Bringing Evil to Others: A Reexamination of Piracy Through Homeric Relationships Master’s Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Brandeis University Graduate Program in Ancient Greek and Roman Studies Dr. Joel Christensen, Advisor In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in Ancient Greek and Roman Studies by James Martin May 2017 Copyright by James Martin © 2017 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would first like to thank my advisor, Dr. Joel Christensen of the Ancient Greek and Romans Studies Faculty at Brandeis University. Dr. Christensen has been an integral element of this project and my success through its process. He allowed this work to be my own while simultaneously steering me in the right direction. His advising and mentorship has ultimately contributed to my success as a graduate student and as a scholar in the progress of this project. I would also like to thank my additional readers, Dr. Andrew Koh, Dr. Ann Olga Koloski-Ostrow, and Dr. Cheryl Walker. Thanks to their diverse expertise, but equal interest in my progress, I was able to incorporate multiple disciplines into my project. Koh, Kolowki-Ostrow, and Walker have all also been extremely accessible and invested in my development during my time as a graduate student. I am thankful that I have been able to share this last project, which serves as an excellent capstone, with all four of my readers. iii ABSTRACT Bringing Evil to Others: A Reexamination of Piracy Through Homeric Relationships A thesis presented to the Graduate Program in Ancient Greek and Roman Studies Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Brandeis University Waltham, Massachusetts By James Martin The topic of piracy has been long debated by both Greek and modern readers of Homer. The scenes involving piratical acts, with only a few notable instances, seem to have little to no negative judgment on the pirates. This paper examines the scenes that involve piracy and address the reasons for the attitudes toward the pirates. Their actions and those of the Homeric heroes are often similar. Though the terms for pirates are not associated with heroes, the similarity in their behavior can allow us to interpret some of the actions of the Homeric heroes as also being piratical. The judgement of piracy within the epics should be understood primarily in terms of the targets of the raids, and not a judgment on the raiding itself. By examining when there seems to be a condemnation of piracy and who is being attacked at that time, a hierarchy of relationships is able to be made. This hierarchy helps us to understand how a Homeric warrior is expected to interact with those around him, and how he is able to treat people differently depending on what level of relationship he shares with them. This paper displays the categories of relationships and provides the scenes which reveal the conduct that is expected of the hero towards each group. The iv hierarchy of relationships is primarily focused on the topics of violence and acquisition of booty, but is also able to illuminate additional interactions in which the relationship of the Homeric characters can be understood. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS………………………………………………………………………………………………….. iii ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… iv TABLE OF CONTENTS………………………….…………………………………………………………………………vi LIST OF FIGURES………………………………………...………………………….....………..…………………………vii CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………….……………………………………..1 CHAPTER II: ILIAD……………………………………………………………………..………………………………….12 CHAPTER III: ODYSSEY………………………………………………………………………………………………….29 CHAPTER IV: CONCLUSION…………………………………………………….……………………………………..45 REFERENCES……………………………………………………………………..…………………………………………49 vi LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Hierarchy of Relationships without ξένος 23 Figure 2. Complete Hierarchy of Relationships 27 Figure 3. Hierarchy of Relationships in Proximity 37 vii Chapter I: Introduction καὶ προσπίπτοντες πόλεσιν ἀτειχίστοις καὶ κατὰ κώμας οἰκουμέναις ἥρπαζον καὶ τὸν πλεῖστον τοῦ βίου ἐντεῦθεν ἐποιοῦντο, οὐκ ἔχοντός πω αἰσχύνην τούτου τοῦ ἔργου, φέροντος δέ τι καὶ δόξης μᾶλλον: δηλοῦσι δὲ τῶν τε ἠπειρωτῶν τινὲς ἔτι καὶ νῦν, οἷς κόσμος καλῶς τοῦτο δρᾶν, καὶ οἱ παλαιοὶ τῶν ποιητῶν τὰς πύστεις τῶν καταπλεόντων πανταχοῦ ὁμοίως ἐρωτῶντες εἰ λῃσταί εἰσιν, ὡς οὔτε ὧν πυνθάνονται ἀπαξιούντων τὸ ἔργον, οἷς τε ἐπιμελὲς εἴη εἰδέναι οὐκ ὀνειδιζόντων. Thucydides 1.5.1-2 And they would fall upon un-walled cities, made up of villages, and plunder them. From that they made the greatest part of their livelihood since it brought no shame from the deed, but it actually brought some glory. Some of the mainlanders show this even now, for whom it is becoming for someone to carry out these raids well, and so do the old poets everywhere have people asking of those sailing whether they are pirates, as though there was no intention of disowning the deeds on the part of those asked, nor of reproaching for those inquiring. In the proem to his Peloponnesian War, Thucydides is first concerned with giving a history of Greece going back as far as he can using his own methods of research. By utilizing burials, word of mouth, and cultural memory, he is able to create a picture of what he believes Greece may have looked like. The above passage captures one of the more colorful descriptions of the world before him. Thucydides describes the prevalence of piracy in a world that is already old and somewhat foreign to him. For Thucydides, piracy is something that used to be acceptable and even appropriate earlier in Greece. By mentioning that part of his evidence for the prevalence of piracy is that some people on the mainland still practice those acts, Thucydides implies that the piracy gradually became less acceptable over time. What started out to be commonplace eventually became inappropriate to most of Greece, with only a few exceptions. 1 The second piece of evidence that Thucydides cites is the commonplace greeting given by the poets to inquire as to whether a visitor is a pirate. Thucydides accepts that the poets, in this case Homer,1 reflect historical reality that can tell a contemporary audience something about Greece before his time. The concept that piracy could potentially be without shame is foreign enough to Thucydides that he deems it worthy to discuss. Thucydides is surprised and interested in a topic that continues to perplex those reading Homer. Even other ancient audiences found this worth discussing. The scholia on Homer agrees with Thucydides that piracy was not considered shameful.2 Modern scholars range from agreeing with Thucydides to those who believe that there is actual condemnation of the act of piracy in the epics.3 Can we then believe Thucydides and his understanding of the epics? And why is there so much debate over the way the epics treat piracy if every modern scholar is looking at the same information? The cause for such widespread debate on the attitudes toward pirates is that the interpreters of the epics have not fully understood the range of relationships depicted in the poem. As Thucydides implies, piracy in the epics is certainly present and wide spread. According to values of the Homeric warriors, piracy does seem to be an acceptable action within the epics. Piracy does, however, exist in a hierarchy of relationships. Thucydides’ understanding of piracy ultimately comes from his understanding of Homeric relationships and how they function. By exploring these relationships, we can potentially learn more about Homer and Thucydides’ conception of piracy. These relationships may also help us in understanding more about the historic time period that Thucydides reflects on. I will, therefore, first investigate what world Thucydides examines and then summarize the sections of this paper. 1 Hornblower 1991, 23. 2 φαίνεται γὰρ οὐκ αἰσχρὸν τοῖς ἀρχαίοις ὂν τὸ λῃστεύειν, καὶ Θουκυδίδης εἴρηκεν. H.Q.T. 3 See Ormerod 1924 and Van Wees 1992 for the argument supporting Thucydides. See DeSouza 1999 and Heubeck et al. 1988 for the assertion that piracy clearly has negative connotations. 2 Homer and History Before analyzing what the Homeric epics represent to a historic era, we must first explore with which era we should associate the information. It is commonly agreed that the epics which we now possess were composed sometime in the early Archaic Period.4 The time that the Homeric epics are thought to represent, however, has been seriously debated during the last century. After the discoveries at Troy and Mycenae by Heinrich Schliemann, many believed that the Trojan War and the surrounding cultural make-up of the epics must reflect the Bronze Age. Due to archaeological and philological evidence and due to the revolutionary developments in our understanding of orality,5 the Bronze Age connection has been largely dismissed.6 The nature of oral poems is one of change and re-composition. Thus, it is unlikely that a poem would retain many elements reflecting real culture in the Bronze Age after so many generations. The audience of the epic, however, may not have been able to differentiate the past in a significant way. As a result, their understanding of the time within the epics would simply be the past. Elements that do remain in the poem, however, are the larger plot narratives that the main stories take place within. For example, the Iliad is not actually a retelling of the war, but rather a focus on the feud of Agamemnon and Achilles during the war. The details of the Trojan War are likely a remnant of an existing tradition that possibly dates back to the Late Bronze Age or perhaps Early Iron Age. There is historical evidence that there was already conflict between the Mycenaean mainland and Western Anatolia where Troy was located. In the Amarna letters, Mycenaean men are mentioned by name, who are accused of conducting raids. In analyzing a 4 West 2014, 1; Van Wees 1992, 1. 5 See Lord 1960 for a complete discussion on the orality of the epic poems.