Threatening, Abusing and Feeling Angry in the Homeric Poems

Abstract

At other times and in other places I have tried to show, by means of a study of the manner in which Homer uses words, the nature of the Homeric field of values. I have also tried to show the effect of that field of values on the concepts of punishment, honour and friendship. In this paper I wish to develop the enquiry in a rather different direction, but using the same tools and method of approach. I shall begin by discussing some peculiarities of behaviour of certain Homeric words, leave, at first, the questions I shall ask hanging in the air, and then attempt at the end to show how these peculiarities fit together into a pattern, a pattern imposed (or encouraged) by Homeric values and the structure of Homeric society.I begin with the word νεικείειν. LSJ renders this as ‘quarrel, wrangle with’ or transitively ‘chide, rail at, upbraid’, Ebeling, Lexicon Homericum, as increpo. Ebeling's rendering I find unhelpful, since I am as unsure of the implications of increpo as of νεικείειν. I understand the words LSJ uses, but (as presumably we all do) regard wrangling with someone as a different activity from chiding or rebuking him, and each as distinguishable from railing at him. What induced Homer to use the same word in Greek was presumably that he saw a resemblance between these activities stronger than their differences: at all events, the likelihood that this was the reason is strong enough to make it worth while to look for the resemblances by studying some examples of the usage of νειείειν.