Epic Grief: Personal Laments in Homer's Iliad

244 Pages·2004·6.264 MB·English

by  Christos Tsagalis

Christos Tsagalis
Epic Grief
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DE
G
Untersuchungen zur
antiken Literatur und Geschichte
Herausgegeben von
Gustav-Adolf Lehmann, Heinz-Günther Nesselrath
und Otto Zwierlein
Band 70
Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York
Epic Grief
Personal Laments in Homer's Iliad
by
Chris to s Tsagalis
Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York
© Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines
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ISBN 3-11-017944-X
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Printed in Germany
Cover design: Christopher Schneider, Berlin
Acknowledgements
Καιρός τοϋ σπείρειν, καιρός τοϋ θερίζειν wrote George Seferis many
years ago,* but it is only now, as I write these lines, that I feel the depth
of this metaphor like the good ploughman who has sown his field and
eagerly awaits harvest time. I only hope that both seeds and field were
good.
This book began its long journey to the Homeric seas as a PhD
dissertation submitted to the Classics Department of Cornell University at
the end of 1997. Its present state is much different, and I feel the need to
dwell for a while on the various changes done for this thorough revision.
One completely new chapter ("Distance, Closeness and Mors
Immatura: Common Motifs in the Iliadic Personal Laments"), has been
added. Chapters 1 and 4 ("The Morphology of the Iliadic Personal
Laments" and "Ars Allusiva: Intratextual Readings in the Iliadic Personal
Laments") have been thoroughly revised and the appendix on Iliadic short
obituaries has been considerably enriched. A chapter on the poetics of
Thetis' personal lament (to appear in QUCC) and the second appendix of
my thesis ("Localization and Metrical Shape of Lament Terms in the
Iliad'') have been omitted.
Many people have helped me improve my work in various ways. For
a first acquaintance with deixis and its poetics, I would like to express my
gratitude to Lucia Athanassaki and Natassa Peponi for inviting me to
attend a Conference in Delphi on Deixis in Greek and Latin Literature. I
also offer special thanks to two of my colleagues in Crete, Stavros
Frangoulidis and Yannis Tzifopoulos, as well as to Prof. George
Christodoulou in Athens, Michael Lipka and Andreas Markantonatos (to
whom I owe the first part of the book's title) in Patras for their
encouragement and insistence on the importance of turning this
dissertation into a book. For their generosity in offering valuable criticism
on this study, I would like to thank Fred Ahl, Kevin Clinton, Richard
' Γ. Σεφέρης, «Τελευταίος Σταθμός», Ημερολόγιο Καταστρώματος Β', "Ικαρος,
Athens 199217.
VI Acknowledgements
Martin, Nanno Marinatos, Heinz-Günther Nesselrath, Philippe Rousseau
and Jeff Rusten. Finally, I acknowledge a long-standing debt to Pietro
Pucci, who initiated me to Homeric advanced research, both in a seminar
on the Iliad during the Fall of 1994 and during the preparation for a
Conference in Lausanne in May 1995. He directed my work from its first
beginnings with learning, fine Italian gusto and confidence in my
abilities.
For almost idyllic conditions of research, I am indebted mainly to the
the following libraries: Olin and Uris in Ithaca, the American School of
Classical Studies in Athens, the British School, Γ École Française d'
Athènes, the Deutsches Archaeologisches Institut in Athens, the Central
Library of the University of Crete at Rethymnon and the Classics Library
of the University of Athens. I would also like to express my gratitude to
the following Publishing Houses for their permission to use material from
their sources: (1) E. V. Rieu and Dominic Rieu, The Odyssey by Homer
(Penguin Classics, 1946, Revised edition 1991) Copyright © 1946 by E.
V. Rieu, Revised translation © the Estate of the late E. V. Rieu, and D. C. H.
Rieu, 1991, and (2) approximately forty-six selections from THE ILIAD OF
HOMER, transi. R. Lattimore (1951), University of Chicago Press, copy-
right © 1951 by the University of Chicago. All rights reserved.
On a personal level, I am truly grateful to Anna for her patience in
proofreading the indexes and the bibliography, and no less for shoring me
up in my hour of need.
My greatest debt is of a different nature, equally important, albeit not
academic. This book is, therefore, dedicated to my parents Constantinos
and Mary and to my brother George for all those things that cannot be
calculated, only gratefully acknowledged.
C.C.T.
Athens
March 2004
Contents
Chapter 1 Reading Madie Lament
1. Death in the Iliad 1
2. Γόοι vs Θρήνοι 2
3. Selection Criteria 8
a. Rethinking the Formula 9
b. Using Textual Markers 14
c. Thematic Typology 15
4. Types of Γόοι 16
5. Cenre and Sub-genre 17
6. Defining the Iliadic γόοι 21
7. Scope of Research 22
Chapter 2 The Typology of the Illiadic γόοι
2.1. Introductory Remarks 27
2.2. Praising Address 32
2.3. "Comparison" 36
2.4. Common fate 39
2.5. "Death-Wish" 42
2.6. Past and Present 44
2.7. Tripartite Structure 46
2.8. Ring-Composition 47
2.9. Antiphonal Element 48
Chapter 3 Introductory and Closing Formulas
3.1. Speech-formulas, speech-classification and γόος-speeches 53
3.2. Personal lament speech introductions 55
3.2.1. Single-verse introductions 55
3.2.2. Multi-verse introductions 58
3.3. Personal lament speech closures 64
VIII Contents
3.3.1. Single-verse closures 64
3.2.2. Multi-verse closures 65
3.4. Privileged Individuals and Unprivileged Chorus 68
3.4.1. Privileged Individuals 68
3.4.2. Unprivileged Chorus 72
Chapter 4 Distance, Separation and Mors Immatura:
Common Motifs in the Iliadic γόοι
4.1. Distance and Separation 75
4.1.1. Dying away from one's native land 76
Verbal and Local Deixis 76
4.1.2. Bereaved parents and family 88
4.2. Closeness 90
4.2.1. Personal Deixis (I) 90
4.2.2. Personal Deixis (II) 94
4.3.3. Personal Deixis (III) 99
4.3. Mors immatura 103
4.3.1. Personal Deixis and Narratee Shift 103
4.3.2. Temporal Deixis and Point of View 105
Chapter 5 Intratextual Readings
5.1. Introductory Remarks 109
5.2. Agamemnon 112
5.3. Andromache 118
5.3.1. Iliad 6 118
5.3.2. Iliad22 129
5.3.3. Iliad24 133
5.4. Thetis 136
5.5. Briséis 139
5.6. Achilles 143
5.6.1. Iliad 18 143
5.6.2. Iliad 19 148
5.7. Priam 151
5.8. Hecuba 154
Contents IX
5.8.1. Iliad 22 154
5.8.2. Iliad 24 158
5.9. Helen 161
Conclusion 166
Appendix I Privileged and Unprivileged Dead
1. Unreported γόοι in the Iliad 171
2. The Therapeutics of Lament 174
Appendix II Short obituaries in the Iliad
1. Introductory remarks 179
2. Types of Short Obituaries 181
2.1. The Brief SO 181
2.2. The Expanded SO 182
3. Iliadic γόοι between mirroring and deflecting 188
Table 1 51
Table 2 112
Bibliography
Editions, Commentaries, Concordances, Grammars, Léxica 193
Works Cited 195
Indexes
General Index 219
Index of Homeric Passages 222
Index of Greek Words 229