How a Classical Homer occasionally downgrades the heroic glory of Ajax in order to save it: Part 2

Abstract

Here in Part 2 of a three-part essay dedicated to Gloria Ferrari Pinney and posted in Classical Inquiries—this second part was posted one day before her eightieth birthday—I elaborate on arguments I introduced in the first part (Nagy 2021.05.24, linked here), now concentrating on this question: how was it that Odysseus won and Ajax lost the right to own the armor of the fallen Achilles in the context of a Judgment made by their Achaean comrades-in-arms? The answer, from the standpoint of a “Preclassical Homer,” is multiform: there were many variations on this theme of a Judgment, as still reflected in Preclassical vase paintings. For example, some of these paintings depict a decision that is made by way of pebbles used as ballots, but there is one painting where the depicted decision is made by way of leaves, and such a Judgment, as argued by Gloria Ferrari Pinney and her co-author Richard Hamilton, would be a secret ballot as distinct from an open ballot by way of pebbles (Pinney and Hamilton 1982; there is a comparable argument made by Alan Shapiro 1981). The illustration that I have chosen for my essay here shows a picture of that painting. By contrast with such Preclassical visualizations attested in vase paintings, however, the “Classical Homer” as reflected in the textual tradition of “our” Iliad and Odyssey shows no mention of any such balloting—either secret or open. In Odyssey 11.469–470 and 550–551, there is mention, yes, of a Judgment: it happens explicitly at line 545, where the figure of Odysseus himself retells how he was ‘engaging in the judgment’, δικαζόμενος. But there is no mention there of a Vote by way of balloting, secret or otherwise. Such an omission, as I started to argue already in Part 1 of my three-part essay (again, Nagy 2021.05.24, linked here), is a distinctive characteristic of what I am calling the Classical Homer, where various events as narrated in multiform versions by a Preclassical Homer are reshaped in a relatively more uniform version that is more effective in safeguarding the epic glory of Ajax, even at the cost of some degree of downgrading. A case in point is the Vote, inventoried as Event C at §3 of Part 1. And now, here in Part 2, I offer an inventory of other such epic events, each one of which is relevant to myths about the armor of Achilles.