐνὶ χώρῳ ἐρίζητον περὶ ἴσης,
ὣς ἄρα τοὺς διέεργον ἐπάλξιες· οἳ δ’ ὑπὲρ αὐτέων
δῄουν ἀλλήλων ἀμφὶ στήθεσσι βοείας
ἀσπίδας εὐκύκλους λαισήϊά τε πτερόεντα.

Schol. T ad Il. 12.423b

“This is about the intensity. For those who possess more might look down on [fighting like this?”

ex. ὀλίγῳ ἐνὶ χώρῳ: εἰς ἐπίτασιν· οἱ γὰρ πλείονα κεκτημένοι ἴσως καταφρονοῦσιν.

I have spent the better part of the past 20 years, reading, thinking, and writing about the Homeric epics. After all this, I am still regularly surprised by how much I don’t understand and often shocked by the fact that I have spent so many years doing just this, re-reading, being surprised, and then trying to learn something new.

The truth is, there was a time when I had little regard for the Homeric epics. I started reading them because I wanted to understand the ‘literature’ that followed them. About the same time I started reading Homer in the original, which was transformative on its own, I read both epics again in translation. The oceanic gap between the experience of the Greek and the translations rattled my confidence in my own aesthetic judgments (and in the act of translation).

In the middle of the battle over the walls the Greek have constructed against the resurgent Trojan defenders, the warring sides are compared to two men fighting over measuring their share of a common field. Even to this day, this comparison seems so disarmingly true as it reduces the grand themes of the struggles between Trojans and Greek, Agamemnon and Achilles, to that of two men over shared resources. The Iliad, at one level, is all about scarcity: scarcity of goods, of women, of honor, of life-time, and, ultimately, the scarcity of fame.

This simile works through metonymy to represent not just the action on the field of battle at this moment, but the conditions that prompt the greater conflict and those that constrain human life. It leaps through time and space and indicates how this poem differs from simple myths. The normal mortals who love this poem aren’t kings or demigods; we live small, sometimes desperate lives, the conditions of which are improved or exacerbated by how well we work together to make fair shares of our public goods.

The scholiast’s comments above, then, are doubly laughable. If I am reading them right (and the verb καταφρονοῦσιν without an object can be annoying), the commentator is imagining that these men in the simile are struggling over this small bit of land because they are poor and that wealthier men would not bother. Not only is this a tragic misunderstanding of human nature (wait tables or tend bar for only a few weeks and you will discover that the good tippers are not the wealthiest ones), but it is a poor reading of the epic, where the wealthiest and most powerful men alive are more than happy to keep fighting and ensuring that their people die.

The point of the simile is that it provides a meeting point between the actors of the poem and the worlds of the audiences; the line that separates imaginative story in the audience’s minds from the lives they live becomes permeable and the hero meets the mortal in the shared experience. This is how the world becomes a part of the story and how it also  shapes the poem.

Right after this, there’s another simile.

Iliad 12.427-438

“Many were struck across their flesh by pitiless bronze
Whenever they turned and bared their backs
As they struggled, although many were also struck through their shields.
The towers and walls were decorated everywhere with the blood
Of men from both sides, from Trojans and Achaeans.

Yet, they still could not force the Achaians to flee—
No, it held as when an honest weaving woman holds
The balance and draws out the weight and the wool on both sides
to make them equal so she might earn some wretched wage for her children.
So the battle and the war was stretched even on each side
Until Zeus gave the glory over to Hektor
Priam’s son, who first broke through the wall of the Achaeans.”

πολλοὶ δ’ οὐτάζοντο κατὰ χρόα νηλέϊ χαλκῷ,
ἠμὲν ὅτεῳ στρεφθέντι μετάφρενα γυμνωθείη
μαρναμένων, πολλοὶ δὲ διαμπερὲς ἀσπίδος αὐτῆς.
πάντῃ δὴ πύργοι καὶ ἐπάλξιες αἵματι φωτῶν
ἐρράδατ’ ἀμφοτέρωθεν ἀπὸ Τρώων καὶ ᾿Αχαιῶν.
ἀλλ’ οὐδ’ ὧς ἐδύναντο φόβον ποιῆσαι ᾿Αχαιῶν,
ἀλλ’ ἔχον ὥς τε τάλαντα γυνὴ χερνῆτις ἀληθής,
ἥ τε σταθμὸν ἔχουσα καὶ εἴριον ἀμφὶς ἀνέλκει
ἰσάζουσ’, ἵνα παισὶν ἀεικέα μισθὸν ἄρηται·
ὣς μὲν τῶν ἐπὶ ἶσα μάχη τέτατο πτόλεμός τε,
πρίν γ’ ὅτε δὴ Ζεὺς κῦδος ὑπέρτερον ῞Εκτορι δῶκε
Πριαμίδῃ, ὃς πρῶτος ἐσήλατο τεῖχος ᾿Αχαιῶν.

Schol D + bT ad Il. 12.433-435 ex.

“The equal balance of those fighting, [Homer] compared to the beam of a loom, again. For nothing is so precisely similar to an even balance. And the one weighing this out is not the mistress of the household—for she does not often trouble this much for so small an equal bit—nor is it one of the household maids—for they would not seek to make so precise a measure since they are fed by the household’s master and do not risk their nourishment if they mess up on the loom weights—but it is a woman for hire who must provide what is needed for living by the effort of her hands.”

ex. | D ἀλλ’ ἔχον ὥς τε τάλαντα<—μισθὸν ἄρη-ται>: πάλιν τὸ ἰσοπαλὲς τῶν μαχομένων παρέβαλε ζυγῷ· οὐδὲν γὰρ οὕτως ἀκριβὲς πρὸς ἰσότητα. καὶ ἡ ταλαντεύουσα οὐκ ἔστι δέσποινα οἰκίας (ταύτην γὰρ οὐ λυπεῖ πολλάκις τὸ παρὰ βραχὺ ἴσον), ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ θεραπαινίς (οὐ γὰρ αὗται ζητοῦσι τὸ ἀκριβὲς εἰς τοσοῦτον, ἅτε δὴ ὑπὸ τοῦ δεσπότου τρεφόμεναι b [BCE3E4] T καὶ οὐκ ἐν τῷ διαμαρτεῖν περὶ τὸν σταθμὸν κινδυνεύουσαι περὶ τροφήν), T χερνῆτις (433) δέ, ἡ χειρὶ τὰ πρὸς τὸ ζῆν πορίζουσα, ἵνα παισὶν ἀεικέα (435) φησίν.

This passage has long moved me too because, as with the earlier simile, the great ‘epic’ themes and images of war were reduced to something simple, daily, and completely understandable. Even in the ancient world where many members of the audiences probably had considerably more experience of violence than we do and where most aristocratic audience members would certainly have nothing but contempt for working for a living, many probably heard a crucial echo of their own lives in this surprising comparison.

I also appreciate the way that the scholiasts here home in on how dire this woman’s position is, making the dubious but nonetheless striking claim that the household servants led less precarious lives than the woman of the simile who draws the weight so precisely because her pay—and the lives of her children—depend upon it. In a crucial way, this simile evokes the same sense of scarcity as that of the men on the field—but it adds that an all too familiar anxiety from the precarity that emerges when one lives constantly with the sense of how scarce those things we value are.

It may seem a stretch, but the image of the weaving woman evokes for me the creative power of women presented elsewhere in Homer–Helen weaves the story of her own kleos, Penelope weaves shroud whose images are never revealed. In a way, the tension prepared by the woman’s hands within the simile is a comparison for the balance of war and a metaphor for an act of creation. The epic’s plot and the audience’s experience are similarly drawn out in the narrator’s hands.

This is another place where the method of reading I have mentioned before can be helpful. As I describe in the post on book 9, some cognitive approaches to literature follow reader response theories to suggest that when we engage with narratives we create a blend of the stories we hear and our experiences in our minds. What this means, in effect, is that our actual mental picture of narrative blends our own experiences and memories with the sketches we receive from stories and generates a new thing. I think that the way that similes unfold in the Homeric narrative demonstrate the blending or bleedover of something in one world (the tenor, the notional real) compared to something in the imagination (the vehicle of the simile). Similes move and shift from an initial comparison to something different, conflating the identities and qualities of tenor and vehicle together. I think this echoes what happens in reading epic in general: our real world and the fantasy of epic interweave in our minds during the telling and interpretation of the tale, creating something different, unpredictable, each time.

 

 

Indeed, the scarcity and precarity evoked by this simile and the one that precedes it extends the transitional moment begun with the image of the farmers to create anticipatory tension in the audience. At the epic’s middle, before we move from book 12 to 13 and to the slaughter of the Achaeans at the ships, the balance hangs ever briefly before it breaks. Hektor surges through the Achaean fortification: the balance of action fails just as the balance of the plot will too—the story of Achilles’ withdrawal will now translate into the slaughter he asked Zeus to precipitate leading to the death of Patroklos, Hektor and, ultimately, Achilles too.

These similes stand at the middle of the poem and convey the sense of tension at the passing of this moment and the spinning of the tale itself. The nameless men and the nameless woman stand in contrast to the named heroes who will suffer and die in the following books. But they are also vehicles moving between the lives of the audiences and the heroes’ deeds marking off the small stakes for which all are struggling and the limited life by which we are all constrained.

Iliad 12, from the Venetus A Manuscript (via the Homer Multitext Project)[/caption]

A Starter Bibliography on Similes in Homer

n.b this is not an exhaustive bibliography. If you’d like anything else included, please let me know.

Bassett, Samuel E. “The Function of the Homeric Simile.” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 52 (1921): 132–47. https://doi.org/10.2307/282957.

Beck, Deborah, The stories of similes in Greek and Roman epic. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2023. 

Ben-Porat, Ziva. “Poetics of the Homeric Simile and the Theory of (Poetic) Simile.” Poetics Today 13, no. 4 (1992): 737–69. https://doi.org/10.2307/1773297.

Mandel, Oscar. “Homeric Simile.” Prairie Schooner 69, no. 2 (1995): 124–124. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40633938.

Minchin, Elizabeth. “Similes in Homer: image, mind’s eye, and memory.” Speaking volumes: orality and literacy in the Greek and Roman world. Ed. Watson, Janet. Mnemosyne. Supplements; 218. Leiden ; Boston (Mass.): Brill, 2001. 25-52.

Moulton, Carroll. “Similes in the Iliad.” Hermes 102, no. 3 (1974): 381–97. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4475864.

Muellner, Leonard. “The Simile of the Cranes and Pygmies a Study of Homeric Metaphor.” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. 93, 1990, pp. 59–101. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/311283. Accessed 6 Jan. 2024.

Naiden, Fred S.. “Homer’s leopard simile.” Nine essays on Homer. Eds. Carlisle, Miriam and Levaniouk, Olga Arkadievna. Greek Studies. Lanham (Md.): Rowman and Littlefield, 1999. 177-203.

Notopoulos, James A. “Homeric Similes in the Light of Oral Poetry.” The Classical Journal 52, no. 7 (1957): 323–28. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3294076.

Pache, Corinne. “Mourning lions and Penelope’s revenge.” Arethusa, vol. 49, no. 1, 2016, pp. 1-24.

Porter, David H. “Violent Juxtaposition in the Similes of the ‘Iliad.’” The Classical Journal 68, no. 1 (1972): 11–21. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3296022.

Ready, Jonathan. 2011. Character, Narrator and Simile in the Iliad. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Ready, Jonathan L. “The Comparative Spectrum in Homer.” The American Journal of Philology 129, no. 4 (2008): 453–96. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27566727.

Scott, William C. 2009. The Artistry of the Homeric Simile. Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College Press.

Andreas Thomas Zanker, Metaphor in Homer: time, speech, and thought. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019. x, 263 p.. ISBN 9781108491884 $99.99.

Iliad 12 tells the story of the battle around the walls that protect the Achaean ships. Like other books of the Iliad, remarkable speeches intersperse the action. One of the most famous Homeric speeches appears about two-thirds of the way through the book as the Trojan ally, Sarpedon—a son of Zeus—turns to speak to his friend Glaukos:

Homer, Iliad 12.310-328

‘Glaukos, why are you and I honored before others
by place, the best meat and cups filled with wine
in Lykia, and all men look on us as gods,
and we have great tracts of land Xanthos’ banks,
good holdings with orchards and vineyards, farmland for wheat too?
Because of this we must stand at the head of the Lykians 
and take our part of the burden of battle’s fire
so that one of those well-armored Lykians may see us and say:

“Indeed, these lords of Lykia are no base-born men,
these kings of ours, who dine on the fatted sheep selected for them
and drink the finest wine, since there is in fact strength
and courage in them, when they fight in the forefront of the Lykians.”

But, friend, imagine if you and I could escape this battle
and be able to live forever, ageless, immortal–
then neither would I myself go on fighting in the frontlines
nor would I tell you to seek the fighting that brings us glory.
But now, since death’s ghosts stand around us numbered
in their thousands and no person can ever escape them,
let’s go on and claim this glory for ourselves or give it to others in turn.”

Γλαῦκε τί ἢ δὴ νῶϊ τετιμήμεσθα μάλιστα
ἕδρῃ τε κρέασίν τε ἰδὲ πλείοις δεπάεσσιν
ἐν Λυκίῃ, πάντες δὲ θεοὺς ὣς εἰσορόωσι,
καὶ τέμενος νεμόμεσθα μέγα Ξάνθοιο παρ’ ὄχθας
καλὸν φυταλιῆς καὶ ἀρούρης πυροφόροιο;
τὼ νῦν χρὴ Λυκίοισι μέτα πρώτοισιν ἐόντας
ἑστάμεν ἠδὲ μάχης καυστείρης ἀντιβολῆσαι,
ὄφρά τις ὧδ’ εἴπῃ Λυκίων πύκα θωρηκτάων·
οὐ μὰν ἀκλεέες Λυκίην κάτα κοιρανέουσιν
ἡμέτεροι βασιλῆες, ἔδουσί τε πίονα μῆλα
οἶνόν τ’ ἔξαιτον μελιηδέα· ἀλλ’ ἄρα καὶ ἲς
ἐσθλή, ἐπεὶ Λυκίοισι μέτα πρώτοισι μάχονται.
ὦ πέπον εἰ μὲν γὰρ πόλεμον περὶ τόνδε φυγόντε
αἰεὶ δὴ μέλλοιμεν ἀγήρω τ’ ἀθανάτω τε
ἔσσεσθ’, οὔτέ κεν αὐτὸς ἐνὶ πρώτοισι μαχοίμην
οὔτέ κε σὲ στέλλοιμι μάχην ἐς κυδιάνειραν·
νῦν δ’ ἔμπης γὰρ κῆρες ἐφεστᾶσιν θανάτοιο
μυρίαι, ἃς οὐκ ἔστι φυγεῖν βροτὸν οὐδ’ ὑπαλύξαι,
ἴομεν ἠέ τῳ εὖχος ὀρέξομεν ἠέ τις ἡμῖν.

In this speech Sarpedon first rhetorically affirms their privileged position among their countrymen and then asserts that it is this very position that obligates them to prove their noble worth through noble deeds—deeds that will earn them fame. The two men, according to Sarpedon, are honored like immortals and that they are treated as immortals requires them to attain the immortality that is available for men (that is, kleos).

The near divine honors that they receive, the very acts that require them to seek kleos, are material (food, wine, land). Following this statement, Sarpedon wishes that they were immortal so they would not have to fight, touching upon the irony of heroic immortality, an immortality that is something completely different from that of the Olympian gods. Since they are mortal and they will die no matter what, they should go into battle and “win glory or give it to someone else.”

It is life’s status as a limited commodity that gives those who risk it a share of the immortal in the form of fame.  In discussing Homeric heroism, Margalit Finkelberg refers to Sarpedon’s speech writes “The Iliad proceeds from an idea of hero’ which is pure and simple: one who prizes honour and glory above life itself and dies on the battlefield in the prime of life” (1995, 1). Adam Parry cites this passage when he asserts that “moral standards as values of life are essentially agreed on by everyone in the Iliad” (1956, 3; see Pucci 1998, 49-68 for an extended discussion of this passage).     And many other authors (see Hammer 2002, Adkins 1982)  agree with this.  But I think the key phrase in Finkelberg’s sentence is proceeds from. The epic does not by any means insist that this articulation of values is unquestionable or, ultimately, good. As James Arieti suggests  (1986, 1), the basic framework of these values are assumed in book 1, where Hera has Athena promise Achilles that he will be compensated 3 or 4 times over for his loss of honor (1.213) but ultimately questioned in book 9 by Achilles dissent.

To fully understand Sarpedon’s comments, they need to be contextualized in the action of book 12 and the flow of the plot since the embassy to Achilles. Achilles’ rejection of the offer of the gifts stands in contrast to his commitment to stay and fight, regardless of what he will receive. Book 12 is the first significant commentary on heroic behavior since the embassy, and the actions center around the Achaean chieftains who have no choice but to defend the walls around the ships and Hektor as he tries to break through the wall. As S. Faron argues, Sarpedon is the one who does the most in battle in this book and, by contrast, Hektor’s grasping for glory might seem more desperate or ill-considered. Yet, even if Sarpedon’s comments ring noble, they are attenuated by his eventual death, one so prominent that it prompts Zeus to cry tears of blood.

I have no doubt that Sarpedon presents something of a standard heroic ‘code’ in this passage. The question, as usual, is to what extent we are supposed to accept the standard articulation as sufficient or still applying. A key note of dissonance here is the contrast between Sarpedon’s dream of immortality and Hektor’s boast in book 8. There Hektor says,

Tomorrow will show the proof of our excellence, if he will stand
To face my spear’s approach. But I think that he will fall there
Struck among the first ranks and many of his companions
Will be there around him as the sun sets toward the next dear.
But I wish I were deathless and ageless for all time,
Then I would pay them back as Athena or Apollo might,
And now on this day bring evil to the Argives.

So Hektor spoke and the Trojans cheered in response.

One significant contrast between this wish and Sarpedon’s is the audience: Sarpedon speaks only to Glaukos as they face death in an intimate way, acknowledging that, just maybe, facing men with spears on top of a wall is a less desirable way to spend a life than dining and drinking. Hektor, in contrast, speaks in bluster to rally his troops to do something they have never done before (remain outside the walls and face the Achaeans.

I find it interesting that there is some contrast in the scholiastic response to this. Hektor’s wish to be immortal is denigrated (“Praying for the impossible is barbaric” βαρβαρικὸν τὸ εὔχεσθαι τὰ ἀδύνατα, Schol. bT ad Hom. Il. 8.538-539b) while Sarpedon’s reverie is praise as “a noble sentiment” (εὐγενὴς ἡ γνώμη, Schol. b ad Hom. Il. 12.322-8 ex.). Sarpedon’s odd detachment seems somehow more to the taste of Hektor’s more desperate energy.

And this gets me to the primary differences in the statements and the core of what I see as the Iliad’s stance on this kind of heroism. Achilles can linger by his ships, indulging in navel-gazing and worrying about life’s meaning, because no one is forcing him to fight. They are asking him. Similarly, Sarpedon–also a demi-god–comes as an ally who fights for the promise of honor, goods, and glory. Hektor knows what Achilles only learns too late: if he does not fight, everyone he loves dies. All the words of honor and glory and any sense of noblesse oblige ring hollow in comparison to this. And I think that any reading of Sarpedon’s speech that does not acknowledge audience familiarity with his death misses a crucial aspect of its interpretation.

Sarpedon’s articulation, I think, has drawn praise over the ages because it isn’t messy. He doesn’t talk about not fighting; he idly imagines a life of ease and makes the choice to stand. Hektor’s prevarication and later vacillation in the face of danger troubles us because however fantastic it may sound, it is not a fantasy. His fight is about survival; any talk of glory is just a distraction from the mortal truth.

And there’s a moral content as well. What does it mean for audiences to praise the exploits of ‘heroes’ who fight for personal gain and intangible, indefinable, things like fame? Achilles doubts this; Sarpedon merely restates this; the rest of the epic helps us judge the matter for ourselves.

Short bibliography on Sarpedon’s Speech

n.b this is not an exhaustive bibliography. If you’d like anything else included, please let me know.

Adkins, A. W. H. “Values, Goals, and Emotions in the Iliad.” Classical Philology 77, no. 4 (1982): 292–326. http://www.jstor.org/stable/269413. 

Arieti, James A. “Achilles’ Alienation in ‘Iliad 9.’” The Classical Journal 82, no. 1 (1986): 1–27. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3297803.

Farron, S. “THE CHARACTER OF HECTOR IN THE ‘ILIAD.’” Acta Classica 21 (1978): 39–57. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24591547.

Finkelberg, Margalit. “Odysseus and the Genus ‘Hero.’” Greece & Rome 42, no. 1 (1995): 1–14. http://www.jstor.org/stable/643068.

HAMMER, DEAN. “THE ‘ILIAD’ AS ETHICAL THINKING: POLITICS, PITY, AND THE OPERATION OF ESTEEM.” Arethusa 35, no. 2 (2002): 203–35. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44578882.

Howald, Ernst. “Sarpedon.” Museum Helveticum 8, no. 2/3 (1951): 111–18. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24811891.

A. Parry, 1956. “The Language of Achilles,” TAPA 87, 1-8.

P. Pucci,1998. The Song of the Sirens: Essays on Homer, Lanham.

Bonus Sarpedon Content

Pindar, Pythian 3.108-116

“I’ll be small for minor matters but big for big ones
and I will cultivate in my thoughts
The fate that comes to me, serving it by my own design.

So if god allows me wealth’s luxury
I have hope of finding fame’s height as well.

We know about Nestor and Lykian Sarpedon–
People’s legends, from famous songs which
The wise craftsmen assembled. And excellence blooms
In famous songs for all time. But it is easy for only a few to earn.”

σμικρὸς ἐν σμικροῖς, μέγας ἐν μεγάλοις
ἔσσομαι, τὸν δ᾿ ἀμφέποντ᾿ αἰεὶ φρασίν
δαίμον᾿ ἀσκήσω κατ᾿ ἐμὰν θεραπεύων μαχανάν.
εἰ δέ μοι πλοῦτον θεὸς ἁβρὸν ὀρέξαι,
ἐλπίδ᾿ ἔχω κλέος εὑρέσθαι κεν ὑψηλὸν πρόσω.
Νέστορα καὶ Λύκιον Σαρπηδόν᾿, ἀνθρώπων φάτις,
ἐξ ἐπέων κελαδεννῶν, τέκτονες οἷα σοφοί
ἅρμοσαν, γινώσκομεν· ἁ δ᾿ ἀρετὰ κλειναῖς ἀοιδαῖς
χρονία τελέθει· παύροις δὲ πράξασθ᾿ εὐμαρές.