TFBT:January Quotes

“Bad manners makes the Gods angry and your hair falls out. “.  Maya M

"When I happen to agree with Graves, I search where I am mistaken :-)  Maya M

“ no man who has unsparingly thrown himself into political-life [politeiā] trusting in the loyalty of the democracy [tà tou dēmou] has ever met with a beautiful death. “(Pausanias 1.8.3)

D'Artagnan: [reciting from memory the letter Richelieu wrote giving Milady de Winter permission to kill Buckingham, d'Artagnan and Constance, as Richelieu reads the actual note which D'Artagnan has handed him] "By my order and for the good of the state, the bearer has done what has been done." 

Cardinal Richelieu: Hm. One should be careful what one writes... 

“Unfixable force of chaos” Lethal Weapon

“god-like Homer” Aristophanes Frogs 1032

“You exhort me in vain as if you were talking to th ewaves.”  Prometheus in Prometheus 

"In later Greek art the figure moving to the right or auspicious side is usually the winner” Jenifer Neils

"The lame Hephaestus is seldom depicted with a deformed foot; only his riding of the mule alludes to his disability “ Neils

"It was there, near the Atlas Mountains that the goddess Hera had planted the tree of immortality, which bore golden apples.“  Ada Cohen

“Palm (trees) might serve to underscore a distant exotic place.”  Cohen

“As Lincoln reluctantly admits scholarship to be itself a form of myth” Cohen

TFBT: Random Notes on Metamorphesis, Chapters 12-13.

 

The Monthly Book Club at the Kosmos Society  is reading Ovid’s Metamorphosis, Chapters 12-13.  I haven’t read the book in years except when looking up references.   But I know enough of it that I’ve come  across confusing “errors” constantly.  My friend Helene suggests that Ovid follows different traditions that Homer.  Rather I see sloppy plagiarism and typos.

The Dark Green Snake

At Aulis the heart-broken Achaeans in route to Troy  were trapped by adverse winds.  In reading Ovid’s description of what happen next, it sounded a lot like Homer’s. 

First Ovid;  “The Greeks saw a dark-green snake sliding into a plane tree that stood near to where they had begun the sacrifice.   There was a nest with eight young birds in the crown of the tree, and these the serpent seized and swallowed in its eager jaws, together with the mother bird, who circled her doomed fledglings.   They looked at it wonderingly, but Calchas, the seer, son of Thestor, interpreted the truth, saying: ‘We will conquer, Greeks, rejoice! Troy will fall, though our efforts will be of long duration,’ and he divined nine years of war from the nine birds.  The snake, was turned to stone,  (Ovid Chapter 12)”

Now look at Homer; “Then we saw a sign; for Zeus sent a fearful serpent out of the ground, with blood-red stains upon its back, [310] and it darted from under the altar on to the plane-tree. Now there was a brood of young sparrows, quite small, upon the topmost bough, peeping out from under the leaves, eight in all, and their mother that hatched them made nine. The serpent ate the poor cheeping things, [315] while the old bird flew about lamenting her little ones; but the serpent threw his coils about her and caught her by the wing as she was screaming. Then, when he had eaten both the sparrow and her young, the god who had sent him made him become a sign; for the son of scheming Kronos turned him into stone,  we stood there wondering at that which had come to pass. Seeing, then, that such a fearful portent had broken in upon our hecatombs, Kalkhas right away declared to us the divine oracles. ‘Why, flowing-haired Achaeans,’ said he, ‘are you thus speechless? Zeus has sent us this sign, [325] long in coming, and long before it be fulfilled, though its fame [kleos] shall last forever. As the serpent ate the eight fledglings and the sparrow that hatched them, which makes nine, so shall we fight nine years at Troy, but in the tenth shall take the town” Iliad 1.135

Not exactly plagiarism; but the keys elements and where they appear in the tale makes me a little suspicious that Ovid didn’t have a copy of the Iliad in hand as he wrote his version

Nereus

Next Ovid was bad mouthing the famously kind Nereus, which made me think he knew less  about Greek Mythology than I thought. “Nereus continued to be boisterous on the Aonian waters,”.  Ovid Book 12 Most mythologist over the millennia have followed Hesiod who says

  “Pontus,  the great sea, was father of truthful Nereus who tells no lies, eldest of his sons. They call him the Old Gentleman (Gerôn) because he is trustworthy, and gentle, and never forgetful of what is right, but the thoughts of his mind are mild and righteous.  Hesiod, Theogony 233 ff  

Plus let’s keep in mind that it is the winds that make the sea Boisterous not the sea-gods as mentioned by Virgil in the famous “Quo ego” scene at Aeneid 1:135

Achilles famous Pelion spears

Another error struck me with Ovid’s description of Achilles famous Pelion spears. “Achilles examined the spear to see if the iron point had not been dislodged.”  Shouldn’t that be bronze?

It’s Thebe with No “S”!

Then Achilles said,  “when I caused Tenedos and Thebes, the city of Eetion…"  Really?  Confounding King Eetion’s city of Thebe with “Thebes” is common but I expected better Ovid.   Eeetion is the King of Placian Thebe in Cilicia and father of Hector’s wife Andromache.  (Homer Iliad 6.396 & 417)

Nestor

Finally, we read that Nestor is over two hundred years old.  Really? Nestor speaking “have lived for two centuries and now am living in my third.”  (Ovid, Meta. Chapter 12) Homer accurately, universally acknowledged and more logical is Homer’s statement. Two generations of men born and bred in sandy Pylos had passed away under his rule, and he was now reigning over the third (Iliad 1.250] This is clearly plagiarism of the worst sort, sloppy!

Nice lines

• “Tell on, old man, eloquent wisdom of our age,.
• “they drew out the night in talk, and valour was the theme of their conversation. Of battles was their talk, the “enemy's and their own, and 'twas joy to tell over and over again in turn the perils they had encountered and endured”  

 

 

 

TFBT: Homer and the Pretzel

 A fellow club member at Hour 25 just received an internship to work on his Master’s thesis.  The thesis is that there is a correlation between the way the Ancient Greeks built new cities and the way Homer composed the Iliad.  Cool, huh?   

Oh, Homer didn’t write the Iliad, he recited or sang it accompanied by a lyre.  He had to keep a certain beat; dactylic hexameter.  In a possible autobiographical sketch in a lesser work he might have been an inerrant poet singing for his supper before dining aristocrats.  He would pick a tale appropriate for the occasion and using traditional language, style, format, quotes and blocks of text compose their song during a totally oral spontaneous performance. 

His thesis and internship were much discussed in Hour 25.  It has been much on my mind.  What else that has been on my mind is country-swing dancing.  I am teach the class and we are half way through the Spring session. 

Last night one of the girl’s said she preferred dancing with me because I signaled what we were going to do next.  “I do?”  Apparently, to use the literary term I foreshadow what is coming.  It is the nudge of a shoulder when I am spinning her away, the lifting of my arm in anticipation of a Left Tuck or the subtle shift in our hand position.  I never occurred to me that dancing was composition in performance.

For those that don’t “boot scoot” there are several different styles of country and western music.  There are fast melodies with strong beats for swing dancing, slower softer music for “polishing your belt buckles” that is the two-steps and a waltz among others.   The man leads, that is choreographs dance as he and his female partner dance.  The lady’s job is to “follow”.  The “meter” would be pounded out by their feet.  Swing is with both dancers putting their left foot in and their left foot out.  For men the two-steps is “left (foot forward then, bring up your right foot) together, left together, right (foot back the, bring back your left foot) together.  Waltz is the basic 1-2-3, 12-3.  You can’t waltz to a swing song.  Swinging to a two-step is just sad.  And trying to two-step to a waltz gives one a headache.  Lord and Parry the definitive researchers in composition in oral performance say the audience’s trained ear can tell when the poet misses the beat in the poem’s meter.  And trust me your audience can tell you stepped on your partner’s feet when you missed the beat.

The guy choreographs the couple’s routine right there on the dance floor.  They have a set routine or routine moves they like doing and can do without concentrating too much.  These are probably tradition moves they were taught by other.  While waltzing or two stepping they traverse the floor going counter-wise as tradition dictates.  The guy might interrupt their “Five Basic Moves” by whirling them around in one spot or spinning her away should the traffic flow get jammed up.  They will warm up a bit and then advance into more complex swing moves.  The moves are all built of more basic moves “moshed” together, condensed and contracted.  And maybe at the end of the song it will be the elbow-wielding “Pretzel”, sweet “Window” or their signature move; unique to them but composed of all the tradition elements. 

Should they take a break and another gentleman ask the lady to dance.  She and their audience and their fellow dancers will expect him to keep the appropriate beat, perform the appropriate steps and moves, dance the traditional style and use the traditional moves or moves recognizable as from tradition.  If he doesn’t she wouldn’t be able to follow, she and anyone watching will deem him a bad dancer and his fellow dancers will deem him a nuisance. 

You don’t get to be Homer by being a nuisance, and you definitely must know how to do the “Pretzel”

TFBT: “Homeric Moments” Part I

Eva Brann, subtitled her book; “Clues to delight in reading the Odyssey”.  She starts with “I wrote this book because…I was full of small discoveries and large conjectures.”  That she wanted to share with first-time readers.  I so know what she is talking about and consequently happily joined her on her rather confident journey to display these delights.  I’m happy half-way through the book and still happy I jumped onboard the chariot.  Around page 21 Brann says “…the poet will say, “When they had put from themselves the desire for food and drink…”, where we would say; “When they were full…”  One gets used to these graphic and noble formulas, however and ends up wondering why we can’t talk like that.”   In point of fact Brann does write that way.  It is one of the joys of reading the book.  On the other hand sometimes I get so carried away that I am not reading critically. 

I love her unquenchable faith in the genius of Homer; Homer’s inexhaustibility. “Homer is first in time, first in enduring effect, first in breadth of use, first in force of inspiration.”  She sees that genius and inspiration in the fact that the Taphians live to the “north in the vicinity of the legendary entrance to Hades”  that Odysseus is using just Mentes the Taphian visits Telemachus in Ithaca.    She explains that Achilles is a swift-footed runner, and that swift-footed is so intrinsic to his nature his actuality, that he is swift-footed even when he is sitting.  “It is a reasonable faith that there is a responsible author, a maker, who leaves an inexhaustible wealth of intentional small signs meant to be picked up by any reader as evidence from the lines of what is being said beyond and between the lines.  These intimating clues take the form not only of metric anomalies, signifying visualizations and double meanings…but also of apparently misapplied epithets, homonyms…suggestive descriptions ..but above all, of pregnant silences and significant omissions.   In other words if Homer nods, it is with a wink to those in the know. 

She points out the lack of  un-named dead in the Iliad something I’ve found in sharp contrast to the Odyssey.  “The surfeit of killing is perhaps mitigated by the fact that each recital is a remembrance: that this dead warrior has his name ancestry, place of origin and manner of armament forever set in the greatest of all war poems.”   

She finds a moving correlation between Hephaestus the lame smithy who creates the famous shield of Achilles and the blind bard who sings of it.  And claims that Homer is mightier than the god for that reason.  “I think that Homer’s alleged blindness betokens the extraordinary visual acuity of his poetry, “  

“Homer thinks of  swift-footed , swift fated Achilles as the being who makes possible the poetry that makes the full world visible…Alexander (the Great) who wanted to reincarnate Achilles but lacks a Homeric Muse, merely conquered the world for a moment, while his avatar Achilles captivated the ages.”

Here are some of her discoveries so far;

• “Homer’s inexhaustibility”  
• “Tragedy is in the present tense, spoken by impersonating actors; it is fast-paced, taking place, by a very apt Greek convention; within one day; “ 
• “Tragic heroes tend to undergo sudden catastrophic shifts of fortune – their fate – which leave them transformed but also dead” 
• On intertextuality; “readings of the word without the world”  
• “Odysseus becomes the weaver of a fairyland…”   
• “We might well read the Iliad without knowing the Odyssey, but to rad the Odyssey without reference to the Iliad would be to read under a handicap.”   
• On Poseidon; “he is a resentful god whose persecution of Odysseus is an obscure reflection of his resentment against Zeus”   
• Achilles’ old armor had to be shrunk by the god to fit Hector”   
• “Hector has just reached the first Greek ship, the very one from which the first Greek leaped onto Trojan soil to be also the first to die.”   
• Brann on Patroclus; “Homer does him, more often than anyone else, the rare honor of the intimacy of addressing him directly.   
• Of Hector, “In Chaucer’s words, the verray parfit, gentil knyght.”  
• “The mules carry Priam and Hector’s body toward the gates of Troy, unseen by any but Cassandra, the seeress.”   
• On Priam’s ransom of Hector’s body; “So ends the terrestrial enactment of a descent to Hades, a Herculean labor of trial for the old king.   
• One hundred and ten or so generations…separate us from Homer” 

TFBT: Homer is Thessalian

 by William Moulton and Maya M.

“From Colophon some deem thee sprung,
From Smyrna some, and some from Chios;
These noble Salamis have sung,
While those proclaim thee born in Ios;
And others cry up Thessaly
The mother of the Lapithæ."

                             "On Homer’s Birthplace” Antipater of Sidon

                                      Translated by J. H. Merivale

 

“Homer is Thessalian”.  I realize that is a ludicrous unfounded sounding statement, but follow along and see what you think. If you read the Iliad closely you will see something odd about the Nereid Thetis.  Several authors have.   Slatkins most famously in The Power of Thetis.   For an obscure goddess of minor rank; Thetis is exceptionally powerful and influential among the Olympians.  She rescues Zeus and none of the gathered rebels attempt to stop her (Iliad 1. 393).  None of the sharp wagging tongues of the immortals criticize her thwarting the will of Zeus.  (Put all the fancy words on it you want, bottom-line Thetis alters the will of Zeus at Iliad 1. 495.)   She rescues the Olympian Hephaestus. (Iliad 18. 369)  She rescues the Olympian Dionysus. (Iliad 6. 135)  The gods have to beg her to rescue the body of Hector. ( Iliad 24. 77)

 

I have always assumed that the Olympic deference to Thetis was Homer’s nod to other theogonies.  A famous such nod is to Oceanus and Tethys; when Hera referes to “Oceanus, whence the gods have risen, and Tethys our mother” (Iliad 14. 200)   Homer might be us a sign about other such theogonies in the relationship of the Nereid Thetis and Oceanid Eurynome.  Gods don’t have friends.  Almost all divine relationships are with a family member.   (See “Friendship Amongst the Gods.”) And yet here are two unrelated goddess dwelling on the shores of the great River Ocean. Thetis is a primordial goddess in the Spartan theogony of Alcman who “presented Thetis as the primal divine creative force, the generative principle of the universe”. (Power of Thetis, p82) Eurynome is a primordial goddess in other theogonies;  “in the beginning, Ophion and Eurynome, daughter of Oceanus, governed the world from snow-clad Olympus; (Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 1. 503)  So I always assumed that Homer’s references to Oceanus, Thetis and Eurynome were just a tip of the hat. 

 

But recently with Sarah at Hour 25 and Maya M on my blog I discussed Thetis and Emily Schurr’s opinion came up.  Schurr suggests that Homer is not invoking the Muse at the start of the Iliad.  The text in the original Greek does not say Μοῦσα  (Muse) it says Qea (Goddess) .   Schurr suggests the goddess in line 1 of the Iliad is Thetis.  Now that’s a horse of a different color!  It is almost as if the Iliad is actually the “Homeric Hymn to Thetis”. What came to my mind at this point in our conversation is the relationship of Hesiod and Hecate; the so-called "Hymn to Hecate".  In the Theogony Hesiod goes way out of his way to grant the goddess unheard of honors and influence, what  Clay refers to as “Hecate's special status.”   In “Hesiod’s Cosmos” Clay dismisses the belief that “Hesiod's family had a special attachment to the Hecate cult,” or  “Hecate cult was already well-established in Boeotia in Hesiod's time… Accordingly, we ought not to be surprised to find Hesiod giving a privileged position and rendering  homage to the chief local goddess” . 

 

How about we test the same logic on Homer’s adoration of Thetis?  Aaron Atsma (www.theoi.com) lists three cult sites for Thetis; two are Peloponnesian and one in Thessaly where the Aeolic dialect is used.  If Homer was Dorian we’d expect the Iliad’s theogony to be based on Alcman and vocabulary on the Doric dialect.  Instead with find a poet with an Aeolic name settling his goddess in southern Thessaly with a mortal husband and son.  So it would make more sense to associate Homer with the goddess cult site on the headland of Sepia in Euboea

 

There is a problem with the suggestion that Homer is Thessalian. He never mentions Thessaly in the Iliad and all the peoples the Achaeans conquer while waiting for Troy to fall are Aeolic  I only see one way out of the dilemma.  That is the application of the lesson from Matt 13:57, Luke 4:24 and Mark 6:4, that no man is a prophet in his home town.  I am suggesting an Aeolic speaking Homer rejected by Thessaly, who traveled to Ionia where he found great success in their dialect.  He wrought his revenge on those back home by deleting them from history and enslaving all the Aeolians. As Maya M asks, “Homer vents his menis by writing about the menis of Achilles?”

 

What do you think?

 

 

 

 

 

P.S.       This paper was generated by a long rambling conversation between Bill Moulton and Maya M.  Those interested may attempt to follow the conversation at; http://shortstories-bill.blogspot.com/2014/10/tftfbt-bella-rophan-at-palmer-house.html#comment-form

 

TFBT: Random Notes from Iliad XVI

I read Book XVI today; the Death of Patroclus. It rained buckets naturally so it wasn’t difficult to decided to stay inside and read. Very sad. This time my emphasis was on looking for similes and metaphors. Particularly after just reading Rhesus I noted how often the Achaians are compared to a pack of wolves 155-164,276,351-355 making Dolon’s choice of apparel even more untimely and inappropriate. Here also glorious Homer compares men to trees; 482-4,632-5,765-771.  I noted with sadness that Patroclus and Hector are compared to wild animals fighting and dying “over a little spring of water” (825)

 

“till I (Zeus) have accomplished the desire of the son of Peleus, according to the promise I made by bowing my head on the day when Thetis touched my knees and besought me to give Achilles, ransacker of cities, honor.” Iliad 15.74  I just find that pretty

 

“have you had news from Phthia?” Iliad 16.13  In recent discussions at Hour 25, Janet asked if there weren’t any trips back and forth to Greece in all those long nine and a half years.  Achilles question above makes it appear that such travel was conceiveable thing to the Achaeans before Troy.

Did I notice Homeric plagarism?  Preparing for a discussion tomorrow I re-read Book XVI of the Iliad and found;  “the mighty slayer of Argos was enamored of her as he saw her among the singing women at a dance held in honor of Artemis the rushing huntress of the golden arrows; he therefore – Hermes, giver of all good – went with her into an upper chamber,”  Iliad 16.181  Now compare to the Homer Hymn to Aphrodite 117 “But then, the one with the golden wand, the Argos-killer, abducted me, taking me from a festival of song and dance in honor of Artemis, the one with the golden arrows.”

They came swarming out like wasps whose nests are by the roadside, and whom silly children love to tease, whereon any one who happens to be passing may get stung – or again, if a wayfarer going along the road vexes them by accident, every wasp will come flying out  in a fury to defend his little ones- even with such rage and courage did the Myrmidons swarm from their ships, Iliad 16.259  Just another line of poetry I thought pretty. 

TFBT: “Hippota Nestor” by Douglass Frame

I attended a video conference with the suave Professor Frame at Hour 25.  We discussed Hippota Nestor.  Afterwards,  I was greatly excited to read his thick book about Nestor, the aged wise counselor of the Greeks during the Trojan War.  Frame studies Nestor’s appearances in both Homeric epics using the  “Indo-European Twin Myth” as his analytical tool.

 

If you research the genealogy of the characters in Greek mythology you will find an overabundance of male twins.  Those heroes without a twin will have a younger brother, nephew or close companion to share their adventures with.  The technical term from the Greek is “therapon”.  (Robert Graves used the Celtic term “tanist”)  Many cultures within the Indo-European language group show this tendency, hence “Indo-European Twin Myth”.  Frame postulates that Nestor had a twin, who was never fully acknowledged by Homer or Hesiod, but whose myth impacted their poems extensively

 

As to the “Indo-European Twin Myth” I have two comments here. 

• My experience with using the structure of a particular myth for analytical purposes is that it works well on the material at hand and a few associated topics.  But as the argument continues it often veers far from the original source or intent.  By the end of my reading of this book every hero has a twin whether he wants one or not and it is sometimes the goddess Athena.
• When you start your argument based on the intricacies of a hypothetical grammar of a hypothetical language dead for three thousand years, you are going to lose me.  Hence, I was not successful in following Frame’s argument. 

 

Though I did find some interesting insights along the way. 

• Frame in “Hippota Nestor “ proposes an interesting correspondence between Helios and Augeias the man of many herds who figured in the Labors of  Heracles. 
• I observed that  the only twins among the “gods” are Apollo and Artemis, brother and sister rather than the twin males Frame requires.   Maybe Prometheus and Epimetheus.  Otherwise we have to wait for the appearance of the demi-gods Castor and Pollux.
• Frame discusses a pair  Vedic demigods ( Endnote 1.2) Their patron attempts to include them in the divine sacrifice and “A violent dispute erupts between the gods and the sages and the sages create the demon Māda, “intoxication,” whereupon the gods are forced to yield to the sages’ superiority.” It struck me here that marginalized gods benefit from divine warfare; Heracles in the Gigantomachy,  Cadmus when the gods battled Typhon, Hecate, the Hundred-handed Ones, Cyclops and Styx in the Titanomachy
• §2.116 ” It is remarkable how the Phaeacian genealogy in Book 7 (of the Odyssey), from beginning to end, selects significant details to create an unmistakable correspondence to Nestor and his  family.”

 

In an interesting metaphor he states at §3. 3 “The Phaeacians are like performers in a play of which this is the synopsis, and which Athena stage-manages.” He continues by pointing out that the goddess introduces both Nausicaa and Arete, and then quits the stage in a way that correlates with the each. ” In her first departure Athena flies to Olympus and takes her place in her father’s household; this destination is appropriate to Nausicaa… Athena’s second destination is appropriate to Arete, a married woman, …” It is as if the two mortal actresses  “are in some sense the same person as Athena, and she therefore cannot appear with them in the same place at the same time.”  Personally, I was reminded of the Duel scene in the Iliad, which Helen is summoned to watch.  As soon as Zeus’ daughter gives off weaving about the battle before Troy, it stops

 

Frame makes some interesting observations on a possible relationship between the giant Tityos who attempted the rape of the Titaness Leto and Rhadamanthys, judge of the dead

Even if it is farther away than Euboea,
which is said to be farthest off by those of our people who saw it
when they took fair-haired Rhadamanthys
to see Tityos, Earth’s son. (Odyssey 7.321–324):

“The upshot is that the Phaeacians and Rhadamanthys lived near each other at the ends of the earth,” (2.117.n 156) and “If Rhadamanthys indeed inhabited the Elysian Fields he was already dead when he visited Tityos.“  (2.118. n157)

 

Now we come to the part where I quit reading the book.  My disenchantment began when Frame wrote, “ I do not make the suggestion of interpolations in the Homeric text lightly.” (§2.135)  The current view in mythological circles is that the Iliad and the Odyssey are oral compositions performed in front of a live audience.  Prior to this era when most classicists assumed that Homer “wrote” his epics, the experts were divided into two camps.  In those days many authorities believed that the epics were full of “interpolations” by other hands.  That is that other people had added , corrected or edited parts of Homer’s masterpieces.  Frame calls these people  khōrízontes or “separatists,”. 

The other traditional school of thought about the Homeric epics are the Unitarians.  Who believe that the epics were more or less composed by one person or a group of person and that the current version is pretty true to the original.  

 

Those that recognize “interpolations in the text” are generally pointing at a particular clause  that doesn’t fit their current theory.  The general problem I see in questioning the unity of the epics, is that if you start picking out pieces that you don’t want, the whole beautiful tapestry comes unraveled.  At another point where the facts don’t meet Frames needs he suggests that the scholar in question, “therefore seems to have slightly misquoted the first line of the passage.” (§2.139)   Finally for me he writes at  §3.8. “There is in fact explicit evidence that Athena was worshipped as a mother goddess in at least one city, namely Elis in the northwest Peloponnesus, which had a cult of Athena Mḗtēr. This of course does not mean that Athena Polias in Athens was a mother goddess, only that she may have been.”  Or it could mean that a bunch of grateful mothers expressed their thanks to Athena.  (Graves, 138.g)

 

Apparently, I am not smart enough to read this book.  At this point what with its heavy reliance on the Indo-European language, Nestor’s absence twin and the abundance of interpolations I was too confused to read further.