[In the following essay, Lang probes the interaction between the Iliad and external mythological stories of Greek gods and heroes, concluding that this relationship implies a process of “ongoing, non-static composition” in regard to both the epic and mythological exempla.]

The relationship between non-Trojan-War exempla and the Iliad episodes or situations which they illuminate has been defined in two opposite and apparently mutually exclusive ways. One view sees the exemplum as a model from which the Iliad episode was adapted; the other holds that the Iliad situation has priority, and that the exemplum was invented to fit it. In both these cases the relationship is viewed as it would be in a literary work which was composed once and for all by an individual poet. The Iliad, however, is presumed to be the end product of many re-creations, and in this case it is almost inevitable that both types of relationship operated. What we have to allow for then is a process of reverberation between inherited material influencing the Iliad narrative and also the Iliad narrative influencing inherited material. Imitation and innovation go hand in hand on a two-way street.

How reverberation would have operated may be illustrated with the first paradeigma in the Iliad (1.259ff.), by which Nestor urges the heroes to heed his words even as his old fighting comrades the Lapiths had done. First an assumption must be made about Nestor's presence at Troy: is it possible that at some early stage of the Trojan War story, or even of the Iliad itself, Nestor was added to the Greek warriors to provide a different, older-generation type (as Odysseus, Ajax, Agamemnon, and Diomedes were respectively types of resourcefulness, brute strength, authority-figure, and all-roundness)? Or was Nestor always part of the group and only gradually specialized into a type? It is easier to accept the former alternative and to think of him as imported into the Trojan War from another time and context. Only so does the unprecedented and elaborate introduction provided for him make sense (1.248ff.): it serves as an apology for including him in a generation which everyone knew was “after his time.” Only Calchas is similarly introduced, and that case has been properly explained as a necessary guarantee of his prophetic authority. In addition, it is clear that the arete of Nestor as the older-generation type was not his military prowess but his speech, or advice. Thus his reminiscences of pre-Trojan-War experiences could be used to defuse (or diffuse) quarrels among the heroes. Thus in some early version of the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon he was used to urge reconciliation; he gave authority to his words simply by reminding them that he had associated with far better men than they, to wit, the Lapiths, who had respected him, and together they had faced the most frightful enemy such as no present warrior could take on. That is pretty much the exemplum which appears in our text, except for the lines: “These listened to the counsels I gave and heeded my bidding. / Do you also obey, since to be persuaded is better.” (273-274, tr. Lattimore). Instead of these words the original version might have had the single line which is known from the Homeric Hymn to Apollo (line 486), with very close relatives in the Iliad (2.139; 9.26, 704; 12.75; etc.): ἀλλ' ἄγεθ', ὡs aν ἐγo εἴπω, πείθεσθε τάχιστα (But come and quickly obey whatever I say).

In later re-creations of this scene the obedience which Nestor asks for in the Iliad narrative must gradually have found a place in the exemplum as well. That it did not originally belong there is suggested by the inherent improbability of battle-hardened Lapiths seeking advice from a young foreigner. Nevertheless, because the situations were similar enough, they must have exerted a mutual attraction on each other which increased the similarity, by adding to the exemplum a detail which really makes better sense in its Iliad context. The parallel was made more pointed thereby, and also the ring composition was extended. That is, the original, now the outer, ring started: “Yet be persuaded. Both of you are younger than I am,” and would have ended: “But come and quickly obey whatever I say.” The mid-part merely moved from Nestor's association with the Lapiths to their joint ventures against the Centaurs. But the present version makes an inner ring around the battle verses: thus, at the beginning, “Yes, and in my time I have dealt with better men than / you are, and never once did they disregard me,” and then the echo, “These listened to the counsels I gave and heeded my bidding.”

If a paradeigma is viewed in this fashion, not as the product of a single act of innovation but as part of the development that comes with successive re-creations, it is clear that the whole “chicken and egg” question of priority which has been so hotly argued (particularly with regard to the wrath-stories of Meleager and Achilles in Book 9) is unanswerable. The reverberation or echo-effect between the original tale, whichever it was, and its parallel would cause changes in both, bringing them closer together and hopelessly blurring priority.

Although this first paradeigma in the Iliad could well have been inherited material that established Nestor as a warrior among warriors, the end result of its association with the wrath-story is very much the same as that pointed out by Kakridis for the last paradeigma in the poem: “Niobe in book 24 eats for the simple reason that Priam must eat.”¹ So here in Book 1 the Lapiths listen to Nestor because Achilles and Agamemnon ought to listen. And it is because Achilles and Agamemnon do not listen that the whole Iliad follows. Thus the epic comes full circle in this as in other ways: a paradeigma that fails to persuade opens up the wrath-story, which is finally brought to a close with a paradeigma that succeeds in persuading.

Can we discern the mechanics of reverberation at work in the Niobe paradeigma? And must we do so, or can the difficulties this episode presents all be met by assuming simple, one-way innovation? Here is the whole passage in Richmond Lattimore's translation:

                                                            Now you and I must remember our supper.
For even Niobe, she of the lovely tresses, remembered
to eat, whose twelve children were destroyed in her palace,
six daughters, and six sons in the pride of their youth, whom Apollo
killed with arrows from his silver bow, being angered
with Niobe, and shaft-showering Artemis killed the daughters;
because Niobe likened herself to Leto of the fair colouring
and said Leto had borne only two, she herself had borne many;
but the two, though they were only two, destroyed all those others.
Nine days long they lay in their blood, nor was there anyone
to bury them, for the son of Kronos made stones out of
the people; but on the tenth day the Uranian gods buried them.
But she remembered to eat when she was worn out with weeping.
And now somewhere among the rocks, and the lonely mountains,
in Sipylos, where they say is the resting place of the goddesses
who are nymphs, and dance beside the waters of Acheloios,
there, stone still, she broods on the sorrows that the gods gave her.
Come then, we also, aged magnificent sir, must remember
to eat, and afterwards you may take your beloved son back
to Ilion, and mourn for him; and he will be much lamented.

(24.601-620)

Some of the unlikely details in the Niobe story can be explained as simple innovations inspired by the main narrative and introduced in order to improve the parallel between Niobe and Priam: thus she eats because Priam must eat; her children must lie unburied because Hector so lies (the petrifaction of the populace may then have been introduced, by analogy with Niobe's petrifaction, to explain the lack of burial); and, finally, the otherwise unsuitable burial by the gods could have been invented to parallel the gods' concern in Book 24 for Hector's burial. But one difficulty cannot be explained as simple, one-way innovation; that is the inconcinnity between Niobe's remembering to eat when she tired of weeping and her subsequent petrifaction from grief. So awkwardly do the lines about her becoming stone fit that they were thought by Aristophanes and Aristarchus to be interpolated, and by some modern commentators as well. We can meet this final objection only by imagining that the Niobe story evolved, gradually becoming more parallel to Priam's situation, with both being changed in the process of mutual attraction and reverberation. How might this process have worked? Let us assume that in some original version the poet wished to make a transition from the difficult, because unique, ransoming scene to the familiar ground of a standard hospitality theme, and so had Achilles say: “Now you and I must remember our supper / For even Niobe, she of the lovely tresses, ceased to wail” (that is, “ceased to wail” instead of “remembered to eat” or lēge klauthmoio instead of emnēsato sitou). Achilles would then have continued as in the present text through the twin gods' slaughter of the Niobids and its cause in Niobe's attempt to rival Leto. Then, making no mention of the Niobids' unburied state, Achilles would have returned to his original statement not with the present line, that is, “but she remembered to eat when she was worn out with weeping” (ἡ δ' ἄρα σίτου μνήσατ', ἐπεὶ aάμε δάaρυ χἐουσα), but with this one: “But she ceased to wail when she was worn out with weeping” (ἡ δ' ἄρα λῆγε γόοιο, ἐπεὶ aάμε δάaρυ χἐουσα). The lines about her petrifaction then follow with perfect propriety, and Achilles' speech would conclude not with encouragement to eat, but with a plea to cease from grief: not ἀλλ' ἄγε δὴ aαὶ νῶϊ μεδώμεθα, δῖε γεραιἐ, / σίτου but ἀλλ' ἄγε δη aαὶ νῶ λήγωμεν, δῖε γεραιἐ, / aλαυθμοῦ (But come, aged sir, let us also cease our weeping).

Thus the original paradeigma would have given the usual Niobe story, and only in subsequent re-creations would the mutual attraction between the similar plights of Niobe and Priam have caused interaction and changes in both tales. The first effect may have been the inclusion in Achilles' earlier speech of the lines (530ff.) which remind us that Peleus had only one son who was bringing grief to Priam and his children. Simultaneously, Priam's earlier speech would have been expanded with the lines (495ff.) counting his fifty sons and mourning the many killed. At least the contrast between the two children of Leto and the twelve of Niobe has more point for that story than does the contrast between Peleus' one and Priam's fifty sons for the Iliad story; any influence therefore is more likely to have gone from the inherited material to the Iliad than in the other direction. The next change may have been the addition of Niobe's eating to the paradeigma. That is, the way in which the main narrative turned immediately to formulas of feasting combined with the pressure of ring-composition to make it seem natural for Niobe also to take up eating instead of merely ceasing to weep. The mere association of Niobe and Priam in re-creation after re-creation must have set up the kind of bond that prevented the addition of the eating detail from seeming to be a gratuitous invention. And because the original detail of her petrifaction was so generally accepted a part of her story, and had had its rightful place in the original exemplum, there would have been no impulse to remove it from the later version. Thus Niobe eats because Priam must eat, but she becomes stone because she had always done so. Still later, perhaps, continued reverberation between paradeigma and narrative resulted in the Niobids taking on Hector's unburied state and, like his body, attracting divine concern. The reason is clear in the Iliad why Hector lies unburied, but once this detail was added to the exemplum it required some explanation there. The poet's solution was one more addition to the Niobe story: potential buriers were all turned to stone, a detail obviously patterned on Niobe's own fate.

Thus there is no question that innovation has taken place, even as Kakridis and Willcock have indicated, but two things about it have not been sufficiently appreciated: 1) that it is not a one-time, or necessarily even a one-poet, operation but rather a function of re-creation; and 2) that it is a two-way street, with paradeigmata creating parallels in the narrative as well as the narrative demanding parallels in the paradeigmata. These two principles combine to answer the objection most often made to demonstrations of mythological innovation by Homer: that if the myth which is presented as a paradeigma has suffered very much in the way of innovation it will have lost its persuasive power as a precedent to be respected. But this is not a danger if, as suggested, the innovations occur in both main narrative and paradeigma, and if they evolve naturally and gradually out of the pressures of propinquity and from a desire to strengthen the parallel. In this case the tales will remain familiar through constant retelling, and there will be no suspension of belief.

In order to test whether the two principles stated above have any validity beyond these two exempla, it seems right and proper to examine other paradeigmata and their contexts, to see if we can find traces of reverberative innovation through successive re-creations. In order to make the examination more challenging and more revealing about the extent to which paradeigmata include inherited material, we shall limit ourselves here to the exempla which primarily concern divinities. These are more challenging because, given the largely human subject matter of the Iliad, there is less room for reverberation between such exempla and the main narrative; they may also be more revealing because most of them fit together in such a way as to suggest that each is not a self-contained episode, but part of a larger whole which might be reconstructed.

Perhaps the easiest illustration of the way several paradeigmata may be fitted together is the theme of conflict on Olympus.

1) Thetis freed Zeus when Hera, Poseidon, and Athena conspired to bind him

(1.396ff.).

2) Poseidon and Apollo were punished by Zeus, who sent them to serve Laomedon, building the walls of Troy and herding his cattle

(21.441ff.).

3) Zeus punished Hera by hanging her up and then hurled to earth any divinity who tried to free her

(15.16ff.).

4) Hephaestus was hurled to earth by Zeus when he tried to help his mother Hera

(1.586ff.).

In the binding of Zeus (no. 1) no punishment of Hera, Poseidon, and Athena is mentioned, and in the punishment of Poseidon and Apollo (no. 2) no crime is given, since in neither case is the omitted detail relevant; but the two tales complete each other, with Poseidon as the link. How Hera and Athena may have been punished we cannot know, since serving a mortal king by wall-building and cattle-herding is not appropriate for goddesses. Apollo, though punished in no. 2, is absent from the list of rebels in no. 1; this might suggest that the two passages are not part of the same tale. Further, the three rebels in no. 1 are also the three chief divine supporters of the Greeks; this equation has been taken as evidence that the revolt is an innovation to parallel the plot of the Iliad.² But since both Zenodotus and others read Phoebus Apollo instead of Pallas Athena at the end of the rebel list, the reverse could as well be the case: Apollo as the original reading may have given way in later versions to Athena, because the mention of Hera and Poseidon recalled the traditional pro-Greek triad in the Iliad. In that case we would have a trace of the original story in no. 2, with the punishment of the two rebels who really mattered to Zeus. (We have his own word for the hopelessness of trying to discipline Hera: “Yet with Hera I am not so angry, neither indignant, / since it is ever her way to cross the commands that I give her,” 8.407f.)

The three rebels listed in no. 1 might also be only representatives or ringleaders of a far larger group, since if these three alone were involved the other divinities on Olympus could have freed Zeus, and there would have been no need for the intervention of a sea-goddess like Thetis. However that may be, the connection between these two paradeigmata is further strengthened by the way in which it is echoed in the second pair: again, no. 3 and no. 4 so complement each other that both are needed to tell the full story. In no. 3 we are not told what gods were hurled to earth for attempting to release Hera, and in no. 4 we do not hear why Hera needed the help which Hephaestus offered, and for which he was hurled to earch. This pair introduces still another pair which bring Heracles and Hypnos into the Olympian quarrel.

5) Hera's punishment was for the storm by which she drove Heracles off-course (15.26ff.).

6) So that Hera could thus vent her wrath on Heracles as he sailed from Troy Hypnos lulled Zeus to sleep and as a result would have suffered a fate like that of Hephaestus if he had not been protected by Night (14.247ff.).

Here again it takes two paradeigmata to tell one story since no. 6 omits all reference both to Zeus' rescue of Heracles after his awakening and to his punishment of Hera while no. 5 explains neither how Hera could have sent the storm without Zeus' knowledge nor what Heracles was doing at sea. That he was sailing from Troy brings in still another pair of paradeigmata (see below) that will take us back to the original revolt on Olympus and so make a complete story of Olympian strife. This story is presented in seven different passages; they make up four complementary pairs, appearing in six widely spaced books (1, 5, 14, 15, 20, and 21). Therefore it is highly unlikely that all these references were invented separately to illuminate particular situations in the Iliad. Even a writing poet might have difficulty in constructing such a consistent and organic whole out of parts which he was inventing on an ad hoc basis.

The fourth pair of paradeigmata concern Heracles at Troy.

7) His sack of the city when he was disappointed of the horses of Laomedon for which he had come (5.635ff.).

8) The wall which was built for him on the Trojan plain as security against the sea-monster (20.145ff.).

The story in Book 5 (no. 7) tells us that Heracles sacked Troy because as Laomedon's benefactor he was cheated of his reward—but there is no mention of the way in which he benefited Laomedon. In Book 20 (no. 8) we learn what was presumably the benefit he conferred on Laomedon, for there he met the attack of a sea-monster, apparently on behalf of the Trojans (who joined with Athena in building the wall for him)—a feat for which he might well have been promised the divine horses. Again the two episodes combine to tell the full story: the tale of the sack (no. 7) provides a sequel to the tale of benefaction (no. 8), while the sea-monster in no. 8 gives point to Heracles' disappointment and consequent sack in no. 7. The only loose end is then the origin or raison d'être of the sea-monster, and this is where a Homeric link is missing. But given Poseidon's anger at being cheated by Laomedon (21.441ff.) as a parallel to Heracles' vengeance for a similar disappointment at Laomedon's hands, it almost goes without Homer's saying so that the sea-monster of Book 20 is Poseidon's response to Laomedon's treatment of him and Apollo.

We have thus come full circle: the conflict on Olympus led to the enforced servitude of Poseidon and Apollo, Poseidon's dispatch of a sea-monster to punish Laomedon's failure to pay for their service, Laomedon's hiring of Heracles to dispose of the sea-monster, Heracles' sack of Troy to punish Laomedon's failure to pay up, Hera's bribing of Hypnos to distract Zeus so she could drive Heracles off course, Zeus' punishment of Hera and threat to hurl to earth anyone who tried to help her, and Hephaestus being thus hurled for trying. Are there other conflicts among the gods which are used in the Iliad for illustrative purposes? If so, are they tied in to those we have looked at; and how much interaction is there between such presumably inherited material and the Iliad narrative? Was there pre-Iliadic precedent for Hera's resentment of Zeus' power and of those whom he favors, which is so basic to the Iliad story (1.518ff., 540ff.; 4.25ff., 50ff.; 8.408; 16.440ff.)? Does their preexisting enmity explain their support of opposing forces in the Trojan War so that conflict on earth reverberates with conflict on Olympus?

The tales of earlier (that is, pre-Trojan-War) strife among the gods are so complex and so consistent that, as we have seen, the various episodes or parts of episodes are not likely to have been invented independently, to parallel details of the Iliad plot. The probability is rather that the divine strife of the Iliad story had its origin in such precedents as appear in the paradeigmata. This probability is strengthened by the fact that several of these paradeigmata do not at all parallel the episodes in which they appear, and so there is no reason to suppose that they were created for their particular contexts. Neither Thetis' rescue of Zeus from revolting gods (1.396ff.) nor Poseidon's reminder to Apollo of their suffering at the hands of Laomedon (21.441ff.) is in any way parallel to its context. Zeus' anger at Hera over her deceit and her treatment of Heracles does parallel his wrath over Hector's suffering by her wiles; yet even here the paradeigma clearly has priority. Hera's persecution of Heracles is many-faceted and essential to that tale, quite unlike the contingent and one-shot character of her hostility to Hector. Indeed, that the conflict over Heracles is basic is confirmed by another paradeigma which has only limited relevance to its Iliad context. Agamemnon apologizes (19.91ff.) for his treatment of Achilles, blaming Ate, the blindness that deceived even Zeus, who boasted that the one born of his line that day would be lord of all his neighbors, but then was lured by Hera into confirming his boast with an oath, while she arranged to delay Heracles' birth and hasten that of Eurystheus. Only in the action of Ate is the exemplum parallel to Agamemnon's situation, since no one had lured him into fulfilling his threat to take Briseis; Achilles may have provoked him to take action, but there is nothing to compare with Hera's elaborate machinations to thwart Zeus' will. Here again the Iliad uses as a parallel a conflict between Zeus and Hera over Heracles. This recurrence of the Heracles theme helps to confirm that there was a detailed tradition of Heracles as the object of divine favor and hostility, and, more important, that Zeus' and Hera's conflict over Hector was most likely modeled on that tradition. That the Zeus-Hera strife in the Iliad may indeed have been borrowed from the Heracles story is indicated by the fact that it is not so much an integral part of the Trojan War as it is a mechanism to make the wrath-story work: that is, it belongs not to the original Trojan War chronicle, but to the Wrath as encapsulating the War. For Zeus' support of Hector and the Trojans, which brings him into conflict with Hera, is the direct result of his favoring the Greek Achilles, whom Hera supports. Thus for the greater part of the Iliad Hector seems to inherit Hercles' uncomfortable situation as object of the divine quarrel, while it is Achilles who is supported by both Zeus and Hera. This is shown particularly by Athena, who serves as Hera's agent just as in the Heracles “model” she was Zeus' agent in helping Heracles. The Iliad makes bold use of this apparent switch when it makes Athena speak reproachfully (8.360ff.) of the way in which Zeus thwarts her and does not remember how he was always sending her to help Heracles. Thus in the very act of associating Athena (Heracles' helper) with Hera (Heracles' tormentor) in a pro-Greek alliance against a temporarily pro-Trojan Zeus, the poet is irresistibly reminded of the “pattern” alliance between Athena and Zeus in the Heracles story. It is presumably only his “early Greek capacity for viewing things separately”³ that allows him conveniently to ignore at the same time the irony of Athena's present alliance with Hera: it was Hera, after all, who caused the sufferings of Heracles which Athena was so often sent to relieve.

Only two of the exempla in the Iliad which deal with interrelations among divinities do not fit into the cycle of divine strife centered either on Olympus or on Heracles. Together they involve Hera in apparent contradiction. While in 1.586ff. it was for his attempt to help Hera that Hephaestus was hurled from Olympus by Zeus, in 18.395ff. it is Hera who caused his fall into the deep, where he was rescued by Thetis and Eurynome. It is often assumed that the latter version is a Homeric innovation to provide Hephaestus with a motive to do whatever Thetis wants, but in that case it is odd that Eurynome is given such prominence as a whole line to herself. It is perhaps easier to assume a doublet in the tradition, partly because Hephaestus' lameness marks him as accident-prone, and partly because both hurling out of heaven and rescues by Thetis seem to have been popular motifs which were useful in a variety of circumstances. The lameness of Hephaestus, essential in a smith-god, could be the cause of his hurling out of heaven, given Hera's likely reaction to a deformed offspring (cf. Book 18); but it could also be the effect of such hurling, given the strife between Zeus and Hera (cf. Book 1). And while story-tellers were exploring the possibilities inherent in the hurling motif, they might also have toyed with the alternatives of earth or sea landing, and have considered as appropriate refuges for a fallen smith-god both a volcanic island and a sea-goddess who made a specialty of rescue (witness her deliverance of Zeus in 1.396ff., and her rescue of Dionysus in 6.130ff.).

Indeed, the otherwise unmotivated hostility which Hera seems to display toward Thetis in Book 1, along with her regular resentment of any action taken by Zeus, almost requires that the tradition provided some instance in which Thetis had thwarted Hera's will. Completely different but perhaps relevant is the connection between Hera and Thetis as presented by Hera in 24.59ff.; there she reminds Apollo that he played at the wedding of Thetis, whom she herself had nurtured and given in marriage to Peleus. The usual explanation of this about-face on Hera's part is Homer's willingness to deal with one situation at a time and to ignore contradictions that might result. So now that Achilles is back fighting for the Greeks all the pro-Greek divinities are happy to welcome Thetis (24.100f.); and the present Iliadic situation colors the past so that these kindly feelings are allowed to flood back to earlier days in the paradeigma. A very similar backcasting is to be noted in 1.520f., where Zeus says to Thetis that Hera is always reproaching him for helping the Trojans, even though it is apparent that his support for the Trojans will stem from his agreement with Thetis' request to make the Greeks suffer, and will be a change from his usual pro-Greek policy. But is it possible that the original tradition about the revolt in heaven, noted in 1.396ff., incorporated details that might motivate an actual change in the relationship of Hera and Thetis? If indeed Thetis was brought up by Hera, as “a daughter of the house” she would have been in the most favorable position both to want and to be able to help Zeus when the other gods ganged up on him; she would also, as in the version from later poets, be in a position most likely to attract Zeus' attention and wandering eye. Both of these situations could reasonably be expected to turn Hera against her nursling out of frustration and jealousy. In that case she would have been happy to marry Thetis off to Peleus, even without any prophecy that Thetis would bear a son greater than his father. This is pure speculation and perhaps an overly ambitious attempt to historicize bits of myth, but surely we have a right to assume that cause and effect operated even in pre-Homeric tradition.

The other three exempla concerning divinities in the Iliad all have more to do with divine-human relations than with intramural activities on Olympus. Two of them represent a reversal of the Heracles episodes we have already considered in that they deal with mortals acting on divinities, instead of divinities on mortals. An exact reversal would involve one mortal harming and another helping one divinity, just as Hera harmed and Zeus helped Heracles. Instead, presumably because there is greater impiety in rescuing a god than in damaging him, the helper in these cases is another divinity. And yet the inclusion of a third party links these situations with those in which divinities act on mortals and suggests that they are variations on a single theme. For example, in 6.129ff. Diomedes backs up his reluctance to fight with a divinity by citing the example of Lycurgus, who did not survive long after he pursued Dionysus' nurses and frightened the god into the sea (where Thetis rescued him). The other case is 5.385ff., where Dione cites three examples in order to reconcile Aphrodite to the rough treatment she has received at Diomedes' hands: 1) Ares was imprisoned by Otus and Ephialtes and only released by Hermes; 2) Hera was wounded by Heracles; 3) Hades was shot by Heracles and only cured by Paieon. Surely it is significant that only Hera has no god to help her, as if to intimate that the untended wound rankled and justified her constant harassment of Heracles.

These further details of Heracles' adventures raise again the question whether the Iliad poet is inventing examples of gods suffering from mortals, or making use of already elaborated episodes. In the case of invention, we would expect the poet to create a better parallel to Aphrodite's situation in at least one of the examples Dione uses to console her. Yet no one of the three damaged divinities was wounded by a spear, nor was the afflicted part a hand; and for even loose parallelism the imprisonment of Ares is far-fetched. Given the relative inappropriateness of that tale and the way in which the two adventures of Heracles can be tied in with other episodes in the Iliad (like Nestor's account of Heracles' raid on Pylos in Book 11), it is easier to assume that the poet was drawing on pre-existing tales. It may be that the two lines in which Paieon applies drugs both to Hades' wound (5.401-402) and to Ares when he too is wounded by Diomedes (5.900-901) originally belonged to only one episode and were added to the other, but it is impossible to ascertain which was the prior use. Thus the effects of reverberation can be discerned even where the process cannot be followed.

The last of the divine paradeigmata is Zeus' urging of Hera (14.313ff.) to make love because he has never before in the course of his philanderings been so smitten. The list of females he has loved is most closely related to Dione's list in 5.385ff.: in both the one-line recommendation (“endure” in the one and “let's go to bed” in the other) is followed by two lines of generalized reason introduced by gar, and then by the items of the list. Dione's examples are only three, and take up respectively seven, three, and eight lines; whereas Zeus' list includes eight examples, no one of which exceeds two lines. Dione's speech concludes with a long section on Diomedes' rashness and a veiled threat concerning his fate. There is no return to the general reason for the recommendation to endure; perhaps this implies that the thought of vengeance to come will soothe Aphrodite more than a further reminder that she is not alone in her suffering. Zeus' list does come full circle not only back to his generalized reason but also, tactfully, to Hera herself, without however repeating his recommendation. Though little more than a bare list, it still acts as a hortatory paradeigma, and as has often been noted it probably presumes a catalogue of divine off-spring. Whether or not its inclusion here is meant to mock the god and his philanderings, it is likely that his reputation along those lines suggested Hera's ploy for distracting his attention from the battlefield. That is, whenever and wherever Hera first tricked Zeus, whether it was in some Ur-Iliad or in some scandalous popular tale, the inspiration likely came from his reputation as a great lover (with which he must have been saddled largely to provide divine paternity for heroes and godlings of all sorts).

What then of re-creation and reverberation can be identified in the various divine paradeigmata and the surrounding narrative? Proceeding as before from those which are primarily intramural on Olympus, let us take up first the binding and loosing of Zeus in 1.396ff., and the question whether the frequency of the motif is a matter of borrowing from several inherited anecdotes or of reverberation between such anecdotes and the action of the Iliad. The instances involving both divinities and men may be summarized as follows.

BINDING

INHERITED

Other gods bind Zeus (Book 1)

Otus and Ephialtes bind Ares (5)

Laomedon threatens to bind Apollo and Poseidon (21)

ILIAD ACTION

Zeus binds Agamemnon with ate (2, 9)

Dolon asks to be bound (10) (regular way of taking captive [2])

Achilles binds Trojan youths (21) and Hector to be dragged (22, 24)

LOOSING

Thetis looses Zeus (1)

Hermes looses Ares (5)

Other gods loose Hera (15)

Except for the figurative binding with ate no Iliad action involves divine binding, unless we wish to see in the joint operation of Hera and Hypnos in Book 14 a figurative binding of Zeus that was inspired by his physical binding of Hera. Otherwise the theme of binding is so variously used in the inherited tales that it is difficult to find any common ground, except that for deathless beings it substitutes for death, whether the aim is usurpation (Book 1), punishment (15), or riddance (5, 21). It might be, then, that the use of binding in war as a fate next to death was the original source, and that divine binding in these anecdotes was an echo or reverberation from heroic epic. As far as loosing goes, there is a possible figurative reverberation if Zeus is thought of as “bound” by his oath to Thetis (1), and Hera and the other gods keep trying to free him from that oath. Certainly in a more general sense the inherited conflict of Zeus and Hera is invoked for the action of the Iliad at the same time that inherited instances illustrating it are used as exempla.

It was suggested that the revolt against Zeus was the act which he punished by sending Apollo and Poseidon to serve Laomedon (21.441ff.). This would link the exemplum used to motivate Zeus' decision to favor the Trojans with that used by Poseidon for an equal but opposite purpose, to undermine Apollo's allegiance to the Trojans. There is an obvious relationship between Laomedon's refusal to give the promised payment for the wall which the god built him (21) and Laomedon's refusal to give Heracles his promised payment (5.635ff.). The connection works in at least two ways. Not only do both episodes use the same motif, perhaps, as so often in doublets, in order to explore different outcomes (Heracles' sack of Troy and Poseidon's dispatch of a sea-monster), but they are also connected causally, with Laomedon hiring Heracles in one episode to dispose of the very sea-monster sent in the other. Furthermore, both these Laomedon exempla seem to be reflected in Paris' refusal (7.357ff.) to keep his promise that Helen go with the victor of the duel (3.69ff.). That is, the refusal to give up Helen which presumably brought on war in the first place exemplifies a motif that has many parallels as an explanation of conflict, but that cause has here not only been renewed but also converted into a failure to deliver on a promise which may well have been patterned on Laomedon's refusal to live up to his agreements about both horses and wages. Thus the duel between Paris and Menelaus which properly belongs to the first year of the war has been brought into the tenth year, and into the Iliad, both to give the illusion of the conflict's beginning and to make the Trojans' refusal to give up Helen into the same sort of breach of promise that had justified Heracles' sack of Troy and Poseidon's dispatch of the sea-monster. Thus justification for the new fall of Troy is provided both through the breaking of the truce in Book 4 and by Paris' refusal to keep his promise, a motif inherited from his grandfather and reverberating for the bard from the earlier traditions about Troy.

The next pair of paradeigmata involving divine crime and punishment concerns Hera's driving Heracles off course, Zeus' vengeance on her for this action, his punishment of those gods who tried to loose her, and Hephaestus as one who was so punished (15.16ff.; 1.586ff.). In both these passages the punishment is hurling from heaven, a feat in which Zeus indulges, in fact or intent, on three other occasions, and which Hera imitates for her own purposes in another paradeigma. Hurling from heaven, even more than binding, is a way of disposing of immortals, since at least in one case (8.13ff.) it involves descent to Tartarus and the underworld. And surely Zeus' habit of expressing his displeasure thus in the old stories that are quoted in the Iliad has rubbed off or reverberated on the Iliad narrative itself:

INHERITED

Zeus hurls Hephaestus (Book 1)

Zeus wished to hurl Hypnos (14)

Zeus hurls gods loosing Hera (15)

(Hera hurls Hephaestus [16])

ILIAD NARRATIVE

Zeus threatens to hurl any god who interferes in the war (8)

Except in the case of Hera's hurling, the action is taken or threatened as a punishment, but each of the inherited cases has its own rationale and outcome. That is, the hurling motif is not simply repeated in the various tales; rather its possibilities are explored. If indeed the accounts in Books 15 and 1 refer to the same occasion, they still emphasize almost completely different aspects of the hurling. In 15 the emphasis is on the crime that is punished; in 1 the crime is passed over and it is the suffering and results that are emphasized. The threatened hurling of Hypnos in 14 shows a different twist: it is aborted by Zeus' respect for Night, to whom Hypnos flees. Still more different is the hurling of Ate in 19, since this is not only a punishment but also an explanation of the goddess' presence among men. It seems fair to say that the hurling motif has been worked for all it is worth in the inherited cases; so too in the Iliad narrative, where Zeus' threat is like the Book 14 version in not being fulfilled, and like the Book 19 version in using exclusion from Olympus. It nevertheless has its own differences too, in that the destination is neither land (as in Books 1 and 14) nor sea (as in 16) nor the heads of men (as in 19), but Tartarus. And whether Hera's hurling in 16 is an Iliadic innovation or an inherited variant, it exhibits still another way of handling the motif, as an unemphatic prelude to the Thetis-rescue motif. Thus two old motifs make a new combination to serve a specific purpose, to motivate Hephaestus' work on Achilles' armor.

One oddity concerning the hurling-motif has not been noted: that despite Hypnos' original worry in 14 that Zeus would again seek to punish him (forgotten when the bribe proves irresistible), Zeus completely ignores Hypnos' role in his deception and accurately zeroes in on Hera as the instigator. It is in this kind of omission that the Iliad poet shows true mastery of his craft. By having Hypnos cite Zeus' previous threat as a precedent he not only shows Hypnos successfully angling for a greater reward and foreshadows Zeus' coming anger, but also disposes of any need later to slow down the narrative with an account of Zeus' treatment of Hypnos. The paradeigma thus serves to prefigure the present situation, which can then be developed in its own way because the groundwork has already been laid in the precedent. We know that Hypnos will flee to Night and that Zeus will not touch him. Thus the poet uses the inherited motif both as a pattern or inspiration of an episode (the distraction of Zeus' attention so that Hector, like Heracles, can be persecuted) and as a precedent to prepare the ground. So the Hephaestus doublet of this episode in Book 1 serves a similar purpose: again it is a matter of 1) hurling from heaven, 2) Zeus, and 3) a helper of Hera. This time, however, the helper Hephaestus was actually hurled, and tells the story to persuade Hera not to pit herself against Zeus. He thereby provides a heavenly parallel and precedent for Achilles, who was similarly dissuaded from attacking Agamemnon. Achilles' withdrawal from battle is paralleled by Hera's withdrawal in Book 4, and in the divine arguments in both 1 and 4 Hera's resentment of Zeus' authority and privileges echoes almost every point made by Achilles in 1 and 9 against Agamemnon: she toils in vain; he pulls rank on her, has no regard for her honor and the people she loves, but does as he pleases; and his decision to support the Trojans means that she is deprived of Greek victory just as Achilles is deprived of his symbol of victory, Briseis. This kind of reverberation between past and present, heaven and earth, love and war, with mutual attraction and like calling to like, exemplifies the organic unity of the Iliad's complex structure. Such a complex whole could not have resulted from any single act of composition, but must be the result of repeated re-creations.

Lack of space prevents a similarly detailed examination of the other divine paradeigmata for evidence of reverberation. We may, however, point up the possibilities in this kind of speculation by a quick review of Iliadic themes and episodes which seem to echo these paradeigmata, but may also have influenced them in return:

the rivalry and hostility of Zeus and Hera, for which the ground is laid by the two paradeigmata in Book 1;

Hector as Zeus' protégé and Hera's victim, like Heracles, with Hypnos as Hera's helper and Athena as active agent;

Paris' refusal to honor a commitment, echoing Laomedon's double-dealing and used as justification (once again) for the sack of Troy;

the comparatively unmotivated wounding of Aphrodite and Ares, copying the understandable hostility to the gods on the part of Heracles and Otus and Ephialtes;

Athena as guardian angel for various heroes as for Tydeus and Heracles;

Zeus' sexual susceptibility, for which ground is laid by the list of former conquests.

Whether the “mothering” role which Thetis assumes in three different paradeigmata (for Zeus, Dionysus, and Hephaestus) is inspired by her relationship with Achilles in the Iliad or whether her care for her son there is an extension of an old role may be uncertain. Nevertheless, the interaction between the two shows once again the kind of two-way innovation to which only repeated reworkings and re-creations of a narrative would give rise. That is, whether an Iliad theme attracted old tales as exempla or an old tale inspired an Iliad episode for which the old tale was used as support, each would be liable over time to infiltration of details from the other. For if like attracts like in epic narrative, as the use of both similes and mythological paradeigmata suggests, it is probable that in a situation of ongoing, non-static composition this kind of attraction, like that between charged particles in the physical world, would be a force acting mutually between stories.

Notes

1. Johannes Kakridis, Homeric Researches = Skrifter utg. av Hum. Vetenskapssamf. i Lund 15 (Lund: Gleerup, 1949), p. 99.

2. M. M. Willcock, “Mythological Paradeigma in the Iliad,” CQ [Classical Quarterly] 14 (1964), 141-154.

3. Ben E. Perry, “The Early Greek Capacity for Viewing Things Separately,” TAPhA [Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Society] 68 (1937), 403-427.