Introduction 1. Kinyras and Kinnaru Kinyras of Cyprus Already for Homer, Kinyras loomed on the eastern horizon, a Great King who treated on equal terms with Agamemnon, sending him a marvelous daedalic breastplate as a friendship-gift: Next in turn he donned the corselet round his chestWhich once Kinyras gave him as a friendship-gift.For he had heard a great report on Cyprus—the Achaeans… Read more
Part I: The Cult of Kinnaru 2. Instrument Gods and Musician Kings in Early Mesopotamia: Divinized Instruments Already in the late Uruk period (ca. 3300–2900), reverence for cult-objects is implied by the ritual deposition of ‘retired’ tools from an old temple when a new one was built over it (for example, the Eanna complex at Uruk); the burial of objects including musical instruments and weapons… Read more
3. The Knr The Mesopotamian material, together with the Divine Kinnaru of Ugarit and further evidence from the Hurro-Hittite world, indicates that the divinization of instruments was one facet of an ‘international’ music culture operative in the BA Near East. Fortunately, the latter enormous subject need not be exhausted here. We may simply focus on the knr, for which there is relatively abundant textual evidence and associated… Read more
Chapter 1. “Winged Words”: How We Came to Have Our Iliad Our Iliad consists—to quote a well-known Homeric formula—of “winged words” (ἔπεα πτερόεντα). An image in a Bronze Age fresco from Pylos suggests that as early as Mycenaean times, poetry in performance was conceived of as being in flight (Plate 1). [1] As we have seen, the nature of the Iliad—as a… Read more
Chapter 2. Sunt Aliquid Manes: Ancient Quotations of Homer A multitextual approach to Homeric epic acknowledges and even embraces an expected amount of variation between performances of oral poetry. Because this multiformity was generated within a system, the attested variations enable us to appreciate the poetry of the Homeric epics on more than just the level of a single performance. By adopting a multitextual approach, we can,… Read more
Chapter 3. “And Then an Amazon Came”: Homeric Papyri In the previous chapter we saw that the earliest witnesses to the text of the Iliad, in the form of early quotations, are multiform. Additional verses and variations within verses are not uncommon, and the attested variations are often of a demonstrably formulaic nature, by which I mean they are perfectly in keeping with what we know of… Read more
Chapter 4. The Lost Verses of the Iliad: Medieval Manuscripts and the Poetics of a Multiform Epic Tradition In this chapter we skip ahead many centuries, to the medieval manuscript tradition. The medieval manuscripts are our best source of information about the texts known to the Hellenistic scholars who were in charge of the library of Alexandria, including Zenodotus, Aristophanes of Byzantium, and Aristarchus. The scholia in… Read more
Conclusion. “In Appearance Like a God”: Textual Criticism and the Quest for the One True Homer Aristarchus athetized at least seven passages of three verses or more in Iliad 20 alone. Each athetesis gives us insight into an editor who was struggling to account for a mythological and poetic tradition that was multiform and at times contradictory. Some passages cause issues with narrative continuity, some passages Aristarchus… Read more
Plates Plate 1. A fresco from the so-called Palace of Nestor in Pylos suggests that as early as Mycenaean times, poetry in performance has been conceived of as being in flight. Drawing by Valerie Woelfel, after a reconstruction by Piet de Jong. Plate 2. Red-figure skyphos attributed to Macron (Louvre G146), depicting Agamemnon leading away Briseis (side A). Neither side A nor side B (Plate 3)… Read more
Bibliography Ahlberg-Cornell, G. 1992. Myth and Epos in Early Greek Art: Representation and Interpretation. Jonsered, Sweden. Alexiou, M. 1974. The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition. Cambridge. 2nd ed., Lanham, MD, 2002. Allan, W. 2005. “Arms and the Man: Euphorbus, Hector, and the Death of Patroclus.” Classical Quarterly 55:1–16. Allen, T. W. 1899. “On the… Read more
