Chapter 12. Poetry of Praise, Poetry of Blame 12§1. As we see from Georges Dumézil’s comparative study Servius et la Fortune, Indo-European society operated on the principle of counterbalancing praise and blame, primarily through the medium of poetry. [1] This state of affairs is most overtly preserved in the evidence of Indic and Old Irish, [2] but… Read more
Chapter 13. Iambos 13§1. With the mention of Lukámbēs, we may now turn to the íamboi of Archilochus. [1] Of course, we are dealing here not so much with a metrical category but rather with a genre of composition: [2] “iambic metre got its name from being particularly characteristic of íamboi, not vice versa.” [3]… Read more
Chapter 14. Epos, the Language of Blame, and the Worst of the Achaeans 14§1. The resemblances in poetic form between the Archilochean Iambos and the Homeric Epos suggest that blame poetry may have evolved away from an old (and unattested) form corresponding to that of praise poetry (as still attested in Pindar and Bacchylides) into its newer form resembling comedy. The key here to formulating the evolution… Read more
Chapter 15. The Best of the Achaeans Confronts an Aeneid Tradition 15§1. Having finished with the diction surrounding the Thersites figure, we may now turn to another Iliadic passage, XX 246–256, which rivals the passage about Thersites in its wealth of information relating to the poetry of blame. For a proper understanding, however, we must begin with an Iliadic passage found earlier on in the action. … Read more
Chapter 16. The Death of a Poet 16§1. In the story of Thersites, we have seen that the details told about him consistently reflect his function as poet of blame. [1] As it happens, even the story of his death reflects this function. From the epic tradition of the Aithiopis, we learn that Thersites was killed by Achilles himself; the reason given… Read more
Chapter 17. On the Antagonism of God and Hero 17§1. Aside from the direct testimony of P.Oxy. 1800 and Aesop Vitae G+W 142 about a hero cult of Aesop, there is important indirect evidence for his actual function as cult hero. Again we turn to the parallelism between the deaths of Aesop and Pyrrhos. In the myth of Pyrrhos, the theme of his antagonism with Apollo is… Read more
Chapter 18. On the Stories of a Poet’s Life 18§1. In the preceding chapters, I have argued that the generic warrior/poet, as therápōn of Ares/Muses, is implicitly worthy of becoming a cult hero after death. This in fact is the explicit message, I now submit, of the famous poetic declaration made by the one attested figure who boasts of being both warrior and poet: εἰμὶ δ᾽ ἐγὼ… Read more
Chapter 19. More on Strife and the Human Condition 19§1. The deaths of Aesop and Thersites result directly from their engaging in blame, [1] and the result of their deaths is purification. [2] It follows, then, that their engaging in blame is itself an ultimately purifying act. Thus even in the ideology of myth, blame and the… Read more
Chapter 20. Achilles beyond the Iliad 20§1. Having just seen how the neîkos ‘quarrel’ between Hesiod and Perses (Works and Days 35) serves as the context for a grand definition of díkē by way of its opposition to húbris, [1] we return one last time to the neîkos between Odysseus and Achilles (Odyssey viii 75) in the first song of Demodokos (Odyssey… Read more
Appendix. On the Forms Krataió– and Akhaió– A§1. Our point of departure is the verse-final form krataiís/Krátaiin in Odyssey xi 597/xii 124. [1] The conventional explanation, that we have here an id-stem feminine built from the adjective krataió-, is plagued with difficulties on the formal and functional levels. [2] I cite in particular the verse-final ā-stem feminine… Read more
