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.