Abstract

Was Odysseus to Achilleus “as hateful as the gates of Hades”? This is the implication of the prevailing tenor in the exegesis of Il. 9.312-13 from antiquity to the present: that Achilleus is referring to Odysseus, when he states that he detests like “the gates of Hades that man who hides one thing deep in his heart and speaks forth another”. Going one better, an influential school in North American Homeric studies has made the poet himself share Achilleus’ assumed detestation of Odysseus. The very eccentricity of this view and the extraordinary vehemence of this school’s disparagement of Odysseus have had the salutary effect that some doubt has settled on the communis opinio. The exegesis of the couplet Il. 9.312-313 can now pass for a modern zêtêma, involving, as will become evident, larger questions of Homeric hjqopoiiva and μίμησις πράζεως. This is a zêtêma that must be resolved; and the good news is that it can be.