Speech from Tree and Rock

Recovery of a Bronze Age Metaphor

Bibliographic Data

ID23134677
AuthorsAlexander Forte (corresponding author), Alexander S W Forte
Year2015
Volume136
Issue1
Pages1-35
Publication date2015-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe American Journal of Philology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0002-9475 • E-ISSN: 1086-3168
PublisherProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/ajp.2015.0009
OpenAlexW2008783303
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited18

Interpreters of archaic Greek epic poetry have long labored to explain the meaning of the semantically ambiguous phrase involving “tree (δρῦς) and/or rock (πέτρη).” The idiom appears three times in archaic epic: in the proem of Hesiod’s Theogony , during Hector’s deliberation about negotiating a truce in Iliad 22, and in Penelope’s speech to a disguised Odysseus in Odyssey 19. A tantalizingly similar, and equally unsolved idiom, rgm ‘ṣ w lḫšt ’abn, appears in the thirteenth-century Ugaritic Ba’al Cycle found at Ras Shamra. Current scholarship agrees that this phrase connotes ideas of prophecy. This article argues that the phrase’s history can be traced further back to a metaphor describing the audio-visual phenomenon of lightning and thunder as the storm-god’s oracular speech. Crucial evidence for this account is found in Bronze Age material culture.

Archaeology · Art · Bronze · Bronze Age · Linguistics · Metaphor · Ancient Near East History · Byzantine Studies and History · Geology · History · Linguistics and language evolution · Philosophy

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