This thesis argues that the defining characteristic of intra-familial relationships in both the Iliad and the Odyssey is inequality. Homeric relationship pairs that are presented positively are strongly marked by an uneven distribution of power and authority, and when family members do not subscribe to this ideology, the result is a dysfunctional relationship that is condemned by the poet and used as a negative paradigm for his characters. Moreover, the inequality favoured by the epics proceeds according to strict role-based rules with little scope for innovation according to personality, meaning that determination of authority is simple in the majority of cases. Wives are expected to submit themselves to their husbands, sons to their fathers, and less powerful brothers to their more dominant siblings. This rigid hierarchy does create the potential for problems in some general categories of relationship, and relations between mothers and sons in particular are strained in both epics, both because of the shifting power dynamic between them caused by the son’s increasing maturity and independence from his mother and her world, and because of Homeric epic’s persistent conjunction of motherhood with death. This category of familial relationships is portrayed in the epics as doomed to failure, but others are able to be depicted positively through adhering to the inequality that is portrayed in the epics as both natural and laudable. / I will also argue that this systemic pattern of inequality can be understood as equivalent to the Homeric concept of homophrosyne (“like-mindedness”), a term which, despite its appearance of equality, in fact refers to a persistent inequality. Accordingly, for a Homeric relationship to be portrayed as successful, one partner must submit to the other, adapting themselves to the other’s outlook and aims, and subordinating their own ideals and desires. Through this, they are able to become “like-minded” with their partners, achieving something like the homophrosyne recommended for husbands and wives in the Odyssey.

This dissertation argues that Homer's Iliad depicts the Trojan landscape as participant in or even victim of the Trojan War. This representation alludes to extra-Homeric accounts of the origins of the Trojan War in which Zeus plans the war to relieve the earth of the burden of human overpopulation. In these myths, overpopulation is the result of struggle among the gods for divine kingship. Through this allusion, the Iliad places itself within a framework of theogonic myth, depicting the Trojan War as an essential step in separating the world of gods and the world of men, and making Zeus’ position as the father of gods and men stable and secure. The Introduction covers the mythological background to which the Iliad alludes through an examination of extra-Homeric accounts of the Trojan War’s origins. Chapter One analyzes a pair of similes at Iliad 2.780-85 that compare the Akhaian army to Typhoeus, suggesting that the Trojan War is a conflict similar to Typhoeus’ attempt to usurp Zeus’ position as king of gods and men. Chapter Two demonstrates how Trojan characters are closely linked with the landscape in the poem’s first extended battle scene (4.422-6.35); the deaths of these men are a symbolic killing of the land they defend. Chapter Three discusses the aristeia of Diomedes in Book 5, where his confrontations with Aphrodite, Ares, and Apollo illustrate the heroic tendency to disrespect the status difference between gods and men. Athena’s authorization of Diomedes’ actions reveals the existence of strife among the Olympian gods, which threatens to destabilize the divine hierarchy. Chapter Four examines the Akhaian wall whose eventual destruction is recounted at the beginning of Book 12. The wall symbolizes human impiety and its destruction is a figurative fulfillment of Zeus’ plan to relieve the earth of the burden of unruly humanity. Finally, Chapter Five treats the flußkampf and Theomachy of Books 20 and 21, episodes adapting scenes of divine combat typically associated with the struggle for divine kingship. In the Iliad, these scenes show that Zeus’ power is unassailable. / text

This dissertation examines the depiction of the parent-child relationship in the Iliad and the Odyssey. In this examination, I focus on the representation of this phenomenon as it applies to Achilles and Hector, as the respective protagonist and antagonist of the former poem, and to Odysseus, the protagonist of the latter. The parent-child relationship has been selected as the subject of investigation on the grounds of the fundamental nature and extensive presence of this phenomenon in human life, and, consequently, in literature. The primary reason for the selection of the Iliad and the Odyssey for this study of the literary representation of this phenomenon is the status that these poems enjoy as the earliest extant works in Western literature, whose reputation and influence have endured through the centuries to modern times. The other reason is that they provide a rich source of the literary representation of the parent-child relationship. The inclusion of both Homeric poems in the investigation offers a broader spectrum of parent-child relationships and a wider range of parent-child related situations, issues, and outcomes. In each poem, the poet concentrates on the biological parent-child relationships of the heroes, although other supplementary relationships also feature. Assisted by narratological analysis, I examine the three heroes’ parent-child relationships in terms of their triadic structure of father-mother-son, and of the dyadic relationships encompassed by this triad, namely, father-son, mother-son, and father/husband-mother/wife. Each hero is depicted as both a son and a father; hence the triads to be examined are, for Achilles, the Peleus-Thetis-Achilles natal triad and the Achilles-[Deidamia]-Neoptolemus procreative triad (represented in the poem only by the father-son relationship), for Hector, the Priam-Hecuba-Hector natal triad and the Hector-Andromache-Astyanax procreative triad, and for Odysseus, the Laertes-Anticleia-Odysseus natal triad and the Odysseus-Penelope-Telemachus procreative triad. A significant feature to emerge from the examination of each of these triads and associated dyads is the poet’s use of the affective dimension of the parent-child relationship to make the epic hero more accessible, and the epic situations and events more meaningful to the audience. In addition to exploiting the universal appeal of the affective dimension, the examination of the representation of this relationship in the poems provides insights into socio-culturally determined aspects of the society depicted. On the structural thematic level the parent-child relationships of Achilles and Hector in the Iliad, and of Odysseus in the Odyssey provide a thematic thread woven into the central theme of each poem. Thus we see that these heroic epics tell stories that are not only about heroic warriors, but also about the other participants in their natal and procreative triads: their parents, wives, and sons. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu Natal, Durban, 2010.

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This thesis raises and explores questions concerning the popularity of the Homeric poems in ancient Greece. It asks why the Iliad and Odyssey held such continuing appeal among the Greeks of the Archaic and Classical age. Cultural products such as poetry cannot be separated from the sociopolitical conditions in which and for which they were originally composed and received. Working on the basis that the extent of Homer’s appeal was inspired and sustained by the peculiar and determining historical circumstances, I set out to explore the relation of the social, political and ethical conditions and values of Archaic and Classical Greece to those portrayed in the Homeric poems. The Greeks, at the time during which Homer was composing his poems, had begun to establish a new form of social organisation: the polis. By examining historical, literary and philosophical texts from the Archaic and Classical age, I explore the manner in which Greek society attempted to reorganise and reconstitute itself in a different way, developing original modes of social and political activity which the new needs and goals of their new social reality demanded. I then turn to examine Homer’s treatment of and response to this social context, and explore the various ways in which Homer was able to reinterpret and reinvent the inherited stories of adventure and warfare in order to compose poetry that not only looks back to the highly centralised and bureaucratic society of the Mycenaean world, but also looks forward, insistently so, to the urban reality of the present. I argue that Homer’s conflation of a remembered mythical age with the contemporary conditions and values of Archaic and Classical Greece aroused in his audiences a new perception and understanding of human existence in the altered sociopolitical conditions of the polis and, in so doing, ultimately contributed to the development of new ideas on the manner in which the Greeks could best live together in their new social world.

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This thesis explores the forms and significance of dispute settlement by arbitration, or ‘δίκη’, in the Iliad. I take as my focus the ‘storm simile’ of Iliad XVI: 384-393, which describes Zeus’ theodical reaction to corruption within the δίκη-court, and the ‘shield trial’ of Iliad XVIII: 498-508, which presents a detailed picture of such a court in action, and compare the forms and conception of arbitration that emerge from these two ecphrastic passages with those found in the narrative body of the poem. Analysing the terminology and procedures associated with dispute settlement in the Iliad, I explore the evidence for the development of an ‘ideology of δίκη’, that valorises arbitrated settlement as a solution to conflict, and that identifies δίκη as a procedure and a civic institution with an objective standard of fairness: the foundation of a civic concept of ‘justice’. I argue that this ideology is fully articulated in the storm simile and the shield trial, as well as Hesiod’s Works and Days, but that it is also detectable in the narrative body of the Iliad. I further argue that the poet of the Iliad employs references to this ideology, through the narrative media of speech and ecphrasis, to prompt and direct his audience’s evaluation of the nature and outcome of the poem’s central conflict: the dispute of Achilles and Agamemnon.

The following work consists of a careful analysis of the translation of the Iliad by Homer prepared by Melchiorre Cesarotti. Caught amidst the dilemma of loyalty to the original and the beauty of translation, Cesarotti decided to compose two versions: one in blank verses and the other in prose. This work is therefore none other than a comparison between Cesarotti's version in poetry and the version in prose. / The first part deals briefly with a few details on the criticism that Cesarotti's work raised. / The second part consists of the comparison work, which is subdivided in "Canti" (as Cesarotti's version in poetry) because the work proposes to compare the version in poetry to the version in prose and not vice-versa. / The last part examines the artistic value of Cesarotti's translations and the place they occupy in Europe in the eighteenth century.

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