Homer’s writing reveals a sensitivity to the human capacity to invent discourse and to compose or weave such language for effect. The modalities of this human capacity are present in two types of discourse, eristic and protreptic. The Homeric notion of eristic discourse is taken to be more than the mere symbolization of thought and sentiment but rather the inherent power of the language itself. Eris or strife is a personification and can be god-induced (Iliad 4.440; Iliad 5.518, 740; Iliad 11.3, 73; Iliad 18.535; Iliad 20.48; Odyssey 3.136, 16l). It can also come into being as a result of discord or disagreement, particularly when induced by wine (Iliad 20.55, Odyssey 6.92, 3.136, 20.267, 19.11). It is the human power to create strife through discourse that is particularly revealing here because Homer conjoins the notion of eristics with wrangling. The association of “strife and wrangling” occurs so frequently in Homer that it can almost be classified as formulaic (Iliad 2.376; Odyssey 20.267). According to Ben Edwin Perry, the frequency of such coordinating notions is not only characteristic of Homeric language but is a paratactic structure encouraging the “spontaneous absorption” of notions through a “strung-along style” (4l0–418, especially 412).
The relationship of “strife and wrangling” is important to understand. Homer often combined strife and wrangling. On some occasions, strife provoked wrangling, while in other instances, the opposite happened. Yet, just as Greeks later bonded concepts of the true and the beautiful together, so also did Homer equate strife and wrangling. This coexistence of strife and wrangling forged a unity of reciprocal relationships. Strife, particularly when mixed with wine, induced wrangling, but wrangling also produced strife, as when Athena characterizes taunting words as a “reproachful attack,” or when the suitors are told to “restrain your spirit from rebuke and blows, so that no strife or wrangling may appear”—and they all “bit their lips “(Iliad 1.210–211; Odyssey 20.266–268). In such moments of passion “winged words” are sent to the gods so that no violence can be caused when one is “burning on fire” with rage (Iliad 21.359–361, 368; see also, Odyssey 2.269). For Homer, the concept of wrangling holds no great esteem; in fact, his clearest view of the term is when he has Aeneas say, “to forcibly quarrel with strife and wrangling between us” is “like women who engage in bitter wrangling” (Iliad 20.251–255). While such lowly prattle has no place in a Homeric man’s world, it is clear that manly argument rarely occurs in a climate of quiet, dispassionate reason. In fact, Telemachus tells his own mother the queen that, despite her well-reasoned views, it is not her function but his—and that of men in general—to be the spokesperson of the home (Odyssey 1.356–359).
For Homer, the eristic power of language is bonded with emotion and the possibility of violence. The clearest association with “strife and wrangling” is that violent thoughts lead to violent words and, eventually, violent deeds. Individuals are often told to curb their violent words so that strife and wrangling do not lead to blows (Iliad 1.210; Odyssey 19.11; Odyssey 18.13; Odyssey 20.266–267). Conversely, strife would continue if not for the power of words to thwart it as when Homer writes that “strife would have [protreptically] gone forward . . . had not Achilles spoken” (Iliad 23.490–491). In brief, man has the power to generate strife though discourse, as do gods. Man has the power to resolve strife through discourse, as do gods, and man, like the gods, has the capacity to generate discourse which will create and mitigate violent words and create and mitigate violent acts of “strife and wrangling.” Words can sting or be sweet and their power is often seen in terms of emotive and sensory responses, as when Odysseus says, “your speech has bit my heart” (Iliad 1.247–249; see also Odyssey 8.183–185). To this point we can see that Homeric characters had some concept of an inventional capacity to generate discourse but that this self-consciousness of their “heuristic” capacity produced discourse that was eristic, or emotive-based as well as emotive-directed, by arousing some sort of attitudinal disposition. Odysseus frequently mentions that an individual could or could not “persuade the heart within my breast” (Odyssey 9.33).
Yet, discourse can have the capacity to check a “strong-hearted spirit” and induce “kindliness” (Iliad 9.255–256). Words can have the capacity to “turn” or direct human thought (Odyssey 11.18; 12.381) in a way approaching rationalism rather than in strictly sensual terms, which leads to the Homeric notion of protreptic (instructionally directive) discourse. We know that when rhetoric was established as a formal discipline it not only gave treatment to ethos and pathos but also to logos, the rational capacity to persuade other minds (Aristotle, Rhetorica 1356a). Certainly, any position which argues for an emerging notion of rhetoric must inquire into the human capacity to structure discourse toward the “reasonable.” There is, in fact, evidence to indicate that notions of reasonable discourse are to be found in Homer.
As indicated earlier, Plato strongly opposed Sophists who practiced eristic discourse but would not engage in the rational didactic techniques of protreptic discourse (Euthydemus 288B–D, 272B–C, 289E, 290A, 278C, D). We know from Pucci, that Hesiod had discussed the concept of false and true discourse, which he called respectively “crooked” and “straight” (45–49). Homer also has a directional concept of protreptic discourse and refers to yielding or betaking oneself willingly to do something (Iliad 5.700; Iliad 6.336). Moreover, there is present in Homer the notion of a human capacity to generate “gentle” words to soothe the mind. Perhaps the most sensitive illustration of this phenomenon of protreptic discourse occurs in the Iliad when Alexander says “I had a desire to direct my [thought] to sadness. And even now my wife sought to persuade me with gentle words” (Iliad 6.336–38). By our present standards it is somewhat ironic that women, who are seen here as having nothing whatsoever to do with the real power of discourse beyond “wrangling,” are used to illustrate a capacity for rationality in time of stress!
Although the human heuristic capacity to discover discourse is evident in Homer as well as the potential to manufacture powerful eristic and reasonable protreptic discourse, it should not be forgotten that these are emerging, and even primitive, notions of discourse. To appreciate this perspective, we should reflect on the ability to produce genuine eloquence. There is little doubt that in Homer, eloquence is god-produced and god-given. As is evidenced in Hesiod’s account of Pandora, Zeus gave, and later took away, divine speech (Erga 90–105; see also Solmsen, “Gift”). Yet, to say that Zeus completely took away divine speech would be imprecise and not account for Hesiod’s statement that both he and Homer knew “a few” divine words (Theogenia 837; Pucci 91). Despite man’s limitations to struggle with the development of his own techne, there is evidence of what E. R. Dodds calls “psychic intervention” (5). Individuals who are eloquent are seen as having a gift from the gods and are considered to be “god-like” (Homer, Odyssey 8.165–185).
This divine gift from the gods is reserved for two categories of humans. The first group is royal or god-descended and god-blessed. Nestor, the King of Pylos, is the model of eloquence in Homer (Iliad 1.247–249). Yet, Odysseus, the King of Ithaka, is viewed not only as wily but eloquent, as is indicated in the Iliad when Homer says, “But when he [Odysseus] put forth his great voice from his breast, as like a snow storm in the winter, then indeed could no mortal man quarrel with Odysseus and then indeed did we wonder to behold his image” (Iliad 3.221–224). Lastly, the “hero” of the Iliad, Achilles, is not only god-born but has been raised in a kingly fashion so that he can be “a rhetor of speech and a doer of deeds” (Iliad 9.443). Of great importance here is the use of the term rhetor, for it is the earliest and only known instance in which Homer used the term throughout the entire Iliad and Odyssey. It is a provocative point to historians of rhetoric that this earliest notion of the term which would