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FISH SIMILES AND CONVERGING STORY LINES IN THE ODYSSEY*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2014
Extract
It has long been noted that there are links between the Homeric portrayals of Odysseus' companions and the suitors. These two largely anonymous groups of Ithacans are connected not only by their ἀτασθαλίαι (‘reckless deeds’) but also by the fact that by the end of the Odyssey both groups will be dead. Clearly, these fatalities are – in their different ways – crucial to the story. Nagler regards the death of the suitors as a ‘grim inversion’ of the death of Odysseus' crew. Odysseus himself is depicted both by the primary narrator and in his own narrative in Od. 9–12 as making every effort to save his crew, all in vain. By contrast, he is the prime and highly effective instigator of the death of the suitors.
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Footnotes
*
I am grateful to the editor and an anonymous reviewer for their helpful and constructive comments. This note was written in the unique library of the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, DC. I owe its Director, Professor Greg Nagy, and his extraordinary staff inside and outside the library a great debt for their friendship, hospitality, and help.
References
1 For the complex relationship between the groups of the companions and of the suitors to the Ithacan ‘people’, see Haubold, J., Homer's People: Epic Poetry and Social Formation (Cambridge, 2000), 104–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 120.
2 See e.g. Nagler, M.N., ‘Odysseus: the proem and the problem’, ClAnt 9 (1990), 335–56Google Scholar; Olson, S.D., Blood and Iron: Stories and Storytelling in the Odyssey (Leiden, 1995), 213Google Scholar; Pucci, P., The Song of the Sirens (Oxford, 1998)Google Scholar, 19 n. 19, pointing to the importance of the ἀτασθαλίαι theme in the Odyssey: the term is used by the primary narrator for the behaviour of Odysseus' crew in devouring Helios' cattle (Od. 1.7), and it is applied fifteen times to the morally repugnant suitors (e.g. 22.317, 416; 23.67; cf. 24.282; so de Jong, I.J.F., A Narratological Commentary on the Odyssey (Cambridge, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ad Od. 1.32–43; for a list of all passages see Olson (this note), 213. Apart from that, it is used once of Aegisthus, and once in an attempt of one of the ἑταῖροι, Eurylochus, to blame Odysseus for causing their destruction, at Od. 10.437 (see Strauss-Clay, J., ‘The beginning of the Odyssey’, AJPh 97 (1976), 313–26Google Scholar, at 316–17; in defence of the crew, see Buchan, M., The Limits of Heroism: Homer and the Ethics of Reading (Ann Arbor, MI, 2004), 155–61)Google Scholar; see also de Jong (this note), ad Od. 1.6–9, 32–43.
3 See Nagler (n. 2), passim, esp. 344–5, emphasizing ‘loss’ of the crew versus ‘destruction’ of the suitors. Buchan (n. 2), 133–80, takes a more sinister view of the same opposition.
4 All the more impressive if we realize that the dolphin itself was considered a terrifyingly predatory hunter of smaller fish: see the simile in Il. 21.22–4.
5 Translations are taken from Murray, A.T., rev. Dimock, G.E., The Odyssey (Cambridge, MA, 1995 2)Google Scholar.
6 Even in Antiquity it was argued that there was something not quite heroic about fishing and fish-eating: see e.g. Pl. Resp. 404b; Eubulus fr. 120 Hunter (= Ath. 1.25c): ἰχθὺν δ' Ὅμηρος ἐσθίοντ' εἴρηκε ποῦ τίνα τῶν Ἀχαιῶν; ΣA Hom. Il. 16.747a and b (with reference to τὸ μικροπρεπές of fish-eating); for the most recent modern discussion, see Berdowski, P., ‘Heroes and fish in Homer’, Palamedes: A Journal of Ancient History 3 (2008), 75–91Google Scholar, with ample references to earlier literature; for the best earlier discussion, see Heath, M., ‘Do heroes eat fish? Athenaeus on the Homeric lifestyle’, in Braund, D. and Wilkins, J. (edd.), Athenaeus and His World: Reading Greek Culture in the Roman Empire (Exeter, 2000), 342–63Google Scholar.
7 Od. 12.228: αὐτὰρ ἐγὼ καταδὺς κλυτὰ τεύχεα καὶ δύο δοῦρε | μάκρ' ἐν χερσὶν ἑλών (against the explicit instructions of Circe, cf. 12.226–7); 12.232–3: οὐδέ πῃ ἀθρῆσαι δυνάμην· ἔκαμον δέ μοι ὄσσε | πάντῃ παπταίνοντι.
8 This is not the first time that some of Odysseus' men die like fish. The short simile at 10.124 graphically describes how the Laestrygonians spear Odysseus' men like fish (ἰχθὺς ὥς) and carry them home for dinner. The fish simile in the Scylla episode extends the image.
9 See also n. 6. De Jong (n. 2), ad Od. 22.381–9, lists six other examples (Od. 10.124 [see n. 8]; 12.251–5 [just discussed here]; the other four in the Iliad: 16.406–10 [Patroclus spearing an opponent and lifting him bodily from his chariot, cf. the fishing technique of Scylla, whisking Odysseus' men up and off the ship], 21.22–6 [see n. 4], 23.692–5 [a jolted boxer compared to a fish jumping out of the water and falling back], 24.80–2 [Iris diving into the sea like the lead weight sinker on a fishing line]). See also Schnapp-Gourbeillon, A., Lions, héros, masques: les représentations de l'animal chez Homère (Paris, 1981), 55Google Scholar; 81; Moulton, C., Similes in the Homeric Poems (Göttingen, 1977)Google Scholar, 119 (comparing Od. 12.251 and Il. 16.406).
10 Note that the very same verb is used when Odysseus is on the lookout for Scylla, Od. 12.233 (see above, and n. 7).
11 I owe this point to an anonymous referee for CQ; see below on the death of the women servants (22.468–73; n. 14). There, too, pathos is added by the fact that their resting place (κοῖτος, 22.470) is in fact a horrible one (στυγερός, ibid.), and there too it is implied that they die a miserable death (they kick their feet, ‘although not for very long’, 472–3).
12 It is worth noting the cruelty of the image – not something that would bother Odysseus. The fish, like the birds with which the servant women will be compared (n. 14), are innocent.
13 For lions in the Iliad, see e.g. Schnapp-Gourbeillon (n. 9), 86–9; in the Odyssey, see Moulton (n. 9), 139–41; especially Friedrich, R., ‘On the compositional use of similes in the Odyssey’, AJPh 102 (1981), 120–37Google Scholar: and Magrath, W.T., ‘Progression of the lion simile in the Odyssey’, CJ 77 (1981–2), 205–12Google Scholar, for the notion of ‘progressive (lion) similes’. The ‘thematic relevance’ approach differs notably from the strictly local interpretations of similes as advocated by e.g. Μ. Coffey, , ‘The function of the Homeric simile’, AJPh 78 (1957), 113–32Google Scholar. On the difference between Iliadic and Odyssean lions, see Pucci, P., Odysseus Polutropos: Intertextual Readings in the Odyssey and the Iliad (Ithaca, NY, 1987), 157–64Google Scholar.
14 For bird omens and bird imagery, see Podlecki, A.J., ‘Omens in the Odyssey’, G&R 14 (1967), 12–23Google Scholar; Podlecki, A.J., ‘Some Odyssean similes’, G&R 18 (1971), 84–5Google Scholar; Moulton (n. 9), 135–9; de Jong (n. 2), ad Od. 2.143–207. For instance, in killing the suitors, Odysseus and Telemachus are compared to birds of prey swooping down on their victims (22.302–9); the extraordinary initiative of Telemachus in hanging the women servants, going far beyond the clean execution by sword suggested by his father, leads up to the comparison of the servants to thrushes and doves being strung up in a row (22.468–73). These bird victims may be compared to the fish victims of Odysseus (see de Jong [n. 2], ad 22.468–72).
15 This may be taken to match Scylla's solitary hunting versus the team effort of Odysseus and his men.