Geography, Topography, Landscape: Configurations of Space in Greek and Roman Epic 9783110315318, 9783110314731

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Geography, Topography, Landscape

Trends in Classics – Supplementary Volumes

Edited by Franco Montanari and Antonios Rengakos Scientific Committee Alberto Bernabé · Margarethe Billerbeck Claude Calame · Philip R. Hardie · Stephen J. Harrison Stephen Hinds · Richard Hunter · Christina Kraus Giuseppe Mastromarco · Gregory Nagy Theodore D. Papanghelis · Giusto Picone Kurt Raaflaub · Bernhard Zimmermann

Volume 22

Geography, Topography, Landscape Configurations of Space in Greek and Roman Epic

Edited by Marios Skempis and Ioannis Ziogas

DE GRUYTER

ISBN 978-3-11-031473-1 e-ISBN 978-3-11-031531-8 ISSN 1868-4785 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2014 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Logo: Christopher Schneider, Laufen Printing: Hubert & Co. GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen ♾ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com

Foreword The idea of a multi-authored volume dedicated to geography and space in ancient epic goes back to the very first Trends in Classics international conference organized by Jonas Grethlein and Antonios Rengakos in Thessaloniki, Greece, where the editors of this volume collaborated to write a paper on Homer’s Odyssey. In the aftermath of that conference, the editors were light-hearted enough to allow themselves to engage in a project that was meant to take many turns until it found its way into print. Our wish back then was to deal with a subject matter, which current scholarship has room for, and to produce an informative, comprehensively structured and reader-friendly volume on the ‘geographies’ of Greek and Roman epic. It falls to the reader of the book to decide whether we managed to meet these criteria. Epic geography is one thing, and human geography is another. The project was first and foremost warmly saluted by Antonios Rengakos, whose genuine concern and unflagging support over the years are far beyond acknowledgment. In the Classics Department of Basel University, Switzerland, Anton Bierl, Rebecca Lämmle, Katharina Wesselmann, Magdalene Stoevesandt, Henriette Harich, and Petra Schierl offered valuable help and solidarity. The encouraging words of Damien Nelis and Stephen Wheeler already during the genesis of the project released vital energies for undertaking a difficult task at times of overall uncertainty. The Department of Religious Studies at Erfurt University has proved a congenial place to pursue such an ambitious project, the more so since the presence of Kai Brodersen, an international authority in the study of geography and space in antiquity, provided the necessary impetus and inspiration for its progress. Katharina Waldner, Richard Gordon, and Jörg Rüpke helped the project take its final shape in more than one ways. Veit Rosenberger, Wolfgang Spickermann, Leif Scheuermann, Daniel Albrecht, Christian Karst, Johannes Eberhardt, and Mihaela Holban were always eager to discuss matters of spatiality in ancient literature and provided valuable insights in individual queries. We are also grateful to the Classics Departments of Cornell University, the University of Adelaide, and the Australian National University. Many thanks are also due to the anonymous readers of Trends in Classics for their helpful and encouraging comments. For all their support, understanding and deep concern we would like to express our gratitude to all aforementioned colleagues and to our contributors from whom we learnt a lot. Marios Skempis Ioannis Ziogas

Thessaloniki Canberra

Contents Marios Skempis and Ioannis Ziogas Introduction: Putting Epic Space in Context Johannes Haubold Ethnography in the Iliad

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19

Alex Purves Thick Description From Auerbach to the Boar’s Lair (Od. 19.388 – 475) Donald Lateiner Homer’s Social-Psychological Spaces and Places

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63

Anthony T. Edwards The Ethical Geography of Hesiod’s Works and Days

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Kirk Ormand Uncertain Geographies of Female Desire in the Hesiodic Catalogue: 137 Atalanta Evina Sistakou Mapping Counterfactuality in Apollonius’ Argonautica Katerina Carvounis Landscape Markers and Time in Quintus’ Posthomerica Robert Shorrock Crossing the Hydaspes Nonnus’ Dionysiaca and the Boundaries of Epic Jackie Elliott Space and Geography in Ennius’ Annales Stratis Kyriakidis From Delos to Latium Wandering in the Unknown

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Contents

Marios Skempis Phenomenology of Space, Place Names and Colonization 291 in the ‘Caieta-Circe’ Sequence of Aeneid 7 Ioannis Ziogas The Topography of Epic Narrative in Ovid’s Metamorphoses Alison Keith Ovidian Geographies in Flavian Mythological Epic Erica Bexley Lucan’s Catalogues and the Landscape of War Ruth Parkes The Long Road to Thebes The Geography of Journeys in Statius’ Thebaid

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Helen Slaney The Voyage of Rediscovery Consuming Global Space in Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica

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Gesine Manuwald Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica The Argo’s Maiden Voyage from Europe into the Unknown

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Bibliography

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List of Contributors

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Index rerum et nominum Index locorum

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Marios Skempis and Ioannis Ziogas

Introduction: Putting Epic Space in Context An epic geography is a metaspace embedded in the second skin of the earth – a virtual mantle forming a narrative unfolding that simulates the skin. Motion through the texture of the mantle unfolds the narrative. When a scenario is formed within the second skin using its resources, an epic geography is formed. R. Bunschoten, T. Hoshino, H. Binet, Urban Flotsam: Stirring the City (p. 273)

Current challenges that stem mainly from globalization and environmental concerns have reinvigorated scholarly interest in human geography.¹ Even though these current issues tend to sideline the diachronic dimension of geography by adopting seemingly non-anthropocentric positions, they essentially converge into one basic principle: the acts of a person locate her/his existence within surrounding environments. And the plural is here no coincidence. In fact, it is precisely the interrelated notions of human agency and experience that turn space into place and vindicate the necessity of the plural ‘places.’² A series of turns (linguistic, discursive, cultural) have gradually signposted the development of crossdisciplinary discussion on space, now crystallized in the so-called geographical or spatial turn. ³ The decisive impetus was given by the social sciences that have been eager to examine (and, no less, theorize) the relation of geographical space (nature) to social space (culture).⁴ The spatial turn reworks “the very notion and substance of spatiality to offer a perspective in which space is every bit as important as time in the unfolding of human affairs, a view in which geography is not relegated to an afterthought of social relations, but is intimately involved in their construction”.⁵ Pinning down the spatial dimensions of social processes casts space as the arena of social interface par excellence. From this point of view, space is far from static since it is constantly negotiated and reconstructed in the physical, cultural, and political map. The nation-shaping role of geography, the topography of isolation and integration, the bounding of space and the crossing of boundaries, the gendered dynamics of geography as well as the space of language and literature are some of the aspects that lie at the heart of modern criticism on human geography.⁶

     

De Blij 2009; Bruckmeier/Serbser 2008. Tuan 1977; Buttimer/Seamon 1980; Hirsch 1995; Creswell 1996; Malpas 1999. For overviews, see Soja 1989; Günzel 2007; 2009; 2010. Lossau/Lippuner 2004; Withers 2009; Warf/Arias 2009. Warf/Arias 2009, 1. Prescott 1965; Bachelard 1969 [1994]; Sibley 1995; Moss/Al-Hindi 2008.

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For the last decades literary studies have been intensely inquiring into the way space is represented within diverse contexts of literary narration.⁷ Even though the mechanics of cognition and representation has duly monopolized scholarly discourse on matters concerning the way geography leaves its imprint on literary artifacts,⁸ elaborate practices of mapping space within its narrative environments gain in focus as they call attention to the formal traits underlying narrative structures. The prime question asked is how narrative media devise (spatially) coherent worlds.⁹ Within this context, scholars attempt to come up with definitions and operative formulas that apply to the representational norms of narrated space (erzählter Raum). In an essay revising earlier and current views on the subject, Marie-Laure Ryan puts forward a taxonomy that distinguishes no less than five main categories of narrated space: a. spatial frames: the immediate surroundings of actual events, the various locations shown by the narrative discourse, b. setting: the general socio-historico-geographical environment in which the action takes place, c. story space: the space relevant to the plot, as mapped by the actions and thoughts of the characters, d. narrative or (story) world: the story space completed by the reader’s imagination on the basis of cultural knowledge and real world experience, and e. narrative universe: the world (in the spatio-temporal sense of the term) presented as actual by the text, plus all the counterfactual worlds constructed by characters as beliefs, wishes, fears, speculations, hypothetical thinking, dreams, and fantasies.¹⁰

The varying extent to which these levels of spatiality inform narrative discourse accounts for the multifarious processes by which space is integrated into the narrative’s broad spatio-temporal continuum, i. e., is narrativized. In the meantime, we can even speak of a fairly systematized ‘narratology of space.’¹¹ The latest trend in this direction draws on the interpretative model of cognition and, thus, works on the assumption of a model-reader’s thought-patterns, which conduce to the production of space in the narrated world. The inferential process to which the reader resorts to supplement the textual data related to space and to properly conceptualize various dimensions of spatiality applies to a reader-response theory and results in a concept of negotiated space in narrative contexts. In her own introduction to the narratology of space, the classicist and narratol-

 Salter/Lloyd 1976; Mallory/Simpson-Housley 1987; Eilan/McCarthy/Brewer 1993; Hallet/Neumann 2009; Piatti 2009.  Bjornson 1981; Ryan 2003; Hamilton 2011.  See, most importantly, Herman 2009; Sommer 2009.  Ryan 2009, 421– 2.  Smitten/Daghistany 1981; Zoran 1984; Bal 1985, 132– 42; Dennerlein 2009.

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ogist Irene de Jong¹² draws attention to the narrative categories at work when anchoring space in story: she differentiates between setting where the action unfolds and frames created by the virtual spaces of thoughts and memories, and gives prime place to the devices of description and ekphrasis used to represent places and/or props in a synoptic and detailed manner respectively. The focalizer (narrator, anonymous, character), she argues, is just as important as the standpoint (panoramic, scenic) from which space is presented each time. The usefulness of de Jong’s categorization lies in the plethora of narrative functions bound up with the presentation of space (thematic, mirroring/contrasting, symbolic, characterizing, psychologizing, personifying). Faced with these trends, classics is invited to participate in the lively critical discussion on geography (especially with respect to narratology) and has in fact a lot to contribute, given that most of the questions that modern theorists ask can be examined in Greco-Roman antiquity. Every story has its place(s). As narrative genre par excellence, epic is concerned with representing spatial dimensions. Epic storytelling comes into existence by describing persons’ movements through space. It recounts sets of successive events whose flow resembles the shifts inherent in a journey.¹³ However, spatial visualizations of epic storytelling are not always compatible with the confinements of human existence, but occasionally become figurative enough to sketch out transcendent topographies pertinent to the divine or the dead. Since epic is, at least in Bakhtinian terms, a chronotope insofar as it preserves and transmits memories of past events held most frequently in remote, unaccustomed domains, but also in domestic, regular places,¹⁴ geography counts among the constitutive elements of the cultural system each time inscribed into the vision of the epic world. Accordingly, the presentation of an epic story is, as a rule, steeped in ethnological features and cultural data viewed through the lens of myth, which ultimately segues into a historicizing discourse.¹⁵ Epic narrative memorializes places and encodes their dynamic profile by means of embedded descriptions and dispersed toponyms laden with signification. Toponymics exemplifying genealogy, an expressive means that allows the past to project itself into the present, are explicitly set on a geographical basis and, in these terms, lay the geo-historical foundations of epic. Thus, next to various forms of repre-

 De Jong 2012a.  On the ‘narrative as travel’ metaphor, see Mikkonen 2007.  For a dynamic, cross-cultural definition of epic as genre, see Martin 2005a. Cf. Nagy 1999b. For an assessment of the term chronotope with reference to Greek literature, see now Seaford 2012, 1– 10.  Raaflaub 2005; Konstan/Raaflaub 2010.

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senting space within the narrative, epic is also keen to establish the extratextual space created between the mythical and historical world.¹⁶ The representational norms instantiated in the layout of overall spatial structures, the geographical excursuses as well as the ekphrastic exercises with their distinct topographical frames claim a particular connection with the narrative idiosyncrasies of epic as genre.¹⁷ Each epic forms a new delineation of geographical and spatial contours sketched in such ways as to convey pertinent cultural meanings, while also staging diverse scenarios of intercultural contact. Epic space emerges as a narrative medium forging distinction and complementarity. The juxtaposition of city and countryside as well as the inset, digressional character of landscape as opposed to the battlefield form two regular indicators of the essential position epic space occupies in marking up boundaries.¹⁸ Gendered spaces bring out the tensions ingrained in social relations and often provide insight into the reasons why epic uses space the way it does. Socio-political implications on the representation of geographical planes are also often entwined in these settings and are in turn enmeshed with respective ideologies. As a result, ‘geopoetics’, that is, the discourse of political power and the way it is acted out on literary geographies, takes center stage in the hermeneutics of epic.¹⁹ Ancient Greek conceptions of space seem to be connected with two worldviews, which either distinguish themselves from one another or occasionally intersect: the cartographic, an all-embracing ‘bird’s-eye’ mapping, and the hodological, the grounded perspective of the forward-moving person.²⁰ To begin with a pertinent example from the first category, the divine poetics of the Iliad as exemplified in the Muse-driven narrative and the affiliated motif of divine supervision advance a synoptic mapping of space enriched with diverse anthropological and ethnographic details.²¹ Similarly, the epic viewpoint of the Homeric Hymns, where the gods are foregrounded as the main agents, exhibits an either vertical or horizontal spatiality (earthly geography extended to Olympian geography) in the way characters move into space. Drawing on the spatio-temporal ex De Jong 2012b, 36 – 8.  Segal 1969; Kurman 1974; DuBois 1982a; Findlay 1984; Hatto 1989; Antoniades 1992.  Parry 1957; Andersson 1976; Larsen 2004; Rosen/Sluiter 2007.  Barchiesi 1999. Barchiesi’s announced treatment of geopoetics in Vergil’s Aeneid is much anticipated. Asper (2011) deals with the geopoetics of Callimachus whose special way of talking about places in his works “sum[s] up to a geography of Ptolemaic power” (p. 160).  Janni 1984; Romm 1992; Cole 2010; Purves 2010a.  Minchin 2007; de Jong 2012b, 27; Haubold (this volume). Seaford (2012, 13 – 20) suggests a division of Homeric space in the three interdependent categories of “(a) cosmic space, which embraces the entire cosmos, (b) geographic space, i. e. the space of land and sea that extends to the ends of the earth, and (c) immediate space, i. e. space visible from a single point.”

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pansiveness of the song of the Muses, Hesiod’s Theogony lays out a well-wrought cosmic design in which the gods occupy space and acquire their powers.²² The genealogical lore in the tales from the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women defines a Panhellenic space made up of local traditions which individual entries tend to display.²³ The liminal states of wandering and travel are so deeply rooted in the cultural history of ancient Greece that its literature teems with relics of itinerant individuals and their experiences.²⁴ The Odyssey, for instance, is essentially the story of Odysseus’ travels and has been thereby received as a work with both an intrinsic geographical edge and a genuinely ethnographical resonance that is eventually instrumentalized “to construct a reading of the worlds and peoples of the mythic past in order to make sense of a tumultuous and volatile present”.²⁵ Within this context but not exclusively referring to Homer, the paramount role of colonization in shaping cultural identities and in blending the familiar with the other explores the effects of displacement and spatial dislocation as well as the individual’s interface with novel geographies.²⁶ The grounding of colonization in mythical structures testifies to its political immanence, on the one hand,²⁷ and bolsters the historical tendencies toward constructing both virtual and actual ‘spaces of Hellenism’, on the other.²⁸ In Rome, colonizing practices mingle with power relations more overtly and intensely, and exert their own special impact on the means and methods of acculturation within the frame of the imperium. ²⁹ Whereas Roman epic retains some ties with its Greek predecessor, tone and focus shift irreversibly to what we may call the poetics of spatial dominion. This is neatly reflected in the texts that move away from the ‘totalizing’ geographies of Greek epic and develop their own vision of ‘maximizing’ spaces. Power and its modes of expression have a decisive impact on spatial constructions liable to expansion and therefore unbounded and subject to constant fluctuation. As an acute reader of Roman epic has succinctly put it, “in spatial terms the Virgilian and post-Virgilian epic attempts to construct a comprehensive and orderly model of the world, but it  Clay 2003; Pucci 2009.  West 1985, 1– 11; Hall 1997, 83 – 8; Rutherford 2005; Calame 2009, 119 – 20.  Hartog 2001; Montiglio 2005; Hunter/Rutherford 2009.  Dougherty 2001, 9. For a rationalizing approach to the geography of the Odyssey see Bittlestone/Diggle/Underhill 2005.  For thorough accounts on the pragmatics of Greek colonization see Tsetskhladze 2006; 2008; Tsetskhladze/de Angelis 2004.  Dougherty 1993; Malkin 1998; Antonaccio 2007.  Thalmann 2011; Stephens 2011; cf. Leontis 1995.  Salmon 1970; Bradley/Wilson 2006; van Dommelen/Benjami 2007.

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turns out that such models are inherently unstable. The instability of the Virgilian world is an open-ended invitation for succeeding epic poets to revise and redefine”.³⁰ For precisely the spatial dynamics of the imperium spring from the Roman aspiration to ‘globalization’ and thus generate narratives about the mediation of space and its integration. Of course, the Roman inclination towards a linear, hodological mapping of space³¹ as opposed to a panoramic, cartographic one has been influential in shaping the epic discourse along with its narrative elaborations. The ensuing topology establishes itself in an intensely reinvigorated version of ekphrasis, where landscape description is on a par with the complexities of visual perception.³² The emphasis placed on rarefied description and enlisting of micro-spaces may collide with the rhetoric of macro-space that can be grasped better in terms of cartographic rendition, though it does facilitate the practical need to situate things in space on the meeting-point between real and conceptual geography. The numerous monumental sites of Rome no doubt evoked knowledge associated with real, conceptual, sometimes even psychological geography, in order to establish a proper spatial footing.³³ Although this volume covers a very long period, spanning from Homer to Quintus, and includes both Greek and Latin works, the traditional preoccupations of the epic genre guarantee a plethora of unifying themes. The clash between the East and the West defines the geographical dynamics of the Iliad and is repeatedly and variously reworked in Roman epic (Elliott, Skempis, Keith, Manuwald). Within the new framework of imperial politics and globalization, the dichotomy between East and West is recast as a transition of power from Greece to Rome, reflecting the translation of Greek epic poetry to Rome. The global worldview of epic poetry focuses on the encounter between the familiar and the unknown (Haubold, Sistakou, Skempis, Shorrock, Keith, Slaney), often perceived as a polarity between center and periphery (Ziogas, Bexley, Shorrock). Human space is separated from the divine realm – epic poetry clearly demarcates two worlds, which often interact with each other (Sistakou). Whether this distinction triggers ethnographic digressions (Haubold), reflects social contexts (Lateiner), or emphasizes the gods’ easy travels (Parkes), it features as one of the most prominent boundaries in a genre preoccupied with drawing borderlines and redefining established landmarks (Ormand, Skempis, Carvounis, Manu   

Hardie 1993, 3. On the influential spatial imagery of the Aeneid, see Hardie 1986. Brodersen 1995; 2004; Brodersen/Talbert 2004; Talbert 2008; 2010. Barchiesi 1997a; Tissol 1997; Jenkyns 1998; Fowler 2000; Elsner 2002; Goldhill 2007. Larmour 2007.

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wald). The crossing of natural bounds (Shorrock, Bexley), supposedly fixed but often surprisingly fluid (Bexley, Manuwald), in combination with the designation of artificial borderlines stresses the intricate politics of constructing space in epic poetry. The contradistinctions between war and peace, village and city (Edwards), national identity and ethnic otherness (Haubold, Lateiner, Edwards, Bexley), civilization and wilderness (Purves, Ormand, Sistakou), and indoor and outdoor space (Elliott) invite the readers to interpret thematic motifs and structural patterns of epic poetry by defining narrative space. Epic space becomes a crucial factor, not a mere background. While human beings interact with the historical and literary backdrop of landscapes, the construction of a hero’s identity becomes indistinguishable from narrated space; a character’s biography extends to shape a landmark and vice versa (Carvounis, Skempis, Kyriakidis, Ziogas, Bexley). Epic heroes transform the landscape, while the landscape defines their characters and destinies. Linguistic tropes, such as the interplay between literal and metaphorical descriptions (Ormand) or narrative proper and similes (Purves, Lateiner), bring about spatial metamorphoses. Epic poets revisit, negate, and forge semantic relations of geographical names; etymology (Skempis, Kyriakidis, Ziogas, Bexley) and aetiology (Edwards, Carvounis, Slaney) negotiate new space for old places, casting mythical and historical topographies in an updated socio-political context (Lateiner, Parkes, Keith, Manuwald). Connecting the past with the present, while looking forward to the future, defines the temporal range of epic poetry. The all-inclusive chronological sway of epic should be examined in parallel with its global worldview. Time marks up space, and topography often opens a time-window (Purves, Sistakou, Kyriakidis, Manuwald, Slaney). Since epic poetry deals with bygone eras and appropriates previous traditions, the temporal dimension of topography is repeatedly brought to the fore. Even the oldest extant Greek epic, the Iliad, is now seen as the culmination of an epic tradition rather than its beginning. Instead of being the father of geography and ethnography, Homer most likely responded to an already established ethnographic tradition (Haubold). Subsequently, Homeric geography and landscapes create an authoritative tradition and leave their traces in Greek (Carvounis, Shorrock) and Roman (Elliott, Bexley) epic. Geography becomes a passion of Hellenistic poets and authors, whose geographical interests deeply influence Roman epic poets (Skempis, Kyriakidis). But after Vergil, the Romans can resort to their own epic tradition. The epics of Statius and Valerius Flaccus, for instance, open an intriguing dialogue with mythical topography (Parkes, Slaney) and the narrative dynamics of Ovidian landscapes (Keith).

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Epic travels can be seen as the rediscovery of epic traditions. An exploration of epic space suggests the well-known parallel between a hero’s journey and a poet’s narrative trip (Sistakou, Parkes, Slaney, Manuwald). An epic poem is an adventure, which the readers share with the poet and the heroes. Author, characters, and the readership contribute to the poetics of constructing and interpreting epic space. And all the contributors of this volume examine this fascinating aspect of epic geographies, topographies, and landscapes. But let us have a closer look at each chapter. In what sense does the discourse of what we call ethnography relate to the production of cultural space? To answer this question, Johannes Haubold (“Ethnography in the Iliad”) turns to the Iliad and re-examines the first grains of ethnographic writing, identified as such in Book 13. Far from adopting the conventional viewpoint that favors the rise of ethnography in Il. 13.1– 9, he argues for the poem’s self-reflexive stance toward the tradition of ethnographic writing that precedes it, insofar as it appears to appropriate samples of this tradition. This he manages by re-reading the Iliadic passage at issue against the backdrop of its narrative setting and of the questions it raises concerning the embedding of cultural space. Ethnographic discourse, he submits, is an elaborate means of expressing cultural distinctiveness in a broad sense. The mechanisms of narrative generate ties between this discourse and the epic genre’s general concern with sketching out cultural history, on the one hand, and the specific thematic principles of the Iliad, on the other. In more detail, the catalogue of northern peoples to which Zeus turns bored with the Trojan War (just as the reference to the Ethiopians and the Hippemolgi in the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women) serves as a purely digressive ethnographic distraction. It turns out that the Iliad is rather unwilling to track down tokens of cultural otherness among mortals, but is certainly interested in differentiating divine from human culture. The gods of the Iliad, Haubold maintains, are laden with exotic traits, thus attracting an interest fairly equivalent to the one in ethnographic digressions. As the shift of focus from the human to the divine sphere shows in Iliad 13 – 14, ethnographic moments are centered on the divine and its representation. One of the most famous Homeric excursuses, the story of Odysseus’ scar in Odyssey 19, gives Alex Purves (“”Thick Description”: From Auerbach to the Boar’s Lair (Od. 19.388 – 475)”) impetus to examine the embedding of wilderness (natural space) within narrative frames. Purves takes as her starting-point Auerbach’s position that Homeric style grants latitude of space and time to the narrative at key-moments such as the recognition of Odysseus by Eurycleia. By further discussing Auerbach’s insistence on the language of illumination and the expunction of depth, perspective, and background from Homeric narrative, the author inquires into the dimensionality of narrative time and reflects on the

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way time and space coalesce to form the digression in Book 19. Purves argues that a temporal sequence marked by the use of successive adverbs opens a spatial window that enables the passing over from the urban setting of Odysseus’ current encounter with Eurycleia to the natural landscape of his past experience with the boar on Mt. Parnassus. What is more, the thickness of the boar’s lair serves as a hypertextual vehicle for advancing the spectrum of associations that connects the natural landscape in question with other landscapes hosted in similes as well as with Odysseus’ expedient bed in Scheria. As a result, thickness in Homer is indexed as a natural quality that unravels its rich semantic implications within a frame of homologous references. This sort of interconnectedness endows the Homeric text with particular depth – and strikes at the heart of Auerbach’s argument. For pukinos (“thick”) establishes itself as a term indicative of the inherent texturedness of the narrative setting in which it is embedded, thus acquiring quasi-poetological overtones. Besides signposting the induction of nature into Homeric storytelling, the term gives way to “thick descriptions” of multilayered signification and varied narrative tempo. In his essay “Homer’s Social-Psychological Spaces and Places”, Donald Lateiner analyzes the mechanics of cognition that underlies Homer’s relation to space. After a terminological survey designed to illuminate spatial concepts and their narrative use by mortals and immortals, Lateiner delves into the world of epic narrative in order to demonstrate that Homeric characters perceive and experience proxemics, that is, spatial analogies, within the diverse social contexts to which these pertain. Homeric poetry, he argues, is replete with elaborate examples testifying to the way human and divine movement maps out space and unfolds its social implications. To underpin his argument on the cognitive production of localities, he deals with the distribution of space among the gods of the Iliad as well as with sites of real and imagined cultural geographies in the Odyssey. In the field of narrative stylistics, the form of narration affects the different kinds and degrees of focalization in the description of places. Similes, in particular, negotiate the notions of distance and proximity as well as public and private according to the experiences to which they are attached. Taking as a point of departure the axiom that society should match ethical values, Anthony Edwards analyzes the ascription of morals to geography on the basis of human interface. In his chapter “The Ethical Geography of Hesiod’s Works and Days”, Edwards surveys the overarching polarity between village and city, the ethical connotations of which uphold a phenomenological approach to space. Moral values are contingent on the places perceived through experiences of social interaction and therefore construe a “socially valued space”, as the author terms it. Given that the Works and Days has a particular interest in the projection of minor localities, the main set of spatial oppositions is to be

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traced in the pivotal distinction between ergon and agore, a distinction that implies the more general, yet unstated geographical opposition between agros and polis. Within the frame of his dispute with Perses, Hesiod puts a stark emphasis on the moral semantics of ergon, a term denoting both the site (farm) and the activity associated with it (toil). The prosperity gained from the ergon emerges as a correlative of labor and justice, a constellation sanctioned by the divine. Conversely, in the agore, the seat of lawsuits within the context of bad strife and injustice, prosperity can be attained by claiming the property of others. In this light, Edwards goes on to analyze the aetiologies of labor in the Pandora narrative and the myth of the golden race. It turns out that a whole set of dialectical oppositions such as the binarity of strife and the division between judgment-dike and justice-dike revolves around the intrinsic concept of ‘labor’. The ethic-centric rhetoric in the Works and Days shows how a personalized conflict, the one between Hesiod and Perses, can take the form of a spatialized opposition. In his chapter “Uncertain Geographies of Erotic Desire in the Hesiodic Catalogue: Atalanta”, Kirk Ormand casts light on the transformative qualities of space. Taking his cue from the interdependence of action and interaction, Ormand argues that the definition of space rests on a constant negotiation that generates meanings other than the established ones. The literary motif of erotic pursuit in the story of Atalanta takes center stage in this process. In its cardinal form, the story narrates Atalanta’s aversion to marriage, which leads to the arrangement of a footrace in which suitors are called to compete with her in swiftness. The winner has his life spared and takes Atalanta as his wife. The uncertainty in representing female desire, Ormand maintains, reflects its fluid state in the unstable configurations of the geographical space that claims to host this desire. As a consequence, the geography of the race undergoes a threefold mutation. In Theognis, a boy unwilling to have a love affair with the persona loquens is paralleled to the sexually disinclined Atalanta. Here the element of competition is entirely missing, and Atalanta’s negative stance toward marriage transposes her to the realm of untamed nature. To describe Atalanta’s relation to space, Ormand takes up Foucault’s concept of ‘crisis heterotopia’, a spatial alterity for individuals undergoing a critical situation. Atalanta’s displacement into the wild gives rise to the semantic multiformity of the footrace in Hesiod. Given that the Catalogue focuses on the running contest between Atalanta and Hippomenes, Ormand argues for its metaphorical conceptualization as a hunt, which puts Hippomenes in the position of the fleeing subject. The very moment when Atalanta takes hold of Hippomenes turns the hunt-like race into a battle where the warrior seizes his opponent with fatal consequences. Yet Atalanta grasps an apple instead of Hippomenes, a token of her flight’s ceasing and

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her consent to marriage. The ‘battle’ has an intertextual edge as it evokes the Homeric duel between Hector and Achilles in Iliad 22 and especially the footrace before the Scaean Wall. In an exciting new take on the geography of Hellenistic poetry, Evina Sistakou (“Mapping Counterfactuality in Apollonius’ Argonautica”) sets out to explore how the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius copes with fictive, counterfactual geography as opposed to the historicized geography of the real world. Given that the Argonautica hovers between the discourse of epic and travelogue, this dichotomy makes good sense since it reflects upon the boundaries of realism and fictionality in terms of the complementary ways an epic construes its spatialities. For Sistakou, Apollonius is conscious as far as the historical spaces of the ancient Mediterranean and beyond is concerned, but counterfactual geography is what bears out the immanent ties of his poem with the epic genre. Fantasylands, landscapes of epiphany, spaces of desire, heterotopias, mythical places, and territories of mirage make up the canvas on which geographies of the unreal are shrewdly drawn. Hellenistic epic, so it seems, insists on the fabrication of fictional spaces and places in order to manifest its provenance from established predecessors and proclaim creative continuity in terms of genre. In her essay “Geographical Landmarks and Time in Quintus’ Posthomerica”, Katerina Carvounis goes through the Posthomerica in order to showcase the imprint of Homeric stories on the historical landscape of the late Imperial period. In the core of her study, Carvounis argues that Quintus’ engagement with landmarks already registered in the Homeric epics springs from an astounding self-awareness of his late position in the epic tradition. Within this context, at times the epic poet revises the presentation of Homeric landmarks according to literary and philological insights into the respective geography (as in the case of Miletus), at times he makes the connection between mythical past and Trojan theme explicit (as in the case of Anchises’ bed). Carvounis shows that narratives about landmarks with either a metamorphic twist or an instance of divine epiphany exhibit a predominantly aetiological character, which is meant to fill the gap between narrated past and historical present. On the one hand, metamorphosis is exemplified in the figures of the mourning mothers Niobe and Hecuba, who have turned into rock-formations with commemorative function (Niobe morphs into Sipylos and Hecuba into Cynossema). On the other, narratives about how the rivers Paphlagoneios and Glaucus came into being entail instances of divine mediation in the burials of the heroes Memnon and Glaucus. The result is that persons and landscapes intersect. In all cases, however, the individual history of landmarks turned into monuments is subjected to a radical recontextualization of the Homeric material to a Hellenistic and Imperial setting.

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The analysis of the evidence Carvounis collects from the Posthomerica bears witness to an increased level of spatial monumentality, one of epic’s intrinsic traits. The power of narrative to create and transgress spatial boundaries is a germane issue to Robert Shorrock’s essay “Crossing the Hydaspes: Nonnus’ Dionysiaca and the Boundaries of Epic”. Quite apart from the literary boundaries that the Dionysiaca notoriously break down, the narrative of Nonnus’ lengthy poem covers a considerable range of geographical distance, which spans from Greece and its cultural periphery around the Mediterranean to the near East and Asia. Dionysus’ movement through space prompts Shorrock to flesh out his argument about literary geography going hand in hand with generic pluralism. After acknowledging the vast interface of the Dionysiaca with literary models, he proceeds to a thorough examination of the poem’s links with both historical and literary sources by using Dionysus’ first encounter with Indian space as a case in point: the crossing of the Indian river Hydaspes signposts the geographical midpoint of Dionysus’ itinerary from Asia Minor to India and back again, and marks the arithmetical central-point of the epic. By pointing out thematic similarities between the narratives of Plutarch and Nonnus, Shorrock argues that Alexander corresponds to Dionysus in his battle against the Indians. Moreover, Hydaspes is presented not just as a physical borderline that signals Dionysus’ foray into a foreign land, but also gives Nonnus the opportunity to engage in dialogue with Iliad 21, which recounts Achilles’ battle against the river Scamander. Callimachean echoes from the Hymn to Apollo invest Hydaspes with metapoetic signification and draw forth the Dionysiaca’s adherence to the thematic principles of epic poetry. In intratextual terms, Shorrock substantiates a connection between Hydaspes and the Nile, which he places within a globalized frame that forges comparison of India with Egypt as a means of creating geographical boundaries. Appealing the amalgam-like semanticization of literary space as it is, Shorrock manages to illustrate the diversity of textual ties that nuance Nonnus’ representation of Hydaspes and add up to a sophisticated literary landscape. Jackie Elliott (“Space and Geography in Ennius’ Annales”) examines aspects of spatial and geographical juxtapositions in the extant fragments of Ennius’ Annales. Though the work is fragmentary and the task of contextualizing and interpreting fragments not an easy one, Elliott shows how Ennius’ epic poem revisits the dynamic tension between the West and the East, recasting a geographical and cultural conflict which features prominently from Homer and Herodotus to Roman epic and history. Moving from the smaller to the more substantial fragments, Elliott sheds new light on the interplay between indoor and outdoor space in Ilia’s dream and the ‘good companion’ fragments. While Ilia’s disorientation in an environment defined by men underlines the gendered tension in Ennius’ landscapes, the traits which the Ilia episode shares with

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the ‘good companion’ fragment suggest that gender is one, but not the only, determinant in Ennius’ epic space; land as a means of communicating the distribution of power among the actors is a crucial aspect which transcends gendered dichotomies. According to Stratis Kyriakidis (“From Delos to Latium: Wandering in the Unknown”) the semantic relation between Delos/ Ortygia and Latium signposts Aeneas’ quest for the unknown land where he is destined to found a new city. As the reader experiences the delay of the revelation of Aeneas’ final destination, the etymology of Delos (from δῆλος, “clear”) or Ortygia (from orior, “to appear”) contrasts with the etymology of Latium (from lateo, “to conceal”): at Delos the ultimate destination remains obscure (ἄδηλος) because of Anchises’ error in the interpretation of Apollo’s oracle. Although Latium as the hero’s destination remains latent until he reaches Carthage, it ceases to be so when Aeneas acknowledges it as his journey’s end. Delos and Latium create a bipolar situation parallel to the hero’s esoteric development which is inscribed in space through his errores. To this end, Vergil appropriates the Greek myth of Delos-Latona in his poetics by showing his Callimachean preferences vis-à-vis the Homeric Hymn to Apollo; the Delos-Latona semantic relation is reallocated as a Delos-Latium geographical framework. Interestingly, the story of Delos, the floating and obscure island, which eventually assumed a fixed identity and position, mirrors the wanderings of Aeneas and reflects the hero’s characterization. Relying on the semantic range of error, which means both “wandering” and “mistake”, Vergil invites us to read his verses as a map depicting the Trojans’ erratic and erroneous course from Delos to Crete; as a matter of fact, his catalogue of the Cyclades mirrors the actual position of Naxos, Donusa, Olearos, and Paros in relation to Delos/Ortygia. The narrative sequence Caieta-Circe in the beginning of Aeneid 7 is the focus of Marios Skempis’ chapter (“Phenomenology of Space, Place Names and Colonization in the ‘Caieta-Circe’ Sequence of Aeneid 7”). By exploring the geographical background of Caieta and Circe, Skempis demonstrates the intricate spatial nexus between two seemingly unrelated minor figures of the Aeneid. Vergil not only locates the vignettes of Caieta and Circe in Italy, but also foregrounds the transformation of these female figures into geographical toponyms. The narrative link between Caieta and Circe is set against the geographical background of the Italian peninsula. Through a detailed examination of lexical and geographical issues in archaic Greek epic, Hellenistic literature, and prose geographical sources, Skempis shows how Vergil employs a rich literary tradition in order to map out a poetics of colonization in his Roman epic. Greek myth and Roman geography merge into the epic palimpsest of the Aeneid. An intriguing aspect of structuring epic narrative against the backdrop of literary geogra-

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phy is the blurring of human identity and space as well as the interplay between proper names and narrative segments. For Skempis, naming or changing the name of a site signals Aeneas’ cultural appropriation of territorial otherness. “What’s in a place name?” inquires Ioannis Ziogas in his contribution “The Topography of Epic Narrative in Ovid’s Metamorphoses” as he comes to grips with semasiological issues of geographical names in Ovid. The author takes a new critical path that is set to combine literary onomastics with the narrativity of space, and, in so doing, poses pertinent questions: How does the meaning of a place name well up and to what extent do narrative turns develop this meaning? The answers Ziogas provides are clear-cut: place names and personal names are subservient to the consolidation of characters within the spatial continuum of the narrative. His case studies comprise examples of the etymological empowering of epic topographies such as the Arcadian connections of Lycaon, Venus’ ambiguous relation to her epithet Cytherea, and Glaucus’ trip to Circe through Zancle and Rhegium. The notion of geographical displacement lies at the heart of the argument insofar as it focuses on the twisting of myth to meet the needs of Roman geopolitics. In the light of Metamorphoses 14– 15, which includes stories of heroes traveling from Greece to Italy, the author turns to the beginning of the epic and argues that Ovid downplays the traditional connection of Apollo’s laurel with Delphi and links it to Rome and Augustus. Interestingly, the programmatic tale of Apollo puts two places that claimed to be the center of the world (Delphi and Rome) in the periphery of Ovid’s narrative. In a similar vein, the ekphrasis of Fama’s house invites the reader to view Fama’s sway between center and periphery in relation to the global range of Rome’s dominion. Poised between myth and history, the Metamorphoses projects a characteristic blend of chronological and topographical shifts that are interlocked with the passage from Troy to Rome. Nestor’s story about the impregnable Caeneus as recounted to the Thessalian hero Achilles can also be seen within the discourse of decentralizing Troy, since Nestor’s account suggests a parallel between the Centauromachy and the Trojan War and thus redirects the narrative focus from Troy to Thessaly. The reception of Vergil in early imperial Roman literature has been studied thoroughly. However, far less attention has been paid to the centrality of Ovid’s Metamorphoses in epics of this period. To that end, Alison Keith (“Ovidian Geographies in Flavian Mythographical Epic”) explores the transposition and transformation of Ovid’s landscapes in Valerius Flaccus and Statius. In the beginning of his Argonautica, Valerius programmatically evokes Ovid’s introductory scene of the Argonautic narrative in Metamorphoses 7, suggesting a new epic and imperial expedition from East to West along the lines of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Valerius’ Argo revisits the landscapes of Ovid’s epic voyage. Hecate’s grove in

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the Argonautica is focalized through Ovid’s Enna and Medea through Proserpina and thus Valerius re-introduces a distinctly Ovidian interaction between epic landscapes and the violence of desire. Moving from Valerius to Statius, Keith demonstrates how the topography of civil strife in the Thebaid is sketched out against the geographical blueprint of Ovid’s Theban tales in Metamorphoses 3. Ovid’s Thebes, the city of Cadmus’ exile, extends its rule over a deadly landscape of trackless wilderness. Similarly, Statius’ Thebes, to which Polynices returns as an exile, is inhabited with monstrous hunters and wicked ambushers, and so constitutes an accursed site and an appropriate setting for internecine warfare. By spreading out the ominous aura of Ovid’s landscapes over the literary and imperial programs of their epics, Valerius Flaccus and Statius highlight the marital and martial themes of the Argonautica and the Thebaid respectively. Lucan’s iconoclastic catalogues and their geography of devastation are the focus of Erica Bexley’s chapter (“Lucan’s Catalogues and the Landscape of War”). Comparing the catalogue of Caesar’s troops in Pharsalia 1 to Homer’s catalogue of ships and Vergil’s catalogue of Italian allies, Bexley argues that Lucan concentrates not on the assembling forces, but on the spaces they abandon. Such a pointed inversion of the traditional epic catalogue illustrates the self-defeat inherent in civil war at the same time as it undoes Caesar’s expansionist conquest of Gaul; as Caesar’s troops leave Gaul for Rome, they contract Rome’s imperial power. The catalogue of Pompey’s troops in Pharsalia 3 likewise represents Rome’s collapse. More conventional than Caesar’s, Pompey’s catalogue expresses the inverted nature of civil war via content rather than form: the assembling republican allies anticipate the train of mourners at Pompey’s funeral as well as recalling this general’s famous triumphs; as a triumph in reverse, Pompey’s catalogue therefore illustrates the narrowing effect civil war inflicts upon Roman imperial geography. Following this focused analysis, Bexley proceeds to demonstrate how Lucan’s catalogues reflect more general themes in the Pharsalia as a whole. She examines the presence of water (rivers, sea, the Ocean) as a natural boundary whose symbolic transgression by unrestrained tyrants amounts to war against nature. Human beings and natural phenomena interact in intriguing ways, with rivers in particular replicating the conflict waged between Pompey and Caesar. An analysis of proper names, too, shows that Lucan sacrifices geographic accuracy in favor of etymologies that suit his epic program. Finally, Bexley argues that Lucan’s catalogues avoid establishing genealogical links: Romans barely feature in either list of troops and, in Pharsalia 7, a brief catalogue of animals literally removes all traces of Roman soldiers from the battlefield. By abjuring the catalogue’s traditional genealogical function, Lucan suggests that civil war has destroyed Roman bloodlines.

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Epic journeys and poetic expeditions go hand in hand in Latin literature. Ruth Parkes (“The Long Road to Thebes: The Geography of Journeys in Statius’ Thebaid”) follows the route between Argos and Thebes in the Thebaid and traces a tension between the magnetic pull of Thebes and the poet’s as well as the characters’ reluctance to reach the city where the epic’s focal action takes place. The Argive army takes too long to reach Thebes in both narrative and chronological terms, a delay which conveys Statius’ postponement to recount his nefarious subject matter of civil war and fratricide, recalling Lucan’s marked disinclination to focus on his epic’s topic. The prolonged duration of the Argive expedition is further underpinned by the effortless travels of the gods as well as by the speed of Polynices’ journey from Thebes to Argos and, most importantly, by the bereaved wives and female relatives of the Argives, who need a far shorter time than their men to travel from Argos to Thebes. Different characters repeat the same itinerary for different purposes and in different speed. This repetition, Parkes demonstrates, contrasts with the Argives’ failed homecoming and suggests a parallel between the doomed military expedition and the trip of the female mourners who are likened to a defeated army. The Thebaid’s much-traveled routes further pit the Argive expedition against the altruistic travels of Hercules and Theseus. Locations and landmarks resonate with mythological echoes, highlighting the ominous and impious impact of the Argive army on the landscape. Thebes is the goal in Statius’ epic, but the trip is what really matters. Of course, the Flavian epic which explores the literary and political dynamics of traveling is Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica. Helen Slaney (“The Voyage of Rediscovery: Consuming Global Space in Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica”) discovers the ironies of a first ship laden with the long literary tradition of the Argonautic expedition and the global pretensions of the Roman Empire. The landscapes exposed by the first ship are anything but untouched, drawing the Argonauts and their readers towards an uncanny encounter with the familiar made strange. Valerius insists on the Argo’s primacy only to shatter the illusion of the first voyage by denying Jason and his crew any aetiological command of uncharted territory. By contrast, aetiology is a recurring activity in Apollonius’ Argonautica, even though the Argo of the Hellenistic poet is not the first ship. The depth of intertextual allusions in Valerius’ Argonautica makes Argo’s belatedness surface more readily. As distant and unknown places can only be perceived in preconceived terms, it becomes all the more explicit that every discovery is not a new experience but a projection of the explorer’s cultural background to unfamiliar landscapes. For Slaney, Valerius self-consciously undermines the possibility of exploring new places and lands untainted by imperial preoccupations, in order to challenge the epic’s own participation in constructing a global Rome.

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Argo’s maiden voyage in Valerius Flaccus further revisits a recurring theme in Roman epic, namely the transition of power from East to West. Gesine Manuwald (“Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica: the Argo’s Maiden Voyage from Europe into the Unknown”) focuses on topographical turning points in the Argonautica and examines how the selection of geographical information is linked to the overall framework of the epic. Valerius’ voyage transcends the agenda of the Argonauts of Greek myth since it will have serious impact on the future distribution of power. By opening up the seas and thus initiating conflicts between distant peoples, the Argo delineates the boundaries between East and West and enables the transition of power from Asia to Greece and later from Greece to another people, presumably the Romans. Interestingly, Manuwald demonstrates how Valerius’ Argonautic expedition suggests the fluidity of frontiers between East and West. The frozen Pontus, which touches Europe on one side and Asia on the other, undermines the stability of this natural boundary, while the peninsula of Cyzicus is neither Europe nor Asia, neither island nor mainland and it neither connects nor separates. What is more, the presentation of Amycus’ kingdom as the barrier between Europe and Asia highlights the construction of artificial limits separating the two continents. The Argonauts define East and West, but the negative repercussions of Argo’s maiden voyage might foreground the problematic nature of Roman imperialism. The publication of a multi-authored volume dedicated to a unifying theme is always a firm indication that scholarly interest in the theme not just grows, but also flourishes. As a consequence, the recent publication of Space in Ancient Greek Narrative edited by Irene de Jong is certainly a time-marker.³⁴ Seminal studies that consolidate the importance of space in epic narratives and pave the way for further elaborate work on spatial configurations within the broad field of narratology have recently come out.³⁵ At the same time, the Research Cluster “Topoi”, based in Berlin as a collaboration act of Humboldt-Universität and Freie Universität, is set to explore in depth processes of “formation and transformation of space and knowledge in ancient civilizations” and thus promises to produce cutting-edge scholarship on the diverse epistemological frames within which ancient cultures map out and conceptualize space. The present volume is to be seen in the context of these developments and aspires to contribute to scholarly interest in ‘epic geography’ by offering new insights and readings. For the purposes of this volume, we focus on Greek and

 The approach of the volume is narratological and therefore designed to supplement de Jong/ Nünlist/Bowie 2004 and de Jong/Nünlist 2007.  Trachsel 2007; Purves 2010a; Tsagalis 2010b; 2012; Clay 2011; Thalmann 2011.

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Roman epic, a poetic genre traditionally linked with the historical, political, and cultural dynamics of geography. The aim is to discuss the extent to which spatial configurations classified under the tags ‘geography’, ‘topography’, and ‘landscape’ intersect with the premises of epic narrative and further compositional parameters within this genre-specific framework. The questions we address mainly concern matters of representation and conceptualization of space. As well as exploring the geographical and topographical determinants inherent in epic, a special goal of the volume is to elaborate on certain contexts that render the interrelation of conceptual and representational space meaningful for the formation of the genre and its narrative tropes. The choice of epic poets is eclectic, not comprehensive, with emphasis on non-canonical works, and our main aim was to achieve thematic coherence rather than produce a companion-like volume that covers many authors. Nonetheless, we trust that the volume covers a wide and representative range of Greek and Roman epic poems and will inspire further studies on the topic. By introducing a multifaceted approach to epic geography we hope to provide a critical evaluation of spatial perception, of its repercussions on shaping narrative as well as of its discursive traits and cultural contexts.

Johannes Haubold

Ethnography in the Iliad Greek ethnography, it is often said, starts before ethnographic literature itself came into existence. Long before Herodotus and Hecataeus, there was Aristeas of Proconnesus. Before Aristeas, there was the Odyssey. And before the Odyssey, there was Iliad 13.1– 9: when Zeus wants a break from the fighting around Troy, he turns his gaze to “the horse-breeding Thracians, the Mysians who fight in close formation, the brilliant Hippemolgi who feed on milk, and the Abii who are most righteous of all men”. There he lingers, and “not at all did he turn back to Troy any more”. Already Strabo treated the passage as an early example of ethnographic writing.¹ Modern scholars follow suit, and so a few lines in the Iliad become the starting point for an entire literary tradition. But what does it mean to say that “the primitivistic form of exoticism… start[ed] with the author of the Iliad”?² Or that we have here “the first extant case of Greek idealization of barbarian races”?³ The first claim amounts to mere speculation: quite apart from the problems we have in dating the Iliad, we do not of course know when and how ethnographic ‘exoticism’ started being articulated in Greek. The second claim is banal if we grant that the Iliad is indeed the oldest extant text of Greek literature. What these assessments have in common is the fact that they single out a specific passage in the Iliad, and read it with hindsight. This chapter investigates how Il. 13.1– 9 relates to the rest of the poem, and what it can tell us about its poetics of human and divine space. I want to make two points in particular. First, the Iliad does not mark the beginning of Greek ethnography in any meaningful sense. Quite the contrary: the poem displays a sophisticated understanding of an already existing ethnographic discourse, to which it responds, and which it appropriates in subtle and surprising ways. Secondly, the ethnographic passage in Iliad 13 needs to be understood both in the context of the Iliad’s more general attitude to cultural space (which in turn is shaped by its broader poetic concerns), and its immediate narrative context. In arguing these points, I take inspiration from Franco Moretti’s Atlas of the European literature. ⁴ Moretti shows that nineteenth-century novels were just as engaged in drawing the contours of geographical and cultural space as were

   

Str. 7.3.2– 10, citing earlier authors such as Apollodorus, Ephorus and Eratosthenes. Lovejoy/Boas 1935, 288. Romm 1992, 53 n. 21; see also Müller 1972, 53 – 9. Moretti 1998.

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the specialised genres of geographical writing that flourished at the time. As Moretti puts it: “geography shapes the narrative structure of the European novel”.⁵ Of course, classicists did not need Moretti to tell them that space had an important role in Greek literature too: from Zielinski to Purves and Strauss Clay, there has been plenty of illuminating work on Homeric representations of space in particular.⁶ Yet none of this work has challenged the assumption that ethnography is relevant for some early Greek epics but not others. Thus, the Odyssey has long been regarded as an archetypical product of the Greek ethnographic imagination;⁷ whereas the Iliad has not on the whole been read with ethnography in mind, sporadic mentions of our one passage in book 13 notwithstanding. At first sight, this may seem entirely sensible: in contrast with the flamboyantly wide-ranging Odyssey (“he saw the cities of many men and learned their mind”, Od. 1.3), the poet of the Iliad keeps his gaze fixed on a small patch of land between the Hellespont and the city of Troy. And what he sees yields little that might qualify as ethnography on any conventional definition of that term. Yet, if Moretti is right and nineteenth-century novels developed sophisticated maps of the world without showing much prima facie interest in geography of a conventional kind, might not the same be true of the Iliad and ethnography? The question leads us to rethink not only the Iliad and its portrayal of human and divine space but also the relationship between early Greek epic and ethnographic discourse more generally. I therefore begin my discussion with some considerations of a general nature: how does epic as a genre define itself, and how does the Iliad fit into the wider framework of song about “the deeds of gods and men” (Od. 1.338)? I then turn to the question of how the poem maps divine and human culture; and how in so doing it responds to, and transforms, existing traditions of ethnography.

From Epic to Ethnography My starting point, then, is the definition of epic as song (ἀοιδή) about the famous deeds of gods and men.⁸ Song preserves the memory of deeds that are worthy of

 Moretti 1998, 8 (his emphasis).  See variously Zielinski 1899/1901, Elliger 1975, Thornton 1984, Scully 1990, Clay 2007, Trachsel 2007, Herzhoff 2008, Purves 2010a, Clay 2011; for early Greek geography more generally, see Cole 2010, with further literature.  E.g., Malkin 1998, Dougherty 2001, Hartog 2001, 15 – 39.  See Ford 1992, 13 – 56.

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renown (κλέος). In practice, epic celebrates those deeds that contributed to the shaping of the cosmos, especially during the heroic age, when the respective roles (τιμαί) of gods and men were finally determined.⁹ Taken together, the deeds of gods and men encapsulate a cultural history of the universe, starting from a time near the beginning of the cosmos, when gods such as Earth or Sky were all-encompassing and all-powerful. Two generations later, the Olympian gods were less powerful individually but socially and culturally more advanced. The trend towards cultural differentiation continues in the era of the demigods, and culminates with the world of human beings ‘as they are now’.¹⁰ Within this larger narrative of cultural differentiation, the Iliad focuses on the critical moment when human beings and gods become fully separated. Achilles, for one, has a divine mother and as a result gains a powerful hold on the gods, including Zeus. Yet, as the narrative unfolds, he too must accept that he is a mere mortal.¹¹ In focusing on the tragedy of Achilles, the Iliad construes human life and human space broadly along a scale from human to semi-divine to fully divine. Cultural difference has little room in this scheme, for it suggests that there might be several different ways of being human. What is acceptable to an Ethiopian is not necessarily acceptable to a Thracian, as Xenophanes famously pointed out.¹² Unlike Xenophanes, however, the Iliad focuses on the human condition tout court. It therefore plays up those elements that all human beings share (we must all grow old and die) and plays down as irrelevant or distracting those elements that set us apart (some people are “red-haired and blue-eyed”, others are “snub-nosed and black”, as Xenophanes points out). In practice, this means that the Iliad is largely uninterested in staging cultural difference: Achaeans and Trojans worship the same gods, hold similar values and share one language. Much has been made of the fact that the Carians are “barbarian-voiced” in the Iliad (βαρβαρόφωνοι, Il. 2.867), and that the Trojans are of “mixed tongue” (γλῶσσα μέμικτο, Il. 4.438). These are however isolated passages: as a general rule the Iliad does not emphasise language difference among human communities.¹³ Other cultural traits are likewise given short

 Clay (2003, 161– 74) discusses the age of heroes as a transitional phase in the making of the universe.  See Graziosi/Haubold 2005.  Graziosi/Haubold 2005, 140 – 3.  Fr. 16 D-K.  Mackie (1996) argues that Greeks and Trojans use speech differently, but the traits she uncovers are so subtle as to confirm my point, which is that though differences exist, they do not become overt markers of cultural identity.

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shrift. When characters do stand out, this tends to be motivated by the narrative context. Thus, Paris’ behaviour and attire at Il. 3.15 – 20 seem primarily a matter of characterisation. Likewise, Priam’s stone palace comes into view at Il. 6.242– 50 not as a marvel of the ethnographic imagination but, in the words of Oliver Taplin, as “the breeding ground of a great dynasty”:¹⁴ the palace illustrates Hector’s task in trying to defend Troy, and helps the narrator present Troy as a prize for the invading army. Then again, when Achilles tells Hector that there can be no agreement between them (Il. 22.262– 7), he does not invoke cultural values but contrasts men and lions, wolves and sheep, in a hyperbolic play of metaphor. Achilles makes no attempt to cast Hector as typically Trojan: it is just a matter of who eats whom. Even Agamemnon at Il. 6.55 – 60 does not suggest that the Trojans’ treachery is a cultural trait. Rather, he emphasises their disregard for values which in principle they ought to share with the Achaeans. Cultural difference in early Greek thought tends to increase towards the edges of the world, but there is little sense of that happening in the Iliad: among the Trojan contingents, four are said to come from ‘far away’.¹⁵ None of these, however, stand out as particularly exotic. The Paiones are good archers (Il. 2.848 etc.), but so are others. The Lycians at the very end of the Trojan Catalogue form an obvious counterpart to the Trojans at the beginning and may thus seem good candidates for ethnographic elaboration. That, however, is precisely what we do not find. As I have argued elsewhere, the poet rather sees the Lycians as confronting issues that affect all warriors before Troy:¹⁶ why should they fight over Helen when they are apparently free to walk away from the war?¹⁷ What might be a cause worth dying for? And what is it that makes a human life worth living at all? These are universal concerns, expressed with exemplary clarity in Sarpedon’s famous speech at Il. 12.310 – 28. The speech involves no special pleading: Sarpedon lives by the same values (κλέος, κῦδος, εὖχος, τιμή) that determine the lives of the other warriors at Troy. He is not culturally unique, nor does Lycia itself differ significantly from other regions closer to home. It may be argued that Glaucus’ extravagant golden armour adds an exotic touch, but Glaucus too does not place himself outside the cultural framework of the other warriors at Troy: when he swaps armour with Diomedes at Il. 6.234– 6, his actions prove that guest friendship is a central value in Lycia as well as in Argos.¹⁸

    

Taplin 1992, 117. Paiones at Il. 2.849, Halizones at Il. 2.857, Phrygians at Il. 2.863 and Lycians at Il. 2.877. See Haubold 2011. As Glaucus threatens to do at Il. 17.154– 5. For detailed discussion of the episode, see Graziosi/Haubold 2010, 36 – 40.

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Beyond the sphere of Troy and her allies, cultural diversity increases, but not by much. A swift tour of outlying regions will illustrate the point. The Solymians of south-eastern Anatolia feature twice in Glaucus’ account of his grandfather Bellerophontes (Il. 6.184– 5, 204): they are particularly warlike, but otherwise seem unremarkable. The Amazons are encountered in a similar geographical context (Il. 3.182 and 6.186): they too feature only in direct speech – their homeland remains out of sight and we hear little about their customs. Granted, they are called ἀντιάνειραι and it may be argued that in this epithet we find the kernel of an ethnographic digression. But the fact remains that the Iliad never offers that digression.¹⁹ Further east, there are the Sidonians of the Levantine coast and the Phoenician sailors who trade their goods. What little we learn about their homeland and customs hardly promises hidden ethnographic delights. In any case, all that the Iliad actually tells us about the Sidonians is that they were good at producing some of the precious objects that feature in the narrative (e. g. Il. 6.289 – 95, 23.743). Egyptian Thebes is mentioned briefly in Achilles’ speech at Il 9.381– 4: we learn that it is rich and spacious, but never hear of it again. Beyond even the Sidonians and Egyptians dwell tribes whom no human traveller reaches. Among them are the Pygmies who live in the far south, by the river Ocean. The Pygmies are mentioned in a simile at Il. 3.3 – 7, where they do battle with migrating cranes. They were popular in later literature and art, and may have been popular already among Homer’s earliest audiences.²⁰ The name suggests dwarfishness, as does the story of the cranes (not exactly the most warlike of creatures): ancient readers knew that there was scope here for ethnographic elaboration, but characteristically had to look elsewhere for details. More prominent than the Pygmies, and perhaps the closest the Iliad comes to emphasising cultural difference outside of book 13, are the Ethiopians, who appear twice near the edges of the world by the river Ocean (Il. 1.423 – 4 and 23.202– 7). The Ethiopians acquire ethnographic point in the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women (fr. 150.17– 18 M-W), where they are grouped with the Pygmies and other exotic tribes.²¹ From Xenophanes onward, they appear as a prime target of the ethnographic imagination.²² There is every reason to believe that early Iliadic audiences already knew them as an exotic tribe: certainly, the Iliad itself sug-

 For the Amazons in later literature, see duBois 1982, Tyrell 1984, Blok 1995.  Krieter-Spiro 2009, 14.  The tribe of the “Black ones” (Μέλανες) suggests the popular interpretation of Αἰθίοπες = “Burnt faces”.  Romm 1992, 49 – 67.

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gests that they live in plenty and close to the gods.²³ Most telling perhaps is their epithet ἀμύμονες, “blameless”, which is not normally used of entire societies in Homer, being generally reserved for individuals. Yet, even in the case of the Ethiopians the narrator resists going into detail. Indeed, we sense a reluctance to include the Ethiopians in human cultural space at all: only gods mention the Ethiopians in the Iliad, and only they get to visit them.²⁴ When they do, the narrator does not follow them there. By placing the Ethiopians and Pygmies near the Ocean, the poet of the Iliad locates pockets of cultural difference along the edges of the world. We find the same phenomenon also in the Odyssey and later ethnographic texts: the Iliad was evidently familiar with this feature of Greek ethnographic discourse.²⁵ Yet, it refrains from joining up outlying regions into a coherent ethnography of ‘the other’ (no connection is made, for example, between Pygmies and Ethiopians), and when the poet describes the Ocean on the Shield of Achilles there is no mention of exotic tribes. More generally, the Shield of Achilles conceives of the world not as a mosaic of culturally distinct regions but as an abstract image of the human condition.²⁶ It is my contention that this is not a matter of Homer displaying a pre-ethnographic consciousness, but a poetic choice. Here it might be instructive to contrast the Iliad’s approach to ethnography with an early, and rather notorious, example of the genre: the Arimaspea by Aristeas of Proconnesus. Unfortunately, that work as a whole is lost, and we know frustratingly little about its contents, context and time of composition.²⁷ What we do know is that Aristeas claimed to have been transported to the far north of the world in a trance, and to have brought back from his voyage an account of the weird and wonderful tribes whom he encountered there (test. 2 Bernabé). We also know that Aristeas was much interested in cultural traits: he reports that the Issedones wear their hair uncut (fr. 4 Bernabé), and that their neighbours to the north, the Arimasps, are brave in battle and rich in horses, sheep and oxen (fr. 5 Bernabé). Moreover, he reports that the Arimasps have shaggy hair and only one eye, and that they are enormously strong (fr. 6 Bernabé). More sensa-

 Romm 1992, 50 – 4.  Contrast Od. 4.84.  See Romm 1992, and especially pp. 9 – 44 for the geography of Ocean.  Taplin 1980.  For edition with commentary, see Dowden; discussion in Bolton 1962, West 2004, Dowden. The issue of dating in particular is much debated: ancient suggestions range from the early 6th century (Suda) to the early 7th (Herodotus). Bolton accepts the early date but is criticised by Burkert (1963) and Herington (1964). Current consensus favours a “lower version of the high date”, around 620 – 580 BCE (Dowden).

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tionally still, they are embroiled in a constant war over gold with a tribe of Griffons (fr. 7 Bernabé). This last detail, which recalls the Iliadic Pygmies and their war against cranes, shows well how the Arimaspea appeals to ethnographic desire in a way in which the Iliad does not: whereas Homer hints that there might be more to say about Amazons, Pygmies and Ethiopians, Aristeas explores in detail the tribes whom he visits. He concedes that this is not altogether unproblematic, as we can see from the fact that he frames ethnography effectively as a form of hallucination. Moreover, he stops short in the land of the (relatively ‘normal’) Issedones and learns about the Cyclopean Arimasps and their even weirder neighbours only through hearsay. But once these provisos are in place we are allowed to indulge in the details of his ethnographic tour. The Iliad is different. Not only does Homer play down cultural differences in general, he also prevents us from indulging our desire for an Aristean brand of ethnography in the one passage of the Iliad where a character within the story does just that (Il. 13.1– 9). I turn to it now.

Ethnographic Distractions At the beginning of Iliad 13, Zeus has had enough of the Trojan War. After a period of protracted stalemate, Hector has finally broken through the Achaean wall, and Zeus’s promise to honour Achilles is nearing its fulfilment. At this point, the god dramatically averts his gaze from the battlefield and goes on a virtual tour around exotic northern tribes: Ζεὺς δ’ ἐπεὶ οὖν Τρῶάς τε καὶ Ἕκτορα νηυσὶ πέλασσε, τοὺς μὲν ἔα παρὰ τῇσι πόνον τ’ ἐχέμεν καὶ ὀϊζὺν νωλεμέως, αὐτὸς δὲ πάλιν τρέπεν ὄσσε φαεινὼ νόσφιν ἐφ’ ἱπποπόλων Θρῃκῶν καθορώμενος αἶαν Μυσῶν τ’ ἀγχεμάχων καὶ ἀγαυῶν ἱππημολγῶν γλακτοφάγων Ἀβίων τε δικαιοτάτων ἀνθρώπων. ἐς Τροίην δ’ οὐ πάμπαν ἔτι τρέπεν ὄσσε φαεινώ· οὐ γὰρ ὅ γ’ ἀθανάτων τινα ἔλπετο ὃν κατὰ θυμὸν ἐλθόντ’ ἢ Τρώεσσιν ἀρηξέμεν ἢ Δαναοῖσιν. After Zeus had brought Hector and the Trojans to the Achaean ships, he left the combatants to their toil and misery without pause and turned his luminous eyes away, scanning the land of the horse-breeding Thracians, the Mysians who fight in close formation, and the brilliant Hippemolgi who feed on milk, and the Abii, most righteous of men.

5

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And not at all did he turn his eyes to Troy any longer, for he did not think that any of the immortals might go and help the Trojans or the Greeks.²⁸

The narrative function of the episode is transparent: Homer introduces a diversion so that Poseidon can intervene on the Achaean side. This brings respite for the reader before the final onslaught on the ships and creates many opportunities for narrative delight, including the deception of Zeus in Iliad 14 and the clash between the divine brothers Zeus and Poseidon in book 15. Yet, beyond introducing a narrative diversion, Zeus’s moment of distraction also works as an allusion to a specific type of literature. A brief comparison with a similar passage in the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women illustrates what is at stake. That text takes the chase of the Harpies and Boreads as an excuse to go on a whistle-stop tour around the ethnographic edges of the world, visiting on the way the Hippemolgi that so interested Zeus in Iliad 13 (frr. 150.15, 151 M-W), as well as the Ethiopians, the Pygmies, and many other tribes.²⁹ At one level, the passage enables the poet to fill ‘gaps’ in his genealogies, thus making good his claim to full coverage. We hear of tribes that are descended from Gaia (fr. 150.11 M-W), Zeus (fr. 150.16 M-W), Poseidon (fr. 150.19 and 27 M-W) and Hermes (fr. 150.31 M-W). Yet, these genealogical titbits are hardly the point of the passage. Rather, the Hesiodic Periodos takes the opportunity of presenting us with an extended piece of early Greek ethnography, the dazzling equivalent in narrative of a funfare extravaganza. We are quite literally getting side-tracked from the main narrative, and we love it. The trash aesthetic of the Catalogue comes fully into its own here: as Richard Martin points out, more is always more in this poem.³⁰ There is, however, one important qualification to what I have just said: the format of the mid-air chase, so effective in so many ways, ensures that we do not linger in this fascinating but alien world. Successive verbs of motion drive us on relentlessly: ἐθύνεον ἀίσσοντες (20), ὄρουσαν (30). At one stage, the chase spins back on itself (28), but far from slowing down, we accelerate even further.³¹ A pause seems finally on the cards when we arrive with the Sirens:

 Il. 13.1– 9.  Frr. 150 – 5 M-W; for Horse-milkers and Cheese-eaters, see frr. 150.15, 151 M-W; for further overlap with the Iliad, see fr. 150.9 and 18 M-W (Pygmies), fr. 150.15 and 17 M-W (Ethiopians); for overlap with the Odyssey: fr.150.15 M-W (Libyans), 150.26 M-W (Laestrygones), fr. 150.31 M-W (Calypso), fr. 150.33 M-W (Sirens); for overlap with Aristeas, see fr. 150.15 M-W (Scythians), fr. 150.21 M-W (Hyperboreans) and fr. 152 M-W (Griffons).  Martin 2005b.  Hes. fr. 150.29 M-W, [ἱέμενοι] μάρψαι, ταὶ δ’ ἐκφυγέειν καὶ ἀλύξαι (“the Boreads striving to catch them, the Harpies striving to escape and avoid their clutches”).

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Σειρήνων τε λίγε]ι[α]ν̣ [ὄπ]α κλύον· And they heard the resounding v[oice of the Sirens].³²

If the restoration is correct (and there is much to be said in its favour), this is a telling moment of poetic tension. The Sirens and their “resounding voice” (λίγε]ι[α]ν̣ [ὄπ]α) articulate our desire to stop the roller-coaster ride and linger.³³ However, we must press on: ἀλλ’ ἄρα καὶ τὰς [

μετα]χ̣ρονίοισι πόδεσσι [they left behind] with swift feet.³⁴

but even these

The phrase ἀλλ’ ἄρα καὶ τάς suggests that the lure of ethnography makes itself felt. Yet, even the Catalogue, for all its unashamed sensationalism, does not allow us to get permanently distracted by exotic creatures and places. All this has obvious implications for how we read Odysseus’ encounter with the Sirens in the Odyssey. ³⁵ However, distraction born of ethnographic curiosity is also an issue in Il. 13.1– 9. Zeus clearly likes what he sees: narratologically, the catalogue of northern tribes fills the enormous space between the beginning of book 13 and the deception of Zeus at Il. 14.153 ff. “Not at all did he turn his gaze to Troy any more”, says the narrator, emphasising the extent of the gap which Zeus’s wayward gaze must fill: Zeus, it would seem, cannot have enough of what he is seeing.³⁶ By contrast, what we are told about his viewing is brief. It starts innocently enough with the Thracians and Mysians, whose names are familiar from elsewhere in the narrative.³⁷ Epithets establish a broadly cultural register (ἱπποπόλων, ἀγχεμάχων), until with the Hippemolgi we steer toward a more pronounced ethnography: milk-drinking Hippemolgi (almost a tautology) and

 Hes. fr. 150.33 M-W.  The tension is recognized by Hirschberger 2004, 328.  Hes. fr. 150.33 – 4 M-W.  For the Sirens in the Odyssey, see Pucci 1987, 209 – 13 and 1998, 1– 9; Goldhill 1991, 64– 5. For A. R. 4.891– 921, see Goldhill 1991, 298 – 300.  Janko (1992, 43) argues that the metrical shape of Il. 13.4– 7 is suggestive of the “duration and abstractedness of Zeus’s reflections”.  Both are mentioned in the catalogue of Trojan allies: Il. 2.844 (Thracians) and 858 (Mysians); for discussion, see Brügger/Stoevesandt/Visser 2003, 276 and 281.

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righteous Abii (another tautology)³⁸ are stereotypes that serve as shorthand for the northern tribes, and the attendant ethnographic discourse: dystopian milk drinkers suggest one end of the spectrum (we recall the Odyssean Cyclops and his predilection for milk products), utopian ‘super-just men’ another. Between them, they suggest a genre of ethnography which must have been well-known to Iliadic audiences; and which under different circumstances they might have enjoyed exploring just as much as the Iliadic Zeus.³⁹

Ethnography of the Divine In the Iliad, ethnography of the conventional sort remains a guilty pleasure, and one, which – unlike Zeus – we are not allowed to indulge. Yet, for the audience too there are ethnographic thrills in store: the Olympian gods themselves, I argue, take on the role of an exotic tribe far more glamorous even than the Ethiopians and the Hippemolgi whom, unlike the gods, we cannot hope to visit. Once again, a sideward glance at the Arimaspea may help us understand better what is at issue in this claim: θαῦμ’ ἡμῖν καὶ τοῦτο μέγα φρεσὶν ἡμετέρηισιν. ἄνδρες ὕδωρ ναίουσιν ἀπὸ χθονὸς ἐν πελάγεσσι· δύστηνοί τινές εἰσιν, ἔχουσι γὰρ ἔργα πονηρά· ὄμματ’ ἐν ἄστροισι, ψυχὴν δ’ ἐνὶ πόντωι ἔχουσιν. ἦ που πολλὰ θεοῖσι φίλας ἀνὰ χεῖρας ἔχοντες εὔχονται σπλάγχνοισι κακῶς ἀναβαλλομένοισι. This too is a great marvel for our minds: There are men who dwell on water, in the sea, away from land, they are wretched, for they have an oppressive way of life: their eyes are on the stars, their soul in the waves, they send many a prayer to the gods, with hands raised, but with their bowels dreadfully being tossed up too.⁴⁰

The authenticity of this fragment has sometimes been doubted, but regardless of whether we are dealing with a genuine passage of Aristeas, or merely a good  For ἄ-βιοι = “(people) without force”, with δικαιοτάτων ἀνθρώπων as an explanatory gloss, see Janko 1992, 42– 3. The superlative δικαιοτάτων is in itself characteristic of ethnographic discourse. For Herodotus’ use of the superlative in ethnography, see Bloomer 1993.  Ancient readers, however, wanted more; cf. ΣT ad Il. 13.6c: πῶς δὲ οὐδὲν περὶ αὐτῶν εἶπεν. Aeschylus apparently obliged, though for some unknown reason he turned Homer’s ‘Abii’ into ‘Gabii’ (fr. 196 TrGF).  Aristeas fr. 11 Bernabé.

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fake, there are several aspects that make it seem typical of early Greek ethnography.⁴¹ We may note, first of all, the studiously sensational nature of the description: with a mixture of fascination and horror the speaker (probably a character in the story rather than the narrator himself) dissects the people he describes, turning them into a bizarre display of limbs: eyes, soul, hands, and bowels are prized apart and laid out for inspection. The description is meant as a tour-de-force of the ethnographic gaze: its intended effect is ‘wonder’ (θαῦμα), a typical response to cultural idiosyncracy in the Odyssey (9.190), and indeed in later ethnographic writing. The central paradox sustaining Aristeas’ passage is the idea of a tribe that dwells not on land but in water. That is indeed striking, for in Homer all human beings live on land, in contrast with the gods who dwell in heaven.⁴² What is presented as a matter of ontological status in the Iliad becomes cultural habit in Aristeas. In a similar vein, the anonymous speaker in Aristeas describes the sea-dwellers’ existence as ‘wretched’ (δύστηνοί τινές εἰσιν), thus creating a pocket of space where life is permanently worse than elsewhere. At one level, this is merely to generalise the Homeric sentiment that sailors and other travellers are wretched.⁴³ At another level, Aristeas once again does something here that is characteristic of ethnographic discourse but quite uncharacteristic of the Iliad: he singles out one specific society as decisively disadvantaged because of its lifestyle. Homer may call an individual or group of people ‘wretched’ on the basis of specific experiences, but he does not brand entire cultures in this way. In fact, wretchedness for him describes the condition of all humans, in contrast with divine beings: ‘ἆ δειλώ, τί σφῶι δόμεν Πηλῆι ἄνακτι θνητῶι, ὑμεῖς δ’ ἐστὸν ἀγήρω τ’ ἀθανάτω τε; ἦ ἵνα δυστήνοισι μετ’ ἀνδράσιν ἄλγε’ ἔχητον; οὐ μὲν γάρ τί πού ἐστιν ὀιζυρώτερον ἀνδρὸς πάντων, ὅσσα τε γαῖαν ἔπι πνείει τε καὶ ἕρπει.’ ‘Ah poor wretches, why did we give you to lord Peleus, a mortal, while you are unaging and immortal? Was it so that you could share the suffering of wretched mankind?

 For discussion, see Bowra 1956, Dowden ad BNJ F 7, both of whom accept the genuineness of the lines.  For ἐπιχθόνιος as a standard Homeric term for human beings, see LfgrE s.v.  Thus, δύστηνος is commonly used of Odysseus in the Odyssey. The Iliad considers not having a fixed abode an extreme form of suffering; see Graziosi/Haubold 2005, 141– 2. In the ethnographic register of the Hesiodic Catalogue, it becomes a cultural trait: cf. fr. 151 M-W (the Scythians are said to live on carts).

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For nothing is more miserable than man, of all beings that breathe and move upon the earth.’ ⁴⁴

This passage, taken from a speech by Zeus in Iliad 17, illustrates well the poem’s universalising thrust: in stark contrast with Aristeas, who portrays one specific tribe as wretched because of its peculiar way of life, the Iliad treats as one tribe all members of the human race and proceeds to describe them all as wretched from the perspective of the gods (δυστήνοισι μετ’ ἀνδράσιν). Now, lest it be thought self-evident that humans are indeed the most wretched of creatures, let us remind ourselves that even in the Iliad individual heroes can be called ‘blessed’: Ὣς φάτο, τὸν δ’ ὁ γέρων ἠγάσσατο φώνησέν τε· ὦ μάκαρ Ἀτρεΐδη μοιρηγενὲς ὀλβιόδαιμον, ἦ ῥά νύ τοι πολλοὶ δεδμήατο κοῦροι Ἀχαιῶν. Thus she spoke, but the old man marvelled at him and said: ‘The blessed son of Atreus, born to power and wealth. Now I see how many young men of the Achaeans you command.’⁴⁵

Whether or not we are all wretched depends on our point of view. To Priam looking down from the walls of Troy, Agamemnon appears exceptionally fortunate. But the dominant point of reference in the Iliad is provided by the gods, and compared with them, even Agamemnon at the height of his power is merely a ‘wretched mortal’ among others. Just as the Iliad tends to play down differences in personal fortune, so it flattens out cultural differences among human societies. In truth, the poem knows only two tribes, gods and humans, whom it relentlessly compares and contrasts. For example: φράζεο Τυδεΐδη καὶ χάζεο, μηδὲ θεοῖσιν ἶσ’ ἔθελε φρονέειν, ἐπεὶ οὔ ποτε φῦλον ὁμοῖον ἀθανάτων τε θεῶν χαμαὶ ἐρχομένων τ’ ἀνθρώπων.’ ‘Think it over, son of Tydeus, and get back. Don’t wish to think like the gods. For the tribes of gods and humans who walk upon the earth are never equal.’⁴⁶

 Il. 17.443 – 7.  Il. 3.181– 3.  Il. 5.440 – 2.

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Apollo’s famous admonition comes at a moment when Diomedes seems poised to transcend the boundaries between the divine and human realms. He has just wounded the goddess Aphrodite and is ready to take on Apollo himself. That Diomedes hails from Argos, fights for the Achaeans, has a famous father, etc. is irrelevant in this connection and would indeed be distracting: all that matters here is that he belongs to those beings that walk upon the earth (χαμαὶ ἐρχομένων τ’ ἀνθρώπων); and that he cannot therefore hope to challenge the gods. Characteristically, the Iliad focuses on the central question of what it means to be human; and poses that question specifically by contrasting the “tribe of humans” (φῦλον… ἀνθρώπων) with that of the immortal gods (φῦλον… ἀθανάτων… θεῶν). In delimiting the divine and human races, the Iliad creates two distinct spheres: the human tribe dwells on the earth, the gods dwell in heaven. Yet, beyond basic distinctions of this kind, the Iliad also mobilises cultural markers such as food, dress and language to arrive at a veritable ethnography of the gods. Its treatment of language is a prime example. As we have seen, the Iliad is aware of linguistic diversity in the human realm but in practice does not contrast the languages of different human communities. Instead, it contrasts words used by all humans with divine items of vocabulary: ὃν Βριάρεων καλέουσι θεοί, ἄνδρες δέ τε πάντες Αἰγαίων’· whom the gods call Briareos, but all men call Aigaion.⁴⁷

Two points may be noted about this passage: first, the poet highlights the difference between divine and human culture (gods and humans use different names for Aigaion). Secondly, he emphasises the coherence of human cultural space (all men call him Aigaion). The two points are in fact different sides of the same coin: in emphasising the gap between gods and men, the Iliad plays down distinctions among men. That conclusion can now be generalised: when the Iliad mentions the special food of the gods, the strange make-up of their bodies, their idiosyncratic clothes and housing, it casts them as an ethnographic mirror image of all human culture. How this works in practice may be seen with exemplary clarity in a passage in Iliad 5. Ethnographic discourse comes to the fore as the narrator informs us that the gods, unlike humans, do not eat grain or drink wine, and do not therefore have blood flowing through their veins:

 Il. 1.403 – 4; for other examples of divine language, see Il. 2.813 – 14 (the tomb of Myrine, on which see Grethlein 2008, 30 – 1), 14.291, 20.74; cf. Od. 10.305 and 12.61 (the latter two in character speech).

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ῥέε δ’ ἄμβροτον αἷμα θεοῖο, ἰχώρ, οἷός πέρ τε ῥέει μακάρεσσι θεοῖσιν· οὐ γὰρ σῖτον ἔδουσ’, οὐ πίνουσ’ αἴθοπα οἶνον· τούνεκ’ ἀναίμονές εἰσι καὶ ἀθάνατοι καλέονται. … the immortal blood of the goddess flowed, the ichor, the kind of blood that gods have: for they do not eat wheat, and do not drink dark wine, wherefore they are bloodless and are called immortals.⁴⁸

The register here is strikingly close to what we find in Aristeas and other early ethnographers. Line 441 in particular, uses the staples of Greek ethnography, food and drink, to establish a mirror image of human culture (οὐ… οὐ). We may recall the description of the Cyclopes in the Odyssey: οὔτε φυτεύουσιν χερσὶν φυτὸν οὔτ’ ἀρόωσιν. They do not sow plants with their hands, nor do they plough.⁴⁹

The two passages are not just rhetorically similar (cf. οὐ… οὐ and οὔτε… οὔτ’) but also make essentially the same point: like the gods (and unlike human beings), the Cyclopes do not rely on agriculture. The difference, of course, and the main reason why the passage from the Iliad is not ethnography in the normal sense, is that it precisely does not refer to a distinct location where things are done differently. The point is that the gods are imagined as universal powers. Their being different is not a matter of local custom but encapsulates a fundamental truth about all human beings: we, unlike the gods, must die. That is what the gods’ ‘cultural difference’ ultimately amounts to: because they eat different food from us, they alone are immortal (τούνεκ’ ἀναίμονές εἰσι καὶ ἀθάνατοι καλέονται).

True Marvels The Iliad, I have argued, finds its own, ingenious way of enjoying the thrills of the ethnographic gaze. Not, of course, in Iliad 13, which as a piece of ethnographic discourse is disappointing: the catalogue of northern tribes is short

 Il. 5.339 – 42. Some scholars regard the last two or three lines of the passage as a later interpolation, but very similar sentiments can be found elsewhere in Homer (e. g., Od. 5.196 – 9). Kirk (1990, 96 – 7) is right to retain them.  Od. 9.108; for discussion, see Vidal-Naquet 1986, 21.

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and rather unexciting. And what other texts from the Odyssey onward portray as the thrill of direct human contact with alternative worlds is here a matter of the ruling god getting a little distracted from what should after all be his main concern: the fate of the heroes. Iliad 13 is ethnography lite, a TV meal of the cheaper sort. But the Iliad does find its ethnographic thrills elsewhere, in what I have called its ‘ethnography of the divine’: the gods’ language, dress, diet, etc. all become sources of ethnographic interest and, indeed, delight.⁵⁰ I conclude my argument by suggesting that the Iliad itself dramatizes this shift from the human to the divine realm in Iliad books 13 – 14. As Zeus turns his bright eyes to the north, the rest of us are left behind in Troy. Yet, we too get our moment of respite, for Zeus’s original plan of relaxation quickly unravels. This is how the text continues: Οὐδ’ ἀλαοσκοπιὴν εἶχε κρείων ἐνοσίχθων· καὶ γὰρ ὃ θαυμάζων ἧστο πτόλεμόν τε μάχην τε ὑψοῦ ἐπ’ ἀκροτάτης κορυφῆς Σάμου ὑληέσσης Θρηϊκίης· ἔνθεν γὰρ ἐφαίνετο πᾶσα μὲν Ἴδη, φαίνετο δὲ Πριάμοιο πόλις καὶ νῆες Ἀχαιῶν. ἔνθ’ ἄρ’ ὅ γ’ ἐξ ἁλὸς ἕζετ’ ἰών, ἐλέαιρε δ’ Ἀχαιοὺς Τρωσὶν δαμναμένους, Διὶ δὲ κρατερῶς ἐνεμέσσα.

10

But lord Poseidon wasn’t blind. He sat marvelling at the war and battle high on the topmost peak of wooded Samos, the Thracian island: for from there he could see all of Ida and the city of Priam and the ships of the Achaeans. There he sat, having come out of the sea, and pitied the Achaeans who were beaten by the Trojans, and he was furious with Zeus.⁵¹

10

15

15

The passage bristles with irony: while Zeus still looks north from Mount Ida, towards Thrace and beyond, Poseidon looks back at Mount Ida from Thracian Samos (i. e. the island of Samothrace). And whereas Zeus seemed to bring new worlds into view, Poseidon ‘was not blind’, a turn of phrase which rather suggests that his brother, for all his grand scanning of distant horizons, has simply gone blind to the things that matter in the Iliad. Poseidon for his part scans the landmarks of the Trojan plain in a mini-catalogue that is transparently designed to balance the mini-ethnography that went before. Mountain peak against lofty mountain peak (this is after all how the battle of the gods and Titans started in

 Some further examples of Iliadic ethno-theology: Il. 1.597– 8 and 4.3 – 4 (drink); 5.441– 2 and 899 – 904 (healthcare); 11.74– 5 (housing).  Il. 13.10 – 16.

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the Theogony), the stage is set for a show-down between the two brothers.⁵² They will eventually clash at the beginning of book 15. For now, we are left to reflect on the contest of narrative perspectives, registers and genres, which the confrontation between Zeus and Poseidon suggests. Most notably, Poseidon is said to “marvel” at the Trojan battlefield (θαυμάζων), which seemed so uninteresting to Zeus only moments ago. The two brothers, then, look at different marvels, each representing the different genres of Trojan War epic and edge-of-theworld ethnography. There is no question as to who makes the better choice, at least as far as Homeric audiences were concerned: for Zeus misses out on the most marvellous of all battle descriptions, the one that ancient audiences regarded as emblematic of Homer’s art: ῥηθέντων δὲ καὶ τούτων, οἱ μὲν Ἕλληνες πάντες τὸν Ὅμηρον ἐκέλευον στεφανοῦν· ὁ δὲ βασιλεὺς Πανήδης ἐκέλευσεν ἕκαστον τὸ κάλλιστον ἐκ τῶν ἰδίων ποιημάτων εἰπεῖν. Ἡσίοδος οὖν ἔφη πρῶτος (Op. 383 – 92)· […] μεθ’ ὃν Ὅμηρος (Il. 13.126 – 33 + 339 – 44)· ἀμφὶ δ’ ἄρ’ Αἴαντας δοιοὺς ἵσταντο φάλαγγες καρτεραί, ἃς οὔτ’ ἄν κεν Ἄρης ὀνόσαιτο μετελθών οὔτέ κ’ Ἀθηναίη λαοσσόος· οἱ γὰρ ἄριστοι κρινθέντες Τρῶάς τε καὶ Ἕκτορα δῖον ἔμιμνον, φράξαντες δόρυ δουρί, σάκος σάκεϊ προθελύμνωι· ἀσπὶς ἄρ’ ἀσπίδ’ ἔρειδε, κόρυς κόρυν, ἀνέρα δ’ ἀνήρ, ψαῦον δ’ ἱππόκομοι κόρυθες λαμπροῖσι φάλοισιν νευόντων· ὣς πυκνοὶ ἐφέστασαν ἀλλήλοισιν. ἔφριξεν δὲ μάχη φθεισίμβροτος ἐγχείηισιν μακραῖς, ἃς εἶχον ταμεσίχροας· ὄσσε δ’ ἄμερδεν αὐγὴ χαλκείη κορύθων ἄπο λαμπομενάων θωρήκων τε νεοσμήκτων σακέων τε φαεινῶν, ἐρχομένων ἄμυδις. μάλα κεν θρασυκάρδιος εἴη, ὃς τότε γηθήσειεν ἰδὼν πόνον οὐδ’ ἀκάχοιτο. θαυμάσαντες δὲ καὶ ἐν τούτωι τὸν Ὅμηρον οἱ Ἕλληνες ἐπήινουν, ὡς παρὰ τὸ προσῆκον γεγονότων τῶν ἐπῶν, καὶ ἐκέλευον διδόναι τὴν νίκην. When these dicta too had been spoken, the Greeks all called for Homer to be garlanded as victor. But King Panedes told each poet to recite the finest passage from his own compositions. So Hesiod said first: […] Then came Homer: About the two Ajaxes the battle lines stood strong that neither would Ares have faulted had he come there

 ΣT ad Il. 13.11b rightly remark that the scene is visually effective: γραφικῶς δὲ ἔχουσιν οἱ δύο ἀπὸ τῶν ὀρῶν θεώμενοι; for Olympian gods and Titans facing off on opposite mountains, see Hes. Th. 629 – 33.

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nor Athena driver of armies; for the finest picked men were awaiting the Trojans and lordly Hector, hedging lance with lance, shield with shield overlapping; targe pressed on targe, helm on helm, man on man, and the horsehair plumes touched on the bright crests as they nodded, so close they stood to one another. The murderous battle bristled with long spears that they held to slice the skin; eyes were dazzled with the glint of the bronze from the shining helmets, the fresh-polished corslets, and the bright shields as the armies clashed. It would have been a bold-hearted man who felt joy at the sight of that toil and not dismay. Once again the Greeks were struck with admiration for Homer, praising the way the verses transcended the merely fitting, and they called for him to be awarded the victory.⁵³

This passage from the Contest of Homer and Hesiod marks the climax of the contest, when after much sparring each poet is asked to quote his “finest” lines (τὸ κάλλιστον ἐκ τῶν ἰδίων ποιημάτων). Hesiod goes first, with a passage from the so-called ‘farmer’s calendar’ in the Works and Days. Homer then quotes two extracts from Iliad 13, a blindingly vivid selection of lines (esp. ὄσσε δ’ ἄμερδεν/ αὐγὴ χαλκείη κορύθων ἄπο λαμπομενάων). Zeus, of course, is still looking elsewhere. It is an exquisite irony that he should miss what ancient audiences regarded as the defining passage of all Homeric poetry, a scene so marvellous that it ought to have won Homer the crown as the best poet of Greece (θαυμάσαντες δὲ καὶ ἐν τούτῳ τὸν Ὅμηρον οἱ Ἕλληνες ἐπῄνουν… καὶ ἐκέλευον διδόναι τὴν νίκην). For ancient readers, then, the real excitement of Iliad books 13 – 14 undoubtedly lies in the fighting at Troy – and not just on the human plane: as Poseidon joins the fray, he attracts the attention of Hera (Il. 14.153 – 6). Hera in turn divises a new and better way of distracting Zeus: she will gain the kestos from Aphrodite and seduce him (Il. 14.161– 23). The plan succeeds, and Zeus is neutralized for the rest of book 14. Whatever desire for exotic worlds we might have harboured at the beginning of book 13 is channelled towards the much more glamorous world of the Olympian gods. This time, we stay with Zeus: unlike the curtailed ethnography of Iliad 13.1– 9, the Dios apate is worked out as an eventful and lengthy inset narrative. We marvel at the golden houses of the gods, their strange accoutrements (what, after all, is a kestos?) and their sexual antics. In its own way, the Dios apate too is an intrusion into the main narrative, derailing the Trojan ad-

 The Contest of Homer and Hesiod 12– 13 (West), quoting Il. 13.126 – 33 and 339 – 44.

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vance and suggesting a throw-back to theogonic narrative.⁵⁴ Yet, unlike Iliad 13.1– 9 it chimes with the poem’s interest in the Olympian gods: Homer is only too willing to let us peek in on his favourite tribe, even at the expense of the plan of Zeus. For ethnography of a more conventional sort, we – like Zeus – must turn elsewhere.

Conclusion I have argued two main points. First, the Iliad cannot meaningfully be said to stand at the beginning of Greek ethnography. Rather, its poet was a subtle reader of an already established ethnographic tradition, which he appropriated for his own narrative purposes, and which also informed the Odyssey. Yet, while the Odyssey offers a direct engagement with ethnographic discourse, the Iliad plays down differences between human societies, focusing instead on the gap between all human beings and the gods. The immediate context here is what readers since antiquity have called the Iliad’s ‘tragic’ outlook on human life:⁵⁵ as Achilles points out in Iliad 24, the gods ‘spun life for wretched mortals that they live in unhappiness, while the gods have no sorrows’ (Il. 24.525 – 6). For Achilles, the suffering that unites all human beings is of paramount concern. As part of this concern, the Iliad channels ethnographic desire away from human societies towards the gods, whom it casts as an exotic tribe in terms of language, diet, and customs. More traditional forms of ethnography, and this was my second point, become an alluring but ultimately irrelevant sideshow: what has sometimes been regarded as the ‘starting point’ of western ethnography in Iliad 13.1– 9 is little more than a literary joke at the expense of Zeus, who treats himself to a fashionable catalogue of northern tribes only to lose sight of his own much more important plans. Hera’s plot makes this mini-ethnography obsolete even as a narrative diversion, as Zeus’s desire for broader horizons gives way to the pursuit of sexual gratification. This shift, it seems to me, is characteristic of the Iliad’s view of life – and of its view of ethnography as a way of reflecting on different ways of being human and, indeed, divine: the narrative transcends the war at Troy not by visiting exotic tribes or places, but by turning towards the gods.

 Janko 1992, 168 – 72, with further literature.  Memorably discussed in the introduction to Macleod 1982.

Alex Purves

Thick Description From Auerbach to the Boar’s Lair (Od. 19.388 – 475)¹ There is also room and time for orderly, perfectly well-articulated, uniformly illuminated descriptions of implements, ministrations, and gestures; even in the dramatic moment of recognition, Homer does not omit to tell the reader that it is with his right hand that Odysseus takes the old woman by the throat to keep her from speaking, at the same time that he draws her closer to him with his left. Clearly outlined, brightly and uniformly illuminated, men and things stand out in a realm where everything is visible; and not less clear – wholly expressed, orderly even in their ardor – are the feelings and thoughts of the persons involved. Erich Auerbach, “Odysseus’ Scar” in Mimesis, The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, 1953 [2003], 3. A landscape is thus a space deliberately created to speed up or slow down the process of nature. John Jackson, Discovering the Vernacular Landscape, 1984, 8. “To put it bluntly,” said my friend, nature is out of date.” Paul Shepard, Man in the Landscape: A Historic View of the Ethics of Nature, 1967, xiii.

Does nature always suggest a place that is out of date and out of time? Does a turn to a natural landscape involve some kind of stepping outside time, into a different sphere of reality that exists somewhere (usually) in the past?² Does the movement from one kind of scenery to another also denote a change in

 My thanks to Johannes Haubold, Kirk Ormand, Seth Schein, Mario Telò, and the members of the audience at UC Davis for helpful comments on this paper, as well as to the volume’s reader and editors.  Nature in the post-Romantic sense has always been heavily imbued with notions of nostalgia and the past (cf. Shepard 1967; Williams 1973; Pugh 1988; Greenblatt 1989, 8 – 10 [as cited in Fludernik 1996]; Soper 1995; Fludernik 1996; Shapiro 2004), and we should of course guard against laying modern notions of nature over ancient ones. For one thing, nature was not something that the Greeks of Homer’s world were necessarily expected to enjoy, although cf. Vivante 1970, who sees nature in Homer as a more abstract, experiential construct, “a sympathetic participation” (94). Here, I am trying to argue not that Homeric depictions of natural scenes operate nostalgically, but that they may offer altered or more complex versions of narrative time. Cf. Whitmarsh 2010, 340 – 3, on how the space of the garden in the Greek novel allows for time to operate differently. Modern spaces may also apply to this reading – one might think of the temporal discontinuities (découpages du temps) that Foucault has suggested exist in heterotopias (1997, 182).

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tempo, a “speeding up” or “slowing down,” as Jackson suggests? Or does the kind of space that one is experiencing have no effect on pacing, on the speed at which we observe, move, or narrate? Can certain genres of storytelling really offer up an endless supply of room and time, as Auerbach puts it here, no matter what topographies they describe? Or do certain landscapes invite different stylistic choices, different modes of composition, from others? On the first page of the first chapter of his landmark study Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, Erich Auerbach impresses upon his reader that, in Homer, there is always more than enough “room and time.”³ That is, enough Raum (room or space) for all aspects of his narrative to appear side by side in the foreground, brightly lit and with nothing crowded into the shadows, and enough “time” for the story to be narrated in as leisurely and extended a manner as suits the poet.⁴ In stating his case this plainly from the start, Auerbach sets the stage for his well-known reading of Odyssey 19.386 – 490, the episode in which Eurycleia discovers the scar of Odysseus when washing her disguised master, and which act of discovery triggers a long inset narrative explaining how the wound was inflicted during a hunt with Odysseus’ maternal uncles on Mount Parnassus.⁵ Despite the “dramatic moment of recognition,”⁶ therefore, when even after Odysseus’ last-minute efforts to turn away from the fire Eurycleia still discovers the scar, and despite the fact that this action immediately transmits a serious threat to both the plot of the Odyssey and to Eurycleia herself, Homer feels no need to quicken the pace of his narrative. Instead, he extends it, both temporally and geographically. As Auerbach goes on to discuss, the poet’s choice to delay his narrative at this very point with an extended excursus of over 70 lines can be seen as a hallmark of Homeric style.⁷ That there is always sufficient “room and time” in Homer for a kind of endless horizontal expansion will be Auerbach’s central premise in his chapter, and

 As Lynn-George (1988, 2) puts it, Auerbach is attempting to recover “a Homeric world in which there is time to tell all – in this and other respects a timeless world, which emerges at the outset invested with the legendary plentitude and primitive simplicity of a lost paradise.” (See also my n. 2, above).  The German word Raum can be translated as either “room” or “space,” (both meanings are at play in the passage quoted). Trask’s choice of “room” is particularly apt for its ability to evoke the word’s meaning in connection with their being enough room (capacity) for something.  The episode has been discussed by many critics, most notably Auerbach 1953 [2003], 3 – 23, but also Büchner 1931; Köhnken 1976; Austin 1966, 296 – 311; Genette 1980, 48 – 64; Clay 1983, 56 ff.; Slater 1983; de Jong 1985; Lynn-George 1988, 2– 26, Goff 1991; Bakker 1999; Scodel 2002; Haubold (forthcoming); Montiglio (forthcoming).  Auerbach 1953 [2003], 3.  On Homeric digression and retardation, see Austin 1966; Krischer 1971; Martin 2000.

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indeed the importance of that concept within the overall project of Mimesis is underscored by its analogy to the book’s epigraph, the Marvell quotation “Had we but world enough and time…”⁸ In an effort to come to grips with what Auerbach thinks of as room, I explore in this paper Homer’s presentation of “natural space” – what one might alternately call “scenery” or “the wilderness” – using the revelation and story of Odysseus’ scar as a test case.⁹ In doing so, I want to follow Auerbach’s lead in thinking about space together with time, and I am especially interested in examining how Homer embeds natural or wild spaces within various narrative frames. In this case, I am thinking of the boar’s lair that lies at the heart of the excursus, a deep-set space covered over with leaves and described with an adjective, πυκινός (thick), which applies, I will argue, not just to its physical properties but also to the formal properties of the manner in which it is described.¹⁰ The story of the scar, narrated in a leisurely and extended fashion over 74 lines and yet occurring, in “real-time,” within the split-second of Eurycleia’s recognition, has long fascinated and troubled readers of Homer. Generally, those readers have sought to interpret the episode as a problem to do with time (whether the inset story creates suspense in relation to the main narrative or causes us to forget it) or focalization (whether it is focalized by Eurycleia, for example) and a substantial body of work has arisen around these questions.¹¹ But, despite the fact that much of Auerbach’s original essay on the subject was set in relief by considerations of space and spatial description, the temporal complexities of this scene have never really been understood in relation to the different topographies it evokes.¹² This is due, in part, to a lack of specificity in the writing of Auerbach himself – for although his description of Homeric style is deeply interwoven with the language of scenery and landscape, his writing about space is also frustratingly generalized. As far as he is concerned, simplicity of time in Homer goes hand in hand with a depiction of space that is so straightforward as to require hardly any discussion at all.  Cf. Lynn-George 1988, 2. For a brilliant explication of Auerbach’s choice of that quotation as an epigraph for his work, see Porter 2008, 121 and n. 8.  I have found the work of Bordo (2002) on the notion of “the wilderness” particularly helpful.  My labeling of these kinds of descriptions as “thick” draws not on Clifford Geertz’ category of “thick description” so much as the various conceptualizations of thickness that have been applied to poetry (Pound 1951), literary texture (Bora 1997), poetic language (Shklovsky 1917 [1965]; Porter 2010, 78 – 80, 173; 2013), and to literature’s ability to connect temporal and spatial relations through the chronotope, so that “time, as it were, thickens…” (Bakhtin 1981, 84).  See n. 5, above.  Bakker (1999) comes closest to doing so, with his analysis of the moment when the boar emerges from his lair and attacks Odysseus, but his concern is with action, not topography.

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Thus, although Auerbach understands the present tense as a kind of place in Homeric poetry, a somewhere that can be seen and is in fact always fully visible in the foreground before our eyes, he never goes so far as to connect this imagined “view” of the text with the actual spaces which occur in the story of the scar or its discovery.¹³ In this paper I want to push at precisely that idea, to see if there is something to this concept of scenery reflecting the dimensionality or “depth” of narrative time.¹⁴ I will start with a discussion of Auerbach and move on from there to examine Od. 19.388 ff. Everything about Homeric style, for Auerbach, speaks to a concern with luminosity, to the extent that whenever the critic describes any Homeric scene it is by way of metaphors of darkness and light. Thus, as he goes on to argue, despite Odysseus’ initial unsuccessful attempt to “[move] back out of the light” before Eurycleia approaches to wash his feet (Od. 19.389),¹⁵ Homer everywhere provides us with “uniformly illuminated descriptions” which are “clearly outlined, brightly and uniformly illuminated,” existing in “a realm where everything is visible…” (3). This system of images shines strongly through the first five pages of the essay, in which Auerbach explicates the story of the scar. I provide the following quotations by way of example:¹⁶ … all is narrated again with such a complete externalization of all the elements of the story and of their interconnections as to leave nothing in obscurity. (4). … the need of the Homeric style to leave nothing which it mentions half in darkness and unexternalized. (5). Here is the scar, which comes up in the course of the narrative; and Homer’s feeling simply will not permit him to see it appear out of the darkness of an unilluminated past; it must be set in full light… (6) … the basic impulse of the Homeric style: to represent phenomena in a fully externalized form, visible and palpable in all their parts, and completely fixed in their spatial and temporal relations. (6) … nothing must remain hidden and unexpressed. (6) … brought to light in perfect fullness. (6) … never is there a form left fragmentary or half-illuminated, never a lacuna, never a gap, never a glimpse of unplumbed depths. (6 – 7) The Homeric style knows only a foreground, only a uniformly illuminated, uniformly objective present. (7)¹⁷

 On imagining a literary plot as a kind of view or landscape, see Purves 2010a.  On the lack of “depth” in Homeric time, see Auerbach 1953 [2003], 3 – 23, esp. 7. I have discussed this issue also in Purves 2004, 156 ff.  Auerbach 1953 [2003], 3.  Auerbach 1953 [2003], 4– 7, emphasis added.  At page 8, Auerbach turns to a discussion of the Hebrew Bible, in order to contrast its style with Homer’s. The language shifts in accordance, although at almost all points of comparison

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As can already be seen from these examples, this obsession with the language of light and illumination dovetails with a related set of imagery concerning surface and depth. For Auerbach’s Homer, the light of the present shines so brightly that depth, perspective, and background are completely eradicated, along with all notions of past or future time. The Homeric heroes may experience strong feelings, but they still “wake every morning as if it were the first day of their lives” (12). For the reader, too, even though there is a lengthy excursus on the story of Odysseus’ scar between the moment when Eurycleia recognizes it (Od. 19.393) and the moment when she drops his foot into the basin in shock (19.468 – 70), there is no suspense in-between, for we are so completely and exclusively transported into the fullness of each new scene which the poet puts before our eyes that we cannot at the same time worry about any kind of “background” from a previous scene intruding into our consciousness. Although Auerbach does not give us any examples of what he means by “all foreground”, we are to understand from his essay that the scenery in Homer is only surface deep – so thickly detailed, in fact, with a luxurious sheen of objects, epithets, and digression as to be thin and superficial; it lacks depth, overlap, and perspective,¹⁸ and the capacity to fold multiple layers of time into itself. In a somewhat strange juxtaposition, Auerbach provides as a completely opposite alternative the style of the Hebrew Bible, where by contrast the reader is lost, searching for topographical and temporal markers in a landscape that is entirely abstract and unrealized.¹⁹ When God instructs Abraham to set off on a journey he obeys, but it is “unthinkable that… a landscape through which the travelers passed… should be described” (9). The journey instead takes place “through a vacuum,” (9), “a silent progress through the indeterminate and the contingent, a holding of the breath… like a blank duration” (10).²⁰ This absence of scenic or

illumination and its metaphors return (e. g., 11: “uniformly illuminated phenomena”; 12: “their emotions… find expression instantly”; 13: “make their delight perceptible to us… in order that we may see the heroes… and seeing them so, may take pleasure… the Homeric poems conceal nothing”; 23: “fully externalized description, uniform illumination.”)  Several scholars have queried Auerbach on this point, with Andersson (1976) going so far as to argue the exact opposite, calling Homer’s scenery “latent” instead (16: “Homer plunges the reader (or listener) not only into mid-action, but also into mid-scene, providing only gradually, and incidentally, a few details from which the Trojan setting can be pieced together in part.” He articulates his disagreement with Auerbach at 50 – 1, n. 26). The opening chapter of Mimesis nevertheless remains influential, and for important reasons. It is difficult not to think about the broad concept of “room and time” in the Odyssey without in some way returning to it.  On Auerbach’s choice to contrast Homer and the Bible, see Köhnken 1976; Porter 2008.  Homer’s apparent propensity for avoiding “flat” or “blank” stretches in his poetry has also been noted by other scholars (Bassett 1938 [2003], 40, 44; Vivante 1970, 78).

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topographic description, however, conversely leads to a deeper and thus more meaningful sense of place.²¹ When God finally speaks to Abraham, we are told neither where he calls from nor where he comes from, only that he “must enter the earthly realm from some unknown height or depths” (8, emphasis added). The “undetermined, dark place” (8), which marks the only kind of source we can determine for God’s voice, is never brought to light, never set in the foreground (9), in sharp contrast to the specifics of topography, landscape, and place that fill the mind of the Homeric reader with “the utmost fullness” (6) and superficiality. Auerbach’s frequent recourse to the metaphor of landscape in his description of Homeric storytelling is thus curtailed in a specific and dramatic way. For he claims that Homeric style knows “no background” and returns frequently to the point that it lacks perspective and depth. Homeric poetry is filled with description and lush with landscape, but it is a landscape that is resolutely two-dimensional.²² “[N]ever is there a form left fragmentary or half-illuminated, never a lacuna, never a gap, never a glimpse of unplumbed depths” (6 – 7). A little later on the same page, Auerbach makes it clear that what he is talking about here is temporal as much as spatial depth (7, emphasis added): … the story of the scar had only to be inserted two verses earlier, at the first mention of the word scar, where the motifs “Odysseus” and “recollection” were already at hand. But any such subjectivistic-perspectivistic procedure, creating a foreground and background, resulting in the present lying open to the depths of the past, is entirely foreign to the Homeric style; the Homeric style knows only a foreground, only a uniformly illuminated, uniformly objective present. And so the excursus does not begin until two lines later, when Euryclea has discovered the scar – the possibility for a perspectivistic connection no longer exists, and the story of the wound becomes an independent and exclusive present.²³

Auerbach argues that Homer’s style exists happily in discrete, fully realized and independent paratactic units (“the syntactical connection between part and part is perfectly clear,” 3),²⁴ with the kind of bright immediacy that subjects no one passage to a subordinate or recessive position in relation to any another. This is the crux of his argument for the lack of Homeric suspense – we feel no suspense as to the fate of Odysseus while the excursus is going on because the  Porter (2008) describes well how Auerbach equates Homer with surface, legend, and frivolity and the Bible with depth, history, and morality.  Cf. Bassett 1938 [2003], 46.  Both Austin (1966) and de Jong (1985) challenge this last point, arguing that the description of how Odysseus got his scar is seen from Eurycleia’s perspective. Scodel (2002) argues that the perspective in the digression shifts between Eurycleia and Odysseus.  Other scholars have argued something similar. See, e. g., Bakker 1999.

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story of the scar is so vivid as to make us completely forget that Eurycleia is touching Odysseus’ leg all along. But is this really true of the way space is depicted in the Odyssey? Are the surfaces of the framing and inset narratives really so flat and auto-reflective, so completely independent of one another? Let us try to rethink this whole scene by leaving Auerbach behind for a while and first considering in detail how the framing narrative is staged. αὐτὰρ Ὀδυσσεὺς ἷζεν ἐπ’ ἐσχαρόφιν, ποτὶ δὲ σκότον ἐτράπετ’ αἶψα· αὐτίκα γὰρ κατὰ θυμὸν ὀΐσατο, μή ἑ λαβοῦσα οὐλὴν ἀμφράσσαιτο καὶ ἀμφαδὰ ἔργα γένοιτο. νίζε δ’ ἄρ’ ἆσσον ἰοῦσα ἄναχθ’ ἑόν· αὐτίκα δ’ ἔγνω οὐλήν (Od. 19.388 – 93) then Odysseus was sitting at the hearth, but swiftly he turned towards the dark; for at once he suspected in his heart that, as she took hold of him, she might feel his scar, and everything would be revealed. Then she came closer and washed her master, and at once she recognized his scar,… ²⁵

The story is well known. A serving woman hurries off to bring water, both hot and cold, to wash the stranger’s feet. As she returns, the stranger, sitting at the hearth, turns suddenly toward the shadows, realizing that if the old woman took hold of his foot and felt his scar everything would be revealed. And so, as an audience, we are poised on the brink of action and turning point. Yet although the stranger turns quickly (αἶψα), the two lines that follow (390 – 1) undercut precisely the notion of narrative transition and progression. For now a new word denoting swiftness, αὐτίκα (“at once,” 390), doubles back from its initial position in the line onto the αἶψα at the end of the preceding one, in a curious kind of reverse enjambment.²⁶ That second “at once” takes a barely perceptible step backwards in time, in order to elaborate on the thought process that motivated the turn of Odysseus’ body (and which must, of course, have come first).  Translations are my own.  The work of Bonifazi (2008) on αὐ- discourse markers in Greek poetry, including αὐτίκα, is particularly illuminating in this context. She shows how αὐ- causes us always first to look backwards in our mind’s eye “to the visualization of a new entry in a parallel sequence” (56), at the same time as it draws our attention to a special moment of the story, marking a “performative peak” in the narration. For the use of αὐτίκα in this passage, see also Erren 1970, 49 – 50; Köhnken 1976, 496 – 7.

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But already it is too late, for now with a second αὐτίκα the serving woman, having moved forward to perform the footwashing, recognizes the scar (393). In this short passage, therefore, we see time both compressed and extended, marked by the placement of these three temporal adverbs at key (but different) positions in the line each time (final; initial; after the bucolic diaeresis). The flashes of suddenness that punctuate the actions of both characters are framed by two simple – and similar-sounding – verbs (ἷζεν, νίζε), anagrams of each other that stand at the beginning of their own line, as coordinators of the action that is taking or about to take place. Their combined simplicity and similarity creates the effect of a single moment in time being repeated and relayed, creating a moment that is virtually simultaneous at the same time as it is thick with repetition.²⁷ The expansion of time from between the neatly closed folds of “αἶψα·/ αὐτίκα” at 19.389 – 90 opens up enough space in the poem, therefore, for the recounting of two events that are almost simultaneous, and which realign in the final clause of the passage at hand with that last at once: αὐτίκα δ’ ἔγνω/ οὐλήν, τὴν… (“At once she recognized the scar, which …”).²⁸ And so the intimate space marked by the coordinates of Odysseus’ chair, the fire, and Eurycleia’s touch expand out from the space of the house, in the course of a famously lengthy excursus, to reach as far as a lair hidden in the wooded depths of Mount Parnassus. The secret, quietly referential topography of that lair is embedded not only within the space of the mountainside but also, too, within the narrative space of this brief moment shared between Odysseus and Eurycleia, as we will go on to see. This opening scene provides an example of how the simple movements of two bodies as they turn, draw closer, and touch can offer – even within the space of a few lines – sufficient “room and time,” for the poet to draw fine distinctions and variations between the multiple temporal and spatial coordinates

 The careful organization of words in the scene suggest different strains of sound as well, the first tending toward closure and stops, symbolized by Odysseus’ movement toward the dark (ἷζεν ἐπ’ ἐσχαρόφιν, ποτὶ δὲ σκότον ἐτράπετ’); the second toward open vowels, activated not only by the initial diphthong in the word for scar but also by Eurycleia’s act of feeling (οὐλὴν ἀμφράσσαιτο καὶ ἀμφαδὰ ἔργα γένοιτο), culminating in the extraordinarily vowel-heavy ἄρ’ ἆσσον ἰοῦσα ἄναχθ’ ἑόν· αὐτίκα δ’ ἔγνω/ οὐλήν. It is as if these open vowels sounds were drawing the vocabulary of the passage from the closed (short-vowelled, consonant-bracketed) word for dark (σκότον) and toward open-ended illumination (ἀμφαδὰ), no matter how hard Odysseus attempts to bend his body back and away.  As Montiglio (forthcoming) observes, Eurycleia’s “continuous action of washing is suddenly interrupted by the ‘aoristic’ discovery.” It is precisely the convergence of these different registers of time that interests me here.

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embedded within a single moment.²⁹ While the temporal adverbs αἶψα… αὐτίκα… αὐτίκα ensure that our attention is continually focused on the present, the ability of this run of at onces to double back on and even reverse each other also suggests a complex system of time – a series of overlapping, but not quite coordinated nows which will serve as preparation for the long stretching-out of present time that is about to follow in the description of Odysseus’ naming and scarring.³⁰ Not only is the moment of recognition itself prepared for repeatedly in this passage with various proleptic hints, such as κατὰ θυμὸν ὀΐσατο (“he suspected in his heart,” 390), ἀμφαδὰ ἔργα γένοιτο (“everything would be revealed,” 391), ἄναχθ’ ἑόν (“her master,” 392);³¹ it is also returned to after the digression, when the composition circles back to exactly where it had left off, not now with the repetition of αὐτίκα but with the doubling of the pronoun τήν and a series of partial repetitions of ἔγνω.³² Here we have the last line before the digression begins and the first one after it ends; both are marked by the use of τήν, to denote the scar, and [ἔ]γνω, to denote its recognition: αὐτίκα δ’ ἔγνω οὐλήν, τὴν… at once she recognized the scar, which… (Od. 19.392– 3) τὴν γρηῢς χείρεσσι καταπρηνέσσι λαβοῦσα γνῶ ῥ’ ἐπιμασσαμένη (Od. 19.467– 8) the old lady took hold of it in the palms of her hands, and she recognized it by feeling it

 Cf. Auerbach 1953 [2003], 6, on Homer aiming “to represent phenomena in a fully externalized form, visible and palpable in all their parts, and completely fixed in their spatial and temporal relations.” By contrast, Andersson (1976, 31) says of Homer’s style: “Sometimes the dwelling on detail appears to transport us into a recalibrated time scheme.”  Lynn-George (1988, 9) puts it nicely: “The break is abrupt; the story of the scar – that trace of the past – cuts across the narrative, disrupting and suspending the immediacy of ‘at once’ with the distance of ‘once long ago’ (autika d’ egnô / oulên tên pote…).”  We might note here the ironic words of Eurycleia at Od. 19.363 – 81 (the scene just prior), which already suggested that on a subconscious level she recognized her master.  Cf. Lynn-George 1988, 20.

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Less than ten lines later the aorist form of γιγνώσκω (I know, recognize) reappears in Eurycleia’s first words to the man whom she is at last certain is Odysseus: ἦ μάλ’ Ὀδυσσεύς ἐσσι, φίλον τέκος· οὐδέ σ’ ἐγώ γε πρὶν ἔγνων, πρὶν πάντα ἄνακτ’ ἐμὸν ἀμφαφάασθαι. (Od. 19.474– 5) You are Odysseus, my dear child. I did not know you before, until I felt my master completely.

The recognition of Odysseus by his scar, an event now regulated to the past by Eurycleia (πρὶν ἔγνων), is also already hidden in the words οὐδέ σ’ ἐγώ γε that precede it. This phrase, placed at the end of the line just as αὐτίκα δ’ ἔγνω was at 19.392, only needs a single nu to turn “I” into the “recognized” of those earlier lines, or ἐγώ into ἔγνω (one could go further, and see a scrambling of the start of Odysseus’ name in οὐδέ σ’ ἐ.. , a play on the Ὀδυσσεύς earlier in the line, that is broken off by the ἐγ[ν]ω[ν]; an incomplete articulation, in other words, of what Eurycleia has half-known all along:³³ “Odysse… I [knew] before”/ “I did not know you before.”).³⁴ Now, instead of a series of suggestively deferred or incomplete quicklys/ at onces, we have a doubling of retrospective befores / untils (πρίν… πρίν), which, combined with the repetition that circles around the aorist form of the verb to recognize – including the hint of confusion introduced by the negative οὐδέ – makes the precise moment at which Eurycleia notices the scar all the more ungraspable. The moment is rehearsed/ reversed so often, in other words, as to be impossible to pin down to a specific moment in the poem. The blurriness that surrounds any attempt to pinpoint the moment of Eurycleia’s touch as a singular and definitive moment of recognition contrasts with

 Cf. n. 31, above.  This pun works well with the other two that the poem has already revealed concerning Odysseus’ name (οὔτις/μῆτις and ὀδύσσομαι). Cf. Dimmock 1956. Note also Shoptaw’s observation of a third pun directly inscribed in the naming/scarring scene (2000, 229): “the hero’s name is cryptographically remotivated, at the moment of this passage from boyhood into manhood, when the boar’s tusk, odous in Greek, inscribes the name Odus-seus on his flesh.” We might note that in three of the four cases where puns have now been identified for Odysseus’ name (οὔτις; ὀδούς; οὐδέ σ᾽ ἐ), we find the sound (and thus also some trace of the meaning) ου. Although the diphthong itself never occurs in Odysseus’ proper name, its substitution here for either the initial or second vowel is also a combination of those two letters (ο and υ). Dimock (1956, 67) identifies a related punning on οὐλή in the words of Dolius to Odysseus at Od. 24.402 (οὖλέ τε καὶ μέγα χαῖρε).

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the use of the phrase αὐτίκα δ’ ἔγνω (“straightaway s/he knew”) elsewhere in Homer. Its four other occurrences (Il. 1.199, 14.157, 17.84; Od. 11.153) all signal immediate and direct action that continues on in the present, whether referring to Achilles’ sudden recognition of Athena or Hector’s observation of the fight taking place over Patroclus’ body. It also contrasts sharply with what Auerbach argued was happening in this passage. For Auerbach, the point of transition from οὐλήν to τήν at line 393 (οὐλήν, τήν ποτέ μιν σῦς ἔλασε λευκῷ ὀδόντι, “the scar, which a boar once drove into him with its white tusk”) works as the simple flipping of a switch from one fully realized and externalized reality to another; from the world of the aged Odysseus and Eurycleia at the hearth to a completely new world in which an adolescent Odysseus is attacked by a boar. At this point it must be said that Auerbach’s exclusive focus on the idea of the surface, where the present is located and which is always in the foreground, is curious in light of the actual landscapes that Odysseus moves through in the poem – both elsewhere and especially here, where his encounter with the boar in his lair pointedly raises the question of how space can be covered over, clothed, or hidden. The topography that we move to at this point in the poem is one that rarely occurs in the direct narrative action of Homeric poetry, but more often in similes, flashbacks, and digressions. This is precisely the kind of descriptive material that readers who are hungry for nothing but “plot” sometimes skip. It is the space of the mountains, the place where boar, deer, and lions live, close to the home of Odysseus’ maternal grandfather, the “Lone Wolf” Autolycus, and his family.³⁵ The area of Mount Parnassus that Odysseus – an adolescent just reaching manhood – enters on the hunt with Autolycus’ sons exists on the wild side, beyond the border that Redfield identified as the limit of agriculture: ἀγροῦ ἐπ’ ἐσχατιῆς.³⁶ Within the excursus we find a detailed description of that wilderness as the hunting party starts out early in the morning and follows the tracks of a boar to its lair: Ἦμος δ’ ἠριγένεια φάνη ῥοδοδάκτυλος Ἠώς, βάν ῥ’ ἴμεν ἐς θήρην, ἠμὲν κύνες ἠδὲ καὶ αὐτοὶ υἱέες Αὐτολύκου· μετὰ τοῖσι δὲ δῖος Ὀδυσσεὺς ἤιεν· αἰπὺ δ’ ὄρος προσέβαν καταειμένον ὕλῃ

 On the mountain as a site of wilderness, reversal, and “time before” in Greek myth, see Buxton 1994, 81– 96. In Homer, with the exception of this passage, the wild space of the mountainside is described only in similes. It is important to distinguish this space from the top of any mountain, such as Mount Olympus, which is a divine realm and a different kind of space altogether in Homer. On Autolycus, see Clay 1983, 56 – 89.  Redfield 1994, 189 – 99.

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Παρνησοῦ, τάχα δ’ ἵκανον πτύχας ἠνεμοέσσας. Ἠέλιος μὲν ἔπειτα νέον προσέβαλλεν ἀρούρας ἐξ ἀκαλαρρείταο βαθυρρόου ᾿Ωκεανοῖο, οἱ δ’ ἐς βῆσσαν ἵκανον ἐπακτῆρες· πρὸ δ’ ἄρ αὐτῶν ἴχνι’ ἐρευνῶντες κύνες ἤισαν, αὐτὰρ ὄπισθεν υἱέες Αὐτολύκου· μετὰ τοῖσι δὲ δῖος Ὀδυσσεὺς ἤιεν ἄγχι κυνῶν, κραδάων δολιχόσκιον ἔγχος. ἔνθα δ’ ἄρ’ ἐν λόχμῃ πυκινῇ κατέκειτο μέγας σῦς· τὴν μὲν ἄρ’ οὔτ’ ἀνέμων διάη μένος ὑγρὸν ἀέντων, οὔτε μιν ἠέλιος φαέθων ἀκτῖσιν ἔβαλλεν, οὔτ’ ὄμβρος περάασκε διαμπερές· ὣς ἄρα πυκνὴ ἦεν, ἀτὰρ φύλλων ἐνέην χύσις ἤλιθα πολλή. (Od. 19.428 – 43) When early-born rose-fingered Dawn appeared, they set out on the hunt, both the hounds and the sons of Autolycus themselves. With them, too, came shining Odysseus. They approached the steep mountain of Parnassus, clothed in wood, and quickly came into its windy folds. The sun had only then begun to touch the fields from the silent-flowing, deep-streamed Ocean, thus the hunters entered the glen. In front of them following the tracks, went the hounds, and at the back the sons of Autolycus. In their midst shining Odysseus came, close to the dogs, brandishing a long-shadowing spear. There in a thick lair a great boar was lying, a lair which the wet force of blowing winds could not pass through nor could the sun, shining, touch it with its rays, nor could a rain storm break all the way through, it was so thick, and a great heap of leaves was piled up on it.

A striking number of topographical features in this scene receive at least one descriptive qualifier (the mountain is steep, the wood clothed, the folds windy, the fields sunlit, the Ocean gentle-flowing and deep-streamed, while the lair receives four lines of description), lending a rich sense of place to the landscape. Each of these features of the natural world is imbued with some form of layering, depth, or three-dimensionality, and the descriptions are laden not only with detail but also with temporal markers, from the recent rising of the sun to the sequencing of verbs of motion as the hunters traverse the landscape (ὄρος προσέβαν…/ τάχα δ’ ἵκανον πτύχας…/ ἐς βῆσσαν ἵκανον…/ ἤισαν…/ ἤιεν),³⁷ complemented by the

 Note the repetition of ἵκανον but with metrical variation (its metrical shape at 19.432 [–– –– ––] is rare; LfgrE s.v.). I am grateful to Johannes Haubold for alerting me to the significance of both ἵκανον and ἄρα in this passage.

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prepositions (μετά…/ προσ-…/ προσ-…/ πρό…/ ὄπισθεν…/ μετά…/ ἄγχι) that elaborate on the relative positions of Odysseus, the hounds, and the sons of Autolycus. Interleaved with these positions and actions, moreover, is the fourfold repetition of ἄρα, an evidential particle that Bakker has shown draws the past vividly into the present, and which therefore – not unlike the series of “nows” we had earlier – further charges and enlivens the events at hand.³⁸ The scene resembles a simile not only for its natural setting but also for the running and tracking action that this kind of landscape invites, as in: ἴθυσεν δὲ διὰ προμάχων συῒ εἴκελος ἀλκὴν καπρίῳ, ὅς τ’ ἐν ὄρεσσι κύνας θαλερούς τ’ αἰζηοὺς ῥηϊδίως ἐκέδασσεν, ἑλιξάμενος διὰ βήσσας· (Il. 17.281– 3) He went straight through the front line of fighters like a wild boar in his prowess, who easily scatters the dogs and vigorous men in the mountains as he whirls through the glens. ὡς δ’ ὅτε νεβρὸν ὄρεσφι κύων ἐλάφοιο δίηται, ὄρσας ἐξ εὐνῆς, διά τ’ ἄγκεα καὶ διὰ βήσσας· τὸν δ’ εἴ πέρ τε λάθῃσι καταπτήξας ὑπὸ θάμνῳ, ἀλλά τ’ ἀνιχνεύων θέει ἔμπεδον, ὄφρα κεν εὕρῃ· (Il. 22.189 – 92) As when a hound in the mountains chases the fawn of a deer, having sprung it from its lair, through the valleys and glens, a fawn whom, even if he should escape the hound’s notice hiding under a bush, still the dog running steadily would follow its tracks until he found it. οἱ δ’ ὥς τ’ ἢ ἔλαφον κεραὸν ἢ ἄγριον αἶγα ἐσσεύαντο κύνες τε καὶ ἀνέρες ἀγροιῶται· τὸν μέν τ’ ἠλίβατος πέτρη καὶ δάσκιος ὕλη εἴρύσατ’, οὐδ’ ἄρα τέ σφι κιχήμεναι αἴσιμον ἦεν· τῶν δέ θ’ ὑπὸ ἰαχῆς ἐφάνη λὶς ἠυγένειος εἰς ὁδόν, αἶψα δὲ πάντας ἀπέτραπε καὶ μεμαῶτας· (Il. 15.271– 6) And they, as when dogs and country men rush after a horned stag or a wild goat whom a sheer rock and thick-shadowed woods protects, nor is it fated for them to reach it, and then a well-bearded lion is drawn out by their racket into the road, and quickly it turns them all away even though they are eager.

 Bakker 1993, 16 – 23.

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In these similes, the deep or thickset quality of the natural mountainside environment (διὰ βήσσας, διά τ’ ἄγκεα, ὑπὸ θάμνῳ, δάσκιος ὕλη) is precisely what adds excitement to the hunt – the landscape is not easy to move through and it offers several hiding places for the quarry. Fawns, lions, and boars emerge from unexpected lairs and small creatures can crouch down to hide beneath bushes.³⁹ The thickness, therefore, constitutes a vital element of the action, for the hunters are forced to take their cues from the landscape as much as from the animal they are chasing, and the speed at which they run plays into the frequentative associations of thickness. The atmosphere is charged both with the excitement of rushing through wooded mountains and glens but also with the various intersecting frequencies of a number of Iliadic similes. The thick vocabulary of 19.428 – 43 is further packed down with the description of the boar’s lair (439 – 43, quoted above) – here the πυκινός covering of the bed of leaves under which the boar lies makes the whole scene appear to be untouched by time, just as the lair is also impervious to the forces of the weather. Like an inverse of the hunters’ journey through the mountain, where we had mention of sunshine, water, and any number of weather-beaten nature similes,⁴⁰ here we have a cocooned space, apparently closed off to the epic and the world. Yet, as with the hunting passage, the lair is thick, too, with traditional epic themes which connect with other landscapes in Homer.⁴¹ In addition to linking to other animal lairs in similes,⁴² it refers back to Odysseus’ makeshift bed beneath two entwined olive bushes, complete with a great heap of leaves under which the hero slept during his first night on Scheria:⁴³ τοὺς μὲν ἄρ’ οὔτ’ ἀνέμων διάη μένος ὑγρὸν ἀέντων, οὔτε ποτ’ ἠέλιος φαέθων ἀκτῖσιν ἔβαλλεν, οὔτ’ ὄμβρος περάασκε διαμπερές· ὣς ἄρα πυκνοὶ ἀλλήλοισιν ἔφυν ἐπαμοιβαδίς· (Od. 5.478 – 81)

 See Scott 1974, 58 – 62.  Cf. Purves 2010b; de Jong 2012, 24– 5, on the space of nature in the similes.  See especially Russo 1993. Tsagalis (2008, 272– 85 on similes; 2010) classifies this kind of linking as “hypertextuality.”  Il. 11.414– 18: boar’s lair; Il. 5.162, 11.115, 15.580, 21.573, 22.190; Od. 4.335 & 4.338 (= 17.127 & 17.129): other animal lairs.  Russo 1993. There are a few other places in the Odyssey where we find spaces magically untouched by the weather. At 4.566, Menelaus learns that he will eventually be transported to the Isles of the Blessed where οὐ νιφετός, οὔτ’ ἂρ χειμὼν πολὺς οὔτε ποτ’ ὄμβρος (“there is no snow, nor much of a winter nor ever a rain storm”), and at 6.43 we learn that Olympos is οὔτ’ ἀνέμοισι τινάσσεται οὔτε ποτ’ ὄμβρῳ (“not shaken by winds nor ever by a rain storm”).

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which the wet force of the blowing winds could not pass through nor had the sun ever struck it with its rays, nor could a rain storm penetrate it. So thick were [the bushes] that grew entwined with one another.

These almost identical passages set out to describe, again, a certain quality of thickness to be found in nature. The ὥς of 19.442 (= 5.479) points backwards to explain the extent to which these natural makeshift beds are πυκινός (thick, or textured). But – as we alluded to before – this thickness comes not just through the quality of the branches or leaves that cover over the space but also through the quality of the reference itself, for there is a kind of intratextual thickness, a layering through repetition, in this passage too.⁴⁴ Also worth noting is the detailed description of leaves at the end of Odyssey 5, which Odysseus “piles up” over his body in a manner that imitates the sleep that Athena “pours over” him: φύλλων γὰρ ἔην χύσις ἤλιθα πολλή, ὅσσον τ’ ἠὲ δύω ἠὲ τρεῖς ἄνδρας ἔρυσθαι ὥρῃ χειμερίῃ, εἰ καὶ μάλα περ χαλεπαίνοι. τὴν μὲν ἰδὼν γήθησε πολύτλας δῖος Ὀδυσσεύς, ἐν δ’ ἄρα μέσσῃ λέκτο, χύσιν δ’ ἐπεχεύατο φύλλων. ὡς δ’ ὅτε τις δαλὸν σποδιῇ ἐνέκρυψε μελαίνῃ ἀγροῦ ἐπ’ ἐσχατιῆς, ᾧ μὴ πάρα γείτονες ἄλλοι, σπέρμα πυρὸς σῴζων, ἵνα μὴ ποθεν ἄλλοθεν αὕοι, ὣς Ὀδυσεὺς φύλλοισι καλύψατο· τῷ δ’ ἄρ’ Ἀθήνη ὕπνον ἐπ’ ὄμμασι χεῦ’, ἵνα μιν παύσειε τάχιστα δυσπονέος καμάτοιο, φίλα βλέφαρ’ ἀμφικαλύψας. (Od. 5.483 – 93) For there was a great heap of leaves piled up, as much as two or three men could collect in the winter time, if the weather was very blustery. Seeing this, much suffering glorious Odysseus rejoiced, and lay down in the middle of it, and poured the heap of leaves over himself. Just as when someone hides a fire spark in black ash on the edge of the countryside, for whom there is no other place to get a light, so Odysseus covered himself over in the leaves. And for him Athena shed sleep on his eyes, in order that he might very quickly cease from wretched toil, covering over his dear eyelids.

Here the repetition of words to do with heaping, piling over, and covering (χύσις, ἐπιχέω, ἐγκρύπτω, χέω, καλύπτω, ἀμφικαλύπτω) creates a quality of poetic con Cf. n. 41, above on “hypertextuality,” and Dué 2010.

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centration and denseness that merges the place being described with the texture of the description itself. For we might call the language here “thick” with the concentrated form of an idea as well as the words chosen to describe it. The thickness that begins with the entwined bushes and moves on to the leaves is finally transmitted to the sleep that Athena “sheds on” (χέω) and uses to “cover over” (ἀνακαλύπτω) Odysseus’ eyes, which in both cases borrow from words earlier used to describe the pile of leaves (χύσις, ἐπιχέω, καλύπτω). Finally, the bed that Odysseus makes for himself within the leaves receives one further “layering” by the addition of a simile:⁴⁵ the hiding of the fire brand in the black ash, the cancellation of light, and the location ἀγροῦ ἐπ’ ἐσχατιῆς all supplement the original description of this densely detailed space. This complex intratext with Odyssey 5 makes the use of πυκινός to describe the boar’s lair in Odyssey 19 all the more compact, therefore. For in the latter passage, the lair – although it is supposed to be a surprise, supposed to be a first space in Odysseus’ transition to manhood⁴⁶ – is already thick with meaning and reference. As with the passage in Odyssey 5, we find verbal repetition in this passage, too, when the compacted form of the adjective πυκινός is repeated at the end:⁴⁷ ὣς ἄρα πυκνὴ ἦεν, ἀτὰρ φύλλων ἐνέην χύσις ἤλιθα πολλή. (Od. 19.442– 3) it was so thick, and a great heap of leaves was piled up on it.

If we can already see condensed within the five lines describing the boar’s lair the tightly-packed folds of the twenty-line description of Odysseus’ bed of leaves from Od. 5.475 – 94 – for just as the first part of the description (19.439 – 42) repeats Od. 5.478 – 81, so does the last (19.443) almost exactly repeat 5.483 – then what we have here, within an extended digression set in motion by Eury-

 See further Tsagalis 2008, 273 – 85, on the simile’s capacity to enable multilevel textual structuring.  The boar hunt functions in the story as a rite de passage for Odysseus. Note ἡβήσας at 19.410 and see, e. g., Russo 1993; Goff 1991, 262– 4.  πυκινός is often repeated when it appears in Homer, as if the double placement of the word imitates the frequentative aspect of its meaning (in addition to the passages mentioned above, see also Od. 6.128 – 34, 18.318 – 20, 19.516 – 20, Il. 16.212– 18). In the example at Il.16.212– 17, the verbal repetition occurs at close quarters, imitating the tightly-packed formation of shields, helmets, and men in battle: ἀσπὶς ἄρ’ ἀσπίδ’ ἔρειδε, κόρυς κόρυν, ἀνέρα δ’ ἄνηρ·/ …/ … ὡς πυκνοὶ ἐφέστασαν ἀλλήλοισι.

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cleia’s recognition of the scar, is a compressed intratext. Time is moving in two ways – it is both stilling and zeroing in, waiting for the action from the outside world to break in on it, whilst also reaching far back to a point beyond the beginning of the poem. Instead of just a horizontal, paratactic expansion, in other words, as Auerbach saw in the scar episode as a whole, we have in the description of the boar’s lair the kind of expansion that moves vertically down into the layers of the text, suggesting “depth” and “background” as well as hidden elements beneath the surface. In order to justify my putting this much weight on the symbolism of πυκινός in the description of the boar’s lair, let us consider this word’s role more broadly in Homer. The cluster of words πυκ[ι]νός (thick), πυκιμηδής (prudent [x 1]) πυκ[ι]νά (thickly) occurs not infrequently in Homeric epic (68 times in the Iliad; 128 in the Odyssey).⁴⁸ As Dué and Ebbott have recently shown,⁴⁹ it appears in connection with ambush (πυκνὸς λόχος), and so by extension planning and cunning (one’s mind can be “thick” with ideas),⁵⁰ thick undergrowth, lying awake at night, a bed, or a well-constructed and virtually impenetrable bedroom or house.⁵¹ It is easy to trace a path using πυκινός from the bed of leaves in Odyssey 5 through the boar’s lair in Odyssey 19 to Odysseus’ tree bed in Odyssey 23 (183 – 204).⁵² Not only are each of these spaces connected to a transitional moment in Odysseus’ life,⁵³ they are all also in some way overlaid by nature and closed off to the outside world – thick, hidden, and secret.

 On the Iliadic battlefield we find the πυκινός family of words used to describe the tightlyfitted construction of arms, a piece of armor, or the close-knit relation of armed man to armed man or piece of armor to piece of armor in a phalanx (Il. 4.281, 5.93, 7.61, 10.271, 12.317, 13.133, 13.145, 13.680, 13.804, 15.529, 15.689, 15.739, 16.217, 18.608). These words also apply to counsel (μήδεα), nature, and similes. In the Odyssey, πυκινός more often applies to the family, the house/ room/bed, nature, and similes.  Dué/Ebbott 2010.  Cf. Il. 3.202, 3.208, 9.554, 14.217, 14.294, 15.461, 24.282, 24.674; Od. 9.445, 19.353.  πυκινός associated with well-made or well-sealed houses, walls, doors, gates, bedrooms: Il. 5.751 = 8.395, 9.475, 10.267, 12.301, 12.454, 13.680, 14.339, 16.212, 16.217, 19.355, 21.535; Od. 1.333, 1.436, 2.344, 6.134, 8.458, 16.415, 18.209, 21.64, 21.236, 21.382, 22.155, 22.155, 22.258, 22.275, 22.455, 23.193, 23.194, 23.229. See further Lynn-George 1988, 230 – 3, on the use of πυκινός in Iliad 24.  All three sites are over-determined by various layers of nature and πυκινός. In addition to my discussion of the scenes in Odyssey 5 & 19, see also the word’s fourfold occurrence in connection with Odysseus’ tree-bedroom at Od. 23.193, 23.194, 23.229, 23.291.  Scodel 2002, 110.

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In Book 19, after the episode with the scar has played out and Odysseus is talking to Penelope, she refers to the deep or πυκινός quality of her grief, elaborating on her emotions by means of a simile:⁵⁴ αὐτὰρ ἐπὴν νὺξ ἔλθῃ, ἕλῃσί τε κοῖτος ἅπαντας, κεῖμαι ἐνὶ λέκτρῳ, πυκιναὶ δέ μοι ἀμφ’ ἁδινὸν κῆρ ὀξεῖαι μελεδῶναι ὀδυρομένην ἐρέθουσιν. ὡς δ’ ὅτε Πανδαρέου κούρη, χλωρηῒς ἀηδών, καλὸν ἀείδῃσιν ἔαρος νέον ἱσταμένοιο, δενδρέων ἐν πετάλοισι καθεζομένη πυκινοῖσιν, ἥ τε θαμὰ τρωπῶσα χέει πολυηχέα φωνήν (Od. 19.515 – 21) But when night comes and sleep takes hold of all, I lie in my bed, but for me around my thickset heart deep piercing laments crowd upon me in my sorrow. Just as when the daughter of Pandareus, the nightingale of the greenwood, sings beautifully when spring has just arrived, sitting in the thick leaves of the trees, she who frequently modulating pours out her much resounding voice.

Penelope’s words point to a convergence of thickness and frequency, felt not only in the fact that πυκινός connects the tenor and the vehicle of the simile but, more specifically, in the density of her cares (πυκιναί), the thick or fast beating of her heart (ἁδινόν), and the thickness of the leaves (πυκινοῖσιν) in the tree that the nightingale sings from. The voice of the nightingale itself, like the leaves in Odysseus’ bed beneath the olive bushes and like the sleep that Athena sheds on him there “pours out” (χέω) from her mouth in condensed, rich tones, and in fast succession (θαμά).⁵⁵ Here, the repetition is thick even at the level of sound, as χέει expands into πολυηχέα.⁵⁶ It is, as we will see, very common in Homer for

 Penelope first refers to her own grief in this way at 19.95, when addressing the suitors: πυκινῶς ἀκάχημαι (“I grieve deeply”). She returns to the concept at 20.84 when comparing herself to someone else who “is grieving deeply in their heart” (πυκινῶς ἀκαχήμενος ἦτορ) by day but can at least (unlike her) sleep at night. πυκινός is often applied to grief and lamentation in Homer (Il. 10.9, 16.599, 18.318, 18.320, 21.417, 21.535; Od. 11.88, 19.516, 23.360, in addition to the examples cited above). See further Dué/Ebbott 2010, 239 – 42.  Dué/Ebbott 2010, 239 – 40: “The adjective pukinos has a variety of meanings in Homer, all of which are linked by the idea of frequency, density, or closeness.”  Shklovsky (1917 [1965], 22) cites Leo Jukubinsky on the “particular case of the repetition of identical sounds,” which makes the language of poetry a “difficult, roughened, impeded language.” Although the sounds in this passage are not identical, the repetition of sounds and words are thick or “rough” in a related way. The Russian Formalists felt that the purpose of art was to

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the word πυκινός to connect an event to a simile or to show up in association with a simile, often by means of a quality that is “thick” within the realm of nature.⁵⁷ Just as Penelope’s grief is concentrated, like the thick leaves of the tree from which the nightingale sings and like the frequent modulations of its voice; so on two occasions in the Iliad are Agamemnon and Achilles’ grief compared through similes in an analogous way: ὡς δ’ ὅτ’ ἂν ἀστράπτῃ πόσις Ἥρης ἠυκόμοιο, τεύχων ἢ πολὺν ὄμβρον ἀθέσφατον ἠὲ χάλαζαν ἢ νιφετόν, ὅτε πέρ τε χιὼν ἐπάλυνεν ἀρούρας, ἠέ ποθι πτολέμοιο μέγα στόμα πευκεδανοῖο, ὣς πυκίν’ ἐν στήθεσσιν ἀνεστενάχιζ’ Ἀγαμέμνων νειόθεν ἐκ κραδίης, τρομέοντο δέ οἱ φρένες ἐντός. (Il. 10.5 – 10) Just as when the husband of fair-haired Hera sends forth lightning, causing either a great, terrifying rain storm, or hail or a blizzard, when snow covers the fields, or somewhere causes the great onslaught of destructive battle, so thickly in his chest did Agamemnon groan, from the bottom of his heart, and his phrenes trembled inside him. αὐτὰρ Ἀχαιοὶ παννύχιοι Πάτροκλον ἀνεστενάχοντο γοῶντες. τοῖσι δὲ Πηλεΐδης ἁδινοῦ ἐξῆρχε γόοιο, χεῖρας ἐπ’ ἀνδροφόνους θέμενος στήθεσσιν ἑταίρου πυκνὰ μάλα στενάχων ὥς τε λὶς ἠυγένειος, ᾧ ῥά θ’ ὑπὸ σκύμνους ἐλαφηβόλος ἁρπάσῃ ἀνὴρ ὕλης ἐκ πυκινῆς· ὁ δέ τ’ ἄχνυται ὕστερος ἐλθών, πολλὰ δέ τ’ “ἄγκε’ ἐπῆλθε” μετ’ ἀνέρος ἴχνι’ ἐρευνῶν, εἴ ποθεν ἐξεύροι· μάλα γὰρ δριμὺς χόλος αἱρεῖ· ὣς ὁ βαρὺ στενάχων μετεφώνεε Μυρμιδόνεσσιν· (Il. 18.314– 23) But the Achaeans, groaning all night long, lamented for Patroclus. Achilles set them off on their thick-set lament, placing his man-slaying hands on the chest of his friend, groaning very deeply, just as some well-bearded lion whose cubs a hunting man has snatched away

“increase the difficulty and length of perception,” thereby creating a kind of thick, or – as Porter has it – rough or material poetics (Shklovsky 1917 [1965]; Porter 2010, 78 – 80).  Il. 5.93, 10.5, 11.118, 12.301, 13.145, 13.199, 16.212, 16.298, 18.320, 24.480; Od. 5.53, 5.329, 5.433, 6.128, 19.516.

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from a thick wood. And he, coming afterward, is grieved, and he traverses many glens after the man, following the tracks, if he might find them somewhere, and a sharp anger holds him. So deeply groaning, [Achilles] addressed the Myrmidons.

In both cases Homer uses πυκινός or πυκινά to connect the thickset nature of Agamemnon and Achilles’ groans with scenes from the natural world. In the first example, we can compare the dense quality of the hail, rain, or snow⁵⁸ as it falls upon winter fields with both the frequency and depth (νειόθεν ἐκ κραδίης) of Agamemnon’s lamentation. In Achilles’ case, however, the connection between the metaphorical quality of the “thick” emotion that he experiences and the occurrence of precisely this kind of concentration in the physical landscape of the natural world is made explicit, just as it was in the nightingale simile; for the πυκνά quality of Achilles’ groans draw added poetic resonance from the πυκινός forest from which the lion’s cubs have been stolen, causing the animal – like the warrior – to groan “deeply” (βαρύ). As Dué and Ebbott have written of this passage: “On the conceptual level the comparison being made is between the grief of Achilles and the lion, but what unites the tenor and vehicle on a verbal level is the word pukinos.”⁵⁹ How then do these select examples of πυκινός occurring in the natural world and in similes help us to better understand the “thick” quality of the boar’s lair? I am suggesting that when πυκινός appears in these settings, there is something inherently textured about its usage – for, at the same time as it works within the context of the scene being described, it also adds an extra layer to the description, thereby thickening the overall poetic effect. Thus when, during Odysseus’ shipwreck in Book 5, for example, he is blown “from here to there” on the raft, “as when a harvest wind bears thistles along a plain, which stick thickly to each other” (πυκιναὶ δὲ πρὸς ἀλλήλῃσιν ἔχονται, 5.329), or when just a little later his hands are ripped from grasping onto the rocks “as when thick (πυκιναί) pebbles stick to the suckers of an octopus being pulled from its home,” (433), we might tentatively call these, alongside the other passages I have quoted,⁶⁰ exam-

 On the πυκινός qualities of snow, cf. Dué/Ebbott 2010, 238 and my note 64, below.  Dué/Ebbott 2010, 240.  Other examples abound, such as the twofold use (once in the simile and once in the natural environment) of πυκινός at Od. 6.128 – 34 when Odysseus approaches Nausicaa like a lion; Hermes skimming the waves like a thick-winged bird (5.53); a phalanx standing closely packed (πυκνοί) with helmets and shields together like the πυκινοί stones of a high house that keep out the wind (Il. 16.212– 17); Sarpedon proceeding like a lion against a πυκινὸν δόμον (12.301; cf. Od. 6.134); Trojans running in flight like a deer fleeing a lion διὰ δρυμὰ πυκνὰ καὶ ὕλην

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ples of thick description. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that the thick quality of these descriptions reflect on the placement of the natural scene within the narrative, signaling something about the embedded, secluded nature of similes and digressions, the particular quality of nature which tends to appear in these contexts, and finally the way in which the natural space within the simile or digression can alter the temporal dynamics of the poem. It is difficult to suggest that a certain style of composition is “thick” without the use of metaphor, or without borrowing the imagery supplied by the scene itself. In part, as I mentioned at the outset, I take my cue from Auerbach in doing this (and this essay is meant as much as a reflection on Auerbach and his reading practices as it is on Homer).⁶¹ The thick nature of the description that I am trying to identify in these passages also applies to the relationship between the frame and inset narratives in the scar tale. It relates to the kind of folding or layering that I tried to show existed already in the small foot-washing scene in Odysseus’ house, where tiny quickenings in time prepare for and reflect the spatio-temporal complexities of the natural landscape in which the scar originates. That is, if we are to understand time and space in Homer as existing only on the surface, “fully illuminated” and “fully externalized,” we are missing something important about not just Homeric style, but also the nature of Homeric digression, expansion, and description. In his ABC of Reading, Ezra Pound discusses the connection between Dichtung, the German word for poetry, dichten (to write or compose), and dicht (thick, dense, closely-woven, compact, in quick succession).⁶² Poems, which are also called Gedichte in German, can thus be thought of as works that have thickened or condensed in the process of being composed. For Pound: “poetry… is the most concentrated form of verbal expression,”⁶³ and dichten is thus basically equivalent to the Italian and Latin condensare (in other words, poetry is something that is “condensed” or “concentrated”). By describing poetry as “thick” in this way, Pound is specifically referring to the poet’s choice of words (36): … the good writer chooses his words for their ‘meaning’, but that meaning is not a set, cutoff thing like the move of knight or pawn on a chess-board. It comes up with roots, with

(Il. 11.118); the two Ajaxes acting like two lions who catch a goat and then carry it ἀνὰ ῥωπήια πυκνά (Il. 13.199).  Despite my criticism of Auerbach’s reading of Homer here, what I really want to do in this essay is analyze ways in which Auerbach’s model productively opens up new avenues for exploring the poem.  Pound 1951, 36; Collins German Dictionary (London/Glasgow 1981), as discussed in Spice 1993, 22.  Pound 1951, 36.

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associations, with how and where the word is familiarly used, or where it has been used brilliantly or memorably.

I do not wish to argue for some kind of literary-critical language for Homer, as if πυκινός were a stylistic term from a rhetorical handbook,⁶⁴ but rather to suggest that the word can imbue a certain significant quality within the construction of a scene, which might affect our notion of that scene’s sense of “background” or “depth”. Thus, in the passage depicting the boar’s lair, the quality of the scene is further enhanced by the rough nature of the hair “bristling” on the boar’s back (φρίξας εὖ λοφίην, 446), which contributes to the thickly-charged environment as the animal faces its attackers.⁶⁵ This quality of roughness or thickness is particularly attuned to the contexts of nature, which in turn bears its own special relationship to description and inset narrative. For Homer (as for us) the wilderness is generally characterized as a rough and uneven topography with a deep underlayer; it is often located in the folds and glens of mountains, on the rough face of rocks, or under the dark cover of woods or animal lairs. But in order to capture the essence of “nature” or the wilderness, Homer has to inset it in some way within the social world of his poem.⁶⁶ This means that his descriptions of natural (especially wild) spaces are often nested within similes or flashbacks.⁶⁷ As Bordo has put it concerning the –ness suffix of the word wilderness: “Ness comes to hold the wild as in a

 It appears to have a more technical (rhetorical) sense in Ar. Ach. 445 (contrasted with λεπτός). Alternatively, see [Longin.] De subl. 10.1, who states that the sublime style arises in part from the selection of ideas and the concentration or thickening (πύκνωσις) of that selection. It is also worth noting that in Homeric poetry words can be “thick” in a couple of different ways. First is the notion of the πυκινός μῦθος, which means something like wise, mature, and experienced speech (Telemachus worries that he does not have the μύθοισι… πυκινοῖσιν with which to address Nestor at Od. 3.23), as well as the related terms πυκινὴ ἐφετμή (Thetis’ command to Achilles, Il. 18.216) and πυκινὸν ἔπος (of Priam, Il. 7.375; of Zeus, Il. 24.75; [imagined] of Hector Il. 24.744; of Nestor, Il. 11.788). All of the speakers whose words are associated with the notion of thickness, in other words, are authoritative and experienced. Second, Odysseus’ words are said to fall like snow at Il. 3.221– 2, which has a “thick” quality as can be seen in, e. g., Il. 12.156 – 60 (Ready 2011, 114– 16; Dué/Ebbott 2010, 238).  Cf. Il. 4.281 and 7.61– 2 – in the latter passage, a close-packed rank of soldiers are said to bristle with shields, helmets and spears: στίχες ἥατο πυκναὶ/ ἀσπίσι καὶ κορύθεσσι καὶ ἔγχεσι πεφρικυῖαι.  Cf. Fludernik 1996, 8, who calls nature “an inset within civilization.”  Orchards and gardens are set apart by their cultured and ordered topography (both Laertes’ orchard and Alcinous’ magical garden are carefully apportioned), while other examples of wilderness are confined to the fantastic islands of the goddesses Calypso and Circe.

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nest or niche, as if the wild were contained or the core of something.”⁶⁸ The ness is necessary, in other words, precisely because it embeds the core of the formless (and, in its pure state, indescribable) wild. In Glaucus’ famous simile of Iliad 6, a pile of leaves on the ground (φύλλα τὰ μέν τ’ ἄνεμος χαμάδις χέει), blown there by the wind after the tree has flourished in the spring, represent the accumulated time of human generations (ἀνδρῶν γενεή) heaped one upon the other (Il. 6.146 – 9). These Homeric leaves are thick and frequent both in spring (as in the nightingale’s tree, Od. 19.519 – 20) and winter, or perhaps it is more accurate to say that they add a layer of thickness to different aspects of the wilderness (trees, the ground, undergrowth, lairs) at different times. The Iliad simile’s invitation to consider the thickness of a pile of leaves in terms of time, then, is helpful for attempting to unpack the assumption that nature and the wilderness are unchanging and timeless.⁶⁹ For while the πυκινός quality of a bed of leaves may act, like the thickness of sleep, to soften and still the flow of time, it cannot make events stop completely. Odysseus and the boar are both awakened from their lair-beds to important narrative action, and the thickness of the scenes describing the natural world in which they lie, rather than impeding that action, makes it all the more focused. Thus although wind nor sun nor rain can blow through (διάη, 442), touch (ἔβαλλεν, 443) or penetrate (περάασκε, 445) the boar’s lair in Odyssey 19, the narrative will nevertheless drive the boar’s tusk through the flesh of Odysseus’ thigh, just as it will almost simultaneously force the tip of Odysseus’ spear forward and through (διῆλθε, 19.453) the animal, curtailing its seemingly endless sleep and all the protection offered by its lair and hide.⁷⁰ In Book 5, on the other hand, Odysseus will emerge from the thick woods (ἐκ πυκινῆς δ’ ὕλης) like a lion whose hunger drives him to attempt to break into a πυκινὸν δόμον of flocks (Od. 6.127– 34), in a simile that marks a decisive moment in his progress towards home. This thickness applies, also, I have argued, to the mode of narration that modulates the tempo of poetry in the movement between action and description as well as frame and inset narrative.⁷¹ On the one hand, the thickness that comes with an inset narrative such as a digression or a simile clearly slows time down,

 Bordo 2000, 225.  On the endurance of the myth of “timeless nature,” see Pugh 1988, 2; Shapiro 2004.  As Dimock (1956) has observed, the doubling of these actions is reflected in the middle voice of ὀδύσσασθαι – to both receive and cause pain, as Odysseus does here at the crucial moment of sealing his name.  I do not want to over-emphasize the distinction between narration and description, but rather to suggest, following Genette (1976, 5 – 8), that the two categories often merge with one another. See also Bal 2006.

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by placing the framing narrative on hold. On the other, just as what is thick can be still (“held fast”), so can it also be rapid (θαμά) and varied (“thick and fast”). The frequentative or close-packed nature of the thick description we have been examining here speaks to a complex folding of time through various modulations, turns, and repetitions, rather than to an image of time standing still. It follows that the discovery of the scar (19.388 – 93, 467– 75) and the excursus itself (393 – 466) do not exist on entirely separate temporal planes, as Auerbach argued, but are perhaps more suggestively intertwined. The three successive moments of immediacy (αἶψα, αὐτίκα, αὐτίκα) and the thrice-repeated and thrice-varied (ἔγνω, γνῶ, ἔγνων) moment of recognition with which Homer frames the excursus resemble in some ways the thick frequencies and folds that characterize the scenery in which the scar first forms. In particular, the repetition of αἶψα/αὐτίκα and (ἐ)γνω(ν) at the moment of the scar’s discovery highlights the imperfect relationship between the single, aoristic occurrence of an event and the attempt to report that event as a single occurrence in time, as if it were clean and simple, existing on a single and erasable surface.⁷² This is precisely what led Auerbach to believe that the reader of Homer could transition seamlessly from one landscape to another, without a trace or mark of the previous scene left behind in her mind. But the mark on Odysseus’ skin, even a skin such as his that Athena can make smooth and young again by the pouring on of χάρις, undermines the point. For the entire scene with the scar is triggered by the touch of one small place on Odysseus’ body that, although the wound was a single, momentary occurrence – the quick slice of a boar’s gleaming tusk – has thickened over time. Texture, as Bora has said, always expresses temporality; the material world remembers.⁷³ Like the scar which triggers the recollection, the boar’s lair has also thickened in time, through the act of remembering and through its repeated retellings by characters within the narrative and the poet himself,⁷⁴ as well as by the layers of reference added from later stages in Odysseus’ life. For, although the hunting expedition on Parnassus is explicitly framed as Odysseus’ first journey, his initial experience of the wilderness upon leaving the small and rocky island of Ithaca,⁷⁵ when we reach the boar’s lair for the first time in the poem it is already thick, covered over with the symbolic resonances, verbal repetitions, and narrative embeddings. As the epicenter of the entire hunting excursus, the lair draws into itself – both spatially and temporally – a series of folds that reach back out to re   

Cf. Montiglio (forthcoming). Bora 1997, 95. Cf. Od. 19.463 – 4: καὶ ἐξερέεινον ἕκαστα,/ οὐλὴν ὅττι πάθοι· ὁ δ’ ἄρα σφίσιν εὖ κατέλεξεν. For descriptions of Ithaca, see Od. 4.601 ff., 12.236 ff.

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flect on the way in which the entire scar episode is constructed. Even the ring composition that so famously encircles the story of the scar contributes to this idea of composition as a series of folds or layers. Auerbach’s invitation to think about Homeric style in terms of surface, flatness, and depth, therefore, opens the door to a consideration of what we might call “thin” vs. “thick” poetics, and in particular how the combined spatio-temporal texture of πυκινός applies to oral poetics and its many formal features, such as the laying on of description and epithet, the extensive use of cross-reference through formula and traditional theme, the extensive embedding of similes, digressions, and inset narratives within the main narrative, and the practice of stacking and circling by means of ring composition.⁷⁶ All of these techniques set one aspect of the poem into a spatio-temporal relationship with another to create a work that is “thick” or multi-layered. It is particularly in the realm of nature, however, that we see this quality of thickness come to the fore – a category that is both so often “inset” within Homeric narrative and at the same time so often descriptively associated with what is πυκινός. In the respect of both its position within the text and the terms of its description, the natural world can be seen to reflect on various modes of Homeric composition. Rather than seeing space in Homer as all foreground, therefore, “a reflective surface with no access to itself”⁷⁷ and rather than relegating the space of nature, by contrast, to nothing but the “background,”⁷⁸ we can instead appreciate that, in Homer, sometimes space is described with an almost superfluous, richly-textured abundance of description, closely packed with epithets and adjectives, yet that this does not close it off to narratorial or temporal complexity. The impenetrable surface of Homeric landscape is present not, as Auerbach so powerfully suggested, because that is all there is, but because that surface hides something crucial from our immediate view. Like the scar – an object that one might first consider (as Odysseus initially prepared us to) as only a shiny surface reflecting the light of the fire in a kind of instantaneous luminosity, but which is in fact perceived “roughly,” through the fingers – Homeric epic forces us to consider the space of nature as thickly textured by its relationship to both time and poetic form.

 Russo (1993) discusses many of these elements of Homeric style in connection with the boar’s lair.  Porter 2008, 136 on Auerbach.  For the similes as “background” images, see, e. g., Lonsdale 1990, 39. For a good discussion of the role of nature as “background” in film studies, see Morgan 2009.

Donald Lateiner

Homer’s Social-Psychological Spaces and Places Near and far, small and large, in and out, my land and your land: these fundamental human categories of space aid our navigation of charted territories, unbounded and trackless misty distances of sea,¹ and perceived celestial bodies. Both of Homer’s² poems exploit territorial possession and aggression, life abroad, death at sea, nostalgia and homesickness, rootedness in a particular rocky soil. Strabo deemed Homer the founder of geography (ἀρχηγέτης, 1.1.2). Controlling territory against competitors and invaders, awarding it to subordinates, and penetrating other tribes’ privileged spaces are central Homeric honor-bringing occupations. Trojans defend their home territory and town against Akhaians, Akhilleus quarrels with Agamemnon over spear-won chattel, a property equivalent on alien ground (Il. 1.122– 40). When Agamemnon threatens to invade Akhilleus’ camp to seize this local woman, Akhilleus threatens to kill him, should he try to take anything therein but the awarded prize, Briseis (κλισίηνδε, Il. 1.185; εἰ δ’ ἄγε μὴν πείρησαι, Il. 1.302). At his wits’ end, Agamemnon subsequently offers him one daughter (no bride-price!) and seven rich Pylian towns to rule that will honor and support him (Il. 9.141– 56). Furious Poseidon disputes control with Zeus’s proxy over allegedly common territory (Il. 15.158 – 217), a passage to which we shall return. Penelope’s “suitors” occupy Telemakhos’ domain against his Laërtid will, beggar Odysseus holds a minimal foothold in the face of the “suitors,” Laërtes has retreated to the hilly periphery, etc. Property and territorial expectations focus heroic and divine conflicts and thus furnish essential motives to both Homeric plots. This paper, therefore, addresses four space-based topics. It hopes to illuminate [A] Homeric linear and spatial measures and concepts, quantifiers of human and divine experience. Then, it identifies [B] Homer’s characters’ conscious and subconscious perceptions and manipulation of travel-paths, battlefield ground gained and lost, built urban architecture and choke-points (e. g., gates), and social distances (or proxemics, including characters’ access, elevation, and other spatial recognitions of hierarchy). Thus one opens a window to glimpse narrator and characters’ conceptions of body envelopes and positional

 ἄπειρον πόντος, ἠεροειδές, while ὑγρὰ κέλευθα may be a sailor’s joke.  “Homer” here signifies the two monumental texts that later Greeks and we possess. It does not imply answers to the notorious “Homeric questions.”

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points of view. The essay then elucidates [C] the internal and external Homeric audiences’ cognitive comparanda from the peacetime world, examples found in similes, metaphors, and other expressions of locality, distance, and epic spaces. Finally [D], we briefly speculate about cognitive geographies from the Bronze Age to the Archaic era, perspectives implied in descriptions of places, battle-orders, spaces, frontiers, disputed combat zones and no-man’s lands, and trajectories traveled by gods and men. [A] Measures, large or small units of lineal dimension or area, receive as much attention in the Homeric epics as weight, holding capacity, and time, but Homer proffers sizes in popular and heroicized comparisons more frequently than in exact, largely anachronistic metrological units and divisions.³ One precise, but to us conjectural, area unit is the rare γύη: Alkinoos’ great orchard has four and Meleager was promised a handsome τέμενος of fifty – if he returned to fight the besieging Kouretes outside the walls (Il. 9.578 – 9, Od. 7.113, 18.374). For an example of the impressive but imprecise analogy, the eagle that wealthy Priam rightly considers ominous (Il. 24.317) has a wingspread equal to the width of a rich man’s well-built treasure-house door. The power associations of the lordly, predator eagle and the secure treasure tower easily overwhelm the significance of a number measuring a precise wing width (cf. Polyphemos’ club, which is like the mast on a twenty-oared ship, Od. 9.322– 4). Homer never mentions fingers (dactyls!), cubits, or stades for measurement, but he does employ the πέλεθρον to describe a considerable length or area, one used twice for an area covered by huge fallen divinities, Ares and Tityos (Il. 21.407, cf. Od. 11.577). Both passages suggest that the πέλεθρον connoted a vast square measure.⁴ He compares, in a recondite, peacetime conflict simile, the closeness of the Akhaian and Trojan battle-lines at the Akhaian camp to two men in a civil suit disputing their boundary-line. They angrily flourish ropes in their face-off over a foot or two between their productive fields.⁵ The funeral pyre that Akhilleus has raised for Patroklos measures a ἑκατόμπεδον (Il. 23.164: hapax – the only example of a foot measure and, obviously, a conveniently large round number). The subsequent tumulus – not very big but broad and high – will be a glo-

 Scott (1974, 20 – 4) discusses similes of measure. Linear B tablets from Pylos describe 6 and 9foot parts of tables; although it is not clear which elements the scribes have measured. See [C] below.  10,000 ft2, cf. Hdt. 7.199, perhaps popularly associated with πέλωρ, giant and gigantic, hence of divine size.  Il. 12.421– 3, but these ropes are not calibrated like measuring “tapes,” however we imagine the process.

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rious sema on the Trojan plain, a space “littered with semata” (οὐ μάλα πολλόν…/ …/ εὐρύν θ’ ὑψηλόν τε, 23.245 – 7).⁶ (Rare) temples and commoner royal dwellings are grand stone edifices (Il. 6.88 – 92, 6.241– 9, 6.379 – 80; Od. 10.211, 10.350 – 70). Athena’s, Patroklos’, and Akhilleus’ spears are described formulaically as βριθὺ μέγα στιβαρόν, “heavy, huge/long, thick,”⁷ but Homer wisely leaves imprecise their lethal dimensions (length, weight, sharpness). Homer thrice refers to ὄργυιαι, approximately six feet or a fathom, for a pivotal tree stump marking a race-track turning point in the plain, a sharpened olive post in the Kyklops’ cave, and a heroic huntsman’s length of rope serving to drag a giant stag (Il. 23.327; Od. 9.325, 10.167). In general, and unsurprisingly for heroic traditions, Homer’s accessible descriptions (including formulaic phrases, similes, ecphraseis, and metaphors) value material worth and dazzle above exact measures. The Akhaian fleet’s beachhead, below the gods’ sky-realm, provides a tiny toehold in Trojan enemy territory across the treacherous sea on an alien continent. This war-torn man-world – shrunk and limited to a cosmic scratch on earth – consists of a narrow coastal encampment, a wide battlefield, and one beleaguered city. The Trojan territory west of town towards the seashore, war torn for a decade now, contrasts to the calm, wider realms of the celestial gods, to the blank seascapes of the Odyssey, and Ithaka’s manor, an interior full of unearned, lip-smacking feasts. Homer implicitly compares Troy’s now nearly treeless, blasted ten-year battlefield landscape to agriculturally productive, tillable plain. The Iliad’s engaging similes⁸ and the ecphrasis of Akhilleus’ shield describe open spaces and cultivated places to this same purpose, developing images that recall the productive worlds of forests, pasturage, grain fields, fish-filled seas, animalsacrifice rituals, and feasts where tables overflow with meat, bread, cheese, and wine. The violence of man, predatory beast, or destructive nature sometimes disturbs even these recollections of more peaceful occupations and slow-growth natural processes,⁹ but, even so, those expansive spaces remain procreative rather than deadly like the squeezed Trojan war field. When one turns from human scale and distance quantification to geographical, divine, and cosmic spaces, measures of extent are entirely absent.

 Clay 2007, 250.  Il. 5.746 = 8.390, 16.802, 19.388; cf. Od. 1.100, perhaps one of many ironic echoes of the Iliad, since Athene here plans no immediate fighting.  Recent useful studies (among many) of Homeric similes (see [C] below) include Mark Edwards 1991, 24– 41 with bibliography, Scott 2009, Ready 2011.  E.g., Il. 16.765 – 9: winds force trees to whip each other noisily and splinter.

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True or false, anachronistically too early (e. g., tactics that exhibit hoplite characteristics) or late (e. g., now destroyed ornate Bronze Age, Aegean palaces), the Homeric poems’ social presumptions and descriptive topographies and geographies of planet Earth, and outliers beyond the earth’s thin and fragile crust (underground and in the sky), orient characters and audiences, internal and external. Familiar enough plain and battlefield Ilion,¹⁰ regal Egypt of the Delta, mercantile Phoenicia, rich Krete, distant Epiros, and stony Ithaka¹¹ offer actual-space, real world topographies – emphatically recognizable to the Greeks of “Homer’s” time.¹² The main scene of Iliadic action is the battlefield between Akhaian ships dragged on shore and the ashlar πτόλις walls. This arena, the war-zone between the two armies, is a large no-man’s land to and from which warriors travel by foot or chariot. In combat, thousands battle and can barely discern the direction of victory on other parts of the field. The battlefield by nature stands in τὸ μέσ(σ)ον, a locational phrase used of Helen, duel arrangements, and the battle-lines (Il. 3.69, 3.90, 3.416, 7.55, 17.375, 18.264, etc.). The dead zone provides the poem’s usual focus, a field of dangerous and deadly force, rather than the often protected and domesticated productivity of the Iliadic similes and much of the Odyssey. The varied natural landscape described includes alluvial plain, two rivers, hills and mountains in the distance, two trees, the useful springs, and the seascape behind (Il. 14.30 – 6). Homer more often mentions for our mental maps the constructed features on the field’s eastern and western peripheries. There is a city inhabited on two levels with stone ramparts, gates, temples, and palaces, and there is the “temporary” Akhaian bivouac of wood ships, a wooden wall with gates, a wide defensive ditch, altars, and κλισίαι (sleeping shelters/huts).¹³ In ad-

 See Clay’s (2007, 241, at length: 2011) visualization of the battlefield in Iliad 12– 15. She demonstrates a fixed Homeric focus from the Odyssean center of the Akhaian line, where altars and agora appear (Il. 11.5 – 9, 11.806 – 7).  Cf. Vernant 1983, 19.  They are therefore distinct from the topographies of the fantastically fecund earthly paradises (Skheria, Kyklopesland, Lotosland, Aiaia), otherworldly lands of the dead shadows, and the barely detailed divine realms above and below where speedy Immortals visit and dwell. Similarly removed are the proto-cartographic descriptions mapped out by Zeus observing territories over the horizon, or Hephaistos shaping the entire cosmos on a human-sized shield.  For completeness, one should mention the humble washerwoman’s washing troughs and the heroic burial mound in the plain between the forces. Clay (2011, 38 – 53, with bibliography) describes how Homer presents urban Troy as emotional and psychological realities, less by physical characteristics or by our present concern, quantitative measures. See her useful schematic drawing and website (105 and http: //www.homerstrojantheater.org/). C. Tsagalis (2010, 90 n. 13) observes that specific natural or man-made loci are cited or summoned only to

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dition to private quarters, each combatant community (better deemed an unstable ‘alliance’) has a public, common meeting space or ἀγορή, although they differ in procedure and permanence. Homer articulates other kinds of charged, even consecrated spaces in epic. At one end are the transitory human encampments and dispositions for battle, semi-permanent allocations (the beached ships’ at Troy in their specified order),¹⁴ martial formations for various battles “along the line” (Il. 15.655 – 6; cf. στίχες, Il. 16.211), occupations of territory, and the building of “permanent” structures – walls, palaces, even a habitable cave. No less utilitarian stand altars and Trojan temples, sacred precincts for mortal worship of gods, including propitiatory animal bloodshed. Heroic zones of dispute and contention extend beyond the two main rings of the gods’ human circus: Ilion’s battlefield and Odysseus’ wife, mansion, herds and properties – both on and off-island. Ithaka’s ἀγορή, Polyphemos’ cave, Kirke’s palace, and Ithaka’s feast-hall delimit micro-battlefields, feature foodfights, and provide roofed and penned theaters in which status rivalry, superior force or verbal fraud, humiliation, transformation, and even death are decided. The Iliad’s quasi-omniscient narrator (θεὸν ὥς, Il. 12.176), in addition, depicts the humanly untraveled, but sometimes contested, territories of the Divine.¹⁵ At the other end of the dimensional scale, the cosmos, Poseidon rejects Zeus’s unexpected grab of common land (the earth). Zeus had previously driven his father Kronos down, underground (Il. 14.204), one generation displacing another’s control of all space. A primeval territorial division by lot among the three Olympian brothers followed, one that afforded Zeus the domain of the sky. Hades obtained the dead and the darkness, and Poseidon got the sea. Earth and the Olympian mansions, Poseidon alleges, remain “common to all” (ἔτι ξυνὴ πάντων, Il. 15.193). Having been commanded by Iris, serving an awakened Zeus, to depart forthwith from Troy’s heroic battlefield and retreat either to the company of the gods or to his exclusive realm of the sea, Poseidon angrily objects. He complains to one who should know, reporting the “Hesiodic” antedilu-

re-situate characters back into the narrative, frequently at a moment of imminent danger. Spatial studies are expanding: see Tsagalis 2012 and de Jong 2012b. The combined 1,150 pages of these volumes address issues similar to those in my modest paper, but they reached me too recently for consideration.  The ships’ disposition on the beach (Clay 2011, 45 – 50, citing Il. 4.250 – 326, 8.222– 6, 10.1– 179) is different from the three hodological, circling itineraries of Book 2’s more famous catalogue of Akhaian town contingents (Il. 2.484– 759; cf. 815 – 77 for Trojan forces; Clay 2011, 117– 18).  Cf. Haubold (this volume) on ethnography.

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vian tripartite allotment decided among the brothers: the light grey sea, the misty netherworld, and the heavens, clouds of the aer below aither (Il. 15.189 – 93; cf. 8.13 – 16): τριχθὰ δὲ πάντα δέδασται, ἕκαστος δ’ ἔμμορε τιμῆς· ἤ τοι ἐγὼν ἔλαχον πολιὴν ἅλα ναιέμεν αἰεὶ παλλομένων, Ἀίδης δ’ ἔλαχε ζόφον ἠερόεντα, Ζεὺς δ’ ἔλαχ’ οὐρανὸν εὐρὺν ἐν αἰθέρι καὶ νεφέλῃσι· γαῖα δ’ ἔτι ξυνὴ πάντων καὶ μακρὸς Ὄλυμπος.

The crust of Earth itself and high Olympos¹⁶ remain common “turf” shared by three male divinities, at least in this plaintiff’s informal recitation. He briefly summarizes an obscure finale of the Titanomachy including the Olympian fraternity’s territorial division of the spoils. Although whining Poseidon may have right on his side, that advantage matters little in the face of Zeus’s superior force. That’s the point: for the Iliad’s brutal reality, a claim to property has no more authority than the force available to hold it. Homer – in contrast to his near contemporary Hesiod – never describes in detail divine houses, realms, or landscapes. Hera’s journey to Troy elicits a curt description of Olympos’ built environments. Homer mentions walls and gates (Il. 5.749 – 51), and Zeus’s palace – the house itself, and for interiors: dining room, and inner bedchambers, i. e., θάλαμοι (Il. 1.533, 1.597, 1.610, 14.166). Hephaistos built dwellings for all the other gods (Il. 1.605 – 11). Homer briefly mentions the Olympian palace threshold, assembly-place (Il. 20.4– 6), and a livery area in which, in a seemingly lackey-less society, Hera yokes her horses to the space-chariot for herself and Athena (Il. 8.382– 9). The sky dwelling of the gods, the ultimate “no-trespassing” territory for humans, serves divine needs well, with fine weather on Mount Olympos, air paths (Od. 5.383; cf. Il. 3.406 – 7, metaphorical for Aphrodite), and cloud-cover. The permeable layers hide them from the irritable mortals below, beef- and bread-eaters, who are often dissatisfied with the quality of divine succor. Descriptions of divine spaces and structures are unexpectedly restricted: an automatically gated community (Il. 8.393), the palace and throne of Zeus (Il. 1.533 – 6), an isolated viewing peak (Il. 1.499), and the nearby dwellings of his family and henchpersons (Il. 1.606 – 8). There, the gods feast exclusively on nectar and ambrosia (Il. 4.3). At their closely packed table, they must endure notably tense conversa The land claims recall the Book 12 simile discussed above, but there the human community arranges a civil resolution. Each Homeric epic begins with a divine displacement: the gods or one god (Poseidon) fly south to feast and vacation in Aithiopia (Il. 1.423 – 5; Od. 1.22– 6, 5.282– 7) leaving behind their usual habitations.

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tions larded with noisy threats against themselves and human favorites and targets. Afterwards, they retire to their quieter bedrooms (Il. 1.533 – 611). Some facilities with mangers provide a steading for the gods’ fabulous horses and horsepowered vehicles (Il. 5.364– 9, 5.720 – 32). These chariots sometimes transport female divinities – Athene, Hera, etc. (Il. 5.720 – 52, 5.767– 8, 8.389) – to and from both peaceful and lethal mortal activities at distant points on earth below. At other times, super-humans fly unerringly to their destinations’ co-ordinates by their own super powers (e. g., Aphrodite, Il. 3.382– 3). There, the conflicts of deathbound humans currently generate partisanship and side-taking, proxemic allegiances responsible for cosmic excitement. One might expect descriptions of a divine garden, an armory, or a panoramic vista, but beyond Olympos and Earth’s surrounding Ocean sea, sky, and celestial bodies (a topography reprised by Hephaistos’ cosmographic shield), little appears. When, the narrator or characters mention the Otherworld (Hades’ [realm]), principally occupied by yesteryear’s humans, the place denotes the unwelcome destination mentioned in battlefield obituaries for perished comrades.¹⁷ Beyond that, the older, displaced Titans dwell nethermost, below all beings, constrained or indeed jailed behind gates of iron and beyond the bronze threshold.¹⁸ Zeus obliquely insults Hera mentioning a nethermost wandering among the relocated gods (τὰ νείατα πείραθ᾽, Il. 8.478). Homer footnotes once more the Hypotartarian Titans when Hera swears Sleep a confirmatory oath (Il. 14.278 – 80). Territoriality, here vertical rather than horizontal, in a world of divine and human tooth and claw, thematizes both Homeric epics. Either someone controls and polices claimed territory or one finds oneself controlled – pillaged or displaced (e. g., Andromakhe’s mini-history and Briseis’: Il. 6.414– 27, 19.291– 8). A Zeus’s-eye view far above Troy (Il. 14.157– 8) gazes out from the near to the further North (Il. 13.4– 7) at the Thracian horsemen, close-in fighting Mysians, the [Skythian] Hippemolgoi (cf. Hdt. 1.216) and the righteous Abioi.¹⁹ This better vantage, the Olympian’s gaze from a lofty crag of Mount Ida, suggests a Homeric cartography, an ethnographic, if not commercial, map. This eusynoptic consciousness travels beyond the Trojan-Akhaian battlefield and army supplyroute ambit. The abbreviated geographical catalogue echoes the four “hodological” cognitive paths taken by an audience hearing the Trojan catalogue. Hera’s

 Ἄϊδόσδε, “going Hellwards”: Il. 7.330, 16.856, 20.294, 22.362, cf. 23.137. Menelaos’ destination, the Elysian Fields, is the exception that proves the rule.  Il. 14.279 and 8.13 – 16: allusion perhaps to the Hesiodic tradition’s (Th. 851) more detailed topography.  Haubold (this volume) surveys Anatolian neighbors.

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journey, Olympos-Lemnos-Ida, not as the crow flew or flies,²⁰ by a similar logic, is not an erratic itinerary but simulates first a road traveled and then Greek sailors’ island-hopping and shore-hugging.²¹ The poets’ vista for Zeus reminds audiences that the demarcated Aegean battle zone is a most constricted one.²² The Trojan catalogue’s longer geographical view comprehends Dardan allies marshalled from different corners of Anatolia and Paionia, Paphlagonia, Amydon, Lykia, and Alybe “far-off,” τηλόθεν, (Il. 2.815 – 77). This formal roster reprises the Trojan’s cognitive map, i. e., this catalogue focalizes four routes or radii from near to far from the Trojan point of view (τῆλ’, Il. 2.863; τηλόθεν, Il. 2.849, 2.857, 2.877).²³ Hera pretends to her husband that she plans to travel yet further than Ida to reconcile Okeanos and Tethys. She will travel “to the ends of the Earth” (πείρατα γαίης, Il. 14.301). Homer offers a binocular perspective, he contrasts the different scales and methods of divine and human travel in the two poems. The open vistas enjoyed by Zeus, Hera, Hermes, Athena, and Poseidon and their unencumbered and jetspeed locomotion emphasize men’s claustrated limited horizons on the land and sea, short-sighted human eyes and slow progress to destinations, sometimes, indeed, one step forward and two back. In his nostos, Odysseus stumbles from one seaside trap to another. In his self-justifying, periegetic apologia or in the omniscient narrator’s voice, narrow escapes by sea concatenate his disasters²⁴ and precede his immediately next following misadventures on land – a cave, a palace, a field sequestered for athletics or filled with kine. The labile salt sea also trips and

 Il. 14.225 – 30; cf. Janko 1992 ad 4.186 – 7, Clay 2007, 246– 7, 281– 4, Purves 2010a, Clay 2011, 98.  Hermes complains of long flights with no populated stopovers (Od. 5.100 – 2). Poseidon travels from Samothrake to underwater stables near Anatolian Aigai for precious military equipment. Soon he surfaces between Tenedos and Imbros on his way to aid the Akhaians at Troy (Il. 13.12– 38). The poets emphasize divine speed and distances covered in their god-geographies and itineraries.  The self-immobilized and isolated, hardly traveled Akhilleus, alone (οἶος, 11.763; cf. the human scale of νόσφι, 5.322, 10.416, 22.332 & 508, 23.365, etc., to the gods’ view and the poet’s) in his camp within the Akhaian camp regards even the nearby central Trojan battlefield in the plain as “distant.” The Akhaians trade offshore for supplies and prestige goods and receive gifts of wine from Lemnos (Il. 7.467, 23.746). They also raid the Kilikians for food, drink, and other loot (Il. 1.366 – 8, 6.415 – 24). The rationalist and materialist historian Thucydides (1.11) characteristically emphasizes the unpoetic logistics, the necessities of heroic subsistence that prolonged this ambitious, mythic overseas expedition of loot and conquest prior to its Athenian analogue invading Sicily.  Cf. Kirk 1985, 250.  Carpenter 1946.

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traps him: storms, lethally extended calms, Skheria’s rocky surf, Skylla’s multihanded grab, and Kharybdis’ sucking whirlpool. [B] When characters describe a landscape, characteristics of a natural place, or a humanly altered, even constructed area, each one possesses a status-conscious, self-concerned “take” on his or her relationship to the prospect and a gendered viewpoint. A telescopic god, a myopic mortal, and “internal audiences” solitary or numerous, rather than the disinterested, pantascopic narrator, frequently personalize these perspectives.²⁵ Elliger discusses the narrator’s “take” on the Trojan plain and the Skamandros/Xanthos river battle, realistic Odyssean islands, heights, and harbor-towns, and topographical overviews beyond the ken of ordinary, groundling men.²⁶ Here one includes similes (especially – if uniquely – the crowded, simulated simile-like image of the cosmos on Hephaistos’ five-ringed shield), ideal landscapes such as Olympos and Elysion (Od. 4.563 – 70, 6.43), and enchanted fairylands off the geographer Strabo’s map: Kalypsoland, Kirkeland, Alkinoosgarten, and semi-Märchen stops such as the island opposite Kyklopsland. Even Laërtes’ locus amoenus, a well-tended, rustic fruit orchard on relatively modest, rocky Ithaka, exhibits paradisiacal, labor-free features (cf. Skheria and Kyklopesland) unusual for Hellenic orchards: all-season fruiting, plenty, neat order, size, variety, regularity, and all productive features always functioning (κομιδή, Od. 24.244– 7, 24.339 – 44). The Homeric city (“wide-streeted” Troy) exhibits internal thoroughfares to accommodate human foot and vehicular traffic (Il. 24.322– 9, 4.52; cf. πτόλις… εὐρυάγυια, Od. 15.384), bordering houses, and royal domiciles. The city besieged needs its fortifications: citadel (Pergamos), high and thick walls, ramparts and gates, whether Homer narrates tales of Troy, Kalydon, or Thebes, or the warring towns on Akhilleus’ replacement shield (Il. 22.144, 22.195; ἐν πόλει ἄκρῃ, 6.88 = 6.297, 7.1, 9.383 = 9.573; 18.511– 14, 24.453 – 5). Odysseus, an efficient if devious and self-serving internal narrator, describes the route to, and topography of, the Otherworld of the Dead, claiming a journey beyond the peripheral Ocean (Od. 11.5 – 22). Time and space receive more varied

 Sky-god Zeus and Earth-shaker Poseidon have more than a bird’s-eye view. Aias or Akhilleus can barely descry their battlefield (because of mist or distance). The inspired poet, however, sees and synoptically knows all the Akhaians and Trojans’ thoughts and events everywhere and can switch focus to simultaneous, or at least far distant, events “meanwhile back” in Ithaka or in Troy town. See Il. 13.3 – 19, 17.643 – 50, and 11.598 – 614; 2.484– 93 and 2.815, or Od. 4.620 – 1: Sparta to Ithaka). Clay (2011, 43) demonstrates a consistent narrator’s point of view of the Iliadic battlefield, looking out from the central Akhaian battle-station of Odysseus in the invaders’ camp (see Il. 2.631– 7, 11.807– 8).  Elliger 1975, 29 – 156.

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treatments in the Odyssey. ²⁷ Odysseus, always aiming homewards and inwards, eventually reaches Ithaka – the last but still largely unwelcoming venue on his involuntary, convoluted itinerary – but first he explores distant corners of the Mediterranean Sea. He describes “real world” parts known well and utopian fantasylands long imagined by the Hellenic colonial participants and their stay-athome kin.²⁸ Homer’s perhaps not so “proto-colonial” Odysseus reflects his contemporaries’ Hellenic curiosity about circumambient, (more) fertile territories, commercial opportunities, and defensible island trading posts on the frontiers of Hellenic habitation (Od. 7.112– 35, 9.116 – 41). His appreciative eye perceives commercial and agricultural opportunities and successes still visible both in Bronze Age shipwrecks and Linear B inventories. Homer’s own age was exploring in all directions and noting topographic and ethnographic features. The accumulated geographical data, dispersed at Delphi and other centers, was appreciated by Ionian merchants, overseas settlers, and eventually recorded by the periegete Hekataios. The deep sea, a vast, sufficiently infinite, graveyard for many Akhaian nostoi, presented danger and no security for Odysseus’s fragile ship and raft. All other members of his own twelve ships’ crews perished before he reached Ogygia (Od. 9.159, 12.417– 19, 11.110 – 14). The sea – infinite, polymorphic, and formulaically ἀτρύγετος²⁹ – presents a hostile or indifferent character, one that baffles and disorients Odysseus, the consummate sailor and helmsman (κυβερνήτης). It repeatedly maims or shipwrecks him or demolishes his νήπιοι comrades. Its glassy flatness in windless calm, its mountainous waves in high seas, and its ordinary lethal breakers (Od. 12.170 – 80; 5.291– 390, 5.401– 35, 10.47– 55, 12.405 – 19) foil the progress of his journey and repeatedly spoil hopes of homecoming. One irritated sea god, Poseidon, many insubordinate subordinates, and his own poorly timed needs for heroic sleep thwart his return to Ithakan home fires (paradigmatically and most explicitly at Od. 10.28 – 55; cf. 12.337– 9, 12.366 – 70). The displaced vagrant (ἀλήτης, 12 times) survives his watery catastrophes and persuasively embroiders his encounters at untrustworthy ports of call, Aiaia and Ogygia, on liminal Skheria, in Otherworldly Hades, and on home base Ithaka. He remains wary at multiple venues, even when “home” – swine farm, manor

 Hellwig 1964, 128.  Malkin 1998, 15.  Chantraine 1999 s.v. and LfgrE s.v. recognize this word’s formulaic character and regrettable lack of specificity. It characterizes the sea (πόντος, ἅλς, πέλαγος, θάλασσα, ὕδωρ), and the αἰθήρ. It is unclear whether the alpha suggests deprivation or intensification (see Chantraine 1999, 1381). Recorded suggestions include “barren, agitated, deep, limpid, permeable, groaning, ever wet,” etc.

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feast, basileutic bedroom. His concatenated, formulaic mishaps sequence desperate landings, piratical raids, and necessary supplications of the powerful. His requests for aid are often repulsed or result in claustration, involuntary servitude or imprisonment. Both the sweetly gloved predatory women and the sourly silencing anthropophagous monsters impose challenging impediments to getting home. Agoraphobic seas lack familiar headlands (cf. Od. 10.29 – 32), coastal buoys¸ or any other signposts, so both internal and external audiences experience Odysseus’ anomie and atopia, “What place is this? Where are we now?” Akhilleus’ promised and threatened but ultimately abandoned his hypothetical two-day return trip, home to Phthia (Il. 9.360 – 3). Odysseus, the homeward bound traveler, first lands at a site within the familiar Aegean core: a not too distant, indifferent or enemy harbor (Kikones). After the island sailor passes the frontiers of the Akhaian world (Epiros and Malea on the mainland, Kythera and Krete),³⁰ he visits or coasts by less well-known peripheries (as had Menelaos in Egypt, Od. 4.351– 586; cf. Aithon/Odysseus’ “lying [Kretan and Egyptian] tales”). Then, however, he is driven into the Great Beyond – should one choose to believe his captivating travel narratives (Lotophagoi, Kyklopes, Laistrygones). These strange landings, reported in climaxing groups of three in the Apologia, ³¹ bring him to terrae incognitae, “off the map,” what the Hellenistic critics referred to Odysseus’ ἐκτοπισμός and ἐξωκεανισμός (Str. 1.2.10).³² The reported, fanciful geography of the exotic periphery, dominant throughout Odyssey 9 – 12, includes both paradisiacal Schlaraffenland and monstrous dangers.³³ Sucking, consuming monsters such as the malevolent super-boor Polyphemos, Laistrygonians, and Skylla and Charybdis threaten to trap, bury, and/or consume the briefly overwhelmed and sometimes foolish, unstrategic hero.³⁴ The enervating temptations and exotic opportunities of the conceivably beneficent Lotos-Eaters, Kirke, and even the fortunate Phaiakians obstruct his planned path to return home. Feeling more confident after Athena’s encourage-

 Hartog 2001, 15 – 39.  The ternary structures of Odyssey 9, 10, and 12 (cf. Carpenter 1946, 136 and σύντρεις αἰνύμενος, Od. 9.429), each with final climactic catastrophe, may hint at the taleteller’s artifice (Kikones, Lotophagoi, and Kyklops; Aiolos, Laistrygones, and Kirke; Sirens, Skylla & Kharybdis, and Helios’ kine.  Romm 1992.  Cf. Hdt. 3.106 – 16 on the wonders found on the edges (ἐσχατιαί) of the (known) earth, the οἰκεομένη. See also Hellwig 1964, 126 – 8, Lateiner 1989, 127, 262 n. 3 and Romm 1992, 38 – 41 with bibliography.  Even the gentle witch Kalypso, too, as her telltale name reveals, hopes to bury/hide/disappear the hero in her woman-cave and deprive Odysseus of his “proper” place (both geographical home and socio-economic status).

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ment, Odysseus entering Phaiakia-town notes its exceptional harbors, fleet, walls and gardens,³⁵ and wonders about occupying, possessing, and profiting from it – the Hellenic colonist’s imperial dream. Heroic spaces, then, are not to be assumed to be cooperative or neutral. In the generally lawless encounters with strangers (absent xenic arrangements), judging by this one warrior’s troubled travel, one either plunders and dominates new territories and their inhabitants or finds oneself dominated, enslaved, or even eaten. Despite successful supplications directed to the princess and later her parents Arete and Alkinoos, Odysseus has many trials to face between his extended fêting as guest and his desiderated, delayed journey home. The as yet unnamed castaway on Skheria, accepted royally as a guest-friend, finds himself insulted while a passive spectator – he resembles a trader, not a peer! – and is goaded to compete in the discus-throw. His victorious attempt gains five affirmations of its distance. He hurls a specifiedly bigger, thicker, and heavier object that flies far further than all the Phaiakian competitors’ attempts (ὑπέρπτατο, Od. 8.192). The narrator [1] notes the length of the cast for the external audience, then Athene in disguise as a local man [2] asserts it to the crowd gathered beside the field (πολὺ πρῶτον, Od. 8.197). The happy victor [3] verbally caps his demonstration of status; he vaunts and taunts his rude, younger, local “peers” to try to match it or to compete in any heroic contest whatsoever (τῶν δ’ ἄλλων ἐμέ φημι πολὺ προφερέστερον εἶναι, Od. 8.221). They [4] demur, wisely (οἱ δ’ ἄρα πάντες ἀκὴν ἐγένοντο σιωπῇ, Od. 8.234 – paralinguistic deference marking a silence louder than words). Finally, to forestall any incipient argument or brawl¸ basileus Alkinöos [5] admits his xeinos’ ἀρετή, his clear superiority at discus distance (Od. 8.236), although he reserves Phaiakian claims to superiority in running, feasting, dancing, etc. Thus the heroic trajectory of his decisive heave-ho gains assent five ways! Competitive animals, both Homeric athletes and warriors (and bankers and football teams today),³⁶ contest supremacy through territory, both their place in their own community’s vertical hierarchies and their space in size of territory – perceptible, horizontal dimensions. Homeric peers compete at near and far distances (see below [C] on similes), above and below (divine, human, realm of the dead), in and out (of towns and rings), in central and peripheral (borderland – ἐσχατιή) locations for profit and honor, even when they celebrate the short career of dead Patroklos. Space is never neutral. Control over it communicates de-

 Od. 7.43 – 50, 7.84– 133; cf. 6.262– 72, Nausikaa’s complementary description.  Even Skherian washerwomen vie for victory (ἔριδα, Od. 6.92).

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grees of power or powerlessness, on racecourse finish lines, in secure high ramparts, on ships at sea, in corner offices, or underground prisons. Polyphemos’ promontory and the Kyklopian offshore island receive a colonizer’s shrewd and admiring appraisal.³⁷ The aggrandizing traveler’s first thought is not to pay deference to the locals but to seize their territory – location, location, location. The Ithakan surveyor would further tame this natural, island paradise teeming with wild goats, plant crops in fertile meadows, reap harvests including grapes, enjoy fresh spring water, and build up the defensible, commercially friendly harbor (Od. 9.116 – 41). Adopting a more conventional xenic pose later when he is trapped by the one-eyed native, he wants to settle for giving “guest gifts” and getting a swift good-bye. Polyphemos’ anti-(Hellenic) world enjoys produce without labor, wild carefree goats, fertile fields, cave-dwellings, good forests – in short autonomy and autarchy. But the “savages” (they live οὐ κατὰ μοῖραν, Od. 9.352) do not build houses, or observe a body of sanctioned customs, θέμιστες (Od. 9.112; cf. Il. 2.206). They do not know about farmers who plow, plant, and reap, or hold assemblies and engage in overseas commerce (πάτος, Od. 9.119). They prosper by themselves without shipwrights or ships. In brief, the utopian topography of Polyphemos’ self-sufficient if brutish community militates against any external contacts or commercial interests and therefore any desire fully to exploit their own rich resources. Only the comparative scarcity of mountainous Ithakan territories (Od. 4.605 – 8, 9.21– 2) will produce the skills and strengths of an Odysseus.³⁸ Homer presents as the most distant and severely prohibited spaces the transOceanic lands of the dead. Separated by rivers and vast circling Ocean (Od. 10.508 – 15, 11.157– 8), this destination is humanly attainable – indeed unavoidable for all except the chosen few – but only after death and proper burial. Odysseus’ crewman Elpenor, for example, who slipped off a roof and broke his neck, details the boundary and liminal protocols (Od. 10.51– 4, 12.9 – 15).³⁹ Homer’s epic successors (inter alios, Vergil’s Aeneas in Aeneid 6, Ovid’s Orpheus in Metamorphoses 10 – 11) develop further physical and metaphysical details for

 Malkin 1998, 13 – 15. Akhaians could quickly transform the ἀγρός here into a πτόλις with good anchorage and water supply (Od. 9.125 – 41).  Herodotos has both Spartan Demaratos and Persian Kyros reprise and develop this theory of hard lands producing innovative success. His serious meditations develop his poetic predecessor’s insight into prosperity and war preparedness (7.102, 9.122). Herodotos the geographer records later, historical commercial adventurers into the Beyond such as Kolaios the Samian and certain west- and south-sailing Phoenicians and Sataspes (4.152, 42– 3).  Odyssey 11, or the Nekyia. Katabatic heroes like Herakles and Odysseus present the heroic, rule-proving exceptions.

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the morally demarcated neighborhoods, the troubled access paths, and the ambiguously exclusive⁴⁰ topographies of Hades’ realm. Odysseus enthralls his Phaiakian audience with his survey of the Otherworld – the realm of Death bordering the northwest Ocean. This country has its own trees and rivers: Pyriphlegethon, Akheron, and Kokytos derived from Styx (Od. 10.513 – 14, Il. 8.369). The wanderer draws on traditional narratives of moral geography as old as the Near East’s theogonic myths. Thus, he has divided the Land of the Blessed (Od. 4.561– 9), an exclusive Paradise for god-relations, probably Egyptian in origin,⁴¹ from the resting place of all other mortals. After he performs essential last rites that allow his stumbling dead shipmate Elpenor (Od. 11.66 – 80) to cross to his proper realm, Odysseus meets first the untimely dead – virgins, brides [not yet mothers], and battlefield heroes dead while still enjoying first youth (Od. 11.38 – 41). The unquiet dead come to him at the liminal demarcator, the threshold. Odysseus carefully⁴² never crosses that threshold into Hades’ realm (ἐγὼ μὲν ἄνευθεν…/ εἴδωλον δ’ ἑτέρωθεν, Od. 11.82– 3). Homer’s listeners thus can barely visualize the proxemics of his meetings with, or more distant (Od. 11.543, 11.561, 11.563 – 4) sightings of, the perished dead in their geographic divisions (women, heroes [Od. 11.627– 9], punished violators of decency and privilege). He observes, sequentially and apart, the wives and daughters of the basileis of the past (Od. 11.227– 30), the mobile if now pointedly aimless, heroes of the Trojan War, and selected malefactors in torment: blasphemous Tantalos, the death-beater Sisyphos, and the rapist Tityos (Od. 11.576 – 600). Even the Iliad’s “blameless” heroes and heroines must wander endlessly in the next world, as Akhilleus complains to his anxious guest (Il. 11.488 – 91) – a reprise, perhaps, of this young man’s characteristic, sometimes petulant, off-sides behavior in the Iliad. Returning to terra firma, Ithaka’s familiar, peaceful, poor but well-tended rural landscapes extend from the shoreline Nymphs’ cave, mountainside pigsties, and Laërtes’ private, upland orchard and tilth to the small town’s public

 In any eschatology, post-mortem location reflects earthly moral stature. Cresswell (1996) provides a rather abstract introduction to the ideology of spatial transgression, while Sibley (1995) is more interested in Coventry shopping-malls than ancient eschatologies, but his discussion of who gets in and who is pushed out of a privileged locus illuminates any discussion of spatial consequences of moral distinctions and hierarchies.  Vermeule 1979, 72– 7.  Aeneas, however, Odysseus’ Doppelgänger in the Otherworld, appears to stroll through the many neighborhoods of Vergil’s underworld, save Phlegethon, off-limits to pure souls (Aen. 6.410 – 892, esp. 563, 886: tota passim regione vagantur).

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ἀγορή, harbor, private dwellings, and chieftains’ entertainment houses.⁴³ Hospitable but poor, old Eumaios’ upland, neighborless steading stands opposed to inhospitable but rich, young Eurymakhos’ urban squatting, a familiar countrycity polarity.⁴⁴ Odysseus regards with wonder the locales of his earlier, pre-war existence, the visual and aural cues and associations of childhood places past.⁴⁵ This poem,⁴⁶ therefore the written island, teems with cognitive landmarks, activators of memory – sights, sounds, smells, and nostalgic landmarks, natural as the cave of the nymphs and fruit trees, or as artificial as his self-carpentered threshold and bedpost. After a long deferred return to his town, he begins the difficult process of reversing his community’s slide into catastrophic political disruption. The pastoral highlands, the agriculturally productive fields, the gardens (on Ithaka and Skheria), and the built environments of the πτόλις reassure and therefore mislead dramatically the homecome stranger. Athena warns her protégée, and he likewise warns all other friendly parties by words, signs, and even a choke hold. Both son and father are unwelcome intruders for the temporary “hosts” at the Laërtid manse. They are socially displaced, stigmatized outsiders, for the nonce. The warm familiarity of his boyhood countryside and the xenic hospitality of the swineherd’s mountain σταθμός provide contrasts to Melanthios and the city-bound suitors’ brutal and Zeus-offending occupation and exclusions (17.239 – 44, 17.475 – 87, 17.494, etc.). He experiences these humiliations (literally: de-elevations to earth) first on the supposedly public, neutral territory of the path to town and then, in extreme form, when he reaches the hostile environment of his expropriated, or at least occupied, house. The mini-army of invaders attempt to fend off the additional mouth, to fence off the socially inappropriate

 E.g., Od. 2.35 – 7, 6.9 – 10, 7.43 – 5 (Skheria, including land allotments), 7.80 – 1 (Athens, streets and palace), 10.87– 94 (Laistrygonia), 17.264– 71; Il. 11.808, 21.446 – 7). The Akhaian camp has city-like features: ἀγορή, walls, de facto harbor/beach, and ten-year encampments of unexpectedly heroic splendor, e. g. Akhilleus’: 24.448 – 55. We have already described metropolis Troy’s urban features including walls and gates, paved streets, temples and altars, spacious palaces with storerooms that warehouse accumulated capital. The displayed wealth strengthens contrasts to the field-camp, the small πτόλις, and the farmer’s exigent life.  Od. 13.102– 12, 18.356 – 61, 18.366 – 75, 24.223 – 7 & 24.244– 7; cf. Anthony T. Edwards 1993.  Telemakhos, barely twenty years of age, like his father was when he left for the Great War, complements the veteran’s experience of recollection of a modest prosperity with his own adolescent discovery of new luxury at cosmopolitan Sparta.  Clay (2007, 248 – 50) explicates parallel reliance on visualization in the Iliad, both the natural geographical features and humanly created structures. The oral tradition’s mnemotechnic problems and resources invite detailed evocations of places and space – informal ecphraseis that invite elaboration of humble huts and lavish halls.

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arrival from his ancestral territory comprising his house, his own cypress and ash-wood doorway (17.339 – 41), his hearth, dining hall, and ultimately his personally handcrafted bed. Her one hundred eight suitors and her one son force Penelope, the head of household, to retreat upstairs and inside – apart and away from the decisive bow and spear foreplay (Od. 21.350 – 4). Odysseus’ step-by-step, “slo mo” successful penetration of forbidden spaces in his large house culminates in his repeatedly frustrated, but eventually successful, ventures to reach, in order, the threshold entry-point, the feast-table, the hearth, the bow and ax-heads agonistic testingground, and, after the battle, to enter the ultimate, well-guarded retreat, the marital θάλαμος. Audiences experience his progress room to room – a mini-spatial, repeat odyssey, advancing (as in many current video-games) from point to point. This private room, with its upstairs, “inmost” [ἔσχατον] locked closet and “high shelf” (έϕ’ ὑψηλῆς σανίδος) on which the bow for a long time resided (Od. 21.5 – 60), is the house’s most intimate and male-forbidden, protected space (sexually analogous to the basileia’s body). The suitors’ repeated tactical failures to block Odysseus’ spatial progress prefigure their defeat in pitched battle and complete annihilation. The “suitors’” corpses, stacked up in a simile like dead fish, now but ephemerally occupy a minimal territory (Od. 22.384– 9, 22.448 – 50). Odysseus’ calculated proxemic ploys and ripostes at each stage outwit the crude efforts of Penelope’s suitors to keep him “in his [stigmatized] place” and destroy his minimal face. They deny him, first, entry, then, a place at the table, and finally, a turn out-of-turn in the serial and otherwise aristocratically rule-bound contest of the bow.⁴⁷ The twisty hero manipulates Hellenic protocols of hospitality and beggary to inch through the doorway and up to the table, into the contest, and to occupy the strategic high ground in the decisive, rule-free ambush, battle, and bloody slaughter.⁴⁸ He promises his two servant allies – should they succeed against the suitors’ vastly superior numbers – to treat the herdsmen like “comrades and brothers” of Telemakhos and to furnish them wives and houses built next to his. He promises domiciles near and dear, that is, proximity to his power (οἰκία τ’ ἐγγὺς ἐμεῖο τετυγμένα, Od. 21.215). Homer exploits paradoxes arising from the limits of human perception and mortal uses of space, or proxemics. He pictures both tightly constructed and hierarchically positioned city dwellings and the wide spaces of other realms in this world and two others. Exhausted dead spirits ceaselessly wander the Other Lateiner 1992.  The careful and measured disposal of the axes in the playground of the harm-free bow-pull and one-directional arrow contest contrasts dramatically to the chaotic, no holds barred, directional free-for-all fight that characterizes the slaughter of the suitors.

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world, while the immortal gods enjoy sexual dalliances and bloody playgrounds both at Troy above ground and in remote celestial bedrooms. At the Iliad’s end, the usually distant battlefield spatial dynamics enter a surreal phase of face-to-face encounters. Akhilleus’ battle with a force of nature and striking geographical feature, the Zeus-fathered Trojan river, Skamandros, violates usual human limits (Il. 21.300 ff.) and fluvial capacities. Akhilleus’ climactic encounter with Hektor immediately after unleashes several similes (Iliad 22) from the worlds of nature and culture.⁴⁹ Akhilleus, sleeping apart from friend and foe on the liminal beach, attempts unsuccessfully to stand close and embrace the briefly risen shade of his friend Patroklos (ἀλλά μοι ἆσσον στῆθι· μίνυνθά περ ἀμφιβαλόντε/ ἀλλήλους, Il. 23.97– 8). He thus expresses a rationally pointless but understandable emotional need for physical intimacy with his therapon (zero-degree corporeal separation). Later, mutual touching (haptics of knee and hand) with his enemy Priam transcends their implacable enmity. Although both experiences are necessarily transient (Il. 23.59 – 107, 24.476 – 515), this physical intimacy, the heroic tears in common, and the heart-broken accompanying words appreciate the shared need for contact – for closeness. One blind poet, poetry-patronizing princes, and their audiences are all tuned to the micro-management of status-inflection amidst irreparable and permanent human loss. On the marge of Hades’ territory, between life and death, Odysseus seeks essential information and emotional reassurance, so he too wishes to touch and hug someone, here his mother’s shade. Although a welcome face, Odysseus’ intertextual echo of Akhilleus’ foiled attempt to touch the ghost of dead Patroklos (Il. 23.99 – 102; Od. 11.150 – 225) recalls the incommensurability of fleshless spirits and boned bodies. The human impulse for haptic communication does not recognize the categorical distance between the living and the dead. After reaching Ithaka, Odysseus, as stigmatized beggar, initially must calibrate and maintain some “respectable” social distance from his exalted hostess, his unacknowledged wife. For reasons perhaps deriving from her very early recognition of the remarkably poorly disguised “beggar,”⁵⁰ the otherwise ever prudent “widow” Penelope asks Eumaios to summon the vagrant to her in her private (females only!) rooms (Od. 17.507– 10, 17.529, 17.554). In this situation, she shockingly ignores gendered spatial expectations – the protocols of heroic proxemics. Any ruler’s lady must maintain distance from homeless, dinner-grubbing male vagabonds, and cannot alone parlay with a male stranger. Odysseus

 Scott 2009, 72– 8.  Vlahos (2011, 14– 28) lucidly and persuasively presents the couple’s homophrosynic synchronization of the heroic revenge and slaughter plot.

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knows better and so, shockingly but correctly, perhaps crypto-informatively, rejects the ruling lady’s imperious command (Od. 17.569 – 70). Penelope is irritated but perceptively interprets the stranger’s strategic decision – he is “no dope,” οὐκ ἄφρων. Journeying home, Odysseus had faced both threateningly distant destinations and uncomfortably close degrees of proximity, nearness to women and (other?) monsters. His titrated, conscious and semi-conscious, distance-adjustments confirm his spatial savvy. He communicates accordingly by deferentially distanced dialogue, standing embraces, haptic supplications by the chin and at the knees (dis-elevation), and sexual intercourse. These are shifts from social to personal to intimate space, and from vertical to horizontal bodily orientation experienced with Kalypso, Kirke, and Penelope.⁵¹ His proxemic finesse salvages crises (Skheria beach, Alkinoos’ palace, Ogygia), easing entrée into, and (no less) egress from, forbidden or potentially perilous places (Aiolos’ island, Polyphemos’ cave, Eumaios’ steading, and the socially unstable μέγαρον on Ithaka). Gendered spatial dynamics, a division of proxemics,⁵² complicate the narratives of both epics: Helen distracts Paris from battle at the current ground zero of the Trojan War, Paris’ self-built palace: a δῶμα with μέγαρον, αὐλή, and θάλαμος (bedchamber), etc. The seducer/abductor built his house near the highest authorities’ homes on Pergamos, the citadel with Athena’s temple and the peak dwellings of Hektor and Priam (Il. 6.317, 6.512). In the adulterer’s very sleeping chamber (Il. 6.313 – 24), site of the repeated sexual transgression that has caused this decade-long war, Hektor chides his unpredictable brother, a warrior reluctant about leaving his restless lover to return to the fray. He further rejects his seductive sister-in-law’s invitation to sit down beside her, rest awhile, and chat (354). The room is uneasily claustrophobic for Commander-in-Chief Hektor, probably more confusing than the battlefield. In the Iliad’s other camp, the contested, oscillating locations of recently captured Chryseis, a priest’s daughter become Akhaian booty or sexual property  Proxemics can intentionally mislead an interlocutor (Hall, 1966, 12, 104– 5; Lateiner 1992, 144– 50). For example, Odysseus approaches in pseudo-friendly style from a social distance the towering threat to his safety, Polyphemos, and hands him a gift, the ultra-potent, sleep-inducing Ismarian wine (Od. 9.345 – 70). Kirke, at the personal distance, seductively hands her visitor another drink, a deceptive, indeed transformational, potion (Od. 10.316 – 25). The pre-fortified Odysseus draws his sword to attack. The witch, however, slips under his guard to reach the intimate distance and there supplicates the hero. The beggar Odysseus comes near each suitor reaching out his hand (Od. 17.366) for alms; Antinoos explicitly orders the aggressive spaceinvader to stand off, recognizing the danger in his threat to questionable aristocratic proxemic protocols (στῆθ’ οὕτως ἐς μέσσον, ἐμῆς ἀπάνευθε τραπέζης, Od. 17.447).  Cf. similar conflicts in a different genre, prose narrative, examined in Lateiner 2012.

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(home, Agamemnon’s captive, returned to her father) and the locations of captive Briseis (home, Akhilleus’ prize, Agamemnon’s, back to Akhilleus) confound and nearly topple the invading Akhaians’ fragile “big-man” command structure (Iliad 1, 9, 19). In the Odyssey, Kirke, Kalypso, Nausikaa, and Arete, in that temporal order of events (not the narrative sequence), by sexual offers and provocations delay Odysseus’ desired homecoming.⁵³ Homer describes his calculated, delicate approaches to their female persons, especially Nausikaa’s (6.118 – 85), in free indirect speech, unusually detailed interior monologue, direct speech, as well as narrative. Should he appear while nearly naked, come near, touch them, clasp their knees, abase himself in the personal distance, etc.? Their women’s weapons are not bronze or poison-tipped, but consist of nurture, sex, and creature comforts (such as clothes, food, baths, and secure refuge).⁵⁴ They offer superhuman, or at least regal, status and riches that reach beyond anything that small and poor Ithaka and ageing Penelope can provide. Their generous territories, however, are distant from his construction of wealth, status, inherited paternal estates, and family and cannot replace his web of spatial anchors, his consanguineal network of Ithakan orchards, domestic animals (Argos, his territorial dog on the dungheap, included), orchards, persons, and family places. These landmarks extend from the distant but useful treasure-house cave of the Nymphs near the beach to the geography of his self-built bed and bedroom. As in other cultures, Homeric communities briefly form meaningful circles. These can construct and share sacred locales and protect demarcated places.⁵⁵ The circle⁵⁶ provides a magical barrier or at least a spiritually protective, inter-

 Odyssey 10, 5, 6 – 7, 12. Other variously female-gendered threats include the Sirens, Skylla, and Kharybdis.  Hekabe and Helen both secure their most precious robes “at the bottom” of storage chests, the safe locus of gifts, proffered to goddesss Athena and Telemakhos’ intended wife (νείατος, Il. 6.295 = Od. 15.108).  Ritual or symbolic circling may well derive from hominid ethology. Akhaian warriors in order to protect Menelaos surround the wounded battler when he is down (κυκλόσε!, Il. 4.211– 12). Intuitive rings (seen also already among animal packs such as wolves, dogs and other canids) ward off danger and damage or isolate a victim. Encirclement produces an aggressive tactic for heroic and divine trappers (Od. 4.792, 8.278 [Hephaistos’ bedroom snare for Aphrodite and Ares, a wrap-around hunting net], 19.444 [wild animals]). A simile employs barnyard terminology for the Akhaian efforts to encircle or pen in the Trojans (8.131: “penned like sheep”). Cf. Il. 17.392: Homer uniquely compares in a simile the many-sided tugging of Patroklos’ corpse to an all-sides hide-pulling event. Here the simile’s encircling leather treatment procedure is entirely instrumental, but the same might be said of the corpse-protectors.  Sherratt 2004.

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personal, and symbolic chain-formation in rituals.⁵⁷ The heroes herd sacrificial animals around an altar (περὶ βωμόν, Il. 1.448). The Akhaian warriors on their horses solemnly circle the body of Patroklos “in state,” as they perform mourning rituals (Il. 23.13 – 14). Community elders sit in a solemn circle occupying a recognized public place in order to hear disputes and render legal judgment (Il. 18.504). Farmers, too, in practical rather than symbolic terms, protect their flocks enclosing them in a pen or corral.⁵⁸ Homeric male and female celebrants in joy also form circles to chain-dance on a designated, demarcated dancing floor before a multitude of spectators. They thus express gratitude for harvest and plenty (Il. 18.590 – 605, Od. 8.250 – 3, 8.262; at 8.378 – 80, a spectators’ circle is only implied). A simile (see infra) compares the whirling dancers on Akhilleus’ circular, protective, and heroic shield to a humble potter lightly spinning his wheel around.⁵⁹ During Homeric performances and agones, the judges/spectators literally shape themselves into a circle, marking out the ephemeral but meaningful segregated space of contest (πολλὸς δ’ ἱμερόεντα χορὸν περιίσταθ’ ὅμιλος, Il. 18.603). Diners feast around a table in Agamemnon’s camp, on Mount Olympos, or in central courtyards (Il. 1.597, Od. 17.365: ἐνδέξια – propitiously, circling left to right; 8.65 – 6, 9.8, 17.447– 50). Penelope’s suitors, who also feed endlessly and dance, uneasily occupy another man’s house and territory against the will of impotent (and thus positionally peripheral) household authorities.⁶⁰ These off-island space-invaders also form a temporary ring – a place – both in order to hem in willy-nilly their playthings, Aithon and Iros, and to view their boxing contest, the bullies’ cheerful amusement at their inferior’s catastrophe (ἀμφὶ… ἠγερέθεντο, Od. 18.41). Victory in the ring will determine which beggar will con-

 The dancers on the shield, sometimes in circles, at other times form parallel rows (ἐπὶ στίχας) and cross each other (Il. 18.602). Other formations: Humans march and stand in aligned, serried ranks to prepare for battle or to form civil turn-taking lines. The suitors appear to queue up for unheroic but egalitarian left-to-right turn taking with the contest to string the bow (ἐξείης ἐπιδέξια, Od. 21.141– 2), although there is some jostling for position (Telemakhos: 124, Leiodes: 144, νέοι θάλποντες: 184, Eurymakhos: 245).  Σηκός: Od. 9.219, 9.227, 9.439; 10.412 [simile], 17.224– 5, servant of a servant pen-sweeper.  The Hephaistian shield itself provides its mortal wielder with a divinely salvific, defensive circle defense (Il. 18.375, cf. 12.294, 19.280). Sacrificial savor curls (ἑλισσομένη) into the sky (Il. 1.317).  Their impotence arises from disenfranchised positions in heroic hierarchies: Telemakhos has been too young, Penelope is female, Eumaios and Philoitios now have low status, Laërtes is too old and removed himself from power before Odysseus departed twenty years earlier, and Eurykleia is doubly diminished: both female and a slave.

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tinue to enjoy the largess of the parasitic suitors, their handsome scraps of food (Od. 18.40 – 1). Hephaistos’ divine miniaturization of solar-system and generic πτόλις geographies (Il. 18.478 – 607), the five-fold thick and heavy, triple-rimmed shield provides, first in the middle, a mini-kosmos – earth, sky, and the encircling sea. Moving further out, the eternal sun and moon and constellations, and, again at the end, Ocean rings all the schematic activity, encircling two “lovely cities” of men. Like the divine craftsman, the omnipresent, multi-locational poet shifts his and our perspective from the heavens to these cities that ephemerally enjoy ordinary men’s blessings. Their everyday strenuous activities “on the ground,” managing their plants and animals (with dung [?] of gold and tin: Il. 18.574– 5), are complemented by their seasonal pleasures. The happy elite feast on ox-meat, while the rest must be content with barley (Il. 18.59 – 60). Later, the community’s male and female dancers present kaleidoscopic circles, crossing rows, and, in three-dimensional climax, two leaping soloists “spin amidst the crowds” (? κυβιστητῆρε… ἐδίνευον, Il. 18.605 – 6). The external audiences visualize multum in parvo, before they are jerked back to the remainder of Akhilleus’ extended, extra-ordinary arming scene. The armor, designed at Hephaistos’ forge, is now same-day delivered to the killing fields of Troy (Il. 18.609 – 16). The narrator controls listeners’ perceptions of space and time, backgrounds and foreground.⁶¹ Guardians of place definition and separation (such as gate-keeping monsters, doormen, and even domestic animals)⁶² articulate the appropriate procedures, manners, and survival strategies for navigating “betwixt and between” locales. Friendlier liminal figures provide divine intercession: Thetis, Athena, Apollo, and psychopomp Hermes (in both Iliad 24 and Odyssey 24), Iris, the witchgoddesses Kirke and Kalypso (and the shaman ghost of mortal Tiresias at the edge of the Otherworld). They instruct mortal protégées, advising Akhilleus and Odysseus as they negotiate threats or conquer near and far places of dangers. Looking for escape or safety, disoriented heroes stay put as commanded, listen to detailed directions, lag behind, dodge ox-hoof missiles, and hang

 Hellwig 1964, 1.  Polyphemos alone can remove the stone that blocks entrance to or egress from his cave (Od. 9.240 – 4). Eteoneus asks his basileus Menelaos whether to welcome the unknown travelers or send them on to another house (Od. 4.22– 36). Decrepit dog Argos even on the dung heap retains his usual guard duty/position before the entrance to Odysseus’ dwelling (Od. 17.292; cf. 11.623 – 5, referring to the archetypal gate-keeping hound, Hades’ Kerberos). Finally, domestic dogs fawn excitedly on their homecome masters (Od. 10.216 – 17: a simile) and herders’ dogs will maul a stranger (Od. 14.29 – 38).

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from a fig tree over the lethally sucking whirlpool, Kharybdis, while awaiting the tide that will return the life-saving keel (Od. 12.431– 44). Their geographic experiences with difficult and extreme environments demand coordination with elastic audience perceptions of earthly space, in terms and images appropriate for psychological or cognitive geography. Human minds experience epic distances and sizes as analogues of their experiences with height and depth, narrowness and width, etc., not as quantified standard measures, units of scientific metrology. These shared experiences ground the similes that we must next examine, expressions of line, space, and volume that provide important threads in oral traditional poetic textures. [C] Similes serve a variety of cognitive functions. Eustathios and other scholiasts note that they provide fullness, clarity, variety, vividness, decoration, and relief.⁶³ Critics⁶⁴ observe their ability to retard the epic – slow the action and prolong the tension, as they draw attention to a significant similarity (simultaneously emphasizing the vital difference!) or pivotal act or emotion.⁶⁵ A few measure a minute distance. Antilokhos’ chariot beats Menelaos’ in a horserace by the space between a horsetail and a chariot rim (anglice “whisker”). Here the analogue in the simile is unusually drawn from the very activity being compared (Il. 23.517– 22; cf. Od. 5.249). Since ancient athletic contests were decided by relative speed, rank position, or which wrestler ended up on top, not by (non-existent) absolute spatio-temporal measuring devices (clocks, tapes, etc.), such similes vivify, as they certify, victories. The poet helps his audiences picture ephemeral spaces or positions. Similes of measure are more frequent in narrator-text than character-text. Rarely do we hear both these points of view in quantitative similes,⁶⁶ but Odysseus’ crucial position, running in second place as the footrace in Book 23 pro-

 Mark Edwards (1991, 24– 41, esp. 38 – 41) concisely discusses the purposes of similes in his introduction.  See the studies of Lee 1964, Scott 2009, Austin 1975, and Ready 2011, inter alios.  Some few of them, moreover, function to vivify measure, not only distance – length, area, and volume in space –but also numbers and time. E.g., the opening of the Akhaian catalogue (Il. 2.455 – 83) piles up similes indicating countless numbers of birds and insects, leaves and flowers. Time is often emphasized by similes, usually a short period (e. g., the passage of swift birds, human thoughts, a cure that acts as swiftly as fig juice curdles milk: Il. 2.764, 5.902; Od. 1.320, 7.36). But a simile seems to indicate a long epoch at least once: Poseidon’s temporal (or spatial) hyperbole for forever (or everywhere): Il. 7.451, “as long as [or far as] the dawn scatters [the darkness].” Janko (1992, 266 ad 15.358 – 61) collects many similes utilized in this paragraph.  Cf. Ready 2011, 152– 60.

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gresses, is exceptional.⁶⁷ “Breathing down Aias’ neck,” his lagging distance is pictured as the negligible distance between a woman weaver’s breast and a loom’s warp threads. The narrator expresses by a picture Odysseus’ skill and proximity as he presses the front-runner, Oilian Aias: ἄγχι μάλ᾽, ὡς ὅτε τίς τε γυναικὸς ἐυζώνοιο στήθεός ἐστι κανών, ὅν τ᾽ εὖ μάλα χερσὶ τανύσσῃ πηνίον ἐξέλκουσα παρὲκ μίτον, ἀγχόθι δ᾽ ἴσχει στήθεος· ὣς Ὀδυσεὺς θέεν ἐγγύθεν, αὐτὰρ ὄπισθεν ἴχνια τύπτε πόδεσσι πάρος κόνιν ἀμφιχυθῆναι. (Il. 23.760 – 4)

The ‘closeness’ adverbs pile on: …ἄγχι μάλ’, ὡς ὅτε…/ ἀγχόθι δ’ ἴσχει/ στήθεος· ὣς … ἔγγυθεν. This simile could not emerge from a world more different – one of quiet and solo, constructive, female technique rather than noisy and primitive male agonism. After Aias loses to Odysseus, his own self-excusing simile irritably refers to Athene’s divine favor and help for Odysseus – she is “like a mother” and thus he was tripped by her and lost (Il. 23.758 – 83). The similes – one from the calm narrator, the other from a miserable character – contrast different realms: acquired mortal woman’s skill and a divine mother’s effortless favor (or, Aias implies his competitor’s inexplicable luck). Some ὅσσα/η/ον expressions of distance – approaching full similes – quaintly point to an early epoch when Greeks used only imprecise, folkish units of measure: mist obscures a man’s sight beyond a stone’s cast (Il. 3.12), Akhilleus’ leap equals the long cast of a spear (Il. 21.251), or the once repeated but obscurely vague range of a yoke of plowing mules (Il. 10.351– 2, Od. 8.124). The poet Homer adequately indicates farness in fuller simile form (complete with verb), when Apollo flattens the Akhaians’ defensive ditch that was as wide as a sportsman’s (peacetime) spearcast (Il. 15.358 – 9).⁶⁸ Similes provide audiences with experiential proxemic analogies, as we said above. The simile that ends Iliad 8 compares the many Akhaian watchfires on the fighting plain to the sky’s numberless stars, familiar to all (Il. 8.555 – 60). The poet, after the point of tangency, turns audience attention to the far off shining moon, then back to the Earth’s still aither, the hills and ravines. At the end only, allegedly blind Homer returns to the stars, seen with joy by an imagined human

 This unique nearness simile, not surprisingly, likewise appears in the “funeral games,” in another contest where first man wins.  Similarly, Il. 16.589, 23.431, 23.523 (discus throw), 23.845: an oxherd’s throwing stick (καλαύροψ – an archaic hapax). Sea haze limits how “unfar” a man can see (Il. 5.770 – 1; cf. the distance a man’s shout can be heard: Od. 5.400 = 9.473, 12.181 ~ 6.294).

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observer, the (generic) shepherd who focalizes the clear night scene for us (πάντα δὲ εἴδεται ἄστρα, γέγηθε δέ τε φρένα ποιμήν, 8.559). The narrator’s encompasssing view, more panoramic than the combatants’, surfaces again in other similes (e. g., Il. 12.278 – 87). Here, in the poem’s longest simile “comparing” soft falling snow with skullsmashing missiles, stones are likened to Zeus’s incessant snow flakes as Akhaians and Trojans hurl missiles at each other. If the pun be forgiven, Homer gains distance from the melée, describing a scene of utter quiet that shares one point of tangency with a scene of thundering clamor, the din of battle at the wall (δοῦπος): manyness – θαμειαί or countless “thick and fast” dropping items, whether snowflakes or ballistic stones. The pivotal word elegantly combines spatial and temporal closeness. The winds and surf, meanwhile, are silenced by Zeus’s snow missiles (κῆλα usually and notably describe lethal arrows or lightning bolts). For epic geographers, the tightly contested, noisy battle at the wall contrasts to the noiseless expanses of the ten verse simile: the silent winds, the mountain peaks and their bluffs, the grassy plains and men’s “rich works,” the grey sea and surf with their associated harbors and beaches – all this world is shrouded (εἴλυται) from above by Zeus’s snow storm (νιφάδες χιόνος, χειμέριον, χέει, ὄμβρος). This battle comparison does not resemble the typically analogous hostile violent works of nature – e. g., fierce winds, torrential rivers, and earthquake (Il. 2.781– 4).⁶⁹ Rather, in Mark Edwards’ phrase, the simile provides a “quasi-Olympian perspective”⁷⁰ in which battle-ripped human action and agony seems a flattened and contracted stage in comparison to the snow-steeped soundlessness of infinite nature.⁷¹ Homeric similes occur in places urban, rural, and wild, and they often depend on specific kinds of space (linear, area-describing, and three-dimensional) or refer to the thematics of space-dominance. Zeus’s seduction by and sex with Hera on the edge of battle in a meadow high on the peaks of Ida is a polyvalent

 The winds and lightning cause trees to crash, storms and fire to lay low towns and forests, torrents to flood the land, and seas to sweep over ships. Sometimes nature seems animated (that is purposeful, or divinely directed), but these similes are really illustrating something purposeless about the way we experience the world.  Quibblers might suggest a “super-Olympian perspective,” since Homer knows more than Zeus does about what is going on.  Although many similes provide an expanded vista (sea, mountain, forest, storm, moon, stars) in their “vehicle” or comparatum, a few compare human scale and measure in their “tenor” or comparandum to a tiny “vehicle,” such as the varied and affecting insect similes, e. g., Il. 2.87– 91, 12.167– 71, 16.641– 4, 17.570 – 3. The last example, e. g., contrasts heroic Menelaos’ daring in comparison to that of a biting mosquito (μυίη) rather than to that of a great lion, a wolf-pack, or a storm.

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surprise (Il. 14.331– 53), but one under-appreciated element of this interlude is the alpha male’s unimpeded “room” for copulation. Awake or asleep, he owns all this turf, regardless of others’ primeval claims. Wasps guard their nests, vultures bewail their robbed young, cattle, lions, and dogs protect their offspring, an ass is clubbed from a field, dogs guard the animals in a sheepfold. It’s all about territoriality. Humans want to return home, protect their flocks, provide food and shelter for their families. Natural and analogous impulses widespread in the animal kingdom and embodied in similes remain timeless and persuasive today. Glimpses of the rarer pastoral, viticultural, or agricultural scenes, where, in fact, most pre-industrial production occurs, in the Iliad arise only in similes and present busy humans laboring to feed themselves. Quiet human efforts in the similes, such as reaping and threshing, are disturbed by cattle-marauding carnivores (essentially, lions, wolves, and boars) and organized communities’ neighborly cattle raids (Il. 18.520 – 40). The heroic epics rarely mention disease or praise agriculture’s exhausting toil, meeting, presumably, the expectations of their intended, clean-handed warrior-class audiences. Homer presents a threedimensional social setting but describes few interactions between the domains of the rural farmer and the proto-urban πτόλις-dwellers, unlike the narrative situations arising in Hesiod’s clearly more anti-aristocratic Works and Days. At the “city limits,” as Eumaios escorts Odysseus into town, the city-assimilated factotum Melanthios forces this country-dwelling, πτόλις-avoiding slave and his escorted beggar into unwanted verbal and physical tussles (Od. 17.204– 39).⁷² Melanthios gains no ground in either conflict.⁷³ Odysseus arrives in Ithaka-town, but it is “a place strictly to be avoided.”⁷⁴ The shameless suitors have occupied the chieftain’s territory and manse and are eating his fam-

 Melanthios, Eurymakhos, and Agamemnon all try to edge their status-seeking opponents into becoming bound to them by offers or gifts they presumably “can’t refuse” – but they do refuse (cf. Donlan 1993). The Odyssey’s bullying doublets, Melanthios and Eurymakhos, although inhabiting different ends of the social hierarchy, are both reduced to battery after losing their battles of words with the strategic beggar.  Homer does not argue that geographic turf or birth class trumps innate character, but, we must confess, the issue always becomes confused in one way or another by a good poor man’s birth, class, and stature. Pigherd Eumaios originally is of rich and royal descent (Od. 15.403 – 14), and the beggar Aithon can’t stop himself from claiming to the suitors that he too once was a fighting leader of men: to Antinoos (Od. 17.419 – 26: thousands of retainers), and to Eurymakhos (Od. 18.376 – 80). “City”-dwellers Aigyptios, Mentor, and Peiraios are decent people, even if the Odyssey’s urbanites are not heroic figures (like Ilion’s city-shielding Hektor). Some critics perceive this bias as playing to Homer’s “paying” aristocratic audiences.  Anthony T. Edwards 1993, 49.

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ily out of house and home, so the stigmatized outsider must develop a strategy to gain a foothold and establish his “place.” Displacing the rival, nearly statusless, Iros wins him some “purchase.” The favor of his son Telemakhos (‘in’ on his identity) and the housemistress Penelope (‘out of the loop’) establishes him more securely. The outcast’s clever challenges to the suitors to share their hosts’ bounty, and to aristocratic Eurymakhos to compete in farmers’ work contests, ἔρις ἔργοιο (Od. 18.366 – 78: reaping, ox-driving, ploughing four [unknown but clearly large] measures, τετράγυον), squarely confronts the braggart suitor with a lose-lose situation. Either he competes and loses face to a competitor that he allows in the egalitarian “ring” with him, or he declines to compete and looks cowardly. The aberrant, Iliad-parodying “suitors’” inverted siege and plunder of Penelope’s mansion and stores invites master Odysseus’ (god-inspired) disruptive restoration of the previous, proper paternal order. Until then, yet another character, Odysseus’ old father Laërtes, remains in rags, grieving alone in self-imposed exile in the countryside, apart from his own house, town, and control of family and tribal territory (Od. 11.187– 96, 24.226 – 86). [D] Aegean proto-historic polities, long before the Homeric poems took shape, had gathered wealth through farming, viticulture, animal husbandry, hunting, with attendant feasting at home.⁷⁵ Over the frontiers and abroad by sea, the magnates of the Mycenean age pursued entrepreneurial and reciprocal exchange and increase of capital through raiding (including proto-wars over) cattle, women, crops, and metal materiel. Although their economic vocabulary was more limited, they understood the desirability of increasing their contiguous territories and commercial reach. Ensconced in paradigmatic exempla from days of yore or on the shield ecphrasis come narratives that function like “extended” similes. They refer to border-wars, predatory cattle-raids in the land beyond cultivation.⁷⁶ Nestor retails with relish his Pylians’ retaliation on the Epeian cattle-thieves’ βοηλασίη (Il. 11.669 – 760), men who despoiled his daddy’s herdsmen tending their flocks in the hilly borderlands ἀγροῦ ἐπ’ ἐσχατίην (cf. Od. 5.489, 18.358, 24.150): fifty herds each of oxen, sheep, goats, pigs, and more than 150 mares and foals. Nestor smashed the neighboring forces far away (τηλοῦ), near the Alpheios river. The sheep and cattle ambush on the Shield also occurs near a river where death of the shepherds and pitched battle between two towns’ forces result (Il. 18. 520 – 40).  Aside from Penelope’s geese, recall Eumaios’ pigs, Melanthios’ goats, and Philoitios’ cattle on both sides of the water. See Wright 2004, 68 – 71 for useful reflections on struggles among and inside Mycenean communities.  Il. 1.154– 7; see Redfield 1975, 186 – 92.

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Prowess in these categories (activities on and beyond the Mycenean frontiers) resulted in the conspicuous display of symbolic resources reconfigured into physically imposing structures (μέγαρα, fortifications, mortuary memorials and burials, like ancient, eponymous Ilos’ Trojan mound (Il. 11.166 – 70 with other landmarks). At Sparta (Od. 4.43 – 54), Helen and Menelaos’ unhappy household “spread” displays imported products of amber and ivory, precious metals (esp. bronze, gold, and silver), uniquely ornate furniture, golden tools, a magical Egyptian drug (Od. 4.220 – 32), and implements like Helen’s wheeled embroidery basket. The “hick’s” amusing point of view appears (Od. 4.71– 4) when Telemakhos whispers his stupefied (early Iron Age) reaction to this unimaginably fabulous display of Bronze Age treasure. Sumptuous and privileged palatial locales provide settings for elite social performances such as these guestreceptions and wedding feasts, religious sacrifices (at Pylos), truce ceremonies, and funeral games, pyres, parades, and interments. Did Homer situate his socially coherent heroic narratives in temporally specific, either late Bronze Age (ca. 1300 BCE) or late Archaic Age (ca. 600 BCE), spaces? He could not and would not, if he could.⁷⁷ His portrait of an imaginary world, drawn from oral tradition and memory, has a satisfying but historically deceptive consistency. The opening of a Third Millennium CE movie usually situates its audience in a specific time and place by several datable markers such as car models, hairstyles, and ephemeral fashions in clothes, and Homer has already developed a similar technique. The open agoras provided Homeric spaces to be on occasion set off and utilized for irregularly convened military and political assemblies. They do not seem to be topographically demarcated or architecturally established structures of a political or religious sort, even in Troy or Ithaka. (Contrast, for instance, the Bronze Age Kretan palace piazzas at, e. g., Phaistos.) Religious ritual-precincts for animal sacrifices and privately cultivated properties such as Alkinoos’ gardens, Laërtes’ orchards with stone walls, and the suitors’ vineyards, grain lands, and animal pasturages probably changed the landscape little between 1350 and 650 BCE. The uncontrolled and essentially uncontrollable peripheral areas (e. g., ἐσχατιαί and beyond, Od. 18.358, Il. 11.86 – 8, 12. 278 – 83, 23.114– 20) would always appear contemporary to ancient audiences,

 Moses Finley (1978, 45 – 9) split the difference, but this is a heuristic strategy rather than a satisfactory method for dating the poem’s objects, social habits, or political structures. As recent studies comparing poetry and archaeology show (e. g., van Wees 2011; Schwartz 2011), any element of a Homeric artifact, architectural construct, or societal custom (shield, temple, marriage, inheritance, conveyance of property, speaking and voting privileges) may derive from different archaeological epochs, and Homer frequently conflates incompatible military and marital practices (is Penelope available for bride-price or dowry? Cf. Lyons 2011).

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because their tradition’s experience of forest, rough mountain wilderness,⁷⁸ river valleys, etc., rarely changed the environment from wild to cultivated. No earthmovers and bulldozers rapidly rearranged the geography of their pre-industrial world. Only Apollo and Poseidon generally can do that (Il. 7.459 – 63: Akhaian and Trojan walls; Od. 13.149 – 52: Phaiakian ship and rock in the harbor).⁷⁹ Both poems’ scattered descriptions of peacetime activities and occupation – sailing the seas, lumbering activities in the mountains, hunting in forests, and cultivating crops down in the plains – assume a stable topography and economy.⁸⁰ Anachronisms (such as writing, iron swords, oligarchy) are generally excluded, but disparate elements of prehistoric and early Iron Age culture and technology are unintentionally juxtaposed by a lengthy oral tradition. The enclosing, towering walls and gates of the Iliad’s Troy and the Odyssey’s grand “homesteads” (Nestor’s at Pylos, Menelaos’ at Sparta, even Odysseus’ more modest “spread” on Ithaka), especially the lavishly ornamented and extensively described inside spaces in Helen’s Sparta, reflect the Second Millennium’s grand palatial topographies and richly decorated Bronze Age interiors. The splendors of these places have been coherently and impressively transmitted across the previous millennium to the decentralized culture and economy of reduced expectations and results evolving after Hellas’ somewhat dark Dark Age. The oral tradition of an architecturally modest epoch and economically still developing area both treasured and conflated the memories of a long-gone, extravagant Bronze Age past. More recent commercial experiences of immense Near Eastern palaces further enrich the mix. These elaborate Hellenic structures recall earlier oriental palaces built by centralized Eastern authorities with labor extracted from the populous Eastern masses. In such settings, leisured Near Eastern elites enjoyed the older Sumerian and Babylonian narratives. In their heroic legends, heroes such as Gilgamesh traveled to and from Mesopotamian palaces and traversed distant forests, plains, mountains, tunnels, fresh rivers, and salt seas to face, east and west, exotic rulers, divinities, rivals and monsters.

 Cf. Purves (this volume).  Cf. Il. 15.362– 4: Apollo and the Trojans smash the Akhaian wall – as if it were a child’s sandcastle – a simile that emphasizes the ephemerality and puniness of human modifications on the land. In fact, few structures of subsequent epochs are more impressive than Mycenaean era (including Trojan) fortifications.  The Iliad concentrates these relatively pleasant, ordinary life and agrarian experiences in the “late” similes and in the ecphrasis of the happier mini-universe and community on Akhilleus’ divine and capacious “Shield.”

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Private and public embody one polarity defining interpersonal cognitive geography. Heroic achievement is public. At the Akhaian crisis of management at Troy, Nestor contrasts his own once youthful valor and leadership μετ’ ἀνδράσιν to the now young Akhilleus’ solitude – οἶος (Il. 11.762 – 4) – the youth’s solipsistic pique and consequent grievous, heroic isolation, the kind that will later cause Akhilleus’ multiple losses and the death of his close friend and rival, Aias. Already in Book 1, Akhilleus withdraws from his Akhaian and Phthian comrades (ἑτάρων ἄφαρ ἕζετο νόσφι λιασθείς, Il. 1.349) – the (geographic/proxemic) motor of the Iliadic plot. His return from solitary self-confinement to the group comes only eighteen books later, when heroic bonding and comradely fraternity have lost their former meanings for spiritually and militarily isolated Akhilleus. Also in Book 1, Khryses the suppliant withdraws (responding to Agamemnon’s unpopular command) from the Akhaian camp to the shore, Apollo hunkers down apart before shooting his retributive plague arrows, and Zeus reminds dissident gods of his power to plan his actions apart from them and without their knowing the consequences (35, 48, 549 – all ἀπάνευθε). Homeric social stratigraphy elaborately distinguishes warrior gatherings’ rules of access to authority and the right to speak. Thersites speaks boldly and Odysseus brutally chastises him with blows from the very sceptre that grants the privilege (Il. 2.224– 78). Thersites does not “know his place.” One observes the Akhaian host’s semi-chaotic agora, the basileis’ orderly strategy session in Agamemnon’s grand cabin, and the polite if strained dialogues between two chiefs in the shelter where Nestor sleeps (Il. 2.50 – 2, 2.53 – 5, 2.84– 6, 10.74– 81; cf. 2.42). Elite and infantry fight by different means in different places in the battle-line and reap different rewards, as Sarpedon explicates to audiences rather than to Glaukos who must already know (Il. 12.310 – 25): the basileis fight in front (proxemics), gain their rewards in receiving the best seats in front (proxemics) and choice wine and meats, and obtain their retainers’ respect and high visibility (proxemics) while “farming” the τεμένη, choice holdings of land.⁸¹ “Ethical geography,”⁸² the relative valuation of places depending on their mores, is not prominent in the Iliad, a story deeply sympathetic to both “sides.” The infamously partial Odyssey passes negative judgments on the current city folk of both Skheria and Ithaka. The audience perceives a cognitive ge-

 ἕδρῃ τε κρέασίν τε… δεπάεσσιν,/ …. θεοὺς ὣς εἰσορόωσι;/ καὶ τέμενος νεμόμεσθα μέγα, Il. 12.311– 13; Λυκίοισι μέτα πρώτοισιν ἐόντας/ ἑστάμεν ἠδὲ μάχης, 12.315 – 16; Sarpedon hypothesizes that another man (τίς) would say Λυκίοισι μέτα πρώτοισι μάχονται, 12.321; while Sarpedon asserts of himself: οὔτέ κεν αὐτὸς ἐνὶ πρώτοισι μαχοίμην, 12.324. These marks of chieftains’ esteem highlight the place distinctions of the βασιλεῖς.  Anthony T. Edwards’ (1993) useful term. He lists institutions of the “city” (p. 37).

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ography describing the haunts of heroes, slackers, and villains. The similes of the Iliad and the landfalls of the Odyssey find beauty and wealth both in uncultivated, wild forest areas, border pasturelands, and in tamed and tended fields and gardens. The inhabitants of the ptoleis of Troy, Skheria, and Ithaka (especially the ridiculed, indolent Iros) depend primarily on farmers planting beyond the urbanized area, but also on their in-town craftsmen (δημιοεργοί, Od. 17.383 – 6). They in turn reciprocally support the armed forces, their privileged, leisured warrior class. Acquisition by elite gift-exchange (ξενίη) and buccaneer raids abroad gain pre-state leaders both local retinues of loyal warriors and inter-group and foreign renown. Venturesome extraction of wealth and exploitation of labor establish a “big man’s” vertical axis in a semi-egalitarian “ranked” society. At home, dependable distributions of wealth, by feast, potlatch (Akhilleus’ campsite pyre), and other gifts, gain and maintain networks of followers and ensure loyalty by “big man” ownership of debts.⁸³ Odysseus’ skills, for example, in sharing wealth, delivering justice, and delegating authority attracted new warriors and followers to his band, promoted group solidarity, and encouraged active participation in, and acceptance of, his unstable hierarchy and administration on the horizontal axis.⁸⁴ The most common and expedient Bronze Age institution promoting this system for the negotiation of power and status was the celebratory feast, a “give and take” gathering event rich in “instrumental purposes behind this display of largesse.”⁸⁵ But the feast requires reliable supplies of wine and meat, and cattle herds require extensive and defined lands for foraging and grazing. Since animals do not recognize human boundaries and dependable fences were not yet invented, small- and large-scale trespass and rustling were both frequent and open to conflict-escalation. Rustling a princess from her husband’s house (Helen) or occupying her lord’s house while besieging her and consuming the hegemonic family’s accumulated resources (Penelope) represents “Homer’s” epic “dignification” of pre-industrial “chieftain” and “big man” competition, contests and struggles to possess highly symbolic human capital. Nestor’s lengthy recollections of such raptorial invasions and contests (as both agent and victim) bind him to, and unify him with, his third-generation, far from home, Akhaian peers

 Cf. Donlan 1993, 155 – 62.  Cf. Eurymakhos’ kerneled truth in his hypocritical reassurance of Telemakhos, a eulogy of his former basileus’ economic and proxemic generosity, and later, beggar Odysseus’ theorization of any good chief’s (and his own former) fortune and leadership, εὐηγεσίη, Od. 16.442– 7, 19.109 – 14.  Finley 1978, based on Marcel Mauss’ Le Don [1925]; Donlan 1993, 158; Wright 2004, 73 – 4.

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(Il. 1.266 – 73, 7.132– 57, 11.707– 72, 23.629 – 42). The emigré community thereby constructs landscapes of memory that confirm the basileis’ shared warrior-leader identities: raids, booty-taking, distributions to subordinates; housing projects or huge δώματα (Priam’s exceptional “spread”: Il. 6.242– 9), ceremonial courtyards, extensive temene; altar-centred ceremonies, the gathering of ships at Aulis and elsewhere; and the top-down management of the semi-permanent encampment at Troy. Public and private interchanges in the heroic landscape create hallowed places from previously unsignifying spaces.⁸⁶ Successful prayers and sacrifices in sacred spaces, feasts and naming ceremonies, weddings and cattle-raids create, consolidate, and legitimate a leader, his power, prestige, and the vast geographical scope of his authority (e. g., Agamemnon, “of many an isle and of all Argos King”).⁸⁷ They also cement his household retainers’ and retinue’s fidelity. Speakers, e. g., Nestor, often visualize and describe in detail the coastal and inland locales and landscapes in which they once performed heroically, i. e., gained oral historical record and space in tribal memory. The Parnassian forest covert where the boar drew Odysseus’ blood (Od. 19.394), ⁸⁸ the princely dwelling whither Phoenix fled and whence Akhilleus left for Troy (Il. 9.479 – 83); the Trojan walls, and ancestral tombs, the ancient oak tree, and fortified gates by means of which Hektor hoped to escape his pursuer (Il. 9.354; 22.137, 22.194– 8), and Nestor’s heroic set-to battle between Pylians and Arkadians fought by the swirling river Keladon (Il. 7.133 – 5) – all these establish historical or, in an oral world, mnemonic landmarks. Humble, cooperative activities and toilsome, repeated actions common to the everyday life of all pre-industrial communities, on the other hand, vivify several simile landscapes. The Trojan hot and cold springs, a traditional site for communal laundering, briefly come into sharper focus – Homer contrasts the pleasant past’s repetitive – onerous but refreshing – duties and the murderous present’s unique calamity: Akhilleus pursues decent Hektor to his death (Il. 22.146 – 56; cf. Od. 6.40, 6.85 – 7). The long-delayed but normal coitus of Odysseus and Penelope sites them in their unique bed at Odysseus’ grounded center, a resting-place rooted for the ritual of generating generations unborn: λέκτροιο παλαιοῦ θεσμόν.⁸⁹ Their union occurs at the occluded but marked, because im-

 Cf. Wright 2004, 76.  Il. 2.108, quoted approvingly by Thucydides, a general and strategist himself (1.11).  de Certeau (1984) offers insights here about the unexpected spatial visions and revisions that travel entails.  Od. 23.296, here θεσμός is a Homeric hapax, the θε- root (from τίθημι) referring to a placement, situs rather than to the later metaphorical meaning of “custom,” habitus.

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movable and fixed, location. The setting counts as important as the sex act itself. The far-flung nostos poem, describing inherited and achieved position lost and regained, has returned the wanderer to his Ground Zero. Homer’s heroes thus manage and rearrange elements in their found and settled landscapes as well as perceive and live in them. They establish ptoleis and monuments,⁹⁰ adjust social and political frontiers, and provide destinations for later ancient (e. g., Strabo) and modern tourists.⁹¹ The Homeric bards forged and refined cultural symbols for mostly illiterate Hellenic audiences. When the hexametric poems of “Homer” jelled in more or less their present form, mythic heroic deeds stamped monumental footprints on nearby and familiar landscapes. Later epic geographies happily assume, imitate, plagiarize from, and satirize Homer’s Heaven, Hell, and heroic earthly locales. Prose-writing ancient geographers argued about and corrected the alleged first geographer’s topoi and spaces. Immigrant inheritors of revolutionary British-Americans claim for nearly every mid-Atlantic coastal village, “Washington slept here.” Similarly the Homeric bards, leading their listeners by the ear or hand (Il. 4.541– 2), gave the later Hellenes legendary elements of their epichoric histories. The narratives thereby conferred symbolic value, on their hills, rivers, mountains, caves, springs, and on the astonishing, then and still now visible, remains of Mycenean forts and citadels, walls and tombs. Cyclopean circuits and structures,⁹² indeed, massive and primitive but impossible to surpass or even equal in scope and wild beauty, stand and remain, much like the Homeric poems themselves.

 Funeral barrows, fortified communities, and production and redistribution centers such as Sarpedon’s τέμενος, an extensive Lykian estate, etc., etc.  Lane Fox (2008) and Hall (2008) both discuss the genesis and reception of the hero Odysseus, his associates and his associations.  So called by Soph. fr. 227 Radt, Eur. El. 1158; Str. 8.6.2, etc.

Anthony T. Edwards

The Ethical Geography of Hesiod’s Works and Days I. Introduction

I have already discussed in an earlier publication the geographical contrast between the village and the πόλις that Hesiod constructs in Works and Days. ¹ In the present study I wish to focus upon the problem of the ethical value that Hesiod encodes in that divided landscape. To that end I will survey the places of the poem, the geography of Works and Days, focusing on the contrasting values with which Hesiod invests the opposing sites of κώμη and πόλις. I will then analyze the mythology of labor that Hesiod provides to account for the spatial-ethical division of his world. Finally, I will explore the effects of this primordial spatial separation on the moral order of the poem, which I hope thus to show to be spatially grounded. This project of assessing the places of Works and Days links my analysis to the phenomenological approach to geography, regarding the space occupied by humans as pregnant with inherent values that make it meaningful to them.² Communities invariably endow with values the spaces they adapt to their use. This intersection of a society’s ethical order with its spatial order defines the point of origin for place, socially valued space, whose moral component provides it with a quality of permanence and makes of it something worthy of defending against change.³ At the same time, however, locating such spatial values within the overarching contrast between distinct and antagonistic forms of settlement, the village and the πόλις, entails that the moral valuations of places in the poem are historically mediated and therefore both conventional and mutable. Exposing the contingency of the spatial order and of the communal values embedded in places requires a historically grounded analysis of space as something produced by material forces, as the artifact of a particular social formation, and as something in process. I assume as axiomatic that specific configurations

 Edwards 2004, 1– 8, 30 – 79, 176 – 84. I argue there that the opposition in Works and Days between village and πόλις is subsidiary, dependent upon that between the prosperous and the poor (Edwards 2004, 2– 8, 72– 3, 173 – 6).  Heidegger 1971 is fundamental to this approach; see also, e. g., Bachelard 1969 [1994], Tuan 1990, and Skempis (this volume), especially his valuable introduction.  On the concept of “place”, see Cresswell 2004.

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of social, political, and economic institutions produce their own organization of space. This spatiality supports those institutions in turn and is essential to a social formation’s ability to reproduce itself.⁴ It follows, moreover, that conflicts between different forms of settlement – πόλις and κώμη for example – are necessarily conflicts over the social organization of space and consequently conflicts over the values that different communities invest in places.

II. The Places of Works and Days Hesiod’s depiction of space frequently becomes elliptical and impressionistic. On the basis of what Hesiod tells us it is difficult to reconstruct the poem’s familiar geography, to determine where things and institutions that he mentions are located.⁵ His avoidance of such larger generic terms as ἀγρός (countryside), πόλις (city), ἄστυ (city, citadel), or ἐσχατιή (boundary land) in favor of more precise, smaller scale locales as ἔργον (farm), ἀγορή (town square), οἶκος (home), λέσχη (a public building), or κλῆρος (family plot), produces a certain geographical vagueness in the poem. As a result, the correspondences between some of Hesiod’s intimate haunts and the larger geographic zones to which they belong need to be worked out. Hesiod’s geography, moreover, is social. He is interested in the land in terms of its occupation and use by human communities. Even the limited interest in the natural landscape exhibited by Homer is absent from Hesiod’s geography. His preoccupation with the human uses to which the land is put produces a conception of space that is essentially ethical – pregnant with social values and grounded in the perspective of his village.

 Lefebvre 1991 is the founding study for this approach. See also e. g. Cosgrove 1998. Harvey (1996, 292– 326) offers a penetrating and illuminating analysis of the relationship between the phenomenological and materialist approaches. See Cresswell 1996, Harvey 1996, Tilley 1994, Ferguson 1997, and Loukaki 1997 as model analyses of the historical mediation of the values of place. Cf. Edwards 1993, Hölkeskamp 2004, 30 – 5, and Bexley (this volume).  Cf. Lateiner’s (this volume) excellent analysis of Homeric space from a social and psychological perspective.

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Ἔργον and Ἀγορή Within the geographic system of Works and Days the terms ἔργον and ἀγορή stand in opposition to each other as ἀγρός and πόλις.⁶ This opposition is introduced early on in the poem at lines 27– 41, providing a thematic frame for what will follow:⁷ Ὦ Πέρση, σὺ δὲ ταῦτα τεῷ ἐνικάτθεο θυμῷ, μηδέ σ’ Ἔρις κακόχαρτος ἀπ’ ἔργου θυμὸν ἐρύκοι νείκε’ ὀπιπεύοντ’ ἀγορῆς ἐπακουὸν ἐόντα. ὤρη γάρ τ’ ὀλίγη πέλεται νεικέων τ’ ἀγορέων τε ᾧτινι μὴ βίος ἔνδον ἐπηετανὸς κατάκειται ὡραῖος, τὸν γαῖα φέρει, Δημήτερος ἀκτήν. τοῦ κε κορεσσάμενος νείκεα καὶ δῆριν ὀφέλλοις κτήμασ’ ἐπ’ ἀλλοτρίοις. σοὶ δ’ οὐκέτι δεύτερον ἔσται ὧδ’ ἔρδειν· ἀλλ’ αὖθι διακρινώμεθα νεῖκος ἰθείῃσι δίκῃς, αἵ τ’ ἐκ Διός εἰσιν ἄρισται. ἤδη μὲν γὰρ κλῆρον ἐδασσάμεθ’, ἄλλα τε πολλὰ ἁρπάζων ἐφόρεις μέγα κυδαίνων βασιλῆας δωροφάγους, οἳ τήνδε δίκην ἐθέλουσι δικάσσαι. νήπιοι, οὐδὲ ἴσασιν ὅσῳ πλέον ἥμισυ παντὸς οὐδ’ ὅσον ἐν μαλάχῃ τε καὶ ἀσφοδέλῳ μέγ’ ὄνειαρ. Perses, store these words away in your heart. Do not let wicked Strife keep you from your farm, watching quarrels and attentive to the town square. For there is little time for quarrels and speeches if a man does not have enough of the season’s livelihood stored away, which the earth brings forth, the grain of Demeter. When you have a surplus of this, then you can start provoking quarrels and over other men’s possessions. But it will not be possible for you to do thus a second time. Rather let us decide our quarrel right here with straight judgments, which are from Zeus and the best. For we have already divided our plot, and you kept on seizing and taking many other things to honor the gift-eating kings, who wish to judge this suit – the fools, for they do not realize how much more the half is than the whole nor how great a gain there is in mallow and asphodel.

30

35

40

30 disputes 35

40

 This is, of course, a much-discussed contrast. See Edwards 1993 and, in general, Schönbeck 1962, Williams 1973, Elliger 1975, and Lateiner’s (this volume) efficient survey for Homer.  I reprise here with additional detail an analysis of these lines from Edwards 2004, 177– 8; see also 38 – 44 regarding the dramatic setting for this harangue. In line with this contrast see also Purves’ (this volume) discussion of the contrast between wild and civilized as well as that of Ormand (this volume). Haubold (this volume) discusses the spatialization of cultural difference.

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Lines 28 – 9 contrast ἔργον and ἀγορή, to which the bad Ἔρις draws Perses, as the respective sites of toil and of litigation.⁸ The phrase ἀγορῆς ἐπακουὸν ἐόντα (29) suggests, moreover, the status of a habitué much as θυμόν (28) suggests volition and desire rather than mere presence. This contrast of ἔργον and ἀγορή is restated in 30 – 2 between βίος… ἐπηετανός, the grain of Demeter brought forth by the earth, and the νεικῆ (i. e., the lawsuit, to which ἔρις also refers) and ἀγοραί, for which a man lacking a year’s supply of this βίος should have no leisure. The contrast is repeated for a third time in the slightly different terms of this livelihood won through one’s own labor (33, τοῦ κε κορεσσάμενος) and the possessions of others seized through νεῖκος and δῆρις (33 – 4). The first section of the passage (27– 34) contrasts the opposing sites of ἔργον and ἀγορή in terms of the labor invested in the one and the litigation that takes place in the other, and in terms of the livelihood extracted for oneself from the ἔργον over against the attempts made upon the possessions of others in the ἀγορή. That is to say, the two sites contrast with each other in terms of toil and indolence, abundance and lack, one’s own and another’s. In the remaining lines the emphatic αὖθι (35), as an alternative location for the νεῖκος to that of the ἀγορή of the βασιλῆες, restates the geographical opposition established at the beginning of the section between ἔργον and ἀγορή.⁹ Within this spatial contrast Hesiod opposes the ἰθείαι δίκαι sanctioned by Zeus to the δίκαι provided by the βασιλῆες δωροφάγοι, and the κλῆρος, which Hesiod clings to as the basis of his livelihood, to the ἀγορή, where litigation and deceit bring gain. Hesiod allies himself with the ἔργον, the locus of toil, livelihood, what is one’s own, and with justice (Zeus’s ἰθείαι δίκαι, 35 – 6), and locates Perses and the βασιλῆες in the ἀγορή, connected with indolence, want, the property of others, and crooked justice. He counsels that Perses flee the lawsuits of the city and cease meddling in the affairs of others in order to return to his own farm and tend to his own business. As we see, Hesiod does not specify the country and the city per se, ἀγρός and πόλις, but implies rather this larger regional contrast through the opposition of ἔργον and ἀγορή. The city emerges in these opening lines as a place where disputes are adjudicated, and as a consequence as a potential site of power

 See Jones 1984, 307– 9 regarding the importance of this opposition. It is occasionally difficult to distinguish between the meanings “toil” and “farm” for occurrences of ἔργον/ἔργα in Works & Days as I discuss below.  See West 1978 ad 35 for the spatial reference of αὖθι; contra, Verdenius 1985. Certainly doing something “now” entails doing it “here”. See Groningen 1957, 3 – 4 and Jones 1984, 314 n. 26. For the association of βασιλεύς with ἀγορή, see Th. 84– 93, 434– 30 (following Solmsen’s numbering).

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over the land and the rural population.¹⁰ Hesiod’s elliptical account suggests that rather than applying himself to the toil required by his ἔργον in order to secure a livelihood, Perses is drawn to the ἀγορή and πόλις where he seeks to remedy his resulting poverty through swindling others in court. From the perspective of the farmer the men of the ἀγορή pass their days without attending to their business, without laboring. In the ἀγορή the produce of the land and the land itself can be unjustly appropriated and consumed by those who do not work. I turn now to survey the values associated with these two sites elsewhere in Works and Days. ¹¹

Ἔργον: Wealth and Justice The ἔργον as a site (ἔργα is also used), the farm or fields, occupies the center of Hesiod’s ethical geography. Within the poem’s ethical system, the farm is identified not only as the site of toil, but of plenty and justice as well. It is the place where the successful farmer is to be found. The close, even overdetermined, identity between the fields and labor in the poem springs in the first place from the dual meanings of the word ἔργον itself: both “labor” and “farm”. That labor in Works and Days is almost exclusively that of agriculture heightens the synonymy of these two meanings.¹² The ἔργον-farm is thus exclusively the site of ἔργον-labor. This semantic and thematic overlapping produces such dense phrases as ἔργον ἐπ’ ἔργῳ ἐργάζεσθαι (382) and ἐργάζευ, νήπιε Πέρση,/ ἔργα (397– 8) as well as instances where it is not certain whether ἔργον ought  Hesiod states even more emphatically that this lawsuit is confined within the bounds of the city in a later passage observing of Zeus οὐδέ ἑ λήθει/ οἵην δὴ καὶ τήνδε δίκην πόλις ἐντὸς ἐέργει (268 – 9). This passage repeats the contrast at 256 – 64 of the crooked δίκαι of the βασιλῆες with the δίκη sanctioned by Zeus.  I discuss “Hesiod’s” and Perses’ positions within this contrast of ἔργον and ἀγορή at Edwards 2004, 176 – 84; see also 19 – 29.  For the meaning “labor”, “job” see, e. g., 311, 382, 398, 641– 2 (Hofinger [1978] s.v. II). Hofinger does not acknowledge the meaning “field”, “farm”, but the opposition of ἔργου at 28 to ἀγορῆς at 29 requires a spatial reference, “farm”; the epithet πυροφόροις at 549 (which is certainly the correct reading: see ad loc. Wilamowitz 1962, Solmsen 1970, and West 1978) similarly specifies the meaning “fields” for ἔργοις; and ἔργα at 231 modified by μεμηλότα (“cared for”, “worked”; cf. μελέτη at 380 and 412) again makes the best sense if taken as “fields”. To the ἔργα βοῶν at 46 cf. Od. 10.98, where the reference is clearly to “fields”, and to μινύθει… ἔργον at 409 cf. Il. 16.392. The meaning “farm”, or “field”, is preferable as well at 119, 494– 5, and 767. This meaning is well attested in Homer, who does attribute the meaning “fields” to Hesiodic contexts: see LfgrE s.v. and Cunliffe 1963 s.v. 12.c. See the comments of Descat 1986, 190 – 1 on ἔργον as labor in Works & Days.

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to be taken in the sense of “labor” or “field”. For example, at 316 ἔργον contrasts with ἀλλότρια κτέανα (315), another man’s possessions – either land or the produce of the land – and is equated with βίος (316), the produce of the fields. It is not clear whether ἔργον in this instance means “work” or “farm”, and since the work referred to is agricultural labor they mean close to the same thing in any case.¹³ Within Works and Days’ ethical system both prosperity and justice are associated with ἔργον as a site and as an activity. The association of riches with labor is thematized for the poem in the opening harangue where Hesiod tells how the good Ἔρις spurs even the shiftless man to emulate his neighbor who has become wealthy through energetic reaping and plowing (20 – 4). Many of the elements of this speech are echoed in a later passage (312– 19) urging Perses that if he will turn himself from the possessions of others (ἀπ’ ἀλλοτρίων κτεάνων, 315) and go to work, he will make the shiftless man envious of him as he grows wealthy (πλουτεῦντα, 313). Later (574– 7) Hesiod makes the connection between toil and prosperity more directly when he exhorts his audience to rise at dawn during harvest time in order to get in the crop and store away adequate βίος. In two passages, in fact, prosperity from Zeus is elided with what one gains through labor. At 379 – 80 Hesiod allows that even for a family with more mouths to feed, Zeus can provide inexhaustible wealth and then goes on to explain that there is more labor from more hands and as a result a greater surplus. The sense conveyed by these lines that wealth given by Zeus is identical in Hesiod’s mind with the product of the farmer’s labor is reinforced by the couplet at 473 – 4. Capping detailed instructions for plowing and sowing (458 – 72) Hesiod generalizes that a good harvest will thus be ensured but then qualifies his optimism with the condition that Zeus himself grant a good outcome. Here again what the farmer wins from the soil through his own toil is made contingent upon, and so the equivalent of, what Zeus gives. Hesiod, moreover, conceives of wealth in these passages strictly in terms of the produce of the land.¹⁴ This same relationship between toil, divine favor, and success lies behind Hesiod’s assertion (286 – 92) that the gods have placed sweat in front of the path to ἀρετή (289), the prestige that comes with success at farming.¹⁵

 Cf. Op. 34 where κτήμασ’ ἐπ’ ἀλλοτρίοις refers implicitly to Hesiod’s κλῆρος (37). See also occurrences of ἔργον at 440 and 443 – 4 for similar examples of ambiguity between “work” and “farm” or “field”.  This is specifically the meaning of ὄλβος at 379 – 80, where μελέτη expresses the idea of labor. For the idea that wealth is won from labor, see further 299 – 309, 392– 400 and 409 – 13. See Liebermann 1981, 392 on 299 – 301.  Cf. Op. 312– 3; see Edwards 2004, 111– 18.

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Hesiod, however, presents wealth not only as the result of labor but simultaneously as the reward of justice.¹⁶ Just behavior is defined negatively at 327– 34 through a list of injustices including harming suppliants and strangers, adultery with a kinsman’s wife, mistreating an orphan, or insulting aged parents. These same points are supplemented earlier in Works and Days in the description of the race of iron (183 – 9) by the sacking of cities in a list culminating in the crime of false-swearing (190 – 4). The just man and the one keeping his oath will receive no appreciation, but the man of ὕβρις will be honored and the wicked will harm the good with false testimony. These passages establish a range of crimes covered by ὕβρις, but the focus of that theme in Works and Days is upon false swearing. The passage following the fable of hawk and nightingale (212– 24) opens with the direct contrast of ὕβρις and δίκη (213 – 18) which is then exemplified in the specific terms of the conflict of Ὅρκος, god of oaths, and of Justice with the crooked judgments (σκολιῇσι δίκῃσι, 219, 221) of ἄνδρες… / δωροφάγοι (220 – 1), clearly renaming the kings of 38 – 9. Similarly, in a subsequent passage (274– 85), which in fact marks the culmination of the theme of justice in Works and Days, Hesiod opens with a generic contrast of δίκη with βίη that, following a praise of δίκη, is realized in specific terms as a contrast between those wishing to speak τὰ δίκαι’ (280) and those who purposely perjure themselves with false oaths (ἐπίορκον ὀμόσσας, 282; cf. 320 – 2). Taking these two passages together, false swearing appears to comprehend both the crooked judgments of kings and the false testimony of litigants.¹⁷ Presumably judges and litigants alike swore an oath to uphold justice. The focus of the central theme of justice upon the specific issue of oath-taking is the effect of Hesiod’s adaptation of that theme to the immediate context of Works and Days’ framing narrative, the threatened litigation between himself and Perses before the kings in the ἀγορή.¹⁸ The lines just noted at 274– 85 are significant not only for tying justice to the specific issue of oath-taking but also for asserting that Zeus grants prosperity, ὄλβος (281), to the one giving true testimony, which is exemplary of justice in this passage (275). The principle that prosperity is the reward of justice is evident as well in the description of the city of justice where “straight judgments” (δίκας…/ ἰθείας, 225 – 6) are compensated almost exclusively by the burgeoning

 See Detienne 1963, 48 – 51.  That Ὅρκος is said to pursue “crooked judgments” at 219 but is described as a πῆμ’ ἐπιόρκοις at 804 provides further confirmation that Hesiod places the judgments of the kings under the jurisdiction of oaths.  On the importance of oaths to Works & Days, see Gagarin 1986, 47– 50 and Durán 1999. In general on Hesiod’s notion of “justice”, see Dickie 1978. Pucci 1977, 69 – 74, analyzes the extent to which Hesiod identifies his own voice with the figure of Justice.

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fertility of the countryside (227– 37). Similarly the generation of heroes is characterized as more just (δικαιότερον, 158) than the bronze race and are subsequently described as ὄλβοι (172) upon the isles of the blessed where that epithet is glossed by reference to the marvelous fertility of the land (172– 3). The luxurious prosperity of the heroes on the isles of the blessed resembles, moreover, the abundance offered without toil to the just generation of gold. As we see, within the value system of Works and Days Hesiod designates prosperity as the reward both of labor and of justice, he views justice primarily in terms of oath-taking, and wealth is conceived of as the produce of the land.¹⁹ Hesiod’s repeated injunctions to Perses both to work and to follow the path of justice suggest that these two comprise a single option.²⁰ Similarly within the geographical opposition of ἔργον and ἀγορή of Hesiod’s opening harangue the options of labor and resorting to the judgments of the “gift-eating kings” are presented as mutually exclusive alternatives. If the “crooked judgments” (220 – 1, 249 – 50, 258, 261– 4) of the kings are not just, then the other alternative, toil, presumably is. As I have just argued, moreover, labor and justice are paired in the poem as twin sources of prosperity. One explanation of such an association is that justice – for Works and Days the avoidance of false-swearing – entails or equals in some sense labor. The logic of such an equation is rooted very firmly in the poem’s framing narrative of the conflict between Hesiod and Perses, which imposes upon the latter a choice between returning to his ἔργον or resorting to the βασιλῆας δωροφάγους. Within this controlling scenario the course of justice can only be to return to the farm. Certainly behind Hesiod’s invitation to judge their quarrel on the spot with ἰθείῃσι δίκῃς (36) lies the implicit assumption that if that proposal were followed, Perses would return to his own plot (27– 9) and abandon his claim against Hesiod’s property (34, κτήμασ’ ἐπ’ ἀλλοτρίοις). This implicit equation of labor with justice is strengthened by the sponsorship of the gods. Justice is herself a goddess wreaking vengeance upon mortals (220 – 4) and reporting to Zeus (256 – 62), and Zeus bestowed justice upon humanity in order to separate it from the beasts, who solve their differences through violence (276 – 80). Similarly the gods have appointed toil for men (398, cf. 42 and 47 ff.). Persisting at his labor, moreover, will cause Famine (Λιμός, 302) to hate Perses but Demeter to love him and fill his grain bin since the gods blame the shiftless man but love the diligent (299 – 309).²¹ In the con On the link between just behavior and prosperity, see Sihvola 1989, 49 – 51.  Perses should work: 27– 8, 299, 397– 8, 641– 2, cf. 611; Perses should hearken to justice: 213, 274– 5, cf. 286 – 92. See Welles 1967, 19 – 21, Heath 1985, 246, and Beall 2005/6, 174– 6.  Cf. Liebermann 1981, 392.

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trast of stolen (ἁρπακτά, 320) wealth with god-given (θεόσδοτα, 320) at lines 320 – 6 the specific development of the notion of wealth in Works and Days leaves it uncertain whether χρήματα… θεόσδοτα refers to the fruits of labor or to what has been won by justice. Justice and prosperity are also linked to each other within the epic topos of the good king, which I discuss below. In Works and Days this theme is realized in its normative form in the description of the utopian city of justice (225 – 37), where the straight judgments (δίκας, 225) and adherence to justice (δικαίου, 226) bring about a regime of peace and plenty for the community (227– 37). Yet, as I have tried to establish, within the limits of the poem’s framing scenario to put one’s hand to labor is in fact to pursue justice since to do so requires that one avoid the crooked judgments of the kings in the ἀγορή and consequently the wealth of others (ἀλλότρια) as well. Agricultural labor, prosperity, and justice form a coherent and integral ensemble within Works and Days’ ethical system since the prosperity won through toil forestalls the need which compels a man to seek his livelihood from another – either through begging or through some form of ὕβρις. At 410 – 13 Hesiod caps a warning to Perses to avoid begging by means of labor (381– 413) with a final caution against procrastination. Diligence prospers a farm, but a procrastinator always struggles with calamities (αἰεὶ δ’ ἀμβολιεργὸς ἀνὴρ ἄτῃσι παλαίει, 413). Desperation and perplexity are always the result of evading one’s work. So Hesiod initially can conceive of only two options for Perses, either returning to work or pursuing his lawsuit (27– 9). Later on in the poem Hesiod reformulates this pair of alternatives as a choice between work and begging (381– 404).²² Perses must work in order that he not find himself compelled to beg from his neighbors, who will not offer hand-outs indefinitely. So, as an illustration of the principle that hunger is the companion of an idler but from toil men become wealthy (299 – 308), Hesiod adduces the shiftless (ἀεργοί, 305) drones who consume the product of the bees’ work. It remains unclear whether the drones’ freeloading comprises a case of theft or of beggary since, lacking any explicit indication, either construction would be authorized by Works and Days’ perspective on the idler. In either case, however, the simile makes clear the terms of the relationship prevailing between the shiftless and the industrious, a relationship thematized for the poem in that between Perses and Hesiod. Hesiod sums up the straits in which the ἀεργός finds himself in a couplet at 498 – 9:

 The lines at 396 ff. (ὡς καὶ νῦν ἐπ’ ἔμ’ ἦλθες…) link 381– 413 with the initial address to Perses (27– 41) though the lawsuit has now given way to begging; cf. 473 – 8. On this transition, see Edwards 2004, 97– 9, 180 – 3.

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πολλὰ δ’ ἀεργὸς ἀνήρ, κενεὴν ἐπὶ ἐλπίδα μίμνων, χρηίζων βιότοιο, κακὰ προσελέξατο θυμῷ. An idle man, waiting on vain hope, lacking a livelihood, debates many wicked deeds in his mind.

The idler, waiting upon empty hope and lacking a livelihood as a consequence, turns his mind to crime (κακά).²³ In Hesiod’s moral universe the poverty resulting from shiftlessness invariably spawns either begging or injustice. As we see, then, Hesiod places ἔργον, both labor and the site of labor, at the ethical center of his poem.²⁴ Given the identity of labor in Works and Days with cultivation of the fields, Hesiod clearly spatializes moral values in the poem. He constructs an ethical geography investing the agricultural zone with his cardinal virtue of justice. Ἔργον is the source of wealth and comprises the path of justice. This principle remains implicit due to the association of labor with justice even in passages where wealth and justice alone are linked. Indeed, after a long list of crimes against relatives culminating in the warning that Zeus will punish such acts, Hesiod offers advice on how to propitiate the gods and win them over ὄφρ’ ἄλλων ὠνῇ κλῆρον, μὴ τὸν τεὸν ἄλλος (“so that you acquire someone else’s farm, not someone else yours”, 341).²⁵ The alternatives resulting from just and unjust behavior respectively are the prosperity enabling one to acquire still more land and the poverty compelling one to relinquish one’s plot. This passage expresses in a general way the relationship perceived by Hesiod between righteousness and prosperity. The climactic positioning of this warning, however, underlines the centrality of the land, and the legal, economic, and religious issues attached to it, within the broader system of ethical principles organizing his poem.²⁶ All of the poem’s conflicts, contrasts, injunctions, and prohibitions finally return to a focus upon the land.

 There is no clear consensus for this difficult line. The question turns on the meaning of προσλέγομαι and the specific connotation of κακά. The verb occurs neither in Homer nor otherwise in Hesiod, but I think that West’s (1978 ad loc.) comparison with Od. 5.298 (εἶπε πρὸς ὅν μεγαλήτορα θυμόν) is probably correct though Wilamowitz’s (1962 ad loc.) “… sammelt sich zu seinem θυμός… viel Übles” is also plausible. I take κακά here to refer not to self-criticism but to desperate criminal scheming. See Heath 1985, 246 – 51 and Jajlenko 1988, 97– 8 on the connection between shiftlessness and crime in Works & Days and cf. Σ 499a, 493a.8 – 10, and 496 bis.  See Hanson 1995, 91– 4 and 99 – 105.  Κλῆρος appears to be synonymous with ἔργον in the sense of “farm” or “field” but with the connotation of family holding. Cf. Op. 37 and Hes. fr. 37.12 M-W.  See Detienne 1963, 28 – 51.

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Κώμη Continuing with this survey of the geography of Works and Days, a site more closely related to the ἔργον than to the πόλις is the village, the κώμη. Hesiod informs us in one of the apparently biographical passages in Works and Days (639 – 40) that his father settled in the village of Ascra: νάσσατο δ’ ἄγχ’ Ἑλικῶνος ὀιζυρῇ ἐνὶ κώμῃ, Ἄσκρῃ, χεῖμα κακῇ, θέρει ἀργαλέῃ, οὐδέ ποτ’ ἐσθλῇ. He settled near Helicon in a miserable village, Ascra, bad in winter, grievous in summer, not ever good.

Using a word that does not occur in the Homeric epics, Hesiod tells us specifically that his father settled in a village, a κώμη, not in a πόλις. The distinction between πόλις and κώμη appears as well in a Hesiodic fragment narrating the exploits of Heracles where, apparently in reference to the sack of Oechalia, the poet states that Heracles ἔπραθεν ἱμερόεντα πόλιν, κε[ρ]άϊξε δὲ κώμας (“he sacked their beautiful city and pillaged their villages”, fr. 43a.62 M-W). Hesiod distinguishes the πόλις from the dwelling place of the λαός also at 222 in the phrase πόλιν καὶ ἤθεα λαῶν (cf. 137, 167– 8, 525, fr. 204.103) and at 527 in the phrase δῆμόν τε πόλιν τε. The poet expressly distinguishes the city proper from the surrounding villages, a geographical zone virtually invisible to Homer. ²⁷ Hesiod observes that in case of some disaster in the village (χρῆμ’ ἐγκώμιον ἄλλο, 344) a neighbor will come unclothed to help while an in-law will linger to dress (344– 5).²⁸ The passage provides a glimpse of a community of interest defined in terms of geographical proximity within the village, and the favorable contrast of neighbor with in-law evidences a relatively strong bond among neighbors. Hesiod extols the value of a good neighbor in this passage (342– 60) in terms of concrete benefits and discusses neighbors in terms of friendship, banquets, and sharing among households. Hesiod also advises selecting a wife from among one’s neighbors (700 – 1). While the degree of integration and cooperation

 Regarding the site of Ascra, see Bintliff/Snodgrass 1985, Snodgrass 1985, Fossey 1988, 142– 5, Gauvin/Morin 1992, and Wallace 1974. For additional evidence on πόλις and κώμη, see [Hes.] Sc. 18 – 19 (cf. Apollod. 2.50 – 60), and [Plat.] Min. 320d-c (= Hes. fr. 144.2 M-W). Homer might assume such settlements for his λαοὶ… ἀγροιῶται (Il. 11.676) or περικτίονες (Il. 18.211– 12, 19.101– 11, Od. 2.65 – 6). See Buck 1979, 100 and Edwards 1993, 30 – 3.  I prefer the reading ἐγκώμιον (Sinclair 1966, Solmsen 1970, Verdenius 1985, Wilamowitz 1962) to ἐγχώριον, (West 1978, Mazon 1914). Textual as well as archaeological evidence suggest that Hesiod assumes for himself in Works & Days a dwelling within the village rather than a homestead; see Edwards 2004, 133 – 4.

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among neighbors described by Hesiod may be limited, still the village provides the spatial context for mutuality and social bonds surpassed in Works and Days only by the οἶκος.²⁹ The κώμη comprises within the social geography of Works and Days an alternative form of settlement to the πόλις that is much more closely connected to the land and the life of agriculture. Much as the πόλις is represented in Works and Days by the ἀγορή, the chief feature of the κώμη is the οἶκος, associated in Hesiod’s mind with the bounty of the fields.³⁰ He is in particular preoccupied with the interior of the house as a protected zone where βίοτος is stockpiled. This perspective upon the house appears early in the poem in Hesiod’s opening address to Perses when he admonishes that there is no leisure for lawsuits and ἀγοραί for the man who has not laid away a year’s food “inside” (ἔνδον, 31). This association of the interior of the house with the stored product of the fields is repeated throughout the poem. For example, at 475 – 6 Hesiod congratulates Perses on the good harvest resulting from his advice: καί σε ἔολπα/ γηθήσειν βιότου αἰρεύμενον ἔνδον ἐόντος (“I expect you will be pleased drawing on the food stored inside”), and in a later passage he moves from the harvest to his next topic with the words αὐτὰρ ἐπὴν δὴ/ πάντα βίον κατάθηαι ἐπάρμενον ἔνδοθι οἴκου (“but once/ you’ve laid up all your livelihood secure within your house”, 600 – 1).³¹ This association of the house with the produce of the fields is focused upon the καλιή, the “granary”. The phrase Δημήτηρ/ αἰδοίη, βιότου δὲ τεὴν πιμπλῇσι καλιήν ( “that revered Demeter fill your granary with livelihood”, 300 – 1) suggests in connection with the strong association between the house itself and βίοτος that the καλιή is located in the village as an adjacent structure to the house. The καλιή is closely tied to the theme of labor and the abundance that it brings to the industrious man (306 – 7, 411– 12), and so to the values attached to the ἔργον. The presentation of οἶκος and καλιή as the repositories of βίοτος links the κώμη in which they are located even more intimately to the region of the ἔργον and the values associated with it.

 See Radermacher 1918, 3 – 16, Latte 1968, 252– 9, Weber 1978, 360 – 3, and Edwards 2004, 89 – 118.  See Spahn 1980, 538 – 41 and Millett 1984, 93 – 9.  See also Op. 363 – 7, 575 – 6; cf. 494– 5, 554– 6, 611, 632, 733. Equipment is also stored in the house: Op. 407, 422– 36, 452– 4, 627.

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Ἀγορή The ἀγορή is the antithesis of the ἔργον and what it stands for within the spatial ethics of Works and Days. In his opening harangue, introducing the contrast between these locales, Hesiod situates the ἀγορή within a nexus of themes that extend their influence across the poem as a whole.³² Δίκη, which as “justice” serves a central role especially in the first half of the poem, occurs in this introductory passage in the sense of “lawsuit” (τήνδε δίκην, 39) and in opposition to the “straight judgments” of Zeus (ἰθείῃσι δίκῃς, 36). The chain of terms leading up to this occurrence of δίκη-lawsuit begins with the wicked Ἔρις. Hesiod characterizes it as “worthy of blame” (ἐπιμωμητή, 13), “relentless” (σχετλίη, 15), “heavy” (βαρεῖαν, 16), the cause of war and “discord” (δῆριν, 14), and a divinity which no mortal loves but worships only due to the compulsion of the gods (15 – 16). This Ἔρις leads Perses from his farm to the ἀγορή where he observes “strife” (νείκε’, 29; cf. νεικέων τ’ ἀγορέων τε, 30). Hesiod refers to the effects of this Ἔρις again through the generics νείκεα καὶ δῆριν (33) and νεῖκος (35) before deploying the specific name of the “strife” of the ἀγορή, τήνδε δίκην (39). Hesiod equates the δίκη-lawsuit of the ἀγορή with Ἔρις κακόχαρτος, νεῖκος, and δῆρις, designating it as a disruptive and destructive force in the community.³³ The moral status of the ἀγορή as a site is largely expressed through Hesiod’s characterization of the suit with which Perses threatens him. The condemnation of Perses’ action, moreover, (Ἔρις κακόχαρτος, 28; ἁρπάζων ἐφόρεις, 38; βασιλῆας/ δωροφάγους, 38 – 9) can reasonably be taken to imply that Hesiod expects Perses to rely upon false-swearing to win his point before the kings.³⁴ Hesiod returns to the threatened lawsuit in a later passage addressed to the kings (248 – 73) in which he urges them too to give some thought to this lawsuit (τήνδε δίκην, 249) since the immortals keep their eyes on those practicing crooked judgments (σκολιῇσι δίκῃσιν, 250). Hesiod constructs this passage around a generic contrast between the justice sanctioned by the gods (254,  Op. 269 requires that the ἀγορή lie within the city; see Edwards 2004, 66. West 1978 ad 38 suggests that by βασιλῆας Hesiod refers to the descendants of the seven δημοῦχοι who in the historical period ruled Thespiae; cf. Broadbent 1968, 283 – 6. See also Buck 1979, 90 – 2 on the coalescence of incipient noble classes in the emergent cities while independent villages continued to survive.  Pucci (1977, 63 – 71) analyzes the equivalencies and oppositions into which δίκη is interwoven, including its relation to the ἀγορή.  See my analysis of relations among Hesiod, Perses, and kings at Edwards 2004, 38 – 44, 70 – 1. At this point Perses has only threatened to go before the kings, with whom his gifts have established a relationship of reciprocity (Edwards 1993, 41– 3) in a bid to gain leverage over Hesiod for further assistance.

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256, 259 – 61) and the crooked judgments practiced by the kings (250, 258, 260, 262– 4), who can expect retribution in return from the watchful gods. At length, however, he refocuses upon the topic announced in his initial address to Perses first through the phrase καί νυ τάδ’ (268) and then with the line οἵην δὴ καὶ τήνδε δίκην πόλις ἐντὸς ἐέργει (“what sort of a lawsuit/justice this is that the city holds within it”, 269) in which πόλις restates the theme of the ἀγορή and τήνδε δίκην recalls Perses’ threatened suit. Δίκη in the spatial context of the ἀγορή, the lawsuit, is tied, paradoxically, to perjury and injustice in Works and Days. Hesiod describes the prosperity held out by the ἀγορή, an alternative prosperity to that acquired from labor on the land, through the phrase κτήμασ’ ἐπ’ ἀλλοτρίοις (34). Rather than seeking a livelihood by means of his own labor on his own land, Perses prefers to lay claim in the ἀγορή to what is in truth the property of others. At 314– 16 Hesiod reverts to this theme when he warns Perses that working is better εἴ κεν ἀπ’ ἀλλοτρίων κτεάνων ἀεσίφρονα θυμὸν/ ἐς ἔργον τρέψας μελετᾷς βίου (“if, turning your witless mind from the possessions of others towards work, you take pains for your own livelihood”, 315 – 16). The gnome following only a few lines later χρήματα δ’ οὐχ ἁρπακτά, θεόσδοτα πολλὸν ἀμείνω (“property must not be stolen; what is given by god is better by far”, 320), recalls the phrase ἁρπάζων ἐφόρεις (38) from the initial speech to Perses, describing how Perses has apparently carried off jointly held property to make gifts to the kings. Ἁρπακτά and θεόσδοτα, moreover, contrast in this line much as the fruits of judicial theft differ from the product of one’s own labor in Hesiod’s initial harangue. As glosses on ἁρπακτά Hesiod contrasts force of hands (χερσὶ βίῃ) with theft through words (ἀπὸ γλώσσης ληίσσεται, 322), thus equating the lying speech used in the litigation of the ἀγορή with physical violence. The conflicting alternatives of wealth won by one’s own labor and the attempt to acquire the property of another through intrigue are fundamental to Works and Days’ vision of the world.³⁵ These alternatives are spatialized by Hesiod through the contrast of ἔργον and ἀγορή. The σκολιαί δίκαι purveyed by the judges in the ἀγορή are also equated with false-swearing and characterized as examples of ὕβρις. In the passage introducing the paired descriptions of the city of δίκη and the city of ὕβρις Hesiod urges Perses to hearken to δίκη and abandon ὕβρις since the former always wins out in the end (213 – 18). This contrast is developed in terms of the conflict of the deities

 See Op. 305 – 6 (cf. Th. 599) and 381– 95. The association of ease with living off of another’s toil is evident as well in the contrast of the ἡμερόκοιτος ἀνήρ (605), the “day sleeper” or thief, with Hesiod’s warnings that a successful farmer must rise at dawn (574– 5, 578 – 81).

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Ὅρκος, “oath”, and Δίκη with the σκολιαὶ δίκαι of ἄνδρες δωροφάγοι, “gift-devouring men”, the same as the kings of the poem’s opening harangue (219 – 24). The introduction of Ὅρκος as the avenger of “crooked judgments” incriminates such judicial acts as a form of false-swearing, much as the perjury of Perses.³⁶ These “crooked judgments”, moreover, exemplify ὕβρις and indeed comprise the salient form of ὕβρις for Works and Days. The appeal itself, finally, to hearken to δίκη and not to foster ὕβρις, repeats in ethical terms the spatial reference points of Hesiod’s initial exhortation to Perses not to abandon his ἔργον and hearken to the ἀγορή (28 – 9). A similar configuration of values occurs at 190 – 1 where in his description of the generation of iron Hesiod opposes the man who keeps his oaths (εὐόρκου), the just man (δικαίου), and the good man (ἀγαθοῦ) to the perpetrator of evil (κακῶν ῥεκτῆρα) and the man of ὕβρις (ὕβριν/ ἀνέρα). A final passage repeats the contrast of δίκη and ὕβρις found at 213 but in terms of δίκη and βίη (275). Here too the concrete terms in which this generic contrast is realized are those of true testimony and breaking one’s oath through false testimony (280 – 3).³⁷ The false swearing that typifies Hesiod’s ἀγορή casts that site as the locus of ὕβρις for the poem. In the opening speech to Perses Hesiod urges his brother not to permit the bad Ἔρις to draw him from his ἔργον – both “farm” and “labor” – to the ἀγορή. Only a few lines earlier Hesiod has praised the good Ἔρις for stirring even a lazy man (καὶ ἀπάλαμόν περ ὁμῶς, 20) to work in rivalry with the wealth of his industrious neighbor. Implicit to the contrast between Perses and the ἀπάλαμος who is nonetheless motivated to labor lies the judgment that Perses pursues the path of injustice in the ἀγορή chiefly out of indolence, in flight from his ἔργον. The theme of laziness recurs across Works and Days, but in Perses’ case it is linked to litigation and the ὕβρις of the town square. The peculiar prosperity of the ἀγορή is the product of indolence, not labor. As I have argued, Hesiod characterizes the ἔργον as a place of toil, justice, and prosperity. The ἀγορή in contrast is implicated in ὕβρις, the opposite of δίκη in Works and Days. Hesiod associates it with ease as the refuge of the shiftless such as Perses who flee their plots and seek out the aid of the βασιλῆες there. The ἀγορή also possesses its own prosperity in the form of ἀλλότρια, the possessions of others, with which loafers like Perses, much as the workless

 An equation of perjury with rendering “crooked judgments” is further suggested by the parallel between lines 258 and 282– 3 in which “hindering” (βλάπτῃ, 258; βλάψας, 283) justice is glossed respectively by crooked judgments (σκολιῶς ὀνοτάζων; cf. West 1978 ad 258) and by giving false testimony (ἐπίορκον ὀμόσσας, 282).  West 1978 ad 275 notes that that line repeats the contrast of δίκη with ὕβρις and compares Il. 16.387– 8.

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drones (305 – 6), can enrich themselves. Hesiod warns, however, that such wealth, in contrast to what is god-given (320, θεόσδοτα), is short-lived. For when someone seizes great wealth by force or loots it with the tongue, this wealth remains in his possession only a short time (παῦρον δέ τ’ ἐπὶ χρόνον ὄλβος ὀπηδεῖ, 326). At 352 Hesiod generalizes μὴ κακὰ κερδαίνειν· κακὰ κέρδεα ἶσ’ ἄτῃσι. Illicit profits are no gain at all but the equivalent rather of ἄται (“ruin”, “calamity”).³⁸ The status of such ill-gotten gains for Works and Days is illuminated at 214– 16 where Hesiod tells us that ὕβρις leads a man into ἅται. By contrast neither famine (Λιμός) nor ἄτη pursue men of straight judgment (ἰθυδίκῃσι μετ’ ἀνδράσι, 230). The theme that ill-gotten prosperity lasts only for the short term and that over the duration it results in further losses runs throughout Works and Days and in fact stands at its ethical core as the corollary of the principle that prosperity can be won by toil alone. This is precisely the point of the gnome addressed to the kings at the conclusion of Hesiod’s opening harangue that the half is more than the whole and there is a benefit in a diet of mallow and asphodel (40 – 1). He warns them that the wealth reaped from the likes of Perses in exchange for their crooked judgments will profit them only for the moment and will shortly turn to ruin.³⁹ True δίκη, however, labor upon one’s own plot, brings, as I have discussed, ὄλβος. The ensemble of justice, labor, and plenty native to the ἔργον is matched in the ἀγορή by the trio of ὕβρις, ease, and a prosperity with ruin hot on its heels.⁴⁰ Only in his vision of the city of justice (225 – 37), defined in contrast to the city of violence, does Hesiod offer a positive portrayal of the ἀγορή. The reference to “judgments” (δίκας, 225) in the first line of the passage draws our attention to the ἀγορή and the actions of the βασιλῆες, essential elements of Hesiod’s πόλις. The straight justice that is the defining characteristic of this city’s ἀγορή and βασιλῆες, reminiscent of the generation of gold but generally untypical of the city in Works and Days, unexpectedly, however, refocuses the description of this πόλις upon the countryside, the land and its fertility: εἰρήνη δ’ ἀνὰ γῆν κουροτρόφος (228); οὐδέ… λιμός (230); μεμηλότα ἔργα νέμονται (231); φέρει μὲν γαῖα πολὺν βίον (232); οὔρεσι δὲ δρῦς/ … φέρει βαλάνους… μελίσσας (232– 3); ὄιες μαλλοῖς καταβεβρίθασι (234); καρπὸν δὲ φέρει ζείδωρος ἄρουρα

 Cf. the formulation at Op. 356: ἅρπαξ δὲ κακή, θανάτοιο δότειρα. Similarly the procrastinator (413, ἀμβολιοεργός) also struggles with ἄται since, as I have shown, shiftlessness leads to attempts to seize the livelihood of the diligent.  For this sentiment see also Op. 89, 213 – 18, 265 – 6, 320 – 6, 333 – 4, 352, 356 – 62, 760 – 4. The comments of Verdenius (1985 ad 40 – 1) are to the point.  Heath (1985, 246), in a brief but lucid analysis, comes to similar conclusions.

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(237).⁴¹ The reign of justice within the city, for the ἀγορή is the site where kings dispense their judgments, produces abundance and bounty outside the walls, in the fields. This depiction of the city of justice represents the villager’s conception of the ideal city, one that in its justice simply evaporates from the landscape and leaves behind it a utopian fertility in the countryside. Importing the straight justice of the rural region into the heart of the city, paradoxically, liberates the ἔργον of the city’s malign influence, the effect of its customary injustice, and leaves it free to flourish. These lines present a conventional epic topos, the theme of the good king. In the Odyssey (19.109 – 14) and in a related passage in Theogony (81– 93) the topos serves to build the reputation and celebrity of the king.⁴² The negative view of the city that predominates in Works and Days, however, redirects the emphasis of this theme away from its customary focus upon the king and towards the bounty of the countryside as a region distinct from the city. The prominent position occupied in the poem by toil on the land as the sole source of prosperity and as the essence of justice and by Hesiod’s condemnation of the πόλις as the refuge of sloth and judicial meddling drives the city and its elite from the spotlight. A celebration of the agricultural region as the true locale of fertility and justice results from this peculiar contextualization of the theme of the good king.⁴³ For Works and Days the city of justice marks the ideal against which the violent ἀγορή of Thespiae must be judged as much as the depraved city of violence. The city of ὕβρις exemplifies a city dominated by its ἀγορή and represents for Hesiod the sort of place to which Perses threatens to resort. I have already discussed the specificity of ὕβρις in Works and Days to the dealings of the ἀγορή, false-swearing in particular, and the σχέτλια ἔργα of the city of ὕβρις (238), in their opposition to the δίκας… ἰθείας of 225 – 6, promise more of the same. The descriptions of the two cities share the motifs of the fertility of women (235, 244), famine (230, 242– 3), and the vitality of the population (227, 243), but the emphasis placed upon the fertility of the land for the city of justice  See Il. 18.502– 8, for the ἀγορή and straight judgments. The description of the city of justice echoes elements of the characterization of the golden age. To Op. 231– 2 compare 118 – 19 and to 237 compare 117. Note also the correspondence of his comments on sailing at 236 – 7 to 45 and 633 – 8. See Vernant 1960, 32 and Pucci 1977, 105 – 7.  The theme also appears at 170 – 3a where it adds to the glory of the heroes inhabiting the isles of the blessed and it may stand behind the complex of wealth, justice, and kingship at 122 – 6 (see Verdenius 1985 ad 126). Od. 11.134– 7 also offers a hint of the topos. West 1978 ad 225 – 47 collects further examples from other literatures.  Cf. Edwards 1993, 46 – 8. The theme that the λαός or δῆμος must pay for the injustice of a wicked king is the inverse of the topos: 238 – 47, 258 – 62, Hesiod fr. 30.10 – 19, Il. 16.384– 92, 24.25 – 30.

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is countered in the city of violence by Zeus’s retribution upon the πόλις proper: the destruction of armies, the city’s wall, and its ships (246 – 7).⁴⁴ The contrast delineated here between the righteous city and the wicked suggests that the boundary between city and country is attenuated under the regime of δίκη but is affirmed under ὕβρις. The city of violence expresses in brief the character which Hesiod assigns to his own iron age and to the city of the kings, and it is the role of the city of justice to serve as a foil to these, a utopian vision of the city which causes the normative characterization of the city in Works and Days to appear all the more grim.

Θῶκοι, Λέσχη, and the Blacksmith’s Hesiod mentions several sites that are difficult to tie with certainty to either village or πόλις. At 574 he advises to avoid σκιεροὺς θώκους when it is time for the grain harvest. This site is clearly distinct from the χαλκεῖον θῶκον of 493, the blacksmith’s forge. The basic meaning of θῶκος is “chair”, “seat”, and the term has strong connections with the ἀγορή. ⁴⁵ At Hes. fr. 1.6 M-W, moreover, θόωκοι occurs in a context where it refers to festivals of some sort, paralleling the festivities set in the ἀγορή at Th. 435 (cf. 91 and Sc. 201– 6, 305 – 13). The external evidence would suggest that the σκιεροὶ θῶκοι lie within the city and double as both a ceremonial space and a cool retreat for loafers. Hesiod pointedly warns against such unproductive idling. Much as with the σκιεροὶ θῶκοι, Hesiod recommends passing by the companionable distractions of the blacksmith’s forge and the warm λέσχη (Πὰρ δ’ ἴθι χάλκειον θῶκον καὶ ἐπαλέα λέσχην, 493) even when it seems too cold to work outside. Λέσχη in fact closely parallels θῶκος semantically. Chantraine proposes that λέσχη is derived from *λεχ-σκα related to λέχομαι and meaning a seat or place to sit.⁴⁶ The word in fact comes to mean “small talk” or “chatter” and is repeatedly glossed as φλυαρία. Yet λέσχη commonly refers to serious political deliberations, the assembly as a body, and even the council chamber, again paral-

 In this line, the phrase ξύμπασα πόλις (240) may refer to the city alone and not the surrounding territory: cf. πᾶσαν δὲ πόλιν θαλίαι τε χοροί τε/ ἀγλαΐαι τ’ εἶχον. τοὶ δ’ αὖ προπάροιθε πόληος/ νῶθ’ ἵππων ἐπιβάντες ἐθύνεον, Sc. 284– 6; contra, Verdenius 1985 ad 162, LSJ s.v. III.  See Od. 2.26 and 15.468, for which the scholiast glosses εἰς θῶκον] εἰς βουλήν. For the link between a ceremonial chair and the assembly place, see Od. 2.10 – 14, 5.3, 12.318 – 19, Il. 8.438 – 45, and 1.532– 6 (with 20.4– 6 where the Olympian ἀγορή is located Διὸς πρὸς δῶμα).  Chantraine 2009 s.v.

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leling the semantic range of θῶκος.⁴⁷ It is also characterized as a hangout for the idle poor. Melantho, for example, likewise pairs the blacksmith’s and the λέσχη as refuges for slackers (Od. 18.327– 9). It is safe to infer that it is a building, heated by a fire, and located within the πόλις where the men of the area can go idly to shoot the breeze but whose official purpose is of a civic nature.⁴⁸ Evidence suggests that these sites lie within the πόλις, but there can be no certainty. Hesiod is distrustful of these locations as snares for the lazy but he hardly exhibits towards them the hostility that he reserves for that other sink of indolence, the ἀγορή. These haunts are a danger only to the fools who take refuge there against summer’s heat and winter’s cold, but the litigations of the ἀγορή are a threat to the diligent as well. Even if, moreover, we assume them to be located rather in the village, they are nevertheless inscribed within Works and Days’ geography of labor and ease in opposition to the ἔργον.

Πόντος Within the spatial contrasts of Works and Days the sea comprises a third and almost intermediate space. The sea is not, of course, socially produced space in the way that a city or farm is – physically refashioned to serve human ends – but it is exploited as a medium for networks and relationships among nodes of social space.⁴⁹ Its simultaneous resistance to transformation through human effort and its location amid places created for human use nevertheless establishes the sea as a specific type of space and invests it with specific associations and values. In particular some have seen the passage devoted to seafaring in Works and Days, the so-called Nautilia (618 – 94), as a portal into the epic space of the war at Troy and poetic competition or into the space of the itinerant epic singer. Others have mined the Nautilia for evidence on the state of trade in Archaic Greece.⁵⁰ It is trade that explicitly attracts Hesiod’s attention in Works  The λέσχη is consistently characterized as a τόπος δημόσιος (cf. the intriguing lines at Od. 20.262– 5). See Chantraine 2009 and LSJ s.v. λέσχη along with other words formed on λεσχ-. Cf. Σ ad Hes. Op. 493 – 5 and Σ ad Od. 18.329 as well as Thgn. 613, Heraclit. fr. 5.5 – 7 D, A. Ch. 665 – 7 and Eu. 365, S. Ant. 161 (to which cf. Vita Herodotea Homeri 141– 59).  The accepted interpretation of ἐπαλέα at 493 seems to be “warm” rather than “crowded”. See West 1978 ad loc. Σ 493b quotes Neoptolemus to the effect that λέσχην εἶναι ὄνομα αὐλῆς ἐν ᾗ πῦρ ἐστι.  See Vlassopoulos 2007, 162– 5 and 168 – 81, regarding the role of such interconnecting networks.  For the Nautilia as a metaphor for poetic competition, see Rosen 1990, Steiner 2005, and Tsagalis 2009, 152– 7; for the Nautilia and the itinerant singer, see Martin 1984; for the Nautilia

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and Days. As a space, moreover, that is beyond human management, the sea is distinguished by the dangers that await those who venture there, a theme which Hesiod employs in his warning against being at sea too late in the season and in his description of spring sailing (673 – 94).⁵¹ Hesiod explicitly inscribes maritime trade within the category of labor (ἔργον) and the seasonal cycle of agricultural tasks with his injunction at 641– 2: τύνη δ’, ὦ Πέρση, ἔργων μεμνημένος εἶναι ὡραίων πάντων, περὶ ναυτιλίης δὲ μάλιστα. But you, Perses, be mindful of all your tasks according to season, especially regarding seafaring.

It is a repeated theme of work in the poem that the farmer must complete his tasks in sequence and in season (ὡραῖος), so the use of this epithet along with the noun ἔργον itself establishes trade undertaken at sea as a counterpart to his normal labors on the land.⁵² The equation suggested, moreover, between staying off the sea out of season and working the land instead (γῆν δ’ ἐργάζεσθαι, 623) implies that the two endeavors are complementary, the types of labor appropriate each to its own season. Similarly, to characterize the absence of toil through the image of the steering oar hanging above the hearth (45 – 6, cf. 629 – 30) clearly includes sailing in the poem’s privileged category of work. At lines 646 – 9 Hesiod announces the Nautilia’s theme once again with the invitation to Perses to turn his foolish mind towards trade (ἐπ’ ἐμπορίην τρέψας ἀεσίφρονα θυμόν, 646) and to flee debt and hunger (χρέα τε προφυγεῖν καὶ λιμὸν ἀτερπέα, 647) by learning from Hesiod the measures of the thundering sea (μέτρα πολυφλοίσβοιο θαλάσσης, 648). The phrase ἀεσίφρονα θυμόν occurs at 315 to urge Perses to redirect his attention away from others’ possessions and towards work (ἔργον) and similarly at 334 away from a multitude of unjust deeds (ἄδικα ἔργα). The ἀεσίφρονα θυμόν appears to be one turned in the wrong direction, so the invitation here to redirect it towards trade would imply the legitimacy of that pursuit alongside farming as a form of ἔργον. At 404, moreover, the evasion of debt and hunger (χρειῶν τε λύσιν λιμοῦ τ’ ἀλεωρήν) through seafarand the economy of Archaic Greece, see Mele 1979 and Tandy 1997, with citations and discussion at Edwards 2004, 44– 8.  See West 1978 ad 686; cf. Solon 13.43 – 6 W. See also Lateiner’s (this volume) analysis of Homer’s presentation of sea travel.  Cf. ὡραῖον… πλόον at 630 and 665; ὡραῖος linked to labor or the fruits of labor appears at 31– 2, 306 – 7, 392– 3, 616 – 17. See West 1978, 253 and Jones 1984, 307– 16. Th. 440 refers to fishing as a form of work at sea: οἳ γλαυκὴν δυσπέμφελον ἐργάζονται. Haubold (this volume) discusses a fascinating vision of life on the sea unimagined in Works and Days.

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ing recapitulates the exhortation to work occurring a few lines earlier (391– 4, 397– 8). Hunger (λιμός) appears also as the companion of those who will not work (299 – 302) and afflicts the inhabitants of the city of wickedness (242– 3), but it lets alone men of straight judgment (ἰθυδίκῃσι) to dwell upon their cultivated fields (230 – 1). The vocabulary of 646 – 9 within the web of associations created by Works and Days clearly aligns seafaring with the values of work and justice. The ἀγορή differs from seafaring in that it is not fixed within the cycle of seasonal tasks and its characteristic activities are not regarded by Hesiod as work. Yet, maritime trade and the ἀγορή are linked in so far as both offer κέρδος. Neither of the two specific voyages mentioned by Hesiod in the Nautilia, his own voyage to Euboean Chalcis to compete for prizes (650 – 60) and his father’s voyage of emigration from Cyme to Ascra (633 – 40) in flight from poverty rather than riches, was undertaken for trade although both were made in pursuit of rewards if not explicitly κέρδος.⁵³ The word κέρδος itself occurs outside the Nautilia as many times as within. Lines 322– 4 refer obliquely to the behavior of Perses by reference to robbery with the tongue (ἀπὸ γλώσσης ληίσσεται, 322) that occurs when κέρδος beguiles the mind and shamelessness supplants shame (αἰδῶ δέ τ’ ἀναιδείη κατοπάζῃ, 324). In these lines Hesiod ties κέρδος to the theme of false-swearing that, as I discuss below in more detail, is linked in Works and Days to the kings and the ἀγορή. At 352 in a passage discussing relations between neighbors Hesiod enjoins Perses that he not win profit wickedly, and that wicked profits are the same as ruin (μὴ κακὰ κερδαίνειν· κακὰ κέρδεα ἶσ’ ἄτῃσι, 352). These lines caution against attempting to profit from exchanges with neighbors that ought to promote reciprocity. These passages draw κέρδος within the orbit of the general greed and lawlessness, focused upon the space of the ἀγορή, against which Hesiod struggles. As I have shown, Hesiod certainly prizes the stored food that the farmer brings in from his fields but he does not refer to it as κέρδος. Yet the gain that proceeds from maritime trade is designated as κέρδος with no apparent sinister connotation. So, at 631– 3 Hesiod recommends hauling one’s boat down to the shore and loading it with cargo in order to bring home κέρδος (644) and at 643 – 5 he advises a larger vessel for a larger cargo that will return greater κέρδος. The negative connotations attached in Works and Days to κέρδος of ἄτη, ἀναιδείη, ἀπάτη, and ληϊστύς are shed at sea where this “profit” is the product of legitimate labor that is firmly anchored

 These lines on Hesiod’s father’s emigration from Cyme are introduced as a comparison (ὥς περ ἐμός τε πατὴρ καὶ σός…/ πλωίζεσκ’ ἐν νηυσί, 632– 3). It is clear from lines 633 – 4 that the point of comparison is the journey by sea itself (629 – 30a) rather than maritime trade (630b-1).

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within the cycle of seasonal ἔργα. In fact, the parallel ideas of lines 644 (μείζων μὲν φόρτος, μεῖζον δ’ ἐπὶ κέρδεϊ κέρδος), dealing with the ratio of cargo to κέρδος, and 380 (πλείων μὲν πλεόνων μελέτη, μείζων δ’ ἐπιθήκη), concerning the ratio of labor inputs to the size of the harvest, suggest that Hesiod did attribute to farming and the labor of the countryside a “profit” or “gain”, designated here as ἐπιθήκη. As a place, then, the sea is posed between the positive values of ἔργον ὡραῖον since it is, no doubt, the surplus crop from his fields that Hesiod envisions committing to trade, and the κέρδος that he eyes with a physiocrat’s skepticism. To sum up at this point, for Hesiod the ἔργον comprehends the values of toil, livelihood, abundance, what is one’s own, and above all straight justice. In contrast the ἀγορή is the locus of litigation, indolence, the acquisition of others’ possessions, and of the crooked justice and ὕβρις of the kings. The οἶκος as a subsidiary site of the village is linked to the ἔργον as the repository for its produce. The contrast, as we see, between the farm and the town square dominates the poem’s ethical geography, its phenomenology of place. The πόλις, otherwise so central and so visible in Greek literature and culture, effectively disappears from view in this poem except for a single location, the ἀγορή. Even the ἀγορή, moreover, appears only as the site of judicial proceedings. Similarly, were we to rely upon Works and Days alone, we would never guess that the kings might also run the city, lead the army, or own land.⁵⁴ The ἀγορή represents the πόλις as a whole within Works and Days and functions in that capacity as a distorted and interested representation. So much is evident from the simultaneous presence in Works and Days of a more positive treatment of the city, for example, in his presentation of the Euboean city of Chalcis (650 – 62),⁵⁵ or in the contrast of the city of justice with that of ὕβρις (225 – 47). Hesiod’s use in these two passages of the encomiastic self-conception of the city familiar from Homer’s poetry – the first to enhance his own reputation as a poet and the second as a mere foil to the more salient depiction of the city of ὕβρις – reveals the πόλις of Works and Days as a studied distortion, one side from a dispute over the meaning of place.

 Regarding the role of βασιλῆες in Ascra, see Edwards 2004, 64– 77 and 118 – 23. Hesiod’s effacement of the city in Works & Days is discussed at Welles 1967, 9 – 11, Spahn 1980, 544– 5, Millett 1984, 90 – 3, and Edwards 2004, 176 – 84.  Hesiod’s abandonment of the persona of farmer in favor of that of poet and the specificity of these lines suggests that they recount a historical event though there can be no certainty that the reference is not fictive or generic. See Rosen 1990, Pucci 1996, 200 – 4, and Edwards 2004, 19 – 25.

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The πόλις as a human transformation of the landscape arose from a specific set of social, political, and economic relations. Similarly Hesiod’s κώμη as a social institution comprises a historically produced space. As the spatial dimension of a community, the κώμη depicted by Hesiod presupposes the existence of self-sufficient farmers free to organize themselves as a community according to their mutual interests much as Homer’s πόλις presupposes a hierarchized community in which a martial elite benefits from the control of land and labor.⁵⁶ Each site consequently produces its own representation of space, and each of these representations is equally partial and distorted although the stridency of Hesiod’s assault on the βασιλῆες may suggest a moment of heightened confrontation.

III. Ἔργον, Ἀγορή, and the Generation of Gold Hesiod provides in Works and Days a mythic account for the origin of the spatial division separating the village as the locus of justice, prosperity, and toil from city as the locus of injustice, short-lived prosperity, and ease that thus projects this spatial opposition onto the chronological axis of myth time. In Hesiod’s explanation the event precipitating this fundamental split in human geography is the imposition of labor as an element of the human condition. Hesiod turns to the origins of labor in the lines (42– 52) concluding his opening harangue to Perses and introducing the story of Pandora. Through these lines he offers verification of his central theme that livelihood can be acquired only through work.⁵⁷ As Hesiod explains: Κρύψαντες γὰρ ἔχουσι θεοὶ βίον ἀνθρώποισιν. ῥηιδίως γάρ κεν καὶ ἐπ’ ἤματι ἐργάσσαιο, ὥστε σε κεἰς ἐνιαυτὸν ἔχειν καὶ ἀεργὸν ἐόντα· αἶψά κε πηδάλιον μὲν ὑπὲρ καπνοῦ καταθεῖο,

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 Regarding the social and economic arrangements supporting the political order of the πόλις system as it is presented by Homer, see Qviller 1981, and Donlan 1989. I analyze the organization of Hesiod’s community and its relations with Thespiae in Edwards 2004, 30 – 126.  The role of this myth and the myth of the races as etiologies of labor is discussed by Welles 1967, 14– 17, Walcot 1970, 84– 7, Pucci 1977, 82– 3, Liebermann 1981, 404– 8, Rowe 1983, 132– 5, Descat 1986, 188 – 9, Sihvola 1989, 39 – 42. Contra, see Beall 2005/6, 161– 4. To inject a judicious note of caution, I believe that these two segments were placed in Works & Days to provide etiologies of labor, but I acknowledge that that purpose alone cannot encompass the multiple ramifications of such rich and complex narratives.

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ἔργα βοῶν δ’ ἀπόλοιτο καὶ ἡμιόνων ταλαεργῶν. ἀλλὰ Ζεὺς ἔκρυψε χολωσάμενος φρεσὶ ᾗσιν For the gods keep men’s livelihood hidden. Indeed, you could easily have worked even for a day to keep yourself for a year, though remaining idle. Immediately you could hang your steering oar over the fireplace and the toils of oxen and hardworking mules would cease. But Zeus, because of the anger in his heart, hid it.

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It would be possible for men to labor for only a day to produce enough to live from for a year even though remaining otherwise at ease (ἀεργὸν ἐόντα, 44) except that Zeus has hidden their livelihood (βίον, 42) from men in anger, as Hesiod goes on to explain, over Prometheus’s theft of fire. Hesiod returns to this introductory theme toward the end of the Pandora segment (90 – 2) when he tells us that formerly the human race lived upon the land without evils (disease and death) and without harsh toil (χαλεποῖο πόνοιο, 91). These lines reassert the priorities of the framing narrative, the origins of labor as an explanation of why individuals such as Perses must work, in the face of the Pandora narrative’s local emphasis upon λυγρά and νοῦσοι.⁵⁸ It is Zeus’s κρύψις βίου that marks the watershed between a utopian golden age when mankind neither suffered disease and death nor endured harsh labor and the present degenerate state in which these ills are daily reality. The Pandora narrative responds to the preceding harangue of Perses by offering an etiology of labor. Hesiod specifies, moreover, that the labor imposed upon men by Zeus’s malevolent regime is not surprisingly agricultural labor, the necessity of toiling in order to gain one’s βίος. Hesiod introduces the theme of a utopian golden age for the first time in Works and Days only to recount how it was irrevocably lost along with the possibility of a life combining plenty and justice with ease. The preceding Pandora narrative has provided an account of how men and gods lived alike until the institution of sacrifice separated them, an event chiefly marked by the imposition of labor upon men. The story of the generations of man (Op. 106 – 201), following immediately on the Pandora narrative, sets out to provide an account of the same event, how men once possessed a livelihood similar to the gods’ (ὡς ὁμόθεν γεγάασι θεοὶ θνητοί τ’ ἄνθρωποι, 108) but now have fallen from the utopian circumstances enjoyed by the generation of

 As West (1978) points out in his introductory comments to line 42, Hesiod has some difficulties adapting the Pandora story to the theme of the origins of labor. Apropos of that theme, however, see Sihvola 1989, 39 – 42. See also Pucci 1977, 92.

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gold.⁵⁹ The focus in lines 112– 15, where Hesiod picks up again the comparison of men to gods (ὥστε θεοὶ δ’ ἔζωον, 112), upon freedom from labor and evasion of old age thematizes these elements as central to the segment. As West points out,⁶⁰ the generations of man narrative takes an unexpected turn from the central issue of labor to those of injustice, violence, and godlessness, but the contrast between a life of idle plenty like the gods’ and one dominated by the necessity of work remains unmistakable in the contrast between the first and last generations, those of gold and of iron respectively. As I have already demonstrated, moreover, the theme of labor is interwoven in Hesiod’s mind with those of injustice and violence. The segment commences, of course, with gold (109 – 26): Χρύσεον μὲν πρώτιστα γένος μερόπων ἀνθρώπων ἀθάνατοι ποίησαν Ὀλύμπια δώματ’ ἔχοντες. οἳ μὲν ἐπὶ Κρόνου ἦσαν, ὅτ’ οὐρανῷ ἐμβασίλευεν· ὥστε θεοὶ δ’ ἔζωον ἀκηδέα θυμὸν ἔχοντες νόσφιν ἄτερ τε πόνων καὶ ὀιζύος, οὐδέ τι δειλὸν γῆρας ἐπῆν, αἰεὶ δὲ πόδας καὶ χεῖρας ὁμοῖοι τέρποντ’ ἐν θαλίῃσι, κακῶν ἔκτοσθεν ἁπάντων· θνῇσκον δ’ ὥσθ’ ὕπνῳ δεδμημένοι· ἐσθλὰ δὲ πάντα τοῖσιν ἔην· καρπὸν δ’ ἔφερε ζείδωρος ἄρουρα αὐτομάτη πολλόν τε καὶ ἄφθονον· οἳ δ’ ἐθελημοὶ ἥσυχοι ἔργ’ ἐνέμοντο σὺν ἐσθλοῖσιν πολέεσσιν. [ἀφνειοὶ μήλοισι, φίλοι μακάρεσσι θεοῖσιν.] αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ δὴ τοῦτο γένος κατὰ γαῖα κάλυψε, τοὶ μὲν δαίμονες ἁγνοὶ ἐπιχθόνιοι τελέθουσιν ἐσθλοί, ἀλεξίκακοι, φύλακες θνητῶν ἀνθρώπων, [οἵ ῥα φυλάσσουσίν τε δίκας καὶ σχέτλια ἔργα ἠέρα ἑσσάμενοι πάντη φοιτῶντες ἐπ’ αἶαν,] πλουτοδόται· καὶ τοῦτο γέρας βασιλήιον ἔσχον. The immortal gods dwelling on Olympus made the golden race of mortal men first. They lived in the time of Cronus, when he ruled in heaven. They lived like gods, with minds free of care, far removed from all toils and hardship, nor did wretched old age come upon them, but ever the same in arms and legs they took pleasure in their banquets, far from all evils. They died as if going to sleep. Every noble thing was theirs. The graingiving fields bore produce of their own accord, abundantly and without stint. And in contentment and at peace they lived amid their fields with great prosperity,

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 The meaning of this line (108) remains uncertain. I follow the indications offered by West 1978, 49 and ad loc. and by Verdenius 1985 ad loc. See also Peabody 1975, 248 – 50.  West 1978, 49.

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[wealthy in flocks and dear to the blessed gods.] But when the earth covered over this race, they became sacred earthly spirits, benevolent, keeping off evil, guardians of mortal men, [who watch over judgments and wicked crimes, cloaked in mist and wandering over the land,] givers of wealth – they had this royal prerogative too.

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These men live under the reign of Cronus and before the necessity of labor has been imposed upon human kind (νόσφιν ἄτερ τε πόνων καὶ ὀιζύος, 113).⁶¹ They lead a life characterized by ease and plenty. Their continuous banqueting (τέρποντ’ ἐν θαλίῃσι, 115) belongs to a world that knows neither begging nor hoarding. Their days are devoted to the pursuits of pleasure since the land offers up her fruits to them αὐτομάτη (118). They dwell amidst their fields, not in cities (ἥσυχοι ἔργ’ ἐνέμοντο, 119).⁶² The epithet αὐτομάτη (118) appears to rule out the practice of agriculture for this race (though the phrases ζείδωρος ἄρουρα [117] and ἔργ’ [119]⁶³ exhibit the difficulty Hesiod has expressing this notion in Works and Days), but they are nonetheless endowed with the plenty provided by the land: ἐσθλὰ δὲ πάντα (116), καρπὸν…/ πολλόν τε καὶ ἄφθονον (117– 18), ἐσθλοῖσιν πολέεσσιν (119), and ἐσθλοί (123). In the wake of their destruction, Hesiod assigns to this first generation a role of terrestrial spirits guarding mortals as protectors of justice and dispensers of wealth. The epithet ἐσθλοί (123) in this context, as Verdenius notes,⁶⁴ already indicates that these δαίμονες are a source of benefits, and πλουτοδόται (126) refers within Works and Days’ frame of reference to ensuring a good harvest.⁶⁵ The golden generation is associated with the notion of justice in a general way through the epithets ἐθελημοί (118) and ἥσυχοι

 Sinclair 1966 ad 111 in fact equates the generation of gold with the pre-Pandoran world of lines 43 – 6 though Verdenius 1985 ad 113 is rightly more qualified.  The verb νέμω occurs in Hesiod in the middle voice on two occasions, at Op. 119 and 231, both times complemented by ἔργα. West (1978) renders the phrase at 119 “lived off their fields” citing 231 in support, and Hofinger 1978 s.v. glosses these attestations “profiter de, jouir de”. West 1978 additionally cites Iliad 2.751: οἵ τ’ ἀμφ’ ἱμερτὸν Τιταρησσὸν ἔργα νέμοντο. Νέμοντο here, however, as Kirk 1985 ad loc. points out, clearly means “inhabit” as can be seen from the parallel phrase οἰκί’ ἔθεντο in the line preceding. This meaning for νέμομαι with ἔργα appears secure at Od. 7.26, to which cf. Il. 20.8 – 9, 2.496, 2.504, and Od. 2.167. The golden race is pictured in this passage as living in a community resembling in its physical details a village like Ascra, amidst its fields. Since there is no mention of cities in this description, “inhabit” seems to me the best sense for ἐνέμοντο.  See West 1978 ad loc.  See Verdenius 1985 ad loc.  See West 1978 ad loc.

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(119), which, as Verdenius discusses,⁶⁶ contrast with the ὕβρις of the age of silver. This quality surfaces in the function specified at 124– 5 of watching over τε δίκας καὶ σχέτλια ἔργα (124) as these spirits wander over the land.⁶⁷ Hesiod offers us here a utopian society characterized through the same ease and plenty enjoyed by humans before the creation of Pandora. As line 111 stresses, the prosperity of this epoch is closely associated with the kingship of Cronus. The segment is in fact a development of the theme that prosperity accompanies the rule of a good king.⁶⁸ As we see, for the generation of gold life harmonizes the qualities of justice, plenty, and ease. As it is, we hear no more of labor until the final generation is reached (174– 201): Μηκέτ’ ἔπειτ’ ὤφελλον ἐγὼ πέμπτοισι μετεῖναι ἀνδράσιν, ἀλλ’ ἢ πρόσθε θανεῖν ἢ ἔπειτα γενέσθαι. νῦν γὰρ δὴ γένος ἐστὶ σιδήρεον· οὐδέ ποτ’ ἦμαρ παύσονται καμάτου καὶ ὀιζύος οὐδέ τι νύκτωρ φθειρόμενοι· χαλεπὰς δὲ θεοὶ δώσουσι μερίμνας. ἀλλ’ ἔμπης καὶ τοῖσι μεμείξεται ἐσθλὰ κακοῖσιν. Ζεὺς δ’ ὀλέσει καὶ τοῦτο γένος μερόπων ἀνθρώπων, εὖτ’ ἂν γεινόμενοι πολιοκρόταφοι τελέθωσιν. οὐδὲ πατὴρ παίδεσσιν ὁμοίιος οὐδέ τι παῖδες οὐδὲ ξεῖνος ξεινοδόκῳ καὶ ἑταῖρος ἑταίρῳ, οὐδὲ κασίγνητος φίλος ἔσσεται, ὡς τὸ πάρος περ. αἶψα δὲ γηράσκοντας ἀτιμήσουσι τοκῆας· μέμψονται δ’ ἄρα τοὺς χαλεποῖς βάζοντες ἔπεσσι, σχέτλιοι, οὐδὲ θεῶν ὄπιν εἰδότες· οὐδέ κεν οἵ γε γηράντεσσι τοκεῦσιν ἀπὸ θρεπτήρια δοῖεν· χειροδίκαι· ἕτερος δ’ ἑτέρου πόλιν ἐξαλαπάξει· οὐδέ τις εὐόρκου χάρις ἔσσεται οὐδὲ δικαίου οὐδ’ ἀγαθοῦ, μᾶλλον δὲ κακῶν ῥεκτῆρα καὶ ὕβριν ἀνέρα τιμήσουσι· δίκη δ’ ἐν χερσί· καὶ αἰδὼς οὐκ ἔσται, βλάψει δ’ ὁ κακὸς τὸν ἀρείονα φῶτα μύθοισι σκολιοῖς ἐνέπων, ἐπὶ δ’ ὅρκον ὀμεῖται. ζῆλος δ’ ἀνθρώποισιν ὀιζυροῖσιν ἅπασι δυσκέλαδος κακόχαρτος ὁμαρτήσει στυγερώπης. καὶ τότε δὴ πρὸς Ὄλυμπον ἀπὸ χθονὸς εὐρυοδείης λευκοῖσιν φάρεσσι καλυψαμένω χρόα καλὸν ἀθανάτων μετὰ φῦλον ἴτον προλιπόντ’ ἀνθρώπους

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 See Verdenius 1985 ad loc.  I believe that Verdenius 1985 ad loc. adequately and correctly defends 124– 5.  See Verdenius 1985 ad 126. Cronus as good king serves as a foil for the wicked kings of Works & Days. Regarding Cronus here cf. 173a and in general see Versnel 1987, esp. 121– 7.

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Αἰδὼς καὶ Νέμεσις· τὰ δὲ λείψεται ἄλγεα λυγρὰ θνητοῖς ἀνθρώποισι· κακοῦ δ’ οὐκ ἔσσεται ἀλκή. I wish that I did not live in the fifth race of men, but had died before them or were born after. For now is the race of iron. Neither by day will they cease being worn down by toil and hardship nor by night. The gods will give them harsh cares. But just the same good things will be mixed with evils even for them. Zeus will destroy this race of mortal men, too, when they come to be born with greying hair. Neither will fathers agree with their sons, nor sons at all with their fathers. Nor will guest be dear to host, nor friend to friend, nor brother to brother, as once used to be. Straightaway children will humiliate their aging parents; they will abuse them, speaking harsh words, hardhearted, ignorant of the gods’ will. Nor will they recompense their parents for their rearing. Fists are their justice: one will sack the other’s city. Nor will there be any gratitude towards a truthful man, a just man, or a good man. Rather they will honor the perpetrator of evils and the violent man. Justice will reside in fists and respect will not survive. The wicked man will harm the better man by testifying with twisted accounts, and he will swear an oath on it. And Envy, foul-mouthed, enjoying evil, with her hostile gaze, will keep company with all wretched mortals. And then, Respect and Indignation, leaving men behind, cloaking their lovely skin in white robes, go among the family of the immortals, towards Olympus from the wide-wayed earth. These dismal sorrows will be left for mortal men. There will be no defense against evil.

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The central contrast between Hesiod’s own age, that of iron, with the generation of gold finds immediate expression in the necessity of ceaseless κάματος and ὀϊζύς (177). Labor is a defining reality for this depraved age: it is the first attribute Hesiod mentions for this generation, and the men of iron never cease from it (οὐδέ… / παύσονται, 176 – 7). The coincidence, moreover, for the age of gold of “automatic” fertility with freedom from labor suggests through the contrast between the ages of gold and of iron that the specific variety of toil plaguing the latter age is that required to ensure a livelihood, agricultural labor, the salient form of labor for the poem as a whole. The necessity of labor imposed upon the race of iron links their lot as well with the conditions ushered in by the creation of Pandora in the preceding narrative. The stark contrast between the epochs of gold and of iron continues in the predominance in the latter of enmity among kin (182– 4), perjury and violence

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(190 – 2, 194), in the neglect of δίκη, αἰδώς, and Νέμεσις (192– 4, 200), and in the power of ζῆλος…/ δυσκέλαδος κακόχαρτος (195 – 6). These qualities, moreover, integrate the epoch of iron, Hesiod’s own, with the framing narrative of Hesiod’s struggle with Perses. In particular the ζῆλος… / δυσκέλαδος κακόχαρτος of the age of iron recapitulates the wicked strife, the Ἔρις κακόχαρτος (28), which initially turns Perses from his work and land to litigation in the ἀγορή.⁶⁹ These elements of the age of iron presuppose within the context of Works and Days the ἀγορή. This inference is confirmed by the indications of habitation patterns supplied for these two epochs. The race of gold, as noted above, dwell amidst their fields, not in cities. Hesiod notes, however, that the race of iron, among other deeds of violence, sack each other’s cities (ἕτερος δ’ ἑτέρου πόλιν ἐξαλαπάξει, 189). While the men of gold all shared a happy existence on their land, the generation of iron is divided between city and country in the same moment that the necessity of laboring for one’s livelihood is established.⁷⁰ The respective absence and necessity of labor produce two different geographies, two different modes of organizing space. From the perspective of the village, the πόλις system, epitomized by the calamities of the age of iron, is the by-product of the close of the golden age and the imposition of the need to toil for one’s survival. For, the golden age, free of the necessity of labor, lacks the fundamental spatial division between the city’s walled enclave and the surrounding fields. The men of bronze do know the “groaning labors of Ares” (Ἄρηος/ ἔργ’… στονόεντα, 145 – 6), but Hesiod’s statement that they do not eat grain (146 – 7) rules out agricultural labor in their case.⁷¹ Hesiod mentions in the segment describing the heroes that they perished around Thebes and Troy, clearly acknowledging the existence of cities in this prior, if problematic, age. But it would be difficult to avoid referring to these two cities in this passage dedicated to separating the figures of heroic epic from the circumstances of the iron age. Hesiod, however, would also know from Homer’s and other heroic narratives that agriculture and husbandry were practiced in this age too, much as men dwelled in cit The use of ζηλοῖ for the effects of the good Ἔρις at 23 secures the synonymy of ζῆλος and ἔρις.  West (1978 ad loc.) seems to me to defend successfully this frequently condemned line. As West appreciates, the discussion of oaths, ὕβρις, δίκη, false testimony, etc. comprise civic matters introduced by mention of the πόλις in 189. Thus, to eliminate 189 will not diminish the harsh transition that troubles Verdenius 1985 and Sinclair 1966 ad loc. In fact, the line only repeats the swift changes of topic in this catalogue found at 182– 3 and 184– 5. Regarding the city’s appearance here, see Walcot 1970, 96 – 9 and Hamilton 1989, 84.  I take the phrase χαλκῷ δ’ εἰργάζοντο (151) to refer precisely to the Ἄρηος/ ἔργ’… στονόεντα (145 – 6 – i. e., not to farming implements); cf. the reference to bronze armor (χάλκεα μὲν τεύχεα) in line 150.

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ies, but he makes no mention of this. Rather as far as the matter of livelihood is concerned, Hesiod describes this only in the setting of the isles of the blessed where the heroes enjoy a livelihood resembling the βίος αὐτόματος of the race of gold (170 – 3, cf. 112– 13, 117– 18). This focus forestalls any thought that the generation of heroes shared the burden of labor with the iron men and distracts attention from the implications of cities for this epoch.⁷² Hesiod of course attributes wickedness to the ages of silver and of bronze, not just to that of iron. The silver men exhibit a generic ὕβρις without elaboration and fail to perform sacrifice (134– 7) while the brazen men’s love of war comprises their specific form of wickedness (ὕβριες, 146). As we have seen, however, the faults of the epoch of iron are developed in much greater detail and with far greater specificity to the framing scenario of Hesiod’s conflict with Perses. Only in that age does the element of labor appear and only there are the salient forms of injustice and violence displayed. In the Generations of Man segment Hesiod likely adapts a pre-existing narrative motif to the local topic of the origin of labor.⁷³ The salient feature of this traditional topos for the context, the theme linking it to the preceding Pandora narrative and to the framing scenario of Hesiod’s dispute with Perses, is of course the contrast between the ages of gold and iron in the terms explored above. Hesiod, indeed, does not present an evolutionary sequence of progressive stages in his Generations of Man narrative. In view of the overriding purpose of explaining the origins of labor, the contrast of the wicked ages of silver and bronze with that of the virtuous heroes appears as a subordinate repetition of the contrast between the first and last terms of the series, gold and iron. The introduction of the theme of justice into the segment, moreover, does not comprise a loss of focus since this theme is closely associated in Hesiod’s mind with the issue of labor.⁷⁴ The ages of gold and of iron, then, contrast decisively with each other in the first place in terms of labor: the men of gold are free of it while the

 Walcot (1970, 96 – 9) argues that the generation of heroes is more closely associated with pastoralism, contrasting with the cereal-cultivation of the iron age. Heath (1985, 246– 9) maintains that the heroes’ life of ease on the isles of the blessed serves to provide a strong contrast with the regime of labor imposed upon the men of iron (176 – 8). Most (1997, 108 – 14), in fact, contends Hesiod does not distinguishes the heroes from the men of iron as distinct γένη, intending to preserves the possibility of heroic genealogies for contemporary aristocrats (cf. Finkelberg 2004). Clearly the thematic priorities of Works & Days shed more light on the presence of the heroes in the Ages of Man segment than does concern for Homer.  West 1978, 173 – 7.  Regarding the importance of the contrast between Gold and Iron within the segment, see Heath 1985, 246– 9, Querbach 1985, 1– 6, Most 1997, 114– 15, and Brown 1998, 388 – 9, reinforced by his discussion at 397– 409.

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men of iron are oppressed by it. The golden men, moreover, dwell upon their fields in a landscape undivided by the boundary between urban and rural while by the age of iron the city has been established. Finally, for the generation of gold ease, plenty, and justice comprise an organic unity, but the logic ruling the age of iron imposes a choice of either toil or injustice to achieve prosperity. Through the governing contrast of gold with iron in the Generations of Man narrative Hesiod presents the birth of labor as a temporal process. The originary age of gold is characterized by ease and justice but the age of iron exhibits the qualities of labor and injustice. This diachronic scheme produces, however, an apparent paradox since, as I have already argued, Hesiod elsewhere equates labor precisely with justice and ease with injustice. The history of ease/labor and justice/injustice appears to organize these oppositions quite differently from the geography of ease/labor and justice/injustice of Hesiod’s own iron age. From the diachronic perspective of origins the formulation gold is to justice as iron is to ὕβρις is accurate enough since, as I have suggested, it is the necessity of working for a living that supplies the motive for the acts of injustice unknown to the age of gold. Zeus’s imposition of labor, however, inaugurates the divided iron age spatiality of πόλις and ἔργον within which labor is the path of justice since only through one’s work is it possible to avoid the poverty that can drive a man to false-swearing, violence, and other deeds of ὕβρις. Within the system of contrasts organizing the age of iron, therefore, that epoch finds its purest expression in the ease of the city while the ἔργον preserves through its toil elements of the age of gold. As I have argued, a defining feature of the life led by the generation of gold is the conjunction of justice, ease, and plenty. These happy men enjoyed prosperity without toil, yet did not need to turn from the path of justice in order to do so. As we have seen, however, for his own epoch Hesiod associates the ἀγορή with ease (laziness), shortage due to indolence but the wealth as well of others (ἀλλότρια κτήματα), and injustice (ὕβρις) while the ἔργον define a space of toil, a hard prosperity, and justice. The city’s combination of ease and wealth can only be achieved through injustice, and the justice and wealth of the countryside are won only through toil. The impossibility of living in ease and prosperity with justice marks for Hesiod’s epoch the forfeiture of the golden age. This is of course the effect of Zeus’s κρύψις βίου and the consequent necessity that men labor. The regret for the loss of the golden age and the catastrophic reorganization of life that it provoked finds striking expression in Hesiod’s observation that formerly only a day’s work could supply an entire year’s livelihood even to a “workless” man (καὶ ἀεργὸν ἐόντα, 44). As I have already shown, the epithet ἀεργός serves elsewhere in the poem as a reproach. That it bears no such negative connotation in the present context expresses the utopian logic of the lost

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golden age, before Zeus’s concealment of livelihood, when justice and ease functioned as complementary rather than opposed terms. The imperfect alternatives of justice with labor or ease through injustice that organize life in the age of iron give rise in their train, however, to a geographical division between ἀγορή and ἔργον, between πόλις and ἀγρός. Paradoxically, however, Hesiod offers a road out of this impasse through the very necessity that brought it into being: labor. That wealth and prosperity, ὄλβος, can be acquired only through toil is a theme repeated over the course of Works and Days. At least, as we have seen, this is the only way to acquire wealth justly and for the long run. This principle assigns to labor a recuperative role: through toil men can approach the condition of the race of gold – plenty and justice along with ease – though it will never be possible fully to escape the necessity of labor. The clearest articulation of this principle occurs in a segment in which Hesiod sketches out two paths open to Perses: that of wickedness (κακότης) and that of excellence, achievement (ἀρετή, Op. 286 – 92).⁷⁵ The road of wickedness is easy and near at hand. The gods have placed sweat, however, before the road of virtue. Its approach is steep, and it is rough at first. But after the ascent it is easy. In this allegory Hesiod links ἀρετή, the prestige and sense of self-worth acquired from success, to sweat and a steep climb, that is, to toil as elsewhere in the poem. But after initial hardship, the road then becomes easier – that is, sweat eventually brings prosperity and an easier life. This is the opposite of what Hesiod predicts for those who turn to ὕβρις, prosperity and ease for the moment but ruin later on. The sweaty path of ἀρετή serves, of course, as an allegory for the life of agricultural toil that Hesiod presses upon Perses throughout the poem. Hesiod refers in Works and Days to this easier life won by hard work through such images as a full grain bin, exporting surplus crops by sea, acquiring a neighbor’s land, or becoming his creditor. The poem’s most powerful image of the approximation of the golden age by men of Hesiod’s epoch occurs, however, at 582– 96 in a passage describing the dog days of mid-July when there is little work to be done but the fruits of the farmer’s labors abound. This is the plenty of midsummer when everything is at its peak except for man himself, whose knees, head, and skin are parched by the heat (585 – 7). The wine, bread, sheep, goats, and beef, however, are all at their best, and the shade beckons

 See Detienne 1963, 34– 41, Heath 1985, 250 – 1, Hamilton 1989, 64– 5 on these lines, and Bongert 1982, 192– 9, Descat 1986, 192– 3, Brown 1998, 396, and more generally Brout 2003, 100 – 1 on labor as a bridge between human and divine. I think the roads of ἀρετή and κακότης in this passage recapitulate the alternatives of δίκη and ὕβρις at 213 – 18 and at 225 – 6. Regarding hard work and prestige within the village, see Edwards 2004, 91– 2, 111– 16.

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the enervated farmer to come and sit down with his face to brisk Zephyr where he can drink wine after satisfying his hunger. This description of midsummer contrasts with the earlier passage (493 – 503) where Hesiod warns against using the λέσχη or the blacksmith’s as a refuge from the frigid weather of mid-winter. The thought of passing time there when it is too cold to work provokes a tirade against indolence and the shiftless man who continues to hope while his grain bin is empty (495 – 9). The two seasons resemble each other in their extreme weather and in the lack of seasonal work, but Hesiod apparently feels no inclination to warn against the dangers of laziness in midsummer as he does in midwinter when there is equally little to be done.⁷⁶ The stem καματ-, evoking the theme of labor in Works and Days, does appear in the passage, but to describe the debilitating effect of the season’s heat (θέρεος καματώδεος ὥρῃ, 584) rather than in the usual exhortation to work. In a surprising semantic effect paralleling the positive evaluation given to ἀεργόν (44) in the description of the pre-Pandoran golden age, Hesiod recommends that one flee this particular “weariness” by seeking out a shady rock. Similarly, although Hesiod warns, as we have seen, against the idleness of the σκιεροὺς θώκους (574), Hesiod does not hesitate to enjoy the “rocky shade” (πετραίη τε σκιή, 589) of the present passage. The leisure offered by the two seasons receives such different treatments because the period in summer between the threshing and the vintage offers up all of the benefits of the preceding months of labor while in the corresponding period of winter, following the plowing, the labor invested in a crop still remains in doubt and dependent on much more toil to come. The days of mid-summer resemble the universal condition of the golden age in the abundance of the earth’s produce and the suspension of the regime of toil. But for Hesiod’s epoch this condition lasts only a fleeting moment and it can be enjoyed only by those who have been unrelenting in their work throughout the other months of the year.⁷⁷ In sum, Hesiod presents in Works and Days a world marked by a fundamental spatial division between those who live a life of ease, dwelling within the city, and those who live by toil amid the fields. The countryside offers justice and prosperity with toil while the city offers ease and wealth through injustice. Through his etiologies of labor Hesiod provides as a backdrop to this ethical geography a golden age which did not impose a choice between justice and injustice, between labor and ease, between legitimate and ill-gotten prosperity, or between village and city. This golden age casts its shadow over the world of Works

 See Hamilton 1989, 82 on these two passages.  Cf. Versnel, 1987, 127– 39, Petropoulos 1994, and Brown 1998, 389 – 91.

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and Days as a moment of primordial unity in comparison to which Hesiod’s own reality appears irrevocably ruptured.⁷⁸ From the perspective of these myths one can thus say that the countryside and the city are the very creations of labor since for the epoch of gold and the pre-Pandoran world the geography of toil and ease did not exist. Hesiod’s view of labor and the particular formulation he gives to the country/city topos in Works and Days can be grasped only against the backdrop of a golden age that was geographically undivided and that enjoyed a primordial estate of bountiful ease and justice. The influence exercised by this myth over Hesiod’s own age of iron provides the ideological foundation for investing labor with its recuperative force and identifying it with justice. For if the pursuit of wickedness only exacerbates the rupture afflicting Hesiod’s epoch, pursuing justice, as I have suggested, has a restorative effect.

IV. Contradictory Doubles The dialectical character of Works and Days is announced in the poem’s opening lines where Hesiod describes Zeus’s power to make men ἄφατοί τε φατοί τε,/ ῥητοί τ’ ἄρρητοί τε (3 – 4), and how he βριάει, ῥέα δὲ βριάοντα χαλέπτει,/ ἀρίζηλον μινύθει καὶ ἄδηλον ἀέξει (5 – 6), or ἰθύνει σκολιὸν καὶ ἀγήνορα κάρφει (7).⁷⁹ We have already considered in detail, moreover, a series of narrative segments exhibiting this same dialectical structure. Hesiod constructs his opening harangue around the spatial opposition of ἔργον and ἀγορή. The Pandora narrative contrasts the life before with that after Zeus’s κρύψις βίου, and the complementary opposition of the generation of gold to that of iron repeats this theme. I have also analyzed the double cities of δίκη and of ὕβρις, and the twin paths of ἀρετή and of κακότης. Labor, because it occupies the pivotal position between each of these opposed terms, consequently leads back inexorably into the geographical opposition between country and city. If labor is crucial to these oppositions, then within Works and Days’ local mythology they ought not to have existed prior to the imposition of labor. In Works and Days’ pre-Pandoran golden age the homogeneity and integrity of a world without dialectical oppositions is the effect of the absence of the city, which has yet to appear. Such dialectical balancing around the pivot of labor organizes a series of

 See Liebermann 1981, 406 – 7 and Bongert 1982, 199 – 202.  Regarding this dialectical quality of Works & Days, see Pucci 1977, 22– 4, 63, 95 – 8, and passim; Liebermann 1981, 400 – 2; and Gagarin 1990, 177– 8. On the programmatic status of the twin Strifes, see Peabody 1975, 239 – 56 and Hamilton 1989, 53 – 65. For further discussion and bibliography, see Edwards 2012, 6 – 8.

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key concepts in the poem, in effect splitting them into good and bad aspects and distributing them according to the spatiality of ἔργον and ἀγορή.

Ἔρις Exemplary of this phenomenon is Hesiod’s announcement at the outset of the poem that the Ἐρίδων γένος is not single (μοῦνον, 11), but double (δύω, 12). The first born of these one would praise (12, 17– 24), Hesiod tells us, since it spurs the lazy or poor man on to plow and sow in rivalry with the wealth of his neighbor. But its twin is evil, the Ἔρις βαρεῖα (16) and Ἔρις κακόχαρτος (28), that turns men from their farms to the disputes of the ἀγορή with designs upon other men’s property (28 – 34). Hesiod urges Perses to abandon the rivalry of the ἀγορή in favor of the rivalry among neighbors, encircled by the borders of the village. These double Ἔριδες align themselves respectively with work and with indolence and they separate not only countryside from city but Hesiod from Perses as well.⁸⁰ The notion of strife, ἔρις, is absolutely central to Hesiod’s encomiastic exposition of rural life. Within the narrow boundaries of the agricultural village strife assumes a constructive role in human affairs, converted into emulation, a positive competition for status and prosperity. Yet, as we see, this concept is divided against itself. The strife of Works and Days is complicated by the retention of the concept’s negative aspect, familiar from other epic texts, so as to produce a doubling that recapitulates the opposition between country and city. The eccentricity of Works and Days’ dialectical presentation of ἔρις is highlighted by the treatment of this same phenomenon in Theogony. There Hesiod makes Ἔρις the child of “destructive Night” along with Nemesis, Deceit, Love, and Old Age (Th. 223 – 5) and describes her as καρτερόθυμος (Th. 225) and στυγερή (Th. 226). She in turn gives birth to Πόνον ἀλγινόεντα (Th. 226), “grievous Toil”, as her first child, along with famine, grief, battles, dysnomy, Ἄτη, discord, and other plagues. As we can see, for Theogony Ἔρις is all bad, a force poisoning human existence and lacking any beneficial or constructive aspect. One need not maintain that this doctrine of two Ἔριδες represents an explicit revision of an earlier view expressed in Theogony – though that could certainly be the case – to argue that the difference between the two poems is the effect of the

 See the discussions of the Ἔριδες by Walcot 1970, 87– 92, Pucci 1977, 130 – 2, Pucci 1996, 204– 7, Liebermann 1981, 396 – 400, Descat 1986, 175 – 86, Kapsalis 1986/8, 29 – 35, and Thalmann 2004.

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central place occupied by labor in Works and Days. The good Ἔρις is precisely the positive competition among villagers waged through labor, something invisible from the normative vantage point occupied by the city.

Δίκη The notion of δίκη too is divided. Δίκη is, as we have seen, the course that Hesiod urges upon Perses as right in itself, the will of the gods, and the only sure means of prosperity. The pursuit of δίκη keeps a man on his plot and busy at his work. This is the principle of justice sponsored by the goddess Δίκη whom the kings outrage and drive forth (219 – 24) and who is obstructed by their crooked judgments (256 – 62). For as we have seen, Hesiod locates straight judgments (ἰθείῃσι δίκῃς, 36) in the countryside (αὖθι, 35), but the city is host to the kings’ “crooked judgments” (σκολιαὶ δίκαι, 220 – 4, 248 – 51, 258 – 62). Indeed, the very expression σκολιαὶ δίκαι opens a rift within the concept of δίκη by acknowledging that a judgment-δίκη can contradict justice-δίκη.⁸¹ It is, moreover, a δίκη to which Perses summons Hesiod in the ἀγορή and which the βασιλῆες δωροφάγοι are eager to judge (39, similarly 249 and 269). This latter δίκη serves as a synonym for νεῖκος, δῆρις, and even the evil Ἔρις (33 – 6). These conflicting notions of justice produce paradoxical results in the striking verses at 270 – 2: νῦν δὴ ἐγὼ μήτ’ αὐτὸς ἐν ἀνθρώποισι δίκαιος εἴην μήτ’ ἐμὸς υἱός, ἐπεὶ κακὸν ἄνδρα δίκαιον ἔμμεναι, εἰ μείζω γε δίκην ἀδικώτερος ἕξει. Now therefore may neither I be just among men nor a son of mine since it is ill to be just if the less just man will win the larger judgment.

According to the logic of the passage if a less just (ἀδικώτερος, 272; i. e. “unjust”, cf. Verdenius ad loc.) man obtains the larger judgment (δίκην, 272), or award, then it is “bad” (κακόν, 271), i. e. “disadvantageous”, to be “just” (δίκαιον, 271) relative to this distorted standard.⁸² Hesiod rejects the course of justice under such conditions though, as he finally assures us (273), Zeus will not let it come to pass. Hesiod plays upon the specialized meaning of “judgment”, “award” for δίκη to produce the paradoxical formulation that the man who is

 Equally contradictory is the notion of δίκη δ’ ἐν χερσί (192) and χειροδίκαι (189). See Liebermann 1981, 400 – 2, Munding 1983, 163 – 4, and in general Janik 2003 and Allan 2006.  See Claus 1977, 74– 8 and Gagarin 1990, 92– 3.

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more unjust receives more “justice”. As lines 267– 9 make clear, moreover, this perverse justice belongs to the city and is in fact the “suit” that Perses threatens against Hesiod (οἵην δὴ καὶ τήνδε δίκην πόλις ἐντὸς ἐέργει, 269). Similarly, the kings as dispensers of crooked justice are located squarely in the ἀγορή, but the king of the city of justice is associated through his judgments with the countryside. The boundary marked by labor between countryside and city gives rise to severe problems for the notion of δίκη in Works and Days. The contradictions plaguing δίκη in Works and Days, however, are not found in Theogony. The δίκαι of that poem are all ἰθεῖαι (Th. 86; cf. 434). Δίκη is closely associated there with the βασιλεύς and ἀγορή, but there is no hint of either the negative associations attached to the “justice” of the ἀγορή in Works and Days or of the dialectic between the two types of δίκη found there. This treatment of δίκη follows from the presentation of those associated elements, βασιλεύς and ἀγορή. Hesiod appears to acknowledge in Theogony the possibility of a bad king (Th. 81– 2), but no examples occur there. Rather, we are told, kings bring an end to dispute (νεῖκος, Th. 87) and enforce restitution (μετάτροπα ἔργα, Th. 89) through persuasion and straight judgments (ἰθείῃσι δίκῃσιν, Th. 83 – 90; cf. 434– 30 [following Solmsen’s numbering]). The subsidiary concepts attached to δίκη-justice – the goddess Justice, litigation, judgment, and award – do not normally interact in a state of mutual contradiction but rather of harmony.⁸³ This harmony is presupposed by the use of a single word for these various concepts as well as by the social necessity that the forms of social interaction designated by δίκη be assumed to be just. Comparison with Theogony, whose ideological horizon is bounded by the limits of the πόλις, supports the conclusion that the contradictory conception of δίκη found in Works and Days is an effect of the country-city opposition at work in that poem.

Eating Eating is closely linked to central themes of Works and Days through βίοτος, “livelihood”, the grain that the farmer wins from his fields by his labor and then stores within his οἶκος. It is the single goal that grounds the agricultural economy and village life as a whole. When Hesiod introduces the theme of eating at the end of his opening harangue, he places it squarely in the opposition he is constructing between the city and the countryside. At lines 38 – 41 Hesiod denounces the “gift-eating kings” (βασιλῆας δωροφάγους), whom he derides as

 See s.v. δίκη Hofinger 1978 and LfgrE.

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“fools” (νήπιοι, 40) because they “…do not understand by how much the half is greater than the whole/ nor how great a gain there is in asphodel and mallow” (40 – 1). These lines clearly contrast the cuisine of the city and its elite with that of the countryside. The kings dine on gifts raked in from the country while turning up their noses at the asphodel and mallow which poor men collect in the countryside.⁸⁴ These lines, though somewhat enigmatic at this point in the poem, also inscribe the kings within one of the fundamental moral principles of Works and Days: gains gotten through injustice bring retribution in their wake. The kings would be better off, Hesiod suggests, if instead of gifts they would rather eat the asphodel and mallow that are there for the picking. This is what Hesiod has in mind when he warns the “gift-eating kings” that a man who plots evil for another in fact plots it for himself (263 – 6). By designating them “eaters of gifts” Hesiod accuses the kings of the city of greed and rapacity, of “eating” the resources of the village in the form of gifts. A related image of eating occurs at lines 304 – 6 in a simile comparing the shiftless man (ἀεργός, 303) to the drones who in their indolence (ἀεργοί, 305) eat (τρύχουσιν…/ ἔσθοντες, 305 – 6) the toil (κάματον, 305) of the bees. Idlers literally “eat” the work of their neighbors much as the suitors of Penelope are repeatedly said to “eat” the house of Odysseus (Od. 4.318 – 19, 15.12– 13, 21.68 – 70, e. g.). This theme of eating is incorporated within the poem’s broader ethical framework in a warning (274– 80) to Perses to hearken to justice and abandon violence since Zeus has established a law (νόμον, 276) for men: ἰχθύσι μὲν καὶ θηρσὶ καὶ οἰωνοῖς πετεηνοῖς ἔσθειν ἀλλήλους, ἐπεὶ οὐ δίκη ἐστὶ μετ’ αὐτοῖς· ἀνθρώποισι δ’ ἔδωκε δίκην, ἣ πολλὸν ἀρίστη γίνεται· (Op. 277– 80) for the fish, the wild animals, and the winged birds, [the rule is] to eat each other since they do not have justice. But to men Zeus gave justice, the best thing by far.

In these lines, marking the culmination of Hesiod’s treatment of the theme of justice, Hesiod has chosen the image of eating to express the opposite of justice as the savagery of wild beasts who have not received a “law” from Zeus, a guide to civilized behavior substituting cooperation for violence. The alternatives of violence and justice in this passage refer within the poem’s moral landscape specifically to the choice Hesiod urges upon Perses between litigation before the

 Cf. West 1978 ad 41.

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kings and returning to work on his land. Within the logic of this thematic code the kings’ consumption of gifts appears to be as lawless and anti-social as the mutual depredations of wild beasts.⁸⁵ The countryside’s humble fare of mallow and asphodel, which the lords of the city despise, resembles, however, the fare of the golden age. It too appears of its own accord, αὐτομάτη (118), and is there to take for those who need. The plenty and respite of the country’s mid-summer feast (582– 96) likewise recapitulates the blessings of a golden age for the farmer who has toiled ceaselessly throughout the rest of the year. The sacrificial banquet within the village (336 – 43) serves to express the principle of balanced reciprocity among neighbors rather than the superiority and power of a king much as distributing rations to one’s slaves (766 – 7) inverts the kings’ gift-eating. For Hesiod, though, the best meal is the “livelihood” (βίοτος) from a successful harvest securely stored away in one’s grain bin. In his scornful rebuke to the kings Hesiod identifies asphodel and mallow as the cuisine of the countryside in contrast to the fare of the city. In condemning the city’s rich diet of gifts, however, Hesiod hardly makes a virtue of poverty. Rather he polemically attributes a positive ethical value to the discipline and fortitude required to make a living at farming. The kings ought not to meddle in village matters, but they are enticed to do so since they do not appreciate the limits imposed upon their greed by justice. So they eat gifts. Within the village, among neighbors, however, it is understood that for the long run one does better to forego unjust gains and so avoid divine retribution even if that entails a diet of mallow and asphodel. This stark distinction between the cuisines of country and city, incorporating within it such major themes as justice, work, saving, hubris, and living off of others, asserts again the moral boundary between the two regions.

Zeus The mythic etiologies of labor and the consequent opposition of city and village in Works and Days likewise produces a distorted presentation of Zeus. He is, of course, the source of fertility as well as the guarantor of δίκη through his retribution. So at 36, for example, Hesiod designates Zeus as the source of ἰθεῖαι

 Perhaps similar are Polyphemus’s dining on his guests (Od. 9.106, 112– 15, 287– 93, 347– 52, etc.) and Cronus’s swallowing of his children (Th. 453 – 67). Cf. the analysis of Brout 2003, 97– 102.

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δίκαι, at 238 – 40, opening the description of the city of ὕβρις, Zeus is said to ordain δίκη for those who love violence and wicked deeds, or at 327– 34 Hesiod concludes a catalogue of misdeeds with the warning that Zeus has stored up a harsh return for ἔργα ἄδικα (see 252– 62 and 270 – 85). The fertility of the land is attributed to Zeus at 465 – 6 when Hesiod recommends a prayer to him (Διὶ χθονίῳ) and Demeter that the grain grow heavy,⁸⁶ at 415 – 16 and 488 Zeus is pictured causing the rain, and at 473 – 4 it is Zeus (Ὀλύμπιος) who grants a successful harvest (cf. 379, 638, and 667– 8). Yet, as we have already seen, Zeus is at the same time the malevolent heir of Cronus, the god who cursed humans with the necessity of toil by concealing their livelihood from them and who hid the good Ἔρις away at the roots of the earth (18 – 19).⁸⁷ Zeus contrasts, on the one hand, as the good deity who secures the land’s fertility for those who work it and protects an individual’s possessions from the rapacity of others through his justice, but, on the other, as the hateful god who imposed upon human kind the necessity of toiling for a living, the condition of the age of iron. Again, Theogony offers a one-sided picture of Zeus in comparison to Works and Days’ dialectical conception.⁸⁸ Themis, a goddess difficult to distinguish from Δίκη, bears to Zeus the Horae: Eunomia, Justice (Δίκη), and Peace (Th. 901– 6). As Hesiod tells us, this trio ἔργ’ ὠρεύουσι καταθνητοῖσι βροτοῖσι (“watch over their farms/ labors for mortal men”, Th. 903). This same collocation of peace, justice, good governance, and fertility of the land is found in Works and Days’ city of justice, an approximation of the age of gold and Cronus’s reign. In Theogony’s interpretation, however, these deities belong to the reign of Zeus, and could hardly be associated with Cronus’s rule. For Cronus plays the heavy in Theogony while Zeus takes the role of protagonist. In this narrative of the struggle between Zeus and successive adversaries – Cronus (Th. 453 – 506), the Titans (Th. 617– 745), and Typhoeus (Th. 820 – 68) – Hesiod presents the reign of Zeus as the imposition of order and justice over monstrous, chaotic forces. The selection of Zeus as king and his equitable division (ἐὺ διεδάσσετο, Th. 885) of the τιμαί won from the defeated Titans present Zeus in stark contrast to his tyrannical and violent predecessors.

 See West 1978 ad loc.  See Peabody 1975, 264– 5, Sihvola 1989, 17– 23 and Nelson 1996/7, 245 – 7. Placing the good strife γαίης τ’ ἐν ῥίζῃσι is to conceal it. Men fail to pursue the life of the good Ἔρις because it is hard. In this sense it is as hidden away and inaccessible as the βίος (42) that Zeus also concealed and that only labor, to which the good Strife spurs a man, can bring forth from the earth. Cf. Thalmann 2004, 364; contra, West 1978 and Verdenius 1985 ad 19.  See, however, Nagler 1992, 84– 5.

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The treatment of Zeus in Theogony lacks the dialectical complexity of Works and Days’ narrative. The association of Zeus with fertility and with justice in Works and Days harmonizes with the presentation of Zeus in Theogony. But, the central importance granted in Works and Days to labor and the myth of the golden age complicates the presentation of Zeus. The myth of the golden age, the time before Pandora, places Zeus in an unfavorable contrast with Cronus, and the etiologies of labor, as explanations of why men must work, introduce Zeus as the concealer of livelihood. The spatiality of Works and Days in the form of the opposition between village and πόλις inaugurated by the imposition of labor requires that the contradiction of rural life – that plenty is won only through backbreaking toil – be absorbed by Zeus as regent of the cosmos and founder of the current epoch.

Labor Labor itself exhibits a similar ambivalence to that observed in the case of Zeus, arising likewise from the conflicted spatiality of the poem. Hesiod’s etiological myth presents labor – ἔργον, πόνος, κάματος, ὀϊζύς – as the loss of the golden age, a curse imposed upon men by Zeus and, as I have argued, the cause of injustice and wickedness. Yet for Hesiod’s depraved age labor serves at the same time as the path of justice, the means of a partial recuperation of the golden age, and the source of a secure livelihood. ⁸⁹ Labor is, of course, restricted geographically in Works and Days to the ἔργον, the site of labor, and absent from the πόλις, the locus of ἀεργίη. For the farmer it is always simultaneously curse and salvation: a curse since it separates the present epoch from the leisure, justice, and plenty of the golden age, but salvation since it evades the ease, injustice, and doomed prosperity of the city. This contradiction within the notion of labor is rooted in the ambivalence of the ἔργον itself as a place, the site of toil but the source of plenty. While it defines the condition of the generation of iron, labor simultaneously offers the only means of restoring some part of the epoch of gold. Theogony’s presentation of labor, however, appears again rather flat in comparison with the complexity found in Works and Days. The goddess Night brings forth Ὀϊζὺν ἀλγινόεσσαν (Th. 214) in the company of Fate, Doom, Death, Sleep, and Blame. As already noted, another of Night’s children, Ἔρις, who is characterized as καρτερόθυμον (Th. 225) and στυγερή (Th. 226), gives birth to Πόνον

 See Nussbaum 1960, 217 and Bongert 1982, 191, 199.

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ἀλγινόεντα (226) along with famine, grief, battles, dysnomy, Ἄτη, discord, and other evils. Labor in this company contrasts with the children of Zeus and Themis: Eunomia, Justice, and Peace (Th. 901– 6). Theogony articulates a decisive opposition between the values of peace, eunomia, justice, and fertility, on the one hand, and those of strife, dusnomia, labor, and famine on the other. Theogony’s attitude toward labor expresses the condescension of the city, whose outlook dominates the poem, for the country and its population. Works and Day’s contradictory treatment even of labor is again rooted in the poem’s complex geography of ἔργον and ἀγορή set against the backdrop of the age of gold. To conclude, Works and Days provides for itself a context of conflict between brothers, Hesiod and Perses, that opens in turn onto a conflict between opposing sites, the village and the πόλις, embodied in the poem as ἔργον and ἀγορή. This fraternal conflict launches Hesiod on an intensive project of place construction, producing an ethical geography of village and πόλις within Works and Days. As Hesiod presents it, the city stands as a locus of ease, injustice, and a prosperity that feeds upon the possessions of others while the village and surrounding fields are tied to the values of labor, justice, and the self-sufficiency of one’s own prosperity. The mythic etiologies of labor, the story of Pandora and the Generations of Man narrative, establish a chronological boundary between a lost age in which justice and plenty accompanied a life of leisure and the present epoch in which justice and plenty are won only at the price of ceaseless toil. The imposition of labor divided the originary, homogeneous landscape of the golden age into the opposed regions of city and countryside and destroyed the possibility of a life of simultaneous justice, ease, and plenty. Henceforth men must choose either toil or injustice. The effects of this catastrophe for humanity can be traced in a series of the poem’s key concepts and practices that have been divided along the geographical boundary of village and πόλις. The ethical geography of Works and Days is formulated from the distinctive vantage point of the village, much as Homer presents space as it is perceived from within the city wall. Hesiod’s exhaustive effort to articulate the values of place for his village within Works and Days can perhaps be understood as a response to a real conflict, anticipated or ongoing, between Ascra and Thespiae through which he hopes to forestall the absorption of his village within the spatial order of the neighboring πόλις.⁹⁰

 On Homer’s perspective, see Zanker 1986 and Edwards 1993. Regarding Ascra’s relations with Thespiae, see Edwards 2004, 73 – 7 and 166 – 75.

Kirk Ormand

Uncertain Geographies of Female Desire in the Hesiodic Catalogue: Atalanta Geographic space is never an undefined blank, a set of unexamined topographic features waiting in pure state to be delineated by bold explorers, assiduous cartographers, or mercantile activity. Rather, space is always defined, always in a process of definition, by the activities of those who inhabit it.¹ While some social spaces have relatively stable functions, such as a shopping mall, a bathroom, or a recording studio, any space can be transformed by human activity into a different kind of place: a city street becomes a parade route, the Lincoln monument becomes the backdrop for a political speech, a church basement becomes a meeting space for the counter-revolution. The physical attributes of the defined space in each of these cases has not changed, but that is of little consequence: the meanings produced by each of these transformed spaces, the kinds of human interactions that they contain, enable, and ultimately produce, are in each case significantly different from the meanings that they “normally” – which is to say, sometimes, and not quite arbitrarily – embody. More importantly, the shifting parameters of different spaces produce different kinds of meanings, both in real life and in literary representations. In the course of this paper, I examine a simple scene, in which a man and a woman, one in pursuit of the other, traverse a plane. But the manner of their itinerary – even if it does not affect the course – is crucial for understanding their interrelation. Are they running, swift of foot, in a race? Or is one of them pursuing the other with intent to kill, as in a hunt? Or is what we see something more akin to a battle, in which one of them runs, as our weakened metaphor goes, for his life? In each instance, the distance covered does not change, nor does the description of the place itself. But in each possibility, the meaning of the place is different, and different specifically in the way that it represents a different relationship between the two players: one of hostility, or simple competition, or – the most difficult case – desire. It is this last possibility which is, of course, the one most often figured as something else: desire is like a hunt, or like a battle, or like a

 For a useful discussion of the production of “space” and its problematic relation to the notion of “place,” see Hubbard 2005. I draw here particularly on the work of Lefebvre in defining space as “socially produced and consumed” (Hubbard 2005, 41). I try to avoid the controversy about the distinction drawn by theorists between “space” and “place” which, as Hubbard shows, easily devolves into a debate about which concept provides the master trope against which the other plays off. See, however, the useful discussion of Skempis (this volume).

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race, or like almost anything other than a pursuit of the object of erotic feeling. The love-relationship occupies conceptual space to be made into something else, not unlike the ground over which the lovers run. And so I hope to show, through two interrelated texts, that the always problematic concept of female desire is display in archaic Greek poetry as a series of shifts and dodges that serve, ultimately, to display nothing so much as the impossibility of representing the ground of such a pursuit. In this way, the indeterminacy of the space over which Atalanta runs comes to figure the unimaginability of her desire. The primary site of my analysis is a series of relatively coherent fragments from the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women (frs. 73 – 6 M-W)², in which we are told the story of the marriage of Atalanta, daughter (in this text) of Schoeneus. The Catalogue as a whole has received relatively little scholarly discussion, not least because of the fragmentary state of our current text, and so requires a brief introduction. The Catalogue was ascribed in antiquity to Hesiod, with no questions about its authorship, and indeed the text has a number of Hesiodic characteristics, both in terms of formulaic diction and overall outlook.³ Most scholars, however, now ascribe the work to a later poet, and the date for the work is hotly debated. I am content with a date early to mid-sixth century, though the argument of this essay does not depend on such a date.⁴ In any

 I refer to the Catalogue throughout using the standard fragment numbers of Merkelbach and West’s OCT edition. In a few places I quote the text from Most’s 2007 Loeb Classical Library edition, an excellent new text and translation, which contains numerous useful additions and conjectures.  The bibliography on the Catalogue is rapidly growing. West (1985) provides an invaluable discussion of the text’s history and overall structure; the collection of Hunter (2005) includes articles discussing numerous literary and historical aspects of the text as we have it. I have found the discussion of J. Strauss Clay in that volume (Clay 2005) as well as Clay (2003) particularly helpful. Hirschberger (2004) provides a comprehensive text and commentary. Rutherford (2000) discusses the genre of the work, in light of catalogue-poetry and genealogical poetry. The most important reading of the Atalanta-episode for my purposes is now Ziogas (2011); Ziogas comments on Ovid’s use of Hesiod’s intertextual play with Homer.  West (1985, 130 – 7), arguing from internal evidence, puts it between 580 and 520. March (1987, 158 – 9) prefers the earlier part of this range, 580 – 550. Koenen (1994, 26) thinks it can be no later than the early sixth century. Rutherford (2000) suggests that the “canonical version” may belong to the sixth century, but is willing to believe that some material may be much older. Fowler (1998, 1 n. 4) argues for a date before the death of Kleisthenes in 575, and suggests a date near 580. The one significant outlier is Janko (1982, 87 and 247– 8 nn. 37– 8) who, based on stylistic evidence, believes that the Catalogue is closely contemporary to the Theogony and Works and Days, which he puts at the end of the eighth or beginning of the seventh centuries. Solmsen (1981, 355 – 8) argues that the text was highly variable, and changed by local rhapsodes, until the Alexandrian period. If this is the case, it is impossible to fix either date or place of any fragment.

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case, the text as we have it purports to tell the story of the Greek hemitheoi, the heroes who are born during that brief moment in human history when gods (primarily male) had sex with humans (mostly female).⁵ As such the material in the text is arranged genealogically, and through these genealogies, it appears that the Catalogue provided a remarkable compendium of Greek heroic myth. If the stories in the Catalogue are arranged genealogically, they are also necessarily clumped together geographically: though the gods of epic are notoriously lacking in place-epithets, most of the mothers of heroes belong to a particular place, and each story takes place in the geographic region, and local community, of Greece where a particular hero is born.⁶ As Osborne has noted, this pattern is seriously disrupted by the story of the suitors of Helen, in which the young men who woo for this particular woman’s hand come from all of the major kingdoms of Greece; as Osborne provocatively puts it, the story of the marriage of Helen is “geographically promiscuous.”⁷ My concern in this paper, however, is with another story that is “geographically promiscuous,” both in that it presumes suitors from all over Greece, and in other senses. Atalanta, as is perhaps appropriate for a heroine who is best known for her ability to run with astonishing swiftness, proves to be remarkably difficult to place. Like Elvis after his death, more than one Atalanta is reported, bounding through the pages of Greek mythology: an Arcadian, the daughter of Iasos, and a Boiotian, the daughter of Schoeneus. These curious doublets, however, share the significant attributes of aversion to marriage and swiftness of foot, and it seems likely that both Atalantas were, at one time, a single character who became split in the mythological tradition and then re-united later.⁸ Clay (2003, 165 n. 51) surveys previous opinions and discuses the difficulty of reaching a sure conclusion. Hirshberger (2004, 32– 51) cautiously settles for a date between 630 and 590.  Clay (2005) argues, rightly in my view, that the Catalogue ends with the story of the suitors of Helen precisely because the Trojan War marks the end of the heroic genealogies. See now González (2010), who also argues that the end of the Catalogue marks the end of the age of heroes precisely by ending sexual relations between mortals and heroes.  For the geographical implications of Circe in the Catalogue, see Skempis (this volume). West (1985) argues for an overall structure that is largely geographical. See also Cole 2004, 24– 6. Fowler (1998) locates the final redaction of the Catalogue to the First Sacred War in the region of Delphi. For a thorough discussion of the invention of the “Hellenic genealogy,” see Hall 2002, 125 – 72.  Osborne 2005, 22.  A brief but useful discussion of the disparate traditions is provided by Barringer (1996, 48 – 9). Both Atalantas are said separately to participate in the hunt for the Calydonian Boar by Apollodorus, without apparent awareness that they are different; see Apollodorus 1.8.2 and 3.9.2. As Ziogas points out, Ovid keeps the two Atalantas separate in his Metamorphoses, though he conflates them elsewhere (Ziogas 2011, 255 n. 22). Detienne (1979 [1977], 31– 2) argues for a

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The central episode of this essay is relatively well-known, though the version in the Hesiodic Catalogue is not. Atalanta, swift of foot and lovely of limb, wishes to avoid marriage. She convinces her father to establish a footrace between Atalanta herself and each of her would-be suitors. Any suitor who competes and loses is killed (though the method of death varies, as we will see). Only that suitor who is able to surpass Atalanta as she runs against her suitor and away from marriage will win both his own life and Atalanta as a bride. What is remarkable about this race in Hesiod is that it appears to partake in an identity crisis: the story cannot decide if the race is a race, or alternately, a hunt or, still more metaphorically, an epic battle. In each of these scenarios, the space traversed remains the same but the redefinition of the event necessitates a rethinking of its place, and the meaning of that place.⁹

Theognis Pursues Atalanta Before we turn to the Catalogue, however, I analyze another moment of erotic pursuit, in which both the space of pursuit and the site of desire becomes less concrete than we might wish. Theognis’ brief poem (lines 1283 – 94 in the standard corpus), in which a fleeing eromenos is compared to Atalanta, provides a particularly good example of geographical landscape being used to evoke a social status, bolstered perhaps by an ambivalent emotional state.¹⁰ A thorough reading of Theognis’ poem will make the Catalogue’s mutations of geography all the more striking: Ὦ παῖ, μή μ’ ἀδίκει – ἔτι σοι καταθύμιος εἶναι βούλομαι – εὐφροσύνηι τοῦτο συνεὶς ἀγαθῆι· παρελεύσεαι οὐδ’ ἀπατήσεις· νικήσας γὰρ ἔχεις τὸ πλέον ἐξοπίσω. ἀλλά σ’ ἐγὼ τρώσω φεύγοντά με, ὥς ποτέ φασιν Ἰασίου κούρην, παρθένον Ἰασίην, ὡραίην περ ἐοῦσαν ἀναινομένην γάμον ἀνδρῶν φεύγειν. ζωσαμένη δ᾿ ἔργ’ ἀτέλεστα τέλει

homology between the activities of the two supposedly separate characters, and treats them as structural variants of a single story.  See the useful remarks of Skempis (this volume) on the relation between myth and space.  Theognis’ corpus, though not so tattered as the Catalogue of Women, has its own complex history, for which see West 1974, 40 – 72. I agree with West that the date of Theognis is likely to be the end of the 7th to beginning of the 6th centuries BCE. This places Theognis possibly earlier than the Catalogue, at least in terms of its final redaction, though the traditional material in the Catalogue may well pre-date the Theognidean poem.

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πατρὸς νοσφισθεῖσα δόμων ξανθὴ Ἀταλάντη· ὤιχετο δ’ ὑψηλὰς εἰς κορυφὰς ὀρέων φεύγουσ’ ἱμερόεντα γάμον, χρυσῆς Ἀφροδίτης δῶρα· τέλος δ’ ἔγνω καὶ μάλ’ ἀναινομένη. Boy, do not wrong me – I wish to be dear to you still – understanding this with noble grace.¹¹ You will not pass by me with a trick, nor will you deceive me. Having won, you have still more in the future, but I will injure you as you flee from me, as once, they say the daughter of Iasios, the Iasian maiden, though she was ripe, spurned marriage with men, and fled. Having girded herself, she fulfilled fruitless deeds having shrunk from the home of her father, blonde Atalanta. And she lived in the high crowns of the mountains, fleeing desirable marriage, the gifts of golden Aphrodite. But finally she knew, though refusing strongly. [or: But she knew completion, though refusing it strongly]. (Thgn. 1283 – 94)¹²

This poem, as we will see, plays curiously with the geography of desire, making even the idea of pursuit into a kind of cipher. The logic of the poem seems straightforward enough, at first: the speaker urges his beloved not to try to escape his erotic desire; if he does, the speaker will capture him, just as Atalanta was eventually captured and married. The suggestion that the speaker will “injure” the boy as he flees may carry a double-entendre, suggesting that the speaker will penetrate the youth from behind.¹³ Both the youth and Atalanta are depicted as running physically from their respective relationships, indicated by the word φεύγειν, to flee. Just as Atalanta was not able to avoid marriage, then, so the beloved boy of Theognis’ poem will not escape the speaker’s sexual desire. Both stories present, then, a spatial element to desire and its avoidance. Though the boy’s rejection of the speaker’s desire may not involve literal, physical flight, the language of the lines suggest a footrace. The word παρελεύσεαι,

 There is considerable disagreement about the meaning of this couplet, and whether the participle συνείς (“understanding”) should go with the speaker or the beloved. If the latter, we must understand the phrase “for I still wish to be dear to you” as parenthetical, as I have printed here. If the former, then τοῦτο “this,” must refer to some unspecified situation, possibly the boy’s infidelity, hinted at in the following line. See the useful discussion in West 1974, 165 ad 1283 – 94.  This and all other translations are my own, and are intended to be as literal as possible.  See West 1974, 166; Hubbard 1993, 43 n. 51.

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from παρέρχομαι (1285), to overtake or pass beyond, suggests a competition of speed, and this imagery is picked up in the idea that the boy has “been victorious” in the next line.¹⁴ Lover and beloved are imagined in a competition. This suggestion should make the comparison to Atalanta in the second half of the poem particularly relevant but, as we will see, Atalanta’s footrace is carefully elided in this work. In the next line, moreover, the imagery shifts once again: in the suggestion that the speaker will “injure” (or perhaps, “stab”) his beloved as he flees, we are transported to a different kind of space, that of a battle or hunt. I will return to the question of how the two halves of the poem work together a little later; first, we must consider the story of Atalanta that is presented here. Most striking is that Atalanta’s flight from marriage (φεύγειν, 1290; φεύγουσ’, 1293) is represented by a physical removal from the sphere of civilized life to one of wilderness (“the high crowns of mountains”, 1292).¹⁵ As has been elucidated by Detienne and Lewis, the geographical remove here echoes Atalanta’s personal state.¹⁶ In a normally functioning archaic Greek civilization, when a daughter leaves her father’s home, she does so because she is entering into the home of her husband; this geographical transition helps to signify the woman’s marriage, which is considered a τέλος, a fulfillment of her personal being.¹⁷ Elsewhere in the Hesiodic Catalogue, Mestra is a troublesome bride who, after marriage, returns to father’s house in order to marry again (fr. 43a.31 M-W). Her failure to move to another man’s house and stay there becomes a marker of her failure to achieve a new state of being, to become a gunê (wife) rather than a parthenos (young unmarried woman).¹⁸ Here, Atalanta leaves her father’s house, but in a different mode. In this poem, the house of her father is not replaced by another dwelling, but literally unbounded space: the highest peaks of mountains.¹⁹ Her flight from father, home, and marriage, then, is signified by the geographic wildness to which she momentarily escapes.

 See Purves 2011, esp. 526 – 8, 532– 3. I am grateful to Prof. Purves for allowing me to see her work in an unpublished version. Interestingly, the word in this form (παρελεύσεαι) appears once in the Iliad, where it has a metaphorical meaning similar to its use here. Agamemnon tells Achilles that he will not “pass by or persuade” him in their dispute over Chryseis (Il. 1.132).  See the useful discussion of Lewis 1985, 214– 16.  Detienne 1979, 31– 2; Lewis 1985, 214– 16.  Vernant 1983, 133; Ormand 1999, 12– 14, 18 – 25.  See Ormand 2004 for a full discussion of this episode.  In the Odyssey the Cyclopes live “in hollow caves on the peaks of high mountains,” ἀλλ’ οἵ γ’ ὑψηλῶν ὀρέων ναίουσι κάρηνα/ ἐν σπέεσι γλαφυροῖσι, 9.113 – 14. This description takes place in the context of describing the Cyclopes’ lack of culture or community. In Theognis’ poem, Atalanta is not even granted a hollow cave; she exists simply on the mountains.

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This ill-defined space fulfills the conditions that Foucault briefly and engagingly called a “crisis heterotopia”: In the so-called primitive societies, there is a certain form of heterotopia that I would call crisis heterotopias, i. e., there are privileged or sacred or forbidden places, reserved for individuals who are, in relation to society and to the human environment in which they live, in a state of crisis: adolescents, menstruating women, pregnant women, the elderly, etc.²⁰

Atalanta exists in this other space precisely because she is at a moment of personal crisis, which she wishes to make permanent. Rather than undergoing the transition of marriage that would give her a set place in society, she resists that transformation, and her resistance is marked by the unbounded nature of the environment to which she retreats. While there, moreover, this Atalanta engages in particularly curious activities. Theognis’ poem seems to refer here to an episode in the various myths of Atalanta in which she lives in the wild, as a hunter (cf. Apollod. 3.9.2). Even this is uncertain; though various scholars have connected this part of the poem with that known episode from Atalanta’s life, we must admit that the poem does not actually mention that Atalanta hunts anything while on her mountain retreat. Instead, we are told that she “brings to fulfillment unfinishable things” (1290). Detienne argues that this curious phrase, ἀτέλεστα τέλει, has a double meaning: Instead of the fulfillment of marriage (télos…gámoio) she chooses to fulfill (teleîn) exploits whose essential virtue is to be deprived of conclusion and limit. They are atélesta in two senses: without end, since they must never cease, but also fruitless, since they are vain and useless. Atalanta’s hunt is interminable just as the race to flee marriage has no finish.²¹

In Detienne’s formulation Atalanta’s hunting is atelesta, without completion, because, unlike the activities that are associated with domestication and culture, hunting does not produce a completed product (grain, children) as do agricultural and sexual activities. At the same time, Atalanta’s activities in the mountains are distressingly unbounded: there is literally no mechanism for ending her avoidance of “desirable marriage” (1293). Here, however, there is a curious ambiguity of roles that we should note, brought about because Atalanta is insistently fleeing things in this passage. She flees to the mountains to avoid marriage with men, and she lives in the mountains fleeing “desirable marriage” (desirable

 Foucault, “Heterotopias,” 1967.  Detienne 1979, 33.

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to whom?). Though she is busy hunting animals – if that is what is meant by ἀτέλεστα τέλει – it appears that she is also, like the boy at the beginning of the poem, being pursued as if the object of a hunt. Who or what is pursuing Atalanta? One would presume a potential bridegroom, but the poem leaves him undefined as well. Atalanta flees only from marriage, and flees only to the unbounded space of mountaintops. In the last line of the poem, Atalanta’s avoidances come to an end, rather abruptly, through the common trope of sexual experience as a form of knowledge. That, Lewis suggests, is the point of the speaker’s metaphor: Atalanta, who became a huntress beyond civilization, becomes the quarry for a different kind of hunter, one who, inspired by eros, seeks to reincoporate her into human society. The would be erastes of Theognis 1283 – 1294 presents the story of Atalanta as a paradigm for his own approach to the eromenos. ²²

This is a coherent enough reading, but again, we must note that no bridegroom appears in Theognis’ poem. Rather, Atalanta simply “knew” although she had been avoiding. It is not even fully clear if the word τέλος in line 1294 is used adverbially (as I have translated it, “finally”) or if it is the object of the verb of knowing, “But she knew a τέλος, (that is, a marriage).” There is, in other words, a thoroughly confounding lack of definition to Atalanta’s experience of desire, so much so that her act of fleeing has come to be understood as an act of pursuit: a pursuit of emptiness, as it were (ἀτέλεστα τέλει). That lack of definition is also a lack of limit, and is here represented by Atalanta’s move to unbounded, uncivilized space. The more confusing aspect of the poem, however, is the way that it suppresses the expected story of Atalanta’s footrace. As mentioned above, the first four lines of the poem use vocabulary appropriate to a race: the boy will not surpass the speaker, and has been victorious. The speaker presents himself pursuing the boy. We expect, then, that when the poem turns to an extended metaphor about Atalanta, that the myth told will be that of her famous race, in which she literally fled from marriage, by racing against her potential bridegrooms.²³ Indeed, lines 1287– 90 clearly set us up to expect such a race: “…as they say/ the daughter of Iasios, the Iasian maiden, although ripe, refusing marriage with men,/ fled.” In that race, as we will see, it appears that Atalanta is often portrayed as pursuing even as she is pursued; for now, however, I wish to concentrate on the effects of

 Lewis 1985, 216.  See the useful note of Bing/Cohen 1991, 98 n. 4; they suggest that the poem here deliberately conflates the two episodes from Atalanta’s life.

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this curious ellipsis. Indeed, had Theognis gone forward with the story of Atalanta’s race, the poem as a whole would have made, it seems, more sense. The speaker warns his beloved that the speaker will overtake him, just as Atalanta was overtaken in her footrace, and will thus bring him into the civilized world of affective relationships. This, in effect, is how Lewis interprets the poem that we have (above).²⁴ But of course, we do not get the story of Atalanta’s race, or even a clear narrative of her marriage. Instead, Atalanta “flees” marriage by means of a curiously static verb: she “lives,” or “inhabits” (ὤιχετο). West, a literal and careful reader of the poem, points out the incongruity that is thus created: We are told (as also in the Hesiodic Catalogue, with which there are verbal parallels: cf. fr. 73.4– 5; 76.6) that Atalanta refused to consider marriage, and that she ‘fled’ from it and took to the mountain heights (this is not attested for the Catalogue, but there is a parallel case in Porthaon’s daughters, fr. 26.10 ff.); but in the end she came to know the gifts of Aphrodite all the same. In order that this may be parallel to ἀλλά σ᾿ ἐγὼ τρώσω φεύγοντά με, we must imagine Hippomenes pounding up the mountain slopes and finally catching and raping the runaway at a gusty altitude.²⁵

Faced with this illogical set of meanings, West suggests that, in fact, the poem as we have it is corrupt. He argues that the original poem did contain a story of Atalanta’s race, and that the first half of it has been inexpertly joined with a story about Atalanta’s mountain sojourn. There is even a spatially convenient spot for this unhappy juncture, namely line 1288, which consists, quite strangely, of two phrases that mean exactly the same thing, arranged chiastically: Ἰασίου κούρην, παρθένον Ἰασίην, “of Iasios the daughter, maiden Iasionic”. This phrase, provides a perfect midpoint, as it were, for the poem’s unhappy break and rejoin.²⁶ If we are willing to read the poem as we have it, however, we must interpret it differently. I suggest that the curious ellipsis of Atalanta’s race produces both effect and meaning. As Detienne has shown, both episodes of Atalanta’s mythical life – living in the mountains as a huntress, and racing against her potential bridegrooms – have the same structural function. Indeed, as we will see, in some versions of the story of the race, the race itself is structured as a hunt. Both are means of avoiding marriage, and both result, in a sense, in ἀτέλεστα: a state of non-completion, non-marriage on the part of Atalanta. But, where the race has certain advantages as a metaphor for the speaker, namely in suggesting his

 Lewis 1985, 216.  West 1974, 166.  West 1974, 166 – 7.

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avid pursuit of his eromenos, the story of Atalanta’s time in the wild gives us the geographical image that corresponds to Atalanta’s – and the eromenos’s – undomesticated state. The ground over which lover and beloved race for completion of desire, then, becomes replaced by an unbounded geographical state from which the speaker must rescue his beloved, so that he, like Atalanta can enjoy the “gifts of Aphrodite” (1293).²⁷ In all of this, it is important to note that Atalanta’s desire – if there is such a thing – is never mentioned. She flees from marriage, but the poem never expresses motion towards anything. She inhabits the mountains, but we do not see her seeking even them out. Her desire here, is simply one of avoidance, in contradiction of her natural state of ripeness, and thus can only be expressed by this geographical metaphor of unlimited, uncultivated wilderness, which is also a state of innocence; her change of state is announced simply by the verb “she knew” (1294). The story of her race, however, leaves Atalanta less thoroughly indeterminate, and in some versions presents her as pursuing as much as pursued, as much a subject as a sexual object. By suppressing this aspect of Atalanta’s narrative, Theognis’ speaker preserves her (and by extension, his beloved pais) as passively fleeing, unmoved by any desire of her own. As we will see, the version of her race presented by the Catalogue, such a desire threatens to destabilize the rules of both gender and genre. Atalanta’s lack of cultural boundaries in Theognis becomes, paradoxically, a curtain over her potentially disruptive desire.

Atalanta in the Hesiodic Catalogue ²⁸ If, in Theognis’ version of Atalanta, the story of a race has been supplanted by an excursion into heterotopia, in the Catalogue of Women the story of the race itself seems protean, changing shape into both hunt and battle. The poem explores, in other words, three different ways of traversing the same physical space, and in the process, three different ways of marrying Atalanta. Once again, Atalanta flees from marriage with mortal men; but as she runs, she is distracted by a form of desire. Her desire is figured as a kind of turning aside from her previous flight: not a motion towards something, but a deviation of her motion away. I

 So Lewis 1985, 216.  I present a fuller account of Atalanta’s race in my book on the Catalogue of Women, forthcoming from Cambridge University Press. Some of the ideas presented here will appear in ch. 4 of that volume. In this essay I focus primarily on the idea of the race – that is, of ground traversed in competition – as a representation of Atalanta’s change of state.

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suggest that the very indeterminacy of this representation is what makes the ground over which she runs so strikingly polyvalent. The Catalogue, of course, comes to us only in fragments, and is challenging at best to read. The story of Atalanta in the Catalogue is preserved in three fragments, the last of which is of greatest interest here. Given the unfamiliarity of the text, I present all three fragments with a translation: (fr. 73 M-W) P. Lond. 486C, post Mahaffy ed. Milne; P. Oxy. 2488B, ed. Lobel [ ]ιτοιο ἄνακτος [ ]σ̣ι ποδώκης δῖ’ Ἀταλάν[τη [ Χαρί]των ἀμαρύγματ’ ἔχο[υσα [ πρὸς ἀνθρώπων ἀ]παναίνετο φῦλον ὁμιλ[εῖν ἀνδρῶν ἐλπομένη φεύγ]ε̣ιν γάμον ἀλφηστάων̣[. [ ]τ̣ανι̣σ̣φ̣ύ[̣ ρ]ο̣υ̣ εἵνεκα κού[ρης [ ].α̣μ[̣ ]ν̣ον εννε[ [ ].[.]ρ̣δ[̣ (fr. 75 M-W) P.S.I. 130 col. i, ed. Vitelli [ ]ο̣παζε[ [ ] [ ]α̣σιππ[ [ ]σ̣σι̣ [ ]ἔνθα· [….. ….. ….. ..τ]ανίσφυρ[ο]ς̣ ὤ̣ρν̣υτο κούρη [….. ….. ….. …]α· πολὺς δ’ ἀμφίσταθ’ ὅμιλος [….. ….. ….. ..θ]άμβος δ’ ἔχε πάντας ὁρῶντα[ς [….. ….. ….. .πν]οιὴ Ζεφύροιο χιτῶνα [….. ….. ….. .πε]ρὶ στήθεσσ’ ἁπαλοῖσι [….. ….. …. πολ]λ̣ὸς δ’ ἐπεγείρετο λαός [….. ….. ….. Σχ]οινεὺς δ’ ἐγέγωνε βοήσας· “κέκλυτέ μευ πάντες, ἠμ]ὲ̣ν νέ̣οι ἠδὲ γέροντες, ὄφρ’ εἴπω τά με θυμὸς] ἐνὶ στήθεσσι κελεύει. [….. ….. ….. ..] ἐμὴν ἑλικώπιδα κούρην [….. ….. ….. ..]οι εἰρημένος ἔστω· [….. ….. . Ζεὺς δ’ ἄμ]μ’ ἐπιμάρτυρος ἔστω· [….. ….. ….. …..].ήσεται· εἰ δέ κεν οὗτος νικήσηι καί οἱ δώηι Ζεὺς] κ̣ῦδος ἀρέσθαι ἄλλοί τ’ ἀθάνατοι, οἳ Ὀλύμ]πια δώματ’ ἔχουσι, ….. ….. ….. ..φί]λ̣ην ἐς πατρίδα γαῖαν· ….. ….. ….. . ὠκυ]πόδων σθένος ἵππων ….. ….. ….. ..κε]ιμήλια· καί νύ κε θυμῶι ….. ….. ….. …]α̣ ἀνιηρὸν ἄεθλον. εἰ δέ κε μὴ δώηισι πατ]ὴ̣ρ ἀνδρῶν τε θεῶν τε (fr. 76 M-W) P.S.I. 130 col. ii, ed. Vitelli .].[.]….. .α̣ρ[̣

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δεξιτερῆι δ’ α̣ρ… ̣ ει̣[ κ]αί μιν ἐπαΐσσων̣ επ[ ἦχ’ ὑποχωρήσασ’· οὐ̣ γ̣ὰ̣ρ̣ ἴ̣σ̣[ον ἀμφοτέροισιν ἆθλον ἔκειθ’· ἣ μέν̣ ῥ̣α π[οδώκης δῖ’ Ἀταλάντη ἵετ’ ἀναινομένη δ̣ῶρα̣ [χρυσῆς Ἀφροδίτης, τῶι δὲ̣ περὶ ψυχῆς πέλε[το δρόμος, ἠὲ ἁλῶναι ἠ̣ὲ φυ̣γε̣ ῖν· τῶι καί ῥα δολο̣[φρονέων προσέειπεν· “ὦ̣ θύγατερ Σχοινῆος, ἀμ[είλιχον ἦτορ ἔχουσα, δ]έ̣ξο τάδ’ ἀγλα̣[ὰ] δ̣ῶρ̣α̣ θ̣ε[̣ ᾶς χρυσῆς Ἀφροδίτης …..]π̣ό.̣ μ̣[…]ω̣εθο̣[ ….. ….. ..]ρ̣ων πα̣[ ….. ….. ..]ν κάββαλ̣[ε ….. ….. ..]ε̣ις̣ χρυ̣[ς .[…. ….. ..].[.]κ̣ηπ̣α[̣ τυφ̣.[……..].[.]χ̣αμα̣[ αὐτὰρ ὃ̣ […..πό]δ̣ε̣σσι μ̣[ ἣ δ’ αἶψ’ ὥσθ’ Ἅρπυια μετ[αχρονίοισι πόδεσσιν ἔμμαρψ’· αὐτὰ̣[ρ ὃ] χειρὶ τὸ δεύτερον ἧ[κε χαμᾶζε· . . . . . . . καὶ δὴ ἔχεν δύο μῆλα ποδώκης δῖ’ Ἀτ[αλάντη· ἐγγὺς δ’ ἦν τέλεος· ὃ δὲ τὸ τρίτον ἧκε χ̣[αμᾶζε· σὺν τῶι δ’ ἐξέφυγεν θάνατον καὶ κῆ̣[ρα μέλαιναν, ἔστη δ’ ἀμπνείων καὶ [..]..[..]..σ̣ομ̣.[

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] of the king²⁹ ] swift-footed godlike Atalanta ] possessing the twinklings of the Graces she refused to mingle with the tribe of men hoping to flee marriage with men who eat bread ] because of the slender-ankled girl (traces of two more lines) Fragment 75 (traces of 5 lines) ] the slender-ankled girl arose³⁰ ] a great crowd stood around ] astonishment held all as they saw ] the breath of Zephyros … the chiton ] around her tender breasts ] a great crowd was gathered ] Schoeneus declared, speaking loudly,

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 Most (2008) plausibly reconstructs the name Schoeneus at the beginning of this line.  The verb ὄρνυμι here could mean “rushed” (so Most 2008 ad loc.) but since the race with Hippomenes seems not to have started yet, I prefer to think that this line refers to Atalanta coming forward where the crowd can see her.

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“Let everyone hear me, both young and old, so that I can say what the spirit in my breast orders me: ] my glancing-eyed daughter ] let it be as stated. ] Let Zeus be our witness. ] …. But if somehow he wins, and Zeus grants to him to win glory, and the other immortals who have homes on Olympos, ] to his dear fatherland ] strength of swift-footed horses ] treasures; and now in his spirit ] grievous contest. But if he does not grant it, the father of gods and men…” (there are lines missing here) Fragment 76 (trace of one line) on the right and he, rushing towards her having retreated a little.³¹ For the prize was not equal for them both: for she, swift-footed godlike Atalanta ran refusing the gifts of golden Aphrodite but for him the race was a matter of life, either to be taken or to escape. And so, planning a trick, he said “Daughter of Schoeneus, having a pitiless heart, receive these shining gifts of the goddess, golden Aphrodite…” (traces of two lines) ] threw down [ ] golden [ (traces of two lines) then he ] with feet [ She, straightaway like a Harpy with feet flying behind grasped; but he sent groundward the second with his hand (there may be lines missing here) And now swift-footed godlike Atalanta held two apples; the finish-line was near; he threw the third groundward and with this he escaped death and dark fate and he stood breathing and [ ] (?) [

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 As printed, the participle is feminine, and goes with Atalanta. It is difficult to know, however, what “retreating” means in this context, unless we picture Atalanta as pursuing Hippomenes, which seems to contradict the preceding line. If we take the participle as masculine (without elision) then we must read Hippomenes as slowing down as part of his deception. See Hirschberger 2004 ad loc. for a brief discussion of the possibilities. It is possible that the participle ὑποχωρήσας/-σα here anticipates the implied comparison to Achilles and Hector (on which, see below); it makes more sense in a battle than in a race.

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The narrative is surprisingly lively. Though Atalanta does not speak – no woman in the Catalogue does – she has evidently convinced her father to set up the race with suitors that we hear about in other accounts.³² The stakes of the race are not quite preserved in our fragments, but seem clear enough: the suitor who wins in a race against Atalanta will win her hand in marriage along with (probably) some horses and other valuable items (fr. 75.18 – 23 M-W). What would happen to the suitor who loses is, unfortunately, lost in a gap in the papyrus (fr. 75 MW, post 25), but fr. 76 M-W makes it clear that, for Hippomenes, death is one possible outcome. So we have, here, the story of the race; and as in the poem by Theognis, Atalanta is described as “fleeing” from marriage with men (fr. 73.5 M-W). As Ziogas has pointed out, this act of flight meshes well with the story of the race, and in fact forms a syllepsis around the word φεύγειν (to flee): “Both Hesiod and Ovid employ the literal and metaphorical meaning of φεύγω/fugere simultaneously. The oracle advises Atalanta that she “avoid” marrying, but Atalanta’s way of “escaping” marriage is to run away from her suitors.”³³ At the same time, this act of physical flight is also a moment of “refusing the gifts of golden Aphrodite” (fr. 76.10 M-W), a line that recalls the last couplet of Theognis’ poem, above. So although Atalanta’s flight here does not take her to new geographic space, her traversal of the racecourse ahead of her suitors preserves in her a state of innocence of sex. In this version she is not, of course, thrown out into the wilderness, but simply remains in the home of her father; her “flight” then, takes the implicit form of a refusal to leave her natal domestic space, but in order to remain in that space, she must continually “flee” in a series of footraces against suitors. A careful reading of the fragment at hand, however, raises serious questions about who is fleeing from whom. Though it is not entirely clear if this version preserves such a tradition, in some retellings of Atalanta’s race the race is itself figured as a hunt. In Apollodorus’ version, for example, the “race” goes as follows: Atalanta sets up a marker halfway down the racecourse, from which the suitor begins running. Atalanta, on the other hand, starts from the starting line, and runs fully armed. If she catches her suitor, she kills him herself (Apollod. 3.9.2). So, as Detienne has argued, “…the race to which the suitors are invited is only a kind of hunt in which they are obliged to play the role of quarry, of the harried beast that only owes its safety to the swiftness of feet.”³⁴ The imagery  Apollod. 3.9.2; Ovid Met. 10.560 – 707. On the episode in Ovid and its relation to the Catalogue, see now Ziogas 2011.  Ziogas 2011, 256.  Detienne 1979, 33.

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of hunting is, of course, commonly employed to describe erotic pursuits, and was something of a trope on Athenian vases.³⁵ But Atalanta is unique as a mortal woman in playing the role of hunter, chasing down her fleeing prey, not in order to marry him, but to avoid such marriage by killing him. It is important to note that in the “hunt” variation of Atalanta’s race not only the roles of the players have shifted: their relation to the space in which the race takes place is now entirely different. Unlike a race, both runners do not begin at the same spot; the course must be altered (at least in Apollodorus’ version) with the placement of a marker midway for the “suitor’s” starting line. We might well imagine that the manner of running would be different; and most paradoxical of all, Atalanta’s desire in such a case undergoes a modulation: she must chase after and catch her suitor – and kill him – in order to “flee from” marriage. As Detienne suggests in a slightly different context, “…for Atalanta hunting is the chosen means of denying amorous desire and refusing the gifts of Aphrodite by forcing the space reserved for marriage to become nothing more than the hunter’s domain…”³⁶ Is the “hunt” supported by the Catalogue’s version of the race? I believe that it is, for several reasons. First, there is the fact that elsewhere in myth Atalanta is a paradigmatic huntress herself, a devotee of Artemis and participant in the Calydonian boar hunt. In addition, we are told in fr. 74 M-W (Schol. in Il. 23.683b1) that Hesiod introduced the idea that Hippomenes was nude when he competed with Atalanta. His nudity, though it would be normal for a man in a footrace and might also have erotic connotations, would certainly increase his vulnerability. More telling are the final lines of fr. 76 M-W, in which it appears that Atalanta is trying to overtake Hippomenes, and is in that act likened to a harpy, a threatening figure whose name is derived from the verb ἁρπάζω, to seize or to snatch. Hippomenes’ arrival at the finish line also seems to have a sense of immediacy, as if he has avoided death right then, and not after some summary judgment. One other line might support such a reading. Fragment 76, line 16 has been read by West and Merkelbach as beginning with the letters τυφ; Hirschberger, however, prefers the reading τυψε, and records Franz’s suggestion of τυψέ[μεναι μεμαυῖα, “(she) desiring to strike” (Hirschbeger 2004 ad loc.).³⁷

 See Sourvinou-Inwood 1987. In this regard, there is a particularly nice glass bowl of the 2nd c. CE, perhaps from Egypt, in which an armed Atalanta pursues a nude Hippomenes (Reims Musee 2281).  Detienne 1979, 34.  Against this suggestion, however, is fr. 76 line 3, in which a masculine participle (ἐπαΐσσων) suggests that Hippomenes is rushing towards someone, his object indicated by the indeterminate pronoun μιν. The easiest reading of this line is that Hippomenes is trying to catch up

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Most interesting of all, however, is the question of what happens to Atalanta’s desire in the scenario of the hunt: the lines preceding this somewhat ambiguous possibility are arresting, in that they depict both Atalanta and Hippomenes as fleeing, and neither of them pursing. In fr. 76.4– 8 M-W we are told that: For the prize was not equal for them both: for she, swift-footed godlike Atalanta ran refusing the gifts of golden Aphrodite but for him the race was a matter of life, either to be taken or to escape.

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The vocabulary, significantly, is almost identical to that in the poem by Theognis: Atalanta refuses (ἀναινομένη) the gifts of Aphrodite (δῶρα… Ἀφροδίτης), just as she refused (ἀναινομένη) marriage with men, and fled (φεύγειν) the gifts of Aphrodite (δῶρα… Ἀφροδίτης) in the earlier poem. In these lines, she is not actively pursuing anything. Hippomenes, however, is clearly being pursued. Like the prey of a hunt, he has only two options: “to be taken, or to escape.” This curious ambiguity is picked up, and toyed with, in the final lines of fr. 76 M-W: And now swift-footed godlike Atalanta held two apples; the finish-line was near; he threw the third groundward and with this he escaped death and dark fate and he stood breathing and [] (?) [ (fr. 76.20 – 4 M-W)

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The word that I have translated “finish line,” is, of course, τέλος, that versatile word that means a boundary, a goal, and also the moment of a ritual word of state. Clearly here the primary meaning of the word is physical: Hippomenes has reached the end of the course before Atalanta, with the help of his golden apples, and so won the race. But the τέλος is also near in another sense: because Hippomenes reaches the end first, Atalanta must give up her flight from marriage, and undergo a personal τέλος, a marriage. Thus by “escaping” (ἐξέφυγεν)

to Atalanta, who must be understood as running ahead of him, towards the finish line. Further complicating the issue is the participle in the following line, ὑποχωρήσασ’, “having retreated,” or, perhaps, “having held back.” As printed, the participle is an elided feminine, referring to Atalanta; but it could just as easily be an unelided masculine nominative, referring to Hippomenes. All of this begins to sound more like a battle than a race, with one party rushing the other, and the second initially giving way. Who is retreating, or perhaps, “holding back” from whom? The text is too fragmentary here to know with certainty.

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dark death (which also would have been a τέλος, had he not avoided it), Hippomenes also puts an end to Atalanta’s serial “flight” (φεύγειν).³⁸ In this poem there is almost no direct pursuit, only flight; and insofar as Atalanta is trying to catch Hippomenes, that act of almost grasping (fr. 76.18 – 19 M-W), is not of erotic desire – so far as we can tell – but figured as an act of avoidance, of escape. The apples, of course, are crucial to our understanding of the race and to Atalanta’s desire, and their physical function requires some explanation. Elsewhere I have argued, following the work of Faraone and Detienne, that in stooping to pick up the apples, Atalanta (perhaps unconsciously) signals her acceptance of Hippomenes as a suitor. Apples, as Faraone has argued, are used as “ballistic aphrodisiacs” in love-charms throughout the ancient Mediterranean. Significantly, the apples here are described as δῶρα Ἀφροδίτης, “gifts of Aphrodite,” the very phrase used a few lines earlier to designate the experience of sex that Atalanta is fleeing from.³⁹ When Atalanta receives these “gifts of Aphrodite,” then, she metaphorically accepts the sexual experience that they represent.⁴⁰ At the same time, the apples are literally a physical distraction from Atalanta’s flight. Though the Hesiodic text does not give us much detail about how Hippomenes releases the apples, it does not appear that he throws them off to the side. In line 12 he evidently throws something down (κάββαλ̣[ε); and in lines 19 and 21 apples two and three are sent “groundward” (χαμᾶζε). The image that comes up, then, is not one of Atalanta driven off the course of the race, but merely having to stoop to pick them up. Atalanta’s desire, then, is physically redirected, groundward, by the apples. In fr. 76.18 – 19 M-W, Atalanta, described as harpy-like, has just “taken hold of” (ἔμμαρψ’) Hippomenes. The word μάρπτω is not a racing word; its usual context is, as we will see in the next section, one of battle. Men take hold of their enemies; abstract concepts, such as sleep, old age, or death take hold of men. Hippomenes, then, is all but in Atalanta’s grasp when he drops the second apple, and by means of the third he escapes death and dark fate. There is a remarkable confluence of literal and metaphorical here, as what he really escapes is, of course, Atalanta. And she, pausing in her desire to grab Hippomenes, grasps instead a “gift of Aphrodite,” and so no longer flees from marriage. The space occupied by the footrace has, remarkably, served also as the place from which Ata-

 See Ziogas 2011 for an astute reading of Ovid’s use of this paradoxical formulation.  Ormand (forthcoming). Faraone 1990, 238; Detienne 1979, 42– 4.  Faraone 1990, 238; Barringer 1996, 74; Detienne 1979, 41– 2.

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lanta will marry, and, in accordance with her father’s declaration from which she will go to her husband’s “dear fatherland” (fr. 75.21 M-W).

From Hunt to Battle If Atalanta’s race seems, in some respects, like a hunt, however, in other ways the story recalls a battle. And so we have our third transformation of geographical space: the race course is not merely a representative of the space that Atalanta must traverse in order to become a wife, but on an intertextual level becomes a reenactment (or pre-enactment, if you like) of the fight between Hector and Achilles in Book 22 of the Iliad. ⁴¹ Early in the extant fragments Atalanta is identified as ποδώκης δῖ’ Ἀταλάν[τη, “swift footed Atalanta” (fr. 73.2 M-W). The epithet must call to mind the most famous of swift-footed heroes, Achilles.⁴² The epithet is repeated at least once more (fr. 76.20 M-W) and has been plausibly reconstructed in another instance (fr. 76.5 M-W). “Swift-footed” is, of course, a reasonable epithet for Atalanta, and that alone is not sufficient to make an identification with Achilles. Parallels soon become more explicit, however, and in fact refer to a remarkable moment in the Iliad. Returning for a moment to the passage discussed just above, consider the different motivations that the two runners have in their dangerous footrace: οὐ̣ γ̣ὰ̣ρ̣ ἴ̣σ̣[ον ἀμφοτέροισιν ἆθλον ἔκειθ’· ἣ μέν̣ ῥ̣α π[οδώκης δῖ’ Ἀταλάντη ἵετ’ ἀναινομένη δ̣ῶρα̣ [χρυσῆς Ἀφροδίτης, τῶι δὲ̣ περὶ ψυχῆς πέλε[το δρόμος, ἠὲ ἁλῶναι ἠ̣ὲ φυ̣γε̣ ῖν·

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… For the prize was not equal for them both: she, swift-footed godlike Atalanta ran refusing the gifts of golden Aphrodite but for him the race was a matter of life, either to be taken or to escape. (fr. 76.4– 8 M-W)

 Some of the ideas here are forthcoming in my book on the Catalogue of Women as well. For combat as a common metaphor for athletic competition, see Scanlon 1988.  Hirschberger (2004) provides several parallels; the most common similar formula is ποδάρκης δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς, which occurs some 21 times in the Iliad. See also the useful and perceptive discussion of Ziogas (2011, 258): “Cast as a female Achilles, Atalanta exemplifies a gendered shift from the male oriented Iliad to the heroines of the Ehoiai.”

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This passage, in addition to characterizing Atalanta’s pursuit as a moment of flight, also contains a clear reference to that most famous of grim footraces, the moment when Achilles is chasing Hector before the walls of Troy. But because Achilles and Hector are in a war, not a race, the “race” exists only at the level of metaphor, and the prize of this race is not the usual prize, but the life of Hector himself.⁴³ τῇ ῥα παραδραμέτην φεύγων ὃ δ’ ὄπισθε διώκων· πρόσθε μὲν ἐσθλὸς ἔφευγε, δίωκε δέ μιν μέγ’ ἀμείνων καρπαλίμως, ἐπεὶ οὐχ ἱερήϊον οὐδὲ βοείην ἀρνύσθην, ἅ τε ποσσὶν ἀέθλια γίγνεται ἀνδρῶν, ἀλλὰ περὶ ψυχῆς θέον Ἕκτορος ἱπποδάμοιο. ὡς δ’ ὅτ’ ἀεθλοφόροι περὶ τέρματα μώνυχες ἵπποι ῥίμφα μάλα τρωχῶσι· τὸ δὲ μέγα κεῖται ἄεθλον ἢ τρίπος ἠὲ γυνὴ ἀνδρὸς κατατεθνηῶτος· ὣς τὼ τρὶς Πριάμοιο πόλιν πέρι δινηθήτην καρπαλίμοισι πόδεσσι· (Il. 22.157– 66)

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So there they ran about, the one fleeing and the other pursuing from behind, and a noble man fled in front, but behind a much better man pursued, swiftly, since they did not strive for a sacrificial animal, nor an ox-hide, which are prizes for races run by men, 160 but they ran for the life of Hector, tamer of horses. Thus when single-foot horses that bear away prizes run very lightly around the turning-posts; and a big prize is at stake, a tripod, or a woman, when a man has died, thus three times the two whirled around the city of Priam 165 with swift feet.

In the Iliad, the comparison to a footrace affects the listener because of the contrast between sport and war. The footrace that the chase is compared to is, indeed, a serious one – but even a race where the prize is a woman is trivial compared to the grim conditions of Hector’s running. To lose the race is, for Hector, to lose his life – a “prize” only in the blunt devaluation brought about by the metaphor. In the Catalogue, however, this same metaphor has been made literal: Hippomenes is actually in a race, structured as a race, in which the prize, if he loses, is his life. As Ziogas has put it in a recent and perceptive analysis, “Hesiod synthesizes Homer’s simile and narrative proper, turning the Iliadic fatal race of  The parallels were noted by Laser 1952. Laser, however, assumes that the lines have been interpolated in the Iliad, since they are not as appropriate there as they are in the Catalogue episode, and he posits a common early source for both works. See now Ziogas 2011, 258 – 61 for a brief but illuminating discussion of the relation between these two passages.

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the greatest Achaean and Trojan hero into a contest for a maiden’s hand.”⁴⁴ At the same time, the prize of Hippomenes’ winning carries an unspoken benefit that is only mentioned as the more normal prize in the passage in the Iliad: though the Catalogue does not say so, Hippomenes stands not only to win his life, but also “a woman,” – namely, the other contestant, Atalanta. The passage in the Catalogue, moreover, uses diction that adds to the impression that what goes on here is more battle than race. In a recent study of the concept of “overtaking,” Alex Purves has shown that the vocabulary used for overtaking in battle is usually different than that used for overtaking in a race, as the different objects of the two kinds of pursuit might suggest.⁴⁵ When Homer describes warriors chasing a target in battle, we see verbs of pursuit, notably διώκω (to chase) and catching up like μάρπτω and καταμάρπτω (to seize). The person running away is typically described using φεύγω (to flee) and its compounds. In races in the Iliad, by contrast, the act of running is marked by a series of verbs that deal with the act of overtaking in the sense of passing by: φθάνω, παρέρχομαι, παρεξέρχομαι, παραφθάνω, παρατρέχω, παρελαύνω, παρεξελαύνω. In the passage from the Catalogue above, it is clear that the vocabulary for Atalanta’s running comes from Achilles’ pursuit of Hector, and as such, the stakes for Hippomenes are no less serious than for the Trojan hero. If he is not successful in the act of fleeing (φεύγω), he will die just as Hector does. A second verbal parallel to the Iliad appears towards the end of our extant fragment, just as the race ends: ἣ δ’ αἶψ’ ὥσθ’ Ἅρπυια μετ[αχρονίοισι πόδεσσιν ἔμμαρψ’· αὐτὰ̣[ρ ὃ] χειρὶ τὸ δεύτερον ἧ[κε χαμᾶζε· . . . . . . . καὶ δὴ ἔχεν δύο μῆλα ποδώκης δῖ’ Ἀτ[αλάντη· ἐγγὺς δ’ ἦν τέλεος· ὃ δὲ τὸ τρίτον ἧκε χ̣[αμᾶζε· σὺν τῶι δ’ ἐξέφυγεν θάνατον καὶ κῆ̣[ρα μέλαιναν, ἔστη δ’ ἀμπνείων καὶ [..]..[..]..σ̣ομ̣.[ (fr. 76.18 – 23 M-W) She, straightaway like a Harpy with feet flying behind seized; but he sent groundward the second with his hand (there may be lines missing here) And now swift-footed godlike Atalanta held two apples; the finish-line was near; he threw the third groundward and with this he escaped death and dark fate and he stood breathing and [] (?) [

 Ziogas 2011, 260.  Purves 2011.

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These lines clearly parallel a moment in the grim race between Hector and Achilles, when Apollo gives Hector just enough assistance to keep him alive, and the poet suggests that this “race” is like a race in a dream: ὡς δ’ ἐν ὀνείρῳ οὐ δύναται φεύγοντα διώκειν· οὔτ’ ἄρ’ ὃ τὸν δύναται ὑποφεύγειν οὔθ’ ὃ διώκειν· ὣς ὃ τὸν οὐ δύνατο μάρψαι ποσίν, οὐδ’ ὃς ἀλύξαι. πῶς δέ κεν Ἕκτωρ κῆρας ὑπεξέφυγεν θανάτοιο, εἰ μή οἱ πύματόν τε καὶ ὕστατον ἤντετ’ Ἀπόλλων ἐγγύθεν, ὅς οἱ ἐπῶρσε μένος λαιψηρά τε γοῦνα; (Il. 22.199 – 204)

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As in a dream, one is not able to pursue the one fleeing, nor is the one able to completely escape the first, nor the other to pursue; Thus the one was not able to catch the other with his feet, nor the other to escape.⁴⁶ And how could Hector have escaped the fates of death, if not that Apollo, for the last and latest time came to him nearby, and roused his strength and his swift knees?

We should, perhaps, not make much of the verbal echo of μάρψαι (Il. 22.201) in the description of Atalanta pursuing like a harpy overtaking (ἔμμαρψ’, fr. 76.19 M-W). But clearly Hippomenes’ escape from “death and dark fate” is an echo of Hector’s similar, though temporary escape.⁴⁷ In both cases, the two heroes escape death through the assistance of a divinity, though Hippomenes’ help has the more concrete form of the golden apples. The more interesting thing about the parallel, however, is that the Catalogue takes a temporary, provisional moment in Hector’s flight from Achilles and makes it into the successful conclusion of Hippomenes’ story. Just as the basis for the Catalogue’s literal race is the hypothetical and metaphorical one in the Iliad, the Catalogue takes a momentary pause in the Iliadic passage (itself phrased as a rhetorical question) and makes it concrete and permanent. Unlike Hector, Hippomenes really has escaped from the fate of death and, we presume, will go on to marry Atalanta.

 The deliberate ambiguity about who is pursuing and who is pursued in this passage is remarkable, and perhaps also enables the ambiguity in the Hesiodic parallel. My thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing this out.  Ziogas (2011, 259) also sees in this passage a parallel to the temporary “escape” of Lycaon in Il. 21.64– 6, as he supplicates Achilles. In both of these cases, of course, the escape is of limited duration; both heroes will be cut down. Ziogas’ careful lexical analysis supports his conclusion that this is a true intertextual moment, and not merely a case of shared epic diction. He points out, further, that Achilles is twice described as “swift-footed godlike Achilles” in this episode.

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What, then, is the literary effect of this complex invocation of the most famous footrace of the Trojan War? The basic mode of the narrative is to take moments of fantasy, of potential, and of wishful thinking in the Iliad and to put them in a narrative where they are real. The metaphorical race of the Iliad is a real race in the Catalogue, and the momentary escape of Hector becomes Hippomenes’ successful avoidance of death and winning of “a woman.” In that regard, I would like to suggest that Hippomenes’ experience is also presented as the realization of one of Hector’s fantasies, one that occurs before the metaphor of the race begins in the Iliad. Hector speaks to himself early in book 22, and wonders if he could approach Achilles unarmed and negotiate a settlement with him; he then realizes that such thoughts are pointless: ἀλλὰ τί ἤ μοι ταῦτα φίλος διελέξατο θυμός; μή μιν ἐγὼ μὲν ἵκωμαι ἰών, ὃ δέ μ’ οὐκ ἐλεήσει οὐδέ τί μ’ αἰδέσεται, κτενέει δέ με γυμνὸν ἐόντα αὔτως ὥς τε γυναῖκα, ἐπεί κ’ ἀπὸ τεύχεα δύω. οὐ μέν πως νῦν ἔστιν ἀπὸ δρυὸς οὐδ’ ἀπὸ πέτρης τῷ ὀαριζέμεναι, ἅ τε παρθένος ἠΐθεός τε παρθένος ἠΐθεός τ’ ὀαρίζετον ἀλλήλοιιν. (Il. 22.122 – 8)

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But why does my heart debate these things with me? May I not go, supplicating him, and he will not pity me, nor will he respect me, but kill me while I am naked, like a woman, since I have put aside my armour. There is not now any way to talk lightly with him from an oak or a rock, as a parthenos and a youth – a parthenos and a youth – talk lightly with one another.

Hector’s imagined, but rejected, scene with Achilles casts a surprising erotic light on their relationship. Not only does Hector suggest that he would, in such a situation, be “nude” (γυμνόν, 124), but, as a Richardson points out, “… Hektor has just referred to being killed ‘like a woman’, and this is perhaps what gives rise to the idea of the two lovers conversing.”⁴⁸ The verb ὀαρίζειν (“talk lightly) in line 128 also seems to have erotic connotations: Hector is described as conversing with Andromache using this word at 6.516.⁴⁹ It is the kind of talk that husbands and wives, or perhaps young lovers, share.

 Richardson 1993 ad 123 – 5. Richardson argues that γυμνόν “must mean ‘unarmed’”; but it is entirely possible that the Catalogue poet has picked up on this term’s more usual primary meaning.  See Richardson 1993 ad Il. 22.127.

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Hippomenes and Atalanta are exactly a youth and a parthenos, and if we accept the information that Hippomenes ran literally nude in the Catalogue’s version of his tale, then there is a further point of similarity between Hippomenes and Hector’s imagined negotiator. But in the Catalogue the impossibility of a lover’s chat again becomes reality: Hippomenes’ combination of verbal appeal and fruitful offering convinces Atalanta despite her “pitiless heart” (fr. 76.9 M-W). Atalanta accepts the apples, Hippomenes escapes dark death. Hector imagines a different resolution to his conflict with Achilles, one in an erotic register. The Catalogue enacts that resolution. For Hector to have such an erotic encounter with Achilles, however, it is important to note that he must simultaneously imagine a different location from which to do so. A youth and a parthenos do not dally together on the battlefield, fighting to take one another’s life; instead, they chat “from and oak and a rock,” a particularly baffling phrase that has a parallel, equally baffling, at Theogony 35. Richardson, admitting to uncertainty about the phase, suggests that “Whatever the original sense, to a modern reader the phrase conjures up a pastoral scene of a lover’s meeting in the countryside, which… does form a suitable context.”⁵⁰ For Hippomenes and Atalanta, the geographic space that defines their contest is more fluid: it is racecourse, and hunting ground, and battlefield, with all the attendant dangers of each. In part the geographic space of this episode is able to exist on three homologous planes, it seems, because of the undefined nature of Atalanta’s desire. As this paper has explored at length, the function of Atalanta’s race is not to achieve anything: indeed, insofar as Atalanta is trying to avoid a τέλος, an end, the point of the race is merely to keep running on and on without resolution. In this way, the space of Atalanta’s marriage race represents her desire, which is no desire, but rather a desire to avoid, to flee, to run away. Also, perhaps, to catch: but in catching Hippomenes (were she to do that) she would deny her erotic desire, either by transferring it to the desire of the hunt, or to the more violent desire that men experience when they try to kill one another in the space of battle. Indeed, this may be the most clever bit of intertextuality in Hesiod’s story: Atalanta’s desire is implicitly likened to a moment in the Iliad when Hector imagines some such form of desire (between himself and Achilles), but immediately rejects it as impossible. Atalanta’s desire, then, is defined by a reference to a place in which such desire cannot be. To quote again from a modern theorist of space:

 Richardson 1993 ad Il. 22.126 – 8.

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Rather than being one definite sort of thing – for example, physical, spiritual, cultural, social – a given place takes on the qualities of its occupants, reflecting these qualities in its own constitution and description and expressing them in its occurrence as an event: places not only are, they happen. ⁵¹

Atalanta’s space happens as it does because it is a space of avoidance. She may pursue, but if she has desire it is figured not as erotic desire, but the desire of men as they kill, either animals or other men – which becomes, for Atalanta, another form of the desire to avoid. By way of conclusion, I would like to pause the course of this analysis to consider how it is that Atalanta’s endless flight finally comes to an end. We know that Hippomenes wins the race, and we know what he acquires as victor. He does this by dropping golden apples, “gifts of Aphrodite” groundward, and Atalanta must hesitate, and presumably stoop, to pick them up. In so doing she acts both physically and metaphorically, accepting the state of marriage (that is, the “gifts of Aphrodite”) as she accepts the gifts themselves. This act of stooping, of interrupting flight, changes momentarily the mode of Atalanta’s motion, the speed and course of her traversal of space. It is this interruption, this pause, I would argue, that also signifies desire on her part. Atalanta must want the apples.⁵² In physically admitting to that desire, she transforms her relation to the geography of the race; she pauses. In so doing, she allows Hippomenes to reach τέλος (finish line, marriage) ahead of her. By accepting this boundary, as it were, she moves into the carefully defined and bounded space reserved for objects of erotic desire. Ironically, for women, that acceptance means an unbounding of her physical body, as Catullus reminds us: it pleases me as they say the golden apple delighted the nimble girl, loosening her belt so long tied tight. (Catul. 2.11– 13)

 Casey 1996, 27.  As Ovid perceptively realizes: at Met. 10.676 – 80 he has Aphrodite force her to pick up the last apple.

Evina Sistakou

Mapping Counterfactuality in Apollonius’ Argonautica In epic the realm of reality cannot be sharply distinguished from the realm of imagination. This premise is central to the study of the Homeric epics which on the one hand seem to incorporate factuality by conveying a historical view of the 8th/7th century Greek world (most prominently in the Iliadic Catalogue of Ships), whereas on the other disclose their affinity with folktale and myth by integrating fantasyworlds into their plot (and here the settings of Odysseus’ Apologoi are the classic example since Eratosthenes’ time). Not only does Apollonius play by these rules in writing his adventure epic on Jason and the Argonauts, but moreover he effectively historicizes the mythical voyage of the Argo by inscribing it in the real world. From Iolcos through the Hellespont to the Black Sea and back through the Ister, the Adriatic, Libya, Crete and the Aegean, the Argonautica monitors a sea voyage with utmost geographical precision. Apollonius has been hailed as a well-read scholar who draws upon historical and geographical sources of the Alexandrian Library as well as adopts the expanded view of the known world which emerged after Alexander’s expedition to the East and the subsequent Hellenistic explorations.¹ There is even an ideological aspect in his preoccupation with geographical realism: the detailed account of Greek colonization in the Black Sea and the West contained in the epic suggests the new identity of 3rd century Hellenism within the multicultural Ptolemaic empire.² Thus factual geography is deeply rooted in Apollonius’ travel epic. As a proper récit de voyage or a travelogue the Argonautica follows the logic of a periplous. ³ Jason and his comrades engage in a voyage of exploration into the lands and people of the East, some of which, like the Chalybes, the Tibarenians and the Mossynoecians, have strange customs that are recorded in ethnographic di-

 For the geographical reading of the Argonautica Delage (1930) is indispensable; an updated overview of Apollonius as a Hellenistic geographer is offered by Meyer (2008).  On how space in the Argonautica embodies the cultural and social relations between Greeks and others during the Hellenistic era, see Thalmann 2011 and Stephens 2011. For the politics of the Argonautic voyage, also from a geographical viewpoint, see Mori 2008, esp. 46 – 51.  A detailed analysis of the Argonautic itinerary in Books 1, 2 and 4 in Vian (1976b, 3 – 49) and (1981, 3 – 68).

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gressions.⁴ An impressive feature of the epic is that accurate maps of the route are embedded in the speeches of characters who function as guides during the voyage: the prophecy of Phineus covers the outward journey towards Colchis (2.317– 407), Argos explains the alternative route from Colchis to the Mediterranean via the Ister (4.257– 93) and Triton gives the heroes instructions on how to find the outlet from Libya to the sea (4.1573 – 85). A heightened awareness of space, as would be natural for navigators, including the observation of landmarks—harbours, cities, rivers, mountains or islands—, is obvious throughout the Argonautic journey.⁵ Topographical data, cartographic overviews of entire regions (a technique known as the ‘bird’s eye view’) and hodological principles in combination with contemporary views on the oikoumene inform Apollonius’ strategy of spatial orientation within the Argonautica. But epic is about myth after all, and it was not possible for Apollonius to overlook the boundaries set by the genre. Conventional devices, such as the catalogue of the participating heroes, are textual spaces where reality and myth intersect; the Argonautic catalogue of Book 1 is replete with heroic names connected to historical locations. The theme of nostos, of a heroic return, as developed in Book 4, is an integral part of every epic plot, both of the cyclic and the Homeric tradition. More importantly in the case of the Argonautica, the geographical contexts are subordinate to the literary intertexts among which the Odyssey is prominent: the wanderings of the Argonauts, their passage through the Wandering Rocks, the arrival on the islands of Circe and the Phaeacians, the encounter with the Sirens or the Scylla and Charybdis are consciously modelled on Odysseus’ adventures.⁶ Moreover, the Argo is a symbolic ship, and its voyage has metatextual resonances. The sea route followed by the ship might as well function as a metaphor for poetry itself—the ‘path of song’ traversed by the epic narrator and retraced by his audience.⁷ In the present paper I will explore another facet of epic geography in the Argonautica, which provides an alternative both to the one identified as realistic/ historical and to the intertextual and metatextual readings of the poem’s topography. I have termed it counterfactual in the sense that it contrasts markedly with what may be considered as real or actual within the internal logic of an epic plot. Counterfactuality therefore includes what might be perceived as straightforward-

 A comprehensive, though outdated, study of the ethnographic elements in the Argonautica is the German dissertation by Teufel (1939).  The central role of navigation in the Argonautica is discussed by Rostropowicz (1990).  For a thorough discussion of how Apollonius incorporates Odyssean geography into his epic, see Knight 1995, 122– 266.  Albis 1996, 93 – 120; cf. DeForest 1994, 70 – 85; Clare 2002.

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ly fable-like, supernatural, marvellous, illusionary and visionary by characters and readers; what belongs to a different temporal or spatial dimension than the epic’s narrative universe; any crossing into other worlds, such as lands of the dead, realms of gods or spaces of the past. Counterfactual occurrences in the Argonautica are not secondary or marginal but pertinent to the plot-type adopted by Apollonius, namely the quest. ⁸ For quests form the core of fantasy literature and hence take place in fantasylands: these will be my point of departure for the exploration of uncharted territories in the Argonautica. ⁹

Fantasylands Modern editions of the Argonautica come equipped with a map meant to be used by the reader;¹⁰ though mapping the Argonautic voyage may seem at first an attempt to actualize it, in effect a map displaying the detailed topography of a fantasyland is a necessary supplement to many fantasy narratives.¹¹ Apollonius may not provide us with a rough sketch of the narrative’s topography as fantasy authors often do (Tolkien is legendary for supplying his books with maps of Middle-earth), yet he embeds the geographical outline of the voyage into the words of the omniscient narrator and those of his characters. It is critical to acknowledge that, though myth is involved, Apollonius’ geography is realistically anchored in our own world; yet, at the same time, it is also true that lands of fable are situated between this and other, impossible, worlds.¹² So, whereas pure fantasy plays out the scenario of the lost world like The Lord of the Rings or of an entirely fictional universe like Gulliver’s Travels, the Argonautic quest features exotic adventures similar to those attributed to Sinbad the Sailor where faraway places and locations become the theatre of supernatural events.

 For the model of the quest plot in literature, from Homer’s Odyssey to Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, see Booker 2004, 69 – 86.  For the Argonautica as a dark fantasy epic, see Sistakou (2012, 53 – 130).  Vian (1976b; 1981) in the celebrated Belles Lettres edition merges realistic and mythical geography in detailed maps of the Argonautic itinerary; five historical maps are appended to the 2008 Loeb edition by W.H. Race.  For terms and definitions concerning the spaces of fantasy literature I mostly relie on Clute/ Grant (1997): especially relevant are the entries borderlands, fantasyland, land of fable, portals, sea monsters and islands.  Travel descriptions in the Argonautica between fact and fiction are explored by Harder (1994).

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The key to distinguishing between the two lies in the essential idea of an exotic quest, namely the undertaking of a mission to the ends of the earth.¹³ In the Argonautica, this is represented by Colchis which is contrasted to the Greek world—by analogy travel fantasies in other cultures take place in the Orient, the far North, China or the Carribbean as opposed to the West. Jason states the remoteness of the Colchian land in his speech to Phineus: Αἶα δὲ Κολχίς/ Πόντου καὶ γαίης ἐπικέκλιται ἐσχατιῇσιν, 2.417– 18 (“Colchian Aea lies at the end of the Black Sea and of the world”).¹⁴ Prior to departure a rumour spreads about a mission impossible: πόθι τόσσον/ ὅμιλον ἡρώων γαίης Παναχαιίδος ἔκτοθι βάλλει; … ἀλλ᾽ οὐ φυκτὰ κέλευθα, πόνος δ᾽ ἄπρηκτος ἰοῦσιν, 1.242 – 6 (“To what place beyond the Panachean land is he sending so great a crew of heroes?… But the voyage cannot be avoided and the task is beyond accomplishment”). The sense that Colchis is a borderland occupying the limits of human geography is stressed everywhere in the epic, as for example upon arrival to the Phasis: ἵκοντο/ Φᾶσίν τ᾽ εὐρὺ ῥέοντα καὶ ἔσχατα πείρατα Πόντου, 2.1260 – 1 (“they reached the wide-flowing Phasis and the furthest reaches of the Black Sea”). Faraway lands form the ideal background for fantasies to unfold. In the narrative grammar of fantasy, space is defined by specific characteristics. For instance, water is a border and a symbol, a boundary in all its forms—sea, river, the Ocean—that has to be traversed. Colchis is enclosed by waters, a topography that heightens not only the dangers for the Argonauts but also the mystery and horror inherent in the water element. The river Ister, for example, which provides an alternative route for the homeward journey, is depicted as a branch of the semi-mythical Ocean that has its sources in the fabled Rhipaean mountains, the territory of the Hyperboreans in Greek imagination (4.282– 93). Dark mystery surrounds the intersection of the Rhone and the Eridanus, the edge of the earth to the West: ἐκ δὲ τόθεν Ῥοδανοῖο βαθὺν ῥόον εἰσεπέρησαν, ὅς τ᾽ εἰς Ἠριδανὸν μετανίσσεται, ἄμμιγα δ᾽ ὕδωρ ἐν ξυνοχῇ βέβρυχε κυκώμενον. αὐτὰρ ὁ γαίης ἐκ μυχάτης, ἵνα τ᾽ εἰσὶ πύλαι καὶ ἐδέθλια Νυκτός, ἔνθεν ἀπορνύμενος… (4.627– 31)

 On how central to ancient thought was the idea that the earth has its own ends or borders, see Romm 1992.  All translations are taken from Race (2008).

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From there they entered the deep stream of the Rhone, which flows into the Eridanus, and in the strait where they meet the churning water roars. Now that river, rising from the end of the earth, where the gates and precincts of Night are located…

A feature suggested by this topography is the portal. In fantasy, portals demarcate this world from otherworlds. Physical portals in the Argonautica are the rocky passages encountered from Hellas to the East and vice versa, the Symplegades (2.549 – 606) and the Wandering Rocks (4.924– 63) respectively.¹⁵ A nautical fantasy also highlights the confrontation with the monsters that inhabit the sea. Yet, as Odyssean reminiscences, the episodes on the Sirens (4.891– 919) and Skylla and Charybdis (4.825 – 31) are compressed in Apollonius’ narrative, while still carrying the dark and sinister undertones of similar accounts.¹⁶ In any case such challenges presuppose divine intervention, men skilled in seafaring and definitely an archetypal ship. The Argo (in contrast to Odysseus’ ship) has a name and an identity, and is the forerunner of all ships of travel literature—the Nautilus, the Flying Dutchman, the Pequod, the Hispaniola, the Black Pearl… For the Argo is not just an autonomous space alongside other spaces of Apollonius’ epic, the background to the nautical enterprise, as well as the dramatic setting, a kind of agora, for the assembly of the Argonauts; it has a legendary past (νῆα μὲν οὖν οἱ πρόσθεν ἔτι κλείουσιν ἀοιδοί, 1.18), a history (Ἄργον Ἀθηναίης καμέειν ὑποθημοσύνῃσι, 1.19) and hence a personality. Moreover Argo is animated (ὧς Ἀργώ… ἀμφεπόλει δηναιὸν ἐπὶ χρόνον, 4.1546 – 7) and even possesses an awe-inspiring voice (Πηλιὰς ἴαχεν Ἀργώ, 1.525; ὧς Ἀργὼ ἰάχησεν ὑπὸ κνέφας, 4.592).¹⁷ A fantasy ship par excellence. Hovering between exploration literature and fantasy epic, the Argonautica is set in alien territories, such as the semi-barbaric lands of the Propontis or the Libyan desert. Apollonius blurs the boundaries between the two genres by turning exotic spaces into fantasy sites. Cyzicus is an illuminating example, since at this site a civilized people, the Doliones, are presented as cohabitants of the Earthborn, mythical warriors with six hands, resembling the Hesiodic Hecatoncheires—an adaptation of the Laestrygonian episode from the Odyssey. ¹⁸ Cyzicus

 Especially the extensive Symplegades episode with its dramatic depiction of a sublime and terrifying natural phenomenon has attracted the attention of many scholars; see, e. g., Williams 1991, 129 – 45. For the Alexandrian penchant for unstable geographies as a symbol of primordial chaos, see Nishimura-Jensen 2000.  Knight 1995, 200 – 10; Sistakou 2012, 71– 4.  Gaunt (1972) downplays the significance of the Argo in Apollonius’ plot, but nevertheless gives a stimulating analysis of the related passages. The central role of the Argo in the journey is restored by Clare (2002, 33 – 83); for the Argo as a metapoetic allegory, see Murray 2005.  Knight 1995, 147– 52.

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is described as an island by Apollonius (ἔστι δέ τις αἰπεῖα Προποντίδος ἔνδοθι νῆσος, 1.936) and islands are the venue of extraordinary events in fantasy literature.¹⁹ The Argonauts come across dozens of islands during their voyage, some of which are miraculous. One of these is the island of Ares, the dwelling of the birds that have darts instead of feathers; here the Argonauts embark on a heroic adventure that equals Heracles’ labour against the carnivorous Stymphalian birds with the metallic feathers (2.1030 – 89). The ensuing epic-like battle between the densely armed heroes and the fabulous birds concludes with a view extending into infinity: ὧς πυκινὰ πτερὰ τοῖσιν ἐφίεσαν, ἀίσσοντες/ ὕψι μάλ᾽ ἂμ πέλαγος περάτης εἰς οὔρεα γαίης, 2.1088 – 9 (“thus did the birds cast a shower of feathered darts upon them as they sped off high over the sea to the mountains at the end of the earth”).

Landscapes of Epiphany Landscape plays a key role in both genres incorporated into the Argonautica, namely the travel adventure and fantasy epic.²⁰ Closely connected with Hellenistic aesthetics, the description of landscapes in Apollonius is consistent with the refined sensibility towards nature displayed in Alexandrian poetry and art.²¹ It is noteworthy that the sea and all its concomitants (harbours, winds, cliffs, storms) form only part of the Argonautic landscape; other striking descriptions involve symbolic landmarks, such as mountains, caves, plains, rivers, gardens, groves and the desert. Landscape should also be viewed from a temporal perspective: day, night or dawn significantly alter natural descriptions in the Argonautica. Occasionally, landscape may acquire sublime dimensions, especially when dramatic images of nature arouse a heightened emotion or pathos; in other cases sublimity may originate from merging the divine with the human map.²² A case in point is the descent of Eros from the garden of Zeus on Olympos towards the earth:  A striking parallel comes from modern fantasy: the acclaimed writer of fantasy and science fiction books Ursula Le Guin has created a fictional realm formed by an archipelago of islands, called the Earthsea, where magic and fantasy reign.  Williams (1991) gives a comprehensive analysis of landscape as a means of enhancing characterization and foreshadowing the plot in the Argonautica. For the description of landscape in ancient Greek poetry Elliger (1975) is a classic; for Apollonius see especially pp. 306 – 17.  Fowler (1989) still remains the most valuable source for the study of Alexandrian aesthetics (see especially pp. 23 – 31, 110 – 36 and 168 – 86 on nature and Apollonius).  On the divine and human map in the Argonautica from a cultural perspective, see Hunter 1995.

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βῆ δὲ διὲκ μεγάλοιο Διὸς πάγκαρπον ἀλωήν, αὐτὰρ ἔπειτα πύλας ἐξήλυθεν Οὐλύμποιο αἰθερίας. ἔνθεν δὲ καταιβάτις ἐστὶ κέλευθος οὐρανίη· δοιὼ δὲ πόλοι ἀνέχουσι κάρηνα οὐρέων ἠλιβάτων, κορυφαὶ χθονός, ἧχί τ᾽ ἀερθείς ἠέλιος πρώτῃσιν ἐρεύθεται ἀκτίνεσσιν. νειόθι δ᾽ ἄλλοτε γαῖα φερέσβιος ἄστεά τ᾽ ἀνδρῶν φαίνετο καὶ ποταμῶν ἱεροὶ ῥόοι, ἄλλοτε δ᾽ αὖτε ἄκριες, ἀμφὶ δὲ πόντος, ἀν᾽ αἰθέρα πολλὸν ἰόντι. (3.158 – 66) He traversed the fruit-filled orchard of mighty Zeus and then passed through the ethereal gates of Olympos. From there a path descends from heaven; and two peaks of lofty mountains uphold the sky, the highest points on earth, where the risen sun grows red with its first rays. And beneath him at times appeared life-sustaining earth and cities of men and divine streams of rivers, and then at other times mountain peaks, while all around was the sea as he traveled through the vast sky.

The gates of Olympos are clearly portals that allow transitions from the divine to the human world, and Eros’ passing through them foreshadows his involvement in the affairs of men. From a panoramic standpoint the reader takes a look at the divine landscape (the pillars holding the sky evoke the archetypal image of the mythical Atlas) and at the cosmos of mortals suggested through a set of landmarks as if designed on a physical map. What is striking in this passage is the ethereal path through which sky and earth, viz immortals and mortals, are forever connected, a path not mentioned in similar Homeric accounts according to which these worlds are poles apart.²³ Not so in Apollonius, for divine and mundane spaces regularly intersect in the Argonautica. The scene on Mount Dindymon is a paradigm of how the sacred and the profane co-exist in an archetypal landscape, namely the mountain.²⁴ The two climbs of the Argonauts to Dindymon are interrupted by the battle with the Earthborn (1.985 – 8 and 1.1104– 52). At first, the Argonauts ascend to Dindymon to view the route for the continuation of the voyage, and it is here that the narrator gives prominence to historical geography and its visualization—from the summit they get a stunning mountain panorama of Thrace, Bosporus and Mysia. Eventually the real mission of the ascend is carried out, i. e. the performance of ritual in honour of Rhea/Kybele. A wealth of details from

 Especially in the Iliad, where vertical distance between the two worlds is highlighted: see Purves 2010a, 24– 64; Tsagalis 2012, 140 – 7.  On the symbolism of the mountain as a remote natural space connected either with gods or monstrous creatures, and for a detailed discussion of the Dindymon episode, see Williams 1991, 79 – 92.

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the natural landscape—the mysterious forest, the trunk of the vine, the tall oaks—used in the ritual allude to the very symbolism of Mother Goddess as the Soul of the Earth. Primitiveness, exoticism and fantasy are in play in this landscape. And although an actual encounter with the goddess never takes place, her presence is felt in the signs of a miraculous rebirth of nature (τὰ δ᾽ ἐοικότα σήματ᾽ ἔγεντο, 1.1141), expressed in a sequence of Golden Age tableaux: the trees are filled with fruits, flowers sprout from the grass, wild animals are tamed and water gushes from the arid mountain. A realistically depicted site is thus transformed into an enchanted space where men and the phantom of a goddess meet. As said, in archaic epic the realms of the gods are set on Olympos or in the depths of the sea, spaces distant and estranged from those of humans; however, it is not uncommon for gods to penetrate into the spaces of mortals, usually in disguise, to act as helpers or advisers. In view of the new sensibility developed during the Hellenistic period, such appearances usually take the form of an epiphany. An epiphany occurs in specific spatiotemporal settings; typically it is noon in an eutopic landscape. But Apollonius is innovative in choosing dawn for the coming of Apollo, the god of the Sun, to the deserted island of Thynias (2.669 – 713).²⁵ Although description is not part of the scene, dramatic change in the natural landscape occurs as the blond god makes his epiphany. As Phoebus walks, the earth shakes (ἡ δ᾽ ὑπὸ ποσσίν σείετο νῆσος ὅλη, 2.679 – 80) and tidal waves strike the shore (κλύζεν δ᾽ ἐπὶ κύματα χέρσῳ, 2.680) causing the Argonauts to hide in amazement (τοὺς δ᾽ ἕλε θάμβος ἰδόντας ἀμήχανον, 2.681) and avoid eye contact with the god (οὐδέ τις ἔτλη ἀντίον αὐγάσσασθαι ἐς ὄμματα καλὰ θεοῖο, 2.681– 2). In this passage, Earth is simultaneously inhabited by god and man—hence Thynias is a Garden of Eden before the Fall located in the heart of Hellenistic epic.²⁶

Spaces of Desire As a story of piracy and romance the Argonautica overflows with desire. Desired places and objects are literal and metaphorical spaces longed for by the charac-

 Cf. Apollo’s second epiphany on the Melanteian Rocks which is perceived as a flash of light (4.1706 – 10); the epiphany of Apollo on Thynias may be seen as a poetic version of the sunrise as Hunter (1986) suggests.  Cf. Gen. 3.8: καὶ ἤκουσαν τὴν φωνὴν κυρίου τοῦ θεοῦ περιπατοῦντος ἐν τῷ παραδείσῳ τὸ δειλινόν, καὶ ἐκρύβησαν ὅ τε Ἀδὰμ καὶ ἡ γυνὴ αὐτοῦ ἀπὸ προσώπου κυρίου τοῦ θεοῦ ἐν μέσῳ τοῦ ξύλου τοῦ παραδείσου.

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ters; visualization and appeal to the senses are techniques employed to describe such spaces. Objects arousing desire are described in the form of ecphrasis several times in the Argonautica. A case in point is the golden ball promised by Aphrodite to Eros, in effect a sphere depicting in miniature the harmony of the celestial cosmos (3.131– 41).²⁷ Similarly desirable are the robes of Jason and Hypsipyle, two objects strongly appealing to the senses.²⁸ Jason’s purple cloak in Book 1 is visualized in terms of its vibrant colour: τῆς μὲν ῥηίτερόν κεν ἐς ἠέλιον ἀνιόντα ὄσσε βάλοις ἢ κεῖνο μεταβλέψειας ἔρευθος, 1.725 – 6 (“you could cast your eyes more easily on the rising sun than gaze at that cloak’s red colour”). In Book 4, the robe of Hypsipyle not only delights the senses (οὔ μιν ἀφάσσων οὔτε κεν εἰσορόων γλυκὺν ἵμερον ἐμπλήσειας, 4.428 – 9 “neither by stroking it or gazing upon it could you satisfy your sweet longing…”): it moreover bears the memory of a legendary desire, since it once served as a bedcover upon which Dionysos made love to Ariadne on the island of Dia (4.430 – 4). What is desired is inaccessible and unrealizable, it has less relations with reality than with the domain of fantasy. Spaces of desire are therefore counterfactual in being both imagined and idealized. And if this applies to artefacts made by the hands of gods that encompass the entire cosmos, such as the ball of Eros and the cloak of Jason, it is even more evident when eutopias and idyllic landscapes come into view.²⁹ Indeed Apollonius’ historical map slips into the idyllic at the end of Book 1. After the epiphany of Mother Goddess causing the regeneration of nature on Mount Dindymon, the Argonautic landscape emanates an otherwordly aura; in the subsequent episode on the abduction of Hylas the Argonauts depart from factuality by immersing themselves in a world of mystery and desire (1.1172– 363).³⁰ The Mysian mainland, where the Hylas episode will take place, is apparently rooted in the real-world;³¹ but once Heracles enters into the woods (βῆ ῥ᾽ ἴμεν εἰς ὕλην υἱὸς Διός, 1.1188), the travelogue gives its place to fairytale.³² Then desire for water brings Hylas to the eponymous spring, the Pegae, around which nymphs perform their dances  For the cosmic symbolism of Eros’ golden ball, see Pendergraft 1991.  Not only is love the central theme of the epic as argued by Zanker (1979), but, besides Medea in Book 3, Jason is also identified as a sexual hero throughout the epic by Beye (1969): spaces of desire in Apollonius’ epic mirror exactly this theme.  Conventionally termed as locus amoenus, on which see the dissertation by Schönbeck (1962).  On this sequence of dark sites, see Sistakou 2012, 103 – 7.  Cf. e. g. the ‘Hesiodic’ description of the daily routine of a gardener or a ploughman at 1.1172– 8.  See Clute/Grant (1997, s.v. Into the Woods); it is justly argued that entering the woods, a theme often encountered in fairytale narratives, symbolizes a transformation, a rite of passage or a quest for the heart’s desire.

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by moonlight. In this landscape of heightened sensation one nymph falls in love with Hylas. Now the young boy’s body becomes the space of desire; yet with a deadly embrace it is eventually absorbed by the swirling waters of the spring (1.1221– 39). The outcome of the story clearly demonstrates how desire in an eutopia may turn into a nightmarish scenario.³³ But the main space of desire in the Argonautica is no other than Colchis, for the Argonauts are, to a certain degree, pirates searching for a hidden treasure in a faraway city of gold, a mythical Eldorado.³⁴ Seen from this perspective, the palace of king Aeetes may only convey images of authority and wealth to the invaders into the desired land. Indeed opulence and grandeur dominate the description of Aeetes’ palace as focalized through the eyes of the amazed Argonauts (3.213 – 38).³⁵ Not only do the palace’s architecture and gardens come close to perfection, but moreover the techne of god Hephaestus is omnipresent in the wondrous springs and bronze artefacts and the adamant plough decorating the royal gardens. Book 3 and 4 are supplemented by descriptions of other magical and dark spaces which constitute the topography of Colchis: the shrine of Hekate, the plain of Ares and the grove where the Golden Fleece is held. The grove is yet another symbol of fantasy narratives and a typical abode of the fairytale dragon, and Apollonius describes them extensively as horrifying spaces (4.123 – 61). Against this dark background (πολύσκιον ἄλσος, 4.166) the Golden Fleece stands out for its unearthly radiance, which is indirectly suggested by a simile referring to the beam of the full moon (4.167– 70). Jason rejoices in its sight and touch (4.170 – 82) until it comes into full view in the eyes of the crew: θάμβησαν δὲ νέοι μέγα κῶας ἰδόντες λαμπόμενον στεροπῇ ἴκελον Διός, ὦρτο δ᾽ ἕκαστος ψαῦσαι ἐελδόμενος δέχθαι τ᾽ ἐνὶ χερσὶν ἑῇσιν (4.184– 6) The young men marvelled when they saw the great fleece shining like a thunderbolt of Zeus, and each one leapt up, eager to touch it and take it in his hands…

 Apollonius indeed transforms an eutopic into a dystopic landscape by use of acoustical and similar effects, on which see Williams 1991, 175 – 84.  Though Jason diplomatically rejects Aeetes’ accusations of piracy (τίς δ᾽ ἂν τόσον οἶδμα περῆσαι/ τλαίη ἑκὼν ὀθνεῖον ἐπὶ κτέρας;, 3.388 – 9), the idea of acquiring the Golden Fleece is obsessively repeated throughout the epic (in phrases such as χρύσειον μετὰ κῶας, κῶας ἄγειν κριοῖο μεμαότες, χρύσεον Αἰήταο μεθ᾽ Ἑλλάδα κῶας ἄγοιντο, ἑλεῖν δέρος Αἰήταο and so on).  See Williams 1991, 151– 62; cf. Sistakou (2012, 81– 4 and 114– 16) for Aeetes as embodying the dark lord and his palace the threatening edifice of Gothic fantasy.

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The sensuality of the object overcomes its value as a booty for the pirates. Sensuality is again stressed when the nymphs spread the bridal bed for Jason and Medea in a cave in the land of the Phaeacians (4.1128 – 55); the Golden Fleece is the cover upon which the newlywed couple will eventually unite (ἔνθα τότ᾽ ἐστόρεσαν λέκτρον μέγα· τοῖο δ᾽ ὕπερθε χρύσεον αἰγλῆεν κῶας βάλον, 4.1141– 2 “here, then, they spread the great bed and over it threw the gleaming Golden Fleece…”). The Golden Fleece, with all its sexual connotations, thus becomes the ultimate space of desire (and tragedy) both for the pirates and Medea.

Heterotopias Heterotopia is a broad term denoting spaces of Otherness, counter-spaces as opposed to hegemonic spaces, spaces of both here and there, both now and then, spaces that represent and at the same time invert the norm, spaces of crisis and deviation.³⁶ The Argonautica is probably the first work in literature—perhaps alongside Callimachus’ Aetia—that is so conscious of communicating and dramatizing spatial and/or temporal displacement.³⁷ Apollonius experiments with all types of heterotopic geography, thus calling into question the factual mapping of the world that apparently dominates his epic. There are various types of heterotopias in the Argonautica. For instance, Jason’s cloak, as a representation of the entire cosmos, encompasses spaces from the whole range of mythology (1.721– 67): in juxtaposing incongruous sites—the workshop of the Cyclopes, Thebes before foundation, the bedchamber of Aphrodite, the bloody meadow invaded by the Taphians, Pelops’ chariot race in Olympia—Apollonius creates a mythical heterotopia.³⁸ On the grand scale, the mythical otherworld encountered by the Argo during its voyage is a counter-space to the historical route followed by the Argonauts. Other heterotopias include fantasyworlds, sanctified sites and spaces of desire as discussed above.

 The concept was introduced by French philosopher Michel Foucault in 1967 (on which see Foucault 1986).  Thalmann (2011, 34– 5 and passim) argues that the Argo is a heterotopia affirmative of Greek culture; for a heterotopic/heterochronic reading of Callimachus’ poetry, see Selden 1998. It is worth noting that in both approaches heterotopia concerns the cultural antithesis between Greek and non-Greek (preferably Egyptian) in Apollonius and Callimachus, a view markedly different from the one I adopt in my discussion of the Argonautica.  The paradigm proposed by Foucault (1986, 25 – 6) for this type of heterotopia is the Persian Garden and the Persian carpet, which, like the objects of epic ecphrasis, represent the totality of the world in their microcosm.

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What merits special attention here are heterotopias suggesting isolation from society or reality. A distinct category are the heterotopias of crisis, in which characters are confined after alienating themselves from their social environment. Lemnos is an example of such a closed heterotopia (1.609 – 39): women, except for their queen Hypsipyle, commit a massive androcide on Lemnos; as a consequence, they become the only inhabitants and labourers of the island, and live deprived of men and sex until the arrival of the Argonauts— for the Argo is the only ship that has ever sailed to this wilderness.³⁹ Phineus is also held in detention in the Thynian land (2.178 – 239). Punished by Zeus for prophesying his intentions to men, Phineus is kept within the limits of his house like a prisoner (ἔνθα δ᾽ ἐπάκτιον οἶκον Ἀγηνορίδης ἔχε Φινεύς, 2.178 “there Agenor’s son Phineus had his home on the shore”; cf. ἀλλά με πικρὴ δῆτα καὶ ἄατος ἴσχει ἀνάγκη/ μίμνειν, 2.232– 3 “but a truly painful and unending necessity compels me to stay there…”). The abode of Phineus is both a heterotopia of deviation—a kind of prison for the hubristic seer—and a torture chamber accessed by the Harpies: its heterotopic character is revealed by the mysterious connection between Phineus’ feasting hall and heaven (Ἅρπυιαι στόματός μοι ἀφαρπάζουσιν ἐδωδήν/ ἔκποθεν… καταΐσσουσαι, 2.223 – 5 “the Harpies swoop down from some unseen place… and snatch the food from my mouth”; ἀπρόφατοι νεφέων ἐξάλμεναι ἐσσεύοντο, 2.268 “without warning sprang from the clouds and swooped down…”). Yet, if one character deserves to be seen through the prism of crisis and deviation in the Argonautica, this is Medea, and consequently her spaces may be considered as heterotopic. Apollonius is meticulous in designing Colchian topography which is divided into spaces controlled by the hegemonic figure of Aeetes—here the dazzling palace and the horrifying plain of Ares are of paramount importance—and into spaces where Medea moves and lives. As a young maiden Medea is imprisoned in the house of the father, symbolically illustrated by the closed space of the bedchamber. The bedchamber houses Medea’s desires, dilemmas and nightmares, and in this respect it is emblematic of her emotional crisis (3.616 – 824). Medea is symbolically liberated from patriarchal authority once exiting the palace and the city (3.869 – 86): thence she enters into a different kind of heterotopia, a realm of magic dominated by the dark powers of Hecate (3.887– 8; cf. 3.250 – 2).⁴⁰ A third heterotopia is the Argo itself, where Medea

 That Lemnos is depicted as a wild heterotopic space is reinforced by images such as that of the Thyiads awaiting on the shore: δήια τεύχεα δῦσαι ἐς αἰγιαλὸν προχέοντο,/ Θυιάσιν ὠμοβόροις ἴκελαι, 1.635 – 6.  Caucasus, the space where the herb Prometheion grows, is another heterotopia of magic and horror associated with Medea (3.844– 68).

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eventually seeks shelter after having abandonded family and homeland in Book 4 (4.35 – 81).⁴¹ A different type of heterotopia suggestive of isolation is the domain of the dead. Although the Argonautic plot does not feature a journey to the underworld, it is nevertheless replete with spaces thematizing death.⁴² As the Argonauts penetrate deep into the Black Sea, they come across the Acheron which, despite signposting the portal to Hades, is fully integrated into the historical topography and the natural environment of the region (2.720 – 51). Apollonius confounds the readers’ expectations that the Acherousian headland can develop into a space of horror similar to the one described in the Odyssean Nekyia; only the terrifying sound effects and the icy coldness of the landscape create a chilling atmosphere but without any explicit reference to the dead.⁴³ Yet death is a recurrent theme in the Argonautica, and dead heroes are evoked in the numerous tombs found or erected during the voyage. Tombs are special places of remembrance for the Argonauts but also serve as memorials for future generations (for example the tomb of Cyzicus, 1.1058 – 62, or of Idmon, 2.835 – 50); they are sites of cult and veneration (of Tiphys, 2.924– 9), and, of course, of lament (for Tiphys, 2.859 – 63); and they may also become the theatre of ghostly apparitions (as in the case of Sthenelos’ tomb, 2.911– 22).⁴⁴ But the most impressive death space is Circe’s plain where trees grow corpses; here the idyllic develops into the uncanny:⁴⁵ Κιρκαῖον τόγε δὴ κικλήσκεται, ἔνθα δὲ πολλαί ἑξείης πρόμαλοί τε καὶ ἰτέαι ἐμπεφύασιν, τῶν καὶ ἐπ᾽ ἀκροτάτων νέκυες σειρῇσι κρέμανται δέσμιοι. (3.200 – 3) This plain is, I believe, called Circe’s, where many tamarisks and willows grow in rows, on whose topmost branches hang dead bodies bound with cords.

 For the reading of Medea as a Gothic heroine and a victim of patriarchal authority, see Sistakou 2012, 78 – 99.  Apollonius eliminates a proper katabasis from his quest epic: on the allusions to the Homeric Nekyia, especially in regard to Heracles, see Kyriakou 1995. For a close comparison between the infernal atmosphere of several Argonautic passages and the Nekyia, see Nelis 2001, 228 – 35.  Williams 1991, 145 – 50.  On death and the tombs in the Argonautica, see Durbec (2008); on heroic tombs in Apollonius’ epic cf. Saïd 1998, 17– 19.  For this avenue made of corpses and the horror atmosphere created by it, see Sistakou 2012, 115.

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The route to and from the Colchis occasionally resembles a huge cemetery—the spaces surrounding the Argonauts are a constant reminder of death awaiting all humans, the heroes of the Argo included.

Mythical Places Heterotopias may also develop into heterochronies, since the Argonauts are not only travellers in space but also travellers in time. In transcending spatial and temporal confines the Argonauts are confronted with different layers of mythical time along the route.⁴⁶ An obvious example of timeslip is the intersection between Argonautic and Odyssean itineraries, as reflected in the Homeric sites encountered by the Argo. Different routes are more explicitly crossed in the case of Heracles and the mythical spaces connected with his labours. As stated in the catalogue (1.121– 32), Heracles is in the middle of killing the Erymanthian Boar when he decides to join the Argo; in effect he is on the road (ἀλλ᾽ ἐπεὶ ἄιε βάξιν ἀγειρομένων ἡρώων/ νεῖον ἀπ᾽ Ἀρκαδίης Λυρκήιον Ἄργος ἀμείψας…, 1.124– 5 “when he heard the report that the heroes were gathering, he had just crossed from Arcadian to Lyrceian Argos…”). In departing from Mycenae (ἐνὶ πρώτῃσι Μυκηνάων ἀγορῆσιν, 1.128 “at the edge of the Mycenaeans’ assembly place”), and thus bringing his heroic endeavour to a standstill (αὐτὸς δ᾽ ᾗ ἰότητι παρὲκ νόον Εὐρυσθῆος/ ὡρμήθη, 1.130 – 1 “and set out of his own accord against the will of Eurystheus”), Heracles heads towards Argonautic spaces. Yet, once Heracles is abandoned in Mysia, he resumes his labours for Eurystheus (ὁ δ᾽ Εὐρυσθῆος ἀέθλους/ αὖτις ἰὼν πονέεσθαι, 1.1347– 8 “Heracles was to go back again and perform Eurystheus’ labours”); when in Book 4 the Argonauts eventually arrive at the Garden of the Hesperides, they almost run across Heracles, who had been there the day before (cf. ἤλυθε γὰρ χθιζός τις ἀνήρ, 4.1436 “for a man came yesterday…”). Despite this asynchronism (which in effect dramatizes the asynchronism of the two mythological cycles), it is critical to recognize that

 Cf. Foucault (1986, 26) who notes that “there are heterotopias of indefinitely accumulating time, for example museums and libraries…the idea of accumulating everything, of establishing a sort of general archive, the will to enclose in one place all times, all epochs, all forms, all tastes, the idea of constituting a place of all times that is itself outside of time and inaccessible to its ravages, the project of organizing in this way a sort of perpetual and indefinite accumulation of time in an immobile place, this whole idea belongs to our modernity”. That museums (and libraries) are culturally significant for Apollonius is a fact that hardly needs any documentation: hence, the Argonautica, as a mosaic of all mythological cycles coexisting in a single space, clearly reflects the Alexandrian fascination with the preservation of the past.

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the Garden of the Hesperides is a site where two myths, the Argonautic expedition and the labours of Heracles, intersect.⁴⁷ The most striking feature of the Argonautic spaces is precisely the coexistence of various mythical cycles in the same setting. There is an overall sense that the Argonauts travel along an open-air museum where each site has its own story to tell. The female domains that play a key role in the economy of Apollonius’ geography are a case in point: nymphs, once sleeping with gods and heroes, have still their abode in the spatial and temporal space surrounding the Argonauts. In Book 1 the heroes pass by the island of Electra, the daughter of Atlas (915 – 21); in Book 2 the blowing of the Etesian winds leads to a digression on the love of the nymph Cyrene and Apollo (498 – 505), whereas the Assyrian land is said to be the dwelling of Sinope, the daughter of Asopus (946 – 54), and another mythical site, the island of Philyra, is presented as the setting of Zeus’ lovemaking with the daughter of Oceanus (1231– 41); in Book 4 two islands off Illyria, Corcyra and Nymphaea, conjure up the memory of Corcyra, Poseidon’s beloved, and Calypso respectively (566 – 76). All these spaces are created by and exist through narrative; such narrativized spaces become places, in the sense that they cease to be mere geographical ‘sites’ and incorporate stories, experiences and emotions, thereby acquiring a temporal dimension and a special meaning.⁴⁸ A mythical place is more than a memorial of times past, because it perpetually reproduces the story that has given birth to it. This process presupposes presentification, recapturing of the past as lived experience, and Apollonius masterfully heightens this effect in the Argonautica. A fine example is provided by the Prometheus passage at the end of Book 2 (1246 – 59). Caucasus is identified as the place where the Titan’s torturing is forever replicated. The Argonauts get a glimpse of Zeus’ eagle flying through the air (1251– 5) and hear the tormented cries of Prometheus (1256 – 9); it is as if they perceive the abyss of time dividing them from pre-Olympian world order in a moment of revelation.⁴⁹ It is worth noting that Prometheus is never actually viewed, although the setting of his torment, i. e. the cliff of Caucasus, is clearly visualized (καὶ δὴ Καυκασίων ὀρέων ἀνέτελλον ἐρίπναι/ ἠλίβατοι, 1247– 8 “and then, rising above the horizon were

 The Garden of the Hesperides also signifies the generic crossing between the Argonautica and a Heracleid, on which see Sistakou 2009, 391– 2.  On space as place from the viewpoint of human geography, sociology and philosophy, see the introduction by Hubbard/Kitchin/Valentine 2004.  Clute/Grant (1997, s.v. Time Abyss) argue that the gap between the present of a narrative and some point deep in the past as perceived by characters and readers is a hallmark of fantasy literature. On the pre-Olympian background of the Prometheus scene, see Sistakou 2012, 113 – 14.

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the steep cliffs of the Caucasus mountains…”). This explains the illusionary, phantom-like nature of mythical places—they are not actually seen but vaguely sensed and thence mentally reconstructed.⁵⁰ Places create virtual realities for the Argonauts, whereas their journey resembles a passage through mythical time. A striking case is the entering of the Argo into the Eridanus, the river where Phaethon once suffered agonizing death struck by the thunderbolt of Zeus (4.595 – 626). Conspicuously set in the past (ἔνθα ποτ᾽ αἰθαλόεντι τυπεὶς πρὸς στέρνα κεραυνῷ/ ἡμιδαὴς Φαέθων πέσεν ἅρματος Ἠελίοιο, 4.597– 8 “where once Phaethon was struck by a blazing lightning bolt on his chest and fell half-burned from Helius’ chariot…”), the episode seems to be still vividly present on site. The lament of the Heliades blends with nature so subtly that characters become amalgamated into place.⁵¹ Phaethon’s smouldering wounds steam up the landscape, while the Heliades, transformed into poplars, shed tears that flow with the river’s waters: ἡ δ᾽ ἔτι νῦν περ τραύματος αἰθομένοιο βαρὺν ἀνακηκίει ἀτμόν (4.599 – 600) …which to this day spews up noxious steam from his smouldering wound… ἀμφὶ δὲ κοῦραι Ἡλιάδες ταναῇσιν ἐελμέναι αἰγείροισιν μύρονται κινυρὸν μέλεαι γόον (4.603 – 5) …and round about, the maiden Heliades, confined in tall poplars, sadly wail a pitiful lament… τὰ δὲ δάκρυα μυρομένῃσιν οἷον ἐλαιηραὶ στάγες ὕδασιν ἐμφορέοντο (4.625 – 6) …as they wept, their tears were borne along the waters like drops of oil…

The landscape thus functions as a screen upon which images of illusionary figures are projected to produce an uncanny effect—this virtual tour through myth becomes a show of phantasmagoria for the Argonauts, the immediate viewers, and the readers of the epic alike.

 Both the Prometheus and the Phaethon episode, narrated in a fragmented and static manner, highlight the distance between Argonautic present and mythical past (Byre 1996).  Williams (1991, 245 – 8) argues that Apollonius breathes emotion into nature by making the landscape itself weep for Phaethon.

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A Territory of Mirages Mirage, and the correlated concepts of illusion, hallucination, dream and vision, are essential for understanding spatiality in Book 4 of the Argonautica. The realistic geography of the return itinerary serves as a foil to the counterfactual topographies that test the endurance of the Argonauts on their way home. Odyssean spaces are one category of the illusionary, as they form literary phantoms that haunt Apollonius’ epic. To follow, or bypass, Odyssean sites proves to be the ultimate challenge for the Argonauts whose nostos is moulded to that of Odysseus. Faced with the dilemma of imitating the Odyssey or offering a neoteric variation of it, Apollonius decides either to suppress specific episodes (the island of Calypso or the Laestrygonians are hardly mentioned in the Argonautica) or to create mirages of Odyssean spaces. Immediately after their fantastic ride through the Wandering Rocks, an unrealistic episode par excellence, the Argonauts catch a fleeting glimpse of Thrinacia (4.964– 81). Time is extremely brief,⁵² plot is absent and the entire scene is an audiovisual recreation of Thrinacia as a bucolic, and hence idyllic, setting. Although the narrator informs us that the daughters of Helios, Phaethusa and Lampetia, shepherd the legendary cattle of their father, the Argonauts perceive only illusions of the scene: they listen to the cattle’s bleating, they are blinded by the silver and orichalcum staffs carried by the girls, and marvel at the snow-white cows with their golden horns. This is a dazzling mirage of an Odyssean landscape rather than a fully-fledged Argonautic experience.⁵³ Yet, it is the second category of illusionary spaces that is fascinating—not from an intertextual point of view but from a purely dramatic one: it comprises the spaces travelled by the Argonauts once they enter the fantastic otherworld of Libya (4.1225 – 619).⁵⁴ Despite the realistic underpinning of Libyan geography (the main sources being Herodotus and Timaeus), the reader is kept in suspense as to whether what is visualized in the last phase of the Argonautic voyage is real or imaginary.⁵⁵ Illusion replaces action, and indeed this section of the Argonautica has an affinity with fantasy literature and fairytale narratives. Space and time indicate the shift in the generic quality of the epic by clearly evoking the

 Time, and hence action, is suppressed already in the preceding episode, as indicated by ὅσση δ᾽ εἰαρινοῦ μηκύνεται ἤματος αἶσα,/ τοσσάτιον μογέεσκον ἐπὶ χρόνον in 961– 2, and further suggested by ὦκα δ᾽ ἄμειβον in 964 and καὶ μὲν τὰς παράμειβον ἐπ᾽ ἤματι in 979.  Knight 1995, 216 – 20.  For the Libyan adventure as a fantasy episode in the Argonautica, see Sistakou 2012, 125 – 9; cf. Livrea (1987) who stresses the dramatic aspects of the Libyan episode.  On Libya between reality and fantasy, with a thorough discussion of the site’s geography, see Vian 1981, 53 – 64.

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shipwreck narratives of the Odyssey. ⁵⁶ After an unexpected northern wind, the Argo wanders for nine nights and nine days in the Libyan sea—a magical number marking the transition into a dimension alternative to that of reality—, until the ship becomes stranded at the gulf of Syrtis. An infinite and awe-inspiring land, with no name or identity (τίς χθὼν εὔχεται ἥδε;, 1251 “what is this land called?”), stretches in all directions (μεγάλης νῶτα χθονὸς ἠέρι ἶσα/ τηλοῦ ὑπερτείνοντα διηνεκές, 1246 – 7 “the expanse of vast land stretching just like the sky into the distance without a break”, cf. 1264– 6): this is not just another exotic adventure for the Argonauts but an entrapment in a space of hallucination, agony and death.⁵⁷ And it is here that for the first time the Argonauts lose sight of their spatial orientation in real topography and are completely immersed in a counterfactual world.⁵⁸ In all fantastic literature, beginning with the Odyssey, the sea and other liminal spaces, such as the desert, the mountaintops or the ends of the earth, become, under special conditions of light and shadow, the theatre of strange apparitions, which are no more than spectral illusions formed by the mind’s eye.⁵⁹ Moreover, it appears that the Libyan episode is set in a dreamland, since during their first night the Argonauts are overcome by a sleep similar to death (θυμὸν ἀποφθίσειαν ἐνὶ ψαμάθοισι πεσόντες, 1292 “so that each could then collapse on the sand and perish”); as they lie one next to the other, they render the Libyan desert a huge cemetery (βὰν δ᾽ ἴμεν ἄλλυδις ἄλλος, ἑκαστέρω αὖλιν ἑλέσθαι, 1293 “they went off here and there, one further than the next, to choose a resting place”).⁶⁰ At this critical point between dream and death, three divine apparitions take place: that of the Libyan heroines and the chariot of Poseidon, that of the Hesperides and the far-off phantom of Heracles, and finally that of Eurypylus/Triton. This sequence of marvels is set against the background of three equally marvellous landscapes, namely the desert, the garden and the lake respectively. The sand dunes of Libya struck by the rays of the midday sun create

 Clare 2002, 150 – 9.  For the modes of description adopted by Apollonius in the Syrtis episode, see Williams 1991, 163 – 73.  Cf. Clare (2002, 151– 2) who convincingly argues that “until now the route of Argo has depended upon orientation by visible signs and pre-ordained paths, but the Syrtis landscape is something entirely alien and extraneous to this process…it is not so much a question of not knowing where to go, as there being, quite literally, nowhere to go to: there are no paths at all in this desolate scene”.  Visual illusions as cultural phenomena are brilliantly explored by Warner (2006); especially for natural fata morganas, see pp. 105 – 17.  One cannot but agree with Stephens (2008, 108 – 11) who argues that the Libyan adventure may be read as a katabasis within an Egyptian symbolic framework.

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the ideal conditions for the appearance of the meridianus demon (1312– 14), whereas later on are connected to the horrifying story of Medusa’s head (1513 – 17); the Garden with the apples of the Hesperides, after the labour of Heracles (1396 – 405), becomes a space of natural metamorphosis (1422– 30, 1444 – 9); the Tritonian lake, evoked as Athena’s birthplace (1309 – 11), functions as the setting for the seagod’s miraculous apparition (1601– 19). Once exiting the lake into the Mediterranean again, the Argo resumes its course in the real world. Despite spatial coordination suggested by the itinerary followed (Libya, Crete, the Aegean and finally Iolcos), temporal disjunction is still looming on the horizon of Book 4. The killing of Talos on the island of Crete and the overpowering of darkness upon the appearance of Anaphe mark a decisive victory of the civilizing forces of the Argonauts over primordial chaos, in effect a defeat of the uncivilized past and a promise of a new future.⁶¹ In a shifting and destabilized world, like the one reflected in moving geographies, fantasyworlds and places of Otherness, Jason and the Argonauts seek to establish a new order. Albeit constantly interacting with the landscape and reshaping their universe, they envision a future world, one that has yet to come. The world as vision comes as a climax to the entire epic when Euphemos recounts an uncanny dream involving the divine clod of earth from which Thera will arise in the distant future: εἴσατο γάρ οἱ δαιμονίη βῶλαξ ἐπιμάστιος ᾧ ἐν ἀγοστῷ ἄρδεσθαι λευκῇσιν ὑπαὶ λιβάδεσσι γάλακτος, ἐκ δὲ γυνὴ βώλοιο πέλειν ὀλίγης περ ἐούσης παρθενικῇ ἰκέλη· μίχθη δέ οἱ ἐν φιλότητι ἄσχετον ἱμερθείς· ὀλοφύρατο δ᾽ ἠύτε κούρην ζευξάμενος, τὴν αὐτὸς ἑῷ ἀτίταλλε γάλακτι… (4.1733 – 9) For he had dreamed that the divine clod, which he held in his palm against his breast, was being moistened with white drops of milk, and that from the clod, small as it was, came a woman resembling a virgin. Overcome with insatiable desire, he made love to her, but then lamented as if he had had intercourse with his daughter, whom he had been nourishing with his own milk…

Regardless whether an imperial dream or a Freudian nightmare, Euphemos’ vision of Thera dramatizes future space as a woman that has to be seduced. The ultimate vision projected by Apollonius in the extratextual future is probably the foundation of Cyrene or even Alexandria, two cities symbolizing Ptolemaic

 Hunter 1993, 162– 9.

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colonialism and sovereignty.⁶² Thus, at the closure of the Argonautica politics come into view, a space where counterfactuality and reality inevitably converge.

 For a Ptolemaic reading of the episode, see Stephens 2008. Köhnken (2005) argues that Calliste/Thera is an allusion to the future colonization of Cyrene and hence to Callimachus.

Katerina Carvounis

Landscape Markers and Time in Quintus’ Posthomerica ¹ Introduction

The Posthomerica (PH) by Quintus of Smyrna in fourteen books (c. 3rd c. AD) covers the events in the Trojan War between Hector’s death and the storm that hit the victorious Greeks on their return journey from Troy.² The epic opens with a reference to the death and burial of Hector (Q.S. 1.1– 4), and alludes at the end to the troubles that Odysseus will suffer at Poseidon’s hands (14.630 – 1); it is thus envisaged as a sequel to the Iliad and prequel to the Odyssey, with famous Iliadic moments – such as Achilles’ anger over Briseis, his grief at the death of Patroclus, and Odysseus’ rebuke of Thersites – invoked as events that have taken place ‘before’ the present narrative.³ Yet this is not to say that in the few instances where events are covered both in the PH and (prospectively or retrospectively) in the Homeric epics there is always agreement between the two versions; in Odyssey 3, for example, Nestor claims that the sons of Atreus quarrelled and that the Greeks sailed away from Troy in two groups, whereas in PH 14 the Greeks, united, sail away in one group.⁴ In addition to plot, Quintus draws on the Homeric epics for style and literary techniques to produce an epic that is strikingly ‘Homerising’ in character, earning him the title ὁμηρικώτατος (“most Homeric-like”)⁵ and firmly placing him within an archaising strand of the epic tradition.⁶ Landscape markers within the PH have been central in attempts to establish a context for this strongly ‘Homerising’ epic,⁷ and scholars have scrutinised two

 I use Vian’s critical edition (1963 – 9) to cite from the PH.  For Quintus’ dates, see Baumbach/Bär 2007, 1– 8 and Gärtner 2005, 23 – 6.  Cf. Q. S. 14.215 – 16, 1.720 – 1, and 1.759 – 60 respectively.  A quarrel is also mentioned in Proclus’ summary of the archaic Nostoi (PEG 94).  Lascaris, Matritensis gr. 4686 ap. Köchly 1850, cxi.  See, e. g., Vian 1986, 336 – 9.  Cf., e. g., James 2004, xviii: “If we examine Quintus’ work for indications of its period, we find that there are hardly any, such was the success with which he reproduced the archaic character of the Homeric epics and avoided anachronisms.” Nonnus’ Dionysiaca, by contrast, openly refers to Rome’s glory and to Beyrut as a centre for law: see Hadjittofi 2007. On geography in the PH, see Vian 1959, 110 – 44 and Kakridis 1962, 181– 8.

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passages in particular to this effect:⁸ first, the apparently ‘autobiographical’ passage in PH 12 after the first-person invocation to the Muses, where the narrator claims to have received inspiration while still a young man tending his sheep in Smyrna:⁹ Τούς μοι νῦν καθ᾽ ἕκαστον ἀνειρομένωι σάφα, Μοῦσαι, ἔσπεθ᾽ ὅσοι κατέβησαν ἔσω πολυχανδέος ἵππου· ὑμεῖς γὰρ πᾶσάν μοι ἐνὶ φρεσὶ θήκατ’ ἀοιδήν, πρίν μοι ἀμφὶ παρειὰ κατασκίδνασθαι ἴουλον, Σμύρνης ἐν δαπέδοισι περικλυτὰ μῆλα νέμοντι τρὶς τόσον Ἕρμου ἄπωθεν ὅσον βοόωντος ἀκοῦσαι, Ἀρτέμιδος περὶ νηὸν Ἐλευθερίωι ἐνὶ κήπωι, οὔρεϊ οὔτε λίην χθαμαλῶι οὔθ’ ὑψόθι πολλῶι. (Q. S. 12.306 – 13) Muses, tell me now clearly, one by one, as I inquire, how many descended into the vast horse; for you set the whole song into my mind, before my cheeks were yet covered in down, while I tended my famous sheep in the land of Smyrna, three times as far from the Hermus as it is to listen to someone calling, near the temple of Artemis in the garden of Eleutherios, on a hill that is neither too low nor very high.¹⁰

It is on the basis of this passage that Quintus has received the epithet ‘Smyrnaeus’, while the details of the river Hermus near Artemis’ temple in the Eleutherios garden (12.311– 13) purport to show deeper familiarity on the narrator’s part with the locale.¹¹ It has also been argued that the fact that Quintus draws mostly on Homer for his knowledge of mainland Greece and the islands but evinces awareness of local histories for places in Asia Minor¹² can confirm his place within that geographical milieu. ¹³

 A third passage that has been adduced to contextualise Quintus refers to a simile relating to executions by lions and boars in an amphitheatre-like enclosure (Q. S. 6.532– 6): see, e. g., James/Lee 2000, 5 and Gärtner 2005, 24 with n. 14.  For a detailed discussion of this passage, see more recently Bär 2007.  Translations in this paper are my own unless otherwise acknowledged.  Unlike Hermus, the temple of Artemis and the Eleutherios garden have not been identified; for some suggestions, see Vian 1959, 131 and Vian 1963, x n. 1. West’s conjecture Ἐλευθερίου [sc. Διός] (12.312) recorded in Vian’s apparatus is worthy of further consideration: shrines to Zeus Eleutherios are attested in various parts of the Greek-speaking world (cf. Sim. AP 6.50; Hdt 3.142), and a possible inclusion here alongside Artemis’ temple might suggest a sacred space for the Muses.  Vian 1959, 110 – 14. For the coasts of Caria and Lycia in particular, Quintus’ information is confirmed by other sources and evidence, such as inscriptions and statements of ancient geographers, see Vian 1963, xii-xiii and cf. Robert 1978 46 – 8.  For a recent reassessment of this view, see Bär 2007, 52– 61.

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The inclusion of topographical details in this ‘autobiographical’ passage adds plausibility to Quintus’ literary affiliations with Homer, whose birthplace was traditionally identified with Smyrna.¹⁴ Further hints in Quintus’ self-conscious invocation have encouraged scholars to consider its position vis-à-vis three famous literary exchanges with the Muses: an important model here for this invocation before the catalogue of heroes entering the Trojan Horse is the Homeric invocation to the Muses before the catalogue of ships in Il. 2.484 – 92, while the autobiographical element also recalls – in Callimachean terms (cf. μῆλα νέμοντι, Aet. 1 fr. 2.1 Pfeiffer = fr. 4.1 Massimilla) – the proem to Hesiod’s Theogony, where the poet claims to be tending sheep at the foot of Mount Helicon when the Muses visit him (Th. 22 ff.). Moreover, Quintus’ claim that he was a young man at that point recalls Callimachus’ own prologue to the Aetia, where it is implied that the poet was ἀρτιγένειος, that is, “with his beard just sprouting”, when the Muses took him to Helicon.¹⁵ By referring to these three famous instances in the literary tradition for his self-representation as a young shepherd from Smyrna, Quintus states his literary affiliations with Homer, Hesiod and Callimachus.¹⁶ Quintus’ familiarity with the landscape of Asia Minor does not, in itself, suffice to place him in that part of the Roman Empire; foundation literature in the Hellenistic period, such as the ktiseis of various cities, was continued in late antique Patriae,¹⁷ and such works may have been available to a poet eager to complement information offered by the Homeric epics for Troy and beyond.¹⁸ On the other hand, as we shall see below, most of the landmarks which, according to the narrator of the PH, have survived ‘to this day’ or were erected for ‘future men to see’ are set in the eastern part of the Roman Empire. This is not unexpected, given that the Troad forms the dramatic setting for the entire epic, but it remains curious that so many such landmarks – not only within the narrative proper but also within digressions – are centred in that geographical area. It thus seems justified tentatively to associate Quintus with poetry flourishing in, or looking towards, Asia Minor.¹⁹

 For an overview of ancient evidence, see Bär 2007, 53.  Cf. Massimilla 1996, 243. Note that Quintus mentions that he was inspired by the Muses before (πρίν, 12.309) his beard grew.  See Hopkinson 1994, 106, for a metapoetic interpretation of Q. S. 12.313.  Cameron 1995, 26 and 51 with n. 181.  Vian 1959, 119. Cf. also the argument in Bär 2007, 55.  This discussion draws on Carvounis 2005, 12– 13. See Bowie 1989 for Greek poetry in Asia Minor from this period.

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The second passage in the PH involving a landscape marker that has been scrutinised in attempts to contextualise Quintus comes from a prophecy spoken by Calchas during the sack of Troy in PH 13. The seer urges the Greeks to spare Aeneas, for the gods have ordained that he leave Xanthus and go to the Tiber to found a city, and that he may reign over countless men, with his race ruling from east to west: Τὸν γὰρ θέσφατόν ἐστι θεῶν ἐρικυδέι βουλῆι Θύμβριν ἐπ᾽ εὐρυρέεθρον ἀπὸ Ξάνθοιο μολόντα τευξέμεν ἱερὸν ἄστυ καὶ ἐσσομένοισιν ἀγητὸν ἀνθρώποις, αὐτὸν δὲ πολυσπερέεσσι βροτοῖσι κοιρανέειν· ἐκ τοῦ δὲ γένος μετόπισθεν ἀνάξειν ἄχρις ἐπ᾽ Ἀντολίην τε καὶ ἀκάματον Δύσιν ἐλθεῖν. (Q. S. 13.336 – 41) For it is ordained by the glorious will of the gods that after he goes from Xanthus to the wide-flowing Tiber, he shall construct a sacred city that will be admired even by men to come, and that he himself will rule over mortals scattered far and wide; and in the future the race descending from him shall rule until it reaches both the East and the tireless West.

The main model for Calchas’ speech is that of Poseidon in Il. 20.301– 8, where he urges the gods to rescue Aeneas from certain death and save him for a glorious future, as “it is fated for him to escape” (μόριμον δέ οἵ ἐστ᾽ ἀλέασθαι, Il. 20.302) and “he [Aeneas] and his sons’ sons, who will be born in later times, will rule over the Trojans” (Τρώεσσιν ἀνάξει/ καὶ παίδων παῖδες, τοί κεν μετόπισθε γένωνται, 20.307– 8).²⁰ Taken together with literary-historical evidence,²¹ Calchas’ allusion to Rome that is implied through the reference to the Tiber²² plausibly suggests that the PH was composed in the period of the Roman empire; but to infer from there, however tentatively, that the inauguration of Constantinople in 330 AD as the new seat of the empire has not yet taken place²³ relies on a hazardous argumentum ex silentio. ²⁴ Landscape markers within the PH cannot, then, take us very far towards placing Quintus within a temporal and physical setting; they can, nevertheless, cast some light on his literary models, techniques, and poetics, as I shall argue in the main part of this paper. In attempting to recreate the space in, around, and

 For ancient views of this prophecy, see Erskine 2001, 100 – 1.  Cf., e. g., the argument for the composition of the PH after Oppian’s Halieutica.  For the use of rivers as landmarks in oracles, cf., e. g., Hdt 1.55.  Cf., e. g., James 2004, xix. Gärtner 2005, 24 and Baumbach/Bär 2007, 3 are rightly sceptical regarding the weight of this argument to date Quintus.  For a discussion of Quintus and the Roman Empire, see Hadjittofi 2007, 358 – 65.

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beyond Troy, Quintus draws heavily on the Iliad, and his poem emerges as a credible sequel to the Homeric narrative of the Trojan War. Yet he does not hesitate to refer to landmarks within Troy that pre-date, as it were, the narrative of the PH but which did not feature in the Iliad. For instance, alongside the temple of Athena (Il. 6.88, 269, 279, 297; cf. Q. S. 6.146, 13.435, 13.421– 8, 14.326) and the sanctuary of Apollo (Il. 5.445 – 6, 5.512, 7.83; cf. Q. S. 12.481, 12.517, 13.434), Quintus mentions the altar of Zeus Herkeios (Q. S. 6.147, 13.222, 13.435 – 6) and Ganymede’s sanctuary (Q. S. 14.325 – 6) as places of worship within Ilion.²⁵ The altar to Zeus Herkeios is not, of course, Quintus’ invention; at the end of the Iliad, before Priam sets out to retrieve Hector’s body, he stands μέσωι ἕρκεϊ (“mid-court”, Il. 24.306), pours a libation, and prays to Zeus (24.308 – 13).²⁶ In the post-Homeric tradition this same altar will become the place where Neoptolemus will kill Priam.²⁷ This is also the tradition followed in the PH (see Q. S. 13.222), and Quintus draws attention to the altar as a landmark both before and after Priam’s death: in PH 6, as Paris leads Eurypylus to his home through the town, they pass by Assaracus’ tomb, Hector’s home, and Athena’s temple, close to which are the halls and altars of Zeus Herkeios (6.143 – 7), while in PH 13 this altar is included – alongside Apollo’s sanctuary and Athena’s temple – among the burning landmarks in Troy (13.430 – 7).²⁸ At the very end of the epic, Ganymede’s sanctuary is one of the landmarks left standing in Troy following the sack of the city (Q. S. 14.325).²⁹ Ganymede himself is mentioned twice in the Iliad: first by Diomedes, who refers to the horses that Zeus gave to Tros as compensation (Il. 5.266), and then by Aeneas, who describes him as the most beautiful mortal, whom the gods snatched and he be-

 Note, conversely, Quintus’ silence of the “permanent landmarks of the Iliad’s geography of the Trojan plain” (Hainsworth 1993, 243), namely, Ilus’ tomb (Il. 10.415, 11.166, 11.372), the fig-tree (ἐρινεός: Il. 6.433, 11.167, 22.145), the oak (φηγός: Il. 5.693, 6.237 [πύργον: φηγόν], 7.22, 9.354, 11.170, 21.549); and the “rise” of the plain (θρωσμός: Il. 10.160, 11.56, 20.3).  See MacLeod 1982 on Il. 24.306 (μέσω ἕρκεϊ): “the court outside the μέγαρον; an altar of Zeus Herkeios might stand there (Od. 22.334– 5; cf. Il. 11.772– 5).”  Cf., e. g., Proclus’ summary of the Iliupersis; Eur. Tr. 16 – 17, 481– 3; Virg. Aen. 2.512– 58; Triph. 634– 9.  Note the verbal variation in this imagery: καίετο… καίοντο, 13.432a; καταίθετο, 13.433; κατεπρήθοντ(ο), 13.436; ἀμαθύνετο, 13.437. As one of the referees points out, the double reference to the altar of Zeus in the middle and the end of the PH adumbrates Quintus’ adaptation of his Homeric and post-Homeric models in dealing with a landscape marker, the significance of which has evolved throughout the epic tradition.  Vian 1969, 189 n. 6 [= N.C., p. 233]: “Ganymède a été déifié: cf. QS, VIII, 429ss; il doit posséder un sanctuaire sur l’acropole de Troie.”

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came cupbearer for Zeus (Il. 20.234– 5).³⁰ Ganymede’s life among the immortals was pointedly brought to the fore in the second stasimon of Euripides’ Troades, where the opulence (Tr. 820) and serenity (Tr. 835 – 7) that he enjoys in the gods’ company framed the Chorus’ description of the blazing Troy. The conclusion of the stasimon, which depicts the destruction of Ganymede’s favourite haunts (τὰ δὲ σὰ δροσόεντα λουτρὰ/ γυμνασίων τε δρόμοι/ βεβᾶσι, “your fresh baths and the race courses for training are gone”, Tr. 833 – 5), underlines his detachment from Troy, as the women call upon one who is safely away from the burning city. In the PH, Ganymede is shown fearing for Troy (Q. S. 8.430) and asks Zeus that he may not see his city being destroyed (8.431– 42). Zeus grants his wish by veiling Troy with mist and creating thunder (8.446 – 50), yet this is only a temporary relief and Ganymede is ultimately unable to avert destruction. As in Euripides’ Troades, in the PH too his distance from his own city is conveyed through his conspicuous absence from Troy, with his sanctuary – one of the last landmarks left standing in Troy – as a physical and poignant manifestation of this absence.³¹ As these two examples show, although Quintus draws heavily on the Iliad to recreate the dramatic setting of his epic, he nevertheless allows room for subtle departures and innovation within that framework. This paper explores further departures from Quintus’ Homeric models with reference to landscape markers in the PH: I first discuss two instances where Quintus’ re-working of his Iliadic models highlights his late place within the epic tradition, while in the second part of this paper I focus on one particular feature of the epic that constitutes a marked departure from the Homeric models, namely, Quintus’ interest in landmarks that can ‘still’ be seen.³² I shall thus demonstrate how he adapts hints of memorialisation in the earlier tradition and the Homeric epics in particular, and develops them into existing landscape markers.

 Cf. also Ilias Parva fr. 6 EGF (= Alterius Iliadic Parvae vel Aliarum Iliadum Parvarum fr. 29 Bernabé).  Carvounis 2005, 291– 2.  My debt to Vian’s relevant studies (Vian 1959, esp. 110 – 44 and Vian 1963 – 9) is obvious throughout this paper.

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A. Quintus’ Topography and his Homeric Models 1. Quintus’ Description of Miletus In the first battle-scene in the PH Paris kills Evenor, who had come from Dulichium (Q. S. 1.270 – 5). At the latter’s death, Meges intervenes (1.276 – 7) and kills Itymoneus and Agelaus, who had come from Miletus under the command of Nastes and Amphimachus (1.279 – 81), who, in turn, hold sway over Mycale and the peaks of Latmos, the mountain glens of Branchos and Panormos, and the streams of Maeander, which flows from Phrygia to Caria: οἳ Μυκάλην ἐνέμοντο Λάτμοιό [τιτάνοιό codd.]³³ τε λευκὰ κάρηνα Βράγχου τ᾽ ἄγκεα μακρὰ καὶ ἠιόεντα Πάνορμον Μαιάνδρου τε ῥέεθρα βαθυρρόου, ὅς ῥ᾽ ἐπὶ γαῖαν Καρῶν ἀμπελόεσσαν ἀπὸ Φρυγίης πολυμήλου εἶσι πολυγνάμπτοισιν ἑλισσόμενος προχοῆισι. (Q. S. 1.282– 6) They dwelt in Mycale and the white peaks of Latmos and the long glens of Branchos and Panormos by the shore and the streams of deep-flowing Maeander, which runs from Phrygia, rich in flocks, upon the Carians’ land, rich in vines, whirling in its mouths of many twists.

For Meges’ brief aristeia Quintus combines information from different parts of the Iliad. The catalogue of ships in Iliad 2 mentions the Dulichian contingent led by Meges (Il. 2.625 – 8) and the Carian one led by Nastes and Amphimachus (Il. 2.867– 75). Meges had been introduced as leader of the Dulichians and son of Phyleus (Il. 2.625 – 8); he was referred to in several other instances as Phyleus’ son (Il. 5.72, 10.110, 10.175, 15.519, 15.528, 16.313, 19.239) and was twice grouped with important Greek leaders (Il. 10.110, 15.302). A sequel to the Iliad, the PH allusively introduces Meges as Phyleus’ son (πάις Φυλῆος ἀγαυοῦ, “the child of noble Phyleus”, Q. S. 1.276), while his name is revealed only at the conclusion of his achievements (Q. S. 1.287). At the same time, Quintus also draws on a later Iliadic battle-scene featuring Meges: Quintus’ Meges is spurred to action and kills the two Carians following Evenor’s death just as the Iliadic Meges had been spurred to action following the death of his companion Otus of Cyllene: τοῦ δ᾽ ἄρ᾽ ἀποφθιμένοιο πάις Φυλῆος ἀγαυοῦ/ ὠρίνθη, Q. S. 1.276 – 7 (“when he was killed, the child of noble Phyleus was roused”); cf. τῶι δὲ Μέγης ἐπόρουσεν ἰδών, Il. 15.520 (“when Meges saw [this], he leapt upon him”).

 For this error in the MSS see pp. 168 – 9 below (with references in n. 36).

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The Carians, on the other hand, were named as the penultimate contingent in the Iliadic catalogue; their leader was Nastes (Il. 2.867), to whose name was added that of Amphimachus, who had come to the war decked with gold, but Achilles killed him and carried off the gold (2.872– 5). The Carians hold Miletus, the mountain of Phthires, the streams of Maeander and the peaks of Mycale: Νάστης αὖ Καρῶν ἡγήσατο βαρβαροφώνων, οἳ Μίλητον ἔχον Φθιρῶν τ᾽ ὄρος ἀκριτόφυλλον Μαιάνδρου τε ῥοὰς Μυκάλης τ᾽ αἰπεινὰ κάρηνα. τῶν μὲν ἄρ᾽ Ἀμφίμαχος καὶ Νάστης ἡγησάσθην, Νάστης Ἀμφίμαχός τε, Νομίονος ἀγλαὰ τέκνα. (Il. 2.867– 71) Nastes led the barbaric-speaking Carians, who held Miletus and the leafy mountain of Phthires and the streams of Maeander and the tall peaks of Mycale. Amphimachus and Nastes – the two of them – were their leaders, Nastes and Amphimachus, the glorious sons of Nomion.

As Vian has noted in his excellent discussion of Q. S. 2.282– 6, Quintus adopts and adapts the Iliadic description of the Carian region: whereas Miletus, Mycale and the river Maeander feature as landmarks in both the Homeric and the postHomeric descriptions, Quintus replaces the mountain of Phthires with the peaks of Latmos, adds Panormos and the ridges of Branchos, and elaborates on the extensive course of Maeander.³⁴ Mt Phthires was a source of controversy among ancient scholars; according to Strabo, Hecataeus of Miletus identified it with Mt Latmos: ἐκαλεῖτο δὲ πρότερον Λάτμος ὁμωνύμως τῶι ὑπερκειμένωι ὄρει, ὅπερ Ἑκαταῖος μὲν ἐμφαίνει τὸ αὐτὸ εἶναι νομίζων τῶι ὑπὸ τοῦ ποιητοῦ Φθειρῶν ὄρει λεγομένωι (ὑπὲρ γὰρ τῆς Λάτμου φησὶ τὸ Φθειρῶν ὄρος κεῖσθαι), Str. 14.1.8.³⁵ Quintus thus replaces the Homeric Mt Phthires with Mt Latmos as a key landmark for the Carian landscape, and for the verse-end Λάτμοιό τε λευκὰ κάρηνα (Q. S. 1.282) draws on the description of yet another contingent in the Iliadic catalogue: οἳ δ᾽ ἔχον Ὀρμένιον οἵ τε κρήνην Ὑπέρειαν,/ οἵ τ᾽ ἔχον Ἀστέριον Τιτάνοιό τε λευκὰ κάρηνα, Il. 2.734– 5 (“those who held Ormenion,

 For πολυγνάμπτοισιν ἑλισσόμενος προχοῆισι, Q. S. 1.286 (of Maeander), cf. τῆι καὶ τῆι σκολιῆισιν ἑλισσόμενοι προχοῆισι, D. P. 1072; πενταπόροις προχοῆισιν ἑλισσόμενος, D. P. 301; πολυγνάμπτου ποταμοῖο, Nonn. D. 11.399, 19.348.  “It was formerly called Latmos by the same name as the mountain lying above, which Hecataeus indicates that, as he thinks, it is the same as that called by the poet ‘mountain of Phthires’ (for he says that the mountain of Phthires lies above Latmos).” See Kirk 1985, 260 – 1, on Il. 2.867– 9.

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and those who held the Hypereian spring, and those who held Asterium and the white peaks of Titanus”).³⁶ To the markers in the Carian landscape mentioned in the Iliadic catalogue of ships Quintus adds the ridges of Branchos and the harbour of Panormos.³⁷ Branchos was a herdsman desired by Apollo (cf. Luc. DDeor. 6.2; Long. DC 4.17.6), who bestowed on his beloved the gift of prophecy (see Call. fr. 229 (= Iamb 17 (?) D’Alessio)).³⁸ He became the eponymous ancestor of a family of influential Milesian seers,³⁹ and, as Strabo notes, the Milesians erected the largest temple in the world with the scene of Branchos’ myth and Apollo’s love (Str. 14.1.5). Herodotus refers to the temple at Branchidae as an important oracular seat dedicated to Apollo (1.157, 2.159), and Pausanias mentions the Branchidae in proximity to the harbour Panormos (Paus. 5.7.5). Rather than repeating the information offered in the Iliadic catalogue of ships, Quintus thus adapts the relevant lines dealing with the landmarks of Caria by taking into consideration post-Homeric literary and philological references to this geographical area.

2. Anchises’ Bed In a digression in PH 8 on the origin of Diomedes’ victim Eumaeus who used to dwell in Dardania, the narrator claims that this is the location of Anchises’ bed that he shared with Aphrodite: ὅς ποτ᾽ ἔναιε Δάρδανον αἰπήεσσαν, ἵν᾽ Ἀγχίσαο πέλονται εὐναί, ὅπου Κυθέρειαν ἐν ἀγκοίνηισι δάμασσεν. (Q. S. 8.96 – 8) He once dwelt in steep Dardanus, where there is Anchises’ bed, which is where he seduced Cythereia in his embrace.

The model for this digression is found in the Iliadic catalogue of ships, where Aeneas is introduced as leader of the Dardanians:  Vian 1959, 135; cf. also Vian 1963, 23 n. 4. For another instance of a philological debate informing geographical landmarks, see Skempis (this volume).  Quintus applies to Panormos the epithet ἠιόεις (Q. S. 1.283), which is a hapax in Homer; cf. τὸν μὲν ἔπειτα καθεῖσεν ἐπ᾽ ἠϊόεντι Σκαμάνδρωι, Il. 5.36.  See Dieg. X.15: Ἀπ[ό]λλων ἐκ Δήλου ἀφικνεῖ-/ ται εἰς τὸ Μιλήτου χωρίον ὃ καλεῖται/ ἱερὰ ὕλη, ἵνα Βράγχος (“Apollo arrives from Delos to the place of Miletus which is called ‘sacred wood’, where Branchos [was]”). See the excellent note in Vian 1963, 23 n. 4.  Henderson 2009, 173 n. 65.

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Δαρδανίων αὖτ᾽ ἦρχεν ἐὺς πάις Ἀγχίσαο, Αἰνείας, τὸν ὑπ᾽ Ἀγχίσηι τέκε δῖ᾽ Ἀφροδίτη, Ἴδης ἐν κνημοῖσι θεὰ βροτῶι εὐνηθεῖσα. (Il. 2.819 – 21) The noble son of Anchises led the Dardanians, Aeneas, whom divine Aphrodite bore to Anchises, a goddess who slept with a mortal in the range of Ida.

Quintus’ re-working highlights his interest in concrete landmarks and reveals an attempt to connect the Trojan War with the ‘present’ time: rather than referring to the place where Anchises and Aphrodite had intercourse, he draws attention to the bed in Dardanos⁴⁰ that Anchises shared with the goddess (cf. ἵν᾽ Ἀγχίσαο πέλονται/ εὐναί, Q. S. 8.97– 8).⁴¹ Such connections with the past and the Trojan War in particular were common in the Imperial period, and Vian has linked Quintus’ fondness for pointing out landmarks that can ‘still’ be seen with a contemporary culture of tourism in Troy.⁴² Earlier leaders who visited the site include Xerxes in 480 BC (Hdt. 7.42– 3) and Alexander the Great, both of whom are said to have sacrificed to Athena Ilias (Plut. Alex. 15), while Alexander also sacrificed to Priam at the altar of Zeus Herkeios and paid homage to Achilles’ tomb (Arr. Anab. 1.11.7– 8, 1.12.1).⁴³ In the Imperial period emperors visiting Troy stressed the connection with the foundation of Rome; a visit by Caesar is related by Lucan (BC 9.950 – 99), who mentions the presence of a local guide (9.976 – 9) and includes a series of landmarks from the Trojan saga, such as Ajax’s grave (9.962– 3), Anchises’ bed (9.970 – 1),⁴⁴ the cave where Paris sat as judge (9.971), and the peak where Oenone lamented (9.972– 3).

 On the relationship between Dardania, Dardanos and Troy in the PH, see Vian 1959, 122 and Kakridis 1962, 184.  Quintus here subtly adapts Iliadic diction for legendary locations: cf. ὅθι φασὶ θεάων ἔμμεναι εὐνὰς/ νυμφάων, Il. 24.615 – 16 (“where they say that there are the beds of goddesses, the nymphs”).  Vian 1959, 119 – 21.  Erskine 2001, 105. Note also that in the Hellenistic period Polemon of Ilion wrote a description of the city, while Antiochus III stopped in Ilion on his way to invade Greece and aid the Aetolians in 192 BC: Vermeule III 1995, 469; see Liv. 35.43.3; 37.9.7; 37.37.2– 3.  For Anchises’ bed as a surviving landmark in the ruins of Troy in the Imperial period cf. Luc. 9.970 – 1 (of Caesar’s visit to Troy): aspicit Hesiones scopulos silvaque latentes/ Anchisae thalamos (“he saw the rock of Hesione and the secret marriage-bed of Anchises in the wood”). Eustathius also mentions Anchises’ tomb as a monument to which herdsmen paid homage (cf. Pfister 1909, 138 n. 496): ἐδείκνυτο δέ, φασι, τάφος αὐτοῦ ἐν τῆι Ἴδηι καὶ ἐτίμων αὐτὸν οἱ ἐκεῖ ποιμένες καὶ βουκόλοι κατὰ πᾶν φθινόπωρον τὸν τάφον αὐτοῦ στέφοντες, Eust. on Il. 12.98 [894.34] (“and his tomb, they say, was pointed out in Ida and the shepherds there and herdsmen honoured him every autumn crowning his tomb”).

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The historicity of this visit is doubted,⁴⁵ but Strabo, who does not specifically mention the visit, reports on the privileges granted by Caesar to the Trojans in recognition of the connection between the foundation of Rome and the Julian gens (Str. 13.1.27),⁴⁶ while a series of public inscriptions from Ilion refer to the συγγένεια (“kinship”) of the Julio-Claudians with the Trojans.⁴⁷ In 214 AD Caracalla stopped at Ilion while on campaign against the Parthians, and is said to have paid special tribute to Achilles’ tomb (Hdn. 4.8.4– 5; D. C. 78.16.7).⁴⁸ In 354 AD Julian also visited Ilion and claims that he saw a shrine of Hector with a statue of Achilles opposite, as well as the temple of Athena Ilias (Ep. 79 Bidez). Prose literature of the second and third centuries in particular reflects the rising interest in local cults; Philostratus’ Heroicus is a notable example of this interest, which is also registered by Aristides, Pausanias and Lucian.⁴⁹

B. Surviving Landmarks in Quintus’ PH In the Homeric epics the heroes themselves articulate their aim or wish that funerary monuments be witnessed by later men: Agamemnon’s ghost in the Odyssean Underworld tells how the Achaeans put up a tall mound for the bones of Achilles and Patroclus on the shore by the Hellespont, “so that it might be visible from the sea from afar to living men and to those who will come after” (ὥς κεν τηλεφανὴς ἐκ ποντόφιν ἀνδράσιν εἴη/ τοῖς οἳ νῦν γεγάασι καὶ οἳ μετόπισθεν ἔσονται, Od. 24.83 – 4). Elpenor’s posthumous request to Odysseus also relates to a burial monument for the preservation of his memory: σῆμά τέ μοι χεῦαι πολιῆς  As Erskine (2001, 248 – 9) puts it, the evidence is “surprisingly slight… The sole evidence for Caesar’s visit is in a poem, De bello civili, Lucan’s epic of the civil war between Caesar on the one hand and Pompey and the Senate on the other.” Dio Cassius (42.6.1) only mentions that Caesar pursued Pompey as far as Asia: καὶ μέχρι μὲν τῆς Ἀσίας κατὰ πύστιν αὐτοῦ προϊὼν ἠπείχθη, ἐνταῦθα δέ, ἐπειδὴ μηδεὶς ὅπηι πεπλευκὼς ἦν ἠπίστατο, ἐνδιέτριψεν (“and he hurried on until Asia going by information about him; but he lingered there, since nobody knew where he had sailed to”). See Trachsel 2007, 303 – 9, for a discussion of Lucan’s depiction of Caesar’s visit to Troy (with bibliography), and Bexley (this volume).  Wick 2004, 401, on Luc. 9.950 – 99, §1; see Erskine 2001, 247– 8, for a sceptical view of Caesar’s benefactions to Ilion.  Sage 2000, 213. According to Strabo, however, who is drawing here on Demetrios of Skepsis, Ilion was not the Troy of Homer, with the people of Ilion disputing this claim: see Erskine 2001, 104– 6. On this debate, as Vian (1959, 119) has noted, Quintus places himself with those who see in Ilion Novum the continuation of the Homeric Troy, as he depicts at the very end of the PH Antenor among the survivors of the city (Q. S. 14.399 – 403).  Sage 2000, 214.  Sage 2000, 216.

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ἐπὶ θινὶ θαλάσσης,/ ἀνδρὸς δυστήνοιο καὶ ἐσσομένοισι πυθέσθαι, Od. 11.75 – 6 (“and heap up a mound for me on the shore of the grey sea that future men learn of a wretched man”).⁵⁰ In challenging the Achaean leaders to a duel in Iliad 7, Hector likewise envisages that, if he is victorious, he will return his opponent’s body to the Achaeans, who will heap up a mound (σῆμα, Il. 7.86) by the Hellespont for future men to see: καί ποτέ τις εἴπηισι καὶ ὀψιγόνων ἀνθρώπων, νηῒ πολυκλήϊδι πλέων ἐπὶ οἴνοπα πόντον· ‘ἀνδρὸς μὲν τόδε σῆμα πάλαι κατατεθνηῶτος, ὅν ποτ᾽ ἀριστεύοντα κατέκτανε φαίδιμος Ἕκτωρ.’ (Il. 7.87– 90) And some man of those who will be born later may say one day as he sails in his ship of many benches over the wine-dark sea: “This is the mound of a man who died a long time ago, whom, while he excelled, glorious Hector once killed.”

As Grethlein points out, the temporal longevity to which Hector aspires “converges with the spatial extension of his fame: not only does τις… ἀνθρώπων signify mankind in general, but the seafarer stands for the spreading of his fame all over the world”.⁵¹ This comment comes within the context of his applying the term “timemark” to tombs in the Homeric epics, for the tombs are “markers of the past that were made in memory of the dead” and were subsequently used as points of orientation.⁵² Yet in the Iliad indications that the time of the Trojan War is different from that of the narrator resurface in the recurring phrase οἷοι νῦν βροτοί εἰσιν (“such as mortals are now”, Il. 5.304; 12.383, 449; 20.287) and in the memorable description of the prospective destruction of the Achaean wall (Il. 12.13 – 35).⁵³ This temporal distance between the time of the narrative and that of the audience is made explicit in Apollonius’ Argonautica ⁵⁴ through the narrator’s emphatic assertions already from the outset (cf. παλαιγενέων κλέα φωτῶν/ μνήσομαι, “I shall recall the glory of men born of old”, A. R. 1.1– 2),⁵⁵ while aetiologies link a specific event in the Argonautic expedition to a place that derives its name from that

     on 

Fusillo 1985, 138. Grethlein 2008, 30. Grethlein 2008, 28. For the concept of “timemarks”, see also Skempis (this volume). See de Jong 1987, 44– 5. Fusillo 1985, 138; cf. Hunter 1993, 105 with n. 19 and Hunter in Fantuzzi/Hunter 2004, 91– 3, A. R. 1.1 and the adjective παλαιγενεῖς applied to the Argonauts. See Hunter in Fantuzzi/Hunter 2004, 92 with nn. 12– 14.

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event,⁵⁶ a custom that is still observed,⁵⁷ or a monument that can still be seen.⁵⁸ On one occasion, the narrator implies that he even draws knowledge from surviving visual evidence to reconstruct the narrative of the past: after the account of the posthumous honours for Idmon, the narrator wonders who else died there, for the heroes set up another mound, since there are two grave-markers that can still be seen (A. R. 2.851– 3).⁵⁹ As Fusillo has argued, aetiology changes the relation to the past suggested by the Homeric epics,⁶⁰ and, in Goldhill’s words, “brings the epic towards the moment of reading”.⁶¹ Quintus openly links the time of the narrative to the present and the future, as he draws attention in the PH to a handful of landscape markers resulting from divine intervention, which are ‘still’ there to be seen or which were erected for future generations of men. The narrator explains the origin of most of these monuments and links it to heroes and events of the Trojan War that are related in the PH and which thus become engraved in the landscape. In PH 1 Niobe’s rock on Mt Sipylos (Q. S. 1.294– 306) is still visible as “a wonder for men passing by” (1.299: see (1) below), while in PH 14 the gods turn Hecuba into a rock – “a great wonder even for men to come” (14.351: see (1) below). In PH 2 the Paphlagoneios river, which turns red on the anniversary of Memnon’s death (2.556 – 66), was formed by the gods as “a sign even for men to come” (2.558), and in PH 4 the Nymphs create a new river in honour of the Lycian Glaucus that men still (εἰσέτι, 4.10) call by the warrior’s name, while Memnon’s followers, who are transformed into the ‘Memnon’ birds, even now (νῦν, 2.646) lament over their king’s tomb (2.646 – 55: see (2) below). Philoctetes’ cave in PH 9 is covered by discharge from his wound – “a great wonder for men and for those who will come after” (9.389 – 91) – and Selene’s cave in PH 10 is filled with water that congeals and which, from a distance, looks like milk (10.127– 37), and “men still wonder at it” (10.133 – 4). Finally, reference is made in PH 11 to a rock under the Corycian ridge that burns day and night, which the gods made “for future men to see” (καὶ ἐσσομένοισιν ἰδέσθαι, 11.98).⁶²  Cf., e. g., A. R. 1.591, 4.1153– 4.  E.g., A. R. 2.524– 7, 4.534– 5, 4.1770 – 2.  Cyzicus’ tomb (A. R. 1.1061– 2), oak-trees charmed by Orpheus’ lyre (1.28 – 30); as Hutchinson (1988, 93 – 4) points out, this aetion appears in the first item of the opening catalogue of the Argonautica.  For an overview of scholarly opinions on the relationship between present and past implied through aetiologies, see Goldhill 1991, 321.  Fusillo 1985, 138 – 9.  Goldhill 1991, 322, pointing to Fusillo 1985, 116 – 58.  For comparable lists, see Vian 1959, 144 and Kakridis 1962, 187– 8. The present list is confined to landmarks that can, according to the narrator, still be seen; I thus exclude (i) the island in the

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From among these landmarks, I shall focus on two pairs that have their origin in transformation or divine intervention and function as aetiologies, namely (1) the rocks of Niobe and Hecuba, and (2) the rivers Paphlagoneios and Glaucus.⁶³ The Homeric epics show transformations “worked by magicians”, as Forbes Irving puts it (Proteus’ self-transformations, Od. 4.455 – 9; Circe’s transformation of Odysseus’ men, Od. 10.235 – 43) or petrifications (a snake, Il. 2.303 – 19; Niobe, Il. 24.602– 17; the Phaeacians’ ship, Od. 13.160 – 4),⁶⁴ with only Niobe’s petrification explaining a landmark that can ‘still’ be seen (see below). By contrast, in the Hellenistic period, metamorphoses are “virtually all both aetiological and terminal; their function is to explain some present creature or landmark, and they bring the story to an end”.⁶⁵ In this respect, the rocks of Niobe and Hecuba and the rivers Paphlagoneios and Glaucus, which belong to parallel scenes, show Quintus re-working identifiable Homeric models and adapting them within a later context.

1. Grieving Mothers and Rock Formations: Niobe and Sipylos, Hecuba and Cynossema The rock of Mt Sipylos (Q. S. 1.294– 306) is the first landmark in the PH which is explicitly described as existing in the present time, and it is the only such landmark to be mentioned in the Homeric epics (Il. 24.614– 17). Following his orders that Hector’s body be prepared before it is returned to Priam, Achilles in Iliad 24 invites the Trojan king to think about food, and he introduces Niobe as an example of a bereaved parent who eventually ate after she had mourned the loss of her twelve children for the nine days during which they remained unburied. And now, Achilles continues, somewhere in the rocks on Sipylos, “where they say that there are the beds of goddesses, the nymphs” (ὅθι φασὶ θεάων ἔμμεναι

Euxine that Poseidon promises to give Achilles in the future (Q. S. 3.770 – 80) and the hole (visible at the time) where the snakes that killed Laomedon’s sons disappeared (12.480 – 2); and (ii) landmarks described in the present tense but without a specific temporal framework, such as the cave of the Nymphs (6.471– 91) and Protesilaus’ tomb (7.408 – 11).  See Buxton 2009, 202 on Niobe’s rock and similar tales which can be seen ‘until now’: “all these places signify, through the still-visible evidence of transformational genesis, the living persistence of the mythological past.”  Forbes Irving 1990, 8 – 9.  Forbes Irving 1990, 20.

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εὐνὰς/ νυμφάων, Il. 24.615 – 16), Niobe, “although a rock” (λίθος περ ἐοῦσα), nurses her grief sent by the gods (Il. 24.615 – 17).⁶⁶ This is a rare instance in the Homeric epics where reference is made – albeit by one of the characters in the epic rather than by the narrator – to a supernatural phenomenon that is still visible (νῦν, Il. 24.614). Yet as Taplin suggests, it might “have still been a valid νῦν for the audience of Homer’s day,” since they would have known of a rock-formation on Sipylos believed to preserve the shape of Niobe in grief, which later authors also mention (cf. S. Ant. 822– 33; Paus. 1.21.5); and the fact that a story from the past has left a tangible trace in the surviving landscape can be “a source of consolation: the sufferings, the mortal lives, of the past have not disappeared without leaving any mark. They are still the subject of story and of poetry. And they have left vestiges – names, cults, landmarks, memorials – which link us to them across the gulfs of time.”⁶⁷ Through this first description of a landmark that still exists, Quintus’ epic evokes the end of the Iliad and establishes a sense of continuity with the Homeric model. In adopting Niobe’s story, Quintus describes the μέγα θαῦμα on Mt Sipylos (Q. S. 1.299) within a digression on the location where the otherwise unknown warrior Dresaeus was born to Theiodamas by the nymph Neaira;⁶⁸ it is there, the narrator states, that the gods turned Niobe into a stone (1.294– 306): ἧχι θεοὶ Νιόβην λᾶαν θέσαν, ἧς ἔτι δάκρυ πουλὺ μάλα στυφελῆς καταλείβεται ὑψόθε πέτρης, καί οἱ συστοναχοῦσι ῥοαὶ πολυηχέος Ἕρμου καὶ κορυφαὶ Σιπύλου περιμήκεες ὧν καθύπερθεν ἐχθρὴ μηλονόμοισιν ἀεὶ περιπέπτατ’ ὀμίχλη· ἣ δὲ πέλει μέγα θαῦμα παρεσσυμένοισι βροτοῖσιν, οὕνεκ’ ἔοικε γυναικὶ πολυστόνωι ἥ τ’ ἐπὶ λυγρῶι πένθεϊ μυρομένη μάλα μυρία δάκρυα χεύει·

295

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 Ancient scholars rejected these verses on logical, stylistic, and factual grounds: they questioned how Niobe could eat and nurse her cares if she had been turned into stone, and found inappropriate the point of Niobe’s petrification in this context of consolation (καὶ ἡ παραμυθία γελοία, ΣΑ ad loc.). Moreover, they noted the Hesiodic character of these lines and the three-fold repetition of ἐν in 24.615 – 16, while ΣT question Achelous’ connection with Sipylos. For some counter-arguments to these objections, see Richardson 1993, 341– 2 on Il. 24.614– 17.  Taplin 2002, 26.  As Vian (1963, 24 n. 2) points out, Neaira is mentioned in [Apollod.] Bibl. 3.5.6 among Niobe’s daughters. Different authors give different names to Niobids who escaped death (e. g., [Apollod.] mentions Chloris, but Paus. (2.21.9, 5.16.4) says that Meliboea was Chloris’ original name before she turned pale with fear at her siblings’ slaughter), so it is not impossible that Neaira was a Niobid who also escaped (see Vian loc. cit.).

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καὶ τὸ μὲν ἀτρεκέως φῂς ἔμμεναι, ὁππότ’ ἄρ’ αὐτὴν τηλόθεν ἀθρήσειας· ἐπὴν δέ οἱ ἐγγὺς ἵκηαι, φαίνεται αἰπήεσσα πέτρη Σιπύλοιό τ’ ἀπορρώξ. Ἀλλ’ ἣ μὲν μακάρων ὀλοὸν χόλον ἐκτελέουσα μύρεται ἐν πέτρηισιν ἔτ’ ἀχνυμένηι εἰκυῖα.

305

There the gods made Niobe a stone, whose tears still drop densely down a hard rock from high up, and the streams of loud-sounding Hermus groan together with her, as well as the very high peaks of Sipylos, over which there is always spread a fog hateful to shepherds; and this is a great marvel to men who pass by, because it resembles a mournful woman, who sheds countless tears as she weeps for a baneful grief. And you may say that it is so in reality, whenever you see it from afar; but whenever you come closer to it, it clearly appears as a high stone and a precipice of Sipylos. But Niobe, fulfilling the destructive anger of the gods, weeps among rocks still appearing to grieve.

Quintus takes for his starting-point what stood as the conclusion of Achilles’ own digression (that is, that Niobe nurses her god-sent cares even though a stone), and then capitalises on the link that the Iliadic Achilles had drawn between the myth of Niobe and the landscape as it can be seen ‘now’. But an important departure from his Homeric model is that Quintus places this θαῦμα within a human context; he gives further geographical indications for this rock by noting that the streams of the river Hermus and the tips of Mt Sipylos groan with Niobe (Q. S. 1.296 – 7), and, rather than defining the rocks in Sipylos as places where the Nymphs dancing around Achelous are said to have their beds (Il. 24.614– 15), he refers to the fog that shepherds encounter (Q. S. 1.297– 8).⁶⁹ In his description of the Niobe-rock Quintus thus moves from the mythical to the human context, setting this landmark not only in the present time (‘now’), but also within a familiar space (‘here’). Moreover, he expands on its effect on present-day viewers (1.294– 304) by using the present tense (καταλείβεται, 1.295; συστοναχοῦσι, 296; περιπέπτατ(αι), 298; πέλει, 299; χεύει, 301; φαίνεται, 304; μύρεται, 306) and other linguistic markers (ἔτι, 1.294; ἔτ(ι), 306), as well as an apostrophe to the reader as eye-witness: καὶ τὸ μεν ἀτρεκέως φὴις ἔμμεναι, ὁππότ᾽ ἄρ᾽ αὐτὴν/ τηλόθεν ἀθρήσειας, 1.302– 3. Quintus frames what is a μέγα θαῦμα to future generations of men (1.299) with yet another reference to Niobe’s tears that are still falling (μύρεται… ἔτ(ι), 1.306; cf. 1.294– 5, 300 – 1) and an allusion to the gods’ anger (1.305; cf. θεῶν ἒκ κήδεα πέσσει, Il. 24.617). This striking effect of Niobe’s rock upon a viewer is also recorded in the second century AD by Pausanias, who claims to be an eye-witness: ταύτην τὴν Νιό-

 Cf. Vian 1959, 131: “[A]u lieu des details legendaires (les gîtes des Nymphes, l’Achélôos), il donne des précisions géographiques (l’Hermos) et une description détaillée du rocher à forme humaine.”

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βην καὶ αὐτὸς εἶδον ἀνελθὼν ἐς τὸν Σίπυλον τὸ ὄρος· ἡ δὲ πλησίον μὲν πέτρα καὶ κρημνός ἐστιν οὐδὲν παρόντι σχῆμα παρεχόμενος γυναικὸς οὔτε ἄλλως οὔτε πενθούσης· εἰ δέ γε πορρωτέρω γένοιο, δεδακρυμένην δόξεις ὁρᾶν καὶ κατηφῆ γυναῖκα (Paus. 1.21.3).⁷⁰ Such a rock is reported to exist in the region⁷¹ and Pausanias’ agreement with Quintus on the rock’s illusory effect as a tearful woman when seen from afar may be coincidental.⁷² This effect is also noted by Eustathius (on Il. 24.615 [1368.11 ff.] and on D. P. 87), who adds that “one of the ancient poets” (τῶν τις παλαιῶν ἐποποιῶν) mentions the myth of Niobe.⁷³ Hollis has convincingly argued against identifying Quintus with this “ancient epic poet”,⁷⁴ while identification with Euphorion, who is also said to have dealt with the myth, is left open: θρηνοῦσαν οὖν τὴν Νιόβην ἀφάτως τὸ τοιοῦτο δυστύχημα Ζεὺς ἐλεήσας εἰς λίθον μετέβαλεν, ὃς καὶ μέχρι νῦν ἐν Σιπύλωι τῆς Φρυγίας ὁρᾶται παρὰ πάντων, πηγὰς δακρύων προϊέμενος. ἡ ἱστορία παρὰ Εὐφορίωνι

 “I myself, going up on Mt Sipylos, also saw this Niobe; from nearby it is a rock and a crag, which does not offer to someone present the shape of a woman in grief or otherwise; but if you were to go further away, you will think that you see a woman in tears and with downcast eyes.”  See Furlani 1930/1 and Spanos 1983.  Vian 1959, 132– 3, pace Furlani 1930/1, 1144, who suggests that Quintus is drawing directly on Pausanias. Quintus mentions a similar illusory effect when describing Selene’s cave (Q. S. 10.127– 37); for a comparison between these two marvels, cf. Vian 1959, 134. The digressions on Niobe’s rock and Selene’s cave both open with the death of a minor warrior associated with a region where mythical events (Niobe’s petrification and Selene’s visits to Endymion respectively) took place and left their mark to the present day: ἧς ἔτι δάκρυ/ πουλὺ μάλα στυφελῆς καταλείβεται ὑψόθε πέτρης, 1.294– 5; cf. ἧς ἔτι νῦν περ/ εὐνῆς σῆμα τέτυκται ὑπὸ δρυσίν, 10.131– 2 (“of whose bed there is still now a sign under the oak trees”). In both cases this landmark remains a source of marvel (ἣ δὲ πέλει μέγα θαῦμα παρεσσυμένοισι βροτοῖσιν, 1.299; cf. οἱ δέ νυ φῶτες/ θηεῦντ᾽ εἰσέτι κεῖνο, 10.133 – 4), which gives an illusory effect from a distance: καὶ τὸ μὲν ἀτρεκέως φὴις ἔμμεναι, ὁππότ᾽ ἄρ᾽ αὐτὴν/ τηλόθεν ἀθρήσειας, 1.302– 3; cf. τὸ γὰρ μάλα τηλόθε φαίης/ ἔμμεναι εἰσορόων πολιὸν γάλα, 10.134– 5 (“for you would say looking from very far away that it is grey-coloured milk”). Vian (1959, 133) argues that Quintus’ use of traditional formulae in his digression on Niobe suggests that he is not drawing on personal impressions; but neither this argument nor the similarities with the digression on Selene’s cave can prove the point.  Hollis 1997, 579 – 80. Cf. Vian 1959, 132: “Les deux passages d’Eustathe ont manifestement même origine: ils remontent à un commentaire homérique de basse époque (référence à Lydos), qui conserve en son milieu le résumé plus ancien d’un texte épique (τῶν τις παλαιῶν ἐποποιῶν; cf. la tournure poétique ὕδωρ ἀένναον dans le Commentaire à Denys le Périégète).”  See Hollis 1997, 578 – 80 with evidence from Michael Choniates (c. 1138 – c. 1222), who refers to a petrified woman (likely to be Niobe) and uses the phrase κωφὰ ῥέουσαν δάκρυα: as Hollis points out, ῥέουσαν δάκρυα looks like an (otherwise unknown) quotation of a hexameter or elegiac poem and it may be a paraphrase of καταρρέειν δάκρυον, which is found in Eustathius’ comment on Iliad 24.616 ff.; if it is a quotation from a poem on Niobe that Eustathius has also paraphrased, then this “ancient epic poet” cannot be Quintus.

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(ΣΑD Il. 24.602), Euph. fr. 68 Lightfoot.⁷⁵ For explicit reference is made to the illusory effect of Niobe’s rock and it seems surprising that what seems to be a standard version of the myth is here specifically attributed to Euphorion;⁷⁶ moreover, Quintus mentions divine anger (Q. S. 1.305 – 6) rather than pity (cf. Ζεὺς ἐλεήσας, fr. 68) towards Niobe. If Quintus is drawing on Euphorion, then he is (characteristically) combining more than one sources⁷⁷. The last landmark in the PH that can ‘still’ be seen relates to Hecuba, who is (like Niobe) a bereaved mother whom the gods turn into stone (Q. S. 14.347– 53): ἔνθα τέρας θηητὸν ἐπιχθονίοισι φαάνθη, οὕνεκα δὴ Πριάμοιο δάμαρ πολυδακρύτοιο ἐκ βροτοῦ ἀλγινόεσσα κύων γένετ’· ἀμφὶ δὲ λαοὶ θάμβεον ἀγρόμενοι· τῆς δ’ ἅψεα λάινα πάντα θῆκε θεός, μέγα θαῦμα καὶ ἐσσομένοισι βροτοῖσι. καὶ τὴν μὲν Κάλχαντος ὑπ’ ἐννεσίηισιν Ἀχαιοὶ νηὸς ἐπ’ ὠκυπόροιο πέραν θέσαν Ἑλλησπόντου.

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Then a wondrous sign appeared to mortals, because the wife of much lamented Priam was turned from mortal into a grievous dog. The people gathered all around were astounded; a god turned all her limbs to stone, a great marvel even for mortals to come. And at Calchas’ advice, the Achaeans placed her on a swift-moving ship on the other side of the Hellespont.

The earliest certain allusion to Hecuba’s transformation into a dog in the extant literary tradition comes at the end of Euripides’ homonymous play, where the blind Polymestor predicts that the Trojan queen will climb a ship’s mast and that “[she] will become a dog with fiery glances” (κύων γενήσηι πύρσ᾽ ἔχουσα δέργματα, Hec. 1265) and her tomb will be called κυνὸς ταλαίνης σῆμα (“tomb of a wretched bitch”, Hec. 1273), “a landmark for sailors” (ναυτίλοις τέκμαρ, 1273).⁷⁸ In the subsequent tradition there is wide variation in the details pertaining to Hecuba’s transformation; in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, for instance, she is  “Zeus then took pity on Niobe who was lamenting such a misfortune beyond words and turned her into a rock, which even until now is visible to all in Sipylos of Phrygia, as it sends forth streams of tears. This story [is found] in Euphorion.” For another reference in Greek poetry to Niobe still shedding tears, see Nonn. D. 48.428 – 9: καὶ εἰσέτι δάκρυα λείβει/ ὄμμασι πετραίοισιν (“and she still sheds tears from her stony eyes”).  Lightfoot 2009, 299 n. 95. This attribution may suggest that after Achilles’ reference to Niobe’s petrification in Iliad 24, Euphorion was the most memorable poet to render her weeping as an aetion for the rock formation on Sipylos, with the rock’s illusory effect possibly implied in his phrase ὁρᾶται παρὰ πάντων.  For other accounts of Niobe’s transformation, see Forbes Irving 1990, 294– 7.  The allusive nature of this prophecy implies that the story would have been known to Euripides’ audience: Forbes Irving 1990, 207 (and 207– 8 for other accounts of Hecuba’s transformation).

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stoned to death and then changes form (Met. 13.565 – 71), while in Nicander’s version she leaps into the sea and is transformed into a dog (fr. 62 Gow and Scholfield). Regarding her burial, in [Apollod.] Epit. 5.23, Helenus takes her to the Chersonese, where she is turned into a dog and buried, whereas in Quintus’ version Hecuba first becomes a dog and is then petrified before the Greeks take her to the Chersonese (Q. S. 14.347– 51), while the location of her tomb became known as the Cynossema (e. g., [Apollod.] Epit. 5.23, Str. 13.1.28).⁷⁹ As Forbes Irving points out, in the cases of both Niobe and Hecuba (to which he also compares that of Cadmus), transformation comes as “the final and ambiguous episode in a series of misfortunes”.⁸⁰ By explicitly stating that a god made (θῆκε, 14.351) Hecuba into a stone after she became (γένετ(ο), 14.349) a dog, the PH ends (in the manner of ring-composition) as it began, namely, with the petrification of a bereaved mother as the final event that takes place on the Troad before the victorious Achaeans sail away. Verbal echoes between these two landmarks framing the epic invite the readers to consider them alongside each other: θεοὶ Νιόβην λᾶαν θέσαν, 1.294 ~ τῆς δ᾽ ἅψεα λάινα πάντα/ θῆκε θεός, 14.350 – 1; ἣ δὲ πέλει μέγα θαῦμα παρεσσυμένοισι βροτοῖσιν, 1.299 ~ μέγα θαῦμα καὶ ἐσσομένοισι βροτοῖσι, 14.351. An important difference, however, between the narrator’s handling of these two transformations is that, whereas that of Niobe was assumed already to have taken place in the background to the digression on the rock on Mt Sipylos, Hecuba’s petrification is enacted within the narrative of the PH. Yet the latter event is described in a strikingly cursory manner, as the narrator neither explicitly names Cynossema as the resulting landmark nor dwells on its effect on present-day viewers, as with the Niobe-rock (see pp. 177– 8 above). In this respect, Hecuba’s petrification in PH 14 can be compared to that of the Phaeacians’ ship in Odyssey 13:⁸¹ ἡ δὲ μάλα σχεδὸν ἤλυθε ποντοπόρος νηῦς ῥίμφα διωκομένη· τῆς δὲ σχεδὸν ἦλθ᾽ ἐνοσίχθων, ὅς μιν λᾶαν ἔθηκε καὶ ἐρρίζωσεν ἔνερθε

 See Kyriakidis (this volume) for the association of landmarks, literary biography and etymology.  Forbes Irving 1990, 63. Cadmus’ fate shares striking similarities with that of Hecuba’s, as both characters suffer domestic misfortune and are forced to leave their country, while their respective transformations into animals are mentioned in allusive prophecies at the end of two Euripidean plays: see Forbes Irving 1990, 209 – 10.  Cf. James 2004, 344 on Q. S. 14.347– 53: “The turning of the dog to stone is possibly a novel touch, influenced by such petrified portents as those at Iliad 2.318 – 20 and Odyssey 13.161– 4.”

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χειρὶ καταπρηνεῖ ἐλάσας· ὁ δὲ νόσφι βεβήκει. (Od. 13.161– 4) Swiftly driven, the seafaring ship came very close [to Scheria]; but close to it came the Earth-shaker, who turned it into a rock and after he struck it with the flat of his hand, he planted it underneath and went away.

Both transformations are related with comparable brevity (Od. 13.163; cf. Q. S. 14.350 – 1) and are motivated by the gods’ wish that men marvel; as Zeus puts it to Poseidon, ἵνα θαυμάζωσιν ἅπαντες/ ἄνθρωποι, Od. 13.157– 8 (“so that all men may wonder”; cf. Q. S. 14.351). Both events take place before the masses: ὁππότε κεν δὴ πάντες ἐλαυνομένην προΐδωνται/ λαοὶ ἀπὸ πτόλιος, Od. 13.155 – 6 (“when all people should see it [the ship] from the city well under way”); cf. ἀμφὶ δὲ λαοὶ/ θάμβεον ἀγρόμενοι, Q. S. 14.349 – 50. Most importantly, however, both transformations come as the conclusion of a lengthy episode: Hecuba’s transformation, which inscribes upon the landscape the grief and bereavement related in the PH, is the last event to take place in the Troad after the end of the Trojan War, with Calchas then advising the Greeks to take the rock to the other side of the Hellespont, where the Cynossema is traditionally located (Q. S. 14.352– 3). On the other hand, the petrification of the Phaeacian ship is the last act to take place within the fantasy world of the Odyssey; the Phaeacians subsequently pray to Poseidon around an altar and, with an unusually abrupt transition in mid-hexameter,⁸² the audience is transported to Ithaca (Od. 13.187); “Odysseus awakens and they [= the Phaeacians] fade, almost as if in a dream, into the past.”⁸³ By contrast to Quintus’ description of Niobe’s rock, which brought that landmark closer to a more familiar and tangible ‘here and now’ and ensured the survival of the mythological past into the future, while also establishing continuity with the Iliadic narrative, his cursory narrative of Hecuba’s transformation into a stone as the Greeks leave the Troad points towards closure, consigning that landmark and its context to a past that has now become the Trojan War.⁸⁴ Quintus thus adopts two instances of petrification from the Homeric epics to illustrate the position of the PH within the Trojan saga.

 See Purves 2010a, 89; Peradotto 1990, 81.  Segal 1994, 29.  Cf. Carvounis 2007, 254– 7.

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2. Burials, Posthumous Honours and Rivers: Memnon and Glaucus Following the death of the Amazon Penthesileia, Dawn’s son Memnon arrives at Troy in PH 2 as leader of the Aethiopians and meets his death at Achilles’ hands (Q. S. 2.542– 8). The Winds, sons of Eos (Dawn), arrive in the plain of Troy at their mother’s behest and swiftly lift up Memnon, carrying him through a grey mist; the gods gather the blood-drops falling from his limbs upon the earth to form the river Paphlagoneios as “a sign for men to come”, and on the anniversary of Memnon’s death this river turns red with blood and a terrible stench emerges from the water, as if it were the festering discharge from the fatal wound (2.550 – 66): Θοοὶ δ’ ἅμα πάντες Ἀῆται μητρὸς ἐφημοσύνηισι μιῆι φορέοντο κελεύθωι ἐς πεδίον Πριάμοιο καὶ ἀμφεχέαντο θανόντι· οἳ καὶ ἀνηρείψαντο θοῶς Ἠώιον υἷα καί ἑ φέρον πολιοῖο δι’ ἠέρος· ἄχνυτο δέ σφι θυμὸς ἀδελφειοῖο δεδουπότος, ἀμφὶ δ’ ἄρ’ αἰθὴρ ἔστενε. Τοῦ δ’ ἐπὶ γαῖαν ὅσαι πέσον αἱματόεσσαι ἐκ μελέων ῥαθάμιγγες, ἐν ἀνθρώποισι τέτυκται σῆμα καὶ ἐσσομένοις· τὰς γὰρ θεοὶ ἄλλοθεν ἄλλην εἰς ἓν ἀγειράμενοι ποταμὸν θέσαν ἠχήεντα, τόν ῥά τε Παφλαγόνειον ἐπιχθόνιοι καλέουσι πάντες ὅσοι ναίουσι μακρῆς ὑπὸ πείρασιν Ἴδης· ὅς τε καὶ αἱματόεις τραφερὴν ἐπινίσεται αἶαν, ὁππότε Μέμνονος ἦμαρ ἔηι λυγρὸν ὧι ἔνι κεῖνος κάτθανε· λευγαλέη δὲ καὶ ἄσχετος ἔσσυται ὀδμὴ ἐξ ὕδατος· φαίης κεν ἔθ’ ἕλκεος οὐλομένοιο πυθομένους ἰχῶρας ἀποπνείειν ἀλεγεινόν.

550

555

560

565

At their mother’s command, all the swift Winds together were borne along a single path at Priam’s plain and spread themselves over the deceased. They swiftly snatched the son of Eos and carried him through the grey mist. Their heart grieved for their fallen brother and the air groaned all around. All drops of blood that fell from his limbs to the ground became a sign for men to come, for the gods gathered them from different places to one spot and turned them into a resounding river, which mortals – all those dwelling beneath the ridges of tall Ida – call the Paphlagoneian. And when it is the baneful day on which Memnon died, the river flows over the thick earth turned red with blood; and from the water shoots up a terrible and unbearable odour; you would say that it still terribly emits festering discharge from the fatal wound.

The Winds finally set down Memnon’s body by the streams of the river Aesepos, where there is a grove for the Nymphs, which Aesepos’ daughters subsequently put around Memnon’s tomb, covered on all sides by trees (2.585 – 92):

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Νέκυν δ’ ἀκάμαντες Ἀῆται Μέμνονος ἀγχεμάχοιο θέσαν βαρέα στενάχοντες πὰρ ποταμοῖο ῥέεθρα βαθυρρόου Αἰσήποιο, ἧχί τε Νυμφάων καλλιπλοκάμων πέλει ἄλσος καλόν, ὃ δὴ μετόπισθε μακρὸν περὶ σῆμ’ ἐβάλοντο Αἰσήποιο θύγατρες ἄδην πεπυκασμένον ὕληι παντοίηι καὶ πολλὰ θεαὶ περικωκύσαντο υἱέα κυδαίνουσαι ἐυθρόνου Ἠριγενείης.

585

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The tireless Winds, heavily groaning, placed the corpse of Memnon, who fought in close quarters, by the streams of the deep-flowing river Aesepos, where there is a fine grove of the well-tressed Nymphs, which the daughters of Aesepos planted afterwards around his tall mound, thickly covered by various trees; and the goddesses greatly lamented, honouring the son of Dawn of the noble throne.

Meanwhile, a god guides the Aethiopians and gives them speed to become airborne (2.570 – 3); they follow the Winds lamenting their king like dogs following the body of their master, who has been killed by a lion or boar (2.574– 82), and the Greek and Trojan beholders are struck with amazement as they see the Aethiopians disappear after their king (2.582– 5). Dawn is reluctant to rise, but Zeus sends a thunderbolt and the Aethiopians swiftly bury Memnon, while Dawn turns them into birds (2.634– 45). These birds are now called ‘Memnons’; they still swoop over their king’s tomb pouring dust over the mound as they lament, and they fight with each other in honour of their dead king until one or both sides are killed (2.646 – 55).⁸⁵ Τοὺς δὴ νῦν καλέουσι βροτῶν ἀπερείσια φῦλα μέμνονας, οἵ ῥ’ ἔτι τύμβον ἔπι σφετέρου βασιλῆος ἐσσύμενοι γοόωσι κόνιν καθύπερθε χέοντες σήματος, ἀλλήλοις δὲ περικλονέουσι κυδοιμὸν Μέμνονι ἦρα φέροντες· ὃ δ’ εἰν Ἀίδαο δόμοισιν ἠέ που ἐν μακάρεσσι κατ’ Ἠλύσιον πέδον αἴης καγχαλάαι, καὶ θυμὸν ἰαίνεται ἄμβροτος Ἠὼς δερκομένη· τοῖσι δὲ πέλει πόνος, ἄχρι καμόντες εἷς ἕνα δηιώσωνται ἀνὰ κλόνον ἠὲ καὶ ἄμφω πότμον ἀναπλήσωσι πονεύμενοι ἀμφὶς ἄνακτι.

650

Countless tribes of mortals now call them ‘Memnons’, and they still rush upon the tomb of their king and lament pouring dust above the mound, and stir up a din of battle with each other, bringing honour to Memnon; and he – in the halls of Hades or somewhere among the immortals in the Elysian plain – rejoices, and the heart of immortal Eos warms as she

 For Quintus’ sources for this episode, see the excellent discussion in Vian 1959, 27– 9. For other myths involving the transformation of a dead hero’s companions into birds, see Forbes Irving 1990, 116 – 17.

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watches him. As for them, they labour until, wearied, they slay each other in battle or both sides fill up [the measure of] their fate, labouring for their king.

Three distinct aspects in Quintus’ narrative of Memnon’s burial and posthumous honours account for three aetia for landmarks and customs surviving to the narrator’s day: the river Paphlagoneios formed from Memnon’s blood-drops; the grove around Aesepos river built by the Nymphs around Memnon’s mound; and ‘Memnon’s birds’, which are the Aethiopians honouring their king. The outline of this account partially corresponds with Quintus’ account in PH 4 of the burial of Glaucus, leader of the Lycians and ally to the Trojans. Apollo hastily lifted Glaucus from the burning pyre and gave him to the swift Winds to carry “close to the land of Lycia” (Λυκίης σχεδὸν αἴης, 4.6).⁸⁶ The Winds quickly transferred him to the glens of Telandrus⁸⁷ and set an “unbreakable stone” (πέτρην…/ ἄρρηκτον, 4.8 – 9) over his body. Then “the Nymphs caused sacred water to gush from an ever-flowing river” (Νύμφαι δὲ περίβλυσαν ἱερὸν ὕδωρ/ ἀενάου ποταμοῖο, 4.9 – 10), “which the tribes of men still call the good-flowing ‘Glaucus’” (τὸν εἰσέτι φῦλ᾽ ἀνθρώπων/ Γλαῦκον ἐπικλείουσιν ἐύρροον, 4.10 – 11).⁸⁸ Therefore, both Memnon and Glaucus are carried by the Winds and Apollo respectively to their places of burial; rivers are formed to commemorate the dead heroes (τόν ῥά τε Παφλαγόνειον ἐπιχθόνιοι καλέουσι, 2.560; cf. 4.10 – 11, cited above) and the Nymphs intervene to honour them (2.589 – 91; cf. 4.9 – 10), while their actual burials are concluded with attribution of these events to the gods’ will (ἀλλὰ τὸ μὲν βουλῆισι θεῶν γένε(το), 2.567; cf. ἀλλὰ τὰ μέν που/ ἀθάνατοι τεύξαντο γέρας Λυκίων βασιλῆι, “but these things, I suppose, the immortals accomplished in honour of the king at the Lycians,” 4.11– 12). Both accounts are modelled on Sarpedon’s burial in Iliad 16, who is the other Lycian leader and Glaucus’ close companion,⁸⁹ and a literary precedent for a mortal offspring whose bereaved immortal parent makes arrangements for extraordinary posthumous honours.⁹⁰ Before Sarpedon’s death at the hands of Patro For this phrase, see Vian 1959, 137.  This place-name is corrupt in the MSS tradition: Τηλάνδροιο Pauw: τ᾽ ἠδ᾽ [τῆδ᾽ DQ] ἄντροιο codd. For Telandros as a city of Caria, see St. Byz. Ethnica p. 620 Meineke and Hdn. De prosodia catholica 3,1 p. 205.  Cf. Ovid’s account of the formation of the river Marsyas out of tears of country people, deities of the woods, fauns, satyrs, Olympus and Nymphs (Met. 6.392– 400).  Cf. Il. 2.876 – 7; 12.101– 4, 307– 30, 392; 16.491– 501, 508 – 26.  The similarities between Memnon and Sarpedon have featured in discussions of direct influence of the Epic Cycle (and the Aethiopis in particular) upon the Iliad; for an earlier overview of the debate (and the priority of Memnon’s story), see Clark/Coulson 1978, 65 – 73. I discuss Quintus and the Epic Cycle in my (forthcoming) commentary on PH 14; this question is

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clus, Zeus sheds drops of blood on the ground (Il. 16.459); after the event, he orders Apollo to transfer Sarpedon’s body away from the missiles, bathe him, anoint him with ambrosia and dress him with immortal clothing before consigning him to Sleep and Death, who will swiftly take him to Lycia, where his brothers and kinsmen will give him an appropriate burial (Il. 16.667– 84). As we have seen, Memnon’s body in Quintus’ version is likewise removed from its immediate context at his parent’s behest by the Winds, while Glaucus’ body is removed from the pyre by Apollo himself, who then hands it over to the Winds to take to his native land, just as that god handed Sarpedon’s body to Sleep and Death to take to his native Lycia.⁹¹ In both the Iliadic account and in Quintus’ double re-working of that model there is emphasis on the swiftness of this supernatural transfer (θοοὶ… Ἀῆται, Q. S. 2.550; ἀνηρείψαντο θοῶς, 2.553; μάλ᾽ ἐσσυμένως, 4.5; θοοῖς Ἀνέμοισι, 4.6; cf. αὐτίκα… ἀείρας, Il. 16.678; πομποῖσιν… κραιπνοῖσι, 16.681; οἵ ῥά μιν ὦκα/ κάτθεσαν, 16.682– 3). Quintus departs, however, from the Homeric model in offering existing landmarks for the miraculous interventions and the supernatural effects mentioned in the Iliad. So whereas Zeus shed drops of blood (αἱματόεσσας… ψιάδας, Il. 16.459) as an expression of grief for his son’s imminent death, the drops of blood from Memnon’s wounds in PH 2 are gathered by the gods to form the Paphlagoneios river as sign for future men (τοῦ δ᾽ ἐπὶ γαῖαν ὅσαι πέσον αἱματόεσσαι/ ἐκ μελέων ῥαθάμιγγες, ἐν ἀνθρώποισι τέτυκται/ σῆμα καὶ ἐσσομένοις, Q. S. 2.556 – 8).⁹² Moreover, Zeus’ final point to Apollo, namely that Sarpedon’s relatives will bury him in Lycia with signs to commemorate his death (ἔνθα ἑ ταρχύσουσι κασίγνητοί τε ἔται τε/ τύμβωι τε στήληι τε, “there his brothers and kinsmen will bury him with both a tomb and a mound”, Il. 16.674– 5 = 16.456 – 7), which is omitted from the actual account of Sarpedon’s burial, is recalled and materialised, as it were, in Quintus’ narrative of Glaucus’ burial, when the Winds put “an unbreakable stone” over the body: πέτρην…/ ἄρρηκτον, Q. S. 4.8 – 9. Furthermore, whereas Andromache had mentioned that the Nymphs planted elm trees around Eetion’s mound (Il. 6.419 – 20), in Quintus’ accounts of the burials of Memnon and Glaucus the Nymphs are responsible for creating

not relevant here, as Quintus is drawing on the Iliad and his familiarity with the Aethiopis cannot be assumed.  Cf. Vian 1963, 136 – 7 n. 1.  For αἱματόεσσαι/ … ῥαθάμιγγες, cf. (in the context of Uranos’ castration) ὅσσαι γὰρ ῥαθάμιγγες ἀπέσσυθεν αἱματόεσσαι,/ πάσας δέξατο Γαῖα, Hes. Th. 183 – 4 (“for as many drops of blood fell, all of those Gaia received”); δή ῥα τότ᾽ ἀμβροσίοιο κατειβόμεναι φορέοντο/ αἵματος ὠτειλῆθεν ἐπὶ τραφερὴν ῥαθάμιγγες, Orph. L. 652– 3 (“then the drops of divine blood flowing downwards were carried from the wound upon the earth”).

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natural landmarks – a grove around Memnon’s mound and the ever-flowing river Glaucus respectively – described in the present tense: Νυμφάων καλλιπλοκάμων πέλει ἄλσος/ καλόν, ὃ δὴ μετόπισθε μακρὸν περὶ σῆμ’ ἐβάλοντο/ Αἰσήποιο θύγατρες, Q. S. 2.588 – 90; τὸν εἰσέτι φῦλ᾽ ἀνθρώπων/ Γλαῦκον ἐπικλείουσιν, 4.10 – 11. Quintus’ descriptions of the Paphlagoneios river and of Memnon’s burial place by the river Aesepos correspond to topographical landmarks that might have been familiar to contemporary readers from the eastern part of the Empire. Vian draws attention to the river Adonis in Byblos, which, according to Lucian’s account in De Dea Syria, grows bloody every year at the anniversary of Adonis’ death.⁹³ As Lightfoot notes, this river (but not its annual change of colour) is also attested by other ancient authors such as Strabo (16.2.19), Ptolemaeus (Geog. 5.14.3 Müller), Lydus (Mens. 4.64, p. 119 Wünsch), and Nonnus (D. 3.107– 9, 4.81– 2, 20.144; 31.127).⁹⁴ The river Glaucus is also mentioned by Pliny, who places it and its tributary, the Telmedius, in Caria (HN 5.29.103).⁹⁵ Moreover, Strabo states that at some distance from the mouth of Aesepos, there is a hill (κολωνός) “where the tomb of Memnon, son of Tithonus, is shown” and that “the town ‘Memnon’ is also nearby” (ἐφ᾽ ὧι τάφος δείκνυται Μέμνονος τοῦ Τιθωνοῦ· πλησίον δ᾽ ἐστὶ καὶ ἡ Μέμνονος κώμη, Str. 13.1.11).⁹⁶ The ‘Memnon’ birds, on the other hand, are mentioned by various authors in the Roman period, including Pausanias (10.31.6 – 7), Pliny (HN 10.37), Dionysius (Ixeut. 1.8 Garzya) and Ovid (Met. 13.600 – 22). The authors differ in the details of their accounts: Pausanias, for instance, reports that, according to the people of the Hellespont, these birds go to Memnon’s grave, sweep part of the tomb and sprinkle it with water from Aesepos from their wet wings, while the birds in Ovid’s version appear from the ashes of Memnon’s funeral pyre and, divided into two bands, fight against each other until they fall, which they still do on the anniversary of Memnon’s death (Met. 13.618 – 19). In Dionysius’ version, after fighting over Memnon’s tomb, the birds wash in the stream of Aesepos, roll on the sand to

 See Vian 1963, 77 n. 2. Luc. Syr.D. 8: ὁ δὲ ποταμὸς ἑκάστου ἔτεος αἱμάσσεται καὶ τὴν χροιὰν ὀλέσας ἐσπίπτει ἐς τὴν θάλασσαν καὶ φοινίσσει τὸ πολλὸν τοῦ πελάγεος καὶ σημαίνει τοῖς Βυβλίοις τὰ πένθεα (“the river turns bloody each year and having lost its colour, falls into the sea; it reddens the greater part of the sea and signals grief to the people of Byblos”).  Lightfoot 2003, 327, where she notes further parallels for waters turning red with what is thought to be a hero’s blood: the Nile, for example, turns red during its inundation, and this has been attributed to the blood of Osiris (Firm. Matern. Err. 2.5), while the seashore in Cilicia was thought to be red with Typhaon’s blood (Opp. Hal. 3.24– 5).  See Arkwright 1895, 93 – 9.  Vian 1963, 78 n. 1. Contrast the version in Philostr. Jun. Im. 1.7.3: τάφος οὐδαμοῦ Μέμνονος, ὁ δὲ Μέμνων ἐν Αἰθιοπίαι μεταβεβληκὼς εἰς λίθον μέλανα (“Nowhere is the tomb of Memnon, but Memnon [himself] is in Aethiopia, having turned into a black stone”).

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get covered in dust, and then sit upon Memnon’s tomb to dry their wings and to cover it with dust (Ixeut. 1.8 Garzya), with this last detail leading Vian to suggest that Quintus is drawing directly on Dionysius.⁹⁷ As his model in the epic tradition for the Paphlagoneios river and the posthumous honours bestowed to Memnon Quintus turns to Apollonius’ posthumous honours bestowed to Phaethon, which are described in a digression that follows the entrance of the Argo into the river Eridanus, where Phaethon fell after he was struck by lightning (A. R. 4.596 – 611).⁹⁸ The narrator describes that “still now the river spews up heavy vapours from the burning wound” (ἡ [sc. λίμνη] δ᾽ ἔτι νῦν περ/ τραύματος αἰθομένοιο βαρὺ ἀνακηκίει ἀτμόν, 4.599 – 600; cf. φαίης κεν ἔθ᾽ ἕλκεος οὐλομένοιο/ πυθομένους ἰχῶρας ἀποπνείειν ἀλεγεινόν, Q. S. 2.565 – 6) and that no bird can cross over the water, but leaps into the flame in mid-flight (4.601– 3). Later on, attention is drawn to the effect of the stench on the Argonauts themselves: στρεύγοντο περιβληχρὸν βαρύθοντες/ ὀδμῆι λευγαλέηι, τήν ῥ᾽ ἄσχετον ἐξανίεσκον/ τυφομένου Φαέθοντος ἐπιρροαὶ Ἠριδανοῖο, 4.621– 3 (“they were distressed even to faintness, weighed down by the baneful stench, which the streams of Eridanos were emitting unbearably as Phaethon was consumed by smoke”; cf. λευγαλέη δὲ καὶ ἄσχετος ἔσσυται ὀδμὴ/ ἐξ ὕδατος, Q. S. 2.564– 5). All around, Phaethon’s sisters, the Heliades, “unhappily wail a plaintive lament” (μύρονται κινυρὸν μέλεαι γόον, 4.605). The text is here corrupt, but it seems that they are somehow “surrounded by tall poplars” (Ἡλιάδες ταναῆισιν †ἀείμεναι αἰγείροισιν, 4.604),⁹⁹ and shiny drops of amber flow from their eyelids to the ground. The sun dries these drops in the sand, and whenever

 See Vian 1959, 29.  Vian 2008, 390: “The nauseating emanations from Paphlagoneios, the river born of Memnon’s blood (Q. S. 2.564– 6), recall Arg. 4.600 (although there are no textual similarities).” For the transformations within Apollonius’ digression and its narrative context, see Buxton 2009, 117– 19. For earlier sources treating this myth, see Forbes Irving 1990, 269 – 71, esp. Arist. Mir. 81 for the detail of the foul-smelling lake in which Phaethon falls: ὀσμὴ δ᾽ ἀπ᾽ αὐτῆς [sc. τῆς λίμνης] βαρεῖα καὶ χαλεπὴ ἀποπνεῖ, καὶ οὔτε ζῶιον οὐδὲν πίνει ἐξ αὐτῆς οὔτε ὄρνεον ὑπερίπταται, ἀλλὰ πίπτει καὶ ἀποθνήσκει. (…) μυθεύουσι δὲ οἱ ἐγχώριοι Φαέθοντα κεραυνωθέντα πεσεῖν εἰς ταύτην τὴν λίμνην. εἶναι δ᾽ ἐν αὐτῆι αἰγείρους πολλάς, ἐξ ὧν ἐκπίπτειν τὸ καλούμενον ἤλεκτρον (“from it [the lake] a stench breathes out that is heavy and unpleasant, and neither any animal can drink from it nor can any bird fly over, but falls and dies… And the locals say that Phaethon was struck by a thunderbolt and fell into this lake; and that there are many poplar trees by it, from which falls what is called amber”).  As Vian (1981, 170 [N.C. on A. R. 4.604]) puts it, the Heliades have not been transformed into poplar trees, since they weep (4.606) and lament (4.624– 5); yet they could be “enveloped in” (ἐελμέναι: Gerhard) poplar trees or indeed “beaten by the winds [in the poplar trees]” (ἀήμεναι/ ἀείμεναι), as Livrea and Giangrande (ap. Vian loc. cit.) have suggested.

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the waters of the lake wash onto the shores by the wind’s blast, they are rolled into Eridanus by the swelling flow (4.605 – 6). In both Apollonius’ and Quintus’ accounts, the rivers Eridanus and Paphlagoneios respectively emit a bad and unbearable stench; in the case of the Eridanus, the stench and vapours come from Phaethon’s wound when he was struck by Zeus’ thunder, whereas for the Paphlagoneios the narrator claims that it is as if from an open wound. Both accounts mention female figures associated with trees all around the grave or place of burial (Phaethon’s sisters and the Nymphs respectively), and end with a miraculous story as aetion, namely the drops of amber flowing from the Heliades’ eyelids and the Aethiopians’ transformation into birds. In Quintus’ (lengthier) account, the Paphlagoneios is dissociated from the river Aesepos, and there are two separate places where Memnon is honoured, whereas in Apollonius’ account the river Eridanos is the centre of Phaethon’s burial and of his posthumous memorialisation. In this case study on the burials of Memnon and Glaucus in the PH we have thus seen Quintus drawing both on Iliad 16 and Apollonius’ Argonautica to convey in concrete terms the memorialisation of the dead and to explain surviving landmarks from the Trojan War with which Quintus’ contemporary audience would have been familiar.

Conclusion These two case studies dealing with landmarks that result from the petrification of bereaved mothers (Niobe and Hecuba) and the creation of rivers in honour of dead heroes (Memnon and Glaucus) have sought to highlight how Quintus draws on the literary tradition to join the mythological past to the present in depicting landmarks that can ‘still’ be observed and which correspond to familiar geographical landmarks also attested by other sources. And both pairs of landmarks, which belong to parallel scenes that help shape and structure the PH, thus inscribe within the landscape for contemporary and future audiences the relevant events recounted in the epic. In making explicit this link between the time of the narrative and the ‘present’, Quintus departs from his Homeric models and adheres to the Hellenistic tradition of explaining surviving landmarks through connections with the past, which is likely to have been motivated by a contemporary renewed cultural interest in surviving relics and monuments from the Trojan War. In addition, then, to illustrating Quintus’ literary techniques as he innovates within traditional material by adopting and adapting information from the Homeric epics to recreate the dramatic space of the Iliad, a close study of geographical landmarks in

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the PH allows readers the opportunity to catch a (rare) glimpse of this Homerising epic within its literary-historical context of the Imperial period.*

* I would like to thank Marios Skempis and Ioannis Ziogas for their invitation to contribute to this volume; Mary Whitby for offering detailed comments; and the anonymous referees for helpful feedback.

Robert Shorrock

Crossing the Hydaspes Nonnus’ Dionysiaca and the Boundaries of Epic

This is an article about epic boundaries and the boundaries of epic in the Dionysiaca of Nonnus. This fifth-century AD Greek hexameter poem written in later Roman Egypt should need little introduction to audiences familiar with the genre of ancient epic.¹ Nonnus’ Dionysiaca narrates the colourful life-story of the wine-god Dionysus in forty-eight Homeric-style books. It begins several generations before the birth of the Greek divinity and charts his epic struggle against the Indian nation and his efforts to spread knowledge of the vine throughout the world, before he is finally able to take his place by the side of his father Zeus in heaven. The epic is conceived on a grand scale – the fortyeight books are obviously designed to match the combined total of books of the Iliad and Odyssey and it is the longest surviving poem to have survived from the whole of antiquity, weighing in at over 21,000 hexameter lines. Although the basic narrative structure is very simple, the Dionysiaca is much more than ‘simply’ the story of Dionysus: it represents a vast and intoxicating echo-chamber of allusions and references to Greek mythology, history and literature from Homer down to Nonnus’ own contemporary world of late antiquity.² In the words of one recent critic, “… the Dionysiaca covers enormous distances… These range from the Iliad, Hesiod, and Callimachus to the Alexander romances, from the Odyssey, Pindar and Attic tragedy to the erotic and sepulchral elegists. And that is to say nothing of… the possibilities suggested by Neoplatonist and Christian allegory”.³ The distances covered by Nonnus’ epic are not, however, just literary, but literal. The poem opens on Pharos island off the coast of Alexandria in Egypt and concludes forty-eight books later on Olympus. The journey between these points takes us to the cities of Greece, Asia Minor, Assyria and to India and the borders of the known world. Our understanding of Nonnus’ use of space within his epic is closely linked to the way that Nonnus’ narrative is understood more widely (which is itself linked to perceptions of late antique poetry). The traditional view of Nonnus’ poetry takes a dim view of his epic creation,

 Hopkinson (1994a) provides an excellent starting point; see also Shorrock 2005 for a general introduction.  On the compendious nature of Nonnus’ epic, see Shorrock 2001.  Harries 1994, 64.

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with one critic suggesting that the Dionysiaca is “unreadable as narrative”.⁴ It goes without saying that anyone who regards the poem in this way, as a confused tangle of people, places and stories, is likely to view Nonnus’ use of space and elaboration of spatial relationships in a similarly unsympathetic manner. Fortunately, times have changed. Thanks to the landmark French commentary and translation by Francis Vian and his team of collaborators (and the excellent Italian commentary and translation in the BUR series), and supplemented by a growing bibliography of literary criticism on Nonnus’ epic, a more coherent and nuanced picture of the Dionysiaca has begun to emerge.⁵ This article begins with a brief consideration of Nonnus’ use of boundaries within the context of the Dionysiaca as a whole – as part of Nonnus’ project to build a global epic both in literal and literary terms. The spotlight will then be thrown onto one specific episode – the crossing of the Hydaspes in Books 22– 24 of the Dionysiaca – in order to explore in greater detail Nonnus’ playful and sophisticated construction (and deconstruction) of boundaries within his epic: spatial, historical, mythical, and literary. In Book 13 Dionysus’ idyllic Phrygian childhood is brought to an end by a message from his father Zeus instructing him to wage war on the Indian nation and spread knowledge of the vine throughout the world: “he must drive out of Asia … the proud race of Indians … and teach all nations (ἔθνεα πάντα) the sacred dances of the vigil and the purple fruit of vintage” (Dion. 13.3 – 7). Dionysus’ mission to teach all the world about wine (as well as his mission to defeat the Indians) has both literal and metaphorical force: his geographical journey is tracked at every step by Nonnus’ poetic journey through the world of Greek literature, mythology and history. At the same time that we follow Dionysus on his way to spread knowledge of the vine throughout the world so we follow Nonnus on a literary journey to incorporate different poetic genres within the framework of a new global epic.⁶ The most obvious, and significant, incorporation within the epic is that of Homer: the Iliad represents a dominant

 Wiseman 1995, 47; see Shorrock 2001, 2– 3.  The eighteen-volume Budé series was inaugurated by Vian (1976a); the Italian edition was edited in four volumes by Gigli Piccardi (2003), Gonnelli (2003), Agosti (2004), Accorinti (2004). On the wider critical study of the Dionysiaca see, for example, Shorrock 2001 and 2011, 79 – 115. For an important study of Nonnus’ use of geography and local histories, see Chuvin 1991; more recently Hadjittofi (2011) has explored Nonnian geography through the lens of late antique Christian society.  On the incorporation of different genres within the Dionysiaca, see especially Shorrock 2001, 113 – 205.

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model for the narrative of the Indian War in Books 13 – 40 (as Dionysus fights against the Indians so Nonnus is engaged in a literary struggle against his poetic ‘father’ Homer), whilst the Odyssey provides a loose model for the ‘nostos’ of Dionysus in Books 40 – 48. At the same time other genres are also integrated into the Dionysiac epic: Callimachus’ Hecale epyllion underpins the structure of Books 17– 18. In Books 44– 6 Nonnus appropriates the genre of Greek Tragedy, with his epic rendition of Euripides’ Bacchae. Local geographies – including foundation poems and topographic descriptions – are also articulated and subsumed within the wider epic project – for example the Beroe episode in Books 40 – 43.⁷ The Greek novel is also recontextualised within Nonnus’ poem: the description of Tyre in Book 40 clearly engages with Achilles Tatius’ novel Leucippe and Clitophon. This is not to mention the mythological and literary territory incorporated during the narrative of Cadmus in the early books of the epic including a Titanomachy and the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius. The parallel journey of poet and hero through the epic and their missions to introduce the literal and literary vine is neatly encapsulated in a description of the growth and spread of the vine at Dion. 12.272– 84: ἀμφὶ δὲ δένδρεα πάντα κάτω νεύοντα καρήνῳ εἴκελα λισσομένῳ κυρτούμενον αὐχένα κάμπτει, ὑψιτενῆ δὲ πέτηλα γέρων ἐκλίνατο φοῖνιξ· ἀμφὶ δὲ μηλείῃ τανύεις πόδας, ἀμφὶ δὲ συκῇ χεῖρας ἐφαπλώσας ἐπερείδεαι· ὑμετέρην δέ, δμωίδες ὣς δέσποιναν, ἐλαφρίζουσιν ὀπώρην, εὖτε τιταινομένων πετάλων ἑλικώδεϊ παλμῷ ἀμφιπόλων ὑπὲρ ὦμον ἀνέρχεαι· ἀγχιφύτων δέ ἁβρὰ πολυσπερέων ἑτερόχροα φύλλα κορύμβων οἷα σέθεν κνώσσοντος ἐπαιθύσσουσι προσώπῳ αὔραις φειδομένῃσι καταψύχοντες ἀῆται, λεπταλέην ἅτε λάτρις ἐθήμονα ῥιπίδα σείει, ψυχρὸν ἑῷ βασιλῆι φέρων ποιητὸν ἀήτην.

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All the trees bow their heads around, as one in prayer bends low the neck. The ancient palm-tree inclines his soaring leaves, you stretch your feet round the apple-tree, you clasp your hands about the fig-tree and hold fast; they support your fruitage as slavewomen their mistress, while you climb over the shoulder of your maids with your tendrils pushing and winding and quivering, while the winds blow in your face the delicate manycoloured leaves of so many neighbouring trees with their widespread clusters, as if you slept and they cooled you with gentle breath. So the serving-woman waves a light fan as in duty bound, and makes a cool wind for her king.⁸

 See Chuvin 1991 and 1994.  Translations from Nonnus’ Dionysiaca have been slightly adapted from Rouse 1940.

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This description of the vine can be understood literally in terms of its relationship to the mission of Dionysus, but also metaphorically, as a model for Nonnus’ own poetry. As the vine advances through space, so Nonnus advances through different poetic genres. Just as the vine needs the support of other plants in order to flourish, so too does Nonnus’ poetry rely on established poetic material. Far from seeking to eliminate ‘rival’ generic elements, Nonnus co-opts them into a state of respectful subservience, forcing the established world of literature to bowing down to him in an act of worship as if before a god, or to play the role of slaves to a powerful mistress or king. In this way the Dionysiaca is able to embrace and exploit a diversity of genres, whilst at the same time it is able to maintain its own distinctive identity.⁹ Evidence of this dialogue between multiplicity and unity – or between bounded and unbounded space – can be seen not just in descriptions of the progress of the vine, but in descriptions of the product of wine itself. At Dion. 12.240 – 4 Dionysus champions the superior nature of wine over other drinks: ὅττι πολυτρίπτοιο νέαις λιβάδεσσιν ὀπώρης σὸν ποτὸν ἄνθεα πάντα δεδέξεται· ἓν ποτὸν ἔσται μιγνύμενον πάντεσσι, καὶ εἰς μίαν ἵξεται ὀδμήν ἄνθεσι παντοίοις κεκερασμένον· εἰαρινὴν γάρ κοσμήσει τεὸν ἄνθος ὅλην λειμωνίδα ποίην. For with the new-found streams of your crushed fruitage your drink will contain all flowers: that one drink will be a mixture of all, it will combine in one a scent of all the flowers that blow, your flowers will embellish all the spring-time herbs and grass of the meadow.

Just as the wine of Dionysus contains every kind of flower so, in metaphorical terms, the poetry of Nonnus contains every kind of poetry: an encyclopedic range of literary genres and mythological and historical material. It is important here to emphasise that literary boundaries are clearly delineated (in the same way as geographical boundaries within the narrative of Dionysus) even though they are destined to be transcended: Nonnus’ epic keeps in play a dramatic tension between the unity of the whole and the multiplicity of its parts, between synthesis and resistance. In Book 47, for example, the Athenian Icarius becomes an enthusiastic ‘disciple’ of Dionysus, but suffers death for his efforts to spread the message of the vine at the hands of a group of intoxicated farmers.¹⁰ Nonnus’ global epic remains throughout a powerful and powerfully unpredictable product.

 See further Shorrock 2001, 134– 7; 2011, 112– 14.  For a ‘Christian’ reading of this scene, see Spanoudakis 2007.

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Crossing the Hydaspes I want now to zoom in on a single part of Nonnus’ vast epic map: the point at which Dionysus makes his entry into the territory of India and Nonnus makes his own entry into the specific literary territory of Homer’s Iliad.

a) The Hydaspes as Boundary Dionysus’ mission against the Indians (inaugurated in Book 13) occupies the majority of the epic, culminating with the sack of the Indian City in Book 40. Although he meets and defeats Indian forces as early as Book 17, Dionysus does not actually reach the territory of India proper until the end of Book 21 when he crosses the Hindu Kush and faces Indian resistance at the river Hydaspes. Significant fighting occurs both in front of and in the river, until finally the forces of Dionysus make a successful crossing of the river in Book 24.¹¹ It is important to observe the pivotal structural position occupied by the Hydaspes within the frame of the epic. The crossing of the Hydaspes and the entry into India marks the mid-point of the epic in geographical terms as illustrated by the figure reproduced below. As one can see, India functions as a spatial hinge within the epic narrative: the itinerary that takes us from Egypt, home of the poet, at the beginning of the epic to India is clearly mirrored by the route taken from India to Olympus, home of the gods, at the end of the epic: Egypt (home of the poet) Near East *Asia Minor *Greece *Asia Minor *Near East *Arabia India *Arabia *Near East *Asia Minor *Greece *Asia Minor Greece Olympus (home of the gods)

 On Nonnus’ handling of the Hydaspes scene, see Hopkinson 1994b ad loc.; Gonnelli 2003 ad loc.; Shorrock 2001, 164– 6.

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The crossing of the Hydaspes does not just mark a geographical mid-point, but a numerical one as well, being positioned twenty-four books into the epic. The importance of this threshold is marked in several ways. First, there is a pronounced pause in the action at this point: whilst the Indians make for the safety of the city and lament impending catastrophe, the forces of Dionysus settle down to a feast of celebration and singing. The following book then puts emphasis on the opening of the second half of the Dionysiaca with a second proem: “O Muse, once more fight the poet’s war with your thyrsus wand of the mind” (Μοῦσα, πάλιν πτολέμιζε σοφὸν μόθον ἔμφρονι θύρσῳ, Dion. 25.1).

b) Alexander at the Hydaspes Dionysus and his army are, of course, not alone when they cross the Hydaspes. They are accompanied – in spirit at least – by Alexander the Great. The association between Alexander, the all-conquering and frequently intoxicated Greek leader (regarded as a god by many of his subjects), and Dionysus is well established.¹² The general connection is all the more apposite when we recall that Nonnus’ epic poem was in all likelihood written in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, a city that owed its very foundation to the ambitious young man from Macedonia. Alexander’s own celebrated entry into India, in particular his crossing of the river Hydaspes in 326 BC and battle against the Indian king Porus, forms an obvious point of intersection with Dionysus’ own fluvial exploits and the resistance he meets from the Indian foe (although Nonnus’ narrative resists specific correspondences). At Dion. 23.148 – 50, one part of Dionysus’ army “filled swelling skins with artificial wind and on these leathery bags crossed Indian Hydaspes, while the skins teeming with wind carried them along” (ἀσκοῖς οἰδαλέοισι χέων ποιητὸν ἀήτην,/ δέρματι φυσαλέῳ διεμέτρεεν Ἰνδὸν Ὑδάσπην·/ ἐνδομύχων δ’ ἀνέμων ἐγκύμονες ἔπλεον ἀσκοί) – a detail that may well have been inspired by Alexander’s crossing of the Hydaspes using improvised rafts made out of skins stuffed with straw and sewn together.¹³ Elephants likewise feature prominently in both stories: the elephants of King Porus (described at some length by both Arrian and Plutarch) frighten Alexander; when the Indian leader Deriades withdraws his troops from the river and heads back to the safety of his city he does so, “seated on the back of his retreating elephants” (ἑζόμενος λοφιῇσι παλιννόστων ἐλεφάντων, Dion. 24.175).

 See Bowersock 1994, 157.  Arr. An. 5.9.3, 12.3 (Hydaspes); 3.29.4 (Oxus).

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According to Plutarch, Alexander’s crossing of the Hydaspes was accompanied by rain: “here rain fell in torrents and many tornadoes and thunder-bolts dashed down upon his men” (ἐνταῦθα δὲ ῥαγδαίου μὲν ἐκχυθέντος ὄμβρου, πρηστήρων δὲ πολλῶν καὶ κεραυνῶν εἰς τὸ στρατόπεδον, Alex. 60.4; tr. Perrin 1919).¹⁴ This detail of the stormy crossing may well have had an influence on Nonnus’ description of how an Indian ambush was averted by the side of the Hydaspes (Dion. 22.133 – 5): “And Father Zeus thwarted the crafty plan of the Indians, and prevented their night assault, by a loud peal of thunder and torrents of rain which made a great noise all night long” (Ζεὺς δὲ πατὴρ δολόεντα μετατρέψας νόον Ἰνδῶν/ ἑσπερίην ἀνέκοψε μάχην μυκήτορι βόμβῳ,/ ὄμβρου παννυχίοιο χέων ἀπερείσιον ἠχώ). At Dion. 22.127– 30, Nonnus provides a description of Dionysus as a tactical commander (quite different from the way Dionysus is described elsewhere in the story) that seems to owe more to the genre of history than that of epic and may well have been inspired by the narrative of Alexander: καὶ ταχινὸν μετὰ δόρπον ἐπέρρεον ἀσπιδιῶται γείτονος ἐκ ποταμοῖο πιεῖν ἐπιδόρπιον ὕδωρ, νεύμασι θεσπεσίοισι περισσονόου Διονύσου, μὴ στρατὸν εὐνήσειε μέθη καὶ κῶμα καὶ ὄρφνη After a hasty meal they hurried under shields to the river nearby, to drink water after the food, by divine command of prudent Dionysus who did not wish drunkenness and darkness and slumber to put his army to bed.

What is perhaps most significant about Alexander’s campaign in India, however, and most relevant to the story of Dionysus, is that it did not end in triumph but in ignominy, following the refusal of his troops to cross yet another Indian river (the Ganges).¹⁵ This model of failure sits uncomfortably beside Nonnus’ depiction of a triumphant Dionysus. But Nonnus is not concerned to exclude the shadow of failure from his own epic account. Failure is in fact a central concern of the song that closes the feast of Dionysus at the end of Book 24 – a song that tells how Aphrodite abandons her traditional sphere of love in favour of the spindle  See also Arr. An. 5.12.3; 13.3.  See Plut. Alex. 62.1– 2: “As for the Macedonians, however, their struggle with Porus blunted their courage and stayed their further advance into India. For having had all they could do to repulse an enemy who mustered only twenty thousand infantry and two thousand horse, they violently opposed Alexander when he insisted on crossing the river Ganges also, the width of which, as they learned, was thirty-two furlongs, its depth a hundred fathoms, while its banks on the further side were covered with multitudes of men-at-arms and horsemen and elephants” (tr. Perrin).

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of Athena – with disastrous results.¹⁶ The ultimate failure of Alexander and Aphrodite to cross ‘natural’ boundaries may well give us cause to fear for the efforts of Dionysus and Nonnus at the midway point of the epic.

c) Achilles at the Scamander Alongside the ‘historical’ narrative of Alexander there stands a clear literary model for the crossing of the Hydaspes: Achilles and his battle with the river Scamander in Iliad 21 (Achilles was of course himself already a clear source of inspiration and emulation for Alexander, who went out on campaign with a copy of the Iliad in a fennel box). The opening of Dionysiaca 22 (ἀλλ’ ὅτε δὴ πόρον ἷξον ἐυκροκάλου ποταμοῖο/ Βάκχου πεζὸς ὅμιλος, ποταμοῖο “When the foot-forces of Bacchus came to the crossing of the pebbly river”, 22.1– 2) quotes directly from the opening of Iliad 21 (ἀλλ’ ὅτε δὴ πόρον ἷξον ἐϋρρεῖος/ Ξάνθου δινήεντος, “When they came to the crossing of the fair-flowing river of eddying Xanthus”, 21.1– 2) and signposts the start of engagement with the Homeric scene.¹⁷ In case we have missed the intertextual allusion at the beginning of Book 22, Nonnus makes the Homeric connection explicit in the last twenty lines of the book (Dion. 22.384– 9): οὐδ’ ἀθεεὶ πολέμιζε καὶ Αἰακός· ἀντιβίους γάρ, ὡς γενέτης Πηλῆος, ἔσω ποταμοῖο δαΐζων ἰκμαλέον μόθον εἶχε καὶ ὑδατόεσσαν ἐνυώ, οἷα προθεσπίζων ποταμοῦ παρὰ χεῦμα Καμάνδρου φύλοπιν ἡμιτέλεστον ἐπεσσομένην Ἀχιλῆι· καὶ μόθον υἱωνοῖο μόθος μαντεύσατο πάππου.

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Not without God’s help Aiacus also fought. As befitted the father of Peleus, he slew his enemies in the river, a watery battle, a conflict among the waves, as if to foretell the unfinished battle for Achilles in time to come at the river Camandros: the grandfather’s battle prophesied the grandson’s conflict.

And again at Dion. 23.221– 4: οὐχ οὕτω Σιμόεντος ἀρειμανὲς ἔβρεμεν ὕδωρ, οὐχ οὕτω ῥόος ἔσκεν ἐγερσιμόθοιο Καμάνδρου χεύματι κυματόεντι κατακλύζων Ἀχιλῆα, ὡς τότε Βακχείην στρατιὴν ἐδίωξεν Ὑδάσπης

 See Hopkinson 1994a, 21– 2; Shorrock 2001, 167– 70.  See Hopkinson 1994b ad loc.; Gonnelli 2003 ad loc.

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Not so furiously roared the war-mad water of Simoeis, not so defiantly rushed Camandros to overwhelm Achilles with his roaring flood as then Hydaspes pursued the army of Bacchus.

The detailed intertextual relationship between the Dionysiaca and Iliad at this point signals an important moment in the ongoing relationship between Nonnus and Homer. Just as the crossing of the Hydaspes by Dionysus represents a movement into the territory of India proper, so for Nonnus it represents a poetic movement into the territory of Homer’s Iliad. In other words the Hydaspes functions as both a physical and generic boundary. For it is immediately after this point that Nonnus enters a new phase of engagement with Homer, quite different from what has gone before: Book 25 opens with the final year of the Indian war and commences a direct and sustained correspondence with the narrative of the Iliad that continues until the death of Deriades in Book 40. Nonnus’ engagement with the narrative of Achilles and Scamander in the preceding Hydaspes episode serves to confirm his ability to take the imitation of the narrative of the Iliad to a new level.¹⁸

d) The Muddy River of Epic To cross over a river of epic is no simple matter, of course, as Callimachus made abundantly clear in his Hymn to Apollo: “Great is the stream of the Assyrian river, but for much of its course it drags along on its waters filth from the land and much refuse” (Ἀσσυρίου ποταμοῖο μέγας ῥόος, ἀλλὰ τὰ πολλά/ λύματα γῆς καὶ πολλὸν ἐφ’ ὕδατι συρφετὸν ἕλκει, H. 2.108 – 9; tr. Mair). Thus did Callimachus draw a comparison between his own poetry (imagined as a pure and slender spring of water) and the tradition of epic poetry (a vast polluted river).¹⁹ Nonnus’ Hydaspes invites obvious comparison with Callimachus’ ‘Assyrian river’. It is both large in extent and full of mud and rubbish: at Dion. 23.215, the river is described explicitly as “dragging the mud in its rush” (ἀφυσγετὸν οἴδματι σύρων). It is also full of the literal detritus of epic poetry (drawn to a great extent from the Homeric description of the Scamander in Iliad 21): a mass of dead soldiers, shields and helmets (see esp. Dion. 23.105 – 112). Thanks to the efforts of Dionysus’ troops to cross the water, it is also filled with additional ‘rubbish’: cymbals, fawnskins, a leather wineskin (still full) belonging to Maron, and several pastoral instruments – the double pipes and the syrinx of Pan (Dion. 23.196 – 214). The

 See Shorrock 2001, 170 – 4.  For analysis of these lines, see Williams 1978, 91– 2.

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river, like Dionysiac wine itself, presents an extraordinary generic mixture – a case of the many contained within the one. The Hydaspes, one feels, is not a river of which Callimachus would have approved. Confirmation of this would appear to be provided by the presence of the Telchines among the forces of Dionysus who make their way across the swollen river. In the Aetia prologue it is, of course, the Telchines who make their notorious appearance as envious detractors from Callimachus’ poetry – critics of his work who would prefer him to write “one continuous poem in many thousands of lines about the deeds of kings or heroes of old” (ἓν ἄεισμα διηνεκὲς ἢ βασιλ[η/ ……]ας ἐν πολλαῖς ἤνυσα χιλιάσιν/ ἢ προτέ]ρους ἥρωας, Aet. fr. 1.3 – 5) rather than the slender poetic products that constitute Callimachus’ oeuvre.²⁰ It is these same creatures, who appear at Dion. 24.113 – 6: ἔξοχα δ’ ἄλλων ὠκύτεροι Τελχῖνες ἁλιτρεφέων ὑπὲρ ἵππων πατρῴης ἐλατῆρες ἁλικνήμιδος ἀπήνης, εἰς δρόμον ὡμάρτησαν ἐπειγομένῳ Διονύσῳ.

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but far quicker than the rest came the Telchines behind their sea-bred horses, driving their father’s sea-borne car and they kept close to Dionysus as he sped along.

The presence of the Telchines as enthusiastic participants in Dionysus’ campaign against the Indians might lead us to conclude that Nonnus is actively flouting the aesthetic strictures of Callimachus. I would argue, however, that we are not dealing here with a scene of aggressive and dogmatic anti-Callimacheanism, but a playful trangression of a literary boundary established by an influential Hellenistic predecessor. Indeed, even though the ‘envious’ Telchines support the forces of Dionysus, Callimachus is by no means excluded from Nonnus’ poetic project. Callimachean allusions have be found throughout the Dionysiaca, whilst in Books 17– 18 Nonnus undertakes an ambitious reworking of Callimachus’ Hecale into his narrative.²¹ One might even speculate that a reference to Callimachus lies behind the reference to the story of the huntress Cyrene at Dion. 24.82– 5: ἀπ’ εὐρυπόροιο δὲ κόλπου υἱὸν Ἀρισταῖον γενέτης ἐσάωσεν Ἀπόλλων, φαιδρὸς ἀλεξικάκων πεφορημένος ἅρματι κύκνων, μνῆστιν ἔχων θαλάμοιο λεοντοφόνοιο Κυρήνης

 See, for example, Hopkinson 1988, 85 – 101; Acosta-Hughes/Stephens 2002.  See Shorrock 2001, esp. 146 – 52.

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Apollo the father saved Aristaius the son from the broad gulf, riding brilliant in his car drawn by the bane-averting swans; for he remembered the bower of lion-slaying Cyrene.

Callimachus was, of course, one of the most famous of all the citizens of Cyrene, a connection that he himself celebrated in his Hymn to Apollo. With a playful nod to Callimachean aesthetics, in this scene we see Apollo (the god of poetry) engaged in the rescue of his son not just from the Hydaspes but from the muddy waters of epic poetry itself. Nonnus, unlike Callimachus, demonstrates his readiness to plunge into the epic flood, and is forced to survive by means of his own ingenuity. His distinctive approach to epic poetry may be extrapolated to a certain degree from the various modes of transport used by Dionysus and his troops to cross the river. At Dion. 23.123 – 4, we learn that “the company of the Bacchoi was fashioning all sorts of machines (ἑτερότροπα μάγγανα) of navigation”. In the next forty lines we are furnished with a cataract of details concerning this heterotropic armada: Dionysus passes over the water on his land-chariot; one soldier crosses by raft, another by skiff – using a native boat stolen from fishermen; another improvises a punt and uses his spear as the pole to propel him on his way; one uses his shield like a coracle, employing his sling as a mooring rope. The cavalry swim across the river on the backs of their horses, whilst the infantry use buoyancy aids consisting of inflatable wine-skins. The emphasis here is on improvisation and diversity – features that can be said to characterise Nonnus’ approach to poetry. The native fishing boat, for example, might suggest Nonnus’ use of local poetic traditions (as opposed to the universally recognisable traditions of, say, Homer and Callimachus), whilst the construction of a raft at Dion. 23.134 “lashing together a number of logs with skilful knots” (ἅμματι τεχνήεντι περίπλοκα δούρατα δήσας) may well invite us to consider Nonnus’ own literary skill in drawing together different genres.

e) The Hydaspes and the Nile There remains a further aspect to Nonnus’ presentation of the Hydaspes that we have yet to consider: the explicit connection made within the text between the Hydaspes and the Nile. At the start of Dionysiaca 22, we read that “the footforces of Bacchus came to the crossing of the pebbly river, where, like the Nile (ἅτε Νεῖλος), Indian Hydaspes pours his navigable water into a deep-eddying hollow” (1– 3), prompting a direct comparison between the Indian and Egyptian rivers. This comparison – a rare disclosure on the part of Nonnus of his affiliation with the country of Egypt – is followed up four books later during a description

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of the catalogue of the Indian troops who are drawn up against the forces of Dionysus (Dion. 26.222– 40):²² καὶ στόλος ἄλλος ἵκανε τριηκοσίων ἀπὸ νήσων, αἵ τε περιστιχόωσιν ἀμοιβάδες ἄλλυδις ἄλλαι γείτονες ἀλλήλῃσιν, ὅπῃ περιμήκεϊ πορθμῷ δίστομος Ἰνδὸς ἄγων μετανάστιον ἀγκύλον ὕδωρ, ἑρπύζων κατὰ βαιὸν ἀπ’ Ἰνδῴου δονακῆος λοξὸς ὑπὲρ δαπέδοιο παρ’ Ἠῴου στόμα πόντου, ἔρχεται αὐτοκύλιστος ὑπὲρ λόφον Αἰθιοπῆα· ἧχι θερειγενέων ὑδάτων ὑψούμενος ὁλκῷ χεύμασιν αὐτογόνοις ἐπὶ πήχεϊ πῆχυν ἀέξει· καὶ χθόνα πιαλέην ἀγκάζεται ὑγρὸς ἀκοίτης, τέρπων ἰκμαλέοισι φιλήμασι διψάδα νύμφην, οἶστρον ἔχων πολύπηχυν ἀμαλλοτόκων ὑμεναίων, μέτρῳ ἀμοιβαίῳ παλιναυξέα χεύματα τίκτων Νεῖλος ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ καὶ ἑώιος Ἰνδὸς ἀκούων. κεῖθι μελαμψήφιδα διαξύων ῥόον ὁπλῇ νήχεται ὑδατόεις ποταμήιος ἵππος ἀλήτης, οἷος ἐμοῦ Νείλοιο θερειγενὲς οἶδμα χαράσσων ναιετάει, βυθίοιο δι’ ὕδατος ὑγρὸς ὁδίτης μηκεδαναῖς γενύεσσιν·

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Another host came from the three hundred islands, scattered here or there or in groups together, which lie about that place where the Indus on an endless course pours out its winding travelling stream by two enclosing mouths, after creeping in its slow curving course from the Indian reed-beds over the plain to its mouth by the Eastern sea, after first rolling down the heights of the Ethiopian mountains: swollen by the mass of summer-begotten waters it increases cubit by cubit with self-rising floods and embraces the rich land like a watery husband, who rejoices a thirsty bride with his moist kisses and enfolds her in many passionate arms for a sheaf-bearing bridal, while he begets in his turn other ever recurrent streams: so Nile in Egypt and the eastern Hydaspes in India. There swims the travelling river-horse through the waters, cleaving with his hoof the black-pebble stream, just like the dweller in my own Nile, who cuts the summer-begotten flood and travels through the watery deeps with his long jaws.

It is possible to explain this connection between the rivers of India and Egypt quite simply, in geographical terms: in the Hellenistic world it was imagined that the Nile and the Indus (and its tributaries such as the Hydaspes) were directly connected.²³ For Rose, writing in Rouse’s 1940 Loeb translation of the Dionysiaca, this connection was little more than a case of bad geography: “… there is in [Nonnus] a tendency common amongst the ignorant of every Graeco-Roman

 On Nonnus’ literary relationship with Egypt, see Gigli Piccardi 1998.  Gonnelli 2003, 499.

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age – namely to believe that Indians were somehow connected with the Ethiopians of North-East Africa, and that India and North-East Africa were joined together”.²⁴ A more constructive approach would be to consider why Nonnus chose to highlight the connection between India and Egypt (this was not after all something that he was obliged to mention) and what the implications of that connection are for our understanding of the crossing of the Hydaspes scene. Most obviously, the connection between the Hydaspes/Indus and the Nile serves to collapse any real sense of distance and difference. Imagined boundaries between East and West, between civilised and barbarian are seen to be as fluid as the water that flows through the rivers themselves. Dionysus’ epic journey may have taken him to the edge of the known world but in doing so we discover not otherness but similarity. In the world of Nonnus’ Dionysiaca, India is now no more remote than Egypt. This (re)discovery of the familiar at the ends of the earth also has implications for our understanding of the poem’s rich literary texture: Nonnus’ dramatisation of the crossing of the Hydaspes does not take us, as we might imagine, into terra incognita, but back once again to the familiar world of Alexander the Great and to Homer, the fons et origo of it all. It is tempting here to draw a connection with modern theories of globalisation: Nonnus’ comparison between Indian and Egypt highlights the interconnectedness of things across a vast geographical distance and thereby makes the world a significantly smaller place – the epic universe now re-imagined as a global village.²⁵ At the same time the comparison forces us to rethink fundamental ideas about core and periphery. The Dionysiaca began in Egypt – once an epic margin, now thanks to Nonnus, part of the epic mainstream. But if the Hydaspes is like the Nile, does not India have as strong a claim to be the centre of the epic world as Egypt does? This close reading of Nonnus’ Hydaspes episode has attempted to cast light on the way that epic boundaries and the boundaries of epic are articulated and dissolved within the frame of the Dionysiaca. By means of a sophisticated and playful amalgam of historical and literary models we are encouraged to see Dionysus (the ultimate transgressor of boundaries and collapser of difference) in the guise of Alexander crossing into India (in the final part of his fateful advance Eastwards); at the same time a dense web of Homeric allusions cues our recollection of the battle between Achilles and the river Scamander in Iliad 21. The Hydaspes is not just the focus for specific matrices of allusion, however, but

 Rose apud Rouse 1940, 293 (vol. 2).  For an inroad into this vast and labyrinthine subject, see, for example, Giddens 1990; Castells 1996; Gray 1999; Scholte 2000; Hutton/Giddens 2001.

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has an important symbolic function. The river divides the epic structurally – forming an important geographical and literary boundary at the half-way point of the Dionysiaca. After crossing the river, Nonnus’ major engagement with the Iliad will begin, alongside Dionysus’ major encounter with the Indian enemy. In literary terms the Hydaspes functions as a symbol for epic poetry itself – evoking the dangerous and muddy river of epic rejected by Callimachus and into which Nonnus plunges undaunted, leaving his readers delighted, but gasping for air.

Jackie Elliott

Space and Geography in Ennius’ Annales This paper explores two aspects of spatial relations in Ennius’ Annales. First I examine the distribution among the extant fragments of activity at home and abroad, then across different foreign theatres of war. (Appendices at the end of the paper chart these distributions.) Second, I consider the treatment of space in the three longest surviving fragments: Ilia’s dream (Ann. 34– 50), the fragment describing the augurate of Romulus and Remus (Ann. 72– 91) and the ‘good companion’ fragment (Ann. 268 – 86).¹ The first exercise reveals a vast preponderance of fragments describing action at the periphery of emergent empire over fragments describing action at its hub: internal affairs at Rome suffer virtual eclipse in favour of theatres abroad; while among foreign theatres, the East dominates. The former observation engages the question of how the poem, whose title designated its expanding geographical ambit as annales – that is, as the stuff of local Roman historiography – portrayed the relationship of the City to the territories that it controlled or fought for. The latter raises the question of the ideological force of Ennius’ geographical emphases: I will speculate in particular that a polarizing East-West dynamic broadly governed the text, while at the same time arguing that the poem nevertheless represented non-Romans, including Easterners, as worthy opponents of an ethically complex but fundamentally sound Roman state.² The fragments that feed the first part of the study are largely the product of ancient scholarly traditions that transmit brief and decontextualized material, and their language often replicates the effects of Homeric oral formulaic verse.³ It is, then, neither surprising nor coincidental that this conventional and interchangeable language cannot securely be associated with any specific event or locality.⁴ Names – almost always lacking in our record – would be crit-

 All references to the Annales are to Skutsch 1985. The text given, including of the fragments’ quotation-contexts, is Skutsch’s text.  On the politics of space in Roman epic, especially in connection with Roman imperialism, compare Slaney and Manuwald (this volume); on the relationship of East and West under Rome, Skempis (this volume), in the sections ‘Circe in the Land of the Tyrrhenians’ and ‘From Colchis to Italy’, Keith and Bexley (this volume).  The evidence for this is set out in Elliott 2013, 75 – 134.  The standard editions tend to create an exaggerated impression of how much action we can reliably locate in any given theatre, because editors, naturally wishing to identify as many fragments as possible with known historical events, proceed on a highly positivist basis. I discuss editorial procedure, with a focus on Skutsch, in the introduction to my study (n. 3

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ical to our ability to understand finer points in the organization of the space these fragments describe. The observation that the language of these briefer fragments is not particularized, however, affords a means of contrasting it with that of the three longer fragments explored in the second half of this paper, which offer far more idiosyncratic descriptive language – as well as, in the cases of the ‘augurate’ and the ‘good companion’ fragments, more by way of surviving named space. In the case of the Ilia- and ‘good companion’ fragments, the alternative, individualized treatment of space acts as means for expressing the emergence of individualized and alternative perspectives. Ilia’s disorientation in an environment controlled (and nameable) only by men suggests a gendered tension in Ennius’ landscapes, but the commonalities in the treatment of space between this and the ‘good companion’ fragment would indicate rather that ultimately space is used more broadly to communicate the distribution of power among actors in a manner that transcends gendered dichotomies. From the outset, it will be clear to my readers that the first of my two exercises poses an immediate methodological problem: even in describing very general proportions, the statistics offered in the initial part of the paper are at best only coarsely representative of the original poem, while in matters of any detail it is of course quite impossible to treat what emerges from the fragments as reliably representative. So much of the poem is gone that entire theatres of war are miss-

above). Essentially, if a fragment dealing with fighting is assigned to a specific book, either by its source or by editorial conjecture, that more or less alone can motivate an editor to attribute the battle-fragment to a particular battle. The editor considers the events available, themselves placed by convention or conjecture in that book (for standard accounts of the progress of the narrative of the Annales, see F. Skutsch 1905, 2604– 10, Leo 1913, 166 – 71, O. Skutsch 1985, 5 – 6, and Gratwick 1982, 60 – 3). As an aid to making an identification, the editor may discern an analogue in Livy or another prose historian, perhaps relying on a similarity of wording (often very slight or arguably the product of literary convention rather than of reference to any unique phenomenon); Skutsch in particular relies on this procedure (see his commentary passim). The fragment is then associated with that event. (See Elliott 2010, 150 – 3 for discussion of the conspicuous example of this process supplied by the lines attributed to the battle of Cannae [Ann. 263 – 7].) This procedure is possible and indeed, if battle-descriptions are ever to be associated with specific events, necessary, precisely because the surviving descriptions of engagements with the enemy are almost uniformly stylized and conventional. Among the surviving material, an exception to this general rule exists in the fragments associated with Pyrrhus, which, thanks to Cicero (as quoted by Quintilian; see Fantham 2006, 549, 550, n. 5), can with some assurance be placed in Book 6 (see, however, n. 24 below, for a caveat). Usually, even where a source supplies a fairly long narrative passage and gives a book number for it, as happens with Ann. 391– 8 (the heroic tribune, supplied by Macrobius; for the fragment, see Appendix 1.II.a, below), we may still be left high and dry without any historical context or specific referent for the event in question.

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ing or virtually missing from our present record; or we assume that they are, depending by and large simply on the assumption that Ennius treated all the Roman wars of conquest in turn (and, for its part, the sheer volume of fragments dealing with the business of war supports that assumption). The suggestions offered below, about the distribution of geographical references in the Annales and about the implications of that distribution, along with the interpretation of given fragments, for reasons signalled along the way, must remain entirely tentative and provisional.

The Distribution of the Fragments of the Annales across Different Geographical Theatres Despite the rarity with which the surviving fragments of the Annales offer clues as to specific locations, the remains of the poem allow access to certain broad traits. The surviving record confirms the impression we receive from the flippant redactions of the Augustan poets:⁵ the action of the poem focused on Rome’s military conquests and territorial expansion – as one would expect, moreover, from a poem making full use of the intersection between epic and historiography.⁶ Almost a third of the surviving lines of the Annales describe either battlefield fighting itself or the preliminaries to war and its aftermath.⁷ (See Appendix 1 for a list of these fragments.) Such lines are relatively sparse in the pre-Republican material of the first three books: they constitute less than 10 % of the 149 lines assigned (by the ancient sources or by modern conjecture) to those books. By contrast, of the 292 surviving lines that Skutsch ascribes with some degree of confidence to the narrative of the Republic (Books 4– 18), 129 – that is, ca. 44 % – describe either battle-action proper (24 fragments = 34 lines) or else preparation for or the consequences of war (60 fragments = 95 lines). Besides the battle-descriptions attributed to particular books, the fragments sedis

 E.g. Prop. 3.3.7– 12: et cecinit [sc. Ennius] Curios fratres et Horatia pila/ regiaque Aemilia uecta tropaea rate,/ uictricesque moras Fabii pugnamque sinistram/ Cannensem et uersos ad pia uota deos,/ Hannibalemque Lares Romana sede fugantis,/ anseris et tutum uoce fuisse Iouem.  See Ash (2002, 253 – 73) on battle-narrative as a particularly fertile area of intersection between the two genres.  In the latter two categories are included military manœvres, speeches and other preliminaries to battle or war, discussion of military policy or summaries of wartime activity; naval exercises, fleets and sailing; cavalry; weaponry; the aftermath of battle or of war (triumphs, the defeat of enemies, the effects of war on women); metaphors or similes pertaining to war; or invocations to sing of war or of particular wars.

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incertae yield a further 8 fragments (10 lines) of fighting proper plus 29 fragments (31 lines) describing war’s appurtenances. The sources supplying these fragments largely belong to two related groups: those such as Macrobius and Servius interested in elucidating the Roman history of Vergil’s language; and those such as Festus and Priscian, working in the lexicographical and grammatical traditions. Because the preservation of book-numbers is an engrained feature of each of these scholarly traditions, a relatively high proportion (ca. two thirds) of the fragments listed in Appendix 1 survive with a book-number attached to them by their ancient source. This reliably tells us that the generic descriptions of fighting and its concomitants these sources supply were represented in each book of the Annales. As a result, we are assured (again, not contrary to our expectations) that the narrative of the Annales never ceased from its preoccupation with war. At the same time, the concerns and working practices of these late sources mean that they have neither interest in nor access to either historical reference or literary context. They are therefore unable to help us discern the contents of particular books and are for the most part uninformative as to the shape and progress of the narrative as a whole. Compared with the extant bulk of fragments describing Rome’s engagements abroad, little survives on the City’s domestic workings. This again, to the extent that we can trust the figures, confirms that the poem faced primarily outwards from Rome. Of the 292 lines Skutsch attributes to the Republican material of Books 4– 18,⁸ only 34 lines (16 fragments), plus one testimonium – that is, ca. 11 % – show action at Rome and/or relate with any degree of plausibility to domestic rather than foreign matters: see Appendix 2.II. This estimate is, if anything, high: included are several fragments whose reference may be to Rome but

 The question of how attention is distributed between inward- and outward-facing material is in the first three books arguably moot, since the events treated (that is, conventionally, Rome’s foundation and early establishment) pre-date the era of the City’s expansion. Essentially all of the material of Books 1– 3, after the proem-material, are local to Rome: this includes Ann. 72– 91 (the augurate of Romulus and Remus), Ann. 92, 93, 94– 5 (the material attributed to the quarrel between Romulus and Remus), Ann. 96, 97, 98, 101, 102– 3 (the problems of the nascent Roman community, including the quarrel with the Sabines), Ann. 105 – 9, 110 (the apotheosis of Romulus), Ann. 99, 100, 113, 114– 15, 116 – 18 (the establishment of Roman ritual and prayer-language), Ann. 137 (the death of Ancus Marcius), Ann. 127 (a possible pun on the ‘Caelian’ hill of Rome; see Skutsch 1985 ad loc.), Ann. 138 (the accession of Tarquin) and Ann. 147 (the death of Tarquin). ‘Foreign’ engagements are in this era only as far-flung as Alba Longa (Ann. 31, 32, 120 – 5), Ostia (Ann. 128 – 9) or Etruria (Ann. 142) and so relate, if not exclusively to internal, then at any rate to local affairs.

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is fundamentally doubtful (see the 6 fragments, totalling 17 lines, designated with a question-mark in Appendix 2.II).⁹ As things stand, Republican Rome’s internal politics are thus all but invisible to us in the fragments of the Annales. Although that cannot represent the full situation of the original, the imbalance between lines clearly describing foreign affairs and ones clearly describing internal affairs is so pronounced that it is hard to explain if not as a reflection of an original strong focus on Rome’s expanding military ventures, at the expense of the domestic; for the interests and working methods of the sources are not such as necessarily to prejudice these ratios. Yet the overall scarcity of fragments detailing the City’s inner workings in no way infringes on the poem’s strong notional centre being Rome. (That uncontroversial idea is supported in the record by the existence of seven fragments sed. inc., listed in Appendix 2.III, which name the Roman nation or state without being associable with events in any particular locality: these confirm what we well know, that this poem is the story of the actions of the Romans, at home but especially abroad.) The title Annales alone would suffice to ensure the gravitational centrality of Rome: in its reference to the local historiographical tradition, the title announces clearly that what this text took in its purview was nothing other than Rome’s local affair.¹⁰ This leads me to suggest that the narration of Rome’s military successes abroad under the heading Annales might prompt the audience to construe the account so offered, for all its geographical breadth, as all a part of Rome’s internal workings, just as much as the description of the local operations and internal affairs, the matter of conventional annales, had traditionally been. Effectively, Ennius’ treatment suggested, Rome and the lands she drew in increasing numbers into her orbit were becoming synonymous. The concept of imperium, a term not yet used in the Annales (so far as we can tell) of Rome’s wider rule,¹¹ was thus arguably finding, if not yet explicit articulation, at least a kind of literary expression.¹²

 Excluded are three lines sed. inc. whose reference is so unclear that nothing prevents the fragments’ context from having been a description of internal affairs, even if nothing especially favours it either: Ann. 593 (oratores doctiloqui), Ann. 605 ([quem] non uirtutis egentem) and Ann. 616 (haec abnu[eram]). These conclude the list of surviving lines of the Annales whose reference is even potentially to domestic affairs at Rome during the Republic.  Ch. 1 of my study of the Annales (n. 3 above) discusses the evidence for the title and makes the case for the interpretation I here mention.  It is found three times in the fragments: at Ann. 138, it is used of the administrative power exercised by the king, at Ann. 412 and 613 of military orders (OLD 1 & 8, respectively); cf. Richardson 2008, 51, with n. 129 there.  On the development, from the third century on, of the term imperium from its use designating the power vested in an individual to its use designating Roman dominion over an

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At this juncture, it may be worth noting that one fragment at least, from early in the poem, suggests that the idea of geographical spread also had a role as cipher for the success of the Annales themselves, on analogy with Rome’s proto-imperial military successes. Ann. 12– 13, latos populos res atque poemata nostra… clara> cluebunt (“broadly through the peoples our affairs and poems will achieve bright fame”) is transmitted by a pseudo-Proban author who tells us that the lines come from the first book of Ennius’ Annales.¹³ Given the decontextualized state of the fragment, we are not in a position fully to evaluate the reference of nostra, but it looks to be doing double duty: in its (transferred) reference to res, it looks to be mean “our [Roman] state/ the affairs of Rome”, while in its reference to poemata it seems to represent the standard poetic plural for singular and thus refer to Ennius’ (“my”) poems.¹⁴ A powerful association is thus effected between Rome’s growing political influence over increasingly far-flung peoples and the success of Ennius’ song. This association, along with the source’s assurance that the fragment belongs to Book 1, helps secure the sense that the centrifugal thrust of the poem was dominant right from the start of the poem and constituted a central means of communicating the significance of its subject-matter.¹⁵

international landscape, see Richardson 1991, 1– 9, where Richardson makes clear that “the transferred, concrete meaning ‘dominion’, ‘realm’, ‘empire’, becomes especially frequent during and after the Augustan period”. Before then, e. g. for Cicero and his contemporaries, it designated the power of a nation-state, as well as the power of an individual magistrate (ibid. 7). On the earliest surviving uses of the term in Accius, and thereafter in Cicero and Varro, to signify Roman power in a wider sense than that belonging to an individual magistrate, see ibid. 6. See also Lintott 1981, 53 – 67, Lintott 1993, and Richardson 2008. See ibid. 51– 2 for analysis of Ennius’ rare surviving uses of the term (in the Annales [see n. 11 above], the Medea, the Hectoris Lytra, and the Euhemerus).  GLK 4.231: neutro genere in casibus supra dictis [nom., acc., voc.] sine ambiguitate breuis est [sc. syllaba finalis] Graecis Latinisque nominibus:… Graeci etiam nominis exempla subiciamus: Ennius in primo annali (Ilberg; nam cod.) ‘latos populos res atque poemata nostra cluebunt’ et in Vergilio ‘Arcada piscosae cui circum flumina Lernae’ (A. 12.518). For the problems of the text, see Skutsch 1985 ad loc.  The alternative, given that the source assures us that the fragment originates in Book 1, is that it is associated with the dream-proem of the Annales and that nostra continues the association there explicitly initiated between Ennius and Homer and so represents a true plural. Thus res atque poemata nostra would mean “our [viz. Ennius’ and Homer’s] poems and their subject-matter”. Skutsch’s future tense cluebunt represents a problem for such an interpretation, given Homer’s already established fame, unless the claim is for the future fame of Ennian and Homeric epic in association. (Mariotti’s imperfect cluebant is equally problematic, if the claim is to include the not-yet-established Annales.)  This centrifugal thrust is, later in the epic tradition, countered by Lucan in his catalogues, as Bexley (in the present volume) ably describes. For comparison and contrast with the situation in the Annales, see also Ziogas (this volume) on Ovid’s moves to marginalize the celebrated centres

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Among the scarce instances where the fragment itself or its source states or implies the geographical location of the action or people described, there is again an obvious disproportion in the amount of attention different theatres receive. The fragments name six, predictable, discrete geographical arenas besides Rome: (A) the Italian peninsula, (B) Africa, (C) Illyria, (D) Greece and Macedon, (E) Asia (Troy; Antiochus), (F) the West (Spain and Gaul). Among these, the largest total number of references are to (A) the Italian peninsula, followed by (D) Greece and Macedon and (B) Africa, while very few references indeed survive to (C) Illyria or (F) lands west of Italy. (The fragments themselves are listed in Appendix III.A–F.) Table 1: the distribution of fragments of the Annales naming geographical arenas other than Rome. The pre-Republican era The Republic (Books  – ) (Books  – )

Sed. inc. TOTAL

A. The Italian peninsula B. Africa

 ()¹⁶

 ()

 ()

 ()

—

 ()

C. Illyria

—

 () +  testimonia  () +  testimonium  ()  ()

 () —

 () +  testimonia  () +  testimonium  ()  ()

 ()

 ()

 ()

D. Greece & Macedon — E. Asia  () (Troy; Antiochus) F. The West — (Spain & France)

 ()

of the earth: not only Delphi but ultimately also Rome; and Slaney (this volume) on Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica. Slaney privileges two aspects of the text: (1) Valerius’ promotion of the glamorous and beguiling possibility of geographical discovery – a reflection, in her reading, of Roman imperialism, and a means by which to co-opt the audience’s support for such ventures and the costs they entail; (2) the undermining of that possibility by demonstrating its hollowness. It may be an accident of transmission that, in the Annales, the clearest traces of the representation of a voyage of discovery are discernible not in the description of encounters with non-Roman alterity but in the alienated and mythologized description of Italy as beheld through foreign, presumably Trojan, eyes: e. g. est locus Hesperiam quam mortales perhibebant (Ann. 20, securely attested for Book 1); quam Prisci, casci populi, tenuere Latini (Ann. 22). The absence from the Annales of traces of irony (such as Slaney detects in Valerius Flaccus) attaching to the dawning possibility of imperialism is presumably not an effect of the hazards of transmission but rather reflects that Ennius is describing Roman imperialism’s naïve infancy.  The number of fragments attached to the Italian peninsula may in a sense be artificially swollen by the first six (Ann. 20, 21, 22, 26, 30, 31; see Appendix 3.A.I for the text). If these are correctly assigned to Book 1 (and ancient authority for that assignation exists only in the cases of Ann. 20 and 26), they are reasonably interpreted as concerning the establishment of Rome rather than with the City’s subsequent relations with competing peoples.

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Methodological considerations apply when considering what this evidence has to tell us. In particular, the fragments supply weak grounds for drawing conclusions about the shape of the narrative, which, as the editions present it to us, is rather more the product of modern editorial activity than of the ancient evidence.¹⁷ For example, editions routinely place the material associated with Africa in Books 7, 8 and 9 (reflected in Appendix 3.B, below). Yet of the thirteen fragments associable with Africa or its inhabitants, only two come with book-numbers attached. One of these is Ann. 297 (Poenos Didone oriundos, “the Carthaginians who trace their descent from Dido”), which its source, Priscian (GLK 2.210), attributes it to Book 8 – unobjectionable from an editorial viewpoint, since it accords with standard scholarly estimates of where the account of the Second Punic War would fall.¹⁸ Since the fragment itself, however, consists of no more than a noun and an attribute or predicate, it cannot supply any sense of the narrative in which it stood.¹⁹ In the single other instance where a source for an Africa-fragment supplies a book-number, Ann. 242, Skutsch changes it because it does not suit his sense of the narrative.²⁰ The line reads explorant Numidae, totam quatit ungula terram (“the Numidians reconnoiter; the hooves [of their horses] shake the entire land”). Its source, Macrobius (Sat. 6.1.22), places it in Book 6, to which we know that the narrative of the encounter with Pyrrhus belonged.²¹ Skutsch dislikes Macrobius’ testimony because it implies two possibilities, both of which contradict his sense of the narrative. The first of them he states and discounts, the second he elides. If – the possibility that Skutsch recognizes – the line refers to Numidian cavalry in Pyrrhus’ employ, it implies that Ennius included detail that Skutsch reckons of dubious interest to the Romans. The other possible implication, however, is that Book 6 anticipated or included early narrative of the engagement with Africa, a possibility so out of step with standard assumptions about the progress of the narrative that Skutsch does not even mention it. In effect, however, neither Ann. 297 nor Ann. 242 – and so no fragment at all – confirms the supposition that Rome’s encounter with Carthage took place primarily in Books 7– 9.

 See n. 4 above and nn. 66 and 77 below.  For standard accounts of the progress of the narrative of the Annales, see the references to F. & O. Skutsch, Leo and Gratwick in n. 4 above.  Thus, Ann. 472 (Poenos Sarra oriundos, “the Carthaginians, who originate in Tyre”), a wholly parallel fragment, appropriately finds itself among the sed. inc., since in its case, the source, Probus (Verg. G. 2.506), supplies no book-number.  See Skutsch 1985, 426.  On Book 6 of the Annales and Cicero (and others) as its source, see Fantham 2006, 549 – 68.

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By contrast, one strength of the material associable with Africa is that it has no particular source predisposed in its favour. Unlike the material associable with Greece and Macedon, for example – about half of which is generated by the utility to Cicero, in a variety of contexts, of Ennius’ rendition of Pyrrhus²² – the material associable with Africa survives via a diverse set of authors directed by a diverse set of interests.²³ As a result, we have better evidence for the narrative’s broad preoccupation with Africa than we do in Pyrrhus’ case.²⁴ As noted at the outset, there is of course no reason to think the surviving record a reliable guide to the distribution of material in the full original. With that caveat in open view, it is perhaps nevertheless worth noting what the fragments as they stand have to offer. The location conspicuous by its near complete absence is the West. A tentatively ventured speculation of Skutsch’s makes a single ambiguous, decontextualized line, the only potential remaining trace of Ennius’ account of Cato’s victories in Spain in 195 BCE: ²⁵ this is Ann. 471, Hispane non Romane memoretis loqui me (“you ought to bear in mind that I am speaking after the Spanish and not the Roman fashion”). Similarly, we are without any discernible remains of L. Aemilius Paullus’ Spanish campaign of 190/89.²⁶ There is of course no reason to doubt that events of such contemporary moment would have been described; as already noted, given how fragmentary the work is, it is undoubtedly the case that entire theatres of war have slipped between the cracks – or that their atoms, where they survive, are not identifiable.

 Cicero is the sole or primary source of Ann. 167, Ann. 183 – 90 and Ann. 197– 8, all of which relate to Pyrrhus; the other fragments directly associable with Greece and Macedon (Ann. 165, 166, 322– 3, 340 – 2, 346, 257, 281) survive via sources belonging to the grammatical and etymological traditions (Varro, Gellius, Festus, Nonius, Priscian).  Four slight fragments survive via Cicero (Ann. 216, 234, 302, 309), one via Varro (Ann. 215), three via Festus and/or Paulus (Ann. 214, 287, 292), one each via Gellius (Ann. 303), Macrobius (Ann. 242), Servius Danielis (Ann. 299), ps.-Probus (Ann. 472) and Priscian (Ann. 297). There are besides this two testimonia supplied by Servius (Ann. VIII.xv and xvi) and one dubious fragment surviving only through a sixteenth-century report (Ann. 303).  See Elliott 2013, 67– 8, for the argument also that even the location of the Pyrrhus-narrative in Book 6 – which typically serves as one of the most widely accepted points of reference for the organization of the Annales, rests on evidence that is not entirely secure; cf. Fantham 2006, 549 – 68, esp. 553 – 5, for a view of the arrangement of Book 6 differing in some respects from the standard editors’.  Skutsch 1985 ad loc. Skutsch there also cites Norden (1915, 114– 15) as the origin of an alternative conjecture, which makes Rome’s dealings with Carthage the point at issue. (As a preliminary to war with Carthage, Roman ambassadors went to Spain to seek Spanish allies but were rejected – here Norden posits the role of Ann. 471 – in consequence of Rome’s recent abandonment of Saguntum to its fate at Carthaginian hands; Liv. 21.19.)  Cf. Skutsch 1985, 528 – 9, 535.

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Material surviving on Rome’s encounter with peoples to the East (Carthage,²⁷ Greece, Troy and its neighbouring descendant peoples) is, by contrast, impressive in its relative abundance and in its apparent distribution. Beyond the statistical preponderance in the surviving record, which may be misleading, it is noticeable that the presence of the East extends visibly among the fragments beyond literal references to narrative events in their chronological order; and also beyond characters and events familiar from Homer to characters and events familiar from Herodotus. Discussion of the fragments below will lead me to suggest that active in the Annales was the trope of conflict of continents familiar from Homer and Herodotus – although this does not, in my view, necessitate that Ennius’ epic was a chauvinist or nationalist work in any sense stronger than is true of the Iliad. Although there is no call for quarrelling with the editorial hypothesis that Troy figured in its chronological narrative place, towards the start of Book 1 of the Annales, the one fragment that both names Troy and that is assigned by its ancient source to a particular book suggests that it was at any rate not confined to its chronological place but loomed large over the narrative as a whole. We may accept as immediate narrative in the authorial voice Ann. 14 (quom ueter occubuit Priamus sub Marte Pelasgo, “when Priam of old fell to the Greek WarGod”), and Ann. 15 – 16²⁸ (doctus†que Anchisesque Venus quem pulcra dearum/ fari donauit, diuinum pectus habere, “?and? learned Anchises, to whom Venus, outstandingly beautiful goddess, granted/ the gift of prophecy and to have an inspired mind”).²⁹ To the point here, though, is that we know that Troy appears

 I include Carthage not only because of its association with Phoenicia (thus the standard designation in the Annales of the Carthaginians as Poeni, as at Ann. 214, 287, 297, 310 and 472) but also because of the implications of Gellius’ (admittedly post-Virgilian) reading of Ann. 303; see p. 216, below. Cf. Levene (2010, 90, 94, 99, 107– 11) on the alignment of Carthaginians with Easterners in a Livian context.  I have not counted Ann. 15 – 16 among the references to the East charted in Table 1 or in Appendix 3.  The sources for Ann. 14 (Prisc. GLK 2.97: ueterrimus quasi a ueter positiuo, quod Capri quoque approbat auctoritas et usus antiquorum. Ennius [Ann. 14]; and Ars Anon. Bern. 8.81: uetus ueteris ueterrimus quasi a uetere positiuo. Ennius [Ann. 14]) and Ann. 15 – 16 (‘Probus’ Verg. Ecl. 6.31: cur ibi [A. 6.724] Anchisen facit disputantem quod hic Silenum deum, nisi quod poeta Ennius Anchisen augurium [Sk.; -ii codd.] ac per hoc diuini quiddam habuisse praesumit sic [Ann. 15 – 16]…, supported by the more problematic text of Schol. Veron. Verg. A. 2.687) do not supply us with a booknumber. They thus leave open the possibility of these fragments’ place in the narrative. Nothing prevents them from representing character-speeches from any point in the epic. Yet the standard editorial decision, to place them early in Book 1, implying that they represent authorial narrative of Aeneas’ departure from Troy, is at any rate a reasonable one.

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late in the narrative too. In quoting the following fragment, Macrobius guarantees Book 10 of the Annales as its original location:³⁰ [Pergama] quae neque Dardaniis campis potuere perire nec quom capta capi nec quom combusta cremari (Ann. 344– 5) [Troy] which could not be destroyed on the Dardan plain nor when captured remain captured nor when torched be consumed by flame.

The lines themselves refer to Troy’s apparently unstoppable renascence and this, together with their guaranteed origin in Book 10, assures us that a retrospective view of Troy continued to be deployed late in the poem. Macrobius quotes these fragments to illustrate their formative influence on Aen. 7.294– 6 (part of Juno’s irate speech on the incipient Trojan successes in Italy).³¹ The quotation-context thus supports the idea that Troy served throughout the poem not just as a geographical location but as an ideological construct and as a rhetorical device available to the poem’s internal speakers. Skutsch conjectures that Ann. 344– 5 originate in Ennius’ replication of a speech of the Lampsacene embassy to Massilia and Rome in the 190 s BCE, in which the Lampsacenes requested that Rome protect them from Antiochus, on the grounds of their kinship with the Romans through Troy.³² This conjecture rests on the conventional estimate of the narrative of Book 10, which is itself no more than a hypothesis; and it is too precise to be underwritten by our surviving evidence about the text. Nevertheless, Skutsch’s conjecture well illustrates the type of function the fragment is liable to have had, for it is sensitive to critical characteristics in the fragment: the lines carry an evident emotional charge – witness the insistent p and c alliteration and the patent strength of sentiment associated with the reference to Troy’s now distant re-birth (exasperation, as on the Vergilian Juno’s part? hope, as in the case of Skutsch’s conjecture about the suppliant Lampsacenes?). It is clear that the concept of Troy is being engaged to some charged rhetorical end, and it is this that guarantees, if not the accuracy of Skutsch’s particular conjecture, then at any rate the powerful emotional valence of Troy, as a cipher for Rome’s

 Macr. Sat. 6.1.60. Macrobius also supplies us with the knowledge that the antecedent of the relative is Pergama.  A. 7.294– 6: num Sigeis occumbere campis,/ num capti potuere capi? num incensa cremauit/ Troia uiros). The first half-line of this quotation is omitted by Macrobius.  Skutsch 1985 ad loc.; Erskine 2001, 40, 169 – 72.

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ancient resilience and resourcefulness. The relationship among the Annales, the Iliad and the Aeneid, as constructed for the modern reader by Macrobius (as, for example, at Sat. 6.1.60, above), naturalizes this use of ‘Troy’ to Ennius’ epic for that reader. The East, however, figures not only in terms of Troy, and not only in ways that the epic tradition as we know it would lead us to expect: the Herodotean East also appears, and here there can be no doubt of its figurative as opposed to literal value. I have argued elsewhere for the presence of Herodotus in the remains of Ennian battle-narrative, as illustrated by the fragments regularly assigned to Cannae (Ann. 263 – 7).³³ I suggested that the battle-language of the Annales is standardized and non-particularizing, in imitation of the effects of Homeric formula; and that, in addition to the images of fighting inspired by Homer, at least some of its standard tropes (phrases such as fit ferreus imber at Ann. 266 and the idea of fighting against the slanting rays of the sun at Ann. 265)³⁴ are borrowed from the Greek historiographical tradition, and in particular from Herodotus. Another, more direct signal of Herodotus’ presence survives. At L 7.21, Varro quotes and explains a fragment of an unknown Roman tragedy thus: ‘quasi Hellespontum et claustra’ [trag. frg. inc. inc. 107 R], quod Xerses quondam eum locum clausit; nam ut Ennius ait ‘isque Hellesponto pontem contendit in alto’ (“‘as if the Hellespont and its barriers’, because Xerxes once barred up that place; for, as Ennius says, “he drew a bridge out over the deep Hellespont,” Ann. 369). The critical piece of information Varro supplies is that the referent of Ennius’ unnamed is is Xerxes, who has no natural place in Ennius’ primary narrative of Roman history. In search of a moment where mention of Xerxes might be relevant to that primary narrative, Skutsch posits that the line belongs to a speaker expressing Roman apprehension at Antiochus’ movement West towards Rome in 192; hence, he places it in Book 13.³⁵ Skutsch’s conjecture is again too precise for certainty,³⁶ but it plausibly sketches a role for the fragment in pro-

 Elliott 2010, 250 – 3.  On the latter, however, see n. 68 to Appendix 1 below.  “The bridge built by Xerxes. The fragment clearly has to do with apprehension felt at Rome in 192 when war against Antiochus seemed inevitable: Livy 35.23 and 41…” (Skutsch 1985, 535). The source, Varro (L 7.21), does not, however, indicate which book of the Annales (or even which work) the fragment comes from, and I fail to find the argument which makes the assignation of this fragment and the following Ann. 370 to Book 13 “certain conjecture” (Skutsch 1985, 535, introduction to Books 13 – 14). Neither can I find the argument that shows conclusively that the narratives of Books 13 and 14 are certainly and exclusively devoted to the war against Antiochus.  See Clarke (1999, 99 – 100) on the recurrence of the Greek Xerxes-episode in Polybius’ history of Rome, likewise as an analogy for recent threats to Rome. She there cites Polyb. 3.6.2 (the Carthaginian crossing of the River Iberos in contravention of the treaty of 226 BCE) and

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moting an analogy between a critical moment in Herodotus’ history and an event of Roman history as described in the Annales. With material as fragmentary as that of the Annales today, it is impossible to glean more than hints about the organization and labelling of material and the ideological values promoted as a result. Yet, together with Ann. 344– 5, Ann. 369 at any rate suggests that the spectre of the East, as it was known through Greek literature, loomed over Ennius’ interpretation of current Roman events and that the poet thus made use of the East as it was figured in Greek epic and historiography to spark the imagination of his audience in construing their own recent undertakings. It is therefore perhaps worth entertaining the possibility that the bias visible in the extant record, with its preponderance of fragments associable with theatres of war East of Rome, to the virtual exclusion of those associable with Rome’s encounters with Western Europe, may not entirely be the result of the hazards of transmission. Rome’s clashes with the East in the form of Antiochus, Hannibal, and perhaps other opponents too, could be endowed with an ideological force, after the manner of Greek presentations of earlier clashes between the representatives of Asia and Greece;³⁷ engagement with theatres to the West offered no similar opportunity, at least none afforded by the emulation of those predecessors with whom Ennius appears most closely to have associated himself. Two principal factors abet the idea that Ennius found himself engaging afresh that notion of the archetypal clash between East and West that the Iliad, especially in its re-interpretation in the Persian Wars, represented: as already considered, the modelling of the Annales on specific works of Greek epic and Greek historiography, to which the notion of a clash between continents was central, made Ennius’ epic a natural heir to that idea. Besides this, the Annales were a national epic touting national virtues, in which Rome’s confrontation of her enemies appears to have been figured as the confrontation between civilization and moral order on the one hand and barbarity and decadence on the other. Lines figuring Rome as the representative of moral order have, from

Polyb. 3.66.6 (Hannibal’s crossing of the Po by means of a bridge of boats) as instances of the episode’s recurrence. Though no mention of these moments is traceable among the surviving fragments of the Annales, they fall within the scope of his narrative and could also be considered as possible occasions for Ennius’ introduction of Ann. 369.  See Hardie (1986, 311– 13) on ‘Europe and Asia’ as a universalizing expression in the Aeneid, and Horsfall (2000, 175) on Europae atque Asiae at A. 7.223 regarding the idea of the Trojan War as “the first conflict between the continents”; cf. Feeney 2007a, 82, citing Horsfall. Both Hardie and Horsfall emphasize that the idea of the Trojan War as the first conflict between continents is Herodotean and not Homeric.

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the earliest moments at which we can access readings of the epic, been among its most popular. Ann. 156 (moribus antiquis res stat Romana uirisque, “by its laws of old and by its men the Roman state stands firm”) is ascribed by a popular hypothesis to Manlius Torquatus’ speech to his son for disobeying military orders. This line’s fame in antiquity can be measured by the frequency with which it was quoted or alluded to.³⁸ The same is true of Ann. 363 (unus homo nobis cunctando restituit rem, “one man alone, by delaying, restored our state”), which, according to Cicero (Off. 1.84) and Livy (30.26.7), regarded Fabius Maximus ‘Cunctator’.³⁹ Against such lines can be set another series, which advertise the sacrilegious nature, vices, and moral failings of Rome’s Eastern enemies: thus Ann. 214 (Poeni soliti suos sacrificare puellos, “it is Carthaginian custom to sacrifice their children”) and Ann. 287 (iniqua superbia Poeni, “the Carthaginian’s perverse arrogance”).⁴⁰ In commenting on Numanus Remulus’ slur on Trojan clothing at A. 9.616, Gellius (6.12.6 – 7) informs us: Q. quoque Ennius Carthaginiensium ‘tunicatam iuuentutem’ [Ann. 303] non uidetur sine probro dixisse (“Q. Ennius too appears to have intended a slur in speaking of the ‘young men’ of Carthage ‘in their trailing gowns’”). Gellius’ reading implies that the anti-Eastern bias familiar from the Aeneid was at least occasionally available, whether in implicit or in explicit form, to the ancient reader of the Annales. Some lines also appear to speak to the consequences of the moral failings of these exotic peoples of the East, as at Ann. 310, perculsi pectora Poeni (“the Carthaginians, daunted in their hearts”). Such implications do not occur in the context of Rome’s enemies to the West or her enemies and allies on the Italian peninsula. Indeed, the line Ann. 471 (Hispane non Romane memoretis loqui me, “you ought to bear in mind that I am speaking after the Spanish and not the Roman fashion”) might be read as implying that a Spanish speaker made a bid to co-opt the moral high ground from the Romans – perhaps, as Norden suggested, in the aftermath of Saguntum.⁴¹ The activation of the East-West dynamic is not, however, a hypothesis that, in my interpretation, entails that Ennius consistently represented Rome’s Eastern enemies as morally inferior.⁴² It may be that Philip V of Macedon or Hannibal or  See Skutsch 1985, 317.  Ibid. 529 – 30.  Cf. ibid. 463 on this phrase: “superbia may refer mainly to the victor’s pride… but is brought close to ὕβρις by the addition of iniqua, and the subject matter suggests that ὑβρίζειν was in the poet’s mind. An overtone of the moral-political notion, debellare superbos,… may well be present as well”.  See n. 25 above.  Compare Slaney (this volume) on the opportunity given by Valerius Flaccus to Medea’s nurse (Val. Fl. 5.352– 3), Sol (Val. Fl. 1.525 – 6) and Aeetes (Val. Fl. 7.35 – 47) to express alternative perspectives on the new arrivals in Colchis and to co-opt the moral high ground.

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another enemy of Rome is vilified and caricatured at Ann. 319 – 20: Cyclopis uenter uelut olim turserat alte/ carnibus humanis distentus (“just as once the Cyclops’ belly had swollen huge, crammed with pieces of human flesh”);⁴³ yet the assimilation to an Homeric character, however grotesque, also mythologizes and thus elevates the tenor of this simile, whoever or whatever it was. Less compromisingly, the portrayal of Pyrrhus in the Annales is clearly modelled on the noble and humane Achilles of Iliad 24, even if it also takes into account the same text’s inarticulate Ajax.⁴⁴ At Balb. 50 – 1, arguing in defense of the citizenship of a wealthy Spaniard (procured by Pompey in return for assistance during the Sertorian War), Cicero is able to present even the Ennian Hannibal’s words as worthy to be emulated by Roman commanders: etenim cum ceteris praemiis digni sunt qui suo labore et periculo nostram rem publicam defendunt, tum certe dignissimi sunt qui ciuitate ea donentur pro qua pericula ac tela subierunt. atque utinam qui ubique sunt propugnatores huius imperi possent in hanc ciuitatem uenire, et contra oppugnatores rei publicae de ciuitate exterminari! neque enim ille summus poeta noster Hannibalis illam magis cohortationem quam communem imperatoriam uoluit esse: hostem qui feriet, †erit, inquit, mi† Carthaginiensis, quisquis erit. cuiatis siet, (Ann. 234 – 5) id habent hodie (Halm; hoc codd.) leue et semper habuerunt, itaque et ciuis undique fortis uiros adsciuerunt et hominum ignobilium uirtutem persaepe nobilitatis inertiae praetulerunt. For in fact, though those who by their own toil and at their own peril come to the aid of our state are worthy of all possible other rewards also, they are in the first place worthy to have bestowed on them the citizenship of the state for which they have faced dangers and wars. And would that all the bulwarks of this empire, wherever they are, could be gathered into this state and that conversely all its assailants be banished from its territory! For that most distinguished poet of ours did not intend that Hannibal’s famous exhortation be considered his own more than the common exhortation of all generals: He who will strike the enemy, he said, will be a Carthaginian in my eyes, whoever he shall be. Wherever he hail from… Today too they consider this a small thing, as they always have, and so they adopted into the citizenry brave men from everywhere and preferred the courage of men of no particularly eminent rank to the sloth of the nobility.

Cicero thus treats the Ennian Hannibal’s dignified and graceful words as exemplary; and, given that his audience as well as himself were educated on the An-

 See Flores/Esposito/Jackson/Paladini/Salvatore/Tomasco 2006, 122– 4 for a full history of editorial conjectures about the simile’s missing referent.  See Elliott 2007, 52– 4.

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nales, Cicero’s interpretation here is presumably not entirely inconsonant with the effect of ‘Hannibal’’s words in the original text. It may have been precisely the familiarity and the established patriotism of the Annales that safely allowed room for a sympathetic and ennobling presentation of characters across the board, regardless of ethnicity or political allegiance. After all, the Romans are themselves lent dignity by Ennius’ portrayal of her foes as her equals in moral rank;⁴⁵ Rome’s eventual victory is the more meaningful the more redoubtable her enemies and the more closely they challenge Rome’s ethical claims to supremacy.⁴⁶ Cicero himself comes close to pointing this out at Off. 1.38, where he differentiates between two types of war and two types of enemy: a more brutal war, waged for survival; and a nobler war, waged for sovereignty and empire, represented by the conflicts with an in this case generic – i. e. not identifiably Ennian—Hannibal and with a specifically Ennian Pyrrhus: cum uero de imperio decertatur belloque quaeritur gloria, causas omnino subesse tamen oportet easdem, quas dixi paulo ante iustas causas esse bellorum. sed ea bella, quibus imperii proposita gloria est, minus acerbe gerenda sunt. ut enim cum ciui aliter contendimus, si est inimicus, aliter si competitor (cum altero certamen honoris et dignitatis est, cum altero capitis et famae), sic cum Celtiberis, cum Cimbris bellum ut cum inimicis gerebatur, uter esset, non uter imperaret, cum Latinis, Sabinis, Samnitibus, Poenis, Pyrrho de imperio dimicabatur. Poeni foedifragi, crudelis Hannibal, reliqui iustiores. Pyrrhi quidem de captiuis reddendis illa praeclara. (Ann. 183 – 90, quoted in Appendix 1.II (b), below) Now when the contest is for empire, and glory in war is what is at stake, then still the same reasons I described just a little while ago as the just causes of wars should be operative. But those wars that aim at the glory of extended rule should be waged less bitterly. Just as we compete differently with our fellow-citizens, depending on whether they are actually our [personal or political] foe or simply our rival in an election (for with the one the contest is for respect and office, with the other for life and reputation), so we waged war with the Celtiberi and the Cimbri as with total enemies, to decide who would survive, not who would be in control; but with the Latins, the Sabines, the Samnites, the Carthaginians

 Cf. Woodman 1977, 107 on Vel. 96.3: “the more difficult the foreign terrain in which the laudatus won his victories, the more the victories are themselves magnified”. I am grateful to Carole Newlands for this reference.  I therefore on principle disagree with the idea that one can use the nobility of a sentiment or the sophistication of a speech as a means of adjudicating between possible speakers, as Skutsch does with regard to Ann. 382– 3 (nunc est ille dies quom gloria maxima sese/ nobis ostentat, si uiuimus siue morimur) in writing that “the sentiment is worthy of a Roman commander rather than of Antiochus” (Skutsch 1985, 546); and similarly with regard to Ann. 414, when he dismisses the possibility that the speaker was the Illyrian king Epulo on the grounds it is inadmissible that “Ennius [would] have given so elaborate a speech on a purely tactical matter… to a barbarian chief” (ibid. 579).

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and with Pyrrhus we fought for rule. Amongst those, the Carthaginians were treacherous, Hannibal cruel, but the rest acted with greater justice. And in fact, those words of Pyrrhus’ on the return of the prisoners-of-war are outstanding…

The close, emulative relationship Ennius constructs between his poem and the Iliad in my view promotes the likelihood that the appearance of an ennobling presentation of Pyrrhus and Hannibal, as it emerges from these Ciceronian fragments of the Annales, is not deceptive. One of the most immediately striking characteristics of the Iliad is its humane view of the participants in its narrative across ethnic lines.⁴⁷ The recreation of this dynamic between opposing parties would readily have followed from Ennius’ close replication of Homer, which appears both in the detail of his language and in the recreation of at least some full episodes. In addition, specifically Roman terms appear to be used of non-Romans in the Annales: for example, if Skutsch’s editorial conjectures and standard accounts of the progression of the narrative are right, matronae at Ann. 418, attested for Book 16, ought to refer to the women of a non-Roman (possibly Istrian) town;⁴⁸ and the legiones at Ann. 292 to Hannibal’s army. These re-designations of foreigners in Roman terms (not unusual in texts of this period) suggest analogies and commonalities between Romans and non-Romans, which could have served as vehicles for introducing sympathy across national barriers. Speculation about the distribution of the remaining geographical references of the Annales has led me to suggest that a polarizing East-West dynamic broadly governed the text, while nevertheless allowing for the sympathetic representation of non-Romans, including Easterners. It is perhaps worth making one final point in conclusion. It is in any case clear from the basic parameters of the Annales as we know them – the presentation of Rome as central in a new, international setting and the co-option of the Greek past – that Ennius radically re-negotiated Rome’s ideological role in the world. But if, beyond this, Ennius fathered on to the story of Rome an inherited East-West dynamic, that would further mean that Rome would, on the one hand, be revealed Greece’s heir, the primary power foisting off the hostile Orient – an appearance that Rome’s recent major victories against Hannibal and Antiochus could have helped bolster. Yet, alongside Roman acts of aggression that made Rome in her own right an enemy of Greece, Ennius’ choice to highlight Roman descent from Troy – as suggested by Ann. 14 (the death of Priam at Greek hands), Ann. 15 – 16 (Venus’ gift of prophecy to Anchises) and especially Ann. 344– 5 (Troy’s renascence) (all quoted above) – much as it echoed accepted legend and the self-presentation of leading

 Fornara (1983, 63 – 4) suggests that this trait is a formative influence on Greek historiography.  Cf. Elliott 2007, 51.

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Roman families as descended from Trojan heroes,⁴⁹ could only have heightened the resulting paradox. Ennius’ negotiation of geography thus has potentially complex ramifications for our sense of his treatment of Roman identity, ethics and the ideology.

Alternative ‘Spaces’ in the Annales: Ilia’s Dream (Ann. 34 – 50), Romulus and Remus (Ann. 72 – 91) and the ‘Good Companion’ Fragment (Ann. 268 – 86) Above we have considered what might be gleaned from the fragments of the Annales about the organization of the nameable spaces of the poem’s male and martial arena. Here we will consider three extended fragments, which between them offer an alternative view of the use and conception of space in the Annales. Names are key to only one of the three fragments to which we now turn: tellingly, this is Ann. 72– 91 (the augurate of Romulus and Remus), the fragment whose actors well represent the dominant male, political and military cast of the poem. The absence of names from the fragment describing Ilia’s dream in particular is very clearly not the result of the accidents of transmission but rather part of a deliberate portrayal of Ilia’s psychological experience and perspective, expressed via her relationships to the space into which the dream thrusts her.⁵⁰ Ilia’s dream and the ‘good companion’ fragments have in common a novel interplay between indoor and outdoor space. The former is ostensibly set indoors, in Ilia’s bedchamber, where she has just woken from her dream, but takes us rapidly to an unnamed outdoor space unfamiliar to the dreamer; the latter is ostensibly set outdoors, at a major battle (its name lost to us), but takes us to an interior space which turns out to be the arena in which a non-military type

 See most fully Erskine (2001, 15 – 43), who quotes the standard secondary literature in which Republican Roman self-understanding as descended from Troy is taken for granted (ibid. 16). Erskine himself, however, seeks to re-assess this picture, emphasizing the extent to which our access to the earlier Republican understanding of the relationship between Troy and Rome is filtered through the Iulii.  See Ormand and Keith (this volume) – the latter on Valerius Flaccus’ use of Ovidian landscapes of desire – for comparable readings of space as an expression of psychology. Ilia’s disorientation, as I describe it below, could perhaps also be seen as a forerunner of that (in their case, occasional) loss of perspective and of security that Valerius Flaccus’ Argonauts suffer in the reading of Slaney (this volume).

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of prowess can be appreciated. Within each of these spaces, the alternative perspectives of individuals who normally occupy less privileged positions come momentarily but memorably into view. Hand in hand with the individualization of perspective in these fragments goes the individualization of language. In stark contrast to the constantly re-circulating, stylized language in which the fighting of the dominant, martial arena is described, the language of these episodes is unique.⁵¹ No names are attached to the alternative spaces they describe. For whereas the stylization and resulting interchangeability of the battle-descriptions means in effect that names are necessary to the organization of that space, the non-recurring descriptive detail itself of the Ilia-fragment and of the ‘good companion’ fragment sets off the spaces they delimit. At the start of Ilia’s dream, we find ourselves first in Ilia’s bed-chamber at night, in an exclusively female space,⁵² shared by Ilia, her half-sister, and the nurse, and illuminated only by the torch the old woman brings the two girls. The dream has pulled Ilia, however, into a world outdoors, haunted by elusive male figures, in which she finds herself disoriented and distressed. The fragment runs thus: et cita cum tremulis anus attulit artubus lumen. talia tum memorat lacrimans, exterrita somno: ‘Eurydica prognata, pater quam noster amauit, uires uitaque corpus meum nunc deserit omne. nam me uisus homo pulcer per amoena salicta et ripas raptare locosque nouos. ita sola postilla, germana soror, errare uidebar tardaque uestigare et quaerere te neque posse corde capessere: semita nulla pedem stabilibat. exim compellare pater me uoce uidetur his uerbis: “o gnata, tibi sunt ante gerendae aerumnae, post ex fluuio fortuna resistet.” haec ecfatus pater, germana, repente recessit nec sese dedit in conspectum corde cupitus, quamquam multa manus ad caeli caerula templa tendebam lacrumans et blanda uoce uocabam.

 Not only does the language of these episodes not recur among the extant fragments (a fact that of itself might not suffice to convince, given the extent to which our record is maimed); but, unlike the battle-fragments, which, as we have seen, emanate mainly from the scholarly and lexicographical traditions, the Ilia- and ‘good companion’ fragments were selected for content, by ancient readers with full or considerable access to the Annales. (Our source for Ann. 34– 50, Ilia, is Cic. Div. 1.40 – 1; that for Ann. 268 – 86, the ‘good companion’ is Gell. 12.4.4.) This suggests that they stood out from the regular narrative as especially memorable.  Keith 2000, 42– 4.

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uix aegro cum corde meo me somnus reliquit.’ (Ann. 34– 50) Rapidly, with trembling limbs, the old woman brought the light. Then, in tears, terrified out of her sleep, she [Ilia] gave this account: ‘Child of Eurydice, beloved of our father, even now my life-strength is seeping from my entire body. For it seemed to me that a handsome man hurried me away through lush willowy river-banks, places unknown to me. And so, thereafter, dear sister, it seemed I wandered alone and slowly cast around and sought you yet was not able to find you, ?much as I longed for you?:⁵³ for there was no path to guide my feet. Then it seemed our father addressed me, with these words: “My daughter, first there are hardships for you to endure; thereafter, your fortunes, emerging from the floodtide, will find their foothold.” Once he had said this, sister, our father of a sudden withdrew, and did not return to my sight, though I longed for him earnestly, and though I lifted my hands many a time to the azure regions of the sky in my tears and called to him entreatingly. And only just now has sleep left me, all sick at heart.’

The contrast between the private space in which Ilia recounts her story and the unfamiliar external dream-world is heightened by the effects of light Ennius describes, when the darkened, interior room, lit only by the nurse’s torch, gives way to an exterior space lit by the daylight that allows Ilia clearly to perceive details (amoena salicta, l. 38; ripas, l. 39; locos nouos, l. 39), although she does so uncomprehendingly. The most recurrent geographical feature of the outdoor landscape in which Ilia finds herself is the river, which turns out to have multiple extensions, literal and metaphorical, present and future. The physical river implied by the ripae of l. 39 has an echo in the metaphorical fluuium, by which Aeneas refers to the hardships ahead for Ilia (l. 45). According to ‘Porphyry’’s account of the Annales, these hardships will turn out to involve another close encounter with a physical river, in which Ennius’ Amulius has Ilia drowned.⁵⁴ The eery echoes among these multiple extensions does something to capture Ilia’s confused emotional experience of the distressing present and of the threatening future in this, for her, alien landscape. The line by which she prefaces her narrative (uires uitaque corpus meum nunc deserit omne, Ann. 37) sums up its devastating effect on her. If the details of this landscape are strange to Ilia (cf. locosque nouos, Ann. 39),⁵⁵ they constitute easily recognizable elements of the world in which the males of the narrative regularly operate and which they (alone) can

 See Skutsch 1985, 199 on the difficulties of construing the phrase corde capessere; he glosses the phrase as cupitam capessere, with “to reach you” the only sense possible for capessere.  See Ann. I. xxxix, quoted in n. 56 below.  See Keith 2000, 43, 45 – 6 on the function of the description of the landscape in the passage, including the phrase locosque nouos, as a metaphor for sexual initiation.

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name.⁵⁶ To her, their specific identity is of no interest, and so, because the fragment describes the landscape from her perspective, its features remain nameless. This namelessness well communicates Ilia’s bewilderment within the new, male territory in which she finds herself. Her inability to navigate this landscape is marked by her failed quest for her sister (ll. 39 – 42) and by her futile search for a path through it to take her back to familiar surroundings and familiar company (l. 42). The mystery shrouding the landscape reflects the mystery, to Ilia, of the individual whom she can only describe as homo pulcher (l. 38), who accompanies her there. Her rapid and abstract description of this encounter with Mars (ll. 38 – 9) suggests that she little knows what to make of it. Even her father, whose presence she welcomes, speaks in riddles and appears only in a fleeting vision (ll. 44– 9). It is to these mysterious (Mars) or elusive (Aeneas) males that this landscape seems properly to belong. As Alison Keith has pointed out, it takes male political and military agents to demarcate and control what remains from Ilia’s perspective a landscape unmarked by recognizable signs of human society.⁵⁷ When we revisit this territory (or its extension) in the Romulus and Remus fragment (Ann. 72– 91), it is from the perspective of males who have already begun to parcel it up into discrete and nameable features. The fragment is transmitted by Cicero (Div. 1.107– 8), supplemented by Gellius (7.6.9), thus: curantes magna cum cura tum cupientes regni dant operam simul auspicio augurioque. in †monte Remus auspicio sedet atque secundam solus auem seruat. at Romulus pulcer in alto quaerit Auentino, seruat genus altiuolantum. certabant urbem Romam Remoramne uocarent. omnibus cura uiris uter esset induperator. expectant ueluti consul quom mittere signum uolt, omnes auidi spectant ad carceris oras quam mox emittat pictos e faucibus currus:

 Named rivers associated with male ritual or military activity are among the recurrent physical features of the poem. Thus teque pater Tiberine tuo cum flumine sancto, Ann. 26; quod per amoenam urbem leni fluit agmine flumen, Ann. 163; sulpureas posuit spiramina Naris ad undas, Ann. 222; et Tiberis flumen uomit in mare salsum, Ann. 453; atque manu magna Romanos impulit amnis, Ann. 581; cf. ‘Porphyry’’s testimonium: Ilia auctore Ennio in amnem Tiberim iussu Amulii regis Albanorum praecipitata Antemnis Anieni matrimonio est, Ann. I.xxxix, and that of the Orig. gen. Rom. 20.3 (Ann. I.xliv). Other lines also mention fluvial bodies of water, such as the mysterious Ann. 5, desunt riuos camposque remanant; and postquam constitit †isti fluuius, qui est omnibus princeps/ †qui sub ouilia†, Ann. 63 – 4.  Keith 2000, 44.

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sic expectabat populus atque ore timebat rebus utri magni uictoria sit data regni. interea sol albus recessit in infera noctis. exin candida se radiis dedit icta foras lux et simul ex alto longe pulcerrima praepes laeua uolavit auis. simul aureus exoritur sol cedunt de caelo ter quattuor corpora sancta auium, praepetibus sese pulcrisque locis dant. conspicit inde sibi data Romulus esse propritim auspicio regni stabilita scamna solumque. (Ann. 72– 91) With great care then, in their eagerness for rule, they set about taking the auspices. Remus takes up his seat †on the hill for his auspicate and in isolation awaits the arrival of the birds of omen. Handsome Romulus for his part seeks reply on the lofty Aventine, awaiting the arrival of birds on the wing. They were settling by contest whether to call the city Roma or Remora. The entire population is anxious to know who would be leader. They wait as when the consul is about to give the signal and all direct their gazes eagerly at the gates of the starting-post, to see how soon it will release the painted chariots from its maw: just so did the people wait and show their apprehension for the future on their faces, in their anxiety to know to which of the two the victory of great rule would be given. In the meantime, the gleaming sun retreated to the night below. And then bright light, struck forth, revealed itself by the sun’s beams, and at that moment from afar on high a most handsome swift flock flew by on the left. As soon as the golden sun arose, there make their way from the sky thrice four holy birds and disport themselves in fine lofty places. And so Romulus gathered that to him was given, as his own possession, kingship’s seat and territory, established by the omen.

Here, the description of the nameless features of a trackless landscape that had dominated the Ilia-fragment has been replaced entirely. At issue instead is the naming (l. 77) of a place already established and familiar, and the taking of political control (ll. 78, 90 – 1), the former act clearly symbolic of the latter.⁵⁸ There is no question as to what the site of the future city will be, and the participants of the narrative are sufficiently oriented in that site that places within it already have names: while textual corruption obscures the name of the mountain on which Remus’ conducts his augurate, in †monte (l. 74) at any rate looks like it conceals a place-name or at least an identifiable location;⁵⁹ and Romulus conducts his augury unambiguously in alto… Auentino (ll. 75 – 6). The location is in fact so clearly established that it helps anchor the anachronism in the simile comparing the suspense of the crowd to that at the games held in Republican

 Cf. Skutsch 1985, 226 on Romam Remoramne.  Skutsch (1985, 222) says that it was “the Remuria, the saxum on the south-eastern spur of the Aventine, originally a separate hill known as Murcus.”

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times (ll. 79 – 83). The western slope of the Aventine, the hill on which Ennius locates Romulus, faces onto the Circus Maximus, a likely location for the chariot-race envisaged in the text.⁶⁰ The sense is thus that, when Romulus spotted the ominous birds, he was in a place associated with the future site of the games that were to cause analogous suspense in their Republican audience. In this passage, place functions, then, as a linch-pin connecting different temporal strata by highlighting the unities among them. Besides this, the focus on the description of religious ritual (the augurate itself) and of the proper routines of communal life (as in the simile) promotes a sense of established order, reflecting the sense in these lines of actors at ease in a location they know and are able to control. Both the ritual and the games involve established procedure, each to take place in designated locations, in known temporal sequence. Indeed, the simile describing the crowd’s suspense only heightens the idea of a communal set of expectations on which the passage as a whole is predicated. The fragment thus ideally communicates its male actors’ ability to govern space and therefore to move through it in meaningful ways, that is, ones available for shared interpretation by the community at large. This ability stands in sharp contrast to Ilia’s disorientation in the male environment with which her dream presented her. She for her part could find no communally shared terms to describe that environment, to direct her expectations, or to promote the sense of her own understanding either of it or of the elusive figures that confronted her there. The difference between how location is figured in the Ilia-fragment and in the Romulus and Remus fragment has suggested that gender is a significant arbitrator in the poet’s descriptions of place. Description of place in the ‘good companion’ fragment, however, shares sufficient traits with the Ilia-fragment to suggest that a more dominant determinant in Ennius’ use of space lies in his manner of communicating the distribution of power among actors, in which gender is only one potentially operative factor. The passage is transmitted by Gellius (12.4), along with the information that it originates in Book 7 of Ennius’ Annales and, famously, that he, Gellius, had heard people say that the scholar L. Aelius Stilo (c. 2– 1 BCE), used to say that the description of its principal figure, the so-called ‘good companion’, was a veiled self-portrait by the poet.⁶¹ The other figure named in the passage is a ‘Servilius’, whose name Gellius amplifies as Ser-

 Skutsch (1985, 228) connects the games envisaged in the text to the ludi Romani, via the mention of the consul at l. 79. The most ancient site of the chariot-races of the ludi Romani was the Circus Maximus (Mommsen 1856, 79 – 87).  See Hardie 2007a, 132– 3, who includes a note of healthy scepticism about the identification attributed to Stilo.

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vilius Geminus, and whom Skutsch identifies as Cn. Servilius Geminus, consul of 217 BCE.⁶² Gellius also tells us that the passage came sub historia Gemini Seruili (“under the story of Servilius Geminus”, 12.4.1). The fragment, which shows multiple signs of textual corruption,⁶³ runs thus: haece locutus uocat quocum bene saepe libenter mensam sermonesque suos rerumque suarum consilium partit, magnam quom lassus diei partem fuisset de summis rebus regundis consilio indu foro lato sanctoque senatu; quoi res audacter magnas paruasque iocumque eloqueretur †et cuncta† malaque et bona dictu euomeret si qui uellet tutoque locaret; quocum multa uolup gaudia clamque palamque; ingenium quoi nulla malum sententia suadet ut faceret facinus leuis aut mala: doctus, fidelis, suauis homo, iucundus, suo contentus, beatus, scitus, secunda loquens in tempore, commodus, uerbum paucum, multa tenens antiqua, sepulta uentustas quae facit, et mores ueteresque nouosque †tenentem multorum ueterum leges diuomque hominumque prudentem qui dicta loquiue tacereue posset: hunc inter pugnas conpellat Servilius sic: (Ann. 268 – 86) Having finished this speech, he summons the man with whom right often at his pleasure he shares meal-time conversation and whom he apprises of his intentions for his affairs, when he has grown weary from the day, spent in large part on administering matters of state in the forum and sacred senate. To this man he unhesitatingly tells matters of great and small moment and jokes, and of all things bad and good to say he can unburden himself, if he feels the desire to, and safely entrust them; with whom many things pleasurable… joys both privately and publicly; a person no light-minded or treacherous sentiment can move to wicked action: a learned, faithful, pleasant man, agreeable, satisfied with his condition, happy, discerning; who speaks appropriately to the occasion; an obliging man, of few words, who has knowledge of many ancient matters which the passing of time covers in oblivion and †understands customs old and new, along with the ordinances of many ancient peoples, both divine and human; sagacious; able both to speak out and to keep silent. This man did Servilius address thus amid the fighting.

 Skutsch 1985, 447– 8. The historical identification is of small moment to the present argument.  See Skutsch 1985 ad loc.

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As Ilia’s dream does, the ‘good companion’ fragment thus introduces the poem’s audience to an arena alternative to the epic’s dominant martial space, alternative also to the civic and political spaces designated as Servilius’ habitual fields of action. It does so, strikingly, by cutting directly from the battlefield (cf. inter pugnas, “amid the fighting”, Ann. 286)⁶⁴ to the description of the ‘good companion’ in a domestic setting. That setting thus stands out against both the battle into which it is set and the forum and senate to which the passage (ll. 268 – 72) explicitly contrasts it.⁶⁵ In Servilius’ forensic and senatorial activity, we have an analogue (at a much later point in the poem’s temporal spectrum) to the spaces occupied by Romulus and Remus for their augurate and by the audience of the chariot-race in the simile of that passage: that is, a public space internal to the City – a type of space, then, the traceable mention of which is a comparative rarity among the surviving fragments. The good companion’s alternative space operates, as Ilia’s did too, in terms of personalities: it is the relationship between Servilius and the good companion on which this passage turns, just as the space of Ilia’s dream had thrown into relief the relationships between herself and her sister, herself and the homo pulcher, and herself and her father. The passage begins by making it clear that part of the value of the ‘good companion’ to Servilius lies in his absence from Servilius’ principal places of business (Ann. 272). The distinction in the two characters’ spheres of operation correlates clearly to the difference between their social function and utility. The space proper to the ‘good companion’, Servilius’ table (inseparable from the conversation that took place around it), is critical in allowing his virtues, subsequently enumerated, to flourish; they have no particular place in the public arena. If the final line of the fragment suggests that the ‘good companion’ has curiously managed to get himself introduced to the battlefield, it is clearly for his habitual purpose of private conversation (cf. compellat, l. 286), which is allowed to take place there via an extraordinary transference of context. The passage removes the audience’s mind as far from the battlefield as any Homeric simile does, offering relief from the fighting by displaying a peacetime counterpart to such activity. In a sense, by doing so, the passage allows the ‘good companion’ to bring both his usual setting and the activity that accompanies it with him to the battlefield; thus the link effected by hunc (l. 286) between the preceding lines and Servilius’ subsequent address to the ‘good companion’ (which the passage signals but of which we are deprived). Because the poet  On the interpretation of this phrase, see Skutsch 1985 ad loc. Skutsch there asserts that “we are undoubtedly at the battle of Cannae”. For his reasons for that claim, see again Skutsch 1985, 447– 8.  Cf. Skutsch 1985, 462.

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has thus allowed the ‘good companion’ to bring his setting with him, the latter does not find himself disoriented when introduced to a sphere of action as alien to him as Ilia’s dream-context was to her; hence the absence of the psychological element so strong in Ilia’s dream. Instead, the alien setting for the description renders it salient within its environment – sufficiently so to account at least in part for its preservation at length by Gellius, as well for scholars’ ongoing puzzlement about its function in context.

Conclusion I have argued above that, for all the hazards involved in engaging with fragmentary works, the remains of the Annales allow us access to some aspects of the vision of the world the poem promoted. The fragments reflect a preoccupation with the expansion by military means of Rome’s influence over an increasingly far-flung environment, as is to be expected from the poem’s genre and its reputation in antiquity. The interests and limitations of the sources predetermine that, for the most part, specific geographical referents are denied us. Where geographical or ethnical referents are still traceable, they suggest a description of the world heavily laden with ideology, an ideology in which Rome stood as bastion of the Occident and in that sense usurped Greece’s ancient role. The longer fragments allow us to witness how the poet used space, both public and private, as a means of expressing characters’ individualized perspectives and their relationships to others in their environment. The characters’ negotiation of that space, and the terms which serve the poet (in the authorial voice or in the characters’ individual voices) to describe its features, appear as integral to the construction of character and the dynamic among the agents of the poem. Despite the vast gaps in our knowledge and the kaleidoscopic qualities of these as of all fragments, the remains of the Annales are sufficient to allow us to discern a complex treatment of space and geography that responds to the ancient world’s sense of the poem’s calibre and assures us of its ability, while it survived, to match in quality its more fortunate epic relatives.

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Appendix 1:⁶⁶ War in the Fragments of the Annales Total: 125 fragments = 173 lines (out of Skutsch’s 623 securely attributed extant lines)

I. Fighting in the pre-Republican material of Books 1 – 3 (8 fragments = 10 lines, out of a total of 149 surviving lines): (a) small-scale skirmishes or individual feuds: Ann. 69 – 70:** Ann. 71:** Ann. 130: Ann. 131: Ann. 132:

pars ludicre saxa iactant inter se licitantur occiduntur. ubi potitur ratus Romulus praedam ferro se caedi quam dictis his toleraret qui ferro minitere atque in te ningulus adnuit sese mecum decernere ferro

Book 1

Book 2

(b) armies (implying larger-scale engagements) Ann. 121:** Ann. 122:

quianam legiones caedimus ferro quamde tuas omnes legiones ac popularis

Book 2

(c) regular battle (?) Ann. 143 – 4:

postquam defessi sunt stare et spargere sese hastis ansatis, concurrunt undique telis

Book 3

 The system of asterisks I reproduce in Appendices 1– 3 is Skutsch’s. No asterisks mean that at least one of the fragment’s sources supplies a book-number for the fragment, as well as a definite assignation to Ennius and to the Annales; one asterisk signals that the fragment is transmitted by its source without book-number and so that the assignation to a definite book is the result of editorial conjecture; two asterisks signal that the fragment is not explicitly assigned to the Annales by its source; three that the fragment has been transmitted without even the poet’s name. It is important to note the extent to which the arrangement of fragments into books is the result of modern editorial activity and is based on a variety of modern assumptions, among them the assumptions that the narrative of the Annales presented events in reliably chronological order, that lines reliably represent narrative in the authorial voice given in that chronological order rather than more mobile character-speeches, and that the historical referents of fragments are readily ascertainable, despite the vacuum of information that typically surrounds them. The book-numbers represent Skutsch’s organisation of the text.

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II. Fighting in the narrative of the Republic, Books 4 – 18 (84 fragments = 129 lines, out of a total of 292 surviving lines): (a) battle-action proper (24 fragments, 34 lines) Ann. 151: Ann. 152:** Ann. 160:** Ann. 161: Ann. 173 – 4:⁶⁷ Ann. 236 – 7: Ann. Ann. Ann. Ann. Ann. Ann. Ann. Ann. Ann. Ann. Ann. Ann.

264:⁶⁸ 266: 267: 289:** 291:** 298: 315: 355: 356: 384: 387: 389 – 90:

Ann. 391– 8:

Ann. 409:

Romani scalis: summa nituntur opum ui Volsculus perdidit Anxur bellum aequis [de] manibus nox intempesta diremit ansatas mittunt de turribus †decimo tamen induuolans secum abstulit hasta insigne denique ui magna quadrupes, eques atque elephanti proiciunt sese iamque fere puluis ad caeli uasta uidetur hastati spargunt hastas. fit ferreus imber densantur campis horrentia tela uirorum summus ibi capitur meddix, occiditur alter de muris rem gerit Opscus uiri uaria ualidis uiribus luctant puluis fulua uolat tum clipei resonunt et ferri stridit acumen missaque per pectus dum transit striderat hasta horrescit telis exercitus asper utrimque omnes occisi occensique in nocte serena occumbunt multi letum ferroque lapique aut intra muros aut extra praecipe casu undique conueniunt uelut imber tela tribuno: configunt parmam, tinnit hastilibus umbo, aerato sonitu galeae, sed nec pote quisquam undique nitendo corpus discerpere ferro. semper abundantes hastas frangitque quatitque. totum sudor habet corpus, multumque laborat, nec respirandi fit copia: praepete ferro Histri tela manu iacientes sollicitabant. qui clamos oppugnantis uagore uolanti

Book 4 Book 5 Book 6 Book 7 Book 8

Book 9 Book 11 Book 14 Book 15

Book 16

 Ostensibly, this fragment’s source, Macrobius (Sat. 6.1.53), gives its book-number as 16 (“in sexto decimo”). On Skutsch’s reasons for treating decimo as the first word of the quotation from Ennius, see Skutsch 1985, 339 – 40 & 31– 4; Kaster removes decimo altogether, on the hypothesis that it was wrongly transferred in by a scribe from Macr. Sat. 6.1.50 (Kaster 2010, 52).  I have excluded for the sake of argument Ann. 265 (amplius exaugere obstipo lumine solis), which is regularly assigned, along with Ann. 263 (see below under “cavalry”), 264, 266 and 267 to the narrative of Cannae. Its source (Fest. Apogr. 210) looks only to illustrate the use of obstipum as equivalent to oblicum (obliquum) and gives no sense of the line’s context; battle is only one of any number of possibilities.

Space and Geography in Ennius’ Annales

Ann. 410: Ann. 411: Ann. 428: (?) Ann. 440:

ingenio forti dextra latus pertudit hasta concidit et sonitum simul insuper arma dederunt tollitur in caelum clamor exortus utrimque aere fulua ⁶⁹

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Book 17 Book 18

(b) Military manœvres, speeches and other preliminaries to battle or war, discussion of military policy or summaries of wartime activity (29 fragments = 50 lines) Ann. 167:** Ann. 169: Ann. 170 – 2:*

aio te Aeacida Romanos uincere posse balantum pecudes quatit, omnes arma requirunt proletarius publicitus scutisque feroque ornatur ferro. muros urbemque forumque excubiis curant. Ann. 183 – 90:** nec mi aurum posco nec mi pretium dederitis: non cauponantes bellum sed belligerantes ferro, non auro uitam cernamus utrique. uosne uelit an me regnare era quidue ferat Fors uirtute experiamus, et hoc simul accipe dictum: quorum uirtuti belli fortuna pepercit eorundem me libertati parcere certum est. dono – ducite – doque – uolentibus cum magnis dis. Ann. 191– 4: diui hoc audite parumper: ut pro Romano populo prognariter armis certando prudens animam de corpore mitto,

Ann. 195 – 6: aut animo superant atque asp rima fera belli spernunt Ann. 197– 8:** stolidum genus Aeacidarum: bellipotentes sunt magis quam sapientipotentes Ann. 199 – 200:** quo uobis mentes, rectae quae stare solebant antehac, dementes sese flexere †uia Ann. 201: sed ego hic animo lamentor Ann. 202:** orator sine pace redit regique refert rem Ann. 213:** quantis consiliis quantumque potesset in armis Ann. 216:*** Appius indixit Carthaginiensibus bellum Ann. 227– 8: qua Galli furtim noctu summa arcis adorti moenia concubia uigilesque repente cruentant Ann. 230: dum censent terrere minis hortantur ibe sos Ann. 233: fortibus est fortuna uiris data Ann. 234– 5:** hostem qui feriet †erit (inquit) mi† Carthaginiensis quisquis erit. cuiatis siet Ann. 238: alter nare cupit, alter pugnare paratust Ann. 261: praecox est pugna Ann. 262: certare abnueo. metuo legionibus labem

Book 6

Book 7

Book 8

 For this line, cf. Ann. 315 (puluis fulua uolat) with the discussion at Elliott 2010, 251– 2.

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Ann. 292:** Ann. 309:** Ann. 326 – 8:

Ann. 330 – 1: Ann. 343: Ann. 347: Ann. 371– 3:

Ann. 412: Ann. 424: Ann. 425 – 6:

ob Romam noctu legiones ducere coepit Africa terribili tremit horrida terra tumultu aspectabat uirtutem legionis suai expectans si mussaret [dubitaret] quae denique pausa pugnandi fieret aut duri laboris insignita fere tum milia militum octo duxit delectos bellum tolerare potentes regni uersatum summam uenere columnam horitatur induperator Hannibal audaci cum pectore de me hortatur ne bellum faciam, quem credidit esse meum cor suasorem summum et studiosum robore belli navorum imperium seruare est induperantum prandere iubet horiturque hic insidiantes uigilant, partim requiescunt succincti gladiis, sub scutis, ore fauentes

Book 9 Book 10

Book 13

Book 16

(c) Naval exercises, fleets and sailing (7 fragments = 12 lines) Ann. 218: Ann. 219:* Ann. 294– 6:

Ann. 377– 8: Ann. 379 – 80: Ann. 382– 3: Ann. 388:

poste recumbite uestraque pectora pellite tonsis pone petunt, exim referunt ad pectora tonsas tonsamque tenentes parerent obseruarent portisculus signum quom dare coepisset uerrunt extemplo placidum mare: marmore flauo caeruleum spumat sale conferta rate pulsum quom procul aspiciunt hostes accedere uentis nauibus ueliuolis nunc est ille dies quom gloria maxima sese nobis ostentat, si uiuimus siue morimur malos defindunt, fiunt tabulata falaeque

Book 7 Book 8

Book 14

Book 15

(d) Cavalry (3 single-line fragments): Ann. 242: Ann. 263: Ann. 431:

explorant Numidae, totam quatit ungula terram consequitur. summo sonitu quatit ungula campum it eques et plausu caua concutit ungula terram

Book 7 Book 8 Book 17

(e) Weaponry (2 single-line fragments) Ann. 239: Ann. 381:⁷⁰

deducunt habiles gladios filo gracilento rumpia

Book 7 Book 14

(f) Enemies or allies (5 single-line fragments) Ann. 214:** Ann. 215:** Ann. 229:***

 See n. 84 below.

Poeni soliti suos sacrificare puellos Poeni stipendia pendunt Marsa manus, Paeligna cohors, Vestina uirum uis

Book 7

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Ann. 297: Ann. 310:***

Poenos Didone oriundos perculsi pectora Poeni

Book 8 Book 9

(g) The aftermath of battle or of war: triumphs; the defeat of enemies; the effects of war on women (12 fragments = 18 lines) Ann. 162: cogebant hostes lacrumantes ut misererent Ann. 180 – 2:*** qui antehac inuicti fuere uiri, pater optume Olympi, hos ego ui pugna uici uictusque sum ab isdem Ann. 243 – 4: legio †reditu †rumore †ruinas mox auferre domos populi rumore secundo Ann. 287:** his pernas succidit iniqua superbia Poeni Ann. 288: nunc hostes uino domiti somnoque sepulti Ann. 299:** Livius inde redit magno mactatus triumpho Ann. 300 – 1: rastros dente †fabres capsit causa poliendi agri Ann. 316: praeda exercitus undat Ann. 349: aegro corde, comis passis Ann. 366 – 8: omnes mortales uictores, cordibus uiuis laetantes, uino curatos somnus repente in campo passim mollissimus perculit acris Ann. 385 – 6: infit: “o ciues, quae me fortuna fero sic contudit indigno bello confecit acerbo Ann. 418: matronae moeros complent spectare fauentes

Book 5 Book 6

Book 7 Book 8

Book 9

Book 10 Book 12

Book 14 Book 16

(h) Metaphors for the onset of war (1 two-line fragment) Ann. 225 – 6:**

postquam Discordia taetra belli ferratos postes portesque refregit

Book 7

(i) Similes describing a violent clash (1 three-line fragment) Ann. 432– 4:

concurrunt ueluti uenti, quom spiritus Austri imbricitor Aquiloque suo cum flamine contra indu mari magno fluctus extollere certant

Book 17

(j) Invocations to sing of war or of particular wars (2 fragments = 3 lines) Ann. 322– 3:** Ann. 403:

insece Musa manu Romanorum induperator quod quisque in bello gessit cum rege Philippo quippe uetusta uirum non est satis bella moueri

Book 10 Book 16

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III. Fighting in the sedis incertae fragments (37 fragments = 41 lines, out of a total of 182 surviving lines): (a) battle-action proper (8 fragments = 10 lines): Ann. 483 – 4:** oscitat in campis caput a ceruice reuulsum semianimesque micant oculi lucemque requirunt Ann. 485 – 6:** quomque caput caderet carmen tuba sola peregit et pereunte uiro raucum sonus aere cucurrit Ann. 545:** clamor ad caelum uoluendus per aethera uagit Ann. 582:** pila retunduntur uenientibus obuia pilis Ann. 583:** decretum est stare corpora telis Ann. 584:** premitur pede pes atque armis arma teruntur Ann. 597:** runata recedit Ann. 612:** stant puluere campi

(b) military manœvres, preparations, speeches in advance of battle or war, discussion of military policy or summaries of wartime activity (14 single-line fragments): (?) Ann. 450:** Ann. 451:** Ann. 468:** Ann. 480:** Ann. 526:** Ann. 527:** Ann. 528:** Ann. 531:** Ann. 544:** Ann. 550:* Ann. 573:** Ann. 577:** Ann. 620:*** Ann. 623:**

iam cata signa fere sonitum dare uoce parabant at tuba terribili sonitu taratantara dixit et detondit agros laetos atque oppida cepit nostri cessere parumper Illyrii restant sicis sybinisque fodentes succincti gladiis, media regione cracentes leuesque sequuntur in hastis spiras legionibus nexit inde loci lituus sonitus effudit acutos atque atque accedit muros Romana iuuentus hos pestis necuit, pars occidit illa duellis cum legionibus quom proficiscitur induperator machina multa minax minitatur maxima muris crebrisuro

(c) Shipyards, war-ships or marine activity (3 fragments = 4 lines) Ann. 504:** idem campus habet textrinum nauibus longis Ann. 512:** multa foro ponet et agea. longa repletur Ann. 515 – 16:** ratibusque fremebat imber Neptuni Ann. 517:** tonsillas apiunt, configunt litus, aduncas

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(d) Elephants or cavalry (3 single-line fragments) Ann. 502:⁷¹** Ann. 599:** Ann. 611:**

it atrum campis agmen equitatus iit celerissimus tetros elephantos

(e) Weaponry (5 single-line fragments) Ann. 519:** Ann. 548:** Ann. 557:** Ann. 603:** Ann. 607:**

succincti corda machaeris aut permarceret paries percussus trifaci quae ualide ueniunt falarica missa heia machaeras teloque trabali

(f) Enemies or allies (1 two-line fragment) Ann. 474– 5:**

at non sic dubius fuit hostis Aeacida Burrus

(g) The aftermath of battle or of war: triumphs; the defeat of enemies; the effects of war on women (2 single-line fragments) Ann. 498:** Ann. 618:***

flentes plorantes lacrumantes obtestantes despoliantur eos et corpora nuda relinquont

 With the source, Serv. A. 4.404 (it nigrum campis agmen): hemistichium Ennii de elephantis dictum, quo ante Accius usus est de Indis.

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Appendix 2: Events at Rome I. Domestic affairs in the pre-Republican material of Books 1 – 3 (149 surviving securely attributed lines): See n. 8 to the text above.

II. Domestic affairs in the narrative of the Republic, Books 4 – 18 (16 fragments = 34 lines + 1 testimonium, out of a total of 292 surviving lines): Ann. 150:** Ann. 154– 5:** Ann. 158:⁷²** ? Ann. 170 – 2:*

Ann. 240 – 1:** ? Ann. 247– 53:

? Ann. 254– 5:⁷³ Ann. 256 – 7:** Ann. 290:** Ann. 299:** Ann. 304– 8:

et qui se sperat Romae regnare Quadratae septingenti sunt, paulo plus aut minus, anni augusto augurio postquam incluta condita Roma est quom nihil horridius umquam lex ulla iuberet proletarius publicitus scutisque feroque ornatur ferro. muros urbemque forumque excubiis curant Iuno Vesta Minerua Ceres Diana Venus Mars Mercurius Iouis Neptunus Volcanus Apollo proelia promulgantur, pellitur e medio sapientia, ui geritur res; spernitur orator bonus, horridus miles amatur; haud doctis dictis certantes, nec maledictis miscent inter sese inimicitias agitantes; non ex iure manu consertum, sed magis ferro – rem repetunt regnumque petunt – uadunt solida ui

aut occasus ubi tempusue audere, repressit uel tu dictator uel equorum equitumque magister esto uel consul Quintus pater quartum fit consul Liuius inde redit magno mactatus triumpho additur orator Cornelius suauiloquenti ore Cethegus Marcus Tuditano collega Marci filius. is dictus popularibus ollis qui tum uiuebant homines atque aeuom agitabant

Book 4

Book 5 Book 6

Book 7 Book 8

Book 9

 This line is transmitted as a supralinear addition by Ekkehart to his manuscript of Orosius. The context in Orosius indicates that the line refers to the burial alive of the Vestal Minucia in 337 BCE.  I include this fragment here because Skutsch argues, on the basis of possible analogues in Liv. 22.14 or 25 (see, however, n. 4 above), that it belongs to a speech given in Rome criticizing Fabius Maximus Cunctator. There is, however, no guarantee of this.

Space and Geography in Ennius’ Annales

flos delibatus populi Suadaique medulla Graecia Sulpicio sorti data, Gallia Cottae egregie cordatus homo, catus Aelius Sextus pendent peniculamenta unum ad quemque pedum unus homo nobis cunctando restituit rem. noenum rumores ponebat ante salutem. ergo postque magisque uiri nunc gloria claret ? Ann. 369:⁷⁶*** isque Hellesponto pontem contendit in alto

Ann. 324:** Ann. 329:⁷⁴** ? Ann. 362:⁷⁵ ? Ann. 363 – 5:

257

Book 10 Book 11 Book 12

Book 13 Book 16 Ann. XVI.viii:* an uero M. ille Lepidus, qui bis consul et pontifex maximus fuit, non solum memoriae testimonio sed etiam annalium litteris et summi poetae uoce laudatus est quod cum M. Fuluio collega, quo die censor est factus, homine inimicissimo, in campo statim rediit in gratiam (Cicero, Prov. Cons. 20)

III. Domestic affairs in the sedis incertae fragments (182 surviving securely attributed lines): Editors do not place lines where reference to action at Rome is a possibility among the fragments sed. inc. ⁷⁷ The Roman people or the Roman state are, how-

 Whether or not this line deals with Sextus Aelius’ appointment to the consulship for 198 BCE, as is regularly assumed, we know enough about this figure to be clear that his peacetime record as a lawyer and civic administrator outshone any military undertakings on his part (see Skutsch 1985, 504– 5). Cordatus speaks to his wisdom in these capacities. I therefore count the line as referring to domestic affairs, even though no action of Aelius’ is named.  I include this and the following two fragments on the grounds that conjectures typically make speeches of them, often at Rome. The reference and therefore the context of Ann. 369 is particularly obscure, however. For all three, see Skutsch 1985 ad loc.  See 214– 15 above, with Skutsch 1985 ad loc., who states that “the fragment clearly has to do with apprehension felt at Rome in 192, when war against Antiochus seemed inevitable”, citing Vahlen’s suggestion of a speech recalling earlier invasions of Europe. Because of the implication that this was a speech made at Rome, I here list the fragment under material pertaining to domestic affairs. Further see n. 84 below.  The lack of sed. inc. fragments in this appendix and their relative scarcity in the next contrasts with their abundance in Appendix 1. This situation is the result of the fact that the language that describes fighting and its appurtenances is largely generic in kind, the product of Ennius’ imitation of Homeric formula (for evidence, see the reference in n. 4 above). Where booknumbers do not survive for these largely interchangeable fragments, editors are (appropriately) more hesitant than usual to offer conjectures regarding their original book-location. This situation stands in contrast to editorial confidence – reliant as it is on our ability to discern the progress of the narrative and historical referents – in ascribing to particular books lines attaching to particular locations or nations: that is, the fragments of Appendices 2 and 3. (This is

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ever, mentioned in 7 fragments sed. inc. (totalling 9 lines), if without reference to action in any particular arena: Ann. 494– 5:

audire est operae pretium procedere recte qui rem Romanam Latiumque augescere uoltis Ann. 499:** cum sese exsiccat somno Romana iuuentus Ann. 533:** dictis Romanis incutit iram Ann. 559:** fortis Romani sunt quamquam caelus profundus Ann. 560 – 1:** at Romanus homo, tamenetsi res bene gesta est, corde suo trepidat Ann. 563:** optima cum pulcris animis Romana iuuentus Ann. 581:** atque manu magna Romanos impulit amni

visible at a glance from the asterisks attached to the lines in the Appendices, which designate the amount of information about a fragment’s origin that a source imparts in transmitting the fragment; see n. 66 above.)

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Space and Geography in Ennius’ Annales

Appendix 3: The Distribution of Identifiable Geographical References among the Fragments of the Annales A. The Italian peninsula I. The Italian peninsula in the pre-Republican material of Books 1 – 3 (8 fragments = 9 lines, out of a total of 149 surviving lines): Ann. 20: Ann. 21:** Ann. 22:** Ann. 26: Ann. 30:* Ann. 31:** Ann. 128 – 9: Ann. 142:

est locus Hesperiam quam mortales perhibebant Saturnia terra quam Prisci, casci populi, tenuere Latini teque pater Tiberine tuo cum flumine sancto quos homines quondam Laurentis terra recepit olli respondit rex Albai Longai Ostia munita est. idem loca nauibus munda facit, nautisque mari quaesentibus uitam hac noctu filo pendebit Etruria tota

Book 1

Book 2 Book 3

II. The Italian peninsula in the narrative of the Republic, Books 4 – 18 (6 single-line fragments, out of a total of 292 surviving lines): Ann. 152:** Ann. 157:*** Ann. 160:⁷⁸** Ann. 229:*** Ann. 289:** Ann. 291:**

Volsculus perdidit Anxur ciues Romani tunc facti sunt Campani bellum aequis [de] manibus nox intempesta diremit Marsa manus, Paeligna cohors, Vestina uirum uis summus ibi capitur meddix, occiditur alter de muris rem gerit Opscus

Book 4 Book 5 Book 7 Book 8

III. The Italian peninsula in the sedis incertae fragments (9 single-line fragments, out of a total of 182 surviving lines): Ann. 453:** Ann. 455:*

et Tiberis flumen uomit in mare salsum aqua est aspersa Latinis

 This line’s source, Ps.-Acro on Hor. Ep. 2.2.98, implies that the line refers to an engagement between Romans and Samnites.

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Ann. 457:* Brundisium pulcro praecinctum praepete portu Ann. 477:** Bruttace bilingui Ann. 494– 5:** audire est operae pretium procedere recte qui rem Romanam Latiumque augescere uoltis Ann. 524:** Messapus Ann. 525:** nos sumus Romani qui fuimus ante Rudini Ann. 609:** Anionem

B. Africa I. Africa in the pre-Republican material of Books 1 – 3 (None, out of a total of 149 surviving lines.)

II. Africa in the narrative of the Republic, Books 4 – 18 (13 fragments = 15 lines + 2 testimonia, out of a total of 292 surviving lines): Ann. Ann. Ann. Ann.

214:** Poeni soliti suos sacrificare puellos 215:** Poeni stipendia pendunt 216:*** Appius indixit Carthaginiensibus bellum 234– 5:** hostem qui feriet †erit (inquit) mi† Carthaginiensis quisquis erit. cuiatis siet Ann. 236 – 7: denique ui magna quadrupes, eques atque elephanti proiciunt sese Ann. 242:⁷⁹ explorant Numidae, totam quatit ungula campum Ann. 287:** his pernas succidit iniqua superbia Poeni Ann. 292:⁸⁰** ob Romam noctu legiones ducere coepit Ann. VIII.xv:** (in Ennio inducitur) Iuppiter promittens Romanis excidium Carthaginis (Serv. A. 1.20) Ann. VIII.xvi:** bello Punico secundo, ut ait Ennius, placata Iuno coepit fauere Romanis (Serv. A. 1.281) Ann. 297: Poenos Didone oriundos

Book 7

Book 8

 On the place of this line in the narrative, see p. 210, above.  I count this fragment among those attaching to Africa, because Skutsch assigns it to the context of the war against Hannibal (Skutsch 1985, 470). His reasons for doing so, however, are obscure; nothing in the fragment itself or its source (Fest. 188) gives any such indication. Hannibal’s famous march towards Rome is not the only occasion on which an army was brought against the City, and indeed the neutral sense of ob in its early usage, “towards”, which Skutsch (1985 ad loc.) signals as relevant, does not require us to understand a hostile army (even if the adverbial noctu, “by night” or “under cover of night”, slightly favours such a possibility).

Space and Geography in Ennius’ Annales

Ann. Ann. Ann. Ann. Ann.

299:** 302:⁸¹*** 303:** 309:** 310:***

Liuius inde redit magno mactatus triumpho Europam Libyamque rapax ubi diuidit unda. tunicata iuuentus Africa terribili tremit horrida terra tumultu perculsi pectora Poeni

261

Book 9

III. Africa in the sedis incertae fragments (1 single-line fragment, out of a total of 182 surviving lines): Ann. 472:**

Poenos Sarra oriundos

C. Illyria I. Illyria in the pre-Republican material of Books 1 – 3 (None, out of a total of 149 surviving lines.)

II. Illyria in the narrative of the Republic, Books 4 – 18 (2 single-line fragments + 1 testimonium, out of a total of 292 surviving lines): Ann. XV.iv

Ann. 407: Ann. 408:

Book 15 de Pandaro et Bitia aperientibus portas locus acceptus est ex libro quinto decimo Ennii, qui induxit Histros duos in obsidione erupisse porta et stragem de obsidente hoste fecisse. (Macr. Sat. 6.2.32) primus senex Bradylis regimen, bellique peritus Book 16 quos ubi rex Epulo spexit de cotibus celsis

III. Illyria in the sedis incertae fragments (1 single-line fragment, out of a total of 182 surviving lines): Ann. 526:**

Illyrii restant sicis sybinisque fodentes

 I have listed this fragment, which refers to the Straits of Gibraltar, also under ‘(F) The West’.

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D. Greece & Macedon I. Greece & Macedon in the pre-Republican material of Books 1 – 3 (None, out of a total of 149 surviving lines.)

II. Greece & Macedon in the narrative of the Republic, Books 4 – 18 (10 fragments = 21 lines, out of a total of 292 surviving lines): Ann. 165: Ann. 166:⁸² Ann. 167:⁸³** Ann. 183 – 90:**

nauos repertus homo, Graio patre, Graius homo, rex nomine Burrus uti memorant a stirpe supremo aio te Aeacida Romanos uincere posse nec mi aurum posco nec mi pretium dederitis: non cauponantes bellum sed belligerantes ferro, non auro uitam cernamus utrique. uosne uelit an me regnare era quidue ferat Fors uirtute experiamur, et hoc simul accipe dictum: quorum uirtuti belli fortuna pepercit eorundem me libertati parcere certum est. dono – ducite – doque uolentibus cum magnis dis. Ann. 197– 8:** stolidum genus Aeacidarum: bellipotentes sunt magis quam sapientipotentes Ann. 322– 3:** insece Musa manu Romanorum induperator quod quisque in bello gessit cum rege Philippo Ann. 340 – 2:*** rursus uos reddite nobis, O Epirotae (de una quaque re ut uideamus quid) pastores a Pergamide Maledoue potis sint Ann. 346: Leucatan campsant Ann. 357: contendunt Graecos, Graios memorare solent sos Ann. 381:⁸⁴ rumpia

Book 6

Book 10

Book 11 Book 14

III. Greece & Macedon in the sedis incertae fragments (2 fragments = 4 lines, out of a total of 182 surviving lines):

 Nonius assigns this fragment to Book 5. Skutsch, following in previous editors’ footsteps, changes the book-number to 6, in reliance on standard assumptions about the progress and organization of the narrative (see nn. 4 and 66, above).  This fragment’s source, Cicero (Off. 1.38), tells us that this speech belongs to Ennius’ Pyrrhus.  According to its source (Gell. 10.25.4), rumpia is the name for a Thracian weapon.

Space and Geography in Ennius’ Annales

263

Ann. 459 – 60:**

cos Grai memo li>ngua longos per Ann. 474– 5:** at non sic dubius fuit hostis Aeacida Burrus

E. The East I. The East in the pre-Republican material of Books 1 – 3 (Two single-line fragments, out of a total of 149 surviving lines.) Ann. 14:** Ann. 28:**

quom ueter occubuit Priamus sub Marte Pelasgo Assaraco natus Capys optimus isque pium ex se Anchisen generat

Book 1

II. The East in the narrative of the Republic, Books 4 – 18 (3 fragments = 6 lines, out of a total of 292 surviving lines): Ann. 344– 5: Ann. 369:⁸⁵*** Ann. 371– 3:⁸⁶

[Pergama] quae neque Dardaniis campis potuere perire nec quom capta capi nec quom combusta cremari isque Hellesponto pontem contendit in alto Hannibal audaci cum pectore de me hortatur ne bellum faciam, quem credidit esse meum cor suasorem summum et studiosum robore belli

Book 11 Book 13

 The fragment’s source, Varro (L 7.21), indicates that the fragment’s unnamed subject is Xerxes, and hence I list it under material pertaining to the East. See p. 214– 15 above.  Our highly informative source for this fragment (Gell. 6.2), tells us that the speaker is Antiochus; see Skutsch 1985 ad loc.

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III. The East in the sedis incertae fragments (None, out of a total of 182 surviving lines.)

F. The West I. The West in the pre-Republican material of Books 1 – 3 (None, out of a total of 149 surviving lines.)

II. The West in the narrative of the Republic, Books 4 – 18 (2 fragments = 3 lines, out of a total of 292 surviving lines): Ann. 277– 8: Ann. 302:⁸⁷***

qua Galli furtim noctu summa arcis adorti moenia concubia uigilesque repente cruentant. Europam Libyamque rapax ubi diuidit unda.

Book 7 Book 9

III. The West in the sedis incertae fragments (2 single-line fragments, out of a total of 182 surviving lines): Ann. 471:* Ann. 557:⁸⁸**

Hispane non Romane memoretis loqui me. quae ualide ueniunt falarica missa.

 I have listed this fragment, which refers to the Straits of Gibraltar, also under ‘(B) Africa’.  On the grounds that the falarica is mentioned in the context of the siege of Saguntum by Livy and, separately, by Silius, Skutsch (1985 ad loc.) argues for attributing Ann. 557 to that context in the Annales.

Stratis Kyriakidis

From Delos to Latium Wandering in the Unknown*

Seafaring forms a particular feature in ancient epic, especially in the Odyssey and later in the Argonautica. These sea-voyages involve the visiting of many and various places, the necessary stopovers, or the passing by of yet other geographic locations. A similar phenomenon (not exclusive, of course, to sea-voyage) is often attested in the Homeric as well as in the Callimachean Hymns where – due to their limited length – their richness in geographic references is particularly stressed. The reader of the Hymns wanders in a variety of locations without distinctions among nations or peoples; through this geographic tour the importance of the divinity addressed is highlighted, each time for a different reason. In the Aeneid, Book 3 is the book of the voyages par excellence. It is the middle book of the first half of the epic¹ and the part of the narrative where most of the errores of the wandering Trojans are described. Aeneas and his comrades leave sacked Troy in search of the new place, promised to him by fate, where he will found a new city. His first stop is in Thrace where the Polydorus episode takes place (3.14– 72). There Aeneas learns nothing of importance with regard to his final goal; Polydorus gives only a broad statement as to the safety of the land and his exhortation to the hero to leave: heu fuge crudelis terras, fuge litus avarum (“ah, flee from this cruel land, flee from these shores of greed”, 3.44).² Delos is the second port of call of the wandering Trojans (3.78 f.), but the first where Aeneas directly receives a divine response. They have sailed to it in order to consult the oracle of Apollo. The episode (3.73 – 124) begins with references to the island’s prominence and the related myths (3.73 – 7). In this episode, however, the historic name of Delos itself does not appear³ and the island is not named

* I am grateful to the anonymous reader of the paper who has made a number of constructive comments. I also thank the editors of the volume for their patience and assistance.  On the function of middles in the Aeneid, see Thomas 2004.  Almost equally vague was Hector’s advice in Aeneas’ sleep; his advice begins in a similar fashion: ‘heu fuge, nate dea, teque his’ ait ‘eripe flammis… hos cape fatorum comites, his moenia quaere/ magna pererrato statues quae denique ponto’ (“ah, escape, son of the goddess, save yourself from these flames… take them [i.e. the Penates] with you as companions to your fate, seek for them great walls, which you will establish after you have finally completed your wanderings through the seas”, 2.289, 294– 5).  Barchiesi 1994, 439.

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until the Trojans’ departure, and then only by its less known name of Ortygia (linquimus Ortygiae portus, “we sail away from the port of Ortygia, 3.124).⁴ The name of Delos may not appear in the episode but the reference to it at this point can hardly be misleading since a number of elements, mythological as well as textual, vouch for it. The way, for example, Apollo (arquitenens, A. 3.75) turned the island from errantem (A. 3.76)⁵ to immotam (A. 3.77), leaves no space for mistaken identity to anyone knowing Hellenistic poetry at least, as we shall see below. In this episode Virgil employs ways to enrich the Aeneas-legend with elements of the Apollo-cult not previously connected with it,⁶ creating at the same time a more profound relationship between the Delian episode and the rest of the narrative. In attempting this task, the poet had to strengthen the sense of continuity between the Trojan Apollo and the ‘Actian-Palatine Apollo’, thus bringing together myth and historic reality,⁷ as well as the beginnings and ends of Aeneas’ legend. It is at this continuity “between the physical Troy and the physical Rome and between the destinies of Troy and Rome”⁸ that the invocation to Apollo as Thymbraee (A. 3.85) perhaps aims. On a literary level, this is achieved through an intensive intertextual dialogue between the Aeneid and the Homeric Hymn to Apollo as well as the Callimachean Hymns to Apollo and to Delos. ⁹ Especially the latter Hymn, as Barchiesi has shown very well, offers “the key link” to the Aeneid episode, which encapsulates the “idea of dynastic prophecy”.¹⁰ On the textual level Virgil eagerly strives to demarcate this continuity in various ways and to show his indebtedness to the sources.

 In the Aeneid the name of Delos appears once at 4.144, as it does in Apollonius’ Argonautica (1.308); in both works it appears in a simile and in close connection with Apollo’s name. See below. See Nelis 2001, 135.  Barchiesi (1994, 439) notes that the participle shares the same metrical position with πλαζομένη at Call. Del. 192. This is a further instance of an intertextual connection between the episode of the Aeneid and the Callimachean Hymn, as we shall see further down. On floating islands, see Williams 1962 on 3.76.  For the Apollo-cult and its connection with the Aeneid, see Paschalis 1986, 44– 68 and esp. 46, 48; see now Miller 2009.  Paschalis 1986, 46 f.  See Cairns 2006, esp. 77.  Heyworth 1993 and Barchiesi 1994 are seminal on this issue.  Barchiesi 1994, 438.

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267

Apollo’s oracle at Delos is the first divine prophecy Aeneas asks for and receives.¹¹ Until that moment Hector’s advice on the night of Troy’s sacking was rather vague (2.294– 5),¹² while Creusa’s words do not seem to have penetrated to Aeneas (2.776 – 89). This can be seen from the reaction of Aeneas himself. On the other hand, the warning of Polydorus, as we have said, was general and not at all helpful for Aeneas as regards what he had to seek for. It is at Delos that the hero, for the first time, consciously and knowingly, asks the god for advice and seeks specific answers to his agonizing questions (3.85 – 7), among which is his final destination; information that the reader already has from the proem of the work, and which is none other than Latium (A. 1.6).¹³ quem sequimur? quoue ire iubes? ubi ponere sedes? (A. 3.88) Whom do we follow? Or, where do you bid us go? Where are we to settle?

Apollo’s prophecy (A. 3.94– 8), however, as to where that final destination is, was misinterpreted by father Anchises.¹⁴ The message of the god, instead of being clear (δῆλον), remained obscure (ἄδηλον). Equally obscure in the narrative is the name of the island, the concealment of which, as has been noted,¹⁵ may be connected with the misinterpretation of the oracle by the Trojans. At Delos Aeneas is still dependent on his father for any decision he takes regarding his communication with the supernatural and he does not even attempt to interpret the response of the god himself. The use of the verb feror (78)¹⁶ on the part of the hero is quite revealing.¹⁷ On account of this misinformation Aeneas sails off to Crete.¹⁸

 Κnauer (1964) considers Iliad 24.308 – 13 as a model of A. 3.85 – 9. I feel, however, that the evidence for such relationship is rather weak. Unlike the fame Virgil attributes to Delos, the island was rarely known as an oracular centre in historic times: see Miller 2009, 107 and n. 36.  See above n. 2.  O’Hara (2007, 80) recognizes some ‘inconsistencies’ between Books 12 and 1 as to the hero’s stance to Latium.  See Heyworth 1993, 256: “The problem is not Anchises’ false recall of what he has heard (107), but rather a failure of interpretation.”  According to Horsfall (2006 on 124), the poet, by using the name of Ortygia instead of Delos, alludes to the unclear meaning of the oracle the Trojans received: “Delos has changed name and so her instability has perhaps not … been fully remedied”.  Even earlier, at the beginning of Book 3, Aeneas states: feror exsul (3.11). The verb obviously expresses his passivity. The sense of exile with which he characterizes his departure may also be seen as an implied misinterpretation of reality.  Mackie 1988, 64.

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Unlike the reader of the Aeneid, Aeneas is never told that Latium was his final destination; not in Delos, nor in Crete, nor anywhere else for that matter, does the hero learn, either from a god or a human, that at the completion of his errores he will reach Latium. What is confirmed at Delos is the ultimate outcome: that the house of Aeneas and his descendants will rule over all (3.97– 8).¹⁹ The reader, therefore, is in a privileged position, since he knows as early as the proem (1.6) what the hero of the epic will never really learn.²⁰ It is a kind of knowledge, which remains obscure (ἄδηλος) for a long period during his errores; knowledge, that is, which is latent (latet could be the word), ²¹ and which seems to be acquired at a later stage, as the result of the hero’s esoteric development, rather than as part of the narrative.²² Aeneas will continue his wanderings as a matter of course towards self-insight and the attainment of his final goal. His errores unfold parallel to this gradual attainment of self-consciousness and knowledge until he finally reaches the place of his destiny. In a sense, therefore, the errores are the geographic imprint of this gradual esoteric process. Scholarship has long since shown that the epic narrative is structured in such a way as to imply this development of the hero to become the true leader of the Trojans. The first time Aeneas utters the name of Latium is at 1.205, when he addresses his comrades after their ordeal in the storm and when they have reached the North African shores. What Book 1 of the Aeneid includes, however, is an advanced stage of the errores of the Trojans. Taking into consideration the plotline chronologically, the storm and the arrival in Carthage are in medias res. What Aeneas had learned from Creusa, during the night of their flight from Troy, was Hesperia (2.781),²³ which she had connected with Lydius… Thybris:

 Lloyd 1957b, 395.  According to Barchiesi 1994, 439: “Delos, the Clear is both the clear promise of a stabilized future, and the omen of a life of errores.”  The reference in the exordium is augmented with the mention of the Latin race (genus… Latinum, 1.6) and the name of Rome (1.7).  As we shall see in this paper the etymology and meaning of Delos (δηλόω) and Latium (lateo) is of special importance. For the function of the proper names in the Aeneid according to their etymology the works of O’Hara (1996a) and Paschalis (1997) are invaluable. On the etymological wordplay on geographical place-names in the Aeneid, the Metamorphoses and the Pharsalia, see the learned papers of Skempis, Ziogas and Bexley (this volume) respectively.  The problem of the character development and of the hero’s self-consciousness and maturity in relation to his mission has been discussed extensively. For a sober view (with references) see Horsfall 1995, esp. 118 – 22; see, however, Fuhrer 1989, 63 – 72.  This piece of information will be repeated by the Penates at Crete (3.163).

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et terram Hesperiam uenies, ubi Lydius arua inter opima uirum leni fluit agmine Thybris. (A. 2.781– 2) You shall come to the land of Hesperia where the Lydian Tiber flows smoothly amid the rich fields of the people.

The form Thybris, a slight but, contextually, meaningful variant of Tib[e]ris, is first used by Virgil,²⁴ for the Roman river. Thybris could stir Aeneas’ patriotic memory of his past homeland, since it recalls the fields of Thymbra at Troy as well as the river Θύμβριος (Str. 13.1.15). Poetically though, it may serve – together with the invocation to Apollo as Thymbraee (3.85) in Delos – the Virgilian strategy of stressing the continuity between Trojan past and Roman historic reality. The epithet Lydius, on the other hand, is a ‘learned’ allusion, and a piece “of the romance of geographical history” according to Austin.²⁵ One may argue that Creusa’s words were clear enough but for a number of reasons Aeneas made nothing of them: the emotional tension of the moment, the prevailing conditions of their forced flight in the dead of the night, and the psychological burden he had felt from the loss of his dear wife, may be factors which prevented the proper reception of the message.²⁶ This will become apparent much later, in the farewell scene at Buthrotum: when Aeneas says goodbye to Andromache he seems to recollect the Thybris which he had heard only from Creusa as a place of his destination (A. 2.781 f.). His expectation, however, to reach that place takes the form only of a conditional wish: Si quando Thybrim uicinaque Thybridis arua intraro gentique meae data moenia cernam… (A. 3.500 – 1) If I ever reach the Tiber and the fields nearby the Tiber and see that my people are given city-walls…

The first time Aeneas hears the name of Italy (as an attribute: Italiam… gentem, 3.166) is in his sleep in Crete from the Penates (3.154 ff.), who give it as an alternative to the name of Hesperia (3.163). Then Anchises will remember Cassandra’s

 See Austin 1964 ad loc.; Horsfall 1990, 156 – 7. Cairns (2006, 65 – 82) is very important on the subject.  On Lydius, see Servius ad loc. See Austin 1964 ad loc.; Cairns 1989, 115 and n. 3; Cairns 2006, 72.  For additional reasons see Lloyd 1957a, 134 f.; but see also Cairns 1989, 115 and n. 13.

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prophecy and will repeat both names of Hesperia and Italy in the same line (3.185): nunc repeto haec generi portendere debita nostro et saepe Hesperiam, saepe Itala regna uocare. (A. 3.184– 5) Now I recall how she [i.e. Cassandra] would foretell the destination of our nation and often would talk about Hesperia and the destined kingdom of Italy.

It is the Penates in Crete who explain to Aeneas that the propriae sedes (the true place of settlement, 3.167) is the place where Dardanus comes from: Hae nobis propriae sedes, hinc Dardanus ortus (A. 3.167) This is our true home, from the place Dardanus originated.

Since in the Apollonian oracle, Aeneas and his comrades are addressed as Dardanidae (A. 3.94), this should be an obvious hint to their actual place of origin which, unfortunately, Anchises and the Trojans miss.²⁷ It is the Penates who will reveal to Aeneas that Dardanus originates from Italy (3.167– 8).²⁸ The oracular language of Apollo with his antiquam exquirite matrem (“seek your ancient mother”, 3.96)²⁹ was not properly decoded. The Penates in Crete repeat (3.157– 61) the positive message Aeneas received from Apollo at Delos (3.96 – 8), they correct Anchises’s misinterpretation (3.161– 2), but they still do not name the Trojans’ final goal, which is the arrival in Latium. Instead, they refer generally to Italy (3.166).³⁰ So addressing the Tro-

 Macr. in Somn. Scip. 1.7; Serv. A. 3.94. Paratore 1978a ad loc.; Cairns 1989, 116; Horsfall 2006 ad loc.  There is much speculation as to Dardanus’ place of origin, particularly because the poet associates it with the place-name of Corythus (3.170). Horsfall (1987), reworking and elaborating on Horsfall (1973), showed that the use of the name was due to the special interest held for things Etruscan at the time of Virgil: “Etruscan himself, or of Etruscan sympathies, [he] should, in a spirit of patriotism, have decided, by a clever mythological stroke, to capture the whole glorious house of the Dardanidae for his nation… This new and ingenious speculation was, it has been suggested, alluded to and rejected by Varro; by Virgil, though, it was admired and followed” (pp. 103 – 4).  According to Keith 2000, 47, “the phrase Aeneia nutrix at 7.1 resonates symbolically with Apollo’s characterisation of the land the Trojans are to settle as ubere laeto…/ … antiquam… matrem (3.95 – 6).”  Some scholars consider Italy as the final goal of the Trojans: e. g. Cairns 1989, 115 ff. An obvious argument is Aeneas’ phrase Italiam quaero patriam (1.380). See below.

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jans as Dardanidae proved insufficient evidence for reassuring them as to their destination and the same is also true for Creusa’s Lydius Thybris which remained unintelligible.³¹ Aeneas was not yet prepared to listen to her words. The river Tiberis, however, was in Latium and it formed a kind of border in the area thus identified with it.³² It was there, in Latium, that the new city was to be built, whose name, Rome, also lies hidden until Mercury mentions to Aeneas the Romana tellus at 4.275. Until Aeneas reaches the North African shores his goal remains Italy, or Hesperia, or Ausonia, according to Creusa, the Penates, and Helenus. For Dionysius of Halicarnassus (1.35.3), Hesperia ³³ refers to the whole of Italy and it is the Greek name for it: Τὰ δὲ πρὸ τούτων Ἕλληνες μὲν Ἑσπερίαν καὶ Αὐσονίαν αὐτὴν [i.e. Ἰταλίαν] ἐκάλουν, οἱ δ′ ἐπιχώριοι Σατορνίαν, ὡς εἴρηταί μοι πρότερον. Before that, the Greeks called Italy Hesperia and Ausonia but the native people Saturnia, as I have said earlier.

When at Buthrotum Helenus sees the Trojans off, he tells them that they are still far from their goal: Ausoniae pars illa procul quam pandit Apollo (“that part of Ausonia which Apollo reveals to you is far”, 3.479). The vagueness of the phrase Ausoniae pars for Aeneas turns to become a symptom in the Virgilian story as regards his final goal. Helenus, too, is prevented from fully knowing the final destination by Juno herself:prohibent nam cetera Parcae/ scire Helenum farique uetat Saturnia Juno (“The fates prevent Helenus from knowing the rest and Saturnian Juno forbids me to speak”, 3.379 – 80). His prophecy, however, represents a more advanced stage in Aeneas’ acquisition of the much sought-after knowledge as the information Aeneas receives this time talks about a part of Ausonia and not generally about Ausonia as previously (3.171, by the Penates). It is only on the shores of Africa that the hero proves to be conscious of the goal of his errores at 1.205 as we saw above. Later, in Book 6, when Aeneas and his comrades are already in Italy (6.61), he asks the Sibyl to put an end to their wanderings and to allow the Trojans and their gods to settle in Latium:

 Cairns 1989, 115.  Catalano 1978, 510: “il concetto territoriale di Latium, … è connesso al valore, religioso, dei fiumi. Ciò è confermato dal fatto che per dire ‘fuori dal Lazio’, si usava l’espresssione pregnante Trans Tiberim (Tab. III, 5).” For rivers as borders, see Bexley (this volume); cf. also Carvounis (this volume).  Hesperia is an Ennian reminiscence, as the Annales is the first surviving Latin work mentioning the word (1.20 Sk. with Skutch 1985 ad loc.).

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da (non indebita posco regna meis fatis) Latio considere Teucros errantisque deos agitataque numina Troiae (A. 6.66 – 8) Grant my prayer, I ask for a kingdom due to me by my fates, let the Trojans and the roving and restless gods of Troy settle in Latium.

Aeneas’ pursuit, therefore, of a true insight into the final goal of the wanderings, and the frustrating ignorance in which he remains, create a contrasting environment between his wish for a clear (δῆλον) message and his experience of the fleeting and the obscure (ἄδηλον). The tension between these two conflicting notions is masterfully mapped out upon two geographic loci: Delos and Latium. If the island of Delos is the starting point of that quest for knowledge, Latium is its completion;³⁴ this knowledge is acquired gradually and put into words only on the shores of Carthage. Only after he has secured that knowledge (1.205) is Aeneas ready to recognize the whole of Italy as his patriam (1.380), thus foreshadowing what Jupiter has promised in his prophecy: that after his arrival Latium will rule over Italy.³⁵ bellum ingens geret Italia populosque ferocis contundet moresque uiris et moenia ponet, tertia dum Latio regnantem uiderit aestas ternaque transierint Rutulis hiberna subactis. (A. 1.263 – 6) He shall wage a great war in Italy and subdue the ferocious tribes and he shall raise walls for his men and establish a civilized way of life, when the third summer will have seen him ruling in Latium and three winters will have passed with the Rutulians conquered.

*** The most common etymology for Latium has to do with the myth of Saturn seeking refuge there.³⁶ According to Virgil (A. 8.322 f.)³⁷ or his source in prose, Varro, it was the place Saturn chose to hide after being deposed:

 According to Keith 2000, 47: “The town and promontory of Caieta are situated on the borders of Latium and Campania, so that it is only with Aeneas’ arrival at Port Caieta in the closing lines of book 6, and not with his arrival on the ‘Euboean’ shores of Cumae at the opening of the book (6.2), that Aeneas reaches his destination of Latium.”  See, however, Cairns 1989, 109 ff.  The standard etymology of Latium is from lateo as is evident from the sources listed in Maltby (1991) and Marangoni (2007) s.v. Latium. Only Priscian relates the place-name to the substantive latitudo (Maltby, ibid.). See also Catalano 1978, 523 with nn. 353, 354.

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is genus indocile ac dispersum montibus altis composuit legesque dedit, Latiumque uocari maluit, his quoniam latuisset tutus in oris. (A. 8.321– 3)³⁸ [Saturn] brought together this uncouth people who were dispersed amid the high mountains and gave them laws and wished to call the place Latium because in this land he had been safely hidden.

Delos, on the other hand, is a significant name for the island where the obscure is supposed to be clarified. This is the logical explanation offered by Servius. Before that, however, Servius gives us another version as to the island’s etymology. With this Virgil’s scholiast in very few words refers to the ‘history’ of the island as the birthplace of Apollo, reminding us of Callimachus’ Hymn to Delos. ³⁹ Delos autem, quia diu latuit et post apparuit: nam δῆλον Graeci manifestum dicunt: uel quod uerius est, quia cum ubique Apollinis responsa obscura sint, manifesta illic dantur oracula (Serv. A. 3.73) Delos was so called because she was lying hidden for long and then appeared: for the Greeks call δῆλον that which is clear; or what is more fitting, because whenever Apollo’s given responses are obscure, the oracles given there are clear.

In other words, in the beginning Delos latuit, and then apparuit. Delos, that is, escaped from the condition the etymology of Latium implies. Unlike Latium, Delos was involved extensively in myths and had a distinct presence in the literary texts of Greek antiquity. The story of the Aegean island, its connection with Leto and how it finally turned to be the birthplace of her children was well known in antiquity; the Hymns, Homeric and Callimachean, formed a well-known literary cycle on the subject. Virgil had made a point of it at the opening of the Georgics 3 (3 – 8, esp. 6) as one of the hackneyed themes (uulgata, 3.4). The epithet of Delos there qualified the contents of the myths alluded to: Latonia Delos. In that phrase of the Georgics, however, there is an interesting aspect as regards the episode of the Aeneid. The trite topic mentioned there is Latonia Delos, not Δήλιος Ἀπόλλων, as Callimachus calls the god, or Delius Apollo in the Virgilian episode (A. 3.162).⁴⁰ The application of the epithet La-

 An interesting analysis on this passage concerning the typology of Latium in Book 8 is in Thomas 1982, 95 f.  See Serv. A. 1.6, 8.322.  See below.  ἀλλ᾽ ἀπ᾽ ἐμεῖο/ Δήλιος Ἀπόλλων κεκλήσεται (“but from me will be called Delius Apollo”, Call. Del. 268 – 9). See also Verg. A. 6.12, where the etymological pun is obvious: Delius inspirat uates

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tonia to the proper name of Delos creates an etymological wordplay in which each of the two words reverses the other, as we shall presently see. As a result the phrase is poised between Delos and Leto thus treating the two poles of the myth on an equal basis. Leto (or Latona) is a significant name usually connected with the verb λανθάνω, to hide.⁴¹ This etymology is implied – among other texts – in Strabo, although he associates the Leto-myth with Ortygia in the area of Ephesus: εἶθ᾽ ἡ πόλις. ἐν δὲ τῇ αὐτῇ παραλίᾳ μικρὸν ὑπὲρ τῆς θαλάττης ἐστὶ καὶ ἡ Ὀρτυγία, … ἐνταῦθα γὰρ μυθεύουσι τὴν λοχείαν καὶ τὴν τροφὸν τὴν Ὀρτυγίαν καὶ τὸ ἄδυτον ἐν ᾧ ἡ λοχεία, … φασὶ τοὺς Κουρῆτας τῷ ψόφῳ τῶν ὅπλων ἐκπλῆξαι τὴν ῞Ηραν ζηλοτύπως ἐφεδρεύουσαν, καὶ λαθεῖν συμπράξαντας τὴν λοχείαν τῇ Λητοῖ. (Str. 14.1.20) After that comes the city [i.e. of Ephesus]. On the same coastline, barely above the sea, there comes Ortygia… for here they relate the child-birth, and the nurse Ortygia, and the actual holy place (ἄδυτον) where the birth took place… it is said that the Curetes frightened Hera, who was spying out of jealousy, with the noise of their weapons and that they helped Leto to hide the child-birth.⁴²

According to Strabo, therefore, Leto gives birth in secrecy (λαθεῖν). In the Homeric Hymn to Apollo Leto is roaming to find a land to give birth to Apollo (45 – 6). In this early work, the notion of λανθάνειν is also brought forth as an implied wordplay on the name of the island between its unimportance before becoming the birthplace of Apollo and the renown it would acquire afterwards (50 – 82).⁴³ In the Callimachean Hymn to Delos the island of Delos was ἄδηλος⁴⁴ before it became the birthplace of Apollo: ἡνίκα δ᾽ Ἀπόλλωνι γενέθλιον οὖδας ὑπέσχες, τοῦτό τοι ἀντημοιβὸν ἁλίπλοοι οὔνομ᾽ ἔθεντο, οὕνεκεν οὐκέτ᾽ ἄδηλος ἐπέπλεες, ἀλλ᾽ ἐνὶ πόντου

aperitque futura (“The Delius inspires the prophetess and discloses the future”): Paschalis 1997, 210; O’Hara 2001, 373.  For the Latin sources, see Maltby 1991 s.v. Latona > lateo, latito etc.  Cf. also EM 564.17– 25, where the etymology from λανθάνω is repeated together with some others (cf. Pl. Crat. 406a-b).  Miller 1986, 34.  Mineur (1984 on 53) suggests that “The reference is not to Delos’ invisibility… the island being sufficiently conspicuous to seafarers according to l. 43 (ναῦται ἐπεσκέψαντο, sc. σέ), but to the irregularity of her appearance in the Mediterranean: ‘You did not float upon the waves anymore in an uncertain way, getting properly fixed in the sea’.”

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κύμασιν Αἰγαίοιο ποδῶν ἐνεθήκαο ῥίζας. (Call. Del. 51– 4)⁴⁵ But when you gave your land to be the birthplace of Apollo, sailors gave you in exchange this name, because you no longer drifted obscure but in the waters of the Aegean sea planted the roots of your feet.

In the Hellenistic Hymn, however, there are further aspects of the relation between λανθάνειν and Leto: Leto wanders all over to find where she could give birth (70 – 197); such a place was lying hidden (ἐλάνθανε) from her. Another aspect, however, of this etymologizing is Hera’s wrath over Zeus’ secret amours (240 – 4): οὕτω νῦν, ὦ Ζηνὸς ὀνείδεα, καὶ γαμέοισθε λάθρια καὶ τίκτοιτε κεκρυμμένα, μηδ᾽ ὅθι δειλαί δυστοκέες μογέουσιν ἀλετρίδες, ἀλλ᾽ ὅθι φῶκαι εἰνάλιαι τίκτουσιν, ἐνὶ σπιλάδεσσιν ἐρήμοις. So now, you disgraceful creatures of Zeus, you may get married in secrecy and give birth in hiding not where the wretched grinding women give birth in painful labor but rather where the sea-seals bring forth on solitary rocks.

The element of hiding, secrecy or unimportance (all these are meanings covered by the verb λανθάνω and its cognates or the overlapping notion of ἄδηλος) at times concerns either the story of the island of Delos itself, or Leto’s ignorance as to the place she will give birth; at others it means the actual birth of Apollo in hiding; at others still the secret love affair of Zeus. In any case what lies latent may each time be different. This notion of λανθάνειν has become a characteristic feature and a vehicle which can be transposed from one end of the myth to the other; it can also be transferred from one poetic text to another. This given resilience of the unsettled etymology is of some help to the poet who can use a myth by choosing any kind of reshuffling for the story and rearranging it at will. It is generally acknowledged today that an etymology may be used in a text beyond specific narrative frames in the tradition.⁴⁶ Furthermore, the poet may employ it for his own poetic needs, not merely in a specific limited part of the narrative but rather as an underlying component in a larger section of the work.⁴⁷ In Virgil, the meaning of the word Latium – as of Delos for that matter – may constitute an essen-

 Cf. 35 ff.  For a parallel instance in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, see Ziogas (this volume).  For the contextualisation of myth and its application in the Aeneid, see Skempis (this volume).

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tial component in the arrangement of the poetic matter,⁴⁸ as the epic hero is out in search of his final destination. In the Aeneid, the Delian oracle remains obscure, as its meaning is not clear to the hero. Delos’ name, therefore, is connected with the notion of ἄδηλον, or λανθάνον, as both of them were basic components of the Greek myths. At the same time, however, many parts of the Delos-myth remain unexploited in Virgil: Leto, for instance, is not mentioned at all in the episode of Delos. The reader, however, can recall the mythological frame in this case and see that the poet has reallocated the bipolarity of the myth from Delos and Leto to Delos and Latium. The final goal in Aeneas’ wanderings is hidden; the place where Leto could give birth is also hidden. In both stories Juno’s wrath is a common denominator.⁴⁹ From the moment the oracle at Delos remained obscure (ἄδηλος) and Latium, although not disclosed as Aeneas’ final goal, became δῆλον later on through the hero’s internal progress to self-consciousness, we can rightly claim that there is a reversal of the function and significance of the names of these two places. Latium will lie latent as long as Aeneas is not conscious of his final destination and does not name it (until Carthage, 1.205). After that point the etymology no longer corresponds to its name. This reversal in the function of the two place-names and their meaning causes an infusion of the value and significance of the one to the other. It is the kind of infusion which is evident when the past is projected onto the future. The epic culmination of this process is the prophecy of Anchises in Book 6, where past and future mingle in the epic present.⁵⁰ Delos is a focal point of Aeneas’ apologoi, where the one time is projected onto the other; this infusion is materialized in the patronymic Dardanidae with which Apollo addresses the Trojans; with an epithet looking back to the Trojan past the god refers to a situation or event of the future. Furthermore, the phrase antiquam exquirite matrem (“seek your ancient mother”, 3.96) in Apollo’s words seems to be uttered in the same vein. Creusa’s Lydius Thybris at 2.781– 2 was another obvious instance of temporal infusion between past and future, as we have already seen. A legitimate question at this stage is the reason for Virgil’s preference for the name Ortygia instead of Delos, since in the ancient world the name of Delos was much more widespread than that of Ortygia: how, that is, does this choice serve the Roman poet’s poetic aims? In the Homeric Hymn to Apollo the island of Delos is the birthplace of Apollo, whereas Ortygia is that of Artemis:

 As Ziogas (this volume) argues, in his concluding remarks, the plot of a tale may revolve around the etymology of a geographic name.  Barchiesi 1994, 439. On Hera’s wrath towards Asterie in Pindar, see Depew 1998, 171– 2; Bing 2008, 114 f., 120.  Kyriakidis 1984.

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χαῖρε μάκαιρ᾽ ὦ Λητοῖ, ἐπεὶ τέκες ἀγλαὰ τέκνα Ἀπόλλωνά τ᾽ ἄνακτα καὶ Ἄρτεμιν ἰοχέαιραν, τὴν μὲν ἐν Ὀρτυγίῃ, τὸν δὲ κραναῇ ἐνὶ Δήλῳ. (h.Ap. 14– 16)⁵¹ Hail blessed Leto, for bearing splendid children, the lord Apollo and Artemis, the shooter of arrows; her in Ortygia and him in rugged Delos.

Virgil, however, understands Ortygia and Delos as one and the same island,⁵² and so does Callimachus.⁵³ Ortygia as the island’s name is not only Callimachean; it comes also from the Hellenistic epic tradition. In Apollonius, the island of Delos is mentioned four times: once by that name and three by the name of Ortygia. Delos is mentioned only the first time (1.308) in a simile when Jason appears like the god Apollo visiting his temple at Delos, whereas Ortygia is used in an invocation (1.419) by Jason to the god Apollo, and in a prayer (4.1705) and once in a simile (1.537). At first glance, the evidence shows that Delos is used when Apollo is directly involved in an action and Ortygia when the human factor is involved. If the above suggestion for Apollonius holds true as to the way the poet substitutes the name of Ortygia for that of Delos, it may be that Virgil, too, uses the same name in the Delos episode in order to restrict Aeneas’ reaction to the oracle to the human level and to highlight thus the human dimension of the interpretation of his father. But how does the name of Ortygia serve the narrative with regard to the bipolarity Delos – Latium? Does the choice of the name of Ortygia – instead of Delos – render the tension between ἄδηλον/latens and δῆλον/ apparens inactive? Let us look at two mythological versions presented by Hyginus: Iouis cum Asterien Titanis filiam amaret, illa eum contempsit; a quo in auem ὄρτυγα commutata est, quam nos coturnicem dicimus, eamque in mare abiecit, et ex ea insula est enata quae Ortygia est appellata [sc. < ὄρνυμαι, orior]. (Hyg. Fab. 53)⁵⁴

 See Allen/Halliday/Sikes 21963. Already at Od. 5.123, Artemis is connected with Ortygia-Delos (see Hainsworth in Heubeck/West/Hainsworth 1988 ad loc.); also in Call. Ep. lxii Pf.; there are also a number of testimonies connecting the goddess with the Syracusan Ortygia (e. g. P. Ν. 1.2 f.).  In Callimachus, Delos and Ortygia refer to the same place and the names are used alternatively. From the beginning of the Hymn to Apollo, Apollo is addressed as Δήλιος (4) whereas at 59 it is obvious that Ortygia substitutes for Delos. Allen/Halliday/Sikes 21963 on h.Ap. 16; Ukleja 2005, esp. 131 f. with n. 510.  Rutherford 1988, 72.  Cf. Serv. A. 3.73.

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When Jupiter fell in love with Asterie, the daughter of Titan, she defied him; hence she was changed to the bird ὄρτυξ which we call ‘quail’, and was thrown into the sea and from her an island issued forth which is called Ortygia.

And in another fable: Python Terrae filius draco ingens. hic ante Apollinem ex oraculo in monte Parnasso responsa dare solitus erat. huic ex Latonae partu interitus erat fato futurus. eo tempore Iouis cum Latona… concubuit; hoc cum Iuno resciit, facit ut Latona ibi pareret quo sol non accederet [Lato < lateo]. Python ubi sensit Latonam ex Ioue grauidam esse, persequi coepit ut eam interficeret. at Latonam Iouis iussu uentus Aquilo sublatam ad Neptunum pertulit; ille… in insulam eam Ortygiam detulit, quam insulam fluctibus cooperuit. quod cum Python eam non inuenisset, Parnassum redit. at Neptunus insulam Ortygiam in superiorem partem rettulit [Ortygia < ὄρνυμαι, orior], quae postea insula Delos est appellata [sc. Delos < δῆλος]. ibi Latona oleam tenens parit Apollinem et Dianam. (Hyg. Fab. 140.1– 4) Python, the son of the Earth, was an enormous snake which, before the time of Apollo, used to give oracular answers from the oracle on Mount Parnassus. According to a prophecy he would be slain by Latona’s offspring. At that time, Jupiter slept with Latona… When Juno found out, she made sure that Latona give birth in a place where the sun does not approach. When Python realized that Latona was left pregnant by Jupiter, he began to pursue her in order to kill her. But, by Jupiter’s order, the North wind lifted Latona and brought her to Neptune. He… carried her to the island Ortygia which Neptune covered with the sea. When Python did not find the island he returned to Parnassus. But Neptune brought up to the surface the island Ortygia and after that the island was called Delos. There Latona, holding an olive tree, gave birth to Apollo and Diana.⁵⁵

On several occasions the name Ortygia has been related etymologically to the bird ὄρτυξ,⁵⁶ the quail, into which Zeus transformed Leto in order to shield her from Hera’s wrath. Virgil, however, is probably playing with an etymology of the word from ὄρνυμαι, to rise, related to the Latin verb orior, bypassing the participation of ὄρτυξ in the myth. Ortygia, therefore, seems to carry the meaning of ‘someone or something that emerges’, ‘someone or something which appears.’

 The parts of the texts which perhaps imply the author’s intention to etymologising are in bold-type letters.  Maltby 1991 s.v. Ortygia. Cf. Schol. in Call. Ap. 59: Ὀρτυγία δὲ ἡ Δῆλος ἀπὸ τοῦ τὴν Λητὼ εἰς ὄρτυγα μεταβληθεῖσαν εἰς τὴν Δῆλον ἐλθεῖν φεύγουσαν τὴν ῞Ηραν (“Ortygia is [the island of] Delos from the transformation of Leto to a quail coming to Delos in order to flee from Hera”); cf. Schol. in Od. 5.123.1– 5.

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In the excerpt from Hyginus’ work the name of Ortygia is connected with the stage of the island’s emergence from the water.⁵⁷ Under such circumstances Ortygia and Delos are etymologically parallel.⁵⁸ It is the island which surfaced (enata est)⁵⁹ and afterwards was given the name of Delos (at Neptunus insulam Ortygiam in superiorem partem rettulit, quae postea insula Delos est appellata). With this underlying etymology in mind, Virgil by identifying Delos with Ortygia distances himself from the Homeric Hymn without deviating from his major aim, that is to organize his narrative on the bipolar contrast of ἄδηλον to δῆλον. *** The Delian episode consists of details which characterize an early stage of development of the hero from a Trojan to the ancestor of the Romans. At Delos, Aeneas is still within the Greek world. The augurium he seeks from the god is on a Greek island. However, by employing mythological details from the tradition, the poet forms a friendly surrounding, I would say, for Aeneas and his Trojans: The poet’s reference that the Apollinis urbs (A. 3.79) is ruled by Anius, not only king of the island and high priest of Apollo (A. 3.80), but also a friend of Anchises (A. 3.82), is a piece of information which follows the ‘anti-Greek’ version of the myth. As a matter of fact, in his handling of the mythological data, Virgil does not mention anything about the Greeks who were welcomed by Anius on their way to Troy. Anius had then even suggested a longer sojourn on the island until the time came for Troy to fall.⁶⁰ The poetic aim here is to hint at that version of the myth in which Anius was Anchises’ friend (and, incidentally, father of Lavinia, from whom, for a number of reasons, the Latin Lavinium was later called).⁶¹ Virgil’s choice gives a pro-Trojan hint while Aeneas was still in Greek waters and sailing westwards in search of his roots. Delos is the cross-roads of conflicting

 Servius (on A. 3.73) does not relate the bird’s name, ὄρτυξ with the verb ὄρνυμαι as seems to be the case in Hyginus’ first passage.  On the etymology of the different names of Delos, see Ukleja 2005 passim.  Cf. P. Pae. 7b.46 – 9 S-M: δέ μιν ἐν πέλ̣[α]γ̣[ο]ς̣ /ῥιφθεῖσαν εὐαγέα πέτραν φανῆναι[·/ καλέ̣οντί μιν Ὀρτυγίαν ναῦται πάλαι. / πεφόρητο δ᾽ ἐπ᾽ Αἰγαῖον θαμά (“But they say that she was flung into the sea and appeared as a conspicuous rock. Sailors have long called it Ortygia. It often traveled over the Aegean…”, transl. Rutherford). As Rutherford (1988, 68) notes, the phrase for Asteria ‘appeared as a conspicuous rock’ (line 47) is “almost certainly an etymological allusion to the fact that the name ‘Delos’ means ‘clear’.” See now Rutherford 2001, 244, 246. See also Bing 2008, 96 – 110 (on Pindar and Callimachus).  Casali 2007, 196 – 202 with references; see also Baudy 2002 with references.  The ancient source on this is D. H. 1.59.3 and Ps.-Aur. Vic. Or. Gent. Rom. 9.5. See also Serv. A. 3.287. In the Virgilian text, however, there is no reference to Anius’ daughter: Erskine (1997, 134– 6) has all the information.

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versions of myth. The poetic preferences in a way contribute to the strengthening of the Trojan identity, which has become the starting point in Aeneas’ course to becoming the ancestor of the Romans. Crete, Aeneas’ next stopover, played a special role in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo. In it Apollo decides that the Cretans, who sail from Crete to Pylos, should be his priests in his oracle at Delphi. The Cretans, at first accept the appointment out of sheer fear of the god, but later wish to return home: ἄλλῃ γὰρ φρονέοντες ἐπεπλέομεν μέγα λαῖτμα εἰς Πύλον ἐκ Κρήτης, ἔνθεν γένος εὐχόμεθ᾽ εἶναι· νῦν δ᾽ ὧδε ξὺν νηῒ κατήλθομεν οὔ τι ἑκόντες νόστου ἱέμενοι ἄλλην ὁδὸν ἄλλα κέλευθα· ἀλλά τις ἀθανάτων δεῦρ᾽ ἤγαγεν οὐκ ἐθέλοντας. (h.Ap. 469 – 73)

470

Thinking differently, we were sailing on the great sea to Pylos from Crete, from where we boast to originate, but now we come by ship to this place unwillingly – another course and different paths even though we would wish for our return; but one of the immortal gods brought us here without us wanting it.

The Cretans were sailing (ἐπεπλέομεν, 469) when they suffered the intervention of the god. The verb ἐπιπλέω (to sail, to float) is also used by Callimachus for Delos before becoming the birthplace of Apollo (see also above). Delos was floating and wandering until it became the place of Apollo’s birth. Her name was given to her by sailors (ἁλίπλοοι, 52). The Cretans of the Homeric Hymn were also sailing. In the same work the sailing and wandering Cretans did not consent to stay as priests of Apollo and the god accused them of ὕβρις (541). In contradistinction to their behavior, the isle of Delos gladly consented to become the birthplace of the god. The incident with the Cretans does not exist in Callimachus’ Hymn. This part of the Apollo-myth as presented in the Homeric Hymn, has not left any visible trace in the Virgilian Delos episode. In his Hymn to Zeus, however, Callimachus reminds his readers that the Cretans were liars: Κρῆτες ἀεὶ ψεῦσται (“the Cretans are always liars”, Jov. 8).⁶² Having in mind this Callimachean warning (and its tradition) the Roman poet assigns to no Cretan an attempt to reinterpret the oracle, thus protecting his hero’s reputations from notorious liars. ***

 Heyworth 1993, 256 f.

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The application of specific metrical features is a further proof of the influence Callimachus had in this episode. Indeed, the second hexameter (A. 3.74, see below p. 266) of the passage with its challenging metrical structure calls for the reader’s attention: the wholly spondaic structure of the line, but for the first foot, is a rarity in Virgilian hexameter-poetry. The spondaic fifth foot (spondeiazon) suits the Hellenistic theme of Delos, as Callimachus has presented it, and fits well with the Roman poet’s Hellenistic preferences: the same verse contains hiatus at two places.⁶³ Furthermore, at A. 3.91 the varying scansion of que recalls a favorite Callimachean technique which, according to Hopkinson, appears six times in Callimachus’ Hymn to Zeus. ⁶⁴ Just before the god’s prophecy (94– 8), therefore, there is a number of technical allusions to Callimachean poetics⁶⁵ and Virgil spares no effort to remind his reader, through these literary reminiscences, of his own poetic goal, to show, that is, his literary preferences vis-à-vis his precursors. There are, however, some further points where the Virgilian narrative converges with that of Callimachus and deviates from the Homeric Hymn. Aeneas asks the god for an augurium (A. 3.89). The god in response will give his own signs: tremere omnia uisa repente, liminaque laurusque dei, totusque moueri mons circum et mugire adytis cotrina reclusis. (A. 3.90 – 2) Suddenly everything seemed to tremble, the gates and laurel of the god, the whole mountain around was shaken and the tripod bellowed as the shrine opened.

All objects participating in the imagery prepare the hero and the reader for the prophecy of the god which follows. The reader can also find parts of this scene at the beginning of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo: Μνήσομαι οὐδὲ λάθωμαι Ἀπόλλωνος ἑκάτοιο, ὅν τε θεοὶ κατὰ δῶμα Διὸς τρομέουσιν ἰόντα. (h.Ap. 1– 2) I will be mindful of and will not forget the far-shooting Apollo whom even the gods tremble as he passes through the house of Zeus.

  six 

Horsfall 2006 ad loc. Hopkinson 1982, 164: “[w]e have an extraordinary case, even by Hellenistic standards, with examples in 96 lines”. See Heyworth 1993, 255. See also below, n. 68. Heyworth 1993, 255; see also Horsfall 2006 ad loc.

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The Latin tremere ⁶⁶ seems to be a direct allusion to the τρομέουσιν of the Homeric Hymn where the verb in lines 1– 2 shows the reaction of the other gods when Apollo walks through Olympus (κατὰ δῶμα). Callimachus, however, who, according to Hunter, reworked the Homeric Hymn to Apollo “no less than three times in his Hymns to Apollo, Artemis, and Delos”⁶⁷ read this scene in his own way: In the beginning of his own Hymn to Apollo he replaced the τρομέουσιν of the Homeric Hymn with the σείεσθαι; at the same time movement now and trembling do not come from the gods but from the shrine (μέλαθρον) and the laurel, (δάφνη): the elements of the external world participate in empathy. Οἷον ὁ τὠπόλλωνος ἐσείσατο δάφνινος ὅρπηξ, οἷα δ᾽ ὅλον τὸ μέλαθρον· (Call. Ap. 1– 2) How Apollo’s young shoot of laurel trembled, how the whole shrine quaked!

Virgil, therefore, in the Delos episode by alluding to the beginning of the two Hymns discloses his preferences. The influence of the Hellenistic poet is evident: In the Virgilian imagery the reaction once again comes from the surrounding objects; it is the limina, the laurus (A. 3.91) and the whole mountain (A. 3.91– 2) which move and tremble with the god’s presence. To have a model, however, does not mean blind acceptance. Virgil augments the effect of the divine presence by increasing the verbs from one to three (tremere, moueri, mugire) and by involving nature itself (mons) in addition to the increased number of the divine symbols (limina, laurus, adytis, cortina).⁶⁸ Further to this, in the Virgilian narrative there is neither any clear (δῆλον) message, nor does the god appear (δῆλος). In Callimachus the epiphany of the god was made only to the privileged good and great (ἐσθλός, μέγας) whereas the feeble one (λιτός) cannot see him (9 – 10):⁶⁹

 Hardie (1986, 225) reads in this Virgilian scene “a divinely originated earthquake”. Contra Ηorsfall 2006 on 91. See also Hardie 2007b.  Hunter 2006, 25. Serv. A. 7.73 init.  Barchiesi 1994, 440: “Virgil has combined, in a generalising frame inspired by Callimachus, a number of cult features of Apollo, Delian as well as Delphic: Delian laurel and Delphic tripos vibrate in unison. The effect has a power which transcends the reverberation of the Hymn to Apollo”, and n. 10: “This vibration is so magical that it produces an effect of prosody that is unique in the whole poem, -que being treated as a long before a simple liquid consonant.”  In Callimachus only those who could ‘see’ god were privileged (οὐχ ὁράᾳς, Ap. 4). In the Aeneid only the uox (93) of Apollo can be heard.

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ὡπόλλων οὐ παντὶ φαείνεται, ἀλλ᾽ ὅτις ἐσθλός· ὅς μιν ἴδῃ, μέγας οὗτος, ὃς οὐκ ἴδε, λιτὸς ἐκεῖνος. (Call. Ap. 9 – 10) Apollo does not appear to all but to the good ones; whoever sees him he is great, whoever does not, is feeble.

One cannot help but notice an ‘inconsistency’ in the Callimachean work: One of the reasons to which Callimacheanism owed its tremendous influence on generations of poets was its programmatic discourse and the metaliterary weight the Cyrenaic poet added to a number of words turning them to symbols. Two such words were the adjectives μέγας and λιτός. In the context of the above Hymn, and contrary to the current Callimachean precepts, the adjective μέγας is privileged to λιτός who cannot see the god.⁷⁰ It is perhaps with this ‘inconsistency’ in mind that the Roman poet responded to the Hellenistic text and at the same time served his own poetic strategies. Aeneas did not see the god, so, according to the Hymn, he could not be considered as yet good or great (μέγας). Does Virgil suggest here that his hero is not ready yet to be numbered among the good or great? Indeed, nowhere in the apologoi is Aeneas called magnus or magnanimus. ⁷¹ According to the chronological development of the Aeneas story, the hero is characterized as such at 1.260, in Jupiter’s prophecy, after he had addressed his comrades with soothing words, as we have seen, telling them about their final destination (tendimus in Latium, 1.205). In Book 3 of the Aeneid Aeneas is not yet fully initiated into the fata and the epic reality. It is perhaps the search of knowledge for the final goal –knowledge about Latium – which is the determining factor of the hero’s stage of maturity, and hence that of molding the type of hero Virgil aspires to. *** After Delos the errores of the Trojans continue. Anchises’ error, which he will later admit (seque nouo ueterum deceptum errore locorum, “and that he was de Williams 1978 on 10. We have the epiphany of the same god in the Homeric Hymn, when Apollo appears to the Cretans (440 – 50); his presence caused great fear to each one of them (μέγα… δέος ἔμβαλ’ ἑκάστῳ, 447). As Feeney (1998, 106) points out, “Humans are commonly so terrified by epiphany”. On the phenomenon of the epiphany, however, Feeney’s conclusions are based on texts not discussed in this work (104– 7).  The failure in interpreting the oracle on the part of Anchises and the ‘improper’ behavior of Aeneas to the god upon his arrival at Delos, are two possible reasons, which perhaps indicate that at this stage the hero is not yet magnus or magnanimus. According to the ancient practice, Aeneas should have offered a sacrifice to the god before asking for an oracle: Casali 2007, 191 f. Anchises, too, is not described as magnus until after his death (5.99, 8.156).

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ceived by the recent mistake about the ancient places”, 3.181) takes the wandering Trojans to Crete,⁷² where the plague will be the harbinger of the new errores the hero will undergo until he solidifies the world within him.⁷³ Before acquiring, however, this mens immota (A. 4.449) – which occurs after the epiphany of Mercury at Carthage – he has to endure a number of hardships. He has to outgrow the influence of his father (who in the meantime dies), to deal with various predicaments and to face his own self in his relationship with Dido. The narrative development seems to reflect, or rather to have elements in common with, the story of the Callimachean Delos. Delos, in addition to ἄδηλος (Del. 53), was πλαζομένη (192), πλαγκτή (273), and it floated (ἐπέπλεες, 36) before being connected with Apollo:⁷⁴ σὲ δ᾽ οὐκ ἔθλιψεν ἀνάγκη, ἀλλ᾽ ἄφετος πελάγεσσιν ἐπέπλεες (Call. Del. 35 – 6) You were not oppressed by necessity but were floating free on the waters.

But once it is associated with the god, it becomes ἄτροπος (“firm”, 11). According to the scholiast⁷⁵ the adjective means ἀκίνητος and ἄσειστος (“unmoved” and “unshaken”). When the island became the birthplace of Apollo (269), its position in the Aegean was fixed⁷⁶ and it emerged taking the name of Delos. The floating and drifting of the island is a basic component of the Hellenistic Hymn but much less so of the Homeric Hymn. ⁷⁷ In the Aeneid Delos, rather than errans (3.76) be-

 Miller (2009, 116) pointedly observes: “By following Anchises’ direction to Crete, the Trojans become errantes in another sense – sharing in his error.”  Perhaps in this way we may give an answer to Servius auctus’ query (on A. 3.154) as to the delayed help of the Penates at Crete: sane quibusdam uisum est serum auxilium deorum penatium; cur enim ante pestilentiam non monuerunt mutandas sedes? (“Indeed it has appeared to some that the divine help of the Penates was late; for why did they not advise that they should change their abode before the plague?”).  This movement may be characterized as ‘chaotic’: Νishimura-Jensen 2000, 290 – 3. See above n. 44.  Schol. in Call. Ap. 11a: Barchiesi 1994, n. 15.  See above, p. 5. See lines 191– 2 and 273.  The Callimachean Hymn gives greater emphasis to the wandering than the Homeric Hymn: see Montiglio 2005, 232; Bing 2008, 99 f.; also Barchiesi 1994, 441. See also Ukleja 2005, 138 – 141. Depew 1998, 162: “Similarly, the nineteen lines that in the Homeric Hymn were devoted to Leto’s wanderings (30 – 48) Callimachus develops into 140 lines. Leto’s travels, moreover, are paralleled to Asteria’s, which, along with what motivates their end, are the poem’s most dominant theme.” Nishimura-Jensen 2000, 289 and n. 5.

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comes immota (3.77, cf. revinxit, 3.76). Even the phrase contemnere uentos (“defy the winds”, 3.77) recalls the Callimachean adjective ἠνεμόεσσα: ⁷⁸ κείνη δ᾽ ἠνεμόεσσα καὶ ἄτροπος †οἷά θ᾽† ἁλιπλήξ (Call. Del. 11) Windy she is and unchangeable and wave-stricken.

Delos was a drifting island in the Aegean before it was fixed by the god and acquired its present name; Leto also had to wander around in search of a birthplace for her twins, before Delos accepted her request.⁷⁹ Aeneas and the Trojans sail the seas for many years in search of their new country and set their course by divine guidance. Evidently, the wandering proves to be a basic constituent in the Delos myth involving all parties in one way or another. One might, therefore, see the story of Delos as the frame within which the poet contains much of the essential part of the Aeneas’ story. Wandering which ends in immobility and firmness are two basic foundation features upon which the Delos and Aeneas stories are based. The incessant search on the part of the hero for a clear message as to his final destination and the fleeting nature of that knowledge is a major component reflected in the frame of the Delos episode, which anticipates early enough the development of Aeneas’ character from ‘mens errans’ to mens immota (4.449). In his quest for that hidden goal, it is only after Mercury’s epiphany at Carthage that Aeneas will maintain a steady course to the land ordained by fate. Thus the epiphany of the god becomes the turning point in the development of the hero. *** Parallel to the mythological elements hidden, added to or adapted in the Virgilian narrative, there is a number of learned techniques of poetic labor which enhance the significance of the episode. The content of the introductory line (73) stresses the island’s importance as a cult center, strengthened by the structure of the line: the adjective medio placed in the middle of the hexameter not only visualizes the meaning of the word⁸⁰ in an extratextual mirroring⁸¹ but it

 Barchiesi 1994, 439.  At h.Ap. 214 ff. the god himself begins his search for a place to establish his oracle χρηστήριον. His wandering is not described in terms different from the wandering of Leto in search of a birthplace. See Montiglio (2005, 15) on ἐβίβασκεν (132). As a matter of fact the wandering of Apollo in search of an oracle (214) in h.Ap. is a topic beyond the interests of the Roman poet.  On this important is Thomas 2004, 124– 31.  See previous note and below n. 88.

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also suggests, as Horsfall perceptibly notices,⁸² the island’s geographic location ‘right in the middle of the sea’ which really means – strengthened by the attribute of Neptunus (Neptuno Aegeo, 74) – ‘in the middle of the Aegean.’⁸³ I would further add that by this structure Virgil alludes to the name of Cyclades and the etymology of that name⁸⁴ and hence to the relevant tradition⁸⁵ according to which Delos is placed in the middle and is encircled in a ring-formation by the rest of the islands.⁸⁶ sacra mari colitur medio gratissima tellus Nereidum matri et Neptuno Aegaeo (A. 3.73 – 4) A sacred land is cherished in the middle of the sea dear to the mother of the Nereids and Neptune of the Aegean.

In the Delos episode, the idea of wandering is established through the participle errantem (“wandering”, 76) for the yet unnamed island of Delos which shares the same characterization as the Trojans themselves (errantis, 3.101).⁸⁷ At the same time, however, the Trojans are burdened in their wandering by an error. Erratio and error go hand in hand, as we shall see, with their voyage to Crete. At line 124 the Trojans leave the island of Delos (Ortygiae portus) for Crete on a course supposedly due south. In the following two lines we have the short list of four islands named out of all the Cyclades the Trojans sail through: linquimus Ortygiae portus pelagoque uolamus bacchatamque iugis Naxon uiridemque Donusam, Olearon niueamque Paron sparsasque per aequor Cycladas, et crebris legimus freta concita terris. (A. 3.124– 7)

125

 Horsfall 2006 ad loc.  Serv. A. 3.73 init. A similar phrase with the same structural phenomenon is applied for Crete further down at 3.104 (Creta Jovis magni medio iacet insula ponto, “Crete, the island of great Jupiter, lies in the middle of the sea”). There may be some thoughts for this repetition; it may suggest implied similarities between the two islands; strictly speaking Delos and Crete form the same narrative unit. With regard to the geographic reality, Crete is indeed in the ‘middle’ of a great sea-expanse without being surrounded by closely placed islands. Cf. Horsfall 2006 on 3.73.  Cf. Paschalis 1997, 116 f. For the Latin sources see Maltby 1991 s.v.; Bing 2008, 126. See below.  See Call. Del. 198, 300 f.  Cf. D.P. 525 – 6 with Eustathius, Commentarii, p. 204 (Bernhardy); cf. also the paraphrasis, p. 383 (Bernhardy). In the Callimachean Hymn to Delos Bing (2008, 125) recognizes a persistent “‘circling motif’ which appears at the start of the poem… (v. 11– 29)”.  See Horsfall 2006 ad loc.

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We are leaving the port of Ortygia and fly over the sea past Naxos with its bacchic ridges, green Donusa, Olearos, gleaming white Paros, the Cyclades scattered across the sea we pass and over the waves stirred up by the frequent shores of the islands.

Apparently the meandering course the Virgilian text suggests can hardly match the due south course the Trojans should have taken on their way to Crete.⁸⁸ Line 124, that is, shows Ortygia, the northernmost of the islands mentioned, and line 125, presents Naxos and Donusa, the pair of islands situated SE of Ortygia, to occupy the right part of the hexameter, whereas line 126 presents Olearos and Paros, the pair of islands situated SW of Ortygia, to occupy the left part of the line. It is to be noted that Olearos and Donusa are respectively and geographically the westernmost and easternmost of the islands stated and hence they hold the extreme left and the extreme right position of their respective lines. It is obvious that with the order in which the names are placed in lines 124– 6, the poet exploits the visual quality of the text, since it ‘depicts’ within the space of three hexameters the actual position of Ortygia/Delos in relation to the other islands. It is a case of extratextual mirroring which is also attested in other poetic texts of different periods.⁸⁹ The text here is treated by the poet as a material surface, which, like a map, imitates the extratextual reality. The catalogue has the potentials, therefore, to stress in yet another way the sense of error – with both meanings of the word here present – the wandering about, that is, and the mistake, however unintentional it may be. The erratic element underlying the course of the Trojans which is well inscribed on the writing surface through the structural possibilities of the catalogue together with the myth of Delos employed in the narrative frame mutually function in order to suggest the sense of disarray and uncertainty in which Aeneas finds himself. The Virgilian catalogue closes with the collective name of the Cyclades whose attribute (sparsas, 126) suggests a bilingual etymological play with spargo

 Horsfall 2006 on 3.125 – 7.  Kyriakidis 2007, mainly 52– 66. On occasion, geographic catalogues lend themselves to a similar treatment; at any rate there is always a poetic intent involved. It is no surprise, therefore, that Ovid in his emulation of the Master exploited and furthered the same technique by applying it to his short catalogue at Ep. 21.81– 2 (Kyriakidis 2010, 8 – 11) involving the islands north of Delos (Andros – Tenos – Myconos) instead of the Virgilian catalogue which exploits the islands south of Delos/Ortygia. See the map at the end of the paper. Et iam transieram Myconon, iam Tenon et Andron, inque meis oculis candida Delos erat (Ep. 21.81– 2) And now I had passed Myconos, now Tenos and Andros, and shining Delos was before my eyes.

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and σπείρω (“I sow”) from which we get Sporades, ⁹⁰ the name of another group of islands in the Aegean. Given that in antiquity there was a confusion as to the number of islands belonging to the Cyclades and the Sporades⁹¹ and that some of the islands mentioned in the list (Donusam, Olearon) were rather listed under the Sporades,⁹² it is not unlikely that with the phrase sparsasque…/ Cycladas Virgil wished to point to this inconsistency and thus enhance in the reader the notion of erratic and erroneous. If the chart of Aeneas’ sea-voyage is the surface on which the poet can mark the main stops on the errores, thus representing stages of the hero’s internal development from ignorance to knowledge – from his lack of self-awareness to his maturity – it is also the surface on which the poet’s journeying in the literary world of the tradition is impressed. Both the hero and the poet wander, each leaving his mark, and the text becomes the meeting place for both as well as for the reader. In writing the Aeneid, Virgil made use of various sources. Through the geographic itinerary of his readers and the stopovers of that grand tour, Virgil discloses his own wandering in the literary texts of the past. Each stopover in the narrative corresponds to a literary visit to the sources. The apologoi of the Aeneid always have as an unwavering model the Odyssey,⁹³ whose influence on the Roman epic is obvious, but the reminiscences of the Homeric and Callimachean Hymns are frequent and tangible, especially in the Delos episode as has been widely recognized.⁹⁴ It is true that the episode of Delos – but not only this – is redolent of Hellenistic poetic techniques; the Callimachean echoes abound together with the challenging information for the learned reader. Virgil’s preference for the Callimachean model rather than the archaic one is evident.⁹⁵ Later on, in the narrative, at the beginning of the second half of the Aeneid, Callimachus’ presence will be again noticeable in a passage pertaining to the last leg of Aeneas’ voyage. But there, after three more books of narrative, Virgil, with numerous allusions to the Callimachean program, as I have tried to show elsewhere,⁹⁶ will keep his distance from the Hellenistic model. Things are no longer the same and Aeneas has been successfully transformed into a full grown

 On this issue, see O’Hara 1996b, 137 and 2001, 372; Horsfall 2006 on 125 to 127.  See e. g. Str. 10.5.3.  Str. ibid.; Eust. Comm. in D. P. 530 (p. 207.15 f. Bernhardy); see also Schol. in D. P. 132 (p. 333 Bernhardy).  Cairns 1989, 177– 214.  See above, n. 9.  Rutherford 1998.  Kyriakidis 1998; see also Thomas 1985.

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and genuine leader of his people. Each stop during the voyage was a spiritual and mental trial for the hero. This precept was equally valid for the poet himself.

Marios Skempis

Phenomenology of Space, Place Names and Colonization in the ‘Caieta-Circe’ Sequence of Aeneid 7*

Introduction The invocation to Erato at the midpoint of the Aeneid has long been a major issue in Virgilian scholarship and has led to various approaches, the overwhelming majority of which hinge on implicit or explicit eroticizing interpretations. What strikes the reader most in this invocation is that it does not coincide with the arithmetic beginning of Book 7 of the Aeneid (7.37– 45), but follows a concise narrative section that contains references to Caieta (7.1– 7) and Circe (7.8 – 24) as well as a description of the Trojans’ arrival at the Tiber (7.25 – 36). It is this narrative sequence ‘Caieta-Circe’ with which I am concerned here. Thus far scholars have either treated the topic in passing or have tried to make sense of the individual references to these female figures, thus suppressing the question of whether and to what extent the successive placement of Caieta and Circe forges a link between them, let alone their alignment with Erato.¹ In this paper, I argue that there is indeed an interconnection between the Caieta-section and the Circe-section that adds to the tightly knit structural design of the epic as a whole and contributes to its progression from the “Odyssean” first half (Books 1– 6) to the “Iliadic” second one (Books 7– 12). The spine of my argument is that this progression is mapped out in spatial terms insofar as it sketches out a subtle geographical * I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Katharina Waldner and Ioannis Ziogas, who were willing to read various drafts of this paper and provide insightful comments. I am also indebted to the organizers and participants of the Research Group “Kultureller und religiöser Transfer in der Antike” at Erfurt University for giving me the opportunity to discuss a number of ideas presented above and benefit immensely from their valuable feedback. Thanks are also due to Henry Heitman Gordon for correcting my English.  The one scholar to have undertaken a full study of the narrative framing of the sections preceding the invocation to the Muse in Aeneid 7 is Stratis Kyriakidis (1998), who proposes a reflected poetological reading based on the intertextual dynamics of the Aeneid, mostly with regard to Callimachus and Apollonius Rhodius. The insights of Kyriakidis into the narrative selfreflexivity of the Aeneid’s midpoint are particularly enlightening, especially the ones concerning Caieta, and it will become clear in the course of my analysis how much the argument owes to his reading. For further pungent readings of the narrative sections at issue, see Jenkyns 1998, 462– 6; Thomas 1999; 2004.

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framework that follows the Trojans’ course toward Latium. In fact, the ‘CaietaCirce’ sequence marks a significant junction in this course inasmuch as it signals the impending arrival of the Trojans at their final destination. On these grounds, it is the aim of this paper to provide a new perspective by means of which the seemingly disparate references to Caieta and Circe can be viewed as a coherent unit. This narrative blend, I submit, is the result of associations based on the Virgilian appropriation of Hellenistic epic against the backdrop of archaic epic. Furthermore, I shall demonstrate that these intertextual ties are largely determined by the impact they have on the semanticization of the spaces Virgil inquires into. It is the critical stance of the Hellenistic poets toward lexical and geographical issues, in particular, that Virgil adopts while shaping the ‘Caieta-Circe’ sequence.² In essence, I intend to show how literary relations merge into spatial configurations. Before turning to the examination and interpretation of the individual sections of the ‘Caieta-Circe’ sequence, I wish to introduce and briefly discuss certain notions fundamental to the development of my argument and attempt to pin down the theoretical framework within which my analysis moves. The concepts of “space” and “place” have been much debated in the discourses of contemporary geography, philosophy and cultural studies. Determining the exact relation of the one to the other has proved quite a difficult task, especially with regard to the complex mechanisms underlying this ambivalent relation. In a broad sense, “space” has been conceptualized as an abstract notion open to various interpretations and, accordingly, subject to diverse contextualizations, whereas the notion of “place” is understood to exhibit more settled traits contingent on how it correlates with human agency and experience.³ While geography tends to represent space as an absolute quality, literature mostly deals with places, since the interaction with persons becomes all the more intrinsic in its contexts.⁴ After all, perception and agency are the triggers that transform space into place. Yet, what do we mean by perception and agency when it comes to space? In his landmark study Phenomenology of Landscape, Christopher Tilley examines how spaces are socialized and culturally constituted through the unmediated involvement of

 This part of my argument is in line with scholarship dealing with semasiological aspects in Hellenistic poetry and its relation to Homeric terminology where the seminal studies of Rengakos (1992, 1993 and 1994) are preeminent. As far as the interest of Hellenistic poets in matters of contested literary geography is concerned the contributions of Sistakou (2002 and 2005) are essential.  For a brief and valid assessment of scholarly views on the relation between space and place, see Hubbard 2005. On the embeddedness of experience in place, see Malpas 1999.  Further on this, see Tuan 1978; Bachelard 1969 [1994].

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persons with particular sites: “Socially produced space combines the cognitive, the physical and the emotional into something that may be reproduced but is always open to transformation and change.”⁵ Moreover, Tilley views the coalescence of mobility and narrative as a pivotal complex that conditions the relation of persons to places. To put it once more in his words, “movement through space constructs ‘spatial stories’, forms of narrative understanding”.⁶ Within the same phenomenological framework, the Chinese geographer Yi-Fu Tuan in his influential Space and Place draws attention to the factors that compromise the sense of absolute space and create places measured against the sort of experience attached to them.⁷ This dimension proves most exciting for interpreting the spaces linked with Caieta and Circe according to the resonance they have on the Trojans, who in both cases display geopiety ⁸ and thus mark their relation with individual places. Moving through space allows for a certain degree of contingent perception in the way relational spatialities and subsequent localities are configured, and paves the way for the intrusion of further determinants that claim their own role in the semanticization of space.⁹ I focus on two of these determinants that are tied to space: mythology and colonization. Regarding mythology, Rob Shields has provided a useful framework within which we can think about how space is laden with associations and, on a further level, how it is subject to hermeneutics. For this purpose, he coins the crucial, albeit somewhat fuzzy, term “place- or space-myths,” in order to comment upon the infusion of layers of mythology (in a broad sense) into the semantics of space/place: “There is both a constancy and a shifting quality to this model of place- or space-myths as the core images change slowly over time, are displaced by radical changes in the nature of a place, and as various images simply lose their connotative power, becoming ‘dead metaphors’, while others are invented, disseminated, and become accepted in common parlance.”¹⁰ Shields conceptualizes space as potentially shifting in connotative power according to the meaning ascribed to it and the purposes the latter is set to serve. Mythology creates local geographies and, in doing so, constitutes a fundamental device by means of which space can be negotiated, appropriated or even remain unaltered.

 Tilley 1994, 10.  Tilley 1994, 31.  Tuan 1977; see also Tuan 1971.  The term is borrowed from Tuan 1976.  I am most grateful to Richard Gordon for a series of enlightening discussions about “semanticized geography” (his term) that helped me clarify my views on the subject.  Shields 1991, 61.

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In view of the fact that “Roman myths were in essence myths of place”,¹¹ the different spaces associated with Caieta and Circe show how mythology can be reshaped to meet specific needs or can be treated as a firm indicator of cultural identity. Onomastics acts as a subservient feature, given that both female figures morph into toponyms, which attest either to the alternating potential of namegiving (Caieta) or to the allusive force of a name (Circe).¹² Place-myths become operative in colonial contexts as they reflect the human impulse to ascribe cultural meaning to geographical space.¹³ Discourses of belonging and cultural inclusion are consistently taken up in colonial activities in order to mark the movement of persons into unfamiliar space and render it familiar, that is, to turn it into place.¹⁴ The connection between colonizer and colony is put into terms of cultural identity, and mythology enters at this point in order to generate close ties and to cement identification between person and space.¹⁵ Religion is a special part of this interesting blend of myth and culture, which has in itself a decisive impact upon the way space is shaped and perceived,¹⁶ and thereby grows into a basic instrument for the institutionalization of the ensuing cultural bond within the context of colonization.¹⁷ On these grounds, colonizers occasionally develop a personalized, almost somatized relation to the newly acquired space and thus become substantially enmeshed with the topography of the colony. More often than not, territorial claims within colonial discourse come to the fore by tracing the colonizer back to mythical times in order to create a temporally unspecified, quasi primordial tie with a particular place. The way mythology is used in colonial discourse may vary according to the purposes pursued, though the spatial grounding of colonial figures always retains its immanence. It is precisely this aspect I am most interested in while inquiring into the ‘Caieta-Circe’ sequence, for I shall argue that both Caieta and Circe are registered as mythical figures of considerable significance in the context of colonization in Italy.

 Beard/North/Price 1998, 173.  Kyriakidis and Ziogas (this volume) provide splendid examples of how onomastics intertwines with intertextuality to nuance the epic topographies of Virgil and Ovid respectively.  For a different approach to the production of cultural space that takes into account epic’s concern with ethnography, see Haubold (this volume).  Cf. Cole 2004, 7– 29; Slaney (this volume).  On the conjunction of myth and colonial discourse, see Malkin 1998; Calame 2003.  For various aspects of religion’s grounding in space, Rüpke (2007) is fundamental.  Malkin (1987) illustrates the integral role of religion in practices of colonization. Particularly illuminating from a literary point of view is Dougherty (1993, 15 – 30).

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Keeping these preliminary remarks in mind, let me turn to the individual sections of the ‘Caieta-Circe’ sequence and assess their significance in creating localities within the spatial continuum of the Aeneid.

Caieta: the Woman and the Harbour Recent scholarship on Virgil’s Aeneid has stressed this epic’s concern with marking Roman ethnicity within the political context of the Augustan period as well as the way it demarcates cultural identity through the expression of religiosity and by recourse to ritual practices.¹⁸ In the poem, Aeneas embodies the selfawareness of the hero with respect to the maintenance of his cultural identity by performing ritual acts in a paradigmatic manner. Funeral rites reflect his sacral authority and responsibility toward the community he is in charge of as well as his unmatched morality as a religious leader.¹⁹ The Caieta-section that bridges Books 6 and 7 of the Aeneid is a case in point as it provides a suitable narrative platform for Virgil to highlight Aeneas’ religious profile and its spatial repercussions within a funerary context. Virgil opens the second half of his epic with a four-line epigram devoted to an unheroic character, Caieta. These lines commemorate the loss and burial of Aeneas’ nurse that take place as the Trojans reach the harbour eventually named after her. In fact, Virgil does not narrate her death, which presumably occurs between Books 6 and 7, but only her funeral, and that in an extremely condensed manner, which recalls the mechanics of funerary epigram.²⁰ The transition from the katabasis in Book 6 to Caieta is made at the very end, where the state of her existence is rather unclear (tum se ad Caietae recto fert limite portum./ ancora de prora iacitur; stant litore puppes, 6.900 – 1).²¹ Then we turn to Book 7, and Caieta is suddenly a dead person addressed by the narrator. The text reads as follows: Tu quoque litoribus nostris, Aeneia nutrix, aeternam moriens famam, Caieta, dedisti; et nunc seruat honos sedem tuus, ossaque nomen

 See, most importantly, Dyson 2001; Barchiesi 2006; Panoussi 2009; 2010.  To put it in Panoussi’s (2010, 65) words, it is public death rituals in particular that “showcase his [scil. Aeneas’] sacral development, since they provide the context within which Aeneas is able to discharge his ritual duties to his immediate family […].”  For epigrams embedded in the Aeneid, see Barchiesi 1979; Dinter 2005; Ramsby 2007, 19 – 20. On Caieta’s epigram in particular, see also Skempis 2010, 115 – 17.  Cf. Putnam 1995, 103. On the closural function of these verses, see Wills 1997, 196 – 8.

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Hesperia in magna, si qua est ea gloria, signat. At pius exsequiis Aeneas rite solutis, aggere composito tumuli, postquam alta quierunt aequora, tendit iter uelis portumque relinquit. (Verg. A. 7.1– 7) You too, Caieta, once nurse to Aeneas, bestowed by your death eternal fame upon our shores; still now the honours shown you stand watch over the spot, and your name marks where your bones are laid in great Hesperia, if that is any glory. So the pious Aeneas, after due performance of the funeral and the construction of Caieta’s burial mound, once the deep waters grew still, set his sails on course and left the harbour behind.²²

Having left the Underworld in Book 6 Aeneas reaches the shores of the harbour Caieta, which is located on the Tyrrhenian coast and thereby signposts a preliminary encounter of the Trojans with the Italian soil. The use of the word limes (6.901) is indicative of the transitional character of the arrival in Italy, since it presents the harbour of Caieta as the final borderline of the Trojan journey to Italy in strictly geographical terms.²³ The emphasized use of the so-called DuStil in the very first line of the Caieta-section in Book 7 points to the intended overlap between the narrator’s point of view and that of the Trojan immigrants, who long for settlement. The strong sense of directness ensuing from the second person address to Caieta fits well with the incorporation of the harbour’s shores into the ideology of ‘we’ and, at the same time, calls for explication of its proleptic function.²⁴ The narrator boldly declares Caieta’s litora as nostra, a designation that accounts for the eventual appropriation of geographical space with which the Trojans are previously unacquainted. The strong connection between Aeneas and the person Caieta is neatly transferred to the place where the old nurse has been properly buried. Virgil pushes the rhetoric of appropriation to the point where the boundaries between human identity and space begin to

 Here I follow the OCT of Mynors (1969). For the translation of Virgil I have used Horsfall (2000), of Hesiod Most (2006), of Homer Lattimore (1967), of Apollonius Hunter (1993a).  Nickbakht (2006, 97– 8) fittingly discusses the suggestive role of liminality in the last verses of Book 6 and points to the potential contextualization of portus within “a semantic-phonetic wordplay in portus – λιμήν – limen, indicating that the portus to which Aeneas proceeds is also a limen, a “threshold”.” Nickbakht also cites Wills (1997, 199 with n. 33) for the shorelines (litora) as “boundary markers”.  On Caieta and the device of prolepsis, see Wills 1996, 199; Reed 2007, 130 with n. 4.

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blur.²⁵ Yet, it is the factor “space” he is interested in as is shown by the unconventional structure-transgressive ring composition he employs (Caietae portum, 6.900 ~ portumque, 7.7). What turns Caieta the woman into a harbour? Death and a proper burial – both incidents of transition, the one biological, the other social. Virgil seems to project a conception of death as fluctuating between corporeality and incorporeality, since he uses an ambivalent sign, the bones (ossa), as a metonymy for the grave²⁶ or perhaps as an implicit reference to cremation.²⁷ Provided that ossa is etymologically linked with uro (cf. ossa… ab usto dicta, propter quod cremarentur ab antiquis, Isid. Orig. 11.1.86),²⁸ the use of the term in this context might suggest the etymology of Caieta’s name from “burn”, an etymology put forward by Servius, albeit in a different context (lectum tamen est in philologis in hoc loco classem Troianorum casu concrematum, unde Caieta dicta est, ἀπὸ τοῦ καίειν, Serv. A. 7.1).²⁹ This etymology of Caieta seems to have prevailed at least in another major literary text of the Augustan period as Ovid also alludes to this semantic cluster and thereby comments on Virgil when he refers to Caieta’s funeral pyre in his own epic poem (hic me Caietam notae pietatis alumnus/ ereptam Argolico quo debuit igne cremauit, Met. 14.443 – 4).³⁰ Social memorialization is a prominent feature in the funerary customs pertaining to Caieta. Name (nomen) and body (ossa) turn into means of social action (honos) that cast space (sedem) with special significance. In particular, the funerary practices that Aeneas undertakes by burying her and heaping up a mound are means by which he manages to alter the identity of the deceased and creates a novel one. Caieta is a nurse, a person of low status, probably a slave, whose identity has been changed through the institution of communal remembrance.

 It has often been noted that Caieta’s burial is interwoven with the deaths of Palinurus and Misenus; see Paratore 1978b; Barchiesi 1979; Jenkyns 1998, 465 – 6; Dinter 2005, 157– 60. Interestingly, both Misenus and Palinurus have a similar fate to Caieta, since, according to Virgil (6.234– 5; 6.379 – 81) and D. H. 1.53.2– 3, after their respective deaths they have been monumentalized as eponyms of harbours located on the Tyrrhenian Sea. All three become Italian toponyms of Trojan origin. Cf. Brenk 1984, 778.  Bowie (1998) draws attention to the central position of the body, even of the incorporeal, dead body, and its use as a metaphor for decoding the text of the Aeneid.  Feeney (2007b, 133 – 4) comments that Virgil’s recourse to Roman ritual in the Aeneid is rather a non straightforward one in comparison to the early Roman epic poets. Cf. Feeney 1998, 141– 2.  I am indebted to Ioannis Ziogas for this reference.  Cf. McKay 1970, 161. See also Sol. 2.13; Anon. De orig. gent. Rom. 10.  See the discussions of this passage in O’Hara 1996a, 183; 1996b, 268; Paschalis 1997, 244; Hinds 1998, 108 – 9; Kyriakidis 1998, 86 – 7; Erasmo 2008, 99; Panoussi 2010, 58.

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In other words, the transition from the status of a person to the status of a spatial marker that confirms the introduction of a certain cultural identity is effected through ritual practices linked with the memorialization of the dead.³¹ In this context, burials have often been interpreted as rites of passage that enable various forms of transformation.³² In the case of Caieta, burial and the subsequent raising of a funeral mound mark the literal grounding of a person in space as well as her conceptual transformation into a harbour. Thus, the harbour of Caieta ultimately functions as “topography of remembrance”, a place where the deceased is monumentalized in collective memory.³³ The “distillation of the woman’s body into pure signification”,³⁴ an intensely phenomenological process, intertwines with the fact that the woman at issue is bound up with social memory, which ensues from a proper burial. Caieta’s tomb operates as a “timemark”, as a site associated with a certain point in time and/or instance from the past, and thus acquires a practical usefulness as a point of topographical navigation, since Caieta ends up marking an Italian harbour under the aegis of Aeneas. This is a typical case of setting up a “spontaneous shrine” prompted by a life-cycle incident, a funerary monument in particular, where the deceased can be publicly memorialized and imbue space with a personalized tinge.³⁵ The reasons why Caieta is endowed with such a spontaneous shrine are never made explicit. However, the monument linked with her is destined to attain spatial distinctiveness, a definite sign that the consecration Ae-

 McKay (1970, 161) points out that cape Caieta was marked out in Virgil’s time as a predominantly funeral site since statesmen such as Lucius Munatius Plancus and Lucius Sempronius Atratinus were buried there, whereas Cicero was also executed at that particular place. I am grateful to Wolfgang Spickermann for drawing McKay’s study to my attention.  On the dynamics of funerary rites in Rome, see Lindsay 2000; Mustakallio 2005; Graham 2009. For the parallel existence of inhumation and cremation burials in Rome, see Morris 1992, 31– 69; Rüpke 2001a, 53; Schrumpf 2006, 63 – 6; Scheid 2007. For funerary rites in general, see now the contributions in Rüpke/Scheid 2010.  For the term “topography of remembrance” in general, see Assmann 1999, 298 – 339; for practices of memory preservation of the lowly in Rome, see Graham 2006.  Nugent 1999, 268. In a non-Virgilian context, Bakker (2008) elaborates on the crucial role of the body in generating epic memory.  Grider 2006, 248: “One function of spontaneous shrines is to draw attention to the previously ordinary place where some violent event occurred. The most distinguishing characteristics of spontaneous shrines are their proximity to the precipitating event and the extraordinary range of idiosyncratic mementos from which the shrines are created. The shrines are spontaneous because they are erected in response to sudden, unpredictable tragic events. These artifact assemblages are sacred by virtue of the actions and intentions of the people who create and tend to them.”

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neas presides over has cultural repercussions.³⁶ In essence, Aeneas inscribes new space into a hitherto unfamiliar geographical system, magna Hesperia. It is worth noting that in the case of Caieta the prerequisite that ensures commemoration lies in the social interaction with an individual from a high social class. Aeneas exhibits an exemplary sense of ritual responsibility (pius, 7.5) when he performs the funeral rites by raising a tomb for his deceased nurse (aggere composito tumuli, 7.6). Caieta’s posthumous honours are not intended to praise a certain role of hers in the narrative since she is a figure we know nothing about – Virgil has provided no further information other than the fact that she was Aeneas’ aged nurse, who just passed away. On the contrary, it is plausible that the story of Caieta’s burial and her subsequent memorialization is designed to put special emphasis on Aeneas’ pietas and to stress the gravity of the religious component in shaping proto-Roman identity. For it is precisely the conscious performance of ritual activities, the sense of ritual duty that advances Aeneas to a paradigmatic figure and constitutes Roman pietas. ³⁷ The motif of pietas not only embeds the Caieta-section in the religious ethics of the Virgilian epic, but also validates the desire of the Trojans for settlement that lies behind the expression litora nostra. ³⁸ The naming of an Italian harbour after the Trojan Caieta serves the poetics of colonization in the Aeneid, where a continuum between Trojan past and Roman present needs to be established. It is clear that Aeneas emerges here as a settler, even though he does not make himself the eponym of Caieta’s harbour.³⁹ In a perceptive paper on Aeneas’ colonial profile, Nicholas Horsfall remarks that “the founder’s central role is symbolized by his ability to confer a name, sometimes but not always his own, upon the new settlement”.⁴⁰ In addition, he points out that “it was common practice for nomenclature to evoke memories of the homeland”. In this light, to commemorate Caieta on Italian soil through the foundation of a harbour is to introduce social

 Cf. Brereton 1987, 534: “To call a place sacred asserts that a place, its structure, and its symbols express fundamental cultural values and principles.”  On the conceptualization and pivotal importance of pietas in Roman religious practices in general, see Scheid 1985.  The mobility inherent in Aeneas’ mission to transport the ancestral gods from Troy to Italy goes hand in hand with his religious commitment to the safe-guarding of the sacra and the penates. Indicative in this respect is Aeneas’ self-introduction in Aen. 1.378 – 9: sum pius Aeneas raptos qui ex hoste penates/ classe ueho mecum with Cancik 2006, 35: “Die Definition, die pius durch diese Selbstvorstellung erhält, klingt durch das ganze Epos, das Aeneas mit dem stehenden Epitheton pius markiert.”  On the diverse practices of founding a colony and the notion of eponym, see Malkin 1985; on Aeneas as founder of colonies, see Horsfall 1989; cf. Malkin 1998, 194– 8.  Horsfall 1989, 18.

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Marios Skempis

and spatial dynamics of the past in the venues of the present. Thus, an ordinary woman triggers off ways of expressing cultural identity through foundation practices.⁴¹

Re-naming Harbours: the Semantics of a Place Name Thus far I have discussed Caieta’s burial and establishment as a spatial marker on the Tyrrhenian coast along with certain interrelated aspects in strictly Virgilian terms. In the following section I wish to extend the discussion about Caieta’s spatial configurations by considering further textual evidence, both poetic and non-poetic. Callimachus provides an instance of textual criticism on the Homeric text that proves significant for assessing the multi-layered semanticization of Caieta in (and beyond) Virgil. Against this literary backdrop, Caieta emerges as a subject of controversy in diverse colonization discourses. In order to analyse and fully assess the geographical implications of the harbour Caieta in the Aeneid, it is essential to take a look at related passages by Strabo and Diodorus Siculus that account for mythical and historical contextualizations of the site. Archaeologizing the semantics of Caieta’s name can actually lead us back to Homer through Callimachus. The adjective κητώεσσα occurs twice in Homer as a part of the formula κοίλην Λακεδαίμονα κητώεσσαν (Hom. Il. 2.581– 2; Od. 4.1– 2) and is taken to mean either “full of marine monsters” (