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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 March 2020
Things in Homer cannot complain about a lack of attention. Nearly forty years ago, Jasper Griffin, in response to the oralist emphasis on composition and formulaic language, drew our attention to the many significant objects populating the Iliad and the Odyssey. Nestor's cup, for example, is so heavy that other men have difficulties to lift it; the cup illustrates the eminence of its owner who rubbed shoulders with the far greater heroes of the past. As Griffin demonstrated, Homer deftly uses the significance of objects to enrich many scenes of his narrative. While the sceptre, symbol of the king's power, underscores the sorry figure cut by Agamemnon in Iliad Book 2, the washing places that Hector passes when he tries to escape Achilles generate a powerful tragic contrast to the battlefield chase in which he is now involved. Following Griffin's lead, scholars have closely examined things and their role in Homeric epic, notably their commemorative function: weapons and other objects have biographies and are therefore an important means of evoking the past besides song.
For their stimulating comments, I wish to thank CQ's anonymous reader, Lilah Grace Canevaro and the participants in the conference on ‘Materiality, Representation, and Performance in Archaic and Classical Greek Poetry’ (University of Edinburgh, June 2017). All translations of the Odyssey are taken, partly with modifications, from R. Lattimore, The Odyssey of Homer (New York, 1965).
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4 Besides Homeric epic, Greek tragedy and comedy are further genres that have started to attract attention from scholars inspired by thing theory; see especially Mueller, M., Objects as Actors: Props and the Poetics of Performance in Greek Tragedy (Chicago, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Telò, M., Aristophanes and the Cloak of Comedy: Affect, Aesthetics, and the Canon (Chicago, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Being performed, drama offers an additional point of interest: props that were used on stage.
5 Whitley, J., ‘Homer's entangled objects: narrative, agency and personhood in and out of iron age texts’, CArchJ 23 (2013), 395–416Google Scholar.
6 Bielfeldt, R., ‘Gegenwart und Vergegenwärtigung: dynamische Dinge im Ausgang von Homer’, in ead. (ed.), Ding und Mensch in der Antike: Gegenwart und Vergegenwärtigung (Akademiekonferenzen 16) (Heidelberg, 2014), 15–48Google Scholar.
7 Purves, A.C., ‘Ajax and other objects: Homer's vibrant materialism’, Ramus 44 (2015), 75–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8 Canevaro, L.G., Women of Substance in Homeric Epic: Objects, Gender, Agency (Oxford, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a gender approach to Homeric things, especially textile, see also Mueller, M., ‘Helen's hand: weaving for kleos in the Odyssey’, Helios 37 (2010), 1–21Google Scholar.
9 Bielfeldt (n. 6), 23–31.
10 Bielfeldt (n. 6), 32.
11 Bielfeldt (n. 6), 32–3.
12 A juxtaposition with the doors to Odysseus’ storeroom is instructive in this case: ‘creaking loudly like a bull’ (Od. 21.48–9), these doors in the human world are only compared to an animal, and the animal-like sound they produce depends on an external agent who is opening them, in this case Penelope.
13 Cf. Kokolakis, M.M., ‘Homeric animism’, Museum Philologum Londiniense 4 (1980), 89–113Google Scholar.
14 Bielfeldt (n. 6), 37.
15 See, for example, scholium bT Il. 4.126b ex., which argues that Homer ‘transferred the eagerness from the archer to the arrow’ (ἐμφαντικῶς δὲ τὴν τοῦ βαλόντος προθυμίαν εἰς τὸ βληθὲν μετήγαγεν). See also scholium bT Il. 21.169a ex.; bT Il. 13.562 ex.; bT Il. 4.217 ex. Cf. Nünlist, R., The Ancient Critic at Work: Terms and Concepts of Literary Criticism in Greek Scholia (Cambridge, 2009), 210–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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17 For a perceptive discussion of metaphor in Homer as varying ‘between the strikingly new and effective and the completely dead’, see Edwards, M.W., The Iliad: A Commentary, vol. 5: Books 17–20 (Cambridge, 1991), 50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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19 See, however, Purves (n. 7), who subscribes to a vitalist agenda.
20 Gell, A., Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory (Oxford, 1998)Google Scholar.
21 Canevaro (n. 8) also draws on Gell in her analysis of things and women in Homeric epic.
22 Gell's book, written in the course of a few weeks before the author's death, is not without problems. For critical assessments of Gell, see, for example, Layton, R., ‘Art and Agency: a reassessment’, The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 9 (2003), 447–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rampley, M., ‘Art history and cultural difference: Alfred Gell's anthropology of art’, Art History 28 (2005), 524–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Morphy, H., ‘Art as a mode of action: Some problems with Gell's Art and Agency’, Journal of Material Culture 14 (2009), 5–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Chua, L. and Elliot, M. (edd.), Distributed Objects: Meaning and Mattering after Alfred Gell (New York, 2013)Google Scholar. Osborne, R. and Tanner, J. (edd.), Art's Agency and Art History (Malden, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar contain a couple of attempts to make Gell's approach fruitful for the study of the ancient world.
23 See Starobinski, J., ‘The inside and the outside’, Hudson Review 28 (1975), 333–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bonnafé, A., ‘L’ olivier dans l’ Odyssée et le fourré du Parnasse: reprises de termes et reprises de thèmes’, QS 21 (1985), 101–36Google Scholar; Murnaghan, S., Disguise and Recognition in the Odyssey (Princeton, 1987), 140–1Google Scholar; Katz, M.A., Penelope's Renown: Meaning and Indeterminacy in the Odyssey (Princeton, 1991), 177–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Zeitlin, F.I., Playing the Other: Gender and Society in Classical Greek Literature (Chicago, 1996), 19–52Google Scholar.
24 Katz (n. 23), 181.
25 E.g. Zeitlin (n. 23), 22, 24.
26 Canevaro (n. 8), 7.
27 For another thought-provoking comparison, see Purves, A.C., Space and Time in Ancient Greek Narrative (Cambridge, 2010), 83CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who juxtaposes the bed with the oar that Odysseus is supposed to carry in Teiresias’ prophecy.
28 Canevaro (n. 8), 75.
29 Gell (n. 20).
30 The example of the shepherd and the fence is taken from Latour, B., ‘On interobjectivity’, Mind, Culture, and Activity 3 (1996), 228–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 239.
31 Gell (n. 20), 20–1.
32 Gell (n. 20), 17–23.
33 Gell (n. 20), 22.
34 See especially Newton, R.M., ‘Odysseus and Hephaestus in the Odyssey’, CJ 83 (1987), 12–20Google Scholar.
35 Zeitlin (n. 23), 34.
36 On Homeric epic, see Whitley (n. 5); more generally, see, for example, Hodder, I., Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationship between Humans and Things (Chichester, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
37 Schapp, W., In Geschichten verstrickt: Zum Sein von Mensch und Ding (Hamburg, 1953)Google Scholar.
38 Cf. Zeitlin (n. 23), 42.
39 Besides Gell (n. 20), ch. 7, especially 103–4, see, for example, Strathern, M., The Gender of the Gift: Problems with Women and Problems with Society in Melanesia (Studies in Melanesian Anthropology 6) (Berkeley, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wagner, R., ‘The fractal person’, in Godelier, M. and Strathern, M. (edd.), Big Men and Great Men: Personifications of Power in Melanesia (Cambridge, 1991), 159–73Google Scholar.
40 Strathern (n. 39).
41 See also Zeitlin (n. 23), 41–2 in vigorous opposition to analytical scholars who excised 23.157–62 as a mere repetition of 6.230–5. On the contested authenticity of these verses, see also Heubeck ad loc., in Russo, J., Fernández-Galiano, M. and Heubeck, A. (edd.), A Commentary on Homer's Odyssey. Vol. III: Books XVII–XXIV (Oxford, 1992)Google Scholar. See also Austin, N., Archery at the Dark of the Moon: Poetic Problems in Homer's Odyssey (Berkeley, 1975), 211–13Google Scholar; Newton (n. 34), 17 n. 19.
42 Brown, B., ‘Objects, others and us (the refabrication of things)’, Critical Inquiry 36 (2010), 183–217CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 191.
43 Brown, B., ‘Thing theory’, Critical Inquiry 28 (2001), 1–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 7, and 3–5 on the differences between things and objects.
44 Purves (n. 7), 78. See also Holmes, B., The Symptom and the Subject: The Emergence of the Physical Body in Ancient Greece (Princeton, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
45 For a survey, see Schildkrout, E., ‘Inscribing the body’, Annual Review of Anthropology 33 (2004), 319–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for an illuminating case-study of tattooing on Polynesia, see Gell, A., Wrapping in Images: Tattooing in Polynesia (Oxford Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology: Cultural Forms) (Oxford, 1996)Google Scholar.
46 See, however, Purves (n. 7), who analyses weapons and argues that their vibrant nature dissolves the boundary between human being and matter.
47 As argued by Jong, I.J. de, ‘Eurykleia and Odysseus’ scar: Odyssey 19.393–466’, CQ 35 (1985), 517–18Google Scholar; Peradotto, J.J., Man in the Middle Voice: Name and Narration in the Odyssey (Princeton, 1990), 125–6Google Scholar.
48 Cf. Grethlein, J., Die Odyssee: Homer und die Kunst des Erzählens (Munich, 2017), 180–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
49 Cf. Grethlein (n. 48), 187–9.
50 See Purves (n. 27), 222–8, who not only interprets the trees in the orchard in light of the comparisons of falling soldiers to trees, but also brings them together with ships, which also consist of trees, albeit in a horizontal, not a vertical, arrangement. On Homeric tree and plant similes expressing human fragility, see further Grethlein, J., Das Geschichtsbild der Ilias: Eine Untersuchung aus phänomenologischer und narratologischer Perspektive (Göttingen, 2006), 85–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
51 On the parallel to Penelope, who is not satisfied with the scar, see Katz (n. 23), 181. Murnaghan, S., ‘Farming, authority, and truth-telling in the Greek tradition’, in Rosen, R.M. (ed.), City, Countryside, and the Spatial Organization of Value in Classical Antiquity (Leiden, 2006), 93–118CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 96 shows that speaking about farming establishes authority in antiquity and emphasizes that Odysseus’ identity is bound up with the familiarity with farming.
52 Cf. Murnaghan (n. 23), 56–8.
53 In Od. 21.395, Odysseus tests his bow ‘to see if worms had eaten the horn in the master's absence’. Eckstein, F., Handwerk (Archaeologia Homerica vol. 2, L1) (Göttingen, 1974), 41 n. 287Google Scholar contends that ‘horn’ is here used only metaphorically to signify the two tips of the bow, but Pandarus’ bow in the Iliad is said to be made of horn (4.105–11). None the less, several scholars assume that Homeric bows are ‘of “composite type”: that, made out of wooden staves reinforced by inset strips of horn (keratin) on the inner side and sinew on the outer side, all bound together’. (Kirk, G.S., The Iliad: A Commentary, vol. 1 [Cambridge, 1985]CrossRefGoogle Scholar, on Il. 4.110 with further literature.) Buchholz, H.-G., Kriegswesen: Ergänzungen und Zusammenfassungen (Archaeologia Homerica vol. 1, E3) (Göttingen, 2010), 241Google Scholar assumes that only the apices are made of horn, but this leaves open the question of whether the middle piece consists of wood or of metal. I thank Leslie Kurke for drawing my attention to the discussion of the material of Homeric bows.
54 Cf. Reece, S., The Stranger's Welcome: Oral Theory and the Aesthetics of the Homeric Hospitality Scene (Ann Arbor, 1993), 174–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Grethlein (n. 3), 42–3.
55 Cf. Segal, C.P., ‘The Phaeacians and the symbolism of Odysseus’ return’, Arion 1 (1962), 17–64Google Scholar, at 51: ‘His closer bond to the bow represents the innate and acquired lightness of his claim to the kingship and Penelope. It is part of his nature and his heritage as good king and gentle father.’
56 Cf. Ready, J.L., ‘Why Odysseus strings his bow’, GRBS 50 (2010), 133–57Google Scholar, who argues that the stringing of the bow embeds Odysseus in relationships of xenia and reinvests him with kingly power.
57 E.g. Segal (n. 55), 50–2; Thalmann, W.G., Conventions of Form and Thought in Early Greek Epic Poetry (Baltimore, 1984), 175–6Google Scholar; Rutherford, R.B., ‘At home and abroad: aspects of the structure of the Odyssey’, PCPhS 31 (1985), 133–50Google Scholar, at 143; Goldhill, S., The Poet's Voice: Essays on Poetics and Greek Literature (Cambridge, 1991), 66Google Scholar; Ready (n. 56), 149–56.
58 Cf. Brown (n. 42), 188–9.
59 Appadurai, A., ‘Introduction: commodities and the politics of value’, in id. (ed.), The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge, 1986), 3–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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61 E.g. Latour, B., Nous n'avons jamais été modernes: Essai d'anthropologie symétrique (Paris, 1991)Google Scholar; id., Enquête sur les modes d'existence: Une anthropologie des Modernes (Paris, 2012).
62 Strathern (n. 39).
63 Gell (n. 20), 18.
64 Gell (n. 20), 18.
65 One of the few prominent thing-theoreticians today who is engaging with Heidegger is Brown. See, for example, Brown, B., ‘How to do things with things (a toy story)’, Critical Inquiry 24 (1998), 935–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar; id. (n. 43); id. (n. 42). I thank Lilah Grace Canevaro for reminding me of Brown's engagement with Heidegger.
66 Heidegger, M., Das Ding, Gesamtausgabe, 1. Abteilung: Veröffentlichte Schriften 1910–1976, vol. 7: Vorträge und Aufsätze, ed. von Herrmann, F.W. (Frankfurt a. M., 2000 [1950]), 165–88Google Scholar.
67 Kästner, E., Aufstand der Dinge: Byzantinische Aufzeichnungen (Frankfurt a. M., 1973), 160–1Google Scholar: ‘Die Dinge für grenzenlos unterdrückbar, rechtlos, willenlos, fühllos und unbedürftig der Selbst-Bestimmung zu halten, das kann bloß, wer meint, daß sie weder Leben noch Macht hätten. Sie haben es. Wovon sonst hätten die Gedichte, die Bilder, Verse, die Geschichten, die Träume von jeher gesprochen als eben von ihrer Gewalt? Es ist der Herren-Wahn unserer Neuzeit, zu meinen, man könne die Dinge ohne Maß, ohne Grenze ausspähen, ausforschen, ausbeuten, und es werde schon keine Rechnung deswegen ins Haus kommen. Sie täuscht sich, die Neuzeit.’ (‘That things can be infinitely repressed, be without rights, without will, without sentiment and without the need for self-determination, this can only be assumed by someone who believes that they have neither life nor power. But they do. What else would poems, pictures, verses, stories, dreams of all times have talked about if not their power? It is the delusion of dominion held by our modern era to think one could spy out, explore, exploit the things without limits, and that in the end there would be no bill to be settled. The modern era errs.’) See also id., Griechische Inseln: Aufzeichnungen aus dem Jahre 1944, ed. H. Gremmels (Frankfurt a. M., 1975), 124: ‘Wir sind im Begriff, die Welt bloß noch angefüllt mit Gegenständen zu sehen; es sind aber Dinge. Über einen Gegenstand kann man verfügen, ihn ausrechnen, anstellen, abstellen. So werden Dinge, denen man ihr Wunder, ihr Rätsel, also ihre Macht wegnahm, zu Gegenständen über die wir wie über Sklaven verfügen.’ (‘We are in the process of seeing the world filled only with objects; these objects are however things. Of an object one can dispose, one can calculate it, switch it on and off. This is how things, deprived of their miracle, their mystery and hence their power, become objects of which we dispose as of slaves.’)
68 Kästner (n. 67 [1973]), 158–9: ‘Kann man glauben, die Dinge dächten niemals an Aufstand, seien zur Volks-Erhebung nicht fähig? Hätte man nicht an die uralte Waffe der gepeinigten Unterdrückten denken sollen: an die Möglichkeit eines General-Streiks der Dinge? Brauchten sie mehr zu tun, als sich abzuwenden? sich zuzuschließen? einfach bloß zu verstummen? nur sich wegzuziehen?’ (‘Can one believe that the things would never think of a sedition and would not be capable of an uprising? Should one not have remembered the very old weapon of those tormented and oppressed: the possibility of a general strike of the things? Would they have to do more than to turn away? To lock themselves up? Simply to become mute? Just to pull themselves aside?’).
69 As Kästner states in an earlier work (Die Lerchenschule [Frankfurt a. M., 1964], 161): ‘Das verfluchte Wort Objekt war es, was so viel Kälte in diese Welt einließ.’ (‘It was the cursed word ‘object’ that let so much coldness enter this world.’).
70 Kästner is sometimes viewed, alongside Heidegger, Schmitt and Jünger, as part of ‘the conservative revolution’, but his conservative stance needs to be qualified: he is not pleading for a restoration of what came before and does not believe that developments can be reversed: e.g. Kästner (n. 67 [1973]), 165. Cf. Gander, H.-H., ‘“Wirklich sind nur die bedichteten Dinge”: über Erhart Kästners Ethos des Schreibens’, in Figal, G. (ed.), Erhart Kästner zum 100. Geburtstag: Die Wahrheit von Orten und Dingen (Freiburg, 2004), 22–44Google Scholar, at 36. For more on Kästner, see Gander, H.-H., ‘Martin Heidegger und Erhart Kästner’, Heidegger Studies 3 (1987/8), 75–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nauhaus, J.M., Erhart Kästners Phantasiekabinett: Variationen über Kunst und Künstler (Rombach Cultura 32) (Freiburg, 2003)Google Scholar and the contributions to Figal, G. (ed.), Erhart Kästner zum 100. Geburtstag: Die Wahrheit von Orten und Dingen (Freiburg, 2004)Google Scholar.
