Homer’s Iliad and the Trojan War

by Naoise Mac Sweeney,Jan Haywood

  As might already be evident, when referring to these ‘other Iliads’ we do not necessarily mean a wholesale denial or replacement of the Homeric poem. Instead, these new Iliads represent a conceptual challenge to the Homeric Iliad and its place at the core of the Trojan War tradition. In very different ways, all of these works question the Iliad’s centrality, and signal the possibility of other narratives. So, for instance, Herodotus’ Histories propose that Helen was never at Troy – a rival narrative that he suggests has its roots in the Homeric account. And in the case of the film Troy, the Trojan War is transformed into a wholly cynical affair, a manifestation of one man’s imperial megalomania. Just as Hesiod does in the Contest of Homer and Hesiod (for which see the Introduction), these later Iliadic receptions engage in a form of competitive dialogue with Homer. The story of the Trojan War may be the subject that they are dialoguing about; but for our purposes, this is less significant than the related issues of (1) who and what they are dialoguing with and (2) how this dialogue is carried out.

  The first of these issues – who/what is being dialogued with – is key. In all the cases we have explored, later contributions to the Trojan War tradition have engaged directly with Homer’s Iliad. This seems to have been true not only at moments when the Homeric poems were an essential part both of the wider cultural milieu and were critical to the way in which the Trojan War story was conceived (as is the case for Rossetti, Euripides, Herodotus and Schliemann), but also at times when their cultural status was less pronounced and they did not dominate contemporary understandings of the myth (as for Euthymides and Shakespeare), and even during periods when there was little or no engagement with the Greek text of the Iliad (as it was for Godfrey and, to a lesser extent, Petersen-Benioff). This is not to say that these works do not engage with non-Homeric elements of the Trojan War tradition (indeed, we have highlighted wide-ranging intertextual nexuses for all of our case studies) – only that in all cases, sustained and deliberate engagement with Homer’s Iliad is evident. The Iliad seems to dominate the Trojan War tradition utterly.

  The second of these issues – how the dialogue is carried out – is also significant. Our case studies seem to suggest three qualitatively different modes of engagement. The first, and perhaps the most intuitive, is engagement with specific details of the Iliadic narrative. This emerged perhaps most notably in the quest for historical truth in the work of Herodotus and Schliemann, but also in the peri-Iliadic games of Euthymides and the scholarly claims of Godfrey. In each of these cases, particular Iliadic features and points of narrative detail were explored. Alternative Iliads were presented by the revision of Iliadic details or the inclusion of supplementary material. The second mode of engagement centres around Iliadic or Homeric themes. This was evident in the cases of Rossetti, Euripides, and Shakespeare, for all of whom Iliadic ideas about narrative, argument, and speech acts were crucial, opening the door to alternative Iliads by the destabilizing of authoritative speech and the presentation of contrasting perspectives. In the third and final mode of engagement, the central point of reference was even more abstracted – the very idea of a central text at the core of the wider tradition. Most obviously, this can be seen in Euripides’ claim to redefine the concept of the Iliadic by offering a Trojan-centred memorial song for Troy, but it is also evident in Petersen-Benioff’s attempts to occupy the Homeric space of recounting klea andrōn, as well as Memorial’s rejection of klea andrōn through the foregrounding of lament.

  It is worth noting that these three qualitatively different modes of dialogue do not map directly onto historical circumstances, i.e. the contemporary position of the Iliad within the Trojan War tradition. The specifics of the Iliadic text were just as important to Godfrey in the twelfth century – even though he had to invent them – as they were to Schliemann in the nineteenth century, when he could rely on his audience’s familiarity with its detail. Similarly, Euripides’ idea of an inverted Iliad is not a sign of ignorance of Homeric poetry in late fifth century BCE Athens, although Petersen-Benioff’s notion of replicating epic glories might be predicated on precisely such unawareness amongst Troy’s mainstream audience.14 The ways we talk to Homer are not determined, it seems, in a direct and straightforward way by the practicalities of our access to his work.

  The Iliad and the Trojan War tradition

  In this book, we set out to investigate the position of the Iliad within the wider Trojan War tradition; and we have unsurprisingly reached the conclusion that it is central. But this centrality takes an unexpected form. It is partly about content and themes, as we might have anticipated; but it is also about the poem in the abstract, and the very concept of a central text in the tradition. The centrality of the Iliad in the Trojan War tradition, then, is the result of individual receptions engaging both with the Iliad’s text and with the Iliad’s status.

  In short, the centrality of the Iliad to the wider Trojan War tradition is partly due to the metapoetics of that tradition, where each new contribution must not only talk to the same core text, but must position itself in relation to the very idea of there being a core text. Part of what holds the Iliad at the centre of the wider tradition is the very discussion of its centrality. Perhaps counterintuitively, the challenge to Iliadic centrality implied by these discussions does not serve to destabilize that centrality, but rather to confirm it. While everyone is trying to present a new Iliad, the Iliad remains the standard by which each new Iliad is judged.

  Perhaps it is time, then, to redefine what we mean by the ‘Trojan War tradition’. Implied in this term (and, indeed, in the explicit framing of this entire book project) is the assumption that the story of the Trojan War is the crucial defining feature of the wider tradition and that the Iliad was simply an important instantiation of the story within this tradition. As we saw in Chapter 1, this was certainly the case at the time during which the Iliad was being composed and in the early phases of its circulation. For centuries, it seems that there was indeed a broad set of traditions concerning the Trojan War, manifested not only in Greek poetry but also in social and cult practices at the city of Troy itself, and perhaps also in various Anatolian literatures (see pp.8–9 above). The Iliad itself is aware of this wider tradition, making reference at various points to poets, poetry, and narrative. This metapoetic consciousness was by no means unique around the time of its composition – the Odyssey has a similar interest, as do contemporary Mesopotamian poems such as the Erra and Ishum. Unlike the Erra, however, the Iliad made no claim to centrality within the wider tradition. It made no claim to being a unique ‘story-entity’. Instead it explicitly acknowledges that at this point, the Trojan War tradition was dispersed and decentralized.

  This was no longer the case in the late sixth century, when Euthymides painted the arming of Hector on his amphora. The Iliad had already come to occupy a privileged position within the wider Trojan War tradition, exercising a centripetal force that meant it was increasingly difficult to engage with the story without engaging with some of the details of the Homeric poem (the first mode of dialogic reception, as identified above). When Euripides and Herodotus wrote a century later, the Iliad’s place at the heart of the tradition was firmly established with a solidity only further cemented by these authors’ attempts to challenge it (the third mode of dialogic reception), by elaborating on its themes (the second mode) and disputing its details (the first mode). By this point, there was no ‘wider’ Trojan War tradition independent of the Iliad. By this, we mean it was impossible to conceive of the Trojan War without engaging in some way with the Iliad (even if only to reject or embellish it). The tradition was already held together, not just by the common theme of the Trojan War, but also by the very process of dialogic reception with the text of the Iliad.

  This is most clearly demonstrated by the work of Godfrey and his contemporaries in the twelfth century CE, who found it impossible to escape the shadow of Homer (the third mode of engagement) despite having no access to actual Homeric poetry. While in pract
ical terms the Iliad was completely absent from the Trojan War tradition, in conceptual terms it remained at the tradition’s core. It still held this central position four centuries later in the time of Shakespeare, although there was a growing awareness of the Homeric texts at this time’; enabling the second and third modes). The same was true of in the nineteenth century in the time of Rossetti and Schliemann, when knowledge of the text was widespread (allowing for all three modes of dialogic reception once more). In the twenty-first century, for Petersen and Benioff, being a part of the Trojan War tradition meant not just talking about the Trojan War, but also talking about the making of tradition itself (the third mode).

  As we mentioned in our Introduction to this book, dialogic processes of reception are central to the forging of story traditions. And as we saw in Chapter 1, the Iliad and other contemporary poems engaged in these processes in innovative and sophisticated ways, seeking to locate themselves within a rich landscape of wider poetic traditions. Perhaps the metapoetic qualities of the Iliad fundamentally transformed the nature of the Trojan War tradition – it became a tradition defined not just by its subject (the Trojan War) but also by its process (metapoetic engagement). As a result of the Iliad, writing about the Trojan War means unavoidably writing about the Trojan War tradition.

  This brings us finally to the cover image of our book, in which Rembrandt imagines the philosopher Aristotle resting his hand reflectively on a bust of Homer. The painting might recall for some Aristotle’s discourses on the Iliad and Odyssey in his Poetics, but it is also a representation of dialogue between the two authors. Although the stone bust of Homer does not, of course, literally talk to Aristotle, Homeric poetry has nonetheless spoken to and provoked him. But Aristotle is not depicted here engaging with particular aspects of Homeric poetry (the first mode of dialogic reception), or even with Homeric themes (the second mode of dialogic reception). Rather, he is pictured engaging with the more abstract idea of Homer as a conceptual centre and core of his own literary tradition (the third mode of dialogic reception). This is Aristotle responding to Homer as a cultural icon, to Homer’s iconic status, and to the concept as well as the physical reality of Homer set up on a pedestal. But this is also an image which triangulates Rembrandt’s own relationship with the classical tradition15 – a commentary on and response to precisely the dialogue that it depicts. We, like Rembrandt, must each figure out our own position on the dialogical relationship in front of us, locating ourselves in the wider tradition.

  * * *

  1 The focus here is on the written version of Oswald’s poem; for her live oral performances and the audio publication of Memorial, see Harrop 2013, cf. Minchin 2015, 206, n.17, 210, n.26, 216–20, Schein 2016, 156–61, and cf. Hardwick 2016, 24–25, a brief but elegant treatment. For many, Oswald’s poem is perhaps the most significant and distinctive poetic reception of the Iliad since Christopher Logue’s War Music, for which see Greenwood 2007 and Reynolds 2011, 219–34, 247–48 and Schein 2016, 161–65.

  2 Minchin 2001.

  3 Minchin 2015, 205. On the interactions between the Homeric poems and early Greek epigrams, see Petrovic 2016.

  4 Harrop 2013, 80 and Schein 2016, 156.

  5 We do not discuss Oswald’s complex engagement with Homeric poetics in this conclusion. Nonetheless, the poem’s use of repetition and simile are particularly interesting (Harrop 2013, 79). In many cases (e.g. the case of Ophelestes, Oswald 2011, 71), Oswald repeats, not half-line formulaic phrases as in the Iliad, but longer-verse-length similes. These longer repeated passages serve to slow the pace of the poem, encouraging deeper reflection on the death being described before moving on to the next soldier. Of course, Oswald also employs thoroughly modern poetics. Strikingly, the name of each dead individual is fully capitalized, making innovative use of print medium (Harrop 2013, 79). As Seth Schein has recently illustrated, these passages often take particular moments from their original Iliadic context and refract them in order to present new perspectives (Schein 2016, 157–58).

  6 Oswald 2011, 2.

  7 In the preface to the poem, Oswald articulates her interest in ancient lament poetry (Oswald 2011, 1). For lament poetry in the Iliad, see pp.19–23 above.

  8 Il. 21.97–113. Here, Achilles makes a nod to the extra-Iliadic tradition that he will be fatally wounded by the archer Paris: ‘there will be a dawn or evening or midday when my life shall be extinguished by somebody with Ares’ strength, whether he strikes me by the launch of a spear or the arrow from its bow-string’ (ἔσσεται ἣ ἠὼς ἣ δείλη ἣ μέσον ἦμαρ | ὁππότε τις καὶ ἐμεῖο Ἄρῃ ἐκ θυμὸν ἕληται | ἣ ὅ γε δουρὶ βαλὼν ἣ ἀπὸ νευρῆφιν ὀϊστῷ, Il. 21.111–13).

  9 Schein 2016, 158.

  10 Oswald 2011, 22.

  11 Oswald 2011, 42. In the published preface, Oswald claims: ‘The Iliad is a vocative poem. Perhaps even (in common with lament) it is invocative’. The same might also be said of Memorial.

  12 For example, Hardwick 2016, 24 notes that Oswald’s Protesilaus acquires ‘the memorial that he does not achieve in Homer’.

  13 There is an extensive literature on the creation of memory and memorialization in historiography. For a brief summary, see Hutton 2013.

  14 Of course, it is still possible to detect a more extensive engagement with the Iliad in non-academic contexts. A notable example is Eric Shanower’s Age of Bronze comic book series, in which Shanower engages with the Iliad, as well as various literary and archaeological sources, in order to present a holistic account of the Trojan War; see further Shanower 2011 and Sulprizio 2011.

  15 Rembrandt showed considerable interest in depicting Homer (Golahny 2003, 122–29). This particular image was commissioned as a portrait of Aristotle, and it is significant that it is actually an image of Aristotle contemplating Homer – that is, Aristotle’s wider intellectual tradition and his place within it.

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