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Popular Accountability in the Iliad and the Odyssey
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2009
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The epics present actions of men rather than theories of politics. Epic political accountability thus will not be found as a political idea but in an action which the people take or might take that brings them into a tense and potentially disastrous confrontation with their leaders. One such confrontation demonstrating popular accountability in the Odyssey will be analyzed, and a major speech in the Iliad will be examined to determine the importance of popular accountability in epic polity.
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- Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1979
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* The risk of looking utterly foolish is very high for a political scientist who ventures into the much disputed territory of Homeric studies, and I would not have attempted such a venture if I had not been encouraged to do so by the support given to me by the National Endowment for the Humanities, Yale University, and Cornell College. I also received advice and encouragement from numerous individual scholars, including especially John Crossett, Professor of Classics at Cornell College, who assisted me at many stages of the study.
1 See, for example, Calhoun, George, “Polity and Society,” in A Companion to Homer, eds. Wace, A. J. B. and Stubbings, F. H. (London, 1962), pp. 436–38Google Scholar; and Kagan, Donald, The Great Dialogue: History of Greek Political Thought from Homer to Polybius (New York, 1965), pp. 12–14Google Scholar.
2 See, for example, Ehrenberg, Victor, From Solon to Socrates (London, 1967), p. 10Google Scholar; and Adkins, Arthur W. H., Merit and Responsibility (London, 1960), pp. 35, 52Google Scholar. Adkins and others do recognize the importance of public opinion as a sanction used against the agathoi when they fail to display arete, but since Adkins considers the people to be incapable of doing anything about their opinions, it is hard to understand how the sanction works in an overtly political way.
3 The historicity of the political world described by Homer has recently been considered in a general way by Snodgrass, A. M., “An Historical Homeric Society,” Journal of Hellenic Studies, 94(1974), 114–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar. More specifically, C. G. Thomas argues that the kings depicted in the Homeric epics were “literary counterparts to historical Ionian ‘basileis’….” See Thomas', “The Roots of Homeric Kingship,” Historia, 15 (1966), 387–407Google Scholar. Using the Odyssey as evidence, Thomas traces the decline of Homeric kings to the growth of the polis in which decisions are made in an assembly. See “Homer and the Polis,” Parola del Passato, 21 (1966), 5–14Google Scholar. Starr, Chester G. in “The Decline of the Early Greek Kings,” Historia, 10 (1961), 129–38 reviews the nonliterary evidence for such a changeGoogle Scholar.
4 Odyssey 2.70–79. Lattimore's translations will be used throughout (See The Odyssey of Homer [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968]Google Scholar and The Iliad of Homer [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951[Google Scholar. Usage of such a standard translation gives some assurance to the reader who knows little or no Greek that the argument of the essay is not dependent upon equivocal or self-serving translations which an author who has a point to prove may unwittingly provide. Hereafter reference to the epics will be cited in the text. On the function of assemblies in the Homeric epics, see Finley, M. I., The World of Odysseus (New York, 1965)Google Scholar: “[their function] was twofold: to mobilize the arguments pro and con, and to show the king or field commander how sentiment lay” (p. 82). Telemachus, however, assigns a much more active role to the assembly he addresses than Finley indicates, for, as the quotation reveals, Telemachus presents the gathered people with a set of choices and pleads with them to act on the one he favors. In a later speech to the same assembly, Mentor concurs with Telemachus' view that the purpose of the assembly is for the people to make a choice (see 2.239–41).
5 Lattimore's translation of the participle, apaitizontes, gives the general sense, “asking,” though the word may be more appropriately rendered here by the specific and more literal sense, “begging back.” Such a translation is consistent with the way the simple verb, from which the participle is formed, is used by Odysseus in the nine times it appears in the epic. See Odyssey 17.222, 228, 346, 351, 502, 558; 20.179, 182; 29.273. In all these cases, Odysseus appears as a beggar upon whom great misfortune has fallen, and all who meet him are presumed to have some obligation to supply a few of his essential needs. See, for example, 4.649–51, where Telemachus is depicted in a similar fashion. Such an obligation would be even stronger in Telemachu' use of the verb at 2.78, since Telemachus assumes that Odysseus will return to show that he has not been an enemy to his people and that the entreaty for restoring the royal estate will, therefore, be a matter of tisis or “retribution.” On the relationship between tisis and politics in archaic Greek thought, see Jaeger's commentary on Anaximander, frg. 9 (Diels), in Paideia, trans. Highet, G., 3 vols. 2nd ed. (New York, 1965), 1:110, 159–161Google Scholar.
6 See, for example, Wood, Robert, Essay on the Original Genius and Writings of Homer (1975Google Scholar; rpt., New York; Garland, 1971), p. vii; Arnold, Matthew, “On Translating Homer,” in The Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold, 10 vols. (Ann Arbor, 1960–1974), I: 107–108CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Leaf, Walter, Iliad, 2 vols. (Amsterdam, 1971). I: 548Google Scholar.
7 Our knowledge of Sarpedon is not full enough to allow us to determine with certainty whether he was a political as well as military leader of Lykia, but the chances of his having little or no part in the governance of Lykia are quite remote given Homer's general identification of political and social leadership with military leadership. For discussion of such identification, see Adkins, , Merit and Responsibility, pp. 31–60, esp. p. 34Google Scholar; Jaeger, , Paideia, I:8–9Google Scholar; Finley, , The World of Odysseus, pp. 76–78Google Scholar; and Calhoun, in Companion to Homer, p. 436Google Scholar.
8 See the note on ophra in Smyth, Herbert Weir, Greek Grammar, rev. ed. (Cambridge, Mass., 1956), p. 669Google Scholar. The word is a final conjunction indicating a relationship of subordination between means and ends, but, as Smyth notes (2193a), ophra does not express purpose purely since the idea of purpose in the word is conditioned by the idea of time, and the temporal force is especially strong in Homer. The limitation of time here imposed on purpose may be related either to duration or to termination, and since “until” makes no sense in this context, the temporal condition must be durative. “So long as” is thus the most accurate translation of ophra's secondary sense. Sarpedon's explanation must, therefore, combine two relatively distinct English statements. The first statement would be: in addition to being morally obligated to fight, Sarpedon and Glaukos are leaders in battle so that any one of the Lykians will see and say that the people are justified in their generosity to these heroic men who continue to risk their lives in the performance of the most dangerous tasks in battle. Such a statement gives the purposive sense of the Greek and this sense is the one that usually prevails in translation. Expressing the temporal condition requires a different statement: the people will see and say that their generosity to their rulers is justified only so long as the rulers take on the most onerous burdens of the war in heroic fashion.