1. Introduction 1.1 Characterizing Agamemnon Homer [1] and his audience knew Agamemnon as the primary leader of well over 1,000 Achaian ships that sailed against Troy. [2] He led an intense ten-year struggle, only to return… Read more
2. Characterization in Homer and Agamemnon’s Appeal in Iliad 4 2.1 Traditional Characterization Our discussion in the last chapter argued that Homeric characterization is tradition-based. Epic characters, at least the major ones, are already known in some detail to Homer and his core audience by distinguishable… Read more
3. The Characterization of Agamemnon in the Odyssey 3.1 Introduction Agamemnon is in Hades by the time the action of the Odyssey opens. This necessitates that his personal appearances be incorporeal and only in the underworld (Odyssey 11 and 24). Agamemnon as a traditional character is… Read more
6. Beyond Thebes “And what about you, Nikêratos—what kind of knowledge do you take pride in?” And he said: “My father, because he wished for me to be a good man, compelled me to memorize all of Homer. And now I can recite the whole Iliad and Odyssey.” Xenophon Symposium… Read more
Conclusion: Endgame “Simonides said that Hesiod is a gardener while Homer is a garland-weaver—the first planted the legends of the heroes and gods and then the second braided them together in the garland of the Iliad and the Odyssey.” Simonides [… Read more
Acknowledgements This book has its origins in my University of Chicago dissertation. I treasure my conversations with my advisors: first, the late David Grene, who demanded that every act of translation be a performance, and then James Redfield, Laura Slatkin and the late Paul Friedrich. Each of… Read more
Introduction “Isn’t everything that is said by the storytellers and the poets a narrative of what has happened or what is or what is to come?” “What else?” he said. Plato Republic 392d This book plumbs the virtues… Read more
1. The Elements of Poetics and Presence The specific virtue of solo Homeric performance has come into view: namely, the performer’s position between representation and action. The bard drifts within the space of half-acting; he does not merely alternate smoothly between narrating and enacting. Epic performance brings… Read more
2. Marpessa, Kleopatra, and Phoenix Perhaps it means that at the point where we are we have lost all touch with the true theater, since we confine it to the domain of what daily thought can reach, the familiar or unfamiliar domain of consciousness;—and if… Read more
Interlude 1. Ring Thinking: Phoenix in Iliad 23 A full account of the theatricality or performability of Phoenix’s speech involves features such as structure, image, and mythological background. This Interlude shows how these features carry forward from Book 9 to reappear in the narrative of Phoenix’s other… Read more
