from the very beginning: Susan Heuck Allen, “A Personal Sacrifice in the Interest of Science: Calvert, Schliemann, and the Troy Treasures,” Classical World 91, no. 5, The World of Troy (May–June 1998), 345–54.
“the ruins and red ashes”: E. Meyer, “Schliemann’s Letters to Max Müller in Oxford,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 82 (1962), 75–105.
“three different sets”: D. F. Easton, “Heinrich Schliemann: Hero or Fraud?,” Classical World 91, no. 5, The World of Troy (May–June 1998), 335–43.
Schliemann’s suggestion: J. B. Carter and S. P Morris, eds., The Ages of Homer: A Tribute to E. Townsend Vermeule (1995; reprint, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998), 5. Burkert: “The Greeks knew no date for the Trojan war. This makes modern attempts to match ancient Greek dates with archaeological remains an exercise in illusion.”
The Boston treasure: MFA Boston, Inv 68116–68139, Centennial Gift of Landon T. Clay. The museum bought it in 1968 from George Zacos, a Greek dealer in antiquities, based in Basel, who could not say where he had gotten it from. It may have been looted from an otherwise unknown tomb in Turkey.
four Trojan hammer-axes: James C. Wright, “The Place of Troy Among the Civilizations of the Bronze Age,” Classical World 91, no. 5, The World of Troy (May–June 1998), 356–68.
stolen by Schliemann: Susan Heuck Allen, “A Personal Sacrifice in the Interest of Science: Calvert, Schliemann, and the Troy Treasures,” Classical World 91, no. 5, The World of Troy (May–June, 1998), 345–54.
his son Agamemnon: He became a member of the Greek Chamber of Deputies and briefly the Greek minister in Washington, D.C.
a linen fabric: Elizabeth Wayland Butler, Women’s Work: The First 20,000 Years: Women, Cloth and Society in Early Times (New York: Norton, 1994), 212.
tiny gold beads: Ibid., 213.
“a great cloth”: Iliad III.125ff. The word for cloth can mean “web,” “loom-beam” or even “mast.”
shimmering linen: Ibid., III.140.
“how terribly like”: Ibid., III.158.
“Come over here”: Ibid., III.160.
“The queen herself”: Ibid., VI.287ff.
women and womanliness: See ibid., XVI.100, where the Greek warriors refer to the battlements of Troy as its “veil.”
A woman and a tripod: Ibid., XXII.262–64.
twelve oxen: Ibid., XXIII.702–5.
Hera … prepares herself for love: Ibid., XIV.165ff.
“the whispered words”: Ibid., XIV.217.
“He goes down”: Ibid., II.870.
kill Trojan babies: Ibid., VI.57–60.
Zeus accused Hera: Ibid., IV.35.
“Idomeneus stabs”: Ibid., XVI.345–50.
“like wolves”: Ibid., XVI.156–62.
“Patroclus, you have thought”: Ibid., XVI.825ff.
soaked and clotted: Ibid., XVII.51.
“mauling the kill”: Ibid., XVII.64.
“and give the rest”: Ibid., XVII.125–27, 241.
He promises: Ibid., XVII.241.
the straps of his shield: Ibid., XVII.290.
“oozes out from the wound”: Ibid., XVII.297–98.
under the collarbone: Ibid., XVII.309.
“so that he claws”: Ibid., XVII.315.
a spear in the liver: Ibid., XVII.349.
“with so many pulling”: Ibid., XVII.389–97.
“as on some lion”: Ibid., XVII.540–42.
“who though it is”: Ibid., XVII.570.
“a tawny lion”: Ibid., XVIII.162.
“cut the head”: Ibid., XVIII.175.
wants more than anything: Ibid., V.863. See Tamara Neal, “Blood and Hunger in the Iliad,” Classical Philology 101, no. 1 (Jan. 2006), 15–33.
wants to feast on the body: Iliad XIX.305.
he pops out death: Ibid., XX.386ff.
“These bewildered boys”: Ibid., XXI.29–32 (Lattimore cum Fagles).
“an unlooked for evil”: Iliad XXI.39.
“Now there is not one”: Ibid., XXI.125.
“Die on”: Ibid., XXI.128–29.
“I will not leave off”: Ibid., XXI.225.
“The aged Priam”: Ibid., XXI.525.
“fierce with the spear”: Ibid., XXI.540.
“For they dare”: Ibid., XXI.608.
“shackled by destiny”: Ibid., XXII.5.
“Come into the walls”: Ibid., XXII.57.
“I have looked upon evils”: Lattimore, Iliad XXII.61–76.
“Sweet branch”: Ibid., XXII.87, 82.
like a dream: Ibid., XXII.199.
“and forces him”: Ibid., XXII.198.
“to hack your meat”: Ibid., XXII.346–48.
“and clean out”: Ibid., XXII.327.
“gasping the life breath”: Ibid., XXII.440.
“All of these”: Ibid., XXII.510.
robes, mantles, blankets: Ibid., XXIV.228, 580.
“kisses his hands”: Ibid., XXIV.478ff.
“Priam weeps freely”: Ibid., XXIV.509ff (Fagles, XXIV.594ff).
“They reach down”: Iliad XXIV.630ff.
11: HOMER’S MIRROR
the Egyptian city of Thebes: A place, incidentally, known to Achilles for its riches: Iliad IX.381–84.
fragments of papyrus: For an illustration from Papyrus Chester Beatty IV, see A. H. Gardiner, Hierat Papyri in the British Museum, Third Series: Chester Beatty Gift (London: British Museum, 1935), 41.
Sinuhe’s story: R. B. Parkinson, ed. and trans., The Tale of Sinuhe and Other Egyptian Poems, 1940–1640 BC (1997; reprint, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 1.
“Be a scribe”: Quoted in Barry Kemp, Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilisation (London: Routledge, 2007), 163.
Peace had prevailed: Ibid., 62.
“makes those born”: Parkinson, Sinuhe, 31.
It is Indo-European: Carleton T. Hodge, “Indo-Europeans in the Near East,” Anthropological Linguistics 35, no. 1/4, A Retrospective of the Journal Anthropological Linguistics: Selected Papers, 1959–1985 (1993), 90–108.
“numberless are its cattle”: Parkinson, Sinuhe, 31.
“rushy place”: Ibid., 46.
“This is the taste”: Ibid., 29.
“milk in every cooked dish”: Ibid., 32.
“each man subjugating”: Kemp, 32.
“What can establish”: Parkinson, Sinuhe, 33.
“What matters”: Ibid., 34.
“the enduring security”: Kemp, Ancient Egypt, 24.
“I was appointed”: Parkinson, Sinuhe, 42–43.
Timē and Aretē: See Margalit Finkelberg, “Timē and Aretē in Homer,” Classical Quarterly, new ser., 48, no. 1 (1998), 14–28, for a long and elegant discussion of this core Homeric tension.
the bath is always beautiful: J. M. Cook, “Bath-Tubs in Ancient Greece,” Greece and Rome, 2nd ser., 6, no. 1 (Mar. 1959), 31–41; Steve Reece, “The Homeric asaminthos: Stirring the Waters of the Mycenaean Bath,” Mnemosyne, 4th ser., 55, fasc. 6 (2002), 703–8.
“washing his long hair”: Gilgamesh, Epic XI.239–55, trans. in Gary A. Rendsburg, “Notes on Genesis XXXV,” Vetus Testamentum 34, fasc. 3 (July 1984), 361–66.
“wash yourselves”: Genesis XXXV.2.
“daughters of the springs”: Odyssey X.350.
“brought in the water”: Odyssey X.357–67 (Lattimore/Murray/Dimock).
“mind wandering”: Ibid., X.374.
The Hittites were: See J. P. Mallory and D. Q. Adams, The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
“in the city of Urikina”: Gary Beckman, ed., Hittite Diplomatic Texts, 2nd ed., SBL Writings from the Ancient World series (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 1999), 113.
“never suffer strangers gladly”: Odyssey VII.32.
ptoliporthos Odysseus: Ibid., VIII.3.
prēktēres: Ibid., VIII.162.
“Strangers, who are you?”: Ibid., IX.252–54.
“much-wandering pirates”: Ibid., XVII.425.
“From Ilium the wind”: Ibid., IX.39–42.
In about 1350 BC: Beckman, Hittite Diplomatic Texts, 26.
“a low-born”: Ibid., 31.
“Furthermore this sister”: Ibid., 32.
“When you see a palace woman”: Ibid.
“If the King”: Ibid., 106.
it is now generally accepted: Hans G. Güterbock, “Hittites and Akhaeans: A New Look,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 128, no. 2 (June 1984), 114–22.
“The father of My Majesty”: Beckman, Hittite Diplomatic Texts, 154.
“the untrembling”: Martin L. West, “Atreus and Attarissiyas,” Glotta 77 (2001), 262–66.
A letter also survived: Adrian Kelly, “Homer and History: ‘Iliad’ 9.381–4,” Mnemosyne, 4th ser., 59, fasc. 3 (2006), 321–33.
Hittite scholars: Güterbock, “Hittites and Akhaeans: A New Look,” 128 (1984), 114–22.
“People are treacherous”: Beckman, Hittite Diplomatic Texts, 90.
it is clear: T. Dothan, The Philistines and Their Material Culture (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1982); T. Dothan and M. Dothan, People of the Sea: The Search for the Philistines (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1992); L. E. Stager, “The Impact of the Sea Peoples in Canaan (1185–1050 BCE)” in The Archaeology of Society in the Holy Land, ed. T. E. Levy (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1995), 332–48; Seymour Gitin, Amihai Mazar and Ephraim Stern, eds., Mediterranean Peoples in Transition, Thirteenth to Early Tenth Centuries B.C.E. (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1998).
at its symbolic climax: The David and Goliath story is in 1 Samuel, chapter XVII. For a brilliant discussion of it, see Azzan Yadin, “Goliath’s Armor and Israelite Collective Memory,” Vetus Testamentum 54, fasc. 3 (July 2004), 373–95.
six feet nine inches tall: See J. Daniel Hays, “Reconsidering the Height of Goliath,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 48, no. 4 (Dec. 2005), 701–14. In the Septuagint manuscripts and in the Dead Sea Scrolls, Goliath’s height is given as “four cubits and a span,” which is six feet nine inches. Later versions make it six cubits and a span, which is nine feet nine inches. The average height of Semites in the ancient Near East was about five feet. One warrior in the Shaft Graves at Mycenae was measured at five feet five inches. See A. J. N. W. Prag, Lena Papazoglou-Manioudaki, R. A. H. Neave, Denise Smith, J. H. Musgrave and A. Nafplioti, “Mycenae Revisited: Part 1. The Human Remains from a Grave Circle,” Annual of the British School at Athens 104 (2009), 233–77.
“Why do you”: 1 Samuel XVII.8–10 (New English Bible).
Shouted aggression: For the continuing emotional power of the battle shout, in attack or mourning, see the New Zealanders grieving the death of their companions in Afghanistan, http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10829992.
“When Saul and the Israelites”: 1 Samuel XVII:11.
“Morning and evening”: Ibid., XVII.16 (New English Bible/King James Bible).
“Who is he”: Ibid., XVII:26.
“I cannot go”: Ibid., XVII.39–40 (New English Bible/King James Bible).
“And the Philistine came on”: Ibid., XVII. 42–44 (New English Bible/King James Bible).
“and all the world”: Ibid., XVII.46–47 (New English Bible).
“And David put”: Ibid., XVII. 49 (King James Bible).
12: HOMER’S ODYSSEY
“fall like winter snowflakes”: Odyssey XII.187.
“tossing backwards and forwards”: Ibid., XX.25.
“at which any immortal god”: Ibid., V.72–73.
but was called Thapsos: For Thapsos in the Bronze Age, see Anthony Russell, “In the Middle of the Corrupting Sea: Cultural Encounters in Sicily and Sardinia between 1450–900 BC,” PhD thesis, University of Glasgow, 2011, online at http://theses.gla.ac.uk/2670/; David Abulafia, The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 34–35.
“at a loss”: P. Leigh Fermor, letters to D. Devonshire; Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, 5.3.2, online at http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Diodorus_Siculus/5A*.html.
“swooping down”: Odyssey V.50–53 (combination of Fagles, Lattimore).
Hermes does everything: Mary W. Helms, Ulysses’ Sail: An Ethnographic Odyssey of Power, Knowledge and Geographical Distance (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988), 111ff.
“Sleep never falls on his eyelids”: Odyssey V.271.
“the axis always fixed”: Ibid., V.274.
“reaching towards him”: Ibid., V.281.
“death’s decision”: Ibid., V.326.
Seabirds are too beautifully present: For birds in Homer, see J. MacLair Boraston, “The Birds of Homer,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 31 (1911), 216–50; Sylvia Benton, “Note on Sea-Birds,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 92 (1972), 172–73; Paul Friedrich, “An Avian and Aphrodisian Reading of Homer’s Odyssey,” American Anthropologist, new ser., 99, no. 2 (June 1997), 306–20.
“the most beautiful ankles”: Odyssey V.33.3.
“like a diving tern”: Odyssey V.353.
The earth shaker: Ibid., V.367.
“Just like the kind of joy”: Ibid., V.394–99.
kai dē doupon akouse: Odyssey V. 401–3.
“Spent to all use”: George Chapman’s translation of Odyssey, V.454–55.
“heartsick on the open sea”: Odyssey I.4.
“from his thigh”: Odyssey X.321.
“her surpassingly beautiful”: Ibid., X.347.
“lay in the sea-Lord’s loving waves”: Odyssey XI.306.
“his story held them”: Ibid., XI.334 (Fagles translation, XI.379).
“Many were the people”: Odyssey I.3.
“for his return”: Ibid., I.13.
“the fascinating imaginative realm”: Quoted by Richard Rorty in “Trotsky and the Wild Orchids” (1992), from Philosophy and Social Hope (London: Penguin, 1999).
“the sweetest place”: Odyssey IX.34 (Fagles translation, IX.38).
“rocky Ithaca”: Odyssey XXI.346.
the kind of island: This point, in connection with the Iron Age, is made by Helen Waterhouse in “From Ithaca to the Odyssey,” Annual of the British School at Athens 91 (1996), 301–17.
“bends to kiss”: Odyssey XIII.354.
an Assyrian relief: See, e.g., Julian Reade, Assyrian Sculpture (1983; reprint, London: British Museum, 1998), fig. 57, p. 54.
“there is nothing sweeter”: Odyssey IX.28.
“She withers”: Ibid., XIII.430–33.
“Knossos, where Minos reigned”: Ibid., XIX.172–78.
When she appears: Ibid., XVI.415 for Penelope standing by column; XX.42 for her shining among women.
Artemis and Aphrodite: Ibid., XVII.37, XIX.54.
“the nightingale”: Ibid., XIX.518–24.
Like all the great women in Homer: Penelope with well-balanced mind, ibid., XVIII.249; weeping, XIX.209; weaving, XVII.97, XIX.128; with cloths, XIX.232, 255; and veil, XX.65.
a queen regnant: Penelope as governor, ibid., XIX.106ff.
“grow in goodness”: Ibid., XIX.114.
“Just as a bitch”: Ibid., XX.14–16.
swimming in blood: Ibid., XXII.307.
are repeated here: Ibid., XXII.325.
“like a lion”: Ibid., XXII.401–3.
“He finds them”: Ibid., XXII.383–88.
“They lead him out”: Ibid., XXII.474–77.
“the cable of a dark-prowed ship”: Ibid., XXII.465.
“Just as when”: Ibid., XXII.468–73.
“the well-built bridal chamber”: Ibid., XXIII.178.
“her knees are loosened”: Ibid., XXIII.205–8.
“As when the land”: Ibid., XXIII.233–40.
CONCLUSION: THE BRIGHT WAKE
“spirit of cruelty”: Note to Iliad IV.75 in Pope’s translation; see, for this and the following valuable references to William Blake and Joel Barlow, Michael Ferber, “Shelley and ‘The Disastrous Fame of Conquero
rs,’” Keats-Shelley Journal 51 (2002), 145–73.
Blake blamed Homer: David V. Erdman, ed., The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake, rev. ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 270.
“but he has given”: From David B. Davis, ed., Advice to the Privileged Orders in the Several States of Europe, in a chapter on “The Military System” (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1956), 39.
“There are certain ages”: Susan Sontag, review of Simone Weil, Selected Essays (1962), trans. Richard Rees, New York Review of Books, Feb. 1, 1963.
“Nietzsche, at his worst”: Richard Rorty, “Against Belatedness,” London Review of Books, June 16, 1983, 3–5, a review of Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, trans. Robert Wallace (1983).
“praised Homer’s enargeia”: Alice Oswald, Memorial: An Excavation of the Iliad (London: Faber, 2011), 1.
“a telling out”: See Heinrich F. Plett, Enargeia in Classical Antiquity and the Early Modern Age: The Aesthetics of Evidence (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 27.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
GREEK TEXTS
Hesiod, Homeric Hymns, Epic Cycle, Homerica. With parallel translation by H. G. Evelyn-White. Cambridge, Mass.: Loeb/Harvard University Press, 1914.
The Iliad. With parallel translation by A. T. Murray. Cambridge, Mass.: Loeb/Harvard University Press, 1925.
The Iliad. With parallel translation by W. F. Wyatt. Cambridge, Mass.: Loeb/Harvard University Press, 1999.
Lives of Homer. In Homeric Hymns, etc., with parallel translation by M. L. West. Cambridge, Mass.: Loeb/Harvard University Press, 2003.
The Odyssey. With parallel translation by A. T. Murray, revised by G. E. Dimock. Cambridge, Mass.: Loeb/Harvard University Press, 1999.
TRANSLATIONS
Fagles, Robert. The Iliad. New York: Penguin, 1990.
______. The Odyssey. New York, Penguin, 1996.
Lattimore, Richmond. The Iliad of Homer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951.
______. The Odyssey. New York: Harper, 1967.
Nicoll, Allardyce, ed. Chapman’s Homer: The Iliad. 1956., Reprint, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press 1984.
Pope, Alexander. The Iliad. London, 1715–1720.
Pope, Alexander, with W. Broome and E. Fenton. The Odyssey. London, 1726.
Rieu, E. V., revised by D. C. H. Rieu. The Odyssey. London: Penguin, 1946.
Shaw, T. E. The Odyssey. London: Oxford University Press, 1932.
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