『일리아스』에서의 로베(λώβη):‘영웅적 분노’의 양면성

Abstract

λώβη is a term regularly employed in the significant scenes of Homeric epic. This word possesses both the semantic specificity and the emotional intensity which are unrivaled in Homeric vocabulary. Although λώβη is, like ἀτιμᾶν, a term that connotes the loss of τιμή, this term secures its own conspicuousness since its usages are strictly confined to indicating actions that play a decisive role in the narrative both of the Iliad and the Odyssey. When someone defines a certain action as λώβη, it indicates that he takes it as a serious offense against his own τιμή. In other words, the term λώβη, unlikely ἀτιμᾶν, reflects the anger of those who refer to this term, and the intensity of their anger is signified by destructive consequences ensuing from λώβη. The events that have enormous importance, such as Paris’ abduction of Helen, Agamemnon’s deprivation of Briseis, Hector’s murder of Patroclus, and the Suitors’ outrageous violence towards Odysseus are labeled as λώβη, and the gory revenges incurred by the rage of the injured parties function as impetus for the narrative of the two Homeric poems. The bestiality those massacres generate in the Iliad, however, can be appreciated from a different perspective when viewed in the light of the cosmogenic history related in the Theogony, since it is through the divine conflict triggered by Gaia’s mention of λώβη that Zeus comes to acquire his absolute authority and thereby establish the permanent cosmic order. This ambivalence of ‘heroic anger’ is recurrently suggested by the poet throughout the Iliad: whenever the audience shudders at the abhorrence of the retaliations caused by ‘heroic anger’, the poet neutralizes such abhorrence by conferring divine implications on the excessive brutality by means of various allusions. Likewise, whenever the audience begins to be fascinated by the cosmic scale bestowed on ‘heroic anger’, the poet, in turn, evokes the bestiality of the vengeance ensuing from such ‘heroic anger’ by vividly delivering the grief and sorrow consequent on it. The depth and the dimension of ‘heroic anger’ in the Iliad reach culmination in the irony of heroic anger, and this irony is most effectively implied by the term λώβη.