Lately I have been going through some old notes. Okay,
well actually as Maya can probably tell you, a thousand plus notes. Mostly
quotes or links I don’t want to lose track of, again! Naturally I think all
these little gems are amazing and fascinating, but I picked out just a few, you
all might find interesting
“Where one hero
throws a rock at another, we should expect Aeneas to win the encounter.”
Nagy_Best-of-the-Achaeans. As to the
victor using a rock, I think Athena is the best example;
“As (Ares) spoke he struck (Athena) on the terrible tasseled aegis—so
terrible that not even can Zeus’ lightning pierce it. Here did man-slaughtering
Arēs strike her with his great spear. She drew back and with her strong hand
seized a stone that was lying on the plain—great and rugged and black— [405]
which men of old had set for the boundary of a field. With this she struck Arēs
on the neck, and brought him down” Iliad 21.400 ff
The first example I found in the Iliad (assuming Nagy
is focusing his assumption on this tale of battles and duels) is I Book Seven;
“Hector
did not cease fighting; he gave ground, and with his brawny hand seized a
stone, [265] rugged and huge, that was lying upon the plain; with this he
struck the shield of Ajax on the boss that was in its middle, so that the
bronze rang again. But Ajax in turn caught up a far larger stone, swung it
aloft, and hurled it with prodigious force. [270]”
However just a few lines
later we hear, “the good herald Idaios
said, “My sons, fight no longer, [280] you are both of you valiant, and both
are dear to Zeus who gathers clouds; we know this; but night is now falling,
and the requests of night may not be well ignored.” Which means Hector threw the first stone and
did not win.
Examples proving Nagy’s point are;
- · The gruesome “stone”-triggered fate of Diores, son of Amarynkeus at 4.519,
- · At 5.580 “Antilokhos hit the charioteer and attendant [therapōn] Mydon, the brave son of Atymnios,”
- · Hector at 8.320 when “ with a loud cry … seizing a great stone made straight for Teucer”
- · 12.379 “Ajax son of Telamon killed brave Epikles, a comrade of Sarpedon, 380]hitting him with a jagged stone”
- · 14.409 Ajax son of Telamon struck Hector with a stone and he did fall to earth and bite the dust.
Etc., etc.
Plenty enough to prove Nagy’s point.
But as he points out, Aeneas always seems to be the exception to this
rule.
Zielinski’s
Law;
Homeric narrative always moves forward.
Homer represents simultaneous actions as sequential and rarely notes
simultaneity.
Lots of debate on this law, scholars looking for the
slightest nuance to make it invalid and others slightly changing the meaning of
words to insure the laws validity. In short it is a good rule of thumb and
explains incongruities in other poems of the era. http://grbs.library.duke.edu/article/view/6661
“Zeus…the
tragedians did not present him on stage.” http://t.co/usQgsjp1 This rule is quite controversial. Of the surviving plays by the three great
playwrights; Aeschylus, four single
plays and one trilogy, seven plays of Sophocles survive and Euripides' eighteen
or nineteen. In none of these does Zeus
appear on stage. But the argument is he
could have in some of the lost plays.
Hmm; lack of evidence as evidence.
I don’t think so. Ken Dowden in Zeus, argues that “It looks
as though a rule is upheld: tragic Zeus does not appear on stage, but comic
Zeus can. “ Of course, his argument
for a comic Zeus on stage is based on “the excellent Roman comedy of
Plautus…based on a lost Greek play”, so our missing evidence used again as
evidence.
All that said, am I right? Zeus never descends to
earth in the Homeric present?
“Winkler’s Law;
wherever in Homeric poetry a female character is described with beautiful
ankles, (she) is about to save a male character.” I have no reference for Winkler’s Law and
can’t find it by googling it. So far my searches on the word in Perseus (καλλίσφυρος)
aren’t providing it to be true.
Here’s
the first text I found using the Perseus word study tool;
book 9, card 538: ... κεῖτο παρὰ μνηστῇ ἀλόχῳ καλῇ Κλεοπάτρῃ κούρῃ Μαρπήσσης καλλισφύρου Εὐηνίνης Ἴδεώ θ᾽, ὃς κάρτιστος ἐπιχθονίων γένετ᾽ ἀνδρῶν ... τότε: καί ῥα ἄνακτος ἐναντίον εἵλετο τόξον Φοίβου Ἀπόλλωνος καλλισφύρου εἵνεκα νύμφης,
abode beside his wedded wife, the fair Cleopatra,
daughter of Marpessa of the fair ankles, child of Evenus, and of Idas that was
mightiest of men that were then upon the face of earth; who also took his bow
to face the king [560] Phoebus Apollo for the sake of the fair-ankled maid.
The
beautiful ankled women above; Marpessa of the fair ankles, daughter of Evenus
and wife of Idas. Yes Marpessa saves
Idas, but not now, rather twenty years before in another story.[1]
Next
example is: book 5, card 313: ... Ζεφύρῳ εἴξασκε διώκειν. τὸν δὲ ἴδεν Κάδμου θυγάτηρ, καλλίσφυρος Ἰνώ, Λευκοθέη, ἣ πρὶν μὲν ἔην βροτὸς αὐδήεσσα the West Wind to
drive. But the daughter of Cadmus,
Ino of the fair ankles, saw him, even
Leucothea, who of old was a mortal of human speech, [335] Which does
follow Winkler’s Law,
Next;
κατὰ καλὸν ἕδος νιφόεντος Ὀλύμπου ναίει τερπόμενος καὶ ἔχει καλλίσφυρον Ἥβην. (HH 15-7&8) In no way does Hebe save her
husband
Heracles,
in myth or in the Hymn that ends shortly thereafter
male
character to rescue even if trim-ankled Demeter.was in the mood to do
so.
Conclusion;
Winkler’s Law, doesn’t seem to work.
[1]
(Apollodorus, The Library 1.7.9) But
Idas came to Messene, and Apollo, falling in with him, would have robbed him of
the damsel. As they fought for the girl's hand, Zeus parted them and allowed
the maiden herself to choose which of the two she would marry; and she, because
she feared that Apollo might desert her in her old age, chose Idas for her husband.125
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