Eris and Epos Composition, Competition, and the Domestication of Strife

Eris and Epos Composition, Competition, and the Domestication of Strife Joel P. Christensen Brandeis University [email protected] Abstract This article examines the development of the theme of eris in Hesiod and Homer. Start- ing from the relationship between the destructive strife in the Theogony (225) and the two versions invoked in the Works and Days (11–12), I argue that considering the two forms of strife as echoing zero and positive sum games helps us to identify the cultural and compositional force of eris as cooperative competition. After establishing eris as a compositional theme from the perspective of oral poetics, I then argue that it develops from the perspective of cosmic history, that is, from the creation of the universe in Hes- iod’s Theogony through the Homeric epics and into its double definition in the Works and Days.To explore and emphasize how this complementarity is itself a manifestation of eris, I survey its deployment in our major extant epic poems. Keywords eris – competition – conflict – poetics – rivalry In Cypria fr. 1, Zeus fans “the flames of the great strife of the Trojan war / to lighten the [earth’s] burden with death” (ῥιπίσσας πολέμου μεγάλην ἔριν Ἰλιακοῖο, 5).* Similarly, in Hesiod (fr. 204 M-W), when strife divides the gods at the birth of Hermione—“all the gods were of two minds / because of the strife” (πάν- τες δὲ θεοὶ δίχα θυμὸν ἔθεντο / ἐξ ἔριδος, 94–95)—Zeus hastens the destruction of the Heroes: “And then he hastened to extinguish the great race of human * A version of this article was given at the Heartland Graduate Conference in Ancient Stud- ies at the University of Missouri in 2015. Special thanks are due as well to Justin Arft, Elton Barker, Erwin Cook, Catherine Keane, and Leonard Muellner for stimulating and challeng- ing conversations. This article was also greatly improved by YAGE’s editors and anonymous referees. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi:10.1163/24688487_00201001Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 05:57:08PM via free access 2 christensen beings / and gave this excuse for destroying the souls of the demigods” (ἤδη δὲ γένος μερόπων ἀνθρώπων / πολλὸν ἀϊστῶσαι σ̣π̣ε̣ῦ̣δ̣ε̣, π̣ρ̣[ό]φασιν μὲν ὀλέσθαι / ψυχὰς ἡμιθέω[ν ̣̣̣̣̣ ̣̣̣̣̣ ̣]ο̣ι̣σ̣ι̣βροτοῖσι, 96–98).1 In the Works and Days, Zeus like- wise authorizes the death of the race of heroes in wars at Troy and Thebes (158–165).2 Proclus, in his summary of the Epic Cycle, echoes these motifs when describing the origin of the Trojan War (Chrest. 86–90): παραγενομένη δὲ Ἔρις εὐωχουμένων τῶν θεῶν ἐν τοῖς Πηλέως γάμοις νεῖκος περὶ κάλλους ἀνίστησιν Ἀθηνᾷ, Ἥρᾳ καὶ Ἀφροδίτῃ αἳ πρὸς Ἀλέξανδρον ἐν Ἴδῃ κατὰ Διὸς προσταγὴν ὑφ’ Ἑρμοῦ πρὸς τὴν κρίσιν ἄγονται· καὶ προκρίνει τὴν Ἀφροδίτην ἐπαρθεὶς τοῖς Ἑλένης γάμοις Ἀλέξανδρος. Eris appeared while the gods were feasting at the marriage banquet of Peleus and set in motion a conflict among Athena, Hera, and Aphrodite who, at the command of Zeus, were led by Hermes to Alexander on Ida for judgment. Alexander earned a marriage with Helen by choosing Aphrodite as the winner.3 Here, conflict (neikos) comes from rival claims to honor in a social setting (a wedding), resolved through a problematic judgment (krisis) that results in a re-arrangement of human honor and position through another marriage. The anthropomorphized Eris of the gods becomes the cataclysmic eris of theTrojan War. But, as we know from Hesiod’s Works and Days, there are two kinds of eris on the earth (Οὐκ ἄρα μοῦνον ἔην Ἐρίδων γένος, ἀλλ’ ἐπὶ γαῖαν / εἰσὶ δύω, 11–12) while only a single eris is born in the Theogony (225). This article examines the interrelationship between eris and early Greek epic to argue that eris impacts the development of individual poems both as a theme (influencing the shape of the poems) and as a cultural aesthetic that drives poets to rival one another.4 I will thus argue as well that the poets’ eristic efforts to contemplate the nature of eris contribute to a shared endeavor to adapt or, for lack of a better term, to domesticate strife. What I mean by domestication is 1 For a recent discussion of this passage and relevant scholarship, see Ormand 2014: 201–214. 2 For overlap in the destruction motifs, see Scodel 1982; Koenen 1994 (ancient Near Eastern par- allels); Mayer 1996. Cf. Nagy 1979: 220. For Hesiod, flood narratives, and engagement with the Prometheus myth, see Stamatopoulou 2017: 133–136. 3 All translations are my own. 4 See Griffith 1990 for the competitive character of Greek culture. See also Kurke 1999 and Collins 2004. Cf. Barker and Christensen 2006, 2008. Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 05:57:08PM via free access eris and epos 3 the transformation through which the eris that appears cosmically threatening at the beginning of Hesiod’s Theogony becomes formative for and espoused by early Greek poetry. This article will survey the primary extant evidence to sketch out the development of strife from Hesiod’s Theogony through the Works and Days. As a result of the limited scope of this approach, many features of the poems will go unmentioned. I will start by addressing a few conceptual frameworks impor- tant for my argumentation—a teleological view of Panhellenic epic poetry as cosmic history, modern analogies for types of competition (zero and positive sum games), and a compositional structure called the anticipatory doublet— alongside the problem of eris’s multiple genealogies.5 From there, I will argue that eris (with its near synonym neikos) and the concomitants dasmos and krisis function as a compositional theme from the perspective of oral poetics. After I have established the compositional features of the theme, I will briefly explore its deployment in the Theogony, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, and Hesiod’s Works and Days. I will argue that the poems appear to work together to domesticate strife, that is, to turn a dangerous feature of the world and human nature into something notionally more productive. Cosmic History and Complementarity: A Positive Sum Game It has been argued that when viewed together the poems attributed to Hesiod “impl[y] a narrative of external and intellectual progress” (Haubold 2010: 10– 11). And scholars have also noted a deep complementarity in the worlds created and explored by Homer and Hesiod (see Slatkin 2011).6 An essential feature of my approach to the problem of eris is that it is teleological: following the work of Barbara Graziosi and Johannes Haubold (2005), I imagine the major extant epic poems reflecting a worldview of their audiences.7 This worldview frame- 5 See Snodgrass 1971 for Panhellenism in material culture around the eighth century B.C.E. Cf. Nagy 1979: 7 for Panhellenism and Homer; for Panhellenism and Hesiod, see Nagy 1990: 36–82; Stamatopoulou 2017: 13–16. For Panhellenism in general, including politics, art, and religion, see Mitchell 2007. 6 For Homer and Hesiod as representing a full history of the universe, see Graziosi and Haubold 2005: 31; cf. Koning 2010: 290–294; Mureddu 1983; Edmunds 2016: 19. 7 This is conceptual because it makes no claims about the actual compositional sequence of the poems or their relative dating. Conventional relative chronologies tend to put the Home- ric poems first: see Janko 1982: 13; Koenen 1994; Rose 2012: 170; for an earlier date for Hesiod, see West 2012: 240. For the relation of chronology and writing, see Most 1993: 76. Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 05:57:08PM via free access 4 christensen work projects upon the mythical past an “evolutionary” development that starts with the creation of the universe and terminates with life in Archaic Greece, as reflected in the Works and Days. Each step in the cosmic narrative sequence allows for a reconsideration of the major forces of the universe and the relative position of human beings. In particular, these stages use the deployment of eris to examine the origins of conflict, the various efforts to mediate conflicts through the distributions of rights and honors, and the conse- quences and exigencies of incomplete or problematic resolutions. In this way, the theme of strife (eris and neikos) and its critical concomitants, distribution (dasmos) and judgment (krisis), develop as and through compositional features of the epic tradition.8 For the divine realm, these related motifs reflect how the Olympians achieved their stability; for humans, they evoke changes in politics and reflect the concerns of the audience’s real worlds.9 To be clear, I am not asserting that the texts of the poems we have were com- posed in the sequence I have just outlined, but rather that the poetic tradition generated a series of reflections on eris during countless performances and that these reflections are conducive to and reinforced by a particular conceptual sequence, which in turn functions teleologically to eventuate in an ideological view espoused during the Archaic Age.10This self-conscious positioning—with the Odyssey clearly meant to be understood as coming after the Iliad and with the Works and Days as post-Theogonic—implies a deep dialogue and engagement among the poetic traditions.11 Indeed, the intertextuality of one poem’s contents reacts to another in such a way that recreates the sequence through performance for audiences (cf. Most 1993: 77). Other scholars, indeed, have noted the co-influence and complementarity of the Hesiodic and Homeric treatments of strife (Munding 1995; Havelock 1966). My analysis builds on this work but with the understanding that, instead of one narrative responding to the other directly, we have the end result of a repeated engagement structurally integrated into the poems’ final forms.

Load more