The Simile of the Cranes and Pygmies: A Study of Homeric Metaphor

Brandeis University

[This essay was originally published in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, Vol. 93 (1990), pp. 59–101. The original pagination is marked in brackets ‘{ }’, so, for example, the break between pages 59 and 60 will be as follows: {59|60}.]

The question is, what does such a simile signify? Since Greek epic works by tacit conventions familiar to the poet and his audience but not necessarily to us, one way to begin is to restore the simile’s conventionality by observing its relationship to other similes of like content or {59|60} in similar contexts. [1] Then, on the assumption that the language in metaphors and similes is determined by their specific narrative and metaphoric context, [2] one can examine this simile in relation to the narrative and to the other metaphors of the rest of Book 3: after all, in position if not significance, this is the book’s first metaphor. [3] Lastly, since Greek epic is traditional poetry, it is plausible to examine the historical past and/or future of this simile in its conventional, narrative, and metaphoric context. My contention is that the similes are not less traditional {60|61} than the rest of the epic, and that tradition, far from bearing the past as a meaningless burden, continually enhances and preserves the epic’s expressive and evocative power. [4] An investigation of this simile’s traditional background provides a context of variants over time that are analogous to mythical variants and that function as yet another guide to understanding. The overall goal, then, is to open a set of questions about the way epic similes are composed and to suggest answers to them. [5]

Generally speaking, to interpret a simile is to explain its relation to its narrative context or, in “specialized” terminology, the relation between tenor (here, epic narrative) and vehicle (the simile itself). [6] But for Greek epic, the nature of this relation is the heart of the problem. Homeric similes either consist of or introduce elements that appear to us irrelevant to the narrative context. Leaving aside this issue for the moment, we need to begin by establishing the relation, whatever it may be, not between this vehicle and its tenor, but between it and others like it or joined to like tenors. Such parallels would have constituted a {61|62} primary frame of reference for an epic audience and poet. So other similes about cranes—there is no other mention of Pygmies in epic, with or without cranes—are a suitable point of departure.

The simile at the head of Iliad 3 follows the Catalogue of Trojans at the end of Iliad 2 and the mustering and march of the Trojan army into battle. In a similar though not identical context, just before the Catalogue of the Achaeans, when Agamemnon’s army is mustered, its march is embellished with similes. First their radiance (αἴγλη) is compared to the far-seen blaze of a forest-fire on the mountain-tops (2.455–458), and then they are likened to flocks of birds, including cranes:

The single mention of cranes as one of three possible subjects of this simile may seem tenuous grounds for comparing it to the simile of the cranes and Pygmies. Yet the contextual similarity of the two suggests deeper links, and the listing of two or three possible subjects for the simile is a peculiar but not uncommon feature of Homeric similes that {62|63} needs to be understood before it can be considered grounds for disjoining the two similes in question. [7] In fact, the list of alternative subjects is an artistic aspect of the simile’s form: it begins with a generic correspondence between men and birds, then the picture develops with more and more specific, sensual details. The birds are in social groups (ἔθνεα), they are either geese, cranes, or swans, they are in an Asian meadow, actually the banks of the Kaiister, and so on. A predominance of nouns and adjectives at the beginning of the simile (13 in the first three lines, no verbs) shifts to a predominance of verbs and adverbs at the end (seven in the last two lines, with two nouns) as the details of action become more and more precise. The scene develops an overall contrast between its vague opening, in which the objects seen are gradually more clearly identified, and its precise close, which abounds in details of movement and sound. So the list of possible subjects for the simile is an aesthetic element of an artistic form, not the hesitancy or vagueness of a second-rate poet.

Nevertheless, this artistry is a less constant feature of Homeric similes than the alternative list itself, which has another function. [8] This becomes clear once we observe the similarities between the composition of similes and that of folktales as analyzed by Vladimir Propp. Inside a defined corpus of tales, the same narrative themes from a fixed repertoire are carried out by a widely varying cast of characters in such a way as to give the listener a simultaneous impression of the tales’ variety and their sameness. [9] Similarly in epic, boars and lions are actually the subjects of identical similes, [10] and at times the poet can also compose a simile the subject of which is “a lion or a boar” (Il. 12.41 f.; cf. 5.782–783):{63|64}

There are other similes, however, in which the two are not interchangeable, for the tradition treats lions as predators who initiate aggression while boars are aggressive defenders, not attackers. [11] If nothing else, the simple formal parallelism between the alternative cast of characters at Il. 12.41 f. and at 2.459 ff. suggests that geese, cranes, and swans are members of an associated group like boars and lions. A simile in which one of the three species is singled out could, in principle, be composed about either of the other two, though individuals within the group might have secondary traits and associations that would render them appropriate to certain contexts but inappropriate to others. It needs further research to establish that a system of composition based on a varying but associated cast of characters is generalizable for epic similes, [12] but such a system would bespeak an aesthetic of regularized flexibility not incompatible with the formal flexibility typical of epic formula and theme. [13]

That cranes, then, are only one of three possible subjects of the simile at Il. 2.458 ff. need not diminish its relevance to the study of a simile about cranes alone. The context’s ambivalence with respect to the traditional simile system makes possible the choice of subjects, and we can assume that the other birds in the simile are functionally associated with cranes in the tradition, a factor that can widen the scope of our research. In a way, we can even treat the three-subject simile as though it were about cranes only since in this context at least geese, cranes, and swans are true synonyms. [14] {64|65}

To look more closely at the thematic variables in this simile and their contextual relevance: it concerns a group of relatively large, social (implied in ἔθνεα [15] ) birds on a meadow beside a river, first flying here and there, then alighting with shrieks and making the meadow resound mightily (σμαραγεῖ). All but one of these details of the simile have very precise analogues in the narrative. The men called out to muster consist of social groups (again, ἔθνεα) who pour forth onto the plain (πεδίον) or, two lines below, on the meadow of the river Scamander, making a terrible din (κονάβιζε) [16] with their feet and their horses’ hooves. Just as the birds alight (προκαθιζόντων) on the meadow, so the men stand (ἔσταν) still after rushing forth.

The single detail in the simile that has no precise analogue in the narrative is as follows:

Is this a careless irrelevancy? A detail pertinent to the simile itself but irrelevant to its narrative context? Or is there some other explanation for its disturbing appearance—disturbing for us, at least, since elements like this one transgress what we sense as intuitive limits on irrelevance in an analogy.

In the past, various ways of accounting for these transgressions have been proposed: that Homeric similes were made on an aesthetic rule that is different from our rule of analogy—for instance, that an epic simile is built up from a single Vergleichungspunkt, or that it aims at Stimmungsgleichnis, similarity of register instead of the “logic” of analogy. Others have suggested that such elements are lapses ascribable {65|66} to the strenuous demands of oral performance or to the inferior poetic quality in “later” layers of the text. In fact, the problem has larger dimensions than the existence of superfluous elements in so-called “extended” similes. There are times when the opposite situation obtains: a comparison is made between things that seem to us too similar to be analogous; and finally, there are similes in which tenor and vehicle seem devoid of any similarity whatever, as when Hektor charging into battle is said to resemble a snowy mountain. I suggest that the global problem and its solution lie in the factor of tradition: a conventional, traditional medium like Homeric epic has the capacity to omit from the surface of its discourse elements that are admitted to social memory, that are evoked by the traditional poetic language in the poet and his audience but not in us. [17] In a word, it is not that the longer Homeric similes are “extended”; instead, all similes, including the longer ones, are “condensed.” On this hypothesis, the several peculiarities of Homeric similes can be explained by one principle inherent in the medium itself and consistent with it rather than through more or less convincing special pleading.

To determine the traditional contextual associations of the “superfluous” line 2.462, we need go no further than a simile that deserves consideration in this discussion anyhow, namely, the one used in a parallel context at the beginning of Book 2, when Agamemnon musters his army in order to test the veracity of his false dream:

Among the numerous parallels in diction between this simile and the one involving cranes at 2.458, Ι single out for formal comparison a line that elaborates on the diverse, clustered movement of the bees, here explicitly correlated with the movement of men in squads to their mustering places:

Compare:

The only other instance in epic of the two words that terminate this line is:

Not surprisingly, the παρθένοι referred to here are actually the prophetic bee-maidens that Apollo grants Hermes. A few lines below their movements are described as follows:

So closer examination reveals that 2.462, which at first appeared irrelevant to its immediate context, actually is relevant to it, since it belongs to a traditional set of metaphors whose nature is established by the bee simile of 2.85–92 and the description of the bee maidens in HHerm. 553–558. [18] If we add the general consideration that forms of the root πετ- ‘fly’ in Homer are traditional, even dead metaphors for the rapid movement of warriors (and their horses), [19] then the relevance of 2.462 can be clearly stated. It calls to mind, as does its parallel in form and context at 2.90, the rapid movement of swarming squads of men to their various positions for a muster. The traditional, though inexplicit associations of the diction at 2.462 fit its narrative context as precisely as the explicit associations of the diction in the rest of the simile. In a sense, then, the traditional simile can narrate.

Nor is this correspondence between a simile about bees and a simile about geese, cranes, and swans a unique or inexplicable phenomenon. As subjects of similes, bees belong to a group that includes wasps. Both occur in mustering similes with themes and diction common to each other and the two bird similes we have just been considering. The mustering of the Myrmidons for battle from their ships (16.267: ἐκ νηῶν ἐχέοντο; cp. 2.464–465: νεῶν ἄπο … προχέοντο) is likened to wasps (σφῆκες) pouring forth (16.259: ἐξεχέοντο) at the silly boys who rile them or even a passer-by who disturbs them by accident; their fearless defense of their children (16.266: πρόσσω πᾶς πέτεται καὶ ἀμύνει οἶσι τεκέσσι) brings a common woe upon many. With bees, they are alternate subjects of a simile (12.167: σφῆκες … αἰόλοι ἠὲ μέλισσαι) on the same theme of a group rising up to defend its children against individual predators. The aggressive aspect of these similes is distinct from that of the simile of the bees in 2.86 ff. and the birds at 2.459 ff., but appropriately so: the troops likened to bees are being called to muster for assembly (2.93: εἰς ἀγορήν), not battle. {68|69}

Returning once again to the group consisting of geese, cranes, and swans, they appear to constitute an associative group of large, social birds who shriek, fly in formation, and alight noisily upon plains beside rivers. These characteristics make them suitable for comparison with the armies mustering at Troy. There is only one other mention of cranes in Homeric epic, also in a simile. At the end of Book 15, before the battle commences around Protesilaos’ ship, Aias, wielding a ship timber no less than 22 cubits in length, shouts encouragement to the demoralized Achaeans all along the shore, moving among them like an acrobatic jockey changing horses in a race. But his enemy Hektor is not put off:

The portrait of a social group (again, ἔθνος, 691) of birds, geese, cranes, or swans, gathered beside a river recurs here, but this time there are two different details: they are ‘feeding’ (βοσκομενάων, 691) beside the river, not shrieking, flying about, etc.; and also, they are the object of direct attack by a single predator, a blazing (αἴθων, 690) eagle. The attack on feeding animals is reminiscent of the simile used twice to describe the way in which Agamemnon was killed:

More germane is this simile in Diomedes’ aristeia:

In the case of Agamemnon, and in the context of the Odyssey as a whole, the language implies that Agamemnon’s slaughter was a perversion: unsuspecting, he was butchered like an animal being sacrificed for a dinner such as the one he was attending at the time (not an inappropriate return for the crime of Atreus). In the battle narrative of the Iliad, however, the implications are not the same: [20] that the cow or calf is feeding when killed by a predator is a pathetic detail marking its unsuspecting defenselessness—though the pathos is perhaps distanced and the scene ennobled by an ironical contrast of herbivorous bovine with carnivorous predator, each in the process of getting food.

As always in Homeric epic, the eagle (αἰετός), vulture (φήνη, αἰγυπιός), or falcon (κίρκος, ἴρηξ)—another group of three—like the lion or boar, stands in analogy to an aggressive, individualized hero distinct from his own host of fighting men. Being family-centered, predatory, {70|71} and carnivorous birds of the mountains, they are the opposite of geese, cranes, and swans, the gregarious and herbivorous waterfowl of the river plains below who here, as elsewhere, constitute their easy prey. For a simile—and there are many others—of parallel context to Hektor’s but with its cast of characters selected from among the associative groups eagle, vulture, falcon vs. cranes, geese, swans, compare:

To return to Hektor’s simile, it seems to entail a slight flaw in the relationship between tenor and vehicle: though the eagle attacks a group of feeding waterfowl, Hektor himself does not attack a mass of men, but a glossy-prowed ship, νεὸς κυανοπρῴροιο (693). But the problem is a false one: the ship is his synecdochic target, a talisman to the demoralized Achaeans who, menaced with the loss of their homes, are fighting in fear around it. This is a false problem, but not a trivial one, for the traditional language is consistently precise about such details in bird similes. When tenor changes, vehicle’s predators and victims change accordingly. For instance, two isolated heroes fighting each other resemble two vultures fighting one another on a high cliff (16.428 ff.). [21] Several individualized heroes fighting against a massed army are like vultures from the mountains swooping down on the massed birds of the plain (22.302 ff.)—the simile uses vultures, not eagles and falcons, since they are relatively sociable birds (as wolves are more sociable than lions and boars), though they are not gregarious {71|72} like geese, cranes, and swans. [22] Likewise, the falcon, a smaller, faster predator of equal prestige to the eagle and the vulture but having a variant subset of birds as its victims—namely, jackdaws, starlings, and the rock-dove—always has predator and victim precisely matched to tenor. Akhilleus chasing a terrified Hektor is like a falcon pursuing a rock-dove, then pitying it and letting it escape (22.138 ff.). When the narrative features a single hero attacking a massed army, not a single victim, the falcon’s prey are gregarious jackdaws and/or starlings (16.582 ff., 17.755 ff.). If no particular victim is to hand, either none is spoken of in the vehicle (21.251) or its species is left undefined (13.62 ff.: ὄρνεον ἄλλο “another bird”). So the choice of geese, cranes, and swans as the eagle’s prey in Hektor’s simile represents a choice meant to fit the narrative context from a range of precise, available alternatives.

From this analysis we can begin to glimpse the way in which such similes were composed. The traditional poet worked with a system of groups, each comprising not more than three members: geese, cranes, and swans; eagle, vulture, or falcon; jackdaws, starlings, or rock-dove; bees or wasps; lions or boars. Each associative group has conventional characteristics in common that suits it to certain contexts; some member of the group may have distinctive characteristics that suits it to some contexts but not others. We have observed the difference between lions and boars, vultures as against eagles and falcons, the rock-dove as against starlings and jackdaws. The analysis offered up to now, however, has not been sensitive enough to determine why an eagle might be chosen over a falcon for a given simile; ultimately, it may be possible to make such a discrimination. [23] Furthermore, it appears as though the similes are well-attuned to the narrative environments {72|73} in which they are designed to function, that tenor and vehicle are, to put it concretely, creatures of one another. Despite this generative interdependence of simile and narrative, the similes themselves are not lacking in verisimilitude. Some might balk at the notion that an eagle could or would attack a bird as large as a crane or swan; but until recently, the Emperors of Japan forbade their subjects to hunt the Manchurian crane in order to afford themselves the exclusive pleasure of doing so with goshawks, predatory birds comparable to the European eagles. [24] But the similes are true-to-life not because they are based on the daily life of the epic performers/composers, or still less because they are intended to be a window on the world of the poet and his audience. It is much more consistent with the nature and aesthetics of archaic epic poetry to hypothesize that similes like these are a transformation of traditional lore that has, over time, developed into a coherent, generative, poetic system with formal aspects that are typical of folklore genres. [25]

The discussion of these other similes throws into relief some features of the cranes and Pygmies simile at the head of Iliad 3. First, its context now appears to be peculiar:

Unlike the narrative context of any other bird simile, not simply the ones cited thus far, this passage describes a massed army marching into battle, that is, after instead of during its muster, on the offensive, not the victim of attack by some single, overpowering hero. The simile proper begins with a self-contained expression that occurs alone once elsewhere, [26] ὄρνιθες ὥς ‘like birds,’ and then develops after a second {73|74} analogical conjunction, ἠΰτε ‘just as,’ as though the simile that follows is actually an expansive association triggered by the first simile rather than by the narrative itself:

Some aspects of this developing image are by now familiar: the shriek of these birds, who in fact have a windpipe up to five feet in length with which they produce piercing, sonorous, trombone-like sounds; the flight from violence that their shriek signals, even if here the violence is not that of predators but of the weather; and also, their presence near a river, in this case the Okeanos.

But another aspect of the image is not familiar at all: these cranes are high in the sky, a position reserved for predators in other bird similes. The reference here is to a piece of lore also mentioned in the Works and Days of Hesiod, that the annual southerly migration of the cranes marks the onset of winter:

The migratory shriek, then, accounts for the birds’ disquieting position, but why they are spoken of in connection with the marching of a mustered army into battle is not clear until the last two lines of the simile:

So these cranes are in fact predatory, carnivorous, deadly birds, and their shriek is, after all, a war-cry, not the noise of a flock settling on a river plain or the outcry of a falcon’s prey, such as the one in this simile from the seventeenth book of the Iliad:

In the cranes and Pygmies simile, then, the cranes have actually replaced the predatory eagle, falcon, or vulture in other bird similes, and the Pygmies have replaced the cranes, swans or geese (or, in this parallel, starlings, jack-daws, and rock-dove).

Does this inversion of the cranes’ role have any special significance? The question should be asked since such an inversion is qualitatively different from a change to an alternate cast of characters within an otherwise coherent associative group. For predatoriness is a trait in conflict with the traits of cranes elsewhere. It is not just a special dimension of cranes that distinguishes them from swans and geese, as a boar’s aggressive defensiveness distinguishes it from a lion, or as the solitary dove distinguishes itself from daws and starlings. Those {76|77} distinctive traits are consistent with the overall role of lions and boars, or rock-doves, starlings, and jackdaws, but ‘attack-cranes’ are fundamentally unlike geese, or swans, or even other cranes.

The first question that comes to mind in response to this one is, in this particular narrative context, did the poet have any alternative to the simile that we have? Once the poet had associated the massed, attacking army with birds, there is in fact no extant alternative to the simile of these cranes shrieking their war-cry at the Pygmies since there is no other instance of a bird simile applying to a massed attacking army. There are, however, alternatives to the choice of birds for such a context. There are similes about wasps (16.259 ff.), wolves (16.156 ff.), and wind and waves (13.795 ff.). This last is a particularly striking simile that follows upon a catalogue of Trojan heroes, precisely like the simile of the cranes and Pygmies. So the poet’s tradition did provide alternate simile subjects in this context, nor was it averse to repeating elaborated similes. As the only bird simile in such a context, as the only simile specifically about cranes, and as the only simile in which cranes or their ilk invert roles and behave like their predators, the simile at the head of Book 3 is an exceptional one. Why the poet placed it there and what its several peculiarities may signify are now the preoccupations of this essay.

The answers to these questions lie in a thorough understanding of the simile’s immediate metaphoric and thematic context. In the narrative that follows the simile comparing the Trojan army to the cranes attacking the Pygmies, their fighting army is ritually reduced to a single representative, who on this occasion is not Hector but Paris. This substitution—of a single combatant for the group, and of Paris in Hektor’s role—is suggestive in itself, and Paris’ portrayal in the subsequent narrative is a reasonable place to seek an explanation for predatory cranes. Is he portrayed as a conventional warrior in heroic single combat? Or is he an analogue, in diction and theme, to the cranes?

An image depicting Paris near the end of Book 3 is an ideal point of departure from which to describe the consistent imagery surrounding him, which is emphatically not that of a warrior. Aphrodite has just snatched him from the battlefield—Menelaos was about to kill him. She places him in his bedroom, disguises herself as an old woman, a {77|78} favorite wool-working slave of Helen’s from Lakedaimon, and then, having found Helen on the rampart, plucks at her fine robe to get her attention and says:

This passage has been discussed in a compelling analysis of the role of Aphrodite in Greek epic by Deborah Boedeker. [30] Her hypothesis is that the diction and functions of Aphrodite in Homer are developments from those of the Indo-European dawn-goddess whose descendant in Greek, Eos, she has all but displaced. Like Eos and her Vedic cognate, Usas, Aphrodite is a goddess associated with the dance. [31] All three goddesses are said to possess mortal consorts. [32] As Eos brings Tithonos to her θάλαμος (HAphr. 235), so Aphrodite has placed Paris in his θάλαμος (3.382). In her role as Διὸς θυγάτηρ (3.374), [33] she has just rescued him from death on the field of battle; significantly, the exact cognate in Vedic of this Greek phrase, diva(s) duḥitár-, is restricted to Uṣas. Three times in epic, Eos “snatches/rapes” for herself a mortal {78|79} consort; the word is a form of the verb ἁρπάζω in two of these (Kleitos, Od. 14.250, and Tithonos, HAphr. 218: ἥρπασεν). The verb ἁρπάζω is also used for Aphrodite’s “snatch/rape” of Paris from the field of battle in this particular context (3.380: τὸν δ’ ἐξήρπαξ’ Ἀφροδίτη). [34]

In terms of the history of this theme and the diction associated with it, Aphrodite’s motive in snatching Paris should be to keep him as her own mortal consort, [35] not to restore him to Helen. And as Boedeker points out, that is precisely Helen’s bitterly ironic suggestion to Aphrodite once she divines that the old slave is in fact the goddess disguised:

Usually, the aftermath for the mortal raped by the dawn-goddess is either elevation in the cosmic hierarchy, or demotion, or some combination of the two: he goes down to Hades, or he becomes immortal, or ageless and immortal, or at least the damaged father of a superhuman child. [36] Instead, Helen has turned the motif on its head, suggesting that Aphrodite, who is actually disguised as a δούλη ‘slave-woman,’ be everlastingly demoted to the human sphere and suffer the ultimate humiliation of being wife or even slave to a mortal.

So the scene (3.369–409) in which Aphrodite as a slave-woman beckons Helen to find Paris in her bedroom reflects an ensemble of {79|80} conventional epic themes, with their accompanying diction, that were originally associated with the Indo-European dawn-goddess and are now appropriate to Aphrodite: the metaphoric dance from which Paris seems to have come or to which he seems to be going; the θάλαμος in which he lies; the rescuing, protective Διὸς θυγάτηρ; the rape of a mortal consort and his subsequent cosmic transformation, here inverted into his goddess’s demotion. More can be said about the dance theme. In epic Aphrodite’s specific participation in the dance (as against her more general association with it) is limited to two passages (HApoll. 194–196; Od. 17.194; cf. HAphr. 119) in which she joins the Kharites and seems to play a role parallel to Artemis’. [37] In fact, the metaphoric dance of Paris seems to have the most direct associations with the dancing place of Artemis, a traditional locale for the seduction of nubile adolescent virgins (κούραι, παρθένοι, νύμφαι) both in epic and in cult myths. [38] For example, the mother of a Myrmidon general named Eudoros awakened the desire of Hermes there:

Or again, in the Hymn to Aphrodite, the goddess takes on the form and stature of a παρθένος ἀδμήτη ‘unwed maiden’ (82) and explains her sudden presence to Ankhises with the same motif:

In this instance, a goddess in the act of taking a mortal consort for herself, an action usually denoted by a form of the verb ἁρπάζω, is disguising herself as a mortal virgin snatched by Hermes from Artemis’ χορός (ἁρπάζω: 117, 121). The same thematic links underlie the resemblance of Paris to a dancer in 3.393–394. True, he is no nubile maid snatched by a god from the χορός of Artemis: he is a male snatched by a goddess as though to be her consort, as hungry for a {81|82} sexual encounter with Helen as when he first made love to her, [40] and a hero resembling a dancer, not a fighter.

From where, in fact, has he been snatched? The poet tells us twice, once before the combat with Menelaos begins, once at its actual beginning:

So Aphrodite has snatched Paris not from a χορός, but a χῶρος, a ritually demarcated space for his single combat with Menelaos. In another connection altogether Boedeker has made a strong case for the historical relationship between the words χορός and χῶρος ‘special place,’ showing that cognates of their common root in Indo-European have thematic associations in Greek and Indie with the dawn-goddess. [41] The metaphoric use of the word χορός at 3.393 (to designate the place from which Paris came or to which he is going) in connection with a series of inherited, conventional themes that actually call up the word χῶρος (to designate the place from which he is actually snatched) reinforces her historical argument and suggests the creativity of her method. From a synchronic standpoint, the inherited χῶρος ‘place of battle’/χορός ‘dancing place’ combination is a play on words with {82|83} significant implications about the thematic structure of Book 3. To cite a parallel the implications of which have not been exhausted, I refer to Schadewaldt’s observations on the verbal and thematic links between the names and functions of Kleopatra, wife of Meleagros, and Patroklos, Akhilleus’ companion. [42] So it may be worthwhile to explore the implications of the χῶρος/χορός word-play to enhance our understanding of Paris’ representation in the narrative.

Most directly, the play on χῶρος ‘place of combat’/χορός ‘place for dancing’ implies that the single combat of Paris and Menelaos, the principal action of Book 3, is a confluence of battle with dance. That is to say, it is a combination of fire and ice, as Aphrodite’s speech to Helen makes plain:

Fighters do not look the same before and after a battle, but before and after a dance, a dancer is the same, as sensual as before; that is the special point of the contrasting alternatives the old woman poses. They are a twist on an epic cliché, the polar contrast between warrior and dancer. Compare, as an example, Ajax’s speech bolstering the Achaeans: {83|84}

Here the dance vs. battle contrast calls up another traditional contrast between cunning and force, the physical force in a warrior’s hands. For the same combination of contrasts in condensed form, see Polydamas’ cautionary remarks to Hektor:

Given the association of hands (χεῖρες) with physical force (βίη) in epic diction, we can understand Alkinoos’ characterization of the Phaeacians as a variation on the same theme:

Fist-fighting and wrestling, as ways of training for single combat that involve the use of powerful hands, are inimical to the Phaeacians, who excel in feet: running, dancing, and a set of objects and pursuits associated with them. [45] There is also a Homeric hero, one Periphetes from Mycenae, who is said to have far outstripped an inferior father [46] in all the virtues, παντοῖαι ἀρεταί. These are given as feet and fighting (ἠμὲν πόδας ἠδὲ μάχεσθαι), and, the poet adds, he was also among the first of the Mycenaeans in νόος ‘intelligence’ (15.641).

There are more examples in epic of the contrast between battle and dance, [47] but more importantly, there is a way in which it can be acceptably neutralized: by reducing one member of the contrastive pair to {85|86} metaphoric status. So the male dancers on Akhilleus’ shield are imitating warriors:

Equipped as symbolic warriors with golden μάχαιραι ‘ritual knives,’ not real weapons, and sewn tunics, not bronze ones, the youths in this dance run at each others’ στίχας ‘ranks,’ a word used elsewhere of men or chariots in fighting formation. [48] A real warrior in full battle {86|87}dress in such a scene would abort the dance; likewise, the warrior masquerade in no way trivializes warfare, instead it exalts it. By contrast, a warrior like Hektor can menace his opponent on the battlefield with his knowledge ἐνὶ σταδίῃ μέλπεσθαι Ἄρηι ‘to sing and dance for destroyer Ares in hand-to-hand (combat)’ [49] ; this metaphoric dance is ferocious. But it is an insult for a warrior to say, as Aineias does of Meriones, that his opponent is a dancer (16.617: ὀρχηστήν περ ἐόντα); and when Priam says that the sons remaining to him after the death of Hektor excel at the dance, he is not flattering them. Of the best of them, he says:

Of the sons remaining to Priam after the death of Hektor the most prominent is Paris, and we have observed the themes in Book 3 that suggest that he, in contrast to Hektor, is a dancer snatched from the χορός rather than a warrior in the χῶρος of single combat. The narrative of Book 3 makes Paris into a literal, not a metaphoric, dancer, unsuited to the field of battle, whose single combat does not end in victory or in death, but in the bedroom.

In fact, right from the beginning of Book 3 Paris is positioned smartly between battle and dance. When he runs out before the front ranks of the advancing Trojan army challenging the best Argives to battle, he catches sight of Menelaos rushing out to meet him and immediately retreats, like a man who has just seen a snake in a mountain-dell (3.33–37). His brother Hektor, who later in the poem is likened to the mountain snake awaiting the man in such a simile, [50] {87|88} rebukes him sternly and taunts him about what would happen if he actually did face Menelaos:

The lyre, Aphrodite’s gifts, sensual beauty—these attributes of the dancer are also the tokens of his inadequacy in war. In the erotic context they define, Hektor’s use of the battle-book formula for a dead warrior’s disfigurement, ἐν κονίῃσι μιγείης ‘you are mingled in the dust,’ seems a vicious metaphor with a double meaning: compare the regular epic expression for having sexual intercourse, ἐν φιλοτῆτι μιγῆναι ‘be mingled in sex’ (as in 3.445). Lastly, there is the image of the λάινος χιτών ‘tunic of stone.’ Whether it refers to lapidation or a σῆμα ‘tomb’ of stone, as the commentators discuss it, [51] leaves irrelevant and unexplained the choice of a clothing image, a χιτών ‘tunic.’ Yet in this context of dancers’ attributes, it is completely relevant, for fine clothes, especially χιτῶνες, are another conventional item associated with the dance: the Phaeacians love feasting, the lyre, dancing places, and clothing worth exchanging (Od. 7.250); the virgins dancing on Akhilleus’ shield wear fine linens (λεπταὶ ὀθόναι), while the boys have well-stitched tunics, sparkling a little with olive oil (18.595–596: ἦκα στίλβοντας ἐλαίῳ); and then, at the end of this book there is Paris, the dancer, κάλλεΐ τε στίλβων καὶ εἵμασιν ‘with his beauty and clothes gleaming,’ ripe for seduction (3.392). So the Trojans should have long ago dressed up Paris, but not in a warrior’s {88|89} bronze tunic, nor the glistening, oiled one of a dancer; instead, says Hektor, it should have been a stone tunic, not made for movement of any kind.

Hektor’s objective in this abusive speech is to shame Paris out of his dancer’s identity and into a fighter’s. Paris tries, but ultimately, he fails. The spear he hurls at Menelaos does not even pierce his shield; its point gets bent. Then Menelaos, full of righteous indignation and praying to Zeus for vengeance against the miscreant, does not do much better: his spearcast pierces Paris’ shield, and that is all. In utter fury, he brings down his sword over Paris’ helmet. But the sword shatters into several pieces and flies from his hand. Desperate, outraged at Zeus’ unresponsiveness, Menelaos finally grabs the plume of Paris’ helmet and begins to drag him off. But the goddess Aphrodite, puny in war, [52] manages to intervene and save him with a tiny gesture: she snaps the leather chinstrap of his helmet. Menelaos tosses away the empty helmet and charges forward to attack again with his other spear, but his quarry, Paris, gets whisked off to his bedroom by Aphrodite. That is a place in which she presides. Menelaos is left charging around the field of battle like a wild beast (θηρὶ ἐοικώς … ) looking for his enemy and unconvincingly declaring himself the victor while Paris is making love to his wife: the contrast is yet another enactment of the contrast between warrior and dancer.

At the end of Book 3 Paris is what he was at the beginning. He has failed to respond to Hektor’s challenge that he shed his dancer’s identity and become a fighter. So the dancer’s single combat ends with a seduction, not a victory or even a defeat. All this is not a matter of cowardice on his part; still less is it ascribable to the rigidity of Homeric concepts of character. It is Aphrodite, the powerful and in fact violent forces that she represents and that Helen and Paris incarnate. “You can’t just throw away the gifts of the gods,” Paris had said (3.65–66) in answer to Hektor’s abuse, “though no one would take them of his own will.” If Paris seems a peculiarly submissive figure for {89|90} a Homeric hero, that only bespeaks the particularly subjugating nature of the sexuality in the goddess who is his patron. [53]

By the same token, these features of Paris’ representation in the narrative of Book 3 suggest a solution to the questions raised earlier about the inverted conventionality of the simile of the cranes and Pygmies with which the book begins. [54] Otherwise passive, sociable birds find themselves in an unaccustomed role, in an unaccustomed locale: shrieking high above the river-plains, they descend like predators upon the Pygmies. The simile likens them to the Trojan host, but Paris is the sole representative of the Trojan host in the narrative that follows. So the simile is intended to reflect upon him. Paris, though dressed like a fighter, is in fact a dancer trying to fight, a man who confounds the lists of war with the locus amoenus of seduction. The χῶρος is as unnatural a locale for him as is the high heaven for the cranes; his role as an aggressive single combatant representing the Trojan side, a role that properly belongs to Hector in the Iliad, is as much an inversion of his dancer’s nature as is the cranes’ role as predators. [55] {90|91}

One prominent element in the representation of Paris appears as yet unmatched in the metaphor: just how appropriate is the image of Paris as a dancer trying to fight to the metaphor of the cranes attacking the Pygmies? In fact, γέρανος ‘crane’ is the name of the famous dance performed on Delos by Theseus, Ariadne, and the Athenian youths and maidens on their return from Crete. In nature, cranes actually do perform a remarkable group dance all year round, [56] and their symbolic attributes in the Greek bestiary are especially appropriate to the context of the Theseus myth, as Marcel Detienne has shown: the γέρανος dance, which is consistently described as imitating the entry into or the passage from the labyrinth, is, like Ariadne’s thread, an invention of Daidalos. [57] But in form and function both the thread and the dance recall Greek descriptions of the two-headed, twisting line of flight made by cranes migrating from the ends of the earth and back. [58] In epic, the dancing-place on Akhilleus’ shield (cited above, 86–87) is explicitly likened [59] to the one Daidalos contrived for Ariadne in Crete, and the scholia identify the dance being performed by the ἠΐθεοι καὶ παρθένοι ‘adolescents and maidens’ on it as one performed on Crete {91|92} imitating the twists and turns of the labyrinth. [60] In fact, the scholia may be correct: this may actually be the dance called γέρανος that was later performed on Delos (see the discussion below). So the fighting cranes in the simile have that association with Paris as well: they, also, are dancers taking on the unaccustomed role of fighters. Ultimately, the link between Paris and the simile is as intimate and precise as the link between tenor and vehicle in the other epic bird similes discussed above.

Lest it be unclear, there is in fact no explicit attestation of the word γέρανος in epic as an appellative for a dance. I am arguing that the association of γέρανος with the dance exists in the epic tradition even so. We have seen that bird similes are precisely related to their contexts once the traditional associations of the diction in them are made plain, when they can be made plain. [61] In the particular instance of the simile of the cranes and Pygmies, we have seen how the representation of Paris, stand-in for the Trojan army in the narrative that follows the simile, matches the inversion of the conventional role of cranes in epic similes; furthermore, cranes in nature do perform a remarkable group dance all year round; and epic does attest a dance on the shield of Akhilleus performed by ἠΐθεοι καὶ παρθένοι on Ariadne’s dancing-place in Crete (discussed further below). Given this evidence and the immediate contextual appropriateness of the association we are suggesting, between cranes as dancing birds engaged in battle and Paris as a dancer trying to do battle, I conclude that this is an instance in which we are lacking explicit evidence for an association although the implicit evidence for it is abundant. Since similes are traditional and conventional, they can rely upon a tacit conspiracy of meaning between poet and audience. There is no reason to expect that such meaning will be accessible or recoverable in every case on the basis of explicit evidence. [62] {92|93}

Formally explicit evidence, however, does exist for precisely the association we are suggesting although in another medium than epic. First of all, the existence of a traditional contrastive pairing of battle and dance themes in the context of the myth of Theseus has been documented in another prestigious artistic genre, Corinthian iconography from the first half of the seventh century B.C. through the second half of the sixth. [63] The oldest objects in a series assembled by Friis Johansen are two gold reliefs in Berlin, one depicting Theseus slaying the Minotaur with Ariadne standing behind him holding the ball of thread, the other a chorus of four women, presumably rescued maidens, holding hands in a stately dance. [64] It includes Cyprian, Boeotian, and Etruscan vase paintings as well as such revered objects as the chest of Cypselus exhibited at Olympia and perhaps even the throne of Apollo at Amyclae.

In the latter half of the sixth century the Corinthian pairing of “le combat contre le monstre et la danse triomphale qui le suit” [my emphasis], [65] as Friis Johansen puts it, entered the Attic vase painting tradition. Ultimately the two separate motifs were crystallized and abstracted into one, and Athena (or in one instance an ephebe), portrayed attending on Theseus as he slays the Minotaur, simply proffers him a lyre. [66] But the François vase was painted by Klitias before the motifs had coalesced to that extent. The topmost of its six friezes presents, on one side, a dance performed by Theseus, Ariadne, and the ἠΐθεοι καὶ παρθένοι who accompanied Theseus to Crete; on the opposite side, also at the top, is the slaying of a monster, not, however, the Minotaur. It is the huge Kalydonian boar, and its killers are a host of heroes, among them Meleager, Atalanta, Melanion, Peleus, Castor and Polydeuces. This change to a monster from another myth transforms the concrete narrative association of violent battle and erotic dance into a transcendent one, highlighting symbolic values at the expense of any narrative linkage between the events. [67] Moreover, in a spatial {93|94} opposition symmetrical to the one between the two sides of the topmost frieze along the rim of the vase, the bottommost frieze all around the foot of the vase actually depicts the battle of the cranes and Pygmies. The parallel in symbolic terms to the analysis just concluded of Iliad Book 3 is exact. It would be still more exact if the dance on the top frieze were the γέρανος, as has often been thought. Then the pattern linking cranes and Pygmies to the γέρανος dance and contrasting both to heroic combat will have been preserved intact in two traditional genres.

But the identification of the dance on the vase with the γέρανος dance on the island of Delos has been disputed. To Friis Johansen, the scene on the vase could only take place on the island of Crete. This would explain both the presence and the welcoming attitude of Ariadne, as well as the representation of a boat in the background: for Friis Johansen takes it that the people onboard are once-despondent Athenian sailors now joyously observing the victory dance from offshore, since he finds it hard to conceive who they are if the scene is taking place along the coast of Delos. He also supports the view that Theseus himself was only secondarily associated with the island of Delos by a Pisistratid policy seeking to make an Athenian Theseus into an Ionian hero with the prestige of Herakles. [68] If that is correct, the association of the Delian γέρανος with Theseus did not occur until some time after the date of the François vase. Friis Johansen further assumes that the γέρανος itself was originally a cult dance performed on Delos that was only secondarily associated with the Theseus myth, to which it was originally unrelated. Inferring from its name that it had no connection to the Theseus myth, Friis Johansen suggests that the dance originally imitated the circuitous wanderings of Leto in search of a place to give birth to her divine child. The earliest sure evidence for the dance on Delos is Callimachus’ Hymn to Delos 300 ff.; as mentioned above (n. 60), it is also said in the scholia to Iliad 18.590 that once he left the labyrinth, Theseus and his companions performed a dance imitating the way in and out of it. [69] This language closely {94|95}resembles that used in Pollux and Plutarch [70] to describe the γέρανος itself, and in fact there are no grounds at all for assuming that the γέρανος dance originally had nothing to do with the Theseus myth but applied first to Leto. The suggested connection between her and the crane is gratuitous and, symbolically speaking, no less problematic than the one between Theseus and the bird. All we can safely say is that certainty about the connection between the name of the dance and the myth of Theseus eludes us, not that no relationship ever existed—Detienne’s theory, for instance, on the symbolic relationship between the two is well worth considering. [71] Even if Friis Johansen’s iconographic and historical reasons for placing the scene of the François vase on Crete do carry conviction—and I am not saying that they should [72] —there is no reason whatever to deny that the dance Theseus and the ἠΐθεοι και παρθένοι performed on Crete and that is represented on the vase was also the γέρανος, and that another tradition, ultimately the predominant one, located it on Delos. So the likelihood exists of an exact parallel on the vase to the relationship between Paris and the simile of the cranes and Pygmies: the geranomachy on the vase is associated with the contrast between dancers (who on the vase may actually be dancing the γέρανος!) and fighters that rules the representation of Paris in Iliad 3, where it is also associated with a geranomachy. {95|96}

The overall goal of this detailed, if not exhaustive analysis of a single epic simile is to renew the study of epic similes by suggesting solutions to several besetting problems about their composition, as follows: