TFBT: Master Narrator; Zeus/Homer/Achilles

"But because it's right in the middle of the Iliad, it means that the perfect memory of the muses is channeled by whoever says anything".  Nagy's quote about Phoenix from Hour 8.CB22.1x helped me formulate a vague notion that's floated around my head for a while.  I would suggest that in the Iliad, there is a relationship between Zeus, Homer and Achilles. They are all, at times, aspects of the Master Narrator.  

It can escape no one's notice that on several occasions in the Iliad, the Olympians appear to be Zeus' nectar-swilling extended family gazing down on some entertainment he arranged for the family reunion.   Clearly, Homer is the Master Narrator, the master of the medium.   On occasion, Zeus seems to be Homer's mouthpiece, moving the narrative around like when he sent all the gods to do battle on the plain before Troy.  Achilles with his choice to make, moves the plot as much as Homer or Zeus does. 

I was shooting for a sports metaphor, but that didn't work. Instead let me propose;  Zeus the Master Narrator sitting in the sky boxes with his family watching the concert he produced.  Homer as the Master Narrator is the director and composer standing between the audience and symphony.  And Achilles as the Master Narrator is the star and soloist of the show. (A little aside here, I propose the same relationship between Zeus, Homer and Odysseus in the Odyssey.  The point of mentioning this is I once heard  Prof McGrath once say that somewhere around 80% of the his epic his narrated by Odysseus.).  

The role of the Master Narrator shifts from Zeus to Homer to Hero and back again.  The Master Narrator as Zeus is a god who sees what the other gods are doing.  The Master Narrator as Homer hears from the Muses who sees and tells him, what the gods are doing. Hence the Master Narrator as Achilles accesses the same skill and sees Athena in Book I of the Iliad when no other mortal does.  Likewise the Master Narrator as Achilles uses the dual tense in the Embassy Scene because he is clearly not calling Odysseus; near and dear, so the Master Narrator as Homer does the same.

Kind of a wild theory I know.

TFBT: Random Notes 7.CB22.1x

I got to thinking about all the “daughters” that Zeus and Hera gave away;

·                               daughter Persephone to his brother Hades

·                               granddaughter Harmonia to his brother-in-law Cadmus

·                              foster daughter Thetis to his grandson Peleus

·                              daughter Aphrodite to his son Hephaestus

·                              daughter Aglaia to his son Hephaestus

·                              daughter Pasithea to Hypnos; son of Night

And oddly Helen got to pick Menelaus

Back in Forestry school we did a little surveying.  In the good old days, people use to set up piles of stones to mark the corners of their fields.  In the modern era in the United States we drive steel pipes with brass caps into the ground for “corner markers”.  And in places where the surveyor could not drive a pipe into the bedrock, I’ve seen them stack a pile of rocks around the corner marker to keep it in place.  The Iliad is a story about war and the choices we all face.  And the subject of boundary stones comes up twice that I’ve noticed; 

·                     Iliad 12.420 “from the wall now that they had once reached it. As two men, measuring-rods in hand, quarrel about their boundaries in a field that they own in common, and stickle for their rights though they be but in a mere strip,”
      Iliad 21.402 “with her strong hand seized a stone (oros) that was lying on the plain - great and rugged and black –which men of old had set for the boundary of a field. With this she struck Ares on the neck” 

Do these mark the plot in someway?

 I found the following words in the dictionary at Perseus; 

• anthoros; responding boundary-stone
• dioros; having two boundary-stones
• messoros, boundary-stone
• oros, a boundary landmark and in the plural; bounds, boundaries, marking-stones

And the following commentary in Myths of Greece and Rome, by Jane Harrison, [1928], at www.sacred-texts.com “the old Slavonic rites of Russia comes a simple solution. After they had held a sort of "wake" over the dead man, the body was burned, and the ashes were placed in a small urn and set up on a pillar or herm on the boundary line of two properties. The dead grandfather was the object of special reverence, under the title of tchur, which means in Russian either grandfather or boundary. In the Russian of today prashtchur means great-great-grandfather, and tchur menya means "may my grandfather preserve me." On the other hand, the offence of removing a legal landmark is expressed by the word tchereztchur, which means "beyond the limit," or "beyond my grandfather." The grandfather looked after the patriarchal family during his life, he safeguarded its boundaries in death. His monument was at once tombstone and term. Hermes, then, to begin with, is just a herm, a pillar or square stone to keep the dead in memory and mark his grave; in form it is identical with a boundary stone. The mourner hopes and believes that his kinsman, loving; and faithful in life, will be faithful in death. So when; the autumn comes and he sows his seed, burying it in the ground, he believes that his father or his grandfather, if duly mourned and honoured, will look after the seed in the underworld. The herm becomes a giver of increase (charidotes).  

And one last thing; Thetis and Eurynome rescued Hephaestus and kept him with him in the Ocean for nine years.  Thetis is a salt water nymph a Nereid.  Eurynome is a titaness, one of the freshwater nymphs called Oceanides.  How did these two become friends?  See Friendship Among the Gods for further examples. 

TFBT: Zeus' Aversion to Autochthons

 “I start to suspect that Zeus was a damn racist. He seems to have never liked a true human woman!”

                              Maya M.  in Maya’s Corner

 Most of the great mortal families and city-states in Greek Mythology claim descent from some demi-god who traveled to another land, conquered or colonized it, married the local nymph and created a great kingdom.  Kings are commonly called “sons of Zeus”.  When my friend Maya says “true human woman” she refers to a member of those rare genealogies unpopulated by deities.  These are the native people, the indigenous people, the earth-born, in the Greek language; the autochthons.

 Carlos Parada, in a great article on “Autochthonous” in  Greek Mythology Link, lists seventeen autochthons; Amphictyon,  Aras, Castalius,  Cecrops,  Coresus,   Cranaus,  Erichthonius,  Evenor,  Indus,   Lelex, Lycaon,    Palaechthon, Pelasgus,  Periphas,  Phigalus,   Phlegyas and Tyllus . 

Parada did not list the Sparti who were literally born from the earth after Cadmus seeded the fields of Thebes with dragon’s teeth.  Among them I found the first exemption to “Maya’s Law” about Zeus' aversion to autochthons.   Antiope was third generation autochthon with only a nymph in her genealogy. Her sons were the god-like (and heir-less) Amphion and Zethus.    

Other authochthon families either faded into obscurity as I followed their family tree, while others quickly intermingled with the divine.  The relative hold outs for racial purity are the families of;

·        King Amphictyon  of Attica and
·        King Lelex of Laconia. 

I continued to surf the genealogy tables.   I noticed another family prone not to mingle with the fickle gods;

·       The descendants of  Hellen and his three biological sons;  Aeolus, Xuthus  and Dorus.   Hellen’s three sons represent three of the Greek dialects Aeolian, Achaean and Dorian.   (Ion his step-son was an adopted demi-god and was the eponymous founder of the Ionian dialect.) 

Amphictyon reigned prior to Ionian becoming the dialect of Attica, Lelex was an Achaean king.  So  “Maya’s Law” should actually say; that Zeus (and the rest of the gods) has a marked preference for mating with Ionians and barbarians.  Or more simply put; “Zeus prefers Ionian women!”

See also;  TFBT:The Divine Aversion to Death and Nyctophobia

TFBT: Tears of Blood, Tears of the Deep

“Alas, that it should be the lot of Sarpedon, whom I love so dearly as to perish at the hands of Patroclus.” Iliad 16:430

A bunch of us participate in a free online course from Harvard, thanks to edX;  “The Ancient Greek Hero”  During classroom discussion about the laments of the goddess Thetis for her doomed mortal-son Achilles,  one participant suggested that Zeus’ debate over the death of his mortal son Sarpedon could be a mini-lament.  So, below I attempt to compare Zeus’ laments for Sarpedon to Thetis’ for Achilles.

1.     At Iliad 16:430 Zeus looks down on the battle before Troy with pity for his doomed son and speaks the words above.  Thetis has a similar bout of pity of her son at Iliad 18:51 

2.     Zeus says “I am in two minds whether to catch him up out of the fight and set him down safe and sound in the fertile district of Lycia or let him now fall” (16:435)  In comparison at Iliad 9:499-505 Thetis is reported actually discussing with Achilles the two ways his fate could turn.  There is no indication that Thetis will be unable to alter Achilles Fates.  As Laura M Slatkin argues in “The Power of Thetis” ; Thetis seems to occupy a unique position in the hierarchy of the Greek gods.  Colluding and conspiring Olympians can thwart the will of Zeus (Iliad 1:393) but Thetis in turn overthrew their will.  If the will of the collective Olympians is greater than Zeus and Thetis’ greater than theirs it follows that Thetis’ will is great than Zeus.  And note that on both occasions when Thetis wishes to change the course of events there is not physical attack on her person nor harsh words about her, even behind her back. (Iliad 1:393, 496).  Thetis can get her way.  Unlike Sarpedon, Achilles has a choice of destinies.

3.     At 16:440 “O most dread son of Cronus, what are you saying?” questions his sister and wife Hera.   Another classmate references the Muses at Achilles funeral being there “for the record”.  An interesting phrase here, because Hera very much seems to being in the Sarpedon conversation “for the record”; representing the status quo and the Olympic community’s expectations.  In contrast, although no one like Hera or the Erinnyes question Thetis effort to insure her son outlives his destiny; goddesses of significance attend his funeral in a formal capacity; the muses insuring his chosen destiny; unwilting glory and endless fame. (Odyssey 24:57-97) 

4.     At 16:459 “The sire of gods and men assented (to Sarpedon’s death) but he shed a rain of blood up on the earth.”  Zeus assented to Sarpedon’s death; allowed his life to end, something Thetis never did.  Both deities shed tears before their sons’ actual death (Iliad 18:94 and 1:413 respectively). 

5.      Following the above quote about Zeus’ nod;  “nor did Zeus turn his keen eyes away from one moment from the fight but kept looking at it all the time for he was settling how best to slay Patroclus.”  Zeus watches and plots revenge, Thetis does neither. 

6.      At 16:665-684 Zeus gives direction for his son’s funeral with no indication he attended the event.  Whereas, Thetis came forth from the sea with the immortal sea-nymphs; the daughters of Nereus the old man of the sea wailing piteously.  She and her sisters clothed Achilles in ambrosial robes.  For seventeen days and nights Thetis immortal gods and mortal men in lament.  After the cremation upon a pyre Thetis provided “ a two-handled, golden urn,” and gave instructions for the burial of Achilles, Patroclus and Antilochus, in a “great and goodly tomb,” And convinced the gods to provide the gifts for the funeral games.  (Odyssey 24:57-97) 

7.     Per Zeus’ instruction Sleep and Death fly Sarpedon’s body off to Lycia.  In some traditions Thetis snatched Achilles from the pyre and flies him off to the Isle of Leuce.  (Aethiopis) 

So, in summary both god and goddess pity their doomed offspring, consider alternative fates for them, are visited by witnesses to that fate, weep, make funeral arrangements and see that they are snatched away from this world at the end.

 

 

 

TFBT: The Old Ball-and-Chain or Two Thunderbolts?

Hera lulls Zeus to sleep atop Mt. Ida so that Prince Hector and the Trojan army  can have their way on the battle field below.  Zeus awakens to discover her  trick and threatens, “Dost thou not remember when thou wast hung from on high and from thy feet I suspended two anvils…”  (Iliad 15:21, translated by A.T.Murray)

In the Hanging of Hera and the Meaning of  Greek akmwn Miles C. Beckwith  ridiculous the notion that there were actually duw akmonas.  He follows Cedric Whitman[i] in this and their comments are pretty funny.  Considering “anvils” a ludicrous translation Beckwith marches forth in a well-documented argument to find out what the “akmons”, the anvils, really were.  His tentative conclusion is that Zeus was pointing out to his wife that they wed on Olympus and she was stuck with him and his authority.  Sort of a ball-and-chain argument.   Beckwith’s argument is well-documented, well-written and easy to follow, that’s why I came to the conclusion half way through that he was wrong.

With careful steps and mounting evidence he traces the meaning of “the etymological designation of the proto-form *akmon or better *h₂ekmon”.  Half way through his argument he concludes “that  both  ‘heaven’  and ‘stone’ are well attested for *h₂ekmon in differing Indo-European traditions, while the status of our third meaning, 'thunderbolt,' is more difficult to judge.”  Okay, I’m not expert and I’ll admit to “having no Greek”, but a stone coming out of heaven would probably sound like a thunderbolt to me. 

Beckwith also says, “Despite the claims of the standard lexical handbooks,there is no evidence that akmwn means 'thunderbolt’.”  Beckwith presents all his arguments for setting aside the pronouncements of all “the standard lexical handbooks”  in a footnote that takes up half the page.  Sadly, I cannot so readily dismiss two and half millennia of scholarship.  In fact….the Perseus translation device[ii] references several lexicologist defines akmwn as “meteoric stone, thunderbolt”.  The ancient Greeks using the same word for meteorite and thunderbolt, makes sense to me.  And if the gods had a few stones laying around Olympus to fling downward on occasion, they were probably pretty heavy considering the damage Zeus’ weapon of choice could inflict[iii].  Probably make great anvils too. 

So, I would argue Hera was hung from heaven with something heavy strapped to her ankles, probably two of the abundant stones Whitman discusses with wit.  Maybe they were even the akmwn that Zeus kept handy until the Cyclopes invented those newfangled keranous.

 

Image of Zeus with thunderbolt, thanks to NYPL digital gallery

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[i] "Hera's Anvils," HSCP 74 (1970) 40.

[ii] http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/resolveform?redirect=true&lang=greek

[iii] The leader of the mixed-blood Titans, outrageous Menoitios whom far-seeing Zeus struck him with a lurid thunderbolt and sent him down to Erebus (Hesiod, Theogony 507)  Athena threw a thunderbolt at the ship of Aias…the ship fell apart (Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca E5. 22 - E6.)  Typhon (whom) the swift lightning and the rushing fiery thunderbolts laid him low (Oppian, Halieutica 3. 15)  

TFBT:The Divine Descendants of Telephassa

The descendants of the fair beauteous Telephassa represent a unique clan of deities among the immortals of Greek mythology. These Theban gods were as independent of the Olympians as the children of Night with whom “intercourse was inconceivable” or the often monstrous and generally marine children of Pontus. That is to say, no Olympian ever intermarried with Pontus’ fifty grand-daughters the Nereids; goddesses of the waters, with the exception of Poseidon who politically speaking was required to do so. The race of the Olympians and that of the Theban deities are as unique to one another as the Vanir and Aesir in Norse mythology. Maybe as antagonist too.

It began as it usually does in Greek myth, with young girls playing by the edge of the wine-dark sea; in this case Princess Europa and her maids frolicking among the springing roses and the sound of the waves. As usually, there is something beautiful to attract the maiden. In this case it was a beautiful bull. “all his body was of a yellow hue, save that a ring of gleaming white shined in the midst of his forehead and the eyes beneath it were grey and made lightning of desire; and the horns of his head rose equal one against the other” (Moscus 2.77) The girls petted him, played with him, garlanded his horns and then most unusually Europa climbed atop his broad shoulders. He trotted through the soft sand, waded into the water and before the startled girl knew swam towards the west, racing across the deep bellows of the Mediterranean. The bull was actually Zeus King of the Gods. Europa and Zeus spent many years together as man and wife. Europa bore him three exceptional sons, who lived exceptionally long lives and ended up as judges in the underworld. Most unexpectedly the bachelor-brother wed in the afterlife the mother of Heracles. Europa was the sole daughter of the Oceanid Telephassa.

Telephassa and her son high-spirited Cadmus set out in search of her daughter, his sister. But before we can tell of their adventures and the gods born of their blood, we must first follow the history of bullish Zeus.

The cloud-gatherer, that’s an epithet for the King of the Gods, the cloud-gatherer came to power by usurping his father’s throne and defeating the mixed-blood cousins who revolted against him. (There will be internal revolts and two sets of earth-born giants, but that comes later.) The next challenge to Zeus’ hegemony was the monstrous immortal storm god Typhon. As the sky-filling monster rose to Olympus, all the other god fled, leaving Zeus alone to defeat this latest manifestation of Chaos. Zeus didn’t do too well. He ended up bound in a cave with his “sinews removed”. Understandable Typhon was in a mood to party. The musical entertainment came in the form of Telephassa’s son Cadmus. Cadmus performed before the mind-boggling beast, entertaining at first and then eventually, like Hermes with Argus, lulled the “unthinkable” to sleep. Either Cadmus, Hermes, Hermes’ grandson pan or an obscure god named Aegipan snuck into the cave, unbound Zeus, replaced his sinews and armed him with lightning. Zeus was victorious and not forgetful of his brother-in-law’s assistance.

Cadmus and his mother Telephassa headed west looking for Europa. Somewhere around Thrace in Northern Greece, Telephassa supposedly passed away. Cadmus traveled upon eventually asking the oracle at Delphi for advice on how to find his sister. The Oracle at Delphi was ruled by the archer god Apollo. This son of Zeus had his own monster to slay. When Apollo looked for a place to build his oracle, he asked the advice of the Naiad Telphusa (Tilphousa) in central Greece. She recommended Delphi. Apollo went there and encountered the Python. This bloody serpent terrorized the neighboring country-side when not fostering the monster Typhon. Apollo slew the monster and established his oracle.

The oracle told Cadmus to follow a cow and where it lay down to build a city. The son of Telephassa and his men did as the god directed. Upon arriving at the locations Cadmus sent his men to fetch water so they could sacrifice the cow to Apollo. Instead of water they found a serpent just as Apollo had when following the directions of Telphusa. Most of Cadmus’s men were killed, but Cadmus succeeded in slewing the monster. The goddess Athena appeared instructing him to plow the land and sow it with the serpent’s teeth. Cadmus did as instructed. The crop that grew was armed warriors. Just as when the blood of Uranus splattered across the broad fertile earth and the Giants clothed in bronze armor appeared, so did warriors appear around Cadmus. Either one told him to mind his own business or he tossed the bones of our mother (gold from the earth) amidst these dogs of war. In either case the earth-born warriors attached one another. Unlike Zeus who slew all the giants when they arose, Cadmus befriended the survivors of this wild melee. The survivors were called the Spartoi and their descendants intermarried with the descendants of Cadmus.

But there was one problem. The dragon at Thebes was not just a dragon it was the daughter of the war god Ares. The serpent was also the daughter of the erinnye Tilphousa or maybe it was the goddess Demeter furious over the kidnapping of her daughter. In either case the god Poseidon raped the goddess at the spring Telphusa. In order to make up for the crime, he served Ares for some time, just as Apollo served Laomedon and Admetus for crimes against Zeus.

At the end of his incarceration, Zeus rewarded his brother-in-law with a bride of his own; Harmonia the daughter of Ares and Aphrodite, the goddess of love. Their divine descendant’s included two of his daughters were goddesses. Whom Pindar in the Olympian Ode II refers to as, "Daughters of Cadmus; Semele from your high place amidst the queens of heaven, and Ino Leukothea, you who dwell by the immortal sea-nymphs,” Additionally, his grandson Dionysius was an Olympian, grandson Melicertes was worshipped throughout the whole of Greece (Cicero, De Natura Deorum 331) and son-in-law Aristaeus was a god per Chiron and Pindar. (Pythian Ode IX) And of course, Heracles was a member of the royal house of Thebes.

And yet for gods they were much troubled by the Fates. Harmonia and Cadmus were banished from their home and eventually turned to snakes. Leucothe, Melicertes and Dionysus all had to be rescued at some point by the daughters of Nereus, Semele was struck by lightning, Autonoe tore her own son limb from limb and the whole mortal branch of their race was eventually erased by the wars of destruction purposely designed by the Olympians. But, in the end Heracles took his place on Olympus and wed Zeus and Hera’s daughter Hebe. Dionysus, great-grandson of Telephassa, took his own throne among the twelve accompanied by his divine wife Adrianne (another descendant of Telephassa and his deified mother Semele, called Thyone by the gods.)


Images thanks to New York Public Library

TFBT: No God May Thwart

       

“The most startling silence in the voluble divine community of the Iliad is the absence of any reproach made to Thetis for her drastic intervention in the war.”  

       Laura Slatkin in

                      The Power of Thetis

I argued in Most Dangerous Sea and Beauteous Scarf  that Thetis’ influence on the gods and events of the Iliad might have to do with the gods mutual respect of the honors and privileges divided among the victorious gods at Mecone. 

But, with my continual re-reading of Tobias Anthony Myers dissertation Homer’s Divine Audience: The Iliad’s Reception on Mount Olympus  I have come away with an additional reason for Thetis gracious reception on Olympus.  (I should mention that Thetis was Hera’s foster daughter that might help insure a pleasant reception.)  Myers suggests that the gods “hold in common that a god's wrath against mortals takes precedence over a god's protection of those same mortals”.  He bases this on, among other things I’m sure, the ready agreement of Hera and Zeus in the Iliad to destroy one another’s favorite cities, just to appease Hera’s “bestial” wrath.  Of which Zeus says “Strange queen, wherein do Priam and the sons of Priam work thee ills so many, that thou ragest unceasingly to lay waste the well-built citadel of Ilios? If thou wert to enter within the gates and the high walls, and to devour Priam raw and the sons of Priam and all the Trojans besides, then perchance mightest thou heal thine anger.  (Iliad 4:30)

Likewise Artemis says in Hippolytus 1456 (Euripides) “Hath Zeus ordained in heaven, no god may thwart a god’s fixed will; we grieve but stand apart.”  Although the virgin-goddess refers to her friend Hippolytus dying at the machinations of the jealous Aphrodite, her behavior seems to follow the example set down by the King and Queen of the Olympians above. 

And finally, Bruce Louden[i]  observes the opposing deities; the protector of the hero and the god antagonistic to the hero never confront one another in epic.  His example being Athena and Apollo during the Theomachy, but the same trend can be recognized in the Hippolytus where Aphrodite and Artemis never confront one another.   Artemis seems to summarize it best “No god may thwart a god’s will.”

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[i] The Gods in Epic or the Divine Economy  page 95 in Companion to Ancient Epic

TFBT: Mimir, the Monster Sphinx and the Throne of Olympus

I composed several encyclopedic articles that are posted elsewhere, that might be of interest to my readers.

A short piece on Mimir, a "giant" in Norse Mythology and a good friend to Odin, King of the Aesir.  Mimir:Norse God of Wisdom

A short piece on the dread and curse of Ancient Thebes, the Sphinx.  Sphinx, the Monster Sings

And finally, a more indepth piece on the danger from Zeus' daughters and sisters to the stability of the cosmos. Securing the Throne of Zeus