4.1.1 Rhetorical Schema of the hodos

What does the analysis set out in the previous chapter mean for Circe’s second hodos, the one she details in Odyssey 12? The overarching task of this chapter will be to analyse Od. 12.39–141 using the tools introduced and the framework developed in the Chapter 3.

The dramatic scenario in which Circe spells out this hodos is well-known. Odysseus has returned from the Underworld to attend to the bones of the hapless Elpenor. But he is also, from a narrative perspective, still empty-handed; Tiresias has not in fact provided the directions home that Odysseus needs, and it therefore falls to Circe to designate the actual itinerary of his journey home.Footnote ¹ She greets the returning voyagers with characteristic hospitality, and then, dispatching the ship’s crew, pledges to Odysseus: ‘I shall indicate the hodos and sign out each [of the road-marks]’ (αὐτὰρ ἐγὼ δείξω ὁδὸν ἠδὲ ἕκαστα σημανέω, Od. 12.25–26).Footnote ² With a minimum of preliminaries, she then launches into the business of doing just this.

In fact, in the catalogic discourse that follows (Od. 12.27–141), we find precisely what our study of the hodos enumerated by Athena to Telemachus in Odyssey 1 would lead us to expect. There, we saw that: (a) the temporal adverbs and particle combinations πρῶτα μὲν … κεῖθεν δὲ … δὴ ἔπειτα enumerated entries in the catalogue of the hodos-itinerary; (b) the sequence of this discursive enumeration tracked the underlying movement in the story-world from destination to destination to be undertaken in the future by Telemachus; (c) the destinations themselves were marked by the lexical items -δε and εἰς; and (d) the events that made up the core of the narrative were expressed in verbs in the aorist, often in the imperative mood (and in the second person). What we find in Odyssey 12 is fundamentally the same constellation of features, though with a few small modifications; for example, the second person imperatives have been replaced by second person futures. Circe begins (Od. 12.39):

And introduces the Cattle of the Sun (Od. 12.127):

Between these moments, a section introduced by the following lines intervenes immediately after the Sirens episode ends (Od. 12.55–58):

Here, too, the textual progression along temporal lines is marked through the cluster αὐτὰρ ἐπὴν δή. The sequence of the textual progression and the sequence of places to be visited in the voyage are correlated with the story-world that Circe narrates to Odysseus: the ‘what place comes next on the hodos’ (ἔνθα) is coordinated with the ‘what comes next in the narration’ (ἔπειτα διηνεκέως ἀγορεύσω).

This is as we would expect from the rhetorical schema governed by the figure of the hodos. We will in due course be able to examine the portion where Circe presents the choice. First, however, and by way of clarifying the patterns that define the other two discursive units (which will then give us a framework for examining the portion where the choice can be found), we will move to the level of types of dependence to examine how the discursive units marked out by this constellation of adverb and particle clusters, tense-aspect-mood-person configurations, and the relationship between narrated movement through space and discursive patterning are organized internally: that is, at the level of dependence.

4.1.2 Levels of Dependence

4.1.2.1 The Sirens and Thrinacia

As expected, a brief narrative link (Od. 12.39a, 12.127a) connecting catalogue entries creates a frame from which first description (Od. 12.39b–46, 127b–36), then further narration (in the form of instruction – Od. 12.47–54, 137–41) depend (see Table 4.1). It is these relations we will now examine at further length.

The first and last of these discourse-units are as follows (Od. 12.39–54, 127–41):

Table 4.1Preliminary division of Od. 12.39–141 by discourse-units³

Σειρῆνας μὲν πρῶτον ἀφίξεαι, αἵ ῥά τε πάντας ἀνθρώπους θέλγουσιν, ὅτις σφεας εἰσαφίκηται. ὅς τις ἀιδρείῃ πελάσῃ καὶ φθόγγον ἀκούσῃ Σειρήνων, τῷ δ᾽ οὔ τι γυνὴ καὶ νήπια τέκνα οἴκαδε νοστήσαντι παρίσταται οὐδὲ γάνυνται, ἀλλά τε Σειρῆνες λιγυρῇ θέλγουσιν ἀοιδῇ ἥμεναι ἐν λειμῶνι, πολὺς δ᾽ ἀμφ᾽ ὀστεόφιν θὶς ἀνδρῶν πυθομένων, περὶ δὲ ῥινοὶ μινύθουσι. ἀλλὰ παρεξελάαν, ἐπὶ δ᾽ οὔατ᾽ ἀλεῖψαι ἑταίρων κηρὸν δεψήσας μελιηδέα, μή τις ἀκούσῃ τῶν ἄλλων· ἀτὰρ αὐτὸς ἀκουέμεν αἴ κ᾽ ἐθέλῃσθα, δησάντων σ᾽ ἐν νηὶ θοῇ χεῖράς τε πόδας τε ὀρθὸν ἐν ἱστοπέδῃ, ἐκ δ᾽ αὐτοῦ πείρατ᾽ ἀνήφθω, ὄφρα κε τερπόμενος ὄπ᾽ ἀκούσῃς Σειρήνοιιν. εἰ δέ κε λίσσηαι ἑτάρους λῦσαί τε κελεύῃς, οἱ δέ σ᾽ ἔτι πλεόνεσσι τότ᾽ ἐν δεσμοῖσι διδέντων.

Θρινακίην δ᾽ ἐς νῆσον ἀφίξεαι· ἔνθα δὲ πολλαὶ βόσκοντ᾽ Ἠελίοιο βόες καὶ ἴφια μῆλα, ἑπτὰ βοῶν ἀγέλαι, τόσα δ᾽ οἰῶν πώεα καλά, πεντήκοντα δ᾽ ἕκαστα. γόνος δ᾽ οὐ γίγνεται αὐτῶν, οὐδέ ποτε φθινύθουσι. θεαὶ δ᾽ ἐπιποιμένες εἰσίν, νύμφαι ἐυπλόκαμοι, Φαέθουσά τε Λαμπετίη τε, ἃς τέκεν Ἠελίῳ Ὑπερίονι δῖα Νέαιρα. τὰς μὲν ἄρα θρέψασα τεκοῦσά τε πότνια μήτηρ Θρινακίην ἐς νῆσον ἀπῴκισε τηλόθι ναίειν, μῆλα φυλασσέμεναι πατρώια καὶ ἕλικας βοῦς. τὰς εἰ μέν κ᾽ ἀσινέας ἐάᾳς νόστου τε μέδηαι, ἦ τ᾽ ἂν ἔτ᾽ εἰς Ἰθάκην κακά περ πάσχοντες ἵκοισθε· εἰ δέ κε σίνηαι, τότε τοι τεκμαίρομ᾽ ὄλεθρον, νηί τε καὶ ἑτάροις· αὐτὸς δ᾽ εἴ πέρ κεν ἀλύξῃς, ὀψὲ κακῶς νεῖαι, ὀλέσας ἄπο πάντας ἑταίρους.

First you will reach the Sirens, who charm all Men, whoever happens to approach them. And whosoever draws near to them in ignorance and hears the voice Of the Sirens, neither this man’s wife nor his little children Will be at hand, delighted, as he returns home; But the Sirens, enchanting him with their clear song, Wait in their meadow, and there is a great heap of men Rotting on their bonesFootnote 4 as the skin withers around them. But give a wide berth as you sail past, and anoint the ears of your crewmates With beeswax kneaded soft, in order that none Of them hear the singing. But should you yourself wish to hear it, Let them bind you hand and foot upright on the mast Of the swift ship, the ropes made fast to the beam, So that you may delight in hearing the voice of the Sirens. And if you plead with your men, command them to untie you, Let them bind you yet tighter still.

Then you will reach the island Thrinacia: and there the many Cattle and sleek sheep of Helios pasture. Seven herds of oxen, and as many fine flocks of sheep, With fifty creatures in each herd. There is no begetting among them, Nor do they ever perish. Their shepherds are goddesses, Nymphs with beautiful braids, Phaëthousa and Lampetie, Whom heavenly Neaera bore to Helios Hyperion. Having given birth to them and raised them, their lordly mother Sent them to the island Thrinacia to dwell far away And guard their father’s sheep and cattle with curved horns. If you leave the cattle unharmed and keep your nostos in mind, You may all yet make it to Ithaca, despite suffering ills. But if you harm them, in that case I foresee destruction For ship and crew; and even if you yourself survive, You will return late and in bad condition, having destroyed all your companions.

As expected, textual features characteristic of description are on abundant display in Od. 12.39b–46 and 127b–36: verbs are in the timeless/omnitemporal present indicative and in the third person (θέλγουσιν at 40 and 44, μινύθουσι at 46, βόσκοντο at 128, γίγνεται at 130, φθινύθουσι and εἰσίν at 131) or (stative) perfect (ἥμεναι at 45); the spatial adverb ἔνθα opens the descriptive portion at Od. 12.127; motion through the story-world (i.e. the future motion through it that Circe foretells) ‘stops’; the ‘statics of the world’ – states of affairs and enduring properties – are presented, and qualities and properties attributed to objects and places.

Similarly, in lines 12.47–54 and 12.137–41, we find again what we would expect to find at this level of dependence; just as in Odyssey 10, Circe follows descriptions of the places that form the hodos with instructions about what to do there. Accordingly, we find several verbs in the imperative or (especially where conditional clauses are concerned) in the subjunctive or optative; similarly, these instruction sections feature verbs in the second person, rather than the third person of description sections.

In order to analyse these sections better, it will be useful to proceed by way of a very brief detour through scholarship concerning Homeric deliberation. In a major study of this and related topics, Christopher Gill highlights three features that are characteristic of Homeric deliberation.Footnote ⁵ First, Homeric deliberation often involves ‘working out the implications of different courses of action’.Footnote ⁶ Second, this working out of implications involves a process by which an actor ‘first entertains and then rejects a certain course of action; and the rejection is a crucial preliminary to the reaching of a conclusion’.Footnote ⁷ Third, these courses of action are often ‘evaluate[d] … in light of explicit or implied goals’ or in relation to a general rule;Footnote ⁸ so the thought pattern often adheres to the following form: ‘if I do x, then y will happen, and this involves z, which is bad or good.’Footnote ⁹ Rachel Knudsen has identified two further features of Homeric deliberation: first, the conclusion of a chain of inferences often takes the form of an imperative or some other kind of instruction (something concerning actions, that is, rather than states of affairs); and, second, these conclusions often come first and are linked to the supporting premises, which come after, by gar or epei.Footnote ¹⁰

Returning to the Sirens, two points may be established. First, that Circe does not merely provide a set of detailed instructions for Odysseus (in the form of the imperatives); instead, she persistently justifies them by embedding them in a purposive or explanatory framework. The means by which she does so are grammatical: the purpose clause and the conditional construction.Footnote ¹¹ Thus Circe’s imperative: οὔατ᾽ ἀλεῖψαι ἑταίρων (Od. 12.47) is not expressed as some kind of divine injunction imposed from above; rather, she supplies a rationale in the form of the negative purpose clause: μή τις ἀκούσῃ | τῶν ἄλλων (Od. 12.48–49). As Knudsen suggests, it is the conclusion, expressed in the form of an imperative to an action, which comes first; as Gill leads us to expect, it is by virtue of thinking through (a) the implications of a course of action (b) in reference to a particular goal or end that each imperative is justified. So, too, her final instructions for Odysseus’ encounter with the Sirens – οἱ δέ σ᾽ ἔτι πλεόνεσσι τότ᾽ ἐν δεσμοῖσι διδέντων (Od. 12.54) – forms the apodosis of a conditional clause: if you plead with your companions to release you, then let them bind you tighter still. In the first instance, Circe establishes the explanatory relationship between her instructions and the rationale behind them in the form of a purpose clause: her instructions (anointing the ears of Odysseus’ crew) represent a good way to achieve a particular outcome (preventing them from hearing the Sirens’ song and, ultimately, being seduced by it). In the second, she uses a conditional clause to articulate something akin to a causal relationship: an effect to be triggered in the event that a given condition is met. We even see a chain of explanatory argument evolve in the linkage between the two (12.49–52): Circe locates her instruction in the apodosis of a conditional clause, and this apodosis triggers its own purpose clause – if what you want is to hear the Sirens, have your men bind you to the mast in order to hear the song of the Sirens and take delight in it (without being fatally waylaid by their seductive song).

The second point is that if it seems natural, even obvious, that Circe should account for her instructions to Odysseus, the first hodos she details (in Odyssey 10) suggests otherwise. There she outlines a series of places Odysseus will need to pass through en route to Hades, giving a detailed series of instructions about what to do when he has arrived at the rock where Acheron receives its tributaries. Those instructions, however, are simply instructions (Od. 10.516–25):

ἔνθα δ᾽ ἔπειθ᾽, ἥρως, χριμφθεὶς πέλας, ὥς σε κελεύω,

βόθρον ὀρύξαι, ὅσον τε πυγούσιον ἔνθα καὶ ἔνθα,

ἀμφ᾽ αὐτῷ δὲ χοὴν χεῖσθαι πᾶσιν νεκύεσσιν,

πρῶτα μελικρήτῳ, μετέπειτα δὲ ἡδέι οἴνῳ,

τὸ τρίτον αὖθ᾽ ὕδατι· ἐπὶ δ᾽ ἄλφιτα λευκὰ παλύνειν.

πολλὰ δὲ γουνοῦσθαι νεκύων ἀμενηνὰ κάρηνα,

ἐλθὼν εἰς Ἰθάκην στεῖραν βοῦν, ἥ τις ἀρίστη,

ῥέξειν ἐν μεγάροισι πυρήν τ᾽ ἐμπλησέμεν ἐσθλῶν,

Τειρεσίῃ δ᾽ ἀπάνευθεν ὄιν ἱερευσέμεν οἴῳ

παμμέλαν᾽, ὃς μήλοισι μεταπρέπει ὑμετέροισιν.

But there, hero, go close in and do as I tell you:

Dig a pit, about a cubit in each direction,

And pour around it drink offerings for the dead:

First, honey mixed with milk, and then sweet wine,

And in the third place, water, and over this sprinkle white barley.

And promise many times to the strengthless heads of the dead

That when you return to Ithaca, a barren cow, whichever is your best,

You will slaughter in your palace, and pile the pyre with fine gifts,

And sacrifice just for Tiresias an all-black

Ram, the one conspicuous in your flocks.

Indicators, syntactical or semantic, articulating explanatory, purposive, or intentional relationships justifying these instructions are completely absent: Odysseus is simply supposed to do the things she tells him to do. The contrast between these two ‘instruction’ segments depending from the ‘description’ sections (the first bare instructions, the second embedded within a framework of inferential justification) suggests we might do well to call this section not only ‘instruction’ (as does de Jong), but even ‘justified instruction’ – or even, according to the terminology set out in Section 3.1.2, ‘argument’.

The Thrinacia episode develops this penchant for examination and explanation. Recall Gill’s observation that in Homeric deliberation, the deliberating character often ‘entertains and then rejects a certain course of action; and the rejection is a crucial preliminary to the reaching of a conclusion’.Footnote ¹² Common to Od. 12.47–54 and 12.137–41 is the use of conditional clauses, though the differences between them in the Sirens episode and those related to Thrinacia are striking. In the first case, the conditional sentences are geared towards attaining a certain set of outcomes – to hear the Sirens and not be destroyed by doing so. By contrast, the three conditional clauses in the Thrinacia episode examine the terms and consequences of a single choice. Two mutually exclusive possibilities are presented: either Odysseus and his men can leave the cattle unharmed, or they can harm the cattle – plainly they cannot both harm and not harm the same cattle (the point is driven home by the binary pair ἀσινέας/σίνηαι, 12.137, 139).Footnote ¹³ What is more, these choices are presented as exhaustive: these two options are plainly the only two conceivable options. In the first case the outcome is clear: nostos for all. Not so the second case; again deploying the framework of the conditional clause, Circe examines two possible consequences resulting from the second course of action. That Odysseus’ men will perish and his ship will be destroyed is expressed unequivocally (τεκμαίρομαι),Footnote ¹⁴ but ‘even if’ (εἰ … κεν …) Odysseus happens to survive, he will be much delayed and will return in grievous circumstances (139–41). And although Circe does not explicitly reject one of the two courses of action, the way in which she establishes the implications of each strongly suggests the undesirability of one – ‘a crucial preliminary to the reaching of a conclusion’.Footnote ¹⁵

4.2.1 Rhetorical Schemata

If analysing Od. 12.39–54 and 12.127–41 can be done rather neatly, how best to analyse the different units that make up Od. 12.55–126 is more challenging. De Jong’s commentary, generally a reliable starting point, is misleading or inaccurate in a number of ways when it comes to this passage. For example, lines 12.108–10 and 124–26 are inexplicably assigned to Charybdis, not Scylla; the first half of line 12.73 addresses not only Scylla, but both Scylla and Charybdis; lines 12.81b–82 are plainly not descriptive.Footnote ²⁴ One suspects that these uncharacteristic inaccuracies stem from de Jong’s decision to use the individual characters or places – viz. the Sirens, the Planctae, Scylla, Charybdis, Thrinacia – as the base units (‘episodes’) of her analysis. While this is appropriate for the Sirens (12.39–54) and Thrinacia (12.127–41), where the segmentation of the text (that is, of the narrative or plot) corresponds to the discrete places where Odysseus will arrive, in lines 12.55–126 something else is going on.

Figure 4.1

Preliminary analysis: Discursive organization governed by the figure of the hodos in Odyssey 12

As noted, Od. 12.55–58 fits the model of ‘prior narration’, the top unit in the levels of dependence:

Two recent studies on autar and autar + epei/epeita/epēn have made clear how these clusters of what are traditionally classed as particles and conjunctions are better understood as discourse markers that help speakers organize their discourse by parcelling it into distinct units.Footnote ²⁵ Applying their findings to this portion of the Odyssey, we may say that αὐτὰρ ἐπήν would here mark the beginning of a new narration section. Similarly, we find typical markers of narrative activity, including three verbs in the future indicative ἀγορεύσω, ἐρέω, and ἔσσεται.Footnote ²⁶ The cluster ἔπειτα διηνεκέως also marks the progression of the text along temporal lines. All the features of narration discussed above are in play here.

By contrast, very few of these narrative elements are found in 12.59–126. Instead, we find extensive stretches of description (to be examined shortly) introduced by the portentous phrase (Od. 12.57–58):

These two hodoi, both of which she promises to enumerate, in fact introduce what amounts to 47.5 lines (12.59–106a) of description; verbs in this portion of the text overwhelmingly take the omnitemporal present, and nearly all the adverbs used are spatial (e.g. enthen at 12.59; entha at 12.85; tēi [‘past there’] at 12.62, 12.66; tōi [‘in that place’] at 12.103, 12.104). The text proceeds along largely spatial lines, with little movement in ‘story’ time (barring one important exception, which we shall note shortly).Footnote ²⁷ The function of these portions is clearly to introduce elements of the story-world and attribute qualities and attributes to them.

One major exception is a curiously ambiguous line and a half of plainly narrative language occurring at 12.81b–82, just after the first of the ‘two rocks’ (viz. Scylla’s rock) is introduced (Od. 12.80–82):

As the commentators note, ἰθύνετε is an aorist subjunctive; when combined with the ἄν in the environment of a prophecy, this has the force of something approaching a command.Footnote ²⁹

What are we to make of this? Lines 81b–82 (ᾗ … Ὀδυσσεῦ) plainly cannot be designated as descriptive (as de Jong would have it): the textual features are not those of description, neither establishing features of the narrative world nor attributing qualities to the characters that populate it. Depending on how one interprets the force of the subjunctive + an construction in the context of a prophecy, this could either be a prior narration section, which would introduce a new unit, or an instruction section, which would close off an old unit, according to the analysis we have been undertaking so far (see Figure 4.2 below). Perhaps in this setting, however, the ambiguity is useful. We might do well to see the clause that spans the two lines as doing double duty: as instruction, it closes off the section that, as we shall see, details a choice between the two ‘routes’, while as prior narration it opens a new kind of textual or discursive unit in which the two creatures, Scylla and Charybdis, are presented in high-descriptivity passages followed by instruction/argument (12.106b–10) concerning how best to address them.

Figure 4.2

Analysis of Od. 12.39–141 by discourse-unit, hodos-unit, and episode

A version of de Jong’s schema modified to take these points into account might look like Table 4.2. On this reading, we can identify three possible units of analysis. The first would be discursive units, units of discourse parcelled out or marked off as discrete items by discourse markers on the surface of the text (clusters of adverbs and particles, here in combination with prior narration introducing the new unit and following a section of instruction closing the old units); these would be distinctions made at the level of discourseFootnote ³⁰ and would here be coextensive with entries in the catalogue of Circe’s hodos-itinerary (capitalized in Table 4.2). These units we may contrast with what we may still, following convention, call episodes, which would correspond to all the locations Circe mentions, regardless of whether she actually instructs Odysseus to visit them;Footnote ³¹ these episodes may revolve around particular characters (e.g. the Sirens) but they are ultimately tied to specific places (which number five, underlined in Table 4.2, and would include the Planctae and Charybdis (rejected by Circe)). Finally, we can identify a third category between these two, what we might call a ‘hodos-unit’, which marks out a distinct node in the itinerary (based on the analysis of the level of dependence undertaken so far) that makes up the hodos enumerated in the catalogic discourse of Circe’s prophecy. This level may be seen to bridge the underlying story-world and the level of discourse by capturing the way elements in the story-world are organized by discourse (these number four, in boldface in Table 4.2).

Table 4.2Preliminary analysis of Od. 12.39–141

All caps = discourse-unit; bold = hodos-unit; underlined = episode.

It is this level of analysis, the hodos-unit (see Table 4.3), that will provide the basis for the following discussion; breaking things down in this fashion allows us to glean a better insight into the two passages where choices are presented (12.57–82; 81–110, 115–26) and, by helping us better discern the shape of Circe’s hodos, help us better analyse the discursive dynamics through which it is expressed. How, then, does this work in practice?

Table 4.3Terms of analysis: Od. 12.55–126

As we have seen, Circe disclaims the ability to instruct Odysseus, telling him she will present two options between which he must choose (12.57–58):

The first of these two (and both ὁπποτέρη and ἀμφοτέρωθεν underscore the duality of the choice) is presented by lines beginning ἔνθεν μὲν γὰρFootnote ³² πέτραι ἐπηρεφέες (‘There on the one hand [are] steep rocks’, 12.59). Notable is the spatial preposition enthen and the particle men, which open the door to an extended description of these steep rocks (12.59–72). The men is matched by the corresponding οἱ δὲ δύω σκόπελοι (‘And on the other [are] the two rocks’, 12.73), which in turn heads another portion of description (12.73–81a) where the first of these rocks is presented.

Scrupulous symmetries characterize the two items presented in the harmonized balance of the men … de … clauses, as Hopman puts it:

In Bakker’s view, as a general matter in Homer, the use of men ensures that the option introduced by the de clause is ‘framed’ in relation to the option in the men clause.Footnote ³⁴ This ‘framing’ need not set up an antithetical relationship: ‘[a] speaker using men, looking forward to an upcoming statement with de, does not so much presuppose a common basis for conducting discourse as establish one’.Footnote ³⁵

Whereas units of discourse are mapped onto places one-to-one in the Sirens and Thrinacia episodes, in the course of the hodos-unit formed by the narration-description-instruction section spanning lines 12.57–82 we find two different geographic units, the Planctae and the Two Rocks. They are not introduced at the level of the narrative frame (the top level of dependence), but rather form two different entries placed in parallel at the second level of dependence, that of description.

Precisely the same dynamics are to be found in the course of lines Od. 12.73–106a, which relate Scylla and Charybdis to each other and describe them. The two are presented through a men … de … framing device (for Scylla’s rock: ὁ μὲν οὐρανὸν εὐρὺν ἱκάνει | ὀξείῃ κορυφῇ at 12.73–74; for Charybdis: τὸν δ᾽ ἕτερον σκόπελον χθαμαλώτερον at 12.101)Footnote ³⁶ at the level of description rather than narration.Footnote ³⁷ What follows (Od. 12.73b–81a, 12.83–106a) is an extended description addressing the first option and then the second, the details of which are closely coordinated.Footnote ³⁸ There is also one final point: an advantage of this line of analysis is that the hodos-units do not map one-to-one onto ‘episodes’; as the confusion surrounding lines 73–81a make clear, it is entirely possible for one discrete place or character – Scylla and her rock, in this case – to be split across two different hodos-units in a way that analysing by episode does not allow for.

By way of linking the foregoing discussion to existing scholarship on ancient Greek thought, and also to pinpointing what makes this portion of the Odyssey distinctive, it is helpful to discuss these points in light of the Homeric phenomenon that Geoffrey Lloyd termed ‘polar expressions’, with which the relationship between the Planctae and the Two Rocks, and between Scylla and Charybdis, may seem to have much in common.Footnote ³⁹ As Lloyd emphasizes, however, the unit that forms one half of a ‘polar expression’ can also often be paired with other units to form a ‘polar expression’ along a different axis; so, for example, ‘openly’ can be contrasted with either ‘secretly’ (ἢ ἀμφαδὸν ἦε κρυφηδόν, Od. 14.330) or ‘by trickery’ (ἠὲ δόλῳ ἢ ἀμφαδόν, Od. 1.296).Footnote ⁴⁰ Furthermore, these polar opposites often admit of a third, intermediate option (or even a gradation of intermediate options): so soldiers need not be only either brave or cowardly, but can also be somewhere in between (μεσήεις, Il. 12.269).Footnote ⁴¹ By contrast, however, and very importantly, neither hodos of the two paired by Circe admit of another contrary to be substituted, as with ‘openly/hidden’ and ‘openly/secretly’. No ‘third hodos’ is presented – nor does the possibility seem conceivable, unless one can rewrite the geography of the story-world. It is not only that one cannot travel both routes at the same time; it is also simply that, as presented, there do not exist any other possible routes if one wants to get from the Sirens’ Meadow to Thrinacia. That the two hodoi are part of the physical space of the story-world is central not only to their mutual exclusiveness but also, that is, to the exhaustive nature of the dichotomy they form; as a convenient shorthand, we may also refer to this phenomenon of the exclusive exhaustive disjunction (where one cannot choose both options, or neither, but must choose one) between the two paths of a forked road as a krisis. The krisis will be a feature of enormous importance in Parmenides’ poem.

With this analysis in hand, we can now identify a second kind of operation in the syntax of the hodos as a form of catalogic discourse. The focus has been on the ordered sequentiality according to which items form entries in the series of the catalogic discourse organized by the figure of the hodos (see Table 4.4a, b, c). In the exclusive disjunction or krisis, we see a second possible relationship that can obtain between two items of a hodos-itinerary within one unit of hodos-discourse, one that relates these two items in the story-world at the level of description, not narration.

Table 4.4aOrganization by (possible) episodes (after de Jong)

Table 4.4bOrganization by discourse-units/episodes visited

All caps = discourse-unit; bold = hodos-unit; underlined = place visited; strike through = place not visited.

Table 4.4cOrganization by hodos-units

4.2.2 Types of Dependence: Description and Argument in the krisis Section

This has implications at the level of types of dependence for sections of text that depend from the entries that make up the catalogue of the hodos. Compared to Od. 12.39–54 and 12.127–41, however, the dynamics of lines Od. 12.55–126 are subtly but critically distinct. Since in lines 12.55–126 it is the places themselves – as opposed to actions (e.g. to kill or not to kill the Cattle of the Sun) – that form the possible choices in question, in the scenario of the krisis it is the nature of the places themselves (as opposed to the actions one can or cannot perform there) that now commands the narrator’s attention. The places themselves must be adequately described in order that a choice between them may be made. As a result, in lines Od. 59–126, description predominates to a far greater extent than in other sections: in the Sirens episode the portions are virtually even (7.5 lines of description to 8 lines of argument), while in the Thrinacia episode we find a description to argument ratio of nearly 2:1 (9.5 lines to 5) – between lines 12.59 and 126, however, the ratio stands at nearly 6:1 (52 lines of description to 9 of instruction/argument).Footnote ⁴²

This is significant, especially given the view that oral poetry is good at, and its linguistic resources designed for, ‘describ[ing] the acts of persons and the happening of events’, but offers few means of examining the world beyond ‘verbs of doing and acting and happening’.Footnote ⁴³ On this view, even when the language of oral poetry is mobilized to gain purchase on ‘the nature of the outside world’, its orientation towards the expression of actions and events inclines it strongly towards doing so ‘in diachronic terms, as history rather than as philosophy or science’.Footnote ⁴⁴

The encounter with the Sirens and the passage by way of Thrinacia are, for geographical reasons, simply givens. Circe flatly declares that Odysseus ‘will first reach the Sirens’ (12.39). This certainty lets Circe get on straight away to ‘what matters’, which is what these Sirens do: they enchant (12.40). There is simply no need to further explore their underlying nature, their ontological status, their genealogy, their form (even their number).Footnote ⁴⁵ Regarding Thrinacia, whether or not Odysseus and his men make land there is partly what is at stake in Tiresias’ prophecy in book 11. Circe elides the question, however, simply listing it as the next place Odysseus ‘will reach’ in the sequence of his travels; what ‘matters’ for Circe is the question of the cattle. The element of choice in this section perhaps accounts for the increased proportion of description relative to instruction: because what matters is the cattle (concerning whose fate there is to be a kind of choice), information about them – about their nature and their histories – is important. Not only is it what the cattle do that ‘matters’ here; what they are becomes more important.

This relationship between the introduction of a choice and the proliferation of description comes dramatically into view in the portion of Circe’s hodos presented by lines 12.59–126. Without the simple givenness that defines the encounters with the Sirens and Thrinacia (viz. that there would be an encounter with the Sirens or the Cattle of the Sun), the nature of the possible destinations in the hodos-itinerary are ‘what matter’. Accordingly, what we find is something akin to ‘describing the setting for its own sake’ here: what ‘matters’ is the very nature of the potential items making up Odysseus’ itinerary, and what will form the ‘argument’ sections is, in part, an argument about which of the two exclusive, exhaustive alternatives forming the krisis to select, and why. It is to some notable aspects of these description and argument sections, and to the relationship between the two, that we shall now turn.

4.2.3 Krisis: Assessments and Cautions

What we see, then, is a remarkable coalescence of (a) the three linguistic features we have so far been discussing within (b) the framework of the type of dependence we have so far sketched out (see Section 4.2.2) involving (c) one of the two possibilities of the rhetorical schema of the hodos (viz. an exclusive, exhaustive disjunction, or krisis). Key features (often expressed through a predicative esti and/or a modally charged negation) of characters introduced (often with an existential esti) in the course of extraordinarily lengthy, well-developed description sections establish basic states of affairs; these in turn go on to serve as the evidence on the basis of which (a relationship articulated, as suggested by Knudsen, by gar or epei) Circe’s instruction (which is thus also the conclusion of an inferential process) is supported in the instruction/argument section that follows. This process in turn proceeds according to Gill’s pattern of working through the implications of a course (no longer only of action, but now a physical course in the sense of cursus). What is more, this plays out within the context of the exclusive, exhaustive disjunction formed by a fork in the physical hodos and, paired with the modally charged negations introduced in the description sections, amounts to a ‘proscription-by-negation’ rendering one option strictly impassable and impossible, which thus forces, implicitly or explicitly, her male mortal charge to choose the alternative path.

What does this mean for Parmenides? Much in the preceding paragraph should sound arrestingly familiar to scholars of Parmenides’ poem. Evaluating the nature and significance of the overlaps between the features of Odyssey 12.55–126 explored in this last section and Parmenides’ poem (to be explored in Chapter 5 below) is a delicate task, however – and not least because these involve similarities of different kinds and at different scales, and these in turn differ considerably in their degree of closeness or markedness. In some cases, we may feel we can advance claims with considerable confidence; in others, definitive answers will be in short supply. There can be no debating the extremely high degree of commonality between the scenario described in preceding paragraph and, as we shall explore in the next chapter, in parts of Parmenides’ ‘Route to Truth’. By contrast, regarding the use of esti, or gar and epei, we might be content to note the striking similarities without feeling compelled to make firmer, or unduly grandiose, claims.

Three factors should be considered when assessing these aspects of the relationship between Parmenides and Od.12.55–126. The first concerns how distinctive the features in question are to Od.12.55–126. The second concerns how close or precise the overlaps between Odyssey 12 and Parmenides’ ‘Route to Truth’ are.Footnote ⁶² The third concerns the Parmenidean side of the ledger: to what extent is Parmenides’ own intellectual agenda likely to be the driving force behind the specificities of his usage, rather than the particular features of the Homeric text he inherited?Footnote ⁶³ In the remainder of the chapter, I shall consider the first and (more briefly) the third points; the second (and, again rather briefly, the third) will be discussed at length in the following two chapters, particularly Chapter 5.

The second half of this chapter has been devoted to examining how the forks in the hodos at Od. 12.55–126 play out at the levels of rhetorical schemata and types of dependence. But are these forks really so distinctive? Early archaic Greek poetry furnishes a pair of celebrated instances where a similar image is leveraged to great effect, Hesiod’s Works and Days 213–18 and 287–92. Nor was Parmenides alone in making use of this image in the late archaic period; the presumed influence of these two passages from Hesiod on Theognis 911–14 has often been discussed.Footnote ⁶⁴ So is this not simply a stock image?Footnote ⁶⁵

To this mix some scholars have also been tempted to add the texts inscribed on a dozen or so gold tablets (sometimes dubbed ‘Orphic’) discovered in tombs across Magna Graecia, some of which seem to have suggestive points of overlap with Parmenides’ poem.Footnote ⁶⁶ Do these tablets not also provide directions for travelling a hodos traversing the BeyondFootnote ⁶⁷ – perhaps even one where some sort of a fork in the road must be confronted?Footnote ⁶⁸ Are not the set of religious and eschatological associations conjured by this itinerary no less suggestive, no less potent (and perhaps even more so) than the social or ethical ones conjured by Hesiod’s hodoi in Works and Days?

To be sure, some of the similarities between parts of Parmenides’ poem and Hesiod’s crossroads or the golden tablets are indeed evocative. And, as will be clear from the Introduction, I am strongly in favour of any readings of Parmenides’ poem that can help relocate him more firmly in his time, place, and poetic and sociocultural context. Similarly, it is not at all my goal to advocate for a single-mindedly Homeric reading of Parmenides, one that claims for Homer a monopoly on influencing Parmenides to the exclusion of all other forms of archaic poetic, cultural, and religious life. Far from it. But from the perspective of Parmenides’ place in the history of thought, there are nevertheless crucial differences between lines 12.55–126 of the Odyssey and the two passages of Hesiod (and archaic epigone) just cited or the texts of the gold tablets recovered from various sites in Magna Graecia. It is to these latter we must now turn.

First, in the golden tablets, unlike in Odyssey 12, when the possibility of taking more than one path emerges, there is no interest whatsoever in arguing for – or against – a specific selection. Rather, one simply receives a one-line injunction along the lines of, for example, ‘Do not even go near this spring!’ (ταύτᾶς τᾶς κράνας μēδὲ σχεδὸν ἐνγύθεν ἔλθēις, GJ 1 = Edmonds B10), before the instructions continue on (space is at a premium on a gold tablet, one might think, and the important thing is just to make the right choice, not to prove the merits of choosing one way or the other).Footnote ⁶⁹ Since my interest is in understanding Parmenides’ development of extended deductive argumentation and the constitutive elements of demonstration, this is a very important point.

On the other hand, the diversion towards the lake and the white cypress is, one presumes, a genuine feature of the physical landscape (however this might be understood by initiates). What is more, it is hard to imagine that a deceased mortal, initiated or otherwise, might try to reject the two options available and instead advocate the merits of fashioning some kind of third, alternative route or course of action. In this, some tablets are indeed like Odyssey 12.55–126. By contrast, Hesiod’s conceptualization of qualities like hybris and dikē, kakotēs and aretē Footnote ⁷⁰ by mapping them onto an imagined spatial domain, and then figuring a dichotomy between them via the apparently exclusive, exhaustive disjunction of a forked path, does not change the fact that it leaves open an entire terrain of potential responses. As Lloyd pointed out, even in the context of traditional polar expressions, when these involve different ways of addressing a problem or articulating an ethical choice, there is always the possibility of elaborating a third option, be that a middle way or a new axis along which to construct the dichotomy.Footnote ⁷¹ Might not a resourceful Perses always have been able to respond that there is a third way between pure hybris and pure dikē, pure kakotēs and pure aretē? Or could he not transpose the problem to a different landscape, a pragmatic one, say, rather than an ethical one (or vice versa, depending on how one understands the meaning of aretē and kakotēs)?Footnote ⁷² Odysseus (and an initiate travelling the route from the golden tablet), however, is stuck in the physical world as it is; there is no option for him to invent some unthought of third way to Thrinacia between Scylla and Charybdis, or to transpose himself to a differently configured map.

Furthermore, it is extremely telling that we see no hint of any kind of modal charge to the negations in either Works and Days or the golden tablets. That is precisely because the choices presented in both texts are in fact genuine choices. Indeed, in both Works and Days and the golden tablets, the conundrum – and thus the need for advice in the first place – lies in the fact that either route could be, and in fact routinely is, selected. One could very easily divert from one’s path forward by veering right to refresh oneself at the spring by the white cypress (as the imperfective participle suggests – cf. e.g. κατερχόμεναι (GJ 1=Edmonds B10) – the souls of the dead do so regularly). Equally, one could all too easily choose the route to kakotēs, to whose dwelling the hodos is short and smooth; that it is ever so much more inviting than the long, rough, steep path of aretē is precisely why one needs to be warned from it. There is no ‘proscription-by-negation’ in either the Works and Days or in the golden tablets because there could not be: in each case, the path one is advised against taking is simply the ordinary path that mortals, or their souls, do so often take. As we shall see, this difference between the hodoi enumerated by Circe (in which only one of the possibilities is truly viable at each krisis) and those we find in Hesiod and on the golden tablets is of the utmost importance for Parmenides and his invention of extended deductive argumentation and key features of demonstration.

There is another important pair of points to be made concerning the relationship between the itinerary Circe sketches out in Od. 12.55–126 and some similarities this shares with other cultural artefacts of the archaic (or, in the case of the golden tablets, the classical) era, be these the confronting of a crossroads, the navigation of a hodos through the Beyond, the use of a pattern of deliberation, or thinking in terms of polar opposites. While there are important points of overlap with Hesiod’s Works and Days 216–17 and 287–92, the golden tablets, and the texts analysed by Lloyd, Gill, and Knudsen, it happens that all the features that Odyssey 12.55–126 shares with one or another of the texts discussed coalesce in the hodos that Circe details in the same book. Just as neither the analyses of Gill and Knudsen nor Lloyd’s discussion of polar opposites implies that there is nothing unique in Circe’s particular use of the general structures that each scholar described, so we may observe that in Odyssey 12, it is not only that a hodos is presented which helps a mortal navigate the physical geography of some portion of the Beyond, as in the tablets – nor only that the crossroads imagery constructs a choice between two alternatives that come into their own as alternatives, as in Works and Days. Likewise, what we find in Odyssey 12 is not just another instantiation of a polar expression; nor is it just another instance of a deliberative process that considers alternatives only to eliminate one and select the other; nor is it just another use of road imagery in providing instructions for navigating the physical geography of an Elsewhere; nor is it just another example of the use of a forked path to articulate a dichotomy. Each aspect of Odyssey 12.55–126 that overlaps with the different expressions of archaic Greek culture surveyed above in fact reveals just how distinctive this portion of the Odyssey is.

Indeed, it is precisely this very confluence of these features in one passage that makes Odyssey 12.55–126 so distinctive and so valuable for Parmenides.Footnote ⁷³ The whole of this passage of Odyssey 12 is incomparably greater than the sum of its archaic Greek parts. That the dichotomous choice between courses of action is quite literally between physical courses (of action) creates an extraordinarily powerful tool – the exclusive, exhaustive disjunction or krisis – which, when combined with argumentative support for the route to be chosen (or rather, a modally charged argument strictly ruling out one possibility, and therefore requiring that the other be chosen), simply cannot be found in any of these features individually. As we have seen, Lloyd observes that in very many cases there is the possibility of elaborating a third option in a polar expression. In the golden tablets, there is no interest at all in examining the other route in the fashion described by Gill; it is simply a wrong turn one should avoid on the way to the Lake of Memory, and there is apparently no need to explore the possibility of going to this spring, to think through the consequences of this course (of action), to reject it in favour of another alternative. Nor is there any interest in providing an argumentatively pregnant justification for selecting the one route over the other. If, as we shall see in Chapter 5, what matters to Parmenides is having the ability to leverage a uniquely potent argumentative tool that forces a voyager down one route or the other, this is something that neither a generic ‘polar expression’ nor the topography of the afterlife, nor even the rhetorical device of Hesiod’s two hodoi, can offer. Rather, this is a distinctive feature of the exclusive, exhaustive disjunction formed by a choice between two physical routes, and two physical routes alone, when one must press forward (and so cannot take neither), when one has a body that cannot be divided (and so one cannot take both), and when, in the end, only of the routes is actually viable. What we find in Hesiod, the golden tablets, and in most of the examples discussed by Lloyd and Gill are in fact genuine choices; what we find in Circe’s hodos, and what we shall find in Parmenides, is an apparent choice that, upon further descriptive reflection and argumentation, is in fact no choice at all. And for Parmenides, for the emergence of demonstration (which must begin from a point that all accept and cannot be rejected), and for the Western tradition of thought defined by the kind of knowledge demonstration produces, that makes all the difference.

This much concerns largely (though not exclusively) the level of rhetorical schemata. But there are other distinctive features of the krisis in Circe’s hodos at the level of dependence. An essential part of what we have been building up in the second half of this chapter is an analysis of the discursive framework used to express the options forming this choice – the description of the two alternatives – and the process by which one or the other is to be selected. At the level of types of dependence, the description sections play a vital role in establishing the possible courses (of action) insofar as they provide the raw material for the premises in the ensuing argument sections that, in their turn, ultimately yield a conclusion in the form of an imperative to a certain kind of action. In Odyssey 12, Circe is judicious about introducing only those characters and places, and describing only those qualities, that have a direct bearing on the choice to be made and the argument to be supplied in support of her instructions. This in turn means that the description sections become much longer and more extensive than in the other entries in Circe’s hodos-catalogue (or in Homer generally) in order to present the information necessary for the argument. By contrast, the role of narration sections is much diminished: what matters is the state of affairs that constitutes the options of the choice. Again, this is something that is entirely different from both the Works and Days and the golden tablets.Footnote ⁷⁴

Finally, what are we to make of the three textual features discussed above? Functioning as limit cases of a sort, they present a rather more complex picture. Taken individually, it is hard to say that their appearance in Od. 12.55–126 seems terribly distinctive or marked. One finds the verb form esti often enough in archaic poetry (though, as noted, almost never with such frequency). Similarly, the practice of negating statements with a modal charge is not only to be found in such passages already discussed as the Invocation to the Muses in Iliad 2, but also, inter alia, in some of the reworkings it underwent at the hands of other archaic poets, as well as in plenty of other unrelated contexts.Footnote ⁷⁵ Epei and gar, meanwhile, are of course simply basic linguistic items whose use, particularly in the case of gar, are an extremely ordinary feature of the syntax of oral poetry.Footnote ⁷⁶

These questions take on special importance when we consider the Parmenidean side of the ledger. It would be a great folly, for example, to suggest that Od. 12.55–126 is somehow the primary driver motivating Parmenides’ thematization of the question what-is, or that his ground-breaking examination of modality is merely the result of his engagement with this passage, or that his interest in rigorously supporting his claims with arguments is just a minor outgrowth of Homer’s practice in Odyssey 12 or elsewhere. Any sensible attempt to address these questions would of course consider Parmenides in relation to a much, much broader array of predecessors, contemporaries, and even successors, and would place his own agenda squarely at the centre of the answers provided.Footnote ⁷⁷

Pinning down the exact nature of the relationship between Od. 12.55–126 and Parmenides’ ‘Route to Truth’ at this word-by-word level of granularity will always be difficult, and little in my argument hangs on the specific answers one might wish to supply (or even on answers being hazarded at all). Nevertheless, to the extent that they force us to ask other interesting questions, they are worthy of brief consideration here. At just what point do unmarked, not terribly distinctive features become distinctive? How much does it matter that in this passage of the Odyssey we encounter with unprecedented frequency the use of modally charged negations or the third person singular esti, both of which are, of course, distinctive hallmarks of Parmenides’ poem? Are there ways in which specific combinations of the features identified – for example, the use of esti to provide the evidence upon which is based, via a gar or an epei, an instruction that serves as the conclusion of a practical deliberation; or, similarly, the combination of a modally charged negation and an exclusive, exhaustive disjunction, to form a proscription, and thus a prescription, by negation – can, when taken as unit, form something more marked and less typical, more distinctive and less frequently trafficked? How ought we to weigh this against the importance of these features for Parmenides’ own philosophical agenda? And – to turn this question on its head – to what extent could we imagine that his agenda might have been shaped in part by the fact that it was this passage, with its distinctive or marked use of indistinctive and unmarked features of the Greek language, that Parmenides reworked?

This is not the place to attempt to answer these questions, since it is the commonalities at the level of the rhetorical schema and levels of dependence that are central to the points that I want to make. For the moment, one might simply observe that the similarities are there, whatever one is to make of them, and that what is desirable is perhaps a more subtly graded spectrum than a simple declaration that something ‘IS’ or ‘IS NOT’ intertextual;Footnote ⁷⁸ rather, we might ideally locate different degrees of intertextual proximity or distance.