Flesh and Spirit in the Songs of Homer: A Study of Words and Myths

394 Pages·1999·5.374 MB·English

by  Michael J. Clarke

OXFORD CLASSICAL MONOGRAPHS
Published under the supervision of a Committee of the
Faculty of Literae Humaniores in the University of Oxford
The aim of the Oxford Classical Monographs series (which replaces the
Oxford Classical and Philosophical Monographs) is to publish books
based on the best theses on Greek and Latin literature, ancient history,
and ancient philosophy examined by the Faculty Board of Literae
Humaniores.
Flesh and Spirit in the
Songs of Homer
A Study of Words and Myths
MICHAEL CLARKE
CLARENDON PRESS · OXFORD
1999
OXFORD
VNIVBUITY PUU
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6op
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(!; Michael Clarke 1~99
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First published 1999
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Clarke, Michael (Michael J.)
Flesh and spirit in the songs of Homer: a study of words and
myths / Michael Clarke.
p. cm.--{Oxford classical monographs)
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
1. Homer--Criticism and interpretation. 2. Epic poetry. Greek
History and criticism. 3. Mythology, Greek, in literature.
4. Spiritual life in literature. s-Body and soul in literature.
6. Homer-Knowledge--Psychology. 7. Future life in literature.
8. Greek language--Etymology. 9. Psychology in literature.
10. Self in literature. I. Title. II. Series.
PA-4037.C-49s 1999
88J'.01-dc21 99-3o884
ISBN 0-19-815263-9
I 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Typeset by Joshua A88ociatcs Ltd., Oxford
Printed in Great Britain
on acid-free paper by
Bookcraft (Bath) Ltd., Midsomer Norton
For my father
and in memory of my mother
Chuaigh me amach as an chathair go dti an Bit a mbionn
an chuid is treine de na fir ag sn8mh, ag Cladach an
Daichead Troigh. Ach bhi barraiocht daoine ansin agus
chuaigh me bunll.s mile thart an chuan go cladach
Dheilginse . . . Bhi an81 na farraige do mo neart\l go
millteanach, go dti go raibh me do mo mhothacht8il fein
fillin. Cuireann aer na farraige bri mhillteanach ionam, go
me
h3irithe i m'intinn. Is iomai uair a smaoinigh d8
me
dtigeadh an fonn orm agus cois farraige go scriobh
fainn leabhar a shiobfadh ball6g na claigne den mh6rchuid
den chine daonna. Ach ni raibh fonn scribhneoireachta ar
bith an 18 seo orm.
S. Mac Grianna, Mo Bhealach Fiin

PREFACE
This book is based on work that I began in 1990 and continued
intermittently during the eight years that I spent at the
universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Manchester. I owe
special thanks to James Clackson, Michael Crudden, Stephanie
Dalley, John Dillon, Pat Easterling, Mark Edwards, Roy
Gibson, Jasper Griffin, Richard Hunter, John Killen, Matthew
Leigh, Torsten Meissner, Reviel Netz, Trevor Quinn, Keith
Sidwell, Christiane Sourvinou-lnwood, Oliver Taplin, and the
J.
late F. Procope, who have been kind to me and have given
me the benefit of their scholarship. Jasper Griffin in particular
read countless drafts with great patience, and I would have
done little without his acute learning and his relentless criti
cism. Torsten Meissner helped me without stint in my
attempts to understand words, and Michael Crudden read
the final draft and made many invaluable suggestions and
corrections; while the meticulous work of Julian Ward and
Georga Godwin was an unlooked-for boon during copy-editing
and production. I am also very grateful to Judith Mossman and
to my nephew, James Clarke, and his family, who lent me their
homes to write in. Otherwise my chief debts are to all my
family and friends, to the music of James Taylor, and to
Regan's Tara Bar in Dublin, Clowns Cafe in Cambridge, and
above all the New Excelsior Restaurant in Oxford, where they
made the best coffee in England.
As the book is founded on a doctoral thesis, the reader may
be surprised to find that I have allowed little space to
complicated disagreements with published scholarship. So
much is written about Homer that the student will be hindered
rather than helped if he lets other people's theories distract him
from the job of grappling with the substance of the poems,
which remain bitterly hard to understand from line to line. By
trying to let Homer's words speak for themselves I have
developed a habit of arguing through glossed quotations,
which sometimes makes for exhausted reading: but I hope
Preface
Vlll
the argument will be clear if the reader is patient. Certainly the
book would have become unmanageable if I had discussed all
my tussles with the books and articles that I had to read as I
went along. Many times when I read something, I would be
greatly helped by one of its observations but would leave aside
many of the others: this applies particularly to Bruno Snell's
Discovery of the Mind, David Claus's Toward the Soul, Thomas
Jahn's Zum Wortfeld 'Seele-Geist' in der Sprache Homers, Jan
Bremmer's Early Greek Concept of the Soul, Arbogast
Schmitt's Selbstiindigkeit und Abhiingigkeit menschlichen Han
delns bei Homer, and Ruth Padel's In and Out of the Mind. A
few recent books that seemed at first sight to belong in the same
area, such as Hayden Pelliccia's Mind, Body and Speech in
Homer and Pindar and Christopher Gill's Personality in Greek
Epic, Tragedy, and Philosophy, turned out to be so remote from
what I had already written that there was nothing to be gained
by adding discussions of them to the final drafts; and although
I have perhaps learnt more about Greek life and thought from
Christiane Sourvinou-lnwood than from any other scholar
alive today, I found myself at loggerheads with the Homeric
chapter in her 'Reading' Greek Death, which I first saw in draft
form in 1992. (Conversation reveals that the difference is less
between our conclusions than in the objects of our enquiries:
see Ch. n. 64.) Of all the studies of Homeric psychology the
1,
only one that I found really compelling was R. B. Onians's
Origins of European Thought, but even there I have had to
disagree with many of its brilliant and eccentric insights. If it
and the other monographs are referred to only very briefly, this
is not because I have ignored them but because the ancient
evidence must take precedence at all times. I can only apologise
for the multiplication of errors and omissions that will have
been caused by this policy.
M.J.C.
Da/key
September 1998
CONTENTS
Texts, Abbreviations, and Commentaries
XU
Part I: Prologue
Homeric Words and Homeric Ideas
I.
Reading Homer in isolation 4
Religion and world-picture 9
Words and ideas 13
Poetic language and poetic ideas 22
The integrated study of Homer 26
Semantic reconstruction 31
The Categories of Body and Soul
2.
Asking the right questions 37
Dualism of body and soul is insidious 39
Dualistic words and categories constrain scholarship 42
The quest ahead 47
Part II: The Language of Thought and Life
The Breath of Life and the Meaning of ,f,v)('/
3-
The shape of Homeric man 53
'Pvx~?
Does the living man have a 55
Mental Life and the Body
4-
Ovµ.6sa nd its family 61
The idea of psychological identity 61
The mental apparatus has many names but is undivided 63
Mental agents and functions are one 66
The sliding scale of agency and function in Iliad 1-vr 69
Mental life is in the breast 73
Mental life ebbs and flows as breath and fluids 79
New emotions flow into the mental apparatus 90
The flow of bile, x6Aos 92
The stuff of thought alternately softens and coagulates 97
In folly the stuff of thought is dispersed
IOI
Homeric psychology is a seamless garment 106
The defining factor can be in movement not substance 109
Contents
X
The body and the self are one II5
Body and not-body II5
As i,Oost hought goes beyond the apparatus in the breast 119
Part III: Death and the Afterlife
5. The Dying Gasp and the Journey to Hades
Loss of 'PvxTis Jn ot departure of soul from body 129
Loss of Ovµ.6si s loss of breath and life 130
Loss of YJuxYisJ likewise loss of breath 133
Loss of if,vxTcJan be its annihilation 137
llvµ.6s can be lost temporarily by swooning 139
if,vxYisJ gasped out, OuµOsi s breathed back in 140
i/,vxTJ'P, vxp6si/,J Vxwre fer to coldness, breath and blowing 144
if,vxThJas two senses in two narrative contexts 147
The image of the flying VJvxyToJke s the two together 148
The image of flight emerges from that of lost breath 151
6. The Corpse and the Afterlife
The corpse has lost vitality but still holds identity 157
To die is to waste away enfeebled 160
When is the corpse distinguished from the dead man? 161
Mutilation of the corpse is mutilation of the man 165
Hades is beyond the darkness of death 166
Allusion to the descent in rhetorical and synoptic style 168
Mutilation is alluded to in the same way as Hades 170
The descent of 'PvxTeJm erges from the descent of K£c/>a>..TJ1 72
Hades is below the earth men stand on 178
The purpose of the funeral is social 180
viKv5/11£Kpd6e,n;o tes both corpse and dweller in Hades 190
The dweller in Hades is corpse or shade 191
The shade is defined as remnant or as counterfeit 194
The shade's movement names it as i/JuxTJ 198
The identity of the shade is indeterminate 200
The shade is an image of the undivided bodily man 205
These articulations are irreconcilable: a problem 207
Patterns of the relation between shade and corpse 211
Appendix: I. The unity of the Nekuia 2'5
2. The authenticity of the Second Nekuia
225
Part IV: The Shaping of Myth
7, The Personalities of Death
How does the visible world relate to the mythical? 231