This book concentrates on what ancient Greek society inherited through its language, described by linguists as belonging to the Indo-European language family. The span of time covered is roughly between the eighth and the fifth centuries B.C. My emphasis on the language of the Greeks, calling for comparison with the testimony of related Indo-European languages including Latin, Indic, and Hittite, reflects my long-standing interest in Indo-European linguistics, a discipline that has in the past been successfully applied to the systematic study of society in such pioneering works as Emile Benveniste’s Le vocabulaire des institutions indo-européennes. [1] This discipline of Indo-European linguistics aims to reconstruct, from various related Indo-European languages, a proto-language once described as “a glorious artifact, one which is far more precious than anything an archaeologist can ever hope to unearth.” [2] To put it in more modest terms: the attempt to reconstruct a proto-language translates into an attempt to recover various patterns in society as articulated by language. Throughout the pages that follow, the primary aim is to examine the Greek language, by way of comparison with cognate languages, as a reflection of Greek society, with special attention to the function of language as a vehicle of mythology and poetics.

The emphasis of this book, however, is not on the Indo-European heritage of the Greek language. Rather, it is on the forces that transformed this Indo-European heritage into a distinctly Greek heritage; let us call it Hellenism. As for the process of transformation, let us call it {1|2} Hellenization. Hence the titles of the three parts into which the book is divided:

The use of such terms as “poetics,” “myth,” “ritual,” and “social ideology” will be brought into sharper focus as the discussion proceeds, but another question of meaning must be addressed at the very start. The term “Indo-European” will never be used here as any sort of racial or ethnic classification: to say that something is Indo-European is merely to reconstruct an aspect of that thing by way of comparing cognate languages, inasmuch as language is a reflection of society and its institutions. [3]

In the case of ancient Greek society—and the same goes for the Romans and the Hittites and so on—it is misleading to speak of it as “Indo-European” just because comparative linguistics has established that the Greek language is predominantly Indo-European in nature. Still, the story of Hellenization can be at least partly retold in the history of an Indo-European language that has settled into a Mediterranean setting.

In the historical context of the ancient Greeks, the Indo-European heritage of their language can be expected to elucidate some, though hardly all, the inherited institutions of their society. Other institutions will have been inherited from layers of language speakers that preceded the Indo-European layer. Still others will have been borrowed at different times from different societies. One thing is sure: all Greek social institutions, whatever their provenience, will have continued to interact and change in the course of history. That process of interaction and change I am describing as Hellenization. In this book, the distinctive Hellenism or “Greekness” of Hellenization is the decisive empirical given. [4]

It follows that there can be no such thing as a controlling Indo-European model for the Greek heritage of mythology and poetics. In particular, the influence of the Near East is pervasive in the ongoing process of Hellenization. In the poetics of Sappho, for example, as we shall see in Chapter 9, the Indo-European myths about the Morning Star and Evening Star have merged with the Near Eastern myths about the Planet {2|3} Ištаr, known to the Greeks as the Planet Aphrodite, and to us as the Planet Venus.

A particularly valuable contribution to the issue of cultural interaction in ancient Greece is the work of Walter Burkert, who has consistently mined the vast testimony of the Near East for valuable parallelisms with various Greek institutions that have long defied our understanding. [5] For example, he can show that the various myths and rituals of the Greeks connected with the goddess Demeter are closely matched by the patterns inherent in the Hittite Telepinu- and the Mesopotamian Inanna/Ištar figures. [6] Call it Urerlebnis or archetype, the fact is that in this particular case Burkert finds no other closely corresponding figures as he surveys other cultures of the world in search of further matches. It is difficult, then, to resist the conclusion that we are dealing here with some sort of contact or borrowing; further analysis of such parallelisms may benefit from techniques of investigation that have been employed by linguists in studying the phenomenon known as Sprachbund. [7]

Mention of the myths and rituals connected with the goddess Demeter brings us to a major problem in the history of classical scholarship, where studies of myth and ritual have tended to be segregated. For example, the longtime standard work on Greek religion, Martin Nilsson’s reliable Handbuch, [8] studiously avoids any consideration of myth as it relates to ritual, with the one notable exception being the myths of Demeter, which even Nilsson cannot divorce from the corresponding rituals. [9] In Chapter 1, I offer working definitions of myth and ritual. For now, however, I stress only the methodological need to treat them as interrelated phenomena in society, along the lines of Burkert’s hand book, Greek Religion. [10] {3|4}

To grasp the essence of Greek religion, I suggest, is to understand the relationship between myth and ritual in the historical context of ancient Greece. [11] Moreover, it is at times impossible to achieve an understanding of a given myth without taking into account a corresponding ritual, or the other way around: in the myths and rituals of Adonis, for example, we can see clearly that the factor of sacrifice in ritual corresponds to the factor of catastrophe in myth, and that “play acting” the catastrophe of Adonis in sacrifice is supposed to avert catastrophe for the sacrificers. [12]

The relationship of myth to ritual can have a direct bearing on poetics. In the myth of the Divine Twins, for example, the rituals connected with these figures are a key to understanding not only the historical setting of the dual kingship at Sparta but also the poetics of Alcman PMG 7, concerning the alternating kôma of the Twins, their death-sleep. In the case of the Adonis myth, for another example, the connections of this figure with rituals of mourning are pertinent to a general anthropological assessment of mourning as demonstrative self-humiliation and self-aggression. [13] Further, these connections are pertinent to the poetics of Sappho, where the explicit theme of mourning for Adonis may be connected with the implicit theme of Sappho’s self-identification with Aphrodite. [14] In this context, we may note Burkert’s observation that the standard mythmaking sequence, as formulated by Vladimir Propp, of a successful quest ending in marriage finds its inverse in Sappho’s poetry as the disquieting and Adonic sequence of love’s abruptly ending in failure. [15]

Some of the essays collected in this book took shape some years ago. The  essay on Sappho, for example, was published  as early as 1973 (recast as Chapter 9). Another of the essays appeared more recently, in 1987 (recast as Chapter 12). For this reason and for the purposes of the ensemble in general, there has had to be a great deal of reorganization and rewriting. New references to additional secondary sources, however, have been kept to a minimum. Such new references as there are tend to concentrate on those works that had a role in reshaping various specific lines of argumentation. There are undoubtedly many other works that should have played a role, but some of these have been saved for future reference in altogether new projects to be undertaken. [16] {4|5}

The frequent cross-references to the author’s other publications, most of which represent later work, are intended as a continuation and reinforcement of the arguments here presented, not as empty self-advertisement. With the publication of Greek Mythology and Poetics, in combination with the books published in 1974, 1979, 1985 (with T. J. Figueira), and 1990 (Pindar’s Homer: The Lyric Possession of an Epic Past), as listed in the Bibliography, all of the author’s major works from 1973 to date have become easily available. {5|6}

Still under the spell of Heinrich Schliemann’s rediscovery of Troy, students of ancient Greece have been accustomed to regard the Greek epic tradition of Homer as a reporting of events that really happened in the second millennium B.C., the Mycenaean Bronze Age. [1] This view must be modified by the perspective of comparative mythology, as most clearly articulated in a three-volume series, Mythe et épopée, by Georges Dumézil. [2] This perspective takes the methodology of Indo-European linguistics beyond the level of pure language and applies it on the level of myth as expressed by language. In this sense, it is appropriate to think of comparative mythology, more broadly, as comparative philology:

Just as the Greek language, is cognate with other Indo-European languages, including Latin, Indic, and Old Norse, so also various Greek institutions are cognate with the corresponding institutions of other peoples speaking other Indo-European languages. In other words, such {7|8} diverse groups as the ancient Greek and Indic peoples have a common Indo-European heritage not only on the level of language but also on the level of society. To appreciate the breadth and the depth of this Indo-European heritage in Greek institutions, one has only to read through the prodigious collection of detailed evidence assembled by Emile Benveniste in Le vocabulaire des institutions indo-européennes. [4] For now, however, we shall concentrate on Dumézil’s argument that one such Indo-European institution is the tradition of epic as reflected, for example, in the Indic Mahābhārata. The comparative approach, as we shall see, gives a vision of epic that is significantly different from the picture emerging from a “separatist” approach that restricts the field of vision to Homeric standards.

What comparative philology teaches us is that epic is a reflection not so much of historical events as of myth. According to this scheme, epic allows myth to take precedence over reality as we know it. Even where epic utilizes the raw material of real events, the argument goes, it will reshape these events to accommodate the requirements of myth.

This insight from comparative mythology concerning myth is a far cry from our own contemporary usage of the word “myth,” which conveys the opposite of reality. Myth, in societies where it exists as a living tradition, must not be confused with fiction, which is a matter of individual and personal creativity. Rather, myth represents a collective expression of society, an expression that society itself deems to be true and valid. From the standpoint of the given society that it articulates, myth is the primary reality. [5] For the purposes of the present argument, then, “myth” can be defined as “a traditional narrative that is used as a designation of reality. Myth is applied narrative. Myth describes a meaningful and important reality that applies to the aggregate, going beyond the individual.” [6]

The links between myth and epic are explored from another angle in the researches of Milman Parry and Albert Lord on the nature of traditional oral epic poetry. [7] From their fieldwork in the living South Slavic oral poetic traditions, we can witness directly how the composition and performance of epic are aspects of the same process, how myth is literally re-created in each new performance, and how there can be {8|9} countless variations in tradition without any deviation from tradition itself. Parry and Lord have successfully applied to the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey the criteria that they developed from their experience in field-work, and their demonstration that these marvels of Western literature are composed in the traditions of oral poetry may further justify applying the criteria that Dumézil has developed from his experience in the systematic comparison of surviving epic texts. [8] As we can ascertain independently with Parry and Lord, Homer is a master of mythe et épopée.

There are serious problems, however, in connecting the epic traditions of ancient Greece with those of other societies belonging to the Indo-European language family. Dumézil himself gives the clearest account of these problems, which can be summarized as follows: [9]

1. 1. generally, it is difficult to connect the narrative of the Homeric poems with the basic patterns of Indo-European society as reconstructed from comparable narratives in languages related to Greek;

1. 1. specifically, the themes associated with the major Homeric heroes seem not to match the themes associated with gods—at least, they do not match as they do, for example, in the clearly Indo-European epic traditions of the Indic Mahābhārata. [10]

A solution to these problems may be found in archaeology—not in the evidence of the second millennium B.C., the represented era of the Homeric heroes, but in the evidence of the eighth century B.C., the era of the incipient Homeric audience. Whereas the archaeology of the second millennium has encouraged students of Hellas to concentrate on the historical realities found in Greek epic, the archaeology of the eighth century may lead them to perceive the mythmaking framework that integrates these realities.

A 1971 book by Anthony Snodgrass, The Dark Age of Greece, has made it plain that the eighth century B.C., the era in which the Iliad and Odyssey were reaching their ultimate form, is as important for our understanding of Homeric poetry as is the late second millennium B.C., the era that provides the overt subject matter for both of these epics. [11] Granted, Homeric poetry draws on details that archaeologists can indeed assign to the late second millennium. [12] But the point is that it also reflects the {9|10} overall orientation of the eighth century, which is a watershed for the evolution of Hellenic civilization as we know it: in this era, alongside the phenomenon of the pólis ‘city-state’, the heir to localized traditions in cult, law, and so on, there emerged a complementary phenomenon of pan-Hellenism, formalized in such institutions as the Olympic Games, the Delphic Oracle, and the Homeric poems themselves. [13]

In fact, Homeric poetry is a formalization of both these phenomena; it synthesizes the diverse local traditions of each major city-state into a unified pan-Hellenic model that suits the ideology of the polis in general, but without being restricted to the ideology of any one polis in particular. [14] Perhaps the clearest example is the Homeric concept of the Olympian gods, which incorporates yet goes beyond the localized religious traditions of each polis; the pan-Hellenic perspective of Homeric poetry has transcended local phenomena such as the cult of gods, which is functional only on the local level of the polis. [15] By “cult” I mean a set of practices combining elements of ritual as well as myth. For a working definition of “ritual,” I choose the following formulation: “Ritual, in its outward aspect, is a programme of demonstrative acts to be performed in set sequence and often at a set place and time—sacred insofar as every omission or deviation arouses deep anxiety and calls forth sanctions. As communication and social imprinting, ritual establishes and secures the solidarity of the closed group.” [16] The insistence of ritual on a set order of things should not be misunderstood to mean that all rituals are static and that all aspects of rituals are rigid. Even in cases where a given society deems a given ritual to be static and never changing, it may in fact be dynamic and ever changing, responding to the ever-changing structure of the society that it articulates.

Besides the cult of gods, another example of interplay between polis and pan-Hellenism in Homeric poetry is its attitude toward the cult of heroes. Erwin Rohde’s monumental book Psyche remains one of the most eloquent sources for our understanding the hḗrōs ‘hero’ as a very old and distinct concept of traditional Greek religion, requiring ritual practices that were distinct from those associated with the gods. [17] What archaeology now tells us is that this Hellenic institution of hero cults, without much difference from what we see attested in the Classical period of the fifth century, is shaped in the eighth century B.C., the same {10|11} era that shaped the Iliad and Odyssey. [18] It is of course tempting to explain the upsurge of hero cults throughout the city-states as a phenomenon motivated by the contemporaneous diffusion of Homeric poetry, [19] but it would be better to follow Snodgrass in looking for a more comprehensive explanation. [20] Again, the key is the twin eighth-century phenomena of the polis on one hand and pan-Hellenism on the other. I cite Rohde’s thesis that the cult of heroes was a highly evolved transformation of the worship of ancestors—a transformation that took place within the social context of the polis. [21] This thesis, perhaps most appealing from the viewpoint of cultural anthropology, [22] allows room for considering the constituent elements of hero cults to go back far beyond the eighth century. [23] In other words, we can posit a lengthy prehistory for not only the epics of heroes but also the cults of heroes, with this qualification: the ultimate forms of the epics and of the cults were definitively shaped in the eighth century. The strong eighth-century upsurge in the local cults of heroes can thus be viewed as a phenomenon parallel to—rather than derivative from—the pan-Hellenic epics of heroes, namely, the Iliad and Odyssey.

Thus the ideological heritage of Greek heroes may still in principle be reconstructed as Indo-European in character. But there are problems in extracting comparative evidence about the hero from Greek epic, especially about the religious dimension of the hero. It is worth stressing that the hero as a figure of cult must be local because it is a fundamental principle in Greek religion that his supernatural power is local. [24] On the other hand, the hero as a figure of epic is pan-Hellenic and consequently cannot have an overtly religious dimension in the narrative. Still, we may expect to find at least latent traces of this religious dimension within the Homeric poems. I have in fact produced a book with this expectation in mind. [25] Even further, it can be argued that these latent traces have cognates in the comparative evidence of other Indo-European epic traditions.

Both the Iliad and the Odyssey reveal a pervasive theme that implicitly tells of a hero’s parallelism, not only in character but also in action, with a corresponding god. This theme is particularly manifest in the case of {11|12} Achilles and Apollo in the Iliad. For example, both the hero and the god have mênis ‘anger’ (I 1/I 75) that inflicts álgea ‘pains’ (I 2/I 96) so as to be a loigós ‘devastation’ for the Achaeans (I 341/I 97). [26] Moreover, the hero and the god are traditionally represented as look-alikes, for example both appearing unshorn in the manner of a koûros ‘uninitiated male’. Their physical parallelism has led Walter Burken to describe Achilles as a Doppelgänger of Apollo. [27] We see here a remarkable analogue to the five epic heroes known as the Pāṇḍava-s in the Indic Mahābhārata, heroes whose parallelism with corresponding gods (Dharma, Vāyu, Indra, and the two Aśvin-s) has been traced in detail by Dumézil. [28]

In Greek epic there is a consistent pattern of mutual antagonism between a god and the hero who is parallel to him, Moreover, this pattern of antagonism on the level of myth is matched by a pattern of symbiosis on the level of cult. [29] As a case in point, I cite the relationship of Apollo with Pyrrhos/Neoptolemos, son of Achilles: this hero is killed by the god himself within his own divine precinct (e.g. Pindar Paean 6.117-120), the very place where Pyrrhos/Neoptolemos is believed to be buried and where he is worshiped as the chief cult hero of Delphi (e.g. Pindar Nemean 7.44-47). [30] This and many other similar themes of god-hero antagonism suit an Indo-European pattern documented by Dumézil, who links the story patterns of the Old Norse hero Starkaðr, the Indic hero Śiśupāla, and the Greek hero Herakles. With the myth of Herakles, Dumézil himself has admirably demonstrated that the Indo-European pattern of god-hero antagonism is indeed attested in the realm of Greek myth. What I would add here is that this same pattern is central to the narrative traditions of Greek epic in particular, as exemplified in the Iliad and Odyssey. [31] In fact, the compressed retelling of the Herakles story in Iliad XIX 95-133 is a clear attestation of the same Indo-European pattern that Dumézil has reconstructed from such nonpoetic retellings as in Diodorus Siculus (4.8-39). [32]

The claim can be made, then, that the themes associated with the major Homeric heroes do indeed match the themes associated with {12|13} gods, and that Dumézil’s doubts about the applicability of his reconstructions to Greek epics can in the end be dispelled. Moreover, since the Greek evidence shows parallelisms of god and hero attested even on the level of cult, Dumézil’s vision of epic as structured by myth may even be extended one level further: from epic to myth to ritual.

There is a striking attestation of all three levels in the Homeric Hymn to Herakles (Hymn 15), which can be described as a brief and stylized prayer in worship of the hero Herakles, invoked as the son of Zeus (verses 1 and 9) and implored to grant success and wealth (9). Within this prayer Herakles is described as áristos ‘best’ among the epikhthónioi ‘earth-bound men’ of Thebes (1-2), and each of these words conjures up a specific heroic theme. Considering epikhthónioi first, we note that this word can mean more than ‘earth-bound men’ pure and simple: it is also attested in the context of designating heroes as worshiped in cult (e.g. Hesiod Works and Days 123). [33] As for áristos ‘best’, it serves as a formal measure of a given hero’s supremacy in his own epic tradition, as we see from the deployment of the expression áristos Akhaiôn ‘best of the Achaeans’ in the Homeric poems: the Iliad and the Odyssey each appropriate this epithet to fit the central figures Achilles and Odysseus, respectively. [34]

There are other epic touches as well in Homeric Hymn 15, as for example in these verses describing the Labors of the hero Herakles:

Let us compare the verses beginning the Odyssey:

In the Hymn to Herakles, the anaphora of πολλᾲ…πολλᾲ ‘many things…many things’ at verse 6 in the context of πλαζόμενος ‘set off-course’ at verse 5 is parallel to the anaphora of πολύτροπον…πολλὰ/πολλῶν…/πολλὰ ‘the one of many turns’…’many’/’many’ …/’many’ at Odyssey 1/3/4 in the context of πλάγχθη ‘was set off course’ at I 2. Further, the expression πολλὰ…ἀνέτλη ‘he endured many things’ at Hymn 15.6 describing Herakles is parallel to πολλὰ…πάθεν ἄλγεα ‘he suffered many pains’ at Odyssey i 4 describing Odysseus, while the ἀτάσθαλα ‘reckless’ deeds of Herakles at Hymn 15.6 correspond to the characterization of Achilles in his own dark moments of savagery as ἀτάσθαλος (e.g. XXII 418). [35]

The study of the diction in Hymn 15 could be taken much further, but the point has already been made: this composition is not only a functional prayer to a hero in his capacity as a cult figure but also a glorification of his epic attributes—the very same epic attributes that seem to be divided up between Achilles and Odysseus in the overall epic diction of the Iliad and Odyssey. [36]

It is as if the epic figures of Achilles and Odysseus resulted from a split of characterizations that we can find in one heroic figure, Herakles. In light of Dumézil’s work on Herakles in Mythe et épopée II, [37] we see that Herakles is in fact far closer to an Indo-European model of the hero than is either Achilles or Odysseus. We may even add another factor, this time in light of Dumézil’s work in Mythe et épopée I. [38] Such heroes as the five Pāṇḍava-s in the Indic Mahābhārata are not only each parallel to specific gods in traits and actions: they are also sired by these very same gods. [39] So also with Herakles: the best of heroes, as he is described in the Homeric Hymn To Herakles (15.1-2), is sired by the best of gods. By {14|15} contrast, most Homeric heroes are several generations removed from divine parentage, just as they are several stages removed from the Indo-European model of the hero.

There is a striking reflex of this state of affairs on the formal level of poetic diction. The word in question is hēmí-theoi (ἡμίθεοι) ‘demigods’, which as we see from Hesiod F 204.100 MW and elsewhere clearly denotes direct divine parentage on one side (ἡμίθεοι at verse 100 = τέκνα θεῶν at verse 101), not simply semidivine status. [40] In Hesiod Works and Days 160, this same word hēmí-theoi designates the heroes of the generations that fought at Thebes and Troy. [41] Yet Homeric diction consistently refers to this same generation of heroes as hḗrōes (ἥρωες) ‘heroes’, not hēmí-theoi (ἡμίθεοι) ‘demigods’. The only exception is at Iliad XII 23, where hēmí-theoi does indeed refer to the Achaean heroes who fought at Troy—but the reference here is made from the standpoint of the Homeric audience, as it looks back, centuries later, at the remains of the Trojan War (see especially Iliad XII 26-32). [42] The point remains, then, that Homeric poetry—unlike other traditional forms of poetry—cannot as a rule designate its own heroes as hēmítheoi ‘demigods’, being restricted instead to the word hḗrōes. It is as if the Indo-European model of hero were no longer appropriate for the Homeric tradition of epic narrative, whereas it remained so for other poetic traditions such as the Hesiodic. [43]

I return to Hesiod F 204 MW for a remarkable illustration of this principle. At verses 95 and following, we find a tightly compressed narrative about the beginnings of the Trojan War: how the Olympian gods were split into pro-Achaean and pro-Trojan factions ever since the éris ‘strife’ at the Judgment of Paris (verses 95-96), [44] how the Will of Zeus ordained the deaths of heroes in the Trojan War (96-123). By good fortune, a corresponding passage is attested in a fragment from the epic Cycle, specifically from the beginning of the epic Cypria (F 1 Allen). Here, too, we find a reference to éris ‘strife’, this time designating the Trojan War itself (Cypria F 1.5), and how it was the Will of Zeus that heroes should die at Troy (F 1.6-7). [45] So much for the convergences. One major divergence, however, is that the heroes of the Trojan War are called hḗrōes in the Cyclic version (F 1.7 Allen) but hēmítheoi ‘demigods’ in the Hesiodic (F 204.100 MW). It appears that the epic format is more specialized, {15|16} more restricted, than other forms of poetry, and that it cannot easily tolerate the semantics of an Indo-European model that contradicts the genealogies of its own more specialized, more restricted heroes.

And yet the general themes shared by these Cyclic and Hesiodic passages are distinctly Indo-European in character. Even if the Cyclic Cypria avoids calling its heroes hēmítheoi ‘demigods’, these epic figures nonetheless share a vitally important theme with their distant Indic cousins, the divinely sired Pāṇḍava-s of the Mahābhārata: Zeus brings the éris ‘strife’ of the Trojan War because he intends to depopulate the Earth of the myriad heroes that weigh upon her (Cypria F 1.1-6 Allen). Similarly in the Mahābhārata, the war of the Pāṇḍava-s is a divine solution to the overpopulation of heroes weighing upon the earth. [46] In this way the major epic narratives of the Greek and the Indic peoples are inaugurated with a cognate theme, and it is hard to imagine more compelling evidence for the Indo-European heritage of the epic traditions about the Trojan War. [47]

A related theme, equally important as evidence for an Indo-European heritage in Greek epic, is apparent in the Iliad’s own compressed reference to the beginnings of the Trojan War—a theme elaborated in detail by the Cypria. We have already seen that the war itself is an éris ‘conflict’ (Cypria F 1.5 Allen), just as the Judgment of Paris is an éris (Hesiod F 204.96 MW). The éris that marks the beautiful shepherd’s judgment took the form of neîkos (νεῖκος) ‘quarreling’ (Cypria/Proclus summary p. 102.15 Allen), and the Iliad itself refers to the whole affair as éris (III 100) or neîkos (XXII 116). I emphasize the words éris ‘strife’ and neîkos ‘quarreling’ not only because of their thematic importance as a plot motivation of epic but also because of their programmatic significance beyond epic. It so happens that the language of Greek praise poetry designates its own converse, blame poetry, with these very words, éris and neîkos. [48] Moreover, epic itself uses the word neikéō as ‘blame’ in opposition to ainéō ‘praise’ (e.g. Iliad 249-250). [49]

This opposition fits the larger pattern of a complementary interplay between praise and blame, particularly on the level of poetry, in such Indo-European societies as the Italic, Celtic, and Indic. [50] Marcel Detienne has extended the comparison to the Greek evidence, [51] and I in turn have described in detail the diction of praise and blame specifically {16|17} in Greek poetry. [52] The point to be made now, however, is more fundamental: as we can see from the Iliadic references to the Judgment of Paris, Greek epic presents its own genesis in terms of the opposition between praise and blame. As the Iliad puts it, the Judgment of Paris entailed the blaming of the goddesses Hera and Athena along with the praising of Aphrodite:

Thus the primary narrative of Greek epic, which is the Trojan War, is self-motivated by the Indo-European social principle of counterbalancing praise and blame.

It is precisely in this theme, the Judgment of Paris, that Dumézil has found the most overt Greek example of a general Indo-European social ideology that he describes as trifunctionalism. In Dumézil’s formulation, society as reflected by the Indo-European languages tends to divide along the following three lines of ideological organization: (1) sovereignty and the sacred, (2) warfare, (3) agriculture, herding, and fertility in general. [53] The theme of the Judgment of Paris reflects this pattern of trifunctionalism. Paris the herdsman is being offered a gift from each of the three functions: (1) sovereignty, from Hera; (2) military supremacy, from Athena; and (3) sexual relations with Helen, the most beautiful woman on earth, from Aphrodite. [54]

Thus the Judgment of Paris, the ultimate point of departure for the narrative traditions that we know as Homer’s epics, can itself be judged as an epic theme with an Indo-European foundation. More broadly, Homer can be judged an authoritative source for the myths inherited by and through the Greek language. {17|18}

Since the discoveries of Milman Раrry [1] and Albert Lord [2] about the nature of “oral poetry,” some problems have developed over how to define the formula. Parry’s own definition will serve as a useful point of departure: the formula is “a group of words which is regularly employed under the same metrical conditions to express a given essential idea.” [3]

It is pointless here to launch into a bibliographical survey of scholars’ reactions; I propose instead to consider some of the general problems to be found in the definition itself. The most important of these, one that requires extensive discussion, has to do with Parry’s original frame of reference. To put it simply, Parry was basing his definition on one body of evidence alone, the Homeric corpus (that is, the Iliad and Odyssey). If we look again at Parry’s words, we see that he actually prefaced his definition with “The formula in the Homeric poems may be defined as…” [4]

In fact, it is fair to say that the study of oral poetry down to our time has been destined to develop in a certain direction and almost in a certain order not so much because Homeric poetry had been a preeminent topic of academic interest for centuries but rather because Milman Parry in particular based his initial findings exclusively on Homeric poetry. As late as six years after publication of his two fundamental French theses {18|19} (Parry 1928a, b), at a time when he was already starting fieldwork on South Slavic oral poetry, Раrrу was still relying on criteria based squarely on Homeric poetry. Albert Lord gives us a fascinating glimpse of this stage in his teacher’s thinking when he quotes statements like the following from Parry’s own field notes (dictated at Dubrovnik, from December 1, 1934, to February 2, 1935): “for some reason, that does not exist for the South Slavic poetry, there existed for the Greek heroic songs a fixity of phrasing which is utterly unknown in the South Slavic.” [5] Much more fieldwork was yet to follow, and the subsequent research of both Parry and Lord has led to an entirely different conclusion, that the fixity of phrasing in South Slavic oral poetry is in fact all-pervasive. [6]

The experience of fieldwork, then, has here ultimately corrected an initial impression induced under the Homeric influence. It should be emphasized, however, that Homeric poetry did not mislead the field-worker about Homeric poetry; rather, it misled him about South Slavic poetry. And yet, why should one archaic text, the Homeric corpus, have had more to say about the nature of oral poetry than the myriad songs sung by singers in the living South Slavic tradition? The answer is simple: one knew a great deal more about the Homeric tradition. Centuries of philology had already passed in pursuit of every imaginable aspect in the evolution of the Iliad and Odyssey. Prodigious efforts at discovering the genesis of Greek epic had a way of inspiring confidence that one was on the track of its essence as well. No matter what we call this quest—the “Homeric Question” or whatever—the assumption is there: essence through origins.

Here the evolution of another field of study, that of linguistics, teaches the student of oral poetry an important lesson: searching for origins does not necessarily lead to our grasping the essence. In the nineteenth century the study of language was preoccupied mainly with its genealogy rather than its structure. Historical linguistics took precedence over other approaches, as we can see from Pedersen’s eloquent account in The Discovery of Language (1931). But historical linguistics is by no means adequate as the sole approach to language. For example, we will not really know the Latin language simply by tracing it back to an Indo-European protolanguage—even though the technique of reconstructing Latin and all the other Indo-European languages to a common prototype has been justifiably called, by a prominent linguist who was not even an Indo-Europeanist himself, “more nearly perfect than that of any other science dealing with man’s institutions.” [7] Granted, {19|20} reconstructed protolanguage may perhaps justifiably be called “a glorious artifact, one which is far more precious than anything an archaeologist can ever hope to unearth.” [8] Nevertheless, the point remains that reconstruction cannot yield all the answers. What is also needed is a thorough description of the structure of a given language as it exists at a given time and place. Since the influential work of the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, such a perspective on language has been called “synchronic,” in contrast to the “diachronic” perspective, where we see the structure of a language as it evolves through time. [9] For solving most problems of language, it is now generally recognized that both perspectives are needed. [10]

These concepts of synchronic and diachronic are readily applicable to the study of oral poetry. What I propose to do throughout this presentation is to stress their abiding usefulness. But first, let us quickly compare the history of oral studies with the history of linguistic studies. Fieldwork on South Slavic epic, which is an example of synchronic analysis, came about much later than philological research into the genesis of the Homeric corpus, which is clearly diachronic analysis. In general, then, the evolution of linguistics and oral studies is parallel. In particulars, too, it was the historical perspective, I submit, that had led Parry at the outset of his fìeldwork to believe that South Slavic oral poetry lacked the degree of fixity in phrasing that could be found in the Iliad and Odyssey. Let it not go unsaid, though, that Parry’s own approach to the Homeric corpus was strictly synchronic: he was studying its formulas as blocks of a real system of traditional diction. My point is simply that Parry’s initial impressions of South Slavic oral poetry were influenced by the diachronic standpoint of his Homerist predecessors. Once his own synchronic perspective took hold, the essence of South Slavic oral poetry presented him with an altogether different picture.

The synchronic approach, however useful it has been for Parry when he was analyzing Homeric poetry, was even more effective as a tool for analyzing South Slavic oral poetry. In the ease of the Iliad and Odyssey, Parry had to confront the philological problem of a fixed text containing a finite length of discourse—vestiges of an oral tradition long dead even by the time of Plato. Moreover, we know precious little even about the setting of ancient Greek oral poetry—beyond what we learn from the texts themselves. By contrast, Parry’s fieldwork in Yugoslavia was an open-ended situation: here he had access to as many performances as {20|21} he could record from as many singers as he could find who practiced the living tradition of oral poetry. It is in fact from the synchronic fieldwork of Parry and Lord that we gain the most important new fact about oral poetry—one that we could perhaps never have learned from philological work on the Homeric texts alone. Each and every performance that Parry recorded from the singers of the living tradition turned out to be, as he discovered, a distinct composition. Lord sums it up this way: “Singer, performer, composer, and poet are one under different aspects but at the same time. Singing, performing, composing are facets of the same act.” [11]

This aspect of oral poetry, which Parry learned from his fieldwork in Yugoslavia, had vital significance for Parry’s concept of the formula. The Homeric evidence had taught him that the formula is a traditional group of words regularly recurring in a given rhythmical framework, that is, in given metrical slots. Now he learns from the South Slavic evidence that oral poetry may require you to compose while you perform, perform while you compose. Such a medium, it follows, puts pressure on the poet/singer to have a ready-made phrase available to fill every position in the verse, which is the overall frame for his phraseology. Then too, the singer has to make verse follow verse rapidly. As Lord puts it, “the need for the ‘next’ line is upon him even before he utters the final syllable of a line. There is urgency. To meet it the singer builds patterns of sequences of lines, which we know as the ‘parallelisms’ of oral style.” [12]

We may all follow intuitively such observations offered by Parry and Lord about the demands made by performance on composition. But the Hellenist who has been reared on the classical approaches to the Iliad and Odyssey begins to wonder how an oral system so seemingly automatic could still result in compositions that seem so integral—so premeditated esthetically, even psychologically. He wonders even more when he reads some other Hellenists who have championed the findings of Parry. For example, defining what he calls Parry’s “law of economy,” Denys Page says the following about the Homeric formula: “Generally speaking, for a given idea within a given place in the line, there will be found in the vast treasury of phrases one formula and one only.” [13] Page then goes on to give a particularly elegant illustration of this principle of thrift by examining all the Homeric attestations for “the sea.” I quote his conclusions in full: [14]

Such assertions about “metrical utility as a primary determinant in the choice of words” [15] have vexed legions of Homerists devoted to the artistry of the Iliad and Odyssey.

Most of the outraged reactions, however, are based on overinterpretation of the Parry-Lord theories. To infer that “Homer” cannot do this or that—even against his own artistic wishes—is to misunderstand Parry and Lord altogether; a careful rereading of Albert Lord’s Singer of Tales chapter 3 (“The Formula”) is then in order. [16] What Parry was saying is that the Homeric language is “free of phrases which, having the same metrical value and expressing the same idea, could replace one another.” [17] Moreover, the context of Parry’s statement is a discussion of fixed epithets that are distinctive rather than generic, like πολύτλας δῖος ‘much-suffering brilliant’, which is applied to Odysseus only, ποδάρκης δῖος ‘swift-footed brilliant’, applied to Achilles only, μέγας κορυθαίολος ‘great flashing-helmeted’, to Hektor only, and so on. [18] Let us pursue the distinction between generic and distinctive epithets. The former class of adjectives is appropriate to any hero, under the right metrical conditions. Where the generic and the distinctive epithets have the same metrical shape, either can be applied to the hero, depending on the requirements of the theme at hand. [19] When we add this regular Homeric phenomenon of interchange between generic and distinctive epithets to the sporadic phenomenon, as also noted by Parry himself, of interchange among distinctive epithets, [20] we begin to see more clearly that the Homeric “thrift {22|23} of expression,” to use Parry’s own words, [21] is not really a conditioning principle.

In fact, it can be argued that the principle of economy is not a cause but an effect of traditional diction. From the diachronic standpoint, we can imagine a scenario for the development of a distinctive into a generic epithet. Suppose that a traditional theme about one given hero with a given epithet becomes applied and reapplied to a succession of other heroes. Within parallel epic actions, then, his epithet would follow these other heroes. If the theme is broad enough, and influential enough, it may in time accommodate a whole class of heroes, such as the figures assigned by tradition to the times of the Trojan War. By then, one original hero’s epithet may have become appropriate to a whole set of other heroes cast in the same epic mold, so to speak.

As for epithets that still function in a distinctive phase, one sees them from the diachronic standpoint as capsules of traditional themes associated with the noun described. A distinctive epithet is like a small theme song that conjures up a thought-association with the traditional essence of an epic figure, thing, or concept. To cite an example that has deservedly become a commonplace: Odysseus is πολύτλας ‘much-suffering’ throughout the Iliad because he is already a figure in an epic tradition about adventures that he will have after Troy. My saying “after” here applies only to the narrative sequence: the Iliad is recording the fact that Odysseus already has an Odyssey tradition about him—which is certainly not the final Odyssey, the fixed text that has come down to us. In sum, the diachronic viewpoint suggests that the prime regulator of Homeric epithet in particular and formula in general is traditional theme rather than current meter. [22]

Of course, a great deal remains to be said about meter and its synchronic/diachronic relation to formula. For now, however, the point is simply that the gaps in the Homeric principle of thrift prove nothing more than the fact that meter does not automatically trigger ready-made words. The ready-made words are determined by the themes of the composition, and the degree of thrift that we do find is due to a long-term streamlining of these themes in the context of the metrical frame. In this connection, the evidence of the Hesiodic corpus helps supplement what we know about the Homeric corpus. From the important work of G. P. Edwards, we learn that Hesiodic poetry is just as formulaic as the Homeric, and that here, too, we can find regular instances where the {23|24} principle of economy is observed and sporadic instances where it is not. [23] Significantly, the areas of nonobservance in Homeric and Hesiodic poetry often differ. [24] From the diachronic point of view, we may wish to posit here the factor of chronological variation, where the principle of economy is waived in order to leave room for an older or newer expression that is more apt for an older or newer theme. There may also be regional variation; the inherited themes of Homeric and Hesiodic poetry must have been filtered through different traditions from different places. As the boasting Aeneas says to the boasting Achilles in a mutually menacing encounter:

I will defer the reasons for my translating as I did until later. For now, the argument is simply that both the regular observance and the sporadic nonobservance of the thrift principle may reflect the force of traditional themes. Finally, considering all the instances of nonobservance and following Roman Jakobson’s useful concept of distinguishing poetic trends from constants, [25] I will henceforth refer to the “trend toward thrift” instead of “law of thrift/economy.”

On the subject of thrift, we may develop a better synchronic insight from the fieldwork of Parry and Lord in South Slavic poetry. Their findings suggest that there is a trend toward thrift that is parallel to what is found in the Homeric corpus—but primarily on the level of the individual singer’s composition. Lord puts it this way: “Indeed, it seems to me that the thriftiness which we find in individual singers and not in districts or traditions is an important argument for the unity of the Homeric poems. Homer’s thriftiness finds its parallel in the individual Yugoslav singer, but not in the collected songs of a number of different singers.” [26] An important amplification seems in order: from the synchronic evidence of South Slavic oral poetry, where we see that composition and performance are one, we may also infer that the composition of the Iliad and that of the Odyssey are also a matter of performance. Homeric poetry is a performance medium, no matter how difficult it is for us to imagine any {24|25} possible context for actual recitation of epics that size. [27] Otherwise such Homeric phenomena as the strong trend toward thrift would be absent. Having discounted meter as the primary cause of fixity in formulaic behavior, we may now attempt to take a diachronic look at the evolution of formula systems. Lord’s fundamental observations about the formula in Singer of Tales, [28] though they are based on the synchronic perspective of his experiences in the field, are also replete with valuable diachronic insights. In what amounts to a manifesto, he declares: “For the singing we hear today, like the everyday speech around us, goes back in a direct and long series of singings to a beginning which, no matter how difficult it may be to conceive, we must attempt to grasp, because otherwise we shall miss an integral part of the meaning of the traditional formula.” [29]

He considers the genesis of formulas not only within the tradition at large but also within the individual singer: [30] “Even in pre-singing years rhythm and thought are one, and the singer’s concept of the formula is shaped though not explicit. He is aware of the successive beats and the varying lengths of repeated thoughts, and these might be said to be his formulas. Basic patterns of meter, word boundary, melody have become his possession, and in him the tradition begins to reproduce itself.” Surely the dictum applies: ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. [31] How, then, does tradition generate formulas in the singer? The key, it seems, is to be found in the traditional themes inherited by the singer: [32] “The fact of narrative song is around him from birth; the technique of it is in the possession of his elders, and he falls heir to it. Yet in a real sense he does recapitulate the experiences of the generations before him stretching back to the distant past.” Accordingly, although I agree with Lord’s statement that, in making his lines, “the singer is not bound by the formula,” [33] I would also add that the singer is indeed bound by the traditional theme. The theme, I submit, is the key to all the other levels of fixity in oral poetry—including both the formulaic and the metrical levels.

The degree of the singer’s adherence to the traditional theme can best be shown by examining the content as well as the form of epic. It is particularly instructive to consider the evidence from Homeric poetry and beyond, as we see from Marcel Detienne’s careful investigation of {25|26} the attitude of Hellenic society toward the aoidós ‘singer’ and the attitude of the singer toward his craft. [34] The traditional boast of the Hellenic singer, as an individual performer, is that he preserves the truth about heroic actions without having to be an eyewitness. Instead, the truth is his simply by virtue of his hearing from the Muses what they saw. As the singer declares at the beginning of the Catalogue,

The claim of knowing nothing masks a highly sophisticated boast. From its etymology, we know that the Greek word κλέος (kléos) was originally an abstract noun meaning simply “the act of hearing.” The word came to mean “fame” because it had been appropriated by the singer in his traditional role as an individual performer to designate what he sang about the actions of gods and heroes. The meaning “fame” betrays merely the consequences. It shows the social prestige of the poet’s art form. The actions of gods and heroes gain fame through the medium of the singer, and the singer calls his medium kléos, from “the act of hearing.” [35] Since the singer starts his performance by asking his Muse to “tell him” the subject, his composition is in fact being presented to his audience as something that he hears from the very custodians of all stages of reality. The Muses are speaking to him, and they have the ipsissima verba of the Heroic Age.

The poet’s inherited conceit, then, is that he has access not only to the content but also to the actual form of what his eyewitnesses, the Muses, speak as they describe the realities of remote generations. I should emphasize that this conceit is linked with the poet’s inherited role as an individual performer, and that “only in performance can the formula exist and have clear definition.” [36] The formulas are the selfsame words spoken by the Muses themselves: they are recordings of the Muses who were there when everything happened. In fact, the frame in which these formulas are contained, the dactylic hexameter, was actually called {26|27} ἔπος (épos) by the composer/performer himself, as Hermann Koller has argued in detail. [37] Since the dactylic hexameter, as well as all verses, has an inherited tendency to be syntactically self-contained, [38] the épos is truly an epic utterance—an epic sentence—from the standpoint of the Muses or of any character quoted by the Muses. The word introducing Homeric quotations is in fact regularly épos. There are even some subtle grammatical distinctions, in traditions of formulaic behavior, between the épos that the Muses quote and the épos that they simply narrate. [39] In a medium that carries with it such inherited conceits about accuracy and even reality, we can easily imagine generations after generations of audiences conditioned to expect from the performer the most extreme degree of fixity in content, fixity in form.

Of course, different audiences in different places may be raised on traditions that are variants. When the heroic figures of Aeneas and Achilles meet on the battlefield (Iliad XX), they try to intimidate each other by boasting of the variant epics serving as background for their heroic exploits. Aeneas tells Achilles not to try to frighten him with the épea (XX 200-201)—let us call them his “epics.” There is further allusion to the power of épea as Aeneas continues:

There are, as Aeneas warns Achilles, variant épea about the same heroes:

The most striking feature of this Aeneas/Achilles episode is that the Iliad in Book XX actually allows part of the Aeneas tradition to assert itself at the expense of Achilles, who had taunted Aeneas by predicting that he will never replace Priam as king of Troy (XX 178-183). The god Poseidon himself then predicts the opposite (XX 302-308); the dynasty of Aeneas will prevail in the Troad, and there will be a vindication of his mênis ‘anger’ against King Priam (XIII 460-461)—a theme that finds a parallel in the mênis ‘anger’ of Achilles against King Agamemnon in Iliad Book I, verses 1 and following.

One of the most obvious traces of a variant epic tradition in Iliad XX is the surprising rescue of Trojan Aeneas by one of the most pro-Achaean Olympians, the god Poseidon. From the researches of Felix Jacoby [40] and others, [41] we can reconstruct a motivation for the use of such a tradition. During the times that our Iliad was evolving into its ultimate form, there may well have existed a special cult affinity between the god Poseidon and a dynasty of Aeneadae claiming descent from Aeneas. In Iliad XX (302-308) as well as in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite (196-197), the contemporary importance of such a dynasty is being retrojected into the Heroic Age by such epic devices as the prophecy to Aeneas that his descendants, not Priam’s, will be the ones who are to hold sway in the Troad. [42] What has not been sufficiently stressed in previous studies, however, is that the traditions about the Aeneadae must themselves have been transmitted through the medium of epic. [43] In other words, the wording of the Aeneas/Achilles episode shows that there had been a regional epic tradition about Aeneas that was destined to glorify the Aeneadae—to give them kléos. [44]

I have gone to such lengths in discussing this particular Homeric scene in order to illustrate how regional variations may result in oral traditions with different themes appropriate to different places; and the different themes can in turn lead to corresponding differences in formulaic behavior. In other words, fixity of form in oral poetry should not be confused with uniformity. {28|29}

Lack of uniformity is caused by the dimension of time as well as that of space. Although the medium of oral poetry may look upon itself as containing the original, actual words of the Heroic Age, “irreplaceable and immortal,” [45] its Dichtersprache will nevertheless undergo change in time, much as everyday language does. Since, however, epic deliberately resists change in order to preserve the ipsissima verba, the linguistic innovations that do occur in its Dichtersprache will not keep apace with the linguistic innovations of the everyday language from which it evolves. Consequently, the language of a body of oral poetry like the Iliad and Odyssey does not and cannot belong to any one time, any one place: in a word, it defies synchronic analysis. [46] Such chronological stratification in form can surely be expected to affect content. Meanwhile, content, too, can be expected to shift with the passage of time—even if the actual shifts in the presentation of a given traditional theme to audiences from one generation to the next might be too subtle for detection at any one occasion of performance/composition. Change is possible even if both performer and audience expect strict adherence to the traditional theme.

Once having made due allowances for some degree of evolution and variation in traditional theme, I must now return to emphasizing its remarkable stability and archaism. The fixity of phrasing in oral poetry, as I have argued, is actually due primarily to the factor of traditional theme rather than meter. Accordingly, I now offer a working definition of the formula that leaves out the factor of meter as the prime conditioning force: the formula is a fixed phrase conditioned by the traditional themes of oral poetry. Furthermore, I am ready to propose that meter is diachronically generated by formula rather than vice versa.

By applying the linguistic techniques of comparative reconstruction [47] to the fixed phraseology of native Greek and Indic poetry, I have argued elsewhere [48] that it is possible to find cognate phrases containing identically shaped rhythms. The existence of such comparanda would corroborate the theory that the speakers of these two Indo-European languages have preserved two cognate poetic systems. [49] In the oldest attested phases of Indic poetry, moreover, it can be shown that phraseology is regular even where meter is irregular. [50] This set of facts can be {29|30} supplemented with the discovery, made by Antoine Meillet, [51] that in early Indic poetry metrical trends do not create new phrases. Rather, there are traceable tendencies of preferring phrases with one kind of rhythm over phrases with other kinds of rhythm. Predictable patterns of rhythm emerge from favorite traditional phrases with favorite rhythms; the eventual regulation of these patterns, combined with regulation of the syllable count in the traditional phrases, constitutes the essentials of what we know as meter. Granted, meter can develop a synchronic system of its own, regulating any new incoming phraseology; nevertheless, its origins are from traditional phraseology. In short, the comparative evidence of Indic poetry leads to a parallel formulation about meter and traditional phraseology in early Greek poetry. [52] In this case, however, we may specify “formula” instead of the more general “traditional phraseology.”

The comparative approach, to be sure, allows us to extend our notions about phraseology and meter only to a degree. The metrical perspective in this case is restricted to those features of meter in general that the cognate Greek and Indic poetic material in particular happen to preserve as cognate phenomena, namely isosyllabism, regular patterning of long and short syllables, and so on. [53] The additional perspective on phraseology [54] is likewise restricted, at least for the moment, to what the evidence from the cognate Greek and Indic material reveals. Ideally, the comparative method requires at least three cognate systems. [55] With these allowances duly recorded, an important point can still be made simply by combining the diachronic with the synchronic view of Greek and Indic poetic phraseology. From a synchronic study of cognate Greek and Indic phrases as they are found functioning independently in each of the two poetic traditions, we discover that the regularities governing the behavior of the given phrases are also cognate; furthermore, in the case of the Greek evidence, the regularities are formulaic. [56] Accordingly, the comparative method suggests that the cognate regularities in Indic poetry, most notably in the Rig-Veda, are also formulaic. [57]

If indeed Rig-Vedic poetry is formulaic, may we therefore call it oral poetry? In order to answer such a question, we shall have to reckon at a later point with a problem peculiar to the Rig-Veda, to wit, that we see {30|31} here a fixed text with a nonwritten transmission extending over what appears to have been immense stretches of time. [58] As we shall see, there is an analogous problem with Homeric and Hesiodic poetry. [59]

Throughout this presentation I have allowed myself to make reference to meter as something that contains or frames formulas. Such a point of view, however, is strictly synchronic. From the diachronic point of view, I have now also maintained that formula generates meter. A demonstration is far easier on the basis of the Indic material than on that of the Greek, mainly because Indic meters tend to be so much simpler in structure and because their origins are consequently so much easier to trace. For example, the short verse lengths in Rig-Vedic poetry regularly coincide with syntactical phrase or clause lengths, [60] whereas Greek hexameter is such a comparatively long verse that it regularly accommodates two phrases and over, or even two clauses and over. In this connection, it is pertinent to cite Hermann Fränkel’s theory that the Greek hexameter is innately divisible into four “cola,” and that the divisions are determined by (1) the places where the verse begins and ends with word-breaks, (2) the places within the verse where word-breaks predictably recur (that is, caesuras and diaereses). [61]

Word-breaking, however, is only a surface phenomenon. What is really going on is that the colon lengths regularly coincide with syntactical phrase or clause lengths. [62] Of course, even before the colon theory had ever been propounded, Parry himself had shown the way when he observed that the canonical word breaks of Greek hexameter mark the places where formulas begin and end. [63]

We come back, then, to the question posed at the outset: how are we to imagine the strict correlation between formula and meter as part of a here-and-now poetic process, where the performer is actually composing? The imagination boggles at the degrees of formal strictness that we discover from reading a book like J. B. Hainsworth’s The Flexibility of the Homeric Formula, concerning the interaction of Homeric formula and meter. [64] The key word in this book’s title, flexibility, is a counterweight to Parry’s original definition of the formula, with its overemphasis on {31|32} identical metrical positioning and identical phrasing. [65] And yet, flexibility should not be confused with irregularity. Hainsworth’s study of flexibility in Homeric phraseology shows really just the opposite of irregularity, in that the processes whereby one formula is transformed into another, with different metrical position, inflection, qualifier, and so on, are themselves highly regulated. The flexibility is also regular. In other words, the variations on the regularities are also regular. The strictness is still there, and the synchronic perspective is simply not adequate to account for all its aspects.

Here is where the diachronic approach is needed. It is from this perspective, as we see implicitly from the work of Russo and others, [66] that the interaction between formula and meter can be best understood. The colon system of Greek hexameter, Russo argues, is correlated with a formula system that in turn is correlated with a syntax system. Russo here is intuiting something about the evolution of traditional Greek poetry that can be seen readily from the comparative evidence of Indic poetry. (As in linguistics, the comparative method is invaluable for the diachronic perspective.) In the Rig-Veda we find that the correlations between metrical units (verse) and syntactical units (phrase or clause) are much more simple and basic than those in Greek epic. Furthermore, as a synchronic examination will show, the regularities of meter are clearly subordinate to the regularities of phrasing; the inference, then, is that metrical units were diachronically generated from phraseological units. [67] Meter may then become a viable structure in its own right, and it may even develop independently of traditional phraseology. The Greek hexameter, as I have argued elsewhere, is an example of such a development; it is built from smaller inherited meters, and thus it can regularly accommodate two formulas and over. [68]

Even if formula lengths do not correspond to the overall verse lengths of the Greek hexameter, they do correspond to the metrical components of the verse length, namely, the cola. Such correspondences are verifiable from a synchronic description, [69] but it is important not to overemphasize the factor of cola and underemphasize the factor of formulas. Again, the diachronic perspective suggests that formula shapes generated colon shapes, not vice versa. [70] Accordingly, from the {32|33} synchronic perspective, we can expect formula structure to be regular even where colon structure is irregular. [71] Where a structure В evolves diachronically from structure A, the patterns of A are not automatically predictable from those of B. Certain patterns in A will seem irregular in terms of B, which has evolved beyond A in the continuing process of regularization.

For an illustration, I cite the following two verses from the Odyssey, using Fränkel’s notation for the relevant colon junctures: [72]

From the standpoint of pure phraseology, the combinations

• πολύτροπον (accusative) + ὅς (nominative)
• πολύτροπος (nominative) + ὅν (accusative)

seem to be part of a formulaic unit that bridges the colon juncture labeled C2 above. From the standpoint of meter, on the other hand, the same combinations have a break at the same colon juncture C2, and this metrical break is even accompanied by a syntactical break. Because meter in this instance seems at odds with phraseology, there is some concern whether we have here “a chance combination or a formula.” [73] On the basis of this and other examples, it has been suggested that the Homeric corpus may contain some repetitions that are simply “due to chance.” [74] Instead, I would suggest that any phraseological “spilling” over caesuras, diaereses, or even verse junctures may be traditional rather than innovative. In Homeric diction, the traditional phraseology can reflect rhythmical patterns older than the current norms of the hexameter. [75] Then, too, in the case at hand, the adjective πολύτροπος {33|34} (polútropos) ‘of many turns’ is functioning in place of the generic epithet διίφιλος (diī́philos) ‘dear to Zeus’, ready-made for the slot ᴗ-ᴗᴗ between B2 and C2. [76]

Footnotes

Chapter 3. Hesiod and the Poetics of Pan-Hellenism

The Hesiodic Question

Hesiod, Poet of the Theogony

These fives stages may or may not be explicit in any given Hymn. For instance, in the shorter Hymn to Hermes (18.5-9) the admission of Hermes as an Olympian god (stage 3) is suggested by way of mentioning the delay of his admission during the confinement of Maia in her cave; in the longer Hymn to Hermes (4.5-9), by contrast, the closely corresponding mention of this delay is followed by a lengthy narrative that elaborates on the god’s subsequent admission. This narrative in the longer Hymn takes us all the way to verse 578, where we finally reach stage 4; by contrast, stage 4 in the shorter Hymn To Hermes is reached by verse 10.

Such an example of extreme length and brevity in two Homeric Hymns to the same god, achieved by expansion and compression, respectively (the mechanics of both phenomena are a clear indication of oral poetics), [59] can be compared with the length of the Theogony and the brevity of Homeric Hymn 25. Technically, both Hymn 25 and the Theogony are hymns to the Muses, and the first six hexameters of the seven-hexameter prelude have direct formal analogues in the longer:

Whereas the short hymn is a simplex prelude that motivates the genesis of the Muses, the long hymn is a complex prelude that first motivates the genesis of the Muses, who are then invoked to motivate the genesis of all the gods, which is the theogony proper. But from verse 964 onward, the Theogony is no longer formally a theogony, in that the subject matter shifts from the theôn génos ‘genesis of gods’ (as at Theogony 44, 105; cf. 115) to the genesis of demigods born of gods who mated with mortals (cf. Theogony 965-968); the latter theme, which amounts to catalogue poetry about heroes and heroines, is actually expressed as génos andrôn | hēmithéōn ‘genesis of men who were demigods’ at Homeric Hymn 31.18-19—a theme to which Hymn 31 announces itself as a formal prelude.

To repeat, verses 1-963 of the Theogony are from the standpoint of form a hymn to the Muses, serving as a prelude to the catalogue of heroes and heroines that survives at verses 965-1020 of the Theogony—and that interconnects with Hesiod fragment 1 MW. [60] The significant modification in this hymn to the Muses is that it becomes primarily a monumental hymn to Zeus and all the Olympian gods; thus at stage 4, where the poet may be expected to pray that the Muses be pleased with what has been composed so far, he in fact prays to win the pleasure of all the Olympians generated in his Theogony.

Thus verses 1-963 of the Theogony are not a single, but rather a composite, hymn in comparison with most Homeric Hymns. The hymn proper is at verses 36-103, culminating at 104 in a separate stage 4 in which the poet prays exclusively to the Muses; then, starting at verse 105, the expected stage 5 of transition (to whatever composition might follow the prelude) is implicitly postponed and replaced by a reapplied hymn to the Muses running all the way to verse 962, followed at last by a reapplied but cumulative stage 4 at verse 963. We may compare Hymn to Apollo 165-166, a stage 4 appropriate to Apollo as he is worshiped in the pan-Ionian context of his birthplace Delos: the poet first prays to Apollo and then greets the Deliades, a chorus of female singers/dancers [61] who seem to be a local manifestation of the Muses, with a formula that elsewhere conveys a stage 4 prayer. Then, at verses 177-178, the expected stage 5 of transition is explicitly postponed and followed at verses 179-544 by a reapplied hymn to Apollo as he is worshiped in the pan-Hellenic context of his abode at Delphi; there is a reapplied stage 4 at verse 545, where the poet again prays to Apollo, followed at last by the stage 5 of transition at verse 546. {56|57}

In the case of the Theogony, verses 105-962 amount to an expanded variant of the compressed hymn at verses 36-103, just as verses 179-544 in the Hymn to Apollo amount to an expanded variant of the compressed hymn at verses 1-165. There is an important formal difference, however, between the compressed version at verses 36-103 of the Theogony and the expanded version of verses 105-962: whereas both are simultaneously a prelude and a theogony—just like the composition performed by Hermes in Hymn to Hermes 425-433—the compressed version is more of a prelude and the expanded version is more of a theogony.

The expanded version is the Theogony proper, told by Hesiod in his own persona and “retelling” what the Muses had told him. The compressed version, on the other hand, is told only indirectly: in this case the theogony related by the Muses to Hesiod is merely paraphrased, as it were, in the context of describing what the goddesses sang as they went tip to Mount Olympus.

Verses 1-21 of the Theogony present yet another indirect version (thus there are altogether three versions of theogony in the Theogony). Here, too, the theogony related by the Muses is paraphrased, this first time in the context of describing what the goddesses sang as they came down from Mount Helikon. In this version the Muses are invoked as Helikonian (Theogony 1-2), not Olympian as everywhere else in the Theogony. Moreover, the thematic order of the Muses’ theogony, which they sing and dance (Theogony 3-4) as they come down from the summit of Mount Helikon, is the inverse of what they sing and dance (Theogony 70) as they go up to the summit of Mount Olympus (which is stage 3 in the program of a pan-Hellenic hymn).

In the first theogony, at Theogony 11-20, the Muses are described as starting their narrative with Olympian Zeus (11) and moving their way “down” from the other Olympian gods—Hera, Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Poseidon (11-15)—all the way to the previous divine generations (16-19) and then to the primordial forces, Earth, Okeanos, Night (20). These same Muses, after they encounter Hesiod at the fool of Mount Helikon, are described in the second theogony (Theogony 36-52) as starting their narrative with Earth/Sky (45) and moving their way “up” to the Olympian gods, culminating with Zeus himself (47; the word deúteron ‘next’ here denotes merely the order of this theogony and therefore does not slight the importance of Zeus). It is important that this narrative direction of the Muses’ second theogony, which determines the direction of Hesiod’s third and definitive theogony at verses 105-962, corresponds to stage 3 in the program of a pan-Hellenic hymn, the ascent to Olympus of the divinity who is being praised.

We see here a transformation of the Muses from local goddesses on Mount Helikon into pan-Hellenic goddesses on Mount Olympus. As {57|58} they start their way down the slopes of Helikon, they are described as énthen apornúmenai ‘starting from there’ at Theogony 9—corresponding to énthen apornúmenos (same meaning) at Hymn to Apollo 29, where the verse goes on to proclaim the transformation of Apollo from lord of his native Delos into lord of all mankind. In their local setting the singing and dancing Helikonian Muses resemble the Deliades of the Hymn to Apollo. Like the Muses (for example, Hymn to Apollo 189-190), the Deliades are Apollo’s attendants (157), and the poet seems to be praying to them and Apollo together at stage 4 of his hymn (177-178). Further, the Deliades, too, seem to sing and dance (cf. khorós at Thucydides 3.104.5; cf. also Euripides Herakles 687-690); it is as if the performances of the Helikonian Muses and the Deliades were envisioned as lyric rather than hexameter poetry.

Moreover, the relationship of Hesiod to the Helikonian Muses parallels the relationship of Homer to the Deliades (the Hymn to Apollo unmistakably claims Homer as its composer). [62] The self-dramatized encounter of Homer with the Deliades leads to the poet’s promise that he will spread their kléos ‘glory’ by mentioning them in his poetry as he travels throughout the cities of mankind (Hymn to Apollo 174-175; compare verse 156, where this kléos is already presented as a fait accompli); in other words, the Deliades will have a place in pan-Hellenic poetry. [63] Similarly, the encounter of Hesiod with the Helikonian Muses leads to the poet’s glorifying them with the Theogony, which is technically a pan-Hellenic hymn to the Muses; in this way the local goddesses of Helikon are assimilated into the pan-Hellenic goddesses of Olympus.

We may also compare Hermes’ miniature theogony as paraphrased in the Hymn to Hermes 425-433; this theogony is technically a hymn to the mother of the Muses, Mnēmosúnē (429), who is described as the deity presiding over and defined by the characteristics of Hermes (for the diction, cf. Callimachus Hymn to Apollo 43). In the same way the Helikonian Muses preside over and are defined by the characteristics of Hesiod—characteristics that they themselves had conferred upon him.

And here we finally see why it is essential for the Theogony that Hesiod should have his local origins at the foot of Mount Helikon. As an expression of the Helikonian Muses, he possesses characteristics that are beyond the immediate sphere of the Olympian Muses. As we have noticed, the goddesses confer upon him a staff (Theogony 30), an emblem of authority that is the province of kings and that emanates from Zeus himself. Also, as his very name Hēsíodos proclaims, the Muses {58|59} of Helikon endow the poet with audḗ (Theogony 31), a special voice that enables him not only to sing a theogony (33-34) but also to tell the future as well as the past (32). Whereas the generic protégé of the Olympian Muses and Apollo is an aoidós ‘poet’ who composes the equivalent of Homeric epos and hymns (cf. Homeric Hymn 25.2-3 and Theogony 94-103), Hesiod as protégé of the Helikonian Muses has the powers not only of a poet but also of what the Greeks would call a kêrux ‘herald’ and a mántis ‘seer’.

The Indo-European heritage of Greek poetry goes back to a phase where the functions of poet/herald/seer are as yet undifferentiated. Traces of such a phase survive not only in the characterization of Hesiod as protégé of the Helikonian Muses but also in the paradigm of Hermes as protégé of Mnēmosúnē. By virtue of singing a theogony, Hermes is said to be kraínōn ‘authorizing’ the gods (Hymn to Hermes 427). The verb kraínō denotes sovereign authority as exercised by kings and as emanating from Zeus himself. [64] It conveys the notion that kings authorize the accomplishment of something and confirm that it will be accomplished (as at Odyssey viii 390). A cross-cultural survey of ritual theogonic traditions throughout the world reveals that a basic function of a theogony is to confirm the authority that regulates any given social group. [65] By singing a theogony and thus “authorizing” the gods, Hermes is in effect confirming their authority.

Hermes later enters into an agreement with Apollo whereby the two gods divide their functions between themselves, and in the process Hermes gives Apollo his lyre along with the powers that go with it (Hymn to Hermes 434-512), while Apollo gives Hermes a rhábdos ‘staff’ described as epi-kraínousa ‘authorizing’ the themoí ‘ordinances’ [66] that Apollo has learned from Zeus himself (531-532). While granting this much authorization to Hermes, Apollo specifically excludes the sphere of divination that is appropriate to the oracle at Delphi (533-549); but Apollo does include the sphere of divination that is appropriate to the Bee Maidens of Mount Parnassos (550-566). These Bee Maidens also kraínousin ‘authorize’ (559): when they are fed honey, they are in ecstasy and tell alētheíē ‘truth’ (560-561), but they pseúdontai ‘lie’ when deprived of this food (562-563). Such ecstatic divination is achieved with fermented honey—a pattern typical of an earlier phase when aoidós ‘poet’ and mántis ‘seer’ were as yet not differentiated. [67] When the Bee Maidens are in {59|60} ecstasy, they kraínousin ‘authorize’ by telling of future things that will really come to pass.

The division of attributes between Apollo and Hermes dramatizes the evolutionary separation of poetic functions that are pictured as still integral at the time when Hermes sang the theogony. But then Hermes cedes the lyre to Apollo and confines himself to the primitive shepherd’s pipe (Hymn to Hermes 511-512) so that Apollo can take over the sphere of the aoidós ‘poet’. Apollo also takes over the sphere of the mántis ‘seer’ on a highly evolved pan-Hellenic level (his oracle at Delphi), leaving to Hermes the more primitive sphere of the mántis ‘seer’ as a local exponent of the sort of alētheíē ‘truth’ that is induced by fermented honey. But the “newer” god’s dramatized affinity with the more primitive aspects of poetry and his actual inauguration of Apollo’s poetic art by way of singing a theogony indicate that Hermes—not Apollo—is in fact the older god, and that his “authorizing” staff and his “authorizing” Bee Maidens are vestiges of an older and broader poetic realm. From a historical point of view, Apollo and his Olympian Muses are the newer gods: they represent a streamlining of this older realm into the newer and narrower one of pan-Hellenic poetry.

Similarly, Hesiod’s relationship with the Helikonian Muses represents an older and broader poetic realm that the poet then streamlines into the newer and narrower one of a pan-Hellenic theogony by way of synthesizing the Helikonian with the Olympian Muses. The skêptron ‘staff’ and the prophetic voice that Hesiod receives from the Helikonian Muses, speakers of both falsehoods and truth, are analogous to the Hermetic rhábdos ‘staff’ and Bee Maidens, likewise speakers of both falsehoods and truth. It seems as if the Muses of Olympus inherit the genre of theogony from the Muses of Helikon, just as Apollo gets the lyre from Hermes, composer of the first theogony. For a pan-Hellenic theogony to happen, the Muses have to come down from Helikon and go up to Olympus, through the intermediacy of Hesiod.

Just as Hermes is the archetypal kêrux ‘herald’ and mántis ‘seer’, so Hesiod embodies these two functions along with that of the aoidós ‘poet’ by way of the Helikonian Muses. (These local Muses, as Pausanias 9.29.2-3 reports, are Meletḗ ‘practice’, Mnḗmē ‘memory’, and Aoidḗ ‘song’; these names correspond to the processes involved in the composition and performance of oral poetry.) [68] The figure of Hesiod requires these local Muses in order to compose a theogony, but he also requires the Olympian Muses in order to compose pan-Hellenic poetry. His own implicit reward for assimilating the Helikonian Muses into the Olympian {60|61} is that his local gifts, a staff and a voice that are both appropriate to a local theogony, become in a pan-Hellenic context the emblems that establish his ultimate authority as poet, emanating from the ultimate authority of Zeus as king.

The figure of Hesiod can proudly announce his local origins and still speak in a language that has evolved to match the language of pan-Hellenic hymns, which in turn have evolved to match the language of the epics that they inaugurate. The poet of the Theogony can even equate the artistry of composing a pan-Hellenic theogony with that of composing an epic (100-101)—and the ritual context that a local theogony would surely entail is for us all but forgotten.

In fact, the diction of Hesiodic poetry is so akin to the Homeric that its self-proclaimed Boeotian provenience would be nearly impossible to detect on the basis of language alone. What is more, the Ionic phase of evolution and eventual crystallization is actually even stronger in the Hesiodic tradition than in the Homeric. [69]

Granted, there have been attempts to establish linguistic differences between Homer and Hesiod, the most interesting of which is the finding that the first- and second-declension accusative plural endings -ās and -ous occur in preconsonantal position far more often in Hesiodic than in Homeric diction; also, that in prevocalic position they occur less often. [70] This phenomenon has been interpreted to mean that we are somehow dealing with the native speaker(s) of a dialect in which these accusative plurals, have been shortened to -ăs and -ŏs; this way the beginning of the next word with a consonant would not matter because the resulting –ăs C– and – ŏs C– [71] do not produce overlength, whereas -ās C- and -ous C- do. Now, it is true that Homeric diction tends to avoid overlength (V̄C C- as distinct from V̆C C- or –V C-), but it does not follow that Hesiodic diction should neatly match this tendency; rather, in line with the fact that the formulaic behavior of Hesiod generally reveals fewer constraints, and hence less archaism, than that of Homer, it could be that the higher proportion of preconsonantal -ās and -ous in Hesiod reveals simply a greater tolerance for this type of overlength than in Homer. {61|62}

As it happens, accusative plurals ending in -ăs and -ŏs are decidedly not a feature of the Boeotian dialect. As for the sporadic occurrences of first-declension –ăs before vowels, it is not true that this phenomenon is limited to Hesiodic diction, as is generally claimed. There are sporadic occurrences in Homeric diction as well, including the Hymns (for instance, at Iliad V 269, VIII 378; Odyssey xvii 232; Hymn to Hermes 106). It is difficult, granted, simply to rule out the possibility that this phenomenon is a reflex of Doric dialects, where first- and second-declension – ăs V- and -ŏs V- are indeed attested. Still, it seems preferable to account for the entire problem in terms of the Ionic dialects, which represent the final and definitive phase in the evolution of both Homeric and Hesiodic poetry. The formulaic evidence could go back to a pre-Ionic stage common to all Greek dialects, with accusative plurals ending in

But the intermediate stage, by way of formulaic repositionings of words from prevocalic to preconsonantal contexts and vice versa, could have left sporadic traces of “contaminations”:

Even within Homeric poetry, the Odyssey is perceptibly different from {62|63} the Iliad in featuring more instances of preconsonantal -ās / -ous and fewer instances of prevocalic -ās / -ous, although this gap between the Odyssey and the Iliad is not nearly as great as the one between the Hesiodic poems, on the one hand, and the Homeric, on the other. [72] Still, these data correspond to an overall pattern, as established on the basis of several other linguistic criteria: the Odyssey had a longer span of evolution in the Ionic hexameter tradition than the Iliad, while the Hesiodic poems combined had an even longer span than the Odyssey. [73]

The pervasive Ionic heritage of Hesiodic poetry extends from form to content. The one month name overtly mentioned in the Works and Days, Lēnaiṓn (504), happens to occur in many Ionian calendars (though not in the Athenian), and even the morphology (ending in -ṓn) is distinctly Ionic. Now, each city-state had its own idiosyncratic calendar, and there were significant variations in the naming of months even among states that were closely related; it comes as no surprise, then, that the overt mentioning of month names was generally shunned in archaic Greek poetry, with its pan-Hellenic orientation. Thus it is all the more striking that an exclusively Ionic name should surface in the poetry of Boeotian Hesiod. At best, we can justify the name Lēnaiṓn as tending toward a pan-Hellenic audience in that it is native to most Ionian cities at least; moreover, the meaning of the name is transparent, in that it is derived from lênai ‘devotees of Dionysus’. Even so, the name and its form are more pan-Ionian than pan-Hellenic. Moreover, the description of the wind Boreas as it blows over the sea from Thrace in the verses immediately following the mention of Lēnaiṓn reflects a geographically Ionian orientation parallel to what we find in the Iliad. [74]

In sum, not only does Hesiodic poetry implicitly claim to be like Homeric poetry, but it also shares its predominantly Ionic formal heritage.

Hesiod’s ultimate authority as poet, emanating from the ultimate authority of Zeus as king, is put to the test in the Works and Days. In the prelude to the poem (1-10), which is formally the equivalent of a hymn to Zeus, the supreme god is implored to “straighten the divine laws [thémis plural] with your judgment [díkē]” (9) while the poet proceeds to {63|64} say etḗtuma ‘genuine things’ to his brother Perses (10). Thus the actions of Zeus and the words of Hesiod are drawn into an explicitly parallel relationship.

The actions of Zeus are a model for the ideal king as visualized in the Theogony: imbued by the Muses (80-84), he “sorts out the divine laws [thémis plural] with straight judgments [díkē {plural}].” (85-86). Thanks to his straight judgments, the king is also able to bring to an end even a great neîkos ‘quarrel’ (87). We are reminded of the neîkos pictured on the Shield of Achilles (Iliad XVIII 497), adjudicated by elders who pronounce díkē ‘judgment’ with skêptron in hand (505-508). [75] Curiously, the idealized king in the Theogony is not represented as holding a skêptron; instead, this symbol of the authority that emanates from Zeus is conferred by the Muses upon Hesiod (Theogony 30). It is as if the Muse-imbued king were cast in a mold that could fit the poet.

This is not to say that Hesiod is a king; rather, as we shall see, the Works and Days elaborates an authority that replaces and transcends that of kings. The impetus for the entire poem is in fact a neîkos ‘quarrel’ between Hesiod and Perses (35), but this quarrel will not be stopped by any ideal king; the poet wishes that he and his brother would settle it themselves (35), “with straight judgments [díkē plural], which are the best, being from Zeus” (36). The original cause of the quarrel between the two brothers is this: after they had divided up their inheritance from their father (37), Perses forcibly took some of Hesiod’s fair share (38), thereby enhancing the prestige of greedy kings “who wish to pronounce this judgment [díkē]” (38-39). These kings, characterized by Hesiod as dōrophágoi ‘gift-devouring’ (39, 221, 264), are anything but ideal, and the poet threatens that they will be punished for their “crooked judgments [díkē plural]” (250, 264).

As we shall see, what ultimately settles the quarrel of Hesiod and Perses is not any king, but the Works and Days itself, elaborating on the concept of díkē in the sense of ‘justice’. So far, the translation offered for díkē has been ‘judgment’, which is how we must interpret the word in the immediate contexts of Works and Days 39, 249, and 269. In each of these instances, an accompanying demonstrative (tḗnde, see also táde ‘these things’ at 268) forces a translation such as ‘this judgment’, referring short-range to the unjust pronouncement that the greedy kings wish to make. Such contexts even help us understand the etymology of díkē: the ideal king ‘sorts out’ (verb diakrī́nō, at Theogony 85) what is thémis ‘divine law’ and what is not (85) by way of díkē (86), which is an indication (as in Latin indic-āre, where –dic– is cognate with Greek díkē), hence {64|65} ‘judgment’. Long-range, however, any ad hoc ‘judgment’ can be turned into ‘justice’ by Zeus, who is the authority behind all human judgments. Thus, when Hesiod implores Zeus to “straighten the divine laws laws [thémis plural] with díkē” (Works and Days 9), the supreme god’s ‘judgment’ is the same as ‘justice’. This action of Zeus, to repeat, is coefficient with the words of Hesiod to Perses (10), in the context of a neîkos ‘quarrel’ that the two of them must ‘sort out’ for themselves (verb diakrī́nō again, this time in the middle voice; verse 35).

The figure of Hesiod resorts to words in reacting to the violent seizure of his property by Perses. First he tells Perses the story of Prometheus and Pandora (Works and Days 42-105), motivating the prime theme of man’s inherent need to work the land for a living. Then he tells Perses the myth of the five generations of mankind (106-201), which shows in detail how mankind becomes elevated by díkē ‘justice’ and debased by its opposite, húbris ‘outrage’. [76] The fifth and present generation, which is the Age of Iron, is a time when díkē and húbris are engaged in an ongoing struggle. As happens elsewhere in myths about the ages of mankind, the present encompassed by the final age merges with the future and becomes a prophecy: [77] in a deeply pessimistic tone Hesiod predicts that díkē will finally lose to húbris (Works and Days 190-194). Next, Hesiod tells the fable of the hawk and the nightingale (202-212), addressing it to kings whom he diplomatically presupposes to be phronéontes ‘aware’ (202). Again the tone is pessimistic, at least in the immediate context: the hawk seizes the nightingale, described as an aoidós ‘singer’, that is, ‘poet’ (208), simply because he is more powerful (206, 207, 210), and he boasts of having the ultimate power of either releasing or devouring his victim (209).

At this point Hesiod turns to Perses and, applying all that he has just told him, concludes by urging his brother to espouse díkē and reject húbris (Works and Days 213). He warns that the fulfillment of díkē is an eventual process, and that díkē will in the end triumph over húbris (217-218). Personified as a goddess, Díkē will punish greedy men who “sort out divine laws [verb krīno; noun thémis] with crooked judgments [díkē plural]” (220-223), and “who drive her out, making her not straight” (224; cf. Iliad XVI 387-388). Then follows the paradigm of the two cities: the polis of díkē becomes fertile and rich (225-237; cf. Odyssey xix 109-114), while the polis of húbris becomes sterile and poor (238-247). {65|66}

Having defined justice as an eventual process (Works and Days 217-218), Hesiod invites the greedy kings to reconsider “this judgment [díkē]” (269) that they had wanted to pronounce in response to the forcible taking of Hesiod’s property by Perses (39). We now see that kings who make “this judgment [díkē]” (269) are thereby making the goddess Díkē “not straight” (224), and that the goddess will eventually punish such men through the power of her father, Zeus (220-224, 256-269). The eventuality of Díkē is also clearly defined in the poetry of Solon: men who forcibly take the property of others (F 4.13 W) are thereby guilty of húbris (4.8) in violating the foundations of Díkē (4.14), who will come to exact just punishment “with the passage of time” (4.16).

The Works and Days dramatizes the actual passage of time required for the workings of Díkē. At the beginning of the poem we find the goddess implicitly violated through the forcible taking of Hesiod’s property by Perses and through the crooked judgment pronounced in the unjust brother’s favor by the greedy kings. At verse 39 “this judgment [díkē]” is still implicitly crooked as the poet begins to teach about Díkē, and the initial teachings are still pessimistic about the outcome of the struggle between húbris and díkē, as also about the power of the hawk/king over the nightingale/poet. By the time we reach verses 249 and 269, however, “this judgment [díkē] is seen in the light of the vengeance that Díkē herself will take on those who violated her. Perses is now urged to espouse díkē in the sense of ‘justice’ (275), since those without it will devour each other like wild beasts (275-278).

The “moral” of the fable about the hawk and the nightingale hereby becomes explicit: the hawk/king who threatens to devour the nightingale/poet as proof of his power is utterly disqualified as an exponent of díkē ‘justice’. Moreover, since only those kings who are phronéontes ‘aware’ will understand the fable (202; cf. the idealized kings at Theogony 88, who are ekhéphrones ‘aware’), the greedy kings are implicitly disqualified even from understanding the “moral,” in view of their general ignorance (see Works and Days 40-41). [78] And if the kings cannot be exponents of díkē, they are utterly without authority and their raison d’être is annihilated. In fact, after verse 263, the kings are never heard of again in the Works and Days.

As for Perses, he is being taught that, in the end, it is the man of díkē who gets rich (Works and Days 280-281), while the man who forcibly takes the property of others (320-324) will have wealth “only for a short while” (325-326). By the time we reach verse 396 of the Works and Days, {66|67} Perses has been reduced to utter penury and “now” comes to beg from Hesiod. But the poet refuses to give him anything, teaching him instead to work the land for a living (396-397). While the authority of díkē as emanating from Zeus and as represented by Hesiod is eventually taking hold, even the sense of indignation originally felt by the poet against his brother begins to recede; already by verse 286 he is expressing his good intentions toward Perses. Toward the latter half of the poem, the figure of Perses recedes in favor of a generalized second-person singular: it is as if Perses were now tacitly ready to accept the teachings of his righteous brother.

In the end, then, díkē ‘justice’ is totally vindicated in the Works and Days, and its eventual triumph is dramatized in the time that elapses in the course of the poem. Moreover, the function of the basileús ‘king’ as the authority who tells what is and what is not thémis ‘divine law’ by way of his díkē ‘judgment’ is taken over by the poem itself. The vantage point is pan-Hellenic, in that all the cities of the Hellenes arc reduced to two extreme types, the polis of díkē (225-237) and the polis of húbris (238-247). Even the consistently plural use of basileîs ‘kings’ in the Works and Days suggests a pan-Hellenic perspective: from the Homeric tradition we see that each city is ruled by a single king.

With the elimination of kings, the Works and Days can address itself to any polis of, say, the eighth century or thereafter—whether its government is an oligarchy, a democracy, or even a tyranny. And what the poem in effect communicates is the universal foundation of the law codes native to each Greek city-state.

Even in a democracy like Athens, the laws of Solon, as his own poetry proclaims, are founded on the authority of Zeus as king (F 31 W). Just as Zeus is the one who “straightens what is crooked and withers the overweening” (Works and Days 7), as he is implored by Hesiod to “straighten the divine laws [thémis plural] with díkē” (9), so also Solon’s Eunomíā ‘good government by way of good laws’ is a goddess who “shackles those without díkē” (F 4.33 W), “blackens húbris” (4.34), “withers the sprouting outgrowths of derangement” (4.35), and “straightens crooked judgments [díkē plural]” (4.36). In the Theogony we find that Zeus himself fathered Eunomíā, as well as Díkē (902); moreover, their mother is Thémis, the incarnation of divine law and order (901), and it is significant that Zeus married her after defeating Typhoeus and swallowing Metis, the last two remaining threats to cosmic order.

Assuming the stance of a lawgiver, Solon says in his poetry that he “wrote down” his thesmoí ‘laws’ after having adjusted “a díkē that is straight” for the noble and the base alike (F 36.18-20 W). But besides this written law code, we must also keep in mind the poetic traditions attributed to Solon; and in these traditions the figure of Solon functions {67|68} not only as a lawgiver, as we see here, but also as a personal exponent of díkē by virtue of his life as dramatized through his poetry. In one poem, for example, Solon prays to the Muses that they give him wealth and fame (F 13.1-4 W), and that they should allow him to help his friends and hurt his enemies (13.5-6). He yearns to own khrḗmata ‘possessions’ but renounces any thought of forcibly taking any from others, which would be “without díkē” (13.7-8); sooner or later díkē would have revenge (13.8). More specifically, deeds of húbris will surely be punished by Zeus, who appears like a violent wind (13.16-25; cf. again Iliad XVI 384-392).

In the poetic traditions of the city-state of Megara, as represented by the figure of Theognis, we find a remarkable parallel: here, too, the poet prays to Zeus that he may help his friends and hurt his enemies (Theognis 337-338). If Theognis could only exact retribution, by the time he dies, from those who had wronged him, then he would have the fame of a god among men (339-340). [79] We may note the similarity between this aspiration and what happens to Lycurgus of Sparta: this lawgiver is declared to be like a god by Apollo’s oracle at Delphi (Herodotus 1.65.3) and is made a cult hero after death (1.66.1). [80] Theognis goes on to say how he has been personally wronged: his possessions were forcibly taken from him (Theognis 346-347). So, too, with Hesiod: Perses had forcibly taken some of his possessions (Works and Days 37, in conjunction with 320).

Like Hesiod, moreover, Theognis initially admits pessimism about any success at retribution (Theognis 345), and in his apparent helplessness he expresses the ghastly urge to drink the blood of those who had wronged him (349). The cryptic mention here of a daímōn ‘spirit’ who would supervise such a vengeance (349-350) reminds us of the countless invisible phúlakes ‘guardians’ of Díkē who stand ready to punish wrongdoers in Works and Days 249-255 and who are identical to the daímōnes or stylized cult heroes at verses 122-126. [81] The guardians of díkē ‘justice’ are described as coefficients of the personified goddess Díkē, who is likewise pictured as standing ready to punish wrongdoers (Works and Days 256-262); similarly in the poetry of Solon, it is Díkē who in due time punishes wrongdoers (F 4.14-16 W). Theognis, however, has conjured up the starker alternative of a bloodthirsty revenant, who may even turn out to be the poet’s own self after death. [82] {68|69}

Although the particulars may vary, Theognis, like Hesiod and Solon, is presented through his poetry as a personal exponent of díkē by virtue of his life as dramatized through his poetry. But, unlike Solon’s poetry, which can refer to the díkē of a written law code as well (F 36.18-20), the poetry of Theognis can refer only to the díkē that emerges from his teachings, addressed to his young hetaîros ‘comrade’ Kyrnos and to various minor characters. Still, this díkē has the force of a law code handed down by a lawgiver, as Theognis himself proclaims: [83]

Like Solon, who protects “both sides” and allows “neither side” to win (ἀμφοτέροισι/οὐδετέρους at F 5.5/6), Theognis presents himself as giving an equal share to “both sides” (ἀμφοτέροισι at 544 above), elsewhere advising Kyrnos to walk “the middle road” (219-220, 331-332) and to give to “neither side” that which belongs to the other (μηδετέροισι 332). The fact that Theognis pronounces “this díkē” (verse 544) in a setting of sacrifice and ritual correctness (545) is significant in view of Hesiod’s instructions in the latter part of the Works and Days, where moral and ritual correctness are consistently made parallel. At verses 333-335 Hesiod’s concluding moral injunction to shun “deeds without díkē” is followed up by further advice, this time a ritual injunction:

As the Works and Days proceeds, the advice becomes more and more meticulous: for example, one must not cut one’s nails at a “feast of the gods” (742-743). Or again, a man must not urinate while standing up and facing the sun (727), or in a road (729), or into rivers or springs (757-758). We may compare the parallel advice in the Indic Law Code of Manu 4.45-48: “Let him not void urine on a road…nor while he walks or stands, nor on reaching the bank of a river…Let him never void faeces or urine, facing the wind, or a fire, or looking towards a Brahman, the sun, water, or cows.” [84]

The legal traditions of the Indic peoples are clearly cognate with those of the Greeks, and in this connection it is especially interesting to observe the uses of memnēménos ‘being mindful’ at Works and Days 728, in the specific context of the injunctions now being considered, as well as elsewhere (Works and Days 298, 422, 616, 623, 641, 711). The root *men-/*mneh₂– of memnēménos recurs in the Indic name Mánu-, meaning ‘the mindful one’: this ancestor of the human race gets his name (which is cognate with English man) by virtue of being ‘mindful’ at a sacrifice. Manu is the prototypical sacrificer, whose sheer virtuosity in what Sylvain Lévi has called “the delicate art of sacrifice” confers upon him an incontestable authority in matters of ritual. [85] Since ritual correctness is the foundation of Indic law, the entire Indic corpus of juridical/moral aphorisms is named after him.

There is a parallel thematic pattern in the Precepts of Cheiron, a poem attributed to Hesiod (scholia to Pindar Pythian 6.22) in which Cheiron the Centaur instructs the boy Achilles. The one fragment that we have (Hesiod F 283 MW) contains the initial words spoken by the centaur, in which he tells Achilles that the very first thing the young hero must do when he arrives home is to sacrifice to the gods. In a fragment from the {70|71} Epic Cycle (Titanomachy F 6 p. 111 Allen), Cheiron is described as the one who “led the race of mortals to justice [dikaiosúnē] by showing them oaths, festive sacrifices, and the configurations [skhḗmata] of Olympus.” There are also parallel formal patterns shared by the Precepts and by the Works and Days (336-337, 687-688), as well as by Theognis (99-100, 1145 in conjunction with 1147-1148).

The interaction between Cheiron and Achilles in the Precepts of Cheiron is so strikingly similar to the one between Hesiod and Perses and the one between Theognis and Kyrnos that F. G. Welcker was led to propose, in the preface to his 1826 edition of Theognis, that Perses and Kyrnos are generic figures whose dramatized familiarity with Hesiod and Theognis makes it possible for these poets to offer well-intended advice to their audiences, who really consist of strangers. [86] Such Near Eastern typological parallels as Ahiqar and Nadan and the Proverbs of Solomon add to the probability that these figures are indeed generic. [87] Nevertheless, at least in the case of Perses, scholars resist accepting this probability, primarily because the historicity of even Hesiod is thereby endangered, “and no one supposes Hesiod himself to be an assumed character.” [88]

Throughout this presentation it has been generally argued that the persona of the poet in any given archaic Greek poem is but a function of the traditions inherited by that poem; accordingly, the assumption of Hesiod’s historicity, as in the statement just quoted, requires no ad hoc rebuttal here. Suffice it for now to observe that there are analogues to the complementary characterizations of Hesiod and Perses even in Homeric poetry. One example is the challenge issued by Odysseus to the suitor Eurymakhos at Odyssey xviii З66-375: [89] the resourceful king, disguised as beggar-poet, [90] is challenging the idle usurper of his possessions to a hypothetical contest (the word for which is éris ‘strife’ at xviii 366; cf. Works and Days 11-26, especially 26) in the activity of ‘working the land’ (the word for which is érgon, again at xviii 366, and also at xviii 369; cf. Works and Days 20).

Or again, there are analogues to the complementary characterizations of Theognis and Kyrnos in the Works and Days. For example, Hesiod pointedly teaches that one should not make one’s hetaîros ‘comrade’ equal to one’s own brother (707). This negative injunction then becomes an excuse for displaying the poetic traditions available for teaching a hetaîros instead of a brother, since Hesiod goes on to say in {71|72} the next verse: “but if you should do so [make your hetaîros equal to your own brother], then . . .” (708). What follows in the next several verses is a veritable siring of aphorisms that deal precisely with the topic of behavior toward one’s hetaîros (708-722), and there are numerous striking analogues to the aphorisms explicitly or implicitly offered by Theognis to his hetaîros Kyrnos (for instance, Works and Days 710-711, 717-718, 720 and Theognis 155-158, 945, 1089-1090, respectively). Conversely, Theognis pointedly defines a true phílos ‘friend’ as a man who puts up with a difficult hetaîros as if he were his brother (97-100 = 1164a-d). By implication, one simply has to put up with a difficult brother. Theognis is uncertain whether his being a phílos ‘friend’ to Kyrnos is actually reciprocated: he challenges the fickle youth either to be a genuine phílos (89 = 1082e) or to declare that he is an ekhthrós ‘enemy’, overtly stalling a neîkos ‘quarrel’ between the two of them (89-90). We may compare the neîkos between Hesiod and Perses, which is indeed overt (Works and Days 35) but at least is settled in the course of the poem. By contrast, no overt neîkos ever develops between Theognis and Kyrnos, and neither is Theognis ever assured that Kyrnos is a genuine phílos.

In reckoning with different samples of archaic Greek poetry, we must of course avoid the assumption that parallel passages are a matter of text referring to text; rather, it is simply that any given composition may refer to traditions other than the ones that primarily shaped it, and such different traditions may be attested elsewhere. Still, it is almost as if Theognis here were alluding to Perses, or as if Hesiod were actually giving advice on how to treat a fickle Kyrnos.

Hesiod and Perses are not the only key characters in the Works and Days. Their father’s very essence retells some of the key themes that shape the composition. He came from Kyme in Asia Minor (636), sailing the seas in an effort to maintain his meager subsistence (633-634), until he settled on the mainland at Askra, a place that is harsh in the winter, unpleasant in the summer—in short, never agreeable (639-640).

This description of Hesiod’s Askra, generally accepted as empirical truth by scholars from Strabo onward, seems exaggerated at best: the region is in fact fertile, relatively protected from winds, replete with beautiful scenery, and actually mild in the winter as well as the summer. [91] Why, then, does Hesiod present a deliberately negative picture of his native Askra? The answer emerges when we reconsider the city of Kyme, which, in sharp contrast with Askra, is the place that Hesiod’s father left, “fleeing from poverty [peníā] not from wealth” (Works and {72|73} Days 637-638). We see here a pointed contrast with a theme characteristic of ktísis (‘foundation’) poetry, a genre that concerned itself with the great colonizations launched toward distant lands from cities of the mainland and its periphery. [92]

One of the thematic conventions of foundation poetry is that the great new cities that sprang up in Asia Minor and elsewhere in the era of colonizations were founded by intrepid adventurers fleeing from the poverty that overwhelmed them in the old cities. A worthy example is Kolophon, one of whose founders was ‘the man in rags’, Rhákios, who got his name “because of his poverty and shabby clothes” (scholia to Apollonius of Rhodes 1.308). [93] So also in the poetic traditions of Megara, which celebrated the city’s role as starting point for the foundation of many great cities, including Byzantium, in the era of colonizations. [94] Theognis of Megara urges that one must travel over land and sea in search of relief from baneful peniā ‘poverty’ (Theognis 179-180). Ιn sum, when Hesiod’s father traveled all the way to Askra from Kynie, thereby fleeing peníā ‘poverty’ (Works and Days 638), he was in effect reversing the conventional pattern of colonization as narrated in ktísis poetry.

To repeat, we have here a pointed negative reference as well: Hesiod’s father fled from peníā ‘poverty’ (Works and Days) and did not flee from wealth (637). The theme of wealth conjures up a distinctive feature of foundation poetry, where the colonizers advance from rags to riches, eventually making their new cities fabulously wealthy. [95] Again a worthy example is the city of Kolophon, which in time grew excessively rich (Athenaeus 526a, quoting Xenophanes of Kolophon F 3 W). From Theognis 1103-1104 we learn that the mark of this excess was húbris ‘outrage’, which led to Kolophon’s utter destruction. This fate, as the poet warns, is now looming over Megara as well. Further, we see that the húbris afflicting Megara is manifested specifically as greed for the possessions of others, and that it brings about the ultimate debasement of the city’s nobility (Theognis 833-836).

Such warnings about debasement and even destruction by húbris recall the Hesiodic scheme of the two cities: while the city of díkē becomes fertile and rich (Works and Days 225-235), so that no one needs to sail the seas for a living (236-237), the city of húbris becomes sterile and poor (238-247), and its people are afflicted either by wars (246) or by the storms that Zeus sends against them as they sail the seas {73|74} (247). From the standpoint of ktísis poetry, as we have seen in the instance of Kolophon, the same city can begin at one extreme and end at the other. As he leaves Kyme, Hesiod’s father flees the poverty of a city implicitly ruined by húbris (Works and Days 637-638), and he is in effect fleeing from the debris of what had been the golden age of colonization (for a Homeric reference to foundation poetry, specifically to narrative conventions that picture colonization in a golden age setting, see Odyssey ix 116-141). [96]

Settling down in Askra, Hesiod’s father has found a setting marked by a stylized harshness that conjures up the iron age. [97] Whereas díkē and húbris characterize the golden and the silver ages, respectively (Works and Days 124, 134), both characterize the iron age simultaneously. So, too, with Askra: it is neither a city of díkē nor a city of hubrìs. Still, the place is full of characteristics that pull in one direction or the other. For example, the name Askrā itself means ‘sterile oak’ (Hesychius, s.v. Ἄσκρη· δρῦς ἄκαρπος). While barrenness marks the city of húbris (Works and Days 242-244), a fertile acorn-bearing oak is a prime image in the city of díkē (232-233: note here the phonetic similarity of drûs ákrē ‘top of the oak’ with Askrē). The local lore as reported by Pausanias (9.29.1) has it that Askra was founded by Oioklos (‘he who is famous for his sheep’: cf. Works and Days 234 and Theogony 26), son of a personified Askra who mated with Poseidon; and that it was also founded by Otos and Ephialtes, who were the “first” to sacrifice on Helikon to the Muses. These two brothers, however, are elsewhere clearly exponents of húbris (Odyssey xi 305-320, especially 317 in conjunction with Works and Days 132, preliminary to the destruction of the Silver Generation because of their húbris, verse 134).

As we have seen earlier, the struggle of díkē against húbris in the iron age of mankind appears at first to be a lost cause, but the corresponding struggle, in Askra, of Hesiod as exponent of díkē against Perses, as exponent of húbris turns into a universalized triumph for justice and for the authority of Zeus. In this light we may consider the meaning of the name Pérsēs. Since this character, unlike Hesiod, is confined to the Works and Days, the meaning may have something to do with the central themes inherited by this composition. Now, the form Pérsēs is a residual variant, through a split in declensional patterns, of Perseús, and we may compare such other formal pairs as Kíssēs (Iliad XI 223) and Classical Kisseús. [98] Moreover, the form Perseús is related to the compound formant {74|75} persi– of the verb pérthō ‘destroy’, [99] and it is not without interest that the direct objects of pérthō are confined in Homeric tradition to pólis ‘city’, its synonyms ptolíethron and ástu, or the name of a polis. Since Perses is primarily an exponent of húbris in the Works and Days, we may recall the traditional theme expressed in the poetry of Theognis: hubrìs destroys the city (1103-1104, for example).

Of course húbris destroys cities only figuratively: more precisely, it is Zeus who destroys cities because of their húbris—which is actually what he does to the archetypical city of húbris at Works and Days 238-247 (especially 239, 242). In this sense the name Pérsēs formalizes the negative side of what Zeus does to those mortals who are marked by húbris. Thus it may be significant that Perses is addressed as dîon génos ‘descendant of Zeus’ by his brother Hesiod at Works and Days 299—and that this title is elsewhere applied only to the children of Zeus (for instance, Artemis at Iliad IX 538). Moreover, from the fifth century onward, the name of the father of Hesiod and Perses is attested as Dîos (see, for example, Ephorus of Kyme FGH 70 F 1). Thus the split between Hesiod and Perses as exponents of díkē and húbris, corresponding to the split between the city of díkē and the city of húbris, is genetically reconciled in a figure whose name carries the essence of Zeus, much as Hesiod and Perses become reconciled in the course of the Works and Days through the utter defeat of húbris by the díkē of Zeus.

Hesiod’s pervasive affinities with Zeus, as with Apollo and his Olympian Muses, are paralleled by his affinities with the goddess Hekate as she is celebrated in Theogony 404-452. Like Zeus, this goddess is an ideal paradigm for the pan-Hellenic nature of Hesiodic poetry. Thanks to the sanctions of the supreme god (Theogony 411-415, 423-425), Hekate has title to a share in the divine functions of all the gods (421-422). Accordingly, the invocation of Hekate at a sacrifice is tantamount to a blanket invocation of all the other gods as well (416-420). Because of her relatively recent, maybe even foreign, origins, [100] this synthetic goddess Hekate is an ideal pan-Hellenic figure (we may compare the choice of “foreign” Nyse as the genuine birthplace of Dionysus in the Homeric Hymn to Dionysus 1.8-9): she can manifest even her ritual dimensions in Hesiodic poetry, unlike the historically older gods who are each worshiped in different ways by each city-state—and whose ritual dimensions are therefore consistently screened out by the pan-Hellenic poems of Hesiod as well as Homer. {75|76}

The parallelism of Hekate with Apollo and his Muses also has a bearing on the pan-Hellenic authority of Hesiod. We start with the fact that Apollo and Hekate are actually cousins: their mothers, Leto and Asteríā, are sisters (Theogony 405-410), and the latter name is identical to the “god-given” name of Delos, Apollo’s birthplace (Pindar Paean 5.42 in conjunction with Callimachus Hymn 4.36; also Pindar F 33с.6 SM). The shared grandparents of Apollo and Hekate are Phoíbē and Koîos; the first name is the feminine equivalent of Apollo’s primary epithet Phoîbos (as at Theogony 14), while the second is cognate with the Indic kaví– ‘poet/seer’ [101] (we may compare the discussion, above, of Apollo’s relationship to the generic aoidós ‘singer/poet’ and mántis ‘seer’). The name Hekátē is the feminine equivalent of Apollo’s epithet Hékatos (as at Hymn to Apollo 1). Most important, the name of Hekate’s father, Pérsēs (Theogony 409), is identical to that of Hesiod’s brother.

Hekate is the only legitimate child of Perses the god, and as such she is mounogenḗs ‘only-born’ (Theogony 426, 448). By contrast, Perses the man is distinctly not the only child of Dîos, being the brother of Hesiod, who in turn implicitly wishes he were an only child: he advises that the ideal household should indeed have a mounogenḗs ‘only-born’ to inherit the possessions of the father (Works and Days 376-377). What would happen if Hekate were not mounogenḗs is suggested by the story about the birth of Eris ‘Strife’ in Works and Days 11-26, presented as a traditional alternative to the story reflected in Theogony 225. The Works and Days affirms that there is not just a moûnon…génos ‘single birth’ of Eris (11), the version that we see in the Theogony (225), but that there are in fact two Erides (Works and Days 11-12). The younger and secondary one of these Erides is negative in her stance toward mankind, but the older and primary one is positive: she instills the spirit of competition that motivates even the idler to work the land for a living (Works and Days 12-24). In that Eris is parent of Neîkos ‘quarreling’ (Theogony 229), the neîkos between Hesiod and Perses (Works and Days 35) is motivated by Eris. At first it seems as if it had been the maleficent and secondary Eris that had done so, but, as the neîkos eventually reaches a resolution with the triumph of Hesiod’s díkē over Perses’ húbris in the Works and Days, we realize that it must have been the beneficent and primary Eris all along. [102] The point is, just as an undivided negative Eris can split into a primary positive and secondary negative pair, so also an undivided positive Hekate could by implication split into a primary negative and a {76|77} secondary positive pair. Thus it is beneficial for mankind that Hekate should remain an only child: the primary child in a hypothetical split of the mounogenḗs Hekate figure would presumably take after the father Pérsēs, whose name conveys the negative response of gods to the húbris of mankind. [103] Similarly, Hesiod and Perses themselves are a primary positive and secondary negative pair, while the secondary child Pérsēs has a name that conveys, again, the negative response of Zeus to the húbris of mankind. As for the father of Hesiod and Perses, his name, Dîos—to repeat—carries the essence of Zeus.

The special thematic relationship of Hesiod with the figure of Hekate raises questions about a revealing detail in the Works and Days. Despite all the advice given by Hesiod to Perses about sailing, the poet pointedly says that he himself has never sailed on a ship except for the one time when he traveled from Aulis to the island of Euboea (650-651). There follows a pointed reference to the tradition claiming that the Achaean expedition to Troy was launched from Aulis (651-653). The Iliad acknowledges Aulis as the starting point of the Trojan expedition (II 303-304), and according to most versions it was there that Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter Iphigeneia to Artemis (for instance, Cypria Proclus summary p. 104.12-20 Allen). In the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women (F 23a.15-26 MW), we read that the sacrificed Iphigeneia (here called Iphimede, verses 15, 17) was thereupon made immortal by Artemis, and that, as a goddess, Iphigeneia became Artemis-of-the-Crossroads, otherwise known as Hekate (Hesiod F 23b = Pausanias 1.43.1).

Hekate, as the Theogony (435-438) tells us, aids those who compete in contests, and the poet cites athletic contests in particular. When Hesiod crosses over from Aulis to Euboea, he is traveling to an occasion of contests, the Funeral Games of Amphidamas at Chalkis (Works and Days 654-656). Moreover, Hesiod competes in a poetic contest at the games—and wins (656-657). He goes home with a tripod as prize and dedicates it to his native Helikonian Muses (657-658). Finishing his narrative about the prize that he won in the poetic contest, Hesiod pointedly says again that this episode marks the only time that he ever made a sea voyage (660).

Hesiod’s only sea voyage is ostentatiously brief, with the distance between Aulis and Euboea amounting to some 65 meters of water. [104] There is a built-in antithesis here with the long sea voyage undertaken by {77|78} the Achaeans when they sailed to Troy. Perhaps the antithesis was meant to extend further: Aulis is an original setting for the Catalogue of Ships tradition, transferred to a Trojan setting in the Iliad only because this particular epic starts the action in the final year of the war. But even the Iliad acknowledges Aulis as the starting point of the Achaean flotilla. Moreover, the strong Homeric emphasis on navigation as a key to the Achaeans’ survival (for example, Iliad XVI 80-82) [105] is in sharp contrast with the strong Hesiodic emphasis on the poet’s personal inexperience in navigation—especially in view of Hesiod’s additional emphasis on Aulis as the starting point for not only his short sea voyage but also for the long one undertaken by the Achaeans. Perhaps, then, this passage reveals an intended differentiation of Hesiodic from Homeric poetry.

In this light it is not out of place to consider a variant verse reported by the scholia at Works and Days 657. In this variant we find Hesiod declaring that his adversary in the poetic contest that he won was none other than Homer himself:

instead of

There is no proof for the conventional explanation that this variant verse is a mere interpolation (with the supposedly interpolated verse matching a verse found in an epigram ascribed to Hesiod in Contest of Homer and Hesiod p. 233.213-214 Allen). Also, to argue that this verse may be part of a genuine variant passage is not to say that the surviving version about the tripod is therefore not genuine. In archaic Greek poetry, reported variants may at any time reflect not some false textual alteration but, rather, a genuine traditional alternative that has been gradually ousted in the course of the poem’s crystallization into a fixed text. [106]

Furthermore, there is an attested traditional story that tells of the contest of Homer and Hesiod (Contest pp. 225-238 Allen), juxtaposing the {78|79} Life of Homer and the Life of Hesiod traditions. In its present form it is a late and accretive reworking that has generated much controversy about its authorship, a problem that cannot be addressed here. [107] One thing is sure, however: the basic premise of the story—that Homer and Hesiod competed in a poetic contest—exhibits the characteristics of a traditional theme. This theme, moreover, corresponds to a basic truth about archaic Greek society: the performance of poetry, from the days of the oral poets all the way to the era of the rhapsodes, was by its nature a matter of competition. [108]

To treat Hesiod simply as an author will only accentuate our inability to appreciate fully his poems, in that he represents a culmination of what must have been countless successive generations of singers interacting with their audiences throughout the Greek-speaking world. Whatever poetic devices we admire in the poems have been tested many thousands of times, we may be sure, on the most discerning audiences. Even the unmistakable signs of a Hesiodic poem’s structural unity are surely the result of streamlining by the tradition itself, achieved in the continuous process of a poem’s being recomposed in each new performance. Instead of referring to a poem in such a context, moreover, it would be better to speak in terms of a tradition of performing a certain kind of poem.

With the important added factor of pan-Hellenic diffusion, the successive recompositions of Hesiodic poetry could in time become ever less varied, more and more crystallized, as the requirements of composition became increasingly universalized. Of course the rate of such crystallization, and even the date, could have been different in each poem or even in different parts of the same poem. From this point of view, we can in principle include as Hesiodic even a composition like the Shield of Herakles, though it may contain references to the visual arts datable to the early sixth century. Scholars are too quick to dismiss this poem as not a genuine work on the basis of the dating alone, and it then becomes all the easier for them to underrate its artistic qualities on the grounds that it is merely an imitation of Hesiod. {79|80}

Critics also have noticed that the conclusion of the Theogony at verses 901-1020 is formally and even stylistically distinct from the previous part of the poem. [109] But this part is also functionally distinct from the rest, and we may note in general that different themes in oral poetry tend to exhibit different trends in formal—even linguistic—development. To put it another way: different contexts are characterized by different language. An explanation along these lines is surely preferable to a favorite scenario of many experts, in which the Theogony was somehow composed by a combination of one Hesiod and a plethora of pseudo-Hesiods. Worse still, some will even attribute the constitution of the poem to a dreary succession of redactors. Whatever the arguments for multiple authorship may be, there is predictably little agreement about how much or how little can be attributed to the real Hesiod. In sum, it seems preferable to treat all Hesiodic poems, including the fragments, as variable manifestations of a far more extensive phenomenon, which is Hesiodic poetry.

Another obstacle to our understanding of Hesiodic poetry, perhaps even harder to overcome, is the commonplace visualization of Hesiod as a primitive landlubber of a peasant who is struggling to express himself in a cumbersome and idiosyncratic poetic medium clumsily forged out of an epic medium that he has not fully mastered. Hesiod’s self-dramatization as one who works the land for a living is thus assumed to be simply a historical fact, which can then serve as a basis for condescending speculations about an eighth-century Boeotian peasant’s lowly level of thinking. It is as if the poetry of Hesiod, and of Homer, for that matter, were primitive raw material that somehow became arbitrarily universalized by the Greeks as a point of reference for their poetry and rhetoric in particular, and as the foundation of their civilization in general. Of course, if critics go on to treat such poetry as a producer rather than a product of the Greek poetic heritage, it is easy to find fault whenever we fail to understand. Over the years Hesiod especially has been condemned for many offenses against the sensibilities of modern literary critics. Perhaps the most shortsighted of the many charges leveled against him is that he is, on occasion, capable of forgetting his starting point.

There are, to be sure, those who have articulately conveyed the cohesiveness and precision of Hesiodic poetry. I single out the work of Jean-Pierre Vernant, whose findings about such key Hesiodic themes as Prometheus and the ascendancy of Zeus are so definitive that no attempt need be made here to offer a summary. [110] There is also the work of {80|81} Peter Walcot, whose repertoire of Near Eastern parallels to aspects of the Theogony and the Works and Days serves to illuminate the inner workings of Hesiodic composition. [111] The value of these analogues is not to be underrated, and the absence of any mention of them up to this point can be remedied by citing Martin West’s commentaries, which contain an illustrative collection of references. [112] It is worth noting, however, that such Near Eastern parallelisms may in any given instance be a matter of typology rather than of direct borrowing. Given the pervasiveness of cross-cultural parallelisms in patterns of mythmaking, even the most striking convergences in detail may turn out to be nothing more than a typological analogue: I cite for example the Inca parallels to the Pandora myth, [113] which seem closer to the Hesiodic version than do some of the Near Eastern parallels generally cited as Hesiod’s “sources.”

One of the most neglected areas in the general study of Hesiod, as also in this specific presentation, is the artistry of the poems. With our fragmentary understanding of the Hesiodic tradition, some special effects that would have delighted the intended audience will be forever lost to us, while others will emerge only in their barest outlines. It seems appropriate to bring this survey to a close with one such dimly perceived set of special effects, illustrating simultaneously the richness of the poetry and our own poverty of understanding.

In Works and Days 504-563, a portrait of winter and its harshness, the North Wind is described as it descends upon trees along the side of a mountain, penetrating the skin of all living things in its path with its cold blast (507-518). The imagery here is pointedly sexual, as a study of parallel imagery in other Indo-European tradition clearly shows. [114] Then follows (519-525) the contrasting image of a sensuous young girl taking a bath in her warm and comfortable boudoir, safely sheltered from the piercing wind and “not yet knowing the ways of golden Aphrodite” (521); meanwhile, the anósteos ‘boneless one’ is gnawing at his own foot in his cold and wretched haunts (524-525). Now, the Greek word anósteos has an Indic cognate anasthá– ‘boneless one’, a kenning for “penis,” [115] while the Greek word for ‘gnaw’, téndō (525), is related to the Irish teinm (laído), ‘gnawing [of marrow]’, a magical process leading to knowledge by divination. [116] Thus the ‘boneless one’, by gnawing his foot, {81|82} is one who “knows,” in contrast with the inexperienced young girl, who does not “know” (εἰδυῖα 521).

But the allusiveness extends even further. The ‘boneless one’ is also to be understood as an octopus (compare the syntax of Works and Days 524, containing anósteos, with that of Hesiod F 204.129 MW, containing átrikhos ‘hairless one’ = snake), an animal that is conventionally pictured in Greek lore as eating its own feet when it is hungry. [117] The hungry octopus gnawing at its foot is described as living in cold and wretched haunts (Works and Days 525), and this image of poverty takes us back to an earlier image of a poor man in winter, holding his swollen foot in his emaciated hand (496-497); the Proclus commentary here cites an Ephesian law to the effect that a child could not be exposed until his father’s feet were swollen with famine. [118] Our thoughts turn to Oidípous ‘he whose feet are swollen’, and the story of his exposure.

In this connection we come to yet another occurrence of the word poús ‘foot’ in this passage about winter: at Works and Days 533-535, the winter storm is described as making everyone hunch over like a trípous ‘three-footed’ man (533; compare 518). This kenning, which designates a man leaning on a walking stick, corresponds to the aínigma ‘riddle’ of the Sphinx as solved by Oidípous (Sophocles Oedipus Tyrannus 393, 1525). [119] Like the ‘boneless one’ who ‘gnaws’ his foot (Works and Days 524) and thereby knows by way of divination, Oedipus knows by virtue of solving the riddle of the Sphinx. The oracular tone of this passage is sustained later (at Works and Days 571) with another kenning, pheréoikos ‘he who carries his house’ (= snail), which is introduced by the expression all’ hopót’ an ‘but whenever…’ (571), a frequent introductory phrase in oracles. [120]

This much said, we are still typically far from understanding all the implications of this passage, just as we are far from understanding all that can be understood about Hesiod and his world.

A definitive assessment of Hesiod’s poems is elusive, since we still know so little about their background. The best hope is that there will be further progress in rigorous internal analysis and in systematic comparison with other attested Greek poetic traditions, so that tomorrow’s reader may better appreciate the mechanics and esthetics of Hesiodic poetry. Even so, we shall always fall far short, unable ever to recover all that this poetry presupposes of its own audience at large. {82|83}

The rituals occasioned by the Funeral of Patroklos, as narrated in Iliad XXIII, have been compared with the royal funerary rituals of the Hittites. [1] The parallelisms in details and in ideology suggest a common Indo-European heritage, in view of additional comparative evidence available from the Indic traditions. [2] If indeed the Funeral of Patroklos reflects an ideology so early as to be of Indo-European heritage, then a basic criterion for the dating of narrative traditions in the Homeric poems has to be revised. Archaeologists tend to interpret the cremation of Patroklos in particular and of Homeric heroes in general as inspired by practices that went into effect only in the first millennium B.C., when cremation and inhumation are found to exist side by side; in this respect, then, Homeric poetry is supposed to reflect a near-contemporary state of affairs, as opposed to a more archaic heritage dating back to the Mycenaean era of the second millennium B.C., a period when cremation is sporadic and inhumation is the norm. [3] The comparative evidence, on the other hand, now suggests that the procedures and ideologies of cremation as attested in Homeric poetry are in fact so archaic as to predate the second millennium B.C., thus reflecting—albeit distantly—customs that go back to a time even before the entry into Greece, in the beginning of the second millennium, of the Indo-European language that {85|86} ultimately became the Greek language. Even more important for my purposes, the comparative evidence also suggests that the cremation of Patroklos is a traditional theme founded upon concepts of afterlife beyond Hades.

For the moment, I choose the word “afterlife” instead of “rebirth” or “eschatology.” These other words too are pertinent to my inquiry: as we shall see in what follows, the Indo-European languages, Greek included, abound with earlier patterns of thought concerning life after death. [4] Still, it is useful to start with the most general term possible.

The concept of afterlife, as I argue, is implicit in the Homeric narrative of the cremation of Patroklos. Comparable concepts, as we shall see, are explicitly attested in Indic institutions, especially as represented in prayers to the god Savitr̥ and in rituals involving the so-called Triple Fire. After a detailed exposition of the Indic evidence, soon to follow, we shall also see that closely analogous concepts are represented—albeit indirectly—in the Greek evidence, specifically in the diction of Homeric poetry. [5]

In correlating various concepts of afterlife with the practice of cremation, I am not about to claim that cremation was the definitive Indo-European funerary ritual. I argue only that cremation was clearly one of perhaps several different types of Indo-European funerary ritual. In any discussion of differences in funerary practices, as in the case of cremation and inhumation, I wish to stress from the start that no universals can be assumed for the thought-patterns—let us continue to call them ideologies—traditionally associated with such practices. The ritual dimensions of cremation and inhumation may “mean” different things in different societies or in different phases of the same society. [6] Where the two practices coexist in one society, they may conceivably convey two distinct meanings. [7] In other situations, coexistence may reflect a blurring of distinctions. [8] In some contexts, a practice like inhumation may not even imply anything about a given society’s concepts of afterlife. [9] In other contexts, however, there is good reason to think that the same {86|87} practice of inhumation does indeed imply the concept of rebirth. [10] To take the stance of doubting in general the presence of such an ideology, on the grounds that “a simple inhumation without the accompanying idea of rebirth is often found,” [11] seems to me unjustified. [12]

Let us begin with the briefest possible summary of the evidence from the Indic Vedas, representing the oldest attested Indic concepts of afterlife. [13] Before death the realm of consciousness, of both rational and emotional functions, is the mánas-. When death occurs, this mánas- is separated from the body, and in the process of this separation mánas- can be either equated or paired with the word ásu-. After death, mánas- and ásu– designate the disembodied conveyor of the dead person’s identity, sometimes represented as a frail and vulnerable homunculus who is a miniature vision of the deceased as he seemed in life. [14] Eventually, mánas– and/or ásu– arrive at the “third sky,” where the pitŕ̥̥-s ‘ancestors’ abide. [15] The mánas- and/or ásu– are destined to be reintegrated with the body, and cremation of the body is the key to this eventual reintegration. [16]

From a preliminary comparison with the archaic Greek evidence, we see some striking convergences and divergences. Before death the realm of consciousness, of rational and emotional functions, is the thūmós, [17] which can be paired in this context with the word ménos. [18] {87|88} When death occurs, the thūmós is separated from the body, and in the process of this separation thūmós can be paired with the words ménos or psūkhḗ. [19] After death, psūkhḗ designates the disembodied conveyor of the dead person’s identity, sometimes represented as a homunculus who is a miniature vision of the deceased as he seemed in life. [20] I should stress that the psūkhḗ is merely a conveyor of identity, not the identity itself: in Homeric diction, the word autós ‘self’ actually designates the body, which the psūkhḗ leaves behind when the hero dies (e.g. Iliad I 3-4). [21]

Before death, the word psūkhḗ is as a rule excluded from designating the realm of consciousness, of rational and emotional functions; [22] after death, the words thūmós and ménos are as a rule excluded from designating the disembodied conveyor of the dead person’s identity. [23] Only in the process of death can all three words thūmós/ménos/psūkhḗ be fully synonymous. [24] As they are separated from the body, they head for Hades. {88|89}

In some Homeric variations, however, arrival at Hades may be delayed. For example, after the psūkhḗ of Patroklos has been separated from his body by death (Iliad XVI 856), it leaves for Hades (XVI 856), but is thwarted from entering (XXIII 72-74); in a vision (XXIII 65ff.) the psūkhḗ of Patroklos asks Achilles to give his body a funeral in general (XXIII 71) and a cremation in particular (XXIII 76), so that his psūkhḗ may finally enter Hades (XXIII 71, 75-76). Achilles is astounded that the psūkhḗ of Patroklos has phrénes (XXIII 103-104). [25] We must note that this word phrénes designates the physical localization of thūmós [26] and ménos [27] in the living. Indeed, what the psūkhḗ of Patroklos says to Achilles in Iliad XXIII 65-92 are the words of one who appears to be conscious of himself, in possession of his rational and emotional faculties. [28] By implication, the psūkhḗ of Patroklos can become detached or distinct from his thūmós/ménos and become free to enter Hades only after his body is cremated. [29]

On the surface, then, it seems as if the Homeric poems point to Hades as the ultimate destination of the psūkhḗ. Moreover, once the process of cremation enables the psūkhḗ to arrive at Hades, it is liable to lose consciousness as well as rational and emotional faculties, and we are left with the initial impression that the dead person stays dead forever. Here we see a major divergence from the Indic formulation, where the mánas– and/or ásu- not only preserve consciousness and the faculties but also become eventually reintegrated with the body by way of cremation. Yet the divergence lies not in what the Greek formulation says about the afterlife but rather in what it leaves unsaid. Let us keep in mind that, conscious or unconscious, the psūkhḗ is a conveyor of identity. Thus the door is still left open for the possibility that the psūkhḗ may yet be reintegrated with the body. A word like thūmós or like ménos may at first seem from our point of view more appropriate for designating the aspect that is separated and then hypothetically reintegrated with the body, since both thūmós and ménos designate consciousness and the faculties. In fact, as we have just noted, thūmós and ménos are synonymous with psūkhḗ at the moment of death. Yet these very words thūmós and ménos cease to apply to the identity once it passes through the gates of Hades; from here on, {89|90} the identity is conveyed by psūkhḗ only. This suspension of synonymity is itself telling us something: that the psūkhḗ once had an affinity with consciousness and the faculties—an affinity which is then suspended in Hades.

My interpretation here differs from the view that any absence of synonymity between “Ichseele” (e.g. thūmós/ménos) and “Psycheseele” (e.g. psūkhḗ) in the mythopoeic thinking of any “primitive” culture invariably implies an original distinctness between the two concepts. [30] What I propose is that the distinctness, as in the case of thūmós/ménos on one side and psūkhḗ on the other, may be a secondary development—a matter of secondary specialization. In other words, the convergence in meaning between thūmós/ménos and psūkhḗ may be primary and the divergence, secondary. Then we can account for such rare “exceptions” as Iliad VII 131 (where the thūmós goes to Hades) and XXI 569 (where the psūkhḗ abides in a living hero) as residual traces of an earlier ideology where thūmós/ménos and psūkhḗ were as yet undifferentiated in realms where they are later differentiated.

My interpretation is also at odds with the view that the Homeric psūkhḗ is not a “Psycheseele” but a mere “Totengeist.” [31] The reasoning behind this disputed view is based on the conventional diction describing the swooning of a hero: the psūkhḗ is regularly envisaged as leaving the body, but it is never mentioned as returning when the hero revives. [32] Only the thūmós or ménos are mentioned as returning to the hero when he is revived. [33] For some, this restriction in diction means that “Homer” did not know of any function that could be attributed to psūkhḗ in the living hero—that the word psūkhḗ simply did not denote consciousness. [34]

And yet, as even those who prefer this explanation have to concede, [35] the concept of psūkhḗ is indeed derived from the concept of breathing (cf. Homeric psúkhō ‘blow’, with “wind” as subject, at XX 440), the loss of which is the primary manifestation of death in the conventional Homeric descriptions. The words thūmós and ménos are also associated with breathing. [36] Accordingly, the descriptions of both swooning and {90|91} dying as a loss of thūmós/ménos/psūkhḗ are physiologically appropriate and proper, and yet the regaining of the hero’s breath after swooning is restricted in Homeric diction to thūmós/ménos, with psūkhḗ excluded. The reason for this exclusion is surely not physical but ideological. To repeat, it has been argued that psūkhḗ is excluded because it does not denote consciousness, whereas thūmós/ménos regularly do. But this argument is predicated on the assumption that psūkhḗ is distinct from thūmós/ménos at the moment when they become separated from the body. This is to confuse words with concepts, and I must insist here on returning to the facts of Homeric diction. What leaves the body at the moment of dying or swooning is functionally expressed as thūmós and/or ménos and/or psūkhḗ. At the moment of dying or swooning, all three words are formulaically interchangeable synonyms, expressing the same concept. [37]

If, then, the word psūkhḗ is excluded in descriptions of revival from swooning, it is because this synonym of thūmós/ménos at the moment of dying and swooning has at other moments a meaning that goes beyond the concept of breath or even the concept of consciousness. Some would argue that this meaning is simply that of ‘ghost’: once the psūkhḗ is in Hades, the reasoning goes, it cannot return to the body of someone who has swooned because the psūkhḗ would already be a ghost—and its owner would already be dead. [38] Yet, this reasoning again fails to account for the fact—as established by observation of Homeric diction—that psūkhḗ is synonymous with thūmós/ménos at the moment of dying or swooning. It cannot simply be assumed that psūkhḗ should mean one thing when a hero swoons and another thing when he is revived.

There may be a more sublime reason for the avoidance of the word psūkhḗ in Homeric descriptions of a hero’s revival. As we have noted, the synonymity of thūmós/ménos/psūkhḗ at the moment of death implies an affinity of psūkhḗ with consciousness—an affinity that is then suspended in Hades. If it is simply a matter of suspension, however, then the door is left open for imagining an eventual restoration of synonymity, with all three words thūmós/ménos/psūkhḗ once again capable of designating the identity of the deceased. The setting for such a restoration is, I submit, the eventual reintegration of the psūkhḗ and body, when the deceased comes back to life. In that case, the avoidance of the word psūkhḗ in descriptions of a hero’s revival from a swoon would be motivated by a need to keep this theme distinct from the theme of a hero’s revival from death. Elsewhere, I have attempted to document this theme, the hero’s {91|92} revival from death, on the basis of the internal evidence available in the diction in Greek poetic traditions. [39] In that effort, however, I did not confront what the Iliad has to say, albeit indirectly, about the afterlife of Patroklos. Which is the problem at hand—a problem that may be solved, I submit, by now pursuing even further the semantics of thūmós/ménos/psūkhḗ.

Exceptionally, the restoration of synonymity for thūmós/ménos/psūkhḗ can happen in Hades itself. The psūkhḗ of the seer Teiresias (Odyssey x 492) is described as the only one in Hades to be endowed with phrénes (x 493), which as we have seen is the physical localization of thūmós and ménos. [40] Accordingly, the psūkhḗ of Teiresias is the only one in Hades to recognize Odysseus without having to drink blood (xi 91). To be contrasted are the other psūkhaí who are as a rule without faculties” (aphradées xi 476) except whenever they get to drink a libation of blood (xi 147-149). [41] The reason for my drawing attention at this point to the exceptional psūkhḗ of Teiresias has to do with yet another crucial word, one that serves to explain why Teiresias has phrénes even in Hades: Persephone had given him nóos (x 494). This word, which here epitomizes the synonymity of thūmós/ménos/psūkhḗ, [42] is as a rule used in Homeric diction to designate the realm of rational functions only, [43] whereas thūmós is used to designate the realm of both rational and emotional functions. [44] As such, nóos represents a mere subcategory of thūmós in the living Homeric hero. Why, then, should this word be a key, in Odyssey x 494, to the synonymity of thūmós/ménos/psūkhḗ and, by implication, to the reintegration of consciousness and body?

The etymology of nóos provides an answer. As the researches of Douglas Frame have established, [45] the root of nóos is *nes-, which means not just ‘return home’, as attested in Greek néomai (verb) and nóstos (noun), but also ‘return to light and life’, as apparently attested in Indic {92|93} Nā́satyau, an epithet of the Indic Divine Twins, the Aśvin-s who bring mortals back to life and who bring about sunrise after the night brought on by each sunset. [46] As Frame also shows, there is in fact a pervasive interplay between the themes of nóos and nóstos in the Odyssey, so that the fundamental meaning of the root *nes-, ‘return to light and life’, is reenacted within the overall structure of this epic; in other words, the Odyssey itself is built on the symbolism of rebirth from death, as visualized in the dynamics of sunrise after sunset and as verbalized in the nóos/nóstos of Odysseus himself. [47] Within the space of the present discussion, I cannot do full justice to the evidence and arguments that Frame adduces. Rather, I am simply confining myself to the problem of connecting the death of Patroklos with the semantics of thūmós/ménos/psūkhḗ. Still, the etymology of nóos, which functions in Homeric diction as a subcategory of thūmós and as a principle that reunites thūmós/ménos/psūkhḗ in synonymity, can serve as an ideal point of transition to the main part of this presentation—a survey of assorted evidence available in Indic traditions that may throw light on the afterlife of Patroklos. If this evidence will help strengthen Frame’s own arguments, then I hope that he will accept my efforts here as a tribute to his own.

Indic traditions formalize the theme of returning to light and life in more ways than one. Besides the Nā́satyau, I cite a Vedic sun-god called Savitŕ̥-, appropriately meaning ‘the vivifier’ (root sū- ‘vivify’). As we shall see, Savitr̥’s solar journey enables the aspects of man that leave the body at death to be reintegrated in the realm of the pitŕ̥-s ‘ancestors’. Since the comparative evidence of the Savitr̥ tradition is both ample and complex, it may be best to anticipate here the conclusions that I plan to draw from this evidence at a later point. What will emerge is that the Indic words designating the aspects of man that leave the body at death, mánas– and ásu-, are actually cognate with the Homeric noun + epithet combination ménos ēú (μένος ἠύ), designating in general the energetic faculties of heroes (e.g. Iliad XX 80) and, in particular, the aspect of Patroklos that has been lost as a result of death (XXIV 6).

The correspondence between the Indic noun mánas– and the Greek noun ménos is overt. As for the Indic noun ásu– and the Greek adjective {93|94} ēú (ἠύ), the correspondence on the levels of both form and meaning is complicated, and further discussion is useless until we can review the comparative evidence preserved in Iranian traditions. [48]

Suffice it now to add another overt comparandum besides Indic mánas- on one side and Greek ménos on the other: the Indic word pitŕ̥– ‘ancestor’ is directly cognate with the Greek element patro– of Patro-kléēs, a name that literally means ‘he who has the glory [kléos] of the ancestors [patéres]. [49] In view of Erwin Rohde’s observation that the Funeral of Patroklos in the Iliad bears the distinct features of hero cult [50] and that the cult of heroes is itself an institution that evolved from the worship of ancestors, [51] we may recover an Indo-European theme in comparing the association of ménos ēú (= μένος ἠύ) and Patrokléēs in the context of that hero’s death with the association of mánas/ásu- and the pitŕ̥-s ‘ancestors’ in the context of their coming back to life after death.

Having anticipated my conclusions from the comparative Indic evidence about Savitr̥ and his role in bringing the dead back to life, I will now present this evidence to the extent that I am able to sketch it without oversimplifying its rich complexities. [52]

As we begin to examine the traditions about this specialized sun-god Savitr̥, we note that there are contexts of darkness as well as brightness. Savitr̥ protects the righteous at night (Rig- Veda 4.53.1) and wards off the demonic Rakṣas-es all night (1.35.10). [53] The time of these Rakṣas-es is the {94|95} night (7.104.18); in the east they have no power, because they are wiped out by the rising sun (Taittirīya-Saṃhitā 2.6.6.3). As the Rig-Veda makes clear, the daily breakthrough to light in the east is caused by Savitr̥ (10.139.1). How, then, can the sun-god Savitr̥ be present at night? As we see from Rig-Veda 1.35, the Savitr̥ Hymn, the god reverses the course of his chariot with each sunrise and sunset: he travels through the brightness at day and then through the darkness at night. During the night trip, he is the good aspect of darkness, just as he is the good aspect of brightness during the day trip. The night trip of Savitr̥ is especially precarious for mortals not only because of the darkness but also because the daylight course of the sun is reversed. After the forward course of the chariot at daytime comes the backward course at nighttime. This forward /backward movement of Savitr̥ is expressed in terms of downstream/upstream, the words for which are pravát/udvát-: [54]

It remains to ask where it is that Savitr̥ travels “upstream,” from west {95|96} to east, during the night. [56] The Rig-Veda is ostentatiously cryptic about the sun’s whereabouts at nighttime, offering only such indications as in the following verses of the Savitr̥ Hymn:

A further indication about this unmentionable sky occurs in stanza 6 of the same Savitr̥ Hymn, where Savitr̥ is described as having two skies. From such indirect mystical hints we may surmise that the sky of this our world is matched by another sky, of the underworld. Furthermore, there is a third sky mentioned in the same stanza (Rig-Veda 1.35.6), this one belonging to Yama rather than Savitr̥; it is in this third sky that immortal things abide (amŕ̥tā́dhi taṣḥur), and

The name Yama refers to the king of the pitŕ̥-s ‘ancestors’ (Rig-Veda 10.14 passim), particularly the Aṅgiras-es (10.14.3, 5), and his path is death (1.38.5). He is the first person ever to experience death (Atharva–Veda 18.3.13), and he is specifically addressed as “our pitŕ̥” (Rig-Veda 10.135.1). Yet the abode of Yama and the pitŕ̥-s is in the midst of the sky (10.15.14), in the highest sky (10.14.8), in the third sky which has eternal light and where the sun was placed (9.113.7-9). The abode of the pitŕ̥-s is the highest point of the sun (9.113.9), and they are in communion with it (1.125.6, 10.107.2, 10.154.5). Thus, the third sky of Yama could be visualized as above the first sky of Savitr̥, who goes pravát– ‘downstream’ during the day; come sunset, Savitr̥ reaches the dreaded second sky of the lower world, where he travels udvát– ‘upstream’ during the night.

How, then, did Yama the primordial mortal reach the third sky? {96|97} Come sunrise, he ascends along with the sun, traveling pravát– ‘downstream’:

In the Atharva–Veda (6.28.3, 18.4.7), Yama is described as the first ever to have gone along the pravát-. Before reaching the third sky with the coming of sunrise, it may be that Yama, the first person ever to experience death, is imagined as having to traverse the unmentionable second sky with the corning of sunset. A model and guide for this kind of trip could be Savitr̥ himself.

The role of Savitr̥ as psychopomp is illustrated by such passages as Rig-Veda 10.17.3-6: according to the Kalpa to Taittirīya-Āraṇyaka 6.1.1, this text is a prayer for the dead at the ritual of cremation; Savitr̥ is implored to place the dead man into the abode of the pitŕ̥-s:

In the function of psychopomp, Savitr̥ has a thematic correlate called Pūṣan; in the same Savitr̥ passage (10.17.5) this Pūṣan is implored to guide the dead man “along the least dangerous path” (ábhayatamena), being a “bestower of well-being” (svastidā́). [58] Like Savitr̥, Pūṣan is associated with the path of the sun (Rig-Veda 2.40.4-5, 6.56.3, 6.58.2); in fact, it is the theme of the sun’s path that makes Savitr̥ and Pūṣan overlap in identity: {97|98}

Previously, the movements of Savitr̥ had just been described:

From the other contexts, [59] we may assume here that Savitr̥ goes east to west when night is below us and west to east when night is above us. Savitr̥ and Pūṣan are correlates elsewhere, too, in the Rig-Veda (3.62.9-10, 10.139.1), but it will suffice here to consider only their correlation in solar movement. [60]

In the same hymn where Savitr̥ and Pūṣan function as correlate psychopomps, the solar movements of Pūṣan are described in the following mystical language:

Two basic questions are: (1) what is the extremity of sky/earth and (2) what are the two sadhastha-s ‘abodes’ of the sun?

A bivalent answer can he derived from the Indic concept of Sky and Earth as surrounded by Ocean, on all sides. This concept is implicit in a Rig-Vedic theme that has it that all streams and rivers flow into the Samudra ‘Ocean’ (1.32.2, 1.130.5, 2.19.3), as also in another theme, {98|99} which has it that there is an East Ocean and a West Ocean (10.136.5), or that there are four Oceans (9.33.6). These concepts seem to be based on mythopoeic patterns of cosmic order rather than geographical experience, so that there is room for believing also in an upper Ocean matching the Sky as well as a lower Ocean matching the Earth (cf. 10.98.5, 12). But this distinction is just a sophisticated elaboration: the basic idea remains that the Ocean comes between where the Earth stops and the Sky begins. It follows, then, that the sun submerges in the Ocean at sunset and emerges from it at sunrise; in fact, this concept is explicit in the testimony of the Taittirīya-Āraṇyaka (4.42.33) and the Aitareya-Brāhmaṇa (4.20.13; cf. also Atharva–Veda 13.2.14). Thus the birth of Pūṣan from the extremity of Sky/Earth (again, Rig-Veda 10.17.6) must mean that the sun was born of the Ocean. [61] It must be for this reason that Pūṣan’s solar correlate Savitr̥ is specifically called apā́ṃ nápāt ‘progeny of the waters’ (1.22.6); furthermore, Savitr̥ as Apām Napãt even knows such secrets as where the fountainhead of the Ocean gushes forth (10.149.2). As for the two sadhástha-s ‘abodes’ of Pūṣan (10.17.6), they must be the Sky and the Ocean: as he travels to and fro (ā́ ca párā ca carati), he goes cast to west in the Sky at day and, somehow, west to east at night after having plunged into the Ocean.

To be contrasted with the two sadhástha-s of Pūṣan are the three sadhástha-s of the fire-god Agni (Rig-Veda 3.20.2, etc.); in fact, one of Agni’s epithets is tri-sadhasthá– ‘having three sadhástha-s’ (5.4.8, etc.). Unlike the fire of the sun, which has abodes only in the sky and in the water, Agni as sacrificial fire abides also on earth. The word agní– itself means ‘fire’, cognate with Latin ignis. Agni as god links the microcosm of sacrificial fire with the macrocosm of celestial fire. As sacrificial fire, Agni is kindled on earth at dawn so that the sun may rise (4.3.11, 5.6.4). If there were no sacrificial fire at dawn, there would be no sunrise (Śatapatha–Brāhmaṇa 2.3.1.5). From a cosmic point of view, Agni himself caused the sun to rise (Rig-Veda 10.156.4). [62]

The three sadhástha-s ‘abodes’ of Agni correspond to three different proveniences of Agni, and the Rig-Veda reveals them in the following order (10.45.1): [63] {99|100}

Let us examine in more detail the third provenience of Agni. Like the sun-god Savitr̥, the water-born third Agni is also called apā́ṃ nápāt ‘progeny of the waters’ (Rig-Veda 3.1.12-13, 3.9.1, etc.). Elsewhere, Apām Napāt seems to exist as a separate entity (10.30.3-4, etc.); he is celebrated in one whole hymn (2.35), but even here he is identified with Agni in the last stanza. Just as Savitr̥ as specialized sky-god has features derivable from Dyaus ‘Sky’ [65] so also Apām Napãt: whereas Savitr̥ is called the prajā́pati-, the creator of the universe (4.53.2), [66] Apām Napāt is described as the one who “created all things” (víśvāni…bhúvanā jajāna 2.35.2). [67]

The Vedic figure Apām Napāt is so ancient that there is a formal analogue in the Iranian evidence: the Avestan figure Apąm Napå. [68] While other thematic evidence about Apąm Napå is elusive, he is known to have the epithet auruuat̰-aspa– ‘having swift horses’ (Yašt 19.51); [69] otherwise, this word serves only to describe the huuar– ‘sun’ (Yašt 10.90, etc.). There is a thematic parallel in the Rig-Vedic word āśuhéman– ‘driving swift horses’, which serves as epithet for Apām Napāt (2.31.6, 2.35.1, 7.47.2); he is transported by horses as swift as thought itself (1.186.5). [70]

In Rig-Veda 1.162, a hymn celebrating the sacrificial horse, it is specifically Pūṣan’s goat that leads the horse to its immolation (stanzas 2-3). In fact, Pūṣan’s chariot is regularly drawn by goats (1.138.4; 6.55.3-4, 6; 6.57.3; 6.58.2); by contrast, Savitr̥’s chariot is drawn by {100|101} horses (7.45.1; cf. 1.35.3, 5). Therefore, the ritual symbolism of having the sacrificial goat of Pūṣan precede the sacrificial horse can be related with mythological symbolism: just as the goat is the horse’s guide in ritual, so also Pūṣan is Savitr̥’s guide in myth. From the conventional association of Indic Apām Napāt and of Iranian Apąm Napå with horses, it follows that the designation of Savitr̥ the sun-god as Apām Napāt (1.22.6) is old enough to be a part of the shared Indo-Iranian heritage and is due to his own solar association with horses (7.45.1); by contrast, Pūṣan is called Apām Napāt nowhere in the Rig-Veda, presumably because he is associated with goats, not horses. In their function as solar psychopomps, Savitr̥ and Pūṣan may be correlates, [71] but not so in terms of the epithet Apām Napāt: the inherited phraseology of this expression requires association with horses, not goats.

When it comes to the death and rebirth of man, Apām Napāt serves as a solar model rather than solar guide. The celestial fire plunges into the waters at sunset, only to be reborn from them at sunrise. As a parallel, the sacrificial horse is immolated so that it may draw the chariot of the sun come sunrise, but its guide is the goat. In the Rig-Vedic hymn to Apām Napāt, sun and horse are parallel as they rise at dawn:

For the function of enacting man’s rebirth after death, there is an element missing in the figure of Apām Napāt; as the hymn composed specially for him makes clear, Apām Napāt is Apām Napāt only in the waters and in the sky, but on earth he becomes someone else:

This “other” is then identified in the last stanza of the hymn as Agni himself, in his function as sacrificial fire (2.35.15). Thus whereas Agni is {101|102} Apām Napāt, Aparn Napāt is not Agni in all respects. Specifically, Apām Napāt lacks one of Agni’s three aspects; he is not at work on earth.

To round out this complex picture of the tripartite Agni, let us briefly consider his first provenience. Besides the earth-born Second Agni of the sacrificial fire and the water-born Third Agni of the sun, there is also the sky-born First Agni of lightning (Rig-Veda 10.45.1-3; also 1.143.2, 3.2.13, 6.6.2). While the water-born Agni has two sadhástha-s ‘abodes’, Sky and Ocean, the sky-born Agni in the form of lightning can go directly from Sky to Earth through the antárikṣa– ‘intermediate space’ (6.8.2, 10.65.2).

The tripartite distribution of Agni is subject to a number of confusions. As lightning, sky-born Agni qualifies as being in the third sky (Rig-Veda 1.143.2, etc.); yet the sky-born Agni is the first Agni, Also, with the concept of celestial waters matching terrestrial waters (1.32.2, 12, etc.), it may seem tempting to imagine the water-born Agni as not only the sun but also lightning; and yet, Indic ritual shows that water-born Agni was basically incompatible with the fire of lightning: according to the Śatapalha–Brāhmaṇa (12.4.4.4; cf. Aitareya–Brāhmaṇa 7.7), “the Agni in the waters” must be expiated if fire from lightning has been mixed with sacrificial fire. [73]

Lightning, however, is not the only form in which Agni comes from Sky to Earth. We are now about to see the purpose of Agni’s tripartition, which links the mystery of afterlife with the mystery of terrestrial fire’s origin from celestial fire. We begin with the Vedic concept of human reproduction, where the male plants the gárbha– ‘embryo’ in the uterus of the female: thus when Sky impregnates Earth with rainwater, the embryo is none other than “the Agni in the waters,” and this embryo is then lodged within the plants that grow out of the impregnated Earth (Rig-Veda 7.9.3, 8.43.9, 1.141.4, etc.). [74] One of the designations of Agni within plants is actually apā́m gárbha– ‘embryo of the waters’ (7.9.3); one of the designations of “plant” is óṣadhī-.

Etymologically, óṣadhī– may be interpreted as being composed of roots uṣ– and dhā-, meaning ‘light-emplacement.’ [75]

The one who brought fire from the Sky to the Earth is called Mātariśvan, messenger of Vivasvat (Rig-Veda 6.8.2; also 1.93.6, 3.2.13, 1.143.2). Elsewhere, the messenger of Vivasvat is specified as Agni himself (1.58.1, 8.39.3, 10.21.5), and the word mātaríśvan– actually serves as Agni’s epithet (1.96.4, 3.5.9, 3.26.2). “Though the myth of Mātariśvan is based on the distinction between fire and a personification which produces it, the analysis of the myth shows these two to be identical.” [76] It remains to ask how Mātariśvan brought celestial fire to Earth: he produced fire by friction, expressed with verb forms of the root manth– (as in 1.71.4, 1.141.3, 1.148.1, 3.9.5). In the language of the Rig-Veda, fire is produced by the manth– ‘friction’ of fire-sticks called the aráṇi-s: [77]

The fire latent in the wood of the aráṇi-s is born as terrestrial fire, and we note that the Agni-epithet Mātariśvan is etymologically appropriate to the theme of latent fire: mātarí– ‘in the mother’ and –śvan– ‘swelling’ (from root śū– ‘swell’). Here, then, is the key to the mystery of how the terrestrial fire of sacrifice was produced from celestial fire. Agni descends from the Sky as an embryo in rainwater. Then lie is lodged in the plants that grow from the impregnation of Earth with rain. Finally, he is {103|104} rubbed out of wood, thus becoming terrestrial fire. The link between celestial and terrestrial fire is Agni Mātariśvan, messenger of Vivasvat. (6.8.2, etc.).

As for Vivasvat, he is the first to receive fire on earth by virtue of being the first to sacrifice on earth, and he is the ancestor of humans (Maitrāyaṇī–Saṃhitā 1.6.12, Taittirīya–Saṃhtiā 6.5.6.1-2, Śatapatha–Brāhmaṇa 3.3.1.3-4). [78] To say sádane vivásvataḥ ‘at the place of Vivasvat’ (Rig-Veda 1.53.1) is the same as saying ‘at the sacrifice’. [79] Vivasvat, father of Yama (10.14.5, 10.17.1) is formally and thematically cognate with the Avestan figure Vìvahvant, father of Yima, who was the first person ever to prepare Haoma (Yasna 9.3-4). The association of Vīvahvant with Haoma is important because Soma/Haoma constitutes the Indic/Iranian sacrifice par excellence, [80] and the Vedic Vivasvat also has special associations with Soma (Rig-Veda 9.26.4, 9.10.5, etc.). In the context of the breaking dawn, uṣás-, the word vivásvat– also occurs as an epithet of Agni, meaning ‘shining’:

Such thematic connections (cf. also 1.44.1, 1.96.2, 3.30.13) serve as confirmation of the etymology: the vas– of vivásvat– is derived from the verb vas-/uṣ– ‘shine’, and so, too, is the uṣ– of uṣas– ‘dawn’. Furthermore, the vas– of vivásvat– is cognate with the Latin ues– of Vesta, Roman goddess of the domestic fireplace. [81] As for the domestic aspect of Vivasvat, it is best understood in relation to the Indic Triple Fire. Matching the tripartite nature of Agni, there evolved certain Indic cult practices that involve a triple sacrificial fire, as documented in minute detail by the Brāhmaṇas. Whereas the single sacrificial fire is suitable for domestic purposes, the triple sacrificial fire is a priestly institution associated with {104|105} the cult centers of the Indic peoples (cf. Śatapatha–Brāhmaṇa 2.1.4.4). Some sacrifices, such as the offerings at sunrise and sunset, can he enacted with either a single or a triple fire, but others are restricted to one or the other: for example, rites related to family life belong to the single fire, whereas Soma-rites are restricted to a triple fire. [82]

Among the three fires of the Triple Fire, one is still specifically associated with the domestic aspects: it is the Gārhapatya, meaning ‘fire of the gr̥hápati-’. The word gr̥hápati-, like viśpáti-, means ‘lord of the household’; both are common Rig-Vedic epithets of Agni. Significantly, if the fire of the Gārhapatya is extinguished, it must be rekindled with aráṇi-s (Śatapatha–Brāhmaṇa 12.4.3.2). By contrast, if another of the three fires, the Āhavanīya (from preverb ā– plus root hav– ‘pour libation’), is extinguished, it is to be relit from the fire of the Gārhapatya (Śatapatha–Brāhmaṇa 12.4.3.3). The specific association of the Gārhapatya with the aráṇi-s (see also Śatapatha–Brāhmaṇa 2.1.4.5-9) is parallel to the association of Vivasvat with the aráṇi-s:

We note that the fire apparatus in the latter passage, Rig-Veda 3.29.1-2, [87] is called viśpátnī ‘mistress of the household’: here, too, the domestic implication is pertinent to the function of the Gārhapatya. Finally, besides the aráṇi-s, still another feature of the Gārhapatya links it to the Mātariśvan myth: it is the designation of its enclosure as the yóni– ‘uterus’ (Śatapatha–Brāhmaṇa 7.1.1.1). [88]

The connection between Indic Vivasvat/Mātariśvan/Gārhapatya and Italic Vesta extends beyond the general feature of the domestic fireplace. Even in such specific details as the relighting of the Gārhapatya with the {105|106} friction of wood, the cult of Vesta affords specific parallels. The fire in the Roman sanctuary of Vesta was supposed to be kept going at all times (cf. Cicero Philippics 11.10), and it was a grave matter if it ever went out:

We note that the wood used here is called māteria, a noun apparently derived from māter ‘mother’, and that māteria is qualified as fēlix, an adjective appropriate to the theme of fertility. Immediately comparable in theme are the name mātariśvan– ‘swelling in the mother’ [90] and the name for the enclosure of the Gārhapatya, yóni– ‘uterus’. [91]

If the fire of the Gārhapatya went out, it was likewise a grave matter: the fire must not be relit by borrowing from the fire of the Āhavanīya, nor by substituting the Āhavanīya for the Gārhapatya; rather, fire must be rubbed from the aráni-s (Śatapatha–Brāhmaṇa 12.4.3.3). [92] This ritual hierarchy reflects symbolically the Indo-European custom of borrowing fire from the domestic fireplace of a fellow member of a community: we may compare such expressions as Greek πῦρ αὔειν/λαβεῖν, Lithuanian ùgnį im̃ti, Latin ignem accipere, Italian fuoco prendre, all meaning ‘take fire’; as Wilhelm Schulze has noticed, the contexts of these expressions point back to the same ancestral custom. [93] The point remains that the Gārhapatya, by virtue of being the domestic fire, is the central point from which all other fires emanate. [94]

Having observed the primacy of the Gārhapatya, let us examine how the distinction between the Gārhapatya and the Āhavanīya symbolizes the distinction between terrestrial and celestial fire. To repeat, whereas terrestrial fire is obviously incompatible with its opposite element, water, the nature of water-born celestial fire is different in Indic myth: {106|107}

• —the sun plunges into the waters of the west only to be reborn the next day from the waters of the east;

• —celestial fire is hidden in raindrops will impregnate the earth; it remains hidden in plants dial grow out of the earth; then it is rubbed out of wood as terrestrial fire.

The distinction in myth, as we shall now see, is partially conveyed by the interplay of the Gārhapatya and the Āhavanīya.

• 1. Dakṣiṇa: sky-born Agni, lightning

• 2. Gārhapatya: earth-born Agni, fire

• 3. Āhavanīya: water-born Agni, sun

The three fires have been listed here to match the order of Agni’s three births, as revealed by Rig-Veda 10.45.1. [98] This Rig-Vedic order of Agni’s three births is significant because it helps account for the interpretation of the name Trita Āptya as the watery ‘third one’. [99] It is also significant {109|110} because it corresponds to the order in which the Deva-s [100] had set up the Triple Fire:

• 1. Dakṣiṇa

• 2. Gārhapatya

• 3. Āhavanīya

By contrast, the antagonists of the Deva-s, the Asura-s, [101] had set up the Triple Fire in the following order:

• 3. Āhavanīya

• 2. Gārhapatya

• 1. Dakṣiṇa

The myth of these rival orders is recorded in the Taittirīya–Brāhmaṇa (1.1.4.4-7), where it is added that the fortunes of the Asura-s or ‘demons’ consequently went backward and they lost all, while the fortunes of the Deva-s or ‘gods’ went forward and they prospered. But the Deva-s were not to have any progeny; in this respect, the Deva-s are then contrasted with Manu, whose sacrifice brought him both prosperity and progeny. Throughout the Brāhmaṇa-s, this Manu is the ideal sacrificer and the ancestor of the human race. In Sylvain Lévi’s description, Manu is the hero of the śraddhā [102] given that this Vedic word designates the sacrificer’s attitude toward his sacrifice. As ancestor of the human race, Manu would naturally have the same order of fire placement as that practiced by the Indic peoples; throughout the Rig-Veda, whenever a sacrificer kindles fire, he does so manuṣvát– ‘like Manu’ (1.44.11, etc.). Here is the order in which the Indic sacrificer sets up the Triple Fire:

• 2. Gārhapatya

• 3. Āhavanīya

• 1. Dakṣiṇa

The key to Mann’s success in progeny—where even the gods have failed—is that he started the order of fire placement with the Gārhapatya, where Agni is born like a human: as the mātaríśvan-, the one ‘swelling in the mother’, Agni is born of the Gārhapatya’s yóni– ‘uterus’. [103] From the Rig-Veda, we know that it was Mātariśvan who gave {110|111} Agni to Manu (1.128.2, 10.46.9), and that Agni abides among the offspring of Manu (1.68.4).

Footnotes

Chapter 5. The Death of Sarpedon and the Question of Homeric Uniqueness

The passage in question is the Hesiodic description of the Gold and Silver Generations of mankind, Works and Days 109-142. As Erwin Rohde has shown, the essence of the Gold and Silver Generations is that {133|134} together they form a complete picture of the generic cult hero. [54] A review of the manifold details would go far beyond the scope of this presentation, [55] and I confine myself here to the themes of kingship and tīmḗ.

After the death of the Gold Generation is narrated (Works and Days 116, 121), they are described as possessing what is called the géras basilḗion ‘honorific portion of kings’ (γέρας βασιλήιον 126). We have already seen the word géras ‘honorific portion, privilege’ in a context where it designates the funerary honors accorded to the corpse of Sarpedon—honors that included the procedure designated by the verb tarkhúō:

It is worth noting in this connection that the Gold Generation ‘died as if overcome by sleep’ (θνῇσκον…ὥσθ’ ὕπνῳ δεδμημένοι Works and Days 116), whereas the corpse of Sarpedon was flown to Lycia by Húpnos ‘Sleep’ and Thánatos ‘Death’, who are described as “twins” (Iliad XVI 672). Since the word géras ‘honorific portion, privilege’ in Hesiodic diction and elsewhere represents a specific manifestation of tīmḗ (as in Theogony 392-396), [56] we can correlate what is said at Works and Days 126 about the Gold Generation’s royal géras with what is said later about the Silver Generation: after the death of this next generation is narrated, they are described as

The irony here is that the Silver Generation, which represents the nega{134|135}tive and latent side of the cult hero, earned an untimely death from Zeus for the following reason;

This theme, that a hero gets tīmḗ even though he failed to give tīmḗ to the gods, is a key to understanding the religious ideology of god-hero antagonism, but a proper treatment of this subject would again go far beyond the scope of this presentation. [57] It will suffice for now to observe that the Silver Generation’s failure to give tīmḗ to the gods is in part equated with their failure to make sacrifice to them:

In other words, the factor of tīmḗ is here expressed directly in terms of ritual sacrifice.

Our survey of formulas involving the concepts of tīmḗ and dêmos leads to the following conclusion: the hero who gets tīmḗ from the dêmos is said to be “like a god” because he is thereby being treated as a cult figure. In Homeric poetry, of course, the generic hero is predominantly a figure of {135|136} epic, and his dimension as figure of cult has to be latent—basically because he is still alive. Once he is dead, however, the perspective may change, as in the case of Sarpedon: the verb tarkhúō, designating what his relatives and comrades do to the dead hero, conveys the notion that he is being treated like a god—which is the epic way of saying that he is being treated like a cult figure.

It does not follow, however, that we may dismiss as poetic fancy the traditional notion that a hero is being treated like a god by virtue of getting tīmḗ from the dêmos. The institution of hero cult is visualised, from the religious standpoint of the institution itself, as a form of immortalization after death. In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, for instance, the young hero who is protégé of the goddess loses his chance to be exempt from death (verses 260-264) but is offered as compensation a tīmḗ that is áphthitos ‘imperishable’ (verse 263). [59] In the following three verses, the ritual form of this tīmḗ is then actually made explicit: the youths of Eleusis will hold a festival of mock battles at a given season every year for all tīmḗ to come (265-267). In other words, the cult hero is being awarded the permanent institution of a yearly ritual in his honor. [60] It is not without interest that the name of this young protégé of Demeter who becomes a cult hero is Dēmophóōn (e.g. 234), which apparently means ‘he who shines for the dêmos’. [61]

If we now contrast Demophon as hero of cult with Achilles himself as a hero of epic, we can see more clearly the Homeric perspective on the very nature of being a hero. Whereas Demophon gets as compensation for his mortality a tīmḗ that is áphthitos ‘imperishable’, Achilles says that he will get as compensation for his own untimely death a kléos ‘fame’ that is áphthiton ‘imperishable’ (Iliad IX 413). As we have already seen, this word kléos designates the ‘fame’ that a hero gets specifically by way of poetry. [62] The ultimate hero of the Iliad is in effect saying that he will be immortalized by his own epic tradition. We have here the essence of the Homeric perspective: the theme of a hero’s immortalization has been shifted from the realm of cult to the realm of epic itself. Accordingly, Homeric poetry tends not to speak in a direct fashion about immortalization because Homeric poetry presents itself as the very process of immortalization.

This is not to say, however, that Homeric poetry ignores the dimension of cult: rather, it places itself above cult. The kléos that the hero {136|137} earns in Homeric poetry by way of valor in battle serves to validate and even justify the tīmḗ, ‘honor’ that he gets at home from his dêmos ‘district’. While he is still alive in the Iliad, Sarpedon himself says so:

On one level, the examples of tīmḗ recounted by Sarpedon to Glaukos can function as attributes of a living epic hero who happens to be a king; on another level, however, each example can be matched with a corresponding sacral honor accorded to a cult figure. As we know from Greek religious practices attested in the historical era, cult heroes receive libations, [63] choice cuts of meat placed on a special table, [64] and {137|138} the allotment of a témenos in the sense of ‘sacred precinct’. [65]

From the standpoint of the Iliad, then, Sarpedon’s goal is to get a kléos that matches the tīmḗ that he already has at home in Lycia. From the standpoint of cult, however, this tīmḗ would be possible only after he dies, so that the epic perspective has the logical sequence reversed: by placing epic above cult, Homeric poetry allows the hero, even before he dies, to have the kind of tīmḗ that befits a cult hero. What he still has to earn by dying is kléos itself.

Sarpedon then goes on to say that he and Glaukos should be prepared to die in battle at Troy (Iliad XII 326-328), and that he would choose to escape from battle only if escaping entailed immortality (322-325). The implication seems to be that the welcoming of death may succeed in bringing immortality where the avoidance of death has failed: after all, both tīmḗ and kléos, which are in store respectively for the hero of cult and the hero of epic after death, are áphthito– ‘imperishable’ (τιμὴ…ἄφθιτος Homeric Hymn to Demeter 263; κλέος ἄφθιτον Iliad IX 413).

The same sort of implication can be found in the words of Hera at Iliad XVI 440-457, where she tells Zeus that he must not permit Sarpedon to escape death in battle and thus send him back home to Lycia alive (see especially line 445). Implicitly, Sarpedon would then have tīmḗ without having had to experience death. The exemption of Sarpedon from death in battle, Hera says to Zeus, would be without precedent: in her words, “beware lest some other divinity may wish to send his or her son back home, away from the battle” (Iliad XVI 446-447). Instead, Hera suggests, Zeus should let his own dear son die at the hands of Patroklos, after which Thánatos ‘Death’ and Húpnos ‘Sleep’ will take Sarpedon’s body back home to the dêmos ‘district’ of Lycia (XVI 450-455). Immediately after these verses, we come upon the verse that describes the ritual performed on Sarpedon’s corpse, as designated by the verb tarkhúō (XVI 456, repeated at 674). From the context of Hera’s words, we now see that the action conveyed by this verb is presented as a compensation for the death that Sarpedon must experience. From the other contexts that concern the theme of compensation for mortality, we also see that the verb tarkhúō entails the theme of immortalization after death—in a way that is yet to be defined. That is to say, the verb tarkhúō indicates not only that the relatives and comrades of Sarpedon will treat him like a cult figure but also that he will thereby attain some form of immortalization after death. [66] {138|139}

The explanation of tarkhúō that I have just offered is corroborated by the evidence of comparative linguistics. The Indo-European root *terh₂-, which survives as Hittite tarḫ– ‘conquer, overpower, overcome’, also survives as Indic tar(i)- ‘overcome, cross over’, which takes the shape –tur– in compounds (e.g. ap–túr– ‘crossing over the water’). The latter formation corresponds to the –tar– of Greek nék–tar, the substance that sustains the immortality of the Olympian gods; furthermore, the root nek– in nék–tar is the same as in Latin nex ‘death’ and Greek nék–us/neh–rós ‘corpse’. [67] Thus the word nék–tar must once have meant something like ‘overcoming death’; in fact, there is a kindred combination of concepts, even words, in archaic sacral Indic poetry, where the verb tar(i)- ‘overcome’ is actually attested in a context where mr̥tyú– ‘death’ is its direct object (Atharva–Veda 4.35.1d-6d). [68]

This evidence not only provides yet another argument for the heritage of an Indo-European poetic language. [69] More immediately, it also gives us a broader perspective on the semantics of Greek tarkhúō. To put it another way: the meaning of Greek –tar– in nék–tar, where the root is directly inherited from Indo-European, may help us comprehend the meaning of Greek tarkhúō, where the stem tarkhu– is indirectly inherited from Indo-European by way of a Greek borrowing from the Anatolian language family. [70] I draw special attention to the corresponding Anatolian form tarḫu– as it appears in Hittite tarḫu– ‘victorious’ and in Luvian Tarḫunt-, the name of the storm-god who is head of the Luvian pantheon—and who wields the thunderbolt: as his attribute. [71] Perhaps these formations convey the theme of overcoming not just evildoers or other such immediate obstacles, but also the ultimate obstacle of death itself. [72]

Let us look for a parallel in the figure of Zeus himself, head of the Greek pantheon and wielder of the thunderbolt in his own right. With {139|140} his thunderbolt, Zeus can cause both the death and the immortalization of heroes. We may take for example the poetic tradition that tells how Semele became immortalized as a direct result of dying from the god’s thunderbolt (Pindar Olympian 2.25, in conjunction with Hesiod Theogony 942). [73] Then there is the case of Herakles, son of Zeus, who is struck by the thunderbolt of his divine father and thereby elevated to Olympus as an immortal (Diodorus Siculus 4.38.4-4.39.1). [74] Finally, we may consider yet another son of Zeus, none other than the Lycian king Sarpedon, whose dead body undergoes a process designated by the verb tarkhúō. I submit that this process entails immortalization of the hero after death.

The fundamental difference, however, between the explicit immortalization of Herakles and the implicit immortalization of Sarpedon is that the first is narrated as an event on the level of myth whereas the second is narrated as an event on the level of ritual. Still, the myth and the ritual are complementary aspects of one ideology. The rituals of cult are a code that can convey the same message as that conveyed by the code of the myth. On a formal level, we can see most clearly the complementary function of myth and ritual in expressing the theme of immortality by considering the name Ēlúsion ‘Elysium’. We may turn to the renowned passage in Odyssey iv 561-569 where this name designates a special place of immortalization for heroes, and indeed the concept of Elysium has become a permanent fixture of Western civilization. But we seldom hear of what ancient commentators on Greek religion have to say about élúsion as a plain noun. In the Alexandrian lexicographical tradition (Hesychius s.v. Ἠλύσιον), the word is glossed as κεκεραυνωμένον χωρίον ἢ πεδίον ‘a place or field that has been struck by the thunderbolt’, with this added remark: καλεῖται δὲ καὶ ἐνηλύσια ‘and it is also called enēlúsia’. This definition is confirmed by the testimony of Polemon (F 5 Tresp), who explains that enēlúsion is a place made sacred by virtue of having been struck by a thunderbolt; also, the adjective enēlúsios is attested in Aeschylus TGF 17 as an epithet of the hero Kapaneus, who was struck dead by the thunderbolt of Zeus. [75] We may compare the semantic relationship of enēlúsios/enēlúsion with that of hierós/hierón ‘sacred’/’sacred place’. Moreover, the body of the thunderstruck Kapaneus is described as hieró– ‘sacred’ in Euripides Suppliants 935. [76] {140|141}

Besides Ēlúsion, there is also another example of a form that serves to designate both a place of immortalization on the level of myth and a cult site on the level of ritual. In Hesiod Works and Days 171 we hear of a place called Makárōn nêsoi ‘Islands of the Blessed’, where heroes who fought in the Theban and Trojan wars are immortalized after death (167 and following). [77] But there is also a tradition according to which the name Makárōn nêsos ‘Island of the Blessed’ was actually applied to the old acropolis of Thebes, the Kadmeion; specifically, the name designated the sacred precinct where Semele, the mother of Dionysus, had been struck by the thunderbolt of Zeus (Parmenides in Suda and in Photius s.v. Μακάρων νῆσος; Tzetzes on Lycophron 1194, 1204). [78]

Let us return for one last viewing of the corpse of Sarpedon. It is appropriate to notice that the Iliad contains other indications of his impending immortalization besides the verb tarkhúō at XVI 456 = 674. Each of these indications requires a discussion that would go beyond the scope of this presentation, and I will content myself with merely listing them as signposts for future elaboration:

The name Sarpēdṓn applies not only to the hero but also to various places associated with the mythological theme of abduction by winds or by birdlike Harpies. [82] This theme is expressed by way of various forms containing the verb-root harp– ‘snatch’ (as in hárpuia ‘Harpy’ and harpázō ‘snatch’), which may be formally connected with the element sarp– of Sarpēdṓn. [83] In this connection, I cite the following observation: “It is not too surprising that Homer makes Sarpedon the subject of the only big {141|142} snatch in the Iliad, though he transformed the carriers from lady birds to Sleep and Death, to match more familiar configurations of epic mortality.” [84]

The snatching of Sarpedon’s body by Húpnos ‘Sleep’ and Thánatos ‘Death’ (XVI 454, 672, 682) can he correlated with the manner in which the hero faints and dies. As in the case of other Homeric heroes, Sarpedon loses his psūkhḗ when he dies (XVI 453) as also earlier when he falls into a swoon from a terrible wound (V 696). Nowhere in Homeric poetry, however, is a hero ever described as regaining his psūkhḗ when he is revived from a swoon. [85] This rigorous stricture in Homeric diction implies that the reintegration of the psūkhḗ with the body is understood as immortalization, the overt expression of which is programmatically avoided in the Iliad and Odyssey. [86] Still, the manner in which Sarpedon recovers from his swoon seems to be a latent expression of this hero’s destiny of immortalization: Sarpedon is revived by a blast from Boreas the North Wind (V 697). We note that it was to a rock named Sarpēdṓn that Boreas snatched Oreithuia away (scholia to Apollonius of Rhodes 1.211 = Pherecydes FGH 3 F 145). [87]

Coming now to the end of this inquiry into the death of Sarpedon, we are left perhaps even more mystified than ever by this uncanny Anatolian analogue of a Herakles. There are so many ramifications waiting to he explored that this presentation amounts to a set of questions more than answers. But this much at least is certain: Homeric epos is a repository of secrets about life and death—secrets that it will never fully reveal. In the case of Sarpedon, his Anatolian heritage allows a glimpse behind the veil of Homeric restraint—and the secrets are almost given away. {142|143}