The Iliad by Bruce Louden

Author:Bruce Louden
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: 2006-02-14T16:00:00+00:00

Him they found delighting his heart with a high-pitched lyre, beautifully fashioned, with a silver bridge, which he had taken from the spoils when he sacked the city of Eetion, he delighted his heart with this lyre, singing epics of heroes.

(9.186–89)

This is as close as the Iliad gets to a self-referential portrayal of an epic tradition in process. David hears himself depicted as the subject of an incipient oral epic tradition, in a popular refrain:

At the homecoming of the army and the return of David from slaying the Philistine, the women from all the cities and towns of Israel came out singing and dancing to meet King Saul, rejoicing with tambourines and three-stringed instruments. The women, as they made merry sang to one another:

’Saul struck down thousands,

but David tens of thousands.’ Saul was furious, and the words rankled. (1 Sam 18:6–8; cf. 1 Sam 29:5)

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