Civilization, Homeric; Epic poetry, Greek -- History and criticism; Homer; Homer -- Homes and haunts -- Greece
In _Iliad,_ III. 125, Iris finds Helen "in the hall" weaving. She
summons her to come to Priam on the gate. Helen dresses in outdoor
costume, and goes forth "from the chamber," [Greek: talamos] (III.
141-142). Are hall and chamber the same room, or did not Helen dress "in
the chamber"? In the same Book (III. 174) she repents having left
the [Greek: talamos] of Menelaus, not his hall: the passage is not a
repetition in words of her speech in the Odyssey.
The gods, of course, are lodged like men. When we find that Zeus has
really a separate sleeping chamber, built by Hephaestus, as Odysseus has
(_Iliad,_ XIV. 166-167), we are told that this is a late interpolation.
Mr. Leaf, who has a high opinion of this scene, "the Beguiling of
Zeus," places it in the "second expansions"; he finds no "late Odyssean"
elements in the language. In _Iliad,_ I. 608-611, Zeus "departed to his
couch"; he seems not to have stayed and slept in the hall.
Here a quaint problem occurs. Of all late things in the Odyssey the
latest is said to be the song of Demodocus about the loves of Ares
and Aphrodite in the house of Hephaestus. [Footnote: Odyssey, VIII.
266-300.] We shall show that this opinion is far from certainly correct.
Hephaestus sets a snare round the bed in his [Greek: talamos] and
catches the guilty lovers. _Now_, was his [Greek: talamos] or bedroom,
also his dining-room? If so, the author of the song, though so "late,"
knows what Noack knows, and what the poets who assign sleeping chambers
to wedded folks do not know, namely, that neither married gods nor
married men have separate bedrooms. This is plain, for he makes
Hephaestus stand at the front door of his house, and shout to the gods
to come and see the sinful lovers. [Footnote: Ibid., VI. 304-305] They
all come and look on _from the front door_ (_Odyssey_, VII. 325), which
leads into the [Greek: megaron], the hall. If the lovers are in bed in
the hall, then hall and bedroom are all one, and the terribly late poet
who made this lay knows it, though the late poets of the _Odyssey_ and
_Iliad_ do not.
It would appear that the author of the lay is not "late," as we shall
prove in another case.
Noack, then, will not allow man or god to have a separate wedding
chamber, nor women, before the late parts of the _Odyssey_, to have
separate quarters, except in the house of Odysseus. Women's chambers
do not exist in the Homeric house. [Footnote: Noack, p. 50.] If so, how
remote is the true Homeric house from the house of historical Greece!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account