in the context of discussing ērato and Arētē

comment on Apollo’s arrows indicating death by disease, in the context of discussing O.07.063-066

By saying ‘sing, goddess [theā]’, the Master Narrator is saying that the song that he will perform is something that he hears from the Muse. The addressing of the Muse as theā ‘goddess’ is an Aeolian signature, as it were, since the form theā is Aeolic, as opposed to the form (hē) theos, which is Ionic. See the anchor comment at I.01.463 on Aeolians as speakers of Aeolic, vs. Ionians as speakers of Ionic.

The mēnis of Achilles is a special kind of ‘anger’. The hero feels this anger after his tīmē ‘honor’ is damaged by the over-king Agamemnon. The Master Narrator says at verse 2 that this special anger caused algea ‘pains’ for the Achaeans. The name Akhaioi ‘Achaeans’ here at verse 2 refers to the heroes who were viewed by the ancient Greeks in a later age as their prototypes in an earlier age of heroes; two synonyms for ‘Achaeans’ in the Iliad are Danaoi ‘Danaans’ and Argeioi ‘Argives’. The word mēnis at verse 1 does not yet refer to the anger of persons other than Achilles in the Iliad. As the narration continues, however, it becomes clear that the god Apollo felt mēnis ‘anger’ at the Achaeans even before the hero Achilles felt his own mēnis.

On mēnis ‘anger’: see especially the comment on I.01.001–002

On eris ‘strife’: see the comment on I.01.008–012

On neikos ‘quarrel’: see the comment on I.02.221

The main theme of the narration is signaled right away. By theme I mean a basic unit of content or meaning in Homeric poetry: see the inventory of Words and Ideas. The signaling is accomplished by way of the first word of the very first verse of the Homeric Iliad. The word is mēnis ‘anger’, I.01.001, and it refers to the anger of Achilles. A definitive book on this word is Muellner 1996. The Master Narrator begins his narration by focusing on this anger: he invokes a Muse, as a goddess of inspiration whom he addresses here simply as theā ‘goddess’, and he calls on her to sing for him this anger, I.01.001. On the term Master Narrator, see the inventory of Words and Ideas; on the idea of the Muse(s) as the goddess(es) of poetic inspiration, see the general comment at I.02.484–487 and the special comments at I.02.484 and at I.02.761. The subject that the Master Narrator has chosen to narrate, the anger of Achilles, is the grammatical object of the verb aeidein ‘sing’. So, the narrative subject is the grammatical object. The Master Narrator is calling on the Muse to sing the anger, not just sing about the anger. The song is not only about the anger: it is the anger itself. The song captures the total reality of the anger. The Master Narrator proceeds to tell about this anger: it happened because of a quarrel, as signaled especially by the words erizein ‘have strife’ at I.01.006 and eris ‘strife’ at I.01.008. This quarrel in the Iliad is parallel to another quarrel that is narrated in a “micro-Iliad” that we find embedded in the Odyssey. This micro-Iliad is the First Song of Demodokos, O.08.072–083, and the quarrel there is signaled especially by the word neikos ‘quarrel’ at O.08.075. It has been debated whether the quarrel scene in this “micro-Iliad” was modeled on a quarrel-scene in the Cypria, which was part of the epic Cycle. On the terms epic and epic Cycle, see the Inventory of terms and names. But the quarrel scenes of the Iliad, the Cypria, and the “micro-Iliad” can be seen as stemming from epic traditions that were originally independent of each other. On the term epic, used here for the first time in these comments on the Homeric Iliad, see again the inventory of Words and Ideas.

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.

The reference to algea ‘pains’ here is relevant to the etymology of the name Akhil(l)eus—if this name can successfully be explained as a shortened by-form of Akhi-lāu̯os in the sense of ‘he who has the grief [akhos] of the people [lāu̯os]’. In comments to come, the word akhos ‘grief’, will be traced as a marker for a most pervasive theme in the Iliad*: how the anger of Achilles caused grief for his people.

The placement of this adjective oulomenē ‘disastrous’ as an epithet for mēnis ‘anger’ in the previous verse corresponds to the placement of the adjective lugros ‘disastrous’ at O.01.327 as an epithet for nostos ‘homecoming’ in the previous verse at O.01.326. See the comment on O.01.326–327.

de test comment

Example comment

In the Iliad, the word autos ‘self’ refers to the body as the basis of identity for heroes, while the word psūkhē ‘spirit’ refers to (A) the life-force of heroes when they are alive and (B) the disembodied conveyor of identity when they are dead. Here at the beginning of the Iliad, the dead body of the generic hero is identified with the ‘self’, autos. When a warrior dies in the Iliad, his psūkhē ‘spirit’ goes to the realm of Hādēs while his body, which is his ‘self’, is left behind and must be treated with proper ritual care. In the Iliad, the ritually correct treatment of a warrior’s dead body, which is called sōma, is cremation. See I.22.342–343 and the comment on I.22.335–354. The very idea of exposing a dead body to be devoured by dogs and birds is considered to be an abomination in the Iliad, as in the verses here at I.01.3–5, by contrast with the ritually correct practice of cremation. See the comment on I.22.335–354. There is also a cross-cultural contrast to be noted here: the practice of exposing a dead body to be eaten by dogs and birds is considered to be ritually correct in Iranian traditions that uphold Zoroastrian orthodoxy, while the very idea of cremating a dead body is for Zoroastrians an abomination. Both practices, exposition and cremation, are linked with ideas of eschatology, that is, of a permanent kind of afterlife. In Zoroastrian traditions, such an afterlife is endangered by cremation, while in Homeric traditions the danger comes from exposition. There will be more to say about ideas of afterlife in the anchor comment at I.23.071–076, where it will be argued that Hādēs in Homeric poetry is merely a transitional phase of afterlife for the psūkhē ‘spirit’ of a hero who died: in other words, Hādēs is not eschatological.

On boulē ‘wish, plan’ in the specific sense of ‘plan’: I.01.524–530, 1.10.043–052, I.10.415, I.11.627, I.12.235–236, I.15.056–077.

The Will of Zeus is presented here as the plot of the narration or narrative arc that we know as the Iliad. The Greek noun boulē, translated here as ‘Will’, is what the god ‘wishes’, as expressed by the verb boulesthai ‘wish’. For boulesthai ‘wish’, see the comment on I.11.078–079. But the noun boulē conveys also the idea of ‘planning’, not just ‘wishing’: when Zeus wishes to do something, he engages in planning what he wishes, so that the Will of Zeus is also the Plan of Zeus. See the comment on I.01.524–530 concerning the Plan of Zeus. In comments still to come, there will be further observations on the Will of Zeus with reference to other relevant words, including sēma ‘sign’, nóos ‘mind’, mūthos ‘wording’ (see also GMP 222).

On eris ‘strife’: I.01.008–012, I.01.177, I.01.177, I.03.100, I.05.891, I.11.005–016.

The Master Narrator calls on the Muse to explain the cause of the eris ‘strife’. See also the pointed use of the word eris ‘strife’ at Pindar Paean 6.50–53. It is now revealed that the god Apollo has a basic role in the plot of the Iliad, and that he too was angry at Agamemnon, even before Achilles became angry at this over-king. It is now also revealed that Apollo himself has agency in the outcome of the epic that we know as the Iliad. On the term epic, mentioned already in the comment at I.01.001-012, see the inventory of Words and Ideas. In the version of the epic as we have it, however, such an agency of Apollo is subsumed under the ultimate divine agency represented by the Will of Zeus. In earlier versions of the Iliad, on the other hand, the events of the epic could actually be attributed to the agency of Apollo. More on this subject in HPC 111–115.

Speakers who hold a skēptron ‘scepter’, speak with a kingly authority emanating from the over-king of the gods, Zeus.

The adverb aiei ‘forever’ is the old locative case of the noun aiōn ‘life-force, lifetime’. The use of the locative indicates that the ‘life-force’ keeps coming back to life by way of a ‘recircling of time’. So, aiei means literally ‘in a recircling of time’, signaling an eternal return, a perpetual starting-over.

These two verses are in the list of West’s (2001:40n33) list of plus-verses, in the context of analyzing plus-verses in Zenodotus’ (vs. Aristarchus’) text of Homer and Zenodotus’ deletion as well as athetesis of them [MRBTP: scholia]

Kalkhas, as ‘the best of the bird-watching seers’, belongs to a more restricted category than the category we see in the expression ‘the best of the Achaeans’.

The words spoken by Kalkhas the seer here at I.01.074–083 indicate three different kinds of anger: mēnis at I.01.075, kholos at I.01.081, and kotos at I.01.082. In the case of mēnis, it is a kind of “cosmic sanction”: I cite the definitive work of Muellner 1996, especially ch.1. As for kholos, it is a kind of explosive anger that is generally instantaneous, as opposed to kotos, which is an anger that is timed to go off only in the fullness of time, when the course of events in the narration has come to fulfillment, as expressed here at I.01.082 by way of the verb teleîn ‘come to fulfillment’. On kotos in particular and on kholos in general, see Walsh 2013, especially ch. 1, where he analyzes the wording of the seer here at I.01.074–083 as a kind of “folk definition” for all three of the different kinds of anger mentioned in this passage.

The narration of the Iliad, from the start, sets up a parallelism between the hero Achilles and the god Apollo.

This line features a syntactic formula of the type described by Milman Parry (Parry 1928:17-19 =  Parry 1971:14-16). It consists of the accusative of the noun mênis (μῆνιν, usually translated as 'rage, wrath, anger') at the beginning of the line followed by a subjective genitive name (of the person whom the mênis inhabits) with epithets that concludes the line, as in Iliad 1.75, 5.444, 16.711, 19.75 (in the last attestation, the grammatical pattern is the same except that the genitive is not subjective or objective); another multiform of this syntactic pattern occurs in Iliad 19.35, where a dative of the object of the anger (Agamemnon) occurs whereas a subjective genitive is found in the other examples. Either epithets for the name or a verb governing the accusative fill up the space between line-initial μῆνιν and the name + epithet combinations at the end of the line; the current line is the only example we have in which an imperative verb and a term of address, θεά, occur in that space, but then again, this is the prooimion of the poem, not the narrative proper. One expects variation in traditional dictional patterns when the context varies, and in this case the variation pertains exactly to the conventional content of this context. One can also say that the traditional diction points at or highlights a conventional narrative usage by placing it in an extra-narrative context.

Like every word in the epic song-generating system, mênin, the first word of the poem has expressive dimensions that were disclosed to its original audiences and performers through age-old, recurrent exposure to this poetry in performance. Those dimensions are invisible to us — unless we strive to rebuild them from the existing corpus of Homeric poetry. So this word  means potentially more and potentially different things than the English words “rage” or “anger” with which it is usually translated. A contextual analysis that this commentary will track over the course of the poem supports one point that we anticipate here. mēnis is a keyword of a 'theme' or relatively formalized, larger unit of traditional content (for a working definition of the term ‘theme’ in the study of traditional poetry, see Lord 2000: ch. 4). That theme recurs within a more or less consistent set of episodes and diction elsewhere in the Homeric corpus, so its occurrence evokes a set of narratives that have a discernible pattern or patterns. We will signal the details of the patterns and their recurring diction as they reach the reader’s eyes. However, we signal now that a most illuminating instance of the mênis theme, which would make good reading before reading or re-reading the beginning of the Iliad, occurs at Iliad 15.1-142.

References

Lord, A. 1960, 2nd ed. 2000. The Singer of Tales. Cambridge.

Parry, A., ed. 1971. The Making of Homeric Verse: The Collected Papers of Milman Parry. Oxford. update

The epithet oulomenē ‘disastrous’ here at I.01.002, which describes the narrative subject of the entire performed narration of the Iliad as designated by the driving word mēnis ‘anger’ at I.01.001, is now immediately followed at I.01.002 by a relative clause that outlines the plot of this narration. Similarly, the epithet lugros ‘disastrous’ at O.01.327, which describes the poetic subject of a performed narration as designated by the driving word nostos ‘homecoming, song of homecoming’ at O.01.326, is then immediately followed at O.01.327 by a relative clause that outlines the plot of that narration. See the comment on O.01.326–327.

feast for the birds - many birds update

Short version: The verb ἐτελείετο '[the plan/will of Zeus ] was beginning to be fulfilled' in line 6 is followed by the expression ἐξ οὗ δή 'just from the time when [they stood apart to fight]' in line 7, so it appears as though Διὸς βουλή 'the plan/will of Zeus' began when Agamemnon and Achilles 'stood apart' to fight. That is a legitimate interpretation based on the conventions of epic syntax and of a parallel prooimion in Odyssey 8.81-82 (which coordinates the πήματος ἀρχή 'beginning of suffering' with the 'plans/wishes of Zeus') , but it is also a convention of epic prooimia to specify the starting point of the poem, so it is reasonable to think that the audience could at the same time sense that ἐξ οὗ δή 'right from the time when' also goes back to the verb ἄειδε 'sing!' in line 1, specifying the starting point of the song as the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon, which line 8 then confirms.

Longer version: The verb ἐτελείετο 'was beginning to be fulfilled' in line 6 is the verb of the third and last paratactic clause after the relative clause ἥ... in line 2 of the standard prooimion to the Iliad. The first two finite verbs of the prooimion are aorists (ἔθηκε, προΐαψε) whereas ἐτελείετο and the verb of the previous clause to this one, τεῦχε, are imperfects. As Leonard Palmer 1963 pp.146-148 pointed out, the use of the imperfect after 'establishing' aorists in epic narrative is 'autopsic': it functions to stimulate visualizing/highlighting for the hearers, rather than being reflective of an essential contrast between narrative 'points' (aorist) and enduring narrative moments (imperfect). The essence of the aorist, one could say, is that it is a-horistos 'undefined', or in terms of Prague School linguistics, unmarked as to duration. By contrast, the imperfects do evoke visualization of the past events that they specify as ongoing processes.

The sentences after the relative clause are linked by the conjunction δέ, the simplest of connectives, and they may not be felt as part of the relative clause. Parataxis rather than sustained subordination is the rule in Homeric style, as Palmer also points out, p. 156, citing Iliad 5.247-8: Αἰνείας δ᾿ υἱὸς μὲν ἀμύμονος Ἀγχίσαο / εὔχεται ἐκγεγάμεν, μήτηρ δέ οἷ ἐστ᾿ Ἀφροδίτη 'Aineias claims that of blameless Anchises / he was born, and his mother is Aphrodite' (not 'and that his mother was...'). But this grammatical point raises a dilemma about the next line, which begins ἐξ οὗ δή 'right from when': if subordination is not normally sustained in Homeric syntax, then the time specification 'right from when' should refer to the verb of the previous clause, ἐτελείετο, so that the message is that the process of bringing to completion the Διὸς βουλή 'plan/will of Zeus' began when the two heroes started quarreling. The problem is that observable conventions of the prooimia to epic narratives like the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Homeric Hymns, require that the starting point of the narrative be specified in the prooimion. So one would think that ἐξ οὗ δή 'right from when' depends on the imperative in line 1, ἄειδε 'sing,' in that the poet is asking the muse to sing from the correct starting point. And in fact the starting point actually is (at least nominally) the quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles, as is made clear by line 8, even though the poem immediately has to backtrack in order to set it up as the starting point.

On the other hand, is it possible that ἐξ οὗ δή 'right from when' in the wording of this prooimion could also be specifying that the quarrel between the two of them is the point when the plan/will of Zeus (as against the μῆνις of Achilles) started on its path to fulfillment? To put it another way, is the plan of Zeus coterminous with the Iliad, or should we think of it as something that overlaps it, that began before and ended after it? How can we know? I would argue that the plan/will of Zeus is a cause that starts and completes with the song on the basis of the diction in the first song of Demodocus in Odyssey 8.81-82, where the πήματος ἀρχή 'the beginning (sic) of suffering' began to roll (κυλίνδετο, imperfect) Διὸς μεγάλου διὰ βουλάς 'because of the plans (plural) of great Zeus.' It (the suffering) was prophesied by Apollo at Delphi as starting when the ἄριστοι Ἀχαιῶν 'best (plural) of the Achaeans' δηριόωντο 'quarreled' (again, imperfect) — on this point, see G. Nagy here . So the solution to the syntactical dilemma about ἐξ οὗ δή 'right from when' is that it refers both to the verb ἐτελείετο 'began to be fulfilled' and to the imperative in line 1, ἄειδε 'sing!', because 1) the convention for the specification of the starting point requires it, 2) the conventions of epic paratactic style require it, and 3) the traditional specifics of the plan/plans of Zeus require it to refer to both. Beginning in 1976, G. Nagy has shown in detail how this song of Demodocus is a multiform of our Iliad, and on that basis we can conceive of its diction as stemming from the same tradition as our Iliad. I note that the prooimion to the Odyssey ends with a globally resumptive pronoun τῶν... 'of these things' whose antecedent is all of the contents of the prooimion, just as the narrative of Demodocus' song concludes with ταῦτ' ἄρ' ἀοιδὸς ἄειδε περικλυτός 'these things, you see, the very famous singer began to sing' (8.83). The Iliad prooimion has no such clarifying summative construction, though understanding ἐξ οὗ δή in the way we have means that both ἄειδε at the beginning and ἐτελείετο at the end of the prooimion are the points from which the song begins.

Incidentally, it is also clear just from our Iliad that there could be at least one other starting point for the tale of Achilles' wrath. See the comment on Iliad 1.366-369, which also may cast light on the starting point chosen here. There is also a conflicting point of view about the plan of Zeus that was enunciated in the Epic Cycle and that may or may not pertain to the boundaries of the epic tale of Achilles' anger: in that context, the 'plan of Zeus' was to unburden Earth of overpopulation by generating a war that would decimate it. Tying the diction of the Iliadic prooimion to that external definition of the Διὸς βουλή in the Cypria appears to me to conflict with the first two conventions specified above as well as the parallel passage in Odyssey 8.81-82.

References

L. R. Palmer, "The Language of Homer," in A. J. B. Wace and F.H. Stubbing, A Companion to Homer. New York, 1963.

G. Nagy, The Best of the Achaeans. Baltimore, 1976; rev. ed. 1999, pp. 333-337. See also G. Nagy, Classical Inquiries, April 10, 2015 (http://classical-inquiries.chs.harvard.edu/who-is-the-best-of-heroes-achilles-or-odysseus-and-which-is-the-best-of-epics-the-iliad-or-the-odyssey/) and G. Nagy, Homeric Responses. Austin, 2003, pp. 7-19.

The language (ētīmēsen arētēra) here specifies that Agamemnon slighted the tīmē of Chryses in his role as arētēr 'one who prays/curses'.

The notion of slighted tīmē evokes the system of reciprocal exchange between individuals and groups that is the basis of the social system in the epic for mortals and immortals. How this system works and the significance of offenses to it will be tracked in this commentary as part of the treatment of the mēnis theme in the poem, to which they are vitally related. As G. Nagy has shown in Best of the Achaeans, in Epic there is both a divine and a human sense of the word tïmē: in the divine world, tīmē means the 'sphere' in which a divinity operates. For example one part of the sphere of Apollo is both the causing and the healing of loimos 'plague'. By contrast, in the warrior domain, tīmē means an individual's social prestige within the group. This differentiation in meaning is because of the division of labor that obtains among the divinities and of the absence of the division of labor among the heroes — or, to put it another way, to the fact that all members of the warrior class in theory at least compete for excellence in the same set of spheres, which are the ones that are divided up into specializations among the gods. So the same term, timē, can mean general prestige for humans and specific prerogatives for gods. The gods do not conflict with one another except when the boundaries between their prerogatives are not respected, whereas the heroes conflict with each when their prestige as warriors is not respected.

On the other hand, the old man Chryses, unlike the warriors, is a human being with a sphere or prerogative that is specified along with the fact that he has been slighted. In other words, what Agamemnon has done is to slight his prerogative as a person who prays/curses, not his general prestige in the specialized domain of warriors.

The traditional epithet used here for the apoina 'payment of goods offered in exchange for someone' is the word apereisi' 'limitless', an adjective that occurs eleven times in Homeric epic at exactly this point in the line to qualify the neuter plural noun apoina. It also occurs twice, again in the same place in the line, in the form apereisia (without the last syllable elided) as the epithet of the noun eedna 'wedding gift' (Iliad 16.178, Odyssey 19.529; also Hesiod Frag. 198.10 [M-W], with the same line-placement as all other attestations). Like the word apoina, eedna also designates goods given as part of a transaction, but the transaction in question is always and only a wedding, and the goods go with a woman. The fact that apereisia 'limitless' is an otherwise unattested traditional epithet shared only between these two kinds of exchange means that there are analogies between them. The difference between the two is that in a wedding, the gift-goods go with the woman, the third person whose ownership is being transferred from her father's household to her husband's father's household, whereas in a 'payment' like the one being proposed to Agamemnon here, the goods are in exchange for the third person, male or female, whose ownership is being transferred between two others — in this particular case, from Agamemnon to her father. In effect, what Chryses is proposing to Agamemnon and Menelaus and all the Achaeans is the reverse of a wedding gift: the father seeks to retrieve his daughter from a kind of spouse (in rejecting the offer, Agamemnon soon says that he actually prefers her to his own wife, Iliad 1.111-115)  by the offer of gift-goods in exchange for her.

Now we can understand why the goods offered in payment in both cases are qualified as 'without end/limit'. Such exchanges resemble an extreme form of exchange analyzed in detail by Marcel Mauss (see the note on Iliad 1.13-15) called potlatch. Among the Amerindians of the Pacific Northwest, positively ruinous amounts of prestige goods are offered in exchanges between groups, and the exchanges even include the flagrant casting of precious valuables into the sea, the ultimate form of conspicuous consumption. The idea behind potlatch and the epithet apereisia for a payment in this instance or in the case of a wedding seem to me the same: in theory at least, they are offers of exchange that cannot be refused, and they are designed to display the ultimate wealth, prestige, and power of the party that offers them, though like other gifts they appear on the surface to be generous. Their extreme nature is also designed to be absolute in its effectiveness: the 'limitless' wedding gift cements the marriage because the husband's father's household will never give up such wealth (if the bride leaves the marriage, the wealth goes with her!), and Chryses' 'limitless' payment perfects the disjunction between the two parties because the wealth offered in exchange for the woman is beyond adequate as compensation for her. The key is, as Mauss showed, that gifts are both obligatory to give, obligatory to receive, and they generate obligations in return among those who receive them. The bigger the gifts the more stringent the obligations. So what happens if the gifts are 'infinite', as here? It would seem that the obligations are then absolute.

Chrysēs came to the ships to engage in an exchange, a behavior that the anthropologist/sociologist Marcel Mauss described as the basic form of social contract in archaic societies. Archaic exchange systems, he said, are "total social phenomena", in that they seamlessly interweave economic, sacral, and social or group interaction. That is exactly what we see here: the intention to exchange involves Chrysēs with the whole social group (l. 15, πάντας Ἀχαιούς, 'all Achaeans'), it requires of him the transfer of wealth —the verb φέρω 'carry, bear' (l. 13) designates the movement of prestige goods that cannot move by themselves—, and it is accompanied by the display of sacred symbols referred to the god Apollo, namely wreaths on a golden scepter (lines 14-15).

This attempt at exchange may look to us like the kind of economic transaction that only occurs between civilized people and criminals. It is customary to translate the word λυσόμενος in line 13 with the English word 'ransom', because for us, the exchange of human beings for goods is 'human trafficking,' which is by definition a heinous evil. Mauss also clarifies this problem, which is one of the most difficult aspects of an archaic exchange system for us to understand. In the world of Homeric epic, Mauss would say, humans are exchangeable for goods not because humans are commodified or objectified, but because goods are humanized, because they are as dear and as attached to human beings as human beings are to each other. Lacking a medium of exchange like coins or bills, which can dehumanize even prestige goods made by artists or skilled craftsmen, people in the Epic world not only identify themselves with what we call objects (as we sometimes do), they also do not categorically distinguish between people and things as property types. Instead, the regnant distinction is between immovable goods (those which cannot move themselves), like tripods or golden cups or woven goods, and movable ones (those which can move themselves), like cattle or human beings or slaves.

References

Mauss, Marcel. "Essai sur le don: forme et raison de l'change dans les sociétés archaïques, L'Année sociologique, nouvelle série, I, 1923-1924 (http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/mauss_marcel/socio_et_anthropo/2_essai_sur_le_don/essai_sur_le_don.pdf) translated into English by W. D. Halls as The Gift: The form and reason for exchange in archaic societies, New York & London, 1990).

Benveniste, Emile. "Don et échange dans le vocabulaire indo-européen," L'Année sociologique, 3^e série, t. II, 1951, and reprinted in his Problèmes de linguistique générale, Paris, 1966, pp. 315-326; English translation by Mary Elizabeth Meek as Problems in general linguistics, Coral Gables, 1971.

The noun apoina 'payment' occurs as the object of the verb dekhesthai 'receive, accept' in various forms six times in the Iliad (Iliad 1.20, 1.23, 1.111, 1.377, 6.46, 11.131) and once in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite (l. 140); the same is true of the noun poinē 'payment, blood money' (Iliad 9.633, 9.636, 17.207-208), which is derived from the same root as apoina. * Another verb is used once to denote not 'accepting' a poinē in the legal dispute described on Achilles' shield  at Iliad 18.501, namely helesthai 'take for oneself'. There is a demonstrably living analogy between poinē and apoina, as one can see from the context of Iliad 9.632-637, which draws an explicit parallel between the two, so the use of a different verb, helesthai, in the instance of a negated poinē, reinforces the normality of the syntactic formula is apoina + forms of dekhesthai* 'to accept'.

Payments designated as apoina in Homeric epic are customarily accepted. We can say that the traditional diction is equipped for that, and in archaic exchange systems as described by Mauss, there are symmetrical obligations: there is an obligation to accept an offer to exchange just as there is an obligation to reciprocate appropriately once one accepts an exchange. There are exceptions to those obligations, but they are fraught with danger and power for all concerned. One such exception is this one, the first scene in the Iliad, in which Agamemnon rejects the apoina of Chryses. For another example, we can point to Achilles fighting in the river Xanthos at the beginning of Iliad 21, when he comes upon the Trojan Lycaon, a son of Priam whom he had not long before captured and 'sold' — the difference between 'selling' and giving apoina for a person is not to be pressed (see peperēmenos 'having been sold' 21.58, 21.78 vs. 21.99 apoina for the same transaction as well as the extremely archaic expression ōnon edōke 'paid a price' at 21.41 for another transaction of the same type). Lycaon grabs Achilles by the knees in the posture of a suppliant, in other words, a person urgently requesting a customarily obligatory "favor". Yet Achilles tells him that his (Achilles') days of accepting payment for captives, which he did often before (21.100-102), have ended with the death of Patroklos, especially, he says, when it comes to the sons of Priam. Then, by way of consolation for both himself and Lycaon, Achilles goes on to describe the coming day of his own death, at dawn or midday or in the afternoon, by a spear or an arrow from a bowstring (21.106-113). Then he kills Lycaon, brutally, confronting us, too, with the moment of death for a person who has just come to life for us in the narrative. For a third example, there is Achilles' refusal of Agamemnon's apoina for him in Iliad 9, but as we shall see, there are significant anomalies in that failed transaction that are not present in this instance or in Achilles' refusal of Lycaon. A better parallel to the present moment is the legal dispute on Achilles' shield, which turns on the question, in what circumstances the refusal of a poinē could be proper — with the implication that there may or may not be such circumstances.

The language precisely contrasts the response of 'all the other Achaeans' (alloi...pantes...Akhaioi, l. 22) with that of Agamemnon, 'but not to Agamemnon son of Atreus' (all' ouk Atreidēi Agamemnon, l. 24) to the offer of a 'limitless ransom' by the old man, Chryses. That Agamemnon's response paces him in a minority of one is another sign that the offer of payment is obligatory by custom and that its refusal is dangerous and powerful when viewed in the context of other offers of apoina 'payment' and their refusal/acceptance (see notes above on Iliad 1.13, 1.13-15, and 1.20; for a parallel to Agamemnon's isolated position here, see Odyssey 3.141-143). D. Elmer (2103, pp. 30-31 and chapter 3, pp. 63-85) argues that the diction describing the collective response of  all the Achaeans (alloi...pantes epeuphēmēsan Akhaioi 'all the other Achaeans shouted their approval', l. 22) is also exceptional, not the standard way of expressing communal opinion, as is the utter refusal of Agamemnon to hear and heed their response in rejecting the offer. Note also the semantic parallelism between the earlier expression 'he slighted the prestige of the one who prays/curses' (of Chryses, l. 11, previewing Agamemnon's reaction here), and the Achaeans request that he, by contrast, 'show the priest respect'  (aideisthai hierēa, l. 23). Aidōs (seen here in its denominative verb aideisthai) is another key term in the vocabulary of social value, where a person's aidōs 'respect' is a function of a figure's timē 'prestige, prerogative'. That is why he is again described in his social function as priest, just as he was described as 'the one who prays/curses' in the earlier formulation. In line 23, note again the parallelism and implied equivalence between engaging in exchange (aglaa dekhthai apoina 'to accept the splendid payment') and showing respect for the priest (aideisthai hierea), because a person's value to the society is manifest in the way in which he or she participates in exchange.

Reference

Elmer, David. The Poetics of Consent: Collective Decision Making in the Iliad. Baltimore, 2013.

In rejecting the offer of Chryses, Agamemnon ignores the norms of exchange behavior made concrete by the expression of the common opinion of everyone else in favor of what pleases his own heart's desire (literally, 'to Agamemnon, to his heart'). David Elmer (2013, p. 42-46) has shown that the verb 'to please' that is used here, handanein, is "an essential component of the Iliad's decision-making vocabulary" (p. 44), in which it functions as "a way of signaling divergence from an otherwise cohesive collective will (p. 42)." He also argues that an authoritarian, individualistic preference overriding the collective will is not normative behavior in Homeric society, but its opposite. The norm in decision-making in the Iliad is for the collective will to be decisive (Elmer 2013, Chapter 1). Furthermore, Agamemnon's divergent response represents a failure to perceive the interwoven social and sacral consequences of his act. Agamemnon himself is not only the titular leader of the whole expedition to Troy on his brother's behalf, manifested in his possession of the epithet anax andrōn 'lord of men' (an expression that is used of him 49 of the 54 times it occurs in the Homeric and Hesiodic poems), but he is also the wielder of the sacrificial knife (Hitch 2009, Chapter 4), to which we can compare the role of Chryses as the old man who prays/curses and who bears wreaths on a golden skēptron 'staff/sceptre' (1.14-15): we have discussed above the overt sacred/social aspects of the system of exchange: see the comments on Iliad 1.13-15.

Reference:

Hitch, Sarah. 2009. King of Sacrifice: Ritual and Royal Authority in the Iliad. Washington, available online at http://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/6167

Homeric prayers, of which this is a relatively standard example, are predicated upon the system of gift exchange that also prevails in human social interaction. Their form and content is a function of that and of the way in which oral traditional poetry composes themes, which are chunks of conventional discourse that exemplify fixed and variable dictional and semantic elements that vary depending upon the particular context of each instance. What we see in this particular prayer are three structural elements that are generalizable but also variable both as to their content and in their presence or absence: 1) an address to a particular divinity; 2) a statement that either generates a reciprocal relationship between the speaking human and the divinity by speech-acting the giving of an obligatory gift now or in the future, or a statement that points to the past existence of a reciprocal relationship between the speaking human and the divinity on the basis of previous successful interactions based on exchanges; 3) a request on the part of the speaking human that the divinity accomplish something on the human's behalf as a function of the divinity's present, past, or future obligation to do so because of the exchange relationship that is being generated, will be generated, or has existed in the past.

So here, Chrysēs first 1) names the divinity in local terms (1.37-39) for the god Apollo — he is not so named but has been identified by his Olympian name in the narrative preceding the prayer as its addressee (1.35); 2) states that in the past, he has put the roof on temples (in other words, completed their construction) and burnt thigh pieces, the choicest part of the sacrificial animals, bulls and goats, as gifts to the divinity that serve as the basis of the request that is coming next; and 3) requests that the divinity fulfill his wish, namely, "may the Danaans pay for my tears with your weapons," an example of negative reciprocity in which bad is returned for bad, just as the overall prayer itself is based on the exchange of good for good.

This line is a multiform of the regular formula for concluding prayers that are labelled with the verb eukhomai, which is a word that designates three different kinds of discourse by using mutually exclusive formulas for each of the three. It has a two-part structure extending  from the line-beginning to the oblgatory word-break within the third foot and from the obligatory word-break to the end of the line. The first chunk, hōs ephat'/ephan eukhomenos/ē/oi/ai, whose subject is always a previously identified mortal or mortals, designates that the discourse that precedes the line was a prayer and is concluded, and the second chunk, tou d' eklue |¯˘˘ | ¯˘#, designates that the divinity addressed, whose name + epithet combination is specified in the space at the end of the line, 'heard' (eklue, cognate with the English word '(k)listen') the prayer (for Poseidon, just the epithet kuanokhaitēs 'with a glossy blue mane' occurs, since his name + epithet combinations are too long to fit the metrical space) . 'Heard' is functionally unmarked in English, but in only one of the 25 occurrences of this formulaic line does it mean anything less than accepted and agreed: at Iliad 16.250, where Zeus accepts one part of Achilles' request about Patroklos and refuses (the verb is aneneue 'was refusing') the other. When the response to the prayer is (exceptionally) negative, the expression tou/tēs d' eklue 'and he/she heard him/her' is replaced with aneneue de + name + epithet (once, Iliad 6.311) 'and she was refusing'  or nemesēse de + name + epithet (once, Iliad 8.198) 'and she was outraged'. There are also two places where tou/tēs d' eklue is replaced with different verbs and divine names to express an exceptionally positive response on the part of the divinity (Odyssey 2.267 and Iliad 15.377). There are also two attestations when the beginning of this line, hōs ephat' eukhomenos, is attested in a non-sacral context that evokes one of the other meanings of the verb eukhomai, 'boast (of warriors in battle)'; see Iliad 5.106 and Iliad 20.393, but in both those cases (and in no others) good medieval manuscripts attest a metrically equivalent variant hōs phat' epeukhomenos which is actually attested in the meaning 'boast' without variants in Homeric Hymn to Apollo 370; so it is clear that just the first half of this formulaic line is, despite a plausible ambiguity, traditionally associated with the meaning 'pray' in sacral contexts.

In short, this line is a manifestation of a superbly efficient and expressive system for concluding a prayer.

The noun kēla that occurs in line is attested in Homeric and Hesiodic poetry by these three formulae at line initial position, line final position, and after the word break in the third foot:

κῆλα Διός 'kēla of Zeus' Hesiod, Theogony 708 and Fragment 204.138

κῆλα θεοῖο# 'kēla of a/the god' Iliad 1.53=1.383

||πιφαυκόμενς τὰ ἂ κῆλα 'showing those kēla of his' Hymn to Apollo 444, Iliad 12.280

The formulas designate the weapons of Zeus in three places (Iliad 12.280 and the two Hesiodic passages) and the arrows of Apollo in three places (Homeric Hymn to Apollo 444 as well as here and in the repetition of this passage at Iliad 1.383). In the case of Zeus' kēla, it is evident that the reference is to his fiery thunderbolts. What is not immediately apparent is that Apollo's kēla are in fact also fire-bearing. Here is the line from the Homeric Hymn:

ἔνθ' ἄρ' ὅ γε φλόγα δαῖε πιφαυσκόμενος τὰ ἃ κῆλα

'there he was making fire blaze, revealing those kēla of his...

And in this passage, in the line that just precedes the occurrence of the formula shared by Zeus and Apollo, kēla theoio 'the god's kēla', we read of the fire of pyres as the immediate consequence of Apollo's arrow-shooting in the line immediately before the current one:

Iliad 1.52 βαλλ'· αἰεὶ δὶ πυραὶ νεκύων καίοντο θαμεῖαι

'he was hitting them; and immediately the pyres of corpses were burning thick and fast'

It is as though the kēla cause the pyres to burn. In seeking the etymology of this term, an underlying assumption has been, I believe, that what Zeus and Apollo share are arrows or things like them (thunderbolts), and so the etymology of kēla has been sought, unsuccessfully, in words in other Indo-European languages for arrows or 'shafts'. But every occurrence of the word in Epic diction evokes fire as an aspect of the kēla. What is happening on a thematic level is also relevant, because Apollo is here exercising mēnis 'cosmic anger' (see Iliad 1.75) by way of cosmic arrows — in fact he is functioning as a variant of Zeus, since striking victims with the thunderbolt is the conventional manifestation of Zeus' mēnis. And we will see that fire and in fact cosmic fire that goes up to the sky can become an expression of Achilles' mēnis as well (on this topic, see also now G. Nagy, "Cataclysm and Ecpyrosis, two symmetrical actions of Zeus as sky-god," Classical Inquiries, May 19, 2016, http://classical-inquiries.chs.harvard.edu/cataclysm-and-ecpyrosis-two-symmetrical-actions-of-zeus-as-sky-god/). On this level, one might prefer to define this word as 'fiery shafts' rather than just 'shafts'. It is not surprising that a connection was made in the Hesiodic scholia and in a late Byzantine Homeric gloss of this line which perhaps reflects earlier exegetical traditions:

Scholion on Theogony 708: <κῆλα Διός:> τὰ καυστικὰ σημεῖα "Zeus's kēla: burning signs/omens";

13th Century Byzantine on Iliad 1.51: ...ᾤχετο κῆλα θεοῖο. παρὰ τὸν κήσω μέλλοντα τὸν δηλοῦντα τὸ καύσω. ὅθεν καὶ τό· πυρὶ κηλέῳ, τουτέστι καυστικῷ,  "kēla of the god:  [derived] from the future [form] κήσω, which shows the [verbal form] καύσω. From where also the [phrase]: πυρὶ κηλέῳ 'with blazing fire' (Iliad 8.217, etc.), that is, καυστικῷ 'burning'") from Pseudo-Zonaras Lexicon, ed. E. Crusius 1808, rear. 1967, alphabetic letter kappa, p. 1206, line 3

It is reasonable to believe that the poetic tradition also sensed the relationship between κῆλα and the verb καίω, whether by way of folk etymology or, perhaps, by way of an inherited etymological relationship.

The adjective κηλέῳ 'blazing' is attested only in the formula πυρὶ κηλέῳ 'blazing fire', in synizesis, six times in line final position, once after the triphthemimeral caesura, and once in the form πυρὶ κηλείῳ before the penthehemimeral caesura.  The form cited just above from the  as the future of the verb καίω, namely κήσω, is not otherwise attested and may be a mistake, but the form ἔκηα (Iliad 1.40 etc.), which is an archaic athematic aorist with the 1st person singular ending -ṃ that was later misunderstood as a first aorist ending -α, attests to the verbal root for 'burn' with that vocalism (κη-). That form should be reconstructed as *ἔκηϝα, to which we can compare the Thessalian εκηυα attested in a ?? inscription.

autoisi anticipating the lifelessness of the men inflicted by Apollo

commentary on Achilles’ solidarity in calling an assembly to face the consequences of Apollo’s mēnis

comment on the relationship between ‘coming home’ and ‘escaping death’

in the list of offenses that (threaten to) incur mēnis \n\n----- Merged Content -----

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

commentary on kholos and kotos in opposition to mēnis, in the context of criticism of Considine

The mēnis ‘anger’ of Achilles at I.01.001 towards Agamemnon the over-king is parallel to the mēnis of Aeneas at I.13.459–461 towards Priam the over-king.

The formula "thus he spoke, and the old man feared and obeyed the muthos" (1.33) is one of the audience-response formulas the poet uses to emphasize the moment of persuasion. The same formula recurs at 24.571, where Priam obeys Achilles' muthos in identical terms (Khryses = 24.571, Priam) (Martin 1993:23).

An important preliminary strike against Agamemnon as a speaker comes in the detail that he speaks against the wishes of his audience: "The other Achaeans all approved... but it did not please Agamemnon" (1.23-24). His threat to Khryses, that the scepter of the god will not do him any good should he return, turns out to have ironic appropriateness for Agamemnon himself when his own authority sinks. In contrast to Zeus, whose similar threat silences Hera at the end of Book 1 (1.566), Agamemnon's language works destruction, turning the priest to seek divine intervention with deadly effect (Martin 1993:62-63).

For the broader analysis of the hierarchy of muthos command and Agamemnon's rhetorical failings, see the comment on Iliad 4.336-421.

References

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

The poet characterizes Agamemnon deftly in his very first speech. The "hard muthos" (1.25) falls under the heading of "command," but the illocutionary force of the directive is clothed here in the diction of a threat: "Do not let me meet you lingering by the ships, old man . . . lest the god's staff and fillet not do you any good." Agamemnon has the option of making directives in a number of ways; that Homer chooses to give him this tonal range is a significant sign of style. Agamemnon's seemingly straightforward commands strike us as distinctive and even deficient, because Homer shows us Agamemnon basing his orders on a false dream (2.55-75), or constructing a plausible command to retreat under false pretenses (2.109-41), or even denying that he is giving a directive (4.286), all the while using his limited praise ability to do precisely that (Martin 1993:113-14).

The general resort to the language of neikos by Agamemnon betrays an uncertainty about his power at speech which, in circular fashion, only makes his rhetoric more nervous and deficient. A good indication of Agamemnon's lack of confidence in speech comes from Homer's deployment of the epithet "clear speaker," ligus agorētēs. The poet used it of Nestor; Thersites earns it in Odysseus' portrayal of him; but Agamemnon seems to say this as a way of explaining his own lack of forcefulness after hearing Achilles: "In a great crowd of men, how could anyone hear or speak? Even a clear speaker is hindered" (19.81-82) (Martin 1993:118).

For the broader analysis of Agamemnon's style across all speech genres, see the comment on Iliad 4.336-421.

References

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

The introduction of Achilles in the poem pinpoints the central quality of his commanding style. Achilles directs the Achaeans to ask a seer, priest, or dream-interpreter the cause of Apollo's anger (1.62-67); he authorizes speech by his command, and defends the speaker, Kalkhas. The plot unfolds because Achilles has taken the initiative to call an assembly, another indication of his respect for speech. In the course of Book 1 he relies on words rather than the sword to face down Agamemnon; casts down the scepter, a gesture of impatience with the degraded state of discourse; narrates his own story to Thetis; and even coaches her in techniques of argumentation to win him honor from Zeus. His style is open, communicative, adaptable (Martin 1993:138-39).

Achilles' commands are remarkable in that they seem to "negate" the notion of the speaker's authority to order. Achilles uses command to pass on that authority to others. In speech-act terms, one "felicity" condition for a directive—that the speaker be in a position to issue the order—is actually jeopardized by the directives themselves. This strategy fits with Achilles' preference for two-way communication between speaker and addressee, and the denial of command only increases respect for the hero who can risk such apparent undercutting: it is a sign of higher authority (Martin 1993:140).

For the broader analysis of Achilles' distinctive speech style, see the comment on Iliad 9.646-647.

References

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