The Song of the Sirens: Essays on Homer 0822630591, 9780822630593

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The Song of the Sirens Essayson Homer

Pietro Pucci

The Song of the Sirens

Greek Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches General Editor: Gregory Nagy, Harvard University Assistant Editor: Timothy Power, Harvard University On the front cover: A calendar frieze representing the Athenian months, months, reused in the Byzantine Church of the Little Metropolis in Athens. The cross is superimposed, obliterating Taurus of the Zodiac. The choice of this frieze for books in Greek Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches reflects this series' emphasis on the blending of the diverse heritages-Near Eastern, Classical, and Christian-in the Greek tradition. Drawing by Laurie Kain Hart, based on a photograph. Recent Recent titles in the series are: The Shield ofAchilles ofAchilles and the Poetics ofEkphrasis, of Ekphrasis, Andrew Sprague Sprague Becker, Virginia Polytechnic Institute The Blinded Eye: Thucydides and the New Written Word, Gregory Crane, Tufts University The Wrath ofAthena: ofAthena: Gods and Men in the Odyssey, Jenny Strauss Clay, University of Virginia Virginia Talking Trojan: Speech and Community in the Iliad, Hilary Mackie, Rice University Poet ofApollonius, Poet and Audience in the Argonautica of Apollonius, Robert V. Albis, The Hotchkiss School Theatrical Space and Historical Place in Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus, Lowell Lowell Edmunds, Edmunds, Rutgers University Choruses ofYoung of Young Women in Ancient Greece: Their Morphology, Religious Role, and Social Social Function, Function, Claude Calame, University of Lausanne, Switzerland; translated by Derek Collins and Jane Orion ofAuthority in Greek Poetics, Eurykleia and Her Successors: Female Figures ofAuthority Helen Pournara Karydas, Boston Latin School and Harvard University Speech in Speech: Studies in Incorporated Oratio Recta in Attic Drama and Oratory, Victor Victor Bers, Yale University Aegean Strategies: Studies of ofCulture Culture and Environment on the European Fringe, P. Nick Kardulias, College of Wooster and Mark T. Shutes, ofWooster Youngstown State University ofAleman, Aglaia: The poetry of Alcman, Sappho, Pindar, Bacchylides, and Corinna, Charles Segal, Harvard University Charles

The Song of the Sirens Essays on Homer

PIETRO PUCCI

ROWMAN & & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC. Lanham • Boulder Boulder·- New York York·- Oxford Lanham-

ROWMAN & & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, PUBLISHERS, INC. INe. ROWMAN

Published in the United States of America by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 4720 Boston Way, Lanham, Maryland 20706 12 Hid's Copse Road Cummor Hill, Oxford OX2 9JJ, England Cummor Copyright © 1998 by Rowman & & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. publication may be reproduced, All rights reserved. No part of this publication stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Pucci, Pietro The song of the sirens essays on Homer / Pietro Pucci. p. em. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 13: 978-0-8226-3059-3 (paper:: alk. paper) (paper 1. Homer--Criticism Homer-s-Criticism and interpretation. 2. Epic poetry, Greek-History and mythology) in literature. 4. Achilles (Greek criticism. 3. Odysseus (Greek mythology) mythology) in literature. 5. Trojan War-Literature and the war. I. Title PA4037.P86 1997 883-dc21 97-39863 883--aav9£v. We note 9aJ..l~1l0"£v, "he was amazed," which, as noted above, carries a stronger charge than the normal surprise of recognition. Note also J..l£tu 0' hpa1t£to, "he turned": this expression is unique in the Homeric corpus in this sense and certainly the form hpa1t£to would have been sufficient oll' its own. 9 I need not stress the possibility that J..l£tatpE1tOJ..lat refers to the change or transformation of Achilles himself CHes. Erga 416), as if on seeing the goddess the hero himself alters, or that it indicates Achilles' transfer of his attention to the goddess.1O We turn instead to the moment at which Achilles sees the goddess or, more accurately, recognizes her. The text describes the blazing eyes of one of the two characters: OEtVW M oi 00"0"£ q>aav9£v. The impossibility of determining whether the oi refers to Achilles or Athena is a familiar problem. With this irritating grammatical imprecision, the text solicits our curiosity, tempting critics to decide whom these blazing eyes belong to. It would indeed be worth knowing whether this terrible blaze offers us a reflection of the goddess's splendor. But we cannot know; the ambiguity is irresolvable. ll Without the certainty that it is Athena who is described with those terribly flashing eyes, the goddess's presence remains for the reader a blank presence, with no imaginable form. She remains in the sphere of the unexpressed. She is visible, quite literally, only to Achilles .. If we could be certain that the eyes described in the text are Athena's, then we would have a description in the form of a synecdoche-a spark at least of the entire luminous form of the goddess. But the most important point remains this grammatical imprecision, this clumsy negligence on the part of the text. A tiny accident cuts us off from a vision of the divine. The Iliad's enunciation of the epiphany frames it amidst indecision, between silence and synecdoche. But what is it that Achilles sees? The Athena promakhos with spear and Gorgon-emblazoned shield, as she is described at It. 5.733ff.? The text allows us to imagine so, if we wish, but it seems to me that the "not-said" in our passage signifies precisely that the poets of this text knew no more than they tell us about the form in which Athena appears. It is impossible, in other words, that the reader is here being invited to imagine the figure of the 9. Chantraine (1963, 116) explains the meta as "aboutissement de I'action." 10. Il. 1.160; ll. 12.238; Jl. 9.630. 11. Most recently Nicole Loraux (1983, 99ff.) has collected the evidence and arguments, among them the recurrent epithets YA K