Book 8 returns the Iliad to battle. It begins with a divine council, where Zeus attempts to control the actions of the other gods and by doing so, shapes the plot to come. The violence inspires Hera to try to disobey Zeus’ injunction, resulting in the flow of battle first favoring the Trojans and then the Greeks. Zeus has Iris prevent Athena and Hera from engaging further in the battle and the end of the book features two important moments: Zeus reveals his plan to the rest of the gods for the sides to struggle until Patroklos dies; Hektor has the Trojans camp outside the city for the first time in the conflict. The plot of this book engages critically with the major themes I have noted to follow in reading the Iliad: (1) Politics, (2) Heroism; (3) Gods and Humans; (4) Family & Friends; (5) Narrative Traditions. But the central themes I emphasize in reading and teaching book 8 are Gods and Humans and Narrative Traditions.

Zeus and the Plot of the Iliad

As I discuss in the introductory post on book 4, Zeus is instrumental in shaping the plot of the Iliad. The epic is cast as part of his “plan” in book 1, but he also articulates the plot of the epic at several key moments. There are different ways to think about Zeus’ intervention: As Bruce Heiden argues, we too often think about the Iliad as a text to be read, rather than one that was performed. The performance units are unknown to us: certainly, parts of epic narrative circulated as episodes (the teikhomakhia, “battle around the wall”; or teikhoskopia, “viewing from the walls”) but we can’t know from ancient references to such scenes whether they correspond to the same scenes we have in the written texts. Some have proposed that the book divisions we have were also performance units, but few of the books exhibit a kind of clear beginning, middle and end that would lend themselves to such performances.

Based on the three days of performances at the City Dionysia in Athens, some scholars have suggested a three-part sequence in a ‘monumental’ or ideal performance of the Iliad in some sort of a religious festival. There are several proposals, but the one I have always found most persuasive is Heiden’s: he remarks that Zeus has significant decisions and speeches in books 1 and 24, to begin and end and shape the plot, but that he also outlines the plot to come for the first time: in the latter part of book 8, and the latter part of book 15. Each of these moments could be seen as a ‘teaser’ for the next performance, outlining or anticipating the narrative to come in the same way a weekly television episode might end with “Next week, on [the Iliad]…” In this case, the performance units would be books 1-8, 9-15, and 16-24.

Now, even if we don’t subscribe to the tripartite performance structure, or, more importantly, if we acknowledge that the epic’s contents have not always been enjoyed in such a fashion, we can still see the effect that Zeus’s speeches have on the epic. He refocuses the action and dictates the plot.

Il. 8.469-483

“Then Zeus the cloud-gatherer answered Hera:
‘At dawn you will see the powerful son of Kronos,
If you want, cow-eyed Queen Hera,
Destroying the great host of spear-wielding Argives.
Hektor will not take a break from war until
The swift-footed son of Peleus rises among the ships
On that day when they battle among the prows
In the greatest strain over Patroklos who has died.
This is divinely decreed. I don’t care about whether
You are angry, not even if you run away to the ends
Of the earth and the sea, where Iapetos and Kronos
Sit and take pleasure neither in the rays of Helios
Nor in the winds, since Tartaros is steep around them.
Even if you go wandering there, I don’t care if you’re
Angry, since there’s no one more doglike than you.”

Τὴν δ’ ἀπαμειβόμενος προσέφη νεφεληγερέτα Ζεύς·
ἠοῦς δὴ καὶ μᾶλλον ὑπερμενέα Κρονίωνα
ὄψεαι, αἴ κ’ ἐθέλῃσθα, βοῶπις πότνια ῞Ηρη
ὀλλύντ’ ᾿Αργείων πουλὺν στρατὸν αἰχμητάων·
οὐ γὰρ πρὶν πολέμου ἀποπαύσεται ὄβριμος ῞Εκτωρ
πρὶν ὄρθαι παρὰ ναῦφι ποδώκεα Πηλεΐωνα,
ἤματι τῷ ὅτ’ ἂν οἳ μὲν ἐπὶ πρύμνῃσι μάχωνται
στείνει ἐν αἰνοτάτῳ περὶ Πατρόκλοιο θανόντος·
ὣς γὰρ θέσφατόν ἐστι· σέθεν δ’ ἐγὼ οὐκ ἀλεγίζω
χωομένης, οὐδ’ εἴ κε τὰ νείατα πείραθ’ ἵκηαι
γαίης καὶ πόντοιο, ἵν’ ᾿Ιάπετός τε Κρόνος τε
ἥμενοι οὔτ’ αὐγῇς ῾Υπερίονος ᾿Ηελίοιο
τέρποντ’ οὔτ’ ἀνέμοισι, βαθὺς δέ τε Τάρταρος ἀμφίς·
οὐδ’ ἢν ἔνθ’ ἀφίκηαι ἀλωμένη, οὔ σευ ἔγωγε
σκυζομένης ἀλέγω, ἐπεὶ οὐ σέο κύντερον ἄλλο.

Zeus’ control of the plot, in an echo of his language at the beginning of books 4 and 8, is somehow related to his physical might and reminders of a theomachy that led to the Titans (or someone like them) being exiled to Tartarus. At the beginning of 8, he reminds the gods that they cannot overpower him and threatens to hurl anyone who disobeys him into the underworld (10-20). In book 4, Zeus is not explicit in threatening Hera, but he does imply he will destroy one of her favorite cities as payback for the destruction of Troy (4.25-30). Book 5 is replete with echoes of divine war; but book 8 seems the most explicit in bookending the action with references to the consequences of opposing Zeus. By flexing his rhetorical muscle, Zeus both forestalls any further action against him and clarifies the epic’s plot.

If we are imagining books 1-8 as a performance unit, this final speech closes Zeus’ response to Achilles’ request in book 1: Achilles asks for the Achaeans to be punished; here Zeus makes it clear that Patroklos’ death is a part of his honoring of that request. Of course, there interpretive space for understanding Zeus’ action. A scholiast explains for the phrase “this is divinely decreed” that “[Zeus] is tossing out that this is fated, so that he doesn’t seem to play the part of tyrant” τὸ μοιρίδιον προβάλλεται, ἵνα / μὴ δοκῇ τυραννεῖν, Schol. bT ad Hom. Il. 8.477). As if that settles it all!

On the performance of the Iliad and book 8

n.b this is not an exhaustive bibliography. If you’d like anything else included, please let me know. Follow-up posts will address book 8 and other traditions

Cook, Erwin F. “On the ‘Importance’ of Iliad Book 8.” Classical Philology, vol. 104, no. 2, 2009, pp. 133–61. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.1086/605340

Fenno, Jonathan. “‘A Great Wave against the Stream’: Water Imagery in Iliadic Battle Scenes.” The American Journal of Philology 126, no. 4 (2005): 475–504. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3804872.

Foley, J. M. 1988. The Theory of Oral Composition: History and Methodology. Bloomington.

———. 1999. Homer’s Traditional Art. Philadelphia.

González, José M. 2013. The Epic Rhapsode and His Craft: Homeric Performance in a Diachronic Perspective. Washington, D.C.: Center for Hellenic Studies.

Heiden, B. (1996). The three movements of the iliad. Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 37(1), 5-22. Retrieved from https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/three-movements-iliad/docview/229178418/se-2

Bruce Heiden. “The Placement of ‘Book Divisions’ in the Iliad.” The Journal of Hellenic Studies 118 (1998): 68–81. https://doi.org/10.2307/632231.

Heiden, B. 2008. Homer’s Cosmic Fabrication: Choice and Design in the Iliad. Oxford.

Lord, Albert. 2000. The Singer of Tales. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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.

Scodel, Ruth. 2002. Listening to Homer: Tradition, Narrative, and Audience. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Stroud, T. A., and Elizabeth Robertson. “Aristotle’s ‘Poetics’ and the Plot of the ‘Iliad.’” The Classical World 89, no. 3 (1996): 179–96. https://doi.org/10.2307/4351783.

Taplin, Oliver. . 1992. Homeric Soundings: The Shape of the Iliad. Oxford.

Homer, Iliad 7.81-93

“But I kill one of you—and Apollo grants me glory,
Then once I strip off your weapons, I will take them to holy Troy
And I will hang them on the temple of far-shooting Apollo.
But I will return the body to the well-benched ships,
And the Achaeans with the long hair will bury him.
They will heap him up a sign on the broad Hellespont
And then someone of the people who are born later will say
As they sail on the wine-dark sea in a many-benched ship,
“This is the grave of a man who died long ago,
Someone whom shining Hektor killed when he was the best”
So someone will say some day, and my fame will never perish”
So he spoke and everyone stayed quiet in the silence.
They were ashamed to refuse, but afraid to accept.”

εἰ δέ κ’ ἐγὼ τὸν ἕλω, δώῃ δέ μοι εὖχος ᾿Απόλλων,
τεύχεα σύλησας οἴσω προτὶ ῎Ιλιον ἱρήν,
καὶ κρεμόω προτὶ νηὸν ᾿Απόλλωνος ἑκάτοιο,
τὸν δὲ νέκυν ἐπὶ νῆας ἐϋσσέλμους ἀποδώσω,
ὄφρά ἑ ταρχύσωσι κάρη κομόωντες ᾿Αχαιοί,
σῆμά τέ οἱ χεύωσιν ἐπὶ πλατεῖ ῾Ελλησπόντῳ.
καί ποτέ τις εἴπῃσι καὶ ὀψιγόνων ἀνθρώπων
νηῒ πολυκλήϊδι πλέων ἐπὶ οἴνοπα πόντον·
ἀνδρὸς μὲν τόδε σῆμα πάλαι κατατεθνηῶτος,
ὅν ποτ’ ἀριστεύοντα κατέκτανε φαίδιμος ῞Εκτωρ.
ὥς ποτέ τις ἐρέει· τὸ δ’ ἐμὸν κλέος οὔ ποτ’ ὀλεῖται.
῝Ως ἔφαθ’, οἱ δ’ ἄρα πάντες ἀκὴν ἐγένοντο σιωπῇ·
αἴδεσθεν μὲν ἀνήνασθαι, δεῖσαν δ’ ὑποδέχθαι·

This speech comes near the beginning of Iliad 7 as Hektor is challenging one of the Greeks to fight him in single combat. Its position and content speak directly both to the characterization of Hektor, some problems of the structure of the Iliad, and the metapoetics of kleos (or, more appropriately, the occluded poetics of the epic “kleos function”). Let me try to address them in order.

First, Hektor is using this language not 45 minutes in performance time from his encounter with Andromache and Astyanax on the wall of Troy where he ends by praying for his son to be better than his father and to delight his mother’s heart by returning from nettle with another man’s weapons just as Hektor hopes for himself now (6.479-81). There as well, Hektor engages with what some have called “tis-speech” imagining the future words of others (de Jong 1987). Hilary Mackie refers to these moments as vignettes and notes that all but one of them appear in Hektor’s speeches (6.460-1; 6.479-50; 7.88-91; 7.300-2; and 22.107). For Mackie, these support Hektor’s tendency towards “an inward focus and absorption in the scenes he is creating” (1996, 98-99). This separation from reality, the rumination and the accompanying verbal tic of moving between a harsh assessment of reality (Hektor’s statements that he will in fact die) and flights of fancy, is supportive of a character in distress, I believe. Hektor is engaging in classic rumination, in delaying tactics, as he pushes against the reality of his situation. His decisions and his actions may be shaped by trauma. (Or, to put it less aggressively, his characterization may be such that it allows others to see him as responding erratically as one in a traumatized state may do.)

In a way, Hektor is a complement for Achilles’ contemplation of heroic valor and the promise of eternal fame. But he approaches it from a more shame-based perspective. (See Schein the Mortal Hero, 177-178 for more on hector as a hero shaped by shame and Redfield, Nature and Culture 119-126 for Hektor’s heroism as a function of responsibility and obligation.) In nearly every major speech that indicates a decision or a resistance/regret for one being suggested (see Hektor in book 6 and 22), Hektor worries of shame and reputation which may be considered part of the rhetoric of fame, since the latter is shaped to an extent by the meaning of the former. Hektor, as Richard Martin has noted (1989, 133), is particularly concerned with winning a reputation. This concern expands beyond the boundaries of the poem (in time and space) in a manner that is really only achieved elsewhere by Achilles. When he refuses Andromache’s plea to stay within the walls in book 6, he immediately claims he fears feeling shame in front of the Trojans and predicts, using language that recalls this speech, that some day someone will see Andromache enslaved and crying and that her pain will rise anew from the loss of a husband who can no longer save her.

The projections of objects into the future that attest to Hektor’s absence, his success in gaining fame, and his failure to protect his wife, must in some way hang together in the mind of the audience. While we often take Hektor’s comments in book 7 as signal words on Homeric fame, they are words shaped by the public context that is in and of itself about the shame of people witnessing your excellence or commemorating one’s fall. When Hektor speaks to Andromache a book earlier, he projects her into the future as a different sêma (marker) of his absence, but one that correlates to his failure. The personal, intimate nature of this and Hektor’s expression of pain—that he would rather the earth cover over him than have to hear her crying (6.459-465) both underscores Hektor’s conflicted feelings and also undermines the significance of his later claims.

Yet, perhaps this too is an overstatement. Hektor’s bluster in public is a function of his refusal to reject shame, to stand down or seem less-than in front of his people and his enemies. In the intimate wish to his wife, he doesn’t mention glory or a grave, but instead wishes for oblivion, to be covered by the earth and to have no news of the horrors that continue after his death. If anything, rather than being an indication of an inconsistent character, these two vignettes point to an emotional coherence and a deep complexity to Hektor’s character.

And I am so bold as to imagine that the structure of books 6 into 7 reflect this. Why does the Iliad need a second duel between heroes in its first half? Why, 10 years into the war, should Ajax and Hektor face each other in a single combat that is ultimately meaningless? And why, of all possible moments, have this be the one when Hektor points to the sema of his own grave as the guarantee of the continuity of memory for his own kleos? I may be as yet and as ever too modern in saying this, but I suspect the futility and the mundanity of the scene is the point. Hektor’s duel—and his fame to come—impact nothing of the world he cares about and may, at best, preserve a kleos that is as much a record of this as of all he could not protect.

The incoherence of the events that follow may support the coherence of this characterization. Hektor’s challenge inspires fear—and the response reported by the narrator echoes Hektor’s own concern with shame (αἴδεσθεν μὲν ἀνήνασθαι, δεῖσαν δ’ ὑποδέχθαι, 93). Nestor follows with the language shame reminds the Achaeans of their own boasts, Menelaos gets frustrated and is said by the narrator to be about to die (7.104) if he faces Hektor, only for Ajax to win a random drawing to face Hektor. Despite their fear of Hekor, Ajax seems to acquit himself quite well, save for an intervention by Apollo (7.272-273). The ‘draw’ is a stepping back from the conflict that has the Trojans relieved that Hektor survived and Agamemnon delighted at Ajax’s “victory” (7.312).

Throughout Hektor’s characterization in the Iliad we find a tension between the man we are told he should be and the figure we actually see in action. After returning to this speech again, I think that such tension is a direct function of Hektor’s relationship to kleos as clarified by his contrast with Achilles: he does not fight by choice, like Achilles; but he fights by obligation. His imagined futures change depending on whether they are public or private as he tries to play the part of a warrior prince who has learned to fight and die for his people while still struggling with the human part of knowing what his failure means for his city, spouse and child. Together, Achilles and Hektor can provide reflections on the limits of epic kleos and the conditions under which it matters and cannot. We just need to hear them as speaking in dialogue with each other, and us.

Short bibliography on Hektor

n.b this is not an exhaustive bibliography. If you’d like anything else included, please let me know. Follow-up posts will address kleos and Trojan politics

Clark, Matthew. “Poulydamas and Hektor.” College Literature 34, no. 2 (2007): 85–106. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25115422.

Combellack, Frederick M. “Homer and Hector.” The American Journal of Philology 65, no. 3 (1944): 209–43. https://doi.org/10.2307/291490.

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

Horn, Fabian. “The psychology of aggression: Achilles’ wrath and Hector’s flight in Iliad 22.131-7.” Hermes, vol. 146, no. 3, 2018, pp. 277-289. Doi: 10.25162/hermes-2018-0023

Irene J. F. de Jong. “The Voice of Anonymity. Tis-Speeches in the Iliad.” Eranos 85 (1987) 5-22.

Lynn Kozak, Experiencing Hektor: Character in the Iliad. Bloomsbury Classical Studies Monographs. London; New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016. xiv, 307. 

Hillary Mackie. Talking Trojan: Speech and Community in the Iliad . Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996.

Van der Mije, Sebastiaan Reinier. “Bad herbs: the snake simile in Iliad 22.” Mnemosyne, Ser. 4, vol. 64, no. 3, 2011, pp. 359-382. Doi: 10.1163/156852511X505079

W. R. Nethercut. “Hektor at the Abyss.” Classical Bulletin 49 (1972) 7-9.

Oele, Marjolein. “Priam’s despair and courage: an Aristotelian reading of fear, hope, and suffering in Homer’s « Iliad ».” Logoi and muthoi : further essays in Greek philosophy and literature. Ed. Wians, William. SUNY Series in Ancient Greek Philosophy. Albany (N. Y.): State University of New York Pr., 2019. 297-317.

Pantelia, Maria C. “Helen and the Last Song for Hector.” Transactions of the American Philological Association (1974-) 132, no. 1/2 (2002): 21–27. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20054056.

Pucci, Pietro. “Divine protagonists in the « Iliad »: Hector’s death in book 22.” Yearbook of Ancient Greek Epic, vol. 1, 2017, pp. 175-205.

Ready, Jonathan L.. “Iliad 22.123-128 and the erotics of supplication.” The Classical Bulletin, vol. 81, no. 2, 2005, pp. 145-164.

James Redfield. Nature and Culture in the Iliad: The Tragedy of Hektor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975.

Scott, John A. “The Parting of Hector and Andromache.” The Classical Journal 9, no. 6 (1914): 274–77. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3287165.

Scott, John A. “Paris and Hector in Tradition and in Homer.” Classical Philology 8, no. 2 (1913): 160–71. http://www.jstor.org/stable/262449.

Traill, David A. “Unfair to Hector?” Classical Philology 85, no. 4 (1990): 299–303. http://www.jstor.org/stable/269583.

Book 7, as discussed in the introductory post, can be split into the following subsections: the divine orchestration of the duel, the duel between Hektor and Ajax, assemblies of the Trojans and the Greeks, and the building of the Achaean wall and the divine response. These events are part of an “analeptic” {retrospective or flashback)  movement in the epic’s first third, as the Iliad attempts to evoke the themes of the first nine years of the Trojan War. The assemblies in the latter half of the book provide a unique opportunity to compare Greek and Trojan political organizations.

As others have written, the political institutions in the Iliad reflect the basic organization of many Greek city-states: a small, mostly aristocratic/oligarchic council for governing and decision-making, and a larger public assembly for the adjudication of disputes and the performance of political relationships. The three distinct political groups in epic–the Achaeans, Trojans, and the Gods–all provide various versions of these institutions and the ‘success’ of each polity partly hinges on how they work.

Elsewhere, I have outlined the major ‘political’ activities in the Iliad. Apart from the repeated engagement between Poulydamas and Hektor, Antenor’s speech in book 7 is one of the few times the Trojans encounter dissent. The significance of these scenes is often missed between the more famous dual and the divine response to the construction of the Achaean walls.

Antenor is an interesting figure: in a way, he is positioned as something of an equivalent to Nestor. The larger poetic tradition, however, notes that he was known as being friendly to the Greeks and provides some ground for suspicion. 

Schol bT Il. 3.205a ex. 1-5

When they were coming out of Tenedos as ambassadors with Menelaos, Antênôr, the son of Hiketaos received them and saved them when they were almost killed through deceit. For this reason, during the sack of Troy, Agamemnon ordered that the household of Antênor be spared, and he signalled this by hanging a leopard’s skin in front of his home. 

ὅτε ἐκ Τενέδου ἐπρεσβεύοντο οἱ περὶ Μενέλαον, τότε ᾿Αντήνωρ ὁ ῾Ικετάονος ὑπεδέξατο αὐτούς, καὶ δολοφονεῖσθαι μέλλοντας ἔσωσεν· ὅθεν μετὰ τὴν ἅλωσιν τῆς Τροίας ἐκέλευσεν ᾿Αγαμέμνων φείσασθαι τῶν οἰκείων ᾿Αντήνορος, παρδάλεως δορὰν ἐξάψας πρὸ τῶν οἴκων αὐτοῦ.

 Schol. in Il. bT 7.335a ex. 1-4

Another Trojan assembly: for it was necessary to look at what should be done since the sons of the king were being beaten, the city was imperiled by Diomedes and, because of the transgression, they were in dire straits. [as] There was Nestor among the Greeks, the Trojans had Antênor.

Τρώων αὖτ’ ἀγορή: ἔδει γὰρ τῶν τοῦ βασιλέως υἱῶν ἡττωμένων καὶ κινδυνευσάσης τῆς πόλεως ὑπὸ Διομήδους, δυσελπίδων ὄντων διὰ τὴν παράβασιν, σκοπεῖν τι τῶν ἀναγκαίων. ἔστι δὲ ἐν τοῖς ῞Ελλησι Νέστωρ, ἐν δὲ Τρωσὶν ᾿Αντήνωρ.

Schol. in Il. bT 7.347a ex. 1-3

Antênor stands among them because he is was a patron of the Greeks, a public speaker, and a god-fearing man. And Hektor was silent because he is ashamed to end the war, lest he appear to be afraid because he was just defeated.

ex. τοῖσιν δ’ ᾿Αντήνωρ: ὡς πρόξενος ῾Ελλήνων καὶ δημηγορῶν καὶ θεοσεβής. ῞Εκτωρ δὲ σιωπᾷ αἰσχυνόμενος διαλύειν τὴν μάχην, ἵνα μὴ δοκῇ δεδοικέναι διὰ τὸ νεωστὶ ἡττῆσθαι.

What I find most interesting in the scenes that follow is how Priam is forced to accommodate Antenor’s dissent alongside Paris’ recalcitrance. Of course, Antenor’s suggestion to return Helen is against the poetic tradition and ultimately possible. At some level, there’s no reason for this scene to exist at all, unless it reflects in some way on the themes of this particular version of Achilles’ rage. As I argue in an article from a few years back, the exchanges in book 7 function as an index of the “limits on advice and deliberation” in the Trojan polity.

In the sequences of speeches below, note how Priam attempts to acknowledge the ‘plans’ of both speakers and then directs the herald Idaios to take the complex messages to the Achaeans. Rather than delivering Priam’s speech verbatim, Idaios modifies it, especially in the delivery of Paris’ proposals.

Opening of the Trojan Assembly, 7.345-353

Then the Trojan assembly was held on the city peak of Ilium,
terribly disordered, alongside the doorways of Priam’s home.
Among them prudent Antenor began to speak publicly:
‘Hear me Trojans, Dardanians, and allies
so that I may speak what the heart in my chest bids.
Come now, let us give Argive Helen and her possessions too,
to the sons of Atreus to take away; now we fight
even though we made false the sacred oaths; thus I do not expect
that anything advantageous for us will happen unless we do this.’

Paris’ Response, 7.354-64

‘Antenor, no longer do you speak these things dear to me—
you know how to think up yet another mûthos better than this.
If you say this truthfully in public and earnestly indeed,
then the gods themselves have surely already obliterated your wits.
But I will speak out publicly among the horse-taming Trojans:
I refuse this straight-out; I will not hand over the woman;
but, however many things I took from Argos to our home
I am willing to give them back and to add other things from my household.’

Priam’s Intervention, 7.365-79

And saying this he [Paris] sat down and among them rose
Dardanian Priam, a counselor equal to the gods—
well-intentioned towards them he spoke publicly and spoke among them:
‘Hear me Trojans and Dardanians and allies
so that I may say those things the heart in my chest bids.
Now, take your dinner throughout the city as you have before
and be mindful of the watch and keep each other awake.
At dawn let Idaios go to the curved ships
to repeat the plan of Alexandros, on whose account this conflict has arisen,
to Atreus’ sons, Agamemnon and Menelaos—
and also to propose this wise plan, if they wish
to stop the ill-sounding war until we have burned the corpses;
we will fight again later until the god separates us
and grants victory to one side at least.’
So he spoke and they all heard him and obeyed.

Idaios’ Report to the Achaians, 7.382-398

[Idaios] found the Danaans, Ares’ followers, in assembly
by the prow of Agamemnon’s ship. Then standing among them
in the middle the loud-voiced herald spoke:

‘Sons of Atreus and the rest of the best of all the Achaians,
Priam and the rest of the illustrious Trojans bid me
to speak, in the hope that it might be dear and sweet to you,
the múthos of Alexandros, on whose account this conflict has arisen:
However many possessions he took in the hollow ships
to Troy—I wish he had perished before that—
all those things he is willing to return and to add others from his household.
But the wedded-wife of glorious Menelaos
he says he will not give back—although the Trojans ask him to.
And they also ordered me to speak a speech—if you wish
to stop the ill-sounding war until we have cremated the corpses;
we will fight again later until the god separates us
and grants victory to one side at least.’

In a blend of original message and framing for his audience that is similar to Iris’ speeches to Poseidon in book 15 of the epic, Idaios reveals internal dissent about Paris’ stance. Such subtlety rings of a political realism, despite the heroic nature of epic. The suffering of the city and its people is laid at the feet of a selfish prince and a political organization incapable of restraining him.

On Homeric (and Trojan) politics

n.b this is not an exhaustive bibliography. If you’d like anything else included, please let me know. Follow-up posts will address kleos and Trojan politics

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.

Christensen, Joel P.. “Trojan politics and the assemblies of Iliad 7.” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, vol. 55, no. 1, 2015, pp. 25-51.

Clay, J. S.  Homer’s Trojan Theater: Space, Vision and Memory in the Iliad (Cambridge, 2011)

Donlan, Walter. “The Structure of Authority in the Iliad.” Arethusa 12 (1979) 51-70.

—,—. “The Relations of Power in the Pre-State and Early State Polities.” In The Development of the Polis in Archaic Greece. Lynette Mitchell and P. J. Rhodes (eds.). London, 1997, 39-48.

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

Esperman, L. 1980. Antenor, Theano, Antenoriden: Ihre Person und Bedeutung in der Ilias. Meisen Heim am Glam.

Hall, Jonathan M.  “Polis, Community, and Ethnic Identity.” In H. A. Shapiro (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Archaic Greece. Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2007: 40-60.

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

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

—,—. “Homer, Tyranny, and Democracy.” GRBS 39 (1998b) 331-360.

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

Létoublon, Françoise. “Le bon orateur et le génie selon Anténor dans l’ Iliade : Ménélas et Ulysse.” in Jean-Michel Galy and Antoine Thivel (eds.). La Rhétorique Grecque. Actes du colloque «Octave Navarre»: troisième colloque international sur la pensée antique organisé par le CRHI (Centre de recherches sur l’histoire des idées) les 17, 18 et 19 décembre 1992. Nice: Publications de la Faculté des Lettres, Arts et Sciences Humaines de Nice, 1994, 29-40.

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

Mackie, Hillary. Talking Trojan: Speech and Community in the Iliad . Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996.

Raaflaub, Kurt A., Josiah Ober, and Robert W. Wallace. Origins of Democracy in Ancient Greece. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.

—,—. “Homer and the Beginning of Political Thought in Greece.” Proceedings in the Boston Area Colloquium Series in Ancient Philosophy 4 (1988) 1-25.

Redfield, James. Nature and Culture in the Iliad: The Tragedy of Hektor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975.

Sale, William M. “The Government of Troy: Politics in the Iliad. GRBS 35 (1994) 5-102.

Schulz, Fabian. Die homerischen Räte und die spartanische Gerusie. Berlin: Wellem, 2011.

Scodel, Ruth.  Listening to Homer: Tradition, Narrative and Audience. Ann Arbor: University of 

Sealey, R. “Probouleusis and the Sovereign Assembly.” CSCA 2 (1969) 247-69.

One of the most iconic scenes of the Iliad is the exchange between Glaucus and Diomedes in book 6. This scene comes in the middle of book 6, in part as a delaying technique while Hektor travels into the city. But it also continues part of the plot in book 6, where Diomedes wounded Athena and was warned not to attack any of the other gods.

Diomedes: Il. 6.123-129

“Bestie, who are you of mortal humans?
For I have never seen you before in this ennobling battle.
But now you stride out far ahead of everyone
In your daring—where you await my ash-wood spear.
Those who oppose my might are children of miserable parents!
But, if you are one of the immortals come down from the sky,
I don’t wish to fight with the sky-dwelling gods!”

τίς δὲ σύ ἐσσι φέριστε καταθνητῶν ἀνθρώπων;
οὐ μὲν γάρ ποτ’ ὄπωπα μάχῃ ἔνι κυδιανείρῃ
τὸ πρίν· ἀτὰρ μὲν νῦν γε πολὺ προβέβηκας ἁπάντων
σῷ θάρσει, ὅ τ’ ἐμὸν δολιχόσκιον ἔγχος ἔμεινας·
δυστήνων δέ τε παῖδες ἐμῷ μένει ἀντιόωσιν.
εἰ δέ τις ἀθανάτων γε κατ’ οὐρανοῦ εἰλήλουθας,
οὐκ ἂν ἔγωγε θεοῖσιν ἐπουρανίοισι μαχοίμην.

Glaukos, 6.145-151

“Oh, you great-hearted son of Tydeus, why are you asking about pedigree?
The generations of men are just like leaves on a tree:
The wind blows some to the ground and then the forest
Grows lush with others when spring comes again.
In this way, the race of men grows and then dies in turn.
But if you are willing, learn about these things so you may know
My lineage well—many are the men who know me.”

Τυδεΐδη μεγάθυμε τί ἢ γενεὴν ἐρεείνεις;
οἵη περ φύλλων γενεὴ τοίη δὲ καὶ ἀνδρῶν.
φύλλα τὰ μέν τ’ ἄνεμος χαμάδις χέει, ἄλλα δέ θ’ ὕλη
τηλεθόωσα φύει, ἔαρος δ’ ἐπιγίγνεται ὥρη·
ὣς ἀνδρῶν γενεὴ ἣ μὲν φύει ἣ δ’ ἀπολήγει.
εἰ δ’ ἐθέλεις καὶ ταῦτα δαήμεναι ὄφρ’ ἐὺ εἰδῇς
ἡμετέρην γενεήν, πολλοὶ δέ μιν ἄνδρες ἴσασιν

This scene certainly leaves an impression on people. One of my best friends spent years scheming to re-stage this scene on a paintball field. After may abortive events, some of us laid down covering fire so he and another could meet an exchange their equipment midfield. It was hilarious. And unsafe. But hilarious.

The exchange between these two heroes is marked by three things (among others!): (1) the establishment of xenia–the reciprocal exchange of hospitality–as an inheritable principle; (2) Glaukos’ telling of the story of Bellerophon (which establishes the aforementioned xenia status); and (3) the exchange of armor to signal their continuing friendship.

The exchange is marked with a strong note of judgment by the Homeric narrator.

Homer, Iliad 6.230-236

“Let’s exchange armor with one another so that even these people
May know that we claim to be guest-friends from our fathers’ lines.”

So they spoke and leapt down from their horses,
Took one another’s hands and made their pledge.
Then Kronos’s son Zeus stole away Glaukos’ wits,
For he traded to Diomedes golden arms in exchange for bronze,
weapons worth one hundred oxen traded for those worth nine.”

τεύχεα δ’ ἀλλήλοις ἐπαμείψομεν, ὄφρα καὶ οἷδε
γνῶσιν ὅτι ξεῖνοι πατρώϊοι εὐχόμεθ’ εἶναι.
῝Ως ἄρα φωνήσαντε καθ’ ἵππων ἀΐξαντε
χεῖράς τ’ ἀλλήλων λαβέτην καὶ πιστώσαντο·
ἔνθ’ αὖτε Γλαύκῳ Κρονίδης φρένας ἐξέλετο Ζεύς,
ὃς πρὸς Τυδεΐδην Διομήδεα τεύχε’ ἄμειβε
χρύσεα χαλκείων, ἑκατόμβοι’ ἐννεαβοίων.

Ancient commentators were intrigued by this judgment.

Schol. ad. Il. 6.234b ex.

“Kronos’ son Zeus took Glaukos’ wits away”. Because he was adorning him among his allies with more conspicuous weapons. Or, because they were made by Hephaistos. Or, as Pios claims, so that [the poet?] might amplify the Greek since they do not make an equal exchange—a thing which would be sweet to the audience.

Or, perhaps he credits him more, that he was adorned with conspicuous arms among his own and his allies. For, wherever these arms are, it is a likely place for an enemy attack.”

ex. ἔνθ’ αὖτε Γλαύκῳ <Κρονίδης> φρένας ἐξέλετο: ὅτι κατὰ τῶν συμμάχων ἐκόσμει λαμπροτέροις αὐτὸν ὅπλοις. ἢ ὡς ῾Ηφαιστότευκτα. ἢ, ὡς Πῖος (fr. 2 H.), ἵνα κἀν τούτῳ αὐξήσῃ τὸν ῞Ελληνα μὴ ἐξ ἴσου ἀπηλ<λ>αγμένον, ὅπερ ἡδὺ τοῖς ἀκούουσιν. 
ἢ μᾶλλον αἰτιᾶται αὐτόν, ὅτι λαμπροῖς ὅπλοις ἐκοσμεῖτο κατὰ ἑαυτοῦ καὶ τῶν συμμάχων· ὅπου γὰρ ταῦτα, εὔκαιρος ἡ τῶν πολεμίων ὁρμή. b(BE3E4)

I always thought that Glaukos got a raw deal from interpreters here. Prior to the stories Diomedes and Glaukos tell each other, Diomedes was just murdering everyone in his path. Glaukos—who already knew who Diomedes was before he addressed him—tells a great tale, gives Diomedes his golden weapons, and actually lives to the end of the poem. I think this is far from a witless move. And, if the armor is especially conspicuous, maybe the plan-within-a-plan is to put a golden target on Diomedes’ back.

But let’s back up a bit to make a few points:

1. Diomedes does not know who Glaukos is; Glaukos definitely knows who Diomedes is.

2. Everyone among the Trojans knows that Diomedes has been tearing it up in the field and that few can meet him.

3. Diomedes prefaces his question of Glaukos’ identity by telling him a story of how Lykourgos messed with the gods and regretted it, providing a bit of a proverbial lesson by concluding that no one lasts long “once they have become hateful to the gods” (ἦν, ἐπεὶ ἀθανάτοισιν ἀπήχθετο πᾶσι θεοῖσιν, 6.140).

4. Then, Glaukos tells an elaborate tale about his ancestry that links up with Diomedes’ grandfather, concluding that Bellerophon “became hateful to the gods” (using the same language as Diomedes at line 200)

5. This narrative confirms Diomedes’ sentiment that anyone can fall out of favor, while also bulking up Glaukos’ heroic profile and providing him an out clause (xenia)

6. Just as everyone knows who Diomedes is, they also seem to know his famous father as one of the failed Seven against Thebes

7. So, when Diomedes says that he doesn’t remember his father (222), we might be able to argue that Glaukos is counting on this: Diomedes knows some object left behind in his family’s home, but cannot confirm or deny the story Bellerophon says.

In my work on the Odyssey (The Many Minded Man: the Odyssey, Psychology and The Therapy of Epic) I argue, following authors like Lisa Zunshine and Palmer, that good storytellers exhibit mind-reading, by which they mean the ability to “ascribe states of minds to others and [themselves]”. While this is seen by modern authors as a sign of sophistication in novels, I think it is something we can see in the case of effective liars and persuaders like Odysseus. I summarize (2020, 150):

For Lisa Zunshine, the ability to ascribe to someone else “a certain mental state on the basis of her observable action” (2006:6)—what she calls “mind-reading”—is both an essential skill for “construct[ing] and navigat[ing] our social environment” and a foundational quality for the creation of fiction and literature.2 Such an ability is in part what makes Odysseus a great story-teller and a narrative agent; but it also allows him to subjugate and use others.

In short, I think there is a reading of Glaukos’ use of Bellerophon’s narrative that shows it works similarly to Odysseus’ lies: he weaponizes a story to achieve a complex outcome. In Glaukos’ case, he establishes a hereditary relationship with Diomedes that allows him to avoid fighting the most dangerous person on the battlefield.

Some things to read on book 6

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

Alden, M. J. “Genealogy as Paradigm: The Example of Bellerophon.” Hermes, vol. 124, no. 3, 1996, pp. 257–63. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4477146

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.

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.

Harries, Byron. “‘Strange Meeting’: Diomedes and Glaucus in ‘Iliad’ 6.” Greece & Rome, vol. 40, no. 2, 1993, pp. 133–46. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/643154. 

Lowry, Eddie R.. “Glaucus, the leaves, and the heroic boast of Iliad 6.146-211.” The ages of Homer: a tribute to Emily Townsend Vermeule. Eds. Carter, Jane P. and Morris, Sarah P.. Austin (Tex.): University of Texas Pr., 1995. 193-203.

Palmer, Alan. 2010. Social Minds in the Novel. Columbus.

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.

Tracy, Catherine. “The Host’s Dilemma: Game Theory and Homeric Hospitality.” Illinois Classical Studies, no. 39 (2014): 1–16. https://doi.org/10.5406/illiclasstud.39.0001.

Traill, David A. “Gold Armor for Bronze and Homer’s Use of Compensatory TIMH.” Classical Philology, vol. 84, no. 4, 1989, pp. 301–05. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4620748

Walcot, Peter. “Χρύσεα χαλκείων. A further comment.” Classical Review, vol. XIX, 1969, pp. 12-13. Doi: 10.1017/S0009840X00328311

Zunshine, Lisa. 2006. Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel. Columbus.

Aphrodite’s Mom in Iliad 5

Hom. Iliad 5.370-4

Then divine Aphrodite fell to the knees of Diône
Her own mother. She took her own daughter into her arms.
She touched her with her hand, named her, and spoke:
“Dear child, who of the Olympians has done these kinds of things to you,
Pointlessly, as if you were doing something wicked in the open?”

ἣ δ’ ἐν γούνασι πῖπτε Διώνης δῖ’ ᾿Αφροδίτη
μητρὸς ἑῆς· ἣ δ’ ἀγκὰς ἐλάζετο θυγατέρα ἥν,
χειρί τέ μιν κατέρεξεν ἔπος τ’ ἔφατ’ ἐκ τ’ ὀνόμαζε·
τίς νύ σε τοιάδ’ ἔρεξε φίλον τέκος Οὐρανιώνων
μαψιδίως, ὡς εἴ τι κακὸν ῥέζουσαν ἐνωπῇ;

Once Aphrodite tells her the story, her mother then goes on to provide her a catalogue of gods who had to endure wounding by mortals. While the passage is amusing, it produces a little dissonance based largely on the significant detail of Aphrodite having a mother.

Schol. D ad. Hom. Il. 5.374

“Note that according to Hesiod, Aphrodite is the product of Ouranos’ genitals and the sea, but according to Homer, she is from Diône and Zeus.

᾿Ιστέον δὲ, ὅτι, κατὰ μὲν ῾Ησίοδον, ἡ
᾿Αφροδίτη γίγνεται ἐκ τοῦ Οὐρανοῦ τῶν
αἰδοίων, καὶ τῆς θαλάσσης· κατὰ δὲ
῞Ομηρον, ἐκ Διώνης καὶ Διός.

An instructive detail here is that the scholion here doesn’t take a stance about whether either or not Homer or Hesiod are “correct” or one is prior to another, and I think this is pretty important. From a narrative perspective each genealogy makes sense for the story in question: Aphrodite is a powerful elemental force in Hesiod’s Theogony and there is both poetic and political logic behind her birth from Ouranos’ testicles. In the Homeric tradition, this is more complicated. Zeus needs to humiliate Aphrodite in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, where he ‘gets back’ at her for infecting the gods with lust by inducing her to have sex with the mortal Anchises. In the Iliad, Aphrodite is rendered subordinate to Zeus as one of his children. Aphrodite is often mentioned as a daughter of Zeus (as G. S. Kirk notes in his Cambridge commentary on the Iliad), but this is the only place we hear about her mother. To make it a little more bewildering, Diône seems top merely be a feminine form of Zeus (cf. the genitive Dios).

Frederick Combellack writes in his 1976 article “Homer the Innovator” that “any person who spends very much time in the study of the Homeric poems will almost certainly find himself involved, perhaps with regret, in the study of Homeric scholarship” (44). He drops this “diss track” by way of introducing an argument against the very idea that Homeric poetry could “innovate” or “invent” new detail, an assertion supported by many scholars in the twentieth century, dismissed by Combellack as being possible, but implausible based on our evidence.

While I don’t necessarily share Combellack’s aversion to reading Homeric scholarship, despite a weighty tradition mocking its pedantry going all the way back to Seneca (and likely earlier, given the evidence of Palladas the Alexandrian poet), I do think the asperity of his comments point to an important problem in thinking about Homeric poetry: making any sense of the relationship between our ‘Homer’ and what may have come before. 

The relationship between the Iliad and the Odyssey and antecedent ‘traditions’ is not just about mythological narratives: it pervades our view of Homeric language (the formula), devices (e.g. similes), as well as content. Indeed, a great deal of Homeric scholarship of the 20th century was engaged with this question in one way or another. (Sidenote, this is a topic that will always inspire debate: The first 45 minutes of my dissertation defense in 2007 was occupied by my readers debating among themselves the meaning of the word ‘tradition’ in relation to the Iliad.)

I have discussed neoanalytical approaches before, and I don’t really want to recap that. Here I am interested in two problems presented by the nature of Homeric poetry itself: First, Homeric poetry is generically meant to seem old and authoritative, without having to actually be so. Second, Greek poetry and myth in general have a very different approach to veracity or fidelity than a culture immersed in fixed textual traditions like ours might expect.

For the first problem, I always find it useful to flip our belief about Homeric poetry on its head: what if, instead of assuming that Homeric poetry stands as the authoritative origins of Trojan war narratives (and other myths) it stands at the end of a certain kind of flexible tradition, imposing an authoritative order only over time thanks to a privileged cultural position? I find starting from this approach useful especially with other archaic and classical age poets because we can’t actually know what ‘Homer’ they were exposed to and it is strange to think that epic performance was not shaped by other genres as well.

For the second challenge, I often think back to what Hesiod announces before the cosmogonic narrative of the Theogony even begins. The Muses approach ‘Hesiod’ while he is tending his flocks:

Theogony 26-28

“Rustic shepherds, wretched reproaches, nothing but bellies,
We know how to say many lies similar to the truth
And we know how to speak the truth when we want to.”

“ποιμένες ἄγραυλοι, κάκ’ ἐλέγχεα, γαστέρες οἶον,
ἴδμεν ψεύδεα πολλὰ λέγειν ἐτύμοισιν ὁμοῖα,
ἴδμεν δ’ εὖτ’ ἐθέλωμεν ἀληθέα γηρύσασθαι.”

When I teach myth I emphasize that while this passage can be taken as a disclaimer (i.e., you may know different stories than mine!) for communities of divergent, even conflicting narrative traditions, I think it is also a conditioning framework for setting aside concerns about veracity. Hesiod the narrator here attributes poetic authority to the Muses along with the ability to discern what is true from what is false. The result is that mortals simply cannot know and, therefore, probably shouldn’t worry about it.

But I have also taken recourse to ideas from scholars of memory to rethink moments like this. In studying memory systems, Martin Conway suggests that there are two forces in human memory: correspondence, which is about equivalence between details of ‘reality’ (or experience) and details of a story and coherence, which means that details make sense together in a narrative. When it comes to the way these systems operate in the human mind, not only does he argue that the memory systems have different neuro-anatomy, but he suggests that the episodic memory system (which prizes correspondence) developed earlier and is more basic to day-to-day survival than the autobiographical memory system which focuses more on coherence and is essential for the development of a goal or ‘identity’ driven self. The two systems are not exclusive—autobiographical memory selects from episodic memory in the creation of a coherent self.

In expanding these ideas to communities of audiences and narrative traditions, what I think we can say is that ancient audiences were accustomed to making sense of each story on its own terms, nonplussed by details that might conflict with other story traditions, because they belong to those other stories. The force of narrative coherence supersedes correspondence to ‘facts’ in other tales because what matters in each telling is the story in process. To an extent, these forces and the aesthetics they imply are operative throughout early Greek poetry (consider Pindar) and at play as well in the ‘innovations’ we see in Athenian Tragedy.

To return to book 5 of the Iliad: Aphrodite has a mother because it makes sense for the global context of the epic (where Zeus is the “father of gods and men”) and because it makes sense for this scene. Whether or not this is Homeric “invention” is almost beside the point. Certainly the simplicity of the name Diône and the lack of her presence in other narratives implies that this detail is important, even idiopathic to this (kind of) scene, but it tells us nothing about whether or not earlier versions of this theme including this detail or whether similar moments occurred in antecedent or parallel traditions. The challenge, as always, is to make sense of how this passage supports the Iliad we possess.

Cribbing from the Muses here: we cannot know if ‘Homer’ made something up, so should we bother worrying about it?

Short bibliography

Alden, Maureen Joan. “The rôle of Calypso in the Odyssey.” Antike und Abendland, vol. XXXI, 1985, pp. 97-107.

Barker, Elton T. E.. “The « Iliad »’s big swoon: a case of innovation within the epic tradition ?.” Trends in Classics, vol. 3, no. 1, 2011, pp. 1-17.

Barker, Elton T. E., and Joel P. Christensen. 2019. Homer’s Thebes: Epic Rivalries and the Appropriation of Mythical Pasts. Hellenic Studies Series 84. Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies

Berg, Nils and Haug, Dag Trygve Truslew. “Dividing Homer. 2,: Innovation vs. tradition in Homer : an overlooked piece of evidence.” Symbolae Osloenses, vol. 75, 2000, pp. 5-23. Doi: 10.1080/003976700300005811

Bruce K. Braswell. “Mythological Innovation in the Iliad.” Classical Quarterly 21 (1971) 16-26.

Christensen, Joel P.. “Innovation and tradition revisited: the near-synonymy of ἀμύνω and ἀλέξω as a case study in Homeric composition.” The Classical Journal, vol. 108, no. 3, 2012-2013, pp. 257-296.

Combellack, Frederick M.. “Homer the innovator.” Classical Philology, vol. LXXI, 1976, pp. 44-55.

Martin A. Conway. “Memory and the Self,” Journal of Memory and Language 53 (2005) 594-628.

Fantuzzi, Marco and Tsagalis, Christos. “« Kyklos », the Epic Cycle and Cyclic poetry.” The Greek Epic Cycle and its ancient reception : a companion. Eds. Fantuzzi, Marco and Tsagalis, Christos. Cambridge: Cambridge University Pr., 2015. 1-40.

Bernard Fenik. Homer: Tradition and Invention.  Leiden, 1978.

Ingalls, Wayne B.. “Linguistic and formular innovation in the mythological digressions in the Iliad.” Phoenix, vol. XXXVI, 1982, pp. 201-202.

Jones, Peter. “Poetic invention: the fighting around Troy in the first nine years of the Trojan War.” Homer’s world: fiction, tradition, reality. Eds. Andersen, Øivind and Dickie, Matthew W.. Papers from the Norwegian Institute at Athens; 3. Athens ; Bergen: Norwegian Institute at Athens, 1995. 101-111.

Mueller-Goldingen, Christian. “Tradition und Innovation: zu Stesichoros’ Umgang mit dem Mythos.” L’Antiquité Classique, vol. 69, 2000, pp. 1-19. Doi: 10.3406/antiq.2000.2419

Nussbaum, Alan J.. “The Homeric formulary template and a linguistic innovation in the epics.” Language and meter. Eds. Gunkel, Dieter and Hackstein, Olav. Brill’s Studies in Indo-European Languages and Linguistics; 18. Leiden ; Boston (Mass.): Brill, 2018. 267-318.

Ready, Jonathan L.. The Homeric simile in comparative perspectives : oral traditions from Saudi Arabia to Indonesia. Oxford: Oxford University Pr., 2018.

David C. Rubin. “The Basic-systems Model of Episodic Memory,” Perspectives on Psychological Science 1 (2006) 277-311.

M. M. Willcock. “Mythological Paradeigmata in the Iliad.” Classical Quarterly 14 (1964) 141-151.

—,—.  “Ad Hoc Invention in the Iliad.” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 81 (1977) 41-53.

Book 5 contains several speeches that engage with themes of theomachy and the Iliad’s relationship with the past. A few of them also can help us think about the poem’s composition and its relationship to other poetic traditions. One speech where many of these issues emerge is Dione’s speech to Aphrodite after Diomedes wounds her.

Homer, Iliad 5. 381-416

“Dione, the shining goddess, answered her then: ‘Endure my child, and restrain yourself even though you are grieving. For many of us who have Olympian homes have caused each other hard pains because of humans. Ares once endured when Otos and strong Ephialtes, The children of Aloes, chained him in a powerful bond. He was tied down for thirteen months in a bronze jar. And then Ares, insatiate of war, would have perished there If their step-mother, the super pretty Eeriboia Had not informed Hermes. He freed Ares Who was in a lot of pain, since his bonds were hurting him. And Hera endured, when the powerful son of Amphitryon Struck her in the right breast with a three-barbed arrow. Then untreatable pain overtook her indeed. And huge Hades endured when the same son of Aegis-bearing Zeus Gave him pain by shooting him among the corpses. Then he went to great Olympos to Zeus’ home, Grieving that he had been allotted pain. That arrow Was lodged in his massive shoulder, and suffered in his heart. Paeon relieved his pains by applying medicine, Since he wasn’t mortal in any way at all. The one who doesn’t hesitate at doing sacrilegious things Is a violence-doing criminal, that guy who harms the gods with arrows. Athena the grey-eyed goddess sent him against you. The fool. Doesn’t Tydeus’ son recognize in his thoughts That someone who fights the gods doesn’t live very long, He won’t ever have children saying “daddy” at his needs When he comes home from war and the terrible battle. So now the son of Tydeus, even if he is super strong, Let him not even think about fighting someone better than you, Lest prudent Aigialeia Adrastus’ daughter Should wake her dear servants from sleep, weeping, Longing for her wedded husband, the best of the Achaeans, That strong wife of horse-taming Diomedes.” 

This passage has a few interesting things in it. First, while there is some evidence for Dione as a goddess outside of the Iliad, in Hesiod and her Homeric Hymn she is the product of Ouranos’ castrated testicles. By having a mother in Homer, Aphrodite is more neatly fit into an Olympian pantheon as a child of Zeus rather than a goddess from an earlier generation. Dione, coincidentally, has been seen as a feminine version of the alternate root for Zeus, Dios.

A short digression, one of the features of the flexibility of Homeric verse is that it admits formal variants that other dialects would tend to reduce. So, for convenience of metrical shape, there are two ways to decline Zeus:

Zeus/ Zēnos / Zēni /Zēna

Zeus / Dios / Dii / Dia

For those who don’t know an inflected language, the declension of a noun is the set of the forms needed to communicate their grammatical function in the sentence. So, Homeric Greek provides two ways to say “of Zeus” (Zēnos/Dios) or “to/for Zeus”(Zēni/Dii). The rhythmic shape of each pair differs long/short vs. short/short; and, further, the initial consonants can change the length of final vowels that precede them. Complex consonants like zeta (closer to the sound ds) can make short vowels that precede them (what we call “long by position” in contrast to “long by nature”).

Back to Dione’s speech: this is a good example of what I have mentioned before, a paradeigma, an example from the past used to persuade someone in the poem’s presence. This one provides a catalogue of divine suffering at the hands of humans to ‘console’ Aphrodite. Each of these examples have story traditions that are explained in the scholia (on which see below) or appear in other extant texts.

Beyond the details, this passage is also often compared for its structure to an epic fragment ascribed to the poet Panyasis in the 5th century BCE:

Panyasis Herakleia fr. 3 Benarbé = 16 K

“Demeter endured; the famous Lame-god endured; 

Poseidon endured; and silver-bowed Apollo endured

to serve a mortal human being for one year 

and even Ares strongheart endured under his father’s compulsion,” 

 

τλῆ μὲν Δημήτηρ, τλῆ δὲ κλυτὸς ᾿Αμφιγυήεις,

τλῆ δὲ Ποσειδάων, τλῆ δ’ ἀργυρότοξος ᾿Απόλλων 

ἀνδρὶ παρὰ θνητῷ θητευσέμεν εἰς ἐνιαυτόν, 

τλῆ δὲ καὶ ὀβριμόθυμος ῎Αρης ὑπὸ πατρὸς ἀνάγκῃ 

Note the repetitions in structures (τλῆ μὲν…τλῆ δὲ), themes (immortals harmed by mortals), and even diction (ὀβριμόθυμος in Panyasis is parallel to ὀβριμοεργὸς in Homer).  The similarity between this passage and the longer speech in Homer has led to much speculation as to the cause: is this catalogue a common structuring motif in early Greek poetry or is it a case of Panyasis imitating Homer (or Homer imitating Panyasis) or something more complex.

(Elton Barker and I have written about this a little: See our discussion in Homer’s Thebes).

An Issue of Texts

Iliad 5.403 reads σχέτλιος ὀβριμοεργὸς ὃς οὐκ ὄθετ’ αἴσυλα ῥέζων but there is a scholion that notes that the Hellenistic editor Aristarchus read αἰσυλοεργός. 

That would give us a different line σχέτλιος *αἰσυλοεργός ὃς οὐκ ὄθετ’ αἴσυλα ῥέζων (Schol. T ad Il. 5.403).. The difference is minor: σχέτλιος ὀβριμοεργὸς is something like a “violence-doing criminal” while σχέτλιος *αἰσυλοεργός is something closer to a “sacrilege-committing criminal”. My guess is that other editors preferred ὀβριμοεργὸς because it is not a hapax legomenon (a word said only once) and because the compound αἰσυλοεργός (aisuloergos) has its sense repeated at the end of the line with αἴσυλα ῥέζων (aisula rezôn). 

These two aesthetic criteria–uniqueness of words, close repetition–are not necessarily at home with the basic aesthetics of Greek poetry. Our scholia–the collection of marginal comments culled from centuries of scholarly editing of and commentary on ancient texts–preserve layers of different approaches to Homer. The editor Aristarchus, one of Homer’s earliest editors, is criticized by some modern authors for preserving unique or otherwise uncommon readings. (See this review by Gregory Nagy of Martin West’s edition of the Iliad for more.) My personal take on this is that the kind of repetition in this line is characteristic of something like an intentional archaism, a  close repetition that hearkens back to the legendary era the speaker is evoking. While the repetition and unique diction may seem odd from Hellenistic and modern aesthetic perspectives, I think it rings better for the context and is truer to the complexity of Homeric poetry.

I have discussed similar textual differences before in an article about a later scene in book 5, centering around Ares where our common text preserves rather bland vocabulary in preference to exceptional diction.

A World of Stories: Mythographical scholia

Another kind of material preserved in the scholia includes additional information about myth from outside Homer. There are several versions of the story of Diomedes’ wife, Aigialeia, in the scholia to Homer. The scholion in this case seems to read Dione’s comment’s as an allusion or even a coded threat about the impact of Athena’s anger on Diomedes in the long run.

Schol. T Ad Hom. Il. 5.512ex

“They say that Aigialeia, the youngest of the daughters of Adrastus, was Diomedes’ wife and really longed for him and troubled herself over him through the nights as well. But later, thanks to the rage of Aphrodite, she slept with a band of Argive youths and later on, Kometes, the son of Sthenelos, to whom Diomedes had entrusted the affairs of his household. Although she was planning to kill him when he returned home, she spared Diomedes because he fled to the altar of Athena. People say that when he left there he went to Iberia, as some claim, and that he was deceitfully killed by the king Daunus. Others claim that he was killed by Iounios the son of Daunos during a hunt. For this reason, Athena turned him into a god and changed his companions into herons.

The poet does not know of the desire of Kometes and Aigialeia.”

μὴ δὴν Αἰγιάλεια: φασὶν Αἰγιάλειαν τὴν νεωτέραν τῶν᾿Αδρηστίδων γυναῖκα Διομήδους οὖσαν σφόδρα αὐτὸν ἐπιποθεῖν καὶ ἀπολοφύρεσθαι καὶ κατὰ τὰς νύκτας. ὕστερον δὲ κατὰ μῆνιν ᾿Αφροδίτης πάσῃ τῇ νεολαίᾳ τῶν ᾿Αργείων αὐτὴν συγκωμάσαι, ἔσχατον δὲ καὶ †σθενέλῳ τῷ κομήτου†, ὃς ἦν ὑπὸ Διομήδους πιστευθεὶς τὰ κατ’ οἶκον. ἥκοντα δὲ αὐτὸν μέλλων ἀνελεῖν ἐφείσατο διὰ τὸ καταφυγεῖν εἰς τὸν τῆς ᾿Αθηνᾶς βωμόν· ὅθεν αὐτὸν φυγόντα φασὶν ἥκειν εἰς †ἰβηρίαν† κἀκεῖ, ὡς μέν τινες, δολοφονηθῆναι ὑπὸ Δαύνου τοῦ βασιλέως, ὡς δὲ ἔνιοι, ἀπολέσθαι ὑπὸ ᾿Ιουνίου τοῦ Δαύνου παιδὸς ἐν κυνηγεσίοις· ὅθεν αὐτὸν μὲν ἀπεθέωσεν ᾿Αθηνᾶ, τοὺς δὲ ἑταίρους εἰς ἐρωδιοὺς μετέβαλεν. 

τὸν Κομήτου πόθον καὶ Αἰγιαλείας οὐκ οἶδεν ὁ ποιητής. 

There is no way of knowing if this account was written into our out of our Iliad. By which I mean: we can’t really know if ancient audiences had access to this story and part of this is because we don’t have evidence of whether this story was told to flesh out what is said in the speech or if the speech reflects stories that were well known.

The scholiast’s notion that the “poet did not know this story” is a problematic one and one that reflects misunderstanding about Homeric poetic strategy.  Homeric narrative tends to suppress stories that don’t support its local and general aims, something I discuss elsewhere in reference to the Homeric treatment of Cassandra.

 It does seem peculiar that Dione would bring up Diomedes’ wife as all–but it is likely that she was a well-known part of his story as one of the Epigonoi. Actual evidence from early Greek poetry is limited. As far as I can see (and this is more or less confirmed by Timothy Gantz’s Early Greek Myth, 1993: 699), the story is later than the classical period, although a much later scholion to Lykophron suggests the story was told by the archaic poet Mimnermus:

Schol. To Lykophron, Alexandra 610

“Aphrodite, according to Mimnermus, was wounded by Diomedes and caused Aigialeia to sleep with many adulterers and to be loved by Kometes the son of Sthenelos. When he returned to Argos, she plotted against him. Then he fled to the altar of Hera and left with his companions in the night. Then he went to Italy to King aunos who killed him with a trick.”

 ἡ δὲ ᾿Αφροδίτη, καθά φησιν Μίμνερμος (F 22 Bgk), ὑπὸ Διομήδους τρωθεῖσα παρεσκεύασε τὴν Αἰγιαλείαν πολλοῖς μὲν μοιχοῖς συγκοιμηθῆναι, ἐρασθῆναι δὲ καὶ [῾Ιππολύτου] Κομήτου τοῦ Σθενέλου υἱοῦ. τοῦ δὲ Διομήδους παραγενομένου εἰς τὸ ῎Αργος, ἐπιβουλεῦσαι αὐτῶι· τὸν δὲ καταφυγόντα εἰς τὸν βωμὸν τῆς ῞Ηρας, διὰ νυκτὸς φυγεῖν σὺν τοῖς ἑταίροις, καὶ ἐλθεῖν εἰς ᾿Ιταλίαν πρὸς Δαῦνον βασιλέα, ὅστις αὐτὸν <δόλωι> ἀνεῖλεν. 

Some things to read

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

BOUCHARD, ELSA. “APHRODITE ‘PHILOMMÊDÊS’ IN THE ‘THEOGONY.’” The Journal of Hellenic Studies 135 (2015): 8–18. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44157344.

Contzen, Eva von. “The Limits of Narration: Lists and Literary History.” Style 50, no. 3 (2016): 241–60. https://doi.org/10.5325/style.50.3.0241.

Cook, Arthur Bernard. “Who Was the Wife of Zeus?” The Classical Review 20, no. 7 (1906): 365–78. http://www.jstor.org/stable/695286.

Hadzsits, George Depue. “Aphrodite and the Dione Myth.” The American Journal of Philology 30, no. 1 (1909): 38–53. https://doi.org/10.2307/288458.

Pratt, Louise. “The Parental Ethos of the Iliad.” Hesperia Supplements 41 (2007): 25–40. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20066781.

Sale, W. Merritt. “Aphrodite in the Theogony.” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 92 (1961): 508–21. https://doi.org/10.2307/283834.

Willcock, M. M. “Mythological Paradeigma in the Iliad.” The Classical Quarterly 14, no. 2 (1964): 141–54. http://www.jstor.org/stable/637720.

 

Theban Epic Fragments and the Homeric Iliad

As Elton Barker and I emphasize in our work on Homer, we think poetic rivalry was a formative feature of the generation of epic poetry in performance over time.  The culture projected within the Homeric world is deeply competitive and rivalry between the Homeric poems through the main figures Achilles and Odysseus is clear as well. But we also argue that agonism should be seen as a primary force in the way Homeric poems relate to other traditions as well, particularly those surrounding Thebes. 

(See this recent video we participated in on The Story of Thebes.)

Thebes comes to the fore in book 4 when Agamemnon reviews his troops and exhorts them to battle in the so-called Epipolesis. By the time he gets to Diomedes, he leans a little more into the language of reproach and attempts to shame Diomedes by comparing him to his father.

Hom. Il. 4.387-393; 396-400

There, stranger though he was, horse-driver Tydeus was not frightened, alone among many Cadmeans. But he challenged them to contests and won victory in all easily. Such a guardian was Athena for your father! But the Cadmeans, drivers of horses, were angered and, as he departed from the city, they set up a close ambush of fifty youths; there were two leaders…. But Tydeus let loose on them a unseemly fate: he slew them all and only one man he sent to return home: he sent Maion, trusting in the signs of the gods. Such a man was Aitolian Tydeus; but he fathered a son weaker than he in battle, but better in the assembly

After he does this, Sthelenos, the Patroklos to Diomedes’ Achilles, objects strongly. Asserting that he and Diomedes actually sacked a city when their fathers failed to do so.

Homer, Iliad. 4.404-110

Son of Atreus, don’t lie when you know how to speak clearly. We claim to be better than our fathers: we took the foundation of seven-gated Thebes though we led a smaller army before better walls because we were relying on the signs of the gods and Zeus’ help. Those men perished because of their own recklessness. Don’t put our fathers in the same honour’’

This response contains a few curiosities for Homeric epic. For one, instead of valuing the past, it directly contests the past as matching up to the present. For another, it assumes audience knowledge of a multigenerational war tradition around the city of Thebes to make sense of this. As we talk about in our book, Homer’s Thebes, the sacks of Thebes and Troy are positioned as a cosmic pair in ending the race of Heroes. For the particular stance of the Iliad, however, it is important to raise up the heroes of its epic: Diomedes and Sthenelos were heroic enough to take care of Thebes when their fathers could not; and yet, despite that, Troy is so much of a bigger deal that Diomedes and Sthenelos are merely role players on a much larger team.

But what of the tradition they are referring to? We have broad and deep evidence for narratives around Thebes from early iconography (8th century BCE) through extant and fragmentary dramas on the Athenian stage. But there is also a tradition of epic poetry more-or-less contemporaneous with Homer and Hesiod. Pausanias, the later travel writer,  even claims that the Thebais was best, after the Iliad and the Odyssey (see below). The primary texts that may be targets of Homeric play here, are the Thebais and the Epigonoi. 

Take these fragments with healthy skepticism, however. It is likelier that Homeric poetry was competing with Theban narratives in general rather than particular poems. And, of course, we always run the risk of a scholarly circularity with these fragments as well: they have been largely preserved in scholarly traditions commenting on and explaining the canonized texts of Homer and the Greek Tragedians. In our work, Elton and I don’t believe that we can accurately reconstruct Theban narratives from extant Homeric poetry, since the Iliad and the Odyssey strive so far to establish themselves as authoritative narratives.

The remains of an ancient epic called the Thebais that was attributed to ‘Homer’ by multiple sources in antiquity (although most scholars today, following Aristotle, agree that ‘Homer’ = Iliad and Odyssey or something like that). This epic seems to have told the Theban tale from the cursing of Polyneices and Eteocles by Oedipus through the events of the Seven Against Thebes.

Pausanias, IX 9.5

“The epic called Thebais was composed about this war. Kallinos, when he comes to mention this epic, says that Homer composed it. Many authors of considerable repute have believed the same thing. And I like this poem especially, after the Iliad and Odyssey at least.”

ἐποιήθη δὲ ἐς τὸν πόλεμον τοῦτον καὶ ἔπη Θηβαΐς• τὰ δὲ ἔπη ταῦτα Καλλῖνος ἀφικόμενος αὐτῶν ἐς μνήμην ἔφησεν ῞Ομηρον τὸν ποιήσαντα εἶναι, Καλλίνῳ δὲ πολλοί τε καὶ ἄξιοι λόγου κατὰ ταὐτὰ ἔγνωσαν• ἐγὼ δὲ τὴν ποίησιν ταύτην μετά γε ᾿Ιλιάδα καὶ τὰ ἔπη τὰ ἐς ᾿Οδυσσέα ἐπαινῶ μάλιστα.

Fragments of the Thebais

Fr. 1 (found in The Contest of Homer and Hesiod)

“Goddess, sing of very-thirsty Argos, from where the Leaders [departed for Thebes]”

῎Αργος ἄειδε, θεά, πολυδίψιον, ἔνθεν ἄνακτες

Fr. 2 (Found in Athenaeus’ Deipnosophists)

“Then the god-bred hero, blond Polyneices,
First placed before Oedipus a fine silver platter,
A thing of god-minded Kadmos. And then
He filled a fine golden cup with sweet wine.
But when he noted that lying before him were the
Honored gifts of his own father, a great evil filled his heart.
Quickly he uttered grievous curses against both
Of his own sons—and he did not escape the dread Fury’s notice—
That they would not divide their inheritance in friendship
But that they would both have ceaseless war and battles.”

αὐτὰρ ὁ διογενὴς ἥρως ξανθὸς Πολυνείκης
πρῶτα μὲν Οἰδιπόδηι καλὴν παρέθηκε τράπεζαν
ἀργυρέην Κάδμοιο θεόφρονος• αὐτὰρ ἔπειτα
χρύσεον ἔμπλησεν καλὸν δέπας ἡδέος οἴνου.
αὐτὰρ ὅ γ’ ὡς φράσθη παρακείμενα πατρὸς ἑοῖο
τιμήεντα γέρα, μέγα οἱ κακὸν ἔμπεσε θυμῶι,
αἶψα δὲ παισὶν ἑοῖσιν ἐπ’ ἀμφοτέροισιν ἐπαρὰς
ἀργαλέας ἠρᾶτο• θοὴν δ’ οὐ λάνθαν’ ᾿Ερινύν•
ὡς οὔ οἱ πατρώϊ’ ἐνηέι φιλότητι
δάσσαιντ’, ἀμφοτέροισι δ’ ἀεὶ πόλεμοί τε μάχαι τε

Fr.4 (Found in Scholion to Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus, 1375)

“When [Oedipus] noticed the cut of meat, he hurled it to the ground and spoke:
‘Alas, my children have sent this as a reproach to me…’
He prayed to King Zeus and the other gods
That they would go to Hades’ home at each other’s hands.

ἰσχίον ὡς ἐνόησε, χαμαὶ βάλεν εἶπέ τε μῦθον•
‘ὤ μοι ἐγώ, παῖδες μέγ’ ὀνειδείοντες ἔπεμψαν …’
*
εὖκτο Διὶ βασιλῆϊ καὶ ἄλλοις ἀθανάτοισι
χερσὶν ὑπ’ ἀλλήλων καταβήμεναι ῎Αιδος εἴσω.

Fragments of the Epigonoi

As early as Herodotus (4.32) it was doubted that the epic that told the story of the sons of the Seven Against Thebes was by Homer. Instead, it was attributed later to a man named Antimachus from Teios. We have two lines most people agree on, and a handful of uncertain lines.

Fr. 1 (From the Contest of Homer and Hesiod)

“Now, Muses, let us sing in turn of the younger men”
Νῦν αὖθ’ ὁπλοτέρων ἀνδρῶν ἀρχώμεθα, Μοῦσαι

Fr. 4 (From Clement of Alexandria)

“Many evils come to men from gifts”

ἐκ γὰρ δώρων πολλὰ κάκ’ ἀνθρώποισι πέλονται.

Fr. 6 (Dub. from the Contest of Homer and Hesiod)

“So then they divided the meat of bulls and wiped clean
The sweat-covered necks of horses, since they had their fill of war.”

ὣς οἱ μὲν δαίνυντο βοῶν κρέα, καὐχένας ἵππων
ἔκλυον ἱδρώοντας, ἐπεὶ πολέμοιο κορέσθην.

Fr. 7 (Dub. From Scholia to Aristophanes’ Peace)

“They girded themselves for war once they stopped….
And they poured out of the towers as an invincible cry arose.”

θωρήσσοντ’ ἄρ’ ἔπειτα πεπαυμένοι
πύργων δ’ ἐξεχέοντο, βοὴ δ’ ἄσβεστος ὀρώρει.

Bibliography on rivalry and Thebes

n.b this is not an exhaustive bibliography. If you’d like anything else included, please let me know. If there is anything you’d like to read that you don’t have free access to, let me know.

Barker, E.T.E. . 2009. Entering the Agon: Dissent and Authority in Homer, Historiography and Tragedy. Oxford.

Barker, E. T. E., and J. P. Christensen. 2006. “Flight Club: The New Archilochus Fragment and its Resonance with Homeric Epic.” Materiali e Discussioni per l’Analisi dei Testi Classici 57:19–43.

———. 2008. “Oedipus of Many Pains: Strategies of Contest in Homeric Poetry.” Leeds International Classical Studies 7.2. (http://www.leeds.ac.uk/classiscs/lics/)

———. 2011. “On Not Remembering Tydeus: Diomedes and the Contest for Thebes.” Materiali e discussioni per l’analisi dei testi classici 66:9–44.

———. 2014. “Even Herakles Had to Die: Epic Rivalry and the Poetics of the Past in Homer’s Iliad.” Trends in Classics: Homer and the Theban Tradition, ed. Christos Tsagalis, 249–277.

Christensen, Joel. 2018. “Eris and Epos: Composition, Competition and the ‘Domestication’ of Strife.” YAGE.

Cingano, E. 1992. “The Death of Oedipus in the Epic Tradition.” Phoenix 46:1–11.

———. 2000. “Tradizioni su Tebe nell’epica e nella lirica greca arcaica.” In La città di Argo: Mito, storia, tradizioni poetiche, ed. P. A. Bernardini, 59–68. Rome.

———. 2004. “The Sacrificial Cut and the Sense of Honour Wronged in Greek Epic Poetry: Thebais frgs. 2-3D.” In Food and Identity in the Ancient World, ed. C. Grotanelli and L. Milano, 269–279. Padova.

Collins, Derek. . 2004. Master of the Game: Competition and Performance in Greek Poetry. Hellenic Studies 7. Washington DC.

Davies, Malcolm.  2014. The Theban Epics. Hellenic Studies 69. Washington, DC.

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

Griffith, M. 1990. “Contest and Contradiction in Early Greek Poetry.” In Griffith and Mastronade 1990:185–207.

Irwin, Elizabeth. 2005. “Gods Among Men? The Social and Political Dynamics of the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women.” In Hunter 2005: 35–84.

Martin, Richard. 1989. The Language of Heroes: Speech and Performance in the Iliad. Ithaca.

Nagy, Gregory. 1979/1999. The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek poetry. Baltimore.

Pucci, Pietro. 1987. Odysseus Polutropos: Intertextual Readings in the Iliad and the Odyssey. Ithaca.

Scodel, Ruth. 2008. Epic Facework. Swansea. 

Tsagalis, C. 2008. The Oral Palimpsest: Exploring Intertextuality in the Homeric Epics. Washington, DC.

Book 4 of the Iliad moves away from the dominant interests of book 3 in providing a kind of ‘flashback’ to the beginning of the Trojan War to the beginning of the violence in this poem. Where book 3 introduces the duel between Paris and Menelaos, book 4 turns back to Agamemnon’s leadership and the beginning of proper Iliadic violence. To ‘begin’ yet again, the scene returns to Zeus with the other gods on Olympos pondering not destroying Troy. Of course, the notion of preserving Troy is impossible, but this motif reinforces Zeus’ position as the ringmaster. As Bruce Heiden explores in a series of articles (see the bibliography before), Zeus’ speeches both outline the plot to come in the epic and provide guidelines for where the books break and how performances of the whole song may have been structured.

In my view on the reading and teaching and my general sense of the five major themes, book 4 is most engaged with the themes of politics, the relationship between gods and humans, and the positioning of Iliadic content and themes in and against other narrative traditions. 

Zeus’ ‘stage-managing’ of the plot is an important part of the theme of divine will vs. human agency. Book 4 takes pains to (more firmly) establish the Trojans as oath-breakers, responsible for the conflict (as if we needed more reasons!). The initial argument between Zeus, Athena, and Hera, moreover, anticipates similar re-articulations of the plot in book 8 and echoes of theomachy in books 5, 8, 13, 14, and 15.

The central framing mechanism of book 4 is the so-called Epipōlēsis (ἐπιπώλησις) . The epipolesis (perhaps best translated as “the inspection of the troops” or something like that) is one of those episodes named specifically by ancient scholars. It denotes Agamemnon’s actions in book 4 when he goes around exhorting Idomeneus, the two Ajaxes, Nestor, Odysseus, and then finally Diomedes and Sthenelos. Elton Barker and I have written about this scene a few times, but I think Rachel Lesser puts it well when she argues in chapter four of her Desire in the Iliad that the epipolesis “may be the only scene in the Iliad where Agamemnon practices effective leadership.”

Indeed, along with actions in book 11, where Agamemnon enjoys his own aristeia, book 4 is one of the chief places where he is characterized both as a leader and as a brother (when Menelaos is wounded). But part of what makes this sequence interesting is that Agamemnon is at times somewhat inept at his task. Odysseus gets annoyed with him; the Ajaxes just nod and go on their way. But when he lays into Diomedes to shame him for not fighting (when he is on his way, he tells a story about Dioemdes’ father Tydeus that doesn’t make a lot of sense for the world of Homer. In this paradeigma, Agamemnon provides another example of a Homeric hero trying to make sense of his experiences through stories from the past and coming up short. As I see it, these are moments where the epic itself models the problems of paradigmatic thinking by exploring the limits of different stories’ analogical value. ( This is covered a little in the post Speaking of Centaurs.)

But as Elton Barker and I talk about in Homer’s Thebes and our article “On not Remembering Tydeus”, this moment is also central to the Iliad’s appropriation from other traditions in order to establish itself as the best story in town. Note how Sthenelos, in responding to Agamemnon, argues that he and Diomedes are better than their fathers:

“Son of Atreus, don’t lie when you know how to speak truly. We claim to be better than our fathers: we took the foundation of seven-gated Thebes though we led a smaller army before better walls because we were trusting the signs of the gods and Zeus’ help. Those men perished because of their own recklessness. Don’t put our fathers in the same honor.”

This scene is somewhat unique in an epic that privileges the past as a place where men were greater than they are today. It capitalizes upon Sthenelos and Diomedes’ status as warriors who actually sacked Thebes to question whether the good old days were anything but merely old.

So, when reading book 4, pay close attention to how these speeches fulfill multiple tasks: they supercharge the plot, provide essential opportunities to characterize individual heroes, and give us a glimpse into how the Iliad pillages other traditions to foreground its own interests.

Some guiding questions for book 4

What does Zeus’ speech at the beginning of the epic do?

What is the cumulative effect of Agamemnon’s epipolesis (his rallying of the troops?)

What is the impact of the exchange between Diomedes, Sthenelus, and Agamemnon?

Brief Bibliography on the epipolesis and Agamemnon

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

Christensen, Joel P., and Elton T. E. Barker. “On Not Remembering Tydeus: Agamemnon, Diomedes and the Contest for Thebes.” Materiali e Discussioni per l’analisi Dei Testi Classici, no. 66 (2011): 9–43. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41415488.

Donlan, Walter. “Homer’s Agamemnon.” The Classical World 65, no. 4 (1971): 109–15. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4347609.

Haft, Adele J. “Odysseus’ Wrath and Grief in the ‘Iliad’: Agamemnon, the Ithacan King, and the Sack of Troy in Books 2, 4, and 14.” The Classical Journal 85, no. 2 (1989): 97–114. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3297409.

Hawkins, Anne Hunsaker. “Confronting Mortality: The Iliad’s Androktasiai.” Literature and Medicine 17, no. 2 (1998): 181-196. https://doi.org/10.1353/lm.1998.0022.

Heiden, B. (1996). The three movements of the iliad. Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, 37(1), 5-22. Retrieved from https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/three-movements-iliad/docview/229178418/se-2

Holmes, B. (2007). The Iliad’s Economy of Pain. Transactions of the American Philological Association 137(1), 45-84. https://doi.org/10.1353/apa.2007.0002.

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