Griffin Budde, Boston University
This paper surveys two of Athena’s line-end epithet phrases, Pallas and glaukwpis Athene (86% and 80% line-end usage), and the related phrase, bowpis potnia Here (100% line-end). It demonstrates the greater predictability of glaukwpis and bowpis relative to Pallas, and shows how animal-eyed epithets associate Athena and Hera according to their common aim of Troy’s destruction. Beck, surveying Hera’s metrically equivalent phrases bowpis potnia and thea leukwlenos, finds “contextual suitability” determining the poet’s choice between alternatives. He feels a literal reading of bowpis (“cow-faced”) would be “indecorous” or “ridiculous”, however. As interest grows in line-end localization (Kahane, Bakker), many doubt a theriomorphic reading both for bowpis and glaukwpis (Kirk, Yamagata).
When Homer’s audience heard Pallas Athene at line-end, it usually came without announcement. She is absent from discourse prior to 12 of 24 line-end uses — in speeches or descriptions of events outside the Iliad (1.400, 5.265, 20.146, 20.314), in gnomic statements (4.541, 5.61, 10.245, 18.311), on Achilles’s shield (18.516), or in battle without a recent mention (5.1, 5.510, 20.33). Pallas Athena is usually the subject of a sentence that begins at midline (6.311, etc.), or continues in necessary enjambment (22.270, etc.), only twice concluding a full-line grammatical unit (4.78, 5.840). Her appearances are often shocking (thambesen, 1.200; thambos, 4.78).
The opposite was true when the audience heard glaukwpis Athene or bowpis potnia Here. These appear in predictable syntactic and narrative contexts with Athena or Hera already present in the scene. In 23 of its 29 appearances at line-end, glaukwpis Athene is either flying, often down from Olympus (2.166, 22.177, etc.), completing a mission of immediate concern (5.719, 22.238, etc.), enhancing someone else’s sight or speed (2.172, 5.133, etc.) or with silence (4.439, 8.30), darkness (10.553), or birds (2.446, 7.43) in context. In its 14 uses, bowpis potnia Here is sedentary or moving slowly (14.222); the context Beck describes as “enmity with Zeus” I characterize as Hera’s surveillance of Zeus (1.551, 14.159, etc.) or other gods (14.263, 20.209, etc.), and arranging her personal plans with their’s in view (4.50, 15.34, etc.). With Athena acting fast, focused, and predatory, Hera observes far and wide; joining skillsets, they accomplish their common aim. The epithets link the goddesses in intention, and imagine their activity (perceptive or locomotive) as narrow-eyed owls of Athenian coins, or the “broad-faced cows” of epic (Il. 10.292, 20.495).
Throughout the Iliad, metrical, syntactic, and narrative regularities allowed Homer’s audience to anticipate “owl-eyed Athena” and “cow-eyed queenly Hera” before hearing them at line-end. Citing neurological opinion (Reber), Minchin considers this fluency a source of pleasure in reception. Similarly, I include experimental data that associates dopaminergic activity with evidence-accumulation: dopamine signals confidence in one’s predictions (Fitzgerald, Poeppel), not rewards strictly speaking, and I apply these findings to the live reception of unfolding hexameters. As opposed to hearing these epithets with “indifference” (Parry), this paper argues for their salience according to the predictive cues of meter, syntax, and narrative, and their literal translations reflecting well-known physical attributes of owls and cows.