Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad

This page intentionally left blank Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad From beginning to end of the Ili...

Author: Donna F. Wilson

75 downloads 1567 Views 1MB Size Report

This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site. Start by pressing the button below!
Report copyright / DMCA form

DOWNLOAD PDF

This page intentionally left blank

Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad From beginning to end of the Iliad, Agamemnon and Achilleus are locked in a high-stakes struggle for dominance in which they attempt to impose competing definitions of rightful leadership, using competing definitions of loss incurred and the nature of the compensation owed. A typology of scenes involving apoina or “ransom” and poine or “revenge” is the basis of Donna Wilson’s detailed anthropology of compensation in Homer, which she locates in the wider context of agonistic exchange. Wilson argues that a struggle over definitions is a central feature of elite competition for status in the zero-sum and fluid ranking system that is characteristic of Homeric society. This system can be used to explain why Achilleus refuses Agamemnon’s “compensation” in Book 9, as well as why and how the embassy tries to disguise it. Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad examines the traditional semantic, cultural, and poetic matrix of which compensation in Homer is an integral part. Donna F. Wilson is associate professor of classics at Brooklyn College and The Graduate Center, City University of New York.

Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the

Iliad DONNA F. WILSON Brooklyn College and The Graduate Center, City University of New York

          The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom    The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia Ruiz de Alarcón 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa http://www.cambridge.org © Donna F. Wilson 2004 First published in printed format 2002 ISBN 0-511-02894-6 eBook (Adobe Reader) ISBN 0-521-80660-7 hardback

Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments

page vii

introduction Compensation and Heroic Identity

1

chapter 1 Ransom and Revenge: Poetics and Politics of Compensation

13

chapter 2 Agamemnon and Chryses: Between King and Father

40

chapter 3 The Quarrel: Men Who Would Be King

54

chapter 4 The Embassy to Achilleus: In the Name of the Father

71

chapter 5 Achilleus and Priam: Between King and Father

109

chapter 6 Unlimited Poin¯e : Poetry as Practice

134

appendix 1 Catalog of Compensation Themes

147

appendix 2 Arrangement of Compensation Themes

179

Notes Abbreviations References Index of Homeric Passages General Index

183 215 217 229 233 v


This book emerged from a dissertation presented to the faculty of the University of Texas in 1997 under the title The Politics of Compensation in the Homeric Iliad. The dissertation itself grew out of a presentation in a graduate seminar on the Iliad, though my interest in the poetics and politics of compensation was sparked much earlier in a Jewish studies seminar on Oral Torah. It has been my good fortune to have at every stage of this project a wealth of colleagues, teachers, and friends who invested their time, energy, and expertise in my work. It is a pleasure to thank them. I am especially indebted to Erwin Cook for his guidance, critical insight, and unflagging support, from the genesis of the project to its published form. To Andrew Riggsby, Thomas K. Hubbard, Barbara Goff, J. Andrew Dearman, and Michael Gagarin I owe special thanks for reading and commenting on early versions of one or all of the chapters. Additionally, the first two chapters and the catalog benefited greatly from Raymond Westbrook’s careful critique from the perspective of ancient Near Eastern law. Gregory Nagy read the entire manuscript and offered detailed and invaluable suggestions for revision, as did Walter Donlan, who also made available to me offprints of his own work. I owe many thanks to my colleagues Edward Harris, J. Roger Dunkle, Hardy Hansen, and Christopher Barnes for comments on the Introduction and first chapter and for many insightful conversations. I am also grateful for the generous and helpful suggestions made by the anonymous readers for Cambridge University Press. A portion of chapter 4 was presented orally for a Baylor University Colloquium in Classics in 1996 and later published as “Symbolic Violence in Iliad 9” in Classical World 93.2:132–47. Parts of chapters 1 and 4 were also presented at annual meetings of the American Philological Association in vii

viii


1996 and 1998, at meetings of the Classical Association of the Mid-West and South and the Classical Association of the Atlantic States in 1996 and 1997, and for the Columbia Seminar in Classical Civilization in 1999. I profited immensely from the audience’s questions and spirited discussion on each of these occasions. The students in my honors colloquium on reciprocity eagerly read the Iliad with me, and aggressively read and critiqued various anthropologies of exchange as approaches to Homeric society. Their rigorous engagement of texts and ideas, political savvy, and multicultural perspectives contributed immensely to me personally and to this book. And finally, this book would not have the form it has without the skillful editorial contributions of Beatrice Rehl, Helen Wheeler, and Helen Greenberg of Cambridge University Press. The errors that remain despite my learned colleagues’ valiant efforts are entirely my own. All translations of the Iliad are based on that of Lattimore (C 1951 by the University of Chicago Press), but with adjustments, and are used by permission of the University of Chicago Press. All other translations are my own. Except where ambiguity might arise, references to the Iliad are by book and line number, without the name of the poem; Od. is used to cite the Odyssey. The Greek in the text and in the footnotes is translated with the exception of a few technical notes in appendix 1. I follow Lattimore’s spelling of Greek names and transliterate other Greek words analogously, if not entirely consistently (e.g., upsilon is usually transliterated as u but chi as kh). Finally, there are a few Greek words that figure prominently in my discussion and that admit of no single translation that adequately compasses their thematic usage in the Iliad. I gloss or explain the thematic significance of these terms the first time they appear in the text; I then transliterate without translating them. For easy reference, I include here a list of these terms with the barest of definitions: apoina bie¯ ¯ dora eris kleos (aphthiton) ¯ metis poine¯ polis (pl., poleis)

ransom force, violence gifts (pl.) strife (unfading) fame, glory cunning intelligence repayment for loss; reparation or revenge city (a form of Greek sociopolitical organization dating from the eighth century b.c.e.)


time¯ tisis philos (pl., philoi)

ix

honor, value repayment of harm for harm friend(s)

And now it remains only to acknowledge my own heroes: my children, Joel, Amanda, and Colin, whose patience and good humor with a mother who became an academic go beyond the call of duty; my mother, Berneda Wilson, who always believes in me; and my father, Thomas Wilson, whose memory is the wind beneath my wings. It is to them that this book is dedicated.

Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad

introduction

Compensation and Heroic Identity

If we accept this book [Iliad 9] as original, we must regard Achilles as really inexorable . . . Walter Leaf Book 9 is, in the final analysis, the diamond in the jewel studded crown of Homer. Wolfgang Schadewaldt

The embassy to Achilleus in Iliad Book 9 has probably sparked more commentary and lively debate than any other passage in the poem.1 The events themselves unfold straightforwardly enough. Nightfall at the end of Book 8 finds the Achaians hemmed in around their ships, desperate for a reprieve from Hektor’s onslaught, and the Trojans camped on the plain, hopeful of victory on the coming day. As Book 9 opens, Agamemnon is urging the dispirited Achaians to beat an inglorious retreat. At Nestor’s prompting, he determines instead to solicit Achilleus’ return by offering him goods, including Briseis, the girl whom the Greek commander had taken by force. Three emissaries – Odysseus, Phoinix, and Aias – convey the offer of goods and entreat the angry hero to reenter the fighting. Achilleus refuses. Upon returning to Agamemnon’s shelter, Odysseus declares the mission failed: “[Achilleus] refuses you and refuses your gifts” (9.679). And so the embassy and the Book conclude without advancing the course of the war significantly.2 Iliad Book 9 is widely regarded in contemporary Homeric scholarship as the interpretive key to the poem, the linchpin to its plot and tragic vision.3 But Book 9 has not always been held in such esteem. In fact, the 1

2


consensus that it is pivotal emerged out of a debate over whether it is even fully integrated into the poem and, if so, what it contributes.4 The history of the so-called Homeric question will be familiar to many readers, but it is worth revisiting briefly because it elucidates a thematic link between compensation and heroic identity. Moreover, it furnishes an account of how a prevailing modern conception of Achilleus’ heroic identity and, by extension, Homer’s peerless ingenuity evolved.5 Difficulty with Book 9 arises primarily from a seeming contradiction between the events of the embassy and Achilleus’ words the next day, in Books 11 and 16. There he claims he is still awaiting supplication, gifts, and the return of Briseis and, further, that he would have already returned to the fighting had Agamemnon treated him kindly (11.609–10; 16.84–86 and 16.69–73). The Alexandrian scholars, the earliest text critics of Homer, did not detect any inconsistency between these passages. At least they did not betray as much by marking the lines in question as spurious. The apparent contradiction has, however, attracted the attention of Analysts, scholars who attempt to isolate a putative ur-text of the Iliad from subsequent accretions. Walter Leaf, for example, declares Achilleus’ words in Book 11 “meaningless” in light of the embassy’s supplication; Gilbert Murray likewise judges them incongruous with Agamemnon’s offer of “princely atonement” in Book 9.6 Consequently, on the premise that the embassy conveys supplication and compensation, Analysts have maintained that Book 9 cannot be integrated satisfactorily into the Iliad.7 They therefore banish it from reconstructions of the ur-text, or Wrath poem. Since Book 9 has traditionally been a target of Analytic criticism, it has also become central to Unitarians, critics who maintain that the text is the unified creation of one poet. Unitarian scholars have now and again launched impassioned assaults against the effect of the Analytic method. John Scott epitomized their sentiments when he wrote, “There can be no Homeric scholarship, no literary appreciation under such [Analytic] leadership, for Homer ceases to be a poet and his work poetry.”8 Alternatively, Unitarians have conceded a discrepancy between Book 9 and Books 11 and 16, and have explained it as having occurred diachronically in the work of the same poet.9 Ironically, like their Analyst forebears, they use Homer’s presumed literacy to explain his errors. In this stratagem they are sometimes joined by oralists who use Homer’s orality to the same end,10 and by Neoanalytic scholars,11 who accept that Homer draws on so many and so varied sources that narrative inconsistency is unavoidable. More generally, scholars who contend for the artistic unity of the poem have concluded that the contradiction is only apparent, resulting from a change

Introduction

3

in the Achaians’ circumstances,12 diminution of Achilleus’ anger,13 or the embassy’s failure to meet Achilleus’ expectations.14 Defense of Book 9 and the integrity of the Homeric poems has emerged most influentially, however, as an argument from unity of narrative design. In his seminal work Homer and the Heroic Tradition, Cedric Whitman argues that the Iliad evinces a structural principle of concentricity known as ring-composition.15 He accordingly arranges narrative units to show balanced symmetries and antitheses in the poem. On this basis Whitman claims that Books 9 and 16 are not in conflict but are, rather, associated by ring-composition: Book 16 completes and reverses Book 9.16 The conviction that Book 9 is integral to a coherent Iliad has, however, presented critics with an interpretive crux: what does the embassy scene contribute? The poet must have Achilleus refuse the embassy’s offer or the poem would be truncated by a premature reconciliation. Insofar as scholarly tradition presumes that Agamemnon offers compensation, the enigma with which critics have had to contend is why Achilleus refuses it. Finding no material explanation for Achilleus’ behavior, Homer’s modern interpreters have by and large turned to subjective or moral explanations. Whitman, for example, reads the Iliad as a study in heroic psychology and the characters as embodying different character types: Achilleus reifies essential values and the human spirit and, accordingly, rejects material compensation; Agamemnon presents his opposite – psychology bound by material value.17 On this view, the Achilleus of Book 9 faces an ethical dilemma, and the poet is chiefly interested in the psychology of the hero’s wrath. The enigma is thus resolved with an appeal to the “peculiar lot and sensitivity” of Achilleus.18 As a result, the embassy scene’s contribution is, paradoxically, Achilleus’ refusal of the embassy’s offer. To be sure, some critics have suggested that Achilleus rejects Agamemnon’s compensation because it is flawed by the condition of subordination that he attaches, which could only inflame Achilleus’ ego.19 This approach, however, remains inherently psychological, and it leaves the relationship between the compensation and the attendant condition vague.20 The conclusion that an overwhelming majority of contemporary scholars have reached is that Achilleus’ refusal is unreasonable – in other words, incompatible with the social rules and values of Homeric society.21 Achilleus’ refusal of Agamemnon’s gifts has, moreover, been construed as a renunciation of material compensation for honor altogether. Further, his supposed rejection of material compensation has been perceived as an expression of his disillusionment with the materialist values of his society and with an established code of behavior often identified as the

4


heroic code. Accordingly, prevailing opinion either judges Achilleus culpable for failing to abide by the code22 or, more commonly, valorizes him as a champion of essential value.23 Either way, he is regarded as alienated from the beliefs and values of heroic society. Critics have even identified Achilleus’ refusal of Agamemnon’s gifts in Book 9 qua refusal of the heroic conception of honor as Homer’s great contribution to the Iliad: [T]he analytical method gives us insight into how Homer transformed the character of Achilles from a rather simple person, angry over the loss of Briseis, who sulks in his tent until his friend is killed, and is ultimately forced to rejoin the heroic society he was angry with, to a man who is driven to question, and eventually to reject, the values upon which that society is based.24

In sum, a dispute over compositional integrity has led many critics who argue for the narrative coherence of the Iliad to defend Book 9 as making a fundamental contribution to the thematic development of the poem. At the same time, identification of Agamemnon’s gifts as compensation has induced them by and large to interpret Achilleus’ refusal, and thus his heroic identity, in ethical and psychological terms. These convergent trends in Homeric studies have produced a vast body of scholarship that pronounces the embassy scene not just integral, but pivotal to our Iliad, in that it transforms an otherwise traditional hero into a nontraditional one, a traditional poet into a singular innovator who transcends poetic tradition, and a traditional poem into literature. Or as Jasper Griffin puts it, “The refusal of Achilles to yield is the central fact in the creation of the Iliad from the traditional plot of the hero’s withdrawal and triumphant return.”25 The foregoing survey of Homeric scholarship has offered a historical account of an approach to the Iliad that has been with us for a long time and has influenced academic and popular interpretation alike. Most of these views assume a common problem – “Achilleus rejects material compensation” – and adopt subjective approaches to resolve it. As a result, an “essential” conception of Achilleus’ heroic identity has been all but naturalized for modern readers. This raises the question of to what extent mainstream twentieth-century scholarship on Achilleus and a presumed crisis in his heroic identity imported a modern interest in psychology and romantic ideals of originality and, as a result, created a hero in our own image.26 The logical conclusion of this approach seems to be that we share a fundamental worldview with Achilleus and, by extension, with Homer: Achilleus comes to represent “us”; Agamemnon

Introduction

5

and the normative pressures of heroic society “them.” On this view, what “we” share with Homer and Achilleus is a hierarchical valuation of the essential over the material and innovation over tradition. One must wonder, however, whether Homer or his audience would subscribe to either of those hierarchies. Two objections come immediately to mind. The first is that the conventional claim that the epic poet sang the truth of a distant heroic past requires that he deny that he ever innovates.27 And this assertion is no mere conceit; it is fundamental to the poet’s claim of authenticity and validity in an oral and traditional society. Thus, oralist approaches that build on the pioneering work of Milman Parry and Albert Lord offer a different and, to my mind, more satisfactory account of matters in that they take into consideration what a poet working within the system thinks he is doing.28 Traditional poetry, of course, admits of change in language and content, but it does so, according to oralist interpretation, precisely because each performance entails a recomposition of the poet’s inherited material.29 Instead of positing a hierarchical opposition between innovation and tradition, oralists contend that “innovation takes place within the tradition.”30 And as a result “we can consider Homer a master poet without abandoning our belief that he works within a traditional performance medium.”31 A second objection is that, while there may be value in exploring the psychology of Homer’s characters, it is all but impossible to explore Homeric psychology apart from the sociocultural background of Homeric society.32 Accordingly, the critic cannot ascertain the nature of Achilleus’ wrath and refusal of the embassy’s offer and cannot infer the extent to which Homer may privilege the essential over the material without knowing the vocabulary, forms, and social meanings of compensation in Homer. As important, one must also know what a slight is and whether domination is an expected social goal. Arthur Adkins’ work on honor and value in Homeric society laid indispensable semantic and social groundwork for investigating these questions.33 Subsequent anthropological studies by Thomas Beidelman and Walter Donlan, among others, have shown that Homeric society comprises a fluid tim¯e (honor)-based system in which rank is under constant negotiation and in which elite warriors try to establish status in relation to one another through agonistic exchange.34 In such a fluid hierarchy, Agamemnon’s gifts may be understood as part of a strategy of domination: a “gift-attack.”35 By showing that Achilleus’ refusal is consistent with the status economies of heroic society, social-anthropological approaches have seriously undermined the

6


material/essential hierarchy as an explanation for Achilleus’ behavior. Oralist approaches have furthered understanding of these matters by pointing out profound connections between poetic and cultural themes in oral and traditional societies.36 This book attempts to advance the discussion of compensation and heroic identity in Homer along oralist and sociological lines. I take an interdisciplinary approach, commonly referred to as ‘cultural poetics’, that employs philology and analysis of oral poetics to distinguish traditional themes and formal patterns of compensation in Homer, narratology to expose the development of the theme in the Iliad, and anthropological models for analyzing the social meanings and politics of compensation in Homeric society. Further, this approach attempts to take account of poetic discourse and cultural history as reciprocal intertexts; that is, it takes performance of oral poetry seriously as one of several interested discourses competing to construct a social world.37 Accordingly, this study first takes up the definitions and social meanings of compensation in the Iliad. Here we must reckon with Greek, for there is no single word in the Homeric vocabulary for compensation. There are several, however, that regularly signify compensatory exchange or that may do so in certain contexts. And as important, they operate within a coherent and unified system; hence we are justified in using the rubric compensation. Take, for example, the terms used for Agamemnon’s offer in the embattled Book 9. Agamemnon calls the goods apoina (9.120), a word that, for the moment, shall remain untranslated because we have yet to establish its meaning. Odysseus refers to them as d¯ora (gifts, 9.261), as does Phoinix (9.515). Aias alludes to them, obliquely, as poin¯e (9.633 and 636), another word that shall remain untranslated for the reason just given. At no time, however, do the emissaries use Agamemnon’s term, apoina. Achilleus, for his part, says that he hates Agamemnon’s d¯ora (gifts, 9.378). To further complicate matters, Achilleus claims on the following afternoon that he is still awaiting supplication, appropriate treatment, the return of Briseis, and d¯ora (gifts, 16.86). That this sort of verbal precision and subtle cross-referencing are within the grasp of an orally composing poet and an aural audience has been well documented in previous oralist scholarship. Verbal imprecision at this critical juncture in the narrative is, moreover, highly unlikely, especially where it concerns compensation, a theme with which the poem begins and ends. If apoina, poin¯e, and d¯ora mean the same thing – if they are formulaic alternatives for the same essential meaning and are also interchangeable in the Homeric social economy – we may conclude that Agamemnon

Introduction

7

offers compensation for wrong done to Achilleus, however flawed it may be by reason of the condition he attaches or the obligation the gifts impose. On this view, the embassy presents Achilleus with a candid version of Agamemnon’s offer and urges it upon him as acceptable by the standards of their society. Accordingly, Achilleus’ behavior in Book 9 may be explained as rejecting Agamemnon’s offer of compensation against reason (as per the essentialist tradition); rejecting Agamemnon’s offer of compensation because it contains an implicit gift attack to which the embassy is oblivious; or rejecting Agamemnon’s offer of compensation because it contains an explicit gift attack in which the embassy is openly complicitous. But these explanations all prove unsatisfactory. The first fails to account for Achilleus’ apparent regression to materialism the next day. The second and the third fail to account for the embassy’s pointed omission of Agamemnon’s own assertion of authority over Achilleus and the omission of his explicit term apoina, which one might reasonably expect to hear somewhere in the embassy speeches. The third is further belied by the persuasive force Phoinix and Aias can bring to bear on Achilleus by appealing to friendship ( philot¯es), even after he exposes Agamemnon’s stratagem. If, on the other hand, apoina, poin¯e, and d¯ora do not mean the same thing in Homer and the heroic social economy, then the embassy is prevaricating. Or, put in social terms, the embassy attaches different and shifting definitions to Agamemnon’s goods with a view to manipulating their symbolic function in a high-stakes game. If such is the case, as this book aims to demonstrate, the problem in Book 9 is not why Achilleus refuses compensation, a term in any event too generic for the Homeric vocabulary, even if it can designate an underlying system. The problem is what Agamemnon, the embassy, and Achilleus mean by the words they use and what the stakes in this tournament of definitions are. Only when this problem is resolved will we have a basis from which to analyze Achilleus’ rejection of Agamemnon’s offer and the implications of that rejection for his heroic identity; for Achilleus is as much a player in the game of definitions as any of the other characters. Since internal characters – and indeed Iliadic tradition itself – compete to determine the meanings of compensation, the definitions and social meanings of compensation in the Iliad must be searched out first within the poem instead of being culled broadly from Archaic Greek poetry and society. Indeed, for the critic to impose composite terms and conventions on the Iliad would only implicate him or her in these contests. Moreover, although compensation as a social institution in Homeric society must

8


bear resemblance to a known system in Greek societies, the Iliad develops the theme to such an extent, and in such a way, that it does not simply reflect historical practice. For example, the Homeric topos of the suppliant exile has been recognized as a convenient narrative device for moving characters from one place to another;38 hence it may present a poetic distortion of laws and procedures concerning exile for homicide in Archaic Greece. Further, since the Iliad refers infrequently to bloodshed outside of battle, the theme of compensation does not overlap significantly with that of manslaughter.39 Accordingly, this study does not encompass the theme of the suppliant exile in the Iliad or compensation in Archaic Greek poetry and practice in general. In sum, the Iliad develops the theme of compensation programmatically enough that it may not be conflated with other poetic traditions or historical institutions and then interpreted through the lens of the composite. Where they seem truly apposite, however, narrative, poetic, and legal traditions from the ancient Mediterranean are marshaled as comparanda, and Archaic Greek poetic traditions and cultural history as intertexts. For these reasons, the approach here taken begins by analyzing traditional themes in the Iliad in which terms signifying compensation regularly appear.40 But definitions of key terms may not be readily found in the major episodes involving Achilleus where they are so hotly contested. Instead, Iliadic typologies are most firmly established in a series of discrete themes that depict unproblematic exchanges of compensation. A catalog of these scenes appears in appendix 1 and is cross-referenced in the text (numbers in brackets refer the reader to catalog entries). These discrete themes are distributed broadly throughout the Iliad and are key structuring devices in the poem. It is against the background of these self-contained scenes that Homer projects the narrative of loss and compensation involving Achilleus here called the ‘monumental compensation theme’. Chapter 1 of this book furnishes a detailed formal description of discrete compensation themes in the Iliad and analysis of how compensation functions in the social economy of Homeric society. Chapters 2 through 5 examine the monumental compensation theme as unfolding against that background. These two operations, representing synchronic and diachronic analysis from the standpoint of reception, enable the modern reader to map the synthetic experience of an oral/aural performance of the Iliad onto the text. The terms ‘synchronic’ and ‘diachronic’ are here used in two ways. Synchronic refers to the intra-and intertextual poetic systems as well as to the generalized sociocultural knowledge a Homeric audience would draw on during a real-time performance of the poem. Diachronic refers

Introduction

9

to the relation of a given performance of the Iliad to all other previous performances. The term diachronic is also used to denote the chronological cross-references an audience would make from one episode to the next during a single performance of the poem. In this book, I do not attempt to uncover a historical development of the compensation theme in (diachronic) Iliadic tradition, but instead explore how it is deployed at the textualization stage of the poem. A Homeric audience, intimately familiar with the epic repertoire and with other poetic traditions, would be able to make synchronic and diachronic comparisons, from the opening scene on, because the narrative is inherited and traditional. In fact, the traditional audience of an oral performance would have a store of poetic and practical knowledge that Richard Martin describes as “the mental equivalent of a CD-ROM player full of phrases and scenes.”41 As a result, they could intuitively make inferences about meaning and cultivate expectations of the narrative and its traditional themes, which the poet may fulfill or subvert. Comparing and contrasting Homeric compensation themes with their own real-life institutions, rituals, and practices would further enhance audience expectation and enjoyment of the performance. Modern readers, however, lack the traditional and cultural nexus to read Homeric epic both synchronically and diachronically, to make formal and social inferences, and to cultivate thematic expectations, all intuitively. The oralist method adopted here – analyzing the (diachronic) story of Achilleus’ wrath against a (synchronic) background of discrete themes – is thus an attempt to supply through close reading some of what escapes intuition. In chapter 1 it is shown that the discrete themes present compensation as a coherent system that is thematically and semantically unified. The thematic unity of the social system is in fact mirrored in the semantic unity of the words that most frequently signify it: apoina and poin¯e. The similarity between the two Greek words is no coincidence, since both derive from a single Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root, ∗ kw ey(H I ).42 The Homeric term apoina denotes ‘ransom’, and poin¯e ‘reparation’ and ‘revenge’ alike. The Homeric terms are here employed to avoid the conflation that inheres in the English term ‘ransom’, which can mean both redemption of a captive and the blood price paid by a homicide. The term ‘compensation’ is used to refer to the unified system. Apoina (ransom) and poin¯e (reparation or revenge) are not, however, simply conflated in Homeric usage. The Iliad tradition exploits their transparent etymological unity to present a unified theme, and the distinction between the two words to present two consistent and firmly demarcated

10


formal types. The difference in Homeric apoina and poin¯e is not merely semantic, for the two types will be seen to have significantly different symbolic functions in the status economy of Homeric society. Payments of apoina, for example, do not entail the same loss of status as payments of poin¯e. We may thus infer that when Agamemnon designates the goods he offers in Book 9 apoina, it is part of a rhetorical strategy for negotiating his and Achilleus’ relative status. Critics have, on the one hand, largely ignored the unified social and semantic network, treating apoina and poin¯e as separate objects of inquiry. At the same time, however, they have selectively failed to recognize the Homeric distinction between the two words, presuming that Agamemnon’s use of apoina in Book 9 is just another way of saying poin¯e.43 Chapters 2 through 5 reveal that each episode in the poem’s monumental compensation theme involves apoina (ransom). In fact, the principal conflict of the poem, between Agamemnon and Achilleus, centers on definitions and in Book 9 turns on the distinction between apoina and poin¯e. Compensation thus emerges as the locus of a struggle for dominance based on a strategy of competing definitions and aggressive arrogation of roles. Although Achilleus feels he is owed poin¯e for the seizure of Briseis, Agamemnon offers him apoina. Accordingly, Achilleus in Books 11 and 16 can legitimately discount the previous offer, since Agamemnon’s gifts are inevitably unacceptable in form and function. Further, the compensation theme is developed in the poem to present Agamemnon’s refusal of Chryses’ apoina as epitomizing a social dysfunction and as initiating a sequence of rejections of apoina, including Achilleus’ refusal of Agamemnon’s in Book 9 and Hektor’s in Book 22, with increasingly disastrous consequences. The exchange of apoina for Hektor’s body in Book 24 emerges as a real resolution to this social condition. Hence, Priam’s apoina play a more crucial role than is commonly supposed. Chapter 6 turns to the cultural framework in which the thematics of compensation in the Iliad operate. It should be seen that Homer explores Achilleus’ wrath not as an existential or ethical phenomenon that turns on his rejection of material compensation and the materialist values of heroic society, but as a reaction to perceived manipulation and abuse of a social system that is otherwise acceptable to him. As a result, the presumed hierarchy of essential over material and innovation over tradition erodes as an explanation for Achilleus’ behavior and for Homer’s poetry. On this view, the quarrel, its aftermath, and its ultimate resolution have less to do with heroic psychology than with a conflict between competing visions of the social world and less to do with Achilleus’ essential identity than

Introduction

11

with competing constructions of the hero’s thematic and cultural identity, both in the Iliad and by the Iliad through the very fact of its performance.44 The development of the monumental theme allows us to infer an alignment between compensation and the Greek cultural opposition of cunning intelligence and force, or m¯etis and bi¯e. 45 It is a cliché of Homeric interpretation that the Iliad is a poem of force. But, as we shall see, Achilleus is responsible in Book 1 for an act of m¯etis (cunning intelligence) that controls the plot of the poem until Patroklos’ death. His rejection of Agamemnon’s apoina in Book 9 nonetheless aligns him thematically with ambiguous bi¯e (force) that is gendered as feminine and associated with pursuit of extraordinary revenge, destruction of one’s own people, and inversion of cultural order. In Book 24 it is only another act of extreme self-restraint on his part, which the poem figures as m¯etis, that allows closure to occur. On this view, the ransom of Hektor’s corpse in the Iliad is, thematically, inversely related to the slaughter of the suitors in the Odyssey. The Iliad can thus be seen to celebrate Achilleus as a culture hero who ultimately mediates between m¯etis and bi¯e, in contrast to Agamemnon explicitly and to Odysseus implicitly. And the poet performing the Iliad bestows on its hero the poin¯e for his death that only epic song can give: kleos apthiton (unfading glory). This brings us to the issue of oral performance of traditional poetry as social practice and, hence, to the relation between Homeric society and Greek societies. Recent research has compiled compelling evidence that Homeric epic integrates the race of heroes, by definition creatures of a paradigmatic dimension in the past, into a society sufficiently coherent to refract – not, I emphasize, reflect – a real world.46 Even the inconsistencies Homeric society displays are not unlike systemic contradictions in real societies.47 But the historical realities most closely approximated in Homeric institutions and relations are the subject of ongoing and lively debate.48 For reasons I discuss subsequently, this study does not take up the search for a historical Homeric society. The reading of the Iliad offered here is, however, congruent with a growing body of scholarship that places the textualization stage of Homeric epic – an issue different from but related to that of a historical Homeric society – well into the seventh and sixth centuries b.c.e.49 It is also compatible with Gregory Nagy’s evolutionary model of textualization, which posits a fluid state in the late eighth century, a more formative and Panhellenic stage from the eighth to the sixth centuries, and a definitive stage in the sixth century.50 On this view, Homeric society is sufficiently coherent to be plausible and is, moreover, recognizable for the Homeric audience. It is not fictive

12


and freestanding, but it is also not a reflection of any single stage of Greek social formation. In fact, if the oral textualization model is correct or if the Homeric poems are Panhellenic texts, they cannot reflect a particular historical period or localized institutions and procedures (e.g., for selection of officials and communal decision making, written laws, or other constitutional features that developed in seventh and sixth-century poleis).51 Kurt Raaflaub accordingly describes Homeric society as Panhellenic in the (synchronic) sense that “it allow[s] broad recognition and identification” but is not, for that, “more fictitious or less historical.”52 I do not mean to say that Homeric society, even insofar as it is coherent and recognizable, corresponds to a social reality known to the poet and his audience, Panhellenic or otherwise. It is instead an interested ideological refraction, and therefore represents not real (historical) conditions of existence but the imaginary relation of a group to those conditions.53 Put another way, a performance of the Iliad represents an attempt to appropriate a heroic past and to reproduce a recognizable heroic social world that may be deployed in the competition to construct a Panhellenic social world and the Homeric audience as social subjects.54 And though the interests that Homeric epic asserts are those of an elite, the perspectives of elites are not necessarily monolithic; they may accommodate competing interests, especially in periods of conflict over social formation. But any conclusions to be drawn here are necessarily tentative and speculative. And so, to return to the topic of this book, we may say that the Iliad deploys the compensation theme in the construction of heroic identity and, by extension, of Greek social identity, through critical appropriation of Iliadic tradition. Inasmuch as traditional poetry is continually recomposed in performance to fit the audience, our Iliad brings to light some of the social concerns of poet and audience during the textualization stage of the poem. Indeed, the poem itself emerges as a performance medium for managing social tension through ritual reenactment of archetypal events and refraction of historical realities.

1 Ransom and Revenge Poetics and Politics of Compensation

If any harm follows, then you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe. Exodus 21.23–25

Compensation in the Iliad involves exchanges that may be subsumed under the principle of reciprocity, a mental model for interpreting social relations and movements of goods.1 Reciprocity has been defined in a narrow sense as prestation and more generally as “exchange conceptualized as the performance and requital of actions perceived as gratuitous,” whether effecting benefit or harm.2 Response to harm is typically cast as negative reciprocity, “where the emphasis is placed not on the return of benefits, but on the return of injuries.”3 On this view, the recipient of benefit or harm reciprocates by paying back benefit or harm, ideally in equal measure.4 But the Iliad complicates this mirror-image opposition of negative and positive reciprocity, for the person who is said to pay back harm is not the one who sustained it but the one who inflicted it in the first place. That the outcome – warrior B is killed for killing warrior A – may be the same by either conception of negative reciprocity matters less than that the exchange is consistently viewed in a particular way. Harm is viewed as taking away something that by rights belongs to another and compensation as a way or ways of getting it back. The ideology of compensation is thus resolution, not circulation, of debt. Hence, unlike gift exchange (xeni¯e ) and marriage (gamos), it does not of itself establish or maintain formalized relations between two parties. Moreover, there is no evidence in the discrete themes that accepting ransom or recompense alone incorporates outsiders 13

14


into a group. But compensation, like gift exchange and unlike exchange conceived of as purchase or sale, entails tim¯e, ‘honor’, and, therefore, does affect the relative status of the persons involved. The narrative of Lykaon and Achilleus illustrates the ideology of reciprocity that underlies the forms and functions, or the poetics and politics, of compensation in Homer (21.34–135 [24]). The story commences with Lykaon clambering exhausted and unarmed out of the Xanthos and into the arms of his nemesis, Achilleus. The circumstances are uncanny. This ill-starred son of Priam had once before been taken unawares by Achilleus, captured, and sold as a slave in Lemnos. From there a foreign friend (xeinos) had obtained his release in exchange for ransom. After making his way home and celebrating his good fortune, the young Trojan joined the battle, only to find himself at the mercy of Achilleus once again. Declaring himself a suppliant, he pleads his case, claiming implicitly that because they had eaten together when Achilleus captured him, their commensality makes rejecting his plea impossible. Lykaon reveals that he had been ransomed for three times what Achilleus had sold him for and further argues that he should not be held liable for Patroklos’ death. Achilleus presumes that the defeated warrior is offering ransom, which he summarily rejects. He kills Lykaon and flings him into the river, claiming that all Trojans will likewise pay back (tisete) the deaths of Patroklos and the Achaians whom they had killed. We may observe two kinds of loss in this story: the first consists in Lykaon’s loss of his status as a free person and his family’s loss of one of its members, and the second in Achaian loss of life. The loss incurred by Lykaon and his family is recovered with ransom, in this case through a foreign friend. The deaths of Patroklos and other Achaians are addressed by means of revenge: Achilleus kills Lykaon to make the Trojans pay through a corresponding loss of their members. The English terms ‘ransom’ and ‘revenge’ may nonetheless be misleading inasmuch as ransom is used here only in its Homeric sense – redemption of family members or possessions, and not for the blood price paid by a homicide. Revenge, as a type, is also to be understood in its Homeric sense – taking satisfaction for a loss, whether in the form of retaliation or reparation.5 Ransom and revenge correspond to the two types of compensation in the Iliad. Both types are comprehended in a thematically and semantically unified system that is expressed in a traditional theme. That both types were familiar also in Iron Age Greek societies may be reasonably inferred. Self-contained scenes involving attempts to give or take compensation, such as the story of Achilleus and Lykaon, are distributed broadly

Ransom and Revenge

15

throughout the Iliad and are key structuring devices in the poem. These discrete themes, which are cataloged in appendix 1, establish the poem’s formal and social conventions for compensation. Moreover, the poetics of compensation, or the collocation of formulaic and traditional elements, proves to be bound up with the politics, or social relations and power structures, of reciprocity in Homeric society. Thus, in the monumental theme, when a character manipulates the poetics of compensation, such as altering vocabulary or arrogating a thematic role, the internal audience may be seen to react to the manipulation as a political stratagem. Such subtleties of form and function would also not escape the Homeric audience, intimately familiar as they are with Homeric conventions (not to mention their own real-life ones). So, for example, the poem operates on the assumption that Achilleus, the embassy, and the external audience are all alert to the political meaning of Agamemnon’s eagerness to cast himself in the poetic role of apoina-bearing father.6 As a result of the “thick descriptions” of Homeric society that recent anthropological studies have furnished, modern readers also are able to draw increasingly nuanced inferences about the meanings of exchange in Homer. It is my aim in this chapter to add a description of the forms and functions of compensation in the Iliad to our growing store of knowledge about Homeric society. I begin by analyzing the formal system that comprises the compensation theme, together with its repeated terms and narrative details. Finally, I consider compensation as an aspect of the Homeric social economy. THE POETICS OF COMPENSATION IN THE ILIAD

Exchanges involving compensation are contained in traditional narrative units that recur in the Iliad. Oralist methodology for identifying repeated units, such as formula and theme, is familiar from scholarship that builds on the pioneering work of Milman Parry and Albert Lord.7 ‘Theme’ is here used to refer to traditional units of content, not only self-contained units such as those inventoried in appendix 1, but also larger narrative structures such as the monumental compensation theme involving Achilleus.8 ‘Compensation theme’ refers to the abstract structural form the theme takes and to each particular instantiation of it. Although compensation themes feature recurring words and phrases, repetition of formal elements is more important than verbal repetition in identifying and classifying them.9 The formal elements that make up the compensation theme in the Iliad may be readily found in the story of Achilleus and Lykaon: loss (a result of harm perceived as gratuitous), a potential exchange, and resolution.

16


The first element of a compensation theme is harm: one party takes something valuable away from another, creating a condition of loss for the injured party. Loss creates disequilibrium, or a new disequilibrium, in status between the parties involved; a response to the loss is thus at the same time a response to the status disequilibrium. Not all instances of harm produce a reciprocal exchange, but if the injured party or someone acting on his or her behalf attempts to recover the loss, it leads to a compensation theme. The second element in the theme is a potential exchange by which the loss may be recovered to the satisfaction of one or both parties. The exchange is qualified by direction, path, and sphere. These terms are current in anthropologies of exchange, but some explanation of their use here is needed.10 When loss is addressed by means of an exchange, compensation may travel in one of two directions in relation to the two parties. In the first type, the party sustaining loss, or his or her family or friends ( philoi), takes repayment or satisfaction for the loss from the party who inflicted it or, failing that, from his or her family or friends. The direction in which this type of compensation travels is regularly marked by the term poin¯e, denoting the repayment, and/or forms of verbs meaning to pay back or get oneself paid back, (apo)tinemen and (apo)tinusthai. Achilleus’ killing Lykaon to make the Trojans pay for Achaian lives is an example of this type. In this first type, the payment compensates the injured party for the loss and thus reverses the status disequilibrium the loss created. In the second type, however, compensation preserves the disequilibrium the harm created and at the same time effects recovery of the loss: the injured party gives material goods to the person who inflicted the loss in order to secure its return. This direction is regularly indicated by the terms apoina, denoting the goods, and a form of the verb meaning to release or gain the release of, (apo)luein. The terms apoina, denoting ransom, or poin¯e, denoting satisfaction in some form for harm, do not occur in every theme. Since, however, the two terms do regularly designate direction, the two patterns are here referred to as themes of the apoina and poin¯e types. The type of exchange that actually ensues when a character sustains harm he or she perceives as gratuitous depends, as we shall see, on several factors: the nature of the harm; the relative status of the parties involved; the resources each can marshal; the prior relationship between the two parties; whether they acknowledge the same conventions or institutions for resolving such disputes; and whether one or the other can effectively mobilize common sense, by which I mean what can be taken for granted in a given culture.11 Put another way, whether a situation calls for ransom

Ransom and Revenge

17

or for reparation or revenge, and who gets to decide the issue, may be at the same time matters of formal structural agreement and of ongoing and rhetorically charged negotiation within culturally recognized boundaries. Apostolos Athanassakis regards the system that sanctioned adjudication of these matters, such as we see on the shield of Achilleus (18.497–508 [18]), as older than unarbitrated competition between powerful individuals.12 He employs a diachronic model that attempts to chart a development in Greek thought along a telic axis. I favor a synchronic model, which allows for the possibility that the scene on the shield invites the audience to see adjudication and agonistic negotiation as coexisting and not entirely exclusive options.13 Competition to determine the direction compensation takes is most evident in several scenes in which apoina and poin¯e patterns are combined in a single narrative unit.14 In this formal variation, here called a ‘mixed-type’, the narrative usually begins with a defeat on the battlefield, thus generating expectation for a theme of the apoina type (ransom). But because the victor recalls a prior injury for which he attempts to take revenge, the theme is actually resolved as a poin¯e type. When, for example, Agamemnon overtakes Peisandros and Hippolochos on the battlefield, they offer him apoina, which their father, Antimachos, would give for their return if Agamemnon spares their lives (11.122–47 [23 ]). Agamemnon, however, reminds his victims that their father had conspired to murder Menelaos while he and Odysseus were on embassy. Instead of sparing their lives for a promise of apoina, he kills them to make them pay back their father’s outrage (l¯ob¯e ). In each of the mixed-type themes in the Iliad, an offer of apoina is interrupted by recollection of a prior loss, which leads to competing definitions of appropriate compensation; and in each, taking poin¯e for prior harm is privileged over taking apoina. The logic of the mixed-type theme is clear: apoina (ransom) and poin¯e (qua revenge) are perceived as exclusive options. Agamemnon can either accept apoina and spare Peisandros and Hippolochos or exact poin¯e and kill them, but not both. Only Achilleus exploits the possibility of taking both poin¯e and apoina or gifts (d¯ora), first in the embassy scene, which unfolds as an expanded mixed-type theme, and again when he accepts Priam’s apoina for Hektor’s corpse. Direction, in sum, maps the movement of exchange objects in relation to the two parties. Path, on the other hand, is used to compare the objects of exchange themselves; it deals with exchangeability. In compensation, as in gift exchange, exchangeability is determined in accordance not with quantitative equivalence between two objects but with qualitative taxonomies; the system is thus primarily symbolic as opposed to economic. The aspect of exchangeability is analyzed using a heuristic device called ‘spheres’,

18


meaning wholly or partially distinct categories of wealth.15 The spheres in which persons and objects belong are not objective and fixed structures; they exist processually and subjectively in a given society. Categories of wealth in such a system are socially constructed and reproduced; they are thus not natural, though they are usually naturalized. An exchange of entities that belong to the same sphere is conventionally referred to as ‘conveyance’, and that of entities belonging to different spheres as ‘conversion’.16 Conveyance is rarely problematized; but conversions – such as the exchange of goods for life that Achilleus rejects in Book 9 – are typically unstable, potentially politically charged, and as a result must be maintained by a framework of social rules.17 Wealth in Homeric society appears to be organized into four spheres: subsistence goods, prestige goods, persons, and cultural wealth. Subsistence wealth is not ordinarily employed in exchange. Prestige wealth is, and the means for acquiring it are confined to elite intercourse, such as gift exchange, distribution of honorific prizes, raiding, and purchase from foreign traders.18 The sphere of wealth in persons is figured relationally. An adult male who is not a slave to one of the parties in an exchange enjoys unequivocal status as a person. Lykaon, for example, would have been considered a person by his family, the foreign friend (xeinos) who ransomed him, and both of the armies gathered at Troy but as prestige wealth by the man who bought him in Lemnos. The position of women is more ambiguous: they are located in the sphere of persons when they are figured as belonging to a kinship and marriage group, but when viewed in relation to their captors they are located in the sphere of prestige goods (e.g., 6.428 [2]). In the Iliad, defining or redefining a woman in terms of familial relationships – as Agamemnon and Achilleus shall be seen to do in the quarrel – locates her in the sphere of persons and augments the compensation one may demand for her loss. Cultural wealth, which is not itself exchangeable,19 is any cultural competence, attribute, or office that derives value from scarcity and therefore potentially yields status for its owner.20 Might in battle, skill in performative speech, the attributes of a priest, and a scepter handed down from Zeus are examples of cultural wealth in Homeric society. None of the spheres just described encompasses tim¯e (usually translated as ‘honor’ or ‘value’), a primary form of wealth taken away and paid back in compensation themes in the Iliad. Tim¯e comprises a material element and an abstract, immaterial element, namely, honor or status.21 The immaterial aspect is partially coextensive with prestige goods but also derives from cultural capital that results in victory, whether in battle (even without

Ransom and Revenge

19

stripping the victim of his armor), in athletic competitions, or in agonistic speech. Anthropological approaches applied to the study of Homeric society have contributed much toward clarifying how the concrete and abstract elements of tim¯e cohere. Thomas Beidelman, for example, explains that the material and immaterial aspects of tim¯e do not exist in polar opposition but are also not woodenly equated; they are instead related in dynamic tension as part of a “traditional system of conflicting values.”22 Walter Donlan demonstrates that in a symbolic system of exchange, tim¯e as status is indistinguishable from its material signs.23 Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of symbolic capital provides a sophisticated conceptual model for mapping the relation between concrete and abstract forms of tim¯e. Symbolic capital is not a separate sphere but a process. It refers to the conversion of other forms of wealth, by a cultural strategy of misrecognition, into seemingly natural properties of one’s person for purposes of achieving or maintaining position (= honor, status, power).24 Misrecognition denotes an institutionally organized failure to recognize that the connection between material or cultural wealth and prestige is not natural at all, but arbitrary and socially reproduced. Misrecognition thus reproduces collective belief, or the naturalization of social order and practices that Bourdieu calls “common sense.”25 In sum, symbolic capital is strategic mobilization of collective belief that certain possessions or competencies automatically translate into status, honor, or power for their owner. So when Nestor says mÆte sÊ, Phle¤dh, ¶yelÉ §riz°menai basil∞Û éntib¤hn, §pe‹ oÎ poyÉ ımo¤hw ¶mmore tim∞w skhptoËxow basileÊw, ⁄ te ZeÁw kËdow ¶dvken

Nor, son of Peleus, think to match your strength with the king, since never equal with the rest is the portion of tim¯e of a scepter-bearing king, to whom Zeus gives glory (1.277–79)

he speaks from a perspective that there exists a natural, divinely legitimated relation between Agamemnon’s cultural wealth, specifically the scepter, and the privileged status he enjoys as commander in chief of the armies gathered at Troy. We may say therefore that Nestor misrecognizes the relation between Agamemnon’s scepter and his status and, moreover, attempts to mobilize collective misrecognition to resolve the quarrel. Absent common social strategies of misrecognition, the arbitrariness of materially or culturally based tim¯e is bound to be recognized and the duality broken down. In Bourdieu’s words:

20

Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad It is no accident that the vocabulary of the archaic economy is entirely made up of double-sided notions that are condemned to disintegrate in the very history of the economy, because, owing to their duality, the social relations that they designate represent unstable structures which inevitably split in two as soon as the social mechanisms sustaining them are weakened.26

On this view, if the Iliad shows Achilleus as recognizing the double-sided nature of tim¯e and thereby exposing the arbitrariness of the system that holds the duality together, the game is up. Although Homer allows the audience to see Achilleus contesting the common sense about Agamemnon’s political superiority, what he contests is the collective belief that legitimates Agamemnon’s cultural wealth as insuperable and the political system it represents as preemptive. But, as we shall see, Achilleus does not contest the material basis of tim¯e. In fact, his consistent strategy is to mobilize the internal audience’s collective belief in the natural relation between elite forms of wealth and status (the premise of the agonistic tim¯e-based system that organizes heroic society), as over against a relatively fixed system represented by Agamemnon’s scepter. Thus, he does not so much unmask the arbitrary relation between Agamemnon’s scepter and his status as he puts forward an alternative system. This is true even when Achilleus is not participating in the tim¯e-based system. Accordingly, one of the aims of this book is to demonstrate that it is not Homer, nor yet Achilleus, who breaks up the double-sided notion of tim¯e, but those audiences and readers for whom the social mechanisms to sustain the duality no longer exist. The final element in a compensation theme is resolution. For our purposes, resolution need not mean that the potential exchange is effected, only that the opportunity is acted upon. Lykaon’s death and his earlier ransom are thus equally a resolution of a theme. Several features that recur in compensation themes emerge as significant to the patterns: verbal repetitions, paths, supplication, roles in compensatory exchange, and patterns in successes and failures of the two types of compensation. The description that follows summarizes these details; for commentary on each scene, I refer the reader to the catalog in appendix 1.

Verbal Repetitions The most significant recurring vocabulary in compensation themes belongs to a single etymological network deriving from the PIE root ∗ w k ey(H I ), which according to Andrew Sihler means “to take notice of.”27 The word family includes apoina, poin¯e, tim¯e, tiemen (to honor), tisis

Ransom and Revenge

21

(repayment in harm), and atitos (unpaid), as well as the verbs (apo)tinemen and (apo)tinusthai, meaning to pay back or get oneself paid back.28 Because the word family is essential to the idea of compensation in Homer, and inasmuch as conventional translations such as ‘punish’ or ‘pay a penalty’ obscure the Homeric economy of tim¯e, Greek will be used for a small number of terms that recur throughout this study. A list of these terms together with a translation may be found in the Preface. A connection between the word family deriving from ∗ kwey(H I ) and payments of compensation may already be attested to in the Mycenaean period. Pylos tablet Ea 805 concerns land held by one o-pe-te-re-u; the land is held ‘on account of a-no-qa-si-ja’. John Killen makes a compelling case for rendering a-no-qa-si-ja as ‘anorkw hasiaw’, ‘manslaughter’ ( Ùn¤nhmi). He concludes that, although the contextual and linguistic evidence is ambiguous, qe-te-o (like qe-ja-me-no) may derive from ∗ kwei, and may refer to payment of some sort of fine or restitution. 32. Benveniste (1973) 340. 33. Benveniste (1973) 343 cites the appearance of apoteinuto on a fifth-century Cretan inscription in support of his claim that teinu- (from ∗ kw¯ei) is the root of tinusthai. Sihler (1995) 161 argues that the words are related etymologically. But even if Benveniste is right about etymology, the secondary semantic joining of the word families, which he allows, warrants an approach to compensation as a conceptual aggregate, however artificially it may seem to cohere to a modern reader. 34. Adkins (1960a). 35. This figure is known in both Hittite and neo-Assyrian as “the owner of the blood” (Ass. bel dami) and in the Middle Assyrian laws as the “owner of the life”; see paragraph 49 of the Edict of the Hittite King Telipinu (= Roth [1995 ] 237) and MAL B2 (= Roth [1995 ] 176); see also Roth (1987) 363–65 and Westbrook (1992) 57–58. 36. In Greek literature outside of the Iliad, the term apoina occurs relatively infrequently. A TLG search turns up about 160 uses of apoina plus a few more of related terms such as apoin¯an. Of these, fewer than seventy appear in literary texts (including anthologies and fragments), and of that number, twenty-eight (40 percent) are in the Iliad (none in the Odyssey). The remaining 90 plus uses of the total 160 are found in commentaries and lexica; of these, 75 (over 80 percent) appear in scholia on the Iliad, Apollonius’ Lexicon Homericum, and Eustathius’ Commentarii ad Homeri Iliadem. In sum, there is a significant concentration of extant uses of apoina in the Iliad, and it did not go unnoticed by ancient scholars. In literature outside of the Iliad, apoina can bear alike the Homeric meanings of ransom (Solon 24.9; Herodotus VI.79 [2x]; Euripides, Rh. 177 [apoinasthai]) and recompense (h. Ven. 210; Aeschylus, Pers. 808; A 1420 and 1670; Euripides Alc. 7). Herodotus at IX.120 employs both meanings: Actaÿctes says he will give apoina as payment to the god for the treasure he took from his temple and, additionally, as payment to the Athenians if they will spare his life. In h. Ven. 140, apoina corresponds to hedna. Apoina in Pindar’s odes denotes compensation not for harm but for the ordeal of athletic competition (O. VII 16; P. II 14; N. VII 16; I. III–IV 7; and I. VIII 4). In Classical Greek, the Homeric meaning of apoina is largely taken over by lutron (< luein) and related forms, none of which appear in Homer. According to Aelian,VH 13.14, the Lutra, Ransom(s), was one of several episodes of the Iliad that were recited discretely. Apollonius Sophist¯es defines apoina as a payment made for someone, like a purchase price (39.1). Finally, it is significant that, given the proclivity of Hellenistic scholars to deploy allusions to obscure Homeric terms in their own “tournament of

Notes to pages 22–25

37. 38. 39.

40. 41. 42. 43. 44.

45. 46.

47. 48.

1 89

definitions,” the only surviving use of apoina in the Alexandrians (Apollonius Rhodius, 2.967) showcases the Homeric usage – ransom. 2.229–31 [1 ]; 6.425 –28 [2]; 24.685 –88 [4]; 11.101–12 [5 ]; 10.374–457 [6]; 6.45 –65 [22]; 11.122–47 [23 ]; and 21.34–135, [24]. I follow the convention of underlining exact verbal repetition, but do not attempt to distinguish modifications and structural formulas with broken lines. The only other noun taking apereisios as an epithet in the Iliad is bride-price, hedna (16.178). Outside of the Iliad, apereisios occurs only twice in Homer and Hesiod, both times in the formula apereisia hedna, which occupies the same metrical location as apereisi’ apoina (Od. 19.529 and Hesiod Fr. (M-W) 198.10, ape[reisia he]dna). The form apeiresios appears elsewhere in the Iliad only at 20.258 as an epithet of earth (gaia), and elsewhere in Homer at Od. 9.118 of goats (aiges apeiresiai), Od. 11.621 of Herakl¯es’ misery (oizun apeiresi¯en), and Od. 19.174 of the peoples of Crete (apeiresioi anthr¯opoi). Cf. also Hesiod, Catalogue 22.7; Fr. (M-W) 240.3–4; and Fr. (M-W) 150.10. 2.229 [1 ]; 22.50 [3 ]; and 6.49[22]; 10.379 [6] and 11.133 [23 ]. 6.47 [22]; cf. 11.132 [23 ]; cf. 10.378 [6] and 22.50 [3 ]. 6.46 and 50 [22]; 10.378 and 381 [6]; and 11.131 and 135 [23 ]; cf. 22.49 [3 ]. In the discrete themes, only Zeus is said to give, didounai, instead of giving back or paying back, apodidounai or (apo)tinemen, a payment corresponding to poin¯e. Cf. analogous usage of active and middle voices of (apo)tinemen in the incomplete monumental poin¯e theme involving Helen: ‘cause the offender to pay back’ (tisasthai aleit¯en, 3.28); ‘pay back tim¯e ’ (apotinemen tim¯en, 3.459 and 286); ‘get paid back for the struggles and groaning over Helen’ (t¤sasyai dÉ ÑEl°nhw ırmÆmatã te, stonaxãw te, 2.356 and 590); ‘to cause Alexander to pay back’ (tisasthai Alexandron, 3.351 and 366). The exception is 21.412, where the object of ‘pay back’ (exapotinemen) is the representatives of the injured party, Hera’s Erinyes. (Apo)tinemen or atitos for payment of poin¯e ‘in harm’ (11.122–47 [23 ]; 13.410–16 [10]; 14.478–85 [14]; 15.113–18 [15 ]; 16.394–98 [16]; 17.34–50 [17]; 21.34– 135 [24]; 21.396 –414 [21 ]; and 24.200–16 [25 ]); (apo)didounai for payment of poin¯e in goods (5.265 –67 [9]; 18.497–508 [18]; outside of the discrete themes, see also apodounai in reference to giving back Helen and the goods (3.285); cf. eggualizein, 17.198–208 [20]). See Od. 22.46 –67, where Eurymachos and Odysseus use apodidounai to refer to poin¯e in goods and Odysseus uses apotinemen for payment of poin¯e in harm. For exceptions, see (apo)tinemen for payment of goods (3.459 and 286 [Exc.]); gignesthai (a verb meaning ‘to be’ or ‘become’), where the path is uncertain (13.656 –59 [12]); and forms of poin¯e without a significant recurring verb. Black (1968) 358: composition is “a sum of money paid, as satisfaction for a wrong or personal injury, to the person harmed, or to his family if he died, by the aggressor.” Benveniste (1973) 105 –12.

1 90

Notes to pages 25 –26

49. For ‘to get a price’, alphanein, see Il. 21.79 (the sale of Lykaon as a slave in Lemnos) and Od. 15.453, 17.250, and 20.383 (sale of captives as slaves); for ‘a price’, ¯onos, see Il. 21.41 and 23.746 (sale of Lykaon), Od. 14.297, 15.388– 429, 15.452 (sale of captive men and women as slaves), and Od. 15.445 and 463 (cargo and a golden necklace); and for ‘purchased’, ¯on¯etos, see Od. 14.202 (a slave). There is no indication that either the seller or the buyer enters into the transaction with a view to liberating the slave. 50. When apoina is given to gain the release of a family member from slavery, the seller may simply make a sale; the family, however, is not purchasing but redeeming a family member. 51. The sale is signified by ‘sold’ (eperrase), 21.40; ‘gave a price for’ (¯onon ed¯oke), 21.41; ‘sold’ (pepr¯emenos), 21.58 and (eperassas), 21.78; and ‘brought a price’ (¯elphon), 21.97; cf. 22.45. Lykaon’s release by a foreign friend (xeinos) is signified by ‘gained the release’ (elusato) 21.42; ‘gave much’ ( polla d’ ed¯oken), 21.42; ‘was released’ (lum¯en), 21.80. 52. See 22.45; 21.40; 21.58; 21.78–79. This pattern may, however, be an accident of the setting rather than a significant narrative detail of the theme of sale into slavery. 53. Bourdieu (1977) 15 refers to the distinction between symbolic and economic systems as a difference between “ritualized” and “non-ritualized” exchange. 54. So, for example, the narratorial comment that Zeus stole away the wits of Glaukos, who exchanged gold armor for bronze (6.232–36). By the rules of gift exchange, woodenly applied perhaps, Glaukos as the more generous giver would be the winner in the exchange. But in reality, gift exchange involves self-interest and calculation, and it admits of a variety of strategies (see Bourdieu [1977] 1–18). Thus Appadurai (1986) 6–16 and van Wees (1998) 15 –20 point out that gift and commodity exchange share a common spirit of interested calculation, even though many cultures perceive them as distinct; See also Buchan (1999), Traill (1989), and Donlan (1989). 55. Sons of Trojans (2.229–31 [1 ]); Ganymedes (5.265 –67 [8]); Adrestos (6.45 – 65 [22]); Dolon (10.374–457 [6]); Isos and Antiphos (11.101–12 [5 ]); Peisandros and Hippolochos (11.122–47 [23 ]); Harpalion (13.656 –59 [12]); Askalaphos (15.113–18 [15 ]); Lykaon (21.34–135 [24]); Lykaon and Polydoros (22.46 –54 [3 ]); and Hektor (24.200–16 [25 ]). 56. Isos and Antiphos (11.101–12 [5 ]); Peisandros and Hippolochos (11.122–47 [23 ]); Archelochos (14.478–85 [14]); Hyperenor (17.34–42 and 50 [17]); Lykaon and Polydoros (22.46 –54 [3 ]). 57. Priam (24.685 –88 [4]). 58. Andromach¯e’s mother (6.425 –28 [2]) is referred to in the theme as mother (m¯et¯er), though her relationship as daughter to the one who ransomed her can also be reasonably inferred. 59. There is little evidence that warriors defeated in battle would have been used or sold as slaves; they were either killed or held for ransom. Lykaon had been sold into slavery once, but he had been captured in his father’s garden and not on the battlefield. Later, when Priam cannot see Lykaon or Polydoros among


60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65.

66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75.

76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84.

1 91

the fleeing Trojans, he assumes that they either are being held for ransom or are dead, but not that they have been sold as slaves (22.46 –54 [3 ]). See Lykaon (21.34–135 [24]), Isos and Antiphos (11.101–12 [5 ]), and Priam himself (24.685 –88 [4]). Achilleus in Book 9 represents the seizure of Briseis as bride stealing and, hence, as justifying his demand for poin¯e; see chapter 4, Odysseus and Achilleus. Potentially in 18.497–508 [18]. 17.198 –208 [20]. 13.410–16 [10]; 13.445 –47 [11 ]; 14.469 –74 [13 ]; 14.478–85 [14]; 15.113–18 [15 ]; 16.394–98 [16]; 17.34–42 [17]; 21.26 –33 [19]; 21.34–135 [24]; 24.200–16 [25 ]; and, again, potentially in 18.497–508 [18]. A religious imperative for dealing with loss of life, arising from the Furies’ demand of blood for blood, does not actually materialize in the Iliad. Though the goddesses’ presence is felt in Homeric epic, it is primarily as upholders of parental curses (9.454 and 571; cf. Od. 2.135), oaths (19.259), and familial and physical order (15.204 and 19.418). See also Muellner (1996) 32 note 1. See Clay (1983) 108 –11 and Cook (1995) chapter 1. On the connection between Zeus and traditional poetry, see Nagy (1990b) 256 –57 and passim; see also Nagy (1979) 81–82 §25 note 2. Pedrick (1982) 128. 6.45 –65 [22]; 10.374–457 [6]; 11.122–47 [23 ]; though Lykaon supplicates, he does not offer apoina explicitly, 21.34–135 [24]. Most of the apoina scenes in which no supplication takes place occur outside the primary fabula and, as such, may tend to be epitomized. Contra Thornton (1984). See Sedgwick (1985) 21–22. This trend of identifying politically active females with disorder continues on in Greek tragedy; see Ormand (1999) 1–35. All but five of the discrete themes involving apoina mention the father explicitly as the one who gives or would give apoina to secure the return of a subordinate family member; in three of those five, that the father gave apoina can be reasonably inferred (6.425 –28 [2]; 11.102–12 [5 ]; and 21.34–135 [24] if Priam recompenses Eëtion for ransoming Lykaon). 5.265 –67 [8]; 15.113–18 [15 ]. 6.45 –65 [22]; 11.122–47 [23 ]; 14.478–85 [14]; 17.34–42 [17.] 18.497–508 [18], where the kinsman is not identified. 13.410–16 [10]; 13.445 –47 [11 ]; 14.469–74 [13 ]; 16.394–98 [16]; 21.26 –33 [19]; 21.34–135 [24]. 17.198–208 [20]; 21.396 –414 [21 ]. The exceptions are exceptional in other respects as well; see 11.696 –705 [9]; 21.396 –414 [21 ]. 6.425 –28 [2]; 11.101–12 [5 ]; 21.34–135 [24]. 24.685 –88 [4]. 2.229–31 [1 ].

1 92


85. The primary fabula is the series of events that take place during the time span covered by the narrative. The primary fabula of the Iliad extends from the arrival of Chryses in the Greek camp to the burial of Hektor; see de Jong (1987) 84. 86. Robbins (1990) 12–13 divides supplication scenes in the Iliad into those that occur on the battlefield and those that occur elsewhere. He concludes that rejection of ransom on the battlefield is Achilleus’ aberrant behavior but Agamemnon’s regular behavior. But as we have seen, ransom is not conflated with supplication; moreover, the Iliad affirms that accepting ransom was Agamemnon’s regular practice before the primary fabula. Cf. Pedrick (1982) 139–40. 87. 6.45 –65 [22]; 10.374–457 [6]; 11.122–47 [23 ]; cf. 21.34–135 [34]. 88. 22.46 –54 [3 ]; also, Thersites does not say that the Trojans whom he and other warriors captured and held for ransom were taken only in raids (2.229–31 [1 ]) 89. 2.229–31 [1 ], 6.425 –28 [2]), and 24.685 –88 [4]. 90. For similar observations, see also Seaford (1994) 25 –29, 65 –73 and Redfield (1994) 160–223. 91. 5.265 –67 [8]; 17.198–208 [20]; 18.497–508 [18]. 92. 6.45 –65 [22]; 11.122–47 [23 ]; 11.696 –705 [9]; 13.410–16 [10]; 13.445 –47 [11 ]; 13.656 –59 [12]; 14.469–74 [13 ]; 14.478 –85 [14]; 15.113–18 [15 ]; 16.394– 98 [16]; 17.34–50 [17]; 21.26 –33 [19]; 21.34–135 [24]; 21.396 –414 [21 ]; and 24.200–16 [25 ]. 93. 11.101–12 [5 ] and 21.34–135 [24]. 94. Cf. Redfield (1994) 183 on denying one’s enemy a funeral as the “perfected negation of community.” 95. Vernant (1989) 8, 38–43. 96. E. Cook (1995) 106. 97. Agamemnon’s refusal of Adrestos’ apoina (6.45 –65 [22]), Agamemnon’s refusal of Peisandros’ and Hippolochos’ apoina (11.122–47 [23 ]), and Achilleus’ refusal of Lykaon’s (alleged) offer of apoina (21.34–135 [24]). Achilleus’ refusal of Agamemnon’s offer in the embassy scene also conforms to this type. See chapter 4, Odysseus and Achilleus. 98. On this, see also Haubold (2000) 43, who proposes that Homer’s people, as founding people, are “left in close and threatening contact with non-being. Little is needed to bring about the decisive slip.” 99. By ‘king’ I do not mean a hereditary monarch. There were many kings (basil¯ees) among the heads of aristocratic households, one of whom emerged as prominent through ritualized conflict. 100. In the real worlds of Homer and the Homeric audience, apoina may have been exchanged among insiders, such as in cases of debt bondage. 101. See chapter 4, Odysseus and Achilleus. 102. See Introduction, n 46. 103. Generalization to a false family is already a social reality once the polis comes into being. The phratry, if it ever was a kinship group, is a factitious brotherhood


104. 105. 106.

107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116.

1 93

by the eighth century. See Snodgrass (1980) 24–25, Donlan (1985), following Roussel (1976) and Bourriott (1977). Crotty (1994) 26 –38; cf. Adkins (1971). See inter alios Beidelman (1989), Donlan (1981, 1982a, 1982b, 1993). Redfield (1994) 33. Martin (1989) and E. Cook (1995) extend the concept of agonistic exchange to include the poet. The Trojans – incorporating the city, territory, and citizens – constitute a polis. Raaflaub (1998a) 103 argues that the Achaians also comprise a polis, temporarily organized on the shore. The Achaian camp is at least a Panhellenic community organized at some level by generic political institutions. On this, see also Scully (1984) and Seaford (1994). 2.229–32 [1 ] affords a glimpse of Agamemnon’s relatively fixed position, but it is less apparent in the discrete than the monumental themes. This is the generally accepted view; see Taplin (1992) 48. For the perspective that Agamemnon is a hereditary monarch, see Collins (1988), van Wees (1992), and Lowenstam (1993). See Donlan (1982a) 153 and (1993) 160. Weiner (1992), especially 39 and 96. Liverani (1990) 22–26. See Donlan (1982a) 163. As we shall see, however, Achilleus also redistributes in Book 23; so redistribution is not confined to the fixed system. Donlan (1982a) 143; see also Seaford (1994) 21–22. Donlan (1982a). Donlan (1982a) 161. Donlan (1982a); see also Raaflaub (1998b) 181–88 .

Chapter 2 . Agamemnon and Chryses: Between King and Father 1. Adkins (1960a) 28–30 demonstrates that ‘to dishonor’ (atim¯an) in Homeric society is not merely descriptive of an attitude; it diminishes the other’s tim¯e and thereby moves him down on the social scale. Agamemnon therefore does not simply fail to acknowledge the priest’s tim¯e; he actually reduces it. 2. Word groups that recur in compensation themes are underlined in the Greek texts quoted in chapters 2–5, as they are in appendix 1. 3. Crotty (1994) 20–21. For a different view, see Clark (1998), especially 6 –7 and 17–19. Thornton (1984) 113 derives the following paradigmatic motif for the monumental theme from Book 1: damage is done; supplication is made, with the object of having the damage repaired; the supplication is angrily rejected; the suppliant prays to his god to hurt the man who rejects him; the god damages the man supplicated in vain; the man is forced to fulfill the suppliant’s plea; the suppliant prays for the safety of his former enemy. I agree with Thornton that the Chryses theme is a significant narrative pattern, but disagree with the conflation of apoina and poin¯e in her model. 4. Flaig (1993 and 1994).

1 94 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

29. 30. 31.

Notes to pages 43–54 Pedrick (1982) 129; contra Gould (1973) 88. Crotty (1994) 33–34 , n. 17. E. Cook (1995) 49–92 and (1999). 2.229–31 [1 ]. See also Taplin (1992) 53 and Redfield (1994) 95. To some extent this possibility is realized: Thersites blames Agamemnon for his abuse of the troops (2.225 –40); see also Agamemnon’s (14.49–51) and Poseidon’s (13.105 –14) words to the effect that the Achaians resent Agamemnon for alienating Achilleus. Mackenzie (1978) 7. Again, Mackenzie (1978) 7. See Rabel (1988 and 1990) and Robbins (1990). Rabel (1990). As may be seen in the discrete themes, family members, and brothers in particular, as well as other philoi, occupy a homologous position as advocates who secure poin¯e for warriors killed on the battlefield. See also Stanley (1993) 49–50. The scholia note that Aristarchus athetized a line as superfluous, but it is unclear whether line 95 or 96 is meant (Aristonicus [A]). The line can be defended on the basis that its epitome of the theme fills out the content in the same way that 1.12–32 fills out the content of ‘dishonored’ (¯etimasen) in 1.11. See also Dickson (1992) 333. Apollonius Sophist¯es defines anapoinon as alutros, without apoina (37.2). 1.78 –79 and 90–91; 1.76 –77 and 88 –89. See Martin (1989) 116. On this see Nagy (1979) 74–78, Blickman (1987) 7, Rabel (1990) 432, and Slatkin (1991) 64–65. Cf. Agamemnon’s similar strategy in response to Nestor’s speech in Book 9. Kirk (1985) 65. Agamemnon will be seen to use a similar strategy in returning Briseis in Book 9. On this, see also Muellner (1996) 98–99. Kakridis (1949) 21–24. See, for example, the gifts given to Odysseus by the Phaiakes (Od. 8.385 –95) from their storehouses (Od. 11.339–41), which they will replenish by collecting from the people (Od. 13.13–15); see also Donlan (1982b) and van Wees (1995). On the comparison of a chief to the father of a household, see Sahlins (1972) 205, 208 –9 and Donlan (1982a) 151, 172 and (1998) 56. Bourdieu (1991) 129. For discussion, see chapter 6.

Chapter 3. The Quarrel: Men Who Would Be King 1. The bibliography on the quarrel in Book 1, like that on the embassy, is extensive. For recent contributions and summaries of the discussion, see especially


2. 3. 4. 5.

6.

7. 8. 9.

10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

1 95

Beidelman (1989), Collins (1988), Donlan (1993), Lowenstam (1993), Mackenzie (1978 and 1981), Martin (1989), Muellner (1996), von Reden (1995), Seaford (1994), and van Wees (1992). Cypria 1.5 (Allen). See Nagy (1979) 213, Slatkin (1991), and Mayer (1996). Arthur (1983) and Mayer (1996). Erwin Cook pointed out to me the important connection between displacement of the female principle and of generational succession. See Mayer (1996). In fact, the struggle between Agamemnon and Achilleus, which plays out a struggle between fixed and fluid ranking systems, is enacted cosmically in a conflict between Zeus and Poseidon in 15.158 –219 (see Muellner [1996] 28 –31 and chapter 4). That the conflict between Zeus and Poseidon comes to nought attests to the success of the displacement of eris. See 1.277–79. The idea that Agamemnon is a traditional hereditary monarch and Achilleus a warrior who opposes him derives, at least in part, from Dumézil’s (1956) identification of an IE trope involving a power struggle between monarch and warrior figures. This view lives on in the work of Vian (1968), Collins (1988), van Wees (1992), and Lowenstam (1993). Taplin (1992) 48 observes that the assimilation of king (basileus) to monarch, and the assumption of Agamemnon to this sovereignty, go back at least to the era of the Hellenistic kings, the first age of professional Homeric scholarship. On this heroic irony, see Nagy (1979) 346. See, for example, ‘abuse with words’ (epeesin . . . oneidison, 1.211); ‘words of derision’ (atart¯etois epeesin, 1.223); ‘speak abusively’ (oneidea muth¯esasthai, 1.291); and ‘words of contention’ (antibiouisi epeesin, 1.304). For example; ‘greediest for gain’ (philoktean¯otate, 1.122); ‘with your mind forever on profit’ (kerdaleophron, 1.149); ‘dog-eyes’ (kun¯opa, 1.159); ‘most hateful’ (ekhthistos, 1.176); and ‘[You king] who feeds on your people’ (d¯emoboros, 1.231). In addition, ekpaglotat, ‘most terrifying’ (1.146), is intended as an insult (see Martin [1989] 115). On the opposition of praise and blame as a fundamental principle in IE tradition and Archaic Greek society, see Detienne (1973) 18 –27, Nagy (1979) 213–64, (1989) and (1990b) 392–95, Gentili (1988) 107–14, and Martin (1989) 72. Giddens (1979) 131–64. On ritual antagonism, see Chirassi Colombo (1977), Nagy (1979) 62, 142–50 and (1990a) 12, Rabel (1990), Cook (1995) 20, 110, and 128 –70, and Muellner (1996) 90, 102–3. See also Stanley (1993) 42; cf. van Wees (1992) 112 and 361 n. 108. On this, see Donlan (1982b) and van Wees (1995). Cf. Hesiod Op. 38 –39, 67, 263–64. Taplin (1992) 57 describes the agreement whereby a “summoner” persuades other kings (basil¯ees) to join forces with him by promising proper tim¯e as a “charis agreement.” Achilleus also turns to Zeus as his advocate; see the ironic echo of 1.175 at 9.608.

1 96


17. On merm¯erizein scenes, see Arend (1933) 106 –15 and, inter alios, Pucci (1987) 69 –75, Edwards (1992) 317–18, and Pelliccia (1995) 126 –35. 18. For this definition of hybris, see Fisher (1992) 1–6, 150–84. 19. For a different perspective, see Adkins (1982) 296. 20. Contra von Reden (1995) 19 –21. 21. See Cook (1995 and 1999). 22. Cf. Hesiod, Op 260–64. 23. On Achilleus’ appropriation of Chryses as a model of revenge through inactivity, see Rabel (1988) 474. 24. For a different perspective, see Schadewaldt (1966) 135, who interprets Achilleus’ change of mind as a sign of the mildness that forms one pole of the psychic polarity that identifies and drives him; see also Griffin (1995) 26. 25. On the sk¯eptron as symbol of divine authority, see most recently Palaima (1995). 26. Nagy (1979) 188. 27. Adkins (1982) 298. 28. For a similar view, see Taplin (1990) 64; for the view of Nestor’s construction of the hierarchy is the traditional vision of reality in Homeric society (and Achilleus’ is therefore to some extent against the traditional vision of reality), see, for example, Segal (1971a) 93, Mackenzie (1978) 9, and Collins (1988). 29. Also Donlan (1982a) 162–63. 30. See also Segal (1971 b) 101. 31. Lowenstam (1993) 61–62. 32. See Donlan (1982a). 33. ‘On account of a girl’ anticipates Book 9, where Achilleus insists that Briseis is more than a young woman (kour¯e), much to the embassy’s dismay; see especially 9.637–38. 34. On the wrath (m¯enis) theme, see Watkins (1977), Nagy (1979) 73–74, and Muellner (1996). 35. Cf. Rabel (1988) 475. 36. My argument here is indebted to Slatkin (1991). 37. Slatkin (1991) and Mayer (1996). 38. Pindar, I. 8.32–34: ‘Because it was fated for the goddess to bear a child, a king stronger than his father’ (e·neken peprvm°non ∑n, f°rteron pat°row | ênakta gÒnon teke›n | pont¤an yeÒn). 39. Slatkin (1991) 101. 40. Slatkin (1991) 102. 41. See also von Reden (1995) 22. 42. See Bourdieu (1991) 168–70, 214–16. 43. See Segal (1971a) 91. 44. See Rabel (1988) 475 –76. 45. See also Rabel (1997) 45 –58. 46. In the discrete themes, a god – in both cases Zeus – may be inclined to give poin¯e voluntarily (5.265 –67 [8] and 17.198–208 [20]). 47. Slatkin (1991) 69; see also Willcock (1964) 144.


1 97

48. Again, see Slatkin (1991). 49. See Schadewaldt (1966) 146. Chapter 4. The Embassy to Achilleus: In the Name of the Father 1. The scale episode raises the vexing question of Zeus’ relation to fate. Adkins (1960b) 17–25 regards the relation as ambiguous in the Iliad. He suggests that Il. 8.69 –73 illustrates a power over which Zeus has no control in the Iliad, the k¯eres or fates of death. Other scholars (for example, Grube [1952] 4) argue that fate is always subject to the will of Zeus; the scales are thus no more than the concrete symbol of the irrevocable decision of Zeus. For a different perspective, see Nagy (1979) 81–82 §25 n2 on the relationship between Zeus, fate, and the traditional plot of the Iliad. 2. Hainsworth (1993) 73 contends that, although Agamemnon has already realized that the quarrel with Achilleus is impeding his conquest of Troy (2.370– 80), it is now clear to him that it has put victory in question altogether. If this is the case, Agamemnon at least thinks only of retreat and not of reconciliation, apart from Nestor’s urging. 3. Griffin (1995) 77 argues from 9.17 that Agamemnon appears to be addressing the chiefs only and not the mass of men. The gathering is patently a public assembly, however, as the remove to a private council makes clear. 4. Wyatt (1982) 250. 5. On Agamemnon’s ‘destroying the people’, see Haubold (2000). 6. 9.18 –28 = 2.111–18 + 139–41. Hainsworth (1993) 61 contends that it is implausible that Agamemnon is represented as deliberately using the same words he had used in his earlier speech. It is reasonable to suppose, however, that the poem depicts him as striving for different ends with the same speech and failing on both occasions. 7. Heiden (1991). De Jong (1985) 190 suggests that Agamemnon’s failure in performance of speech is typical of his general lack of leadership; cf. Martin (1989) 116. 8. On this, see Sheppard (1922) 27 and Owen (1946) 21. 9. See also Nestor’s public acclamation of Agamemnon at 9.69; cf. Hesiod Fr. (M-W). 144.1–3: ‘Who was kingliest of mortal kings and ruled the most people who dwelt round about because he held the staff of Zeus, by which he was king over many’ (˘w basileÊtatow †g°neto ynht«n basilÆvn | ka‹ ple¤stvn ≥nasse periktiÒnvn ényr≈pvn | ZhnÚw ¶xvn sk∞ptron. t«i ka‹ pol°vn bas¤leuen). 10. On this, see Martin (1989) 20–21: “[E]pea in the system of Homeric diction represent the means of conducting social life; they participate in an economy of exchange.” 11. For instance, in Book 24.76, 119, 157, 176, and 196, d¯ora is used in conjunction with forms of the verb ‘to release’ (luein) and/or the term apoina to designate Priam’s gifts as apoina. 12. See Nagy (1979) 81–82 §25 n2.

1 98

Notes to pages 75 –78

13. Atas, a form of at¯e, is from the same word family as the verb aasam¯en, a form of aa¯o. 14. See, for example, Dodds (1951), Adkins (1960b), Lesky (1961), Dawe (1968), Stallmach (1968), Wyatt (1982), Lloyd-Jones (1983), and Stanley (1993) 111. 15. Lesky (1961); see also Adkins (1960b). 16. Hainsworth (1993) 73: “to ascribe an action to êth is exculpatory”; Griffin (1995) 89: at¯e is always “an attempt to understand or palliate past conduct.” 17. Adkins (1960b) 52. 18. Donlan (1993) 164. 19. Aps . . . aresai can, as Donlan (1993) 161 points out, refer to amends in an insult situation, but the use of apoina tells against this as Agamemnon’s intended meaning here. It is better understood as a reference to satisfying Achilleus with gifts and, as such, as a manipulation of what the term could mean in a poin¯e theme. That Agamemnon admits no culpability becomes abundantly clear in Book 19 (see chapter 5, Agamemnon’s Unlimited Apoina). 20. 9.120 is omitted in one papyrus (205), doubtless under the influence of Odysseus’ speech, but it is nowhere athetized by the Alexandrians. Bolling (1950) and all modern editors include it. 21. See, for example, the following translations and explanations of Agamemnon’s offer: Allen (1924) 191 “proper compensation,” Bowra (1930) “handsome amends,” Owen (1946) 43 “gifts of atonement,” Whitman (1958) “magnificent amends,” Reinhardt (1961) 221 “Genugtuung,” Reeve (1973) “abundant compensation,” Mackenzie (1978) 10 “recompense,” Lloyd-Jones (1983) 15 “enormous compensation,” Gagarin (1986) 40 “restitution for that which one party has taken from another,” Arieti (1986) 4 “full and magnificent indemnity,” Hainsworth (1993) 73 “recompense for the seizure of Briseis,” and Wilson (1996) 19 “unlimited reparation.” 22. Robbins (1990) 12. 23. Odysseus responds that even if the suitors paid back (apodoite, Od. 22.61) as much as they had and more, he would not hold back from slaughtering them until they paid back (apotisai, Od. 22.64) their transgression (huperbasi¯en, Od. 22.64) 24. That Odysseus refuses Eurymachos’ offer does not mean it is culturally unacceptable. Instead, Odysseus is here shown outdoing Iliadic warriors – and arguably Achilleus in particular – even at their most savage moments of Iliadic heroism. 25. Raymond Westbrook pointed out the possibility that the lost members of his household Agamemnon wants to get back with apoina are Achilleus and the Myrmidons. By this logic, Achilleus is to be ransomed from himself, which, Westbrook says, presents no difficulty in terms of ancient law since ancient legal systems frequently used the concept of a split legal personality, (e.g., in cuneiform documents when a person sells himself into slavery, the buyer literally buys the seller from himself ). 26. Cf. the terms of Achilleus’ offer of three- and four-fold gifts to Agamemnon when and if Troy is plundered (1.127–29).


1 99

27. Agamemnon’s largess is approached only by Priam’s (24.228 –35), but the symbolic function of Priam’s apoina is confirmed by his supplication. Agamemnon, pointedly, does not supplicate Achilleus. 28. See also Bourdieu (1977 and 1990), Redfield (1994) 16, Beidelman (1989), Donlan (1993) 160, and Lateiner (1995) 54, 76 –77, 282–84. For a different perspective, see van Wees (1992) 104. 29. Herein lies an important difference between the return ( palin) of Chryseis to her father accompanied by additional offerings for the god and Agamemnon’s attempt to give Briseis to Achilleus. Further, Agamemnon’s giving Briseis, untouched, may contain what Martin (1989) 115 –16 has characterized as “an intrusive jibe”: she is not such a desirable prize after all; see also Beidelman (1989) 238. 30. Agamemnon vehemently rejected a similar proposal from Achilleus during the quarrel (1.127–29) because he regarded it as an attempt to cast him in a dependent position. 31. Donlan (1993) 165 cites Od. 14.199–213 (Odysseus’ Cretan tale) and Il. 13.363– 82 (Othryoneus). Cf. 9.142. There is, in addition, ample evidence in Hittite documents that the marriage of a vassal to the suzerain’s daughter sealed the subordination of the vassal. The terms for the new relationship, ‘father’ and ‘son’, were virtually interchangeable with the terms ‘master’ and ‘slave’. For relevant Hittite documents, see Beckman (1996) 37, 45 –46, 121. 32. Griffin (1995) 21. 33. Nestor disregards Agamemnon’s assertion that the goods are apoina, referring to them instead as d¯ora. On Nestor’s cautious praise in this situation, see Martin (1989) 61. 34. For a slightly different perspective, see Nagy (1979) 50–51. 35. See Od. 8.75 –81 and Nagy’s (1979) 42–58 argument that the tradition of a quarrel between Achilleus and Odysseus is not a late pastiche, but an epic tradition that contrasted their heroic identities in terms of m¯etis and bi¯e. 36. Cf. Cook (1995), especially 9, and Nagy (1979) 51–52. 37. See Whitman’s (1958) 191–92 argument that Odysseus’ presentation of Agamemnon’s offer to Achilleus endangers Achilleus’ status in epic; see also Nagy (1996a) 142–43. 38. Bourdieu (1990) 127. 39. Achilleus’ strategy in the embassy scene is thus consonant with his strategy in the quarrel in Book 1; see chapter 3. For a different perspective on competing values in Homeric society, see Hammer (1997). 40. Nestor had appointed three envoys and two heralds, but as soon as the embassy departs, the narrator designates them with dual forms (9.182), as does Achilleus when he greets them (9.196 –98). The duals have given rise to a lengthy debate. For a recent summary of the problem of the duals and the primary approaches to resolving it, see Griffin (1995) 51–53; see also Motzkus (1964) 84–105, Segal (1968), Lohmann (1970) 227–31, Köhnken (1975), Thornton (1978), Gordesiani (1980), and Martin (1989) 235 –37. The evidence seems to me to

20 0

41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62.

63. 64. 65. 66.

Notes to pages 83–91 best support the position, argued by Nagy, that the duals refer to Aias and Phoinix and, further, that they are generated not by reflex of an earlier ‘text’, but by a traditional enmity between Odysseus and Achilleus; see Nagy (1979) 52–58 and (1996a) 138–44. On Odysseus as traditionally speaking out of turn, see Muellner (1976) 21 and Nagy (1996a) 142. See also Lohmann (1970) 233–34. It is irrelevant for my point whether by ‘enemy’ we mean ekhthros or polemios. See Martin (1989) 61 and especially 80: “As a general rule, characters in the Iliad do not remember anything simply for the pleasure of memory. Recall has an exterior goal.” Where Lattimore (1951) translates ‘recompense’. See also Beye (1993) 136 and Redfield (1994) 15. See also Tarkow (1982) 33 n 6 and Hainsworth (1993) 94. Taplin (1992) 70. Edwards (1987) 222. See also Martin’s (1989) 173 observation that Achilleus uses the conventions normally used for speaking about relations with outsiders when he talks about his own commander. On the abuse of xeni¯e as the origin of the Trojan War, see Herman (1987) 125 and Seaford (1994) 65. The only other place in Homer where the phrase alokhos thumar¯es occurs is in reference to Odysseus and Penelope at Od. 23.232. On the relation of the two bride-stealing patterns, see also Lord (1960) 190. On the linking of public and private causes in the Trojan War, see Mayer (1996) 13 and van Wees (1992) 174. For example, Taplin (1992) 214–15 and Stanley (1993) 112. Sale (1963) 94. Sale (1963) 100 n 5. See Beye (1993) 137. 6.45 –65 [22], mixed type; 10.374–557 [6]; and 11.122–47 [23 ], mixed type; the exception is a description of Hera’s chariot, 5.720–32. Martin (1989) 203. In addition, 9.379 anticipates Achilleus’ rejection of Hektor’s offer of apoina at 22.349: oÈdÉ e‡ ken dekãkiw te ka‹ efikosinÆritÉ êpoina, ‘not even if they bring here and set before me ten times and twenty times the apoina’. See, in addition to the sources mentioned later Schein (1980) 105 –10, in support of Parry’s argument, Scully (1984), Griffin (1986) 36 –57, Nimis (1986), Lynn-George (1988) 81–152, Martin (1989) 146 –230, and Stanley (1993) 115. A. Parry (1956) 6. Reeve (1973) 195. Reeve presumes that grievous injuries “cannot be paid back by the person who inflicted them.” Claus (1975) 16 –17. Martin (1989) 205, 206 –19.


20 1

67. Again, see Martin (1989) 196, 206 –30. 68. Odysseus subsequently takes up Eurymachos’ language, saying that even if the suitors paid back (apodoite, 22.61) as much as they had and more, he would not hold back from slaughtering them until they paid back (apotisai, Od. 22.64), that is, ‘in harm’, their transgression. In other words, Odysseus uses apodidounai to signify composition and apotinemen tisis. 69. See also Hesiod, Th. 165 –66, where Gaia says to her children: ‘we would get paid back the evil outrage of your father, for he first plotted shameful deeds,’ (patrÒw ke kakØn teisa¤meya l≈bhn | Ímet°rou. prÒterow går éeik°a mÆsato ¶rga). The similar lines in the Iliad may thus evoke for the Homeric audience the generational strife leading to succession in the traditional mythological background to the Iliad. See also a tantalizing fragment, Fr. 129.2 (M-W): ‘took payment for a great outrage’ (megãlhn [épete¤sa]to l≈bhn). 70. See chapter 1, Verbal Repetitions. 71. See 9.410–16. 72. Floyd (1980) contends that the concept of kleos aphthiton in the Vedic material has more to do with long life and possessions and thus with Achilleus’ first destiny. He infers that Achilleus uses it untraditionally when he applies it to fame that will survive him in the poetic tradition. For a response to Floyd, see Nagy (1981). Both Floyd and Nagy agree, however, that kleos aphthiton as Achilleus uses it means everlasting fame preserved in poetry and, further, that Achilleus chooses kleos over life and material security in Phthia. 73. See Lohmann’s (1970) 247 proposal that by establishing the operative relationship at the beginning of the speech, Phoinix puts his entire speech under the rubric of a father’s instruction. 74. By exemplum, I mean “an object set apart from among other objects like it, for the sake of serving as a model” and, here, a monitory model (Nagy [1996a] 146, following Ernout and Miellet [1959]). 75. Lohmann (1970) 245 –46, Rosner (1976) 314–15, and Stanley (1993) 116. 76. Hainsworth (1993) 122 points to II Samuel 16.21–23 and 20.3 to show that the effect would be to alienate the old man, not the concubine. But the usefulness of the parallel is severely undermined by the fact that Abishalom’s public entry into the royal harem constituted a claim to David’s throne. A better parallel to the autobiography, excepting Phoinix’ motivation, may be Genesis 35.22 and 49.4, where Reuben loses the right of primogeniture because he has sex with his father’s concubine. 77. Il. 9.458–61 reports Phoinix’ near-attempt on his father’s life, intercepted by some deity who cautions him against parricide. The lines are not found in the manuscript tradition or the scholia and are cited in full only in Plutarch, Mor. 26F (and in part in Mor. 72B and Cor. 32). The lines are surely designed to echo 1.188–205 and to make Phoinix’ anger explicit. Plutarch claims that Aristarchus excised the lines. Given the seriousness with which the Alexandrians took Platonic moral philosophy, it is possible, even likely, that the lines belong to a pre-Alexandrian textual tradition, though it is not clear how they disappeared from the manuscript tradition.

20 2


78. See Scodel (1982). 79. For a concise summary of interpretations of the resemblance between Phoinix’ autobiography and Achilleus’ situation, see Scodel (1982). 80. See, for example, Scodel (1982) 131: “both the Iliad and the Phoenix story involve a dispute over a concubine”; see also Stanley (1993) 115. 81. Scodel (1982) 133. 82. Scodel (1982) 133. 83. For a different perspective, see Lohmann (1970) 248–52. 84. For the argument that the embassy does not in fact offer supplication, see also Whitman (1958) 30, Schadewaldt (1966) 81, Eicholz (1953) 142, and Tsagarakis (1971) 262. 85. Cf. Nestor’s recommendation that Agamemnon send Achilleus d¯ora agana, ‘soothing gifts’ (9.113). 86. Yamagata (1991) 5, among others, infers that Phoinix’ representation “exactly matches the present situation.” 87. See, for example, Thornton (1984) 135 –36: “According to the plea of the goddesses of supplication to Zeus (I 512), Blind Madness ‘follows’ Achilleus, and it does so by attacking his ‘substitute’, his beloved friend Patroclus. . . . The death of Patroclus is the punishment (I 512) which Zeus inflicts upon Achilleus for rejecting the supplications of the Embassy and of Patroclus.” 88. See also Crotty (1994) 92: “Phoenix’s story . . . is motivated by his attempt to persuade Achilles to accept Agamemnon’s gifts. To see it as the key to all occurrences of the ceremony, I think, underestimates Phoenix’s rhetorical purpose and puts more weight on the parable than it can comfortably bear.” 89. See also Yamagata (1991) 8–15. 90. This is not to imply that Phoinix or Homer invent aspects of the myth for the occasion. 91. See, for example, Howald (1946), Heubeck (1943), Kakridis (1949) 11–42, Motzkus (1964) 37–46, Schadewaldt (1966) 139–42, Austin (1966), Willcock (1964), Lohmann (1970) 254–71, Braswell (1971), Rosner (1976), Nagy (1979) 103–6, and Bannert (1981). 92. Kakridis (1949) 19, 32 demonstrates that the mother, Althea, must come in the parade of suppliants because she is part of the topos. Her presence does not suggest that she offers recompense for damage. 93. See Blundell (1989). 94. Van Thiel’s (1996) reading, phonoio (

Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad

Iliad

Iliad

The Iliad

The Iliad

The Iliad

the iliad

The Iliad

The Iliad

Iliad

The Iliad

The Iliad

The Iliad

The Iliad

The Iliad

Character, Narrator, and Simile in the Iliad

History and the Homeric Iliad

Ransom

Ransom

Ransom

Ransom

Ransom

Ransom

Ransom

Ransom

Ransom

Ransom

Ransom

Ransom

Ransom

Ransom

Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad

Iliad

Iliad

The Iliad

The Iliad

The Iliad

the iliad

The Iliad

The Iliad

Iliad

The Iliad

The Iliad

The Iliad

The Iliad

The Iliad

Character, Narrator, and Simile in the Iliad

History and the Homeric Iliad

Ransom

Ransom

Ransom

Ransom

Ransom

Ransom

Ransom

Ransom

Ransom

Ransom

Ransom

Ransom

Ransom

Ransom

Recommend Documents