discussion of the motif of Nestor’s three-generation lifespan in both the Iliad and the Odyssey

analysis of Nestor as the only Homeric man to outlive Glaucus’ dictum (Il. VI.46ff.). Suggests that Nestor’s survival is a remnant of his possible former mythological status as a god

The comments I offered in Classical Inquiries 2016-2017 on Iliad Rhapsody 1 through Rhapsody 24, starting here with Rhapsody 1, were based mostly on details that derive from seven books that I indicate in the Bibliography by way of these abbreviations: BA, GMP, H24H, HC, HPC, HQ, HR, MoM, PasP, PH. Each one of these books has its own index locorum. My colleague Anita Nikkanen, an Associate Editor for the online project A Homer commentary in progress, tracked the sequences of Homeric verses as listed in the indices for six of these books and then summarized my comments on those verses. Following up on her meticulous work, I am in the process of converting her summaries into a form of commentary that is being incorporated into AHCIP. My comments on the Iliad as I presented them in Classical Inquiries 2016-2017 are merely samplings of the content that I hope to contribute to the overall commentary, to which a number of other colleagues are also contributing their own comments. That said, I now proceed to offer a sampling of comments on Rhapsody 1. At this point, my comments about this beginning of beginnings need no further introduction of their own.

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“The Rage of Achilles,” by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, 1757, [public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

This insult, kunos ommat’ ekhōn ‘having the looks of a dog’, directed at Agamemnon by Achilles, exemplifies the language of blame. As also at cross-ref. I.01.159, the translation ‘having the looks of a dog’ conveys the idea that vision is treated as a “two-way street.” When you look at Agamemnon and he looks back at you, he both looks like a dog and he looks back at you just as a dog would be looking back at you. The English word look conveys a comparably two-way attitude: I can say “I look at a disgraceful person” and I can also say “this person looks disgraceful to me.” To convey the two-way attitude in the original Greek here, the wording of the translation gives ‘having the looks of a dog’ instead of merely ‘having the eyes [ommata] of a dog’.

This insult directed at Agamemnon by Achilles exemplifies the language of blame. Another aspect of the blame here is the double meaning of dēmo- in the compound formation dēmoboros: it could refer either to dēmos ‘community, district’ or to dēmós ‘fat, grease’. Metaphorically, Agamemnon is a ‘devourer of the community’ because he is like a predatory beast that devours the fat of his prey. On metaphor, see the inventory of Words and Ideas; also MoM 0§01, 0§1 Extract 0-A.

The skēptron ‘scepter’ by which Achilles swears his Oath is here viewed as a thing of nature transformed into a thing of culture, by contrast with the scepter that is pictured in the Electra of Sophocles, 417-423.

Achilles swears by the skēptron ‘scepter’ that he holds and then throws down to the ground. This oath of Achilles is correlated with the plot or narrative arc of the Iliad, starting from a point in time when Achilles declares his mēnis ‘anger’ all the way to the point in time when he un-declares or unsays it.

The insulting of Achilles by Agamemnon takes on a special meaning in the Iliad because the Master Narrator recognizes Achilles as the ‘best of the Achaeans’.

The meaning of mēnis ‘anger’ in a situation where X is angry at Y does not preclude the idea that Y is also angry at X. There is an ongoing reciprocity of anger between Achilles as the supreme warrior of the Achaeans and Agamemnon as their supreme leader or over-king.

comparison of the representation of Minos and Zeus (here, regarding holding a skēptron), in the context of comparing Plato’s Hippias to Minos

meaning of themis, and disagreeing with Benveniste’s statement that themis concerns the genos and that dikē is inter-familial

commentary on Achilles’ oath, which he takes on the scepter wielded by Achaeans who have preserved the themistes from Zeus

discussion of themistes as coming from Zeus who provides them to the king along with the scepter

comparison of the representation of Minos and Zeus (here, regarding dispensing themistes), in the context of comparing Plato’s Hippias to Minos

mēnis and loss of solidarity in Achilles’ oath, the language of which betrays the cost of the loss

mēnis and loss of solidarity in Achilles’ oath contrasted with I.19.151-152 where Achilles likewise speaks of himself in the third person (end of mēnis and bond of philotēs)

scope of Achilles’ oath in the perspective of the mēnis theme

Agamemnon’s mēnis (in the context of discussing mēnis as incurred by violations of the value system based on group distribution and reciprocal exchange)

in the list of offenses that (threaten to) incur mēnis

the source Agamemnon’s and Achilles’ grievance against each other bound up with the mēnis theme, here explicitly attached to Agamemnon

commentary on language of blame

Nestor’s conciliatory formula with both Agamemnon and Achilles as superior to the rest of the Achaeans in counsel and fighting, in the context of commentary on the relative status of Agamemnon and Achilles

Nestor adding other criteria besides seniority, in the context of commentary on the relative status of Agamemnon and Achilles

In his first intervention in the poem, Nestor uses the device of recalling the past in order to legitimate his claim on authority in the present: "But obey. You are both younger than I. Already I have been with men better than you and they never slighted me" (1.259-74). The act of recalling here focuses precisely on Nestor's ability to command: "And they understood my counsels and obeyed the muthos" (1.273). The ability to command—mastery of the first muthos genre—is enhanced when the speaker has the ability to foreground his own directives by retrojecting the act of command through another rhetorical genre, recollection. This latter genre, apart from commands and flyting, is the only other one to be labeled muthos (Martin 1993:79-80).

The master of the genre of memory is Nestor. What the Iliad seems to leave as a gap—having been shown the persuasive power of Nestor, based on his ability to remember and remind, an audience might expect him to be the one capable of convincing Achilles to rejoin the battle—is resolved by the fact that Odysseus takes on the job, and fails; Nestor succeeds, but with the wrong audience, Patroklos. The central trope in both these speeches is explicitly an act of memory. Odysseus says of Peleus' speech: "Thus the old man instructed, but you forget" (9.259). The same line recurs in Nestor's words to Patroklos (11.790). Nor is the strategy of dramatic memory limited to these two speakers: Phoinix, who stands in for Nestor in the embassy scene, uses a long discourse from memory as the centerpiece of his attempt to induce Achilles to return (9.527) (Martin 1993:80-81).

As a general rule, characters in the Iliad do not remember anything simply for the pleasure of memory. Recall has an exterior goal. Memory bestows a mantle on its practitioners: in recalling the words of Kalkhas, for example, Odysseus exhibits a seerlike ability to describe and interpret what is not present (Martin 1993:81). The crucial difference between the memory performance of Odysseus and that of Nestor has to do with the self-presentation of the speaker. Odysseus foregrounds himself as performer, explicitly quoting another authority whom he can be seen to overcome in the contest of speaking. Nestor, on the other hand, presents himself not as a speaker but as a heroic performer of both words and deeds. His narrative of personal experience is convincing because it calls for emulation, even challenge. It becomes the mainspring of memory that powers the entire second half of the poem's action (Martin 1993:82).

References

Martin, R. P. 1993. The Language of Heroes: Speech and Performance in the Iliad. Ithaca.

Nestor of Pylos enters the Iliad just when it seems all speech must fail, and his very first effort at persuasion succeeds. In a system that judges style by results, Nestor holds a preeminent place; this characteristic marks all his speech in the poem. The speech he makes on arrival is highly inventive in attempting to appease three separate audiences: the two flyting heroes and the Achaeans in camp. Moreover, the syntax and discourse structure of the speech enact, at a poetic level, the notion of mutual support aimed at in Nestor's words. Binary structures abound, presenting a rhetorical model for two-sidedness (Martin 1993:101-2):

"A great sorrow has come to Akhaia / There might rejoice Priam / and Priam's children / Other Trojans might be glad / if they hear of these two fighting / Who excel at counsel / and at fighting / Both are younger than me / I once consorted with better than you..."

Agamemnon's comment, that Nestor has spoken kata moiran, can be taken literally: the command to be reconciled is rigorously "proportionate" at the poetic level, down to the rhythm and structure of each verse, as it is at the rhetorical level, according praise and blame equally to Agamemnon and Achilles. Nestor resembles the perfect praise-poet in the ideology of the Indo-European tradition precisely because he enacts this equal distribution. The epithet "having sweet words," hēduepēs, with which he is introduced in the Iliad (1.248), has a long heritage in this tradition, and furthermore refers to divine speech within Greek archaic poetry (Martin 1993:102).

The application of gnomic precedents and the employment of recollection present two more features characteristic of Nestor in this speech and in all his performances. The two strategies, proverbs and recollections, are related, in that both require the formal presentation of "memory," one on the level of narrative, the other that of the phrase. And memory is active throughout Nestor's rhetoric at yet another level, that of praise: he is continually "memorializing" his audience, in a manner akin to the poet's. We find that the totality of his performances marks Nestor as a unique orator, a speaker whose rhetoric rests on eulogy. It is exactly his role as praise-poet—therefore, as one who practices the craft of the epic itself—that gains Nestor the most explicitly favorable depiction of any speaker in the poem (Martin 1993:102-9).

For the broader analysis of Nestor as master of the memory genre and his use of commands, see the comment on Iliad 1.259-274.

References

Martin, R. P. 1993. The Language of Heroes: Speech and Performance in the Iliad. Ithaca.