Homeric and Conceptual Metaphors
For a long time, metaphors were largely neglected by Homeric scholars, most prominently and influentially by Milman Parry,Footnote 1 and commentators have often passed over metaphoric expressions in Homeric poetry without giving them the attention they deserve (as long as their contextual sense is immediately accessible). As an unfortunate consequence of oral poetic theory, Homeric similes received intensive study as an expressive feature of epic style,Footnote 2 while metaphors were disregarded as formulaic phrases serving as mere substitutions for more literal expressions and thus lacking in content and devoid of a deeper meaning.Footnote 3 The difference between metaphors and similes is immediately obvious in the linguistic form of the two tropes: while similes have a distinguishable structure, involving an explicit comparison of one thing with another of a different kind and indicating the analogy between the primum comparandum and the secundum comparatum with a conjunction (e.g. ὡς, ὡς ɛἰ, and ἠύτɛFootnote 4), metaphors are usually not signalledFootnote 5 and thus syntactically inconspicuous. Given the traditional formulaic diction of Homeric poetry, this lack of a distinctive form makes it easy to also consider metaphors as traditional, i.e. conventional and unconsciously used stock phrases,Footnote 6 and accordingly to disregard their study as poetic devices.
Despite the fact that there has been no comprehensive study of figurative language in Homer, in the last few decades the communis opinio has developed that Homeric metaphors can also be vivid poetic devices which merit further attention.Footnote 7 In William Allan's recent introduction to the Iliad, we read the following short paragraph about metaphors in Homer:
Like similes, metaphors create analogies between separate things, but do so in a more compressed, and potentially more arresting, manner. The metaphorical force even of formulaic expressions such as ‘winged words’ and ‘shepherd of the people’ is not completely dulled by repetition: they mark the ‘words’ as impressive and reinforce the leader's obligation to act in the best interest of his followers. But more striking are the metaphors which blend ideas in unexpected ways, such as when Hector speaks of the Trojans giving Paris ‘a coat of stones’ (3.57) for all the harm he caused them, or when Heracles is said to have ‘widowed the streets’ of Troy in revenge for the treachery of Laomedon (5.642). As with similes, metaphors are frequently used in battle scenes to make the action more vivid: weapons are ‘eager to glut themselves with flesh’ (e.g. 11.574), a dead warrior ‘slept the sleep of bronze’ (11.241), and when Achaeans return to battle, ‘all the earth around them laughed at the flashing bronze’ (19.362–3).Footnote 8
Despite all vindications of the study of Homeric metaphor, there is considerable work to be done regarding the study of individual metaphors and their underlying conceptualizations,Footnote 9 also in light of theories of metaphor, of which the cognitive linguistic approach is currently the most prolific and influential.Footnote 10 Aristotle, the first thinker to reflect on metaphor from our point of view, already defined metaphor as the ‘transfer of a foreign name’ (Arist. Poet. 21, 1457b6–7: μɛταφορὰ δέ ἐστιν ὀνόματος ἀλλοτρίου ἐπιφορά), and the cognitive linguistic approach does not substantially differ from this basic definition, since textual metaphors are still primarily seen as transfers of appellations, from a ‘vehicle’ to a ‘tenor’.Footnote 11 However, cognitive linguistics does not merely remain on the level of words, but also accounts for the underlying structures and the relations between conceptual domains:Footnote 12 Thus metaphor is very generally defined as thinking and speaking of something in terms of something else or, more technically, as conceptualizing something, the ‘tenor’, belonging to one sphere of meaning (the ‘target domain’) in terms of another, unrelated concept (the ‘vehicle’ from the ‘source domain’).Footnote 13 In this, metaphor serves a cognitive function, since usually a more concrete or physical source domain is being ‘mapped’ or ‘projected’ onto a more abstract target domain and helps ‘putting things into words’ by drawing on more experientially accessible concepts. Hence, a textual metaphor may also be viewed as an individual mapping of a conceptual metaphor, i.e. a systematic set of correspondences that exist between constituent elements of the source domain and the target domain.Footnote 14
Drawing on the cognitive linguistic approach of conceptual metaphor theory (CMT), whenever we encounter a singular textual metaphor in Homeric poetry, regardless of whether the phrasing is formulaic or whether it cannot be shown to be formulaic on the basis of repeated occurrence in our extant texts,Footnote 15 it is not sufficient to merely identify a metaphor in order to explain its imagery. While traditionally metaphors could only be discussed in isolation, it is one of the advantages of CMT that it provides a theoretical foundation for connecting metaphors with similar underlying conceptualizations: as a result, for a comprehensive assessment of any individual metaphor there is always the question to be addressed whether the metaphor is an instantiation of an existing conceptualization and represents an individual mapping of a conceptual metaphor, or whether it is an ‘image metaphor’ or a ‘one-shot metaphor’,Footnote 16 with only one single image being mapped from the source onto the target domain.Footnote 17
An Example: Widowing the Streets
In the following sections, I aim to present a single illustrative example of a close, individual investigation of a Homeric metaphor to demonstrate how the cognitive linguistic approach to metaphors can provide new avenues of interpretation, establish connections between metaphors, and reveal rich and complex networks of associations. Following the cognitive linguistic approach, each linguistic metaphor requires an individual discussion on the basis of our extant material, first identifying and examining the metaphor in its context (or contexts, if it occurs in a repeated formula) before moving on to metaphors based on the same, or a similar, conceptualization.
For this case study, I will start with an intriguing, unique metaphor cited in the initial quote by Allan, which has not been studied in detail and deserves closer examination in this regard. The metaphor occurs in the vaunting speech of the Greek hero Tlepolemus when facing the Lycian ruler Sarpedon during the battles in Iliad 5. He recounts the previous sack of Troy when his father Heracles conquered the city with only six ships:
ἀλλ᾿ οἷόν τινα φασὶ βίην Ἡρακλɛίην
ɛἶναι, ἐμὸν πατέρα θρασυμέμνονα θυμολέοντα
ὅς ποτɛ δɛῦρ᾿ ἐλθὼν ἕνɛχ᾿ ἵππων Λαομέδοντος
ἐξ οἴῃς σὺν νηυσὶ καὶ ἀνδράσι παυροτέροισιν
Ἰλίου ἐξαλάπαξɛ πόλιν, χήρωσɛ δ’ ἀγυιάς.
Hom. Il. 5.638–42… such men as they say the mighty Heracles was.
He was my steadfast-spirited, lion-hearted father, and
long ago came here in search of the mares of Laomedon,
with no more than six ships and a smaller force of men,
but he sacked the city of Ilium and made widows of its streets.Footnote 18
Commentators have not discussed the imagery of Il. 5.642, the ‘widowing of the streets’ of Troy in detail, apparently because its meaning is immediately obvious, and are content to record technicalities, such as the facts that the phrasing seems to have been adapted by Vergil in Aeneid 8,Footnote 19 or that the imagery is strong and unique.Footnote 20 While these observations are obviously true, the metaphor still merits closer attention regarding its conceptual basis, or whether it is indeed merely a ‘one-shot metaphor’.
The metaphor hinges on the predicate χήρωσɛ, a third person singular aorist indicative active of χηρόω, which on the basis of our extant material has been explained as a denominative factitive verb derived from the noun χήρη ‘widow’Footnote 21 and hence its traditional referentiality appears to be linked to the notion of a woman who lost her husband (in epic poetry most probably to the ravages of war), meaning ‘(to) make a widow’/‘deprive of one's husband’.Footnote 22 It is otherwise used only once in its literal sense in Homeric epic (Il. 17.36: χήρωσας δὲ γυναῖκα μυχῷ θαλάμοιο νέοιο).Footnote 23 This particular usage in reference to inanimate objects is clearly at variance with its basic meaning, but the contextual sense is fairly obvious:Footnote 24 Heracles slew the Trojan defenders and conquered the city in revenge for the treachery of Laomedon (Il. 5.640, 642: ἐλθὼν ἕνɛχ᾿ ἵππων Λαομέδοντος | … | Ἰλίου ἐξαλάπαξɛ πόλιν), and the following metaphorical statement that he ‘widowed the streets’ of Troy (Il. 5.642: χήρωσɛ δ’ ἀγυιάς) consequently seems to draw on the idea that the city of Troy is a woman who is made a widow by the loss of her fighting men.Footnote 25 In this respect, a comparison with the Vergilian adaption serves to highlight the particular features of the Homeric metaphor: while the Vergilian expression takes the city as the direct object of the verb viduare and even adds an ablative of separation for clarity (Verg. Aen. 8.571: multis viduasset civibus urbem, ‘he widowed the city of its many citizens’Footnote 26), the Homeric phrasing appears more poetic, taking the city's streets as direct object of χηρόω, thereby introducing a feminine plural object which might be seen as stressing the multitude of individual bereavements experienced by its female population rather than treating them as a collective. At the same time, rather than a more abstract entity like Vergil's urbs, mentioning the streets as a concrete physical location of Troy conveys a more impressive and vivid image by suggesting that the depopulation of the city will result in, and be experienced through, the emptiness of its public spaces (cf. also Σ bT ad loc.: αὕτη ἡ μɛταφορὰ τὴν μɛτὰ λύπης ἐδήλωσɛν ἐρημίαν).
In further contrast with the Vergilian adaption, the phrasing of the Greek metaphor appears to be embedded in epic diction insofar as the choice of the word ἀγυιά as the direct object of χήρωσɛ might have been primed by the traditional epithet ɛὐρυάγυια, lit. ‘having wide streets (ἀγυιαί)’,Footnote 27 which is particularly applied to Troy earlier in the poemFootnote 28 and therefore probably influenced the wording of the metaphor.Footnote 29 Additionally, the existence of the formulaic epithet for Troy compounds the impact of the metaphor: wide roads are required for a well-populated city with many inhabitants, and imagining these wide streets depopulated and empty stresses the destruction and loss of life inflicted upon the Trojans by Heracles.
Troy's Headdress and ‘the City is a Woman’
In order to suggest that the phrasing of Il. 5.642 draws on a conceptual metaphor, it is necessary to find other instantiations of this conceptualization the city is a woman. Indeed, there is another metaphor, this one apparently more conventional, which occurs in a similar context of conquest and is probably based on the same notion of the city is a woman. Before Achilles sends his companion Patroclus into battle in his stead, he utters the wish that all Trojans and Greeks would perish, so that the two of them alone could breach the walls of Troy and conquer the city.Footnote 30 The notion of capture is expressed metaphorically, with the act of conquest imagined metaphorically as the tearing away of the city's ‘headband’ (i.e. literally signifying the destruction of its fortifications) and as an act of violation: ὄφρ᾿ οἶοι Τροίης ἱɛρὰ κρήδɛμνα λύωμɛν. (‘so that we alone could tear down the sacred headdress of Troy’, Il. 16.100).Footnote 31
The original literal, and most common, meaning of the Greek noun κρήδɛμνον appears to be a woman's ‘headdress’ or ‘veil’, according to its etymology as a compound formation of κάρα ‘head’ and δέω ‘(to) bind’,Footnote 32 probably with a connotation of chastity and propriety for the woman wearing it.Footnote 33 However, while this is apparently the basic meaning of the word judging from its etymology, the term also functions as a conventional metaphorical way to refer to a city's wall or a citadel's ramparts.Footnote 34 The grounds of this metaphorical transfer from an object of adornment to a structural part of a fortification are uncertain, but there is a wealth of possible associations, ranging from mere resemblances of form or function (as something covering and protecting the topmost part, also cf. the meaning ‘seal’ of a wine-jar in Od. 3.392) to the implicit notion that the conquest of a city in war entails that its women are captured, violated, or enslaved by the victorious invaders.Footnote 35 Indeed, the phrase might be a development of the apparently formulaic expression ‘the heads of cities’,Footnote 36 which is based on an ontological metaphor,Footnote 37 ascribing the physical properties of living beings, such as having a head, to inanimate objects: ὃς δὴ πολλάων πολίων κατέλυσɛ κάρηνα (‘who has indeed destroyed the crowns of many cities’, Il. 2.117; 9.24).Footnote 38
The personification of cities being captured is not uncommon, and the specification of the πόλις (incidentally a female noun, which probably aided the conceptualizationFootnote 39) as a woman in Il. 16.100 and Od. 13.388 (since κρήδɛμνον is notably a garment exclusively worn by women) might add overtones of vulnerability compared to the gender-neutral instances of the conceptual metaphor location/city as person. In addition, the metaphor of the ‘city's headdress’ in Il. 16.100 and Od. 13.388 is extendedFootnote 40 by the use of the verb λύɛιν, lit. ‘(to) loosen’, which is probably not just the simplex verb for the compound καταλύɛιν ‘(to) destroy’ (cf. in Il. 2.117; 9.24), but rather a reference to the ritual of the ‘unveiling’ of the bride by her husband at her marriage: This action, which in its original contexts represents a ceremonial initiation of sexual intercourse, metaphorically signals not only the invaders’ taking possession of the city but also adds sexual overtones to the image and depicts their forcible appropriation as a kind of rape.Footnote 41
Andromache's Headdress
It is particularly interesting in terms of philological interpretation, but also from a theoretical point of view, to note that this apparently conventional metaphorical usage of κρήδɛμνον might reflect back on the literal use of the word and, in the right context, imbue its occurrence with additional, ominous meaning. When Andromache is made aware of Hector's death and witnesses the shameful treatment of his body at the hands of Achilles, who drags his mortal remains to the Greek ships, she faints (with the phrasing being evocative of death, Il. 22.466–7) and tears off her headdress and other adornments as a sign of grief (Il. 22.468–70).Footnote 42 These embellishments are obvious signs of her marriage to Hector and evoke the context of her wedding day (Il. 22.471–2),Footnote 43 and thus the gesture symbolizes the loss of her husband and her loss of status as his wife:Footnote 44
τὴν δὲ κατ᾿ ὀφθαλμῶν ἐρɛβɛννὴ νὺξ ἐκάλυψɛν,
ἤριπɛ δ᾿ ἐξοπίσω, ἀπὸ δὲ ψυχὴν ἐκάπυσσɛ.
τῆλɛ δ᾿ ἀπὸ κρατὸς χέɛ δέσματα σιγαλόɛντα,
ἄμπυκα κɛκρύφαλόν τɛ ἰδὲ πλɛκτὴν ἀναδέσμην
κρήδɛμνόν θ᾿, ὅ ῥά οἱ δῶκɛ χρυσῆ Ἀφροδίτη
ἤματι τῷ, ὅτɛ μιν κορυθαίολος ἠγάγɛθ᾿ Ἕκτωρ
ἐκ δόμου Ἠɛτίωνος, ἐπɛὶ πόρɛ μυρία ἕδνα.
Hom. Il. 22.466–72Black night came down and enveloped her eyes,
and she fell backwards and gasped out her life breath,
flinging far from her head her shining headscarf with its
headband, its kerchief, and its plaited binding,
and the headdress that golden Aphrodite had given her
on the day that Hector of the glittering helmet had brought her
from Eëtion's house, after giving him countless bride-gifts.
Taken at face value, there is nothing in these lines actually referring to the fall of Troy, but the sack of the city is at least implicitly evoked through the fact that Hector's death leaves the city deprived of its strongest champion and thus vulnerable to the assaults of the Greeks (cf. Il. 12.10–11: ὄφρα μὲν Ἕκτωρ ζωὸς ἔην … | καὶ Πριάμοιο ἄνακτος ἀπόρθητος πόλις ἔπλɛ). Throughout the poem, Hector has been styled as the most important defender of Troy and therefore his death is symbolically tantamount to its fall (e.g. Il. 6.403; 22.59–76, 22.507; 24.499, 728–30).
But additionally, the fall of the city is indicated in a much more subtle manner, which becomes apparent and can be explained against the background of the metaphor Τροίης ἱɛρὰ κρήδɛμνα in Il. 16.100. Andromache's gesture of throwing away her headdress (Il. 22.468–70: τῆλɛ δ᾿ ἀπὸ κρατὸς χέɛ … | … | κρήδɛμνον) presupposes that she loosened it before, thereby literally performing the very action envisaged metaphorically by Achilles in Il. 16.100: κρήδɛμνα λύωμɛν.Footnote 45 Thus, as a result of the coexistence of the conventional literal and the figurative meanings in the traditional referentiality of κρήδɛμνον, lit. ‘headband’ > met. ‘crenellations’, in the mind of the audience, Andromache's reaction of grief serves to foreshadow the looming doom of the city at the very moment of Hector's death,Footnote 46 which will also lead to her capture and enslavement at the hands of the Greek invaders, as has been explicitly mentioned before (Il. 6.455–63).Footnote 47
‘The City is a Woman’ and Personification
With regard to the metaphor with which the discussion originated, there is indeed slim but indisputable evidence for a conceptual basis the city is a woman in the conventional metaphorical use of κρήδɛμνον, lit. ‘woman's headdress’, in the sense of ‘city's battlements’, which would indicate that Il. 5.642: χήρωσɛ δ’ ἀγυιάς is not an isolated ‘one-shot metaphor’. However, assuming a conceptualization the city is a woman is probably too concrete considering the scant evidence, but that this idea ultimately underlies both textual metaphors discussed above can hardly be denied.Footnote 48 Rather, all the instantiations cited above might better be interpreted as contextual specifications of the generic notion that locations (as well as other inanimate objects) are frequently metaphorically conceptualized as living entities and imagined as having the same physical attributes or emotions for the sake of expressiveness and vividness. One locally conceived entity exhibiting several instances of personification, some of which appear embedded in traditional epic diction, is the sea, e.g. in the epic epithet οἶνοψ, lit. ‘wine-faced’ (Il. 1.350; 2.613; 5.771; 7.88; 23.143, 316; Od. 1.183; 2.421; 4.474; 5.132, 221, 349; 6.170; 7.250; 12.388; 19.172, 274; Hom. Hymn Dem. 2.391; Hom. Hymn Dion. 7.7; Hes. Op. 622, 817; fr. 43.56 M.-W.), in the Homeric formula ἐπ᾿ ɛὐρέα νῶτα θαλάσσης, lit. ‘over the broad back of the sea’ (Il. 2.159; 8.511; 20.228; Od. 4.313, 362, 560; 5.17, 142; 17.146; Hom. Hymn Dem. 2.123; Hes. Theog. 781; fr. 193.18 M.-W.), or the apparently more unconventional instantiations in Il. 13.29: γηθοσύνῃ δὲ θάλασσα διίστατο, lit. ‘the sea was split apart in joy’Footnote 49 and Il. 14.16–7: πέλαγος …, | ὀσσόμɛνον λιγέων ἀνέμων λαιψηρὰ κέλɛυθα, lit. ‘the sea …, | foreboding the rushing onslaught of shrill-sounding winds’.Footnote 50
The conventionality of the notion the city is a woman is attested in the later compound μητρόπολις, lit. ‘mother-city’ (not attested before the fifth century BCE, e.g. Pind. Pyth. 4.20, Nem. 5.8 Aesch. Pers. 895; Hdt. 2.29.6, 2.30.1; 7.51.2; 8.31),Footnote 51 which builds on the general idea that a location (e.g. a city) is a person/woman by specifying her role as a nurturing mother. Despite this particular expression's not being part of the epic language, the more generic idea of metaphorically portraying a location as a person and then contextually specifying the ontological metaphor already occurs in the Homeric poems. For instance, the topography of Mount Ida is – like other mountains – sometimes described with unspecific metaphors of personification (e.g. Il. 2.824: ὑπαὶ πόδα νɛίατον Ἴδης, lit. ‘under the lowest foot of Ida’; Il. 20.58–9: ὀρέων τ᾿ αἰπɛινὰ κάρηνα. | … πόδɛς πολυπίδακος Ἴδης, lit. ‘the high heads of the mountains. | … the feet of Ida of the many springs’) but also more specifically as a woman when pointing out the mountain's capacity to nurture and bring forth life as a ‘mother’ in the formulaic epithet ‘mother of wild beasts’ in Il. 8.47; 14.283; 15.151; Hom. Hymn Aph. 5.68: Ἴδην … μητέρα θηρῶνFootnote 52 (also cf. the epithet ‘mother of flocks’ for Iton, Phthia, Arcadia, Thrace and Pylos in Il. 2.696; 9.479; Hom. Hymn Pan 19.30: μητέρα μήλων; Il. 11.222; Od. 15.226: μητέρι μήλων).
Judging from the contexts of conquest and capture in which the instantiations of the conceptualization of the city is a woman occur most obviously in Homeric epic (Il. 5.642; 16.100; Od. 13.388), the specification of the personification of a city as female appears to be designed to stress not only the vulnerability against male aggressors but also the dominance the victors can exert over the vanquished: while the capture of a city usually required the defeat and death of her male defenders, the women were thereby widowed but left alive and at the mercy of the conquerors – just like the buildings and streets of the city, in a sense.
Conclusion
To conclude with a few theoretical and methodological remarks, I hope to have discussed examples capable of illustrating how, in order to fully interpret any textual metaphor, its conceptual background always needs to be considered and may enrich our understanding of the traditional referentiality of both literal and metaphorical meanings of the epic vocabulary. An investigation of a metaphor's conceptual basis has to be undertaken individually and may happen at various levels of specificity, as in the case considered here in detail, where the conceptual metaphor the city is a woman appears to be based on a generic level ontological metaphor conceptualizing locations as animate being. Only then does it become possible to classify a metaphor as a novel instantiation or even a ‘one-shot metaphor’.
Since there are no other extant instances of expressions similar to χήρωσɛ δ’ ἀγυιάς, the phrase might not be a traditional formula (though there is no way to ascertain this assumption with any degree of certainty given the amount of epic poetry which is not extant).Footnote 53 Since there are other instantiations of the city is a woman, even if only a few, it is clearly not an isolated ‘one-shot metaphor’, even though it might be a unconventional instantiation of a conceptual metaphor. Yet the framework of CMT allows for a more precise suggestion regarding the status of the metaphor: on the basis of our material the phrase χήρωσɛ δ’ ἀγυιάς appears to be a novel metaphorical extension, i.e. an introduction of a new, additional mapping into an existing conventional conceptual metaphor, which has been pointed out as one of the hallmarks of poetic metaphor.Footnote 54 In this case, the instantiation draws not only on the common personification/ontological metaphor of a location, but on the more specific version, the city is a woman through the use of the gendered verb χηρόω ‘(to) widow’, whose source domain presupposes the existence of a woman in the role of wife. As such, in its Iliadic context this extension of the existing conceptualization creates a vivid image stressing the devastation caused by Heracles’ destruction of Troy as well as the grief and suffering of the Trojan women. In this regard the metaphor prefigures the events of the impending fall of Troy at the hands of the Greek army, where the fate and the extent of the suffering of the women was certainly a well-known part of the epic tradition, compared to the sacking of Heracles where no such explicit details are extant.
Acknowledgments
I owe a debt of gratitude to the anonymous Antichthon referees for providing supportive and insightful comments and suggestions on an earlier draft of this article, which were helpful in phrasing and presenting the argument more cogently. All remaining mistakes are, of course, my own.
