Homer the Preclassic

4. Homer in the Homeric Odyssey

4 Homer in the Homeric Odyssey THE FESTIVE POETICS OF AN ONGOING HUMNOS IN ODYSSEY VIII When Thucydides quotes Homer, he imagines the Poet in the act of personally performing at the festival of the Delia in Delos. This historian’s view, as we have seen, is Athenocentric. To be contrasted is the view of Aristarchus, which is post-Athenocentric . For Aristarchus, the poet of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo is a neoteric rhapsode , Kynaithos of Chios. For Thucydides, the performer of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo is Homer himself, and the Poet’s Hymn to Apollo is a prooimion to whatever epic Homer will perform. Theoretically, the Hymn to Apollo may be a prooimion to the Homeric Iliad or Odyssey. Or at least the Hymn may be a humnos that connects with an epic performed by Homer at the Delia on Delos. Such an epic could be seen as a prototype of the epic performed by rhapsodes at the festival of the Panathenaia in Athens. And, as Douglas Frame has shown, such a prototype would most closely resemble versions of the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey as already performed by the Homēridai at the festival of the Panionia at the Panionion of the Ionian Dodecapolis in Asia Minor during the late eighth and early seventh centuries b.c.e.1 We will take a closer look at the Panionia at a later point, but for now I concentrate on the basic idea of performing Homeric poetry at a festival. This idea brings me to the first and the third songs of Demodokos in Odyssey viii, which represent an earlier form of epic as performed at a festival. As we will see, this earlier form of epic is defined by the concept of humnos in the context of a festival. As we will also see, 79 1. Frame 2009 ch. 11. this earlier form represents the morphology of the epic Cycle, as opposed to the later form of the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey. As I argue in the twin book Homer the Classic, the ending of the epic of the first song of Demodokos is continually deferred, and this deferral is marked by the expression aps arkhesthai ‘start again and again’ at verse 90 of Odyssey viii.2 Each time the singer restarts his song, Odysseus starts weeping, and his continuously restarted outpouring of tears is expressed by the wording aps . . . goân ‘lament again and again’ (92). Only Alkinoos, king of the Phaeacians, notices the unexpected reaction of Odysseus to the epic performance in the first song of Demodokos (viii 93–95). The king’s own reaction is to defer even further any kind of epic ending. Postponing any more restartings of the ongoing epic performance by Demodokos, Alkinoos announces that the time for eating and drinking and ‘the phorminx’—a metonymy for the singing of Demodokos, who accompanies himself on the stringed instrumentcalledthephorminx —istobestoppedforthemoment(98–99).Asweare about to see, the singing of Demodokos will be restarted in a festive context that resembles the festive context of the Delia as dramatized in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo. Before any further singing by Demodokos can take place, the time has come for sporting events: that is, athletic contests to be held in the public gathering space of the Phaeacians (viii 100–101). The king refers to boxing, wrestling, jumping, and footracing (103). The first athletic event turns out to be the footrace (120–25), followed by wrestling (126–27), jumping (128), discus throwing (129), and, finally, boxing (130). There is a striking parallel to be found in a passage we have already examined here. That passage comes from the Homeric Hymn (3) to Apollo (146– 55), describing a festival of all Ionians gathered on the island of Delos. For the moment I focus on one detail in that passage: the occasion of that Delian festival is described as an agōn ‘competition’ (149). The competitive events at that festival include athletics—boxing is the example that is highlighted—as well as in dancing and singing (149). So also in Odyssey viii, as we are about to see, the overall occasion is described as an agōn in athletics, dancing, and singing. In analyzing the context of this festive occasion, I hope to show its relevance to the poetry performed by Demodokos in Odyssey viii. In the competitive atmosphere of the athletic contests of Odyssey viii, Odysseus is provoked into participating in the competition. Responding to the challenge, he wins...