Chapter 1. The Prophet Defines

Within the first hundred lines of the Iliad, the Achaean prophet, Calchas, presents a definition of anger (Il. 1.74-83). The immediate context is that Achilles has just called an assembly in response to the suffering of the Achaeans. So great is their suffering that, Achilles suggests, they are on the brink of entirely abandoning their efforts on the Trojan plain (Il. 1.59-67). In response to Achilles’ suggestion that the anger of Apollo is at issue (Il. 1.64), Calchas comes to ask for his protection, for the prophet will reveal that the cause of the suffering is the action of none other than Agamemnon. After Calchas solicits Achilles’ help (Il. 1.76-77), he proceeds to identify the source of his misgiving by sharpening the distinction between two kinds of anger, kótos and khólos: [1]

To paraphrase Calchas, he needs protection because his revelation will anger someone; [2] in addition s are two kinds of anger. [3] One is khólos, which {21|22}can be dealt with immediately. To indicate this feature of khólos, Calchas uses the metaphor of digestion (katapépsēi, Il. 1.81). The second kind of anger is kótos, which will not be brought to an end until the angered party has in some sense completed it (óphra teléssēi, Il. 1.82), a point that Calchas emphasizes by claiming that kótos will last into the future (kaì metópisthen, Il. 1.82).

Furthermore, the social status of the angered party is relevant. Calchas is particularly concerned with arousing the anger of a superior, specifically a basileús (kreíssōn gàr basileùs hóte khṓsetai andrì khérēi “For a king will be stronger, when he comes to be angry with a lesser man,” Il. 1.80). [4] Thus, at issue here are questions of time, social class, and bodily experience:

In Table 1.1, I show how these terms can be aligned with khólos and kotos, in order to highlight the specific terms of Calchas’s definition. [5] Kótos seems connected with the social status of the basileús. [6] The phrase andrì khérēi certainly contrasts with basileús, in a way that says something about its relationship to khólos. I suggest that the person of lower class (andrì khérēi) and his superiors are capable of having khólos, while kótos belongs primarily (within the context of this definition) to a basileús. [7] Indeed, Calchas fears not just anyone’s anger but that of a king. [8]

As for the category of time, Calchas emphasizes the longevity of kótos in comparison with khólos. He claims that kótos has its own télos that must be reached before the kótos can come to an end. The implication is that khólos is more malleable, more subject to modification than is kótos. Autêmar (“in a day’s time”) does not limit khólos in its duration. Rather, it indicates that there is no intrinsic télos (“end”) to khólos.

As to the third category in Table 1.1, that of the body, the metaphor of digestion in katepépsēi is associated with khólos [9] One implication of this {22|23} association is that khólos has a special relation to corporeal experience. G. Kirk suggests that the notion of “ripening” or “cooking” or “digestion” is specifically related to Homer’s Achilles. I agree, but need to add that this passage and Calchas’s description indicates that khólos has relevance to the body beyond the thematics of the anger of Achilles. [10] In Chapter 11 of this book, I will suggest that the use of digestion can be motivated, as Calchas indicates, by a consideration of the etymology of khólos. For the present purpose of analyzing kótos, I note only that the metaphor of digestion exclusively calls to mind the anger that Calchas styles khólos.

Calchas has introduced these terms in such a way that kótos is a marked term in contrast to khólos, the unmarked term. [11] That is to say, Calchas presents us with an opposition that points to an asymmetric relationship between the two terms. The questions we have to pose ourselves are these: When we take Calchas as our informant, does the Homeric text allow us to say that this opposition is consistently asymmetric in a way that is productive for the poetic system? Is khólos unmarked with respect to the marked term kótos?

The notion of an asymmetrical contrast—a marked/unmarked opposition—between khólos and kótos directs us to the Homeric semantics of anger so that we can approach that topic with a specific goal in mind. Just how do these terms contrast, and how does Calchas’s formulation fit with the contrasts that we unearth? For kótos, Calchas suggests that we regard this term as an especially delimited semantic unit, one whose major features include issues of class, the body, and time. As for khólos, in Part II I will attempt both to sketch its role as the unmarked term for anger—the most generic item in the rich epic vocabulary of anger—and to argue that the features of khólos have particular and dramatic importance for the Homeric poems.

One of the asymmetric features distinguishing the opposition between marked and unmarked forms is frequency of distribution: “The one of the two entities that is consistently more widely distributed … is called unmarked.” [12] This observation is relevant to the study of these two terms for anger, since in the case of Calchas’s definition we see that khólos and kótos differ in frequency of use, with khólos and its related forms occurring 138 times, while kótos and related forms show 27 instances throughout the two Homeric epics.

Having accepted Calchas as our informant and having interrogated his statement, I now seek independent support of his definition for each term. To justify taking this approach, to accept Calchas’s lead, I briefly turn to a few passages that emphasize the distinctive nature of kótos and khólos.

To suggest that kótos is as important as Calchas indicates, I ask if there is any other similar characterization of kótos, perhaps one that also flags key terms such as télos in order to point to longevity as a feature of kótos. We see these features in Iliad 4, when Pandarus, spurred on by Athena, shoots and wounds Menelaus. At the sight of Menelaus’s wound, Agamemnon launches into a chilling speech that refers to the anger of Zeus against the Trojans, especially because the oath that marked the duel in Book 3 has been violated:{23|24} This is the only place in the Iliad where Zeus is explicitly said to have kótos against the Trojans, although we will also see a simile that continues the theme in the Patrocleia. [13] It is worth elucidating what the kótos of the chief god means here. [14]

The duel between Paris and Menelaus alludes to the beginning of the war. [15] Without doubt, the meaning of this duel is deepened because of the allusion to the ingrained enmity between Paris and Menelaus. The profound taboo against violating oaths is made all the worse by the apátē, the deceit, that has come to mirror the original crime. Homer’s allusion to the abduction of Helen appears the more prominent through the use of this highly charged word for anger. Kótos, even as it focuses the allusion to a past event, also points to the anger that will be fulfilled in the future, as marked by the repeated word éssetai (“it will be”). Behind this scene, at this moment, is the violation of the oath and what that violation mirrors, the anger of Zeus Xeinios at the Trojans for Helen’s abduction. The passage itself is a five-line unit ringed by the future éssetai and closed by a word whose root reminds us of what Calchas had earlier highlighted as a characteristic of kótos: a-tél-esta. Agamemnon’s formulation is in Homeric grand style, with Zeus at the center of a ring bounded by characteristic features of kótos, the whole structure showing that kótos is rooted in past events and that its future is projected onto a chain of recorded human events.

The issue of télos and its relation to Agamemnon’s speech shows its character even more clearly when we consider D. Lohmann’s analysis, [16] which links Il. 14.166-68 with Il. 14.160-61 through ring-composition. The following lines emerge with striking force: In these words, Agamemnon is presenting an eschatology of the Trojan conflict; as Menelaus lies wounded, his brother wonders at the outcome of it all, and his conclusion is that the violation of the oath guarantees Olympian favor so as to link the result with the kótos of Zeus.

Having looked at Agamemnon’s speech and affirmed that Calchas, as informant, has alerted us to a feature of Homeric anger that is worth pursuing, let us again look to the same speech, where Agamemnon uses the word khólos, and see if it too supports our informant’s data. Near the end of his speech after the wounding of Menelaus, Agamemnon, with a continued focus on télos, shifts attention to his own situation—what will his kléos look like if the boast (eukhōlḗn, Il. 4.113) is given to the Trojans? Indeed, he imagines quite the opposite of his confident assertion about Zeus’s kótos; he calls to mind a vision of mocking Trojans dancing on Menelaus’s grave:

An observer might well want to interrogate the narrative here by asking a pointed question: Isn’t kótos the anger related to télos? Why does Agamemnon imagine Trojans styling the anger of the leader of the expedition as a khólos that is to be brought to an end by Agamemnon? To follow Calchas’s definition in this regard, I begin by contrasting the first part of Agamemnon’s speech with the second. [17] In the first part, the major emphases are on oaths, deceit, and Zeus’s exercise of retributive power. In the second part, the emphasis shifts to the boast of the victor (eukhōlḗn, Il. 4.113) and to the death of individual warriors (túmbōi … Meneláou, Il. 4.111); further, in the first part, Zeus keeps oaths from being made in vain (hálion, Il. 4.158), but later the text turns to the vanity of the siege itself (hōs kaì nûn hálion stratòn ḗgagen, Il. 4.119). With this structure in mind, we are invited to see the anger of the king, in the words of his disgruntled army, not as the high kótos of the king but rather as the mundane khólos of an enraged leader, so ineffectual that he steers his wrath to only a feeble end frustrating the entire endeavor and costing his brother’s life. [18]

The interpretation of the anger terms in Agamemnon’s speech depends on an understanding of the cultural oppositions as presented by Calchas still earlier {25|26} in the text. Calchas’s earnest speech is highly programmatic: the system of Homeric anger terms that he presents is not to be taken lightly. For, the Iliad is centered on mênis, and the meaning of anger terms not only is highlighted at the outset of the narrative but has also been contrasted during the momentous duel of Menelaus and Paris.

The meaning of kótos in our next passage seems in harmony with the meaning gleaned from the passages already discussed. In fact, echoes of Agamemnon’s words reverberate in Book 5, when Aeneas tries to reassure Pandarus and inspire him to fire at Diomedes, who has only just begun his aristeía. Not only does this scene contain kótos, but it also brings kótos and mênis into close proximity: In encouraging Pandarus to take a shot at the leader of the Achaeans, Aeneas mounts the only possible counterargument against Pandarus’s skill as a bowman, namely, that if Diomedes is a god with kótos, then a bowshot is useless. To paraphrase Calchas, a god in kótos will be so until the télos is reached. Ironically, Aeneas assures Pandarus that he should take a shot at the Achaeans’ leader, not only on the grounds that Pandarus is a superior archer (Il. 5.171-73) but also because no god’s kótos is at issue at Troy. For Aeneas, a god’s kótos seems a remote possibility, and he does not conceive of Diomedes in his battle- fury as a god with either kótos or mênis. While he may be correct to think that kótos is remote, there is a narrative gesture toward the destruction of Troy, which in the view of the Iliad's narrator involves the kótos of a god. [19]

To return to the issue of the future and kótos, a particular focus of Calchas’s definition, I note that at least two other passages explicitly refer to the longevity of kótos. The first example is from the Odyssey: Here, when Hermes warns Calypso, three other anger terms (mênis, khalepaínō, and more elusively, ópis) are also drawn into the semantic mix, [20] but the future occasion of anger is based on the concept of kótos. Thus, Hermes validates Calchas’s special fear of kótos with the aorist participle kotessámenos having a causal force: “because he has come to have anger (kótos), beware lest he take it ill in the future” (the subjunctive khalepḗnēi pointing toward the future). Hermes appears to counsel Calypso not to engage in a grudging or feuding relationship with Zeus. [21] In this case, metópisthe, along with the future orientation of the subjunctive, takes over the duties belonging to the notion of télos.

Kótos also refers to a future potential anger in the only passage where the anger of Achilles is called kótos. Agamemnon claims extravagantly that he is not frightened of Achilles’ kótos; he imagines an extreme case in which the wrath of the Phthian king can be dismissed with a wave of the hand: The power of Agamemnon’s insult here stands out when set beside Calchas’s definition, where kótos is styled both as the anger of a basileús and as the wrath that can be serious trouble in the future. The wrath of a king can involve the entire social body (e.g., the Myrmidons, Il. 1.180), and as his particular anger it can cross space and time to exact its vengeance. Furthermore, the notion of the length of time implies both that kótos endures, and, more important, that it may have as its source something outside the immediate narrative context, projected either back into the distant past or forward into the distant future; here, for example, Agamemnon dismisses a possible kótos from Achilles so as to present an extreme and limiting case, where the anger of grudge, extensive over time, might make the situation extremely volatile so as to be worthy of the worry that Calchas assigned to kótos in Iliad 1.

I am developing a sense of kótos that locates it in a world beyond the immediate narrative context. Agamemnon, for example, styles Zeus’s wrath over the Trojans, the wrath that will mean the death of all Trojans, as kótos, and Aeneas has linked kótos with mênis; finally, Agamemnon imagines Achilles’ kótos in Phthia. To conclude my preliminary observations about kótos, I suggest that this word typically draws attention to something that the narrative thematizes as significant on a large scale, such as the end of the Trojan war, the anger of {27|28} Achilles as king, or the like. This suggestion can be strikingly supported from the next passage, Il. 13.516-17 (quoted below).

By presenting kótos in a battle context, this passage poses a problem with regard to Calchas’s assertion that kótos is opposed to khólos. For this opposition depends in large part on the longevity of kótos and its source outside the events of the primary narrative context. In contrast, khólos can signify battle-fury in particular, so that it need last only the length of a battle or of a war, or for the duration of the emotional state of a warrior subject to khólos. Furthermore, khólos can come as a response to an attack, or conversely it can initiate an attack. Finally, this kind of anger can be kindled by taunts or other speech acts that can lead directly to the violence of battle.

Thus the use of kótos in a battle context should give us pause. For contextual reasons scholars have been tempted to interpret kótos in Il. 13.517 as if it were synonymous with khólos; nevertheless, the passage also gives us the formula emmenès aieí that corroborates the notion that kótos is distinguished by its duration over time. Were kótos indeed so close in meaning to khólos, then the distinction that Calchas drew in Iliad 1 would seem rather less definitive than we thought. [22]

In this passage, Aeneas and Idomeneus are attacking one another; Aeneas launches his spear at Idomeneus, and Idomeneus avoids it (Il. 13.503). Idomeneus in turn hits Oenomaus (Il. 13.506) and kills him, after which he retrieves his spear but is not able to remove the armor of Oenomaus. Then Deiphobus, while Idomeneus barely holds his own in his gradual retreat, takes a shot at him: The first point of note is that khólos never occurs with the phrase emmenès aieí. Second, most scholars have interpreted this passage so that kótos is provoked by the death, earlier in the book, of other warriors, especially that of Asius at Il. 13.387-416. Although it is possible to relate a warrior’s fury to an earlier death in the same book, another interpretation, one rather more compatible with Calchas’s definition and with the sense of emmenès aieí, is readily available. Indeed, kótos occurs in an explanatory gár clause referring to an old legend, one cited later in the scholia. At lines 516-17, the scholiast comments on kótos: Here the source for anger is the rivalry of Helen’s suitors, an interpretation also cited by Eustathius: Unfortunately, our most ancient authority also suggests that those who propose that Helen loved Idomeneus must be wrong, since he was an old man. Eustathius evinces a more sophisticated sense of Helen’s taste in men than does the scholiast. With Eustathius, I take kótos here as referring to this tradition. Thus, when Idomeneus and Deiphobus meet on the battlefield, an old rivalry can flare up, just as in Iliad 6 an old friendship can be rekindled between Glaucus and Diomedes. [23]

Κótos, then, refers to a long-term anger outside the immediate battle’s context, an anger such as that spurred by the ancient rivalry for Helen as bride. Such an anger can be motivated by the strife over Helen, a central source for Iliadic kótos.

Having thus laid the groundwork for Part I by reviewing a few telling passages in the light of Calchas’s definition, I now turn to the formal process of understanding kótos. Following the method I described earlier, I will group the examples in a way that begins with formal regularity at the level of the word and then moves toward larger units. To recapitulate briefly, by proceeding from formal to contextual matters we move from more simple to more complex units, thereby pointing to regularities in form prior to establishing oral-literary features. Thus, in Chapter 2, after a look at grammatical forms, I turn to phraseological patterning and other formal structures. The discussion will continue with a close reading of selected narrative contexts that emerge as significant from the formal observations. These narrative contexts will be chosen especially in order to explore the validity of Calchas’s definition of kótos.{29|30}