ὡς δ᾽ ὅτ᾽ ἂν ἀστράπτῃ πόσις Ἥρης ἠϋκόμοιο/…/ὡς πυκὶν᾽ ἐν στήθεσσιν ἀνεστενάχιζ᾽ Ἀγαμέμνων
This simile has been condemned by previous editors as bad poetry and used as evidence that Book 10 was composed by an inferior poet. In his 1900 commentary, Leaf calls various aspects of the simile “so confused as to be practically unintelligible,” “a pointless comparison,” “turgid and tasteless,” and “an incompetent piece of expression.” Much more recently Hainsworth calls it “overstretched, to say the least” and “the first example of much strained thought and language in this book” (Hainsworth 1993 ad 10.5–9). In many ways, the response to this simile is emblematic of previous approaches to Book 10 as a whole. The arguments made in the introductory essays of this volume as to why a new approach to Book 10 is necessary are especially applicable here. The prominent position of the simile in this book and its highly compressed structure, which, like so many Homeric similes, defies traditional literary criticism, make it an ideal test case for the approach we have taken in this commentary.
Similes can teach us a great deal about the system in which our Iliad was composed. Although similes were once thought to be some of the latest, least traditional passages in the poem, drawn from the poet’s real world experiences (see e.g. Shipp 1972:7–144 and 208–222), we now know that this view is incorrect. The similes within epics, like the stories they narrate, have been shown to be traditional and to carry traditional associations that go far beyond the mere words of the similes themselves. (See Notopoulos 1957, Scott 1974, Moulton 1977, Muellner 1990, Martin 1997, and Tsagalis 2008:272–285, as well as Fränkel 1921 and Coffey 1957.) Often in epic we find very compressed similes whose fuller meaning would have been obvious to an audience raised in the tradition. A good example is the description of Hektor at Iliad 13.754–755: “He then sped onward, like a snowy mountain, and with a loud cry flew through the ranks of the Trojans and their allies” (ἦ ῥα, καὶ ὁρμήθη ὄρεϊ νιφόεντι ἐοικὼς/κεκλήγων, διὰ δὲ Τρώων πέτετ’ ἠδ’ ἐπικούρων). Mountains and snowstorms have particular associations, some of which are common to our culture, some which are not. For mountains, there is of course the association of height. But what are we to make of the adjective ‘snowy’? One possibility is that elsewhere in epic the flashing of armor is compared to the light reflecting off falling snowflakes, an association that would not perhaps come immediately to our minds. (See Janko 1992 ad 13.754–755 and Iliad 19.357ff.) But Edward Bradley (1967) has explored all references to snow in epic and found that the quality most often associated with it is “incessant movement,” a phrase that aptly describes Hektor in Iliad 13. So while for us the idea of comparing a quickly striding Hektor to a snowy mountain is almost comical, for an ancient audience the simile, compressed as it is, would no doubt have made perfect sense. It would have been part of a more expanded set of associations with snow and mountains but also more expanded versions of the same simile. So while we have to reconstruct those associations, an ancient audience would have made them effortlessly while listening to the performance. An ancient commentator called the effect of this comparison “savage and fearsome” and something about it must have struck Virgil, who adapts the simile in Aeneid 12.699ff.
Combined with the snowy mountain metaphor is another one, that of a bird in attack mode: “with a loud cry he flew through the ranks of the Trojans and their allies.” Leonard Muellner has examined this second part of the simile as an example of the way that epic similes and metaphors operate within an expanded system of associations. By comparing this particular instance of bird imagery (“with a loud cry” and “flew”) to other bird similes in related contexts, Muellner is able to show that the narrator is drawing on conventional imagery depicting the rapid movements of mustering warriors and their horses—imagery that we can now see pairs well with a comparison to snow. (See Muellner 1990:68n19.)
The traditionality of these similes and metaphors, which are themselves micronarratives within the larger narrative of the poem, allows them to operate in a very different way from similes in the poetry of our literate, text-based culture. For interpreting Homeric similes, we are not restricted to the printed page as we try to elicit the implications of a metaphor—we have the whole of Homeric poetry and even beyond to guide us. If we return now to the simile that opens Book 10, how can we use the corpus of Homeric poetry to understand what significance it might have summoned for an ancient audience?
The idea being conveyed by the simile is the frequency of Agamemnon’s expressions of sorrow (ἀναστενάχιζ’, 10.9), which are pukina (πυκίν’, 10.9). The verb ἀναστεναχίζω is related to other verbs of lament. In Iliad 23.211, Iris describes Patroklos as “the one whom all the Achaeans are bewailing” (Πάτροκλος, τὸν πάντες ἀναστενάχουσιν Ἀχαιοί; see also Iliad 18.315 and 18.355). στενάχω is the verb that describes what Achilles, having just learned of Patroklos’ death, is doing when his mother finds him in Iliad 18.70, and it is also used for the antiphonal cries of mourners who respond to the solo lamenters at Iliad 19.301 and 24.746.
The cries of grief that accompany songs of lamentation are pukina because they come thick and fast, one close upon the next. In Iliad 18.318, Achilles’ expressions of grief (στενάχων) for Patroklos are πυκνὰ, and, similarly, in Iliad 19.312 Achilles is described as grieving in a pukinos way (πυκινῶς ἀκαχήμενον). Sorrow in overwhelming abundance can also be thought of as pukina. In Iliad 16.599, πυκινὸν ἄχος takes hold of the Achaeans when Bathykles is killed. In Odyssey 19.516–517, Penelope speaks of the πυκιναὶ […] μελεδῶναι that torment her as she weeps (ὀδυρομένην, Odyssey 19.517). The adjective pukinos has a variety of meanings in Homer, all of which are linked by the idea of frequency, density, or closeness. One of the most common contexts for the adjective is in the natural world, where it describes the lairs of animals or places where animals hide. While a connection between natural hiding places for animals and the frequency of one’s cries might not seem elegant or logical, the adjective pukinos seems to link the two meanings so closely that it is difficult to ascertain which meaning is the primary one in the two extended descriptions of lament mentioned above. If we look at these passages more closely, we find that in both cases the adjective pukinos is elaborated upon by way of a simile.
In Iliad 18, the frequency of Achilles’ cries are compared to the grief of a lion who discovers that his cubs have been killed by a hunter:
αὐτὰρ Ἀχαιοὶ
315 παννύχιοι Πάτροκλον ἀνεστενάχοντο γοῶντες.
τοῖσι δὲ Πηλεΐδης ἁδινοῦ ἐξῆρχε γόοιο
χεῖρας ἐπ᾽ ἀνδροφόνους θέμενος στήθεσσιν ἑταίρου
πυκνὰ μάλα στενάχων ὥς τε λὶς ἠϋγένειος,
ᾧ ῥά θ᾽ ὑπὸ σκύμνους ἐλαφηβόλος ἁρπάσῃ ἀνὴρ
320 ὕλης ἐκ πυκινῆς· ὃ δέ τ᾽ ἄχνυται ὕστερος ἐλθών,
πολλὰ δέ τ᾽ ἄγκε᾽ ἐπῆλθε μετ᾽ ἀνέρος ἴχνι᾽ ἐρευνῶν
εἴ ποθεν ἐξεύροι· μάλα γὰρ δριμὺς χόλος αἱρεῖ·
ὣς ὃ βαρὺ στενάχων μετεφώνεε Μυρμιδόνεσσιν
Iliad 18.314–323
On the other side the Achaeans
315 all night long bewailed Patroklos, lamenting.
And among them the son of Peleus led off the ceaseless lamentation,
placing his man-slaying hands on the chest of his companion
with wails that came thick and fast, like a well-bearded lion
whose cubs a man who is a deer hunter has snatched away
320 from the thick woods. He grieves when he later returns
and he comes to many valleys searching after the tracks of the man,
if somewhere he can find him, since piercing fury takes hold of him.
So wailing deeply [Achilles] spoke among the Myrmidons.
On a conceptual level the comparison being made is between the grief of Achilles and the lion, but what unites the tenor and vehicle on a verbal level is the word pukinos, used in the simile of the woods in which both the hunter and lion lurk.
The association made between these two semantic realms of the same word occurs in the same way in Odyssey 19:
“ξεῖνε, τὸ μέν σ᾽ ἔτι τυτθὸν ἐγὼν εἰρήσομαι αὐτή·
510 καὶ γὰρ δὴ κοίτοιο τάχ᾽ ἔσσεται ἡδέος ὥρη,
ὅν τινά γ᾽ ὕπνος ἕλοι γλυκερός, καὶ κηδόμενόν περ.
αὐτὰρ ἐμοὶ καὶ πένθος ἀμέτρητον πόρε δαίμων·
ἤματα μὲν γὰρ τέρπομ᾽ ὀδυρομένη, γοόωσα,
ἔς τ᾽ ἐμὰ ἔργ᾽ ὁρόωσα καὶ ἀμφιπόλων ἐνὶ οἴκῳ·
515 αὐτὰρ ἐπὴν νὺξ ἔλθῃ, ἕλῃσί τε κοῖτος ἅπαντας,
κεῖμαι ἐνὶ λέκτρῳ, πυκιναὶ δέ μοι ἀμφ᾽ ἀδινὸν κῆρ
ὀξεῖαι μελεδῶναι ὀδυρομένην ἐρέθουσιν
ὡς δ᾽ ὅτε Πανδαρέου κούρη, χλωρηῒς ἀηδών,
καλὸν ἀείδῃσιν ἔαρος νέον ἱσταμένοιο,
520 δενδρέων ἐν πετάλοισι καθεζομένη πυκινοῖσιν,
ἥ τε θαμὰ τρωπῶσα χέει πολυηχέα φωνήν,
παῖδ᾽ ὀλοφυρομένη Ἴτυλον φίλον.”
Odyssey 19.509–522
“Stranger, I for my part would like to speak to you a little further.
510 For indeed soon will be the hour for going to bed, a pleasant thing,
at least for anyone whom sweet sleep takes hold of despite their cares.
As for me, a daimon has given immeasurable sorrow.
I spend my days delighting in mourning, lamenting,
as I look to my tasks and attend to the household.
515 But when night comes, and bedtime takes hold of all,
I lie in my bed, while thick and fast in my heart without end
sharp sorrows torment me as I weep,
as when the daughter of Pandareos, the vibrant nightingale,
sings a beautiful song when spring is newly arrived,
520 sitting among the thick leaves of the trees,
and she pours forth her resounding voice in one song after another,
lamenting her beloved child Itylus.”
Once again the frequency of one’s sobs and cries are compared by way of a simile to an animal in its haunts—in this case, the nightingale sings from amidst the dense foliage of trees. And much as in the description of Achilles, the point of comparison is the lamentation of Penelope and the sorrowful song of the nightingale, but what links tenor and vehicle verbally is the adjective pukinos.
We will return to the idea of the lair momentarily. For the moment though, let us note that here Penelope describes the impossibility of sleep when one is troubled by sorrows, a situation that matches the opening of Iliad 10. So too at the beginning of Iliad 9, no one is sleeping, including Agamemnon, who is “struck in his heart by great sorrow” (ἄχεϊ μεγάλῳ βεβολημένος ἦτορ, Iliad 9.9). He calls an assembly, and when he begins speaking he is crying:
ἵστατο δάκρυ χέων ὥς τε κρήνη μελάνυδρος
ἥ τε κατ᾽ αἰγίλιπος πέτρης δνοφερὸν χέει ὕδωρ·
ὣς ὃ βαρὺ στενάχων ἔπε᾽ Ἀργείοισι μετηύδα
Iliad 9.14–16
He stood shedding a tear, like a spring whose water flows up from the depths,
a spring which pours dark water down from a steep rock,
so wailing deeply he addressed words to the Argives.
This passage recalls the iconic lamenter of Greek myth, Niobe, whose example is invoked by Achilles as he and Priam mourn for fathers and sons in lament-filled Iliad 24. Niobe in her grief for her twelve children was transformed into just such a weeping rock. (For more on Niobe as the prototypical lamenting woman in the Iliad, see Dué 2002:108–109, and on the metaphor of the spring, see Dué 2006a:160–161.)
We do not find the word pukinos in the initial similes of Iliad 9, as we saw in Iliad 18 and Odyssey 19, but these similes share with Iliad 10 their use of the diction, metaphors, and imagery of lament in their depiction of the sorrow of the Greeks (especially Agamemnon) and their resultant sleeplessness.[1] An explanation for the absence of the concept in Iliad 9, but its presence in Iliad 10, we argue, can be found in yet another semantic aspect of pukinos—its association with the lokhos ‘ambush’. The phrase πυκινὸν λόχον is found three times in the Iliad and Odyssey (Iliad 4.392, 24.779; Odyssey 11.525). Ambush warfare is pukinos because of the cunning involved, and in fact cunning thoughts or schemes are mēdea pukna in Homeric epic. In Iliad 3, Helen describes Odysseus as the master of this kind cunning: οὗτος δ᾽ αὖ Λαερτιάδης πολύμητις Ὀδυσσεύς … εἰδὼς παντοίους τε δόλους καὶ μήδεα πυκνά (“That is the son of Laertes Odysseus who is crafty in many ways … he knows all sorts of tricks and schemes one after the other,” Iliad 3.200–202). Odysseus, as Helen’s description implies, is our ambush hero par excellence. (Like cunning schemes, shrewd counsel is also pukinos. See below on 10.43–44.)
Later in Iliad 10 the plan that Hektor proposes to the Trojans (namely, to send a spy to the Achaean camp) is called a πυκινὴν … βουλήν (10.302). (For similar phraseology used in Book 2 of Agamemnon’s testing of the troops, see above, pp. 231–235.) As was noted above (see “The Poetics of Ambush”), ambush warfare is characterized by mētis, while the polemos is characterized by biē. For another collocation of pukinos, cunning, and ambush, we have the ambush of Bellerophon as it is described in Iliad 6:
τῷ δ᾽ ἄρ᾽ ἀνερχομένῳ πυκινὸν δόλον ἄλλον ὕφαινε·
κρίνας ἐκ Λυκίης εὐρείης φῶτας ἀρίστους
εἷσε λόχον· τοὶ δ᾽ οὔ τι πάλιν οἶκον δὲ νέοντο·
πάντας γὰρ κατέπεφνεν ἀμύμων Βελλεροφόντης.
Iliad 6.187–190
But for him as he was going back he wove another close trick.
He selected the best men from broad Lycia
and sent them on an ambush. These men did not return back home:
Faultless Bellerophon slew them all.
One other element seen here (encapsulated in ἄλλον ‘another’) is that ambush is often used when other means to defeat the enemy have not worked. The king of Lycia has not been able to kill Bellerophon by sending him on various missions or into battle, so he resorts to ambush. A similar sense of desperation drives the plan formed here in Iliad 10.
Ambushes are pukinos for another reason as well, as we alluded to above: they involve hiding in dark, enclosed spaces, not unlike an animal’s lair. In the story of ambush that Odysseus tells Eumaios in Odyssey 14, Odysseus and his companions hide in the ῥωπήϊα πυκνά ‘dense shrubbery’ before the walls of Troy. Here, we return to the similes that elaborate on the grief of Achilles and Penelope. In both of those similes, the word pukinos describes the place in which the lamenting creature seeks refuge. In another passage in Odyssey 19, the idea of the lair and the place of ambush are directly equated. In the narrative that explains the origins of the scar that Eurykleia recognizes, we find out that on a hunting expedition Odysseus was ambushed by a boar, who rushed forth from a λόχμῃ πυκινῇ and gashed his leg (Odyssey 19.439).
Two things remain to be noted. First, it is also likely that ambushes are imagined as pukinos because of the density of the men hiding together in a cramped space. The episode of the wooden horse, the lokhos (as it is termed at Odyssey 4.277 and 8.515) that results in the sack of Troy, involves many men enclosed in a small space. In the ambush of Tydeus narrated at Iliad 4.391–398 (called a πυκινὸν λόχον in 4.392), fifty-two men lay in wait for him. Second, a crucial aspect of ambush warfare (which usually happens at night in the cover of darkness) is the necessity of not going to sleep. Staying awake at night in a cramped hiding place surrounded by other men in a closely packed fashion is precisely the kind of endurance ambush requires, and all of these components are encompassed by the adjective pukinos.
This exploration of the adjective pukinos suggests that the conceptual realms of lament and ambush can be merged in this word. In the simile that describes Agamemnon’s grief and sleeplessness, we find that there is no mention of an animal in his lair. Instead, the entire ambush episode that is about to unfold substitutes for such a simile, linked to Agamemnon’s sobs by the word pukinos. (For more on the traditional referentiality of the word pukinos, as used in the phrase pukinon epos, see Foley 1991:154–156.)
There are still more parts of the simile that can be unpacked, once we understand the traditional connection between lamentation and ambush and the idea of frequency or closeness that unites them. The frequency of the nightingale’s laments in Odyssey 19 (they come one right after another) is conveyed by the word θαμά at 19.521. The adjectival form of this word is used of snowflakes (as at Iliad 12.278) and, like pukinos, of projectiles (arrows, spears, and rocks) thrown in abundance and in quick succession. When Agamemnon’s cries are compared to falling snow, the traditional resonance of the simile can be understood by a traditional audience. Both are θαμά. Similarly, in Iliad 3.222, Odysseus’ persuasive words in the Trojan assembly are compared, in an extremely compressed simile, to snowflakes (νιφάδεσσιν ἐοικότα χειμερίῃσιν). For an audience on the inside of the tradition, this compressed simile would naturally draw on associations between the frequency and denseness of snowflakes and the close-packed nature of Odysseus’ mēdea (which are called pukna twenty lines before).
Possibly related to the metaphor world of snowflakes is the metaphor in Iliad 4.274, where the mass of warriors following the two Ajaxes is called a “cloud of foot-soldiers” (νέφος … πεζῶν). As Mark Edwards notes, the scholia on this line in several manuscripts explain that the metaphor is expressing the “denseness (τὸ πυκνὸν) and frightening aspect of the phalanx” by likening it to “a black and threatening cloud” (τὸ πυκνὸν καὶ καταπληκτικὸν τῆς φάλαγγος μιᾷ λέξει περιέλαβεν εἰκάσας μέλανι καὶ σκυθρωπῷ νέφει). (See Edwards 1991:48; the translation is his.) The lines following Iliad 4.274 actually go on to unpack the metaphor by way of a simile:
275 ὡς δ’ ὅτ’ ἀπὸ σκοπιῆς εἶδεν νέφος αἰπόλος ἀνὴρ
ἐρχόμενον κατὰ πόντον ὑπὸ Ζεφύροιο ἰωῆς·
τῷ δέ τ’ ἄνευθεν ἐόντι μελάντερον ἠΰτε πίσσα
φαίνετ’ ἰὸν κατὰ πόντον, ἄγει δέ τε λαίλαπα πολλήν,
ῥίγησέν τε ἰδών, ὑπό τε σπέος ἤλασε μῆλα·
280 τοῖαι ἅμ’ Αἰάντεσσι διοτρεφέων αἰζηῶν
δήϊον ἐς πόλεμον πυκιναὶ κίνυντο φάλαγγες
κυάνεαι, σάκεσίν τε καὶ ἔγχεσι πεφρικυῖαι.
Iliad 4.275–282
275 As when a goat-herding man sees from a lookout point a cloud
coming over the sea, driven by the rush of the West wind,
and to him being at a distance blacker than pitch
it appears as it comes over the sea, and it brings a great tempest,
and seeing it he shudders, and drives his flocks into a cave,
280 such were the young men nurtured by Zeus who were with the Ajaxes,
dense phalanxes moving into hostile war,
dark, bristling with shields and spears.
Here a single word, “cloud,” elicits an extended simile that conveys denseness by conjuring the image of a closely packed phalanx. But in what way is a cloud dense? If the simile were not present in our text, and we had only the compressed metaphor of Iliad 4.274, we might doubt the scholiast’s interpretation. The key must be in the rain portended by the νέφος, which like hail or snow or Agamemnon’s sighs—or indeed battle—is pukinos. This passage from Iliad 4 allows us to see the richness of this tradition, whose metaphors can be so highly compressed yet full of meaning for a traditional audience. So also does the adjective ἀθέσφατον, used to describe hail in 10.6, have traditional associations, in this case with abundance, but used elsewhere in Homer of rain, food, wine, and, most interesting for us, long winter nights (see Odyssey 11.373 and 15.392).
Finally, as Hainsworth has pointed out in his discussion of these lines, the phrase “the great jaws of destructive battle” (πτολέμοιο μέγα στόμα πευκεδανοῖο, 10.8) is a perfectly traditional metaphor (we can compare Iliad 19.313 and 20.359), but it is “unexpected as an alternative to rain, hail, or snow” (Hainsworth 1993 ad 10.8). The adjective πευκεδανός is found nowhere else in the archaic epic that survives, but the image, we submit, is unexpected and strained only for us—not for a traditional audience, for whom long-range connections of the kind we have argued for here are made on a subconscious level. Such connections are only possible within a traditional system, participated in by both performer and audience, in which meaning becomes possible with reference to the tradition. To put it another way, this simile only makes sense if we read it against the backdrop of the tradition in which it was created. It can be highly compressed because every word has resonance that links it to the other uses of that word in the tradition. Such a simile cannot be the work of an idiosyncratic poet trying to manipulate the oral tradition into a new, original style, as Danek, for example, has argued (see Danek 1988 and above, “Interpreting Iliad 10”), nor can we agree with Hainsworth that the metaphor we have just cited is “further instance of the pretentious usage of traditional language characteristic of this Book” (Hainsworth 1993 ad 10.8). In the system that created the Iliad and Odyssey—including, we are arguing, Iliad 10—the poet does not make use of tradition in an artificial way. When confronted with such a formulation on the part of scholars hostile to Iliad 10, it is instructive to consider the words of Albert Lord, who asserts that we must understand the poet to be working “inside an oral tradition of epic song”:
He is not an outsider approaching the tradition with only a superficial grasp of it, using a bit here and a bit there, or trying to present a “flavor” of the traditional, yet ever thinking in terms that are essentially different from it. He is not a split personality with half of his understanding in the tradition and the other half in a parnassus of literate methods. No, he is not even “immersed” in the tradition. He is the tradition.
Lord 1960/2000:147
[1] We may contrast the similes that describe the anxiety and sorrow of the Greeks at the start of Books 9 and 10 with the one at the end of Book 8 that describes the campfires of the Trojans as they make camp on the plain. The fires are compared to the stars on a windless, clear night (Iliad 8.555ff.; see Webster 1958:231–232). Scott (1974:51) notes that similes frequently occur at junctures in the narrative, and that those junctures often correspond with a change in theme, as is the case with the simile under discussion here at 10.5–9.