Achilles Unbound: Multiformity and Tradition in the Homeric Epics by Casey Dué

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS Achilles Unbound: Multiformity and Tradition in the Homeric Epics. By Casey Du e. Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies. 2019. Pp. xiii, 204. ACHILLES UNBOUND by Casey Dué gathers evidence for the multiform nature of Homeric poetry. The inspiration for many of the arguments is the Homer Multitext Project based at the Center for Hellenic Studies, which is painstakingly producing an online edition of Homer that foregrounds variation. By exploring examples of apparent multitextuality at various stages in the transmission of the Homeric epics, Dué demonstrates with specific examples the empirical basis for an alternative, multitext edition of Homer. The preface describes the Multitext Project and its progress over the last two decades, noting the recent completion of a multitext edition of the famous Venetus A manuscript. An introduction then explains the intellectual basis for the project. Dué challenges the traditional textual edition that sorts, organizes, and prioritizes alternative readings, with the buttress of an authoritative, cryptic apparatus. She also rehearses arguments by scholars associated with the Center for Hellenic Studies, notably G. Nagy’s evolutionary theory of five stages of Homeric transmission.1 Chapter One surveys the potential range of Homeric tradition and transmission, including Vedic Sanskrit comparators, Bronze Age iconography and material culture, Hellenistic scholarship on Homer, and the influential prolegomena of F. A. Wolf.2 Returning to the subject of her first book,3 Dué points to variation in the story of Briseis, as indicated by the Iliad, ancient iconography, and ancient reception of the Trojan War, as a prime example of multiformity. Subsequent chapters focus on different types of evidence for multiformity in Homeric transmission. The second chapter takes up ancient quotations of Homer, featuring one by Aeschines that offers three plus verses and internal variation in a passage from Iliad Book 23. Building on a previous article,4 Dué notes that this fourth-century “variation” precedes our surviving papyri and manuscripts and argues that it is based on oral-formulaic composition. Chapter Three addresses surviving papyrus fragments, notably ones deemed “wild” in reference to their difference from the vulgate. Dué extensively discusses a first-century B.C.E. papyrus that seemingly interpolates lines from the Hesiodic Shield into the shield of Achilles, with reference to the argument of Athenaeus that the school of Aristarchus had transposed a singer from the shield of Achilles to the wedding scene in Book 4 of the Odyssey. That this singer is actually not in the standard text of the shield of Achilles is seen to underscore the need for a multiform understanding of epic intertextuality. Another topic is provided by a papyrus that modifies the last line of the Iliad and adds another so as to introduce an Amazon, apparently in continuation to the Aethiopis of the Epic Cycle. That this reading is different from a comparable Iliad/Aethiopis “join” reported by a scholion of the Townley manuscript illustrates the multiformity of multiformity. 1 See, most succinctly, G. Nagy, Poetry as Performance (Cambridge 1996) 107–117. 2 F. A. Wolf, Prolegomena to Homer (tr. and ed. A. Grafton, A. Most, and J. E. G. Zetzel; Princeton, NJ 1985). 3 C. Dué, Homeric Variations on a Lament by Briseis (Washington, DC 2002). 4 C. Dué, “Achilles’ Golden Amphora in Aeschines’ Against Timarchus and the Afterlife of Oral Tradition,” CP 96 (2001) 33–47. PHOENIX, VOL. 73 (2019) 1–2. 190 BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 191 Chapter Four proceeds to mediaeval manuscripts, with several topics discussed. Multiformity of myth is seen in the startling speech of Briseis over the body of Patroclus in Book 19, in which the concubine suddenly opens one window onto the sack of her city by Achilles before slamming shut another upon her hoped-for marriage to Achilles in Greece. The Catalogue of Ships, missing in several manuscripts and a third-century papyrus, as well as often formatted differently when present, provides another interesting topic, as does the suspected authenticity of Book 10 (building on a book co-authored by Dué on this topic),5 and the shield of Achilles once again, this time in terms of its micro-symbolism of the Iliad and its larger tradition. One will see that in practice...