Between sarkes and derma (rhinos)
(Fragment from my article: Gavrylenko V., “The ‘Body Without Skin’ in Homeric Poems”, in Horstmanshoff H., King H., Zittel C. (eds.), Blood, Sweat and Tears: The Changing Concepts of Physiology from Antiquity into Early Modern Europe (Intersections 25). Leiden: Brill, 2012. Pp. 479-502.)
Homeric chrôs is usually understood as ‘skin ’, or ‘envelope’, ‘surface’, the ‘outer boundary of the human body’. These terms are used by a number of influential modern scholars: B. Snell, J.-P. Vernant and G. Bolens. However, such an interpretation of chrôs as an exterior was first proposed by the Pythagoreans and, after centuries of transmission of Homer and critical work on him, firmly integrated into contemporary academic thought. According to the Pythagoreans, chroian is a surface, a bodily exterior.[9]
At the same time, it is also interpreted as ‘body’, ‘flesh’, and sometimes ‘colour’. Indeed, 72 cases in the Iliad and 44 in the Odyssey10 problematise any distinction within the concept of chrôs between flesh and skin, between surface and depth. If some occurrences suggest that chrôs is close to the modern notion of skin as surface (which has now become problematic as well), others invite the reader to feel its apparent depth. In this regard, it is useful to refer to Galen, who provides a summary of what appears implicit in Homeric poems: ‘The Ionians give the name chrôta to the fleshy part of our body: skin (derma ) and muscles (mues), in addition to the membranes and internal organs (splanchna). What relates to the bones is not called chrôta’.11 The syncretical character of chrôs is therefore evident: it is body and skin together, and what is important is not the opposition of surface to depth, but rather a sort of affinity of chrôs to the fleshy parts of the body, an affinity that allows us to identify it as a ‘body without skin’ because derma, mentioned here by Galen, is not yet ‘appropriated’ by the human body in the Homeric epic.12 Homeric depictions of chrôs suggest that there is no constant meaning of the word, and that it changes from context to context, oscillating between ‘opposites’ – surface and depth. Chrôs is sometimes as ‘thick’ as to reach the bones: antikru chroa te rêksô sun t’oste’ araksô, ‘I will tear your body and at the same time break your bones’ (Il. 23.673). In some cases, however, ‘depth’ or ‘superficiality’ are not so evident: amph’ osteophi chrôs in Od. 16.145 ; chroa kalon eni gnamptoisi melessi, Od. 13.398, 430; amphi peri chroa inesin êde melessin, Il. 23.191 . Following these examples, it is difficult to say whether flesh or skin are to be understood by chrôs, but – and this seems to be more important – it might not be a concern for the poet(s), because the term is interchangeable with sarx and is never associated with derma and rhinos, which in the poems designate mostly animal skin or hide.
The functionally synonymous nature of different words used to describe similar phenomena in the identical passages helps to locate chrôs upon or around the warrior’s bones and limbs, and to define its ‘anatomical’ characteristics. Such is the case of sarx, sarkes which enters into a functional synonymic relationship with chrôs in the passages just mentioned, with an uncertain meaning of chrôs. Chrôs is similar to sarx when sarx, sarkes is opposed to the bones: ou gar eti sarkas te kai ostea ines echousin, ‘joints do not wear flesh and bones any more’, Od. 11.219; sarkes de peritromeonto melessin, ‘flesh trembled around the members’, Od. 18.77; the Cyclops Polyphemus was so hungry as to eat not only the internal organs of the flesh, enkata te sarkas, but bones full of marrow as well, ostea mueloenta, Od. 9.292–293. Chrôs, close in meaning to ‘flesh’ and ‘meat’, is thus interchangeable with sarx.
Apart from sarx, there is a curious correlation between chrôs and derma, rhinos. This time, they are not functionally synonymous. Usually, derma and rhinos are used not in relation to the human body, but to the ‘non-human’. According to Pigeaud, ‘derma c’est la dépouille, la peau de l’écorché. En général, il faut le dire, une peau de bête. Un synonyme de derma est rhinos’.13 Derma, derived from the verb derô, in most cases means the hide of an animal.14 Derma is distinctive due to the fact that it can be detached from the whole animal. It can then be processed and used as an element of armour, clothes, and bedding. The same can be said of rhinos. Il. 16.341 offers the only exception in the Iliad. Here derma is applied to the human ‘écorché’: decapitated by Peneleos, Lyco’s head hangs to one side; only derma holds it.15 In the Odyssey, derma is still used for the detached and sometimes processed skin of animals. Again, as in the Iliad, there is an exception in the Odyssey concerning the use of derma. This exception does not change the meaning of derma; it only transfers it to the human body. Od. 13.429–432 depicts Odysseus’ transformation by Athena where the hero is shown covered with the derma of a very old man (palaiou gerontos), while his own chrôs is dried up:
So saying, Athene touched him with her wand. She withered the fair flesh (chroa) on his supple limbs, and destroyed the flaxen hair from off his head, and about all his limbs she put the skin (derma ) of an aged old man.16
Scholars debate whether the goddess indeed transforms Odysseus or only dresses him with an old man’s skin , quite a popular motif in ancient literature. Gregory Nagy accepts the ‘metaphorical’ interpretation of such scenes, which for him represent ‘the traditional theme of equating one’s identity with one’s “hide” ’.17 Nagy then argues that the Greek sakos, ‘cowhide-shield’, ‘besides meaning “body” [. . .] is also regularly used to designate “person, self, one’s own self” ’.18 A different position is adopted by C.M. Bowra concerning the problem of ‘complete’ transformations of mythological characters (such as Actaeon). According to him, ‘derma is not the same as demas’.19 I would add that derma evidently is not the same as chrôs either. A good example of such an imbalance or difference is Heracles, a superhero who wears the lion’s hide and is skinless at the same time, that is, fatally defective.20
It is clear that the derma of an old man is alien to Odysseus’ body (chrôs). In its meaning, it is identical to other occurences of derma as an animal hide, an envelope, a body part which may be detached from the body. In this context it is worth mentioning another metamorphosis experienced by Athena’s protégé. In book 16, Odysseus meets Telemachus, and just before the son recognises his father, Athena transforms ‘old’ Odysseus into an essence of youth and divine beauty. Telemachus exclaims:
Of other sort thou seemest to me now, stranger, than awhile ago, and other are the garments thou hast on, and thy chrôs is no more the same (Od. 16.181–182 ).21
A.T. Murray’s translation of chrôs as colour omits the play on words created by the previous scene of Odysseus’ transformation in book 13, a play between the chrôs of the hero and the derma upon (or around, amphi) him. J.-P. Vernant is more precise: for Telemachus, Odysseus reappears ‘with totally different skin ’.22 Because Telemachus is ignorant about the former metamorphosis of the stranger with the old derma around him, he wrongly equates derma with chrôs, taking it for the stranger’s ‘own’, and for this reason he calls it chrôs instead of derma. J. Pigeaud emphasises this nuance that chrôs is ‘co-née avec son porteur; je veux dire qu’on ne peut pas la revêtir comme le derma’.23
Synonymous with derma, rhinos (pl. rhinoi) designates an animal hide,24 a material from which shields are made (usually oxhide). However, one can see how rhinos is flayed or torn off the human body. In Il. 5.308 , a rock thrown by Tydeus at Aeneas ‘tore the skin away’.25 In the Odyssey the number of similar cases increases: rhinoi, slightly wounded or torn off the bodies by stones, rocks, weapons, are used to designate the human skin: 5.426, 435 , 14.134 , 22.278 . In Od. 12.45–46 rhinoi rot around the bones of victims who had died listening to the song of the Sirens. To the scholiast, these are skins: ‘skins putrefy around the bones’.26 Then, akrên rhinon touched by the javelin in Od. 22.278 is understood as the ‘outer surface’ (skin) of the body.27
Other examples (cf. Il. 23.673 and Od. 5.426; Od. 12.46, and 16.145) demonstrate the interchangeability of rhinoi and chrôs. Both ‘skin ’ and ‘body’, or ‘flesh’ could be read there. At the same time, those several occurrences in the Odyssey of rhinos designating not exclusively animal skin, but also human skin detached or torn from the heroic body (Od. 5.435, 14.134, 22.278), allow us to offer a hypothesis about the appearance of the human skin in the Odyssey. If the Odyssey, a younger poem than the Iliad, presents more examples of rhinos as the human skin, then it indicates a shift in Homeric assumptions about the human body, a change of a body logic in the redaction of the Odyssey which consists in the body’s acquisition of its ‘own’ skin.
Although the Odyssey presents only slender evidence for the birth of the concept of human skin, which complicates the development of my initial proposal, it is important that it is articulated here in the context of my analysis of chrôs as ‘body without skin’. I see here no contradiction, just as there is no contradiction in the case of ‘skinless’ Herakles covered with the lion’s hide, and also because the Homeric epic is not a system of coherent representations, but a ‘network’ of their multiple disruptions and strata. It shows the body not only in flux with the world but also in flux in time. Rhinos as the human skin is here only the seed of a concept which did not, however, enter into circulation even within the Hippocratic Corpus, where it was rarely used. Therefore, the human skin that emerges in the Odyssey does not overshadow chrôs, but, on the contrary, makes its skinlessness more obvious.
Chrôs, sarx and derma /rhinos form a curious triangle of intricate relationships. However, chrôs seems to prevail in this ‘chrôs-family’.28 If derma and rhinos sometimes designate the human skin in Homer , they are mainly associated with animal hide. And yet, even when applied to the human body, rhinos, when opposed to the bones (as in Od. 12.45–46), may be too close to sarx in meaning to claim its purely ‘dermatological’ (in the Homeric sense of derma) meaning. Moreover, a number of spatial prepositions like amphi and peri depict chrôs as an envelope, a cocoon, an exterior of the body. But this image of a cocoon, a container, is inseparable from another one where the prepositions antikru and dia visualise chrôs as the fleshy body with depth and surface fused together. Chrôs represents depth and exteriority of the body at the same time. But modern scholars stress its exteriority, thus following the Pythagoreans’ understanding of the Homeric man. Bruno Snell argues:
[. . .] chrôs is the skin , not the skin as an anatomical substance , the skin which can be peeled off – that is [. . .] derma – but the skin as surface, as the outer border of the fijigure of man, as the foundation of colour, and so forth. In point of fact, however, chrôs is often used in the place of ‘body’.29
For J.-P. Vernant too the signifijicance of chrôs is focused on its superfijiciality: ‘l’enveloppe extérieure, la peau, la surface de contact avec soi et avec l’autre, comme aussi la carnation, le teint’.30 The terms themselves used to explain chrôs – in particular, surface – should not be taken for granted, but should be used with greater precision. It is possible to accept the idea of Snell and Vernant about superfijiciality and exteriority of chrôs only if an important nuance is taken into account: its depth, pointed out already by Galen . I also agree that chrôs is a border, an area of contact
with the outer world which implies that there is a distinction, a disruption, between the human and the outer world. Chrôs is exactly what establishes this difference. But in the Iliad, and often in the Odyssey, this border is depicted as eliminated. That is, chrôs exists only in the state of disruption between the human and the world, the state of intrusion of one into another. It is intrusion and violation of borders that give birth to this fleshy body.
Concerning the ‘self’ and ‘other’ to which Vernant appeals, these notions and the distinction between them seem somewhat anachronistic, perhaps even modern-eurocentrist. It is barely possible to demonstrate a direct textual correlation between chrôs, ‘self’, and ‘other’ in the Homeric poems. This is primarily because in epic there is no equivalent or no (single?) word for ‘self’, a point which has itself become the subject of a vast body of research. I would not venture to engage with the problem of Homeric ‘self’/’other’ in its relation to chrôs. To me, the use of this notion here would necessitate different conceptual vocabulary and analysis on another level. Besides, when I use the terms ‘hero’ or ‘human’, ‘outer’ or ‘external’, I would not substitute any of them by ‘self’ and ‘other’. Nicole Loraux’s views are close to my own understanding of the heroic body represented by chrôs. It is irrelevant for Homer , she argues, to differentiate between skin and flesh within the term chrôs. What makes a difference is bodily openness and vulnerability. The heroic body is a bodywound which appears just at the moment its life is threatened. In fact, the danger to which chrôs is subject creates and engenders this body-wound. There is no body (chrôs) until it is penetrated, cut, dismembered, dried out, wasted away, mutilated, and so forth.31
Such an approach invites us to perceive chrôs as a tangible substance that always fijinds itself not only in a superfijicial contact with, but also in a profound mixture with, the ‘outer’ world. This circumstance, too, may explain the absence of the Homeric notion of the human skin if its function is to serve as a barrier, a border, a cover protecting the body from outside influences. In Homeric epic this function is performed by the animal hide (derma , rhinos) as the heroic body is generally deprived of his own ‘hide’.
Epithets accompanying chrôs, chroa emphasise its specifijic subtlety, or delicacy: leukon (Il. 11.573 , 15.316), terena (Il. 4.237 , 13.553 , 14.406), kalon (Il. 5.858 , 11.352 , 21.398 , 22.321 , 23.805 , Od. 19.263).32 The idea of the vulnerability of the living heroic body is even further condensed in the word trôtos, used once for Achilles’ body in Il. 21.568 .33 If the live body of the Homeric hero is trôtos, then empedos denotes the dead body of the most prominent heroes whose bodies are to be preserved safe and sound before the funerary rituals are performed (e.g., Il. 19.33, 39). Chroa leirioenta, used for Ajax’s body in Il. 13.830 , is commonly interpreted as ‘delicate flesh’,34 ‘desired’, or ‘lily-like’, but these translations ignore one specifijic nuance which will be discussed below.
Chrôs is said to be neither of stone nor of iron. Because it is human and easy to penetrate it is not insensitive (Il. 4.510).35 It is with the cutting gesture sanctioned by the war, temnein (a verb from which the noun anatomê, ‘dissection’, is derived)36 that these qualities of the body are discovered. Spears are tamesichroa, ‘cutting the flesh’ (Il. 4.511 , 13.340 , 23.803). In cutting the victim they violently violate the bodily boundaries (in order to overcome a military crisis).37 Spears are eager to sate themselves with chrôs (Il. 11.574 , 15.317),38 like the warriors desire to slash the bodies of one another with pitiless bronze (Il. 13.501 , 16.761).39 Spears in parallel with cruelpains penetrate, or go through the human body (Il. 11.398 , 20.100),40 dent the flesh (Il. 8.298 , 15.315).41 The heroic body is disrupted and deformed equally and in the same way (as the use of identical epic formulas show) by weapons, natural decay, and strong emotions .42 In numerous instances in both the Iliad and the Odyssey, chrôs and other bodily parts are tortured by grief, terror, and pain. Although this topic has already been thoroughly investigated, researchers deal mainly with the ‘organs of consciousness’: thumos (breath, life), phrenes (diaphragm, lungs), prapides (diaphragm, heart), kêr (heart), kradiê (heart), etc. Much less attention is paid to the body itself. Meanwhile, the Homeric texts are rich enough to be analysed with a view towards emotional intrusions and their effect not only upon the internal ‘organs’ but on the whole body as well.
NOTES
9 Pseudo-Plutarchus, Placita philosophorum 883C4–5 οἱ Πυθαγορικοὶ χροιὰν ἐκάλουν τὴν ἐπιφάνειαν τοῦ σώματος.
10 Homerus, Ilias 04.130, 137, 139, 237, 510 ; 5.337, 354, 858 ; 7.207 ; 8.43, 298 ; 9.596 ; 10.575 ; 11.352, 398, 437, 457, 573, 574 ; 12.427, 464 ; 13.25, 191, 241, 279, 284, 340, 440, 501, 553, 574, 640, 649, 830 ; 14.25, 164, 170, 175, 187, 383, 406, 456 ; 15.315, 316, 317, 534 ; 16.504, 761, 814 ; 17.210, 571, 733 ; 19.27, 33, 39, 233 ; 20.100 ; 21.70, 168, 398, 568 ; 22.286, 321, 322 ; 23.67, 191, 673, 803, 805, 819 ; 24.19, 414 ; Odyssea 2.376 ; 4.749, 750, 759 ; 5.455; 6.61, 129, 220, 224 ; 11.191, 529 ; 13.398, 430 ; 14.24, 506 ; 15.60 ; 16.145, 175, 182, 210, 457 ; 17.48, 58, 203, 338 ; 18.172, 179 ; 19.72, 204, 218, 232, 237, 263 ; 21.412 ; 22.113 ; 23.95, 115, 237 ; 24.44, 156, 158, 467, 500 .
11 Galenus, In Hippocratis librum de fracturis commentarii 2.9 (18b.435.7–10 K.) Χρῶτα καλοῦσιν οἱ Ἴωνες‚ ὃ ἦν τοῦ σώματος ἡμῶν σαρκῶδες‚ ἐν ᾧ μάλιστα γένει τὸ δέρμα καὶ οἱ μύες εἰσὶν‚ ἐφεξῆς δὲ οἱ ὑμένες καὶ σπλάγχνα․ τὸ δὲ τῶν ὀστῶν γένος οὐκ ὀνομάζουσι χρῶτα.
12 Jackie Pigeaud draws on the Galenic view of Ionian chrôta and its profoundness, stressing (and at this point his position is in line with the understanding of chrôs by contemporary scholars) that chrôs is a ‘superfijicial body’. See Pigeaud J., “La peau comme frontière”, Micrologus. La pelle umana. The Human Skin 13 (2005) 23–53, 28.
13 Pigeaud, “La peau comme frontière” 23–24.
14 Hom. Il. 6.117 , 9.548 , 10.23, 177 ; Od. 2.291 , 4.436, 440, 782 ; 8.53 ; 13.436 ; 14.24, 50, 519 ; 22.362 .
15 ἔσχεσε δʼοἶον | δέρμα, παρηέρθη δὲ κάρη.
16 Ὣς ἄρα μιν φαμένη ῥάβδῳ ἐπεμάσσατʼ Ἀθήνη․ | κάρψεν μὲν χρόα καλὸν ἐνὶ γναμπτοῖσι μέλεσσι‚ | ξανϑὰς δ̕ ἐκ κεφαλῆς ὄλεσε τρίχας‚ ἀμφὶ δὲ δέρμα | πάντεσσιν μελέεσσι παλαιοῦ ϑῆκε γέροντος . . .
17 Nagy G., Greek Mythology and Poetics (Ithaca-London: 1990) 264.
18 Nagy, Greek Mythology 264.
19 Bowra C.M., Greek Lyric Poetry. From Alcman to Simonides (Oxford: 1961) 100.
20 On Herakles’ kairotic skinlessness related to his ‘disease(s)’ see the illuminating article by Staden H. von, “The Mind and Skin of Heracles: Heroic Diseases” in Gourevitch D. (ed.), Maladie et maladies, histoire et conceptualisation. Mélanges en l’honneur de Mirko Grmek (Geneva: 1992) 131–150.
21 “Ἀλλοῖός μοι‚ ξεῖνε‚ φάνης νέον ἠὲ πάροιϑεν‚ | ἄλλα δὲ εἵματ’ ἔχεις‚ καί τοι χρὼς οὐκέϑ’ ὁμοῖος․
22 Vernant J.-P., Mortals and Immortals. Collected Essays (Princeton-New Jersey: 1991) 39.
23 Pigeaud, “La peau comme frontière” 28.
24 Hom. Il. 4.447, 7.474, 8.61, 10.155, 262, 334, 12.263, 13.406, 804, 16.636, 20.276, Od. 1.108, 5.281, 12.395, 423. Ῥινός, ῥινοί are used for the nose and nostrils as well: Il. 13.616, 19.39.
25 ὦσε δ’ ἀπὸ ῥινὸν τρηχὺς λίθος.
26 Scholia Graeca in Homeri Odysseam Q ad 12.46 περὶ δὲ τὰ ὀστέα τὰ δέρματα σήπονται.
27 Scholia in Odysseam V ad 22.278 τὴν ἔξωϑεν ἐπιφάνειαν τοῦ σώματος.
28 An allusion to the ‘thumos-family’ of Michael Clarke in his monograph Flesh and Spirit in the Songs of Homer. A Study of Words and Myths (Oxford: 2000).
29 Snell B., The Discovery of the Mind in Greek Philosophy and Literature (New York: 1982) 6.
30 Vernant J.-P., L’Individu, la mort, l’amour. Soi-même et l’autre en Grèce ancienne (Paris: 1989) 11.
31 Loraux N., The Experiences of Tiresias. The Feminine and the Greek Man (Princeton: 1995) 96–97.
32 Another epithet, ἱμερόεις, charming, desired, is used for the divine body of Hera in Il. 14.170 .
33 In Homer Achilles is not yet represented as ‘imperfectly invulnerable’. This is probably the product of a post-Homeric culture. It would be more convenient to describe the Homeric Achilles as perfectly vulnerable. For the hero’s ‘imperfect invunerability’ see Burgess J., “Achilles’ Heel: The Death of Achilles in Ancient Myth”, Classical Antiquity 14, 2 (1995) 217–244.
34 Segal C., The Theme of the Mutilation of the Corpse in the Iliad (Leiden: 1971) 9.
35 οὔ σφι λίθος χρὼς οὐδὲ σίδηρος. Scholia Graeca in Homeri Iliadem (scholia vetera) bT ad 4.510 πρὸς ἀνθρώπους καὶ τρωτοὺς ἡ μάχη. Scholia in Iliadem (scholia recentiora Theodori Meliteniotis) (e cod. Genevensi gr. 44) on the λίθος: τὸ σῶμα ἀναίσθητος.
36 Staden H. von, “The Discovery of the Body: Human Dissection and its Cultural Contexts in Ancient Greece”, Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine 65 (1992) 223–241, 230.
37 Staden, “The Discovery of the Body” 230.
38 λιλαιόμενα χροὸς ἆσαι.
39 ἵεντ᾽ ἀλλήλων ταμέειν χρόα νηλέι ̈ χαλκῷ.
40 πρὶν χροὸς ἀνδρομέοιο διελθέμεν; ὀδύνη δὲ διὰ χροὸς ἦλθ᾽ ἀλεγεινή.
41 πάντες δ᾽ ἐν χροῒ πῆχθεν.
42 For instance, the body of Laertes, in grief for his son, has dried out, and withered around the bones (Od. 16.145 φθινύθει ἀμφ᾽ ὀστεόφι χρώς). The text correlates with the sepsis of corpses of the Sirens’ victims in Od. 12.45–46 πολὺς δ᾿ ἀμφ᾿ ὀστεόφιν θὶς | ἀνδρῶν πυθομένων, περὶ δὲ ῥινοὶ μινύθουσιν.
