Homer the Rhetorician: Eustathios of Thessalonike on the Composition of the Iliad by Baukje van den Berg;

Author:Baukje van den Berg; [van den Berg, Baukje]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780192689085
Publisher: OxfordUP
Published: 2022-05-26T00:00:00+00:00

Enargeia and the Graphic Quality of Homer’s Style

Closely related to the plausibility and ‘safety’ of Homer’s formulation is Eustathios’ notion of enargeia. Modern scholarship has devoted much attention to enargeia in ancient criticism, which a recent study summarizes as ‘the mental state of a reader or listener who experiences the illusion of being “present” at the events and characters of the narrative […] the distance between narrative world and narratees is collapsed’.117 In other words, enargeia is the quality of a narrative that gives the audience the impression that they are witnessing the narrated situation and allows them to see the events and characters in their mind’s eye. The scholia vetera repeatedly recognize such enargeia in Homeric poetry and explain how Homer’s words enable the audience to visualize the narrated events.118 Eustathios also uses the notion of enargeia in his analysis of Homer, yet his usage of the term is in line with most middle Byzantine writing, where ‘[t]he word itself and cognate terms do not refer to representational vividness, but, they denote truth behind and beyond any aesthetic representation, whether discursive or visual’.119 Enargeia in Eustathios would therefore best be translated as ‘self-evidence’:120 the enargeia of Homer’s style ensures that the narrated events are absolutely clear to the audience in their every detail. It makes their discursive representation unambiguous and evident beyond question.

While Eustathios’ notion of enargeia is in line with Byzantine usage of the term, the techniques he identifies as producing enargeia have much in common with those of ancient critics and rhetoricians. His conception of enargeia is thus a case in point of the appropriation of ancient concepts within a Byzantine framework that characterizes Eustathios’ Homeric project in general. Throughout the Commentary on the Iliad, Eustathios identifies repetition,121 onomatopoeia,122 ekphrasis,123 the specification of circumstantial detail,124 and similes125 as particularly productive of enargeia. The underlying idea seems to be that with these techniques the poet makes the audience understand the narrated events as clearly as possible. In Eustathios’ view, Homer’s discussion of the destruction of the Greek wall is such an event that is narrated with much enargeia. He explains how Homer refers to the future destruction in both Iliad 7 and 12. By addressing most of the elements of narrative (person, manner, cause, time, and event), the account in Iliad 12 specifies exactly how the destruction will happen with clarity and enargeia.126

Throughout the Commentary on the Iliad, enargeia is most often connected with Homeric similes,127 a connection also found in the scholia vetera.128 Whereas the scholia define enargeia in terms of vividness and graphic style, for Eustathios similes enhance the enargeia qua clarity and specificity of the narrative. In his view, similes make clear exactly how we are to understand the narrated events—that is why, we may recall, the images used in similes should be familiar to the audience.129 A simile in Iliad 21 may serve as an example. After his battle with Hephaestus, the river Xanthus spoke ‘burning with fire, and his fair streams were seething’ (Il.

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