discussion of the singularity of the Athenian entry in the Catalogue of Ships and comparison with other entries (here, Boeotia)

discussion of the singularity of the Athenian entry in the Catalogue of Ships and comparison with other entries (here, Orkhomenos)

The narrative of Rhapsody 2 now follows up on the dire consequences of the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon as narrated in Rhapsody 1. Achilles has already withdrawn from the war because of his anger. So, now that this greatest hero of the Achaeans is out of the picture, what will happen next? How will the absence of Achilles affect the story of the Trojan War? Many new doubts and fears set in, and the resolve of the Achaeans is harshly tested. There is negative talk, and there are omens. Thus the story of the Trojan War, as told and retold countless times in the distant past, must now be retold yet again, and Rhapsody 2 will set the terms for the retelling still to come. For setting the terms, Rhapsody 2 will need a new Catalogue of Ships, now happening in the tenth year of the war, as a replacement for any old Catalogue that would have logically happened already in the first year. This new Catalogue is of course not really new: rather, it is the oldest possible Catalogue that is now being renewed for the newest possible retelling of the Trojan War, reconsidered in the glaring light of the grim consequences facing the Achaeans now that Achilles has withdrawn from the war. With these consequences in view, the Catalogue will reassess all the Achaean heroes involved in the Trojan War. Of special interest will be the role of Protesilaos, who had been the first Achaean to die in the war, as a model for Achilles. As the Master Narrator notes most ruefully, Protesilaos is now terribly missed by his fellow warriors. So too will Achilles be missed.

On the reverse side of the coin: Inscription: ΘΗΒΑΙΩΝ. Pictured: the Greek hero Protesilaos, the first Achaean to step on Trojan soil and, according to the myth, the first to die in the Trojan War. The myth is retold in Iliad 2.695–709.

lemmatizing: ἔσπετε νῦν μοι Μοῦσαι Ὀλύμπια δώματ' ἔχουσαι

In this verse, which can be translated ‘tell me now, you Muses who have your dwellings on Mount Olympus’, we see a rhyming of … Mousai, situated before the primary mid-verse word-break, with … ekhousai, situated before the verse-final word-break. Such rhyming is rare and archaizing. (On archaic patterns of rhyming in early Greek poetry, see Nagy 1974:99–101.) On the poetics of re-invocation here, there will be more to say in the comments on I.02.761, Ι.11.218, I.14.508, I.16.112. For now, it suffices to observe that the re-invocation of the Muses here at I.02.484 pictures these goddesses in the plural, by contrast with the singular Muse who had been initially invoked at I.01.001. There will be another invocation of the singular Muse at I.02.761, to be followed by invocations of plural Muses at Ι.11.218, I.14.508, and I.16.112. In the case of each invocation, there is a heightened level of poetic self-awareness about the importance of what is about to be narrated. Here at I.02.484, for example, the Master Narrator shows his concern about the need for accuracy in re-creating a comprehensive catalogue of essentially all the cultural ancestors of the Greek-speaking world. On other occasions of re-invocation, there will be comparable poetic concerns, as we will see in comments still to come.

The immediacy of the Master Narrator’s performance here is counterbalanced by an attitude of remoteness from the composition. Such a counterbalance indicates the Narrator’s deference to the epic tradition of Homeric poetry. The Narrator does not claim that he knows the tradition: instead, he says he just ‘hears’ it from the Muses, goddesses of poetic inspiration, and this act of ‘hearing’ is kleos, I.02.486, derived from the verb kluein ‘hear’. The literal meaning of kleos as ‘the thing heard’ has an enormous prestige that translates into the idealized meaning of ‘glory, fame’ as applied to the composition and performance of Homeric poetry. The Narrator of Homeric poetry is proud of his capacity to ‘hear’. To hear what? To hear ‘the thing heard’, which is kleos. This capacity translates into ‘glory, fame’ not only for Homeric poetry but also for the poet who performs the poetry. Such a poet claims access to both the form and the content of what he ‘hears’ the Muses tell him.

The ‘I’ of Homer is interchangeable with ‘we’. The ellipsis of successive ‘I’-s in this ‘we’ indicates a vertical succession of performers.

|488 πληθὺν δ’ οὐκ ἂν ἐγὼ μυθήσομαι οὐδ’ ὀνομήνω, |489 οὐδ’ εἴ μοι δέκα μὲν γλῶσσαι, δέκα δὲ στόματ’ εἶεν, |490 φωνὴ δ’ ἄρρηκτος, χάλκεον δέ μοι ἦτορ ἐνείη, |491 εἰ μὴ Ὀλυμπιάδες Μοῦσαι Διὸς αἰγιόχοιο |492 θυγατέρες μνησαίαθ’ ὅσοι ὑπὸ Ἴλιον ἦλθον· |493 ἀρχοὺς αὖ νηῶν ἐρέω νῆάς τε προπάσας.

|488 But the number [of Achaeans] I could not tell nor name |489 (not even if I had ten tongues and ten mouths |490 and a voice that was unbreaking, and if a heart of bronze were within me) |491 if the Muses of Olympus, of Zeus the aegis-bearer |492 the daughters, did not mentally connect [mimnēskein] me, (about) how many came to Troy. |493 But now I will say the leaders [arkhoi] of the ships, and all the ships.

The performer here is re-experiencing the here-and-now of his own performance. See further the comment at I.02.492.

What the Muses do is ‘put the mind in touch’: the translation of mnē- as ‘mentally connect’ is more accurate than ‘remind’, since the idea of ‘reminding’ in a language like English restricts the idea of mental contact to the past. But the idea ‘mentally connect’ as conveyed by the word mnē- is broader. This Greek word refers to mental contact not only with the past but also with the present and even with the future. The Muses have the power to put the mind in touch with times and places other than one’s own.

We see here a transition from the prooimion ‘proemium, prelude’ that introduces the Catalogue of Ships to the actual narration of the Catalogue. The transition is formalized by way of picking up a basic idea from the prooimion. This idea, signaled by the word hēgemones ‘leaders’ at I.02.487 in the prooimion, is now picked up by the word arkhoi ‘leaders’ here in the first verse of the actual narration, I.02.493. For the etymology of prooimion ‘proemium, prelude’, see the comment on O.08.074.

analysis of the variant prologue to the Iliad connecting the mēnis of Achilles and of Apollo and its identical line to I.02.484

Homeric epic referring to itself as kleos, like Pindar’s medium

Homer's recusatio at the threshold of the Catalogue of Ships—"I could not make a muthos or name the entirety, not even if I had ten tongues, ten mouths, an unbreakable voice, and my heart bronze within me, unless the Olympian Muses, daughters of aegis-bearing Zeus, should recall how many came up to Troy" (2.488-92)—has a precise parallel in Achilles' hyperbolic denial at 9.379: "Not even if Agamemnon gives ten and twenty times as much will he persuade me." Although their topics appear to be different, both Achilles and the narrator Homer speak in the same manner: both specify a condition using hyperbolic numbering, then deny the condition by adding a further one—Homer requires the Muses, not merely ten tongues; Achilles demands that Agamemnon pay back his insult, and no other payments will satisfy him. Finally, both Homer and Achilles use this trope to continue their speech-acts: Homer by listing the Panhellenic forces, Achilles by listing his own assets in Phthia. As with the occurrence of the unique formula kleos aphthiton in Achilles' speech, this particularly marked trope is restricted within the rhetoric of the Iliad and given to only one hero to speak—the performer who is most like Homer (Martin 1993:223-24).

This parallel furnishes the most important piece of evidence for the first of two conclusions arising from the analysis of Achilles' speech. First, the "language of Achilles" is none other than that of the monumental composer: Homer fully reveals all the possibilities of his own poetic craft only in the extended speech of Achilles. Homer could have expanded formulaic diction in the speeches of any other hero to produce discourse as complex, inward-looking, and pleonastic as Achilles', but he did not. The effect is to make Achilles sound like a poet, and the similarity arises because Homer, when he constructs Achilles by means of language, employs all his poetic resources and stretches the limits of his formulaic art to make the hero as large a figure as possible. In short, the monumental poem demands a monumental hero; the language of epic, pressed to provide speech for such a man, becomes the "language of Achilles" (Martin 1993:222-23).

The second conclusion is the converse: the rhetoric of Homer as narrator is that of a heroic performer in the role of Achilles. Achilles' performance situation is itself an image for the way in which the poem was composed. Homer's composition of the monumental Iliad starts from the need to outdistance previous epics. The rhetoric of Achilles—his heroic self-performance in an adversary relationship with the past and the present—is at the root of Homer's own composition-in-performance. If the language of Achilles is the undisguised voice and rhetoric of Homer himself, then the converse is equally true (Martin 1993:224-25, 230).

For the specific expansion types that underlie the rhetoric of Achilles' speech, see the comments on Iliad 9.310-314 and Iliad 9.315-316.

References

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

Homer's invocation of the Muses at 2.484-86—where he makes clear that his narrative has continuity with the past guaranteed by his own contact with the Muses—must be read in contrast with the story of Thamyris at 2.594-600. When Homer says that a poet returning from Oikhalia was deprived of his art, he is making a claim that the Herakles tradition is faulty, that it suffered a break in historical transmission from the event itself. By contrast, Homer in Book 2 makes clear that his narrative has a continuity with the past which is guaranteed by his own contact with the Muses. In other words, although the story of Thamyris is on the surface about an agon between singers and ultimately about antagonism between artist and divinities, it is also a statement about the agon between Homer and previous singers. Just as Achilles is drawn in such a way that he obliterates Herakles, so the poem itself is composed under pressure from the Herakles epics and in response to them (Martin 1993:229-30).

For the recusatio and the claim that Homer composes under agonistic conditions, see the comment on Iliad 2.488-492.

References

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