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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 July 2014
The Iliad and Odyssey are replete with single speeches or exchanges of speech which are described by the noun νεῖκος (‘quarrel’, ‘strife’) or its derived verb νεικέω. Some time ago, A.W.H. Adkins showed that νεῖκος and νεικείω are used in Homer to designate various kinds of agonistic discourse: threats, rebukes, insults, quarrels and judicial disputes. Critics often now describe νεῖκος-speeches and νεῖκος-exchanges in the Iliad as examples of ‘flyting’. This term, shared by the languages of Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse and the dialect of Old Scots, is transferred to the combination of boasting, invective and threats which Homeric heroes hurl at each other. This is because Iliadic νεῖκος has affinities with the traditional and highly stylised verbal exchanges which take place in the feasting halls and battles depicted in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Germanic heroic poetry.
In his book The Language of Heroes Richard Martin has argued persuasively that the flyting νεῖκος is a significant speech-act genre performed by Homeric characters and that its competitive mode is analogous to the Homeric poet's poetic project tout court. Just as Homer produces a monumental epic whose focus on Achilles may well be competitive with other renderings of epic tradition and is certainly derived through the manipulation of memory, Homeric heroes and gods flyte by manipulating and contesting the resources of memory. The best Homeric flyting is creatively poetic within existing conventions or strategies and is thereby rhetorically devastating. And Martin sees Achilles as the best flyter because he rhetorically manipulates memory better than any other hero. Thus, the hero is like his poet and the poet is like his hero. Achilles' competitive way with words is unique in (and to) the Iliad and is emblematic of Homer's overpowering competitive poetic achievement.
1. Adkins, A.W.H., ‘Threatening, Abusing and Feeling Angry in the Homeric Poems’. JHS 89 (1969), 7–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
2. See Martin, R.P., The Language of Heroes: Speech and Performance in the Iliad (Ithaca … London 1989), 65–88Google Scholar; Parks, W., Verbal Dueling and Heroic Narrative: The Homeric and Old English Traditions (Princeton 1990CrossRefGoogle Scholar); Ford, A., Homer: The Poetry of the Past (Ithaca … London 1992), 63Google Scholar; Mackie, H., Talking Trojan: Speech and Community in the Iliad (Lanham 1996), 43–84Google Scholar.
3. In Beowulf, for example, we have the earliest citation for the verb ‘flítan’ and its cognates which, like 
and νεικείω) can refer to all manner of contests and disputes, both verbal and physical. It has often been noticed that the flyting scene in which Beowulf is at first verbally assailed by Unferth but then silences his abuser with an effective countering speech, has affinities with a scene on Phaeacia in the Odyssey where Odysseus is inappropriately goaded and insulted by Euryalus about his appearance and offers a devastating reply to silence him (Beowulf 499–661 and Hom. Od. 8.158–255). Several scholars from different specialisms have highlighted a fundamental limitation in any approach to ‘flyting’ which sets too much store by archetypal definitions of what constitutes a ‘flyting’ speech or altercation. As one puts it when discussing Norse flyting episodes, ‘no single example stands as an epitome…for the simple reason that the form is traditional and hence subject to the usual thematic and motival variation. Any individual flyting is thus a unique combination of clichés and only approximates the general definition. (Clover, C.J., ‘The Germanic Context of the Unferth Episode’, Speculum 55 [1980], 444–68, at 446CrossRefGoogle Scholar.)
4. See Martin (n.2 above), 238: ‘The poet of the Iliad, as an enacter of a muthos, must by implication be a poet against others, out to obliterate their performances by speaking in more detail, about more topics—in short, in a more monumental fashion than any other epic performer. Achilles is the poet’s voice and his emblem, a heroic speaker who outdoes others in style. I submit that the Iliad, a poem about contest, was created for a contest, of the type we see described in a number of texts, both in other traditions, and in Greek from Hesiod to Corinna. This is not to say that other heroes, be they Greek or Trojan, cannot be good flyters too or that their speech styles are not also consciously shaped by the poet and/or traditions of speech-making that were real. Martin (n.2 above, 125–30) shows, for example, that the famous encounter between Diomedes and Glaucus in Book 6 is the turning-point in Diomedes’ ‘education in performance’ because it is after this episode that he delivers a number of good flyting attacks, whereas previously he is not so adept. Mackie (n.2 above, 43–83) demonstrates that Trojan heroes are often characterised as good flyters, even though they flyte in a way which is markedly different from the style of their Greek opponents. For example, they are less aggressive.
5. Martin (n.2 above), 84.
6. Martin (n.2 above), 84.
7. Martin (n.2 above), 98: ‘The heroes of the Homeric poems surely possess individual styles.
8. Martin (n.2 above ), 67.
9. For the concept of ‘intratextuality’ as one which focuses the critic’s attention on the relationship between textual ‘parts’ (‘digressions’, episodes, inset narratives, ekphraseis, prologues, epilogues, speeches…) and ‘wholes’ see Sharrock, A. and Morales, H. (eds.), Intratextuality: Greek and Roman Textual Relations (Oxford 2000), especially 1–42 and 325–29Google Scholar (and with further bibliography cited therein).
10. R.P. Martin, ‘Wrapping Homer Up: Cohesion, Discourse and Deviation in the Iliad’ in Sharrock and Morales (n.9 above), 43–66.
11. See Lohmann, D., Die Komposition der Reden in der Ilias (Berlin 1970Google Scholar). Lohmann demonstrates the pervasive ring-form structure of speech-making in the Iliad. So, for example, one of the speeches which I focus on in this study is that of Aeneas to Apollo at 20.87–102:
A Why do you urge me to fight Achilles (87–88)?
B I fled from him before, when he sacked Lyrnessus and Pedasus (89–92)
C Zeus saved me then (92–93).
B’ or he would have killed me when he attacked the Leleges and Trojans (94–96)
A So no mortal can fight Achilles (97–102).
12. Adkins, A.W.H., ‘Art, Beliefs and Values in the Later Books of the Iliad’. CP 70 (1975), 239–54Google Scholar; Edwards, M., The Iliad: A Commentary Volume V: Books 17–20 (Cambridge 1991), 286–345CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ford (n.2 above), 63–68; Mackie (n.2 above), 71–75; Nagy, G., The Best of the Achaeans (rev. ed., Baltimore … London 1999), 211–76Google Scholar; Alden, M., Homer Beside Himself: Para-Narratives in the Iliad (Oxford 2000), 176–78Google Scholar.
13. See Bremer, J.M., ‘The So-Called “Göttaparat” in Iliad XX-XXII’. in Bremer, J.M., De Jong, I.J.F. and Kalff, J. (eds.), Homer: Beyond Oral Poetry (Amsterdam 1987), 31–46, at 34Google Scholar.
14. See Schein, S., The Mortal Hero (Berkeley 1984), 145Google Scholar; Edwards (n.12 above), 286.
15. See Adkins (n.12 above); Edwards (n.12 above), 287; Alden (n.12 above), 176–78.
16. See Hom. Il. 1.396f., 21.475f. As Edwards (n.12 above, 302) points out, Agamemnon’s accusation of boastful talk at 8.229–34 is an expanded example.
17. Here the text and translation follow the MSS which offer 
and Edwards’s view that ΝΙΚΗΣΙ works best as an optative given Aeneas’ reservation in line 99. See Edwards (n.12 above), 304. My translations of the text of the Iliad are my own modifications of that of Lattimore, R., The Iliad of Homer (Chicago 1951Google Scholar).
18. See Hom. Il. 11.336, 13.358–60, 14.389, 16.662 and 17.400 for the rope metaphor with further discussion in Janko, R., The Iliad: A Commentary Volume IV: Books 13–16 (Cambridge 1994), 92Google Scholar.
19. Nagy (n.12 above, 268f.) points out that Poseidon is a pro-Achaean god and therefore that it is odd for him to rescue the Trojan prince. Nagy’s explanation is (a) that a rescue by Apollo would be a pro-Trojan act whereas Poseidon’s intervention puts it above taking sides (and thus the theomacny does not start prematurely), and (b) that there may have been a special cult affinity between Poseidon and the dynasty of the Aeneadae. Whatever the truth of (b), Nagy’s thesis that the survival of Aeneas (and hence his line) is a well-known and traditional poetic theme not invented by the Iliad or the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite is persuasive.
20. For the way in which this phrase can convey accurate and contentious claims to superiority in an area of heroic endeavour, see Muellner, L., The Meaning of Homeric EUXOMAI through its Formulas (Innsbruck 1976), 79–83Google Scholar.
21. See Edwards (n.12 above), 52 and 304, for the non-metaphorical applications of the adjective to armour and weapons. As Edwards points out, the adjective χάλκεος (‘bronze’) is used metaphorically but conventionally of Ares five times and is applied to the death-sleep of a warrior (11.241), a ‘fence’ of warriors (15.567), a pitiless sky (17.425), Achilles’ war-cry (18.222) and a weariless heart (2.490). Apollo once points out to the Trojans that the Greeks’ skin is ‘neither stone nor iron’ (
, 4.510).
22. See, for example, Hom. Il. 21.108f., 122–35, 150f., 184–99; 22.331–36.
23. See Hom. Il. 21.110–13, 22.365f.
24. See Edwards (n.12 above), 276–80, with further bibliography cited therein.
25. This is noticed by van der Mije, S.R., ‘Achilles’ God-given Strength: Iliad A 178 and Gifts from the Gods in Homer’, Mnemosyne 40 (1987), 241–67, at 243CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
26. As Edwards (n.12 above, 304) points out, Apollo’s opening vocative ἣρως (‘hero!’ 20.104) ‘seems to be a rather formal mode of address, suitable from the young Lycaon to the senior Trojan leader’
27. See, for example, Agamemnon’s rebukes and replies (or non-replies) to them at Hom. Il. 4.241–421 with the comments of Martin (n.2 above), 69–72. Poseidon adopts the likeness of Thoas and rebukes Idomeneus at 13.206–38.
28. Ford (n.2 above), 64.
29. See Martin (n.2 above), 200.
30. See, for example, Hom. Il. 13.292f. and 16.626–31 with Martin (n.2 above), 17 and 76f.
31. For the irony of Aeneas’ lengthiness, see Mackie (n.2 above), 74. As we will see, I cannot deny that there may be some irony to the length of Aeneas’ reply. Lohmann (n.11 above, 66f. and 92) has particular problems with lines 244–58 of Aeneas’ speech and excises 242f., 247 and the simile at 251–55. Edwards (n.12 above, 320f.) defends the lines ably but does not note the way in which Aeneas’ ‘meta-flyting’ in these lines is prepared for in the previous exchange with Apollo.
32. Edwards (n.12 above, 311) notes the similarity of tone between Achilles’ speech and that of Tlepolemus at 5.633–46. But Tlepolemus disputes Sarpedon’s fighting ability and divine parentage rather than imagining various undermining motives that Sarpedon might have.
33. See Friedrich, P. and Redfield, J., ‘Speech as a Personality Symbol—The Case of Achilles’. Language 54 (1978), 263–88, at 273CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Edwards (n.12 above), 311.
34. See Griffin, J., ‘Homeric Words and Speakers’, JHS 106 (1986), 36–57, at 53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
35. Griffin (n.34 above, 51) points to the following examples of ‘realising a hypothetical image’ Hector on Andromache’s destiny and she on the fate of Astyanax (6.447ff., 22.487ff.); Priam on his own fate (22.59ff.); the indirect speech of Meleager’s wife where she hypothesises the consequences of the sack of his city (9.591–94).
36. Martin (n.2 above), 141.
37. Edwards (n.12 above), 313.
38. Nagy (n.12 above), 265–67.
39. See LSJ s.vv. 
.
40. See Heubeck, A., ‘Griechisch-Mykenische Etymologien’. SMEA 11 (1970), 70–72Google Scholar; Janko (n.18 above), 84. However, this etymology is disputed by Edmunds, S.T., Homeric Nepios (London … New York 1990Google Scholar). Edmunds argues that νήπιος connotes disconnectedness when used of adults or children and that it is derived from the Indo-Eurpoean root *āp- This root is shared with ἢπιος with its primal sense of ‘connected’ and its Homeric connotations of foster-parenthood, good advice, gentleness and the promotion of social cohesion. Even if Edmunds is right, Aeneas can still be seen to be picking up and playing with Achilles’ use of the term νήπιος.
41. See 
at 20.184 with Edwards (n.12 above), 223 and 312.
42. This is, I hope, to develop further the brief observation of Mackie (n.2 above), 73: ‘Aeneas implicitly contests Achilles’ label νήπιος.
43. The other examples where a hero compares the flyting he is engaging in with children’s quarrelling are as follows: (1) Idomeneus to his comrade Meriones ends their exchange thus: 
(‘but come, let us no longer stand here talking of these things like children, for fear some man may arrogantly scold us’, 13.292f.); (2) Aeneas’ rebuke at 20.200–02 is repeated by Hector to Achilles at 20.431–33. In neither of these cases, though, is the comparison elaborated and returned to in the way that it is by Aeneas. Idomeneus’ line at 13.292 is repeated by Aeneas at 20.244, but we will see that he develops the disparaging contrast into a full blown section of unique ‘meta-flyting’
44. Zeus weeps tears of blood when he accepts that his son, Sarpedon, must die at the hands of Patroclus (Hom. Il. 16.431–61); Thetis weeps and cries in response to Achilles’ grief at 18.34–64 and then again at 18.94–96 as she learns that Achilles means to kill Hector and so will himself die soon after.
45. Adkins (n.12 above, 241–47) suggests that Aeneas establishes his ascendancy over Achilles through his genealogy. Alden (n.12 above, 170 n.43) is not so sure: ‘It is a nice question whether Aeneas’ paternal descent from Zeus over eight generations and his maternal descent from Aphrodite outweigh Achilles’ closer relationship with Zeus on his father’s side and the inferior goddess, Thetis, as his mother.’ Alden goes on to point out that Poseidon will tell Aeneas to avoid Achilles in future, because the Greek hero is ‘better’ than Aeneas and ‘dearer to the gods’ (Hom. Il. 20.334).
46. Edwards (n.12 above), 320.
47. These resonances between Aeneas’ remarks and the remainder of the poem are traced by Alden (n.12 above), 173.
48. Thus Mackie (n.2 above, 74) is not quite right to suggest that 20.221–29 are a change of ‘genre’ from genealogy.
49. See Edwards (n.12 above), 313f.
50. This is noted by Alden (n.12 above), 171f.
51. See Ford (n.2 above), 63–67.
52. See Nagy (n.12 above), 265–75.
53. Nagy (n.12 above), 274.
54. Nagy (n.12 above), 273, sees parallels between this comparison with female 
and the festivals and cults where 
(‘shameful talk’) took the form of ritual jesting and was restricted to women. On these contexts, see Richardson, N.J., The Homeric Hymn to Demeter (Oxford 1974), 213–17Google Scholar; Halliwell, S., ‘Aischrology, Shame and Comedy’, in Rosen, R.M. and Sluiter, I. (eds.), Freedom of Speech in Classical Antiquity (Leiden 2004), 115–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Collins, D., Master of the Game: Competition and Performance in Greek Poetry (Cambridge MA … London 2004), 225–30Google Scholar. It seems to me that Aeneas’ comparison is unlikely to evoke ritual or ‘licensed’ 
. His whole point is that χόλος (‘anger’) drives these street-flyting women and that seems to indicate an exchange which is part of a real quarrel.
55. In this connection, it is interesting that Aeneas views both his and Achilles’ capacity to flyte endlessly as a function of the tongue being 
(‘pliant’ 247). Flyting exchanges require verbal and performative ‘flexibility’ or ‘pliancy’ But the tragic death of Patroclus has, in part, been a function of Achilles’ inflexibility: he does not heed Phoenix’ observation that ‘even the gods themselves are pliable (
)’ (Hom. Il. 9.487). Is Aeneas contrasting the ‘pliancy’ of Achilles’ flyting tongue with the rigidity of his spirit?
56. Martin (n.2 above), 86.
57. On stylistic capping in Homer, see Martin (n.2 above), 77. Martin points out, with reference to a 
between Aeneas and Meriones, that successful ripostes can involve the execution of a poetic and stylistic coup: ‘the latter mimics Hector’s [sic] style exactly, down to the coincidence of metrical segment and subordinate clause at line-end.’ Martin is referring to Hom. Il. 16.617–21, though he mistakenly makes Meriones’ interlocutor Hector when it is actually Aeneas.
58. Mackie (n.2 above), 72.
59. Martin (n.2 above), 86.
