Chapter Eight: Homeric variations on a theme of empire II 8ⓢ1. Four festivals and four models of empire II§230 In the account of Herodotus, Miletus figures as the premier city in a federation of twelve cities that comprise the Ionian Dodecapolis. This privileging of Miletus reflects an early model of political dominance that shaped the later model that we know as the Athenian empire. To… Read more
Chapter Nine: Further variations on a theme of Homer II 9ⓢ1. Homer the federal hostage II§327 The time has come to ask this fundamental question about the festive poetics of federal politics. How could Homeric poetry express the idea of a federal society? Or, to put it another way, how could a poetic figure like Homer serve as a spokesman for such a society? The… Read more
Chapter Ten: Homer and the poetics of variation II 10ⓢ1. The sorrows of Andromache revisited II§373 We have seen how the technique of narrating the story about the presentation of a peplos to Athena in her temple at Troy corresponds to the technique of weaving the Panathenaic Peplos for presentation to Athena in her temple at Athens. And the occasion for presenting the woven Peplos,… Read more
Epilegomena: A preclassical text of Homer in the making Eⓢ1. Reconstructing Homer forward in time E§1 Till now I have been reconstructing Homer as a preclassic by working my way backward in time. Now I will attempt an overview by going forward in time. I start with the earliest possible point of departure, the so-called Bronze Age. E§2 For some, the Bronze Age is… Read more
Chapter Three: Homer and his genealogy I 3ⓢ1. The Homēridai of Chios I§141 I return to the cursory reference to Chios as the setting for a quadrennial thusia ‘festival’ honoring Homer in the narrative of Vita 2 (307–8). As we saw, this reference is pertinent to the context of a Homeric Hymn to Apollo to be performed at Delos. In other words, it is pertinent… Read more
Chapter Four: Homer in the Homeric Odyssey I 4ⓢ1. The festive poetics of an ongoing humnos in Odyssey viii I§188 When Thucydides quotes Homer, he imagines the Poet in the act of personally performing at the festival of the Delia in Delos. This historian’s view, as we have seen, is Athenocentric. To be contrasted is the view of Aristarchus, which is post-Athenocentric. For Aristarchus, the… Read more
Chapter Five: Iliadic multiformities I 5ⓢ1. The transcendence of Zeus as hymnic subject I§242 We have seen that the ongoing humnos of the stylized festival of the Phaeacians keeps getting stopped and restarted, and that in two cases the restarting activates a distinct hymnic prooimion. In the first case, the restarting leads to the second song of Demodokos, which activates a hymnic prooimion featuring the… Read more
Preface [In this on-line version, the page-numbers of the printed version are indicated within braces (“{” and “}”). For example, “{69|70}” indicates where p. 69 of the printed version ends and p. 70 begins. These indications will be useful to readers who need to look up references made elsewhere to the printed version of this book.] There are two different publication dates for this book: 2009… Read more
Introduction Introduction §1 This book Homer the Preclassic, which is based on the Sather Classical Lectures of spring 2002, covers the preclassical era of Homeric reception. It is complemented by a twin book, Homer the Classic (2009), which covers the classical era. Between the two of them, Homer the Classic and Homer the Preclassic cover six ages of Homeric reception. Here are the six ages, arranged… Read more
Part One. A preclassical Homer from the Dark Age A working definition of the Dark Age I§1 Thinking my way backward from the classical period of the fifth century BCE, I confront a preclassical period that I divide into two ages, the Dark Age and the Bronze Age. I start here in Part I with the Dark Age. Then, in Part II, I will proceed… Read more
