A Poke in the Eye

 

  A Poke in the Eye

The expression, “Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick” is attributed to the Reverend Threshem Gregg who uttered the memorable phrase in 1855 when commenting on a bottle of porter. Personally I think the saying is quite a bit older than that and most likely was first pronounced by Polyphemus the Cyclops after his encounter with his arch-enemy Odysseus. Homer seemed to get particular joy out of describing gruesome head wounds that one warrior inflicted on another. Broken skulls, spurting neck wounds and heads rolling in the dust were all part and parcel of the bard’s narratives. Homer’s audiences must have sat on the edges of their seats, assuming that there were seats in those days, and listened intently to every gory and entertaining detail. The bloodier the better and I suppose that it is not too different than the reaction that viewers have today watching television shows like Bones and Silent Witness. Everybody loves a mangled body and a good autopsy, especially if it is a cold case. War wounds in Homer are described in such detail and with such accuracy that some scholars believe that Homer could very well have been a military surgeon.

A good case in point is the Polyphemus story. Homer carefully told us how the green olivewood stake was sharpened to a point and then hardened in the fire, and then what came next was almost beyond description, but Homer certainly rose to the occasion. You can just picture his wide-eyed, open-mouthed audience hearing these words. Anything would be better than this particular poke in the eye with a sharp stick!

They grasped the olive-wood stake, that was sharpened to a point, and thrust it into his eye and I leaned on it from the top and twisted it around, just like when a man bores a ship’s timber with a drill, while the others keep it spinning around with a leather thong attached to it and the drill keeps on turning. In the same way, we took the stake with the fiery point and kept it spinning in his eye and the blood flowed around the heated stake. All his eyelids and his eyebrows were seared by the flame as his eyeball burned and the roots of it crackled and sputtered in the fire. Just like when a blacksmith plunges a great axe or an adze into the cold water to temper it and from this comes the strength of the iron and there is a loud hissing of steam, so also did his eye hiss around the olive-wood stake. He cried aloud terribly and the rock rang with the sound and we all shrank back with fear. He pulled the stake out of his eye and it was all smeared with his blood and he threw it aside and waved his arms about and then he called to the other Cyclopes who lived around him in caves along the windy heights.

Let’s stay with the Odyssey for a while and turn to the events surrounding the attack which Odysseus launched against the suitors. After he had successfully won the archery contest, the first one that Odysseus went after was their leader Alcinous, and of course he aimed for his favourite target – anything above the shoulders.

But Odysseus took aim and hit him right in the throat with the arrow and the point of it went through the tender flesh of his neck. He fell over sideways and the goblet fell from his hands and out of his nostrils there rushed a thick stream of the blood of man.

There were a number of other heads wounds made during the melee. Leiodes begged Odysseus for mercy but to no avail. The twelve unfaithful handmaidens were strung up by the neck and Melantheus had his head and other parts disfigured. The entertainment went on and on for Homer’s audience.

So he spoke and he grabbed a sword that was left nearby when Agelaus was killed and had fallen to the ground and with it he slashed Leiodes in the middle of the neck and even while he was still speaking, his head rolled onto the dust.

Just like when long-winged thrushes or doves strike against an enclosure that is set up in a thicket when they try to reach their perches and hated is the bed that greets them, even so all the women held their heads in a row and around their necks nooses were placed so that they would die in a most pitiable manner. Their feet writhed for a short time but not for long.

Then they led out Melantheus through the doorway and into the court and they cut off his nose and his ears with the pitiless bronze and cut off his genitals and threw them to the dogs to eat and then cut off his hands and his feet in their anger.

Turning to the Iliad, it is safe to say that this epic is a veritable treasure trove of vivid descriptions of war wounds to the neck and head regions of the body. In a 2008 study entitled “Cranio-maxillofacial injuries in Homer’s Iliad” published in the CMF Journal, the authors detailed the numerical results of their study. There were 48 references to CMF injuries in the Iliad, with various regions of the head and neck being affected. Of these, 44 were fatal and 5 were decapitations. Spears were the cause of the injuries for 26 of the cases, sword for 13, arrows for 2 and rocks, stones or blows for the balance. Those delivering the blows were 17 Greeks and 4 Trojans while the injured or dead were 8 Greeks and 38 Trojans.

Homer did not spare any details when it came to describing the head wounds inflicted on the battlefield at the plains of Troy. The following are several examples:

Then Idomeneus struck Erymas on the mouth with a thrust of his pitiless bronze and the blade went right through his brain and cleaved asunder his white bones. His teeth were knocked out and both his eyes were filled with blood and he spurted blood through his mouth and nose as he gaped and death enwrapped him in a mass of black clouds.

Hector hit Coeranus on the jaw under his ear and the spear knocked out his teeth and sliced his tongue in half.

As he was coming at him, Achilles hit him straight away downwards on the head and he split his head in two and he tumbled to the ground and the godlike Achilles gloated over him.

Then Achilles approached Mulius and struck him on the ear with his spear and the bronze spear point went straightaway into one ear and out the other.

But Achilles struck him on the neck with his sword and tossed his head and his helmet afar. The marrow spurted out of his spine as his body lay stretched out on the ground.

In light of the horrific and gruesome nature of the wounds that Homer described in his works, and especially the head wounds that were inflicted on his victims, we have to re-examine the reasons why the author would go to such extremes. Without a doubt there was a certain amount of sensationalism involved and this was a way for Homer to gain and hold his audience’s attention. It was Teddy Roosevelt who said, “When you’ve got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.” Homer appeared to understand the significance of such an attitude and knew how to play the visceral card to get attention. But there was more to what Homer was doing than mere theatrics and sensationalism. The graphic realism of his descriptions served a very powerful literary and thematic purpose.

Homer’s graphic details underscored the absolute horror and pain inflicted by warfare and tended to negate the concept that war was glorified and was the medium by which heroes achieved their Kleos. Homer was emphasizing the suffering that war inflicts on people, whether they are warriors or their families. The fierce actions of the combatants, the nature of the wounds that were inflicted and the emotional and physical toll of war all served to point out dramatically that when man goes to war, he becomes a wild beast, and when he is struck down, he is nothing more than dead meat. Kleos is in fact linked to desecration, not everlasting glory. Homer portrays man at war as a tragic being and the battlefield as the stage upon which his tragedy is performed. He shows us that war is not a theatre where the audience rises and applauds after the performance, but rather one in which the viewer looks on the stage with horror and nausea. Once more, the greatest anti-war poet of all times has achieved his purpose.