Talking Trojan: Speech and Community in the Iliad

208 Pages·1996·6.051 MB·English

by  Hilary Mackie

Talking Trojan
Greek Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches
General Editor: Gregory Nagy, Harvard University
On the front cover: A calendar frieze representing the Athenian months, reused in the
Byzantine Church of the Little Metropolis in Athens. The cross is superimposed,
obliterating Taurus of the Zodiac. The choice of this frieze for books in Greek Studies:
Interdisciplinary Approaches reflects this series’ emphasis on the blending of the
diverse heritages—Near Eastern, Classical, and Christian—in the Greek tradition.
Drawing by Laurie Kain Hart, based on a photograph. Recent titles in the series are:
The Transformation of Hera: A Study of Ritual, Hero, and the Goddess
in the Iliad
Joan V. O'Brien, Southern Illinois University
Hegemony and Greek Historians
John Wickersham, Ursinus College
The Scepter and the Spear: Studies on Forms of Repetition in the
Homeric Poems
Steven Lowenstam, University of Oregon
The Origins and Development of Ancient Greek Democracy
James L. O’Neil, The University of Sydney
Heat and Lust: Hesiod’s Midsummer Festival Scene Revisited
J. Ὁ. B. Petropoulos, Democritean University of Thrace
The Pastoral Narcissus: A Study of the First Idyll of Theocritus
Clayton Zimmerman, Carleton College
An Archaeology of Ancestors: Tomb Cult and Hero Cult in Early Greece
Carla M. Antonaccio, Wesleyan University
The Seal of Orestes: Self-Reference and Authority in Sophocles’ Electra
Ann G. Batchelder, College of the Holy Cross
The Shield of Achilles and the Poetics of Ekphrasis
Andrew Sprague Becker, Virginia Polytechnic Institute
The Blinded Eye: Thucydides and the New Written Word
Gregory Crane, Tufts University
The Wrath of Athena: Gods and Men in the Odyssey
Jenny Strauss Clay, University of Virginia
Talking Trojan: Speech and Community in the Iliad
Hilary Mackie, Rice University
Talking Trojan
Speech and Community in the Jliad
HILARY MACKIE
ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.
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Published in the United States of America
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Copyright © 1996 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
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British Cataloging in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mackie, Hilary Susan, 1965-
Talking Trojan : speech and community in the Iliad / Hilary Mackie.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Homer. Iliad. 2. Epic poetry, Greek—History and criticism. 3. Language and
culture—Troy (Extinct city) 4. Troy (Extinct city)—In literature. 5. Trojan War—
Literature and the war. 6. Culture conflict in literature. 7. Community life in literature.
8. Language and culture—Greece. 9. Homer-—Characters—Trojans. 10. Speech in
literature. 11. Homer—Language. 1. Title.
PA4037.M28 1996 883’.0l—dc20 96-13820 CIP
ISBN 0-8476-8254-4 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 0-8476-8255-2 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Printed in the United States of America
ἘΜ
Θ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American
National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Contents
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 Kosmos and Clamor: Assembling the Troops 15
Kosmos and Klaggé
The Agoré
Agamemnon’s Elders and Hektor’s Aristoi
Wrangling with the King
Blaming Hektor
The Teikhoskopia
Poetic or Political
2 Face to Face: Fighting Talk and Talking Trojan 43
Face to Face
Trojan Bowmen
Fighting Talk
Winged Arrows and Windy Words
Talking Trojan
Trojan Poets
The Disarming of Diomedes
Aeneas’s Nomos Epeön
Prayers and Tears
Sarpedon
Genre and Gender
Epithets of Praise and Blame
3 The Language of Hektor: Trojan Kleos
Hektor’s Xenoi and Trojan Kleos
Hektor’s Kleitoi Epikouroi
Trojan-Achaean Xenia
Hektor’s Kleos
Hektor’s Beautiful Death
Poetry and Forgetting
Poetic Uniqueness
Hektor and Paris
Hektor and Andromache
4 Strife and the Language of Achilles 127
Praise and Blame
The Base Argives
Achilles’ Deeds and Days
Achilles’ Abuse of Abuse
Achilles and Homer
Conclusion 161
Bibliography 169
index 183
About the Author 198
Greek Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches
Foreword
by Gregory Nagy, General Editor
Building on the foundations of scholarship within the disciplines of
philology, philosophy, history, and archaeology, this series spans the
continuum of Greek traditions extending from the second millennium
B.C.E. to the present, not just the Archaic and Classical periods. The
aim is to enhance perspectives by applying various different
disciplines to problems that have in the past been treated as the
exclusive concern of a single given discipline. Besides the crossing
over of the older disciplines, as in the case of historical and literary
studies, the series encourages the application of such newer ones as
linguistics, sociology, anthropology, and comparative literature. It also
encourages encounters with current trends in methodology, especially
in the realm of literary theory.
Talking Trojan: Speech and Community in the Iliad, by Hilary Mackie,
explores the Homeric tradition’s complex and subtle portrayal of
cultural differences by focusing on the ways in which the Iliad
“quotes,” within its epic narrative, the different speech-patterns of
different characters. The formulaic system of Homeric poetry, as
Mackie demonstrates, is capable of differentiating not only characters
but also social groups: the Iliad can even differentiate systematically
between Greeks and non-Greeks—producing results quite different
from the tragedians’ negative stereotype of the Barbarian. The
“otherness” of the Trojans in Homeric poetry is not a reflex of Hellenic
ethnocentrism; rather, it provides a vehicle for the poetic exploration
of the institutions of the archaic Greek community in and of itself.

Acknowledgments
I remain indebted to all those in the Classics Department at
Princeton University who offered suggestions and provided
encouragement in the initial stages of this book’s composition. Thanks
are due above all to Richard Martin, Josh Ober, and Brent Vine. More
recently, Gregory Nagy’s kind interest and enthusiasm have greatly
facilitated my bringing the book to a conclusion. Between times,
successive drafts of the book benefited considerably from the insights
of my colleagues at Rice University—in particular, I thank Michael
Maas, David Nirenberg, and Harvey Yunis—and of others who were
kind enough to read and comment on various portions of the text at
its various stages of genesis. These include Cynthia Freeland, Randy
Ganiban, James Houlihan, Bob Lamberton, Mitzi Lee, Joan Mackie,
Penelope Mackie, Kate Pogue, David Rehm, Ann Suter, and Rob
Zaretsky. I am also grateful to the Classics Department at Harvard
University for assisting my research by granting me visiting scholar
status in the summer of 1994. For some much appreciated assistance in
preparing the manuscript, I extend my thanks to Joan Mackie,
Leonard Muellner, Terri Munisteri, Carolynne White, and John
Wickersham. Translations are for the most part taken or adapted from
Richmond Lattimore’s The Iliad of Homer, copyright by the University
of Chicago Press, 1951.