The epics that are preserved under the name of ‘‘Homer’’ were composed, by one or two brilliant poets, in the late eighth or early seventh century bce. Virtually nothing can be found in them that reflects objects or conditions from later than the first half of the seventh century. Hesiod, who presents himself with a distinct persona, probably is slightly younger than Homer. In contrast to the latter’s heroic and narrative epic, his is didactic, representing a different social and economic perspective. For all non-historical aspects I refer the reader to Chapters 21, 22, and 23, by Edwards, Slatkin, and Nelson. I will focus here on Homer and discuss three historical issues: the historicity of the event (the Trojan War) in which the Iliad is embedded, the historical nature of the society that is described in Homer’s epics and forms the background to heroic action, and the poet’s function as an educator and ‘‘political thinker.’’ I should warn the reader that all these issues are intensely controversial.
Later generations criticized certain aspects of Homer’s epics, most notably his portrait of the gods and their interaction with humans. But they had no doubt that the Trojan War was historical. Thucydides applied to it his argument from probability to demonstrate that it had been minor in comparison to the great war he was going to describe (1. 9-11), and eminent scholars competed in dating it correctly (Burkert 1995). This view remained prevalent even in modern scholarship (Cobet 2003). It received a boost more than a century ago when Schliemann excavated the magnificent ruins of Mycenae and Troy and found much that seemed to confirm Homer (see Chapter 9, by Sherratt). Those who disagreed were in a difficult position (Finley 1977: 10), even though the discrepancies between Homer’s world and that unearthed by the archaeologists’ spades seemed all too obvious. The decipherment of Linear B in the 1950s further enhanced the differences (Finley 1982: chs. 12-13). Moreover, earlier in the century Millman Parry’s and Albert Lord’s studies of oral epic song, conducted in then-Yugoslavia where it was still alive, made it possible to recognize that the Greek epics too stood in a long tradition of oral song composed in performance (Lord 2000; see also Chapter 13, by J. Foley). All this has great significance for how we assess the tradition about the Trojan War and the historicity of ‘‘epic society.’’
Homer and the Trojan War
Homer’s epics presuppose a great and long war that was fought, in a distant heroic age, between a coalition of Greek leaders with their followers (variously called Achaeans, Danaans, and Argives), led by Agamemnon, lord of Mycenae, and the city of Troy or Ilion across the Aegean, which was defended by the Trojans and many eastern allies. This was virtually an ancient world war between a panhellenic coalition and a pan-eastern alliance. It broke out because Paris (or Alexandros) of Troy stole from the home of Menelaus of Sparta many valuable objects and his wife, beautiful Helen - and because the Trojans refused to return woman and treasures, when a Greek embassy demanded it. The war ended with the destruction of Troy and the sad homecoming of many of the leaders, most especially of the hero of the Odyssey. Most of this story was featured in other epics (see Chapter 24, by Burgess). The Iliad itself focuses on an episode played out during a few days in the tenth year but incorporates much of the rest through flashbacks and anticipation (see Chapter 21, by Edwards).
The main question that has fascinated laymen and scholars alike is whether this story originated in a real, historical war in which Troy was destroyed by Mycenaean Greeks. A direct answer to this question is impossible because conclusive evidence that is at least near-contemporaneous with the supposed event is lacking. Still, Manfred Korfmann, whose new excavations in and near Troy have yielded impressive results, and Joachim Latacz, an eminent Homerist collaborating with Korfmann, claim that sufficient circumstantial evidence now exists to allow a positive answer. They have presented their arguments (based on archaeological finds in Troy and elsewhere, Egyptian and Hittite sources mentioning names of persons, places, and peoples perhaps identical with those mentioned in the Iliad, new Linear B tablets found in Thebes, the Bronze Age origin of Greek epic, and the specific nature of hexametric song, among others) in articles (including Korfmann 1998, 2002), a book (Latacz 2001), and an exhibition (Troia 2001; Behr et al. 2003).
Although Korfmann and Latacz are not alone (see, e. g., Starke 1997; Niemeier 1999), some of their claims have prompted an intense, at times heated, public debate and met with serious opposition (for summaries, see Cobet and Gehrke 2002; Heimlich 2002; for detailed discussion, Ulf 2003a). Upon close inspection, the arguments supporting the historicity of the Iliadic Trojan War still prove far from conclusive (see also Raaflaub 1998b; Thebes tablets, Palaima 2004). True, Troy was destroyed several times, including twice in the final phase of the Bronze Age, but the destroyers remain unidentified. Mycenaean pottery proves trade and nothing more (Hertel 2001). Name and geographical identifications are still controversial. Egyptian inscriptions list a kingdom of Danaya and Hittite tablets mention one of Ahhiyawa, but so far no explicit record of a war between Ahhiyawa (whose location is still contested: Benzi 2002) and Troy survives in Hittite sources. The one conflict about Wilusa (Ilion?) mentioned there pitted the Hittite king against his Ahhiyawan counterpart and was apparently diplomatic rather than military.
Latacz proposes that the ‘‘straitjacket’’ of the hexameter uniquely enabled Greek epic song to preserve historical data over many centuries, but this suggestion too is less than compelling. All that we know about the nature of oral tradition and orally transmitted song speaks strongly against it. As A. T. Hatto observes (1980: 2.207-12), fossilized words and phrases (often not even understood anymore) survive in many epic traditions; they lend authority to the story but are unable to prevent or delay the processes of transformation typical of all oral transmission. Oral tradition that is not tied to metric song may be less relevant here but what anthropologists have to say on this should at least be noted (Vansina 1985; Ungern-Sternberg and Reinau 1988). Three points seem especially important for our present purpose.
The first concerns conclusions suggested by heroic epic in other cultures (see section 3). Oral traditions and oral song underlying great heroic epics often originate under the impression of a great historical event in the distant past and one or several remarkable individuals. Yet over time, events can be combined arbitrarily and reinterpreted so profoundly as to produce a story that bears very little, if any, resemblance to the original event(s). As a result, without independent historical evidence, the latter cannot be reconstructed, even in its most elementary outline, from the extant epic. The epic heroes are reinterpreted as well and often have vastly different origins that may or may not be related to the original story. Greek epic too functioned as a magnet, attracting and combining figures from various myths and legends (Hampl 1975). Despite subjective and short-term conservatism, over time oral epic undergoes constant change, adaptation, and reinterpretation, in order to remain timely and topical, and a leveling process from the specific and individual toward the typical and universal. The perspective of the last and extant version is that of the final poet’s society, which is often marked by deep and strongly contested changes in social values and structures.
The second point is based on a completely different line of argument, presented impressively by Barbara Patzek (1992). Her observations concern the conditions of mythopoiesis, the emergence and role of historical memory, and of historical consciousness. I cannot discuss these aspects here in detail (for a summary, see Raaflaub 1998b: 398-401). On the basis of such considerations it seems perfectly possible that the Trojan War story could have emerged or at least been shaped into its extant form, in a time span of a few generations before the great poet(s) who created the epics we have.
The third point concerns the fact that the Greek world underwent two profound and comprehensive processes of transformation between the putative historical event (a Trojan War in the Bronze Age) and its Iliadic elaboration. These must have deeply influenced the subject matter (concerning both the event and epic society) and outlook of heroic song (Raaflaub 1998b: 397-8). One was the destruction of Mycenaean palace society at the end of the Bronze Age and the subsequent gradual decline of Greece into the much more modest and restricted conditions of the ‘‘Dark Ages,’’ in which local and regional concerns and perspectives largely replaced Aegean and Mediterranean ones. The other is the chain of reverse changes that began in the tenth century, accelerated greatly in the eighth, and created the world of archaic Greece, with a widening of horizons, the emergence of poleis and panhellenism, widespread emigration, and massively increased social mobility. By the eighth century, close to Homer’s time, a panhellenic perspective (attested in panhellenic sanctuaries, games, and poetry) became possible (again?). In many ways, the extant epics reflect the worldview of precisely this time.
Overall, then, it would not seem implausible, whatever traditions survived from the Bronze Age and however old Greek epic song may have been, that the great war celebrated by the singers became precisely a war between Troy and Greeks under Mycenaean leadership for no other reason than that the giant ruins of Troy and Mycenae were the most magnificent remains of a heroic age for which only Homer’s recent ancestors had developed a fascination (Hampl 1975; Patzek 1992; Hertel 2003: 185-218). In the epics themselves, songs performed by bards consistently focus on very recent events (the end and aftermath of the Trojan War: Od. 1.325-7; 8.73-82, 485-520); even stories told by heroes that might have provided the subject matter for song extend no further back than one generation (Il. 9.529-99, 11.669-761; and think of Odysseus’ own story, Od. Books 9-12), and we hear explicitly that audiences always want to hear the newest songs ( Od. 1.350-2; on the dynamics of epic performance, see Chapter 4, by Jensen).
Like much of the background matter embedded in the heroic story (below), this seems to suggest the possibility of a fairly rapid turnover in epic subject matters. By contrast, the comparative evidence of German, French, and Serbo-Croatian epics supports the assumption that some distant historical event lies at the core of the Trojan War tradition. Yet, as long as we lack explicit independent evidence confirming the destruction of Troy by ‘‘Achaeans’’ and the latter’s identity as Mycenaean Greeks, we cannot identify this core. We can certainly not reconstruct it from the epics, and current archaeological as well as textual evidence is insufficient to provide specific clues. In outlook and, as we shall see, in the social conditions they depict, the extant epics reflect the time of their creation at the beginning of the Archaic Age.
Homer and “epic society”
Homer places the society he describes in his epics in a distant, ‘‘heroic’’ past, in which men were stronger and more enduring and in which humans freely communicated with the gods. Precisely because the epics contain so much potentially valuable information about social and political structures, conditions, and relationships, scholars have tried repeatedly to locate this society in time and place: in the Bronze Age, the Dark Ages, and in Homer’s own time. Others have resisted such temptations, focused on contradictions and inconsistencies, fantasy and exaggeration, and concluded, as Cartledge puts it, ‘‘that Homer’s fictive universe remains immortal precisely because it never existed as such outside the poet’s or poets’ fertile imagination(s), in much the same way as Homeric language was a Kunstsprache never actually spoken outside the context of an epic recital’’ (2001: 157).
Again, the historian faces the problem that no independent contemporaneous evidence survives. Hesiod emphasizes the concerns of a farming population that needs to work hard to survive at or near the subsistence level. He is suspicious of the agora and the polis’ leaders and judges, and worries about justice and good neighborhood relations rather than martial glory, status, honor, and elite interactions. The society he depicts complements Homer’s rather than reduplicating it (Millett 1984; Tandy and Neale 1996). The lyric poets reflect a later stage in social and political development. Hence we cannot but rely on the epics themselves, with occasional assistence by archaeology (Raaflaub 1991). Caution and clear methodological principles are thus indispensable.
One principle is to realize that the picture does contain heterogeneous elements and to understand their function. Bronze Age, Dark Age, and non-Greek items are undeniable but scattered and easily identifiable as such. Elements of fantasy and exaggeration abound but they too are easily recognizable. Together, they all serve the purpose of ‘‘epic distancing’’ and creating the impression of a long-past, heroic society. A second principle is to pay attention to issues that are not emphasized but mentioned in passing or in etiological stories. Such issues throw light on what poet and audience took for granted. A third principle is to understand and respect the singer’s narrative technique and to try to sense how the audience would have reacted to the story they were told. A fourth principle is to apply, with all due caution, anthropological models that may elucidate specific issues that are no longer understandable to us. Such principles help us ‘‘lift off’’ heroic elements that are important to the poet’s concept of a heroic society but do not otherwise distort the social picture, and to reconstruct much that is crucial in and for epic society. Examples include the role of the polis or of council and assembly, the way foreign relations are conducted, or the nature of wars, fighting tactics, and even the psychological impact of battle on those fighting in it (Raaflaub 1998a, forthcoming with examples and bibliog.).
In fact, despite the Iliad’s heroic flavor, gigantic dimensions, and panhellenic aspirations, in its practical details the poet’s description of the Trojan War combines two patterns that were much more modest and thoroughly familiar to his audiences (Raaflaub 1997b). One, the retaliatory raiding expedition by sea was common throughout the Dark Ages, continued long thereafter, and recurs frequently in both epics. The other emerged in the Greek world toward the end of the eighth century: a war between neighboring poleis (often about the control of contested territory); this motif occurs repeatedly in the Iliad.
Elaborating on pathbreaking earlier work by Moses Finley (1977), several scholars have since then built a strong case supporting the view that the epic description of the social background to heroic actions and events is sufficiently consistent to be taken as reflecting either the poet’s own time or, since the poet makes a noticeable effort to avoid recent innovations (such as writing), a slightly earlier period that was still fully accessible to living memory in the poet’s time (Ulf 1990; van Wees 1992; Raaflaub 1997a, 1998a with bibliog.; Donlan 1999). Moreover, direct lines of development lead from the structures and institutions of epic society to those attested in the mid - to late-seventh century in many parts of Greece (Raaflaub 1993). As we shall see, these conclusions find confirmation in later epics, whose social background consistently matches conditions closely familiar to poet and audiences and thus close in time to their own.
Homer, political thought, and the poet’s role as educator
Yet another aspect that illuminates the historical dimension of early Greek epic and its significance for contemporaneous society is its political and educational purpose. Even if we do not subscribe to Eric Havelock’s view (1963, 1978) that the epics represent an encoded moral charter for preliterate Greek society, it is obvious that some of the conflicts dramatized in the epics (between Agamemnon and Achilles in the Iliad, between the suitors and Odysseus’ family in the Odyssey) contain a marked political component. Yet political interpretation of the epics was long deemed inappropriate because the lack of formal institutions and a firmly established political sphere seemed to characterize epic society as ‘‘prepolitical.’’ Dean Hammer (1998, 2002) now demonstrates impressively that such focus on institutions is too restrictive. Rather, epic society conducts politics differently, through performance and competition in areas and on issues that are essential for the communal well-being.
For example, the Iliad begins with a proem that emphasizes not heroic deeds of magnificent heroes but the quarrel between two leaders that caused great harm to their community. Agamemnon, the overall leader of the Achaean army at Troy, makes two crucial mistakes, blinded by selfishness and suspicion of a rival. He thereby exposes his entire army to divine retribution and prompts Achilles, his most important ‘‘vassal,’’ to withdraw from the fighting. The community, lacking the means to resolve conflicts between its most powerful members, suffers grievous setbacks; its success in the war has become doubtful, its very survival is at stake. Agamemnon has violated the ‘‘heroic code,’’ which relates high status and honors bestowed by the community to the obligation to protect its interests and needs; he suffers public humiliation, his leadership enters a severe crisis. Gradually, he realizes and admits his mistakes and offers rich compensation to Achilles, thus paving the way for reconciliation and communal reintegration. For this he is respected and recognized as ‘‘being more just.’’
By contrast, Hector, Agamemnon’s counterpart on the Trojan side, though praised throughout as a man with an exceptionally deep commitment to his community, fails in this very respect. Rejecting good advice, he exposes his army to the vengeful fury of Achilles and terrible losses. When he realizes his mistake, he finds himself incapable of facing the criticism, shame, and humiliation he fears to encounter when returning to the city. Hence he chooses to fight Achilles, although he knows that he is likely to die - thus valuing personal honor higher than his obligation to the community. The message seems clear: although the community depends for its survival on the outstanding martial capacity of its leaders, on the long run it is better served by one who is capable of reconciling honor and responsibility. Everybody makes mistakes; what matters most is that inevitable rifts between leaders can be overcome in the interest of communal well-being (Raaflaub 2000: 27-34).
Such concerns must have been deeply and troublingly familiar to the poet’s audiences. In dramatizing the clash between individual aspirations and communal needs, he emphasizes communal values and the ethos of good leadership (an aspect given highest priority in Hesiod’s epics as well: Raaflaub 2000: 34-7). He guides his listeners fTom the outbreak to the successful resolution of a communal conflict; he makes them politically aware and educates them, not by lecturing them, but by weaving his specifically political interpretation into a heroic narrative that serves many other purposes as well. This aspect seems to me significant, and it clearly anchors the epics in their own time.
This, too, is perhaps a universal function of epic. In its preserved version, the Nibel-ungenlied is a written work, produced for aristocratic members of courts. Like other literature of the time, it was expected to reflect this society’s social and moral perspectives. The poet both does and does not do this. ‘‘By a differently-angled positioning of ‘key concepts’ of the courtly worldview, the poet is able to hold up his creation as a critical mirror for the court to view itself and, by implication, its imperfections. For by taking what seems to be familiar, but shifting the perspective just slightly, the poet forces his audience into a dialectic confrontation with its own ideals and their inadequacies’’ (Gentry 1998: 66). He challenges his characters, and through them his audience, to reconsider traditional obligations, patterns of behavior, and values; he forces them into uncomfortable choices and illustrates their consequences (p. 77).
World History
