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Book Eleven
OKpoaTaTs, see also W. W. Minton, TAP A 91 (i960) 292-
309. The poet has set the narrative a goal, the wounding of Agamemnon,
and hastens to it, allowing Agamemnon only one regular slaying before he
is wounded by Koon. His opponents are sons of An tenor, a detail doubtless
suggested by the sons of Antimakhos in the preceding aristeia. For the good
Antenor as host of Odysseus and Menelaos stands in sharpest contrast to
the base Antimakhos.
The whole episode of Agamemnon's last fights and wounding should
be compared with the wounding of Odysseus at 426-71; the details are
different, but the thread of the story is identical: the hero kills a Trojan, the
Trojan's brother wounds the hero, the hero kills the second Trojan, finally
the hero withdraws. Fenik's remarks (TBS 9) on a subsequent passage are
worth quoting here:
the poet composed by describing certain basic, recurrent situations with which he
associated certain details. These details in turn group themselves along certain
general structural lines — i.e. they form patterns. But this does not happen according
to any unalterable or fixed system. The structural framework of all the patterns is
variable at almost any given point, although a majority of identifying details is
always present in an one example. Both the repetitiveness and the elasticity of the
system are demonstrated by the fact that although the battle narrative is composed
almost entirely of repeated elements of all kinds, no two battle scenes, large or small,
are wholly alike.
For the formular character of 218-63 see Espermann, Antenor, Theano,
Antenoriden 119-29, who counts 21 verses substantially repeated elsewhere.
218-21 Within the epic the poet's appeals to the Muses follow a certain
pattern. A question, directly or indirectly, is put to the goddesses, and
answered in a sentence that often (though not here) echoes the wording of
the question, see 2.761-2 with 768, 14.508-10 with 511. The appeal therefore
is for information, not inspiration, cf. P. Murray, JHS 101 (1981)
87-100, and de Jong, Narrators 45-53 (with bibliography). The form is
common to Hesiod, Theog. 114-16, 965-9, 1021-2 with fr. 1 M-W, and
betrays a certain self-consciousness in the narrator. The Muse reveals to him
the 'facts' of the story which the singer then transmits, with commentary,
to his audience. Only 1.1 (cc6i8e, 6e&) seems to suggest that the singer is a
mere mouthpiece of the Muse, who is the real author of the poem: a form
that is best taken as a simplification of the usual relationship of singer and
Muse; see, however, A. Lenz, Das Prodm des fruhgriechischen Epos (Bonn 1980)
27. The author of 12.176 apyocAeov 6e (as TOCOTC< Oeov cos TT&VT' dyopeuaai
drew a distinction between himself and the god/muse, cf. 2.485-92. We
may say that the Muse is a symbol of the singer's special 'knowledge' and
skill, but for him, of course, she is real enough. For the effect of a belief in
the Muses on the poet's use of the heroic tradition see Introduction 36.
248