previous next

[239] This line opens the difficult question of Homeric augury. The Trojans are at the moment looking N.; a bird has passed them ‘keeping them on his left,’ i.e. flying from their right to left, from E. to W., through N., that is, ‘widershins,’ ‘against the sun,’ ‘counter-clockwise’; whereas the lucky ways are from left to right, with the sun, from W. to In E. whichever direction an observer looks, the direction from his right to his left will always be ‘widershins,’ so long as he regards himself as the centre of the horizon; but it will only be from E. to W. so long as he looks N. But if ζόφος means W. (on which point see below), Hector speaks as though the two conditions were identical. Are we therefore to conclude, as has almost universally been done, that the Homeric augur always looked to the N.? The conclusion is hardly justified; Hector may be speaking only with a special reference to the omen which is uppermost in his thought. For we find in other cases that the position of an omen to the right is lucky even when we must suppose that the observer is facing S.; see 10.274. In the case immediately before us the main element seems to be the direction of flight, and this is insisted on in Hector's words. But in other cases mere position, apart from direction of movement, is sufficient, e.g. 10.274, 24.312, Od. 24.311. And whether the augur could detect the direction of the movement of the lightning flash in 2.353, 9.236 may be doubted; it seems more natural to take “ἐπιδέξια, ἐνδέξια” in those two places as meaning ‘on the right hand’ rather than ‘from left to right.’ But the main difficulty arises when we come to the circulation of the wine. Here the drinker is on the circumference of a circle, looking inwards. Thus ‘right’ and ‘left’ with regard to the movement of the sun have changed places; if he passes the wine from his left hand to his right, the previously lucky direction, it is now going ‘widershins,’ the previously unlucky direction. We may get over this by supposing that the wine-pourer goes round the circle outside, and that “ἐνδέξια” is used from his point of view, just as in 201 “ἐπ᾽ ἀριστερά” is from the eagle's; ‘having the guests on his right’ is still the same as ‘with the sun’ (see Jevons in C. R. x. 22). Or we may hold that ‘widershins’ was the lucky direction for the wine, as it is said that some folk in Scotland still do (Darbishire Rell. Phil. 70 ff.). Again, in many cases the direction or position of the omen seems to be of no importance; all depends on concomitant circumstances. The general conclusion is clear — that we can form no consistent scheme of Homeric augury; it would be strange if we could, for the existence of contradictions is the very raison d'être of the “θεοπρόπος ὃς σάφα θυμῶι εἰδείη τεράων”. A further question is raised in Darbishire's paper already referred to, that of the meaning of ποτὶ ζόφον ἠερόεντα as opposed to πρὸς ἠῶ τ᾽ ἠέλιόν τε. It is there argued with some force that these expressions mean ‘to the north’ and ‘to the south’ respectively, not to east and west. There can be no doubt that these points of the compass suit best the conceptions of the realm of darkness and the realm of the sun. The sense N. and S. also simplifies a notorious crux in Od. 9.26, where Strabo took “πρὸς ζόφον” to mean ‘to the N.,’ as the facts require. But then we are obliged to fall back upon the supposed primitive sense of “ἠώς”, brightness, daylight, rather than dawn. If this interpretation be upheld, it appears that there is no longer any ground for the ordinary statement, based solely, it would seem, on this passage, that the Greek augur faced the N.; it will follow that he normally faced the E., for Hector's statement would become general; the eagle of 201 cannot have flown from S. to N.

It may be noticed that this indifference of Hector to omens is in the spirit of the Homeric age; the art of augury is little developed and has little positive effect at any time. Signs encourage or discourage a resolution already taken, but they never determine or prevent any enterprise as they did in later times. Indeed they are elsewhere lightly spoken of; e.g. Od. 2.181 “ὄρνιθες δέ τε πολλοὶ ὑπ᾽ αὐγὰς ἠελίοιο φοιτῶσ᾽, οὐδέ τε πάντες ἐναίσιμοι”.

The Iliad, edited, with apparatus criticus, prolegomena, notes, and appendices. Walter Leaf. London. Macmillan. 1900.

The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide References (7 total)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: