Abstract
Abstract Archaic Greek epic exhibits a pervasive eristic intertextuality, repeatedly positioning its heroes and itself against pre-existing traditions. In this article, I focus on a specific case study from the Odyssey: Homer’s agonistic relationship with the Catalogue of Women tradition. Hesiodic-style catalogue poetry has long been recognized as an important intertext for the Nekyia of Odyssey 11, but here I explore a more sustained dialogue across the whole poem. Through an ongoing agōn that sets Odysseus’s wife against catalogic women, Homer establishes the pre-eminence of his heroine and—by extension—the supremacy of his own poem.
Highlights
Archaic Greek epic exhibits a pervasive eristic intertextuality, repeatedly positioning its heroes and itself against pre-existing traditions
35 Notably, this positive Odyssean assessment of κέρδεα contrasts with a largely critical evaluation elsewhere in early Greek epic: for example, Hesiod’s warning about the dangerous pursuit of profit in the Works and Days, and Penelope’s superiority to catalogic women in these terms, Homer agonistically hints at the superiority of the tale in which she features: just as Penelope surpasses these women of the past, so too does the Odyssey trump the Hesiodic tradition of female catalogues.[36]
We know from various later sources that Penelope was not always as faithful as she appears in our Odyssey
Summary
Demodocus’s and Odysseus’s various tales in Scheria can be interpreted as a quasi-poetic competition, paralleling the athletic contest of Odyssey 8: Ford 1992: 114–118
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