How Homeric Is Hysteron Proteron?

HOW HOMERIC IS HYSTERON PROTERON ?

ELIZABETH MINCHIN

It is now eighty years—we go back to a time which precedes the work of Milman Parry—since Samuel Bassett’ s article on hysteron proteron in Homer brought to readers’ notice a “remarkable” device, an idiosyncracy of the poet’s style. 1) The term, generally speaking, refers to the poet’s preference for spelling out within his song a twofold instruction, proposal, or question and in a subsequent pas- sage reversing the original order of presentation. Bassett examines the occurrence of hysteron proteron in one particular context, which he identi ed in the spoken discourse of both the Iliad and the Odyssey. On the basis of his observations of response patterns in Homer, Bassett had concluded that when more than two questions are asked within the same speaking turn in the Homeric text, there are three possible arrangements of answers: the order of questions may be retained, or varied, or reversed. 2) The rst arrangement, according to Bassett, is the ‘most natural’. 3 ) He cites as an example the replies which Mentes-Athen e makes to Telemachos’ questioning at Od. 1.180-194. At 1.170-177, Telemachos has asked the following questions: (1) who are you? (170); (2) where is your city? (170); (3) in what ship did you come? (171); (4) how did you happen to be sail- ing near Ithaca? (171-172); (5) who are your crew? (172); (6 ) are you a guest-friend of my father? (175-177). Mentes-Athena replies in almost the exact order of the six questions asked: (1) Mentes (180-181); (2) I rule the Taphians (181); (3) my own (182); (4) I am

1)See Bassett (1920), at 47. Although Bassett’s subsequent discussion of hysteron proteron, in the lectures which have been collected in The Poetry of Homer (Bassett, [1938], at 120-126 ), was published after Parry’ s demonstration of the oral character of the poems, there is little signi cant change in Bassett’s argument. 2)Bassett (1920), at 40. Here he speci es more than two questions. What he says is true also of two questions. 3)Bassett (1920), at 40. Bassett does not explain why he believes this to be the case: I assume that for him the practice that we adopt in our presentation of writ- ten texts—in which the order of answers given corresponds to the order of questions asked— seems ‘natural’, because in a literate culture it appears logical.

©Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2001 Mnemosyne, Vol. LIV, Fasc. 6 636 ELIZABETH MINCHIN on a trading voyage to Temesa (183-184); (5) (This has already been answered.) (6) I am (187-194). 4) Bassett notes, however, thatit is more often the case that answers are ordered di Verently from the questions to which they respond. The mixed order of response is illustrated in Telemachos’ responses at Od. 1.413-419 to Eurymachos’ questions at 1.405-411; and Telemachos’ answers at Od. 3.79-95 to Nestor’s questions at 3.71-74. 5) Examples of this pattern of response are not common in Homer. The third possibility, that of reversal, is the subject of this paper. The pattern of reversal, which Bassett has identi ed and which I wish to re-examine, is in evidence when a series of questions is asked by any one character, and his or her respondent replies to those questions in reverse order . Bassett uses the term hysteron proteron , as did Cicero, to describe this phenomenon. 6) Let us consider an example of reverse ordering of this kind from Homer’s Odyssey. We begin with a sustained series of questions asked by Odysseus of his mother Antikleia, now in the Underworld:

llƒ ge moi tñde eÞp¢ kaÜ tr¡kevw kat‹lejon: tÛw næ se k¯r ¤d‹masse tanhleg¡ow yan‹toio ; µ dolix¯ noè sow , · …Artemiw Þox¡aira oåw ganoÝw bel¡essin ¤poixom¡nh kat¡pefnen ; eÞp¢ d¡ moi patrñw te kaÜ uß ¡ ow , ùn kat¡leipon , µ ¦ti pŒr keÛnoisin ¤mòn g¡raw , ·¡ tiw ³dh ndrÇn llow ¦xei , ¤m¢ dƒ oé k¡ ti fasÜ n¡ esyai . eÞp¢ d¡ moi mnhst°w lñxou boul®n te nñon te , ±¢ m¡nei parŒ paidÜ kaÜ ¦ mpeda p‹nta ful‹ssei · ³dh min ¦ghmen ƒAxaiÇn ÷w tiw ristow . (Od. 11.170-179)

4)For further examples of this pattern, in which the order of answers corresponds to the order of the questions, see Od. 9.252-255 and 259-271; 11.397-403 and405- 415; 16.57-59 and 61-67, 461-463 and 465-475; 24.474-476 and 478-486. Fromthe Iliad see, for example, 1.202-205 and 207-214, 6.376-380 and 382-389, 10.424- 425 and 427-435. To give some coherence to the discussion in the text of thispaper I have used examples from the Odyssey alone. The Odyssey, indeed, is richer in con- versation than is the Iliad, but, as demonstrated in the footnotes, Homer’s expres- sion of question and answer patterns in both epics covers the same range of options. 5)For other examples, see Od. 16.95-97 and 113-129; 24.298-301 and 303-308; Il. 10.406-411 and 413-422. 6)For Bassett’s discussion of Cicero’s use of the term, see Bassett (1920), at 39, 47-48. His account of the phenomenon at times ventures beyond question and answer sequences to other types of hysteron proteron , for example, event sequences (Bassett (1920), at 49-50). But his principal focus, and mine, is on the question and answer pattern.