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- Title
Crowing over Kebriones the Diver: Iliad 16.740-50, Augustan poetry, and traditions of the Troad.
- Authors
Braund, David
- Abstract
In Iliad 16, at a key juncture in the poem, Homer's Patroklos kills Kebriones, Hektor's charioteer, and taunts him in terms of his capacity to dive for poor food at sea. The primary purpose of this paper is to explicate that image. Kebriones is imagined here as a diver at sea, because his name (together with his death-dive from his chariot) evokes the cormorant as it dives in search of food. The argument proceeds in four sections: 1) Homer's verses and Kebriones' forward dive, headlong; 2) 'Kebriones' as the name of a bird, and the charioteer's association with Kebrenia and a tale of metamorphosis into a cormorant there; 3) the associations between cormorants, ships and extended food-gathering, as in Patroklos' taunt; 4) Virgil's adaptation of these ideas (also with some humour) in the story of the 'charioteer' Menoetes and cormorants in the boat race of Aeneid 5, which seems to confirm his understanding of Homer's imagery and reveal the poet at work.
- Subjects
HOMER, fl. ca. 900 B.C.-ca. 801 B.C.; LATIN poetry; ILIAD of Homer; VIRGIL, 70 B.C.-19 B.C.; CORMORANTS; YACHT racing; SEAFOOD; METAMORPHOSIS
- Publication
Hermathena, 2015, Issue 199, p5
- ISSN
0018-0750
- Publication type
Article