Homeric Similes

Hum 110

Gail B. Sherman

Sept. 5, 2003

1. Why slow down to read the similes in the Iliad?
2. The structure and function of epic similes: e.g., 2.455-483
1. Cinematic zoom and closeup
2. Juxtaposition of two orders of things
3. Delay, disorientation, and unfolding implications and complexity
3. The difference that desire makes: immortality and kleos (fame, glory)

1. Vernant, "Feminine Figures of Death"

1. Leafy Language
1. Glaukos answers Diomedes, 6.145-150
2. Apollo dissuades Poseidon, 21.462-66
3. Hera advises Zeus, 16.455-57
4. Achilleus swears on a scepter, 1.234-238
5. Thetis mourns Achilles, 18.54-60
6. Epic narrator notes death of Simoieisios, 4.483-489
2. The blind spot of culture: the self-destructiveness of Homeric heroism

A. The rhetorical purpose of the similes is not to describe the world of peace but to make vivid the world of war; that is, the images they convey of the wider world are incidental to their intent. They therefore have some of the quality of dream material. The poet reaches for some memory or image to clarify the scene he has set before us; he takes the image which strikes him as having the greatest potency in its context. Because this process is unreflective, the recurrent themes of the simile can be taken to reflect and express a substratum of the poet’s mind – or, since probably few similes are his original invention – of the poetic tradition in which he is at home. A catalogue of the recurrent themes in the similes cant hus tell us what images were held by this tradition to be particularly strong and meaningful. In the similes, taken as a group, there comes to the surface an inchoate, implicit, collective understanding of what things in the world are of most significance to men [sic].

J. Redfield, Nature and Culture in the Iliad (University of Chicago Press, 1975); 187.

B. If we come to Glaukos’ speech …from the context of Homer{‘suse of leaf similes}, we quite easily discern vast numbers and an associated indistinct movement: the wind is scattering anonymous leaves on the ground of the forest, and the process seems repeated through the infinite turn of the seasons. Such is the generic condition of humankind, and precisely at the point where Glaukos distinguishes himself from such anonymity by reciting his ancestry, he leaves Diomedes in a forest of indistinction [sic] and thereby makes his simile into a rebuke of his adversary.

E. R. Lowry, "The Heroic Boast of Iliad 6.146-211" in The Ages of Homer, ed. J.B. Carter and S.P. Morris (University of Texas Press, 1995), 199.

C. The similes in which [Achilles and Hektor] are compared to elements of nature represent them as victor and victim respectively. Achilles, more often than any other hero, is compared to a predatory animal on the attack: for example, a lion (20.164-75, 24.41-45). A "great gaing dolphin" (21.22-26), a hawk (22.139-42), and a dog chasing a fawn (22.189-92). Hector never is compared to a predator, but instead several times is a predator’s potential victim: for example, a dog chasing a lion or a wild boar (8.338-42), a timid dove (22.140-142), and a fawn (22.189-92). His role in the poem is best expressed by the long simile at 13.137-48. . . . Like the boulder, Hektor rushes forward destructively until his force is spent and, in the end, lies motionless on the plain. Achilles, on the other hand, never is compared to a passive element of nature; he is, rather, like a raging forestfire (20.490-94) or the fever-bearing dog-star (22.26-32).

S. Schein, The Mortal Hero (University of California Press, 1984), 180.