Homer (1)

The Iliad is populated by an array of manufactured objects—including weapons, clothes, utensils, and vehicles—that allude to social and economic realities beyond the horizons of the Trojan battlefield. This paper argues that the rare scenes of manufacturing in the Iliadic narrative serve as sites of aesthetic resistance to the protagonists’ aristocratic, status-seeking ethos: two depictions of metalworking (Il. 18.478-608; 23.826-49) trace the tenuous place of martial labor in the broader world of epic.

Pivotal counterfactuals (“Then X would have happened had not Y intervened”) are a frequent Homeric construction.  Previous scholarship has analyzed this construction in general (Lang 1989, Louden 1993) or specifically in its occurrences in the Iliad (De Jong 1987, Morrison 1992), but has tended to overlook certain key differences between the two epics’ utilization of pivotal counterfactuals.  I argue that the Iliad uses pivotal counterfactuals to accentuate Achilles’ dignity regarding freedom of choice vis-à-vis other humans and that, in contrast to the Odyss

Diomedes holds a special place in the Achaean camp of the Iliad: he is at once the youngest of the basilewes and one of the most experienced in warfare. No other Greek hero is as important on the battlefield or as narratively dominant in Achilles’ absence. Yet despite his prominence in the Iliad he remains little studied. This paper will explore how Diomedes navigates the class of basilewes and rises in the ranks to become the second most important of the Achaeans in both war and counsel.

This paper demonstrates how Achilles code switches in his conversation with his mother Thetis, toggling between divine and human worlds. I examine two speeches of Achilles: his cry to Thetis from the shore (1.352-356) and his longer speech to her after she comes (1.365-412). On the surface these two utterances seem to accomplish similar things: asking for his mother’s help, complaining about how he has been mistreated by Agamemnon, and seeking Zeus’s intervention.