Homer’s Iliad and the Trojan War

by Naoise Mac Sweeney,Jan Haywood

  19 Amongst which are the seminal works by Martin 1989 on the Iliad and Segal 1994 on the Odyssey. There has also been there considerable scholarly activity focused on the unique qualities of Homeric language and the Homeric poet’s determination to challenge epic tradition. See variously Braswell 1971, Griffin 1977, Richardson 1987, Morrison 1992, and Finkelberg 2011; cf. further references listed under Russo 1992, 385, n.14.

  20 Scodel 2002, 99–114 shows that the poet expects his audience to have a sound grasp of the Troy saga. On the poet’s necessary selectivity, see Ford 1992, 70–79.

  21 On the proem of the Iliad, see Redfield 2001; cf. the nuanced discussion in Halliwell 2011, 59–61.

  22 Saïd 2012, 30 with n.5. Foley 2010, 20–21 demonstrates succinctly the problems that surround any attempt to uncover a single ancient poet named Homer; cf. Nagy 1992. For discussion of the authorship of the Homeric poems, see variously Kullmann 1984, Graziosi 2002, 13–18, Fowler 2004a, b, Montanari 2012, Foley 2010, West 2011, and Saïd 2011a, 20–44, 2011b.

  23 Scholars have tended to remark on the modesty of the Homeric poet; de Jong 2006, however, emphasizes the narrator’s desire to acquire glory for himself. As the discussion below demonstrates, it is significant in relation to the character of the Homeric narrator that other internal poets such as Demodocus are specially praised for their poetic outputs.

  24 For invocations to the Muses, cf. 11.218; 14.508; 16.112.

  25 The term ‘κλἴος’ is a complex one, although it has been translated as ‘rumour’ in this passage; in other places I have translated it as ‘glory’ or ‘reputation’: see further LSJ s.v. κλἴος.

  26 Finkelberg 1990, 295: ‘the ancient Greek poet sees himself as a mouthpiece of the Muse’.

  27 Nagy 1979, Ford 1992, 78–79, and Saïd 2011a, 67.

  28 See especially Ford 1992, 60–89 and Purves 2010, 7–8. On the Homeric poems and their relationship with the heroic age, see Grethlein 2009.

  29 This is not to say, though, that the poet is at pains to present a narrative that is hyper-factual, scrupulously wedded to the evidence. As Halliwell 2011, 42 points out, the Iliad presents no divine voice to corroborate its aspiration to present a more-than-humanly true account.

  30 For poets and poetic activity in the Iliad and Odyssey, see Macleod 1983, 1–15, Ford 1992, 57–130, Saïd 2011a, 125–31, and Halliwell 2011, 36–92.

  31 For Helen’s concern about the consequences of her actions elsewhere in the Iliad, see West 2011, ad. 125–28, who suggests that this sympathetic portrait of Helen may be ‘untraditional’.

  32 On the connections between weaving and poetic composition in Greek thought, see the references listed under Clader 1976, 7. For the contrast between Helen’s weaving and that of Andromache in Book 22, see Roisman 2006, 9–10. For weaving as a metaphor for literary composition in the Mesopotamian world, see p.29 below and especially n.77.

  33 So Clader 1976, 8, Kennedy 1986, Taplin 1992, 97–98, Austin 1994, 38, 41 Pantelia 2002, 26 Roisman 2006, 10–11, Bergren 2008, 46, 55, Purves 2010, 11, Blondell 2013, 68, and Nappi 2013.

  34 Schol. Il. 3126–27 bT.

  35 For a rich analysis on Helen as ‘internal commentator of the [epic] tradition’ (113) in this episode, see Tsagalis 2008, 112–34, cf. Suzuki 1989, 39–42, focusing on her Achilles-like liminal status.

  36 On Helen’s authority in this scene, see Blondell 2013, 6.

  37 Suzuki 1989, 40, Martin 1989, 136–37, Taplin 1992, 119, Graziosi and Haubold 2010, ad 358, and Blondell 2013, 54 (‘[Helen’s song] is, in fact, the Iliad’).

  38 For the recurring theme of klea andrōn – the glorious deeds of men – see the main text below, as well as: Il. 9.524-25; Od. 8.73.

  39 Murnaghan 1987, 150 and Halliwell 2011, 76.

  40 Finkelberg 1990, 296.

  41 On Homer’s blindness, see Graziosi 2002, 125–63 and Saïd 2011a, 19.

  42 Homer similarly refers to the divine bestowing the poet with his art at Il. 13.730; Od. 8.64, 498. Cf. Aristotle Poet. 23.1459a30–4, describing Homer as ‘divine in speech’ (θεσπἴσιος).

  43 Cf. Odysseus’ reply to Lord Alcinous at the beginning of Odyssey 9: ‘truly this is a good thing, listening to a singer such as this man [Demodocus] is, resembling the gods in speech’ (ἦ τοι μὲν τόδε καλὸν ἀκουἴμεν ὑστὶν ἀοιδοῦ | τοιοῦδ᾿ οἷος ὅδ᾿ ὑστί, θεοὑς ὑναλίγκιος αὐδήν. Od. 9.3-4).

  44 Od. 1.337; cf. Hes. Th. 55, 98–103.

  45 See further Saïd 2011a, 126–28.

  46 Macleod 1983, 5.

  47 Schein 1984, 80–82.

  48 Cf. 22.105. War in the Iliad is clearly envisaged as the domain of men, see, e.g., 7.236; 8.161-66.

  49 Finkelberg 2007 argues that the phrase κλέος ἄφθιτον is not a traditional formula stemming from a shared Indo-European poetics, but rather a Homeric modification. For the opposite view, see the works listed under Garcia 2013, 257, n.29.

  50 On the interconnectedness of the Iliad’s two main heroes, Achilles and Hector, see Martin 1989, 130–45.

  51 For the social elite and their pre-eminence in battle, see too Il. 6.207-9.

  52 Thalmann 1988, 6. For the question of what kind of audience(s) might have accessed the Iliad, see Grethlein 2009, 130–31. For further discussion of the aristocratic associations of the poem, see pp.47–8 below.

  53 Scodel 2002, 192. On public challenges of authority in the Iliad, see Barker 2009, 40–88.

  54 Roisman 2006, 31, Blondell 2013, 67, and Schein 2016, 5–9. For women in the Iliad, see Farron 1979, Arthur 1981 and Nappi 2015.

  55 For a subtle analysis of Helen’s uniquely powerful role in the Iliad, see Blondell 2013, 53–72, cf. Arthur 1981, 26 (with some caveats) Roisman 2006.

  56 For a full list of passages in which women lament, see Nappi 2015, 49, n.2. For women’s laments in the Iliad, see further Derderian 2001, 31–61, whose view that female lament (the γόος) is presented as inferior to the epic medium can be usefully countered by Dué 2002 and Bachvarova 2016a, 68–70.

  57 Nappi 2015, 37.

  58 See especially Taplin 1992, 119–20 and Farron 1979, 21–22. Pantelia 2002 argues that Helen is purposefully positioned as the last woman to speak, since it is she who best understands ‘the importance of heroic kleos and poetry as the means for conferring it’ (p.21).

  59 Taplin 1992, 118.

  60 For Helen’s problematic reference to her twentieth year at Troy, see further discussion in Richardson 1993, ad. 24.765-67.

  61 Roisman 2006, 30 focuses on how the speech ‘brings her into the commonality she so longs for’.

  62 Taplin 1992, 282.

  63 Roisman 2006, 30–32 explores the difference between this and Helen’s other Iliadic scenes. As she points out, this is the first time that Helen speaks in front of a public audience, and it is striking that in her first public speech, Helen explicitly reproaches the vast majority of the Trojans for the way that they have treated her so cruelly.

  64 Taplin 1992, 213: ‘The two leading casualties of the poem [Patroclus and Hector] are each lamented by a woman’.

  65 See especially Taplin 1992, 212–18 and Dué 2002.

  66 Suzuki 1989, 21–29.

  67 Note too that Achilles is reunited with Briseis at the end of the poem (24.676) – a foil, perhaps, for Helen and Menelaus, whose separation overhangs the Achilles–Briseis relationship.

  68 By ‘epic’, I mean longer narrative poems telling of the deeds of gods and humans. For the difficulty in defining ‘epic’ as a distinct genre in Mesopotamian literature, see n.14 above.

  69 For discussion of the date of the poem, see George 2013, 47 with references. For the Akkadian text and critical edition, see Cagni 1969. For translations, see Cagni 1974, Lambert (1962b), Dalley 2000, 282–316, Foster 2005, 880–911. The translation used in this chapter is that of Foster 2005, and the text is that of Cagni 1969.

  70 For the depiction of wrath and violence in t
his poem, see George 2013. As Foster says, ‘The text is a portrayal of violence’ 2005, 880.

  71 For the unusual nature of the Erra in this respect, see Lambert 1962b, 119, and Foster 2005, 880–81. As George puts it: ‘its form is much less the customary narrative and much more extended rhetorical monologue’ (2013, 47). For the strategies of introducing direct speech in Akkadian poetry in general, see Vogelzang 1990; the Erra usually conforms to standard formulae for introducing direct speech, save in Tablet 1 where there are some innovative ways of introducing speech (Vogelzang 1990, 65–7).

  72 Foster 2005, 894.

  73 Foster 2005, 901.

  74 This passage in which Erra is described in his restless state also employs complex narrative strategies. First, there is some debate over whether Erra or Ishum is being addressed (see Foster 2005, 881 n.4 with references). In reading this passage as the external narrator addressing Ishum, I am following the interpretation of Vogelzang 1990, 66 and George 2013, 49–51 with notes. Second, we hear not only the narrator’s own voice, but also that of Erra speaking to his own heart (lines 15–6) and to the Sibitti (17–8); Erra’s heart speaking to the Sibitti (lines 7–8), as well as to Ishum (9–12) and Erra himself (13–4). In this passage, as well as in the poem as a whole, the audience is treated to a cacophony of different voices addressing different hearers in direct speech.

  75 This slippage between an internal and an external audience, and a doubling of perspectives when the poet addresses both the external audience and an internal character at the same time, has been identified as a key feature of performance in traditions of oral poetry in modern Egypt. This is sometimes coupled with ambiguity of tenses, so that statements can be interpreted as applying equally to the past of the poem’s events and to the present of the poetic performance. See Reynolds 1995, 77–78 for a particularly apt example of a poet addressing both an internal character and their external audience at the same time; and p.208 for the ‘duplication of the epic performance within the epic’. I am grateful for Gregory Nagy for pointing me in the direction of this work.

  76 For a discussion of poetic composition in Akkadian poetry, see Foster 1991.

  77 Indeed, it can be traced back as early the third millennium BCE. It appears in the hymns of Enheduanna, although these poems were written in Sumerian rather than Akkadian, and so the specific vocabulary if not the imagery would have been different: De Shong Meador 2000, 2009.

  78 Indeed, the rarity of this word is such that translators could only infer its meaning because it was used in parallel with the more common term zamāru (poem/song) by the Neo-Assyrian king Ashurbanipal in the seventh century BCE. In this context, it was used of ancient Sumerian texts, which would have been over a millennium old by the time of Ashurbanipal’s reign. See Bodi 1991, 56 n.25.

  79 As Röllig 2009, 45 puts it, Kabti-ilani-Marduk is perhaps ‘weaving together’ different mythic and poetic strands.

  80 Noegel 2011, 180. This passage as a whole is heavily laden with puns and wordplay Noegel 2011, 180–82.

  81 Indeed, the difference in relationship between the Muses and Homeric bards is evident when we consider Kabti-ilani-Marduk could never hope to usurp the role of Ishum, as Thamyris did the Muses (although as Jan points out above, this was to cause Thamyris’ downfall: Il. 2.595–600).

  82 Although wordplay suggests ambiguity over whether song ultimately praises Erra or Marduk as its subject, as it was Marduk’s assent which allowed for the events to occur: Noegel 2011, 188.

  83 These final lines stress the role of the poem as a physical sign of the god and suggest that the poem was imbued with apotropaic power. This goes some way to explaining the poem’s widespread popularity, and it has been found carved in miniature on several talismans and amulets (Reiner 1960).

  84 See Haubold 2013, 32–35 on the emphasis on the visual in this passage. In an earlier version of this prologue found at the Levantine port city of Ugarit, this is phrased, not as an invitation to the reader but as a description of Gilgamesh’s actions (George 2007, 245). It is unclear whether the invitation to the reader was a later innovation or whether the difference here in the Ugarit text was produced by changes during the process of textual transmission.

  85 The development of standard versions did not necessarily mean that alternative written (and perhaps also oral) versions of the poem did not continue to exist. The development of these standard versions involved not only the compilation and editing of older poems, but also the composition of completely new lines and passages. In the case of Gilgamesh, Babylonian tradition suggests that this work was attributed to a scholar known as Sîn-lēqi-unninni. For the development of the standard version of Gilgamesh, see: George 2003, 28–33 and Michalowski 1996, 187.

  86 The prologue of Gilgamesh raises questions of reading and writing, story and experience, through its description of the storage and rediscovery of the text: Gilbert 2012, 147–48. I am grateful to Martin Worthington for pointing me in this direction.

  87 George 2003, 446. I am grateful to Nicholas Postgate for highlighting this point.

  88 The inscription can be found in Leichty 2011, no.98 (RINAP 4, 98). For a discussion of the iconography of the stele, see Porter 2003, 75–77; for the stele in the context of Assyrian-Egyptian conflict, see Eph‘al 2005.

  89 To cite another Neo-Assyrian example, in the Annals of Sennacherib as preserved in the Taylor Prism, the king places a curse on the ‘one who alters this inscription or my name’ (Taylor Prism, Side 6, lines 80–1: see Grayson and Novotny 2012, no.22).

  90 Longman 1991, 48, 199–203, Jonker 1995, 92–95 and Westenholz 1997, 16–20.

  91 Jonker 1995, 98–102. One well-known example of the genre is The Cuthean Legend of Naram-Sin. Although this poem existed in various earlier forms, at the start of the first millennium the standard version began: ‘Open the tablet-box and read out the stela, | Which I, Naram-Sin, son of Sargon, | Have inscribed and left for future days’ (lines 1–3, trans. Westenholz 1997, 301). This closely parallels the passage from the prologue of Gilgamesh quoted in the main text above. Where the Gilgamesh prologue deviates from the narû literature format, however, is that while it makes reference to the setting up of a narû inscription recounting Gilgamesh’ adventures (line 10), it does not openly claim that the text of the inscription is the same as that of the poem. This claim is made, in contrast, in the explicitly in the final section of the Cuthean Legend: ‘Read this stela! | Heed the wording of this stela!’ (lines 152–3; trans. Longman 1991, 231). Indeed, the very final lines of the Cuthean Legend return once more to the idea that the text that is being read is an inscription: ‘You who have seen the things on my stela and set out your record, (just as) you have blessed me, may a future (ruler) bless you’ (lines 174–5; trans. Longmann 1991, 231).

  92 See Powell 1997, 27–28 for a discussion of this passage, coming to the conclusion that the Homeric poet did not fully understand the technology of writing.

  93 The story of the flood presented in Tablet 11 of Gilgamesh differs in several respects from the fuller version of the tale in the Atraḫasis. The standard version of the Atraḫasis dates back to the Middle Bronze Age, c. 1700 BCE, although it continued to be copied well into the first millennium: Lambert and Millard 1969.

  94 Utnapištim’s tale, like that of Odysseus, makes use of linguistic games and literary deceptions, in a self-aware and self-referential way. In both poems, the extended sections given over to these embedded poet-narrators are a means of exploring the control of discourse. See Michalowski 1996, 188–90.

  95 On authorship and anonymity in Mesopotamian literature, see Foster 1991, Michalowski 1996, and Röllig 2009, 44–45.

  96 Indeed, the earliest named Mesopotamian author is known 85 for her hymns – Enheduanna, a Sumerian priestess in the third millennium. See n.77 above.

  97 Although of course the autobiographical names offered in narû literature cannot be the true authors of these works. See p.90 above.

  98 Indeed, it is only through a
relatively late tradition which links the composition of the standard form of Gilgamesh to a scholar known as Sîn-lēqi-unninni. See n.85 above.

  99 The Babylonian Theodicy preserved the name of its author, Esaggil–kinam–ubbib, as an acrostic (Oshima 2014, 121–25). Several hymns use the same format for naming their authors (Foster 1991, 17 nn.3–4).

  100 Lambert 1957, 1962a.

  101 Although the catalogue initially seems to follow a hierarchical structure, legendary figures are found alongside ‘historical’ human authors in the latter tablets of the text. Some of the ‘historical’ human authors are given ancestral surnames, while others are known only by their own given names. Lambert 1957, 1962a argues that this is evidence for the emergence of scribal dynasties and schools.

  2

  Visualizing Society

  One of the themes that recurs in the Iliad is the construction and correct functioning of society. Throughout the poem, social bonds are forged and broken, and social roles are transgressed and renewed. It is a theme that also recurs in the wider Trojan War tradition, not least in the two case studies discussed in this chapter, both of which primarily discuss visual images.

  In the first half of the chapter, Naoíse considers Trojan War imagery on the red figure vases of the Pioneer Group of painters in late archaic Athens, focusing in particular on an amphora by Euthymides and its playful questioning of traditional male roles. In Cleisthenic Athens, against a backdrop of social reform and political transformation, these images were politically sensitive, touching on issues of status as well as of masculinity. Subversive in many ways, the Pioneer Group intriguingly avoided playing politics in their Trojan War scenes, eschewing straightforwardly Iliadic images entirely. The Euthymides amphora is a notable exception – a vase that does engage in political games, at the same time making subtle Iliadic references. In the second half of the chapter, Jan examines Helen of Troy, an oil painting by the Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti. This and other contemporary images use Helen as a means of exploring traditional female roles, focusing especially on her dangerous sexuality. Painted during a period of rapid social change and emergent women’s movements, Rossetti’s painting is unusual in attributing agency to Helen beyond that afforded to her by her physical desirability.