Prescribed Homer: Separating Quarrel, Plague and Divine Agency in Iliad 1
Revision session on a prescribed Homeric passage. You are asked to comment on Iliad 1.8–12, printed with a facing vocabulary. The Greek is: τίς τ' ἄρ σφωε θεῶν ἔριδι ξυνέηκε μάχεσθαι; / Λητοῦς καὶ Διὸς υἱός· ὃ γὰρ βασιλῆϊ χολωθεὶς / νοῦσον ἀνὰ στρατὸν ὄρσε κακήν, ὀλέκοντο δὲ λαοί, / οὕνεκα τὸν Χρύσην ἠτίμασεν ἀρητῆρα / Ἀτρεΐδης. A classmate's notes say: 'Apollo made them fight because Agamemnon dishonoured Chryses.' The teacher asks you to distinguish the quarrel from the plague and to show how the Greek signals the causal chain. You have 10 minutes and must produce three short points, each anchored in a Greek word or construction. You may not use an English translation; the point is comprehension of the Greek, not a polished rendering.
1. Who is the subject of ξυνέηκε and who is the subject of ὄρσε? Explain how the cases and the relative pronoun help you decide.
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ξυνέηκε is governed by τίς τ' ἄρ ... θεῶν: 'who of the gods brought them together ...?' The answer is given in the next line, Λητοῦς καὶ Διὸς υἱός, 'the son of Leto and Zeus', i.e. Apollo. ὄρσε has as its subject the relative pronoun ὃ (nominative masculine singular), whose antecedent is Apollo; the participle χολωθείς is also nominative and agrees with ὃ, so 'he, having become angry, roused the plague'. βασιλῆϊ is dative, the object of χολωθείς: angry 'at the king' (Agamemnon). The dual σφωε in the first line means 'the two of them', i.e. Achilles and Agamemnon, so the question is who set those two at each other. The cases alone do not give the name; the relative clause and the apposition do.
2. A classmate's sentence collapses the plague and the quarrel. Using οὕνεκα, ἠτίμασεν, and νοῦσον ... ὄρσε, set out the causal chain in three steps, and say which step is the immediate cause of the quarrel and which is the immediate cause of the plague.
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Step 1: Agamemnon dishonoured Chryses the priest - ἠτίμασεν is aorist, a single act, and οὕνεκα introduces the reason for Apollo's anger. Step 2: Apollo, angry at the king (χολωθείς + βασιλῆϊ), rouses a plague through the army - νοῦσον ... ὄρσε κακήν - and the army dies (ὀλέκοντο δὲ λαοί). Step 3: the plague creates the crisis in which the Achaeans, and especially Achilles and Agamemnon, fall into strife; the proem's first question says Apollo set the two of them to fight in strife (ἔριδι ... μάχεσθαι). So the immediate cause of the plague is Apollo's anger at the dishonour to Chryses; the immediate cause of the quarrel is the plague and the resulting dispute over how to respond. The classmate's sentence makes the dishonour directly cause the quarrel and omits the plague as the mechanism.
3. Why might a translator render ἔριδι ξυνέηκε μάχεσθαι as 'set them at each other's throats' rather than 'made them fight'? What is gained and what is lost?
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ξυνέηκε is literally 'brought together' (συν-), and ἔριδι is dative of manner or cause, 'in strife'; μάχεσθαι is the infinitive complement. The phrase therefore has an ironic edge: the god 'brings together' two men in order to make them fight. 'Set them at each other's throats' captures that ironic joining and the reciprocal hostility, and it reads as vivid English. But it adds an idiom not present in Greek and may overstate the mutual, physical violence; 'made them fight' is flatter but safer. A good translation decision depends on the register the mark scheme expects: if the passage is being translated for accuracy, keep 'brought them together in strife to fight'; if the task is literary, a controlled idiom may be defensible provided you can explain what it adds.