Conclusion As we arrive at the end of this examination, it appears that heroism is, in essence, an ambiguous concept. At first glance, it seems that masculinity is at the core of heroism, and, further, that the limits of heroism coincide with those of masculinity. Without a doubt, a feminine element is not absent, but it acts as a foil. “Weakling cowards, Achaean women rather than Achaeans,”… Read more
Bibliography Adkins, A. W. H. 1960. Merit and Responsibility. A Study in Greek Values. Oxford. ———. 1963. “‘Friendship’ and ‘Self-Sufficiency’ in Homer and Aristotle.” Classical Quarterly n.s. 13:30–45. ———. 1969. “Threatening, Abusing, and Feeling Angry in the Homeric Poems.” Journal of Hellenic Studies 89:7–21. Alexiou, M. 1974. The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition. Cambridge. Read more
List of Figures All figures drawn by Glynnis Fawkes unless otherwise noted. Figure 1. Detail from ‘Sea Peoples’ reliefs, Medinet Habu, reign of Ramses III (ca. 1184–1152). Drawn from Nelson et al. 1930, pl. 36–37. Figure 2. ‘Harp treaty’, unprovenanced Mesopotamian cylinder seal, ca. fourteenth century. London, BM 89359. Drawn from MgB 2/2 fig. 108. Figure 3. ‘Asiatic’ troupe with lyrist, tomb-painting, Beni-Hassan, Twelfth… Read more
Preface Κυπρογενῆ Κυθέρειαν ἀείσομαι ἥ τε βροτοῖσι μείλιχα δῶρα δίδωσιν, ἐφ’ ἱμερτῷ δὲ προσώπῳ αἰεὶ μειδιάει καὶ ἐφ’ ἱμερτὸν θέει ἄνθος —with eternal gratitude for Glynnis, Sylvan, and Helen Kinyras has deep roots on Cyprus. He came to the island, I argue, in the Late Bronze Age, when he had already begun to outgrow his musical roots as a Divine Lyre. Already… Read more
Conventions and Abbreviations To keep the main text as accessible as possible, I have presented all Greek in transliteration (retaining accentuation as several key points depend on this); more specialized philological issues are dealt with in the footnotes, where I have not always translated Greek and Latin. Following Assyriological convention, Akkadian words are given in italics, Sumerian in expanded spacing, logograms in capital letters, and determinatives… Read more
Introduction 1. Kinyras and Kinnaru Kinyras of Cyprus Already for Homer, Kinyras loomed on the eastern horizon, a Great King who treated on equal terms with Agamemnon, sending him a marvelous daedalic breastplate as a friendship-gift: Next in turn he donned the corselet round his chestWhich once Kinyras gave him as a friendship-gift.For he had heard a great report on Cyprus—the Achaeans… Read more
Part I: The Cult of Kinnaru 2. Instrument Gods and Musician Kings in Early Mesopotamia: Divinized Instruments Already in the late Uruk period (ca. 3300–2900), reverence for cult-objects is implied by the ritual deposition of ‘retired’ tools from an old temple when a new one was built over it (for example, the Eanna complex at Uruk); the burial of objects including musical instruments and weapons… Read more
3. The Knr The Mesopotamian material, together with the Divine Kinnaru of Ugarit and further evidence from the Hurro-Hittite world, indicates that the divinization of instruments was one facet of an ‘international’ music culture operative in the BA Near East. Fortunately, the latter enormous subject need not be exhausted here. We may simply focus on the knr, for which there is relatively abundant textual evidence and associated… Read more
Chapter 1. “Winged Words”: How We Came to Have Our Iliad Our Iliad consists—to quote a well-known Homeric formula—of “winged words” (ἔπεα πτερόεντα). An image in a Bronze Age fresco from Pylos suggests that as early as Mycenaean times, poetry in performance was conceived of as being in flight (Plate 1). [1] As we have seen, the nature of the Iliad—as a… Read more
Chapter 2. Sunt Aliquid Manes: Ancient Quotations of Homer A multitextual approach to Homeric epic acknowledges and even embraces an expected amount of variation between performances of oral poetry. Because this multiformity was generated within a system, the attested variations enable us to appreciate the poetry of the Homeric epics on more than just the level of a single performance. By adopting a multitextual approach, we can,… Read more
