Homeric Simile Research Articles

Unveiling the Hidden Warfare in Maternal Protection Similes of the Iliad

Since ancient times, Homeric similes, particularly in the Iliad, have been extensively debated. Often treated as separate narrative components, their traditional aspects have been overlooked in favour of their unique images. However, recent studies have emphasised that these similes convey more than just explicit images: they also communicate through their traditional language and repeated themes. The similes centred on maternal protection have been commonly interpreted as tender, portraying a war-free reality. Yet, Kathy Gaca (“Reinterpreting the Homeric Simile of Iliad 16.7–11: The Girl and Her Mother in Ancient Greek Warfare,” American Journal of Philology 129 (2): 145–171, 2008) introduced an alternative view, proposing that the simile in Il. 16.6–10, comparing Patroclus to a crying little girl clinging to her mother’s dress, might represent a mother fleeing from invading soldiers with her child. Building upon this interpretation, I argue for a war context in the other three similes that have a maternal protection scene: Il. 4.130–131 (Athena protecting Menelaus), Il. 8.271 (Teucer hiding behind Ajax’s shield), and Il. 12.433–435 (the balance in battle).

Traces of Homer in Ishmael’s Double Vision

Among the many complex stylistic features that contribute to the enduring appeal of Moby-Dick is Ishmael’s tendency to effect sudden, often perplexing shifts in attitude and tone of voice, particularly when describing activities associated with whaling. In recent years, Melville scholars have enriched our understanding of this narrative instability by applying Mikhail Bakhtin’s theoretical concepts, particularly his dialogical views of language, consciousness, and the novel. This essay argues along similar lines, and examines salient instances of tonal and rhetorical disjuncture in Ishmael’s narrative in light of their dialogical implications. However, the author also posits that some of Ishmael’s tonal anomalies strongly echo the discrepant and ambivalent narrative tone that can be found in Homer’s Iliad. The similarities in tonal discord are made all the more conspicuous by Ishmael’s prominent adoption of literary devices that are closely associated with the epic, such as hypallage and the Homeric simile. One potent effect of this dual-voiced echoing of Homeric narration is to illustrate the seductive resilience of heroic-epic attitudes towards martial glory and honor, which endure in the cultural consciousness, albeit in a state of dialogic tension with voices that value principles of peace, brotherhood, and compassion.

Jonathan L. Ready: The Homeric Simile in Comparative Perspectives. Oral Traditions from Saudi Arabia to Indonesia.

Jonathan L. Ready: The Homeric Simile in Comparative Perspectives. Oral Traditions from Saudi Arabia to Indonesia.

MENELAUS’ WOUND (AND LAVINIA'S BLUSH)

The focus of this note is the simile attached to Menelaus’ wound in Iliad 4 and its Virgilian transformation in Aeneid 12. My goal is to flesh out and specify the sense of the Homeric simile; as the parentheses in my title suggest, I call upon Virgil chiefly as a fellow-interpreter. Since an important part of my argument is that the simile only takes on its full significance when considered in its narrative context, I begin by setting the scene.

The Homeric Simile in Comparative Perspectives: Oral Traditions from Saudi Arabia to Indonesia. By Jonathan L. Ready. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. [xv] + 315.

<i>The Homeric Simile in Comparative Perspectives: Oral Traditions from Saudi Arabia to Indonesia</i>. By Jonathan L. Ready. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. [xv] + 315.

Two Lovers and a Lion: Pankrates’ Poem on Hadrian’s Royal Hunt

AbstractThis article offers a new reading of Pankrates’ poem on Hadrian’s and Antinoos’ hunt of a lion in 130 AD, examining both its intertextual dialogue with Homer and its evocation of Egyptian imagery. I first show how the raging lion, which emerges directly out of a Homeric simile (Il.20.163–164), has been transformed fromcomparatumtocomparandum: he no longer serves to illustrate a warrior’s force, but has himself become part of the main narrative and the subject of analogy. Contemplating theaitionin which the text culminated I argue that the Antinoeian lotus, which grew out of the lion’s blood, ought to be read against the backdrop of Egyptian mythology and iconography as an emblem of rebirth. Both Pankrates’ allusions to Homer, which subtly evoke Achilles’ loss of Patroklos, and the symbolic function of the lotus strongly suggest that the poem was composed in the aftermath of Antinoos’ death and conceived as a celebration of the youth’s apotheosis.

The Homeric Simile in Comparative Perspectives: Oral Traditions from Saudi Arabia to Indonesia by Jonathan L. Ready

The Homeric Simile in Comparative Perspectives: Oral Traditions from Saudi Arabia to Indonesia by Jonathan L. Ready

ホメーロスの比喩について : 特に"オデュッセイア"における

ホメーロスの比喩について : 特に"オデュッセイア"における

Leaving School

Leaving School Susan Ford Wiltshire I did not notice it when I first read the Aeneid at age seventeen or even during an intensive yearlong reading in graduate school. But eventually I started noticing that in every book of the Aeneid, whether in simile, [End Page 123] allusion, or narrative detail, Vergil refers to laments of mothers at the plight of their children. For example, in Aeneid 9.59–64 Turnus is compared to a wolf stalking a sheepfold for prey as the Trojans huddle inside the walls. The figure is familiar from several instances in Homer. In Iliad 12.299–306, for instance, Sarpedon is compared to a lion harrying the sheepfolds as he attacks the Trojan defenses. All other elements of the Homeric simile appear in the Aeneid lines except one: the bleating lambs seeking safety under their mothers: tuti sub matribus agni / balatum exercent (9.61–62). Both Andromache and Dido mourn for children they do not have. The lament of the mother of Euryalus in Aeneid 9 comprises a small epic all its own. Many men who long for the honor of a past culture fail to mention the costs of that culture to women. Vergil is the clear exception; he does not fail. Eventually I came to see a similar tension between public and private in other conflicts in the Aeneid (see Wiltshire 1989). How can one function as a leader when one's heart is broken? Spem vultu simulat, premit altum corde dolorem ("he simulates hope on his face, presses the pain deep in his heart," 1.209). How can one properly grieve for a lost homeland when required to create a new home in an unforeseeable future? (illic fas regna resurgere Troiae, "it is necessary for the kingdom of Troy to rise again there," 1.206). What does love mean to a man who can say to his lover that his amor is for Italy, not her: hic amor, haec patria est ("this is my love, this my country," 4.347)? Adam Parry (1963) confirmed my sense of duality within the poem, and I was grateful for that. I did notice, however, that Parry's discussion focused almost entirely on Aeneas himself, while mine encompasses the Aeneid as a whole. Vergil's poem is not about Aeneas. It is about Vergil and about life. Vergil was an outsider: as a north Italian in Rome; as a poet in a doggedly prosaic culture; as an introvert, probably gay, in a world of unmitigated manliness; as a farmer who preferred cultivating his fields in Nola to the hurly-burly of Rome. It may be easier for outsiders to grow and change since they have had so much practice at it. Vergil grew and changed, as a thinker and poet, from the small poems of the Appendix to the Bucolics, to the Georgics, and finally to the Aeneid. The Aeneid too is a poem of change because it concerns youth, middle age, and old age. It teaches us to revere the old without becoming old. It teaches us that it is all right even for the old to make mistakes, as [End Page 124] Anchises famously does in mistaking Crete for Italy. It teaches us that the more we know, the more we will honor diversity. To know anything is to trade its entirety for a constantly changing variety. In poetry as in politics, adherence to a single belief system or school is always tempting and always wrong. Schools define and categorize and limit growth. Whether there is or ever was a Harvard School, I do not know. I do know that it is a good thing that readings of the Aeneid change with time. Otherwise, Vergil might still be a proto-Christian or a medieval necromancer or an optimist or a pessimist or a semiotician or worse. As I once wrote for Vergil, on his birthday (2015: 168): Your poem ends with umbras.Once I found that sad. No longer.Now I like shadows. They are companions—bread for the journey. Shadows change, lengthen, contract,fade and come again,like kindness or a friend.What you see depends on where you stand. Susan Ford Wiltshire...

Ways to die for warriors

“Sometimes there is no other word but ‘beautiful’ to describe the evocation of the death of an otherwise insignificant warrior”. Buxton (2004, 151-152) refers to a group of similes and comparisons in Homeric death scenes that thus far has not been studied thoroughly. There is an abundance of dying scenes in the Homeric epics, especially in the “Iliad”, and in particular those illustrated by similes and comparisons add significant meaning to the plot. Similes and comparisons have various literary functions and are often used as structuring elements in the narrative. Death similes are used to characterize the victim and aggressor during their fatal confrontation. By extension, they equally provide a characterization of death itself, which can be depicted from different points of view. Death can be seen as a natural part of the cycle of human life or, in the heroic war ideology, as an instrument to win glory. Many of the typically “Homeric” similes and comparisons used in death scenes have been imitated in later epics. Not only the bare images, but also the deeper message they can imply is often transferred to its new context. This paper describes the occurrence of death similes in the “Iliad” and “Odyssey” as a foundation for its reception in the “Posthomerica” of Quintus of Smyrna. This 3rd century AD epic provides a clear example of Homeric imitatio and aemulatio. Quintus’ typically Homeric style includes an abundant use of Homeric similes, also in dying scenes. In fact, similes prove to be even more frequently used for this purpose in the Posthomerica than in the Homeric epics. This study analyses Quintus’ rich reception of the Homeric death simile and its effects on the narrative structures of the Posthomerica. Although obviously inspired by Homer, Quintus’ use of death similes is further elaborated to support the plot by means of a linearly evolving characterization of both death and its aggressors and victims. This study therefore proposes an interpretation of the Posthomerica as an original literary composition.

Revaluation: Kapuściński Travels with Herodotus

RevaluationKapuściński Travels with Herodotus Christopher McDonough (bio) Travels with Herodotus by Ryszard Kapuściński translated from the Polish by Klara Glowczewska (Vintage International, 2007. 276 pages. $15 pb) If Ryszard Kapuściński’s name is not better known among American readers, it is not for lack of international awards or accolades from such renowned figures as John Updike, Salman Rushdie, and Gabriel García Márquez, who hailed him as “the true master of journalism.” Breaking new ground in the world of literary reportage, Kapuściński interwove hard news with personal detail and artistic insight. “You know, sometimes, in describing what I do, I resort to the Latin phrase silva rerum, the forest of things,” he told Bill Buford in an interview with Granta. “That’s my subject: the forest of things, as I’ve seen it, living and travelling in it. To capture the world, you have to penetrate it as completely as possible.” Throughout his work, the Polish journalist again and again pushed—like his countryman, Joseph Conrad, before him—into the heart of darkness, all the while deftly balancing literary observation with lived experience. A good instance of this vérité style is to be found in “The Soccer War,” the author’s account of the hundred-hour conflict between Honduras and El Salvador in 1969 that claimed six thousand lives. His reports from the front escaped military censorship because they were filed in Polish, but it is the finely rendered incidentals that truly capture the reader’s attention. At one point, the open truck carrying Kapuściński and other reporters is shelled and overturns amid gunfire. Lunging into some bushes off the road, he notices a colony of busy ants on the ground before him. It wasn’t the time for observing ants, but the very sight of them marching along, the sight of another world, another reality, brought me back to consciousness. An idea came into my head: if I could control my fear enough to stop my ears for a moment and look only at these insects, I could begin to think with some sort of sense. I lay among the thick bushes plugging my ears with all my might, nose in the dirt and I watched the ants. I don’t know how long this went on. When I raised my head, I was looking into the eyes of a soldier. To my mind, this is as close to a Homeric simile as one might ever come in an ostensible work of journalism. Wars throughout the third world were Kapuściński’s beat, as were the falls of various governments—from Haile Selassie (The Emperor: Downfall of an Autocrat, 1978) to Reza Pahlavi (Shah of Shahs, 1982) to the Soviet Union (Imperium, 1993). Kapuściński’s final work, published before his death in 2007, was Travels with Herodotus, a memoir of his early years as a reporter when—sent without much preparation by his Eastern bloc newspaper to faraway places like [End Page xl] India under Nehru, China during the Cultural Revolution, and the war-torn Congo—he took with him a copy of Herodotus’s Histories in Polish translation. For many correspondents covering international events, the Greek historian of choice would have been Thucydides, the cold-eyed analyst of Realpolitik, rather than the wide-eyed, sightseeing Herodotus, for whom evidently no story was too incredible to record. Travels with Herodotus is well worth reading, not just for the author’s remarkable style and life story, but also for the sustained encounter with his ancient world-travelling counterpart. In the Cairo of Nasser’s era, Kapuściński reflects upon Herodotus’s own journey through Egypt in the fifth century b.c. and his visits to temples already themselves thousands of years old. What can ever really be learned of others with such ancient and exotic lineages?—he seems to wonder. Later Kapuściński follows Ahmed, a seemingly friendly guide, into an obscure part of town to visit a dilapidated mosque—they climb the rickety stairs into the unlit minaret, where the guide demands his wallet and leaves him in complete darkness to...

Le Sourire des Amants et la Fusion de l’Amour (A.R. 3.1008-1024)

This is a brief study on one of the most beautiful passages of Apollonius’ epic (A.R. 3.1008-1024). In a scene full of lyricism, the two lovers’ smile became the sublime expression of their desire. The contexts of the verb μειδιάω in the poem demonstrates the connection between the smile and the subject of love, and this takes us back to Homeric poetry where Aphrodite is φιλομμειδής (e.g., Il. 3.24 ; 4.10 ; 5.375). At first the smile is the mirror of the passionate joy felt by Medea (A.R. 3.1009), but, when the two lovers look in each other smiling eyes, a mutual and uncovered desire is born (A.R. 3.1024). This is described by the image of the dew melted by the dawn’s heat, a Homeric simile (Il. 23.597-599) with an erotic sense that makes Medea the water of love.

The Artistry of the Homeric Simile (review)

The Artistry of the Homeric Simile (review)

What Homer can teach us about Seynsgeschichte

This paper is an attempt to expand upon Heidegger‘s project of thinking the History of Being through an overt engagement with that project‘s limitations. It is in this sense, then, both a carrying forward and a renovation. The limitation I have in mind is Heideg-ger‘s focus upon philosophy, and more specifically written philosophy, for the tracing of the History of Being. This limitation will be addressed by asking what Homer might be able to tell us about the historical unfolding that Heidegger traces in his investigations. As this is a very large project, this paper will sketch the avenues the investigation might take and then focus in detail upon the potential importance of Homeric simile for the path of thinking we embark upon with Heidegger.

The Simile at Iliad 16.7–11 Once Again: Multiple Meanings

In a 2008 article Kathy L. Gaca argued that the simile at Iliad 16.7–11 represents a wartime scene of "a daughter-mother pair of refugees on the verge of being caught and dominated by warrior thugs." While praising Gaca's demonstration of the simile's wartime connotations, I resist her rejection of its peacetime associations, arguing that—as so often with Homeric similes—the language of the passage accommodates both readings. Placed at a critical turning point in the Iliad, and reaching toward both peace and war, past and future, the simile's power resides in the acutely contrasting associations that its open-ended language evokes. Only when we honor its full associative range can we appreciate its full impact.

The Eagle's Gaze in the Opening of Heliodorus' Aithiopika

Many recent studies have brought into focus the highly mimetic, ecphrastic and even cinematic quality of the initial scene of Heliodorus’ Aithiopika. As widely recognized, the Egyptian pirates’ camera-like gaze, through which the reader is drawn into the narrative, breaks this opening into a chain of enigmatic visual tableaux – a moored cargo ship, an array of slain bodies scattered all over the beach, the remnants of a banquet-turned-battle – and thus emblematizes this novel’s tendency to call into question the process of interpretation (cf. J. Winkler 1982, Bartsch 1989, Morgan 1991, M. Winkler 2000-2001, Whitmarsh 2005). Scholarship has noticed that through its beginning in medias res Heliodorus’ novel fashions itself as a quintessentially Odyssean narrative (cf. J. Winkler 1982, Whitmarsh 1998, Fusillo 2006, Elmer 2008, Morgan-Harrison 2008). It has also been pointed out (cf. Feuillatre 1966) that the banquet-turned-battle observed by the pirates bears striking resemblances to the description of the suitors’ slaughter in Book 22 of the Odyssey (ll. 8-21). This paper sets out to cast further light on the tantalizing opening of the Aithiopika and its coding of narrative into still moments by exploring Heliodorus’ intertextual dialogue with a simile from the same book of the Odyssey (ll. 379-89), which pairs the corpses of the suitors lying in blood and dust after their slaughter with fishes caught in a net and strewn in death on a beach. In this scene, Odysseus and Telemachus survey the dead suitors hemmed into the megaron and are cast in a spectatorial position that is defined by the repeated usage of the verb παπταίνω. This verb denotes a kind of panoramic vision characteristic of predator birds and, in particular, of eagles (cf. Lonsdale 1989). At the beginning of the Aithiopika, the Egyptian pirates look out to the sea from the ridge of a hill in the hope of catching new prey and, while doing so, they fix their eyes on a beach heaped with dead bodies. As I argue, the viewer-viewed relation framing the Odyssean simile re-surfaces in the opening of Heliodorus’ novel and intertextually associates the gaze of the pirates with the eagle symbolism conjured, in the Odyssean passage, by the semantics of παπταίνω. This analysis aims to enhance our understanding of the opening of Heliodorus’ Aithiopika by highlighting its treatment of Homeric similes as prototypes of ecphrastic discourse and teasing out its strategies of authorial self-positioning. In particular, I contend that in fashioning the starting-point of the novel as a diegetic reconfiguration of the fish simile the omniscient narrator of the Aithiopika displays his predilection for a panoramic standpoint (the so-called “bird’s eye view”) which, in the Homeric epics, is typical of similes (cf. De Jong-Nunlist 2004). In addition, by importing the Odyssean eagle imagery into the programmatic space of the prologue Heliodorus figuratively epitomizes the Aithiopika’s all-embracing glance over the previous literary tradition and defines this novel’s intertextual dimension in terms of predatory consumption. Bibliography Bartsch, S. 1989. Decoding the Ancient Novel. The Reader and the Role of Description in Heliodorus and Achilles Tatius. Princeton. De Jong I., Nunlist R. 2004. “From Bird’s Eye View to Close-up: the Standpoint of the Narrator.” In A. Bierl, A. Schmitt, A. Willi, eds., Antike Literatur in neuer Deutung. Munchen-Leipzig: 63-83. Elmer, F. E. 2008. “Heliodoros’s ‘Sources’: Intertextuality, Paternity, and the Nile River in the Aithiopika.” TAPA 138: 411-450. Feuillatre, E. 1966. Etudes sur les Ethiopiques d’Heliodore: contribution a la connaissance du roman grec. Paris. Fusillo, M. 2006 “Metamorfosi romanzesche dell’epica.” In F. Montanari-A. Rengakos, eds., La poesie epique grecque: metamorphoses d’un genre litteraire. Vandoeuvres: 271-303. Lonsdale, S. H. 1989. “If Looks Could Kill: παπταίνω and the Interpenetration of Imagery and Narrative in Homer.” CJ 84: 325-333. Morgan, J. R. 1991. “Reader and Audiences in the Aithiopika of Heliodoros.” GCN 4: 85-103. Morgan, J. R., Harrison, S. 2008. “Intertextuality.” In T. Whitmarsh, ed., The Cambridge Companion to the Greek and Roman Novel. Cambridge: 218-236. Whitmarsh, T. 1998. “The Birth of a Prodigy: Heliodorus and the Genealogy of Hellenismus.” In R. Hunter, ed., Studies in Heliodorus. Cambridge: 92-124. . 2005. “Heliodorus Smiles.” In S. Harrison, M. Paschalis, S. Frangoulidis, eds., Metaphor and the Ancient Novel. Groningen: 87-104. Winkler, J. J. 1982. “The Mendacity of Kalasiris and the Narrative Strategy of Heliodoros’ Aithiopika.” YCS 27: 93-158 (= S. Swain, ed., Oxford Readings in the Greek Novel, Oxford 1999: 286-350). Winkler, M. M. 2001-2001. “The Cinematic Nature of the Opening Scene in Heliodorus’ Aithiopika.” AN 1: 161-184.

Agamemnon's Densely-Packed Sorrow in Iliad 10: A Hypertextual Reading of a Homeric Simile

Agamemnon's Densely-Packed Sorrow in Iliad 10: A Hypertextual Reading of a Homeric Simile

Die Darstellung der Troer und Griechen in den Kampfszenen der Posthomerica des Quintus von Smyrna

Inhaltsverzeichnis Athanassios Vergados, Penelope´s Fat Hand Reconsidered (Odyssey 21,6); Rudolf Stefec, Kollation der Handschrift Zu (Turyn). Ein Beitrag zur Erforschung der paläologischen Vulgata des Sophokles; Luigi Belloni, Una Provocazione Apolloniana. Apollonio Rodio Ἔφηβος(Vita A, 8ss. Wendel); Marcelle Laplace, Des Armes et des Mots. Reflets Contrastés de l´ Ancienne Athènes dans le Roman de Chariton d´ Aphrodisias; Stefanie Jahn, Die Darstellung der Troer und Griechen in den Kampfszenen der Posthomerica des Quintus von Smyrna; David Butterfield, Emendations on the fourth book of Lucretius; Neil Adkin, Wet Rams: The Etymology of aries in Virgil; Gerrit Kloss, Von Zeiten und Rhythmen. Zu Tac. ann. 3, 55; Petr Kitzler, Nihil enim anima si non corpus. Tertullian und die Körperlichkeit der Seele; Isabella Schiller - Dorothea Weber - Clemens Weidmann, Sechs neue Augustinuspredigten. Teil 2 mit Edition dreier Sermones zum Thema Almosen; Rainer Jakobi, Ein Triptychon aus Nola. Zur Interpretation des neugefundenen Paulinus-Titulus; Gottfried Eugen Kreuz, Inquiri mihi necesse est... Überlegungen zu drei vermuteten kleineren Genesiskommentaren Wigbods; Rezensionen und Kurzanzeigen

Reinterpreting the Homeric Simile of Iliad 16.7–11: The Girl and Her Mother In Ancient Greek Warfare

Though long regarded as a scene of mother-daughter domesticity during peacetime, Iliad 16.7–11 reveals the destruction of normal life for a daughter and her mother on the verge of being captured by ancient Greek warriors. As such it provides exemplary insight into this fundamental aspect of ancient warfare. Further, as reinterpreted here, the simile gains great dramatic and emotive power, strengthens the Homeric characterization of Achilles as a forthright speaker given to poetic realism, and heightens the tragedy of Patroclus by revealing how Achilles by his own admission fails to fulfill his protective role as Patroclus' warrior mother.

Gregory of Nazianzus's De rebus suis and the tradition of epic didactic poetry

Gregory's poem De rebus suis (Carm.2.1.1) is examined in this article from the point of view both of its content and of its literary and stylistic features. In content, the poem is personal and reflexive, and its central theme appears to be a crisis of faith that its author had experienced in his later years. In form, it has all the characteristics of the epic didactic genre: it is metaphrastic in nature (i.e., it turns prose material into verse form); it is written in the archaizing epic language; it makes use of the modified Homeric simile (the so-called multiple correspondence simile); and it carefully avoids the use of specific liturgical terms and expressions replacing them instead with various poetic paraphrases. The overall conceptual simplicity of the poem is generic too, and it may have been modeled on the earliest known representative of the genre, Hesiod's Works and Days. .