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herateleia-blog · 7 years ago

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E. The Tamer of Heroes and Horses ( The Transformation of Hera )

I now turn to the Iliadic diction used of Hera's relationship with heroes, to suggest that she tamed them as well--though in death, not marriage. The deaths of Heracles, Sarpedon, Patroklos, and Achilles provide the evidence.

Let us review what we know of the fate of the early Heracles. Although the Odyssey speaks of a divinized Heracles feasting with his wife Hebe on Mt. Olympus ( Od. 11.603), the Iliad does not:

oὐδὲ γὰρ oὐδὲ βίη 'Hρακλη̂oς φύγε κη̑ρα. ὄς περ φίλτατoς ἔσκε Διὶ Kρoνίωνι ἄνακτι· άλλά ἑ μoι̂ρα δάμασσε καὶ άργαλέoς χόλoς "Hρης.

For not even the strength of Heracles escaped destruction although he was dearest to lord Zeus Kronion, but fate and Hera's cruel rage tamed him. ( Il. 18.117-19)

Here is no hint of immortalization. Heracles' cult as a hero antedated his cult as a god, and his name, "he who wins fame from Hera," must have arisen when he was considered only a hero, since gods are not named after other gods. The "strength of Heracles" was tamed by "Hera's cruel rage," periphrastic phrases that may have been long in the tradition. 32. Hera must have had a pre-Olympian tradition of encounters with Heracles that ended in his death. He is ultimately subject to Hera, whose divine energy both begins and ends his life (19.114-119; 18.117-19). The deification of Heracles, so celebrated in Attic vase painting, "is indeed an indication of lateness." 33.

But the Iliadic tie between Hera and a hero's death is not limited to the fate of Heracles. She figures significantly in the deaths of Sarpedon, Patroklos, and especially Achilles. In the case of Sarpedon, Hera counsels Zeus to allow him to die and specifies burial rites that mirror Heraian rites. 34. In the recovery of Patroklos' corpse (18.165‐ 242), her initiative is decisive. Without the knowledge of Zeus "yoked on high" (ὑψί-ζυγoς 18.185), she sends Iris to urge Achilles to retrieve the body. 35. "Let not Patroklos become the sport of dogs," her message runs in part (18.178-79). To a hesitant Achilles, Iris insists: let him simply show himself and thus provide a breathing spell in which the Achaeans may retrieve the corpse. Armed with Athena's tasselled aegis about his shoulders and a golden cloud around his head, he creates the needed consternation. As the Achaeans return with the corpse, Hera, as it were, completes the ritual by causing all nature to join in the mourning: "Lady Hera with the look of an ox sent the unwilling Helios" to set early into Okeanos ("Hέλιoν δ' ἀκάμανταβoω̑πις πότνια "Hρη / πέμψεν 18.239-40). 36. Presumably, this final pericope and much of the passage reflect an earlier setting in which Hera's concern for a dead hero's shortened life leads her to interrupt the sun god's daily cycle. Nature's cycle shortens out of respect for the hero's shortened life.

But it is Achilles' dialogue with his divine horse that establishes Hera as pre-Olympian tamer of both heroes and horses ( Il. 19.404-17). Once in the heat of battle, Achilles calls out to his famed horses Xanthos and Balios, asking whether they will carry him back to the Achaeans. "This time we will save you," replies Xanthos, "the goddess white-armed Hera having given him voice" (αὐδήεντα δ' ἔθηκε θεὰ λευκώλενoς "Hρη 19.407). The nimble horse bows his head and speaks from underneath the yoke (ὑπὸ ζυγόφι), his mane streaming to the ground from under the yokepad (ζεὐγλης) beside the yokebar (παρὰ ζυγὸν 19.404-406). So situated-not unlike the yoked Kleobis and Biton (Herodotus 1.31)-he proclaims the essence of Hera's relationship to heroes: "A mighty god and powerful fate (θεός τε μέγας καἰ Moϊρα κρσταιή 19.410) will cause [your death]. You are fated to be tamed in battle by a god and a mortal" (ἀλλὰ σoἱ αὐτῳ̂ / μόρσιμόν ἐστι θεῳ̑ τε καὶ άνέρι |δφι δαμη̑ναι 19.416-17). Almost the very words that Achilles uses of Heracles' death (18.119; cf. 113). The yoked horse's horse‐ taming metaphor touchingly expresses his empathy with his master. Both master and Hera-voiced horse speak of "fate" and a "god" taming a hero. Yoking is a visual image that supports the metaphor of taming. The metaphor can refer to domestication in marriage, or, as here, to the ultimate taming in death.

Talking animals and talking rivers are rare in Homeric epic. Quite remarkably, both a talking river and a talking horse are named Xanthos and both are associated with Hera. 37. The talking horse was Poseidon's gift to Peleus on his wedding day. But the description of these horses evokes images that belong not only to Poseidon, but also to Hera. The yoked Xanthos and Balios fly "swift as the winds," as do Hera's horses. 38. Xanthos' mother, the "Harpy wind Podarge," conceives him by the west wind Zephyr while "grazing on the meadow beside the stream of Okeanos" (βoακoμένη λειμω̑νι παρὰ ῥόoν 'Ωκεανoι̂o 16.149-51). Podarge 'Swift of Foot' is imagined simultaneously as a whisking wind (Harpy means Snatcher) and as a mare, "grazing" (boskomenê) in the locale of Hera's world-end abode. 39. Significantly, Hera's streaking steeds graze on ambrosial grasses specially produced for them by the river Simoeis at a confluence of rivers (5.768-72). The similarities between Hera's and Achilles' teams in divine origin, speed, and grazing locales leave little doubt that the Hera-voiced Xanthos, prophesying his master's death from under his yokepad, was part of Heraian myth.Thus, the Iliad shows knowledge that Hera yokes or tames a talking horse and a talking river, and that she tames heroes in death, directly in the case of Heracles, and indirectly in other cases. The two greatest Hellenic heroes, Heracles andAchilles, achieve fame (kleos) through a death associated with a "Hera-taming" or "Hera-yoking."

32.See Chap. 5.A for morphological and metrical evidence. Among the pieces of the early Hera-Heracles tradition visible in the epic is Dione's Catalogue of divinities wounded by mortals in which Heracles wounds both Hera and Hades at the Gate (Pulos or pulê), a name early viewed as a portal to the realm of the dead (see Od. 24.14, Frame 1978.92-93, and Nagy 1990a.225‐ 26). The Catalogue ( Il. 5.381-97) refers to Heracles' cattle raid retold by Nestor of Pylos ( Il. 11.671-761). Heracles' wounding of Hera and Hades suggests an early story of the hero storming the Gate of the Underworld, perhaps parallel to the tale of his birth at Argos. (If Argos meant "realm of light" [Clader 1976.56ff.] and Pylos "the gate of death," Hera's control over his birth at Argos may have been prelude to a tale of his death at Pylos.) Hera's "incurable" (ἀνἠκεστoν 5.394) breast wound inflicted by his arrow justifies her subsequent tormenting of the hero and explains why her breast will be "cured" (έξακἐσαιo 4.36) only in the "raw-eating" of all Troy (see Chap. 4). The recurrence of the rare verb exakesthai 'to cure' used of Hera's breast in two Iliadic contexts (anêkeston 5.394 and exakesaio 4.36) suggests that the breast wound reflects an early Troy tale. On Mycenaean allusions in these stories see below.

33.West 1966.417. Nagy, by contrast, suggested to me that the Iliad simply ignores the idea of Heracles' immortalization.

34.Conversing with Hera ( Il. 16.431-68), Zeus weighs whether to keep Sarpedon alive or to "tame" him beneath the hands of Patroklos. In a rare act of obedience to Hera (458), he elects to "send Death and sweet Sleep to carry him" home toLykia for proper burial and the immortality of cult (16.454). She argues against exempting Sarpedon from death because of the precedent it would set (14.446-47). The epiphany of the birdlike twins, Death and Sleep, is almost certainly borrowed from Heraian cult, since the epic's only other such epiphanies feature Hera soaring with either Sleep (14.283-86) or Athena (5.745-79). It may be significant, therefore, that the heroes of the Golden Age died as if "tamed by sleep" (Hesiod Works and Days116; see Nagy 1990a.134).

35.Il. 18.185; cf. 18.165-68. The rare hupsizugos, used only of Zeus, is often translated "enthroned on high," but its present context suggests a spouse "yoked aloft" (at home or on Ida).

36.By juxtaposing these verses in which Hera forces an "unwilling" sun god to set (18.239-42) with a parallel passage (8.484-88), one sees that Panhellenic Homer is probably recasting earlier scenes in which the earth goddess Heraexerted power over the action of the sun god. Book 8 needs an ineffectual Hera. Hence she does nothing despite a triple supplication of the Achaeans (τρίλλιστoς 8.488), as the sunset draws a veil over earth and Night "happily" rises. In a more sympathetic context, Hera presumably would have answered her followers' triple supplication with an early nightfall, "drawing black night like a veil over her grain-giving earth" (ἔλκτoν νύκτα μέλαιναν ἐπὶ ζείδωρoν ἄρoυραν 8.486). The unique trillistos and image of an earth goddess drawing her veil over the earth apparently derive from early Heraian ritual.

37.The talking river appears in the theomachy of Iliad21, when Hera's fury and Hephaistos' fire finally tame the river god: "But when the anger of Xanthos was tamed, the adversaries ceased. For Hera, despite her wrath, stayed them" (αύτὰρ ἐπεἰ Ξάνθoιo δἀμη μένoς, oἱ μὲν ἔπειτα / παυσάσθην· "Hρη γὰρ ἐρύκακε χωoμένη περ Il. 21.383-84). Hephaistos' firestorm against the river is not stayed until her roar for a ceasefire. The passage would have made a fitting finale to an Argolic theomachy in which the earth goddess and her fiery son ( Typhon?) triumph over the river god (Chap. 4.B).

38.For the description of Achilles' horses see 16.145-54 and for Hera's see 5.768-72; 15.15.79-86; cf. 14.225 = 19.114.

39.See Chap. 6.C for Pherecydes' and Callimachus' references to Hera at a leimôn 'meadow' near Okeanos. On the Snatcher-Harpy see Nagy 1990a.243‐ 245. In a 1992 article that arrived when this study was already in press, Johnston provides evidence that Hera of early myth bestowed talking horses on favored warriors and was linked to Poseidon as spouse and to the horse Xanthos, perhaps as mother. From fragments of Alcman and Stesichorus, she notes a tradition in which Hera gives Kastor a Xanthos who speaks to him, as Iliadic Xanthos speaks to Achilles (86, n. 3).

#😎✨✨✨ lizzy explains it all ( hellenic polytheism research.)#📑 ███ bookcase ( the transformation of hera.)#RESEARCH TAG TBD.#ILIAD TAG TBD.

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