“Let Me Tell You an Ancient Deed of the Distant Past”: The Epic Hero as a ‘Historian’

This chapter discusses some passages of the Iliad where internal narrators (Agamemnon in Book 4, telling of Tydeus’ heroic deeds; Phoenix in Book 9, recounting to Achilles the story of Meleager; Nestor in Book 11, remembering the glorious deeds he accomplished in his youth) open a window on the heroes of the past generations. By inserting these narrations in his poem, the poet of the Iliad leads his audience to perceive that the heroic myth has a ‘vertical’ dimension: the warriors who fight around the walls of Troy belong to the generation of the ‘children’, but before them there were the generation of the ‘fathers’ and the generation of the ‘grandfathers’. This chronological articulation makes the mythical account sound more credible, because it makes it appear more similar to the historical narration of real deeds.