LfgrE isn’t very practical as a concordance. But it’s worthwhile to risk getting caught while stealing it from the university library, because of the extensive articles on each word with bibliography and all… (My university has made the business of liberating the LfgrE much more difficult by having had the Lieferungs bound in 4 big, heavy volumes, which are really difficult to smuggle out 
)
Concordances. There’s nothing extra in Prendergast-Dunbar, just the individual lines themselves, without further context and with some bad readings. If you have access to the TLG you can simply enter a word and see every occurrence of it, with as many lines of local context as you choose. (No variants, though.) And you can specify the range of texts to be searched—Homer, just Iliad, Hom.+Hom.Hymns, all epic, whatever. It’s neat, fast, and reliable. (It didn’t used to be. In its fledgling days at Irvine it took a whole day to run a global search on a much smaller corpus. Mind you, that was a lot faster than reading it all or consulting dozens of indexes etc.). Failing that, there’s the Chicago site.
So I’d leave the concordances with your antiquarian bookseller, and support her/him by buying something more useful and/or more entertaining. If you spot a copy of Ebeling’s Lexicon Homericum, snap it up. That definitely falls into the useful category, especially if you haven’t stolen the LfgrE.
Yes, I thought so. The trouble is that the chances of finding anything that really interests me there are infinitely small. Typically you have books like “Alea jacta est – 1000 favourite Latin expressions” and obscure Greek-German dictionaries from the 19th century printed in Fraktur. So my support goes to online booksellers abroad. Ebeling I know, but since I don’t really read Latin I’ve skipped it.
Duly noted. A new edition goes for 95 euro on amazon, quite expensive, though okay if really worthwhile. After a few months ‘into Homer’ I get the strong impression that one may spend a small fortune collecting a credible Homeric library. Still, some hobbies are far worse. So I tell myself at least.
I think that captures the essence of it, yes; a fairground attraction for a highbrow audience.
I’m sure that’s not the way you see it. Whilst it would be nice to carry around a library of favourite books entirely in our head, enjoyment of a work is not tied to a perfect recollection of it, and may even be increased by forgetting and then rediscovering parts of it when it is read again.
Your musing puts me in mind of one of poor old Gissing’s best known characters:
“Scholarship in the high sense was denied me, and now it is too late. Yet here am I gloating over Pausanias, and promising myself to read every word of him. Who that has any tincture of old letters would not like to read Pausanias, instead of mere quotations from him and references to him? Here are the volumes of Dahn’s Die Könige der Germanen: who would not like to know all he can about the Teutonic conquerors of Rome? And so on, and so on. To the end I shall be reading—and forgetting. Ah, that’s the worst of it! Had I at command all the knowledge I have at any time possessed, I might call myself a learned man. Nothing surely is so bad for the memory as long-enduring worry, agitation, fear. I cannot preserve more than a few fragments of what I read, yet read I shall, persistently, rejoicingly. Would I gather erudition for a future life? Indeed, it no longer troubles me that I forget. I have the happiness of the passing moment, and what more can mortal ask?” (The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft, XVII).
I wasn’t serious. Memorizing Homer doesn’t strike me as how I want to spend my dwindling years.
Reading the speech of Achilles we register what you call a discrepancy by noting the irony, and the imagination fills in the narrative. It should be easy to accept since the unnarrated episode fills in a natural curiosity as to what Achilles has been doing this whole time - well, he had another visit paid to him by Thetis.
We should register that the earlier pleas of Thetis to Zeus and the promises of Athena to Achilles were being fulfilled. The Achaeans are hemmed up by their ships, Achilles is being repayed as Athena promised and is being honoured as Thetis wished and there is a great longing for Achilles as he himself said there would be. The new development, the revelation of two fates, is necessary to understand why he doesn’t accept the repayment. Zeus has declared that Patroclus must die, and to this end Achilles is allowed to give full expression to his anger. As Pandarus was the agent of Athena who had him, who didn’t bring any one of his eleven chariots to Troy the pasture of horses because he thought they wouldn’t get anything to eat, to foolishly try to shoot an arrow to break the truce, so in the same manner it is the very attribute about Achilles being such an intense guy that allows him to accept the other path he thinks he has before him.
The rhetorical force of the statement is great but it is silly to assume that because the speech is impassioned, the facts are fabricated. The magnificence of the rhetoric is appropriate to the significance of the subject. The revelation of the two paths Achilles has before him is not some isolated fact, but is integral to the whole speech, and the idea that a man has a choice to make on his own is so different from what the poet has been treating us with up to this point, particulary when Homer three times explicitly depicts three heroes debating one of two courses of action (diandicha mermerixen) which were settled by the intervention of gods, that it is unfathomable that Homer now has Achillies make it up just to “play up the risks”.
The irony of the episode, and the motives of fate and glory have a parallel in the activities of Hector. He had the women pray against Diomedes already when it was rather unnecessary, seeing as Athena had ceased her lively involvement by then. We see he develops a hope to slay Diomedes, and that desire for glory, so evident and near desperate in the terms he sets out for his duel, materializes as the reckless behaviour Odysseus reports to Achilles. (The exchange of armour between Diomedes and Glaucos isn’t then after all so innocent, as one can so readily imagine the desire of Hector’s to strip his Trojan golden armour - and I will continue to insist that the contrast between the glorious gold and the bronze, bronze that the realist dryly notes is more appropraite to fighting battles, underscores that desire for glory.) Hector also seems to be making a choice - to fight outside the city walls, and he also shares a certain premonition of the future when he reveals to his wife that Troy will be destroyed. And of course the remarks of Helen to Hector about becoming the theme of songs is echoed by Achilles when he is found playing his lyre.
The choice the poet made not to narrate the new development has the poetic force of fittingly engaging the reader to consider what is very personal, free will, or one’s relationship to the gods and fate. Throughout the poem, the poet accustoms the audience to behold the ever-present agency of the gods, and using the technique of “not saying everything” to do so is immediately apparent from the beginning, when Agamemnon rises furiously against Kalkas. Other instances of a more textual sort occur throughout the poem, as when after the Trojans have mustered for battle, Homer narrates the agency of Hera, having her complain about her sweating horses: he does not narrate it before and this has the effect of making us alert to the agency of the gods at all times. When Aphrodite is with Paris and Helen in his room, a sudden desire comes over Paris for Helen; we are not told that Aphrodite sprinkled love potion over him, but we are to understand her immediate agency - it’s a minor occurence but nevertheless acustoms the audience to fill in the blanks. During the duel between Menelaus and Paris, Menelaus prays to Zeus, but Paris says it was with Athena’s help that he overcame him; a trivial discrepancy but it forces the audience to consider the intricate agencies of the gods. When the duel between Aias and Hector is put to an end, we are to understand that the heralds, angels of Zeus, were of one mind to put the matter to an end by the agency of Zeus - it’s not narrated but it’s the natural presumption. In the ninth book the technique is used in a two fold complementary manner: The audience is aware that the poet did not narrate Thetis telling Achilles the news; but on the other hand, the audience will find that the ninth book lacks any narration of the gods all together, a feature unique to this book; we are not told what the gods are doing on Olympus, we are not told how Zeus nods his head in reply to prayers and libations. The contrast is unmistakably intended, and the crashing of Homeric formulas - another instance is reported earlier up the thread - complements the circumstances Achilles is dealing with.
I’m getting ahead of myself, but I want to remark on the remark Achilles makes to the dying Hector. I want to suggest that this is a statement of faith, and it does not betray a “rhetorical exaggeration”. Perhaps at that point Achilles realizes that he never had a choice, fulfilling the will of Zeus and fate, and acknowledges his full submission to something greater than mortal man. Moreover, in killing Patroclus perhaps the purpose of Zeus was not to entice Achilles just to kill Hector and so forth - but the killing of Patroclus itself is part of the higher scheme of things, Zeus’ grand plan, and hence why it is necessary that Achilles should continue to nurture his wrath and why the option of the two fold fate is very real. Afterall, who is Zeus to fulfill the entreaty of Thetis for her sake alone, or Hera’s or anyone else’s? The significance of the death of Patroclus cannot be understated - the fight for his stripped corpse is in the Iliad the only description of the hoplite formation.
Interesting post. I’m afraid I can’t engage with it right now—hopefully others will—but clearly I shall have to justify my preemptive “(No use saying Well maybe she told him on a different occasion.)”
See XVII 408 and 409:
πολλάκι γὰρ τό γε μητρὸς ἐπεύθετο νόσφιν ἀκούων,
ἥ οἱ ἀπαγγέλλεσκε Διὸς μεγάλοιο νόημα.
Then see around XIIX 95,96; it’s hard to pretend the manner of the conversation is not agreable to the revelation. And the shield itself - Does it not express the two paths? Does it not answer for glory?
But compare lines 95 - 98 and 115 and 116:
‘ὠκύμορος δή μοι τέκος ἔσσεαι, οἷ᾽ ἀγορεύεις:
αὐτίκα γάρ τοι ἔπειτα μεθ᾽ Ἕκτορα πότμος ἑτοῖμος.’
τὴν δὲ μέγ᾽ ὀχθήσας προσέφη πόδας ὠκὺς Ἀχιλλεύς:
‘αὐτίκα τεθναίην, …
νῦν δ᾽ εἶμ᾽ ὄφρα φίλης κεφαλῆς ὀλετῆρα κιχείω
Ἕκτορα: κῆρα δ᾽ ἐγὼ τότε δέξομαι ὁππότε κεν δὴ
Ζεὺς ἐθέλῃ τελέσαι ἠδ᾽ ἀθάνατοι θεοὶ ἄλλοι.
I think it’s rather clear by the first book when Thetis bemoans his short life. Will you argue she is sad he is mortal? She adds he is “now both swift fated and distressed above all men”, in other words, not only is he swift fated but now miserable as well: his situation is poignant from the first. Isn’t the image of a hero and full grown man crying for his mom over a girl a little ridiculous?
In the bk.17 passage the point is being made that despite Achilles’ occasional access to Zeus’ νόημα via his chats with Thetis, he does not know, for she did not tell him, that Patroclus is already dead. We certainly cannot infer from this—I suppose this is what you’re suggesting—that she had told him that he himself would not return home if he rejoined the fighting. That is what he claimed in the embassy scene in his response to old Phoenix, but we do not have to believe him, and it would be a mistake to do so. What Homer’s characters say is entirely determined by the circumstances in which they find themselves—it’s all situational rhetoric. Here Achilles needs to justify his irrational refusal, in the face of Phoenix’ unanswerable arguments, to accept the astoundingly generous τιμή-conferring gifts that Agamemnon is offering, and the only way he can do it is by perverting what Thetis had in fact told him in bk.1. You rejected this in your earlier post (“silly,” “unfathomable,” etc.), but I still believe that’s the right way to view it.
You do well however to adduce bk.18, and you could have mentioned 9-11, where Achilles says that Thetis had told him that Patroclus would die at the hands of the Trojans. This obviously comports with 17.401-11, where we have it on Homer’s authority that Thetis had not told Achilles that Patroclus was now indeed dead.
But as to Achilles’ own impending death: the expectation is continually set up that his death will culminate the poem. After Sarpedon’s death will come Patroclus’, after Patroclus’ Hector’s, after Hector’s Achilles’, the last in the chain (as far as the poem is concerned, that is). The killer is killed, as night follows day, and the pattern is not to be broken. Homer leaves no room for doubt in the audience’s mind. The closer we get to Achilles’ death, the more of a sure thing it becomes. His death has to be the most significant event of the poem, so the certainly of it has to be signaled well in advance (signaled to us, that is; Homer specializes in dramatic irony, the disconnect between what we know and what the characters themselves know).
Accordingly we’re told already in bk.1 that he won’t be alive for long, and here in bk.18 Homer gives Thetis an ante-mortem lament in which she mourns that fact that her son will not return home (59f.), and he even has Achilles echo this himself (89f.)—but note that Achilles accounts for it not by reference to what Thetis has said to him, as divine revelation, but in terms of his own thumos’ refusal to let him go on living without killing Hector (90-93), and it is only in light of this determination of his that Thetis predicts his early death (ωκυμορος δη μοι, τεκος, εσσεαι—note the future tense), since his ποτμος is “ready and waiting immediately after Hector.” This is the first time we have been expressly told that, but it is something we have to be told, unambiguously. This specific piece of info, true though it is, is actually a superb piece of misdirection on Homer’s part. We have another six books to go and Achilles still won’t be dead by the end of them. (And a whole lot more will happen before he is, but the poem gives no hint of that.) But we have to know his death is the next in the sequence. Thetis’ ante eventum threnos itself serves to ensure that, too.
At 115f. Achilles says he’ll accept death whenever the gods bring it about—exactly what he will say again in his final words to (now dead) Hector in bk.22. I should have noted this in my earlier post. He’s not prepared to accept unequivocally that his own death will now follow—it’s all in the lap of the gods, he’ll die when they choose, whenever that may be. It’s psychologically realistic. He has to be allowed if not a glimmer of doubt, at least the pretense of it. To do otherwise would be to lose face.
[EDIT. However, when mourning Patroclus later in the book, at 328ff., he declares that it’s fated (πεπρωται) that both of them “redden the same earth right here at Troy”: he will not return home to his parents. I should certainly have taken this into account too. The situation has changed. Instead of attempting to weaken the prediction of his own imminent death, he is now intent on reproaching himself for failing Patroclus. Holding himself responsible for his beloved companion’s death, he feels bound to keep him company in death. That is expressed in terms of fatedness. In Homer, what happens is fated to happen: it’s what happens (did happen, will happen) that determines what’s fated to happen.]
In the bk.1 dialogue between Achilles and his divine mother, much is made of the fact that Achilles is destined for a short life. Achilles uses it as the basis for his complaint about his lack of τιμή (it’s all the more unfair since Thetis bore him μινυνθάδιος, 353), and Thetis really goes to town on it (414-18). So it’s established right at the outset of the poem that Achilles’ life will be short and lamentable, it’s a fixed datum, but it’s all rather vague and unspecific, and is left unelaborated for the time being. It comes back in the later part of the poem as his death approaches, now in more specific form, as we’ve seen. His life will be short, no ifs or buts. And he knows it, has always known it, witness bk.1. His introduction of his alleged διχθαδιαι κῆρες in bk.9, in which he claims he has a long life as an alternative destiny (!) to a short one, is in direct contradiction of this immutable truth, and is not to be credited. I stand by the explanation I’ve offered of it, in terms of the rhetoric of the situation (a phrase used by A.M. Dale of speeches in tragedy).
Sorry to go on at such length, but this is the Iliad we’re talking about.
EDIT. Still, it’s conceivable, probable even, that there was some version in which Achilles, or somebody else, did have these alternative fates. It would be a most effective way to present the hero’s constant dilemma—fight and die with glory, or don’t and live with shame. Cf. Glaucus and Diomedes, Hector, Stesichorus’ Geryon, …. (It’s a fictive dilemma, of course, in the sense that he always makes the same choice.) The Iliad stamps hard on that version, whether actual or merely potential, just as it suppresses other weird or magical things in the tradition that would not be consonant with the poem’s aesthetics, but allows it to peek out for a moment in the embassy scene, if only in a context where it can be seen as alien and false.
Minor edits for phrasing.
Congratulations, you have brought the Homeric hero down to your own level
I shall now go sulk in my tent.
I think mwh’s assessment is straight to the point, except perhaps for this post scriptum.
I would think myself that this constant dilemma (immortality through heroic death or living with shame) is specifically the Iliad poet’s own contribution to the tradition, the personal touch in his reinterpretation of the inherited tradition. The alternative fates are, in my opinion, a rhetoric device (a device mwh already suggested above). For the Iliad poet, the only conceivable immortality is through heroic deeds. I’m not aware of this idea in any other early poetry. Dying heroically for the community is treated at least in some elegy, but I think only the Iliad does heroism has such an utterly intrinsic value (as compared to the heroism of sacrifying oneself for the benefit of community).
Hmm… Having written this, I wonder if you didn’t mean this in the first place. Still, I post it as it is.
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Ah, Dr. Casaubon! It must be almost 20 years ago since I read that novel and I can still remember my almost physiscal disgust at the marriage between beautiful and intelligent Dorothea and that awful man.
Sorry for the digression: back to Homer.
Qimmik, you could benefit editing your response still a fifth time
I deleted it. Are you happy?
@Niedzielski, I see two posts above that read like personal insults to this forum’s two most learned participants. That’s not good.
I know where you’re coming from. I am a fan a sharp rhetoric and I am bad about lashing out when people disagree with me – much of the time, I’m even right – but I always regret speaking (or even worse, writing) in anger. Let’s not have the most expendable members of this board (you or me), drive away the least expendable.
If only abundant knowledge and learning were a sign of the existence of culture! Ah, but Qimmik, I am misunderstood, it’s really your happiness I worry for! But to mwh I will only apologize when there becomes a great longing of him, and am ready to offer many gifts, and the concession of his opinions, unharmed and untouched. Isn’t that what the situation now requires? Either way, this is potter against potter, textkit user against textkit user; jeidsath, take your Christian sentiments with yourself to another forum, for we here are students of Homer!
For my part, I enjoy an occasional digression and do indulge in them myself, especially when they are even remotely related to Homer or Homerists. So I at least did enjoy the story of Dunbar (or was it Prendergast), for all its “Christian sentiments”, before it benefitted of a fifth editing. If there was a slight note of sarcasm in that delightful story, it still made me regret I missed a great career opportunity by not electing to study theology.