Divine Inspiration and Narrative Technique in the <i>Iliad</i>

Abstract

The invocation to the Muses has rightly been seen as an appeal for information about the past (e.g. A. Ford, Homer: The Poetry of the Past, Ithaca 1992). This paper argues that the poet’s relationship with the Muses not only guarantees the contents of his tale, but also determines how he goes about telling it. In particular, the paper argues that the poet’s divine perspective affects how he treats time, and how he relates to space. The paper falls into in three parts:1. The Muses. The paper starts by discussing the most elaborate invocation to the Muses in the Iliad. At 2.484-93, the poet declares: ‘Tell me now, you Muses who have your homes on Olympus – for you are goddesses, are present, and know all things…’. The meaning of πάρeστe, at 2.485, has been much debated (for a summary of the different views, see J. Latacz, Homers Iliad Gesamtkommentar vol. 2, Munchen/Leipzig ad 484-93 and ad 485). Are the Muses ‘present’, in the sense that they are in the company of the poet and his audience, or are they ‘present’ in Troy, at the time of the Trojan expedition? This question admits of no straightforward answer. The Muses and the poet enjoy an intimate relationship, and the result of that relationship is the performance itself, in front of an audience. But the ‘presence’ of the Muses, in our passage, does not just concern their impact on the poet and his audience: it is closely linked to the Muses’ own knowledge of the Trojan expedition, and to their divine powers more generally: ὑμeῖς γὰρ θeαί ἐστe πάρeστέ τe ἴστe τe πάντα, ‘you are goddesses, are present, and know all things’. Hesiod tells us that the Muses please the mind of Zeus by ‘telling what is, what will be, and what was before’ (Th. 38). Their knowledge has a temporal dimension in the Iliad too: they bridge the gap between the great events at Troy, and the world of Homeric audiences. 2. Time. The poet’s own knowledge of the past is also characterised by a sense of his presence in Troy. For example, although he uses the past tense to relate what happened at Troy, he sometimes addresses his characters directly in the course of the narrative (whereas he never addresses his audience). These direct apostrophes are so startling that they have attracted much commentary from antiquity to today (for a summary of ancient and modern views, see e.g. S. D. Richardson, The Homeric Narrator, Nashville, 1990: 170-4). What this paper wants to add to the discussion is that direct addresses enhance the vividness of the narrative (or ἐναργeία as the ancients called it) by erazing temporal distance: the poet addresses Menelaus, Patroclus and Antilochus as if he was standing right next to them. The poet’s presence at Troy may also help to explain another puzzling feature of Homeric narrative technique: the poet’s tendency to represent simultaneous actions as sequential. This observation, known as ‘Zielinski’s law’, has been much debated. In ‘Zielinski’s law reconsidered’, TAPA 138, 2008: 109, R. Scodel reaches the following, judicious conclusion: ‘there is no single solution for all passages where the Homeric narrator’s treatment of time is difficult, because time stands in a complex relationship with his other narrative concerns.’ This paper argues that one such concern may help to explain Zielinski’s law. The poet describes events as if he were there. Overt references to simultaneity would dispel that sense of presence: in order to say that an event was taking place while something else was happening elsewhere, the poet would need to stand back from both events, however briefly. That, by and large, he does not do. Rather, he often abandons one strand of the story and picks up another without offering explicit guidance about the transition. He simply, suddenly, looks elsewhere, or changes locale – just like Zeus who, at 13.1-9, momentarily turns his eyes from the Trojan plain, in order to look at the Thracians, the Mysians etc.3. Space. The poet’s treatment of space is also affected by his divine perspective. Contemporary readers often describe Homeric technique as ‘cinematic’ (e.g. M. M. Winkler, ‘The Iliad and the cinema’ in Troy: from Homer’s Iliad to Hollywood Epic, Oxford, 2007, 43-67). Homeric narrative offers panoramic views of the action, then zooms in on a detail of the fighting, etc. The poet controls the whole battlefield, and describes it from a specific vantage point: he hovers above the plain, facing Troy, and keeping his back to the sea. And yet there were no helicopters, in antiquity, from which to take aerial shots, and no cameras zooming in or out. Only the gods could view things from above, and suddenly descend and observe the fighting at close quarters (cf. 4.539-42). The ancient Greeks thought that Homer’s powers were divine, rather than cinematic. They called him θeῖος Ὅμηρος – and with good reason.