Giuseppe Zanetto
Abstract
This chapter discusses some passages of the Iliad where internal narrators (Agamemnon in Book 4, telling of Tydeus’ heroic deeds; Phoenix in Book 9, recounting to Achilles the story of Meleager; Nestor in Book 11, remembering the glorious deeds he accomplished in his youth) open a window on the heroes of the past generations. By inserting these narrations in his poem, the poet of the Iliad leads his audience to perceive that the heroic myth has a ‘vertical’ dimension: the warriors who fight around the walls of Troy belong to the generation of the ‘children’, but before them there were the generation of the ‘fathers’ and the generation of the ‘grandfathers’. This chronological articulation makes the mythical account sound more credible, because it makes it appear more similar to the historical narration of real deeds.
What elements make a narration ‘historical’? There are many, of course, but among them there is surely a sense of continuity.1 I mean: in order to be ‘historical’, a narrative must consider the chronological sequence of facts and be aware that there are things that happen before and things that come as a consequence and happen later; moreover, it must be in chronological relation with the time of the narrator, with the hic et nunc of his life experience. In other words, the narrator must perceive his narration as something which is concretely connected with his and his audience’s environment.
We can speak of an ‘internal’ continuity (history as a ‘vertical’ account of more distant and less distant facts) and of an ‘external’ continuity (history as an account of facts which are ‘horizontally’ related to the present, to ‘now’).
If we look at Greek myth, we are confronted with a paradox. Myths are by definition stories of the past; it is exactly its ‘pastness’ the element which gives myth its strength. In a ‘traditional’ society such as archaic Greece, the present is thought to be the final result of a long sequence of facts which have their roots in the mythical past.2 Things are as they are because something that happened in the past produced a transformation, and this ‘novelty’ has remained standing ever since, and through an infinite series of repetitions has survived until the present time. Everything in our world is explained by a myth that tells how it came into existence.
Myth is therefore conceptually contiguous to the present, because it is its fundament. But – this is the paradox – there is no continuity (‘external’ continuity) with the present, because the chronological dimension of the myth is extremely vague.3 Mythical deeds happened in an undefined past and the myth-teller (i.e. the poet) is not interested in proposing a chronological connection between the ‘once upon the time’ of his narration and the ‘now’ of his performance.
This is particularly true for epic poetry. Epic narrates the glorious deeds of the heroes (ta klea andron), that is to say of great men who lived before us and were the ancestors of today’s people. The foundation of heroic cults and the creation of a heroic mythology are of paramount importance to promote the Greek ‘miracle’ of the eighth century BC:4 the heroes are the models at which the Greeks look to construct a new ethnic identity and to start a process of political expansion and economic growth. The Iliad is the manifesto of a new Panhellenic consciousness (its meaning being: ‘the Greeks are ready to afford new challenges’), whereas the Odyssey symbolises the adventure of the colonisation.
But Homer does not provide the heroes with a ‘historical’ dimension; he does not define the interval which separates their time from his time, nor does he integrate – so to say – their existence into his audience’s reality. The only epic passage which ‘historicises’ the heroic age is the myth of the five generations in Hesiod’s Works and Days. Taking his cue from his quarrel with his brother Perses, Hesiod tries to explain why the earth gives its fruits only to hard-working people. In the past it was not so: there was a Golden Age in which humans had an easy life and enjoyed almost divine privileges; but then everything changed, and life is now very tough. The explanation is offered by two stories, that of Pandora and that of the five ages. The latter has clearly – like the former – a mythical configuration, but it also has a ‘historical’ perspective, because it displays a clear relation between past and present.5 The heroes, who are the protagonists of the fourth generation, lived immediately before today’s people, who are the fifth generation: the myth is explicitly linked to today’s reality (Hes. Works and Days, 156–170):6
αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ καὶ τοῦτο γένος κατὰ γαῖα κάλυψεν,
αὖτις ἔτ’ ἄλλο τέταρτον ἐπὶ χθονὶ πουλυβοτείρῃ
Ζεὺς Κρονίδης ποίησε, δικαιότερον καὶ ἄρειον,
ἀνδρῶν ἡρώων θεῖον γένος, οἳ καλέονται
ἡμίθεοι, προτέρη γενεὴ κατ’ ἀπείρονα γαῖαν.160
καὶ τοὺς μὲν πόλεμός τε κακὸς καὶ φύλοπις αἰνὴ
τοὺς μὲν ὑφ’ ἑπταπύλῳ Θήβῃ, Καδμηίδι γαίῃ,
ὤλεσε μαρναμένους μήλων ἕνεκ’ Οἰδιπόδαο,
τοὺς δὲ καὶ ἐν νήεσσιν ὑπὲρ μέγα λαῖτμα θαλάσσης
ἐς Τροίην ἀγαγὼν Ἑλένης ἕνεκ’ ἠυκόμοιο. 165
ἔνθ’ ἦ τοι τοὺς μὲν θανάτου τέλος ἀμφεκάλυψε
τοῖς δὲ δίχ’ ἀνθρώπων βίοτον καὶ ἤθε’ ὀπάσσας
Ζεὺς Κρονίδης κατένασσε πατὴρ ἐς πείρατα γαίης,
τηλοῦ ἀπ’ ἀθανάτων · τοῖσιν Κρόνος ἐμβασιλεύει.
καὶ τοὶ μὲν ναίουσιν ἀκηδέα θυμὸν ἔχοντες 170
But when this generation too was covered over by the earth,
Zeus made yet another generation on earth, which nurtures many, a fourth one.
This one, by contrast, was just. It was better.
It was the godlike generation of men who were heroes, who are called
demigods; they are the previous generation who lived throughout the boundless earth. 160
These were overcome by evil war and the terrible din of battle.
Some died at the walls of seven-gated Thebes, the land of Cadmus,
as they fought over the sheep of Oedipus.
Others were taken away by war over the great yawning stretches of sea
to Troy, all on account of Helen with the beautiful hair. 165
Then they were covered over by the finality of death.
But they received, apart from other humans, a life and a place to live
from Zeus the son of Kronos, who translated them to the edges of the earth,
far away from the immortal gods. And Kronos is king over them.
And they live with a carefree heart.7 170
Such an ‘external’ continuity with the present, which makes the myth ‘historical’, is hard to find in Homer: a breaking of the fourth wall and an irruption of the poet’s age in the indefinite ‘yesterday’ of the myth are not in tune with the transparency of the Homeric narration. A partial exception is the passages in which the physical exploit of a hero is favourably compared with the feebleness of today’s degenerate people: for example, in Iliad 5.302–304 Diomedes seizes a large stone ‘heavier than any two men of our time might carry, lifting it easily on his own’ (similar formulations occur also in other passages):8
ὃ δὲ χερμάδιον λάβε χειρὶ
Τυδεΐδης μέγα ἔργον ὃ οὐ δύο γ’ ἄνδρε φέροιεν,
οἷοι νῦν βροτοί εἰσ’ · ὃ δέ μιν ῥέα πάλλε καὶ οἶος.
But Tydeus’ son in his hand caught
up a stone, a huge thing which no two men could carry
such as men are now, but by himself he lightly hefted it.9
Other exceptions can be found in similes or in the long description of Achilles’ new shield in Iliad 18. On the other hand, if the heroic myth does not ‘dialogue’ with the present, because it is confined in a remote and historically undefined pastness, it has nevertheless an internal chronology.10 At the beginning of my chapter I proposed a distinction between a ‘vertical’ and a ‘horizontal’ dimension of mythical time. Verticality is a perspective that Homeric poetry knows very well. In the age of the heroes there are different generations: there are fathers, children and children of the children. An exemplary case is the clan of the Aeacids: the founder of the family is Aeacus, his sons are Peleus and Telamon (who conquered Troy for the first time together with Hercules), his grandsons are Achilles and Ajax (who followed Agamemnon in the second campaign against Troy), and his great-grandson is Neoptolemus (who destroyed the city once and for all).11
This means that within epic myth there can be a ‘today’ and a ‘yesterday’, and this temporal depth is a truth-oriented element. On the one hand, it increases the credibility of the narrative because it gives it the contours of reality; on the other, it offers the characters the opportunity to refer to ‘past deeds’ that can be seen as useful exempla. Thus, within the myth (which belongs to the past, and is therefore the foundation of the present) there is a more remote past – so to say – which is the foundation of a less remote past. In other words, the ‘mythical look’, which is typical of the epic audience and can be defined as the attitude to look at myth as an exemplary narrative, is shared by the characters of the epos themselves.
We can see all this in the Iliad. The Iliad – as we all know – is a selective narration: it does not tell the Trojan War from the first to the last day; indeed, it proposes a very partial report, focused on the wrath of Achilles and built on the three major deaths of Sarpedon, Patroclus and Hector. But the major selected episode (Achilles’ wrath and its consequences) ‘contains’ – thanks to a clever play of flashbacks and flashforwards – the history of the entire war, from the beginning to the end. Not only: the poem comes with ‘windows’ open onto mythical stories that precede the Trojan War and feature heroes of previous generations. These ‘windows’ are activated by internal narrators: they are narratives of second degree which depart from the primary narrative and have the function of linking it to a more extended context (more extended in space and time). We are always in the realm of myth, of course: a myth that is able to expand itself.
The character who most clearly embodies the temporal verticality of myth is Nestor. He is a living paradox, because at the time of the Trojan War no one of his generation should be alive; in fact, he belongs to the age of the grandfathers, as Homer says when he introduces Nestor for the first time at the beginning of the poem (Iliad 1.247–252):12
τοῖσι δὲ Νέστωρ
ἡδυεπὴς ἀνόρουσε λιγὺς Πυλίων ἀγορητής,
τοῦ καὶ ἀπὸ γλώσσης μέλιτος γλυκίων ῥέεν αὐδή ·
τῷ δ’ ἤδη δύο μὲν γενεαὶ μερόπων ἀνθρώπων 250
ἐφθίαθ’, οἵ οἱ πρόσθεν ἅμα τράφεν ἠδ’ ἐγένοντο
ἐν Πύλῳ ἠγαθέῃ, μετὰ δὲ τριτάτοισιν ἄνασσεν.
and between them Nestor
the fair-spoken rose up, the lucid speaker of Pylos,
from whose lips the streams of words ran sweeter than honey.
In his time two generations of mortal men had perished, 250
those who had grown up with him and they who had been born to
these in sacred Pylos, and he was king in the third age.13
This fantastic longevity makes Nestor capable of mentioning episodes that belong to the entire chronological range of the heroic age. He is well aware of his uniqueness and plays this card when he tries to reconcile Agamemnon and Achilles by appealing to his extraordinary experience. Nestor tells of the mythical battle which opposed Lapiths and Centaurs, naming among others Theseus and Pirithous: an episode that is expected to sound very ‘old’ to the assembly of the Achaeans and increase Nestor’s prestige and credibility.14 At the end of his report he says that men like those ancient heroes are not to be found now: this ‘now’ refers to the time of the Iliad, the time in which the characters are supposed to act, but it is very likely that the audience of Homer perceived it as a reference to their ‘now’, connecting the past of the myth with the present of the performance (Iliad 1.259–266, 269–272):
ἀλλὰ πίθεσθ’ · ἄμφω δὲ νεωτέρω ἐστὸν ἐμεῖο ·
ἤδη γάρ ποτ’ ἐγὼ καὶ ἀρείοσιν ἠέ περ ὑμῖν 260
ἀνδράσιν ὡμίλησα, καὶ οὔ ποτέ μ’ οἵ γ’ ἀθέριζον.
οὐ γάρ πω τοίους ἴδον ἀνέρας οὐδὲ ἴδωμαι,
οἷον Πειρίθοόν τε Δρύαντά τε ποιμένα λαῶν
Καινέα τ’ Ἐξάδιόν τε καὶ ἀντίθεον Πολύφημον
Θησέα τ’ Αἰγεΐδην, ἐπιείκελον ἀθανάτοισιν · 265
κάρτιστοι δὴ κεῖνοι ἐπιχθονίων τράφεν ἀνδρῶν
[. . .]
καὶ μὲν τοῖσιν ἐγὼ μεθομίλεον ἐκ Πύλου ἐλθὼν
τηλόθεν ἐξ ἀπίης γαίης · καλέσαντο γὰρ αὐτοί · 270
καὶ μαχόμην κατ’ ἔμ’ αὐτὸν ἐγώ · κείνοισι δ’ ἂν οὔ τις
τῶν οἳ νῦν βροτοί εἰσιν ἐπιχθόνιοι μαχέοιτο.
Yet be persuaded. Both of you are younger than I am.
Yes, and in my time I have dealt with better men than 260
you are, and never once did they disregard me. Never
yet have I seen nor shall see again such men as these were,
men like Peirithoös, and Dryas, shepherd of the people,
Kaineus and Exadios, godlike Polyphemos,
or Theseus, Aigeus’ son, in the likeness of the immortals. 265
These were the strongest generation of earth-born mortals
[. . .]
I was of the company of these men, coming from Pylos,
a long way from a distant land, since they had summoned me. 270
And I fought single-handed, yet against such men no one
of the mortals now alive upon earth could do battle.
Homer seems to think (but of course we should not expect rigorous control of the chronology) that the age of the heroes embraces three generations. The internal narratives allow the poet to display relationship lines between the ‘present’ of the Iliadic myth (the Trojan War, fought by the generation of the ‘sons’, i.e. the second generation) and the ‘past’ of the other heroic cycles, when the first generation was in action. The ‘fathers’ are often mentioned, in particular Peleus, Achilles’ father. A striking case is Iliad 11.765–789, where Nestor reminds Patroclus of the heroic investiture of Achilles: when the Achaean officers were recruiting people for the Trojan expedition, he and Odysseus went to Phthia to invite the young Achilles to join the enterprise; they were received by Peleus who encouraged his son to go to Troy and be always the first in battle (aristeuein).15 This episode focuses on an idea of intergenerational continuity: Peleus ‘sends’ Achilles to glory and death; like in a relay running the father passes the baton to the son, and the young generation succeeds the old.
Let’s consider now some clear examples of mythical ‘verticality’. In Book 4, after the wounding of Menelaus, Agamemnon urges all the leaders of the Achaeans to resume fighting; he tries to find the right words for each one and with Diomedes he plays the card of the comparison with his father Tydeus. He mentions two apparently secondary episodes of the Theban cycle: the preparation of the first expedition against Thebes, when Polynices and Tydeus went to Mycenae to recruit men, and the failed ambush of the Thebans against Tydeus, when the hero killed the fifty armed men sent against him. In order to ignite the warrior spirit of Diomedes, Agamemnon provokes him by claiming he is far less valiant than Tydeus, given that children are generally worse than the fathers.16 But Sthenelus, the son of Capaneus, reacts fiercely and emphasises that the assault of the fathers resulted in a defeat, while the children eventually conquered Thebes: accordingly, he proclaims that the sons are far better than the fathers (Iliad 4.370–375, 399–400, 404–410):
ὤ μοι Τυδέος υἱὲ δαΐφρονος ἱπποδάμοιο 370
τί πτώσσεις, τί δ’ ὀπιπεύεις πολέμοιο γεφύρας;
οὐ μὲν Τυδέϊ γ’ ὧδε φίλον πτωσκαζέμεν ἦεν,
ἀλλὰ πολὺ πρὸ φίλων ἑτάρων δηΐοισι μάχεσθαι,
ὡς φάσαν οἵ μιν ἴδοντο πονεύμενον · οὐ γὰρ ἔγωγε
ἤντησ’ οὐδὲ ἴδον · περὶ δ’ ἄλλων φασὶ γενέσθαι. 375
[. . .]
τοῖος ἔην Τυδεὺς Αἰτώλιος · ἀλλὰ τὸν υἱὸν
γείνατο εἷο χέρεια μάχῃ, ἀγορῇ δέ τ’ ἀμείνω. 400
[. . .]
Ἀτρεΐδη μὴ ψεύδε’ ἐπιστάμενος σάφα εἰπεῖν ·
ἡμεῖς τοι πατέρων μέγ’ ἀμείνονες εὐχόμεθ’ εἶναι · 405
ἡμεῖς καὶ Θήβης ἕδος εἵλομεν ἑπταπύλοιο
παυρότερον λαὸν ἀγαγόνθ’ ὑπὸ τεῖχος ἄρειον,
πειθόμενοι τεράεσσι θεῶν καὶ Ζηνὸς ἀρωγῇ ·
κεῖνοι δὲ σφετέρῃσιν ἀτασθαλίῃσιν ὄλοντο ·
τὼ μή μοι πατέρας ποθ’ ὁμοίῃ ἔνθεο τιμῇ. 410
Ah me, son of Tydeus, that daring breaker of horses, 370
why are you skulking and spying out the outworks of battle?
Such was never Tydeus' way, to lurk in the background,
but to fight the enemy far ahead of his own companions.
So they say who had seen him at work, since I never saw nor
I encountered him ever; but they say he surpassed all others. 375
[. . .]
This was Tydeus, the Aitolian; yet he was father
to a son worse than himself at fighting, better in conclave. 400
[. . .]
Son of Atreus, do not lie when you know the plain truth.
We two claim we are better men by far than our fathers. 405
We did storm the seven-gated foundation of Thebe
though we led fewer people beneath a wall that was stronger.
We obeyed the signs of the gods and the help Zeus gave us,
while those others died of their own headlong stupidity.
Therefore, never liken our fathers to us in honour. 410
This passage is very telling for our topic because it contains an explicit reference to the two attacks against Thebes within the span of one generation; the sons keep the memory of their fathers’ behaviour and are ready to comment on it and to become ‘historians’ of what happened before them.17
The myth of the Calydonian boar hunt is evoked by Phoenix in Book 9, when the old tutor of Achilles tells the story of Meleager to try to convince Achilles to let go his wrath. Phoenix is interested in focusing on the parallelism between Meleager and Achilles, because he proposes the story as an apologue (an ainos) from which his pupil should learn to avoid the wrong behaviour of the ancient hero. Meleager retired from the fight in anger and was only persuaded by his wife to rejoin the battle in order to save his city from destruction; but it was too late for him to earn a reward. Achilles, on the contrary, is still in time to gain the compensatory gifts promised by Agamemnon.
Phoenix cleverly juxtaposes the present situation (the ‘now’ of the Iliadic scene) with an identic, or very similar, situation of the past (the ‘yesterday’ of the mythical memory), because he expects Achilles to be struck by Meleager’s exemplum.18 The correspondence between Meleager and Achilles is actually imperfect; more than anything, Phoenix must conceal Meleager’s death. However, the audience knows how the myth ends; thus, the story conveys a two-level meaning: on the internal level, that of the characters, it is an ainos; on the external level, that of the audience, it is a premonition (both Patroclus and Achilles will be victims of Achilles’ wrath).
What is particularly interesting is that Phoenix introduces the story by presenting it as an ‘ancient’ one (line 527, μέμνημαι τόδε ἔργον ἐγὼ πάλαι, οὔ τι νέον γε – ‘I want to remember this fact, not recent but ancient’): there is therefore an explicit reference to the chronology of heroic myths, which are not compressed into an undifferentiated and timeless ‘past’. Precisely because of its ‘ancientness’ the story of old hero Meleager has great value and can prove instructive for the heroes of ‘today’ (Iliad 9.524–528):
οὕτω καὶ τῶν πρόσθεν ἐπευθόμεθα κλέα ἀνδρῶν
ἡρώων, ὅτε κέν τιν’ ἐπιζάφελος χόλος ἵκοι · 525
δωρητοί τε πέλοντο παράρρητοί τ’ ἐπέεσσι.
μέμνημαι τόδε ἔργον ἐγὼ πάλαι οὔ τι νέον γε
ὡς ἦν · ἐν δ’ ὑμῖν ἐρέω πάντεσσι φίλοισι.
Thus it was in the old days also, the deeds that we hear of
from the great men, when the swelling anger descended upon them. 525
The heroes would take gifts; they would listen, and be persuaded.
For I remember this action of old, it is not a new thing,
and how it went; you are all my friends, I will tell it among you.
Another mention of ancient heroic generations (fathers and grandfathers) occurs in the dialogue between Glaucus and Diomedes in Book 6. As Diomedes asks his competitor to tell his name and his lineage, Glaucus narrates at length the story of his ancestor Bellerophon. Bellerophon is the hero of Corinth: his image, on the back of the winged horse Pegasus, is an unmistakable icon, which appears on Corinthian ceramics and coins already at a very early date. Moreover, Corinth is a ‘recent’ city; its Mycenaean status is very doubtful: in the Bronze Age it must have been a small village, without a palace, and politically subordinated to its most powerful neighbours. Things change radically in the tenth century, after the collapse of the Mycenaean power and the arrival of the Dorians: the Dorians relaunch Corinth, starting the new history of the city, which in the eighth century becomes the most active polis in the colonial movement.19
In the absence of any trace of Mycenaean memory, ‘geometric’ Corinth develops its own epic tradition, which is required for the city’s cultural identity: the poet who takes charge of this is Eumelus. We have only very few fragments of Eumelus’ Korinthiaka; but he can be credited with the ‘transplant’ of the stories of Sisyphus and Bellerophon: he appropriated these Thessalian stories and turned them into the mythical past of Corinth (whose name in Eumelus’ poem was Ephyra).20 This is far from unparalleled: myths transmigrate and can be ‘relocated’ wherever their presence is required. But Corinth is not the arrival point of Bellerophon’s story. The city is the great protagonist of the archaic colonisation: Corinthian settlers move to the new foundations in Ionia, to Miletus, Priene, Samos, Colophon and Ephesus. Bellerophon is the ideal model for the Corinthian colonists, because he is a ‘contact hero’: he too crosses the sea and goes to Anatolia and there he obtains his most glorious victories, fighting the Chimaera, the Solymi and the Amazons.
Bellerophon, however, cannot enter the Iliad as Agamemnon’s teammate: he belongs to a previous heroic generation; he is too ‘ancient’. But there are his descendants. Glaucus and Sarpedon, who are grandchildren of Bellerophon, fight bravely in the Trojan plain, as allies of Priam and Hector. The feeble Mycenaean legacy of Corinth is thus compensated by the strong presence of the two Lycian heroes. Their Lycia is a mythical land that has nothing to do with historical Lycia (where neither the Mycenaeans nor the Greeks of the archaic age ever set foot), but precisely for this reason it is the ideal land to provide an identity to the two heroes of Corinthian blood: thanks to Glaucus and Sarpedon, Corinth (under the name of Ephyra) features prominently in the Iliad.21
The last lines of Glaucus’ speech are particularly noteworthy: here he traces his lineage, claiming that Bellerophon was the father of his own father Hippolochus. Thus, the heroic career of the splendid champion Bellerophon, to which he has devoted an extensive narrative, becomes the model of his own heroic behaviour.22 Glaucus reconstructs the history of his family, going back in the time step by step, from his generation to the third generation. The verticality of the mythical time is a key point of the whole episode (Iliad 6.196–197, 206–211):
ἣ δ’ ἔτεκε τρία τέκνα δαΐφρονι Βελλεροφόντῃ
Ἴσανδρόν τε καὶ Ἱππόλοχον καὶ Λαοδάμειαν.
[. . .]
Ἱππόλοχος δέ μ’ ἔτικτε, καὶ ἐκ τοῦ φημι γενέσθαι ·
πέμπε δέ μ’ ἐς Τροίην, καί μοι μάλα πόλλ’ ἐπέτελλεν
αἰὲν ἀριστεύειν καὶ ὑπείροχον ἔμμεναι ἄλλων,
μηδὲ γένος πατέρων αἰσχυνέμεν, οἳ μέγ’ ἄριστοι
ἔν τ’ Ἐφύρῃ ἐγένοντο καὶ ἐν Λυκίῃ εὐρείῃ. 210
ταύτης τοι γενεῆς τε καὶ αἵματος εὔχομαι εἶναι.
His bride bore three children to valiant Bellerophontes,
Isandros and Hippolochos and Laodameia.
[. . .]
But Hippolochos begot me, and I claim that he is my father;
he sent me to Troy, and urged upon me repeated injunctions,
to be always among the bravest, and hold my head above others,
not shaming the generation of my fathers, who were
the greatest men in Ephyre and again in wide Lykia. 210
Such is my generation and the blood I claim to be born from.
The so-called Pylian epos, in Iliad Book 11, is the account of glorious deeds accomplished by Nestor in his youth. It is Nestor himself who tells the story; in line with his usual attitude, the hero regrets not being as strong as he used to be and recalls one of his klea, when at the head of the Pylians he defeated the Eleans in a battle on river Alphaeus after a hugely successful cattle raid.
This passage has always attracted scholarly attention.23 It’s a fragment of an old Pylian epic tradition which survived and was incorporated into the Iliad thanks to the important role that Pylian people played in Athens and Ionia in Geometric times;24 as such, it helps reconstruct the composition of the poem. Yet the passage is also important because it shows very well the ‘dialogue’ between past and present in the Homeric way to narrate the heroic myths. Nestor is old, too old: he should not take part in the Trojan War, which is fought by the generation of the ‘children’; nevertheless he is present, miraculously; and his presence allows the recovery of episodes which belong to more ancient myths from Western Peloponnese, featuring very early heroes such as Hercules, Augeas and the Moliones.25 Nestor tells stories that go back in time to the dawn of the heroic age and lives long enough to come to Troy with Agamemnon: as such, he is the perfect trait d’union between the ‘yesterday’ and the ‘today’ of the myth (Iliad 11.689–695, 750–752):
ὡς ἡμεῖς παῦροι κεκακωμένοι ἐν Πύλῳ ἦμεν ·
ἐλθὼν γάρ ῥ’ ἐκάκωσε βίη Ἡρακληείη 690
τῶν προτέρων ἐτέων, κατὰ δ’ ἔκταθεν ὅσσοι ἄριστοι ·
δώδεκα γὰρ Νηλῆος ἀμύμονος υἱέες ἦμεν ·
τῶν οἶος λιπόμην, οἳ δ’ ἄλλοι πάντες ὄλοντο.
ταῦθ’ ὑπερηφανέοντες Ἐπειοὶ χαλκοχίτωνες
ἡμέας ὑβρίζοντες ἀτάσθαλα μηχανόωντο. 695
[. . .]
καί νύ κεν Ἀκτορίωνε Μολίονε παῖδ’ ἀλάπαξα, 750
εἰ μή σφωε πατὴρ εὐρὺ κρείων ἐνοσίχθων
ἐκ πολέμου ἐσάωσε καλύψας ἠέρι πολλῇ.
Since we in Pylos were few and we had been having the worst of it.
For Herakles had come in his strength against us and beaten us 690
in the years before, and all the bravest among us had been killed.
For we who were sons of lordly Neleus had been twelve, and now
I alone was left of these, and all the others had perished,
and grown haughty over this the bronze-armoured Epeians
despised and outraged us, and devised wicked actions against us. 695
[. . .]
And now I would have killed the young Moliones, scions 750
of Aktor, had not their father who shakes the earth in his wide strength
caught them out of the battle, shrouding them in a thick mist.
To sum up, mythic narration is far from ‘historical’; it is in a way anti-historical, because its perception of time is totally different from that of history: the chronological dimension of myth is remoteness, alterity, vagueness. But myth shares with history the notion of verticality: within the mythical tradition there is a ‘before’ and a ‘later’, and the epic storyteller is aware of this temporal depth: he can therefore ‘historicise’ his narration, thus becoming a ‘historian’ of myth.
Bibliography
Ercolani, A. 2006. Omero. Rome. a, b
Ercolani, A. 2010. Esiodo. Opere e giorni. Rome. →
Gentili, B. and Cerri, G. 1983. Storia e biografia nel pensiero antico. Rome. →
Hainsworth, B. 1993. The Iliad: A Commentary, vol. 3: Books 9–12. Cambridge.
Hubbard, T.K. 1987. Two Notes on the Myth of Aeacus in Pindar. GRBS 28: 5–22. →
Kirk, G.S. 1985. The Iliad: A Commentary, vol. 1: Books 1–4. Cambridge. a, b
Kirk, G.S. 1990. The Iliad: A Commentary, vol. 2: Books 5–8. Cambridge. a, b
Lattimore, R. 1951. The Iliad of Homer. Chicago. →
Miller, S.G. 1986. Eros and the Arms of Achilles. AJA 90: 159–170. →
Nagy, G. 1999. The Best of the Achaeans. Baltimore. →
Nobili, C. 2011. L’«Inno omerico a Ermes» e le tradizioni locali. Milan. →
Schein, S.L. 1984. The Mortal Hero. An Introduction to Homer’s Iliad. Berkeley. →
Tagliabue, A. 2009. L’epos di Corinto e Omero. Acme 57: 87–115. a, b
Van Noorden, H. 2015. Playing Hesiod. The ‘Myth of the Races’ in Classical Antiquity. Cambridge. →
Vetta, M. 2001. Prima di Omero. I luoghi, I cantori, la tradizione. In La civiltà dei Greci. Forme luoghi, contesti, ed. Vetta, M., 19–58. Rome. →
Vetta, M. 2003. L’epos di Pilo e Omero. Breve storia di una saga regionale. In Ῥυσμός. Studi di poesia, metrica e musica greca offerti dagli allievi a Luigi Enrico Rossi per i suoi settant’anni, ed. Nicolai, R., 13–33. Rome. →
West, M.L. 2002. Eumelos: A Corinthian Epic Cycle? JHS 122: 109–133. →
Zanetto, G. 2017. Fighting on the River: The Alpheus and the ‘Pylian Epic’. In Time and Space in Ancient Myth, Religion, and Culture, eds. Bierl, A., Christopoulos, M. and Papachrysostomou, A., 229–238. Berlin. →
Zanetto, G. 2019. Miti greci, con gli affreschi di Pompei ed Ercolano. Milan. →
Notes
1
Gentili and Cerri (1983) 5.
2
Zanetto (2019) 10. See also the Preface to the present volume for a synopsis of significant landmarks in myth-history studies.
3
Ercolani (2006) 74.
4
Vetta (2001) 37.
5
Van Noorden (2015) 35–36.
6
Ercolani (2010) 164.
7
Transl. by Nagy, on the site of the Centre for Hellenic Studies (section ‘Primary Texts’; https://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/5290, accessed 11.01.2021).
8
Kirk (1990) 91–92.
9
The English translations of the Iliad are taken from The Iliad of Homer, translated and with an introduction by Lattimore (1951).
10
Ercolani (2006) 73.
11
Pind. Ol. 8.45–46; Hubbard (1987) 18.
12
Kirk (1985) 79.
13
At Od. 3.245 Telemachus says that Nestor “has reigned over three generations of men.”
14
Schein (1984) 135.
15
Miller (1986) 164 focuses on a fragmentary vase from Olynthos that seems to illustrate this episode.
16
Kirk (1985) 368.
17
Tydeus’ bravery at Thebes is referred to again by Athena herself at Il. 5.800–813.
18
Nagy (1999) 100–106.
19
Tagliabue (2009) 99.
20
West (2002) 125.
21
Tagliabue (2009) 106.
22
Kirk (1990) 187.
23
Brilliant discussion in Vetta (2003).
24
Zanetto (2017) 236.
25
Nobili (2011) 23–70.