Introduction: Homeric Anger {1} Across the landscape of Homeric studies there are monuments that demonstrate how central anger is to whatever the early Greeks—audience and performers alike—imagined the Homeric narratives to be about. By our own various references to the powerful concept of anger, we seem to wave it as a magic wand for conjuring meaning. The titles of some of the most insightful works in Homeric… Read more
Chapter 1. The Prophet Defines Within the first hundred lines of the Iliad, the Achaean prophet, Calchas, presents a definition of anger (Il. 1.74-83). The immediate context is that Achilles has just called an assembly in response to the suffering of the Achaeans. So great is their suffering that, Achilles suggests, they are on the brink of entirely abandoning their efforts on the Trojan plain (Il. 1.59-67). Read more
Chapter Two. Forms and Formulae Kôtos in Its Noun Forms {32|33} The formal details concerning the noun kótos are straightforward. The substantive kótos is attested six times in the Iliad and the Odyssey, each time in the accusative case. [1] Each of these instances occurs at the hephthemimeral caesura, in other words, always in the second hemistich of the verse and… Read more
Chapter 3. Κότος and Social Status {78|79} At the beginning of this study, I suggested that kótos was identified in Calchas’s definition both by the length of time that it lasts and by the social status of the angered party. We have seen that the use of télos, metópisthen, and other related terminology gives kótos a sense of extraordinary duration. The issue of the term’s relation to… Read more
Chapter 4. Anger’s History: Κότος and Etymology {88|89} With Calchas as my guide, I have shown kótos to be an anger, that, in the Iliad, relates to the fall of Troy, while in the Odyssey it calls to mind Odysseus’s vengeance against the suitors. The method, thus far, has been to focus on the diction of Homeric poetry, its phraseology and narrative contexts. In the remaining two… Read more
Chapter 5. Anger’s Aggression: The Wrath of Feud {96|97} I began this study with a close look at the terms of Calchas’s definition (Il . 1.80-83), especially because he uses three categories to define the two different kinds of anger, khólos and kótos. Those three categories were time, social status, and the body. We proceeded to examine the features of Homeric diction that characterize kótos in the… Read more
Chapter 6. Helen’s Cure and the End of Anger {108|109} In Part I, I surveyed and analyzed the language of kótos to show the validity of Calchas’s definition in Il . 1.80-83; in addition to confirming Calchas’s formulation, I concluded that comparative evidence locates this term for anger in the institution of the feud. Since only part of Calchas’s formulation has been elucidated, in Part II I… Read more
Chapter 7. The Beginning of Χόλος {126|127} As we have seen, khólos comes to be identified by its endpoint, a feature that accords well with Calchas’s indication that it can be consumed “in a day” (autêmar, Il. 1.81). Can we also expect that it can be located as to its beginning, the moment at which a character comes to be angry? And will we also find moments… Read more
Chapter 8. Fighting Words {140|141} In his definition, Calchas suggests that khólos, unlike kótos, can be brought under control. In this chapter, I will elaborate on the limitations of that control, by showing that certain kinds of speech may stimulate khólos, whereas for kótos that is an impossibility. First, responses to khólos can be styled as formal challenges, often in the manner of the invective. Second, I… Read more
Chapter 9. Fighting Deeds ἐπέων κεχολωμένος ἠδὲ καὶ ἔργων (Il . 11.703) {162|163} In the preceding chapter, khólos emerged in the context of speeches in which a character speaks out of anger or where the speaker elicits an angry reply, or both. In these instances, the angered party has a specific motive derived from the immediate context. But, as we will now… Read more
