Homer’s Iliad and the Trojan War
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These ten case studies illustrate that the Iliad forms just a small part of a much wider set of traditions concerned with the Trojan War. Yet they also underline the distinctive role played by the Iliad in shaping this tradition in a range of different time periods and historical contexts. While it might be possible to represent later Iliadic receptions as ‘slices from the great banquet of Homer’,4 for the authors of this book they are better regarded as sinuous creatures, participating in complex dialogues that adapt, refract, translate, and ultimately transform their source text. For while it is impossible for us to imagine the Trojan War without taking some kind of recourse to the Iliad, it is no less difficult to imagine the Iliad bereft of the monumental, tentacular series of cross-cultural dialogues that have emerged from this wider tradition.
1 For a discussion of the Contest of Homer and Hesiod, see Graziosi 2002, 165–80; for competitive poetic performance in Greek culture more generally, see Collins 2005. On (ancient and modern) receptions of the lives of classical poets and artists, see Fletcher and Hanink 2016.
2 In this sentence, the word ‘text’ is used in the sense of Bal (1985, 5), and our assumption is that source text (or hypotext) and the receiving text (the hypertext) speak to each other reciprocally: see Gadamer 1975; Iser 1978; Martindale 1993, 29–34.
3 In the interests of brevity, only some of the literature can be cited here. This existing literature includes studies of Homeric receptions in antiquity (e.g. Knauer 1964; Neitzel 1975; Barchiesi 1984; Rengakos 1993; Knight 1995; Sotiriou 1998; Graziosi 2002; Hunter 2004; Nagy 2009; Kim 2010); studies of post-antique Homeric receptions (e.g. Bloom 1991; Dué 2005; Graziosi and Greenwood 2007; Winkler 2007b, 2015b; Hall 2008; Flack 2015; Goldwyn 2015; cf. also contributions in College Literature 2007: ‘Reading Homer in the 21st Century’; and contributions in Classical Receptions Journal 2017: ‘Homer and Greek Tragedy in Early Modern England’s Theatres’); studies that adopt a comparative approach to explore issues in Homeric reception that cut across chronological and geographical contexts (e.g. Fowler 2004b, section 5; Clarke, Currie and Lyne 2006; Latacz, Greub, Blome, Wieczorek 2008; Efstathiou and Karamanou 2016); works that aim to offer overviews of the Trojan War tradition over the span of history (e.g. Young 1948; Scherer 1963; Thompson 2004; Solomon 2007; Kelder, Uslu and Şerifoğlu 2012); and studies that focus on specific elements within the wider Trojan War tradition, such as the figure of Helen (e.g. Suzuki 1989; Gumpert 2001; Roisman 2006; Maguire 2009; Blondell 2013).
4 Athenaeus, Deipn. 8.347e. The comment is applied to the plays of Aeschylus.
1
Navigating Tradition
The first of our dialogues focuses on the Homeric poems in the context of the contemporary poetic traditions of their own day. While the Iliad and Odyssey may be the only surviving accounts of the Trojan War story from the period of their composition,1 as we have already noted, these poems never stood alone. Rather, they emerged out of an interconnecting set of rich and sophisticated poetic traditions: some dealing with the Trojan War, others treating different subjects; some conforming to the generic conventions what we might consider to be ‘epic’, others drawing from different genres such as ritual lament or praise poetry; some in ancient Greek, others in a variety of different languages.
In this chapter, we seek to understand the Homeric poems in this broader poetic context. In the first section, Jan will explore how the Homeric poems situated themselves within the wider tradition, through their treatment of the theme of poetry itself and their representations of poetic practice. Naoíse will offer a comparison in the second section of the chapter, considering the Mesopotamian ‘epic’ poem of Erra and Ishum, and its treatment of similar themes.
The two poems are roughly contemporary. The Iliad is thought to have been composed some time in the eighth century, although it evidently drew on oral traditions that were significantly older. Similarly, the final form of the Erra and Ishum also dates to the eighth century, although the core of the poem may first have appeared some centuries earlier. The two poems, therefore, would have circulated in roughly the same time period, although they emerged from very different contexts of production and performance. While the Iliad is firmly rooted in the Anatolian and Aegean world of small, localized polities and a nascent sense of Hellenic identity,2 the Erra belongs to the Mesopotamian world of the Neo-Assyrian Empire.3 Equally as important as the difference in social and cultural context, however, is the difference in the immediate literary context of the two poems.
The Iliad was composed in a particular dialectal form of ancient Greek and emerged from several centuries of oral tradition, perhaps not just in Greek but also in the indigenous languages of Anatolia. Indeed, evidence from the Late Bronze Age suggests that this tradition drew both from Mycenaean Greek practices of storytelling and song (most likely oral)4 and from the literatures (both oral and written) of Bronze Age Anatolia.5 From these traditions Greek ‘epic’6 was born – not only the Iliad and the Odyssey, but also the Hesiodic works,7 and the poems collectively known as the Epic Cycle.8 It is particularly significant that the Homeric poems were not the only compositions to relate myths of the Trojan War in this broader tradition. Several poems of the Epic Cycle also dealt with Trojan War themes,9 and a fragment of Anatolian poetry demonstrates that Troy was already the subject of song in the Late Bronze Age, some five centuries before the composition of the Iliad.10 Archaeological evidence from the site of Troy itself also indicates that myths of the heroic Trojan past were important around this time. From the ninth century BCE onwards, new cultic structures were erected and new ritual practices begun that incorporated the physical remains of the Bronze Age city, which at this time remained not only visible but impressively monumental.11 The Iliad was composed in the context, therefore, not just of a rich and complex oral tradition of song, but also out of a pre-existing tradition of Trojan War stories – which found expression not only in poetry, but also in the social practices of the community living at Troy. In the first part of this chapter, we will begin to explore how the Iliad acknowledges this wider tradition, and how it uses poetics as a means of locating itself within a tradition that it would eventually come to dominate.
The context of the Erra was markedly different. It was written in the language of Akkadian, and emerged out of a continuous literary and scribal tradition that stretched back well over a millennium.12 Although oral traditions continued to circulate in Mesopotamia, the surviving corpus of Akkadian literature has been crucially shaped by the existence and practices of scribal schools, and by the processes involved in the written transmission of texts. Indeed, scribal traditions in Akkadian themselves drew from pre-existing scribal practices in Sumerian, which can be dated back to the mid-third millennium BCE.13 The Erra is often considered to be an ‘epic’ poem, in that it deals with the great deeds of heroes and gods set in a distant and legendary past.14 Perhaps the best-known Mesopotamian example of the genre is the Epic of Gilgamesh, a poem codified into standard form in the late second millennium BCE which tells of the wondrous deeds of a mythical king of Ur. The written nature of the Erra and its emergence from a long-standing writing tradition were both crucial in shaping the poem’s metapoetics. While the Iliad needed to position itself in relation to a tradition that was diffuse and lacking a central core, the Erra had to situate itself within a tradition with set norms and parameters, which had already developed canonical versions of key texts.
The evident differences between our Homeric and our Mesopotamian examples do not necessarily mean that the two poems circulated in entirely separate cultural contexts. It has long been argued that Mesopotamian epic was influential in shaping many of the themes, motifs, and characters of Homeric epic. One case that is often discussed in this context is the Gilgamesh, which bears several notable similarities to the Iliad.15 The many parallels between Greek and Mesopotamian epic have led to discussions about how the two traditions might be related, and the nature of interactions between them.16 Such questions are beyond t
he remit of this book, but it is relevant that the Aegean and Mesopotamia were becoming increasingly interconnected at the time that the Iliad and the Erra were composed.
The eighth century was a time of heightened connectivity across the Mediterranean and Near East, driven by a range of different factors including the interaction stimulated by the expanding Neo-Assyrian Empire; the spread of Phoenician and Greek trading networks; and the Greek and Phoenician practice of founding new settlements in far-flung locations.17 Perhaps coincidentally, the eighth century is also the time when the Greeks first appear in Mesopotamian documents. Referred to collectively as the ‘Yawanaya’ (Ionians), the Greeks are recorded as seaborne raiders c. 730 BCE in the reign of the Neo-Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser III.18 The social and cultural contexts of the Iliad and the Erra might well be distinct, then, but they were not entirely separate. The two poems were composed at roughly around the same time, in a period characterized by interaction and connectivity. They emerged not just out of their own immediate literary traditions, but also from a wider pool of interconnected traditions that spanned the eastern Mediterranean and Near East. In this chapter, we argue that the Iliad and the Erra were both concerned with placing themselves within this same interconnected world, and that they used comparable metapoetic strategies to do this.
Jan: The Iliad’s poets
The first of our texts is the Iliad, and the first of our close readings considers the poet’s treatment of poetry itself. Much excellent scholarship is already available on speech, performance, and the representation of poetry within the Homeric epics,19 as well as the relationships between the Homeric poems and other contemporary epics.20 I do not seek to replicate this work, but rather to offer an analysis of the representations of poetic practice within the Iliad. The discussion falls into two main parts: the representation of poetic activity and the representation of the functions of poetry. In the first part, I consider the poet’s self-presentation; the poetic activities of key characters in the story; and the representation of bardic figures, or poetic specialists. In the second part, I begin by discussing the celebratory function of poetry, which plays a central role in the transmission of glory or kleos, and then consider its role in lament and mourning.
Poets and poetic practice
‘The wrath, sing, goddess, of Peleus’ son Achilles’ (μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος, 1.1). Thus, the poet begins the Iliad, clearly setting out his task as being the divinely inspired preservation of past events: Achilles’ inhuman anger (mēnis) and its destructive effects on his fellow Achaean comrades.21 While Homer (and/or any other poet responsible for the creation of the poem) is never named in the text,22 the poet draws a clear sense of his status as an author, and of his enterprise as the creation of poetic song. The key word in this first line is perhaps the imperative ‘sing!’ (ἄειδε), signalling a clear interest from the very outset in the process of performing poetry. The voice of the self-effaced poet comes to the fore at a few other points in the poem, though it remains hidden for the bulk of the narrative.23 In Book 2, as he prepares to enumerate the different groups supporting the Achaean effort (the Catalogue of Ships), the poet summons forth the Muses, daughters of the goddess Mnemosyne (‘memory’):
Ἔσπετε νῦν μοι, Μοῦσαι Ὀλύμπια δώματ᾿ ἔχουσαι24– ὑμεὑς
γὰρ θεαί ὑστε, πάρεστἴ τε, ἴστἴ τε πάντα,
ἡμεὑς δὲ κλἴος οἶον ἀκούομεν οὐδἴ τι ἴδμεν
Tell me now, Muses, who have your homes on Olympus;
for you are goddesses, and you are present and know everything,
but we only hear a rumour25 and do not know anything.
Iliad 2.484–6
Having invoked the Muses, who act as a repository for all knowledge, the poet reinforces his own impotence in the face of an overwhelming tradition:
πληθὺν δ᾽ οὐκ ἂν ὑγὼ μυθήσομαι οὐδ᾽ ὀνομήνω,
οὐδ᾽ εἴ μοι δέκα μὲν γλῶσσαι, δέκα δὲ στόματ᾽ εἶεν,
φωνὴ δ᾽ ἄρρηκτος, χάλκεον δέ μοι ἦτορ ὑνείη,
εἰ μὴ Ὀλυμπιάδες Μοῦσαι Διὸς αἰγιόχοιο
θυγατέρες μνησαίαθ᾽ ὅσοι ὑπὸ Ἴλιον ἦλθον·
I could not state nor name the multitude,
not even if I had ten tongues and ten mouths,
an unbreakable voice, and a heart within me made of bronze,
unless the Olympian Muses, daughters of aegis-bearing Zeus,
should call to my mind how many men came beneath Troy.
Iliad 2.488–92
This passage clearly signals the poet’s awareness of a rich and broad tradition, comprising more stories and songs than he could ever hope to master. It also highlights the poet’s consciousness of his own art as involving not just his tongue, mouth, and voice, but also his heart (ἦτορ; 490).
There are other, additional points in the Iliad where the poet makes explicit reference to his own actions in the production of song, often introduced in the form (as with the passage quoted above) of invocations to the Muses.26 At the close of the Catalogue of Ships, for instance, the poet asks the Muse to tell him who was the best of the Achaeans (2.761), while in Book 16, he asks the Muses to disclose how it was that the Trojans first set fire to the Achaean ships (16.112–13).27 Much has been written about the way that these invocations to the Muses reinforce the poet’s indebtedness to the divine (even though, in reality, his ability to sing must have derived from some kind of formal poetic training), thus helping to collapse the spatial and chronological gap between the heroic age and his own time.28 And certainly, such moments underline the poet’s special relationship to the poetic matter that the Muses channel through him, just as they underline the point that trustworthiness is an important element of his particular, Muse-inspired account.29
In addition to the occasional appearance of the poet of the Iliad in his own voice, other characters in the poem are also depicted as creating/singing poetic narratives.30 One of the most extended metapoetic passages – instances of self-conscious reflection on poetry within a poem – comes from Book 3, when Helen is weaving a tapestry that speaks of the war between the Achaeans and the Trojans. This is Helen’s first appearance in the poem, and it is significant that in her debut appearance, she is engaged in a quasi-poetic activity.
τὴν δ᾿ εὗρ᾿ ὑν μεγάρῳ· ἣ δὲ μἴγαν ἱστὸν ὕφαινε,
δίπλακα πορφυρἴην, πολἴας δ᾿ ὑνἴπασσεν ἀἴθλους
Τρώων θ᾿ ἱπποδάμων καὶ Ἀχαιῶν χαλκοχιτώνων,
οὕς ἑθεν εἵνεκ᾿ ἔπασχον ὑπ᾿ Ἄρηος παλαμάων.
She [Iris] found Helen in the hall. There she was weaving a great web,
double fold and purple, on this she was pattern-weaving many contests
of the horse-taming Trojans and bronze-clad Achaeans,
which for her sake they had suffered at the hands of Ares.31
Iliad 3.125–8
Like the poet of Iliad, Helen actively contributes to the memorialization of the Trojan War story, though her poetic creation is reified in the form of a woven tapestry,32 rather than an orally disseminated poem.33 Helen’s quasi-poetic status in this scene has long been recognized, of course, as witnessed by the comments of one ancient scholiast: ‘the poet has created a worthy archetype of his own poetic art’ (ἀξιόχρεων ἀρχέτυπον ἀνέπλασεν ὁ ποιητὴς τῆς ἰδίας ποιήσεως).34
Helen will continue to act as a surrogate for the poet elsewhere in the Iliad, notably in the Teichoscopia (‘viewing from the wall’) episode later in Book 3, where she relates to the Trojan king Priam stories of the Achaean heroes that can be seen at a distance (3.177–242).3
5 She regales Priam with various personal and biographical details, for instance remarking on Agamemnon’s abilities with the spear (3.179) and Odysseus’ many wiles (3.200–02). Helen is portrayed as a master of conversation in this episode, delighting the aged king, who praises her for the true words that she utters in speaking of these different individuals: ‘Lady, really you said that account truthfully’ (ὦ γύναι ἦ μάλα τοῦτο ἔπος νημερτὲς ἔειπες, 3.204).36 Helen’s status as a kind of poet within the poem can also be discerned elsewhere. To note one significant example, when in conversation with the Trojan hero Hector in Book 6, Helen informs her brother-in-law that ‘because of the dog that I am and the folly of Alexander, Zeus has set up an evil fate, so that in days to come we may be worthy of song amongst men in future generations’ (εἵνεκ᾽ ὑμεὑο κυνὸς καὶ Ἀλεξάνδρου ἕνεκ᾽ ἄτης, | οἷσιν ὑπὶ Ζεὺς θῆκε κακὸν μόρον, ὡς καὶ ὀπίσσω | ἀνθρώποισι πελώμεθ᾽ ἀοίδιμοι ὑσσομένοισι, 6.356–8). Although critical of her own role in the war, Helen is nonetheless certain that it is her unfortunate relationship with Zeus that will guarantee the everlasting fame of Paris and herself (and presumably Hector) amongst future generations, a fame that is in turn preserved in Homer’s account of the war.37