Homer the Theologian: Neoplatonist Allegorical Reading and the Growth of the Epic Tradition

I: The Divine Homer and the Background of Neoplatonic Allegory

The Divine Homer and the Background of Neoplatonic Allegory A. HOMER'SPRETENSIONS Our concern here will be to examine one among several traditions of the interpretation of Homer in antiquity: that characterized by the claims that Homer was a divine sage with revealed knowledge of the fate of souls and of the structure of reality, and that the Iliad and Odyssey are mystical allegories yielding information of this sort if properly read. It will be necessary to omit from discussion the larger part of the history of the interpretation of Homer in antiquity1 in order to look specifically at the tradition closing that history and looking forward to the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Nevertheless it seems appropriate to begin by examining the earliest testimonia (including the Homeric texts themselves) providing insight into the prehistory and early history of the conception of Homer as a sage. It has been customary among recent students of Homer to minimize the importance of the prophetic element in Homeric diction and, on the i. This vast field was approached as a whole by Felix Buffiere in Les Mythes d'Homere et la pensee grecque. His work, though anticipated to some extent by iconographical studies such as those of Franz Cumont, broke new ground and has remained the definitive treatment. Buffiere's vast scholarship permitted him to sketch out a comprehensive history of the interaction between Homer and Greek philosophy. The debts of all subsequent work in this field to his study are very great. Of comparable importance, but more general in scope, is Jean Pepin's Mythe et Allegoric: Les Origines grecques et les contestations judeo-chretiennes. I 2 HOMER THE THEOLOGIAN contrary, to emphasize the absence of any pretense to supernatural insight in the narrative voice. J.Tate sums up the negative evidence: Homer . . . does not claim to be "controlled" by a spirit not his own, or to utter oracles containing a manifold significance. . . . Nor does he claim the standing of a priest. . . . The Homeric claim to inspiration does not imply profound wisdom or even veracity.2 Tate's point is that the "divine" Homer of Plato, whom the Neopythagoreans and Neoplatonists systematically expanded (in isolation from the ironies and contradictions of the relevant passages of Plato) into a seer and sage, has no Homeric roots whatsoever. Tate does not place great weight on his own argumentum exsilentio, but at the same time he takes it for granted that any reasonable reader will agree with him. The Homeric narrative voice, though, is notoriously opaque with regard to its own identity and function, and Tate's argument does have decided weaknesses . For the sake of a full appreciation of the qualities of the poems, this commonly held view deserves to be examined and questioned. No one will deny that direct access to information about a mode of existence beyond the human, about the fate of souls after death, and about events on the human plane but hidden from everyday perception is a possibility in the imaginative world of Homer. Revelationis the stockin -trade of Homeric seers from Calchas to Theoclymenus and Tiresias, and direct, accurate perception of divine reality is commonly extended to the heroes themselves.3 The contrast between human ignorance and divine omniscience is repeatedly drawn,4 and the epiphanies that provide breakthroughs from perception on the human level to perception on the divine are among the most dramatic moments of the poems. There is ample basis, then, on which to claim that the epics contain a complex model of perception in which the world of experience of ordinary mortals is seen as severely limited. The perceptions of the heroes remain similarly limited except for occasional moments of insight. Those of the seers differ from those of the other heroes only in degree: for 2. J. Tate, "On the History of Allegorism," p. 113. 3. The instances are so numerous and conspicuous as scarcely to require enumeration . In the Odyssey, Odysseus is repeatedly given privileged information by Athena. In the Iliad, her striking apparitions to Achilles at 1.194-222 and to Diomedes at 5.123-33 and 799-845, along with that ofApollo to Achilles at 22.720 , all involve the imparting ofprivileged information, available only through the superhuman perceptions of a divinity. 4. E.g., in the line that opens Achilles' response to Thetis's questions at II. 1.365. The Divine Homer and Neoplatonic Allegory 3 them, epiphanies...