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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
It has been easy to take the apparently detached viewpoint of the two early Greek epics as actually objective, a window on a ‘Heroic Age’, on a ‘Homeric society’ and its values. We used to ask whether ‘Homeric society’ belongs to the poets' own time or to some earlier one. We still ask how to characterize and explain the ways in which the ‘Homeric world’ differs from any world that we can accept as having existed: we answer with phrases such as ‘poetic exaggeration’ and ‘epic distance’. We have constructed ‘Homeric society’, but it remains an isolate. It can tell us nothing in return of the poets' intentions, or of the society of their time, unless we have a working hypothesis as to the place in that society that was held by the poets and their audiences.
1 Bowra, for all his comparative stance, was after all a classicist and can have had no clearer examples than the two Greek epics in mind when he wrote that ‘though [heroic poetry] celebrates great doings because of their greatness, it does so not overtly by praise but indirectly by making them speak for themselves’: Heroic Poetry (London, 1952), p. 4Google Scholar; see also Edwards, IC v.2–7. In this paper the six volumes of The Iliad: a Commentary (Cambridge, 1985–1993)Google Scholar are cited as IC i–vi; the three volumes of A Commentary on Homer's Odyssey (Oxford, 1988–1992)Google Scholar are cited as CHO i–iii. Lexikon der frühgriechischen Epos (Göttingen, 1955–)Google Scholar is LfE; Liddell, and Scott's, A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed. (Oxford, 1925–1940)Google Scholar is LSJ.
2 I accept, and feel no need to re-argue, Morris's, conclusion (“The Use and Abuse of Homer’, Classical Antiquity 5 [1986] 81–138)CrossRefGoogle Scholar that it is ‘almost certain that the institutions and modes of thought in the poems were ultimately derived from the world in which Homer and his audiences lived’ (p. 82); a world that included the ruins of Mycenae, a world observed by people who knew that ways of life can differ and that the past was different from the present.
3 This ‘poet-audience symbiosis’ is well explored by Taplin, , Homeric Soundings (Oxford, 1992), pp. 2–6Google Scholar; cf. Fränkel, H., Dichtung und Philosophie (New York, 1951), pp. 15–20Google Scholar.
4 Examples are given by Rychner, J., La Chanson de Geste (Geneva, 1955)Google Scholar, by West, D. J. A. in Hatto, A. T. (ed.), Traditions of Heroic and Epic Poetry 1 (London, 1980)Google Scholar, and by Duggan, J. J., ‘Social Functions of the Medieval Epic in the Romance Literatures’, Oral Tradition 1 (1986), 728–66Google Scholar. Duggan is wrong to argue that these asides, circumstantial as they are, form proof that the poems were copied down from normal performances: no clerk of those times could have kept up the requisite speed.
5 Iliad 24.720, 18.604(if genuine); Odyssey 4.17–18, 23.133, 3.267–72, 1.325–7, 8.254–369, etc. Cf. Davison, J. A., From Archilochus to Pindar (London, 1968)Google Scholar. A detailed examination of the use of εδιν and οιδς is provided by West, M. L., ‘The Singing of Homer and the Modes of Early Greek Music’, JHS 101 (1981), 113–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A distinction is often made by scholars between professional οιδο and those who were ‘gifted amateurs’: so West, S. in CHO i. 96Google Scholar, distinguishing Iliad from Odyssey.
6 van Wees, H., Status Warriors: war, violence and society in Homer and history (Amsterdam, 1992), p. 5Google Scholar. Later Greek poets, and reciters of Homer, were often highly mobile. Note the opening of Margites: ἨλӨ τις ς Κολοøνα γρων κα Өεȋος οιδς. But within the two epics the word ‘travelling’ can only be justified by Odyssey 17.384: the passage is quoted below and has to be set against Odyssey 13.9. The passage from Ecclesiasticus, which does not appear in the Greek version, is as quoted by Burkert, W., The Orientalizing Revolution (Cambridge, MA, 1992), p. 23Google Scholar.
7 Murko, M., La Poésie Populaire Épique en Yougoslavie au Début du XXe Siécle (Paris, 1929), p. 21Google Scholar; on rivalry among bards see references given by Edwards, M. W., Classical Antiquity 9 (1990) p. 314, nn. 9–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ford, A., Homer: the poetry of the past (Ithaca, 1992), pp. 93–101, 118Google Scholar. The two epics offer merely negative evidence on the point (one never sees two singers together), but we may consider that Odyssey 17.384 and Hesiod, , Works and Days 25–6Google Scholar are part of the same trend of popular thought. ‘Members of a guild’: see e.g. LfE i. 982 line 69.
8 Homeric Hymn to Apollo 165–78. See Taplin, , Homeric Soundings, p. 40Google Scholar.
9 Scholia EV on Odyssey 8.63.
10 Traditions of Heroic and Epic Poetry 1 (1980), 37–8Google Scholar.
11 Fågerström, K., Greek Iron Age Architecture: developments through changing times (Göteborg, 1988), p. 143Google Scholar.
12 Maehler, H., Die Auffassung des Dichterberufs im frühen Griechentum bis zur Zeit Pindars (Göttingen, 1963), p. 34 [my translation]Google Scholar.
13 E.g. Janko, , IC iv. 38Google Scholar.
14 Hainsworth, , CHO i. 349–50Google Scholar; in his chapter ‘The Iliad as Heroic Poetry’ in IC iii. 32–53Google Scholar he does not, I think, pursue this idea.
15 Murko, , Poésie Populaire Épique en Yougoslavie, p. 13Google Scholar. Singers were also invited to noblemen's houses (ib.). Compare the remarks of Mededović, Avdo in Lord, A. B. (tr.), The Wedding of Smailagić Meho (Cambridge, MA, 1974)Google Scholar.
16 Bentley, R., Remarks on a Late Discourse of Free-Thinking (London, 1713)Google Scholar; Kirk, G. S., The Songs of Homer (Cambridge, 1962), pp. 274–80, 135–8Google Scholar; Taplin, , Homeric Soundings, pp. 22–31, 39–41Google Scholar; note also Silk, M., The Iliad (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 14–15Google Scholar. Bentley's statement, though intentionally controversial, was not mere speculation: it has solid support in ancient authors. There are plenty of more complex theories, but they fit with difficulty into what is known of oral poetry and its making. There has been talk of teams of performers (for references, Taplin, p. 28 n. 27). Nagy, G. asserts that the Homeric epics were composed for competitive relay recital at festivals (‘the Homeric testimony … belies the synchronic reality’: Pindar's Homer [Baltimore, 1990], p. 24 with text and footnotes of pp. 21–3)Google Scholar, but the evidence on which he bases the assertion is far from ‘synchronic’ with the composition of the epics.
17 Duggan, J. J., The Cantar de Mio Cid: poetic creation in its economic and social contexts (Cambridge, 1989), p. 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar, puts it thus: ‘A heuristic strategy for reconstructing the interpretations of those medieval poets and scribes who produced and first preserved the texts is to pay increased attention precisely to passages that do not fit the models and expectations that prior scholarship has provided.’
18 Chios (Oxford, 1984), pp. 3–13Google Scholar. Was there going to be room for Telemachus at Menelaus's house? How would the Phaeacians recompense themselves for their gifts to Odysseus? Griffin (n. 8) quotes modern scholars' doubts of Odyssey 4.621, 13.3–15 where these questions arise.
19 Janko, IC iv. Note the discussion of one such case by Athenaeus 180b–182a. Those who wish to investigate the typical scenes of the epics can now begin from a recent review article: Edwards, M. W., ‘Homer and Oral Tradition: the Type-Scene’, Oral Tradition 7 (1992), 284–330Google Scholar.
20 The fullest and clearest examples of these two scenes are not in a king's house but at Eumaeus's farm: the dinner at Odyssey 14.409–56 and the feeding of a guest at Odyssey 14.72–113. Here separated by some hundreds of lines of text, the two typical scenes are in other cases adjacent or even interwoven.
21 Odyssey 17.264–8 etc. An excellent outline of a Homeric hero's household, friendships and estate as depicted in the totality of references in the two epics is given by van Wees, Status Warriors.
22 Odyssey 7.86–94; Odyssey 4.71–6.
23 Odyssey 2.337–343.
24 Scholia EMQ on Odyssey 2.340.
25 Τν δ ρωικν οἴκων τοὺς μεζονας Ὅμηρος μγαρα καλεȋ κα δώματα κα κλισας, οἱ δ νȗν ξεννας κα νδρνας νομζουσι (Athenaeus 193c).
26 Scholia HMQR on Odyssey 3.400–401.
27 Consider Eustathius (Commentary on Homer 1427.37) on Odyssey 1.426: Ὅρα δ ὅτι παρ πν ‘Oμρ Өλαμος κα νδρεȋος οἶκδς λγεται. οἱ δ μεӨ’ Ὅμηρδν τν γυναικωντην οὕτω καλλȗσιν (‘Notice that in Homer a man's room, too, is called thalamos. Later authors use the term for the women's quarters’).
28 Especially Odyssey 1.425–6. For assaults on the problem see e.g. Bérard, V., ‘Le Plan du Palais d'Ulysse’, REG 67 (1954), 1–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dawe, R. D. (tr.), The Odyssey (Lewes, 1993), pp. 79, 163Google Scholar.
29 Odyssey 1.330 etc.
30 Russo, , CHO iii. 42–3Google Scholar on Odyssey 17.492–506; scholia in H and in Vind. 133 on Odyssey 17.501.
31 Garrido-Bozić, I. M., ‘Mud and Smoke in the Odyssey’, G&R 15 (1946), 108–13Google Scholar.
32 Evidence is conveniently gathered by Fågerström, Greek Iron Age Architecture (note review by Ainian, in Opuscula Atheniensia 19 [1992], 183–6Google Scholar). Fågerström, finds ‘renewal of seafaring and of agriculture as the main subsistence strategy, architecturally heralded by an emphasis on vast, diversified and conspicuous storage facilities’ (p. 2)Google Scholar. He plays down the contrast between his evidence (which is preponderantly for large houses) and that of the epics, observing correctly that the Iliad ‘depicts the situation of an encamped army … where dinner habits are likely to diverge from those at home’ (p. 133); elsewhere, ‘we hear of [pig] pens in Homeros, and also of other supplies in special store rooms’ (p. 143), a phrase that crucially misrepresents the epics. We hear only of a general store room.
33 Odyssey 1.145, etc., 7.95–6.
34 Odyssey 4.716–17.
35 Odyssey 14.49–51; Odyssey 16.43–8.
36 Odyssey 17.328–34.
37 The Greek is λλ' πτ ἄν σε δμοι κεκӨωσι κα αὐλ, ὦκα μλα μεγροιο διελӨμεν, øρ' ἂν ἵκηαι μητρ' μν· ' ἧσται σχρῃ ν πυρς αὐγῇ, ỉλκατα στρωøσ' λιπρøυρα, Өαȗμα ἰδσӨαι, κονι κεκλιμνη· σμῳα σ οἱ εἵατ' ὅπισӨεν. ἕνӨα δ παττρς μοȋο Өρνος ποτικκλιται αὐτῇ, τῷ ὅ γε οἰνοποτζει øμενος Өνατος ὥς. LSJ is agreeing with the German commentators Ameis, and Hentze, (Anhang zu Homers Odyssee [Leipzig, 1889–1900], ad loc)Google Scholar. LSJ also offers ‘stands by the pillar’; LfE (i. 1671 line 5) attributes this explanation to Pökel, , ‘Bemerkungen zur Odyssee’, Programm Prenzlau 1861, p. 8Google Scholar, but though an assiduous reader may be persuaded that αὐτῇ refers to κονι an audience could hardly take it so. All this argumentation, and the very existence of the alternative reading αὐγῇ ‘in the firelight’, demonstrate later discomfort at the unacceptably rustic picture that the Homeric text conjures up.
38 Odyssey 17.269–71.
39 Odyssey 7.103–6; Odyssey 22.421.
40 The vagueness is, of course, related to the nature of oral literature. The poem is not to be pinned down: the pursuit of a cross-reference backwards was unimaginable for audiences and for poet. There were women in Achilles' tent at bedtime: who can say whether they had been there at dinner time (Iliad 9.658–68; Dalby, , JHS 112 (1992), 29–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar)? When had Achilles come by the big thatched house in which Priam found him (Iliad 24.448–56)? Where did Odysseus's menservants spring from (Odyssey 23.147)? When these features are wanted for the setting, or are temporarily essential to the plot, they exist.
41 Odyssey 1.109–12.
42 Ramming, G., Die Dienerschaft in der Odyssee (Erlangen, 1973)Google Scholar, tabulates titles and duties.
43 The words of Odysseus: Odyssey 15.324.
44 Scholia on Odyssey 15.319, quoting Odyssey 1.109–10.
45 Van Wees, , Status Warriors, p. 32, n. 25Google Scholar.
46 West, S. in CHO i. 90Google Scholar.
47 Iliad 18.558.
48 Epitome ofAthenaeus 8f.
49 See Odyssey 14.80–81.
50 The heroic diet in the Iliad is even more restricted: there is a shortage even of bread.
51 The Epitome of Athenaeus (8e–9f, 18e–f) and Suda (s.v. Ὅμηρος) both note the absence of cakes and desserts, perfumes and wreaths.
52 Scholia Q on Odyssey 19.61, which cross-refer to scholia on Odyssey 1.147.
53 Plato, Republic 404b–c, gives Socrates the opinion that the poet's intention was didactic: roast meat is best and most practical for soldiers. The Epitome of Athenaeus 9a similarly argues that the diet described is the most nourishing.
54 Epitome of Athenaeus 25d an d scholia AT on Iliad 16.747, followed by most modern scholars.
55 Plato, Republic 404b and the Epitome of Athenaeus 25b–e, quoting Eubulus 118, comment on the meagre Homeric evidence for the boiling of meat and the eating of fish— ‘though they were beside the Hellespont,’ adds Plato's Socrates. See also Epitome of Athenaeus 9c–e.
56 In the Odyssey cheese is mentioned only as food for the savage Cyclops (Odyssey 9.219–23), providing a legendary pedigree for the excellent cheese of classical Sicily. Cheese had already been known in Greece for about two millennia when the Odyssey was composed.
57 Fish and fowl are eaten by Odysseus's sailors only when all else fails (Odyssey 12.330–31); see scholia T on Iliad 16.747. The Epitome of Athenaeus 13a–b cunningly argues from the ‘bent fishhooks’ of the Odyssey episode that already in Homeric times Greeks habitually fished: “The hooks were not forged in Thrinacia, but brought with them on the voyage, surely.’
58 Odyssey 7.114–26; Odyssey 24.337–43.
59 Epitome of Athenaeus 9e; on vegetables, Epitome of Athenaeus 24f, 25d.
60 Hainsworth, , IC iii. 145Google Scholar on Iliad 9.658; cf. Odyssey 3.402–3.
61 Russo, , CHO iii. 297Google Scholar on Odyssey 22.441–73; Stanford (2nd ed., 1958) on Odyssey 22.474–7 (‘perhaps—one hopes not—Telemachus’).
62 Odyssey 14.407–56.
63 Odyssey 7.103; Hainsworth, , Traditions of Heroic and Epic Poetry 1 (1980), 46 n. 11Google Scholar.
64 Odyssey 20.107–8, 16.245–53.
65 We may add that the kingly householders of the Odyssey sometimes wield a surprisingly restricted influence. Menelaus, King of Sparta, for whom all Greece had gone to war, the only man in the epic with a house so big that he has to be told of a visitor at the door, even Menelaus invites ‘neighbours and followers’ to his children's wedding: ‘[his neighbours are] from neighbouring towns, not living in his own city; his followers, those of his own city’, explains a scholiast in evident embarrassment (Scholia EQ on Odyssey 4.16). Griffin, , Chios (Oxford, 1984) p. 4Google Scholar reminds us that Menelaus's guests had to bring their own food.
66 With the simplest houses described by Fågerström, Greek Iron Age Architecture, compare those of sixth century B.C. Sardis, ‘“single cell” buildings of … a plan which would form one large room, very much like village houses in the same area both today and in the past’: Ramage, A., Lydian Houses and Architectural Terracottas (Cambridge, MA, 1978), pp. 6–7Google Scholar. Ramage conjectures from slots in the walls that the one room would in actual use have been divided either with a curtain or with a wattle wall. (The latter is less likely as it would have required doorway posts: postholes were not found.) Ruth Picardie's description of women's life in rural Iran, (Independent on Sunday, 13 11 1993)Google Scholar is not irrelevant to the world of the Odyssey: ‘Families live in one room; privacy in the marital bed is achieved by drawing a curtain. Domestic labour begins at four o'clock in the morning, when the day's bread is baked.’
67 Agamemnon left a singer behind in his palace, we are told, as moral guardian of Clytemnestra: the details and probability of this are discussed by both ancient and modern editors. Aegisthus, her lover, killed him. Odyssey 3.267–72. I am impressed by much else in Seaford's, R.Reciprocity and Ritual (Oxford, 1994)Google Scholar, but not by his acceptance of the view that the perspective of the poems can be explained in terms of their origin in ‘an informal and undeveloped stage of state formation’ (p. 6 with references).
68 The comparison, made by Alcinous at Odyssey 11.367–9, is, as Fränkel points out (Dichtung und Philosophic), a compliment both to poet and to audience—and it remains so whether the audience more resembles Alcinous's court or Eumaeus's men. On Odysseus as doiSos see also Taplin, , Homeric Soundings, pp. 30–31Google Scholar.
