Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-t5pn6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-19T23:16:38.779Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Memory and material objects in the Iliad and the Odyssey*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 January 2010

Jonas Grethlein
Jonas Grethlein
Affiliation:
Universität Heidelberg
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

Recently, archaeologists have been focusing on material relics as evidence of a historical consciousness. This article examines the Iliad and the Odyssey from the point of view of this ‘archaeology of the past’. Various material objects, ranging from tombs to everyday objects, evoke the past in the epic poems, thereby enriching the narrative and providing reflections on the act of memory. In turn, Homeric evidence sheds new light on the hermeneutics of relics in archaic oral society.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 128 , November 2008 , pp. 27 - 51
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alcock, S.E. (2002) Archaeologies of the Greek Past. Landscape, Monuments, and Memories (Cambridge)Google Scholar
Antonaccio, A. (1994) ‘Contesting the past. Hero cult, tomb cult, and epic in Early Greece’, AJA 98, 389–410CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Antonaccio, A. (1995) An Archaeology of Ancestors. Tomb Cult and Hero Cult in Early Greece (Lanham)Google Scholar
Appadurai, A. (1986) ‘Introduction. Commodities and the politics of value’ in id. (ed.) The Social Life of Things. Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge) 3–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arnason, J.P. et al. (eds) (2005) Axial Civilizations and World History (Leiden)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bassi, K. (2005) ‘Things of the past: objects and time in Greek narrative’, Arethusa 35, 1–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boardman, J. (1970) Greek Gems and Finger Rings. Early Bronze Age to Late Classical (London)Google Scholar
Boardman, J. (2002) The Archaeology of Nostalgia. How the Greeks Re-created their Mythical Past (London)Google Scholar
Bradley, R. (2002) The Past in Prehistoric Societies (London)Google Scholar
Bruns, G. (1970) ‘Küchenwesen und Mahlzeiten’, in Archaeologia Homerica II Q (Göttingen)Google Scholar
Buchan, M. (2004) The Limits of Heroism. Homer and the Ethics of Reading (Ann Arbor)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buchert, U. (2000) Denkmalpflege im antiken Griechenland. Maβnahmen zur Bewahrung historischer Bausubstanz (Frankfurt)Google Scholar
Burkert, W. (1995) ‘Lydia between East and West or how to date the Trojan War: a study in Herodotus’, in Carter, J.B. and Morris, S.P. (eds) The Ages of Homer. A Tribute to E.T. Vermeule (Austin) 139–48Google Scholar
Certeau, M. de (1988) The Writing of History (New York)Google Scholar
Chapman, J. (1988) ‘From “Space” to “Place’: a model of dispersed settlement and Neolithic society’, in Burgess, C. et al. (eds) Enclosures and Defences in the Neolithic of Western Europe (Oxford) 21–46Google Scholar
Chapman, J. (1994) ‘The living, the dead and the ancestors: time, life cycles and the mortuary domain in later Euro– pean prehistory’, in Davies, J. (ed.) Ritual and Remembrance. Responses to Death in Human Societies (Sheffield) 40–85Google Scholar
Chapman, J. (1997) ‘Places as timemarks: the social construction of prehistoric landscapes in eastern Hungary’, in Nash, G. (ed.) Semiotics of Landscape. Archaeology of Mind (Oxford) 31–45Google Scholar
Clay, J. (1972) ‘The Planktai and moly: divine naming and knowing in Homer’, Hermes 100, 127–31Google Scholar
Clay, J. (1983) The Wrath of Athena. Gods and Men in the Odyssey (Princeton)Google Scholar
Coldstream, J.N. (1976) ‘Hero Cults in the Age of Homer’, JHS 96, 8–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coldstream, J.N. (1983) ‘Gift Exchange in the Eighth Century B.C’, in Hägg, R. (ed.) The Greek Renaissance of the Eighth Century B.C. Tradition and Innovation (Stockholm) 201–7Google Scholar
Combellack, F.M. (1947/1948) ‘Speakers and scepters in Homer’, CJ 43, 209–17Google Scholar
Cook, J.M. (1973) The Troad. An Archaeological and Topographical Study (Oxford)Google Scholar
Crielaard, J.P. (1995) ‘Homer, history and archaeology: some remarks on the date of the Homeric world’, in Crielaard, J.P. (ed.) Homeric Questions (Amsterdam) 201–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crielaard, J.P. (2003) ‘The cultural biography of material goods in Homer's epics’, Gaia 7, 49–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dally, O. (forthcoming) Rückblick und Gegenwart. Vergleichende Untersuchungen zur Visualisierung von Vergangenheitsvorstellungen in der Antike, forthcoming in Ergänzungshefte. Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen InstitutsGoogle Scholar
Davies, M. (1991) Sophocles. Trachiniae (Oxford)Google Scholar
Dickinson, O. (1986) ‘Homer, the poet of the Dark Age’, G&R 33, 20–37Google Scholar
Dickson, K. (1995) Nestor. Poetic Memory in Greek Epic (New York)Google Scholar
Donlan, W. (1989) ‘The unequal exchange between Glaucus and Diomedes in light of the Homeric gift-economy’, Phoenix 43, 1–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Easterling, P. (1989) ‘Agamemnon's skêptron in the Iliad’, in Mackenzie, M.M. and Roueché, C. (eds) Images of Authority (Cambridge) 104–21Google Scholar
Elsner, D. (2005) ‘Helen Epigrammatopoios’, CA 24, 1–39Google Scholar
Farnell, L.R. (1921) Greek Hero Cults and Ideas of Immortality (Oxford)Google Scholar
Finley, M. (1954) The World of Odysseus (New York)Google Scholar
Ford, A. (1992) Homer. The Poetry of the Past (Ithaca)Google Scholar
Gadamer, H.-G. (1986) Wahrheit und Methode. Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik (Tübingen)Google Scholar
Gaisser, J.H. (1969) ‘A structural analysis of the digression in the Iliad and the Odyssey’, HSCP 73, 1–43Google Scholar
Galinsky, G.K. (1972) The Herakles Theme. The Adaptations of the Hero in Literature from Homer to the Twentieth Century (Oxford)Google Scholar
Gregory, (1982) Gifts and Commodities (London)Google Scholar
Grethlein, J. (2006a) Das Geschichtsbild der Ilias. Eine Untersuchung aus phänomenologischer und narratologischer Perspektive (Göttingen)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grethlein, J. (2006b) ‘The manifold uses of the epic past: the embassy scene in Herodotus 7.153–63’, AJP 127, 485–509CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grethlein, J. (2007) ‘Ritual and epic narrative: the case of the Funeral Games in the Iliad’, in Bierl, A. et al. , Literatur und Religion (Leipzig) 151–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grethlein, J. forthcoming: ‘From “Imperishable Glory” to history: the Iliad and the Trojan War’, in Raaflaub, K. (ed.), Epic and History (London)Google Scholar
Griffin, J. (1980) Homer on Life and Death (Oxford)Google Scholar
Gunning, (1924) ‘Laomedon (1)’, RE 12/1, 747–55Google Scholar
Hadzisteliou-Price, T. (1973) ‘Hero-Cult and Homer’, Historia 22, 129–44Google Scholar
Hainsworth, J.B. (1987) ‘Classical Archaeology?’ Minos 20–2, 211–19Google Scholar
Hall, J.M. (1999) ‘Beyond the Polis: the multilocality of heroes’, in Hägg, R. (ed.) Ancient Greek Hero Cult (Stockholm) 49–59Google Scholar
Henige, D.P. (1974) The Chronology of Oral Tradition. Quest For a Chimera (Oxford)Google Scholar
Hertel, D. (2003) Die Mauern von Troja. Mythos und Geschichte im antiken Ilion (Munich)Google Scholar
Hingley, R. (1996/1997) ‘Ancestors and identity in the later prehistory of Atlantic Scotland: the reuse and reinvention of Neolithic monuments and material culture’, World Archaeology 28, 231–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hölkeskamp, K.-J. (2002) ‘Ptolis and Agore. Homer and the archaeology of the city-state’, in Montanari, F. (ed.) Omero. Tremila anni dopo (Rome) 297–342Google Scholar
Holtorf, C. (2005) ‘Geschichtskultur in ur- und frühgeschichtlichen Kulturen Europas’, in Assmann, J. and Müller, K.E. (eds), Der Ursprung der Geschichte. Archaische Kulturen, das Alte Ägypten und das Frühe Griechenland (Stuttgart) 87–111Google Scholar
Hooker, J.T. (1989) ‘Gifts in Homer’, BICS 36, 79–90Google Scholar
Hoskins, J. (1998) Biographical Objects. How Things Tell the Story of People's Lives (London)Google Scholar
Huyssen, A. (1995) Twilight Memories. Marking Time in a Culture of Amnesia (New York)Google Scholar
Jong, I. de (2001) A Narratological Commentary on the Odyssey (Cambridge)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jong, I. de (2004) Narrators and Focalizers. The Presentation of the Story in the Iliad (2nd edn, Amsterdam)Google Scholar
Jonker, G. (1995) The Topography of Remembrance. The Dead, Tradition and Collective Memory in Mesopotamia (Leiden)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kallet, L. (2001) Money and the Corrosion of Power in Thucydides. The Sicilian Expedition and its Aftermath (Berkeley)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kirk, G.S. (1960) ‘Objective Dating Criteria in Homer’, MH 17, 189–205Google Scholar
Klingner, F. (1940) ‘Über die Dolonie’, Hermes 75, 337–68Google Scholar
Kopytoff, I. (1986) ‘The cultural biography of things: commodization as process’, in id. (ed.), The Social Life of Things. Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge) 64–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koselleck, R. (1975) ‘Geschichte, Historie. V. Die Herausbildung des modernen Geschichtsbegriffs’, in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe II, 647–91Google Scholar
Koselleck, R. (1979) Vergangene Zukunft. Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten (Frankfurt)Google Scholar
Krischer, T. (1992) ‘Die Bogenprobe’, Hermes 120, 19–25Google Scholar
Kullmann, W. (1955) ‘Die Probe des Achaierheeres in der Ilias’, MH 12, 253–73Google Scholar
Lacroix, L. (1989) ‘Quelques aspects du “culte des reliques” dans les traditions de la Grèce ancienne’, Bulletin de la classe des lettres et des sciences morales etpolitiques 75, 58–99Google Scholar
Latacz, J. (2004) Troy and Homer. Towards a Solution of an Old Mystery (New York)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lattimore, R. (1951) The Iliad of Homer (Chicago)Google Scholar
Lattimore, R. (1965) The Odyssey of Homer (New York)Google Scholar
Leach, J. and E., (eds) (1983) The Kula. New Perspectives on Massim Exchange (Cambridge)Google Scholar
Louden, B. (1999) The Odyssey. Structure, Narrative, and Meaning (Baltimore)Google Scholar
Lowenthal, D. (1996) Possessed by the Past. The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History (New York)Google Scholar
Lynn-George, M. (1988) Epos. Word, Narrative and the Iliad (Houndmills)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Macleod, C.W. (1983) ‘Homer on Poetry and the Poetry of Homer’, in Collected Essays (Oxford) 1–15Google Scholar
Mannsperger, B. and Mannsperger, D. (2002) ‘Die Ilias ist ein Heldenepos. Ilosgrab und Athena Ilias’, in Aslan, R. et al. (eds), Mauerschau. Festschrift für Manfred Korfmann, III (Remshalden-Grunbach) 1075–101Google Scholar
Mayor, A. (2000) The First Fossil Hunters. Paleontology in Greek and Roman Times (Princeton)Google Scholar
Mazarakis Ainian, A. (1999) ‘Reflections on hero cults in early Iron Age Greece’, in Hägg, R. (ed.), Ancient Greek Hero Cult (Stockholm) 9–36Google Scholar
McGlew, J.F. (1989) ‘Royal Power and the Achaean Assembly at Iliad 2, 84–93’, CA 8, 283–95Google Scholar
Mondi, R. (1980) ‘ΣKHΠTOYXOI BAΣIΛEIΣ: an argument for divine kingship in early Greece’, Arethusa 13, 203–16Google Scholar
Morris, I. (1986a) ‘The use and abuse of Homer’, CA 5, 81–138Google Scholar
Morris, I. (1986b) ‘Gift and commodity in Archaic Greece’, Man 21, 7–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Müller, K.E. (1997) ‘Zeitkonzepte in traditionellen Kulturen’, in Müller, K.E. and Rüsen, J. (eds), Historische Sinnbildung. Problemstellungen, Zeitkonzepte, Wahrnehmungshorizonte, Darstellungsstrategien (Reinbek) 221–39Google Scholar
Müller, K.E. (2005) ‘Der Ursprung der Geschichte’, in Assmann, J. and Müller, K.E. (eds), Der Ursprung der Geschichte. Archaische Kulturen, das Alte Ägypten und das Frühe Griechenland (Stuttgart) 17–86Google Scholar
Nagy, G. (1979) The Best of the Acheans. Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry (Baltimore)Google Scholar
Nagy, G. (1983) ‘Sema and Noesis: some illustrations’, Arethusa 16, 35–55Google Scholar
Nagy, G. (1990) Pindar's Homer. The Lyric Possession of an Epic Past (Baltimore)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nagy, G. (1996) Homeric Questions (Austin)Google Scholar
Nagy, G. (2003) Homeric Responses (Austin)Google Scholar
Nash, G. (1997) Semiotics of Landscape. Archaeology of Mind (Oxford)Google Scholar
Niemeyer, H.G. (1996) Sēmata. Über den Sinn griechischer Standbilder (Hamburg)Google Scholar
Nietzsche, F. (1954) Werke in drei Bänden, ed. Schlechta, Karl (Munich)Google Scholar
Nora, P. (1984–1992) Les lieux de mémoire (Paris)Google Scholar
Ober, J. (1995) ‘Greek Horoi: artifactual texts and the contingency of meaning’, in Small, D.B. (ed.), Methods in the Mediterranean. Historical and Archaeological Views on Texts and Archaeology (Leiden) 91–123Google Scholar
Overbeck, J.C. (1980) ‘Some recycled vases in the west cemetery at Eleusis’, AJA 84, 89–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Page, D. (1959) History and the Homeric Iliad (Berkeley)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parmentier, R.J. (1987) The Sacred Remains. Myth, History, and Polity in Belau (Chicago)Google Scholar
Pfister, F. (1909) Der Reliquienkult im Altertum (Gieβen)Google Scholar
Pred, A. (1986) Place, Practice and Structure. Social and Spatial Transformation in South Sweden 1750–1850 (Totowa)Google Scholar
Preis, A. et al. (eds) (1990) Das Museum. Die Entwicklung in den 80er Jahren (Munich)Google Scholar
Pritchett, W.K. (1979) The Greek State at War. III. Religion (Berkeley)Google Scholar
Purves, A. (2006) ‘Unmarked space: Odysseus and the inland journey’, Arethusa 39, 1–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Raaflaub, K.A. (1998) ‘A historian's headache. How to read “Homeric Society”?’ in Fisher, N. and , H. van Wees (eds), Archaic Greece. New Approaches and New Evidence (London) 169–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Redfield, J. (1975) Nature and Culture in the Iliad. The Tragedy of Hector (Chicago)Google Scholar
Reece, S. (1993) The Stranger's Welcome. Oral Theory and the Aesthetics of the Homeric Hospitality Scene (Ann Arbor)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reichel, M. (1994) Fernbeziehungen in der Ilias (Tübingen)Google Scholar
Renthe-Fink, L. V. (1964) Geschichtlichkeit. Ihr terminologischer und begrifflicher Ursprung bei Hegel, Haym, Dilthey und Yorck (Göttingen)Google Scholar
Ritter, J. (1974) Subjektivität. Sechs Aufsätze (Frankfurt)Google Scholar
Rivers, W.H.R. (1910) ‘The genealogical method of anthropological inquiry’, Sociological Review 3, 1–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rohde, E. (1898) Seelenkult und Unsterblichkeitsglaube der Griechen (2nd edn, Leipzig)Google Scholar
Schmidt, J.U. (2002) ‘Die “Probe” des Achaierheeres als Spiegel der besonderen Intentionen des Ilias dichters’, Philologus 146, 3–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scodel, R. (1982) ‘The Achaean Wall and the myth of destruction’, HSCPh 86, 33–53Google Scholar
Scodel, R. (2002) ‘Homeric signs and flashbulb memory’, in Worthington, I. and Foley, J.M. (eds), Epea and Grammata. Oral and Written Communication in Ancient Greece (Leiden) 99–116CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scully, S. (1990) Homer and the Sacred City (Ithaca)Google Scholar
Segal, C. (1983) ‘Kleos and its irony in the Odyssey’, AC 52, 22–47Google Scholar
Shannon, R.S. (1975) The Arms of Achilles and Homeric Compositional Technique (Leiden)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sinos, D.S. (1980) Achilles, Patroklos, and the Meaning of ΦIΛOΦ (Innsbruck)Google Scholar
Snodgrass, A.M. (1982) ‘Les origines du culte des héros dans la Grèce antique’, in Gnoli, G. and Vernant, J.P. (eds), La mort, les morts dans les sociétés anciennes (Cambridge) 107–19Google Scholar
Stanford, W.B. (1954) The Ulysses Theme. A Study in the Adaptability of a Traditional Hero (Oxford)Google Scholar
Strathern, M. (1988) The Gender of the Gift. Problems with Women and Problems with Society in Melanesia (Berkeley)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taplin, O. (1992) Homeric Soundings. The Shaping of the Iliad (Oxford)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomas, J. (1996) Time, Culture and Identity. An Interpretive Archaeology (London)Google Scholar
Thomas, N. (1991) Entangled Objects. Exchange, Material Culture and Colonialism in the Pacific (Cambridge)Google Scholar
Thornton, A. (1984) Homer's Iliad. Its Composition and the Motif of Supplication (Göttingen)Google Scholar
Tilley, C. (1994) Phenomenology of Landscape. Places, Paths and Monuments (Oxford)Google Scholar
Tsagarakis, O. (1969) ‘The Achaean Wall and the Homeric Question’, Hermes 97, 129–35Google Scholar
Tuan, Y.-F. (1977) Space and Place. The Perspective of Experience (London)Google Scholar
Ulf, C. (ed.) (2003) Der neue Streit um Troja. Eine Bilanz (Munich)Google Scholar
Vansina, J. (1985) Oral Tradition as History (Madison)Google Scholar
Wees, H. van (1992) Status Warriors. War, Violence and Society in Homer and History (Amsterdam)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
West, M.L. (1969) ‘The Achaean Wall’, CR 19, 256–60Google Scholar
West, M.L. (1988) ‘The rise of the Greek Epic’, JHS 108, 151–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar
West, M.L. (1997) The East Face of Helicon. West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth (Oxford)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whitley, J. (1994) ‘The monuments that stood before Marathon: tomb cult and hero cult in Archaic Attica’, AJA 98, 213–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U. von (1916) Die Ilias und Homer (Berlin)Google Scholar
Williams, H. (ed.) (2003) Archaeologies of Remembrance. Death and Memory in Past Societies (New York)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zacharias, W. (ed.) (1990) Zeitphänomen Musealiserung. Das Verschwinden der Gegenwart und die Konstruktion der Erinnerung (Essen)Google Scholar