Content area
Full Text
This paper explores a repeated phenomenon in Homer and Sanskrit literature in which a narrative is copied and outfitted with modifications in order to create a new story with a different tone and outcome. After a discussion of the mechanisms of this technique and the advantages it presents to oral poets, a number of such tales are examined below. The paper then evaluates the motif structure of the Homeric Laestrygonia in comparison to that of the Phaiakis, and finds that on a structural level the Laestrygonia is likely a copy of the Phaiakis, albeit with a much darker ending.
(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)
The Laestrygonia vies with the mis-conducted sacrifice on Thrinacia as the most neglected critical event in the Odyssey. In spite of its dread consequence, it has somehow had little success at firing either the popular or scholarly imagination. Popular versions of the epic often leave the pitiless monsters out entirely, and the average non-classicist adult who claims some knowledge of Homer will frequently look blank upon being questioned about the events at Lamos. In the scholarly world, commentaries treat the episode,1 but few other sources do: searching for the Laestrygones (under any spelling variant) in scholarly archives yields a few one-line mentions and exactly one full article, Frangoulidis 1993 ... which is actually about Thucydides' reference to the man-eating giants. Searching for the name "Iphthime" brings a plethora of references to Athena's impersonation of Penelope's sister, but only one or two (and those glancing) to the young woman who directs Odysseus's scouting party to their doom.
In such attention as it has been given, the Laestrygonia has traditionally been viewed as a sort of weak-sister doublet of the Cyclopeia.2 There are well-recognized crucial differences between the two societies (e.g. the Laestrygones' political organization, their urban lifestyle, and the differing ways the two episodes utilize violations of the rites of hospitality), and there is no programmatic similarity in the construction of the narratives, so this traditional association is supported only by the following short list of shared features:
1) Both are described as ... (Od. 9.106/ Od. 6.274) (though the term is applied to the Cyclops elsewhere than within the episode itself).
2) Mountain similes (Od. 9.190/ Od. 10.112-113).
3)...