Doctoral Dissertation by Kevin Solez
Did Greeks and non-Greeks banquet together in the first half of the first millennium BCE, and if ... more Did Greeks and non-Greeks banquet together in the first half of the first millennium BCE, and if so, how does this mode of cultural contact explain the evidence of cultural exchange between Greece and the Near East? Following suggestions in scholarship that Greeks shared a banqueting culture with West Semitic peoples, and that Greeks sometimes banqueted with non-Greeks, this dissertation presents evidence that Greeks banqueted with non-Greeks, explains why they should have done so in terms of earlier practices and anthropological theory, and argues that multicultural banquets were the primary mode of peaceful cultural contact in the thought-world of Greeks in the eighth and seventh centuries BCE. Chapter 1 addresses the evidence for multicultural banqueting before the first millennium, and finds that it was a feature of diplomacy in the Late Bronze Age (1700-1100). Objects and texts are examined and used as evidence that members of various populations learned foreign banqueting customs. I argue that the multicultural banqueting in the Iron Age (1100-750) and Archaic period (750-490) is a revival of Late Bronze Age diplomatic practices. Chapter 2 addresses evidence for reclined banqueting in the Iron Age, arguing that it is a result of multicultural banqueting among various groups. It is interpreted as a feature of diplomacy and as an instantiation of the anthropological theory of Mary Helms (1988) that elites seek out external symbols of status in order to be recognized as elite by foreigners and to differentiate themselves at home. Chapter 3 focuses on the Iliad and finds that multicultural banquets are philologically distinguished from banquets among Greeks, and that the banquet is essential in cultural contact where hostility is possible. Chapter 4 focuses on the Odyssey and demonstrates that banqueting mediates contact between Greeks and non-Greeks in the Archaic imagination. I hope hereby to construct a stable mode of contact that explains the evidence of cultural exchange between Greek and West Semitic populations, such as the alphabet, the burning of incense in ritual, and adaptations of gods and cults. The multicultural banquet becomes an interpretive model for developments in Archaic Greek literature, culture, and society.
BA Honors Thesis (2003): "Lyrecraft" by Kevin Solez
University of Alberta BA Honors Thesis, 2003
Papers by Kevin Solez
Yearbook of Ancient Greek Epic, 2019
The journey of Paris from Sparta to Troy and the journey of Menelaus from Troy to Sparta are narr... more The journey of Paris from Sparta to Troy and the journey of Menelaus from Troy to Sparta are narrative doublets that feature in the Epic Cycle. Both men follow a typical and historical pattern of mobility between Greece and the Levant before reaching their destination. These similarities constitute a proleptic doublet, where Paris’s journey is a less elaborate iteration of a story pattern that appears again in the nostos of Menelaus. In our known epics, the doublets appear near the beginning of the Cypria and at the very end of the Nostoi.
Hans Beck and Philip J. Smith (Eds.), Megarian Moments: The Local World of an Ancient Greek City-State. Teiresias Supplements Online. , 2018
This chapter examines the local traditions (through Pausanias and Theognis), discourse environmen... more This chapter examines the local traditions (through Pausanias and Theognis), discourse environment, and positionality of Megara to establish abstract principles of the Megarian worldview, and then applies those principles to the local traditions in an attempt to present a cohesive account of Megarian myths from the earliest mythistorical times to the beginning of oligarchic government. An important discovery resulting from this is the general avoidance of all things Corinthian in Megarian narrative traditions.
E. Varto (Ed.), The Classics and Early Anthropology: A Companion to Classical Reception. Leiden: Brill. , 2018
http://eugesta.recherche.univ-lille3.fr/revue/eng/issues/issue-5-2015/
Nikephoros 25, 7-17. Hildesheim: Weidmann., 2012
Chariot-racing metaphors and other sporting metaphors are highly productive in ancient Greek lite... more Chariot-racing metaphors and other sporting metaphors are highly productive in ancient Greek literature but I do not think that they ever escape the association with Homer and his descriptions of Achilles as a charioteer and a chariot-horse circling round and round the city of Troy in Iliad 22. Therefore, analyzing the passages in two important poetic texts that employ chariot-racing metaphors-the Iliad and Aeschylus’ Agamemnon-will help us to understand the relationship of the use of this metaphor in these two works, the significance of the metaphor’s later use, and the network of associations the notion of chariot-racing summons into the minds of an ancient Greek audience. This is an attempt to provide a culturally-oriented thick description of the import of the chariot-racing vocabulary as it is employed in the Iliad and the Agamemnon.
Creative Publications by Kevin Solez
Ancient Exchanges , 2022
This translation and its accompanying translator's note are useful for teaching about the ancient... more This translation and its accompanying translator's note are useful for teaching about the ancient Greek symposium, about the Greek-Near Eastern interface, about the poetics of elegy, and about the function of the caesura in ancient Greek verse. I hope you enjoy it and can use it in your classes!
Ancient Exchanges Spring 2021, 2021
A translation of a passage from Philostratus the Elder's Imagines, 1.11.5, into English poetry.
Designed for the English and creative writing classroom as well as for the popular market, Pandem... more Designed for the English and creative writing classroom as well as for the popular market, Pandemic Poems is an anthology addressing the unusual present and the challenges we all keep facing in the coronavirus pandemic. Featuring the work of renowned contemporary poets Christian Bök, Jenna Butler, rob mclennan, Jude Neale, Nisha Patel, Lisa Shatzky, and Thomas Trofimuk, it also showcases the work of regionally famous poets and new voices published for the first time. Almost all of the poems were composed between March and June 2020 and the collection represents one of the first records of artistic responses to the pandemic.
Talks by Kevin Solez
"Food and..." Conference at the Humanities Center of Texas Tech University, March 2018.
May 2018, Annual Meeting of the Classical Association of Canada, Calgary
Banqueting scenes are c... more May 2018, Annual Meeting of the Classical Association of Canada, Calgary
Banqueting scenes are closely linked to the theme and to the narrative structure of the Iliad. It is often stated that the epic consists of three narrative sections (Schein 1997; Kirk 1985), or acts, and I observe that the pattern of the banqueting scenes changes and becomes part of the distinction between the three sections. In the first act, Iliad 1–7, there is a reciprocal pattern of divine and human banqueting scenes, which could be understood to reflect the sacrificial relationship. At the end of Book 7, Poseidon complains about the lack of sacrifice in the building of the Achaean wall, and this inaugurates the next act beginning with Book 8. In the second act there is no observable pattern organizing the banqueting scenes. In the third act (18–24), with the Death of Patroclus and the return of Achilles to the fighting the reciprocal pattern of human and divine banqueting returns, and seems to relate to the restoration of Zeus’ control over the gods, to the restoration of relations between Achilles and Agamemnon, and to the restoration of normal relations between humans and gods within the story. The pattern of feasts may also reflect sacrifices which could have accompanied the performance of the Iliad in various environments, building on Oswyn Murray’s (2008) similar argument about the Odyssey.
A similar geographic pattern, or itinerary, is shared by some early epic nostoi involving ports o... more A similar geographic pattern, or itinerary, is shared by some early epic nostoi involving ports of call in Egypt, Phoenicia, and a Greek state. The term metanostos suggests that some nostoi may have had an analogical structuring influence on others, and that a fairly specific itinerary was expected of many nostoi. The examples under consideration are the nostos of Menelaus in the Odyssey and Nostoi, the lying tales of Cretan Odysseus, and the Trojan nostos of Paris returning from Sparta in the Iliad and Cypria. This paper adds detail to current interpretations of the parallels between the early epic nostoi, and introduces the idea of a Trojan nostos of Paris, which, while belonging to the first stages of the Trojan cycle, is very likely structured by the nostos of Menelaus.
The observation of shared itineraries is relevant to historicizing and neoanalytical readings of Homer. From a historicizing perspective, the itineraries of these three nostoi follow the general pattern of counter-clockwise Mediterranean seafaring known from geological estimates of sea currents and shipwrecks (Barako, 155-6). This geographic orientation also relates to certain terms of elite competition that would have been familiar to some Greek audiences in the eighth and seventh centuries, i.e., familiarity through xenia with the prestigious civilizations of Egypt and Phoenicia, and possession of their luxury goods.
Metanostos relationships add to our understanding of early epic nostoi from a neoanalytic perspective. Certain folkloristic and narrative details characterize the nostoi both of Menelaus and Odysseus in the Odyssey, as has been recognized for some time (Danek, 357). Most would agree that it is not possible to determine whether the nostos of Menelaus had an analogical influence structuring the nostos of Odysseus, or vice versa. This argument can be extended to the lying tales. The journeys of Cretan Odysseus have been recognized as potential references to versions of Odysseus’ nostos in preHomeric epic that the Homeric poems revise (Burgess, 29; Danek, 360; West, 248-9). They bear witness to a centrifugal Odysseus, always setting out again but never reaching unknown lands, while the Odysseus of the Apologos continuously seeks home and regularly encounters the undiscovered. Menelaus’ nostos in the Odyssey combines these elements; the itinerary of Cretan Odysseus, involving Egypt and Phoenicia (Od. 14.235-359), is closely matched by part of Menelaus’ journey (Od. 4.454-6; 4.615-9). Another part, mentioned at Od. 4.81-91, combines this known geography with a more fantastical one involving the Aethiopians and Eremboi. We can now recognize in Menelaus’ nostos elements that match the nostoi both of the centripetal Odysseus of the Odyssey and the centrifugal Odysseus of preHomeric tradition.
Every version of Menelaus’ nostos, Cyclic and Homeric, contains a visit to Egypt (West, 253). The same is not true for Paris’ Trojan nostos, which is preserved in the Iliad and in Proclus’ summary of the Cypria as involving an itinerary from Sparta to Sidon to Troy (Il. 6.289-92, with Currie, 287; Burgess, 16-17). Stesichorus (Palinode) and Herodotus (2.113) record a version of the story where the storm sent by Hera against Paris forces them to land in Egypt, and a phantom of Helen went to Troy with Paris, while Helen remained in Egypt. An Egyptian port of call in Paris’ nostos brings it very closely into line with the nostoi of Menelaus and Cretan Odysseus, but unlike the case of those nostoi, a clear precedent can be established for the metanostos itinerary of Paris and Menelaus. The parallel position of the men as husbands of Helen and sons-in-law to Zeus exerted a pressure on the tradition to harmonize their journeys in Helen’s company. I argue that it is the persistent detail of Menelaus’ adventure in Egypt that caused this part of the itinerary to be added to Paris’ nostos in some versions, providing an opportunity for the elaboration of the alternative journey of Helen, no further than Egypt, to be retrieved by Menelaus on his return home.
Session/Panel Title:
Nostoi/Odyssey/Telegony: New Perspectives on the End of the Epic Cycle
Session/Paper Number
51.7
When Priam comes to Achilles’ shelters to ransom Hector, Achilles refuses to deal with the matter... more When Priam comes to Achilles’ shelters to ransom Hector, Achilles refuses to deal with the matter immediately; instead, he threatens Priam after he refused to take a seat (24.518-71). Priam wishes to conclude the business as quickly as possible, but this approach is not acceptable to Achilles. Priam will remain Achilles’ enemy, in which case he is in great danger, or he may be Achilles’ dinner guest; a third option is not available. Constraining the behaviour of Achilles are heroic notions of community, negotiation, and proper behaviour (Papakonstantinou 2009; Bakker 2005; Adkins 1960). If the enemy king wants to negotiate with Achilles, their relationship must be transformed through commensality into one where a negotiation can take place (Cerqueira Lima 2013; Bruit 1989; Gernet 1982). Without this, the previous inimical relationship prevails. We see here two modes of proper action for the Homeric warrior—war and feasting. A third appears in Achilles’ mourning of Patroclus; for all the necessity of war, time must be made for games to honour the dead, games that are venues for status negotiation among members of the same broadly-conceived community (Solez 2012; Brown 2003; Papakonstantinou 2002; Pemberton 2000), and that themselves seem to symbolize war (Huizinga 1955). Sport, war, and feasting delimit an ideal of heroic behaviour. Linking Achilles’ approach to these situations is his insistence on the highest rank and the role of patron. He wishes to host Priam the way Agamemnon hosts the other Achaean chiefs earlier in the poem, demonstrating his superior rank in an asymmetrical social relationship (Dietler 2001). Achilles has only recently achieved this rank. While before the funeral games he knows he is the best warrior (18.105), it is only during them that Achilles’ authority clearly eclipses that of Agamemnon (23.49, 483-98); Agamemnon defers to Achilles’ decision-making several other times between Iliad 18-24. Achilles stands at the beginning of 24 as the best of the Achaeans in all the realms that matter, better than Agamemnon, and with his invitation to feast Priam, he is making a clear statement that Priam too is now subordinate to him. Priam can either admit his subordinate status and dine with Achilles or he can refuse the invitation and remain the enemy king, to be killed presently. In my paper I address key passages from Iliad 18-24 that demonstrate the limits of heroic action and Achilles’ insistence on top rank, and clearly define the relations between Achilles and that second best of the Achaeans, Agamemnon, relations that are in flux between 18.105 and the end of the poem.
Scholars studying early Archaic Greece or contact between Greece and the Near East have identifie... more Scholars studying early Archaic Greece or contact between Greece and the Near East have identified a large group of comparanda suggesting influence from the Near East on Greece. In addition to hundreds of general similarities, there are a number of highly specific cultural artefacts that seem to be evidence of historical contact between Greek and West Semitic populations, by which I mean Phoenicians, Aramaeans, or Israelites. These highly specific cultural artefacts are alphabetic writing, artistic motifs like the tree of life, standardized weights of silver, metalworking technology, lexical items, mythological motifs, and banqueting practices. It is this last Greek adaptation of a West Semitic practice that I will be discussing today.
The reclined banquet, or to be more specific, the posture of reclining at an elite banquet, has a special quality, since it does not only suggest that the Greeks adapted a practice from the West Semitic world, but it seems to suggest the social context in which they did so. Some Greek-speakers attended a West Semitic-style banquet, were profoundly impressed, and replicated the practice in their home communities, in what would eventually become known as the symposion. This pattern of adaptation of external cultural characteristics is in accordance with current anthropological theories of elite cultural exchange, such as that articulated by Mary Helms, whereby elite groups seek out external systems of status-marking, in order to further differentiate themselves in their home communities and to be recognized as elite by foreigners. It also accords with recent accounts of Greek engagement with others in the Mediterranean, such as that of Erich Gruen, who notes that there was a “powerful ancient penchant of buying into other cultures to augment one’s own”.
I am not the first to suggest that Greeks banqueted with West Semitic peoples, and over the last 15 years, a number of scholars, such as Ian Morris and Hartmut Matthäus, have proposed or addressed the idea that Greeks took opportunities to banquet with non-Greeks in general or with West Semitic peoples in particular. Albert Nijboer has recently suggested a banqueting context for some of the most significant Greek adaptations from the West Semitic world, such as the concept of city-states, Levantine weights of exchange, mythological stories, and the alphabet.
In this presentation, I will present the earliest evidence that Greek and West Semitic peoples banqueted together, which is the development of reclined banqueting in the Mediterranean world, and then, using the idea of a multicultural banquet as an interpretive model, I will present some objects of exchange that such a banquet might account for.
In ancient Mediterranean cultures, the conceptions of the underworld are quite diverse, but never... more In ancient Mediterranean cultures, the conceptions of the underworld are quite diverse, but nevertheless share certain homologies. In ancient Greek and Egyptian thought, the underworld is where the sun goes after it sets. In ancient Hebrew thought, Sheol is sometimes like a devouring animal, sometimes like the lightless pit that appears in Greek as another underworld, Tartarus. In this paper I focus on the geographies of the underworld as they are described in narratives and hymns in Greek (Odyssey 11, Theogony, Orphic gold lamellae), Egyptian (Amduat), and Hebrew (Job 24:19; Psalms 18:5, 30:3, 88:3, 141:7; Ecclesiastes 9:2; Isaiah 5:13). What is in the underworld? What is it made of? Where is it? Who populates it? In each of the three cultures surveyed, there is no single overriding vision or idea of the underworld, but in each one multiple traditions are drawn on in the narrative. Bodies of water figure importantly in all three underworlds. It is not the inconsistencies in the Greek accounts that should motivate our looking to non-Greek sources for influence, as suggested by Kirk and Raven (Presocratics) and West (Theogony); all geographical writing in the Archaic Period was similarly disjointed and inconsistent (S.G. Cole 2009). It is the simple existence of similar accounts in the regions neighbouring the Greek-speaking world that should motivate the consideration that there may be a kind of intertextuality across linguistic boundaries in descriptions of the underworld.
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Doctoral Dissertation by Kevin Solez
BA Honors Thesis (2003): "Lyrecraft" by Kevin Solez
Papers by Kevin Solez
Creative Publications by Kevin Solez
Talks by Kevin Solez
Banqueting scenes are closely linked to the theme and to the narrative structure of the Iliad. It is often stated that the epic consists of three narrative sections (Schein 1997; Kirk 1985), or acts, and I observe that the pattern of the banqueting scenes changes and becomes part of the distinction between the three sections. In the first act, Iliad 1–7, there is a reciprocal pattern of divine and human banqueting scenes, which could be understood to reflect the sacrificial relationship. At the end of Book 7, Poseidon complains about the lack of sacrifice in the building of the Achaean wall, and this inaugurates the next act beginning with Book 8. In the second act there is no observable pattern organizing the banqueting scenes. In the third act (18–24), with the Death of Patroclus and the return of Achilles to the fighting the reciprocal pattern of human and divine banqueting returns, and seems to relate to the restoration of Zeus’ control over the gods, to the restoration of relations between Achilles and Agamemnon, and to the restoration of normal relations between humans and gods within the story. The pattern of feasts may also reflect sacrifices which could have accompanied the performance of the Iliad in various environments, building on Oswyn Murray’s (2008) similar argument about the Odyssey.
The observation of shared itineraries is relevant to historicizing and neoanalytical readings of Homer. From a historicizing perspective, the itineraries of these three nostoi follow the general pattern of counter-clockwise Mediterranean seafaring known from geological estimates of sea currents and shipwrecks (Barako, 155-6). This geographic orientation also relates to certain terms of elite competition that would have been familiar to some Greek audiences in the eighth and seventh centuries, i.e., familiarity through xenia with the prestigious civilizations of Egypt and Phoenicia, and possession of their luxury goods.
Metanostos relationships add to our understanding of early epic nostoi from a neoanalytic perspective. Certain folkloristic and narrative details characterize the nostoi both of Menelaus and Odysseus in the Odyssey, as has been recognized for some time (Danek, 357). Most would agree that it is not possible to determine whether the nostos of Menelaus had an analogical influence structuring the nostos of Odysseus, or vice versa. This argument can be extended to the lying tales. The journeys of Cretan Odysseus have been recognized as potential references to versions of Odysseus’ nostos in preHomeric epic that the Homeric poems revise (Burgess, 29; Danek, 360; West, 248-9). They bear witness to a centrifugal Odysseus, always setting out again but never reaching unknown lands, while the Odysseus of the Apologos continuously seeks home and regularly encounters the undiscovered. Menelaus’ nostos in the Odyssey combines these elements; the itinerary of Cretan Odysseus, involving Egypt and Phoenicia (Od. 14.235-359), is closely matched by part of Menelaus’ journey (Od. 4.454-6; 4.615-9). Another part, mentioned at Od. 4.81-91, combines this known geography with a more fantastical one involving the Aethiopians and Eremboi. We can now recognize in Menelaus’ nostos elements that match the nostoi both of the centripetal Odysseus of the Odyssey and the centrifugal Odysseus of preHomeric tradition.
Every version of Menelaus’ nostos, Cyclic and Homeric, contains a visit to Egypt (West, 253). The same is not true for Paris’ Trojan nostos, which is preserved in the Iliad and in Proclus’ summary of the Cypria as involving an itinerary from Sparta to Sidon to Troy (Il. 6.289-92, with Currie, 287; Burgess, 16-17). Stesichorus (Palinode) and Herodotus (2.113) record a version of the story where the storm sent by Hera against Paris forces them to land in Egypt, and a phantom of Helen went to Troy with Paris, while Helen remained in Egypt. An Egyptian port of call in Paris’ nostos brings it very closely into line with the nostoi of Menelaus and Cretan Odysseus, but unlike the case of those nostoi, a clear precedent can be established for the metanostos itinerary of Paris and Menelaus. The parallel position of the men as husbands of Helen and sons-in-law to Zeus exerted a pressure on the tradition to harmonize their journeys in Helen’s company. I argue that it is the persistent detail of Menelaus’ adventure in Egypt that caused this part of the itinerary to be added to Paris’ nostos in some versions, providing an opportunity for the elaboration of the alternative journey of Helen, no further than Egypt, to be retrieved by Menelaus on his return home.
Session/Panel Title:
Nostoi/Odyssey/Telegony: New Perspectives on the End of the Epic Cycle
Session/Paper Number
51.7
The reclined banquet, or to be more specific, the posture of reclining at an elite banquet, has a special quality, since it does not only suggest that the Greeks adapted a practice from the West Semitic world, but it seems to suggest the social context in which they did so. Some Greek-speakers attended a West Semitic-style banquet, were profoundly impressed, and replicated the practice in their home communities, in what would eventually become known as the symposion. This pattern of adaptation of external cultural characteristics is in accordance with current anthropological theories of elite cultural exchange, such as that articulated by Mary Helms, whereby elite groups seek out external systems of status-marking, in order to further differentiate themselves in their home communities and to be recognized as elite by foreigners. It also accords with recent accounts of Greek engagement with others in the Mediterranean, such as that of Erich Gruen, who notes that there was a “powerful ancient penchant of buying into other cultures to augment one’s own”.
I am not the first to suggest that Greeks banqueted with West Semitic peoples, and over the last 15 years, a number of scholars, such as Ian Morris and Hartmut Matthäus, have proposed or addressed the idea that Greeks took opportunities to banquet with non-Greeks in general or with West Semitic peoples in particular. Albert Nijboer has recently suggested a banqueting context for some of the most significant Greek adaptations from the West Semitic world, such as the concept of city-states, Levantine weights of exchange, mythological stories, and the alphabet.
In this presentation, I will present the earliest evidence that Greek and West Semitic peoples banqueted together, which is the development of reclined banqueting in the Mediterranean world, and then, using the idea of a multicultural banquet as an interpretive model, I will present some objects of exchange that such a banquet might account for.
Banqueting scenes are closely linked to the theme and to the narrative structure of the Iliad. It is often stated that the epic consists of three narrative sections (Schein 1997; Kirk 1985), or acts, and I observe that the pattern of the banqueting scenes changes and becomes part of the distinction between the three sections. In the first act, Iliad 1–7, there is a reciprocal pattern of divine and human banqueting scenes, which could be understood to reflect the sacrificial relationship. At the end of Book 7, Poseidon complains about the lack of sacrifice in the building of the Achaean wall, and this inaugurates the next act beginning with Book 8. In the second act there is no observable pattern organizing the banqueting scenes. In the third act (18–24), with the Death of Patroclus and the return of Achilles to the fighting the reciprocal pattern of human and divine banqueting returns, and seems to relate to the restoration of Zeus’ control over the gods, to the restoration of relations between Achilles and Agamemnon, and to the restoration of normal relations between humans and gods within the story. The pattern of feasts may also reflect sacrifices which could have accompanied the performance of the Iliad in various environments, building on Oswyn Murray’s (2008) similar argument about the Odyssey.
The observation of shared itineraries is relevant to historicizing and neoanalytical readings of Homer. From a historicizing perspective, the itineraries of these three nostoi follow the general pattern of counter-clockwise Mediterranean seafaring known from geological estimates of sea currents and shipwrecks (Barako, 155-6). This geographic orientation also relates to certain terms of elite competition that would have been familiar to some Greek audiences in the eighth and seventh centuries, i.e., familiarity through xenia with the prestigious civilizations of Egypt and Phoenicia, and possession of their luxury goods.
Metanostos relationships add to our understanding of early epic nostoi from a neoanalytic perspective. Certain folkloristic and narrative details characterize the nostoi both of Menelaus and Odysseus in the Odyssey, as has been recognized for some time (Danek, 357). Most would agree that it is not possible to determine whether the nostos of Menelaus had an analogical influence structuring the nostos of Odysseus, or vice versa. This argument can be extended to the lying tales. The journeys of Cretan Odysseus have been recognized as potential references to versions of Odysseus’ nostos in preHomeric epic that the Homeric poems revise (Burgess, 29; Danek, 360; West, 248-9). They bear witness to a centrifugal Odysseus, always setting out again but never reaching unknown lands, while the Odysseus of the Apologos continuously seeks home and regularly encounters the undiscovered. Menelaus’ nostos in the Odyssey combines these elements; the itinerary of Cretan Odysseus, involving Egypt and Phoenicia (Od. 14.235-359), is closely matched by part of Menelaus’ journey (Od. 4.454-6; 4.615-9). Another part, mentioned at Od. 4.81-91, combines this known geography with a more fantastical one involving the Aethiopians and Eremboi. We can now recognize in Menelaus’ nostos elements that match the nostoi both of the centripetal Odysseus of the Odyssey and the centrifugal Odysseus of preHomeric tradition.
Every version of Menelaus’ nostos, Cyclic and Homeric, contains a visit to Egypt (West, 253). The same is not true for Paris’ Trojan nostos, which is preserved in the Iliad and in Proclus’ summary of the Cypria as involving an itinerary from Sparta to Sidon to Troy (Il. 6.289-92, with Currie, 287; Burgess, 16-17). Stesichorus (Palinode) and Herodotus (2.113) record a version of the story where the storm sent by Hera against Paris forces them to land in Egypt, and a phantom of Helen went to Troy with Paris, while Helen remained in Egypt. An Egyptian port of call in Paris’ nostos brings it very closely into line with the nostoi of Menelaus and Cretan Odysseus, but unlike the case of those nostoi, a clear precedent can be established for the metanostos itinerary of Paris and Menelaus. The parallel position of the men as husbands of Helen and sons-in-law to Zeus exerted a pressure on the tradition to harmonize their journeys in Helen’s company. I argue that it is the persistent detail of Menelaus’ adventure in Egypt that caused this part of the itinerary to be added to Paris’ nostos in some versions, providing an opportunity for the elaboration of the alternative journey of Helen, no further than Egypt, to be retrieved by Menelaus on his return home.
Session/Panel Title:
Nostoi/Odyssey/Telegony: New Perspectives on the End of the Epic Cycle
Session/Paper Number
51.7
The reclined banquet, or to be more specific, the posture of reclining at an elite banquet, has a special quality, since it does not only suggest that the Greeks adapted a practice from the West Semitic world, but it seems to suggest the social context in which they did so. Some Greek-speakers attended a West Semitic-style banquet, were profoundly impressed, and replicated the practice in their home communities, in what would eventually become known as the symposion. This pattern of adaptation of external cultural characteristics is in accordance with current anthropological theories of elite cultural exchange, such as that articulated by Mary Helms, whereby elite groups seek out external systems of status-marking, in order to further differentiate themselves in their home communities and to be recognized as elite by foreigners. It also accords with recent accounts of Greek engagement with others in the Mediterranean, such as that of Erich Gruen, who notes that there was a “powerful ancient penchant of buying into other cultures to augment one’s own”.
I am not the first to suggest that Greeks banqueted with West Semitic peoples, and over the last 15 years, a number of scholars, such as Ian Morris and Hartmut Matthäus, have proposed or addressed the idea that Greeks took opportunities to banquet with non-Greeks in general or with West Semitic peoples in particular. Albert Nijboer has recently suggested a banqueting context for some of the most significant Greek adaptations from the West Semitic world, such as the concept of city-states, Levantine weights of exchange, mythological stories, and the alphabet.
In this presentation, I will present the earliest evidence that Greek and West Semitic peoples banqueted together, which is the development of reclined banqueting in the Mediterranean world, and then, using the idea of a multicultural banquet as an interpretive model, I will present some objects of exchange that such a banquet might account for.
What do I mean by Warrior feasting equipment? This is a development of the Iron Age, where grave goods become dramatically richer for a few individuals and resemble certain Mycenaean grave goods of the Late Bronze Age. The graves are not completely unique, they are in clusters with similar goods, but these graves are never the majority, so they constitute the graves of special, very wealthy people, in communities among people who were not so. Since these wealthy graves are in clusters in the cemeteries in which they are found, we should therefore consider the elite in these communities as belonging to the same extended family, or professional class, such as cavalry officers. In this talk, I am presenting objects from tombs and asking you to view them together and to consider the function of the items. We will look at one representative tomb from almost every relevant cemetery. What are these people communicating about themselves when they deposit such objects in the tomb of a dead loved one? What aspects of life are highlighted in the tomb? You will notice that militarism, horsemanship, and group feasting are the primary significance of the objects deposited. I will then summarize the comparable items, and discuss the phenomenon in general.
References
Clarke, W.M. 1978. “Achilles and Patroclus in Love.” Hermes 106: 381-396.
Dobrov, Gregory (ed). 1995. Beyond Aristophanes: Transition and Diversity in Greek Comedy. Atlanta: Scholar’s Press.
Dobrov, Gregory, and Eduardo Urios-Aparisi. 1995. “The Maculate Music: Gender, Genre, and the Chiron of Pherecrates.” Dobrov 139-74.
Goldhill, Simon, and Robin Osborne (eds). 1999. Performance Culture and Athenian Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Prauscello, Lucia. 2004. “A Note on Tabula Defixionis 22(A).5-7
Ziebarth: When a Musical Performance Enacts Love.” CQ 54:333-339.
Wilson, Peter. 1999. “The aulos in Athens.” Goldhill and Osborne 58-95.
Ziebarth, Erich. 1934. “Neue Verfluchungstafeln aus Attika, Boiotien und Euboia.” SPAW 33:1022-1050.
Instead of the imported ceramic remains at these two sites indicating the presence of the peoples who made them, and besides them being evidence of exchange (trade), I intend to view archaeological objects as evidence for the practices of which they are part, and the majority of the ceramic material exchanged in the Iron Age is involved in drinking and dining (Crielaard 60). This last observation is of great importance because it is on drinking equipment that Greeks first made use of their adapted Phoenician alphabet, and it seems to be from the Phoenician marzēaḥ that Greeks learned to recline at their parties.
The symposion, the ancient Greek elite drinking-party, is a favourite locus of ancient authors for the discussion of the gods, love, and other things we assign to the category of culture, often in the form of dialogues or group conversations. The pre-sympotic Homeric banquet was the locus for polite discussion, political competition and negotiation, and the performance of traditional songs; the symposion, while very different, continued these traditions. Oswyn Murray stated in his 1990 edited volume that “it is from the symposiast’s couch that Greek culture of the Archaic age makes most sense” (11), and I propose that the same might be said about the Greek-speaking populations in the Iron Age, in that their banqueting practices may have provided opportunities for them to learn from Phoenicians elements of their religious and social practices (Vlassopoulos 236, for the Classical period), as well as the technology of the alphabet, which proved formative in the emergence of Greek states.
I orient this study around the social practise of the banquet in response to two trends in contemporary scholarship. The first is that archaeologists have been remarking that interpretive models based on trade are insufficient to account for the presence of imported objects (Strøm 371, Shanks 198), and the second is that literary scholars and historians who also observe that casual or commercial contacts cannot account for the Near Eastern elements in Greek literature (Finkleberg 62, Powell 46, West 624) orient their interpretations around two polarized contexts of contact: the contacts of Greek communities with more or less individual itinerant specialists (following Burkert 1992; Bachvarova 23-5, Lopez-Ruiz 35), and the contacts between individuals and parents and children in ethnically mixed families in ethnically mixed communities (following Coldstream 100; Powell 46, Lopez-Ruiz 29, 36, 46). The itinerant specialist is archaeologically undetectable, and its extreme opposite – ethnically mixed families and communities – while extant seems a more intense level of contact than what is necessary for these exchanges.
The intermediate term between these extremes is a realm of interaction actually much broader than “the interaction of Greek and Near Eastern groups for commercial or even religious reasons (often inseparable)” (Lopez-Ruiz 35). It is this intermediate area, which is typically dominated by notions of “trade” that requires attention and redefinition (Lopez-Ruiz 37). Thus, I propose that the social practices of drinking and banqueting, as contexts in which gift-exchange can be negotiated, where knowledge can be passed between people of different cultures, and where bilingualism is encouraged, become exceedingly important in envisioning cultural exchanges attested by the archaeological and literary records, and in constructing a social history for the Iron Age Greeks.
The explanatory value of trade has expanded from accounting for the movement of Greeks and Phoenicians around the Mediterranean to accounting for the reinterpretation of social practices, religious practices, and technologies. I suggest that “trade,” rather than illuminating the mechanisms of cultural exchange has served to efface the social mechanisms, such as ritual drinking and banqueting, that fostered these exchanges.
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