Homer’s ‘Set List’: Imagining a Performance of the Iliad
Part 2: Evidence for 'Episodes' from Literature and Art
This is a continuation of my substack on the Iliad. All proceeds from the substack are donated to classics adjacent non-profits on a monthly basis. Last year this substack provided over $2k in charitable donations.
This post is part one of three looking more closely at the proposition that our Iliad is made up of a series of songs or ‘episodes’ put together in a monumental performance. The first part looks at some of the internal evidence for performance and provides some historical context. The second part explores how much support there is for this model in the classical period. The third part offers some remarks on how this approach may or may not be different from neoanalysis and begins to sketch out how our Iliad may be broken up into songs or episodes.
In the last post, I explored the composition of the Homeric epics through a combination of episodes, focusing especially on the evidence from the Odyssey and on the tradition of the “Panathenaic rule”, the conventional performance of Homer in Athens by multiple rhapsodes. The internal and external evidence suggests that the full epics are made up of smaller parts integrated by multiple performers. In addition, it suggests that the epics evolved during performance over time. This means that we don’t imagine ancient performers creating from scratch each time, but working in concert and competition to integrate–or ‘stitch together’, to observe one of the etymologies of rhapsode–traditional themes and songs into a much larger performance.
As I discussed when talking about Odysseus’ story in books 9-12 of the Odyssey, it seems likely that longer compositions were in part developed from shorter, recognizable episodes. Logically, this makes sense, and late evidence from the Roman imperial period has provided some support for this, both in terms of the general idea itself and with some indication of what sections may have been considered self-standing songs. The 2nd Century CE Roman Aelian (Claudius Aelianus) reports that the epics were sung in “separate parts”:
Varia Historia, 13.14
“The tradition is that the ancients used to sing Homeric epics in separate parts. For example, they sang the “Battle By the Ships”, the “Doloneia”, the “Aristeia of Agamemnon”, the “Catalogue of Ships,” the “Patrokleia” and the “Ransoming” or the “Contest for Patroklos” and the “Breaking of the Oaths”. These were from the Iliad. From the other poem they sang “Events at Pylos” and “Events at Sparta” “Calpyso’s Cave,” “The Raft Story”, “The Tales of Alkinoos” and “The Kyklopeia” and the “Nekyuia” or “Events with Kirke”, “the Washing”, “The Murder of the Suitors,” “The Events in the Country”, “Laertes’ Tale”.
Rather late, Lyrkourgos the Spartan was the first to bring the poetry of Homer together into Greece; He brought them back with him from Ionia when he was living abroad. Later, Peisistratos collected them and had the Iliad and the Odyssey performed.”
῞Οτι τὰ ῾Ομήρου ἔπη πρότερον διῃρημένα ᾖδον οἱ παλαιοί. οἷον ἔλεγον Τὴν ἐπὶ ναυσὶ μάχην καὶ Δολώνειάν τινα καὶ ᾿Αριστείαν ᾿Αγαμέμνονος καὶ Νεῶν κατάλογον καὶ Πατρόκλειαν καὶ Λύτρα καὶ ᾿Επὶ Πατρόκλῳ ἆθλα καὶ ῾Ορκίων ἀφάνισιν. ταῦτα ὑπὲρ τῆς ᾿Ιλιάδος. ὑπὲρ δὲ τῆς ἑτέρας Τὰ ἐν Πύλῳ καὶ Τὰ ἐν Λακεδαίμονι καὶ Καλυψοῦς ἄντρον καὶ Τὰ περὶ τὴν σχεδίαν καὶ ᾿Αλκίνου ἀπολόγους καὶ Κυκλώπειαν καὶ Νέκυιαν καὶ Τὰ τῆς Κίρκης καὶ Νίπτρα καὶ Μνηστήρων φόνον καὶ Τὰ ἐν ἀγρῷ καὶ Τὰ ἐν Λαέρτου. ὀψὲ δὲ Λυκοῦργος ὁ Λακεδαιμόνιος ἀθρόαν πρῶτος ἐς τὴν ῾Ελλάδα ἐκόμισε τὴν ῾Ομήρου ποίησιν· τὸ δὲ ἀγώγιμον τοῦτο ἐξ ᾿Ιωνίας, ἡνίκα ἀπεδήμησεν, ἤγαγεν. ὕστερον δὲ Πεισίστρατος συναγαγὼν ἀπέφηνε τὴν ᾿Ιλιάδα καὶ ᾿Οδύσσειαν.
Here, Aelian combines several details that have been irresistible to Homerists interested in the epics’ textualization and performance: a connection between their final form and quasi-legendary foundation narratives along with details about the relationship between parts and the whole. Near the end of the anecdote, we find famous and semi-legendary leaders of Sparta and Athens as authorities who introduced the full epics into their communities, aligning in part with a historical movement that modern scholars have called Panhellenism. But before that, we find the attractive idea that really old performers (palaioi) sang (aiedon) the epics of Homer split into parts. And the parts align with some of the discrete sections of each epic that we have recognized as somewhat self-standing, such as the catalog of ships or the Doloneia.
I am one of those who really like this passage and find it valuable to think with. Nevertheless, I am concerned about how much of it we can rely on. My anxieties come in two forms: first, the relative antiquity of Aelian; second, the lack of corresponding evidence for episodes of these names or consistent nomenclature for episodes prior to Aelian.
Let me start with the first: Aelian is from the so-called second sophistic. I don’t know if we can say that anything he knows or reports about Homer does not come from Hellenistic editing practices. That is to say that he is almost six centuries removed from the Panathenaic rule at Athens and was educated in a system dominated by the editorial and rhetorical practices that canonized and transmitted the epics more or less as we have them.
In addition to limits on what Aelian could have known or how his knowledge was shaped by the rhetorical and editorial tradition preceding him, the contents of this passage are correspondingly curious: there is a lot of each epic not reported within his anecdote. Now, the omissions may simply be a case of Aelian leaving out the most well known plot points such as the embassy to Achilles in the Iliad or the Telemachea in the Odyssey. But the language he uses for the “separated epics” also gives me pause because it assumes each epic as a pre-existing whole. I am not sure that if there were traditional terminology for individual songs it would sound like this.
This leads me to the second concern I have for this passage: the lack of corresponding support from earlier evidence prior to the Hellenistic period. One of the most famous passages for thinking about the composition of the epics comes from Aristotle. In it he writes about the epics being composed of “episodes”:
Poetics 1459a
“For this reason, Homer should seem rather inspired compared to others: for, although the war has a beginning and an end, he did not try to compose the whole story. For the story would have been too overwhelming and incomprehensible or, if kept to a reasonable length, confusing because of its complexity. Instead, although he has taken up one plot [meros], he has employed many other episodes [epeisodiois] such as the catalog of ships and other episodes through which he has varied his composition.”
ταύτῃ θεσπέσιος ἂν φανείη Ὅμηρος παρὰ τοὺς ἄλλους, τῷ μηδὲ τὸν πόλεμον καίπερ ἔχοντα ἀρχὴν καὶ τέλος ἐπιχειρῆσαι ποιεῖν ὅλον· λίαν γὰρ ἂν μέγας καὶ οὐκ εὐσύνοπτος ἔμελλεν ἔσεσθαι ὁ μῦθος, ἢ τῷ μεγέθει μετριάζοντα καταπεπλεγμένον τῇ ποικιλίᾳ. νῦν δ᾿ ἓν μέρος ἀπολαβὼν ἐπεισοδίοις κέχρηται αὐτῶν πολλοῖς, οἷον νεῶν καταλόγῳ καὶ ἄλλοις ἐπεισοδίοις οἷς διαλαμβάνει τὴν ποίησιν.
It is really tempting to read this passage and infer that Aristotle’s episodes may be in some way coterminous with Arrian’s “separated parts”. But when I read epeisodos elsewhere, I think it functions as much as a “scene” as it does a specific and self contained narrative equivalent to the songs of Phemius and Demodocus in the Odyssey. There’s also something else I find both intriguing and compelling here: epeisodios seems to be etymologically tied to the parts of tragedy between the choral odes. The term seems to be related to the entrance and exit of different actors or characters on the stage. Applied to epic performance, it is tempting to imagine epeisodion as delimiting the space for a single singer or song within a larger composition.
In the Poetics, Aristotle’s primary focus is on the genre of tragedy. His episodes, if read carefully, blur the lines between major scenes in Attic tragedy and parts of the Trojan War narrative integrated into Iliad or the Odyssey. At times I am certain he means that the overall plot of the “rage of Achilles” is expanded or embellished through other episodes from the whole war. Aristotle does us a favor here by distinguishing between an episode of the war and the story of the whole. But if one reads through the Poetics carefully, the issue is much more uncertain. There is some indication in Plato that audiences thought in terms of particular scenes. For example, consider the longish question in the Ion where Socrates is trying to prove to the rhapsode that he is divinely inspired when he recites Homer:
Plato, Ion 535 c
Tell me this Ion and don’t hide anything from me whatever I ask you. Whenever you are performing epic and you especially astound the audience—either when you sing about Odysseus leaping upon the threshold and then appearing to the suitors as he pours arrows out on them all of a sudden or the part about Achilles chasing after Hektor or one of the sad things about Andromache or Hekuba or Priam—are you at that point in your own mind or are you outside yourself and does your spirit think you are among the events themselves, inspired by the very words you are speaking, either in the Ithaka or Troy or wherever the songs take you?
ΣΩ. ῎Εχε δή μοι τόδε εἰπέ, ὦ ῎Ιων, καὶ μὴ ἀποκρύψῃ ὅτι ἄν σε ἔρωμαι· ὅταν εὖ εἴπῃς ἔπη καὶ ἐκπλήξῃς μάλιστα τοὺς θεωμένους, ἢ τὸν ᾿Οδυσσέα ὅταν ἐπὶ τὸν οὐδὸν ἐφαλλόμενον ᾄδῃς, ἐκφανῆ γιγνόμενον τοῖς μνηστῆρσι καὶ ἐκχέοντα τοὺς ὀιστοὺς πρὸ τῶν ποδῶν, ἢ ᾿Αχιλλέα ἐπὶ τὸν ῞Εκτορα ὁρμῶντα, ἢ καὶ τῶν περὶ ᾿Ανδρομάχην ἐλεινῶν τι ἢ περὶ ῾Εκάβην ἢ περὶ Πρίαμον, τότε πότερον ἔμφρων εἶ ἢ ἔξω σαυτοῦ γίγνῃ καὶ παρὰ τοῖς πράγμασιν οἴεταί σου εἶναι ἡ ψυχὴ οἷς λέγεις ἐνθουσιάζουσα, ἢ ἐν ᾿Ιθάκῃ οὖσιν ἢ ἐν Τροίᾳ ἢ ὅπως ἂν καὶ τὰ ἔπη ἔχῃ;
Here, Plato has his Socrates point to scenes of particular vividness or tension–action scenes where Odysseus is about to murder the suitors and Achilles is chasing Hektor. These suspenseful scenes that create the emotion implied by the verb ἐκπλήξῃς. In addition, Ion may or may not be referring to specific events when he mentions “something of the pitiful things about Andromache, Hecuba, and Priam”. I am tempted to imagine these as correlating to their laments for Hektor, but the language itself (specifically the ἐλεινῶν τι + περὶ) makes me think Ion means what happens to them.
While both scenes certainly are from episodes (the ‘murder of the suitors’ or the pursuit of Hektor) they may not correspond to specific episodes themselves. This does not mean that Plato did not conceive of episodes: later in the same dialogue he refers to the “battle around the wall” as a part of the Iliad: “Or often in the Iliad too, for example in the teikhomakhia, when he says…” (πολλαχοῦ δὲ καὶ ἐν ᾿Ιλιάδι, οἷον καὶ ἐπὶ τειχομαχίᾳ· λέγει γὰρ καὶ ἐνταῦθα, 539 b3). He also seems to refer to funeral games from Patroklos earlier when he mentions the chariot race specifically (“Tell me now what Nestor says to his son Antilochous when he is advising him to be careful around the turning post in the chariot race for Patroklos.” ΣΩ. Εἰπὲ δή μοι ἃ λέγει Νέστωρ ᾿Αντιλόχῳ τῷ ὑεῖ, παραινῶν εὐλαβηθῆναι περὶ τὴν καμπὴν ἐν τῇ ἱπποδρομίᾳ τῇ ἐπὶ Πατρόκλῳ, 537a7“)
Plato provides at least the possibility that 5th and 4th century authors conceived of discrete parts of the Iliad as having their own titles and perhaps independent standing. I suspect there is more extensive support for this contention among the Greek orators, but the more interesting data is available from Greek art. In vase painting especially we have images from the 6th century and earlier that correlate to famous scenes from the Trojan War narrative such as the judgment of Paris and the ransoming of Hektor. As authors like Steven Lowenstam have shown, these are not simply static scenes but they act as metonyms for narratives. Of course, it is a mistake to see these images as correlating with the narrative we have. Instead, they indicate the basic premise of each episode as part of a larger whole (to go back to Aristotle). What the total evidence shows, though, is not a clustering of episodes from the Iliad and the Odyssey but a wide range of scenes from the Trojan War in general and a concentration of those that are not actually in our extant epics.
There is little agreement among classical scholars about the relationship between iconography and narrative traditions. Generally, I think it is unwise to overdetermine such things–by which I mean limiting to a less than useful extreme the range of relationships an image can have with the story it inspires in viewers. When it comes to traditional narrative episodes, images can denote very specific things or be rather open. Consider images of a crucified Christ: one may be a simple figure on a cross while another may show a wound from the centurion’s spear etc. There is iconographic drift even within one general narrative tradition.
An image can, therefore, stand metonymically to potential variations for narrative traditions. The popular image of a human figure blinding a giant–almost always identified as Odysseus–can support a level of detail that implies or conveys a very specific narrative correspondence. Consider how the krater in the image below allows alignment with the story where Odysseus gets Polyphemus drunk before blinding him while the image below it shows a “sleeping Cyclops” but without the specific allusion to wine, unless we consider the lines and dots stylized vines. The third image has neither.
So, iconography is indicative but not necessarily determinative for episodic performance. There are tempting parallels from other traditions that could push the boundaries of what we think the relationship between epic performance and images were, however. In Rajasthan, the performance of religious epics like Devnarayan, which can take a full week of all night recitations, are offered alongside a tapestry with images from the story. In this tradition, the Bhopa, a religious figure and singer, recites the tale while a partner illuminates the Par or Phad to correspond with parts of the tale. (I first learned about this from William Dalrymple’s 2006 article “Homer in India”)
I offer this analogy not because I believe that something similar happened in the performance of Homer in ancient Greece, but because it can point to some essential features of the relationship between episodic performance and imagery. First, the relationship between an image and a tale in this dynamic is metaphorical and metonymic: the image is not the story, but instead provides a possible window into the story. It can trigger a range of associative details that unfold over time. So, images stand for a story, but when they fix it in time can become something else on their own (and vice versa, to avoid making image secondary to the always primary narrative). Second, discrete series of images help to order or sequence more or less complex series. I often recall the cognitive concept of 7 plus/minus 2, which is generally how many discrete tasks/facts a human mind can keep track of at any given time. Any technology or practice that can divide larger sequences into manageable sets of 7 plus/minus 2 can help to explain the creation of longer and intricate compositions by individuals or groups.
Digression aside, there are multiple ways to think about the relationship between image and story in Greek myth. For thinking about the performance of Homer, I think that early art, when combined with the textual evidence the archaic and classical material discussed here, mostly supports the premise that many parts of the Homeric epics that we know had an independent status as shorter songs. The concretization of these scenes into identifiable parts could also be scene as a feature of the evolution of the epics and their later textualization. By phrasing it this way, I am leaving open two possibilities: one is that later scholars identified separate parts of the poems and gave them names based on their content; the other is that the songs were extant and the names are only articulated later. The material from the Homeric scholia is somewhat scattershot: episodia denote larger scenes much less frequently than shorter scenes or motifs. Much later authors, like Eustathius, seem to use the term more frequently to indicate different narrative traditions, but all this signals to me is a shifting of the term over time to be more inclusive. From Herodian to Eustathius, we can observe the development of episodes for nearly every book of the epic.
Bibliography: Please see the first post for an inclusive bibliography