Robin Lane Fox. Homer and his Iliad.
1. When Zeus makes love to Hera in Il. 14 on Mt. Gargaron, they do so on a bed of plants:
He clasped his wife in his arms
And beneath them the earth grew newly flourishing grass
And dewy lotus and crocus and hyacinth (λωτόν θ᾽ ἑρσήεντα ἰδὲ κρόκον ἠδ᾽ ὑάκινθον, 14.348)
Thick and soft which kept them above the ground.
Fox claims that Gargaron is the modern Koca Kaya and crocus is a feature distinctive to the site. He even has a picture:
Pretty dubious evidence (why would an ancient audience know this bit of botanical trivia), but pretty
fun
2. Fox claims that the Arima in the simile at Il. 2.780-5 (like the sound of the earth on faraway Arima, where,
'they say', is the bed of monstrous Typhon) is Ischia in the bay of Naples, and hence evidence that Euboeans
were not the audience of the poem.
but it's not clear where Arima was. Kirk ad loc. says that ancient scholars had no idea, and paraphrases
Strabo, who provides half a dozen possibilities of places with volcanic activity.
I feel like Italy rarely/never comes up in Homer -- I would be surprised to see a simile clearly alluding to an
Italian context
3. Fox takes the Niobe story of Il. 24 as knowledge of the Aegean coast. He makes two points: 1) Homer
seems to know of the rock formation, and 2) Homer knows the name of the local river, Achelesios (corrupted
in most manuscripts, only surviving in the scholia, accepted by West).
the rock formation (probably this is the right one, according to Szempruch 2019):
I wasn't aware the rock formation was so close to Izmir -- ~30 miles.
4. Fox argues that the catalogue of the
ships is an interpolation, like Il. 10. Not sure his citations back up here; e.g. he cites ML West 2011b
on the catalogue, but West claims that the poet of the Iliad took over the catalogue from a previous
poem, not that it wasn't original to the Iliad in the first place.
5. Fox discusses possible performance settings for Homer
(pp. 71-2) -- I was surprised he doesn't mention funeral games, attested in e.g. Hesiod and in
Plutarch's QC (see Tsagalis 2018: 34-7).
"There I myself crossed over into Chalcis for the games of
valor-
ous Amphidamas—that great-hearted man's sons had announced
and established many prizes—and there, I declare, I gained
vic-
tory with a hymn, and carried off a tripod with handles.
This I
dedicated to the Helikonian Muses, where they fi rst set me
upon a
path of clear-sounding song." (Hesiod WD
646-659).
6. Fox praises A H Clough's Amours de Voyage as the best
hexameters in English, quoting these lines as an example:
George has just seen Garibaldi, dressed up in a long white
cloak, on
Horseback, riding by, with his mounted negro behind him:
This is a man, you know, who came from America with him,
Out of the woods, I suppose, and uses a lassŏ in fighting,
Which is, I don't quite know, but a sort of noose, I
imagine.
I might give the whole work a try.
7. Fox points to 19th century German scholarship (especially Heinrich Düntzer) for the essential insight that Homeric epithets are chosen for their metrical positions. He uses the Parry-ian terms "scope and economy" somewhat anachronistrically, but it's true that Düntzer 1872: 539-549 systematically shows that adjectives for a variety of common nouns (ship, earth, people, etc.) are chosen for their metrical convenience more than their meaning.
I didn't realize that this insight went back before Parry -- I think of it as an essentially Parry idea.
8. Fox points to John Ruskin's praise of the pathos in the lines in Iliad 3 about the "life-giving earth" (3.243
φυσίζοος αἶα)
9. Fox dismisses the 'ideological' explanation for Homer (that he supports kingship
in an era of weakened kings) too quickly -- certainly Osborne in his Greece in the Making takes a similar idea more
seriously ("Monarchical rulers too are good to think with, even, perhaps especially, in a community that lacks
them.")
10. Fox alludes to SEG 56.1003 (published 2006), the first epigraphic attestation for the
Homeridai on Chios.
Ἀμφικλιδῶν·
Εὀρυσθίδαι
Ὁμηρίδαι
Συλεῖδαι
οἱ Παρμένοντος
οἱ Μνασέος
οἱ Φανέος
Ἀμφικλειδῶν
πρώτων
Ε
11. Apparently Pindar told a story where Homer gave the Cypria to this daughter as a dowry; Fox uses this story
as evidence for the possibility that Homer composed the Iliad as a gift to this descendants.
In addition, this story is told: since Homer was too poor to marry off his daughter, he gave her the Cypria as
her dowry. Pindar is authority for this. (Aelian Varia Historia 9.15 = Pindar fr. 265 SM)
12. I was unaware of how close Tyrtaeus 10 is to Il. 22:
αἰσχρὸν γὰρ δὴ τοῦτο, μετὰ προμάχοισι πεσόντα
κεῖσθαι πρόσθε νέων ἄνδρα παλαιότερον,
ἤδη λευκὸν ἔχοντα κάρη πολιόν τε γένειον,
θυμὸν ἀποπνείοντ᾿ ἄλκιμον ἐν κονίῃ,
αἱματόεντ᾿ αἰδοῖα φίλαις ἐν χερσὶν ἔχοντα—αἰσχρὰ. 25
τά γ᾿ ὀφθαλμοῖς καὶ νεμεσητὸν ἰδεῖν—καὶ
χρόα γυμνωθέντα· νέοισι δὲ πάντ᾿ ἐπέοικεν,
ὄφρ᾿ ἐρατῆς ἥβης ἀγλαὸν ἄνθος ἔχῃ,
ἀνδράσι μὲν θηητὸς ἰδεῖν, ἐρατὸς δὲ γυναιξὶ
ζωὸς ἐών, καλὸς δ᾿ ἐν προμάχοισι πεσών. 30
il. 22.71-6
κείσοντ' ἐν προθύροισι. νέῳ δέ τε πάντ' ἐπέοικεν
ἄρηϊ κταμένῳ δεδαϊγμένῳ ὀξέϊ χαλκῷ
κεῖσθαι· πάντα δὲ καλὰ θανόντι περ ὅττι φανήῃ·
ἀλλ' ὅτε δὴ πολιόν τε κάρη πολιόν τε γένειον
αἰδῶ τ' αἰσχύνωσι κύνες κταμένοιο γέροντος,
τοῦτο δὴ οἴκτιστον πέλεται δειλοῖσι βροτοῖσιν.
Fox cites but dismisses West 2011, but I agree with West -- seems to me that the Iliad is reworking a cliche from
elegy rather than elegy quoting and imitating the Iliad.
there are other times (in my opinion) where epic reworks martial elegy, e.g. in Telemachus' speech to the Ithacan
assembly in od. 2.
13. Fox claims that Homer "uses
fixed phrases when referring to Troy whose scansion and spelling show that they had developed earlier than his own
lifetime" and cites Bowra 1960 for the claim, but Bowra says no such thing -- Bowra goes over the Homeric epithets
for Troy and claims that some are a good match for actual Bronze Age Troy, but he doesn't claim that the formulas
themselves show evidence of their age.
14. Hecuba is apparently Phrygian.
Asios, who was uncle to Hektor, breaker of horses,
since he was brother of Hekabe, and the son of Dymas,
who had made his home in Phrygia by the stream of Sangarios. (Il. 16.717-9)
15. Several times Fox presents clear evidence for 7th century items and then has to argue that those items are
interpolations:
- the stone threshold at Pytho (9.404-5) unlikely before 680
- Gorgon's head on Ag's shield (5.740-3); figures on shields start c. 650, including a Gorgon
- 4 horsed chariot competing at Elis (11.696-702); 4 horsed chariot competitions began at Olympics in 680 (I assume according to Pausanias)
Pretty dubious. We're not going to solve the Homeric problem here but I do tend to favor a later date personally.
16. Heraclitus (c. 500) wanted Homer banned from performance at competitions.
D21 (B42) Diog. Laert. 9.1
τόν τε Ὅμηρον ἔφασκεν ἄξιον ἐκ τῶν ἀγώνων ἐκβάλλεσθαι καὶ ῥαπίζεσθαι καὶ Ἀρχίλοχον ὁμοίως.
D21 (B42) Diogenes Laertius
He said that Homer deserved to be driven out of the competitions and thrashed, and Archilochus likewise.
Clear evidence of performance at competitions (and Archilochus too -- recalls the Ion).
17. Similarly, according to Herodotus, the tyrant of Sicyon Cleisthenes banned Homer from competitions, since he
was a partisan of Argos
Hdt. 5.67
In doing this, to my thinking, this Cleisthenes was imitating his own mother's father, Cleisthenes the tyrant of
Sicyon, for Cleisthenes, after going to war with the Argives, made an end of minstrels' contests at Sicyon by reason
of the Homeric poems, in which it is the Argives and Argos which are primarily the theme of the songs.
18. The 5th-century medical text On Joints cites Homer on animals in winter, but no such statement is found in our
Homer.
On Joints 8
And it should be, for Homer has well observed that of all farm beasts cattle suffer most during this season
[winter], and among cattle the ploughing oxen because they work in the winter.
By the 5th century Homer already an authority for the physical world. This is the kind of citation that wouldn't be
out of place in Plutarch.
19. The line between life and death in Homer is blurred somewhat by two statements that perjurers are punished
after death.
Il. 3.278-80
and you who under the
earth take vengeance
on dead men, whoever among them has sworn to falsehood,
you shall be witnesses, to guard the oaths of fidelity.
19.258-60
'Let Zeus first be my witness, highest of the gods and greatest,
and Earth, and Helios the Sun, and Furies, who underground
avenge dead men, when any man has sworn to a falsehood,
Perhaps significant that both examples occur in oaths.
20. Hector imagines that his fame will be transmitted in part by other people's monuments.
Il. 7.89-91
"This is the mound of a man who died long ago in battle,
who was one of the bravest, and glorious Hektor killed him."
So will he speak some day, and my glory will not be forgotten.'
21. Fox claims that we only learn of Hector's dark hair in Il. 22; he further claims that dark hair is restricted
to gods and god-like people.
"Its head trails in the dust, 'and around it his dark hair fell'.15 For the first time Homer specifies the colour
of Hector's hair. He presents it here because it adds to the pathos of the scene: elsewhere in the poem dark hair is
mentioned only for gods and god-like persons."
Not sure on either point, especially the latter.
22. The Icarian Sea is another geographical feature that potentially localizes Homer.
2.144-6
And the assembly was shaken as on the sea the big waves
in the main by Ikaria, when the south and south-east winds
driving down from the clouds of Zeus the father whip them.
The Icarian Sea is the sea off Ikaria, in between Chios, Samos, Ikaria, and the mainland near Izmir.
23. Hermes tells Priam to supplicate Achilles in the name
of his father, mother, and child. Fox's point is that Priam drops the mother and child from the actual supplication.
24.465-7
But go you in yourself and clasp the knees of Peleion
and entreat him in the name of his father, the name of his mother
of the lovely hair, and his child, and so move the spirit within him.'
This and Il. 19.326f are the only places I'm aware of where Neoptolemus is mentioned.
24. Achilles repeats (with a positive spin) Hecuba's claim that Priam's heart is iron.
24.205
How can you wish to go alone to the ships of the Achaians
before the eyes of a man who has slaughtered in such numbers
such brave sons of yours? The heart in you is iron. For if
24.521
How could you dare to come aIone to the ships of the Achaians
and before my eyes, when I am one who have killed in such numbers such brave sons of yours? The heart in you is
iron. Come, then
The Greek is closer than Lattimore's translation
πῶς ἐθέλεις ἐπὶ νῆας Ἀχαιῶν ἐλθέμεν οἶος
ἀνδρὸς ἐς ὀφθαλμοὺς ὅς τοι πολέας τε καὶ ἐσθλοὺς
υἱέας ἐξενάριξε· σιδήρειόν νύ τοι ἦτορ.
πῶς ἔτλης ἐπὶ νῆας Ἀχαιῶν ἐλθέμεν οἶος
ἀνδρὸς ἐς ὀφθαλμοὺς ὅς τοι πολέας τε καὶ ἐσθλοὺς
υἱέας ἐξενάριξα; σιδήρειόν νύ τοι ἦτορ.
25. Fox cites Horace Epistle 1.2 for an ethical reading of Homer -- one which Fox finds unsatisfactory, since
Homer's ethical values are "more instructive than those to which Horace wittily reduced them"
Hor. Ep. 1.2.6-16
The story in which it is told how, because of Paris's love Greece clashed in tedious war with a foreign land,
embraces the passions of foolish kings and peoples. Antenor moves to cut away the cause of the war. What of Paris?
To reign in safety and to live in happiness—nothing, he says, can force him. Nestor is eager to settle the strife
between the sons of Peleus and of Atreus. Love fires one, but anger both in common. Whatever folly the kings commit,
the Achaeans pay the penalty. With faction, craft, crime, lust and wrath, within and without the walls of Troy all
goes wrong.
I'm particularly struck by the negative interpretation of kinghip here: "foolish kings and peoples," "Whatever
folly the kings commit, the Achaeans pay the penalty."
26. Fox notes that a young man just beginning to grow a beard is explicitly the most graceful age of life.
24.347-8
walked on, and there took the likeness of a young man, a noble,
with beard new grown, which is the most graceful time of young manhood.
βῆ δ' ἰέναι κούρῳ αἰσυμνητῆρι ἐοικὼς
πρῶτον ὑπηνήτῃ, τοῦ περ χαριεστάτη ἥβη.
'graceful' seems good for χαριεστάτη.
27. Grandfather Phylas brings up his grandson Eudorus, cherishing him as though his own son
16.191-2
and the old man Phylas took the child and brought him up kindly
and cared for him, in affection as if he had been his own son.
τὸν δ' ὃ γέρων Φύλας εὖ ἔτρεφεν ἠδ' ἀτίταλλεν
ἀμφαγαπαζόμενος ὡς εἴ θ' ἑὸν υἱὸν ἐόντα.
28. Fox takes issue with Terence Irwin's bleak view of Homeric ethics: "Homeric ethics gives each person an
interest in supporting a system whose effects harm everyone" (Irwin 1989: 18). Irwin's text ("Classical Thought") is
an overview of ancient philosophy from Homer to Augustine.
29. Nobody would choose war. "Odysseus reminds the wavering Agamemnon that wars are Zeus' hard gift to heroes:
'Zeus has given us the [task of] winding gruesome wars, like a ball of thread, from youth to old age."
14.85-7
οἷσιν ἄρα Ζεὺς
ἐκ νεότητος ἔδωκε καὶ ἐς γῆρας τολυπεύειν
ἀργαλέους πολέμους, ὄφρα φθιόμεσθα ἕκαστος.
τολυπεύω < τολύπη ('ball of thread'). LfgrE has "from τολύπη (not in early Greek) 'ball': literally 'wind up',
only used metaphorically: to struggle with, go through, get it over with; of experiences with negative connotations,
always transitive."
Scholia also note the etymology and metaphor.
30. Diomedes has a wife, mentioned only once by Hera.
Il. 5.410-5
Then, though he be very strong indeed, let the son of Tydeus
take care lest someone even better than he might fight with him,
lest for a long time Aigialeia, wise child of Adrastos,
mourning wake out of sleep her household's beloved companions,
longing for the best of the Achaians, her lord by marriage,
she, the strong wife ofDiomedes, breaker of horses.'
31. Antenor is the Trojan elder, Agenor his son.
32. Generally Homer avoids the later Greek stereotypes of 'Asiatic effeminacy,' but there is one exception in
book 2 (perhaps later interpolation):
Il. 2.872-5
Nastes came like a girl to the fighting in golden raiment,
poor fool, nor did this avail to keep dismal death back;
but he went down under the hands of swift-running Aiakides
in the river, and fiery Achilleus stripped the gold from him.
This story of Nastes does not occur later.
33. Fox says that horse sacrifice to the river Scamander (21.132) is one of the few non-Greek religious customs
assigned to the Trojans. He cites Hall's Inventing the Barbarian on this point but she actually disagrees.
At 23.171-2 Achilles puts (live?) horses on Patroclus' funeral pyre.
34. Some formulas relating to horses date back to PIE.
Fox cites West 2007: 465-7; among the interesting tidbits in those pages are two cognate formulas:
Vedic aśvāso... āśavo = Homeric ωκεες ιπποι ('swift horses')
Vedic ṛjrā... aśvā = Homeric αργος, not used of horses but cf. the name
of Menelaus' horse Podargos ('Swiftfoot').
35. At the end of 19, Xanthus stretches his mane to the ground,
recalling his behavior mourning Patroclus in 17.
19.403-5
Then from beneath the yoke the gleam-footed horse answered him,
Xanthos, and as he spoke bowed his head, so that all the mane
fell away from the pad and swept the ground by the cross-yoke;
Τὸν δ' ἄρ' ὑπὸ ζυγόφι προσέφη πόδας αἰόλος ἵππος
Ξάνθος, ἄφαρ δ' ἤμυσε καρήατι· πᾶσα δὲ χαίτη
ζεύγλης ἐξεριποῦσα παρὰ ζυγὸν οὖδας ἵκανεν·
17.437-440
warm tears were running
earthward from underneath the lids of the mourning horses
who longed for their charioteer, while their bright manes were made
dirty
as they streamed down either side of the yoke from under the yoke pad.
δάκρυα δέ σφι
θερμὰ κατὰ βλεφάρων χαμάδις ῥέε μυρομένοισιν
ἡνιόχοιο πόθῳ· θαλερὴ δ' ἐμιαίνετο χαίτη
ζεύγλης ἐξεριποῦσα παρὰ ζυγὸν ἀμφοτέρωθεν.
36. No god interacts with Andromache. She is alone, unguided by a
god or goddess
37. In the oath-swearing at Il. 3.271ff, an animal is killed and
discarded without human consumption of the meat.
38. According to pseudo-Aeschines Letter 10, there was a tradition in
post-classical Troy that young woman could still have sex with the river Scamander.
There were big crowds of girls getting ready to marry. It was customary
in the region of Troy for brides-to-be to go to the river Scamander, wash themselves in its waters, and say this
phrase out loud, as if it were something sacred: "Scamander, take my virginity."
39. van Wees has argued in a number of studies that Homer's
treatment of chariots as "battlefield taxis" in fact matches actual 7th century practice, and is not an instance
of Homer misunderstanding an inherited tradition.
40. Griffin in Homer on Life and Death (a work maybe I should
read in full) argues that the Iliad is fundamentally about death; the obituaries are like funerary
epigrams, and their purpose is to show the pathos of their death.
"This tragic and consistent view of human life is what makes the
epic so great. The 'obituaries' and the other passages of austere pathos are vitally important for it.
The Iliad is a poem of death... In the Iliad the lesser heroes are shown in all the pathos of their
death, the change from the brightness of life to a dark and meaningless existence, the grief of their
friends and families; but the style preserves the poem from sentimentality on the one hand and sadism on
the other." (143).
Compelling but he does not explicitly compare any obituaries and
funerary epigrams, and so the comparison lacks clear evidence. Some of the epigrams though do feel a bit
like obituaries:
"Pleistias. Sparta is his fatherland, in spacious Athens he was
brought up: death's lot came on him here."
"'This is the grave of Arniadas; the furious war-god slew him as
he fought by the ships on Arathus' streams, a great champion in the cruel battle.'"
41. Helen refers to her daughter only once, at Il. 3.173f (the beginning of the Teichoscopia):
and I wish bitter death had been what I wanted, when I came hither
following your son, forsaking my chamber, my kinsmen,
my grown child (παῖδά τε τηλυγέτην), and the loveliness of girls my own age.
42. A temple to Athena on Rhodes had a cup supposedly dedicated by Helen, in the shape of her breast. Coccagna
2014 compares extant cups in the shape of the female breast for the sympotic setting. Fox makes the point that
Homer never mentions Helen's breasts, though they are significant in later tellings of Helen.
Pliny HN 33.23.8
At Lindos, in the island of Rhodes, there is a temple dedicated to Minerva, in which there is a goblet of
electrum, consecrated by Helena: history states also that it was moulded after the proportions of her bosom.
Minervae templum habet Lindos insulae Rhodiorum, in quo Helena sacravit calicem ex electro; adicit historia,
mammae suae mensura.
This temple itself was real and was a significant sanctuary to Athena: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_of_Athena_Lindia
43. Andromache weaves θρόνα into a double robe (22.441: ἐν δὲ θρόνα ποικίλ' ἔπασσε.). The
normal interpretation in later Greek sources is 'flowers,' but Fox claims the word may have meant 'animals,' as it
did in Thessalian dialects.
The key evidence is a scholion to Theocritus 2.59
44. Brutus left his wife Porcia in southern Italy; there she saw a painting of Andromache, Hector, and Astyanax,
which made her burst into tears.
Plut. Brut. 23 (https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Plut.+Brut.+23&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2008.01.0011)
[2] As Porcia was about to return thence to Rome, she tried to conceal her distress, but a certain painting
betrayed her, in spite of her noble spirit hitherto. Its subject was Greek, —Andromache bidding farewell to Hector;
she was taking from his arms their little son, while her eyes were fixed upon her husband. [3] When Porcia saw this,
the image of her own sorrow presented by it caused her to burst into tears, and she would visit it many times a day
and weep before it.
LIMC has three representations of the scene of Hector and Andromache before the fighting. One Greek (no Astyanax),
two Roman
One of these days I'd like to track down better versions of Andromache I 8 and Andromache I 9.
8 is from Pompeii, and I think all the wall paintings at Pompeii were published in some
monumental edition like 30 years ago (though its name escapes me)
9 is from the Domus Aurea, which also I assume has been published in some higher quality form.
6 (the Greek vase) was sold at auction in 1967, present whereabouts are I assume unknown.
45. In Iliad 8, Gorgythion dies
dropping his head to the side like a poppy in the rain. Fox claims that poppies do not actually bend their stems,
though individual petals might bend, but it's easy to find photos online of poppies bending in the rain with a right
angle.
Il. 8.303-8
Gorgythion the blameless, hit in the chest by an arrow;
Gorgythion whose mother was lovely Kastianeira,
Priam's bride from Aisyme, with the form of a goddess.
He bent drooping his head to one side, as a garden poppy
bends beneath the weight of its yield and the rains of springtime;
so his head bent slack to one side beneath the helm's weight.
υἱὸν ἐῢν Πριάμοιο κατὰ στῆθος βάλεν ἰῷ,
τόν ῥ' ἐξ Αἰσύμηθεν ὀπυιομένη τέκε μήτηρ
καλὴ Καστιάνειρα δέμας ἐϊκυῖα θεῇσι.
μήκων δ' ὡς ἑτέρωσε κάρη βάλεν, ἥ τ' ἐνὶ κήπῳ
καρπῷ βριθομένη νοτίῃσί τε εἰαρινῇσιν,
ὣς ἑτέρωσ' ἤμυσε κάρη πήληκι βαρυνθέν.
https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/wet-rain-poppy-flower-bowed-head-1070397692.
Uploaded to shutterstock 2018, so definitely not AI.
46. Fox claims Achilles has nine dogs at Troy.
Il. 23.172-3 (Lattimore)
And there were
nine dogs of the table that had belonged to the lord Patroklos.
Greek for Il. 23.173
ἐννέα τῷ γε ἄνακτι τραπεζῆες κύνες ἦσαν,
I think it's ambiguous whether ἄνακτι refers to Achilles or Patroclus.
47. Boars are inferior to lions in Homer's similes; e.g. Patroclus is
compared to a boar and Hector to a lion when Hector kills Patroclus.
Il. 16.823-8
As a lion overpowers a weariless boar in wild combat
as the two fight in their pride on the high places of a mountain
over a little spring of water, both wanting to drink there,
and the lion beats him down by force as he fights for his breath, so
Hektor, Priam's son, with a close spear-stroke stripped the life
from the fighting son of Menoitios, who had killed so many...
In reality (according to Wikipedia), it's true that boars are often prey
for apex predators, e.g. wolves, tigers, and komodo dragons. "A single wolf can kill around 50 to 80 boars of
differing ages in one year." The wikipedia page has some ugly photos of tigers and komodo dragons (!) killing
boars. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_boar#Predators
48. "A careful reader of Homer's similes, Hermann Fränkel, ended by wondering whether the makers of such similes
perhaps 'had already become cool, sedate and orderly town dwellers who, if they wanted to describe the great and
sublime, turned their thoughts away from the daily life which surrounded them'.'
Attractive to see the similes as a kind of proto-bucolic poetry, but feels anachronistic. Fox reasonably rejects it
("The towns of Homer and his listeners were not separated from an alien expanse called the countryside").
I do think the similes are generally interested in the natural world (however one defines it) and generally ignore
the town life that sometimes sneaks into the similes, e.g. with the two women arguing in the street (20.251-255).
49. "Through Homer's eyes, Auden claimed, human lives are seen as if through the impassive eye of a bird or a
camera: they run their indifferent course, and 'for ever and ever/Plum blossom falls on the dead'.'
Another attractive idea that Fox rejects. For him, the only simile that compares "the fact of mortals' transient
lives to the recurring world beyond them" is when "Glaucus tells his opponent Diomede that the 'generations of men
are like the generations of leaves' which pass away, yet reappear when the forest flourishes again in spring. 'So
one generation of men is born, but another ceases.'"
50. Fox makes some interesting generalizations about the similes:
- they show unusual events: a lion or a boar hunt does not happen everyday (though of course there are counterexamples)
- they tend to show "everyday people" -- not king and queens, not slaves.
51. "and on it all the constellations that festoon the heavens,
the Pleiades and the Hyades and the strength of Orion
and the Bear (Ἄρκτόν), whom men give also the name of the Wagon (Ἄμαξαν)..." (18.485-7)
The Bear/Wagon is Ursa Major, the Big Dipper. The Akkadian name for this constellation is ereqqu, literally
'wagon.' But eriqqu must have sounded like Ἄρκτόν to Greeks who took over the constellations and their names from
the Near East. Fox cites Hainsworth on the Odyssey version of these lines.
52. Fox takes the plowing scene at 18.541-9 as a
representation of plowing of 'common land,' in contrast to the reaping of the temenos described in the next
scene.
His footnote suggests that Finley rejected the existence of 'common
land' altogether in Homer (the simile at Il. 12.421-3 being the crucial passage), and he must fall back to a JHS
article from 1885.
53. Aristotle said that the Iliad was characterized by pathos:
Poetics 24.1459b13-5
Of his poems, the Iliad's structure is simple and rich in suffering
(παθητικόν), while the Odyssey is complex (it is pervaded by recognition) and character based.
καὶ γὰρ τῶν ποιημάτων ἑκάτερον συνέστηκεν ἡ μὲν Ἰλιὰς ἁπλοῦν καὶ
παθητικόν, ἡ δὲ Ὀδύσσεια πεπλεγμένον (ἀναγνώρισις γὰρ διόλου) καὶ ἠθική.
Fox cites Gill 1984 ("The Ēthos/Pathos Distinction in Rhetorical and
Literary Criticism"), which discusses pathos as passion and emotion throughout ancient literary criticism.
54. Fox dwells on the pathos of Homeric irony, where characters are
unaware of facts that the audience knows. As examples he adduces Iliad 22, which begins with Priam's ignorance
that Lykaon and Polydoros are dead and ends with Andromache's ignorance of the death of Hector.
22.46-8
καὶ γὰρ νῦν δύο παῖδε Λυκάονα καὶ Πολύδωρον
οὐ δύναμαι ἰδέειν Τρώων εἰς ἄστυ ἀλέντων...
55. He further dwells on irony in the death of Hector: a hero as great
as Hector can only be killed through the intervention of the gods, where they (and we) know things that the
characters do not. "He was nowhere near (ὃ δ' οὔ τί οἱ ἐγγύθεν ἦεν). Six brief words express the irony:
ruthlessly poignant... Athena deceives him, not as an anticlimax, but as a supreme example of man's ignorance of
the gods' decisions" (397).
I feel this misses an important emotional aspect of Hector's death: that
after this, when irony is stripped away and we, the gods, and Hector all face the reality of the situation,
Hector finds the courage to face Achilles and achieve one last great thing.
22.300-5
νῦν δὲ δὴ ἐγγύθι μοι θάνατος κακός, οὐδ' ἔτ' ἄνευθεν,
οὐδ' ἀλέη· ἦ γάρ ῥα πάλαι τό γε φίλτερον ἦεν
Ζηνί τε καὶ Διὸς υἷι ἑκηβόλῳ, οἵ με πάρος γε
πρόφρονες εἰρύατο· νῦν αὖτέ με μοῖρα κιχάνει.
μὴ μὰν ἀσπουδί γε καὶ ἀκλειῶς ἀπολοίμην,
ἀλλὰ μέγα ῥέξας τι καὶ ἐσσομένοισι πυθέσθαι.
I find Hector's hopeless courage even more moving than his heartbreaking
request to Deiphobus for a spear.
56. Fox argues for an interpretation of Homeric wedding gifts as:
- hedna: gifts from the bridesgroom to the bride's father or other male relatives ('bride-goods')
- dora: gifts given in either direction at various points in the process, but especially gifts from the bride's family to the bridegroom ('dowry')
Apparently ER Dodds called women with gifts and women for hedna as "women at a discount" and "women at a
premium" (memorable if unsavory). The Dodds quote appears in Snodgrass 1974, where he rejects the unity of
Homeric society, using the alleged incoherence of Homeric marriage customs as crucial evidence. https://www.jstor.org/stable/630424
Fox further cites Ormand 2014: "esp. 52-85" for an alternative view, which I have not seen.
36a. In claiming that Aphrodite is unaided by the gods, Fox neglects the κρήδεμνον that Aphrodite gave to
Andromache on her wedding day.
22.470-2
κρήδεμνόν θ', ὅ ῥά οἱ δῶκε χρυσῆ Ἀφροδίτη
ἤματι τῷ ὅτε μιν κορυθαίολος ἠγάγεθ' Ἕκτωρ
ἐκ δόμου Ἠετίωνος, ἐπεὶ πόρε μυρία ἕδνα.
Presumably a mark of favor, even if not literally a gift from the goddess.
τέλος
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