The Rise of the Greek Epic Author(S): M
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The Rise of the Greek Epic Author(s): M. L. West Reviewed work(s): Source: The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 108 (1988), pp. 151-172 Published by: The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/632637 . Accessed: 04/07/2012 06:05 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Hellenic Studies. http://www.jstor.org Journal of Hellenic Studies cviii (1988) 15I-I72 THE RISE OF THE GREEKEPIC MY title is familiar as that of a book, and my subject may be thought to call for one. I hope in due course to explore the genesis of the Homeric poems in that format, and what I have to say here may take its place there in a maturer form (wiser, fatter). For the moment I offer merely a provisional attempt to trace out the stages by which the epic tradition developed, stopping short of any discussion of the Iliad and Odyssey themselves. Any such attempt necessarily involves a certain amount of rehearsal of familiar arguments, and, if it is to be plausible, a fair measure of concurrence in familiar conclusions. But conclusions that are familiar are sometimes also controversial, and can be strengthened against their assailants by a fresh discussion; and I have certain doctrines of my own that are best presented in the context of a broad synthesis.1 To speakof the rise of the Greekepic presupposesthat it did not always exist, at least not in the majesticform in which we see it in the Homeric poems. We know from the Russianbyliny, the South Slavic epic songs, and other casesthat oral traditionsof heroic poetry can persistfor many centuries.2 Almost everyone accepts that the Greek epic tradition goes back at least to late Mycenaean times. In fact, as will be seen, there is reason to assume its existence as early as the fifteenth century, and before that an ancient tradition of poetry, which may have been in some sense heroic, going back to an Indo-European setting. In one sense, then, the rise of the Greek epic will have to be dated no later than the middle of the second millennium. On the other hand it is scarcely to be supposed that the Homeric epics are simply late examples of something that had existed in much the same state for seven or eight hundred years. This is surely a tradition that, however old its roots, burst spectacularly into flower within the last few generations before Homer. It is an Ionian tradition, but it can be shown that the Ionians had not always had it. From about 750 we can see that this Ionian epic began to be widely known. It created a great impression on the Greeks of the mainland, as something to which they had nothing corresponding. It aroused in them an interest in the heroic past which had not been evident before. Bronze Age graves began to be treated with reverence, to be brought offerings, and in some cases to be identified as the graves of particular heroes of legend. Relics of Mycenaean buildings, often secular, became the sites of new shrines. Heroic scenes began to appear in art.3 There can be no doubt that the diffusion of epic poetry of the Homeric type was responsible for this new consciousness of the past. It is reflected too in poetry of other genres. Hesiod, in his mythical scheme of metallic races of men, has to find room for the heroes who fought at Thebes and Troy (Op. I56-73); he cannot mention Aulis without adding 'where the Achaeans once gathered their great army against Troy of the fair women' (Op. 65 I-3); his catalogue of rivers includes a group of Trojan ones that he must have learned of from epic about Troy (Th. 340-5). Alcman refers to Ajax and Memnon (PMG 68-9), Paris (7ob, 77) and other Trojans (52, 71), Odysseus, Circe and the Sirens (8o),4 and perhaps Helen and Nestor (IOI i). Alcaeus and Sappho show an obsessive preoccupation with the saga of Troy, and in the case of one brief fragment it is evident that Alcaeus had the Iliad in mind.5 I wish to thank three referees, TC)V EyCb eiC5o T'a 4 I wonder, however, whether this hexameter frag- ovo6pacraou yp&pco, for their expert comments and ment should not be attributed rather to the Kirka of criticisms. Alexander Aetolus (Powell, CollectaneaAlexandrina 1 To some extent I shall be using the same canvas as 122). 5 in an earlier essay, 'Greek poetry 2000-700 BC', CQ Fr. 44.6-8 PladEr[p'iovop]ac&8ov 9Ka?rI v&[iS' xxiii (I973) 179-92. wITrepTrav] I vU,p9[cv evv]aAiav. & 8i yovoov [a&ap,va 2 H. M. and N. K. Chadwick, The Growth of Aios] | iKTrEv[' dyacn]TCo TEKEOSpiviv [&arUaTpnprv.] literature (Cambridge I932-40) ii I2 f.; C. M. Bowra, (end of poem). This not only corresponds to events in Heroicpoetry (London 1952) 372 if. Iliad i but implies the whole framework of the epic: 3 A. M. Snodgrass, The Dark Age of Greece(Edin- Zeus' response to Thetis' prayer, granting the Trojans burgh I97I) 192-4, 397 f.; Archaic Greece (London increasingsuccess in battle until the Greeksare forced to I980) 38-40, 68-78; J. N. Coldstream,JHS xcvi (I976) plead with Achilles for his assistance. I draw attention to 8-17; Geometric Greece (London 1977) 341-57. this because it is in my opinion the earliest text that I52 M. L. WEST Fromthe middleof the eighthcentury, then, Greecewas captivatedby a genreof heroic poetry that had achieveda new splendourfrom the effortsof Ionianbards. Here again is somethingthat may claimto be regardedas the riseof the Greekepic. The objectof inquiryis thereforea complexone. The taskis to try to defineand describe, so faras the evidencepermits, the phasesthrough which the epic traditionpassed in the courseof its long development. INDO-EUROPEANPRAISE POETRY aksiti sravah, sravo ... aksitam=K\EFos a&iqplTov.With that famous equation of a Rigvedic with a Homeric formula, Adalbert Kuhn in i853 opened the door to a new path in the comparativephilologist's garden of delights.In the yearsthat followedhe madea few more discoveriesof the samesort, and also established a strikingcorrespondence of contentand style between certain Germanicincantations for sprainsand broken limbs and one in the Atharvaveda.The conceptof an Indo-Europeanpoetic language was beginningto emerge.6 Scholarshave continued to add to these phraseologicaland stylistic comparisonsbetween differentIE poetictraditions, especially between the Greekand Vedic, and their findings now makea not inconsiderablecollection.7 Antoine Meillet in 1923successfully got on to thetrack of IE metreand prosody, and this too hasproved a fruitfulline of research.8Studies of IE social institutions,religion, and mythology have also made intermittent headway, despite the special difficultiesthat arise in thesefields. Philologists imbued with the ideathat 'Indo-European' is a purelylinguistic term reserved for theirown use,and that it cannotmeaningfully be appliedto anything other than hypothetical,unspeakable language, nowadays find themselvesa beleagueredspecies. In generalit is concededthat, as it is certainthat an IE parentlanguage existed,it is equallycertain that theremust have been a historicalpeople who spokeit, and furthermore that this people must have had social forms, poetry, mythology, and so forth, reflexesof which it is legitimateto seekamong their heirs' effects. Effortsto correlatethe archaeologicaldata of prehistoricEurope with the progressof the IE peoples towards their historicalresidences have not so far succeededin evoking any agreement, either about these peoples' starting-point or about their movements in the fourth and third millennia, though certain models have emerged as the most plausible.9It is generally accepted that the story began somewhere in easternEurope or the west Asiatic steppe. So far as southern Greeceis concerned,there is something approachinga consensusthat the first arrivalof'Greek'- speakersin substantialnumbers is signalledby the destructionsand changesat the end of the EH clearly attests knowledge of our Iliad (as distinct from Slavonic Papers iii (I952) 21-66'Selected Writingsiv unidentified epic about the Trojan War). Correspond- (1966) 414-63; C. Watkins, Celtica vi (1963) I94-249; ing evidence from art does not go back before about 630 G. B. Pighi, Studi di ritmica e metrica (Torino 1970); M. (K. FriisJohansen,The Iliadin earlyGreek art [Copenha- L. West, Glotta li (I973) 161-87, cf. my Greek Metre gen 1967]). (Oxford I982) I-4; G. Nagy, Comparative studies in 6 See Riidiger Schmitt, Dichtungund Dichtersprache in Greekand Indicmeter (Cambridge Mass. I974). indogermanischerZeit (Wiesbaden 1967) 6 if., and in the 9 See e.g. V. Gordon Childe, The Aryans (London introduction to the collection of articles edited by him I926); Prehistoric migrations in Europe (Oslo I950) 146- under the title IndogermanischeDichtersprache (Darm- 51; P. Bosch-Gimpera, El problemaindoeuropeo (Mexico stadt 2 1968) f. 1960); G. Devoto, Origini 1962) 7 indeuropee (Florence Besides the works of Schmitt just cited see M. 71-156; M. Gimbutas, American Anthropologist lxv Durante, Sulla preistoriadella tradizionepoetica greca ii (I963) 815-36; S. Piggott, Ancient Europe (Edinburgh (Rome 1976); E. Campanile, Ricerchedi culturapoetica I965) 78-97; various papers in R. W. Ehrich (ed.), indoeuropea(Pisa I977). (Cited hereafter as 'Durante', Chronologiesin Old Worldarchaeology (Chicago 1965) 'Campanile'.) and in G.