Homer - Iliad Book VI

Lexikon des frhgriechischen Epos , ed. B. Snell, U. Fleischer and H.-J. Mette et al ., Gttingen 1955

Brill's New Pauly: encyclopaedia of the ancient world , ed. H. Cancik and H. Schneider, Leiden 2007

In his Collection of useful knowledge Proclus observes that Homer said nothing about his own origins and lineage, and that because his poetry gives no express indication on these questions, each writer has indulged his inclinations with great freedom. This is a perceptive comment: from antiquity to the present there has been much debate about the origin, date and authorship of Homeric epic a debate fuelled, in part, by a lack of reliable information. And yet the Iliad does say something important about its poet, and in order to offer an introduction to Homeric poetry, it seems reasonable to start with the image of the poet presented in the Iliad itself, before broaching the many, and difficult, issues on which the poem offers no explicit guidance.

The poem starts with an order: Sing, goddess, the wrath of Achilles. Like all second-person addresses, this opening invocation establishes a specific relationship between speaker and addressee. The poet asks the goddess to sing and she evidently complies with his request: what follows, after the proem, is indeed a song about the wrath of Achilles. Song, , is a word the poet uses for his own performance: the Muse sings, and the poet sings too, about the same topic. After the proem their voices blend, until the poet faces particularly difficult challenges. Before launching into the massive Catalogue of Ships in book 2, for example, the poet suddenly puts some distance between himself and the Muse, re-establishes his own individual voice with the pronoun , and asks, again, for divine support (2.48493):

The Muses alone are present and know all things. Without their help, the poet is in exactly the same position as his audience: we have only heard the , and know nothing. is, literally, what is heard: the word sometimes describes the subject matter of epic poetry (e.g. Od . 3.204, 8.73; Hes. Theog . 99101; Hom. Hymn 32.1820; cf. Il . 9.189). The Muse sings, and the audience hear: in between, mediating in that complex transaction, stands the poet. At 2.487 the poet asks the Muses to tell him who the leaders of the Danaans were; he then declares he needs their help in order to relate to the audience this information; and finally, at 493, he launches into the grandest and most impressive catalogue in the whole poem. The Muses and the poet sing in unison again for a while; but the invocation establishes the terms of their relationship. The goddesses guarantee the accuracy of the poet's performance (they know everything); while the poet's performance, in turn, guarantees their presence (he states he could not accomplish his poetic feat without their help). Through this interaction, the ability to perform and the accuracy of the performance are tightly woven together.