What are your Homeric reading habits? I read all sorts of books, but I like to read a little Homer most days. I read in Greek. Nowadays I use the Loeb parallel translations to help me along, though when I was getting in practice I found the Perseus site incredibly helpful. I'm currently on Book 23 of the Iliad, on my second complete read. I've read the Odyssey once and am planning to alternate the Iliad and Odyssey (though I prefer the Iliad). My ambition is to be able to read without a crib.

I came across an explanation of Homeric style in Introduction to The Iliad of Homer, translated by Richmond Lattimore. It made me pause because of its kinship to Chinese.

In modern storytelling and writing, we try to steer away from the over-used, unoriginal phrase--the cliché. In Homeric stories, the author(s) of the story does not avoid repetition because the phrase, the sentence or sentences has been uttered/written in an earlier passage.

Quoting Lattimore: "All repeats are founded on the principle that a thing once said in the right way should be said again in the same way when occasion demands."

Often these phrases are repeated for their metrical unit adaptable when "sense demands, and the metre will accommodate."

The Chinese love to repeat phrases, love to quote historical figures, passing them down through the generations. These phrases are not considered cliché, but the mark of a well-read man and said in the spirit of "once said in the right way should be said again in the same way."

Later Greek poets are remote from Homeric style, but the Chinese continue this tradition of repetition.

Message edited by its author, May 17, 2007, 12:21pm.

Why are the Achaians called "glancing-eyed"? I am puzzled by this.

The Greek word which Lattimore translates "glancing-eyed" can also be translated "bright-eyed". Liddell and Scott translate it as "with rolling eyes, quick-glancing" and add "as a mark of youth and spirit".

Re: 'glancing-eyed' (cf. helix; helicopter)

I'll transliterate for the ease of the Greek-less:

helikōps, which should literally mean 'rolling-eyed' has a parallel formation, helikoblepharos, where blepharon means eyelid but can stand in for the eye.

The first element, heliko-, is a suffixed form of Proto-Indo-European *wel-2, and is thus related to a whole string of interesting words like Latin volvere ('to roll') and vulva ('womb') as well as English walk (originally meaning 'roll') and well (meaning 'spring').

It also seems to be the root of the famous Greek name Helen.

No one knows exactly what helikōps originally meant. When I read Homer as an undergraduate my professor, himself a Greek, would translate it 'helicopter-eyed,' dissatisfied with the traditional translations and content to have one as baffling as the original.

The idea of brightness, I think, would be gotten from the idea of flashing which, though it can be reached from the movement implied by the root, I suspect to have been drawn from the dictionary by analogy with its use to describe twisted hair (curls) or vines (tendrils), which gave rise to a metaphor for lightning (helikes steropēs, 'tendrils of lightning'). This is given as 'flashes of forked lightning.'

But any way you look at it, that the epithet should refer to sight seems natural and satisfying enough: the youth are naturally keen-sighted -- they see all around, or else have active eyes.

Helicopter-eyed? that is quite dreadful. It seems obvious to me that darting-eyed would be the best approximation, not a translation but only a fool translates idioms.

2500 years in the future the idiom in this post will be translated as spear-jabbing-eyed.

>5 could "glancing eyes" or "rolling eyes" have been a pejorative like shifty-eyed or covetous? If eyes dart, it's a sign that the heart is not centered? Since Homer is championing the Greeks, I imagine your answer would be no, (but people who sack and pillage are certainly shifty in my mind).

Message edited by its author, May 15, 2007, 11:28am.

"sparkling" might be a good translation

The reason why it's problematic is that the root means turning, twisting, rolling. It doesn't flashing, bright, or sparkling.

My old professor's joke, 'helicopter-eyed,' captures the fact that no one really knows exactly what the original audience took the epithet to mean. What is to be 'twisting-eyed?' That sounds like a seizure.

If it really meant sparkling or bright then why not something along the lines of chrysōpos or charopos?

I tried to explain above the possible ways of reading the epithet based on etymology and usage and to illustrate why it's a problematic word.

There's another avenue to go with this, which is that the original epithet, before codified in literature, had a specific meaning lost to us. We look for an answer based on traditional translations which always focus on a description of eye movement. But there are other possibilities.

I'll invent one now that, though I've just made it up, seems more plausible to me based on the roots than 'sparkilng-eyed' does.

Why couldn't helikōps originally have meant 'ringlet-faced' describing the ubiquitous curls that frame the faces of Greeks in their own art? The second root here means not just 'eye' but also 'face.'

('Gray-eyed' Athena has doubtless influenced the traditional rendering of this epithet, as 'gray-eyed' is taken also to mean 'bright-eyed,' But gray isn't bright, and another possibility is rather 'owl-faced,' where Athena may have once had the head of an owl.)

The point is still that we don't know, and it's disingenuous to suggest good translations or best approximations that all ultimately rest upon uncritical dictionary entries and translator's best guesses.

I'd always assumed 'glancing-eyes' was idiom for a lively face / countenance: i.e. vital and (therefore) 'sparkling' with life. Idiom is difficult to capture in modern languages, let alone 'dead' ones.

From my own (painful and slow) reading of the Odyssey in Greek, I saw repetition as an aide memoire: if one has to recount great swathes from memory - as those who recited Homer did - stock-phrases are useful 'chunks' of a text which preserve the flow and meter of the story's poetry without burdening the 'sayer' with different metaphors and similies for stock happenings. The most repeated epithets: 'rosy-fingered Dawn', 'resourceful / wily / much-enduring Odysseus' and 'grey-eyed Athene' are monotonous to the modern reader, but within the poetry and flow they become 'tags' for characters. As soon as I think of Athene, I immediately think 'grey-eyed' or 'of the flashing eyes', in the same way I think of Odysseus as 'polumetis' or 'cunning'. In the same way the continual 'so he / she said' serves as a reminder to the teller exactly where they are in the story: the Odyssey is a series of stories within stories recounted by various speakers, which must have put a severe strain on the memory of those reciting the text.

Hence repetition, which modern writers strive to eradicate, was I believe a vital tool in the oral tradition. You can see this in the very basic and repetitive nature of Grimm's tales and folk ballads, also meant to be spoken rather than read.

I haven't started the Iliad in Greek yet, though I've read the opening so many times it's almost by heart.

>5 I was thinking about the "helicopter-eyed" last night and I came to the conclusion given by Thecardiffgiant in #9.

I applied ancient Chinese:

In the 6th Century B.C. usuage, the character 說 is the equivalent of the modern day 樂. Two vastly different meanings. The ancients used the character to mean "happy" while the modern Chinese use it to mean "to talk, speak." We only understand this in context.

I was happy to read this morning:
"The point is still that we don't know, and it's disingenuous to suggest good translations or best approximations that all ultimately rest upon uncritical dictionary entries and translator's best guesses."

>5 Hera, that's interesting.

I came across an explanation of Homeric style in Introduction to The Iliad of Homer, translated by Richmond Lattimore. It made me pause because of its kinship to Chinese.

In modern storytelling and writing, we try to steer away from the over-used, unoriginal phrase--the cliché. In Homeric stories, the author does not avoid repetition because the phrase, the sentence or sentences has been uttered/written in an earlier passage.

Quoting Lattimore: "All repeats are founded on the principle that a thing once said in the right way should be said again in the same way when occasion demands."

Lattimore also said: "Often these phrases are repeated for their metrical unit adaptable when "sense demands, and the metre will accommodate."

The Chinese love to repeat phrases, love to quote historical figures, passing them down through the generations. These phrases are not considered cliché, but the mark of a well-read man and said in the spirit of--quoting Lattimore--"once said in the right way should be said again in the same way."

As pointed out by Lattimore later Greek poets, like Pindar, are remote from Homeric style.

Also the notion of "originality" came along much later. I'm not saying that the idea of someone or someone's work as original did not exist in ancient times, but it was not until the 18th Century with the advent of Romanticism that this idea of "genius" and "originality" became the criteria for great art.

The 18th Century poet Edward Young proclaimed that the only three truly great originals were Shakespeare, Homer and Milton. But Shakespeare, by today's standards, was a plagarist, and so was Homer (whoever he was or they were).

Message edited by its author, May 17, 2007, 12:20pm.

I am currently re-rearding The Iliad in the Lattimore verse translation (I previously read the Butler prose version) along with A Companion to The Iliad by Malcolm M. Willcock as my nightstand book(s). Taking my time. Relishing it!