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Homeric Pathos and Objectivity*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Jasper Griffin
Jasper Griffin
Affiliation:
Balliol College, Oxford
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Extract

One of the most striking differences between ancient and modern writings on Homer is the prominence in the former, and the rarity in the latter, of discussions of pathos. The word barely appears in the most characteristic books of our time on the subject. Thus the inquirer will find in Wace and Stubbings's Companion to Homer (1962) an index hospitable enough to include ‘Babylonian cuneiform’, and ‘Kum-Tepe, neolithic-site at’, and ‘Pig-keeping, in Homer’; but for ‘pathos’ he will look in vain.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , December 1976 , pp. 161 - 187
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1976

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References

1 Table Talk for 12 May 1830.

2 Dichtung und Philosophie2 (1962), p. 41: ‘Einem weiteren Kennzeichen des homerischen Stils, der verhaltenen Sachlichkeit und vornehmen Distanz.’Google Scholar

3 Mimesis (Eng. trans. by W. Trask), p.7.

4 Homerische Untersuchungen (1884), p.123: ‘Die antike Asthetik, wie immer für die eigene Litteratur unendlich verständiger als die neuere…’

5 Index zu den Ilias-Scholien (1962).

6 See the review by Bühler, W. in Byz. Zeitschrift 55 (1962), 79.Google Scholar

7 In HSPh. 76 (1972), 9 ff.

8 Die aesthetischen Anschauungen der Iliasscholien, Zürich, Diss. 1943, pp. 34 ff.Google Scholar

9 Cf. Duckworth, G.E., AJP 52 (1931) 320 ff.Google Scholar

10 Some historical reflections on the motif and its origins: Trypanis, C.A., ‘Brothers fighting together in the Iliad,’ Rh. Mus. 106 (1963), 289 ff. He does not consider the increase in pathos produced by having two brothers slain at once, as so often happens.Google Scholar

11 “[The ‘obituaries’ in the Iliad] werden nie gefühlvoll im Ausdruck, aber ihre Wirkung tun sie doch”: Fränkel, H., Dichtung and Philosophie, p.41.Google Scholar

12 The provenance of material is the subject of Beye, C.R., ‘Homeric Battle Narrative and Catalogues’, HSPb. 68 (1964), 345 ff.Google Scholar

13 Thus even a purely aesthetic perception becomes at once an implement of enquiry into Origins; see Wilamowitz, , Die Ilias und Homer (1920), p.142;Google ScholarFriedrich, W., Verwundung und Tod in der Ilias (1956), p.106;Google Scholarcontra, cf. Dihle, A., HomerProbleme (1970), p.23.Google Scholar

14 Strasburger, G., Die kleinen Kämpfer der Ilias, Diss. Frankfurt/Main 1954, p. 45;Google Scholar cf. Marg, W., die Antike 18 (1942), 168.Google Scholar

15 Well discussed by Kakridis, J. Th., Homer Revisited (1971), p.131.Google Scholar

16 Σ in i.33:

17 Reflection on this may suggest doubts about a highly lexicographical approach to the study of ancient (or modern) poetry and ideas. It is not only, perhaps it is not chiefly, by use of the ‘most important terms of value’ that emotions and judgements are conveyed. Cf. the Appendix below on dying for one's country.

18 Cf. (37) below.

19 Schadewaldt, , in discussing this scene, Von Homers Welt und Werk4 (1965), p. 328, speaks of Homer's ‘great and simple art of contrasts’.Google Scholar

20 On the distinction of the two see Fränkel, H., Dichtung und Philosophi,2 p. 43.Google Scholar

21 The motif of innocent preparations is parodied by Juvenal, 3.264, of a man squashed in a road accident—surprisingly, neither Friedländer nor Mayor records the point. Thackeray records (The Letters and Private Papers of W.M. Thackeray, ed. Ray, G.N. (1945), i.207 that on 10 June 1832 he made ‘a vow to read some Homer every day’.Google Scholar

22 The motif of ‘ignorance of friend's fate’ is used again to great effect at xvii. 401, Achilles does not know of the death (at xxii.437). Nothing of this in Leaf; the analysts tended to reject the passage in xvii, Ameis-Hentze pointing out that ‘its content is purely negative.’ Not without provocation did Adolph Roemer refer to ‘das kleine Geschlecht der grossen Analytiker’ (Horn. Aufsätze (1914), p.66).

23 On the different ethos of the two poems, see Jacoby, F., ‘Die geistige Physiognomie der Odyssee’, die Antike 9 (1933), 159–94Google Scholar = Kleine philologische Schriften (1961), i. 107–39;Google ScholarBurkert, W., ‘Das Lied von Ares und Aphrodite: Zum Verhaltnis von Odyssee und lias,’ Rh. Mus. 103 (1960), 130–44;Google ScholarMarg, W., ‘Zur Eigenart der Odyssee,’ Antike und Abendland 18 (1973), 1–14.Google Scholar The Tränenseligkeit of the Odyssey is brought out, e.g., by Beck, G., ‘Beobachtungen zur Kirke-Episode’, Philol. 109 (1965), 1–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24 YCS 20 (1966), 197 ff.

25 Aesch. Ag. 454.

26 ‘The Pursuit of Hector’, TAPA 61 (1930), 138.Google Scholar

27 In the Odyssey the analogy, characteristically less tragic and more ironic, is the abuse of Odysseus ‘in his own house’.

28 The scene is discussed by Schadewaldt, Iliasstudien (1938), pp. 47 ff.

29 Scholars have often been struck by the number of kinsmen of Priam who are killed in the course of the Iliad. Many have said simply that Trojans whose death at the hands of Achaean heroes is to be worth recording must be in some way significant, and the easiest way to confer significance upon the insignificant is to make them sons of Strasburger, Priam. G., Die kleinen Kämpfer, p. 24, suggests that, in contrast to the Achaeans, the Trojans are presented as forming a unity, embodied in the house hold of Priam. Aesthetically, I think the principal point is that Priam is the old man and father whom we see suffer in the poem (apart from the death of Hector, cf. also xxii. 44 ff., Priam on the deaths of his sons), and the accumulation of disasters upon him can be made visible and tangible in terms of pathos. We know Priam: other pathetic fathers are, by contrast, bloodless. And the Iliad is greatly interested in bereaved fathers (cf. p. 174).Google Scholar

30 ‘An extremely prosy addition,’ Platt: quoted with approval by Leaf.

31 So Schadewaldt.

32 The contrast with the Cycle is great. In the Iliad not only divine favourites like Scamandrius and Hector, but even a son of Zeus like Sarpedon can be killed; in the Cycle, was distributed with lavish hand. Thus Artemis gave immortality to Iphigeneia, Eos and Thetis to their sons Memnon and Achilles, and Zeus to the Dioscuri; while Circe made all the survivors immortal, it seems, in the Telegony (Proclus). The Odyssey does not stoop to this, but flinches from the austerity of the Iliadic conception (Od.iv.561, Menelaus to be immortal).

33 The material is collected by Segal, C., ‘The Theme of Mutilation of the Corpse’, Mnemosyne, Suppl. 17 (1971).Google Scholar

34 Kritisches Hypomnema zur Ilias (1952), p.317: ‘Noch hässlicher ist, was folgt…nach Otto Körner, Die homerische Tierwelt (1930), 80, geht dies, was die Aale betrifft, gegen die Naturgeschichte.’ Cf. Kakridis, , Homer Revisited, p.96.Google Scholar Some of the ancients, too, thought Homer was infallible on every art and science; see, e.g., Buffiere, F., Les Mythes d' Homière et la pensée grecque (1956) pp. 10 ff.Google Scholar

35 ‘Here too B has attached an unseemly passage,’ von der Mühll, p.333. ‘The gratuitous exaggeration of horror combines with other considerations…to stamp these lines too as not original,’ Leaf, p.428, who at once adds that ‘all these suspicions rest on somewhat general grounds’, and that ‘the additions…are skilfully made.’

36 codd. Cf. Pfeiffer, R., History of Classical Scholarship i (1968), 111.Google Scholar

37 It is not discussed in Willcock, M.M., A Commentary on Homer's Iliad, I–VI (1970),Google Scholar nor by Groningen, B.A. van, The proems of the Iliad and Odyssey, Meded. der kon. Ned. Ak. 9.8 (1946),Google Scholar nor Kullmann, W., ‘Ein vorhomerisches Motif im Iliasproömium’, Philol. 99 (1955) 167–192.Google Scholar

38 For such a sense of (not in

39 In a modern literature one might compare (but there are so many examples), Thomas Nashe:

Brightness falls from the air;

Queens have died young and fair;

Dust hath closed Helen's eye…

The affective juxtaposition of ‘Helen's eye’ and ‘dust’ is the same effect as ‘mighty heroes…the prey of dogs and birds’.

40 For a development of this idea as fuller and more explicit pathos, see (64) below.

41 See the Appendix for a discussion of this line and the idea of heroic death.

42 Von Homers Welt and Werk4, p.331.

43 Saint-Simon, , Mémoires ii.48 (Bibl. de la Pléiade): ‘llest des vérités dont la simplicité sous art jette un éclat qui efface tout le travail d'une éloquence qui grossit ou qui pallie…’.Google Scholar

44 Two more examples:

She's gone for ever.

I know when one is dead and when one lives; She's dead as earth. (Shakespeare, King Lear V.3)

Half-owre, half-owre to Aberdour.

'Tis fifty fathoms deep;

And there lies guide Sir Patrick Spens

Wi' the Scots lords at his feet.

(Ballad of Sir Patrick Spens)

45 See the Appendix on this passage.

46 A very exaggerated statement of this in Beye, C.R., The Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Epic Tradition (1968), p.94: ‘Only the very old (and Andromache) seem to have any concern for children …’Google Scholar

47 Cf. p. 185 below for the same fact in early epigrams. Croesus is made by Herodotus to say to Cyrus (1.87.4): ‘Nobody is mad enough to choose war rather than peace; for in peace sons bury their fathers, but in war fathers bury their sons.’ There is a proverbial ring to this .

48 is used four times; revealingly, always of failure to return from battle. All the other three passages refer to Hector (xvii.207; xxii.444; xxiv.705).

49 This use of of more than one son is peculiar; ‘perhaps twins’, says LSJ, as if the poet had in mind a real family saga, beyond what he says in this passage, which could be reconstructed by us by conjecture. I suppose the usage has arisen from the desire to combine two pathetic motifs: ‘the only child’ and ‘two sons lost at one blow’. The poet is not innocent of exaggeration. Cf. (59) below.

50 Kritisches Hypomneme zur Ilias, p. 258.

51 Most editors have followed the Alexandrians in rejecting these lines (see Leaf ad loc.). As with (33) above, there are real difficulties, but the emotional effect is, I think, in accord with the others discussed here.

52 lliasstudien, pp. 107 ff. The reason for giving concrete honour to his corpse is his sacrifices (xxiv.67 ff), but the account of his death shows him lifted up and divinely favoured to contrast most tellingly with his end.

53 B. Fenik, Typical Battle Scenes in the Iliad = Hermes Einzelschriften 21 (1968), 170, comments that ‘the sympathe tic, pondering tone is special to Books xvi and xvii,’ comparing xvi.431, 644, and xvii.441. Comparison with (54) above, showing that the two passages form a pair like a number of other pairs, may suggest the distinction is less than complete; see also Zeus' speech about Hector, xxii. 168–73. It is in xvi and xvii that Sarpedon and Patroclus are killed, and that Hector seals his doom; that is no doubt largely why such passages are commonest in those two books.

54 Well discussed by Deichgraber, K., Das letzte Gesang der Ilias, SB Mainz 1972, pp. 118 ff.Google Scholar

55 See Fränkel, H., Dichtung and Philosophie2, p.60;Google ScholarOtto, W.F., The Homeric Gods (English translation), pp. 241 ff.Google Scholar

56 Those scholars who notice the passage are not much impressed by it. Michel, C., Erläuterungen zum N der Ilias (1971), p.30, is content to quote with approval the ‘recognition by earlier scholars’ that it is ‘an all too transparently invented device,’ with no other point than to leave freedom of manoeuvre to Poseidon. Ameis-Hentze (Anhang, p.10) go so far as to say that ‘the poet's lack of skill could not betray itself more clearly than in this inept invention…’Google Scholar

57 Cf. Franz, M. L. von, Die aesthetischen Anschauungen der Iliasscholien, p.34.Google Scholar

58 Jachmann, G., Der homerische Schiffskatalog and die Ilias (1958), pp. 118 ff. He will not allow that the passage is the work of ‘a poet’ at all.Google Scholar

59 The phrase for the slayer of Protesilaus is certainly odd; heroes are not normally slain by nameless persons. Perhaps it was the peculiar bitterness of Protesilaus' fate, foretold by an oracle, to be killed by an unknown hand?

60 It is of course to this motif that (4) above owes part of its force, and so too do (36) and (37).

61 Cf. (37) above.

62 Cf. (57) above for the contrast of the effortless action of the god and the catastrophe it produces for man.

63 Analysis can find no better words for the passage than ‘überdichtung,’ and ‘ein Zusatz von B’ (von der Mühll ad loc.).

64 A ‘late insertion,’ according, e.g., to Wilamowitz, , Glaube der Helletten2 i.299.Google Scholar

65 Antike and Abendland 18 (1973), 10.

66 xxiv.525 ff., Achilles to Priam.

67 Homer (1972), p.56.

68 e.g. σBT in xi.104: Griesinger, R., Die aesthetischen Anschauungen der alten Homererklärer, Diss. Tübingen 1967, p.33.Google Scholar

69 Von Homers Welt und Werk4, p.326.

70 The Songs of Homer, p.342.

71 e.g. ΣT in i.366:

72 Nilsson, M.P., die Antike 14 (1938), 31, points out that mythological ‘digressions,’ too, are never included merely for their own sake (he excepts ll. xvi.173–92, Od.xv.223–56), but always are transformed by being given a psychological point.Google Scholar

73 Die Ilias und ihr Dichter (1961), p.430: ‘erinnernd fast an eine Form des späteren Grabepigramms’.

74 ΣBT on vi.460:

75 Griechische Vers-Inschriften I: Grabepigramme, ed. W. Peek (1955).

76 Von altgriechischen Kriegergräbern, NJbb. 18 (1915), 8Google Scholar = Das Epigramm, ed. Pfohl, G. (1969), p.47.Google Scholar

77 Cf. Nilsson, , Geschichte der griechischen Religion i2. 714, for the funerals of the archaic period and the attempts of legislators to curb them.Google Scholar

78 Burkert, W. in Rh. Mus. 105 (1962), p.36.Google Scholar

79 Lloyd-Jones, H., The Justice of Zeus (1971), p.75.Google Scholar

80 Dichtung and Philosophie2, pp. 15 ff.

81 Iliad vi.357.Google Scholar

82 Strikingly argued by Marg, W., Homer über die Dichtung (1957), p.14.Google Scholar

83 Die kleinen Kämpfer, p.50.

84 Homeric Values and Homeric Society, JHS 91 (1971), 7, n.37, in opposition to Long, A.A., ‘Morals and Values in Homer’, JHS 90 (1970), 130, n.53, who had called Hector's death ‘glorious’. Cf. also Adkins, Merit and Responsibility, p.66, n.13.Google Scholar

85 Adkins, p.9; is the only word powerful enough…’ In fact, is a rare word in Homer, being used of courses of action only three times (Il. ii.119, 298; xxi.437). This fact alone suggests that there were other means of conveying praise and blame. Professor Dover remarks on the moral and evaluative use of ‘Do you call that a hat?’ and similar utterances (Greek Popular Morality in the Time of Plato and Aristotle (1975), pp. 46 ff.). We cannot expect that a poet will say ‘and that was ’ to resolve our doubts by the lexicographical method. Cf. note 17 above, and H. Lloyd-Jones, Justice of Zeus, pp. 2 ff.