Testing the Greeks (and their Audience)
Returning to Iliad 2
This post 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.
In my earlier posts on the second book of the Iliad, I wrote in general terms about the structure of the book and in specific about the treatment of Thersites during the political scene. If I have to convey one thematic point about book 2 it is this: book 2 is both a political and a poetic response to the rupture of book 1. It features the Greeks attempting to reunify their coalition after Achilles’ apostasy at the beginning of the epic and then resets the narrative by taking us to the beginning of the Trojan War. Here’s how I would break down the structure of the book.
A Political Theme: Reunifying the Greeks 1-484
Zeus’ False Dream, Agamemnon’s Council 1-84
Agamemnon’s Test 85-154
Hera’s Intervention through Odysseus 155-210
Thersites’ Scene 211-277
Odysseus’ Speech 278-333
Nestor’s Speech and Agamemnon’s Commands-395
Similes and Marshalling, 396-483
Poetics: Repositioning the Trojan War, 484-
Greek Catalog 484-785
Trojan Catalog 786-877
I have been thinking about the structure of this book and the scenes in the first half since my dissertation days, now two decades ago. The crucial thing thing about the first half is that there is a movement from a state of uncertainty into one of disorder that is than reshaped into one of greater order by the interventions of Odysseus and Nestor who stage-manage the conflict effectively to put Agamemnon into a position to retake the helm of war.
There are many interpretive issues about book 2: it starts with a false dream sent by Zeus to get Agamemnon to lead the Greeks into war, in part to satisfy Zeus’ local plan to honor Achilles by making the Greeks suffer. Of course, this also leads into the larger plan of the Trojan War, which is to lighten the burden of the race of heroes on the earth by killing them off through conflicts at Thebes and Troy. Final questions about the book circle around the poets of the Homeric narrator appealing to the Muses again, the compositional tension between a catalog that seems thematically and content-wise fit to the beginning of the war, poetic interest in the associative series of inset narratives associated with the catalog, and, finally, the strange, nearly afterthought nature of the Trojan Catalog.
But one initial question for the beginning of the book is what we are supposed to make of Agamemnon’s decision to test his troops. The Diapeira of Iliad 2 is often used as a touchstone for the epic’s characterization of Agamemnon. Ancient authors approve of his strategy. For one scholiast the test is an ancient custom (κατά τι παλαιὸν ἔθος) to see whether the Achaeans fight earnestly or compulsion (προθυμίᾳ ἤ ἀνάγκῃ; Schol. D Il. 2.73c ex. 2-4); another sees it motivated by a long campaign and Achilles’ revolt (Schol. bT Il. 2.73a ex. 1-1). Eustathius commends it as “good and strategic” (Comm. ad. Il. II. 285.14).
Although some critics have read the test as a mistake, they do not clarify why it is so in the epic’s terms. Thalmann (1988, p. 7-9) suggests that Agamemnon “intends a complex message” but his failure to articulate this “marks the disruption of the relations between king and people”. Russo and Knox (1989) argue that Agamemnon’s testing of the army is traditional and acceptable; see also McGlew 1989. Porter (2013, Chapter 4) argues that Agamemnon has miscalculated the reactions and the scene constitutes a reflection of his inept character.
But, as one might guess, I have a different take on this beginning. I think it is successful! But it takes a little bit of explaining why. One of the first things to (re)introduce are some basic ideas from speech act theory (which I have discussed before). J. L. Austin was one of the first philosophers to qualify as a “performative speech act” an utterance that in some way changes reality by effecting or amounting to an action. His examples were fairly limited: utterances like “I bet” or “I thee wed” are those that need no accompanying action or other act to suffice to have changed the relationship between the speaker and others (or among those subject to the speech) based on the context. Austin added more vocabulary to this: a felicitous speech act is one that obtains its outcome (and infelicitous is one that does not). Austin also helpfully distinguished between different kinds of outcomes: he calls the intended effect of a speech-act the illocutionary effect of the speaker and the actual outcome the perlocutionary effect. If we take the example of making a bet, an infelicitous “betting” would be one where the process or formula were wrong or either the speaker or the recipient did not have the contextual (social) standing to execute the speech act.
Essential to any analysis of what Agamemnon achieves is a reevaluation of what he actually proposes to the boulê of gerontes (2.72-75):
ἀλλ’ ἄγετ’ αἴ κέν πως θωρήξομεν υἷας ᾿Αχαιῶν·
πρῶτα δ’ ἐγὼν ἔπεσιν πειρήσομαι, ἣ θέμις ἐστί,
καὶ φεύγειν σὺν νηυσὶ πολυκλήϊσι κελεύσω·
ὑμεῖς δ’ ἄλλοθεν ἄλλος ἐρητύειν ἐπέεσσιν.‘But come let us see if somehow we may arm the sons of the Achaeans.
But first, I will test them with words, which is thémis,
and I will order them to flee with the many-benched ships;
but you, spread out and individually restrain them with words.
Agamemnon communicates an expectation (illocutionary force) for his speech’s (perlocutionary) effect. Agamemnon characterizes his speech without qualification as a command (κελεύσω): he will order the Achaeans to flee (φεύγειν). Furthermore, he expects the host to obey him since he orders the gerontes to restrain the host with words (ὑμεῖς δ' ἄλλοθεν ἄλλος ἐρητύειν ἐπέεσσιν) These details imply that he really intends for them to (try to) flee.
To confirm this: When he speaks in front of the entire assembly, he is persuasive and vivid in his language. He paints a bleak picture of futility: he emphasizes divine deception while also using memorable language (repetitions, e.g. τοιόνδε τοσόνδε τε λαὸν, 120; alliterations, e.g. ἄπρηκτον πόλεμον πολεμίζειν, 121)[1] to activate cultural codes of shame for army’s failure (e.g δυσκλέα ῎Αργος ἱκέσθαι, 115; αἰσχρὸν γὰρ τόδε γ' ἐστὶ καὶ ἐσσομένοισι πυθέσθαι, 119).
He initiates the speech by taking responsibility for destroying the host (ἐπεὶ πολὺν ὤλεσα λαόν, 115) and ends it by appealing to a collective desire to flee and thus save the host (140-141) In short, the speech appears wholly aimed at convincing the Achaean host to return home. To confirm the success of this endeavor, the audience hears similes comparing the army to waves of the sea pushed in different directions or fields of grain whirled asunder by wind attend the men from assembly to a mad dash to the ships (2.142-254).
The missing piece in analyzing this sequence is often what Agamemnon orders the captains to do: He enjoins them to respond to his speech and persuade the soldiers to prepare for war (ἀλλ' ἄγετ' αἴ κέν πως θωρήξομεν υἷας ᾿Αχαιῶν) and also to restrain the men when they panic (ὑμεῖς δ' ἄλλοθεν ἄλλος ἐρητύειν ἐπέεσσιν). So, Agamemnon achieves his perlocution with the army (they flee) but somehow fails to secure obedience to his command to his council or, perhaps, is so persuasive in his feigned lament that his speech obtains the ‘infelicitous’ outcome of unnerving even the elders who are in on the game [see Cook (2003, p. 172): “The problem lies not with the plan, but its execution”].
From the perspective of the larger book, however, these orders are eventually realized: Odysseus gets everyone to sit down; he meets the challenge of Thersites’ dissent; Nestor and Odysseus give rousing speeches that reauthorize Agamemnon’s power; and the similes following Agamemnon’s orders reflect groups unified in a shared cause. By Agamemnon’s final speech, on the other hand, the Achaeans one wave raised to a mighty height against a jutting cliff by a single wind, 2.394-7. And, yet, despite this unity, the narrative leaves the impression that it was a close thing altogether: if not for the intervention of Athena and Hera, “the Achaeans would have obtained a homecoming against their fate”[3].
In a way, this sequence is a microcosm of the whole Iliad: we have interpretive indeterminacy, a confusion of divine and human agency, and overlapping motivations all within a frame of advancing an immediate plot (the rage of Achilles and breakdown in Achaean politics) within the more-or-less known arc of the larger Trojan War. The test as I have suggested elsewhere, is as much a challenge for the epic’s external audience as for those acting within the poem.
From Poetics to Politics: Repairing Achaean Politics in Book 2 of the Iliad: Introduction to Iliad 2, the Diapeira and the Catalog of Ships
Thersites’ Body: Description, Characterization, and Physiognomy in Iliad 2: Disability Studies and Homer; Politics
Extraordinary, But Ordinary: Homeric Ideology
Selected Bibliography
Dentice di Accadia Stefano, «La ‘Prova’ di Agamennone: Una Strategia Retorica Vincente», Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, nº 153, 2010, p. 225-246.
Austin J. L., How to Do Things With Words, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1975.
Barker E. T. E., «Achilles’ Last Stand: Institutionalising Dissent in Homer’s Iliad», PCPS nº 50, 2004, p. 92-120.
Barker E. T. E., Entering the Agôn: Dissent and Authority in Homer, Historiography and Tragedy, Oxford, 2009.
Clark Matthew, «Chryses’ Supplication: Speech Act and Mythological Allusion», Classical Antiquity, nº 17, 1997, p. 5-24.
Cook Erwin F., «Agamemnon’s Test of the Army in Iliad Book 2 and the Function of Homeric Akhos», American Journal of Philology, nº 124, 2003, p. 165-198.
Donlan Walter, «Homer’s Agamemnon», Classical World, nº 65, 1971, p. 109-115.
Elmer David, The Poetics of Consent: Collective Decision Making and the Iliad, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins, 2013.
Gorman David, «The Use and Abuse of Speech-Act Theory in Criticism», Poetics Today nº 20, 1999, p. 93-119.
Hammer Dean, The Iliad as Politics: The Performance of Political Thought, Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 2002.
Katzung P. G., Die Diapeira in der Iliashandlung, Dissertation, Frankfurt, 1960.
Knox Ronald and Russo Joseph, «Agamemnon’s Test: Iliad 2.73-5», Classical Antiquity nº 8, 1989, p. 351-358.
Kullman W. «Die Probe Des Achaierheerds in der Ilias», Museum Helveticum, nº 12, 1955, p. 253-273.
Lloyd Michael, «The Politeness of Achilles: Off-Record Conversation Strategies», Journal of Hellenic Studies nº 124, 2004, p. 75-89.
Lohmann Dieter, Die Komposition der Reden in der Ilias, Berlin: de Gruyter, 1970.
Louden Bruce, «Pivotal Contrafactuals in Homeric Epic», Classical Antiquity, nº 12, 1993, p. 181-198.
Mackie Hilary, Talking Trojan: Speech and Community in the Iliad, Lanham, MD, Rowman and Littlefield, 1989.
Martin, Richard, The Language of Heroes: Speech and Performance in the Iliad, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1989.
McGlew James F., «Agamemnon’s Test of the Army in Iliad Book 2», Classical Antiquity, nº 8, 1989, p. 283-295.
Morrison James V., Homeric Misdirection: False Predictions in the Iliad, Ann Arbor, The University of Michigan Press, 1992.
Morrison James V., «Alternatives to the Epic Tradition: Homer’s Challenges in the Iliad», TAPA nº 122, 1992, p. 61-71.
Moulton Carroll, Similes in the Homeric Poems, Göttingen,Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1977.
Rabel Robert J., «Agamemnon’s Iliad», Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, nº 32, 1992, p. 103-117.
Porter Andrew E., Agamemon, the Pathetic Despot: Reading Traditional Characterization in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, 2013
Pratt M. L., Toward a Speech Act Theory of Literary Discourse, Bloomington, University of Indiana Press, 1977.
Roochnik David, «Homeric Speech Acts: Word and Deed in the Epics», Classical Journal, nº 85, 1990, p. 289-299.
Sammons Benjamin, «Agamemnon and His Audiences», Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies, nº 49, 2009, p. 159-185.
Schmidt Jens-Uwe, «Die ‘Probe’ des Achaierheeres als Spiegel der besonderen Intentionen des Iliasdichters», Philologus, nº 146, 2002, p. 3-21
Searle J. R., Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1969.
Searle J. R., « A Classification of Illocutionary Acts». Language in Society, nº 5, 1976, 1-22.
Searle J. R., Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theories of Speech Acts, Cambridge, 1979.
Scodel Ruth, Epic Facework: Self-Presentation and Social Interaction in Homer, Swansea, Classical Press of Wales, 2008.
Taplin Oliver, «Agamemnon’s Role in the Iliad», dans Charecterisation and Individuality in Greek Literature, C.Pelling (ed.). Oxford, Oxford University, 1990, p. 60-82.
Wilson Donna F., Ransom, Revenge, and Heroic Identity in the Iliad, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002.