Why Homer Matters

by Adam Nicolson

“They clothe their bodies”: Iliad XIV.384ff.

  “as snug as a gun”: Seamus Heaney, “Digging,” from Death of a Naturalist (London: Faber, 1966).

  “doupēsen de pesōn”: E.g., Iliad IV.504, XVII.50.

  their life dependent: See Emily Vermeule, Aspects of Death in Early Greek Art and Poetry (Oakland: University of California Press, 1979), 99–101, 112–15.

  Adolf Schulten: A. Schulten, Fontes Hispaniae Antiquae (Barcelona: Universidad de Barcelona, 1922), vol. 1, p. 90.

  Inner and outer landscapes: Circe’s description at Odyssey X.510. Odysseus comes to the shores of Hades at Odyssey XI.22.

  “flutter through his fingers”: Ibid., XI.206–8.

  “Never try to sweeten death”: Ibid., XI.408ff.

  the ghost says through his tears: It’s not certain that the hero was weeping—olophuromai usually means “lament, be sad”—but this is likely to be the sense.

  “like consuming fire”: Iliad XX.372.

  “But tell me”: Odyssey XI.491.

  murdering Priam: This was the scene, transmitted through the Aeneid, when Neoptolemos was slaughtering his way through Troy, “And all his father sparkled in his eyes,” which caught Hamlet’s imagination; the young Greek was

  total gules; horridly trick’d

  With blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons,

  Bak’d and impasted with the parching streets,

  That lend a tyrannous and damned light

  To their lord’s murder. (Hamlet II.ii.457–61)

  “So I spoke”: Odyssey XI.538–40 Fagles, XI.613–16.

  “Set up your mast”: Ibid., X.506–7 (Murray/Dimock, adapted slightly).

  “But when in your ship”: Ibid., X.508–12 (Murray/Dimock).

  “There into the ocean”: Ibid., X.513–15 (Murray/Dimock).

  “they stowed their gear and laid the mast in the hollow hulls”: Odyssey XI. 20.

  there is a museum: www.parquemineroderiotinto.com/.

  at a place called Chinflón: The mine at Chinflón is at 37°40'N, 6°40'W; see B. Rothenberg and A. Blanco-Freijeiro, “Ancient Copper Mining and Smelting at Chinflón (Huelva, SW Spain),” British Museum Occasional Paper 20 (1980), 41–62; for bronze mining, see Ben Roberts, “Metallurgical Networks and Technological Choice: Understanding Early Metal in Western Europe,” World Archaeology 40, issue 3 (2008), 354–72; Anthony F. Harding, European Societies in the Bronze Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 197–241.

  In Cornwall: M. A. Courtney, “Cornish Folk-Lore,” part 3, Folk-Lore Journal 5, no. 3 (1887), 177–220; James C. Baker, “Echoes of Tommy Knockers in Bohemia, Oregon, Mines,” Western Folklore 30, no. 2 (Apr. 1971), 119–22.

  “called the little miners”: Georgius Agricola, De Animantibus Subterraneis (Freiburg, 1548).

  “represent man’s inner universe”: Ronald Finucane, Appearances of the Dead (London: Junction Books, 1982).

  their ancient beliefs: Agricola, De Animantibus Subterraneis; Courtney, “Cornish Folk-Lore,” part 3; Finucane, Appearances of the Dead; Baker, “Echoes of Tommy Knockers in Bohemia, Oregon, Mines.”

  “When it comes to”: Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space (1958; reprint, Boston: Beacon Press, 1994), 18–20.

  in his catalog: Harrison, Symbols and Warriors. The stelae in the Archaeological Museum in Badajoz represent perhaps the richest of all collections. Others are in Córdoba, Huelva, Seville and Madrid, and in Portugal.

  topped and mended with thorns: Odyssey XIV.10.

  None of this is different: Harrison, Symbols and Warriors, 12, 24.

  “red with the blood”: Iliad XVIII.538.

  “fruit in wicker baskets”: Ibid., XVIII.568.

  “the perfect circle”: Menelaus’s, for example, in Iliad XVII.6.

  obsessed with male beauty: M. Eleanor Irwin, “Odysseus’s ‘Hyacinthine Hair’ in Odyssey 6.231,” Phoenix 44, no. 3 (Fall 1990), 205–18.

  “who held his head”: Iliad VI.509–10.

  “His strength can do nothing”: Ibid., XXI.316–18.

  “Great Priam entered in”: Ibid., XXIV.477–79.

  “roused in Achilles”: Ibid., XXIV.507–8.

  “And they come”: Ibid., IX.185ff.

  Archaeologists working: http://www.aocarchaeology.com/news/the-lyre-bridge-from-high-pasture-cave.

  It seems unlikely: Harrison, Symbols and Warriors, 104.

  A huge warrior figure: Ibid., 298–99; Catalog number C80, found at Ategua, Córdoba. Now in the Museo Arqueológico Provincial de Córdoba.

  “Ah Sokos”: Iliad XI.450–55 (Lattimore, adapted).

  “He is a unique”: Harrison, Symbols and Warriors, 116.

  “Hector … talk not”: Iliad XXII.261–67.

  “There are no oaths”: Iliad XXII.262–67.

  “the heroes gave orders”: Harrison, Symbols and Warriors, 116.

  9: HOMER ON THE STEPPES

  The origins of the Greeks: J. P. Mallory, In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology and Myth (London: Thames & Hudson, 1989).

  And before that: N. G. L. Hammond, “Tumulus-Burial in Albania, the Grave Circles of Mycenae, and the Indo-Europeans,” Annual of the British School at Athens 62 (1967), 77–105.

  Right in the middle: Odyssey XI.119–37.

  “You must go out”: Ibid., XI.121–30, Fagles, XI.138–49.

  “in the ebbing time”: Odyssey XI.136.

  recorded from Sophocles: R. Scott Smith and Stephen M. Trzaskoma, trans., Apollodorus’ Library and Hyginus’ Fabulae: Two Handbooks of Greek Mythology (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2007), Fabula, 95.

  “Our land”: Plato, Critias.

  it is possible: M. L. West, The Making of the Iliad: Disquisition and Analytical Commentary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 42.

  “the smoke ascending”: Lattimore, Iliad XXI.522–23.

  the speech he makes: Iliad IX.308–409.

  “rich with fat”: Ibid., IX.205–8.

  Odysseus then lists: Ibid., IX.264–98.

  “Let him submit”: Ibid., IX.160.

  “the greediest”: Ibid., I.122.

  “As I detest the doorways”: Lattimore, Iliad XI.312–14.

  “Hateful in my eyes”: Iliad IX.378ff.

  “All the wealth”: Ibid., IX.401–2.

  “Cattle and fat sheep”: Lattimore, Iliad IX.405–9.

  These questions: See: Adam Parry, “The Language of Achilles,” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 87 (1956), 1–7; M. D. Reeve, “The Language of Achilles,” Classical Quarterly, new ser., 23, no. 2 (Nov. 1973), 193–95; Steve Nimis, “The Language of Achilles: Construction vs. Representation,” Classical World 79, no. 4 (Mar.–Apr. 1986), 217–25; W. Donlan, “Duelling with Gifts in the Iliad: As the Audience Saw It,” Colby Quarterly 24 (1993), 171; Dean Hammer, “Achilles as Vagabond: The Culture of Autonomy in the ‘Iliad,’” Classical World 90, no. 5 (May–June 1997), 341–66.

  Those connections: For these and many of the examples in the following pages of reconstructed and inherited words in the Indo-European family, see the outstanding J. P. Mallory and D. Q. Adams, The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 138, especially 220ff.

  “phrater”: This word, from the same root as the others, in fact means something like “clansman” in Greek. The usual Greek word for brother is adelphos, meaning “from the same womb.”

  words that have been transmitted: For an overview of the Indo-European world, see Benjamin W. Fortson IV, Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction, 2nd ed. (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010).

  the same word at root: See Mallory and Adams, The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European, 138. The reconstructed root for “otter” in PIE is udrós, with descendants in Latin, English, Lithuanian, Russian, Greek, Iranian and Sanskrit. That reconstructed word is itself formed from the word for water, wódr.

  A verb for the driving: J. P. Mallory, In Searc
h of the Indo-Europeans (London: Thames and Hudson, 1989), 117–18: the frozen expression “to drive cattle” is found in Celtic, Italic and Indo-Iranian. Sanskrit and Greek share a word for the special sacrifice of “one hundred cows,” for which the Greek word is a hecatomb.

  It seems as if: Ibid., 118: “It has long been regarded as reasonable that there was an irreversible semantic development that led from a word ‘to comb’ and a noun ‘sheep’ (the woolly animal) to livestock in general and finally to wealth, hence German Vieh ‘cattle’ and English fee. More recently, however, this was challenged by Emile Benveniste who argued that the semantic development should indeed be reversed and begin with the concept of ‘movable possessions’ which, under the influence of later cultural development, was gradually specified to sheep.” The PIE root is reconstructed as péku. See Emile Benveniste, Indo-European Language and Society (Miami: University of Miami Press, 1973).

  The word for marry: Mallory, In Search of the Indo-Europeans, 123: “Many Indo-European languages do employ the same Proto-Indo-European verb wedh—‘To lead (home)’ when expressing the act of becoming married from a groom’s point of view.”

  That original compound word: Mallory and Adams, The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European, 323.

  In other languages: Bernard Comrie, Tense (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).

  It was probably domesticated: For the transforming role of the horse in steppeland life, see David W. Anthony, The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2007).

  both descended from: Mallory and Adams, The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European, 134.

  or in hill figures: The White Horse at Uffington (illustrated), not merely scratched into the turf but deliberately constructed with chalk rammed into deep trenches, nearly in the form it still maintains, has been dated to the Bronze Age, perhaps as early as 1400 BC, and has been regularly maintained ever since. David Miles and Simon Palmer, “White Horse Hill,” Current Archaeology 142 (1995), 372–78. Images of horses on Celtic Iron Age coinage (the illustration is of a gold stater coined by the Gaulish Parisii ca. 70–60 BC) draw as much on that tradition as on Mediterranean examples.

  a place called Sintashta: Anthony, The Horse, the Wheel and Language, 371–411.

  they might have been: Ibid., 371–411, 452–57.

  it is possible for one man: Iliad X.505.

  at the funeral games: The chariot race at Patroclus’s funeral games is at ibid., XXIII.286–534.

  camp build for many days: They took nine days bringing in the timber for Hector’s funeral pyre. Ibid., XXIV.783–84.

  both Poseidon and Athene: M. Detienne and A. B. Werth, “Athena and the Mastery of the Horse,” History of Religions 11, no. 2 (Nov. 1971), 161–84.

  “a prize-winning horse”: Iliad XXII.22.

  whiter than snow: Ibid., X.436, 547.

  “like a horse”: Ibid., XV.263ff.

  The Trojans sacrifice: Ibid., XXI.132.

  the horse dominates the names: Grace H. Macurdy, “The Horse-Taming Trojans,” Classical Quarterly 17, no. 1 (Jan. 1923), 50–52.

  tells Telemachus: Odyssey IV.271ff.

  “dear, steadfast heart”: Ibid., IV.240.

  The second time: Ibid., VIII.499ff.

  “his whole body”: Aeneid VI.497–99.

  “As a woman weeps”: Odyssey VIII.523–32 (Lattimore, fundamentally).

  “Those who had dreamed”: Simone Weil, L’Iliade ou le poème de la force. See Simone Weil and Rachel Bespaloff, War and the Iliad, trans. Mary McCarthy (New York: New York Review of Books, 2005), 3.

  the word Homer uses: Iliad XIII.393.

  “We did not dare”: Edwin Muir, “The Horses,” from One Foot in Eden (London: Faber, 1956).

  Sleep sits: Iliad XIV.290.

  beautiful as a star: Ibid., VI.399–403.

  like cattle stepping: Ibid., XX.495.

  “a snowy mountain”: Ibid., XIII.754.

  Usatovo, near Odessa: D. Ya. Telegin and David W. Anthony, “On the Yamna Culture,” Current Anthropology 28, no. 3 (June 1987), 357–58.

  a world not of palaces: Katarzyna Ślusarska, “Funeral Rites of the Catacomb Community: 2800–1900 BC: Ritual, Thanatology and Geographical Origins,” Baltic-Pontic Studies (Poznań) 13 (2006).

  Scholars have pursued: For many of these references, see M. L. West, “The Rise of the Greek Epic,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 108 (1988), 151–72.

  as Nestor tells: Iliad II.362.

  phrase that recurs repeatedly: Iliad II. 159, Odyssey III.142.

  ep’ eurea nota thalasses: Ibid., XX.228, et cetera.

  “He harnessed to the chariot”: Ibid., XIII.23ff.

  When Aeneas is remembering: Ibid., XX.217.

  “They would play”: Ibid., XX.225.

  “It is by cunning”: Ibid., XXIII.316–18, 325.

  fast-running ships: Odyssey IV.707–8.

  “Just as in a field”: Ibid., XIII.81ff.

  beautiful metal dogs: Ibid., VII.91–94.

  robotic golden girls: Iliad XVIII.372ff.

  “and the spearhead”: Ibid., V.65ff (Lattimore and Fagles combined/altered).

  “Who understands how”: Iliad V.60ff (Lattimore and Fagles combined/altered).

  At this most fundamental level: For these transitions, see Mallory and Adams, The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World; and Anthony, The Horse, the Wheel and Language, 371–411, 452–57.

  They can only have arrived: Thomas F. Strasser et al., “Stone Age Seafaring in the Mediterranean, Plakias Region for Lower Palaeolithic and Mesolithic Habitation of Crete,” Hesperia 79 (2010), 145–90.

  “the colossal vortex”: For the transforming arrival of the sailing ship, see the concluding chapter of Cyprian Broodbank, An Island Archaeology of the Early Cyclades (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

  And above all: Ibid., 345.

  Topsail, Riptide: Fagles, Odyssey VIII.130–39.

  “Our ships can sail”: Odyssey VIII.556–63.

  “drastically shrunk”: Broodbank, An Island Archaeology of the Early Cyclades, 345.

  Menelaus remembers: Odyssey III.158.

  It was fast ships: Iliad VII.467–75.

  It is the ships: Ibid., XV.502ff.

  10: THE GANG AND THE CITY

  “the abandoned weapons”: Iliad X.469.

  dog-eyed: Ibid., I.159.

  “the most savage man alive”: Ibid., I.146.

  “shaggy breasts”: Ibid., I.189.

  “black blood”: Ibid., I.303.

  “the wives and daughters”: Ibid., VI.237–38 (adapted from Murray/Dimock, Loeb).

  “that most beautiful house”: Ibid., VI.242–49 (adapted from Fagles).

  “Let no man”: Ibid., II.354–55 (adapted from Fagles).

  formulaic adjectives: Ibid., II.540; rocky Aulis is at II.496, Eteonus has many ridges at II.479 and Orchomenos is very sheepy at II.605.

  They love their land: Ibid., XIV.120.

  phrase that is repeated: See, for example, Iliad XII.243, XXIV.500.

  “And now sweeter”: Ibid., II.450–54.

  “Beware the toils”: Ibid., V.487–88, Fagles V.559–60.

  264 people: C. B. Armstrong, “The Casualty Lists in the Trojan War,” Greece and Rome 16 (1969), 30–31, gives 238 named casualties and twenty-six unnamed, sixty-one of whom are Greek and 208 Trojan.

  “they limp and halt”: Fagles, Iliad IX.502–6.

  “Of all that breathe”: Iliad XVII.441–47, Fagles, XVII.509–15.

  “Patroclus keeps on sweeping”: Iliad XVI.397–98.

  “Hah! look at you!”: Ibid., XVI.745–50.

  “Erymas and Amphoterus”: Ibid., XVI.414–18.

  “Next he goes”: Iliad XVI.401ff, Fagles, XVI.472ff; see Fagles, Odyssey XII.271–75.

  “Ahead, Patroclus”: Christopher Logue, “The Iliad: Book XVI. An English Version,�
�� Arion 1, no. 2 (Summer 1962), 3–26.

  The first fighting: Iliad IV.446.

  a cause for rejoicing: Ibid., VII.189.

  “Now the sun”: Ibid., VII.421–29.

  Bruce Jacobs and Richard Wright: Bruce A. Jacobs and Richard Wright, Street Justice: Retaliation in the Criminal Underworld, Cambridge Studies in Criminology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

  “This desire for payback”: Ibid., 25.

  “urban nomads”: Ibid., 12.

  “maintaining a reputation”: Ibid., 32.

  “Everyone was watching”: Ibid., 76.

  “two lions”: Iliad X.279.

  “like two rip-fanged hounds”: Ibid., X.360.

  The two Greeks: Ibid., X.400.

  “strikes the middle”: Ibid., X.454.

  Odysseus laughs aloud: Ibid., X.565.

  calling them fools: Ibid., II.870, XI.450–55, XVI.833.

  “I got your punk ass”: Jacobs and Wright, Street Justice, 35.

  “I felt like I was”: Ibid., 36.

  “When he smiles”: Colton Simpson with Ann Pearlman, Inside the Crips (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2005), 14.

  “No one forgets”: Martín Sánchez-Jankowski, Islands in the Street: Gangs and American Urban Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 140–41.

  Neither rape nor fighting: Ibid., 79.

  “Troy must have been”: D. F. Easton, J. D. Hawkins, A. G. Sherratt and E. S. Sherratt, “Troy in Recent Perspective,” Anatolian Studies 52 (2002), 75–109.

  It sat at one: A city at Troy, at the southern end of the narrows between the Aegean and the Black Sea, might be seen as a strategic alternative to a city on the site of Istanbul, at the other end. Byzantium was founded as a colony by the Greek city of Megara only in 667 BC, by which time the ruined site of Troy was also occupied by a small number of Greek colonists, probably from Lesbos.

  The great Trojan treasures: D. F. Easton, “Priam’s Gold: The Full Story,” Anatolian Studies 44 (1994), 221–43.

  The silver and gold vessels: Christoph Bachhuber, “The Treasure Deposits of Troy: Rethinking Crisis and Agency on the Early Bronze Age Citadel,” Anatolian Studies 59 (2009), 1–18; Mikhail Treister, “The Trojan Treasures: Description, Chronology, Historical Context,” in The Gold of Troy, ed. Vladimir Tolstikov and Mikhail Treister (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996), 225–29.