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This paper examines the role of Diomedes in the Iliad. Focusing in particular on the three appearances of the divine horses he steals from Aeneas in Book 5, I examine the connection between his characterization and his narrative function. His prominence in the first third of the poem stands in stark contrast with his minimal participation in the main events of the plot, which has suggested to many that he is a late addition to the traditional "wrath of Achilles" story, expanding the poem's length by standing in for the absent hero. This is reflected in Diomedes' characterization: again and again he defies the expected order (of his commanders, of the gods) and attempts to hijack Achilles' story. I conclude with a reading of the chariot race in Iliad 23, suggesting that Diomedes' win over Eumelus would have been recognized by the original audience as an unexpected change to the tradition with which they were familiar.

Pre-proof copy of paper forthcoming in YAGE This article examines the development of the theme of eris in Hesiod and Homer. Starting from the relationship between the destructive strife in the Theogony (225) and the two versions invoked in the Works and Days (11–12), I argue that considering the two forms of strife as echoing zero and positive sum games helps us to identify the cultural and compositional force of eris as cooperative competition. After establishing eris as a compositional theme from the perspective of oral poetics, I then argue that it develops from the perspective of cosmic history, that is, from the creation of the universe in Hesiod's Theogony through the Homeric epics and into its double definition in the Works and Days. To explore and emphasize how this complementarity is itself a manifestation of eris, I survey its deployment in our major extant epic poems.

In this paper we analyse Oedipus’ appearance during Odysseus’ tale in book 11 of Homer’s Odyssey in order to outline and test a methodology for appreciating the poetic and thematic implications of moments when ‘extraneous’ narratives or traditions appear in the Homeric poems. Our analysis, which draws on oral-formulaic theory, is offered partly as a re-evaluation of standard scholarly approaches that tend to over-rely on the assumed pre-eminence of Homeric narratives over other traditions in their original contexts or approaches that reduce such moments to instances of allusions to or parallels with fixed texts. In conjunction with perspectives grounded in orality, we emphasise the agonistic character of Greek poetry to explore the ways in which Odysseus’ articulation of his Oedipus narrative exemplifies an attempt to appropriate and manipulate a rival tradition in the service of a particular narrative’s ends. We focus specifically on the resonance of the phrases algea polla and mega ergon used by Odysseus as a narrator to draw a web of interconnections throughout Homeric and Archaic Greek poetry. Such an approach, in turn, suggests to what extent the Homeric Oedipus passage speaks to the themes and concerns of Homeric poetry rather than some lost Oedipal epic tradition and illustrates the importance of recognizing the deeply competitive nature of Homeric narratives vis-à-vis other narrative traditions.

Although the Iliad does not explicitly depict Achilles and Patroclus as lovers, I argue that the poem suggests an erotic dimension to their relationship by comparing them to husband-wife pairings in Homeric epic. Previous scholars have tended either to deny any erotic component to Achilles and Patroclus's bond or to assume that the Iliad unproblematically depicts them as lovers. Others have hinted at the possibility of a deliberate homoerotic subtext between the two heroes but have adduced little specific evidence other than the intensity of their emotional connection. In this article, I show that Achilles and Patroclus in the Iliad are analogous to a husband and wife by presenting specific examples from the text of how their relationship structure and affective bond mirror those of Homeric husband-wife couples. I conclude that the poem portrays Achilles and Patroclus's relationship as a conjugal bond in order to highlight Achilles' alienation from traditional social structures as well as the excessive and transgressive nature of his affective responses. I also suggest that Homeric epic presents the ideal conjugal bond as being characterized by the potential for power exchange and role reversal rather than by strict hierarchy.

This paper examines the relationship between wind, narrative, and time in Homer. It begins by considering Fränkel’s observation that weather rarely occurs outside the similes in the Iliad, and goes on to show that wind plays a subtle but fundamental role in shaping the narratives of both the Iliad and the Odyssey.

Homer