Tag: the iliad

paratactician:

terpsikeraunos:

anyway this came up before but for those just tuning in i for one am still not over how lattimore translated οὐλομένη as “sluttish” when it refers to clytemnestra.

it means “accursed” or “destructive” and it’s the same word that famously describes the wrath of achilles in the second line of the iliad

but no, he didn’t think “oh cool, the ghost of agamemnon in the odyssey describes his murder at clytemnestra’s hands as if she were as destructive as achilles’ wrath! let’s make that clear to the reader by using the same word!”– on the contrary, he apparently thought “the murderer is a woman, so there’s only one option here, she’s a slut.”

shame him.

The last time I saw this on my dash it was someone having fun with Achilles’ ‘sluttish wrath’, which I enjoyed, as I have occasionally regretted some of Lattimore’s word choices myself. But this is unfair. Whatever was going through Lattimore’s head when he chose the word ‘sluttish’ here, I’m fairly confident it wasn’t ‘oh, she’s a bad woman, she must be a slut’.

Homer uses οὐλόμενος fourteen times, four in the Iliad and ten in the Odyssey. It describes Achilles’ wrath (I.2), Athene (V.876), Agamemnon (XIV.84), Ate (XIX.92), Clytaemestra (iv.92, xi.410, xxiv.97), Circe’s pig drug (x.394), the armour of Achilles (xi.555), hunger (xv.344, xvii.287, xvii.474), Antinous (xvii.484), and Penelope’s impending marriage to one of the suitors (xviii.273). It’s from the verb ὄλλυμαι ‘die, perish’, which was used in Greek as an insult: ὄλοιο ‘may you die’ is probably the single closest Greek equivalent to our ‘fuck you’, as a catch-all thing to say when you’re angry at someone. So 

οὐλόμενος basically means ‘something swearable-at’, ‘something it’s worth saying ὄλοιο to’. This is why it’s often rendered as ‘accursed’ in polite English; I’d argue that a solid rule-of-thumb equivalent is actually ‘fucking’, used as an adjective.

οὐλόμενος in Homer is always spat. When it’s used of Achilles’ wrath, it’s not a term of respect or awe: mighty Achilles’ all-powerful rage! It’s Achilles’ fucking temper, that great disastrous liability that caused thousands of unnecessary deaths. Ares refers to Athene as οὐλομένη just after she gets Diomedes to stab him in Iliad V: that’s not ‘powerful Athene who has conquered me’, it’s ‘fucking Athene!!’. Odysseus is so furious with Agamemnon in XIV that he calls him οὐλόμενος to his face, which is politely turned into ‘accursed fellow!’ but should of course be ‘you fucking idiot!’.

When Agamemnon and Menelaus refer to Clytaemestra as οὐλομένη, they are absolutely not calling her powerful, destructive, ‘strong’. They’re swearing. So why ‘sluttish’, rather than some more gender-neutral term?

Well, Lattimore was clearly alive to the possibility, because when Menelaus calls her οὐλομένη in IV, it’s translated as ‘cursed’. Only Agamemnon calls her ‘sluttish’, and that’s in the Underworld when he’s comparing his homecoming (murdered by his deceitful wife) with the much better homecoming that awaits Odysseus (welcomed by his brave and faithful wife). Lattimore made the calculation, I think, that Agamemnon – a nasty piece of work throughout the Iliad, and arguably that poem’s most genuinely misogynistic character in a not-terribly-inspiring line-up – is exactly the kind of man who would bitterly characterise his wife as a slut for sleeping with somebody else. It’s an unpleasant thing to say, from an unpleasant person. When the much nicer Menelaus talks about the woman who murdered his brother, of course he calls her cursed, because what would you call someone who murdered your brother? ‘Sluttish’ is Lattimore very carefully bringing out the misogyny and pettiness so fundamental to Agamemnon’s character, making sure that even in the Underworld we can’t forget what a dick he is – and perhaps even implying that he’s more upset Clytaemestra cheated on him than that she stabbed him to death. In a more modern translation, ‘that bitch Clytaemestra’ would have a similar effect. It reminds us why Agamemnon had it coming.