It is appropriate for Iliad 10, as we shall see, that we have a mix of a new art-form and an ancient one. First, the new -- the meme:
And now, the ancient (H/T the Oxford University Press blog) -- red-figure vases from South Italy that depict, first, the capture of Dolon, which gives the book its 'ancient' name -- the Doloneia -- and, second, the killing of Rhesus and the nickin' of his horses.
So, why is Iliad 10 'an easy commerce of the the old and the new'? To answer that, a picture of a boars' tusk helmet (s.v. Wikipedia) and a passage, Iliad 10.260-271:
This specimen of is now at Athens. I have seen one with my own eyes in Heraklion on Crete.
Here's Homer via Hammond:
'And Meriones gave Odysseus a bow and a quiver and a sword, and on his head he put a helmet of leather, carefully made. It was stretched tight on the inside by many straps: the outside rows of white tusks from a shining-toothed boar ran round it this way and that, well and skillfully fastened: a layer of soft felt was fixed between. Autolycus had once stolen it from Amyntor son of Ormenus, breaking through his strong house in Eleon: and he gave it to Amphidamus of Kythera to take to his home in Skandeia. Amphidamus gave it as a gift of friendship to Molus, and he gave it to his son Meriones to wear. And now it was put over Odysseus' head to cover it.'
So, a curious piece of head-gear is carefully described and its multi-generation backstory is told so as to begin and end with Meriones' gift to Odysseus ('ring composition'). Note that Odysseus has a bow, a coward's weapon associated in the vase paintings with the Trojans (and, elsewhere, with Paris). That said, the climax of the Odyssey involved Odysseus -- in disguise -- stringing his old bow and his son Telemachus 'Mr Fights-from-afar' might have been named after Odysseus' archery.
The boars' tusk helmet is unique in Homer. Such helmets were the head-gear neither of the Dark Age through which the Iliad came together nor of the eighth- and seventh-century audiences who first heard the Iliad more or less as we know it. Such helmets were used in Mycenaean times and the early Mycenaean period at that. The boars' tusk was already an antique in the middle of the second millenium BC. Remember that, even in Homer's telling, this is armour from the past. It was not an artefact that any audience near to the monumental poet of the Iliad could have known for themselves, except through grave robbery. The vase paintings above show a different kind of head-wear, a skull cap or some such. The Homeric tradition has preserved a memory of the armour of the dim and distant past, of armour rediscovered through the archaeological excavation of Mycenaean Greece.
This very old artefact is found in Book 10, a book that has seemed awkward to readers modern and ancient alike (see, for example, reviews in The New Yorker and BMCR). We know that Homer is using delaying tactics, but this self-contained episode (an 'epyllion' ?) just takes us too far off the main track. If you did not read it, you would not notice the gap. Linguistic arguments, too, have been adduced for Iliad 10 being a late intrusion on an Iliad already formed.
So, something old and something new...
PG
And now, the ancient (H/T the Oxford University Press blog) -- red-figure vases from South Italy that depict, first, the capture of Dolon, which gives the book its 'ancient' name -- the Doloneia -- and, second, the killing of Rhesus and the nickin' of his horses.
So, why is Iliad 10 'an easy commerce of the the old and the new'? To answer that, a picture of a boars' tusk helmet (s.v. Wikipedia) and a passage, Iliad 10.260-271:
This specimen of is now at Athens. I have seen one with my own eyes in Heraklion on Crete.
Here's Homer via Hammond:
'And Meriones gave Odysseus a bow and a quiver and a sword, and on his head he put a helmet of leather, carefully made. It was stretched tight on the inside by many straps: the outside rows of white tusks from a shining-toothed boar ran round it this way and that, well and skillfully fastened: a layer of soft felt was fixed between. Autolycus had once stolen it from Amyntor son of Ormenus, breaking through his strong house in Eleon: and he gave it to Amphidamus of Kythera to take to his home in Skandeia. Amphidamus gave it as a gift of friendship to Molus, and he gave it to his son Meriones to wear. And now it was put over Odysseus' head to cover it.'
So, a curious piece of head-gear is carefully described and its multi-generation backstory is told so as to begin and end with Meriones' gift to Odysseus ('ring composition'). Note that Odysseus has a bow, a coward's weapon associated in the vase paintings with the Trojans (and, elsewhere, with Paris). That said, the climax of the Odyssey involved Odysseus -- in disguise -- stringing his old bow and his son Telemachus 'Mr Fights-from-afar' might have been named after Odysseus' archery.
The boars' tusk helmet is unique in Homer. Such helmets were the head-gear neither of the Dark Age through which the Iliad came together nor of the eighth- and seventh-century audiences who first heard the Iliad more or less as we know it. Such helmets were used in Mycenaean times and the early Mycenaean period at that. The boars' tusk was already an antique in the middle of the second millenium BC. Remember that, even in Homer's telling, this is armour from the past. It was not an artefact that any audience near to the monumental poet of the Iliad could have known for themselves, except through grave robbery. The vase paintings above show a different kind of head-wear, a skull cap or some such. The Homeric tradition has preserved a memory of the armour of the dim and distant past, of armour rediscovered through the archaeological excavation of Mycenaean Greece.
This very old artefact is found in Book 10, a book that has seemed awkward to readers modern and ancient alike (see, for example, reviews in The New Yorker and BMCR). We know that Homer is using delaying tactics, but this self-contained episode (an 'epyllion' ?) just takes us too far off the main track. If you did not read it, you would not notice the gap. Linguistic arguments, too, have been adduced for Iliad 10 being a late intrusion on an Iliad already formed.
So, something old and something new...
PJ
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