Western University Scholarship@Western Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository 12-2-2016 12:00 AM Homeric Kinship on the Margins of the Oikos Tim Wright The University of Western Ontario Supervisor Dr. Christopher Brown The University of Western Ontario Graduate Program in Classics A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree in Doctor of Philosophy © Tim Wright 2016 Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd Part of the Classical Literature and Philology Commons Recommended Citation Wright, Tim, "Homeric Kinship on the Margins of the Oikos" (2016). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 4281. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/4281 This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship@Western. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@Western. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Abstract ! Homeric scholarship has a long history dating back to the 19th century of elucidating Homeric poetry through examining its kinship structures and how kinship is performed. Of particular note has been the focus on the father-child dynamic both per se and with respect to its widespread use as a prototype for a diverse range of relationships. Agamemnon, for example, can be profitably viewed as a kind of dysfunctional father to the Achaeans, and many of the Odyssey’s characters are implicitly judged based on the extent to which they fill the role of the gentle father (ēpios patēr) in various ways. Central to all of this scholarship, however, has been the essentially structural assumption that kinship is a binary concept. Some people are related; others are not. However, recent anthropology has exploded this idea of ‘pseudo-kinship’, concluding that ‘relatedness’, the belief that someone even outside of one’s genetic or marital family is kin, is a more accurate measure of how kinship actually works than more prescriptive approaches have been. In light of these conclusions, I attempt to expand upon our understanding of how kinship is portrayed in the Homeric poems by taking claims of relatedness more seriously. In a series of studies, I examine how more marginal relationships, those potentially outside of the patrilocal joint family, namely those involving bastards, slaves, and fugitives, function nonetheless as kinship relations. My model for this approach will be the oikos, with the father at its centre. Homeric kinship is portrayed as centripetal, with its various members jockeying for position relative to the patriarch. With this in mind, I focus especially on how my marginal subjects negotiate their position and how their role is portrayed with respect to the patriarch of their oikos. ! ! Keywords ! Homer, Epic, Kinship, Family, Bastardy, Slavery, Exile, Relatedness, Teucer, Heracles, Eumaeus, Odysseus, Phoenix, Achilles, Archaic Greece. !i Epigraph ! !Patria est, ubicumque est bene. !“One’s fatherland is wherever things go well.” – Pacuvius fr. 250 Schierl ! ! "ὸ "ᾶ% ῥικ)ᾶ% *+,-).% µ).µ/)+0+1 !οἶκ2% 4ὰ6 ἄ6'8"2% ἀ,.:;<% (.ὶ >?,2% !“Recall what the shrivelled tortoise said: for truly the best oikos is also one’s own.” – Cercidas fr. 7 Lomiento = 2 Powell ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !ii Acknowledgments ! Many thanks to my dissertation and examination committees, including Profs. Thomas Lennon, Randall Pogorzelski, Charles Stocking, Aara Suksi, and Ruth Scodel, who drove from Michigan and back in the same day in order to attend the examination. Particular gratitude is owed to three groups. First, the UWO Department of Classics. As those of you who know me well are aware, my first couple of years here were not the easiest. But I feel very strongly that the whole department rallied around me in a way that was remarkable in my experience. One of strengths of this department is its ability to support its own without coddling them. Second, my supervisor Prof. Chris Brown, who has been a mentor and, really, a benefactor when you consider all the books he has lent me – some of which I even intend to return someday. And he has also been a good friend when I’ve needed it the most. And finally my wife Heather and our unborn child. Having spent so much time thinking about families over the past number of years, it is fulfilling now to have one of my own. ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !iii Table of Contents ! Abstract and Keywords…………………………………………………………………….i Epigraph…………………………………………………………………………………...ii Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………iii Table of Contents…………………………………………………………………………iv Abbreviations……………………………………………………………………………...v Introduction………………………………………………………………………………..1 Chapter 1: Bastards………………………………………………………………………23 1.1: The Nothos…………………………………………………………………………..23 1.2: Teucer……………………………………………………………………………….48 1.3: Heracles……………………………………………………………………………..70 Chapter 2: Eumaeus……………………………………………………………………...88 Chapter 3: Phoenix and Achilles as Exiles……………………………………………..149 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………..187 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………190 Curriculum Vitae………………………………………………………………………..223 ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !iv Abbreviations ! I retain the traditional English spelling for Greek proper nouns. Greek words are transliterated unless a specific context is being quoted. I generally follow the LSJ and Oxford Latin Dictionary in abbreviating ancient sources, but sometimes I expand these in cases of potential ambiguity. Periodicals are abbreviated according to l’Année !philologique. Other abbreviations are as follows: ! DK: Diels, H. and W. Kranz. (1960). Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. 10th ed. Berlin: ! Weidmann. !FGrH: Jacoby, F. (1950-8). Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker. Leiden: Brill. HE: Finkelberg, M., ed. (2011). The Homer Encyclopedia. Chichester, West Sussex; ! Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. !IG: (1903- ). Inscriptiones Graecae. LfgrE: Snell, B. and U. Fleischer, eds. (1955-2010). Lexikon des frühgriechischen Epos. ! Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. LIMC: Ackermann, H.C. and J.-R. Gisler, eds. (1981-1997). Lexicon Iconographicum ! Mythologiae Classicae. Zürich: Artemis. LSJ: Liddell, G.H., et al., eds. (1968). A Greek-English Lexicon. 9th ed. with supplement. ! Oxford: OUP. PMGF: Davies, M., ed. (1991). Poetarum Melicorum Graecorum Fragmenta. Vol. 1. ! New York: OUP. TrGF: (1971-2004). Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & !Ruprecht. ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !v !1 INTRODUCTION This project’s objective is to expand our understanding of the portrayal of the social dynamic of the Homeric oikos (‘household’) by examining figures on its margins, namely bastards (especially Teucer and Heracles), Eumaeus in his role as slave, and Phoenix as exile. Fundamental to this study will be the assumption that these characters are portrayed as the kin of the central patrilines of their oikoi, namely Telamon/Ajax, Zeus, Laertes/Odysseus/Telemachus, and Peleus/Achilles respectively. This assumption runs against prevailing attitudes about Homeric kinship, and to some extent kinship in antiquity overall, which has tended to be treated as a binary category. For any given individual, a prescribed group of people are family, and everyone else is not. Recent social anthropology, however, has shown this idea to be problematic, and it should be fruitful to examine how a more mobile and contextual approach to the portrayal of kinship in Homeric poetry can elucidate the relationships between individual characters within various kinship groups. Most importantly I observe that kinship, like much in Homeric poetry, is both the basis for and subject of continual negotiation and struggle. Kinship groups can unite against a common enemy, but they are just as capable of internecine discord and even fatal violence.1 There is constant jockeying for position, perhaps most easily observable among a group’s marginal members, who are striving to belong. But these marginal members are no less kin for all that. Their position is simply less secure than that of the more central members. The difference is one of degree rather than kind. By Homeric poetry, I mean the Iliad and Odyssey. Other evidence, especially from 1 See Herzfeld (1985, 11-13) on the tendency of feuding kin groups in a modern Cretan village to come together in the face of an external threat. !2 Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and the fragments and epitomes of the epic cycle, will also prove useful, especially when, as with bastards, for example, the evidence in Homer is fairly slight. I will also use later (and especially Athenian) evidence, but only for comparative and supplementary purposes. By itself, later evidence can prove nothing. But when used cautiously in conjunction with evidence from the poetry itself, there can be a cumulative effect. It is now almost universally accepted that the Iliad and Odyssey represent crystallized forms of oral traditions.2 The different epic traditions, represented by Homeric epic, the Hesiodic corpus, and at least the earlier of the Homeric Hymns, are seen as representations of the same bardic practice. There is a growing trend that views these early corpora as “potentially allusive to shared aspects of mytho-poetic traditions, including mythological narratives and the epic phraseology commonly employed to express them.”3 Furthermore, “the relative date of two texts may not well replicate the relative date of their respective performance traditions.”4 This means that we cannot ignore the potentially informative nature of alternative traditions