Greek Epic Research Articles

Poseidon and Zeus in Iliad 7 and Odyssey 13: on a case of Homeric imitation

This article aims to contribute to the current debate on how imitation in early Greek epic can be identified and assessed. Two divine scenes in Iliad Book 7 and Odyssey Book 13 are compared in the light of their traditional background and contextual significance. It is suggested that there are grounds to interpret this as a case of imitation on the Odyssey poet’s part which, however, was not necessarily meant to elicit recognition of the subtext. A methodological point is made by showing that it is possible to argue for a specific intertextual relation by considering the traditional techniques involved.

Moving from two- to multi-way interactions among binary risk factors on the additive scale

Many studies have focused on investigating deviations from additive interaction of two dichotomous risk factors on a binary outcome. There is, however, a gap in the literature with respect to interactions on the additive scale of >2 risk factors. In this paper, we present an approach for examining deviations from additive interaction among three or more binary exposures. The relative excess risk due to interaction (RERI) is used as measure of additive interaction. First, we concentrate on three risk factors – we propose to decompose the total RERI to: the RERI owned to the joint presence of all three risk factors and the RERI of any two risk factors, given that the third is absent. We then extend this approach, to >3 binary risk factors. For illustration, we use a sample from data from the Greek EPIC cohort and we investigate the association with overall mortality of Mediterranean diet, body mass index , and smoking. Our formulae enable better interpretability of any evidence for deviations from additivity owned to more than two risk factors and provide simple ways of communicating such results from a public health perspective by attributing any excess relative risk to specific combinations of these factors. Abbreviations: BMI: Body Mass Index; ERR: excess relative risk; EPIC: European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and nutrition; MD: Mediterranean diet; RERI: relative excess risk due to interaction; RR: relative risk; TotRERI: total relative excess risk due to interaction

Limb-Loosening and the Care of History: Tracing a Motif in Vergil

Limb-Loosening and the Care of History: Tracing a Motif in Vergil GEORGE SAAD the counter-voice of eros in epic While the Homeric world clearly underlies Vergil’s Aeneid, this Roman appropriation of Greek epic is not without complications. Vergil, taking the whole of history as his theme, develops a world subject to cosmic forces beyond the might and craft of Homeric heroes. To overcome enemies is no mean feat, but how is the world itself overcome? How does the hero move history? Prior to writing the Aeneid, Vergil had already found this world-conquering power in amor and labor improbus,1 which conquer all things. Love and unrelenting toil always step beyond their limits. Unlike Achilles, they rage on after the bodies are buried. Always unsatisfied, they cut deeper than the superficial, personal manipulations of sword and stratagem. These forces reach beyond the satisfaction of any finite objective, encompassing and reshaping the entire world. As Vergil is more than an epic poet, the Aeneid transcends the presuppositions of Homeric epic. Against the wider horizon of world history, the epic form becomes the contingent expression of an outmoded worldview, one now seen from outside itself and suspended in comparison with other possible alternatives. And so, though Vergil sings of arms and the man, it is not at all clear that he means to exult the armed man. The ambiguity of Vergil’s commitments has been expressed in Adam Parry’s reading of Vergil as counterposing “two voices” in the Aeneid, 2 a main voice of Roman triumph and a counter -voice questioning the Roman imperial project. This counter -voice ties Vergil to genres outside of epic, genres with their arion 28.2 fall 2020 44 limb-loosening and the care of history own often opposing views of the human condition. Sappho offers one such critique of epic from the erotic perspective of lyric when she asks if any military pageantry could really be more beautiful than the object of her desire (Sappho LP 16). Though the sentiment comes from Greek lyric, it perfectly applies to the crisis of value-commitments Aeneas faces across his journey, most obviously (but not exclusively) in abandoning Dido for Roman glory. The conflicting voices Parry found within the Aeneid are thus analogous to the contrast between epic and lyric, between a view of the world as violence redeemed by public renown and a view of the world as love contained within personal intimacy. Even in Vergil’s most quintessentially epic moments, the deaths of great heroes, an echo of the lyrical voice is present. A formula repeated at the beginning and end of the epic—solvuntur frigore membra—describes the introductory surrender of Aeneas during the storm (Aen 1.92) as well as the concluding death of Turnus at Aeneas’ own hands (Aen 12.951). The hero and his rival both fall with their “limbs slack in a chill,”3 one in desperate supplication, the other in death. What exactly does this mean? Do the limbs seize up in a kind of terror, stiffening in rigor mortis as frigore would suggest? Or is the stress on the solvuntur, as the limbs loosen with a free sensuality evocative of lyrical eroticism? On the most basic physical level, solvere describes the body as somehow coming apart and losing its unified form, yet in these uses it also suggests the opposite, a rigid stiffening of the body. There is clearly more than a physical account intended in each of these expressions. Some deeper semantic sense unites the physical descriptions. Vergil is not entirely innovating with this expression, as Homer uses a similar phrase to describe the deaths of Patroclus and Hector (Il. 16.856–57; 22.68). I aim to demonstrate how this epic formula draws upon a literary tradition which supplies the wider semantic sense necessary to contextualize these passages in Vergil. The epic poets are relying upon a George Saad 45 long-standing motif to describe the loosening of boundaries between individual and world in a moment of bittersweet release. While this motif arises throughout Greek literature, it is especially characteristic of lyric. The loosening of the limbs becomes especially conspicuous in Vergil because this...

Epic on an American Scale: Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio

In this article I examine the link between ancient Greek epic and American Midwestern Agrarianism. Specifically, I examine how Greek and Roman epic influenced Modernism as evidenced in one of the earliest Modernist works, Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio. I find that Anderson employs many epic elements to convey the link between the two empires and emphasize the epic nature of the collapse of American Agrarianism.

Greek Genealogical Epic: Vitality of Its Formulaic Diction

Abstract One aspect of the Greek epic that has yet to be thoroughly explored is the possibility of differentiating, in the midst of formulaic wording, the different genres that from the point of view of Greek literature comprise, for example, the telling of heroic deeds (Iliad, Odyssey), gnomic-paraenetic poetry (Works and Days), or the stories of genealogies, be they divine (Theogony), or heroic (Ehoiai). However, each of these forms of poetic expression had available a specific formulaic apparatus apart from the other much more abundant and more visible, the epic one, shared among the different genres. Thus has it been pointed out on some occasions, although the critics have scarcely pursued the consequences. Here my proposal consists of investigating the dynamics of the formulaic diction of oral poetry of the genealogical type, based on information provided in this regard by the Hesiodic poems of the Theogony, and above all, of the Catalogue of Women.

The Space of the Epigone in Early Greek Epic

Abstract Several poems of the Epic Cycle (especially the Little Iliad and the Nostoi) have a strong interest in the figure of the epigone, as does the Odyssey. Reconstruction of these cyclic epics suggests the operation of narrative conventions that are found to be pointedly inverted in the Homeric poem and thoroughly perverted in the cyclic Telegony.

Narrative, Narratology and Intertextuality: New Perspectives on Greek Epic from Homer to Nonnus

The history of ancient Greek literature can, in some way, be regarded and written as a history of epic poetry. Greek literature in its recorded form began and ended with two heavy epic “blows” that...

Emily Allen-Hornblower: From Agent to Spectator. Witnessing the Aftermath in Ancient Greek Epic and Tragedy.

Emily Allen-Hornblower: From Agent to Spectator. Witnessing the Aftermath in Ancient Greek Epic and Tragedy.

Jacob Baldes Batrachomyomachia Homeri Tuba Romana cantata (1637) und der Dreißigjährige Krieg

Abstract One of the most extensive texts of the neolatin poet and Jesuit Jacob Balde is his ›Battle of the Frogs and Mice‹, a Latin version of the Batrachomyomachia, an ancient Greek epic, which for a long time was seen as a work of the founder of European literature, Homer. The pseudo-Homeric Batrachomyomachia was read as a humorous travesty of the Iliad. By assigning the comic text to Homer, scholars implied the appealing, yet wrongful idea that the author of the greatest mythical war was mocking his own work, thereby parodying the respectable genre of heroic epics. With Balde’s creation of a new version of this Greek poem during the Thirty Years’ War, the question arises as to whether his text is no more than an intertextual play on a famous literary genre, or whether it reacts to the recent historical events in early modern Europe - or both.

From the History of Classical Philology: Alexei F. Losev and Bruno Snell

This article delves into the history of classical philology and the relationship between two prominent classical philologists, one Russian and one German: Alexei Losev (1893–1988) and Bruno Snell (1896–1986). The article shows that both scholars worked at the intersection of philosophy, philology, and history of concepts, and both were interested in the history of ideas, terminology, aesthetics, and mythology and in the language of ancient Greek epics. Unlike Snell, who did not speak Russian and was unable to familiarize himself with Losev’s work on the history of ancient thought, Losev relied on Snell’s work from the mid-1920s until the very end of his life, using Snell to defend his own views on various controversial issues (e.g., reconstructing Homer’s archaic notions of the cosmos, debating the meaning of Heraclitus’ term “ethos,” or discussing the usage of the word sēmainō, and so forth). The subject of analysis is Losev’s 1962 review of the Dictionary of the Early Greek Epic (Lexicon des frühgriechischen Epos), edited by B. Snell, as well as the two scholars’ correspondence in 1959–1960.

Device and Composition in the Greek Epic Cycle by Benjamin Sammons

Reviewed by: Device and Composition in the Greek Epic Cycle by Benjamin Sammons Robert J. Rabel Benjamin Sammons. Device and Composition in the Greek Epic Cycle. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Pp. vii, 263. $85.00. ISBN 978-0-19-061484-3. The thesis of this remarkable book is that the Homeric poems and the poems of the so-called epic cycle are constructed from the same basic devices, “the same bag of tricks” (20). For readers unfamiliar with these fragmentary epics, Sammons includes English translations of summaries attributed to Proclus: Cypria, Aethiopis, Little Iliad, Ilioupersis, Nostoi, and Telegony (239–243). The devices the cyclic epics share with the Homeric poems include certain identifiable, specific narrative features, catalogues, narrative doublets, similar treatment of major and minor characters, the aristeia, and the role(s) assigned to the gods. These devices are treated in separate chapters, each of which begins with a discussion of its use in Homer. Both Homer and the cyclic poets employ a similar narrative style, revealed, for example, in their use of short mythological narratives, often exploited for their paradigmatic or thematic value; they also make frequent use of prolepses and analepses. Like the Odyssey—but unlike the Iliad—the cyclic poems are concerned to locate their stories within a larger mythological context (29). Homer and the cyclic poets use catalogues. Some are paradigmatic catalogues like Dione’s recounting of gods wounded by mortals in Iliad 5 (66). The Homeric Catalogue of Ships shows that almost the whole of the Greek world was involved in the Trojan War; the Catalogue of Trojan Allies in the Cypria numbers the other half of the world (Asia) (96). Both Homer and the cyclic poets make use of repeated narrative doublets. Sammons ingeniously argues that the presence of such doublets in the cyclic poems may explain what at first may seem only the awkward repetition of similar recurring themes in Proclus’ summaries of the poems: an apparent overuse of prophecy, for example (101–102). Less successful, I think, is the attempt to tease out distinctions between the roles played by major and minor characters in the poems of the [End Page 740] cycle (127–156). The four great aristeiai of the Iliad, the heroic deeds of Diomedes, Agamemnon, Patroclus, and Achilles, constitute major compositional units of the poem (159) and find analogues in the cycle (163–176). The Iliad, the Odyssey, and the poems of the cycle differ from one another regarding the roles played by the gods. “Within the Iliad,” Sammons says, “the gods are very busy indeed, but they have little to do” (207). The gods—in particular Athena—drive the Odyssey to its conclusion (181). The poems of the epic cycle show remarkable diversity in their treatment of the gods (182–207). Sammons’ argument is convincing and groundbreaking: the Homeric epics and the cyclic poems have indeed been constructed from many of the same basic devices. How then to explain the uniqueness of the Homeric poems, if they use “the same bag of tricks” as the poems of the cycle? Sammons points to Aristotle, who noted that the Iliad is constructed around a single action, incorporating other elements as episodes (5). Many of these other elements, it seems to me, are designed to constitute a veritable history of the Trojan War, which furnishes a subplot in relation to the poem’s main plot and single action identified by Aristotle: the wrath of Achilles. As the Trojan War unfolds in the background, Homer maintains focus on the wrath of Achilles. Sammons comes close to making a similar point when he describes “the Iliad as a poem concerned with the wrath of Achilles and the Iliad as a Panhellenic epic of the Trojan War” (129 n.6). Later, however, he suggests that the Iliad does little in regard to filling out “a significant portion of the larger history of the Trojan War” (176). Both of these propositions, it seems to me, can’t be true. Regardless of how—or if—a reader might choose to characterize the genius underlying the Homeric poems, Sammons provides an indispensable picture of many of the traditional devices through which the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the...

Device and Composition in the Greek Epic Cycle by Benjamin Sammons

Device and Composition in the Greek Epic Cycle by Benjamin Sammons

Mary R. Bachvarova, From Hittite to Homer. The Anatolian Background of Ancient Greek Epic

Specialiste des cultures de l’Anatolie et du Proche-Orient de l’Âge du Bronze, Mary B. Bachvarova (MBB) presente dans cet ouvrage le fruit de ses recherches sur l’origine anatolienne des epopees homeriques. Sa these, soigneusement illustree et solidement documentee, s’ouvre sur une chronologie de l’Âge du Bronze et une table d’equivalence entre les dieux du Proche-Orient et ceux du monde grec. Cet appareil documentaire est complete par deux cartes et le plan de la capitale hittite: Hattusa (l...

The Training of Virtue and the Role of Adversity in Ancient Greek Epic

The Training of Virtue and the Role of Adversity in Ancient Greek Epic

From Hittite to Homer: The Anatolian Background of Ancient Greek Epic by Mary R. Bachvarova

From Hittite to Homer: The Anatolian Background of Ancient Greek Epic by Mary R. Bachvarova

PINDAR'S CELEDONES (PAEAN 8.68–79): A NOTE

Pindar's Celedones have raised much controversy over the years. Their identity still remains uncertain, although there have been many attempts from scholars to specify whether the term refers to mythical creatures comparable to the Sirens of Homer or to elaborate life-like statues adorning the gable of a long-lost Delphic temple. In this paper, I wish to argue for a metaphorical reading of the Celedones in Pindar's Paean 8 that resides in the poetic (re-)signification of proper names and how they are put into narrative(s). Drawing intratextual evidence from Olympian 1 and intertextual evidence from early Greek epic, I contend that the Celedones, richly semanticized as they are, become the means by which Pindar deals with the rigours of the song-making process, as he strives to introduce an ambivalent take on the choral praise of Apollo at Delphi, one that rests on the paradox of song exquisiteness and its negative consequences.

AJAX AND OTHER OBJECTS: HOMER'S VIBRANT MATERIALISM

ἕρϰος Ἀχαιῶν: ἔμψυχον τεῖχος τῶν Ἑλλήνων.Bulwark of the Achaeans: living wall of the Greeks.Schol. D. Il. 6.5 (on Ajax)Now, still breathing, he is simply matter…Simone Weil, ‘The Iliad or the Poem of Force’ The two quotations at the start of this paper, one from the D scholion on the Iliad and the other from Simone Weil's famous essay on force, both make of the Homeric warrior a kind of ‘breathing material’. Two references, then, to the liveliness of objects, but each meaning very different things. For the scholiast places man on the same side as materiality, as if humans and things can equally be infused with life and can exist in a sort of continuum, but Weil argues that a human who is reduced to mere matter, even if he is a still a thing that breathes, is as good as nothing. Unlike the scholiast, Weil's interpretation is predicated on a strong belief in the duality of body and soul in the structure of human life, and since objects do not have souls they are, for her, essentially dead. Throughout her essay, Weil visits again and again the materiality of Homeric man and his propensity to turn, under the crushing power of force, into what she calls alternately a ‘thing’, ‘inert matter’, ‘stone’, and even ‘nothingness’. But for the D scholiast, the comparison of Ajax to stone does not subjugate him or turn him into a ‘mere’ or ‘inert’ object. On the contrary, the gloss ἔμψυχον τεῖχος speaks instead to the lively and permeable boundary between human and nonhuman in early Greek epic, one that suggests that objects can have their own life form, their own energy, vitality, and even creativity.

Epic Visions. Visuality in Greek and Latin Epic and its Reception, written by H. Lovatt, C. Vout

Epic Visions. Visuality in Greek and Latin Epic and its Reception, written by H. Lovatt, C. Vout

MOURNING DEATHS AND ENDANGERING LIVES: ETRUSCAN CHARIOT RACING BETWEEN SYMBOL AND REALITY

This paper examines the iconographic and archaeological evidence for chariot racing in Etruria, its context and audience. We then focus on the representation of the chariot crash — a motif pervasive in Etruscan art on a variety of locally-produced artistic media. The incongruous depiction of the most exciting, dangerous and tragic occurrence in the race alongside scenes of banqueting and dancing complicates our understanding of Etruscan tomb painting and of funeral ritual. Images of chariot crashes reveal an Etruscan appreciation for Greek epic, while also reflecting real details of the burial rite and the nature of elite competition.

Quid Shmuel cum Homero? Greek Culture and Early Yiddish Epic

AbstractThe conceptual connections between early Yiddish epic and ancient Greek epic, especially in the works of Homer are striking, even in the absence of evidence of direct influence. Those connections are explored here.