Keating P.J. McKeon (Harvard University)
This paper argues that Apollo’s comparison of Achilles to a lion in search of a feast at Iliad 24.39-45 constitutes a compressed fable narrative, which functions as an embedded ethical program within the epic. Reproaching the hero’s abuse of Hector’s corpse, the god describes an unusual scenario: a lion advances against flocks of sheep intending a distinctly human form of repast in the form of a “feast” (δαίς). Previous scholarship has typically overlooked these lines or simply categorized them alongside the forty other similes involving lions in the Iliad (e.g. Duchemin 1960; Moulton 1977; Baltes 1983; Clarke 1995), even as there has been renewed interest in Homeric metaphor more broadly (Ready 2011, 2018; Horn 2016, 2018; Brockliss 2019; Zanker 2019). This classification is informed by a conception of generic hierarchy that relegates the beast fable to an inferior status relative to epic and accordingly reads animal content in Homer as belonging exclusively to simile (Heath 2005; Kurke 2010).
My paper looks beyond these limitations both to resolve the paradoxical relationship of beast and feast and to clarify the moral encoding of Apollo’s discourse. By tracing the psychological anthropomorphism ascribed to the lion, and considering the god’s rhetorical aims in addressing the divine assembly, I demonstrate a condensed but complex engagement with the didactic fable (αἶνος). As a result, I locate not only an intergeneric dialogue with unique implications for our understanding of Homeric speech, but also a forceful glance back to the grisly feast (and notorious crux) of the poem’s opening (Il. 1.4-5).