Whose Homer?

The end of the Odyssey has long presented challenges to interpreters. Zeus’ unexpected declaration of an eklêsis, or ‘amnesty’ (24. 485–486), invites separate and often discrete responses. This sudden ending can seem generically problematic in prizing forgetfulness in a genre of memory and commemoration; and its abruptness has also struck some as artistically lacking. Nevertheless, in a way, it functions like a Platonic aporia, forcing its audiences to reconsider their questions and assumptions anew.

This paper offers a new approach to a small yet salient detail of Homeric intertext in Pindar’s victory odes: Pindar’s remarkable treatment of Homeric simile.

This paper discusses a critical distinction between Homer and Pindar in the way that each represents the rearing of child heroes. Though each poet presents a conception that is more idealized and imaginary than realistic, together they provide useful examples of two distinct ways that the Greeks of the archaic and early classical period were thinking about the nature of children, child-rearing and childhood that certainly influenced later representations and possibly also social practices.

The study of the epic cycle is a growth industry that has produced much ground-breaking research in recent years, but comparatively little attention has been paid to the importance of the cycle for post-Homeric poetry. Did Pindar allude to lost Trojan epics? Some simply assert a positive answer (e.g. West 2013) while others express doubt in passing (e.g. Burgess 2001). Rutherford 2015 has offered by far the most sophisticated and substantial discussion of this topic, but he cautiously avoids endorsing any firm conclusions.

In the paraepic fantasy world of the late fifth- and early fourth-century comic poet Theopompus, Odysseus is a man who knows – and likes – his Homer. Eustathius preserves a fragment of Theopompus in which the character of Odysseus refers to “an elaborate cloak you brought and gave to me, which Homer excellently compared to the skin of an onion” (fr. 34).