Phemius is spared, whereas the earlier direct appeal of the priest Leodes to Odysseus
goes unheeded and he is cut down with the rest.
In Homeric society the roles of poet and priest, so often confused in earlier
societies, are thoroughly distinct. It is worth noting too that while the apparently
typical Homeric man is not irreligious, most of the practices such as sacrifices and
funerals that are presided over by priests in other societies are conducted by the
heroes themselves. The custodian confirming the identity, commemorating the values
and transmitting the ideals of Homeric culture from generation to generation is not,
as in Egyptian society, the priest, but is the bard like Phemius and Demodocus who
sang, as Achilles sings in his tent at Iliad 10, 189, of the klea andron (‘the great deeds
of famous men’). The old tag that Homer was the Bible of the Greeks serves to remind
us that while the Homeric poems were indeed accorded the special status in Greek
culture and education that the Bible has often had in the Judaeo-Christian world, the
Hellenic spirit is as different from the Hebraic recorded in the Bible as it is from
the Egyptian, whose conservative priestly caste has left no great texts. Unlike the
prophets of the Old Testament, Homer is the reverse of otherworldly; he celebrates
the vibrancy of the human spirit in the here and now, manifested in the godlike actions
of his heroes.
The Homeric bard, of course, is not merely the conduit through which culture is
transmitted, for he himself, like Demodocus and Phemius who are ‘inspired by the
god’, is the creative agent who transmutes the raw material of the world around him
into art. The fullest and most dynamic portrait of the artist in Homer is of the artist
as god himself when we see the divine artificer Hephaestus in the Iliad forging the
shield of Achilles and recreating on it the whole Homeric world, beginning with the
sun, the moon and the constellations, and ending with the Ocean stream, which just
as it encircles the world in Homer, encircles the rim of the divine artefact.
Homer gives us a vivid impression of the shield’s manufacture, as the god
vigorously sets about his task. The divine craftsmanship of the plastic artist finds its
counterpart in the poetic energy with which Homer invests his descriptions of the
scenes on the shield. In these, there is so much activity and movement that rationalis-
tic critics have been offended because the descriptions no longer accurately represent
what is a static object. But Homer is not interested in accurate representation, in
verisimilitude, but in lively representation. The art of Homer is not to give us finished
pictures but pictures in the making, always moving and full of energy.
The god first creates two beautiful cities. The first is a city at peace in which
weddings are celebrated with music, singing, feasting and dancing. In the market
assembly of the people two litigants disputing claims of compensation for a homicide
put their case before a tribunal of elders who give judgement and expound the law
In contrast to this picture of peaceful activity and the rule of law is the second city,
which is in a state of siege. There is an ambush and a bloody battle. Five agricultural
28 THE GREEKS