HOMER

The Simile as Textual Stratagem

In Book Sixteen of the Iliad, as the Myrmidons are preparing themselves for battle, they are compared to wolves in a most befuddling simile (Π 155-65):

But Achilles went meanwhile to the Myrmidons, and arrayed them

all in their war gear along the shelters. And they, as wolves

who eat flesh raw, in whose hearts the battle fury is endless,

who, having brought down a great horned stag in the mountains,

devour him, till all their jowls run blood;

and then go all in a pack to drink from a spring of dark water,

lapping with their lean tongues along the top of the dark water,

belching up the clotted blood; in the heart of each one

is a spirit untremulous, but their bellies are full and groaning;

just so the lords of the Myrmidons and their men of council [swarmed]

around the brave henchmen of swift-footed Aiakides.

From the standpoint of “mimesis” (in Riffaterre’s sense), the simile is particularly confusing, and Leaf’s analysis is typical of scholarly commentary on the passage:

The following elaborate simile is unique as presenting two distinct scenes, first the rending of the body, and then the rush to the spring. The second part, 160-63, contains several strange expressions, and is quite unsuited to its place; for although the eager Myrmidons may be compared to wolves tearing a deer (although even this is premature while they are only arming), there is less than no point in comparing them to glutted wolves going off for a drink.

The epic poet often expands a simile with touches that do not bear directly on the main point of the comparison, but not with a further development directly contradicting it. The natural history of 163 is wrong, for a glutted wolf is a thorough coward.... In spite, therefore, of the vigorous character of the four lines, we must condemn them with Hentze. They may be interpolated from some poem where they were more appropriately applied to an army returning from battle.¹

Leaf notes that the simile of the wolves does not cohere mimetically in two ways: first, it does not cohere in terms of the referent (the natural history is wrong); and secondly, the actions of the wolves are not similar to the actions of the Myrmidons (are not a good “imitation” of those actions). Attempts to reconcile these apparent “ungrammaticalities” try to salvage some notion of similarity between the two situations. Wilamowitz, for example, suggests that the simile shows the Myrmidons are kampflustig after being overfed on inactivity, which is virtually a lucus a non lucendo.² Fraenkel suggests that the point of the simile is how the Myrmidons hasten around Patroklos (Wie die Wölfe zur Quelle, so trotte die Myrmidonenhaufe zu Patroklos hin), and that the first part of the simile emphasizes how quickly they respond (an Waschen denkt keiner).³ This explanation also seems to stretch the comparison by denying the whole thrust of the picture: a herd of wolves devouring a deer, drinking and then lolling around bloated and belching. The simile is, in fact, quite “ungrammatical” as a representation of the mustering of the Myrmidons. There is no particular identity in terms of Stimmungsbild, nor any “immediate visual relevance” or “existential identity”; there is not even a clear tertium comparationis.⁴

Such a simile presents the reader of Homer with a direct challenge, and the methodology of Riffaterre offers itself as a remedy to the problem posed by this “dissimilar simile.” As a clearly defined swathe of text, the wolf simile can be studied in its own terms as an example of hypogrammatic derivation. The single dominating element in the simile is the notion of eating a meal, from ὠμοφάγοι to γαστήρ. Since feasting is a nuclear event of some prominence in Homer, it is possible to compare the wolf simile with other eating loci and determine the precise character of the hypogram which gives unity to the simile, and to the nature of the transformation that hypogram has undergone. We will thus have to bracket our common sense notion of “similarity,” and work our way toward a more semiotic conception of the narrative function of this simile.

Many meals are described in the Homeric poems and Walter Arend has collected all the examples and considered their relationships to one another.⁵ Like many of the typical scenes Arend discusses, the descriptions of meals contain a host of repeated formulas and elements, such as αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ πόσιος καὶ ἐδητύος ἐξ ἔρον ἕντο, which marks the end of nearly every detailed meal. The meals of the heroes, therefore, along with a number of other related activities (libations, entertainment, etc.) comprise what Riffaterre calls a “descriptive system”--a network of verbal sequences associated with one another around a kernel word in accordance with that word’s sememe, but “already actualized in set form within the reader’s mind” (Semiotics of Poetry, p. 39); or, less mentalistically, already actualized in set form in some locatable texts. A descriptive system is not an abstract template which is instantiated in a series of “multiforms,” but is the set of words themselves. This is important because the wolf simile is not generated by the general idea of a feast, but by the words themselves used to describe meals elsewhere. That is, the relationship is intertextual.

The operation which gives internal coherence to the wolf simile is its consistent conversion⁶ of the positive aspects of human feasts into negative aspects. The word ὠμοφάγοι names this conversion most clearly: men roast their meat, not only the meat which they eat, but also the meat they prepare as offerings before the meal. The word ὠμοφάγοι establishes the opposition human vs. savage, and the rest of the simile describes the wolves in a way that calls attention to that opposition by standing the descriptive system of heroic feasts on its head. Here is the scene from B 421-33, which contains numerous repetitions from A 458ff., H 314ff., and many others:

Now when all had prayed and flung down the scattered barley,

first they drew back the victim’s head, cut his throat and skinned him,

and cut away the meat from the thighs and wrapped them in fat,

making a double fold, and laid shreds of flesh above them.

Placing these on sticks cleft and peeled, they burned them,

and spitted the vitals and held them over the flame of Hephaistos.

But when they had burned the thigh pieces and tasted the vitals,

they cut all the remainder into pieces and spitted them

and roasted them carefully and took off the pieces.

Then after they had finished the work and got ready the feast

they ate, nor was any man’s hunger denied a fair portion.

But when they had put away their desire for eating and drinking,

the Gerenian horseman Nestor began speaking among them.

To begin with, it is noteworthy that ὠμοφάγοι and ὤπτησαν are equivalent metrically and in word position. Indeed, n 157 can be compared in detail with B 429. The adjective ἄσπετος, “boundless,” “without limits,” inverts the meaning of περιφραδέως, “circumspectly,” “in a measured way,” a word that occurs in Homer only with ὤπτησάν τε in the meal formula. There is even a slight verbal echo between περὶ φρέσιν and περιφραδέως. The word ἀλκή is generally confined to military contexts, but is also found in eating contexts as that which one eats in order to attain (I 705-6; cf. T 160-61):

Go to sleep now that the inward heart is made happy with food

and drink, for these are the strength and courage within us.

The word ἀλκή is thus doubly pertinent in the simile. The narrative context describes the arming of the Myrmidons (cf. the phrase δύμεναι ἀλκήν, “to put on one’s valor,” as in I 231); but part of the preparation for battle is eating, whence one derives ἀλκή. The wolves reverse this sequence, having ἀλκή to begin with and, as we shall see, losing it after the meal.

The next line of the simile, οἵ τ’ ἔλαφον κεραὸν μέγαν οὔρεσι δηώσαντες, can be summarized as the “preparation” of the wolves’ meal. The singularly simple mode of preparation, δηώσαντες, “cut down,” is generated in part by the numerous verbs used to describe the elaborate ritual of killing and cutting up the meat by the heroes: ἔσφαξαν, ἔδειραν, ἐξέταμον, μίστυλλον. Usually the sacrificial beast is a bull, but it is always a domestic animal; the wolves attack a wild beast The mention of οὔρεσι seems to correspond to the occasional mention of the place of the sacrifice made by the heroes, such as the ἐΰδμητον βωμόν (“well-polished altar”) of A 448; for mountains are often mentioned as the place where all sorts of natural disasters take place: forest fires rage there; swollen rivers crash down from the mountains; particularly ferocious animals are often ὀρεσιτρόφος, “bred in the mountains.” Mountains are thus emblematic of the untamed and undomesticated aspects of the world, as opposed to an altar or even the hearth of Eumaios where he slaughters a pig for Odysseus (ξ 420).

The end of the preparation of a meal is usually capped off with the Abschlussvers αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ παύσαντο πόνου τετύκοντό τε δαῖτα (B 430 = A 467 = H 319, etc.): “After they had finished the work and got ready the meal.” This line is always followed by δαίνυντ’, οὐδέ τι θυμὸς ἐδεύετο δαιτὸς ἐΐσης, “they ate, nor was anyone lacking a fair portion.” These two lines are inverted in a striking way by Π 158-59:

who, having cut down a great horned stag in the mountains,

devour him, till all their jowls run blood.

The substitution of the verb δάπτουσι (devour) for δαίνυντ’ is, like ὠμοφάγοι, especially indicative of the opposition human vs. savage; for δάπτω is, like the German fressen, used only for beasts; whereas δαίνυμι is a euphemism for eating, its literal meaning being “divide” or “distribute.” The word for meal at the end of B 430, δαῖτα, is a related word: literally, “a thing divided up,” “a portion.” Another related word is δαίω, “to divide,” used also in meal contexts (o 140: κρέα δαίετο). But δαίω has a homophone meaning “to burn,” and then “to destroy” from which the verb δηιόω is derived, of which we have the participial form δῃώσαντες at the end of Π 159. By its position and meaning this participle is most closely compared to the ending of the Abschlussvers, τετύκοντό τε δαῖτα (literally, “when they had got ready the thing divided up”), which has thus generated a verb which not only negates the notion of careful division, but calls attention to the switching of semantic fields (eating and destroying). The verb δηιόω has numerous uses in battle contexts: it frequently occurs meaning to wound by cutting (e.g., 𝚯 534, E 452), used often with an instrumental like χαλκῷ Like ἀλκή, δῃώσαντες is especially pertinent because of its dual connection to both military “cutting” and the “division” of heroic meals.

The end of B 431, οὐδέ τι θυμὸς ἐδεύετο δαιτὸς ἐΐσης, restates the notion of equal division. This phrase generates the end of Π 159: πᾶσιν δὲ παρήϊον αἵματι φοινόν, “and the cheeks of all were red with blood.” Note that the litotes οὐδέ...ἐδεύετο is resolved to πάσιν in the simile. Alongside the lexical conversions (ὤπτησαν / ὠμοφάγοι / περιφραδέως / ἄσπετος), therefore, we can speak of formal conversions: a litotes in heroic meals generates a hyperbole in the simile. Such an operation is quite appropriate thematically, since the basis of the opposition is the ritual behavior of the heroes versus the unrestrained behavior of the wolves. The word φοινόν is another example of military language used to describe the wolves’ eating: φοινός means “blood-red,” connected to φόνον, “slaughter.” In a particularly relevant passage, Achilles uses the word φόνος when he explicitly contrasts the spheres of eating and fighting (T 213-4):

Food and drink are not a care to my heart,

but slaughter, blood and the hard groaning of men.

Characteristic of the wolves in the simile is the confounding of the conventional separation of the spheres of eating and fighting.

The next phase of the simile is the movement of the herd to the spring for a drink.⁷ Drinking is not always specifically mentioned in Homeric meals, except for the libation which sometimes follows. We have the repeated lines (A 470-71):

The young men filled the mixing bowls with pure wine, passing
a portion to all, having poured out a libation from the goblets.

Here the ritual word ἐπαρξάμενοι indicates the most important part of the drinking: the libation. Obviously there can be no question of the wolves pouring a libation, but the simile adds details which seem to function only to invert details of human feasts. It is specifically stated, for example, that the wolves drink off the top (ἄκρον) of the water--the portion of a drink poured out to the gods in a libation. The cups with which the men drink, like other utensils, are often described by ameliorative epithets, such as “golden” (γ 472, o 149; see especially the cup of Nestor, Λ 632-35). This generates the pejorative ἀραιῇσιν to modify the tongues of the wolves, used twice of Hephaistos’ lame leg (Σ 411=Y 37) and once of Aphrodite’s hand in a derogatory remark by Athena (E 425).⁸

Similarly, the epithet μέλαν is a conversion of the ameliorative epithets of wine: μελίφρονα, μελιήδεα, but, especially αἴθοπα, “gleaming,” used of heavenly bodies, the aether and very commonly of wine. The verb λάψοντες, a hapax, inverts the very word for libation, λείβειν, particularly in the repeated phrase (A 462-63, γ 459-60):

And over them the gleaming wine/ he poured

Compare this with Π 160-61:

Instead of pouring gleaming wine on the offerings, the wolves lap out of a dark-watered spring. The most meaningful interpretant of this passage is Z 266-68:

I fear to pour out the gleaming wine to Zeus with unwashed

hands; nor is it permissible to pray to the son of Kronos

who is shrouded in the clouds when spattered with blood and gore.

The aidos of Hector in this scene, indeed, the aidos of Homeric feasters in general, is not simply absent in the wolf simile, but dramatically negated.

The vomiting of the wolves also seems to be added simply to make the scene more repulsive. It is perhaps also a travesty of the libation--a pouring out of the “last” portion instead of the first. The only other example of vomiting in the Homeric poems is by that most discourteous host and unceremonious feaster, the Cyclops (ι 373-74). The vomiting, however, is also linked to the next phase of the simile, the repletion of the wolves (Π 162-63):

This should be compared to a line repeated some twenty times in Homer marking the end of a meal:⁹

But after they had put away their desire for eating and drinking.

This line caps off a proper Homeric meal and even its simple absence, as in the eating of the sun’s cattle in Odyssey 12, probably constitutes a significant variation.¹⁰ Whereas the heroes’ repletion is described by euphemistic understatement (they “set aside their desire” for food), that of the wolves is described by a hyperbole (they stuff themselves until their stomachs groan).

The word ἄτρομος is an ambiguous word. A τρόμος is a trembling motion which afflicts the limbs when one is afraid. Hence the two other occurrences of ἄτρομος in Homer mean “fearless” (E 124, P 157). But the various forms of τρεμ-/ τρομ-retain their connection with physical motion, as is shown by the adverb ἄτρεμας which means “still” (used of Zeus’ sleep in Ξ 352, of clouds in E 524, etc.) and by Hesiod’s use of the verb ἀτρεμέω to describe the stiffening of hair in the cold (Erga 539). If the θυμός is, as Snell has argued,¹¹ “the generator of motion or agitation,” then to have an ἄτρομος θυμός may well mean to be fearless in a military context; but after a gluttonous feast such as the wolves have just indulged in, it could suggest that they are too stuffed to move. The progression of the simile reverses the sequence of a human feast. Heroes eat in order to restore their ἀλκή, but the wolves have boundless ἀλκή to begin with. A heroic feast is a preparation for some action; but the wolves have been rendered incapable of action: ἄτρομος.

The θυμός is also the generator of speech and as such provides a contrast with the γαστήρ of the wolves, which “groans” (περιστένεται). A communal meal is a ritual action, a form of communal language signifying the identity of the participants in respect to a community. Meals are often followed by a speech rousing the heroes to some action for which the meal was a preparation (as in B 433). The wolves’ meal, however, has no ritual significance and is clearly not a preparation for any action. A groan is an undifferentiated, unarticulated expression unit. As such, it is correlated to an undifferentiated, unarticulated, and hence undefined content. In short, it is non-significant. The unarticulated, non-significant “groaning” of the wolves’ stomachs at the end of the simile negates the signifying function of the ritual action of sharing a meal, as well as the arousal to action which follows meals.

A similar opposition of sharing a meal and “groaning” is implied in the line cited above (T 214): Achilles cares not for food and drink, but for φόνος τε καὶ αῖμα καὶ ἀργαλέος στόνος ἀνδρῶν, “slaughter, blood and the hard groaning of men.” Even more pertinent is Gaia’s reaction in the Theogony to the ghastly meal¹² that Ouranos imposes on her. After being forced to reingest her children, Gaia groans (Theo. 159-60):

But the wide earth groaned inwardly/being stuffed.

Hesiod apparently plays on two sets of words grouped around στείνω, “to crowd” or “make narrow,” and στείνω, “to groan.”¹³ Nor is it a gratuitous connection. The stuffing of the earth with her own children is a most uncultural act, and the groaning which is caused by it is the obverse of the signifying function of a communal meal. Lattimore’s translation of Π 164 as “their bellies were full and groaning” catches both the semantic connections of περιστένεται. We could rephrase the line, perhaps, as “their bellies were stuffed, instead of being apportioned a fair division, and therefore groaned, instead of making a culturally coded communicative act.” It is the communal language of a proper meal which is negated by the wolves’ actions as well as their “words.”

The wolf simile, therefore, does not present an action which “represents” the narrative event of mustering. As a discrete textual swathe, however, the simile does articulate a single hypogram: a savage meal. Actually, we should say a non-heroic meal; for it is not on a par with descriptions of other meals of animals. The simile represents a coherent picture not in terms of the “natural history” of wolves, but in terms of how heroes conduct a feast. The simile is a conversion of the descriptive system of the meals of heroes. Nevertheless, the wolf simile is not a separate poem; neither its generation here nor its pragmatic consequences are independent of the narrative context of Book 16. Thus, to account more fully for the simile’s role in the text, it will be necessary to consider that narrative context in order to pose the question, why was an anti-heroic meal generated at this particular point? In doing so, we will be going beyond the scope of Riffaterre’s “semiotics of poetry”: that is, the semiotics of relatively short poems in which the unit of significance is the whole text. But this will not entail a qualitative leap from a theoretical standpoint, despite the fact that narrative has a number of special problems. If we can characterize narrative in a preliminary fashion as a succession of textual swathes, the interrelationships among these various units and the flow from one textual unit to another will be determined by a number of coded factors. Notions of narrative “sequences,” “motifs,” “patterns,” etc., are common interpretative devices which are used to account for these interrelationships.

Interpretive devices such as narrative patterns or sequences enter a semiotic analysis as what Eco calls “overcoding”: “given a code assigning meaning to certain minimal expressions, overcoding will assign additional meaning to more macroscopic strings of these expressions” (Eco, 134). This grouping together of a series of actions into a single “scene” which has a significance beyond its discrete components is an important part of the interpretive process by which readers produce meaning. Since a textual strategy always attempts to determine in some degree interpretive responses, a narrative tradition assimilates the results of overcoding in the form of narrative rules. Thus, for example, Vladimir Propp identified a number of narrative functions organized by certain plot rules in a series of Russian fairy tales.¹⁴ These rules are the result of the “super-elevation of codes” introduced above in the discussion of connotation (p. 9) producing thereby a narrative subcode. This notion will be elaborated more fully in an appropriate context, but for now it will be sufficient to note that narrative subcodes are textually established: they are produced by the dialectics of the communicative process. Innovative texts can propose unforeseen coding correlations, and if they are accepted, can modify the narrative rules.¹⁵ In order to assess the pragmatic implications of the wolf simile of Iliad 16, as well as the textual dynamics which generated it there, it will be necessary to consider the narrative function of the cultural unit of a communal meal, particularly in the context of preparation for battle, which I will argue makes up a narrative subcode.

The Meal as Communal Language

In Book 16 of the Iliad, Achilles and Patroklos meet and decide that Patroklos should lead out the Myrmidons. Patroklos arms himself while Achilles marshals the troops. There is a catalogue, an arousal speech and then the Myrmidons set out. The scene thus resembles Book 2, where there is a similar sequence of events, except for the full description of a preparatory meal in Book 2. At the beginning of the other three days of battle (Books 8, 11 and 19), the preparation is varied. In Book 8 there is a divine assembly and the preparation of the Greeks is compressed into only two lines (𝚯 53-54):

Now the flowing-haired Achaeans had taken their dinner

hastily among the shelters, and then put on their armor.

At the beginning of Book 11, there is an impressive arousal, the arming of Agamemnon is described at length, but no preparatory meal is taken. In Book 19, however, after Achilles assembles the Greeks and urges an immediate encounter, there is a long debate about the wisdom of fighting before the Greeks have eaten. It is this debate and the other references to eating, rather than any strict parallelism of the various preparation scenes, which shows clearly the importance of a meal in the narrative context of preparation for battle.

In Homer, as in many other contexts, sharing a meal functions as an expression of social harmony, the physical and spiritual continuity of a group which is dedicated to some concerted action. In Homer a feast regularly precedes and concludes important actions and decisions, to the point that Odysseus has three meals during the course of the evening of Books 9-10. The social cohesion that feasts exemplify and confirm is put into question by the quarrel of Achilles and Agamemnon; and the consequences of that fissure are portrayed in the subsequent defeats of the Greeks. When Achilles finally returns in Book 19, his actions are ambivalent. Although he has returned to battle and the aid of the Greeks, he is less interested in patching things up than in exacting revenge; and this is indicated by, among other things, his refusal to share a meal before going to battle. Achilles shows no interest in Agamemnon’s conciliatory gesture (T 146-7) and is all for setting out immediately. Odysseus reprimands him for this, reminding him of the necessity of food and insisting on a public reconciliation. Here are some of the pertinent lines (T 160-3; 171-4; 179-80):

Rather tell the Achaeans here by their swift ships

to take food and wine, since these make for strength and courage.

For a man cannot fight his way forward all day

long until the sun goes down if he is starved for food....

Come then, tell your men to scatter and bid them get ready

a meal; and as for the gifts, let the lord of men Agamemnon

bring them into the middle of the assembly so all the Achaeans

can see them before their eyes and your own heart may be pleased....

After that in his own tent let him appease you

with a generous meal, so that you will lack nothing of your due.

Odysseus refers first to the physical necessity of food, but this is only a pretext for engineering a public affirmation of communal bonds. The call for a meal is immediately followed by a call for a formal reconciliation. Achilles must accept Agamemnon’s gifts and be reconciled, and then Agamemnon must appease Achilles with a meal. The ending of line 180, ἵνα μή τι δίκης ἐπιδεὲς ἒχησθα, is clearly a call for a return to the social harmony reflected in the fair division of a meal: οὐδέ τι θυμὸς ἐδεύετο δαιτὸς ἐΐσης.¹⁶

Agamemnon agrees, but Achilles will have none of it (T 205-14):

No, but I would now

drive forward the sons of the Achaeans into the fighting

starving and unfed, and after the sun goes down

make ready a great feast, when we have paid off our defilement

But before this, for me at least, neither food nor drink

shall go down my very throat, since my companion has perished

and lies inside my shelter torn about with the cutting bronze,

and turned against the forecourt while my companions mourn

about him. Food and drink are not a care to my heart,

but slaughter, blood and the hard groaning of men.

Achilles is no more interested in patching things up with Agamemnon now than he was in Book 16 or in Book 9. His only motivation for “returning” is vengeance against Hector. In particular, Odysseus’ call for a public ritual reaffirming communal bonds between Achilles and the other Greeks is opposed by Achilles to the “groaning of men” (στόνος ἀνδρῶν). It is not simply that Achilles is in a hurry to get after Hector; what is emphasized in the whole passage is Achilles’ pointed refusal to play according to the rules of the game. This draws a second rebuke from the ever-decorous Odysseus. This time Odysseus links a communal meal with giving over one’s attachment to the dead and going on with life (T 225; 228-31):

The Achaeans cannot mourn a dead man by denying the belly....

No, but we must harden our hearts and bury the man who

dies, when we have wept over him for a day, and all those

who are left about from the hateful work of war must remember

food and drink, so that afterwards all the more strongly, etc.

Odysseus’ point is a common one in Homer: mourning is appropriate only for a specific amount of time, after which it is necessary to “give up one’s grief’ and “return” to the demands of the living. Equally common in Homer is the use of a communal meal to signify this return to the living. Although Achilles finally relents and orders the others to eat (275), he refuses to take part himself, despite the urging of the other leaders. Note once again that the refusal is linked with a “groan” (T 303-7):

But the Achaean lords were gathered around Achilles

beseeching him to eat, but he with a groan refused:

“I beg of you, if any dear companion will listen

to me, stop urging me to satisfy the heart in me

with food and drink, since this strong sorrow has come upon me.”

Instead of eating, he mourns Patroklos, recalling the times when his friend used to prepare meals for him before battle (T 315-21):

There was a time, ill-fated, O dearest of companions,

when you yourself would set the desirable dinner before me

quickly and expertly, whenever the Achaeans were urgent

to carry sorrowful war on the Trojans, breakers of horses.

But now you lie here torn before me, and my heart goes

starved for meat and drink, though they are here beside me,

by reason of your absence.

This passage seems to serve only to underline the alienation of Achilles. Now that Patroklos is dead, Achilles would appear to have no one to eat with--no one with whom he cares to establish a communal bond. Finally Zeus sends Athena to infuse nectar into Achilles, again underlining the fact that only Achilles has not yet eaten (T 345-48):

All the others

have gone to take their dinner, but he is fasting and unfed.

Go then to him and distill nectar into his chest, and delicate

ambrosia, so weakness of hunger will not come upon him.

On this last passage Whitman writes, “Achilles refuses mortal food; he has done with mortality except for dying, and his sustenance comes from the gods.”¹⁷ Sustenance, however, is not the real issue here. What is important about eating in Homer is the ritual preparing and distributing of food as a sign of communal solidarity. Any private nibbling by Achilles does not have the signifying function of a communal meal. Whether one ingests ambrosia and becomes like a god or whether one eats like a savage is all the same from the standpoint of culture. So Aristotle says in the Politics (1253a) that “he who is unable to live in society, or has no need for a state because of his self-sufficiency, must be either a god or a beast” The moment of Achilles’ climactic return is thus dominated by his refusal to share a meal; and this must be understood in terms of his refusal to be reintegrated into his culture by “speaking” their communal language.

Nagler’s discussion (Spontaneity, 140-66) focuses on Achilles’ inordinate attachment to the dead Patroklos, characterized by his death wish (Σ 90-97), his maddened rampage through Books 20-22, attended by a Theomachy which threatens to confound heaven and earth (Y 54-66), his fruitless attempts to disgrace the body of Hector, and his refusal to wash, sleep and eat. If Achilles’ withdrawal from battle in the beginning of the Iliad has resulted in a disruption of the social order, his return in Book 19 has not achieved a resolution. Achilles’ maltreatment of corpses is the dominant indicator of this in his aristeia,¹⁸ which is climaxed by his threat to Hector (X 346-47):

I wish only that my fury and spirit would drive me to hack

your flesh away and to eat it raw for the things you have done.

Even after Hector’s death, Achilles refuses to eat and sleep as he wears himself out mourning for Patroklos. When Thetis visits him in Book 24, she chides him for his persistent refusal to perform those actions which would signify his submission to the code of communal behavior (𝛀 128-31):

My child, how long will you go on eating your heart out

in sorrow and lamentation, and remember neither food nor

bed? It is a good thing even to lie with a woman.

It is only later in Book 24 that Achilles is completely restored, when he shares a meal with Priam, who himself has not eaten or slept since Hector’s death (𝛀 637-42). Achilles reminds the old man that even Niobe thought of food after losing her twelve children (𝛀 601-3, 618-19):

Now let us be mindful of food;

for even lovely-haired Niobe thought of food

whose twelve children were killed in her palace....

But come glorious old man, let us turn our thoughts to food.

In these passages, the sharing of a meal is explicitly portrayed as the privileged sign of reconciliation. In Book 24, it is the acknowledged way of “reconciling” oneself to the loss of a loved one, the sign of giving over one’s grief. In Book 19 Odysseus insists on a meal as part of a formal reconciliation between Agamemnon and Achilles, including a meal. The sharing of a meal is a ritual act which will bind Achilles once again to Agamemnon and the other Greeks, insuring that Achilles has no lack of δίκη (T 180). In both cases sharing a meal reaffirms one’s commitment to a community against the claims of some other attachment which conflicts with the best interests of the group (attachment to the dead, Achilles’ attachment to his private wrath). It is this step that Achilles refuses to take in Book 19.

In Book 16 Achilles also acts in a way which has often seemed to scholars to be “anti-social.”¹⁹ As in Book 9, he refuses to make amends with Agamemnon, despite the fact that the other Greeks clearly feel he no longer has good cause to do so. When Patroklos reproaches Achilles for acting in a way that will benefit no one (Π 29-35), Achilles hyperbolically rejects any interest in the common weal (Π 97-100):

Father Zeus, Athena and Apollo, would that

not one of the Trojans or Greeks would escape

death and that we two alone would survive so

that we alone could loose Troy’s hallowed coronal.

At this point the text switches back to the battle, where Aias gives way and the ships are fired, the condition which Achilles had set for his return. Instead he orders to arms Patroklos, who is conspicuously unable to stand in for Achilles (Π 140-2):²⁰

Only he did not take the spear of blameless Aiakides

huge, heavy, thick, which no one else of all the Achaeans

could handle, but Achilles alone knew how to wield it.

After the catalogue of the Myrmidons, which Nagler notes is “acephalic” and anticlimactic, Achilles gives what is supposed to be an arousal speech to the troops. Instead Achilles reminds them of how they have insulted him in the past (200-9). After they depart, Achilles goes to his tent to prepare a libation to Zeus. This is the only libation in Homer which does not take place in the social context of a meal, and Achilles uses a cup from which only he has ever drunk, a detail which seems to be added only to emphasize the anti-social character of Achilles’ actions. Achilles’ prayer is most significant (Π 236-45):

As one time before when I prayed to you, you listened

and did me honor, and smote strongly the host of the Achaeans,

so one more time bring to pass the wish that I pray for.

For see, I myself am staying where the ships are assembled,

but I send out my companion and many Myrmidons with him

to fight. Let glory, Zeus of the wide brows, go forth with him.

Make brave the heart inside his breast, so that even Hector

will find out whether our henchman knows how to fight his battles

by himself, or whether his hands rage invincibly only

those times when I myself go into the grind of the war god.

Hector will indeed find out whether Patroklos’ hands are invincible when Achilles does not accompany him: they are not. The whole point of Achilles’ withdrawal has been to show the Greeks that they cannot endure without him; Patroklos will also not endure without him, even as it has been prophesied (Ο 65; cf. 𝚯 474-76, Π 46-47). There thus seems to be some question about the “intentions” of Achilles.

Achilles’ actions in Book 16 are, in fact, quite inexplicable in terms of his stated “intentions.” It is difficult to see how sending out Patroklos will profit Achilles at all in reestablishing his lost honor. If Patroklos beats back Hector, how will the Greeks be forced to give Achilles back his due honor? If Achilles now feels that his ends have been accomplished, why does he not return himself? We could state the problem in Riffaterre’s terms by saying that in Book 16, the significance of the poem, which can be identified thematically with the Διὸς βουλή, the “plan of Zeus” to honor Achilles, begins to contradict the meaning of Achilles’ actions; that is, the portrayal of Achilles begins to become “ungrammatical.” Achilles will achieve his due honor by killing Hector after the death of Patroklos: this has been ordained. Nevertheless, it would be perverse to suggest that this is what Achilles “had in mind” when he made his initial request, or even when he sends out Patroklos in Book 16. It thus seems precipitous to blame or praise Achilles in this book; such claims remain mired in the realm of mimesis. Elsewhere in the poem the Διὸς βουλή is specifically identified as the determinant of the action (Ο 64-77, Ο 592-52, Π 249-52, to name only the most salient passages); but in Book 16 the relationship between the Διὸς βουλή and Achilles’ actions becomes especially complex. The significance of the contradictions in the behavior of both Achilles and Zeus is a larger issue that we will have to face eventually, but for now it is possible to identify the narrative function of the wolf simile, which is clearly related to this contradiction.

When the Myrmidons prepare to enter the battle, a preparatory meal would be inappropriate, since Achilles’ actions are at one level “anti-social.” The text thus encounters a crisis. The preparation for battle is an overcoded situation in which, among other things, the cultural unit of a preparatory meal is an established element. The forward movement of the narrative thus dictates an element which is thematically inconsistent with the portrayal of Achilles’ actions. The only way to prevent the text from breaking down is to transform the meal element in some way. The text tells us, “they did not eat a preparatory meal, for Achilles’ actions run counter to the social cohesion implied by a meal. The kind of eating commensurate with his actions would run something like this: οἱ δὲ λύκοι ὣς κτλ.” The traditional dynamics of Homeric narrative thus provide a way to get through the narrative complication. The preparatory meal becomes transformed into a negative meal and is articulated in the text as a savage meal. The wolf simile does for the Myrmidons what Achilles’ spear does for Patroklos. The most important thing about Patroklos’ arming is what he does not do: take the great Pelian ash. The most important thing about the marshaling of the Myrmidons is what they do not do: eat a proper preparatory meal. To return to Riffaterre’s terminology, the matrix of the simile is “they do not eat a proper meal”; the model of the simile, the way the text articulates the matrix, is “they eat a savage meal.”

I chose the wolf simile of Book 16 as my first example because of its dramatic “irrelevance” to the narrative event it is ostensibly compared to. This irrelevance makes the simile stick out; it engages the reader and calls out to be integrated into the significance at a deeper level of organization. Many of Homer’s similes do not create such a tension with the organization of the text at the level of representation. Hence, they often seem to be simply colorful moments of poetic fantasy. This may indeed be the case with many of Homer’s similes, but one need not be content with such a solution. The notion of “organic unity” at the level of the representation became a desideratum of narrative largely as a result of classical philosophy and rhetoric. But this does not mean that archaic poetry had no regard for coherence at that level: indeed, coherence at more than one level of linguistic organization would seem to be characteristic of all literature. It is likely that many of Homer’s similes perform narrative functions beyond the usual “decorative” ones. To be thorough, one should investigate all the similes and create a typology of their functions. This, however, is beyond the scope of the present study. I will therefore use a case study approach, choosing some particularly interesting examples.

Book 11: Simile as Textual Generator

Since in my treatment of the Patrokleia I have assumed that the preparation for battle is an overcoded situation which dictates a preparatory meal, it will be useful to look at the beginning of the great battle in Book 11. No mention is made of a meal, but interestingly enough, the element is once again taken up in the similes. Immediately before Agamemnon’s aristeia, we have (Λ 84-90):

So long as it was early morning and the sacred daylight increasing,

so long the thrown weapons of both took hold and the men fell.

But at the time when the woodcutter makes ready his meal

in the wooded glens of the mountains, when he has sated his hands

of cutting down tall trees, and his heart is cloyed with it,

and longing for food and for sweet wine takes hold of his senses;

at that time the Danaans by their manhood broke the battalions.

This simile creates a remarkable foil to the action, and the resulting pathos has often been admired. What is particularly interesting is the play on the notion of appetite in this simile, its use for the woodsman’s desire for food as well as for his work. The woodsman turns to prepare his meal because he has “sated” (κορέσσατο) his hands of cutting down trees. A “cloying,” ἅδος, overcomes his θυμός. The word ἅδος is a hapax, but its meaning is clearly related to the use of the adverb ἅδος in such phrases as εἰωθότες ἔδμεναι ἅδην (E 203), “accustomed to eating to repletion”; οἵ μιν ἅδην ἐλόωσι (N 315), “these can battle him sufficiently”; οὐ λήξω πριν Tρῶας ἅδην ἐλάσαι πολέμοιο (T 423), “I will not leave off until the Trojans have their fill of fighting”; ἀλλ ἔτι μέν μίν φημι ἅδην ἐλάαν κακητότος (ε 290), “but still I think I have given him his fill of difficulty.” The word ἅδος, then, like the verb κορέννυμι, suggests having one’s appetite satisfied or oversatisfied.

On the other hand, the verb describing the woodsman’s desire for food, αἱρέω, is often used of strong emotions (ἵμερος Ξ 328, δέος P 67, χόλος Σ 322) “overtaking” or “capturing” someone. This sense is connected to the verb’s most common use in the “seizing” or “capturing” of someone in battle. At the same time, the verb ὁπλίζω, although commonly used for the preparing of many things, also can mean simply “to arm,” to put on one’s ὅπλα. Thus the simile contains a mixing of two spheres of activity which should properly be kept separate, not unlike the wolf simile of Book 16. The semantic content of this simile is, indeed, determined by the fact that the Greeks have had no preparatory meal; but the function of the woodsman simile is quite different from that of the wolf simile. It just so happens that the Zeitangabe diction which introduces the simile occurs in two other places which illustrate clearly the function the woodsman simile must perform. The first is in Book 8, the beginning of the second day of battle. A general melee is briefly described and then we have (𝚯 66-72):

So long as it was early morning and the sacred daylight increasing

so long the thrown weapons of both took hold and men fell.

But when the sun god stood bestriding the middle heaven,

then the father balanced his golden scales, and in them

he set two fateful portions of death, which lays men prostrate,

for Trojans, breakers of horses, and bronze-armored Achaeans,

and balanced in the middle. The Achaeans death-day was heavier.

This is the first time Zeus directly intervenes in the fighting in order to accomplish his promise to Thetis, and Hector’s success in this book leads immediately to a crisis for the Greeks and to the embassy. The Zeitangabe separates the “other” actions (ὄφρα μὲν) from the crucial turning point in the plot (ἦμος δέ). In fact the whole previous day of battle must be included among these “other” actions which do not get the story any further along. After a substantial retardation, the Διὸς βουλή is finally initiated in Book 8, and the turning point is marked by the same two lines which precede the woodsman simile.

Later, in Book 16, Patroklos’ undoing is preceded by the following Zeitangabe (Π 777-80):

So long as the sun was climbing still to the middle heaven,

so long the thrown weapons of both took hold and men fell.

But when the sun had gone to the time for unyoking cattle,

then beyond destiny the Achaeans were stronger.

The overwhelming success of Patroklos, like the Greek successes of Books 3-7, threaten to take away Achilles’ τιμή; the Zeitangabe again separates the “other” actions of Book 16 from the divine intervention which will ultimately lead to Achilles’ much sought for honor. It marks the return, that is, to the forward movement of the plot after several hundred lines of narrative which retard the crisis created by the firing of the ships.

The Zeitangabe of Book 11 serves a similar purpose. It too marks a turning point in the plot, the moment the Διὸς βονλή begins to unfold in the narrative. But instead of direct divine intervention, we have the woodsman simile. This simile, its own semantic content determined by the fact that the Greeks have not taken a preparatory meal, becomes in turn the model of the articulation of the Διὸς βουλή. Like the woodsman, the “best of the Achaeans,” as Nestor later characterizes them, will fight successfully until a δοςἅ overcomes them and they are forced to retire. In a series of parallel episodes, Agamemnon, Diomedes and Odysseus fight and kill only to be wounded themselves. The simile, however, does not merely presage in a general way the imminent setbacks of the Greeks, but determines them in detail. To use Riffaterre’s terminology, the matrix of the narrative is the Διὸς βουλή (as it was in Books 8 and 16); the model of the narrative, the first actualization of the matrix is the woodsman simile.²¹

Note, for example, the use of the ὄφρα μὲν...αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ diction which describes the action of each hero. First, Zeus sends a messenger to Hector (Λ 186-94):

Go on your way, swift Iris, and carry my word to Hector:

as long as he beholds Agamemnon, shepherd of the people,

raging among the champions and cutting down the ranged fighters,

so long let him hold back and urge on the rest of the people

to fight against the enemy through this long encounter.

But when, either struck with a spear or hit by a flying arrow,

he springs back to his horses, then I guarantee power to Hector

to kill men, till he makes his way to the strong-benched vessels,

until the sun goes down and the blessed darkness comes over.

These lines are the “second” actualization of the will of Zeus, and they are clearly modeled on the woodsman simile: there will be a spree of success for Agamemnon which will be cut short by a wound. After Agamemnon’s withdrawal, Hector kills several Greeks until Diomedes comes up to face him. Diomedes also has an initial success; in fact, he almost kills Hector. Then we have (A 357-60):

As long as the son of Tydeus was following his spear’s cast

far through the front fighters where it fixed in the earth,

for so long Hector caught his breath, and springing back into

his chariot, drove back into the multitude and avoided death.

Shortly after this Paris wounds Diomedes, whose withdrawal brings forth Odysseus, who is taken through a similar sequence. After killing five Trojans and being called “insatiable of guile and endeavor” (Λ 430: δόλων ἀτ’ ἠδὲ πόνοιο), Odysseus is wounded. When the Trojans see Odysseus’ blood, they swarm on him and force him to give way. Aias then comes to his aid and the situation is recapitulated in a simile which again uses the ὄφρα...αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ diction (473-86):

The Trojans crowded around Odysseus, as bloody jackals in

the mountains crowd on a horned stag who is stricken,

one whom a hunter shot with an arrow from the string,

and the stag has escaped him, running with his feet,

as long as the blood stayed warm, and his knees were springing

beneath him; but when the pain of the flying arrow has

beaten him, then the rending jackals begin to feast on him

in the mountains and the shaded glen. But then some spirit

leads that way a dangerous lion, and the jackals run

in terror, but the lion eats it; so for a while around wise

much-devising Odysseus the Trojans crowded, valiant and

numerous, but then the hero with rapid play of his spear

beat off the pitiless death day. Now Aias came near

him, carrying his shield like a tower, and stood forth

beside him, and the Trojans fled one way and another.

Odysseus then withdraws from battle with the help of Aias. In each of these three cases, the actions of each hero varies the pattern of action articulated in the woodsman simile. A closer look at the passages will show that as the model of the action, characteristics of the simile’s form and content recur in the whole passage in significant ways. The simile becomes the textual generator of a series of variations of itself. This is especially clear in the similes.

After he is hurt, Agamemnon remains in the battle until his wound dries up and the pain becomes unbearable. Note the similarity to Odysseus’ deer simile and the use of ὄφρα and αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ (264-68):

But Agamemnon ranged in the ranks of the other fighters

with spear and sword and with huge stones that he flung,

as long as the blood was still running warm from the wound.

But after the sore place was dry, and the flow of blood stopped,

the sharp pains began to break in on the strength of Atreides.

Line 268 has a remarkable phonic character: ὀξεῖαι δ’ ὀδύναι δῦνον. This succession of vowels plus 8 even seems to generate a simile which continues the phonic play (269-32):

As the sharp sorrow of pain descends on a woman in labor,

the bitterness that the hard spirits of childbirth bring on,

Hera’s daughters, who hold the power of the bitter birthpangs,

so the sharp pains began to break in on the strength of Atreides.

The scholiast complained that such a humble image was unbefitting a man who had just accomplished such feats as Agamemnon.²² But the organization of this simile is not primarily mimetic, not even semantic or lexical: it is phonic. The most important words in this simile are ὠδίνουσαν and ὠδῖνας. The rest fleshes out this phonic play.²³ And the generative source for all five lines is none other than the ἅδος of Λ 89, which overtakes the poor woodsman when he is “sated” of working. In the logic of the structural parallelism between the woodsman and Agamemnon, the ἅδος and the ὀξει’ ὀδύναι are equivalent: each is the cause of the “retreat” from heroic labor.

The inscription of this equivalence by a phonic echo, itself expanded in the strongly “ungrammatical” simile of the birthpangs, is a good example of what Riffaterre calls “overdetermination,” a term he borrows from psychoanalysis. “Poetic” devices such as verbal echo produce connections among words which are additional to the normal grammatical ones. These “deviant” connections in turn become symptomatic of the “repressed” matrix. Overdetermination is, according to Riffaterre, the corollary of catachresis (“abusive” language): the more strange a departure from usage seems to be, the more strongly motivated it seems to be (Semiotics of Poetry, p. 21). The phonic play between ἅδος and ὀδύνη not only draws attention to the parallelism between the woodsman and Agamemnon, but opens up into other productive issues of the text: the fact that the woodsman simile itself is determined by the lack of a preparatory meal by the Greeks, a lack that is a symptom of a wound in the Greek community because of Achilles’ withdrawal; the fact that Achilles is nursing a wound for which he is demanding satisfaction, a satisfaction which, after the embassy of Book 9, seems to be destined to become an oversatisfaction. Because we are used to paying attention to more “grammatical” forms of textual relationships, it is easy for us to underestimate the versatility of texts in drawing propulsive force from any level of linguistico-textual organization. When the arrow is removed from Diomedes’ foot, there is another proliferation of versions of the ἅδος/ὀδύνη play (Λ 398):

But the phonic play may just as easily have helped determine Odysseus as the next victim of the Διὸς βουλή, as it probably did, albeit on a different level of linguistic organization, in the case of the next Greek to be wounded, Machaon the healer.

The semantic content of the woodsman simile, a conflation of appetite and work (specifically, cutting down trees), recurs in the similes of the narrative. Agamemnon is compared to a forest fire, a common usage; but this fire “fells” shrubbery (Λ 155-58):

As when obliterating fire comes down on a timbered

forest and the roll of the wind carries it everywhere,

and thickets leaning under the force of the fire’s

rush fall uprooted, so before Atreus’ son Agamemnon

went down the high heads [of the fleeing Trojans].

The verb πίπτω is used of warriors falling after being cut down in battle, an event which is often compared to a tree being felled (e.g., Δ 482, E 590). This verb, however, is not particularly appropriate for a “thicket” (θάμνος) which has burnt; but this line is generated by the semic potential of the woodsman simile. Note also the hapax, ἀξύλῳ to describe the forest. The word ξύλα refers specifically to wood which is cut down for lumber. A forest which is ἀξύλος is one which has not yet been thinned by a woodsman. Thus, despite the fact that it is the wind and fire which destroy the forest, the semantic content of the woodsman simile continues to play a text-formative role.

Agamemnon’s simile of the lion attacking cattle and eating one of them (172-76) exemplifies the other semic center of the woodsman simile, but lines 175-76 are particularly appropriate:

First the lion breaks her neck caught fast in the strong teeth,

then gulps down the blood and all the guts that are inward.

The verb ἔαξε (from ἄγνυμι) usually describes the breaking of wooden objects, such as spears and axles. In M 148, it is used of boars rushing through a woods and breaking down trees. The use of ἔαξε, therefore, to describe the “cutting down” of the cow answers to one part of the semantic nucleus of the woodsman simile, the scene as a whole to the other. In Agamemnon’s other lion simile (113-20), the deer flees διὰ δρυμὰ πυκνὰ καὶ ὕλην, “through a thick wood and forest,” and in Odysseus’ boar simile, the boar rushes βαθεὶης ἐκ ξυλόχοιο (415), “out of a deep copse.” Note also that in these similes the teeth of the animals are mentioned: ὀδοῦσιν 114, 175; ὀδόντων 417. The woodsman’s work results in a ἅδος for him; the work of the aristeuontes, which they perform in the similes with their ὀδοῦσιν, will backfire on them in the form of an ὀδύνη.

The simile of lines 474-81 (quoted above, page 46) is an example of a point-by-point correspondence between narrative situation and simile. Again the labor of war is translated into eating. Odysseus, who manages to kill the man who inflicted the wound on him, corresponds to the deer who is struck by the hunter, whom he eludes despite the wound. The jackals correspond to the Trojans who swarm on the wounded Odysseus until they are in turn chased off by a lion (Aias). This is noteworthy because it shows that in the similes there need not be a tension between mimesis and semiosis, between meaning and significance. There is, however, one minor lapse of correspondence: Aias saves Odysseus from the Trojans; but the lion chases off the jackals only to eat the deer himself. Of the innumerable possibilities for a line ending after the bucolic diaeresis, the textual dynamics generated a phrase determined primarily by its phonic character: αὐταρ ὁ δάπτει.

It can thus be seen that the woodsman simile generates not only the general shape of the battle scenes of Agamemnon, Diomedes and Odysseus, but determines details at a number of levels of linguistic organization. Within the scope of the narrative, there are similes generated by the semantic core of the woodsman simile (“woods,” “felling of trees,” “appetite”),²⁴ a simile generated by the model of the action (474ff.), and a simile generated by the phonic content of the simile (269-71). The strongest evidence for this view, however, is the exceptional treatment of Aias, to whom we must now turn.

Aias steps forward after the withdrawal of Odysseus and quickly kills five Trojans (489-91). He is then compared to a mountain stream in a simile which continues the semantic expansion of the woodsman simile (Λ 492-5):

As when a swollen river hurls its water, big with rain,

down the mountains to the flat land, pressed on by Zeus’ rain,

and sweeps down with it numbers of dry oaks and pine trees,

until it hurls much mud into the salt sea.

Besides the notion of “felling” trees, the Διὸς ὄμβρῳ reintroduces directly the matrix: Διὸς βουλή. It seems that Aias is about to be taken through the same sequence as Agamemnon, Diomedes and Odysseus. Now Aias is the “best of the Achaeans,” we have been told, ὄφρ’ ’Αχιλεὺς μήνιεν, “as long as Achilles was angry” (B 769); and if he were to be wounded, that would quickly bring about the will of Zeus: the rout of the Greeks. That would in turn pave the way for the return of Achilles. But the text makes an abrupt volte face (497-98):²⁵

nor yet had Hector

heard, since he was fighting at the right of the entire battle.

The sequence will not, it seems, be run for Aias, or at least not yet. Hector’s fighting is briefly described, and then the text makes another switch over to Paris, who wounds Machaon in a way that recapitulates the pattern of the other three heroes in brief compass (504-7):

Even so the Achaeans would not have yielded from his path

had not Alexandros, the lord of lovely-haired Helen,

stopped Machaon, shepherd of the people, as he was having an aristeia,

hitting him with a three-barbed arrow in the right shoulder.

After Nestor retreats with Machaon, we return to Hector (521), whose charioteer urges him to face Aias. This they seem to be doing (531ff.) but instead Hector unaccountably steers clear of Aias (542). What does happen is that Zeus mazes Aias and causes him to retreat. The pattern which was begun for Aias at 489 is now taken up again by the direct intervention of Zeus and we have the following simile (548-57):

As when the men who live in the wild and their dogs have driven

a tawny lion away from the mid-fenced ground of their oxen,

and will not let him tear out the fat of the oxen, watching

nightlong against him, and he in his hunger for meat closes in

but can get nothing of what he wants, for the ranging javelins

thrown from the daring hands of the men beat ever against him,

and the flaming torches, and these he balks at for all of his fury

and with the daylight goes away, disappointed of desire;

so Aias, disappointed at heart, drew back from the Trojans.

Again there is an actualization of the semantic nucleus of the woodsman simile, appetite. But here the lion is prevented from eating, despite his great hunger, and he goes away unsatisfied (τετιηότι θυμῷ). This must have seemed unsatisfactory to the poet as well, for he launches into a second simile which “corrects” the first (558-62):

As when a donkey, stubborn and hard to move, goes into a field

in despite of boys, and many sticks have been broken upon him,

but he gets in and goes on eating the deep grain, and the children

beat him with sticks, but their strength is infantile; yet at last

by hard work they drive him out when he is glutted with eating;

so around great Aias, the son of Telamon, etc.

This simile is much more closely connected with the woodsman model. The ass retreats only after “sating” himself, in a line which is clearly a variation of line 87 of the woodsman simile:

after he had sated his hands

after he had sated himself on grain.

The ass even does a little “woodcutting” himself as the children’s sticks (πολλὰ ῥόπαλα: cf. Λ 88 δένδρεα μάκρα) are broken on his back (ἐάγη: from ἄγνυμι again). Significantly, the ass has a ἅδος, but no ὀδύνη, a fact underlined by the phrase βίη δέ τε νηπίη αὐτῶν, “but their strength is infantile” (i.e., undamaging). Both similes, in fact, represent a withdrawal unattended by wounds, a contrast to the previous aristeuontes, and this is of major interest

The introduction of Aias in lines 464ff. seems to have created a difficulty. The seriousness of the Greek plight escalates successively from the wounding of Agamemnon to the wounding of Diomedes to the wounding of Odysseus. The series leads the text to Aias, who is “second-best of the Achaeans.” Aias’ wounding, as I have said, would lead inexorably to the “best of the Achaeans,” Achilles. But the Διὸς βουλή, i.e., the plot of the poem, seems hesitant to bring this critical event about at this time. Let us consider again the progression of the action from 489 on.

Aias begins killing Trojans and is compared to a river breaking down trees. The sequence which has been run for the previous three heroes is thus begun for Aias. What is projected by the pattern is for Aias to be wounded and then withdraw. Then the Trojans would advance unchecked to the ships, even as Zeus has promised (Λ 192-93). Instead we are told that Hector, the likeliest candidate to inflict such a wound, is not nearby. This abruptly introduced information short-circuits one possible direction of the narrative flow. Then, just as abruptly, we are told that Paris wounds Machaon, who, surprisingly, was having an aristeia (ἀριστεύοντα). Machaon’s wounding seems to complete the pattern which was begun for Aias. Hector’s charioteer then drives toward Aias, but again the confrontation is avoided (542). Instead Zeus mazes Aias, a much more potent actualization of the will of Zeus. But still Aias is not wounded, and the Trojan spearcasts are in vain, despite their eagerness to sate themselves in Aias’ flesh: [δούρα] λιλαιόμενα χροὸς ἆσαι (574). The confrontation between Hector and Aias, which will lead to the firing of the ships and pave the way for Achilles’ return, is still five books away. As he retreats, Aias prevents the Trojans from making their way to the ships (569): πὰντας δὲ προέεργε θοὰς ἐπὶ νῆας ὀδεύειν. The ἅδος of the model does not become translated into an ὀδύνη for Aias, but a retreat in which he wards off the ὀδεύειν of the Trojans, and the text has been laboring for some time to establish this reorientation of the model. Paris then for the third time steps forward and wounds a Greek with an arrow: not Aias, for whom the pattern was begun, but Eurypylos, who then retires to the camp (581ff.). This displacement of Aias by Eurypylos is reflected in the words of Nestor, repeated by both Patroklos and Eurypylos himself, that the “best of the Achaeans,” Agamemnon, Diomedes, Odysseus and Eurypylos, have been wounded, ignoring the fact that Aias is still fighting (Λ 658-62, Λ 823-25, Π 23-27).

With Eurypylos, the narrative turns to the Greek camp and the articulation of the will of Zeus grinds to a halt. After an astonishing succession of Greek defeats which climaxes in the slow retreat of Aias, the action reaches a flat spot which will extend all the way through Book 15. In that book, Zeus’ intervention will once again bring the Greek plight to a climax with a retreat by Aias; and when Aias can no longer endure against Hector’s onslaught (Π 102), the stage will be set for the return of Achilles to battle. Achilles, however, will send out Patroklos; and it will be the death of the latter, and not Aias’ wounding, which brings Achilles back into the fighting.

Book 11 of the Iliad presents us with an extraordinary example of the workings of a composition technique dominated by the poetics of oral presentation. Let us try to imagine the situation of the poet as he begins line 489. The model of the woodsman simile has already generated three parallel sequences. Homer launches on a fourth with Aias, but suddenly decides that he is not ready for the outcome of the pattern: Aias’ wounding. Vergil could have erased these lines and started over; but in an oral performance, once something is said, there is no going back: one can only make an adjustment somewhere along the line. One such adjustment comes at line 497b, when the text switches abruptly to Hector, and stretches to 503. That eliminates Aias’ wounding, and the poet then brings the projected pattern to an end with the wounding of Machaon. Next the charioteer of Hector urges him to confront Aias and begins heading to the other side of the battle, but the confrontation of Aias and Hector is again short-circuited, since Hector inexplicably stays clear of Aias (521-42). These lines are yet another example of something begun by the poet, only to be abandoned. Instead of Hector driving Aias out of the field, Zeus mazes him (542) and his retreat proceeds without any further reference to Hector. A simile is generated to handle the development (548-55), but the lion simile gets the appetite seme wrong; Zenodotus athetized the lion simile, and a literate poet could have erased it. Homer instead leaves it and takes another shot, this time focusing on the woodsman simile more sharply and adjusting the transformation of the appetite seme in the lion simile (558-63). As in the previous case, the woodsman model projects another wounding and the poet falls on Eurypylos. Eurypylos’ parting remarks emphasize the danger if Aias is wounded (587-91).

Apparently satisfied with this resolution of the textual complexity in which he found himself, the poet turns to Achilles and Patroklos, since it is through the latter that the Διὸς βουλή will make its next major movement (602-4):

At once Achilles spoke to his own companion in arms, Patroklos,

calling from the ship, and he heard it from inside the shelter

and came out like Ares, and this was the beginning of his evil.

Achilles sends Patroklos out to discover who has been wounded, for he thinks the time might be right for his return (609-10):

Now I think the Achaeans will come to my knees and stay there

in supplication, for a need past endurance has come to them.

When Patroklos returns from his mission, he will tell Achilles what has just happened in Book 11 (Π 23-27):

For all those who were before the best in battle

are lying up among the ships with arrow or spear wounds.

The son of Tydeus, strong Diomedes, was hit by an arrow,

and Odysseus has a pike wound, and Agamemnon the spear-famed,

and Eurypylos has been wounded in the thigh with an arrow.

He will also repeat the request of Nestor (Λ 794-803 = Π 36-43) that Achilles send out the Myrmidons with Patroklos at their head. It seems that it is this escalation of the plot by means of Patroklos’ involvement, already formulated by Zeus’ prophecy back in Book 8 (475), which had to be set up in the story before Hector could meet Aias. Once this is done, the deferred confrontation between Aias and Hector can be narrated (Π 101-24). But, as Patroklos is returning to the tent of Achilles in Book 11, there is another “fateful” decision: Patroklos is waylaid by Eurypylos (822ff.), and the “main” plot of the poem is waylaid for what turns out to be four books. After the teichomachia of Book 12,²⁶ Poseidon enters the battle unbeknownst to Zeus and begins reversing his βουλή. In Book 14, the “plot” is literally put to sleep with the beguilement of Zeus by Hera. When Zeus awakens in Book 15, he is furious that his plan has been foiled and angrily tells Hera that he and nobody else will decide what the plot of the poem will be (O 53-77). He once more initiates his will, this time through the agency of Apollo,²⁷ and returns the story to the point it had reached at the end of Book 11. The long-awaited confrontation between Hector and Aias finally occurs; and after Hector shears the spear of Aias (Π 114ff.) and fires the ships, the stage is set for the “best of the Achaeans” to enter the battle. It is, of course, Patroklos and not Achilles who enters the battle, but this is not the only instance in the Iliad of a narrative trajectory which is truncated or modified, a process often flagged by the use of similes.

The woodsman simile with which we began provides the model of the articulation of the Διὸς βουλή in Book 11. The heroes will labor until they are overcome by a ἅδος/ὀδύνη, and retire to camp. The semantic content of this simile is determined by the absence of a preparatory meal: not, of course, that the Greeks will become hungry for food in the battle, but that the social cohesion that a communal meal signifies is lacking, and it is this which will cause them harm. The form and content of the following narrative is generated by the form and content of the woodsman simile. Several of the larger similes, in particular, are generated by the semantic content; one is generated by a phonic play which has its origin in the woodsman simile. With the introduction of Aias, there is a textual complication necessitating some substantial readjustment. Within the scope of this readjustment, the model of the woodsman simile asserts itself twice with the wounding of Machaon and the wounding of Eurypylos. There is also an example of a simile which restates and “corrects” a preceding simile to conform better with the pattern of the woodsman simile.

This last phenomenon is of great importance for Homer and deserves further comment. Berkeley Peabody has argued that the pattern of statement-retrogression--restatement, or statement--amplification--restatement, is a fundamental characteristic of oral poetry.²⁸ This basic pattern is responsible for a large part of the ubiquitous “ring composition” that so many scholars have identified in Homer. Peabody suggests, however, that there is a fundamental difference between ring composition in Homer, where it is basically a “correction” device, and ring composition in Pindar or Horace. In the latter, ring composition is cultivated as a rhetorical device, since it is no longer needed as a correction device. This is, in fact, the fate of many characteristics of Homeric narrative. When their functions in the textual dynamics became outmoded or were no longer understood, such features as ring composition, anaphora, etc., were perceived as rhetorical flowers and cultivated by later authors qua rhetorical devices. This, I shall argue, is the fate of that touchstone of the Homeric style, the epic simile.

Another example of this correction procedure occurs in the beginning of Book 11, just before the woodsman simile; and since it is connected with the cultural unit of a preparatory meal, it will be useful to consider it. As the Trojans are preparing for battle, Hector’s armor flashes like the lightning of Zeus (66). This line introduces the Διὸς βουλή in connection with Hector and his imminent success; that is, it is a statement of the matrix of the narrative. It is followed by a reapers simile (A 67-69):

And the men, like two lines of reapers who, facing each other,

drive their course all down the field of wheat or of barley

for a man blessed in substance, and the cut swathes drop thickly.

Krischer assigns this simile to the motif of the unentscheidner Kampf, often a moment of pause before some turn in the battle.²⁹ The simile is followed by two and a half lines which amplify the notion of an “equal battle” (70-72a),³⁰ and the text seems poised for the plunge into the narrative of the battle. The end of line 72 is οἱ δὲ λύκοι ὣς, the same words which introduce the wolf simile in Book 16. But this simile is left undeveloped; instead, the poet restates the overwhelming presence of Zeus (75-83). Then we seem to have a new beginning with the Zeitangabe and the woodsman simile. But why this retrogression?

The reapers simile is related to the cultural unit of a preparatory meal, a connection that would be by no means obvious did not Odysseus use a similar comparison when he chides Achilles in Book 19 for refusing to eat before fighting (T 221-25):

When there is a battle men suddenly have their fill of it

when the bronze scatters on the ground the straw in the most

numbers and the harvest is most thin, when Zeus has poised

his balance, Zeus, who is steward of men’s battles.

There is no way the Achaeans can mourn a dead man by

denying the belly.

Odysseus’ comparison is obscurely related to his point; but it is just this obscurity (this “ungrammaticality”) and the fact that the passage has a strong gnomic character which suggests that there must be some traditional association of reaping with a preparatory meal.³¹ In Λ 67ff. the poet is fishing about for just the right way to begin the battle. The cultural unit of a preparatory meal suggests itself as the semantic focus of the model of the action by its absence in the preparation of the Greeks. The text generates the reapers simile, but it is not developed into a model for the succeeding narrative. Wolves come to mind, but this is not developed either. By this time the poet has wandered away from his matrix to the point of bringing in Eris, which apparently creates a problem, for the text immediately works itself back to the overwhelming presence of Zeus. Eris is εἰσορόωσα (73), “looking things over,” but that is not important. What is important is that Zeus, who wishes to give glory to the Trojans (79) is looking things over: εἰσορόων (82). Now that he is back to Zeus, the poet tries again, this time successfully, to articulate a model for the action.

But why was Eris introduced here at all? Nothing in Homer is completely fortuitous: that is by theoretical fiat. If Eris is inappropriate at one level of the discourse, she must be appropriate at another level; for something generated her appearance in the text. In fact, Eris also has an important place in the semantic field of the communal meal. The basic meaning of ἔρις is, according to Trumpy, “das Bedurfnis sich zu messen,”³² precisely that which can disturb the δαίς ἐΐση. In Book 1 of the Iliad, Hephaistos intervenes in the quarrel of Zeus and Hera, calling on them not to contend (ἐριδαίνετον) over mortals, for it will spoil the feast of the gods (οὐδέ τι δσιτὸς/ἐσθλῆς ἔσσεται ἦδος, A 575-76). Eris is also traditionally the one who spoiled the wedding feast of Peleus and Thetis in the Cypria (Allen V, p. 102). In the Theogony one of Eris’ children is Λίμος, “Hunger,” the result of an “unequal division.” While on the battlefield in Book 4, finally, Eris distributes “equal portions of strife” to both sides, a travesty of the fair portions allotted to the heroes in communal meals (Δ 444-45):

She then hurled down bitterness equally between both sides,

as she walked through the crowd, augmenting the groaning of men.

The result of her apportioning of νεῖκος is the “groaning of men,” recalling the groaning which concludes the wolves’ meal in Book 16.

So also, in the passage in Book 11, Eris is πολύστονος, “causing much groaning,” reinforcing her connection with the lack of a communal meal in the preparation for battle. If the fair division of a meal signifies communal harmony and singlemindedness, the presence of Eris suggests the breakdown of that harmony. The lack of a preparatory meal at the beginning of Book 11 is a void marked by the presence of Eris, who is sent down to rouse the Greeks (Λ 22ff.). She it is who, screaming with her shrill voice puts oôevoç into the heart of each man and makes war seem sweeter than going home.³³ In respect to the cultural unit of a communal meal, therefore, ἔρις πολύστονος has a significance similar to the reapers and the wolves of Λ 67-72. It is this semantic heritage which brings Eris into the text, an introduction which creates an anomaly an another level of textual organization, necessitating the retrogression and restatement of lines 74-84.

The picture of Homeric composition which emerges from this analysis of Book 11 runs counter to the one underlying most essentialist interpretive strategies. The tendency of such critics has been to analyze Homer’s epics along the same lines as one would analyze, say, a Pindaric ode or a Vergilian eclogue. In these latter texts, elements of structure are foremost: balance, symmetry, parallelism, etc. Such traits make the linear unfolding of the text secondary to the text’s wholeness, its closure, its existence as a single object able to be seen “all at once.” At one level, one can say that for such characteristics to be primary requires what an oral poet does not really have and does not really have a need for: the opportunity to consider the poem’s whole existence before beginning, or having completed a “first draft,” to review it in detail and revise it into an “organically” unified whole. My discussion has emphasized the forward propulsion of Homeric narrative, a characteristic likely to be more legible in a text dominated by an oral poetics. The similes of Book 11 are means for propelling the narrative forward, for getting and keeping the text underway, and ring composition is a propulsive version of revision.

It is not that the poet has no idea where the text is going at the beginning; rather, there are innumerable ways of getting there, and as the text rolls forward, the factors which will determine its route are many. Other songs heard or sung, lexical and semantic associations, meter, mimetic considerations, even phonic similarities may lead the text this way or that. If one imagines, for example, the semantic field of Homer’s language system as a vast network of connections implied by various coding correlations, each phrase or word of the text suggests many possible directions for development This “embarass de richesses,” as Nagler calls it, is perhaps the major difficulty of continuing an oral performance: not an aporia, but a polyporia. There are perhaps times when the poet launches on a certain track out of desperation, but this could be the exceptional case. It is more likely that the direction of the continuation will be “overdetermined” by its appropriateness on a number of levels of linguistic organization. All of these levels can be generative, or, when the poet is faced with a plenitude of possibilities from which one must be chosen, determinative.

To these linguistic factors must be added a host of non-linguistic ones: the audience’s response, the nature of the occasion for the performance, the poet’s physical condition, etc. The many gaps in our knowledge about the particulars of these factors makes it difficult to identify fully the textual dynamics operative at any particular moment. There is, however, one implication of the theory of codes which should be noted. There is no one level of linguistic organization which can be cited as primary; for they all interact simultaneously within the scope of the signifying system whose tendency toward internal coherence gives significance to all of its elements. Thus Eco replaces the notion of a hierarchy of textual “levels” with a scheme of metatextual “boxes” which

are interconnected in a continuous coming and going. The cooperation of the interpreter at the lower levels can succeed only because some hypotheses which concern upper levels (and vice versa) are hazarded. The same happens also for a generative process: frequently an author makes decisions concerning the deep semantic structure of his story only at the moment in which he chooses at the lexical level, for merely stylistic reasons, a given expression.³⁴

The Διὸς βουλή, for example, does seem to be the overall plot of the Iliad, but most of the poem can be related to that notion only in a very general way, for as the narrative is propelled forward, local issues of organization often override the larger movement of the plot. Thus, Cedric Whitman’s attempt to discover the “geometric” structure of the Iliad seems most arbitrary when he deals with the broader correspondences.³⁵ It is dubious whether ring composition as a structural device could be a primary organizing force on the scale Whitman suggests.

It is a significant fact in itself that the ending of the Iliad (and for that matter, the endings of the Odyssey, the Theogony, Beowulf, The Song of Roland, etc.) have always seemed problematic, if not downright clumsy. The forward propulsion of these texts does not become finally used up or exhausted at the end of these works: it simply stops. The generative potential at the end of these works is just as full as it is anywhere else, and the text could literally have kept on going forever. Closure is anathema to a propulsive poetics, whose entire mechanism is geared to continuation, to preventing the breakdown of the performance. I do not mean to say that the endings of these works are completely fortuitous or that they do not achieve a resolution of sorts. Rather, the point is that the overall plot and its resolution is only one of the many concerns of the poet. The bulk of the Iliad and Odyssey, as the analysts never tired of pointing out, is devoted to all sorts of things which do not directly move the plot forward. If the Iliad and Odyssey are at all representative, it seems that Homer and his audience cared less about “getting the story told” (which was, for the most part, traditional and well known) than about all sorts of other things which are brought in along the way. Thus, although we can delineate with Whitman and others the overall plot of the poem, this plot will be a loose “skeleton,” not the “soul” of the work, as Aristotle thought. And although it will be a determinative and generative force in the narrative, it will not be so uniformly, nor will it necessarily be the primary generator of text.

On the other end of the spectrum, Berkeley Peabody’s assumption that the primary generative force in Greek epic is phonic seems equally imbalanced.³⁶ The phonic level of linguistic organization has always been deemed important in poetry, but like metrical or mimetic considerations, the phonic level cannot be analyzed apart from the other potentials of language. Homeric narrative, above all, keeps on going, and the way that one thing leads to the next may result from any one or any combination of different levels of linguistic potential. A narrative situation may generate a simile; but a simile may also generate a whole narrative sequence. The critic of Homer will be on safest ground when a swathe of text can be shown to be overdetermined on a number of levels.

More generally, it can be seen that the notion that a text--any text--is “unified” and is an internally coherent system, even in Riffaterre’s sense as a “sustained relationship to one structure” (Semiotics of Poetry, 6), falls into the trap of seeing literature as mere repetition, however innovative. Such a view inevitably minimizes the degree to which texts such as the Iliad are examples of social practice, of someone trying to do something at a certain moment in a certain social context. Riffaterre identifies the function of poetry in general as aesthetic play, a game with words whose consequences are only aesthetic. This, however, is merely a modernist version of the traditional notion of the poet as “genius” who transmits to his/her audience essential and enduring truths to which the poet has some privileged access. To replace this romantic notion with a picture of Homer struggling along, becoming confused, changing his mind in midstream, may seem more scandalous than Parry’s oral-formulaic theory, but it is a necessary consequence of a perspective which takes seriously the critique of essentialist theories of meaning. If the poet is not merely repeating the words of the gods, but is engaged in some form of social practice, it is not unlikely that he will occasionally stumble; and such human frailty in Homer is not, pace Horace, a disgrace.

More importantly, we can add to Riffaterre’s thesis that poetry is a transformation or repetition of some textual structure the thesis that poetry is also an attempt to transform or preserve a social structure, an attempt to raise and resolve the problems and thoughts of a community in which the poet also acts and thinks. This means that the poet is also caught up in the contradictions and problems that the text articulates, and that the poet also has some effect on those problems and contradictions. It is, in fact, the dialectical relationship between code and message, between text and reader, between addressee and addresser, which necessitates this view of the poet. If Riffaterre’s “intertextual” analysis is incomplete, he nevertheless is the one who foregrounds for us this dialectic and puts in our hands the very tools with which we can go beyond his more strictly aesthetic concerns; for the social aspect of a literary work is not a representation of a social structure which preexists that work, even if a significant part of the labor of textual production is designed to give that impression. The relationship between social structure and text is, rather, one of indirection, distortion and transformation. The relationship between text and society is not mimetic (a reflection of social reality), but semiotic (a dialectical distortion or transformation of social reality). The social problem or contradiction to which the text tries to articulate a solution can thus be thought of as a sort of hypogram, a system which emerges as the focus of a text in part by its structured absence.³⁷

This notion is quite different from the various “functionalist” versions of the cultural effects and uses of literature, in which literature merely confirms already existing social relations. It has often been asserted, for example, that Homer’s language is a homogeneous and internally coherent system which reflects and confirms a homogeneous and cohesive social order.³⁸ The function of texts and other cultural practices thus becomes the reinforcement of that cohesiveness and homogeneity. Our focus on the cultural unit of a communal meal as an instance of such cultural reinforcement should allow us to draw the difference between such a “mimetic” view of the Iliad and a more properly semiotic one.

The Meal as Cultural Unit: Conclusion

Let us begin by considering the various examples of the preparatory meals of the Iliad as a series. The first day of battle is preceded and closed off by fully described meals (B 410ff. and H 314ff.). On that day, Zeus is not particularly active in advancing his plan to honor Achilles, a fact which led many “old analysts” to hypothesize that the first part of the Ur-Ilias consisted of Books 1-2, 8 and 11.³⁹ It is on the second day of battle that Zeus earnestly begins giving glory to the Trojans and trouble to the Greeks. Before this battle there is only a brief summary of the Greeks’ preparation (𝚯 53-54) and they eat “hastily” (ῥίμφα). In Book 11, the beginning of the day which will be by far the most disastrous for the Greeks, there is no preparatory meal, and the omission determines in part the character of the subsequent narrative. This disappearing act of the preparatory meal can be taken as an index of the advancing dissolution of the Greek situation due to Achilles’ absence. Later that same day, when the Myrmidons go forth without Achilles, there is a conversion of the preparatory meal in the wolf simile (Π 157ff.). On the final day of battle beginning in Book 19, there is Achilles’ outright refusal to participate in the preparatory meal advocated by Odysseus, who defends the significance of the cultural unit. At the height of Achilles’ mad rampage in Book 22, he threatens to eat Hector raw. Then in Book 23 Achilles diffidently becomes reconciled with the Greeks (see esp. ψ 156-60), and the final resolution comes in Book 24, when Achilles shares a meal with Priam.

The nature of this resolution Nagler treats in terms of Achilles’ reconciliation with his own mortality, his “creaturality,” a reconciliation by which Achilles achieves a “generic status” and becomes a “counterpoint of the gods” (Spontaneity, 197-98). But one can go beyond this view of the poem. Eating is indeed a sign of one’s creaturality; but within the scope of any particular culture, the necessity of eating becomes the occasion for the ritual affirmation of communal bonds. The simple fact of consuming food is a sufficient indication of one’s creaturality; but the ritual preparation, distribution and apportioning of food have a more specific communicative function, a function which is at stake in the Iliad in a significant way. Readings like Nagler’s see the poem as the unfolding of a predetermined content, culminating in an epiphany in the final scene with Priam and Achilles. A more semiotic reading would show how the text tries to construct a certain content which exists only as a series of textualized “versions” which are transformations of each other. But as Riffaterre notes, a rigorous “mimetic” reading is often the precondition for a “semiotic” reading. Thus, we can proceed by following more orthodox interpretations of the poem, concentrating our attention on the communicative aspects, and this will allow us to rethink the significance of the resolution of the poem.

A ritual such as a communal meal is the most predetermined and explicitly coded form of language. As such, it does not admit of much discursive variety: the participation in a communal meal simply signifies one’s identification within some social system; and one is, so to speak, either in or out. Achilles rejects his identity within the Greek “culture” by, among other things, refusing to perform the ritual action of sharing a meal. He repudiates the role assigned to him and at the same time tries to assert new grounds for his identity; and this entails asserting his own individual language against the predetermined communal language of the Greeks. When the emissaries come to Achilles in Book 9, they find him and Patroklos sitting together singing in alternation the κλέα ἀνδρῶν, “the glories of men” (I 189). The κλέα ἀνδρῶν (from κλύω, “to hear”) comprise the collective cultural history transmitted by the oral tradition. A man’s κλέος is his identity as established within the scope of culture.⁴⁰ Achilles has rejected the identity assigned to him; and although his “new” identity is largely negative (a “Not-Achilles”), here he and Patroklos seem to be “re-writing” a culture of their own, a situation Achilles expressly wishes for in Book 16 (Π 97-100, quoted above, p. 39):

Father Zeus, Athena, and Apollo, would that

not one of all the Trojans would escape destruction,

nor one of the Argives, but only you [Patroklos] and I

would emerge from the slaughter so that we alone could

break Troy’s hallowed coronal.

The first thing Odysseus suggests to Achilles in the embassy is that he is welcome to come and eat with Agamemnon (I 225-8):

Your health, Achilles. You have no lack of an equal portion

either within the shelter of Atreus’ son Agamemnon

nor here in your own. You have good things in abundance

to feast on.

In response to Odysseus’ plea that he return to his former role as champion of the Greeks, Achilles states that he will “speak out his meaning without consideration of his audience,” τὸν μῦθον ἀπηλεγέως ἀποειπεῖν (I 309).⁴¹ Achilles’ answer strikes the other Greeks as nonsense, for he does not respond in a way determined by the heroic “code,” but in a private language which, since it is being articulated for the first time, has no appropriate interpretants. When Achilles sends out Patroklos with the Myrmidons in Book 16, this too is condemned within the scope of culture by (among other things) the wolf simile, which assigns a negative value to the actions of Achilles. When Patroklos is killed, Achilles refuses to eat at all, for now he has no one to eat with (T 315-21, cited above, p. 36):

There was a time, ill-fated, o dearest of my companions,

when you would set the desirable dinner before me

quickly and expertly, at the time the Achaeans were urgent

to carry the sorrowful war on the Trojans, breakers of horses.

But now you lie here torn before me, and my heart goes starved

for meat and drink, though they are here beside me,

for want of you. There is nothing worse than this that I could suffer.

There is no such thing as a culture of just one person. Achilles’ attempt to articulate an alternative “code” results in his total isolation, first from the other Greeks, then from Patroklos (who does not “observe the word of Achilles,” Π 686). That Achilles has no one to eat with means that he has no one to “understand” him. He has said in Book 9 that if Zeus honors him, that will be enough and he does not require τιμή from the Greeks (I 607-10). But after the death of Patroklos, he finds no joy in the τιμή of Zeus (Σ 72-81):

Sorrowing for him, Thetis spoke in winged words,

“Why then, child, do you lament? what sorrow has come upon you?

Speak out, do not hide it These things are accomplished

through Zeus in the way that you lifted your hands and prayed for,

that all the sons of the Achaeans be pinned on their grounded

vessels for lack of you, and suffer things that are shameful.”

Then, groaning heavily, Achilles of the swift feet answered her:

“My mother, all these things the Olympian brought to

accomplishment, but what pleasure is this to me, since my

dear companion has perished, Patroklos, whom I loved

beyond all others.”

The words of Thetis in this remarkable passage are as “ungrammatical” as Achilles’ actions in Book 16. Does Thetis really think that Achilles has gotten what he wanted? It is possible to explain away the problem by claiming that Thetis is being ironic or simply very insensitive, but such explanations fail to recognize the truly contradictory nature of Achilles’ position. Achilles wants to stay, but he wants to leave; he does not want to be “in,” but he does not want to be “left out.” When he tries to explain this to others, it keeps coming out as a groan. The response of Thetis here, like the response of Patroklos and the other Greeks, foregrounds this inability of Achilles to make himself understood.⁴²

After Achilles kills Hector, he seems to come to terms with the other Greeks in Book 23; but his negative actions at the beginning of Book 24 show that things have still not been set right (Ω 1-6):

The games broke up, and the people scattered to go, each

to his fast ship, and the rest of them took thought of dinner

and of sweet sleep and its enjoyment; only Achilles

wept still as he remembered his beloved companion, nor did

sleep who subdues all overcome him, but he tossed here and there,

wanting Patroklos, his manhood and his great strength.

There is a pointed contrast here between the rest of the Greeks, who take dinner and then go to sleep, and Achilles, who neither eats nor sleeps. But in the final scenes of this last book, Achilles achieves a resolution which moves beyond both the predetermined language of the communal meal and idiosyncratic language. This resolution is precipitated by a whole range of structural and thematic issues, that have been noted by many readers of Homer. What follows is a rehearsal of these issues with an attempt to rethink them vis-à-vis the communicative aspects of the situation.

Throughout Book 24, the similarity of situation between Achilles and Priam is pointedly made. Since Hector’s death, as he tells Achilles after their meal, Priam too has “groaned” instead of participating in communal activities (Ω 637-42):⁴³

For my eyes have not closed underneath my lids since that time

when my son lost his life beneath your hands,

but always I have been groaning and swallowing my numberless sorrows,

wallowing in the dung about my courtyard’s enclosure.

Now I have tasted food again and have let the gleaming wine

down my throat. Before I had tasted nothing.

Like Achilles, Priam has suffered the worst thing possible (compare T 231 with Ω 393-94) and has endured what no other man has endured (Ω 505-6):

I have endured what no other mortal on earth has gone through,

I put my hands to the lips of the man who has killed my children.

This unique gesture, like Achilles’ own attempts to say something “new” and uncoded, is incomprehensible to the other Trojans. Hecuba assumes that Priam has gone mad when he states his intention to go to Achilles (Ω 200-5). Priam, meanwhile, reviles the other Trojans and especially his surviving sons, who he wishes had all died instead of Hector, even as Achilles had wished all but he and Patroklos would survive (Ω 253-54; cf. Π 97-100). All these associations and identifications serve to emphasize that Priam is an appropriate “audience” for the unique and innovative language of Achilles.

The isolation of Achilles and Priam is emphasized throughout the scene.⁴⁴ The Trojans weep as Priam leaves the city, “as though he were going to his death” (328). When he enters Achilles’ tent, Priam initially escapes the notice of all but Achilles (477), who is himself sitting apart from his companions (473). When Achilles notices Priam, he wonders at him as a man would wonder at the sight of a suppliant who has been banished from his own land, in Greek culture the most alienated situation possible (Ω 480-3). After the plea of Priam, Achilles and he together fill the house with their mutual and reciprocal “groaning” (Ω 509-12):

And the two remembered, as Priam sat huddled at the feet

of Achilles and wept for manslaughtering Hector

and Achilles wept now for his own father, now again

for Patroklos. The sound of groaning moved in the house.

The groan is, as I have said, an undifferentiated expression, not as yet correlated with a differentiated content. It is an expression which is not yet coded, which is not yet language. The wolves, for this reason, groan in the simile of Book 16, for their meal negates the signifying function of a heroic meal. Elsewhere, Achilles opposes groaning to culturally coded behavior, specifically eating a communal meal. Angered as he is about Patroklos’ death, for example, Achilles desires not food, but the στόνος ἀνδρῶν, the “groaning of men” (T 214). When the heroes gather around him to urge him to eat, he “refuses with a groan” (T 304: ὁ δ’ ἠρνεῖτο στεναχίζων). When the other Greeks eat in Book 23, Achilles instead “lies on the beach groaning deeply” (Ψ 60: κεῖτο βαρὺ στενάχων). All the negative, anti-social behavior of Achilles is summarized in this unarticulated groan, perceived by others as nonsense, for it is correlated to a content which is as yet “ineffable” within the scope of culture, and as such is not yet language.⁴⁵

But when Achilles and Priam “groan” together, it seems to be a sort of communicative exchange, a sort of “phatic” address by these two alienated individuals who have so much in common. The lines following this groaning echo the endings of meals as though something comparable to a communal meal had just ended (Ω 513-15):

When great Achilles had taken his full satisfaction of groaning

and the passion for it had gone from his mind and body,

immediately he rose from his seat and took the old man by the hand.

This initial exchange is then followed by the meal which they share, itself the framework for the articulation of a new language. Here is the end of the meal (Ω 628-34):

But when they had set aside their desire for eating and drinking,

Priam, son of Dardanos, gazed on Achilles, wondering

at his size and beauty, for he seemed like one of the gods.

But Achilles in turn gazed on Dardanian Priam

and wondered, as he saw his brave looks and listened to him talking.

But when they had taken their fill of gazing on one another,

first of the two to speak was the aged man, Priam the godlike.

This is the acknowledged climax of the poem and it is strikingly “epiphanic” sounding. Nagler sees in these lines a resolution in four dimensions (Spontaneity, 197):

Achilles and Priam are reconciled, they participate together in well-earned creatural enjoyments, they honor one another, and finally, in the act of visual admiration, they realize for one another the all-important element of charis.

To these we must add the communicative dimension, for the silent exchange of Priam and Achilles is also the climax of Achilles’ attempt to articulate an alternative code. Between the ritual meal, which is predetermined language, and the first words of Priam, the mutual and reciprocal “gazing” constitutes another language act, a reciprocal “defining” of each other. I have emphasized two phrases in the passage above which make up what appears to be a minor “nod” on Homer’s part. But μῦθον ἀκούων in line 632 should perhaps be translated “understanding his meaning,”⁴⁶ for the entire context seems to imply that the gazing is a form of communication. The position of the gazing, for example, immediately after the formulaic closing of the meal (628), is where one expects someone to get up and speak.⁴⁷ Moreover, lines 633-34 themselves resemble such formulaic endings of meals, as though the gazing itself has a social and communicative function similar to a communal meal. The gazing is thus positioned in such a way as to implicitly compare it to both the predetermined language of a meal and verbal language. Achilles and Priam become, as it were, “interpretants” of each other, imitating by this mutual gazing the mirroring effect of language which is its fundamental mechanism: the bouncing back and forth from one sign to another, establishing thereby the sequence of interpretants which circumscribes a content unit. The private language of Achilles is no longer nonsense, for he has found someone to understand it (him). This intense exchange establishes the self-identity aside from the one assigned him by culture that Achilles has sought all along. It is Priam, not Patroklos, not Agamemnon, not even Zeus, from whom Achilles receives his long-sought-for τιμή.

The importance of the communicative aspect of the resolution is that it allows us to frame the poem’s various thematic preoccupations within the context of a discursive crisis. That is, the Iliad can be seen as an articulation of a crisis, a moment of transformation, in the very form of culture: its discursive organization. It is beyond the scope of this study to analyze the precise terms of the social, political and economic turbulence which produced this crisis, but it is possible to sketch out briefly the implications of our view of the poem for certain key conflicts. This should not be taken as a definitive historical account, but rather as an attempt to suggest the kind of cultural “problematic” of which the Iliad could be a discursive transformation.

Politically, the Iliad brings into full view the arbitrariness of Agamemnon’s “hereditary” authority, reflected in the arbitrariness of Zeus himself; for the ideology of “inherited excellence,” which justifies hereditary authority is propped up mainly by reference to divine favor. The very fact that the validity of Agamemnon’s preeminence becomes a subject for discussion and is no longer “taken for granted,” indicates that this piece of aristocratic ideology is already in jeopardy.⁴⁸

Economically, at the same time, the Iliad exposes the objective reality of the distribution of prizes: namely, that it is a form of payment for services rendered. For the “misrecognition” of the fact that the dasmos is a form of payment is effected by treating the distribution of prizes as an act of generosity independent of the fighting of the heroes, who fight not for prizes but out of a “sense of honor.”⁴⁹ When Achilles is provoked by Agamemnon’s arbitrary seizure of his prize to connect explicitly the value of one’s prize with the value of one’s labor, he calls into question the entire economic apparatus which supports Agamemnon’s authority: his right to give out prizes as he sees fit. Once Achilles has unmasked the dasmos for what it is and has refused to submit anymore to the authority of Agamemnon, it becomes impossible for him to be persuaded to return by means of prizes, since that would make him a mere mercenary. Achilles has, so to speak, burned all his bridges back into the Greek community, and hence his wish in Book 16 that all the Greeks and Trojans would die so that he and Patroklos could start over. Patroklos’ death provides Achilles with an “honorable” way out of this dilemma, but despite his subsequent deference to Agamemnon in Book 23, Achilles never really “returns.”

In terms of social relations, the Iliad can be seen to be poised between the breakdown of a social organization based on a shared communality, implicitly acknowledged in rituals such as the communal meal (a Gemeinschaft), and a new social organization in which the individual will be constituted as such, and his relationship to society will become more explicitly formalized (a Gesellschaft). Such a transition inevitably entails the breakdown of the ties binding together the old Gemeinschaft, a process perceived by members of that society as alienation. Achilles and Priam in Book 24 of the Iliad, wrenched from their previous communal contexts, bereft of their-most precious loved ones and establishing an extraordinary relationship with each other, are, at some level, figures of the kind of individual who will make up this new kind of community; and the little community which Priam and Achilles wordlessly establish is itself a forerunner of this new social organization; but it is a community whose discourse is, in the Iliad, still unformulated. The Iliad is thus a meditation on a profound cultural dilemma specific to the poet’s historical moment. Nevertheless, the historical specificity of that dilemma is masked in part as a representation of an eternal and transcendental crisis faced by “Mankind” in general. To see the poem as an embodiment of some such eternal Truth, however, is to take at face value the claim that the text is a divinely inspired mimesis. It is to fall into a trap which is set, so to speak, by the text itself.

Similes as Textual Interpretants

At the end of Book 2 of the Iliad, the setting out of the Greeks is graced with the following simile (B 780-84):

But the rest went forward, as if all the earth with flame were

eaten, and the ground groaned under them, as if Zeus who delights

in the thunder were angry, as when he batters the earth about Typhoeus

in the land of the Arimoi, where they say Typhoeus lies prostrate.

Beneath their feet the ground groaned heavily.

This remarkable simile is the only one in Homer which explicitly alludes to another song, the Typhonomachy. By coincidence, there is an account of the Typhonomachy extant in Hesiod’s Theogony, so that here is a rare opportunity for an intertextual study in the narrow sense. That is, this simile allows us to look at a simile generated at the most complex level of linguistic organization: another song. In our discussion, however, we will not be concerned with the historical relationship between Homer and Hesiod, although the following analyses will seem to assume that Homer knew Hesiod’s text in detail. Meaning is produced by difference. By invoking Hesiod’s text as an interpretant of Homer, meaning will be produced in this intertext. This would be true regardless of the precise historical circumstances surrounding the composition of these works, regardless of the conscious or unconscious intentions of Homer.

A message does not have a meaning because someone intended that meaning; it has meaning because it exists in a system. There are many potential Interpretants which can produce meaning in a message. Of particular interest among these possibilities is a contemporary text like Hesiod’s. Despite gaps in our knowledge about the history of Greek epic, it is clear that Hesiod and Homer are nearly contemporary and are products of related traditions. This means that the signification system of Homer is closer to the signification system of Hesiod than anything else. Hence, meaning produced by the collocation of these texts will be privileged historically, particularly in view of the absence of alternatives of equal status. Thus, the question of Hesiod’s influence or Homer’s direct knowledge of Hesiod can be laid aside as a matter beyond substantiation. Instead we can assume that Hesiod and Homer both vary some prior “text” of the Typhonomachy, and that however numerous the mediations, Hesiod’s text can give privileged information about the coding correlations which are an explanatory condition for Homer’s text

An example will perhaps clarify the issue. In B 87ff., the Greek host is compared to a swarm of bees. What sort of implications could such a comparison have? What in the configuration of the sememe of bees in Homeric culture could have made the production of this particular simile at this particular place appropriate at some level? For a modern reader, reared on the pastoral tradition, bees may suggest an ideally harmonious society; but this is not necessarily a Homeric notion. In Hesiod there are two bee similes (Theogony 594-600; Erga 304-7), both times as examples of social inequity: the bees work hard; the lazy drones do nothing but consume honey. Now Achilles accuses Agamemnon of being a δημοβόρος βασιλεύς (A 231; cf. I 330-33), a king who “consumes the people” and does nothing himself. The comparison of the Greeks to bees perhaps suggests the fruitlessness of their labors when they have a drone for a king.⁵⁰ The Hesiodic loci are not necessarily the source for the Homeric simile, but they do imply information about the sememe of bees in archaic epic, information which is more relevant to Homer than, say, Semonides’ comparison of the model wife to a bee.

What then does Hesiod’s account of the story of Typhoeus imply about Homer’s Typhoeus simile? The Typhonomachy is part of the succession myth of Zeus. Whatever else one may want to say about this story, it is clear that Typhoeus challenges the preeminence of Zeus; or in Homeric terms, he challenges the τιμή of Zeus as king of the gods. The plot of the Iliad, the Διὸς βουλή, is to establish Achilles’ injured τιμή. When Thetis intercedes for Achilles, she reminds Zeus that she herself had previously acted to guarantee his preeminence (A 396-406). The identification of the τιμή of Achilles and the τιμή of Zeus is immediately made by Hera’s challenge (A 552-59) and Zeus’ response (A 564-67; cf. also Hephaistos’ warning to Hera in A 580-81). Elsewhere when someone intervenes to help the Greeks, Zeus again treats this contravention of the plot as a threat to his τιμή (𝚯 5-27, O 14-33). In short, the simile of Typhoeus is one of a series of identifications made between the establishment of Zeus’ honor and the establishment of Achilles’ honor. The Greeks’ attempt to sack Troy without Achilles is like Typhoeus’ attempt to overthrow Zeus.

These preliminary remarks could have been made on the basis of a summary knowledge of the Typhonomachy, but the text of Hesiod allows us to analyze in a detailed way how the Typhoeus story plays a text-constitutive role in Book 2 of the Iliad. We will not be so interested in how the general framework of a succession myth is “realized” in the Iliad; nor will we be interested in showing how both texts are “multiforms” of some underlying plot pattern. Rather, we will be trying to reconstruct the traditional network of correlations associated with Typhoeus and investigate the text-formative role they play in the Iliad.

To begin with, the Typhoeus simile is itself an expansion of the initial comparison of a vast fire, an image which is also found before the catalogue:

But the rest went forward, as if all the earth with flames were eaten.

As obliterating fire consumes a boundless forest

The scorching of the earth makes up a large part of the description of the Typhonomachy. Here are some of the relevant passages (Theogony 844-47, 859-61):

The purple sea was seized by heat from both,

from the thunder and lightning, and from the fire the

monster bore: the burning hurricane and blazing thunderbolt.

The whole earth boiled and the heaven and the sea....

A flame leaped from the lightning-blasted lord,

when he was struck, on the jagged mountainside.

Great earth was widely scorched by the awful blast

Similar details describe the battle with the Titans (Theogony 693-97):⁵¹

The fertile earth being burnt, roared out,

the voiceless forest cried and crackled with fire;

the whole earth boiled and Ocean’s streams, and the

unfruitful sea. The hot blast reached the earthborn

Titans; flames unspeakable rose to the upper air.

The fire which overtakes the earth during these battles threatens the “cosmic balance” at the mythological level; earth, heaven and sea are confounded and the result is chaos. One of the peculiar manifestations of this chaos is the “groaning” of the earth (Theogony 843, 858):⁵²

The heavens also “groan” in the Titanomachy (Theo. 679):

This detail is not only repeated in the Typhoeus simile (B 781, 784), but also occurs in the initial mustering of the troops (B 95):

And their meeting place was shaken, and the earth groaned.

The gathering of the troops to set out without Achilles is thus framed by these two references to the earth’s groaning, and nowhere else in Homer does the earth groan. She does, however, make other similar noises. In the midst of the sequence of similes preceding the catalog, the earth “thunders” under the feet of the Achaeans (B 465-66):

But the earth below

the feet of the men and horses thundered terribly.

The earth also “thunders” in the Typhonomachy (Theo. 839-40):

But Zeus thundered mightily and fiercely, and the

earth thundered terribly, and also the heavens above.

These are the only two occurrences of the earth’s “thundering” in either text and like the other inarticulate sounds that the earth, sea and heavens make, it seems to signify a moment of undecidability, of unintelligibility, such as accompanies a challenge to a principle of order.

Another unusual word which seems to have a similar function is the verb σμαραγέω/σμαραγίζω. Three forms of this rare word appear in Hesiod only in reference to the Titanomachy (Theo. 678-79, 693-94):

The boundless sea roared terribly around;

The great earth rumbled (?), and the broad heaven groaned.

The fertile earth being burnt roared out (?)

the voiceless forest cried out from the great fire.

After the defeat of the Titans, they are sent to Tartarus, which is described at length. Then we have (Theo. 813-16):

And further on, apart from all the gods

the Titans live, out beyond Chaos’ gloom.

But the allies of wide-thundering (?) Zeus

inhabit homes on the ocean floor.

Aside from these, there are only three other occurrences of this rare word in archaic literature;⁵³ and two of them are in similes describing the host in Book 2 (B 208-10, B 459-63):

But they rushed back from the ships and the tents

with a roar, as when a wave of the much echoing sea

crashes on a great beach, and the sea roars(?).

These, as the many nations of winged birds

of geese, and of cranes, and of long-necked swans,

in the Asian meadows beside the Kaystrian waters

this way and that make their flights in the pride of their wings,

then settle in clashing swarms and the whole meadow echoes (?).

It is interesting that the exact meaning of σμαραγέω is dubious and that the various passages from Homer and Hesiod leave its meaning vague. In fact, “mimetic” considerations play a minimal role in determining the use of this verb in the two passages from Homer. Like the scorching and groaning of the earth, the “smaraging” sound of the sea and meadow is a poetic sign pointing to the interpretant of the actions of the Greek host: the earthborns’ uprising against Zeus. And once again it is the peculiarity of these expressions which gives them the effect of “poeticity,” which suggests that they are related to each other in sharing some semiotic pertinence.

The other occurrence of σμαραγέω is in an equally pertinent context. After Achilles kills Asteropaios in Book 21, he vaunts over the dying man by claiming that the children of Zeus are more powerful than the offspring of rivers (Φ 184-85). Achilles then boasts of his own descent ἐκ Διός, ending by saying that even Ocean, the origin of all waters, fears Zeus’ powers (Φ 198-99):

But even Okeanos is afraid of the bolt of great Zeus

and the terrible thunder, when it crashes (?) from the sky.

The occurrence of this rare word here in a speech contrasting those who are ἐκ Διός and those who were born of the prior generation of the gods can be no coincidence.⁵⁴ What follows is, in fact, Achilles’ battle with the river Skamander, which turns out to be a “cosmic” struggle, complete with “scorching of the earth” (342ff.) and a theomachy (358ff.). As the gods crash together, the earth “echoes” (Φ 387: βράχε) and the heavens “blast out like a trumpet” (388: σάλπιγξεν).

The extraordinary sequence of events which makes up Achilles’ aristeia in Book 21 is a gold mine of mythological motifs. Nagler discusses this section of the poem in connection with the archetype of the deluge-creation story. Skamander, he maintains, resonates with the figures of the chthonian monster, the death god, and the chaos demon who must be overcome by the sky god, who is in turn the guarantor of cosmic order. The paradigm of culture hero vs. chaos demon does, in fact, clarify a number of issues in this very strange episode of the Iliad. But a mythic paradigm, although a convenient descriptive device, is not a text-constitutive force as such, unless one takes such a paradigm to belong to a universal constituent of human thinking (a sphota).

The Near Eastern sources which Nagler takes into account are by no means fortuitous interpretants, for it is generally recognized that Near Eastern civilizations influenced Greek culture. This same material is also cited by West and others as sources for Hesiod’s Theogony.⁵⁵ Thus despite the interest of more ancient accounts, Hesiod’s text reflects the reception of Near Eastern myths better than any other extant text. It is Zeus’ battles with the earthborn monsters which provide the most suitable clues for the background (the sememe) of a battle between a chaos demon and a culture hero. The highly mythologized narrative of Books 20-21 of the Iliad bears a fruitful comparison with the Hesiodic battles of Zeus. But the one nature simile in the episode with the river is particularly noteworthy, since it takes up another aspect of the sememe of Typhoeus, an aspect also important for the narrative of Book 2.

Hephaistos dries up the plain with his fire like Boreas (Φ 346-8):

As when the north wind of Autumn suddenly makes dry

a garden freshly watered and makes glad the man tending it,

so the entire plain was parched.

The background of this simile is the association of the evil winds with Typhoeus, no doubt by a folk etymology,⁵⁶ but made explicit in a passage of the Theogony (869-80):

And from Typhoeus comes the fierce, rain-blowing winds--

not Boreas or Notos or bright Zephyros, for

these come from the gods, and they refresh mankind--

but others, reckless gusts, blow on the sea;

some fall on the misty sea and bring calamity

to men; as evil storms they rage;

each blows in season, scattering ships and

killing sailors. Men who meet them

have no defense against their power.

And sometimes over the vast and blooming earth

they blast the lovely fields of earthborn men

and fill the land with dust and dreadful noise.

The first few lines of this passage exhibit some minor ring composition, which seems to be motivated by the conflict of line 869 and an earlier passage (Theo. 378-80) where the winds are said to be born of Eos and Astraios. This conflict is immediately amended by the poet in lines 870-71, and these lines are a classic case of retrogression and restatement as a correction device. The evil winds, however, have no names and the distinction Hesiod makes here is not observed elsewhere in Hesiod or in Homer: the winds who are “born of the gods” are the only winds there are, and they are sometimes a bane and sometimes a boon.⁵⁷ Nevertheless, the division of the good and bad aspects of the winds, and the assignment of the latter to Typhoeus must have traditional roots, and the division is pertinent to the wind similes of Book 21 and of Book 2.

In Book 21, Boreas is clearly a θνητοῖς μέγ’ ὄνειαρ, for the farmer rejoices at its effects on his field. In addition, the ameliorative action of the wind in this simile is its “drying” function, whereas in the Hesiod passage, the evil winds are specifically wet (μένος ὑγρόν). In Book 2, on the other hand, there are two wind similes describing the host of the Achaeans which suggest connections with the evil winds of Typhoeus. After Agamemnon orders the Greeks to eat, we have (B 394-97):

So he spoke, and the Argives shouted aloud, as surf crashing

against a sheerness, driven by Notos descending,

some cliff out-jutting, left never alone by the waves from

all the winds that blow, as they rise now here, now there.

Despite the fact that Notos is specifically named, this wind is clearly one of the wet, nasty ones which falls on the sea and is a πῆμα μέγα θνητοῖσι.⁵⁸ Here is the other wind simile of Book 2 (B 144-49):

And the assembly was shaken as on the sea the big waves

in the main by Ikaria, when Eurus and Notos

driving down from the clouds of Zeus the father whip them.

as when Zephyr moves across the grain deep-standing,

boisterously, and shakes and sweeps it till the tassels lean.

This is actually a double simile, and the second one again seems to have a corrective function. The first three lines bring in the wind whipping up the sea, not unlike the scene in B 394. The picture ends, however, with the phrase Διςὸ ἐκ νεφελάων, and this introduces an anomaly: for these winds are ἐκ Tυφωέος. The poet thus launches into another simile of the winds blowing ashore on the works of the field, a πῆμα also attributed to the winds of Typhoeus by Hesiod (Theo. 879-80, cited above, p. 80). Thus, whereas the wind simile of Book 21 relates to the “fair” winds which are ἐκ θεόφιν γενεή (Theo. 871), the wind similes of Book 2 relate to the “foul” winds which are ἐκ Tυφωέος. In both passages the similes are generated by the sememe of the Typhonomachy, which thus functions as an interpretant both for the behavior of Agamemnon and the other Greeks toward Achilles and for Skamander’s attack on Achilles in Book 21, an attack that the river god himself boasts will thwart Zeus’ plan to give honor to Achilles (Φ 316-23).⁵⁹

The various elements of the Typhonomachy which appear in the Iliad are what Riffaterre calls textual interpretants, fragments of a text quoted in the text that they serve to interpret. One of the characteristics of such textual interpretants, according to Riffaterre, is that they explicitly focus attention on intertextuality, “especially on how the poem exemplifies the type of intertextual conflict where two conflicting codes are present within its boundaries” (Semiotics of Poetry, 109-10). This characteristic has special appropriateness for the Iliad’s allusion to the battles of Zeus against the Titans and Typhoeus, for the Iliad is very much about the conflict of codes, and Zeus is in a most ambiguous position vis-à-vis “cultural order” in the Iliad. If Agamemnon’s attempt to take Troy without Achilles is an affront which causes the earth to “groan,” Achilles’ actions throughout the poem are also affronts to principles of cultural order; and in fact it is Achilles who is the premier “groaner” in the Iliad. If Zeus is the guarantor of cosmic order, he has in this instance taken the side of the figure in the poem whose behavior is most frequently portrayed as negative and “anti-social.” But the Iliad is not simply a representation of the consequences of anti-social behavior, but an articulation of a new “code” against the background of an old one. Zeus embodies the contradictory claims to which this situation gives rise, indicated, at the least, by his rather twisted plan to give glory to Achilles. The “double” wind simile of B 144-49 shows this contradictory portrayal at work in a small scale. The ambiguity about whether the destructive winds mentioned there are from Zeus or not, which triggers the second “corrective” simile, is based on the ambiguous position of Zeus himself: are his actions here for or against culture? Thus when we call Zeus the “guarantor of cosmic order,” we should qualify this by saying “guarantor of cultural order such as it is”; and in the Iliad it is rather messy and self-contradictory, a consequence of its being at stake in the poem itself.

The story of Zeus’ clash with the earthborn is a particularly apt interpretant for the Διὸς βουλή of the Iliad and references which can be related to it crop up all over the Iliad. Details which describe some sort of cosmic chaos occur in so many similes describing the onslaught of Greeks and Trojans that they are considered to be typical details of battle scenes.⁶⁰ But this is an argument ex silentio; is it not also possible that these details are not typical of Homeric narrative in general, but of this particular poem, which derives so much generative energy from the conflicts of Zeus against the earthborn?⁶¹ Nearly any battle scene would be an appropriate place to allude to the Typhonomachy, since Achilles’ τιμή is always at stake in a general way, along with the Διὸς βουλή. Nevertheless, the Typhonomachy is only one text-constitutive force in the Iliad. To say this or that simile is a textual interpretant pointing to the Typhonomachy does not give a full account of their functioning in the poem. If “ungrammaticality” is a key characteristic of poetic discourse, so is appropriateness at a number of levels of organization.

Thus, for example, Agamemnon’s aristeia contains the following simile (Λ 155-58, cited above, p. 49):

As when obliterating fire comes down on the timbered forest

and the roll of the wind carries it everywhere, and thickets

leaning under the force of the fire’s rush fall uprooted,

so before Atreus’ son Agamemnon went down the high heads.

This simile suggests the association of the scorching of the earth (cf. Theo. 694 and B 455). Now Agamemnon’s aristeia is an appropriate enough place for this element to be generated, but I have said above that this simile is determined in part by the model of the woodsman simile. Hence the whole picture, with wind and fire and thickets “felled” by the blast of fire is overdetermined in the simile by its connection to both the Typhonomachy and the woodsman simile. But Tilmann Krischer has shown that in the narrative subcode of the aristeia, a series of Einzelkämpfe is regularly followed by an Ansturm auf die Phalangen, and that this stage of the action is regularly accompanied by a simile of a “Naturgewalt der nichts standzuhalten vermag” (Formale Konventionen, 49). All these factors, and no doubt others as well, came together at this point in the narrative to determine the precise character of the simile.

Conclusion: Propulsion and the Epic Simile

It has been my object in the preceding pages to investigate the functions of the similes in the poetics of Homer; that is, to identify their text-constitutive functions, their roles in the dynamics of the narrative. It is now possible to generalize about the various roles played by the similes and construct a picture of Homeric “narratology.”

All narratives recount a series of events; that is, things which “happen” in a “world” constructed in the text. A simple chronicle links a series of punctual events to a series of verbal units. Since the description of action (praxis) always implies a “logic of action” as part of the interpretive apparatus by which it is to be understood, we call this one-to-one correlation of a series of verbal units to a series of actions the proairesis. No narrative,⁶² however, consists entirely of a chronicle of events; sooner or later, proairesis becomes inadequate for one reason or another. Narrators have a variety of devices to call upon at such moments. Homer, for example, can leap into the narrative in propria persona and call someone a fool for doing something or other. This is an explicit act of overcoding, gathering together a series of events and assigning additional meaning to them as a unit: “he did such and such, and these actions show him to be a fool.” Such interjections and various other devices occur at moments when it is no longer possible to “let the actions speak for themselves.” Such moments in the narrative are marked by a shift in discursive mode: from proairesis to some other mode. Similes are examples of such shifts, and in the preceding analyses I have tried to establish the mechanism which determined the shift in each case. These mechanisms can be thought of as three narrative roles.

“Preparation for battle” is an overcoded sequence of events resulting in a narrative subcode. One of the punctual events in that series is a communal meal. In Book 16, where the value of the preparation scene is negated, the element of a communal meal presents an obstacle to the text’s unfolding. A meal is called for by the narrative subcode, but is thematically inconsistent with Achilles’ “negative” portrayal. This motivates a shift in discursive mode and the cultural unit of a meal is handled in the wolf simile. The meal thus fills the gap left by the omission of a narrated meal; and although from an interpretive standpoint, one can certainly say that the wolf simile does more than get the text from point A to point C, in terms of the poetics of the narrative, this is precisely its role. If one were to represent the text of Homer graphically, the proairesis could be thought of as a straight line, suggesting a succession of punctual events, whose arrangement is determined by some (overcoded) logic of action. In such a graph, the wolf simile is actually a substitution for a point on the line corresponding to the narration of a preparatory meal.

The woodsman simile of Book 11 has a text-generative function; it articulates in brief compass a narrative sequence: working, satiety, retirement This little sequence articulates the Διὸς βουλή and subsequently generates a series of variations of itself in the narrative. The action of the aristeuontes “rearticulates” the sequence: fighting, ὀδύνη, retirement. In our graphic representation of the narrative, these rearticulations can be thought of as “loops” which retrace the same narrative ground in a succession of variations. This looping characteristic is common in all narratives and can occur in numerous forms. It corresponds loosely to the rhetorical figure of amplification in the sense that it gives a more articulated view of the action, much like the instant replay of sports telecasting, which reviews a play in slow motion, “stopping” the action at various crucial places to clarify the narrative development.⁶³

In Book 11 we have a simile establishing the narrative sequence and subsequently being rearticulated by the narrative. More commonly something will be narrated proairetically and then renarrated in a simile. The simile of the jackals and the deer in Λ 474-82 exemplifies this “looping” role, renarrating not only what has just happened to Odysseus, but also varying the woodsman model. This looping role, or “replay” role, is a text-constitutive force. It is a way of continuing the narrative, although it is not, in terms of our graphic representation of the narrative, linear. It is, however, propulsive; that is, it keeps the narrative going. One use of the looping role has already been discussed above: the correction or restatement feature of “ring composition.” The ass simile of Λ 558-63 is a loop which restates the situation of the preceding lion simile, a restatement necessitated by the modeling function of the woodsman simile.

Another function of this looping role is suggested by several of the similes of Book 11 discussed above. The woodsman simile functions primarily as a textual generator for a rather large swathe of narrative. The similes which expand the semantic content of the woodsman simile in the subsequent narrative can be thought of as moments where the text “pauses” and “refocuses” attention on the semantic nucleus of the woodsman model. This can be seen as a propulsive version of the use of structural symmetries and isotopies; or even as a propulsive version of a literate poet’s outline. It is a way the oral poet can exercise control “on the fly,” so to speak, over the development of the poem as a whole. Since the oral poet is mainly preoccupied with what is immediately at hand (with “propelling” the narrative forward), he maintains his orientation by periodically shifting discursive modes (which “stops” the proairesis) and reestablishing his bearings. The ass simile of Λ 558-63 not only reestablishes the textual model of the woodsman simile, but sets up the special variation applied to Aias.

The looping role is basically intratextual. It consists of a textual variation of something which has already been produced within the scope of the narrative. Often, however, a text will connect the narrative at hand with a variety of “extra-textual” issues. Nestor is the preeminent example of this type of narrative digression (from the proairesis, that is), fond as he is of launching off on a tale of his youthful exploits in order to exhibit some pattern of behavior which is somehow relevant to the situation of his auditors. If the proairesis is thought of as a horizontal line, this third general role could be represented as a vertical line perpendicular to the proairesis, pointing outside the narrative to some other text, or to some other textually established code. Many similes in Homer perform this role, and the Typhoeus similes discussed above have been dealt with in these terms: the groaning of the earth, the “smaraging” sound of sea and meadow, the chaotic effects of wind and fire, and the mention of Typhoeus himself all couch the narrative at hand within a larger cultural context and provide interpretants to the action.

These three narrative roles are often not easily separable. The wolf simile of Book 16 performs a role in the proairesis of the narrative subcode of preparation; but it also constitutes an important thematic comment on the narrative by its relationship to the cultural unit of a communal meal. So also, the forest fire simile for Agamemnon (Λ 155-7) “loops” back to the woodsman simile, is part of the narrative subcode of the aristeia, and evokes the cosmic chaos of the Typhonomachy. The similes of Homer can perform any or all of these three main narrative roles and thereby function in an important way in the textual dynamics of the narrative, as well as in the interpretive apparatus provided by the textual strategy. Moreover, the similes can assume these roles at any level of linguistico-textual organization. I have purposely stressed this diversity in order to avoid the oft-made assumption that the function of Homer’s similes is determined primarily by their rhetorical form. Rather, the similes are shifts in discursive mode, and their functions are determined by their relationship to the forward movement of the poem.

A final example from Book 16 of the Iliad will clarify the notion of a shift in discursive mode along with a number of other issues of both theory and interpretation. Patroklos’ entry into battle in Book 16 causes a turning of the tide, but the poet works up to this shift in stages. Initially, when the Trojans see Patroklos, “each man looks for his escape” (284). Patroklos kills Pyraechmes, whose followers flee (292), and then all the Trojans flee (294). There is then a simile of Zeus moving a cloud from a mountaintop (296-301). Then we are told that the Trojan flight is not headlong (303-5), but that they only yielded from the ships. There is then a series of androktasiai (306-51), after which there is a wolf simile describing the headlong flight of the Trojans (352-57). Hector and Aias are still engaged with each other, but Hector does not retreat (358-63). There is then an obscure simile in which Zeus moves a cloud into the heavens and creates a hurricane (364-65). The Trojans flee “in no good order” (οὐδὲ κατὰ μοῖραν: 367), along with Hector himself (368). There then follows a chaotic scene in which Patroklos sets upon Hector, followed by a remarkable storm simile (384-93). After this simile Patroklos continues his aristeia by killing a number of Trojans, climaxed by the slaying of Sarpedon.

The turning of the tide (ἑτεραλκέα νίκην: Π 362) of this passage clearly manifests a series of textual complexities, and the similes are the key indicators of the difficulties encountered and resolved by the forward movement of the narrative. Here is a scheme of the text:

278-83: Patroklos appears and the Trojans look to flight

284-90: Patroklos kills Pyraechmes.

290-96: the Paeones and then all the Trojans flee.

297-300: Cloud simile.

303-5: The Trojans stand their ground again.

351-57: Wolf simile--headlong flight of the Trojans.

358-63: Hector and Aias: Hector stands firm to save his people.

364-65: Cloud simile.

366-83: Hector and the Trojans flee.

384-93: Storm simile.

394ff.: Patroklos continues killing Trojans and is in complete control of the situation.

The crucial points in the text are the shifts of mode which mark out lines 352-93. Before and after this passage are androktasiai; but the significance of the second of these two series is quite different from the significance of the first, a difference which is established by the intervening shifts in discursive mode.

The androktasiai of 306-51 are a good example of Homeric scene composition. The section begins and ends with the statement that “each of the Greek leaders killed a man” (306, 351). The scene thus begins and ends with a statement of the single proairetic event which is amplified in lines 307-50. This amplification, however, does not serve to correct or rearticulate the proairesis with significant variation: it is just fight, fight, fight. To judge from the Iliad, such detailed sequences of battle scenes were part of what the audience had paid to hear, comparable, perhaps, to the violence and special effects which are at present a great attraction in film. If we think of our sports telecasting analogy, such a scene could be compared to the case when a particularly elegant moment is replayed numerous times: not so the action will become more clear, but just so the viewers can savour the delicious moment again and again.

Nearly all the Trojans killed in this scene are mentioned here for the first and only time. Of the nine, only Akamas and Erymas are mentioned elsewhere, the latter only here and in Π 415, where he is killed for a second time. These characters are thus the kind of secondary figures who are introduced only to be killed off. Patroklos’ kills immediately after the storm simile of 384-93 have a similar character, but occur in the context of a new orientation to the narrative.

The passage from 352-93 articulates a hypogram of the breakdown of order. The verb διέτμαγεν, “becomes scattered,” of the wolf simile (354) is picked up by τμάγεν (374) and ἀποτμήγουσι (390) in the storm simile. The “folly” (ἀφραδίῃσι 354) of the shepherd in the wolf simile is reflected in the crooked judgments of the men in the storm simile which makes Zeus angry (387-88). The λαιλάψ of Zeus in 365 is picked up by the ἀέλλη of 374 and the λαιλάψ of 384. Significantly, the earth is “weighed down” (βέβριθε χθών 384), the rivers overflow their banks with a groan (στενάχουσι: 391), “rushing headlong and diminishing the ἔργα of men” (392); the Trojan horses also groan as they run (στενάχοντο θέουσαι: 393). These two singular uses of στεν-words can be connected with the groaning of the earth in the Typhonomachy and Book 2 of the Iliad. The matrix of the entire passage is, in fact, explicitly rendered in the words describing the flight in line 367: οὐδὲ κατὰ μοῖραν, “not according to moira.” The word μοῖρα, literally, a portion, is directly opposite to διέτμαγεν, “divided up without order”; but more important, this word, in a passage filled with images of disorder at every level, leads us to Zeus, the allotter of portions, the one who establishes fate (μοῖρα). Zeus’ conspicuous presence in the similes of this passage reminds us that his involvement in the plot of the poem is the source of both thematic and textual order, that the plot of the poem is the Διὸς βουλή.

The problem is this. Achilles has prayed for victory for the Trojans in order to have his honor restored. In Book 16, however, he prays for Patroklos’ victory, thus making two contradictory requests. Moreover, Zeus has agreed to honor these contradictory requests, making his own position ambiguous. But the Διὸς βουλή is the plot of the poem, and thus Zeus’ vacillation becomes immediately translated into a textual crisis. How can Zeus will both a Trojan and a Greek victory? How can he honor both of Achilles’ requests?

The first cloud simile of Π 297 is the first modal shift resulting from the textual complication. The Trojans turn and run: but a Trojan retreat is against the old βουλή. A simile is generated in which Zeus moves a cloud away from a mountain so that everything becomes clear (297-300):

As when Zeus the thunder-gatherer moves a dark cloud

from the lofty summit of a great mountain; and all

the lookouts and the high peaks and glens become

visible, and the boundless aether bursts heavenward.

This “clarifying” act of Zeus is immediately followed by the statement that the Trojans’ regrouped and stood their ground. The Greeks, it is also said, get a breather (302); the poet too takes a breather by killing off a number of Trojans until he establishes a way to circumvent the textual problem.

The passage beginning with the wolf simile and ending with the storm simile articulates the textual and thematic chaos which is the result of the prevarication of Zeus. As the Trojans make their “ill-sounding” (δυσκελάδος) retreat, a retreat which contradicts the old βουλή, the text comes backs to Aias and Hector. Earlier (Π 114-15) Hector had rendered Aias defenseless, paving the way for the return of the “best of the Achaeans.” Instead, Patroklos enters the battle according to the new βουλή. Now the climactic duel of Hector and Aias is broken off. Hector, however, “stands his ground” (363). This is an action commensurate with the old βουλή, and another shift of mode is generated (Π 364-67):

As when the cloud comes into the heavens from Olympus

out of the brilliant aether, when Zeus stretches forth a

hurricane; so there was a cry and flight from the ships

as they made their way back in no good order.

Before, Zeus “cleared” the sky when the Trojans stood their ground, mediating the shift from the new βουλή to the old. Now, he darkens the sky when Hector and the Trojans flee οὐδὲ κατὰ μοῖραν, mediating the shift from the old βουλή (Hector’s stand in 363) to the new (Hector’s retreat in 367-68). Aias had been “trying to strike” Hector (ἵετ’ ἀκονίσσαι: 359). He now drops out of the picture for several hundred lines, and in his place Patroklos “tries to strike” Hector (ἵετο γὰρ βαλλέειν: 383); for it is the confrontation between Patroklos and Hector, and not that of Hector and Aias, which will bring Achilles back into battle.

Then, after a most vexing passage (366-83), full of ring composition, in which chariots are driverless, foot soldiers are trapped in a ditch which is apparently no obstacle to the chariots of Hector and Patroklos,⁶⁴ we have the great storm simile, filled with images of overwhelming chaos (Π 384-93):

As when the whole earth is weighed down under a hurricane,

and becomes black, on a late summer day, when Zeus pours

down the rain most heavily, when he is very angry at men

who make crooked judgments in the courts by force,

and drive out justice, caring not that the gods watch them.

All their flowing rivers become swollen

and the mountain torrents cut away all the banks,

and they groan, flowing to the purple sea from the

mountains, headlong, and they diminish the works of men.

So the Trojan mares groaned greatly, running.

Most prominent is the breakdown of the relationships between Zeus, the guarantor of cosmic order, men and nature. In the narrative to follow, the initial request of Achilles and Zeus’ promise to Hector that he would fight successfully the rest of the day after Agamemnon is wounded (Λ 186-94) are laid aside for a contradictory claim. When the narrative picks up Patroklos’ aristeia in 394, approximately where it left off in Π 300, the poem has entered a new dispensation, one which extends all the way to Π 777, where a Zeitangabe ushers back in the old Διὸς βουλή. Apollo there comes to confront Patroklos in order to prevent a ὑπὲρ αἶσαν (777-87; see above, p. 44).

In the Sarpedon episode which begins in line 419, the ambiguous position of Zeus becomes explicit. As he see Patroklos about to engage Sarpedon, Zeus vacillates about whether he should save his son. Hera’s response is a famous theological crux (Π 440-47):

Most lordly son of Kronos, what word have you spoken?

Do you wish to save from dire death a man whose

death was long ago established by fate?

Do it then, but the other gods will not praise you.

And put away in your thoughts this other thing I tell you;

If you bring Sarpedon back to his home, still living,

think how then some other one of the gods might also

wish to carry his own son out of the strong encounter.

This is one of two places in Homer where there seems to be a “fate” or some ordering principle independent of Zeus’ will to which Zeus must accommodate himself (cf. X 178-81). Hera’s words imply that if Zeus intervenes in this instance, the other gods will feel free to do so also, resulting in chaos. This is indeed odd and inconsistent with the actions of Zeus and the other gods elsewhere in the Iliad. But what we have here is not a theological crux, but a textual one. Zeus’ will is the plot of the poem, and it is as a textual function that his words and actions are contradictory in this passage.⁶⁵

The similes of the Trojan retreat show clearly the propulsive character of Homeric narrative. When the proairesis encounters an obstacle, the text effects a shift in discursive mode which allows the continuation of text and meaning production in an appropriate way. It has often been noted that Book 16 has the densest accumulation of similes in the poem; it is also the book with by far the most poetic intrusions in propria persona. These and other shifts of mode testify to the textual and thematic complexity of this book. When Patroklos finally falls, Hector addresses him in the following words (Π 837-42):

Ah wretch, Achilles, although excellent, was no use to you;

he remained behind, telling you many things as you went forth:

“Do not return, horseman Patroklos, to the balanced ships,

until you have split the tunic of man-killing Hector

about the breast and made it bloody.”

So he must have spoken to you, and you, fool, were persuaded.

Hector’s reconstruction of the proairesis is, of course, false. Achilles said no such thing to Patroklos. But his hypothesis is one which is, from the way things fell out, quite sensible. As it is, neither Hector nor anyone else in the poem can figure out the “real” logic of Achilles’ actions; in this book, more than in any other, the contradictions constitutive of the poem’s unfolding keep rendering the representation problematic, making it inscrutable from the standpoint of “mimesis,” and necessitating again and again the abandonment of proairesis for other modes.

In a literary tradition which has emphasized structure and organic unity, the propulsive character of Homeric narrative has been obscured in a number of ways. Ironically, the Parry-Lord theory of oral composition has in its own way obscured this point as well. The conception of formula systems and typical scenes as “building blocks” implies the preeminence of structure, of a form into which these prefabricated units can be fitted. But it is precisely this notion of organizational structure, of architectonics, which becomes more important after Homer. A crucial ingredient for a poetics based on structure is revision, the self-conscious evaluation of the work of art in terms of some preconceived form. In this later development, the propulsive functions of similes, ecphrasis, ring composition, etc., become the relics of an outdated poetics. Their text-constitutive and propulsive functions become taken over by elements of structure; while they themselves survive as exteriorities, formal devices employed for numerous other uses.

This later development is, of course, related to the introduction of writing, and studies of the cognitive implications of changes in the means and modes of communication have emphasized that the introduction of writing results in the acceleration of skills relating to formalization and classification.⁶⁶ Indeed, one cannot imagine the compilation of tables of formulas such as those made by Parry without the use of writing. The recognition and analysis of formula systems requires a “decontextualization” of utterance and a reorganization of it according to some formal principle (e.g., meter). But such tables of metrically similar phrases produce collocations of utterance which could never have occurred or been recognized as such in a strictly oral culture, where all utterance is contextual. Formula systems like those drawn up by Parry and Lord cannot be the “real mental furniture” of the oral poet, any more than tables of declensions of nouns and verbs are the mental furniture of speakers in general. Such tables, however useful and illuminating in certain respects, must be recognized for what they are: formalist fictions valuable only heuristically.⁶⁷

The circumstances of the composition of the Iliad are beyond certainty. The predominance of a propulsive poetics seems best explained as rooted in continuous oral performance, a predominance which can be seen in things like the revision-which-leaves-a-trace phenomenon. In such a poetics, structural and formal considerations will be likely to play a minimal role. In general, this seems to be the case with Homer; and his similes exemplify this fact. The whole notion of similitude with point-for-point correspondence requires a sort of tabular thinking which is characteristic of the written register; it requires that the qualities of two objects or actions be reduced to a series of spatially conceived “boxes,” which can then be manipulated into alignment. This is not impossible in a continuous oral performance, simply less likely.

Homer is the beginning (for us anyway) of a tradition. The other authors whom we will consider either directly or indirectly imitate him, which is to say that they evoke Homer as an interpretant of their own texts. The use of an epic simile always says, at the least, “this text is serious, like Homer was serious.” The use of such similes became so closely associated with the epic tradition that it is possible to see them as symptomatic of the “epic” aspirations of a text. These aspirations will be articulated by a certain signifying practice which posits (or “stitches together”) a certain kind of “epic totality.” We have already seen that similes are an important part of the “stitching” that holds together Homer’s epic poetry. If Homer’s successors transform the epic simile, put it to new uses, the problem of stitching still remains. We shall thus keep an eye on what the similes do in the texts of Homer’s successors, what they no longer do, and what replaces the functions similes used to do.