Abbreviations BA – The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry = N 1979 BA2 – 2nd ed. 1999 EH – “The Epic Hero” = N 2005a GM – Greek Mythology and Poetics = N 1990b HC – Homer the Classic = N 2008a/2009a HPC – Homer […]
Epilegomena: A preclassical text of Homer in the making Eⓢ1. Reconstructing Homer forward in time E§1 Till now I have been reconstructing Homer as a preclassic by working my way backward in time. Now I will attempt an overview by going forward in time. I start with the earliest possible point […]
Chapter Ten: Homer and the poetics of variation II 10ⓢ1. The sorrows of Andromache revisited II§373 We have seen how the technique of narrating the story about the presentation of a peplos to Athena in her temple at Troy corresponds to the technique of weaving the Panathenaic Peplos for presentation to […]
Chapter Nine: Further variations on a theme of Homer II 9ⓢ1. Homer the federal hostage II§327 The time has come to ask this fundamental question about the festive poetics of federal politics. How could Homeric poetry express the idea of a federal society? Or, to put it another way, how could […]
Chapter Eight: Homeric variations on a theme of empire II 8ⓢ1. Four festivals and four models of empire II§230 In the account of Herodotus, Miletus figures as the premier city in a federation of twelve cities that comprise the Ionian Dodecapolis. This privileging of Miletus reflects an early model of political […]
Chapter Seven: Conflicting claims on Homer II 7ⓢ1. The tomb of Achilles and the topography of the Troad II§42 The Aeolians had their own motives for claiming the territory of Sigeion as their very own Iliadic space. The tomb of the hero Achilles was understood to be located in Aeolian territory, […]
Chapter Six: Variations on a theme of Homer II 6ⓢ1. Rival datings of Homer II§6 In the Life of Homer traditions we find explicit references to the dating of Homer, linked directly to the dating of the Trojan War. In Vita 3a (25–44), which draws upon Book 3 of Aristotle’s Poetics […]
Part Two. A preclassical Homer from the Bronze Age A working definition of the Bronze Age II§1 Just as I redefined the Dark Age in Homeric terms as a transitional phase leading up to a notionally terminal phase of Homer the Classic, I now redefine the Bronze Age as the […]
Chapter Five: Iliadic multiformities I 5ⓢ1. The transcendence of Zeus as hymnic subject I§242 We have seen that the ongoing humnos of the stylized festival of the Phaeacians keeps getting stopped and restarted, and that in two cases the restarting activates a distinct hymnic prooimion. In the first case, the restarting […]
Chapter Four: Homer in the Homeric Odyssey I 4ⓢ1. The festive poetics of an ongoing humnos in Odyssey viii I§188 When Thucydides quotes Homer, he imagines the Poet in the act of personally performing at the festival of the Delia in Delos. This historian’s view, as we have seen, is Athenocentric. […]