『일리아스』 속의 개작(改作)된 신화들과 그 기능들에 관한 연구

Abstract

The Iliad, claimed by our standard classical authorities, is an epic poem of heroic war. They share the notion that the pathos of the ruthless warriors as in Book 18. 529 cutting down the innocent pastoral world and killing shepherds playing happily on pipe is quintessentially Homeric. They imply that the unwarlike tone of the similes, the shield of Achilleus, and the remade myths in Iliad are foreign and somehow inessential. So they doubt that subsequent poetical tradition has allowed these occasional flashes of humanity to illuminate the severe architecture of the heroic soul. What they meant was that the "heroic soul" is what the Iliad is really all about and the "heroic soul" is free from all contaminations of humanity(Taplin 13). These classical authorities see anything that is not really 'heroic' and does not glorify war as the additions of the subsequent ἀοιδόι and detachable. This study is focused on searching for and the aspects of “the additions of the subsequent ἀοιδόι” and “the detachable.” What I mean “the subsequent and the detachable” is: remade myths, i.e. the legend of unauthentic union of Hera, Poseidon, and Athene in Book 1, Meleagros legend in Book 9, and Niobe story in Book 24, for example, which ἀοιδόι had added to the original for the amusement of the hearers. The functions of these remade myths have also been widely researched. It has been understood that epic poems were the work of men known as ἀοιδόι, (singers, minstrels, bards) a term that refers to performance, not creation. The singers portrayed in the Homeric epics are not represented as creating poems but reproducing songs that they knew about the deeds of men and gods(West 365). But I assume that the myths remade in the Iliad were not wholly represented but invented partly by ἀοιδόι with special purposes. Remade myths are introduced for exhortation or consolation, in other words, for a fortiori encouragement, i.e., ‘You must do this, because X, who was in more or less the same situation as you, and a more significant person, did it(Willcock 142).’ For that function, myths were remade intentionally by ἀοιδόι and they are suspiciously close to the present circumstances. But this function is not all these remade myths are for. With these remade myths, there arose various discourses concerning several important themes of Iliad. For examples, the myth of the union of Hera, Athene, and Poseidon, which Achilleus told his mother for asking his mother to go to Olympus and persuade Zeus to honour him by helping the Trojans, led the hearers to the subconsciousness of Achilleus. The remade myth of Meleagros made the hearers think of the un-reconcilable heroic ethics and heroic duties. Finally, the invented Niobe story has caused the most varied and imaginative explanations. It inevitably led the hearers to witness the greatest metamorphosis in Ilias. Achilleus as a beast had been transfigured into a real hero through the invented story of Niobe.