Homer, Tradition and Invention 9789004056473, 9004056475, 9789004673823

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HOMER TRADITION AND INVENTION

CINCINNATI CLASSICAL STUDIES NEW

SERIES

VOLUME

II

LEIDEN

E. J. BRILL I978

HOMER TRADITION

AND EDITED

BERNARD

INVENTION BY

C. FENIK

LEIDEN

E. J. BRILL 1978

Published with financial support of the Classics Fund of the University of Cincinnati established by Louise Taft Semple in memory of her father, Charles Phelps Tatt.

ISBN

90 04

05647

5

Copyright 1978 by E. J. Brill, Leiden, The Netherlands All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or translated in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, microfiche or any other means without written permission from the publisher PRINTED

IN THE

NETHERLANDS

CONTENTS Preface

.

.

oo

rn

Alfred Heubeck, Homeric Studies Today: Results and Prospects . . .........2.2.2.2.2.2.2^.2^.. G. S. Kirk, The Formal Duels in Books 3 and 7 of the Ihad J. B. Hainsworth, Good and Bad Formulae. Uvo

.

. . . . . .

Hoelscher, The Transformation from Folk-tale to Epic

Bernard Fenik, Stylization and Variety: Four Monologues in

thelhad

. . . ........ l.l. llle

PREFACE The essays printed here were delivered as lectures at a symposium sponsored by the Department of Classics of the University of Cincinnati and held at the University of Cincinnati March 5-6, 1976. The subject of the symposium is implied by the title. It expresses a dilemma of contemporary Homeric scholarship. Milman Parry and his successors have studied those features of Homeric style that were inherited and learned rather than created or individually shaped. Their main effort has been toward analysis of the epic diction and a poetics of oral composition. Formulaic expressions have been identified and tabulated, statistics compiled of their number and frequency, the modes of their generation reconstructed and their variability and flexibility subjected to close measurement. Nor have the larger systematized components of Homeric narrative been neglected: typical scenes, repeated action sequences and recurrent themes. Study of living oral poetry has led to a sounder understanding of many peculiarities of the Greek epic that previously resisted explanation. Understandably and properly, indeed necessarily, the bare description of these traditional elements and their reduction into a workable taxonomy have occupied more than a generation of scholars. But at the end of this research looms another question, more

fundamental

and

even

more

difficult:

what

of Homer

the

poet? the creative artist? What belongs to him amidst this overwhelming conglomerate? To those unfamiliar with the work of Parry and his school the problem will not seem to be immediately desperate. Surely Homer, like any artist, was born into a tradition that he at once absorbed and recast. But how precisely does the truism apply in Homer's case? The demonstration is fraught with methodological snares and confronts an apparent paradox. On the one hand the formular aspects of Homer's style, contemplated by themselves, are so relentlessly systematized as to resemble a machine that runs by itself—or at least allows only a minimal freedom to the poet at the controls. A direct consequence of this (as Parry demonstrated) is that the imputation of specific meaning and force to Homeric

VIII

PREFACE

epithets is subject to severe limitation. This requires, in turn, (as Parry knew and argued repeatedly) a deep re-ordering of the categories by which the Greek epic is to be interpreted. On the other hand, it is equally clear that the Iliad and Odyssey alike were shaped by a poetic imagination of the first order, both on the monumental level and down into the details of scene after scene. Here is an excellence of a sort generic to all great literature and not dependent on interpretive criteria derived from the mechanics of formular systems. To reduce it to a question of method: how shall we give full recognition to the large areas of Homer's style that came to him ready-made, and interpret them properly, but also account for the powerful and obviously unique artistry of the Iliad and Odyssey? In

short,

how

shall

we

discover

Homer's

invention

within

his

tradition ? While Homeric scholarship in England and America has preoccupied itself increasingly with the theory of oral poetry, studies in Europe, especially in Germany, have continued along more traditional lines. Except for a few notable exceptions, the work of Milman Parry and his school has not struck root there. Paradoxically, the consequences have not been all bad, if only because one extreme helps balance the other. We on our side have tended to study Homer's art only in terms of his manipulation of formular units and to dwell on those features of his style common to all heroic poetry. The Germans have resisted this and not allowed their expectations of Homer to be defined by what is achieved in modern Crete or Yugoslavia. As a result they have made strong advances, but along lines very different from our own. Both sides suffer from willful isolation. Our own tendency has been to ignore the best in Homer because it seems inaccessible by way of the categories of formula and typology. The Germans run the serious risk of interpretive anachronism and hopeless vulnerability to the implacable statistics and comparative data compiled by the Parryists over the last forty odd years. The purpose of this symposium was, then, to build bridges: to encourage the two schools to learn from each other and to turn oral poetry studies to larger and in some cases traditional problems of interpretation. All the papers are directed to this goal in one way or another. No theoretical consensus was expected and none emerged. What all the contributors share is the effort to take into

PREFACE

IX

account the epics' deep footing in tradition as well as their high artistic merit. We hope this has been useful, that meaningful cooperation has been carried out and fruitful questions raised. The other contributors to this volume join me in expressing our thanks to the many scholars from all over the United States who attended the symposium and who added so much to the discussion that followed each lecture. Bernard Fenik Cincinnati, February,

1977

HOMERIC

STUDIES

TODAY

Results and Prospects ALFRED

HEUBECK

Erlangen

Any attempt to provide a survey of the results and prospects of Homeric studies today can only be, as matters stand, fragmentary and incomplete. The papers which have been published on Homer in recent decades are so numerous ! that even the specialist can hardly retain complete control over the situation and follow and examine each work with the same thoroughness. Thus in this short report studies of interest only to the specialist will be left aside. On

the

other

hand,

it will be

impossible

not

to draw

attention

occasionally to studies and research trends dating from further back; finally we cannot and should not forego taking a personal stand, implicitly and explicitly. It seems to me to be in the interest of clarity when subjective judgment is introduced into the objective report.

For almost two centuries the argument concerning proper appreciation of Homeric poetry has been marked by a polarity of standpoints, especial where it has been staged in Germanspeaking countries. The unitarian and the analytical approach to Homer have from the outset stood in almost irreconcilable opposition, and this is still true in our day; perhaps in the course of time

methods, arguments and results have changed; perhaps here and there the different standpoints have come a little closer together; but basically the situation has hardly changed at all. As proof of the fact that the old antithesis is still alive I only need to refer you to the papers published in recent decades by such excellent scholars as, on the one hand, G. Jachmann ? and P. Von der Mühll,?

1 Cf. D. W. Packard a. Tania Meyers, A Bibliography of Homeric Scholarship. Preliminary Edition 1930-1970 (1974); A. Heubeck, Die Homerische

Frage (1974), p. 243-304. ? Cf.

esp.

"Homerische

Einzellieder,"

>

in:

Symbola

Coloniensia

J.

Kroll

oblata (1949; repr. 1968); Der homerische Schiffskatalog und die Ilias (1958). 3 Cf. “Odyssee,” in: RE Suppl. 7 (1940), c. 696-768; Kritisches Hypomnema zur Ilias (1952).

2

ALFRED

HEUBECK

and on the other K. Reinhardt * and W. Schadewaldt.® In other countries, particularly in Anglo-Saxon lands, the argument has not been carried out with the same intensity; indeed, the general tendency there has been not to abandon the belief in one great poet.® Since the thirties however, in precisely these Anglo-Saxon countries, scholars have been engaged, with considerable animation, in a new effort to come to a correct interpretation of Homeric poetry. This discussion was given a sudden boost by M. Parry,’ who at the same time raised it to an entirely different level, where the older, exhausted fight between Unitarians and Analysts appeared almost irrelevant. By comparing poetries composed in traditional and individual style, and then changing and elaborating this into a confrontation between oral and written poetry, Parry left behind him the arguments of traditional Homeric criticism and opened up to research new paths and possibilities for reaching a better understanding of the poetry. To put it coarsely and somewhat schematically: Parry and his followers ? are less concerned with the problem of whether the Iliad or Odyssey stem from one hand or from many, than with the question whether Homeric poetry should be included in the genos of traditional, oral poetry, or in literature in the literal meaning of the word. They hoped, with the help of an increasingly exact and refined knowledge of the genos “oral heroic poetry," of its requirements and potentialities, its capacities and limits, that not only the essence of Homeric 4 Die

Ihas

und thr Dichter,

hg.v.

U.

Hólscher

(1961);

Tvadition

und Geist.

Gesammelte Essays zur Dichtung, hg.v. C. Becker (1960), p. 1-124.

5 Iliasstudien, Abh. Ak. Leipzig 43:6 (11944; ?1943; 31959);

Von Homers

Welt und Werk (11944; 71952; 31959; *1965). 8 Cf. e.g. M. Bowra, Tradition and Design in the Iliad (11930; 71950); W. F. Woodhouse, The Composition of Homer’s Odyssey (1930; repr. 1969); H. T. Wade-Gery, The Poet of the Iliad (1952). 7 L'épithéte traditionelle dans Homére; essai sur un probléme de style

homérique (1928); Les formules et la métrique dans Homéve (1928). These and the later works of M. Parry are now united in the book edited by his son Adam Parry: The Making of Homeric Verse. The Collected Papers of M.P., ed. by A.P. (1971; abbrev.: MHV). 8 For this change in M. Parry's conception cf. now A. Parry, in: MHV, p. IX-L XII. ? Amongst these we only cite A. B. Lord, The Singer of Tales (1960); “Homer and Other Epic Poetry,” in: A Companion to Homer, ed. by J. A. B. Wace a. F. H. Stubbings (1962), p. 179-214, and J. A. Notopoulos (for a full bibliography cf. Packard-Meyers, /.c. p. 97f.).

HOMERIC

STUDIES

TODAY

3

poetry would be better understood, but also that a truly fundamental question could be answered, namely under which branch of epic poetry Homer should be classified. I scarcely need add that the majority of those who have set about the task of questioning and arguing according to Parry's principles support the inclusion of Homer in oral poetry. Without wishing to diminish the originality and importance of Parry's work, we note here that he did not in every respect open up new territory. In particular, K. Witte !^ recognized a long time ago the importance of formulaic phrases and their variations, depending principally on prosody, for the formation of epic expressions; W. Arend 1} observed that the formulaic verses and groups of verses describing so-called typical scenes (1.6. events and actions which inevitably appear again and again within the heroic world) are an inherited and integrating element of epic versification; many scholars,

C. Rothe !? and W.

Schadewaldt !? among them, stressed

that Homer's famous verse repetitions should not be misused for analytical deductions, but that here 15 to be seen a specific stylistic intention of archaic Greek heroic poetry. Parry also had predecessors in his comparison with non-Greek heroic poetry: at the beginning of our century, M. Murko 15 was the first to compare Homeric and Yugoslavian heroic epics, whereby he also made recordings of this folk-poetry. Finally, the thesis that Homer composed his poetry without knowledge of writing was, if I am not mistaken, first defended by R. Wood !? as far back as the eighteenth century. 10 The

papers

of

K.

Witte,

published

in Glotta

1-5

(1909-1914),

are

now

collected: Zur homerischen Sprache (1972). Also K. Meister, Die homerische Kunstsprache (1921; repr. 1963) could here be named. 1 Die typischen Szenen bei Homer (1933); cf. M. Parry's famous recension,

CPh 31 (1936), p. 357-360 (= MHV p. 404-407).

12 Die Bedeutung dev Wiederholungen für die homerische Frage (1890); Die Ilias als Dichtung (1950) esp. p. 22-55; Die Odyssee als Dichtung (1914). 13 Cf. Iliasstudien, p. 24-28 a. passim (with reference to former works Ῥ. 25, n. 2). 14 The results of M. Murko's former publications in: Sitz.-Ber. Ak. Wien 173:3 (1913); 176:2 (1915); 179:1 (1915) are summarized in: La poésie populaire épique au début du XXe siécle (1929). Also O. Immisch, Die innere Entwicklung der griechischen Eptk (1904), referring to the observations of V. V. Radloff about the folk poetry of the Kirgisian tribes in northern Turkestan,

could be named.

15 An Essay on the Original Genius of Homer (1767; 1769); cf. Hilda L. Lorimer, "Homer and the Art of Writing. A Sketch of Opinion between 1713 and 1939," AJA 52 (1948), p. 11-23, esp. 12-14; J. L. Myres, Homer and His Critics, ed. by Dor. F. Gray (1958), p. 59-67.

4

ALFRED

HEUBECK

It is astonishing that the two directions of Homeric criticism, the traditional and the progressive, if I may thus abbreviate them, have only rarely come together with positive results, in spite of the ties between them. In Germany, neither prominent Unitarians such as K. Reinhardt nor Analysts such as G. Jachmann have ever taken into account the arguments of the Parry-Lord-theory. Broadly speaking, the Unitarians reckon, expressis verbis or implicite, with a Homer who wrote his poetry down; so do the majority of Analysts, whose notion of the modus operandi of the various poets supposedly involved in the formation of the Homeric poems is based on the assumption, usually unspoken, that these poets worked at a writing-table. They do not see, or do not want to see, how fragile this assumption is, should one be disposed to allow even limited validity to the viewpoints of the theoreticians of oral poetry.!$ On the other hand, it must be noted that Homeric

studies from

traditional schools, be they unitarian or analytical, have been paid little or no attention in Anglo-Saxon research. They are apparently regarded as the vestiges of a by-gone age, and what is particularly remarkable is the fact that the research trend which we call neoanalytical is not spoken of at all, although there would be good reason to do so precisely from the standpoint of the oral poetry theory. There will be more to say about this later. Of course these remarks express the situation one-sidedly and schematically—intentionally so. It should however not be forgotten that there has been for some time a more and more pronounced tendency in German-speaking countries to take notice of the work produced by Anglo-Saxon research and not to leave it on the shelf as a quantité négligeable; here I refer you in particular to the fundamental studies of A. Lesky.!”

16 Cf. A. Lesky, "Mündlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit im homerischen Epos,”’ in: Festschrift f. D. Kralik (1954), p. 1-9 (= Ges. Schriften 1966, p. 63-71).

17 Besides the just cited paper cf. esp. (1967),

c. 7-23

of the separate

printing.

"Homeros,"

The

relevance

in: RE

Suppl.

11

of the oral poetry

theory is also stressed by F. Dirlmeier, ‘‘Das serbokroatische Heldenlied und Homer," Sitz.-Ber. Heidelberg (1971:1); A. Heubeck, Gymnasium 66 (1959), p. 395-397, at last: Die Hom. Frage p. 130-152; H. Patzer, "Dichterische Kunst und poetisches Handwerk im homerischen Epos,’ Sztz.-Ber. der Wiss. Ges. an d. J]. W. Goethe-Universitat Frankfurt-Main 10:1 (1971), p. 7-14 a. passim.

HOMERIC

STUDIES

TODAY

5

To proceed: any one who 1s caught up in the fascination of the phenomenon of Homeric poetry will be at pains to give it its due— that is, to appreciate the poet and his poetic intentions as fully as possible, to recognize his capacities and potential as well as his limits. A basic part of this endeavour will be the attempt to assign the poet his correct place in his own time and in the cultural and literary development of the archaic Greek world. Only then can one avoid the error of judging him according to standards which for historical reasons are inappropriate. This is a mistake to which traditional Homeric study has, in many cases, apparently fallen victim, especially in its analytical variation. For scholars of this persuasion believe that, by using established categories gained from the study of literary epic, they can identify in the Homeric epics peculiarities, incongruences and contradictions of different kinds; and they hope, by means of various manipulations, to retrieve that which may be considered to be "genuine" Homer.!? It is indisputably due to oral poetry research that the basic dubiousness of this process has been laid bare, and that the question has been asked whether the standards which until now have been applied to Homeric poetry are adequate at all. Everyone who knows that Homeric poetry stands indelibly in the tradition of a centuries old history of oral poetry—and nowadays one can no longer avoid acknowledging this—must recognize the importance of this poetic tradition for the creation of the Homeric epics, and must ask whether it is not better to judge Homer according to categories which have been gained from the study and knowledge of oral heroic poetry than to associate and compare him, more or less unreflectively, with the literary epics of a later age. It is beyond all doubt that this question is justified. However, if one limits oneself, as do some supporters of the Parry-Lordtheory, to demonstrating how deeply rooted Homeric poetry 15, on all conceivable levels, in the customs and practices of traditional oral heroic poetry, then one forgets, in my opinion, that the incorporation of oral poetry into Homeric research is, in the last analysis, only to pose a question; implicitly, however, not one single answer is produced. The question is, namely, whether Homer

18 The most excellent example of this kind of interpretation may here stand for numerous other works: U. v. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Die Ilias und Homer (1916; 1920).

6

ALFRED

HEUBECK

really belongs completely to the tradition from which he comes, or whether that which distinguishes him from this tradition and allows him to surpass it 1s not more important than that which ties him to it. This question—crucial for Homeric appreciation—is today still unanswered and a consensus omnium 1165 far in the future. The reason why no absolutely decisive answer can be given is that we cannot compare Homer with older Greek heroic poetry. It is true that comparative studies have been able to demonstrate that non-Greek oral epic shows such an astonishing homogeneity in form, content, importance and effect that it does not seem erroneous to include pre-Homeric epic in this worldwide genos.!? Moreover, one may justifiably draw conclusions from Homeric poetry as to the nature of its ancestry. On the whole, however, our knowledge of pre-Homeric poetry stands on an admittedly broad, but weak, base and this should not be forgotten. Oral poetry studies have given us valuable insight into the instruments and material with which the oral poet worked. I should like to stress three of these insights here: Firstly, the essence and importance of the formula consisting of two or more

words,

however

one cares to understand

or interpret

M. Parry’s famous definition.?? Secondly, the importance of the stereotype statements of one or more verses, describing the so-called typical events and happenings

within the heroic world.?! Thirdly and finally, in addition to these two realisations, which are concerned mainly with diction and structural questions, there is another discovery concerning content: in heroic epic there are a number of themes which occur again and again. They are partic19 Cf. esp. M. Bowra, Heroic Poetry (11952; ?1961). 20 "Dans la diction des poémes aédiques la formule peut étre définie comme une expression (my italics) qui est réguliérement employée, dans les mémes conditions métriques, pour exprimer une certaine idée essentielle." This

definition (L'épithéte trad. p. 16) is varied in the English version (HSCP 41, 1930, p. 80): ‘‘...as a group of words (my italics) which is regularly employed under the same metrical conditions. ..''. For the discussion of the problems raised by this definition and the various interpretations of the term "formula"

cf. e.g. A. Hoekstra, Homeric Modifications of Formulaic Prototypes (1965), p. 10-18; A. Lesky, Homeros, c. 10-17; A. Heubeck, Die Hom. Frage, p. 132140. 21 Cf.

the

above

(n.

11)

cited

work

οἱ

K.

Arend

and,

from

R. Schróter, Die Aristie als Grundform homerischer Dichtung,

1950; B. Fenik, Typical Battle Scenes 1n the Iliad (1968).

later

times,

Diss. Marburg

HOMERIC

STUDIES

TODAY

7

ularly characteristic of the life and actions of the hero and heroic society, and they are only or mainly associated with this domain. These are the so-called basic themes, and they are attached to various mythical persons, they are incorporated into varying situations and they can always be combined with one another in new forms to produce new chains of events.?? A. B. Lord ? described most convincingly the practices of the oral poets who,

thanks

to the artisan tradition and schooling,

are

most familiar with the learned material and the ways in which to use it. It is hardly necessary to recount his description in all its details. Here is just one: the particular greatness and importance of the creative oral poet—and it is he alone with whom we are concerned here—is to be found in his ability, on the level of language and subject-matter, to modify and combine in each separate case the material at his disposal in an ever-changing manner. Thus on every occasion where he is asked to produce a song, he creates by free improvisation something original which has never been heard before. On the structural level, A. Hoekstra 34 and J. B. Hainsworth ?* in particular have demonstrated that epic vocabulary underwent modifications in the course of the pre-Homeric epic tradition up to Homer

himself, and that these can be reconstructed with some

degree of certainty. The flexibility of the formula allows the poet to produce continually new variations, and if we think that there is clearly visible in Homeric poetry the modifying hand of the poet, who has perfect control over the transmitted formulae, then it 15 justifiable to see in this working method a constituens of his poetic activity which was already typical of his predecessors. Within the second, larger sphere of which we have spoken—the so-called typical scenes—we can use the same arguments. It is beyond doubt that the poets before Homer already had a large stock of established verse material at their disposal, with which they were able to form effortlessly the scenes from heroic life which 22

Rich

material

is to be found

in:

M.

Bowra,

Heroic

Poetry,

most recently H. Patzer, /.c. p. 40-48. 23 The Singer of Tales, passim; in: A Companion to Homer,

passim;

cf.

p. 179-214;

cf. also G. S. Kirk, The Songs of Homey (1962), p. 55-101 (Homer and the Epic, 1965,

p. I-32).

24 |.c. (n. 20) passim. 25 The Flexibility of the

Homeric Formula

(1968).

ὃ

ALFRED

HEUBECK

came up again and again. We may assume that this established verse material was not in each case fixed and limited to one single, prescribed formula. That is to say, the poet was not obliged to describe analogous events with exactly the same predetermined lines. We may rather suppose that for simple scenes, such as eating or greeting, as well as for battle scenes 26 (and here in particular) the epic tradition provided a whole palette of expressions which could be strung together or interwoven to form various scenecomplexes. Moreover, we may also regard as a special signum of poetic creativity the ability of the improvising oral epic poet to form new mosaics out of the treasure of coloured stones at his disposal by carefully aimed, conscious selection and arrangement in such a way that these typical heroic scenes come alive for the

listener each time in a different form. As far as the realm of the so-called epic formulae and typical scenes 1s concerned,

which

I discussed briefly above,

I feel that it

is not necessary to tear open an unbridgeable gulf between traditional Homeric theories and the school of oral poetry. It could rather be said that oral poetry studies have, with their new perspectives, put a number of correct observations from traditional research into their proper context within the history of poetry, and that traditional research should be grateful for the development of these new categories and should resolve to adapt them to its own studies. The same applies to what we have called the basic themes, those larger thematic components of heroic epic. These elements, whose content is determined by the primary characteristics peculiar to the epic hero and by the events and actions which distinguish his world

and

raise it above

the level of the

“‘normal’’

man,

are

numerous and appear again and again in every situation. We have the narrative element of the gathering of several heroes, or also of a large army for some glorious venture; we have the various motives

which

could

cause

such

an enterprise:

defeat

of a

rival,

revenge for harm or outrage received—for example the abduction of a woman. Or the hero sets out to overcome a physically superior opponent or to face some danger which none before him have mastered (this might consist of a fight with a dangerous monster or a journey to the Underworld). In the heroic battles themselves 26 See esp. B. Fenik, 1.6. (n. 21) passim.

HOMERIC

STUDIES

TODAY

0

narrative elements can also be identified: the substitute fighter, revenge for a murdered friend, or the withdrawal of the hero from battle—for various reasons. Again we may regard as a mark of the creative oral poet the ability to produce extemporaneously again and again original and surprising variations of narrative sequences by using each time a different choice and combination of the elements offered in the treasury of tradition, and by free transfer of these elements to other protagonists. In this point, too, I can see no basic contradiction between

oral

poetry studies on the one hand, which by means of comparative investigations have made clear the wide distribution of these and similar narrative elements, their constancy and relevancy for the creation of heroic poetry, and traditional research on the other, which has, especially in its above-mentioned neo-analytical variation, shown to what extent we must reckon with narrative elements

in Homeric poetry that were previously used in other contexts and only later were adapted by Homer for his own narrative.?? Although in some details the results of neo-analytical research may justifiably be regarded with suspicion, the basic soundness of its approach lies beyond all doubt.?8 As a preliminary result of these deliberations we can conclude, then, that traditional and progressive studies ın Homericis can and ought to come to the same finding, without in either case giving up any of their claims: namely that Homer is to be understood within the context of the tradition in which he stands; or rather, that our

proper appreciation of him requires acknowledging how deeply rooted he is in his tradition. That which distinguishes the oral poet generally also applies to Homer; he wields the poetic tools handed down to him with perfection and has complete control over the 27 As founder of neo-analytical methods of interpretation may be regarded D. Milder, Die Ilias und thre Quellen (1910); he was followed by J. Th. Kakridis whose papers are collected in: Homeric Researches (1949), and: Homer Revisited (1971). An extraordinary effect was exerted by the little book of H. Pestalozzi, Die Achilleis als Quelle der Ilias (1945) which esp. influenced the works of W. Schadewaldt, “Einblick in die Erfindung der Ilias," in: Von Homers Welt und Werk (41965), p. 155-206, and W. Kullmann,

Die Quellen dev Ilias (1960). For a short sketch of the development, methods and

theses

of

neo-analytical

research

cf.

A.

Heubeck,

Die

Hom.

Frage,

p. 40-48. 28 Thus the critical remarks of U. Hölscher, Gnomon 27 (1955), p. 385-399; 38 (1966), p. 113-127, concern the neo-analytical principle and methods less than special results.

10

ALFRED

HEUBECK

acquired rules of the game. All that may be conjectured with some degree of certainty as to the abilities and potentialities of the oral poets

who

lived

and

worked

before

him

can

also,

indeed

must,

especially be applied to him. The question now raises itself whether or not this observation covers all essential qualities of Homer and his poetry; if so, then the question as to whether he still belongs within the sphere of traditional (and that is simultaneously oral) poetry, is already answered— positively. Homer would then perhaps only differ from his poetic ancestors in that he made particularly good use of the facilities offered to him by tradition in that he practised his craft with particular skill, and that precisely for these reasons his work—the Iliad—escaped the fate of the numerous other epics before it and was saved from oblivion by being written down—whether later from memory,?? whether the poet himself, at the request of his contemporaries, dictated his orally conceived work to someone who could write,3? or whether he wrote it down himself later, perhaps after many successful

recitations.

Whatever

the

case,

the

difference

between

Homer and his precursors would be only a gradual one; Homer would still stand with both feet in tradition—and of course this is precisely the opinion held by most theoreticians of oral poetry. However, this opinion is not entirely satisfactory; it leaves behind the feeling that the last word has not been spoken; even that the essential, the crucial points are still missing.

29 Amongst those who think of a post-Homeric date of the fixation of the Homeric epics by writing the opinion is widespread that the first writingdown take place in Peisistratean Athens; a part of the well-known theses of E.

Bethe,

P.

Cauer,

P.

Von

der

Mühll,

cf.

now

esp.

Rh.

Carpenter,

Folk

Tale, Fiction and Saga in Homeric Epics (11946; 71956), p. 12; R. Merkelbach, "Die Pisistratische Redaktion der homerischen Gedichte," RAM 95 (1952), P. 33-47; D. L. Page, The Odyssey (11955; 71965); History and the Homeric Ihad (1959), p. 260f.; R. Sealey, “From Phemios to Ion," REG 70 (1957), Ῥ. 315-351; G. S. Kirk, The Songs of Homer (1962), p. 301-315; E. Heitsch, “Ilias B 557/8," Hermes 96 (1968), p. 641-660; A. Dihle, Homer-Probleme (1970), p. 94-119.

30 This is the opinion of A. B. Lord, '"Homer's Originality: Oral Dictated Texts," TAPA 84 (1953), p. 124-134 (= Language and Background of Homer. Some Recent Studies and Controversies, sel. a. introd. by G. S. Kirk, 1964, p. 68-78); The Singer of Tales (1960). Similarly M. Bowra, Homer and His Forerunners (1955), p. 9-12; G. P. Goold, “Homer and the Alphabet," TAPA QI (1960), p. 272-291.

HOMERIC

STUDIES

TODAY

II

If we try to go beyond what has been said up until now, then we must remember that our observations will fall outside the framework of what is stricto sensu provable. None the less they should not remain unsaid. If one attempts to analyze in a particular case more exactly what is specifically Homeric in the field of formulaic patterns in the broadest sense—that is the actual formulae, the typical scenes, the versus ıterati—then there is no avoiding the conclusion that the poet in many cases, although certainly not in all (if we see matters correctly) goes far beyond the probable practices of his forerunners. If these formulaic patterns represented a necessity as well as a convenience for improvised epic recitation in earlier times, the same is true for Homer only partially if at all. And if Homer also practises the variations and modifications which were probably always used within this sphere of oral poetry, then it is certainly not predominantly for the sake of the traditional stylistic principle of variatio. We need not cite examples here: it should be enough to draw attention to the numerous observations of W. Schadewaldt and K. Reinhardt (to name just two) who have shown how Homer intended to produce and indeed achieved quite specific effects precisely in his unchanged or even varying re-use of formulaic or quasi-formulaic phrases. The stylistic devices which the oral poets used to formulate the course of action often help Homer to create relationships and connections within his work, to recall to mind what has been told earlier and to foreshadow what 15 to come. They serve to elucidate similarities and parallel situations, as well as differences and contrasting situations, or to bring to light and emphasize the outer and inner structure of a large-scale composition. The formulae and formulaic patterns are for Homer not primarily necessary prerequisites for any form of epic creation, but rather means made to serve a particular epic purpose; they take on functional character. However meritorious it may be to trace the origin and development of the formulae, and thus to illustrate, among other things,

the extent

of formulaic statements

in Homeric

epic,

research should nevertheless not stop at this point. Such study first reaches its deeper significance and justification when its results are used to interpret more exactly what Homer wanted, what he created. Formulaic diction 15 also and precisely an instrument in epic composition, and with the concept "composition" we touch upon another point which is here worth consideration.

12

ALFRED

HEUBECK

There is no doubt that oral heroic poetry is also inconceivable without that element which we call composition. We do not know what the subject-matter and proportions of pre-Homeric epics were, but we will hardly go astray if we think in terms of epic works which dealt with, for example, the Fight of the Seven against Thebes, the Voyage of the Argonauts, or the Calydonian Boarhunt and its consequences. The subject-matter in these and similar cases is ἃ rounded, self-contained mythological episode consisting of several parts, whose arrangement and sequence are determined by the chronology of events. The difference between our Iliad and these probable old epic forms is just as evident as their indisputable similarity. Among the numerous basic themes that together constitute the Iliad, a single one 15 raised up above all others and thus made the uniting thread: this is the Menis theme, and all others are made subordinate to it.

Only that which is able to fulfil a useful function in terms of the Menis is given its due place in the epic. On the other hand, within such a conception, everything which does not fit in, which goes beyond its limits, must be omitted. We may hypothesize as follows: in an oral epic of traditional shaping where Achilles was the centerpoint his heroic death at the Scaean Gate at the hands of Paris and Apollo would certainly have played a part. And in fact neoanalytical research has made the well-grounded postulate that the Iliad is modelled on an epic prototype in which this event was included, and has tried to demonstrate what effect this archetypal epic had on the formation of our Iliad?! The Homeric conception, which is shaped by one clear thematic fixation, automatically excludes everything which is not intrinsically connected with the Menis

theme.

Furthermore,

the

notion

of

poetic

unity,

as

was

probably characteristic of pre-Homeric poetry, does not merely involve the possibility of structural and stylistic variation in a new treatment of an old subject, of expansion, shortening and modification of the contents; but it even makes this possibility a prerequisite.

With

the Iliad, on the other hand,

all that can be said

on the subject "Menis'" is said and formulated once and for all. The poet chose his wording, even and precisely where it was to be found with the help of formulaic material, consciously taking into 31 Cf, the above (n. 27) W. Schadewaldt a.o.

mentioned

works

of D.

Mülder,

H.

Pestalozzi,

HOMERIC

STUDIES

TODAY

I3

consideration the function which it would have within the composition as a whole; he related the sequence of individual episodes to the inner order created by the thematic framework so carefully that no changes of any kind are possible: any alteration would rock the structure of the whole. Thus we believe that the poet of the Iliad, in his effort to create a monumental construction, balanced in every point, large or small, supported by mighty pillars and held together by countless struts, transcended the possibilities and intentions of extemporising poetry and replaced improvisation with composition. This, in turn, could only be realized by careful consideration and minutely detailed planning. It is not enough to say that Homer further developed traditional epic and excelled his predecessors in the art of it. He confronted traditional epic with his own new work—the realization of a fundamentally and completely different conception of epic poetry. Allow me to add to these deliberations from another viewpoint. We have spoken about the basic themes of heroic epic which are determined

by

such

actions,

afflictions,

events

and

fates

as con-

spicuously typify the life of the hero. Achilles, the central character in the Iliad, even and indeed especially when he is not visibly on the scene, is in this sense altogether one of the typical figures in heroic poetry. Motifs such as the insult to the hero's honour, withdrawal from battle, death of one's best friend, revenge upon the murderer,

even

at risk to one's own

life—these

are all themes

which were not invented especially for Achilles. They are freely suspended motifs which, along with many others, could be attached to various heroes in different combination. Precise selection and meaningful combination—this is the special merit of the creative poet. There is, to my mind, no doubt that Homer was the first to enrich the multifarious tradition which had always been associated with Achilles by adding the quarrel with Agamemnon and combining still other typical motifs from heroic life in an original fashion. And in this sense Homer certainly belongs to the number of his oral poet ancestors, whose creative imaginations constantly furnished the old sagas so luxuriously with new features and elements. Moreover, the qualities of Achilles which explain his prominent position among his fellow-fighters and enemies, and which are the cause of his whole heroic behaviour and reflexes, these cannot repudiate the fact that his image is deeply rooted in the idealistic

14

ALFRED HEUBECK

tradition of the heroic epic. Elements constituting his nature are his outstanding strength, his passionate fighting-spirit, his overintense thymos, which tends to incontrollability, his sensitivity in all things concerning his honour as a hero, and, in connection with this, his unquenched

thirst for fame

and esteem,

even

at the cost

of his own life—in short, his uncompromising efforts to realize the ideal image of the hero. All this allies Achilles to the mighty heroes who,

before

him

and

with

him,

moved

the hearts

of singers

and

audience alike. However,

in spite of all this, our understanding of the true hero,

as Homer saw him and wished him to be seen, is still not complete. Homer enriched this traditional, self-contained image with features which not only add a new, important dimension to the old, but which even put it in question. The events of the last book of the Iliad reveal characteristics of the hero which could only vaguely have been suspected from what had been told about him in the course of the epic (for example in the scene with Patroclus at the beginning of the 16th book and with Lycaon in the 21st). Achilles possesses the magnanimity which enables him to open his heart to the father of his deadly enemy, to approach him with sympathy and understanding, and to see in the enemy not a foe but a man suffering;

he

who,

but

a few

days

beforehand,

had

waded

with

pitiless (nélés) hatred through a sea of blood, is capable of and ready to show eleos towards Hector's father. In this regard, what we are told in the last book is no loose or inorganic appendage: without the description of the Lytra, the picture of Homer's hero would be incomplete; one could even go so far as to say that the portrayal of Achilles is aimed at this telos from the very beginning. The significance of this nobleness, which goes beyond all normal levels and which is documented in his behaviour towards Priam, first becomes clear when we see it in relation to the excess of hatred of which the hero is just as capable. With this portrayal of a hero, in which the greatest conceivable contrasts unite to form one whole, in which the gentle light of humanity joins company with the radiance of old heroic splendour, Homer has, on yet another level,

not only transcended epic tradition, but even grown

out of it.

The image of the great man has replaced that of the great hero.?? 32 Cf.

W.

Burkert,

1955, p. 99-107; Mainz

Zum

altgriechischen

K. Deichgräber,

1972:5, esp. p. 89-91.

Mitleidsbegriff,

Diss.

Erlangen,

‘Der letzte Gesang der Ilias," Abh. AR.

HOMERIC

STUDIES

TODAY

I5

To summarize: it 1s indisputable, thanks to oral poetry research, that in every dimension Homer is deeply rooted in the poetry of the so-called "dark" centuries before him. If we see matters clearly, however, interpretation of Homeric poetry should not be limited to elucidation only of these ties between Homer and his poetic tradition, however creditable such study may be. It can indeed lead to a better appreciation of the poetry, but only when it is used and understood

not as an end in itself, but as a means

to a

higher purpose, namely to show how Homer, equipped with the ample instruments offered to him by tradition, not only continued this tradition, but also went beyond and overcame its set limits in all decisive points. Our intimations here have attempted, in some respects,

to

show

how

it was

that

he

overcame

the

tradition;

e.g. in the way in which he gave new functions to the linguistic and formal devices at hand, the formulae in the widest meaning of the word; how he altered the concept of the epic narrative unit into a new form of large-scale poetic composition; and how he enlarged upon the concept of the hero and changed it to a new image of human greatness. A further question is posed here, even though of secondary importance; was this step beyond traditional versification that was taken by the poet in the Ihad, with his individual methods,

at the

same time the step from oral to written poetry? The question still hangs unanswered in the air. For anyone who is prepared to see Homer as the transcender of traditional heroic epic, the question oral or written is certainly not answered a /imine in favour of the latter. Theoretically, it is perhaps conceivable that Homer realized his new conception of poetry, as exemplified in the Iliad, while working as an oral bard.?? On the other hand, the following must be taken into consideration. In oral heroic poetry, those who occupy the highest rank are not only the poets who have, in the course of their “apprenticeship,' acquired the traditional idiom of poetic statement most perfectly, and have learned to use it masterfully, but also those who, by virtue of special talent, are able to bring, offhand and improvising freely, any themes given to them into epic form— themes which perhaps have never been sung before. The Phaeacian poet Demodocus, about whom we are told in the Odyssey, a genuine 33 Some

aspects

are discussed

by A.

Hoekstra,

of. cit.

(n. 20)

p.

16-19.

16

ALFRED

HEUBECK

oral aoidos, has this ability: at the request of his king he sings of an event which has taken place only shortly beforehand and does not yet belong to the repertory of inherited themes—namely the Conquest of Ilium. Such a form of epic delivery does not need the aid of writing. On the contrary: it is basically meaningful and possible only without writing. On the other hand, even a superficial analysis of the Iliad 15 enough to show that it did not come to be by means of free improvisation. This ability, which in earlier times was the special merit of the poet and brought him great fame, became, with the creation of a work such as the Iliad, almost irrelevant. The Iliad is

the result of long and careful planning. In it the single episodes are not placed one after the other in loose sequence, but are integrating elements in an organized structure. In the first scenes the poet can already see clearly the whole sequence of the epic events in detail. The theory is not to be rejected out of hand that Homer worked step by step. This implies, in turn, that he probably did not create his work in one go from A to Q, and that the formulation of the individual parts did not necessarily take place in the sequence in which they now stand. The virtue of improvisation was replaced by the aptitude for planned composition. Just as the idea of the extemporizing poet automatically excludes any thought of his literacy, so the notion of the "composing" poet is, in my opinion, not feasible without the assumption that he is literate.*4 One could here allow one's thoughts to run freely and ask whether the ability to write—an ability probably acquired in Greece a short time before—and the sudden flash of recognition of the tremendous possibilities opened up by it, particularly for poetry, caused the poet of the Iliad to replace and thus transcend the traditional art of epic recitation with a new conception possible with the help of the new medium. Or was it the case that the ingenious conception of a new form of poetry prompted the poet to use writing to realize his plans? It 15 probable that both incentives were involved. In

these

considerations

of Homeric

art,

we

have

only

spoken

34 Among those who believe in a writing poet we only cite H. T. WadeGery, The Poet of the Iliad (1952), p. 9-12; T. B. L. Webster, From M ycenae to Homer (1958), p. 272f.; F. Dirlmeier, Sztz.-Ber. Heidelberg 1971:1, p. 16120; H. Erbse, Beiträge zum Verständnis der Odyssee (1972), p. 177-188; H. Eisenberger, Studien zur Odyssee (1973), p. 327.

HOMERIC

STUDIES

TODAY

I7

about the Iliad and have almost excluded the other great epic of early Greece. It goes without saying that the Odyssey is to be considered outside the realm of traditional-oral poetry. Like the Iliad, it lacks the basic features which distinguish purely traditional epic, and is marked, like the Ihad, by characteristics which typify a new epic concept. The poetic situation for the Odyssey, however, is more complex than for the Iliad, whose author we may call Homer. Homer creates his work in constant, immanent conflict with the tradition to which he knows himself to be committed and tied, and which

he plans to transcend— partly with its own methods. The poet of the Odyssey shares precisely this intention with Homer; he himself adopts Homer's programme, and here we have a new confirmation of the theory first posed by F. Jacoby,?? namely that the Odyssey poet came from Homer's school and tried to vie with the man who pioneered a new concept. But besides this " Homeric'"' objective the Odyssey poet had another interest as well, namely to place alongside the embodiment of a new concept which he considered exemplary an equally good, yet at the same time different, realization. Jacoby appropriately described this effort as "creative mimesis.” However, with these references, we have now gone beyond the main objective of this lecture.* 35 “Die geistige Physiognomie der Odyssee,” Die Antike 9 (1933) p. 159194 (— Kleine Philologische Schriften I, 1961, p. 107-138); A. Heubeck, Der Odyssee-Dichter und die Ilias (1954). * My cordial thanks are due to the wife of my dear colleague Dr. Niklas Holzberg (Erlangen), Ms. Christine Holzberg, to whom I owe the English version of this paper.

THE

FORMAL

DUELS

IN BOOKS

3 AND

7 OF THE

ILIAD

G. S. KIRK Trinity College, Cambridge

The depiction of two formal duels, neither of them decisive, on the same day presents us with a prima facie structural dilemma in the earlier part of the //ad. Nowhere else in the poem does such a formal duel recur, and it looks as though the main composer has in these cases slightly overplayed the doublet method of composition in his desire to establish diversions and delays after the march-out of the two armies in the second book. On a simple-minded view the duel in 7 would be a variant of that in 3. Such a view assumes an annalistic method of composition in which one part of the epic is completed before a subsequent one in the final order is begun. But we know that that is not how Homer worked—for example that many of his components, both large and small, existed beforehand in the tradition and were developed in varying degrees as part of a vast repertory of martial and Trojan episodes. It is almost as likely that 7 is the model and 3 the copy as vice versa, given that that were the kind of relationship between them. Further thought about the development of themes in an oral tradition shows that the model-copy conception is in many cases misleading—that what we are more likely to be dealing with is a monumental composer elaborating in different ways and on different scales from a variety of formal-duel archetypes. Even so, it is reasonable for the critic to ask whether Homer might have formulated the idea of a 7-type duel or a 3-type duel first; for one may doubt whether he is likely to have started with the idea of having two such duels in his poem. Thereafter the critic has at his disposal two complementary approaches to the answering of this question: through the analysis of the broad origin and context of each formal duel, and through the comparison of their detailed motifs and expression, especially in terms of formular vocabulary. The contextual weaknesses of each episode are enshrined in Analytical scholarship and are rather well summarized, as usual, by W. Leaf in his commentary on the /liad. Book 3 (with its natural continuation in the breaking of the truce down to 4, 222) is described

THE

by

him

FORMAL

as in itself

DUELS

IN

BOOKS

"consistent,

3 AND

plain,

7 OF

and

THE

ILIAD

I9

straightforward;

it is

indeed one of the most brilliant and picturesque pieces of narrative in the I/iad ;" yet “After the pompous description of the march out of the two armies ... it is certainly surprising to find that they no sooner meet than a truce is made, and instead of the general engagement we have been led to expect, a single combat is proposed as a settlement of the whole war’’ (op. czt., I, 117). Leaf goes on to claim

that this duel, like the Viewing

from

the Walls,

belongs

more naturally to the first than to the tenth year of the siege. "My own belief," he concludes on p. 118, “is that in the natural course of the development of the story the duel between Aias and Hector, now in 7, stood here, and was displaced in order to make room for the combat of Paris and Menelaos, which originally stood

at an earlier point in the tale of the siege." Of the duel in 7 he remarks that “It is in itself somewhat surprising that the two duels should be fought on the same day; but when we remember the very remarkable manner in which the first had ended, by an unpardonable violation of a truce made with all possible solemnities, and then find that the second is entered upon by the two parties without apology or reproach, the difficulty is one which can hardly be explained. Nor can it be smoothed over by the excuse of artistic propriety; for no canon of art will justify what we have before us; a duel which is proposed as a decisive ordeal, designed to finish the war, is succeeded at the distance of a few hours by another which is a mere trial of prowess ... This surely approaches near to the limits of an anticlimax’’. (op. cıt., I, 296). Finally Leaf states his opinion that "this duel is, unlike that of Menelaos and Paris, well suited to the story of the Menis. As more than one allusion shows (113, 226), it is the absence of Achilles which emboldens Hector to give the challenge, and makes the Greeks hesitate to accept it. And though the subjects are so similar, neither account seems to have borrowed from the other. It is impossible to say that either is the older; but as they stand in the Menis,

it is 3, not 7, which

is

the intruder" (p. 297). This is a healthy defence of the claims of the duel in 7 to be more than a secondary and rather botched version of that in 3, but it confuses textual and contextual considerations and pays only intermittent attention to the needs of poetry as against factual reporting, let alone the habits of oral poets, of which he was of course innocent.

20

G.

S.

KIRK

It 1s essential to the contextual approach to begin by noting that both duels belong to a major portion of the poem, extending from the end of the first book to the end of the tenth, whose main purpose is to postpone the fulfilment of Zeus' promise to Thetis to favour the Trojans until the Achaeans make good the slight on Achilles; or, from a different point of view, to delay it until other dramatic aspects of the war have been exploited. Nothing that delays the Trojan triumph promised by Zeus is directly compatible with the Menis plot. At the same time, the god made no promise of instantaneous

results; moreover,

as even

Leaf conceded,

his under-

taking could be allowed to lapse into the background from time to time as other aspects of the war needed to be emphasized. Yet anything sanctioned by Zeus that specifically favours the Achaeans will be inconsistent

with

his commitment

to Thetis,

and

that

1s

harder to ignore. In this light

the

first duel,

in 3, is ambiguous.

A

direct

clash

between the armies, which is what the great march-out of 2 plainly portends, would provide ample opportunity for the fulfilment of Zeus' plan. That could scarcely be allowed to happen so early in the monumental poem, given that the wrath of Achilles is its central motif. Once a duel between Paris and Menelaus is proposed instead, the permanent role of Zeus as guardian of oaths and hospitality comes into conflict with his temporary role as supporter of the Trojans to help Achilles—and yet that role involves him directly in the matter of his own oath to Thetis. Trojan Paris, as the offender in abducting Menelaus' wife, has to be the loser—and indeed that is virtually what transpires, except that he is saved at the last moment by Aphrodite. But the moral tone of this book is clear; both armies are sick of fighting Paris' war and want to see a decision in favour of the innocent party to the dispute, which means Menelaus. It is dramatically useful to have that moral issue put so clearly before the audience before the real fighting begins, but the way it 15 put needlessly ignores Zeus' promise to Thetis. In this respect the duel turns out to be an awkward intruder on the natural development of events. It is important to recognize, on the other hand, that the whole idea of having a duel is shown by the poet as developing gradually. First of all Paris promachize1, prances ahead of the advancing amy and offers battle to all and sundry—out of sheer thoughtless bravado, it seems, which is very much in character. When Menelaus

THE

FORMAL

DUELS

IN

BOOKS

3 AND

7 OF

THE

ILIAD

21

rushes toward him, full of righteous anger at the sight of the man who has stolen his wife, he panics and withdraws into the ranks. Perhaps he had hoped for a lesser warrior to show himself? At any rate Hector rebukes him—his action would after all demoralize the Trojans and encourage the Achaeans—and to counter the rebuke Paris offers to face Menelaus after all, not in order to inaugurate the mass fighting (which is what he seems to have intended before) but in a formal, isolated duel to settle the issue once for all. Hector

is pleased, for like the others he is tired of war, and the duel is arranged. Thus it takes shape almost by accident; that is presumably the poet's way of softening the incongruity with the plan of Zeus and the expectations engendered by the march-out. Its conclusion is negative, except that it clearly exposes the moral culpability of Paris. Perhaps that was necessary for Hellenic sympathies, especially since the Achaeans were to be ultimately humiliated to please Achilles. But the immediate consequences, of the Trojans failing to concede (at least formally) Paris' moral defeat and then treacherously breaking the truce through Pandarus, have to be suppressed in order to allow the plan of Zeus to proceed. There is much poetical legerdemain here, but something of the sort was needed. At least one might reject Leaf’s opinion, and conclude that single combat between the two main parties to the dispute can be thought of at any time—the first year of war being not more but less plausible, in sheerly realistic terms, than later. The Viewing from the Walls is a different matter, but poetical needs do much to justify this device for describing Helen herself (as much as Agamemnon, Odysseus and the others). The Viewing is closely interwoven with the duel, but that does not mean that they always belonged together. As Leaf conceded and Adam Parry recently helped to demonstrate (in YCS 20, 1966, pp. 197-201), this section of the poem is very tightly and carefully composed, so that episodes from the tradition that were originally distinct would be scrupulously trimmed, when they were conjoined, to fit the new context. As for the duel in 7, its immediate antecedents in the poem are peculiar. At 6, 73f. the Trojans are so hard pressed after Diomedes' aristeia that they would have been driven back inside the walls, had not Helenus advised Hector and Aeneas to return to the city and organize a prayer-meeting for survival. Hector temporarily stiffens the Trojan morale before leaving, but his men are still under heavy pressure. It is not, admittedly, the direst kind of

22

G.

S.

KIRK

fighting, because now comes the light relief of the encounter between Diomedes and Glaucus; and the real poetical purpose of Hector’s unexpected removal from the battle is seen to be the opportunity of showing him first with Helen and then with Andromache and his son. At the end of the book he surges forth with Paris and can even contemplate, in the closing verse, the possibility of ultimate victory. Certainly they are successful for a few moments at the beginning of 7, and they and Glaucus each despatch a minor opponent. But that is enough to bring Athena hurrying down from Olympus to help the Achaeans—there is a distinct change here in the poet’s view of the situation, and the Trojan crisis of book 6 has silently disappeared. Apollo sees her from Troy and intercepts her; he proposes that they jointly stop the fighting for the day, since he fears she will help the Achaeans to victory. She agrees (but why? because she can no longer achieve her purpose once Apollo is there to oppose her?), and they decide to encourage Hector to issue a challenge to a duel. The seer Helenus intuits their decision and so advises Hector, adding that it is not yet his fate to die. The introduction of a second formal duel 15 rather flimsy so far. The divine intervention is not well motivated, Athena has nothing to gain by listening to Apollo, and the Achaean threat of book 6 is forgotten. But we are back again with the essential indeterminacy, the indecisive reversals, of this whole part of the poem, and probably have no right to insist on the Achaean superiority of 6 as more than a temporary expedient to explain Hector's return to Troy—although it is worth remembering that behind it lies the whole aristeia of Diomedes. Now we move on to the challenge itself and the oddity referred to by Leaf, that it 15 not intended to lead to a duel that will settle anything. Zeus has not brought the oaths to fruition, says Hector at 7, 69ff., but with evil intent toward both

sides he is holding his hand until Troy falls or the Achaeans are defeated—ingenious pleading, this, suppressing as it does the treachery of Pandarus and implying equal terms for the present. Let any Achaean who wishes (he continues) come forward to be promos, front challenger, against himself. Nothing further is said about terms and rewards for the winner, except for the emphasis on

fair treatment for the loser's corpse—at least the possibility of a fatal ending is conceded here. The Achaean response is surprising. They are both frightened and disconcerted, embarrassed not to

THE

FORMAL

DUELS

IN

BOOKS

3 AND

7 OF

THE

ILIAD

23

accept the challenge at once. Admittedly Achilles, their natural champion, is not available. But if there were doubts about any possible substitute

(and Hector

is not, after all, quite of Achilles'

stature); why did not Agamemnon reply that they would not dream of duelling with oath-breakers? That would have been a complete answer to the predicament. But he did not do so, and thus shows that this duel ignores its predecessor in 3, except for that one brief reference to Zeus not fulfilling the oaths—the very least, perhaps, that the poet could do in the interest of consistency. As for the duel's ultimate effects, they are non-existent apart from the provision of a transition, convenient but not necessary,

to the

gathering of the dead and the building of the wall and trench. Contextually, then, the duel in 7 is negative in effect and weak in inception. Yet it is rather interesting in itself, and, linked with the

dead-and-wall

episode. and the the duel the duel It is the

theme,

makes

a

neat,

almost

self-contained

There remains the weakness of its ending, to which Leaf Analysts rightly drew attention. It is not so much that is interrupted and aborted; that had been the case with in 3 also, and was less than dramatically disastrous there. manner

of the

interruption,

rather,

combined

with

the

fact that after 3 some especially satisfactory device for terminating the second duel was called for. The earlier encounter had ended with the removal of one contestant, on the point of being killed, by a god: a motif that occurs elsewhere (for example Aeneas is rescued by Poseidon at 20, 318-29) and 15 indeed typical in the Iliad. It is especially apt in the context of 3, since the audience knows that Paris was Aphrodite's particular favourite, a motif developed alongside that of the duel itself. The poet's difficulty, once

he

decided

to re-use

the

duel

theme,

was

how

to end

the

second duel without drawing once again on this kind of divine intervention—for then the similarities would surely have seemed too blatant—and, of course, without letting the duel achieve its most obvious conclusion of the death of one or other contestant. That was out of the question in both cases, given that the duels had to be between major warriors to justify their special elaboration, and

given too that no major warrior could be sacrificed at this point, least of all one known in the mythical tradition to have survived. Homer evidently decided, therefore, to terminate the second duel

by agreement—and that meant in response to some special accident or intervention;

here, the heralds and their claim that darkness is 3

24

G. S. KIRK

faliing. Actually that is rather weak in itself, since nothing else suggests that the duel had begun particularly late in the day, and in any case a fight to the death in the dusk might have provided just the kind of untypical incident that was needed at this point.

But an additional characteristic of the duel is relevant here: that it was not undertaken in order to settle anything in particular, but merely as a demonstration of prowess and daring on either side. That is not a strong conception in itself, but was presumably felt to be necessary to justify the eventual termination of the duel by agreement. Moreover the subsequent exchange of gifts and compliments, so out of tune with the behaviour of Hector and Ajax elsewhere,

chance

suggests

that

Homer

battle-encounter

ending

as with Glaucus

and

Diomedes

had

other

models

in reconciliation

in mind—the

and

in 6, and the mock

friendship,

duel as in 23;

on which more later. These other thematic patterns combine to make the intervention of the heralds and the exchange of gifts seem more plausible; or so at least the poet was able to persuade himself. The fact remains that the ending of the duel in 7 is dramatically feeble. That 15 a pity, because much of the second duel is very well done. There 15 a similar effect later in the same book: the gathering of the dead and building of the wall and trench are unusual and dramatic in themselves, but are marred by casual motivation as well as by uncertainty in later books about whether the wall and trench are really there. 50 much for the broader contexts. The time has come for a closer examination of each duel and a comparison of their detailed elements. The simplest procedure is to summarize their progress side by side, motifs that are common to both being italicized (and given an identifying letter for convenience of comparison): 3

7 Hector and Paris return to battle-

armies approach

field Paris sallies forth he is dismayed^ vances

with Glaucus Achaeans when

Menelaus

Hector vebukes® him

ad-

Athena

they

descends

kill to

three

intervene(M)

Apollo meets her from Troy

Paris proposes formal duel©

they agree to interrupt fighting by

Hector makes armies sit”

making Hector propose formal duel© Helenus reports idea to Hector

he states challengeE and terms¥

Hector makes armies sitD

THE

FORMAL

DUELS

IN

BOOKS

Menelaus accepts, insists that Priam take oaths

Idaeus brings Priam, sacrifice oaths Priam returns to Troy

Nestor nisces

and

arming τ duel: first throws’ Menelaus attacks with sword he grabs

THE

ILIAD

25

he states termsF about victim's body Menelaus acceptsS, vebukes® the others Agamemnon and others dissuade him he disarms()

ground measured out lot! for first throw, and prayersJ

breaks,

7 OF

he challengesE, since Zeus has brought oaths ®) to nothing

Priam and animals sent for Helen summoned by Aphrodite Viewing from the walls

sword

3 AND

helmet

nine

rebukesB

Achaeans

the

others,

remi-

volunteer

lots! cast, prayers’, Ajax wins sollicits prayerss for success he armsK briefly, sallies forth Hector is dismayed^ but stands fast

duel: first throws!

Aphrodite intervenesM, saves Paris

second thrusts stone-throws, Hector

floored

Apollo intervenesM, raises him

sets him in chamber, goes for Helen conversation between the three Helen and Paris go to bed Menelaus

searches

for Paris,

Trojans

they prepare to fight with swords heralds interveneM, night approaches Ajax agrees to stop if Hector will Hector accepts, proposes exchange of gifts they exchange, separate, friends are relieved Nestor proposes gathering dead, and

would show him if they could Agamemnon claims victory, there-

wall

fore;

Helent*),

Helen, tion(P)

goods

and

compensa-

Antenor proposes return

of

oaths,(E) gathering dead Achaeans accept latter, refuse Helen or goods)

Some of the motifs common to both versions differ in their specific application. Not only are the terms quite different in content (concerning the return of Helen in 3, the treatment of the loser’s body in 7), but the lots are cast for different reasons (for the right of first throw, and to choose from the nine volunteers) and the prayers are offered for different ends. Other motifs are

26

G. S. KIRK

treated with differing emphasis and detail. Hector makes the armies sit in both cases, but ın 3 the Achaeans begin by shooting at him until Agamemnon tells them to stop, whereas in 7 they obey him straight away. Arming is described in detail only for Paris in 3; it is cursory for Menelaus there and also for Ajax in 7, where Hector is already armed. Intervention takes quite different forms, even by the gods, and is clearest in 7 when the interveners are the heralds. In any event the labelling of common motifs is only approximate. Obviously if the limits of generality were extended there would be more motifs to be found in common;

but the exercise serves to

show in a preliminary way how much, or how little, is shared by the two episodes. For a great deal is not held in common: especially the preliminaries to the duel (Paris sets it going by bravado; the gods decide on it to delay the fighting), the important sacrificeand-oath ceremony in 3 and the choice by lot of a champion in 7, the digressions in each case (Viewing from the walls; Nestor's long reminiscence), the aftermaths of the duels (Helen and Paris; gathering and wall). The preliminaries and consequences are more closely integrated with the duel itself in 3 than in 7. For 3 is a tight unity; Paris is involved first and last, and the duel is an ingenious excuse for describing life in Troy and introducing Priam and Helen, as well as for showing Aphrodite's responsibility for the war. Even the Viewing is well integrated (apart from the well-known difficulty over the need for identifying important enemies at so late a stage of the war), and serves to characterize Agamemnon and Odysseus as well as Helen. The whole book adopts a consistent attitude to Paris' wrongdoing and volatile character.

Book 7, on the other hand, falls into

two separate parts. The aborted duel 15 succeeded by the gathering of the dead and building of the wall and trench, first mooted by the tactical expert Nestor at the celebration dinner for Ajax—not a strictly organic connexion, although the second part develops quite smoothly out of the first. There are references at the end to the breaking of oaths and the return of Helen, but they refer back to 3 and 4 rather to the duel in 7 itself. The emphasis on sacrifice and oaths cannot be repeated in 7, once the oath has been broken by Pandarus in 4; but its prominence in 3 is mainly due to its value in stressing Paris’ irregular behaviour and the essential justice of the Achaean cause, as well as in building up the role of Priam and leading toward a climax. An equivalent sense of prepara-

THE

FORMAL

DUELS

IN

BOOKS

3 AND

7 OF

THE

ILIAD

27

tion for an important event is given in 7 by the drawing of lots for the champion and the prayers for Ajax’ success. As for the different views of divine participation, Aphrodite in 3 emerges naturally enough to support her favourite Paris and excite Helen; she does not initiate the duel but intervenes only when Paris is in grave danger—by leading Helen to watch she has already given a sign of her intention of ensuring a less than disastrous result. In 7, on the other hand, the two gods create the duel; after that they are only observers, at least until Apollo intervenes briefly to raise Hector and prevent his death. It is curious, perhaps, that the poet does not make him protest against the building of the wall; curious, too, that the Trojans allow this insidious breach of the intentions of the truce without complaint. Probably the reason in each case is the rather cavalier way in which the whole episode has been appended. The differences between the duels are not unrelated to the different characters of the two pairs of contestants as revealed in the rest of the epic. Paris is boastful and volatile, not always very brave but much impressed by Hector, hence his initial bravado and subsequent stiffening under rebuke. Menelaus is a good fighter, not one of the very best but keen to come to grips with his personal enemy at any opportunity. The only question is why the poet makes him defeat Paris so easily after the first exchange of spearthrows. Perhaps it is because he is in the right, and therefore protected by Zeus despite the god's undertaking to Thetis. It is fitting in any event that such warriors as these, as protagonists in the quarrel, should be more impressive in their preparation and oaths than in the duel itself. Hector and Ajax are different. Ajax is the great defensive fighter with the virtually impenetrable shield; Hector is possessor of the exceptional martial skills he describes to Ajax in such unusual terms, and he is especially confident here, perhaps, because he has been told by Helenus that he is not yet fated to die. His concern for the treatment of the losers body, as well as his dismay, soon overcome, when Ajax advances so imposingly, accord quite closely with his character and behaviour just before his death in 22—which may imply the art of the monumental composer at this point also. 50 much for the main thematic resemblances. We shall expect more specific similarities and differences, especially of language and style, to show up most strongly in those portions of the duel-

28

G. S. KIRK

scenes

that

are

thematically

closest.

One

or

two

introductory

generalizations can be made. 3, as we saw, is aesthetically essential

to the fabric of the monumental poem, even if it is inessential in Ur-Ilias terms; and its expression and style are typical and fully Homeric. 7 is not essential from either point of view. That reveals nothing a riri about its language, but closer inspection shows it to be unusual here and there. The expressions οἰόθεν οἷος (twice) and αἰνόθεν αἰνῶς are obviously based upon e.g. ἀλλόθεν ἄλλος but have a different and less logical meaning; they are found only in the duel episode in 7, in the whole of Homer. The poet also reveals himself here as fond of rhetorical diction; witness the unusually stark antithesis of αἴδεσθεν μὲν ἀνήνασθαι, δεῖσαν δ᾽ ὑποδέχθαι (7, 93) and the assonantal and alliterative jingle, unique in such an extreme form in Homer,

of

ὡς εἰπὼν παρέπεισεν ἀδελφείου φρένας ἥρως, αἴσιμα παρειπών, ὁ δ᾽ ἐπείθετο: τοῦ μὲν ἔπειτα... (7, τ2οΐ. Cf. 6, 61f.) Unusual too are the content and expression of Hector's declaration at

238-41,

verses

that

contain

a

unique,

somewhat

naive

and

seemingly archaic definition of martial prowess: “I know how to wield to the right, I know how to wield to the left the parched ox— that for me is tough fighting; I know how to dart into the moil of swift chariots; I know how to dance for Ares in the standing fight." There 1s nothing else like this in the whole of Homer, despite the typical nature of the warrior's boast as such. Ares is thrice described in the Iliad as ταλαύρινος, "tough" or perhaps literally “hidebearing," but Hector's declaration is the only place where the word is more than an apparently obsolete formal epithet. Nowhere else is a leather shield called just an "ox," or is the hide that this implies called "dry" or "parched." The unusual word μόθος, "moil," occurs twice in this book without a preposition, thrice elsewhere but in the formular phrase κατὰ μόθον. Nowhere else 1s there anything resembling the vivid “dance for Ares;" 16.617 is the closest parallel. At the same time the analysis of the warrior's

skills—dexterity with the shield in defence, swiftness in running forward among the chariots, agility in the standing certain practical logic. Lack of reference to skill at spear might be taken as a sign of age and accuracy, a period before the throwing-spear became conflated

fight—has a throwing the derived from in the minds

THE

FORMAL

DUELS

IN

BOOKS

3 AND

7 OF

THE

ILIAD

20

of poets with the earlier Mycenean thrusting-spear; on the other hand the close involvement of chariots with the battle cannot represent a particularly ancient or accurate view.! Instances of specific passages, verses or substantial phrases common to the duels of 3 and 7 are fewer than might be expected on any view of the mode of composition, especially if one bears in mind the number of detailed motifs held in common. They amount (if we disregard the unimportant 3, 348 = 7, 259) to a total of four: (1) 3, 76-8 = 7, 54-6 (Hector separates the armies): ὡς ἔφαθ᾽, "Exrtwp δ᾽ αὖτ᾽ ἐχάρη μέγα μῦθον ἀκούσας καί ῥ᾽ ἐς μέσσον ἰὼν Τρώων ἀνέεργε φάλαγγας, μέσσου δουρὸς ἑλών - οἱ δ᾽ ἱδρύνθησαν ἅπαντες. These

verses

do

not

recur

elsewhere,

neither

does

the motif

of ἃ

leader signalling by holding up his spear in this manner, neither does that of an army sitting down in response. Yet nothing closely similar is likely to happen in the ordinary circumstances of battle, so that the unique idea and its expression are not very surprising. The verses naturally contain certain basic formular elements, for example ὡς ἔφαθ᾽, μῦθον ἀκούσας, ἐς μέσσον, and φάλαγγας and ἅπαντες at the verse-end; but ἐχάρη μέγα does not occur elsewhere (and ἐχάρη 1n the singular is confined to these uses and two others in the duel-scene in 3), nor do ἀνέεργε and ἱδρύνθησαν exactly, both verbs being used only once else in the Ilsad. The likelihood is that in its present form this three-verse passage is specific to the two formal duel scenes and was composed

for one or both of them,

or

for a close archetype. Is there any indication that it fits one context better than the other? Hector's "great joy" may be more naturally engendered, without need for further enquiry on his part, by Paris’ offer to fight in 3 than by Helenus' cursory and unsupported divination in 7. If one scene 1s derived from the other (and not both from a common stock of language appropriate to formal duels in particular), then it 15 slightly more probable that 3, not 7, was prior at this point. Further support for this interpretation is provided by the consideration that in 3 the Achaeans fail at first to respect Hector's signal, whereas in 7 they immediately respond as though by now familiar with it. 1 See for example 41f. and 61.

my

Homer

and the Oval

Tradition

(Cambridge,

1976),

30

G. S. KIRK

(ii) 3, 85f. = 7, 66f. (Hector addresses the armies): Extwo δὲ μετ᾽ ἀμφοτέροισιν ἔειπεκέκλυτέ μευ, Τρῶες καὶ ἐὐκνήμιδες ᾿Αχαιοί... 4

[a

/

\

~

>

\

5..

3

/

/

»

3

“

This 1s standard formular material, with the address to both sides

being lightly adapted from typical address-formulas for each separately. What follows 15 more significant; for 7 continues with the formular verse ὄφρ᾽ εἴπω τά με θυμὸς ἐνὶ στήθεσσι κελεύει (as also at 7, 368f.), after which Hector states his challenge, whereas 3 continues with μῦθον ᾿Αλεξάνδροιο, τοῦ εἵνεκα νεῖκος ὄρωρεν, ἃ verse

that recurs in a different kind of context at 7, 374 — 388. Now the syntax of 7, "listen to me ... that I may tell you what my spirit bids me," is perfectly regular; but that of 3 is not, since κέκλυτε here takes the accusative μῦθον (for which the contracted form μύθου, only once in the liad, is not a plausible substitute) instead of the regular genitive after this form of the verb as in the Odyssean formula χέχλυτέ μευ μύθων. The poet cannot in the context of 3 say "listen to what my spirit bids me," because Hector is reporting Paris' intention and not his own—hence the awkward sequence.? It is plain that the difficulty in 3 is caused by the necessary adaptation to slightly different circumstances of language that was appropriate in 7. Therefore priority is suggested for 7, or something very like it—the contrary of what was concluded for

repetition (1). Once again we must bear in mind that "language appropriate in 7’’ implies no more than traditional language that could be correctly deployed in the context of 7 among others. That it could not be deployed in the context of 3 does indeed suggest posteriority, other things being equal; and the fact that the substitute verse in 3 (verse 87) is itself apparently borrowed from 7—it occurs twice in that book and not elsewhere—helps to

confirm the priority of 7 at this point. (11) 3, 324 = 7, 181 (the drawing of lots): A oy» y ; , V μέγας κορυθαίολος “Extw ὡς ἄρ᾽ ἔφαν, πάλλεν δὲ » Yos P 5 ; P Γερήνιος ἱππότα Νέστωρ.

2 The

minority of mss.

that inserted the “that I may

tell you

what

my

Spirit bids me’’ verse before ''the saying of Alexandros'' is clearly wrong, although it draws attention to the difficulty.

THE

FORMAL

DUELS

IN

BOOKS

3 AND

7 OF

THE

ILIAD

3I

The noun-epithet formula varies, and the remainder of the verse, also, is heavily formular. πάλλεν δὲ (not exactly so elsewhere) is the only special point of resemblance, and it belongs to a common type (a spondaic verb followed by δὲ, in that position in the verse). More interesting is the entirely independent expression of the verse that follows in each case, even though their general sense is similar and therefore on ordinary formular rules one might expect closely similar language: 3, 325: ἂψ ὁρόων: IIaptoc δὲ θόως ἐκ κλῆρος ὄρουσεν 7, 182: ἐκ δ᾽ ἔθορε κλῆρος κυνέης ὃν ἄρ᾽ ἤθελον αὐτοί. Admittedly 7 has more to say than simply that X's lot leapt out; conversely 3 adds the graphic detail that Hector looked away as he shook the helmet. The basic action is much the same, yet the poet is ready and able to adjust typical diction in order to express different nuances. Contextual criteria may point in a slightly different direction, for the idea of drawing lots to choose an Achaean champion from the nine who volunteer may be thought to make stronger sense than that of drawing for first throw, an odd procedure by Homeric conventions. For first throw does not seem to give any special advantage in other encounters (unless one contestant 1s clearly superior and clearly the aggressor), nor is it remarked later in this duel itself. The draw for first throw is a formal detail akin to the measuring out of the ground, likewise in 3 but not in 7; both are preliminaries that help to supplement the action of the duel itself, which 1s rather abrupt in 3 although not in 7 | Moreover the prayer that accompanies the drawing of the lots is apposite in 7, less so in 3: in 7 it is for a particular warrior to be chosen (179f.), in 3 for the initiator of evils to be killed so that the rest can make peace (320-3). In this latter use one might object that the prayer is only loosely related to the draw for first throw, moreover that both sides knew perfectly well who was to blame— it was Paris, and therefore the substance of the prayer should logically have been "may Menelaus as innocent party get first throw." Admittedly a poet is not always logical, but we are compelled to consider,

at least,

the criteria of logic, cohesion

and

so on

3 For a parallel case of markedly different expressions for similar actions one can refer to the idea of a warrior retreating to the safety of his companions, which at 3, 32 takes the form of ἂψ δ᾽ ἑτάρων εἰς ἔθνος ἐχάζετο but

at 7, 217f. appears as ἀναδῦναι | ἂψ λαῶν ἐς ὅμιλον.

32

6. S. KIRK

in attempting to relate the variant uses of common motifs. case the lot-drawing in 7 is somewhat more consistent and motivated than that in 3, and that makes priority for 7 prototype) more probable than not, although not of mandatory.

In this better (or its course

(iv) 3, 355-60 = 7, 249-54 (the piercing of the shield): Aloe Nowe

| προΐει δολιχόσκιον ἔγχος

καὶ βάλε Πριαμίδαο κατ᾽ ἀσπίδα πάντοσ᾽ ἐΐσηνδιὰ μὲν ἀσπίδος ἦλθε φαεινῆς ὄβριμον ἔγχος, xai διὰ θώρηκος πολυδαιδάλου ἠρήρειστοἀντικρὺ δὲ παραὶ λαπάρην διάμησε χιτῶνα ἔγχος: ὁ δ᾽ ἐκλίνθη καὶ ἀλεύατο κῆρα μέλαιναν. Here is a substantial repetition describing Menelaus! only throw and Ajax' first one; it contains much typical battle-poetry and some untypical. The common second half of 3, 355 and 7, 249 is typical and frequent, as are the separate formular components of the following verse (on which, however, there is more to say later). The next pair of verses, 3, 3571. = 7, 251f., recurs in the wounding of Odysseus in 11, and the second verse of the pair also recurs in the wounding of Menelaus by Pandarus in 4. Constituent formulas in both verses also occur more widely. The last two verses, 3, 359f. = 7, 253f., do not occur elsewhere, although some of their elements

are naturally formular once again: ἀντικρὺ δὲ, χιτῶνα as last word of the verse, and ἀλεύατο κῆρα μέλαιναν. Yet significant elements of this pair appear not to be completely formular. λαπάρη in different cases occurs four times elsewhere, but always before the main caesura, not as here; the compound διάμησε meaning “sheared through" does not recur in Homer, although the simple verb, usually meaning "reap," is relatively common; ἔγχος occurs as runover-word in only one other verse out of a total of over a hundred uses; ἐκλίνθη recurs a couple of times, although in a different part of the verse and with a different application (although here it is the action rather than the word that is most surprising). The verse that describes the spear pressing forward through the corslet, the fourth verse in the passage, has often been suspected, both in these duel-contexts and in its appearances in 4 and 11. Bernard Fenik has discussed the well-known difficulties and

THE

FORMAL

DUELS

IN

BOOKS

3 AND

7 OF

THE

ILIAD

33

concludes that the verse appears correctly at 11, 436, but has been misapplied in its three other uses; in 4 because the arrow is said to pierce other bits of armour also, which seems incompatible with the corslet,

and in our two duel-scenes because

the warrior under

attack could scarcely swerve and avoid the spear-point after it had pierced the corslet and tunic.* Fenik thinks that "Here too ...a line has been transferred from one scene into another where it does not entirely fit," and that “If the thorax line is removed... . everything is in the best of order." The intrusion of a faintly inappropriate verse is not improbable in itself, but may well be an unnecessary hypothesis. Fenik believes it to be the corslet, rather than the tunic, that causes the practical problem: the spear could pierce a loosely clinging tunic without causing a wound, but the corslet fits so closely that piercing it would also entail piercing the skin. That still leaves the difficulty of the warrior swerving after even the tunic had been pierced. But in either case we may be insisting on too literal a view of the sequence of events, a point on which Homeric singers are notoriously imprecise. Surely the recipient starts swerving when he sees the spear approaching, and swerves just enough to make the spear-point miss his flesh by a fraction? Nor is there any real need to assume that the corslet-verse is added; the spear pierces both corslet and tunic, but the warrior swerves and just misses being wounded. Even in English, as I have expressed the matter here, the sequence of events and the slightly loose manner of expressing them are perfectly acceptable. We should not in any case become embroiled in this old problem. Fenik's explanation suffices if the one I have suggested is found inadequate, for we know by now that singers sometimes strung typical language together too rapidly for perfect logic. What matters is that the corslet-verse belonged to the tradition, and has been taken from it, with total or less than total propriety and accuracy, by the composer or composers of the duel-scenes; and that there follows a pair of elaborating verses that appear uniquely in these scenes—that may have been derived from a reservoir of typical battle-poetry, but if so have left no other trace in the Homeric vocabulary. That does suggest, once again, that the duel-scenes are interconnected at this point—either that one is based on the other, or that both are closely based on a common * B. Fenik,

Typical Battle Scenes in the Iliad (Wiesbaden,

1968),

102-4.

34

G. S. KIRK

archetype. I should even be inclined to go further, in view, first, of the usefulness of the swerving-idea for martial encounters in general and the fact that it was nevertheless not used outside the formal duels, and, second, of the non-formular elements, especially

the otherwise non-Homeric compound διάμησε. I should be tempted to conjecture that this pair of verses was especially composed for one formal duel or the other, in the first instance.

If this were so,

could priority be assigned to either passage on contextual grounds? Not, unfortunately, with any great probability, although I myself find the detail of swerve and near-miss more in place in the elaborate sequence of events in the second duel (with two throws followed by two thrusts and then two stone-throws) than in the abbreviated action of the first, in which Menelaus' rapid resort to the sword and Paris' apparent helplessness are inadequately accounted for by the more or less neutral results of the spear-casts—even though Menelaus' piercing of his opponent's shield, in contrast with Paris' failure in this respect, points by Iliadic conventions to the eventual winner. I can imagine other deployments of the typical language of spear-casts that would justify the subsequent action in 3 more efficiently; whereas the sequence of events in 7 is both complete and natural. One further usage in this repeated passage suggests 7, rather than 3, as prior in application, and that is Πριαμίδαο in 3, 356 — 7, 250:

ἃ harmless

word

as one might

think,

and so it 1s—except

that in 3 τί denotes Paris among Priam's sons, and not Hector as in 7. Yet Πριαμίδης, "son of Priam,” occurs in its different cases 31 times in the Jad,

and in no less than

26 of these it refers to

Hector and not Paris or any other son. In 15 of these 26 Hector's name stands close by, but in the remaining 11 "son of Priam’ is enough by itself to denote Hector. In four of the five cases (out of 31) that do not apply to Hector, the specific name of the particular son of Priam comes in close proximity, so that [Πριαμίδης becomes an epithet rather than a denominative. The solitary exception, apart from our reference to Paris at 3, 356, is 13, 586 which refers to Helenus. Admittedly we are aware that only one

of Priam's sons is directly involved in the duel in 3, and that is Paris; no one is likely to imagine that it is Hector whose shield is being struck. Yet the real question is whether the composer of this episode, if he had been selecting quite freely from the typical language of battle, or even from the more special language that

THE FORMAL DUELS IN BOOKS 3 AND 7 OF THE ILIAD

35

might have existed for formal duels, would have chosen IIgtxut8«o, which is so strongly associated with Hector, rather than a form of Paris' own name. After all, ᾿Αλεξάνδροιο is regular in this position in the verse, and indeed occurs there at 3, 87 = 7, 374 and 388. The poet could just as easily have sung καὶ Bar’ ᾿Αλεξάνδροιο as xai βάλε Πριαμίδαο. He did not do so, and the most obvious reason may well be that he was taking over this passage wholesale from the parallel duel-scene in 7. The upshot of this discussion of the verbatim repetitions is that in one of them, (i), 3 looks primary; in one certainly and another probably, (ii and iv),7 is primary and 3 secondary, on linguistic grounds; and in one, (ii1),7 looks primary on contextual grounds. Before drawing final conclusions from repetitions between 3 and 7 it is advisable to look more closely at the formular language of the other

scenes,

not

formal

already been mentioned: the

encounter

duels

but

related

especially the mock

of Glaucus

and

Diomedes

in

to

them,

that

have

duel of 23 but also 6,

to

which

can

be

added the encounter between Achilles and Aeneas in 20—likewise a scene that is more elaborate than the ordinary informal duels of battle and likewise one that fails to reach the ordinary conclusion of the death of one contestant. Linguistically, 23 is the important parallel; 6 and 20 merely serve to establish as typical one or two verses and phrases that are varied in 3, with 6 in addition providing an important thematic parallel in the aborting of the encounter and the exchange of gifts. First, then, parallels with 23: A:

early stages of the duel 3

23

340 of δ᾽ ἐπεὶ οὖν ἑκάτερθεν ὁμίλου θωρήχθησαν , t ’ 5». ~ 3 ἐς μέσσον Τρώων καὶ ᾿Αχαιῶν ἐστιχόωντο θάμβος δ᾽ ἔχεν δεινὸν δερκόμενοι: εἰσορόωντας

818 οἱ δ᾽ ἐπεὶ οὖν ἑκάτερθεν ὁμίλου θωρήχθησαν ἐς μέσον ἀμφοτέρω συνίτην μεμαῶτε μάχεσθαι δεινὸν δερκομένω- θάμβος δ᾽ ἔχε πάντας ᾿Αχαιούς.

Τρῶας

θ᾽

xat

ἐγγὺς

/

p

€ 3

ἱπποδάμους στήτην

καὶ

ἐὐκνήμιδας ᾿Αχαιούς.

διαμετρητῷ

ἐνὶ

χώρῳ

οἱ δ᾽ ὅτε δὴ σχεδὸν ἧσαν ἐπ᾽ ἀλλήλοισιν ἰόντες,

345 σείοντ᾽ ἐγχείας ἀλλήλοισιν κοτέοντε. 817 τρὶς

μὲν

ἐπήιξαν,

τρὶς

δὲ σχέδον ὁρμήθησαν.

326

G. S. KIRK

B: conclusion of the duel 7 303 ὡς ἄρα φωνήσας

23 Saxe

ξίφος ἀργυ-

824 αὐτὰρ

Τυδεΐδῃ

ὃ ὥκεν

μέγα

φάσγα-

ρόηλον

νον ἥρως

σὺν κολεῷ τε φέρων xal ἐὐτμήτῳ τελα-. μῶνι.

σὺν κολεῷ τε φέρων καὶ ἐὐτμήτῳ τελαμῶνι.

Notice that in A there is no significant contact with 7, although the general idea of the approach and closeness of the combatants, 3, 344 and 23, 816, is broadly paralled by 7, 219 and 225. 3 and 23, however,

are closely related in A, but it is 23 that sticks closest to

the typical language of the Iliad, as is shown 6 and 20; for 23, 814

=

by the parallel of

6, 120 and 20, 159, and 23, 816

=

6, 121

and 20, 176. 3 in each case supplies unique variants. Admittedly the mock duel in 23 is an unsatisfactory episode in many respects, and could, like the archery contest at 23, 850ff., be a rhapsodic expansion. Nevertheless great care has been expended on its detailed expression, for actually verse 814 is not (to amend what was said above) exactly identical with the typical verse found in 6 and 20; instead of ἐς μέσον ἀμφοτέρων we find ἐς μέσον ἀμφοτέρω. That is because the typical verse is designed for combatants meeting between the two armies, whereas the mock duel is held in the midst of the Achaeans only. Hence the plural ἀμφοτέρων 15 ingeniously made into a dual that now denotes the pair of participants, and subsequently generates 3epxouévo in place of the standard plural form. But why has the poet of 3 decided to supply a quite different, non-standard verse for the idea of "came into the middle"? His motive seems to be the reverse of that which operated on the poet of 23; he wishes to emphasize the two armies on either side, and so spells out Teoov καὶ ᾿Αχαιῶν in place of the less vivid ἀμφοτέρων (which amounts to the same thing), just as he needlessly specifies who the onlookers are in his cumulated verse 343. We shall return below to another aspect of his verse 341, concerned with the verb ἐστιχόωντο. Obviously it is because the formal duel takes place between the two seated armies that the careful specifying of "Trojans" and "Achaeans' is justified; one admires the flexibility of this poet, his ability to depart from typical language in order to emphasize the finer nuances of his scene. The only additional connexion of the language of 7 with that of 23 at stage A might be through the medium of book 16, where at

THE

FORMAL

DUELS

IN

BOOKS

3 AND

7 OF

THE

ILIAD

37

462 — 476 it is said of Patroclus and Sarpedon that «à δ᾽ αὖτις συνίτην ἔριδος περὶ θυμοβόροιο. This has connexions through συνίτην with 23, 814 and the typical vocabulary represented also in 6 and 20; and through ἔριδος περὶ θυμοβόροιο with 7, 301 (where Hector imagines people as saying ἠμὲν ἐμαρνάσθην ἔριδος 7.0.). But it is at stage B that 7 briefly and strikingly coincides with 23; for Hector gives his sword to Ajax just as Achilles gives Sarpedon's to Diomedes; the phraseology 15 different at first, but becomes identical in the second verse, which specifies scabbard and strap as part of the gift. We might expect some parallel with the language of 6, also; but the nature of the gifts there (complete sets of armour are exchanged) precludes it. At this point the whole method is obviously becoming too finicky, and I can almost hear the reader saying testily to himself that obviously there is a certain amount of typical language around for duels, even for formal ones; but that it is drawn on unsystematically, and at any rate beyond the reach of detailed reconstruction, for any particular scene. Therefore we cannot hope to establish priorities for the use of any individual verse or formula. That is the message of Professor Fenik's Iliad-book, and in general I completely agree with it. But from time to time it 1s worth looking carefully at roughly similar passages, rather in the manner of the Analysts. One case where positive results may be given occurs at 3, 341 (quoted in A above). ἐς μέσσον Τρώων xai ᾿Αχαιῶν ἐστιχόωντο, as we saw, 15 substituted for the typical verse ἐς μέσον ἀμφοτέρων συνίτην μεμάωτε μάχεσθαι. It occurs only once elsewhere, and that is in the same general context of the formal duel in 5, where at 266 Priam and his herald are described in these words as advancing into the space left clear between the seated armies. But this, unlike 3. 341, is an entirely appropriate usage; not only is the specific mention of Trojans and Achaeans needed here, but also, and more important, the verb éotty6wvto—elsewhere applied to ships drawn up in ranks or to an army marching in ranks—is properly used; for Priam and Idaeus presumably advance in line, with the herald either leading or following the king. The verb is quite wrong, on the other hand, for Paris and Menelaus coming into the space between the armies from opposite directions—one from the Trojan, the other from the Achaean side. The basic meaning of στίχος, "rank" or "file," is quite out of place here, and the verb is being used in a uniquely loose manner as a simple verb of motion. The

38

G. S. KIRK

poet of 3 was so anxious to avoid using approaching duellists that he re-used, another verse from his repertory, one basically different situation. His reasons entirely

clear,

but

once

again

he

shows

the typical language for with considerable strain, that was designed for a for doing so are still not a rather

heavy

touch.

Reverting to B, we can conclude that 23 is unlikely to be the initiator of the verse about scabbard and strap which also occurs in 7, since these appendages were not mentioned by Achilles in 23 when he named the sword as a prize. Indeed Aristophanes and Aristarchus objected to both this verse and its predecessor, presumably because after saying that the prizes were to be divided it would be unfair of Achilles to award to Diomedes the sword that had been designated as first prize. But there would be difficulties about an equal division in any case; how was Sarpedon's armour to be equally divided? Perhaps the model here was the wrestlingmatch somewhat earlier in the same book 23, which Achilles terminates at 735-7 much as the Achaeans terminated the mock duel at 8221.; for the same formula, ἀέθλια To’ ἀνελέσθαι (-ελόντες), occurs

in each.

The

wrestling-match,

indeed,

contains

a locution

that once again reminds us of 7: compare 7, 273-81, xal νύ χε δὴ ξιφέεσσ᾽ ... εἰ μὴ Xfpuxec ... “᾿μήκετι... ἄμφω δ᾽ αἰχμήτα ...,” with 23, 733-6, καί νύ χε τὸ τρίτον αὖτις... εἰ μὴ ᾿Αχιλλεὺς ... “μήκετ᾽ . .. νίκη δ᾽ ἀμφοτέροισιν᾽᾽. The pattern is no doubt typical in its basic elements, some of which are found also at 20, 288-91: ἔνθα κεν Αἰνείας ... εἰ μὴ ἄρ᾽ ὄξυ νόησε Iloosıdawv £vooty0cv—once again from the frustrated duel between Achilles and Aeneas that provided some of the typical language used by both 3 and 23 in A. But the similarity of ἄμφω δ᾽ αἰχμῆτα and νίκη δ᾽ ἀμφοτέροισιν, and the inappropriateness of both to any normal encounter in battle, confirms what the whole aborted ending of the formal duel in 7 suggests: that the poet of 7 was indebted to the language and motifs of funeral games and the like for his method of bringing the duel between Hector and Ajax to an end. That is confirmed by the following additional considerations, some stronger than others: the heralds step between the contestants as though there were no real danger to themselves; they address them as "dear children," foreign to the heroic martial vocabulary and the spirit of a serious fight; it is hardly necessary for such distinguished warriors to be told that they are "both fighters;" and the exchange of gifts, like the idea of Hector and Ajax being “joined in friendship" henceforth

THE

FORMAL

DUELS

IN

BOOKS

3 AND

7 OF

THE

ILIAD

39

(Hector's word at 7, 302, ἐν φιλότητι... ἀρθμήσαντε), is quite out of tune with the violently hostile feelings of the Greek and Trojan leaders for each other. It goes beyond what was implied by the exchange of gifts between Glaucus and Diomedes in 6, because they had discovered ties of guest-friendship that transcended enmity in war—although Ajax' gift, ζωστῆρα δίδου φοίνικι φαεινόν at 7, 305, exactly reproduces Diomedes' grandfather's gift to Glaucus' grandfather at 6, 219. Perhaps the near-contest in 6 had been the model that persuaded the poet of 7 that he could terminate a real formal duel in the manner of an athletic competition. Any sustained passage in the Homeric epics is likely to reveal elements directly borrowed from the tradition, and others that have been more or less strongly adapted to the new context. Often enough the mélange of repetition, variation and invention is impenetrable, as is the mixture of extreme skill and automatic composition, bordering on the careless, that oral poets bring to bear. In these cases the modern critic, whether primarily aesthetic or philological in his approach, can make little progress. In others, however, there are special linguistic or contextual signs to help him—which is why I have been subjecting parts of the formal duels and their congeners to detailed examination, in the hope of identifying such signs and interpreting them correctly. On the whole the results confirm the mélange theory, if confirmation 1s needed. Yet useful probabilities for the relation of tradition to invention have also emerged. The presence of common motifs in the formal duels in 3 and 7 suggests some kind of copy-model relationship. The varied deployment of some of these motifs might suggest deliberate variation to avoid the appearance of obvious repetition. Yet it is difficult to brand either 3 or 7 as the copy. Verbatim repetitions between them are rare, but suggest strongly that at two or three points 3 uses language

proper to the context

in 7 rather to that in 3 itself; whereas the contrary is probable in one case only. Yet Leaf's explanation, the total priority of 7, will not do. There are several respects in which the two scenes proceed independently, even where there is no probable intention by 7 to achieve variation for its own sake. For the ending of the duel 7 resorts to a different set of typical motifs and language, exemplified in both the mock duel and the wrestling match in the funeral games of book 23. Even here there is no absolute separation of archetypes, since 3 (and not 7) shares some of the language of 23 (and also 4

40

G. S. KIRK

of quasi-duels in 6 and 20) for the first approach of the two contestants. As for the common motifs listed on pp. 24f. above, the casting of lots is better motivated in 7, and might imply prior knowledge of that book by the singer of 3; yet the fact that in 3 the Achaeans are at first puzzled when Hector holds up his spear, but in 7 seem to know how to respond, suggests the opposite. All these phenomena are compatible with the idea of a single composer deciding to make two distinct scenes on the basis of a general narrative 1dea, that of the formal duel. He elaborates the central theme by applying others to it—Paris' guilt, Paris and Helen and Aphrodite in 3; Athena and Apollo, casting lots for a champion, the termination of a mock duel in 7. He also inserts large digressions—the viewing from the walls in 3 and Nestor's reminiscence in 7—and adds quite separate aftermaths, Menelaus searching for Paris in vain at the end of 3, Agamemnon's victory dinner in 7 and the truce to gather the dead and build the wall and trench round the Achaean camp. The final result is two very different episodes, whose doublet-relationship would not strike one so forcibly (and, one must admit, so unfortunately) were it not for their relative proximity to each other and, more than anything, the contrived and improbable termination of the duel in 7. I have suggested already, and can only repeat it, that Homer must have felt variation to be essential at this point, and that to have Athena and Apollo intervening in place of Aphrodite would not do. He must have felt that the somewhat analogous circumstances of the mock duel provided a possible answer, especially in view of the need to suppress terms such as were solemnly agreed in 3 (in order to avoid bringing up the awkward matter of the broken oaths), and so to leave this second duel as something of a contest of virility and morale. All this is compatible with the idea of a great singer gradually working up and adjusting his repertoire so as to make a monumental poem, going from one application of a central theme to another and then back again, so that in the end neither is precisely primary, but both become more or less parallel instances of the idea in the background, indebted to each other as well as various other traditional models, styles and formular phrases at different points. And yet priority within the eventual order of his large-scale narrative remains as a factor of some importance. Hence it is not surprising that book 3, although 1t 15 outdone in certain particular respects by book 7, surpasses it as a unity and as a contribution to setting the scene for the action of the [lad as a whole.

GOOD

AND J.

BAD

FORMULAE

B. HAINSWORTH

New College, Oxford

It is impossible to discuss the effectiveness, aesthetically, of any part of Homeric diction without making certain presuppositions about that diction. For example, how does it work? Of the various models of formulae and their function on the market at the present time, I am reluctant to buy any to the exclusion of the others: whether it be the stock-in-trade theory implicit in the early theses of Parry; or the phrase-structure-with-variable theory of Professor Lord; or Dr. Nagler's pre-verbal Gestalt.! There are merits in all these views, for it is not necessary to suppose that the nature and use of formulae 15 everywhere the same in Homer. What I am obliged to presuppose in this paper is that there 476 formulae in the technique of Homeric versification—formulae which exist as firm word-groups and not merely ?» potentia. I presuppose this on the strength of the concordances. I also presuppose certain generative processes: for I do not suppose that the stock was greater than recurrent needs required, since it was recurrent use that had consolidated expressions into formulae in the first place. It is obvious that the use of formulae was characterized by economy: precise metrical duplicates were significantly few. On the other

hand

generative

processes

were

diverse

and

numerous:

many expressions for a given essential idea of a given shape existed in potentia, and doubtless from time to time existed in reality also. Clearly, the development of formulae and the maintenance of their economy was achieved by a process of sorting and selection. On what principles then did this process operate? On this subject I have noticed a certain number of obiter dicta by various scholars, but I know of no papers that have been addressed specifically to 1 The loci classici are M. Parry, “The Epic Technique of Oral Versemaking. II." HSCP 43 (1932) 7 (= Making of Homeric Verse, Oxford 1971, p. 329)— this is the best statement—cf. J. B. Hainsworth, Flexibility of the Homeric Formula (Oxford, 1968), pp. 110ff. A. B. Lord, Singer of Tales (Cambridge, Mass., 1960), pp. 35ff., cf. J. A. Russo, "The Structural Formula in Homeric Verse," YCS 20 (1966) 219ff. M. N. Nagler, "Towards a Generative View of the Oral Formula," TAPA 98 (1967) 269ff.

42

J. B. HAINSWORTH

this important and difficult question—difficult, because no doubt this part of Homeric art 15 full of tensions: the aesthetic versus the technical, the personal versus the traditional, not to speak of tensions within the aesthetic or technical fields themselves, such as

might be created by changes of taste or belief, or by changes in the vernacular. That art and craft are in tension at the formular level is so obvious that it needs to be stated. Achilles and Odysseus, Ajax and Diomede are mighty heroes: they might, in principle, have been so exalted that each was su generis, possessed of his own exclusive formulaic description which he could no more share with his colleagues than the sword (ξίφος) could share its epithets with the shield (σάκος). As it happens, even the mightiest heroes in Homer are only partially sw: generis: in some formulae they have their special

epithets,

others

(usually the shorter ones) they have generic epithets, like

δῖος,

ἐσθλός,

like

φαίδιμος,

πόδας

ὠκχύς,

ἄλκιμος,

πολύμητις,

which

they

κορυθαίολος,

share

with

but

in

colleagues,

sometimes with many colleagues. Now the distinction between special and generic epithets is far from being a simple one: many uses of a generic epithet, for instance, are the ad hoc results of generative processes. But setting aside such complications, we can see that there would be a great gain in economy (that is, a technical improvement) if special epithets were eliminated in favour of a universal application of the generic. If that had taken place, it could only have been at the cost of great aesthetic loss in richness and colour and heroic atmosphere. In the Homeric epics I do not see that we can make any assumption other than that the balance between the colour of the special epithets and the flatness of the generic epithets was about right aesthetically, and likewise the balance between complexity and simplicity technically. But we can ask which direction has the stronger pull, what sort of formulae would in the Greek tradition be accounted “better” formulae,

How can such a question be answered? Not by comparison of Homer with other Greek epic, because there isn't really enough to validate the comparison. Not by reading the comments of scholiasts, for they do not recognize the technical function of formulae. Not immediately at any rate by our own aesthetic sense, because that has been conditioned by different training and different experience.

GOOD

AND

BAD

FORMULAE

43

To illustrate, I spoke just now of the richness and colour of epithets: for that 1s how readers most often react to them: and richness and colour seem to be desirable qualities. But if Milman Parry was correct in his contention that inattention was the normal compliment paid by an audience to a recurrent epithet, what is the point of richness and colour? ? Would it not be more fitting to favour the neutral tones of a vague generic epithet, so as to make a technical device less conspicuous? My approach to the problem relies on an extension of Hoekstra's method in his Homeric Modifications of Formulaic Prototypes.® Hoekstra himself relied on the fact that various stages of formulaic evolution were attested (or implied) in the Homeric text. I persuade myself that it is also possible to discern various stages of maturity in the formula-systems. An element of intuition must enter at this point, but it can be controlled by reason and principle. I begin with the principal verse-end formulae of eight major Olympian gods. It seemed worthwhile to look at the diction for gods because the gods appear to be a fairly fixed feature of epic stories whatever the human personnel may be. There is therefore reason to suppose that we shall find here, at least in the frequently used nominative case, a mature system of formulae, well sorted by generations of use, and so consisting of what were by common consent the most effective expressions. Only two incorporate an epithet which may without any qualification be termed generic: (see next page). Compare this with the facts observed in quite a different area by Miss Gray, concerning the diction that described the Homeric Helmet.? She speaks of a “‘mass of promiscuous epithets,"" complains of a “lack of organic connections (between adjective and noun),"' and concludes, from the sense of the epithets and their archaeological correlations, that Homer had been obliged to cope linguistically with improvements in contemporary armaments. We have therefore in the helmet

diction,

amidst

the

debris

of an

ancient

formulaic

system, the beginnings of a new. The metallic qualities of the new 2 See "The

Homeric

(= Making of Homeric 3 A.

Hoekstra,

Gloss: a study in word sense," TAPA

59 (1928)

246

Verse, p. 249).

Homeric

Modifications...

(Amsterdam,

1965),

and

Sub-Epic Stage of the Formulaic Tradition (Amsterdam, 1969). * D. H. F. Gray, "Homeric Epithets for Things," CQ 41 (1947) (= Language and Background of Homer, Cambridge 1964, pp. 55ff.).

The

114ff.

44

J. B. HAINSWORTH Principal Noun-Epithet Formulae for Gods and Goddesses

Formula Type

B,

᾿Αθήνη

H;

Παλλὰς A.

Ts

γλαυκῶπις A.

θεὰ γλαυκῶπις ' A.!

᾿Οβριμοπάτρη ᾿Απόλλων

Φοῖβος ’A.

"Ἄρης

χάλκεος "A. ὄβριμος "A.?

᾿Αφροδίτη “Ἑρμείας Ζεύς

᾿Αλαλκομενηϊΐς A. Διὸς υἱὸς 7A. ἑκάεργος A. χρυσήνιος "A.

ἄναξ Διὸς υἱὸς ᾽Α.3 ἄναξ ἑκάεργος ᾿᾽Α. "A. ἅτος πολέμοιο

dt At

χρυσέη ' A.

Διὸς θυγάτηρ ' À.

Ἥρη

᾿Αργεϊφόντης μητιέτα Ζ. εὐρυόπα Ζ. πότνια Ἥ.

κλυτὸς ᾿Δργεῖφ.ὅ νεφεληγερέτα Ζ. Z. τερπικέραυνος λευκώλενος "H.®

διάκτορος ᾿Αργεϊφόντης πατὴρ ἀνδρῶν τε θεῶν τε ᾿Ολύμπιος ἀστεροπητῆς βοῶπις πότνια Ἥ.

Ποσειδάων

᾿Εννοσίγαιος

κλυτὸς

θεὰ λευκώλενος "H.

φιλομμειδὴς A.

᾿Εννοσίγαιος >

χρείων ᾽᾿Ενοσίχθων,

[Ποσειδάων ἐνοσίχθων

Ui

&

WN

Ln

. θεά 15 ἃ standard element for expanding the H, formula for a goddess to ἃ T, expression. . Also ἄναξ Ἑρμείας 1 x ; ἄναξ in the oblique cases is generic. . ὄβριμος 15 shared only with Hector. . δῖα is shared with Θεανώ, Νέαιρα, Χάρυβδις, Καλυψώ, and Kiurauunorpn. . Χλυτός is generic for gods (once with ‘Inmodaperx); the oblique cases are fully generic. 6. λευκώλενος is generic when it falls after the third foot caesura with the noun preceding, but not in any comparable formula to A. "Hp. 7. xpetwyv is shared with Agamemnon (26 x), and four others.

helmets are expressed by common, rather unexciting words, like φαεινός, χάλκειος, χαλκήρης, which are used of many sorts of weapon and armour. They do not assist substantially towards the thickening of the heroic atmosphere. The mysterious, evocative words, like τετραφάληρος, αὐλῶπις, χαλκοπάρῃος, belong to the few fixed formulae. The implication is a strong one, that special epithets in due process of time gain ground at the expense of generic ones. The craft becomes more complicated thereby: so the reason underlying the preference for special epithets is not technical, but aesthetic. Colour is better than drabness. This conclusion is general in two ways. First, it is not specific about

aesthetic

"colour."

The

assumption

is,

of

course,

that

a

formula with a precise epithet has more impact on the hearer than

GOOD AND BAD FORMULAE

45

one of fuzzy ornamentation, in the same way as a special epithet appeared to be preferable to a generic one. However, we do not yet know which colourful images are exact and clear to the eye of the poet—which epithets, that 1s, have meaning as well as colour—and which are vague. We therefore need some criteria for probing the vitality of sense among special epithets. Second, the form that the systems of noun-epithet formulae for gods have come to show 15 the result, doubtless, of hundreds of applications of generative processes, hundreds of choices and lucky inspirations—and few of them at a conscious level. The preference for the special epithet is thus a statistical norm—and cases will exist where the preference appears to be retrograde. Such cases of inverted preference, where they are not fortuitous, are apt to be instructive. (I) θεὰ λευκώλενος “Hoy (19 X ), despite its indistinct and generic colour, has gained considerable ground against the dramatic βοῶπις πότνια Ἥρη (11 x). The addition of θεά to turn the H, formula of a goddess into a T, is a very well used generative device with parallels among the hero-formulae (addition of γέρων or μέγας). One would understand without difficulty the sporadic occurrence of θεὰ λευκώλενος “Hon—just as one extends indulgence to μεγάθυμος ᾿Αχιλλεύς (Il. xxiii 168, for πόδας ὠκύς ᾿Αχιλλεύς), to ᾿Οδυσσῆος μεγαλήτορος (Od. iv 143, for ᾿Οδυσσῆος ταλασίφρονος), or to νηυσὶν

ἐΐσῃς (Od. iv 578, for νηυσὶ θοῇσι). But the vogue for θεὰ λευκώλενος Ἥρη suggests something more—perhaps the obscurity, or the embarrassment, of the sense of βοῶπις. (2) One can make a similar point with reference to Διὸς θυγάτηρ ᾿Αφροδίτη and φιλομμειδὴς ᾿Αφροδίτη. Διὸς θυγάτηρ has some of the qualities of a generic epithet: it occurs 11 X besides the Aphroditeformula. As an epithet of the goddess, with 9 occurrences, it is gaining ground in the epic over φιλομμειδῆς, with 6 occurrences. Perhaps φιλομμειδής in the Ionic dialect was beginning to suffer from the unfortunate approximation in pronunciation of which Hesiod takes advantage at Theog. 200.° 5 The infamous φιλομμειδέα, ὅτι μηδέων ἐξεφαάνθη. I do not wish to deny Dr D. D. Boedeker's contention (A phrodite’s Entry into Greek Epic, Leiden 1974, pp. 23ff., 3off.) that Διὸς θυγάτηρ is in origin an ancient special epithet and

that

its

use

may

sometimes

be

related

to

context.

It

seems

to

me,

however, that where metrical duplicates exist among formulae there are normally many contexts where the use of either epithet would not jar one's sensibility, and where one formula may gain ground against another.

46

J. B. HAINSWORTH

These two examples will serve to indicate how fragile a system of noun-epithet formulae is, how easy it is to disrupt it, how difficult

to maintain

1t, even

in an area

as stable

as the nomen-

clature of the ever-living gods. Let us stress the point with two further observations: (1) The oblique cases of personal names are in much less demand than their nominatives: consequently, the formula system is less well-developed—it is less extensive, and it relies more heavily on generic material: οἱ. Δία Κρονίωνα ἄνακτα Ποσειδάωνα ἄνακτα ᾿Απόλλωνι ἄνακτι Ηφαίστοιο ἄνακτος /

ε

[4

»

Διὸς μεγάλοιο Aon κρατερῷ

„

m

»

This is readily understandable.

When

the expression

is required

infrequently, it is simpler to create something ad hoc than to retain

a special formula. (2) The fragile link of noun and epithet may be destroyed by the necessity to recast the formula in some way. Χερσὶ στιβαρῇσι is apparently well established (7x), it is supported by a prepositional congener στιβαρῆς ἀπὸ χειρός (4X) Or χειρὸς ἀπὸ στιβαρῆς (2x); but let the close cohesion of the phrase be disrupted, and the fine archaic gloss στιβαρός is at once replaced by a nondescript κρατερός: χερσὶ πίεζε | νωλεμέως χκρατερῇσι Od. iv 287-8: cf. πολύβουλος ... ᾿Αθήνη (Od. xvi 282), not γλαυκῶπις; ποδώκης... ᾿Αχιλλεύς (Jl. xviii 234), not ποδάρκης; and acc. μεγάθυμον ᾿Αθήνην (2x ) against γλαυκῶπιν ' A0. (Od. i 156).5 The quality of στιβαρός etc. shows itself most obviously as a technical fault: the formulae are not productive. But the technical fault is symptomatic of an aesthetic point: στιβαρός, etc., are colourful and exotic, but they are little more:

in fact, we are not

quite sure what they mean, at least not in precise terms. The best formulae can do better than that. It is a thesis of recent Homeric criticism that certain evocative links exist between certain formulae, e.g. σάχος ἑπταβόειον, μελίην ἰθυπτίωνα, δόρυ μείλινον, and certain heroes, here Ajax and Achilles, or between certain epithets,

6 But cf. γλαυκώπιδ᾽ ᾿Αθήνην, h. Ap. 323, h. Ven. 8. (most codd.) I detect a certain

distaste

in Homer

for elision within

the

formula.

GOOD AND BAD FORMULAE

47

e.g. ἀμύνων and δῖος, and certain contexts and qualities.’ If these scholars are correct, then the best formulaic epithets are both generally decorative, evoking the heroic world, and specifically evocative of some situation or quality. We have then at least the makings of a criterion by which to control the suggestion that a given epithet has a wider force and impact. Is it productive? Or does the word association collapse if the nexus of noun and epithet is broken? Professor Whallon, for example, perceived a link between the epithets in χορυθαίολος Ἕχτωρ, πόδας ὠχὺς ᾿Αχιλλεύς, (or ποδάρκης ᾿Αχιλλεύς), and incidents within and without the Ilvad. It is disturbing, however, that in the famous scene (Il. vi 466-484) where the infant Astyanax recoils in terror from the war panoply of Hector, the crucial epithet κορυθαίοAoc does not occur. There is no schema etymologicum actually expressed, in spite of the fact that the schema etymologicum is a rhetorical figure to which Homer 15 addicted. Suspicion deepens when it is observed that, for a formula occurring 36 times, xoovθαίολος “Extwe is very unproductive. It is only once split (xxii 471), and it does not occur in any of the oblique cases. If a formula cannot generate diction, can it be vital enough to produce incident ?? The case of πόδας ὠχὺς ᾿Αχιλλεύς is similar, but not so decisive. IIó8xG ὠκύς is productive, or rather it was productive at one time:

note the existence of ποδάρκης, and in the oblique cases of ποδώχεα and πόδας ταχύν, all strongly formulaic. But on the great occasion when Achilles's swiftness of foot 1s of significance in the narrative, in xxii

I31ff.,

when

Achilles,

"trusting

in his nimble feet,"

leaps

forward to pursue the fleeing Hector—on this occasion the formulae ποδάρχης and πόδας ὠχὺς ᾿Αχιλλεύς do not appear. Instead we have ποσὶ κραιπνοῖσι πεποιθώς, ἃ formula that has no specific association with Achilles's swiftness of foot. What sort of precise image can

7 See especially W. Whallon, Formula, Character, and Context (Cambridge, Mass., 1969); A. Amory Parry, Blameless Aegisthus (Leiden, 1973); R. S. Shannon III, The Arms of Achilles and Homeric Compositional Technique (Leiden, 1975); and more generally C. H. Whitman, Homer and the Heroic Tradition (Cambridge, Mass., 1958), pp. Io2ff. 5 The

image

of Hector

and

his flashing armour

is, of course,

a real one,

cf.

χαλκοκορυστήν (n), 8x of Hector, once of Sarpedon, and is responsible, as M. W. Edwards has pointed out to me, for the line τὴν (1.6. κόρυθα) κατέθηκεν ἐπὶ χθονὶ παμφανόωσαν, vi 473, where παμφανόωσαν replaces the expected

πουλυβοτείρῃ. But we may distinguish the vitality of the image from that of specific items of vocabulary. Kopu0atoXog is once used of Ares (Il. XX. 38).

48

J. B. HAINSWORTH

be evoked by ποδάρκης and πόδας ὠχύς, if they failed to appear at the very moment when Achilles's speed is, for the first and last time, significant? The epithets of Odysseus or Agamemnon would be better examples of apposite sense and productiveness. The technical usefulness of the epithets of Hector, Achilles and Odysseus is not in question, but again there is a tension between what is aesthetically effective and what is technically useful. For usefulness tends to conserve formulae when time has dulled their impact. It is clear, for example, that χορυθαίολος is Hector, and πόδας ὠκύς Achilles. The words are far more than honorifics. They evoke images unthinkable in other contexts. But one does not study the epithets for long before one meets the “ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν phenomenon." ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν is an epithet-phrase that occurs 37 times with one hero, and with 5 other heroes once each: cf. κρείων, with Agamemnon 30x, with Enosichthön 7 x, and once with five

others. Special epithets therefore are raided to furnish vocabulary for generic use. It is a very good formula that is so specific, and so vivid, that it can long resist that kind of generalization. The ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν phenomenon illustrates something else, the difficulty of inventing new and effective epithets. Around most sets of formulae there is a limbo of uniquely occurring expressions, ambiguously classified. It is even possible to find whole sets of such expressions, e.g. the diction grouped around the word θάλαμος in the genitive singular: ὑψηλοῦ θαλάμου πυκινοῦ θαλάμου πολυκμήτου θαλάμου ἐὐσταθέος θαλάμου ὑψηρεφέος θαλάμοιο θαλάμου πύκα ποιητοῖο θαλάμοιο θυώδεος ὑψορόφοιο. None

of these expressions is formulaic in the sense that it is

repeated. Most, I should conjecture, are ad hoc creations. But there is not a single new epithet in the list at all. The most colourful phrases borrow epithets like ὑψόροφος and ἐϊσταθῆς from other case-forms of θάλαμος or from related words like δῶμα and μέγαρον. Otherwise we have neutral, general words like πυχινός and ὑψηλός. The one striking word in this group, πολύκμητος (‘‘elaborate”’ according to LSJ), has interestingly lost the precise and vivid force

GOOD

AND

BAD

FORMULAE

49

it had in the primary formula πολύκμητος σίδηρος. It will not be disputed that what is good about this set of expressions, what 1s colourful, is derived from borrowed garments. Invention is quite rare. Interchange of epithets between formula-systems is an interesting feature of Homeric diction, insufficiently studied. Potentially it is an important feature. For whether diction is transposed from one formula-system to another, whether it is non-transferable, whether it is borrowed but adapted—this is a means whereby the

decay of emotive force in formulaic diction can be estimated. ἄναξ, ἀνδρῶν at least appears to have been intelligible as it stood.? The next stage may be illustrated by τανηλεγέος θανάτοιο. Among the peripheral diction for “war’’ is a standard verse-end pair in the gen. sing., ὁμοιΐου πολέμοιο (8X ) and moAvatxoc πολέμοιο (3X ). Both are very ossified, in need of commentary to elucidate their sense, and the first may represent a prototype *óuottoo πτολέμοιο. ὀϊζυροῦ πολέμοιο (Il. 11.112) is just emerging to compete with the first. It uses a common epic ψοτγά--ὀϊζύς and its adjective occur 32x. δυσηλεγέος πολέμοιο (Jl. xx 154) competes with the second—but where does its epithet come from? πόλεμος and θάνατος exchange some diction, e.g. the epithet δυσηχῆς. Now τανηλεγεός θανάτοιο is an expression embedded in whole line formulae (8x), but not in free use. It is not a cipher, however; the poet still attaches some meaning to it, and will borrow it. But when he does so, he clarifies

the meaning: hence θάνατόν ye δυσηλεγέα, accusative, and δυσηλεγέος πολέμοιο. In conclusion, then, how should we imagine that a primitive and undistinguished formula-system like the HaAd&uoro-expressions would develop, given time? Some of the expressions indeed would never become true formulae, because they were so seldom needed that the usual generative processes would be adequate to supply the occasional requirement. So long as he worked with epithets that were felt to be truly generic, the poet would not be using an emotively powerful part of his diction. There would be some effect, of course, and doubtless some generic epithets were more effective than others, though we do not know how one could be sure which

? Yet even glosses are sometimes transferred, cf. dxaxnta Προμηθεύς, Hesiod, Theog. 614, with an obscure epithet taken from Hermes. Such a use, however, seems to me too sophisticated for a genuine oral tradition.

50

J. B.

HAINSWORTH

they were, except by hariolation. But some expressions would be thrown up that, needed more often, would begin to ossify into formulae. It is when this process starts that the quality of the diction begins to matter,

and the best and most

colourful expres-

sions are sorted out, not a rapid process. It is verbal dexterity, not verbal inventiveness, that 15 the epic's strong point. At this stage the image produced by the epithet (or, in Dr. Nagler's terms, by the Gestalt underlying it) is a real one. These formulae are the best in the poet's repertoire, both technically and aesthetically. We can pick them out by their productivity: there is a halo of derivative expressions about them, and the essential idea crops up in other formulae and perhaps also in incident. The sense of the formula,

in

other

words,

is clear

and

exact.

This

would

be

the

stage of πολύτλας and πολύμητις ᾿Οδυσσεύς. It was a difficult one to maintain for long, as we have seen. The use of the epithet is controlled by a technical factor—metrics—not by context. So the sense of the epithet is apt to lose exactitude, and with it some of its impact. It may lose it sufficiently, like ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν ᾿Αγαμέμνων, to become quasi-generic. At any rate the regular and stable use of a formula that brings it into existence is bound in the end to destroy it. Custom, fashion, even the very language of the vernacular changes. The formula becomes outmoded. Its colour turns first into the rust of archaism, and finally into the magnificence of the unknown and incomprehensible: at which stage the old formula 15 ripe for replacement by the neutral product of generative processes, and the cycle begins anew.1? 19 ] wish to thank Professor B. C. Fenik and the University of Cincinnati for their kindness in making it possible for me to address the Symposium. I am

indebted

also

to

Professors

A.

Athanassakis,

D.

D.

Boedeker,

M.

W.

Edwards, M. N. Nagler, and to the other participants who sought to correct my errors and rectify the balance of my contribution. Apart from a few stylistic changes appropriate to the literary rather than the oral medium, however, the text is printed as delivered.

THE

TRANSFORMATION UVO

FROM

FOLK-TALE

TO

EPIC

HOELSCHER Munich

It might be helpful to say that my lecture, after an introduction, will consist of four points of argument, more or less independent of one another, but each of them related to the process denoted in my

title: the transformation from folk-tale to epic. First, I shall talk about the problem of the beginning of the epic narrative; secondly, about the presumable beginning of the old Odysseus tale and its relation to the Telemachia; in the third place I shall try to analyse into its folk-tale and epical elements the Penelope scene in book 18 with her deception of the suitors; finally, there will follow some considerations on the scene of the bow-test in book 21, where Telemachos sends his mother away. You will easily recognize my arguments as continuing, on a modest scale, the methods and insights of Karl Reinhardt. It is true that the transformation from folk-tale to epic, as treated by him in his essay on the Adventures of Odysseus, is not identical with the transition from oral to literary composition, and you will miss in my considerations the explicit treatment of this predominant question. You may ascribe this failure, if it is one, to the peculiar tendencies of Homeric research in our country, as described yesterday in Professor Heubeck's paper. Still, I think my problem also has a bearing upon the idea of oral composition as well as upon the general question of our meeting: the relation of tradition and invention in Homer. For a long time, the Homeric question was treated as the question of the genesis of the Homeric poems. Besides this question, and frequently against it, there was always raised as well the question of their poetic form. These two kinds of approach to the text of Homer,

it 1s true,

are

differently

oriented:

the

latter

treats

the

epic as a whole, complete and necessary in itself; the former (the question of genesis) regards it as something growing, the transmitted form of which, compared to its previous stages, is more or less fortuitous. But the two questions are also interdependent. Assuming the gradual historical growth, we still have to account for the literary form

of each

single

stage;

and

assuming,

on

the

other

hand,

a

52

UVO HOELSCHER

unique act of poetic composition, we still encounter the problem of the way in which the poet's invention relates to the traditional myth. For it 1s evident that there are certain stories underlying the Homeric poems, or contained in them, even though it may not

be possible to separate them as individual texts from the whole. In

the

Iliad,

for instance,

the

tale

of Paris

awarding

the

apple,

continuing with the rape of Helen and the fall of Troy, can be considered as such a basic story. This story has been called a novelette; it 15 at any rate of a different kind from that other story which is also contained in the Iliad: the Achilleis. This begins with the wedding of Peleus and Thetis and ends with the death of Achilles: a heroic myth with divine origin and tragic ending. It seems as though we must distinguish from the Achilleis yet a third story, though concerned with the same hero: the Patrocleia;

a heroic story as well, but without any gods: beginning with the quarrel about the captured girl, and ending with the death of Patroclos, or the vengeance on Hector. A story of a few days. It 1s this story, and not the other two, which serves as the frame

of the action which philologists call the “‘Menis.”’ When speaking of "stories," I am referring to the simple sequence of narrated events, or the pragmatic skeleton of an action; in a word,

the fabula, the "plot" —strictly speaking what Aristotle calls the “mythos” or the "logos" of a poem. This simple story is recognizable by its internal narrative logic, dealing with certain motifs that entail certain consequences. 50 it has a beginning, a middle, and

an

end,

and

constitutes

a narrative

whole:

the

Aristotelian

“holon.” The ‘simple story’ is not a literary primary stage, but a subliterary form, being somehow contained in every particular literary formation. Nevertheless, one must, or may, ask in which way such simple stories existed before they were transformed into literature. The inquiry into this question would lead to preliterary forms, whether prosaic or poetical, in which the telling of tales happened to go on, and which, as ‘simple forms’ (in the sense as introduced by Andre Jolles, Einfache Formen, 1930, 71974), would join with other original modes of human speech like ‘ainos,’ ‘gnome,’ 'griphos' etc. With regard to the Odyssey, the stories contained in it in their proper form are much more evident than in the Iliad. Odysseus’ Adventures are neither heroic myth nor novelettes, but genuine fairy-tales. It is hard to imagine that the linguistic medium for

THE

TRANSFORMATION

FROM

FOLK-TALE

TO

EPIC

53

these Odysseus tales should originally have been the heroic hexameter song; rather one would think of prose narration. However, there is also Odysseus as the hero of the Trojan saga, from which derived his name "'ptoliporthos." It is a special problem how this heroic Odysseus relates to the folk-tale hero. At any rate, the features of the latter are already marked in the hero at Troy in the Iliad: it is as the folk-tale hero, and not as the epic figure in the Iliad, that Odysseus is given the epithets “much-enduring,”’ “resourceful” and "wily." Helen calls him a “man of many wiles,”’ and his opponent in Book ii addresses him °Q ᾿Οδυσεῦ πολύαινε, "you with the many tales, insatiate of wiles and endurance..." (v. 430). Wiles and endurance are characteristic of the adventurer and wanderer. You may think of the Wooden Horse or the Ptocheia; the attributes, however, apply to him as the adventure hero. He was this already, then, before he makes his entry in the heroic epic. But to what extent is the Odyssey marked by features of the folk-tale? Is there a story underlying not only the Apologoi, but also the other parts of the poem: the return to Ithaca and the reunion with Penelope? To say nothing of the Telemachia. We know the answers supplied by traditional analysis. Since its approach is directed towards establishing texts—texts within the text—, it is always epic texts which this form of analysis hopes to establish as the preliminary stages of the text as we know it. This applies no matter whether the process of composition 15 assumed to have been oral or written. Of course this kind of analysis also assumes there to have been a folk tradition, but this is only regarded as raw subject-matter. Thus the epic songs are seen as pieces, shaped by the singers, of a mass of basic material. It is rare for questions to be asked as to the form of the story or the consequences resulting from its motifs. Questions are sometimes put as to the various kinds and degrees of reality; in this way one may distinguish between mythology and history, contemporary and folk-tale elements. The dubious concept of the ‘miraculous’

is taken to be a characteristic of the folktale;

where the miraculous element is missing, where real-life events such as the return of the missing hero seem to be reflected, the term "novellette" is used. Thus the parts naturally separate themselves by their very contents. It is one of the basic assumptions of traditional analysis that the two halves of the epic belong to different

54

UVO

HOELSCHER

bodies of content, the transition from the one to the other taking place in Book 13. The epithets awarded Odysseus in the Iliad are supposed to relate only to the wanderings, and not to the “‘novelette’’ of the husband's homecoming, which would have been a later accretion (Wilamowitz, Heimkehr des Odysseus 186, Ilias und Homer 488). The different subject matters or contents thus also fall into place as steps in the genesis of the epic text. On closer examination, however, the Iliad and its epithets are seen to point beyond the wanderings. The adventures consist in fact of only very few cases of the use of wiles and cunning, really only the incident with Polyphemus,

and, to a lesser extent, the episodes of Circe and the

Sirens. But what do the Sirens mean when they address Odysseus: Acie’ ἄγ᾽ ἰών, πολύαιν᾽ ᾿Ωδυσεῦἡ (12.184) What did Agamemnon mean when he used the same expression to address him in the Iliad? (9.673) This epithet is entirely restricted to Odysseus. Which

of his adventures depends,

in its outcome,

on “ainoi,”’ that

is, ‘suggestive and allusive tales"? The outwitting of the Cyclops, maybe.

The

basic

situation

of

endurance,

however,

endurance

coupled with “wily scheming’ and “allusive tales" is to be found in the role of the beggar in the story of the homecoming. I am not going to deal with preliminary stages of the text in what follows. Although I do not dispute that the Odysseus story was the subject of earlier epics, I do not think it possible to identify such earlier stages as texts in the Odyssey. Instead, allow me at once to leap back into the unknown, the preliterary stage, to the hypothetical Odysseus story, leaving out the distinction between Novelette and folk-tale, a questionable distinction in any case. This unknown story is not completely unrecognizable. À lot has been done to throw light onto the folk-tale background of the Odyssey. Ludwig Radermacher was one of the first to try this, with his “Die Erzählungen der Odyssee" (1915), in which he found parallels in world literature, especially for the adventures, which proved how far the epic was based on narrative tradition. As folk-tale and fairy-tale research continued many more parallels have been found, most recently by Denys Page in his lectures on ‘Folk-tales in the Odyssey" (1972). In one respect Radermacher went one step further than Page in that he considered the adventures not only individually but certain links between them as well;

links

between

certain

motifs

continuation in the story of the

of

the

wanderings

homecoming,

and

their

for which he also

THE

TRANSFORMATION

FROM

FOLK-TALE

TO

EPIC

55

finds parallels from many different sources and which he claims for a "world folk-tale." As such motifs he lists the long period of time spent with the sorceress, the journey to the underworld and the consultation of the demon of the underworld, the miraculously swift journey home made by the hero in a deep sleep, the first appearance of the returned hero in shabby disguise, the contest of the bow and the recognition. To this one could add that the long series of adventures itself is a basic motif of this kind of folk-tale,

although in this respect the narrator is far more free to choose his own combination. The poet of the Odyssey, for example, appears to have chosen to include some stories which actually belong to the saga of the Argonauts and to have related them to his hero instead, thus adding to the number of adventures. There is one remarkable detail: Radermacher tells us that in the American Indian folk-tale of Odhibwa the prophecy of the demon of the underworld contains not only the warning that the hero will find his brothers paying court to his wife at home, but also the promise of a happy old age. Here the look beyond the actual homecoming, the re-establishing of normal relations and the happy end, belong to the story as a whole. We must therefore look at the whole of the story. This is what J. Tolstoi did in his essay in Philologus, 1934, in which he finds ten motifs, mainly from Russian tales, which he shows to be components of a model story and which all occur in the Odyssey as well. Thus, in addition to the collecting of motif parallels, folk-tale research now has to compare and identify structures. Since 1928 Vladimir Propp has been developing an exact morphology of the folk-tale, which 1s intended to be applicable to all examples. Morphology is used here in the Goethean sense of a theory of ideal form and its metamorphoses. For our purposes we can adopt from this the view that the question is not so much to reconstruct any particular story as to recognize a form. The Odysseus story, too, is, to a certain extent, an abstractum which has concrete existence only in its variants. Bearing these concepts in mind, let me now turn to the text of the Odyssey. The simple story which underlies the epic can be gathered from numerous references in the text, starting at the latest from the point when the Achaean fleet, after the fall of Troy, is preparing to sail home, that is, when the Nostoi begin. This 15 to be found in the tales of Nestor and Menelaus in Books 3 and 4. 5

56

UVO HOELSCHER

It 1s followed by the adventures told by Odysseus himself, and the return to Ithaca. From there, the story is embedded in the action of the epic itself, and ends with the recognition by Penelope. It is a story covering ten years. But this story is not identical with the action of the Odyssey. It is, for the greater part, its antecedents, which are supplied within the epic by means of retrospective speeches and interior narrations. The epic itself, however, begins close to the end of this story: "By now all the others were safely home... Only the one was detained by the nymph, the goddess Calypso..." We have, I think, wondered too little at this beginning. Probably we are so much accustomed to tradition, and even analysts are so biased by the factuality of the poem, they take it so much for granted and find it so unquestionable that they can think of an original Odyssey only as beginning with the dismissal from Ogygia. Of course, the poet explicitly leaves the decision about the beginning to the Muse: ‘

... you may begin at whatever point you will..."

and according the proem we are prepared to hear something of the hero's wanderings, adventures, and sorrows. But that the beginning should be with Calypso, that is, at the end of the wanderings, was by no means an obvious choice. The advantages of this disposition are known. ἃ narrative of ten years, that is of 3000 or more days, would not allow the sort of Homeric narration in which the days, between sunrise and sunset,

round off into scenes and episodes. We may say with certainty that the Cyclic epics, such as the Cypria or the Little Iliad, were narrated in a totally different style. By entering into the story shortly before its end the narrative is reduced to the brief span of the return. But time conditions style. Without the time being shortened, the Homeric art of narration, its dwelling on scenes, and what we call the epical breadth, the particular presence and sensuousness of epic style, would be impossible. The model is the Iliad. There, too, a ten- or twenty-year story of the downfall of Troy was represented in an action of a few days. But yet the proceeding of the poet of the Iliad was a different one. The frame of his epic was the Patrocleia, that is, a story really comprising only a few days.

THE

TRANSFORMATION

FROM

FOLK-TALE

TO

EPIC

57

To the same end the poet of the Odyssey cut through his story by starting near the end and turning all the rest into antecedents. Admittedly, the point where the poet begins, Odysseus' stay with Calypso, was a good choice. But how was this moment offered by the traditional Odysseus story? Was it not, as the proem says, a quite arbitrary choice? The question will arise all the more if it is right, as has been suggested, that Calypso and indeed the whole Ogygia episode is an invention of the poet of the Odyssey, created on the model of Circe; consequently, if it did not belong to the original sequence of adventures at all, then the first five lines after the proem, the entry into the narration with Calypso, are the first surprise, the poet's first narrative effect. The second one follows immediately. For what he now begins telling—not what we expected, namely the story of Odysseus, but instead Athene's visit to Telemachus—was quite new to his audience. Telemachus' journey to the mainland, his visits to Nestor and Menelaos, cannot have been a traditional story. On this point philologists are unanimous. But what is the meaning of the fact that the poem, instead of beginning on Ogygia and with the dismissal by Calypso, begins in Ithaca? It means that the Odyssey starts with a crisis. Every scene of the first book is saying one thing: that the state of affairs is not to be endured any longer; that the moment has come when a decision has to be taken. From where did the poet take the situation of this moment? Was there a rudiment of it in the basic story? I do not find the moment of crisis in the course of the Odysseus action. Odysseus could easily continue to remain with Calypso. There

is one

moment,

it is true,

in the

sequence

of adventures:

it is when Tiresias tells him that he will find his wife courted by the suitors. It 1s significant that this prophecy refers to the future. In parallel folk-tales it is the prophecy of the demon of the underworld that precipitates the turn of events, that is, the immediate return. The Odyssey lets this prophecy pass without such a peripetal turn being produced; the adventures continue. After all, the prophecy, as a motif of the adventures, points to a critical situation in Ithaca. Besides the wanderings

of Odysseus,

there is, however,

another

story in the Odyssey, also indirectly told, also antecedent to the epic, whose whole meaning and function is to bring forth a crisis: I am referring to the story of the web. A story not of Odysseus,

58

UVO HOELSCHER

but the day told

of Penelope. It also shows unmistakably the characteristics of folk-tale, and it is wholly based upon the motif that now the is at hand when Penelope must marry again. Wherever it 15 in the poem, it is to account for this constrained situation.

Here,

then,

the term

draws

near

and

the crisis 1s about

And of course it is the intention of the motif that in Odysseus appear. It is not difficult to see that at this point one other. In fact, there are not two stories but one. parallel tales about a long waiting and a return

to arise.

the last moment story joins the There are many at the eleventh

hour, where we find the motif of the fixed term in this form:

"But

when the time was come..." The date always means the miraculous coincidence of two strings of action, the coincidence of deepest distress and rescue, as is demanded by the logic of the story.

Now, the Odyssey begins with the fixing of such a date: "But when the rolling seasons had at last brought up the year marked by the gods for his return to Ithaca..." It would be idle to ask why it 15 just now that the gods feel that Odysseus has been errant long enough. What in the logic of the simple story is miraculous coincidence, 15 divine dispensation on the level of the epic. But the moment is motivated not from the series of adventures, but solely from the logic of the story of Penelope. That means that the ''term'' of the gods’ resolution, with regard to the logic of the story, also points to the situation of crisis, that is,

to the situation of the Telemachia. My thesis, then, of this first section would be the following: The beginning of the Odysseus action in the Odyssey, the entry into the narration shortly before the homecoming, was anything but self-evident. It presented itself to the poet not in an isolated Odysseus action, as reconstructed in the hypothetical '' Urodyssee;"' it is conceived as a moment of the Penelope story, as represented in

the first book in the form of an epic situation. The basic story which we recognize behind the epic is not as simple, then, as it might seem at first. Structurally, it contains at least two places: abroad and at home. Such a change between two strands of action involving different localities is not beyond the possibilities of folk-tale narration. And the logic of the tale is to unite the two.

THE

TRANSFORMATION

FROM

FOLK-TALE

TO

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59

But how did they come to be separated? The question also surely arises: How did the story begin? Here again the structural analysis of comparative folklore research can help us. Stories do have their beginnings. Folk-tales of the Odyssean type usually begin with the hero's departure from home, often with the leave-taking from his wife. At this point he issues an injunction to one of those remaining behind. In this injunction the further sequence of events is, as it were, designed. And indeed in the Odyssey, too, we meet with this type of a beginning; again, it is retrospectively given in a speech as a reminiscence of remote antecedents. I mean the speech of Penelope in Book 18, at her appearance before the suitors. It has been doubted whether Penelope is being serious here. For the time being I shall not question the meaning of this scene, but confine myself to what she says: "When Odysseus left his native strand he took me by the wrist of my right hand and said: Wife, I fear not quite all of us mailclad Achaeans can live through this campaign ... So I cannot tell if heaven will grant me a home-coming or retain me in the Troad. Hence you must take charge here. Look after my father and mother in the house as you do now;

or even more,

perhaps,

to replace my absence. But when you see our son growing a beard, then feel free to marry again as you will, and leave your home." If we take her at her word, we find here the beginning of the story we have been looking for, which began just as fairy-tales usually do: Once there was a king who went abroad... This beginning we recognize as typical of folk-tales if only by the departure to a distant land and the instructions left behind, which already contain the germ of all the consequences. But it 1s in one motif especially that I see the character of folktale: "When you see our son growing a beard..." Only this instruction accounts for her waiting so long and to the end of a fixed term. Without the fixing of such a date the whole story of Odysseus could hardly be told. The wording means the son's majority, his coming of age; it means that from now on there is no reason any longer for Penelope to manage the house instead of Odysseus; that now she must go.

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UVO HOELSCHER

I shall not quote the numerous passages that explicitly speak of Telemachus' coming of age. But I should like to point to a group of scenes, all of which serve to demonstrate one and the same thing. His behaviour towards

his mother,

his standing up to the suitors,

his caling together the assembly of the Ithacans, his journey undertaken without his mother's knowledge—all these acts are described as first manifestations of manhood. It has often been remarked that the story of the Telemachia, as opposed to the other parts of the Odyssey, has no mythical background; it seems to be totally the invention of the poet. I would not deny it. But all the situations there in which the character of Telemachus is shown represent the adolescent's coming of age at the critical moment between childhood and manhood. The whole Telemachia is no more than the fixing of the date in the primitive fabula, transformed into epical situations: “as soon as our son has a beard." —That is what I might call my second thesis. It was my point to show where the Telemachia is rooted in tradition. Now, we remember that in the Iliad Odysseus twice calls himself the “father of Telemachus.’’

This, we may

conclude,

is no

reminiscence either of the Odyssey or of some heroic part Telemachus played in myth. It just points to his function in the old Odysseus story, in a similar way that Odysseus’ epithets "polymetis" or "polytlas" point to the folk-tale hero. Telemachus' presence in the Iliad 1s perhaps the most obvious evidence that the Odysseus story, however much of a folk-tale there is in it, was the subject of heroic epic literature before the Odyssey was composed. This is even more obvious evidence than Odysseus' epithets. The minstrels' epic, as a social custom, appears to have played a dominant role and taken over all the subject matter of tales, to have transformed everything and anything into "mythos." Let me proceed to another step in my argument. You may ask what the point is of knowing that the Odyssey is based on a folk-tale which ran in such and such a way. As I see it, the point is that the specifically epic elements can be recognized more clearly by comparing the folk-tale and the epic, and by observing the transformation of the one into the other. The simple story is pragmatic, it consists of a series of facts. The transformation into an epic is the conversion of facts into situations—like Reinhardt, I prefer to call them 'situations' rather than 'scenes,' because there is more in

the 'situation' than merely the perceptual. The situation is existence

THE

TRANSFORMATION

FROM

FOLK-TALE

TO

EPIC

61

in time, existence in which a person's circumstances, a psychological element, an internal relation are expressed. Psychology is alien to the simple story; it gives us only facts and does not care about the state of the hero's soul. Itis not concerned with the hidden constellations. Let us, from this point of view, look once more at the scene from

which I have just quoted Penelope's report of her husband's departure. A very odd scene, as it seems—we all know the problem connected with it. Penelope, by that very speech to Eurymachus, assures the suitors that her new wedding is close at hand. By reproaching them for their improper courtship she provokes them to bring her a large number of valuable presents. Thereupon she withdraws with her riches. Odysseus, silently present, “rejoiced, itis said, "because she drew the gifts from them by her sweet words,

while desiring something else.’ By this remark the scene seemed to be explained by the poet himself as an artful maneuver of Penelope's, a conscious deception. And certainly the suitors are the deceived ones. You probably know the famous verdict of Kaiser (in 1836): “Regina ad artes prope meretricias descendit." Penelope’s frivolous behavior, not consistent with the rest of the poem, seemed to supply evidence for separatist analysis. However, the assumption of an intention to deceive contradicts the opening of the scene. It is Athene who has managed the whole thing, it is her design to “fan the ardour of the suitors and enhance Penelope's value to her husband." Penelope does not know what is happening to her: "Queerly she laughed and turned to her maid...”

She is not aware of her husband’s presence; she feels she ought to have a serious word with her son; she rejects outright her maid's suggestion that she ought to beautify herself for her appearance before

the suitors.

No,

she will not

wash

nor

anoint

her cheeks,

as her beauty is gone since Odysseus went away. So it is impossible to impute to her the intention of duping the suitors. But the goddess follows her scheme through. In a short sleep, which suddenly overwhelms the queen, all cosmetics are substituted by the gift of Athene, who employs a beauty cream normally reserved for Aphrodite. The effect of it is that Penelope's appearance in the hall excites the suitors to the most passionate desires: “all of them wished to lie with her in her bed.”’

62

UVO

HOELSCHER

So the actual effect of the story is a dupery indeed. One may compare it with the story of the web. There Penelope was the crafty, the cunning woman for the only time in the Odyssey. It was one of those stories referred to in epic speeches, which, like the Adventures, belonged to the pre-epic folk-tale stratum of the poem. But the epic poet in Book 18 is anxious to exclude any suspicions about Penelope's intentionally deceiving the suitors. Everything on her part had to be done unintentionally. As for her toilet, it 15 the goddess who takes care of it. Coquetry and craftiness, which one might expect from the effect of the episode, are not shown at all; she is as dignified and modest as ever. Indeed, the character of Penelope does not deviate from that displayed elsewhere in the Odyssey. In short, she is not the cunning Penelope of the folk-tale, but the “periphron” of the epic. I would not hesitate to claim the dupery story for the old folktale tradition. Its motif seems indeed to be a trick, and the meaning of the motif shaped its figures: Penelope was the cunning woman, the suitors the same fools as in the story of the web. But into its outlines—and this would be my third thesis—into the simple outlines of the story of deception an epic situation was drawn, the substance of which transcends the old story. The deception could very well have been told without the presence of Odysseus. But not so in the Odyssey. Here the scene has a spectator. By this very fact 1t becomes what we call a situation. It becomes ambiguous, it enters into an atmosphere that is characterized by the interplay of consciousness and unconsciousness. In this quality the scene has its accurate place in the sequence of meetings between Penelope and Odysseus. The queen, we know, had asked for the beggar already in the early afternoon. But the audience did not take place; Odysseus had declined to see the queen and asked for a confidential talk in the later evening. Between the meeting rejected by Odysseus in the afternoon of Book r7, and the actual meeting in the late evening in Book 19, there is this scene of Book 18, unforeseen as it 1s, which we might call or not call a meeting: for, while the queen

and the beggar do not say a single word to each other, and Penelope is unaware of her husband's presence, each of her words is related to him. It 1s for him that she takes her son to task for having allowed the wrestling match with Irus;

for him, too, that she tells how

THE

TRANSFORMATION

FROM

FOLK-TALE

TO

EPIC

63

Odysseus took leave of her twenty years before. It is a kind of unconscious '"peira," a wonderful passing of a test. And here, too, according to the will of the poet (and the goddess) she has to show herself in overwhelming splendour. Penelope appears before him, the queen before the beggar, for the first time after twenty years; she appears not as the mourning wife, but in Aphrodite's splendour and with the dignity of a great lady. This she must not know—but the goddess knows. Let us realize what would be lost to the epic if this last episode were missing. In all the other scenes Penelope is represented as the faithful, the mourning, the oppressed wife. But the Penelope for whose sake Odysseus on the island of Calypso rejects immortality, the Penelope whose majesty the beggar praises, the glorious, the enchanting, the overwhelming Penelope—she would be missing. So we see: by the epical transformation a simple story has undergone a deep alteration. What formerly was cunning is now superiority, and the oppressors become thralls of regal fascination. In the same way the harvesting of gifts is not what it was: the gifts requested as “what is due to a gentlewoman and a rich man's daughter" are proffered with chivalrous obeisance, where the acceptance is taken as a sign of favour. Thus, throughout the epic, the suitors have been raised above the fools of the folk-tale. And it is only in this more elevated role that they also could become transgressors.

So it may be clear what use it is to know that there was a story underlying the epic. We do not understand what epic is unless we understand what is non-epic. If we do not recognize the limits of primitive narration (and here we have to take into account the possibilities of oral narrative), we never shall see the particular virtues of great epic style. Here, and only here, we have the considerable retardations, the looking back and ahead, the pointing from one scene to the other, the transparence and the ambiguity of situations. I turn now to one last consideration. The transformation of elements of action into situations has brought the epic, as compared with the folk-tale, more than just advantages. It is the virtue of the simple tale to be pragmatic, concise, and purposive. The many attempts, especially with the Iliad, were to transform the epic with all its episodes back into a shorter, more concise and dramatic form

which follows a straight-line course to the end with no digressions

64

UVO HOELSCHER

or retardations. These show how strong is our need of pragmatic consistency in a story. But even at the level of the folk-tale there 15 yet another need, one directly opposed to this, the need of entertainment, of diversion and diversity of events. The epic, too, satisfies these needs; but it also satisfies another one: the need of description, visualization, reality and the here and now. This requires breadth and length—length sometimes at the expense of other things. Lengthy, vivid, detailed description is so essential a part of epic poetry that the narrator, in order to unfold and display individual scenes and situations, has to accept even the risk of improbabilities. The conciseness and close-knit logic of the simple story may be affected thereby. We find such a case of improbability in the scene of the contest of the bow. The scheme of this story is easily recognizable as a folk-tale motif even if we had no parallels from world literature. The old weapon of the missing hero will prove who of the competitors is his equal—but that is nobody except himself. He who

is able to bend the bow turns out to be Odysseus. The story, according to its type, points to a revelation: it culminates in the suitors’ terrified astonishment at the beggar and their sudden realization when he aims the arrow at them. The suitors recognize the King, and—we should presume—the queen her husband. Let it be noted, however, that the recognition of the spouses 15

not what occurs in the 22nd book of the Odyssey. It is what had to happen according to the folk-tale scheme. But how is it realized in the Odyssey? Up to the moment when Penelope is about to give the bow to the beggar, everything goes as expected. But suddenly Telemachus intervenes, strongly opposing his mother: “Off with you to your quarters and your duties, the weaving and the spinning and the ordering of your maids’ work. The bow is man's business, and especially mine as I am master here." By the way, is that a formula? Students of formular patterns are incined to acknowledge traditional formulation even in cases where the same wording is repeated only once: The lines just quoted occur four times in Iliad and Odyssey. Is, then, the question as to the original place of occurrence permissible? What is “better, and what is “not so good.” to send Andromache "home," εἰς otxov— or Penelope, who is at home? What is better: ''War is men’s business"—or "tale"? or "escort"? or "the bow"? (Don't we need a

THE

TRANSFORMATION

FROM

FOLK-TALE

TO

EPIC

65

substantivum actionis?) Is, then, Telemachus "quoting" Achilles? Or is the question a wrong one? Did the singers have a formula in their stock, ready for all events and eventualities whenever they had to send away a woman? Are there "types" of that sort? And if there are, are they typical of tradition, or typical of Homer? I do not always find scholars making this distinction when talking of "typical scenes." But if the latter, then the typical and the individual coincide. But to return to our point: what 15 it that Telemachus wants? Does he want to withhold the bow from the beggar—whom he really knows very well to be his father? Quite the opposite: no sooner is Penelope gone than he gives the bow to Odysseus. Why then

the scene?

did in Book Book 1:

To

demonstrate,

once more,

his manliness,

as he

1? Penelope is sent away with the same lines as in

"She turned, bewildered, into the house with this pregnant phrase of her son's laid up in her heart. And when upstairs again with her serving women she bewailed Odysseus, her sweet husband; till Athene shed a balm of sleep upon her eyes." She sleeps. It is hard to believe, but she can sleep while downstairs the decision over her remarriage is taking place. She sleeps while the horrible slaughter of the suitors is going on; she sleeps for nearly two whole books. And when she awakes, brought to her feet with rather an effort by Eurycleia, all is over, and Odysseus 1s standing amidst the corpses like a lion among slain bulls. One might call this sleep of Penelope a rather poor invention. The motivation is artificial, without any probability. The poet takes no pains to explain to us the scene with Telemachus. It is obviously a repetition from the first book. And indeed, it is quite clear that a simple course of events is being interrupted here. The interruption can be compared to the part in Book 22 of the Ihad where Achilles, having been victorious over Hector, calls on the Myrmidons to storm Troy—the continuation, after all that has passed here, can only be Achilles death at the Scaean Gate. But suddenly, remembering Patroclus, he stops and begins to maltreat Hector's body. It is what prepares the way for the end of the Iliad as we know it in Book 24. In both cases one must ask whether the interruption is the result of an arbitrary change in the text, which we would then

66

UVO HOELSCHER

have to correct. Would it not be much more convincing to allow Penelope to stay and thus combine the murder of the suitors in Book 21 immediately with that wonderful scene of Odysseus’ recognition by Penelope in Book 23? The philologist, in contriving such more plausible connections, really appears to emulate the epic poet. It seems to be his task, by cutting and combining, to regain the old genuine epic by discarding the artificial turn which is brought into the action by the sleep of Penelope. But in reconstructing the action in this way we should realize that it is no longer an epic scene we are dealing with. What we reconstruct by analysis is not an earlier epic stage, but the basic story. Such a story can be easily inferred, telling how the beggar bent the bow and the suitors recognized that it was Odysseus: and he shot them down one after the other, and the queen recognized her husband and embraced him... 50, or in a like manner,

our basic story would run. But as soon

as the simple story turns into great epic, as the moments of the tale are transformed into epical situations, the presence of the queen is inadmissable. The recognition by the suitors and the recognition by the queen had to be separated. Each of them unfolds itself in an independent scene. This is required not only by the breadth of epic style—the reunion of the spouses could not be suspended for a whole book—the main cause is the palpability of scenic representation in Homeric narrative, which could not ignore the silent presence of a mute Penelope. The poem would be deprived of the recognition scene unless this scene was postponed at all costs. The prize which the poet had to pay for his epical disposition is the improbability of an instance: he removed Penelope and put her to sleep, not to rouse her until the defeat of the suitors was over. In the folk-tale Penelope certainly did not sleep. She was the schemer,

the witness,

and the prize of the shooting match;

it was

for her sake that the revelation was brought about. Revelation, vengeance, and recognition were all one. The sleep of Penelope was invented when the folk-tale was elaborated into epic. Now the recognition was reserved to be unfolded in a separate episode in Book 23. I cannot go into the interpretation of that incident any further here. It would have to be shown how the scene of recognition, far beyond its functional value for the plot, becomes an epic situation able to display the occurrences of the heart. The folk-tale was not concerned with scene-setting; neither was it concerned with

THE

TRANSFORMATION

FROM

FOLK-TALE

TO

EPIC

67

the psychology of its figures. It did not concern itself about the presence of the queen or with her feelings when witnessing the slaughter of the suitors. Only in the epic form could the recognition be represented as an internal process, with all its conflicting tones of despair and hope, of numbness and sensitivity, of cleverness and candour, of rejection and the devotion of love.

STYLIZATION

AND

VARIETY

Four Monologues in the Iliad BERNARD

FENIK

Cincinnati

Direct discourse comprises about 67% of the Iliad, and both the amount and quality of it have attracted attention from antiquity onwards. Modern interest has been directed in the main at two things: (1) Homeric psychology, and (2) the structure and form of the longer speeches.! As for the first, the main question has been this: does Homeric man have the concept of choice? Does he regard himself as capable of it? How much of his doing is assigned to outside forces, and in what terms does he assume responsibility for his actions? In short, what notion does he possess of the self? ? The following study touches on both these matters, though indirectly. The four speeches in question comprise a natural group, clearly distinct from all the rest. What marks them off is their typology. The first occurs in Book A, 40r. Odysseus is suddenly isolated and hemmed in by a horde of Trojans. He debates with himself: shall

1 This last by J. Zahn, Betrachtungen über den Bau homerischer Reden, I. Probe: Die Reden dev Ilias A-1-303, Gymn.-Programm 4 (Barmen, 1868); C. Hentze, ‘‘'Die Monologe in den homerischen Epen," Philologus 63 (1904), 12-30; also “16 Chorreden in den homerischen Epen,’’ Philologus 64 (1905), 254-68; D. Mülder, ‘‘Gotteranrufungen in Ilias und Odyssee,”’ Rhein. Mus. 78 (1929), 35-55; W. Arend, Die typischen Szenen bei Homer (Berlin, 1933), 120ff.; A. Fingerle, Die Typik der homerischen Reden (Diss. München, 1939);

the most important is D. Lohmann, Die Komposition der Reden in der Ilias (Berlin, 1970). 2 The bibliography here is too great to make enumeration useful. I single out the following: B. Snell, Die Entdeckung des Geistes (Hamburg, 1955, 17ff.—this of course the study that set the categories for the modern controversy); E. R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Ivvational (Berkeley, 1951, chapters 1-2); A. Lesky, Göttliche und menschliche Motivation im homerischen

Epos

(Heidelberg,

1961),

and

Homeros

(Stuttgart,

1967,

cols. 49-54);

G.

Petersmann, “Die Entscheidungsmonologe in den homerischen Epen," Grazer Beiträge, Zeitschrift für die Altertumswissenschaft 2 (1974), 147-69; and finally, the very useful overview and summary by J. Latacz, "Zur Forschungsarbeit an den direkten Reden bei Homer (1850-1970),"' Grazer

Beitráge 3 (1975), 395-422.

STYLIZATION AND VARIETY

69

he retreat or stand his ground? He decides to fight, receives an elaborate simile comparing him to a boar holding men and hounds at bay, and finally escapes into the Greek lines. The basic ingredients of the episode are these: I. 2. 3. 4.

A single warrior facing unequal odds À monologue pondering the alternatives of retreat or resistance A simile of animal against man Escape

These same elements, in almost identical sequence, form the body of all four scenes. There is a difference in only one: Hector tries to escape, but fails. Book 6, line 553. As the Trojan army streams back into the city, Agenor turns to face Achilles. The menace is extreme, and Agenor waits with his heart in his throat. His monologue: which way to turn? Sure disaster if he does this, terrible danger if he does that. He opts to resist, and is likened to a leopard guarding its lair against hunters and dogs. Combat follows, but is aborted by Agenor's rescue at the hands of Apollo. Book X, line 99. All the Trojans have reached safety inside the walls but Hector. He stands alone with Achilles almost upon him. Again the soliloquy: what shall he do? Retreat? Beg for mercy? No, the only choice is to resist. He is compared to an angry snake coiled over its den, ready to strike. This time, however, there is no escape. Hector's resolve fails and he runs, only to fight in the end and be slain. Book P, line 91. Menelaos stands guard over the corpse of Patroklos and looks out with dismay: Hector is bearing down at the head of his men. Menelaos is a spirited fighter, but of course no match for Hector, and so he has an unpleasant decision to make. Like the others he lays out the alternatives: withdrawal will bring dishonor,

a face-off

certain

death.

But

unlike

the

rest

Menelaos

persuades himself that reason and discretion alike call for retreat. As he backs off, a simile makes him a lion driven from the fold by watchdogs and guards. It is immediately obvious that the four scenes are conceived and executed after a single pattern. Even the monologues follow the same lines. The fighter starts with a cry of desperation, each time with the words ὦ μοι ἐγών. Then he ponders the disagreeable choices

70

BERNARD C. FENIK

available, and signals his decision by asking why he even bothers to reflect: ἀλλὰ τίη μοι ταῦτα φίλος διελέξατο θυμός;

The line remains the same.? In short, the typology of the scenes is pronounced and selfevident: the lone fighter in hopeless circumstances; the speech to himself, always with the same shape and progression; the decision; the simile;

and,

in every

case

but

one,

deliverance.

Add

to this

all other typical details in the four scenes relating them to counterparts in the narrative at large—details too numerous even to mention here; * consider, too, the highly repetitive nature of almost all battle description in the Iliad, and the impression of sheer convention becomes overwhelming. Hence the question: what is there here besides narrative formulae? Certainly these last, lifted from their contexts and listed by themselves, leave the impression of assembly-line copies produced without limit, one scarcely distinguishable from another except for the proper names. What sets each of them apart? Is there individuality in the speakers and in their thinking? And is there fine tuning, so to speak, in each scene's

relation to its context? I have already asserted that all four men make a decision. But here are traps to catch the unwary, for Bruno Snell has long since challenged the notion that Homeric man is capable of genuine choice at all.’ Selection of one course over another is determined from the outside (e.g. by a god), and it is only much later, in Tragedy, that an inward, personal choice—true freedom of the will— first becomes possible. Actually, this question was already alive in antiquity before developing into one of the liveliest and most important of the modern controversies.* But since the work of Lesky, and most recently of Petersmann,

the issue seems to me to

be decided: Homer’s persons do see themselves as capable of free 3 It is also restricted to these monologues with the exception of X 385. 4 For the speeches in A and P, see my Typical Battle Scenes in the Iliad (Wiesbaden, 1968), g6ff. and again 1591.

5 Op. cit. (above, footnote 2) and again in Aischylos und das Handeln 1m Drama, Philologus Suppl. XX, Heft 1 (Leipzig, 1928), see esp. p. 21. For a clear statement of the problem and useful bibliography, cf. Petersmann, op. cit. (above, footnote 2), 147-49. 6 For the debate in antiquity, Plutarch, und menschliche Motivation, 18ff.

Coriolanus

32, and Lesky, Góttliche

STYLIZATION

AND

VARIETY

71

choice between genuine alternatives. The question is not, of course, whether man (all men) enjoy actual freedom of choice (whatever that is), but whether

Homeric

man

thinks he has it, in the same

unreflective way most of us assume the same. And Homer's characters, rightly or wrongly, think that they do.’ Any one of our four monologues, rightly understood, will prove that by itself. Together, they present an irrefutable case. What is more, these men arrive at their decisions in different ways. Each articulates the dilemma in his own terms—so much so that each of the scenes contributes a portrait. The following analysis will, therefore, proceed on two fronts: (1) to examine the interplay of typology and variation; (2) to demonstrate the richness and subtlety of the Iliad’s character drawing. ODYSSEUS

I turn first to Odysseus. He had fought for a while at the side of Diomedes until his partner was disabled by Paris. Then he suddenly finds himself alone against a Trojan multitude. He takes the situation in and reflects (A 404-410): coy

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405

μοῦνος τοὺς δ᾽ ἄλλους Δαναοὺς ἐφόβησε Κρονίων. ~

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>

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ἀλλὰ τίη μοι ταῦτα φίλος διελέξατο θυμός; οἶδα γὰρ ὅττι κακοὶ μὲν ἀποίχονται πολέμοιο, ὃς δέ x' ἀριστεύῃσι μάχῃ ἔνι, τὸν δὲ μάλα χρεὼ ἑστάμεναι κρατερῶς, HT ἔβλητ᾽ T, τ᾽ ἔβαλ᾽ ἄλλον.

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410

Odysseus holds his ground because the code he lives by enjoins it. The alternatives are reduced to their essentials and put as clearly as human speech can make them: retreat in disgrace, or fight and win glory, whether in victory or defeat. The heroic imperative is cast

if not

in abstract

terms,

at least

as a general

and

binding

norm. There are rules governing the warrior's life and station, and Odysseus will abide by them. It 1s a speech of blank sobriety, spare ? W. Bröcker thus misses the point, Theologie der Ilias (Frankfurt a/M., 1975), 27: “Mit Recht bemerkt Snell: 'Menschliches Handeln hat keinen wirklichen und eigenstandigen Anfang; was geplant und getan wird, ist Plan und Tat der Götter.” Was Albin Lesky an Gegenbeispielen dagegen

aufbringt,

beweist

reflektiert wird."

nur,

dass nicht immer

und

überall auf den Ursprung

72

BERNARD

C. FENIK

and unembellished, also the shortest of the four. It confirms Odysseus' stature. He is not, of course, a match for all the enemy,

but he never turns to flight. He remains the chieftain Odysseus against a throng of lesser men. We note that his chances of success carry no weight and are not even mentioned. They are irrelevant. No distinctions or mitigating allowances are permitted to blur the absoluteness of his choice. This directness colors Odysseus' engagement with Sokos that comes right after. The Trojan makes his challenge in the same tenor (430): cc

ὦ ᾿Οδυσεῦ πολύαινε, δόλων KT’ ἠδὲ πόνοιο,

σήμερον ἣ Gotototy ἐπεύξεαι 'Iraoctóno:, τοιώδ᾽ ἄνδρε καταχτείνας xal τεύχε᾽ ἀπούρας, N) xev ἐμῷ ὑπὸ δουρὶ τυπεὶς ἀπὸ θυμὸν ὀλέσσῃς. [A

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There is no bluster here, no parading only the naked alternatives, kill or Trojan Sokos had caught the spirit of replies with another measured speech

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ancestry or windy threats: killed. It is as though the great adversary. Odysseus his own (450):

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It is ἃ scene of harsh finality. The victor wins with only his own death in mind. The warrior's canon is expressed and lived without flair or mitigation. This is the genuine Odysseus. He has pondered the heroic destiny and his formulation is always the same: lucid and melancholy. Listen to him describe for Agamemnon, who wants to run away, the path laid out for them for all time (5 84): αἴθ᾽ ὥφελλες ἀεικελίου στρατοῦ ἄλλου σημαίνειν, μηδ᾽ ἄμμιν ἀνασσέμεν, οἷσιν ἄρα Ζεὺς EX νεότητος ἔδωχε xat ἐς γῆρας τολυπεύειν ἀργαλέους πολέμους, ὄφρα φθιόμεσθα ἕκαστος.

85

It is this same pitiless understanding that shapes his insistence later to Achilles on proper forms and the performance of mundane

STYLIZATION

AND

VARIETY

73

obligations. Achilles would take himself and the army into battle without food. Odysseus says no: men should eat and ready themselves; most are sure to perish anyway, while the rest will bury the dead and fight on without ceasing (T 226): λίην γὰρ πολλοὶ xat ἐπήτριμοι ματα πάντα πίπτουσιν: πότε χέν τις ἀναπνεύσειε πόνοιο; /

A

M

\

3

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37

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ἀλλὰ yp τὸν μὲν καταθάπτειν ὅς xe θάνῃσι, νηλέα θυμὸν ἔχοντας, ἐπ᾽ ἤματι δακρύσαντας:᾽ ὅσσοι δ᾽ ἂν πολέμοιο περὶ στυγεροῖο λίπωνται, μεμνῆσθαι πόσιος καὶ ἐδητύος, ὄφρ᾽ ἔτι μᾶλλον ἀνδράσι δυσμενέεσσι μαχώμεθα νωλεμὲς αἰεί, ἑσσάμενοι xpot χαλκὸν ἀτειρέα. 3

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The most famous of the Iliad's ethical pronouncements is probably Sarpedon’s solemn exordium in Book M, but it is Odysseus who enunciates the heroic code most often, and always in his sombre and reflective manner. The monologue in A is entirely in character, and different from those of Menelaos, Agenor and Hector. All this is enough by itself to show that typology does not muffle the distinct personality of the speech, in no way distorts its pertinence or blunts its precision. Still, its singularity and point emerge fully only when set against the immediate context. First another word about typology. It is clear that the monologue scenes are highly stylized. One establishes this by comparing them to each other. But the very typical details and narrative formulae connecting them with each other also relate them to still other passages. For example, all the following are conventional: the circumstances of the speech—one Achaean against a mass of Trojans; ® a lone Greek attack on the enemy ranks; ? rescue of a threatened warrior; 1% the association of Menelaos and Aias in

Odysseus’ rescue; the placement and subjects of the similes; !? the slaying of brother pairs; 13 the verbal exchanges; !4 the details 5 Cf. P 544 (Aias), N 550 (Antilochos). ? Cf. E 676 (Odysseus again), A 489 (Aias). 10 Same as in footnote 8 above.

11 Cf. P 120, P 708. 1? See W. C. Scott, The Oval Nature of the Homeric Simile (Leiden, 1974), 12ff. Note,

too, that all four monologue

scenes

contain a

simile.

13 Cf. E 148, E 152, A 101, A 122, A 221, A 426, N 663, 14 See Fenik, Battle Scenes, 32, xor, 161f.

II 317,

II 604. 6*

74

BERNARD C. FENIK

of Odysseus' wounding; 15 the counterattack by Aias; 16 the list 15 still not half complete, but the reader may be spared the rest. A bare catalogue of the sort establishes a true fact: the text is a veritable network of narrative formulae. It also creates a false impression, namely that of a barren and repetitive composition strung out in monotonous patterns. I have already called attention to the marked personal quality of Odysseus’ monologue. How does it function in context? The entire scene falls into two balanced and symmetrical halves. The first (401-457): I. Odysseus, alone against the Trojans, debates with himself and decides to resist. 2. He 1s described by a simile, a boar holding hounds at bay. 3. There is a fight, ending in the slaying of two brothers and the wounding of Odysseus by one of them. So far the first part. In a transitional section (458-472) Odysseus calls for help, and the second half begins (473-488): I. He is again alone against a horde of Trojans. 2. A simile describes him—a wounded stag pursued by jackals. 3. Aias and Menelaos leap forward to rescue him. I call attention

to structure

here

because

formal

ordering

and

contrast mark this section of Book A generally. Four major Greek heroes are driven from the field. The first three—Agamemnon, Diomedes, Odysseus—all end by facing a pair of brothers and being disabled by one of them: Agamemnon against Iphidamas and Koon, sons of Antenor (221); Diomedes against Hector and Paris (343); Odysseus against Charops and Sokos, sons of Hippasos (426). Space prohibits a long excursus on Agamemnon and Diomedes, but the two of them, together with Odysseus, are set off strongly against each other; as a trio they generate a series of luminous and disquieting contrasts. All three are sharply drawn. Agamemnon is a wanton dispenser of justice: killing, mutilating and moralizing at once, hacking to pieces the guilty, the innocent, the cowardly and the brave, always as the righteous avenger, a lurid righter of wrongs. He meets two 15 Ibid., 1o2ff. 16 Cf. A 485, M 343, P 128, P 278, P 356.

STYLIZATION

AND

VARIETY

75

sons of the villainous Antimachos (122), the man who plotted the murder of Odysseus and Menelaos when they came on an embassy to Troy. They cringe in terror, offering no resistance, their bad blood showing itself in the crisis. Agamemnon wreaks vengeance for their father's crime by cutting off Hippolochos' head, then his arms, too, and finally shoving the trunk to roll on the ground "like a mortar." Two sons of the great and good Antenor (Iphidamas and

Koon) do credit to their name and fight for their lives (221). But this earns them no better treatment; Agamemnon chops the head from Koon's corpse. Diomedes dispells this ghastly atmosphere with a splendid entrance after Agamemnon's departure, vowing to face Hector despite the certainty of defeat (317): “ἤτοι ἐγὼ μενέω καὶ τλήσομαι: ἀλλὰ μίνυνθα ἡμέων ἔσσεται ἦδος, ἐπεὶ νεφεληγερέτα Ζεὺς Τρωσὶν δὴ βόλεται δοῦναι κράτος HE περ ἡμῖν. He shows the same temper when Hector charges (347): “γῶϊν δὴ τόδε πῆμα χκυλίνδεται, ὄβριμος "Excop: ἀλλ᾽ ἄγε δὴ στέωμεν xai ἀλεξώμεσθα μένοντες. 3

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To his own surprise, he wins an easy victory and is suddenly full of derogation and menace, threatening Hector with death if he ever catches him again (362). But now comes frustration, as he is promptly shot by Paris and forced to withdraw. But first he showers abuse (385): "You insolent bowman! You fop! Ogler of girls! You boast about a scratch on my heel—I don't even notice— it's like the blow of a woman or child." So says Diomedes, but the facts are otherwise: the wound 15 real, extremely painful (398, 400), and takes him out of the fight. He leaves, Paris remains to claim still another important victim, Machaon. There is a degrading frenzy in Diomedes' encounters here with the sons of Priam, an embarrassing discrepancy between claims and accomplishment. He beats Hector but ends the loser, disabled by a man he despises,

and throwing away even a moral victory in frustrated invective. It is an unsettling incident, with Diomedes' impressive start disfigured by a sorry finish. Take the three wounded Greeks as a company, and penetrating, ironic contrasts emerge. They pass by in monumental juxtaposition: Agamemnon the grim judge, dispenser of justice and dis-

76

BERNARD C. FENIK

memberment; Diomedes first pessimistic and steadfast, then strident and abusive; Odysseus articulate, understated, illusionless,

matter-of-factly heroic. 50 much for what goes before. As Odysseus is led off the field, Aias counterattacks, only soon to be driven back himself by Zeus and a Trojan host. The situation of one fighter facing a mass of the enemy thus repeats itself, and this sets Odysseus and Aias in emphatic parallelism. Odysseus (459-488), wounded and failing, calls for help and falls back. Menelaos hears, summons Aias, and the

two of them spring to the rescue. Menelaos leads Odysseus from the field and Aias takes his place. He, like Odysseus, launches a brief offensive before being flung back (489). It is Zeus himself who stops him (544). This time it is Eurypylus who is wounded and calls for help. The two consecutive scenes of a warrior's isolation and fall-back thus stand in close correspondence: one against many, wounding of a Greek, retreat, call for help, rescue. But observe the

changing distribution of constituent items. Odysseus is disabled by a Trojan and driven to retreat by human agency. It is he who calls for assistance. Aias is repulsed by Zeus, it is his rescuer, Eurypylus, who suffers a wound, who calls for help and who is led off the field. Odysseus gives expression to the ordinances he lives by. Aias acts, nothing more. In short, the variation is not at random. The character and strength of the two men are precisely registered. Aias, at the end of the series, also stands in contrast to the entire three. Unsurprisingly, he 15 the mightiest and least colorful of them all: ferocious, stolid, unyielding, more successful than the others even in defeat, but with no inner person emerging under the pressure of circumstances. Odysseus is set between Diomedes and Aias, the two men most closely associated with him in the cyclic tradition.’ In sum: Odysseus' monologue, for all its stylization, draws a sharp and unique portrait on the one hand, and on the other functions within an elaborate and finely conceived large composi-

(1)

17 For Aias it is the episode of Achilles’ armor. Diomedes their slaying of Palamedes (Pausanias 10.31.2; Cypria,

(2) the capture of the palladium

and Odysseus: Allen, fr. 21);

(Proclus, Chrest., Ilias Parva, Allen 107,

7-8); (3) the death of Polyxena (schol. to Euripides’ Hecuba 41); (4) the slaying of Philomelas (schol. on Odyssey ὃ 343). Besides in A, the Iliad also puts them together at E 519, O 92 and in the Doloneia. They both speak against Agamemnon's proposal in &, 82 and 109, as they are the two rebuked by him in the Epipolesis (A 339, 370).

STYLIZATION AND VARIETY tion. The

typology is visible only upon

77

dissection.

remains below the surface of the narrative,

Otherwise,

it

a vehicle for structure

and nuance, but obtruding itself nowhere and nowhere out of place. AGENOR

By the end of Book ® the Trojans are in confused retreat. Nothing stands between Achilles and the gates. Suddenly Agenor, a Trojan of some modest distinction on the battlefield and son of the judicious and highly placed Antenor, turns and makes a stand. It is Apollo who inspires him. The familiar monologue follows: ὦ μοι ἐγών. Alternatives bad and worse are laid out, and a decision is reached: he will resist. Achilles closes. Agenor, like a leopard at his den, holding before hunters and dogs, challenges and makes an ineffective spear-cast. Before Achilles can counter, the Trojan is saved from certain death by Apollo as the god takes on the man's form and runs away. This lures Achilles from the host of Trojans and allows them to escape inside the walls. Here is Agenor's monologue (® 553-70): ὦ μοι ἐγών᾽

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Ihe difference between this speech and Odysseus' is deep and unbridgeable. Agenor does not review his choice in terms of the dictates of honor and shame. One question occupies him: which way

78

BERNARD

C.

FENIK

lies survival? Shall he flee with the others? Or shall he run for the mountain? Either way, Achilles is sure to catch him. Only one solution, then: face him and hope for the best. Odysseus stood his ground because honor demanded it and disgrace would attend a retreat. There is no real debate in his mind. The alternatives flash before him only to confirm what he already knows. His soliloquy describes the predicament only to announce a response now become instinct. But with Agenor we watch a decision actually being reached in half-panic and fright. No question of honor: the chances for bare survival determine his choice. Ways to escape are weighed and rejected, hopes and certainties distinguished. The man falters, thinks and decides. Irresolution and resolve are equally true. The train of thought (unlike Odysseus') is indirect and abrupt. The first question is not the classic “Shall I make a stand or run?”, but “How can I best get away?” This quickly leads to a dead-end, and so he decides to challenge. Why? Because that is his only chance to come out alive: καὶ yao θην τούτῳ τρωτὸς χρὼς ὀξέϊ χαλκῷ, £v δὲ ἴα ψυχή, θνητὸν δέ £ φασ᾽ ἄνθρωποι ἔμμεναι. M

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Agenor’s monologue, like Odysseus’, measures him precisely against his opponent. If Odysseus was a lion, so to speak, against a herd of jackals, Agenor is just a good fighter of the second rank caught in a general panic and facing an overwhelming terror. But he is no coward,

either. When

the evil is upon him he stands firm,

challenges, even mocks Achilles and takes the fight to him. If his death was certain but for Apollo’s interference, it would not have been an inglorious one. We saw that Odysseus’ aristeia and speech are firmly anchored in their context. Is the same true of Agenor? What is he doing here? In one sense, the episode is remarkably useless, even by permissive Homeric standards; an appropriate epilogue to the theomachia that ended just before. Apollo makes Agenor fight, but rescues him before harm is done. The monologue thus builds to a limp anticlimax. We can register only one result of consequence: Achilles is distracted long enough for all the Trojans but Hector to reach safety inside the walls. But this is a meager profit, and an expendable one

STYLIZATION

AND

VARIETY

79

at that. Had Hector entered the scene at this point instead of Agenor, only the pedants would ask what became of the rest of the Trojan force. We recall that this is the third in a series of duels between Achilles and Trojan leaders stopped by divine intervention: Poseidon saved Aeneas not long before (Y 318). Then Apollo snatched Hector from certain death (Y 443). Here he does the same for

Agenor.

Add

to

these

the

river's

attack

on

Achilles,

and

a

clear tendency emerges: one intrusion by the gods after another to slow Achilles' advance on the city and delay the final confrontation with Hector. Those brief skirmishes with Aeneas and Hector are of as little practical importance as Agenor's brief stay in the limelight. Retardation and suspense are therefore the contributions of the Agenor scene, and it shares these with several others that go before. We now begin to approach the heart of the matter. The next step is to identify a particular stylistic mannerism. The Agenor episode is what I have elsewhere labeled an “‘anticipatory doublet.’ The poet likes to prefigure major events with minor replicas of themselves. There are many of these scattered through the Iliad and Odyssey, and they assume a variety of specific forms. One other

example

will show

what

I mean.

In Book

Y,

at line 463,

one Tros pleads with Achilles to pity his tender years and spare him. But his captor, says the poet, is a man of no sweet disposition or gentle heart. Tros is dispatched even as he assumes the suppliant’s posture. It is a short incident, briefly related, with no direct speech and covering ten and one-half lines. A few more slayings and Achilles meets Lykaon (® 34), and here begins the longest and most important scene of supplication in the Iliad. The act and details are the same, but elaborated and deepened. Tros anticipates Lykaon. Consider

the

similarities

between

Agenor

and

Hector,

and

remember that the incidents are consecutive. Both stand alone to face the charging Achilles. Each holds a speech with himself, weighing the fearful alternatives and deciding to stand. Both scenes end in a chase: Hector runs away; Apollo, disguised as Agenor,

does the same.

The

pursuit takes us into Book

X. When

the god reveals himself and the race ends, the scene of Hector's last stand immediately begins. 18 Typical Battle Scenes, 213f.

80

BERNARD

C. FENIK

Agenor therefore retards and anticipates the climactic duel between Achilles and Hector. He sets the stage, establishes categories which the great sequel will deepen and enlarge. Agenor's role is less practical than thematic. Now consider Apollo. Agenor enters the scene as follows ( 544): Ἔνθα xev ὑψίπυλον Τροίην ἕλον υἷες ᾿Αχαιῶν, εἰ μὴ ᾿Απόλλων Φοῖβος ᾿Αγήνορα δῖον ἀνῆχε,

545

Critics take umbrage at the apparent discrepancy between the boldness implanted in Agenor by the god and the fear that dominates his soliloquy. But we need to keep the whole scene in mind. The man's boldness, indeed his recklesness, comes out in the fight

at the end (583): “ἢ δή ποὺ war’ ἔολπας ἐνὶ φρεσί, φαίδιμ᾽ ᾿Αχιλλεῦ, ἤματι τῷδε πόλιν πέρσειν Τρώων ἀγερώχων, νηπύτι᾽ - ἢ τ᾽ ἔτι πολλὰ τετεύξεται ἄλγε᾽ ἐπ᾽ αὐτῇ. ἐν γάρ οἱ πολέες τε καὶ ἄλκιμοι ἀνέρες εἰμέν, οἱ καὶ πρόσθε φίλων τοκέων ἀλόχων TE καὶ υἱῶν Ἴλιον εἰρυόμεσθα- σὺ δ᾽ ἐνθάδε πότμον ἐφέψεις, «

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explains why Agenor stops running with the rest. Why does he face Achilles at all? The question forces itself, because upon returning he thinks only of escape. Apollo provides the immediate answer—Agenor holds because the god supports him. This is in accordance with familiar Homeric psychology. Agenor could scarcely explain himself why he suddenly changes course. Therefore a god made him do it. But his defiant temper in the sequel shows a brave and desperate man. As usual, the god's action runs parallel to human character. But notice, too, the "almost" situation.!? This is the only one of our four scenes where a god inspires the warrior to make a stand. The Achaeans would have stormed the city, but ... This is a familiar trope. The poet likes to take unthinkable possibilities to the brink only to avert them at the last second. “Hector would 19 This trope was identified by K. Reinhardt, Die Ilias und ihr Dichter (Göttingen, 1961), 108ff.

STYLIZATION

AND

VARIETY

have burned the ships, but Hera...’ captured

the corpse of Patroklos,

8I

(© 217); "Hector would have

but

Iris..."

(2 165);

"Achilles

would have slain Aeneas, but Poseidon...” (Y 290); "The Trojans would have fled into the city, had not Helenus..." (Z 73); "The Greeks

would

have

returned

home

before

the destined

time,

had

not Hera..." (B 155); "Then the Greeks would have captured Troy, but Apollo..." (II 698). In all these examples but one (Z 73) the inevitable is turned aside by a god. So here: Troy would have fallen then and there, had Apollo not given Agenor courage to resist. Apollo remains on the scene to rescue his agent and dupe the enemy. In book Y he had spurred Aeneas against Achilles, only to leave the Trojan in the lurch and force the intervention of Poseidon. Now he urges his man on to what would be certain death, but also saves him in time. Agenor is not deserted. For him,

the adventure has a happy ending. Apollo is therefore one of the main connectors between AgenorAchilles and Hector-Achilles. Hector, too, will have a god by his side, but it will be Athena, his enemy and deceiver. Apollo, of course, is closely associated with Hector, both as patron of Troy and as the man's special guardian. It is Apollo who lends him speed and strength in the great chase (X 202). As it ends, Zeus lifts his scales, Hector's lot sinks, "and Apollo left him" (213). There is scarcely a weightier half line in the Iliad. Where Apollo saves Agenor, heleaves Hector to his fate. Divine rescue of the first stands against victimization and desertion in the second. Hector runs himself, no god takes his place. The typological elements of the Agenor scene thus function in the service of suspense, retardation, contrast, intensification, character drawing, irony and pathos. Apollo himself provides the required divine element in a scene of conventional brinksmanship. He adds drama and plasticity to Agenor's decision, and he links Agenor and Hector into a thematic unit. It 15, indeed,

a false distinction here between formularity and creation. The composition is neither mechanical nor constrained. Instead, we find ourselves in the presence of stylized virtuosity. HECTOR

Hector’s monologue, beginning at line 99 of Book X, is the longest of the four, probably the most carefully contrived, and certainly the most important. It is the natural climax of the others,

82

BERNARD

C. FENIK

the dramatic finale to which they build. The episode itself, Hector's last stand and death, is also weightier than the rest, also longer and more complex, and more exciting. It has an emotional prelude in the pleadings of Priam and Hecuba, a concentration of similes, a scene on Olympus, divine intervention and verbal exchanges between the fighters. Hector debates with himself as follows (X 99-130): ὦ μοι ἐγών, εἰ μέν κε πύλας xat τείχεα δύω, Πουλυδάμας μοι πρῶτος ἐλεγχείην ἀναθύήσει, óc μ᾽ ἐκέλευε Τρωσὶ ποτὶ πτόλιν ἡγήσασθαι νύχθ᾽ ὕπο τήνδ᾽ ὀλοήν, ὅτε T ὥρετο δῖος ᾿Αχιλλεύς. ἀλλ᾽ ἐγὼ οὐ πιθόμην: T, τ᾽ ἂν πολὺ κέρδιον Fev. viv δ᾽ ἐπεὶ ὥλεσα λαὸν ἀτασθαλίῃσιν eurouy, αἰδέομαι Τρῶας καὶ Τρῳάδας ἑλχεσιπέπλους, €€

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πάντα μάλ᾽ ὅσσα τ᾽ ᾿Αλέξανδρος κοίλῃς ἐνὶ νηυσὶν ἠγάγετο Τροίηνδ᾽, 7, τ᾽ ἔπλετο νείκεος ἀρχή, δωσέμεν ᾿Ατρεΐδησιν ἄγειν, ἅμα δ᾽ ἀμφὶς ᾿Αχαιοῖς ἄλλ᾽ ἀποδάσσεσθαι, ὅσα τε πτόλις ἥδε χέκευθεΤρωσὶν δ᾽ αὖ μετόπισθε γερούσιον ὅρκον ἕλωμαι un τι κατακρύψειν, ἀλλ᾽ ἄνδιχα πάντα δάσασθαι κτῆσιν ὅσην πτολίεθρον ἐπήρατον ἐντὸς ἐέργει" ἀλλὰ τίη μοι ταῦτα φίλος διελέξατο θυμός; UN μιν ἐγὼ μὲν ἵκωμαι ἰών, ὁ δέ μ᾽ οὐκ ἐλεήσει οὐδέ τί μ᾽ αἰδέσεται, χτενέει δέ ue γυμνὸν ἐόντα αὔτως ὥς τε γυναῖκα, ἐπεί x” ἀπὸ τεύχεα δύω. οὐ μέν πως νῦν ἔστιν ἀπὸ δρυὸς οὐδ᾽ ἀπὸ πέτρης τῷ ὀαριζέμεναι, & τε παρθένος ἠΐθεός τε, παρθένος ἠΐθεός τ᾽ ὀαρίζετον ἀλλήλοιιν. βέλτερον αὖτ᾽ ἔριδι ξυνελαυνέμεν ὅττι τάχιστα" εἴδομεν ὁπποτέρῳ κεν ᾿Ολύμπιος εὖχος ὀρέξῃ. 3

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VARIETY

83

Sheer terror of the enemy consumes Hector's attention. In this he is like Agenor, and we realize with a start: Hector is not deciding whether to resist or flee. Like Agenor, he is casting for a way out. Like him, he plots two routes of escape, and fights only because neither is good enough. Shall he retreat into the city? Still possible, but unendurable. Shall he plead for mercy and offer terms? That wil mean certain death. His monologue thus follows the same general lines as Agenor's. How can he save himself? Two plans occur, but neither will work. Only the bitter alternative of combat remains. The correlation of the two episodes, the first an anticipatory doublet of the second, becomes even clearer. Hector's decision to fight is shallow-rooted and fitful. Shall he run back to Troy? “ἐμοὶ δὲ τότ᾽ ἂν πολὺ xépOtov εἴη ἄντην 7, ᾿Αχιλῆα καταχτείναντα νέεσθαι, >? 3 ~ 39 [A ,.. ~ \ / NE xev αὐτῷ ὀλέσθαι ἐὐκλειῶς πρὸ πόληος. »

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3

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Shall he plead and negotiate? “βέλτερον αὖτ᾽ ἔριδι ξυνελαυνέμεν ὅττι toca: εἴδομεν ὁπποτέρῳ xev ᾿Ολύμπιος εὖχος ὀρέξῃ. A firm decision to fight, coming from the heart, as it were, is not made

here.

And

in the

absence

of genuine

resolve,

there

is no

surprise when he turns and runs. To do battle 15 forced by the hopelesness of his circumstances, and even so he has not yet faced that compulsion squarely. For Hector, the man driven by vain dreams and generous enthusiasms, the illusions that sustained him will not be so easily dispelled. That comes only at the last moment, after Deiphobos-Athena has left him. A final detail confirms the rest. Observe the animal simile describing Hector's resistance (X 93). Odysseus, Agenor and Menelaos are likened to noble beasts of prey, all holding their ground against attack or in grudging retreat. The serpent representing Hector coils itself around its hole, but no fight occurs and none is described. The placement of the comparison tells even more. For the other men it comes right after the monologue, illustrating the resolution just made. Hector's comes before he address himself. As usual, the poet's hand is sure. The simile would be badly inappropriate at the end of his deliberation since the decision to

84

BERNARD C. FENIK

fight

will

be

abandoned.

He

is not,

in fact,

like

the

others,

an

intrepid beast, hard to dislodge. There is indeed a simile right after his speech (r34), but it is given to Achilles, whose armor is like fire or the rising sun. Then comes

another:

Hector

turns to flight, Achilles to pursuit,

double comparison providing the commentary: dove.

The

turnabout

from

with a

a hawk pursues a

the similes for the other three men,

in

subject and placement alike, could scarcely be more decided. But like Odysseus, and decidedly unlike Agenor, Hector reviews his plight in terms of honor and shame. The comparison becomes especially interesting at this point. Odysseus thinks within the categories of the heroic code, that abiding summons to excellence from which he will not allow himself to shrink. Hector lives by the same precepts, but for him the imperative presents itself as specific ingredients, past and present, of his own life and dilemma. Poulydamas' rejected advice of the night before comes back to haunt him. Hector's infatuation caused the ruin of his army and now the wreck of his own career. He cannot go back to face that charge, full as it is of malice and truth. A grand and sombre line recurs from the meeting with Andromache long before: “I feel shame in the face of the Trojans and our women with trailing garments." Pride in his station and shame at the thought of failing it: this drives him always to risk his life in the forefront, and so he would not allow his wife's urgings to follow the safer course. But now there is a different αἰδώς: avoidance of disrepute has become shame already incurred that he cannot endure to face. For all his striving, the ideal he painted for Andromache has been compromised. The ironies of his predicament are laid bare, harshly and without pity. Thoughts of restitution and compensation cross his mind. Restore Helen with all her possessions and half of Troy's besides. But something like that had been urged long before by Antenor, and was rejected by Paris. What was once a just course 1s now only a sorry contrivance, born of desperation and weakness. Paris and Helen: wrong begun by others is now to be paid for by him; but his role as blameless defender of a bad cause is tarnished by guilt from his own mistakes.

STYLIZATION AND VARIETY

85

Hector's monologue sets the context for his death. It defines his predicament and his personal tragedy. Other details in his speech, and more outside it, do the same. À memory arises of young lovers whispering where he now has to face an implacable foe. Is he thinking of himself and Andromache? No matter, the picture is one of peace and the days before the war. Other memories are conjured up by the stone troughs passed by in the chase, "where the comely wives and daughters of Troy used to wash their shining garments in the old days, in peace, before the coming of the sons of

the Achaeans." The desperate pleadings of Priam and Hecuba show us another side: Hector as son and mainstay, what his death will mean to his parents and city. He had rejected similar pleas by Andromache

days

before,

and

that

scene,

too,

is recalled

by

the

repeated line. In short, the whole episode dramatically expounds the meaning of Hector's death—for his city and as a personal fate. The monologue is part of this, and is thereby weightier and more revealing than the others. The decision it records, falteringly made and immediately abandoned, is only a piece of something larger, the wonderfully probing and moving depiction of Hector in his last moments, of his character and fate in their setting. MENELAOS

Book

P: Menelaos,

flushed with recent success, stands over the

body of Patroklos and is suddenly thrown into consternation: Hector is yelling and bearing down on him at the head of a Trojan force. It is the familiar predicament, stated and pondered in the usual way: à μοι ἐγών, the prospects are bad in every direction. Retreat will bring discredit, resistance almost certain death. Hector is bad enough, but a god is helping him, too. The resolution is introduced as always: ἀλλὰ τίη μοι ταῦτα φίλος διελέξατο θυμός; No

doubt

about

what

it must

be,

retreat

is the

obvious

course.

Disaster is sure for those who resist a man with the gods behind him. Here is the monologue itself (91-105): “ὦ μοι ἐγών, εἰ μέν XE λίπω κάτα τεύχεα καλὰ Ilatpoxrdv θ᾽, ὃς κεῖται ἐμῆς ἕνεχ᾽ ἐνθάδε τιμῆς, Uf) τίς μοι Δαναῶν νεμεσήσεται, ὅς κεν ἴδηται. εἰ δέ κεν “Ἕκτορι μοῦνος ἐὼν καὶ Τρωσὶ μάχωμαι

86

BERNARD

C. FENIK

αἰδεσθείς, μή πώς ue περιστήωσ᾽ ἕνα πολλοί: Τρῶας δ᾽ ἐνθάδε πάντας ἄγει κορυθαίολος “Extwo. ἀλλὰ τίη μοι ταῦτα φίλος διελέξατο θυμός; ὁππότ᾽ ἀνὴρ ἐθέλῃ πρὸς δαίμονα φωτὶ μάχεσθαι ὅν χε θεὸς τιμᾷ, τάχα οἱ μέγα πῆμα κυλίσθη. To μ᾽ οὔ τις Δαναῶν νεμεσήσεται, ὅς xev ἴδηται ἽἝχτορι χωρήσαντ᾽, ἐπεὶ ἐκ θεόφιν πολεμίζει. εἰ δέ που Αἴαντός γε βοὴν ἀγαθοῖο πυθοίμην, ἄμφω x αὖτις ἰόντες ἐπιμνησαίμεθα χάρμης καὶ πρὸς δαίμονά περ, εἴ πως ἐρυσαίμεθα νεκρὸν Πηλεΐδῃ ᾿Αχιλῆϊ: κακῶν δέ xe φέρτατον ein.”

95

100

105

The speech stands as a variation on a theme: a common type of monologue in a typical situation, but with an unusual turn. Menelaos is the only warrior in these circumstances to opt for retreat. How shall we interpret this speech? Is Menelaos a coward? Do his reasons for abandoning the corpse convince? Does he come off well or badly? The speech and context alike combine to indict him. First the context. Hector's assault spoils the aftermath of Menelaos' bracing victory over the Trojan Euphorbos just before. The decision was swift and clear-cut, bringing the added relish of requital against one of the insolent sons of Panthus, and indeed the very one who had just stabbed Patroklos in the back. But Euphorbos 15 not a fighter of the first rank, and his action against Patroklos brought him no glory. He struck a man already disabled by Apollo, and even then jumped back into the Trojan lines rather than face him, twice wounded though he was. His fall is described as follows: δούπησεν δὲ πεσών, ἀράβησε δὲ τεύχε᾽ ἐπ᾽ αὐτῷ. αἵματί οἱ δεύοντο κόμαι Χαρίτεσσιν ὁμοῖαι πλοχμοί θ᾽, ot χρυσῷ τε καὶ ἀργύρῳ ἐσφήκωντο. οἷον δὲ τρέφει ἔρνος ἀνὴρ ἐριθηλὲς ἐλαίης χώρῳ ἐν οἰοπόλῳ, ὅθ᾽ ἅλις ἀναβέβροχεν ὕδωρ, καλὸν τηλεθάον- τὸ δέ τε πνοιαὶ δονέουσι παντοίων ἀνέμων, καί τε βρύει ἄνθεϊ λευκῷ ἐλθὼν δ᾽ ἐξαπίνης ἄνεμος σὺν λαίλαπι πολλῇ βόθρου τ᾽ ἐξέστρεψε καὶ ἐξετάνυσσ᾽ ἐπὶ γαίῃ: τοῖον Πάνθου υἱὸν ἐὐμμελίην Εὔφορβον ᾿Ατρεΐδης Μενέλαος ἐπεὶ κτάνε, τεύχε᾽ ἐσύλα. Kd

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STYLIZATION AND VARIETY

87

The sapling that describes him suggests youth and tenderness instead of a mighty bulk, and his elaborate headdress approximates him more to the realm of Aphrodite than to the battlefield. One is tempted to associate him with that strutting popinjay from the end of the Trojan catalogue (B 867), who came to Troy, as the poet says, like a girl, expecting his gold to protect him. It did him little good when he met Achilles in the river. Euphorbos is a mediocre trophy, even for Menelaos. The son of Atreus beats fiercer enemies elsewhere (e.g. Peisandros, N 601). Hector is stimulated to his attack by Apollo. The god disguises himself as one Mentes and reprimands the Trojan general for pursuing Achilles’ horses while Menelaos rescues the corpse of Patroklos. These rebukes, or rebuke patterns, are a common type scene. A Trojan is chastized for cowardice or inadvertence; he re-groups his forces and counterattacks; the Achaeans are either brought up short or rolled back until Aias rushes up to reverse the Trojan charge or stiffen the Greek lines. So here. Menelaos retreats, summons Aias, Hector leaps back at the sight of him, and the battle enters a new phase. The rebuke pattern has a special importance here, because the entire action of Book 17 15 built around a fivefold repetition of it. Whether in brief or expanded form, rebuke patterns embrace and sustain all of P from beginning to end.?! Now, a Greek setback is called for at the very point in the pattern where Menelaos in fact persuades himself to yield. Shall we therefore explain his quick exit on typological grounds? That is to say, is his retreat automatically predetermined by an inflexible narrative pattern? And is this conclusion re-enforced by the overriding importance of rebuke sequences in Book P? This explanation is false, because Menelaos could satisfy the requirements of the type scene simply by being driven back in a stand-up fight. That happens often enough in rebuke patterns. Instead, he opts to give way without offering resistance at all. Hector, of course, runs from Achilles, too, but only after resolving to stand, and that is another story entirely.

Typology will not, then, lighten Menelaos’ responsibility. Other 20 Typical Battle Scenes, 49ff. Other examples are at E 471, A 523, II 538, P 75, P 142, P 327, P 586. 21 Ibid., 159ff.

88

BERNARD

C. FENIK

details aggravate it. Like Admetus in Euripides’ play, Menelaos has the unfortunate habit of putting things into words that were better left unsaid. His turgid excursus near the end of Book N on pleasure, war, satiety, and Zeus’ unconscionable support of the Trojans is one example. His monologue here contains some others. He observes, correctly enough, that his friends will be scandalized

to see him

desert

the corpse.

It was,

after all, to do

him, Menelaos, honor that Patroklos fought and died in the first place. We recall that this was the very reproach flung into Agamemnon's teeth by Achilles (A 158): “ἀλλὰ σοί, ὦ μέγ᾽ ἀναιδές, ἅμ᾽ ἑσπόμεθ᾽, ὄφρα σὺ χαίρῃς, τιμὴν ἀρνύμενοι Μενελάῳ σοί τε, κυνῶπα, 160 πρὸς Τρώων-᾿ With typical impropriety, Menelaos calls embarrassing attention to the irony of a great man dying for the sake of a lesser one, namely himself. He talks himself into retreat on the grounds that nobody can resist the gods. The assertion is of course true. But in later times, at least, it tends to appear in causes of dubious integrity (one thinks of Gorgias' defense of Helen, or that lady's own arguments in Euripides’ Tvoades). Even here Menelaos' case gains little by it. Heroism and expediency seldom recommend the identical course. Nor is his excuse enhanced by his readiness to fight even against a god if Aias would only help him (102). Later in this same book Aias himself sees Zeus’ hand at work in the Trojan offensive, but his reaction is different (645): “Zed πάτερ, ἀλλὰ σὺ ῥῦσαι ὑπ᾽ ἠέρος υἷας ᾿Αχαιῶν, ποίησον δ᾽ αἴθρην, δὸς δ᾽ ὀφθαλμοῖσιν ἰδέσθαι" ἐν δὲ φάει καὶ ὄλεσσον, ἐπεί νύ τοι εὔαδεν οὕτως.᾽᾽ >

5

645

)

Or compare Diomedes' words to Odysseus in Book A (317) where, again, Hector is making what looks like an irresistable thrust: ἤτοι ἐγὼ μενέω xai τλήσομαι: ἀλλὰ μίνυνθα ἡμέων ἔσσεται ἦδος, ἐπεὶ νεφεληγερέτα Ζεὺς Τρωσὶν δὴ βόλεται δοῦναι κράτος HE περ ἡμῖν.᾽ €»

,

And in Odysseus' case, his chances for survival had no part in his decision at all. As Sarpedon reminded Glaukos, it is not to live forever that men enter the fight. We recall, again, that Menelaos

STYLIZATION AND VARIETY

89

is the only warrior in these circumstances who deliberately retreats, and the irony becomes all the more caustic in light of his outrage just before (at line 26 of this book) that one of the Trojans should call him "the most contemptible fighter on the Greek side." The truth lies somewhere in the middle. He is not by any means the worst fighter—he sometimes shows a spirit beyond his strength— but he 1s not the man to rescue Patroklos, either. The similes make

that clear. At first he stands over the body like a cow with her first calf (4). But after slaying Euphorbos he is upgraded to a lion seizing the best cow from a herd (61). From cow to lion, from defender to aggressor: the continuity and reversal make a point. But that is not the end of it, for the string continues. As Menelaos retreats from Hector he remains like a lion, this time on the defen-

sive, chased from the fold by men and dogs (109). But when Aias moves up to take his place, and Hector gives way, the mighty Greek is compared to a lion guarding its little ones, not to be driven from them (133). Cows, lions, helpless young: these are the constants in the simile sequence. At the beginning Menelaos is like a cow with her calf; at the end Aias is a lion defending its cubs. Two things take the measure of the men: their performance against Hector and the similes. It will be Aias who leads the rescue of Patroklos. Menelaos will play an important but secondary role. The first incident in the book—the slaying of Euphorbos, Menelaos' monologue and Aias' counterattack—establishes their ranking. The similes do the same. CONCLUSION

The conclusions to be drawn will be obvious from the foregoing, and a brief summary will suffice. The four monologue scenes are heavily stylized; there can be little doubt on that score. Yet each is unique. The men see their predicaments in strongly individual terms. Secondly, the characterization of each speaker is appropriate and consistent, where this can be tested, with his role and person in the rest of the poem. Finally, each scene as ἃ whole is closely tailored to its circumstances and context. They are neither interchangeable nor movable. This will serve as a reminder: the monologues cannot be properly understood in isolation from their context, and should not be studied that way. One other thing impresses, namely the close refinement of the composition down to the smallest details. We do not have to do

00

BERNARD

C. FENIK

merely with ἃ grand organizer compiling a mass of tradition and shorter lays into a monumental epic with a central conception, but with rambling structure and loose ends dangling on every side. Many recent studies have shown the same. The epics stand up to close scrutiny, maintaining their solidity and integrity under even an intense focus. Here another question obtrudes. It was always the scandal of the analysts that the Iliad and Odyssey contain discrepancies of quality: passages of sublime greatness beside others of monstrous incompetence. Doubtless the negative extremes were frequently exaggerated in the service of tendentious reconstruction. Still, the fact of unevenness remains, and some will be admitted by all but the most intransigent unitarian zealots. There are, for example, many formular illogicalities in Homer, mistakes arising from the use of dictional and narrative formulae where they are either out of place or give at best a rough fit. These account for themselves on the assumption that the poet overlooked small detail for grand effect and expected his audience to do the same. What mattered was the large design. Little inconcinnities are left to disappear in the flow of the narrative. These formular imperfections associate Homeric epic with oral poetry, with its peculiar modes and circumstances of composition. These are the special weaknesses it is heir to. But neither oral theory nor examples of contemporary oral poems have successfully accounted for Homer's surpassing excellence. Here is an artistic achievement that is quite simply incommensurable with the modern analogues. If my analysis has been correct, the monologue scenes reveal an alertness to close detail, the finest control of shading and variation. The style is both heavily stylized and wonderfully responsive. At issue, then, is nothing less than the mode and circumstances of the poems' composition. How shall we account for the not infrequent cases of carelessness and imprecision in Homer, set as they are against others where he demonstrates mastery of detail, conceptual penetration and architectural design? The ruling theory of the day (oral poetry) explains only half. The sheer quality of Homer remains an unicum in the body of oral poetry made known to us. Two questions, Homer and writing, and the unity of the poems, thus remain unanswered, stuck fast in inconclusive and paradoxical evidence. The old problems remain, and we should not pretend to have solved them.