Wrestling with Proteus
The Cyclic Poems in Context
In this fourth and final installment of my essay, I discuss the Cyclic poems (the six outside the Iliad and the Odyssey which have not survived) in context of the Iliad and whether our common belief in the Unity is fully justified. I suggest it is not, and propose a hypothesis as to how it came about through the merging of two separate traditions: one dating from the late Bronze Age and another that evolved under the tumultuous conditions of 8th century BC Greece. I then close with some tentative conclusions.
References are indicated by brackets [1] but not linked (due to the current limitations of Substack when importing from MS Word files). Explanatory footnotes are linked. All works cited are listed at the end of this installment, along with suggestions for further reading.
Acknowledgements: I am indebted to Prof. Eric Luttrell inspiring the title of my essay and my approach, generally, and to Dr. Cynthia Gralla for her encouragement, invaluable feedback and editorial assistance.
Keywords: the Trojan War, the Iliad, the Homeric poems, the Cyclic poems, Homer, the Age of Heroes, Late Bronze Age conflicts in Anatolia, Mycenaean activities in Anatolia.
Part 4: The Cyclic Poems in Context
The relationship between the Cyclic poems and the Iliad has often been rather vexed. Because the Cyclic poems were composed long after the Iliad – by some reckonings, the Telegony could have been composed almost two centuries later – the Cyclic poems might be viewed as subsidiary to the Iliad.1 The Cyclic poems are also often viewed as aesthetically inferior to the Homeric poems. In recent years, the prominence of the Cyclic poems has been emphasized (as Finkelberg did when she conceived the Homeric poems as a correction to the older tradition). Burgess has done much to promote the view that the tradition that was set down in the Cyclic poems should be given primacy over the Iliad. As he remarks in his introduction: “[I]n fact the Epic Cycle is even more representative of the Trojan War tradition than the Homeric poems. If the tradition of the Trojan War were a tree, initially the Iliad and Odyssey would have been a couple of small branches, whereas the Cycle poems would be somewhere in the trunk.”[1] In so doing, he emphasizes the Unity regarding the Trojan War tradition.
Here, I shall limit myself to a few observations. First, as noted previously, the Cyclic poems contain the oldest material – older than any possible Trojan War – and are heavily mythological and folkloric. This material does not reflect, except possibly in a few snippets, the history I related above. Therefore, unlike the Iliad, the Cyclic poems have no evident historical basis. Further, they lack coherence; this is particularly evident in the Cypria, which is a collection of myth and folklore assembled without regard for coherent narrative structure, and the other poems are not much better. This mishmash of tales is what we would expect if the tradition they were drawn from was similarly disunified.
What I suggest we are seeing here is a mythopoetic tradition of the Trojan War that took ancient material from many sources to create a new myth suited to 8th century concerns.2 Myth and folklore are by their nature, communal and fluid, being orally composed and transmitted, and continually adapted to their audiences; that is, multiform. Deeds of kings, such as we find in other Bronze Age societies, are not communally composed; they are composed according to the ruler’s dictates and transmitted to the subjects who receive them as is. The deeds are not fluid in the sense myth and folklore are; in other words, they are not multiform.
Is the Iliad, in terms of the tradition it draws upon, closer to myth or a deed? The answer appears to be evident: it has some correspondence to history; Cyclic poems have only tidbits encysted in a matrix of folklore. This suggests that the Iliad and Cyclic poems reflect two different traditions: mythopoetic and quasi-historical. The tradition of the Cyclic poems seems to have been entirely oral up until the poems were assembled independently in the late 7th to mid-6th centuries and recorded at some point. The Iliad was composed before the Cyclic poems, probably by a single individual, possibly with the aid of writing, drawing on a tradition of my conjectured “Hundred Years War” combined with the “Wars of the Roses.”
In other words, the Iliadic tradition and the tradition of the Cyclic poems were, as Burgess says, different in conception and purpose, but counter to what he asserts, the evidence does not support the idea that they “share the same mythological tradition.”[2] Instead, it would seem to be rather the reverse. Most crucially, the Iliadic tradition could not have been based on ending a heroic age if it predates the Bronze Age collapse, and would not include a sack of Troy because in history, Troy did not fall to the Greeks.
What could account for separate and, in a sense, incompatible traditions?3 Two possible reasons suggest themselves. First, they could simply be different genres; in our society, we have many different treatments of great events, ranging from history to fantasy, and we make no effort to rationalize them. Were the ancient Greeks any different in this regard? It does not seem so; they too had different genres, they even assigned separate Muses to them.
But perhaps there may be a deeper reason. By the early 8th century, the Greeks believed in the extinction of the demi-gods and the end of a heroic age. What caused the catastrophe? Looking back at what I call their “epic historical” tradition, there were two great wars, the largest in their history, fought by mighty kingdoms and heroes, for pride, wealth and (in the Trojan War) a quintessentially beautiful woman. Here were conflicts grand enough they could end an age, so they were brought into a new mythopoetic tradition for that purpose.
But there was a problem: as noted, the epic-historical tradition could have included neither the end of a heroic age, nor the fall of Troy. Cataclysmic wars must necessarily have cataclysmic culminations; ending them through diplomatic negotiation simply would not do.
So a new divine reason was invoked (the plan of Zeus) and the sack of Troy added, the material being drawn from ancient tradition.4 The enterprise took on a mythopoetic character and all manner of myth and folklore became part of the story. But the epic-historical tradition was still present and inspired the Iliad, which developed over decades alongside the mythopoetic tradition, and being aware of it (as its audiences would have been), was obliged to give nods to it in the form of vague allusions, while maintaining its original character. Homer also omitted the beginning and end of the legend, which were not germane to his purpose and were known, and also being related in a different and competing form.
Generations later, the Iliad’s popularity (which took decades to develop, as the late appearance of Iliadic art suggests) demanded it be integrated into the mythopoetic tradition – this was the “cyclic” endeavor analyzed by West.[3] This effort eventually required a good deal of editorial rationalization (we should not assume this was an tidy activity) which resulted in changes to the Iliad to bring it in line with the Cyclic poems and vice versa. The Cyclic poems were multiform and this impressed a degree of “multiformity” on the Iliad. The Cyclic poems faded over time but their imprint on the Iliad survived, and in the Hellenistic period, the Alexandrian scholars undertook to discern what had been the “original” text of the Iliad and what had been added, changed, or corrupted. Thus, I suggest it is the existence of two disparate traditions, one multiform and one not, being integrated from the middle of the 7th century to the latter part of the 4th (bridging second and third periods of Nagy’s evolutionary model) that created the appearance of a “multiform” Iliad, not the way it was originally composed.5
And we have been debating ever since.
Conclusions
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by…
The Road Not Taken. Robert Frost.
Now that we have concluded our match with the Old Man of the Sea, can we say we have “gotten a clue”? I believe we can lay claim to several.
First, I believe the hypothesis that the Trojan War legend represents a “telescoping” of many events is valuable, although it has been overlooked that these events appear to have been parts of a long war, not a series of largely independent conflicts. By the same token, the idea the war was an inconsequential conflict that would not have been remembered had it not been chosen as the frame story for the Iliad is correspondingly weakened.
Cline’s proposal of an Ahhiyawa confederation is a major clue. It solves two issues: how the Greeks could project power into western Anatolia for 150 years and why the king of Ahhiyawa was regarded as a Great King. It creates a context for the conflicts between Mycenae and Thebes, and why their status seems to fluctuate. It explains the organization of Agamemnon’s army in the Iliad, and suggests an origin for the Catalog of Ships. It also can help explain the “PanHellenic” appeal of the Iliad.
Although controversial, more elements of the literary tradition may have a historical basis than usually thought. These could include Helen’s marriage to Paris (not elopement), their trip to Egypt, the career of Achilles, and even the duel between Hector and Ajax.
Finally, the notion of a Bronze Age “Hundred Years War” combined with a Bronze Age “Wars of the Roses” explains the mix of periods in the Iliad, the inclusion of “backstories” about Heracles, Bellerophon, and the Theban wars, and also Hesiod’s statement that both wars were responsible for the end of the age of heroes. It points to an “epic historical” tradition, reflected in the Iliad, that existed alongside a separate mythopoetic tradition – reflected in Hesiod, the Cyclic poems, the Odyssey, the Greek lyric tradition and later works – which evolved during the 8th century in response to the unique conditions of that period.
Most importantly, taking the Unity for granted is questionable. Approaching the Trojan War without this precept may help untangle some of the contentious issues about the poems, including their dating, their relationship, the nature of their composition and the vexing issue of multiformity – even the Iliad’s authorship – as well as the nature of the war itself.6
Proteus did not promise Menelaus an easy journey home. He told the Spartan king he must cross the misty sea (ἠεροειδέα πόντον), a long, painful way (δολιχὴν ὁδὸν ἀργαλέην), before he achieved his objective.[4] So it may be with us, and though we have no guarantee of the happy outcome that awaited Menelaus, I believe the journey will be worth it.
I will close with this quote from Rachel Bespaloff:
Against the eternal blindness of history is set the creative lucidity of the poet fashioning for future generations heroes more godlike than gods, and more human than men. [5]
Perhaps I might add that if we pay enough attention to the creative lucidity of Homer, we might find, despite the eternal blindness of history, a history more epic than epics.
Further Reading
For those who wish to further explore the questions surrounding Homer or the Trojan War, there is a vast literature available – so vast as to be quite daunting in many respects. Regarding the history itself, I recommend the works of Barry Strauss, Eric Cline and Trevor Bryce as a good starting point. They are readily available and written in a way that is accessible to any interested non-specialist.
Particularly, Barry Strauss’ The Trojan War (Simon & Schuster, 2006) is excellent and a must-read for anyone interested in this topic. One of the best bibliographies on the subject may be found in this book. Also his two podcasts, “Achilles” and “Helen of Troy” (Antiquitas, Season 1, Episodes 1 and 2), are quite informative and entertaining.
Eric Cline’s The Trojan War: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2013), is another good introduction to the topic of the Trojan War, while his 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed (Revised and Updated, 2021) is a great source for the general context in which the Trojan War took place. It also includes an extensive list of sources, for those who wish to dig deep. His new book, After 1177 B.C.: The Survival of Civilizations (Princeton University Press, 2024), is also excellent and provides the latest information.
Trevor Bryce has written two books on Bronze Age Anatolia that are quite valuable: The Kingdom of the Hittites (Oxford University Press, 1998; New Edition, 2005), and The Trojans and their Neighbours (Taylor & Francis, 2006). The Trojans and their Neighbours is the more readily available of the two and applies more directly to the Trojan War, but The Kingdom of the Hittites is valuable for getting a broader context of the history and worth reading. More recent is Bryce’s Warriors of Anatolia. (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019). It is readily available and a fun read.
To understand the full context of the Hittite documents, The Ahhiyawa Texts (Society of Biblical Literature, 2011) by Gary Beckman, Trevor Bryce and Eric Cline is indispensable.
For anyone interested in the Amazons, Adrienne Mayor’s The Amazons (Princeton University Press, 2014) is essential. It is a wonderfully written, fun read about a fascinating, under-appreciated history.
Geared more toward specialist readers but accessible to anyone with an interest, is Joachim Latacz’s Troy and Homer: Towards a Solution of an Old Mystery (Kevin Windle and Rosh Ireland, Translators). This seminal book, published in 2004, forms the basis for much of our current understanding of Troy.
For those interested in exploring the scholarship on oral traditions in more detail, Albert Lord’s The Singer of Tales and Gregory Nagy’s Homeric Questions are important for understanding both the positions of various Homeric scholars and the debates between them. Both are available free online:
The Singer of Tales: nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_LordA.The_Singer_of_Tales.2000
Homeric Questions: nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_Nagy.Homeric_Questions.1996
For understanding the Iliad itself in detail, the late Martin West’s The Making of the Iliad (Oxford University Press, 2011) is vital. Extremely detailed, it not only lays out the most comprehensive and defensible discussion of how the Iliad was composed, but provides a necessary correction for some of the theories advanced by the oralist school, as they apply specifically to the Iliad.
Another important source is West’s The Epic Cycle: A Commentary on the Lost Troy Epics. Unfortunately, it’s expensive for those outside academia and contains much untranslated ancient Greek, but his general thoughts on the subject are available in some articles listed both in Works Cited.
For the epics themselves, I prefer the translations of the Iliad and Odyssey by Caroline Alexander and Emily Wilson, respectively. Caroline Alexander’s introduction is especially useful for understanding the context and probable origin of the Iliad. Robert Fagles’ translations of both these epics are also popular, as is his translation of the Aeneid.
For those who wish to hear a scholarly perspective on these works, I found three lectures by Prof. Luttrell to be very valuable. They can be found on YouTube:
The Iliad (www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DHgPePIFhk);
The Odyssey (www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJOaItUjRow);
The Aeneid (www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLjRQKwDKBk).
Finally, for those interested in reading sagas handed down by oral tradition from ancient times to the early 20th century and which also contain some of the same themes found in the Greek epics, I recommend the Nart Sagas from the Caucasus: Myths and Legends from the Circassians, Abazas, Abkhaz, and Ubykhs (Princeton University Press, 2016), assembled and translated by John Colarusso. I believe these provide some of the best examples of orally transmitted myths that might give us a flavor of what some the ancient stories that eventually made their way into the Greek legends of the Trojan War were like.
Works Cited
Alexander, Caroline. The War the Killed Achilles. New York: Viking Penguin, 2009.
Bachvarova, Mary R. From Hittite to Homer: The Anatolian Background of Ancient Greek Epic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016.
Beckman, Gary; Bryce, Trevor; Cline, Eric. The Ahhiyawa Texts. Netherlands: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011.
Bryce, Trevor. The Kingdom of the Hittites. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Bryce, Trevor. The Trojans and their Neighbours. New York: Taylor & Francis, 2006.
Bryce, Trevor. Warriors of Anatolia. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019, 2023.
Burgess, Jonathan. The Tradition of the Trojan War in Homer and the Epic Cycle. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.
Cline, Eric. “Aššuwa and the Achaeans: The ‘Mycenaean’ Sword at Hattušas and Its Possible Implications.” The Annual of the British School at Athens 91, 1996: 137–51. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30102544.
Cline, Eric. 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed: Revised and Updated. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2021.
Cline, Eric. After 1177 B.C.: The Survival of Civilizations. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2024.
Cline, Eric. The Trojan War: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.
Davies, Malcolm. The Cypria. Hellenic Studies Series 83. Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_DaviesM.The_Cypria.2019.
Davies, Malcolm. “The Folk-Tale Origins of the Iliad and Odyssey.” Wiener Studien 115, 2002: 5-43. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24751364.
Finkelberg, Margalit. “18. The Formation of the Homeric Epics” In Homer and Early Greek Epic: Collected Essays, 182-196. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2020.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671452-018
Finkelberg, Margalit. The Sources of Iliad 7, 2002: 38.
https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3454&context=cq
Fournier, Emmanuelle. Parfum et cosmétique à l’Âge du Bronze en Grèce (Perfume and cosmetics during the Late Bronze Age in Greece), 2014: 47-59. https://doi.org/10.4000/artefact.10714.
Glatz, Claudia, and Roger Matthews. “Anthropology of a Frontier Zone: Hittite-Kaska Relations in Late Bronze Age North-Central Anatolia.” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, no. 339, 2005, pp. 47–65. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25066902.
Hesiod. Theogony and Works and Days (translated by M. L. West). Oxford World’s Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Homer. The Iliad (translated by Stephen Mitchell). New York: Simon and Schuster, 2011.
Homer. The Iliad (translated by Robert Fagles). New York: Penguin Group, 1990.
Homer. The Iliad, A New Translation (translated by Caroline Alexander). New York: HarperCollins, 2015.
Homer. The Odyssey (translated by Barry Powell). New York: Oxford University, 2014.
Kelder, Jorrit M. “The Kingdom of Mycenae: A Great Kingdom in the Late Bronze Age Aegean”. CDL Press. Bethesda, MD, 2010. http://www.academia.edu/218696.
Kelly, Adrian. “Homer and History: Iliad 9.381-4.” Mnemosyne 59, no. 3, 2006: 321–33. http://doi:10.1163/156852506778132400.
Korfmann, Manfred. “Was There a Trojan War?” Archaeology Magazine, vol. 57 no. 3, May/June 2004. http://archive.archaeology.org/0405/etc/troy.html.
Lambrou, Ioannis. Homer and the Trojan Cycle: dialogue and challenge. Ph.D. Thesis, Department of Greek and Latin, University College London, 2015.
Latacz, Joachim. Troy And Homer: Towards a Solution of an Old Mystery (translated by Kevin Windle and Rosh Ireland). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Mackie, C. J. “‘Iliad’ 24 and The Judgement of Paris.” The Classical Quarterly 63, 1 (2013): 1-16. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23470072.
Melchert, Craig. “Mycenaean and Hittite Diplomatic Correspondence: Fact and Fiction.” Classical Inquiries, Harvard, 2020.
http://classical-inquiries.chs.harvard.edu/mycenaean-and-hittite-diplomatic-correspondence-fact-and-fiction/.
Muellner, Leonard. The Anger of Achilles: Mênis in Greek Epic, 1996 (Updated). Cornell University Press http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_MuellnerL.The_Anger_of_Achilles.1996.
Nagy G. “Homer and Greek Myth.” In: Woodard RD, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Greek Mythology. Cambridge Companions to Literature. Cambridge University Press, 2007: 52-82. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/cambridge-companion-to-greek-mythology/homer-and-greek-myth/5171E37B64B90389B9E3E4FA647356A4
Nagy, G. “Helen of Sparta and Her Very Own Eidolon.” Classical Inquiries. May 2, 2016.
https://classical-inquiries.chs.harvard.edu/helen-of-sparta-and-her-very-own-eidolon/.
Nagy, G. “Homeric poetry and problems of multiformity: The ‘Panathenaic Bottleneck’”. Classical Philology 96(2), 2001: 109-119. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/449533.
Nagy, Gregory. Homeric Questions.
http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_Nagy.Homeric_Questions. 1996
Nagy, G. “Just to look at all the shining bronze here, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven: Seeing bronze in the ancient Greek world.” Classical Inquiries. February 18, 2016. https://classical-inquiries.chs.harvard.edu/just-to-look-at-all-the-shining-bronze-here-i-thought-id-died-and-gone-to-heaven-seeing-bronze-in-the-ancient-greek-world/.
Nagy, G. “Pindar’s Homer is not ‘our’ Homer.” Classical Inquiries. December 24, 2015.
https://classical-inquiries.chs.harvard.edu/pindars-homer-is-not-our-homer/.
Porter, Andrew. “Reconstructing Laomedon’s Reign in Homer: Olympiomachia, Poseidon’s Wall, and the Earlier Trojan War.” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 54, 2014: 507–526. https://grbs.library.duke.edu/index.php/grbs/article/view/15051.
Smoot, Guy.Donum natalicium digitaliter confectum Gregorio Nagy septuagenario a discipulis collegis familiaribus oblatum: “Did the Helen of the Homeric Odyssey ever go to Troy?”
http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_Bers_etal_eds.Donum_Natalicium_Gregorio_Nagy. 2012.
Strauss, Barry. “Episode 1: Achilles.” Antiquitas, Season 1, Episode 1, Barry Strauss Podcast, November 10, 2018. http://barrystrauss.com/podcast/page/3/.
Strauss, Barry. “Episode 2: Helen of Troy.” Antiquitas, Season 1, Episode 2, Barry Strauss Podcast, November 12, 2018. barrystrauss.com/podcast/page/3/.
Strauss, Barry. The Trojan War: A New History. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2006.
Thomas, Carol G. and Conant, Craig. Citadel to City-State: The Transformation of Greece, 1200-700 B.C.E.. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993 (2003 edition).
Weil, Simone; Bespaloff, Rachel; Benfey, Christopher. War and the Iliad (translated by Mary McCarthy). New York: The New York Review of Book, 2005.
West, Martin. “Atreus and Attarissiyas.” Glotta 77, no. 3/4, 2001: 262–66. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40267129.
West, Martin. “‘Iliad’ and ‘Aethiopis.’” The Classical Quarterly, vol. 53, no. 1, 2003, pp. 1–14. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3556478.
West, Martin. “The Homeric Question Today.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 155, no. 4, 2011, pp. 383–93. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23208780.
West, Martin. “The Invention of Homer.” The Classical Quarterly, vol. 49, no. 2, 1999, pp. 364–82. http://www.jstor.org/stable/639863.
West, Martin. Hellenica, Vol 1: Epic. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
West, Martin. The Making of the Iliad. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
West, Martin. The Making of the Odyssey. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.
West, Martin. The Trojan Cycle: A Commentary on the Lost Troy Epics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
Wiener, Malcolm H. “Homer and History: Old Questions, New Evidence”, EPOS: Reconsidering Greek Epic and Aegean Bronze Age Archaeology, Proceedings of the 11th International Aegean Conference, Los Angeles, UCLA-The J. Paul Getty Villa, 20–23 April 2006, Aegaeum 28, 2007, pp. 3–33.
Woudhuizen, Fred. The Luwians of Western Anatolia: Their Neighbours and Predecessors. Oxford: Archaeopress Publishing Ltd, 2018.
Woudhuizen, Fred. “Review of Kelder,” BIBLIOTHECA ORIENTALIS LXVIII, no. 1-2, Januari-April 2011: 140-146.
http://www.academia.edu/7287913/Review_Kelder_2010.
Xian, Ruobing. “Recent Homeric Research.” Museum Sinicum, 2018.
References
[1] Burgess (2001, 5).
[2] Burgess (2001, 5).
[3] West (2013).
[4] The Odyssey (Book 4, 482–3). http://data.perseus.org/citations/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0012.tlg002.perseus-grc1:4
[5] Weil et al (2005, 50).
Footnotes
A gap of almost two centuries is arrived at by accepting West’s date for the composition of the Telegony (West 2013) and date for the Iliad’s composition in the latter half of the 8th century.
I am late in discovering this idea has previously been advanced, though not in the same context:
“Homer’s interactive engagement with the mythopoetic traditions which were eventually crystallised in the Epic Cycle.” (Lambrou 2015, 3.)
“…there is very often good reason to believe that stories that ultimately came to crystallise in a post-Homeric written form were derived from earlier and perhaps pre-Homeric oral mythopoetic traditions.” (Lambrou 2015, 134.)
I agree on both counts.
The Cypria and the Little Iliad may originally have told the whole story of the war. If so, this would indicate a separate tradition from the Iliad, and that they were later cut down to allow the Iliad its place in the cycle.
The Hittite Song of Release has already been mentioned. It should also not be overlooked that the sack of Troy is credited to a wooden horse that reflects the Indo-European tradition of a magical agent that can overcome Troy’s invulnerable walls; it has been suggested Odysseus once had a such a horse (see Davies 2002). Later the horse became a ruse when magical animals were no longer acceptable. Virgil was aware of this tradition: in the Aeneid Book 2 (20–27), he told the usual story of the horse, but in Book 6 (599), he wrote: “the fatal horse mounted over our steep walls.” If the Greeks had an epic-historical tradition of Troy’s fall, they would have had no need to resort to a magical horse turned ruse to explain it.
Nagy’s evolutionary model stands in contrast to the idea of a single composer for the Iliad, favored by West (and myself). See Nagy (2001) for a brief description of his model.
A final word on the Unity: given my penchant for harmless doggerel, I hope I may be forgiven that when I reflect on it, I am reminded of the opening stanza of William Mearns’ famous poem:
Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
I wish, I wish he'd go away...
“Antigonish”, William Mearns. Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations,
14th ed. 1968.
The Unity seems to me to be like “man who wasn’t there,” and I might well wish “he’d go away.” It has so captured our imagination that the field of Homeric studies has largely been defined by its “non-presence” and without that, it would be a very different animal.
I have argued that the “Unity who wasn’t there” has trapped us into analyzing the Trojan War legend in general, and the Iliad in particular, in reference to itself without sufficient attention to the contexts of the societies that produced and listened to it; Homer’s Ionian society, the later Greek society of the 5th and 6th centuries, and the Bronze Age societies in which the original legends and the events that inspired it both happened. By “taking for granted” the the legend of Trojan as unified, and looking outside it mainly to seek support for the idea there is a Unity, we see things that appear to supply answers to the Homeric Question, only to gave a competing theory come along and upset the apple cart. (Talk about apples of discord! Apologies – I could not resist. You were warned!)
If only the “Unity who wasn’t there” would go away and stop bedeviling us, perhaps we could see Homer in a clearer light, one that would enhance his brilliance, not shade it. Would not we prefer that the nonexistent Unity stop throwing shade on our favorite poet?
The Classics, once the foundation of our understanding of ourselves, has withered and much of that understanding with it. Our society has produced technologies hardly dreamed of a few decades ago and we have accumulated vast technical knowledge on every subject imaginable, but we have not advanced our wisdom to match, or anything like it. I humbly submit that Homer unleashed and made accessible again would be a useful remedy. If Homer is lost, it will not be his fault. It will be because we failed him, failed our society and failed the generations that will succeed us. We should not let that happen.
In that spirit, I would like to see a new “Homeric Question” posed: how do we bring the beauty, power and lessons of Homer to a wider audience? Homer belongs to everyone and so does the history behind the Iliad. Neither should be subject to the distortions the “unity who wasn’t there” imposes on them.
For these reasons, I have pursued this topic. Certainly, my treatment is neither as complete or comprehensive – or as learned – as I would like. My intent has been to think outside the box, but hopefully not around the bend. I wish to inspire others to do so as well. If that should happen in any small way, I shall rest content.