The Mocking Homer of the Exegetical Scholia to the Iliad

Abstract

In contrast to a view that mockery was alien to epic propriety, the exegetical
scholia see Homer in the Iliad as ridiculing and criticizing several of his characters. In
doing so they relate Homer to the genre of comedy in a way that uses but goes beyond
Aristotelian ideas. The distribution of relevant third-person verbs shows two notable
patterns, which suggest that the compiler of the exegetical scholia imposed greater
consistency than is usually assumed: certain stems are ascribed freely to characters but
are ‘off-limits’ for Homer; others are ascribed to Homer but with the constraint that he
almost never ridicules or criticises Greek characters. The scholiasts deploy such claims
notably against Hector and at moments of Trojan success to force through their view
that Homer is pro-Greek. This may suggest how tendentiously the epic was read in the
schoolrooms of late antiquity.