The Cosmic Myths of Homer and Hesiod

Eric A. Havelock
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HOMER’S COSMIC IMAGERY
Embedded in the narratives of the Homeric poems are a few passages which open windows on the ways in which the Homeric poet envisioned the cosmos around him. They occur as brief digressions, offering powerful but by no means consistent images, intruding into the narrative and then vanishing from it, but always prompted by some suitable context.
A. Iliad 5.748-52 and 768-69
The Greeks in battle being pressed hard by the Trojans, assisted by the god Ares; the goddesses Hera and Athene decide to equalize the
encounter by descending from Olympus to help the Greeks. A servant assembles the components of Hera’s chariot: body, wheels, spokes, axle, felloe, tires, naves, platform, rails, pole, yoke are all itemized in sequence, comprising a formulaic account of a mechanical operation:

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