Wandering Musicians: Cross-Cultural Education in the Age of the Homeric Bard

• In Event: Women and War in Ancient Poetry

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between music and foreignness in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. It argues that music (or the lack thereof) functions as an important indicator of cultural or ethnic identity, providing insight into the character of the diverse peoples encountered in the Homeric epics. Homer’s portrayals of music serve more than an ethnographic purpose, however. Once we understand each community as a living representation of a musical pattern—from the simplest to the most complex polyphony—it becomes clearer which forms of cross-cultural engagement lead to discord and which to harmony. It further becomes clear that the Homeric bard himself plays a crucial role in helping to bring about harmony in the world by acting, insofar as possible, as an intermediary between mortals and the divine. The musician, the quintessential traveler, acts, in short, as a vessel through which the Muses try to bring their gift of harmony to the world. In this way, the Homeric bard plays the role of cross-cultural educator, shaping not only the archaic Greeks’ image of themselves and of distant, unencountered cultures, but also their vision of political interaction in an age of exploration.

Author

• Rebecca LeMoine, Florida Atlantic University