Religion Compass 7/7 (2013): 225–233, 10.1111/rec3.12050
What’s Religious about the Iliad?
Margo Kitts*
Hawai’i Pacific University
Abstract
The disconnection between contemporary understandings and ancient experiences of “religion,“
“theology,” and the “supernatural” has plagued attempts to understand Homeric imagination
for more than a century. The chasm might be measured by judgments that the theomachy of
Iliad 20 and 21, for instance, must be “bad art,” “black comedy,” or represents a “comic agon”
imitative of Near Eastern creation stories. In other words, it is not to be taken seriously. This
paper defends religious sensibilities in the Iliad. It summarizes the problems of uncovering these
sensibilities with an ear toward some basic issues in hermeneutics: the difficulties posed by the
poem’s diachronic development, conceivably over centuries, but more importantly difficulties
internal to the poem, such as fickle Muses and the world they open for us. Finally, the tools
of poetic extension and catachresis help to grasp the poem’s sophistication in its representations
of divine violence.
A glance at the range of scholarly impressions of Homeric religion reveals a persistent tendency
to disregard it, on the one hand, along with an occasional tendency to revere it, on the other.1
Disregarders construe Homeric religion as a capricious affair tangential to the appeal of the Iliad,
whose real drama is argued to revolve around distinct human personalities struggling with fate:
wrathful Achilles, tragic Patroklos, noble Hector, wretched Priam, weak Agamemnon, wise
Nestor, clever Odysseus, and so on. For some Homeric religion is a literary artifice2, or at worst,
a curious amalgam of Greek rationality and savage superstition.3 Defenders of Homeric religion
counter with perceptive readings of divine dynamics in the plot4 and applause for the Homeric
spirit.5 Naturally, criticism hinges on approach.6 As Guthrie noted over half a century ago, most
scholars of religion do not read Homeric Greek, whereas most Homerists do not read religion
(1950:23–26), or hermeneutics. Happily, that is changing.
This essay aims to provide a short overview of the Iliad’s religious sensibilities, at three
successively deepening levels of analysis. The first level is historical: the first section sketches the
poem’s performance contexts and internal religious suppositions. The second is narratological:
this section explores musical artifice and the focalization of various perspectives on the gods
within the poem, as well as the likely perceptions of the audience outside of it. The third level
is poetic: it examines the representations of gods in battle and the compositional techniques
which evoke the suspension of disbelief. Poetic extension and catachresis are argued to invite
perceptions that elude linguistic categorization and immerse an audience in the poetic reality of
divine violence. This essay is built on the supposition that conceptual tools restricted to rituals,
doctrine, group dynamics, or historical studies are too blunt for grasping religious sensibilities in
the Iliad. Poetic tools, on the other hand, reach beyond the text into its imaginative sources.
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Performance Contexts and Internal Religious Suppositions
Understanding the Homeric poems is complicated, first, by their age. Both epics are arguably as
old as the Bronze Age (Latacz 2004), possibly stemming from unwritten Mycenaean praise
songs (Ford 1997) and containing formulae reaching deeply into the Indo-European nebulae
(Watkins 1978, Nagy 1990a:7–35) or, alternatively, stemming from lays composed in the Greek
colonies of Asia Minor during the so-called Dark Age and borrowing themes from earlier epics
further east (S. Morris 1997, Bryce 2008, Kitts 2013b). Whatever the initial sources, the epics
are thought to have matured into lengthy oral poems performed in recitative registers
(Nagy 1990b:41, Ford 1997:401), a distinct metrical style (dactylic hexameter), and a
specialized art–language with formulaic sequencing and traditional themes (Ford 1997,
Nagy 1990b:17–51). Since Snodgrass (1980:11–48), we have dated the crystallization
of these poems to the 8th century BCE, a watershed for a Panhellenic identity fostered
by rising populations and intensified networks of communication and trade among
emerging city-states all around the Mediterranean Sea.7 Shared institutions such as the
Delphic oracle, Olympian games, and poetry competitions enhanced this Panhellenic
identity,8 variegated locally by the adoption of eponymous heroes by some city-states.9
Panhellenic poetic and athletic competitions were conceived as devotional rituals for the
gods (Malkin 2003:61–63, Heiden 1997:232).
The exterior context is thus culturally and historically complex, which makes all the more
astonishing the seeming unity of the poems in the matter of pantheon and cultural traditions,
for Achaians, Trojans, and allies alike. From an internal perspective, the Iliad is overwhelmingly
religious. It is constructed around institutions supported by gods, the actions, personalities, and
constraints on these gods, and the restrictions on human autonomy imposed by divinely
authorized fate.
INSTITUTIONS
The institutions supported by gods typically include marked speech acts (prayers, curses,
invocations of Muses) and deeply rooted cultural conventions such as hospitality, honor for
suppliants, sacrifice, and oath-making, all of which stem directly or indirectly from the oikos,
that is, the home and the hearth, the heart of the Homeric social unit. The cultural depth of
these institutions is supported by formalized ritual scenes hallowed by religious formulae,
relatively fixed behavioral sequences, and remote etiologies, sometimes shared with the Near
East (Kitts 2011). Divinely decreed institutions and the emotions which stem from them are
deemed essentially civilizing, designed to soften the wild hearts of men – so scold Nestor and
Apollo at points of crisis (9.63–6410; 24.44–4511).
Gods too honor these institutions, mostly. For instance, Zeus swears an unretractable oath to
Thetis that he will manipulate the war so that the bruised dignity of Achilles will be assuaged
(1.505–1.527), and Hephaestus shows sympathetic hospitality to Thetis as he prepares Achilles’
immortal armor (18.389ff). Yet, gods may also subvert those institutions when humans try to
honor them. For instance, Aphrodite ignores the Trojan-Achaian truce, constructed by oath,
when she plucks Paris from the battlefield and deposits him at the bed of Helen (3.373–382),
and Zeus and Athene make Trojan Pandaros shoot the first arrow to violate the same truce
(4.92–104). Of course, these subversions have their reasons.
GODS
AND THEIR
CONSTRAINTS
Subversions of divinely authorized conventions usually serve the ultimate plan of Zeus, and
also of fate (aisa). Fate is deeply etched into the scheme of events, whether stemming from
Zeus or from a deeper source. Literarily, it is supported by contrafactuals throughout the
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poem – “And now [Menelaus] would have dragged [Paris] and won unending kudos, had
not Aphrodite, daughter of Zeus, at once noticed . . .” (3.373–374); “At that point the
Argives would have made their return beyond fate, had not Hera instructed Athene . . .”
(2.155–156); and “now [Hector] would have dragged the corpse and won unending fame,
had not swift footed Iris come rushing from Olympus . . .” (18.165–166). Occasionally the
force of fate is captured in expressions of divine regret: Zeus would like to save his son
Sarpedon from the murderous hands of Patroklos, but to avoid disturbing fate and
unleashing a clash of meddling parent-gods, must settle for spiriting away the corpse and
weeping down divine tears of blood (16.459–461).
Those who deny religious themes in the Iliad miss the fact that the constraints of fate and the
unsurpassable will of Zeus pervade nearly every critical juncture of the action.12 This is twice
illustrated by the tipping of fateful golden scales (at 8.69–72, 22.249), but clear elsewhere
too. The wrath of Achilles is said to fulfill the master plan of Zeus in the fifth verse (1.5), the
wrath of Apollo initiates the plan soon after (1.8–10), then Hera plants the thought in the mind
of Achilles to call the assembly (1.55) from which the quarrel begins; Athene stops Achilles from
killing Agamemnon right then and there (1.194ff); later Zeus and Hera conspire that the
Achaian-Trojan truce be violated and the war resume (4.60–80), and so on. Along the way,
auspicious portents signal meaningful destiny: on the third morning Zeus sends Eris to raise
a mighty shout among the Achaians and to make war seem sweeter than returning home
(11.3–15); then he sends down tears wet with blood from the aether, because he is about to send
many mighty heads to Hades (11.53–55); later he extends terrible moil and toil over fallen
Patroklos for an entire day (16.400–401), to honor him, and Athene is sent as a purple cloud
to stir up strife over his body (17.544–552). The mingling of divine forces in battle is
constant: Ares, along with queenly Enyo (battle personified) and Kudoimos (the din of battle),
leads the Trojans, flitting one moment in front, one moment behind Hector (5.590–595);
Apollo too leads the Trojan hosts (15.306–311); while Poseidon (14.383–387) and Athene
(20.94–98) similarly mingle with the Achaian.13
Notwithstanding occasional attempts to thwart the will of Zeus by Poseidon and Hera, or
just plain human folly see note 7, the cosmic plan and its effects are overwhelming in the
Iliad, which is one reason why Heiden (1997), Lefkowitz (2003), and Turkeltaub (2007) decry
scholarly tendencies to disregard the poem’s deep religious sentiment. Even as poetic devices,
the gods and fate must have resonated with ancient audiences and borne some similarities to
notions they entertained in their own lives. Otherwise the audience would have seen the
poetic action, with gods intervening in every aspect of it, as simply comic.
It is not comic. This is because divine engagement provides more than a driver for action;
it provides perspective. The songs emanate from Olympus, in part because the Muses
emanate from there, but also because much of the action is focalized through the hearts
and minds of divine spectators,14 who simultaneously participate in the action. The
Patrocleia, for instance, is focalized through the sorrowful eyes of Zeus (Heiden 1997:226),
who oversees the last moments of both Sarpedon and Patroklos. His grief is symbolized not
only by his own tears and anguish but poetically extends also into the anguish of Sarpedon’s
fellow Lycians and Trojans, and Patroklos’ Achaians, as well as into the grieving immortal
horses, whose teary manes trail in the dust. Zeus pities them (17.426–447), and so do we,
because we hear the Patrocleia from his perspective. The Muses call Patroklos a fool
(nήpiοB, 16.686) – he is yet another uncomprehending mortal. But they address him
in second person (16.692–693), a sign of endearment, before he is about to die. This
emotionally wrenching quality of the Iliad, of course, makes it great art. As Ricoeur would
say, the text opens its world for us and we unite it with our own (1973), as presumably did
ancient audiences too.
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HUMAN AUTONOMY?
Part of the beauty of the Iliad is that, fate and the will of Zeus notwithstanding, human
autonomy is never completely stripped of meaning, even when the result of any one human
decision is predetermined. Achilles makes a sincere choice to obey Athene when she discourages
him from killing Agamemnon in Book 1. We, the audience, know the cruelty in her promise
of three times the riches to come, given the sacrifice of Patroklos which ultimately will impel
Achilles to fight, win those riches, and then face death. When forced to reckon with this
deceit and the terrible irony in the way Zeus fulfilled his mother’s wish (that the Achaians
pay dearly for dishonoring her son), Achilles blames himself. He is culpable for the loss of
Patroklos and the many others subdued by godlike Hector while he was away
(18.102–103). He does not at that point rail against the gods. Similarly, Hector, cruelly
misled by a disguised Athene in his final confrontation with Achilles, ultimately stands up
to fight, only to learn that his brother was not in fact there with a helpful spear. Hector
immediately grasps that he was tricked by Athene and that the gods are calling his death
(22.297–299), but he heroically faces his fate, at least briefly (22.303–305).
In the end, of course, Achilles does lament the unfairness of it all, speaking to Priam on
behalf of us all: “So the gods have woven it so that wretched mortals live in grief, while they
themselves are uncaring” (24.525–526). And yet, we know that Zeus does care: “[Mortals] are
a concern to me, though they perish” (20.21). It is this pendulum of care and its seeming
absence that underpins the emotionality of the Iliad, from the introduction of myriad cares
imposed upon the mighty Achaian souls sent to Hades (1.2–3) to Zeus’ tears of blood
(11.53–55, 16.459–461) to the implicit care for Hector’s white bones and the sema poured around
them (24.799–801) at the very end.15 The Muses poetically offer divine and human care as some
small compensation for the lack of human autonomy and for the constraints of fate.
Musical Artifice and Focalization on Gods
According to the poem, these perspectives on fate and its constraints do not come to us in a
direct way. It is true that, as a knowing audience, we are privy to the divine machinery from
the fifth verse: it is all “to fulfill the plan of Zeus.” But what we learn is mediated by the Muses
and singers. Famous to Hesiod as whimsical reporters of both truths and lies (Th.27–28), the
Muses in the Iliad are said to see truth, whereas singers hear and report but do not see or know
it (2.484–486) – a visual-aural contrast which persists in remarks about truth and tales in both
epics (e.g., 20.202–204, Od. 4.831, Od. 8.491).16 So how are these indirect reports of singers
to be fully trusted? Can we be sure that the reported truths are not musical sleights of hand?
According to Heiden, the point of hearing Homeric singers was never actually about
grasping truth but rather about releasing ourselves to enchantment (1997:222). In the
en
Odyssey, singer Phemios, like the Muses, knows enchantments of mortals (brοt ω
θelktήria, Od. 1.337), and singer Demodocus conjures his story so vividly that he is deemed
divinely inspired (8.499). Making it seem real is an art, Demodocus sings “as if he were truly
there, or got it from someone else who was” (Od. 8.491).
To complicate our grasp of this musical artifice, the Muses conjure the story differently for
the various audiences whose reactions are reported within the poems. On the one hand,
songs17 are known to exalt the enduring fame (klέοB) of gods and men (Od. 1.338) and to
please them both.18 In the Iliad, the pleasing nature of song is illustrated when Achilles pleases
his spirit with songs of the glorious deeds of men (9.186–189), when a boy on Achilles’ shield
sings a fine lay of Linos, while his companions dance, stamp in beat, and shout (18.570–572),
and when the Achaians sing paeans to appease Apollo in the first book (1.472). We remember
that songs performed at panhellenic festivals were ostensibly sacred offerings, gifts of piety to
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the gods (Heiden 1997). But in the Odyssey, kleos-proclaiming songs about Troy profoundly
disturb Penelope and Odysseus (Od.1.335–346, 8.521–536). They cannot bear to hear,
presumably because they are too close to the subject. In contrast, the next generation of
audiences (Ithacan suitors too young to have fought at Troy; Phaeacian sailors who prefer
dance to battle) delight in these songs.19 Responses within the poems are thus layered,
pending generations and involvement with the events captured in the songs.
Trusting the Muses will always require a leap of faith because of the gulf between the
worlds of heroes and their audiences. We hear repeatedly that mythical heroes enjoyed a
now-lost proximity to the gods and were capable of superhuman feats inconceivable for
“the sort of mortals there are now” (Nestor (1.271–272), Diomedes (5.302–304), Ajax
Telemonios (12.381–385), Hector (12.449–451), Aineas (20.285–287)). Occasionally, we
hear of even mightier generations, such as Heracles (19.113–137) and Poseidon’s Siamese
twin sons who once fought Nestor (11.709–710, 750–52).20 Panhellenic audiences
presumably experienced some synchronicity between their world and the bygone world
of these heroes, but the epic’s spell was effective in part because there was a gulf. That gulf
mandates the suspension of disbelief, which in turn enables audiences to submit to enchantment
by singers inspired by Muses.
That gulf extends to us, of course. As an audience, we no longer experience directly a
proximity to the gods and we no longer hoist boulders which are impossibly large. But what
we lose in virtual reality, we gain in artistic perspective. As Gadamer put it, we withdraw into
esthetic judgment “when we are no longer open to the immediate claim of that which grasps
us” (1976: 5). We listen for art. Hence the adage, “the gods spun ruin for men so there would
be song for those who came after” (Od. 8.579–580).
Gods in Battle, Poetic Extension, and Catachresis
That artistic perspective is also a theological perspective – not a theological argument, but a
vision. There is a certain irony to this. Estranged from the world of heroes and yet captivated
by the song, we are granted continuously visions of gods in action, visions which most heroes
never see and special heroes only rarely.21 For instance, Achilles’ new shield is too dazzling for
mortal eyes within the poem (19.14–17), but ours behold Eris/Strife and Kudoimos/Din of
Battle consorting together, and destructive Ker/death, holding a newly wounded man, an
unwounded man, and dragging a dead man through the melee by the foot. Around her
shoulders, she wore a garment stained with human blood (18.535–538). In the same scene, Ares
and Athene, conspicuously beautiful, enormous, and clad with weapons and gold, lead away
from harm the fleeing people, who are somewhat lesser in stature (ύpοlίzon) (8.516–519).
Off the shield, mortal vision is shrouded by mist (
awθύB); so we are told when Athene removes
that of Diomedes (5.127–128) so that he may witness gods in battle.22 The Muses remove it
for us. The audience sees gods modulating their shapes and voices to engage with heroes
(Clay 1974), darting about with the speed of a man’s thought (15.80–83) or as comets
(4.75–78).23 Along with the Muses, we enjoy an omniscient view of these events.
As for the heroes within the poem, arguments have been made that only first generation
children of gods actually recognize gods face to face (Turkeltaub 2007, Pucci 2002), but this
does not preclude other generations from experiencing the presence of the gods. This happens
when, for instance, Poseidon moves out screaming as loud as nine or ten thousand men entering
warlike strife with Ares and instills great strength into each heart of the Achaians (14.148–152).
Then, do any warriors actually see Apollo when he leads was there initially. Hector and the
Trojans, wearing a cloud over his shoulders and holding the panic-inducing aegis
(15.306–310)? Yet, the fray was terrible, especially when, looking under his brows, Apollo
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shook the aegis and screamed terribly, bewitching the hearts in the Danaan chests, so they
forgot their courage and ran. That is how Apollo bound kudos to Hector and the Trojans
on that day (15.320–327).
It used to be argued that these extraordinary scenes featuring gods in battle were, politely,
“thought processes in Homer which do not coincide with our own” (Dietrich 1983:59).24
Today, however, we are less inclined to dismiss ancient people’s experiences as quite so
foreign,25 despite our apparent hermeneutic gulf, and considering too the sociotheological
approach to religion, which takes seriously the epistēmē, as Foucault called it, of religious
actors.26 However much our own epistēmē may differ, we may enlist two tools to help bridge
the perceptions of Homer’s audience and our own. These are poetic extension and catachresis,
which are related.
Poetic extension is felt in the Iliad when emotions or experiences transcend articulate
speech and must be insinuated through events. So, for instance, Achilles’ wordless grief upon
discovering the death of Patroklos in Book 18 is extended into his self-laceration, hair tearing,
and facial disfigurement to the screaming, chest-pounding, and collapsing of the captive
women, all the way to the wailing and breast-pounding of the Nereids who erupt from the
sea onto the beach among the Myrmidons. For a full 59 verses (18.22–81), the wordless grief
of Achilles is poetically extended, right through the keening sea creatures. Elaine Scarry taught
us that extreme pain may elude articulation in forms other than wordless screams or figurative
analogy (1987). In the poem, psychological pain is poetically configured through Achilles’
actions and the anguish of those surrounding him.
But the most remarkable form of poetic extension in the Iliad is catachresis, defined as
the mixing of metaphors and personalization of objects and contexts, and ultimately the
dissemination of meanings by poetic connotation. Rather than evidence of disowned emotions
(per Snell (1982), for instance), or just lazy figuration, catachresis is a poetic strategy to make
comprehensible dimensions of experience which elude other forms of discourse, as Aristotle
recognized (Holmes 2007:59). We already know that Achilles is distressed, but when that
emotion is extended into his spear, described as pikra, “bitter, aggrieved” (22.206), yearning “to
sate itself on human flesh” (21.167–168), we grasp his injury in a way that becomes virtual.
The imagination evoked by catachresis bends categories of perception and reaches into a preverbal
understanding for which spears, in this case, are phenomenological extensions of the self.
Catachresis and poetic extension are apt explanations for how it can be that, as early as the
first day of battle, distressing animus between the Trojans and Achaians is figured as Ares
rousing one side, Athene the other, and Terror, Fear, and insatiably desirous Eris/Strife,
planting her head in the sky and striding over the earth, increasing the groaning of men
(4.439–445). Another example might be the imminent cholos and mēnis (anger and fury) of
Ares, which are figured as Ares’ horses Terror and Panic, about to descend into battle along
with the god who wants to avenge his mortal son (15.119–122). Rather than exterior forces
acting upon characters, these poetic extensions should be understood as sensory expansions of
the characters’ experiences into the vaster poetic world. The effect is predicated on the
audience’s suspension of disbelief.
But the outstanding example of poetic extension is the theomachy stretched over Books
20 and 21. There, Achilles reenters battle and the frenzy is so extended into the cosmos that
divinities dominate it. Zeus releases the gods to fight, Eris arises, Athene and Ares scream
across the plain, and the great gods arouse human opponents to break out in heavy strife
(20.48–55). Dissolution of the gulf between human and divine worlds seems complete when
Zeus thunders from above, Poseidon shakes the earth and mountains, the streams and human
cities tremble, and Hades leaps in fear lest the world break open and the houses of the dead
be exposed (20.55–56). Book 21 continues the chaos and sound effects in parallel spheres,
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human and divine. “Trojans fell in[to the river] with a great clatter, and the steep streams
brayed,/the river banks shrieked loudly back and forth, while [Trojan victims] swam here
and there with a cry,/being rolled around in the eddies” (21.9–11); “Then the gods . . . fell
together with a great clatter, the wide earth brayed./The great heavens resounded back and
forth, and Zeus heard./sitting on Olympus, and he laughed his heart/in delight, when he saw
the gods coming together in strife” (21.387–390). The parallel clattering, braying, and
resounding worlds dissolve into a surreal unity when Achilles slays so many Trojans that
the river god pursues him roaring, spewing black foam, logs, pebbles, and mud, hoping that
Achilles will be buried in slime and his bones never recovered (21.305–321). The surreal imagery
and sound effects connote sensuous immersion in an unstable world on the brink of destruction, a
theme frequent in war literature from Homer through the Bible into our own day.
We needn’t conclude from passages like these that the Iliad reflects such an excess of figuration
that the poetic intention is comic (as some have argued), despite the sinister laugh of Zeus.27
Instead, we may presume that the ancient poetic strategy of catachresis accomplished for
Homer what it accomplishes for perceptive audiences today, which is to provide intuitions of
experiences which collapse categories in language. In this era of trauma studies and violent
imaginaries, we are increasingly aware that some experiences, such as terror, pain, and the
uncanny, intrude into awareness at a level beneath discursive signification.28 By these
god-in-battle scenes, the Homeric Muses (or their impersonators) elicited intuitions of the
cosmic disequilibrium discharged by extraordinary violence.
Conclusion
The Iliad is a war poem thoroughly permeated with religious elements, from sacred institutions
to divinely decreed fate to heightened experiences of battle figured as divine engagements.
Musical artifice opens up a world of divine epiphanies known to selected heroes and to us,
its power predicated on our willing suspension of disbelief. Tools such as catachresis and poetic
extension help us to grasp the Iliad’s theomachies not as bad art or as a perversion of lofty
religious experience, but rather as figuring the way that Terror, Strife, and the Din of Combat
may march through our experiences, then and still.
Short Biography
Margo Kitts is a professor of religious studies and east-west classical studies at the Hawai’i Pacific
University in Honolulu. She writes on religion and violence and on ancient Mediterranean and
Near Eastern literature. See http://www.hpu.edu/CHSS/Arts_Humanities/Directory/Kitts.html.
Notes
*
Correspondence address: Margo Kitts, Humanities, Hawai’i Pacific University. E-mail: mkitts@hpu.edu
1
All translations herein are by the author.
See, e.g., Calhoun 1939, Dietrich 1983, Pucci 2002, Louden 2006.
3
See, e.g., Vico (2002:85, 108–109), and Calhoun 1937:11–12 (“the effects range from the comic, vulgar and
ridiculous to the sublime”).
4
See, e.g., Whitman 1965, Heiden 1997, Lateiner 2002,Lefkowitz 2003, Turkeltaub 2007.
5
See, e.g., Nietzsche (1996 (1872)), Harrison (1962 (1927)), Murray 1955.
6
see, e.g., Burkert 1985:1–7
7
Alternatively, the poems continued to evolve beyond Classical times (Nagy 1990b).
8
See, e.g., I. Morris (2005).
2
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9
See Coldstream (2003:341–413), Snodgrass (1980: 38), Antonaccio (1995), Nagy (1990), Lateiner (2002), Guthlein
(2008) and Seaford (1994) for analyses of different aspects of eponymous heroes and hero cult.
10
“Without clan, without law, and without hearth is he who loves chilling civil strife.” See discussion in Kitts
2005:57–61.
11
“So Achilles destroys pity, and has no shame, which hurts men but also helps them.”
12
As noted by Heiden (1997:224–225). Some events, however, are due simply to blind human folly, e.g. Agamemnon’s
at 2.73ff.
13
Poseidon runs in front of the troops at 13.345–355, 13.434–445, 13.554–556, 13.563–564, 14.384–401, Ares at
5.590–595, Apollo at 15.306–311, Athene 20.94–98, even Hector, resembling Zeus, does so at 11.61–64.
14
Pucci touches upon these various spectator roles (2002).
15
On the overwhelming theme of care and lack of care in the Iliad, see M. Lynn-George (1996).
16
( ς τέ που α τ ς παρε ν λλου κούσας).
17
See Ford (1997) for the complications in direct versus indirect reporting of stories within the Iliad. On an extended
theme, Turkeltaub discusses the Homeric association of vision with life and loss of it with death (2007:51, note 2).
18
And of course there are numerous types of song in evidence. See Ford (1997).
19
See discussion in Ford (1997:413-414).
20
Although gods may earn kleos by deeds as well (e.g. 7.451–453).
21
The artwork for the twins is discussed in Snodgrass, (1997). References to bygone generations and their stories are
discussed by Mackie (2008).
22
Turkeltaub grades the stature of heroes by how they perceive theophanies (2007).
23
And Poseidon pours a temporary mist over the eyes of Achilles, while Aeneas is whisked away (20.321).
24
Dietrich has a good list of theophanies (1983).
25
Notice that Biblical and Near Eastern allusions to a Chaoskampf, wherein cosmic powers collide on earth, are never
dismissed as comic (Fishbane 2003, Day 1985, Ortlund 2010, Noegel 2007, Wyatt 2005, Kitts 2013b), even when the
biblical god scoffs would be foes (Ps. 2.4–6), or Leviathan laughs at the lance which tries to kill him (Job 41). Rather,
these show sinister amusement. Likewise, the frivolousness of goddesses boxing each other’s ears and boasting might
be compared with the frivolous wager of YHWH with Satan at the trial of Job. The contest is sport, except to Job,
who doesn’t die but wants to (Job 3). In short, to expect “religious” narratives to reflect something lofty and just is to
fail to notice how persistent is divine indifference to human suffering in religious sensibilities.
26
On these elusive experiences consequent to trauma or terror, see Crapanzano (2004: 91)a and Strathern and Stewart
(2006: 7, 13). For a summary of literary approaches to religious violence, see Kitts 2013a).
27
As did Dodds (1951:14).
28
See especially Cairns (2003: 17, 24).
29
See Juergensmeyer and Sheikh, 2013.
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