The translations of the Homeric epics used in this essay are substantially those of Richmond Lattimore, viz. The Iliad of Homer (Chicago and London, 1961) and The Odyssey of Homer (New York, 1968).

1. See Gschnitzer's, Fritz argument in his ‘Stadt und Stamm bei Homer’, Chiron 1 (1971), 1–17Google Scholar, that two levels of organization can be found in Homer: an earlier system in which tribal organization predominates and a later one in which the city is preeminent. Also see Vlachos, George, Les Sociétés politiques homériques (Paris, 1974), 65-6 and 231Google Scholar, n.99, for his belief that it is possible to ‘rebuild in the epic an overlapping of the many historical levels’. Cf. Austin, M. and Vidal-Naquet, P., Les Économies et Sociétés en Grèce ancienne (Paris, 1972), 53–56Google Scholar; Finley, M. I., The World of Odysseus (New York, 1954), 79-80, 110-111, 124–5Google Scholar.

2. Cf. Hooker, J. T., ‘Ilios and the Iliad,’ WS 13 (1979), 5–21Google Scholar; Nagy, G., The Best of the Achaeans (Baltimore, 1980), 115–6Google Scholar; Thomas, C. G., ‘The Roots of Homeric Kingship’, Historia 15 (1966), 387–407Google Scholar; Hammond, Mason, The City in the Ancient World (Cambridge, Mass., 1972), 155–162CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wade-Gery, H. T., The Poet of the Iliad (Cambridge, 1952), 38Google Scholar; Snodgrass, A., ‘An Historical Homeric Society’, JHS 54 (1974), 114–125, esp. 123ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3. Luce, J. V., ‘The Polis in Homer and Hesiod’, PRIA 78 (1978), 8Google Scholar. Also see Snodgrass, A., The Dark Ages of Greece (Edinburgh, 1971), 435Google Scholar and Mireaux, Émile, Vie quotidienne au temps d'Homère (Paris, 1967), 50–1Google Scholar. Cf. West, M. L., ‘Greek Poetry: 2000-700 BC’, CQ 23 (1973), 182CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4. Cf. Redfield, James, ‘Household and Community’ in Nature and Culture in the Iliad (Chicago, 1975), 123–7Google Scholar and 111: ‘inheritance secures the continuity of the household, which is the fundamental social institution’. Compare Adkins, A. W. H., Moral Values and Political Behaviour in Ancient Greece (New York, 1972), 17Google Scholar: ‘the unit of power, the social unit, the economic unit is the oikos: no effective larger unit than the oikos possesses any property, and hence no larger unit could provide the comer with nourishment’. See also his Merit and Responsibility (1960), 40Google ScholarPubMed. Cf. Finley, M. I., Early Greece: The Bronze and Archaic Ages (Ancient Culture and Society Series, London, 1970), 84–85Google Scholar, and also his World of Odysseus (n.1 above), 33, 111, 124-5.

5. Hoffman, Wilhelm, ‘Die Polisbei Homer’, Festschrift Bruno Snell (Munich, 1956), 156Google Scholar. Cf. J. V. Luce (n.3 above), 9ff. For a discussion of the difference between the concept of aretē in Homer and Tyrtaeus, see Bowra, C. M., Early Greek Etegists (London, 1938), 65–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for a study of narcissism in the Homeric hero, Slater, Philip, The Glory of Hera (Boston, 1968Google Scholar), passim, esp. 26 and 35-6; see also Beye, Charles, ‘Male and Female in the Homeric Poems’, Ramus 3 (1974), 90ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a contrary opinion, see Greenhalgh, P. A. L., ‘Patriotism in the Homeric World’, Historia 21 (1972), 528–537Google Scholar; compare Arthur, Marilyn B., ‘Origins of the Western Attitude Toward Women’, Arethusa 6 (1973), 9–12, and cf. n.8 belowGoogle Scholar.

6. Cf. Calhoun, George, ‘Society and Polity’, in Companion to Homer, ed. Wace, Alan and Stubbings, Frank (New York, 1962), 432Google Scholar; Hoffman, op. cit., 151-5; J. V. Luce (n.3 above), 1-2. The term ‘village’, although not found in Homer, has been identified on the Linear B tablets in the word da-mo (paro damoi, da-mo-de-mi and da-mo-ko-ro interpreted as meaning ‘from the village’, ‘but the village says that she’ and a title for a village functionary, respectively; cf. Ventris, M. and Chadwick, J., Documents in Mycenaean Greek 2nd ed. [Cambridge, 1973], 254 and 309Google Scholar). In Homer, however, dēmos does not mean ‘village’. It can mean ‘territory’ or ‘people’ as in panti dēmō(i) which does not refer to a settlement but rather to people within a district or realm. The word kōmē first appears in extant literature at Hesiod Shield 18. Homer speaks exclusively of the polis, astu and ptoliethron. See Maddoli, di Gianfranco, ‘Damose basilēes: Contributo alio studio delle origini della polis’, SMEA 12 (1970), 17–40Google Scholar, esp. 17-19 and 37-8. See also Hoffman (n.5 above), 153-65, who states that man in Homer had already reached the condition in which ‘das Leben in der Stadt konzentrie/rt; von Dorfen horen wir uberhaupt nichts’, 153. See also Glotz, G., The Greek City and its Institutions, tr. Mallinson, N. (New York, 1930), 12Google Scholar; Calhoun, op. cit., 432; Donlan, W., ‘Changes and shifts in the meaning of demos in the literature of the archaic period’, PP 25 (1970), 381–95Google Scholar. J. V. Luce believes that ‘polis in Homer can cover different types of settlements from village to town or city … Thucydides (1.8) is probably reflecting epic usage when he describes early Greece as consisting of “unfortified communities dwelling in villages”, a phrase which combines polis and kōmē (op. cit., 8, cf. 5-9). Although Luce is undoubtedly correct from a historical view point, it should be remembered that, unlike the many, varied and frequently unwalled settlements that existed in the Mycenaean era, a relatively small number of poleis appear in the Homeric landscape. In the narrative of the Iliad, although not in the Catalogue of Ships, few cities are named and most of these are significant and fortified. There is a generic quality about the polis in Homer; there are few epithets that are not shared by many cities, and those that are of one city, such as ‘of good foals’ of Troy, do not describe aspects of the city which make it unique qua city. All cities in the Iliad that are under attack, or have previously been destroyed, are walled and, when the wooden wall of the Achaian camp is attacked, it too is described as if a mighty city-fortification. The important epithet arrēktos (‘unbreakable’), which for cities is used of Troy alone, is however used of the Achaian wall as in Book 14.

7. Cf. Steiner, George, Language and Silence (New York, 1967, 172-87, esp. 174Google Scholar: ‘At the core of the Homeric poems lies the remembrance of one of greatest disasters that can befall man, the destruction of a city … That is the central realization of the Iliad. Resounding through the epic, now in stifled allusion, now in strident lament, is the dread fact that an ancient and splendid city has perished’. See also Bespeloff, Rachel, On the Iliad, tr. McCarthy, Mary (Princeton, 1947Google Scholar): it is, she says, not the wrath of Achilles but the duel between Hektor and Achilles that ‘forms the Iliad's true centre’ (p.46); and she later comments on the holy city that ‘it survives in the epic as the living witness to the real or imaginary lives it supported, to the real or legendary struggles of which it was the stake’ (p.87).

8. Greenhalgh (n.5 above), 528-9; cf. Il 12.243 and 3.50. Cf. Bowra (n.5 above), 65f.: ‘Achilles, Diomedes, and the rest fought not for their city, but for their own glory … In Hector, Homer certainly created a man like Tyrtaeus’ ideal, but he is only one character among many, and we cannot be sure that he was Homer's own ideal of what a man ought to be.’

9. Kakridis, J. T., Homeric Researches (Lund, 1949), 19-27 and 152–64Google Scholar, comparing the order of suppliants in this list to a similar list in Iliad 6, argues that the order has been changed by Phoinix in order to emphasize comrades. Nevertheless, the polis at large finally sways the hero as it does in the case of Hektor in the same book. For the city in the Meleagros story, see Hoffman (n.5 above), 157-8.

10. For the tendency to place excessive emphasis upon one individual in early attempts at recording history, see Beloch, K., Griechische Geschichte (Strassburg, 1912), i.1Google Scholar.

11. Cf. G. Vlachos (n.1 above), 48-51 and 60-1; see also 73-4, n.16. See also Vidal-Naquet, P., ‘Valeurs religieuses et mythiques de la terre et du sacrifice dan l'Odyssée’, Annales E.S.C. 25 (1970), 1278–97Google Scholar (now in Problèmes de la terre en Grèce ancienne, ed. Finley, M. I. [Paris, 1973] Google Scholar). Cf. Austin, Norman, Archery at the Dark of the Moon (Berkeley, 1975), 143–7Google Scholar.

12. Plato (Laws 680b-e) notes this passage as an example of primitive patriarchal government (oikos dominant): ‘And did not such a state spring out of single habitations (kata mian oikēsin) and families (kata genos) who were scattered owing to the distress following the catastrophes; and among them the eldest ruled, because government originated with them in authority of a father and mother whom, like a flock of birds, they followed, forming one troop under the patriarchal rule of sovereignty of their parents, which of all sovereignties is the most just?’ Cf. Aristotle, , Politics, 1252b. 16–31Google Scholar. Of the family and now-polis orientation among the Cyclopes, Ehrenberg says: ‘Diese Erkenntnis zeigt, wie liberaus stark das religiöse Moment bei der Entstehung der staatlichen Gemeinschaft der Griechen mitgewirkt hat; zugleich aber enthüllt themis die Bedeutung der Gentilizischen Gebilde, die lebendige Kraft, die aus den enzelnen Geschlechtern hinüberleitet zum Staat’, Die Rechtsidee im Frühen Griechentum, 15.

13. Note the emphasis on technology in the parallelism between ‘builders of ships who could have have made them/strong-benched (eusselmous) vessels' and ‘made this a strong settlement’ (euktimenēn). The prefix eu-, as elsewhere, signifies technological skill. For other instances in which human habitation transforms the natural landscape, see the intransitive use of naiō, naietaō, and oikeō; cf. Leumann, M., Homerische Wörter (Basel, 1950), 182–94Google Scholar, esp. 191-4 (modified, correctly I feel, by Shipp, G. H., Essays in Mycenaean and Homeric Greek [Melbourne, 1961], 42–7Google Scholar). For a different view, see Vivante, Paolo, The Homeric Imagination (Bloomington, Ind., 1971), 103Google Scholar.

14. J. V. Luce (n.3 above), 15; cf. 10-11. Cf. Austin and Vidal-Naquet (n.11 above).

15. Compare the non-legalistic use in Homer of the term politai. At Il. 2. 805-6, with the Ionic spelling poliētas, it seems to refer to the resident garrison (as does laoi). See SirMyres, John, The Political Ideas of the Greeks (New York, 1927), 68–70Google Scholar. The figure Polites in this passage supports this interpretation, if we can make a correlation between proper name and noun: as the Trojan sentinel, he symbolizes the duty of the city-garrison. The other references, however, all with the spelling politai, have a more general application. In the Iliad, Hektor considers whether the enemy ‘shall capture steep Ilion and destroy the politai’, 15.558 (cf. 22.429-30). In view of the many references to women and children in such contexts, it would be difficult to restrict the meaning simply to ‘garrison’. In the Odyssey, the politai draw water at the civic springs (7.131 and 17.206), again suggesting that the politai are the ‘free peoples within the polis vicinity’ (Calhoun, n.6 above, 433). Luce (n.3 above, 8) suggests that ‘Homer is beginning to use polites for citizen’, but this appears too technical a use of the term. The non-political definition of polis is also felt in a word like etai, which in Homer means ‘clansmen’ or ‘cousins’ (i.e. oikos-related) but which in the classical period means ‘townsmen’ or ‘private citizens’. See Andrewes, A., ‘Phratries in Homer’, Hermes 89 (1961), 134–7Google Scholar; Hoffman (n.5 above), 155-6 and 164; Starr, Chester, ‘The Early Greek City-State’, PP 12 (1957), 102–8Google Scholar; Hammond, N. G. L., A History of Greece (Oxford, 1967), 68Google Scholar.

16. Aristotle, , Politics 1252ffGoogle Scholar; cf. Arendt, Hannah, The Human Condition (Chicago, 1959), 7-37, esp. 23–33Google Scholar. Aristotle thought that the city ‘comes into being on account of life but exists for the good life’ (Pol. 1252b. 29f.). Its ultimate goal (Telos) is to free itself from necessities (cf. 1291a. 17 and Plato, Republic 369b-371e), to achieve political virtue and to pursue political partnership. According to this view, the polis, invulnerable to time, provides a bios free from all demands of the earth. Such complete freedom from servitude, physical or spiritual, most closely approaches the felicity of life among the immortals; the mature polis therefore provides, as Aristotle argues in the Protrepticus, the environment in which the divine nature of mortals can best be realized. For ‘perfect self-sufficiency’, see Politics 1253a.29 and passim, and also Plato, Republic 369b-372d. For aspects of immortality, see particularly Arendt, ‘Eternity and Immortality’, op. cit., 17-21.

17. Many important Homeric cities are not described as walled. Historically some may never have been walled (Ithaka, Pylos, Lakedaimon, for example), and others were clearly walled but are not so specified in Homer (Mycenae most notably); but the fact that every city under siege or destroyed in past sieges (e.g. Andromache's Thebe) and the idealized city of the Phaiakians are said to be walled suggests that the wall was generic in the Homeric concept of the polis.

18. The common ingredient in each of the three descriptions of Scheria is the wall. When Nausithoos founded the city, he drove a wall around the city (first thing), built houses, constructed temples, and divided out the ploughland (Od. 6.9-10). Nausikaa says in describing Scheria that around it is a lofty tower (first thing), a harbor on each side, and hard by an agora fitted with deep-bedded quarried stones close to the beautiful precinct of Poseidon (Od. 6.262-7). The epithets of craftsmanship also apply to the agora and perhaps to the temple precinct in the word ‘beautiful’. For the importance of a monumental temple as a physical indication that the nascent polis has emerged, see Snodgrass, A., ‘Archaeology and the Rise of the Greek State’, (Cambridge, 1977), 24–5Google Scholar. For the close parallel between this picture and cities like Lebedos, Myonessos and (Old) Smyrna of the eighth century in Ionia, see Cook, J. M., The Greeks in Ionia and the Near East (London, 1971), 30–4Google Scholar.

19. Brann, Eva, ‘The Poet of the Odyssey’, The College (St. John's College Annapolis, Maryland) 26 (04, 1974Google Scholar), 5. See also Bassett, Samuel, The Poetry of Homer (Berkeley, 1938), 91Google Scholar.

20. Contrast Wordsworth's first sight of London as he comes down from the high country and he nears Westminster Bridge:

As in the Homeric description, Wordsworth sees the city as radiant, vibrant with activity and geometric splendor, but unlike Homer it is not simultaneously open and closed. Rather, he sees it as integrated with the natural world and open to the fields and sky above. Such a reciprocity between the natural and man-made centre can only be possible in the absence of the Homeric wall.

21. Compare the founding of Thebes as described in Book 11 of the Odyssey, where to found the seat of Thebes and to build the wall around the city are seen as the same act:

Od. 11.263-265

22. The gods take a special interest in the founding of cities and the building of city walls; there are many reasons for this, but one is surely that the city houses the weak and the young and nurtures life. The nature of the city wall is further clarified by comparison of the Trojan wall with the Achaian defensive line. The latter, which is never called ‘holy’, does not protect women and children and was built without sacrifice to the gods (Poseidon). Perhaps for both reasons, it is an aberration from the natural order and the natural landscape (Il. 12.8-9) and is destroyed after the war. All walls, however, are in time forsaken by the gods; even the Trojan wall built by Poseidon is weakened by Laomedon's hubris. Even when antithetical to divine favor, however, the wall displays an enormous strength; it takes the combined forces of Zeus, Poseidon, Apollo and eight rivers with nine days of continuous rain to wash the Greek wall into the sand and sea where its stones and timber will blend, once again, into the timeless forms of nature (Il. 7.461-3 and 12.17-33).

23. Furthermore, towers are ‘well-made’, ‘made’, ‘well-fitted’; gates are ‘solid’, ‘compact’, ‘fitted’, and ‘lofty’.

24. Il. 18.274-6. Compare the emphasis on technology again when, like fawns, the Trojans find comfort behind, and on, the walls, ‘leaning/along the magnificent battlements (kalēsin epalxesin)' Il. 22.2f. The very unusual epithet kalēsin — the only other application to fortifications is in Poseidon's account of the ‘unbreakable’ system he built for Troy (21.446-7) — indicates the emotional comfort the Trojans now take in these works.

25. Compare Il. 13.683; also consider the epithet areion, which signifies the imperfection of the walls and technology, 4.406-7 and 15.736.

26. The wall around King Aiolos' island is also indestructible, both because of its material and its divine craftsmanship: ‘a floating island, the whole enclosed by a rampart/of bronze, unbreakable (arrēktos)’, Od. 10.3f. Cf. Plato's account of the outer walls around Atlantis, Critias 116b. The man-made Greek wall is called arrēktos by Nestor (Il. 14.56), but this clearly is a generic response to fortification systems and is, as Agamemnon makes clear in his answer to Nestor, derived from the hope that the wall had divine favor (67-70). The only other mortal thing associated with that epithet is the voice of the bard (Il. 2.490). In a comparable vein to the arrekton teichos, the Greek Theban wall is called ‘holy’ (Il. 4.378), a unique phrase and said by a mortal (Diomedes). Gatekeepers are also described as hieroi (Il. 24.681). Each time the wall is called ‘holy’ or ‘unbreakable’, or the voice of the poet ‘unbreakable’, it is cast in a contrary-to-fact condition or appears in a context where the substance of the epithet is in opposition to the subject of the narrative.

27. As the earth-shaker, Poseidon is more frequently associated with the breaking of walls, but as with all divinities he has the power to create as well as to destroy. See his cult title themelioukhos, Inscr. Délos ed. Durrbach, F. (Paris, 1926Google Scholar), 290.116 (third century BC). In Troezen, he was worshipped as polioukhos (Plutarch, Theseus 6). He also has a son Eurypylos (Pindar, P. 4.33). See Hesiod, , Shield, 104–5Google Scholar, quoted below, p.8. Apollo is not identified with the building of walls in the Iliad (cf. 21.446-9), but cf Theognis 773-4 and Callimachus, Hymn to Apollo 12ff. and 55-7. Compare the singing of Amphion and Zethos in the building of Thebes by means of music and the lyre, Hesiod fr. 182 MW.

28. See Nilsson, M., Minoan-Mycenaean Religion, 2nd ed. (Lund, 1968), 491–501Google Scholar. See Il. 6.94-6: ‘If Athene might pity the city, the women and children and if she might hold off Diomedes from holy Troy’. See also her unique epithet erysiptolis at 6.304, and compare her role in the defence of the city under attack on Achilles' shield, 18.516-9. For Athene's role as city goddess, see Farnell, , The Cults of the Greek States i.293–319Google Scholar; cf. Nilsson, op. cit., 26-8 and 128-9.

29. See especially Nagler, Michael, ‘Towards a Generative View of Oral Formula’, TAPA 98 (1967), 279-80 and 298–311Google Scholar; also his Spontaneity and Tradition (Berkeley, 1974), 44ff., 51ff. and 64ffGoogle ScholarPubMed. Cf. Helbig, W., Das Homerische Epos aus den Denkmälern erläutert (Leipzig, 1887), 219–26Google Scholar for an account of the term with female dress.

30. The krēdemnon is ‘holy’ only with reference to the city. For identification of the polis with the head, see Il. 2.116-8, 2.735 and 9.24. For the veil of towers and the divine protectress of the walls, compare the Idaean Cybele crowned with a veil of turrets, turrifera (see Lucretius 2.611; Vergil, Aeneid 9.80 and Ovid, Fasti 4.219 with Bomer's commentary ad loc; see also Euripides, Bacchae 58). The same association is suggested in the epithet eustephanos, used once of the Boeotian Thebes (Il. 19.99; cf. Hesiod's use of the word for the same city, Theogony 978 and Shield 80). The epithet is also used of the heroine Mykene, not the city (Od. 11.120); the ease of the transfer from local divinity to city is particularly clear in this example. See Nilsson (n.28 above), 491.

31. The role of male protector can also be taken by mortals; cf. Hymn to Demeter 151-2, ‘they guard the krēdemna of the city’. It is thought both from archaeological evidence and literary reference (cf. ib. 270-2) that the Late Mycenaean acropolis at Eleusis was enclosed by a fortification wall. See Travlos, , ‘The Topography of Eleusis’, Hesperia 18 (1949), 138CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Mylonas, , Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries (Princeton, 1961), 33–4Google Scholar.

32. Cf. Nagler (n.29 above), 303-7. See also Odysseus' statement that the Achaians ‘loosed the shiny veil of Troy’, Od. 13.388.

33. Mumford, Lewis, The City in History (New York, 1961), 37Google Scholar. Epithets asserting the holy nature of the polis (hieros/hiros, dios, ēgatheos, zatheos) appear twice as often (64 times) as any other set of epithets for the city, distributed evenly throughout both poems. Even discounting the happy use of Ilios hirē at the bucolic diaeresis (18 times), these epithets still hold a commanding lead. (The group of epithets which refer to the city's fortification system and those which refer to its inhabitants are the two other major sets. The three are closely interrelated in usage and suggest that each aspect of the city is dependent upon the other for the city's well-being; see Scully, Stephen, The City in Homer: A Definition and Interpretation, Diss. Brown Univ., 1978, chs. 3-5Google Scholar). An investigation of the city's sanctity in Greek thought would require a study in itself; there has been surprisingly little work in this area. See Rudhardt, Jean, Notions fondamentales de la pensée religieuse et actes constitutifs du culte dans la Grèce classique (Geneva, 1958), 29Google Scholar, and the interesting but limiting comments of Peter Wulfing-v, Martitz, ‘Hieros bei Homer und in der altern griechischen Literatur’, Glotta 38 (1960), 274-5 and 305Google Scholar; cf. Knight, W. F. Jackson, Vergil: Epic and Anthropology (London, 1967Google Scholar), esp. ‘The Events’ (of Troy) (1932), 103-128 and ‘The Holy City of the East’ (1939), 291-301.

34. Zeus also instigates the building of the walls at Thebes in Bacchylides 11. 55-8 and 69-81. It is also in such context that we must understand the often-repeated formula: ‘if ever Zeus gives/into our hands the strong-walled citadel of Troy to be plundered’, Iliad 1.128-9; cf. 2.112-3 = 9.19-20, 2.288, 8.240-2. The difficulty of the task is obviously contained in the epithet. In these lines, the dual aspect of the wall as divinely protected yet man-made comes through in that divine agency is needed to overcome the man-made defence of the city. For other references to Zeus' role in the fate of cities, see 2.116-8 and 4.45ff.

35. Elsewhere in Greek literature, the city wall is protective from all save death: ‘In respect to other things, it is possible to secure safety, but as far as death is concerned, we inhabit a city that has no wall (polin ateikhiston oikoumen)’ Epicurus, , Gnomologium Vaticanum, 31Google Scholar. Cf. Sophocles, , Antigone 941–4Google Scholar and Oedipus Tyrannus 1200-1.

36. That the reference to Erichthonios in the Iliad predates that hero's entry into Attika and for the genuineness of this passage, see Griffin's, Jasper (‘The Epic Cycle and the Uniqueness of Homer’, JHS 97 [1977], 41CrossRefGoogle Scholar, n.22) argument against the thesis of Heitsch, E. (Aphroditehymnus, Aeneas und Homer [Hypomnemata 15: Gottingen, 1965], 124–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

37. A Greek hero whose father is divine, dead or senile (as in the case of Herakles, Achilles or Odysseus) finds it easier to grow into full manhood. The stature of Diomedes' father still hangs over his head; Antilochos, the son of Nestor, will never become a major figure as long as his father remains prominent. The same is true on a divine level for Apollo.

38. While Priam is the ruler of the city, Hektor is the unquestioned commander in the field. For the cooperative relations between the two, see Redfield (n.4 above), 110.

39. Cf. Frisk, H., Griechisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch (Heidelberg, 1960), 561Google Scholar. The agricultural aspects of the Attic hero Erichthonios are discussed in Farnell, , The Cults of the Greek States iv. 47–55Google Scholar. Is there a coincidence between the name and the epithet of men when associated with cities in Zeus' phrase polēes epikhthoniōn anthrōpōn (Il. 4.45)?

40. For the polis-man as a figure suspended between the animal and divine worlds, see Aristotle's description of man (Politics 1253a.27-29: ‘The man who is unable to join in partnerships or does not need to because of his self-sufficiency is not part of a city; he is either a beast or a god’ [after Wardman]; cf. also 1253a.Iff.). For Ganymedes, see Reinhardt, Karl, Die Ilias und ihr Dichter (Göttingen, 1961), 509–10Google Scholar. Ganymedes is the only figure in this account to have no offspring. No children of the brothers of Priam are mentioned; but they are contemporaries, which places them in a different category. Perhaps they suggest the health of the family line at present. According to legend, Tithonos married the goddess of dawn, and through her received a son Memnon, as well as the gift of immortality without its necessary eternal youth.

41. Cf. Kakridis, J. T., ‘The Role of the Women in the Iliad’, Eranos 54 (1956), 24 and 26Google Scholar.

42. A similar dichotomy between heroic action and mothering city may be suggested two centuries and a half later by Plato in the Euthyphro, the prologue as it were to the philsopher/hero's struggle against an imperfect state. Socrates charges that Meletus ran to the state ‘as a boy to his mother’ (2c.7-8). There is the same implication that the city, as nurturing female, here using law, constricts adulthood, truth and fullness of being.

43. Cf. Schmidt, A., ‘La polarité des contraires dans la rencontre d'Hector et Andromaque’, LEC 31 (1963), 129–58, esp. 133-48Google Scholar.

44. Hektor's inability to accept Andromache's military advice stems from a fundamental split in the Greek spirit. The wall of the city, praised because it provides solace for the hero (see e.g. Il. 15.736), threatens the male self-image. Thucydides reports, for example, Themistocles as saying that a guard of a few men, and of those who are most weak, is sufficient if a wall exists for them to fight behind (1.93.6); Plato says that walls make for a certain softness of character for those who live within the city ‘by inviting them to seek refuge within it instead of repelling the enemy; instead of securing their safety by keeping watch night and day, it tempts them to believe that their safety is ensured if they are fenced in with walls and gates and go to sleep, like men born to shirk toil, whereas a new crop of toils is the inevitable outcome, as I think, of dishonorable ease and sloth’ (Plato, Laws 778e-9a, tr. R. G. Bury, Cambridge, Mass., 1926); cf. Aristotle, Politics 1330b.32ff. Subsequently there is a tendency to identify the defence of the city in the fighting force and not the walls, and to transfer the architectural images of walled defence on to the warrior himself. Thus, for example, Alcaeus said that cities are not works of stone, timber or the skill of carpenters, but exist wherever there are men who know how to defend themselves; ‘there’, he says, ‘will be found a city and a wall’ (fr. 426 LP; cf. fr. 112.10). Compare Lycurgus who said, when asked whether the Spartans should fortify their city, that no city is unwalled which is crowned (estephanōtai) with a body of men and not with bricks (Plutarch, , Lycurgus 19Google Scholar). Here the entire architectural terminology of urban defence (in the implied reference to the diadem of the walls) has been transferred to the human sphere. Similarly, it is the warrior, and not the wall, which the messenger in Aeschylus' Persians (349) identifies as the city; he says to his Asian queen when she asks if the city of Athens is not yet destroyed: ‘While there are men, it has a secure wall.’ Similarly, Nicias says to his troops in Sicily that ‘wherever you settle yourselves (kathezēsthe) you are at once a city’ (Thuc. 7.77.4); and Pericles says that Athens is men, not walls or houses (Thuc. 1.143.5). Cf. Sophocles, , Oedipus Tyrannus 56–7Google Scholar and Xenophon, Memorabilia 3.5.27.

45. Cf. the sensitive comments of Schmidt (n.43 above) on this question, 152-3. Cf. also Beye (n.5 above), 88.

46. For a philosophical view of the polis in the fifth and fourth centuries expressed in much of the same language, see Benardete, Seth, ‘Leo Strauss, The City and Man’, Political Science Reviewer 5 (1978), 1–20Google Scholar.

47. J. V. Luce (n.3 above), 11; he continues: ‘The heroes dominate the polis just as they dominate the Assembly. In the pursuit of their individual satisfactions they may even totally disregard the interests of the social group. Achilles nursing his wrath, Paris refusing to surrender Helen are cases in point. By comparison with classical Athens or Sparta, the Homeric polis seems powerless to check the wayward impulses of the leaders of society.’ Luce must have in mind Athens' ability to check the ways of Alcibiades. Cf. pp. 1-2 above.

48. Schadewalt, Wolfgang, Von Homers Welt und Werk: Aufsätze und Auslegungen zur homerischen Frage³ (Stuttgart, 1959Google Scholar).

49. Whitman, Cedric, Homer and the Heroic Tradition (New York, 1958CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

50. Thus according to this view, the focus of the Iliad differs slightly from its plot. Although Books 23 and 24 are important for Achilles' reintegration with his society and his humanity, they also soften or bring him back from the dramatic height of the poem when Achilles at his most intense and godlike confronts Hektor in Book 22. In this regard, the dramatic structure of the Iliad is analogous to that of the Odyssey where the action of the poem reaches its climax in Book 22 with Odysseus' slaying of the suitors and not in his reunion with Penelope or Laertes in Books 23 and 24. For a somewhat different interpretation of the Iliad's structure, see Benardete, S., ‘The Aristeia of Diomedes and the Plot of the Iliad’, Agōn 2 (1968), 10–38Google Scholar. In not naming the poem after Achilles, Porphyry intends to lay stress upon the many heroes of the poem and not, as I wish to suggest, a thematic shift from the wrath of Achilles to the subject of Troy.

51. Jaeger, Werner, ‘Tyrtaeus on True Arete’, Five Essays (Montreal, 1966), 121Google Scholar.

52. Cf. Il. 22.1-3, quoted n.24 above. As with the major characters, descriptions of the city are not prominent in the poem (although its image persists by constant reference through epithets), but when the spotlight does fall upon the city, the wall often metonymically stands for the whole. All dramatic scenes that concern the welfare of Troy, furthermore, take place either upon the walls or at the gates, not within the city at the palace or at the temple. For example, the teichoscopia in Book 3, the encounter between Hektor and Andromache (Book 6), the dialogue/soliloquy with Priam, Hekabe and Hektor (Book 22) and the dragging of his body with the thrēnos from Troy (Book 22) are all staged upon the Skaian Gates. Andromache in her fear that Hektor has been killed runs to the tower (22.447-65), and it is from the city-wall that she fears Astyanax will be thrown when the city is captured (24.727-38). To be sure, the defiant silhouette of the Cyclopean wall construction of the Mycenaean citadels justifies the prominence of the wall in Homeric portrayal, but the Mycenaean frescoes depicting siege warfare and the famous silver rhyton reveal that the Homeric depiction is not fully consonant with Mycenaean conditions. In Mycenaean art, as in Homeric description, women (no children) take an active interest in the course of battle and seem to play a clear part in the events (their portrayal in art, perhaps, the visual equivalent to the Homeric formula ‘fighting for their women and children’), but the Mycenaean ladies of the palace observe the war both from the walls and from the palace windows. (For further discussion of these depictions, see Webster, T. B. L., From Mycenae to Homer [New York, 1968], 58–61Google Scholar and SirEvans, Arthur, Palace of Minos [London, 1930], iii. 81–106.Google Scholar) In Homer, that never happens. The wall marks an absolute visual barrier between city and beyond; in order to see outside the city, one must go to the walls or gates. The Homeric picture, perhaps, may more closely parallel the Ionian walled city contemporary with Homer, cities founded on level ground where an overview from within is impossible. The question of anachronism is, however, of less concern than the realization that in Homer the absolute barrier of the circuit wall necessitates that the dramatic conflict of the city's welfare occur at the point of greatest psychological tension — the point where the city simultaneously feels exposed and invincible. (Cf. n.7 above.)

53. I wish to thank Mary Hannah Jones for this observation. See also Il. 18.79-126, esp. 90-6 and 114-6; cf. 16.851-4. The domino effect begins with the death of Sarpedon which precipitates the rest, Patroklos, Hektor, Achilles (cf. 15.64-77).

54. Il. 17.737-9; 18.207-14; 18.219-21; 21.522-5. Compare Od. 8.523-30. For the one simile of a city of peace, see Il. 15.679-86. Cf. the comparison of the boy who makes sand castles and then ruins them to Apollo wrecking the bastions of the Achaians, 15.360-6, and Priam's response to the approaching Achilles at 21.526-38 and 22.25-30 (discussed below).

55. Cf. Bassett, Samuel, ‘The Introductions of the Iliad, the Odyssey and the Aeneid’ CW 21 (1934–1935), 105-10 and 113–8Google Scholar.

56. Il. 6.403.

57. Il. 6.448-63; cf. n.9 above.

58. Schadewalt (n.48 above), 223.

59. Il. 24.706; cf. Hektor's words to Andromache, Il. 6.441-6. For those who feel that Hektor fights for familial responsibilities, see Finley (n.1 above), 33 and 124-5, and Adkins MR (n.4 above), 40.

60. That Troy is protected by Priam's sons, not Hektor alone, is stated at 20.183, 21.105; cf. Priam's lament for the loss of his sons and of Hektor (22.422-6), his chastisement of his surviving sons (24.247-64), and his plea before Achilles (24.493-501). Compare Sarpedon's rebuke of Hektor that the city's strength does not lie in his family alone (5.472-4). The importance of allies is also stressed in Hektor's address to his captains, each of whom represents a different tribe or city (17.220-4); see also the emphasis upon an organized collective body in the city's defence at 21.586-8. For the effect of the oikos upon the polis (pp. 1-3 above), see Hektor's charge against Alexandros that many families will be destroyed because of his actions (13.769-73). In spite of this collective need, Hektor is, in Hoffman's words (n.5 above, 158-9), the Schutz und Schirm, the defence and umbrella, so to speak, of Troy, and his fate is that of the city. Thus, in the highly symbolic poetry of Seneca, the final day of the city and the fated day of Hektor are the same (Troades 128-9, cf. 188-9). Cf. Il. 22.381-4.

61. Cf. Fick, August and Bechtel, Fritz, Die Griechischen Personennamen (Göttingen, 1894), 389Google Scholar. Grace Macurdy (‘Homeric Names in -tor’, CQ 23 [1929], 24-5 and 27Google Scholar) argues that ‘Hektor’ should be considered a shortened form of Ekhelaos; but for ‘Hektor’ as ‘holder’ of the city, see Nagy, , The Best of the Achaianss 146–7Google Scholar, and for Astyanax as named after one of his father's primary heroic characteristics, see ib., 146 n.9. Hektor as coming from Ekhepolis is also closer to the ancient Greek view of him: so in the fifth century B.C., Hektor is called poliokhon kratos and associated with the ‘city-holding rule’ of Troy, poliokhou turannidos, Rhesus 821 and 166. See also Plato, Cratylus 394b-c.

62. The epithet is applied to Athene or Pallas by Pindar, O. 5.10; Herodotus 1.160; Aristophanes, , Knights 581Google Scholar, Clouds 602, Birds 827; to Zeus by Plato, , Laws 921cGoogle Scholar; to Artemis by Apollonius Rhodius 1.312; and to the gods and daimons by Aeschylus, , Seven Against Thebes 312 and 822Google Scholar, respectively. For Poseidon, cf. n.27 above.

63. Stesichorus fr. 224 Page PMG.

64. 10.47-50 (Hektor is the son of no goddess or god, although he has done in one day what no man has done before, as Agamemnon says); 13.54 (Hektor's reported boast to be the son of Zeus is made up by Poseidon to incite the Achaians); 24.58 (in contrast to Achilles, Hektor is a mortal and suckled a mortal's breast, says Hera). We learn in 9.155, however, that those who rule over others can be honored as though a god.

65. Scholiast T cites 24.730 as a figura etymologia of Hektor's name. In Homer the word ‘Hektor’ only appears as a proper name but Sappho (fr. 80 LP) uses it as an epithet of Zeus and Lycophron (100) applies it to an anchor. Cf. n.61 above.

66. Il. 22.136-223, esp. 165. Not surprisingly, Seneca states the equation outright: columen patriae, mora fatorum,/tu praesidium Phrygibus fessis,/tu murus eras umerisque tuis/stetit ilia decern fulta per annos (‘Prop of your country, delayer of the fates, you were the bulwark for weary Phrygians, you were the city's wall, and supported on your shoulders she stood for ten years', Troades 124-7). In the Iliad as well, the terminology for the architecture of urban defence is occasionally applied to individual warriors; cf. Il. 12.373, where Menestheus' defence is called Menesthēos megathumou purgon ‘the tower of great-hearted Menestheus’; cf. 4.462), and Aias with his shield ēute purgon, ‘like a tower’ (7.219, 11.485, 17.128) — also called a bulwark of the Achaians (3.229, 6.5, 7.211), as are soldiers (4.299) and Achilles (1.284). See also 15.735-8. Cf. n.44 above.

67. Il. 3.15-120, esp. 67-75, where Alexandros declares that he will fight with Menelaos ‘for the sake of Helen’ with the understanding that the winner will take the possessions and Helen while the peoples of the armies will either dwell in Troy or return to Argos.

68. Il. 3.373-82; 3.448-54; 4.14-9, where Zeus in assembly of the gods asks whether they should stir up battle again or allow that the city of Priam ‘still be a place men dwell in’. Cf. Parry, A., ‘Language and Characterization in Homer’, HSCP 76 (1972), 15Google Scholar. Bride-stealing may originally have motivated epic accounts of siege-warfare (see Webster, n.52 above, 85-87), but in the Iliad that motif is relegated to a back position and incorporated into the central story of Achilles. See Reckford, K., ‘Helen in the Iliad’, GRBS 5 (1964), 5–20Google Scholar; cf. Clader, L. L., Helen: The Evolution from Divine to Heroic in the Greek Epic Tradition (Leiden, 1976Google Scholar).

69. S. Benardete (n.50 above), 20-24.

70. Il. 7.177-83.

71. Even this has its false start in the short confrontation between Achilles and Hektor aborted by Apollo, 20.421-44. This encounter occurs before the great elemental struggle of Achilles with the river in Book 21, and thus is a premature confrontation and without the full associations of the latter duel between the two heroes in Book 22.

72. Diomedes is also compared to a star (the same autumnal star) at the beginning of his aristeia in Book 5, but that simile stops short of associating the brilliance of the light with its threatening consequences; cf. Whitman (n.49 above), 142-4.

73. Cf. 6.459-61. It matters less from our perspective whether Hektor imagines that he will not survive (Schadewalt, n.48 above, 222 and Broccia, C., ‘Homerica: La chiusa di Z secundo la critica e secondo l'esegesi’, RFIC 92 [1964], 392Google Scholar) or whether Astyanax at this point gives him new hope (Reinhardt, n.40 above, 303), than that Hektor thinks the city will continue. One can take exception, nevertheless, to Reinhardt's terminology when he says that Hektor's departure from Astyanax reawakens his sense ‘zum Leben und der Gegenwart’.

74. Il. 6.486-9. Vivante (n.13 above) is fundamentally wrong, I think, even from the most distant perspective, in what is for the most part a refreshing book on Homer, when he sees in Hektor a transcendence of the actual human drama, intense as it is, and thinks he is lifted into a frame of mind where he is ‘free of heart’ (208).

75. For the ‘self-deluding’ aspects of Hektor, see Whitman (n.49 above), 208-12 and Mueller, M. E., ‘Knowledge and Delusion in the Iliad’, Mosaic 3.2 (1970), 86–103Google Scholar now in Essays on the Iliad, ed. Wright, J. (Indiana, 1978Google Scholar).

76. Il. 18.115ff, cf. 19.420-3, 21.99-113, etc.

77. Whitehead, , The Aims of Education and Other Essays (New York, 1949), 26Google Scholar. For the consciousness that entertains past and future, see Mumford (n.33 above), 9 and Brown, Norman O., Life Against Death (Middletown, Conn., 1970), 283–5Google ScholarPubMed.

78. Cf. Il. 18.98-126, esp. 120-1, and 21.64-113.

79. Here expressed by the unique phrase polēes epikhthoniōn anthrōpōn (cf n.39 above).

80. Marg, Walter, ‘Die Schild des Achilleus’, Homer über die Dichter (Munster, 1971), 38Google Scholar. It seems odd to argue, as Marg does, that the scenes on the Shield are meaningless to Achilles when he alone of the Myrmidons has the courage to look at the intricate armor (19.14-20). As much as most of the individual pictures depict life-continuing activities, in their entirety they present the world from the distance of the Olympians.

81. Il. 18.483-5. Compare also the broad temporal frame in which Achilles perceives his own fate. In its magnitude, it equals the spatial frame in which Zeus cast the fate of Troy at 4.41-9. Achilles says to Lykaon (21.110-2): ‘Yet even I have also my death and my strong destiny,/and there shall be a dawn or evening time (deilē) or midday/when some man in the fighting will take the life from me also.’

82. Il. 22.179-80.

83. Fitzgerald, F. Scott, ‘My Lost City’ from The Crack-up (New York, 1945Google Scholar), first published by Esquire (1934).