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Grated Cheese Fit for Heroes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 February 2012

M. L. West
M. L. West
Affiliation:
All Souls College, Oxford
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Extract

The scene in Iliad 11 where Nestor's slave Hekamede prepares a restorative κυκεών for his guests in his great cup, which only he can lift when it is full, has often been cited in connection with the skyphos from Ischia, dated to c.735–720 BC, with its verse inscription that alludes to Nestor's εὔποτον ποτήριον. Now that scholarly opinion is increasingly swinging towards a seventh-century dating for the Iliad, it seems more prudent than ever to see the Ischia inscription as a reflex not of our Iliad but of a similar Nestorian drinking episode in earlier epic tradition. His cup, as described, has features of a Bronze Age vessel; and the motif of the mighty goblet is paralleled in the Ugaritic Baal epic, current not later than the fourteenth century.

Here I want to consider another element in the scene, namely the grated cheese which Hekamede adds to her posset. I hope to show, by a combination of metrics and archaeology, that this too, even though it cannot be traced back to the Bronze Age, belongs to a traditional account that is many generations older than our Iliad.

Type
Shorter Contributions
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 118 , November 1998 , pp. 190 - 191
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1998

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References

1 Hom. Il. 11. 624-41; CEG i. no. 454 (cf. ii 304).

2 Cf. Heitsch, E., GGA 220 (1968) 180–1Google Scholar; Burkert, W., WSt 89 (1976) 5–21Google Scholar; Taplin, O., Homeric Soundings (Oxford 1992) 33–5Google Scholar; Kullmann, W., Homerische Motive (Stuttgart 1992) 264Google Scholar; van Wees, H., GR 41 (1994) 1–18, 131-55Google Scholar, and in Morris, I. and Powell, B.B. (eds.), A New Companion to Homer (Leiden & New York 1997) 692Google Scholar; West, M.L., MH 52 (1995) 203–19Google Scholar; Crielaard, J.P. in Crielaard, J.P. (ed.), Homeric Questions (Amsterdam 1995) 274Google Scholar; Dickie, M.W. in Andersen, Ø. and Dickie, M.W. (eds.), Homer's World (Bergen 1995) 29–56Google Scholar; W. Kullmann, Ibid. 57. In JHS 117 (1997) 216CrossRefGoogle Scholar van Wees writes ‘it looks like 1995 was the year in which Homer left the Dark Age and at last became an archaic poet’.

3 See West, M.L., Mus. Helv. 52 (1995) 205Google Scholar, and The East Face of Helicon (Oxford 1997) 376Google Scholar.

4 van Leeuwen, J., Enchiridium dictionis epicae (2nd ed., Leiden 1918) 46Google Scholar. He notices also Hymn. Dem. 204 καὶ ῐλαον σχεῖν θυμόν, where the abnormal rhythm, as N.J. Richardson observes ad loc, ‘perhaps arises from adaptation of a formula such as Il. 9.639’ (σὺ δ΄ ίλαον ένθεο θυμόν); and the cacometric fifth century Attic epitaph CEG 83.5 ούτος άνήρ, ύς ἒ<σ>ωισεν Άθηναίων τρἕς ϕυλάς.

5 So Schwyzer i. 675-6; Chantraine, Grammaire homérique i. 297, 307, 362; Lexikon des frühgriechischen Epos s.v. κνη. The philological analysis in the following paragraphs (which do not claim to offer a complete historical account of this knotty little verb) has profited distinctly from the learning and insight of Anna Morpurgo Davies, to whom my thanks.

6 Cf. Monro, D.B., Homeric Grammar (2nd ed., Oxford 1891) 22Google Scholar, ‘the metre points rather to the uncontracted κνάε (than to an athematic form). κνάε seems first to have been conjectured by C.G. (K.W.) Müller, De cyclo Graecorum epico et poetis cyclicis (Leipzig 1829) 144.

7 Ionic: Hdt. 7. 239. 4 κνᾶν; Hippocr. Fract. 21 (ii. 79.3 Kühlewein) κνᾶται v.l. κνῆται; Herondas 8. 8 κνῶ (imperative). Attic: Com. adesp. 519 K.-A. κάπικνῆν (quoted explicitly for Attic κνῆν); Pl. Gorg. 494c κνῆσθαι; Xen. Mem. 1. 2. 30 προσκνῆσθαι (v.l. -κνήσαθαι). At Ar. Birds 1586 editors rightly adopt Cobet's correction of the manuscripts’ (Koine) έπικνᾶις to έπικνῆις.

8 This would still be the case if κνῆ arose as a mis-transcription of KNE representing κνεῖ < *κνέε. But the attested Attic and Ionic forms of the verb seem to preclude the existence of *κνέε at any point in either line of development.

9 West, M.L., ‘The rise of the Greek epic’, JHS 108 (1988) 166–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Ridgway, D., ‘Nestor's cup and the Etruscans’, Oxford Journal of Archaeology 16 (1997) 325–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I should have over-looked this but for the author's kindness in sending me an offprint.

11 Ridgway (n. 10) 330.

12 See W. Kroll, RE x. 1493.62.