Barbelith Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing > The Iliad

A quick burst of Classics for those who aren't familiar with the background to epithets in epic poetry:

Basically - these are huge poems that appear to have been written down by someone at some point, but were originally told by travelling story-tellers, who would perform choice sections at social and religious occasions for the assembled populace (generally "noble").

The whole things were memorised, which in itself is pretty impressive - but perhaps MORE impressive is the fact that they were all in verse - each line contains a certain number of long and short syllables arranged in generally predictable forms. Greek long and short syllables being based upon the length (generally) of the vowel sounds, and whether or not they contained a consonant at each end. I'm a little rusty on this, so I won't go into too much detail, except to say that athena (for example) could be something like a short 'a', long 'then', short 'a'. Speak them out loud and you'll see how the middle block takes more time.

Anyway - the first and primary use of the epithet (aside from its adjectival function) is to fit into the rhythm. You see this particularly with the common gods - Athena is variously described throughout the epics as 'grey-eyed athene' or 'pallas athene' (amongst others).

Imagine a limerick

There once was a young man of Fife
Who was greatly disgusted with life
They sang him a ballad
And fed him on salad
Which cured that young man of Fife.

Ignoring for a moment the fact that the last line seems to me to be lacking one useful syllable, if you imagine that the phrase "young man" was replaced by the name of a god, then "of Fife" could be seen as the epithet which fits his name into the scheme. This is not a particularly good example, but it's my favourite limerick so hey...

Some of the names have clear cult origins - Pallas Athene for example was worshipped in various cults. You can think of it as being like appealling to the quality of the divinity you want to invoke if you will - for example the word "Nike" (as used on shoes) comes from the Greek for 'victory' - and there is a temple to Athena Nike on the Acropolis in Athens.

Because communication between areas in Ancient Greece wasn't particularly fast, local variations in religious practice emerged, and divinities sometimes had different names or attributes in different areas. As communication became greater, these cult groups often became absorbed by the 'greater' deity - Pallas, I believe, was a unique and individual character in some mythology, but gradually became absorbed within the figure of Athena. The gods were often associated with animals - Athena was frequently connected with Owls for example - and in fact an owl was on the coinage of Athens (which of course took its name from her). So some resonances will come from there as well.

Hope that's cleared some stuff up...

The Iliad - Notes and Queries.