Flight, pursuit, breach of contract, and ceasefire in classical epic

Abstract

The description of flight and pursuit was an enduring (and celebrated: Pl. Ion 535B) component of epic battle narratives from the age of Homer to Late Antiquity. The structural patterns of this type-scene may be analysed in various subcategories. Each of these sub-categories contributes its own nuances of meaning to the narrative in which it is embedded and each is subject to meaningful adaptation over time. Flight and pursuit may be recounted in the form of quite unelaborated notices (marked by the key vocabulary φεύγω, διώκω, fugio, sequor) of collective flight from a single warrior or an army. These may mark major turning points within a battle narrative, such as at Hom. Il. 8.343-9 (the Greeks flee before Hector to their ships), 21.606-11 (the Trojans flee before Achilles into the city), or Verg. Aen. 1.466-8, where the major turning points of the battle at Troy are cast as flight and pursuit. Collective flight may reflect the prowess of the individual hero, or, alternately, the cowardice or shame of his opponent(s). Individual encounters on the battlefield may also lead to flight and/or pursuit.Warriors may flee when they are outnumbered, or at the prompting of a god, or when wounded; they may also flee in compliance with evidence of divine will. Such flight may result in wounding, death, or escape. Scenes of individual flight and pursuit attain their most complex and fully elaborated narrative structure when they recount the flight and pursuit of the poem’s main protagonists as part of their climactic confrontation. This sub-category may be enriched by similes, topographies, and itineraries of flight, narrative interruptions, speeches of observers, topoi, such as the prize motif, as well as exhortations to and from the individuals in the pursuit. The archetype is provided by Hector’s flight from Achilles at Hom. Il. 22.136-246; its most prominent point of reception within later epic is Turnus’ flight from Aeneas at Verg. Aen. 12.733-90. It will be the purpose of this chapter to establish the normative narrative patterns by which scenes of flight and pursuit in epic are conveyed under such categories. The chapter will consider how the various sub-categories of flight and pursuit interrelate within their own poems, and how divergences from and fragmentations of established narrative patterns generate new meanings in the succession of epic poems from Homer to Late Antiquity.