Copyright by Christopher Lovell 2011 The Dissertation Committee for Christopher Lovell Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: The Overburdened Earth: Landscape and Geography in Homeric Epic Committee: Andrew Riggsby, Supervisor Deborah Beck Erwin Cook Larry Kim Alex Purves The Overburdened Earth: Landscape and Geography in Homeric Epic by Christopher Lovell, B.A.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin August 2011 to Amanda, Ben, and Nick The Overburdened Earth: Landscape and Geography in Homeric Epic Publication No._____________ Christopher Patrick Lovell, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2011 Supervisor: Andrew Riggsby This dissertation argues that Homer's Iliad depicts the Trojan landscape as participant in or even victim of the Trojan War. This representation alludes to extra-Homeric accounts of the origins of the Trojan War in which Zeus plans the war to relieve the earth of the burden of human overpopulation. In these myths, overpopulation is the result of struggle among the gods for divine kingship. Through this allusion, the Iliad places itself within a framework of theogonic myth, depicting the Trojan War as an essential step in separating the world of gods and the world of men, and making Zeus’ position as the father of gods and men stable and secure. The Introduction covers the mythological background to which the Iliad alludes through an examination of extra-Homeric accounts of the Trojan War’s origins. Chapter One analyzes a pair of similes at Iliad 2.780-85 that compare the Akhaian army to Typhoeus, suggesting that the Trojan War is a conflict similar to Typhoeus’ attempt to usurp Zeus’ position as king of gods and men. Chapter Two demonstrates how Trojan characters are closely linked with the landscape in the poem’s first extended battle scene (4.422-6.35); the deaths of these men are a symbolic killing of the land they defend. Chapter Three discusses the aristeia of Diomedes in Book 5, where his confrontations with Aphrodite, Ares, and Apollo illustrate the heroic tendency to v disrespect the status difference between gods and men. Athena’s authorization of Diomedes’ actions reveals the existence of strife among the Olympian gods, which threatens to destabilize the divine hierarchy. Chapter Four examines the Akhaian wall whose eventual destruction is recounted at the beginning of Book 12. The wall symbolizes human impiety and its destruction is a figurative fulfillment of Zeus’ plan to relieve the earth of the burden of unruly humanity. Finally, Chapter Five treats the flußkampf and Theomachy of Books 20 and 21, episodes adapting scenes of divine combat typically associated with the struggle for divine kingship. In the Iliad, these scenes show that Zeus’ power is unassailable. vi Table of Contents Introduction.......................................................................................................................................1 Chapter 1. The Typhoeus Similes (Iliad 2.780-85) ............................................................... 17 Chapter 2. The Trojan Landscape and the Overburdened Earth ....................................... 63 Chapter 3. The Aristeia of Diomedes.......................................................................................107 Chapter 4. The Akhaian Wall....................................................................................................152 Chapter 5. The Laughter of Zeus .............................................................................................183 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................211 Bibliography..................................................................................................................................217 Vita ...............................................................................................................................................229 vii Introduction Interest in Homeric geography has o!en focused on the question of accuracy: do the epics faithfully describe real places? Robert Wood, in his Essay on the Original Genius and Writings of Homer, a pioneering work of Homeric scholarship published posthumously in 1775, referred to his investigation of the geography of the Troad as ful"llment of “the humble duty of bearing testimony, as an eyewitness, of the Poet’s veracity.”1 More than three decades later, Byron recorded his indignant reaction to #omas Campbell’s suggestion that no one cared about the “authenticity of the tale of Troy”:2 I have stood upon that plain daily, for more than a month, in 1810; and, if any thing diminished my pleasure, it was that the blackguard Byrant had impugned its veracity...I still venerated the grand original as the truth of history (in the material facts) and of place. Otherwise, it would have given me no delight.3 For Byron, truth is a necessary condition for Homer’s poetry to create delight. One component of this truthfulness is the truth of place, which Byron considered himself able to judge because of his exploration of the Troad. Byron links topographical accuracy with historical accuracy. #is link makes a reappearance in Walter Leaf’s Troy, published in 1912, a!er the excavations of Schliemann and Dörpfeld had established Hissarlik as the site of Homeric Troy. Leaf believed that the Iliad displayed such a great familiarity with Troy and its surroundings, that “no case of such a local inconsistency, not a single anatopism...can be brought home to the Iliad.” 4 For Leaf, 1. Wood (1775) 302. 2. Campbell (1819) 5:311. 3. Byron (1978) 21-22. 4. Leaf (1912) 12. 1 the accuracy of Homer’s description not only demonstrated his eyewitness knowledge of the Troad, but also showed that the Iliad was “based on a very solid foundation of historical fact.”5 More recently, John V. Luce has characterized his investigation of Homeric landscapes as a defense of the poems’ topographical accuracy against a recent tendency to see Homeric landscapes as poetic constructions.6 But an approach that concentrates on Homer’s "delity to the real world risks losing sight of the role of landscape within the poems themselves. For example, one of the more prominent landmarks on the Trojan plain as it appears in the Iliad is the tomb (sēma) of Ilos, the eponymous founder of the city of Ilion and the grandfather of Priam. #e Iliad places this tomb between the city and the fords of the river Skamandros, but there is no tumulus visible today in the area, and the tomb remains unidenti"ed.7 Regardless of its historical reality, within the poem, Ilos’ tomb marks the Trojans’ ancestral claim to the land, and in this respect it is historically accurate in re$ecting the role of tomb of a founding hero in de"ning the territory of the developing polis and protecting it from hostile forces.8 #e tomb is "rst mentioned during the interrogation of Dolon, a captured Trojan spy, by Odysseus and Diomedes, in Book 10.9 When asked about the location of Hektor and whether the Trojans intend to withdraw to the city, Dolon replies that Hektor is holding a council at the tomb of Ilos (10.414-16). #e Trojans’ 5. Leaf (1912) 13. 6. Luce (1998) ix, 1-10. 7. See Luce (1998) 133-34. 8. See de Polignac (1995) 143-44. Clay (2007: 248) mentions the tomb of Ilos as one of several landmarks that symbolize the Trojans’ possession of the land. 9. See Danek (1988) for the view that Book 10 is an interpolation added to the Iliad shortly a!er its composition. 2 normal practice has been to withdraw to the city at night, but their newfound success has led them to camp upon the plain. #e tomb’s next appearance marks another change in the Trojans’ fortunes. A!er the Trojans are put to $ight by Agamemnon during his aristeia, they pass by a series of landmarks on their way back to the city: "rst the tomb of Ilos, then a wild "g tree, and last the Skaian Gates and an oak tree growing close by (11.166-70).10 But the Trojans once again carry the ba%le to the middle of the plain, and Paris, leaning against Ilos’ grave stele, "res an arrow and wounds Diomedes (11.369-78). In each of these appearances, Ilos’ monument provides a physical marker of the changing fortunes of war. #e tomb appears for the last time in Priam’s journey to Akhilleus’ tent. Priam passes the tomb of Ilos, and comes to the ford of Skamandros, where he pauses to let his chariot horses drink (24.349-51). At this point, Hermes arrives to provide an escort for the remainder of the journey. Priam is safe in the neighborhood of his grandfather’s grave, but no farther.11 Ilos’ tomb is a sign, a sēma, of the Trojans’ connection to the Troad, which extends back to the city’s founding. #is dissertation is concerned with the way the depiction of the Trojan landscape connects the Iliad with the mythological past. I argue that the Iliad’s representation of the Trojan landscape and of the Akhaians’ interactions with it allude to extra-Homeric traditions of the Trojan War, to cosmogonic myth, and to myths of divine succession. #rough a dense and interconnected network of allusion, the Iliad de"nes its place within the larger universe of Greek myth, that is, its relation to other narratives about the Trojan War, the myths of heroes, and the 10. On these landmarks, see #ornton (1984) , Hainsworth (1993) on Iliad 11.166, and Clay (2007) 248.