This page intentionally left blank
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad From beginning to end of the Iliad, Agamemnon and Achilleus are locked in a high-stakes struggle for dominance in which they attempt to impose competing definitions of rightful leadership, using competing definitions of loss incurred and the nature of the compensation owed. A typology of scenes involving apoina or “ransom” and poine or “revenge” is the basis of Donna Wilson’s detailed anthropology of compensation in Homer, which she locates in the wider context of agonistic exchange. Wilson argues that a struggle over definitions is a central feature of elite competition for status in the zero-sum and fluid ranking system that is characteristic of Homeric society. This system can be used to explain why Achilleus refuses Agamemnon’s “compensation” in Book 9, as well as why and how the embassy tries to disguise it. Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad examines the traditional semantic, cultural, and poetic matrix of which compensation in Homer is an integral part. Donna F. Wilson is associate professor of classics at Brooklyn College and The Graduate Center, City University of New York.
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the
Iliad DONNA F. WILSON Brooklyn College and The Graduate Center, City University of New York
The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia Ruiz de Alarcón 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa http://www.cambridge.org © Donna F. Wilson 2004 First published in printed format 2002 ISBN 0-511-02894-6 eBook (Adobe Reader) ISBN 0-521-80660-7 hardback
Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments
page vii
introduction Compensation and Heroic Identity
1
chapter 1 Ransom and Revenge: Poetics and Politics of Compensation
13
chapter 2 Agamemnon and Chryses: Between King and Father
40
chapter 3 The Quarrel: Men Who Would Be King
54
chapter 4 The Embassy to Achilleus: In the Name of the Father
71
chapter 5 Achilleus and Priam: Between King and Father
109
chapter 6 Unlimited Poin¯e : Poetry as Practice
134
appendix 1 Catalog of Compensation Themes
147
appendix 2 Arrangement of Compensation Themes
179
Notes Abbreviations References Index of Homeric Passages General Index
183 215 217 229 233 v
Preface and Acknowledgments
This book emerged from a dissertation presented to the faculty of the University of Texas in 1997 under the title The Politics of Compensation in the Homeric Iliad. The dissertation itself grew out of a presentation in a graduate seminar on the Iliad, though my interest in the poetics and politics of compensation was sparked much earlier in a Jewish studies seminar on Oral Torah. It has been my good fortune to have at every stage of this project a wealth of colleagues, teachers, and friends who invested their time, energy, and expertise in my work. It is a pleasure to thank them. I am especially indebted to Erwin Cook for his guidance, critical insight, and unflagging support, from the genesis of the project to its published form. To Andrew Riggsby, Thomas K. Hubbard, Barbara Goff, J. Andrew Dearman, and Michael Gagarin I owe special thanks for reading and commenting on early versions of one or all of the chapters. Additionally, the first two chapters and the catalog benefited greatly from Raymond Westbrook’s careful critique from the perspective of ancient Near Eastern law. Gregory Nagy read the entire manuscript and offered detailed and invaluable suggestions for revision, as did Walter Donlan, who also made available to me offprints of his own work. I owe many thanks to my colleagues Edward Harris, J. Roger Dunkle, Hardy Hansen, and Christopher Barnes for comments on the Introduction and first chapter and for many insightful conversations. I am also grateful for the generous and helpful suggestions made by the anonymous readers for Cambridge University Press. A portion of chapter 4 was presented orally for a Baylor University Colloquium in Classics in 1996 and later published as “Symbolic Violence in Iliad 9” in Classical World 93.2:132–47. Parts of chapters 1 and 4 were also presented at annual meetings of the American Philological Association in vii
viii
Preface and Acknowledgments
1996 and 1998, at meetings of the Classical Association of the Mid-West and South and the Classical Association of the Atlantic States in 1996 and 1997, and for the Columbia Seminar in Classical Civilization in 1999. I profited immensely from the audience’s questions and spirited discussion on each of these occasions. The students in my honors colloquium on reciprocity eagerly read the Iliad with me, and aggressively read and critiqued various anthropologies of exchange as approaches to Homeric society. Their rigorous engagement of texts and ideas, political savvy, and multicultural perspectives contributed immensely to me personally and to this book. And finally, this book would not have the form it has without the skillful editorial contributions of Beatrice Rehl, Helen Wheeler, and Helen Greenberg of Cambridge University Press. The errors that remain despite my learned colleagues’ valiant efforts are entirely my own. All translations of the Iliad are based on that of Lattimore (C 1951 by the University of Chicago Press), but with adjustments, and are used by permission of the University of Chicago Press. All other translations are my own. Except where ambiguity might arise, references to the Iliad are by book and line number, without the name of the poem; Od. is used to cite the Odyssey. The Greek in the text and in the footnotes is translated with the exception of a few technical notes in appendix 1. I follow Lattimore’s spelling of Greek names and transliterate other Greek words analogously, if not entirely consistently (e.g., upsilon is usually transliterated as u but chi as kh). Finally, there are a few Greek words that figure prominently in my discussion and that admit of no single translation that adequately compasses their thematic usage in the Iliad. I gloss or explain the thematic significance of these terms the first time they appear in the text; I then transliterate without translating them. For easy reference, I include here a list of these terms with the barest of definitions: apoina bie¯ ¯ dora eris kleos (aphthiton) ¯ metis poine¯ polis (pl., poleis)
ransom force, violence gifts (pl.) strife (unfading) fame, glory cunning intelligence repayment for loss; reparation or revenge city (a form of Greek sociopolitical organization dating from the eighth century b.c.e.)
Preface and Acknowledgments
time¯ tisis philos (pl., philoi)
ix
honor, value repayment of harm for harm friend(s)
And now it remains only to acknowledge my own heroes: my children, Joel, Amanda, and Colin, whose patience and good humor with a mother who became an academic go beyond the call of duty; my mother, Berneda Wilson, who always believes in me; and my father, Thomas Wilson, whose memory is the wind beneath my wings. It is to them that this book is dedicated.
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
introduction
Compensation and Heroic Identity
If we accept this book [Iliad 9] as original, we must regard Achilles as really inexorable . . . Walter Leaf Book 9 is, in the final analysis, the diamond in the jewel studded crown of Homer. Wolfgang Schadewaldt
The embassy to Achilleus in Iliad Book 9 has probably sparked more commentary and lively debate than any other passage in the poem.1 The events themselves unfold straightforwardly enough. Nightfall at the end of Book 8 finds the Achaians hemmed in around their ships, desperate for a reprieve from Hektor’s onslaught, and the Trojans camped on the plain, hopeful of victory on the coming day. As Book 9 opens, Agamemnon is urging the dispirited Achaians to beat an inglorious retreat. At Nestor’s prompting, he determines instead to solicit Achilleus’ return by offering him goods, including Briseis, the girl whom the Greek commander had taken by force. Three emissaries – Odysseus, Phoinix, and Aias – convey the offer of goods and entreat the angry hero to reenter the fighting. Achilleus refuses. Upon returning to Agamemnon’s shelter, Odysseus declares the mission failed: “[Achilleus] refuses you and refuses your gifts” (9.679). And so the embassy and the Book conclude without advancing the course of the war significantly.2 Iliad Book 9 is widely regarded in contemporary Homeric scholarship as the interpretive key to the poem, the linchpin to its plot and tragic vision.3 But Book 9 has not always been held in such esteem. In fact, the 1
2
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
consensus that it is pivotal emerged out of a debate over whether it is even fully integrated into the poem and, if so, what it contributes.4 The history of the so-called Homeric question will be familiar to many readers, but it is worth revisiting briefly because it elucidates a thematic link between compensation and heroic identity. Moreover, it furnishes an account of how a prevailing modern conception of Achilleus’ heroic identity and, by extension, Homer’s peerless ingenuity evolved.5 Difficulty with Book 9 arises primarily from a seeming contradiction between the events of the embassy and Achilleus’ words the next day, in Books 11 and 16. There he claims he is still awaiting supplication, gifts, and the return of Briseis and, further, that he would have already returned to the fighting had Agamemnon treated him kindly (11.609–10; 16.84–86 and 16.69–73). The Alexandrian scholars, the earliest text critics of Homer, did not detect any inconsistency between these passages. At least they did not betray as much by marking the lines in question as spurious. The apparent contradiction has, however, attracted the attention of Analysts, scholars who attempt to isolate a putative ur-text of the Iliad from subsequent accretions. Walter Leaf, for example, declares Achilleus’ words in Book 11 “meaningless” in light of the embassy’s supplication; Gilbert Murray likewise judges them incongruous with Agamemnon’s offer of “princely atonement” in Book 9.6 Consequently, on the premise that the embassy conveys supplication and compensation, Analysts have maintained that Book 9 cannot be integrated satisfactorily into the Iliad.7 They therefore banish it from reconstructions of the ur-text, or Wrath poem. Since Book 9 has traditionally been a target of Analytic criticism, it has also become central to Unitarians, critics who maintain that the text is the unified creation of one poet. Unitarian scholars have now and again launched impassioned assaults against the effect of the Analytic method. John Scott epitomized their sentiments when he wrote, “There can be no Homeric scholarship, no literary appreciation under such [Analytic] leadership, for Homer ceases to be a poet and his work poetry.”8 Alternatively, Unitarians have conceded a discrepancy between Book 9 and Books 11 and 16, and have explained it as having occurred diachronically in the work of the same poet.9 Ironically, like their Analyst forebears, they use Homer’s presumed literacy to explain his errors. In this stratagem they are sometimes joined by oralists who use Homer’s orality to the same end,10 and by Neoanalytic scholars,11 who accept that Homer draws on so many and so varied sources that narrative inconsistency is unavoidable. More generally, scholars who contend for the artistic unity of the poem have concluded that the contradiction is only apparent, resulting from a change
Introduction
3
in the Achaians’ circumstances,12 diminution of Achilleus’ anger,13 or the embassy’s failure to meet Achilleus’ expectations.14 Defense of Book 9 and the integrity of the Homeric poems has emerged most influentially, however, as an argument from unity of narrative design. In his seminal work Homer and the Heroic Tradition, Cedric Whitman argues that the Iliad evinces a structural principle of concentricity known as ring-composition.15 He accordingly arranges narrative units to show balanced symmetries and antitheses in the poem. On this basis Whitman claims that Books 9 and 16 are not in conflict but are, rather, associated by ring-composition: Book 16 completes and reverses Book 9.16 The conviction that Book 9 is integral to a coherent Iliad has, however, presented critics with an interpretive crux: what does the embassy scene contribute? The poet must have Achilleus refuse the embassy’s offer or the poem would be truncated by a premature reconciliation. Insofar as scholarly tradition presumes that Agamemnon offers compensation, the enigma with which critics have had to contend is why Achilleus refuses it. Finding no material explanation for Achilleus’ behavior, Homer’s modern interpreters have by and large turned to subjective or moral explanations. Whitman, for example, reads the Iliad as a study in heroic psychology and the characters as embodying different character types: Achilleus reifies essential values and the human spirit and, accordingly, rejects material compensation; Agamemnon presents his opposite – psychology bound by material value.17 On this view, the Achilleus of Book 9 faces an ethical dilemma, and the poet is chiefly interested in the psychology of the hero’s wrath. The enigma is thus resolved with an appeal to the “peculiar lot and sensitivity” of Achilleus.18 As a result, the embassy scene’s contribution is, paradoxically, Achilleus’ refusal of the embassy’s offer. To be sure, some critics have suggested that Achilleus rejects Agamemnon’s compensation because it is flawed by the condition of subordination that he attaches, which could only inflame Achilleus’ ego.19 This approach, however, remains inherently psychological, and it leaves the relationship between the compensation and the attendant condition vague.20 The conclusion that an overwhelming majority of contemporary scholars have reached is that Achilleus’ refusal is unreasonable – in other words, incompatible with the social rules and values of Homeric society.21 Achilleus’ refusal of Agamemnon’s gifts has, moreover, been construed as a renunciation of material compensation for honor altogether. Further, his supposed rejection of material compensation has been perceived as an expression of his disillusionment with the materialist values of his society and with an established code of behavior often identified as the
4
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
heroic code. Accordingly, prevailing opinion either judges Achilleus culpable for failing to abide by the code22 or, more commonly, valorizes him as a champion of essential value.23 Either way, he is regarded as alienated from the beliefs and values of heroic society. Critics have even identified Achilleus’ refusal of Agamemnon’s gifts in Book 9 qua refusal of the heroic conception of honor as Homer’s great contribution to the Iliad: [T]he analytical method gives us insight into how Homer transformed the character of Achilles from a rather simple person, angry over the loss of Briseis, who sulks in his tent until his friend is killed, and is ultimately forced to rejoin the heroic society he was angry with, to a man who is driven to question, and eventually to reject, the values upon which that society is based.24
In sum, a dispute over compositional integrity has led many critics who argue for the narrative coherence of the Iliad to defend Book 9 as making a fundamental contribution to the thematic development of the poem. At the same time, identification of Agamemnon’s gifts as compensation has induced them by and large to interpret Achilleus’ refusal, and thus his heroic identity, in ethical and psychological terms. These convergent trends in Homeric studies have produced a vast body of scholarship that pronounces the embassy scene not just integral, but pivotal to our Iliad, in that it transforms an otherwise traditional hero into a nontraditional one, a traditional poet into a singular innovator who transcends poetic tradition, and a traditional poem into literature. Or as Jasper Griffin puts it, “The refusal of Achilles to yield is the central fact in the creation of the Iliad from the traditional plot of the hero’s withdrawal and triumphant return.”25 The foregoing survey of Homeric scholarship has offered a historical account of an approach to the Iliad that has been with us for a long time and has influenced academic and popular interpretation alike. Most of these views assume a common problem – “Achilleus rejects material compensation” – and adopt subjective approaches to resolve it. As a result, an “essential” conception of Achilleus’ heroic identity has been all but naturalized for modern readers. This raises the question of to what extent mainstream twentieth-century scholarship on Achilleus and a presumed crisis in his heroic identity imported a modern interest in psychology and romantic ideals of originality and, as a result, created a hero in our own image.26 The logical conclusion of this approach seems to be that we share a fundamental worldview with Achilleus and, by extension, with Homer: Achilleus comes to represent “us”; Agamemnon
Introduction
5
and the normative pressures of heroic society “them.” On this view, what “we” share with Homer and Achilleus is a hierarchical valuation of the essential over the material and innovation over tradition. One must wonder, however, whether Homer or his audience would subscribe to either of those hierarchies. Two objections come immediately to mind. The first is that the conventional claim that the epic poet sang the truth of a distant heroic past requires that he deny that he ever innovates.27 And this assertion is no mere conceit; it is fundamental to the poet’s claim of authenticity and validity in an oral and traditional society. Thus, oralist approaches that build on the pioneering work of Milman Parry and Albert Lord offer a different and, to my mind, more satisfactory account of matters in that they take into consideration what a poet working within the system thinks he is doing.28 Traditional poetry, of course, admits of change in language and content, but it does so, according to oralist interpretation, precisely because each performance entails a recomposition of the poet’s inherited material.29 Instead of positing a hierarchical opposition between innovation and tradition, oralists contend that “innovation takes place within the tradition.”30 And as a result “we can consider Homer a master poet without abandoning our belief that he works within a traditional performance medium.”31 A second objection is that, while there may be value in exploring the psychology of Homer’s characters, it is all but impossible to explore Homeric psychology apart from the sociocultural background of Homeric society.32 Accordingly, the critic cannot ascertain the nature of Achilleus’ wrath and refusal of the embassy’s offer and cannot infer the extent to which Homer may privilege the essential over the material without knowing the vocabulary, forms, and social meanings of compensation in Homer. As important, one must also know what a slight is and whether domination is an expected social goal. Arthur Adkins’ work on honor and value in Homeric society laid indispensable semantic and social groundwork for investigating these questions.33 Subsequent anthropological studies by Thomas Beidelman and Walter Donlan, among others, have shown that Homeric society comprises a fluid tim¯e (honor)-based system in which rank is under constant negotiation and in which elite warriors try to establish status in relation to one another through agonistic exchange.34 In such a fluid hierarchy, Agamemnon’s gifts may be understood as part of a strategy of domination: a “gift-attack.”35 By showing that Achilleus’ refusal is consistent with the status economies of heroic society, social-anthropological approaches have seriously undermined the
6
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
material/essential hierarchy as an explanation for Achilleus’ behavior. Oralist approaches have furthered understanding of these matters by pointing out profound connections between poetic and cultural themes in oral and traditional societies.36 This book attempts to advance the discussion of compensation and heroic identity in Homer along oralist and sociological lines. I take an interdisciplinary approach, commonly referred to as ‘cultural poetics’, that employs philology and analysis of oral poetics to distinguish traditional themes and formal patterns of compensation in Homer, narratology to expose the development of the theme in the Iliad, and anthropological models for analyzing the social meanings and politics of compensation in Homeric society. Further, this approach attempts to take account of poetic discourse and cultural history as reciprocal intertexts; that is, it takes performance of oral poetry seriously as one of several interested discourses competing to construct a social world.37 Accordingly, this study first takes up the definitions and social meanings of compensation in the Iliad. Here we must reckon with Greek, for there is no single word in the Homeric vocabulary for compensation. There are several, however, that regularly signify compensatory exchange or that may do so in certain contexts. And as important, they operate within a coherent and unified system; hence we are justified in using the rubric compensation. Take, for example, the terms used for Agamemnon’s offer in the embattled Book 9. Agamemnon calls the goods apoina (9.120), a word that, for the moment, shall remain untranslated because we have yet to establish its meaning. Odysseus refers to them as d¯ora (gifts, 9.261), as does Phoinix (9.515). Aias alludes to them, obliquely, as poin¯e (9.633 and 636), another word that shall remain untranslated for the reason just given. At no time, however, do the emissaries use Agamemnon’s term, apoina. Achilleus, for his part, says that he hates Agamemnon’s d¯ora (gifts, 9.378). To further complicate matters, Achilleus claims on the following afternoon that he is still awaiting supplication, appropriate treatment, the return of Briseis, and d¯ora (gifts, 16.86). That this sort of verbal precision and subtle cross-referencing are within the grasp of an orally composing poet and an aural audience has been well documented in previous oralist scholarship. Verbal imprecision at this critical juncture in the narrative is, moreover, highly unlikely, especially where it concerns compensation, a theme with which the poem begins and ends. If apoina, poin¯e, and d¯ora mean the same thing – if they are formulaic alternatives for the same essential meaning and are also interchangeable in the Homeric social economy – we may conclude that Agamemnon
Introduction
7
offers compensation for wrong done to Achilleus, however flawed it may be by reason of the condition he attaches or the obligation the gifts impose. On this view, the embassy presents Achilleus with a candid version of Agamemnon’s offer and urges it upon him as acceptable by the standards of their society. Accordingly, Achilleus’ behavior in Book 9 may be explained as rejecting Agamemnon’s offer of compensation against reason (as per the essentialist tradition); rejecting Agamemnon’s offer of compensation because it contains an implicit gift attack to which the embassy is oblivious; or rejecting Agamemnon’s offer of compensation because it contains an explicit gift attack in which the embassy is openly complicitous. But these explanations all prove unsatisfactory. The first fails to account for Achilleus’ apparent regression to materialism the next day. The second and the third fail to account for the embassy’s pointed omission of Agamemnon’s own assertion of authority over Achilleus and the omission of his explicit term apoina, which one might reasonably expect to hear somewhere in the embassy speeches. The third is further belied by the persuasive force Phoinix and Aias can bring to bear on Achilleus by appealing to friendship ( philot¯es), even after he exposes Agamemnon’s stratagem. If, on the other hand, apoina, poin¯e, and d¯ora do not mean the same thing in Homer and the heroic social economy, then the embassy is prevaricating. Or, put in social terms, the embassy attaches different and shifting definitions to Agamemnon’s goods with a view to manipulating their symbolic function in a high-stakes game. If such is the case, as this book aims to demonstrate, the problem in Book 9 is not why Achilleus refuses compensation, a term in any event too generic for the Homeric vocabulary, even if it can designate an underlying system. The problem is what Agamemnon, the embassy, and Achilleus mean by the words they use and what the stakes in this tournament of definitions are. Only when this problem is resolved will we have a basis from which to analyze Achilleus’ rejection of Agamemnon’s offer and the implications of that rejection for his heroic identity; for Achilleus is as much a player in the game of definitions as any of the other characters. Since internal characters – and indeed Iliadic tradition itself – compete to determine the meanings of compensation, the definitions and social meanings of compensation in the Iliad must be searched out first within the poem instead of being culled broadly from Archaic Greek poetry and society. Indeed, for the critic to impose composite terms and conventions on the Iliad would only implicate him or her in these contests. Moreover, although compensation as a social institution in Homeric society must
8
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
bear resemblance to a known system in Greek societies, the Iliad develops the theme to such an extent, and in such a way, that it does not simply reflect historical practice. For example, the Homeric topos of the suppliant exile has been recognized as a convenient narrative device for moving characters from one place to another;38 hence it may present a poetic distortion of laws and procedures concerning exile for homicide in Archaic Greece. Further, since the Iliad refers infrequently to bloodshed outside of battle, the theme of compensation does not overlap significantly with that of manslaughter.39 Accordingly, this study does not encompass the theme of the suppliant exile in the Iliad or compensation in Archaic Greek poetry and practice in general. In sum, the Iliad develops the theme of compensation programmatically enough that it may not be conflated with other poetic traditions or historical institutions and then interpreted through the lens of the composite. Where they seem truly apposite, however, narrative, poetic, and legal traditions from the ancient Mediterranean are marshaled as comparanda, and Archaic Greek poetic traditions and cultural history as intertexts. For these reasons, the approach here taken begins by analyzing traditional themes in the Iliad in which terms signifying compensation regularly appear.40 But definitions of key terms may not be readily found in the major episodes involving Achilleus where they are so hotly contested. Instead, Iliadic typologies are most firmly established in a series of discrete themes that depict unproblematic exchanges of compensation. A catalog of these scenes appears in appendix 1 and is cross-referenced in the text (numbers in brackets refer the reader to catalog entries). These discrete themes are distributed broadly throughout the Iliad and are key structuring devices in the poem. It is against the background of these self-contained scenes that Homer projects the narrative of loss and compensation involving Achilleus here called the ‘monumental compensation theme’. Chapter 1 of this book furnishes a detailed formal description of discrete compensation themes in the Iliad and analysis of how compensation functions in the social economy of Homeric society. Chapters 2 through 5 examine the monumental compensation theme as unfolding against that background. These two operations, representing synchronic and diachronic analysis from the standpoint of reception, enable the modern reader to map the synthetic experience of an oral/aural performance of the Iliad onto the text. The terms ‘synchronic’ and ‘diachronic’ are here used in two ways. Synchronic refers to the intra-and intertextual poetic systems as well as to the generalized sociocultural knowledge a Homeric audience would draw on during a real-time performance of the poem. Diachronic refers
Introduction
9
to the relation of a given performance of the Iliad to all other previous performances. The term diachronic is also used to denote the chronological cross-references an audience would make from one episode to the next during a single performance of the poem. In this book, I do not attempt to uncover a historical development of the compensation theme in (diachronic) Iliadic tradition, but instead explore how it is deployed at the textualization stage of the poem. A Homeric audience, intimately familiar with the epic repertoire and with other poetic traditions, would be able to make synchronic and diachronic comparisons, from the opening scene on, because the narrative is inherited and traditional. In fact, the traditional audience of an oral performance would have a store of poetic and practical knowledge that Richard Martin describes as “the mental equivalent of a CD-ROM player full of phrases and scenes.”41 As a result, they could intuitively make inferences about meaning and cultivate expectations of the narrative and its traditional themes, which the poet may fulfill or subvert. Comparing and contrasting Homeric compensation themes with their own real-life institutions, rituals, and practices would further enhance audience expectation and enjoyment of the performance. Modern readers, however, lack the traditional and cultural nexus to read Homeric epic both synchronically and diachronically, to make formal and social inferences, and to cultivate thematic expectations, all intuitively. The oralist method adopted here – analyzing the (diachronic) story of Achilleus’ wrath against a (synchronic) background of discrete themes – is thus an attempt to supply through close reading some of what escapes intuition. In chapter 1 it is shown that the discrete themes present compensation as a coherent system that is thematically and semantically unified. The thematic unity of the social system is in fact mirrored in the semantic unity of the words that most frequently signify it: apoina and poin¯e. The similarity between the two Greek words is no coincidence, since both derive from a single Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root, ∗ kw ey(H I ).42 The Homeric term apoina denotes ‘ransom’, and poin¯e ‘reparation’ and ‘revenge’ alike. The Homeric terms are here employed to avoid the conflation that inheres in the English term ‘ransom’, which can mean both redemption of a captive and the blood price paid by a homicide. The term ‘compensation’ is used to refer to the unified system. Apoina (ransom) and poin¯e (reparation or revenge) are not, however, simply conflated in Homeric usage. The Iliad tradition exploits their transparent etymological unity to present a unified theme, and the distinction between the two words to present two consistent and firmly demarcated
10
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
formal types. The difference in Homeric apoina and poin¯e is not merely semantic, for the two types will be seen to have significantly different symbolic functions in the status economy of Homeric society. Payments of apoina, for example, do not entail the same loss of status as payments of poin¯e. We may thus infer that when Agamemnon designates the goods he offers in Book 9 apoina, it is part of a rhetorical strategy for negotiating his and Achilleus’ relative status. Critics have, on the one hand, largely ignored the unified social and semantic network, treating apoina and poin¯e as separate objects of inquiry. At the same time, however, they have selectively failed to recognize the Homeric distinction between the two words, presuming that Agamemnon’s use of apoina in Book 9 is just another way of saying poin¯e.43 Chapters 2 through 5 reveal that each episode in the poem’s monumental compensation theme involves apoina (ransom). In fact, the principal conflict of the poem, between Agamemnon and Achilleus, centers on definitions and in Book 9 turns on the distinction between apoina and poin¯e. Compensation thus emerges as the locus of a struggle for dominance based on a strategy of competing definitions and aggressive arrogation of roles. Although Achilleus feels he is owed poin¯e for the seizure of Briseis, Agamemnon offers him apoina. Accordingly, Achilleus in Books 11 and 16 can legitimately discount the previous offer, since Agamemnon’s gifts are inevitably unacceptable in form and function. Further, the compensation theme is developed in the poem to present Agamemnon’s refusal of Chryses’ apoina as epitomizing a social dysfunction and as initiating a sequence of rejections of apoina, including Achilleus’ refusal of Agamemnon’s in Book 9 and Hektor’s in Book 22, with increasingly disastrous consequences. The exchange of apoina for Hektor’s body in Book 24 emerges as a real resolution to this social condition. Hence, Priam’s apoina play a more crucial role than is commonly supposed. Chapter 6 turns to the cultural framework in which the thematics of compensation in the Iliad operate. It should be seen that Homer explores Achilleus’ wrath not as an existential or ethical phenomenon that turns on his rejection of material compensation and the materialist values of heroic society, but as a reaction to perceived manipulation and abuse of a social system that is otherwise acceptable to him. As a result, the presumed hierarchy of essential over material and innovation over tradition erodes as an explanation for Achilleus’ behavior and for Homer’s poetry. On this view, the quarrel, its aftermath, and its ultimate resolution have less to do with heroic psychology than with a conflict between competing visions of the social world and less to do with Achilleus’ essential identity than
Introduction
11
with competing constructions of the hero’s thematic and cultural identity, both in the Iliad and by the Iliad through the very fact of its performance.44 The development of the monumental theme allows us to infer an alignment between compensation and the Greek cultural opposition of cunning intelligence and force, or m¯etis and bi¯e. 45 It is a clich´e of Homeric interpretation that the Iliad is a poem of force. But, as we shall see, Achilleus is responsible in Book 1 for an act of m¯etis (cunning intelligence) that controls the plot of the poem until Patroklos’ death. His rejection of Agamemnon’s apoina in Book 9 nonetheless aligns him thematically with ambiguous bi¯e (force) that is gendered as feminine and associated with pursuit of extraordinary revenge, destruction of one’s own people, and inversion of cultural order. In Book 24 it is only another act of extreme self-restraint on his part, which the poem figures as m¯etis, that allows closure to occur. On this view, the ransom of Hektor’s corpse in the Iliad is, thematically, inversely related to the slaughter of the suitors in the Odyssey. The Iliad can thus be seen to celebrate Achilleus as a culture hero who ultimately mediates between m¯etis and bi¯e, in contrast to Agamemnon explicitly and to Odysseus implicitly. And the poet performing the Iliad bestows on its hero the poin¯e for his death that only epic song can give: kleos apthiton (unfading glory). This brings us to the issue of oral performance of traditional poetry as social practice and, hence, to the relation between Homeric society and Greek societies. Recent research has compiled compelling evidence that Homeric epic integrates the race of heroes, by definition creatures of a paradigmatic dimension in the past, into a society sufficiently coherent to refract – not, I emphasize, reflect – a real world.46 Even the inconsistencies Homeric society displays are not unlike systemic contradictions in real societies.47 But the historical realities most closely approximated in Homeric institutions and relations are the subject of ongoing and lively debate.48 For reasons I discuss subsequently, this study does not take up the search for a historical Homeric society. The reading of the Iliad offered here is, however, congruent with a growing body of scholarship that places the textualization stage of Homeric epic – an issue different from but related to that of a historical Homeric society – well into the seventh and sixth centuries b.c.e.49 It is also compatible with Gregory Nagy’s evolutionary model of textualization, which posits a fluid state in the late eighth century, a more formative and Panhellenic stage from the eighth to the sixth centuries, and a definitive stage in the sixth century.50 On this view, Homeric society is sufficiently coherent to be plausible and is, moreover, recognizable for the Homeric audience. It is not fictive
12
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
and freestanding, but it is also not a reflection of any single stage of Greek social formation. In fact, if the oral textualization model is correct or if the Homeric poems are Panhellenic texts, they cannot reflect a particular historical period or localized institutions and procedures (e.g., for selection of officials and communal decision making, written laws, or other constitutional features that developed in seventh and sixth-century poleis).51 Kurt Raaflaub accordingly describes Homeric society as Panhellenic in the (synchronic) sense that “it allow[s] broad recognition and identification” but is not, for that, “more fictitious or less historical.”52 I do not mean to say that Homeric society, even insofar as it is coherent and recognizable, corresponds to a social reality known to the poet and his audience, Panhellenic or otherwise. It is instead an interested ideological refraction, and therefore represents not real (historical) conditions of existence but the imaginary relation of a group to those conditions.53 Put another way, a performance of the Iliad represents an attempt to appropriate a heroic past and to reproduce a recognizable heroic social world that may be deployed in the competition to construct a Panhellenic social world and the Homeric audience as social subjects.54 And though the interests that Homeric epic asserts are those of an elite, the perspectives of elites are not necessarily monolithic; they may accommodate competing interests, especially in periods of conflict over social formation. But any conclusions to be drawn here are necessarily tentative and speculative. And so, to return to the topic of this book, we may say that the Iliad deploys the compensation theme in the construction of heroic identity and, by extension, of Greek social identity, through critical appropriation of Iliadic tradition. Inasmuch as traditional poetry is continually recomposed in performance to fit the audience, our Iliad brings to light some of the social concerns of poet and audience during the textualization stage of the poem. Indeed, the poem itself emerges as a performance medium for managing social tension through ritual reenactment of archetypal events and refraction of historical realities.
1 Ransom and Revenge Poetics and Politics of Compensation
If any harm follows, then you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe. Exodus 21.23–25
Compensation in the Iliad involves exchanges that may be subsumed under the principle of reciprocity, a mental model for interpreting social relations and movements of goods.1 Reciprocity has been defined in a narrow sense as prestation and more generally as “exchange conceptualized as the performance and requital of actions perceived as gratuitous,” whether effecting benefit or harm.2 Response to harm is typically cast as negative reciprocity, “where the emphasis is placed not on the return of benefits, but on the return of injuries.”3 On this view, the recipient of benefit or harm reciprocates by paying back benefit or harm, ideally in equal measure.4 But the Iliad complicates this mirror-image opposition of negative and positive reciprocity, for the person who is said to pay back harm is not the one who sustained it but the one who inflicted it in the first place. That the outcome – warrior B is killed for killing warrior A – may be the same by either conception of negative reciprocity matters less than that the exchange is consistently viewed in a particular way. Harm is viewed as taking away something that by rights belongs to another and compensation as a way or ways of getting it back. The ideology of compensation is thus resolution, not circulation, of debt. Hence, unlike gift exchange (xeni¯e ) and marriage (gamos), it does not of itself establish or maintain formalized relations between two parties. Moreover, there is no evidence in the discrete themes that accepting ransom or recompense alone incorporates outsiders 13
14
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
into a group. But compensation, like gift exchange and unlike exchange conceived of as purchase or sale, entails tim¯e, ‘honor’, and, therefore, does affect the relative status of the persons involved. The narrative of Lykaon and Achilleus illustrates the ideology of reciprocity that underlies the forms and functions, or the poetics and politics, of compensation in Homer (21.34–135 [24]). The story commences with Lykaon clambering exhausted and unarmed out of the Xanthos and into the arms of his nemesis, Achilleus. The circumstances are uncanny. This ill-starred son of Priam had once before been taken unawares by Achilleus, captured, and sold as a slave in Lemnos. From there a foreign friend (xeinos) had obtained his release in exchange for ransom. After making his way home and celebrating his good fortune, the young Trojan joined the battle, only to find himself at the mercy of Achilleus once again. Declaring himself a suppliant, he pleads his case, claiming implicitly that because they had eaten together when Achilleus captured him, their commensality makes rejecting his plea impossible. Lykaon reveals that he had been ransomed for three times what Achilleus had sold him for and further argues that he should not be held liable for Patroklos’ death. Achilleus presumes that the defeated warrior is offering ransom, which he summarily rejects. He kills Lykaon and flings him into the river, claiming that all Trojans will likewise pay back (tisete) the deaths of Patroklos and the Achaians whom they had killed. We may observe two kinds of loss in this story: the first consists in Lykaon’s loss of his status as a free person and his family’s loss of one of its members, and the second in Achaian loss of life. The loss incurred by Lykaon and his family is recovered with ransom, in this case through a foreign friend. The deaths of Patroklos and other Achaians are addressed by means of revenge: Achilleus kills Lykaon to make the Trojans pay through a corresponding loss of their members. The English terms ‘ransom’ and ‘revenge’ may nonetheless be misleading inasmuch as ransom is used here only in its Homeric sense – redemption of family members or possessions, and not for the blood price paid by a homicide. Revenge, as a type, is also to be understood in its Homeric sense – taking satisfaction for a loss, whether in the form of retaliation or reparation.5 Ransom and revenge correspond to the two types of compensation in the Iliad. Both types are comprehended in a thematically and semantically unified system that is expressed in a traditional theme. That both types were familiar also in Iron Age Greek societies may be reasonably inferred. Self-contained scenes involving attempts to give or take compensation, such as the story of Achilleus and Lykaon, are distributed broadly
Ransom and Revenge
15
throughout the Iliad and are key structuring devices in the poem. These discrete themes, which are cataloged in appendix 1, establish the poem’s formal and social conventions for compensation. Moreover, the poetics of compensation, or the collocation of formulaic and traditional elements, proves to be bound up with the politics, or social relations and power structures, of reciprocity in Homeric society. Thus, in the monumental theme, when a character manipulates the poetics of compensation, such as altering vocabulary or arrogating a thematic role, the internal audience may be seen to react to the manipulation as a political stratagem. Such subtleties of form and function would also not escape the Homeric audience, intimately familiar as they are with Homeric conventions (not to mention their own real-life ones). So, for example, the poem operates on the assumption that Achilleus, the embassy, and the external audience are all alert to the political meaning of Agamemnon’s eagerness to cast himself in the poetic role of apoina-bearing father.6 As a result of the “thick descriptions” of Homeric society that recent anthropological studies have furnished, modern readers also are able to draw increasingly nuanced inferences about the meanings of exchange in Homer. It is my aim in this chapter to add a description of the forms and functions of compensation in the Iliad to our growing store of knowledge about Homeric society. I begin by analyzing the formal system that comprises the compensation theme, together with its repeated terms and narrative details. Finally, I consider compensation as an aspect of the Homeric social economy. THE POETICS OF COMPENSATION IN THE ILIAD
Exchanges involving compensation are contained in traditional narrative units that recur in the Iliad. Oralist methodology for identifying repeated units, such as formula and theme, is familiar from scholarship that builds on the pioneering work of Milman Parry and Albert Lord.7 ‘Theme’ is here used to refer to traditional units of content, not only self-contained units such as those inventoried in appendix 1, but also larger narrative structures such as the monumental compensation theme involving Achilleus.8 ‘Compensation theme’ refers to the abstract structural form the theme takes and to each particular instantiation of it. Although compensation themes feature recurring words and phrases, repetition of formal elements is more important than verbal repetition in identifying and classifying them.9 The formal elements that make up the compensation theme in the Iliad may be readily found in the story of Achilleus and Lykaon: loss (a result of harm perceived as gratuitous), a potential exchange, and resolution.
16
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
The first element of a compensation theme is harm: one party takes something valuable away from another, creating a condition of loss for the injured party. Loss creates disequilibrium, or a new disequilibrium, in status between the parties involved; a response to the loss is thus at the same time a response to the status disequilibrium. Not all instances of harm produce a reciprocal exchange, but if the injured party or someone acting on his or her behalf attempts to recover the loss, it leads to a compensation theme. The second element in the theme is a potential exchange by which the loss may be recovered to the satisfaction of one or both parties. The exchange is qualified by direction, path, and sphere. These terms are current in anthropologies of exchange, but some explanation of their use here is needed.10 When loss is addressed by means of an exchange, compensation may travel in one of two directions in relation to the two parties. In the first type, the party sustaining loss, or his or her family or friends ( philoi), takes repayment or satisfaction for the loss from the party who inflicted it or, failing that, from his or her family or friends. The direction in which this type of compensation travels is regularly marked by the term poin¯e, denoting the repayment, and/or forms of verbs meaning to pay back or get oneself paid back, (apo)tinemen and (apo)tinusthai. Achilleus’ killing Lykaon to make the Trojans pay for Achaian lives is an example of this type. In this first type, the payment compensates the injured party for the loss and thus reverses the status disequilibrium the loss created. In the second type, however, compensation preserves the disequilibrium the harm created and at the same time effects recovery of the loss: the injured party gives material goods to the person who inflicted the loss in order to secure its return. This direction is regularly indicated by the terms apoina, denoting the goods, and a form of the verb meaning to release or gain the release of, (apo)luein. The terms apoina, denoting ransom, or poin¯e, denoting satisfaction in some form for harm, do not occur in every theme. Since, however, the two terms do regularly designate direction, the two patterns are here referred to as themes of the apoina and poin¯e types. The type of exchange that actually ensues when a character sustains harm he or she perceives as gratuitous depends, as we shall see, on several factors: the nature of the harm; the relative status of the parties involved; the resources each can marshal; the prior relationship between the two parties; whether they acknowledge the same conventions or institutions for resolving such disputes; and whether one or the other can effectively mobilize common sense, by which I mean what can be taken for granted in a given culture.11 Put another way, whether a situation calls for ransom
Ransom and Revenge
17
or for reparation or revenge, and who gets to decide the issue, may be at the same time matters of formal structural agreement and of ongoing and rhetorically charged negotiation within culturally recognized boundaries. Apostolos Athanassakis regards the system that sanctioned adjudication of these matters, such as we see on the shield of Achilleus (18.497–508 [18]), as older than unarbitrated competition between powerful individuals.12 He employs a diachronic model that attempts to chart a development in Greek thought along a telic axis. I favor a synchronic model, which allows for the possibility that the scene on the shield invites the audience to see adjudication and agonistic negotiation as coexisting and not entirely exclusive options.13 Competition to determine the direction compensation takes is most evident in several scenes in which apoina and poin¯e patterns are combined in a single narrative unit.14 In this formal variation, here called a ‘mixed-type’, the narrative usually begins with a defeat on the battlefield, thus generating expectation for a theme of the apoina type (ransom). But because the victor recalls a prior injury for which he attempts to take revenge, the theme is actually resolved as a poin¯e type. When, for example, Agamemnon overtakes Peisandros and Hippolochos on the battlefield, they offer him apoina, which their father, Antimachos, would give for their return if Agamemnon spares their lives (11.122–47 [23 ]). Agamemnon, however, reminds his victims that their father had conspired to murder Menelaos while he and Odysseus were on embassy. Instead of sparing their lives for a promise of apoina, he kills them to make them pay back their father’s outrage (l¯ob¯e ). In each of the mixed-type themes in the Iliad, an offer of apoina is interrupted by recollection of a prior loss, which leads to competing definitions of appropriate compensation; and in each, taking poin¯e for prior harm is privileged over taking apoina. The logic of the mixed-type theme is clear: apoina (ransom) and poin¯e (qua revenge) are perceived as exclusive options. Agamemnon can either accept apoina and spare Peisandros and Hippolochos or exact poin¯e and kill them, but not both. Only Achilleus exploits the possibility of taking both poin¯e and apoina or gifts (d¯ora), first in the embassy scene, which unfolds as an expanded mixed-type theme, and again when he accepts Priam’s apoina for Hektor’s corpse. Direction, in sum, maps the movement of exchange objects in relation to the two parties. Path, on the other hand, is used to compare the objects of exchange themselves; it deals with exchangeability. In compensation, as in gift exchange, exchangeability is determined in accordance not with quantitative equivalence between two objects but with qualitative taxonomies; the system is thus primarily symbolic as opposed to economic. The aspect of exchangeability is analyzed using a heuristic device called ‘spheres’,
18
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
meaning wholly or partially distinct categories of wealth.15 The spheres in which persons and objects belong are not objective and fixed structures; they exist processually and subjectively in a given society. Categories of wealth in such a system are socially constructed and reproduced; they are thus not natural, though they are usually naturalized. An exchange of entities that belong to the same sphere is conventionally referred to as ‘conveyance’, and that of entities belonging to different spheres as ‘conversion’.16 Conveyance is rarely problematized; but conversions – such as the exchange of goods for life that Achilleus rejects in Book 9 – are typically unstable, potentially politically charged, and as a result must be maintained by a framework of social rules.17 Wealth in Homeric society appears to be organized into four spheres: subsistence goods, prestige goods, persons, and cultural wealth. Subsistence wealth is not ordinarily employed in exchange. Prestige wealth is, and the means for acquiring it are confined to elite intercourse, such as gift exchange, distribution of honorific prizes, raiding, and purchase from foreign traders.18 The sphere of wealth in persons is figured relationally. An adult male who is not a slave to one of the parties in an exchange enjoys unequivocal status as a person. Lykaon, for example, would have been considered a person by his family, the foreign friend (xeinos) who ransomed him, and both of the armies gathered at Troy but as prestige wealth by the man who bought him in Lemnos. The position of women is more ambiguous: they are located in the sphere of persons when they are figured as belonging to a kinship and marriage group, but when viewed in relation to their captors they are located in the sphere of prestige goods (e.g., 6.428 [2]). In the Iliad, defining or redefining a woman in terms of familial relationships – as Agamemnon and Achilleus shall be seen to do in the quarrel – locates her in the sphere of persons and augments the compensation one may demand for her loss. Cultural wealth, which is not itself exchangeable,19 is any cultural competence, attribute, or office that derives value from scarcity and therefore potentially yields status for its owner.20 Might in battle, skill in performative speech, the attributes of a priest, and a scepter handed down from Zeus are examples of cultural wealth in Homeric society. None of the spheres just described encompasses tim¯e (usually translated as ‘honor’ or ‘value’), a primary form of wealth taken away and paid back in compensation themes in the Iliad. Tim¯e comprises a material element and an abstract, immaterial element, namely, honor or status.21 The immaterial aspect is partially coextensive with prestige goods but also derives from cultural capital that results in victory, whether in battle (even without
Ransom and Revenge
19
stripping the victim of his armor), in athletic competitions, or in agonistic speech. Anthropological approaches applied to the study of Homeric society have contributed much toward clarifying how the concrete and abstract elements of tim¯e cohere. Thomas Beidelman, for example, explains that the material and immaterial aspects of tim¯e do not exist in polar opposition but are also not woodenly equated; they are instead related in dynamic tension as part of a “traditional system of conflicting values.”22 Walter Donlan demonstrates that in a symbolic system of exchange, tim¯e as status is indistinguishable from its material signs.23 Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of symbolic capital provides a sophisticated conceptual model for mapping the relation between concrete and abstract forms of tim¯e. Symbolic capital is not a separate sphere but a process. It refers to the conversion of other forms of wealth, by a cultural strategy of misrecognition, into seemingly natural properties of one’s person for purposes of achieving or maintaining position (= honor, status, power).24 Misrecognition denotes an institutionally organized failure to recognize that the connection between material or cultural wealth and prestige is not natural at all, but arbitrary and socially reproduced. Misrecognition thus reproduces collective belief, or the naturalization of social order and practices that Bourdieu calls “common sense.”25 In sum, symbolic capital is strategic mobilization of collective belief that certain possessions or competencies automatically translate into status, honor, or power for their owner. So when Nestor says mÆte sÊ, Phle¤dh, ¶yelÉ §riz°menai basil∞Û éntib¤hn, §pe‹ oÎ poyÉ ımo¤hw ¶mmore tim∞w skhptoËxow basileÊw, ⁄ te ZeÁw kËdow ¶dvken
Nor, son of Peleus, think to match your strength with the king, since never equal with the rest is the portion of tim¯e of a scepter-bearing king, to whom Zeus gives glory (1.277–79)
he speaks from a perspective that there exists a natural, divinely legitimated relation between Agamemnon’s cultural wealth, specifically the scepter, and the privileged status he enjoys as commander in chief of the armies gathered at Troy. We may say therefore that Nestor misrecognizes the relation between Agamemnon’s scepter and his status and, moreover, attempts to mobilize collective misrecognition to resolve the quarrel. Absent common social strategies of misrecognition, the arbitrariness of materially or culturally based tim¯e is bound to be recognized and the duality broken down. In Bourdieu’s words:
20
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad It is no accident that the vocabulary of the archaic economy is entirely made up of double-sided notions that are condemned to disintegrate in the very history of the economy, because, owing to their duality, the social relations that they designate represent unstable structures which inevitably split in two as soon as the social mechanisms sustaining them are weakened.26
On this view, if the Iliad shows Achilleus as recognizing the double-sided nature of tim¯e and thereby exposing the arbitrariness of the system that holds the duality together, the game is up. Although Homer allows the audience to see Achilleus contesting the common sense about Agamemnon’s political superiority, what he contests is the collective belief that legitimates Agamemnon’s cultural wealth as insuperable and the political system it represents as preemptive. But, as we shall see, Achilleus does not contest the material basis of tim¯e. In fact, his consistent strategy is to mobilize the internal audience’s collective belief in the natural relation between elite forms of wealth and status (the premise of the agonistic tim¯e-based system that organizes heroic society), as over against a relatively fixed system represented by Agamemnon’s scepter. Thus, he does not so much unmask the arbitrary relation between Agamemnon’s scepter and his status as he puts forward an alternative system. This is true even when Achilleus is not participating in the tim¯e-based system. Accordingly, one of the aims of this book is to demonstrate that it is not Homer, nor yet Achilleus, who breaks up the double-sided notion of tim¯e, but those audiences and readers for whom the social mechanisms to sustain the duality no longer exist. The final element in a compensation theme is resolution. For our purposes, resolution need not mean that the potential exchange is effected, only that the opportunity is acted upon. Lykaon’s death and his earlier ransom are thus equally a resolution of a theme. Several features that recur in compensation themes emerge as significant to the patterns: verbal repetitions, paths, supplication, roles in compensatory exchange, and patterns in successes and failures of the two types of compensation. The description that follows summarizes these details; for commentary on each scene, I refer the reader to the catalog in appendix 1.
Verbal Repetitions The most significant recurring vocabulary in compensation themes belongs to a single etymological network deriving from the PIE root ∗ w k ey(H I ), which according to Andrew Sihler means “to take notice of.”27 The word family includes apoina, poin¯e, tim¯e, tiemen (to honor), tisis
Ransom and Revenge
21
(repayment in harm), and atitos (unpaid), as well as the verbs (apo)tinemen and (apo)tinusthai, meaning to pay back or get oneself paid back.28 Because the word family is essential to the idea of compensation in Homer, and inasmuch as conventional translations such as ‘punish’ or ‘pay a penalty’ obscure the Homeric economy of tim¯e, Greek will be used for a small number of terms that recur throughout this study. A list of these terms together with a translation may be found in the Preface. A connection between the word family deriving from ∗ kwey(H I ) and payments of compensation may already be attested to in the Mycenaean period. Pylos tablet Ea 805 concerns land held by one o-pe-te-re-u; the land is held ‘on account of a-no-qa-si-ja’. John Killen makes a compelling case for rendering a-no-qa-si-ja as ‘anorkw hasiaw’, ‘manslaughter’ (<∗anr-gwhn-tia; Homeric éndroktas¤a).29 He interprets the phrase “on account of a-no-qa-si-ja” to mean that o-pe-te-re-u holds his plot as compensation for manslaughter. He supports this view with another record in the E series (Eb 294/Ep 704), which records a plot of land held by o-pe-te-re-u.30 This o-pe-te-re-u is qualified as qe-ja-me-no, a term that appears nowhere else on the records. Killen argues that qe-ja-me-no may be interpreted as an aorist middle or passive of kweiamenos (teisamenos) from ∗ w k ei/kwoi, the same root from which poin¯e derives. He proposes that o-pe-te-re-u may hold the land either by taking compensation or by being compensated. Although there is no way to prove that the o-pe-te-re-u mentioned in Ea 805 and the o-pe-te-re-u mentioned in Eb 294 and Ep 704 are the same person, Killen is willing to entertain the possibility that they are and that the tablets refer to parcels of land that o-pe-te-re-u holds as compensation for manslaughter.31 Emile Benveniste is compelled by a presumed disparity in the senses of to punish/penalty (tinemen and poin¯e ) and to honor/honor (tiemen and tim¯e ) to question whether they belong to the same word family.32 As a result, he conjectures that the Greek words he interprets as meaning ‘punish’ and ‘honor’ have different etymologies and are joined only secondarily.33 Arthur Adkins, however, demonstrates conclusively that the entire word group forms a semantic network having to do with transfers of tim¯e.34 Because Adkins’ investigation is in the main confined to systems of lexemes, which he uses to reconstruct a historical system of social relations, his conclusions do not take account of the traditional theme as mobilizing and organizing the formulaic system in Homeric epic. When the relationship of theme and formula is taken into account, a consistent set of verbal patterns emerges in Homer: poin¯e, tim¯e, tisis, atitos (unpaid), and verbs meaning to pay or get paid back (tiemen, tinemen, tinusthai) are conjoined in poin¯e themes; apoina, although it belongs to the same word family, appears
22
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
only in themes of the apoina type, which, moreover, share no significant verbal repetitions with those of the poin¯e type. The semantic and thematic unity of the Homeric system finds an instructive analogy in ancient traditional Semitic systems for recovering loss. In these systems, a kinsman-redeemer is accorded the right and responsibility to bring back to the family what rightfully belongs to it but had been taken away. In the Israelite tradition the kinsman-redeemer, or g¯o’ ¯el, redeems family property (Leviticus 25:25 –34), family members from slavery (Leviticus 25:47–55), and family blood; that is, he avenges the murder of kinsmen (Numbers 35). In Hebrew, the same word is used for the kinsman-redeemer, g¯o’ ¯el, whether he redeems a captive – an exchange corresponding to apoina – or blood – an exchange corresponding to poin¯e. In the last capacity, the kinsman-redeemer is known as the g¯o’ ¯el haddam, the one who redeems, or brings back, blood (= life) that rightly belongs to the family.35 The analogy of the Semitic system may additionally confirm what is implicit in apoina and poin¯e themes in the Iliad: life and honor are not the property of the individual only, but also of his or her family.
Verbal Repetition in Themes of the Apoina Type The two most significant verbal repetitions in themes of the apoina type are apoina (a neuter plural noun) and forms of a verb meaning to release, (apo)luein.36 In eight of the eleven themes, apoina is the term used to denote the goods offered:37 sÁ dÉ êjia d°jai êpoina|38 you take worthy apoina
6.46[22] and 11.131 [23 ]
t«n k°n toi xar¤saito patØr épere¤siÉ êpoina | from these my father would freely give you unlimited apoina
6.49 [22] and 11.134[23 ]
o‡sei | uÂow êpoina | [someone of the Trojans] will bring | apoina for his son
2.229–30 [1 ]
ép°luse lab∆n épere¤siÉ êpoina | he released her after taking unlimited apoina
6.427 [2]
êpoina pifaÊskeo mhdÉ égÒreue | [don’t] speak to me of apoina or propose it
21.99 [24]
¶lusen épo¤nvn| he released them for apoina
11.106 [5 ]
se›o . . . do›en êpoina | [they] would give apoina for you
24.686 [4]
23
Ransom and Revenge
Apereisia, ‘unlimited’, is the epithet found most often with apoina in the discrete themes,39 though axia, ‘worthy’, appears twice. Also frequently recurring are phrases describing the contents of the apoina 40 and claims that the treasures are stored at home or, more specifically, in the father’s house.41 Finally, inasmuch as apoina are frequently offered in response to defeat on the battlefield, the themes may include the warrior’s plea that his life be spared and/or hope that his father will find him alive at the Achaian ships.42 Forms of the verb (apo)luein, meaning ‘to release/gain the release of ’, recur both with and without the noun apoina: xalkoË te xrusoË tÉ épolusÒmeyÉ we would gain their release with bronze and gold
22.50 [3 ]
SarphdÒnow ¶ntea kalå | lÊseian they would release the beautiful armor of Sarpedon
17.162–63 [7]
§lÊsato, pollå dÉ ¶dvken [a guest-friend (xeinos)]gained his release, since he gave much
21.42 [24]; cf. 24.685 [4]
lÊmhn tr‹w tÒssa por≈n I was released, giving three times as much
21.80 [24]
lÊsomai I will gain my release
10.378 [6]
Verbal Repetition in Themes of the Poin¯e Type In themes of the poin¯e type, poin¯e and cognate verbs designating repayment make up the most common verbal repetitions. The term poin¯e may appear as the object or object complement of a verb meaning to give back or pay back, but no discernible verbal or structural formulas emerge. For this reason, the recurring words are arranged in the following table to show syntax, not word order. Words not underlined are not repeated in the discrete themes or the monumental theme. Verb d«xÉ [Zeus] gave43
Object poinØn poin¯e
Genitive Modifier uÂow for [Tros’s] son
épet¤nuto [Patroklos] caused to pay/got paid back
poinÆn poin¯e
pol°vn for many
16.394–98 [16]
§g gual¤jv I will give
krãtow / poinÆn strength as poin¯e
t«n for these things
17.198–208 [20]
§g¤neto there was (no)
poinØ poin¯e
paidÚw for his child
13.656–59 [12]
5.265 –67 [9]
24
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
Verb êtitow unpaid (be)
Object poinÆ poin¯e
Genitive Modifier kasignÆtoio for his brother
l°jato he chose out
koÊrouw / poinÆn youths as poin¯e
PatrÒkloio for Patroklos
21.26–33 [19]
---
(e·neka) poin∞w on account of poin¯e
éndrÚw épofyim°nou for a man who had died
18.497–508 [18]
épodoËnai he paid back
pãntÉ (poinÆ) all
14.478–85 [14]; cf. 13.410–16 [10] and 24.200–16 [25 ]
18.497–508 [18]
Forms of verbs meaning to pay back, cause to pay back, or get oneself paid back ([apo]tinemen, tiemen, and [apo]tinusthai in the active and middle voices, respectively) usually appear independent of the noun poin¯e.44 It is worth noting that subjects of the active verbs listed in the following table are original perpetrators of damage; the subject of the one verb in the middle voice is the victim’s brother (15.113–18 [15 ]). In the discrete themes, these verbs are construed most often with the harm (loss) as the accusative object:45 Verb t¤sete you will pay back
Object l≈bhn outrage
t¤seiw you will pay back
gnvtÚn §mÒn my brother [i.e., whom you killed]
17.34–42, 50 [17]
t¤sete you will pay back
fÒnon ka‹ loigÚn killing and destruction [i.e., that you inflicted]
21.34–135 [24]
épotis°men you will pay back
˜ssa mÉ ¶orgaw as much [harm] as you did me
21.396–414 [21 ]
§japot¤noiw you pay back
§rinÊaw the Erinyes
21.396–414 [21 ]
t¤sasyai cause you to pay back/ get myself paid back
fÒnon the killing
15.113–18 [15 ]
11.122–47 [23 ]
The Homeric syntax of poin¯e is important because it expresses the logic of the Homeric economy of harm and compensation. Inasmuch as inflicting harm is perceived as inflicting a loss, the perpetrator of injury is the one who must pay back, that is, give satisfaction for, the harm he inflicted. Thus it creates no social or semantic contradiction to say that the perpetrator of
Ransom and Revenge
25
injury must pay back harm. We shall return to this point when discussing the language of Achilleus in Iliad 9.387. The word poin¯e is used to signify paying back a loss resulting from gratuitous harm, whether in goods or by suffering a corresponding loss. Thus the distinction often made between ransom, construed as a blood price paid by a homicide, and revenge, construed as exacting payment of life for life, does not inhere in the Homeric use of the term poin¯e. Both are equally poin¯e, which in Homer specifies direction, not path. The Iliad does tend to distinguish path by using forms of (apo)tinemen to signify poin¯e paid in harm and (apo)didounai to signify poin¯e paid in goods. But the pattern is not entirely consistent.46 For purposes of distinguishing path where the Iliad seems to do so, poin¯e taken as a settlement in goods is here referred to as composition and payment exacted in harm as tisis (following Homer’s own tendency).47
The Semantics of Exchange and Sale Benveniste treats apoina and the purchase and sale of persons as the same kind of exchange, based on the IE root of the Greek verb alphanein, ‘to get a price’, designating the price of a human being.48 Observing that this verb and words deriving from the verb ¯oneisthai, ‘to buy’, are applied in Homer to purchasing and selling persons, he infers that the notion of buying persons is attached to the intent of liberating a prisoner offered for sale and is thus identical to ransom. Benveniste buttresses his conclusions in part by deducing from the parallel syntax of apriat¯en anapoinon, ‘without purchase without apoina’ (1.99) that the two words mean the same thing. In Homer, terms for sale (including pern¯emi), which belong to an economic system, do not recur in compensation themes;49 nor are terms signifying release for apoina, which belong to a symbolic system, used to refer to the sale of slaves or goods.50 The distinction is especially apparent in the one case where words for sale do appear in the context of a compensation theme: Lykaon’s purchase by Jason’s son and his subsequent release from slavery by his foreign friend (xeinos), E¨etion. The vocabularies for the sale in Lemnos and for the ransom are mutually exclusive.51 Further, selling persons into slavery in the Iliad conventionally takes place far away in the islands, while ransoming takes place by the Achaian ships.52 And finally, offers of apoina may be accompanied by appeals to the victor’s sense of shame and mercy (aideo . . . ele¯eson, 21.74) or by supplication, measures patently unnecessary in a sale. Commodity exchange and gift exchange are presented as two systems, one economic and one symbolic, that coexist but are not conflated in
26
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
Homeric society.53 This is true even if the conventions of one may on rare occasion be strategically deployed in the other.54 The argument could be made, of course, that the mutually exclusive use of language for commodity and for exchange is a cultural strategy of misrecognition, masking the calculation involved in gift exchange. But since the characters and the narrator consistently reproduce the misrecognition, we are justified in treating exchange and commodity as separate categories, and certainly as separate cultural themes, for the purpose of interpreting exchange strategies in Homeric society. Hence, ‘without purchase’, ∗ apriatos, and ‘without ransom’, anapoinos, may be understood as corresponding to the two systems, economic and symbolic, that a character in Homeric society might use to realize a gain.
Path in Compensatory Exchange Path maps the relationship between the sphere in which loss is sustained and that in which compensation is located. It comes as no surprise in the Iliad that loss is most often sustained in the sphere of persons, who are either killed or taken captive. But the poem subtly positions the audience to view it as such by viewing, or focalizing, the scenes from the victim’s or his or her family’s or friends’ point of view in compensation themes. Additionally, most of the themes identify the victims overtly by their familial relations as sons,55 brothers,56 father,57 or mother.58 Loss in the sphere of persons generates a response of apoina in three different scenarios: warriors defeated on and off the battlefield and women captured in raids. The path of apoina offered on the battlefield may be described as goods for life – and hence as conversion – inasmuch as the apoina preserve the warrior’s life and secure his return to his family.59 Apoina given for warriors captured off the battlefield may be described more accurately as goods for a person, since in these cases the life of the captive does not seem to be in danger.60 If not ransomed by their families, women who are captured appear to be kept as slaves or used in exchange as gifts and prizes. Their captors, in other words, locate them in the sphere of prestige goods. If a female captive is released for apoina, the path may be described from the family’s point of view as goods for a person: the apoina literally preserve her from becoming a thing in her captor’s possession. For example, when Andromach¯e tells Hektor how Achilleus captured her mother and later released her for apoina, she says that he led her off with the other spoils (kteatessin, 6.425 –28 [2]). Achilleus’ perspective is thus embedded in the text. But Andromach¯e narrates the
Ransom and Revenge
27
story, which focalizes the woman for Hektor in the sphere of persons by virtue of kinship. This capacity for women to be located simultaneously in separate spheres creates a potential for conflict, which is in fact realized in the poem. Loss of a person may elicit a claim of poin¯e instead of an offer of apoina, and not only when the victim is dead. Bride stealing, for instance, can generate a response of poin¯e. The only bride stealing referred to in the discrete themes is the rape of Helen (6.45 –65 [22]), although the rape of Ganymedes is analogous to it, even if it is not sexualized, and likewise results in poin¯e (5.265 –67 [8]).61 But harm in the sphere of persons most frequently entails loss of life, for which the victim’s family or companions in the army try to make the perpetrator pay. Thus the path may be one of the following: a conversion of material goods for life,62 a conversion of cultural capital for life,63 or conveyance of life for life.64 Although neither the characters nor the narrator say explicitly what is recovered when life is exacted for life, it is clear from De¨ıphobos’ vaunt after he killed Hypsenor as poin¯e for Asios that his friend is perceived as having been paid: ‘Asios lies not now all unpaid’ (O È mån aÔtÉ êtitow ke›tÉ ÖAsiow, 13.414 [10]). On the analogy of the kinsman-redeemer in the Semitic tradition, we may infer that the group’s loss of blood (life) has been brought back, at least metaphorically, by a corresponding loss of blood, even if the dead man himself is not recovered. A social imperative to deal with loss of life and the disequilibrium in honor that it effects is implied in Akamas’ claim after he kills Promachos as poin¯e for his own brother: a man prays for a kinsman to be left (after he himself has died) so that the dead will not lie unpaid (14.478–85 [14]).65 Since poin¯e and tim¯e are at least semantic and arguably etymological doublets, it is possible to infer that what is paid back and hence recovered in an exchange of life for life is tim¯e – certainly that of the dead man and probably that of his family as well. On this view, the ruin (ar¯e ) Akamas wards off when he kills Promachos must be loss of individual and familial honor (14.478–85 [14]). Therefore, a path of life for life runs parallel to payment in tim¯e for tim¯e.66 Harm may, of course, be inflicted in spheres other than that of persons. When Neleus raids Augeias in return for Augeias’ theft of his racehorses and chariot, the harm and poin¯e alike are viewed as in the sphere of prestige goods, which implicitly constitutes a diminishing and restoring of tim¯e (11.696–705 [9]). When Agamemnon dissuades Menelaos from sparing Adrestos’ life for apoina, he does so ostensibly in order to exact loss of life for loss of a person (Helen). But, since Helen is eventually returned, the path is in effect life, and indeed annihilation of Troy, for diminished
28
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
tim¯e (6.45 –65 [22]). The one apoina theme in which loss is in the sphere of prestige goods presents a curious reversal on the type: Glaukos suggests that Patroklos’ corpse could be used to get the Greeks to release (luein) Sarpedon’s arms, that is, as ransom for them (17.160–64 [7]). Two poin¯e themes in which the gods are involved stand out from the others in regard to path. The first is when Ares tries to make Athene pay, wound for wound, for driving Diomedes’ spear into his belly (21.396–414 [21 ]). Athene sends Ares sprawling instead, his hair dragging in the dust and his armor clattering, and she pronounces it payment for his insult to Hera. As Hera’s philos, Athene thus secures for her a diminishing of tim¯e in return for diminished tim¯e, a payment corresponding to tisis. In a second poin¯e theme involving the gods and singular with respect to path, Zeus, acting as Hektor’s philos, promises to give him strength in battle (kratos) as poin¯e for his impending death (17.198–208 [20]). The path is cultural wealth for life. If we infer that the strength in battle (kratos) leads to glory (kudos), which may in turn be preserved as immortal fame in epic song (kleos aphthiton), then Zeus implicitly promises to compensate Hektor with kleos, fame, for heroic death. This offer would accord with the heroic, or at least Iliadic, paradigm of kleos purchased with premature death.67 The implicit claim that Zeus compensates the hero with kleos further suggests that a close connection is being forged between Zeus and traditional poetry.68 Exchanges of composition, goods for injury or death, do not as a rule take place on the battlefield; the strength awarded Hektor by Zeus is the only quasi-deviation from this pattern. Achilleus’ shield presents the audience (both internal and external) with an image of a dispute over poin¯e for a dead man that takes place in an institution for administration of justice (18.497–508 [18]). Even under the oversight of a circle of elders in a city at peace, it is not unambiguously clear that composition will be successful: the decision remains forever pending. Hence, the only two themes in which composition is successfully exchanged are those in which Zeus gives poin¯e to Tros (5.265 –67 [8]) and secures poin¯e for Hektor (17.198–208 [20]).
Compensation and Supplication Supplication occurs in Homeric epic in a broad range of contexts. It can be the “basis for any plea forced by a weakened condition or inferior position.”69 As such, it lends itself well to the circumstances in which warriors defeated on the battlefield find themselves. There are no sanctions associated with apoina in the Iliad, and since Homeric warriors seem
Ransom and Revenge
29
to be under no religious obligation to accept them, offers of apoina are occasionally accompanied by supplication and further appeals to the victor’s shame (aid¯os) and mercy (eleos). Compensation is associated with supplication only in those scenes in which a defeated warrior offers apoina on the battlefield, usually on behalf of his father.70 Supplication is never mentioned in themes that do not narrate the capture or defeat; nor is it mentioned in association with fathers bringing apoina to the Greek camp.71 Supplication therefore may be seen to overlap with compensation in a very specific circumstance – defeated warriors offering apoina on the battlefield. But supplication and compensation are fully autonomous themes in Homer, and as such exist independently of one another.72
Roles in Compensatory Exchange Compensation in Homeric society is “between men.”73 It is one of the ways in which men enact familial and homosocial solidarity and at the same time negotiate hierarchy in relation to one another. Females who enter this male domain are inevitably shown as introducing disorder and danger by their very presence.74 Hera and Hekab¯e both traffic in compensation indirectly by attempting to abrogate material settlements between men in order to assert their own claims to poin¯e (4.24–56 [Exc.] and 24.200–16 [25 ]). The political profits each garners are negligible, and the consequences for their own cities or family are disastrous. Athene succeeds in securing poin¯e for Hera from Ar¯es, but since she stands for the male principle, she also presents the exception that proves the rule (21.396–414 [21 ]). Apoina is almost always exchanged between the father and the victor.75 Two exceptions to this pattern may be found. Priam is warned that his sons may have to ransom him from the Achaian camp, but as an object of exchange, he would have been cast in a dependent role like a son (24.685 – 88 [4]). Lykaon is ransomed by a foreign friend, though Priam may have sent gifts to E¨etion in return for ransoming Lykaon (21.34–135 [24]). The victor has typically captured or conquered one of the enemy, a feat that earns him tim¯e, embodied concretely by the individual captured; the father deploys his vast, ostensibly unlimited (apereisia) resources to secure the release of the victim. Even when a defeated warrior makes the initial offer on the battlefield, he usually makes it on behalf of his father, who actually provides the apoina. The exchange between victor and father is implicitly about their relative status at the same time that it is explicitly about their relations to the son/captive, who is cast as a passive object. This may explain why
30
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
fathers, unlike the victims, are not shown as suppliants in the discrete themes. Priam’s supplication in Book 24 presents Achilleus and the Homeric audience with a spectacular reversal of the pattern of fathers who bring apoina in the discrete themes and, moreover, of Agamemnon’s commandeering of paternal authority when he offers apoina in the monumental one. The role of taking poin¯e for harm, whether on or off the battlefield, may be assumed by the victim’s father,76 brother,77 other relative,78 a companion at arms (hetairos),79 or some other philos.80 Rarely in the discrete themes does a victim exact poin¯e for harm that he himself has suffered.81 Battlefield poin¯e scenes that explicitly involve family members and those that involve companions in the army (hetairoi) are structurally homologous. The themes do not differ in formal elements, in appeal, or in outcome. Nevertheless, some battlefield themes involving family members introduce elements from the domestic or civic sphere. The description of Pylaimenes, for example, following the cart carrying his dead son Harpalion off the battlefield, contains a near verbal echo of Aias’ words in Book 9, where he refers to a settlement of composition for a dead child (13.656–59 [12]; 9.632–36). The diagrams in Figures 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3 map the roles in compensation themes. The party who inflicts damage and the party who gives apoina or takes poin¯e have active subject positions: these are underlined. The direction in which the compensation travels is indicated by the direction of the arrow (e.g., the father gives apoina to the victor). When the compensation includes a transfer of tim¯e that affects the status disequilibrium, this is signified by the word tim¯e under the same arrow. The subordinate role of the victim for whom apoina is given or poin¯e taken is indicated by its placement below the party inflicting damage. These roles are thematic and recurring. Accordingly, although the person who brings apoina for release of a victim is usually the victim’s father, the role has more to do with the hierarchical paternal relation between the one who gives apoina and the dependent victim than with biology. These diagrams will be used throughout this book to map the roles and power relations that disputants in the monumental theme arrogate for themselves or in which they attempt to cast an opponent. Philos of victim
poine
Party inflicting loss
time Victim
figure 1.1.
31
Ransom and Revenge Victim
Party inflicting loss
poine time
figure 1.2. Father of victim
apoina
Party inflicting loss: victor Victim
figure 1.3.
Success and Failure of Material Compensation Of the eleven offers or contemplated offers of apoina in the discrete themes, three are accepted.82 One more, Priam’s ransom by his sons, is regarded as potentially successful, though it turns out to be unnecessary.83 And in yet another theme, it is revealed that Agamemnon’s general practice had been to accept apoina from the fathers of captive Trojans.84 All the rest fail. The single most important factor in the success of an offer of apoina in the discrete themes is not supplication, where the victim is captured, or who the captor is, but whether the offer is made in the time of the primary fabula85 between Chryses’ arrival in the Achaian camp in Book 1 and Priam’s in Book 24.86 The Iliad develops the compensation theme temporally in such a way that all offers of apoina mentioned as taking place before Chryses’ offer in Book 1 or after Priam’s in Book 24 are successful or potentially successful. But all offers of apoina in the time between Chryses’ and Priam’s offers fail. Scenes involving both apoina and supplication all fail, but they also fall within the time frame between Chryses’ and Priam’s arrivals in the Achaian camp.87 Offers of apoina on the battlefield must occasionally have been accepted, because Priam assumes, when he cannot see Lykaon and Polydoros among the Trojan ranks, that they may have been captured in battle and are being held for ransom.88 It was Agamemnon’s and Achilleus’ practice alike to take apoina prior to the events of Book 1, and it is presumed that Agamemnon would take apoina for Priam in Book 24.89 Therefore the only explanation that accounts for all the successes and failures of apoina is the temporal one.90 Of the nineteen attempts to take poin¯e in the discrete themes, only three involve composition.91 Of these, one, the trial scene on the shield of Achilleus, is left unresolved. The two that are successful involve poin¯e given
32
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
by Zeus to Tros and to Hektor, only one of which takes place during the Iliad’s primary fabula. In the remaining poin¯e themes, the victims or their philoi attempt to exact poin¯e as tisis, and they generally succeed.92 In sum, including the monumental theme, in the time between Chryses’ arrival in and Priam’s departure from the Achaian camp there is one successful exchange of composition and one of apoina. Both exchanges are orchestrated by Zeus and involve Hektor and Achilleus, respectively. The scenes in which apoina are accepted and those in which they are not are distributed, apparently at random, throughout the poem (see appendix 2). The juxtaposing of successful and unsuccessful apoina themes helps to create narrative tension for the audience, and invites them to compare the pattern in the Iliad’s present with that of its past and of the future coming up in Books 23 and 24. This is so especially where a story of a successful offer of apoina in the past is intercalated in the story of an unsuccessful one in the present.93 The scene involving Achilleus and Lykaon is a linchpin of this development (21.34–135 [24]). In this account, the narrator, Achilleus, and Lykaon each contrast Lykaon’s earlier capture and eventual release for ransom, which took place before Chryses’ arrival in the Achaian camp, with the present and less fortuitous encounter. Thus, at a moment of spiraling savagery and violence, the poet repeatedly brings the Homeric audience face to face with Achilleus’ former conduct and sets the contrast between his present and his former and future conduct firmly in the context of the compensation theme. The predominance of poin¯e exacted as harm for harm may be accounted for largely by the wartime setting of the poem. Nonetheless, ambivalence about tisis surfaces in two scenes in which refusing a material settlement in order to take virtually unlimited poin¯e leads to profoundly savage conduct: a wish to commit cannibalistic omophagy (to eat a human raw) and negation of common interest with philoi.94 The first is when Hera protests the material settlement negotiated between the Trojans and Achaians in Book 3. Zeus subsequently accuses her of the wish to eat Priam and his household raw (4.25 –56 [Excursus]). Hera agrees to sacrifice three of her own cities in order to secure the destruction of Troy, which the audience would recognize as poin¯e for the insult Alexandros dealt her in the beauty contest following the wedding of Thetis and Peleus. In the second, Hekab¯e attempts to disrupt Priam and Achilleus’ exchange of apoina in order to assert her own claim to poin¯e. She is shown as willing to abandon Hektor’s corpse to the dogs in the Achaian camp rather than sending Priam to bring it back for burial, wishing only to take satisfaction
Ransom and Revenge
33
(antita erga) for her son’s death by sinking her teeth into Achilleus’ liver (24.200–16 (25 ]). In both scenes, the wish for an extraordinary extension of poin¯e is described as the wish to eat one’s enemy raw, and the character identified with the wish would destroy her own philoi in pursuit of it. Proper feasting functions in Archaic Greek culture as an index of civilized political life: it marks culture, and a Greek cultural catalog in particular, as opposed to nature. Omophagy is conceived of as proper to beasts but not to humans, who eat the cooked meat of sacrifice commensally. Since commensality defines the political order, a formalized relationship with one who commits omophagy is impossible.95 But as Erwin Cook shows, even the wish to commit omophagy attests that one has already descended below the boundaries of the human (or divine) to a state of bestiality.96 The catalog of behaviors that emerge in the scenes involving Hera and Hekab¯e – privileging poin¯e virtually without limit over a material exchange, wishing to eat one’s enemy raw, and neglecting the welfare of philoi – is implicitly aligned with force, or bi¯e, a negation of culture that dissolves even family bonds. We may thus understand that Hera’s sacrifice of her own cities affirms the validity of Zeus’ allegation that only eating Priam and his household raw would satisfy her. The potential for a patron deity to abandon her own cities and a mother to refuse her son burial affords the Homeric audience a vivid glimpse of the social dissolution held at bay by the political order, and specifically by men who negotiate material settlements and take limited poin¯e. It is reasonable to infer that the Iliad aligns accepting material settlements, including apoina and limited poin¯e with the male and culture and denying material settlements and/or limits on poin¯e with the female and nature. This gendered paradigm is evoked in mixed-type themes, where Agamemnon and Achilleus alike are implicated in the pattern of refusing a material exchange in the disastrous pursuit of unlimited poin¯e.97 In the last of the discrete mixed-type themes, Achilleus refuses apoina that Lykaon has not even offered explicitly, kills him, and flings his body into the river to be eaten by fish, declaring that all Trojans must die to pay for the deaths of Patroklos and the Achaians (21.34–135 [24]). It is significant that the battle between Achilleus and the river Skamandros begins shortly thereafter, when the river becomes choked by the bodies of the Trojans Achilleus has killed and thrown into it. The Skamandros overruns its banks; the ensuing clash of the elemental forces of fire and water threatens cosmic chaos. And it follows and is indirectly motivated by Achilleus’ unrestrained killing and nearly beastlike behavior in pursuit of tisis.
34
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
A provocative biblical analogy to this story may be found in the song of Lamech, representative of the last generation before the flood in ancient Israelite tradition: Lamech said to his wives: “Adah and Zillah, hear my voice; you wives of Lamech, hearken to what I say: I have slain a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me. If Cain is avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy-sevenfold.” (Genesis 4.23–24)
Lamech boasts that he has killed a man just for striking him and has thus been avenged seventy-sevenfold – far beyond the limits of talio as they are elsewhere codified (Ex. 21.23–25). The narrative thus presents extraordinary extension of compensation as the defining feature of social conditions just before the primal chaos represented by the flood. Moreover, the first commands God gives the human community after the flood, according to the biblical story, concern the matter of compensation for life (Gen. 9.5 –6). We may see in the Iliad a similar nexus of pursuit of unlimited poin¯e, the subhuman behavior thematically associated with it in a Greek cultural catalog, and chaos – social and cosmic – symbolized by a flood. The narrator may pronounce Agamemnon’s intent to annihilate Troy, their unborn males, and even their memory as fitting (6.61–62 [22]). But the disturbing specter of omophagy and the dissolution of order hover darkly over the extraordinary extensions of tisis in the Iliad ’s present nonetheless.98 THE POLITICS OF COMPENSATION IN HOMERIC SOCIETY
Each warrior in Homeric society is at the same time an individual agent and implicitly, if not explicitly, associated with others in a range of political and affective relations that are referred to here generically as philoi (singular, philos): the kinship group and other adult males attached to the household; the family’s foreign friends (xeinoi); the polis; and the contingent and king (basileus) with whom he came to Troy.99 Each is further associated with the wider circle of warriors gathered at Troy, which I designate here as ‘warrior society’. The term is not intended to signify a class, but rather comrades in arms (hetairoi), differentiated primarily by a fluid hierarchy reproduced among them through elite competition. These several networks of relations impinge on one another and on the hero as an individual
Ransom and Revenge
35
agent almost continually in Homer, sometimes overlapping, and frequently asserting competing claims. Moreover, there is no single monolithic code that governs their relationships or defines heroic conduct across the board. Relations between men that condition compensatory exchange are organized at the most basic level into philoi and enemies (the Homeric terms for enemy need not concern us here). In the discrete themes, philoi exact poin¯e for one another, may be forced to pay poin¯e for one another, and exchange both composition and tisis among themselves. Although philoi give apoina to the enemy for one another, they do not exchange it among themselves for the simple reason that they do not seize and hold for ransom each other’s possessions.100 In fact, the only person in the Iliad’s narrative time frame to take a friend’s possession forcibly is Agamemnon and he reproduces Alexandros’ action against a philos (specifically a foreign friend) in the events preceding the story of the Iliad. The significance of this detail becomes clear when Achilleus seizes upon it in Book 9.101 Recent scholarship has furnished extensive descriptions of Homeric society, which I will not reproduce here. Instead, I confine my discussion to institutions and relations that impinge directly on compensation.102 The philoi that most often come into play in compensation themes are the kinship group and the wider circle of companions (hetairoi) in warrior society. It is the kinship group, and most frequently the father, that offers or gives apoina, though only Trojans are shown doing so. The proximity of fathers at Troy and the relative absence of Greek fathers may explain this phenomenon in part – if apoina are primarily a family-based mechanism. The Greeks, of course, have other philoi at Troy. That they are not shown giving apoina only emphasizes the fact that Agamemnon is in Books 9 and 19, and further, that in so doing, he appropriates a familial, and, more specifically, a paternal role. Trojan and Achaian kinsmen, especially brothers, are shown taking poin¯e for one another and being forced to pay poin¯e for one another as well. The preponderance of family members involved in compensation themes suggests that socioeconomic mechanisms for compensation may have originated in kinship-based systems of justice. Whether or not this is so, the recovery mechanisms of poin¯e and, less frequently, apoina are generalized and appropriated for wider circles of relations in Homeric society. Warrior society is accordingly constructed as an extended, factitious kinship group.103 When a victim is killed on the battlefield, he and his family lose life and tim¯e ; when another life is taken as poin¯e for him, what is restored to him and arguably to his family is tim¯e. It is thus in part the
36
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
status economy that fuels the generalizing tendency of the kinship economy. Kevin Crotty is thus surely right to treat cooperative and competitive values, which Adkins had assigned to household and warrior society, respectively, as complementary tensions within warrior society.104 Warrior society itself emerges as a significant environment that conditions compensatory exchange. Relations among elite warriors and kings (basil¯ees) are negotiated within a zero-sum and fluid tim¯e-based ranking system, in which they try to establish status in relation to one another by means of ritualized conflict, either among themselves – in public speeches, gift exchanges, and athletic competition – or with the enemy in battle.105 That rank might be established by means of conflict with the enemy implies an analogous ranking system among the Trojans. The fluid economy presumes a cultural strategy of misrecognition by which prestige goods and cultural wealth are disposed to be converted into symbolic capital. Hence what is gained and lost in social-symbolic transactions is not merely or even primarily economic advantage, but tim¯e and therefore status. When unimpeded, the agonistic system produces a hierarchy that, although neither fixed nor inherited, differentiates elite warriors into roles of group and leader and ultimately into a ‘best’ (aristos) among kings (basil¯ees). Differentiation of elite warriors into group and leader is the heroic counterpart of the hierarchy among potters and beggars that Hesiod’s good eris (strife) produces (Op. 16–26). Warrior society is thus a political field, organized by relations and contests having to do with power and dominance. It is at the same time cooperative, constrained by social rules and to some degree by generic institutions that characterize a polis, such as an assembly and a council of leaders.106 The fluid ranking system, among the Greeks at least, is further constrained by a relatively fixed rank system in which Agamemnon occupies a privileged position as commander in chief of the assembled Greek forces.107 Agamemnon is not represented as a hereditary monarch.108 He is, in other words, not the king of the Greeks, but he leads the largest contingent of Achaian warriors (1.281) and he possesses the scepter of Pelops (2.100–8). His position as leader of the largest contingent converts readily into symbolic capital. As such, it guarantees him a steady supply of prestige goods and the right to redistribute the spoils of war, the primary way that he consolidates his power.109 The scepter of Pelops is an example of what Annette Weiner calls an “inalienable possession,” a symbolic good or office that a traditional story endows with cosmological authentication.110 The scepter, which has come down to Agamemnon from Zeus, confirms, for those who share a collective belief about it,
Ransom and Revenge
37
the difference between Agamemnon and the rest of the kings (basil¯ees), and Achilleus in particular. As long as Agamemnon successfully deploys the scepter and his large contingent as symbolic capital to legitimate his fixed role as Panachaian leader, he is in a position to exercise control over the tim¯e-based and fluid ranking system, in which he also participates. Achilleus in Book 1, however, insists that for Agamemnon to do so undermines the war effort and the social contract among a group of elites for establishing relative rank. Whatever happened historically, we have in the Iliad two different ideological models for determining social hierarchies and leadership: a zero-sum fluid model based on tim¯e in which a social hierarchy, hence a best (aristos), is negotiated through ritualized conflict, and a fixed-rank model in which the best is politically authenticated and maintains his power in part through redistribution of spoils. The terms fluid and fixed describe reciprocal and centralized, or redistributive, patterns of social relations and movements of goods, which, as Mario Liverani has pointed out, are really mental models and not objective systems.111 Nonetheless, we are justified in calling the beliefs and practices that correspond to each of the ideological models a system. Although the two systems have in common most of the beliefs, institutions, and relations that make up Homeric society, it is possible to identify different common senses that correspond to each and that legitimate their differing conceptions of leadership and of distribution of goods.112 The fluid agonistic system is constrained by the fixed system until Book 23, where it is imagined as functioning independently of constraint. This leads me to infer that the two systems are depicted as coexisting rather than cohering. But on either view, Homeric society is radically destabilized, and the potential for conflict that inheres in it is in fact realized in the poem.113 In an important article on Homeric reciprocities, Donlan explains the socioeconomic distinction just described as that between tribal egalitarianism, on the one hand, and chiefly due and redistribution, on the other, each of which implies a corresponding conception of leadership.114 He, among others, describes the situation as a society in transition from tribal egalitarianism to “a more stratified system, in which chiefly prerogative is an ascribed right.”115 Reasoning that Homeric society may be described provisionally as a society undergoing a rational evolutionary process and caught at a kind of intermediate stage, Donlan attempts to locate a historical transitional Homeric society with similar economic features and political tensions in Dark Age Greece.116 So much of his argument is persuasive. It is equally possible, and in my opinion preferable, to view
38
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
the two systems in the Iliad as two discrete, coexisting, and conflicting elite ideologies – one based on aristocratic competition, some of which takes place in political institutions such as the assembly, and the other on leadership that is fixed politically and restricts aristocratic competition – instead of as a single transitional social system. In this case, the historical period for which Homeric society and the contradictions inherent in it could refract live social concerns would stretch from the eighth to at least the fifth century b.c.e. In other words, Homeric society could be conceived of as diachronically as well as synchronically Panhellenic. A set of social conventions for compensation in Homeric society emerges from the discrete themes. They allow for strategies for mobilizing various forms of wealth to win tim¯e without transgressing boundaries of conduct acceptable among philoi. Loss creates status disequilibrium between the two parties involved: the victor, who inflicts harm, increases his tim¯e at the expense of the victim, whose tim¯e is consequently diminished. A strategy of apoina preserves the disequilibrium; poin¯e reverses it. An offer of apoina is a conventional reaction to being cast in a position of dependence, whether by defeat on the battlefield or by capture. To repeat a point made earlier, offers of apoina presuppose a situation of hostility: they are offered only to enemies. Apoina compensate the victor with prestige goods for the tim¯e represented by his victim (even without stripping him of his armor) or for the material tim¯e he would realize by keeping a female captive. Were he to release the victim or the captive without getting something in return, his hard-won gain would evaporate. Apoina preserve the status disequilibrium that defeating his enemy has effected. This accounts for the rhetoric typically associated with apoina, that it is ‘unlimited’ (apereisia). In other words, the system dictates that accepting apoina should cost the victor none of his gains in tim¯e. The epithet is therefore neither meaningless nor misplaced, but aptly propounds the value of the material exchange for realizing one’s social assets and status. Exchanges of apoina thus provide a mechanism for the kinship group by which defeated warriors may negotiate to be captured rather than killed and families may recover sons and daughters from captivity. At the same time, apoina serve the fluid ranking system by providing alternative means for victors to consolidate their gains in tim¯e. In exchanges of poin¯e, a philos of the victim, or less often the victim himor herself, takes compensation for loss from the party who inflicted it or from his or her philoi. An exchange of poin¯e recovers the loss incurred and redresses the status disequilibrium effected by the loss. In a completed exchange of poin¯e, the original perpetrator pays back the loss (harm) in
Ransom and Revenge
39
tim¯e. His loss of tim¯e constitutes a corresponding gain for the victim, who is thus avenged. This is true whether the exchange comprises prestige goods (composition) or payment in harm (tisis). In the Iliad, poin¯e is rarely offered and must, therefore, ordinarily be exacted by force. Exchanges of poin¯e between philoi, however, are represented as regularly constrained by institutions for the administration of justice and/or mutually recognized social rules. Those between enemies are also subject to conventional limits, though those limits are tested and nearly eroded in the poem. The rhetoric that apoina is unlimited (apereisia) points to its prestige value; however, the numerical scale of prestige items exchanged as apoina is usually small. The rhetoric associated with poin¯e, on the other hand, is that it is of equivalent value, or, according to the measure of the loss it repays. In other words, in Homeric society, apoina is appropriately “unlimited” and poin¯e is appropriately “limited.” Nevertheless, the reality in the status economy of warrior society is that, whenever possible, an incremental return is exacted. Thus the danger that poin¯e will be taken without limit runs as an undercurrent in the discrete themes.
2 Agamemnon and Chryses Between King and Father
Politically, the challenge to exchange is a challenge to what is being kept out of the exchange. Annette Weiner
Analysis of the discrete compensation themes in the Iliad has furnished us with an apparatus for interpreting the practice of compensation as it is depicted in the monumental theme. The discrete themes establish a firm demarcation between the formal types of apoina and poin¯e and also present a mixed-type pattern. Common to both types of compensation is loss, regularly in the sphere of persons, followed by an exchange meant to address the loss. Apoina are payments in prestige goods made to recover something that rightly belongs to a person or group: in almost all extant examples a subordinate member of one’s family, preferably alive. Whereas the purpose of apoina is to preserve a status disequilibrium resulting from the loss, poin¯e has the opposed function of making the victor pay back or surrender his gains in wealth and status, frequently with his own life, since these gains are regularly won by taking a life. Hence, the rhetoric of apoina is that it is unlimited and of poin¯e that it is limited. The mixedtype scenes forge a link between compensation and social order but also evince the poem’s ambivalence about extraordinary extensions of tisis. With this apparatus in place, we are now prepared to examine the practice of compensation in the monumental theme. The monumental theme commences in Book 1 with a quarrel consisting of a series of compensation themes – both apoina and poin¯e – and beginning ostensibly with Chryses’ arrival in the Achaian camp. The themes interlock in such a way that the resolution of one theme constitutes the 40
Agamemnon and Chryses
41
loss in the next. The first theme in Book 1 begins not with the element of loss, however, but with the disastrous consequences of the resolution: the destructive wraths of Achilleus and of Apollo (1.1–2, 9–12). The last compensation theme in the interlocking sequence, Achilleus’ loss of Briseis, is incomplete; it in fact initiates an extended theme that drives the story at least up to Book 19. AGAMEMNON AND CHRYSES: APOINA
The narrator introduces the apoina theme involving Chryses and Agamemnon by linking it to a plague that Apollo sent after Agamemnon deprived his priest of tim¯e (¯etimesen, 1.11).1 The priest, Chryses, dwells in the Troad, and when the Achaians capture his daughter, he comes to their camp bringing “unlimited apoina” to exchange for her release:2
15
20
15
20
˘ går ∑lye yoåw §p‹ n∞aw ÉAxai«n lusÒmenÒw te yÊgatra f°rvn tÉ épere¤siÉ êpoina, st°mmatÉ ¶xvn §n xers‹n •khbÒlou ÉApÒllvnow xrus°ƒ énå skÆptrƒ, ka‹ §l¤sseto pãntaw ÉAxaioÊw, ÉAtre˝da d¢ mãlista dÊv, kosmÆtore la«n: ÉAtre˝dai te ka‹ êlloi §#knÆmidew ÉAxaio¤, Ím›n m¢n yeo‹ do›en ÉOlÊmpia d≈matÉ ¶xontew §kp°rsai Priãmoio pÒlin, eÔ dÉ o‡kadÉ flk°syai: pa›da dÉ §mo‹ lÊsaite f¤lhn, tå dÉ êpoina d°xesyai, èzÒmenoi DiÚw uflÚn •khbÒlon ÉApÒllvna.
When he [Chryses] came beside the fast ships of the Achaians to gain release of his daughter, carrying unlimited apoina and holding in his hands wound on a staff of gold the ribbons of Apollo, who strikes from afar, and pleaded with all the Achaians, but above all Atreus’ two sons, the marshals of the people: ‘Sons of Atreus and you other strong-greaved Achaians, to you may the gods grant who have their homes on Olympos Priam’s city to be plundered and a fair homecoming thereafter, but may you release my own daughter and take the apoina, giving honor to Zeus’ son who strikes from afar, Apollo.’ (1.12–21)
The girl is simultaneously located in two different spheres, depending on whose point of view, or focalization, is expressed. Inasmuch as Chryses and the narrator each designate Chryseis in terms of familial relationships, they represent the path of the potential exchange as prestige goods
42
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
for a person, a subordinate member of Chryses’ household (1.13 and 20). Agamemnon, however, refers to the captive only as ‘that [woman]’ (1.29) and thus for his present purposes regards her as belonging in the sphere of goods. Chryses’, Agamemnon’s, and Chryseis’ roles may be mapped onto the diagrams used for the discrete themes, as shown in Figure 2.1. Chryses occupies the active subject position of the father, Agamemnon that of the victor/captor, and Chryseis, as the object of exchange, the inferior position of victim. The broken arrows show the direction in which the compensation and the girl would travel if the offer were accepted.
Chryses
apoina
Agamemnon
Chryseis
figure 2.1. Chryses’ apoina theme
Although Chryses is said to plead with the Achaians (lissesthai, 1.15), a verb that appears elsewhere as one of several indices of supplication, he does not adopt the language or the physical gestures of a suppliant.3 Like fathers in the discrete themes, he relies on the persuasive force of his unlimited apoina, and additionally on the accouterments of his office as a priest of Apollo, cultural wealth that may be acknowledged as tim¯e. Chryses’ tim¯e is in fact a function of Apollo’s; his admonition to revere Apollo appeals directly to the tim¯e due the god. The exchange Chryses offers would not alter the status disequilibrium resulting from his daughter’s capture, nor would it diminish the Greek commander’s gains in tim¯e. The apoina are intended to compensate Agamemnon for the prestige goods and therefore the status in the fluid system that the captive woman represents to him. Nevertheless, and despite all the Achaians’ hearty approval of the offer, Agamemnon summarily refuses. It is possible to consider the Achaians gathered around their commander and the priest as an assembly, since the manner in which they express their will corresponds to a known voting technique.4 The reasons for the troops’ approval are left implicit, though the upcoming events may encourage the audience to view the Achaians as having a more accurate estimate of Chryses’ staff than Agamemnon does. They urge Agamemnon to ‘feel shame before’ (aideisthai ) the priest and to accept the
Agamemnon and Chryses
43
apoina (1.32–33). Shame is not connected to religious sanctions attached to offers of apoina or to supplication, since neither is binding in Homeric society.5 It is instead a form of social pressure. Kevin Crotty has demonstrated that the exercise of shame (aid¯os) regularly implies “restraint in exercising one’s prerogatives as victor.”6 Chryses, by the very act of bringing apoina, acknowledges the status Agamemnon has won, but the priest and the army alike petition him to exercise restraint and limit his options in response to the father’s plea. Since, as Erwin Cook has shown, self-restraint is the essential and defining quality of Homeric cunning intelligence, or m¯etis,7 we may infer that Chryses and the army extend to Agamemnon a way to win, or hold on to his winnings, without resorting to force, or bi¯e. This scene suggests an implicit alignment between m¯etis and willingness to accept apoina, analogous to the alignment forged in the mixed-type theme between bi¯e and privileging tisis over material compensation. As temporal analysis of the discrete themes has shown, offers of apoina were at least regularly successful prior to the Iliad ’s primary fabula. Agamemnon’s rejection is thus presented as less a transgression of a presumed obligation to reciprocate than a departure from regular practice, including his own.8 Inasmuch as the priest and the army petition Agamemnon to act with restraint, his sending Chryses away harshly, threatening him overtly, and disregarding the will of the army are figured negatively in the narrative as lack of restraint. Further, his actions prove to be a gross miscalculation: a miscalculation not because he refuses apoina, but because he refuses a priest of Apollo.9 By the formal conventions of compensation, when Agamemnon sends Chryses away, the apoina theme is resolved. His warning Chryses not to come around the ships says as much (1.26 –27), since this is the conventional locus for exchanges of apoina in the Iliad . This might have been the end of the matter, but it is not. When he rejects the priest, Agamemnon inflicts harm on someone who is able to retaliate, since by diminishing Chryses’ tim¯e he also diminishes Apollo’s. Agamemnon acts as if he is in a position to impose a resolution, but he underestimates the strength of the position Chryses enjoys by virtue of his relation to the god. Agamemnon will make the same mistake in relation to Achilleus. Chryses’ offer is not simply the first example of an apoina theme in the Iliad . Each offer of apoina in the monumental theme that follows, especially the one involving Priam and Achilleus in Book 24, is implicitly located in narrative relationship to it. It is, as a narrative pattern, archetypal. The ransom of Chryseis is not, however, typical in every respect. In discrete themes of the apoina type, the roles (victim, victor, father) are stable and
44
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
taken for granted. They form part of the apparatus by which the theme generates expectation: the victor imposes the resolution from a position of strength. The father, although not in a dependent position in relation to the victor, is also not in a place to determine the resolution, and must therefore rely on the appeal of the material exchange and on the victor’s self-restraint. And although the exercise of self-restraint is treated as a good thing, the victor is under no obligation to do so. In Chryses’ apoina theme, however, the roles are foregrounded and problematized: Agamemnon’s power to impose a resolution is contested, and successfully so, a thing unheard of in the discrete themes. AGAMEMNON AND CHRYSES: POIN E¯
When Chryses’ effort to recover his daughter with apoina is frustrated and he suffers additional loss of tim¯e, he concedes neither his losses nor Agamemnon’s unilateral resolution. By contesting Agamemnon’s refusal, Chryses calls his position of superiority into question. In order to challenge him successfully, Chryses must marshal the resources at his disposal: he prays to Apollo to intervene on his behalf: t¤seian Danao‹ §må dãkrua so›si b°lessin.
‘Let your arrows make the Danaans pay for my tears shed.’ (1.42)
The priest’s request corresponds in typology and syntax to poin¯e: he asks Apollo to cause the Achaians to pay back (tiseian) his tears (ema dakrua) – a strategy of tisis that would restore his tim¯e at the expense of Danaan tim¯e. By appealing to the god to kill the Greeks, Chryses generalizes the poin¯e to Agamemnon’s philoi. At the same time he places Agamemnon in a position analogous to his own, in that the commander would suffer the loss of people in a dependent position for whose welfare he is responsible. Since Agamemnon’s position as commander of the Achaian armies is a large part of his tim¯e, their death diminishes his honor. Moreover, if the Achaians know they are dying because of Agamemnon’s miscalculation, they will also dishonor him by lowering their opinion of his abilities compared to those of other leaders.10 The path of Chryses’ poin¯e is thus simultaneously tim¯e for tim¯e on a social level and anguish (akhos) for anguish on a personal level. Mary Margaret Mackenzie asks why Chryses does not petition Apollo to help him recover his daughter rather than secure recompense for his
45
Agamemnon and Chryses
tears.11 She reasons, as do I, that ‘my tears’ refers to Chryses’ loss of tim¯e, but she infers that loss of tim¯e therefore corresponds to the emotional as opposed to the material aspect of injury. Mackenzie concludes that all relations between men are reducible to their tim¯e and, consequently, that Chryses’ anguish (loss of tim¯e qua anguish) is more important than his daughter.12 But Chryses’ concern for his tim¯e is not exclusive of his concern to recover his daughter. In fact, the objective of Chryses’ tisis is to diminish Agamemnon’s tim¯e by making him pay to the point where Agamemnon is forced into a dependent position. Successful resolution of the poin¯e theme will therefore put Chryses in a position to secure the return of his daughter. This is not to deny that there is a profound emotional aspect to loss of tim¯e, especially in this scene, but only to say that it is nonetheless inextricably bound up with power relations between the two men participating in the compensatory exchange. Chryses succeeds in converting an apoina theme to a poin¯e theme by summoning Apollo as an advocate to secure poin¯e for him. He thus introduces a fourth position, and a third active role into the map of power relations in compensation themes. Since Chryses summons a figure who is his philos and moreover occupies a position of strength relative to himself and to Agamemnon, the new role may be mapped onto the diagram, as shown in Figure 2.2. Apollo Chryses
poine
Agamemnon/Achaians
time Chryseis
figure 2.2. Chryses’ poin¯e theme
Although Chryses’ strategy of tisis requires Apollo’s assistance, dependence on a god does not reflect negatively on his tim¯e. On the contrary, Apollo’s tisis only verifies and augments the tim¯e of the priest (‘you have honored me’, t¤mhsaw m¢n §m°, 1.454). The roles operative in Chryses’ poin¯e theme are significant because they are paradigmatic for Achilleus’ poin¯e theme, which follows and is initiated by it. The episode involving Chryses anticipates the quarrel and the embassy through an interlocking sequence of apoina and poin¯e themes and through formal analogy. Achilleus, for his part, aggressively appropriates Chryses’ strategy as his own until
46
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
Book 9, and he is supported in this by Nestor and the narrator.13 This works in terms of the psychology of the character,14 but also in narrative formal terms since it controls the plot until Book 9. Chryses’ poin¯e theme is the first one to appear in the Iliad , but it is itself patterned on a poin¯e theme that is logically prior. Behind the capture and attempted recovery of Chryseis is the theme that drives the war and the poem: the rape of Helen. All the poin¯e themes in the monumental theme are implicitly read against it. Agamemnon and Achilleus both try to ‘script’ their poin¯e themes in relation to it. To do so allows them to arrogate its symbolic power and thereby justify their own demands for compensation. In other words, the poin¯e theme for the rape of Helen functions as a thematic archetype for them. The roles are mapped on the diagram in Figure 2.3, with broken lines indicating the intended resolution. From the Greeks’ perspective, Helen’s relation to Menelaos is figured as wife, and her relation to Alexandros as captive woman to abductor. Menelaos and Alexandros are related as injured party and perpetrator of harm. Agamemnon takes the role of an advocate who is superior both to Menelaos and to Alexandros and who can, therefore, ostensibly secure poin¯e for his brother.15 The position of Agamemnon in this theme corresponds to that of Apollo in Chryses’ poin¯e theme. The problem, of course, is that although Agamemnon is superior to Alexandros, he is no match for his brother, Hektor, who occupies the same role in relation to Alexandros as Agamemnon does in relation to Menelaos. The asymmetry invites the Homeric audience, aware as they are that the role opposite Hektor can be filled only by Achilleus, to interpret the quarrel as, at some level, about that role. Agamemnon Menelaos
poine
Alexandros/Trojans
time Helen
figure 2.3. Menelaos’ poin¯e theme
Menelaos and Alexandros were formerly foreign friends (xeinoi ). Alexandros’ abduction of Helen, however, constituted a violation of the ethical principle of friendship ( philot¯es) such that the two men are now enemies. The power relation between the two men and, consequently, the success of Menelaos’ attempt to exact tisis for his loss in tim¯e are determined in part by Agamemnon’s role as advocate. Hence, Menelaos’ dependence
Agamemnon and Chryses
47
on Agamemnon is thematically comparable to Chryses’ dependence on Apollo and, as shall be seen, Achilleus’ on Zeus; and all three – Menelaos, Chryses, and Achilleus – are trying to recover a woman. It is reasonable to infer that Agamemnon’s privileged position in the fixed system and his role in the archetypal poin¯e theme for the rape of Helen are functions of one another. His position of superiority is internally consistent but nevertheless rests on an unstable foundation: Agamemnon may claim to be the best of the Achaians, aristos Akhai¯on (1.91), but the poem does not necessarily support him in that claim. Privileging himself in this fashion amounts to a privileging of the fixed over the fluid systems. Returning to Chryses’ poin¯e theme, from a comparison of Figures 2.2 and 2.3, it can be seen that Chryseis occupies a position in Chryses’ poin¯e theme analogous to that of Helen in the archetypal theme.16 The Achaians in Chryses’ theme are cast in the position of perpetrators of harm and Chryses in that of injured party. Accordingly, in refusing to return the captive woman, Agamemnon is assimilated to the role of Alexandros. The one who assumes Agamemnon’s position as the stronger advocate and turns it against him is no mere mortal but Apollo. The poin¯e theme that results from the capture of Chryseis thus reenacts the cause of the Trojan War. Moreover, inasmuch as it figures the Achaians as the “other” through a narrative strategy of conflation, it undermines the moral basis for the war. The plague that Apollo sent against the Greeks in response to Chryses’ prayer does not automatically effect Chryseis’ return to her father. But when the Achaian camp is ravaged for nine days following Chryses’ visit, Achilleus summons a public assembly to determine the cause of and a remedy for the plague. It is here that Kalchas, at Achilleus’ instigation and under his protection, reveals the offense that has angered Apollo and caused the plague:
95
oÎtÉ ír ˜ gÉ eÈxvl∞w §pim°mfetai oÈdÉ •katÒmbhw, éllÉ ßnekÉ érht∞row, ˘n ±t¤mhsÉ ÉAgam°mnvn, oÈdÉ ép°luse yÊgatra ka‹ oÈk éped°jatÉ êpoina17
‘No, it is not for the sake of some vow or hecatomb he blames us, but for the sake of his priest whom Agamemnon dishonoured and would not give him back his daughter nor accept the apoina. (1.93–95)
Kalchas offers the same interpretation of the plague for the internal audience as the narratorial account does for the external one (1.8–52):18 he personalizes Chryseis by calling her a daughter (1.95); he calls Agamemnon’s action ‘dishonor’ (¯etim¯esen, 1.94); and he indicates that the dishonor
48
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
is the offense for which Apollo has brought the plague upon the Achaians (1.96–97). On this basis, Kalchas mandates an exchange whereby the tim¯e due Apollo and Chryses may be paid in currency other than Achaian lives. Agamemnon must return Chryseis to her father ‘without purchase price or apoina’ (apriat¯en anapoinon) and send along with her an offering for the god.19 The Greek commander has already forfeited Chryses’ apoina, and now, Kalchas tells him, he will have to suffer an additional loss of tim¯e by sending the girl back, with gifts, as poin¯e for dishonoring the priest. Kalchas thereby concedes Chryses’ poin¯e theme but puts the onus for repaying harm on Agamemnon rather than on his philoi, the Achaians (Figure 2.4). Apollo Chryses
poine Chryseis
Agamemnon
time
figure 2.4. Chryses’ poin¯e theme, Kalchas’ redefinition
Although the poem encourages a naive reading of Achilleus’ action in calling the assembly in that Hera instigated it (1.55 –56), there is evidence in the text to support a political reading of his summoning the assembly and of the prophet’s complicity. Both single out Agamemnon, implicitly or explicitly, as the potential target of the prophecy and therefore as a threat from which Kalchas might require protection.20 Achilleus puts the ambiguity of Agamemnon’s privileged position on display when he swears to protect Kalchas, even from the commander himself (1.85 –91). Kalchas represents Agamemnon as impious toward Apollo’s priests and prophets. More importantly, by figuring him as the abductor of a woman whom he defines as person via her familial relationships (1.95), Kalchas invokes the poin¯e theme involving Helen against Agamemnon, even if only obliquely. By singling out Agamemnon as the cause of the plague, he makes him liable for a loss of tim¯e and thus of status in the fluid system in order to bring things back to rights. Kalchas seems to regard the assembly of Achaians as having a voice, but if he is trying to use the public pressure of an assembly to prevent Agamemnon from demanding a replacement prize, his plan miscarries. In fact, Agamemnon reacts to the prophecy as a machination for a power grab by Achilleus.21 Kalchas’ speech anticipates Nestor’s in Book 9, where he also accuses Agamemnon of dishonoring a man by taking and keeping a woman (9.111).
Agamemnon and Chryses
49
Both single out Agamemnon’s action as the cause of destruction of the army; both instruct him to make good the loss he inflicted and thereby persuade the injured party to bring his tisis to an end.22 AGAMEMNON AND THE ACHAIANS: REDEFINING ‘‘ that woman ’’
In the same manner that Agamemnon’s rejection could have concluded Chryses’ apoina theme, but did not, the return of Chryses’ daughter without his paying apoina for her release could conclude the matter but does not. Apollo demands that Agamemnon suffer a loss of tim¯e, but this Agamemnon will not tolerate. Indignant, he mounts a defense: 110
110
ka‹ nËn §n Danao›si yeoprop°vn égoreÊeiw …w dØ toËdÉ ßnekã sfin •khbÒlow êlgea teÊxei, oÏnekÉ §g∆ koÊrhw Xrush˝dow églãÉ êpoina oÈk ¶yelon d°jasyai, §pe‹ polÁ boÊlomai aÈtØn o‡koi ¶xein: ka‹ gãr =a KlutaimnÆstrhw prob°boula kourid¤hw élÒxou, §pe‹ oÎ •y°n §sti xere¤vn, oÈ d°maw oÈd¢ fuÆn, oÎtÉ ír fr°naw oÎte ti ¶rga.
‘Now once more you make divination to the Danaans, argue forth your reason why he who strikes from afar afflicts them, because I for the sake of the girl Chryseis would not take the shining apoina; and indeed I wish greatly to have her in my own house; since I like her better than Klytaimestra my own wife, for in truth she is no way inferior, neither in build nor stature nor wit, not in accomplishment.’ (1.109–15)
Agamemnon now figures the object of exchange as a young woman (kour¯e, 1.111), which could be construed either as person or prestige goods, depending on the relations established for her. In contrast to Kalchas and the narrator, he does not use terms for relating the girl to her father (daughter, thugat¯er, or child, pais), and moreover, he says nothing about having dishonored the priest.23 Whereas he offered no justification for refusing apoina when he sent Chryses away from the ships, Agamemnon now launches into a defense of having turned down prestige goods for Chryseis: he compares her favorably to Klytaimestra. He insists that he wished to keep her because she was inferior in no respect to his own wife (kouridi¯e alokhos, 1.114). Kirk proposes that here kouridi¯e alokhos means little more than wedded wife in a legal or economic sense.24 But Agamemnon
50
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
has reason to exploit the full emotive and economic force of the term, for implicit in the comparison with Klytaimestra is a claim that the loss of Chryseis would be no less than the loss of a wife. Since Achilleus, in his response to the embassy, deploys a similar claim with respect to Briseis, Agamemnon’s strategy in introducing the category bears closer investigation. Had Agamemnon accepted Chryses’ apoina, he would have consolidated the gain in tim¯e represented by the captive woman. When he refuses, Chryses is able to force him to lose tim¯e. Now Kalchas has cast the return of the girl and gifts as poin¯e, which Agamemnon cannot, by the social rules of heroic society, treat as gratuitous harm because it simply pays back what rightfully belongs to Chryses. As poin¯e, the girl’s return redresses the status disequilibrium that taking her away and refusing the apoina caused. Agamemnon’s tim¯e, in fact, plummets: losing many of his men to the plague has cost him already; he stands to lose even more if Achilleus and Kalchas succeed in casting him as the perpetrator of damage in Chryses’ poin¯e theme. Finally, he must send the woman back and receive nothing in return. In this speech, he begins a protracted struggle to redefine the return of Chryseis so as to lose as little tim¯e as possible. To do so will require that he contest Kalchas and Achilleus’ argument, which deploys social convention and is, not insignificantly, also the narrator’s argument, by constructing a culturally acceptable and plausible argument of his own. Further, it will require that he maneuver skillfully between keeping and giving: Agamemnon must find a way to give what he cannot keep, namely, Chryseis, so as to keep what he will not and cannot afford to surrender, namely, belief in the legitimacy of his privileged position in the fixed system.25 Agamemnon implicitly designates Chryseis with a familial term, not in relation to Chryses but in relation to himself, by comparing her with his own wife (kouridi¯e alokhos). He thus reconfigures the exchange Chryses had offered and he had rejected: he did not reject goods for goods, but goods for a person.26 By transferring Chryseis to the sphere of persons, Agamemnon evokes the poin¯e theme involving Helen. Should Chryseis be taken from him, he would sustain nothing less than loss of a wife, analogous to Menelaos’ loss of Helen. As Ioannes Kakridis demonstrates, in Archaic mythological traditions a wife is not figured as just any member of one’s philoi; she holds the highest rank in an ascending scale of affection.27 This is not to say that Agamemnon in fact loves Chryseis (or his wife Klytaimestra, for that matter) above any other philoi. It is only to say that a tradition assigns to the wife the highest rank of affection, and Agamemnon invokes it here.
51
Agamemnon and Chryses
By figuring Chryseis as a wife in relation to himself, Agamemnon potentially recasts his narrative in relation to Menelaos’ poin¯e theme. He legitimately scripts himself out of the role of abductor/perpetrator of harm and into the position of injured party in relation to Chryseis. His strategy could have caused Kalchas’ to backfire, but in comparison to his competitors, Agamemnon is inept at this game. He leaves two unstable positions in the construction of his poin¯e theme (Figure 2.5). First, it is unclear whom he casts as perpetrator(s) of harm, although Achilleus is the most logical candidate since he poses a threat to Agamemnon’s tim¯e. It is, moreover, unclear whom, if anyone, he might summon as a stronger advocate (i.e., Apollo’s position in Chryses’ poin¯e theme). The two unassigned roles will cost Agamemnon, for Achilleus will seize upon them and recast Agamemnon’s own paradigm in a way that he cannot afford to accept. ?? Agamemnon
poine time
[Achilleus? Apollo?] Chryseis
figure 2.5. Agamemnon’s poin¯e theme
Turning from a strategy of poin¯e to that of apoina, Agamemnon says he will give Chryseis back, but at the same time, he defines her as a prize (geras) and treats her as the price that must be paid for Achaian lives to be spared:
120
120
éllå ka‹ Õw §y°lv dÒmenai pãlin efi tÒ gÉ êmeinon: boÊlomÉ §g∆ laÚn sÒon ¶mmenai µ épol°syai: aÈtår §mo‹ g°raw aÈt¤xÉ •toimãsatÉ ˆfra mØ o‰ow ÉArge¤vn ég°rastow ¶v, §pe‹ oÈd¢ ¶oike: leÊssete går tÒ ge pãntew ˜ moi g°raw ¶rxetai êll˙.
‘Still I am willing to give her back, if such is the best way. I myself desire that my people be safe, not perish. Find me then some prize that shall be my own, lest I only among the Argives go without, since that were unfitting; you are all witnesses to this thing, that my prize goes elsewhere.’ (1.116–20)
Agamemnon offers, in effect, to use Chryseis as apoina to preserve the army rather than as poin¯e to redress the harm he did to Chryses (Figure 2.6).
52
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
Agamemnon
apoina [Chryseis]
Apollo/Chryses
the Achaians
figure 2.6. Agamemnon’s apoina
In return, however, he demands that the Achaians compensate him by giving him a replacement prize. But since fathers in the discrete themes do not, that we have seen, require repayment of apoina from their ransomed sons, Agamemnon’s formulation of the theme is poorly conceived. His apoina theme in fact already shows signs of interference from the conventions of redistribution that belong to the fixed system and grant him the power to assess goods from his subjects to fund his largess on behalf of the community.28 He quickly abandons negotiating compensation for another tactical move. The last appeal with which Agamemnon contests Kalchas’ definition of the situation with Chryses is an appeal to convention, but not that of compensation. He invokes the collective belief in his privileged position in a fixed system as commander in chief over the Panachaian forces, and he attempts to mobilize the common sense that belongs to that system: it would not be fitting (oude eoike, 1.119) for him alone of the Achaians to be left without a prize. The issue is not, of course, that Chryeis is Agamemnon’s only prize, but that she is being used to diminish his tim¯e in the fluid system and, more importantly, his control over it. For the disposition of Chryseis represents Agamemnon’s control over other Achaian kings and over Achilleus in particular. Agamemnon therefore both presumes and imposes his symbolically maintained position in the relatively fixed status system to recover his tim¯e in the fluid one. Agamemnon and Achilleus both, as we shall see, recast situations of loss; they do so episodically and in reaction to the tactics of their opponents. Their immediate goal is to deploy their resources and social conventions as effectively as they can so as to recover or increase their status in the political field. What has happened so far in Book 1 ? Chryses offers apoina for the return of his daughter, which Agamemnon refuses. So Chryses asks Apollo to kill the Greeks, thereby exacting poin¯e. Kalchas tells Agamemnon that, in order to bring an end to the plague, he will have to return the girl and give gifts in addition as poin¯e for dishonoring the priest. Agamemnon first tries to rewrite the now inevitable loss of Chryseis as a poin¯e theme,
Agamemnon and Chryses
53
scripting himself as the injured party; failing that, he figures giving the girl as apoina to save the army. Agamemnon tries to negotiate within the kinds of compensatory exchanges operative in the fluid system for winning tim¯e, but this he does rather badly. First, he formulates returning a stolen woman as suffering gratuitous harm for which he can claim poin¯e; then he agrees to return her, as his prize, but demands a replacement prize from those whom he saved. Finally, he masks both the poin¯e and the apoina themes by appealing to what is for him a higher order of convention: the fixed system and his privileged role in it. That appeal, from Agamemnon’s perspective, overrules the definitions game that goes on in the fluid system and in which he is not as well equipped as others to compete. Agamemnon’s appeal to ‘what is not fitting’ is absolutely conventional, but it belongs to the ideology of the fixed system. And it is the only system in which the ‘father’ can legitimately demand repayment of ransom.29 Achilleus will take up the contest with Agamemnon by appropriating his poin¯e theme and using it against him, and by countering Agamemnon’s common sense from the fixed system with a common sense about what is not fitting (ouk epioike, 1.126) in the fluid system. We may thus say that, whatever else is at stake, Achilleus and Agamemnon are locked in a “struggle for the production of common sense,”30 a struggle to impose a particular vision of the social world as legitimate in which even the poet is implicated.31
3 The Quarrel Men Who Would Be King
Kingship is, of course, not a kind of property that can be divided in equal shares. Mario Liverani
The first term used to describe the quarrel between Achilleus and Agamemnon in the Iliad is eris (strife, 1.8).1 The Trojan War actually begins with the arrival of Eris, strife personified, at the wedding of Thetis and Peleus, and even the war itself may be designated as eris.2 Moreover, eris is successfully displaced from the divine to the human realm when Paris is asked to judge which of three goddesses – Hera, Athene, or Aphrodite – is most beautiful.3 The displacement of eris in traditions about pre-Iliad events should also be read against the Theogony’s project of the displacement of the female principle and the law of generational succession from the divine to the human spheres.4 Agamemnon and Achilleus’ eris recalls the primordial scenes at the mythological foundations of the war and even beyond it to the rise of the Olympian order and, accordingly, can be seen to signify a struggle for dominance. Agamemnon is thus cast in the role of father, and Achilleus, true to prophecy is best, aristos. Their quarrel thus enacts the cosmic struggle for dominance that would have occurred had Zeus mated with Thetis.5 Achilleus claims that the quarrel originates in a long-standing conflict between Agamemnon’s privileged position and the agonistic tim¯e-based status system. The opposition is thus not presented as one between traditional kingship and a leading warrior, though Nestor construes it as such and modern scholars sometimes follow him in doing so.6 It arises instead from a contradiction in a social organization that contains a fixed 54
The Quarrel
55
system, in which Agamemnon can legitimate his preeminence, and a fluid, tim¯e-based system in which Achilleus can legitimately claim to be the best of the Achaians (aristos Akhai¯on). Achilleus asserts that the systems have become confounded so that the one has completely disabled the other. Moreover, as we will see, he reveals that he is disadvantaged by a fixed system that has cast him in a position of dependence and prevents him by cultural consensus from effectively contesting it. The opening scenes of the poem thus play out a power struggle between Achilleus and a dominant figure closely aligned with Zeus in his capacity as a scepter-bearing king. Had the struggle been a cosmic one, it would have led to the overthrow of Zeus; on the human plane, however, Achilleus encounters a force that would not have factored into his struggle with Zeus: human social organization.7 Agamemnon’s announcement that he would return Chryseis and send an offering to Apollo brought the first two compensation themes to formal resolution (1.116, 141–47). The actual return of Chryseis is delayed, however, while Agamemnon and Achilleus debate the implications of the exchange in a public forum. Their speeches are described in terms that identify the quarrel generically as neikos (blame);8 the diction of the insults and threats also conforms to that category.9 So the insults and threats Agamemnon and Achilleus exchange are not ancillary but integral to the struggle for dominance, since offense to honor causes harm as easily as does physical violence. Moreover, both speakers cast their adversary in a negative light using traditional categories and social rules. The social rules of the two systems themselves are thereby brought into conflict or, perhaps more accurately, the contradiction already present in Homeric society is put on display. Such internal contradictions are common in real societies and usually rise to the level of conflict only when they are put on display in intense situations and for political purposes,10 as they are here. The poet’s strategy in the quarrel is to keep all the conflicting constructions of reality before the Homeric audience, against the backgrounds of the narratorial account, the discrete themes, and the poin¯e themes involving Chryses and Helen. THE QUARREL: COMPENSATION AND THE STRUGGLE FOR DOMINANCE
In support of his demand for a replacement prize, Agamemnon had invoked a convention proper to the fixed system: it was not fitting for him be left without a prize (oude eoike, 1.119). Achilleus, reminding Agamemnon
56
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
that all the spoils have been distributed, combats common sense with common sense: laoÁw dÉ oÈk §p°oike pal¤lloga taËtÉ §page¤rein
‘It is not fitting for the people to call back things once given.’ (1.126)
A plurality of things is deemed fitting or not fitting in heroic society and they do not comprise a coherent system. Both of the participants in the quarrel presume that the beliefs they mobilize are held in common by the Achaians: Agamemnon used one collective belief to demand a replacement prize; Achilleus now uses another, from the fluid system, to put Agamemnon in a position of violating social rules if he requires that a prize be given him from among those already awarded. Achilleus then proposes an exchange by which the plague may be averted and the Greek commander compensated for loss of Chryseis: éllå sÁ m¢n nËn tÆnde ye“ prÒew: aÈtår ÉAxaio‹ triplª tetraplª tÉ épot¤somen, a‡ k° poyi ZeÁw d“si pÒlin Tro¤hn eÈte¤xeon §jalapãjai.
‘No, for the present send the girl back to the god; we Achaians thrice and four times over will repay you, if ever Zeus gives into our hands the strong-walled citadel of Troy to be plundered.’ (1.127–29)
Attempting an overtly conciliatory gesture, he concedes Agamemnon’s right to poin¯e for loss of Chryseis: the Achaians will pay back (apotisomen, 1.128) Agamemnon’s loss three- and four-fold when the armies sack Troy. But his generosity masks a threat to Agamemnon’s position in the relatively fixed system in that Achilleus presumes that he himself will divide the spoils. In so doing, Achilleus aggressively reconfigures the poin¯e theme Agamemnon had begun, recasting the two unassigned positions to his own advantage. By designating the god as the one to whom the girl is sent, Achilleus figures Apollo, and not himself, as the abductor/perpetrator of harm. By offering to secure compensation for Agamemnon from the Trojans, he generalizes Apollo’s liability for poin¯e to his philoi, and he casts himself and the Achaians in the role of the stronger advocate. Moreover, he puts Apollo, his ritual antagonist in the poem, in the position that Agamemnon had potentially assigned to Achilleus and positions himself opposite Apollo as a thematic antagonist (Figure 3.1; cf. Figure 2.5).11
57
The Quarrel Achilleus/Achaians Agamemnon
poine
Apollo/Trojans
time Chryseis
figure 3.1. Agamemnon’s poin¯e, Achilleus’ redefinition
Achilleus’ offer also would require that Agamemnon be for an indefinite period of time without an honorific prize. In addition, he makes the compensation dependent upon Zeus’ giving them Troy to be plundered. No less operative for being unspoken is the assertion that Agamemnon in fact depends upon Achilleus to plunder Troy. But Agamemnon would gain nothing by Achilleus’ offer that he could not gain for himself if he retains his privileged position and sacks Troy. If, on the other hand, Agamemnon accepts the offer, his position in both the fixed- and tim¯e-based systems is put in jeopardy: he would depend on Achilleus to pay him tim¯e from the spoils of Troy, and Achilleus would adopt the role of distributor of prizes and honors. As a result, Agamemnon would be in a dependent position in relation to Achilleus and the Achaians identical to what Achilleus and the other kings are in relation to him now. In other words, the control of the fixed system over the fluid system would be eclipsed. This scenario is in fact realized in the poem in the funeral games for Patroklos. This strategy is not lost on Agamemnon, who reads the offer as an attempt to cheat and deceive him by keeping a prize while he, the commander in chief, goes without (1.131–34).12 So Agamemnon reasserts his earlier claim to poin¯e : he will resolve the situation with Apollo by sending the girl (1.141), but he will not wait for the Achaians to secure poin¯e for his loss from the Trojans and risk his strategic role as distributor of spoils. If the Achaians do not at once give him an adequate honorific prize, Agamemnon himself will take one from one of the Achaian kings (1.137–38). Once again, when Agamemnon appears to be losing ground in the competition to define loss and compensation, he resorts to the rules of the fixed system, where he can demand gifts from his subordinates to supply the goods necessary for his acts on behalf of the community.13 This time he does not appeal to a common sense; he threatens. In the quarrel, Achilleus will accuse him of unfairly imposing the fixed system on the
58
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
operation of tim¯e-based competition. But before the audience hears his accusations, the narrator has given them in this scene a vivid illustration of Agamemnon’s general stratagem for managing the two social systems or social ideologies that coexist in the Achaian camp. When Agamemnon resorts to the conventions of the fixed system to impose a resolution, it provokes a counterattack. Achilleus’ response (1.149–71) is composed largely of blame directed at Agamemnon’s leadership of the Panachaian forces and aimed at categorizing Agamemnon as greedy (kerdaleophron, 1.149) and shameless (kun¯opa, 1.159).14 We may understand that Achilleus accuses Agamemnon himself of greed, but it is possible at the same time to read Achilleus’ blame as generalized against the centralized system itself. If this is the case, Achilleus is working to discredit not only Agamemnon, but also the common sense to which he appeals. Directly invoking the Trojan War that organizes his relationship to the Greek commander, Achilleus reminds Agamemnon and the assembly that the Trojans had inflicted no damage on him for which he must secure compensation (1.152–57). He has, rather, come to Troy to win tim¯e for the Atreidai (1.158–59).15 Achilleus thus continues to position himself as an advocate who secures poin¯e for the injured parties in the theme involving Helen. The implicit claim, which Agamemnon does not miss (see 1.186–87), is that Achilleus holds a position at least equal to or greater than that of Agamemnon (Figure 3.2). Achilleus Menelaos and Agamemnon
poine
Alexandros
time Helen
figure 3.2. Menelaos’ poin¯e, Achilleus’ redefinition
Achilleus and Agamemnon, it seems, both want to occupy the same role in relation to Menelaos and, by extension, to the armies at Troy, a role each would identify as belonging for different reasons to the best of the Achaians. That Achilleus has come to Troy to win tim¯e for himself, and not just to win back tim¯e for the Atreidai, is confirmed by his objections concerning the distribution of prizes and by his threat to go home rather than be
The Quarrel
59
rendered ‘without tim¯e’ (atimos) while accumulating tim¯e for Agamemnon:
165
170
165
170
oÈ m¢n so¤ pote ‰son ¶xv g°raw ıppÒtÉ ÉAxaio‹ Tr≈vn §kp°rsvsÉ eÔ naiÒmenon ptol¤eyron: éllå tÚ m¢n ple›on poluãÛkow pol°moio xe›rew §ma‹ di°pousÉ: étår ≥n pote dasmÚw ·khtai, so‹ tÚ g°raw polÁ me›zon, §g∆ dÉ Ùl¤gon te f¤lon te ¶rxomÉ ¶xvn §p‹ n∞aw, §pØn kekãmv polem¤zvn. nËn dÉ e‰mi Fy¤hndÉ, §pe‹ ∑ polÁ f°rterÒn §stin o‡kadÉ ‡men sÁn nhus‹ korvn¤sin, oÈd° sÉ Ù˝v §nyãdÉ êtimow §∆n êfenow ka‹ ploËton éfÊjein.
‘Never, when the Achaians sack some well-founded citadel of the Trojans, do I have a prize (geras) that is equal to yours. Always the greater part of the painful fighting is the work of my hands; but when the time comes to distribute the booty yours is far the greater reward, and I with some small thing yet dear to me go back to my ships when I am weary with fighting. Now I am returning to Phthia, since it is much better to go home again with my curved ships, and I am minded no longer to stay here dishonoured and pile up your wealth and your luxury.’ (1.163–71)
Speaking, as he does consistently, from the perspective of the tim¯e-based ranking system, Achilleus protests that although he does the greater share of fighting, he never receives a prize equal to that of the Greek leader, who now threatens to strip him of the prize he does have. In sum, Achilleus alleges that Agamemnon has done irreparable damage to the fluid social system: he has performed his office as distributor of goods and honors (timai) unjustly and has in fact made winning tim¯e at Troy impossible. There is, therefore, no reason for Achilleus to stay. Agamemnon reacts by castigating Achilleus as utterly hateful because of the very characteristics that make him a consummate warrior – his love of eris, war, and fighting (1.176–78). Agamemnon’s exasperation with the best warrior in the Greek army makes sense only from the perspective of the fixed system. Agamemnon speaks consistently from his standpoint within it and makes judgments on that platform, as he does here. If Achilleus wants to go home, let him go. And if Agamemnon must rely on a stronger advocate to secure his tim¯e, let it be Zeus, not Achilleus (1.173–75).16 With that he makes public how he will take his replacement prize, and why:
60
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
185
185
…w ¶mÉ éfaire›tai Xrush˝da Fo›bow ÉApÒllvn, tØn m¢n §g∆ sÁn nh˝ tÉ §mª ka‹ §mo›w •tãroisi p°mcv, §g∆ d° kÉ êgv Brish˝da kallipãrhon aÈtÚw fi∆n klis¤hnde tÚ sÚn g°raw, ˆfrÉ §£ efidªw ˜sson f°rterÒw efimi s°yen, stug°˙ d¢ ka‹ êllow ‰son §mo‹ fãsyai ka‹ ımoivyÆmenai ênthn.
‘Even as Phoibos Apollo is taking away my Chryseis. I shall convey her back in my own ship, with my own followers; but I shall take the fair-cheeked Briseis, your prize, I myself going to your shelter, that you may learn well how much greater I am than you, and another man may shrink back from likening himself to me and contending against me.’ (1.183–87)
Whether Agamemnon ultimately holds Achilleus or Apollo as the immediate cause of his loss, he can hardly exact poin¯e from the god. But he can displace the poin¯e onto a mortal, whom he can compel to pay. That he can force Achilleus to pay is both a result and a mainstay of his privileged position. But Agamemnon can be seen again to miscalculate. Again the proximity of the injured party to a god will thwart his objectives, and Agamemnon will pay with the loss of Achaian lives. And once again he will respond to the loss by offering to give up a girl as apoina to save the Greek army. INTERMEZZO: ACHILLEUS AND ATHENE
Angered by Agamemnon’s fiat and by the tim¯e he will lose if Agamemnon takes Briseis, Achilleus considers (merm¯erixen, 1.189) whether to draw his sword and take Agamemnon’s life at once or restrain his anger. His deliberation conforms to a traditional theme that sets the audience up to expect him to act on his second and more rational impulse.17 Achilleus instead draws his sword. Athene, the goddess who embodies m¯etis (cunning intelligence), intercepts him and induces him to act with restraint (iskheo, 1.214), promising him three times as many gifts on account of Agamemnon’s wanton disregard for his tim¯e (hubris, 1.210–13).18 Put another way, Athene tells him to restrain from exacting tisis for tim¯e by force and offers, as a philos, to secure poin¯e for his loss of tim¯e on the condition that he wait an indefinite period of time and, consequently, be placed in a dependent position in relation to her. Her offer of compensatory tim¯e on condition of indefinite deferment may thus be compared to the offer Achilleus had just made to Agamemnon (1.127–29). Agamemnon, for his part, had refused to delay
The Quarrel
61
gratification, even for the promise of a three- to four-fold increase in tim¯e. Moreover, he had spurned being put in a dependent position in relation to Achilleus, choosing rather to exact compensation forcibly from his own philoi. Agamemnon is thus represented as failing to act with self-restraint in his own poin¯e theme, as he was in Chryses’ apoina theme. In what may be construed as a programmatic contrast, Achilleus, although angry, agrees to Athene’s offer, with its conditions, to resolve his poin¯e theme.19 By accepting her offer, Achilleus renounces neither material compensation nor status in the tim¯e-based system.20 Instead, he elects a strategy of m¯etis based on deferral and even risking public disgrace as a maneuver for winning without recourse to bi¯e. This strategy controls the plot of the Iliad all the way to the death of Patroklos. It is also, not coincidentally, the strategy that Odysseus always uses and that drives the plot of the Odyssey.21 ACHILLEUS’ POIN E¯ THEME
Achilleus restrains his hand but not his anger. He continues to censure Agamemnon (and, indirectly, the system he represents) for taking advantage of the tim¯e-based status system by plundering his own people in the camp instead of going out on raids (1.226–30). This he is able to do, in Achilleus’ judgment, only because he rules men who are completely worthless (outidanoi) (1.231).22 If the Panachaian forces were not worthless, Agamemnon would not again be able to perpetrate the kind of outrage (l¯ob¯e ) that he is inflicting on Achilleus (1.232). He thus implicates the Achaians in the damage Agamemnon inflicts, just as Chryses had earlier done; consequently, multitudes of Achaian heroes will pay with their lives for Achilleus’ tim¯e. Achilleus defines Agamemnon’s insult and the threatened seizure of Briseis as gratuitous harm generating a new poin¯e theme. He characterizes the damage as outrage (lob¯esaio, 1.232) and as failing to give tim¯e (ouden etisas, 1.244) to the best of the Achaians (aristos Akhai¯on). Achilleus appropriates the language the narrator and Kalchas used to characterize Agamemnon’s refusal of Chryses’ apoina, claiming that Agamemnon is depriving him of tim¯e just as he did Chryses, one of the enemy (1.11, 94). The inference is clear: if Agamemnon treats Achilleus like Chryses, Achilleus will respond as Chryses did. He will recover his loss of tim¯e through a strategy of tisis, effected not through his bi¯e – for which he has become hateful (ekhthistos) to Agamemnon – but through inactivity.23 The intermezzo with Athene marks a turning point in Achilleus’ strategy: he will not go home to Phthia, but he also will not fight.24
62
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
Moreover, Achilleus swears that one day, when the Achaians are being slaughtered by Hektor, they will long for him (1.240–44). That the staff by which he swears is carried by Achaians who administer the justice of Zeus is surely not lost on Achilleus, who considers Agamemnon’s insult an act of injustice.25 His words constitute a precis that controls the plot of the Iliad up to Book 9. The oath, which he confirms by flinging the staff to the ground, anticipates the nod of Zeus, by which his intended plot is subsumed under the will of Zeus (Dios boul¯e ).26 Achilleus will subsequently, perhaps consequently, and to his great loss presume that his own plot and Zeus’ are identical. The quarrel has reached a deadlock. Neither antagonist has forced the other to back down; neither can afford to surrender. Nestor steps between them and enters the competition to define the status relation between the two heroes in order to bring an expeditious end to the quarrel. The greater part of Nestor’s speech, however, is devoted to defending his own status by reeling off a list of the mightiest warriors of an earlier generation who were persuaded by his authoritative speech acts.27 His point is clear: Agamemnon and Achilleus should listen to him too. He advises each to act with restraint 275
280
275
280
mÆte sÁ tÒndÉ égayÒw per §∆n époa¤reo koÊrhn, éllÉ ¶a Àw ofl pr«ta dÒsan g°raw uÂew ÉAxai«n: mÆte sÊ, Phle¤dh, ¶yelÉ §riz°menai basil∞Û éntib¤hn, §pe‹ oÎ poyÉ ımo¤hw ¶mmore tim∞w skhptoËxow basileÊw, ⁄ te ZeÁw kËdow ¶dvken. efi d¢ sÁ karterÒw §ssi, yeå d° se ge¤nato mÆthr, éllÉ ˜ ge f°rterÒw §stin §pe‹ pleÒnessin énãssei. ÉAtre˝dh, sÁ d¢ paËe teÚn m°now: aÈtår ¶gvge l¤ssomÉ ÉAxill∞Û mey°men xÒlon, ˘w m°ga pçsin ßrkow ÉAxaio›sin p°letai pol°moio kako›o.
‘You, great man that you are, yet do not take the girl away but let her be, a prize as the sons of the Achaians gave her first. Nor, son of Peleus, think to match your strength with the king, since never equal with the rest is the portion of tim¯e of the sceptred king to whom Zeus gives magnificence. Even though you are the stronger man, and the mother who bore you was immortal, yet is this man greater who is lord over more than you rule. Son of Atreus, give up your anger; even I entreat you to give over your bitterness against Achilleus, he who stands as a great bulwark of battle over all the Achaians.’ (1.275 –84)
The Quarrel
63
Inasmuch as he seems to give each man his due tim¯e, Nestor appears to be an impartial arbiter. But Nestor speaks from the perspective of the same model of leadership and distribution of goods as Agamemnon does.28 His counsel is in fact predicated on the common sense that scepter-bearing kings have a different share of tim¯e than anyone else.29 He thus casts Agamemnon as a king (basileus) and Achilleus not as one of many equal kings, but as a warrior subject to Agamemnon. Accordingly, Agamemnon should let Achilleus have the prize that was given him, and he should not endanger the expedition by angering a warrior so important to the war effort.30 Achilleus, on the other hand, should not make eris (strife) with a king whose allotment of tim¯e was outside the domain of the agonistic system. But what Nestor does not address, and what makes his speech ineffectual, is that he takes as a premise, because of his position within a fixed system of values, what is actually contested in the quarrel, namely, the qualitative difference in tim¯e accorded scepter-bearing kings. Agamemnon finally says outright what has been implicit in the quarrel over poin¯e: it is really about dominance: éllÉ ˜dÉ énØr §y°lei per‹ pãntvn ¶mmenai êllvn, pãntvn m¢n krat°ein §y°lei, pãntessi dÉ énãssein
‘Yet here is a man who wishes to be above all others, who wishes to hold power over all, and to be lord of all, and give them their orders’ (1.287–88)
Steven Lowenstam represents a view that Agamemnon’s fear should be understood as unfounded because “[t]here is never any question about the particular claims, that one is the rightful leader or the other the best warrior.”31 This reproduces Nestor’s position exactly and the belief he can be seen to mobilize. But Nestor cannot represent the unbiased voice of tradition on the rightful leader because, as we have seen, there are two coexisting and competing traditions in Homeric society for identifying and legitimating the best and, hence, the rightful leader.32 No less is at stake in the quarrel than whether the legitimate leader shall be a politically authenticated king who leads in accordance with the conventions and economy of a fixed system or an agonistically authenticated king who leads in accordance with the conventions and economy of aristocratic competition. On this view, we are justified in giving credence to Agamemnon’s concern that his privileged position is under attack.
64
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
Achilleus too spurns Nestor’s counsel. Although he insists that for his part he will not yield to Agamemnon (1.295 –99), he does nonetheless yield to Agamemnon’s demand for Briseis rather than fighting ‘on account of a girl’ (heineka kour¯es, 1.298).33 At the same time, he represents the Achaians, and not Agamemnon, as the ones who gave and now take her away (§pe¤ mÉ éf°lesy° ge dÒntew, 1.299). In other words, Achilleus surrenders the girl, whom it is increasingly clear he cannot keep, but does so without acknowledging Agamemnon’s right to give or take her, which he cannot afford to do. Thus the first and second compensation themes move toward dramatic resolution as the ship leaves with Chryseis and the offering for Apollo on board. And Agamemnon’s poin¯e theme achieves its resolution when he takes Briseis to compensate for loss of his prize. The fourth and last theme of the interlocking series in Book 1, in which the harm is Achilleus’ loss of tim¯e, incurred through Agamemnon’s abuse and his seizure of a woman, begins a protracted course of redefinition. ACHILLEUS, THETIS, AND ZEUS: THE PRIMEVAL THEME
Agamemnon’s revelation that the prize he intends to take from Achilleus is a woman, Briseis, generates a comparison between Achilleus and Chryses: Agamemnon robs both of women, a concubine and a daughter, respectively. Although the Iliad, from the outset, aligns Achilleus with Apollo, his ritual antagonist, through the wrath (m¯enis) theme,34 Achilleus identifies himself with Chryses primarily and with Apollo secondarily by conflating the two through the poin¯e theme.35 In the course of the quarrel he implicitly adopts elements of Chryses’ poin¯e theme as a model for his reaction to the loss sustained at Agamemnon’s hand. His strategy does not, however, proceed from a fully formed plan, but advances in response to Agamemnon’s and the embassy’s tactics. Achilleus’ appropriation of Chryses as a model begins with adoption of a similar pattern of roles and then progresses to using deliberate verbal echoes. The intervention of Athene in Achilleus’ deliberation scene marks his first formulation of a recognizable poin¯e theme arising from Agamemnon’s threat to take Briseis. By accepting Athene’s offer, Achilleus puts himself in a dependent position in relation to a divine advocate, as Chryses did in relation to Apollo. Athene represents the realization that, with an effective strategy, Achilleus may emerge from the situation of unprovoked harm
65
The Quarrel
with a three-fold gain in tim¯e rather than a loss. Subsequently in the quarrel, Achilleus describes Agamemnon’s abuse using language the narrator and Kalchas had used to designate Agamemnon’s abuse of Chryses (1.11, 94, and 244). He thereby tacitly accuses Agamemnon of going so far as to violate the bond of friendship (philot¯es) by treating his own comrade at arms just as he had treated the enemy. Moreover, Achilleus publicly projects a strategy of tisis through inactivity; he thereby arrogates the meaning of the plague to construct a public meaning of the devastation his withdrawal will bring. In this way he sets himself up to be appeased with repayment of tim¯e in the same manner that the assembly is preparing to appease Chryses and Apollo. As if to ensure that the model he appropriates is clear to the Achaians, Achilleus reminds the heralds who come for Briseis that he will someday be needed to ward off destruction, which he calls a loigos (1.341), the very term with which he himself and Kalchas had designated the plague (1.67 and 1.97). After Briseis is led away, the narrator scripts Achilleus’ losses and pursuit of compensation to echo Chryses’ even more closely, at times even reproducing conspicuous details of the Chryses episode. Achilleus, for example, walks alone along the beach, as Chryses had done (1.34 and 350). Like Chryses, he is represented as stretching forth his hands and praying (1.35 –36 and 351). Also, like Chryses, Achilleus is brought to tears by his loss (1.42 and 357). Achilleus’ prayer to Thetis echoes Chryses’ poin¯e theme in some respects. Inasmuch as he is seeking out divine assistance to recoup both his tim¯e and the stolen woman, Achilleus adopts the pattern of roles evinced in Chryses’ poin¯e theme. His poin¯e theme may thus be mapped as in Figure 3.3.
Thetis/Zeus Achilleus
poine
Agamemnon/Achaians
time Briseis
figure 3.3. Achilleus’ poin¯e theme
The basis on which Achilleus makes his appeal, however, is singular: whereas Chryses recalled his past favors to Apollo, Achilleus summons up a tangled web of debts and damages:
66
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
355
355
m∞ter, §pe¤ mÉ ¶tek°w ge minunyãdiÒn per §Ònta, timÆn p°r moi ˆfellen ÉOlÊmpiow §ggual¤jai ZeÁw Ícibrem°thw: nËn dÉ oÈd° me tutyÚn ¶tisen. ∑ gãr mÉ ÉAtre˝dhw eÈrÁ kre¤vn ÉAgam°mnvn ±t¤mhsen: •l∆n går ¶xei g°raw, aÈtÚw époÊraw.
‘Since, my mother, you bore me to be a man with a short life, therefore Zeus of the loud thunder on Olympos should grant me honour at least. But now he has given me not even a little. Now the son of Atreus, powerful Agamemnon, has dishonoured me, since he has taken away my prize and keeps it.’ (1.352–56)
The logic of his appeal comprises a premise, a conclusion, and a complaint, but the argument proceeds obliquely. The conclusion does not appear to follow naturally from the premise; the complaint appears capriciously dissociated from both premise and conclusion. What makes the logic of Achilleus’ prayer cohere is a story. The story is not told, but as Laura Slatkin has argued persuasively, Achilleus’ prayer evokes all of its themes.36 ‘Since you bore me to be a man with a short life’ (§pe¤ mÉ ¶tek°w ge minunyãdiÒn per §Ònta, 1.352) is the premise. It evokes the mythological background that drives Achilleus’ appeal – the marriage of Thetis and Peleus, which ensured that Thetis’ offspring would be mortal. ‘Therefore Zeus of the loud thunder on Olympos should grant me tim¯e at least’ (timÆn p°r moi ˆfellen ÉOlÊmpiow §ggual¤jai | ZeÁw Ícibrem°thw, 1.353–54) constitutes the conclusion, in which Achilleus holds Zeus liable to compensate him with tim¯e for the universal sovereignty he thereby denied him. He thus invokes the myth behind the marriage of Peleus and Thetis, the succession myth that is never broached directly in the Iliad, but that profoundly determines Achilleus’ condition and motivates his struggle for dominance.37 The succession myth tells the story of Zeus’ final mastery in the struggle to preserve the existing hierarchy of divine power. It points back to a rivalry between Zeus and Poseidon for the hand of Thetis and to the subsequent disclosing of a disturbing prophecy that Thetis was destined to bear a son greater (pherteros) than his father.38 Thetis’ power to bear a son stronger than his father threatened the entire divine order. Had Zeus married Thetis, Achilleus, the son who would have been born of this union, would have displaced Zeus and the violent struggle for succession would have continued. Zeus emerged victorious over the generational struggle by forcing Thetis to marry a mortal. The cosmic order and Zeus’ fixed
The Quarrel
67
position of dominance in that order were thus established by ensuring that Thetis’ son was mortal. As Laura Slatkin puts it, “the price of Zeus’s hegemony is Achilleus’ death.”39 Slatkin suggests further that Achilleus appropriates Thetis’ marriage to Peleus as the reminder of past favors (hupomn¯ema) in his request of favor from Zeus. In sum, Achilleus’ favor to Zeus consists of his being short-lived (minunthadios), whereby Zeus’ sovereignty is guaranteed.40 Slatkin’s theory may be modified slightly in view of the development of the compensation theme: underlying Achilleus’ appeal is a perception of his mortality as gratuitous harm for which Zeus owes him poin¯e, that is, compensatory tim¯e. Achilleus’ complaint proceeds obliquely from his premise and conclusion: 355
355
nËn dÉ oÈd° me tutyÚn ¶tisen. ∑ gãr mÉ ÉAtre˝dhw eÈrÁ kre¤vn ÉAgam°mnvn ±t¤mhsen: •l∆n går ¶xei g°raw aÈtÚw époÊraw.
‘But now he has given me not even a little. Now the son of Atreus, powerful Agamemnon, has dishonoured me, since he has taken away my prize and keeps it.’ (1.354–56)
Implicit in his claim that Agamemnon has dishonored him is a complaint that Zeus has therein not honored him.41 His logic is neither capricious nor heavy-handed; it proceeds on a specific homology, already established by the scepter of Pelops, between the Olympian fixed system and the Achaian one. Both fixed systems are political fields (i.e., fields of power) that are organized by homologous relations, analogous specific capital (tim¯e ), and a similar logic.42 Agamemnon and Zeus are represented in the Iliad as occupying homologous fixed and dominant positions in their respective political fields – the field of power among the elite warriors in the Panachaian host and the field of power in the divine order. The crucial difference between Agamemnon’s and Zeus’ positions is that Zeus has once and for all put an end to generational strife and succession; it is now the case that eris is played out in the human sphere, where Agamemnon’s privileged position in a fixed system is still assailable and where Achilleus is the mortal bearer of eris. The juxtaposing of the narrative of the quarrel in the assembly with that of a quarrel on Olympos at the end of Book 1 (1.536–611) demonstrates that eris has in fact been effectively displaced. When Hera realizes that Zeus has conspired with Thetis and she threatens to contest his designs, Zeus is able to impose his will by force (1.565 –67). A situation of contentiousness
68
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
ensues (1.570), but in the same manner that Nestor attempts to mediate the quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilleus by mobilizing the belief that Agamemnon is the greater (pherteros), Hephaistos tries to settle the divine quarrel (neikos; cf. 1.579) and avert destructive deeds (loigia erga, 1.573) on Olympos by invoking Zeus’ superiority (phertatos, 1.581).43 The quarrel between Hera and Zeus will lead not to an impasse or to tragedy, but to a humorous resolution, purchased by Achilleus’ mortality. In sum, Achilleus claims that Zeus should give him poin¯e as compensatory tim¯e for his mortality, but inasmuch as Agamemnon has taken tim¯e by seizing his prize, Zeus has failed to give him the tim¯e he believes is his due. Achilleus neatly, even boldly, conflates the tim¯e that Zeus fails to give him with the tim¯e that Agamemnon fails to give him. In complaining that dishonor at the hands of Agamemnon amounts to dishonor at the hands of Zeus, Achilleus is merely transferring responsibility for harm from one homologous fixed position to another. He thus engages in the same game of reallocation of damage in which Agamemnon had engaged, and he does it more effectively. When Thetis hears her son’s prayer, she rushes up from the sea (1.358). At her request, Achilleus recalls the events that brought him to this point. His speech, the longest in Iliad Book 1, reports all four compensation themes that comprise the quarrel, beginning with the sack of Thebe (1.365 –92) and continuing right up to Agamemnon’s seizing Briseis. He does not repeat any of the direct speech contained in the themes but speaks instead in his own voice as a secondary narrator. At times Achilleus repeats the narrator text exactly, at times he summarizes it, and occasionally he adapts it substantially. The apoina theme involving Agamemnon and Chryses (1.372–79) as Achilleus reports it corresponds in its details to the narratorial account (1.12–32). His report of the poin¯e theme involving Agamemnon, Chryses, and Apollo, however, exhibits two noteworthy differences from the narratorial account. Achilleus says the priest went away angry (1.380); the narrator says that he departed in fear (1.33). Further, Achilleus claims that Apollo heard Chryses because Chryses was dear to him (1.381). Chryses’ own prayer, however, is based on an exchange of favors (1.40–41). Achilleus is not recalling Chryses’ theme, or what he knows of it, disinterestedly for Thetis’ benefit, nor is he simply adopting Chryses as a model. Instead, Achilleus is constructing Chryses’ poin¯e theme, against the narrator, by conflating Chryses and Apollo.44 By attributing Apollo’s anger to Chryses, Achilleus creates an angry (not fearful) injured party, a victim who does not accept a position of inferiority in relation to the perpetrator
The Quarrel
69
of damage.45 He creates a model by which the injured party uses a strategy of tisis through inactivity to recover not only loss of tim¯e and of a woman (Chryseis), but also gifts in addition (the offering for Apollo). He is not only composing his own grand poin¯e theme, but he appears to be recasting the narrator’s Chryses to support it. And the Homeric audience is allowed, even encouraged, to see him doing so. Achilleus, moreover, remembers the events of the assembly in such a way as to construct himself as pious and Agamemnon as an angry and vindictive man who had made good on an unprovoked threat to take away a woman whom the Achaians had given as an honorific prize (1.386–92). With the situation between himself and Agamemnon thus defined, Achilleus makes his request to Thetis (1.394–412). He asks her to supplicate Zeus and to remind him of her assistance to him in the past (1.394 and 407). Achilleus may complain that Zeus owes him poin¯e for his mortality, but trying to exact poin¯e from a god would be unprecedented.46 Thetis should make her appeal, therefore, on the basis of a favor that she had done for him. Achilleus specifically mentions a time when all the gods had tried to bind Zeus but Thetis set him free, summoning Briareos to his aid and thereby warding off destruction (loigos, 1.394–406). Given the evocative force of Achilleus’ earlier allusion to the succession myth, Slatkin is surely justified in suggesting that the reference to Briareos, who was greater in strength than his father, alludes to the succession myth and to Thetis’ own role in it (1.404).47 Achilleus’ request is that Zeus help the Trojans so that the Achaians may be pinned in along the ships and slaughtered (1.408–12). Implicit in his speech is the request that Zeus grant him tim¯e by diminishing Agamemnon’s tim¯e as commander in chief of the army, a strategy of tisis. Hence Achilleus’ withdrawal is not a repudiation of the competition for tim¯e in the fluid status system, but a protest against the constraints, represented immediately by Agamemnon, that stand in his way of using the system to rise to the top of the hierarchy. Only now is the dramatic resolution to the loss that brought Chryses to the Achaian ships finally narrated (1.430–74). The father’s tim¯e is restored, and he receives back his daughter. The god is propitiated, and the tisis (called destruction, loigos) is brought to an end (1.472–74). Achilleus’ aggressive appropriation of Chryses’ model, including his conflation of Chryses and Apollo, would lead the Homeric audience to expect that, if Agamemnon also returns the woman and offers gifts, Achilleus will call off the tisis. The juxtaposing of the joyful scene of Chryseis’ return and Achilleus’ Chryses-like prayer only confirms that belief.
70
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
When Thetis goes to Olympos, she approaches Zeus with gestures and words of supplication (1.500–10). The request she makes for her son, short-lived beyond all others (¯okumor¯otatos all¯on, 1.505), evokes not the episode with Briareos but the primeval generational succession myth.48 The allusion to the succession myth and Thetis’ role in it makes the exchange, as Thetis requests it, one of compensation. When Zeus remains silent, Thetis presses her supplication: let him either promise or refuse it, that she may know how much she is most dishonored (atim¯etot¯e, 1.516) of all the gods. With Achilleus’ tim¯e thus aligned with Thetis’, Zeus relents (1.528–30). The nod that shakes Olympos answers to Achilleus’ oath and casting down of the staff in the assembly.49 It sets in motion a cosmological version of Chryses’ poin¯e theme that mirrors and is motivated by the cosmological theme that displaced eris onto the human sphere.
4 The Embassy to Achilleus In the Name of the Father
A gift is not signed. Derrida
THE DEBACLE
Zeus’ nod that had shaken Olympos in Book 1 of the Iliad seems not to have affected events on the Trojan plain up to Book 8, for the Greeks enjoy a string of victories. But after Zeus weighs the two fates of the armies and the Achaians’ sink (8.69–73),1 he sends panic through the Greek army so that Hektor is able to drive them back to their ships and behind a hastily constructed palisade. Darkness falls too soon for the Trojans on that day, but for the Achaians it brings a brief respite (8.485 –88). Both sides anticipate that the coming day will decide the issue of the war. The light emanating from the Trojan camp renders stark the dread that settles around the Achaian ships. And so, as Book 9 opens, the dispirited Achaians are pinned behind a wall that will not long protect them against the Trojan onslaught. And the Greek commander in chief is in tears. When the Achaians were dying from the plague sent by Apollo, Achilleus had summoned an assembly to determine its cause and seek a remedy; as a result, Agamemnon was forced to pay compensatory tim¯e to redress the harm and bring an end to the plague. In what can be seen as an effort to generate a similar response to the debacle that would follow his withdrawal, Achilleus himself has overtly aligned his claim of poin¯e with that of Chryses, a strategy the narrator supports. But Achilleus’ poin¯e theme has since Book 1 been as little evident in the narrative as Achilleus himself. And the longing for him that he swore would come upon the 71
72
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
Achaians has not materialized openly (1.239–41). Agamemnon earlier owned that if Zeus had not so often driven him into conflict with the leaders of the Achaians, like Achilleus, they probably would have sacked Troy long ago (2.370–80). But now in the face of crushing defeat he makes no mention of the absent warrior, nor does he make any move to solicit his return.2 Instead, when Agamemnon addresses the assembled troops in Book 9, the only cause he puts forward for the Achaian rout is ‘blind ruin’ (at¯e), and the only remedy is going home (9.18–28).3 What Agamemnon means by at¯e, or ‘blind ruin’, is not developed in this context, but he is certainly not using it in reference to the quarrel with Achilleus, which would only implicate him further in the deaths of the Achaians and potentially make him liable once again for poin¯e. William Wyatt’s suggestion that in this speech at¯e consists in an unrealized attempt to take Troy or almost the equivalent of delusion seems reasonable, especially if Agamemnon is trying to avoid being blamed for the rout.4 Whatever definition we devise, it must nominally be applicable also to Book 2, and Wyatt’s is satisfactory on both counts. In any case, Agamemnon does not leave the consequence of his delusion in doubt: he announces that Zeus has ordered him home, his own reputation besmirched, but at least with the army partially intact.5 Agamemnon’s motives in this scene are inscrutable, and his tears may or may not directly report his emotion. It is possible to imagine the speech as a strategy to cause the generals to rally the troops and/or force him to reconcile with Achilleus. Such a reading may be supported by the eagerness with which Agamemnon can be seen to respond to Nestor’s proposal. But in any case, the failure of the war effort, compounded by the Achaian rout, has diminished Agamemnon’s tim¯e substantially, and he is shown as trying to salvage what he can. Agamemnon’s speech on this occasion is nearly a verbatim repetition of the first half and closing lines of the speech he gave to the assembly the morning after the deceptive dream.6 At that time, he spoke the words in anticipation of objections that were not forthcoming. In Book 9, however, the Greek troops are even more demoralized from defeat and Hektor is camped on the Trojan plain. It would seem that on this occasion Agamemnon speaks in earnest. But as Bruce Heiden observes, Agamemnon’s speech conveys a mixed message. The reminders of Zeus’ earlier promise of success and of the cities he has already destroyed furnish an incentive for the Achaians to stay, as does the prospect of returning home in dishonor; the assertion that Zeus deceived Agamemnon and now commands him to return, and the claim that the Achaians will not take Troy, say “go home.”7 Whether Agamemnon intends it or not, the
The Embassy to Achilleus
73
ambiguity in the speech enables Diomedes to construct an argument against it, which he does (9.32–49). Agamemnon here unwittingly accomplishes his objective in Book 2: since the Greeks have insisted on remaining at Troy, Agamemnon is in a position to distribute the blame in case of failure but still garner the credit in case of victory.8 When it becomes clear, however, that the assembly will support Diomedes’ plan, Nestor moves the debate to a private council of the leaders ( gerontes, 9.70 and 90). This reverses the natural order of such councils generally and of the council in Book 2 specifically. But as Nestor’s mild public rebuke of Diomedes and his pointed private rebuke of Agamemnon make clear, he regards Diomedes’ project as not only incomplete (9.56), but deeply flawed and potentially disastrous. Nestor, at least, does not believe that Troy will be taken without Achilleus, or perhaps that the Achaians will even survive if they stay and fight without him. In this more intimate setting designed to allow the Greek commander to save face, Nestor effectively dispenses with Agamemnon’s public account of the Achaian defeat. He begins, however, by affirming the symbolic value of the mainstays of Agamemnon’s position of superiority: he is king (anax) over many men (9.96–99).9 Agamemnon therefore has no reason to suspect subterfuge, as he had when Achilleus and Kalchas blamed him for the plague. As he does consistently, Nestor speaks from the perspective of the fixed system and supports Agamemnon’s privileged position in it. His only quarrel is with Agamemnon’s rash and ultimately disastrous conduct toward Achilleus:
110
110
§j ¶ti toË ˜te, diogen°w, Brish˝da koÊrhn xvom°nou ÉAxil∞ow ¶bhw klis¤hyen époÊraw, oÎ ti kay' ≤m°terÒn ge nÒon. mãla gãr toi ¶gvge pÒllÉ épemuyeÒmhn: sÁ d¢ s“ megalÆtori yum“ e‡jaw êndra f°riston, ˘n éyãnato¤ per ¶tisan, ±t¤mhsaw: •l∆n går ¶xeiw g°raw. éllÉ ¶ti ka‹ nËn fraz≈mesyÉ Àw k°n min éressãmenoi pep¤yoimen d≈rois¤n t' égano›sin ¶pess¤ te meilix¤oisi.
‘Ever since that day, illustrious, when you went from the shelter of angered Achilleus, taking by force the girl Briseis against the will of the rest of us, since I for my part urged you strongly not to, but you, giving way to your proud heart’s anger, dishonoured a great man, one whom the immortals honour, since you have taken his prize and keep it. But let us even now think how we can make this good and persuade him with soothing gifts and soothing words.’ (9.106–13)
74
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
The premise of Nestor’s speech is that the Achaians are in desperate straits because Achilleus is absent from the fighting. And he puts the blame for Achilleus’ withdrawal and the ensuing rout squarely on Agamemnon. Agamemnon may wish to deny liability for the defeat publicly in the interest of maintaining his tim¯e and safeguarding his privileged status, but Nestor does not allow him to deny it privately and so avoid paying poin¯e. He preserves Agamemnon from having to take the first step toward Achilleus on his own, but leaves little room for him to wriggle out of dealing with the harm he inflicted. Nestor rehearses Achilleus’ poin¯e theme in a manner that evokes Chryses’, echoing Kalchas and the narrator’s language for the harm Agamemnon had inflicted on Chryses (‘took tim¯e from’, ¯etim¯esen, 1.93 and 11). Indeed, the public meaning of the plague has been that Agamemnon dishonored the priest by refusing his apoina, thereby angering Apollo, and that Apollo consequently inflicted a plague on the Achaians, causing Agamemnon to restore Chryses’ tim¯e by paying back the harm through loss of Achaian lives, returning the girl without apoina, and sending gifts to appease the god. Achilleus has successfully cast himself as Chryses by his withdrawal and appeal to Zeus to punish Agamemnon with the loss of his men. Nestor exploits the similarity between the two situations in order to advance his plan, and in so doing tacitly accepts Achilleus’ success. Whereas in Chryses’ theme it is Apollo who is angry, Nestor ascribes anger to Achilleus and thus conflates Chryses, from whom Agamemnon had taken a woman, with Apollo, whose anger had to be appeased; he thereby configures Achilleus’ poin¯e theme in the same way Achilleus himself had (1.380– 81). He leaves Agamemnon no choice: he must give back the girl (implicit in Nestor’s speech), together with soothing gifts (d¯ora agana) and, in addition, soothing words (epea meilikhia, 9.113) – perhaps an admission that he himself was to blame.10 Nestor uses a generic term for gifts, d¯ora, which is not a marked term for compensation, as apoina and poin¯e are. The term appears in apoina themes, but does not itself specify direction and so requires further definition.11 It is possible, in theory, that Nestor is encouraging Agamemnon to give gifts to Achilleus gratuitously, ignoring the harm he had done and the status disequilibrium it created, but his faulting Agamemnon for taking the girl and his oblique allusion to the Chryses/Apollo model tells against it. He has made a case for sending Achilleus compensation to right a wrong, and the resonance with Chryses’ poin¯e theme confirms it. In this speech, by the unmarked term d¯ora Nestor clearly means poin¯e, though he prudently leaves it to Agamemnon to admit his wrongdoing and qualify the gifts appropriately. By the
The Embassy to Achilleus
75
conventions established in the discrete themes, paying back the harm he inflicted on Achilleus should amount to a loss of tim¯e for Agamemnon. But if Achilleus accepts, thereby realizing a corresponding gain in tim¯e, the disequilibrium created by the gratuitous harm would be redressed. Achilleus’ tisis having accomplished its purpose, he could be expected – according to the Chryses/Apollo model – to reenter the fighting and bring an end to the destruction of the Greek armies. But the external auditors already know that this will not happen. Zeus has revealed that Achilleus is fated to reenter the fighting only when it takes place among the ships and over the fallen Patroklos (8.470–83). Nestor’s efforts to continue scripting Achilleus’ poin¯e theme in accordance with that of Chryses would bring the poem to a premature end, contrary to the will of Zeus (the Dios boul¯e), or put another way, contrary to the traditional plot of the Iliad.12 The Homeric audience would be waiting to hear not if but how the will of Zeus prevails. They would not have to wait long, for although Agamemnon agrees to send gifts to Achilleus, he defines them in a way that derails Nestor’s plan. AGAMEMNON’S UNLIMITED APOINA
In a point-by-point response to Nestor’s language, Agamemnon formally acknowledges the correlation between his dire circumstances and the quarrel. He echoes Nestor’s use of ‘honor’ (tiemen; 9.110) and uses it to explain why Zeus is subduing (damasse, 9.118) the Greeks. So much of Nestor’s strategy succeeds. Agamemnon then, however, replaces Nestor’s ‘took tim¯e from’ (atim¯an) with ‘delusion’ (at¯e) so as to mitigate his own responsibility. His formulation even leaves it open that Zeus sent delusion to him as part of his strategy of giving tim¯e to Achilleus. He thus sums up the situation, which Nestor has just described in terms of dishonoring (atim¯an), as deception, which appears nowhere in Nestor’s speech: 115
Œ g°ron, oÎ ti ceËdow §måw êtaw kat°lejaw: éasãmhn, oÈdÉ aÈtÚw éna¤nomai. ént¤ nu poll«n la«n §st‹n énØr, ˜n te ZeÁw k∞ri filÆs˙: …w nËn toËton ¶tise, dãmasse d¢ laÚn ÉAxai«n.
115
‘Aged sir, this was no lie when you spoke of my delusion (atas). I was deluded (aasam¯en),13 I myself will not deny it. Worth many fighters is that man whom Zeus in his heart loves, as now he has honoured this man and beaten down the Achaian people.’ (9.115 –18)
76
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
Scholars have discussed at length the implications of Agamemnon’s use of at¯e (translated as ‘delusion’) here.14 Lesky demonstrated that, by the principle of double motivation, Homer could ascribe human action to divine influence without eliminating human responsibility.15 Nevertheless, John Bryan Hainsworth and Jasper Griffin, in two recent commentaries on Iliad 9, contend that Agamemnon’s use of at¯e, or ‘delusion’, does, in fact, constitute an attempt to palliate his conduct in the quarrel.16 Most scholars would agree that, even if the appeal allows Agamemnon to save face to some extent, it does not fully absolve him of responsibility. As we shall see, Agamemnon accepts responsibility without accepting liability, or culpability. Achilleus assuredly did not intend for Agamemnon to be relieved of liability for the defeat the Achaians suffered as a result of his withdrawal (1.411–12). Instead, he hoped to diminish Agamemnon’s tim¯e until he recognized his mistake in depriving Achilleus of tim¯e and returned the girl together with appropriate compensation for his insult. Achilleus’ strategy of tisis has succeeded in diminishing Agamemnon’s tim¯e. Adkins concludes that Agamemnon consequently accepts responsibility to “recompense” Achilleus for the insult.17 Donlan agrees that this is what the social rules of Homeric society require: “What is required by custom, let us be clear, is for him to return Briseis with a public apology and a fitting compensatory gift.”18 As we have seen, a “fitting gift” for paying back harm corresponds typologically to a payment of poin¯e. Agamemnon agrees to send gifts, but he does not define them as poin¯e. He deploys none of the language typically associated with poin¯e, nor does he admit inflicting gratuitous harm for which the goods are recompense. He nowhere concedes that his actions amounted to ‘taking tim¯e from’. Agamemnon admits only delusion and thereby evades, at least to some extent, accepting liability for Achilleus’ loss and for the resulting defeat of the Achaian army, which he will implicitly assign to Achilleus. In other words, he does not accept blame but only responsibility, that is, obligation, as commander in chief, for preserving the lives of the defeated Achaian army and, in so doing, invokes the language and typology of apoina:19 120
éllÉ §pe‹ éasãmhn fres‹ leugal°˙si piyÆsaw, íc §y°lv ér°sai dÒmena¤ tÉ épere¤siÉ êpoina.20 Ím›n dÉ §n pãntessi periklutå d«rÉ ÙnomÆnv:
‘But since I was deluded (aasam¯en) in the persuasion of my heart’s evil,
The Embassy to Achilleus 120
77
I am willing to make all good, and give unlimited apoina Before you all I will count off my gifts in their splendour:’ (9.119–21)
Agamemnon specifies the nature and function of his gifts using the single most significant marked terms for themes of the apoina-type in the Iliad: unlimited (apereisi’) apoina (9.120). This has attracted surprisingly little attention in the scholarship.21 Emmet Robbins notices that Agamemnon offers apoina to Achilleus to return to battle and, further, that it is the single instance of a Greek’s offer of ransom.22 He stops short, however, of investigating the typology of Agamemnon’s offer or its implications for Achilleus’ refusal. Critical interpretations that are entrenched in the idea that Agamemnon’s offer is compensation for the harm he inflicted by seizing Briseis proceed on the assumption that apoina is just another way of saying poin¯e. But the discrete themes have established a firm typological and social-symbolic demarcation between apoina and poin¯e in the Iliad. Moreover, Agamemnon’s offer of apoina may be contrasted with a socially acceptable offer of poin¯e in a (programmatically) similar situation – the slaughter of the suitors in Odyssey 22. Eurymachos, one of the suitors, admits that Odysseus’ punishing them is fitting (aisima, 22.46) because of the reckless deeds (atasthala, Od. 22.47) they had done and the possessions they had robbed him of (Od. 22.56). He nonetheless asks for mercy, since Odysseus had already killed the person who was to blame (aitios, Od. 22.48), Antinoos. Eurymachos further promises that, if Odysseus will spare his own people, they will make public reconciliation and pay him back (apod¯osomen, 22.58) in gold and silver for all they had eaten and drunk in his house.23 What we learn from this scene – as the Homeric audience would have recognized – is that it is socially, typologically, and formulaically possible in Homer for an elite Greek in Agamemnon’s condition to admit wrongdoing, cast himself in a dependent position, and make a culturally acceptable offer of poin¯e.24 But Agamemnon does not. Agamemnon defines the gifts as an exchange aimed not at repaying the harm he had inflicted on Achilleus, or poin¯e, but at sparing the Achaians from the life-threatening situation he represents Achilleus as now inflicting on them, or apoina. Put another way, Agamemnon gives apoina in order to recover something – namely, Achaian lives and perhaps even Achilleus himself – but he pointedly does not give back Briseis or pay back tim¯e.25 His offer therefore conforms in social-symbolic function as well as in terminology to apoina.
78
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
Agamemnon’s use of the words unlimited apoina, following the Greek defeat of Book 8, would arouse audience expectation, generated by the discrete themes, of an apoina theme. In fact, Agamemnon’s offer does commence in such a way that it fulfills expectations that adhere to deployment of the type. Assuming the role of the father, he ticks off the apoina he will give if Achilleus turns from his anger and thereby brings an end to the destruction of the Achaians: seven tripods; ten talents of gold; twenty cauldrons; twelve prize-winning racehorses; seven women of Lesbos, whom Achilleus himself had captured; and, not least, Briseis, with whom Agamemnon swears he has not slept. Moreover, if Troy is sacked, Achilleus may have twenty Trojan women and all the gold and bronze he can load in his ship.26 Agamemnon’s list goes on: if they return to Argos, Achilleus may be Agamemnon’s son-in-law, with his choice of three daughters to wed without a bride-price. In fact, Agamemnon claims he will honor (tiemen) Achilleus like a son and, in addition, give him seven cities inhabited by men who will honor (tiemen) him like a god. To the external auditor, whose interpretation has been conditioned by the discrete themes, and, as shall be seen, to the internal auditors as well, it soon becomes apparent that Agamemnon is manipulating even the typology of apoina. Accepting apoina should cost the victor none of his gains in tim¯e. But Agamemnon’s list of prestige goods, unparalleled for sheer volume, inverts the social function of apoina: the gifts would cease to consolidate the status that Achilleus had earned and make it a function of Agamemnon’s own largess.27 They would, moreover, place Achilleus under heavy obligation to Agamemnon in a variety of ways, not the least of which is the obligation to spare the Achaians, whom Agamemnon has ransomed, by returning to battle.28 In fact, several of the items, by their very nature, assert Agamemnon’s position of superiority in relation to Achilleus. For example, since Achilleus himself had captured the seven women of Lesbos, that Agamemnon had taken possession of and is able to dispose of them as he wishes constitutes a patent display of his redistributive role in the fixed system. Briseis herself is included at the end of the list as one of eight women that Agamemnon, having coopted, purposes now to give.29 Perhaps most telling, offers of apoina conventionally presuppose a situation of hostility; apoina are never in the discrete themes exchanged between philoi. By offering apoina to Achilleus, Agamemnon casts him in the thematic role of the enemy. By offering apoina, Agamemnon attempts to redefine his position in relation to Achilleus vis-`a-vis Chryses’ poin¯e theme. Nestor has accepted
79
The Embassy to Achilleus
Achilleus’ appropriation of Chryses’ poin¯e theme, in which Achilleus corresponds to Chryses, Briseis to Chryseis, Zeus/Thetis to Apollo, Agamemnon to Agamemnon, and the Achaians to the Achaians (Figure 4.1). Agamemnon, however, tries to reassign his own and Achilleus’ roles. In Book 1, by seizing Briseis he cast Achilleus as the one who loses the girl; now he casts him in the role of Apollo (cf. Figures 2.6 and 4.2). In both cases, Agamemnon’s strategy – implicit in Book 1 and explicit in Book 9 – is the same: he tries to preserve his own status by casting himself as the father who offers apoina to save his army, previously Apollo’s victims and now Achilleus’, rather than as the perpetrator of damage who pays poin¯e for an insult. The roles in the theme as Agamemnon defines it may thus be mapped as in Figure 4.2. Thetis/Zeus Achilleus
poine
Agamemnon/Achaians
time Briseis
figure 4.1. Achilleus’ poin¯e theme Agamemnon
apoina
Achilleus
the Achaians
figure 4.2. Agamemnon’s apoina theme
The last items Agamemnon names are situated in an undetermined future; they are, moreover, dependent on the sack of Troy and a successful return to Argos (9.14–55).30 In this way, Agamemnon makes the apoina offered to persuade Achilleus to reenter the fighting dependent on Achilleus’ ensuring the plunder of Troy. The apoina are thus conditional, first, upon Achilleus’ participation in the tim¯e-based fluid ranking system, which he regards as utterly disabled by Agamemnon’s conflation of systems, and, second, upon his gaining a return home, which Achilleus will claim he would forfeit by reentering the fighting (9.410–16). Furthermore, as Donlan and Beidelman observe, Agamemnon’s offer to make Achilleus a son-in-law and to set him over seven villages is a standard
80
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
motif of domination.31 Agamemnon has not only positioned himself as a father in relation to the Achaians, but is attempting to do so in relation to Achilleus as well. He asserts that if Achilleus wants to be obeyed and given tim¯e like a god, he will have to accept Agamemnon as king and father. Agamemnon not only transforms the offer of poin¯e prescribed by Nestor into one of apoina, and then manipulates apoina as a gift attack against Achilleus, but he also declines soothing words. In fact, refusing to offer such words is as necessary a part of his strategy of definition as recommending them was of Nestor’s. By arrogating the role of the father, he legitimately does not supplicate, which would constitute admission of defeat. Instead, he displaces the role of defeated warrior/son onto the Achaians (‘he beat down the Achaian people’, dãmasse d¢ laÚn ÉAxai«n, 9.118). He insists that the disequilibrium Achilleus has won is at the expense of the army, not himself. So his offer simultaneously displaces Achilleus’ advantage and reasserts his own claims to superiority. Agamemnon’s offer of apoina thus corresponds exactly to his overt demand for Achilleus’ subordination:
160
taËtã k° ofl tel°saimi metallÆjanti xÒloio. dmhyÆtv: ÉA˝dhw toi éme¤lixow ±dÉ édãmastow, toÎneka ka¤ te broto›si ye«n ¶xyistow èpãntvn: ka¤ moi ÍpostÆtv, ˜sson basileÊterÒw efimi ±dÉ ˜sson geneª progen°sterow eÎxomai e‰nai.
‘All this I will bring to pass for him, if he changes from his anger. Let him give way. For Hades gives not way, and is pitiless, and therefore he among all the gods is most hateful to mortals. 160 And let him yield place to me, inasmuch as I am the kinglier and inasmuch as I can call myself born the elder.’ (9.157–61)
Agamemnon’s demand that Achilleus submit to him, coming as it does at the end of his offer of apoina, conforms to his behavior in Book 1: he involves himself in the contest to define loss and compensation but eventually resorts to his ‘kinglier’ position as the final court of appeal. The assertion that he is kinglier than Achilleus is surely to be understood as a declaration that the system in which Agamemnon can claim to be best has priority over the fluid hierarchy in which Achilleus is best among many elites who are alike kings (basil¯ees). The strategy of reminding Achilleus that he is older may be a reflex of the father role Agamemnon has taken, or it may be in imitation of Nestor’s tactics in Book 1 (1.259).
The Embassy to Achilleus
81
In sum, what Nestor urged, what Achilleus wants, and what Agamemnon must pay if he is to redress the harm he inflicted is poin¯e. Agamemnon offers apoina, however, because it, unlike poin¯e, allows him to mitigate his loss of personal status and affirm his dominant position in relation to Achilleus. It enables him to figure himself in the role of the father seeking to preserve the lives of the Greek army. But apoina do not redress the harm Achilleus has sustained; his poin¯e theme is therefore left unresolved. To add insult to injury, in taking the role of the father seeking to save his sons with apoina, Agamemnon casts Achilleus as an outsider, arguably as an enemy. His strategy once again is to give what he can afford to lose, namely, Briseis and prestige goods, in such a way as to keep what he will not risk. Agamemnon parries Achilleus’ devastating strategy of withdrawal by manipulating conventions of compensation, by deploying his own paternal authority, and by asserting his privileged position as commander in chief of the assembled Greek armies. It would have accomplished a remarkable recovery had it not been such a breathtaking miscalculation. Not only has Agamemnon failed to anticipate how his opponent may appropriate and turn his offer of apoina against him, he has ensured that he will do so by making an offer Achilleus cannot but refuse. If his gifts are to be salvaged for the project of dominating Achilleus and enticing him back into the fighting, his offer must be brought into line with conventional relations and institutions of heroic society. Jasper Griffin claims that all the heroes regard Agamemnon’s offer as satisfactory in terms of the heroic code.32 It is my contention that at the very least Nestor did not and none of the embassy did. Although Nestor prudently tells Agamemnon that his gifts are acceptable (9.164), he apparently despairs of eliciting soothing words from the commander himself.33 Accordingly, he sets about managing the details of an embassy to convey the offer to Achilleus. Phoinix he appoints as leader, followed by Aias, Odysseus, and two heralds (9.165 –72). Before the embassy departs, Nestor gives them, and Odysseus especially, instructions to which the external audience is not privy (9.179–81). If we can surmise his coaching from the strategy the embassy in fact adopts, it is plausible that the substance involves the soothing words that he sought from Agamemnon but will now be entirely up to them. Nestor is thus represented as unwilling to let half of his proposal go unheeded or to sanction Agamemnon’s breach of social rules among comrades bound by ethical ties of friendship ( philoi hetairoi). Put another way, if Agamemnon’s apoina are to be effective in persuading Achilleus, the embassy must disguise them. Nestor’s pointed look at Odysseus, although it has attracted little attention in the scholarship,
82
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
is telling; it seems to undermine privately his public appointment of Phoinix as leader and to stress Odysseus’ role in the embassy.34 Although the traditional opposition between Odysseus and Achilleus might seem to disqualify him from any special role in the embassy, the contrary may actually be true.35 Odysseus’ traditional role as a trickster qualifies him uniquely for the task of dissembling and hence for the embassy’s mission.36 At the same time it dooms him, in this poem, to fail.37 The embassy speeches further reveal that the internal auditors have understood the import of Agamemnon’s apoina. Each of the emissaries attempts to appropriate Agamemnon’s goods, but they attach different and shifting definitions to them by supplying the soothing words he had eschewed. The embassy’s project no less than Agamemnon’s is domination. But it need not be construed as hostile insofar as they remain within the bounds of behavior sanctioned among comrades in warrior society (philoi hetairoi). Whereas Agamemnon had deployed the diction of hostility implicit in the term apoina, usurped paternal authority, and resorted to outright demands for subordination, the emissaries, more adept at the discourse of elite competition, omit the offensive term apoina and the condition of subordination. They invoke instead the relations of friendship (philot¯es) and family. They recast Agamemnon’s gifts typologically and so bring them into conformity with exchanges conventional among philoi. Odysseus and Phoinix moreover replace Agamemnon with a more acceptable paternal authority. The emissaries thus appeal to values and conventions of heroic society that they presume Achilleus will share, including conventions of compensation. Pierre Bourdieu calls such presumption of shared values in the interest of domination “symbolic violence”: So long as overt violence, that of the usurer or the ruthless master, is collectively disapproved of and is liable to provoke either a violent riposte or the flight of the victim – that is, in both cases, for lack of any legal recourse, the destruction of the very relationship that was to be exploited – symbolic violence, gentle, invisible violence, unrecognized as such, chosen as much as undergone, that of trust, obligation, personal loyalty, hospitality, gifts, debts, piety, in a word, of all the virtues honoured by the ethic of honour, presents itself as the most economical mode of domination because it best corresponds to the economy of the system.38
Symbolic violence is the common sense of conventional values and rules maintained and imposed as legitimate in the interest of a dominant group. Because the arbitrariness of conventional values is misrecognized, they are
The Embassy to Achilleus
83
taken for granted as natural. Symbolic power is thus the invisible power of collective belief, wielded to impose the common sense of the social world and, thereby, to effect symbolic violence, or domination. Symbolic violence as a result does not and cannot operate by overt force. It succeeds, in part, because the one wielding it believes he or she is acting in good faith; the belief and the rhetoric must be that there is no intimidation. Bourdieu’s notion of symbolic violence offers a useful conceptual model for interpreting the embassy speeches. The emissaries use symbolic violence when they deploy the common sense of heroic society in the effort to persuade Achilleus that accepting the gifts and returning to the fighting are, after all, the right thing to do. But, as we have seen, the common sense of heroic society is not monolithic. Achilleus shares the collective beliefs of heroic society, but he also effectively and consistently exploits its ambiguities to resist domination and pursue his own claims. He combats the embassy’s common sense with more of the same:39 he accuses Agamemnon of disabling the materially based status system by not distributing spoils fairly; he unmasks and rejects the apoina and, in so doing, deploys a mixed-type theme to demand poin¯e; he invokes the rule of helping friends and harming enemies; and he coopts for his own cause the bride-stealing theme that forms the moral basis of the war. Far from decrying the traditional and materially based values of heroic society, Achilleus wields them more adeptly and more aggressively than his peers. THE EMBASSY TO ACHILLEUS
When the embassy reaches Achilleus’ shelter, he warmly welcomes (two of ) them as his dearest friends among the Achaians (Akhai¯on philtatoi, 9.198).40 Although he regards Agamemnon as having violated the friendship that forms the bond among men in warrior society, he does not seem to consider himself entirely detached from it. Patroklos prepares a meal, which Achilleus, as gracious host, shares with his guests. After the meal, Aias signals to Phoinix, who, as official leader of the embassy, would presumably be the first speaker. Odysseus, however, notices it and usurps Phoinix’ speech.41
Odysseus and Achilleus The rhetorical thrust of Odysseus’ speech is wrapping Agamemnon’s gifts in insider language. His argument is mirrored in the ring-composition
84
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
that structures the speech:42 Appeal to (negative) common interest with the Achaian armies (9.225 –51) Explicit appeal to Peleus’ paternal authority: ‘the Argives will honor you’ (9.252–59) Agamemnon’s gifts, d¯ora (9.260–99) Implicit appeal to Peleus’ paternal authority ‘the Achaians will honor you like a god’ (9.300–03) Appeal to (positive) common interest with the Achaian armies (9.303–06)
Odysseus ignores, for his present purpose, the hostile relation that the offer of apoina and Achilleus’ withdrawal both assume. He paints the picture of the Achaian rout darkly, but figures Achilleus into the picture as one of “us” rather than as an enemy to whom apoina must be offered (9.247–51).43 Specifically, he identifies Achilleus’ interests with those of the Achaians in that if the ships are burned and the army destroyed, Achilleus will not escape unscathed (9.249–51). Although Odysseus’ inclusiveness falls short of an appeal to the bonds of friendship (philot¯es), it assumes that a social bond is intact between Achilleus and the Achaians, even if the bond is one of expediency. From a relationship involving comrades at arms, Odysseus moves to familial relationships (9.252–59). He reminds Achilleus of Peleus’ advice: had not his own father said that if he would restrain his anger and let go of eris (strife), the Argives would honor him (tiemen, 9.254–58)? Odysseus thereby subtly replaces Agamemnon’s offer with one that is immediately available and presumably more desirable (9.149–56). In fact he cuts Agamemnon out of the picture altogether, so that Achilleus’ tim¯e and status are measured solely by his standing in the army. What he does not mention but Achilleus picks up is that the army will remain under Agamemnon’s command, just like the seven cities. Further, Odysseus’ recollection has less to do with Peleus’ actual words than with his own ability to recall selectively or even construct a memory by which to manipulate Achilleus.44 He attempts to exploit Achilleus’ relationship with Peleus in order to legitimate the message of subordination that he dares not communicate directly from Agamemnon. Nevertheless, whereas it is true that both attempt to use paternal authority to persuade Achilleus to restrain his anger, accept gifts, and return to battle, in other respects Agamemnon’s and Odysseus’ appeals differ. Agamemnon demands that Achilleus acknowledge his own paternal authority, whereas Odysseus imposes acknowledged paternal authority as a persuasive device. Only then does Odysseus introduce the gifts that Agamemnon will give if Achilleus puts away his anger (9.260–99). He rehearses the entire
The Embassy to Achilleus
85
catalog of prestige goods but replaces the offending ‘unlimited apoina’ with ‘worthy gifts’ (axia d¯ora, 9.261), echoing Nestor’s original word.45 He further omits Agamemnon’s overt demand for subordination. Conceding that Agamemnon’s gifts may be ineffective because Agamemnon himself is hateful (9.300–01), Odysseus appeals once again to the conventional relationships with which he began, now in reverse order. He evokes memory of Achilleus’ father by appropriating to himself advice that echoes the language formerly put in Peleus’ mouth: if Achilleus takes pity on the Achaians, they will honor (tiemen) him, and here Odysseus adds, like a god (9.302–03). Returning to the theme of common interest with which he began, Odysseus appeals to the positive aspect of participating actively in warrior society: Achilleus might kill Hektor and win great glory among them (9.303–06). Odysseus seems to have repaired Agamemnon’s culturally objectionable offer, stripping it of its typology and attendant condition. He narratively wraps Agamemnon’s apoina, which he calls gifts (d¯ora), in insider language by appealing to relationships – comrades in the army and paternal – that he regards as still intact and as having a claim on Achilleus. Although the gifts occupy the central panel of the speech, he has tried to change, or disguise, their social meaning by framing them with soothing words. In sum, Odysseus’ speech neatly reverses the import of the speech it replaces and, moreover, largely eliminates Agamemnon from the picture. But although it conceals Agamemnon’s intent to use gifts to put Achilleus in a dependent position in relation to himself, it does not nullify it.46 And in the course of bringing Agamemnon’s offer into conformity with the relations and aspirations of heroic society, Odysseus omits any reference to compensation. His speech contains no compensation theme, no recognition of the harm Agamemnon had inflicted, and no resolution to Achilleus’ poin¯e theme. By failing to redefine Agamemnon’s apoina as poin¯e, Odysseus apparently also fails to disguise them adequately, because Achilleus can be seen to recognize immediately that something is amiss. Achilleus’ acid response unmasks the trickster’s deception, revealing that he is not taken in by Odysseus’ rhetoric:47 §xyrÚw gãr moi ke›now ım«w ÉA˝dao pÊl˙sin, ˜w xÉ ßteron m¢n keÊy˙ §n‹ fres¤n, êllo d¢ e‡ph.
‘For as I detest the doorways of Death, I detest that man, who hides one thing in the depths of his heart, and speaks forth another.’ (9.312–13)
86
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
Oliver Taplin suggests that Achilleus’ words refer to himself: Achilleus hates a man who says one thing and hides another in his heart; therefore he will say what is in his heart.48 But although Achilleus’ words may refer implicitly to himself in a positive aspect, they most incisively refer to Odysseus and, behind him, doubtless also to Agamemnon, in a negative aspect. The only other occurrence of the line at 9.312 in Homer as we have it is found in the Odyssey, where it is also connected with speaking falsehood: §xyrÚw gãr moi ke›now ım«w ÉA˝dao pÊl˙si g¤netai, ˘w pen¤˙ e‡kvn épatÆlia bãzei.
‘For as I detest the doorways of Death I detest that man who under constraint of poverty babbles beguiling falsehoods.’ (Od. 14.156–7)
Here Odysseus, disguised as a beggar, defends the credibility of his claim that Odysseus will soon return to Ithaka. But the tale on which he is about to embark in support of that claim is patent fabrication. It is thus possible to read the lines as a code for Odysseus’ trickster identity. The audience of the Iliad may even be reminded of Odysseus’ lying in the Odyssey when they hear these lines.49 In the Iliad, Achilleus speaks them in censure, signaling the failure of Odysseus’ dissembling speech: he exposes Agamemnon’s subterfuge involving a gift attack and accuses Odysseus of furthering his strategy by hiding the fact. The beginning of Achilleus’ speech can almost be read as a catalog of what is not in Agamemnon’s, or Odysseus’, speech and should be. He reasserts his own complaint, set forth in the quarrel, about Agamemnon’s abuse of the tim¯e-based fluid system, which Agamemnon himself has refused to admit (9.315 –34): Agamemnon has failed to distribute timai appropriately; instead, he has used his position to make it impossible for the heroes to earn material forms of tim¯e by fighting and thereby win status in relation to one another. It will do Odysseus no good to appeal to him on the basis of common interest with other elite warriors as long as the fluid-ranking system itself is incoherent. Put another way, Achilleus makes it clear that he is not willing to fight without the possibility of earning tim¯e in both material and nonmaterial forms. Achilleus links the seizure of Briseis to Agamemnon’s general abuse of the tim¯e-based system with the claim that Agamemnon had singled him out for a raid (9.335). Further, he had deceived (apat¯ese, 9.334), insulted (ephubriz¯on, 9.368), and wronged him (¯eliten, 9.375).50 In fact, Achilleus asserts that the violation he has suffered at his own commander’s hand
The Embassy to Achilleus
87
is no less serious than the violation of friendship (xeni¯e) sustained by Menelaos at Alexandros’ hand.51 He thus reintroduces the language of hostility that Odysseus had suppressed:
340
§meË dÉ épÚ moÊnou ÉAxai«n e·letÉ, ¶xei dÉ êloxon yumar°a: tª pariaÊvn terp°syv. t¤ d¢ de› polemiz°menai Tr≈essin ÉArge¤ouw; t¤ d¢ laÚn énÆgagen §nyãdÉ ége¤raw ÉAtre˝dhw; ∑ oÈx ÑEl°nhw ßnekÉ ±#kÒmoio; ∑ moËnoi fil°ousÉ élÒxouw merÒpvn ényr≈pvn ÉAtre˝dai; §pe‹ ˜w tiw énØr égayÚw ka‹ §x°frvn, tØn aÈtoË fil°ei ka‹ kÆdetai, …w ka‹ §g∆ tØn §k yumoË f¤leon, douriktÆthn per §oËsan. nËn dÉ §pe‹ §k xeir«n g°raw e·leto ka¤ mÉ épãthse.
‘But from me alone of all the Achaians he has taken and keeps the bride of my heart. Let him lie beside her and be happy. Yet why must the Argives fight with the Trojans? And why was it the son of Atreus assembled and led here these people? Was it not for the sake of lovely-haired Helen? 340 Are the sons of Atreus alone among mortal men the ones who love their wives? Since any who is a good man, and careful, loves her who is his own and cares for her, even as I now loved this one from my heart, though it was my spear that won her. Now that he has deceived me and taken from my hands my prize of honour.’ (9.335 –44)
When Achilleus redefines the seizure of Briseis as loss of a bride (alokhos thumar¯es, 9.337), he puts her in a familial relationship to himself and, as a result, transfers her from the sphere of prestige goods to that of persons and, more to the point, family.52 He overtly narrates his loss of Briseis in relation to the rape of Helen by embedding Menelaos’ poin¯e theme in his own:53 9.335 –37 9.337–41 9.342–44
Agamemnon took his bride (alokhos thumar¯es) The Trojan War is on account of Helen (Helen¯es henek’) Agamemnon took his prize (geras) and deceived him
Achilleus appeals to the moral basis of the war: unless the Atreidai alone among men love their wives, there is no difference between the poin¯e theme generated by the rape of Helen and that generated by the seizure of Briseis. The implication is that Achilleus is no less justified than the Atreidai in seeking to redress his loss. Put another way, Achilleus coopts the Trojan War, now a public political undertaking, for his own private
88
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
cause.54 In so doing, he allocates to himself a position equal to that of Agamemnon. Achilleus’ love for Briseis is a topic that has inspired no little speculation about a special romantic relationship between them.55 Sale argues that the most serious insult Agamemnon inflicted was taking a woman who was “no mere [prize] geras, but a woman he [Achilleus] loves.”56 He even infers that it is as a result of this violation that Achilleus loses faith in the heroic system. It is difficult, however, to reconcile romanticizing views of Achilleus and Briseis’ relationship with Achilleus’ wish, publicly expressed after the death of Patroklos, that Briseis had died before becoming a source of conflict:
60
60
ÉAtre˝dh, ∑ êr ti tÒdÉ émfot°roisin êreion ¶pleto, so‹ ka‹ §mo¤, ˜ te n«˝ per éxnum°nv k∞r yumobÒrƒ ¶ridi meneÆnamen e·neka koÊrhw; tØn ˆfelÉ §n nÆessi kataktãmen ÖArtemiw fi“ ≥mati t“, ˜tÉ §g∆n •lÒmhn LurnhssÚn Ùl°ssaw: t≈ kÉ oÈ tÒssoi ÉAxaio‹ Ùdåj ßlon êspeton oÔdaw dusmen°vn ÍpÚ xers‹n, §meË épomhn¤santow.
‘Son of Atreus, was this after all the better way for both, for you and me, that we, for all our hearts’ sorrow, quarrelled together for the sake of a girl in soul-perishing hatred? I wish Artemis had killed her beside the ships with an arrow on that day when I destroyed Lyrnessos and took her. For thus not all these too many Achaians would have bitten the dust, by enemy hands, when I was away in my anger.’ (19.56–62)
Sale ascribes Achilleus’ wish to “Mediterranean rhetoric” that “merely emphasizes his greater love for his companions than for her.”57 But as we have seen, the location of women in spheres of wealth is ambiguous in Homeric society. Hence, when it suits Achilleus’ purpose – as it does in his response to the embassy – he defines Briseis in relation to himself as a wife (person). As a consequence, he vastly augments the compensation he can claim for her loss and, moreover, the paradigm he can appropriate in the competition for status. When, however, it suits Achilleus’ purpose, as it does following the death of Patroklos, he can transfer Briseis just as easily, and just as strategically, back to the exchange order of prestige goods or even wish that she were dead. Although Homer may be interested in Achilleus’ feelings, here the concern is less to represent Achilleus’ feelings for Briseis than to portray a struggle for dominance in which Briseis is
The Embassy to Achilleus
89
a pawn for Agamemnon and Achilleus alike.58 Achilleus’ conflict is over status; the woman is represented as merely the occasion. The centerpiece of Achilleus’ response to Odysseus (9.335 –400) comprises a set of three doublets in which he reiterates the harm Agamemnon inflicted when he seized Briseis (9.335 –44 and 367–69); declares that he will not participate in the expedition against Troy or in any enterprise with Agamemnon (9.345 –63 and 374–77); and claims that he has many prestige goods, including women and even a wife of his own (kouridi¯e alokhos), which are available to him in Phthia when and if he returns (9.364–67 and 378–400). The structural relationship between the parallel units may be viewed as follows: 9.335 –44
Agamemnon inflicted harm on Achilleus by seizing his beloved wife/honorific prize (thumar¯es alokhos/geras) and deceiving him.
9.345 –46
Achilleus will not fight Hektor but will go home to Phthia.
9.364–67
Achilleus has many possessions – gold, bronze, women, and iron (khrusos, khalkos, gunaikes, sid¯eros) – both at home and those he has earned at Troy.
9.367–69
Agamemnon inflicted harm on Achilleus by taking his honorific prize (geras) and insulting him.
9.369–77
Achilleus will participate in no enterprise (ergon) with Agamemnon because of the injury he inflicted; others should take offense as well.
9.378–400
Achilleus will accept no gifts from Agamemnon until he pays back (apodidounai) his heart-rending outrage (thumalg¯es l¯ob¯e); Achilleus can receive a wife of his own (kouridi¯e alokhos) and possessions from his own father at home.
Achilleus invokes prior damage as his reason for not returning to the fighting and rescuing the Achaians. He refuses Agamemnon’s gifts not only on the grounds of the prior unpaid harm, but also by reason of the wealth in prestige goods already in his and his own father’s possession. In fact, Achilleus describes his wealth in Phthia using the same language that defeated Trojan soldiers use to designate the apoina that their fathers will offer in exchange for their lives: gold, bronze, and iron (khrusos, khalkos, and sideros, 9.365 –66). With one exception, a similar grouping of gold, bronze, and iron is found elsewhere in the Iliad only in apoina themes.59 Richard Martin also points to the collocation of terms in Achilleus’ speech and in battlefield ransom scenes.60 He correctly discerns an underlying affinity between what is going on in these scenes and supplication. But neither
90
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
Agamemnon nor the embassy has supplicated Achilleus; therefore the common denominator between the speech and the battlefield scenes is an offer of apoina. It can thus be seen that Achilleus’ language recalls offers of apoina in the very process of exposing and rejecting Agamemnon’s apoina.61 Moreover, to the Homeric audience, whose interpretation has been conditioned by the discrete themes, the arrangement of elements and the terminology would evoke the mixed-type theme in particular: Achilleus exposes Agamemnon’s offer as apoina and then rejects it by invoking poin¯e for prior damage. This, as we have seen, is precedented. If, following an offer of apoina the victor recalls a prior damage, he always chooses poin¯e. But in the discrete themes his decision is followed by summary execution of the one making the offer. So this scene departs from the type in some ways. It is in this thematic context that Achilleus’ celebrated repudiation of Agamemnon’s gifts occurs:
380
380
§xyrå d° moi toË d«ra, t¤v d° min §n karÚw a‡s˙. oÈdÉ e‡ moi dekãkiw te ka‹ efikosãkiw tÒsa do¤h, ˜ssa t° ofl nËn ¶sti, ka‹ e‡ poyen êlla g°noito: oÈdÉ ˜sÉ §w ÉOrxomenÚn potin¤setai, oÈdÉ ˜sa YÆbaw Afigupt¤aw, ˜yi ple›sta dÒmoiw §n ktÆmata ke›tai, a· yÉ •katÒmpulo¤ efisi, dihkÒsioi dÉ énÉ •kãstaw én°rew §joixneËsi sÁn ·ppoisin ka‹ ˆxesfin: oÈdÉ e‡ moi tÒsa do¤h ˜sa cãmayÒw te kÒniw te, oÈd° ken Õw ¶ti yumÚn §mÚn pe¤sei ÉAgam°mnvn, pr¤n gÉ épÚ pçsan §mo‹ dÒmenai yumalg°a l≈bhn.
‘I hate his gifts. I hold him light as the strip of a splinter. Not if he gave me ten times as much, and twenty times over as he possesses now, not if more should come to him from elsewhere, or gave all that is brought in to Orchomenos, all that is brought in to Thebes of Egypt, where the greatest possessions lie up in the houses, Thebes of the hundred gates, where through each of the gates two hundred fighting men come forth to war with horses and chariots; not if he gave me gifts as many as the sand or the dust is, not even so would Agamemnon have his way with my spirit until he paid me back all this heart-rending outrage.’ (9.378–87)
A long debate has been waged over the meaning of Iliad 9.387. The question concerns whether Achilleus is requiring that Agamemnon pay
The Embassy to Achilleus
91
him back for all his heart-rending outrage or that he literally pay back the outrage. A dispute over syntax has led to a dispute over the language of Achilleus.62 Adam Parry, for example, argues that repayment of outrage (l¯ob¯e) is impossible and therefore an abuse of traditional language. He infers that Achilleus resorts to such abuse because he has no (traditional) language with which to express his (untraditional) disillusionment: “[Achilleus] asks questions that cannot be answered and makes demands that cannot be met.”63 M. D. Reeve disagrees that Achilleus is abusing language and describes his demand as misuse of a different sort: Achilleus discountenances material compensation on principle by making a demand amounting to a logical absurdity – “undo what you did.”64 David Claus tries to refute Parry’s conclusion by showing that Achilleus could make both traditional and nontraditional statements with words. He suggests an analogy between the possibility of different meanings of words and the possibility of different traditional modes of behavior within the heroic code.65 Richard Martin demonstrates that the poet represents Achilleus as uniquely skilled in the art of innovating with traditional language.66 Achilleus’ singular art, however, is that of expansion.67 Indeed, the doublets in the mixed-type compensation theme found in 9.335 –400 furnish palpable evidence of Achilleus’ art applied to a traditional theme. Thus a more satisfying solution to the dilemma of Achilleus’ language in 9.387 may be found by studying its syntax not in isolation, but in the context of the expanded mixed-type compensation theme in which it occurs. The logic by which harm is perceived as loss, and poin¯e as paying back the harm, and the syntax corresponding to that logic are firmly established in the discrete themes. Accordingly, in Homer the verb meaning ‘to pay back’, (apo)tinemen, is commonly construed with the accusative of the harm/loss to be paid back. The verb Achilleus uses, apodidounai, ‘give back’ or ‘pay back’ (9.387, by tmesis), does not recur frequently in discrete compensation themes. Where it does occur, it refers to composition, poin¯e taken as a settlement in goods (18.498–99 [18]), or to giving back possessions that had been taken away (3.285). Additionally, in a variation on the mixed-type theme found in the Odyssey, Eurymachos uses apodidounai in offering to pay back (apod¯osomen, Od. 22.58) in bronze and gold the goods the suitors had taken from Odysseus (i.e., a payment of poin¯e).68 Achilleus’ requirement that Agamemnon pay back the outrage is thus confirmed as a demand for poin¯e and arguably allows specifically for payment of compensatory goods. Although there is no exact verbal parallel for the phrase ‘pay back heart-rending outrage’ (épÚ . . . dÒmenai yumalg°a l≈bhn, 9.387), Achilleus’ words in Book 9 come very close, and we are
92
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
justified in regarding it as intentional, at the level of the narrative, to Kalchas’ words to the assembly in Book 1, where he ordered Agamemnon to return (apo . . . domenai) the girl to her father (as poin¯e): oÈdÉ ˜ ge pr‹n loimo›o bare¤aw xe›raw éf°jei, pr¤n gÉ épÚ patr‹ f¤lƒ dÒmenai •lik≈pida koÊrhn
‘Nor will [he] sooner withold his grim hands from the plague until we give the glancing-eyed girl back to her father’ (1.97–98)
The most significant syntactical and thematic analogy to Achilleus’ language, however, may be found in Agamemnon’s words to Peisandros and Hippolochos (11.122–47 [23 ]). When Agamemnon defeated the two Trojans on the battlefield, they offered him apoina, which their father would give if Agamemnon spared their lives. Reminding his victims that their father had conspired to murder Menelaos, Agamemnon rejected the apoina and killed them instead to make them pay back their father’s shameful outrage (toË patrÚw éeik°a t¤sete l≈bhn, 11.142).69 In that the embassy presents the apoina of the absent father rather than an offer on their own behalf, the scene in Book 9 exactly reproduces the battlefield situation. Agamemnon has become the father offering apoina for his army, but he has committed a prior outrage (l¯ob¯e). Moreover, Agamemnon himself rejects apoina in Book 11 for the same reason – a prior outrage (l¯ob¯e) – that Achilleus rejects the offer made by the embassy. Agamemnon’s words constitute emphatic rejection of apoina. He exacts poin¯e for the father’s outrage by taking the sons’ lives. On the basis of the foregoing, it can be seen that Achilleus’ rejection of any amount of gifts constitutes rejection of the apoina that he knows Agamemnon has offered and, moreover, a declaration that he will continue to exact poin¯e for the outrage by refusing to rescue the Achaian army (tisis), at least until Agamemnon makes an acceptable offer of poin¯e or it has been suitably exacted from him in the humiliation of defeat or torching of the ships. Achilleus’ language in 9.378–87, and 9.387 in particular, has been singled out by much of previous scholarship as signifying not only his rejection of material compensation and the materialist values of heroic society, but also as the linchpin for a Homeric hierarchy of essential over material and traditional over nontraditional values. But Achilleus’ language in 9.387 is not untraditional. It conforms precisely to the syntax and logic of traditional poin¯e themes within the Iliad and other Archaic poetic traditions.70 Moreover, when interpreted in its thematic context, his
The Embassy to Achilleus
93
rejection emerges as specific to a specific offer of apoina. His reference to the wealth awaiting him in Phthia, which echoes the language of discrete apoina themes, confirms that this is the case. Achilleus’ several pointed references to prestige goods he possesses apart from those Agamemnon is trying to wield against him further undermine the idea that he discountenances materially based tim¯e on principle. As we have seen, the logic of the mixed-type theme is that apoina and poin¯e are exclusive options. Achilleus, however, leaves open the possibility of accepting Agamemnon’s apoina, but only after he has taken poin¯e. His strategy is clear, since apoina can affirm his tim¯e only in relation to the fluid system, or the army, but not in relation to Agamemnon, and these apoina are expressly designed to subordinate him to the father figure who offers them. By exacting tisis, Achilleus secures what he most desires: retribution on the father for diminishing his tim¯e. Achilleus’ viewpoint is that Agamemnon has taken away what belongs to him and, at the same time, has deprived him of tim¯e. As we have seen, although the proper redress would be to give back to Achilleus what is rightfully his, this is exactly what Agamemnon does not do. Instead, he offers Briseis and other prestige goods as part of his own property as apoina with a view to getting something back from Achilleus. For this reason, Odysseus can refer to the offer generically as a gift. Agamemnon’s offer would therefore give Achilleus Briseis, but not repayment for the loss of tim¯e. It is the sort of offer ex gratia one would make to a foreigner who has no rights, as Achilleus himself recognizes (9.648 and 16.59). Achilleus wants Agamemnon to pay back, not to give. So although the logic of the mixed-type theme is that apoina and poin¯e are exclusive alternatives, Agamemnon’s manipulation has given Achilleus singular justification for demanding both. Achilleus additionally and explicitly refuses the domination that would be effected by marriage to one of Agamemnon’s daughters. He asserts that while possessions and a wife can be had by returning to Phthia, no amount of goods can bring back a man’s life once it has slipped away. Accordingly, no amount of goods is worth the value of, or can compensate for, Achilleus’ life: oÈ går §mo‹ cux∞w éntãjion oÈdÉ ˜sa fas‹n ÖIlion §kt∞syai eÔ naiÒmenon ptol¤eyron tÚ pr‹n §pÉ efirÆnhw, pr‹n §lye›n uÂaw ÉAxai«n, oÈdÉ ˜sa lãÛnow oÈdÚw éfÆtorow §ntÚw §°rgei 405 Fo¤bou ÉApÒllvnow Puyo› §n‹ petrh°ss˙. lhÛsto‹ m¢n gãr te bÒew ka‹ ‡fia m∞la,
94
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad kthto‹ d¢ tr¤pod°w te ka‹ ·ppvn janyå kãrhna: éndrÚw d¢ cuxØ pãlin §lye›n oÎte leÛstØ oÎyÉ •letÆ, §pe‹ êr ken éme¤cetai ßrkow ÙdÒntvn.
‘For not worth the value of my life are all the possessions they fable were won for Ilion, that strong-founded citadel, in the old days when there was peace, before the coming of the sons of the Achaians; not all that the stone doorsill of the Archer holds fast within it, 405 of Phoibos Apollo in Pytho of the rocks. Of possessions cattle and fat sheep are things to be had for the lifting, and tripods can be won, and the tawny high heads of horses, but a man’s life cannot come back again, it cannot be lifted nor captured again by force, once it has crossed the teeth’s barrier.’ (9.401–9)
Achilleus nowhere makes the claim that his honor is incommensurable (though it is frequently attributed to him in contemporary scholarship); rather, it is life that he says cannot be computed in terms of goods. Yet there are two problems with his claim. The first is the evidence in the discrete themes suggesting that families, in certain instances, do in fact take goods for life (e.g., 18.497–508 [18]). The second is that Achilleus declares Agamemnon’s goods unable to compensate for his life when Agamemnon has not, to all appearances, threatened Achilleus with loss of life. But Achilleus, I suggest, is flinging Agamemnon’s offensive typology back in his teeth. Apoina do not compensate an injured party for harm, but rather a victor for what he surrenders in exchange for accepting them. Therefore, if Agamemnon really wants to offer Achilleus apoina, he will have to compensate him for his life since that, according to Achilleus, is what taking Agamemnon’s apoina and returning to battle would cost him.71 What makes Achilleus’ case singular is that he is being offered goods as compensation for his own life. As a result, Agamemnon’s offer of apoina for life is one Achilleus would be foolish to accept, since by returning to Phthia he can have all the possessions he wants and a long life too. But what he cannot obtain in Phthia, what can be had only by returning to and dying in the fighting at Troy, is kleos: 410 mÆthr gãr t° me fhs‹ yeå Y°tiw érgurÒpeza dixyad¤aw k∞raw fer°men yanãtoio t°lowde: efi m°n kÉ aÔyi m°nvn Tr≈vn pÒlin émfimãxvmai, leto m°n moi nÒstow, étår kl°ow êfyiton ¶stai: efi d° ken o‡kadÉ ·kvmi f¤lhn §w patr¤da ga›an,
The Embassy to Achilleus 415
95
letÒ moi kl°ow §sylÒn, §p‹ dhrÚn d° moi afi∆n ¶ssetai, oÈd° k° mÉ Œka t°low yanãtoio kixe¤h.
410 ‘For my mother Thetis the goddess of the silver feet tells me I carry two sorts of destiny toward the day of my death. Either, if I stay here and fight beside the city of the Trojans, my return home is gone, but my kleos shall be everlasting (aphthiton); but if I return home to the beloved land of my fathers, 415 the excellence of my kleos is gone, but there will be a long life left for me, and my end in death will not come to me quickly.’ (9.410–16)
If the emissaries expected Achilleus to choose kleos aphthiton, everlasting fame, over life, they are disappointed, for he decides to go home. His next words seem to echo Agamemnon’s speech to the armies earlier that night (9.17–28): nothing is to be won here; you should all go home (9.417–20).72 Not only are goods unable to compensate for his life, neither, apparently, is kleos. Achilleus’ apparent adamance reduces the embassy to stunned silence. Odysseus has, if anything, lost ground; his “soothing words” proved to be inflammatory. But Achilleus may not be simply choosing life over kleos, and his speech, like Agamemnon’s, may couch an invitation for his auditors to give him good reason to stay. In his speech to Thetis, Achilleus had advanced a strategy of conflating the tim¯e Agamemnon failed to give him and the tim¯e of universal sovereignty for which he was destined but which Zeus had denied him. It is possible to see a similar strategy at work here in regard to kleos, fame for a young death. Although a homology exists between tim¯e and kleos, they belong to different systems. Whereas tim¯e is a zero-sum game and located in a social system, kleos is in principle timeless and limitless. Tim¯e one wins by competing in a fluid ranking system. But it translates readily into kleos conferred by epic poetry on the exploits by which it is won. Hence, by Achilleus’ reckoning, if by disabling the fluid system Agamemnon has made it impossible for Achilleus to earn tim¯e in relation to all the heroes at Troy, Agamemnon himself included, he has also denied Achilleus the kleos that should compensate him for the mortality he incurred at Zeus’ hands. Achilleus implies that, although he has two destinies, he allegedly has only one – to return to Phthia – since Agamemnon has made it useless, or even impossible, for him to remain at Troy. If there is a psychological aspect to Achilleus’ wrath, it seems to emerge most poignantly here, where the divine and human fixed systems appear to have joined forces, first to frustrate his inherited drive – as bearer of
96
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
eris – to be best, aristos, and then to deny him compensation for the losses. On these terms, staying at Troy, which should earn him kleos, could only mean that he would lose everything. Why should he not return to Phthia and salvage what he can? That Achilleus’ sense of loss may be profound does not preclude his deploying one of his destinies, dying in Phthia as a wedded and wealthy but unsung old man, to enlist his best friends’ assistance in realizing the other destiny. That such is the case may be inferred from Phoinix’s speech, which seems to offer him both a reason to choose kleos over long life without it and a way to earn tim¯e and kleos by accepting Agamemnon’s gifts and reentering the fighting.
Phoinix and Achilleus When Phoinix at last speaks, his appeal is predicated on himself as a father figure.73 From this platform, he appeals to Achilleus first on the basis of his own experience as an old man without kleos, then on the basis of gifts and words formulated as a divine model, and finally on the basis of gifts and words formulated as a heroic model. Each appeal is accompanied by a traditional myth or a story (in every case a negative exemplum)74 that recasts Agamemnon’s offer or the loss Achilleus has incurred. The structure of the speech may be viewed as follows:75 9.434–47 9.448–84
9.485 –95 9.496–501 9.502–12
9.513–23
Motivation: Paternal relation. Phoinix’s and Achilleus’ relationship is like that of father and son. Exemplum: Phoinix’s autobiography. Phoinix and his father have a quarrel (neikos) over a concubine ( pallakis); Phoinix is cursed by his father and consequently flees to Peleus. (Achilleus should not be like Phoinix.) Appeal: Achilleus should ward off destruction (loigos) from his surrogate father. Motivation: Divine model. Even the immortals are turned from anger by gifts and supplicatory words (lissomenoi); Achilleus also should conquer his anger. Exemplum: The Supplicatory Prayers, Litai, follow Delusion, At¯e, to bring healing. But to the man who refuses them, they send Delusion, At¯e, as punishment. (Achilleus should not, like that man, refuse Litai.) Appeal: Agamemnon sends gifts (d¯ora) accompanied by supplicatory words (lissesthai); Achilleus should therefore accept the embassy’s offer.
The Embassy to Achilleus 9.524–28 9.529–99
9.600–5
97
Motivation: Heroic model. The heroes were persuaded with gifts and words to turn from their anger. Exemplum: The Meleagros myth. Meleagros was angered by his mother’s curse and refused to defend the Aitolians, though supplicated with gifts. He finally had to fight, but without gifts. (Achilleus should not be like Meleagros.) Appeal: Achilleus should accept the gifts while they can be had and rescue the Achaians, who will honor him like a god; if he fights without gifts, he will not have the same tim¯e.
Phoinix speaks tenderly to Achilleus, calling him his dear child (9.437) and seeming initially to support him in his resolve to go home. Moreover, that he could remain at Troy without his young charge is unthinkable, Phoinix says, since he was sent along with Achilleus, a mere youth when the Trojan War began, to train him to be a doer of deeds and speaker of words (a hero). Thus establishing himself as a father figure to Achilleus, Phoinix relates his own autobiography, a story about himself and his father, Amyntor. Amyntor had brought home a concubine with whom he would make love and so dishonor (atimazein) his wife. Phoinix’s mother begged him to have sex with the concubine and thereby cause her to detest the older man.76 Phoinix consented, whereupon Amyntor cursed him with sterility or impotence. Since he was unable to restrain his wrath and his father also was angry, Phoinix resolved to leave home.77 He was, however, forcibly restrained by relatives who pleaded with him (lissomenoi, 9.465), presumably to stay and be reconciled with his father. Phoinix reports an inglorious escape, which he accomplished only by leaping over a courtyard wall and fleeing to Phthia.78 Phoinix’s autobiography accomplishes two purposes in the embassy’s project: it constructs a connection among Peleus, Phoinix, and Achilleus that enables Phoinix to represent himself as a father (9.434–47 and 485 –95), and it provides an exemplum involving a quarrel (neikos, 9.448) over a concubine (9.449). Agamemnon, as we have seen, had tried to make Achilleus a son through relations of dominance, including an offer of a daughter as a bride. Odysseus, although he prudently suppressed Agamemnon’s overt demand for subordination, furthered this strategy by transferring the demand to Peleus himself. Achilleus’ response to Odysseus was to reclaim his relationship with Peleus apart from any relationship with Agamemnon. Phoinix’s autobiography now serves to nominate himself directly as the legitimate figure of paternal authority, not through marriage to a daughter but through his own relation to Achilleus’ father and to Achilleus himself.
98
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
Phoinix claims that Peleus loves him as a father loves a son (9.481–82); he then recounts how he himself had fed Achilleus as an infant on his own knees. He thereby relegates Peleus to the role of grandfather and asserts his own position as surrogate father. Thus, the text presents us with a sequence of candidates for the role of father: first Agamemnon, then Peleus as mediated by Odysseus, and now Phoinix. Phoinix qua father presents himself as deserving Achilleus’ trust, his loyalty, and eventually his protection (9.493–94). The account of Phoinix’s quarrel (neikos) with Amyntor is meant to evoke Achilleus’ quarrel with Agamemnon so as to persuade Achilleus to accept the offer conveyed by the embassy and, now, to deter him from leaving at once for Phthia.79 The persuasive goal of the story rests on two contacts. First, Amyntor’s curse and Phoinix’s anger stem from a dispute over a concubine. By implicitly recasting Achilleus’ narrative in relation to his own, Phoinix contests Achilleus’ appropriation of the Helen poin¯e theme. Put another way, despite Achilleus’ claim that Agamemnon robbed him of a wife dear to his heart (thumar¯es alokhos, 9.337), Phoinix urges that Briseis is no more than a concubine. But Phoinix’s perspective should not be confused with that of the narrator or poet.80 Homer shows Phoinix competing to define what the quarrel with Agamemnon involves and, consequently, to script Achilleus’ poin¯e theme. A second point of comparison concerns Phoinix’s reaction to the impasse between him and his father: he did not accept the supplication of his family but fled to Phthia instead. Ruth Scodel contends that the tone of Phoinix’s story depicts the action he intends to deprecate in Achilleus: Phoenix was involved in a [quarrel] ne›kow, and his response was to do what Achilles has threatened to do: to ignore the pleas of his friends and to depart. This alternative is presented in a way that makes it seem obviously impossible. Achilles has invited the Achaians to watch him sail away along the Hellespont (359–61), and Phoenix’ answer is to describe himself, gallantly evading a crowd of slave women.81
Scodel concludes that, by touching his own story with the ridiculous, Phoinix intends to slip past Achilleus’ resistance and lead him to dismiss refusing supplication and departing as possibilities. So much of Scodel’s argument is convincing. But the matter of Phoinix’s representation of supplication, on which an appropriate response would depend, requires closer attention. In Phoinix’s autobiography the angry hero is supplicated by nondescript town folk and cousins, from whom he flees. His suppliants,
The Embassy to Achilleus
99
moreover, restrain him forcibly while they themselves feast apparently without restraint. The scene is, as Scodel observes, “as close to the sordid and ignominious as the epic style could permit a heroic character to descend.”82 Phoinix in this way represents his own refusal of supplication as inappropriate to Achilleus, because the embassy’s supplication is such a different scenario. Achilleus is not forcibly restrained. He is, moreover, not supplicated by a motley and gluttonous crew of neighbors and distant relatives but, ostensibly, by his dearest companions in warrior society ( philtatoi hetairoi) and, more importantly, by one who makes a convincing claim to stand in the place of his own father.83 Phoinix’s ‘supplication’ in the role of father would invert the paradigm of the dominant father and cast him in a dependent position. His self-presentation, however, constitutes a manipulation, and arguably a misrepresentation, of the embassy’s entreaty. His story portrays Achilleus as refusing supplication if he rejects the embassy and, in particular, as refusing supplication from a father. But in fact, neither the embassy nor Agamemnon has offered anything like supplication.84 Although Phoinix frequently employs a term connected with formal supplication meaning to plead or beseech (lissesthai) in his exemplum, he directs no words or gestures of supplication to Achilleus himself. The narrator also gives no indication that the embassy supplicates Achilleus. Phoinix’s autobiography depicts the embassy’s solicitation as supplication in order to induce Achilleus to respond to their request, and especially to Phoinix’s as surrogate father. That this is Phoinix’s strategy is confirmed in his next exemplum, the traditional story of the Supplicatory Prayers, Litai, and Delusion, At¯e. Phoinix prefaces the story of the Supplicatory Prayers and Delusion, with a protreptic appeal to divine behavior: even the gods are moved by soothing offerings and the supplicatory pleas of men when they transgress (9.497–501).85 Can Achilleus really do any less? Phoinix links the divine model to the present circumstances with an allegory: Delusion, swift and sure-footed, races through the country, causing men to err – presumably by leading them to inflict harm on one another. The Supplicatory Prayers, daughters of Zeus, follow, limping and disfigured, but capable of bringing healing if only the victim venerates them when they come. Blessings await the one who receives Supplicatory Prayers; but to the one who refuses them they send yet more Delusion as punishment. Significantly, in both the divine model and the allegory, the supplicatory prayers are offered by those who are guilty of some transgression. Phoinix thus implicitly acknowledges what Agamemnon refuses to, namely, that Agamemnon had in fact inflicted harm on Achilleus.86 Some
10 0
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
previous scholars take the additional step of assuming that the story of the Supplicatory Prayers and Delusion likewise represents the actual events of the poem.87 On this view, the parable is regarded as the narrator’s or the poet’s exemplum for interpreting Achilleus’ rejection of the embassy as the transgression that leads to Achilleus’ own punishment in the death of Patroklos. Thus, just as the appeal to divine behavior effectively epitomizes Books 1–9, the actual story foreshadows those that follow. Confusion has arisen, however, from a tendency to identify the Supplicatory Prayers and Delusion story with the poet’s project instead of Phoinix’s.88 The narrator nowhere suggests that Patroklos’ death comprises or is a result of Achilleus’ at¯e, nor does Achilleus or any other of the internal characters suggest any such thing.89 As we have seen, Agamemnon does not admit wrongdoing in the poem, but he does admit delusion, which Phoinix urges Achilleus to excuse when accompanied by Supplicatory Prayers. The problem is that the Delusion and the Supplicatory Prayers come from separate individuals. Phoinix’s allegory thus does not correspond to the reality of the situation, and the poet allows his audience to see the incongruity. In other words, the Supplicatory Prayers and Delusion story is exposed as misrepresentation, a stratagem for constructing the view that the embassy, and Phoinix in particular, wish Achilleus to take of the offer they convey. On this view, Phoinix deploys the exemplum to transform the embassy into an act of supplication by the transgressor. In so doing, he satisfies Nestor’s request for soothing words in addition to gifts. This entitles Phoinix to argue that if Agamemnon were not sending gifts along with the supplication of the embassy, Achilleus might still retain his wrath (m¯enis, 9.515 –23). Ultimately, however, Phoinix is no more able than Odysseus to disguise Agamemnon’s refusal to offer anything like supplication. The Prayers offered remain those of the philoi, which his own life story has just shown to be ineffective. In the final panel of his speech, Phoinix deploys an epic model. He reminds Achilleus that one can learn from the famous deeds (klea) of heroes of old: oÏtv ka‹ t«n prÒsyen §peuyÒmeya kl°a éndr«n
525 ≤r≈vn, ˜te k°n tinÉ §pizãfelow xÒlow ·koi: dvrhto¤ te p°lonto pararrhto¤ tÉ §p°essi.
‘Thus it was in the old days also, the deeds that we hear of 525 from the great men, when the swelling anger descended upon them. The heroes would take gifts; they would listen, and be persuaded.’ (9.524–26)
The Embassy to Achilleus
10 1
These lines may remind the external auditors that Achilleus himself was singing the kleos, fame, of men (klea andr¯on, 9.189) when the embassy arrived. For the audience listening to a poet recomposing the Iliad in performance, Achilleus’ singing would be, by definition, recomposing, as is, I suggest, Phoinix’s narration of the Meleagros myth.90 Moreover, the words ‘kleos of heroes’ (klea andr¯on h¯er¯o¯on) are self-referential: they point beyond Phoinix’s reference and to the Iliad, which is itself fame of men: klea andr¯on. Phoinix is ostensibly going to tell of heroes who were persuaded with gifts and words to put away anger; instead, he uses the Meleagros myth as a negative exemplum of a hero who was eventually persuaded with words but failed to take gifts because he waited too long (9.529–99). Meleagros, the Aitolian champion in a battle against the Kouretes, sat out the fighting in anger over curses his mother had called down on him because he had killed her brother, his maternal uncle. Meleagros remained unmoved by a parade of suppliants who offered him gifts to return to the fighting and rescue them. At last, as fire was being set to the city, his wife, Kleopatra, moved him with descriptions of her impending suffering so that he saved the day, but too late to take gifts. Phoinix points out a possible tactical error. Achilleus has to receive the gifts before reentering battle or Agamemnon may withdraw them. But if Achilleus waits until the last minute, there won’t be enough time. In fact, this potential problem occurs, and Achilleus uses Patroklos to buy him that time. The bibliography on the Meleagros myth is extensive.91 Much of the scholarship derives from Neoanalytic interest in a Meleagris, which critics of that school believe preceded the formation of our Iliad. Other critics have investigated the Meleagros myth with a view to tradition and invention in the Iliad. Another rehearsal of the parallels between the stories of Meleagros and Achilleus would probably not serve understanding here. The foregoing analysis, however, permits an observation about the gifts in the Meleagros myth and an inference about Phoinix’s use of the mythical exemplum. The observation is this: Phoinix describes the gifts offered to Meleagros as a measure to induce him to return to the fighting to save his philoi, who are in desperate straits. They are related to the curses of Meleagros’ mother only inasmuch as they are intended to assuage the anger over it. The gifts, in other words, are gifts to a philos from philoi who will die unless Meleagros helps them, but there is no indication that they are intended to repay the harm that Meleagros has sustained.92 Accordingly, Phoinix uses the myth to figure the gifts the embassy offers as an exchange of d¯ora among philoi (i.e., unlike apoina, which are conventionally offered only to outsiders). But, as a result, Phoinix also brushes Achilleus’ poin¯e
10 2
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
theme and Agamemnon’s harm aside. It is in fact possible to discern a consistent strategy of excluding Agamemnon from the exchange: Phoinix, not Agamemnon, is in loco parentis; the embassy, not Agamemnon, makes supplication; and philoi, not Agamemnon, offer gifts for protection. As he did with the Supplicatory Prayers and Delusion story, Phoinix uses traditional narrative to conflate Agamemnon’s gifts with the words of the embassy in order to produce an offer that is culturally acceptable. Moreover, he represents the embassy bearing gifts (through the parade of suppliants) as conforming to a heroic paradigm. On Phoinix’s view, Achilleus has only two choices: he will reenter the fighting in time to take gifts and be honored (tiemen) by the Achaians in the manner suggested by Odysseus, as a god, or he will fight only when fire is set to the ships, without the gifts and with less tim¯e. 600 éllå sÁ mÆ moi taËta nÒei fres¤, mhd° se da¤mvn §ntaËya tr°ceie, f¤low: kãkion d° ken e‡h nhus‹n kaiom°n˙sin émun°men: éllÉ §p‹ d≈roiw ¶rxeo: ‰son gãr se ye“ t¤sousin ÉAxaio¤. efi d° kÉ êter d≈rvn pÒlemon fyisÆnora dÊ˙w, oÈk°yÉ ım«w tim∞w ¶seai pÒlemÒn per élalk≈n.
‘Listen, then; do not have such a thought in your mind; let not the spirit within you turn you that way, dear friend. It would be worse to defend the ships after they are burning. No, with gifts promised go forth. The Achaians will honour you as they would an immortal. But if without gifts you go into the fighting where men perish, your tim¯e will be no longer as great, though you drive back the battle’ (Iliad 9.600–5)
Put another way, Phoinix contests the validity of Achilleus’ claim to apoina and poin¯e and reasserts the logic that they are exclusive options. As Scodel observes, Meleagros is a model for what Phoinix wants Achilleus not to do, not for what he does. His strategy fails not because Achilleus rejects tradition or gifts on principle, but because he penetrates the stratagem and consistently responds to Agamemnon’s true offer instead of the embassy’s rhetoric. In answer to Phoinix’s warning that he will not have the same tim¯e if he fights without gifts, Achilleus denies that he needs this tim¯e (9.607). His refusal, as before, is directed toward Agamemnon’s apoina and cannot be generalized into a rejection of material forms of tim¯e altogether. Although Achilleus’ next words – ‘I think I am honored already in Zeus’ ordinance’ (9.608) – are often interpreted as repudiating material
The Embassy to Achilleus
10 3
tim¯e, the foregoing suggests another plausible reading. In the course of the quarrel in Book 1, Achilleus had claimed that the heroes had come to Troy to win tim¯e for the Atreidai; nonetheless, he then threatened to go home rather than to earn tim¯e for Agamemnon and be left without tim¯e (atimos) himself. Agamemnon had replied that Achilleus was free to go, for Agamemnon had others who would honor him, and above all, Zeus (1.175). Achilleus, in response, appropriated the Chryses model for a strategy of tisis. Thetis asked and Zeus agreed that he would give Achilleus tim¯e by taking it from Agamemnon until such time as he should give him proper tim¯e. In this light, Achilleus’ rejecting gifts and claiming honor from Zeus may be seen as refusing to reenter a social system where Agamemnon has made it impossible to earn tim¯e – material as well as immaterial – and further, as announcing that he will continue to pursue a strategy of tisis. Achilleus may thus be regarded as taking a risk similar to the one Agamemnon took in Book 1. There Agamemnon calculated that he could take Briseis and still take Troy. Here Achilleus calculates that he can hold out until Agamemnon is cast in a dependent position and still win material tim¯e – if not from Agamemnon in the form of apoina, then from the plunder of Troy. For this reason, he determines to stay by his ships and not return to Phthia. Both protagonists now, for different reasons, assume they have the support of Zeus and, hence, that their respective strategies in the eris between them over dominance will succeed. Finally, Achilleus appropriates the heroic ethos that governs the very relations among philoi invoked by Phoinix: love your friends (and the friends of your friends) and hate your enemies (and the enemies of your friends).93
615
615
mÆ moi sÊgxei yumÚn oÉ durÒmenow ka‹ éxeÊvn, ÉAtre˝d˙ ¥rvÛ f°rvn xãrin: oÈd° t¤ se xrØ tÚn fil°ein, ·na mÆ moi ép°xyhai fil°onti. kalÒn toi sÁn §mo‹ tÚn kÆdein, ˜w kÉ §m¢ kÆd˙: ‰son §mo‹ bas¤leue ka‹ ¥misu me¤reo tim∞w.
‘Stop confusing my heart with lamentation and sorrow for the favor of great Atreides. It does not become you to love this man, for fear you turn hateful to me, who love you. It should be your pride with me to hurt whoever shall hurt me. Be king equally with me; take half of my tim¯e.’ (9.612–16)
Phoinix brought traditional obligations of family and philoi to bear on Achilleus. Achilleus nowhere denies these obligations; he simply wields them to compel Phoinix to choose sides in the quarrel. If Agamemnon is
10 4
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
Achilleus’ enemy, Phoinix cannot, by the common sense about friendship in heroic society, love them both, or so Achilleus claims. His offer of “half my kingdom” throws down a gauntlet: Phoinix must decide where his loyalties lie and who his philoi are. It is Achilleus’ own form of symbolic violence.
Aias and Achilleus So far, the embassy has failed dismally in its mission of persuading Achilleus with repeated and shifting attempts to redefine Agamemnon’s offer. Odysseus had incited a knee-jerk reaction and Phoinix’s speech has only brought them back to ground zero. Aias apparently despairs of persuading Achilleus with words of any sort and proposes to Odysseus that they should leave, since it seems that no conclusion will be brought to the matter by speech acts (muthoi, 9.625). He does, however, deploy speech in one last effort to move Achilleus with words. Like Odysseus’ speech, his is arranged by ring-composition so that the matter of Agamemnon’s offer is narratively framed with insider language of friendship ( philot¯es): 9.628–31 9.632–39 9.639–42
Achilleus has no regard for philot¯es. A man accepts poin¯e for the death of a family member, but Achilleus is implacable because of a woman (kour¯e). Feel a sense of shame (aid¯os) with respect to your guests; we want to be dearest friends (k¯edistoi, philtatoi) to you.
Aias charges that Achilleus shows no regard for friendship (philot¯es), in respect to which the Achaians have honored him above anyone else. His short blame speech is peppered with harsh words for Achilleus’ intractability in rejecting the embassy: Achilleus has a savage spirit (agrion . . . thumon. 9.629); he is hard (skhetlios, 9.630) and pitiless (n¯el¯es, 9.632). Achilleus, in Aias’ view, has unambiguously and unreasonably violated the ethical bonds among friends ( philot¯es). He consequently introduces a compensation theme of the poin¯e type as the positive exemplum to which he contrasts Achilleus’ conduct:
635
ka‹ m°n t¤w te kasignÆtoio fÒnoio94 poinØn µ o paidÚw §d°jato teynh«tow: ka¤ =É ı m¢n §n dÆmƒ m°nei aÈtoË pÒllÉ épot¤saw, toË d° tÉ §rhtÊetai krad¤h ka‹ yumÚw égÆnvr poinØn dejam°nƒ.95
The Embassy to Achilleus
635
10 5
‘And yet a man takes for his brother’s murder the poin¯e, or [poin¯e] for a child who was killed, and the guilty one, when he has largely repaid, stays still in the country, and the injured man’s heart is curbed, and his pride, and his anger when he has taken the poin¯e.’ (9.632–36)
Aias’ exemplum is an epitome of compensation themes of the poin¯e type and is, significantly, most like the scene on the shield. No setting is indicated; nonetheless, a scenario in which such exchanges are transacted in a polis under the auspices of institutions for the administration of justice is likely. It therefore reflects settlements negotiated between men associated as insiders, or philoi. That is, a person accepts poin¯e, here composition, for a slain brother or child. As a result, the homicide avoids exile or death and the anger of the victim’s kinsman is restrained (er¯etuetai, 9.635). Aias claims, without qualification, that the kinsman of a homicide victim in Homeric society takes composition, presuming that the kinsman and the homicide are associated as philoi at some level, and probably that of the polis. And even though the trial scene on the shield suggests that Aias’ exemplum does not tell the whole story, he uses the poin¯e theme to construct an a fortiori argument: so‹ dÉ êllhktÒn te kakÒn te yumÚn §n‹ stÆyessi yeo‹ y°san e·neka koÊrhw o‡hw:
‘But the gods put in your breast a spirit not to be placated, bad, for the sake of one single girl.’ (9.636–38)
The premise is the common sense of heroic society that family members are located in a different exchange order, or sphere, than captive women. Hence, if a kinsman accepts composition for the life of a family member, how can Achilleus not take goods for the lesser harm he has suffered, namely, ‘one miserable girl!’ (kour¯es oi¯es, 9.637–38)?96 Aias grants Achilleus’ claim that he has sustained gratuitous harm for which he is owed poin¯e, but contests his assertion that he was robbed of a wife and also his earlier truism that goods are not for life. Aias’ only solution is that Achilleus’ spirit (thumos) is implacable and evil. He accordingly appeals to him to make his spirit gracious (hilaos) and to feel a sense of shame (aid¯os) concerning the guests under his roof
10 6
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
(9.639–40). By making a plea for a sense of shame (aid¯os), he tacitly acknowledges the position Achilleus has won but implores him to act with restraint. Aias’ appeal concludes with a variation on the theme of friendship (philot¯es) with which he began: he and a great number of Achaians wish to be regarded with affection by Achilleus, as he has been by them (9.640–42). As neither Odysseus nor Phoinix does, Aias reverses the direction of exchange from apoina, which Agamemnon actually offers, to a payment of poin¯e. He invokes an exemplum that applies to settlements among philoi and that therefore should, on his view, apply to the relationship between Achilleus and Agamemnon. But he, like Odysseus and Phoinix, ignores the hostility between the two powerful antagonists that Achilleus’ withdrawal and Agamemnon’s apoina alike presuppose. Aias misses the point of the quarrel. He fails, moreover, to account adequately for Achilleus’ singular demand: the life for which Achilleus seeks to secure poin¯e is his own.97 Nevertheless, he seems to succeed, as neither of the other two speakers has, in getting Achilleus to concede to the embassy’s complex discourse about the gifts. Achilleus’ initial response is encouraging: pãnta t¤ moi katå yumÚn §e¤sv muyÆsasyai
‘All that you have said seems spoken after my own mind’ (9.645)
Hugh Lloyd-Jones proposes that Achilleus recognizes the strength of Aias’ argument and is “in effect acknowledging that he is right. But since his thymos [spirit] is swelling with anger, he cannot bring himself to act upon his knowledge.”98 Arieti suggests that Aias talks Achilleus further back from the edge of his “alienated and pitiless intransigence.”99 It is possible, however, to read Achilleus’ words less as a change in his own thinking than as an affirmation that Aias’ words resonate with what he himself has been saying all along. Aias’ reconfiguration of Agamemnon’s apoina as poin¯e, though arguably an artless and inadequate misrepresentation, at least figures the gifts in line with Achilleus’ demands. All three members of the embassy have based their arguments in part on friendship (philot¯es). Odysseus and Phoinix fail; Aias’ strategy – to the extent that it is one – differs only in recognizing the harm Achilleus has sustained as requiring poin¯e. Therefore, it must be why he succeeds: he comes close enough to be pulled into Achilleus’ orbit. Achilleus can appropriate Aias’ words so as to imply that he is open to compensation that is culturally acceptable.
The Embassy to Achilleus
10 7
Achilleus does not overtly deny the obligation of friendship (philot¯es) as Aias presents it. He himself had received at least Phoinix and Aias as friends ( philoi andres, 9.197). He remains firm, however, in his resolve to refuse Agamemnon’s gifts and not to rescue the Achaians. Each time the embassy tries to move the situation away from Agamemnon and to redefine the father or the gifts, Achilleus moves it back to Agamemnon and the harm he inflicted. He reminds Aias that Agamemnon has disgraced him publicly (9.647). Moreover, he has treated him like some outsider who possessed no tim¯e (9.648). It should, in short, be Agamemnon whom Aias charges with having no regard for friendship. Agamemnon cannot be both friend and enemy. If Agamemnon persists in treating him as notphiloi, he will persist in behaving accordingly. Achilleus concludes his speech, and the embassy’s visit, with a message for Aias to take back to the Greek commander: he will not reenter the fighting until Hektor threatens the Myrmidon ships with fire. Achilleus’ aggressive appropriation of a conflated Chryses/Apollo model brought him the embassy and Agamemnon’s apoina. His strategy has failed, however, to produce a culturally acceptable offer of poin¯e or to cast Agamemnon in a dependent position in relation to himself. Achilleus is, as I have already suggested, determined that Agamemnon’s superiority, unlike Zeus’ own superiority, is not unassailable. He will therefore deploy his strategy of tisis to the limit, and beyond, in the struggle for dominance. Moreover, he does so not by rejecting heroic tradition, but by appropriating and aggressively exploiting its ambiguities. Phoinix had performed a traditional myth as a negative exemplum in an effort to impose limits on Achilleus. Achilleus, himself skilled at singing the fame of men (klea andr¯on), now discards the failed Chryses model and agonistically adopts Phoinix’s negative mythical exemplum as a positive one: like Meleagros, he will not fight until fire touches his own ships; unlike Meleagros, however, he hopes to do so without losing gifts.100 Although Achilleus adjusts his strategy in response to Agamemnon’s and the embassy’s strategies, he has not swerved from his earlier objective. He is no less dissatisfied with his position of dependence; he is resolute in refusing to fight; he maintains a strategy of m¯etis, that is, tisis through inactivity, as a means of securing tim¯e in all its forms; and he is set on taking poin¯e and, after that, apoina. Refusing apoina is, as we have seen, compatible with the norms of heroic society, even though such offers seem to have been accepted regularly prior to Agamemnon’s rejection of Chryses’. Homer does not portray Achilleus’ refusal as untraditional, but rather as without pity or restraint. In Book 1,
10 8
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
at Athene’s instigation, Achilleus adopted a strategy of m¯etis for waging his struggle for dominance with Agamemnon, namely, suffering abuse, withdrawing from the conflict, and casting himself in a position of dependence on a divine advocate. He has pursued that strategy consistently, and it in fact controls the plot of the poem up to the death of Patroklos. But when Agamemnon confronts him with an offer of apoina and he rejects it, as he must, in order to assert his claim to poin¯e, Achilleus becomes thematically and narratively entangled with an ambiguous and potentially dehumanizing pattern of bi¯e, violent might.101 The mixed-type themes evoke the disturbing scenes involving Hera and Hekab¯e in which rejecting a material exchange in favor of unchecked tisis signals dissolution of familial and friendship bonds and even of civilized existence. Without changing his strategy of m¯etis, Achilleus has been scripted into a thematic pattern that will propel him beyond the limits of culture and m¯etis and affiliate him entirely with nature and bi¯e. Aias may have misunderstood Achilleus’ wrath (m¯enis) as unchecked emotion, but his accusation that Achilleus has set a savage (agrios, 9.629) spirit in his breast portends the Achilleus to come. Agamemnon never receives the message that Achilleus will stay by his ships until Hektor threatens them with fire. Odysseus reports to him only Achilleus’ first answer, that he threatens to leave for Phthia (9.677–83). The embassy’s motive is, however, clear: if Odysseus had reported the full response, the army would have simply ceased to fight. Hence, Book 9 ends with Diomedes’ plan – which Nestor has already shown to be flawed – being put into action.
5 Achilleus and Priam Between King and Father
ÉAgayØ dÉ ÖEriw ¥de broto›sin
This Eris is good for mortals. Hesiod
The Achaians are being destroyed by men who would be king. To imagine either Agamemnon or Achilleus as outside the values and world views of their society is to circumvent a, if not the, central ambiguity of the poem. Each maintains that he is best, but each is legitimated by a different ideological model for ranking. In the struggle for dominance, each antagonist deploys and exploits the social rules and values held collectively in heroic society as well as the common sense peculiar to each system. Each lays claim to the support of Zeus in the contest. Each accuses the other of violating social institutions and relations, and at the same time lets his own philoi fall in the crossfire. That the two have been set on a collision course emerges as less a problem of theodicy for the Iliad than as a condition, namely, eris displaced onto the mortal realm with the marriage of Thetis.1 Heroic society will either manage this inheritance successfully or collapse into disorder. Social and even cosmic destruction impends in a crisis generated by Agamemnon’s and Achilleus’ inherited roles, occasioned by an inherent contradiction in Homeric society, and precipitated generally by Agamemnon’s conflating the fixed and fluid ranking systems and specifically by his rejecting Chryses’ apoina. Whereas in the divine order eris was managed by displacement onto the human realm, in Homeric society conflict among philoi is ideally controlled and contained by displacing it onto ritualized conflict such as public speeches, gift exchange, and athletic competition or fighting with the enemy 10 9
110
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
in battle. Ritualized conflict in a tim¯e-based system produces a hierarchy and, hence, an ordered and stable society under the leadership of the best (aristos). But in Homeric society there also exists a second model, a fixed ranking system in which the best is determined and authenticated politically, not agonistically. The two discrete systems can be seen to overlap with respect to many relations, institutions, and values, but the differing ideals of leadership and of distribution of goods are brought into conflict in the poem. This brings to light an inherent source of political instability in Homeric society that, as Bourdieu might say, it is the Iliad ’s job to expose. The situation at the end of Book 9 reveals a breakdown of displacement mechanisms. The development of the compensation theme, in which successful exchange of compensatory goods is confined almost entirely to analepses (flashbacks to the time before Chryses’ arrival in the Achaian camp), confirms that such is the case. On Achilleus’ and, not insignificantly, the narrator’s view, the breakdown may be attributed to the constraint the fixed system exercises over the operation of the fluid ranking system, effectively preventing it from displacing eris and imposing a hierarchy that extends to the highest level. Achilleus’ consistent scheme in the conflict (aside from short-lived threats to return to Phthia) has been to return and rescue the Achaians, having taken gifts and being in a position of dominance in relation to Agamemnon; hence his resolution to take first poin¯e and then apoina, based on a strategy of buying the time Agamemnon will need to send him gifts. This is his only way to get out of the Meleagros paradigm. Agamemnon’s equally persistent scheme has been to use his fixed status to keep Achilleus in a subordinate role and to use his privileged position in the fixed system to control the fluid one. The burden of Books 10–24 is to break the impasse and so turn Achilleus from harming his own philoi to harming the enemy, restore the operation of the fluidstatus system, and reverse the deleterious effects of Agamemnon’s rejecting Chryses’ apoina. Homer’s stratagem for doing so is to tap the mythic theme of the hero as a man of pain.2 FROM THE EMBASSY TO THE ASSEMBLY
On the day following the embassy, the fighting begins with an Achaian advance. But when Agamemnon is forced to leave the battlefield because of a wound, Zeus turns the tide in favor of the Trojans, as he had promised Hektor. Within a short time, Diomedes, Odysseus, and finally Machaon the physician are also wounded and forced to withdraw.
Achilleus and Priam
111
Achilleus, watching the battle from the stern of his ship and seeing Nestor’s chariot arrive at the camp, is confident that the Achaian situation is intolerable and, consequently, that the Achaians will extend to him the poin¯e he believes he is owed and, as important, supplication: nËn Ù˝v per‹ goÊnatÉ §må stÆsesyai ÉAxaioÁw
610 lissom°nouw. xrei∆ går flkãnetai oÈk°tÉ énektÒw. Now I think the Achaians will come to my knees and stay there 610 in supplication, for a need past endurance has come to them. (11.609–10)
Achilleus now sends Patroklos to Nestor’s shelter to find out whom he had brought in, perhaps expecting that Nestor will interpret his overtures as a display of genuine interest in the welfare of the Achaian armies. When Patroklos finally returns from Nestor’s shelter, he comes with a proposal to buy the Achaians some time. If Achilleus himself will not return, let him send Patroklos out in his own armor and so create breathing space for the Achaians (16.38–45).3 It is not, however, only the Achaians who need to buy time. Achilleus cannot afford to have the ships torched before Agamemnon brings gifts. In the meantime, the situation has become critical: the palisade has been breached, and the Trojan and Achaian armies are fighting among the ships. Is there a prophecy, Patroklos asks in accordance with Nestor’s instruction, that holds Achilleus back from the fighting (11.794–95; 16.36–37)? Passing up the opportunity to appeal to his double destiny, Achilleus claims instead to be motivated by anguished indignation (akhos) that derives from his social conflict with Agamemnon: it is not right for a man, when he is preeminent in strength, to despoil another who is his equal and rob him of his prize ( geras; 16.52–54).4 He thus reasserts his complaint against Agamemnon’s abuse of the fixed system to rob him of tim¯e gained in the fluid one. And he asserts his perspective that as the best in the tim¯e-based system, he is at least Agamemnon’s equal. But Agamemnon, in his view, has acted as if he were an outsider with no tim¯e that must be taken into account.5 Achilleus can thus be seen to describe his own wrath as created by and in reaction to disabling of a sociopolitical system, which has left him severely disadvantaged and without viable recourse. Achilleus is not, he assures Patroklos, intractable, as Aias had said. It was never his intent to remain angry forever but to reconcile with Agamemnon when an appropriate offer was made, even though he had said (eph¯en) he would not put his anger aside until the fighting reached his own ships
112
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
(16.60–61). What Achilleus had said at the end of the embassy, according to our Iliad, is that he would not fight until fire touched his own ships (9.653–55).6 But he already has good reason to fear for the Myrmidon ships, and his window of opportunity is small (16.80–82). Although he will keep his word and not reenter the fighting yet, he agrees to send Patroklos out in his stead. Achilleus thus shifts his strategy, modeled on that of Meleagros, in response to the crisis. But he does not abandon either his objective of taking poin¯e and gifts or his struggle for domination. He does not pray that Zeus will bring an end to the destruction (loigos) of the Achaians,7 nor does he enter the fighting to ward it off himself. He thus does not appear to be weakening in his resolve or demonstrating a gradual change of character, as is sometimes claimed.8 Instead, his new strategy is one of incremental return in that the Myrmidons reenter the fighting but he himself does not, except in the person of Patroklos.9 Patroklos is, in fact, sent out with instructions to win tim¯e and glory for Achilleus and to give the armies only enough breathing space so that they will send back the woman and give him gifts (d¯ora) in addition, bypassing Agamemnon altogether if necessary:
85
85
pe¤yeo dÉ Àw toi §g∆ mÊyou t°low §n fres‹ ye¤v, …w ên moi timØn megãlhn ka‹ kËdow êrhai prÚw pãntvn Dana«n, étår o„ perikall°a koÊrhn íc éponãssvsin, pot‹ dÉ églaå d«ra pÒrvsin.
But obey to the end this word I put upon your attention so that you can win, for me great tim¯e and glory in the sight of all the Danaans, so they will bring back to me the lovely girl, and give me shining gifts in addition. (16.83–86)
Achilleus is apparently willing to win superiority by Agamemnon’s admission or, failing that, the armies’ recognition. Either way, Agamemnon would lose tim¯e and be forced into a position of dependence in relation to him. In sending Patroklos out to ward off the destruction (loigon amun¯on, 16.80), even temporarily, Achilleus casts his closest companion in arms (therap¯on) into his own thematic role as best of the Achaians, aristos Akhai¯on (cf. 1.341) – a role Patroklos is not equipped to fill. Moreover Achilleus scripts Patroklos into his own cultural identity by outfitting him in his immortal armor.10 The armor was a gift of the gods to Peleus upon his marriage to Thetis (18.83–85), the marriage that sealed Achilleus’ fate
Achilleus and Priam
113
as a mortal who is destined to be stronger than his father and whose essential identity is eris. Cook proposes that the eris that defines Achilleus is produced by his frustrated attempt to assert his divine self, played out in siding with the mother figure against the father figure, and to deny his mortal self.11 This ‘almost’ son of Zeus would have deposed his father except that his eristic drive was displaced onto the human plane, first, by the marriage of Thetis to Peleus, by which Achilleus was made mortal, and, second, by the judgment of Paris, which occasioned the archetypal event in which eris would be played out among mortals. Cook further argues that the immortal armor is the vector that transmits Achilleus’ impurity, consisting in generational strife, to Patroklos and then to Hektor. The armor reifies the displacement of immortal eris to earth, even as Achilleus himself does as the offspring of that displacement. His inherited identity is thus that of archetypal mortal bearer of eris. In an effort to protect both his surrogate and his own objective, Achilleus issues a stern warning to Patroklos not to fight the Trojans all the way to the wall (16.83–90). Ironically, Achilleus imposes on Patroklos what he himself cannot abide: limits. Patroklos must do only enough to advance Achilleus’ strategy and allow the Achaians an opportunity to return the woman and offer gifts (with Agamemnon in an appropriately dependent position). He must not, however, do so much that Achilleus is rendered dispensable and, as a consequence, divested of tim¯e (atimos) even more than before (cf. 1.171). Achilleus’ impossible wish that the Trojans and Achaians alike would perish and that he and Patroklos alone – apart from warrior society – would ‘loose the sacred veil of Troy’ is emblematic of Achilleus’ own overreaching (16.97–100). It bodes ill for Patroklos and his mission. Even as the two speak, Aias, the last line of Achaian defense, gives way and the Trojans throw fire on the ships. The condition for Achilleus’ return is thus partially met. Patroklos subsequently emerges as a mortal in immortal armor, a human counterpart for the mortal trace horse yoked to the immortal horses that pull his chariot.12 His armor, team of horses, and assignment to ward off destruction (loigos) overdetermine him as bearer of displaced strife, or as an Achilleus figure. Before Patroklos leads the Myrmidons out, Achilleus pours a libation to Zeus and prays, in effect, that Zeus’ will (boul¯e ) may still conform to his own (16.233–48). His own plot for the quarrel with Agamemnon and his own claim of poin¯e have, to this point, run parallel with the will of Zeus (Dios boul¯e ). But the will of Zeus encompasses more than his promise to Thetis, as Zeus’
114
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
own summaries demonstrate (8.470–83 15.49–77); it extends at least to the sack of Troy. Gregory Nagy in fact proposes that the will of Zeus may be identified with the self-proclaimed plot of our Iliad.13 Achilleus thus has no promise of Zeus’ alliance in his project of tisis, for when fire touches the Achaian ships, Zeus’ promise to Thetis is fulfilled (15.596–99). The course of events, and hence the plot of the Iliad, is out of Achilleus’ control, and we are entitled to see a certain presumption in his hopes to the contrary. Encased in immortal armor, Patroklos loses his own sense of limits and ignores Achilleus’ warning. After killing Sarpedon and blinded by delusion (at¯e, 16.685), he pursues the fleeing Trojans. Three times he rushes the city wall and is beaten back by Apollo (16.698–704). Patroklos gives ground only on his fourth attempt, at Apollo’s warning, and for the moment escapes the fate that Achilleus had feared (16.705 –11). Three times he charges successfully into the ranks of the Trojans. On the fourth, however, rushing like someone possessed (daimoni isos, 16.786), he is struck from behind by Apollo.14 Apollo sends the helmet, shield, and corselet flying. Euphorbos strikes Patroklos from behind. Hektor only delivers the third, but deadly, blow. When he in his turn dons the immortal armor stripped from his victim, Zeus himself ‘fits’ it to him, sealing Hektor’s fatal link to Achilleus and Patroklos and, at the same time, promising to secure poin¯e for him (17.198–208 [20]). From this point on, Hektor also begins to lose a sense of human limits. A fierce battle over Patroklos’ corpse ensues, but Antilochos leaves for the ships to let Achilleus know of his death. Achilleus, when he receives the news, cries aloud and is heard by Thetis and the other Nere¨ıd nymphs, who gather about him on the shore. Piece by piece the narrator assembles a cameo, in which Achilleus lies on the ground, disfiguring his head with dust. The Nere¨ıds stand about him weeping and Thetis holds her son’s head in her hands, as one would a corpse, in a gesture of mourning.15 The narrative, explicitly about the death of Patroklos, has thus become at the same time implicitly about Achilleus’. Thetis questions her son: are not the Achaians dying in answer to his request that Zeus give him tim¯e (18.73–74; cf, 1.362–63)? But Achilleus protests that there is no pleasure in what Zeus has accomplished since Patroklos, whom he loves as his own self, has died. Not only that, but Patroklos died because Achilleus, in his own judgment, had failed as his protector (ar¯es alkt¯er, 18.100).16 He recounts how Hektor stripped Patroklos of the armor the gods had given Peleus on the day they compelled Thetis to marry him. Achilleus’ unattainable wish that Thetis had
115
Achilleus and Priam
remained among the Nere¨ıds instead may reflect pity for his mother’s impending sorrow, but it also reveals that his anguished indignation (akhos) issues from his own mortal condition and destiny. Following the death of his substitute, he for his part resists his fate, wishing that mortals could be relieved of eris and anger (kholos) altogether (18.105 –12). But the myth implicitly attests to a cosmology in which eris may not be declared void; it is either displaced or issues into violent conflict.17 Since it is as impossible for him to deny his birthright as to blot out eris, the question of his heroic identity becomes what Achilleus will ultimately do with them. For the present, Achilleus’ anger against Agamemnon has been deflected toward Hektor. His anguish over Patroklos will send him back into battle to take compensation from Hektor and then die a heroic death that will earn him kleos. Patroklos’ death is, as Nagy observes, the pivot on which Achilleus turns from being a source of pain (akhos) to his own people to inflicting it on the Trojans.18 Although he had intimated to the embassy that he had a choice between a long life without kleos or kleos aphthiton (the immortality conferred by traditional poetry) without a return home (nostos), Achilleus now accepts the destiny that has always been his (18.90, 101). He casts himself in a complex poin¯e theme – tim¯e for Patroklos and kleos for himself – that will be resolved first in the death of Hektor and then in his own death (18.92–93; 114–26): 90
115 120
§pe‹ oÈdÉ §m¢ yumÚw én≈gei z≈ein oÈdÉ êndressi met°mmenai, a‡ ke mØ ÜEktvr pr«tow §m“ ÍpÚ dour‹ tupe‹w épÚ yumÚn Ùl°ss˙, PatrÒkloio dÉ ßlvra Menoitiãdev épot¤s˙. : : : : : : : nËn dÉ e‰mÉ ˆfra f¤lhw kefal∞w Ùlet∞ra kixe¤v ÜEktora. k∞ra dÉ §g∆ tÒte d°jomai ıppÒte ken dØ ZeÁw §y°l˙ tel°sai ±dÉ éyãnatoi yeo‹ êlloi. : : : : : : : Õw ka‹ §g≈n, efi dÆ moi ımo¤h mo›ra t°tuktai, ke¤somÉ §pe¤ ke yãnv. nËn d¢ kl°ow §sylÚn éro¤mhn
‘[S]ince the spirit within does not drive me to go on living and be among men, except on condition that Hektor be beaten down under my spear, lose his life and pay back stripping Patroklos, the son of Menoitios. :
:
:
:
:
:
:
Now I shall go, to overtake that killer of a dear life, Hektor; then I will accept my own death, at whatever
116
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad time Zeus wishes to bring it about, and the other immortals. :
:
:
:
:
:
:
So I likewise, if such is the fate which has been wrought for me, shall lie, when I am dead. Now I must win excellent kleos.’ (18.90–93; 114–16; 120–21)
AGAMEMNON’S UNLIMITED APOINA
If Achilleus is to exact poin¯e for Patroklos’ death, he must return to the fighting. He takes the initiative to do so by summoning an assembly, in which he asserts that the quarrel between himself and Agamemnon was over only a woman (kour¯e, 19.58) after all.19 He thereby transfers Briseis back to the sphere of prestige goods and abandons the poin¯e theme for Helen, which he had appropriated to justify his tisis. He further devalues Briseis in relation to the Achaian armies by wishing she had died on the day she was captured, before becoming a source of conflict (19.59–63). He then publicly renounces his anger and urges Agamemnon to marshal the troops at once (19.68–70). In light of his insistent assertion that Agamemnon had violated the ethical bonds of friendship ( philot¯es) and treated him like an outsider, Achilleus’ words may be intended to affirm his own adherence to heroic norms of friendship, now even where Agamemnon is concerned. Achilleus, for all his graciousness, is nevertheless assuming a position of authority. He unilaterally defines the situation between himself and Agamemnon; he returns stridently and on his own terms (19.65 –73). His strategy is to take poin¯e for Patroklos without coming under Agamemnon’s domination, either by taking gifts intended to subordinate him or by participating in a tim¯e-based status system presided over by the Greek commander. Achilleus had claimed he would not accept apoina until he takes poin¯e; he is consistent in how he represents the situation and in his stratagem.20 Now that he is a dead man walking, he shows little interest in pursuing his demand for poin¯e from Agamemnon but he does avoid taking apoina, which would force his reintegration into what he regards as a broken system. In fact, although Achilleus returns to the fighting, he remains detached from the social system and even refrains from normal human activities. The external audience does not see him eat or sleep, nor does he have sex, until he takes Priam’s apoina in Book 24. Agamemnon reacts to the strategy underlying Achilleus’ courtesy. He has tenaciously forestalled being cast into a dependent position in relation to Achilleus, though it nearly cost him his ships and troops. He can scarcely afford now to have the best of the Greek warriors return without defining
Achilleus and Priam
117
the power relation between them publicly. Agamemnon therefore also brings up the matter of the quarrel, but only to protest to the assembly that he has been falsely accused of being at fault: pollãki dÆ moi toËton ÉAxaio‹ mËyon ¶eipon ka¤ t° me neike¤eskon. §g∆ dÉ oÈk a‡tiÒw efimi.
‘This is the word the Achaians have spoken often against me and found fault with me in it, yet I am not to blame’ (19.85 –86)
Agamemnon tries to set the record straight about the quarrel and its disastrous aftermath: I am not to blame. Taplin shows that when someone attributes blame (aitia, 19.86), it is attribution of blame “which expects the payment of the price for the fault.”21 It thus constitutes an admission that one has inflicted gratuitous harm and is therefore liable for a payment of poin¯e. As a result, “the claim that one is oÈk a‡tiow (not to blame) (or éna¤tiow [blameless]), and the claim that someone else is, amounts to a proposal that one should not have to pay the price and that the other party should.”22 So much of his argument is compelling. Taplin contends, however, that in Book 9 Agamemnon, by admitting delusion (at¯e ), accepted attribution of blame, “hence his willingness to offer reparation.”23 He concludes that there is a contradiction between Agamemnon’s claim that he is ‘not to blame’ (ouk aitios) and his willingness to pay reparation in Book 19. He thus infers that ‘I am not to blame’ (§g∆ dÉ oÈk a‡tiÒw efimi, 19.86) represents a retraction of what Agamemnon said in Book 9. But Taplin’s argument is based on virtual equation of delusion (at¯e) and blame (aitia) and on conflation of apoina and poin¯e. In a private council, Agamemnon admitted only delusion in Book 9 but not blame for depriving Achilleus of tim¯e or for the destruction of the Achaian armies. He accordingly accepted responsibility as commander in chief for rectifying the results of the quarrel with an offer of apoina, but nowhere accepted liability to pay poin¯e for harm inflicted on Achilleus. In the public assembly in Book 19 Agamemnon explicitly acquits himself of blame for gratuitous harm that would render him liable for poin¯e. He again admits only delusion and adds that even Zeus is subject to it (19.95 –133). How then could anyone fault Agamemnon for his? Even as Zeus sorrowed over the grief his delusion caused his son Herakles (19.132–33), so Agamemnon remembered his own delusion when he saw the Argives – that is, his sons – being killed around the ships (19.134–35). As he did in Book 9, Agamemnon presents himself as willing to take not liability but responsibility for rectifying circumstances that arose through no fault of
118
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
his own. Without unseating himself in any respect,24 he offers Achilleus, as before, apoina: éllÉ §pe‹ éasãmhn ka¤ meu fr°naw §j°leto ZeÊw, íc §y°lv ér°sai, dÒmena¤ tÉ épere¤siÉ êpoina.
‘But since I was deluded and Zeus took my wits away from me, I am willing to make all good and give unlimited apoina.’ (19.137–38)
The claim that he is not to blame (ouk aitios) is thus absolutely consistent with the offer he makes. Since Agamemnon no longer needs to induce Achilleus to return, the sole remaining function of the apoina is to effect a formal resolution to the quarrel and, as important, to confirm publicly his own position of superiority in relation to Achilleus. Thus the apoina that were offered earlier as an inducement to return are now held forth as a condition of the same. Achilleus himself nowhere indicates that the quarrel or his poin¯e theme has been resolved, but only that he has ceased to be angry for the purpose of pursuing a more pressing claim. Agamemnon is presented as unwilling to let him put the quarrel aside by unilaterally renouncing his wrath. If Agamemnon allows him to do so, it would leave the power relation between himself and Achilleus ambiguous and destabilized. He therefore requires that a formal resolution be concluded before Achilleus reenters the fighting. From Agamemnon’s perspective, it would mean that he had reasserted his position and the fixed system he represents: aÈtår ÉAxilleÁw mimn°tv aÔyi t°vw per, §peigÒmenÒw per ÖArhow. 190 m¤mnete dÉ êlloi pãntew éoll°ew, ˆfrã ke d«ra §k klis¤hw ¶ly˙si ka‹ ˜rkia pistå tãmvmen.
‘Let Achilleus stay here the while, though he lean very hard toward the work of the war god, 190 and remain the rest of you all here assembled, until the gifts (d¯ora) come back from my shelter and while we cut our oaths of fidelity.’ (19.188–91)
Agamemnon’s strategy for concluding the quarrel is to resolve it with gifts (d¯ora, 19.190) that he has defined as apoina, and thus stabilize the social hierarchy with himself in the dominant position, firmly and publicly in control of the social order, including the tim¯e-based competition. Odysseus
Achilleus and Priam
119
supports Agamemnon in his demand for public giving and receiving of gifts (19.171–74) and thus in his project of forcing the social order to recompose itself under the aegis of the fixed system. He can be seen to advance the project of stabilizing the collectivity when he urges Achilleus to accept a meal in Agamemnon’s shelter (19.179–80).25 Achilleus resists resolving the quarrel with apoina for exactly the same reason that Agamemnon insists on it. It is not that gifts are unimportant to Achilleus; it is that these gifts are not important to him and are, in fact, intended to subordinate him to Agamemnon and the system that legitmates him as rightful leader. Should Achilleus accept apoina as a condition of his return, he would admit a resolution to the quarrel and accept a dependent position in relation to Agamemnon; sharing a meal with the king in his shelter would ratify the formal conclusion.26 Moreover, Achilleus has separated himself from heroic society, indeed from all life-sustaining human activity. Eating would reintegrate him into human society, which necessarily means the tim¯e-based system.27 Therefore Achilleus will not allow an exchange of gifts and the meal to be concluded. But he is impelled by Patroklos’ death to reenter the fighting and therefore cannot revert to a strategy of withdrawal. To the consternation of both Agamemnon and Odysseus, Achilleus quite literally walks away. He does not accept the apoina, but declares them irrelevant and urges setting out for battle at once anyway:28 d«ra m¢n, a‡ kÉ §y°l˙sya parasx°men, …w §pieik°w, ≥ tÉ §x°men parå so¤. nËn d¢ mnhs≈meya xãrmhw a‰ca mãlÉ.
‘The gifts are yours to give if you wish, and as it is proper, or to keep with yourself. But now let us remember our joy in warcraft immediately.’ (19.147–49)
He postpones the meal, and presumably the gift ceremony, indefinitely: ÉAtre˝dh kÊdiste, ênaj éndr«n ÉAgãmemnon.
200 êllot° per ka‹ mçllon Ùf°llete taËta p°nesyai, ıppÒte tiw metapausvlØ pol°moio g°nhtai ka‹ m°now oÈ tÒson ¬sin §n‹ stÆyessin §mo›si.
‘Son of Atreus, most lordly and king of men, Agamemnon, at some other time rather you should busy yourself about these things, when there is some stopping point in the fighting, at some time when there is not so much fury inside of my heart.’ (19.199–202)
1 20
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
And he binds himself with an oath, not of fidelity to Agamemnon, but to neither drink nor eat until he takes payment for the outrage (l¯ob¯e, 19.208) of Patroklos’ death.29 Agamemnon and Odysseus parade the gifts into the assembly notwithstanding and confirm Agamemnon’s oath that he had not slept with Briseis. The gifts are sent to Achilleus’ shelter. From Agamemnon and Odysseus’ perspective, order has been restored, the collectivity set in working order, and Achilleus subjected. Achilleus, however, summarily dismisses the assembly and utterly disregards the gifts (19.270–75). There is moreover no mention of Achilleus’ receiving the gifts into his shelter when they are brought, and the suppression of describing their arrival is thematically significant. And so, by saying in effect, “This is useless to me,” he gets the gifts without accepting the subordination.30 From his perspective, there is no resolution to the quarrel or to his original claim of poin¯e, no subordination under Agamemnon’s privileged position, and no reconciliation, but he has been restored to his natural political rank.31 Whereas in Book 1 he claimed he had no injury to recover from the Trojans (1.158–59), he now fights in order to make them pay poin¯e for Patroklos, with no need for distribution of timai by Agamemnon. Achilleus was willing to die for the tim¯e of that system when it was working, but he is willing to participate only when it is working. Achilleus enters the battle now with nothing to lose and only poin¯e and kleos to gain, which he can win apart from tim¯e-based competition in a system he regards as broken. In other words, he sets his pursuit of poin¯e and kleos outside the sphere of competition for tim¯e, not because he has rejected the material basis of tim¯e but because the system has been rendered dysfunctional and no longer allows him to earn tim¯e in all its forms. Ironically, from the time that he suspends his immediate struggle for dominance with Agamemnon, Achilleus occupies an increasingly dominant role and Agamemnon an increasingly subordinate one.32 HEKTOR’S OFFER OF APOINA
Achilleus exacts poin¯e from the Trojans with a fury that approaches something more, and less, than human.33 He chooses a group of twelve Trojans who are made to pay poin¯e for Patroklos alone and who will be burned on his funeral pyre (21.26–33). He denies Lykaon’s plea for his life ‘harshly’, as Agamemnon had denied the pleas of Peisandros and Hippolochos (21.98 and 11.137). He himself explains to Lykaon that before Patroklos was killed, he used to take captives for ransom or sale (a form of displacement
Achilleus and Priam
1 21
onto goods), but now he deals only in death (nondisplacement, 21.100– 04).34 Since the Iliad presents a willingness to take captives for apoina as an act of self-restraint aligned with m¯etis, Achilleus’ pronouncement discloses his alignment with unmitigated bi¯e, violent force. In an extraordinary extension of life for life, Achilleus flings Lykaon’s corpse into the river to be eaten by fish.35 From that point, the battle, as if in a symbiotic relation to Achilleus himself, rages at a fevered pitch until even the elemental forces of fire and water are embroiled in the conflict.36 Achilleus himself seems an elemental force. The flooding of the Skamandros portends an unleashing of primal chaos and dissolution of cosmological order, a threat averted by intervention of the Olympians.37 When Achilleus finally closes in on Hektor and delivers the fatal thrust of his spear (22.322–27), he has fully exacted poin¯e for Patroklos as life for life. With his dying breath, Hektor supplicates Achilleus and offers apoina on behalf of his parents for the release of his corpse:38 l¤ssomÉ Íp¢r cux∞w ka‹ goÊnvn s«n te tokÆvn, mÆ me ¶a parå nhus‹ kÊnaw katadãcai ÉAxai«n. 340 éllå sÁ m¢n xalkÒn te ëliw xrusÒn te d°dejo d«ra tã toi d≈sousi patØr ka‹ pÒtnia mÆthr, s«ma d¢ o‡kadÉ §mÚn dÒmenai pãlin, ˆfra purÒw me Tr«ew ka‹ Tr≈vn êloxoi lelãxvsi yanÒnta.
‘I entreat you, by your life, by your knees, by your parents, do not let the dogs feed on me by the ships of the Achaians, 340 but take yourself the bronze and gold that are there in abundance, those gifts that my father and the lady my mother will give you, and give my body to be taken home again, so that the Trojans and the wives of the Trojans may give me in death my rite of burning.’ (22.337–43)
Hektor’s offer conforms in form and vocabulary to offers of apoina that warriors who have been defeated on the battlefield make in the discrete themes.39 His request, however, is not that his life be spared, but only that his corpse be returned to his family for funeral rites and not mutilated by dogs in the Achaian camp. Moreover, Hektor offers Achilleus a singular opportunity. Achilleus has attempted to recast the Meleagros myth, and his own poin¯e theme in relation to it, so that he can take poin¯e and apoina in that order (cp. 9.386–87). The order is crucial, for it inhibits the ability of apoina to undermine Achilleus’ status. In Book 22, Achilleus has attained a position that is impossible according to the discrete themes,
1 22
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
Phoinix, and the Meleagros exemplum: he can take first poin¯e and then apoina from Hektor. This situation is, moreover, possible only in that Hektor is attempting to secure release of his corpse, not his life. Achilleus, however, refuses unconditionally: 345
350
345
350
mÆ me, kÊon, goÊnvn gounãzeo mhd¢ tokÆvn. a‚ gãr pvw aÈtÒn me m°now ka‹ yumÚw éne¤h mÉ épotamnÒmenon kr°a ¶dmenai, oÂa ¶orgaw, …w oÈk ¶syÉ ˘w s∞w ge kÊnaw kefal∞w épalãlkoi. oÈdÉ e‡ ken dekãkiw te ka‹ efikosinÆritÉ êpoina stÆsvsÉ §nyãdÉ êgontew, ÍpÒsxvntai d¢ ka‹ êlla, oÈdÉ e‡ k°n sÉ aÈtÚn xrus“ §rÊsasyai én≈goi Dardan¤dhw Pr¤amow, oÈdÉ Õw s° ge pÒtnia mÆthr §nyem°nh lex°essi goÆsetai, ˘n t°ken aÈtÆ, éllå kÊnew te ka‹ ofivno‹ katå pãnta dãsontai.
‘No more entreating of me, you dog, by knees or parents, I wish only that my spirit and fury would drive me to hack your meat away and eat it raw for the things that you have done to me. So there is no one who can hold the dogs off from your head, not if they bring here and set before me ten times and twenty times the apoina, and promise more in addition, not if Priam son of Dardanos should offer to weigh out your bulk in gold; not even so shall the lady your mother who herself bore you lay you on the death-bed and mourn you; no, but the dogs and the birds will have you all for their feasting.’ (22.345 –54)
Achilleus’ refusal echoes his rejection of Agamemnon’s apoina in Book 9 (9.378–85), a rejection motivated by a strategy of m¯etis, but that had impelled him thematically and irrevocably to an absolute affiliation with bi¯e. Here, he rejects apoina even after he has taken poin¯e. The scene explicitly evokes the poin¯e themes involving Hera and Hekab¯e. A narrative link is forged between these two female characters by their association with poin¯e themes containing similar significant details: negation of compensatory goods in favor of untrammeled tisis, the wish to commit omophagy, and negation of a common interest with philoi. The paradigm thus established aligns refusing to displace violent conflict onto goods with improper feasting and with bi¯e in opposition to m¯etis. Put another way, unmitigated nondisplacement and improper feasting are related inversions of civilized human existence or a Greek cultural catalog. Hence, for a Homeric audience they embody what is not culture and specifically, what is not Greek.40
Achilleus and Priam
1 23
Achilleus is the only other figure in the Iliad besides Hera and Hekab¯e associated with the wish to commit omophagy: he wishes his anger would let him cut Hektor up and eat him raw. As it is, he will leave his corpse for the dogs and birds to devour.41 He expresses his wish as unattainable, but “Achilles means what he wishes. . . . The beastly wish is an amplification of an already beastly premise [that Achilles will give Hektor’s corpse to the dogs].”42 Achilleus’ words and conduct conform in other respects as well to the paradigm established in the cases of Hera and Hekab¯e. He rejects apoina, a material exchange, in favor of unrestrained tisis; additionally, he is not politically or socially reintegrated into warrior society, but remains an ambivalent figure on the margins. Since reentering the fighting Achilleus has inflicted pain on the enemy instead of his own people, but his escalating savagery, culminating in a wish to eat his enemy raw, marks him as outside his own commensal political order and even the human community. Inasmuch as he is assimilated into a pattern of inverting culture, otherwise reserved for females and associated by analogy with Hera and Hekab¯e, he at this moment embodies what is not Greek. Achilleus’ wish to eat Hektor raw registers his liminality culturally, as the flooding of the Skamandros does mythically and cosmologically. Hence his position is not unlike that of the adolescent initiand, who enacts behaviors exactly opposite to those he or she will assume upon reintegration into society as an adult.43 But Achilleus will not have anything like a reintegration home to Phthia and marriage. His mortality is not reversible, but his liminality, as we shall see, is.44 Since Achilleus’ inherited identity has been constructed as mortal bearer of eris, and since civilized communal life and even cosmological order have been seen to hinge, at least in part, on displacement of eris, the consequences of his disposition of eris in unremitting violence and unlimited tisis are presented as cosmic and as intolerable. The Homeric audience, I propose, would experience the immanent threat of disorder both as ritual reenactment and as refraction of their own cultural and political identities and instabilities. Zeus, or the poetic tradition qua Homer, resolves the dilemma by scripting a reintegration for Achilleus through a strategy of displacement and in relation to archetypal themes. THE FUNERAL GAMES FOR PATROKLOS
Achilleus oversees Patroklos’ funeral rites and takes charge of the funeral games. Athletic contests comprise an important arena for elite competition in Homeric society. Moreover, the funeral games for Patroklos may
1 24
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
point beyond themselves to their framing environment – the Panhellenic athletic festivals where the Homeric poems were performed and elite Greeks gathered for competitive display. The funeral games contain no formal compensation themes, though they are themselves a form of compensation for Patroklos’ death. Nor does Achilleus’ distribution of prizes, which differ from poin¯e and apoina both in typology and in social function, affect or resolve his demand for poin¯e from Agamemnon. But Achilleus’ role in the games does illustrate the social world as it would be – on his view and on the narrator’s likewise – if the tim¯e-based fluid system were operating without the constraints of the fixed system. In fact, viewed through the depiction of the social interaction during the funeral games, the fixed system that Agamemnon represents seems something added to a fluid system that already exists and that works quite well without it. If the funeral games refer metatextually to the ritual context of the poem’s performance, they also present a vision of a Panhellenic social world in which elite competition works quite well apart from constraints imposed by a fixed, or political, system. By declaring Agamemnon’s gifts irrelevant, refusing to eat, and making his military action solely poin¯e for Patroklos, Achilleus had set his entire aristeia outside the sphere of competition for status, and he continues that strategy here. He assembles the Achaians for the games and brings the prizes from his own ships (23.257–70). But he does not participate in the games, because, as he says, he would carry off first prize (23.275). In other words, he has already been validated through the fluid system as best, aristos, and he speaks and acts from that role here. He thus positions himself apart from the competitors and presides over the games as distributor of prizes.45 In this way, Achilleus occupies a position over the ritualized conflict of the games analogous to Agamemnon’s position of superiority in the military conflict over Helen. The games present a situation in which Achilleus is in complete control. The internal and external audiences thus have an opportunity to watch a leader who has risen to the top of the hierarchy through the agonistic system preside over a community of equals. The games consist of eight contests: a chariot race (23.287–652), boxing (23.652–99), wrestling (23.700–39), running (23.740–97), armed combat (23.798–825), weight throwing (23.826–49), archery (23.850– 83), and spear throwing (23.884–97). In the heat of the competition, quarrels break out among the spectators (23.448–87) and participants alike (23.539–54), and tempers flare. But Achilleus is generous and gentle,
Achilleus and Priam
1 25
and the Achaians respond to his generosity by restraining their own anger. All the crises are resolved without the competition being stifled. The last of the games, the spear-throwing contest, is especially germane to the monumental theme and the quarrel. The two contestants are Agamemnon and Meriones, but when the two stand to compete, Achilleus calls a halt to the contest. He announces that, since everyone knows Agamemnon is the best (aristos), he may take the first prize back to his ship. Achilleus, as distributor of timai, thus awards Agamemnon a prize in accordance with his acknowledged excellence, but without his earning it in competition. It is possible to understand Achilleus’ action as a demonstration of altruism, though it is not without an ironic appropriation of Agamemnon’s own tactics, which have been to rely on his fixed position to win tim¯e in the fluid system anyway. But we are also justified in seeing in it an assertion of his status and a model of successful leadership and distribution of timai – a model he can be seen to impose on Agamemnon here.46 The funeral games, with Achilleus at the helm, represent a restoration of the full operation of the fluid ranking system and a corresponding return to orderly management of competition for tim¯e-based status and the resulting tension between comrades in warrior society.47 Eris, appropriately displaced onto ritualized conflict, successfully imposes a hierarchy that, in turn, produces a stable society, one that might, in fact, be described as a utopia. Achilleus is thereby identified with successful social strategies of displacement and, hence, with m¯etis and culture. This eris, as opposed to that produced by the conflict between fixed and fluid systems, is thus shown to be “good for mortals.”48 A Homeric audience could hardly have missed the message. As Richard Seaford observes, the funerary ritual and contests for Patroklos “restore the unity of the cooperative and thus, for the audience, represent a model for the development of cohesive institutions of the polis.”49 Further, Homer has effected at the level of the narrative a succession that is both uncontested and apart from violent conflict. Achilleus occupies the thematic role of distributor of timai, formerly used by Agamemnon to uphold his fixed status. Agamemnon occupies the same subordinate role in relation to Achilleus that the kings (basil¯ees) formerly had in relation to him. This is true even though Agamemnon retains his fixed position as commander in chief of the Greek armies, which he does in all the forms of the myth. Achilleus’ full reintegration into the social system, however, and the test of the stability of the fragile political and social
1 26
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
orders are yet to come, in a reenactment of the archetypal apoina theme that generated the crisis. PRIAM’S OFFER OF APOINA
The funeral games and Achilleus’ new status do not address the loss of Patroklos, as the depiction of Achilleus in the opening scene of Book 24 reveals. He cannot sleep; he tosses and turns; he longs for Patroklos; he weeps; he paces the beach; and he drags Hektor’s body around Patroklos’ tomb and then leaves the corpse lying face-down in the dust (24.3–22). Since Achilleus’ identity is so closely bound up with Patroklos’, his frustrated pursuit of poin¯e for Patroklos evokes the unresolved theme of poin¯e for his own mortality. His actions are motivated by his wish for unchecked tisis, but perhaps they also constitute a tacit admission that – short of eating his enemy raw – there just is not enough. The gods feel compassion for Hektor and would arrange to have his body stolen from Achilleus (24.23–24). Hera, however, still rages for tisis against the house of Priam because of the judgment of Paris – a disturbing reminder of the disorder that lies in wait beyond the boundaries that delimit culture (24.25 –30).50 Apollo rebukes the Olympians for not returning the body of Hektor to his family for burial rites (24.35 –39). He strongly denounces Achilleus and, in so doing, employs a lion simile that recalls Achilleus’ own wish to commit omophagy: l°vn dÉ Õw êgria o‰den, ˜w tÉ §pe‹ ír megãl˙ te b¤˙ ka‹ égÆnori yum“ e‡jaw e‰sÉ §p‹ m∞la brot«n, ·na da›ta lãb˙sin:
‘he knows wild things, like a lion who when he has given way to his own great bi¯e and his haughty spirit, goes among the flocks of men, to devour them.’ (24.41–43)
Achilleus ‘knows wild things’, like a lion governed only by bi¯e and his passions, who ranges among the flocks of mortals to make a meal of them. Whereas other lion similes in the Iliad compare behaviors, Apollo’s simile – and his charge! – is essential and leveled at Achilleus’ cultural identity.51 That Achilleus knows wild things means that he is wild (agrios); he belongs rightly to the liminal realm of nature and not to culture. The thematic pattern that has increasingly constrained Achilleus’ conduct and cultural identity since Book 9, the games excepted, seems finally to have made Aias’ accusation (9.629) a reality. Apollo regards Achilleus as the reification of
Achilleus and Priam
1 27
nondisplacement. Accordingly, if the human community has any hope of managing eris without self-destructing, in Apollo’s view the Olympians themselves will have to accomplish it, circumventing Achilleus entirely. Zeus opposes Apollo on the matter of Achilleus’ heroic identity: Achilleus will spare anyone who approaches him as a suppliant (flk°tev pefidÆsetai éndrÒw, 24.158).52 He therefore orchestrates a solution to Achilleus’ and the immortals’ dilemmas. Overruling Achilleus’ plot for the continuation of the Iliad as pure tisis and Apollo’s verdict that the hero could not do otherwise, Zeus scripts a final apoina theme, with intent both to affirm Hektor’s tim¯e (24.65 –70) and to give Achilleus ‘this distinction’ (tode kudos, 24.110).53 This distinction refers primarily to the glory the exchange will confer on Achilleus,54 though it is also related to Zeus’ respect for Thetis and thus evokes the primal theme. Zeus summons Thetis and Iris and sets in motion a plan whereby Achilleus will release (apoluein) the body of Hektor for gifts construed as apoina (24.75 –80). The successful exchange of apoina, as a medium of displacement, is not irrelevant or even ancillary to Achilleus’ heroic identity, but will on the contrary be its confirming sign. As a consequence, the most significant scene involving apoina in the Iliad comprises a successful exchange of poin¯e as tisis, followed and thereby limited by taking apoina. This reverses the order in discrete themes of the mixed type, where an offer of apoina is always followed by taking poin¯e, together with the rule that apoina is always refused in these scenes. In fact, the only parallel is the assembly scene in Book 19, where poin¯e (tisis) is also followed by apoina; an exchange of goods took place, but Achilleus refused to accept its symbolic value. There, Achilleus wasn’t investing anything in the currency of his position, but in the exchange with Priam, he will. The great consequence of the impending exchange is reflected in the density of references to apoina in Book 24. There are at least seventeen direct references to the goods to be exchanged for Hektor’s corpse, besides the description of them in 24.229–37.55 Of the twenty-seven occurrences of apoina in the Iliad, seven refer to the preparation for and enacting of the successful exchange between Achilleus and Priam and seven to the failed exchange between Agamemnon and Chryses and its aftermath in Book 1.56 The remainder appear elsewhere in the monumental theme57 and in discrete themes scattered throughout the poem.58 Homer would be hard pressed to signal more clearly the import of material goods not only for resolving Priam’s apoina theme and the crisis in Homeric society but also for reintegrating Achilleus into the tim¯e-based system and, hence, returning him to his philoi.
1 28
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
The drawn-out narrative of the preparations for the journey and a sequence of threats to its successful conclusion further underscores the gravity of the exchange between Achilleus and Priam. That a meeting between the two will even take place is endangered by the possibility that the Olympians may intervene prematurely and steal Hektor’s body, thereby also robbing Achilleus of his glory (24.24–25). Achilleus’ own initial response to Zeus’ command is studied indifference, evoking his dismissal of Agamemnon’s apoina as irrelevant: ‘Whoever brings apoina may take away the dead man, if the Olympian wishes it so’ (24.139–40). It is not implausible that even he may compromise the exchange with Priam. Hekab¯e also threatens to derail Zeus’ plan when she tries to obstruct the exchange of apoina and assert her own claim to poin¯e (24.200–16 [25 ]). The perils involved in the journey, which takes the generic form of a katabasis (journey to the underworld),59 and then in gaining entry to the Achaian camp and into Achilleus’ shelter present further potentially insurmountable obstacles. Finally, Achilleus’ anger erupts just before he accepts the apoina and releases the body, creating a final moment of tension (24.559–79). Priam’s response to the message from Zeus stands in marked contrast to Achilleus’. He hurries to a storeroom to gather treasures to take to the Achaian camp, and he makes elaborate preparations for the journey. The apoina that Priam brings from his storeroom and loads onto a cart are rivaled only by Agamemnon’s in Book 9: twelve robes and as many mantles, blankets, cloaks and tunics; ten talents of gold, two tripods, four cauldrons, and a goblet (24.228–36). Zeus sends Hermes to escort Priam safely to the Greek ships. Once he arrives, the only remaining obstacle to a successful conclusion is Achilleus himself. The scene in Achilleus’ shelter takes us back to the original scenario at the beginning of Book 1: a father comes to the Achaian ships, bringing apoina to gain the release of his child, in this case, his child’s corpse.60 The stage is set for a reenactment of the archetypal apoina theme. Priam is cast as Chryses, Achilleus as Agamemnon, and Hektor’s body, like Chryseis, as object of exchange. But this time the father supplicates, and the king relents (Figure 5.1). Priam
apoina
Achilleus
Hektor’s corpse
figure 5.1. Priam’s apoina theme
Achilleus and Priam
1 29
Priam enters the room, takes Achilleus by the knees, and supplicates him: toÁw dÉ ¶layÉ efisely∆n Pr¤amow m°gaw, êgxi dÉ êra ståw xers‹n ÉAxill∞ow lãbe goÊnata ka‹ kÊse xe›raw deinåw éndrofÒnouw, a· ofl pol°aw ktãnon uÂaw.
Tall Priam came in unseen by the other men and stood close beside him and caught the knees of Achilleus in his arms, and kissed the hands that were dangerous and manslaughtering and had killed so many of his sons. (24.477–79)
Narratively established as both king and father figure, including to Achilleus,61 he formally acknowledges his dependent position in relation to Achilleus – a scenario Zeus and Agamemnon had each forfended.62 He furthers his identification as father figure when he appeals to Achilleus’ memory of his own father, Peleus. The old man acknowledges the position the Greek warrior has won and, accordingly, pleads with him to feel aid¯os (a sense of shame) before the gods, or, to act with restraint in victory, to have pity as he would for his own father, and to release Hektor’s corpse in exchange for unlimited apoina (24.501–02): ÜEktora. toË nËn e·nexÉ flkãnv n∞aw ÉAxai«n, lusÒmenow parå se›o, f°rv dÉ épere¤siÉ êpoina. éllÉ afide›o yeoÊw, ÉAxileË, aÈtÒn tÉ §l°hson mnhsãmenow soË patrÒw. §g∆ dÉ §leeinÒterÒw per
‘Hektor, for whose sake I come now to the ships of the Achaians to gain his release from you, and I bring you apoina without count. Feel shame then before the gods, Achilleus, and take pity upon him, remembering your father; yet I am still more pitiful.’ (24.501–04)
Priam’s offer may not be construed as compensation for Patroklos, nor yet for loss of Briseis or Achilleus’ own mortality.63 Achilleus exacted poin¯e (as tisis) for Patroklos when he killed Hektor. He has continued to exact it in an extension of life for life by dragging Hektor’s corpse in the dust and preventing his burial.64 Priam has sustained the loss of a son, whose body he hopes to recover with apoina. The only symbolic function the apoina can serve is gaining release of the body by representing the tim¯e Achilleus has won. The two independent themes, apoina for Hektor and poin¯e for Patroklos, are linked only by a mixed-type theme in which
1 30
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
accepting apoina will also mean formally concluding the poin¯e theme (hence Achilleus’ apology to the dead Patroklos in 24.592–95). Achilleus can accordingly take poin¯e and then unlimited (apereisia) apoina, but he cannot take apoina and unlimited poin¯e. What Achilleus had wanted, that is, to identify with his divine self and to attain universal dominance, has been unequivocally denied him. Moreover, he has been continually frustrated in his strategy to attain dominance in the mortal realm through eris with Agamemnon. The scene with Priam gives Achilleus the dominant position over the father/king he would have had over Zeus if only he had been fathered by Zeus instead of by Peleus. The poem allots to him only the supplication of an old man, a mortal king and father. Unlike Agamemnon, Odysseus, and Phoinix, Priam deploys the figure of the father not as a stratagem for domination but as the basis of an appeal for pity and restraint. Whatever personal or psychological motivation may be found for Achilleus’ actions, the scene strongly encourages the audience to view his conduct toward Priam in stark contrast to Agamemnon’s treatment of Chryses. As important, Achilleus’ actions are reminiscent of his own former behavior, in which he regularly accepted apoina and even afforded burial rites to those whom he killed in battle.65 Achilleus gently pushes away Priam’s hand, and both men weep: Achilleus for his father and friend, the father for his son (24.508–12). When at length Achilleus urges Priam to eat, the old man presses his host not to detain him but to make the exchange quickly (24.555). At this Achilleus’ anger flares.66 He claims that he himself decided to release Hektor’s corpse (24.560–61), but he could just as easily change his mind and kill Priam, Zeus’ message and the old man’s miraculous arrival notwithstanding. Achilleus warns his guest not to provoke (erethizein, 24.560) him, as Agamemnon had warned Chryses when he came bringing apoina (1.32). In each case, the angry warning is elicited when the old man urges apoina on the victor; in each case, the old man yields to the authority of the (apparently) stronger party and obeys in fear. One interpretation connects Achilleus’ anger to the gifts themselves, proposing that it is motivated by a wish that the return of Hektor’s corpse be viewed as unconnected to the ransom.67 But the weight accorded the exchange by the internal characters (except Achilleus, initially) and by the narrator argues against this analysis. I suggest that Achilleus’ anger is motivated not by Priam’s appeal to the apoina per se, but by his resisting the meal and insisting that the exchange be concluded forthwith, which Achilleus perceives as an implicit affront to his dominance and his prerogatives in the exchange. His subsequent actions would seem to confirm that such is the case.
1 31
Achilleus and Priam
The scene attracts, significantly, another lion simile, this time from the narrator. Carroll Moulton suggests that the simile conveys the latent danger that threatens Priam in Achilleus’ shelter.68 But the simile is applied specifically to Achilleus’ reception of the apoina on the cart, and not to his anger at Priam: Phle˝dhw dÉ o‡koio l°vn Õw îlto yÊraze, : : : : : : : §uss≈trou dÉ épÉ épÆnhw øreon ÑEktor°hw kefal∞w épere¤siÉ êpoina.
The son of Peleus bounded to the door of the house like a lion, :
:
:
:
:
:
:
then from the well-wheeled mule wagon lifted out apoina beyond count for the head of Hektor. ( 24.572, 578–79)
This lion simile contrasts dramatically with other lion similes in the Iliad, especially those in which the lion eats its prey.69 It evokes most potently, however, the simile Apollo applied to Achilleus in 24.41–43. Apollo had said that Achilleus is savage, like a beast governed by bi¯e who goes among humans and feeds on their flocks; he reifies nondisplacement and, hence, inversion of Greek culture. The narrator, however, devises an incongruous image of Achilleus leaping like a lion out of the house and upon a cart filled with fine cloth, tripods, and other prestige goods. The incongruity derives from the immediacy of displacement: if the exchange of goods substitutes for violent conflict, the same simile can be employed for both. Achilleus takes compensatory goods in the same heroic manner that he takes the enemy in battle – like a lion. His willingness to accept apoina instead of taking unlimited tisis is presented as a heroic act of self-restraint aligned with m¯etis, which averts the destructive consequences of unmitigated bi¯e. The lion simile depicts, as perhaps nothing less incongruous could, Achilleus’ heroic identity. He is dangerous but assimilable; moreover, he combines in himself the vital heroic qualities of m¯etis and bi¯e, as Agamemnon was never able to do. Prevailing scholarly tradition has maintained that material compensation – whether Priam’s apoina or Agamemnon’s – is irrelevant to Achilleus.70 But as we have seen, Achilleus nowhere repudiates materially based tim¯e on principle. He levels his accusations not at the system itself but at the manipulation that has impeded its operation. Despite his initial indifference to Zeus’ command, Achilleus takes Priam’s apoina before releasing Hektor’s body, in contrast to his earlier dismissal of Agamemnon’s apoina. Moreover, the circumstances in Books 19 and 24 are different in significant
1 32
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
respects. Achilleus left the situation with Agamemnon unresolved rather than concluding it with apoina that would confirm him in a dependent position; there is, however, no question of Priam’s apoina undermining Achilleus’ status. As important, there is no evidence that either Homer or any of the internal characters imagines the release of Hektor’s body apart from an exchange of apoina or, by extension, that Homer conceives of competition for status and management of eris apart from displacement onto ritualized conflict. Indeed, social order and civilized communal life – hence, Greek culture – are imagined to hinge, at least in part, on displacement of eris. Although we may not be able to ascertain from the poem the personal value the apoina have for Achilleus, their social and cultural value for him, and for the poem, is explicit and overriding. Moreover, if gifts or material forms of tim¯e are important to Achilleus in Book 24, then they were important to him in Books 9 and 19. His rejection of those gifts was occasioned by the specificity of the gifts and the intent of the giver, not by a generalized rejection of material forms of honor. The Homeric audience has already been led to compare compensation themes temporally, past and present. The question posed of Agamemnon in Book 1 was whether he would limit his prerogatives as victor and accept apoina, an act of self-restraint corresponding to m¯etis. His rejection was presented as both an index and a cause of dissolution of the mechanisms for displacement of conflict that organize heroic society. The successful exchange of apoina in Book 24 may be understood to reverse the compounded effects of Chryses’ failed offer in Book 1. On this view the correspondence is not merely formal.71 The social mechanisms for managing eris that were formerly in place in the fluid system but rendered ineffective by Agamemnon’s conflation of the fixed and fluid systems were set back in order in the funeral games. Just as his refusing Agamemnon’s apoina in Book 19 maintained Achilleus’ separation from the broken tim¯ebased system, his accepting Priam’s apoina registers his reintegration into the restored one. Thus his conduct in Book 24 does not mark psychological, ethical, or even social maturation on a telic axis,72 but a cosmological, social, and personal return. Richard Seaford rightly observes something of a “miracle” in Iliad 24.73 I disagree, however, that a Homeric audience would have perceived it as a “unity of opposites” in which “perfect enemies, each isolated from his own community . . . come together. . . . ”74 In the scene with Priam, Achilleus eats, drinks, sleeps, and later sleeps with a woman. What Priam does is bring him back from the dead, reactivate him as a social, living, human
Achilleus and Priam
1 33
being. This represents his reintegration into the human community, which necessarily means his reintegration back into the tim¯e-based system; his return to the system is registered in taking the apoina. Apoina do not incorporate outsiders as insiders;75 they effect a return of one’s own and, in this case, a return of both victim and victor. Hektor’s corpse is returned to his philoi and Achilleus to his, the only return (nostos) he is allotted.
6 Unlimited Poin¯e Poetry as Practice
The ideology of the inexhaustible work of art, or of ‘reading’ as re-creation masks – through the quasi-exposure which is often seen in matters of faith – the fact that the work is indeed made not twice, but a hundred times, by all those who are interested in it, who find a material or symbolic profit in reading it, classifying it, deciphering it, commenting on it, combating it, knowing it, possessing it. Enrichment accompanies aging when the work manages to enter the game, when it becomes a stake in the game and so incorporates some of the energy produced by the struggle of which it is the object. Pierre Bourdieu
Our Iliad presents itself as a text under negotiation that, like the heroes it celebrates, must assert itself against competitors.1 The narrator and characters attempt to compose Achilleus’ compensation theme, or the Iliad, in accordance with their own intended plots and in relation to symbolically powerful themes, like Chryses’ offer of apoina or the rape of Helen. Moreover, competition to control the plot of the Iliad emerges as competition to construct Achilleus’ heroic identity. The struggle between Agamemnon and Achilleus in the Iliad is about status and dominance. And while status and dominance are acceptable social goals in Homeric society, they are also and as importantly platforms from which to contend for particular visions of the social world. From this plurality, Homer, qua the Panhellenic poetic tradition, “stitches together” a unified song that does not obliterate competing voices but is for that no less implicated in constructing heroic and, by extension, Greek social and cultural identity.2 134
Unlimited Poin¯e
1 35
An analogy may be inferred between the politics of compensation within the poem and the politics of compensation in the framing environment, where the Iliad is in competition with other poetic and ritual traditions.3 This inference rests on the premise that the poem was performed and recomposed in performance, and, further, that the performance and reception were sufficiently coherent to effect a reciprocal relation between poem and audience.4 That such a reciprocal relation exists has been amply demonstrated by previous oralist scholarship.5 That it satisfactorily accounts for conservative and innovative impulses within the rubric of tradition has been argued most extensively by Gregory Nagy.6 In sum, each performance of the Iliad produces and reproduces Iliadic tradition and the social and ritual systems of which it is a part. At the same time, the Iliad itself is produced and reproduced by the audience, the composing poets, and the performance context.7 Anthony Giddens refers to such reciprocal interaction in social terms as “duality of structure”: To examine the constitution of social systems as strategic conduct is to study the mode in which actors draw upon structural elements – rules and resources – in their social relations. ‘Structure’ here appears as actors’ mobilisation of discursive and practical consciousness in social encounters. Institutional analysis, on the other hand, places an epoch´e upon strategic conduct, treating rules and resources as chronically reproduced features of social systems. It is quite essential to see that these are not two sides of a dualism, they express a duality, the duality of structure.8
On this view, a performance of the Iliad may be described as practice and analyzed as strategic conduct: as practice inasmuch as it is a recurrent and reciprocal social interaction, and as strategic in that structuration is by definition not neutral but interested. Hence our Iliad, which ultimately gained ascendancy in a multiform and polysemos Iliadic tradition, is implicated in ideology and, consequently, in negotiating relations of power and constructing social subjects. It is a chestnut of Homeric interpretation that Homeric epic reproduces elite ideology, and the foregoing analysis gives us no grounds for contesting that. But the poem already problematizes elite ideology by making it the object of a tournament of definitions among the elite warrior kings themselves. In fact, in Agamemnon’s, Nestor’s, and even Odysseus’ speeches, the poem contains a forceful critique of elite forms of competition as producing the best leader. However, in the end it shows these critiques of reciprocity to be misguided. The Iliad thus exposes fault lines in elite ideologies in heroic society and, additionally, presents the external
1 36
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
audience with a vivid depiction of the vastly different social worlds that are generated by what may seem to be inconsequential differences in definition. If we accept that Iliadic tradition, inasmuch as it is continually recomposed for an audience, reflects or refracts live social concerns and anxieties, we may infer that our Iliad exploits analogous fault lines in the social and political ideals represented in the Homeric audience at the textualization stage of the poem. We may infer also that it endorses the social world that aristocratic competition would produce for the collectivity over against the one that would emerge from a fixed and political system. And we may do so without either making it an allegory in which the hero stands for X or looking for a transitional, historical society that seems to reproduce the same tensions between tribal egalitarianism and stratified social formation as Homeric society does.9 The approach I prefer, in view of the Panhellenic streamlining of Homeric epic, is to consider Homeric society and the contradictions inherent in it not teleologically but diachronically and synchronically. That competing elite ideologies coexist in Homeric society suggests that the audience is intimately familiar with both forms of social formation and the conflicts between them. Further, the audience may not view reciprocity and political organization of relations as exclusive alternatives. Put another way, the Iliad we have is not an innocent or naive advocate of reciprocity in that it reflects an early stage of polis formation in which reciprocity is the prevailing mode of managing social relations in the audience (which does not yet know or regularly appeal to law courts, etc.) or even in that it represents a transitional phase. But it deliberately promotes reciprocity among powerful elites as the best means of ensuring social order. And it does so over and against other elite ideologies that have fiercely contested the reciprocal mode of organization at the highest levels and may have even managed to restrain it. Thus, to repeat a point made earlier, the historical period for which Homeric society and the contradictions inherent in it would refract live social concerns would stretch from the eighth to at least the fifth century b.c.e.10 Before turning to the Iliad as practice, we need to review the development of the compensation theme as a structuring device in the poem. Analysis of compensation in the Iliad reveals a unified theme that contains two firmly demarcated typologies, apoina and poin¯e, as well as a mixed type. Both types involve exchanges of tim¯e that are deployed in the competition for status among elite men in warrior society. The discrete themes suggest, and the monumental theme confirms, that exchanges of compensation are implicitly aligned with the cultural opposition of m¯etis and bi¯e.
Unlimited Poin¯e
1 37
Winning without resorting to bi¯e 11 or, once victory has been achieved, limiting one’s prerogatives for the welfare of the collectivity – demonstrated by willingness to accept apoina or to be constrained by conventional limits on poin¯e (including taking composition) – is aligned with m¯etis, or selfrestraint. Refusing apoina and taking (or wishing for) unlimited tisis is conversely aligned, through the mixed type theme, with bi¯e, violent force. M¯etis and bi¯e are, in turn, associated with Greek cultural norms and disorder, or nature, respectively.12 Improper eating, expressed as a wish for omophagy, emerges in key mixed type themes as a central index of unrestrained bi¯e and, hence, of an inversion of a Greek cultural catalog.13 The social meaning of compensation in Homeric society is thus integrally related to civilized and civilizing social order. Temporal comparison of the discrete themes discloses a narrative strategy in which the compensation theme is systematically developed. The poem represents the tim¯e-based status system as a social apparatus for displacement of eris onto ritualized conflict that produces a hierarchy and, as a result, a best, aristos. A fixed ranking system in which Agamemnon can claim to be preeminent introduces a contradiction, which destabilizes Homeric society. But the contradiction erupts into conflict only when Agamemnon’s position and the preemptive right of the fixed system are contested. Agamemnon is shown to exploit his privileged position in the fixed system, exercising control over the tim¯e-based system through redistribution and imposing his leadership arbitrarily in situations of conflict. From Achilleus’ perspective, Agamemnon thereby renders the tim¯e-based system dysfunctional during most of the Iliad ’s primary fabula, and the narrator supports Achilleus in this view. With displacement mechanisms thus disabled, the poem’s present is set apart as an epoch of escalating nondisplacement and cultural inversion.14 It is only the returns of Achilleus in Books 23 and 24 from a personal, cultural, and even cosmic liminality, and his act of extraordinary self-restraint, that bring the epoch to a close. The monumental compensation theme supplies multiple motivations for the social and cosmic crisis that is finally precipitated by Chryses’ arrival in the Achaian camp. Agamemnon’s and Achilleus’ inherited roles as scepter-bearing king and mortal bearer of eris, which pit them in a struggle for dominance, constitutes a mythological motivation. The social motivation is the inherent contradiction in the fixed and fluid rank systems in Homeric society; the social contradiction thus mirrors the antagonists’ inherited roles. On this view, the conflict that tears Achilleus, and nearly tears the fabric of Homeric society, results from a seemingly irresoluble
1 38
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
social contradiction that effectively prevents him from rising to his natural inherited status as best (aristos) and, moreover, leaves him no recourse in the social system. The conflict is both generated by and contributes to a disruption of displacement mechanisms; Achilleus’ inherited identity renders it cataclysmic and cosmic. The monumental theme, however, resolves the crisis at almost every level and brings the epoch, together with its threatened collapse of order, to a close through a definitive act of displacement and self-restraint. Hence the central problem, as the Iliad would have it, is not ritualized conflict among powerful individuals per se, but the inhibiting of elite forms of competition that would otherwise produce the best leaders and displace potentially destructive eris. The Iliad performed reenacts this conflict waged through compensation or, more properly, through definitions of compensation. It reconstitutes order explicitly by reestablishing the elite mechanisms for displacement, thereby allowing eris to impose a hierarchy so that Achilleus ascends to his natural position as best, and implicitly by means of its own recitation. Homer exploits the crisis and its resolution to construct Achilleus’ heroic identity, in programmatic contrast to Agamemnon and in implicit contrast to Odysseus. The project may be tracked through the five offers of unlimited apoina that comprise the monumental theme.15 In Book 1, Chryses’ offer of unlimited apoina leads in a series of interlocking themes to Achilleus’ loss and ensuing poin¯e theme. Achilleus conflates the tim¯e Zeus owes him with the tim¯e Agamemnon has failed to give him. His wrath (m¯enis) thus derives from a lack of tim¯e in the human community that extends to a lack of divine tim¯e. It comes as a direct result of Agamemnon’s conflation of systems, which has made it impossible for Achilleus to earn the tim¯e he believes is his due and, as a consequence, the kleos aphthiton (fame that will not perish, 9.413) that should compensate him for his mortality. The quarrel emerges as a struggle for dominance that enacts a struggle that would have taken place between Achilleus and Zeus. Achilleus, on Athene’s advice, adopts a strategy of m¯etis for exacting tisis through inactivity. This strategy controls the plot of the Iliad up to the death of Patroklos. In Book 9, Agamemnon offers unlimited apoina for the Greek army to induce Achilleus to give up his wrath and return to the fighting in a subordinate role. His offer is inappropriate in form by the norms of heroic society and unacceptable in intent to Achilleus personally. His apoina represent subversion and arguably an inversion of the socially sanctioned function of apoina, namely, recovering subordinate members of one’s own household and, at the same time, consolidating an enemy-captor’s gains in
Unlimited Poin¯e
1 39
tim¯e. Agamemnon, in fact, as Seaford points out, can be seen to assimilate a violent act into an accepted mode of displacing violence. He imposes the prerogatives of his privileged position and demands that Achilleus submit.16 So while he ostensibly plays by the rules of the game with one hand, with the other he disables the game completely. The embassy is able to do little more than replace his overt violence with symbolic violence. Thus, when Achilleus refuses Agamemnon’s apoina, he neither rejects material compensation on principle nor repudiates the values upon which heroic society is based. Even if Agamemnon’s offer of apoina may ultimately fall afoul of legal logic, it is explicable in terms of his own project of maintaining his position of dominance. But it is no less explicable in terms of Homer’s project. For, although Achilleus demands poin¯e to compensate him for loss at both the human and divine levels, his efforts to script poin¯e into the Iliad are frustrated by repeated offers of apoina. As a result, in the epoch inaugurated by Chryses’ appearance in the Achaian camp, Achilleus consistently rejects apoina and takes poin¯e only as tisis. Despite the fact that he does not change from his strategy of m¯etis until Book 18, he is impelled by Agamemnon’s apoina and by the poetics of the mixed-type theme into alignment with an ambiguous form of bi¯e. This does not mean the audience is to think that Achilleus does something wrong in rejecting the apoina. In fact, Achilleus is presented not as unreasonable or intransigent, but as caught in an intolerable social situation in which he will not and cannot yield but is prevented from contending by what the audience is invited to view as arbitrary political restraint. Agamemnon’s offer, inasmuch as it is one Achilleus cannot but refuse, unwittingly serves a larger narrative design in which rejecting apoina in order to exact poin¯e as tisis, and that without limit, eventually drives social and cultural order to the brink of dissolution. In fact, we may even speculate that Homer contrives that Agamemnon formulate his offer as he does to avoid presenting Achilleus with a potentially reasonable offer of material poin¯e. Given Achilleus’ conflation of his losses, such an offer would compete with traditional poetry’s own claim to confer the only compensation for heroic death. In Book 19, Agamemnon again offers Achilleus unlimited apoina. The returning hero dismisses it, however, in order to pursue his claim of poin¯e for Patroklos without reentering the tim¯e-based system, which he regards as dysfunctional, and, consequently, coming under Agamemnon’s immediate control. Achilleus pursues unlimited poin¯e and is thus aligned with a pattern of bi¯e gendered as feminine and characterized by rejection of material exchange (displacement) and neglect of the welfare of philoi.
140
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
In Book 22, Hektor offers Achilleus a singular opportunity to take first poin¯e and then apoina, as Achilleus had intended to take from Agamemnon. Regardless, Achilleus refuses Hektor’s offer and wishes instead that he could eat Hektor raw. His wish registers his cultural liminality and evokes the most disturbing prospect of the mixed-type theme. Homer thus implicates him in the dissolution of social, and potentially of cosmic, order. As Achilleus returns, Agamemnon moves further out of the audience’s field of vision, first from battle and in Book 23 from the ritualized conflict of the funeral games. When Achilleus is in charge, as he is over the athletic contests, all the crises are resolved. The audience – internal and external – is presented with a vision of an ordered society where tensions between powerful individuals are managed not by political restraint but by aristocratic competition under the guidance of a leader who rose up through the system. Despite the restoration of the fluid tim¯e-based system, Achilleus remains apart from the human community generally (by not eating or sleeping) and from the tim¯e-based system specifically. Finally in Book 24, in an exchange doubly motivated by Zeus and the two human participants, Achilleus accepts Priam’s unlimited apoina for the return of Hektor’s corpse. Priam’s apoina are not ersatz for the poin¯e Agamemnon never pays, nor are they to be construed as poin¯e for Patroklos or for Achilleus’ own mortality, though they do bring his exacting poin¯e from Hektor’s corpse to an end. But the apoina he takes return him, the victor, to his own, the human community, and at the same time to the tim¯e-based system, which the funeral games had restored to working order. Seaford proposes that the Iliad ’s crisis of reciprocity is one that cannot be resolved by gifts, but only by ritual;17 but perhaps ritual and reciprocity need not be formulated in opposition. Priam’s supplication as king and father figure confirms Achilleus’ thematic position of dominance. Achilleus’ subsequent accepting apoina, itself a form of ritualized conflict, marks the crisis as resolved. The material exchange is the index sine qua non of successful displacement: reciprocity is ritual. Deploying the compensation theme, Homer destabilizes the polarity between m¯etis and bi¯e through Achilleus – the hero who mediates between them.18 The Iliad attests to both the necessity of heroic bi¯e for the welfare of one’s philoi and the threat to the collectivity, indeed to civilization, posed by unrestrained heroic bi¯e.19 In the interplay of m¯etis and bi¯e, it furnishes a mirror-image complement to the Odyssey. The Iliadic Achilleus reestablishes social and cosmic order by a supreme act of self-restraint corresponding to m¯etis – an exchange of apoina, which he takes like a lion. The Odyssean Odysseus restores order with an act of vengeance marked
Unlimited Poin¯e
141
by unrestrained bi¯e, which also, not coincidentally, attracts a lion simile (Od. 22.401–6).20 Cook suggests that the Odyssey “dramatizes the need for and the virtual impossibility of integrating wisdom and force in the person of the king.” He posits that this “Achilleus and Agamemnon are never able to manage, Odysseus just barely.”21 But, although the Odyssey may programmatically represent Achilleus as a figure of unmitigated bi¯e,22 the Iliad immortalizes him as a culture hero: an integrated hero and kingly figure in contrast to Agamemnon explicitly and to Odysseus implicitly. The concept of the Iliad as a traditional poem that exposes the fault lines in society and reenacts dissolution and reconstitution of order in a ritual setting23 suggests at least two modes in which its performance may be characterized as practice: refraction of real social concerns and ritual reenactment, or mimesis. The first is social and political. Homeric epic, as Donlan remarks, “refract[s] the world of the audience’s experience through the prism of an unreal heroic world.”24 Thus, although the impasse between Achilleus and Agamemnon, and the ensuing cataclysm, are monumental in proportion, they betray a real-world concern in the textualization stage of the poem about reciprocity, competition, leadership, and the effect of elite relations on communal welfare.25 Heroes are good to think with. And Iliadic tradition not only thinks with heroes, it uses them to invent real social worlds. For performance of the Iliad does not just articulate audience concerns, it legitimates interests and itself negotiates dangerous and potentially destabilizing power relations.26 On this view, the Homeric Iliad problematizes elite relations and at the same time promotes an aristocratic ethos in which elite competition may be enacted in the interest of the common good.27 The Iliad can be seen to invent the real world on the shield of Achilleus, and in the trial scene particularly, as a world in search of civilized and civilizing limits.28 Heroic society presents two social models or ideologies for managing social tension and, ultimately, preserving social and cosmic order, or limits: a fluid ranking system that operates through aristocratic competition and a fixed ranking model that is more stratified. Both systems establish a hierarchy; both produce a best (aristos). The best that emerges from the fluid system is agonistically authenticated. To this model belongs the ideology of reciprocity and of the natural leader. The best in the fixed system is politically legitimated. To this model belongs the ideology of redistribution and one rightful king. Homer accommodates the competing voices of these two systems, both of which are the domain of powerful individuals. At one time or another, the values of each are portrayed sympathetically in the poem – Nestor in private council with Agamemnon, for
142
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
example, and Achilleus receiving Priam. And beyond these two groups, virtually unseen in the Iliad, are the people (d¯emos and laos) whose lives and fortunes are influenced to a greater or lesser extent by the relations among the powerful single agents.29 The narratorial account presents the audience with an ideal model of elite competition, without Agamemnon’s restraining force, at the funeral games. It suggests that the fluid system could exist independently of the constraint of the fixed system and, moreover, could work well for all concerned without the fixed system. The contradiction created by the conflation of the two systems so that the fixed is able to obstruct the operation of the fluid, together with the conflict it generates, is the central ambiguity of the poem.30 Although one of Homer’s strategies, as Robert Rabel has demonstrated persuasively, is to put conflicting views before the audience and not resolve them,31 on the central conflict of the poem Homer does, I believe, have a point of view. Achilleus blames Agamemnon rigorously for unjustly incapacitating the fluid system, and the narrator supports him in this. The narrator does so by letting the audience see Agamemnon resort to his privileged position to take advantage of tim¯e-based competition and by contrasting the image of heroic society under Agamemnon’s leadership throughout most of the poem with the world under Achilleus’ in Book 23. By phasing Agamemnon out of the picture and casting Achilleus successfully in his thematic role in the final scene, the poem betrays a decided preference for Achilleus as leader and for the agonistic system through which he emerged, naturally, as best. Although the audience knows that Agamemnon retains his privileged position, after Book 19 he and it have been made irrelevant by and to the narrative. The Iliad finally eclipses Agamemnon’s system because Homer does have a social world that works: the world of the funeral games in Book 23. Here the constraints imposed by a fixed and politically authenticated king have been removed. For the first time in the entire epic, the Homeric audience is afforded a glimpse of the tim¯e-based system operating as Achilleus has wanted it to. Here we see a society of powerful individuals where competition doesn’t lead to outright conflict, where quarrels flare up and are settled with soothing gifts and soothing words, and where the ‘Eris that is good for mortals’ is allowed to impose a hierarchy. And the king who emerges as best (aristos) is naturally suited to lead, combining in one person the essential qualities of m¯etis and bi¯e. He acts with self-restraint and pity, he distributes timai justly, and he deserves to rule precisely because of the system that produced him. The social world of the funeral games is a world made up of elites but projected for a Panhellenic audience with a
Unlimited Poin¯e
143
view to constructing them as social subjects of that world. The message of the last two books of the Iliad is that elite competition, when it is allowed to operate freely, is not incompatible with political institutions. It does not ride roughshod over assemblies and councils (as Agamemnon did). Instead, it works for the common good and only erupts into conflict when its natural mechanisms for displacing eris are inhibited. Thus, the elite ideology that prevails in the Iliad is one that has had to compete with a political system that has attempted or is attempting to impose restraints on it and it is one that appeals to popular ideology as well. The Iliad privileges the elite Greek voice that says, “We are egalitarian, we are restrained, we do not need a king (or a chieftan . . . or a tyrant) ruling over us to preserve order.” That world, from the poem’s perspective, is good for mortals. Homer’s portrayal of a model elite society competing with the restraining force of a king would surely be culturally relevant for an eighth century b.c.e. audience, where Donlan and Raaflaub, among others, place the textualization stage of the poem.32 But it is also possible to imagine that same ideology directed against tyranny at a later textualization stage. If the people (d¯emos) on the shield are the people of Homer’s real worlds, the Iliad offers them an answer to their search for just limits: not the rule of a single rightful ruler – be he king or tyrant – but a world under the direction of the best who naturally rises to lead. Seaford argues cogently that the versions of the Iliad and the Odyssey that were eventually textualized prevailed over other forms of themselves because of their endings and, specifically, because their endings embodied so exceptionally the aspirations of the early polis.33 He demonstrates elsewhere that through the whole of the fifth century b.c.e. the Athenians were anxious about tyranny and, further, points out that in fifth-century Athenian tragedy, the figure of the monarch could stand for the figure of a tyrant.34 Traditional myth did not provide much scope for dramatizing ’the conflict between democracy and aristocracy/oligarchy’. It was rather centred around the crimes and disasters of powerful individuals, unencumbered by the institutions of the state. But these traditional themes were assimilable (up to a point) to a recent historical experience, the experience of tyranny.35
Dislike of tyranny, Seaford reminds us, was a political view on which everybody in fifth-century Athens could agree.36 So much of his argument is compelling. He further interprets the Iliad ’s place in Greek social formation on a temporal axis, in which an early stage of state formation dominated by reciprocity is reflected in Homer’s elite ideology. A mature stage of state formation, namely Athenian democracy, based on
144
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
money, united by cult, defense, and institutions of the polis is reflected in the democratic ideology of Greek tragedy.37 But if ideology against kingship could be manipulated at the same time as ideology against tyranny (i.e., at a later textualization stage of the poem), dislike of tyranny can be seen as a political view on which the Iliad also is agreed. And it is possible to see the tension he describes in fifth-century Athens and in fifth-century Athenian tragedy played out within the story of the Iliad, where the elite ideology of reciprocity prevails only after intense competition with a king (or tyrant). Mark Griffith, in a groundbreaking article on the Oresteia, has made a compelling case that the telic view oversimplifies the democratic ideology of Athenian tragedy.38 He demonstrates that the Oresteia, with its “skillful integration of ‘democratic’ and ‘aristocratic’ elements, and its almost subliminal suggestions of the enduring need for elite leadership and traditional dynastic ties,” provides a convincing example of “solidarity without consensus.”39 He concludes that the prevailing thrust of tragic diction is “towards an affirmation of the stature and value of these natural leaders, flawed and dangerous though they may be.”40 Accordingly, he claims that “[i]f Greek tragedy is intended to instantiate Athenian civic ideology, then we must acknowledge (what is in any case likely enough) that even this most authentically democratic ideology (like many, less authentic, others) still comes with a strongly aristocratic spin.”41 On this view, Homeric epic and Aeschylean tragedy at least present complementary strategies for negotiating between conflicting elite ideologies and between elite ideologies and popular interests within the polis. Homer’s elite ideology need not be conceived of in diametric opposition to civic or democratic ideology. Nor is it a necessary or sufficient condition for confining the textualization stage of the poem to an eighth-century b.c.e. transition from chiefdom to polis or to the primitive stages of state formation. The Iliad ’s political concerns, as evinced through development of the compensation theme, sit quite well in the political environment of the seventh and sixth centuries b.c.e. And the social world that the Iliad offers is one in which aristocratic competition, apart from restraints imposed by a so-called single rightful leader, makes the values and ideals of the Panhellenic audience a reality: it produces an ordered and civilized world that, according to the poem, embodies Greek culture. A second mode of practice suggested by the Iliad ’s dissolving and reconstituting order in the context of Panhellenic festivals is ritual: a performance of the Iliad reenacts an archetypal event that entails an interaction of myth and ritual.42 Gregory Nagy refers to this as mim¯esis but cautions that it is not to be confused with simple imitation. The character of recomposing
Unlimited Poin¯e
145
traditional poetry as mim¯esis depends on the mentality of a group performance: “So long as the mentality of group performance is there, everyone who is present at a mimesis becomes a part of it.”43 Mim¯esis is thus both ritual self-presentation and self-construction. Cook observes that by such mimetic events the “body politic reconstituted and articulated itself.”44 Inasmuch as ritual reenactment proceeds on the assumption that “the deed and the poetry which celebrates the deed are one,”45 a performance of the Iliad may be understood not to just narrate a tale of a time when the fabric of the cosmos was torn and then restored, but actually to effect the dissolution and reconstitution of order in the telling. Parallels for such a mode of operation in the recitation of traditional poetry may be found in epic traditions of the ancient Near East, for example, the Poem of Erra.46 The plot of the poem involves a divine or semidivine warrior in a state of inactivity who cannot be incited to take up war. Once he is roused to activity, however, his violence exceeds all bounds and causes a civil war in Babylon. Erra is finally, and only with difficulty, persuaded to emerge from his berserk state. Peter Machinist demonstrates that a major theme of the poem is that rest and violence alternate in continuous cycles.47 The inactive and active cycles alike prove to have both beneficial and deleterious sides. The problem with which humans must contend is how to deal with this tension and, specifically, how to deal with the hero’s violent side (which is, like the Greek hero’s, both necessary and dangerous). Machinist concludes that the poem offers the power of its own words as the means for neutralization of the destructive effects of the cycle: “the very remembering and reciting of the song . . . is what will provide the needed defense against a repetition of Erra’s violent behavior.”48 The closing lines of the poem read: “In the sanctuary of the god who praises this song (= the poem), may abundance be heaped up, (But) may that (god) who rejects it no longer smell incense! May the king who extols my name rule the (whole) world! May the prince who proclaims the praise of my heroism have no rival! The singer who chants (it) shall not die in the destruction, (But) to king and prince shall his word be welcome. The scribe who commits it to memory shall escape the enemy country (and) shall be honoured in his own country. In the sanctuary of (those) sages where they constantly mention my name, I will grant them wisdom. To the house in which this tablet is placed – however furious Erra may be, however murderous the Sibitti may be –
146
Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad
The sword of destruction shall not come near: salvation shall alight on it. May this song (= the poem) last forever! May it endure to eternity! May all the countries hear it and celebrate my heroism! May (all) the dwellers know (it) and glorify my name!”49 (Poem of Erra 19.49–61)
In sum, recitation of the traditional poem manages the threat the hero poses by reenacting the cycle, thus preserving the benefits and containing the danger. So it is, I propose, that oral recitation of the Iliad manages eris that erupts between powerful individuals, achieving formal resolution not through violent conflict and not only through displacement onto goods, but ultimately through displacement onto traditional poetry, the Iliad itself. Homer, it seems, supports Achilleus in his claim that goods do not, cannot, must not compensate for mortality. But Homer nonetheless rejects nondisplacement as an intolerable alternative. Instead, poin¯e for heroic death is displaced onto traditional poetry, which the poem has already aligned closely with Zeus and which, according to its own selfreferentiality, bestows kleos aphthiton. The only compensation for mortality that Homer holds out to Achilleus is that conferred upon him in song: the Iliad is the father’s poin¯e. The performance of Achilleus’ kleos/poin¯e does not dispense with eris and mortality as realities of the human condition; rather, it holds out in the midst of human limitation the possibility of immortal fame and, hence, the only possibility of unlimited poin¯e.
appendix 1
Catalog of Compensation Themes
The texts in this catalog are grouped according to type (apoina, poin¯e, and mixed). They are arranged from the most unencumbered examples of each type to the most complex, not in the order of their occurrence in the Iliad. The formal elements are indicated in the margins as follows: loss is designated by L; the proposed exchange by E (directionality by E-d; path by E-p); and resolution by R. I underline only those recurring word groups that regularly contain the compensation theme. I do not distinguish exact verbal repetition from modifications and structural formulas. Iliad Text 2.229 –31 5.265 –67 6.45 –65 6.425 –28 10.374–457 11.101–12 11.122–47 11.696 –705 13.410–16 13.445 –47 13.656 –59 14.469 –74 14.478 –85 15.113–18 16.394–98 17.34–42, 50 17.160–64 17.198 –208
Type apoina poin¯e mixed apoina apoina apoina mixed poin¯e poin¯e poin¯e poin¯e poin¯e poin¯e poin¯e poin¯e poin¯e apoina poin¯e
Appendix no. 1 8 22 2 6 5 23 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 7 20
Scene Agamemnon and Trojans Zeus and Tros Adrestos Andromach¯e’s mother Dolon Isos and Antiphos Peisandros and Hippolochos Neleus and Augeias De¨ıphobos and Hypsenor Idomeneus and De¨ıphobos Harpalion Aias and Archelochos Akamas and Promachos Ares and Askalaphos Patroklos and Trojans Menelaos and Euphorbos Patroklos and Sarpedon’s armor Zeus and Hektor
147
148
Appendix 1
Iliad Text 18.497–508 21.26 –33 21.34–135 21.396 –414 22.46 –54 24.200–16 24.685 –88 4.25 –56 3.276 –91, 455 –61
Type poin¯e poin¯e mixed poin¯e apoina mixed apoina incomplete poin¯e incomplete poin¯e
Appendix no. 18 19 24 21 3 25 4 Exc. Exc.
Scene Trial scene on the shield Achilleus and Trojans Achilleus and Lykaon Athene and Ares Priam and sons Hekab¯e and Hektor Priam and sons Hera and Zeus Agamemnon and Trojans
THEMES OF THE APOINA TYPE 1. Iliad 2 .229–31 1 ∑ ¶ti ka‹ xrusoË §pideÊeai, ˜n k° tiw o‡sei
230 Tr≈vn flppodãmvn §j ÉIl¤ou uÂow êpoina,
E, R L
˜n ken §g∆ dÆsaw égãgv µ êllow ÉAxai«n,
‘Or is it still more gold you will be wanting, that some one 230 of the Trojans, breakers of horses, brings as apoina out of Ilion for his son, one that I, or some other Achaian, capture and bring in?’
Thersites, speaking in the assembly, accuses Agamemnon of abusing the privilege of his position. The speech includes a three-line epitome of a theme of the apoina type (2.229–31). Thersites alludes to the practice of holding Trojans who were captured (L) and brought to camp by himself and other Achaians for the gold their fathers would bring to gain their release (E). Since his accusation points to general practice, the resolution can be inferred from the premise of the charge: an exchange of goods for life could be expected to be offered by Trojan fathers and accepted by the victors, and by Agamemnon in particular, with some regularity. 2 . Iliad 6.425 –28 425 mht°ra dÉ, ∂ bas¤leuen ÍpÚ Plãkƒ Ílh°ss˙, tØn §pe‹ ír deËrÉ ≥gagÉ ëmÉ êlloisi kteãtessin, íc ˜ ge tØn ép°luse lab∆n épere¤siÉ êpoina, patrÚw dÉ §n megãroisi bãlÉ ÖArtemiw fiox°aira.
L, E-p R, E-d
425 ‘And when he [Achilleus] had led my mother, who was queen under wooded Plakos, here, along with all his other possessions, Achilleus released her again, accepting unlimited apoina, but Artemis of the showering arrows struck her down in the halls of her father.’
Appendix 1
149
Andromach¯e recounts for Hektor how Achilleus had killed her father E¨etion, taken her mother captive (L), and, after accepting apoina without limit (E), had released her (R). The woman, who remains nameless, was probably ransomed by her father, in whose house she subsequently died. Achilleus had already killed E¨etion, the captive woman’s husband. A father regularly offers apoina for a child, and the death of E¨etion leaves such a scenario likely here. Andromach¯e’s use of m¯et¯er (mother) locates the captured woman firmly in her familial relationship; hence she focalizes the path as prestige goods for a person. Ktear (possession, 6.426), however, locates the captive woman among the booty and defines the path from the captor’s perspective as goods for goods.2 Andromach¯e’s use of the term ktear should thus probably be ascribed to tertiary focalization whereby her words reflect Achilleus’ earlier speech. 3. Iliad 22 .46–54
50
50
Ka‹ går nËn dÊo pa›de, Lukãona ka‹ PolÊdvron, oÈ dÊnamai fid°ein Tr≈vn efiw êstu él°ntvn, toÊw moi LaoyÒh t°keto kre¤ousa gunaik«n. ÉAllÉ efi m¢n z≈ousi metå strat“, ∑ tÉ ín ¶peita xalkoË te xrusoË tÉ épolusÒmeyÉ. ¶sti går ¶ndon: pollå går pase paid‹ g°rvn Ùnomãklutow ÖAlthw. efi dÉ ≥dh teynçsi ka‹ efin ÉA¤dao dÒmoisin, êlgow §m“ yum“ ka‹ mht°ri to‹ tekÒmesya:
L
E
‘Even now there are two sons, Lykaon and Polydoros, whom I cannot see among the Trojans pent up in the city, sons Laotho¨e a princess among women bore to me. But if these are alive somewhere in the army, then I can set them free for bronze and gold; it is there inside, since Altes the aged and renowned gave much with his daughter. But if they are dead already and gone down to the house of Hades, it is sorrow to our hearts, who bore them, myself and their mother.’
Priam, when he cannot see his sons among the Trojans fleeing before Achilleus, hopes they have been captured (L) so that he might obtain their release (E-d) by means of a material exchange (E-p); the exchange goods are specified as yellow metals. Thus, warriors captured on battlefields must have been regularly held for ransom. The path of exchange is focalized by the father as goods for the lives of persons who are designated as family (paide, children, 22.46). Since Achilleus has already killed both men, the resolution has already been accomplished.
1 50
Appendix 1
4. Iliad 24.685 –88 685 ka‹ nËn m¢n f¤lon uflÚn §lÊsao, pollå dÉ ¶dvkaw: se›o d° ke zvoË ka‹ tr‹w tÒsa do›en êpoina pa›dew to‹ metÒpisye leleimm°noi, a‡ kÉ ÉAgam°mnvn g n≈˙ sÉ ÉAtre˝dhw, g n≈vsi d¢ pãntew ÉAxaio¤.
L, E
685 ‘You have gained the release of your dear son and given much for him. But the sons you left behind would give three times as much apoina for you, who are alive, were Atreus’ son Agamemnon to recognize you, and all the other Achaians learn of you.’
Hermes rouses Priam from his sleep in Achilleus’ shelter and urges him to slip out of the Achaian camp. He warns that if Agamemnon and the Achaians discover Priam, his sons will have to pay three times as much apoina (E) for him alive (L) as Priam has just given in exchange for Hektor’s corpse. The contents of the apoina are not described, though the symmetry with polla d’ ed¯okas (‘you gave much,’ 24.385), which refers to the apoina Priam took to Achilleus, confirms the substance of the apoina as prestige goods. The relationship by which the exchange is figured is familial: the father is in the dependent position, and the sons are in the role of the party who brings apoina. Since Priam’s life is not in danger, the path of exchange is prestige goods for a family member and, uniquely, for a father. The theme comprises a potential scenario and, as such, contains no resolution, although the thrust of Hermes’ warning is that the exchange would be transacted. 5. Iliad 11.101–12
105
110
aÈtår ˘ b∞ =É âIsÒn te ka‹ ÖAntifon §jenar¤jvn, uÂe dÊv Priãmoio, nÒyon ka‹ g nÆsion, êmfv efin •n‹ d¤frƒ §Òntaw: ˘ m¢n nÒyow ≤niÒxeuen, ÖAntifow aÔ par°baske periklutÒw: À potÉ ÉAxilleÁw ÖIdhw §n knhmo›si d¤dh mÒsxoisi lÊgoisi, L, E, R poima¤nontÉ §pÉ ˆessi lab≈n, ka‹ ¶lusen épo¤nvn. dØ tÒte gÉ ÉAtre˝dhw eÈrÁ kre¤vn ÉAgam°mnvn tÚn m¢n Íp¢r mazo›o katå st∞yow bãle dour¤, ÖAntifon aÔ parå oÔw ¶lase j¤fei, §k dÉ ¶balÉ ·ppvn. sperxÒmenow dÉ épÚ to›in §sÊla teÊxea kalã, gig n≈skvn: ka‹ gãr sfe pãrow parå nhus‹ yoªsin e‰den, ˜tÉ §j ÖIdhw êgagen pÒdaw »kÁw ÉAxilleÊw.
Then he [Agamemnon] went on to kill and strip Isos and Antiphos, two sons of Priam, bastard one and one lawful, both riding
1 51
Appendix 1
105
110
in a single chariot. The bastard, Isos, was charioteer and renowned Antiphos rode beside him. Before this Achilleus had caught these two at the knees of Ida, and bound them in pliant willows as they watched by their sheep, and released them for apoina. This time the son of Atreus, wide-powerful Agamemnon, struck Isos with the thrown spear in the chest above the nipple and hit Antiphos by the ear with the sword and hurled him from his horses, and in eager haste he stripped off from these their glorious armour which he knew; he had seen these two before by the fast ships when Achilleus of the swift feet had brought them in from Ida.
The story of Isos and Antiphos’ defeat by Agamemnon incorporates an account of an earlier incident in which Achilleus had captured (L) the two while they were watching their sheep on Mount Ida and then released them for apoina (E, R). I infer that the apoina are prestige goods; the path is thus goods for persons who are designated as Priam’s sons. The cursory account omits the identity of the one who brings apoina, but the pattern in other themes leads to the expectation that Priam would offer it, as he later hoped to do for Lykaon and Polydoros (22.46–54). 6. Iliad 10.374–81 and 454–57 3 ˘ dÉ êrÉ ¶sth tãrbhs°n te
375 bamba¤nvn: êrabow d¢ diå stÒma g¤gnetÉ ÙdÒntvn
380
455
xlvrÚw Ípa‹ de¤ouw: t∆ dÉ ésyma¤nonte kixÆthn, xeir«n dÉ ècãsyhn: ˘ d¢ dakrÊsaw ¶pow hÎda: zvgre›tÉ, aÈtår §g∆n §m¢ lÊsomai: ¶sti går ¶ndon xalkÒw te xrusÒw te polÊkmhtÒw te s¤dhrow: t«n kÉ Îmmin xar¤saito patØr épere¤siÉ êpoina, e‡ ken §m¢ zvÚn pepÊyoitÉ §p‹ nhus‹n ÉAxai«n.
L, E-d E-p
* * * * âH, ka‹ ˘ m°n min ¶melle gene¤ou xeir‹ paxe¤˙ ècãmenow l¤ssesyai, ˘ dÉ aÈx°na m°sson ¶lasse fasgãnƒ é˝jaw, épÚ dÉ êmfv k°rse t°nonte: fyeg gom°nou dÉ êra toË ge kãrh kon¤˙sin §m¤xyh.
R
And Dolon stood still in terror 375 gibbering, as through his mouth came the sound of his teeth’s chatter in green fear; and these two, breathing hard, came up to him and caught him by the hands, and he broke into tears and spoke to them:
1 52
Appendix 1
‘Take me alive, and I will secure my own release: in my house there is bronze, and gold, and difficultly wrought iron, 380 and my father would make you glad with unlimited apoina were he to hear that I am alive by the ships of the Achaians.’ *
455
*
*
*
He [Diomedes] spoke, and the man was trying to reach his chin with his strong hand and cling, and supplicate him, but he struck the middle of his neck with a sweep of the sword, and slashed clean through both tendons, and Dolon’s head still speaking dropped in the dust.
When Odysseus and Diomedes catch Dolon in his nocturnal spying mission, he offers them apoina (E), which his father would give graciously (kharisaito pat¯er, 10.380) in exchange for his life (L). The path is thus goods for life. The theme is amplified with details about Dolon, the metal goods his father has in store, and with Dolon’s traitorous revelations. Diomedes finally dashes Dolon’s hopes when he claims that Dolon, left alive, posed too great a threat to the Achaians (10.446–52). Dolon’s last-ditch effort at supplication (10.455 –56) is cut short by Diomedes’ sword (R). 7. Iliad 17.160–64 160 efi dÉ otow prot‹ êstu m°ga Priãmoio ênaktow ¶lyoi teynh∆w ka¤ min §rusa¤meya xãrmhw, a‰cã ken ÉArge›oi SarphdÒnow ¶ntea kalå lÊseian, ka¤ kÉ aÈtÚn égo¤meya ÖIlion e‡sv:
L, E-p E-d
160 ‘If, dead man though he [Patroklos] be, he could be brought into the great city of lord Priam, if we could tear him out of the fighting, the Argives must at once release the beautiful armour of Sarpedon, and we could carry his body inside Ilion.’
After Hektor has killed Patroklos and a fierce battle is being waged over his corpse, Glaukos proposes that if the Trojans could get control of Patroklos’ body and carry it into the city, they could recover Sarpedon’s armor and corpse. Glaukos presumably hopes to ransom the armor, and also recover the body, with Patroklos’ corpse. He is apparently unaware that Sarpedon’s body has already been carried to Lykia by Sleep and Death (16.677–83). Any reference to an actual exchange is oblique. Thus, although the thematic term for release, luein, appears, no direct reference is made to the corpse as apoina. The path also is singular among apoina themes: a corpse for a dead warrior’s armor. At stake is an exchange of losses
1 53
Appendix 1
(a captured body for captured armor). This scene is therefore included in the inventory of apoina themes as a marginal example.
THEMES OF THE POIN E¯ TYPE 8. Iliad 5.265 –67 265 t∞w gãr toi gene∞w ∏w, Trv¤ per eÈrÊopa ZeÁw d«xÉ uÂow poinØn GanumÆdeow, oÏnekÉ êristoi · ppvn, ˜ssoi ¶asin ÍpÉ ±« tÉ ±°liÒn te.
L, E, R
265 ‘These are of that strain which Zeus of the wide brows granted once to Tros, poin¯e for his son Ganymedes, and therefore are the finest of all horses beneath the sun and the daybreak.’
Diomedes includes a poin¯e theme in his description of Aineas’ horses. He says the horses are descended from those Zeus gave to Tros (R) as poin¯e (E-d) for his son (E-p), Ganymedes, whom Zeus had carried off (L). The path of the exchange is prestige goods for a person; Zeus both inflicts the damage and initiates the payment of poin¯e. 9. Iliad 11.696–705 4 ÉEk dÉ ˘ g°rvn ég°lhn te bo«n ka‹ p«# m°gÉofi«n e·leto, krinãmenow trihkÒsiÉ ±d¢ nom∞aw. ka‹ går t“ xre›ow m°gÉ Ùfe¤letÉ §n ÖHlidi d¤˙, t°ssarew éylofÒroi ·ppoi aÈto›sin ˆxesfin, 700 §lyÒntew metÉ êeyla. per‹ tr¤podow går ¶mellon yeÊsesyai: toÁw dÉ aÔyi ênaj éndr«n AÈge¤aw kãsxeye, tÚn dÉ §lat∞rÉ éf¤ei ékaxÆmenon ·ppvn. t«n ˘ g°rvn §p°vn kexolvm°now ±d¢ ka‹ ¶rgvn §j°letÉ êspeta pollã: tå dÉ êllÉ §w d∞mon ¶dvke 705 daitreÊein, mÆ t¤w ofl étembÒmenow k¤oi ‡shw.
R, E L
Now the old man took for himself a herd of cattle and a big flock of sheep, choosing out three hundred of them along with the shepherds; for indeed a great debt was owing to him in shining Elis. It was four horses, race-competitors with their own chariot, 700 who were on their way to a race and were to run for a tripod, but Augeias the lord of men took these, and kept them and sent away their driver who was vexed for the sake of the horses. Now aged Neleus, angry over things said and things done, took a vast amount for himself, and gave the rest to the people 705 to divide among them, so none might go away without a just share.
1 54
Appendix 1
Augeias had taken and kept Neleus’ chariot and four prize-winning horses (L); the charioteer he let go. In addition, he had apparently insulted Neleus, as the old man had been angered by both Augeias’ deeds and words (11.703). When Neleus was able to secure redress, he took a vast herd of cattle and sheep (E, R). The sheep constitute small animal wealth and should probably be considered as subsistence goods, though the cattle and the herdsman may be figured as prestige goods. The path is goods for goods and insult; the insult and loss of goods both constitute a diminishing of tim¯e. After exacting recompense for his own losses, Neleus distributed the remaining goods to the people. This vignette contains almost none of the word groups typical of the compensation theme, but it does contain all the elements: loss and a delayed but ultimately successful attempt to secure recompense. 10. Iliad 13.410–16 410
415
oÈdÉ ëliÒn =a bare¤hw xeirÚw éf∞ken, éllÉ ¶balÉ ÑIppas¤dhn ÑUcÆnora poim°na la«n ∏par ÍpÚ prap¤dvn, e‰yar dÉ ÍpÚ goÊnatÉ ¶luse. Dh¤fobow dÉ ¶kpaglon §peÊjato makrÚn é@saw: O È mån aÔtÉ êtitow ke›tÉ ÖAsiow, éllã • fhm‹ efiw ÖAÛdÒw per fiÒnta pulãrtao kratero›o g hyÆsein katå yumÒn, §pe¤ =ã ofl pasa pompÒn.
L, E, R
410 Yet De¨ıphobos made no utterly vain cast from his strong hand, but struck Hypsenor, son of Hippasos, shepherd of the people, in the liver under the midriff, and at once took the strength from his knees. And De¨ıphobos vaunted terribly over him, calling in a great voice: ‘Asios lies not now all unpaid. I think rather 415 as he goes down to Hades of the Gates, the strong one, he will be cheerful at heart, since I have sent him an escort.’
After Idomeneus kills the Trojan Asios, De¨ıphobos returns a cast at Idomeneus; he misses, but fatally strikes Hypsenor. De¨ıphobos nonetheless vaunts that Asios (L) no longer lies atitos, unpaid, or without tisis (E, R). Although the term poin¯e does not appear, atitos adequately conveys directionality. Hypsenor ‘pays’ for a man whom his comrade, Idomeneus, killed. The path, focalized by De¨ıphobos as life for life, runs parallel to a payment in tim¯e for tim¯e.
1 55
Appendix 1
11. Iliad 13.445 –47 445 ÉIdomeneÁw dÉ ¶kpaglon §peÊjato makrÚn é@saw: Dh˝fobÉ ∑ êra dÆ ti §˝skomen êjion e‰nai tre›w •nÚw ént‹ pefãsyai;
L, E, R
445 Idomeneus vaunted terribly over him, calling in a great voice: ‘De¨ıphobos, are we then to call this a worthy bargain, three men killed for one?’
Idomeneus boasts that three Trojans (Othruoneus, Asios, and Alkatho¨os) have been killed (E, R) in exchange for one Greek, Hypsenor (L). He focalizes the path as an exchange of life for life, which runs parallel to a path of tim¯e for tim¯e. Iliad 13.445 –47 may be compared to 14.469–74 in form and language. 12 . Iliad 13.656–59 TÚn m¢n PaflagÒnew megalÆtorew émfep°nonto, §w d¤fron dÉ én°santew êgon prot‹ ÖIlion flrØn éxnÊmenoi: metå d° sfi patØr k¤e dãkrua le¤bvn: poinØ dÉ oÎ tiw paidÚw §g¤neto teynh«tow.
L, E, R
And the great-hearted Paphlagonians busied about him [Harpalion], lifted him into a chariot and brought him to sacred Ilion in sorrow, and his father, weeping tears, walked beside them, and no poin¯e came his way for his son’s slaying.
The Trojan Harpalion, near death or already dead, is carried from the battlefield; his father, Pylaimenes (13.643–44), follows, weeping. A single line contains the (unsuccessful) poin¯e theme in which no poin¯e (E, R) is taken for the death of a family member (L).5 Although Harpalion’s death occurs on the battlefield, mention of his weeping father and the use of the term pais tethn¯e¯os (dead child) create a domestic cameo that seems to supplant the martial setting. In fact, 13.659 is almost an exact verbal echo of Aias’ words to Achilleus at 9.633: poinØn µ o paidÚw §d°jato teynh«tow (‘he takes poin¯e for a child who was killed’). Pylaimenes’ death has already been narrated at 5.576–79. The inconsistency in the story line resulted in a flurry of textual criticism by the Alexandrians and has provided grist for the Analysts’ mill as well.6 Egregious as the contradiction is, it is still of a kind that might reasonably be expected to occur because of thematic reflex, especially since, only a few
1 56
Appendix 1
lines earlier, mention had been made of Harpalion following his father to Troy (13.643–44). Pylaimenes’ following Harpalion from the battlefield may have seemed to complete the circuit.7 The discrepancy in the story thus need not eliminate this text from consideration as an example of the compensation theme. 13. Iliad 14.469–74 470
A‡aw dÉ aÔtÉ §g°gvnen émÊmoni Pouludãmanti: Frãzeo, Pouludãma, ka¤ moi nhmert¢w §n¤spew. ∑ =É oÈx otow énØr ProyoÆnorow ént‹ pefãsyai êjiow; oÈ m°n moi kakÚw e‡detai oÈd¢ kak«n ¶j, éllå kas¤gnhtow ÉAntÆnorow flppodãmoio µ pãÛw: aÈt“ går geneØn êgxista §–kei.
L, E, R
And Aias Spoke aloud in answer to unfaulted Poulydamas: 470 ‘Think over this, Poulydamas, and answer me truly. Is not this man’s death against Protho¨enor’s a worthy exchange? I think he is no mean man, nor born of mean fathers, but is some brother of Antenor, breaker of horses, or his son; since he is close in blood by the look of him.’
Angered over the death of Protho¨enor, Aias makes a cast at Poulydamas and misses, but hits Archelochos. He vaunts over him, declaring him an axios (worthy) man to be slain Protho¯enor anti (L, E, R).8 I take the term Protho¯enor anti to be a functional equivalent of poin¯e with the genitive; thus Archelochos pays poin¯e for a man whom Poulydamas, his comrade, killed. The path is life for life. 14. Iliad 14.478–85 t“ dÉ ÉAkãmaw ¶kpaglon §peÊjato makrÚn é@saw: ÉArge›oi fiÒmvroi, épeilãvn ékÒrhtoi 480 oÎ yhn o‡ois¤n ge pÒnow tÉ ¶setai ka‹ ÙÛzÁw ≤m›n, éllã poyÉ œde katakten°esye ka‹ Îmmew. FrãzesyÉ …w Ím›n PrÒmaxow dedmhm°now eÏdei ¶gxei §m“, ·na mÆ ti kasignÆtoiÒ ge poinØ dhrÚn êtitow ¶˙: t« ka¤ k° tiw eÎxetai énØr 485 gnvtÚn §n‹ megãroisin ér∞w élkt∞ra lip°syai
Akamas vaunted terribly over him, calling in a great voice: ‘You Argives, arrow-fighters, insatiate of menace. I think
R L, E
Appendix 1
1 57
480 we shall not be the only ones to be given hard work and sorrow, but you too must sometimes die, as this man did. Think how Promachos sleeps among you, beaten down under my spear, so that poin¯e for my brother may not go long unpaid. Therefore a man prays he will leave behind him 485 one close to him in his halls to ward off ruin.’
Archelochos’ death at Aias’ hands (14.469–74) becomes a death that leads, in turn, to a compensation theme. Archelochos’ brother, Akamas, kills Promachos (E, R) and promptly boasts that poin¯e for his brother (L) has not gone long unpaid (atitos).9 Akamas defines the path as life for life; he further defines Archelochos in terms of familial relations as kasign¯etos (brother, 14.483). He exacts payment of poin¯e not from Aias, his brother’s killer, but from one of Aias’ comrades in arms (hetairoi). Akamas concludes his vaunt with a gnomic saying to the effect that a man boasts or prays (eukhetai, 14.484) to have a kinsman (gn¯otos) left as an ar¯es alkt¯er for this very reason: that his poin¯e not be long atitos.10 The phrase ar¯es alkt¯er was the object of intense critical activity as early as the Alexandrians; it remains a textual and interpretational crux.11 The first issue for discussion is the form and meaning of ar¯e; the second is the meaning of the phrase. Janko proposes that aˇr¯e was an obsolete form that became fossilized in two formulas, ar¯es alkt¯era and ar¯en amunai.12 He further suggests that, since aˇr¯e was obsolete, and since Ar¯es is “in origin a mere personification of ‘harm’,” the poet substituted the epic genitive Areos for ar¯es in 14.485 and in 18.213, preserving the obsolete formula ar¯es alkt¯er only in 18.100. Areos, by this view, would have subsequently been Atticized to read Are¯os. Van der Valk also reconstructs an original formula, ar¯es alkt¯er, but he argues that it was Aristarchus (and not the poet) who emended the obsolete form to are¯o; are¯o then became are¯os by corruption.13 The obsolescence of ar¯e seems compelling evidence that the less familiar term may have generated the competing reading, and then existed side by side with it in the tradition. Ar¯e denotes destruction, ruin, death. I take ar¯es as an objective genitive, by analogy with ar¯en amunai, and, accordingly, interpret ar¯es alkt¯er as one who protects against or wards off death or ruin.14 Ar¯e is used most often in the Iliad in the context of combat, where it designates a life-threatening enemy attack. Hence to ward off ar¯e (ar¯es alkt¯er, ar¯en amunai) means most frequently to defend another from death in battle.15 Akamas, however, did not ward off death from his brother but took action only after the fact. In sum, Akamas claims to be a kinsman who protects against ar¯e by securing poin¯e for a family member who has already been killed. Accordingly, the
1 58
Appendix 1
ruin to which the saying refers is a loss of tim¯e suffered by the dead warrior and his family when life (or “blood”) and tim¯e lost to them is not recovered in some form. 15. Iliad 15.113–18
115
115
aÈtår ÖArhw yaler∆ peplÆgeto mhr∆ xers‹ kataprhn°ssÉ, ÙlofurÒmenow dÉ proshÊda: MØ nËn moi nemesÆsetÉ, ÉOlÊmpia d≈matÉ ¶xontew, t¤sasyai fÒnon uÂow fiÒntÉ §p‹ n∞aw ÉAxai«n, e‡ p°r moi ka‹ mo›ra DiÚw plhg°nti keraun“ ke›syai ımoË nekÊessi meyÉ a·mati ka‹ kon¤˙sin.
L, E
Then Ares struck against both his big thighs with the flats of his hands, and spoke a word of anger and sorrow: ‘Now you who have your homes on Olympos, you must not blame me for going among the ships of the Achaians, and taking tisis for my son’s slaughter, even though it be my fate to be struck by Zeus’ thunderbolt, and sprawl in the blood and dust by the dead men.’
Ares declares that he will go to the Achaian ships and ‘get himself paid’ (E) for the killing (phonon, 15.116) of his son, Askalaphos (L). Askalaphos was killed by a Trojan warrior, De¨ıphobos (13.516–20); hence the audience would expect Ares to go to the ships, where the battle is raging, to exact payment in Trojan lives (a path of life for life). The theme is incomplete, however, because Athene dissuades Ares out of fear of what Zeus may do if any of the immortals disobeys his command to desist from the fighting (15.121–41). 16. Iliad 16.394–98 Pãtroklow dÉ §pe‹ oÔn pr≈taw §p°kerse fãlaggaw,
395 íc §p‹ n∞aw ¶erge palimpet°w, oÈd¢ pÒlhow e‡a flem°nouw §pibain°men, éllå meshgÁ nh«n ka‹ potamoË ka‹ te¤xeow Íchlo›o kte›ne meta˝ssvn, pol°vn dÉ épet¤nuto poinÆn.
L, E, R
But Patroklos, when he had cut away their first battalions, 395 turned back to pin them against the ships, and would not allow them to climb back into their city though they strained for it, but sweeping through the space between the ships, the high wall, and the river, made havoc and exacted from them poin¯e for many.
A compensation theme is contained in one line (16.398): Patroklos kills (Trojans) (R), getting payment of poin¯e for many (E, L). The path is
1 59
Appendix 1
life for life; the many for whom he exacts poin¯e are his comrades in arms (hetairoi). 17. Iliad 17.34–42 , 50 35
40
50 35
40
50
NËn m¢n dØ, Men°lae diotref¢w, ∑ mãla t¤seiw gnvtÚn §mÚn, tÚn ¶pefnew, §peuxÒmenow dÉ égoreÊeiw: xÆrvsaw d¢ guna›ka mux“ yalãmoio n°oio, êrrhton d¢ tokeËsi gÒon ka‹ p°nyow ¶yhkaw. ∑ k° sfin deilo›si gÒou katãpauma geno¤mhn, e‡ ken §g∆ kefalÆn te teØn ka‹ teÊxeÉ §ne¤kaw Pãnyƒ §n xe¤ressi bãlv ka‹ FrÒntidi d¤˙. ÉAllÉ oÈ mån ¶ti dhrÚn épe¤rhtow pÒnow ¶stai oÈd° tÉ édÆritow ≥ tÉ élk∞w te fÒboio. * * * * doÊphsen d¢ pes≈n, érãbhse d¢ teÊxeÉ §pÉ aÈt“.
E L
E-p
R
‘Then, lordly Menelaos, you must now pay for my brother, whom you killed, and boast that you did it, and made his wife a widow in the depth of a young bride chamber and left to his parents the curse of lamentation and sorrow. Yet I might stop the mourning of these unhappy people If I could carry back to them your head, and your armour, And toss them into Pantho¨os’ hands, and to Phrontis the lovely. No, this struggle shall not go long untested between us Nor yet unfought, whether it prove our strength or our terror.’ *
*
*
*
He fell, thunderously, and his armour clattered upon him,
When Menelaos kills Hyperenor and boasts over the fact, Hyperenor’s brother, Euphorbus, declares that he will make Menelaos pay (teiseis, E-d) for his brother (L). The damage is described as a loss to Hyperenor’s family, namely, his wife and parents, whose mourning would come to an end if Hyperenor’s death were requited. Euphorbos intends to exact life for life from Hyperenor’s killer. He is unable, however, to exact payment and loses his own life instead (R). 18. Iliad 18.497–508 16
500
Lao‹ dÉ efin égorª ¶san éyrÒoi: ¶nya d¢ ne›kow »r≈rei, dÊo dÉ êndrew §ne¤keon e·neka poin∞w éndrÚw épofyim°nou: ˘ m¢n eÎxeto pãntÉ épodoËnai17 dÆmƒ pifaÊskvn, ˘ dÉ éna¤neto mhd¢n •l°syai. êmfv dÉ fl°syhn §p‹ ‡stori pe›rar •l°syai. lao‹ dÉ émfot°roisin §pÆpuon, émf‹w érvgo¤:
E L R
1 60
505
Appendix 1 kÆrukew dÉ êra laÚn §rÆtuon: o„ d¢ g°rontew e·atÉ §p‹ jesto›si l¤yoiw fler“ §n‹ kÊklƒ. sk∞ptra d¢ khrÊkvn §n x°rsÉ ¶xon ±erof≈nvn: to›sin ¶peitÉ ≥Ûsson, émoibhd‹w dÉ §d¤kazon. ke›to dÉ êrÉ §n m°ssoisi dÊv xruso›o tãlanta, t“ dÒmen ˘w metå to›si d¤khn fiyÊntata e‡poi.
The people were assembled in the market place, where a quarrel had arisen, and two men were disputing over the poin¯e for a man who had been killed. The one made a claim to pay back in full18 500 declaring publicly to the district, but the other was refusing to accept anything. Both were heading for an arbitrator, to get a limit; and people were speaking up on either side, to help both men. But the heralds kept the people in hand, as meanwhile the elders were in session on benches of polished stone in the sacred circle 505 and held in their hands the staves of the heralds who lift their voices. The two men rushed before these, and took turns speaking their cases, and between them lay on the ground two talents of gold, to be given to that judge who spoke the straightest opinion.
Hephaistos depicts on Achilleus’ shield a city at peace in which two men are striving in the agora over poin∞w éndrÚw épofyim°nou, poin¯e for a dead man (L, E). The location of the incident in an institution for administration of justice, however informal, would incline an audience to conjecture that the death was a homicide and, further, that the plaintiff is a kinsman of the victim, although no kinship terminology appears.19 The point of the dispute has itself become a matter of dispute: is the disagreement over whether or not the defendant had paid the poin¯e in full, or whether the plaintiff would accept the poin¯e ? Put another way, is the question a factual one about resolution or a legal one about path?20 Leonard Muellner makes a persuasive argument, based in part on an analogous use of eukhomai (claim, 18.499) in the Linear B tablets, that the issue is a legal and not merely a factual one.21 Raymond Westbrook concurs basically with Muellner, but marshals legal traditions from the ancient Near East to argue for a more nuanced interpretation: by claiming the right to pay poin¯e in goods (composition), the defendant is making an implicit claim that the case is one of mitigated homicide, in which case the court imposes the appropriate limit (peirar, 18.501) of poin¯e.22 By refusing composition, the plaintiff, according to Westbrook, alleges
Appendix 1
1 61
that the case is aggravated homicide, and that he therefore has the right to take poin¯e either as composition (goods) or by taking the homicide’s life. I purposely avoid the terms ‘ransom’ (for composition) and ‘revenge’ (for exacting life), since they are misleading in relation to the aspect of direction. Composition does not conform to the Homeric typology of apoina; it is, instead, the substitution of one form of poin¯e for another, which allows for preservation of the homicide’s life. In sum, it is tenable that the trial turns on mitigated versus unmitigated homicide, although it is improbable that Archaic audiences would have conceived of the public forum as coercive rather than voluntary.23 The relationship of the trial scene on the shield to historical institutions, Greek and other, is not unambiguous; nevertheless, on the basis of the evidence in the poem, we can say that the defendant offers composition for the dead man and that the path is an exchange of goods for life. The theme achieves no resolution, but the participants are transfixed in the dilemma. Muellner proposes that the syntax of m¯eden (nothing, 18.500) means that the man, thus frozen in his refusal, will never accept any compensation.24 I would add only the clarification that what the man will not accept is composition; he elects instead to exact tisis. If the scene is stop-action, it is not static: the litigants, the people, and the elders, suspended in a perpetual search for a limit (peirar), will be carried into the heat of battle by a hero who recognizes virtually no limits. 19. Iliad 21.26–33
30
30
ÑO dÉ §pe‹ kãme xe›raw §na¤rvn, zvoÁw §k potamo›o du≈deka l°jato koÊrouw, poinØn PatrÒkloio Menoitiãdao yanÒntow. toÁw §j∞ge yÊraze teyhpÒtaw ±@te nebroÊw: d∞se dÉ Ùp¤ssv xe›raw §#tmÆtoisin flmçsi, toÁw aÈto‹ for°eskon §p‹ strepto›si xit«si, d«ke dÉ •ta¤roisin katãgein ko¤law §p‹ n∞aw. aÈtår ı íc §pÒrouse daÛz°menai menea¤nvn.
E-p L, E-d
He [Achilleus], when his hands grew weary with killing, chose out and took twelve young men alive from the river to be poin¯e for Patroklos, the son of Menoitios. These, bewildered with fear like fawns, he led out of the water and bound their hands behind them with thongs well cut out of leather, with the very belts they themselves wore on their ingirt tunics, and gave them to his companions to lead away to the hollow ships, then he himself whirled back, still in a fury to kill men.
1 62
Appendix 1
Achilleus pauses from his slaughter of Trojans in the river long enough to choose twelve young men whom he will burn on Patroklos’ funeral pyre as poin¯e (E) for Patroklos (L). Achilleus, Patroklos’ comrade (hetairos), thus exacts from the killer’s (Hektor’s) comrades an exchange of life, or more precisely twelve lives, for a life. The narrator describes Achilleus’ behavior as meneain¯on (raging, 21.33), which leads the listener to suspect that the narrator is at least ambivalent about Achilleus’ actions. Resolution of this theme is delayed until Hektor’s death and beyond (23.175 –76). Although recurring word groups typical of themes of the poin¯e type appear in line 28 (poin¯en . . . thanontos, ‘poin¯e for the dead’), many of the verbal repetitions and significant details are common to themes of the apoina type (e.g., ex¯ege, ‘took out’; d¯ese, ‘bound’; katagein koilas epi n¯eas, ‘led away to the hollow ships’). The overlap in terminology can be explained by the requirement of the story line that the Trojan youths be removed to the Achaian ships, a detail ordinarily characteristic of apoina themes. The verbal echo sets their unhappy fate in relief against the fate of other Trojan warriors who were in times past bound and taken to the ships to be exchanged for apoina. 20. Iliad 17.198–208 The following scene contains two poin¯e themes, one explicit (Zeus gives Hektor poin¯e for his life) and one implicit (Achilleus will kill Hektor for taking Patroklos’ life). TÚn dÉ …w oÔn épãneuyen ‡den nefelhger°ta ZeÁw teÊxesi Phle˝dao korussÒmenon ye¤oio, 200 kinÆsaw =a kãrh prot‹ ˘n muyÆsato yumÒn: âA de¤lÉ, oÈd° t¤ toi yãnatow katayÊmiÒw §stin, ˘w dÆ toi sxedÚn §sti: sÁ dÉ êmbrota teÊxea dÊneiw éndrÚw érist∞ow, tÒn te trom°ousi ka‹ êlloi. toË dØ •ta›ron ¶pefnew §nh°a te kraterÒn te, 205 teÊxea dÉ oÈ katå kÒsmon épÚ kratÒw te ka‹ mvn e·leu. étãr toi nËn ge m°ga krãtow §ggual¤jv, t«n poinØn, ˜ toi oÎ ti mãxhw §knostÆsanti d°jetai ÉAndromãxh klutå teÊxea Phle˝vnow.
[R] [L]
E-p, R E-d, L
When Zeus who gathers the clouds saw him [Hektor], apart from the others arming himself in the battle gear of godlike Pele¨ıdes, 200 he stirred his head and spoke to his own spirit: ‘Ah, poor wretch! There is no thought of death in your mind now, and yet death stands close beside you as you put on the immortal armour
Appendix 1
1 63
of a surpassing man. There are others who tremble before him. Now you have killed this man’s dear friend, who was strong and gentle, 205 and taken the armour, as you should not have done, from his shoulders and head. Still for the present I will invest you with great strength as poin¯e for these things: you will not come home out of the fighting, nor will Andromach¯e take from your hands the glorious arms of Achilleus.’
Hektor’s impending death (17.201–2) constitutes the resolution to an implicit compensation theme [R] arising from the damage Hektor has inflicted: he killed Achilleus’ comrade and stripped him of Achilleus’ armor [L]. The explicit theme, however, is the kratos, might, (E-p) Zeus promises Hektor as poin¯e (E-d) for t¯on, ‘these things’ (17.207). I take the demonstrative t¯on as anticipatory, referring to Hektor’s death in battle and his resulting failure either to keep the arms he has just donned or to kill Achilleus and strip him of his (new) arms (L). The path is thus kratos for Hektor’s life. That Zeus’ promise is a tacit admission of liability for Hektor’s death is unlikely. Further, it is noteworthy that Zeus does not represent the kratos as poin¯e for the fact that Achilleus will kill Hektor. In supplying the poin¯e, Zeus assumes the role of a friend (philos or hetairos) who procures compensation for a friend’s death, uniquely before the fact. The path of compensation is noteworthy. Zeus promises kratos as poin¯e for Hektor’s death. Kratos is a form of cultural capital that has implicit material results, but it is not ordinarily an object of exchange. If we infer that kratos leads to kudos (glory), which is in turn preserved as kleos, then Zeus promises to compensate Hektor with kleos for heroic death. 21. Iliad 21.396–414 ∑ oÈ m°mn˙ ˜te Tude˝dhn DiomÆdeÉ én∞kaw oÈtãmenai, aÈtØ d¢ panÒcion ¶gxow •loËsa fiyÁw §meË Œsaw, diå d¢ xrÒa kalÚn ¶dacaw; t≈ sÉ aÔ nËn Ù˝v épotis°men ˜ssa mÉ ¶orgaw àVw efip∆n oÎthse katÉ afig¤da yussanÒessan 400 smerdal°hn, ∂n oÈd¢ DiÚw dãmnhsi keraunÒw: tª min ÖArhw oÎthse miaifÒnow ¶gxeÛ makr“. ∂ dÉ énaxassam°nh l¤yon e·leto xeir‹ paxe¤˙ ke¤menon §n ped¤ƒ m°lana, trhxÊn te m°gan te, 405 tÒn =É êndrew prÒteroi y°san ¶mmenai oÔron éroÊrhw: t“ bãle yoËron ÖArha katÉ aÈx°na, lËse d¢ gu›a.
[L, E]
[R] R
1 64
410
Appendix 1 •ptå dÉ §p°sxe p°leyra pes≈n, §kÒnise d¢ xa¤taw, ka¤ ofl §peuxom°nh ¶pea pterÒenta proshÊda: nhpÊtiÉ, oÈd° nÊ p≈ per §pefrãsv ˜sson ére¤vn eÎxomÉ §g∆n ¶menai, ˜ti moi m°now fisofar¤zeiw. oÏtv ken t∞w mhtrÚw §rinÊaw §japot¤noiw, ¥ toi xvom°nh kakå mÆdetai, oÏnekÉ ÉAxaioÁw kãllipew, aÈtår Trvs‹n Íperfiãloisin émÊneiw.
E L
‘Do you not remember how you set on Diomedes, Tydeus’ son, to spear me, and yourself laying hold of the far-seen pike pushed it straight into me and tore my skin in its beauty. So now I am minded that you will pay back for all you have done to me.’ 400 He spoke, and stabbed against the ghastly aegis with fluttering straps, which gives way not even before the bolt of Zeus’ lightning. There blood-dripping Ares made his stab with the long spear, but Athene, giving back caught up in her heavy hand a spear, that lay in the plain, black and rugged and huge, one which men 405 of a former time had set there as boundary mark of the cornfield. With this she hit furious Ares in the neck, and unstrung him. He spread over seven acres in his fall, and his hair dragged in the dust, and his armour clashed. But Pallas Athene laughing stood above him and spoke to him in the winged words of triumph: 410 ‘You child; you did not think even this time how much stronger I can claim I am than you, when you match your fury against me. Therefore you are paying back to your mothers furies since she is angry and wishes you ill, because you abandoned the Achaians and have given your aid to the insolent Trojans.’
Ares tries to take satisfaction for a wound Athene had dealt him but fails. Since the subject of the active forms of (apo)tinein (pay back) elsewhere in the discrete themes is the original perpetrator of harm, I take the term se, referring to Athene, in 21.399, as the subject of the infinitive apotisemen (pay back). Some ambiguity remains, but in light of Athene’s retort in 21.412, exapotinois, ‘you pay back,’ the reading is reasonable. Ares attempts to make Athene pay wound for wound; Athene in fact exacts payment of a physical blow for disloyalty. Using the accusative direct object with tinein to indicate to whom repayment would be made (erinuas, the furies) is somewhat unusual. A similar construction may be found, however, at 3.351 and 366, where a causative middle voice of tinein (cause X to pay) takes the original perpetrator of injury as its object.
1 65
Appendix 1
THEMES OF A MIXED TYPE Each of the themes in this group comprises two compensation themes, an apoina and a poin¯e type, woven together into a unified narrative. The themes are set in opposition to each other: an apoina theme is disrupted by a poin¯e theme, which leads to competition to determine the character of the resolution. The formal elements of the apoina theme are marked with a 2 (e.g., L2) and those of the poin¯e theme with a 1. 22 . Iliad 6.45 –65 45
50
55
60
65 45
50
ÖAdrhstow dÉ êrÉ ¶peita lab∆n §ll¤sseto goÊnvn: Z≈grei, ÉAtr°ow ufl°, sÁ dÉ êjia d°jai êpoina: pollå dÉ §n éfneioË patrÚw keimÆlia ke›tai, xalkÒw te xrusÒw te polÊkmhtÒw te s¤dhrow. t«n k°n toi xar¤saito patØr épere¤siÉ êpoina, e‡ ken §m¢ zvÚn pepÊyoitÉ §p‹ nhus‹n ÉAxai«n. àVw fãto, t“ dÉ êra yumÚn §n‹ stÆyessin ¶peiye: ka‹ dÆ min tãxÉ ¶melle yoåw §p‹ n∞aw ÉAxai«n d≈sein ⁄ yerãponti kataj°men: éllÉ ÉAgam°mnvn ént¤ow ∑lye y°vn, ka‹ ımoklÆsaw ¶pow hÎda: âV p°pon Œ Men°lae, t¤ d¢ sÁ kÆdeai oÏtvw éndr«n; ∑ so‹ êrista pepo¤htai katå o‰kon prÚw Tr≈vn; t«n mÆ tiw ÍpekfÊgoi afipÁn ˆleyron xe›rãw yÉ ≤met°raw: mhdÉ ˜n tina gast°ri mÆthr koËron §Ònta f°roi, mhdÉ ˘w fÊgoi, éllÉ ëma pãntew ÉIl¤ou §japolo¤atÉ ékÆdestoi ka‹ êfantoi. àVw efip∆n ¶trecen édelfeioË fr°naw ¥rvw, a‡sima pareip≈n: ˘ dÉ épÚ ßyen sato xeir‹ ¥rvÉ ÖAdrhston. tÚn d¢ kre¤vn ÉAgam°mnvn oÔta katå lapãrhn: ˘ dÉ énetrãpetÉ, ÉAtre˝dhw d¢ låj §n stÆyesi båw §j°spase me¤linon ¶gxow.
L2, E2
L1 E1
R
But Adrestos, catching him [Menelaos] by the knees, supplicated: ‘Take me alive, son of Atreus, and take appropriate apoina. In my rich father’s house the treasures lie piled in abundance; bronze is there, and gold, and difficultly wrought iron, and my father would graciously give you unlimited apoina were he to hear that I am alive by the ships of the Achaians.’ So he spoke, and moved the spirit inside Menelaos. And now he was on the point of handing him to a henchman to lead back to the fast Achaian ships; but Agamemnon came on the run to join him and spoke his word of argument:
1 66 55
60
65
Appendix 1 ‘Dear brother, o Menelaos, are you concerned so tenderly with these people? Did you in your house get the best of treatment from the Trojans? No, let not one of them go free of sudden death and our hands; not the young man child that the mother carries still in her body, not even he, but let all of Ilion’s people perish, utterly blotted out and unmourned for.’ The hero spoke like this, and bent the heart of his brother since he urged justice. Menelaos shoved with his hand Adrestos the warrior back from him, and powerful Agamemnon stabbed him in the side and, as he writhed over, Atreides, setting his heel upon the midriff, wrenched out the ash spear.
When Adrestos, a Trojan warrior, falls before Menelaos’ spear, he offers apoina (E2) in exchange for his life (L2); the path is thus goods for life. The theme is elaborated with words and gestures of supplication and, further, with a description of apoina as prestige goods, specifically, metals. The listener is set up to expect a resolution, and indeed a successful resolution appears imminent: Menelaos prepares to send Adrestos back to the ships (6.51–53). The progression of the apoina theme is abruptly interrupted, however, by the arrival of Agamemnon. Alluding to Alexandros’ previous ill treatment of Menelaos (L1), Agamemnon identifies Menelaos as the injured party and argues that the unanswered harm demands a different direction and path. Instead of accepting apoina for this one Trojan’s life, they should take his life in return for Alexandros’ misdeed; and not only his life, but the lives of all the Trojans, including their unborn sons; and not only their lives, but their funeral rites, and even their cultural memory; all, presumably, for the loss of Helen and the insult inflicted by Alexandros (E1). The path is ostensibly all of life for a life. Since, however, Helen is eventually recovered, the path devolves into all of life for outrage, that is, loss of tim¯e. Agamemnon’s proposal to reject apoina in favor of poin¯e for prior damage earns the apparent approval of Menelaos, who shoves Adrestos, who had taken hold of his knees in supplication, away, and of the narrator, who declares Agamemnon’s words aisima (see following discussion). The phrase aisima pareip¯on (6.62) has troubled critics and translators, following as it does Agamemnon’s inexorable judgment. The question turns on the meaning of aisima in 6.62 and on whose point of view or focalization it expresses. Aisima pareip¯on is commonly rendered something like ‘encouraging him suitably’ or ‘what he said was fitting’. The scholia regard the phrase as expressing the poet’s approval of Agamemnon;
Appendix 1
1 67
moreover, they sanction the poet’s approval in light of the Trojan violation of the code of hospitality. Modern scholars, however, take a variety of lexical and narratological approaches in order to resolve what they regard as moral incongruity between Agamemnon’s speech and the evaluative comment.25 It is generally agreed that the term aisimos can bear the sense of ‘fated, destined, apportioned’ and the sometimes overlapping sense ‘fitting, proper, in due measure’. Comprehensive surveys of Homeric usage of aisimos have been presented elsewhere, but they are inconclusive as evidence for this phrase, which occurs only one other time in the Iliad (7.120–21).26 When Agamemnon restrains Menelaos from taking up Hektor’s challenge to a duel, the narrator indicates that he persuades his brother, aisima pareip¯on (7.121). The capping formula that closes Agamemnon’s speech to Menelaos concerning the duel (7.120–21) is virtually identical to the capping formula that closes his speech to Menelaos concerning Adrestos (6.61–62). The positive evaluation of Agamemnon’s attempt to dissuade Menelaos from taking up Hektor’s challenge poses little difficulty for the modern reader: Agamemnon advises Menelaos to take a prudent course of action. On the strength of the parallel usage, I infer a similar meaning for aisima in the theme involving Adrestos. Moreover, speech introduction and capping formulas are, as Irene de Jong demonstrates, narrator focalization, that is, they represent the perspective of the narrator or, better, how the narrator wants the addressee to interpret and react to words or events.27 We may, therefore interpret aisima pareip¯on in 6.62 as a narratorial comment meaning roughly “speaking persuasively appropriate, or prudent, things.” In what sense might the Homeric narrator construe Agamemnon’s words as “appropriate” or “prudent”? Surely not, as Naoko Yamagata contends, in the sense that Agamemnon speaks eloquently and with balanced phrases.28 The solution may lie in a distinction between public and private affairs.29 Agamemnon is represented in 6.45 –65 as speaking in his capacity not as avenger of a private loss, but of loss that is now a public matter. The rape of Helen was committed by a member of the Trojan royal household; Alexandros’ action is, moreover, condoned by his father, Priam, and by a number of the leaders of Troy.30 According to the narrator, Agamemnon thus has conventionally justifiable grounds, and especially from the point of view of the fixed system by which he operates, for annihilation of the Trojans.31 In the larger scheme of things, however, as we will see, Homer evinces ambiguity, even anxiety, over conventionally justifiable annihilation and its effects on those who perpetrate it.
1 68
Appendix 1
23. Iliad 11.122–47
125
130
135
140
145
125
130
AÈtår ı Pe¤sandrÒn te ka‹ ÑIppÒloxon menexãrmhn ufl°aw ÉAntimãxoio da˝fronow, ˜w =a mãlista xrusÚn ÉAlejãndroio dedegm°now, églaå d«ra, oÈk e‡asxÉ ÑEl°nhn dÒmenai jany“ Menelãƒ, toË per dØ dÊo pa›de lãbe kre¤vn ÉAgam°mnvn efin •n‹ d¤frƒ §Òntaw. ımoË dÉ ¶xon »k°aw „ppouw: §k gãr sfeaw xeir«n fÊgon ≤n¤a sigalÒenta, t∆ d¢ kukhyÆthn. ˘ dɧnant¤on Œrto l°vn Õw ÉAtre˝dhw: t∆ dÉ aÔtÉ §k d¤frou gounaz°sy hn: Z≈grei, ÉAtr°ow ufl°, sÁ dÉ êjia d°jai êpoina: pollå dÉ §n ÉAntimãxoio dÒmoiw keimÆlia ke›tai, xalkÒw te xrusÒw te polÊkmhtÒw te s¤dhrow: t«n k°n toi xar¤saito patØr épere¤siÉ êpoina, efi n«Û zvoÁw pepÊyoitÉ §p‹ nhus‹n ÉAxai«n. àVw t≈ ge kla¤onte prosaudÆthn basil∞a meilix¤oiw §p°essin: éme¤likton dÉ ˆpÉ êkousan: Efi m¢n dØ ÉAntimãxoio da˝fronow ufl°ew §stÒn, ˜w potÉ §n‹ Tr≈vn égorª Men°laon ênvgen ég gel¤hn §lyÒnta sÁn éntiy°ƒ ÉOdus∞Û aÔyi katakte›nai mhdÉ §j°men íc §w ÉAxaioÊw, nËn m¢n dØ toË patrÚw éeik°a t¤sete l≈bhn. âH, ka‹ Pe¤sandron m¢n éfÉ ·ppvn Œse xamçze, dour‹ bal∆n prÚw st∞yow: ı dÉ Ïptiow oÎdei §re¤syh. ÑIppÒloxow dÉ épÒrouse: tÚn aÔ xama‹ §jenãrije, xe›raw épÚ j¤feÛ tmÆjaw épÒ tÉ aÈx°na kÒcaw: ˜lmon dÉ Õw ¶sseue kul¤ndesyai diÉ ım¤lou.
L2 L1 L2
E2
L1 E1 R
Next he [Agamemnon] caught Peisandros and Hippolochos stubborn in battle, sons of Antimachos the wise, who beyond all others had taken the gold of Alexandros, glorious gifts, so that he had opposed the return of Helen to fair-haired Menelaos. Powerful Agamemnon caught his two sons riding in one chariot, who together guided the running horses. Now the glittering reins escaped from the hands of both of them and they were stunned with fear, for against them rose like a lion Atreus’ son, and they supplicated him out of the chariot: ‘Take us alive, son of Atreus, and take appropriate apoina. In the house of Antimachos the treasures lie piled in abundance, bronze is there, and gold, and difficultly wrought iron, and our father would make you glad with unlimited apoina
Appendix 1
1 69
135
were he to hear we were alive by the ships of the Achaians.’ Thus these two cried out upon the king, lamenting and in pitiful phrase, but they heard the voice that was without pity: ‘If in truth you are the sons of wise Antimachos, that man who once among the Trojans assembled advised them 140 that Menelaos, who came as envoy with godlike Odysseus, should be murdered on the spot nor let go back to the Achaians, so now you will pay for the shameful outrage of your father.’ He spoke, and spurned Peisandros to the ground from the chariot with a spear-stroke in the chest, and he crashed on his back to the ground. 145 Then Hippolochos sprang away, but Atreides killed him dismounted, cutting away his arms with a sword-stroke, free of the shoulder, and sent him spinning like a log down the battle.
When the Trojans Peisandros and Hippolochos are overtaken by Agamemnon on the battlefield, they plead for their lives and offer apoina, which their father, Antimachos, whom they mention by name, will furnish (L2, E2). The path is thus goods for life. Although the description of apoina as khrusos, gold (11.132), is recurrent, the gold Antimachos has in store would recall the gold he had received from Alexandros in return for preventing the return of Helen (11.123–25). It thus comes as no surprise when Agamemnon, without pity, interrupts their pleas. Agamemnon recalls Antimachos’ conspiracy to murder Menelaos while Menelaos was presumably under Priam’s protection (11.139–41). He thus introduces prior damage inflicted against his brother, for which he himself will seek compensation: Peisandros and Hippolochos must pay with their lives (E1) for Antimachos’ actions, which Agamemnon refers to as l¯ob¯e, outrage (toË patrÚw éeik°a t¤sete l≈bhn 11.142; L1).32 The path of this exchange is not immediately apparent; it is, arguably, contested within the theme itself. By Agamemnon’s definition, the path is life for attempted murder, characterized as l¯ob¯e (11.139–41). The narrator, however, also recalls Antimachos’ misdeed, but merely as collusion to obstruct the return of Helen (11.123–25) – an insult, but short of attempted murder. Agamemnon and the narrator are, it appears, in competition to define this exchange.33 The family relations in the theme involving Peisandros and Hippolochos are noteworthy: sons offer apoina on behalf of the father, but the father turns out to be the one for whose damage the sons’ lives are taken in payment.
1 70
Appendix 1
24. Iliad 21.34–135 35
40
35
40
ÖEnyÉ ufle› Priãmoio sunÆnteto Dardan¤dao §k potamoË feÊgonti Lukãoni, tÒn =ã potÉ aÈtÚw ∑ge lab∆n §k patrÚw élv∞w oÈk §y°lonta, §nnÊxiow promol≈n: ı dÉ §rineÚn Ùj°Û xalk“ tãmne n°ouw ˆrphkaw, ·nÉ ërmatow êntugew e‰en: t“ dÉ êrÉ én≈Ûston kakÚn ≥luye d›ow ÉAxilleÊw. ka‹ tÒte m°n min L∞mnon §#ktim°nhn §p°rasse nhus‹n êgvn, étår uflÚw ÉIÆsonow Œnon ¶dvke: ke›yen d¢ je›nÒw min §lÊsato, pollå dÉ ¶dvken, ÖImbriow ÉHet¤vn, p°mcen dÉ §w d›an ÉAr¤sbhn: ¶nyen Ípekprofug∆n patr≈Ûon ·keto d«ma.
L3 34 L1
E1 R1
And there he [Achilleus] came upon a son of Dardanian Priam as he escaped from the river, Lykaon, one whom he himself had taken before and led him unwilling from his father’s gardens on a night foray. He with the sharp bronze was cutting young branches from a fig tree, so that they could make him rails for a chariot, when an unlooked-for evil thing came upon him, the brilliant Achilleus, who that time sold him as slave in strong-founded Lemnos carrying him there by ship, and the son of Jason paid for him; from there a guest and friend who paid a great price gained his release, E¨etion of Imbros, and sent him to shining Arisbe; and from there he fled away and came to the house of his father. (21.34–44)
The story of Achilleus and Lykaon (21.34–135, quoted only in part in the preceding and following passages) is a complex narrative unit comprised of three different compensation themes. The first theme consists of an incident that took place prior to the primary fabula of the Iliad: Achilleus caught Lykaon unawares (L), spared his life, and sold him into slavery (reported by the narrator, Achilleus, and Lykaon, respectively, at 21.35 –41, 55 –59, and 74–80).35 Lykaon was later released from slavery at a great price by a xeinos, E¨etion (E, R). It is reasonable to infer either that E¨etion was acting on behalf of Priam or, more likely, that Priam gave E¨etion a handsome gift in return for the goods he had given to gain Lykaon’s release (see 21.80).36 The encounter at the river constitutes a second theme (which is made up in part of recollections of the first theme). Achilleus again catches Lykaon at a disadvantage (L); Lykaon at once makes a gesture of supplication, which raises expectations for a theme of the apoina type. Lykaon, somewhat surprisingly, however, does not explicitly offer apoina.37 He instead deploys
Appendix 1
1 71
the earlier capture to claim a formalized relationship that should obligate Achilleus to honor his supplication: 75
80
75
80
GounoËmai sÉ, ÉAxileË: sÁ d° mÉ a‡deo ka¤ mÉ §l°hson: ént¤ to¤ efimÉ flk°tao, diotref°w, afido¤oio: pår går so‹ pr≈tƒ pasãmhn DhmÆterow éktØn ≥mati t“ ˜te mÉ eÂlew §#ktim°n˙ §n élvª. ka¤ mÉ §p°rassaw êneuyen êgvn patrÒw te f¤lvn te L∞mnon §w ±gay°hn, •katÒmboion d° toi ∑lfon. NËn d¢ lÊmhn tr‹w tÒssa por≈n,38
‘Achilleus, I am at your knees. Respect my position, have mercy upon me. I am in the place, illustrious, of a suppliant who must be honoured, for you were the first beside whom I tasted the yield of Demeter on that day you captured me in the strong-laid garden and took me away from my father and those near me, and sold me away into sacred Lemnos, and a hundred oxen I fetched you. Now I have been released, bringing three times as much.’ (21.74–80)
Further, Lykaon, as if anticipating a forthcoming counterclaim by Achilleus, himself introduces the matter of poin¯e for Patroklos. He declares, however, that he is not liable for the poin¯e, because he is not from the same womb as Hektor: 95
95
ÖAllo d° toi §r°v, sÁ dÉ §n‹ fres‹ bãlleo sªsi: mÆ me kte›nÉ, §pe‹ oÈx ımogãstriow ÜEktorÒw efimi,39 ˜w toi •ta›ron ¶pefnen §nh°a te kraterÒn te.
‘Still, put away in your heart this other thing I say to you. Do not kill me. I am not from the same womb as Hektor, he who killed your powerful and kindly companion.’ (21.94–96)
Lykaon’s appeal to a matrilineally circumscribed limit on liability for poin¯e is unparalleled, as far as I can determine. The distinction he claims makes little difference in the larger scheme of things in the Iliad, since on the battlefield poin¯e is exacted from philoi by either definition – friend or family. If, as it appears, Lykaon’s frantic bid has no basis in Homeric or Greek convention, it only underscores his desperate rhetorical strategy to distance himself from his brother. A third compensation theme in this narrative unit is the poin¯e that arises from the loss Hektor inflicted by killing Patroklos (L). Whereas Lykaon introduces the damage in the hope of disarming it, Achilleus
1 72
Appendix 1
recalls Patroklos’ death as grounds for unqualified rejection of Lykaon’s appeal, which he construes as an offer of apoina: NÆpie mÆ moi êpoina pifaÊskeo mhdÉ égÒreue
‘Poor fool, no longer point out to me apoina, nor argue it. (21.99)
Moreover, although it had been Achilleus’ practice, as he claims, to spare life in exchange for goods, it is no longer (pr‹n m¢n . . . . nËn dÉ, ‘before . . . but now’, 21.100, 103). He therefore brings the theme to a grisly resolution when he kills Lykaon and then, taking him by the foot, flings him into the river (21.119–20; R). Achilleus repudiates Lykaon’s disavowal of liability for poin¯e and announces his own demands: all Trojans, especially the sons of Priam, are liable for the deaths of Patroklos and the other Achaians who died while Achilleus sat out the battle:
105
105
135
135
nËn dÉ oÈk ¶syÉ ˜w tiw yãnaton fÊgoi, ˜n ke yeÒw ge ÉIl¤ou propãroiyen §mªw §n xers‹ bãl˙si, ka‹ pãntvn Tr≈vn, per‹ dÉ aÔ PriãmoiÒ ge pa¤dvn.
‘Now there is not one who can escape death, if the gods send him against my hands in front of Ilion, no one of all the Trojans and beyond others the children of Priam.’ (21.103–5) éllå ka‹ œw Ùl°esye kakÚn mÒron, efiw ˜ ke pãntew t¤sete PatrÒkloio fÒnon ka‹ loigÚn ÉAxai«n, oÓw §p‹ nhus‹ yoªsin §p°fnete nÒsfin §me›o.
‘[E]ven so, die all an evil death, till all of you pay for the death of Patroklos and the slaughter of the Achaians whom you killed beside the running ships, when I was not with them.’ (21.133–35)
The complex of themes interwoven in the preceding narrative unit almost resists schematization. A pattern does emerge, however, in which each report of the scene at the river intercalates a scene from the past – Lykaon’s capture and ransom or Patroklos’ death – as an interpretive device. Lykaon invokes the past, first, as grounds for putting Achilleus under obligation (21.74–76) and, second, with a view to excluding himself from an obligation to pay poin¯e (21.95 –96). Achilleus invokes the past, first as a pretext for killing Lykaon (21.60–64), and then as justification for taking not only Lykaon’s life, but the lives of all the Trojans (21.99–107, 128–35).
Appendix 1
1 73
25. Iliad 24.200–16 After Priam has begun preparations for his mission to gain the release of Hektor’s corpse in exchange for apoina (24.116–19, 134–35, 139–40, 145 –46, 175 –76, 195 –96), he summons Hekab¯e to the storeroom and tells her of the divine command. When he asks how the plan seems to her, she responds with a muthos, an authoritative speech act: 200 àVw fãto: k≈kusen d¢ gunØ ka‹ éme¤beto mÊyƒ:
205
210
215
ÖV moi, pª dÆ toi fr°new o‡xonyÉ, √w tÚ pãrow per ¶kleÉ §pÉ ényr≈pouw je¤nouw ±dÉ oÂsin énãsseiw; p«w §y°leiw §p‹ n∞aw ÉAxai«n §ly°men o‰ow, éndrÚw §w ÙfyalmoÊw, ˜w toi pol°aw te ka‹ §syloÁw ufl°aw §jenãrije: sidÆreiÒn nÊ toi ∑tor. efi gãr sÉ aflrÆsei ka‹ §sÒcetai Ùfyalmo›sin »mhstØw ka‹ êpistow énØr ˜ ge, oÎ sÉ §leÆsei oÈd° t¤ sÉ afid°setai. nËn d¢ kla¤vmen êneuyen ¥menoi §n megãrƒ: t“ dÉ Àw poyi Mo›ra krataiØ geinom°nƒ §p°nhse l¤nƒ, ˜te min t°kon aÈtÆ, érg¤podaw kÊnaw îsai •«n épãneuye tokÆvn éndr‹ pãra krater“, toË §g∆ m°son ∏par ¶xoimi §sy°menai prosfËsa: tÒtÉ êntita ¶rga g°noito 40 paidÚw §moË, §pe‹ oÎ • kakizÒmenÒn ge kat°kta, éllå prÚ Tr≈vn ka‹ TrvÛãdvn bayukÒlpvn •staÒtÉ, oÎte fÒbou memnhm°non oÎtÉ élevr∞w.
L E L
200 So he [Priam] spoke, and his wife cried out aloud, and answered him: ‘Ah me, where has that wisdom gone for which you were famous in time before, among outlanders and those you rule over? 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 205 such brave sons of yours? The heart in you is iron. For if he has you within his grasp and lays eyes upon you, that man who is savage and not to be trusted will not take pity upon you nor have respect for your rights. Let us sit apart in our palace now, and weep for Hektor, and the way at the first strong Destiny 210 spun with his life line when he was born, when I gave birth to him, that the dogs with their shifting feet should feed on him, far from his parents, gone down before a stronger man; I wish I could set teeth in the middle of his liver and eat it. That would be payment for what he did to my son; for he slew him when he was no coward 215 but standing before the men of Troy and the deep-girdled women of Troy, with no thought in his mind of flight or withdrawal.’ (24.200–16)
1 74
Appendix 1
Hekab¯e’s speech comprises a mixed-type theme inasmuch as it contains an allusion to the framing apoina scene in which it is located. She angrily denounces the proposed exchange and introduces prior damage: Hektor met his death at Achilleus’ hands and now lies away from his parents (24.211, 215; L). Hekab¯e counters Priam’s proposal with a competing direction and path: instead of taking apoina to Achilleus, she wants to exact poin¯e from him (E-d). Whereas an exchange of apoina would effect the return of Hektor’s corpse, Hekab¯e is willing to suffer his body to be eaten by dogs in the Achaian camp, apaneuthe tok¯e¯on, far from his parents. She therefore consigns her son to the same mutilated and bier-less end as Achilleus intended (22.345 –54) and was even then carrying out (24.14–18). Hekab¯e’s wish thus not only contravenes her own role of leading the public lament, which she would fulfill if Hektor’s body were returned, but it also threatens to rob Hektor of the kleos she is thereby empowered to bestow.41 The path Hekab¯e proposes is life for life, but it is more than that. The only payment (antita erga) for her son would consist of going beyond life for life, sinking her teeth into Achilleus’ liver and eating it raw (E-p). Hekab¯e thereby discloses in her own nature the very savagery that she denounces in Achilleus’.
EXCURSUS The scenes that follow participate broadly in the compensation theme, though the first does not manifest all of the formal conventions and recurring word groups and the second belongs technically to the monumental theme. Iliad 4.25 –56 As deftly as Aphrodite had swept Paris out of Menelaos’ grasp and into Troy, the narrator sweeps the listener from the scene of the foiled duel between Menelaos and Alexandros to Olympos. There we hear Zeus, with the intent to provoke Hera, musing aloud about whether the gods should allow the settlement negotiated between the Achaians and Trojans to prevail. Hera, motivated purportedly by the effort she had expended in gathering a force against Priam, swiftly moves to obstruct the impending exchange:
Appendix 1
1 75
25
AfinÒtate Kron¤dh, po›on tÚn mËyon ¶eipew: p«w §y°leiw ëlion ye›nai pÒnon ±dÉ ét°leston fldr« yÉ ˘n ·drvsa mÒgƒ, kam°thn d° moi ·ppoi laÚn égeiroÊs˙, Priãmƒ kakå to›Ò te pais¤n; ÖErdÉ: étår oÎ toi pãntew §pain°omen yeo‹ êlloi.
25
‘Majesty, son of Kronos, what sort of thing have you spoken? How can you wish to make wasted and fruitless all this endeavour, the sweat that I have sweated in toil, and my horses worn out gathering my people, and bringing evil to Priam and his children. Do it then; but not all the rest of us gods will approve you.’ (4.25 –29)
Zeus rebuts her objection with a question followed by an accusation:
35
35
Daimon¤h, t¤ nÊ se Pr¤amow PriãmoiÒ te pa›dew tÒssa kakå =°zousin, ˜ tÉ ésperx¢w menea¤neiw ÉIl¤ou §jalapãjai §#kt¤menon ptol¤eyron; efi d¢ sÊ gÉ efiselyoËsa pÊlaw ka‹ te¤xea makrå »mÚn bebr≈yoiw Pr¤amon PriãmoiÒ te pa›daw êllouw te Tr«aw, tÒte ken xÒlon §jak°saio.
‘Dear lady, what can be all the great evils done to you by Priam and the sons of Priam, that you are thus furious forever to bring down the strong-founded city of Ilion? If you could walk through the gates and through the towering ramparts and eat Priam and the children of Priam raw, and the other Trojans, then, then only might you heal at last your anger.’ (4.31–36)
Zeus’ question about Hera’s incessant raging (asperkhes meneaineis, 4.32) to destroy the house of Priam contains an implicit allusion to the judgment of Paris (L) and Hera’s desire for revenge (E-d).42 The path Hera pursues, by Zeus’ reckoning, is life for loss of tim¯e (E-p). His subsequent accusation is that Hera’s anger would be appeased only if she could eat raw (¯omon bebr¯othois, 4.35) not only Priam and his sons, but all the Trojans – an extraordinary extension of tisis as life for life. As Erwin Cook demonstrates, the wish to eat raw attests that one has already descended below the boundaries of the human to a state of bestiality.43 Zeus’ scarcely veiled accusation is therefore nothing less than that Hera is, in this circumstance, an uncivilized savage on the level of an animal.
1 76
Appendix 1
In what may appear to be an abrupt concession, Zeus offers Hera an exchange: the destruction of Troy, which used to be held in honor (tiesketo, 4. 46) in his heart, for the future destruction of one of Hera’s cities of her own choosing (4.39–44).44 Hera offers him not one but three of the cities dearest ( philtatai, 4.51) to her – Argos, Sparta, and Mykenai (4.51–56). Hera’s unstinting sacrifice of cities where she was honored as patron goddess surely would have recalled for a Homeric audience the disappearance of the Mycenean palace culture.45 Moreover, by giving her own cities over to destruction, Hera demonstrates the verity of Zeus’ accusation: she is a political liability and the embodiment of uncivilized (and, consequently, un-Greek) conduct. Iliad 3.276–91 and 455 –61 The speeches of Agamemnon contained in these lines are only a small part of a compensation theme that spans the length of the Iliad and beyond.46 The damages involve the loss of Helen and possessions (kt¯emata [D]). The context for Agamemnon’s speeches is that the war, waged in response to the loss of Helen, has come to an impasse. The Achaians have not been able to secure the return of Menelaos’ wife (alokhos) and goods; but the Trojans have been successful only at fending the Achaians off, not at sending them back home. Alexandros and Hektor propose to resolve the situation with a duel between Menelaos and Alexandros.47 Menelaos accepts the proposal and sends for Priam to ratify the agreement (3.97–110). Priam, however, had not heard the initial agreement except as it was reported to him by the herald Idaios (3.250–58). When Priam arrives, Agamemnon, perhaps exploiting Priam’s ignorance of the initial agreement, adds a demand for additional tim¯e to his oath: ZeË pãter, ÖIdhyen med°vn kÊdiste m°giste, ÉH°liÒw yÉ, ˘w pãntÉ §forçw ka‹ pãntÉ §pakoÊeiw, ka‹ potamo‹ ka‹ ga›a, ka‹ o„ Íp°nerye kamÒntaw ényr≈pouw t¤nusyon, ˜tiw kÉ §p¤orkon ÙmÒss˙, 280 Íme›w mãrturoi ¶ste, fulãssete dÉ ˜rkia pistã: efi m°n ken Men°laon ÉAl°jandrow katap°fn˙, aÈtÚw ¶peiyÉ ÑEl°nhn §x°tv ka‹ ktÆmata pãnta, ≤me›w dÉ §n nÆessi ne≈meya pontopÒroisin: efi d° kÉ ÉAl°jandron kte¤n˙ janyÚw Men°laow, 285 Tr«aw ¶peiyÉ ÑEl°nhn ka‹ ktÆmata pãntÉ épodoËnai, timØn dÉ ÉArge¤oiw épotin°men ¥n tinÉ ¶oiken, ¥ te ka‹ §ssom°noisi metÉ ényr≈poisi p°lhtai:
L, E E
1 77
Appendix 1 efi dÉ ín §mo‹ timØn Pr¤amow PriãmoiÒ te pa›dew t¤nein oÈk §y°lvsin ÉAlejãndroio pesÒntow, 290 aÈtår §g∆ ka‹ ¶peita maxÆsomai e·neka poin∞w aÔyi m°nvn, e·vw ke t°low pol°moio kixe¤v.
E
‘Father Zeus, watching over us from Ida, most high, most honoured, And Helios, you who see all things, who listen to all things, earth, and rivers, and you who under the earth take vengeance on dead men, whoever among them has sworn to falsehood, 280 you shall be witnesses, to guard the oaths of fidelity. If it should be that Alexandros slays Menelaos, let him keep Helen for himself, and all her possessions, and we in our seafaring ships shall take our way homeward. But if the fair-haired Menelaos kills Alexandros, 285 then let the Trojans give back Helen and all her possessions, and pay back tim¯e to the Argives which will be fitting, which among people yet to come shall be as a standard. Then if Priam and the sons of Priam are yet unwilling after Alexandros has fallen to pay me tim¯e, 290 I myself shall fight hereafter for the sake of poin¯e, here remaining, until I have won to the end of my quarrel.’
Lines 455–61 : Following the foiled duel, Agamemnon demands that the Trojans fulfill their oaths: 455 to›si d¢ ka‹ met°eipen ênaj éndr«n ÉAgam°mnvn: K°klut° meu, Tr«ew ka‹ Dãrdanoi ±dÉ §p¤kouroi: n¤kh m¢n dØ fa¤netÉ érhÛf¤lou Menelãou: Íme›w dÉ ÉArge¤hn ÑEl°nhn ka‹ ktÆmayÉ ëmÉ aÈtª ¶kdote, ka‹ timØn épotin°men ¥n tinÉ ¶oiken, 460 ¥ te ka‹ §ssom°noisi metÉ ényr≈poisi p°lhtai. àVw ¶fatÉ ÉAtre˝dhw, §p‹ dÉ æneon êlloi ÉAxaio¤.
455 Now among them spoke forth the lord of men Agamemnon: ‘Listen to me, o Trojans, Dardanians and companions: clearly the victory is with warlike Menelaos. Do you therefore give back, with all her possessions, Helen of Argos, and pay back tim¯e that shall be befitting, 460 which among people yet to come shall be as a standard.’ So spoke Atreus’ son, and the other Achaians applauded him.
The compact that Alexandros, Hektor, and Menelaos initially agreed to adopt under oath would have awarded Helen and the kt¯emata (as prizes, as it
1 78
Appendix 1
were) to the victor in the duel. If Menelaos prevailed, he would recover his losses and correct the negative balance created by Alexandros’ damage. Agamemnon, however appends a provision compelling the Trojans to make an additional payment of goods (tim¯e) should Alexandros lose. Agamemnon calculates that he is in a position to achieve more than just a balance for Menelaos; he elects to seek a favorable disequilibrium. Thus the additional payment of tim¯e is intended to compensate the Achaians for the prestige goods they would have plundered from Troy when and if they took the city.48 That the tim¯e is part of a compensatory stratagem is confirmed by Agamemnon’s vow to fight on account of poin¯e (heineka poin¯es) if the Trojans fail to pay it (3.290).49 Although the duel is foiled, Agamemnon declares Menelaos the winner by default and demands that the terms of the agreement be honored. Resolution of the overarching compensation theme and of the war driven by it – and, as a result, the end of the poem! – seems imminent.
appendix 2
Arrangement of Compensation Themes
COMPENSATION THEMES IN THE ORDER IN WHICH THEY APPEAR IN THE ILIAD Apoina Themes Path Resolution goods for life succeeds goods for life goods for person goods for life goods for person goods for life
fails succeeds fails accepted fails
corpse for goods
incomplete
goods for person
succeeds
Path
Poin¯e Themes Resolution
goods for a person life for life/tim¯e
succeeds succeeds
life for insult goods for goods life for life life for life life for life? life for life life for life life for life life for life life for life
succeeds succeeds succeeds succeeds fails succeeds succeeds incomplete succeeds fails
might (kratos) for life goods for life life for life
succeeds ? succeeds
2.229–31 [1 ] 5.265 –67 [8] 6.45 –65 [22] 6.425 –28 [2] 10.374–457 [6] 11.101–12 [5 ] 11.122–47 [23 ] 11.696–705 [9] 13.410–16 [10] 13.445 –47 [11 ] 13.656–59 [12] 14.469–74 [13 ] 14.478–85 [14] 15.113–18 [15 ] 16.394–98 [16] 17.34–50 [17] 17.160–64 [7] 17.198–208 [20] 18.497–508 [18] 21.26–33 [19] 21.34–135 [24]
179
1 80
Appendix 2
Apoina Themes Path Resolution goods for life fails
goods for life goods for person
Poin¯e Themes Path Resolution life for life succeeds wound for fails wound wound for succeeds insult
21.34–135 [24] 21.396–414 [21 ]
life for life
22.46–54 [3 ] 24.200–16 [25 ] 24.683–88 [4]
fails fails
succeeds (potentially)
21.396–414 [21 ]
COMPENSATION THEMES ARRANGED BY NARRATIVE SITUATION Path
Apoina Themes Resolution Path
Poin¯e Themes Resolution
external analepses goods for life
succeeds goods for a person succeeds
goods for person succeeds goods for person succeeds goods for goods
succeeds
goods for person succeeds
2.229–31 [1 ] 5.265 –67 [8] 6.425 –28 [2] 11.101–12 [5 ] 11.696–705 [9] 21.34–135 [24]
primary fabula goods for life goods for life goods for life
fails fails fails
corpse for goods
incomplete
life for life/tim¯e
succeeds
life for insult life for life life for life life for life? life for life life for life life for life life for life life for life
succeeds succeeds succeeds fails succeeds succeeds incomplete succeeds fails
might (kratos) for life goods for life life for life
succeeds
6.45 –65 [22] 10.374–457 [6] 11.122–47 [23 ] 13.410–16 [10] 13.445 –47 [11 ] 13.656–59 [12] 14.469–74 [13 ] 14.478–85 [14] 15.113–18 [15 ] 16.394–98 [16] 17.34–50 [17] 17.160–64 [7] 17.198–208 [20]
? succeeds
18.497–508[18] 21.26–33 [19]
1 81
Appendix 2
Path
Apoina Themes Resolution Path
goods for life
goods for life goods for person
fails
Poin¯e Themes Resolution
life for life wound for wound wound for insult
succeeds fails
21.34–135 [24] 21.396–414 [21 ]
succeeds
21.396–414 [21 ]
life for life
fails
22.46–54 [3 ] 24.200–16 [25 ] 24.685 –88
fails potentially successful
Notes
Introduction: Compensation and Heroic Identity 1. See, for example, recent commentaries by Griffin (1995) on Book 9 only and by C. Wilson (1996) on Books 8 and 9. Influential works include Heubeck (1943), Kakridis (1949), A. Parry (1956), Whitman (1958), Sale (1963), Schadewaldt (1966), Adkins (1971), Reeve (1972, 1973), Thornton (1984), Martin (1989), Taplin (1992), Donlan (1993), Redfield (1994), and Seaford (1994). 2. For a different perspective, see Bowra (1930) 16 –19 and Lloyd-Jones (1983) 18. 3. Recently, Hainsworth (1993) 56 and Griffin (1995) 19 and passim. 4. Scholarship on the so-called Homeric question is vast. For bibliographic essays, see Dodds (1954), Davison (1963), Lesky (1967), Heubeck (1974), and recently Turner (1996). 5. For convenience, I adopt the convention of referring to the written text that has come down to us as the Iliad and to the poet, as exponent of the Panhellenic tradition of oral poetry, as Homer or “the poet.” 6. Leaf (1900) 370 and Murray (1907) 213. 7. Jebb (1887), Wilamowitz-M¨ollendorff (1920), Mazon (1959) 176 –82; cf. Page (1963) 305. The contradiction is only the most egregious of Book 9’s failings, according to Analytic criticism. The legend of Achilleus’ two destinies has been thought to be inconsistent with Book 1; the language, geography, and religion have been judged as showing signs of lateness; moreover, the contents are bound up with Book 8, which they consider to be one of the latest expansions of the poem. 8. Scott (1921) 81. 9. Hainsworth (1993) 57; cf. Reinhardt (1961) 212–13. 10. Oralists assert that the Homeric poems are traditional texts (‘text’ meaning standardized performance); they rely on traditional diction to account for Homeric poetry. Many oralists further explain composition as oral
183
1 84
11.
12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28.
29. 30.
Notes to pages 2–5 composition (= recomposition) in performance; the artistic unity of the poems thus derives not from a single poet, but from evolutionary streamlining of form and content or a unified tradition (Nagy [1979] 4–5). For orality as a source of narrative contradiction, see, for example, Janko (1998) 7–13 and Fenik (1986) 26 –27. Neoanalysts, like Unitarians, accept the Homeric epics as unified conceptions. They regard the poetic composition as original, but containing many motifs and plot elements that derive from several epic contexts that can still be identified, e.g., that the plot of the Iliad was created in imitation of the Aethiopis, a preHomeric narrative (not a written text) known to us from one of the Cyclic epics (Kullmann [1984] 309–10). See Kullmann (1984) and Willcock (1996). Schadewaldt (1966) 128–34. Janko (1992) 325, Griffin (1995) 26, and Redfield (1994) 250 n 16. Griffin (1995) 25. Whitman (1958). For subsequent analyses of design and the relationship between design and meaning in Homeric epic, see Taplin (1992), Stanley (1993), and E. Cook (1995); cf. Schadewaldt (1966). Whitman (1958) 278. Whitman (1958), especially 10, 155, 190, 279. Arietti (1986) 15. Among others, Eicholz (1953) 44, Whitman (1958) 190, and Schadewaldt (1966) 129 n 4. Mackenzie (1978) 10, for example, describes a perplexing exchange in which Achilleus must pay for his recompense by acknowledging Agamemnon’s status (aret¯e). See especially Lloyd-Jones (1983) 17. For an alternative view, that a “culture of autonomy” is already built into heroic society, see Hammer (1997). Allen (1924) 199 and Bowra (1930) 16 –19. Whitman (1958); cf. Hainsworth (1993) 57. Sale (1963) 86 in reference to Book 9; also Hainsworth (1993) 56 and Griffin (1995) 8–9. Griffin (1995) 26. Beye (1993) 116 and Redfield (1994) xi–xvi and 3–29 already caution against this trend. For example, Iliad 2.484–93; for discussion, see Nagy (1979) 3, 271–72 and Detienne (1973). There is now a vast body of oralist scholarship. Some of the more influential are A. Parry (1971), A. Lord (1960), Hoekstra (1965), Nagler (1967, 1974), Fenik (1968), Russo (1963, 1966, 1976), Nagy (1979, 1990a, 1996a, 1996b), Edwards (1975, 1980, 1986, 1988, 1992, 1996), Foley (1988 and 1996), Bakker (1988), Bannert (1988), Kahane (1994), and Janko (1992, 1998). For a brief historical summary, see Edwards (1996). For the theoretical discussion, see A. Lord (1960) Part I and Nagy (1990a) Part I. Nagy (1996a) 25; see also Bakker (1997).
Notes to pages 5 –11
1 85
31. Martin (1993) 227. 32. By “Homeric society” I mean the social institutions, relations, and conventions depicted in the Iliad, and not Greek society of any particular time or locale. See the following discussion and chapter 1, The Politics of Compensation in Homeric Society. 33. Adkins (1960a, 1971, 1982). 34. Beidelman (1989), Donlan (1982a, 1982b, 1989, 1993); see also van Wees (1992) and Seaford (1994). 35. Donlan (1993) 164; for discussion, see chapter 4, Agamemnon’s Unlimited Apoina. 36. See especially Nagy (1979), Cook (1995), Muellner (1996), and Haubold (2000). 37. The approach taken in this book is thus indebted, among others, to Nagy (especially 1979), Dougherty and Kurke (1993), Redfield (1994), Seaford (1994), and E. Cook (1995). 38. Lesky (1961) 207, Janko (1992) 134, and Seaford (1994) 27–28. 39. The exceptions are the trial scene on the shield (18.497–508), a simile at Iliad 24.480–82, and implicitly Aias’ speech at Iliad 9.633–36; on this, see Schlunk (1976). 40. I take as models for semantic analysis based on composition by theme Nagy (1979), Martin (1989), Lowenstam (1993), and Muellner (1996). Albert Lord’s (1960) 158–59 and (1991) 26 n 18 definition of a theme forms the basis of the modern discussion. Following Nagy (1996a) 22–23 and 137 n 115, ‘theme’ here denotes “a basic unit in the traditional subject patterns of myth.” Although a measure of circularity is endemic to formal analysis, scholars generally agree that if a series of consistently repeated patterns can be shown to exist in the poem, it presents a legitimate corpus for type comparison. 41. Martin (1993) 227. 42. Sihler (1995) 161; see chapter 1, Verbal Repetitions. 43. I note here Cunliffe’s (1963) conflation of apoina and poin¯e in his entry for apoina: “é2 (not appreciably affecting the sense) + poinÆ.” 44. Muellner (1996) demonstrates that Achilleus’ wrath, m¯enis, should be understood not as an emotion, but as a cosmic sanction, a social force. On his view, m¯enis is incurred by the breaking of basic religious and social tabus (9). Although Muellner views the social rules of Homeric society as less in conflict than I do, his work clearly complements my own and anticipates some of my conclusions. 45. For this theoretical model, see E. Cook (1995 and 1999). 46. Including Finley (1979), the earliest champion of this view, and Donlan (1981, 1982a, 1993, 1998), who place Homeric society in the Greek world of the tenth and ninth centuries b.c.e., and Raaflaub (1996, 1997, 1998a), who places it in the eighth century b.c.e. See also Adkins (1971), Carlier (1984) 211, I. Morris (1986b) and (1996, where he proposes a more nuanced political relation between Homeric society and Iron Age Greece), Herman (1987) xi, Ulf (1990) 213–68, van Wees (1992) 53–58, 153–65, 249–65 and (1994),
1 86
47. 48. 49.
50. 51.
52. 53.
54.
Notes to pages 11–13 Crielaard (1995), and Raaflaub (1996, 1997, and 1998a). For the view that Homeric society is not coherent, see among others Long (1970), Snodgrass (1974), Coldstream (1977) 18, Sherratt (1990), Whitley (1991) 344, and Osborne (1996) 147–60. For the view that the Odyssey presents coherent but historically and politically differentiated societies, including Bronze Age palace culture and the Archaic polis, see Cook and Palaima (2001 and forthcoming). Haubold (2000) 3–13 argues that the social world of heroes qua heroes is not conflated with epic’s (coherent) synchronic social world comprising groups and leaders. Cf. Giddens (1979) 131–64. See note 46. Sealey (1957), Nagy (1980) and (1996a) 65 –112, Jensen (1980) 157, Burkert (1985) 121, Gentili (1988) 15 –23, S. West (1988) 33–35, Ballabriga (1990), Taplin (1992) 33–35, van Wees (1992) 54–58 and (1996) 689–93, Stanley (1993) 279–96, Seaford (1994) 144–54, E. Cook (1995) 3–4, 168–70 and (forthcoming), Crielaard (1995), M. West (1995), Osborne (1996) 244; Raaflaub (1998b) 188 also agrees that arguments for a seventh century b.c.e. Homer are increasingly compelling. Nagy (1996a) 65 –112 places the definitive stage in the sixth century in the specific historical context of the Panathenaia at Athens. Panhellenic refers to a synthesis of the diverse local traditions of each polis (city) into a unified Panhellenic model that suits most of them but corresponds exactly to none (Nagy [1996a] 39–42); see, among others, Morris (1986b) 123, Snodgrass (1987) 160, Patzek (1992) 98–101, and Raaflaub (1996) 627 and (1998b) 177. Raaflaub (1998b) 177. Cf. Althusser (1971) 162–70. I find Althusser’s model a useful heuristic device for exploring the politics of poetic competition in ancient Greece, despite certain anachronisms and his rather monolithic view of ‘ruling ideology’. On ideological distortion in Homer see, among others, van Wees (1992) 82–83, 88–89, 152–53, 156–57, Seaford (1994) 5 –6, Raaflaub (1991) 251 and (1998b) 182, and Donlan (1998). For a reading of the Odyssey as ideological discourse actively asserting elite interests in a situation of conflict, see Thalmann (1998). For further discussion, see chapter 6. For my purposes here, I accept Althusser’s (1971) 162–77 definition of ideology as discourse that actively constructs individuals as social subjects. See also I. Morris (1996) 539 and Thalmann (1998) 1–10.
Chapter 1. Ransom and Revenge: Poetics and Politics of Compensation 1. Liverani (1990) 23 rightly points out that reciprocity is not a description of a real exchange but of the ideology of the actors. 2. Van Wees (1998) 20. 3. Gouldner (1960) 172. I am not using negative reciprocity in Sahlins’ (1972) 195 sense as the “attempt to get something for nothing with impunity.”
Notes to pages 13–21
1 87
4. Laws of talio (e.g., Exodus 21.23–25) were intended not to encourage revenge but to limit the amount of compensation that could be exacted for harm to the amount of damage actually incurred. 5. Cf. the meaning of vindicare, from which revenge derives, as ‘asserting a claim to’. 6. See chapter 4, Agamemnon’s Unlimited Apoina. 7. A. Parry (1971) and Lord (1960); see Introduction note 27. 8. Nagy (1996a) 137. 9. See Nagy (1990a) 18–35 for the theoretical argument that themes generate formulas diachronically; theme is, therefore, the key to other levels of fixity in the poem. 10. On path, see Bohannan (1955), Appadurai (1986), and Ferguson (1992). On sphere, see Bohannan (1955 and 1959), Appadurai (1986), I. Morris (1986a), and Ferguson (1988 and 1992). 11. Donlan (1982a) 147 observes a similar pattern in the negotiations by which two families determine which way the goods flow in a marriage arrangement ( gamos). For common sense as a term for cultural orthodoxy, see the following discussion and Bourdieu (1977) 164–71, (1990) 66 –77, (1991) 129–31. 12. Athanassakis (1992) 175. 13. Cf. Seaford (1994) 24 and Hubbard (1992). 14. 6.45 –65 [22]; 11.122–47 [23 ]; 21.34–135 [24]; and 24.200–16 [25 ]. 15. See also I. Morris (1986a) 8–9, who refers to the categories as “exchange orders.” I do not mean to say that possessions located in the same sphere are all regarded as of equal value; clearly they are not (see for example the exchange of gold and bronze armor between Glaukos and Diomedes in 6.230–37). 16. Bohannan (1959) 496 and Ferguson (1992). 17. Ferguson (1992). 18. Cattle are ambiguous: as animals used for food, they belong in the sphere of subsistence goods; as a standard of measurement (Il. 2.449; 6.234; 21.79; 23.702), they are better included in the sphere of prestige goods (Donlan [1981 ] especially 104). 19. But see 17.198–208 [20]. 20. Bourdieu (1986) 245 and passim. 21. Immortal fame conferred by traditional poetry (kleos aphthiton) belongs to a different system but, like tim¯e, is comprised of concrete and abstract elements and essential to the compensation theme in the Iliad. 22. Beidelman (1989) 238. 23. Donlan (1993) 160. 24. Bourdieu (1977) 171–97; see also (1986) passim. 25. Bourdieu (1977) 164–71, (1990) 66 –77, (1991) 129–36. 26. Bourdieu (1990) 113. 27. Sihler (1995) 161, 164A. 28. The term apoina is most commonly regarded as haplology of ∗ apopoina, but for a different explanation of the form, see Robbins (1990) 12 n 33. 29. Killen (1992) in support of an earlier proposal by M¨uhlestein. 30. Ep704 shows the variant o-pe-to-re-u.
1 88
Notes to pages 21–22
31. Killen 1992; cf. Duhoux (1976) 60–65. Hutton’s (1990–91) investigation into the use of qe-te-o in Linear B may further support Killen’s attempt to connect qe-ja-me-no with payment of poin¯e. Hutton compares the use of qe-te-o in the tablets to the parallel terms o-pe-ro (deficit) and o-no (ration, payment, benefit; > Ùn¤nhmi). He concludes that, although the contextual and linguistic evidence is ambiguous, qe-te-o (like qe-ja-me-no) may derive from ∗ kwei, and may refer to payment of some sort of fine or restitution. 32. Benveniste (1973) 340. 33. Benveniste (1973) 343 cites the appearance of apoteinuto on a fifth-century Cretan inscription in support of his claim that teinu- (from ∗ kw¯ei) is the root of tinusthai. Sihler (1995) 161 argues that the words are related etymologically. But even if Benveniste is right about etymology, the secondary semantic joining of the word families, which he allows, warrants an approach to compensation as a conceptual aggregate, however artificially it may seem to cohere to a modern reader. 34. Adkins (1960a). 35. This figure is known in both Hittite and neo-Assyrian as “the owner of the blood” (Ass. bel dami) and in the Middle Assyrian laws as the “owner of the life”; see paragraph 49 of the Edict of the Hittite King Telipinu (= Roth [1995 ] 237) and MAL B2 (= Roth [1995 ] 176); see also Roth (1987) 363–65 and Westbrook (1992) 57–58. 36. In Greek literature outside of the Iliad, the term apoina occurs relatively infrequently. A TLG search turns up about 160 uses of apoina plus a few more of related terms such as apoin¯an. Of these, fewer than seventy appear in literary texts (including anthologies and fragments), and of that number, twenty-eight (40 percent) are in the Iliad (none in the Odyssey). The remaining 90 plus uses of the total 160 are found in commentaries and lexica; of these, 75 (over 80 percent) appear in scholia on the Iliad, Apollonius’ Lexicon Homericum, and Eustathius’ Commentarii ad Homeri Iliadem. In sum, there is a significant concentration of extant uses of apoina in the Iliad, and it did not go unnoticed by ancient scholars. In literature outside of the Iliad, apoina can bear alike the Homeric meanings of ransom (Solon 24.9; Herodotus VI.79 [2x]; Euripides, Rh. 177 [apoinasthai]) and recompense (h. Ven. 210; Aeschylus, Pers. 808; A 1420 and 1670; Euripides Alc. 7). Herodotus at IX.120 employs both meanings: Acta¨yctes says he will give apoina as payment to the god for the treasure he took from his temple and, additionally, as payment to the Athenians if they will spare his life. In h. Ven. 140, apoina corresponds to hedna. Apoina in Pindar’s odes denotes compensation not for harm but for the ordeal of athletic competition (O. VII 16; P. II 14; N. VII 16; I. III–IV 7; and I. VIII 4). In Classical Greek, the Homeric meaning of apoina is largely taken over by lutron (< luein) and related forms, none of which appear in Homer. According to Aelian,VH 13.14, the Lutra, Ransom(s), was one of several episodes of the Iliad that were recited discretely. Apollonius Sophist¯es defines apoina as a payment made for someone, like a purchase price (39.1). Finally, it is significant that, given the proclivity of Hellenistic scholars to deploy allusions to obscure Homeric terms in their own “tournament of
Notes to pages 22–25
37. 38. 39.
40. 41. 42. 43. 44.
45. 46.
47. 48.
1 89
definitions,” the only surviving use of apoina in the Alexandrians (Apollonius Rhodius, 2.967) showcases the Homeric usage – ransom. 2.229–31 [1 ]; 6.425 –28 [2]; 24.685 –88 [4]; 11.101–12 [5 ]; 10.374–457 [6]; 6.45 –65 [22]; 11.122–47 [23 ]; and 21.34–135, [24]. I follow the convention of underlining exact verbal repetition, but do not attempt to distinguish modifications and structural formulas with broken lines. The only other noun taking apereisios as an epithet in the Iliad is bride-price, hedna (16.178). Outside of the Iliad, apereisios occurs only twice in Homer and Hesiod, both times in the formula apereisia hedna, which occupies the same metrical location as apereisi’ apoina (Od. 19.529 and Hesiod Fr. (M-W) 198.10, ape[reisia he]dna). The form apeiresios appears elsewhere in the Iliad only at 20.258 as an epithet of earth (gaia), and elsewhere in Homer at Od. 9.118 of goats (aiges apeiresiai), Od. 11.621 of Herakl¯es’ misery (oizun apeiresi¯en), and Od. 19.174 of the peoples of Crete (apeiresioi anthr¯opoi). Cf. also Hesiod, Catalogue 22.7; Fr. (M-W) 240.3–4; and Fr. (M-W) 150.10. 2.229 [1 ]; 22.50 [3 ]; and 6.49[22]; 10.379 [6] and 11.133 [23 ]. 6.47 [22]; cf. 11.132 [23 ]; cf. 10.378 [6] and 22.50 [3 ]. 6.46 and 50 [22]; 10.378 and 381 [6]; and 11.131 and 135 [23 ]; cf. 22.49 [3 ]. In the discrete themes, only Zeus is said to give, didounai, instead of giving back or paying back, apodidounai or (apo)tinemen, a payment corresponding to poin¯e. Cf. analogous usage of active and middle voices of (apo)tinemen in the incomplete monumental poin¯e theme involving Helen: ‘cause the offender to pay back’ (tisasthai aleit¯en, 3.28); ‘pay back tim¯e ’ (apotinemen tim¯en, 3.459 and 286); ‘get paid back for the struggles and groaning over Helen’ (t¤sasyai dÉ ÑEl°nhw ırmÆmatã te, stonaxãw te, 2.356 and 590); ‘to cause Alexander to pay back’ (tisasthai Alexandron, 3.351 and 366). The exception is 21.412, where the object of ‘pay back’ (exapotinemen) is the representatives of the injured party, Hera’s Erinyes. (Apo)tinemen or atitos for payment of poin¯e ‘in harm’ (11.122–47 [23 ]; 13.410–16 [10]; 14.478–85 [14]; 15.113–18 [15 ]; 16.394–98 [16]; 17.34–50 [17]; 21.34– 135 [24]; 21.396 –414 [21 ]; and 24.200–16 [25 ]); (apo)didounai for payment of poin¯e in goods (5.265 –67 [9]; 18.497–508 [18]; outside of the discrete themes, see also apodounai in reference to giving back Helen and the goods (3.285); cf. eggualizein, 17.198–208 [20]). See Od. 22.46 –67, where Eurymachos and Odysseus use apodidounai to refer to poin¯e in goods and Odysseus uses apotinemen for payment of poin¯e in harm. For exceptions, see (apo)tinemen for payment of goods (3.459 and 286 [Exc.]); gignesthai (a verb meaning ‘to be’ or ‘become’), where the path is uncertain (13.656 –59 [12]); and forms of poin¯e without a significant recurring verb. Black (1968) 358: composition is “a sum of money paid, as satisfaction for a wrong or personal injury, to the person harmed, or to his family if he died, by the aggressor.” Benveniste (1973) 105 –12.
1 90
Notes to pages 25 –26
49. For ‘to get a price’, alphanein, see Il. 21.79 (the sale of Lykaon as a slave in Lemnos) and Od. 15.453, 17.250, and 20.383 (sale of captives as slaves); for ‘a price’, ¯onos, see Il. 21.41 and 23.746 (sale of Lykaon), Od. 14.297, 15.388– 429, 15.452 (sale of captive men and women as slaves), and Od. 15.445 and 463 (cargo and a golden necklace); and for ‘purchased’, ¯on¯etos, see Od. 14.202 (a slave). There is no indication that either the seller or the buyer enters into the transaction with a view to liberating the slave. 50. When apoina is given to gain the release of a family member from slavery, the seller may simply make a sale; the family, however, is not purchasing but redeeming a family member. 51. The sale is signified by ‘sold’ (eperrase), 21.40; ‘gave a price for’ (¯onon ed¯oke), 21.41; ‘sold’ (pepr¯emenos), 21.58 and (eperassas), 21.78; and ‘brought a price’ (¯elphon), 21.97; cf. 22.45. Lykaon’s release by a foreign friend (xeinos) is signified by ‘gained the release’ (elusato) 21.42; ‘gave much’ ( polla d’ ed¯oken), 21.42; ‘was released’ (lum¯en), 21.80. 52. See 22.45; 21.40; 21.58; 21.78–79. This pattern may, however, be an accident of the setting rather than a significant narrative detail of the theme of sale into slavery. 53. Bourdieu (1977) 15 refers to the distinction between symbolic and economic systems as a difference between “ritualized” and “non-ritualized” exchange. 54. So, for example, the narratorial comment that Zeus stole away the wits of Glaukos, who exchanged gold armor for bronze (6.232–36). By the rules of gift exchange, woodenly applied perhaps, Glaukos as the more generous giver would be the winner in the exchange. But in reality, gift exchange involves self-interest and calculation, and it admits of a variety of strategies (see Bourdieu [1977] 1–18). Thus Appadurai (1986) 6–16 and van Wees (1998) 15 –20 point out that gift and commodity exchange share a common spirit of interested calculation, even though many cultures perceive them as distinct; See also Buchan (1999), Traill (1989), and Donlan (1989). 55. Sons of Trojans (2.229–31 [1 ]); Ganymedes (5.265 –67 [8]); Adrestos (6.45 – 65 [22]); Dolon (10.374–457 [6]); Isos and Antiphos (11.101–12 [5 ]); Peisandros and Hippolochos (11.122–47 [23 ]); Harpalion (13.656 –59 [12]); Askalaphos (15.113–18 [15 ]); Lykaon (21.34–135 [24]); Lykaon and Polydoros (22.46 –54 [3 ]); and Hektor (24.200–16 [25 ]). 56. Isos and Antiphos (11.101–12 [5 ]); Peisandros and Hippolochos (11.122–47 [23 ]); Archelochos (14.478–85 [14]); Hyperenor (17.34–42 and 50 [17]); Lykaon and Polydoros (22.46 –54 [3 ]). 57. Priam (24.685 –88 [4]). 58. Andromach¯e’s mother (6.425 –28 [2]) is referred to in the theme as mother (m¯et¯er), though her relationship as daughter to the one who ransomed her can also be reasonably inferred. 59. There is little evidence that warriors defeated in battle would have been used or sold as slaves; they were either killed or held for ransom. Lykaon had been sold into slavery once, but he had been captured in his father’s garden and not on the battlefield. Later, when Priam cannot see Lykaon or Polydoros among
Notes to pages 26–31
60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65.
66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75.
76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84.
1 91
the fleeing Trojans, he assumes that they either are being held for ransom or are dead, but not that they have been sold as slaves (22.46 –54 [3 ]). See Lykaon (21.34–135 [24]), Isos and Antiphos (11.101–12 [5 ]), and Priam himself (24.685 –88 [4]). Achilleus in Book 9 represents the seizure of Briseis as bride stealing and, hence, as justifying his demand for poin¯e; see chapter 4, Odysseus and Achilleus. Potentially in 18.497–508 [18]. 17.198 –208 [20]. 13.410–16 [10]; 13.445 –47 [11 ]; 14.469 –74 [13 ]; 14.478–85 [14]; 15.113–18 [15 ]; 16.394–98 [16]; 17.34–42 [17]; 21.26 –33 [19]; 21.34–135 [24]; 24.200–16 [25 ]; and, again, potentially in 18.497–508 [18]. A religious imperative for dealing with loss of life, arising from the Furies’ demand of blood for blood, does not actually materialize in the Iliad. Though the goddesses’ presence is felt in Homeric epic, it is primarily as upholders of parental curses (9.454 and 571; cf. Od. 2.135), oaths (19.259), and familial and physical order (15.204 and 19.418). See also Muellner (1996) 32 note 1. See Clay (1983) 108 –11 and Cook (1995) chapter 1. On the connection between Zeus and traditional poetry, see Nagy (1990b) 256 –57 and passim; see also Nagy (1979) 81–82 §25 note 2. Pedrick (1982) 128. 6.45 –65 [22]; 10.374–457 [6]; 11.122–47 [23 ]; though Lykaon supplicates, he does not offer apoina explicitly, 21.34–135 [24]. Most of the apoina scenes in which no supplication takes place occur outside the primary fabula and, as such, may tend to be epitomized. Contra Thornton (1984). See Sedgwick (1985) 21–22. This trend of identifying politically active females with disorder continues on in Greek tragedy; see Ormand (1999) 1–35. All but five of the discrete themes involving apoina mention the father explicitly as the one who gives or would give apoina to secure the return of a subordinate family member; in three of those five, that the father gave apoina can be reasonably inferred (6.425 –28 [2]; 11.102–12 [5 ]; and 21.34–135 [24] if Priam recompenses E¨etion for ransoming Lykaon). 5.265 –67 [8]; 15.113–18 [15 ]. 6.45 –65 [22]; 11.122–47 [23 ]; 14.478–85 [14]; 17.34–42 [17.] 18.497–508 [18], where the kinsman is not identified. 13.410–16 [10]; 13.445 –47 [11 ]; 14.469–74 [13 ]; 16.394–98 [16]; 21.26 –33 [19]; 21.34–135 [24]. 17.198–208 [20]; 21.396 –414 [21 ]. The exceptions are exceptional in other respects as well; see 11.696 –705 [9]; 21.396 –414 [21 ]. 6.425 –28 [2]; 11.101–12 [5 ]; 21.34–135 [24]. 24.685 –88 [4]. 2.229–31 [1 ].
1 92
Notes to pages 31–35
85. The primary fabula is the series of events that take place during the time span covered by the narrative. The primary fabula of the Iliad extends from the arrival of Chryses in the Greek camp to the burial of Hektor; see de Jong (1987) 84. 86. Robbins (1990) 12–13 divides supplication scenes in the Iliad into those that occur on the battlefield and those that occur elsewhere. He concludes that rejection of ransom on the battlefield is Achilleus’ aberrant behavior but Agamemnon’s regular behavior. But as we have seen, ransom is not conflated with supplication; moreover, the Iliad affirms that accepting ransom was Agamemnon’s regular practice before the primary fabula. Cf. Pedrick (1982) 139–40. 87. 6.45 –65 [22]; 10.374–457 [6]; 11.122–47 [23 ]; cf. 21.34–135 [34]. 88. 22.46 –54 [3 ]; also, Thersites does not say that the Trojans whom he and other warriors captured and held for ransom were taken only in raids (2.229–31 [1 ]) 89. 2.229–31 [1 ], 6.425 –28 [2]), and 24.685 –88 [4]. 90. For similar observations, see also Seaford (1994) 25 –29, 65 –73 and Redfield (1994) 160–223. 91. 5.265 –67 [8]; 17.198–208 [20]; 18.497–508 [18]. 92. 6.45 –65 [22]; 11.122–47 [23 ]; 11.696 –705 [9]; 13.410–16 [10]; 13.445 –47 [11 ]; 13.656 –59 [12]; 14.469–74 [13 ]; 14.478 –85 [14]; 15.113–18 [15 ]; 16.394– 98 [16]; 17.34–50 [17]; 21.26 –33 [19]; 21.34–135 [24]; 21.396 –414 [21 ]; and 24.200–16 [25 ]. 93. 11.101–12 [5 ] and 21.34–135 [24]. 94. Cf. Redfield (1994) 183 on denying one’s enemy a funeral as the “perfected negation of community.” 95. Vernant (1989) 8, 38–43. 96. E. Cook (1995) 106. 97. Agamemnon’s refusal of Adrestos’ apoina (6.45 –65 [22]), Agamemnon’s refusal of Peisandros’ and Hippolochos’ apoina (11.122–47 [23 ]), and Achilleus’ refusal of Lykaon’s (alleged) offer of apoina (21.34–135 [24]). Achilleus’ refusal of Agamemnon’s offer in the embassy scene also conforms to this type. See chapter 4, Odysseus and Achilleus. 98. On this, see also Haubold (2000) 43, who proposes that Homer’s people, as founding people, are “left in close and threatening contact with non-being. Little is needed to bring about the decisive slip.” 99. By ‘king’ I do not mean a hereditary monarch. There were many kings (basil¯ees) among the heads of aristocratic households, one of whom emerged as prominent through ritualized conflict. 100. In the real worlds of Homer and the Homeric audience, apoina may have been exchanged among insiders, such as in cases of debt bondage. 101. See chapter 4, Odysseus and Achilleus. 102. See Introduction, n 46. 103. Generalization to a false family is already a social reality once the polis comes into being. The phratry, if it ever was a kinship group, is a factitious brotherhood
Notes to pages 36–42
104. 105. 106.
107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116.
1 93
by the eighth century. See Snodgrass (1980) 24–25, Donlan (1985), following Roussel (1976) and Bourriott (1977). Crotty (1994) 26 –38; cf. Adkins (1971). See inter alios Beidelman (1989), Donlan (1981, 1982a, 1982b, 1993). Redfield (1994) 33. Martin (1989) and E. Cook (1995) extend the concept of agonistic exchange to include the poet. The Trojans – incorporating the city, territory, and citizens – constitute a polis. Raaflaub (1998a) 103 argues that the Achaians also comprise a polis, temporarily organized on the shore. The Achaian camp is at least a Panhellenic community organized at some level by generic political institutions. On this, see also Scully (1984) and Seaford (1994). 2.229–32 [1 ] affords a glimpse of Agamemnon’s relatively fixed position, but it is less apparent in the discrete than the monumental themes. This is the generally accepted view; see Taplin (1992) 48. For the perspective that Agamemnon is a hereditary monarch, see Collins (1988), van Wees (1992), and Lowenstam (1993). See Donlan (1982a) 153 and (1993) 160. Weiner (1992), especially 39 and 96. Liverani (1990) 22–26. See Donlan (1982a) 163. As we shall see, however, Achilleus also redistributes in Book 23; so redistribution is not confined to the fixed system. Donlan (1982a) 143; see also Seaford (1994) 21–22. Donlan (1982a). Donlan (1982a) 161. Donlan (1982a); see also Raaflaub (1998b) 181–88 .
Chapter 2 . Agamemnon and Chryses: Between King and Father 1. Adkins (1960a) 28–30 demonstrates that ‘to dishonor’ (atim¯an) in Homeric society is not merely descriptive of an attitude; it diminishes the other’s tim¯e and thereby moves him down on the social scale. Agamemnon therefore does not simply fail to acknowledge the priest’s tim¯e; he actually reduces it. 2. Word groups that recur in compensation themes are underlined in the Greek texts quoted in chapters 2–5, as they are in appendix 1. 3. Crotty (1994) 20–21. For a different view, see Clark (1998), especially 6 –7 and 17–19. Thornton (1984) 113 derives the following paradigmatic motif for the monumental theme from Book 1: damage is done; supplication is made, with the object of having the damage repaired; the supplication is angrily rejected; the suppliant prays to his god to hurt the man who rejects him; the god damages the man supplicated in vain; the man is forced to fulfill the suppliant’s plea; the suppliant prays for the safety of his former enemy. I agree with Thornton that the Chryses theme is a significant narrative pattern, but disagree with the conflation of apoina and poin¯e in her model. 4. Flaig (1993 and 1994).
1 94 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.
18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28.
29. 30. 31.
Notes to pages 43–54 Pedrick (1982) 129; contra Gould (1973) 88. Crotty (1994) 33–34 , n. 17. E. Cook (1995) 49–92 and (1999). 2.229–31 [1 ]. See also Taplin (1992) 53 and Redfield (1994) 95. To some extent this possibility is realized: Thersites blames Agamemnon for his abuse of the troops (2.225 –40); see also Agamemnon’s (14.49–51) and Poseidon’s (13.105 –14) words to the effect that the Achaians resent Agamemnon for alienating Achilleus. Mackenzie (1978) 7. Again, Mackenzie (1978) 7. See Rabel (1988 and 1990) and Robbins (1990). Rabel (1990). As may be seen in the discrete themes, family members, and brothers in particular, as well as other philoi, occupy a homologous position as advocates who secure poin¯e for warriors killed on the battlefield. See also Stanley (1993) 49–50. The scholia note that Aristarchus athetized a line as superfluous, but it is unclear whether line 95 or 96 is meant (Aristonicus [A]). The line can be defended on the basis that its epitome of the theme fills out the content in the same way that 1.12–32 fills out the content of ‘dishonored’ (¯etimasen) in 1.11. See also Dickson (1992) 333. Apollonius Sophist¯es defines anapoinon as alutros, without apoina (37.2). 1.78 –79 and 90–91; 1.76 –77 and 88 –89. See Martin (1989) 116. On this see Nagy (1979) 74–78, Blickman (1987) 7, Rabel (1990) 432, and Slatkin (1991) 64–65. Cf. Agamemnon’s similar strategy in response to Nestor’s speech in Book 9. Kirk (1985) 65. Agamemnon will be seen to use a similar strategy in returning Briseis in Book 9. On this, see also Muellner (1996) 98–99. Kakridis (1949) 21–24. See, for example, the gifts given to Odysseus by the Phaiakes (Od. 8.385 –95) from their storehouses (Od. 11.339–41), which they will replenish by collecting from the people (Od. 13.13–15); see also Donlan (1982b) and van Wees (1995). On the comparison of a chief to the father of a household, see Sahlins (1972) 205, 208 –9 and Donlan (1982a) 151, 172 and (1998) 56. Bourdieu (1991) 129. For discussion, see chapter 6.
Chapter 3. The Quarrel: Men Who Would Be King 1. The bibliography on the quarrel in Book 1, like that on the embassy, is extensive. For recent contributions and summaries of the discussion, see especially
Notes to pages 54–59
2. 3. 4. 5.
6.
7. 8. 9.
10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.
1 95
Beidelman (1989), Collins (1988), Donlan (1993), Lowenstam (1993), Mackenzie (1978 and 1981), Martin (1989), Muellner (1996), von Reden (1995), Seaford (1994), and van Wees (1992). Cypria 1.5 (Allen). See Nagy (1979) 213, Slatkin (1991), and Mayer (1996). Arthur (1983) and Mayer (1996). Erwin Cook pointed out to me the important connection between displacement of the female principle and of generational succession. See Mayer (1996). In fact, the struggle between Agamemnon and Achilleus, which plays out a struggle between fixed and fluid ranking systems, is enacted cosmically in a conflict between Zeus and Poseidon in 15.158 –219 (see Muellner [1996] 28 –31 and chapter 4). That the conflict between Zeus and Poseidon comes to nought attests to the success of the displacement of eris. See 1.277–79. The idea that Agamemnon is a traditional hereditary monarch and Achilleus a warrior who opposes him derives, at least in part, from Dum´ezil’s (1956) identification of an IE trope involving a power struggle between monarch and warrior figures. This view lives on in the work of Vian (1968), Collins (1988), van Wees (1992), and Lowenstam (1993). Taplin (1992) 48 observes that the assimilation of king (basileus) to monarch, and the assumption of Agamemnon to this sovereignty, go back at least to the era of the Hellenistic kings, the first age of professional Homeric scholarship. On this heroic irony, see Nagy (1979) 346. See, for example, ‘abuse with words’ (epeesin . . . oneidison, 1.211); ‘words of derision’ (atart¯etois epeesin, 1.223); ‘speak abusively’ (oneidea muth¯esasthai, 1.291); and ‘words of contention’ (antibiouisi epeesin, 1.304). For example; ‘greediest for gain’ (philoktean¯otate, 1.122); ‘with your mind forever on profit’ (kerdaleophron, 1.149); ‘dog-eyes’ (kun¯opa, 1.159); ‘most hateful’ (ekhthistos, 1.176); and ‘[You king] who feeds on your people’ (d¯emoboros, 1.231). In addition, ekpaglotat, ‘most terrifying’ (1.146), is intended as an insult (see Martin [1989] 115). On the opposition of praise and blame as a fundamental principle in IE tradition and Archaic Greek society, see Detienne (1973) 18 –27, Nagy (1979) 213–64, (1989) and (1990b) 392–95, Gentili (1988) 107–14, and Martin (1989) 72. Giddens (1979) 131–64. On ritual antagonism, see Chirassi Colombo (1977), Nagy (1979) 62, 142–50 and (1990a) 12, Rabel (1990), Cook (1995) 20, 110, and 128 –70, and Muellner (1996) 90, 102–3. See also Stanley (1993) 42; cf. van Wees (1992) 112 and 361 n. 108. On this, see Donlan (1982b) and van Wees (1995). Cf. Hesiod Op. 38 –39, 67, 263–64. Taplin (1992) 57 describes the agreement whereby a “summoner” persuades other kings (basil¯ees) to join forces with him by promising proper tim¯e as a “charis agreement.” Achilleus also turns to Zeus as his advocate; see the ironic echo of 1.175 at 9.608.
1 96
Notes to pages 60–69
17. On merm¯erizein scenes, see Arend (1933) 106 –15 and, inter alios, Pucci (1987) 69 –75, Edwards (1992) 317–18, and Pelliccia (1995) 126 –35. 18. For this definition of hybris, see Fisher (1992) 1–6, 150–84. 19. For a different perspective, see Adkins (1982) 296. 20. Contra von Reden (1995) 19 –21. 21. See Cook (1995 and 1999). 22. Cf. Hesiod, Op 260–64. 23. On Achilleus’ appropriation of Chryses as a model of revenge through inactivity, see Rabel (1988) 474. 24. For a different perspective, see Schadewaldt (1966) 135, who interprets Achilleus’ change of mind as a sign of the mildness that forms one pole of the psychic polarity that identifies and drives him; see also Griffin (1995) 26. 25. On the sk¯eptron as symbol of divine authority, see most recently Palaima (1995). 26. Nagy (1979) 188. 27. Adkins (1982) 298. 28. For a similar view, see Taplin (1990) 64; for the view of Nestor’s construction of the hierarchy is the traditional vision of reality in Homeric society (and Achilleus’ is therefore to some extent against the traditional vision of reality), see, for example, Segal (1971a) 93, Mackenzie (1978) 9, and Collins (1988). 29. Also Donlan (1982a) 162–63. 30. See also Segal (1971 b) 101. 31. Lowenstam (1993) 61–62. 32. See Donlan (1982a). 33. ‘On account of a girl’ anticipates Book 9, where Achilleus insists that Briseis is more than a young woman (kour¯e), much to the embassy’s dismay; see especially 9.637–38. 34. On the wrath (m¯enis) theme, see Watkins (1977), Nagy (1979) 73–74, and Muellner (1996). 35. Cf. Rabel (1988) 475. 36. My argument here is indebted to Slatkin (1991). 37. Slatkin (1991) and Mayer (1996). 38. Pindar, I. 8.32–34: ‘Because it was fated for the goddess to bear a child, a king stronger than his father’ (e·neken peprvm°non ∑n, f°rteron pat°row | ênakta gÒnon teke›n | pont¤an yeÒn). 39. Slatkin (1991) 101. 40. Slatkin (1991) 102. 41. See also von Reden (1995) 22. 42. See Bourdieu (1991) 168–70, 214–16. 43. See Segal (1971a) 91. 44. See Rabel (1988) 475 –76. 45. See also Rabel (1997) 45 –58. 46. In the discrete themes, a god – in both cases Zeus – may be inclined to give poin¯e voluntarily (5.265 –67 [8] and 17.198–208 [20]). 47. Slatkin (1991) 69; see also Willcock (1964) 144.
Notes to pages 70–75
1 97
48. Again, see Slatkin (1991). 49. See Schadewaldt (1966) 146. Chapter 4. The Embassy to Achilleus: In the Name of the Father 1. The scale episode raises the vexing question of Zeus’ relation to fate. Adkins (1960b) 17–25 regards the relation as ambiguous in the Iliad. He suggests that Il. 8.69 –73 illustrates a power over which Zeus has no control in the Iliad, the k¯eres or fates of death. Other scholars (for example, Grube [1952] 4) argue that fate is always subject to the will of Zeus; the scales are thus no more than the concrete symbol of the irrevocable decision of Zeus. For a different perspective, see Nagy (1979) 81–82 §25 n2 on the relationship between Zeus, fate, and the traditional plot of the Iliad. 2. Hainsworth (1993) 73 contends that, although Agamemnon has already realized that the quarrel with Achilleus is impeding his conquest of Troy (2.370– 80), it is now clear to him that it has put victory in question altogether. If this is the case, Agamemnon at least thinks only of retreat and not of reconciliation, apart from Nestor’s urging. 3. Griffin (1995) 77 argues from 9.17 that Agamemnon appears to be addressing the chiefs only and not the mass of men. The gathering is patently a public assembly, however, as the remove to a private council makes clear. 4. Wyatt (1982) 250. 5. On Agamemnon’s ‘destroying the people’, see Haubold (2000). 6. 9.18 –28 = 2.111–18 + 139–41. Hainsworth (1993) 61 contends that it is implausible that Agamemnon is represented as deliberately using the same words he had used in his earlier speech. It is reasonable to suppose, however, that the poem depicts him as striving for different ends with the same speech and failing on both occasions. 7. Heiden (1991). De Jong (1985) 190 suggests that Agamemnon’s failure in performance of speech is typical of his general lack of leadership; cf. Martin (1989) 116. 8. On this, see Sheppard (1922) 27 and Owen (1946) 21. 9. See also Nestor’s public acclamation of Agamemnon at 9.69; cf. Hesiod Fr. (M-W). 144.1–3: ‘Who was kingliest of mortal kings and ruled the most people who dwelt round about because he held the staff of Zeus, by which he was king over many’ (˘w basileÊtatow †g°neto ynht«n basilÆvn | ka‹ ple¤stvn ≥nasse periktiÒnvn ényr≈pvn | ZhnÚw ¶xvn sk∞ptron. t«i ka‹ pol°vn bas¤leuen). 10. On this, see Martin (1989) 20–21: “[E]pea in the system of Homeric diction represent the means of conducting social life; they participate in an economy of exchange.” 11. For instance, in Book 24.76, 119, 157, 176, and 196, d¯ora is used in conjunction with forms of the verb ‘to release’ (luein) and/or the term apoina to designate Priam’s gifts as apoina. 12. See Nagy (1979) 81–82 §25 n2.
1 98
Notes to pages 75 –78
13. Atas, a form of at¯e, is from the same word family as the verb aasam¯en, a form of aa¯o. 14. See, for example, Dodds (1951), Adkins (1960b), Lesky (1961), Dawe (1968), Stallmach (1968), Wyatt (1982), Lloyd-Jones (1983), and Stanley (1993) 111. 15. Lesky (1961); see also Adkins (1960b). 16. Hainsworth (1993) 73: “to ascribe an action to êth is exculpatory”; Griffin (1995) 89: at¯e is always “an attempt to understand or palliate past conduct.” 17. Adkins (1960b) 52. 18. Donlan (1993) 164. 19. Aps . . . aresai can, as Donlan (1993) 161 points out, refer to amends in an insult situation, but the use of apoina tells against this as Agamemnon’s intended meaning here. It is better understood as a reference to satisfying Achilleus with gifts and, as such, as a manipulation of what the term could mean in a poin¯e theme. That Agamemnon admits no culpability becomes abundantly clear in Book 19 (see chapter 5, Agamemnon’s Unlimited Apoina). 20. 9.120 is omitted in one papyrus (205), doubtless under the influence of Odysseus’ speech, but it is nowhere athetized by the Alexandrians. Bolling (1950) and all modern editors include it. 21. See, for example, the following translations and explanations of Agamemnon’s offer: Allen (1924) 191 “proper compensation,” Bowra (1930) “handsome amends,” Owen (1946) 43 “gifts of atonement,” Whitman (1958) “magnificent amends,” Reinhardt (1961) 221 “Genugtuung,” Reeve (1973) “abundant compensation,” Mackenzie (1978) 10 “recompense,” Lloyd-Jones (1983) 15 “enormous compensation,” Gagarin (1986) 40 “restitution for that which one party has taken from another,” Arieti (1986) 4 “full and magnificent indemnity,” Hainsworth (1993) 73 “recompense for the seizure of Briseis,” and Wilson (1996) 19 “unlimited reparation.” 22. Robbins (1990) 12. 23. Odysseus responds that even if the suitors paid back (apodoite, Od. 22.61) as much as they had and more, he would not hold back from slaughtering them until they paid back (apotisai, Od. 22.64) their transgression (huperbasi¯en, Od. 22.64) 24. That Odysseus refuses Eurymachos’ offer does not mean it is culturally unacceptable. Instead, Odysseus is here shown outdoing Iliadic warriors – and arguably Achilleus in particular – even at their most savage moments of Iliadic heroism. 25. Raymond Westbrook pointed out the possibility that the lost members of his household Agamemnon wants to get back with apoina are Achilleus and the Myrmidons. By this logic, Achilleus is to be ransomed from himself, which, Westbrook says, presents no difficulty in terms of ancient law since ancient legal systems frequently used the concept of a split legal personality, (e.g., in cuneiform documents when a person sells himself into slavery, the buyer literally buys the seller from himself ). 26. Cf. the terms of Achilleus’ offer of three- and four-fold gifts to Agamemnon when and if Troy is plundered (1.127–29).
Notes to pages 78–83
1 99
27. Agamemnon’s largess is approached only by Priam’s (24.228 –35), but the symbolic function of Priam’s apoina is confirmed by his supplication. Agamemnon, pointedly, does not supplicate Achilleus. 28. See also Bourdieu (1977 and 1990), Redfield (1994) 16, Beidelman (1989), Donlan (1993) 160, and Lateiner (1995) 54, 76 –77, 282–84. For a different perspective, see van Wees (1992) 104. 29. Herein lies an important difference between the return ( palin) of Chryseis to her father accompanied by additional offerings for the god and Agamemnon’s attempt to give Briseis to Achilleus. Further, Agamemnon’s giving Briseis, untouched, may contain what Martin (1989) 115 –16 has characterized as “an intrusive jibe”: she is not such a desirable prize after all; see also Beidelman (1989) 238. 30. Agamemnon vehemently rejected a similar proposal from Achilleus during the quarrel (1.127–29) because he regarded it as an attempt to cast him in a dependent position. 31. Donlan (1993) 165 cites Od. 14.199–213 (Odysseus’ Cretan tale) and Il. 13.363– 82 (Othryoneus). Cf. 9.142. There is, in addition, ample evidence in Hittite documents that the marriage of a vassal to the suzerain’s daughter sealed the subordination of the vassal. The terms for the new relationship, ‘father’ and ‘son’, were virtually interchangeable with the terms ‘master’ and ‘slave’. For relevant Hittite documents, see Beckman (1996) 37, 45 –46, 121. 32. Griffin (1995) 21. 33. Nestor disregards Agamemnon’s assertion that the goods are apoina, referring to them instead as d¯ora. On Nestor’s cautious praise in this situation, see Martin (1989) 61. 34. For a slightly different perspective, see Nagy (1979) 50–51. 35. See Od. 8.75 –81 and Nagy’s (1979) 42–58 argument that the tradition of a quarrel between Achilleus and Odysseus is not a late pastiche, but an epic tradition that contrasted their heroic identities in terms of m¯etis and bi¯e. 36. Cf. Cook (1995), especially 9, and Nagy (1979) 51–52. 37. See Whitman’s (1958) 191–92 argument that Odysseus’ presentation of Agamemnon’s offer to Achilleus endangers Achilleus’ status in epic; see also Nagy (1996a) 142–43. 38. Bourdieu (1990) 127. 39. Achilleus’ strategy in the embassy scene is thus consonant with his strategy in the quarrel in Book 1; see chapter 3. For a different perspective on competing values in Homeric society, see Hammer (1997). 40. Nestor had appointed three envoys and two heralds, but as soon as the embassy departs, the narrator designates them with dual forms (9.182), as does Achilleus when he greets them (9.196 –98). The duals have given rise to a lengthy debate. For a recent summary of the problem of the duals and the primary approaches to resolving it, see Griffin (1995) 51–53; see also Motzkus (1964) 84–105, Segal (1968), Lohmann (1970) 227–31, K¨ohnken (1975), Thornton (1978), Gordesiani (1980), and Martin (1989) 235 –37. The evidence seems to me to
20 0
41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62.
63. 64. 65. 66.
Notes to pages 83–91 best support the position, argued by Nagy, that the duals refer to Aias and Phoinix and, further, that they are generated not by reflex of an earlier ‘text’, but by a traditional enmity between Odysseus and Achilleus; see Nagy (1979) 52–58 and (1996a) 138–44. On Odysseus as traditionally speaking out of turn, see Muellner (1976) 21 and Nagy (1996a) 142. See also Lohmann (1970) 233–34. It is irrelevant for my point whether by ‘enemy’ we mean ekhthros or polemios. See Martin (1989) 61 and especially 80: “As a general rule, characters in the Iliad do not remember anything simply for the pleasure of memory. Recall has an exterior goal.” Where Lattimore (1951) translates ‘recompense’. See also Beye (1993) 136 and Redfield (1994) 15. See also Tarkow (1982) 33 n 6 and Hainsworth (1993) 94. Taplin (1992) 70. Edwards (1987) 222. See also Martin’s (1989) 173 observation that Achilleus uses the conventions normally used for speaking about relations with outsiders when he talks about his own commander. On the abuse of xeni¯e as the origin of the Trojan War, see Herman (1987) 125 and Seaford (1994) 65. The only other place in Homer where the phrase alokhos thumar¯es occurs is in reference to Odysseus and Penelope at Od. 23.232. On the relation of the two bride-stealing patterns, see also Lord (1960) 190. On the linking of public and private causes in the Trojan War, see Mayer (1996) 13 and van Wees (1992) 174. For example, Taplin (1992) 214–15 and Stanley (1993) 112. Sale (1963) 94. Sale (1963) 100 n 5. See Beye (1993) 137. 6.45 –65 [22], mixed type; 10.374–557 [6]; and 11.122–47 [23 ], mixed type; the exception is a description of Hera’s chariot, 5.720–32. Martin (1989) 203. In addition, 9.379 anticipates Achilleus’ rejection of Hektor’s offer of apoina at 22.349: oÈdÉ e‡ ken dekãkiw te ka‹ efikosinÆritÉ êpoina, ‘not even if they bring here and set before me ten times and twenty times the apoina’. See, in addition to the sources mentioned later Schein (1980) 105 –10, in support of Parry’s argument, Scully (1984), Griffin (1986) 36 –57, Nimis (1986), Lynn-George (1988) 81–152, Martin (1989) 146 –230, and Stanley (1993) 115. A. Parry (1956) 6. Reeve (1973) 195. Reeve presumes that grievous injuries “cannot be paid back by the person who inflicted them.” Claus (1975) 16 –17. Martin (1989) 205, 206 –19.
Notes to pages 91–97
20 1
67. Again, see Martin (1989) 196, 206 –30. 68. Odysseus subsequently takes up Eurymachos’ language, saying that even if the suitors paid back (apodoite, 22.61) as much as they had and more, he would not hold back from slaughtering them until they paid back (apotisai, Od. 22.64), that is, ‘in harm’, their transgression. In other words, Odysseus uses apodidounai to signify composition and apotinemen tisis. 69. See also Hesiod, Th. 165 –66, where Gaia says to her children: ‘we would get paid back the evil outrage of your father, for he first plotted shameful deeds,’ (patrÒw ke kakØn teisa¤meya l≈bhn | Ímet°rou. prÒterow går éeik°a mÆsato ¶rga). The similar lines in the Iliad may thus evoke for the Homeric audience the generational strife leading to succession in the traditional mythological background to the Iliad. See also a tantalizing fragment, Fr. 129.2 (M-W): ‘took payment for a great outrage’ (megãlhn [épete¤sa]to l≈bhn). 70. See chapter 1, Verbal Repetitions. 71. See 9.410–16. 72. Floyd (1980) contends that the concept of kleos aphthiton in the Vedic material has more to do with long life and possessions and thus with Achilleus’ first destiny. He infers that Achilleus uses it untraditionally when he applies it to fame that will survive him in the poetic tradition. For a response to Floyd, see Nagy (1981). Both Floyd and Nagy agree, however, that kleos aphthiton as Achilleus uses it means everlasting fame preserved in poetry and, further, that Achilleus chooses kleos over life and material security in Phthia. 73. See Lohmann’s (1970) 247 proposal that by establishing the operative relationship at the beginning of the speech, Phoinix puts his entire speech under the rubric of a father’s instruction. 74. By exemplum, I mean “an object set apart from among other objects like it, for the sake of serving as a model” and, here, a monitory model (Nagy [1996a] 146, following Ernout and Miellet [1959]). 75. Lohmann (1970) 245 –46, Rosner (1976) 314–15, and Stanley (1993) 116. 76. Hainsworth (1993) 122 points to II Samuel 16.21–23 and 20.3 to show that the effect would be to alienate the old man, not the concubine. But the usefulness of the parallel is severely undermined by the fact that Abishalom’s public entry into the royal harem constituted a claim to David’s throne. A better parallel to the autobiography, excepting Phoinix’ motivation, may be Genesis 35.22 and 49.4, where Reuben loses the right of primogeniture because he has sex with his father’s concubine. 77. Il. 9.458–61 reports Phoinix’ near-attempt on his father’s life, intercepted by some deity who cautions him against parricide. The lines are not found in the manuscript tradition or the scholia and are cited in full only in Plutarch, Mor. 26F (and in part in Mor. 72B and Cor. 32). The lines are surely designed to echo 1.188–205 and to make Phoinix’ anger explicit. Plutarch claims that Aristarchus excised the lines. Given the seriousness with which the Alexandrians took Platonic moral philosophy, it is possible, even likely, that the lines belong to a pre-Alexandrian textual tradition, though it is not clear how they disappeared from the manuscript tradition.
20 2
Notes to pages 97–106
78. See Scodel (1982). 79. For a concise summary of interpretations of the resemblance between Phoinix’ autobiography and Achilleus’ situation, see Scodel (1982). 80. See, for example, Scodel (1982) 131: “both the Iliad and the Phoenix story involve a dispute over a concubine”; see also Stanley (1993) 115. 81. Scodel (1982) 133. 82. Scodel (1982) 133. 83. For a different perspective, see Lohmann (1970) 248–52. 84. For the argument that the embassy does not in fact offer supplication, see also Whitman (1958) 30, Schadewaldt (1966) 81, Eicholz (1953) 142, and Tsagarakis (1971) 262. 85. Cf. Nestor’s recommendation that Agamemnon send Achilleus d¯ora agana, ‘soothing gifts’ (9.113). 86. Yamagata (1991) 5, among others, infers that Phoinix’ representation “exactly matches the present situation.” 87. See, for example, Thornton (1984) 135 –36: “According to the plea of the goddesses of supplication to Zeus (I 512), Blind Madness ‘follows’ Achilleus, and it does so by attacking his ‘substitute’, his beloved friend Patroclus. . . . The death of Patroclus is the punishment (I 512) which Zeus inflicts upon Achilleus for rejecting the supplications of the Embassy and of Patroclus.” 88. See also Crotty (1994) 92: “Phoenix’s story . . . is motivated by his attempt to persuade Achilles to accept Agamemnon’s gifts. To see it as the key to all occurrences of the ceremony, I think, underestimates Phoenix’s rhetorical purpose and puts more weight on the parable than it can comfortably bear.” 89. See also Yamagata (1991) 8–15. 90. This is not to imply that Phoinix or Homer invent aspects of the myth for the occasion. 91. See, for example, Howald (1946), Heubeck (1943), Kakridis (1949) 11–42, Motzkus (1964) 37–46, Schadewaldt (1966) 139–42, Austin (1966), Willcock (1964), Lohmann (1970) 254–71, Braswell (1971), Rosner (1976), Nagy (1979) 103–6, and Bannert (1981). 92. Kakridis (1949) 19, 32 demonstrates that the mother, Althea, must come in the parade of suppliants because she is part of the topos. Her presence does not suggest that she offers recompense for damage. 93. See Blundell (1989). 94. Van Thiel’s (1996) reading, phonoio (
Notes to pages 106–12
20 3
98. Lloyd-Jones (1983) 18–19. 99. Arieti (1986) 21. 100. Scott (1921) and Whitman (1958) 191 observed that Achilleus adopts Meleagros as a positive exemplum instead of the negative one that Phoinix intended. For further development of this idea, see also Scodel (1982), Nagy (1990b) 196 –97 and 252–55, and Lowenstam (1993) 95. But Achilleus does more than adopt a strategy of fighting without gifts, as Meleagros did, as his actions the next day confirm. 101. Cf. Cook (1999) 151. Chapter 5. Achilleus and Priam: Between King and Father 1. Slatkin (1991) and Mayer (1996). 2. Nagy (1979) 69–93; cf. Cook (1999) especially 149–50. 3. Patroklos merely parrots Nestor’s proposal, which itself conforms to the plot summary Zeus announced when he awoke from his sleep to find his promise to Thetis derailed by Hera’s and Poseidon’s machinations (15.59–77). As Slatkin (1991) 110–11 observes, when Zeus as a result loses control over the course of the war, his first concern is damage control for the plot of the Iliad and his promise to Thetis. Except for this incident, the Dios boul¯e seems to be firmly in control of the plot of the Iliad. When, however, Zeus wavers on the matter of Sarpedon (16.431–61), even he appears to be ultimately subject to the poetic tradition. 4. Janko (1992) 323 reads hote in 16.54 on the strength of the following subjunctive. He proposes that by ‘preeminent in strength’, Achilleus means someone with more status, like Agamemnon. 5. See also 9.648. 6. For this reason, some critics interpret eph¯en (16.61) to mean “I thought,” thereby removing any reference to the embassy. See, for example, Mazon (1959) 178–89 and Janko (1992) 323. But cf. Schadewaldt (1966) 128. 7. Contrast this with 1.451–56 (Chryses’ second prayer to Apollo), especially 456: ‘Beat aside at last the shameful plague from the Danaans’ (≥dh nËn Danao›sin éeik°a loigÚn êmunon). 8. See Janko (1992) 324 and Schadewaldt (1966) 135, respectively. 9. On the reentry of Patroklos into the fighting as an element in a withdrawal, devastation, and return pattern underlying the Iliad, see A. Lord (1960) 195 –97 and Nagler (1974) 135 –41. 10. Patroklos’ identity in relation to Achilleus has attracted a good deal of scholarly interest. It is commonly recognized that the death of Patroklos inside the Iliad foreshadows the death of Achilleus outside it (cf. Pestalozzi [1945 ] and Taplin [1992] 181). Whitman (1958) 136 –37 and 199–203 argues that in death, the role of Patroklos becomes identical to that of Achilleus; he describes Patroklos as Achilleus’ epic surrogate. Although most critics agree that the destinies of Patroklos and Achilleus are linked and, further, that the poem blurs the distinction in their identities, the vector through which the poem joins the
20 4
11. 12. 13. 14. 15.
16. 17.
18. 19.
Notes to pages 113–16 two figures is disputed. Nadia van Brock (1959) proposes that the connection is a ritual one, established through the term therapøn (see Sinos [1975 ] 44–60 and Nagy [1979] 292–96 and [1990a] 129). She contends that therapøn has a diachronic meaning of “ritual substitute” by way of borrowing from the Anatolian (cf. Hittite tarpaˇsˇsa-/tarp(an)alli). Van Brock (119) describes the therapøn as an alter ego (usually of a king) upon whom the impurities of the king and the community may be ritually transferred. Dale Sinos (1975) 44–60 develops the concept specifically in relation to Patroklos and Achilleus. He proposes that while Patroklos is near Achilleus and is granted the epithet therapøn, his status is equalized to that of Achilleus. When, however, Patroklos is separated from Achilleus and loses the epithet therap¯on, he undergoes a loss of his own heroic identity and takes on the identity of his counterpart, thereby becoming a substitute for Achilleus. E. Cook, viva voce; on the armor as a vehicle that marks Patroklos as “vulnerable surrogate,” see also Taplin (1992) 181. The immortal horses also were the gift of a god, Poseidon, to Peleus (23.277– 78). Neither Patroklos nor the mortal horse will survive this bonding to the immortal. Nagy (1979) 81–82. Though the Iliad does not narrate the sack of Troy, it foreshadows, and thus encompasses, it. Shay (1994) 77–99 aptly describes Patroklos’ aristeia in terms of a berserk state in which a soldier, among other things, feels like a god, is insatiable, devoid of fear, inattentive to his own safety, reckless, and frenzied. Neoanalysts hold that this scene of the Nere¨ıds rising from the sea is modeled on that of Achilleus’ death in the Cypria. This scene does not, however, require a textual antecedent to evoke Achilleus’ death and funeral rites. See also 23.136 and 24.724. Cf. 18.100. An ar¯es alkt¯er may ward off death in battle or ward off loss of tim¯e and/or mutilation of the corpse after death. See 14.478–85 [14]. See Hesiod Fr. (M-W) 204.95 –123, which links the eris of the Trojan War to the permanent separation of gods and mortals. On the displacement of eris from the divine to the human realm in Archaic Greek cosmology, see Nagy (1979) 219–21, Arthur (1982 and 1983), Nagler (1988), and Mayer (1996). Mayer (1996) demonstrates a cultural construct, similar to the displacement of eris in Archaic Greek cosmology, in Near Eastern, Iranian, and Indian mythology in which “victorious gods resolve their problems by passing them on to mortals, thereby securing for themselves a carefree existence.” Muellner (1996) 78 –79 refers to the continuity of eris as a pressing dilemma for the succession myth in Hesiod: “ . . . how is it possible for a stable sovereign order to be established when the principle of succession – which is nothing more or less than a particular manifestation of the metonymic rule, whereby the next episode is built upon the previous one – always obtains?” See Nagy (1979) 69 –82. In accordance with Aias’ assessment of the damage at 9.637–38.
Notes to pages 116–21 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.
32.
33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38.
20 5
See also Stanley (1993) 196. Taplin (1992) 207. See again Taplin (1992) 207. Taplin (1992) 208. Agamemnon remains seated (19.77) as part of his strategy, not because of his wounds or because of embarrassment. For a similar perspective, see Lateiner (1995) 54 and 97 and Edwards (1991) 244–45. For a similar perspective, see Postlethwaite (1998) 98–99. See Cook (1995) 148–49 on ritual meals at the hearth of the king as verification of the social order and, specifically, as verification of the obligation of local rulers to the king. See also Mazarakis (1987) 20–21 and (1988). See also Postlethwaite (1998) 98–99. See also Crotty (1994) 98 n 19. I find my point independently confirmed by Postlethwaite (1998) 98. On oaths of neither eating nor drinking until a desired end is maintained as self-imprecation, see Martinez (1995). See also Donlan (1993) 170: “Achilles has taken great treasure from his rival on his own terms, and without obligation. He has not even acknowledged his acceptance of them. It is a stunning victory.” See Postlethwaite (1998) 103, who also concludes that the term ‘reconciliation’ “misrepresents the events of Book 19” and that Achilleus “maintains his animosity, and continually displays that animosity towards Agamemnon throughout the later books of the poem.” Postlethwaite (1998) 100 lists specific examples of Agamemnon’s secondary role; he concludes: “In all their dealing subsequent to the reconciliation Akhilleus exercises the authority of leader, whilst Agamemnon goes wordlessly about the tasks assigned to him.” Achilleus’ aristeia, even more so than Patroklos’, evinces features of a berserk state, including and especially his beastlike behavior, indiscriminate cruelty, indifference, rage, and social disconnectedness. See Shay (1994) 77–99. The intercalation of a ‘past’ meeting into the present one in the Lykaon narrative already invites comparison of the past with the present; see chapter 1, Success and Failure of Material Compensation, and appendix (24). On mutilation of the corpse, see especially Segal (1971 b). The skirmishes of other gods following the battle between Hephaistos and Skamandros furnish a comic interlude between Achilleus’ contests with the river and with Hektor (Richardson [1993 ] 51). See, for example, 21.396 –414 [21 ]. On the relation of untrammeled tisis to floods and primal chaos, see chapter 1, Success and Failure of Material Compensation. The mention of a mother providing apoina is singular; it may foreshadow Hekab¯e’s programmatic unwillingness to do so in Book 24. The closest analogy is 22.46 –54 [3 ], where Priam mentions that, if Lykaon and Polydoros were alive, he could ransom them with bronze and gold that Altes gave as a dowry when he had married the boys’ mother, Laotho¨e.
20 6
Notes to pages 121–27
39. Hektor uses d¯ora, a term that is not found for apoina in the discrete themes but that recurs frequently in Book 24 in otherwise clearly marked references to apoina. 40. Culture as opposed to ‘not culture’ is, for a Homeric audience, Greek culture. This is not to impose a monolithic set of practices and beliefs on Archaic Greeks, but only to recognize a rudimentary and Panhellenic catalogue of contrasts between culture and nature, which runs parallel to the opposition of m¯etis and bi¯e. See Cook (1995) 93–110 and 5: “[T]he polarity between m¯etis and bi¯e attracts to it an opposition between culture and all that is not Greek culture, or, for convenience, ‘nature’.” 41. Vernant (1989) 40: “[T]o be devoured by dogs means, as the text clearly indicates, that the flesh is given to ‘be torn apart raw by the dogs’. . . . If Achilles had accomplished his plan, Hector’s corpse, torn to pieces in its natural raw state, would be both dishonored in this world and forever deprived in the next of the invisible existence attained by cremation in the fire of the funeral pyre.” Cf. Redfield (1994) 183: “[T]his ultimate impurity [the dead being left to scavengers] never becomes actual in the poem; yet the threat of this impurity is the quintessential terror of the Iliad.” 42. Nagy (1990a) 300–1. 43. Achilleus’ liminality has nothing to do with maturation but with inversions in the cultural spheres (contra Eliade [1972] 6 –7). 44. For the perspective that savage violence is a direct result of his taking up Herakles as a model in Book 18, see Rabel (1997) 166 –69. Seaford (1994) 169 –70 contends that it is precisely Achilleus’ liminality that is irreversible. 45. See also Postlethwaite (1998) 99. 46. See also Redfield (1994) 108 and especially Postlethwaite (1998) 100; contra van Wees (1992) 95. 47. For a different perspective, see Redfield (1994) 204–10. 48. Hesiod, Op. 25. 49. Seaford (1994) 162. 50. The judgment of Paris has hovered in the background of all the events of the Iliad but is not mentioned until 24.29–30; even then, the poem only alludes to it. 51. In Homer, ‘know’ and ‘be’ are conflated in oiden (24.41); cf. Od. 9, where knowing lawlessness/things being lawless (athemistia eidos) is applied to the Cyclopes. 52. Cf. Phoinix’ divine model (9.496 –501). 53. Zeus reasons that it would not be possible to take Hektor’s corpse from Achilleus by force because Thetis stays by his side. The power of Thetis is, therefore, still a force with which Zeus must reckon. See Slatkin (1991). 54. Richardson (1993) 288. 55. 24.76 (d¯ora/luein), 118 –19 (d¯ora/luesthai), 137 (apoina), 139 (apoina), 146 –47 (d¯ora/luesthai), 175 –76 (d¯ora/luesthai), 195 –96 (d¯ora/luesthai), 264 (tauta panta), 276 (apereisi’ apoina), 278 (d¯ora), 447 (d¯ora), 458 (d¯ora), 502 (apereisi’ apoina), 555 (apoina), 579 (apereisi’ apoina), 594 (apoina), 685 ( polla). 56. 24.137, 139, 276, 502, 555, 579, 594; and 1.13, 20, 23, 95, 111, 372, 377.
Notes to pages 127–35 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75.
20 7
9.120, 19.138, and 22.349. 2.230; 6.46, 49, 427; 10.380; 11.106, 131, 134; 21.99; and 24.686. Whitman (1958) and Nagler (1974). For analogies between the opening and closing of the poem, cf. Reinhardt (1961) 63–68 and Macleod (1982) 33–34. In addition to his roles in relation to Troy and Hektor, Priam is hailed by Hermes as a father (24.362 and 371). On Priam’s body language as manifesting deference (in contrast to Agamemnon’s), see Lateiner (1995) 40. Contra inter alios Andersen (1976) 14–16. See Redfield (1994) 107: “[H]aving killed Hektor, he tries, as it were, to kill him again by despoiling and mutilating and befouling his body.” See, for example, Andromach¯e’s recollection of Achilleus’ respectful treatment of her father: Achilleus had killed E¨etion in a raid, but had not stripped the arms and had himself given the body funeral rites (6.414–19). Achilleus’ anger is frequently interpreted as an index of his psychological state; see, for example, Richardson (1993) 334; cf. Muellner (1996). Postlethwaite (1998) 96 –97. Moulton (1977) 114; see also Postlethwaite (1998) 96. 1.23–28; 13.198 –202; and 18.161–64. See Introduction; see also Lateiner (1995) 283 and Postlethwaite (1998) 96 – 97. Postlethwaite contends that Achilleus’ indifference to Priam’s gifts in Book 24 mirrors his indifference to Agamemnon’s in Book 19. Contra Redfield (1994) 219. Such views fail to take into account, for example, Achilleus’ conduct in relation to Andromach¯e’s father or Isos and Antiphos. Seaford (1994) 71. Again, Seaford (1994) 71. Achilleus and Priam come together as father and son only insofar as Priam is figured as the father over whom Achilleus finally attains superiority. Neither the Iliad nor the many honorific inscriptions attesting to release of prisoners for ransom provide any evidence that release of captives for ransom created a community between the captor and the person paying the ransom (see Bielman [1994]).
Chapter 6. Unlimited Poin¯e : Poetry as Practice 1. ‘Text’ is here used metaphorically for composition and refers to an oral, not a written, process of textualization. 2. Cf. Chatman’s (1978) 148 description of the ‘implied’ author as “the principle that invented the narrator, along with everything else in the narrative, that stacked the cards in this particular way, had these things happen to these characters, in these words or images.” 3. For the theoretical model, see Nagy (1979), Seaford (1994), and Cook (1995). I am not here suggesting that the analogy is at the level of Greek social
20 8
4.
5.
6. 7.
8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.
16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.
Notes to pages 135 –41 institutions for compensating harm, but rather at that of manipulating or constructing concepts of compensation. I will not rehearse arguments made elsewhere that the Iliad was indeed performed. On this, see, among others, Jensen (1980) 88–89, S. West (1988) 39–40, Thornton (1984) 46 –63, Taplin (1992) 22–44, Stanley (1993) 270– 81, Seaford (1994) 150–51, and Nagy (1996a) 88. This position is in contrast to that of Ford (1997); see also Burkert (1987) 49. For example, Cook (1995) 4, who argues that the crystallization of the Odyssean tradition into a written text, the growth of Athenian civic ritual, and the process of state formation in Attica were simultaneous and mutually reinforcing developments. For the anthropological discussion, see also Giddens (1979) 83: “The context of an interaction is in some degree shaped and organised as an integral part of that interaction as a communicative encounter.” Nagy (1996a) 13–27, (1996b) Part I; see also Seaford (1994) and Cook (1995). Cf. Williams (1977) 115: “What we have to see is not just ‘a tradition’ but a selective tradition: an intentionally selective version of a shaping past and a preshaped present, which is then powerfully operative in the process of social and cultural definition and identification.” Giddens (1979) 80. See, for example, Donlan (1982a, 1993, 1998) and Raaflaub (1998b). See again chapter 1, The Politics of Compensation in Homeric Society and the discussion following. On this and the role of m¯etis in the succession myth, see Detienne and Vernant (1978) 57–105. See Cook (1995) 151: “[T]he Odyssey and Iliad are thematically consistent in their identification of unrestrained bi¯e as a threat to civilization.” Cook (1995) 106; cf. Vernant (1989). Cf. Seaford (1994) 65 –66, who describes the epoch of Achilleus’ alienation as a period of ritual abnormality that is ended in an act of revenge followed by ritual closure. These scenes have been interpreted by most of previous scholarship as apoina (Book 1), poin¯e (Book 9), poin¯e (Book 19), and apoina (Book 22); Priam’s gifts are variously regarded as apoina for Hektor’s body or poin¯e for Patroklos. For the effects of this conflation of apoina and poin¯e on critical interpretation of the Iliad, see the Introduction. Seaford (1994) 61–62. Seaford (1994) 63. On destabilization of m¯etis and bi¯e in the Odyssey, see Cook (1995 and 1999). Seaford (1994) 5 –6. On the slaughter of the suitors as enacting order, see Cook (1995) 14, 151–52. Cook (1995) 32. I note in this respect Odysseus’ refusing composition in order to exact apparently unrestrained tisis at Od. 22.45 –67. Cook (1999) 153: “Odyssean tradition responds to Iliadic heroism by aligning m∞tiw with the trickster’s dÒloi and the active exercise of b¤h with the persona of the Iliadic warrior.”
Notes to pages 141–45 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28.
29. 30. 31. 32. 33.
34. 35. 36. 37.
38.
39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44.
45. 46. 47.
20 9
See Redfield (1994) and Seaford (1994). Donlan (1998) 54. See again Donlan (1998) 52 and Raaflaub (1998a); cf. van Wees (1992). See, among others, Jensen (1980), Morris (1986b), Seaford (1994) and Donlan (1998). See Seaford (1994) 5 –6. On elite outlook of Homeric epic, see Seaford (1994) 28, who notes in particular the positive evaluation of gifts and the depiction of “autonomous heroic households whose relations with each other . . . can be satisfactorily conducted without such institutions as the lawcourt. . . .” For a thorough study of the people (laos) in Homer, see Haubold (2000). Donlan (1998). Rabel (1997). Donlan (1982a, 1993, 1998) and Raaflaub (1998b); cf. Seaford (1998). On this, see Seaford (1994) 153. He contends that the political picture and outlook reflected in Homer belong to an early stage of state formation, but places the textualization stage of the poem a century or more later than do Donlan and Raaflaub (28). Seaford (2000) 34. Seaford (2000) 36. Again, Seaford (2000) 36. Seaford (1994) xix concludes that tragedy reflects a (democratic) rejection of the principle of reciprocity: “[T]he self-destruction of the ruling family, expressed in the perversion of ritual, ends in benefits and in particular in the foundation of cult, for the whole polis.” For a similarly linear argument, that reciprocity is not problematized in Homer but comprises the central problematic in Athenian tragedy, see Belfiore (1998). Griffith (1995), especially 109: a “critical preoccupation with development and progress, and a concomitant tendency to locate and define a coherent ‘democratic ideology’ as the Athenian norm against which tragedy’s ‘transgressions’ and conflicts are played out, have resulted at times in readings that are too one-dimensional, even skewed. . . . There were other, competing ideologies too, which need to be taken just as fully into account.” Griffith (1995) 123. Griffith (1995) 123. Again, Griffith (1995) 123. Nagy (1996b), especially 54–57. For application of this functionalist model to the Odyssey, see Cook (1995). Nagy (1996b) 83. Cook (1995) 150; cf. Seaford (1994) xii: “As the enactment, in shared action, of a shared symbolic structure, and as a paradigm of controlled cohesive action, ritual is socially effective, because it leaves the group . . . with an enhanced image of its identity and solidarity.” See again Cook (1995) 150. For transliterated text, translation, and commentary, see Cagni (1977). Machinist (1983).
21 0
Notes to pages 145 –59
48. Machinist (1983) 226. 49. Cagni (1977) 60. Appendix 1: Catalog of Compensation Themes 1. All Greek texts are in accordance with van Thiel (1996) unless otherwise noted. 2. Cf. 16.57 in reference to Briseis and 23.829, where ktear is used in connection with an iron weight, also taken from Thebe. 3. Although many critics regard the Doloneia as an interpolation, theories of interpolation are built on assumptions that I do not share. For a defense of the Doloneia on structural grounds, see Stanley (1993) 188–28. 4. The lines in Lattimore are 695 –704. 5. Paris’ kill in the subsequent scene is not represented as exacting poin¯e for Harpalion; it lacks the typical boast that payment for X had been made. See Janko (1992) 127. 6. Lines 657–58 were athetized by Aristophanes; Aristarchus was undecided whether to athetize them or to posit two men of the same name [AT]; others tried to resolve the discrepancy by inserting a negative into 658 (metå dÉ oÎ sfi) [cf. A]. For other textual decisions, see Mazon (1961) and Bolling (1950). 7. Janko (1992) 126 –27. 8. Cf. 13.446 –47. 9. Cf. 13.414. 10. Gn¯otos, when it is used as a substantive in Homer, designates a kinsperson, most often a brother. See 3.174, 15.350, 17.35, and 22.234; cf. Od. 3.196 –98. 11. Ar¯es alkt¯er is Zenodotus’ reading [ABLT] and the reading chosen by Bolling (1950), Mazon (1961), and Allen and Monro (1920). Van Thiel (1996) reads are¯os alkt¯era, with the vulgate. Several codices of the vulgate show the variant areos. Aristarchus read are¯o (which does not occur elsewhere in Homer but does occur in Ionic, as Van der Valk [1963–64] 2:587 points out). The phrase, with the same assemblage of variant readings, also appears in 18.100 and 18.213. The vulgate transmits are¯os alkt¯era at 14.485 and 18.213 and ar¯es alkt¯era at 18.100; Zenodotus reads ar¯es alkt¯era and Aristarchus are¯o alkt¯era in each of the three lines. 12. Janko (1992) 220–21. Ar¯en amunai appears at 12.334, 16.512, and 24.489. 13. Van der Valk (1963–64) 2.587–88. 14. See also Janko (1992) 220. 15. Ar¯en amunai: 12.334, 16.512, and 24.489. Ar¯es alkt¯er: 18.100, 213. The only uses of the formula that I find outside of Homer attest to a similar but slightly wider range of meanings: Aspis 27–29 refers to Zeus’ plan to beget Herakles as ar¯es alkt¯er for mortals and immortals; SC. 129 describes Herakles’ shield as ar¯es alkt¯er; Th. 657 makes reference to Zeus as alkt¯er . . . ar¯es krueroio because he rescued Obriareos, Kottos, and Gu¯es from Tartaros (here not from attack, but from chill gloom and imprisonment). 16. 18.483–608, which comprises almost the entire description, was athetized by Zenodotus, érkesye‹w tª kefalai≈dei proeky°sei [A]; the lines are, however, included by most modern editors.
Notes to pages 159–69
21 1
17. Zenodotus (ka¤ §n ta›w ple¤staiw [A]) read apoktamenou in place of apophthimenou. Although apophthemenou denotes only that the man had died, the immediate context nonetheless implies that he was killed. Both readings may be equally authentic. 18. I have adopted Nagy’s (1997) 195 translation of lines 499–501, which rests on both Muellner’s (1976) and Westbrook’s (1992) findings. 19. Cf. 9.632–36. 20. It does not affect the formal structure of the theme if the issue is factual; it simply means that the dispute turns on the resolution rather than the path. 21. Muellner (1976) 103. For recent discussion see also MacDowell (1978) 19–20, Gagarin (1986) 32–33, Vatin (1982), M. Edwards (1991) 214–16, Westbrook (1992), and Nagy (1997). 22. Westbrook (1992). 23. For a helpful discussion of this passage in relation to Greek law, see Gagarin (1986) 22. 24. Muellner (1976) 105 –6; for additional discussion, see Nagy (1979) 109. 25. See most recently Goldhill (1990), Yamagata (1990), Taplin (1990), and Kirk (1993). For a different perspective on whether or to what degree the poet expresses authorial or narratorial judgments, see Donlan (1993) 159 and Richardson (1990) 158–66. 26. See, for example, Goldhill (1990). 27. De Jong (1987) 195 –97, 207. 28. Yamagata (1990) 428. 29. I am indebted to Raymond Westbrook for pointing out to me, in relation to this scene, a basic principle of international law according to which a wrong by a private citizen becomes an interstate issue if condoned by the state. 30. Priam supports Alexandros in the assembly (7.345 –78); Antimachos also supports him. 31. The story of the rape of Dinah, preserved in Genesis 34, presents a situation that is regarded by the injured parties similarly to the way Agamemnon views the rape of Helen. Dinah, the daughter of Jacob, is raped by Shechem, the son of Hamor, the leader (na´sˆı ’) of the land. Hamor approaches Jacob and his sons to ask that Dinah be given in marriage to Shechem. Dinah’s brothers, the injured parties, ostensibly agree on the condition that all the men of Hamor’s city be circumcised or, in other words, be made ‘insiders’. The men of the city agree, but while they are in a weakened condition, Dinah’s brothers kill all the males, take the women and children captive, and completely plunder the city. In the case of both Alexandros and Shechem, the relation of the abductor to the ruler of a city, the endorsement of their actions by their fathers and the other men of the city, and the relation of the two groups as outsiders render the damage and the reaction public instead of private and, consequently, lead to annihilation of the city in response to the damage. 32. Aeikea l¯ob¯en, shameful outrage, refers to the damage for which Peisandros and Hippolochos must pay, and not the price they pay (contra, for example,
21 2
33. 34. 35.
36. 37. 38.
39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45.
Notes to pages 169–76 Lattimore’s translation: “your mutilation shall punish the shame of your father”). For a different perspective, see Robbins (1990) 13. There are not two but three compensation themes in the story of Achilleus and Lykaon. I note that the terms used in the passages listed to refer to the sale into slavery: eperrase, 21.40; ¯onon ed¯oke, 21.41; pepr¯emenos, 21.58; eperassas, 21.78. According to 23.740–49, Jason’s son, Eunaos, purchased Lykaon from Patroklos with a silver Sidonian-made mixing bowl. Lykaon claims that he brought Achilleus a price of 100 oxen (21.79). The contradiction is more apparent than real if the hekatomb is considered as the value of the bowl. The discrepancy is further lessened by the destabilization of the hekatomb already in the Iliad (see 23.146). Cf. the provision in the Gortyn law code (ICret IV 72 VI46 –55 ) that one who had been ransomed remained in the power of the person paying the ransom until he had paid him back; see also Demosth. 53.10–11. Achilleus nonetheless interprets Lykaon’s appeal as containing an implicit offer of apoina. The scholia take lum¯en (21.80) as an optative referring to Lykaon’s hope of being rescued again: e.g., ént‹ toË luyhso¤mhn (BCE3 E4 ); lutr¯othei¯en (Aim ; prÚw ı fhsi mÆ moi êpoina); lutr¯osaim¯en (D). Richardson (1993) 60 argues that this is not plausible. Lum¯en must be an aorist middle or aorist passive indicative referring to the earlier release. The narrator’s report that Lykaon escaped (hupekprophug¯on, 21.44) his xeinos seems somewhat at odds with Lykaon’s own words that he (or Priam) provided for his release (lum¯en . . . por¯on). Hupekprophug¯on may mean nothing more than that Priam was obligated to respond to E¨etion’s gift before Lykaon could return home without violating the conventions of xenia. Aristonicus [A] reports that Zenodotus read iogastrios for homogastrios on the basis of the analogy with 24.496: fi∞w §k nhdÊow. Both readings may be authentic; the sense is not altered by the variance. Antita was read by some as an tita [A]. Antita is apparently a synchronized form of anti-titos (LfgrE s.v.). Cf. 13.414 and 14.484. On women’s lament as bestowing kleos, see Sultan (1996). On the power of allusion to evoke an entire mythological tradition, see especially Slatkin (1991). Cook (1995) 160. Zeus speaks from the perspective of a future time in which he wants to destroy a city himself. The use of the imperfect tense in reference to Troy adds a touch of pathos: Zeus’ affection for the city is already gone. One of Hera’s two major cult centers in the Dark Ages was the Heraion, located between Argos and Mykenai. Kirk (1985) 209–10, on the strength of recent evidence for continual occupation of Argos (e.g., Whitley [1991 ]), questions the frequently expressed view that Hera’s words allude to the disappearance of Mycenaean palace culture. Dickinson (1994), however, shows that, although the collapse at the end of the Bronze Age was uneven in its effects, over a period that might have covered a generation or more the world of the Third
Notes to pages 176–78
46.
47. 48. 49.
21 3
Palace period effectively disintegrated. Even in individual settlements that survived, like Athens and Argos, there was considerable dislocation in patterns of settlement, burial customs, religious practice, and social structure. In short, even if Argos escaped the major damage suffered by Mykenai and Tiryns at the end of LHIIIB, the disappearance of the Bronze Age palace culture in the Argolid generally would have been no less striking for Homer’s audience. On this, see also Antonaccio (1995), especially 12–13. This scene is preceded by several partial themes dispersed over several hundred lines. The smaller units are thematically connected with one another in a sequence that leads up to the duel between Menelaos and Alexandros, but no one of the small scenes comprises a complete theme. Some of the recurring word groups from themes of the poin¯e type appear, particularly tinesthai (3.28, 351, and 366). The scenes report Menelaos’ intent to ‘get himself paid’ for the damage that Alexandros first inflicted upon him. See 3.21–29, 3.349–54, and 3.364–68. In the same category should be included 2.354–56, where Nestor, in a speech following the trial of the hosts, urges that no one be in a hurry to return home until he has slept with the wife of a Trojan in order to ‘get themselves paid’ (tinesthai) for the ÑEl°nhw ırmÆmatã te stonaxãw te; cf. 2.585 –90. Alexandros had earlier recoiled at the sight of Menelaos (3.30–37), but was shamed into the duel by Hektor. On this, see van Wees (1992) 381 n 27 and 382 n 28. See also the use of (apo)tinein (pay back 3.286, 288–89, and 459), which appears frequently in themes of the poin¯e type.
Abbreviations
AJAH AJPh CB CJ ClAnt CPh CQ CW EMC G&R GRBS Hesiod Fr. (M-W) HSPh ICS JAOS JCS JHS MH REG RHA SMEA SO TAPhA
American Journal of Ancient History American Journal of Classical Philology Classical Bulletin Classical Journal Classical Antiquity Classical Philology Classical Quarterly Classical World Echos du monde classique (= Classical Review) Greece and Rom Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies. Fragmenta Hesiodea (Merkelback and West) Harvard Studies in Classical Philology Illinois Classical Studies Journal of the American Oriental Society Journal of Classical Studies Journal of Hellenic Studies Museum Helveticum Revue des ´etudes grecques Revue Hittite et Asianique Studi Micenei ed Egeo-Anatolici Symbolae Osloenses Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association
215
21 6 WJA WS YClS
Abbreviations W¨urzburger Jahrb¨ucher f¨ur die Altertumswissenschaft Wiener Studien Yale Classical Studies
References
Adkins, A. 1 960a. “Honour and Punishment in the Homeric Poems.” BICS vii:23 –3 2. 1 960b. Merit and Responsibility. Oxford. 1 971 . “Homeric Values and Homeric Society.” JHS 91 :1 –1 4. 1 982. “Values, Goals, and Emotions in the Iliad.” CPh 77.4:292–3 26. Allen, T. 1 924. Homer. The Origins and the Transmission. Oxford. Allen, T. and Monro, D. 1 920. Homeri Opera. 3 rd ed. Oxford. Althusser, L. 1 971 . “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses.” In Lenin and Philosophy. B. Brewster, tr. New York. 1 27–86. Andersen, Ø. 1 976. “Some Thoughts on the Shield of Achilles.” SO 5 1 :5 –1 8. Antonaccio, C. 1 995 . Archaeology of Ancestors. Lanham, MD. Appadurai, A. 1 986. “Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value.” In The Social Life of Things. Commodities in Cultural Perspective. A. Appadurai, ed. Cambridge, England. 3 –63 . Arend, W. 1 93 3 . Die typische Scenen bei Homer. Problemata 7. Berlin. Arieti, J. 1 986. “Achilles’ Alienation in Iliad 9.” CJ 82.1 :1 –27. Arthur, M. 1 982. “Cultural Strategies in Hesiod’s Theogony: Law, Family, Society.” Arethusa 1 5 :63 –82. 1 983 . “The Dream of a World Without Women: Poetics and the Circles of Order in the Theogony Prooemium.” Arethusa 1 6:97–1 1 6. Athanassakis, A. 1 992. “Cattle and Honour in Homer and Hesiod.” Ramus 21 :1 5 6–86. Austin, N. 1 966. “The Function of Digressions in the Iliad.” GRBS 7.4:295 –3 1 2. Bakker, E. 1 988. Linguistics and Formulas in Homer. Amsterdam and Philadelphia. 1 997. “Storytelling in the Future: Truth, Time, and Tense in Homeric Epic.” In Written Voices, Spoken Signs. Tradition, Performance, and the Epic Text. E. Bakker and A. Kahane, eds. Cambridge, MA, and London. 1 1 –3 6. Ballabriga, A. 1 990. “La question hom`erique: pour un r´eouvertur du d´ebat.” REG 1 03 :1 6–29. Bannert, H. 1 981 . “Phoinix’ Jugend und der Zorn des Meleagros.” WS n.f. 1 5 :69–94. 1 988. Formen des Wiederholens bei Homer. Vienna.
217
21 8
References
Beckman, G. 1 996. Hittite Diplomatic Texts. H. Hoffner, Jr., ed. Atlanta. Beidelman, T. 1 989. “Agonistic Exchange: Homeric Reciprocity and the Heritage of Simmel and Mauss.” Cultural Anthropology 4.3 :227–5 9. Belfiore, E. 1 998. “Harming Friends: Problematic Reciprocity in Greek Tragedy.” In Reciprocity in Ancient Greece. C. Gill, N. Postlethwaite, and R. Seaford, eds. Oxford and New York. 1 3 9–5 8. Benveniste, E. 1 973 . Indo-European Language and Society. Tr. E. Palmer. London and Coral Gables, FL. Beye. C. 1 993 . Ancient Epic Poetry. Ithaca and London. Bielman, A. 1 994. Retour a` la Libert´e. Lib´eration et sauvetage des prisonniers en Gr`ece ancienne. Etudes Epigraphiques 1 . Lausanne. Black, H. 1 968. Black’s Law Dictionary. Rev. 4th ed. St. Paul, MN. Blickman, D. 1 987. “The Role of the Plague in the Iliad.” ClAnt 6.1 :1 –1 0. Blundell, M. W. 1 989. Helping Friends and Harming Enemies. A Study in Sophocles and Greek Ethics. Cambridge, England, and New York. Bohannan, P. 1 95 5 . “Some Principles of Exchange and Investment among the Tiv.” AmAn 5 7.1 :60–70. 1 95 9. “The Impact of Money on an African Subsistence Economy.” Journal of Economic History XIX.4:491 –5 03 . Bolling, G. 1 95 0. Iliad Atheniensium: The Athenian Iliad of the Sixth Century B.C. Baltimore. Bourdieu, P. 1 977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. R. Nice, tr. Cambridge, England. 1 986. “The Forms of Capital.” In Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education. J. G. Richardson, ed. New York. 1 42–5 8. 1 990. The Logic of Practice. R. Nice, tr. Stanford. 1 991 . Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge, MA. Bourriott, F. 1 977. Recherches sur la nature du g´enos: Etudes d’histoire sociale Ath´enienne, P´eriodes archaique et classique. Paris. Bowra, C. 1 93 0. Tradition and Design in the Iliad. Oxford. Braswell, B. K. 1 971 . “Mythological Innovation in the Iliad.” CQ n.s. 21 :1 6–26. Buchan, M. 1 999. “Marx’s Aesthetics: Between Gift and Commodity Exchange.” Helios 26.2:1 29–5 0. Burkert, W. 1 985 . Greek Religion. J. Raffan, tr. Cambridge, MA. 1 987. “The Making of Homer in the Sixth Century: Rhapsodes versus Stesichoros.” In Papers on the Amasis Painter and His World. Malibu, CA. 43 –62. Cagni, L. 1 977. The Poem of Erra. Malibu, CA. Carlier, P. 1 984. La Royaut´e en Gr`ece avant Alexander. Strasbourg. Chatman, S. 1 978. Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca. Chirassi Colombo, I. 1 977. “Heros Achilleus – The`os Apollon.” In Il Mito Greco. B. Gentili and G. Paioni, eds. Rome. 23 1 –69. Clark, M. 1 998. “Chryses’ Supplication: Speech Act and Mythological Allusion.” ClAnt 1 7.1 :5 –24. Claus, D. 1 975 . “Aid¯os in the Language of Achilles.” TAPhA 1 05 :1 3 –28. Clay, J. S., 1 983 . The Wrath of Athena: Gods and Men in the Odyssey. Princeton. Coldstream, J. 1 977. Geometric Greece. London. Collins, L. 1 988. Studies in Characterization in the Iliad. Frankfurt.
References
21 9
Cook, E. 1 995 . The Odyssey in Athens. Myths of Cultural Origins. Ithaca, NY, and London. 1 999. “‘Active’ and ‘Passive’ Heroics in the Odyssey.” CW 93 .2:1 49–67. Forthcoming. The Worlds of Odysseus. Austin, TX. Cook, E. and Palaima, T. 2001 . “New Perspectives on Pylian Cults Sacrifice and Society in the Odyssey.” Abstracts of the American Philological Association 1 3 2nd Meeting. San Diego, CA. 1 92. Forthcoming. “Sacrifice and Society in the Odyssey.” Crielaard, J. 1 995 . “Homer, History, and Archaeology. Some Remarks on the Date of the Homeric World.” In Homeric Questions. J. Crielaard, ed. Amsterdam. 201 –88. Crotty, K. 1 994. The Poetics of Supplication. Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. Ithaca, NY, and London. Cunliffe, R. J. 1 963 . A Lexicon of the Homeric Dialect. Norman, OK, and London. Davison. J. 1 963 . “The Homeric Question.” In Companion to Homer. A. Wace and F. Stubbings, eds. New York. 23 4–65 . Dawe, R. D. 1 968. “Some Reflections on Ate and Hamartia.” HSPh 72:89–1 23 . Detienne, M. 1 973 . Les Maˆıtres de v´erit´e dans la Gr`ece archa¨ıque. 2nd ed. Paris. Detienne, M. and Vernant, J-P. 1 978. Cunning Intelligence in Greek Culture and Society. J. Loyd, tr. Sussex and Atlantic Highlands, NJ. Dickinson, O. 1 994. The Aegean Bronze Age. Cambridge, England, and New York. Dickson, K. 1 992. “Kalkhas and Nestor: Two Narrative Strategies in Iliad 1 .” Arethusa 24.3 :3 27–5 8. Dodds, E. R. 1 95 1 . The Greeks and the Irrational. Berkeley and Los Angeles. Chapter 1 repr. as “Agamemnon’s Apology.” In H. Bloom, Homer’s The Iliad. 1 987. New York, New Haven, Philadelphia. 1 1 –23 . 1 95 4. “Homer.” In Fifty Years of Classical Scholarship. Oxford. 1 –1 7. Reprinted in The Language and Background of Homer. G. S. Kirk, ed. Cambridge, England. 1 964. 3 1 –3 5 . Donlan W. 1 981 . “Scale, Value and Functionalism in the Homeric Economy.” AJAH 6.2:1 01 –1 7. 1 982a. “Reciprocities in Homer.” CW 75 .3 :1 3 7–75 . 1 982b. “The Politics of Generosity in Homer.” Helios n.s. 9.2:1 –1 5 . 1 985 . “The Social Groups of Dark Age Greece.” CPh 80:293 –3 08. 1 989. “The Unequal Exchange between Glaucus and Diomedes in Light of the Homeric Gift-Economy.” Phoenix 43 .1 :1 –1 5 . 1 993 . “Duelling with Gifts in the Iliad: As the Audience Saw It.” ColbyQ 29.3 :1 5 5 –72. 1 998. “Political Reciprocity in Dark Age Greece: Odysseus and His hetairoi.” In Reciprocity in Ancient Greece. C. Gill, N. Postlethwaite, and R. Seaford, eds. Oxford and New York. 5 1 –71 . Dougherty, C. and Kurke, L., eds. 1 993 . Cultural Poetics in Archaic Greece: Cult, Performance, Politics. New York. ´ Duhoux, Y. 1 976. Aspects du Vocabulaire Economique Myc´enien. Amsterdam. Dum´ezil, G. 1 95 6. Aspects de la fonction guerri`ere chez les indo-europ´eens. Paris. Edwards, M. 1 975 . “Type-scenes and Homeric Hospitality.” TAPhA 1 05 :5 1 –72. 1 980. “Convention and Individuality in Iliad I.” HSPh 84:1 –28. 1 986. “Homer and the Oral Tradition: The Formula. Pt. 1 .” Oral Tradition 1 :1 71 –23 0.
220
References
1 987. Homer: Poet of the Iliad. Baltimore. 1 988. “Homer and Oral Tradition: The Formula. Pt. 2.” Oral Tradition 3 :1 1 –60. 1 991 . The Iliad: A Commentary. Vol.. V, Books 1 7–20. G. S. Kirk, ed. Cambridge, England. 1 992. “Homer and Oral Tradition: The Type Scene.” Oral Tradition 7.2:284–3 3 0. 1 996. “Homeric Style and Oral Poetics.” In A New Companion to Homer. I. Morris and B. Powell, eds. Leiden, New York, and Cologne. 260–83 . Eicholz, D. 1 95 3 . “Propitiation of Achilles.” AJPh 75 :1 3 7–48. Eliade, M. 1 971 . Zalmoxis. The Vanishing God. Chicago. Ernout, A. and Meillet, A. 1 95 9. Dictionnaire ´etymologique de la langue latine: Histoire des mots. 4th ed. Paris. Fenik, B. 1 968. Typical Battle Scenes in the Iliad. Studies in the Narrative Techniques of Homeric Battle Description. Hermes Einzelschriften 21 . Wiesbaden. 1 986. Homer and the Nibelungenlied. Comparative Studies in Epic Style. Cambridge, MA, and London. Ferguson, J. 1 988. “Cultural Exchange: New Developments in the Anthropology of Commodities.” Cultural Anthropology 3 .4:488–5 1 3 . 1 992. “Cultural Topography of Wealth.” AmAn 94.1 :5 5 –73 . Finley, M. 1 979. The World of Odysseus. Second rev. ed. London and New York. Finnegan, R. 1 977. Oral Poetry: Its Nature, Significance and Social Context. Cambridge, England. Fisher, N. 1 992. Hybris: A Study of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greece. Warminster, England. Flaig, E. 1 993 . “Die spartanische Abstimmung nach der Lautst¨arke.” Historia 42: 1 3 9–60. 1 994. “Das Konsensprinzip im homerischen Olymp.” Hermes 1 22:1 3 –3 1 . Floyd, E. 1 980. “Kleos Aphthiton: An Indo-European Perspective on Early Greek Poetry.” Glotta 5 7:1 3 3 –5 7. Foley, J. 1 988. The Theory of Oral Composition. Bloomington. 1 996. “Oral Tradition and Its Implications.” In A New Companion to Homer. I. Morris and B. Powell, eds. Leiden, New York, and Cologne. 1 46–73 . Ford, A. 1 997. “The Inland Ship: Problems in the Performance and Reception of Homeric Epic.” In Written Voices, Spoken Signs. Tradition, Performance, and the Epic Text. E. Bakker and A. Kahane, eds. Cambridge, MA. and London. 83 –1 09. Gagarin, M. 1 986. Early Greek Law. Berkeley. Gentili, B. 1 988. Poetry and Its Public in Ancient Greece. A. T. Cole, tr. Baltimore. Giddens, A. 1 979. Central Problems in Social Theory. Action, Structure and Contradiction in Social Analysis. Berkeley. Goldhill, S. 1 990. “Supplication and Authorial Comment in the Iliad: Iliad Z 61 –2.” Hermes 1 1 8.3 :3 73 –76. Gordesiani, R. 1 980. “Zur Interpretation der Duale im 9. Buch der Ilias.” Philologus 1 24:1 63 –74. Gould, J. 1 973 . “Hiketia.” JHS 93 :74–1 03 . Gouldner, A. 1 960. “The Norm of Reciprocity: A Preliminary Statement.” Am Soc Rev 25 :1 61 –78.
References
221
Griffin, J. 1 986. “Homeric Words and Speakers.” JHS 1 06:3 6–5 7. 1 995 . Homer Iliad IX. Oxford. Griffith, M. 1 995 . “Brilliant Dynasts: Power and Politics in the Oresteia.” ClAnt 1 4.1 :62–1 29. Grube, G. 1 95 2. “The Gods of Homer.” In Studies in Honor of Gilbert Norwood. M. White, ed. Toronto. 3 –1 9. Hainsworth, B. 1 993 . The Iliad: A Commentary. Vol. III, Books 9–1 2. G. S. Kirk, ed. Cambridge, England. Hammer, D. 1 997. “Achilles as Vagabond: The Culture of Autonomy in the Iliad.” CW 90.5 :3 41 –66. Haubold, J. 2000. Homer’s People. Epic Poetry and Social Formation. Cambridge, England and New York. Heiden, B. 1 991 . “Shifting Contexts in the Iliad.” Eranos 89:1 –1 2. Herman, G. 1 987. Ritualised Friendship in the Greek City State. Cambridge, England and New York. 1 998. “Reciprocity, Altruism, and the Prisoner’s Dilemma: The Special Case of Classical Athens.” In Reciprocity in Ancient Greece. C. Gill, N. Postlethwaite, and R. Seaford, eds. Oxford and New York. 1 99–225 . Heubeck, A. 1 943 . “Das Meleagros-Paradeigma in der Ilias (I.5 29–5 99).” Antike, Alte Sprachen und deutsche Bildung 1 . A. Heubeck, ed. (= Neue Jahrb¨ucher 1 1 8): 1 3 –20. 1 974. Die homerische Frage: Ein Bericht u¨ ber die Forschung der letzten Jahrzehnte. Darmstadt. Hoekstra, A. 1 965 . Homeric Modifications of Formulaic Prototypes. Studies in the Development of Greek Epic Diction. Amsterdam and London. Howald, E. 1 946. Der Dichter der Ilias. Z¨urich. Hubbard, T. 1 992. “Nature and Art in the Shield of Achilles.” Arion 2.1 :1 6–41 . Hutton, W. 1 990–91 . “The Meaning of qe-te-o in Linear B.” Minos n.s. 25 –26:1 05 – 31. Janko, R. 1 992. The Iliad: A Commentary. Vol. IV, Books 1 3 –1 6. G. S. Kirk, ed. Cambridge, England. 1 998. “The Homeric Poems as Oral Dictated Texts.” CQ 48:1 –1 3 . Jebb, R. 1 887. Homer: An Introduction. Port Washington, NY. Jensen, M. 1 980. The Homeric Question and the Oral-Formulaic Theory. Copenhagen. Jong, I. de 1 985 “Iliad I.3 66–3 92: A Mirror Story.” Arethusa 1 8:5 –22. 1 987. Narrators and Focalizers. The Presentation of the Story in the Iliad. 2nd ed. Amsterdam. Kahane, A. 1 994, The Interpretation of Order. A Study in the Poetics of Homeric Repetition. Oxford. Kakridis, J. Th. 1 949. Homeric Researches. Lund. 1 971 . Homer Revisited. Lund. Killen, J. T. 1 992. “Observations on the Thebes Sealings.” Mykena¨ıka. Supplement XXV. J-P. Olivier, ed. 3 78–80. Kirk, G. 1 985 . The Iliad: A Commentary. Vol. I, Books 1 –4. G. S. Kirk, ed. Cambridge, England. 1 993 . The Iliad: A Commentary. Vol. II, Books 5 –8. G. S. Kirk, ed. Cambridge, England.
222
References
K¨ohnken, A. 1 975 . “Die Rolle des Phoinix und die Duale im I der Ilias.” Glotta 5 3 :25 –3 6. Kullmann, W. 1 984. “Oral Poetry Theory and Neoanalysis in Homeric Research.” GRBS 25 :3 07–23 . Lateiner, D. 1 995 . Sardonic Smile: Non-Verbal Behavior in Homeric Epic. Ann Arbor, MI. Lattimore, R. 1 95 1 . The Iliad of Homer. Chicago. Leaf, W. 1 887. “The Trial Scene in Iliad 1 8.” JHS 8:1 22–3 2. 1 900. The Iliad, Vol. I London and New York. Lesky, A. 1 961 . G¨ottliche und menschliche Motivierung. Heidelberg. 1 967. Homeros. Stuttgart. Liverani, M. 1 990. Prestige and Interest. International Relations in the Near East ca. 1 600–1 1 00 B.C. Padova. Lloyd-Jones, H. 1 983 . The Justice of Zeus. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London. Lohmann, D. 1 970. Die Komposition der Reden in der Ilias. Berlin. Long, A 1 970. “Morals and Values in Homer.” JHS 9:1 21 –3 9. Lord, A. 1 960. Singer of Tales. Cambridge, MA, and London. Lowenstam, S. 1 993 . The Scepter and the Spear: Studies on Forms of Repetition in the Homeric Poems. Lanham, MD. Lynn-George, M. 1 988. Epos: Word, Narrative and the Iliad. London. MacDowell, D. 1 978. The Law in Classical Athens. Ithaca, NY. Machinist, P. 1 983 . “Rest and Violence in the Poem of Erra.” JAOS 1 03 .1 :221 –26. Mackenzie, M. M. 1 978. “The Tears of Chryses: Retaliation in the Iliad.” P&L 2.1 : 3 –22. 1 981 . Plato on Punishment. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London. Macleod, C. 1 982. Homer. Iliad XXIV. Cambridge, England and New York. Martin, R. 1 989. The Language of Heroes: Speech and Performance in the Iliad. Ithaca and New York. 1 993 . “Telemachus and the Last Hero Song.” ColbyQ 29.3 :222–240. Martinez, D. 1 995 . “May She Neither Eat Nor Drink: Love Magic and Vows of Abstinence.” In Ancient Magic and Ritual Power. M. Meyer and P. Mirecki, eds. Leiden. 3 3 5 –5 9. Mayer, K. 1 996. “Helen and the DIOS BOULH.” AJPh 1 1 7.1 :1 –1 5 . Mazarakis, A. 1 987. “Geometric Eretria.” AK 3 0:3 –24. 1 988. “Early Greek Temples: Their Origin and Function.” In Early Greek Cult Practice. Proceedings of the Fifth International Symposium at the Swedish Institute in Athens, June 26–29, 1 986. R. H¨agg, ed. 1 05 –1 9. Mazon, P. 1 95 9. Introduction a` l’Iliade. In collaboration with P. Chantraine, P. Collart, and R. Langumier. Paris. 1 961 . Hom`ere Iliade. Vols. I–IV. Paris. Millett, P. 1 998. “The Rhetoric of Reciprocity in Classical Athens.” In Reciprocity in Ancient Greece. C. Gill, N. Postlethwaite, and R. Seaford, eds. Oxford and New York. 227–5 3 . Missiou, A. 1 998. “Reciprocal Generosity in the Foreign Affairs of Fifth-Century Athens and Sparta.” In Reciprocity in Ancient Greece. C. Gill, N. Postlethwaite, and R. Seaford, eds. Oxford and New York. 81 –97.
References
223
Morris, I. 1 986a. “Gift and Commodity in Archaic Greece.” Man n.s. 21 :1 –1 7. 1 986b. “Use and Abuse of Homer.” ClAnt 5 :81 –1 3 8. 1 996. “Homer and the Iron Age.” In A New Companion to Homer. I. Morris and B. Powell, eds. Leiden, New York, and Cologne. 5 3 5 –5 9. Motzkus, D. 1 964. Untersuchungen zum 9. Buch der Ilias. Hamburg. Moulton, C. 1 977. Similes in the Homeric Poems. G¨ottingen. Muellner, L. 1 976. The Meaning of Homeric EYXOMAI Through Its Formulas. Innsbruck. 1 996. The Anger of Achilleus: M¯enis in Greek Epic. Ithaca, NY. Murray, G. 1 907. The Rise of Greek Epic. Oxford. Nagler, M. 1 967. “Towards a Generative View of the Oral Formula.” TAPhA 98: 269–3 07. 1 974. Spontaneity and Tradition: A Study in the Oral Art of Homer. Berkeley and Los Angeles. 1 988. “Toward a Semantics of Ancient Conflict: Eris in the Iliad.” CW 82.2:81 – 90. Nagy, G. 1 979. Best of the Achaeans. Baltimore. 1 980. “An Evolutionary Model for the Text Fixation of the Homeric Epos.” In Oral Tradition Literature: A Festschrift for Albert Bates Lord. J. M. Foley, ed. Columbus, OH. 3 90–93 . 1 981 . “Another Look at Kleos Aphthiton.” WJA 7nf:1 1 3 –1 6. 1 989. “Early Greek Views of Poets and Poetry.” In Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, vol. 1 , Classical Criticism. G. Kennedy, ed. Cambridge, England. 1 –77. 1 990a. Greek Mythology and Poetics. Ithaca, NY. 1 990b. Pindar’s Homer. The Lyric Possession of an Epic Past. Baltimore. 1 996a. Homeric Questions. Austin, TX. 1 996b. Poetry as Performance. Homer and Beyond. Cambridge, England. 1 997. “The Shield of Achilles.” In New Light on a Dark Age. Exploring the Culture of Geometric Greece. S. Langdon, ed. Columbia, MO, and London. 1 94–207. Nimis, S. 1 986. “The Language of Achilles: Construction vs. Representation.” CW 79:21 7–25 . Ormand, K. 1 999. Exchange and the Maiden: Marriage in Sophoclean Tragedy. Austin, TX. Osborne, R. 1 996. Greece in the Making, 1 200–479 B.C. London and New York. Owen, E. T. 1 946. The Story of the Iliad, As Told in the Iliad. Toronto. Page, D. 1 963 . History and the Homeric Iliad. Berkeley. Palaima, T. 1 995 . “The Nature of the Mycenaean Wanax: Non-Indo-European Origins and Priestly Functions.” In The Role of the Ruler in the Prehistoric Aegean. P. Rehak, ed. Li`ege, Belgium. 1 1 9–3 9. Palmer, L. 1 963 . “The Language of Homer.” In A Companion to Homer. J. B. Wace and Fr. H. Stubbings, eds. New York. 75 –1 78. Parry, A. 1 95 6. “The language of Achilles.” TAPhA 87:1 –7. 1 971 . The Making of Homeric Verse. The Collected Papers of Milman Parry. Oxford. Patzek, B. 1 992. Homer und Mykene. M¨undliche Dichtung und Geschichtsschreibung. Munich. Pedrick, V. 1 982. “Supplication in the Iliad and the Odyssey.” TAPhA 1 1 2:1 25 –40. Pelliccia, H. 1 995 . Mind, Body, and Speech in Homer and Pindar. G¨ottingen.
224
References
Pestalozzi, H. 1 945 . Die Achilleis als Quelle der Ilias. Erlenbach and Z¨urich. Postlethwaite, N. 1 998. “Akhilleus and Agamemnon: Generalized Reciprocity.” In Reciprocity in Ancient Greece. C. Gill, N. Postlethwaite, and R. Seaford, edd. Oxford and New York. 93 –1 04. Pucci, P. 1 987. Odysseus Polutropos: Intertextual Readings in the Odyssey and the Iliad. Ithaca, NY. Raaflaub, K. 1 991 . “Homer und die Geschichte des 8. Jahrhunderts v. Chr.” In Zweihundert Jahre Homer-Forschung: R¨uckblick und Ausblick. J. Latacz, ed. Stuttgart. 205 –5 6. 1 996. “Homeric Society.” In A New Companion to Homer. I. Morris and B. Powell, eds. Leiden, New York, and Cologne. 624–48. 1 997. “Politics and Interstate Relations in the World of the Early Greek Poleis: Homer and Beyond.” Antichthon 3 1 :1 –27. 1 998a. “Homer, Political Thought, and the Discovery of Civic Responsibility.” In The Iliad, the Odyssey and the Real World. Proceedings of a seminar sponsored by the Society for the Preservation of the Greek Heritage, March 6–7. D. Boedeker, ed. Washington, DC. 97–1 20. 1 998b. “A Historian’s Headache: How to Read ‘Homeric society’?” In Archaic Greece: New Approaches and New Evidence. N. Fisher and H. van Wees, eds. London and Oakville, CT. Rabel, R. 1 988. “Chryses and the Opening of the Iliad.” AJPh 1 09:473 –81 . 1 990. “Apollo as Model for Achilles in the Iliad.” AJhP 1 1 1 .4:429–40. 1 997. Plot and Point of View in the Iliad. Ann Arbor, MI. Reden, S. von 1 995 . Exchange in Ancient Greece. London. Redfield, J. 1 994, Nature and Culture in the Iliad. 2nd ed. Durham, NC. Reeve, M. 1 972. “Two Notes on Iliad 9.” CQ 22:1 –4. 1 973 . “The Language of Achilles.” CQ 23 :1 93 –95 . Reinhardt, K. 1 961 . Die Ilias und ihr Dichter. G¨ottingen. Richardson, N. 1 993 . The Iliad: A Commentary. Vol. VI, Books 21 –24. G. S. Kirk, ed. Cambridge, England. Richardson, S. 1 990. The Homeric Narrator. Nashville, TN. Robbins, E. 1 990. “Achilles to Thetis: Iliad I.3 65 –42.” EMC XXXIV n.s. 9:1 –1 5 . Rosner, J. 1 976. “The Speech of Phoenix: Iliad 9:43 4–605 .” Phoenix 3 0:3 1 4–27. Roth, M. 1 987. “Homicide in the Neo-Assyrian Period.” In Language, Literature, and History: Philological and Historical Studies Presented to Erica Reiner. F. Rochberg-Halton, ed. New Haven. 3 5 1 –65 . 1 995 . Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor. Atlanta. Roussel, D. 1 976. Tribu et cit´e: Etudes sur les groupes sociaux dans les cit´es grecques aux ´epoques archaique et classique. Paris. Russo, J. 1 963 . “A Closer Look at Homeric Formulas.” TAPhA 94:23 5 –47. 1 966. “Structural Formula in Homeric Verse.” YClS 20:21 7–40. 1 976. “Is ‘Oral’ or ‘Aural’ Composition the Cause of Homer’s Formulaic Style?” In Oral Literature and the Formula. B. Stolz and R. Shannon III, eds. Ann Arbor, MI. 3 1 –5 4. Sahlins, M. 1 972. Stone Age Economics. Chicago.
References
225
Sale, W. 1 963 . “Achilles and Heroic Values.” Arion 2:86–1 00. Schadewaldt, W. 1 966. Illiasstudien. Darmstadt. Schein, S. 1 980. “On Achilles’ Speech to Odysseus, Iliad 9.3 09–429.” Eranos 78:1 25 – 31. Schlunk, R. 1 976. “The Theme of the Suppliant Exile in the Iliad.” AJPh 97:1 99– 207. Scodel, R. 1 982. “The Autobiography of Phoenix Il. 9.444–95 .” AJPh 1 03 :1 28–3 6. Scott, J. 1 921 . The Unity of Homer. Berkeley. Scully, S. 1 984. “The Language of Achilles.” TAPhA 1 1 4:1 1 –27. 1 990. Homer and the Sacred City. Ithaca, NY, and London. Seaford, R. 1 994. Reciprocity and Ritual: Homer and Tragedy in the Developing City State. Oxford. 1 998. “Introduction.” In Reciprocity in Ancient Greece. C. Gill, N. Postlethwaite, and R. Seaford, eds. Oxford and New York. 1 –1 1 . 2000. “The Social Function of Attic Tragedy: A Response to Jasper Griffin.” CQ 5 0.1 :3 0–44. Sealey, J. R. 1 95 7. “From Phemius to Ion.” REG 70:3 1 2–5 5 . Sedgwick, E. 1 985 . Between Men. English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. New York. Segal, C. 1 968. “The Embassy and the Duals of Iliad 9.1 82–89.” GRBS 9:1 01 –1 4. 1 971 a. “Nestor and the Honor of Achilles (Iliad 1 .247–84).” SMEA 1 3 :90–1 05 . 1 971 b. The Theme of the Mutilation of the Corpse in the Iliad. Mnemosyne Supp. 1 7. Leiden. Shay, J. 1 994. Achilles in Vietnam. Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character. New York. Sheppard, J. 1 922. The Pattern of the Iliad. Reprinted 1 966. New York. Sherratt, E. 1 990. “‘Reading the Texts.’ Archaeology and the Homeric Question.” Antiquity 64:807–24. Sihler, A. 1 995 . New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin. New York and Oxford. Sinos, D. 1 975 . The Entry of Achilles into Greek Epic. Ph.D. dissertation. Johns Hopkins University. Slatkin, L. 1 991 . The Wrath of Thetis: Allusion and Interpretation in the Iliad. Berkeley. Snodgrass, A. 1 974. “An Historical Homeric Society?” JHS 94:1 1 4–25 . 1 980. Archaic Greece. The Age of Experiment. London. 1 987. An Archaeology of Greece: The Present State and Future Scope of a Discipline. Berkeley and Los Angeles. Stallmach, J. 1 968. Ate: Zur Frage des Selbst- und Weltverst¨andnisses des fr¨uhgriechischen Menschen. Beitr¨age zur klassischen Philologie, 1 8. Meisenheim am Glan. Stanley, K. 1 993 . The Shield of Homer. Narrative Structure in the Iliad. Princeton, NJ. Sultan, N. 1 996. “Death and the Matrons: Managing the Hero’s kleos.” Unpublished paper. Taplin, O. 1 990. “Agamemnon’s Role in the Iliad.” In Characterization and Individuality in Greek Literature. C. Pelling, ed. Oxford. 60–82 1 992. Homeric Soundings. Oxford. Tarkow, T. 1 982. “Achilles’ Response to the Embassy.” CB 5 8:29–3 4. Thalmann, W. 1 998. The Swineherd and the Bow. Ithaca, NY, and London. Thiel, H. van 1 996. Homeri Ilias. Hildesheim.
226
References
Thornton, A. 1 978. “Once Again, the Duals in Book 9 of the Iliad.” Glotta 5 6:1 –4. 1 984. Homer’s Iliad: Its Composition and the Motif of Supplication. G¨ottingen. Traill, D. 1 989. “Gold Armor for Bronze and Homer’s Use of Compensatory TIMH.” CPh 84.4:3 01 –5 . Tsagarakis, O. 1 971 . “The Achaean Embassy and the Wrath of Achilles.” Hermes 90.3 :25 4–77. Turner, F. 1 996. “The Homeric Question.” In A New Companion to Homer. I. Morris and B. Powell, eds. Leiden, New York, and Cologne. 1 23 –45 . Ulf, C. 1 990. Die homerische Gesellschaft. Munich. Van Brock, N., 1 95 9. “Substitution rituelle.” RHA 65 :1 1 7–46. Van der Valk, M. 1 963 –64. Researches on the Text and Scholia of the Iliad I–II. Leiden. Vatin, C. 1 982. “Poin`e, Tim`e, Thoi`e dans le Droit hom´erique.” Ktema 7:275 –80. Vernant, J-P. 1 989. “At Man’s Table: Hesiod’s Foundation Myth of Sacrifice.” In The Cuisine of Sacrifice Among the Greeks. M. Detienne and J-P. Vernant, eds. P. Wissing, tr. Chicago. 21 –86. Vian, F. 1 968. “La Fonction Guerri`ere dans la Mythologie Grecque.” In Probl´emes de la guerre en Gr`ece ancienne. J-P. Vernant, ed. Paris. Watkins, C. 1 977. “A propos de m∞niw.” BSL 7:1 87–209. Wees, H. van 1 988. “Kings in Combat: Battles and Heroes in the Iliad.” CQ n.s. 3 8:1 –24. 1 992. Status Warriors. War, Violence, and Society in Homer and History. Amsterdam. 1 994. “The Homeric Way of War.” G&R 43 :1 –1 8. 1 995 . “Princes at Dinner: Social Events and Social Structure in Homer.” In Homeric Questions. J. Crielaard, ed. Amsterdam. 1 47–82. 1 996. “Homeric Warfare.” In A New Companion to Homer. I. Morris and B. Powell, eds. Leiden, New York, and Cologne. 668–93 . 1 998. “The Law of Gratitude: Reciprocity in Anthropological Theory.” In Reciprocity in Ancient Greece. C. Gill, N. Postlethwaite, and R. Seaford, eds. Oxford and New York. 1 3 –49. Weiner, A. 1 992. Inalienable Possession. The Paradox of Keeping-While Giving. Berkeley. West, M. 1 988. “The Rise of the Greek Epic.” JHS 1 0:1 5 1 –72. 1 995 . “The Date of the Iliad.” MH 5 2:3 03 –1 9. West, S. 1 988. “The Transmission of the Text.” In A Commentary on Homer’s Odyssey: Introduction and Books i–vii. A. Heubeck, S. West, and J. B. Hainsworth, ed. Oxford. 3 3 –48. Westbrook, R. 1 992. “The Trial Scene in the Iliad.” HSPh 9:5 3 –76. Whitley, J. 1 991 . “Social Diversity in Dark Age Greece.” BSA 86:3 41 –65 . Whitman, C. 1 95 8. Homer and the Heroic Tradition. Cambridge, MA. Wilamowitz-M¨ollendorff, U. von. 1 884. Homerische Untersuchungen. Philologische Untersuchungen 7. Berlin. 1 920. Die Ilias und Homer. Berlin. Willcock, M. 1 964. “Mythological Paradeigma in the Iliad.” CQ 5 8 ns 1 4.2:1 41 –5 4. 1 996. “Neoanalysis.” In A New Companion to Homer. I. Morris and B. Powell, eds. Leiden, New York, and Cologne. 1 74–89. Williams, R. 1 977. Marxism and Literature. Oxford.
References
227
Wilson, C. 1 996. Iliad Books VIII and IX. Warminster, England. Wyatt, W. F., Jr. 1 982. “Homeric ÖATH.” AJPh 1 03 .3 :247–76. 1 985 . “The Embassy and the Duals in Iliad 9.” AJPh 1 06:3 99–408. Yamagata, N. 1 990. “A‡sima pareip≈n. A Moral Judgement by the Poet?” La Parola del Passato XLV:420–3 0. 1 991 . “Phoinix’s Speech – Is Achilles Punished?” CQ 41 :1 –1 5 .
Index of Homeric Passages
Line numbers are given in boldface type.
Iliad Book 1 8: 54; 11: 61, 65, 74; 12–21: 41; 12–32: 68; 13: 206 n5; 15: 42; 20: 206 n5; 21: 130; 23: 206 n5; 23–28: 207 n69; 26–27: 43; 29: 42; 32–33: 42; 33: 68; 34: 65; 40–41: 68; 42: 44, 65; 55–56: 48; 67: 65; 76–77: 194 n20; 78–79: 194 n20; 85–91: 48; 88–89: 194 n20; 90–91: 194 n20; 92: 47; 93: 74; 93–95: 47; 94: 61, 65; 95: 48, 206 n5; 96–97: 48; 97: 65; 97–98: 92; 99: 25; 109–15: 49; 111: 206 n5; 116: 55; 116–20: 51; 119: 52, 55; 122: 195 n9; 126: 53, 55; 127–29: 56, 60, 198 n26, 199 n30; 131–34: 57; 137–38: 57; 141: 57; 141–47: 55; 146: 195 n9; 149: 195 n9; 149–71: 58; 158–59: 120; 159: 195 n9; 163–71: 59; 171: 113; 173–75: 59; 175: 103; 176: 195 n9; 176–78: 59; 183–87: 60; 186–87: 58; 189: 60; 210–13: 60; 211: 195 n8; 214: 60; 223: 195 n8; 226–30: 61; 231: 61, 195 n9; 232: 61; 239–41: 72; 240–44: 62; 244: 61; 259: 80; 275–84: 62; 277–79:19, 195 n6; 281: 36; 287–88: 63; 291: 195 n8; 295–99: 64; 304: 195 n8; 341: 65, 112; 350: 65; 351: 65; 352–56: 66; 354–56: 67; 357: 65; 358: 68;
362–63: 114; 365–92: 68; 372: 206 n5; 372–79: 68; 377: 206 n5; 380: 68; 380–81: 74; 381: 68; 386–92: 69; 394: 69; 394–406: 69; 394–412: 69; 404: 69; 411–12: 76; 451–56: 203 n7; 454: 45; 472–74: 69; 500–10: 70; 505: 70; 516: 70; 528–30: 70; 570: 68; 571: 68; 573: 68; 581: 68 Book 2 100–8: 36; 225–40: 194 n10; 229: 189 n40; 229–30: 22; 229–31: 148, 179, 180, 189 n37, 190 n55, 191 n84, 192 n88, 192 n89, 193 n107, 194 n8; 230: 207 n58; 354–56: 312 n46; 356: 189 n44; 370–80: 72, 197 n2; 449: 187 n14; 585–90: 213 n46; 590: 189 n44 Book 3 21–29: 213 n46; 28: 189 n44, 213 n46; 30–37: 213 n47; 64–68: 213 n46; 97–110: 176; 174: 210 n10; 250–58: 176; 276–91: 176–77; 285: 91, 189 n46; 286: 189 n46; 286–89: 213 n49; 290: 178; 349–54: 213 n46; 351: 164, 189 n44, 213 n46; 366: 164, 189 n44, 213 n46; 455–61: 177; 459: 189 n44, 189 n46, 213 n49
229
230 Book 4 24–56: 29, 32, 174; 25–29: 175; 31–36: 175; 39–44: 176; 46: 176; 51–56: 176 Book 5 265–67: 23, 27, 28, 153, 179, 180, 189 n46, 190 n55, 191 n76, 192 n91, 196 n46; 576–79: 155 Book 6 45–65: 27, 28, 165–66, 179, 180, 187 n14, 190 n55, 191 n70, 191 n77, 192 n87, 192 n92, 192 n97; 46: 22, 189 n42, 207 n58; 47: 189 n41; 49: 22, 89 n40, 207 n58; 50: 189 n42; 61–62: 34; 62: 166–67; 232–36: 190 n54; 234: 187 n14, 189 n37; 414–19: 207 n65; 425–28: 26, 148–49, 179, 180, 189 n37, 190 n58, 191 n75, 191 n82, 192 n89; 427: 22, 207 n58; 428: 18 Book 7 120–21: 167 Book 8 69–73: 71; 470–83: 75, 114; 485–88: 71 Book 9 14–55: 79; 17–28: 95; 18–28: 72; 32–49: 73; 56: 73; 70: 73; 90: 73; 96–99: 73; 106–13: 73; 110: 75; 111: 48; 113: 74; 115–18: 75; 118: 75, 80; 119–21: 75–76; 120: 6, 207 n57; 142: 199 n31; 149–56: 84; 157–61: 80; 164: 81; 165–72: 81; 179–81: 81; 189: 101; 198: 83; 225–306: 84–85; 312–13: 85; 314–34: 86; 335: 86; 335–400: 89; 335–44: 87; 337: 98; 368: 86; 375: 86; 378: 6; 378–85: 122; 378–87: 90, 92; 379: 200 n61; 386–87: 121; 387: 91, 92; 410–16: 79, 94–95, 201 n71; 413: 138; 417–20: 95; 434–47: 97; 434–605: 96–97; 448–49: 97; 454: 191 n65; 458–61: 201 n77; 481–82: 98; 485–95: 97; 497–501: 99; 501–9: 94; 515: 6; 515–23: 100; 529–99: 101; 571: 191 n65; 600–5: 102; 607: 102; 608: 102; 612–16: 103; 625: 104; 628–42: 104; 629: 108, 126; 632–36: 30, 104–5; 633: 6, 155; 636: 6; 636–38: 105; 637–38: 196 n33; 639–40:
Index of Homeric Passages 106; 640–42: 106; 645: 106; 647: 107; 648: 93, 107; 677–83: 108; 679: 1 Book 10 374–81 and 454–57: 151–52, 179, 180, 189 n37, 190 n55, 191 n70, 192 n87; 378: 23, 189 n41, 189 n42; 379: 189 n40; 380: 207 n58; 381: 189 n42 Book 11 101–12: 150–51, 179, 180, 189 n37, 190 n55, 190 n56, 191 n60, 191 n75, 191 n82, 192 n93; 106: 22, 207 n58; 122–47: 17, 24, 92, 168–69, 179, 180, 187 n14, 189 n37, 189 n46, 190 n55, 190 n56, 191 n70, 191 n77, 191 n87, 192 n92, 192 n97; 131: 22, 189 n42, 207 n58; 132: 189 n41; 133: 189 n40; 134: 22, 207 n58; 135: 189 n42; 137: 120; 609–10: 2, 111; 696–705: 27, 153–54, 179, 180, 191 n81; 794–95: 111 Book 12 334: 210 n12, 210 n15 Book 13 105–14: 194 n10; 113–18: 190 n55; 198–202: 207 n69; 363–82: 199 n31; 410–16: 24, 154, 179, 180, 189 n46, 191 n64, 191 n79, 192 n92; 414: 27, 212 n40; 445–47: 155, 179, 180, 191 n64, 191 n79, 192 n92; 516: 158; 643–44: 155–56; 656–59: 23, 30, 155, 179, 180, 189 n46, 190 n55, 192 n92; 657–58: 210 n6 Book 14 49–51: 194 n10; 469–74: 155, 156, 179, 180, 191 n64, 191 n79, 192 n92; 478–85: 24, 27, 156–57, 179, 180, 189 n46, 190 n56, 191 n64, 191 n77, 192 n92, 204 n16; 484: 210 n11; 485: 212 n40 Book 15 49–77: 114; 59–77: 203 n3; 113–18: 24, 158, 179, 180, 189 n46, 191 n65, 191 n76, 192 n92; 158–219: 195 n5; 204: 191 n65; 350: 210 n10; 596–99: 114 Book 16 36–37: 111; 38–45: 111; 52–54: 111; 57: 210 n2; 59: 93; 61: 203 n6; 69–71: 2;
Index of Homeric Passages 78: 189 n39; 80: 12; 83–86: 2, 112; 86: 6; 97–100: 113; 233–48: 113; 394–98: 23, 158–59, 179, 180, 189 n46, 191 n64, 191 n79, 192 n92; 431–61: 203 n3; 512: 210 n12, 210 n15; 677–83: 152; 698–704: 114; 705–11: 114; 786: 114 Book 17 34–42, 50: 24, 159, 179, 180, 189 n46, 190 n56, 191 n64, 191 n77, 192 n92; 35: 210 n10; 161–64: 207 n69; 162–63: 23; 198–208: 23, 28, 114, 162–63, 179, 180, 187 n19, 189 n46, 191 n63, 191 n80, 192 n91, 196 n46 Book 18 73–74: 114; 83–85: 112; 83–90: 113; 90: 115; 92–93: 115; 100: 114, 204 n16, 210 n11; 101: 115; 105–12: 115; 114–26: 115–16; 213: 210 n11; 483–608: 210 n16; 497–508: 17, 24, 28, 94, 159–60, 179, 180, 189 n46, 191 n60, 191 n64, 191 n78, 192 n91; 498–99: 91 Book 19 26–33: 161; 56–62: 88; 59–63: 116; 65–73: 116; 68–70: 116; 77: 205 n24; 85–86: 117; 95–133: 117; 134–35: 117; 137–38: 118; 138: 207 n57; 147–49: 119; 171–74: 119; 179–80: 119; 188–91: 118; 199–202: 119; 259: 191 n65; 270–75: 120; 418: 191 n65 Book 20 258: 189 n39 Book 21 26–33: 24, 120, 179, 180, 191 n64, 191 n79, 192 n92; 34–135: 14, 24, 29, 32, 33, 170, 179, 180, 181, 187 n14, 189 n37, 189 n46, 190 n55, 191 n60, 191 n64, 91 n70, 191 n75, 191 n79, 192 n92, 192 n93, 192 n97; 34–44: 170; 35–41: 170; 40: 190 n51, 190 n52, 212 n35; 41: 190 n49, 190 n51, 212 n35; 42: 23, 190 n51; 55–79: 170; 58: 190 n51, 212 n35; 60–64: 172; 74: 25; 74–76: 172; 74–80: 170, 171; 78: 190 n51, 212 n35; 78–79: 190 n52; 79: 187 n14, 190
231 n49, 212 n35; 80: 23, 190 n51, 212 n38; 94–96: 171; 95–96: 172; 97: 190 n51; 98: 120; 99: 22, 172, 207 n58; 99–107: 172; 100: 172; 100–4: 121; 103: 172; 103–5: 172; 128–35: 172; 133–35: 172; 142: 189 n45; 396–414: 24, 28, 29, 163–64, 180, 181, 189 n46, 191 n80, 191 n81, 191 n82, 192 n92, 205 n36 Book 22 45: 190 n51, 190 n52; 46–54: 149, 151, 180, 181, 190 n55, 190 n56, 191 n59, 191 n88, 205 n38; 49: 189 n42; 50: 23, 189 n40, 189 n41; 234: 210 n10; 322–27: 121; 337–43: 121; 345–64: 122; 349: 200 n61, 207 n57 Book 23 146: 212 n35; 175–76: 162; 257–70: 124; 275: 124; 287–897: 124; 702: 187 n14; 740–49: 212 n35; 746: 189 n49; 829: 210 n2 Book 24 3–22: 126; 14–18: 174; 23–24: 126; 24–25: 128; 25–30: 126; 29–30: 206 n50; 35–39: 126; 41–43: 126, 131; 65–70: 127; 75–80: 127; 76: 197 n11, 206 n55; 110: 127; 118–19: 206 n55; 119: 197 n11; 137: 206 n55, 206 n56; 138: 206 n55; 139: 206 n56; 139–40: 128; 146–47: 206 n55; 157: 197 n11; 158: 127; 175–76: 206 n55; 176: 197 n11; 195–96: 206 n55; 196: 197 n11; 200–16: 24, 29, 33, 128, 173–74, 180, 181, 187 n14, 189 n46, 190 n55, 192 n92; 211: 174; 215: 174; 228–35: 199 n27; 229–37: 127; 264: 206 n55; 276: 206 n55, 206 n56; 278: 206 n55; 345–54: 174; 362: 207 n61; 371: 207 n61; 385: 150; 447: 206 n55; 458: 206 n55; 477–79: 129; 489: 210 n12, 210 n15; 496: 212 n39; 501–4: 129; 502: 206 n55, 206 n56; 508–12: 130; 555: 206 n55, 206 n56; 559–79: 128; 572–79: 131; 579: 206 n55, 206 n56; 592–95: 130; 594: 206 n55, 206 n56; 685: 23, 206 n55; 685–88: 29, 150, 180, 189 n37, 190 n57, 190 n60,
232
Index of Homeric Passages
Book 24 (cont.) 191 n64, 191 n83, 192 n89; 686: 22, 207 n58; 783–88: 181
Book 14 56–71: 86; 199–213: 199 n31; 202: 190 n49 297: 190 n49
Odyssey
Book 15 388–429: 190 n49; 445: 190 n49; 452: 190 n49; 453:190 n49
Book 2 135: 191 n65 Book 17 250: 190 n49 Book 3 196–98: 210 n10 Book 19 174: 189 n39; 529: 189 n39 Book 8 385–95: 194 n28 Book 20 383: 190 n49 Book 9 118: 189 n39 Book 11 339–41: 194 n28; 621: 189 n39
Book 22 45–67: 77, 189 n46; 58: 91; 61: 198 n23; 64: 198 n23; 201 n68; 401–6: 141
Book 13 13–15: 194 n28
Book 23 232: 200 n52
General Index
Achaians, 42, 44, 47, 61, 64, 80 Achilleus, 2, 3–4, 20, 33, 37, 46, 47–49, 54–60, 60–61, 61–64, 65–70, 85–86, 87–89, 90–96, 102–3, 106–7, 111–14, 114–15, 116, 119–20, 120–22, 123–26, 126–27, 128, 130–33, 137–39, 140–41, 141–42, 150–51, 161–62, 170–72; wrath of, 10, 95, 111, 118, 138 Adkins, A., 5, 21, 197 n1 Adrestos, 27, 165–66 affection, ascending scale of, 50 Agamemnon, 4, 17, 31, 36–37, 41–44, 44–49, 49–51, 54–60, 64–65, 67–68, 72–73, 75, 92, 116–20, 137–39, 141–42, 150–51, 165–67, 168–69, 176–78 Aias, 6, 156; embassy speech of, 104–7 Akamas, 27, 156–57 Alexandros, 46 Althusser, L., 186 nn53 and 54 Amyntor, 97 Analysts, 2 Andromach¯e, 26–27, 148–49 anguish (akhos), 44, 115 a-no-qa-si-ja, 21 apoina 16, 89–90, 188 n36; Agamemnon’s offer of, 51–52, 76–80, 81, 93, 106, 116–20, 138–39; catalog of themes, 148–53; Chryses’ offer of, 41–44, 50,
61, 110, 138; definition of, 6–7, 9, 16; Hektor’s offer of, 120–22; Priam’s offer of, 127–32; symbolic function of, 10, 35, 38; typology of, 22–23, 26–27, 29 Apollo, 42, 43, 44–45, 46, 47–48, 56, 60, 64–65, 68–69, 114, 126–27 ar¯e (ruin), 27, 157–58 Ares, 28, 158, 163–64 Arieti, J., 106 armor, immortal, 112–13, 114 Asios, 154 assembly, 42, 47, 48, 117, 120 at¯e (delusion), 72, 75–76, 114, 117–18; Supplicatory Prayers and, 99–100, 102 Athene, 28, 60–61, 64, 163–64 Beidelman, T., 5, 19, 79 Benveniste, E., 21, 25 best, the (aristos), 36, 37, 47, 54, 58, 80, 96, 110, 112, 125, 138, 142 bi¯e, 11, 33–34, 43, 108, 121, 122, 126, 131, 135–37, 139, 140–41 blame (aitios), 117–18 blame (neikos), 55, 58, 104 Bourdieu, P., 19–20, 82–83 Briseis, 60, 63, 87, 88–89, 116
233
234 capital, symbolic, 19–20 Chryseis, 41–42, 47, 48, 49–51 Chryses, 41–44, 44–49, 64–65 Claus, D., 91 commensality, 14, 33 commodity, 25–27 common sense, 16, 52, 53, 55–56, 83, 135 compensation (see also apoina and poin¯e): as coherent system, 6, 9, 13–14; monumental theme, 8, 40–41, 138; poetic theme, 7–9, 15–20, 31–32, 132; symbolic function of, 15, 137 composition, 25, 28, 39, 105 comrades in arms (hetairoi), see warrior society conflict, ritualized, see eris, displacement of Cook, E., 43, 141, 145, 208 n5 Crotty, K., 36, 43 culture, 33–34, 108, 122–23, 125, 126, 137 Danaans, see Achaians de Jong, I., 167 De¨ıphobos, 27, 154 Dinah, rape of, 211 n31 direction, 16–17 Dolon, 151–52 Donlan, W., 5, 19, 37, 76, 79, 141 embassy to Achilleus, 1–2, 3–4, 6–7, 83–108, 139 eris (strife), 36, 54, 63, 95–96, 112–13, 115, 125, 130, 138, 142; displacement of, 54–55, 67–68, 70, 109–10, 113, 132, 137, 140, 204 n17; see also quarrel, the; succession myth Eurymachos, 77, 91 father, role of, 15, 29–30, 35, 44, 54, 78, 79, 80, 84, 96, 97–98, 99, 130 flood, biblical, see Lamech Floyd, E., 201 n72 force, see bi¯e friends ( philoi), 28, 30, 33, 35, 50, 101, 103–4; foreign friend (xeinos) 29, 46
General Index friendship (philot¯es), 82, 104, 116 funeral games, 123–26, 142–43 Ganymedes, 27, 153 Giddens, A., 135 gift exchange (xeni¯e), 13, 25–26, 36; see also reciprocity gifts (d¯ora), 6–7, 74–75, 85, 101 Glaukos, 28, 152 Greeks, the, see Achaians Griffin, J., 4, 76, 81 Griffith, M., 144 Hainsworth, J. B., 76 harm: as loss, 13, 14, 16; paying back, 23–25, 91 Harpalion, 30, 155–56 Heiden, B., 72 Hekab¯e, 29, 32, 33, 123, 128, 173–74 Hektor, 28, 32, 46, 121–23, 162–63, 176–77 Helen, 27, 46–47, 48, 50, 87, 176–78 Hera, 29, 32, 33, 123, 174–76 Hermes, 150 heroism, heroic identity, 3–4, 11, 35, 97, 101–2, 113, 127, 134, 140–41 hetairoi, see warrior society Homeric question, 2–4, 11 Homeric society, 5, 11–12, 34–39, 119, 120, 132, 137, 140; see also ranking systems homicide, 8, 160–61 honor, see tim¯e ideology, elite, 12, 135–36, 209 n28 Idomeneus, 155 intelligence, cunning, see m¯etis Isos and Antiphos, 150–51 Kakridis, I., 50 Kalchas, 47–49 Killen, J., 21 king (basileus), 34, 36, 63, 128–29, 192 n99, 195 n6 kinship group, 30, 35–36 kinsman-redeemer, 22
General Index Kirk, G., 49 kleos (epic fame), 11, 28, 94–95, 96, 101, 115, 120, 138, 146, 201 n72 Klytaimestra, 49, 50
235 oralists, 2, 5, 15, 182 n10 outrage (l¯ob¯e), 17, 61, 91, 92, 120, 169, 201 n69
Machinist, P., 145 Mackenzie, M., 44–45 marriage, of Thetis and Peleus, 54–55, 66–67; see also succession myth Martin, R., 9, 89, 91 Meleagros, 101–2 Menelaos, 46, 165–67, 176–77 m¯etis, 11, 60–61, 108, 121, 122, 125, 131, 136–37, 140–41; see also restraint mimesis, 144–45 mixed-type themes, 17, 33, 90, 91, 92; catalog of, 165–74 Muellner, L., 160, 161, 185 n44 Murray, G., 2
Panhellenism, Panhellenic poetry, 11–12, 38, 124, 134, 136 Parry, A., 91 path, 17–18, 26–28 Patroklos, 101, 111, 112, 113–14, 158–59, 203–4 n10 Peisandros and Hippolochos, 17, 92, 168–69 Peleus, 6, 84, 89, 97–98 Phoinix, 6; embassy speech of, 96–103 Poem of Erra, 145–46 poin¯e, 17, 77, 104–5; Achilleus’, 60, 61–64, 65–68, 74–75, 81, 85, 89–96, 101–2, 105, 106, 108, 115, 116, 118, 120–23, 126–27, 129, 139, 140, 146; Agamemnon’s, 51–52, 56, 60; catalog of themes, 153–64; Chryses’ and Apollo’s, 44–49, 64–65, 68–69, 78–79; definition of, 6–7, 9, 16; Hektor’s, 28, 114; symbolic function, 10, 35–36, 38–39; typology of, 23–25, 27–28; see also tisis; composition; revenge polis, 36, 136, 143–44, 193 n106 Postlethwaite, N., 205 nn31 and 32 Priam 29, 128–31, 149, 150, 176–77 prize ( geras), 50, 52
Nagy, G., 11, 114, 115, 135, 144–45 nature, 33, 108, 126, 137 Neleus, 27, 153–54 Neoanalysis, 2, 184 n11, 204 n15 Nestor, 73–74, 81–82, 111
quarrel, the, chapter 3 passim; as conflict between systems, 54–55, 57–58, 59–60, 80, 109–111, 118–19, 137–38; as struggle for dominance, 54–55, 57, 58, 63, 109, 112, 130, 137–38
Odysseus, 6, 61, 82, 86, 118–19, 120, 140–41, 151–52; embassy speech of, 83–85 Odyssey, 61, 141 omophagy, 32–34, 122–23, 140, 174, 175 oral poetics, 5, 8–9, 12, 134–35, 144–46
Raaflaub, K., 12 Rabel, R., 142 ranking systems, fixed and fluid, 20, 36–38, 47, 52, 53, 54–55, 57–58, 63, 124–25, 133, 140–43; see also quarrel, as conflict between systems
Lamech, 34 Leaf, W., 2 Lesky, A., 76 lion similes, 126–27, 131 Litai and At¯e, see at¯e (delusion), Supplicatory Prayers and Liverani, M., 37 Lloyd-Jones, H., 106 Lowenstam, S., 63 Lykaon, 14, 18, 25, 29, 170–72 Lykaon and Polydoros, 149
236 ransom (see also apoina), 9, 14, 25, 207 n75 reciprocity, 13–14, 25–26, 135–36, 140, 142–44 Reeve, M., 91 restraint, 11, 43, 44, 60, 62, 121, 131, 138; see also m¯etis return (nostos), 94–95, 115, 132–33 revenge 9, 14, 25; see also poin¯e; tisis Robbins, E., 77 Sale, W., 2 n24, 88 scepter of Pelops, 20, 36–37 Scodel, R., 98–99 Scott, J., 2 Seaford, R., 125, 132, 139, 143, 209 n37 shame (aid¯os), 2, 42–43, 105–6, 129 shield of Achilleus, 17, 28, 141, 159–61 Skamandros, 33–34 Slatkin, L., 66–67, 69 succession myth, 54–55, 66–67, 69, 115 supplication, suppliants, 14, 28–29, 29–30, 42, 70, 80, 98–99, 100, 128–29, 170–71 Taplin, O., 86, 117 theme, 15, 185 n40 Theogony, 54 Thersites, 148 Thetis, 54, 69–70, 114, 127 Thornton, A., 193 n3
General Index tim¯e, 5–7, 14, 18, 19–20, 27, 36, 41, 42, 43, 44–45, 48, 52, 58–59, 60–61, 63, 65, 69–70, 72, 75–76, 78, 84, 86, 93, 94, 95, 96, 103, 112, 114, 116, 120, 122–23, 127, 131, 132, 138; tim¯e-based status, see ranking systems tisis, 25, 28, 32, 33–34, 39, 60–61, 65, 69–70, 92, 93 Tros, 32, 153 tyranny, tyrants, 143–44 Unitarians, 2–3, 5–6 violence, symbolic, 82–83, 104, 139 warrior society, 30, 34, 35, 36, 82 wealth, spheres of, 17–19, 49–51, 105, 116 Wees, H. van, 13 n2 Weiner, A., 36 Westbrook, R., 160–61 Whitman, C., 2 wife (alokhos), 49, 50–51, 87–89, 98 women, 18, 26–27, 29, 41–42, 48, 49–51 Wyatt, W., 72 Yamagata, N., 167 Zeus, 28, 32, 54, 59, 66–68, 69–70, 103, 117, 123, 153, 162–63, 174–76; will of, 63, 75, 113–14, 203 n3
