Garvie says “ ἥρως in run over position, and in apposition to Ἀλκινόοιο, serves merely to fill up the vacant space at the beginning of the line. There is more point to it when the proper name follows as at 8.483 This contracted form of the gen. is unique. H. Uses ἥρωος at 22.185. Σ suggests that ἥρως may be vocative (cf. 7.303, etc. )but such a voc. at the end of the sentence in this position would be very strange. “
I am not sure I can get too excited about this but I posted it because it interests two of you.
Here’s 4, 423:
καὶ τότε δὴ σχέσθαι τε βίης λῦσαί τε γέροντα,
ἥρως, εἴρεσθαι δέ, θεῶν ὅς τίς σε χαλέπτει,
and 6,303
δώματα Φαιήκων, οἷος δόμος Ἀλκινόοιο
ἥρωος. ἀλλ᾽ ὁπότ᾽ ἄν σε δόμοι κεκύθωσι καὶ αὐλή,
(Stanford has ἥρως)
Sean, if yours is a tin ear, mine is pure lead! But honestly, this sounds OK to me; it may be serving as a place holder to fill out the line, but I should think the enjambement in 6,303 allows the poet to place emphasis on ἥρως, and if it’s being emphasized, then perhaps a spondee is more appropriate, hence ἥρως or ἥρω instead of ἥρωος. @Seneca, thanks for the information from Garvie!
ἥρως at 6.303: I haven’t investigated but if the paradosis is ἥρως I guess epic had traditionally used ἥρως as nom. and/or voc. (as at 4.423), and here in Od.6 the same form was pushed into ad hoc service as genitive. I’d have expected ἥρωος (with internal correption) but apparently the force of tradition was too strong. Or since the Odyssey transmission is so poor it may perhaps have been just a mistake for ἥρωος. Makes no real difference. It has to be understood as genitive.
Could someone shed some light of Scheria’s geographical setting for Odysseus’ encounter with Nausicaa? In Bk 6 one has the impression she travels by mule cart some distance to the clothes washing pool by the seashore. Yet, at the beginning of Bk 7, when Od arrives in town en route to Alcinous’ palace, he admires the port and the fine ships, meaning that the town is also on the coast. Is this arrangement a bit of dramatic license on the author’s part? There must have been a suitable stream close by but it wouldn’t have been as secluded as the one where the meeting takes place.
Many thanks
Michael
I bought a copy of Merry’s edition of the Odyssey for schools a while back, which has the following comment on 6.262-65 and the picture below accompanying it:
“Translate the passage, ‘But when we set foot in the city; round which runs a lofty rampart, and there is a fair haven at either side of the city, and narrow is the entrance. And rounded ships are drawn up along the road; for all the men have, each one to himself, a dock.’ Like ᾿Αστερὶς, Od. 4. 846, the town had two harbours, for it was situated on a peninsula, and a harbour was formed on either side, leaving a narrow isthmus, along which the ships were drawn up.”
So Merry makes Scheria a tied island connected to the mainland (or a bigger island?) by a tombolo. There seem to be quite a few of these in Greece. That doesn’t answer your question about the washing pools - as you say, they’re a good way from town (πολλὸν γὰρ ἀπὸ πλυνοί εἰσι πόληος - 6.40). At 6.259 Nausicaa talks about how they will pass through fields on the way to town (ὄφρ᾽ ἂν μέν κ᾽ ἀγροὺς ἴομεν) which are perhaps the fields mentioned at the start of Book 6 which Nausithous divided among the Phaeacians (6.10). Presumably the river is on the other side of these and whatever water supply is nearer to Scheria would be reserved for drinking water.
Of course it’s a fictional place and we shouldn’t assume it makes complete sense but I find the above reasonably satisfying.
Does a Greek (in fiction) have to be told that a space is sacred to a particular god or is it ‘obvious’ in some way? And is a grove like this one a ‘thin place’ where access to the god is easier, a place where one is expected to offer prayer, or both?
I think this reflects real cult practices, even if in this particular case the sacred grove is fictional. When Odysseus arrives in Ithaca, he hides his valuables in a sacred cave of the nymphs, which is suspected to be a real world cult place in Ithaca. (There are probably better examples of actual cult places mentioned in Homer, but I can’t remember).
I don’t know what particular features in the absence of a temple would have marked the grove as sacred to a god. Was there perhaps an altar?
I did not read the article all the way through, but page 8, I think, deals with your question. Sacred groves could be distinguished by shrines, altars, temples or simply by common knowledge. There are 2 types: natural, and landscaped. Natural sacred groves would be found in those places untouched and thus not defiled by man. Landscaped of course, would be those specifically planted about a temple or shrine.
Leaving one’s village, going on past the cultivated fields surrounding it and encountering the wilderness would probably alert someone that he was about to enter an area that only the gods control. Athena’s sacred grove in ll. 292-294 would appear to be of the second type, however, as it is reserved for Alkinoos.
I am not sure I follow this. I thought the thrust of these lines is “you will find the grove of Athena …there is my father’s estate”. Perhaps reserved is not quite the right word. My understanding is that there is grove surrounded by a meadow and alongside this a “τέμενος” which is N.'s estate including the flourishing garden. But perhaps the “τέμενος” dedicated to Alcinous also includes the grove, making it his property. I think my confusion about this arose because I assumed that the grove dedicated to Athena would have been a public space. But I suppose there is not good reason to believe that. Perhaps reserved is the right word. I leave this post as it is in case other people were puzzled about this.
Seneca, you’re probably right. I was thinking of ἄλσος as more of the first type of sacred grove, i.e. natural landscape and τέμενος as the second type, a cultivated landscape, but still sacred and so I rather carelessly attributed the grove to Alkinoos. After reading a little more closely, I don’t see any other necessary connexion aside from proximity. There is an ἄλσος Ἀθήνης and the πατρός ἐμοῦ τέμενος. From what I’ve read, by and large τέμενος is used by Homer to indicate a royal estate and ἄλσος to describe a sacred grove, cultivated or not. According to Hainesworth, the use of τέμενος to mean sacred precinct occurs later on.
Something seems to have gone wrong with the previous version of this post
I think my answer was that readers would have understood 292 to be a locus amoenus and therefore probably the home of some god or other. (maybe a dryad). Nausicaa our guide here gives the local attribution. Odysseus would probably guess if it was pleasant Athena was somewhere in the picture just as any disaster could be attributable to Poseidon.
Aetos, thanks. It was a small point but as it turns out it was worth bringing to your attention.
First I have been thinking about the first word of line 301 : νήπιος.
Garvie notes that in this position νήπιος in the Iliad occurs frequently and in the very “different context of a warrior setting off with high hopes to a battle from which he will not return”. I wonder whether there is some humour here. Athena will be Odysseus’s guide and as the goddess of wisdom is far from a νήπιος. There are other resonances here too.
Secondly, I have noticed people talking about “fairy stories” in relation to Homer. I wondered if anyone has some references for this. Is it just some general idea that emerges from narratology or has some specific work been done on it? I really know nothing about fairy stories but had always imagined them to be a 19th century invention. I understand that there have probably always been folk tales but I wonder why we make a distinction between fairy stories and folk tales?
I actually hadn’t considered that you might plant a sacred grove, how interesting. I’d always assumed that they were all a kind of naturally-occurring ‘green chapel’ like the first type, with a bit of edge to them (as if the priest of Nemi might pop out from behind one of the trees).
I was just about to add that a deliberately planted grove sounds somehow less sacred but there are wooded graveyards in London that are some of the most numinous spaces I’ve ever been in.
Yes point taken about the reader’s perspective. I suppose in a roundabout way I was asking whether there might have been an Athena-specific altar or one of those carved shrines that Pausanias seems to come across everywhere he visits (admittedly in a different millennium). Aetos’s link drew my attention to the list of sacred groves in Homer and specifically to Book 17 of the Odyssey (the paper actually says the Iliad but this is wrong) where we have (204-211)
Murray’s translation for convenience:
But when, as they went along the rugged path, they were near the city, and had come to a well-wrought, fair-flowing fountain, wherefrom the townsfolk drew water—this Ithacus had made, and Neritus, and Polyctor, and around was a grove of poplars, that grow by the waters, circling it on all sides, and down the cold water flowed from the rock above, and on the top was built an altar to the nymphs where all passers-by made offerings.
Tantalising but it’s still not clear whether anything marks it out as a βωμὸς νυμφάων specifically.
Folk tales are what you find in Grimm. Fairy stories are what you find in the Oxford Book of Ballads (and elsewhere). There’s far less nonsense for one thing. Read Tam Lin or Thomas the Rhymer to your kids a few dozen times, or some of the Robin Hood ballads, and you’ll get the idea.
I’m not sure if you’re referring to Aetos’s “fairy-land” here or something else - fairy-land/fairyland is a term which has been used to talk about Scheria specifically in folkloristic and comparative mythological studies (1, 2, etc.). It refers more to the life of ease that the Phaeacians live rather than pointing to any fairytale elements. I think it’s a bit outdated as a term - it oversimplifies the ‘unreality’ of Scheria.
I’ll leave a full discussion of this until we get onto the start of Book 7 but I think Scheria much more closely resembles a Celtic otherworld, which both seems to exist within the protagonist’s own world and outwith it simultaneously, and where strange or magical features of the world can be treated as normal.
I think it’s better to consider fairytales/stories a kind of folktale, which is a more general term. Strange you should mention Thomas the Rhymer - I drive past the spot where the Eildon Tree stood every day! Do you have some Scottish in you, Joel?
Perhaps it does require local knowledge to identify a particular shrine with a particular god/hero. I was reading a section in Herodotus recently (Book 6, C.78-80) where Kleomenes is fighting the Argives and after surprising them at breakfast and defeating them chases the remainder of their force into a sacred grove. He is able to entice about 50 to come out with the promise of a ransom (then murders them) until the rest discover his ploy and continue to hold out in the grove. Kleomenes then burns down the grove. Afterwards, he asks “To which god does this grove belong?”. He learns that the shrine is of Argos, the hero god of Argos. This happened to fulfill a prophecy, so considering his mission complete, he departed. It struck me as odd that he wouldn’t know this or at least ask the question before burning down a sacred precinct. He does ask one of the Argive deserters, but only after the fact.
well thank you for posting it anyway. Something to fill the hours until the next issue of Stamp Collectors’ Weekly arrives.