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The Last Book of the ‘Iliad’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2015

J. L. Myres
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Extract

The structure and composition of the Iliad have been discussed often: usually, however, rather with the object of identifying the component parts and tracing their antecedents, than of apprehending and interpreting the design of the poem as a whole.

I. Homeric Epics as Works of Art

Some critics have argued, or assumed, that there was in fact little or no design; that the cantos or lays somehow fell into their present places like the books of the Old Testament, or at most, as Anaximander might have said, κατὰ τὴν τοῦ χρόνου τάξιν in accordance with a traditional sagatheme, which may, or may not, have had historical background or mythical meaning. As to that historical background, again, opinions differ; and whether the myth was solar or sociological.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 52 , Issue 2 , 1932 , pp. 264 - 296
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1932

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References

1 Who were the Greeks? Berkeley, , California, 1930, pp. 517 Google Scholar ff.

2 Hdt. VII. 198.

3 Who were the Greeks? p. 520.

4 A Companion to the Iliad, London, 1892, p. 32.

5 Iliad, XV. 390–404.

6 Sheppard, J. T., The Pattern of the Iliad, London, 1922 Google Scholar.

7 An instance in the Iliad itself of this alternation of large-scale figures ‘heraldically opposed’; and of tumultuary groups of more numerous figures is in XV, where Hector and Ajax are repeatedly presented in personal contrast (415 ff.: 484 ff.: 592 ff.) these ‘pilaster groups’ enframing and separating the Prowess of Teucer (429–83) and the Prowess of Antilochus (515–91).

8 Walters, , Hist. Anc. Pottery i, p. 284 Google Scholar, fig. 84: cf. Who were the Creeks? pp. 470–3.

9 The omission of a counterpart in XXIV to the scenes at Chrysa in I; see below, pp. 288, 294. Other qualifications of symmetry by movement are Schweitzer, , Geom. Stil in Griechenland, ii (= AM. 43, p. 1)Google Scholar, fig. 20 from Eleusis, with the rhythm a b c \ d e d \ f b a, and fig. 21 from the Dipylon, with the rhythm a b c \ d e d \ e b a. The latter construction is to be seen in the second lateral scene of the (p. 276, below).

10 MrSheppard, , Pattern, p. 141 Google ScholarPubMed, treats the rather differently, making it part of a much larger scheme.

11 On the significance of here, I have com mented in The Political Ideas of the Greeks, London, 1927, p. 83.

12 Jebb, , Homer, p. 162 Google Scholar.

13 In XXIV, 107, is correct, for XXIV only begins on the fourth day after the death of Hector: cf. XXIV, 31.

14 Sheppard, , The Pattern of the Iliad, p. 24 Google Scholar.

15 E.g. (1) Pattern, p. 13. Achilles' warning to Priam not to provoke him, XXIV, 516, compared with his impulse to draw sword on Agamemnon, I, 168 if.; (2) pp. 205–7. Chryses in I as pendant to Priam in XXIV.

16 e.g. Leaf, , Companion to the Iliad p. 41 Google Scholar, 369.

17 Wilamowitz-Moellendorf, , Die Ilias 1916, pp. 69 Google Scholar. ff.

18 Sheppard, , Pattern, p. 201 Google ScholarPubMed: ‘If you cut out from the epic this description which forms a panel in the pattern between the mourning for Patroclus and the supplication of King Priam, you destroy not only the balance of the composition, but the logical development of the hero's own psychology.’

19 The insinuation that we have here a more discreditable version of the Judgment of Paris is not, however, justified by the text.

20 XXIV, 110. is almost physical; to ‘attach glory’ to Achilles, as a medal is ‘conferred’ by pinning it on.

21 Compare Sheppard, , Pattern, p. 202 Google ScholarPubMed: ‘Zeus sent Thetis to her son for the last time, to touch his heart and to bring him back the human pity, which Apollo said he had quite lost.’

22 Compare Sheppard, , Pattern p. 210 Google Scholar: ‘The tragedy of the Iliad, like the later Attic tragedies, ends in the peace, not of exhaustion, but of the healing of the human soul.’

23 Pattern, p. 207: ‘But it is an old man, like Chryses, praying like him in the name of a father, who comes as the last suppliant of the Iliad to the hut of Achilles.’ Cf. pp. 205, 208–9.