SCS-16: Homer

The autobiographical tale told by the swineherd Eumaeus to the disguised Odysseus in book 15 of the Odyssey has been appreciated as a “brilliant digression” (Kirk 367), a clever meta-narrative surprise (Minchin), and an expression of the poem’s dominant slaveholding ideology (Thalmann, 84-87). What has proven difficult, however, is to identify the function of Eumaeus’ narrative at the level of plot: why should the character tell this story at this juncture?

Achilles’ dogged pursuit of Hector in the Iliad is distinguished by an uncanny fixity of purpose (Redfield 27-29, de Jong 2012: 18; Schadewaldt 262; note Apollo at 24.40-44, echoing Hector at 22.356-57), belied by his apparent madness (Bowra 199, Clark 83-84). This paper construes Achilles’ signature single-mindedness as a preternatural critical capacity (one that makes him, conversely, unreadable: a text with no way in [Redfield 28]). I approach Iliad 22.321-29 as a tour de force of close reading, where such reading is a violence enacted upon the text.

This paper offers a new answer to the question of why Odysseus’ men eat the cattle of Helios despite warnings against doing so, leading directly to their deaths. Earlier readings of this episode tend to accept Odysseus’ judgments of his companions: that they act as they do because they are foolish and gluttonous (Nagler 1990; Scodel 2002; McInerney 2010; Bakker 2013), or because they are sacrilegious (Stocking 2017), or under the malicious influence of the instigator Eurylochus (Radcliffe 2021).

I shall attend to the question of the meaning of the augment in the Iliad, whether the presence or absence of the augment on past tense forms is the result of metrical or grammatical considerations. The initial problem was one of chronology. Because the unaugmented forms are linguistically older, scholars at the turn of the twentieth century debated whether the surrounding passages in the text should also be considered to be older (Bréal 1900; Drewitt 1912a-b, 1913; Shewan 1912, 1914; Beck 1919).