1. Kleos and Oral History “Es Tagträumt in mir.” Ernst Bloch, Das Prinzip Hoffnung ‘αὐτὰρ ἐγὼν Ἰθάκην ἐσελεύσομαι, ὄφρα οἱ υἱὸνμᾶλλον ἐποτρύνω, καί οἱ μένος ἐν φρεσὶ θείω,εἰς ἀγορὴν καλέσαντα κάρη κομόωντας Ἀχαιοὺςπᾶσι μνηστήρεσσιν ἀπειπέμεν, οἵ τέ οἱ αἰεὶμῆλ’ ἁδινὰ σφάζουσι καὶ εἰλίποδας ἕλικας βοῦς.πέμψω δ’ ἐς Σπάρτην τε καὶ ἐς Πύλον ἠμαθόεντα,νόστον πευσόμενον πατρὸς… Read more
2. Kleos and Oral News ‘ἐγὼ μὲν ἐξ ἐμοῦ τε κοὐκ ἄλλης σαφῆσημεῖ’ ἰδοῦσα τῷδε πιστεύω λόγῳ.’ Sophokles Elektra 885–886 Both oral history and oral tradition spring from orally transmitted messages, [1] or, to use a Homeric term, ἔπεα (literally, ‘words’). [2] As J. Vansina’s now famous analysis shows,… Read more
3. Kleos and Social Identity ‘ὦ πάτερ, ἦ τοι σεῖο μέγα κλέος αἰὲν ἄκουον,χεῖράς τ’ αἰχμητὴν ἔμεναι καὶ ἐπίφρονα βουλήν.’ Odyssey 16.241–242 “Father, truly I used to hear of your great reputation (kleos),that you were warlike with your hands and wise in counsel.” Ἐνὶ οἴκῳ ‘At Home’ In Odyssey 1.345–359, after Mentes’ departure the Little… Read more
4. The Little Prince’s Voyage on a Borrowed Ship ‘ἄτοπος δοκεῖ εἶναι Τηλεμάχου ἡ ἀποδημία.’ Scholiast ad Odyssey 1.93 (Dindorf) “Telemachos’ going abroad seems absurd.” Telemachos and Eugene Onegin Let us imagine the world Telemachos has been living in before he sets off with his small crew on a borrowed ship. [1]… Read more
5. Of Beards and Boar Hunts, or, Coming of Age in the Odyssey In Homer it is the connection with a paternal model and in general with the model of his male forebears that eventually makes a boy into a man. If the child is unconnected to his father, he is by definition νήπιος ‘childish’, as Susan Edmunds has shown. [1] Who… Read more
6. The End of the Telemachy The Culmination of Extinction? “ . . . Time past and time futureWhat might have been and what has beenPoint to one end, which is always present.” T. S. Eliot “Burnt Norton” (No. 1 of Four Quartets) If much of the emotional effect of the first 21 books of the Odyssey… Read more
Part I. The Power of Thetis: Allusion and Interpretation in the Iliad … Read more
Part I. Preface The challenge to define as fully as possible the cultural environment in which a work of literature was produced presents itself with every examination of an ancient text. In the case of the extraordinarily complex phenomenon of Attic drama the task is perhaps facilitated by the survival of more complete documentation about the conditions, if not of its genesis, at least of its evolution… Read more
Part I. Chapter 1. The Helplessness of Thetis In a key passage in Book 1 of the Iliad Achilles, in order to obtain from Zeus the favor that will determine the trajectory of the plot, invokes not Athena or Hera, those powerful, inveterate pro-Greeks, but his mother. The Iliad’s presentation of Thetis, as we recall, is of a subsidiary deity who is characterized by helplessness and by impotent grief. Her… Read more
Part I. Chapter 2. The Power of Thetis Τhe most startling silence in the voluble divine community of the Iliad is the absence of any reproach made to Thetis for her drastic intervention in the war. What accounts for Thetis’s compelling influence over Zeus and, equally puzzling, for her freedom from recrimination or retaliation by the other Olympians? From the standpoint of characterization, of course, for Zeus to accede to… Read more
