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I. Introduction: Background and Problems

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2016

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      EPIC
      I have lived in important places, times
      When great events were decided, who owned
      That half a rood of rock, a no-man’s land
      Surrounded by our pitchfork-armed claims.
      I heard the Duffys shouting ‘Damn your soul’
      And old McCabe stripped to the waist, seen
      Step the plot defying blue cast-steel—
      ‘Here is the march along these iron stones’
      That was the year of the Munich bother. Which
      Was more important? I inclined
      To lose my faith in Ballyrush and Gortin
      Till Homer’s ghost came whispering to my mind
      He said: I made the Iliad from such
      A local row. Gods make their own importance.
      (Patrick Kavanagh)

Kavanagh’s short poem confronts the reader with a number of questions which will preoccupy us in this survey. The Homeric poems show us a world which in many respects seems primitive and remote; even if the expedition of the Greeks against Troy really happened, even if it took place on the scale which the Iliad asserts, and lasted the full ten-year span, it would still be ‘a local row’ compared with later historical conflicts, ancient or modern. Can the bad-tempered disputes of warrior chiefs, the violent revenge of a savage and undisciplined soldier, the lies and posturing of a vagabond rogue, still move or excite an audience today? It will be necessary to show here some of the ways in which Homer gives the conflict at Troy, and the homecoming of Odysseus, a timeless importance, so that these mere episodes in the vanished heroic age – long past even for himself and his audience - become microcosmic images of human life. The vast subject of Homer’s influence upon later western literature cannot be even superficially addressed here, but occasional comparisons and illustrations may help to show how much subsequent poets and artists have found in the Iliad and the Odyssey to enlighten and inspire their own work.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Surveys in the Classics , Volume 26: Homer , 1996 , pp. 1 - 29
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1996

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References

Notes

1. The most readable discussion is that of Page 1959, a work rich in learning but now generally quoted as an example of excessive credulity. The archaeological developments are reviewed by Manfred Korfmann, currently the doyen of the Trojan excavators, in his contribution to Latacz 1991; cf.Latacz, J., ‘Neues von Troja’, Gymnasium 95 (1988), 385–413 Google Scholar (Eng. version in Berytus 34 (1986), 97-127).

2. See esp. the collection of essays edited by Foxhall and Davies 1984; also Mellink, M.J. (ed.), Troy and the Trojan War (Bryn Mawr, 1986)Google Scholar, Kirk 1990, 36-50. For a penetrating essay which combines archaeological and literary finesse see Sherratt, E.S., ‘Reading the Texts: archaeology and the Homeric poems’ Antiquity 64 (1990), 807-24CrossRefGoogle Scholar = Emlyn-Jones et al. 1992, 145-65. A very different approach is adopted by Fehling, D., Die ursprüngliche Geschichte vom Fall Trojas, oder: Interpretationen zur Troja-Geschichte (Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Kulturwissenschaft 75, 1991)Google Scholar, who seeks to recover the original core of the story, dismissing historicity.

3. On Nestor’s narrativesee Bölte, F., ‘Ein pylisches Epos’, RhM 83 (1934), 319-47Google Scholar; Hainsworth 1993, 296-8.

4. 1183 is the date accepted by Eratosthenes and Apollodorus, but many other dates were canvassed; it is certainly hard to see how any could have been supported by proof. Burkert, W., ‘Lydia between East and West or How to date the Trojan War: a study in Herodotus’, in The Ages of Homer. A Tribute to Emily Townsend Vermeule, ed. Carter, Jane B. and Morris, Sarah P. (Austin, Texas, 1995), 139-48Google Scholar discusses ancient dating-systems and the theories about the Trojan war, concluding that none of the dates suggested have any historical basis.

5. On the cultural amalgam see Kirk 1962, 179-92; on language, M. L. West 1988 (earlier Page 1959, ch. 6). On religion, Nilsson, M. P., The Mycenaean Origins of Greek Mythology (Berkeley, 1932 Google Scholar; revised with new intr. and bibl. 1972); Burkert, W., Greek Religion (Oxford, 1985), ch. 1 Google Scholar (but p. 46 offers a warning: ‘Startling correspondences with the later Greek [religious] evidence stand side by side with things totally unintelligible. Greek religion is rooted in the Minoan-Myceneaean age and yet not to be equated with it.’). On the methodological problems see Sourvinou-Inwood 1995, 18-26.

6. Rhys Carpenter 1946; Kirk 1970, 31-41, and his The Nature of Greek Myth (Harmondsworth, 1974); Bremmer, J.M., Greek Religion (G&R New Surveys in the Classics 24, Oxford 1994), 55–7 Google Scholar.

7. Woodhouse 1930; Page 1973. See also Calhoun 1939.

8. J. Vansina, Oral Tradition (Eng. tr. 1965); id., Oral Tradition as History (London and Nairobi, 1985); Henige, D. P., The Chronology of Oral Tradition: Quest for a Chimera, (Oxford, 1974)Google Scholar; for outstanding applications to archaic and classical Greece see Thomas, R., Oral Tradition and Written Record in Classical Athens (Cambridge, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. chh. 1-2; also Murray, O., ‘Herodotus and Oral History’, in Sancisi-Weerdenburg, H. and Kuhrt, A. (ed.), Achaemenid History II: The Greek Sources (Leiden, 1987), 93–115 Google Scholar.

9. Bowra 1961,520,530ff; cf. Finley et al. 1964, Hainsworth, ‘The fallibility of an oral heroic tradition’, in Foxhall-Davies 1984,111-35, and Hainsworth 1993, 32-53. See also Taplin 1992, 26n.24.

10. Besides the items in the last note, cf.Finley, M.I., The Use and Abuse of History (London, 1973), ch. 1 Google Scholar, ‘Myth, memory and history’.

11. Hainsworth in Foxhall-Davies 1984, esp. 117, 121.

12. 20. 306-8; cf. hymn to Aphrod. 196-7; Smith, P. M., ‘Aineiadai as patrons of Iliad XX and the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite’, HSCP 85 (1981), 17–58 Google Scholar. But see Janko 1992, 19, 382, etc., arguing for disguised compliments to families claiming heroic descent.

13. On the Catalogue of Women, which survives only in fragments, see esp. West, M. L., The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women (Oxford, 1985)Google Scholar. For early genealogies and other lists see Jeffery 1961, 59-61, Hornblower, S. (ed.), Greek Historiography (Oxford, 1994), 9–12 Google Scholar. On families claiming heroic ancestry see Thomas (n. 8) 100-8,173-95.

14. 6. 155-202; 9. 527-99; 4. 370-400; 19.95-133 (cf. 14.249-61, etc.); xii. 69-72 (not an exhaustive list).

15. i. 29ff., 298ff., iii. 193ff., 248ff., iv. 512-37, xi. 387-434, xxiv. 20ff., 93ff.; Garvie, A. F., Aeschylus: Choephori (Oxford, 1986), ix–xii Google Scholar.

16. See Willcock, M. M., ‘Mythological Paradeigmata in the Iliad ’, CQ 14 (1964), 141-51CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘Adhoc invention in the Iliad’, HSCP 81 (1977), 41–53. This position is opposed by M. Lang, ‘Reverberation and mythology in the Iliad’, in Rubino-Shelmerdine 1983, 140-64; also by Slatkin 1991, 61 ff., discussing the specific case in book 1.

17. See Meuli, K., Odyssee und Argonautika (Berlin, 1921), 87–115 Google Scholar; Page 1955,2; Braswell, B.K., A Commentary on the Fourth Pythian Ode of Pindar (Berlin and N.Y., 1988), 6–8 Google Scholar.

18. For bibliography on this speech see Reichel 1994, llln.l.

19. Kakridis 1949, 11-42; March, J., The Creative Poet: Studies on the treatment of myths in Greek Poetry (BICS Supplement 47, 1987), 27–46 Google Scholar.

20. Bacchylides 5.94-154, Aesch. Cho. 594-601, Ov. Met. 8.260-546; Apollod. 1.8.2. Bremmer, J., ‘La plasticité du mythe: Méléagre dans la poésie homérique’, in Calame, C. (ed.), Métamorphoses du mythe en Grèce antique (Geneva, 1988), 37–56 Google Scholar argues that this version is post-Homeric.

21. Bowra 1930, 19-23; similarly Hainsworth 1993, 56-7.

22. See further Schadewaldt 1943, 139-42, Rosner 1976, Bannen, H., ‘Phoinix’Jugend und der Zorn des Meleagros’, WS n.f. 15 (1981), 69–94 Google Scholar; .Swain, S.C.R., ‘A note on Iliad 9. 524-99; the story of Meleager’, CQ 38 (1988), 271-76CrossRefGoogle Scholar on the interpretation of the myth. See now Griffin’s commentary, 1995, 134 ff.

23. Burkert, W., ‘Oriental Myth and Literature in the Iliad ’ in Hägg, T. (ed.), The Greek Renaissance of the Eighth century BC: Tradition and Innovation (Stockholm 1983), 51–6 Google Scholar; ‘Oriental and Greek mythology: the meeting of parallels’ in Bremmer, J. (ed.), Interpretations of Greek Mythology (London, 1988), 10–40 Google Scholar, and Burkert 1992; cf also M. L. West 1988.

24. Dalley, S. (ed. and tr.), Myths from Mesopotamia (Oxford, 1989), 145 Google Scholar; Burkert, 1992, 117f. Cf. 12. 322-8, Sarpedon’s speech (quoted below, pp. 40-1).

25. West, M. L., review of the original German version (1984) of Burkert 1992, in JHS 106 (1986), 233-4CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dalley [see last a], 93 (cf. Iliad 18. 317).

26. West, M. L., Hesiod Theogony (Oxford, 1966), 18–31 Google Scholar; Walcot, P., Hesiod and the Near East (Cardiff, 1966)Google Scholar; Kirk 1970, 118-31.

27. M. L. West 1988; Burkert 1992. But for a critical assessment of Burkert’s approach see Osborne, R., ‘À la grecque’, Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 6 (1993), 231–7 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28. Page 1955, ch. 1; 1973; Fehling, D.,AmorundPsyche (Mainz, 1977), 87–100 Google Scholar; Burkert, W., Structure and history in Greek Mythology (Berkeley, 1979), 156 n. 13 Google Scholar.

29. Page 1955, 14.

30. Page 1973, Griffin 1977; cf. more generally Stanford 1963, on the evolution of the character Odysseus over the centuries.

31. Burkert (see n. 28), 30-4.

32. Fairweather, J., ‘Fiction in the biographies of ancient writers’, Ane. Soc. 5 (1974), 234-55Google Scholar, Lefkowitz, M. R., The Lives of the Greek Poets (London, 1981), 12–24 Google Scholar; on the traditions about the poet’s name and career, Allen 1924, 11-41; Schwartz, E., ‘Der Name Horneros’, Hermes 75 (1940), 1–9 Google Scholar, and other material cited in Burkert 1987, 57 n. 1.

33. Kohl, J. G., De Chorizontibus (Giessen, 1917)Google Scholar.

34. 13. 11-14, cf.Janko’s n.; Kirk 1962, 273.

35. S. West 1988, 65; Austin, M. M., Greece and Egypt in the Archaic Age, PCPS Suppl. 2 (Cambridge, 1970), 11–13 Google Scholar; Boardman 1980, ch. 4.

36. See Dodds 1968; Myres, J. L., Homer and his Critics (ed. Gray, D.) (London, 1958)Google Scholar; Davison in Wace-Stubbings 1962, 234-65; Hainsworth 1969, passim; A. Parry in M. Parry 1971, introd.; Heu-beck, A., Die homerische Frage (Darmstadt, 1974)Google Scholar; Clarke 1981.

37. Ed. R. Peppmüller (Halle, 1884); tr. Grafton et al., 1987. Wolf was partly anticipated by Robert Wood (1769) and others: see M. Parry 1971, x-xiv.

38. I intend to say little about the problems or objections raised by the hard-line analysts, many of which now seem pedantic and trivial. Some cases which remain problematic are discussed in later chapters. For a pre-Parryist treatment see Bowra 1930, ch. 5; a more recent survey by Clarke 1981, ch. 4; also Page 1955, passim. van Thiel, H., Ilias und Iliaden (Basel, 1982)Google Scholar and Odysseen (Basel, 1988) documents analytic criticism exhaustively. Dawe, R. D., The Odyssey: Translation and Analysis (Lewes: The Book Guild, 1993)Google Scholar also maintains an analytic position with reference to the Odyssey.

39. Marg, W., Homer über die Dichtun (Münster 1956, 2nd edn Google Scholar. 1971; partly repr. in Latacz 1991b); Maehler, H., Die Auffassung des Dichterberufs im frühen Griechentum bis zu Zeit Pindars (Göttingen,1963)Google Scholar, Griffin 1980,100-2, Macleod 1983.

40. See e.g. schol. EV viii. 63; Hardie, P., Virgil’s Aeneid: Cosmos and Imperium (Oxford, 1986), 54 fGoogle Scholar.

41. West, M. L., ‘The singing of Homer and the modes of early Greek music’, JHS 101 (1981), 113-29Google Scholar.

42. Webster, T. B. L., From Mycenae to Homer (London and New York, 1958), 267-75Google Scholar; Wade-Gery 1952, ch. 1; cf. Taplin 1992, 39-41.

43. M. Parry 1971,x-xxi.

44. M. Parry 1971 (Milman Parry’s collected papers, with invaluable introd. by Adam Parry) remains fundamental. For clear summaries of his theories see Page 1959, 222-5; Hainsworth, J. B., The Flexibility of the Homeric Formula (Oxford, 1961) ch. 1 Google Scholar.

45. For more detail on Homer’s metre see West, M. L., Greek Metre (Oxford, 1982), 35–9 Google Scholar, abridged as Introduction to Greek Metre (Oxford, 1987), 19-23. See also Hainsworth 1969,27-8; Kirk 1985,17-37; Rutherford 1992, 78-85. A readable essay on the subject is provided by Bowra in Wace-Stubbings 1962, 17-25.

46. Macleod 1982, 38.

47. Eliot, T. S., ‘Tradition and the individual talent’, in Selected Essays (London, 1932), 13–22 Google Scholar.

48. Poetics 23, 24; Hor. Ars Poetica 136f.; but note Garvie 1994, 10-11.

49. See Arend, W., Die typischen Scenen bei Homer (Problematu 7, Berlin 1933)Google Scholar, with M. Parry’s review repr. in 1971,404-7; Hainsworth 1969,25-6; bibl. given by E.-R. Schwinge in Latacz 1991,485.

50. Fenik 1968, 1974; also e.g. Krischer 1971, and Edwards in a series of papers, mostly listed in the bibl. to Edwards 1987. For hospitality-scenes see now Reece, S., The Stranger’s Welcome: Oral Theory and the Aesthetics of the Homeric Hospitality Scene (Michigan, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

51. Armstrong, J. I., ‘The arming motif in the Iliad ’, AJP 79 (1958), 337-54Google Scholar; for another aspect see Segal, C., ‘Andromache’s Anagnorisis’, HSCP 75 (1971), 33–57 Google Scholar.

52. See e.g. Notopoulos, J. A., ‘Parataxis in Homer: a new approach to Homeric literary criticism’, TAPA 80 (1949), 1–23 Google Scholar; Lord, A. B., ‘Homer as Oral poet’, HSCP 72 (1967), 1–46 Google Scholar (for his other papers see the bibl. in Lord 1991). A more moderate position is adopted by Hainsworth, J. B., ‘The Criticism of an Oral Homer’, JHS 90 (1970), 90–8 CrossRefGoogle Scholar = Wright 1978, 28-40 - Emlyn-Jones et al. 1992, 65-75.

53. Note Pope, M.W.M., ‘The Parry-Lord Theory of Homeric Composition’, Acta Classica 6 (1963), 1–21 Google Scholar; Hoekstra, A., Homeric Modifications of Formulaic Prototypes (Amsterdam, 1965), ch. 1 Google Scholar; Young, D., ‘Never blotted a line? Formula and premeditation in Homer and Hesiod’, Arion 6 (1967), 279–324 Google Scholar = Essays on Chssical Literature selected from Arion, ed. Rudd, N. (Cambridge, 1972), 33–78 Google Scholar; Whallon, W., Formula, Character and Context (Cambridge, Mass., 1969)Google Scholar; A. Parry 1972 - 1989, 301-26; Austin 1975, ch. 1; Shive, D., Naming Achilles (New York and Oxford, 1987)Google Scholar;N.J. Richardson, ‘The individuality of Homer’s language’, in Bremer et al. 1987,165-84. See also the discussions cited by A. Parry in M. Parry 1971, xxxiii and xlix n. 3.

54. Sale, W., ‘Achilles and Heroic Values’, Arion 2 (1963), 86–100 Google Scholar, Russo, J., ‘Homer against his tradition’, Arion 7 (1968), 275-95Google Scholar = Latacz 1979, 403-26 (German version), Tsagarakis 1982, esp. 32 ff; cf. Taplin 1992. On technical aspects of the evolution of the formulaic system see Hainsworth, J. B., ‘The Homeric Formula and the Problem of its Transmission’, BICS 9 (1962), 57–68 Google Scholar; ‘Good and Bad Formulae’ in Fenik 1978,41-50; and esp. the magisterial account in Hainsworth 1993,1-31; also Finkelberg, M., ‘Formulaic and Nonformulaic elements in Homer’, CP 84 (1989), 179-97Google Scholar. For a different approach, see Visser, E., Homerische Versificationstechnik (Frankfurt, 1987)Google Scholar; id., ‘Formulae or single words? Towards a new theory on Homeric verse-making’,WJA 14 (1988), 21-37.

55. For Parry’s fullest defence of the statement that the meaning of the epithets was unimportant see 1971,118-72; cf. the briefer account at 304-7. But Parry himself allowed for some cases of deliberate choice or adjustment (1971,156-61), and the argument is taken further by Hainsworth 1969,29-30; Macleod 1982, 35-42; Rutherford 1992, 49-57. For Penelope’s fat hand see Woodhouse 1930, 20-1, who wails ‘Oh Homer! How could you?’; defended by Austin 1975, 73.

56. Griffin 1986, with de Jong 1988; de Jong 1987; Martin 1989; Griffin 1995, 36-45.

57. M. Parry 1971, chh. 13-17 (17 by A. B. Lord), with intro, by A. Parry, xxxiv-xli, xlvii—liii; Lord 1960. See further Finnegan 1977; Fenik, B., Homer and the Nibelungenlied (Cambridge Mass., 1986)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hainsworth 1993, 32-53 (valuable essay on ‘The Iliad as heroic poetry’) and for broadening of the comparative picture e.g. Hatto 1980, and other works cited by Hainsworth, loc. cit., and by Taplin 1992, 26 n. 24. A wide-ranging new study in this field is Nagy 1996 (forthcoming from Cambridge).

58. As is over-eagerly attempted by Kirk 1962, 95 ff. Contrast Thomas, R., Literacy and Oralily in Ancient Greece (Cambridge, 1993), ch. 3 Google Scholar.

59. Lord, A. B., ‘Homer’s Originality: Oral Dictated Texts’, TAPA 84 (1953), 124-33Google Scholar, and elsewhere; accepted e.g. by Janko 1992, 37-8.

60. A view championed by Bowra 1930, and by Parry, Adam (esp. ‘Have we Homer’s Iliad)’, YCS 20 (1966), 177–216 Google Scholar = A. Parry 1989, 104-40), but one which has had less support in recent years (contrast e.g. Taplin 1992, 8-9, 35-7); see Garvie 1994, 16 n. 51, for a list of those (including myself) who still hold to this theory.

61. Powell, B. B., Homer and the Origins of the Greek Alphabet (Cambridge, 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

62. Jeffery 1961, 1-42 with addenda on pp. 425-7 in 1990 edn. by Johnston, against the early dating proposed by near-eastern experts such as J. Naveh; Burkert 1992, 25-33. See also Heubeck, A., Schrift (Arch. Homerica 10, Göttingen, 1979)Google Scholar; Thomas (see n. 58 above).

63. Cost: IG i3 476, 289f.; cf. Jeffery 1961, 56-7; Jensen 1980, 94ff. Burkert (see last n.) supports leather.

64. On Homeridai, Pind. Nem. 2. 1-5 and scholia; PI. Ion 530d, Rep. 10. 599e; see further Allen 1924,42-50; Burkert, W., ‘Die Leistung eines Kreophylos: Kreophyleer, Homeriden und die archaische Heraklesepik’, МН 29 (1972), 74–85 Google Scholar; Fehling, D., ‘Zwei Lehrstücke über Pseudo-Nachrichten (Homeriden, Lelantischer Krieg)’, RhM 122 (1979), 193–210 Google Scholar (total scepticism).

65. WD 650-9; West, M. L., Hesiod, Theogony (Oxford, 1966), 40–8 Google Scholar, with criticisms by Edwards, G. P., The Language of Hesiod (Oxford, 1971), 199–206 Google Scholar;Janko 1982, 94-8.

66. West, M. L., ‘Greek Poetry 2000-700 B.C.’, CQ 23 (1973), 179-92CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 191-2; G. P. Edwards (see last n.), ch. 8; Rutherford on xix. Ill, 203. More generally on Hesiod in comparison with Homer see Wade-Gery, H.T., ‘Hesiod’, Essays on Greek History (Oxford, 1959), ch. 1 Google Scholar; Murray 1980 (revised 1993), chh. 3-4; Milieu, P., ‘Hesiod and his world’, PCPS n.s. 30 (1984), 84–115 Google Scholar.

67. These are in the OCT Homer, vol. 5; also in the recent editions of epic fragments by Bernabé (Leipzig, 1988) and Davies (Göttingen, 1988). For discussion see Severyns, A., Recherches sur la Chrestomathie de Proclos (Paris, 1938-63)Google Scholar; Huxley, G. L., Greek Epic Poetry from Eumelos to Panyassis (London, 1969)Google Scholar; Griffin 1977; Davies, M., The Epic Cycle (Bristol, 1987)Google Scholar.

68. Callim. epigr. 28 Pfeiffer, Hor. Ars 132, 136; Pfeiffer 1968, 227-30.

69. On the hymn to Demeter, Richardson, N.J., The Homeric Hymn to Demeter (Oxford, 1974)Google Scholar, and Foley, H. (ed.), The Homeric Hymn to Demeter (Princeton, 1994)Google Scholar; on the hymns generally, Janko 1982 (very technical), Thalmann 1984, Clay, J. S., The Politics of Olympus: Form and Meaning in the Major Homeric Hymns (Princeton, 1989)Google Scholar, and Parker, R., ‘The Hymn to Demeter and the Homeric Hymns’, G&R 38 (1991), 1–17 Google Scholar.

70. See Davison, J. A., ‘Quotations and allusions in early Greek literature’, Eranos 53 (1955), 125-40Google Scholar = Davison, , From Archilochus to Pindar (London, 1968), 70–85 Google Scholar, a classic statement of this argument. The same question arises with the well-known inscription from Pithecusae, describing the artefact it adorns as ‘Nestor’s cup’ ( Meiggs, R.-Lewis, D., A Selection of Greek Historical Inscriptions (Oxford, 1969, rev. 1988), no. 1 Google Scholar; Hansen, P. A., Carmina Epigraphica Graeca 1 (Berlin and N.Y., 1983), 454 Google Scholar): is the cup a stock item in the epic tradition, or does this indicate knowledge of Iliad 11. 632-7?

71. Aleman PMG 77 and 80; Alcaeus F 44 Lobel-Page; Stesich. SLG esp. S11, revised in Davies, M., Poetarum melicorum graecorum fragmenta 1 (Oxford, 1991)Google Scholar, cf.Page, D. L., ‘Stesichorus, Geryo-neis ’, JHS 93 (1973), 138-54CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the dating of Stesichorus, West, M.L., ‘Stesichorus’, CQ 21 (1971), 302-14CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Campbell, D. A., Greek Lyric iii (Loeb edn., Harvard 1991), 2–4 Google Scholar; see further Burkert 1987.

72. Johansen, K. F., The Iliad in Early Greek Art (Copenhagen, 1967)Google Scholar; Touchefeu-Meynier, O., Thèmes odysséens dans l’art antique (Paris, 1968)Google Scholar; Kannicht, R., ‘Poetry and Art: Homer and the Monuments Afresh’, ClAntiq 1 (1982), 70–86 Google Scholar; Brommer, F., Odysseus: die Taten und Leiden des Helden in antiker Kunst und Literatur (Darmstadt, 1983)Google Scholar; Brillante, C., ‘Episodi iliadici nell’arte figurata’, RhM 126 (1983), 97–125 Google Scholar; Carpenter, T. H., Art and Myth in Ancient Greece (London, 1991)Google Scholar. For the Odyssey see also D. Buitrón et al., The Odyssey and Ancient Art: an epic in word and image (Edith C. Blum Art Inst., Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., 1992); compare also D. Buitron-Oliver and B. Cohen, ‘Between Skylla and Penelope; female characters of the Odyssey in archaic and classical Greek art’, in Cohen 1995, 29-58 (with 60 illustrations in the following pages). Authoritative essays are now provided for individual characters in the Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (Zurich-Munich 1981- ).

73. For example, the long-standing debate over the presence of hoplite-tactics in the Iliad, on which see recently van Wees, H., ‘Kings in combat: battles and heroes in the Iliad ’, CQ 38 (1992), 1–24 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (pro) and Janko on 13.126-35 (con). See generally Kirk, G.S., ‘Objective dating criteria in Homer’, MH 17 (1960), 189–205 Google Scholar = Kirk 1964, 174-90.

74. 9. 404-5, with Morgan, C., Athletes and Oracles: The Transformation of Olympia and Delphi in the Eighth Century B.C. (Cambridge, 1990), 106ff Google Scholar. The arguments of Burkert, W., ‘Das hunderttorige Theben und die Datierung der Ilias’, WS n.s. 10 (1976), 5–21 Google Scholar, that the Iliad must postdate 715 or even belong in the seventh century, based on the reference to Egyptian Thebes in the same speech, are rejected by Janko 1992,14 n. 20, and by Graham in Cohen 1995, 5.

75. Janko 1982,195-6,200,228-32 puts it at the early extreme, but allows some margin for error. A provocative paper by M. L. West in Mus. Helv. 52 (1995) questions the validity of chronology based on statistics, and offers new arguments for dating the Iliad in the mid-600s.

76. Burkert 1987 puts it rather later, in the last quarter of the sixth century.

77. PI. Hipparchus 228b, Isoc. Paneg. 159, Lycurgus 1.102, Cic. de or. 3.137; Janko 1992,29 ff; Merkelbach, R., ‘Die Pisistratische Redaktion der homerischen Gedichte’, RhM 95 (1952), 23–47 Google Scholar -Untersuchungen zur Odyssee (2nd edn. Munich, 1969), 239-62; Davison, J. A., ‘Peisistratos and Homer’, TAPA 86 (1955), 1–21 Google Scholar; D. M. Lewis, CAH iv2, 292. For a different approach see G. Nagy, ‘An evolutionary model for the making of Homeric poetry: comparative perspectives’, in The Ages of Homer (see n. 4 above), 163-79; he sees the story of the Pisistratean recension as in effect a myth describing a gradual process by which the text became fixed.

78. Jensen 1980, esp. ch. 7.

79. Hes. fr. 357 M-W seems to anticipate the image, but applying it to the bard; ctr. Pind. Nem. 2.2. See Patzer, H., ‘Rhapsodos’, Hermes 80 (1952), 314-24Google Scholar; Sealey, R., ‘From Phemius to Ion’, REG 70 (1957), 17–46 Google Scholar; Herington 1985, 167-76; Burkert 1987.

80. For the emergence of interpretation of Homer by non-poets see the Derveni papyrus (ZPE 47, 1982, at end); Ar. Banqueters fr. 233 K-A; Prt. 80A29, 30; Plut. Alcib. 7.1. See Richardson 1975.

81. See esp. Hainsworth’s 1993 commentary, earlier bibl. on his p. 155, esp. Klingner, F., ‘Über die Dolonie’, Hermes 75 (1940), 337-68Google Scholar = Studien zur griechischen und römischen Literatur (Zürich, 1964), 7-39, Danek, W., Studien zur Dobnie ( WS Beiheft 12, Vienna 1988)Google Scholar.

82. Other cases are for the most part much shorter. In antiquity there were controversies about so-called Athenian interpolations (Arist. Rhet. 1375b30, Dieuchidas 485F6 = D. L. 1. 57; cf. Allen 1924, 241 ff.), but the Athenians make so small a showing in the Iliad that it is hard to suppose that much was added. Suspect passages on this score include 1. 265, 2. 553-5, xi. 631. On manuscript evidence for interpolation see Boiling, G. M., The External Evidence for Interpolation in Homer (Oxford, 1925)Google Scholar and Apthorp, M. J., The Manuscript Evidence for Interpolation in Homer (Heidelberg, 1980)Google Scholar: the problems are too complex to discuss here.

83. The expression derives from a famous line in Horace’s Ars Poetica, in which the Roman poet admits that literary perfection, however desirable, is not always attainable: ‘et idem/ indignor quan-doque bonus dormitat Homerus,/ verum operi longo fas est obrepere somnum’ (Ars 358-60: ‘I even feel aggrieved, when good Homer nods; but when a work is long, a drowsy mood is understandable’ ). Pope’s riposte to this tag should be taken seriously by critics: ‘Those oft are stratagems which error seem/ nor is it Homer nods, but we that dream’ (An Essay on Criticism, 179 f.).

84. Page 1959, 305.

85. On textual criticism in general see West, M. L., Textual Criticism and Editorial Technique (Stuttgart, 1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Reynolds, L.D. and Wilson, N. G., Scribes and Scholars (1968; 3rd edn., Oxford, 1991), ch. 6 Google Scholar; for more detail on the Homeric tradition see J. A. Davison in Wace-Stubbings 1962, 215-33; S. West 1988, 33-48. The ‘wild papyri’ are edited by West, S., The Ptolemaic papyri of Homer (Cologne, 1967)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for a brief account see Turner, E.G., Greekpapyri (1968,2nd edn. Oxford, 1980), 106–112 Google Scholar. Besides the variations in manuscript evidence, there is the supplementary testimony of ancient quotations: for a conspicuous case of a passage preserved only in one source, not represented in mss. or papyri, see 9. 458-61, quoted by Plutarch as excised by Aristarchus; these lines may well be authentic ( cf.West, S., ‘Crime prevention and ancient editors (Il. 9.458-61)’, LCM 7 (1982), 84–6 Google Scholar, Janko 1992,27-8; Hains-worth 1993, ad loc). On the Alexandrian scholars see Fraser, P. M., Ptolemaic Alexandria (Oxford, 1972), 447-79Google Scholar; Davison in Wace-Stubbings 1962,222-6; Pfeiffer 1968, part 2, esp. chh. 2 and 6; Janko 1992, 22-9 (with invaluable bibl. and lists of examples of their judgements).

86. Nagy 1992, esp. 30-1; Seaford 1994, 144-54, part of a complex argument many stages of which I cannot accept. Griffin 1995, 8 [marred by an unfortunate large-scale misprint] attempts a brief response to Seaford. See also Sourvinou-Inwood 1995, 94-103.

87. Burkert, W., Greek Religion (Oxford, 1985), 119-25Google Scholar; J. Gould in Hornblower (see n. 13 above), 91-106.

88. See Hornblower (see last n.) 6ff. for historiography; Radermacher, L., Artium Scriptores. Reste der voraristotelischen Rhetorik (Vienna, 1951), 1–10 Google Scholar for rhetoric. Satyrus, Life of Euripides fr. 39, col. vii, 23 ff Arrighetti, comments on the line of descent from Homer to New Comedy. Homer as Ocean: Quintil. 10.1.46; F. Williams’s commentary on Callimachus, Hymn to Apollo, pp. 98-9.

89. Solon F 29 West, Hes. Theog. 27-8; Thalmann 1984,147-9; Pratt, L. H., Lying and Poetry from Homer to Pindar (Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1993)Google Scholar.

90. Cf.Curtius, E.R., European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (Eng. tr.; London 1953), ch. 11 Google Scholar.

91. A. S. Pease on Cic. On the Nature of the Gods 1. 42.

92. Cf.Easterling, P.E., ‘The Tragic Homer’, BICS 31 (1984), 1–8 Google Scholar; Goldhill, S., Reading Greek Tragedy (Cambridge, 1986), esp. ch. 6 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

93. For mutual rivalry and criticism among poets see e.g. Simonides on Pittacus, PMG 542, and on Cleobulus, ibid. 581; also the stories of a contest between Homer and Hesiod. See further M. Griffith, ‘Contest and contradiction in early Greek Poetry’, in M. Griffith and D. Mastronarde (ed.), Cabinet of the Muses (New York, 1990), 185-207; R. G. A. Buxton, Imaginary Greece (Cambridge, 1994), 31.

94. Pfeiffer 1968 is the fundamental reference-work, supplemented by Richardson 1975, and esp. 1993, 25-49. See also Lamberton-Keaney 1992.

95. Hom. Probl: frr. 142-79 Rose. Poetics 25, with commentaries; Carroll, M., Aristotle’s Poetics Ch. XXV in the light of the Homeric Scholia (Baltimore, 1885)Google Scholar.

96. Poetics 25. 1460 b 13-21, tr. M. Hubbard (slightly modified). See further Halliwell, S., Aristotle’s Poetics (London, 1986), 10–17 Google Scholar and ch. 7.

97. For the Hellenistic critics whose views are quoted by the scholia see the works cited in n. 85 above; also Kirk 1985, 38-43; Meijering, R., Literary and Rhetorical Theories in Greek Scholia (Groningen, 1987)Google Scholar.

98. The monumental edition of most of the scholia to the Iliad is by H. Erbse (Berlin and N.Y., 1969-88), though for the mythological commentaries, and for the Odyssey, one must still go back to Dindorf’s edition. For guidance on their critical criteria and preoccupations Richardson 1980 is invaluable. Cf. Richardson 1993,35 ff; see also Heath, M., Unity in Greek Poetics (Oxford, 1989), ch. 8 Google Scholar. Griffin 1980 also makes use of the scholia, but tends to praise or damn them according to the extent that they confirm his views.

99. Richardson 1980, 283-7; Edwards 1987, ch. 15.

100. Finley 1954 (rev. 1978) and Redfield 1975 are particularly important works in this area; more recently, van Wees 1992; see also two long and fully-documented essays by Raaflaub, in Latacz 1991 and Hansen 1993.

101. Burkert, W., Greek Religion (Eng. tr. Oxford, 1985)Google Scholar is a rich store of insights ( cf.Kearns’, E. review, JHS 107, 1987, 215 CrossRefGoogle Scholar-18). See also Parker, R., Miasma: Pollution and Purification in Early Greek Religion (Oxford, 1983), 66ff Google Scholar., 130ff. etc.; Griffin 1980, chh. 5-6; new ch. in Redfield 1975 (revised edn.). See further pp. 44 ff. below. For a more general study of the problems of interpreting Greek religion from the outside, see Kearns, E., ‘Order, interaction, authority ...’, in The Greek World, ed. Powell, A. (London, 1995), 511-29Google Scholar.

102. Edwards 1987, chh. 11-14; Griffin 1980, ch. 1. Rather differently Lynn-George 1988, e.g. 252-72 on grave-mounds and monuments. On metaphor see M. Parry 1971, 365-75, 414-18; Moulton, C., ‘Homeric metaphor’, CPh 74 (1979), 279-93Google Scholar; Edwards 1991,48-53. For a bold new approach see Lateiner, D., Sardonic Smile: Nonverbal behavior in Homeric Epic (Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

103. Genette, G., Narrative Discourse (Eng. tr. London, 1980)Google Scholar, Bal, M., Narratology (Toronto, 1985)Google Scholar.

104. Pragmatic treatment in Griffin 1986; more theoretically grounded, de Jong 1987, 1991, and other papers; Richardson, S., The Homeric Narrator (Nashville, 1990)Google Scholar. See also Edwards 1991, intr. 1-10; Benedetto, V.di, Nel laboratorio di Omero (Turin, 1994) part 1 Google Scholar.