EPIC
I have lived in important places, times
When great events were decided, who owned
That half a rood of rock, a no-man’s land
Surrounded by our pitchfork-armed claims.
I heard the Duffys shouting ‘Damn your soul’
And old McCabe stripped to the waist, seen
Step the plot defying blue cast-steel—
‘Here is the march along these iron stones’
That was the year of the Munich bother. Which
Was more important? I inclined
To lose my faith in Ballyrush and Gortin
Till Homer’s ghost came whispering to my mind
He said: I made the Iliad from such
A local row. Gods make their own importance.
(Patrick Kavanagh)

Kavanagh’s short poem confronts the reader with a number of questions which will preoccupy us in this survey. The Homeric poems show us a world which in many respects seems primitive and remote; even if the expedition of the Greeks against Troy really happened, even if it took place on the scale which the Iliad asserts, and lasted the full ten-year span, it would still be ‘a local row’ compared with later historical conflicts, ancient or modern. Can the bad-tempered disputes of warrior chiefs, the violent revenge of a savage and undisciplined soldier, the lies and posturing of a vagabond rogue, still move or excite an audience today? It will be necessary to show here some of the ways in which Homer gives the conflict at Troy, and the homecoming of Odysseus, a timeless importance, so that these mere episodes in the vanished heroic age – long past even for himself and his audience - become microcosmic images of human life. The vast subject of Homer’s influence upon later western literature cannot be even superficially addressed here, but occasional comparisons and illustrations may help to show how much subsequent poets and artists have found in the Iliad and the Odyssey to enlighten and inspire their own work.

The Iliad is not an Achilleid, although Achilles is the most important character in the epic. One of the most striking features of the poem is the way in which it embraces the action of the whole Trojan war by retrospective and prospective references, rather than by narrating the events in full. In this, as is evident from ancient testimony, the Iliad was markedly different from the ‘cyclic’ epics (see esp. Hor. Ars 136f.). The human characters refer to the abduction of Helen, the initial embassy to the Trojans, the mustering at Aulis, the earlier campaigns and clashes; the prophecies and comments of the gods, particularly Zeus and Thetis, anticipate the doom of Achilles and the ultimate fall of Troy, also grimly foreshadowed in other ways. In an important passage which seems to be deliberately reserved for a late stage in the poem, Homer himself looks back to the origin of the whole conflict, the judgement of Paris which aroused the implacable anger of Athena and Hera against Troy. Another remarkable feature is the intensity of the action of the poem. In terms of time, the whole poem occupies some 40 days, of which only 14 include narrated events, and three in particular are the subject of fourteen books. As for place, the human action is virtually confined to three areas: the camp of the Greeks, the city of Troy, and the plain of battle which lies between. The scenes involving the Olympians are more various and provide a broader perspective, but their attention too is generally focussed on the human suffering on the battlefield. Consequently the Iliad gains in emotional power what it lacks in diversity of scene and situation. A third feature, already implied, is the prominence of the Trojans in the poem. The very title Iliad, though probably not original, reminds us that this is no jingoistic or ‘pan-Hellenic’ epic; despite the claims of some ancient commentators, the Trojans are treated by Homer with great sympathy and generosity. That is not to deny the fundamental guilt of Paris or to assert that the Achaean victory is undeserved.

Although it is theoretically possible (and has been asserted) that the Iliad followed the Odyssey, or that the two poems were composed quite independently, with no influence from one to the other, majority opinion ancient and modern puts the Odyssey later, and assumes it to be in important respects a successor, even a sequel, to the Iliad. This position can be maintained in various forms: those who believe in a single master-poet as the creator of both epics may assign the Iliad to Homer’s youth, the Odyssey to his riper years (a position memorably expressed by Longinus); those who follow the ancient separatists can regard the Odyssey as a rival work, composed by a poet who immensely admired the Iliad but whose own poetic and moral concerns lay elsewhere. On the whole the latter view is now more common, though there are eminent advocates on both sides. In fact it is probably impossible, in a tradition which involved so much use of conventional themes and formulaic material, to decide firmly in favour of common or separate authorship. Whichever view one prefers, the important point seems to be that the Odyssey is later, and that it is conceived as a poem on the same scale as the Iliad, but differing strikingly in content and ethos.

In the remaining pages I shall offer some more detailed comments on a number of passages from both epics. Besides allowing slightly more attention to stylistic matters than was possible in the earlier chapters, this procedure also gives an opportunity to comment on some specific problems, and on a number of other approaches which have not been discussed so far.

And Aphrodite, smiling goddess, herself took up a chair for Helen, and brought it and placed it in front of Alexandros [Paris]. There Helen, daughter of Zeus who wields the aegis, took her seat, turning her eyes aside, and spoke slightingly to her husband: ‘You came back from the fighting, then. I wish you had died there, brought down by a man of strength, who was once my husband. Oh, before now you used to boast that you were superior to the warrior Menelaus in strength and power of hand and spear. Well, go now, challenge the warrior Menelaus to fight you again face to face. But no, I would advise you to stop now, and not pit yourself against fair-haired Menelaus in warfare or combat without thinking - you might well be brought down by his spear.’

Paris then answered her: ‘Wife, do not deride my courage with these hard taunts. This time Menelaus has beaten me with Athena’s aid, but another time I shall beat him: there are gods on our side too. No, come, let us enjoy the bed of love. Never before has desire so enveloped my heart, not even on that first time when I stole you away from lovely Lacedaimon and sailed off with you in my seafaring ships, and lay with you in love’s union in the island of Kranae - even that was less than the love and sweet desire for you that comes over me now.’

So he spoke, and led the way to their bed: and his wife followed. (Tr. M. Hammond)