“Stricken to Silence”: Authoritative Response, Homeric Irony, and the Peril of a Missed Language Cue

The Formula

The formula² “Thus he spoke, but they in fact all were stricken to silence” (ὣς ἔϕαθ’, οἳ δ’ ἄϱα πάντες ἀϰὴν ἐγένοντο σιωπ)³ occurs sixteen times in Homer⁴ and has received significant treatment in a number of recent studies focusing on its referential force. Its “connotative level of signification” (Kelly 2007:6) has been projected in part for the Iliad, and important themes and functions have been suggested. Silvia Montiglio (1993:175–78) has considered the formula’s meaning within the Iliad both etymologically and more generally, and found that it suggests “une rupture anormale,” “la déchirure” of the normal communication process. John Miles Foley has linked the formula in the Iliad with the speech that precedes it, since “each initial speech proposes or reports a radical, usually unexpected action” (1995:13) that promises either the winning or losing of kleos. Foley’s research further demonstrates that the formula leads, immediately or inevitably, to the “qualification if not dismissal of the proposed or reported action” (15) that precedes the silence formula. Raymond Person (1995) uses conversation analysis to suggest that the formula marks that a speaker will follow with a “dispreferred response,” essentially a response that is delayed and mitigated. Adrian Kelly’s study (2007:85–86) of the formula in the Iliad highlights the relationship between the speech that immediately precedes the formula and the speech that ensues, in terms of agreement or disagreement.⁵

The formula’s employment in the Odyssey has been less easy to demarcate.⁶ The present study will suggest a reading that spans both the Iliad and the Odyssey. I will argue that the real heart of the formula is in what it cues in the action of the narrative that follows for the external audience attending the poetic rendition. It points to the immediately ensuing speech as authoritative in setting the subsequent narrative trajectory. In the two exceptions, where the formula’s cue is not followed in the narrative that ensues, I will argue that the poet is being ironic. The poet uses metonymic irony of narrative perspective to heighten tension and create suspense in especially central narrative moments. Our consideration of the “stricken to silence” formula begins, after a review of traditional referentiality, with a consideration of its fourteen regular occurrences, followed by the two instances of its ironic employment, one in each epic.

Traditional Referentiality, Metonymy, and Text

As John Miles Foley has shown, Homeric formulae contain meaning that extends well beyond their simple function as metrically convenient integers.⁷ Meaning is found not primarily in the individual contextual setting of a singular instance of a formula, but through interpreting the instance in connection with its repeated usage elsewhere in the tradition, with formulae being the product of generations of performance. In short, formulae are traditional, and when used, must be read by “reference” to their use within the tradition, a process of metonymy, whereby the “part stands for the whole” (Foley 1991:7).⁸ The audience informed by the tradition can in turn comprehend the meaning of specific metonyms in the text, because they share a body of knowledge that is their cultural inheritance (45). As David Elmer summarizes the phenomenon (2011:605):

Phrases and formulae function more as metonymic than as purely denotative signifiers, allowing the performer to evoke traditional resonances that far exceed the semantic value of his or her [individual] words.

The foregoing description assumes an audience informed by a tradition of performance shared by the Iliad and Odyssey. The research of Richard Janko⁹ supports the impression (for example, Hainsworth 1968:42–43, n.1) that both epics likely represent a common song tradition (that they were sung by exactly the same aoidos [“epic singer”] is perhaps less likely¹⁰) and that other early Greek hexameter traditions were memorialized in writing only later. The question of how common the tradition represented by the Iliad and Odyssey is usually becomes acute for the researcher whenever there seems to be a difference in the use of a particular formula between the two epics.¹¹ In the end, while the question is...