Nor Could I Name Them: Homer Plays the Muse

The essay reexamines the classical conception of Homer as the naïve, muse-inspired poet in Iliad two. Part I, The Messenger, considers Zeus’ dispatching of messenger Dream to transmit his false message as a figure for the poet’s transmission of the poem in the thrall of the Muses and asks whether we can take at face value the poet’s putatively humble self-reflection on his mortal limitations and dependency on the Muses to accurately recite the catalogue of forces. Part II, The Message, assesses specific passages in the catalogue as instances of invention in the service of the individual poet’s counter narrative to the traditional theme of mênis inaugurated in Achilles’ curse of pothê at 1.240. Woven into the catalogue of forces are three cases that advance the narrative of pothê inaugurated in book one. The first case establishes the paradigm whereby the principal leader of the fighting band dies resulting in the pothê of his laoi which must be redressed by the substitution of the therapôn. The second case represents a legitimate exception to the rule while the third case sets up the illegitimate substitution of Patroclus for Achilles while still living.