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Scepticism in Homer?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

H. M. Zellner
H. M. Zellner
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy Kent State University
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Extract

It has been claimed that the earliest expression of a robust scepticism is in the Catalogue of Ships in the Iliad, and even commentators who would not go that far have thought the passage an important guide to epistemological attitudes in Homeric antiquity. It will be argued here that a close examination of the text does not support such conclusions. On the other hand, there are respectable reasons for an interpretation in which religious factors are operative, rather than epistemic ones. The conclusion to be drawn is that the epistemic reading is groundless.

Type
Articles
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 44 , Issue 2 , December 1994 , pp. 308 - 315
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1994

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References

1 The most important sources of the ‘epistemic’ interpretation are: Snell, B., Die Ausdrücke für den Begriff des Wissens in der vorplatonischen Philosophie (New York, 1976), pp. 24–6Google Scholar. n. 1; Hussey, E., ‘The Beginnings of Epistemology: from Homer to Philolaus’, Epistemology, Companions to Ancient Thought: Vol. 1 (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 11–38Google Scholar; Barnes, J., The Presocratic Philosophers, (London and New York, 1989), p. 137.Google Scholar

2 Translations are my own unless otherwise indicated.

3 Snell, B., Die Ausdrücke, pp. 24–6Google Scholar, n. 1. The thesis is criticized by Heitsch, E., ‘Das Wissen des Xenophanes’, RhMus 109 (1966), 193–235Google Scholar. I am following Hussey's interpretation. See E. Hussey (op. cit., n. 1), pp. 12–13.

4 Hussey notes, for example, that at Il. 20.203 Aeneas says he and Achilles know (using the same Greek word as in 2.486) each other's family lineage and parents, though neither has seen with his eyes the family of the other. That is, they seem to have knowledge based on report about what they have not themselves experienced in the present and past, and presumably about a past prior to any of their contemporaries (since genealogical knowledge of two famous families is involved). The Snell reading is not consistent with knowledge in a case of this sort. See also Lesher, J. H., ‘Perceiving and Knowing in the Iliad and the Odyssey’, Phronesis 26 (1981), p. 14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Diogenes, Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, Hicks, R. D., trans., (Cambridge, 1925), Vol. II, pp. 481, 487.Google Scholar

6 This is not to say that there are no other passages which are relevant to scepticism. It is striking that deception by the gods is an obtrusive and repetitive feature of the Homeric poems. See, e.g., Il. 6.15, 22.226–99, 21.600–5; Od. 13.189–96, 13.299–300, and especially 17.483–7. When Descartes raised the epistemic problem of the possibility of a deceiving God in the First Meditation, he did so in a tradition which thought of the divine as veridical. But according to Homeric religious beliefs, divine deception is not just a theoretical possibility, but a recurring fact. Yet the sceptical possibilities never seem to have been recognized or exploited.

7 ‘Some call Homer the founder of this school, for to the same questions he more than anyone else is always giving different answers at different times, and is never definite or dogmatic about the answer.’ Diogenes, Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, 483–4.Google Scholar

8 Seneca, Epistle LXXXVIII, Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales, Gummere, R. M. (trans.), (London, 1930), Vol. II, pp. 351–2.Google Scholar

9 Barnes, J., The Presocratic Philosophers, p. 137.Google Scholar

10 John, Locke, An Essay Concerning the Human Understanding, ed. Alexander Campbell, Fraser (New York, 1959), p. 29.Google Scholar

11 E. Hussey (op. cit., n. 1), p. 17.

12 Cornford, F. M., Principium Sapientiae (Cambridge, 1952), p. 76.Google Scholar

13 The occurrences in the Iliad are: 2.325 & 486; 4.197 & 207; 5.3, 172, 273, 532; 6.446; 7.91, 451, 458; 8.192; 9.413 & 415; 10.212; 11.21 & 227; 13.364; 15.564; 17.16, 131, 143, 232; 18.121; 22.514; 23.280. In the Odyssey: 1.95, 240, 283, 298, 344; 2.125 & 217; 3.78, 83, 204, 380; 4.584, 726, 816; 5.311; 7.333; 8.74 & 147; 9.20 & 264; 13.415 & 422; 14.370; 16.241 & 461; 18.126 & 255; 19.108, 128, 333; 23.137; 24.33, 94, 196. The plural occurs at Iliad 9.U9 & 524, and in the Odyssey at 8.73. The related δνσκα occurs at Iliad 2.114, and at 9.22; κλα is found at Odyssey 4.728. These references have been obtained from the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae.

14 See Il. 5.3, 5.273, 9.415, 17.16, 17.143, 18.121, 23.280; Od. 1.95, 3.380, 13.422, 18.126, 24.94. It is especially this use which has been discussed by scholars, though in quite different contexts than the one relevant here. See Nagy, G., The Best of the Achaeans (Baltimore, 1979), pp. 16–117Google Scholar, and his Comparative Studies in Greek and Indic Meter (Cambridge, 1974), pp. 27–149Google Scholar. See also Clay, J. S., The Wrath of Athena (Princeton, NJ, 1983), pp. 108–11.Google Scholar

15 For Solon, see 13.65–6, in Edmonds, J. M., Elegy and Iambus, (Cambridge: Loeb C. L., 1954), p. 130Google Scholar. Another example of the same sort occurs in Heraclitus. Fragment 78 runs:

Heraclitus is notoriously obscure, and what is behind the fragment is a matter for scholarly debate. My interest in it is the contrast between the ability of divinity and the ignorance of humans, which also seems to be at work in the other cases. Some scholars see Heraclitus as closely approximating later sceptical arguments and tenets. See, for example, Groarke, L., Greek Scepticism (Montreal and Kingston, 1990), pp. 34–7Google Scholar. Of course, there is also what may be scepticism in Xenophanes. But this seems to be about knowledge concerning the gods, rather than about human knowledge in general as opposed to divine omniscience. See Lesher, J. H., Xenophanes of Colophon (Toronto, 1992), p. 39Google Scholar, and Freeman, K., Ancilia to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers (Cambridge, 1983), p. 24Google Scholar. The wording of fragment 34 does not suggest any connection with Il. 2.484–7, though it may show that sceptical tendencies are present in Greek thought quite early on. Lesher has a critical discussion of scepticism in Xenophanes; see pp. 155–69. Whatever the story on Xenophanes, it is one thing to find epistemology among the pre-Socratics, and another to find it in Homer.

16 It may be that this contrast can be seen as an instance of a tendency among the ancient Greeks to think in terms of oppositions. See Lloyd, G. E. R., Polarity and Analogy (Cambridge, 1966), pp. 41–90.Google Scholar