Natasha BERSHADSKY
Death of Kebriones: Diving Birds, Mockery and Local Tradition


The purpose of this paper is to elucidate peculiarities of imagery appearing in the description of death of Hector's charioteer, Kebriones.

Kebriones is killed at the very end of Patroklos' aristeia. Patroklos hurls a stone, smashing Kebriones' head, so that Kebriones falls from the chariot "like a diver" (Il. 16.742). It was long observed that the comparison of Kebriones' fall with a diver's leap is rather awkward. The same simile describes a fall of a killed warrior from a high wall in Il.12.385, where the comparison with a diver seems to be warranted by the great height of the fall. The use of the simile in the case of Kebriones' fall from a low chariot was judged to be an inapt application of a formulaic expression. Despite its apparent awkwardness, the diver simile receives great emphasis, being developed by Patroklos, who comments on Kebriones' diving skills:

... I think if he were in the teeming deep, this man would satisfy many by seeking for oysters, leaping from his ship even if the sea were stormy… (Il. 16.745-749)

The rhetoric of Patroklos' taunt was repeatedly analyzed, receiving numerous, sometimes polar, interpretations. No agreement exists about the precise working of the mockery: The present paper attempts to understand the choice of the imagery using extra-Homeric sources. The starting point is the recognition of the traditional nature of Homeric similes, their deep-rooted connection to the narrative context. If the immediate setting of the simile does not endorse the comparison with a diver, which factors still do make it particularly appropriate in the case of Kebriones' death?

An intriguing suggestion comes from a circumstantial remark in Aristophanes' Birds. We find that the name of Kebriones was at some point connected with a name of a water bird. Further examination of attestations of closely related names reveals the following mythical pattern preserved in several sources (Apollodorus Lib. 3.12.5, Scholia on Lycophron 224, Ovid Metam. 11.750-795). Aisakos, a son of Priam, becomes a husband &endash; or tries to woo - a daughter of river Kebren, and upon her death he is transformed into a bird. In Ovid's story &endash; the most detailed of our accounts &endash; the bird moreover is said to be mergus &endash; a diver (Metam.11.753, 795).

Aisakos' transformation into a diving bird strikingly parallels the simile of sea plunging describing the death of Kebriones. The presence of a common root in the names Kebren and Kebriones (very rarely attested elsewhere) is significant. Further, Aisakos is, like Kebriones, a bastard son of Priam. The two stories seem to be modifications of the same underlying theme.

We cannot restore the myth connecting Kebriones with a diving bird; however one can conjecture that its existence would have been likely. I would propose that Patroklos' taunt draws on the existence of such local tradition in the Troad. Local elements of ritual and myth are ironically transformed into a simile by the epic.

Certain details of Kebriones' death and the following description of the fight over his body prefigure deaths of Hector, Patroklos and Achilles. Kebriones indeed achieves glory &endash; but only as long as he substitutes for greater heroes. The grandeur of the pan-Hellenic epic is pitted against the mocked insignificance of the local tradition in the taunt of Patroklos.


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