Homeric Responses

Hittite Edict of King Telepinu 49: “A matter of blood is as follows. Whoever does blood, whatever the owner of the blood says. If he says, ‘Let him die!’ he shall die. If he says ‘Let him pay ransom!’ he shall pay ransom. But to the king, nothing.” [17]

Neo-Assyrian legal document (ADD 321): “{A} the son of {B} shall give {C}, daughter of {D}, the scribe, in lieu of the blood. He shall wash the blood. If {A} does not give the woman, they will kill him on {B}’s grave. Whichever of them breaks the contract shall pay ten mina of silver.” [18] We may compare the two weights of gold in the Iliadic picture of the Shield, verses 507 to 508 in the passage quoted above. [19] {77|78}

Arguing against the notion of Erfolgshaftung, that is, strict liability, Westbrook suggests that there was “some gradation of homicide based on the mental condition of the offender.” [20]

Codex Hammu-rabi 206-207: “If a man strikes a man in a brawl and inflicts a wound on him, the man shall swear ‘I did not strike knowingly’ and he shall pay the doctor. If he dies from being struck, he shall swear, and if it was the son of a man, he shall pay half a mina of silver.” [21] Again we may compare the two weights of gold in the Iliadic picture of the Shield, verses 507 to 508 in the passage quoted above.

Iliad 23.86-90, Patroklos recalls how, as a boy, he fled his homeland because he had killed another boy over a game of dice, ouk ethelōn ‘not willingly’ but kholōtheis ‘in anger’. Westbrook compares the parallel formulation in Near Eastern law codes where one person kills another “not knowingly.” He infers: “There must be two elements in mitigation, a threshold situation for which the killer was not entirely to blame, i.e., a fight or a quarrel in which he was provoked, and lack of intention to strike a fatal blow.” [22]

With regard to the litigation scene in the City at Peace, Westbrook concludes: “The reason why the killer and not the other party is said to be arguing before this court is that the burden of proof is upon him to establish the existence of mitigating circumstances, as we have seen from our discussion of the Near Eastern sources. The other party, the avenger, has the dual right to ransom or revenge. By refusing to take ransom, he asserts that the case is one of aggravated homicide and he therefore has a free choice between ransom and revenge, and chooses the latter.” [23]

In short, following Westbrook, I think that the rationale of the litigation scene on Achilles’ Shield is basically this: the defendant wishes the limit to be ransom, not revenge, while the plaintiff wishes the limit to be revenge, not ransom. [24] I draw attention to my use of the word limit, which corresponds to the juridical sense that we are about to examine in Iliad XVIII 501, in the picture of the litigation scene in the City at Peace. In what follows I shall try to connect {78|79} a juridical sense of limits with a poetic sense of limits, in pursuing my general argument that the picture of the litigation scene allows “the poet” to go beyond the limits of his poetry.

Let us take an even closer look at the litigation scene in the City at Peace:

497 The people [ lāos ] were gathered together in the assembly place, and there a dispute [ neikos ]
498 had arisen, and two men were disputing [ neikeō ] about the blood-price [ poinē ]
499 for a man who had died [ apo-phthi- ]. The one made a claim [ eukheto ] to pay back in full,
500 declaring publicly to the district [ dēmos ], but the other was refusing to accept anything.
501 Both were heading for an arbitrator [ histōr ], to get a limit;

Iliad XVIII 497-501

The defendant is expounding his case to the dēmos, as we see from line 500, and Leonard Muellner makes it clear that the same word, dāmos, which must be interpreted as ‘district’ or ‘community’, functions in the Linear B documents as a legal entity in its own right. [25] Westbrook finds this step in Muellner’s argument crucial. [26] I should add that Muellner’s argument here is strengthened by the methodology that he applies to his detailed analysis, which combines historical linguistics as perfected by Antoine Meillet and Emile Benveniste with formulaic analysis as pioneered by Milman Parry and Albert Lord. Muellner stresses that Michel Lejeune, another historical linguist, defines the dāmos in the Linear B tablets as an administrative entity endowed with a juridical function. [27] In other words, the dāmos can be seen as a prototype of the polis. [28]

In light of Muellner’s work, as mediated by Westbrook, verses 499-500 of Iliad 18 can be interpreted as follows: “The one man was claiming [to be able, to have a right] to pay everything [i.e. to be free of other penalties], the other refused to accept anything [i.e. any pecuniary recompense in place {79|80} of the exile or death of the offender].” [29] Westbrook’s own work can be summarized thus:

Westbrook therefore holds that in this trial scene the killer is claiming the right to pay ransom (poinē, 498) in full (panta, 499) on the grounds of mitigated homicide, the amount to be fixed by the court. The other party is claiming and choosing the right to the revenge, as in cases of aggravated homicide. The court must set the ‘limit’ (peirar, 501) of the penalty, i.e., whether it should be revenge or ransom and also the appropriate ‘limit’ of either revenge or ransom. [30]

Again I focus on the word peirar ‘limit’ at verse 501 of the Shield passage. This reference to the ‘limit’ of the case is relevant to the visualization of an inner circle of elders who are attempting to define such limits – and of an outer circle of people who are in turn attempting to define the best definition of such limits. In terms of a linear narrative, the peirata or ‘limits’ of the Iliad would be the end of the Iliad, when Achilles finally accepts compensation in the form of apoina, that is, ransom. In terms of the concentric circles that surround the scene of litigation in the Shield of Achilles, on the other hand, the peirata or ‘limits’ of the Iliad are pushed to the outermost limits of the Iliad, that is, to the broadest possible interpretive community.

I will return in a moment to this notion of a broadest-based audience for the Iliad. The emphasis for now, however, is on the peirata or ‘limits’ of the litigation in the Shield of Achilles passage. Here it is also relevant to ask whether the claim of the defendant at Iliad XVIII 499 is a fact of paying rather than a right to pay. [31] Such a question, however, does not affect Muellner’s overall interpretation, which goes beyond the immediate context of the two litigants on the Shield – and which certainly goes beyond the objectives of those who stress simply the juridical force of both the Linear B and the Homeric eukhomai. [32] As Muellner says clearly about the context of eukhomai at XVIII 499, “The issue is not whether the fine was actually paid.” [33] Rather, as he {80|81} makes it quite clear, the issue is whether the plaintiff is morally obliged to accept the payment.

It is in this context that Muellner cites the words of Ajax to Achilles in Iliad 9:

νηλής· καὶ μέν τίς τε κασιγνήτοιο φονῆος
ποινὴν ἢ οὗ 1αιδὸς ἐδέξατο τεθνηῶτος·
καί ῥ᾽ ὃ μὲν ἐν δήμῳ μένει αὐτοῦ πόλλ᾽ ἀποτίσας,
τοῦ δέ τ᾽ ἐρητύεται κραδίη καὶ θυμὸς ἀγήνωρ
ποινὴν δεξαμένῳ· σοὶ δ᾽ἄληκτόν τε κακόν τε
θυμὸν ἐνὶ στήθεσσι θεοὶ θέσαν εἵνεκα κούρης
οἴης
Pitiless one! A man accepts from the slayer of his brother
a blood-price [ poinē ], or for a son that has died;
and the slayer remains in his own district [ dēmos ], paying a great price,
and his [= the kinsman’s] heart and proud spirit are restrained
once he accepts the blood-price [ poinē ]. But for you it was an implacable and bad
spirit that the gods put in your breast, for the sake of a girl
– just one single girl!

Iliad 9.632-639

We may compare the wording in the Shield passage:

499for a man who had died [ apo-phthi -]. The one made a claim [ eukheto ] to pay back in full,
500declaring publicly to the district [ dēmos ], but the other was refusing to accept anything.

Iliad XVIII 499-500

This passage in Iliad 18 has been compared to the Iliad 9 passage quoting the words of Ajax concerning the hypothetical acceptance of poinē and to the Iliad 24 passage concerning the actual acceptance of apoina by Achilles at the end of the Iliad (24.137, 502). [34] Here I must note a problem in some of the interpretations {81|82} of the litigation passage. In the words of Keith Stanley, some interpreters go “against strict design.” [35] By this, Stanley means that some interpreters find the Iliad 9 passage – as also the Iliad 24 passage – useful for understanding the Iliad 18 passage concerning the litigation, but not necessarily the other way around.

For Muellner, by contrast, the relationship between the outer world of the overall narrative and the inner world of the Shield, in particular the litigation scene, is not a matter of one-way communication: rather, the communication goes both ways. [36] Muellner’s interpretation applies the insights of I. A. Richards in his study of similes. [37] Richards, using the term “tenor” for any framing structure, such as a narrative, and the term “vehicle” for the simile as an inner structure that is framed by an outer structure and the term tenor for the outer structure. For Richards, as for Muellner, by contrast, the communication between the tenor or the framing structure and the vehicle or the framed structure is not one way but both ways.

Just as the logic of a simile spills over into the logic of the narrative frame, so also the logic of the story-within-a-story, the litigation scene, spills over into the logic of the story of Achilles, affecting all other passages. From Muellner’s point of view, you cannot say that you “solved” the meaning of the litigation scene if you disregard its relation to the main narrative.

From the standpoint of the Iliad as a linear progression, there is a sense of closure as the main narrative comes to an end in Book 24. From the standpoint of the Shield passage, however, the Iliad is open-ended. In other words, the vehicle re-opens the tenor. In order to make this argument, I must first confront a paradox: the world as represented on the Shield seems to be closed and unchanging, as opposed to the openness of the Iliad to changes that happen to the figures in the story while the story is in progress. The question is, however, what happens when the story draws to a close? Now the figures inside the Iliad become frozen into their actions by the finality of what has been narrated. This freezing is completed once all is said and done, at the precise moment when the whole story has been told. This moment, which is purely notional from the standpoint of Iliadic composition, gets captured by the {82|83} frozen motion picture of the Shield. Time has now stopped still, and the open-endedness of contemplating the artistic creation can begin.

The case in point is the scene of the litigants in the City at Peace: Muellner argues that the syntax of mēden ‘nothing’ at Iliad XVIII 500 makes it explicit that the miniature plaintiff in the picture will absolutely never accept any compensation. [38] Such a notional moment must be distinguished, however, from the real moments of the narrative in progress: later, in Book 19, soon after the description of the Shield, Achilles himself will receive gifts from Agamemnon, which the king had intended as compensation in the form of apoina ‘ransom’ for the loss of Briseis. [39] Still later, in Book 24, he will accept the apoina ‘ransom’ offered by Priam as compensation for the death of Patroklos. And yet, from the synoptic standpoint of the Iliad writ large, as it were, Achilles remains utterly inflexible in refusing compensation – for the ultimate loss of his own life. [40]

In order to pursue this point, I focus on an instance of textual variation at Iliad XVIII 499 between apophthimenou ‘a man who died’ and apoktamenou ‘a man who was killed’. The second variant, as we learn from the scholia, was noted by Zenodotus. If indeed the Shield passage, as a vehicle, can refer to the main narrative of the Iliad as the tenor, then the referent of this variant apoktamenou can be Patroklos, as suggested by Iliad 24 where Achilles accepts the apoina or compensation from Hektor’s father Priam for the death of Patroklos.

I use the word “referent” here in a diachronic sense, that is, viewing various different degrees of cross-referencing in Homeric composition. It is from {83|84} a diachronic perspective that I find it useful to consider the phenomenon of Homeric cross-references, especially long-distance ones that happen to reach for hundreds or even thousands of lines: it is important to keep in mind that any such cross-reference that we admire in our two-dimensional text did not just happen one time in one performance – but presumably countless times in countless reperformances within the three-dimensional continuum of a specialized oral tradition. The resonances of Homeric cross-referencing must be appreciated within the

If Patroklos is the referent of apoktamenou ‘a man who was killed’, the variant in Iliad XVIII 499, then there may be an ulterior meaning in the Ajax speech in Iliad 9: Achilles is justified in refusing compensation in the form of apoina ‘ransom’ offered by Agamemnon in the Embassy Scene of Iliad 9 because, in the long run, the compensation in question concerns the death of Patroklos, not only the loss of Briseis. [41] In the long run, Agamemnon has a share in causing the death of Patroklos and is to that extent liable. Such liability could be viewed, outside the story, as an alternative motivation for his offer of compensation in the form of apoina.

In the longer run, however, it was Achilles himself who caused the death of Patroklos, since he could not in good conscience accept the apoina ‘ransom’ offered by Agamemnon as compensation for Briseis – and since Patroklos consequently took the place of Achilles in battle. [42] In the longer run, then, Achilles can be a defendant as well as a plaintiff in a litigation over the death of Patroklos. [43] In the longest run, though, Achilles can even be the victim himself, since the Iliad makes his own death a direct consequence of the death of Patroklos. [44] No wonder the plaintiff of the Shield scene will not accept compensation in the form of poinē: potentially, he is also the defendant and even the victim! In this light, it becomes more difficult for the narrative to say that anyone is liable for killing Achilles. It becomes easier now to think of the hero not specifically as apoktamenou ‘a man who was killed’ but more generally as apophthimenou ‘a man who died’. {84|85}

Earlier, I made the claim that, just as the logic of a simile spills over into the logic of the narrative frame, so also the logic of the story-within-a-story, the litigation scene, spills over into the logic of the story of Achilles. But there is more to it: it spills over even further, into the logic of the audience that responds to the overall story. Moreover, the logic of the audience can loop back to the logic of the original litigation scene. It is an endless coming full circle, an endlessly self-renewing cycle.

In order to comprehend this coming full circle, I propose to rethink the litigation scene, one more time, all over again. In this litigation, the immediate response is to come from an inner circle of supposedly impartial elder adjudicators who compete with each other about who can best define the rights and wrongs of the case. In the inner world of the Shield of Achilles, this group of arbitrators must compete with each other in rendering justice, until one winning solution can at last be found. Such a winning solution is also needed for the Iliad as a whole, which does not formally take a position on the question “Who is aitios ‘guilty, responsible’ in the narrative?” The response to this question is left up to someone beyond the Iliad.

Within the Iliad, in the inner world of the Shield, there is a point of contact with that someone: it is the histōr ‘arbitrator’ at verse 501. He is the one whose function it is to render the most righteous dikē ‘judgment’. Within the Iliad, in the inner world of the Shield of Achilles, the ultimate winner in the competition among the inner circle of elders is to be that special someone – that single histōr ‘arbitrator’ who will at last respond to the central question of the litigation by formulating the most righteous dikē ‘judgment’. [45]

For the winner of the competition among this inner circle of elders, the immediate prize is the gold, two weights of it, highlighted in verses 507 and 508 of the litigation scene. This gold is the visual focal point of the competition, in which the ultimate winner takes all, and this winner is neither of the two litigants. The two weights of this gold, balancing the claims of the two litigants, will go instead to that special someone who gives the perfect response to the central question of the litigation.

But then the question is, how fitting a prize is this gold for that special someone? The response is open-ended. The logic of the litigation scene is not self-contained, since it reaches beyond the inner circle of supposedly impartial {85|86} elder adjudicators who compete over the perfect definition of the rights and wrongs of the case. The inner logic of the inner circle spills over into the outer logic of an outer circle of people who surround the elders, the people who are waiting to hear the elders’ definitions and who will then define who defines most justly. Moreover, as Michael Lynn-George notices, that defining voice is an end that is anticipated but “is always still to come.” [46] Lynn-George continues: “The process is a desire for a finality that is infinitely deferred.” [47] In the end, then, the inner logic of the litigation scene spills over, paradoxically, into the outer logic of an ever-expanding outermost circle, that is, people who are about to hear the Iliad. From a historical point of view, that audience is the people of the polis.

I started by saying that the logic of this outermost circle – of the audience that responds to the overall story – loops back to the logic of the innermost circle, of the litigants in the original litigation scene. By way of this looping back, the responses to the questions posed by the innermost circle become externally relativized, even if the responses of Homeric poetry are internally absolutized by its self-equation with mantic poetry. The value of the two weights of gold becomes no longer absolute but relative.

The idea of a relativized Iliad, the limits of which are delimited, paradoxically, by the expanding outermost circle of an ever-evolving polis outside the narrative, is compatible with a historical view of Homeric poetry as an open-ended and ever-evolving process. Earlier, I described this view of Homer in terms of an evolutionary model. Such an evolutionary model cannot be pinned down, I argued, to any single “Age of Homer.” I suggested that we need not think of any single age of Homer, but rather, several ages of Homer.

This evolutionary model is the lens through which I see the picture on the Shield of Achilles, with its concentric circles of limits expanding further and further outward. [48] I repeat what I said earlier, this time going one step further. The logic of the litigation scene spills over into the logic of a surrounding circle of supposedly impartial elder adjudicators who are supposed to define the rights and wrongs of the case. Next, the logic of this inner circle {86|87} of elders spills over into the logic of an outer circle of people who surround the elders, the people who will define who defines most justly. Next, it spills over into the logic of the outermost circle, people who are about to hear the Iliad. These people who hear Homeric poetry, as I said, are to become the people of the polis. Going one step further, these people are even ourselves. {87|88}

Footnotes

[ back ] 1. The original version of this essay is Nagy 1997a.

[ back ] 2. Seaford 1994, esp. p. 73, where the “narrative development” of the Iliadic ending is correlated with “this historical development of the polis.” For narrative details reflecting the emerging institutions of the polis, cf. Scully 1990, esp. pp. 101-102.

[ back ] 3. My translation of apoina as ‘ransom’ follows the reasoning of Wilson 2002:9-11, 13-39.

[ back ] 4. Seaford 1994:69-71, 176-177; at p. 176, there is an important adjustment on the formulation of Macleod 1982:16 (“the value of humanity and fellow-feeling”). See also Crotty (1994), who argues that the ceremony of supplication that takes place in Book 24 of the Iliad creates an emotional effect so powerful – and so troubling – that it will take another epic, this time the Odyssey, to follow up on its resonances. For further refinements on the poetics of supplication in the Iliad, see Kim 2000, esp. pp. 18-34.

[ back ] 5. On the correspondences between depicted details on the Shield of Achilles and narrated details in the main narrative of the Iliad, see Taplin 1980. The detail that I am about to consider is not among the ones treated in that work. On the general topic of the poetics of ecphrasis in the Shield of Achilles passage, see Hubbard 1992 and Becker 1995. See also Stansbury-O’Donnell 1995 for a wide-ranging critique of published interpretations concerning the composition of the Shield – from the standpoint of art history as well as literary history.

[ back ] 6. Lessing 1962 [1766]:ch. 19, pp. 99-100.

[ back ] 7. Cf. Hubbard 1992:17: “We do not see the shield as a finished product (for no man save Achilles can dare look upon it), but we see it in the process of fabrication by Hephaestus, as he adds ring after ring.” Cf. Becker 1995:121; also Lynn-George 1988:49, 183-184 (whose valuable formulations will be discussed further below).

[ back ] 8. On the juridicial background for the notion that a speaker is authorized to speak by holding a skēptron, see Easterling 1989:106, with specific references to this passage in Iliad 18.

[ back ] 9. Cf. Seaford 1994:25: “The world on the shield seems to represent the everyday life of the audience, including a city at peace, as a contrast to the heroic world of the main narrative, in which there is no judicial mechanism to resolve the crisis of reciprocity.”

[ back ] 10. Cf. Edwards 1991:214, 218; for analogies to this description of early Greek law in early Germanic law, see Wolff 1946, esp. pp. 44-46. For more on the litigation scene, see also Hubbard 1992:29-30, Becker 1995:119-123.

[ back ] 11. Muellner 1976:100-106.

[ back ] 12. Hooker (1980:139) thinks that ke-ke-me-na ko-to-na is common land “leased” from the dāmos

[ back ] 13. Westbrook 1992.

[ back ] 14. Ibid.:73-74.

[ back ] 15. Ibid.:74.

[ back ] 17. Translation after ibid.:57; highlighting mine.

[ back ] 18. Translation after ibid.:58.

[ back ] 19. As we shall see later, however, the ultimate winner of the gold in Iliad 18.507-508 turns out to be neither of the litigants. On the two weights of gold, see also the discussion of Stansbury-O’Donnell 1995:323.

[ back ] 20. Westbrook 1992:73.

[ back ] 21. Translation after ibid.:61-62.

[ back ] 22. Ibid.:71.

[ back ] 23. Ibid.:75.

[ back ] 24. Ibid.:75-76.

[ back ] 25. Muellner 1976:104.

[ back ] 26. Westbrook 1992:67.

[ back ] 27. Muellner 1976:104, citing Lejeune 1965:12.

[ back ] 28. Cf. PH 251 n. 10.

[ back ] 29. Edwards 1991:215.

[ back ] 30. Ibid.:216.

[ back ] 31. Ibid.:215, citing Perpillou (1970:537), who cites the evidence of Linear B eukhomai and who translates the Homeric eukhomai at 18.499 in terms of the defendant’s claiming a right, not a fact. Westbrook (1992) did not use the work of Perpillou.

[ back ] 32. Perpillou 1970:537.

[ back ] 33. Muellner 1976:106.

[ back ] 34. Muellner 1976 and Andersen 1976. Cf. Edwards (1991:216), who cites the second of these publications but not the first.

[ back ] 35. Stanley 1993:309, with specific reference to Andersen 1976. There is a similar problem with the interpretation of Edwards 1991:213.

[ back ] 36. Muellner 1976:106.

[ back ] 37. Richards 1936.

[ back ] 38. Muellner 1976:106. Wilson (2002:161)agrees, adding this adjustment: what the plaintiff will never accept is “composition,” that is, payment in prestige goods. The plaintiff reserves the right to exact tisis, that is, payment in harm (ibid.:39).

[ back ] 39. My formulation here is based on my earlier wording in PH 254, with an adjustment added in the light of the insights of Wilson 2002. Wilson argues convincingly that Achilles refuses to think of Agamemnon’s gifts as apoina ‘ransom’. See Wilson 2002:10: “Although Achilles feels he is owed poinē [revenge] for the seizure of Briseis, Agamemnon offers him apoina [ransom].” See also ibid.: 87: “When Achilles redefines the seizure of Briseis as loss of a bride (alokhos thmarēs, 9.337), he puts her in a familial relationship to himself and, as a result, transfers her from the sphere of prestige goods to that of persons, and, more to the point, family.” For a most perceptive analysis of the role of Briseis in the Homeric Iliad, see Dué 2002.

[ back ] 40. Wilson (2002:202 n. 97) says: “I find my point that Achilleus ultimately seeks compensation for his own life independently confirmed by Nagy (1997[d])204.” The page cited by Wilson contains the same point as rewritten here. On this point, I disagree with the reasoning of Lowenstam 1993:100 n. 103 (citing Andersen 1976:16).

[ back ] 41. Cf. PH 253-255.

[ back ] 42. PH 254 n. 29, esp. with reference to Iliad 9.502-512.

[ back ] 43. BA 109-110, 312. Here I find it useful to invoke the Near Eastern concept of a “split legal personality,” as discussed by Wilson 2002:198 n. 25.

[ back ] 44. PH 254.

[ back ] 45. This formulation builds on the observations in PH 255.

[ back ] 46. Lynn-George 1988:183.

[ back ] 47. Ibid.:184.

[ back ] 48. In terms of an evolutionary model, I suggest that the variant noted by Zenodotus at Iliad 18.499, apoktamenou ‘a man who was killed’ instead of apophthimenou ‘a man who died’, reflects a relatively earlier version of Iliadic narrative.

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The Shield of Achilles: Ends of the Iliad and Beginnings of the Polis

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