Continuity Issues in Homer

 

Continuity Issues in Homer

It is not unusual to catch technical or continuity errors and slip-ups in literary works or in visual entertainment features like movies. The famous Vinegar Bible, printed by John Baskett at Clarendon press in 1717, has a misprint at the beginning of Luke 20 which gives the title of “The Parable of the Vineyard” as “The Parable of the Vinegar”. From 1939 there is the scene on the Yellow Brick Road in The Wizard of Oz where Dorothy’s ruby red shoes are replaced with a pair of black ones. What about the electrical cords and light bulbs in Gone with the Wind, also from 1939? Then there is the chariot race scene in Ben Hur from 1959 where one of the charioteers is sporting a fancy wrist-watch. Let’s not forget the countless cowboy movies where jet contrails are seen in the western sky. So it stands to reason therefore, that we might be able to pick up the odd inconsistency or anachronism in two works the length of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.

The most notable errors in Homer are those which can be classified as anachronisms and historical discrepancies. Many of these centre on the fact that Homer composed his works in the Iron Age or early Archaic period and was describing events which supposedly took place in the Late Bronze Age of Mycenaean Greece more than 400 years before his time. Many of the most noted historical inconsistencies are Homer’s repeated references to the use of iron for armour, tools and implements in his Bronze Age setting. For example, while preparing to take part in the Trojan battle, the goddess Hera readied her chariot and we learn from the bard that various metals were used in its construction. However, we know that it is historically inaccurate for a chariot of that particular time and place to have had axles made from iron. The use of iron for such purposes was just at its infancy at the time of the Late Bronze Age and this was definitely a Homeric slip-up.

And Hebe immediately fastened round eight-spoke bronze wheels to the iron axles on both sides of the chariot. The hubs were made of imperishable gold and the rims above were of bronze, a wonder to behold. The round naves on both sides were of silver and the chariot board itself was held in place with gold and silver thongs and there were two circular edges from which extended a silver chariot pole.

Homer also tells us about the godlike hero Ereuthalion who was called the ‘mace-bearer’ because he fought with a club made of iron rather than a bow or a long spear. Such a weapon was highly unlikely in the Bronze Age, as were the iron gates of Tartarus that Homer describes. He also mentions the ‘din of iron’ erupting from the battlefield, another obvious anachronism. At the funeral games of Patroclus, Achilles offered a prize of iron to the winner of one of the contests and noted that the recipient would have enough iron for making farm implements for five years.

Then the son of Peleus offered a mass of rudely cast iron which in time past the great might of Etion threw, he whom the godlike swift-footed Achilles killed and then carried this and his other possessions away on his ships. Then he stood up and spoke in the midst of the Argives. “Come now and try to win these prizes. Though his rich fields may be in a place far off, the winner of this prize will have enough iron to serve his needs for at least five years and his ploughmen and shepherds will not have to go to the city to find more for they will have enough to serve them well.”

The twelve axe heads through which Odysseus shot his arrow during the contest with the suitors were supposedly made of iron as well, and there are several other references to iron weapons in the Odyssey. On more than one occasion Homer cautions about drinking and drunkenness and tells us that men are drawn to iron when drunk and that iron draws out the worst in men. Clearly the bard is mixing up his timeframes with these historical inaccuracies.

However, iron was beginning to play a role in Bronze Age Greece, but was viewed as more of a precious metal rather than component of weapons and implements. There are several times when Homer talks about treasure troves consisting of bronze, gold and finely-wrought or richly-wrought iron. There is a reference to the Achaeans buying wine from Lemnos and using iron as currency for the transaction.

Then the long-haired Achaeans bought wine from them, some with bronze, some with shining iron, others with hides or oxen or slaves and they prepared an abundant feast.

In addition to wrongly placing iron weapons on a Bronze Age battlefield or iron tools in a Bronze Age barn, Homer also errs when talking about how chariots were employed in battle. In the Iliad, Homer describes chariots being used like taxicabs to ferry warriors to the front lines. He describes a chariot as being manned by a charioteer as well as one warrior who steps from the cart to battle on foot when he reaches the fighting. This may have indeed been the case in Homer’s time, but in the Mycenaean period, the chariot was used as a highly mobile fighting platform, rather than as a vehicle for carrying a warrior to the front.

Another of Homer’s historical inconsistencies deals with his references to temples, as for example when the priest Chryse prays to the god Apollo:

If I ever roofed a temple that was pleasing to you or provided you with the burnt offering of the fat thigh pieces of bulls and goats, then answer my prayer and let the Danaans pay the price for my tears with your arrows.

There is a reference to the temple of Athena in Athens, the temples of Apollo in Ilium and Pergamus and that of Ares in Troy. Hector is told to direct his mother to go and worship at the temple of Athena in the Trojan capital.

But you Hector, go into the city and speak to your mother and mine and have her gather together all the matrons and go with them to the temple of the shining-eyed Athena on the top of the citadel.

Indeed they came to the temple of Athena on the high citadel and the fair-cheeked Theano, the daughter of Cisseis who was the wife of Antenor the tamer of horses, did open up the gates for them. The Trojans had installed her as a priestess of Athena. With a loud cry they all raised up their hands to Athena and the fair-cheeked Theano, having taken the robe in her hands, spread it on the knees of the lovely-haired Athena.

The difficulty here is that, at the time of the Mycenaean Greeks, there were no large temples built to honour the gods. Such structures were a fact of life in Homer’s age, but not in the period covered by his epics. There were some very small shrines or altars in cult centres, but nothing like the large free-standing temples of later ages.

One of the most glaring anachronisms is Homer’s description of funerary and burial practices. Elaborate funeral pyres are created for Homer’s dead heroes and the deceased are cremated in highly ritualized ceremonies. Sometimes cremation was a matter of expediency, such as when the corpses of the dead burned constantly while the plague waged against the Achaeans for nine days. But for major heroes, being cremated was viewed as a supreme honour and one which every hero felt he deserved. Hector begged Achilles for the right to be honoured in such a way as he lay dying.

“I beg you by your life, your knees and your parents not to allow the dogs to devour me by the ships of the Achaeans. Instead, take the gifts of bronze and gold that my father and queenly mother shall give to you to return my body back to my home so that the Trojans and their wives may give me the right of a funeral pyre in my death.”

Homer provided great detail about the funeral pyre of Patroclus, telling us that, those who were in charge waited behind and gathered wood and made a huge pyre a hundred feet each way and on the top they laid the dead man’s corpse and their hearts were full of sorrow. Large jars of homey and oil were placed on his pyre and numerous animals were slaughtered along with 12 Trojan youths. After the cremation, the remaining ashes and bones of the deceased were gathered and placed in richly crafted vessels for subsequent burial.

The basic problem with these descriptions of funeral pyres and cremations is that the Mycenaean Greeks did not cremate their dead. Deceased heroes and those of royal rank were buried in elaborate tombs, archaeological evidence of which can still be viewed today in the form of tholos or beehive tombs in places like the citadel of Mycenae or other Late Bronze Age settlements in the Peloponnese. Homer was referring to funerary practices that were more akin to his time rather than to the time of the Trojan War.

Finally from an historical point of view, the description in Homer’s Catalogue of Ships of the 1,186 vessels and the tens of thousands of warriors who went to Troy from various parts of mainland Greece and the islands seems to portray a political structure that outlines a collection of independent city-states. That indeed would have been the case in the later Archaic period but not in the Late Bronze Age. At that time there would have been a palace-based society with a Wanax or king of kings in charge of several locations in a region and a loose confederacy of allies. The city state did not start to emerge as the fundamental independent unit of Greek civilization until after the Dark Ages between the 8^th and 6^th centuries BCE.

In addition to the various historical inconsistencies and anachronisms mentioned above, there are several writer’s factual errors or slip-ups found in the texts as well, perhaps better referred to as memory lapses. For example, in Book 5 of the Iliad we are told of the fate of Pylaemenes, the leader of the Paphlagonians:

Then they killed Pylaemenes who was equal to Ares, rule of the great-hearted shield-bearing Paphlagonians. Menelaus the son of Atreus, who was famous for his skill with the spear, hit him in the collar-bone with his spear while he was standing there.

Later on in Book 13, the son of Pylaemenes, who was called Harpalion, was killed by the fierce Achaean Meriones after he had attacked Menelaus. But his father was reported as alive and well and mourning the loss of his son.

The great-hearted Paphlagonians took charge of the situation and placed him in a chariot bearing him to sacred Ilios, mourning as they did so. His father went with him and his tears poured forth, but there was no blood-price paid for his dead son.

            Homer reports that Agamemnon, Menelaus and Odysseus all received rather serious wounds at various points in the battle, but later on in the narrative the three of them appear hale and healthy. Agamemnon was wounded by a spear to the extent that he had to withdraw from the fighting because of the severe pain. Menelaus was hit in the hip by an arrow shot by Pandarus and was treated by Machaon. Odysseus was wounded in the chest by Sokos and had to be rescued by Menelaus and Ajax after he had killed his attacker. As indicated, either all three miraculously recovered or else Homer forgot that he had reported that they had been wounded.

There are other such inconsistencies in both texts, but these minor plot contradictions are generally attributed to the fact that the Iliad and the Odyssey both stem from an oral tradition, rather than from a single written text, and that different authors contributed to the narratives over time. These variances are minor in nature compared to the rather more serious inconsistencies and poetic lapses caused by confusing and mixing Late Bronze Age facts with much later Iron Age and Archaic period conditions.

I suppose the fact that he was writing over 400 years after the events were thought to have taken place, and was relying on several sources from an oral tradition, and writing narrative of such extensive length, provides us with enough leeway to forgive Homer for any of the minor inconsistencies or anachronisms that we find in the Iliad and the Odyssey.