The Mouth of the Whale and Homeric Gates:

Abstract

The article argues that the literary references of the description of the teeth of the enormous whale that swallows the travellers in Lucian’s Verae Historiae I 30 are in Homer’s poetry, more specifically in the episode of the battle before the Achaean wall in Iliad 12 and in Penelope’s account about the gates that dreams come through in Odyssey 19. The lexical, narrative, and thematic features that inform the connection are assessed.