The songs of homer

THE SONGS OF HOMER BY G S KIRK, F.B.A Reader in Greek in the Universiry of Cambridge and Fellow of Triniry Hall C A MBRID GE AT T H E U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S 1962 To D L PAGE and M I FINLEY CONTENT S pages Maps Preface x-xi page xiii PART I THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF THE HOMERIC POEMS The rise of Mycenae The Linear B tablets and life in a late Mycenaean palace-state 23 From the Mycenaean decline to the time of Homer 40 PART 11 THE ORAL POET AND HIS METHODS Introductory, p 55; § I, Heroic Age and heroic poetry, p 56; § 2, The language of formulas in Homer, p 59; § 3, The oral tradition and the advent of writing, p 68 ; §4, The oral poet's use of established themes, p ; § 5, Originality and the formular method, p 80; § 6, The comparative study of the oral epic in Yugoslavia, p 83 ; § 7, The life-cycle of an oral tradition, p 95; § 8, Oral dictated texts, p 98 55 PART III THE GROWTH OF THE ORAL EPIC IN GREECE The evidence for Mycenaean epic 105 The poetical possibilities of the Dark Age 126 Dark Age elements and Aeolic elements 39 vu CONTENTS PART IV PLURALITY AND UNITY IN HOMER Subjects and styles The cultural and linguistic amalgam § I, The archaeological criterion, p 79 ; §2, The criterion of language, p 92 79 10 Structural anomalies in the Iliad 2II II Structural anomalies in the Odyssey 12 The overriding unity page 159 253 PART V THE DEVELOPMENT AND TRANSMISSION OF THE GREAT POEMS 13 The circumstances of Homeric composition §I, ' Homer' and his region, p ; §2, Audiences and occasions, p 274 ; § 3, The date of the poems, p 282 ; §4, The relationship of the Iliad and Odyssey, p 288 271 14 The crucial phases of transmission 301 15 316 Stages of development PART VI THE SONGS AND THEIR QUALITIES The Iliad 337 The Odyssey 355 16 18 Man, fate and action : some special qualities of the Homeric poems 372 Notes 387 Plates between pages 406 and 409 Index of Passages page 409 General Index 412 V1l1 MAP S AND PLATES The maps are printed on pp x and xi The plates are bound in as a section between pp 406 and 409 IX SOOMiles I 'Ir , � i • PREFA CE The Songs of Homer are the Iliad and Odyssey I have tried to develop a comprehensive and unified view of their nature, of their relation to the oral heroic poetry of the Dark Age and beyond, and of their creation as monumental poems by two great singers in the eighth century B.C No one who writes on Homer can either expect or deserve common assent ; yet at certain points I may hope at least to have clarified the issues, at others to have introduced a kind of salutary agnosticism The book is intended to interest not only classical scholars and students, but also amateurs of literature and oral poetry who may know no Greek These will find four or five patches of linguistic discussion which they will simply have to skip ; other­ wise all Greek passages are translated It is not only for their sake that notes and references outside the main text have been kept as few as possible Indeed at the present stage of Homeric studies, when the systematization of archaeology and the pro­ founder understanding of oral song have transformed the appearance of many long-established problems, much of the work of the past, valuable though it has often been, need not always be specifically mentioned I make no apology for the space devoted to the historical and poetical background of the poems The Homeric poetry is the culmination of a long tradition, and without knowing as much as possible about that tradition one can hardly begin to under­ stand (though one might still enjoy) the poetry itself Yet old attitudes die hard ; and there are many scholars who pay lip­ service to the study of oral poetry, but still think that they can carve up the whole of the poems among specific contributors Even so, not all of the old Analytical attitudes and techniques are utterly obsolete, nor all of the Unitarian Reinterpreted, they may have their value In part IV, for instance, I have deliberately concentrated on the internal qualities, in terms of coherence and incoherence, of the Iliad and Odyssey themselves, XlII P REF ACE and have temporarily withheld attention from the probabilities of an oral tradition In part VI, on the other hand, I have written about the poems as unities, as works of art, with questions of composition left largely in the background On the poems as literature some things need not be said, others cannot, and dis­ agreement there will certainly be ; but I would remind one type of reader that to regard all of Homer as precisely equal in literary virtue is obviously naive Whatever errors and imperfections remain in my book, many have certainly been prevented by those who read through all or part of it before publication There cannot, indeed, be many places better than Cambridge in which to write on Homer; it contains, for example, D L Page, M I Finley and J Chad­ wick, experts and friends who have given the most careful and ungrudging attention to my typescript, and the first two ofwhom encouraged me to write this book from the beginning W A Camps, too, read the proofs and eradicated further anomalies ; and so, as he has done before, did P H J Lloyd-Jones in Oxford Others to whom I owe special thanks are G L Huxley, Emily Vermeule and other friends at or around Harvard ; and, for their help over illustrations, R M Cook, N Coldstream, P Courbin, G Daux, V R d'A Desborough, P Devambez, M S Hood, E Kunze, A B Lord, T C Skeat, F H Stubbings, Gladys Weinberg and N M Verdelis E R Dodds, A Lesky and H Erbse are mentioned little or not at all in what follows, yet I like many others have been greatly helped by what they have written Finally that perennial problem, the spelling of Greek names : no single system is quite satisfactory, and the rule followed here is roughly that familiar names are given in their most familiar Latinized forms, unfamiliar ones in a more direct transliteration retaining k and os This explains some apparent inconsistencies of place-names in the maps G S K CAMBRIDGE April 1962 PART I THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF THE HOMERIC POE MS I EH PLATE a Late Helladic gold ring from Tiryns, made per­ haps between 1450 and 1350 B.O.: Athens, Nat Mus., no 6208 The ring, which depicts fantastic therio­ morphic daimons bringing offerings to a seated god­ dess, illustrates the profound difference between actual Achaean cult-practices and those described in Homer (p 35) The ring is part of the'Tiryns hoard' (Athen Mitteil 55, 1930, pp 119 ff.), evidently a tomb­ robber's hoard of mixed date which was buried and lost in the early Iron Age The circumstances are rather odd, but there is no good reason for suspecting the authenticity of this ring (unlike some others) Photograph by courtesy qf National Museum, Athens b Linear B tablet from Knossos: S0894 = Docs., no 278; Oxford, Ashmolean Mus., no 1910 I I The tablet lists different types and numbers of chariot­ wheel (p 33): note the five wheel-ideograms Line reads: ka-ki-jo WHEEL ZE [= �£vyo" 'pair'] I ka-kode-ta WHEEL ZE : 'of bronze, one pair of wheels; bronze bound, pairs of wheels' (EB is not to be confused with the ideogram but is the syllabic sign for ka.) Photograph by courtesy qf Ashmolean Museum, Oxford c Late Helladic ivory plaque from Delos: Delos mus., no B 7069 Shown slightly less than real size, it represents an Achaean (or Minoan?) warrior with figure-of"eight shield, boars'-tusk helmet and thrust- ing-spear The workmanship is perhaps Cypriot or Levantine, and the date might be as late as c 1250 B.O., but is probably somewhat earlier (pp Ill, 181) Photograph by courtesy qf Ecole fraTlfaise d'Athenes PLATE a Late c 1250 Helladic B.G.: goblet from Calymnos, Brit Mus., no A 100B This vase, which is probably of average nIB Peloponnesian manufacture, example of a is an common 'Mycenaean' or Achaean type The shape itself is elegant, though here the stem is heavy and the handles are a little crude The schematized naturalistic motif is somewhat per­ functory both in execution and in positioning See pp 13, 130 Photograph by courtesy if British Museum b Late Helladic Rhodes, c 1250 In B B.G.: tankard from Ialysos Brit Mus., no AB4B in Here is exemplified the coarser, less Minoanized, more baro­ nial aspect of the Achaean Heroic Age; the shape is practical but stolid, the decoration crude and auto­ matic (p 130) c Photograph by courtesy if British Museum Submycenaean cup from Argos, c 1100-1050 B.G.: Argos museum (Ecole franc:;:aise d'Athenes, photo no 27522) It is of moderate fabric and pleasing though perfunctory decoration, and is aesthetically superior to b at least (pp 45, 128-30) Much of the decorated Submycenaean pottery was rougher and less success­ ful, e.g pI 4b; though some from the Kerameikos cemetery at Athens was more elaborate Photograph by courtesy if P Courbin and Ecole fraTlfaise d'Athenes d Protogeometric cup from the Agora at Athens, c 1000-950 B.G.: Agora museum, no P 3953 An average, not a particularly fine, representative of a style whose aesthetic merits are sometimes exaggerated; but the fabric is consistently good and the decoration careful-note the compass-drawn circles See pp 45 f., 130-2 Photograph by courtesy if Agora Museum, Athens, and American School if Classical Studies PLATE a Fragmentary bronze helmet, with cheek-piece, from a Submycenaean grave at Tiryns: Nauplia museum, (Tiryns) 1342 This is an unusual but ex­ tremely fine helmet, presumably fitted originally round a felt or leather cap It is impossible to say from its shape and decoration whether or not it is a Late Helladic III survival; it might, too, have been imported from outside Greece In any event its pre­ sence in a burial in Submycenaean Tiryns, together with a bronze spearhead and shield-boss and an iron dagger, as well as the jar (4b) which dates the grave, suggests that conditions there in the generation or two following the collapse of the Achaean world were better than catastrophic (pp 45, 128, 130) Photograph by courtesy of N M Verdelis and Deutsches Archiiologisches Institut , Athens b Submycenaean stirrup-jar, c 1125-1050 B.C., which approximately dates the burial at Tiryns in which the helmet, 4a, was found: Nauplia museum, (Tiryns) 1380 See above, and compare pI 3c for another example of pottery from the Argolid in this decadent but not utterly destitute period Photograph by courtesy of N M Verdelis and Deutsches Archiiologisches Institut, Athens PLATE a Part of the figure-scene on a late-Geometric Attic jug, c 725 B.C : Louvre museum, no CA 2509, from the Lambros collection The photograph is a composite one, with very slight distortion at the centre The third figure from the left must be a herald, since what he holds is a staff and not a sword He is separating two combatants, one with a shield and the other without K Friis Johansen (see p 284) suggests that the left-hand combatant is Ajax, the right-hand one Hector, with reference to their duel in book VII of the Iliad or some other similar account They are being separated by Idaios (VII 274 ff.); Hector has lost his shield (270-2) and is preparing to offer his sword and belt in an exchange of gifts (303-5); Ajax is still fully armed The horizontal corpse presents a problem; the small figure on the extreme left is identified by Johansen as Eris In spite of difficulties the proposed identification is attractive, and at least the scene is a very specific one which seems to illustrate some pre­ sumably familiar heroic incident; it is unlikely to represent an experience of the vase's owner Photograph by courtesy of P Devambez and Musees du Louvre b Detail of the shoulder-decoration of a late-Geometric Attic jug, c 710-700 B.C.: Ny Carlsberg museum, Copenhagen, no 3153 It is hard to avoid concluding that the unusual scene of a man apparently strangling one of a series of birds refers to the story (not necessarily in poetical form) of Heracles and the Stymphalian birds (p 284) Photograph by courtesy of Ny Carlsberg museum, Copenhagen c Late-Geometric Attic jug, c 730 B.C., from the Agora at Athens: Agora museum, no P 4885 The curious double figure, for which there are other parallels in the art of this period, probably represents the Aktorione-Molione, Eurytos and Kteatos, who were legendary Siamese twins (cf XXIII 638-40) They are mentioned as past opponents of Nestor at XI 750-2, and that incident, whether derived from the Iliad or from some shorter poem, could be referred to here See p 284 Photograph by courtesy of Agora Museum, Athens, and American School of Classical Studies PLATE a Late-Geometric Attic jug, c 735-725 B.C., from the Dipylon cemetery at Athens: Nat Mus no (192) 2074 Incised on the shoulder is probably the earliest Greek alphabetic inscription so far known: the com­ plete hexameter line Fo, VVII 0PXEUTOV 7Tanov a'TaAo'Ta'Ta 7Ta',E, 'who now of all the dancers sports most grace­ fully', is followed by two or three more words, now partly obliterated, perhaps forming half a verse and probably meaning something like 'shall win this as a prize' (pp 69 f.) The inscription reads from right to left; as far as a'Ta (of a'TaAW'Ta'Ta) can be seen in the photograph Photograph by courtesy qf National Museum, Athens b Bronze helmet and cuirass from Argos, in the Argos museum (Ecole fran