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Unit
I: Odyssey scrolls i-iv
1)
Required reading for this week is
scrolls
i-iv
of the
Odyssey.
A key
word in the Odyssey is
nostos, which means 'homecoming',
and is what Odysseus is trying to achieve.
Another is kleos, 'fame, glory;
that which is heard; fame as conveyed by song'.
As you read, look for how these two central
concepts are connected in the narrative.
Our focus
passages from Scrolls xix and xxiv connect both
Penelope and Laertes to the garden imagery that
is also part of the imagery of hero cult (as we
heard in the lecture). As you read the story of
Telemakhos in the first four scrolls, see if you
can find any plant imagery connected to
Telemakhos. What does the imagery say about
him?
Many of the
questions we start with are not fully 'answered'
in the first four scrolls, so we ask that you
keep them in mind as you read further. We hope
to return to these themes in the weeks to
come.
2)
View the RealVideo of Greg Nagy's introductory
lecture on hero cult and the image of the
beautiful garden. A supplementary video gives an
introduction to one of the most important
aspects of Homeric poetry - the fact that it was
composed orally, in and for performance.
3)
The discussion boards for this unit are no
longer active, but you may still read what
others have written.
Lecture
I: The King in the Garden: Symbol of the Cult
Hero
(If
you do not have RealVideo installed, go to
Getting
Started.)
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LECTURE I NOTES
A. Here is an
essential fact about ancient Greek
religion (for a working definition
of this general term, see item B): not
only were the gods worshipped. Heroes
too were worshipped. The worship of
heroes was very much like ancestor
worship. (Compare similar customs in
other traditional societies, including
the Japanese.)
A1.
Besides the word worship, we
may use the word cult. As in
the expression hero cult.
Other relevant concepts:
cultivate [as in
"cultivating" a field /
garden / grove /
orchard / vineyard /
etc.] and culture [as
in the opposition of "cultural" vs.
"natural," that is, "artificial" vs.
"natural"].
A2. It is a
historical fact that the ancient
Greeks worshipped heroes.
A3. Even if
we had no epic (Homeric Iliad
and Odyssey) or drama
(tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles,
and Euripides) surviving from the
ancient Greek world, we would still
be fairly well informed, on the
basis of non-poetic evidence
(prosaic references, inscriptions,
archaeological remains of cult
sites, etc.) about the historical
existence of hero cults in the
period extending from (roughly) the
eighth century BCE through the third
century CE and even
beyond.
A4. The
1979 book The
Best of the
Achaeans
was the first book in Classical
scholarship to argue, as a central
thesis, that the non-poetic evidence
about the religious practice of
hero-cults can be systematically
connected with the existing poetry
and with what that poetry says -
directly or indirectly - about this
religious practice. The book was
meant to demonstrate that such
non-poetic evidence enhances our
appreciation of the poetry,
especially the epic traditions of
Homer (and the dramatic traditions
of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and
Euripides). Another central thesis
of the book was that the poetry
itself provides additional new
evidence about the practice of hero
cults.
B. For a
working definition of ancient Greek
"religion," I suggest simply: the
interaction of ritual and myth. For
a working definition of ritual
and myth, I suggest the
following:
B1.
Ritual. In small-scale
societies, what you do in sacred
space is marked activity, any
kind of marked activity, most
obviously worship
(cult) and sacrifice,
but also including: hunting,
athletics, regulated sexual
relations, even warfare.
B1a.
Specially difficult for us to
understand: sacrifice
(killing animals, cooking
by fire, and distribution
in community) and warfare.
Sacrifice is a ritualized
admission of human guilt about
the human capacity to kill other
humans, as in warfare. This
formulation was developed by
Walter Burkert in a book about
the anthropological background of
sacrifice: Homo necans (as
opposed to Homo
sapiens).
B1b.
Working definition of "sacred
space": whatever is set aside by
society for communication with
the world beyond our everyday
world. It is marked space vs.
unmarked space. "Sacred" is the
best way to describe "marked" in
the smallest-scale societies. I
try to stay away from words like
divine, even
supernatural.
B2.
Myth. In small-scale
societies, what you say in sacred
space is marked speech, any
kind of marked speech, most
obviously worship
(cult) and prayer, but
also including: oaths, wagers,
promises; these are typical
speech-acts. In ancient Greece,
there were other kinds of
speech-acts that we ordinarily would
not think of as speech-acts:
laments, insults, praise,
instruction; in other words,
anything formal that is on
record, as it were; to say on
the record as opposed to off
the record; marked vs.
unmarked; marked speech is
automatically witnessed by the gods
or whatever is out there beyond the
everyday world, in the sacred world.
Myth explains the way things
are. In some song cultures, it has
maximum truth-value.
B2a.
An illustration of the power
of the speech-act... "The
phrase is a holy being.
You see, these songs, when they
were turned over to the Earth
People, were to be used in a
certain way. If you leave out
those words, then the holy beings
feel slighted. They know you are
singing, they are aware of it.
But if you omit those words, then
they feel it and they are
displeased. Then, even though you
are singing, whatever you are
doing ... has no effect." - from
an interview with a Navajo
shaman.
B3. One of
the most fundamental facts about
ancient Greek religion is that it
tends to be local and localized. For
myth to be delocalized, as it tends
to be in Homeric poetry (also in
most archaic and classical poetry),
it has to be separated from
ritual.
B4.
Everything that you have read so
far about ritual and myth involves
heroes as well as gods in ancient
Greek religion.
C. Fifteen
basic facts about hero
cults.
#1. Hero cult
was a fundamentally local practice,
confined to a specific locale. There
were literally thousands of hero-cults
throughout the locales of the ancient
Greek-speaking world. Every locale had
its own set of local heroes. (For
example, in the "demes" or local
districts that constitute the urban /
rural complex of Athens, each "deme"
has a variety of local cult heroes.)
Some of these heroes are well known to
us through epic (every hero - major or
minor - mentioned in the Iliad
and Odyssey was potentially a
local hero) and tragedy, while others
are never mentioned in any poetry known
to us. The local hero of hero cult
could be male or female, adult or
child. (On the cult of baby heroes and
its significance, see the 1999 Harvard
Ph.D. thesis of Corinne
Pache.)
#2.
Ordinarily, the hero cult was based on
the presence of the sôma
'body' (corpse) of the hero in the
"mother earth" of the given locale.
(Occasionally, the presence was limited
to only a part of the body - like the
head.) Whatever we may think
scientifically about the identity of
the given corpse in any given case, the
locals understood that body (or
body-part) to belong to the hero. The
practice of venerating bodies or
body-parts (or, metonymically, various
objects associated with the bodies)
continued beyond ancient Greece; an
aspect of continuity is the Christian
practice of venerating the relics of
saints.
#3. The
sôma of the dead hero was
considered to be a talisman of
fertility and prosperity to the
community that worshipped the hero. The
fertility was viewed in terms of plant
life (especially the harvests from the
fields, gardens, groves, orchards,
vineyards, and so on), animal life
(both domesticated and hunted animals),
and human life (literally, sexuality
and the producing / nurturing of
children).
#4. The
"marker" of the sôma was
the sêma, which ordinarily
took the physical shape of a
'tomb'.
#5. The
"marking" of the sôma
could also be a sign or signal or token
or picture; the word for such a
"marking" was also
sêma.
#6. The
"marking" would be a sacred secret in
some situations. The local details of
ritual and myth surrounding a given
hero cult were held to be sacred in any
case; as such, they tended to be
considered secret as well. Or, at
least, some of the sacred details were
screened by the locals as secrets that
must not be divulged to outsiders. The
"outsiders" were not only the
non-locals: they were also those of the
locals who had not yet been
initiated - the word for which
is muô - into the
secrets - the word for which is
mustêria 'mysteries'. In
Latin, the word for 'uninitiated' is
profanus 'profane' (= 'standing
in front of [= not inside] the
sacred space').
#7. When
locals sacrificed to a hero, they would
kill a sacrificial animal (victim) and
then divide its meat among the
participants in the sacrifice, keeping
the choice cut of meat, called
geras, as an offering to the
hero. To give heroes their proper
geras was to give them their
proper timê 'honor'. For
more on timê, see also
below.
#8. Another
aspect of sacrificing to the hero was
the ritual pouring of liquids, that is,
libations; besides such liquids
as water, wine, oil, milk, emulsified
honey, and so on, the actual blood of
the sacrificial victim could also count
for the pouring of certain special
kinds of libations. For example, the
pouring of blood into the earth in
order to make physical contact with the
corpse of a hero below (sometimes a
tube was connected to the mouth of the
corpse) was thought to activate the
consciousness of the hero, so that the
hero could then give advice (= give a
diagnôsis) from down below
concerning questions of fertility and
prosperity. The hero was sometimes
given the euphemistic name of 'healer'
(Iatros, Iasôn = Jason,
etc.).
#9. When
worshippers sacrificed to a hero, the
perspective was directed toward the
earth (khthôn); when they
sacrificed to a god, the perspective
was directed toward the sky
(ouranos), except for a special
category of gods called "chthonic"
(khthonioi), who likewise
required the downward perspective. Note
the Heroikos of Philostratus: at
the beginning, we see how the
Phoenician has his gaze fixed upward
toward the sky, while the
vineyard-keeper has his gaze fixed
downward toward the earth under his
feet.
#10. When one
sacrifices to a hero or a god, the
generic term is thuô. When
one sacrifices to a hero, the specific
term is en-agizô. When one
sacrifices to a god, there is no
specific term, unless the god is
"chthonic" (in which case,
en-agizô is the
appropriate term). The word
en-agizô means literally
'I take part in the pollution'. In
poetry, thuô 'sacrifice'
is equivalent to the process of giving
timê 'honor' to a given
hero or god. A classic example of
timê in the context of
hero cult is Homeric
Hymn to Demeter
261;
see Nagy, The
Best of the Achaeans p.
118.
#11. The most
common sacrificial animal to be killed
and cooked in the cult of a male hero
was a ram.
#12. In any
sacrifice to a hero, the process was
usually visualized as happening beneath
earth-level (the sacrifice is directed
toward a depression in the
earth, as into a pit or
bothros). In any sacrifice to a
god (with the exception, again, of the
chthonic gods), the sacrifice was
visualized as happening above
earth-level (the sacrifice is directed
toward an elevation from the
earth, as on an altar or
bômos). A classic example
is the ritual involving the sacrifice
of a black ram at the Pit of Pelops
during the night before the Olympics
begin and the boiling of mutton at the
Altar of Zeus on the next day; see
Nagy, Pindar's
Homer pp.
123-124
on the testimony of Philostratus, On
Gymnastics 5-6.
#13. The
sacred space assigned the hero in
hero-cult could be coextensive with the
sacred space assigned to the god who
was considered the hero's divine
antagonist. A classic example is the
location of the body of the hero
Pyrrhos in the sacred precinct of
Apollo at Delphi; see Nagy,
The
Best of the Achaeans ch.7 ("The
Death of
Pyrrhos").
#14. The hero
was considered dead in terms of
the place where the hero's corpse was
situated; at the same time, the hero
was considered immortalized in
terms of the paradise-like place that
awaited all heroes after death.
Such a paradise-like place, which was
considered eschatological, must
be contrasted with Hades, which was
considered transitional. The
name and even the visualization of this
otherworldly place varied from hero
cult to hero cult. Some of these names
are: Elysium, the Islands of the
Blessed, the White Island, and so on.
Many of these names were applied also
to the actual place of the hero cult.
For an extended discussion, see Nagy,
The
Best of the Achaeans ch.10 ("Poetic
Visions of Immortality for the
Hero").
#15. Heroes
were thought to be capable of coming
back to life (anabiônai)
not only eschatologically, in their
timeless paradise-like abodes, but also
sporadically in the present time of
their worshippers. Such sporadic "live"
appearances were considered to be
epiphanies. At the moment of
worship, the sacred precinct of the
cult hero could become notionally
identical to the paradise-like abode of
immortalization from which he or she
returns to his worshippers.
Metonymically, the sacred precinct of
the cult hero needed to be a place of
cultivation, such as a cultivated
field / garden /
grove / orchard /
vineyard / etc.
Key word:
dikê 'justice' (long-range),
'judgment' (short-range); vs. hubris
'outrage'. The three categories of
hubris: (1) human, e.g. Antinoos, (2)
animal, (3) plant (undergrowth or
overgrowth, such as excessive wood /
leaf production). Metaphors of
dikê: (1) straight line and (2)
thriving cultivation = cultivated field
/ garden / orchard / grove / vineyard /
etc.; hubris is the opposite, that is,
(1) crooked line and (2) failing
cultivation = desert or
overgrowth.
This word,
with its two primary metaphors of (1)
the straight line and (2) the thriving
cultivation, is basic to the concept of
the cult hero.
A perfect
example of dikê is focus
passage "A,"from Odyssey
xix:
"Lady;"
answered Odysseus, "who on the face of
the whole earth can dare to chide with
you? Your fame [kleos]
reaches the firmament of heaven itself;
you are like some blameless king, who
upholds righteousness [= good
dikê], as the monarch
over a great and valiant nation: the
earth yields its wheat and barley, the
trees are loaded with fruit, the ewes
bring forth lambs, and the sea abounds
with fish by reason of his virtues, and
his people do good deeds under
him.
2. This epic
image of the just king as an exponent
of dikê, standing in his
blooming garden, corresponds to the
religious image of the hero in
hero-cult, "planted" in the local
"mother earth" as a talisman of
fertility and prosperity for the
community that worships him or her. It
corresponds also to this image from
Odyssey xi:
"As for
yourself, death shall come to you from
the sea, and your life shall ebb away
very gently when you are full of years
and peace of mind, and your people
shall be prosperous
[olbioi]. All that I
have said will come true."
Here we see
the mystical word olbios, which
means 'prosperous' on the surface but
also 'blessed' underneath the surface.
The deeper meaning has to do with the
hero's achieving an afterlife,
rendering him 'blessed', while his
corpse renders the local population
'prosperous'. There is a built-in
metonymy in the reciprocal relationship
linking the 'blessed' heroes and the
'prosperous' population that worships
them.
3. In the
Homeric tradition, references to hero
cults tend to be implicit, not
explicit. That is because the religious
practice of hero-cult is fundamentally
a local phenomenon while the Homeric
tradition is non-local or
"pan-Hellenic"
(that is,
common to a majority of Greek speaking
locales). Homeric references to
olbioi people whose local earth
is in contact with the dead hero imply
hero-cult without really revealing the
mysteries of the hero cult.
Another
example is focus passage B, from
Odyssey xxiv:
As he went
down into the great orchard, ... he
found his father alone, hoeing a vine.
He had on a dirty old shirt, patched
and very shabby; his legs were bound
round with thongs of oxhide to save him
from the brambles, and he also wore
sleeves of leather; he had a goat skin
cap on his head, and was looking full
of grief [penthos]. When
Odysseus saw him so worn, so old and
full of sorrow
[penthos], he stood
still under a tall pear tree and began
to weep. He doubted whether to embrace
him, kiss him, and tell him all about
his having come home, or whether he
should first question him and see what
he would say. In the end he deemed it
best to be crafty with him, so in this
mind he went up to his father, who was
bending down and digging about a
plant.
[244]
"I see, sir," said Odysseus, "that you
are an excellent
gardener&endash;what pains you take
with it, to be sure. There is not a
single plant, not a fig tree, vine,
olive, pear, nor flower bed, but bears
the trace of your attention."
Odysseus'
father is the most difficult character
for the hero to "read" or "recognize" -
even more difficult than Penelope. In
terms of the sequence of narration, the
placing of Laertes' recognition after
that of Penelope suggests that the
patêr 'father' (the plural
pateres means 'ancestors') is
even higher in Odysseus' ascending
scale of affections than the
wife.
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Reading
for Unit I: Odyssey scrolls i-iv
We
would like you to begin the series by reading the
following two passages very carefully. They will
serve as the starting point for our discussions and
they are the focus passages on which "Homeric
Odyssey and the Cultivation of Justice" is built.
After you have read them begin reading the
Odyssey from the beginning, scrolls i-iv. An
on-line translation of the Odyssey is
available here.
A) Odyssey
xix: "Lady;" answered Odysseus, "who on the face
of the whole earth can dare to chide with you?
Your fame [kleos]1
reaches the firmament of heaven itself; you are
like some blameless king, who upholds
righteousness [= good
dikê],2 as the
monarch over a great and valiant nation: the
earth yields its wheat and barley, the trees are
loaded with fruit, the ewes bring forth lambs,
and the sea abounds with fish by reason of his
virtues, and his people do good deeds under
him.
(1)
kleos 'glory, fame, that which is
heard'; OR, 'the poem or song that conveys
glory, fame, that which is heard'. This word
was used in ancient Greek poetry or song /
music to refer to the poetry ["epic"]
or the song / music ["lyric"] that
glorifies the heroes of the distant heroic
past.
(2)
dikê 'justice' (long-range),
'judgment' (short-range); vs. hubris
'outrage'. The three categories of hubris:
(1) human, e.g. Antinoos, (2) animal, (3)
plant (undergrowth or overgrowth, such as
excessive wood / leaf production). Metaphors
of dikê: straight line =
thriving or blooming field / garden / orchard
/ grove / vineyard / etc.; hubris is
opposite, crooked line = desert or
overgrown jungle. So: blooming garden (or
field) is the opposite of desert or excessive
wood/leaf production
B) Odyssey xxiv:
As he went down into the great orchard, ... he
found his father alone, hoeing a vine. He had on
a dirty old shirt, patched and very shabby; his
legs were bound round with thongs of oxhide to
save him from the brambles, and he also wore
sleeves of leather; he had a goat skin cap on
his head, and was looking full of grief
[penthos]1. When
Odysseus saw him so worn, so old and full of
sorrow [penthos], he stood still
under a tall pear tree and began to weep. He
doubted whether to embrace him, kiss him, and
tell him all about his having come home, or
whether he should first question him and see
what he would say. In the end he deemed it best
to be crafty with him, so in this mind he went
up to his father, who was bending down and
digging about a plant. "I see, sir," said
Odysseus, "that you are an excellent
gardener&endash;what pains you take with it, to
be sure. There is not a single plant, not a fig
tree, vine, olive, pear, nor flower bed, but
bears the trace of your attention."
(1)
penthos 'grief' OR 'song of grief' =
'lament'
Now
read Odyssey
scrolls i-iv.
Discussion
Questions
1. The
Odyssey is Odysseus' story, yet it starts
with the story of Telemakhos (the first four
scrolls are sometimes even referred to as the
"Telemakhy"). Why start with the Telemakhos'
journey? We have said that the journey of
Odysseus is a metaphorical 'journey of the soul'
- can we see a similar progression for
Telemakhos already in these four scrolls? One
way to think about this is to examine his
interactions and relationships with others: his
mother, the suitors, his nurse, Athena disguised
as Mentes vs. as Mentor, Nestor, Menelaus,
etc.
Discussion
forum for question 1
Discussion
forum for question 1 for first-time readers of
Homeric poetry
2. In scroll ii,
Telemakhos convenes an assembly (the first one
since Odysseus has left!) to ask for help with
the suitors and the problems they are causing in
his home. How is the state of law/justice in the
community presented in this scroll? What are the
arguments made on both sides about the
situation? How do Mentor's words to the assembly
(see below) relate to the metaphor of the
righteous king in our central
passage?
scroll ii 229ff:
[Mentor - the man, not Athena in
disguise]: "Hear me, men of Ithaca, I hope
that you may never have a kind and well-disposed
ruler any more, nor one who will govern you
equitably; I hope that all your chiefs
henceforward may be cruel and unjust, for there
is not one of you but has forgotten Odysseus,
who ruled you as though he were your father. I
am not half so angry with the suitors, for if
they choose to do violence in the naughtiness of
their minds [noos], and wager
their heads that Odysseus will not return, they
can take the high hand and eat up his estate,
but as for you others I am shocked at the way in
which you the rest of the population
[dêmos] all sit still
without even trying to stop such scandalous
goings on - which you could do if you chose, for
you are many and they are few."
Discussion
forum for question 2
Discussion
forum for question 2 for first-time readers of
Homeric poetry
3. As Telemakhos is
preparing for his journey, he prays to Athena,
who then appears to him in the form of Mentor
(scroll ii 262 ff.):
[262] "Hear
me," he cried, "you god who visited me
yesterday, and bade me sail the seas in search
of the nostos of my father who has so long been
missing. I would obey you, but the Achaeans, and
more particularly the wicked suitors, are
hindering me that I cannot do so."
[267] As he
thus prayed, Athena came close up to him in the
likeness and with the voice of Mentor.
"Telemakhos," said she, "if you are made of the
same stuff as your father you will be neither
fool nor coward henceforward, for Odysseus never
broke his word nor left his work half done. If,
then, you take after him, your voyage will not
be fruitless, but unless you have the blood of
Odysseus and of Penelope in your veins I see no
likelihood of your succeeding. Sons are seldom
as good men as their fathers; they are generally
worse, not better; still, as you are not going
to be either fool or coward henceforward, and
are not entirely without some share of your
father's wise discernment, I look with hope upon
your undertaking. But mind you never make common
cause [noos] with any of those
foolish suitors, for they are neither sensible
nor just [dikaioi], and give no
thought to death and to the doom that will
shortly fall on one and all of them, so that
they shall perish on the same day.
What are the father/son
dynamics set up not only in this passage, but in
the first four scrolls as a whole? (We will
continue to think about this throughout our
reading!) How has Telemakhos fared without a
father all his life, and how will going to
inquire about his father's nostos make a
difference?
Also, why does Athena
have to warn Telemakhos not to join in with the
suitors? Why would he? And from the
characterization of the suitors as 'neither
sensible nor just', how can we begin to define
justice at this point in the
narrative?
Discussion
forum for question 3
Discussion
forum for question 3 for first-time readers of
Homeric poetry
Optional
additional video:
Oral
Poetry:
This 8
minute segment was recorded during one of Casey's
sections of the undergraduate course entitled "The
Concept of the Hero in Greek Civilization" (Harvard
University, Fall, 1999). In it she gives an
introduction to one of the most important aspects
of Homeric poetry - the fact that it was composed
orally, in and for performance.
Oral
Poetry
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ORAL POETRY
NOTES
In the early
1930's Milman Parry and his assistant
Albert Lord went to Yugoslavia to study
the South Slavic oral epic song tradition,
which was still very much alive at the
time. While there, they interviewed
singers, transcribed their songs, and with
the aid of the latest technology were able
to record live performances on aluminum
disks. This collecting resulted in over
3,500 double sided aluminum disks and 800
notebooks of transcriptions, now housed in
the Milman
Parry Collection of Oral
Literature
in Widener Library at Harvard University.
Through their revolutionary comparative
field work they were able to show that the
Homeric poems were not only traditional
but oral.
Milman Parry died
shortly after his second trip to
Yugoslavia. Before his death he wrote a
number of papers which demonstrated that
their was a traditional oral formulaic
system in which the Homeric poems were
composed. His analysis of epithets like
"swift-footed Achilles" or "long-suffering
Odysseus" showed the economy of the system
which evolved in response to the need to
compose in performance at high speed. The
poets of the ancient Greek epic tradtion,
like those in the South Slavic tradition,
did not memorize their songs. Each
performance was a new composition. This
kind of high speed composition is made
possible by the special poetic language in
which the poets composed.
This language
consists not of words but of formular
units. The units are as small as a noun
epithet combination and as large as whole
type scenes such as arming or feasting.
Theses units fit the specific metrical
pattern of the verse, which in the ancient
Greek epic tradition is the dactylic
hexameter:
-vv -vv -vv -vv
-vv --
The economy of
the system is such that rarely are there
two units which express the same idea for
any one metrical configuration.
This system
developed over thousands of years. As a
result the language of the Homeric poems
cannot be pinned down to any one time or
place. There are some extremely old
elements and some considerably newer.
Likewise the dialect of the poems is an
artificial mixture of dialects from around
the Greek-speaking world. It was never
actually spoken in one period of time or
location.
After Milman
Parry's death his assistant Albert Lord
continued the work they began. His
groundbreaking book, The
Singer of Tales
(Cambridge, MA, 1960; second edition,
which includes a multimedia cd, available
Spring 2000) describes in detail how oral
poetry works on the basis of his
unparalled fieldwork in Yougoslavia. He
also applies what he learned from the
South Slavic tradition to the Homeric
poems and the song traditions of other
cultures.
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