The character of Thersites, as presented by Homer in Iliad 2, has received an almost universally bad press, typical of which are the comments of F. A. Paley: ‘one of the turbulent and insolent malcontents in an army, who use their best efforts to misrepresent the authorities and to incite sedition in others’. Paley's view is typical both in the unsympathetic view it presents of Thersites and in its tendency to see him as representative of a whole genre of subversive and recalcitrant soldiery. My concern in this paper is to examine Thersites within the context of the Iliad alone, without any regard for his treatment by subsequent authors, and to attempt to explain his portrayal solely in terms of the dramatic situation at the beginning of the Iliad. My contention will be that the episode of Thersites is an important element in Homer's introductory purpose of presenting the backcloth against which the poem's theme, the menis is acted out.
