Gnawing at the End of the Rope: Poets on the Field in Two Vergilian Catalogues

Abstract

(Iliad2.603-14)They who held Arkadia under the sheer peak, Kyllene,beside the tomb of Aipytos, where men fight at close quarters,they who dwelt in Orchomenos of the flocks, and Pheneos,about Rhipe and Stratia and windy Enispe;they who held Tegea and Mantineia the lovely,they who held Stymphalos, and dwelt about Parrhasia,their leader was Angkaios' son, powerful Agapenor.Sixty was the number of their ships, and in each shipwent many men of Arkadia, well skilled in battle.Agamemnon the lord of men himself had giventhese for the crossing of the wine-blue sea their strong-benched vessels,Atreus' son, since the work of the sea was nothing to these men.The Iliadic catalogue of ships stands as a monument to the victory of memory over time. Through the medium of hexameter verse, the names and deeds of the dead have been recalled and passed on to the living. The device of the catalogue, in fact, has the potential to stand as a pure model of epic recollection: the listing of names, places, and numbers of men, along with particular details, such as the Arkadians' ignorance of seafaring, provides the illusion that what is recalled is fact, that the poem is a screen on which the reality of the past is projected to the audience of the present for the purpose of commemoration, the safeguarding of communal memory.