The Spell of Hypnos

Sleep and Sleeplessness in Ancient Greek Literature

Silvia Montiglio

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780857739834
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Ancient & Classical Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Sleep was viewed as a boon by the ancient Greeks: sweet, soft, honeyed, balmy, care-loosening, as the Iliad has it. But neither was sleep straightforward, nor safe. It could be interrupted, often by a dream. It could be the site of dramatic intervention by a god or goddess. It might mark the transition in a narrative relationship, as when Penelope for the first time in weeks slumbers happily through Odysseus' vengeful slaughter of her suitors. Silvia Montiglio's imaginative and comprehensive study of the topic illuminates the various ways in which writers in antiquity used sleep to deal with major aspects of plot and character development. The author shows that sleeplessness, too, carries great weight in classical literature. Doom hangs by a thread as Agamemnon - in Iphigenia in Aulis - paces, restless and sleepless, while around him everyone else dozes on. Exploring recurring tropes of somnolence and wakefulness in the Iliad, the Odyssey, Athenian drama, the Argonautica and ancient novels by Xenophon, Chariton, Heliodorus and Achilles Tatius, this is a unique contribution to better understandings of ancient Greek writing.

CHAPTER 1

THE ILIAD

Sleep denied, sleep disturbed

‘What is more gentle than a wind in summer?/ […] What, but thee Sleep?’ (Keats, Sleep and Poetry). The widely shared sentiment expressed in these verses finds a voice already in Homeric epic, which almost always describes sleep as a sweet, soft state.¹ It is one of life's joys, alongside love, song and dance (Il. 13. 636). Pleasantness is its formulaic quality. It does not apply selectively as in the Old Testament, where slumber is sweet only when produced under certain circumstances, for instance a hope-filled revelation or a life of wisdom.² Homer calls sleep kind regardless of whom it holds, regardless even of its appropriateness or effects.

In the Iliad, however, sleep's formulaic sweetness is either in the words of the primary narrator or of an agent other than the sleeper:³ never of the sleeper himself. The heroes of this epic do not even talk about their slumber, whether pleasant or not. While characters in the Odyssey often pause to describe the length, quality and aftermath of theirs, no one in the Iliad ever mentions one's own. This absence is consonant with the sleep-depriving urgency that pervades the action. The exhausted, shipwrecked Odysseus is allowed to sleep a ‘boundless’ slumber, which lasts well into the day (Od. 7. 286–8), but warring Agamemnon must remember that a leader should not even sleep all night (Il. 2. 24 and 61). Prolonged rest is an indulgence for ‘Iliadic managers’.⁴ No individual hero is said to sleep all night long, a luxury afforded only to the community at large and to the gods, and even in these cases descriptions of unbroken slumber serve only to provide a foil for scenes of wakefulness.⁵ Other references to hosts asleep point to the threat looming over them,⁶ while mentions of sleeping individuals tend to privilege those who are about to rise.⁷ Characters are abruptly shaken out of their sweet slumber, by a dream, a noise, a god or another warrior. No hero is said to awake naturally. In contrast, many a character in the Odyssey gets up with the sun: ‘When early-born, rosy-fingered dawn appeared, [he] rose from his bed’.⁸

True, the day of the Iliadic warrior ideally follows an orderly course. Fighting begins at dawn and should end at dusk. This ideal is captured in the phrase, ‘Let us obey the night’.⁹ But in fact warriors do fight after dark, and they also hold nocturnal gatherings at critical junctures. In the Odyssey, Nestor remembers the last assembly before leaving Troy, when strife over the route for the return journey divided the Achaeans into two camps. The assembly started at sundown. Nestor sees this fact, along with the conduct of the warriors, as foreshadowing the strife that unfolded; as he says, they gathered ‘recklessly, not in order, near sunset’, and drunk (3. 138). This negative picture of an assembly held in the evening hours highlights Nestor's etiquette-driven vision of the events at Troy, which he can maintain now that the war is over and there is no need to summon assemblies after dark.¹⁰ But in the Iliad such gatherings happen regularly. Obeying the night is not incompatible with making war decisions, for it means that one should stop fighting and eat a meal, but still keep watch, not sleep.¹¹

Even in a night with no fighting, the Homeric warrior does not expect to rest. Both Achilles and Odysseus allegedly ‘spent many sleepless nights’.¹² Odysseus rejects the rich bedding Penelope offers him because, he tells her, in the years at Troy he has grown accustomed to lying awake on foul beds (Od. 19. 337–42). To be sure, his words are strategic, for he seeks to deflect Penelope's possible suspicions about his identity by faultlessly impersonating a beggar unused to comforts.¹³ But his words match Achilles' unquestionably sincere avowal. In another story, one of his made-up tales, Odysseus again pictures the hardship of nights spent on the field (Od. 14. 462–502), claiming that he was freezing for lack of proper clothing. Along with his protestation to Penelope, this ‘lie similar to the truth’ (Od. 19. 203) suggests that in his memory the war was fraught with sleep deprivation.¹⁴

Other warriors would agree with Odysseus' reminiscences, for only two days of the six that cover the fighting in the Iliad end in sleep: days three and four, the latter only in the Greek camp.¹⁵ And how do the warriors rest? At the close of day three, while Greeks and Trojans are feasting ‘all night’, Zeus has been pondering evil ‘all night’ and thundering loudly (7. 476–8). The repetition of ‘all night’ sets Zeus' wakefulness and his control of the action off in contrast with the warriors' blind feasting, followed by equally blind sleep (7. 482). Over that sleep there sounds Zeus' thunder, which breaks in more loudly as the next day dawns and the god ‘who rejoices in thunder’ (8. 2) summons the other Olympians to initiate another day of fighting. This day leads to a wakeful night in the Trojan camp. The victorious and hopeful warriors sit by burning fires ‘all night’ (8. 554) and communicate their excitement to their horses, which, standing by the chariots, ‘waited for Dawn of the beautiful throne’, as if eager for the next day of battle; while on the Greek side the same day ends with slumber but only after protracted night activity: ‘There they lay down and took the boon of sleep’ (9. 713). And again sleep is soon interrupted when Agamemnon, restless at the opening of Book 10, causes the other warriors to be shaken awake. Alternatively, if we leave out Book 10, which may be a later addition,¹⁶ the boon of sleep points ahead to more doom, to Zeus' momentous attack in the morning, when he hurls awful Discord at the Greek ships (11. 3–4). This day, the day of Hector's victory and Patroclus' death and the longest in narrative time (11. 1–18. 241), ends with a wakeful night on both sides (18. 299 and 314–5). And the day of Achilles' superhuman victory, the last day of fighting, does not wind down in restful slumber either,¹⁷ but climaxes in a resonant night of mourning around Patroclus' pyre.

Soft sleep rather belongs to the prewar past. It is inscribed in the Trojan landscape or evoked in a simile. Athena, removing the shaft that has pierced Menelaus' breastplate, evokes a loving mother keeping a fly away from her child, ‘when he lies in sweet slumber’ (4. 130–1). The simile plays up the incongruity between an image of innocence and peace and the theatre of war, where flies turn into arrows and slumbering children into vulnerable fighters. Another sleeping child, a thing of the past, takes shape in Andromache's memory as she broods over the gloomy future that awaits the orphaned Astyanax: ‘Before […] when slumber seized him and he stopped his childish games, he would lie in a bed, in the arms of his nurse, on a soft couch, his heart full of happy thoughts’ (22. 502–4). This portrait will provide the archetype for several images of sleeping children set off against frightful backgrounds.¹⁸

Trojan adults used to enjoy sleep as well, in their bedchambers, the evocation of which is prompted by Hector's visit to his family's palace:

There were fifty chambers of polished stone, built next to each other. Priam's sons were accustomed to sleep there next to their wedded wives. And on the opposite side inside the courtyard there were twelve lofty chambers of polished stone, built near each other. Priam's sons-in-law were accustomed to sleep there next to their revered wives.

(6. 244–50)

While Hector and his relatives used to retire to their appointed quarters every night, he now walks by them quickly, only to rush back to the arena of war. The leisurely description of a place of rest in an ‘exceedingly beautiful’ palace (6. 242) contrasts with Hector's haste in moving through it and away from it and with his repeated refusal to accept the minimal comforts (a seat, a cup of wine) offered by his womenfolk to restore his strength (6. 258–62; 6. 354). Outward and hurried movements prepare for the scene of Hector's farewell to his wife. He does not find her inside the house because she has ‘rushed’ to the walls like one possessed (6. 388–9). He then goes through the city and returns to the Scaean gates, where the parting takes place: not in the couple's bedroom or in the palace, but at the entrance to the war, by the gates ‘which he was about to cross to the plain’ (6. 393), soon to meet his death. Hector and Andromache do not part in the intimacy of their home, because they will never again retire to their bedchamber to sleep together.

There is only one episode in the Iliad in which an undisturbed, nightlong rest is followed by the resumption of activity on the next morning. After returning Chryseis to her father, Agamemnon's envoys feast and sing, and ‘when the sun set and darkness came, they slept by the stern of the ship. But when early-born, rosy-fingered dawn appeared, they put out to sea to return to the great host of the Achaeans, and far-darting Apollo sent them a favourable wind’ (1. 475–9). This episode stands nearer to the Odyssey, with which it shares language and themes, mood and morals: a feast after a sea journey, the coming of night (couched in words that occur only here in the Iliad, but six times in the Odyssey), sleep, the rising of ‘early born, rosy-fingered dawn’ (with a line that appears only twice in the Iliad, but 20 times in the Odyssey), more sea travel with the help of a god-sent wind¹⁹ and an outcome that is ethically satisfying, with Chryses obtaining his due and Apollo rewarding the Greek envoys with a fair return journey.

Wakeful plotters: Zeus and Agamemnon

The sleep-depriving urgency that pervades the Iliad is reflected in the manner in which the core of its plot is launched: from wakeful thinking, which breaks into a landscape of sleep and targets a sleeper. At the end of Book 1, all the gods retire after feasting:

When the bright light of the sun sank, they went each to their homes to lie down […] and Olympian Zeus, the lord of lightning, lay down where he used to sleep before, when sweet slumber would come. There he went and lay down, and near him was Hera of the golden throne.

(605–fin.)

The retiring scene crowns the reconciliation that ends the strife on Olympus, while down on earth Agamemnon and Achilles are not shown in their sleeping quarters after they part in anger. Though the first line of Book 2 says that ‘the men were sleeping all night’ along with the gods, and though Agamemnon dreams, there is no record of the human players' going to rest. Such a detail would be at variance with the tensions dividing the leaders. In contrast, the gods' orderly retiring puts the appropriate seal on their peacemaking and points to their serenity, ultimately untroubled as they are by quarrels caused by humans. (We might recall Hephaestus' words to Hera: ‘Do not spoil our banquet for the sake of mortals!’).

But Zeus, far from enjoying a good night's sleep, plays the wakeful party in the first scene of lonely vigil in western literature: ‘The other gods and chariot-marshalling men were sleeping all night, but sweet slumber was not holding Zeus. He was pondering in his heart how to honour Achilles and destroy many by the Greek ships’.²⁰ Zeus is worried about the politics of Olympus, for he knows that his promise to honour Achilles will create tensions in his family, above all between himself and his wife.

Sleepless pondering, however, does not trouble Zeus for long: it instantly yields the ‘best plan’, ἀρίστη βουλή (2. 5), which activates the god's βουλή announced in the epic's opening lines. Zeus' power is enhanced by the vulnerability of his victim: a human, and a sleeping one at that. The dream sent by Zeus finds Agamemnon ‘asleep in his tent, and ambrosial (ἀμβρόσιος) slumber was poured around him’ (2. 19). Though Homer does not say it, Agamemnon's slumber also seems to have come from Zeus.²¹ It is ἀμβρόσιος – the only time sleep earns this epithet in the Iliad – as is night, the uncanny, awe-inspiring cover of darkness that belongs to the gods and is safe only for them. A mortal should not be out alone ‘in the ambrosial night’, when others are resting.²² The very night in which the god-sent dream comes to Agamemnon feels ‘ambrosial’ to him (2. 57), and in that eerie night he sleeps an eerie slumber. Its divine provenance is further suggested by the identity of its action with the lingering of the god-sent dream: sleep ‘was poured around him’ (περὶ […] κέχυτο) just as the dream's voice ‘was poured around him’ (ἀμφέχυτ’) when he awoke (2. 41).

As is typical of Homeric dreams, the one sent by Zeus rouses the sleeper. It scolds him: ‘You slumber, son of wise Atreus, the tamer of horses? To sleep all night does not become a man who brings counsel, to whom many people turn and so many cares belong’ (2. 23–5). If Agamemnon's slumber comes from Zeus, the dream adds insult to injury by denouncing it as irresponsible. The censure, though, fittingly highlights Agamemnon's unreflective self-importance and his unawareness of the crisis he has caused.²³ The action he takes upon awakening is as unseeing as his sleep, and this in spite of dawn rising when he sets out to gather the heroes. For Dawn this time is biased: ‘Now the goddess Dawn went to Olympus, announcing light to Zeus and the other immortals’ (2. 48–9). Contrary to its normal pattern, the new day brings light to the gods...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• List of Abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. The Iliad
• 2. The Odyssey
• 3. Drama
• 4. Apollonius of Rhodes’ Argonautica
• 5. The Novel
• Conclusions
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Back cover