EARLY GREECE: HOMER AND HESIOD 21ninth year of the siege of Troy selecting only those particulars that relate to his central
theme, which has a clear beginning in the quarrel scene, a middle, in all the conse-
quences that flow from it, and an end in the resolution of the anger. The clear chain
of cause and effect in the main action has all the requirements of the classically well-
made plot that Aristotle made famous in the Poetics.Of course this plot is diversified,
extended and enriched by many episodes and digressions, but they do not take us to
places far away from the plain of Troy or extend the temporal framework within
which the main action takes place. In the final analysis they are subordinate to the
main action of the irreducible plot.
Within his concentrated action, which takes place within a period of a few days,
Homer has nevertheless skilfully interwoven the whole Trojan story. When the scene
changes from the Greek camp to the Trojan city in Book Three, the action involving
Paris, Helen and Menelaus and the presence of Aphrodite the goddess of love puts
before us the protagonists of the original quarrel and indirectly recounts the causes
of the war. The second scene in Troy in Book Six where Hector says farewell to
Andromache and to his son Astyanax is full of foreboding and looks ominously to the
future. The future doom of Troy features predominantly in further forebodings and
prophecies and in the pronouncements of the gods, so that the main action is seen
to be part of a much larger design involving the whole Trojan War.
From the concentration and unity of a clear and simple design stems the
universality for which Greek art has always been famous. For the main plot of the
Iliadgives us a pattern of behaviour that in its causes and effects represents a probable
if not inevitable sequence. Underneath all that is particular and individual, the anger
is typical in its causes and consequences, and it is Homer’s method or art that enables
us to see this. Homer the artist has therefore accomplished in his poetry all that
Aristotle the philosopher and critic held to be the end of art; he has imposed form
and order on the undifferentiated matter and random chaos of life, thus enabling us
to see through the particular to the universal. This imposition of form is not therefore
simply an aesthetic matter. It is the means whereby the poet clarifies and communi-
cates moral truth about the human world he is representing in his poem.
TheOdyssey
Aristotle remarks that while the Iliadhas a simple plot that involves emotion and
calamity, the Odysseyis complex and revolves upon character (Poetics, 24). It is on
the character of Odysseus that the action principally turns. The essence of his
characterization is simple and clear, and is indicated in the various epithets given to
him. In the opening line of the poem he is said to be polytropos,variously translated
as the man of many ways, many turns or many parts. He is also polymetisand