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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Agamemnon's apology (Il. 19.95ff.), in particular that portion which relates the story of Zeus and Ate, contains a number of oddities and peculiarities. This was recognised in antiquity, as various remarks in the Homeric scholia testify. Further inconcinnities have been unearthed by more recent scholars, who by and large belonged to the school of Homeric analysts. Although the presuppositions of this school are now generally regarded as outmoded and inappropriate, we should not underestimate the services of the scholars who drew the relevant unique features to the world's attention. Ways of explaining the oddities may have changed, but the oddities themselves are still well worth considering.
1 For this nuance of ἄτοπος see LSJ s.v. 1.3 (‘unnatural…’). A similar usage, for instance, at ΣΤ 107: ψευστήσεις: ψεύσεις' ἄτοπον γρ λέγειν Διῒ ‘ψεύστης εἶ’.
2 Perhaps the answer is ‘yes’. See the anecdote preserved in McNeish, James, Fire under the Ashes: The Life of Danilo Dolci (London, 1965), p. 141Google Scholar of an event in Palermo: ‘There was one terrible row…I suddenly forgot myself…I remember picking up a woman by the hair and swinging her…’ More importantly, the seizing (and swinging) of a woman by the hair is probably meant to be perceived in the context of Olympian burlesque as basically comic. For the gods, such knock-about violence as this, the boxing of Artemis' ears (Il. 21.489ff.) or the earlier mistreatment of Hephaestus (Il. 1.595ff.) is amusing in a way that cannot apply for humans. See further below n. 24, and on ‘Olympian burlesque’, R. Muth's book of that name.
3 Σb (BE3) T 101: πς δ τ παρ θεοῖς οἶδε γινόμενα; ῥητέον δ ὅτι κοινν ντα τν μθον παρείληφεν. The following quotation is from Page, p. 313. There is a parallel for the rare technique of direct speech within a mythological paradeigma at Il. 6.164–5 (from the story of Bellerophon). But there the words quoted come from a human, and the audience can more easily imagine how Glaucus came to know the words of Anteia (cf. Irene de Jong, J. F., Narrators and Focalizers [Amsterdam, 1987], pp. 168ff.)Google Scholar. The closest Odyssean parallel is 8.266ff. (Demodocus' song), where carefree gods act as foil to mortals' suffering.
4 D. B. Monro's commentary ad loc. ‘Allegory’ is problematic not only because of the ‘allegorisation’ of Homer by later scholars (see, e.g., Richardson, N. J., PCPS 21 [1975], 65ff.)Google Scholar but because the term has a different signification in later literature (see, for instance, Russell, D. A., Criticism in Antiquity [London, 1981], Index s.v.)Google Scholar.
5 Held, G. F., CQ 37 (1987), 252–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar. To many the term ‘parable’ may primarily suggest the discourses of Christ in the New Testament, simple stories which are a world apart from the subtle and sophisticated tale of Zeus and Ate.
6 On the related issue of ‘aetiological narratives’ in folk-tales see the remarks of Röhrich, Lutz in his important book Märchen und Wirklichkeit3 (Stuttgart, 1979), p. 41Google Scholar = Folktales and Reality, p. 27: ‘We find this need for causality in even the most basic realms of human life. An older, purely historical-mythical question may have concerned humanity before this rational question of “rerum cognoscere causas”. Was it always so? What was it like before? The question of cause develops only out of this interest in origins: Why did it change?’.
7 See Edwards on 19.95–133. For other scholars who conclude that Ate's rôle is Homer's own invention cf. Rabel, Robert J., GRBS 32 (1991), 113 and n. 26Google Scholar.
8 Σb (BE3) T 95: κα ν οἶς λεεινολογεῖται ὑψοῖ αυτόν εἰκάζων τι μεγίστωι θει. The situation is, of course, more complex than this, not least because the associated picture of the greater hero subservient to the lesser (Heracles to Eurystheus) evokes the parallel picture of Achilles' subservience to the inferior Agamemnon and thus undercuts the comparison with Zeus (see Davidson, O. M., Arethusa 13 [1980], 200)Google Scholar.
9 Already observed by, for instance, La Roche's commentary ad loc.
10 Compare the remarks of Röhrich (sup. cit. [n. 6]) p. 61 ≏ p. 49 on that variety of the aetiological narrative which he terms ‘folktales without the happy ending’: in these we find presupposed ‘the former existence of an ideal…state of nature…The tale attributes a permanent feature of today's environment to an earlier, one-time occurrence…a negative event leads to a lasting state of nature’. The relevance of this to Iliad 19's tale of Zeus and Ate is obvious, though there is little emphasis here on the folk-tale idea of the original happier state.
11 How, and Wells, , A Commentary on Herodotus (Oxford, 1912), i.50Google Scholar. Compare Claus Westermann's observations on the serpent's rôle in Genesis 3 (Commentary, Engl. transl. i.239): when the author ‘allows the man and the woman to be led astray by the clever snake, creature of God, he is saying that it is not possible to know the origin of evil. We are at a complete loss in the face of the fact that God has created a being that can lead people to disobedience. The origin of evil remains a complete mystery. The most important thing… is that there is no etiology for the origin of evil; a mythical explanation which pinpoints the origin would destroy this’ (cf. ib. p. 256 on Gen. 3.13: ‘the serpent should now say why it led the woman to eat the fruit. But that does not happen. The serpent is not interrogated. The intention of the narrator is clear: the origin of evil cannot be explained’).
12 See below n. 23.
13 Compare Dover, K. J. (Archiloque Entretiens Hardt 10 [1964]), 198Google Scholar= Greek and the Greeks p. 106) on the differences between Hesiod and Archilochus: ‘the alternative hypothesis would regard [them] as two different personalities through whom, shortly after the introduction of writing, poetic genres of long standing found expression at a very high artistic level.’
14 On the use of these particles to introduce an exemplum illustrative of a preceding generalization see, e.g., Ed. Fraenkel, , Horace (Oxford, 1957), p. 185fGoogle Scholar.
15 West's, M. L. commentary on Hesiod's Theogony (Oxford, 1966), p. 74Google Scholar.
16 On the notion of misogyny in Greek literature see, for instance, Lloyd-Jones, H., Females of the Species (London, 1975), pp. 22ff.Google Scholar, Lefkowitz, M. R., Women in Greek Myth (London, 1986), 112ffGoogle Scholar. The rôle of Eve in Genesis' account of the garden of Eden and of the woman who seduces Enkidu in the epic of Gilgamesh is often compared (cf. Claus Westermann's commentary on Genesis 3.6 [Engl. transl., i.250]).
17 On this motif of the rash vow see, for instance, Thompson, S., Motif-Index of Folk Literature2 C68Google Scholar, Frazer, J. G., Loeb Apollodorus ii. 394ffGoogle Scholar.
18 As regards the close connection of the passages in question, Page (p. 332 n. 22) notes ‘the curious iteration of βλάπτουσ' νθρώπους’ in 9.507 = 19.94 ‘though this was athetized’. (On Aristarchus' deletion of the latter see now Lührs, D., Untersuchungen zu den Athetesen Aristarchs in der Ilias undzu ihrer Behandlung im Corpus der exegetischen Scholien (Beitr. zur Altertumswiss. 11 [1992]), 64–67Google Scholar.
19 See above n. 5.
20 And doing so by placing these personal sufferings in a broader context that evokes the sufferings of others. This process shares features both with (i) Homer's use of paradigmatic myth to ‘effect the transformation of single events into variants of a timeless pattern’ (Ø. Andersen, , in Homer: beyond Oral Poetry (Amsterdam, 1987) p. 3Google Scholar: for Agamemnon's apology as combining paradigmatic myth with ‘parable’ see Held (as cited in n. 5, 252)) and (ii) the general technique of consolatio (see my note on Soph, . Trach. 126ff.Google Scholar).
21 It is well known that Homer gives no detailed physical descriptions of his characters (be they men or gods) except in very special cases (such as Thersites in Iliad 2). I am reminded that the third passage may also employ personification, if βούβρωστις at Il. 24.532 means ‘ravening hunger’ (see Richardson, ad he. [p. 331])Google Scholar.
22 Very much at home in this sphere of ideas is the grotesque picture of the Moirae with the wool sticking to their parched lips which we find in Catullus 64.316.
23 JHS 101 (1981) 56–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I find little to retract here (though on pp. 61–2 cf. Feeney, D., CQ 34 [1984], 179ff., esp. 184–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar) but wish I had remembered, in connection with one aspect of my argument (the postponement of explicit mention of the judgement) to quote Solmsen's, F.remarks à propos of the Hesiodic Shield (Hermes 93 [1965], 3 n. 4Google Scholar= Kl. Schr. i. 18 n. 4): ‘I consider it just possible that the reserving of important information to the end is a deliberate technique. The reason for Apollo's hatred of Cycnus is disclosed only in the last lines of the poem… although the enmity as such has played a part in the story.’
24 That the seizing of Ate by the hair is (on the level of Olympian carefree existence) basically comic, while the seizing of Achilles by the hair is a matter of life and death (both for him and for Agamemnon) in no way undermines this comparison. On the contrary, it fits perfectly within the context of contrast between gods and mortals here outlined. Zeus can (at least temporarily) settle some problems or relieve his feelings by hurling other deities about. The same easy solution would not work in the Greek camp (with the significant exception (cf. n. 21) of Thersites). Achilles picks up Lycaon by the foot at Il. 21.120 when he has killed him and is hurling him into the Scamander, but this is part of the god-like behaviour of the hero at this stage of the narrative, behaviour soon to be thwarted by the intervention of Scamander himself.
25 This is not the time or place to examine in detail the issue of the Iliad's structure which has recently been handled, e.g. by Taplin, O., Homeric Soundings (Oxford, 1992)Google Scholar and Stanley, K., The Shield of Homer: Narrative Structure in the Iliad (Princeton, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
26 No t all Page's observations have stood the test of time (e.g. o n the alleged false Ionicism ἠλιτόμηνον at 118 cf. Wyatt, W. F., Metrical Lengthening in Homer (Rome, 1969), p. 75Google Scholar arguing analogy from νηλείτιδες and λείτς).
27 Modern Languages Review 45 (1950), 142CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
28 Even so, I do not think I should wish to go as far as Robert J. Rabel (as cited in n. 7) p. 104, who sees in Agamemnon's speech a ‘panoramic summary of the Iliad from [Agamemnon's] own idiosyncratic [my italics] viewpoint’ [cf. p. 111: a ‘veiled criticism of Achilles…subtly generalised in a string of remarks about proper etiquette in the assembly’]). But I approve his idea (though it functions differently from my approach) that we have to do with a ‘grand architectural design’ on Homer's part which involves (inter alia) correspondences between Books 1 and 19 of the Iliad.
29 I am grateful to Mr. Y. Sano for detailed discussion of the issues raised in this article.
