Homer and the Will of Zeus

College Literature, Spring 2007 by Wilson, Joe

After reading the Homeric poems, and indeed after reading interpretations of them, I cannot help asking about Homer and wondering what he thought he was doing. (Ford 1992, 1)

Andrew Ford's question haunts all who undertake the study of Homer, that most illusive of figures, endowed with none of the ordinary predicates of existence, the putative author, singer, or monumental composer of the incomparable Iliad and/or the Odyssey, or neither.1 R. Martin has suggested that, in the midst of the intense revisionism that has beset tragedy and comedy, Homeric studies are still fairly removed from critical controversy (1988, 2). Martin seems optimistic, especially in light of the work done in the decade subsequent to the publication of his own book, during which the split between pure oralists and virtually everyone else seems to have grown more extreme.2

Still, Ford's question, while undeniably challenging, at least offers those who would attempt to answer it some hope, no matter how faint, of success, as opposed to questions of authorship and composition, which have raged unresolved for centuries. After all, as Martin observed, however the Iliad may have come into existence, it is now a text, "and that has made all of the difference" (1988, 1). A text can be analyzed, if not to discern the putative will of its author, at least to disclose its own methodology.3And we can perhaps do better than that. "In my father's house there are many rooms." Even the densest, least skilled, and most haphazard (and I do not mean to suggest that the Iliad reflects any such ineptitude) of architects must have included a few of them in the original plans.4

Like Ford, I would like to examine what Homer was doing when he composed/wrote the Iliad.5 Yet that question, baldly stated, seems too broad for the scope of the current discussion. Alas, we possess no detailed notes from the poet on his methodology. It remains the most axiomatic of axioms in Homeric studies that the poet never injects himself into his work, and efforts to uncover a "historical" Homer invariably founder.6 We do, however, have his poem, and we do have his plot. As Nagy observes (and repeats often [1979, 35-36, 97-99]), and Nimis (1987, 90) and Richardson (1990) also confirm, the plot of an epic poem is simply the will of Zeus. An investigation of Homer's (or the text's) own intentions can with profit begin there. Moreover, as Redfield carefully argues, following the logic of Aristotle's Poetics 1451b27-29, the invention of the plot is the invention of a narrative poem (1994, 58). Homer or the tradition invents the plot of the work; we may therefore assume that the will of Zeus conforms rather exactly to the will of the poet-in that the will of Zeus in the Iliad operates to guarantee the honor of Achilles, the will of the poet must be to do the same. Moreover, the honoring of Achilles will then condition all of the poet's decisions on the distribution of kleos, the glory (from kluein,"to hear"), gained from oral poetry.7

We can carry the discussion still further. To quote the cogent summary of Mark Edwards:

Fate, of course, is the will of the poet, limited by the major features of the traditional legends. ... In an obviously artistic, not religious, motif, Zeus holds up his scales to determine the decree of fate, and the gods act to ensure the fulfillment of such a decree; Poseidon rescues Aeneas for this reason, as it is fated that through him Dardanus' line shall continue (20.300308). On two occasions Zeus considers the possibility of saving a hero from the death that fate has decreed (his son Sarpedon, 16.433ff.,and the beloved Hector, 22.167-81), but both times another deity declares this to be exceptional and a bad policy, and Zeus gives up the idea.(Edwards 1987, 136)

I offer a slight refinement to Edwards s initial observation: fate is not the will of the poet, but the poetic tradition, to which the poet must in most instances conform, lest he lose all of his authority.8 The poet, however, determines the plot of the poem, and the poet's metaphor for that determination is the will of Zeus. For example, when Zeus must reluctantly allow the deaths of Sarpedon and Hector, we have a metaphor for the poet acknowledging his allegiance to a tradition, a tradition to which he must, in crucial specifics, adhere, in order to maintain his own credibility. Should Sarpedon escape the onslaught of Patroclus, or Hector fall to Ajax instead of Achilles, the poet would compromise, perhaps fatally, both his tale and his status as a "Singer of Tales," to borrow Lord's phrase.

Poetic favor, of course, offers no protective talisman to the characters. Zeus directs his affections precisely to those characters for whom the poet expresses the greatest interest, and yet, as Griffin observes,"Zeus loves Hector and Sarpedon, Patroclus and Achilles; but by the end of the Iliad three of the four are dead, and the fourth will be slain very soon."(1980, 86). Zeus's loves are the crucial figures around whom the poet fashions his tale, the men whose death in battle will earn them the kleos aphthiton, "undying fame," that epic confers.9