Homer for the court of Francois I.

1. INTRODUCTION

Hugues Salel (1503-53), courtier, cleric, and poet, wrote averse translation of the first ten books of the Iliad that appeared in Paris in 1545 as a carefully produced small folio volume with eleven fine new woodcut illustrations. (1) The publisher, Vincent Sertenas, was known for his vernacular editions: often illustrated, and often, like this one, intended for the luxury market. The king himself declares in the privilege, printed at the start of the volume, that he has already heard the first nine books with satisfaction and pleasure. (2) Francois I (1494-1547) is not expressing naive and private pleasure; his statement is surely an implicit exhortation to other readers to follow him in experiencing this delight, explicitly accompanied by instruction. In the volume examined here, the reception of Homer's poem is shaped not only by the translation--accurate on the whole, but marked by subtle and systematic changes--but also by the book's layout, its marginal notations, and its images. In what follows, each of these elements will be examined for what they can tell us about the sixteenth-century reception of this volume. How did the translator and illustrators prepare the work for its intended readers (the authorial audience), whom they understood to be nobles and courtiers who were, like the king, men of action rather than scholars? How were they expected to respond to the Iliad, a poem with enormous importance and prestige, and at the same time deeply rooted in an alien culture? Homer's epic, now made French for the king, should be understood to express the imaginaire of French nobles toward the end of the reign of Francois I. (3) If Salel is the central figure in this undertaking, the publisher and his agents will be seen to have joined their voices to his, giving the project its final shape in the printed volume where contemporary readers encountered Homer. (4)

2. GREEK

Salel undertook the translation at a time when the vernacular's readiness for such a task was still in question, and when Greek was politically loaded, exotic, enticing, and, in the eyes of some, dangerous. (5) All these attitudes merit comment, as they impinge on the reception of the "prince of Greek poets." (6) Greek was increasingly brought into the royal circle by men like the lecteur du roy, Pierre Du Chastel (ca. 1500-52), who was an avid collector of Greek books and manuscripts for the royal library. When Du Chastel came to his position in 1537, the royal collection contained forty Greek manuscripts; by 1544 it had grown nearly sevenfold to 270 items. (7) This enormous expansion reflects Du Chastel's personal enthusiasm, but it would not have continued had it not found the support of the king and court. Numerous French translations of Greek works were published to respond to this interest. The royal circle's interest in things Greek was further reflected in, and encouraged by, the use of Homeric subjects in the decoration of Fontainebleau, undertaken contemporaneously with Salel's translation. (8)

In the 1530s the appointment of official lecteurs royaux in Greek as part of the founding operation of the future College de France helped to legitimize Greek studies by placing them under the direct protection of the crown. At about the same time, elite schoolboys in Paris, including future Pleiade poets, started learning Greek as a normal part of the curriculum. (9) The spread of Greek learning helped reduce the suspicion with which it was viewed by churchmen and the degree to which it was perceived as a threat to the inherited Latinity of the Vulgate and Church traditions. From a political point of view, Greek had the inestimable advantage of not being Latin--the language of the papacy, enemy of Gallican liberties, and, on occasion, enemy of the Most Christian King. In contrast, contemporary Greece, an Ottoman possession, was no cultural threat; better still, the Turks were Francois I's sometime allies. The present political innocence of Greek, the prestige of its antiquity, and the exotic allure of its relative inaccessibility all contributed to the appeal of Greek and all things Greek in contemporary French eyes.

3. NATIONALISM

In the 1530s and '40s, translation became a frequent vehicle for celebrating the national superiority of France and the expanded capacities of the French language. The king recognizes this explicitly in the privilege to Salel's Iliade, speaking of "The utility, richness, and added beauty that our French language receives today by means of this translation." (10) French, and by extension France, is declared to be the equal of any civilization living or dead (at least in theory). In the middle third of the sixteenth century this new potential equality replaced the previous paradigm of the history of civilization, which assumed a single, unique zenith of cultural achievement, generally identified with Homer's epics. The change means that while Homer's prestige is unquestioned, his position is no longer axiomatically unassailable; he is not Prince des poetes, understood as an absolute, as it might have been earlier, but qualified: "the prince of Greek poets." Implicit in this change--a consequence of humanist consciousness of historical specificity--is a parallel position, the Prince des poetes francais, now potentially available to reflect the glory of France. Only decades later would a specific French poet's name--Ronsard--come to be attached to this epithet. Salel's awareness that Homer might possibly have a French peer is reflected in the tone of his introductory epistle. The elegance of the printed volume in which his Homer appeared suggests that the publisher was just as conscious of it.

The Iliad, which recounts the Greek siege of Troy, the city from which French kings proudly traced their origins, might seem a delicate subject, as indeed it would have been a few decades earlier. While early sixteenth-century France had gleefully subscribed to the notion of its Trojan origins as the humanist reconstruction of the classical past progressed, the Trojan connection became less and less intellectually convincing and satisfying, although the idea retained a certain charm. By the 1540s, in France at least, propaganda promoting royal claims of Trojan origins was largely understood figuratively for its mythic power and political implications, rather than as a literal genealogical description. Salel, briefly having it both ways, allows the speaker of his prefatory verse epistle, Dame Poesie (Lady Poetry), a quick reference to Homer's prophetic powers regarding the French-Trojan connection:

  I will abstain for the moment from declaring
  how the gods wanted to grant him
  prophetic powers, by which he predicted
  the authority, the reign, and the respect
  that Trojans, having survived great dangers,
  would one day have in foreign lands. (11)

The firm belief in the importance of Trojan origins that marks Jean Lemaire de Belges's (1473-1514?) Illustrations de Gaule et singularitez de Troye (1509-13) is a thing of the past. (12) The Franciade was still to come, at a later time when its reception would be informed by the newly-understood Aristotelian rule of verisimilitude, allowing Ronsard to declare his very limited belief in the truth of the Trojan legend at the same time that he based his epic on it.

By the 1540s the inevitability of the defeat of the Trojans was no longer a threat to national pride. New learning overshadowed the Trojan genealogy of the Most Christian Kings, as scholars such as Guillaume Bude (ca. 1468-1540), Lazarre de Baif (1485-1547), and Guillaume Postel (1510-81) provided the foundations for a more realistic understanding of the past. The accounts of the Trojan war by Dares and Dictys, compelling while they were believed to have been eyewitnesses accounts, lost their appeal once humanists exposed them as forgeries composed many centuries later in the fourth and sixth centuries CE. At the same time, new fashions in scholarship tended to promote direct ties between France (or Gaul) and ancient Greece. While no mention of Francus--understood in the earlier sixteenth century to be a surviving son of Hector, and the founder of the Frankish-French nation--can be found in any reliable ancient text, Caesar reports Greek letters in use in Gaul, and Tacitus mentions inscriptions from Gaul written in that alphabet. (13) Such passages were understood to mark genuine links between Gaul and Greece. The reign of Francois I saw the rise in support of what Claude-Gilbert Dubois has termed Celt'-helenisme, which often included the conviction that the French language was descended from Greek rather than Latin. (14) Such claims, generally supported by great (if sometimes quirky) learning, were also politically valuable: tracing a direct connection between France and Greece, they prevented the possibility of competing claims being made for Italy or the empire.

4. TRANSLATION

Rather than hoping that numbers of nobles would learn Greek, the king sought a more realistic expedient, that of having the Greek texts he acquired made accessible in French translation, often by men--such as Salel, who was the king's maitre d'hotel and aumonier (15)--associated with the king's household. The nature of Homer's poem and the elegant form of its publication prepared it to be readily accepted in a broader aristocratic milieu. As a genre, the epic was understood to be based, with some poetic license, on events that had actually taken place. It was therefore considered to be a kind of history, offering lessons both pleasing and useful, suitable to men of action, making it especially appropriate reading for nobles. (16) History proper had a considerable place in the king's chosen reading. Bude heard Jacques Colin, Du Chastel's predecessor as lecteur du roi, read a translation of Diodorus Siculus to the king. A scene of this sort is captured in a woodcut--used as the frontispiece of Tory's 1535 quarto edition of Diodorus translated by Antoine Macault, the king's secretary and valet de chambre--showing Francois I being read to. Henri Estienne records hearing Colin read to the king Seyssel's translation of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War in 1535. (17) Francois I's acquaintance with Salel's translation had begun in just this way before the printed edition of the Iliad appeared. The king chose to use his own voice to communicate his approbation and appreciation of Salel's translation of the Iliad in the privilege printed on the opening pages.

Translation in mid-sixteenth-century France was a loosely bounded concept. Translators and theoreticians generally defined the obligation of translation as the transmission of ideas from one language (and culture) to another. (18) French at midcentury was still to some degree constrained by a lack of vocabulary--most especially of technical terms and abstract and collective nouns--while Greek was held to be the richest of languages, excelling in just these domains: thus, cultural difficulties aside, a good bit of periphrasis was inevitable. By the 1540s translators were generally named on the title page, as Salel is; they acknowledged their sources, direct as well as indirect, in contrast to the practice early in the century.

Salel went to school well before learning Greek was commonplace. Since he had access to Lorenzo Valla's fifteenth-century Latin prose paraphrase of the Iliad and--at just about the time he likely began to work on the Iliade--two Latin translations by Andreas Divus (1538) and Eobanus Hessus (1540; both printed in Paris), his mastery of the language has been questioned. Philip August Becker has noted echoes of both Divus and Valla in Salel: however, as Kalwies points out, Becker's conclusion that Salel must have worked primarily from these Latin versions had already been disproved in the minute and painstaking comparisons undertaken by Valentin Burger in an unpublished dissertation at the University of Wurzburg. While Burger found some changes in word order, as well as other occasional liberties, and, like Becker, saw occasional echoes of Divus and Valla--suggesting that Salel had access to both--upon extensive examination he concluded that Salel had relied primarily on a Greek text of the Iliad. (19) Isidore Silver, examining the question independently in 1961, arrived at the same conclusion. (20) Salel's command of Greek put him in an elite group. He must have moved in roughly the same court circles as Bude--generally agreed to have been the greatest Hellenist of his age--who might have helped put him in contact with teachers and texts when they were still hard to come by.

5. COURTIERS AND WARRIORS

Becker, Burger, and Silver all agree on the general accuracy of Salel's translation. It is preceded by a dedicatory verse epistle to the king from "Dame Poesie," presumably a vernacular analogue of the Muses. (21) Francois I is praised for his joining of arms and letters, an idea that recurs at the close of the epistle, where letters are judged to surpass arms. After a quick survey of the encyclopedic qualities of the epic (lines 71-110), the dedicatory epistle focuses on the utility of the Iliad to military leaders as a source of strategy and rhetoric, as well as its value as a source of admirable examples for common soldiers (11. 170-219). From its opening pages, this Iliad's subject is expressly presented as relevant to nobles, the nation's natural leaders in war, people who, following the example of the king, might be expected to be among its owners and readers. His sister, Marguerite de Navarre had a copy. Further witness of such ownership is provided by the copy of this edition in the Houghton Library, whose binding bears the motto--"Acuerdo olvido" ("Remembrance, oblivion")--of Nicolas Herberay des Essars, who is best known as the creator of the French Amadis de Gaule. Despite his literary success, it should be recalled that Herberay never gave up his position as commissaire ordinaire de l'artillerie du roy. (22) Sertenas, also the publisher of Amadis, presents this Homer in a slightly smaller, but otherwise even more luxurious, format than the chivalric novels. The intended audiences of the two works were probably similar.

The interests of aristocratic readers were shaped more by their worldly duties than by their education. Although Philippe Aries declares that "in Paris the college de Navarre was frequented by the children of the high nobility, even of royal blood," he soon modifies the implicit suggestion that this was the rule: "one of the noble functions that remained connected to apprenticeships for the longest time was the sword." (23) In the first half of the century young nobles were still generally sent to court, rather than to school, in their early teens, sharply curtailing their formal education. This is the circle for whom Salel the courtier produced his Homer. He and his publisher, whose capital was on the line, expected it to find an audience among those who may best be understood as the contemporary French equivalents of the actors in the Iliad. The court of Francois I still conceived of nobles as a warrior class, not least among them the king himself. Francois's capture at Pavia is proof enough that he did not hesitate to take military risks, and he was admired in his own and in succeeding generations for his courage and leadership on the battlefield. (24) Some two hundred years later, Wincklemann still feels an echo of the same sense of Homer's purpose when he remarks, "[Homer's] Iliad was meant to be a handbook for kings and rulers." (25) This French Iliad is written for a world in which the expression gentilhomme suggested a leader of troops. The primary connotation of gentil was still etymological: gens, "noble, warrior-like," as in Salel's description of the "Two martial [gentilz] soldiers / Fiercely shaking their spears." (26)

In a world where even poets failed to fathom the charm of Homer's epithets, finding them pointlessly, gracelessly repetitious, the Iliad could yet draw the attention of real fighting men, the counterparts of Homeric heroes. While somewhat later in the century the Odyssey was seriously studied and interpreted allegorically by Dorat and his students and followers, the Iliad, less susceptible of such a reading, had less appeal for poets, philologists, and philosophers and was less frequently read and studied. (27) Jean Ceard notes that where even a poet as learned as Ronsard might be assumed to be citing the Iliad, a more careful look at his sources reveals that he does so at second hand. A case in point is the Hymne de Charles, cardinal de Lorraine where the link between Ronsard and Homer lies in Micyllus's notes to Ovid's Metamorphoses, which are the direct source of Ronsard's references to the Iliad. (28) Ceard concludes that neither the Iliad nor the Trojan war were in Ronsard's circle of familiar images and, consequently, that Homeric references in Ronsard tend to be either (as in this example) secondary, or elsewhere perfunctory--as when Nestor is evoked as a type of the old man, or Ulysses as a cunning one. Salel and his publisher seem to have accurately gauged the appeal of the Iliad for their contemporaries.

6. THE ROLE OF THE TRANSLATOR

Salel's translation makes no attempt to reflect Homer's epic hexameters, which are rendered as decasyllabic couplets, the French meter still associated with noble undertakings at midcentury. (29) The frequency of rimes riches and even rimes leonines is perhaps intended to suggest the rhythmic qualities of Greek, or perhaps merely reflects the tastes of Salel's generation. While attempting to render Homer faithfully, Salel is acutely aware of the interests of his audience. On the rare occasions that the translation includes Homeric epithets, it appears to do so almost by accident. Although at first this seems a great loss, on reflection, finding a culturally acceptable rendition of many of them would have been daunting; sixteenth-century French readers would have been unprepared to think of a goddess--Hera, for example--as having the eyes of an ox. Beyond these difficulties, epithets seem to have been received as idle repetitions that a loyal translator might omit for the protection of Homer's honor. For example, "Ulysses, equal to Zeus in guile" is sometimes rendered as "subtle Ulysses," and more often by his name alone. (30) The one-time appearance of "Scamandrios, skilled in the chase" is reduced to a remark about his profession, "Camandre, the hunter," in which the implicit reference to Trojan geography, the river Scamander, disappears. (31) Salel systematically substitutes the names of Roman gods--names the authorial reader could be relied upon to know--for the less-familiar Greek ones.

Greek geography, which would have served as an important genealogical indicator for ancient Greek audiences, was of less relevance to a French one. This would seem to be the motivation behind the decision to excise completely the nearly 400 lines that contain the Catalogue of Ships which constitutes the latter half of book 2. Salel ends it at the invocation to the Muses "because of the difficulty of cataloguing and naming all the Greeks and Trojans." (32) Geographical indications are occasionally OMITTED elsewhere, as in Achilles' complaint to Thetis, "Especially the city of great King Eetion / was destroyed by my efforts," where Homer had named the city, Thebe. (33) The earlier Achaean conquest of Thebes (during the war of the Seven Against Thebes) does appear in the French and is noted in the margin, "Thebes has seven gates," perhaps because this fact provided readers experienced in besieging cities with a sense of its size and importance. (34)

Other subjects had more immediate appeal for Salel's audience: genealogy, the responsibilities inherited from one's forebears, and the care of horses. Poetic amplificatio is applied to the conversation between Glaucus and Diomedes, enemies who exchange arms in recognition of the mutual obligations of hospitality laid down by their grandfathers. (35) It occupies more than six folio pages in Salel's version, and, at thirty-two lines a page, is nearly twice as long as the original. The importance of horses to noblemen at war is illustrated by an anecdote about the legendary Bayard, who refused to have his noblemen dismount and fight on foot for fear that they would find themselves fighting alongside butchers and bakers, soldiers with no personal honor to protect. (36) Homer's discussions of horses are often expanded and noted marginally: the genealogy of Aeneas's horses is carefully translated and noted in the margins as are other equine details: "Hector Speaks to His Horses," say, or "Wine for War Horses." (37) The illustrations also assume the readers' interest in horses, anachronistically depicting cavalrymen. Other points useful to sixteenth-century warriors are noted in the margins: loyalty among nobles, leaders' tactics, how to address their troops, and how to deal with insubordination.

7. SHAPING RECEPTION

As is common practice in the period, marginalia are printed alongside the text. Modern scholarship knows little about the authorship of this kind of textual apparatus. (38) Marginalia may well have been commissioned by the publisher and added by the compositor as type was being set. They probably were not written by Salel since they contain at least one error it is difficult to imagine Salel making: the margin reads "Mars takes on the appearance of Aeneas and exhorts the Trojans," where at 5.461-62 Mars takes on the appearance of Acamas. (39) Salel's text renders this correctly: "He then took on the visage / and the clothing of a great Thracian prince / called Acamas." (40) The error suggests a less-learned hand turning the unfamiliar into something more familiar, although it might simply be a misreading of handwriting. Other marginal comments, like those providing background information, do come from a scholarly hand. It is possible that the marginalia were written by several people.

While it would be interesting to know who wrote them, even without this information the marginalia are instructive. They indicate where summaries or additional facts were likely to be needed, focus the reader's attention on certain details, and overall give us insight into the likely general level of learning and the expectations of Salel's authorial audience. Virgil was assumed to be familiar, Greek religious practices not; how to address troops was of interest, Greek geography was not. Some marginal comments are broadly informational, and perhaps also intended to help readers find an interesting passage: "Invocation of the Muse," "Narration." (41) Some provide basic facts about characters: "Calchas, excellent prophet and diviner," "Clytemnestra, wife of Agamemnon," "Vulcan serves as wine-steward and makes the gods laugh when they see that he limps when he walks," "Machaon the doctor, son of Aesculapius Tris[megistus]." (42) Others provide geographical details: "Phthia, Achilles' land." (43) This is the same kind of information that less-luxurious French translations of classical texts, with narrower margins, often provide in glossaries. (44) Occasionally the margins mark points of interest where otherwise the text would seem able to stand on its own, as "Amazons," where the text reads "Amazons, / Female in sex, and in war, persons / of great deeds." (45)

In the absence of punctuation to mark direct speech, marginalia frequently note the speaker: "Agamemnon to the Trojans," "Chryses' prayer to Apollo," and "The Greek and Trojan soldiers' prayer." (46) Such marginal notes also facilitate finding a speech to use as a model for one's own performance. (47) Exceptionally (following Iliad 5.69), there is a short excursus into literary criticism, implying audience familiarity with the Aeneid: "Meges kills Phegeus, bastard of Antenor. It should be noted that the Poet, in naming those who are killed, also indicates their family, their training, or their function, feeling pity and commiseration by this means, in which detail Virgil imitated him well." (48) Sententiae are picked out by the usual inverted quotation marks, sometimes further emphasized by a marginal notation: "inconstant youth," "noteworthy opinion." (49) Homeric similes were clearly appreciated. They are carefully rendered and generally noted in the margins, either as a "Comparison" or, more specifically, "Comparison of a pilgrim finding a dragon" or "Comparison of Ulysses' eloquence to the snows of winter." (50)

The gods in the Iliad often behave in ways that threaten to pose problems for a Christian reader. The allegorical tradition associated with Homer since antiquity is occasionally evoked to lessen the difficulty, as when the margins explain toward the end of Athena's speech to the enraged Achilles in book 1 that "Achilles obeys Pallas, that is, Reason." (51) Other marginalia encourage readers to think of Jupiter as just another, as-yet-unrevealed, name for the Christian God and, therefore, perhaps somewhat misunderstood in his accidents: "The power to reign comes from God." (52) In some cases no such accommodation is possible, as in the "Conspiracy of the gods against Jupiter." (53) Salel is sufficiently faithful to Homer's text to present gods doing a great many things that placed them outside the Christian tradition: arguing, being unfaithful, plotting. Nevertheless, religious sensitivity may explain why Salel's translation, for example, frequently omits offerings of barley to the gods (since French readers would have considered it food for the poor or for horses) and sometimes renders it as "fouace" (focaccia) approaching Christian associations of bread with worship. In the same vein, "vin souef" (sweet wine) is reserved for wine as a beverage; Salel never applies it to the wine used in libations to the gods, which is simply "vin" or "vin rouge." Marvelous events, prophecies, plagues, sudden protective fogs, and thunderbolts are manifestations of God's might, as Salel's readers understood it: saints or the Virgin appearing to faithful Christians in times of need have their analogues in some of the activities of Apollo, Pallas, or Venus. The illustrations show the gods most often in council on a cloudbank, rarely interacting directly with humans: only once impersonating a human (in Agamemnon's dream in book 2), and, in book 5, Athena conferring with a hero. In sum, the gods are generally shown doing what a good Catholic might have hoped for from saints. (54)

Homer has generally been admired over the centuries for his evenhandedness, depicting the Trojans as worthy enemies, moral equals of the Greeks. This quality suffers in Salel's rendition, perhaps most clearly in the treatment of Hector and Agamemnon. The French text presents Hector primarily as an enemy to be feared. At the conclusion of their quarrel in book 1, Achilles warns Agamemnon that Achilles' absence will be regretted when the Greeks are threatened by Hector:

  A day will come when to flee the hands
  of the great murderer Hector, who will undo
  a great part of the Greeks, I will be wished for.
  And you, overtaken by sharp sadness, will
  recognize your mischance and folly. (55)

Here the marginalia notes: "The author often calls Hector murderous." (56) In fact, this epithet occurs only ten times in the whole of the Iliad, and--unsurprisingly, given the focus of the narration--only three times in books 1-10, hardly support for the contention that Hector is frequently referred to as a murderer. (57) If one were trying to preserve the status of Hector, a more neutral translation for Homer's epithet--at Iliad 1.242--might be found. English versions often render the Greek etymologically as "man-slaying," which is what a warrior is in business to do. Like Salel, Eugene Lasserre in his modern French prose version also renders it "murderer," supported, perhaps, by a modern usage of this word in the sense of "dangerous." (58) In contrast, Cotgrave gives for meurtrier "a Murtherer, Homicide, cut-throat, blodie fellow," suggesting that in the sixteenth century the word had a stronger pejorative sense, more than might be appropriate to characterize a respected hero and great opposing warrior. The marginal comment seems intended to emphasize the threat Hector presents while reducing his heroic stature. In the French text, where Homeric epithets are normally absent, the appellation gains rather more judgmental and descriptive force than if it were understood as formulaic. Later, when Teucer refers to Hector as an "enraged mastiff," the margin insists "he means Hector," and again a few pages later the margin notes: "Hector terrible and fearful to the Greeks." (59) Salel does, of course, refer repeatedly to "worthy Hector." (60) Overall, however, Salel shapes Homer's text to undercut Hector's courage. When a Trojan retreat is noted in the margin at 4.505-06, Hector's retreat is specially noted:

  The Trojans retreat. Hector retreats....
  Especially Hector, who led
  their army, then had some desire
  to go away, so as not to lose his life there. (61)

Salel's French removes a flattering epithet, glorious, and adds, perhaps in its place, mesmes (especially)--giving Hector a preeminent position which makes his retreat the more noteworthy--while adding, unauthorized, his implicit fear of death, which would have counted strongly against him in the estimation of a sixteenth-century warrior. (62) At 7.192 Ajax's reference to his noble opponent Hector is OMITTED from the rendition of Ajax's thought: "I already feel my heart which promises me that I will be the victor," where Homer says rather "My heart rejoices for I think that I shall vanquish noble Hector. (63)

Although these examples involve Hector, it is not only he who is diminished. At the start of book 5 the Greeks are triumphing over the Trojans, and Homer alternates active and passive descriptions of the slaughter, often evoking pity for the slain. Salel weakens or eliminates these, as when describing the (here-unnamed) Phereclus's death:

  So he died without revenge
  for a spear thrust into his hip
  that went as far as his bladder,
  whence he immediately felt his soul transfixed
  and fell down on his knees, crying
  bitterly when he saw himself dying. (64)

The suggestion of a final moment of cowardice, of fear of death, is not in Homer's text. (65) In the same battle, as Antenor's son Pedaeus is killed by Meges (5.69), Salel reverses the grammar, making the Greek warrior Meges the active subject, adding an adverb of praise: "Meges too fought valiantly." (66) Such small changes, because they are systematic, diminish the Trojans and build up the Greeks.

On the Greek side, Agamemnon is conceived of as a monarch in the mode of Francois I. Salel avoids confusing his unlearned readers with the multiplicity of appellations Homer uses for Agamemnon: "son of Atreus," "leader of the Achaeans," "shepherd of flocks," and so on. In the absence of such names, the figure of the king is more concentrated in his person and he becomes more individually imposing: "Our leader," "he who rules," "the great Greek Agamemnon," and "Prince Agamemnon, most prudent king and powerful in arms." In book 1 his flawed judgment in refusing to release Chryses immediately to her father Chryses, followed by his greed in refusing to give up his own prize without recompense, angers both Jupiter and Apollo and puts the Greeks at considerable risk, but is passed over without marginal comment until the moment when Athena prevents Achilles from drawing his sword against Agamemnon: "Pallas forbids Achilles to kill Agamemnon," the margin announces, drawing the readers' attention to the divine protection accorded the king. (67) During Nestor's following speech, readers are reminded "The authority and power of kings comes from Jupiter," drawing an implicit parallel with the Roi tres chretien whose powers come from God. (68) In book 2, the falseness of Agamemnon's dream is not mentioned, while Agamemnon--treated not merely as hegemon or first among equals--is regularly singled out for special treatment, as befits a monarch. When Nestor declares that Agamemnon's dream is to be heeded only because it came to the best of the Achaeans (2.82-83)--an expression usually, but not uniquely, applied to Agamemnon--this opinion too is noted in the margin. (69) As a result of the omission of the Catalogue of Ships, Salel's version of book 2 closes with a description of Agamemnon that is intended to stress his superiority to other men. This, too, is emphasized in the margin: "Agamemnon resembles three gods: Jupiter, Neptune, and Mars." (70)

The margins associate Ulysses with the power of Agamemnon, reminding readers that as he circulates among the Greeks, he does so bearing Agamemnon's scepter. (71) Throughout, Salel chooses to translate this not as "staff"--something Agamemnon-shepherd-of-flocks might have--but as "scepter," metonymic with sovereignty in sixteenth-century usage. Cot-grave lists among the meanings of scepter: "Monarchie, Kingdom, absolute rule, soveraignte in chiefe." The pedigree of his scepter is described just before this passage, and soon after Ulysses will use it to beat the seditious Thersites. (72) In that scene, the scepter renders Ulysses a tool, a direct extension of Agamemnon's sovereign power. When Homer notes that Agamemnon owes his position to Zeus, again this is translated with some amplification and picked out in the margin as "The power to reign comes from God":

  The anger of a king is great and to be feared
  and his fury is entirely unbearable:
  for the power by which he rules
  comes directly from divine favor:
  and a king is always beloved of God
  given that he commands on earth in his place. (73)

Homer says only that kings have the favor of Zeus; Salel turns this into an explicit statement of royal power and of the divine regency of kings. Kingship is again supported on the next page:

  All government is more respected
  when it is headed by one person:
  therefore let a king (whom Jupiter gives)
  be closely obeyed in all he orders. (74)

In the margin at the start of this passage we read, "Monarchy recommended in all Governments ... obedience to Kings." (75) The margins of the Thersites passage tell us, "Homer in the person of Thersites describes the nature of a seditious, envious, and evil character." (76) The importance of Thersites, used as a type, grows in the French version, as the authority he questions is more important. These additions, and many others like them, form readers' notions of the character of Agamemnon, collectively giving the impression that he is a singular ruler, rather like Francois I and the image of kingship he wished to convey. Ronsard, in his "Epitafe de Hugues Salel," echoes the connection:

  Francis the first king for virtue and of his name
  taking pleasure at hearing Atrides Agamemnon
  speak in his language, and by you [Salel], the warriors
  of Priam, his ancestor, making their arms clash
  with a French murmur. (77)

Ronsard has it both ways: the Trojans are the king's ancestors, but Francois I and Agamemnon are parallel figures here; "speak in his language" in this context not only denotes French, but also suggests that Agamemnon's words are familiar to Francois because they are kingly. (78) If this evocation of Priam as an ancestor of the French monarch is to be expected from Ronsard--who in 1553 was already working on the Franciade--the link here between Francois I and Agamemnon seems at least as strong as the expressed connection to Trojan Priam.

8. IMAGES

The reception of this edition of the Iliad is also shaped by the woodcuts included at the start of each of the ten books. These were half-page woodcuts specially made for this edition; to the best of my knowledge they were never reused, although their size would have permitted including them in later, smaller-format editions. (79) Ideally, but not always, in French sixteenth-century printing practice such images are illustrations, containing a visual narration doubling the verbal narration of the text. Illustrations, then, permit us to perceive a parallel contemporary reception of the text: at a minimum, one can see how the illustrator(s) understood it, and how readers were expected to understand it. And the first six books of this Iliade have illustrations. Starting with book 7 the connection between verbal and visual narrative becomes looser and more problematic. In books 1-6, where the woodcuts really are visual narratives, their very detail, their unmarked shifts in time and space, make them nearly indecipherable without the support of the accompanying verbal text. But if one has the events of the book clearly in mind, the story can easily be picked out from these woodcuts. Given the important role of memory in early modern literary reception, it seems likely they were intended to be perused shortly after the book had been read or heard, for the pleasure of recalling it and as an aid to retaining what was read, perhaps as a guide to what was best remembered.

A close look at the woodcut accompanying book 1 shows the same tendencies that shaped Salel's translation. Because the illustration is both detailed and selective, a brief plot summary of book 1 is necessary. Homer defines the subject of the Iliad as the anger of Achilles, and book 1 starts with the incident that caused his wrath. Agamemnon has refused to release Chryseis--taken earlier as booty following the conquest of Trojan Thebe--to her father, Chryses, priest of Apollo. Apollo responds to Chryses' prayers and inflicts a plague on the Greeks camped near Troy. To end the outbreak, Agamemnon is persuaded to return the girl to her father. He then replaces her by taking for himself another young woman, Briseis, previously given to Achilles. Only the intervention of Athena prevents Achilles from killing Agamemnon in response. After the ship bearing Chryseis leaves, Achilles asks his mother, the goddess Thetis, to spite Agamemnon by intervening with Zeus in favor of a temporary Trojan victory. Zeus's answer is affirmative yet indefinite: Homer gives us no idea how or when Thetis's request will be fulfilled. The book ends with night falling on Olympus after a feast among the gods.

As was typical in the period, the illustration (fig. 1) is presented in diachronic images that allow a single woodcut to move through time, much as the verbal text does. As an illustration, it is both detailed and selective. The visual narrative centers on the interaction between Agamemnon and Chryses, to which we can trace the present plague and the anger of Achilles. The besieged walls of Troy are in the background. Following Agamemnon's refusal to return Chryseis, Chryses prays to Apollo to avenge him:

  Phoebus heard him.
  Then quickly descended to earth
  bearing his arc and his golden quiver....
  And repeatedly shot at the camp
  An arrow....
  From this hard blow were immediately dying
  fat mules and good running dogs.
  But afterwards, the deadly arrow
  that he drew caused such pestilence
  among the Greeks, that an infinite number of bodies could be seen
  weakened and made dull by dire plague.
  O what horror to see near the ships
  the bodies of Greeks burning in great mounds. (80)

Apollo, source of the plague, is nestled in a kind of sun-aureole. A giant, plague-bearing arrow approaches the earth. Dead animals and pyres burning Achaean victims of the plague are visible in the background.

The foreground, however, records an earlier moment. Chryses stands beside a cart emptied of the riches he had hoped would ransom his daughter, holding in his right hand a golden scepter, symbol of the power of his priesthood. The visual narration starts here. Agamemnon stands at the center of the council of Achaean kings, denying Chryses' request. The hand gestures of the other Greeks suggest discussion, yet they accede to the will of a sceptered Agamemnon, who stands while the others remain seated. A bit later, Chryses is shown again to the left, leaving the council and calling on Apollo, who responds, above left, by unleashing the plague with his silver arrows. In the background along the left edge, two ships are under sail, one in which Ulysses is returning Chryseis, another holding her father, who has left earlier. The woodcut needs to be read in layers, from bottom to top, right to left, from the council scene to Chryses leaving, Apollo's response to his prayer, the effects of the plague, and the separate departures of father and daughter all along the left side.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

While the illustration to book 1 includes a great deal, what it omits is equally instructive. Achilles has no place anywhere in the illustration, despite his considerable role in the verbal text of book 1 and his identification with the subject of the Iliad. There is no visual hint of his altercation with Agamemnon, of his long conversation with his mother, or hers with Zeus. The two young women, prizes of war, are no more depicted than are the objects which Chryses brought to ransom his daughter. The woodcut interprets Agamemnon much as we have seen the marginalia and Salel's shading of Homer do: front and center, he is the ruler of the Greeks. Achilles, having broken with him, has been banished from view.

Overall, there are differences between the verbal text and what is depicted in the woodcuts in this volume that create scenes of combat designed to appeal to a mid-sixteenth-century nobleman with some experience of the battlefield, which is made to look like an early modern one with tents and pavilions for the leaders, despite repeated verbal references to the Greeks living on their ships or in huts. In the opening epistle, Dame Poesie describes the Greek camp as tents organized around a monarch: "Always placing in the most open place / right in the middle, the great Royal tent." (81) Combat, when described in Homer's text and in Salel's translation as carried on from a chariot, is usually depicted on foot instead, as French nobles fought hand-to-hand when not on horseback. Battle scenes are drawn in keeping with contemporary ideals and norms. Nowhere, for example, is there visual reference to the throwing of stones in battle--common in Homer, but certainly not in keeping with heroic dignity in the eyes of sixteenth-century warriors. (82) Much of what is included was familiar, but the absence of firearms would have made the scenes all the more attractive. Surely early modern combatants themselves must often have shared the view, expressed by Rabelais and Ariosto, that such weapons were inventions of the devil. (83) None of the numerous banquet scenes, either of gods on Olympus or of warriors on earth, is depicted. Presumably, to show the gods feasting would be to stress their pagan and material nature, whereas for the warriors there was no equivalent in sixteenth-century battlefield customs for Homer's ceremonial sacrifices.

Reading the illustration to book 1 and reconstructing the text from the prompts it provides produces the same shifts in emphasis noted in the verbal text. This is also the case for the next five woodcuts. In book 2 Zeus, a tiny figure floating on a cloud in the upper left, sends the sleeping Agamemnon, bottom right, a dream having the appearance of Nestor (fig. 2). The Greek leaders meeting to discuss the meaning of his dream are shown on the lower left. Homer says that this takes place next to Nestor's ship; Salel's text places it on the ships, as does the illustration. (84) If Salel's contemporaries did not think of Greek ships as being beached--since their own warships, being bigger, could not have been--then Homer's "beside the ship" would make no sense to them, even if Salel himself was scholar enough to know ancient ships to have been much smaller. Higher up on the left, Ulysses, holding Agamemnon's scepter, addresses the troops; a bit higher still, he uses that same scepter, the mark of Agamemnon's sovereign power, to beat Thersites, guilty of lese majeste. The illustration focuses on the same centralized Greek authority expressed in the verbal text. Other details in the illustration depart from Homer, who speaks of chariots and of benches for the men to sit. Here they stand, presumably as did Salel's contemporaries on the battlefield. The pikes and lances depicted would have seemed familiar, or perhaps slightly old-fashioned to mid-sixteenth-century military men. The cantiniere (a woman with a barrel on her head who supplied the troops), clearly visible along the right margin behind the sleeping king's tent, introduces another anachronism, familiar in the early modern battlefield, but unsupported by the verbal text. (85)

The events depicted in the illustration for book 3 are as systematically selective as those for books 1-2. Although an important portion of book 3 takes place inside Troy, the illustration remains in the Greek camp (fig. 3). Events that concern Paris, Helen, and Priam, and which Homer places inside Troy, are OMITTED or shown only from the Greek point of view. The center foreground depicts the single combat of Paris and Menelaus, the outcome of which was to decide the war. In preparation, the others have laid their arms on the ground, as one can see in the left foreground. Menelaus, center foreground, has just broken his sword on Paris's helmet, and it lies in pieces at the woodcut's lower edge. (86) Paris, still holding his sword, is dressed, as Homer describes him, in a leopard-skin. We are not shown the divine intervention of Venus, who breaks the chinstrap of Paris's helmet, which Menelaus has seized to drag him off. However, on the left at mid-page we see Paris fleeing, his now helmetless head obscured by the leopard-skin. Anachronistic cavalrymen can be seen all along the right and top sections of the woodcut.

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

[FIGURE 3 OMITTED]

The illustrations to books 4-6 continue the narrative series, and are selective following the principles noted above. The last four woodcuts, however, raise other questions. They make only a brief attempt to narrate visually what is described in the first few lines of the corresponding book before lapsing into generic scenes. Book 7 starts with Hector and Paris leaving Troy in a chariot (depicted center back) while Apollo, shown surrounded by an aureole, leans on the Trojan ramparts, and Athena descends to earth to defend the Greeks (fig. 4). Later the two gods, described as having taken the form of vultures (but looking more like pigeons or doves), are shown settled in the tree sacred to Jupiter near the gates of Troy. The text contains nothing that corresponds to the melee in the foreground. The action of book 9 centers on the Greeks who agree to try to persuade Achilles to return. Ulysses and Diomedes are appointed ambassadors; the woodcut depicts them receiving instructions from Agamemnon outside his tent (fig. 5). Here, simply clad, they look more like servants than nobles. The scene in which they attempt to accomplish their mission, as depicted top right, also correlates only vaguely to the text. These are, in effect, no longer illustrations.

In addition to a change from an illustrative mode to one which is much less so, the last four woodcuts would seem, on stylistic evidence, to have been drawn by another artist. Their styles are similar, but the first artist, as can be seen in figs. 1-2, uses more detail and smaller individual figures than the other, as in figs. 4-5. (87) In addition, the complex woodcuts have to be read from right to left, the reverse of the usual practice by which diachronic illustrations tend, like the text they accompany, to read from left to right. This observation also provides some slight support for the attribution of the first few woodcuts to Jean Cousin, since this reversal of direction is easily accounted for if we suppose the artist to have drawn directly on the wood, as we know Cousin sometimes did. (88) This procedure, which was not in itself unusual, causes the woodcuts to print as mirror images of the drawing. More often, woodcuts were carved following a drawing prepared on paper, turned over and transferred to the block--resulting in one reversal when the image was cut and another when it was printed--thus reproducing the orientation of the original drawing. (89) The simpler images in this Iliade offer few narrative details and depict action moving from left to right.

The sudden loss of narrative precision in this series of woodcuts is a window into the dependence of Renaissance visual artists on written directions, a program detailing what was to be shown. In the images accompanying books 7-10, the tight connection to the text has been abandoned. It seems likely that the person furnishing the program for the woodcuts suddenly ceased to do so. On the evidence of this series, reading the text was not a sufficient guide. Artists were trained to depict scenes, but not to decide which ones to extract from a complex narrative. For example, the total exclusion of Achilles from the illustrations to book 1 (whether this exclusion was conscious or not) suggests a mind formed by disciplines other than those to which a draftsman or painter would normally have been exposed. Painters were expected to be able to execute a commission to paint, say, a deposition, although they were sometimes further directed to base their painting on a specific extant one: "after the 'portrait' which is at Fontainebleau in the high chapel." (90) The interpretive and memorial functions of secular illustrations, such as the woodcuts we have been examining, seem not to have been the responsibility of early modern artists. In whose hands, then, did such decisions lie?

Generally, it was the publisher who commissioned new woodcuts or chose the blocks for a book from his existing stock, and so probably also commissioned, or wrote, programs to guide illustrations. Documents exist specifying how much artists and artisans were to be paid; far fewer touch on the content of their work. Most woodcuts are anonymous. (91) Where a specific name is attached to a woodcut--as the illustrious name of Jean Cousin the elder is to those of our Homer--this is almost always, as here, an attribution based on stylistic evidence. (92) Perhaps, then, it is just as well that, beyond his signed works, information about Cousin is sparse, so that even a definite attribution to him would shed no further light on how these images were constructed. (93)

[FIGURE 4 OMITTED]

[FIGURE 5 OMITTED]

Since programs directing the contents of a visual representation were thought to be of no further utility once the work they directed had been executed, it is only by accident that they have survived independently. (94) Some programs may have been as simple as the captions that one finds woven into tapestries of the period. Contemporary tapestries were also frequently diachronic but, unlike book illustrations, they could count on no exterior text to guide the viewer; the captions do this, but they may have come first and have guided the artist drawing the cartoon from which the tapestry was woven. Four tapestries of the life of Saint Mamas have captions that could have had such a double function. (95) They may be considered particularly relevant to our question since they were executed after cartoons created by Cousin in 1543-44, just a year before Salel's Homer. Beneath the panel showing Saint Mamas presenting himself to the governor of Cappadocia we read, "Saint Mamas, having feasted, having revealed his identity to those who wished to take him, having with him a lion, went to Duke Alexander, who had him martyred." (96) The visual representation divides this into separate scenes: the feast that the saint offered the soldiers is shown in the upper right; we see the rumps of their horses as they leave after he assures them he will turn himself in to the governor, which he does in the center foreground; his martyrdom is depicted center back. The viewer of the Saint Mamas tapestry is guided by the inscription, just as readers of the Iliade need to know the story before they can decode the illustrations.

9. CONCLUSIONS

The spirit of the illustrations is of interest because it represents yet another harmonious element, traceable in this volume alongside those of Salel, the marginalia writer(s), and the illustrators. All of them regularly arrange the world represented to reflect a pro-Greek and pro-royalist viewpoint. Even when the woodcuts cease being illustrations and seem rather at a loss as to what to depict, they maintain this bias. Salel's intent was to render Homer's text in French. In order to accomplish this, his Iliade consistently presents the condition of the Greeks as similar to that of the French warrior class under Francois I, presenting the Achaeans as a monarchy, like France, placing them in the foreground, and reducing the role of the Trojans. The images echo him in this. I would propose the axiom that when an early modern text appears to do something systematically, the first supposition should probably be that it is an only-partially-conscious expression of the writer's Weltanschauung. This notion is supported when we note that the others involved in the project worked in the same spirit. Based on this evidence, it seems reasonable to posit that the authorial audience was equally prepared to receive Homer this way--one might risk going so far as to say that anything else would have surprised them. Courtiers and military leaders peered into the mirror of antiquity offered by the Iliade and saw their own reflections. This too, perhaps, helps explain the king's interest in collecting Greek manuscripts and encouraging their vulgarization, and might color our understanding of the reception of the art, at Fountainbleau and elsewhere, inspired by Greek sources. In the course of the Iliade, other voices--Salel's version of Homer's text, the comments added in the margins, the information conveyed visually--reinforce the voice of Dame Poesie, who in the opening epistle assured the king that this Iliad was suited to his present needs as leader, in war and in peace, of the beau peuple Gallique.

CARTHAGE COLLEGE 

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(1) Homer, 1545. Page references to this edition (here in arabic numbers) are to the roman numerals printed on each page, starting with the privilege. An edition of the first two books was printed in Lyon, 1542. For the reader's convenience, references to the dedicatory epistle are to the modern edition in Weinberg. On Salel's translation, see Kalwies; Marichal, 1934. On Salel as poet, see Bergounioux; Glidden; Hulubei; Salel, 9-36 (Kalwies's introduction).

(2) Homer, 1545, 3: Francois declares that the privilege is intended to protect "the usefulness, richness, and honor that our French language receives today by means of this translation, of which he has already presented the first nine books which we have read with such satisfaction and which so delighted us" ("l'utilite, richesse, & decoration que nostre langue Francoise recoit aujourdh'huy, par ceste traduction de laquelle nous a ja este presentez les neuf premiers livres; don't la lecture nous a este si agreeable, & nous a tant delecte").

(3) Nearly four decades after Salel, the Protestant Jean de Sponde's youthful response to Homer parallels some of the tendencies noted here. His Latin commentary on the Greek text is directed at a more specialized and learned audience than Salel's, one that will include far fewer military men. It is dedicated to Henri III of Navarre (the future Henri IV of France) and now with the sense that the actions of Homer's models can be outdone. Deloince-Louette, 146, notes that "Sponde develops the idea that reading Homer will make the King of Navarre the equal, and even the superior, of Homeric heroes on a moral level, as well as in strategy." This and all other translations are mine unless otherwise indicated. Modern French scholarship is presented, as here, only in translation.

(4) Among what I have termed agents are the printer as well as his corrector-proofreader, the latter perhaps responsible for writing the marginalia--there is evidence suggesting these are not, or not all, the work of Salel--and the artists who drew the woodcuts as well as the person(s)--in this case, distinct from the artists, as will be shown--who wrote the program directing the visual representation.

(5) On the status of translations from the classics around 1540, see Rothstein, forthcoming.

(6) Homer, 1545, 4: "Prince des poetes grecs."

(7) Du Chastel was able to continue his acquisitions until his death, when the royal library had 557 Greek manuscripts and about 100 Greek books. See Coron, 158.

(8) Under Henri II, Nicolo dell Abate also decorated the Chambre du roi with seven scenes from the Iliad: Fontainebleau, 2:152-53. See also Wilson-Chevalier; Zerner, 12; Yates, 140, n. 2.

(9) See Sandy.

(10) Homer, 1545, 3 (see n. 2 above).

(11) Weinberg, 122 (Salel's "Dedicatory Epistle to Homer's Iliad," 11. 145-50): "Je m'abstaindray pour l'heure a declairer, / Comme les dieux l'ont voulu decorer / De prophetie, en ce qu'il a predit / L'autorite, le regne, et le credit, / Que les Troiens, apres leurs grands dangers, / Auroyent ung jour, es pays estrangers."

(12) For an overview of the French use of the myth of Trojan origins, see Ascher, 1-43.

(13) Caesar, 42-45 (The Gallic War 1.29); Tacitus, 268-69 (Germania 3). Tacitus says that the inscriptions were found in Rhaetia--an area located in modern Switzerland and the Tyrol--which sixteenth-century scholars would have understood to be part of Transalpine Gaul.

(14) Dubois, 87, n. 13. To Caesar and Tacitus one might add Lascaris, Tory, and Sylvius. Dubois goes on to list in the next generation Leon Trippault (1580), Denis Lambin (1572), Jean Picard, Joachim Perion, Jean Bodin, Methodus, chapter 9, and, perhaps most obviously, Henri Estienne's Traicte de la conformite du langage francois avec le grec (1569).

(15) Bolgar, 506-41 (appendix 2), gives a sense of the extent of this activity.

(16) As early as 1527, Francois I urged that the translations of various Greek and Roman historians which Claude de Seyssel had left in manuscript be printed: "As we have always specially sought the training and education of all our good subjects, especially those who are assigned to the condition of nobility" ("Comme nous avons tousjours singulierement desire l'endoctrinement et edification de tous noz bons subjectz, principalement de ceux qui sont constituee en l'estat de noblesse": Catalogue des actes de Francois Ier, 1:527). Jacques Colin saw to it that they were. For a discussion of the generic definition of the epic in mid-sixteenth-century thought, see Bjai, as well as the rest of this special issue of the Nouvelle Revue du XVI' siecle, subtitled Grand Genre, grand aeuvre, poeme heroique; see also Rothstein, 1996; Ferguson.

(17) Coron, 147.

(18) See Norton.

(19) See Kalwies, 600-04.

(20) Silver, 1:25-26; also cited by Kalwies, 605.

(21) On the attitudes of the preface, see Glidden, 510-11.

(22) In the preface to the fifth book of Amadis (1544)--when the success of the series was well established--Herberay not only still mentions his profession, but also ties his return to literary endeavors to the end of the wars in Artois and Luxemburg. Two generations later, this same volume came into the possession of Jacques Auguste du Thou, lawyer and historian (born in 1553, the year after Herberay's death), whose signature is on the title page. In a different age, it had passed to another milieu.

(23) Aries, 207, 209.

(24) See Potter; Germa-Romann, 35-36. The publishing history of Salel's translation suggests that the end of the reign of Francois I was perhaps the apogee of courtly interest in the Iliad, which never again appeared as a folio. After Salel's death, there were octavo editions from Sertenas-Grouleau of books 1-12 in 1555. The remaining twelve books (translated by Amadis Jamyn, Ronsard's secretary) completed an octavo Iliade in 1577. This was followed by 12[degrees] editions in 1580, 1584, 1599, and 1605, suggesting stronger interest in the last two decades of the century. The small format, however, points to a quite different audience.

(25) Curtius, 205.

(26) Homer, 1545, 152: "deux gentilz Soudards / Faisans bransler bien fierement leurs Dards." The Robert historique entry for gentil notes the meaning "noble de naissance" and "brave" as dating from the eleventh century; it later became a synonym for aristocrat. While gentil often merely meant "noble," at least through the first half of the sixteenth century, it was also used in contexts--as in the lines quoted here from Salel--that suggest more aggressive senses. For an extended discussion of the sense of gentil at about this time, see Rothstein, 1999, 140-42.

(27) For the study of Homer in the sixteenth-century, see Ford, 2000 and 2002. In addition to the two Latin translations, there were several whole or partial Greek editions of the Iliad published in France before 1545. Wechel published Homer (or parts of Homer) in Greek in 1530, 1535, and 1537; Bogard in 1543. By 1600 there were perhaps half a dozen more. The last third of the century saw many editions of the Odyssey.

(28) Ceard, 56-57.

(29) Jamyn's translation of Iliad 13-24 is in alexandrins, which had found acceptance by the 1570s. In his 1572 "Epistre au lecteur," Ronsard qualifies alexandrins as "today the best received by our lords and ladies of the court, and all French youths" ("pour le jourd'huy plus favorablement receuz de nos Seigneurs et Dames de la court, et de toute la jeunesse Francoise": 16 (1).9).

(30) Homer, 1545, 62: "le subtil Ulysse"; Homer, 1999, 72 (2.169). References to the Greek Iliad are taken from the Loeb edition. I wish to express my warm thanks to my colleague Richard Heitman for help with Greek fonts and with the English translations here, which are occasionally slightly modified to make Salel's divergence from his Greek source more apparent.

(31) Homer, 1545, 210 (5.49): "Camandre le veneur."

(32) Ibid., 70: "pour la difficulte du catalogue et denombrement des Grecs et Troyens"; Homer, 1999, 96 (2.488).

(33) Homer, 1545, 39: "Mesmes la ville au grand Roy Aetion, / Par mon effort fut a destruction"; Homer, 1999, 40 (1.366). I use the original Thebe rather than the Loeb's Thebes to mark the distinction between the two (quite separate) ancient Greek cities.

(34) Homer, 1545, 130: "Thebes a sept portes"; Homer, 1999, 172 (4.106).

(35) Homer, 1545, 195-203; Homer, 1999, 282-84 (6.119-237).

(36) Bourquin, 97.

(37) Homer, 1545, 257: "Hector Parle a ses Chevaulx" and "Le Vin aux Chevaulx de Guerre." The genealogy is at Homer, 1545, 153-54; Homer, 1999, 224-26 (5.265-72). Initially, I assumed the appeal of giving wine to horses to be in its exoticism. However, Professor Lia Ross drew my attention to a passage in Commynes, 1:37, where, the day after the battle of Montlhery (July 1465) Commynes notes: "I had an extremely tired, old horse. He drank a full bucket of wine. Perhaps by chance he put his muzzle into it. I let him finish it, and never had I found him so good or so fresh" ("J'avoye un cheval extremement las, vieil cheval. II beut ung sceau plain de vin. Par aucun cas d'aventure, il y mist le museau. Je le laissay achever: jamais ne l'avoye trouve si bon ni si fraiz"). So perhaps this is noted because it was a practice still in occasional use, drawing Renaissance French treatment of war horses closer to that of the ancient Greeks.

(38) The literature on this subject is very limited. Slights focuses on English books: he has not found evidence of a usual practice by which marginalia were produced nor anything that would permit general assumptions about their authorship. After examining 1,000 sixteenth- and seventeenth-century books with marginalia, he notes fourteen major uses: amplification, annotation, appropriation, correction, emphasis, evaluation, exhortation, explication, justification, organization, parody/preemption, rhetorical gloss, simplification, and translation (25). All of these, with the exception of parody/preemption, can be found in the margins of Salel's Homer.

(39) Homer, 1545, 164: "Mars prend la semblance d'Eneas et enhorte les Troiens" (emphasis added).

(40) Ibid., 164: "print alors la face, / Et les habitz d'ung grand prince de Thrace / Dict Acamas."

(41) Ibid., 19: "Invocation de la Muse"; 20: "Narration."

(42) Ibid., 24: "Chalchas excellent prophete ou devineur"; 26: "Clytemnestra femme d'Agamemnon"; 51: "Vulcan sert d'Eschanson, et fait rire les dieux en le voyant marcher pour ce qu'il est boiteux"; 120: "Machaon medecin, Filz d'Esculape. Trice."

(43) Ibid., 29: "Phthie pays d'Achilles."

(44) Descriptions of such glossaries in vernacular editions of Herodian, Cicero, Plutarch, Sallust, Valerius, Maximus, and so on, are in Rothstein, forthcoming.

(45) Homer, 1545, 92: "Amazones"; ibid. (translating and expanding on Homer, 1999, 142 [3.189]: "Amazons, peers of men"): "Amazones / Femmes de sexe, et en guerre Persones / De grand exploict."

(46) Homer, 1545, 107: "Agamemnon aux Troiens"; 22: "Oraison de Chryses a Apollo"; 99: "Oraison des souldards Grecs et Troiens."

(47) The preponderance of speeches and letters picked for inclusion in the Tresor d'Amadis suggests that sixteenth-century readers expected to find inspiration for their everyday speech and letter-writing needs in literary models. This purpose is sometimes made explicit in the title of many editions of this work between 1559 and 1605, as, for example, Discours de XIII livres d'Amadis ... servant pour l'instruction de la noblesse de France a bien harenguer, et escrire lettres missives.

(48) Homer, 1545, 143: "Meges tue Phegeus Bastard d'Antenor. Il fault noter que le Poete en nommant ceulx qui sont tuez, dict aussi leur race, nourriture, ou exercice, espouvant par ce moyen pitie, et commiseration, en quoy Virgile l'a tresbien imite." Here both Salel and the marginalia get the name wrong: Homer gives Pedaeus (Homer, 1999, 210 [5.69]).

(49) Homer, 1545, 88: "la jeunesse inconstante"; 197: "sentence notable."

(50) Ibid., 84: "Comparaison d'un pelerin trouvant un dragon"; 94: "Comparaison de l'eloquence d'Ulysses aux neiges hivernalles."

(51) Ibid., 31: "Achilles obeyst a Pallas, cest ascavoir la raison." Allegorical readings of Homer were current in antiquity and in the Renaissance. Denis Lambin (1511-72) lectured on the Iliad, identifying characters with qualities: "Achilles represents youth, Agamemnon, royal dignity ... Nestor, maturity" ("Achille incarne la jeunesse, Agamemnon la dignite royale ... Nestor la maturite": Hepp, 432). See also Ford, 1995 and 2000.

(52) Homer, 1545, 63: "Le pouvoir de regner procede de Dieu."

(53) Ibid., 41: "Conspiration des Dieux contre Juppiter."

(54) Some fifty years later Tasso (1973, 95) makes this point explicitly: "[F]or if God can create ex non entibus, vel ex non existentibus, as the theologians say he can much more easily create ex praeexistenti materia. Let Virgil, then, be allowed to attribute to his Jupiter, the greatest god of the pagans, this marvellous power of transmuting matter from one form to another" (Tasso, 1964, 96: "[P]erche si Iddio puo creare ex non entibus, vel ex non existentibus, come dicono il teologi, molto piu agevolment potra cio fare ex praeexistenti marreria. Concedasi donque a Virgilio l'aver attribuito a quel suo Giove, che era il maggio dio ch'avessero i gentili, questa maravigliosa potenza del trasmutare la materia d'una in un'altra forma"). Tasso, 1973, goes on to conclude "So too the ancients, who lived in the error of their false religion, must not have thought impossible the miracles recounted of their gods not merely by poets but in histories" (Tasso, 1964, 97: "Si come anco a quegli antichi, che vivevano ne gli errori della lor vana relgione, non deveano parer impossibili que' miracoli che de' lor dei favoleggiavano, non solo i poeti ma l'istorie"). I am grateful to Daniel Javitch for drawing my attention to Tasso's text. Ford, 2002, 332, shows Ronsard using Neoplatonic notions to forge a bridge between Christian and classical traditions.

(55) Homer, 1545, 33: "Un jour viendra, que pour fuyr des mains / Du grand meurtrier Hector, qui desfera / Grand part des Grecs, on me desirera. / Et toy, surpris d'aigre melancholie, / Recognoistras ta meschance et folie."

(56) Ibid.: "L'autheur appelle souvent Hector meurtrier."

(57) See Prendergas, 39 ("Hector").

(58) Homer, 1960, 8: "meurtrier."

(59) Homer, 1545, 263: "Mastin enrage" and "il veut dire Hector"; 265: "Hector terrible et espouventable aux Grecs."

(60) Ibid., 87, 88, 171: "le preux Hector."

(61) Ibid., 136: "Les Troiens reculent. Hector recule.... Mesmes Hector, qui avoit la conduycte / De leur Armee, eut alors quelque envie / De s'en aller, pour n'y perdre la vie." Compare Homer, 1999, 201 (4.505): "Then the foremost warriors and glorious Hector gave ground."

(62) Although it was in the best interests of his country that the Trojan leader should seek to live to fight another day, Hector's reported fear of death may have seemed more condemnable to the authorial audience than it would to a modern one. Consider Ronsard's attitude expressed in Ronsard, 16:67 (Franciade 1:766): "A fine death honors human life" ("Un beau mourir orne la vie humaine"). Germa-Romann's study of noble soldiers' attitude toward death documents the respect given those who did not fear death, "the gift of oneself" ("le don de soi"), in battle; see her chapter "Face a face avec la mort," 29-34.

(63) Homer 1545, 232: "Je sens desja mon cueur / qui me promect que je seray vainqueur" (emphasis added); Homer, 1999, 328 (7.192).

(64) Homer, 1545, 143: "Or mourut il sans en avoir revanche / D'ung coup de Dard, receu dedans la Hanche: / Qui lui passa tout outre en la Vessie, / Dont il sentit soubdain l'Ame transie: / Et cheut en bas sur ses Genoux, plourant / Amerement, quand il se veit mourant."

(65) Homer, 1999, 210 (5.68): "and he fell to his knees with a groan and death enfolded him."

(66) Homer, 1545, 143: "Meges aussy vaillamment combatit."

(67) Ibid., 30: "Pallas defent que Achilles ne tue Agamemnon."

(68) Ibid., 34: "L'authorite et puissance des Roys vient de Juppiter."

(69) Ibid., 57.

(70) Ibid., 79: "Agamemnon ressemble a trois Dieux, Juppiter, Neptune, et Mars"; see Homer, 1999, 96 (2.477-79).

(71) Homer, 1545, 63; Homer, 1999, 74 (2.185).

(72) Homer, 1545, 58, 67.

(73) Ibid., 63: "Le pouvoir de regner procede de Dieu" and "L'ire d'ung Roy est grande, et redoubtable, / Et sa fureur du tout insupportable: / Car le pouvoir, par lequel il domine, / Vient droictement de la faveur divine: / Et est ung Roy tousjours ayme de Dieu: / Veu qu'il commande icy bas en son lieu"; Homer, 1999, 74 (2:195-97).

(74) Homer, 1545, 64: "Toute Police est plus recommandee, / Quand elle n'est que par ung seul guydee / Donc soit ung Roy (lequel Juppiter donne) / Tresobey, en tout ce qu'il ordonne."

(75) Ibid.: "La monarchie recommandee en toute Republique ... Obeissance aux Roys."

(76) Ibid., 65: "Homere soubz la persone de Thersites descript la nature d'ung envieux sedicieux & maling personage."

(77) Ronsard, 6:33, 11.31-35: "FRANCOIS le premier Roi des vertus, & du nom, / Prenant a gre d'ouir l'Atride Agamenon / Parler en son langage, & par toi [Salel] les gensdarmes / De Priam, son ayeul, faire bruire leurs armes / D'un murmure francois."

(78) For the equivalence of parler or langage and genre, type, and style, see Mathieu-Castellani.

(79) The frontispiece is a full-page woodcut that for book 1 is approximately 137mm by 97mm, having no borders. The remaining nine woodcuts are about 77mm square expanded to 137mm by 97mm by borders. A full bibliographical description and a reproduction of the frontispiece depicting Homer as a fountain of poetry can be found in Mortimer, 1:361. The Iliade images are notably bigger than the frequently reused, approximately 51mm by 76mm, images appearing in the large folio volumes of the Amadis series. On the illustrations of Amadis, see Chatelain; Rothstein, 1999.

(80) Homer, 1545, 20-24: "Phoebus l'entendit. / Puis tout soubdain en terre descen-dit, / Portant son arc, & sa doree trousse.... / et quant et quant sur le camp descocha / Une sagette.... / De ce dur traict furent soubdain mourans / Les gras muletz, et les bons chiens courans. / Mais en apres la sagette mortele, / Qu'il eslascha, feit pestilence tele / Entre les Grecs, qu'on veit corps infiniz / De griefve peste affoibliz et terniz. / O quel' horreur de veoir pres des vaisseaulx, / Brusler les corps de Grecs a grands monceaulx."

(81) Weinberg, 123, ll. 187-88: "Mettant toujours en place plus patente, / Droit au mylieu la grand Royale tente."

(82) Salel does translate the stone-throwing, as in book 3 just before the single combat between Paris and Menelaus: "The Greeks ceaselessly / while approaching threw / stones and darts, and attacked the Trojans" (Homer, 1545, 86: "Mais les Grecs sans cesser, / En approchant, a coupz perduz jectoient / Pierres et traicts, & Troiens molestoient").

(83) Rabelais, 520 (Gargantua and Pantagruel 4.67); Ariosto, 108-09 (Orlando Furioso 11.21-28).

(84) Homer, 1999, 210 (2.54).

(85) Kathleen Wilson-Chevalier was kind enough to read an earlier version of my discussion of the images in the 1545 Iliade and to meet with me to discuss it. It was her sharp art-historian's eye that drew my attention to this detail. I thank her warmly for her numerous expert suggestions regarding the illustrations.

(86) Homer, 1545, 102.

(87) This conclusion was suggested by Kathleen Wilson-Chevalier. Scholars who refer to the woodcuts in this edition seem happy to ascribe them to Jean Cousin. No one else has suggested that the woodcuts are by two different hands, or noted the lapse from detailed narrative illustration to something less.

(88) A prefatory letter, "L'Imprimeur au lecteur," in Cousin, A3v, tells readers, "Having been presented by Master Jean Cousin (in the art of portraits and painting not lesser than Zeuxis or Apelles) a book composed by himself on the art of Perspective along with the necessary illustrations drawn by hand on wood planks, I accepted the aforesaid offer and cut the greater part of the aforesaid figures--and several which were earlier begun by Aubin Olivier, my brother in law--I finished and completed according to the intention of the aforesaid author" ("M'estant presente par maistre Jehan Cousin [en l'art de Portraicture et Peincture non infime a Zeusis, ou Appelles] un livre de la pratique de Perspective, par luy compose, et les figures pour l'intelligence d'iceluy necessaires, portraittes de la main sus planches de bois: j'ay accepte laditte offre et ay taille la plus grand'part de desdittes figures et quelques unes qui auparavant estoient encommencee par maistre Aubin Olivier, mon beau frere, les ay parachevees et mises en perfection selon l'intention dudit autheur" [emphasis added]). This passage is precious in allowing the identification of the blocks' engraver at a time when craftsmen were generally still anonymous.

(89) See Landau and Parshall, 22. Their evidence comes almost exclusively from Germanic and Italian lands; styles were different in France but techniques were similar and, of course, artisans as well as artists frequently crossed borders. I thank Jeffrey Chipps Smith for drawing my attention to this work.

(90) Grodecki, 2:29: "d'apres le 'portrait' qui est a Fontainebleau en la chapelle haute." Grodecki has extracted from the archives notarial documents relevant to the production of visual art objects of all kinds.

(91) Audin catalogues an exhibit of woodblocks largely from the sixteenth century, some still uncut. Some are signed, usually with a mark or an initial, but it remains unclear whether this represents the designer, the cutter, the owner of the block, or a workshop grouping numbers of artisans--as Audin thinks is probably the case for the famous croix de Lorraine mark that appears in blocks from the 1520s to the 1550s, and on blocks that seem to come from different hands. If what seem to be signatures are in fact the declaration of a workshop and not a maker, the veil of anonymity is even thicker than is often assumed.

(92) Anninger, 177, justly remarks that "anything of quality is often indiscriminately attributed" to Jean Cousin. Among the books whose illustrations have been ascribed at one time or another to Cousin are Corrozet's Hecatomgraphie, book 7 of Amadis de Gaule, the Tableau de Cebes, the French translation of the Songe de Poliphile, and our Iliade.

(93) Dimier, 180, links his style to that of the Ecole de Fontainebleau and characterizes him unkindly as follows: "His manner reveals but indifferent knowledge, taste of little refinement in spite of considerable care."

(94) Notarial records concerning artists' commissions occasionally refer to instructions guiding content. In 1571 Francois Clouet was to design the borders and grotesques of the ceiling of the Grande Salle of the Palais in Paris at his own discretion, but the central motifs were to be painted "such and like those that he will be ordered to make by the aforesaid Seigneur de Chailly [the king's maitre d'hotel]" ("telles et semblables qu'il luy seront commendees faire par ledict seigneur de Chailly [maitre d'hotel du roi]": Grodecki, 1:167). Etienne Tabourot declared in the 1580s that Pontus de Tyard's Douze fables des fleuves ou fontaines, avec la description pour la peinture were the guide to the pictorial decoration of a portion of the Chateau d'Anet, but in this case it is the visual element that has been destroyed. Two extant manuscripts of Marguerite de Navarre's La Coche do contain detailed instructions we know to have been written by Marguerite herself, to guide the illustrator. Neither of these MSS is illustrated but, as Marichal, [1936?], 29-32, painstakingly shows, the woodcuts for the first printed edition in 1547 conform to these verbal instructions quite precisely. However, in La Coche the illustrations are placed after the text they illustrate, both in the two illuminated MSS--Marichal shows these preceded the extant unillustrated MSS--and in the editio princeps. The difference in layout suggests that La Coche was prepared for private reading, where the reader would naturally have access to the illustrations immediately following the relevant verbal text. In contrast, printers placed illustrations before the relevant text when reception was assumed to be aural, as with our Homer or Amadis, where visual and verbal elements of the text would be received separately.

(95) The notion that the captions may constitute a remnant of the program guiding the composition of the tapestries is my own. The tapestries and captions are reproduced in Ross, 30-31.

(96) Ibid., 34: "Sainct Mammes apres avoyr festiee et se estre declare a ceulx qui le vouloyent prandre ayans mesmes avec ung lyon sen alla presenter au duc Alexandre qui le feist martiriser."