Object Lesson...Literally

The men and women, gods and goddesses, and servants and kings and soldiers of the Iliad all play their roles in the unfolding of a hierarchy in the ancient Greek epic.  They do so in their words so eloquent, or their actions often brave, yet what can we say about how the objects around them have a say in their story?  For example, let's take a look at King Agamemnon's staff.

Why would a staff be so important as to be repeatedly associated with the word "imperishable," as well as referred to as "ancestral," and "golden"?  Why would it be included in the text, there during speeches and corrections, being wielded by men of power?  It's history is even included within the text: having been made by Hephaestus, Zeus's blacksmith, it was passed down in an often patriarchal descent from Zeus to Hermes to Pelops to Atreus to Thyestes to, finally, Agamemnon.

A student from last year mentions the "social power" the staff often indicates, and how Odysseus even went to receive the staff from Agamemnon before going to persuade the soldiers to refrain from departing and, instead, stay and fight.  It was used to deliver a beating to Thersites, who had tried to break the social hierarchy by publicly speaking against Agamemnon.  The staff itself is an act of persuasion, simply by its representation of power, whether in wisdom or in strength.  It was actually used throughout ancient Greek culture and texts to convey such meaning, being a symbol in aid to speeches or presentation.  Though we are the secondary audience in the Iliad, the first being those who physically saw the staff and the power behind it, we, too, can identify such rhetorical usage in the writings of ancient Greeks by examining the text with a critical mind.

Our World: Shaped by Rhetoric Found in the Iliad

Many things have been said about the rhetorical devices used in book 2 of the Iliad in the previous posts. I particularly enjoyed the posts discussing the power of language and how language and rhetoric moved people to action, as well as the societal and cultural influences on the behavior  and responses of the characters in the Epic.

But I have a question, to what end are all of these rhetorical devices used? The Illiad is, after all, a fictional work. Most likely none of the script is historically what was said. Thus were my thoughts as I read through the book, what was Homer or whomever it may have been at any of the given times this epic was told trying to inspire within the listener? It is likely that most of the people who heard these epics were unaware of rhetorical devices (as far as I know, which is very little, so feel free to correct me), yet they were still impacted (yet again, as far as I know) so much so by this work that it was and continues to be one of the most famous and well known works of all ancient Greek epic poetry. The themes of hierarchy and pride, as discussed in the excellent post prior to this one, and previous posts concerning pathos, audience, and kairos are all present within the work. But how did the use of rhetoric influence the audience it was intended for?

Ancient Greek society functioned in a certain way, they found success in they way that their society functioned. It is so clear in the Illiad that rhetorical devices were used to steer the societal norms. Their society and civilization was made up of individuals who were influenced by an oral tradition that used rhetoric. It's powerful to see how rhetoric shaped a culture that in some way has shaped the entire western world.

Pride and Power: Appeals to the Greeks

In Book two of the Iliad, it seems as though there were two major themes that the rhetorical and persuasive speeches gravitated towards: the pride of the audience and the emphasis of hierarchy. These two themes will be the focus of this posting.

Pride

The pride of the Greek warriors seems to be one of their major weaknesses; for it is often this pride that can be manipulated by their leaders to convince them to charge into hopeless situations. When all of the men are rushing back to their ships, anxious to see their families again, Ulysses is able to manipulate them into staying and fighting. The interesting part is that he calls the respectable people cowards, in a typical appeal to pride, but he attacks the common men with almost the opposite assault on one’s pride. Rather than just calling them cowards and asking where their courage has gone, he also tells them that they have never been of worth. Even to a common man this would have been highly offensive and such a man would feel the need to prove his worth. In this society war was one of the only ways for men to prove themselves, so they literally ran back to the battlefront. This strategy of Ulysses shows that he had an excellent grasp on how to rhetorically convince different audiences.

Hierarchy

The social power order was very evident in the interactions between the characters in this passage. The most obvious example of this was in Agamemnon’s staff. While his staff was not a spoken rhetoric, it symbolized the authority he had over the men. When he went to address the army he brought the staff to remind them why he was in charge. Then, when Ulysses decided to convince the men to stay and fight, he retrieved the staff and, in some cases, even beat the men with it. This leads to an interesting dynamic, one that I believe was also recognized by Katie Johnson in her posting about Agamemnon’s actions. If Agamemnon told the men to leave, why did he let Ulysses take his ancestral staff to convince them to stay and why did he tell them to leave in the first place? I believe the second question has to do with Agamemnon’s military strategy, but the first can be answered on page nineteen. Agamemnon tells his counselors that he is going to tell the men to go home but that he wants them to convince the armies to stay. I believe that this may be his way of increasing loyalty. He wanted the men to think that he was their nice commander that would have let them go home to their families but they chose to stay and fight. The men will fight with more conviction if they believe that it was their decision to be there than if they see themselves as being forced to stay. But that is just my theory; does anyone have any other ideas?