Homer and Hesiod as Prototypes of Greek Literature

Gregory Nagy

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781136539954
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

This volume is available on its own or as part of the seven volume set, Greek Literature. This collection reprints in facsimile the most influential scholarship published in this field during the twentieth century. For a complete list of the volume titles in this set, see the listing for Greek Literature [ISBN 0-8153-3681-0].

Talking Vases: The Relationship between the Homeric Poems and Archaic Representations of Epic Myth*

Steven Lowenstam

University of Oregon

In memory of Heinz A. Lowenstam, and his enthusiasm

The essential question in investigating the relationship between the Homeric poems and the epic stories painted on Archaic Greek vases is whether the painters were depicting, with characteristic artistic license, the Iliad and Odyssey in the form in which we have inherited them.¹ For instance, when Kleitias portrays Patroklos’ funeral games on the Francois Vase and shows five labeled charioteers, only one of whom participates in the Homeric account, one must ask whether the painter has invented his own version of the event, followed a popular variation of the myth unknown to us, portrayed a loose, possibly oral story ultimately derived from the same tradition as our Iliad, or simply made a mistake.

In the nineteenth century, the prevalent view, as articulated by Luckenbach, was that the Homeric subjects on Archaic Greek vases were in fact drawn directly from the Iliad and Odyssey.² In this century Friis Johansen accepted this viewpoint and went to great lengths to substantiate it further.³ Nevertheless, the interpretation that Homer is essentially the sole influence on Archaic representations of epic has been challenged in two important ways. First, although Greek tragedy was already in the nineteenth century posited to have exercised an influence on vase representations, this view has received its most cogent demonstrations in the last twenty years.⁴ Second, the influence of folktales, which was always considered a factor in vase-painting, has drawn more attention, as seen, for instance, in Touchefeu-Meynier’s examination of artworks pertaining to the Odyssey;⁵ and Cook (1983), while recognizing the difficulty of the subject, has energetically argued that folktales and stories told to painters in childhood were probably the primary source for epic subjects on vases before 530 B.C.E. Snodgrass has further questioned painters’ dependence on poetic sources, even though he still sees the early influence of our Homeric poems.⁶

The question of vase-painters’ sources is indeed difficult to answer, because, as is well recognized, a great number of reasons have been advanced to explain why painted and literary versions of a myth might not correspond. In fact, seven reasons can be briefly stated:⁷

1.in some cases the very difference of media might have prevented a painter from representing a verbal description;

2.painters may not have known or may have forgotten a Homeric or traditional story;

3.use of traditional iconography led to apparent departures from Homer;

4.when painters added labels to a genre scene in order to translate it into an individualized picture, details appropriate to the generic scene clashed with the new context;

5.painters were not mere illustrators of Homer but artists who presented their own versions of myths;

6.artists created a synopsis or emplotment by combining sequential scenes of a story;

7.a different text or version of a myth was followed, either a) another oral or epic story, b) a tragedy, satyr play, or lyric poem, or c) a combination of oral or literary sources.

Accordingly, when a picture on a vase does not correspond with the story we know from Homer, six other explanations for divergences allow critics to avoid the simplistic interpretation that the artist merely erred or had forgotten the “correct” account—the second of the hypotheses listed above.

Although all seven reasons can adequately explain differences between paintings and poems with epic subjects, it is important to recognize that such explanations were devised under the assumption that the paintings were created after the epoch when our Homeric poems had been composed and gained currency. Hence, if the details of a painting diverge from what might have been expected from the Homeric narrative, the most common explanation is that the artists disregarded literary sources and painted scenes as they imagined them. Art historians especially champion the independence and creativity of artists in regard to myth. But, if, as will be argued below, our Homeric poems had not become canonical in the seventh, sixth, or even early fifth centuries B.C.E., this confidence in artistic inventiveness should be reconsidered, because other causes, and in particular the influence of other poetic works, may have played a greater role than is presently accepted.

Although it is undoubtedly difficult—and often impossible—to pinpoint precisely why some literary and artistic depictions of epic scenes do not correspond, attempts to determine the reasons for specific differences can be valuable, especially when such endeavors lead to principles that will facilitate future inquiries of this sort. The aim of the present work is to further the investigation of the relationship between poetic and artistic versions of Iliadic and Odyssean epic from the seventh to the fifth centuries, with special attention paid to the role of artistic traditions and alternative poetic sources.⁸ In Parts I-III, I inspect seven vases from the sixth and fifth centuries whose representations of Iliadic and Odyssean myth noticeably differ from versions of the stories in our Iliad and Odyssey or otherwise appear to reflect non-Homeric sources. In Part IV, I examine scrolls and other writing painted on vases and find that, although some of these inscriptions deal with epic material, including the story of Troy, none alludes directly to our Homeric poems. This conclusion would be surprising if our Homeric poems were authoritative in the sixth and early fifth centuries B.C.E. In Part V, I consider and reject the view of some recent critics that several Archaic artworks reveal a definite knowledge of our Homeric poems. In Part VI, the differences between painted and sung versions of Iliadic and Odyssean myth are examined in terms of artistic inventiveness, local folklore, and alternate poetic traditions, with the latter given priority as the source of the material treated here. Nevertheless, if oral poets were still composing songs about Achilleus and Odysseus in the sixth and fifth centuries, as reflected in Greek paintings, one might wonder how early or authoritative

our Homeric poems were. Therefore, I examine the compositional date of the Iliad and Odyssey in Part VII and conclude that the evidence for composition in the eighth or early seventh century is extremely tenuous. Finally, the argument in Part VIII is that, even if our Homeric poems were composed in the eighth or seventh century B.C.E., they were not authoritative in the Archaic period when the vases considered here were produced. Hence, although this article primarily focuses on evidence that paintings with Iliadic and Odyssean material were influenced by poems and stories other than those of our Homeric poems (with the result that the vases sometimes reflect the tradition from which our Homeric poems were created), such an analysis requires that we also ask when the Iliad and Odyssey were composed, what influence Homer had in the Archaic period, and when our versions of the Homeric poems became authoritative.

I.

It is well known that the artists who turned to the Trojan story were often intrigued by episodes that did not occur in the Iliad and Odyssey: for example, the judgment of Paris, Cheiron’s custodianship of Achilleus, the ambush and slaughter of Troilos, the game of draughts between Achilleus and Aias, the battle between Memnon and Achilleus, and the Ilioupersis. These episodes, with the exception of the draughts game, belonged to the Cyclic poems, whose dates of composition could not have been much earlier, if at all, than the earliest instances of their materialization in painting. Since the Cyclic tradition was as old as the Homeric, it is entirely possible that a Protoattic representation of the entrusting of the infant Achilleus to Cheiron predates an actual written source and relates to oral versions of the myth circulating at that time.⁹ The ivory gem showing the suicide of Aias (late eighth or seventh century) is certainly earlier than the Little Iliad ascribed variously to Lesches, Cinaethon, Thestorides, and Diodorus; a Protoattic representation of Achilleus’ attack on Troilos also predates extant written narratives of that episode.¹⁰

Again, as R. M. Cook points out, the existence in art of two different versions of a myth may indicate that both cannot derive from the same literary source:

The Judgment of Paris, which was included in the Cypria, appears in art in two versions, in one of which Paris welcomes his visitors and in the other runs away to avoid them; and both versions cannot have occurred in the Cypria. Either then two epics with the Judgment were known concurrently, and that well into the sixth century; or one version at least (and more probably the comic flight of Paris) came from some other source—folk tale or the inventiveness of an artist who made free with orthodoxy.¹¹

By “folk tale” Cook appears to mean non-professional story-telling: the folktale of the shepherd who must choose between imperial authority, martial dominance, and sexual gratification may have evolved into the specific myth of the judgment of Paris, but they are not the same.¹² But non-professional story telling and artistic inventiveness, Cook’s two alternatives, raise the question of source. We would expect customers of vases picturing Paris’ flight to recognize the story, if this variation of the myth were told by professional bards or if it were popularly related in less formal settings.¹³ But how would the customer (or other artists) have identified the myth if the painter invented a variation so different from the popular story? Cook wants to distinguish between epic poems and non-professional retellings of myth,¹⁴ but at this point of our investigation it does not matter if the sources were established poems or popular oral versions, for in either case the stori...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Series Content
• Acknowledgements
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Series Introduction
• Volume Introduction
• 1. Talking Vases: The Relationship between the Homeric Poems and Archaic Representations of Epic Myth
• 2. Have We Homer’s
• 3. The Epic Cycle and the Uniqueness of Homer
• 4. The Non-Homeric Cypria
• 5. Patroklo? the Ram
• 6. Patroklos the Ram (Again)
• 7. The “Address to the Delian Maidens” in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo: Epilogue or Transition?
• 8. Kynaithos, Polycrates, and the Homeric Hymn to Apollo
• 9. Individual Poet and Epic Tradition: Homer as Legendary Singer
• 10. Telemachus and the Last Hero Song
• 11. Agamemnon’s Skēptron in the Iliad
• 12. The Wrath of Helen: Self-Blame and Nemesis in the Iliad
• 13. Aithôn, Aithon, and Odysseus
• 14. Who Is μαXάρτατ0σ in the Odyssey?
• 15. Gender and Internal Audiences in the Odyssey
• 16. Homeric OrTOΣ and the Poetics of Deixis
• 17. Poetry and Sailing in Hesiod’s Works and Days
• 18. Hesiod as Satirist
• Copyright AcknowledgmentsSeries Introduction