Rediscovering Homer By Andrew Dalby

[Andrew Dalby]

This is an enlightening discussion. Not having Rediscovering Homer at hand, forgive me if I'm going over old ground.

 

...

 

The Iliad and Odyssey each contain internal contradictions and loose ends. That's not surprising from an author who must have been close to oral composition methods. It's to be expected, in fact. But, strangely, there are practically no true contradictions between the Iliad on one side and the Odyssey on the other. Practically nowhere where, in reading the Odyssey, you can say: that can't have happened if we believe the Iliad. Now, how can it be that there are no contradictions of that kind? My answer is: because the author of the Iliad had had twenty or thirty years to re-read his/her own work (a very unusual activity at that period) and was totally familiar with it -- and was then commissioned to compose the Odyssey.

 

Another fascinating observation. What's interesting about your Single Author explanation, however, is how it assumes (and provides an additional explanation for) the Single Author having two states of mind when composing the two different works. Again, the evidence seems equally consistent with the Two Authors explanation.

 

The translation that MPC quotes is (I think) misleading. In Odyssey 8, lines 79-82, it has "for Apollo had foretold him this at Pytho when he crossed the stone floor to consult the oracle. Here was the beginning of the evil that by the will of Jove fell both Danaans and Trojans." which allows one to understand that the quarrel of Odysseus and Achilles was the beginning of the evil. But that would be a strange misunderstanding of a very well-known story: the apple, and the Judgment of Paris, and Aphrodite's promise were the beginnings of the evil, and surely everyone knew that. The translation ought to be more like "... to consult the oracle; for at that time the beginning of the sorrows that afflicted Trojans and Greeks by great Zeus's will was already approaching." -- i.e. at the time when Agamemnon consulted the oracle.

 

Wow! That really makes a difference! I was relying on the old Butler translation, but your version implies no contradiction between the two books.

 

While we're on the topic, I did have another reason to suspect Two Authors, and that's the factor of time. It seems like the events of the Iliad could take place without implying weird ages for the participants. But if we take them together (I've heard), the events of the two books suggest that Helen returned to Greece at age 70 or something. Maybe I'm mangling this, but if we assume that the author of the Odyssey were attempting to AVOID contradiction with the Iliad (for whatever reason), mightn't the author be more likely to catch overt contradictions than implied contradictions? Moreover, it seems like a second author would be more likely to commit implicit contradictions than would a single author. If this is right, then couldn't we use the prevalence of implicit contradictions as a way of inferring whether there were one or two authors?

 

Tempting as it is, I'm not going to repeat the full argument of Rediscovering Homer: you're going to have to read it! (A paperback is due out this month, I'm told: I have just received advance copies, and they look very pretty.)

 

Your last point, about implied contradictions etc., sounds to me as though you might be getting too complicated. If you want to assume that author 2 attempts to avoid contradiction with author 1, it won't quite do to say "for whatever reason". You need to propose a reason, I think. And bear in mind that oral poets are, in many cultures, in fierce competition. Why should they avoid contradicting one another?

 

Very briefly, my proposal about the different atmospheres and themes of the two poems is this. (As preface, many would agree with me that the Odyssey was composed about 20/30 years after the Iliad.)

 

OK. The Iliad was a commission to record, for writing, the essence of the best-known event of all those that were familiar themes of Greek oral poetry. So we have the essence of the Trojan War, in traditional style (but far longer than a real oral poem) distilled by a poet who belonged to a family or lineage who were thought to deal with this material better than any others. And, yes, she (or he) fulfilled the commission beautifully.

 

Twenty years later, the commission was simpler: we want another poem as good as that one. Twenty years older and wiser, she (or he) was able to be much more original. The story of Odysseus, which already existed, was transformed. And, in the process, the poet was able to show (even better than in the Iliad) how women, children and slaves contribute to decisions and may make the difference between triumph and disaster -- because the author wanted to make that point, and was now mature enough and decisive enough to do it, though still within the context of the traditional epic.

Edited July 8, 2007 by Andrew Dalby

[Andrew Dalby]

If the Odyssey were by a poet who saw himself as in any way competing with, emulating or improving on the Iliad, you would expect at least some minor episode in the Iliad to be taken up and retold in a better way -- just as a demonstration. That never happens.

That's a good observation--the lack of direct overlap rules out the competing poets explanation, but it doesn't quite support an identity between the authors of the two works. I'll go out on a limb and suggest that the Book of Joshua doesn't overlap with its prequel (Deuteronomy), but I'm not convinced they were written by a single author either (that, at least, is the traditional view: Moses as author of the Pentateuch, Joshua as author of the book bearing his name). Moreover, Joshua works as a pretty good sequel to Deuteronomy too. Why not view the Iliad and Odyssey as being similar to Deuteronomy and Joshua?

I don't argue that all books that don't overlap are written by a single author! You'll have to convince me that the circumstances of composition of Deuteronomy and Joshua are close enough to those of oral epics to make this comparison worthwhile: I'm not convinced yet.

[ASCLEPIADES]

Salve, Mr. Dalby! Do you think that the simmilarities between the Odyssey and the Epic of Gilgamesh are enough to suppose a direct relationship?

[Pantagathus]

I have already half given away my answer to MPC's last point -- about the purpose of telling the Quarrel story. I don't think it was ever meant to be a retelling of the Embassy-to-Achilles story, or of the Dispute-over-Briseis, because those stories are already told in the Iliad and the Odyssey doesn't duplicate the stories in the Iliad. No, I think it's meant to be a different story (one that we haven't heard of from any other source, but then, we aren't regular listeners to early Greek epic poets) and the main requirement was that it had to be one that would make Odysseus regret the past, and thus begin to betray his identity.

Thanks Andrew that was exactly the literary device I had in mind in my last post.

 

Also, I want to clarify (because I can't disagree with Andrew that the judgement of Paris was really the singular event that kicked the Trojan Cycle off) that when I said that the Odysseus - Achilles incident at Scyros was the event that set the events of the Iliad off, I meant that there would not have been a quarrel between Achilles & Agamemnon if Achilles wasn't there and it was Odyssues retrieving him from Scyros that made that happen.

[M. Porcius Cato]

I said that the Odysseus - Achilles incident at Scyros was the event that set the events of the Iliad off, I meant that there would not have been a quarrel between Achilles & Agamemnon if Achilles wasn't there and it was Odyssues retrieving him from Scyros that made that happen.

 

But the event at Skyros couldn't have been the dispute between Odysseus and Achilles to which Bk 8 refers. By my recollection of events, Achilles was rather eager to lose his women's clothes and go off to war. All Skyros held for Achilles was Deidamia, who was rather more sorry to see Achilles go than the converse.

[Pantagathus]

But the event at Skyros couldn't have been the dispute between Odysseus and Achilles to which Bk 8 refers. By my recollection of events, Achilles was rather eager to lose his women's clothes and go off to war. All Skyros held for Achilles was Deidamia, who was rather more sorry to see Achilles go than the converse.

I totally agree. I was try to offer an alternative expalination and/or focus on the dangers of various translations of Homer. However, it was Friday evening with a fiance tapping her foot and looking at her watch I wasn't able to articulate myself very well and round out my post.

 

In essence I look at it the same way as Andrew, that it was quarrel completely independent of anything hitherto spoken of and was introduced in the Odyssey as a literary device to expose Odysseus' identity to his hosts.

[Andrew Dalby]

Salve, Mr. Dalby! Do you think that the simmilarities between the Odyssey and the Epic of Gilgamesh are enough to suppose a direct relationship?

My apologies for missing this question when you first asked it, Asclepiades! As you may well know, M. L. West and others have written quite recently and in great detail about apparent links between the Iliad and Odyssey (on one side) and Near Eastern mythology including the Gilgamesh story (on the other side). Yes, the question is, what do the similarities mean? I didn't really go into this in 'Rediscovering Homer' because I didn't think I could add any certainties to the debate and there's enough speculation already. But since you ask, I'll start like this:

 

There are many areas in modern and recent times where oral poetic traditions cross language and culture boundaries. One example, Albanian and South Slavic oral epics; another example, Turkish and Armenian and Arabic oral tales. A medieval example: the tales of King Arthur which early French poets say that they learned from Breton storytellers. Pre-modern examples (like this last one) are always difficult for us to interpret because we don't have enough evidence, and that will be the case with a Homer-Gilgamesh link-up as well. In the same way that linguists establish "linguistic areas", there might well be reason to hypothesize "oral poetry areas". We do know with certainty that the Gilgamesh story crossed language boundaries (it is recorded in Sumerian, Akkadian, Hittite ...) and went on being told for a very long period. I think it's likely that Greece was part of an oral poetry area that included those other languages at some period when the Gilgamesh story was a part of the tradition.

 

But I think this was well before the time when a poet composed the Iliad and Odyssey that we know; that poet knew something about Egypt but nothing about the Near East. Some time after the fall of the Hittites, those links were broken; the oral poetry area shrank or fell apart. So, if you asked that poet about Mesopotamian traditions, your response would be a blank look.

 

That's my answer; what do you think?

[ASCLEPIADES]

Salve, Mr. Dalby! I think that your kind and extensive answer clearly states up your position and that it is going to be very helpful to me for making one on my own. Thank you and good luck with your book (obviously, I pretend to buy it).