Homer’s Iliad and the Trojan War

by Naoise Mac Sweeney,Jan Haywood

  Herodotus, Histories 7.43.1–2

  Xerxes’ somewhat surprising pilgrimage to the ruins of Troy on his march to Greece might not appear credible for some readers, unconvinced that a Persian king could be so engaged with Greek cultural narratives,5 but what is important here is the implicit connection that is established – by both the narrator and the Persian King – between Xerxes and the Trojan king Priam.6 Such appeals to mythic/heroic predecessors by Herodotus and his protagonists are pervasive in the Histories, and help to illustrate the remarkably broad nature of Herodotus’ spatial-chronological perspective.7 Indeed, as a cornerstone of Greek culture, Herodotean appeals to Homer are particularly frequent in the Histories (see further below).

  Responses to Herodotus’ relationship with myth and Homeric epic have a decidedly antique provenance – possibly even as early as his broad contemporary Thucydides, who besmirches those whose accounts are suffused with ‘the legendary’ (τὸ μυθῶδες).8 Most famously, [Longinus] would claim that Herodotus was ‘most-Homeric’, while an anonymous author of a (probably) second-century inscription regards Herodotus as ‘the prose Homer of history’.9 These examples form part of a much wider set of discourses in antiquity on Herodotus’ Homeric persona – both flattering and scornful.10

  This section is thus concerned with Herodotus’ relationship with Homer. It explores his innovative, if playful, approach towards the Trojan War, examining in particular his forensic analysis of the contexts and causes of the war in his account on Helen’s true location (2.112–20).11 The discussion commences with a survey of some of Herodotus’ references to Homer and individuals associated with the Trojan War. The second part examines the wider cultural and literary contexts of Herodotus’ Helen account, and introduces other attempts to undermine Homer’s version of Helen’s role in the war, notably in Stesichorus’ earlier Palinode and Euripides’ roughly contemporary tragedy, Helen. The third section moves on to examine the Helen logos in more detail, an account in which Herodotus applies the characteristic elements of ἱστορίη (‘inquiry’):12 ὄψις (‘personal observation’), γνώμη (‘judgement’), and ἀκοηή (‘hearsay’),13 while the fourth section offers some brief remarks on Thucydides’ similar approach to the Trojan War. I finish with some concluding remarks on the intellectual-cultural impact of Herodotus’ historiographic analysis of the Homeric texts, arguing that the growing tendency to question or rebuff Homer’s account of the war in the fifth century would both question Homeric authority and, simultaneously, cement Homer and his Trojan War in an historical framework.

  An historical war

  As many readers have already noted, Herodotus opens and closes his work with marked references to individuals involved in the Trojan War.14 In the ‘historicizing’ prologue, he famously reports allegedly Persian versions of a series of tit-for-tat exchanges between the Hellenes and what he terms ‘barbarians’ – the Greeks seizing Medea and Europa and the barbarians seizing Io and Helen (1.1–4.1).15 Herodotus adds, somewhat remarkably, that in the Persians’ eyes ‘the beginning of the hostility towards the Greeks was a consequence of the capture of Ilium’ (καὶ διὰ τὴν Ἰλίου ἅλωσιν εὑρίσκουσι σφίσι ἐοῦσαν τὴν ἀρχήν τῆς ἔχθρης τῆς ἐς τοὺς Ἕλληνας, 1.5.1). The Trojan War is therefore transformed from a major historical event in its own right into merely one of a series of precursory episodes leading up to the Persian Wars. The Hellenes of Herodotus’ day are cast as Homeric Achaeans, while contemporary Persians are cast as Homeric Trojans.16 It is important to note, of course, the way that Herodotus concludes this account:

  ταῦτα μέν νυν Πέρσαι τε καὶ Φοίνικες λέγουσι. ἐγὼ δὲ περὶ μὲν τούτων οὐκ ἔρχομαι ἐρέων ὡς οὕτως ἢ ἄλλως κως ταῦτα ἐγένετο, τὸν δὲ οἶδα αὐτὸς πρῶτον ὑπάρξαντα ἀδίκων ἔργων ἐς τοὺς Ἕλληνας, τοῦτον σημήνας προβήσομαι ἐς τὸ πρόσω τοῦ λόγου,

  Now this is what the Persians and Phoenicians say. I for my part am not going to speak about these matters that they happened in this way or another. Instead, I will signal the man whom I myself know first instigated unjust deeds (adikōn ergōn)17 against the Greeks,18 and I will proceed forwards with the account

  Herodotus, Histories 1.5.3

  While Herodotus, like the epic poet, is particularly concerned with the preservation of Greek and non-Greek glory (kleos; see further pp.17–19 above), as well as excavating the aitia (‘reasons’) behind a human conflict,19 it is clear from this passage that he presents himself as unwilling to pass judgement on a series of skirmishes that are ultimately beyond the purview of his historical inquiry.20 This explicit declaration – that he will begin his account with the man whom ‘I myself know’ to have committed unjust deeds against the Greeks – instigates a clear shift from the largely effaced epic poet, who relies on the all-knowing Muses in order to bring forth his story (see p.12 above).21 And just as the Histories begins by looking back to the Trojan War story, so too the work closes somewhat ominously with an account of the Persian Artÿactes who plundered the temple of Protesilaus in Eleaus, ostensibly avenging the first Achaean to step foot on the plains of Troy.22 These appeals to the Trojan War are a clear indication, then, not only of Herodotus’ potential to distance himself from events that occurred at some point in the remote or legendary past, as is the case in the first passage, but equally, as the second passage shows, his widespread attempts to forge a profound connection between the ancient Trojan War and the more recent Persian Wars.23 Such a response is not altogether surprising, of course; as Andrew Erskine, amongst others, has demonstrated, the ‘Trojan-Persian analogy’ was a convenient political tool that could be used across a wide range of media produced in and beyond classical Athens.24

  In addition to this bookending of the Histories with references to Troy, Herodotus offers a wide range of allusions to events and figures related to the Trojan War throughout his work. Chief amongst these, Herodotus proposes that Homer (and Hesiod) flourished no more than 400 years before his own time (2.53.2) and that Helen never really went to Troy (2.112–20, see further discussion below), later declaring that the god Pan was born some 800 years ago, after the Trojan War (2.145.4).25 The date of the war is further refined in Book 7, when Herodotus states that the Trojan War took place in the third generation following the death of Minos (7.171.1). In Book 7, too, Herodotus remarks candidly that Xerxes’ campaign was by far the greatest on record, certainly compared with reports of the Atreidae’s expedition to Ilium (7.20.2).26 These narratorial remarks illustrate the considerable space that Herodotus dedicates to Homer’s poetry, a stark contrast with the much more scanty allusions he makes to other poets.27

  Herodotus’ protagonists are also capable of making allusions to Troy. In the so-called embassy scene, when the Spartans, Athenians, and Syracusans are all contending for leadership of the Hellenes, the Spartan and Athenian envoys cite the achievements of Agamemnon and Menestheus respectively in order to buttress their argument (7.159, 161.3). Similarly, in the Athenians’ and Tegeans’ dispute over the projected battle formation at Plataea in 479 BCE (9.26–28), the Athenians describe a number of their more ancient deeds, including their significant contribution at Troy (although subsequently dismissing all of these deeds as ‘ancient matters’ [παλαιῶν ἔργων] in a rhetorical flourish).28 Herodotus clearly took it for granted that Homer’s Trojan War was deeply embedded within Greek culture during the fifth century BCE, playing a fundamental role in the formation of Greek identity.29 As my discussion will demonstrate, his narrative would push this one step further, making Homer’s Troy part of the discourse of History.

  Relocating Helen

  One of the ways in which Herodotus positions himself in relation to Homer most explicitly is his exposition on Helen’s true whereabouts in Egypt during the Trojan War. The
succeeding section will show how his account fundamentally challenges Homer’s version of the Trojan War, and raises profound questions on the ability of epic poetry to convey historical truth. Of course, Herodotus was by no means the first to question Homer’s authority or to call into question the verifiability of his account. The epinician poet Pindar muses in Nemean 7:

  ἐγὼ δὲ πλέον᾽ ἔλπομαι

  λόγον Ὀδυσσέος ἢ πάθαν διὰ τὸν ἁδυεπῆ γενέσθ᾽ Ὅμηρον·

  ἐπεὶ ψεύδεσί οἱ ποτανᾷ τε μαχανᾷ

  σεμνὸν ἔπεστί τι: σοφία δὲ κλέπτει παράγοισα μύθοις· τυφλὸν δ᾽ ἔχει

  ἦτορ ὅμιλος ἀνδρῶν ὁ πλεῖστος.

  I expect the logos on Odysseus

  exceeds his experiences, due to sweet-voiced Homer;

  for in his lies and winged contrivances there is

  something reverent, and his skill deceives, leading others astray with mythoi.

  Indeed, the heart of the great throng of men is blind.

  Pindar, Nemean 7.20–2430

  For Pindar, then, Homer is able to convince his listeners on account of his poetic skill, even though his stories are exaggerated to the point that they are endowed with ‘lies’ (ψεύδεσί). Surely Homer’s seminal influence on the Greeks is at the root of Heraclitus’ ire too; the late sixth-century philosopher reportedly bemoaned that ‘Homer is worthy of being chased out of the competitions and thrashed’ (τόν τε Ὅμηρον ἔφασκεν ἄξιον ἐκ τῶν ἀγώνων ἐκβάλλεσθαι καὶ ῥαπίζεσθαι, D.L. 9.1).31

  Herodotus’ criticisms of Homer were similar but more subtle, effected by calling into question his presentation of Helen. Once again, however, Herodotus was not the first to do this. One early challenger of Homer on this point was the lyric poet Stesichorus,32 active in the first half of the sixth century BCE. His elliptical Palinode (literally a ‘running-back’) appears to have offered a panegyric for the goddess Helen, in the hope of curing the poet’s blindness.33 Although Stesichorus’ poem exists only in fragments preserved by later authors, it is clear that his poetry provided a distinct rupture with Homeric thought. Helen, it would seem, had never been to Troy:

  ἔστι δὲ τοῖς ἁμαρτάνουσι περὶ μυθολογίαν καθαρμὸς ἀρχαῖος, ὃν Ὅμηρος μὲν οὐκ ᾔσθετο, Στησίχορος δέ. τῶν γὰρ ὀμμάτων στερηθεὶς διὰ τὴν Ἑλένης κακηγορίαν οὐκ ἠγνόησεν ὥσπερ Ὅμηρος, ἀλλ᾿ ἅτε μουσικὸς ὢν ἔγνω τὴν αἰτίαν, καὶ ποιεῖ εὐθὺς–

  οὐκ ἔστ᾿ ἔτυμος λόγος οὗτος,

  οὐδ᾿ ἔβας ἐν νηυσὶν εὐσέλμοις,

  οὐδ᾿ ἵκεο Πέργαμα Τροίας·

  καὶ ποιήσας δὴ πᾶσαν τὴν καλουμένην Παλινῳδίαν παραχρῆμα ἀνέβλεψεν.

  For those who make mistakes in mythologia, there is an archaic technique of purification that Homer did not know, though Stesichorus did. For when he was deprived of his eyesight on account of his slander of Helen, he did not fail to understand, like Homer; but since he was mousikos he knew the cause, and at once creates the following verses:

  ‘This story is not true,

  You did not go on board the well-decked ships,

  You did not arrive at the citadel of Troy.’

  And after composing all of the so-called Palinode he recovered his sight immediately.

  Plato Phaedrus 243a2–3b3

  Stesichorus is presented in a decidedly competitive light in this passage, not only by rebuffing the Homeric version of Helen’s role in the war, but also in his ability to overcome his blindness, unlike the ignorant Homer. The passage’s agonistic flavour clearly hints at the poet’s especial, often polemical, interest in Homeric epic.34 Indeed, in a separate fragment, we are also informed: ‘Stesichorus says that the eidōlon of Helen was fought over at Troy, due to an ignorance of the truth’ (τὸ τῆς Ἑλένης εἴδωλον ὑπὸ τῶν ἐν Τροίᾳ Στησίχορός φησι γενέσθαι περιμάχητον ἀγνοίᾳ τοῦ ἀληθοῦς, Plato Republic 9.586c).35 So for Stesichorus, a Helen of sorts was present at Troy, though not the mortal Helen that surfaces in Iliad. Rather it was a ‘phantom’ (εἴδωλον) that went on the goddess’ behalf. There are some intriguing similarities between Stesichorus’ and Herodotus’ Helen,36 but it is sufficient to note here that by the time that Herodotus came to author his Histories, there was an established tradition that questioned the authority of Homer’s version of Helen’s whereabouts.

  This tradition seems to have been especially strong in the late fifth century, and some of Herodotus’ contemporaries were also sceptical about Helen’s supposed journey to Troy. In the drama Helen, the tragic poet Euripides wove an alternative story in which the errant Helen had in fact spent the previous seventeen years holed up in Egypt under the protection of king Proteus (on Euripides’ engagement with Homer, see Chapter 3). Like Stesichorus’ Palinode, Euripides’ drama proposes contra Homer that it was a phantom of Helen that was in Troy.37 And in prose, too, the sophist Gorgias of Leontini expressed similar reservations regarding the poetical Helen, appealing to his ‘reasoning’ (λογισμόν) in order to reclaim Helen and her sullied reputation by demonstrating her true innocence (2). According to Gorgias, it was one from of a whole variety of causes that was truly to blame for Helen’s behaviour: chance, necessity, and the gods’ stratagems; or abduction by force; or persuasion by logos; or the submission to erōs (6). While Gorgias’ quasi-forensic encomium does not seek to elide Helen’s sojourn in Troy à la Stesichorus and Euripides, his exculpation of the goddess nevertheless serves to question the efficacy of Homer’s characterization of Helen.38

  As these examples illustrate, Helen had become a powerful heuristic for thinking through the problems of Homer’s account of the war more broadly by the time of Herodotus.39 Nevertheless, as we shall see, Herodotus’ unique take on Helen’s role in the war foments new hermeneutic challenges to the authority of the epic poet and their ability to convey the past accurately. For as the Iliad and Odyssey make patently clear, Helen’s presence at Troy is crucial for the unravelling of the conflict (and is even presented as an explanation for the war); in removing her from the scene of that conflict, Herodotus makes a powerful case about the ability of historiography to explain human actions better than epic poetry.

  Inquiry and the Trojan War

  The discussion above has addressed Herodotus’ uneasy relationship with mythical time coupled with a pre-historiographical tradition of questioning different aspects of Homer’s version of the Trojan War. These themes will recur in 2.112–20 – Herodotus’ own archaeology of competing Trojan War traditions.40 In this passage, the historian makes repeated nods to the constituent parts of his inquiry process, and in an extraordinary section, he consults the Homeric texts in order to affirm his own innovative reading of the war.41 For Herodotus will attempt to demonstrate that the ‘real’ Helen was never held captive in Troy, arguing that Homer showed this true version of events within his poetical retelling.42 As we shall see, the passage will bring into question crucial aspects of Homer’s Iliad and its relationship with historical truth.43

  The narrative begins with an explicit reference to Herodotus’ source: the Egyptian priests, those most learned individuals whom he consults for much of his Egyptian account (2.113.1, cf. 2.118.1–20.1).44 The priests relate that the Trojan Alexander had seized Helen from his host Menelaus in the hope of taking her back to his fatherland; however, the couple faced violent winds en route and were forced to land in Egypt. The Egyptian king Proteus proceeded to arrest Alexander, and, having interrogated the deceitful Trojan and uncovered his outrageous behaviour against Menelaus, he sent Alexander awa
y whilst detaining Helen (2.115).45 The Helen of Herodotus, like Stesichorus and Euripides, is thus absented from Troy to Egypt; but unlike the poets, Herodotus offers no phantom or otherwise in her place at Troy.

  Having established Helen’s ‘true’ location during the Achaean-Trojan conflict, Herodotus subsequently sets out to demonstrate the various processes that he has undertaken in order to verify this account. First, he makes explicit appeals to the (probably written) Iliad (and possibly two passages from Odyssey),46 one of our earliest citations from the Homeric corpus.47 The passage from the Iliad centres on a scene in which Hecuba ascends to her chamber:

  ἔνθ ’ ἔσαν οἱ πέπλοι παμποίκιλα ἔργα γυναικῶν

  Σιδονίων, τὰς αυ’τὸς Α’λέξανδρος θεοειδής

  ἤγαγε Σιδονίηθεν, ε’πιπλὼς ευ’ρέα πόντον,

  τὴν ὁδὸν ἣν Ἑλένην περ α’νήγαγεν ευ’πατέρειαν·

  and there were all-embroidered robes, the productions of Sidonian women,

  whom God-like Alexander himself

  led from Sidon, sailing over the broad sea,

  on that journey on which he brought back the noble-born Helen.

  Iliad 6.289–92

  Alexander’s connection in ‘these verses’ (τοῖσι ἔπεσι) with the Syria-dwelling Sidonian women convinces Herodotus that Homer knew of his journey to Egypt; ‘for Syria borders upon Egypt, and the Phoenicians, to whom Sidon belongs, dwell in Syria’ (ὁμουρέει γὰρ ἡ Συρίη Αἰγύπτῷ, οἱ δὲ Φοίνικες, τῶν ἐστι ἡ Σιδών, ἐν τῇ Συρίῃ οἰκέουσι, Hdt. 2.116.6).

  Through what appears to be a rather strained reading of the Iliadic passage,48 Herodotus argues that Homer was in fact ‘well informed’ of Helen’s sojourn in Egypt, though he was compelled to offer an account that was ‘fitting’ (ευ’πρεπὴς) for epic poetry. What does Herodotus mean by his suggestion that Helen’s stay at Troy is ‘fitting’ for epic poetry? Earlier in Book 2, he remarks that ‘the story’ (τὸν μῦθον)49 surrounding Ocean is ‘beyond proof’ (οὐκ ἔχει ἔλεγχον), surmising: ‘I think that Homer or some older poet fabricated the name and inserted it into his poetry’ (Ὅμηρον δὲ ἤ τινα τῶν πρότερον γενομένων ποιητέων δοκέω τοὔνομα εὑρόντα ἐς ποίησιν ἐσενείκασθαι, 2.23).50 Several chapters later in the same logos he states that Homer and Hesiod ‘created the Greeks’ theogony and gave the gods their names, allotted their honours and skills, and indicated their appearances’ (οὗτοι δέ εἰσι οἱ ποιήσαντες θεογονίην Ἕλλησι καὶ τοῖσι θεοῖσι τὰς ἐπωνυμίας δόντες καὶ τιμάς τε καὶ τέχνας διελόντες καὶ εἴδεα αὐτῶν σημήναντες, 2.53.2). In Book 3, too, Herodotus concludes that the name river Eridanus is clearly a Greek one, ‘made up by some poet’ (ὑπὸ ποιητέω δέ τινος ποιηθέν, 3.115.2). With this broader context in mind, it is clear that Herodotus regards Homer as a creator of stories (designated mythoi at 2.23) that in some ways cannot be proven. The implication for Herodotus’ comments at 2.116 is that Homer was not primarily concerned with unvarnished truth when composing his poem. Herodotus’ point is primarily a historiographical one: Homer’s account must be denuded; only then will the historical and poetical become disentangled.51 In his remarks on Homer’s version of Helen’s role, then, Herodotus at once divorces his work from that of Homer, the latter clearly not bound by the same generic principles as Herodotus, whilst simultaneously reasserting a truth value to the Homeric account. Perspicuous readers of Homer, Herodotus intimates, can indeed recover the historical events at Troy.52