Archery at the Dark of the Moon: Poetic Problems in Homer's Odyssey

TLDR: In the case of the Odyssey, Austin this paper showed that the stock epithets can have no relevance to a particular situation, although they naturally do have relevance to the general character of the hero.

Abstract: Chapter I of this book is an important contribution to the discussion of formulas. Parry has convinced most of us that the Homeric poet had a stock of metrical units, fixed phrases, which he would employ whenever the need arose, so that Odysseus, for instance, would be polymetis when he had to complete a line in the nominative case from the caesura in the fourth foot, polymecbanos when he had to do the same in the vocative case, and so on. If this is so, the epithets can have no relevance to the particular situation, although they naturally do have relevance to the general character of the hero. Austin shows by the clearest analysis that it is not so. Polymetis signifies 'intelligent', and is virtually always used in the introduction to speeches (63 times out of 66 in the Odyssey); it is never used by either the suitors or Telemachos to describe Odysseus (one can see that in the mouths of either it would sound condescending or improper). Polymechanos is found in peculiar situations: it is used fourteen times out of sixteen by creatures from other worlds, gods or the dead, once by Eumaios, and once in an imaginary tale by Odysseus himself. His own family do not address him in the vocative with this epithet. Similarly, Telemachos pepnumenos, which we might suppose was a free-floating formula for the young hero, tilling the space between the end of the first foot and the bucolic diaeresis, from position A to position C on the Frankel/Porter/Kirk scale, is in fact invariably found in a line introducing a speech (46 times out of 46); Telemachos is not described as pepnumenos on other occasions. So the stock epithets are not meaningless building blocks; their use is related to the context of their occurrence. Here is a really important corrective to our view of formulaic composition. It does not destroy the concept, but it must greatly modify it. One is only sorry that Austin's evidence comes exclusively from the Odyssey. He shows a blithe lack of concern as to whether the evidence of the Iliad is the same. Chapter II, which appeared previously in Anon, is mainly a discussion of Homer as an example of primitive and pre-scientific thought (Snell's The Discovery of the Mind). Austin disagrees. Chapters III and IV deal with well-known problems of the Odyssey, including the relevance of the individual adventures and the questions raised by the reunion and mutual recognition of Odysseus and Penelope. They contain some of the most delightful reading on these subjects that one could meet, overlapping to some extent with the much praised Studies in the Odyssey by B. Fenik (1974; Fenik's book appeared too late for Austin to take it into account). But Austin is more readable than Fenik. His depth of understanding is a most valuable corrective to the destructive criticism and overconfident judgements of some other writers on the Odyssey. He perceives, for example, the significance of the interplay between Odysseus and Penelope before the recognition, and how previous scenes in the epic (Telemachos and Helen, Odysseus himself and Arete) are advance variants of the meeting of the queen and the incognito stranger. The book deserves to be widely read, and the exaggerated Introduction (pp.1— 9) and the above-mentioned disregard of the Iliad in the formulaic argument should not prevent it from being taken very seriously. As to the title, it is simpler than might be supposed. The 'Dark of the Moon' is the lykabas (14.161, 19.306), the period between the old moon and the new, when there was a feast of Apollo (21.258); the archery is the archery of Odysseus.