The Tale of Meleager in the Iliad

I employ narratology and oral theory in a close reading of Phoenix's tale of the Kalydonian hero Meleager in Book 9 of the Iliad to clarify the function of this embedded narrative within the Homeric epic. Phoenix compares Achilles to Meleager, and the crux of the analogy—angry withdrawal from battle—has tempted some in the past to suppose that a pre-Homeric epic about an angry Meleager was the source for the Iliad's angry Achilles. But since most ancient narratives about Meleager do not feature withdrawal from battle, today Homerists more commonly conclude that Phoenix invents Meleager's withdrawal in order to pursue this analogy. Though I essentially subscribe to this conclusion, analysis of the poetics of Phoenix's narrative have often been misguided. In this essay I explore the traditionality of Phoenix's story and its narratological construction in the Homeric epic. The main goal is to better calibrate the significance of the Iliad's version of the story of Meleager. The issue is relevant to how the Iliad employs material from outside its narrative boundaries, including the Epic Cycle.

Though not as famous as the labors of Heracles, the Trojan War, or the return of Odysseus, the myth about Meleager was popular in antiquity. That is not surprising, since his story often featured the hunt of a monstrous animal and intra-family violence. Sometimes there was a love interest, the famous huntress Atalanta. The story could be variously narrated, and some versions of the myth are incompatible. Homerists have long explored how the version told by Phoenix in Iliad 9 corresponds to or deviates from alternative versions. Before we address that issue, it would be helpful to examine basic elements of the tale of Meleager in order to explore their causal connections and thematic significance.

Texts and Traditions

The bibliography on the Homeric story of Meleager is extensive.¹ Many have pursued a chronological analysis, speculating about the pre-Homeric development of the myth and its post-Homeric literary history.² Homerists in the Analyst school of thought hypothesized a pre-Homeric epic about an angry, withdrawn Meleager, deemed the "Meleagris."³ Most current Homerists have concluded that non-Homeric versions of the death of Meleager, whereby his mother Althaia burns a firebrand that represents his life, is the original form of the story.⁴ Since the firebrand version is an example of a widespread folktale type, this conclusion recognizes the possibility of pre-Homeric oral traditions.⁵ But Homerists have tended to celebrate the seeming Homeric suppression of the folktale motif as a victory of invention over tradition and epic realism over folkloric magic. Interpretative studies of the Homeric version accordingly propose complex effects that seem to depend, explicitly or implicitly, on literate composition and reception.

My approach assumes that a strong yet flexible oral tradition about Meleager is essential to the poetics of Phoenix's story. Instead of creating a literary history by looking for clues of influence and derivation in the surviving evidence, I consider variation to indicate multiforms that were potential in both pre-Homeric and post-Homeric oral traditions about Meleager. The vast majority of ancient tellings of the tale of Meleager were never recorded, and only a minority of poems and images about Meleager have survived. It is therefore impossible to recreate a single, monolithic tradition about Meleager. But I do posit widespread knowledge of essential motifs in traditional narrative about Meleager. Audience knowledge of these would play a role in the potential significance of any manifestation of the myth.

In my view oral traditions were primarily responsible for widespread knowledge of the myth of Meleager, even after textual versions became known. It should not be supposed that once Homer included the tale in the Iliad this version became overwhelmingly dominant. In my work I have argued that the influence of Homer has been exaggerated for the Archaic Age.⁶ Though the centrality of Homeric texts for later literature is obvious, non-Homeric traditions modulated the reception of Homer down through antiquity. As it happens, Meleager is an excellent example of my argument: the Homeric suppression of the firebrand...