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HOMER: THE FIRST TRAGEDIAN*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2016

Irene J. F. de Jong
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Extract

It is a commonplace to link Homer with tragedy. Plato calls Homer the first tragedian, Aristotle praises the dramatic concentration of his plots, and pseudo-Plutarch claims that in Homer we find ‘all elements of tragedy: great and unexpected deeds, epiphanies of gods, and speeches full of thought and representing all kind of characters’. Likewise, modern critics write studies on Nature and Culture in the Iliad. The Tragedy of Hector, ‘Tragic Form and Feeling in the Iliad’, ‘Homeric Epic and the Tragic Moment’, and Homer and the Dual Mode of the Tragic.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 63 , Issue 2 , October 2016 , pp. 149 - 162
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2016 

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Footnotes

*

I thank audiences in Amsterdam, Ghent, Athens, Uppsala, and Lisbon for their useful feedback.

References

1 Pl. Resp. 10.395b–c, 607a; Pl. Tht. 152e; Arist. Poet. 1448b, 1451a; [Plut.] Vit. Hom. 213.

2 Redfield, J. M., Nature and Culture in the Iliad. The Tragedy of Hector (Chicago, IL, 1975)Google Scholar; Rutherford, R.B., Tragic Form and Feeling in the Iliad ’, JHS 102 (1982), 145–60Google Scholar; Gould, J., ‘Homeric Epic and the Tragic Moment’, in Winnifrith, T., Murray, P., and Gransden, K. (eds.), Aspects of the Epic (London, 1983), 32–45 Google Scholar; Rinon, Y., Homer and the Dual Mode of the Tragic (Ann Arbor, MI, 2008)Google Scholar.

3 Gould (n. 2), 41.

4 Herington, J., Poetry into Drama. Early Tragedy and the Greek Poetic Tradition (Berkeley, CA, 1985)Google Scholar.

5 Gould (n. 2), 45. Of course there are also major differences in form between epic and drama, for which see e.g. Arist. Poet. 24; de Jong, I. J. F., Narrative in Drama. The Art of the Euripidean Messenger-Speech (Leiden, 1991), ch. 3Google Scholar.

6 Bassett, S. E., The Poetry of Homer (Berkeley, CA, 1938), 59–70, 233–44Google Scholar.

7 For all Euripidean passages I quote the translation of David Kovacs in his Loeb edition.

8 All translations of Homer are my own.

9 For tragic messenger-scenes, see De Jong (n. 5); Barrett, J., Staged Narrative. Poetics and the Messenger in Greek Tragedy (Berkeley, CA, 2002)Google Scholar; Dickin, M., A Vehicle for Performance. Acting the Messenger in Greek Tragedy (Lanham, MD, 2009)Google Scholar.

10 One could also think of Iliad, 1.365–92, where Achilles informs Thetis about what has taken place between him and Agamemnon.

11 Scholion T, Il. 15.64c. Text, translation and discussion of the scholion can be found in Nünlist, R., The Ancient Critic at Work. Terms and Concepts of Literary Criticism in Greek Scholia (Cambridge, 2009), 39–40 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Gould (n. 2), 43.

13 For a full discussion, see de Jong, I. J. F., ‘The Voice of Anonymity: Tis-Speeches in the Iliad ’, Eranos 85 (1987), 69–84 Google Scholar.

14 Hentze, C., ‘Die Chorreden in den homerischen Epen’, Philologus 64 (1905), 254–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Dunn, F., Tragedy's End. Closure and Innovation in Euripidean Drama (New York and Oxford, 1998), 39–40 Google Scholar.

16 deJong, I. J. F., ‘Silent Characters in the Iliad ’, in Bremer, J. M., de Jong, I. J. F., and Kalff, J. (eds.), Homer. Beyond Oral Poetry. Recent Directions in Homeric Interpretation (Amsterdam, 1987), 105–21Google Scholar.

17 Herington (n. 4), 268, n. 48.

18 Another example can be found in Kullmann, W., ‘Die poetische Funktion des Palastes des Odysseus in der Odyssee’, in Homerische Motive. Beiträge zur Entstehung, Eigenart und Wirkung von Ilias und Odyssee (Stuttgart, 1992), 314–15Google Scholar, where he suggests that the central role played by Odysseus' palace in the second half of the Odyssey as a backdrop for the entire plot may have inspired Aeschylus to do the same with Agamemnon's palace in his Agamemnon.

19 My translation and emphasis.

20 See e.g. Friedrich, P. and Redfield, J., ‘Speech as a Personality Symbol: The Case of Achilles’, Language 54 (1978), 263–88Google Scholar; Griffin, J., ‘Homeric Words and Speakers’, JHS 106 (1986), 36–57 Google Scholar; and Martin, R., The Language of Heroes. Speech and Performance in the Iliad (Ithaca, NY, 1989)Google Scholar.

21 D. Mülder, ‘Ilias’, in RE i.1026. The precise technicalities of singing Homer are a matter of debate: see e.g. Danek, G. and Hagel, S., ‘Homer-Singen’, Wiener Humanistische Blätter 37 (1995), 5–20 Google Scholar; West, M. L., ‘The Singing of Homer and the Modes of Early Greek Music’, JHS 101 (1981), 113–29Google Scholar.

22 The same confusion is discussed in e.g. Bérard, V., ‘Le geste de l'aède et le texte homérique’, REG 31 (1918), 1–38 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Herington (n. 4), 13. See also Nagy, G., Poetry as Performance. Homer and Beyond (Cambridge, 1996), 153–86Google Scholar.

24 For a longer discussion, see de Jong, I. J. F., ‘Double Deixis in Homeric Speeches: On the Interpretation of ὅδε and οὗτος’, in Meier-Brügger, M. (ed.), Homer, gedeutet durch ein grosses Lexikon (Göttingen 2012), 63–83 Google Scholar.

25 de Jong, I. J. F., A Narratological Commentary on the Odyssey (Cambridge, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ad loc.

26 Moreover, the delayed recognition of Odysseus and his lying tales have already been amply discussed in scholarship.

27 Stanford, B., The Odyssey of Homer (London, 1958)Google Scholar, ad loc.

28 Russo, J., Fernandez-Galiano, M., and Heubeck, A., A Commentary on Homer's Odyssey (Oxford, 1992)Google Scholar, ad loc.

29 We may also think here of Odysseus' later consummate role-playing in Sophocles' Philoctetes.