Democracy in the Scholia to the Iliad
More on Force, Homer, and Politics
This post is a continuation of my substack on the Iliad. This post is part of my plan to share new scholarship on Homer. All proceeds from the substack are donated to classics adjacent non-profits on a monthly basis.
In Homer’s Iliad and the Problem of Force, Charles Stocking (see my earlier post about it), sets out to differentiate various words that are translated as “force” in Homer (e.g. biê, kratos, alkê, menos, sthenos, (w)is, and dynamis) as a corrective engagement with earlier approaches to force/violence and agency in the Homeric poems (especially Simone Weil and Bruno Snell).
In examining kratos, Stocking emphasizes that it “encapsulates a notion of “agonistic alterity,” where the force of kratos requires supremacy over others” (2023, 15). This argument is especially attractive when Stocking provides a reading of Nestor’s response to Achilles and Agamemnon in Iliad 1, where the elderly king of Pylos claims that Achilles is stronger (karteros), because he has a divine mother, but Agamemnon is better (pherteros) because he rules over many (1.280-281). Following Émile Benveniste, Stocking suggests that kratos is always relational—that is, it is about superiority in relation to others. In this passage, Nestor seems to innovate, creating what Stocking terms a “scale of superiority” to acknowledge Achilles’ genealogical superiority, Agamemnon’s political sovereignty, and his own superlative status (Nestor claims he fought with the kartistoi against the kartistoi). Agamemnon’s political power—which also comes from divine authority—is rendered as superior to Achilles’ birth.
Chapter 1—where Stocking engages with these arguments—makes creative and effective use of speech act theory (about which I will post later). In chapter 2, Stocking turns to kratos and its relationship to democracy, providing an engaged reading of Jacques Derrida’s Rogues, which reflects on the impact of Odysseus’ claim in Iliad 2, that “we can’t all be kings…the rule of many is not good…”. For Stocking (and for many like me, Elmer, Barker, Hammer etc.), this is part of the political debate at the heart of the Iliad. As he puts it “What is the relationship between physical force and power.
Drawing on linguistics and structuralism, Stocking uses Derrida’s notion of “ipsocentric force” to explore how the Iliad’s notion of politics “is inseparable from larger cosmic concerns..” In doing so, chapter 2 offers a close reading of the notion of political force in the Iliad, while also critiquing Derrida’s reading of Homeric kratos as “ipsocentric” (by which he means emerging from or relying on the self, and translating paradoxically into the bedrock formulations of democratic sovereignty). For Stocking—and the larger argument toward which he builds—Homeric discourse is subject to constant debate and cannot thus be reduced so directly.
I am a fan of any reading of Homer that acknowledges that its internal representation of a topic or debate is essentially dialogic (or dialectic). Homeric poetry is not propaganda—it may bear the imprint of different ideologies, but it emerges out of a plurality of meanings and presents a both a widening and narrowing of meaning. In approaching this oscillation of meaning, Stocking relies on semiotics and emphasizes how ore concepts in Homer represent the shifting and ultimately the breakdown of the relationship between signifier and signified (the word and the concept implied by the word). What I am not sure about, from my reading so far, is what Stocking is positing as the cause of such essential polysemy.
Still, this is more proof of the inviting way in which this book unfolds. I find myself writing a lot in the margins, underlining, objecting, and then reconsidering. One of the things that struck me in the introduction to chapter 2 was the quotation of a scholion to Odysseus’ famous words that glosses them as meaning “there won’t be a democracy”. Stocking suggests that the scholiast’s comments are anachronistic, but this assertion gave me pause.
If we treat the Homeric poems as diachronic objects—by which I mean, narratives that develop over time and absorb the characteristics of different periods and then are treated from different theoretical and aesthetic perspectives as they persist through other periods—then they are always, already anachronistic. But a view of the scholia’s invocations of democracy in general, show a rather consistent range of political responses that would be at home in the 5th century BCE (or earlier, as the Greek city states experimented with different political arrangements).
Below I have pulled out the five times I can find where a scholiast talks about democracy in reference to the Iliad. Note that in the first example, Achilles is called democratic for opposing Agamemnon. In the second, the scholiast notes a difference in expectations based on social status (perhaps seeing democratic rights as those connected to aristocratic position). The third and fifth examples invokes concepts of freedom of speech, emphasizing parrhesia (the right to say what you want) over isêgoria (the right to access to public speech in the assembly).
“Not into war: this [is the statement] of a democratic king and a demagogue.”
Schol. AT ad Hom. Il. 1.226 ex. οὔτε ποτ' ἐς πόλεμον: τοῦτο δημοκρατικοῦ βασιλέως καὶ δημαγωγικοῦ.
“There’s no way we can all be king”: He means there will not be a democracy. If he were saying this to the more important men, he would be inciting rebellion, by assailing men eager for power in such a chaos”
Schol. bT ad Hom. Il 2.203b ex. οὐ μέν πως πάντες βασιλεύσομεν: οὐκ ἔσται δημοκρατία, φησίν. εἰ δὲ τοῖς μείζοσι ταῦτα ἔλεγεν, ἐξῆπτε τὴν στάσιν, σπουδαρχιδῶν ἀνδρῶν ἐν τοσούτῳ θορύβῳ καθαπτόμενος.
“This is right, lord, in the assembly” As is the custom in a democracy. This is placed in the agora, since it is the custom to speak with freedom of speech [parrêsia] in the assembly. People report that Seleukos took issue with the “Lord”, here.
Schol. D/A ad Hom. Il 9.33a Nic. ἣ θέμις <ἐστίν, ἄναξ, ἀγορῇ>: ὡς νόμος ἐστὶν—ἐν δημοκρατίᾳ. | ἐπὶ δὲ τὸ ἀγορῇ στικτέον, ὡς νόμος ἐστὶν ἐκκλησίας μετὰ παρρησίας λέγειν. Σέλευκον (fr. 13 M. = fr. 12 D.) μέντοι φασὶνἐπὶ τὸ ἄναξ διαστέλλειν.
“Go, there’s the road, but the rest will remain…” It is bitter for one of them to hear this, but especially sweet for the other to consider it. For Agamemnon wants to hear from the Achaeans that they are willing to accept the danger, as if they are part of a democracy, and not sent to this by force.”
Schol. bT ad Hom. Il 9.43-5 ex. ἔρχεο· πάρ τοι ὁδός<— /> ἀλλ' ἄλλοι μενέουσι:πικρὰ μὲν τῷ ἀκούεσθαι, ἥδιστα δέ ἐστι τῷ νοεῖν· ταῦτα γὰρ ἀκούεινἐθέλει ᾿Αγαμέμνων παρὰ τῶν ᾿Αχαιῶν ὡς ἐθελονταὶ τὸν κίνδυνον ἀναδέχονται ὡς δημοκρατούμενοι, οὐ βιαζόμενοι.
“Now I will tell you this again. We have “now” instead of “not among everyone”. For Hector is not rejecting advice, but instead equal access to speech [isêgoria] for everyone. The affairs of the Greeks are closer to democracy, and there is a great deal of freedom of speech [parrêsia] among the leaders. For instance, Diomedes says to Agamemnon, “I will fight with you foremost when you’re being foolish” and Odysseus says, “Ruinous one, I wish you ruled over a different, more unseemly army and weren’t lord over us!”
Schol. bT ad Hom. Il 12.215a ex. νῦν δ' αὖτ' ἐξερέω: σοί. νῦν ἀντὶ τοῦ ‘οὐκ ἐν ἅ-πασιν’· ῞Εκτωρ γὰρ οὐ τὴν παραίνεσιν ἀποστρέφεται, ἀλλὰ τὴν ἐν ἅπασιν ἰσηγορίαν. τὰ δὲ ῾Ελληνικὰ πλησίον δημοκρατίας, καὶ παρρησία πολλὴ τοῖς ἡγεμόσι· πρὸς γοῦν τὸν ᾿Αγαμέμνονα Διομήδης φησὶν „᾿Ατρείδη, σοὶ πρῶτα μαχήσομαι <ἀφραδέοντι>” (Ι 32), ὁ δὲ ᾿Οδυσσεὺς „οὐλόμεν', αἴθ' ὤφελλες ἀεικελίου στρατοῦ <ἄλλου / σημαίνειν, μὴ δ' ἄμμιν ἀνασσέμεν>”
For more on Iliad 1 and politics (included a bibliography), see The Politics of Rage: Some Reading Guidelines for Iliad 1; for more on book 2 and politics, see From Poetics to Politics: Repairing Achaean Politics in Book 2 of the Iliad.