I Just. Went Down A Rabbit Hole. And Now You Have To Hear About It - Blog Posts

I can't stop thinking about this rabbit hole I went down a few weeks ago when I was procrastinating on my Iliad paper.

So basically. In the Lattimore translation of the Iliad (the one we read in class), he has Helen call herself a slut.

"That man is Atreus’ son Agamemnon, widely powerful,  at the same time a good king and a strong spearfighter,  once my kinsman, slut that I am. Did this ever happen?” (Lattimore 3.178-180)

Naturally I'm like yikes. Then I started wondering whether this was actually what it said in the Greek, and whether other translators disagreed.

(This is not a new thing to wonder about; people talked about this quite a bit after Emily Wilson discussed it.)

To summarize: the Greek word used here is kunops, which literally translates to dog-face or dog-eyed. This word is used precisely two other times in the Iliad: once in book one when Achilles is insulting Agamemnon and once in book eighteen when Hephaestus is talking about how his mother (Hera) threw him out. Surprise surprise, the male translators usually don't use the same word in those two places.

I could have stopped here, but naturally at this point I was like, obviously the best possible use of my time would be to go down into the depths of the library and see what word is used in these three places in every single translation of the Iliad that we have.

Too much time later, I ended up with this:

I think this table kind of speaks for itself.

Just. The way that the male translators all decide that when a woman is called "dog-face," that must mean that she's a shameless bitch, but when a man is called "dog-face," he can just be a dog-face. The bias is REALLY showing through here. I can understand shameless, but where are they getting slut bitch whore?

Lattimore is supposed to be the most literal translation! But then he just has to go and call Helen a slut for no apparent reason! Why would he do this where did it come from I want to scream. why do they assume that a woman criticizing herself has to be about sexual condemnation??

Some things that are worth noting!

As I mentioned, people have talked about this a lot in regards to Emily Wilson's translation! She gave a couple great interviews about her translation of this word (here and here). What many people forget is that she wasn't actually the first woman to translate the Iliad into English, nor was she the first person to translate the word as "dog-face." That was Caroline Alexander, eight years earlier. I love Wilson as much as the next person but let's not forget Alexander.

Yes dog-face is an insult! And yes it arguably is associated with shamelessness! There's a lot to unpack about why Helen was talking about herself this way. But it's really hard to analyze that when the bias of the male translators is bleeding through so much. I appreciate the decision to translate it literally and let readers decide for ourselves what she meant.