Iliad 11: Healing, Healers, Nestor, and Medea

Home , Antiphates, Medea, Nestor (mythology)

Bruce Louden University of Texas El Paso [email protected]

Abstract

Iliad 11’s series of wounded Greek chiefs sends the doomed Patroklos to Nestor’s tent, where Heka-mede has just given Neleus’s son and the wounded healer Makhaon a restorative potion and shortly afterward will give Makhaon a bath. Nestor delivers a lengthy account, a Pylian epic, which briefly mentions Aga-mede, who knows all the pharmaka the earth grows. Together these details suggest two meanings for Nestor’s surprising longevity. Within the Iliad it serves as a vector to pre-Homeric epic but also alludes to Medea’s rejuvenation of Aison and to related episodes in her larger myth.

Keywords

Medea – Nestor – Argonautica – rejuvenation – Kirke

As multiple references demonstrate,* the Odyssey and the Iliad are aware of an Argonautic epic.1 While some commentators posit that an earlier Argonau- tica would have been fairly complete, others question whether Medea would have been part of it.2 In the case of the Odyssey, a consensus has formed that

* I should like to thank the referees for their comments, which significantly improved this piece, and Joel Christensen for help on an early draft. Translations from Greek are my own. 1 Homeric epic’s explicit mentions of Jason (Il. 7.469, 21.41; Od. 12.72), the Argo (Od. 12.70), Aietes (Od. 10.137, 12.70), and Jason’s son Euneos (Il. 7.468, 21.41, 23.747) point to considerable awareness of the larger contours of the myth. 2 Braswell and West both assume a fairly complete pre-Homeric version: “the poet of the Odyssey seems to know a narrative dealing with the voyage of the Argo” (Braswell 1988: 7); “one of the most certain results of Homeric scholarship, in many scholars’ view, is that some of Odysseus’ adventures owe something to a pre-existing narrative about Jason and the Argo- nauts” (West 2005: 39). Gantz writes, “One can scarcely doubt in any case that she [Medea] is an early part of the story, assisting Jason in an otherwise impossible task as Ariadne does for Theseus” (1993: 358).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi:10.1163/24688487_00201005Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 05:27:39AM via free access 152 louden it draws upon the traditional figure of Medea for components of three characters: Kirke (Braswell 1988: 306), Nausikaa (Meuli 1921; Crane 1987: 14–15, 19–21; West 2005; Louden 2011a: 136), and, to a lesser extent, Antiphates’s unnamed daughter (10.81–133) (Louden 2011b).3 I will argue that the Iliad also demon- strates awareness of Medea’s character, drawing on her template to fashion two lesser female characters, both of whom interact with Nestor in book 11. In so doing, I will also advance two new interpretations of his exceptional longevity. Nestor’s prolonged existence, more fitting for a Genesis patriarch such as Abraham than for a Homeric warrior, has different meanings in the two epics.4 In the Odyssey his longevity is a sign of his piety. His exemplary hospitality to the disguised Athena and Telemakhos in book 3 reveals him as a man who honors the gods, who, in turn, reward him with extraordinary success in his life, again, rather as a Genesis patriarch. In the Iliad, however, which lacks the Odyssey’s focus on rewarding moral and punishing immoral characters— Aristotle’s double ending (Poetics 1453a30–39)—Nestor’s longevity suggests something entirely different. A prominent speaker in both epics, in the Iliad Nestor makes lengthy speeches less connected with the poem’s immediate action, though obliquely commenting on it, set far in the past. His great tale at 11.670–762 is probably a highly truncated version of a pre-Homeric epic, adapted to fit its present position and circumstances in book 11 (cf. his tale at 7.124–160).5 In the Iliad, then, Nestor, in addition to his other character func- tions, can serve as a vector to pre-Homeric epic.6 His longevity itself can, in the Iliad, be understood as pointing to and instantiating this diachronic epic function. But I will be more concerned with advancing a second reason for Nestor’s preternatural age, also pointing to pre-Homeric epic—that it reflects the influ- ence of narratives in which Medea rejuvenates a character. Book 11 of the Iliad, through Nestor, provides further evidence of Home- ric epic’s interaction with Medea’s character. The episodes virtually name two women as Medea figures. Yet the Medea in the background of Iliad 11 is not the Medea of Argonautic myth per se—no Jason, no Argo, no Golden Fleece—but as she figures in episodes involving rejuvenation.

3 Note also the place name, Artakie, associated with Antiphates’s daughter: “Its name is almost certainly drawn from an older Argonautica, cf. the spring Artakie at Cyzikus in the Propontis, which became an integral part of the Argonaut legend (Ap. Rhod. 1.957)” (The Homer Ency- clopedia s.v. “Artakie” [Finkelberg 2011]). 4 See Louden 2011a: 36–40 on parallels between Nestor and Abraham. 5 See Frame 1978: 86–88 on the tale as a “lost Pylian epic”; cf. Tsagalis 2014: 240–241. 6 Though the same can be true of other characters, such as Phoinix, when he relates the Melea- gros story (Il. 9.524–599).

Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 05:27:39AM via free access iliad 11: healing, healers, nestor, and medea 153

Book 11 sets the stage for this side of Medea in its sustained focus on wounds. Agamemnon, wounded and driven from his aristeia, is the first of a series of six wounded Greeks that includes Diomedes (11.310–400), Odysseus (11.401–488), Aias and Makhaon (11.489–574), and Eurypylos (11.575–595) (see Hainsworth 1993: 212). Of these, Makhaon’s is most significant for the epic’s larger archi- tectonics and for the irony that is central to book 11: the healer himself is wounded.7 When Paris wounds Asklepios’s son, Idomeneus bids Nestor take him to safety: “For a healer is worth many men in return” (ἰητρός γὰρ ἀνὴρ πολλῶν ἀντάξιος ἄλλων, 11.514). Akhilleus, catching a glimpse of Nestor taking the wounded Makhaon back to the safety of his tent, not certain whether the wounded man is Makhaon, sends Patroklos to ascertain this (11.597–643). The Iliad may here, and in the brief sequel at 14.1–7, imply a supernatural reason for Nestor’s preternatural longevity. Two minor female characters, Heka-mede, who here, and at 14.1–8, serves Nestor and Makhaon, by preparing potions and drawing baths, and Aga-mede, whom Nestor mentions in his lengthy narrative and who has surpassing knowledge of drugs (φάρμακα, “drugs/herbs”), both function as instantiations of Medea’s traditional character. Their names are compounds fashioned on the same root as hers.8 The Iliad, I suggest, draws on a template of the figure of Medea to highlight and explore certain healing and restoration potentials that arise particularly in book 11. I will argue that this is, in effect, an unstated premise that informs Patroklos’s visit to Nestor’s tent. In book 11 the Iliad activates a Medea rubric around Nestor to increase the pathos of Patroklos’s looming tragedy. Let us first consider relevant episodes from Medea’s larger mythology in which she rejuvenates various characters and performs restorative acts. In a fragment of the Nostoi epic preserved in the argument of Euripides’s Medea, she makes Jason’s father, Aison, youthful by boiling many drugs and presum- ably Aison as well in golden cauldrons (Diggle 1989: 88; West 2003: 158–159):

7 To underscore the seriousness of Makhaon’s being wounded, the Iliad depicts it through a pivotal contrafactual (11.504–507), a form of syntax frequent in the two epics, generally taking the shape, “And now x would have happened, had not y intervened.” This construction is generally employed as “an emphatic method for changing the direction of the plot” (Louden 1993: 185). 8 As an anonymous referee points out, given the names Chantraine includes under μῆδος (“thought, counsel”) and μήδομαι (“contrive”) (1990: 693), the root, as a component in a name, may signify “skilled in.” Given gender stereotypes, however, in a woman it may signify “wiles.”

Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 05:27:39AM via free access 154 louden

αὐτίκα δ’ Αἴσονα θῆκε φίλον κόρον ἡβώοντα, γῆρας ἀποξύσασα ἰδυίηισι πραπίδεσσιν, φάρμακα πόλλ’ ἕψουσα ἐνὶ χρυσέοισι λέβησιν.

At once she made Aison a pleasing, lively youth, having, by her cunning wiles, scraped away his old age, having boiled many drugs in her golden cauldrons.

We will later see Heka-mede doing something analogous to γῆρας ἀποξύσασα, “having scraped away his old age.”9 This episode can be seen as the normative instance of her use of this particular form of magic. We can note that the formula φάρμακα πόλλ’ (“many drugs/herbs”) is inextricably associated with the larger Medea tradition. Aeschylus’s Trophoi (“Nurses”) or Dionysou Trophoi, a non-tragic (from our perspective) satyr play, depicted a similar incident, also noted in the argument to Euripides’s play. Here Medea is said to rejuvenate Dionysus’s nurses and their husbands by having boiled them: τὰς Διονύσου τροφοὺς μετὰ τῶν ἀνδρῶν αὐτῶν ἀνέψησασα ἐνεοποίησε (“having boiled Dionysus’s nurses with their husbands, she made them young”) (Diggle 1989: 89).Though no pharmaka are mentioned, they may be implied in ἀνέψησασα, as in the fragment from the Nostoi: φάρμακα πόλλ’ ἕψουσα. Alan Sommerstein considers why this act would be depicted in the satyr-play Trophoi, rather than in a tragedy (2008: 248):

Rejuvenation—at any rate successful rejuvenation—is a theme for satyr- drama, not tragedy; the role of Dionysus in the story points the same way, and there is virtually no doubt that this play was indeed satyric.

We return later to a fuller consideration of his perspective on the literary genres that may or may not depict successful instances of rejuvenation. In a third analogous incident, again preserved in the argument to Euripi- des’s Medea, Pherekydes and Simonides both wrote how Medea, having boiled Jason himself, rejuvenated him: Φερεκύδης δὲ καὶ Σιμωνίδης φασὶν ὡς Μήδεια

9 Discussing an Etruscan vase that seems to illustrate the same event, Lane Fox notes, “The imagery is datable to c. 630BC” (2009: 189), bringing us relatively close to the Homeric era. I am indebted to Christos Tsagalis for pointing out to me Phoinix’s very similar expression: γῆρας ἀποξύσας θήσειν νέον ἡβώοντα (“having scraped away old age to make me a young man in first blossom,”Il. 9.446). See also Janko 2017: 286–288.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 05:27:39AM via free access iliad 11: healing, healers, nestor, and medea 155

ἀνέψησασα τὸν Ἰάσονα νέον ποιήσειε (“Both Pherekydes and Simonides say how Medea, having boiled Jason, made him young”) (Diggle 1989: 89).10 The Odyssey, accordingly, depicts Kirke performing a kind of rejuvenation. When Odysseus bids her to return his men to their proper form, she does not merely restore them, but, after first anointing them with a pharmakon, rejuvenates them (10.392–396):

προσάλειφεν ἑκάστῳ φάρμακον ἄλλο. τῶν δ’ ἐκ μὲν μελέων τρίχες ἔρρεον, ἃς πρὶν ἔφυσε φάρμακον οὐλόμενον, τό σφιν πόρε πότνια Κίρκη· ἄνδρες δ’ ἂψ ἐγένοντο νεώτεροι ἢ πάρος ἦσαν καὶ πολὺ καλλίονες καὶ μείζονες εἰσοράασθαι.

She anointed each with another drug. The bristling hairs, which earlier the destructive drug had grown (which the Goddess Kirke had applied) fell away; they became younger men than they were before and fairer by far and stouter to behold.

Kirke πολυφάρμακος (“having many drugs”) here thus performs an act congru- ent with recurring elements of Medea’s magic, especially in making the crew νεώτεροι (“younger”). To these acts we can add instances of related forms of magic Medea performs. In Argonautic myth proper, she anoints Jason with a salve prior to his labors to make him impervious to the fire-breathing oxen. In Euripides’s play, she claims to know of pharmaka that could cure Aigeus’s childlessness, or possible impotence (717–718):11

παύσω γέ σ’ ὄντ’ ἄπαιδα καὶ παίδων γονὰς σπεῖραί σε θήσω· τοιάδ’ οἶδα φάρμακα.

I will cease your being childless and I will make you sow the seeds of offspring; such are the drugs I know.

10 Cf. Mastronarde 2002: 45–57 for a thorough analysis of plot elements in Euripides’s Medea that are attested in earlier works and Braswell 1988: 6–23 for discussion of Pindar’s Pythian 4. 11 Though see Mastronarde (2002: 54–55, 58) on whether this is merely a ruse, on how the audience might have understood her advice to Aigeus, and related issues; see also Gantz 1993: lxxi n. 29, 248.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 05:27:39AM via free access 156 louden

There is significant overlap here between σπεῖραί σε θήσω (“I will make you sow seeds”) and Αἴσονα θῆκε φίλον κόρον ἡβόωντα (“she made Aison a pleasing lively youth”), as instances of rejuvenation. These acts suggest Medea, through her magic, has power over the stages of human mortality. We turn now to Heka-mede. In between Patroklos’s arrival and departure, book 11, among other topics, briefly turns its focus on her, whom the Akha- ians had especially selected for Nestor (11.626–627). Here she prepares a famous potion (11.624: κυκεών) for him and Makhaon, mixing it into Nestor’s equally famous cup (11.631–640).12 Though potion and cup have received considerable attention through the ages, Heka-mede has not. Shortly afterward in story time, though many lines later in narrative time, while Patroklos is still busy healing Eurypylos, Heka-mede, in her second and final appearance in the Iliad, prepares a hot bath for the wounded Makhaon (14.6). In preparing a potion (κυκεών) and a warm bath, both for restorative purposes, Heka-mede performs two tasks repeatedly and thematically associated with Medea. Her name’s second component, -μήδη, as we have noted, suggests Medea’s name. The only marker missing here, that we might expect as a signpost to a Medea tradition, is any mention that she has knowledge of pharmaka. The potion Heka-mede mixes and serves requires a fresh look. Discussion has tended to focus on the potion’s unusual mixture of ingredients, at the expense of considering its larger purpose.13 Likened to goddesses as she prepares her unusual potion, Heka-mede bids them to drink it (11.638–641):

ἐν τῷ ῥά σφι κύκησε γυνὴ ἐϊκυῖα θεῇσιν οἴνῳ Πραμνείῳ, ἐπὶ δ’ αἴγεον κνῆ τυρὸν κνήστι χαλκείῃ, ἐπὶ δ’ ἄλφιτα λευκὰ πάλυνε, πινέμεναι δ’ ἐκέλευσεν, ἐπεί ῥ’ ὥπλισσε κυκειῷ.

In it the woman like the goddesses mixed for them Pramneian wine, and in addition, with a bronze grater she grated goat cheese, and sprinkled white barley as well, then, after she had prepared the potion, bid them to drink.

12 See, for instance, Plato Rep. 405e, though Plato confuses the characters involved. 13 Hainsworth, for instance, notes the scene’s love of detail, but merely concludes that this shows “epic’s characteristic love for the detail of the heroic world” (1993: 291). More on target, however, he observes, “Length, however … is correlated with significance in Homer.”

Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 05:27:39AM via free access iliad 11: healing, healers, nestor, and medea 157

Bryan Hainsworth classifies the unusual potion as “restorative” (1993: 291), which may nudge things in Medea’s direction by implying a hint of transfor- mational power in the drink. The specific word for this potion, κυκεών (11.641), is also used of those Kirke serves and of other potions perhaps associated with supernatural agency. Kirke prepares a potion for Odysseus’s crew, using several of the same ingredients as Heka-mede—cheese, barley, and Pramneian wine (Od. 10.234–237):

ἐν δέ σφιν τυρόν τε καὶ ἄλφιτα καὶ μέλι χλωρὸν οἴνῳ Πραμνείῳ ἐκύκα· ἀνέμισγε δὲ σίτῳ φάρμακα λύγρ’, …

in the potion for them she mixed cheese, white barley and green honey with Pramneian wine, but also mixed mournful drugs in with the grain.

Though κυκεών does not occur here, the related verb does (Od. 10.235: ἐκύκα; as at Il. 11.638: κύκησε, of Heka-mede). The standard view (e.g., Heubeck 1989: 56–57) with respect to the overlap between Kirke’s and Heka-mede’s potions has been to assume that the Odyssey 10 passage draws on Il. 11.637–639. There are, however, key differences between the passages, the biggest being, as Alfred Heubeck notes, that Kirke also includes φάρμακα (Od. 10.236) and that they share only one formula, οἴνῳ Πραμνείῳ. Against the traditional view, I argue that Od. 10.234–237 does not draw on Il. 11.638–639 and that both passages separately descend from a Medea tradition. The Odyssey episode more openly displays a connection with magic in Kirke’s pharmaka, which the Iliad chooses not to do or even deliberately suppresses. Hermes later describes to Odysseus how Kirke will mix a κυκεών for him into which she will slip φάρμακα: τεύξει τοι κυκεῶ, βαλέει δ’ ἐν φάρμακα σίτῳ (“she will make a potion for you, and throw drugs in the grain,” 10.290). Implicitly Hermes means that the φάρμακα will be λύγρ’ (“mournful”) as in the previous passage, for he goes on to specify that his φάρμακον ἐσθλόν (“good drug,” 10.292), the moly (described at length at 10.302–306), will counteract Kirke’s drugs, preventing them from taking effect. In a third passage, Odysseus narrates how the goddess does this: ἐν δέ τε φάρμακον ἧκε (“she hurled a drug into it,” 10.317). When she includes the pharmakon, she is said to be κακὰ φρονέουσ’ (“thinking evil thoughts,” 10.316). Kirke herself twice mentions her drugs, τάδε φάρμακ’ (10.326, 327), as they effect the metamorphosis of the crew into swine and would have of Odysseus. We should note that in all of Homeric epic κυκεών only appears in these two episodes. In addition, lest some think Heka-mede is merely perform-

Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 05:27:39AM via free access 158 louden ing a generic female function in preparing this potion, we must observe that she only does so here in the context of the series of wounded men rather than, say, doing so for Nestor when he returns to his tent in book 1. Heka-mede, in this light, corresponds to Medea as she performs acts of rejuvenation. When she finishes preparing the κυκεών, Heka-mede bids Nestor and Makhaon to drink it: πινεμέναι δ’ ἐκέλευσεν, ἐπεί ῥ’ ὥπλισσε κυκειῶ (“and when she readied the potion, she bid them to drink it,” Il. 11.641). Odysseus offers a similar description of Kirke: τεῦχε δέ μοι κυκεῶ χρυσέῳ δέπᾳ, ὄφρα πίοιμι (“and she contrived a potion for me in a golden goblet, so I would drink it,” Od. 10.317). The lines convey essentially the same two ideas, yet share no formulaic expres- sions. It may be noteworthy that Patroklos does not partake of the potion (nor is he in present need of it), arriving immediately after Nestor and Makhaon drink it (Il. 11.643). For further understanding of what is meant by κυκεών, we should recall that the term is also used for what initiates imbibe during the Eleusinian Mysteries (Hainsworth 1993: 293). Nicholas Richardson elaborates (1974: 344–346):

Its [κυκεών] religious use suggests its antiquity. … In later times its use becomes restricted … to certain medicinal purposes … at Eleusis. … The Cyceon … may have calmed them and thus helped to put them in the right frame of mind for the Mystery revelations.

If we combine its occurrences with Heka-mede, Kirke, and the Eleusinian Mys- teries, κυκεών as a term is restricted to circumstances that suggest metamorphosis, or altering a mortal’s relation with mortality. In some interpretations, affairs on Aiaia may have more in common with the Eleusinian Mysteries than generally thought. Egbert Bakker notes ancient readings of the Odyssey that see Aiaia as emblematic of the cycle of life and rebirth (2013: 79–91). Odysseus’s crew, who will soon descend to Hades and successfully return, are waiting to be reborn. In this sense, Kirke’s κυκεών offers considerable overlap with initiates imbibing it at Eleusis. Is there an implicit association between Heka-mede’s κυκεών and these others? We should also note another way Heka-mede is characterized in this episode. As she prepares her potion, she is given a somewhat unusual epithet: γυνὴ ἐϊκυῖα θεῇσιν (“a woman like goddesses,” 11.638). An earlier comment may help explain how she is like goddesses. One of the reasons stated for why she was given to Nestor is that she βουλῇ ἀριστεύεσκε ἁπάντων (“excels all in her counsel,” 11.627). With knowledge resembling that of the gods, excelling all others in counsel, Heka-mede again seems quite at home in a larger Medea tradition, if we think of how crucial Medea’s counsel repeatedly was to Jason.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 05:27:39AM via free access iliad 11: healing, healers, nestor, and medea 159

Having learned why Patroklos has come and asking him why Akhilleus cares who is wounded, Nestor launches into his summary of a pre-Homeric epic about his own youthful prowess against the Epeians and their king Augeias (11.655–762).14 He mentions Aga-mede, daughter of Augeias, whose husband, Moulios, he slew. Aga-mede is distinguished by a specific trait: ἣ τόσα φάρμακα ᾔδη ὅσα τρέφει εὐρεῖα χθών (“she knew as many drugs as the wide earth grows,” 11.741). Just some lines, then, after Heka-mede prepares her potion, Nestor is minded to recall a corresponding woman, again having a name compounded on the root on which Medea’s is formed. Here the details are perhaps even more obviously Medean. Her name, which can be rendered as “very cunning,” is cou- pled with the specific characteristic of knowledge of all drugs. Aga-mede’s expertise in drugs and her father’s name, Augeias, with its clear solar associations, underscore her correspondence with both Medea and Kirke (cf. Grote 1869: 136). Medea’s father, Aietes, is Helios’s son; Kirke is Helios’s own daughter. The description of Aga-mede’s knowledge of drugs is a close counterpart to Kirke’s epithet πολυφάρμακος (“having many drugs,” Od. 10.276). The Aga-mede passage highlights the one element absent from Heka-mede’s brief interaction, explicit knowledge about pharmaka. Together, then, the two women embody complementary aspects of Medea’s traits, just lines apart from each other. Is this a coincidence? Let us now review Patroklos’s larger trajectory, as he intersects with these characters. Paris’s wounding Makhaon, earlier in Iliad 11, carries Patroklos to Nestor’s tent (see Hainsworth 1993: 278). A sense of panic and desperation for the Greeks builds as so many of the best warriors already wounded in quick succession in book 11 are here capped by the wounding of the healer Makhaon. As the narrator ominously confirms only a few lines later, for Patrok- los it is the beginning of the trajectory that leads to his death: κακοῦ δ’ ἄρα οἱ πέλεν ἀρχή (“and this was the beginning of evil for him,” 11.604).15 Right before Patroklos leaves Nestor, having ascertained Makhaon’s identity as the wounded man Akhilleus had observed, Nestor makes his fateful suggestion to him that Akhilleus should send him out to battle in his place, wearing his armor, to buy the Greeks some time (11.795–802). When Patroklos leaves Nestor’s tent, only then do we learn he also has acquired mastery of healing drugs (ἤπια φάρμακα, 11.830) from Akhilleus, who had earlier learned from Kheiron (11.832). In larger Argonautic myth, of course,

14 At 11.659–662, Nestor himself catalogues the recently wounded. 15 Cf. “Here he [the narrator] is looking forward, but looking forward a remarkably long way … and making a precise foreshadowing of events in book 16 some 3,000 verses ahead” (Hainsworth 1993: 288).

Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 05:27:39AM via free access 160 louden

Kheiron also figures as Jason’s instructor.16 Elsewhere the Iliad (4.217–219) also notes that Asklepios himself learned drug lore from the Centaur, passing it on to his son Makhaon. In Kheiron, and his collocation with healing drugs, Iliad 11 perhaps makes yet a further indirect allusion to Medea. Patroklos directs his healing skills to the wounded Eurypylos, applying a bitter, pain-killing root: ῥίζαν βάλε πικρήν … ὀδυνήφατον, ἥ οἱ ἁπάσας / ἔσχ’ ὀδύνας (“and he applied a bitter root … painkilling, which held all pains in check,” 11.846–848). The explicit mention of roots conforms to Medea’s thematic abilities in magic, including rejuvenation, and the Kirke passages in the Odyssey as well. Having treated Eurypylos, when Patroklos finally returns to Akhilleus, he tal- lies the recently wounded Greeks (16.24–28). When Nestor earlier catalogues the recently wounded (11.659–662), his sequence is Diomedes, Odysseus, Aga- memnon, Eurypylos, then Makhaon, who receives the longest description, but sequentially, should come before Eurypylos. When Patroklos lists them, his sequence also has Diomedes, Odysseus, Agamemnon, Eurypylos, but he omits mention of Makhaon. However, he goes on to add, τοὺς μέν τ’ ἰητροὶ πολυφάρμα- κοι ἀμφιπένονται / ἕλκε’ ἀκειόμενοι (“and these men the healers are tending with many drugs caring for their wounds,” 16.28), having a plural “healers,” where Nestor has the singular pre-eminent healer, Makhaon. As Richard Janko suggests (1992: 310), ἰητροὶ πολυφάρμακοι (“healers with many drugs”) serves the same larger function in Patroklos’s account as Makhaon in Nestor’s, though book 11 does not depict Makhaon in the act of healing. Like Nestor, he again dis- rupts the original, and chronological, sequence by putting the healer Makhaon, or equivalent, after Eurypylos for emphasis. There are two peculiarities in Patroklos’s seeming periphrasis here for Makhaon.We have seen that his epithet for healers, πολυφάρμακος (only here in the Iliad), is used in the Odyssey only of Kirke (10.276). Why does Patroklos use the plural ἰητροὶ πολυφάρμακοι, which does not correspond with the events earlier depicted? Is he, or the composer, also thinking of Heka-mede whom he just left, and her restorative potion, or is he even influenced by Nestor’s mention of Aga-mede, whose description, ἣ τόσα φάρμακα ᾔδη ὅσα τρέφει εὐρεῖα χθών (“who knows as many drugs as the broad earth grows”), makes her literally πολυφάρ- μακος? In the Iliad, some characters will be healed and some will not. In the meet- ing of Nestor and Patroklos, two marked contrasts for healers intersect. Like Makhaon, Patroklos, successful at healing Eurypylos, having learned how to do

16 See Hainsworth 1993: 121, on how Phoinix, at Il. 9.442, “claims the role usually assigned to the centaur Kheiron.”

Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 05:27:39AM via free access iliad 11: healing, healers, nestor, and medea 161 so from Kheiron once removed, will himself shortly become the healer who will be (mortally) wounded. In the maddening delays that follow, as suspense builds in a manner that almost prefigures Hitchcockian technique, Patroklos is still tending Eurypylos four books later (15.399–405). In the case of Makhaon, however, Heka-mede, in her final appearance at 14.6–7, prepares him a warm bath as he remains in Nestor’s tent. Nestor bids him to stay, drinking wine, until Heka-mede “washes away the bloody gore” (καὶ λούσῃ ἄπο βρότον αἱμα- τόεντα, 14.7) from his wounds. The word for “gore,” βρότος, differs only in its accent from the word for “mortal,” βροτός, and the two words are etymologi- cally related. In any case, it briefly seems and sounds as if Heka-mede will wash away Makhaon’s mortality, typologically similar to the passage quoted earlier in which Medea “scrapes away” old age, γῆρας ἀποξύσασα. One of the longest Homeric descriptions of the preparation of a bath is that of the one Odysseus receives from Kirke, though one of her four nymphs does the honors (Od. 10.358–364). First, the nymph heats the water (10.359–361),

ἰαίνετο δ’ ὕδωρ. αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ δὴ ζέσσεν ὕδωρ ἐνὶ ἤνοπι χαλχῷ, ἐς ῥ’ ἀσάμινθον ἕσασα λό’ ἐκ τρίποδος μεγάλοιο.

and she heated the water. But when the water was boiling in the glittering bronze, having sat me in the bath, she washed me from the great tripod.

As Heubeck notes of ἰαίνετο,“ἰαίνεσθαι means not so much ‘heating up’ as ‘boiling,’” as ζέσσεν clarifies in the following line (1989: 63).17 When the nymph will apply boiling water to Odysseus, it may remind us of other restorative passages: Medea’s rejuvenations of Aison and Jason involve boiling; so do the gods’ min- istrations to Pelops.18 Such notions, that boiling itself could have a rejuvenating power, may rest on a presumed association between ἰαίνετο (“to heat”) and ἰάο- μαι (“to heal”) (cf. Chaintraine 1990: 453). Steve Reece, in his study of hospitality in the Odyssey, remarks on “the transformative function of the bath” (1993: 34, my emphasis). Though he is thinking more of disguise and recognition, when considered in the larger context of Medea’s rejuvenating baths, his comment is equally applicable to Odysseus’s bath here. Odysseus recalls how Kirke’s divine

17 Heubeck also remarks on the antiquity of several of the words found here: “The lines are also remarkable for the many words attested in Myc.” 18 See Gantz (1993: 367) for further discussion of those episodes.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 05:27:39AM via free access 162 louden attendant concluded his bath: she took “the spirit-destroying weariness from my limbs” (μοι ἐκ κάματον θυμοφθόρον εἵλετο γυίων) and “anointed me richly with olive oil” (ἔχρισεν λίπ’ ἐλαίῳ, 10.363–364). We should note the correspondence between her doing so and Medea scraping off old age from Aison as well as Heka-mede washing bloody gore off Makhaon. It is well known that Homeric epic tends to minimize the use of magic and other incredible forms of agency (magic swords or rings) other than those directly proceeding from the gods (Griffin 1977). This is especially true of the Iliad, as contrasted with the Odyssey (in which Odysseus could stay with Kalypso, immortal and ageless, and Kirke, as we have seen, performs acts of rejuvenation), and rules out the possibility of a “Medea” rejuvenating someone by means of a magic bath and potion. Nonetheless, we should not ignore the opposite outcomes for Makhaon and Patroklos.The former, the Greeks’ greatest healer at Troy, shares in a potion, a κυκεών, prepared by Heka-mede, and then is to receive a warm bath from her hands. The soon-to-be slain Patroklos arrives at Nestor’s tent immediately after they have consumed the potion, as the tragic arc that will quickly end his life just begins.19 His caring for Eurypylos increases not only the pathos of his looming death but the irony in his becoming the healer who will not be healed, fulfilling the larger irony in Akhilleus’s wish that the Greeks would suffer (Il. 1.408–412). What of Nestor himself?20 Are we not to assume that he regularly receives warm baths from Heka-mede and drinks potions she has prepared?Though the Iliad cannot depict him receiving literal rejuvenation at the hands of “Medea,” as the larger tradition depicts Aison, perhaps we are meant to intuit a similar rubric. His preternatural longevity, unique in the Homeric epics, is, on the one hand, a vector to pre-Homeric epic and, on the other hand, implicitly associated with Heka-mede, whose warm baths and potions suggest the Kolchian princess’s rejuvenation of aged Aison and who, in ἐϋπλόκαμος (“of the fair locks,” Il. 11.624, 14.6), shares an epithet with Kirke (Od. 10.136, 11.8, 12.150). The thematic associations are reinforced when Nestor narrates the brief reference to Aga-mede, daughter of Helios-referencing Augeias, and her Medea-like knowledge of drugs.

19 Though he is a reasonably well-developed character whose existence is not confined to this series of episodes, it seems possible that Eurypylos’s name has a functional applica- tion as a “speaking name,” at least as far as Patroklos is concerned, in the sense “wide- gated,” an epithet of Hades. See discussion in Mühlestein 1987: 142–144. 20 See also Frame 1978: chapter 4, in which he argues that Nestor’s name derives from a figu- rative meaning of νέομαι, “to return to light and life.”

Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 05:27:39AM via free access iliad 11: healing, healers, nestor, and medea 163

If we are correct in identifying Aga-mede and Heka-mede as figures associated with Medea and invoking her rubric, then the Iliad is clearly well aware of her character.21 She is present as if by a form of ἀποσιώπησις through these two women, their names, their acts, and their characteristics. Though unnamed in the Iliad or the Odyssey, Medea, it would seem, has left ripples in the larger epic fabric, in Aga-mede and Heka-mede in the Iliad and in some of the interactions Nausikaa and Kirke have with Odysseus in the Odyssey (both of whom are also responsible for the hero’s receiving baths). Episodes in both epics can be seen not only engaging Medea’s larger mythology but in dialogue with well-known scenes and encounters.22

Works Cited

Bakker, E.J. 2013. The Meaning of Meat and the Structure of the Odyssey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Braswell, B.K. 1988. A Commentary on the Fourth Pythian Ode of Pindar. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Chantraine, P. 1990. Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque. Paris: Éditions Klincksieck. Crane, G. 1987. “The Odyssey and Conventions of the Heroic Quest.” Classical Antiquity 6: 11–37. Diggle, J. 1989. Euripidis Fabulae: Tomus I. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Finkelberg, M. ed. 2011. The Homer Encyclopedia. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Frame, D. 1978.The Myth of Return in Early Greek Epic. New Haven:Yale University Press. Gantz, T. 1993. Early Greek Myth. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Griffin, J. 1977. “The Epic Cycle and the Uniqueness of Homer.” Journal of Hellenic Stud- ies 97: 39–53. Grote, G. 1869. A History of Greece. London: John Murray. Hainsworth, B. 1993. The Iliad: A Commentary. Volume III: Books 9–12. Cambridge: Cam- bridge University Press. Heubeck, A. 1989. “Books IX–XII.” In Heubeck, A. and Hoekstra, A. A Commentary on Homer’s Odyssey. Volume II: Books IX–XVI. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 3–143.

21 Though see Huxley (1969: 61), for the opposite argument, that Medea is developed (“fore- shadowed”) from the brief mention of Aga-mede at Il. 11.739–740. 22 In a further instance of a possible engagement, Kullmann argues that the Iliad’s “Cata- logue of Ships” (2.484–877) is influenced by a catalogue from an earlier oral Argonautic epic (2012: 20–24).

Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 05:27:39AM via free access 164 louden

Huxley, G.L. 1969. Greek Epic Poetry from Eumelos to Panyassis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Janko, R. 1992. The Iliad: A Commentary. Volume IV: Books 13–16. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Janko, R. 2017. “Tithonus, Eos and the Cicada in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite and Sappho fr. 58.” In Tsagalis, C. and Markantonatos, A. eds. The Winnowing Oar—New Perspectives in Homeric Studies: Studies in Honor of Antonios Rengakos. Berlin: de Gruyter. 267–292. Kullmann, W. 2012. “Neoanalysis between Orality and Literacy: Some Remarks Con- cerning the Development of Greek Myths including the Legend of the Capture of Troy.” In Montanari, F., Rengakos, A., and Tsagalis, C. eds. Homeric Contexts: Neo- analysis and the Interpretation of Oral Poetry. Berlin: de Gruyter. 13–25. Lane Fox, R. 2009. Travelling Heroes: In the Epic Age of Homer. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Louden, B. 1993. “Pivotal Contrafactuals in Homeric Epic.” Classical Antiquity 12: 181– 198. Louden, B. 2011a. The Odyssey and the Near East. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Louden, B. 2011b. “Laestrygonians.” In Finkelberg, ed. Electronic. Mastronarde, D.J. 2002. Euripides: Medea. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Meuli, K. 1921. Odyssee und Argonautika: Untersuchungen zur griechischen Sagenge- schichte und zum Epos. Dissertation, Universität Basel. Mühlestein, H. 1987. Homerische Namenstudien. Frankfurt am Main: Athenäum. Reece, S. 1993. The Stranger’s Welcome: Oral Theory and the Aesthetics of the Homeric Hospitality Scene. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Richardson, N.J. 1974. The Homeric Hymn to Demeter. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Sommerstein, A.H. 2008. Aeschylus Fragments. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Tsagalis, C. 2014. “Preface.” Trends in Classics 6: 239–246. West, M.L. 2003. Greek Epic Fragments. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. West, M.L. 2005. “Odyssey and Argonautica.” Classical Quarterly 55: 39–64.

Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 05:27:39AM via free access