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Thersites in the Iliad

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2009

N. Postlethwaite
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Extract

The character of Thersites, as presented by Homer in Iliad 2, has received an almost universally bad press, typical of which are the comments of F. A. Paley: ‘one of the turbulent and insolent malcontents in an army, who use their best efforts to misrepresent the authorities and to incite sedition in others’. Paley's view is typical both in the unsympathetic view it presents of Thersites and in its tendency to see him as representative of a whole genre of subversive and recalcitrant soldiery. My concern in this paper is to examine Thersites within the context of the Iliad alone, without any regard for his treatment by subsequent authors, and to attempt to explain his portrayal solely in terms of the dramatic situation at the beginning of the Iliad. My contention will be that the episode of Thersites is an important element in Homer's introductory purpose of presenting the backcloth against which the poem's theme, the menis is acted out.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 35 , Issue 2 , October 1988 , pp. 123 - 136
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1988

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References

Notes

1. A full discussion is to be found in Rankin, H. D., SO 47 (1972), 36–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2. The Iliad of Homer 1–12 (London, 1879), on 2.212Google Scholar.

3. Beye, C. R., The Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Epic Tradition (London, 1968), p. 86Google Scholar.

4. Mueller, M., The Iliad (London, 1984), p. 6Google Scholar.

5. Redfield, J., Nature and Culture in the Iliad (Chicago, 1975), p. 161Google Scholar.

6. Silk, M., The Iliad (Cambridge, 1987), p. 83Google Scholar.

7. Willcock, M. M., A Companion to the Iliad (Chicago, 1976), p. 20Google Scholar.

8. Rankin, H. D., op. cit., 38Google Scholar.

9. Bowra, C. M., Tradition and Design in the Iliad (Oxford, 1930), pp. 213–4Google Scholar.

10. Rankin, H. D., op. cit., 43Google Scholar.

11. Kirk, G. S., The Songs of Homer (Cambridge, 1962), p. 22Google Scholar.

12. Op. cit., 51.

13. Op. cit., 53.

14. Op. cit., 59.

15. Mahaffy, J. P., Social Life in Greece (London, 1890), 13Google Scholar.

16. Rankin, H. D., op. cit., 39Google Scholar.

17. English translations are from The Iliad of Homer tr. Lattimore, R. (Chicago, 1961)Google Scholar.

18. For discussion of these and other suggestions see Rankin, H. D., op. cit., 42Google Scholar.

19. Full discussion in Rankin, H. D., op. cit., 44–9Google Scholar.

20. Willcock, M. M., A Commentary on Homer's Iliad (London, 1970), p. 51Google Scholar.

21. Cf. Kirk, G. S., The Iliad: A Commentary (Cambridge, 1985), p. 141CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For discussion of the different attitudes to women of Agamemnon and Achilleus see Brenk, F. E., Eranos 84 (1986), 81–2Google Scholar.

22. Cf. Kirk, G. S., op. cit., pp. 140–1Google Scholar.

23. Kirk, G. S., op. cit., p. 140Google Scholar.

24. Leaf, W. & M. A. Bayfield, The Iliad of Homer (London, 1965), pp. 306–7Google Scholar.