The Center for Hellenic Studies (CHS)

Repetition in Homeric poetry is a matter of performance, not only composition. I argue that this observation applies to the Homeric phenomenon of “repeated utterances.”

This argument is part of a larger project, which is, to show that Homeric poetry is a medium of oral poetry. That project is exemplified in a 1996 book entitled Poetry as Performance, where I argued that the text of the Homeric poems, that is, of the Iliad and the Odyssey, is derived from a system that needs to be distinguished from the text itself - or, better, from the Homeric textual tradition that editors try to reconstruct as a single Homeric text.[1] The text of Homer is merely the surface. Underneath that surface is the system that is Homeric poetry, which needs to be analyzed on its own terms, as a system. This system, I argued, reveals a medium of oral poetry. My task here is to take the argument further by showing that the phenomenon of repeated utterances in the Homeric textual tradition is explainable in terms of this system, that is, in terms of oral poetry.

In H24H 24§45, I quote and analyze the passage in Plato’s Phaedo 117a–118a where Socrates dies. His last words, as transmitted by Plato, are directed at all those who have followed Socrates—and who have had the unforgettable experience of engaging in dialogue with him. Calling out to one of those followers, Crito, who was a native son of the same neighborhood where Socrates was born, he says to his comrade: don’t forget to sacrifice a rooster to Asklepios. I will quote the whole passage in a minute. But first, we need to ask: who is this Asklepios? As I explain in H24H 20§§29–33, he was a hero whose father was the god Apollo himself, and, like his divine father, Asklepios had special powers of healing. More than that, Asklepios also had the power of bringing the dead back to life. That is why he was killed by the immortals, since mortals must stay mortal. But Asklepios, even after death, retained his power to bring the dead back to life.

I start by citing a most important article by Stephen White:

White, S. A. 2000. “Socrates at Colonus: A Hero for the Academy.” Reason and Religion in Socratic Philosophy (ed. N. D. Smith and P. Woodruff) 151–75. Oxford.

§2. Despite my admiration for White’s article, I cited it only once in H24H, at the end of this paragraph:

23§46. This is where the continuation of the argument comes into the picture. [When I say “this is where” in this context, I am referring to Plato Phaedo 88c–89c, where Phaedo’s inset narrative quoting Socrates’ argument for the immortality of the psūkhē is interrupted by Echecrates, who has been listening to Phaedo’s narrative from the start—but then the argument of Socrates is allowed to continue after Phaedo’s inset narrative is restarted—or, better, recontinued.] After the interruption of the argument, the argument will begin again, as Phaedo recontinues the inset narrative, and, in this recontinued narrative, the dialogue of Socrates gets a new life. The dialogue is brought back to life again. The dialogue, as Socrates himself implies, is resurrected. His use of the expression ana-biōnai, ‘bring back to life again’, in the text quoted [Phaedo 88c–89c] conveys the idea of resurrecting the logos, ‘argument’, the literal meaning of which can also be translated, more simply, as ‘word’. The followers of Socrates should lament not for the death of Socrates but for the death of the word. And if the living word stays alive, then there is no need to mourn for Socrates—even if his psūkhē or ‘soul’ were to die along with him. Plato’s Socrates refers in this context to a celebrated story about the men of Argos who refused to wear their hair long until they got a rematch with the long-haired men of Sparta who had defeated them (Herodotus 1.82.7). So also, says Socrates, the followers of Socrates should cut their hair in mourning for his death only if they are ready to fight once again for the argument that the psūkhē or ‘soul’ is immortal. So, maybe Socrates himself has been immortalized after all. It is in such a context that I can understand the argument of those who see traces of a hero cult of Socrates as instituted by Plato and his followers within the space of Plato’s Academy.

In H24H, I speak about the complementarity of the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey in foregrounding respectively Achilles and Odysseus as the best hero among all the Achaeans who came to fight in the Trojan War. (In this context, the ‘Achaeans’ are the Homeric prototypes of the historical Greeks, also known as ‘Argives’ and ‘Danaans’.) Here is the way I describe that complementarity:

9§12. A central theme unites the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey: as we see from the pervasive use of the title aristos Akhaiōn ‘best of the Achaeans’ in both epics, Achilles emerges as the rightful owner of this title in the Iliad while Odysseus earns the same title in the Odyssey. But the poetry of epic awards this title not by way of measuring the successes achieved by these heroes by virtue of their predominant heroic qualities, namely, strength in the case of Achilles and intelligence in the case of Odysseus. After all, Achilles failed to capture Troy with his heroic strength. As for Odysseus, although he used his heroic intelligence in inventing the Wooden Horse, which was the key to the capture of Troy by the Achaeans, this success did not win for him the title of the ‘best of the Achaeans’ in the Iliad. Rather, Odysseus earned that title by becoming the main hero of the Odyssey, just as Achilles earned the same title by becoming the main hero of the Iliad.

In the footnotes for the paragraph I just quoted, I direct the reader to a book that I first published in 1979, The Best of the Achaeans. In Chapter 2 of that book, I analyze the passages in the Iliad and Odyssey that show decisively the roles of Achilles and Odysseus as ‘the best of the Achaeans’. But there is more to it, much more, as I go on to say in the first sentence of the next paragraph of H24H, which I quote here:

In Plato’s Phaedo 118a, we read this description of the very last seconds before Socrates died from the poison that pervaded his body after he was forced to drink the potion of hemlock that the State had measured out for his execution:

Then he uncovered his face, for he had covered himself up, and said—this was the last thing he uttered—“Crito, I owe the sacrifice of a rooster to Asklepios; will you pay that debt and not neglect to do so?”

These last words ever spoken by Socrates, as quoted in Plato’s Phaedo, are referring to a ritual performed by worshippers of the cult hero Asklepios. It seems as if Socrates had made a vow to perform such a ritual.

The date for my putting together a posting for this week, 2015.04.30, coincides with the date of a special day set aside for celebrating the life and accomplishments of Ellen Bradshaw Aitken, whose premature death on 2014.06.14 deeply saddened me as her friend, colleague, and former teacher. But this day of celebration, at McGill University in Montréal, gives me the happy opportunity to tell about Professor Aitken’s research. In telling my story, I will speak about her as Ellen, not as Professor Aitken, recalling those many happy times when I could talk to you directly, dearest Ellen. That said, let’s get started. I concentrate here on Ellen’s discoveries and discovery procedures concerning the topic of charioteering in Homeric poetry. Ellen’s research on this topic goes all the way back to 1982, when she was a senior at Harvard College, studying in the program of the Committee on Degrees in Folklore and Mythology. That year, she submitted an honors thesis entitled “ὀπάων [opāōn] and ὀπάζω [opazō]: A Study in the Epic Treatment of Heroic Relationships.” The thesis, combined with all her other stellar work as a young student at Harvard, earned her a baccalaureate degree summa cum laude. Then, more than thirty years later, Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies initiated a plan to publish a second edition of this masterpiece in Homeric research. Ellen’s untimely death has not thwarted this plan, and an annotated version of her original work is about to appear. I have volunteered to produce my own annotations for this online work, and what I present now is one part of those annotations. I focus here on a Homeric hero who had particularly interested Ellen: he is Mērionēs the Cretan, who fought in the Trojan War as an opāōn or ‘follower’ of the hero Idomeneus, king of all the Cretans. This Mērionēs was also a charioteer who competed in the chariot race organized by Achilles in Iliad 23 to compensate for the death of Patroklos.

In my posting of 2015.05.01, I analyzed the Homeric passage at Iliad 17.608–625 where a hero named Koiranos is killed while driving the chariot of Idomeneus, king of the Cretans. After the killing, which happens at verses 610–612, the hero Mērionēs suddenly appears at verses 620–621, as if out of nowhere, and he grabs the chariot reins dropped by the mortally wounded charioteer. Then, at verses 621–624, he hands the reins to Idomeneus, who is shown at verse 609 as he is standing on the chariot platform, and he instructs the king to whip the horses and drive the royal chariot back in retreat to the headquarters of the Achaeans, where their ships are beached. At verses 624–625, we see that Idomeneus complies, and he drives away in the chariot (624–625).

In this posting for 2015.05.20, I experiment with different ways of making annotations in a commentary. The passage I have chosen for this commentary is Iliad 5.166–469. I will analyze these 300­odd Homeric verses in two different ways, viewing them through both the lower and the upper part of a bifocal lens. The word lens is my working metaphor here for the critical perspective I hope to achieve.

This posting, 2015.05.27, continues where I left off in a previous posting, 2015.04.10. There I translated and then analyzed the text of the first song of Demodokos, contained in verses 72–83 of Odyssey 8, which I described as a micro-epic that refers to the macro-epics of the Iliad and the Odyssey. In that previous posting, I offered a translation of these verses, followed by a brief analysis that kept citing lengthy arguments that I had developed in a variety of earlier publications. But I kept asking myself, even while writing up my analysis in that posting: could I find new ways of developing my argumentation without having to rely mostly on the details that I cited from my earlier publications? In the present posting for 2015.05.27, which should take less than ten minutes to read, I experiment with a form of commentary that focuses on a minimum number of details to be analyzed. Choosing only three details for analysis in verses 72–83 of Odyssey 8, I will comment on all three by focusing on the relationship between the micro-epic contained in these verses and the macro-epics of the Iliad and the Odyssey. This focused commentary is intended as a radical shortcut in envisioning the big picture, as it were, of Homeric poetry.