Klea andrôn

Klea andrôn (κλέα ἀνδρῶν) — “glories of men” — is the Homeric phrase for the songs of heroes. In Iliad IX 524–525 it appears in the plural, naming a genre. Nagy argues that the phrase marks the exact point at which epic evolved out of earlier local hero-worship traditions: “the klea andrôn /hêrôôn ‘kleos [plural] of men who were heroes’ of Iliad IX 524–525 represents the evolution of Greek epic from earlier ‘stories’ about local heroes” (Nagy 1979).

The phrase does two kinds of work. It makes the genre self-conscious — the Iliad knows it is a song of klea andrôn — and it binds the genre to the muses. The Muses, daughters of mnemosyne, sing the kleos that the poet recites. Hesiod’s invocation at Theogony 104–105 — “kleiete d’ athanatôn hieron genos aien eontôn, ‘make into kleos the sacred genos of the immortals, who always are’” — binds the same medium to the gods (Nagy 1979). Gods and heroes share a form: both are transmitted as kleos, both through Muse-derived memory.

The concept closes the gap between epic and cult. The hero of klea andrôn is a figure whose death is the precondition for his song; his kleos is the Panhellenic replacement for the local tîmê (“honor-in-cult”) he would have received at his tomb. The genre is not merely literary — it is the Panhellenic continuation, in song, of a religious practice that had been plural and local.

Relationships

• kleos-aphthiton
• mnemosyne
• muses
• hero-cult
• gregory-nagy

Primary sources

• nagy-best-of-achaeans (Nagy 1979)
• iliad (Homer, IX 524–525)
• theogony (Hesiod, 104–105)