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.
Abstracts
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