First Similes in Epic

Extended similes are particularly at home in heroic epic, so much so that they are surprisingly rare in other genres, such as lyric or elegy; as we shall see below, they are also very rare in archaic didactic, although they later become more common in that genre.¹ If similes are a marked feature of heroic epic, then the first similes in epic are themselves particularly marked. The programmatic nature of the first simile in Virgil’s Aeneid (1.148–53) has often been commented upon, as an emblem of restoration of order after chaos which generates a set of expectations for the rest of the poem. I shall argue that the iconic nature of the initial simile sequence is a feature of epic that goes back to Homer’s Iliad, and continues well past Virgil. In general, the first similes in epic are programmatic for the cosmos of the whole poem, for they present an icon of the relationship between human beings and the natural world, which in turn gives us an icon of the poem’s relationship between order and disorder, chaos and harmony. These icons are an ideal, like all icons, and there are many ways in which these first programmatic moments turn out to have a degree of slippage and lack of fit, as is characteristic of similes in general.² A study of the first similes in an epic can shed light on a range of narrative techniques and thematic concerns that carry through the poem as a whole.

I. HOMER’S ILIAD

We begin with the first first similes in epic, in Homer’s Iliad. The very first similes in the Iliad are not developed, although they generate considerable condensed power. As Apollo comes down Mt. Ida in response to the prayers of his priest, Chryses, in order to shoot his arrows at the Achaean host, “he went like night” (ὁ δ’ ἤϊε νυκτὶ ἐοικώς, Il. 1.47): since he has been called Φοῖβος, “bright/radiant,” only four lines before, the oxymoronic power of the comparison to night is chilling.³ A second undeveloped simile soon follows, in the description of Agamemnon’s anger at the speech of Calchas, when “his eyes were like shining fire” (ὄσσε δέ οἱ πυρὶ λαμπετόωντι ἐΐκτην, Il. 1.104); and a third is used to describe Thetis emerging “quickly from the grey sea like a mist” (καρπαλίμως δ’ ἀνέδυ πολιῆς ἁλὸς ἠΰτ’ ὀμίχλη, Il. 1.359).

It is only in the second book, with the poem’s fourth simile, that we meet a developed simile of the classic type, the first one in the poem, as the movement of the Achaeans to Agamemnon’s assembly is compared to the movement of bees going out to gather nectar (Il. 2.87–93):

ἠΰτε ἔθνεα εἶσι μελισσάων ἁδινάων, πέτρης ἐκ γλαφυρῆς αἰεὶ νέον ἐρχομενάων• βοτρυδὸν δὲ πέτονται ἐπ’ ἄνθεσιν εἰαρινοῖσιν• αἱ μέν τ’ ἔνθα ἅλις πεποτήαται, αἱ δέ τε ἔνθα• ὣς τῶν ἔθνεα πολλὰ νεῶν ἄπο καὶ κλισιάων ἠϊόνος προπάροιθε βαθείης ἐστιχόωντο ἰλαδὸν εἰς ἀγορήν•

As the tribes of dense-flying bees go from a hollow rock, constantly coming on a-fresh; they fly in clusters on the spring flowers; some fly in throngs this way, some that; so the many tribes of the Achaeans from the ships and huts, in front of the deep beach, filed in companies to the assembly.

There are many lines of approach into this rich simile, but for the purposes of the present argument we shall concentrate on how the simile may be read as an emblem of social cohesion.⁴ Homer creates a meticulous parallelism between the organization of the bees and of the Achaeans. The simile concentrates on the group organization of the bees, as the context concentrates on the organized subgroups which make up the larger mass of the Achaeans. The bees are grouped in ἔθνεα, “tribes” (87), as are the Achaeans themselves (91); they fly βοτρυδόν, “in clusters” (89), and ἅλις, “in throngs” (90), while the Achaeans move in στίχοι, “files” (ἐστιχόωντο, 92) and ἶλαι, “companies” (ἰλαδόν, 93).⁵ Now, the action of the simile may appear to be saying the opposite of the context, in that the bees are leaving a central point and going in diverse directions, while the Achaeans are coming from diverse directions to a central point. In fact, the two actions of simile and context supplement each other to achieve a harmonious reciprocity, which reinforces in narrative terms the thematic import of the comparison. The bees and the Achaeans are subgroups...