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Homeric Words and Speakers1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2013

Jasper Griffin
Jasper Griffin*
Affiliation:
Balliol College, Oxford
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Extract

The aim of this paper is to establish the existence of a significant difference, in a number of respects, between the style of the narrated portions of Homer and that of the speeches which are recorded in the two epics; and to offer some explanations for this fact. It will require the presentation of some statistics: I suspect that not all of the figures are absolutely accurate, but I feel confident that such inaccuracies as they may contain will not affect the validity of the inferences drawn from them. The mere fact of differences in vocabulary, while not without interest, is not extremely interesting or surprising. The hope of this paper is that patterns will appear, and that the ‘reticence’ or ‘objectivity’ of Homer, more often praised than investigated, will be illuminated by them; that particular passages in the poems will be shown to be stylistically interesting or unusual; and that some general considerations will emerge which suggest that the difficulties confronting the oral theory of Homer are rather more complex than is often supposed.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 106 , November 1986 , pp. 36 - 57
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1986

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References

2 Arist., Fr. 163 R = ΣA in Iliad xix 108. Cf. Suerbaum, W., ‘Die Ich-Erzählungen des Odysseus’, Poetica ii (1968) 150–177;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Effe, B., ‘“Personale” Erzählweisen in der Erzählliteratur der Antike’, Poetica vii (1975) 135–157 Google Scholar.

3 Jörgensen, O., ‘Das Auftreten der Götter in den Büchern l–μ der Odyssee’: Hermes xxxix (1904) 357–82 Google Scholar.

4 Krarup, P., ‘Verwendung von Abstracta in der direkten Rede bei Homer’, C&M x (1948) 1–17 Google Scholar.

5 Fränkel, H., Dichtung und Philosophie des frühen Griechentums 2 (Munich 1962) 68 Google Scholar.

6 Austin, Norman, Archery at the Dark of the Moon (California 1975) 49 Google Scholar.

7 Figures: Schmid—Stählin, , Geschichte der griechischen Literatur i (Munich 1929) 92 Google Scholar.

8 W. Cowper, Letter of 3 December 1785 to the Rev. J. Newton.

9 On ‘Lyrismus’ in Virgil, cf. Heinze, R., Virgils epische Technik 3 (Leipzig 1914) 374;Google Scholar Latte, K. in Philol. xc (1935) 154 Google Scholar = Kleine Schriften 584; Klingner, F., Studien zurgriechischen und römischen Literatur (Zurich and Stuttgart 1964) 166 Google Scholar.

10 Despite the ingenious argument of Pope, Maurice, ‘A Nonce-Word in the Iliad ’, CQ xxv (1983) 1–8 Google Scholar.

11 This fact surely reinforces, by the way, the conjecture of Martin at [Horn.] hymn. Vert. 253: Aphrodite complains of her sufferings because of her passion for Anchises, ἐπεὶ μάλα πολλὸν ἀάσθην σχέτλιον οὐκ ὀνομαστόν, ἀπεπλάγχθην δὲ νόοιο παῖδα δ' ὑπὸ ӡώνῃ ἐθέμην βροτῷ εὐνηθεῖσα ‘My infatuation was great, terrible, not to be named; and I am with child by a mortal man’.

The manuscripts read ὀνότατον; T. W. Allen prints Clark's ὀνοταστόν, which the commentary of Allen, Halliday and Sikes actually calls ‘certain’, but ὀνομαστόν has not only the right sense but also the right feminine ethos.

12 On the phrase ἀεικέα ἔργα see Griffin, J., Homer on Life and Death (Oxford 1980) 85 Google Scholar n. 9: it does not, as sometimes alleged, express a moral criticism of the action.

13 Denniston, J. D., Greek Particles 2 (Oxford 1954) 279 Google Scholar.

14 Friedrich, W. H., Verwundung und Tod in der Ilias (Göttingen 1956) 118 Google Scholar.

15 The history and relation of these words are not clear, cf. Frisk, Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, s.v.

16 ‘Virgil was metrically obliged to use some kind of periphrasis’, Gransden, on Aeneid viii 103 Google Scholar.

17 The Making of Homeric Verse: collected papers of Milman Parry (Oxford 1971) 149 Google Scholar.

18 Reeve, M. D., ‘The language of Achilles’, CQ xxiii (1973) 193–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Friedrich, P. and Redfield, J. M. in Language liv (1978) 263–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The strengthless objections of G. M. Messing, ibid, lvii (1981) 888–900, are rightly brushed aside by the authors, ibid, lvii (1981) 901–3. It was Joseph A. Russo who drew my attention to this article.

20 There are things to criticise. The statement that Achilles does not make limiting distinctions disregards xviii 105 ff. The uniqueness of his ‘realising a hypothetical image’, as at xx 179 ff., is illusory: see for instance Hector's account of Andromache's destiny after his death, or Andromache's of the fate of her orphan child, or Priam's of his own (vi 447 ff., xxii 487 ff., xxii 59 ff.); even in his presence we hear a hypothetical account of the consequences of the sack of the city of Meleager (ix 591 ff.). The theme ‘the warrior is a wild beast’, if it is rightly so called, is developed at least as clearly by Menelaus at xvii 19 ff. as by Achilles, who after all begins ὡς οὐκ ἔστι λέουσι καὶ ἀνδράσιν ὅρκια πιστὰ (xxii 262), which presumably makes a rather different point. The problem with a lot of this is the choice of too narrow a control—the speeches of Achilles need to be compared, in some respects, with the other utterances in the poem as a whole. As for cannibalism, compare iv 34 ff. and xxiv 212.

21 See Lohmann, D., Die Komposition der Reden in der Ilias (Berlin 1970) 76 n. 133 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 ‘Quite characteristic of the arrogant style of the man,’ observes P. Cauer, Neue Jahrb. (1900) 607.

23 Compare Od. ii. 80 with Il. i 245 and Σ T ad loc: and my Homer on Life and Death (n. 12) 12. The comparison was already made in antiquity.

24 ἀναιδείην ἐπιειμένε, i 149 and ix 372—not, it is worth observing, in an identical line; ὦ μέγ' ἀναιδές, i 158. ὕβρις, i 203 and 214 (Athena accepts Achilles' term).

25 ἐπὶ νηυσὶ χόλον θυμαλγέα πέσσει, iv 153; παύε', ἔα δὲ χόλον θυμαλγέα, ix 260; πρίν γ' ἀπὸ πᾱσαν ἐμοὶ δόμεναι θυμαλγέα λώβην, ix 387. At ix ςος τῇ ὅ γε παρκατέλεκτο χόλον θυμαλγέα πέσσων is said of Meleager, when he is described as behaving like Achilles, ix 336, of Agamemnon's act: ἔχει δ' ἄλοχον θυμαρέα. Achilles is begged to subdue his great θυμός, ix. 496.

26 ἤματα δ' αἱματόεντα διέπρησσον πολεμίӡων, ix 326; οὐ γὰρ πρὶν πολέμοιο μεδήσομαι αἱματόεντος, ix 650; xix 313.

27 σὺ δ' ἔνδοθι θυμὸν ἀμύξεις, i 243: only here is this rare verb used in a non-literal sense. ἄχθος ἀρούρης, xviii 104. αἰναρέτης, xvi 31.

28 παναώριος, xxiv 540; ὤ μοι ἐγὼ δειλή, ὤ μοι δυσαριστοτόκεια, xviii 54. She also says that she is αἰνὰ τεκοῦσα, i 414: also unique.

29 τριπλῇ τετραπλῇ τε, i 128; καί ποτέ τοι τρὶς τόσσα παρέσσεται ἀγλαὰ δῶρα, i 213. Cf. xix 146–8, xxiv 578, 654 ff., 686–8. δεκάκις τε καὶ εἰκοσάκις, ix 379; xxii 349. The Odyssey emulates this, at Od. xxii 60 ff: Εὐρύμαχ’, οὐδ' εἴ μοι πατρώια πάντ' ἀποδοῖτε… Eustathius remarks on that passage (1919. 22): οὐ πολλὴν ὑπερβολὴν ἔχει, ‘the hyperbole is not great’; he compares the utterances of Achilles and concludes that Homer tones down the exaggeration ‘in accordance with the quality of the characters’, τῇ τῶν προσώπων ποιότητι συμμετριάӡει καὶ τὸ ὑπερβάλλον τῆς δόσεως.

30 xxi 100 ff., cf. xxiv 156–8; vi 417.

31 Similes in speeches, cf. Moulton, C., Similes in the Homeric Poems (Göttingen 1977) 100 Google Scholar.

32 xviii 110, xxii 262, xxi 282, xvi 7, ix 323. The speeches in Book ix are well discussed by Lohmann (n. 21) 240.

33 This term, as Friedrich and Redfield find, is not easy to define satisfactorily. An extreme instance, ix 364–77, with Hon ΣΤ on 374, ἐμφαντικώτεροι γίνονται οἱ λόγοι θᾶσσον διακοπτόμενοι· ἐν γοῦν δ' στίχοις η' εἰσιν αὐτοτελεῖς στιγμαί, and von Scheliha, R., Patroklos (Basel 1943) 174 Google Scholar.

34 See Homer on Life and Death (n. 2) 75 f.

35 On Homer's ‘obituaries’ see ibid., 103 ff.

36 xvi 243, xviii 99, xxiv 541, xxiv 86.

37 xvi 144, xviii 208. Cf. xix 324 ὁ δ' ἀλλοδαπῷ ἐνὶ δήμῳ εἵνεκα ῥιγεδανῆς Ἑλένης Τρωσὶν πολεμίӡω.

38 Cf. also xix 40, and Elliger, W., Landschaft in griechischer Dichtung (Berlin 1975) 67 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 ix 381 ff, ix 405, xxiii 142 ff, i 155, xxiv 615, xix 326 ff.

40 Clear especially from ix 515 ff., ix 628 ff., ix 645 ff.