Gemination at the Horizons: East and West in the Mythical Geography of Archaic Greek Epic

Abstract

: This paper examines descriptions of remote places in archaic Greek epic. I argue that Homeric cosmic geography consists of two complementary models, one in which the sun rises and sets at a single locus-the axis mundi-as in the Theogony, and another in which sunrise and sunset take place on the eastern and western horizons respectively. Conflation of these models in the Odyssey results in the gemination of peoples and places associated in myth with the sun. This not only explains some recurrent patterns in Homeric geography and their thematic importance to Odysseus' travels, but also resolves some traditional interpretive difficulties with descriptions of the edges of the earth in archaic epic. * I would like to thank Jonathan Burgess, Sarah James, Chris Lovell, Jim Marks, and Tim Stover for their helpful comments, as well as Cynthia Damon and an anonymous TAPA reader for greatly improving the text. Most of all I want to thank Erwin Cook for his constant guidance and encouragement. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2002 meeting of the APA in Philadelphia.1 This point is forcefully made by Heubeck 1989: 4-5. Recently Hartog 2001, 28 has discussed real and imaginary Homeric geographies. Ballabriga 1998 argues that we need to supersede the distinction between real and imaginary geography, yet he essentially reproduces ancient interpretations of Homeric geography using later Greek texts and modern maps. Ballabriga assigns a real location to every entity in the Odyssey, implying that Homeric descriptions are always reflections (albeit fabulous ones) of real peoples and places. Thus according to Ballabriga 1998: 180-84 the description of Ogygie, Kalypso's island, reflects 6th century .. knowledge of the Atlantic Ocean, so Kalypso is a recent poetic invention of the Homeridai designed to lengthen Odysseus' absence from Ithake.

Reconsidering the Tartarean Geography of theIliad: Traces of a Far-Away Tartarus and the Narrative Significance of Localisation

“… 5 Nagy (1973) and Ballabriga (1986: 75 – 146) identify this phenomenon as coincidentia oppositorum : Nagy (1973: 150 – 1) defines this as ‘two opposite places which add up to the same place’. This early treatment has since been considered outdated by Ballabriga (1998) 51 and has been superseded by more recent scholarship such as Nakassis (2004) 216.…”

“… 6 On particular types of narrative space in Homeric epic as inherently dualistic see Nakassis (2004) 217 – 21, Purves (2010) 65 – 96, Hammond (2012) xix – xxi, Fowler (2017) 247 – 50, Gee (2020) 23 – 52.…”

“…5 Nagy (1973) and Ballabriga (1986: 75-146) identify this phenomenon as coincidentia oppositorum: Nagy (1973: 150-1) defines this as 'two opposite places which add up to the same place'. This early treatment has since been considered outdated by Ballabriga (1998) 51 and has been superseded by more recent scholarship such as Nakassis (2004) 216. 6 On particular types of narrative space in Homeric epic as inherently dualistic see Nakassis (2004) 217-21, Purves (2010) 65-96, Hammond (2012) xix-xxi, Fowler (2017) 247-50, Gee (2020) 23-52. conceptual concerns and thus a more fluid understanding of spatiality must be brought to bear on such texts.…”

“…This early treatment has since been considered outdated by Ballabriga (1998) 51 and has been superseded by more recent scholarship such as Nakassis (2004) 216. 6 On particular types of narrative space in Homeric epic as inherently dualistic see Nakassis (2004) 217-21, Purves (2010) 65-96, Hammond (2012) xix-xxi, Fowler (2017) 247-50, Gee (2020) 23-52. conceptual concerns and thus a more fluid understanding of spatiality must be brought to bear on such texts. 7 It must be acknowledged that this claim of a fluid, dual localisation is far from uncontroversial.…”

Falling into Time in Homer'sIliad

“…In Homer, the geography of death is horizontal rather than vertical. On horizontal and vertical space in Homer, see Wohl 1993;Nakassis 2004;and, in Hesiod, Purves 2004. 8.…”