Invoking the Muses

Iliad I-2.484ff. (Greek text is that of the Venetus A manuscript)

484 ἔσπετε νῦν μοι Μοῦσαι Ὀλύμπια δώματ᾽ ἔχουσαι·
485 ὑμεῖς γὰρ θεαί ἐστε πάρεστέ τε ἴστε τε πάντα·
486 ἡμεῖς δὲ κλέος οἶον ἀκούομεν οὐδέ τι ἴδμεν·
487 οἵ τινες ἡγεμόνες Δαναῶν καὶ κοίρανοι ἦσαν·
488 πληθὺν δ᾽ οὐκ ἂν ἐγὼ μυθήσομαι οὐδ᾽ ὀνομήνω
489 οὐδ᾽ εἴ μοι δέκα μὲν γλῶσσαι· δέκα δὲ στόματ᾽ εἶεν·
490 φωνὴ δ᾽ ἄρρηκτος. χάλκεον δέ μοι ἦτορ ἐνείη·
491 εἰ μὴ Ὀλυμπιάδες Μοῦσαι Διὸς αἰγιόχοιο
492 θυγατέρες μνησαίαθ᾽ ὅσοι ὑπὸ Ἴλιον ἦλθον·
493 ἀρχοὺς αὖ νηῶν ἐρέω νῆάς τε προπάσας.

[484] Tell me now, Muses who have homes on Olympus,
[485] for you are goddesses and are present for all and know all things,
[486] whereas we only hear the fame [kleos] and do not know anything,
[487] who were the leaders of the Danaans and their commanders?
[488] I do not have the words [muthos] to describe the multitude nor could I name them,
[489] not even if I had ten tongues and ten mouths,
[490] and an unbreakable voice, and the heart in me was made of bronze,
[491] if the Olympian Muses who of aegis-shaking Zeus
[492] are the daughters did not remind me how many came beneath Ilion.
[493] I will speak then the leaders and all the ships.

The Catalogue of Ships is preceded by an invocation of the Muses, which seems to have been a traditional feature of catalogues, as for many types of Archaic Greek hexameter poetry, including the Iliad and Odyssey themselves. The ἔσπετε of verse 2.484 is an aorist form of the same verb that we find in the first verse of the Odyssey: ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε μοῦσα... . The ἔσπετε formula does not seem to be a random variation, but actually serves a different purpose from the verses that open the Iliad and Odyssey. Whereas the Iliad and Odyssey each signal the driving theme of the entire epic by means of the very first word, a noun in the accusative singular (μῆνιν and ἄνδρα), the ἔσπετε formula, with the verb in first position, seems specially suited to asking a question that begins a catalogue.

The Muses were the immortal daughters of Memory (Mnemosyne; see Hesiod, Theogony 53ff.) and had the power to recall everything that has ever happened and put it in the poet's mind, as here. (The name Muse may be etymologically connected to words with the root men-, but the connection is by no means certain. For the linguistic difficulties, see Chantraine ad μοῦσα.) The enormous task of correctly recalling and narrating the catalogue only becomes possible with the Muses' mnemonic help. At the same time, the process is depicted as an oral and aural one: unlike the Muses who know all and have witnessed the events, the poet "hears the kleos" and would need an unbreakable voice in order to be able to name everyone who fought at Troy.  (See Nagy, Best of the Achaeans, chapter 15 §7.)

As Kirk has pointed out, verse 2.484 can be found in three other places in our Iliad, two of which involve catalogue-like lists. In Iliad 11.218 Agamemnon's aristeia begins:

ἔσπετε νῦν μοι Μοῦσαι Ὀλύμπια δώματ᾽ ἔχουσαι
ὅς τις δὴ πρῶτος Ἀγαμέμνονος ἀντίον ἦλθεν
ἢ αὐτῶν Τρώων ἠὲ κλειτῶν ἐπικούρων (Iliad 11.218-220) 

Tell me now, Muses who have homes on Olympus,
who was the first to come face to face with Agamemnon,
either of the Trojans themselves or their allies in fame?

Likewise at 14.508 we find the formula used to begin a list of those who are successful against their Trojan opponents once Poseidon has turned the tide of battle in favor of the Achaeans:

ἔσπετε νῦν μοι Μοῦσαι Ὀλύμπια δώματ᾽ ἔχουσαι
ὅς τις δὴ πρῶτος βροτόεντ᾽ ἀνδράγρι᾽ Ἀχαιῶν
ἤρατ᾽, ἐπεί ῥ᾽ ἔκλινε μάχην κλυτὸς ἐννοσίγαιος. (Iliad 14.508-510)

Tell me now, Muses who have homes on Olympus,
the bloody spoils: who was the first of the Achaeans
to take them, once the famous earth shaker had turned the battle?

The passage at 16.112, however, seems to be of a different sort. Here the Muses are asked to tell how fire fell on the Achaean ships:

ἔσπετε νῦν μοι Μοῦσαι Ὀλύμπια δώματ᾽ ἔχουσαι,
ὅππως δὴ πρῶτον πῦρ ἔμπεσε νηυσὶν Ἀχαιῶν. (Iliad 16.112-113) 

Tell me now, Muses who have homes on Olympus,
how fire first fell on the ships of the Achaeans.

Kirk reconciles the anomaly by saying that the formula is "used to mark a solemn moment (or one that needs to be made solemn), usually involving a list of some kind" (Kirk 1985 ad 484).

If we broaden our perspective, however, and look at what immediately follows verses 16.112-113, we can see that there is a resemblance to the previous instances:

ἔσπετε νῦν μοι Μοῦσαι Ὀλύμπια δώματ᾽ ἔχουσαι,
ὅππως δὴ πρῶτον πῦρ ἔμπεσε νηυσὶν Ἀχαιῶν.
Ἕκτωρ Αἴαντος δόρυ μείλινον ἄγχι παραστὰς
πλῆξ᾽ ἄορι μεγάλῳ αἰχμῆς παρὰ καυλὸν ὄπισθεν (Iliad 16.112-115) 

Tell me now, Muses who have homes on Olympus,
how fire first fell on the ships of the Achaeans.
Hektor, standing close, the ash spear of Ajax
struck with his great sword behind the spear-point, at the end of the shaft

The name of Hektor in the nominative in the first position, as if in answer to the question posed by 16.113, resembles 11.221 and 14.511 respectively:

Ἰφιδάμας Ἀντηνορίδης ἠΰς τε μέγας τε
ὃς τράφη ἐν Θρῄκῃ ἐριβώλακι μητέρι μήλων (Iliad 11.221-222) 

[It was] Iphidamas, the son of Antenor, good and tall,
who was raised in fertile Thrace the mother of sheep 

Αἴας ῥα πρῶτος Τελαμώνιος Ὕρτιον οὖτα
Γυρτιάδην Μυσῶν ἡγήτορα καρτεροθύμων (Iliad 14.511) 

Ajax [was] the first, the son of Telamon—he wounded Hyrtios
the son of Gyrtios, the leader of the strong-hearted Mysians.

If Kirk's interpretation is correct, the solemnity of the occasion has called for an invocation of the Muses, which in turn leads to the use of a verse structure that is often found in catalogues (which are likewise preceded by invocations of the Muses). A slightly different way to look at it is to say that the poet here is signaling that the difficulty of narrating the burning of the Achaean ships is akin to the difficulty of correctly narrating a catalogue (as we find it expressed in the Iliad 2 passage). The daunting task causes the poet to ask the Muses for help, as he would with a catalogue, which in turn naturally leads to the use of formulaic diction associated with catalogue poetry. (For a discussion of other places in which catalogue poetry and battle narrative overlap in Homeric diction, see C. R. Beye, “Homeric Battle Narrative and Catalogues” [Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 68 (1964): 345-73].)

If this is indeed the case, we can view the verse ἔσπετε νῦν μοι Μοῦσαι Ὀλύμπια δώματ᾽ ἔχουσαι  (and the ensuing question and answer) as essentially a compression of the more expanded invocation that we find in Iliad 2. As I have written about elsewhere in connection with similes (see especially “Agamemnon’s Densely-packed Sorrow in Iliad 10: A Hypertextual Reading of a Homeric Simile” in C. Tsagalis, ed., Homeric Hypertextuality, [Trends in Classics 2 (2010): 279-299]), for a traditional audience even a highly compressed formula has the power to evoke more expanded versions of that same formula. (Mary Ebbott and I have also discussed expansion and compression in terms of theme: see the discussion of arming scenes in Dué and Ebbott 2010: 54-55.) In these examples from Iliad 11, 14, and 16 a single verse conjures for the ancient audience (and, of course, the singer) more expanded invocations and catalogues of the larger epic tradition, including the Catalogue of Ships. 

"Live" blogging the Catalogue of Ships

About eight years ago I began translating Book 2 of the Homeric Iliad as part of a translation project I was working on together with Mary Ebbott, Doug Frame, Lenny Muellner, and Greg Nagy at the Center for Hellenic Studies. These were the operating principles we set for ourselves:

1. Same word translated the same way each time [except in the case of glossary words, which are included in brackets]. 2. For glossary words in brackets, one form of the Greek word for all derivatives 3. Include plus verses. 4. We try to follow Greek word order. 5. We substitute names for pronouns when the reference is not obvious. 6. We respect the integrity of the line even at the expense of the distinction between active and passive voice.

Here is a sample that illustrates these principles and several other practices we adopted:

SCROLL I-1

[1] The anger [me>nis] of Peleus' son Achilles, goddess, perform its song --
[2] disastrous anger that made countless sufferings [algos pl.] for the Achaeans,
[3] and many steadfast lives [psukhe> pl.; n:v.l. heads] it drove down to Hades,
[4] heroes' lives, but their selves [note needed about body vs. soul and identity] it made prizes for dogs
[5] and for all birds [n: v.l. a feast for birds], and the plan of Zeus was being fulfilled [telos] --
[6] sing starting from the point where the two first clashed [eris],
[7] the son of Atreus, lord of men, and radiant Achilles.

We wanted our translation to reflect the oral traditional system within which the Iliad was composed, and we were willing to compromise, within reason, on many things (meter, English word order, elegance) in order to make this happen.

We managed to translate several books of the Iliad this way as a group, but eventually we decided, because of our slow rate of progress, that we would each take on individual books, and then submit them to the group for approval. I can't remember how or why I came to be assigned Book 2, but the fact is I never finished my translation. I didn't even come close.

I would like to return to this project, but in a way that goes beyond translation. I'd like to take the opportunity to better understand the place of the Catalogue of Ships within the oral epic tradition. I have written about the textual transmission of the Catalogue here, but what I would like to do now is approach the text that has been transmitted to us as an organic part of the system that is Homeric poetry, exploring its interconnections with the rest of the Iliad and the epic tradition as a whole (to the extent that we can reconstruct it).

I am happy to report that Mary Ebbott will once again be my partner in this work. Each of us will contribute individual posts on the oral poetics of Iliad 2 to this blog, as we have the time and inclination, and we will no doubt also collaborate on particular entries as we have in the past. It is our hope that in working together in this way we will be able to learn more about the poetics of Iliad 2 and its place in the epic tradition than we otherwise could have on our own.

Our plan is to translate brief passages in the order they have been transmitted, and then to research those passages as we go along, drawing on previous commentaries and scholarship (such as the commentaries of Leaf and Kirk, important monographs such as Hope Simpson and Lazenby 1970, and more recent discussions of Catalogue poetry by other scholars) and our own knowledge of the epic tradition. To what extent we can contribute new research on the many questions raised by the Catalogue, we will, but where we will most noticeably depart from the work of previous scholars is in our approach. Much as we did in connection with the so-called Doloneia in our book Iliad 10: and the Poetics of Ambush, we will approach the Catalogue as oral traditional poetry composed within the same system that gave rise to the rest of the Iliad. In other words, rather than seek to show how the Catalogue is different from the rest of the Iliad, we will emphasize the commonalities, and attempt to understand the Catalogue organically. As always, the comparative fieldwork of Milman Parry and Albert Lord, and the work of subsequent scholars who have built upon that fieldwork, will serve as the foundation for our understanding of how oral poetry operates.

There is still a tendency in Homeric Studies, inherited from the 18th and 19th centuries, to look at the Iliad as an assemblage of pieces, and to perceive some of the pieces as being more "Homeric" than others. Even scholars that see a single oral poet as being responsible for the version of the Iliad that has come down to us speak of the Catalogue as being a separately composed piece that has been reworked for its present place. (See e.g. Kirk ad 2.494-495.) We see the text as layered, linguistically and poetically and in its references to material culture, but the layers cannot be separated from one another, so perhaps layered is not the best metaphor to use. (See especially E.S. Sherratt, "'Reading the Texts': Archaeology and the Homeric Question," Antiquity 64 [1990]: 807-824.) As formulaic language entered the system and displaced other language and the poem evolved, these formulas became inextricably bound up with one another. We feel that it is worth studying particular passages and formulas within those passages as individual units in order to learn more about the oral tradition, how our Iliad came to be, and how various passages might have been understood in particular ways in different times and places, but we do not seek to show that some parts of the poem are somehow more valid than others on the basis of antiquity of the formulaic language or any other criteria. In focusing in on particular parts, we seek to better understand the system of Homeric poetry as a whole.

In the next few months I plan to return to my translation work after a long break, and I will be posting my preliminary translations and research findings here, as I go along. I hope it won't be another eight years before I have completed my translation of Iliad 2, but I am not making any promises. Mary plans to start posting on the poetics of Iliad 2 later this year.