The New Simonides and Homer's Hemitheoi

Abstract

The New Simonides and Homer's Hemitheoi Jenny Strauss Clay The proem to Simonides' recently discovered "Battle of Plataea" is addressed to the hero Achilles.1 How long it was and whether it dealt with the hero's birth and other exploits remains unclear. Fr. 10 surely deals with Achilles, but its precise contents are obscure. The beginning lines of the far more extensive fr. 11 apparently describe the hero's death in an epic simile adapted from Homer.2 The damaged lines that follow (9–14) provide a brief summary of the end of the Trojan war, the destruction of Troy, and the return of the Greeks: 3 Before breaking off, Simonides credits Homer with the heroes' renown: [End Page 243] At first glance, the claims on Homer's behalf seem exaggerated. As Aloni notes, the incidents alluded to—the death of Achilles, the fall and sack of Troy, and the returns of the heroes—are actually not recounted in Homer.4 Yet there is no reason to think that Simonides ascribed an Iliou Persis to Homer. To be sure, by exaggerating Homer's accomplishment, Simonides can rhetorically magnify his own. As Homer granted immortal fame to the heroes, so too will Simonides to the Plataean heroes he celebrates. Lloyd-Jones has observed that the diction of these lines is peculiarly evocative of the epic, both in the choice of , a Homeric hapax, which occurs when Helen tells Hector that Zeus set an evil destiny upon herself and Paris, to make them for men to come (Il. 6.357– 58), as well as the epithet , which in four out of its five occurrences is used by Thetis of her son.5 For Simonides, not just Achilles but the whole race of the heroes is . As he says in his Threnoi (523 PMG): In addition to the many verbal echoes of Homer that have already been observed by others, fr. 11 as a whole contains another, I believe more precise, allusion. The two passages are linked not only by the similarity of their contents, but also by the term , a hapax in Homer and surprisingly rare elsewhere. Hesiod uses it almost as the terminus technicus to refer to his fourth race, the race of heroes who fought at Thebes and at Troy: (Works and Days 159–60).6 Similarly, the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women closely links the suitors of Helen and the Trojan War with Zeus' plan to destroy the (fr. 204.100 Merkelbach-West).7 In Alcaeus 42.13 Voigt, Achilles is called one of the hemitheoi, as is [End Page 244] one of Alcman's Hippocoontids in the Louvre Partheneion (3.7 Calame). Callinus' praise of the brave warrior implies that, if he survives, he will be (1.19 W); he becomes the equal of those legendary heroes of the past. Whenever the term is used in these passages, it suggests a retrospective vision, looking back at the legendary past from the vantage of the present. But the comprehensive vision of the Trojan War with which Simonides brings his proem to a close most closely resembles Homer's similarly synoptic view at the beginning of the twelfth book of the Iliad. In Iliad 12, Homer momentarily pulls back from the immediate action on the battle field to distance himself from the heroes who fought before Troy. From that unique vantage, those who participated in the Trojan war belong to an earlier generation and to a different world, the . As he begins his narrative of the assault on the Achaean wall, Homer looks forward to a future time when it will have disappeared (12.10–16): At that point the gods in concert will destroy the wall, (12.23). In characterizing Homer's accomplishment as making a name among men to come for the , Simonides likewise distances himself from the heroes of Troy and, above all, Achilles. In the next line, the poet will salute Achilles and take his leave of the hero, before turning to the task at hand. In echoing the Homeric passage and in using the expression , Simonides both links himself with, and dissociates himself from, Homer and his subject matter. Troy and the race of...