Heracles in Early Greek Epic (Mnemosyne, Supplements, 482) 9004696199, 9789004696198

Citation preview

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

Heracles in Early Greek Epic

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

Mnemosyne Supplements monographs on greek and latin language and literature

Executive Editor J.J.H. Klooster (University of Groningen)

Editorial Board K.M. Coleman (Harvard University) R. Gagné (University of Cambridge) C.C. de Jonge (Leiden University) C. Pieper (Leiden University) T. Reinhardt (Oxford University)

volume 482

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/mns

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

Heracles in Early Greek Epic Edited by

Christos C. Tsagalis

leiden | boston

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at https://catalog.loc.gov lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024006570

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill‑typeface. issn 0169-8958 isbn 978-90-04-69619-8 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-69661-7 (e-book) doi 10.1163/9789004696617 Copyright 2024 by Christos C. Tsagalis. Published by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Schöningh, Brill Fink, Brill mentis, Brill Wageningen Academic, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Böhlau and V&R unipress. Koninklijke Brill nv reserves the right to protect this publication against unauthorized use. Requests for re-use and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill nv via brill.com or copyright.com. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

Contents Preface vii Contributors ix Introduction 1 Christos C. Tsagalis

part 1 Sources and Intertexts for Early Greek Epic on Heracles Heracles and Gilgamesh in Early Greek Epic Bruno Currie

13

Heracles on Cos 63 Ruth Scodel Civilizer, Killer, Glutton … Moralist? Glimpses of Heracles in Early Greek Epic 87 Sophie Mills

part 2 Heracles in Homer and Hesiod Heracles in Homer and Hesiod: Shared ID, Distinct Perspectives Apostolia Alepidou

107

Heracles in Hesiod 131 Glenn W. Most Heracles and Hesione in the Iliad Silvio Bär

146

Of Walls and Monsters: Heracles and Epic Time in Iliad 20 Hanne Eisenfeld

164

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

vi

contents

part 3 Heracles in Fragmentary Greek Epic Narrative and Stylistic Artistry in Early Greek Epic: Creophylus, Pisander, Panyassis 191 Christos C. Tsagalis Traces of the Epics on Heracles in the Archaic and Classical Periods: Between Local Interests and Never-Ending Traditions 221 Laura Lulli Reassessing Pisander of Camirus, fr. dub. 2 EGEF Stefano Vecchiato General Index

240

259

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

Preface This volume is the fruit of an international conference on Heracles in Early Greek Epic that was held at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in June 24– 26, 2022. The conference was generously funded by the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation (H.F.R.I.) as part of the research project 1879 (Early Greek Epic Poets, Acronym: EGEP). In this light, I would like, as principal investigator, organizer of the conference, and editor of this volume, to thank the H.F.R.I. for supporting research in Greek Universities and promoting the Classics. The volume is organized into three parts. Part 1 (Sources and Intertexts for Early Greek Epic on Heracles), Part 2 (Heracles in Homer and Hesiod), and Part 3 (Heracles in Fragmentary Greek Epic). Part 1 deals with Near Eastern intertexts (Bruno Currie: Heracles and Gilgamesh in Early Greek Epic) and reconstructed Greek contexts (Ruth Scodel: Heracles on Cos; Sophie Mills: Civilizer, Killer, Glutton … Moralist? Glimpses of Heracles in Early Greek Epic) that inform early epic representations of Heracles. In Part 2, scholars discuss Heracles in Homer and Hesiod (Apostolia Alepidou: Heracles in Homer and Hesiod: Shared ID, Distinct Perspectives; Glenn Most: Heracles in Hesiod; Silvio Bär: Heracles and Hesione in the Iliad; Hanne Eisenfeld: Of Walls and Monsters: Heracles and Epic Time in Iliad 20). Part 3 deals with the representation of Heracles in fragmentary Greek epic of the Archaic and Classical periods (Christos Tsagalis: Narrative and Stylistic Artistry in Early Greek Epic: Creophylus, Pisander, Panyassis; Laura Lulli: Traces of the Epics on Heracles in the Archaic and Classical Periods: Between Local Interests and NeverEnding Traditions; Stefano Vecchiato: Reassessing Pisander of Camirus, fr. dub. 2 EGEF). This volume would not have been completed but through the thoughtful contributions of all those colleagues who are listed above. Their participation in the Thessaloniki conference and especially their engagement with various issues concerning Heracles in Early Greek Epic has been really stimulating. I am grateful to them all. Special thanks are owed to Ruth Scodel, who in an act of selfless collegiality volunteered to polish the English style of several chapters that were written by non-native English speakers. I would also like to express my heartful thanks to Zoe Kalamara and Eleni Trougkou, graduate students at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, who helped me with practical issues before and during the conference, as well as to the journalist Lambrini Trougkou for her assistance. Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to my family, who allowed me the time to carry out this

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

viii

preface

demanding project at a time when we should have been spending more time together, after this long and awful pandemic. Christos C. Tsagalis Aristotle University of Thessaloniki January 2024

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

Contributors Apostolia Alepidou Ph.D. candidate in Ancient Greek Literature, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Silvio Bär Professor of Greek, University of Oslo. Bruno Currie Mason Monro Fellow in Classics, Oriel College, and Professor of Greek Literature, University of Oxford. Hanne Eisenfeld Assistant Professor in Classical Studies, Boston College. Laura Lulli Associate Professor in Ancient Greek Philology, Università degli Studi dell’Aquila. Sophie Mills Professor of Ancient Mediterranean Studies, University of North Carolina. Glenn Most Retired Professor, Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, and Visiting Professor, University of Chicago. Ruth Scodel Professor Emerita, The University of Michigan. Christos C. Tsagalis Professor of Ancient Greek Literature, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Stefano Vecchiato Mondadori Education S.p.A.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

Introduction Christos C. Tsagalis

One category of modern scholarship on Heracles has offered encyclopedic presentations of the greatest Greek hero, covering various aspects of his mythical, literary, and artistic life in Greek and Roman culture. In this category belong the “global” studies on Heracles by Friedländer (1907) and Schweitzer (1922); the thorough articles by Furtwängler (1886–1890) and Peter (1890) on Heracles and Hercules respectively in Roscher’s Ausführliches Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie; Gruppe’s exhaustive article (1918) in Paulys Real-Encyclopädie der Altertumswissenschaft; the relevant material in Robert’s Die griechische Heldensage (19214); Galinsky’s monograph The Herakles Theme (1972); Brommer’s insightful examination of the Twelve Labors (19792); the hero’s presentation in literary and artistic sources by Gantz (1993); the meticulous examination of artistic material in LIMC; the helpful, though too brief, survey of Padilla (1998); and the two best recent books on this subject by Stafford (2012) and Ogden (2021).1 Another category of studies pertains to in-depth treatments of Heracles in a given era or literary genre. Menkes (1978) has written a Ph.D. thesis on Heracles in Homer; Bonnet (1988) has studied the cults and myths of Melqart (the Tyrian and Mediterranean Heracles); a volume edited by Bonnet and JourdainAnnequin (1992) has examined the interaction of Heraclean cult and myth, not only in Greece but also in Cyprus and the Far West, the hero’s penetration in the East as a conqueror, and his settling in Rome and among the Italic peoples, as well as in Africa; another volume edited by Jourdain-Annequin and Bonnet (1996) has examined the relation of Heracles with women and the impact of the “feminine” in the gradual shaping of his myth; Bonnet, Jourdain-Annequin, and Pirenne-Delforge (1998) have edited a volume that has explored the real and imaginary associations of Heracles with his natural and cultural environment; Haubold has studied Heracles in the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women (2005); Tsagalis has explored the presentation of Heracles in inscriptional and literary epigram from the Archaic to the Imperial period (2011); Eppinger (2015) has investigated the representation of Heracles in late antiquity; Bär (2018) has 1 Stafford’s and Ogden’s books are extremely informative, and well-structured, and constitute excellent guides for the Heracles aficionado. The above list is not exhaustive. I have only mentioned here several publications of high merit; on further bibliography on Heracles that is not of the same quality, see Ogden (2021: xxii–xxiiin1).

© Christos C. Tsagalis, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004696617_002

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

2

tsagalis

focused his attention on the literary representations of Heracles in Greek epic from the Archaic to the Imperial period; Nesselrath has studied Heracles in the Homeric epics (2020); special topics such Heracles and the Church (Allan, Anagnostou-Laoutides, and Stafford 2020), Heracles from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment and beyond (Mainz and Stafford 2020), and modern Heracles (Blanshard and Stafford 2020) have been studied in three edited volumes, which are part of an admirably wide-ranging research project on Heracles coordinated by Stafford at the University of Leeds.2 The volume Heracles in Early Greek Epic belongs to the second category of research on Heracles. By focusing on a single genre (epic) and a limited time span (7th–5th cent. b.c.e.), it contains ten studies that explore difficult questions concerning the sources and intertexts for early epic on Heracles, the problems associated with his presentation in Homeric and Hesiodic epic, as well as narrative, stylistic, and textual issues. Heracles in Early Greek Epic aspires to offer its readers through a series of interlocking studies a variety of nuanced, balanced, and in-depth interpretations of thorny issues pertaining to the ways early epic has dealt with Heracles. Moreover, the particular importance of fragmentary poetry in assessing portrayals of Heracles in this period and the difficulties in dealing with that fragmentary material are key aspects of the volume; so too is the question of how far it is possible to discern earlier oral traditions about Heracles through the surviving poetry about him. Contributors explore questions concerning Heracles’s associations with heroes in Near Eastern literature and myth, as well as possible reflections in early epic poetry of his involvement in famous mythical exploits such as the first sack of Troy, the tale of Hesione and the ketos, the war against the Meropes on Cos, and the sack of Oechalia. Other contributors study the role of Heracles in nonHomeric Archaic and Classical epics (highlighting the local perspective as well as the aetiological function of the use of Heraclean myth) and the intellectual aspect of Heracles that lurks, if only embryonically, in early Greek epic poetry (notably in his underworld exploit where he meets Theseus and Peirithous). Last, some contributors examine and evaluate the way different poets (Creophylus, Pisander, and Panyassis) responded to the writing of epic about such a versatile and truly Pan-Hellenic hero and what are the consequences of their narrative treatment of Heracles for a literary history of early Greek epic. In different ways both fully surviving epics such as those of Homer and Hesiod, in which Heracles features in highly elliptical and fragmentary narratives, and epics in which he is the protagonist, but which survive in a fragmentary

2 There is one more volume in the pipeline, Heracles Performed (Stafford, forthcoming).

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

3

introduction

state, incur special interpretive difficulties, as they both trade on unknowns. In light of this, there is much ground to be covered until we acquire a better understanding of the earliest literary representations of the most elusive and protean, yet the greatest hero of the Greeks, Heracles.

1

Sources and Intertexts for Early Greek Epic on Heracles

Three chapters explore sources and intertexts for early Greek epic on Heracles, each considering different areas of possible influence. Bruno Currie examines the pair Heracles and Gilgamesh as a test case for Greek–Mesopotamian relations. He argues that these two “strong men”, both enjoying a remarkably wide and persisting fame in their respective traditions, offer a good starting point for exploring questions of putative influence. Currie begins his study by discussing the often asked and particularly thorny question of influence versus shared typology. He acknowledges the additional difficulty posed by the fact that, in contrast to other famous Greek heroes like Achilles and Odysseus for whom we have fully-fledged surviving poems (the Iliad and the Odyssey, respectively), there is no surviving Archaic epic poem on Heracles. As a result, any comparative study of Heracles and Gilgamesh must be based on motifs. By focusing his attention on three Heraclean labors that resist typological explanation and comparing them with two episodes of the story of Gilgamesh, Currie studies a series of shared motifs for each labor/episode: quest for immortality involving a journey to a land of beyond, hero’s voyage across the Ocean replicating that of the Sun god, use by the protagonist of his garment as a sail (Cattle of Geryoneus and Cerberus—Gilgamesh’s voyage to Utnapishtim), voyage over the Waters of Death/Styx, and the fact that the hero is conveyed alive by a ferryman of the dead (the Apples of the Hesperides—the jeweled trees in the garden of the gods). In this light, Currie maintains that it can be plausibly argued that in early epic poetry on Heracles the labors involving the Cattle of Geryoneus, Cerberus, and the Apples of the Hesperides formed a sequence of consecutive labors which were conceived as a conscious reception of Gilgamesh’s journey to Utnapishtim in the Standard Babylonian epic of Gilgamesh. As regards the date of the Gilgamization of Heracles mythology, Currie discusses all possible alternatives and, although he acknowledges that this question involves a leap in the dark, he leans towards the argument in favor of successive waves from the eighth–seventh through to the sixth–fifth centuries b.c.e.3 3 Currie’s chapter is much longer than the others in this volume, for various reasons. It deals with the treatment of Heracles in lost early Greek epic, thus responding to a suggestion made

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

4

tsagalis

Ruth Scodel turns her attention to the Iliad by offering a thorough study of the highly elliptical Coan episode following Heracles’s sack of Troy. According to various sources of which the earliest is the Iliad and the most puzzling the epic Meropis, the hero was driven off course to the island of Cos after the sack of Troy because of bad weather caused by Hera. Scodel draws attention to the vagueness of the Iliad about the reason Zeus saved Heracles and claims that the version of the story known to the poet of the Iliad did not suit his needs, since Heracles had to be presented as the innocent victim of Hera. The subsequent removal of Heracles to Argos by Zeus probably reflects a modification by the poet of the Iliad of a typical pattern, according to which a god intervenes in battle and saves his beloved hero from certain death. This pattern could have featured in an episode involving the killing of Alcyoneus or the Gigantomachy, provided that they followed the Coan episode, since in this way Hera’s malice would be alleviated. The Iliad uses the Coan adventure because of the connection it wants to make with the role of Hera as a mythical backdrop against which her mischief in the Dios apate should be measured. This strategy is independent of the position scholars take regarding such a function of Hera in an earlier song on which the Iliad draws. The vagueness of the narrative concerning the Coan episode shows that the poet knew of a version or versions of this adventure, from which he used only what suited him, since they may have been not entirely favorable to Heracles. Sophie Mills explores the intertexts pertaining to the dominant portrayal of Heracles in early epic as a hero of huge strength and appetites who is not known for his intellectual talents. She claims that the focus on Heracles’s portrayal in

by Martin West, and considers the relationship between Gilgamesh and Heracles as making a critical contribution to the fundamental and controversial question of whether and in what ways other extant early Greek epics (the Iliad, the Odyssey) may have received the Babylonian Gilgamesh epic, a question which is, in turn, central to the debate about Near-Eastern influence on early Greek epic more generally. These questions cannot be pursued without careful methodological reflection, for instance, on the difficulty of distinguishing typological parallels from literary influence. The textual evidence in question is also challenging: reference must be made to multiple episodes, from Greek and Babylonian traditions, each involving its own philological issues. As the texts in question, in Greek, Latin, and Akkadian, will often not be well known or easily accessible to readers, they themselves must be cited, translated, and sometimes annotated. In addition, it is not sufficient just to make a case for the reception of the Babylonian Gilgamesh in early Greek Heracles epic poetry tout court: the relative chronology of the “Gilgamization” of Heracles mythology is critical to this inquiry, in particular the question whether this is likely to have occurred before or after the composition of the Homeric and the Hesiodic poems; various chronological scenarios, and their consequences, are therefore presented. The undertaking of this demanding task results, justifiably, in a lengthy but rewarding chapter.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

introduction

5

Homer has clouded our vision as regards the existence of a moralizing aspect of his personality in Archaic Greek epic. The widespread idea of a gradual shaping of Heracles into a “philosopher” and a moral example of self-sacrifice for the good of humanity may well have its drawbacks, especially since traces of these aspects lurk in earlier poetry. By exploring texts that have been less studied, such as the Hesiodic Shield of Heracles (in which Heracles is aligned with the divine paragon of civilization Apollo and fights against Cycnus, the son of the savage war god Ares) and Panyassis’s Heracleia (in which Heracles advises Eurytus on how to avert Hybris, and makes a moral judgment between Theseus and Peirithous in the underworld), Mills maintains that already in early epic Heracles possesses a degree of intellectual capacity and is even capable of making active moral distinctions among the humans and the monsters he encounters.

2

Heracles in Homer and Hesiod

The second cluster of chapters takes its cue from the presentation and function of Heracles in the two chief representatives of early Greek epic, Homer and Hesiod. Apostolia Alepidou studies Heracles in the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Theogony, the only complete, Archaic epics unrelated to Heracles that occasionally engage with the hero. In the Iliad, Heracles is Achilles’s alter ego (though at times compared with other heroes, such as Nestor, Diomedes, and Agamemnon), but also the cause of dissent between Zeus and Hera, whose enmity is employed as the backdrop for their current conflict about the events at Troy. In the Odyssey, Heracles’s subtle comparison to Odysseus constitutes a mechanism for promoting the poetic supremacy of the poem’s protagonist over the greatest hero of all time. In the Theogony, Heracles is inscribed in the period inaugurated with the divine rule of Zeus in the cosmos, since he helps his father to retain his reign, but also benefits mankind as a monster-slayer. After discussing questions such as whether thematic manipulation is due to contextual parameters, mythical variants, or distinct aims of Homer and Hesiod, Alepidou suggests that the preoccupation with Heracles in epic poetry that was thematically unrelated to his saga reveals his undeniable popularity at the time the epics were composed. Heracles’s attributes belong to a common set of themes comprising the hero’s poetic ID but were redeployed and adapted to suit the different contexts in which they were employed. Glenn Most examines Hesiod’s portrayal of Heracles in his Theogony and contrasts it with the hero’s presentation in other early epic poems, such as

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

6

tsagalis

Homeric epic, the Hesiodic poems, and post-Homeric Archaic epics. Hesiod creates a positive portrayal of Heracles not only by presenting him as a moralist but also by cleansing him of his savage and violent aspects. The savagery of this impious warrior is replaced by his civilized aspect as the slayer of monsters. At the same time, his involvement in the establishment of Zeus’s reign marks his new role as a symbol of a just and orderly world. The next two chapters deal with one of the less studied but remarkably fascinating Heraclean mythical contexts, the hero’s first sack of Troy. Since both chapters focus on the first phase of this story which pertains to Heracles’s fighting a sea monster and helping king Laomedon, they should be read jointly. Although they adopt different approaches, the chapters by Bär and Eisenfeld are complementary, since they show how thorny are questions concerning the way we treat elliptical narratives in Homeric epic and debate whether later sources should be used to reconstruct earlier mythical material. Such concerns are particularly important for Heraclean myth, given that we do not have any extant, fully-fledged epic on Heracles from the Archaic or the Classical period. Silvio Bär explores the context of the story of the sea monster killed by Heracles as part of the episode of the hero’s first sack of Troy. He examines afresh the absence of Hesione in the Iliad and challenges the commonly held idea that, despite her Iliadic absence, Hesione belonged to the horizon of expectations of Homer’s audience. According to Bär, it was only in post-Homeric sources that Hesione became part of the larger mythical nexus of Heracles’s first sack of Troy, the first phase of which involved the hero’s rescue of Hesione from a sea monster, hence Laomedon’s debt to him. Bär also argues that in the light of the material provided by early vase painting, Hesione was not simply treated as a maiden in the throes of extreme adversity, but she was also elevated to the status of Heracles’s collaborator. Hanne Eisenfeld’s chapter takes us to a bygone feature of the Trojan landscape, the Wall of Heracles, and invites us to glimpse, through an analeptic reference, the wider matrix of the story of Heracles’s first sack of Troy. According to another highly abbreviated narrative pertaining to Heracles, the hero took shelter behind a wall in the Trojan plain when pursued by a sea monster. Eisenfeld maintains that the Iliad uses this brief analepsis to activate Heracles’s Iliadic status as a figure of the epic past so as to create a metapoetic play with epic chronology which marks the beginning of Iliad 20. In this way, Heracles is disoriented within multiple epic pasts and modes of heroic achievement that are quite different from the situation the Iliadic heroes are facing. Iliad 20 reviews a movement from early epic time to the Iliadic present using Heracles to draw a sharp line between past and present. By recalling this particular phase of Heracles’s fight with a sea monster, the Iliad stresses the different heroic chal-

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

7

introduction

lenges that heroes of the present have to deal with, as well as the unbridgeable gap separating humans from gods.

3

Heracles in Fragmentary Greek Epic

This last triad of chapters explores the function of Heracles in fragmentary early epic. While the chapters by Tsagalis and Lulli concentrate on narrative and generic issues pertaining to poetry on Heracles, Vecchiato’s chapter sheds light on a philological crux concerning a dubious fragment and its attribution to Pisander of Camirus. Christos C. Tsagalis studies the narrative of Creophylus’s Oechalias Halosis and of the two Heracleiae by Pisander of Camirus and Panyassis of Halicarnassus. He explores how each of these poets responded to his immediate predecessor: from Creophylus’s focus on a single event (the sack of Oechalia), Pisander widened his lens to include all of Heracles’s labors and some other exploits in a highly abbreviated epic of only two books, whereas Panyassis created an ambitious, large-scale account of Heracles’s life and deeds in fourteen books. Tsagalis uses this observation as a background against which he examines and compares the narrative style of these three poems and draws larger conclusions about the dichotomy perceived by Aristotle between two other major strands of early Greek poetry, Homeric and Cyclic epic. While Creophylus’s epic is in tune with the “dramatic” aspect of Homeric epic, the epics of Pisander and Panyassis resemble the highly episodic structure of Cyclic epic. We see here evidence for the reiteration of the Homeric–Cyclic polarity within the corpus of Heraclean epic of the Archaic and early Classical period. Tsagalis draws a further analogy between the two Heracleiae and the two Hesiodic Catalogues of Women (the Ehoeae and the Megalai Ehoeae), Pisander and the Ehoeae representing the condensed type of epic, Panyassis and the Megalai Ehoeae the expanded. Seen from this vantage point, it is suggested that the traditional Homeric–Cyclic dichotomy should not be treated as an isolated phenomenon pertaining to the Trojan saga and stemming from a reactionary stance against Homeric epic in favor of episodic narrative. It is rather a deeply seated feature of early Greek epic, as is the polarity between abbreviated and expanded poetic renderings of similar mythical material. Laura Lulli’s chapter is concerned with Heracles’s role in non-Homeric epic of the Archaic and Classical period. She argues that though Heracles was a dominant heroic figure in Greek culture, the almost complete disappearance of Archaic and Classical epic poetry about him has also affected the way his mythical armature was put into use in Hellenistic poetry. After exploring the few

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

8

tsagalis

Heraclean traces in the Theban and Trojan epic cycles, Lulli examines Panyassis’s Heracleia, maintains that this poem underscores the local perspective of Heraclean myth, and offers some evidence of its aetiological function. In this way, Panyassis seems to be a Hellenistic poet avant la lettre. The regional character of Heracles’s exploits—still observable in such fragmentary epics, if only through a few evanescent traces—resurfaces in a stark manner in the revival and development that these motifs underwent in Hellenistic epic. Links with the previous epic tradition can often be identified, mainly through the threads provided by scholiasts, commentators, and readers of Hellenistic texts focusing on Heracles. Stefano Vecchiato’s chapter aims to show that we can confidently add to the scanty remains of the Archaic epic poet Pisander of Camirus a complete hemistich, which has been included so far among his fragmenta dubia by most modern editors. In addition, the chapter examines the fragment’s content, diction, and meter, and discusses its alternative placements within Pisander’s epic. The studies included in this volume yield a rich interpretive harvest. The first group of chapters (Part 1) argue that the influence of other poetic traditions, both Near Eastern and Greek, has played a crucial role in the shaping of certain mythical episodes of Heracles’s saga: the three last adventures of Heracles that were included in the canon of twelve standard labors (the Cattle of Geryoneus, the Apples of the Hesperides, and Cerberus) were influenced by the journey of Gilgamesh to Utnapishtim in the epic of Gilgamesh; the Coan episode involving the struggle between Heracles and the Meropes presupposes some earlier Greek tradition that remains unknown to us; and the moralizing aspect of Heracles’s personality that is often considered a development of the late Classical and of the Hellenistic period lurks in Archaic and early Classical Greek epic, as manifested by the Hesiodic Shield of Heracles and Panyassis’s Heracleia. The second cluster of studies (Part 2) suggest that, although Heracles does not belong to the thematic core of Homeric and Hesiodic epic, he is used in both as the backdrop against which the audience is invited to evaluate principal heroes such as Achilles (Iliad) and Odysseus (Odysseus), or events such as the future sack of Troy (Iliad) and the rule of Zeus (Theogony). The third group of studies (Part 3) traces the treatment of Heracles in epics in which he is the protagonist (the Oechalias Halosis by Creophylus and the two Heracleiae by Pisander, and Panyassis) and allows us to acquire a clearer idea of the development of early Greek epic. The difference between an epic based on a single theme (Oechalias Halosis) and encyclopedic epic treating multiple episodes (the two Heracleiae) suggests that the dichotomy between Homeric and Cyclic epic, in which the same observation has been made, is equally appli-

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

introduction

9

cable to epic poetry on Heracles. Moreover, the contrast between a condensed type of epic (Pisander’s Heracleia) and an expanded one (Panyassis’s Heracleia) on the same topic is analogous to the difference between the Hesiodic Ehoeae (condensed epic) and the Megalai Ehoeae (expanded epic). The regional character of Heracles’s exploits, which emerges from the study of epic poetry in which he is the main figure, paved the way for the development of aetiological associations, and, in turn, of motifs (like his passion for wine) that would be further explored in Hellenistic epic. The most noteworthy example of this phenomenon is Panyassis’s Heracleia, though the definite inclusion of Heracles’s desire for wine in Pholus’s house in Pisander’s Heracleia shows that it goes back at least to the sixth century b.c.e.

Works Cited Allan, A.L., Anagnostou-Laoutides, E., and Stafford, E. 2020. Heracles Inside and Outside the Church: From the First Apologists to the End of the Quattrocento. Leiden: Brill. Bär, S. 2018. Herakles im griechischen Epos: Studien zur Narrativität und Poezität eines Helden. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. Bär, S. 2019. “Heracles in Homer and Apollonius: Narratological Character Analysis in a Diachronic Perspective.” Symbolae Osloenses 93: 106–131. Barker, E. and Christensen, J. 2014. “Even Heracles Had to Die: Homeric ‘Heroism’, Mortality, and the Epic Tradition.” In Tsagalis, C. ed. Theban Resonances in Homeric Epic. Berlin: De Gruyter. 249–277. Blanshard, A. and Stafford, E. 2020. The Modern Hercules: Images of the Hero from the Nineteenth to the Early Twenty-First Century. Leiden: Brill. Bonnet, C. 1988. Melqart: Cultes et mythes de l’Héraclès tyrien en Méditerranée. Leeuven: Peeters. Bonnet C. and Jourdain-Annequin, C. 1992. Héraclès: D’une rive à l’autre de la Méditerranée : Bilan et perspectives. Brussels: Institut historique belge de Rome. Bonnet C., Jourdain-Annequin, C., and Pirenne-Delforge, V. 1998. Le bestiaire d’Héraclès: iiie Rencontre héracléenne. Liège: Presses universitaires de Liège. Brommer, F. 19792. Die zwölf Taten des Helden in antiker Kunst und Literatur. Cologne: Böhlau Verlag. 1986. Heracles: The Twelve Labours of the Hero in Ancient Art and Literature. New Rochelle, NY: A.D. Caratzas. Eppinger, A. 2015. Hercules in der Spätantike: Die Rolle des Heros im Spannungsfeld von Heidentum und Christentum. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Friedländer, P. 1907. Herakles. Sagengeschichtliche Untersuchungen. Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

10

tsagalis

Galinsky, G.K. 1972. The Herakles Theme. The Adaptations of the Hero in Literature from Homer to the Twentieth Century. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Gantz, T. 1993. Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources, vols. i–ii. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Gruppe, O. 1918. “Herakles.” In Paulys Real-Encyclopädie der Altertumswisseschaft, Suppl. iii: col. 910–1121. Haubold, J. 2005. “Heracles in the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women.” In Hunter, R.L. ed. The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women: Constructions and Reconstructions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 85–98. Jourdain-Annequin, C. and Bonnet, C. 1996. iie Rencontre héracléenne: Héraclès, les femmes et le féminin. Brussels: Brepols. Mainz, V. and Stafford, E. 2020. The Exemplary Hercules from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment and Beyond. Leiden: Brill. Menkes, M.S. 1978. Herakles in the Homeric Epics. Ph.D. Diss. The Johns Hopkins University. Nesselrath, H.G. 2020. “Heracles in Homer.” In Rengakos, A., Finglass, P.J., and Zimmermann, B. eds. More than Homer Knew—Studies on Homer and His Ancient Commentators. Berlin: De Gruyter. 25–35. Ogden, D. 2021. The Oxford Handbook of Heracles. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Padilla, M.W. 1998. The Myths of Herakles in Ancient Greece: Survey and Profile. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Robert, C. 19214. Die griechische Heldensage ii. Berlin: Weidmann (= Preller, L., Robert, C. and Kern, O. 1894–1926. Griechische Mythologie. Berlin: Weidmann. ii.2). Roscher, W.H. 1886–1937. Ausführliches Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie. Berlin: Teubner. Schweitzer, B. (1922). Herakles: Aufsätze zur griechischen Religions- und Sagengeschichte. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr Verlag (Paul Siebeck). Stafford, E. 2012. Herakles. Abingdon: Routledge. Stafford, E. forthcoming. Hercules Performed. Leiden: Brill. Tsagalis, C. 2011. “The Heracles Theme: From Inscriptional to Literary Epigram.” Rivista di Filologia e di Istruzione Classica 139.1: 43–100.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

part 1 Sources and Intertexts for Early Greek Epic on Heracles

∵

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

Heracles and Gilgamesh in Early Greek Epic Bruno Currie

1

Introduction*

The question of the possible influence of the figure of Gilgamesh on that of Heracles makes for an important test case in Mesopotamian–Greek relations: we might expect to find influence here, if anywhere. The investigation involves the usual problems of method: in particular, of ascertaining when correspondences should be ascribed to influence and when they are to be explained as being purely typological. The problems of evidence are even more acute than usual in investigations of this kind: we have no extant Heracles epic to set alongside the Babylonian Gilgamesh.1 Conditions are thus less favorable than when appraising the possible influence of Gilgamesh on the figures of Achilles or Odysseus, where the Iliad and the Odyssey enable a case to be made in considerable detail (though even here the case is contested).2 The argument for a reception of Gilgamesh in early Greek Heracles epic poetry must be a much patchier and coarser-grained affair, conducted on the level of bare motifs, rather than their concrete linguistic realization. (Whether this state of affairs in fact makes it harder or easier to allege parallels and possible influence is open to question.) The aim of this chapter is not to encompass the figure of Heracles in all its cultic and mythological complexity, nor the equally absurd one of attempting to derive the figure of Heracles from that of Gilgamesh.3 It may be taken as read that there were numerous influences on Heracles, as a figure of cult as well as of mythology and poetry.4 This chapter does not exclude the possibility of inherited Indo-European elements (compare e.g. Vedic Indra / Trita Āptya),5 Phoenician influence (Melqart),6 and influence from other Mesopotamian fig-

* I am grateful to Stephanie Dalley, Christopher Metcalf, and Christos Tsagalis for commenting on an early draft of this paper. 1 References to Heracles in early Greek hexameter poetry are surveyed by †West 2018: 267–268; Barker and Christensen 2021. 2 See e.g. West 1997: 336–347, 402–417; Currie 2016: 186, 193 (Odysseus), 197, 205, 216 (Achilles); Clarke 2019: passim. Differently, e.g. Matijević 2018. 3 Cf. †West 2018: 267. 4 A handy survey is López-Ruiz 2015: 337–338. 5 Burkert 1979: 85–86; Watkins 1995: 464–468; West 2007: 260–261; Witzel 2012: 142–143. 6 Daniels 2021. Cf. Lane Fox 2008: 206–209.

© Bruno Currie, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004696617_003

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

14

currie

ures than Gilgamesh alone (Ninurta, Nergal, and Marduk).7 The aim of the present chapter is the circumscribed one of considering whether the figure of Gilgamesh in Babylonian poetry constitutes one significant strand of influence on the presentation of Heracles in early Greek epic poetry.

2

Heracles and Gilgamesh: Similar Typology or Influence?

There are numerous similarities between Heracles in the early Greek mythological tradition and Gilgamesh in Babylonian tradition. Each exemplifies the type of the violent hero.8 Each is a monster-slayer and culture hero.9 Each conforms to the type of the solitary hero.10 Each is accompanied (notwithstanding the preceding) and aided in some of their most notable exploits by a close companion (Iolaus, Enkidu).11 Each undertakes adventures clad in a lionskin.12 Each has mixed mortal-divine parentage and embarks on a quest for immortality.13 Each uniquely problematizes the mortal-immortal distinction.14 Many of the above correspondences could perhaps be ascribed to a shared typology. Lane Fox has cautioned:

7

8

9 10 11

12

13 14

On Heracles and Ninurta, see Burkert 1987: 14–19 = 2003: 52–58; West 1997: 467–469; Ogden 2021a: xxiv; Anderson 2021: 375. On Heracles and Nergal, see below, p. 53. On Heracles and Marduk, see Ogden 2021a: xxv; cf. D’Alessio 2004: 25 and n27. On Gilgamesh and violence: cf. George 2020: xlix–l. Heracles as violent hero: Hsu 2020: e.g. 10. Heracles as “Starker Hans” / “Strong John” (ATU Type 650A): Prinz 1974: 164.9–24; cf. Bär 2018: 17 and n25. Gilgamesh and Heracles thus compared: Burkert 1992b: 125 = 2003: 84–85; †West 2018: 267; cf. 2014: 32. Contrast Odysseus (West 1997: 402 “he prefers to overcome difficulties by the use of cunning … He is, then, no Gilgamesh …”). Burkert 1992b: 114–186 = 2003: 76–86. West 1997: 467. West 1997: 466–467; †West 2018: 270: “Iolaos was probably a figure already given by Greek tradition, not an invention on the model of Gilgāmeš’ friend Enkīdu, but our Heracles poet will have been struck by the parallelism and may have developed it”. Compare and contrast Boardman 1998: 31. On Iolaus in general, see West 2009. †West 2018: 271. Gilgamesh: SBV Gilg. vii.147, viii.91, x.6, x.45 ~ 118 ~ 125 ~ 218 ~ 225. It has been disputed whether Gilgamesh actually wears a lionskin or a dog’s skin (cf. e.g. Burkert 1987: 16 = 2003: 54 and n24; cf. 1992: 119 = 2003: 79; West 1997: 462, 466). However, for the correctness of the reading “lionskin”, see SBV Gilg. vii.147, viii.91, x.6, x.45 ~ 118 ~ 125 ~ 218 ~ 225, with George 2003: i.498, ii.869, 871. On the wider distribution of the leonine iconography (also of Melqart and others), see Daniels 2021: 471–473. Cf. also Burkert 1985: 209. Burton 1996: 112. On Gilgamesh, cf. George 2003: i.273. Heracles: Burkert 1985: 208. Gilgamesh: George 2003: i.128; 2020: pp. lii–liii, 150–151.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

heracles and gilgamesh in early greek epic

15

… we risk mistaking parallel stories for causes and origins. Culture-heroes do approximately similar things in different societies, fighting against monsters and wild nature and even penetrating to the edges of the world. Heracles’ animal enemies are not those of Near Eastern heroes, and the differences between theirs and his are more striking than the parallels.15 There are, however, three labors of Heracles in particular that resist a purely typological explanation and provide excellent grounds for inferring influence from the Babylonian Gilgamesh tradition: the quests for Geryoneus’s cattle, Cerberus, and the Apples of the Hesperides. Each of these invites interpretation as a reception of different elements from the narrative of Gilgamesh’s voyage to Utnapishtim in the tenth tablet of the Standard Babylonian Gilgamesh.16 The wider question concerning the language(s) and medium or media in which the Babylonian Gilgamesh may have been transmitted to Greece will not be addressed here; it is, however, a premise of the investigation that such transmission could and did take place.17

3

Heracles’s Voyage to Geryoneus ~ Gilgamesh’s Voyage to Utnapishtim

Heracles’s fight with Geryoneus is one of the earliest attested labors in Greek hexameter poetry; it is alluded to twice in Hesiod’s Theogony, 287–294 and 979– 983. The former passage, though a mere summary narrative, abounds in specific details: Heracles kills Geryoneus, possessor of herds of cattle in Erytheia (compare also 982–983) beyond the Ocean; he has a dog named Orthus (compare also 309) and a herdsman, Eurytion. This summary narration evidently presupposes the existence of a much fuller narration in earlier hexameter poetry.18 Heracles’s voyage to Geryoneus continued to be the subject of later epic poetry on Heracles (Pisander, Heracleia fr. 5 PEG; Panyassis, Heracleia fr. 9 PEG, fr. dub. 31 PEG),19 as well as featuring in so-called “lyric epic” (Stesichorus, Geryoneis frs. 5–83 Finglass).20 15 16 17 18 19 20

Lane Fox 2008: 204. West 1997: 463–464, 466–467; †West 2018: 276. For some possibilities, see West 1997: 586–630. Cf. Davies and Finglass 2014: 230; Finglass 2021: 136. Cf. D’Alessio 2004: 30–31; on Pisander and Panyassis, see Tsagalis (this volume) pp. 203– 216. It was also being depicted in art from the first half (?) of the seventh century b.c.e.: LIMC v.i.73–85; Brize 1980: 30–65; cf. Stafford 2012: 43–44; Davies and Finglass 2014: 231–233.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

16

currie

There is much in the Heracles-Geryoneus episode that cannot be related to the Gilgamesh-Utnapishtim episode: for instance, the herd of cattle, its herdsman, and his watchdog.21 These may be inherited Indo-European elements.22 We may assume there was a forerunner of the Heracles-Geryoneus episode in the Greek mythological-poetic tradition that predated any putative “Gilgamization” of the Heracles mythology and many of whose elements remained untouched by any such “Gilgamizing” agenda, for the simple reason that they lacked any correlate in Gilgamesh mythology.23 Heracles’s combat with Geryoneus has also been compared to other Mesopotamian combat tales, such as that of Gilgamesh and Humbaba (narrated in tablet v of the Standard Babylonian Gilgamesh) or that of Ninurta and the Asag (narrated in the Sumerian poem Lugal-e).24 It should again be emphasized that in comparing the Heracles-Geryoneus episode with the Babylonian Gilgamesh, we are not trying exhaustively to derive it from Gilgamesh; the suggestion is rather that early Greek Heracles poetry/mythology gave a Gilgamizing interpretation of a mythological complex that was already established in Greek tradition. More concretely, the suggestion will be that one modified Jenseitsfahrt involving Heracles has been, partially but significantly, assimilated to another modified Jenseitsfahrt involving Gilgamesh. It is not so much Heracles’s fight with Geryoneus as his voyage to Geryoneus that will concern us. 3.1 A Quest for Immortality Involving a Journey to a Land of Beyond Gilgamesh’s voyage over the ocean to the extremities of the world is described at the start of the poem as a quest for “life” (balāṭi),25 i.e. immortality (SBV Gilg. i.40–42): [Gilgamesh, who] crossed the ocean, the wide sea, as far as the sunrise; who scoured the world-regions ever searching for life, and reached by his strength Utnapishtim the Far-Away.26 “The ocean, the wide sea” that Gilgamesh must cross in order to reach Utnapishtim is later redescribed as the “Waters of Death” (SBV Gilg. x.172, 175; see below, 21 22 23 24 25 26

Cf. †West 2018: 276. See above, p. 13n5, and Curtis 2011: 38–39. The term “Gilgamizing” is taken from †West 2018: 268. Gilgamesh and Humbaba: Burton 1996: 109–111. Ninurta and the Asag: Burkert 1987: 14–16 = 2003: 52–54; cf. Gangutia Elícegui 1998. Cf. Siduri to Gilgāmesh, OB Gilg.iii.3–5 (George 2003: 279): “[sc. when the gods created mankind,] they laid death on mankind, they kept life (balāṭam) in their own hands”. Trans. George 2003: i.541 (slightly modified).

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

heracles and gilgamesh in early greek epic

17

p. 22). His journey to find the sole mortal who has obtained immortality (Ūtanapišti < watû + napištu, “I/He Found Life”)27 assumes the character of a journey to the world of the dead, in order to overcome death and return to the world of the living. Thus, Gilgamesh’s voyage to Utnapishtim is revealed to be a modified or transferred Jenseitsfahrt. Heracles’s voyage to Geryoneus has likewise often been seen as a modified version of a Jenseitsfahrt. As Davies has put it, “What needs particular emphasizing is that the story of Heracles’s mission to fetch the cattle of Geryoneus, like the tale of his descent to Hades to fetch Cerberus, is (though in more oblique form) a Jenseitsfahrt, a heroic journey to the land of the dead”;28 this has often involved, inter alia, identifying Geryoneus as the mythological reflection of a death demon or “herdsman of the dead” figure. We shall return to the conception of the voyage to Geryoneus as a Jenseitsfahrt (below, pp. 29–31). 3.2 The Hero’s Voyage across the Ocean Replicates That of the Sun God In voyaging to Utnapishtim, Gilgamesh is traveling the path of the sun.29 Siduri observes to Gilgamesh, on learning of his intention to reach Utnapishtim (SBV Gilg. x.81–82): Only Shamash the hero crosses the ocean: apart from the Sun God, who crosses the ocean?30 In voyaging over the ocean to the far West to Erytheia where Geryoneus is placed, Heracles is also traveling the path of the sun: he borrows the “cup-boat” of Helios. The best-known extant source for this episode is Stesichorus’s Geryoneis (fr. 8a, b Finglass).31 The motif of Helios sailing across the ocean in a cup was probably already a traditional one in early Greek poetry,32 here co-opted

27 28

29 30 31 32

George 2003: i.152–153; Chen 2019: 161. Davies 1988: 278. Cf. Davies and Finglass 2014: 230, with references in n2; Fontenrose 1959: 335–336; LIMC v.i.81. Hades’s herds are pastured next to Geryoneus’s, according to Apollod. 2.5.10; cf. Jourdain-Annequin 1989: 535. See also Burkert 1979: 83 with 179n2, 85–88; Stafford 2012: 45; McInerney 2010: 103–112 (esp. 103); Fowler 2013: 299. See George 2003: i.493–497. Trans. George 2020: 77. See, further, Pisander, Heraclea fr. 5 PEG; Aesch. fr. 74 TrGF; Pherecydes 18a Fowler. For Helios sailing across the Ocean in a “cup” (δέπας) or “cauldron” (λέβης), see Eumelus, Titanomachy fr. 12 EGEF = fr. 8 PEG (with S.R. West 1994: 147; Tsagalis 2017: 68, 69, esp. 70– 73); Mimnermus 12 West; Stesichorus frs. 8a, b Finglass; Aeschylus fr. 69 TGrF; dubious is Sappho 58b.10 Budelmann (with Watkins 2007: 317–319; Budelmann 2018: 151–152; Janko

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

18

currie

into Heracles mythology, conceivably in the interests of making Heracles’s voyage evoke Gilgamesh’s.33 Pherecydes further mentions an exchange between Heracles and Helios (fr. 18a Fowler).34 This could conceivably have had epic precedent, and may have been inspired by an encounter between Gilgamesh and Shamash in the Gilgamesh tradition before his traversing of the ocean (OBV VA+BM Gilg. i.5′ ff.).35 3.3 Hero Uses a Garment as a Sail We come now to arguably the most striking correspondence. On his voyage to Utnapishtim, Gilgamesh uses hewn cedar logs as disposable punting-poles to replace “the Stone Ones” that he wantonly smashed. When these run out, he resorts to using a garment as a sail (SBV Gilg. x.180–183): ina 2.giš36 gilgāmeš ugdammera parīsī u šū ipṭur qabalšu … gilgāmeš iḫtamaṣ ṣubāssu ina kappīšu karâ ušaqqi At one hundred and twenty double furlongs, Gilgamesh had used up the punting-poles, and himself ungirded his loins …: Gilgamesh tore off his garment: he raised a yardarm in his arms. We have here to take stock of a philological problem in the Akkadian. The translation above assumes that Gilgamesh uses his own garment as a sail.37 The currently favored alternative has him use Urshanabi’s: “and he, [Urshanabi], ungirded his loins” (181; this requires supplementing [uršanabi] at the end of the line).38 In favor of the former interpretation is that the improvisation

33 34 35 36 37 38

2017: 269–273). See, further, Watkins 2007: 315–319. For non-Greek analogues, see West 2007: 207–209. Watkins 2007: 322–323 argues for Western Anatolian Luvian influence. For the comparison of Heracles’s and Gilgamesh’s journeys, see Clark 1979: 84; †West 2018: 275–276. Cf. LIMC v.i.80–81, 85. For this episode, see George 2003: i.276–277 (not attested for SBV Gilg.: ibid. 273). For the comparison with Heracles and Helios, see †West 2018: 276. For the reading giš, and the translation “60 double furlongs”, see George 2003: ii.872–873. So Dalley 2000: 105; Foster 2019: 82. So George 2003: i.502 and n210, 689; Maul 2005: 133; Helle 2021: 94; cf. CAD vi.60 “Gilgamesh stripped off his (Ur-šanabi’s?) clothing”.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

heracles and gilgamesh in early greek epic

19

(and more importantly, apparently, the first invention)39 of sail and yardarm should be the intellectual achievement of Gilgamesh, who is to be regarded as the πρῶτος εὑρετής of this mode of navigation.40 On the latter interpretation, the inspiration will be Urshanabi’s, and would be communicated to Gilgamesh in an oddly non-verbal, deadpan way. The former interpretation has the further advantage that the third-person possessive suffix -šu is used in the same (reflexive) way throughout the passage, with stable reference to Gilgamesh throughout (181 qabalšu, “his loins”; 182 ṣubāssu, “his garment”; 183 kappīšu, “his arms”). The objections to this interpretation are linguistic and are twofold.41 First, the verb ḫamāṣu (182 iḫtamaṣ), “to take off (clothing) by force”,42 is normally used of tearing off someone else’s garment. Second, the emphatic third-person pronoun šū (181) regularly accompanies a change of subject:43 accordingly, if Gilgamesh is the subject of the verb in 181, then Urshanabi should be the subject of the verb in 182. It is hard to gauge the force of these objections. As to the first, it is hard to see why ḫamāṣu could not be used here (182 iḫtamaṣ) of Gilgamesh dramatically tearing off his own garment with force.44 As to the second, it is perhaps conceivable that the emphatic third-person pronoun šū (coupled here with the possessive suffix -šu) is used to express the idea of Gilgamesh being thrown upon his own resources, and his own person, after using up the punting-poles.45 For the purposes of the present argument, it will be assumed that Gilgamesh makes a sail of his own garment. It must be borne in mind, however, that this interpretation of the Akkadian text is controversial. Heracles on his voyage to Geryoneus uses his most distinctive item of clothing, the lionskin, as a sail. One source for this is Servius’s commentary on Virg. Aen. 8.299 (Thilo and Hagen ii.i.242.9–13), in the course of a précis of all Hercules’s labors: 39 40 41 42 43 44

45

George 2003: i.502–503; see further below, p. 30. George 2003: i.503 and n212. George 2003: ii.873. CAD vi.60. For examples of the uses of šū, see CAD 17(3) s.v. šū, esp. p. 159. While attested uses of ḫamāṣu are restricted to cases of someone forcibly tearing off a garment from someone else, this may have more to do with the nature of the act involved than with the intrinsic meaning of the verb: it is simply more common to tear off a garment with force from someone else than from oneself. If, moreover, ḫamāṣu were indeed used exclusively for forcibly tearing off another’s clothes (as argued George 2003: ii.873), then it ought to be possible to point to an alternative Akkadian verb that would preferentially be used for forcibly tearing off one’s own. A verb such as šaḫāṭu, for instance, does not fit the bill: it appears to convey a serene doffing of one’s clothes (CAD xvii.1.93). In six preceding verses (174, 176–180), Gilgamesh has been the grammatical subject and the punting-pole(s) the grammatical object; accordingly, šū in 181 would not signal a change

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

20

currie

ad Geryonem autem … naui aenea nauigauit tergo leonis uelificans, ibique primum canem, Echidnae filium, peremit, deinde Eurytiona pastorem, Martis filium, nouissime Geryonem, cuius abduxit armenta. And he [sc. Hercules] sailed to Geryoneus’s abode in a bronze boat, using the skin of a lion as a sail, and once there slew first of all the dog, the son of Echidna, then the herdsman Eurytion, the son of Ares, and last of all Geryoneus, whose herds he abducted. We do not know by what intermediaries in the mythographic and/or commentary tradition this account came down to Servius.46 At any rate, the “bronze boat” (naui aenea) is clearly recognizable as the “cauldron” or “cup-boat” of Helios.47 It is remarkable that Servius’s summary includes the detail of the improvised sail, which must have been given some prominence in his source. The antiquity of this motif cannot be demonstrated, but it is possible that the detail of the improvised sail featured in the early epic tradition. The motif is attested earlier by the paroemiographer Diogenianus (2.57 = CPG i.204): Ἄλλο γένος κώπης· ἐπὶ τῶν περὶ τὸ ἦθος ἐνηλλαγμένων· Ἡρακλῆς γὰρ διαπεραιούμενος ἐπὶ τὰς ἐν Ἐρυθείᾳ βοῦς, ἱστίῳ τῇ λεοντῇ ἐχρήσατο, ἱστῷ δὲ τῷ ῥοπάλῳ· ἐφ’ ᾧ καὶ ἐλέχθη. “Another kind of oar”: said of perversions of custom. For when making the crossing to get the cows in Erytheia, Heracles employed the lionskin as a sail and the club as a mast. This was the occasion for the saying. The proverbial saying, ἄλλο γένος κώπης, is a hemiepes; both it and the mythological motif in question may have their ultimate origin in a Greek hexameter narrative of Heracles’s voyage to Geryoneus.48

46 47

48

of grammatical subject from Gilgamesh to Urshanabi, but a switch from Gilgamesh taking a new punting-pole to his acting on his own initiative and turning to his own resources / his own person (182 gilgāmeš iḫtamaṣ ṣubāssu echoing 180 gilgāmeš ugdammera parīsī). Cameron 2004: 192–208. Norden 1957: 5, 238–239 assumes that Virgil knew of the descent of Heracles to the underworld from a mythographic handbook. The vessel is bronze also at Eustath. on Dion. Perieg. 558 (sc. Ἡρακλῆς) πλεύσας χαλκῷ λέβητι, citing also Euphorion fr. 72 Lightfoot χαλκείῃ ἀκάτῳ. Otherwise, it is generally golden (Davies and Finglass 2014: 255). I owe both this point and the reference to Diogenianus to the learning and kindness of Christos Tsagalis.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

heracles and gilgamesh in early greek epic

21

It is hard not to connect this motif of Heracles’s improvisational use of his lionskin as a sail on his way to Geryoneus with Gilgamesh’s improvisation of a sail on his voyage to Utnapishtim, and not to see it as a Greek reception of the Babylonian poem.49 This Greek reception would come staggeringly close to its Babylonian model if it were securely known both that Gilgamesh’s garment was understood by the author of this Greek reception to have been a lionskin50 and that Gilgamesh was likewise understood to have made the sail out of his own garment (not Urshanabi’s); in other words: out of the lionskin. However, even if we grant neither of these things, we should still see this as a strikingly impressive Greek reception of Gilgamesh making a sail out of Urshanabi’s garment. The Babylonian and the Greek motifs are in either case close, but in neither case completely identical with one another. One fundamental divergence is that Heracles is alone in the cup-boat of the sun on the voyage to Geryoneus (unlike on his crossing of the Styx to fetch Cerberus, where he is accompanied by Charon as a kind of Urshanabi-figure: see below, pp. 23–29), which means that the possibility of Heracles’s using anyone else’s (his ferryman’s) garment as a sail was simply not given.

4

Heracles’s Descent into the Underworld ~ Gilgamesh’s Voyage to Utnapishtim

Like his voyage to Geryoneus, Heracles’s descent into the underworld to fetch Cerberus belonged to the pre-Homeric tradition of Heracles-poetry. It is presupposed at Od. 11.620–626, where the εἴδωλον of Heracles, conversing with Odysseus in the underworld, recalls his own descent to fetch Cerberus. In the Iliad, too, Athena mentions Heracles’s crossing of the Styx in connection with this exploit (8.366–369). Again, there are elements in this labor—the hound of the underworld itself—that have no analogue in the Babylonian Gilgamesh, and which may be of Indo-European origin.51 Once again, therefore, we are talking about the pos49 50

51

Cf. Graves 1955: 451, cf. 495 and 502n4. For Gilgamesh as wearing a lionskin throughout this episode of SBV Gilg. (and elsewhere), see above, n12. For Gilgamesh as fighting with lions, see SBV Gilg. ix.9, 18, x.34, 38; George 2003: i.492; plus the Hittite Gilgamesh, iii §7 (Foster 2019: 165, trans. Beckman). Mallory and Adams 2006: 439: “Many Indo-European traditions portray death as a journey and in the case of Celtic, Germanic, and Greek, and to a lesser extent Slavic and Indic, this may involve a journey across a river where the deceased is ferried by a *ĝerhaont—“old man”. On this journey they may also encounter a dog who serves either as a guardian of the Otherworld or as a guide. Here we have some linguistic evidence in the cognate names

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

22

currie

sible Gilgamization of an existing mythological episode. Once again, it is not so much Heracles’s encounter with a hound of the underworld that interests us, but the voyage itself to the underworld (compare above, p. 16). 4.1 Voyage over the Waters of Death / Styx Gilgamesh’s voyage to Utnapishtim is a voyage over the “Waters of Death” (mê mūti, SBV x.172, 175, OBV VA+BM iv.23), seemingly an equivalent of the River Ḫubur, the Babylonian Styx.52 It is unusual in a Mesopotamian context for the river of the underworld to be situated in the (cosmic) sea, tâmtu, as would be the case here.53 At the expense of a somewhat unconventional approach to cosmic geography, therefore, we are apparently invited to see this voyage of Gilgamesh over the “Waters of Death” to the immortalized Utnapishtim (resident in Dilmun, close to the Apsû, subterranean cosmic water)54 as equivalent to a passage across the chthonic river, the Ḫubur, to the underworld.55 Heracles’s voyage over the river Styx, the river of the underworld,56 is thus a close analogue of Gilgamesh’s voyage over the “Waters of Death” (vice the River Ḫubur).

52

53 54 55

56

of Greek Kérberos, the three-headed dog of Hades, and the Indic Śárvara, one of Yima’s dogs, both deriving from a PIE *kˆérberos ‘spotted’”. See George 2003: i.499–500, esp. 500. Pace Matijević 2015: 198: “Diese ‘Wasser des Todes’ kann man nicht … mit Flüssen der Unterwelt gleichsetzen”, 198–199: “fest steht, dass man die ‘Wasser des Todes’ nicht mit den Unterweltflüssen gleichsetzen kann”, 214: “es [handelt] sich bei Gilgameschs Suche nach Uta-napischti eben nicht um eine Reise ins Reich der Toten”: see further below. For “the river of Hubur” (nāri Ḫubur) in Babylonian poetry, cf. e.g. Babylonian Theodicy 17 (Lambert 1960: 70–71; Foster 2005: 915). See in general Horowitz 2011: 355–358. Horowitz 2011: 103 and n19. On the abode of Utnapishtim, see below (p. 39n151). See George 2003: i.500–501: “the dead necessarily had to pass through the watery Apsû [sc. subterranean cosmic water] to reach the Netherworld, a situation which would easily permit an equation of Ea’s domain [sc. the Apsû] with the chthonic river [sc. the Ḫubur] … [I]t seems that a ferry across the Waters of Death could link the world of men with two other cosmic domains, the Apsû and the Netherworld”. Compare Horowitz 2011: 103–104: “A belief that the distant reaches of the ocean were connected with death may derive from the notion that one could pass directly into the underworld through the waters of the far reaches of the sea, just as the sun appears to rise and set directly from/into the ocean by the seashore”. Each of these suggestions amply meets the objection raised by Matijević 2015: 199: “[Die ‘Wasser des Todes’] trennen den Wohnort der ewig Lebenden von der Welt der Sterblichen; die Toten spielen hierbei keine Rolle”. On the river that divides the world of the living from the world of the dead in Greek mythological thinking (esp. Il. 23.73), see Sourvinou-Inwood 1995: 61–62; on Acheron, ibid. 307; Nesselrath 2020b: 164–165n11.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

heracles and gilgamesh in early greek epic

23

4.2 Hero Conveyed Alive by a Ferryman of the Dead It is Utnapishtim’s ferryman, Urshanabi, who conveys Gilgamesh over the “Waters of Death”; to equate the “Waters of Death” with the river Ḫubur entails equating Urshanabi, in this narrative, with a ferryman of the river of the dead.57 In Mesopotamian contexts outside SBV Gilgamesh, we find Gilgamesh himself in the role of a ferryman of the dead.58 This development seems to presuppose an understanding of this narrative of SBV Gilgamesh whereby, first, Urshanabi is equated with a ferryman of the dead, and, second, Gilgamesh takes over from him in this role.59 In other Mesopotamian literature, we encounter other figures in the role of ferryman of the dead. One of these is Silu-igi (?), “the man of the ferryboat”, in the Sumerian composition Enlil and Ninlil.60 Another is Ḫumuṭ-tabal (“Take-Away-Quickly, boatman of the netherworld”), in Netherworld Vision of an Assyrian Crown Prince (Underworld Vision of Kummâ) 46.61 The proliferation of such figures plainly presents no obstacle to seeing Urshanabi (and hence Gilgamesh himself) as playing an equivalent role in the Babylonian Gilgamesh.62 The Greek ferryman of the dead, Charon, conveys Heracles over the Styx. For details of this episode, we depend on post-Homeric sources. We are informed (courtesy, again, of Servius’s commentary on the Aeneid, 6.392 = Thilo and Hagen ii.i.61.28–30) of an early Greek hexameter poem ascribed to Orpheus that narrated Charon ferrying Heracles over the Styx (= OF 714): lectum est in Orpheo quod, quando Hercules ad inferos descendit, Charon territus eum statim suscepit, ob quam rem anno integro in compedibus fuit. It has been read in Orpheus that, when Hercules descended to the underworld, Charon, terrified, immediately took him on board, in consequence of which he was held in chains for a whole year. Servius evidently did not read this “Orphic” poem in the original.63 His ponderously impersonal and circumlocutory phrase lectum est in Orpheo does not 57

58 59 60 61 62 63

See esp. George 2003: i.500–501, cf. 151; cf. Clark 1979: 30. Differently, Matijević 2015: 199: “[man sollte] den Fährmann Ur-schanabi … nicht als ‘a kind of Babylonian Charon, the ferryman of the Styx,’ ansehen”. George 2003: i.130–131, 501 and n198. George 2003: i.501. This entailment is ignored by Matijević 2015: 199 and n183. Black et al. 2004: 105. See esp. George 2003: i.500–501. Cf. Tsagalis 2017: 315n1283. Foster 2005: 836. Pace Matijević 2015: 199. Cameron 2004: 200. Cf. Horsfall 2013: 143.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

24

currie

amount to a claim to first-hand reading.64 The testimony has (again) come to us at an indeterminate number of removes; but this does not itself degrade the testimony, whose ultimate derivation may be an “Orphic” poem dating back to the sixth or fifth century b.c.e. It is debated whether the subject of the “Orphic” poem referred to by Servius was a katabasis of Heracles or rather one of Orpheus himself, which made only passing reference to Heracles’s descent.65 Even if the latter were the case, it would seem necessary to suppose that the putative poem narrating the katabasis of Orpheus presupposed Archaic epic poetry narrating the katabasis of Heracles. Virgil himself probably knew, directly or indirectly, of Greek epic poetry narrating Heracles’s crossing of the Styx.66 The early Greek epic poetry in question here may be identical with the sixth-century (?) b.c.e. hexameter Katabasis of Heracles that is posited as a source for Bacchylides’s Ode 5, narrating Heracles’s descent to Hades to fetch Cerberus (especially 60–62).67 Bacchylides’s ode makes no reference to Charon or the crossing of the Styx. That lack, however, is compensated for by Aristophanes’s Frogs, where allusion is made to Heracles’s being ferried over the Styx by Charon in a (small)68 boat (136–140). Aristophanes’s comic katabasis is a palimpsest of previous poetic katabaseis, from which early hexameter poetry can hardly have been absent. One immediate hypotext of Frogs is Critias’s Peirithous: a tragedy or satyr-play, in which Heracles went to the underworld to fetch Cerberus and secured the

64 65

66

67 68

Similarly, Serv. on Virg. G. 2.389 (Thilo and Hagen iii.i.254.9) et hoc in Orpheo lectum est; Serv. on Virg. Aen. 6.565 (Thilo and Hagen ii.i.79.14) fertur namque ab Orpheo quod … For the former option, see West 1983: 268; Bernabé, PEG ii.ii.266. For the latter option, see Norden 1957: 158, 237; Lloyd-Jones 1967: 221 = 1990: 181n30; Bernabé 2008b: 403. For Virgil as using (inter alia) a source that narrated a katabasis of Orpheus, NB Aen. 6.119–120 (cf. OA 42); for a katabasis of Orpheus, cf. Eur. Alc. 357–360; Plat. Symp. 179d2–7; Norden 1957: 158; Horsfall 2013: 142–143. Virg. Aen. 6.123 quid memorem Alciden? (“what need is there for me to make mention of Hercules?”) is interpretable as an instance of “poetic memory” (see, in general, Currie 2016: 138). Differently, Virgil’s use of a Heracles epic is downplayed by Bremmer 2014: 191. Norden 1957: 5, 206, 223–224; Clark 1979: 88–90, 220–221; Cairns 2010: 84–85 and 85nn23– 24; Horsfall 2013: 143; Tsagalis 2017: 314–315, 326–327. Ar. Frogs 139 (πλοιαρίῳ τυννουτῳί) suggests that the audience may have been familiar with a scene in which Heracles was too massive for Charon’s vessel, a motif applied to Aeneas by Virgil, Aen. 6.413–414 (cf. Norden 1957: 237–238, citing inter alia Sen. Her. 775–777). The detail may derive from an early Heracles epic (cf. Horsfall 2013: 144), but there is likely to be comic metatheatrical humor here as well, a joke at the small dimensions of the stage boat-prop that is going to be used later (Frogs 180–270): Dover 1993: 212–213. Similarly, the “Acheron” that is billed here as “a great lake that is utterly unfathomable” (λίμνην μεγάλην … πάνυ | ἄβυσσον, 137–138) materializes as small enough for Xanthias to walk around (193).

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

heracles and gilgamesh in early greek epic

25

release of Theseus and Peirithous into the bargain.69 Recognition of Critias’s Peirithous as a hypotext of Frogs does not rule out the presence of one of more early hexameter narrations of Heracles’s katabasis as additional hypotexts (or as hypo-hypotexts, given that Critias’s play can itself have been indebted to early hexameter treatments of Heracles’s katabasis).70 The scene of Dionysusas-Heracles rowing over the Styx to the “song” of the frog-chorus (Frogs 202– 270), which gives the play its name, raises the question whether Heracles had himself taken his turn at the pole/oars in the putative hexameter source.71 If so, he would further have resembled Gilgamesh in Urshanabi’s boat. The locomotion of Urshanabi’s craft depends on Gilgamesh’s use of hewn timber punting-poles, after his destruction of the enigmatic “Stone Ones”.72 Charon’s boat, according to abundant fifth-century texts and iconography, was propelled by a “punting-pole” (κοντός, Lat. contus), or by an “oar” or “oars” (κώπη, κῶπαι).73 Punting is at home in the “river-oriented civilizations”74 of Mesopotamia and Egypt.75 Greek ships made for the open seas were regularly kitted out with a punting-pole (κοντός), but this served not as a means of locomotion, but rather of pushing off (see Od. 9.487–488, Thucydides 2.84.3).76 The very Greek conception of specifically a puntsman of the dead thus arguably has a Mesopotamian stamp.77 69

70 71 72 73

74 75

76 77

Critias’s Peirithous as “an important hypotext” of Frogs: Wright 2012: 96, cf. 100; 2016: 54–55 and n102. Ar. Frogs 136 τότε, “on that occasion”, also has a metapoetic implication, referencing Critias’s antecedent play as well as an earlier incident in Heracles’s life (we may recognize a metapoetic gesture to the same play also at Frogs 111). On Aristophanes’s sources, see Lloyd-Jones 1967: 218–220 = 1990: 178–180; Clark 1979: 100– 102, 221; 2001: 108n20. The literary genealogy of the scene is again complex; there is also influence e.g. from Eupolis’s Taxiarchoi, where Dionysus was taught to row by the Athenian general Phormion. On the “Stone Ones”, see George 2003: i.501–502; Maul 2005: 180. Cf. also Hittite Gilg. iii.§ 18 (trans. Beckman, in Foster 2019: 167). Ar. Frogs 203, 205, 254 (ἐλαύνειν), 197, 199 (κώπην), 269 (τὼ κωπίω); cf. Aesch. Sept. 854– 860 (855 ἐρέσσετ’, metaph.). Eur. Alc. 254 κοντῷ, 361 κώπῃ. Compare/contrast Virg. Aen. 6.302 (both “punting-pole”, conto, and “sails”, uelisque; cf. also 320 remis, “oars”); Sen. Her. 768 longo … conto. Polygnotus (in the lesche of the Cnidians at Delphi): Paus. 10.28.1 ὁ πορθμεὺς ἐπὶ ταῖς κώπαις (after the epic poem Minyas). Charon generally uses a punting-pole on white-ground lekythoi: Dover 1993: 213; LIMC iii.i.168–171, iii.ii.222. Casson 1971: 30. George 2003: i.502–503, and n211. The contexts in which Greek words for “punt” are attested are suggestive: Alexander the Great had κοντωτά (sc. πλοῖα), “punts”, constructed in Babylon (Diod. 19.12.5); the term κοντωτίτης, “puntsman”, occurs in a third-century b.c.e. Egyptian context in a letter from the Zeno Archive (P.Cair.Zen. iii.59492.2). Conversely, terms for “sailing-boat” are rare in Mesopotamian documentary sources (George 2003: i.502–503n211). Cf. Casson 1971: 251 and n105, 265n3. Diodorus 1.96.8, following Hecataeus of Abdera, sees the Greek mythology of the ferryman

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

26

currie

The episode of Heracles being ferried over the Styx (or Acheron) by Charon as we can assume it was narrated in early hexameter poetry is thus likely to have had striking similarities with the episode of Gilgamesh being ferried over the “Waters of Death” by Urshanabi in SBV Gilg. tablet x. It seems plausible to see in this an early Greek hexameter reception of the Babylonian poem. There are ways of resisting that conclusion. Notions of a river as the boundary to the underworld and of a ferryman of the dead are widespread, so widespread, in fact, as to be considered both a folktale motif and an Indo-European motif.78 Matijević has insisted that “a dependence [between Urshanabi and Charon] cannot be proven, especially as the ferryman of the dead is a universal phenomenon”.79 It should be emphasized here that we are not interested simply in associating Charon with Urshanabi. We are interested in the relationship between a whole narrative sequence in Babylonian mythological poetry and one early Greek epic in which a living hero is conveyed by a ferryman of the dead across a (real or surrogate) river of the underworld and subsequently returns to the land of the living. It is commonplace of myth, ritual, and language (including of Akkadian) that the dead generically cross a watery boundary to enter the underworld.80 However, the narrative motif in which we are interested is explicitly held up as a unique heroic achievement of Gilgamesh (SBV

78

79

80

of the dead and his boat (βᾶρις) as imported to Greece by Orpheus from Egypt, inspired by Egyptian funerary customs. On Diodorus’s (or Hecataeus of Abdera’s) preference for Egyptian sources, where modern scholars might think rather of Mesopotamian ones, see Currie 2020: 157–162. Thompson 1955–1958: A672.1 (“Ferryman on river in lower world (Charon)”: Irish, Greek, Egyptian, Icelandic, Babylonian), F93 (“Water entrance to lower world”, esp. F93.0.1 “Boat to lower world”: Irish, Icelandic; F93.0.1.1 “Ferryman to lower world”), P613 (“Charon’s fee: putting coin in dead person’s mouth to pay for ferry across Styx”). Cf. Davies 1988: 280– 281n22. A “folkloric Charon”: cf. Diez de Velasco 2006: 337. An Indo-European “boatman of the dead”: cf. Norse Ōðinn (as Hárbardr) and Guðmundr, Celtic Barinthus: Mallory and Adams 1997: 612; Lincoln 1980: 41 (adding Indic and Iranian); West 2007: 389–390. Cf. Matijević 2015: 52, 199, 214. Matijević 2015: 199: “eine Abhängigkeit [zwischen Ur-schanabi und Charon] … [lässt] sich nicht belegen, zumal der Totenfährmann ein universales Phänomen ist”; similarly, 2018: 615. Cf. Dräger 2003: 203: “As there is also a ferryman of the dead in Sumer and Egypt … these are all independently arising folk myths; derivation of the Greek C[haron] from the Egyptian (Diod. Sic. 1,92,2; 96,8) should be dismissed”. For the widespread nature of myths and funerary rituals involving the deceased’s “crossing the water” to reach the world of the dead, see West 2007: 389–391. Cf. Diod. 1.92.1 (after Hecataeus of Abdera): in Egypt, a dead person is said to “cross the lake” (διαβαίνειν … τὴν λίμνην), literally, in funerary ritual. “To cross the Ḫubur” (ḫubur ebēru) is Akkadian for “to die” (Horowitz 2011: 354).

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

heracles and gilgamesh in early greek epic

27

Gilg. i.40–42, x.79–82).81 Making it alive over the Waters of Death and back again is a peculiar feat of Gilgamesh in Mesopotamian tradition.82 It is also a highly productive one there, leading both to a conception of Gilgamesh himself as a boatman of the dead (see above, p. 23) and to the identification of Gilgamesh with Nergal as divine ruler in the underworld (see below, p. 53). Within Mesopotamian culture, this feat may have been as peculiar and distinctive to Gilgamesh as flying to heaven on an eagle was to Etana.83 It is doubtful whether we are dealing here with a standard or universal heroic “prestige myths”, like the lion-fight84 or monster-slaying. In the Classical world, the motif of descent to and return from the underworld becomes attached to numerous heroes apart from Heracles (Theseus, Odysseus, Orpheus, and Aeneas).85 However, the indications here are that we are dealing, not with a stock heroic motif, but with a series of pointed and allusive poetic transferences. In the Aeneid, Aeneas’s katabasis is explicitly modeled on those of Hercules, Theseus, and Orpheus (6.119–123, 391–394). No less obviously, though more implicitly, it is also modeled on that of Odysseus in the Odyssey (Odyssey book 11 is a prominent hypotext of Aeneid book 6). Odysseus’s katabasis in the Odyssey is itself arguably explicitly modeled on Heracles’s (Od. 11.618–619).86 Theseus and Peirithous’s katabasis is also likely to have been modeled on Heracles’s.87 Orpheus’s katabasis as narrated in “Orphic” hexameter poetry (OF 707–711) is likely to be derivative on at least one of these, perhaps especially Odysseus’s in the Odyssey.88 The Greek and Latin evidence, 81

82 83

84 85

86 87 88

Cf. Bernabé 2008a: 61: “Es [sc. el viaje al mundo de los muertos] éste un tema desarrollado reiteradas veces y en variadas culturas. En las literaturas orientales podemos citar el caso del Poema de Gilgamés, y en Grecia, además del de Orfeo, los viajes de Odiseo, Teseo y Pirítoo o Heracles. No se trata solo de ir al Más Allá, ya que ese trayecto es el destino final de cualquier difunto. Lo excepcional es viajar en vida y regresar, algo que solo algunos seres privilegiados pueden lograr.” Cf. Matijević 2015: 73 and n30, 194n144. The descents to the underworld of Inanna/Ishtar (Sumerian Descent of Inanna / Akkadian Ishtar’s Descent) and of Nergal (Nergal and Ereshkigal) are distinct. “The Flight on the Grateful Eagle” is an internationally diffused story-tale type (ATU 537), but its distribution may be explicable as diffusion of the Mesopotamian myth of Etana, rather than polygenesis: Currie 2021: 138–140. West 1997: 461. The expanded list of Hygin. Fab. 251 includes figures who were brought back to life, rather than those who actually undertook a katabasis, as well as divine katabaseis (of Demeter/Ceres, Dionysos/Liber). Danek 1998: 247. Mills 1997: 27, cf. 10–12; cf. Clark 1979: 125. Bernabé 2008b: 402: “El modelo, sin duda, sería la Nekyia de la Odisea”. On the question of the date of the Orphic Descent to the Underworld (Εἰς Ἅιδου κατάβασις), see Graf and Johnston 2007: 173–174.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

28

currie

therefore, does not indicate that we are dealing with independently generated instances of a folktale (or “floating”) motif. The Classical instances of this motif are all likely to depend ultimately on Heracles, its application to other heroic figures being successive instances of heroic aemulatio and literary imitatio. It is possible that the attachment of this motif to Heracles in the first place in the early Greek epic tradition may have been similarly motivated: by heroic aemulatio (Heracles as intended to rival Gilgamesh)89 and literary imitatio (early Greek epic poetry as shaping up to the Babylonian Gilgamesh).90 Charon’s origins are obscure. We can say at least that he is not very well integrated in the web of Greek mythology; as Sourvinou-Inwood has put it, “Charon almost entirely lacks genealogical connections and he is only associated with one myth”.91 It is conceivable that he made his entry into Greek culture via epic poetry,92 and that he debuted in epic poetry in the context of a Greek hexameter reception of Urshanabi ferrying Gilgamesh over the Waters of Death. The etymology of his name is likewise obscure.93 The possibility that Charon’s appearance in early Greek Heracles epic poetry is due to a reception of the Babylonian Gilgamesh suggests the possibility of a new approach to his name. A link might be posited between Χάρων and Akk. ḫarrānu, “road”, whose construct state ḫarrān could be faithfully transliterated into Greek as *χάρρᾱν,94 of which Χάρων would in turn be a conceivable naturalization (with folk-etymological interference from χαίρων < χαίρειν).95 We would then have a speaking name 89

90 91 92 93

94

95

Cf. Collins 20163: 57: “The peoples of the Ancient Near East engaged in what might be called ‘competitive historiography’ to show how their national heroes outshone the heroes of other peoples or were the true and most ancient founders of culture”. Thus, for instance, the Mesopotamian heroes Enmeduranki and Utnapishtim-Atrahasis find their Judean counterparts in, respectively, Enoch and Noah. For this type of scenario, cf. Currie 2016: 220. Sourvinou-Inwood 1995: 308. Cf. LIMC iii.i.210. For the idea that Charon may have been introduced “in the context of epic poetry”, see, tentatively, Sourvinou-Inwood 1995: 314. There is no accepted etymology: cf. Lincoln 1980: 41. For various proposals, see Frisk 1973– 1979: ii.1086 (including the suggestion that it relates to Ἀχέρων). Cf. Sourvinou-Inwood 1995: 359, on Χάρων < χαροπός. Cf. Alexiou 1978: 223; Tsagalis 2017: 315n1282; Dräger 2003: 202. For an Indo-European etymology, cf. Lincoln 1980: 59: “I would hypothesize that … the Proto-Indo-European ferryman of the dead was known as *Ǵer-ont-, ‘the Old Man’”. Diodorus (after Hecataeus of Abdera) asserts that charon is an Egyptian word for ferryman: 1.92.2 ὁ πορθμεύς, ὃν Αἰγύπτιοι κατὰ τὴν ἰδίαν διάλεκτον ὀνομάζουσι χάρωνα, cf. 1.96.8. See Diez de Velasco and Molinero Polo 1994: 78–83. Compare the toponym Harran (lit. “Cross-roads” or “City of the Roads”; cf. Bryce 2009: 292); Akk. Ḫarrān; Hbr. Ḥārān, Gk Χαρράν (LXX Gen. 11:31, 27:43), but more usually Κάρραι/Κάραι. See, on the forms of the name, Weissbach 1919: 2009.53–2011.17. For Χάρων connected, through figura etymologica, with χαίρειν, see Ar. Frogs 184, cf.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

heracles and gilgamesh in early greek epic

29

for the ferryman of the dead, comparable to, but different from, Ḫumuṭ-tabal (“Take-Away-Quickly”).96 Χάρων as a Greek version of Akk. Ḫarrān would be a personification of the “Journey” (sc. of no return).97 Akkadian calls the journey to the underworld a “road of no return” (ḫarrān lā târi),98 the underworld itself the “land of no return” (erṣet lā târi; Sum. kur.nu.gi4.a).99 The noun ḫarrānu without any qualification is capable of signifying “the road (to death)”.100 The same goes for its synonym urḫu; thus uruḫša alāku is “to travel one’s road” in the sense of “to die”.101 A parallel for what is proposed here for Charon may be found in the Celtic god Ogmios: a god of the dead identified with Heracles, whose iconography conflates both Charon and Heracles (Lucian, Hercules 1), and whose name has been related to Greek ὄγμος, “path”, in the sense of “the god ‘who pertains to the path (into the beyond)’”.102 Such an etymological connection of Χάρων with Akkadian ḫarrānu is, of course, speculative, as is any such “Kling-Klang” etymology. The point to emphasize is that a Babylonian derivation of the figure of Charon as ferryman of the dead, if not also of his name, is plausible, together with the conjecture that he entered Greek traditions as a reception in early hexameter poetry of Urshanabi as boatman of Gilgamesh over the Waters of the Dead.

5

Jenseitsfahrten and Doublets

Heracles’s voyage to the West to fetch the Cattle of Geryoneus and his descent to the underworld to fetch Cerberus are evidently doublets.103 Each has the character of a Jenseitsfahrt: the former implicitly, the latter explicitly. Ocean and Styx evidently stand in a close relationship with one another.104 The two

96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104

Achaeus fr. 11.1 TGrF. Explained as an antiphrasis: Eust. Comm. ad Hom. Od., Stallbaum ii.441.31–33; Serv. on Virg. Aen. 6.299 (Thilo and Hagen ii.i.53.15–16). See above (p. 23). The notion of the “road of no return” is also Indo-European: West 2007: 388–389 and n37. Cf. Virg. Aen. 6.425 inremeabilis undae (of the Styx). Horowitz 2011: 355. Cf. Ishtar’s Descent 6; Nergal and Ershkigal (Sultantepe version) 7, et alias. E.g. Babylonian Theodicy 10 (Lambert 1960: 70–71). CAD vi.107, 109 (s.v. ḫarrānu). Cf. e.g. SBV Gilg. vii.186, et alias. Cf. Horowitz 2011: 354. The fuller form: illakū uruḫ mūtu, “they go the way of death” (Babylonian Theodicy 16: Lambert 1960: 70–71; Horowitz 2011: 354–355). Janda 2000: 95: “der ‘zum … Pfad (ins Jenseits) gehörige’ Gott”. Differently, Bader 1996: 150– 151; Beekes 2010: ii.1045. Clark 1979: 83–86; Davies 1988: 278–282. West 1966: 373. Styx as eldest daughter of Oceanos: Hes. Th. 361–363.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

30

currie

canines Orth(r)us (Geryoneus’s dog) and Cerberus are also recognizable as doublets; they are juxtaposed as siblings—offspring of Echidna—in Hesiod’s genealogy (Theogony 308–312).105 It follows that the nature of Heracles’s voyage to Geryoneus as a modified Jenseitsfahrt remained relevant and important to the early Greek poets:106 an understanding of Heracles’s voyage to Geryoneus as a modified Jenseitsfahrt is necessary to explain both its conceptualization as a doublet of Heracles’s descent to the underworld to fetch Cerberus and its Gilgamizing by early Greek epic poets (the latter being premised on an understanding of Gilgamesh’s voyage to Utnapishtim as itself a modified Jenseitsfahrt). Even while the Greek poets (such as Stesichorus) were assiduously reconceiving Geryoneus as a mortal hero, therefore, an understanding of Geryoneus as a “death demon” remained operative.107 Another implication of these putative early Greek hexameter receptions of these Gilgamesh motifs is that we must assume a relatively deep level of understanding of Gilgamesh on the part of those who received it into a Greek context. This is the implication not only of the understanding of Gilgamesh’s voyage over the Ocean as equivalent to a voyage to the underworld (which was inexplicit in Gilgamesh), but also in the appreciation of the cultural significance of the different means of locomotion of Urshanabi’s craft: punting-poles versus a sail, in a narrative that apparently offers an aition for the invention of seafaring on the open sea as opposed to river navigation in Mesopotamia.108 We must assume on the part of the Greek-speakers responsible for this reception considerable sensitivity to the original cultural contexts of the Mesopotamian narrative, persisting through whatever filters of transmission (via Aramaic and/or Phoenician, unless we wish to posit Greek-Akkadian bilinguals) we may feel obliged to posit for the transfer of Mesopotamian cuneiform literature to early Greek contexts. It is also striking that these two distinct receptions of Gilgamesh’s voyage to Utnapishtim are complementary: they avoid (on the evidence available to us) obvious and explicit overlap. Thus, on the one hand, the Geryoneus episode derives from Gilgamesh and Utnapishtim the motif of the hero voy-

105 106

107 108

See above; Fontenrose 1959: 336; Davies 1988: 281 and n24. Pace Finglass 2021: 136: “Geryon may originally have been a death demon, with his defeat by Heracles representing the conquest of death. But however interesting in themselves, such speculations are not important for appreciating the myth as it survives in ancient Greek literature and art”. For Stesichorus’s portrayal of Geryoneus as a mortal hero, see Eisenfeld 2018: 80–99. George 2003: i.502–503; Maul 2005: 36, 182.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

heracles and gilgamesh in early greek epic

31

aging over the Ocean on the path of (in the boat of) the Sun-god, and focuses on the hero’s improvisation of a sail out of a garment. On the other hand, the Cerberus episode derives from Gilgamesh and Utnapishtim the motif of the hero voyaging over the river of the underworld (Waters of Death) in a boat manned by a ferryman of the dead, and focuses on the boat’s locomotion by punting-poles. The apparently Gilgamizing details are precisely and equitably distributed across the two labors, which accordingly appear to have been mutually adjusted to one another. The foregoing suggests that in any Archaic Heracles epic that narrated both the Geryoneus and the Cerberus episodes, these functioned as “inclusionary doublets”.109 There are good parallels for this in other arguable receptions of Gilgamesh in the two Homeric poems. First, Diomedes’s aristeia in Iliad book 5 and that of Achilles in book 20 are inclusionary doublets, with Gilgamizing motifs apparently distributed between them: on the one hand, Diomedes’s wounding of Aphrodite and her plaint in heaven in Iliad book 5 receives Gilgamesh’s spurning of Ishtar and her plaint in heaven in SBV Gilg. tablet vi;110 on the other hand, Achilles’s lament at the death of Patroclus in Iliad book 18 receives Gilgamesh’s lament at the death of Enkidu in SBV Gilg. tablets viii, ix, and x.111 Second, the Menelaus–(Eidothea)–Proteus sequence of Odyssey book 4 and the Odysseus–Circe–(Teiresias) sequence of books 10–11 are inclusionary doublets, across which Gilgamizing motifs are apparently evenly distributed, each offering complementary receptions of the Gilgamesh–Siduri– Utnapishtim sequence of SBV Gilg. tablets x–xi (see below, pp. 38–40).112 We seem to be dealing here with a striking and important poetic technique, one which permits extensive engagement with a source-text, but avoids the targettext becoming a limpid or straightforwardly linear reception of it.

109 110 111 112

On “inclusionary” and “exclusionary” doublets, see Currie 2016: 239–244. Burkert 1992a: 96–99; West 1997: 361–362; Bachvarova 2016: 325–326; Currie 2016: 173–178; 196–197; Clarke 2019: 193–194. Differently, Ballesteros 2021. Cf. West 1997: 341–342; †West 2018: 274–275; Currie 2012: 551–552; Rollinger 2015: 17–18. Differently, Matijević 2018: 608–616. Sceptic-agnostic: Rutherford 2019: 233–235. Further, for Calypso–Odysseus in Odyssey book 5 and Circe–Odysseus in Odyssey book 10 as (inclusionary) doublets, with Gilgamizing motifs (Siduri–Gilgamesh) arguably distributed between them, see West 1997: 404–405; Kozlowski 2018: 24n46.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

32 6

currie

The Garden of the Hesperides ~ The Jeweled Trees in the Garden of the Gods

A third labor of Heracles that appears to show significant influence from Gilgamesh is the quest for the Apples of the Hesperides. This labor, too, very likely belongs to the pre-Hesiodic tradition of Heracles’s labors: Hesiod mentions the Hesperides as tending trees bearing golden apples beyond the Ocean (Th. 215– 216, cf. 275) and mentions a “terrible snake” as being set to guard these (334–335: cf. Soph. Tr. 1099–1100). This snake (for which the name Ladon is attested in later sources) is mentioned by Hesiod in the context of other monsters birthed by Ceto or by Echidna that are either mastered or killed, explicitly or implicitly, by heroes, mainly by Heracles in the course of his labors:113 Orthus (309, cf. 293: explicitly killed by Heracles), Cerberus (310–312), Hydra (313–318: explicitly killed by Heracles), Chimaera (319–325: explicitly killed by Bellerophon), Sphinx (326: implicitly destroyed by Oedipus),114 and the Nemean lion (327– 332: explicitly killed by Heracles). It seems likely, therefore, that the Theogony already presupposes, as one of Heracles’s labors, Heracles’s acquisition of the Apples of the Hesperides after killing the snake which guarded them (compare Panyassis, Heracleia fr. 11 PEG).115 6.1 Trees in a Garden of Gods Bearing Precious Stones/Metals In the ninth tablet of the Standard Babylonian Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh, after negotiating the tunnel through Mount Mashu, arrives at “the trees of the gods” (?) (SBV Gilg. ix.172; the reading is uncertain).116 These trees bear, in lieu of fruits, precious stones: carnelian, lapis lazuli, etc. (SBV Gilg. ix.171– 190).117 Heracles’s quest for the Apples of the Hesperides brings him to a locality which Pherecydes calls “the garden of the gods”, τὸν τῶν θεῶν κῆπον (Pherecydes

113 114 115

116

117

Jourdain-Annequin 1989: 520–521, 522. On the Sphinx’s end, see Gantz 1993: 497–498. Compare also Th. 517–518, where Hesiod mentions Atlas and the Hesperides in close narrative proximity to Heracles (Th. 526–531); cf. Ogden 2021a: xxv. Contrast Jourdain-Annequin 1989: 541–542. Horowitz 2011: 100n13; George 2003: i.497, ii.867. On the status of this place, cf. Maul 2005: 178: “[Gilgamesh] befindet sich nun in einer jenseits des Sonnengebirges liegenden transzendenten Welt, die den Menschen unzugänglich bleibt. Der paradiesische Garten mit Bäumen aus Edelsteinen, die Gilgamesch vorfindet, gehört zu einer Welt, die sich in dem von den Menschen erfahrbaren Raum nicht mehr lokalisieren läßt, sondern nur als “jenseitig” beschrieben werden kann. Diese Welt ist den Göttern vorbehalten”. Cf. Horowitz 2011: 100–102.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

heracles and gilgamesh in early greek epic

33

fr. 16c Fowler).118 The trees of this garden bear golden apples (Hes. Th. 215–216 μῆλα … | χρύσεα καλά, 335 παγχρύσεα μῆλα). The garden of the Hesperides has often been compared with the garden visited by Gilgamesh.119 In neither context is the significance of the golden/jeweled fruit made explicit, but it seems likely that this imperishable fruit of the trees of the gods is connected with the theme of the acquisition of immortality.120 6.2

Integration of Hero’s Visit to a Garden of the Gods into a Sequence of Quasi-immortalizing Episodes The episode of Gilgamesh arriving among the trees bearing precious stones precedes his voyage to Utnapishtim; the episode of Gilgamesh and the “Plant of Life” (which Gilgamesh finds and promptly loses to a snake: SBV Gilg. xi.278– 314)121 succeeds his voyage to Utnapishtim; these two episodes thus bookend the modified Jenseitsfahrt that is Gilgamesh’s voyage to Utnapishtim. They constitute the last exploits of Gilgamesh, following the death of Enkidu, all three of them variously participating in Gilgamesh’s elusive quest for immortality. The labors involving Geryoneus, Cerberus, and the Apples of the Hesperides nearly always form a consecutive sequence in enumerations of Heracles’s canonical labors that are attested from the mid-fifth century b.c.e. on. Either the labors involving Geryoneus and Cerberus (the two Jenseitsfahrten) are directly juxtaposed, with the Apples of the Hesperides immediately following them (so, for instance, in Diodorus 4.17, 25–26 and the Tabula Albana, IG xiv.1293 = BNJ2 40 F1c.10–14); or the labor of the Apples of the Hesperides is interposed between the other two (so, for instance, in the metopes of the temple of Zeus at Olympia, at Apollodorus, Library 2.5.10–12, and Hyginus, Fabulae 30.11–13).122 It cannot be proven, but is eminently possible, that the collocation of these 118

119

120 121 122

Cf. Stesichorus, Geryoneis fr. 10.2 Finglass θ]εῶν ̣ περικαλλέ[α ν]ᾶ̣σον, “most beautiful island of the gods” (the doubts of Curtis 2011: 110 about the supplement ν]ᾶ̣σον are not shared by Davies and Finglass 2014: 265). “Garden of the gods”: Jourdain-Annequin 1989: 545; Barrett 1964: 304–305; Fowler 2013: 292n103; Salapata 2021: 150. Burkert 1979: 80 and 178n9; West 1997: 463–464; †West 2018: 277; George 2003: i.497 and n185. Differently, Matijević 2015: 197 and n163 “zu Recht skeptisch äußert sich zu diesem Vergleich George 2003, 497” (this exaggerates the qualified scepticism actually expressed by George 2003: i.497 and n185). Cf. Burkert 1979: 96 and 186n18; Jourdain-Annequin 1989: 517; West 1997: 464; †West 2018: 277–278; Salapata 2021: 151; cf. 160, 161. On this episode, cf. Clarke 2019: 105–107. See Ogden 2021a: xxv–xxviii for an overview. Geryoneus’s home Erytheia and the Garden of the Hesperides are linked by their localization in the far West. It is unclear whether or how Heracles’s voyage to Geryoneus and to the Hesperides may have been connected with

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

34

currie

three labors goes back to early Heracles epic poetry. These three labors are typically the last that Heracles performs; they all seem variously to engage with the theme of immortalization, a prelude to Heracles’s subsequent apotheosis.123 According to our earliest evidence for an ordering of Heracles’s labors, therefore, Geryoneus–Cerberus–Hesperides (or—equivalently, for our purposes— Geryoneus–Hesperides–Cerberus) form a cohesive sequence that caps the previous (predominantly monster-slaying) exploits of Heracles and which foregrounds various motifs of immortalization. This presents a suggestive analogue to what we find in tablets ix–xi of the Standard Babylonian Gilgamesh.124 The motif of apples of gold or that of a garden of the gods where a tree of life grows, guarded by nymphs and a snake, may (or may not) have a claim to be considered either a folktale or an Indo-European motif;125 nevertheless, its presumptive embedding in a wider narrative structure of some complexity that parallels what we find in Gilgamesh gives sufficient grounds for considering it a Gilgamizing feature, a further element in an early Greek poetic reception of Gilgamesh.

7

Date of the “Gilgamization” of Heracles in Early Greek Epic

It is necessary to broach the question of the date of this putative reception of the Babylonian Gilgamesh in early Greek Heracles epic poetry. Our investigation has put us on the tracks of, in the first instance, lost historical, written, hexameter poetry on Heracles of the seventh or sixth centuries b.c.e., which would have influenced Stesichorus’s Geryoneis, Bacchylides’s Ode 5, Aristophanes’s Frogs (perhaps via Critias’s Peirithous), and Pherecydes of Athens’s Historiae (among others). It well may be that we are tracking a single influential poem, such as Pisander’s or Panyassis’s Heracleia, or it may be that we are dealing with more than one poem of the Archaic period. In a second step, it is necessary to ponder the relation of this historical sixth-century b.c.e. Heracles hexameter poetry to the pre-historical Heracles hexameter poetry (oral or written)

123 124 125

one another in Stesichorus’s Geryoneis (fr. 10 Finglass): see Curtis 2011: 107–108; Davies and Finglass 2014: 264; †West 2018: 276; Carvalho 2022: 17–19. Clark 1979: 86; Shapiro 1983: 11–12. Cf. Schweitzer 1922: 135–138; Burkert 1992b: 124 = 2003: 84. West 1997: 463–464, 467; Curtis 2011: 98. Jourdain-Annequin 1989: 545–546. Cf. Aladdin in Arabian Nights (ed. Mack, p. 659). “Germanic lore”: Curtis 2011: 98; Ossetic legend: West 2007: 159; †West 2018: 277–278. Cf. Thompson 1955–1959: D981 (Magic fruit), F810–F813 (Extraordinary trees, fruits, etc.).

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

heracles and gilgamesh in early greek epic

35

that Homer and Hesiod evidently both presuppose.126 It would be of particular importance to us to establish the antiquity of the following three elements: first, Heracles’s wearing of the lionskin (which he is then able to repurpose as a sail); second, Charon ferrying Heracles over the river of the dead; and third, the creation of a cohesive sequence of labors encompassing Geryoneus, the Apples of the Hesperides, and Cerberus, all variously concerned with immortalization (the order of the last two being interchangeable). Pisander (perhaps seventh century b.c.e.) was reputed to have been the first to portray Heracles with bow, club, and lionskin (F1 PEG = Strabo 15.1.9; T1 PEG = Suda π.1465 Adler). Alternatively, Stesichorus was said by the Peripatetic Megaclides (F9 Janko) to have been the first, Xanthos, a lyric predecessor of his, allegedly not having done so (699 PMG).127 In art, depictions of Heracles with bow, club, and lionskin begin in the late seventh to the sixth century b.c.e.128 This would tend to favor the claims of the seventh(?)-century Pisander over the sixth-century Stesichorus.129 However, it is possible that the motif of Heracles wearing the lionskin appeared in epic poetry before its earliest extant attestations in art or poetry. Charon’s first attested appearances in Greek hexameter poetry are in an “Orphic” poem, of uncertain date (OF 714; see above, pp. 23–24), and in the Minyas (fr. 1 PEG / EGEF), most commonly dated to the late sixth or early fifth century b.c.e.130 Charon’s earliest uncontroversial attestation in art is the “Frankfurt cylinder” (c. 500 b.c.e.).131 The convergence of the earliest literary and iconographical attestations in the late sixth or early fifth century has often been taken to provide a terminus a quo for Charon’s presence in Greek poetry and myth.132 This is little more than an argument from silence. It is possible that the earliest artistic representations lag by some decades behind the ear126 127 128 129 130 131

132

This should be contrasted with the approach of †West 2018, who posits ex hypothesi a pervasively Gilgamizing pre-Homeric Heracles epic. Athen. 12.512e–f. See Huxley 1969: 102 and n2; Brize 1980: 25–26. Cohen 1994: 695–696. Differently (agnostic about the priority of Pisander or Stesichorus), Brize 1980: 30. Sourvinou-Inwood 1995: 303 (7th or 6th cent. b.c.e.); Bernabé PEG i.137 (early 5th cent. b.c.e.?); Diez de Velasco 2006: 335 (c. 500 b.c.e.); Tsagalis 2017: 316 (early 5th cent. b.c.e.). LIMC iii.ii no. 1. Diez de Velasco 2006: 334–335. “Charon” is attested as a personal name at the end of the seventh and first half of the sixth centuries b.c.e.; however, it is unclear what the implications of its attestation as an anthroponym should be for dating the introduction of the theonym as borne by the mythological ferryman of the dead (Diez de Velasco 2006: 334; cf. Nesselrath 2020b: 189n75). Dräger 2003: 202; Matijević 2015: 79n53, 199, 213–214; Nesselrath 2020b: 189n74. More circumspect is West 1997: 155: “We do not at first hear anything of the ferryman Charon; he seems to appear in the late Archaic period”.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

36

currie

liest known appearance of Charon in poetry,133 and that the earliest known appearance of Charon in poetry lags considerably behind his actual debut. Sourvinou-Inwood has maintained that the figure of Charon pertained to conceptions of death that had no place in the earlier period.134 If her arguments are accepted, then we would have a concrete positive justification for taking the earliest attestations of Charon as a terminus post quem for his introduction into Greek culture. However, her identification of conceptions of death that are supposedly incompatible with the Homeric epics is questionable.135 Tsagalis, reasonably, takes the earliest attestation, the Minyas, simply as providing a terminus ante quem for the introduction of Charon.136 This would leave the date of his introduction quite open.137 The date of the creation of a cohesive sequence of successive labors involving Geryoneus, the Apples of the Hesperides, and Cerberus is likewise unclear, but is unlikely to be later than the creation of the canon of Heracles’s twelve labors. Homer and Hesiod clearly already knew of “labors” (ἀέθλοι) of Heracles, though their number and order cannot be ascertained.138 Pisander was credited in antiquity with playing a part in establishing the canonical labors of Heracles.139 (An alternative modern dating sees the twelve metopes of the temple of Zeus at Olympia, of the mid-fifth century b.c.e., as instrumental to the

133 134

135

136

137

138

139

Cf. LIMC iii.ii.218. Sourvinou-Inwood 1995: 59: “The absence of Charon … from Homer is not accidental, but an integral part of a nexus of representations in which [he] had no place”, cf. 353–355, 356–361; Bremmer 2002: 5; cf. Diez de Velasco and Molinero Polo 1994: 79. It involves inter alia seeing the Deuteronekyia of Odyssey book 24 as inauthentic. Against Sourvinou-Inwood’s argument (1995: 103–106) that Hermes does not function as ψυχοπομπός in (the genuine parts of) the Homeric poems, see the implications of Il. 24.349–351, with Herrero de Jáuregui 2011: 44–45; Currie 2016: 43 and n27. Tsagalis 2017: 317–318: “The Minyas is our earliest literary source that refers to Charon, but it is a reasonable inference that the figure of Charon as the old ferry-man of the underworld was traditional and as such easily recognizable by the audience of the Minyas”. Pace Bremmer 2014: 184–185, cf. 191, who excludes Charon from a sixth-century b.c.e. epic that narrated Heracles’s katabasis on the grounds that he first appears in the Minyas, which he tentatively dates to the early fifth century b.c.e.; he also favors a fifth-century date for the Orphic poem that mentioned Charon (OF 714): ibid. 60–61. Cf. already Il. 8.363, 15.639 Εὐρυσθῆος ἀέθλων; Od. 11.622 ἀέθλους, 623–624 οὐ γὰρ ἔτ’ ἄλλον | … ἄεθλον; Hes. Th. 951 ἀέθλους; [Hes.] Cat. fr. 190.12 M-W ἀέθλο[υς. West 1997: 470 “the myth of a set of Labours that Heracles had to perform for Eurystheus was certainly in existence before Hesiod, even if they were not originally twelve in number”, cf. †West 2018: 268; Stafford 2012: 24–30, 49–50. Pisander test. 2 PEG (= Theocr. Epigr. 22 = AP 9.598 = 16 Gow–Page) verse 5 χὤσσους ἐξεπόνασεν [sc. Ἡρακλῆς] εἶπ’ [sc. Πείσανδρος] ἀέθλους. Huxley 1969: 101–102; Tsagalis (this volume) pp. 204n62 and n68, 235.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

heracles and gilgamesh in early greek epic

37

creation of the canon of twelve labors.140) The creation of a canon of twelve labors of Heracles has itself been viewed as a Gilgamizing feature, inspired by the twelve tablets of the Standard Babylonian Gilgamesh.141 Alternatively, the canon of twelve has been seen as a more generally “Babylonizing” feature, influenced by the twelve “trophies” of Ninurta,142 or the twelve enemies of Marduk in Enuma elish.143 However, it seems hardly possible to fix the date of the creation either of a potentially Gilgamizing or Babylonizing canon of twelve labors or of a sequence in which the labors of Geryoneus, Cerberus, and the Hesperides were, in a Gilgamizing fashion, juxtaposed with one another. In the face of such uncertainty, it is perhaps necessary to content ourselves just with setting out the theoretically possible options. First, the Gilgamization of the early Greek hexameter Heracles tradition may have happened wholesale at a pre-Homeric and pre-Hesiodic stage of the tradition, being completed, therefore, by the eighth or the early seventh century b.c.e. Second, it may have happened wholesale at a post-Homeric and post-Hesiodic stage of the tradition: in the late seventh or sixth century b.c.e. Third, it may not have happened wholesale, but in successive waves from the eighth–seventh through to the sixth–fifth centuries b.c.e.144 Whereas there is little difficulty in dating these Gilgamizing elements to Heracles epic poetry of the sixth century b.c.e., more of a leap into the dark is involved in ascribing them to pre-Homeric and preHesiodic epic poetry; however, the fact that both Homer and Hesiod are evidently able to presuppose a well-developed Heracles mythology that in many details closely resembles that which is attested for the later Archaic period (see above pp. 15, 21, 32) makes this at least conceivable. An independent argument for thinking that the Iliad presupposes earlier Gilgamizing Heracles epic poetry will be considered below (pp. 44–46, 48–52). The Gilgamization of Heracles mythology is in any event unlikely to be very ancient, if (as seems to be the case: above, pp. 30–31) it depends on a conception of the Geryoneus and Cerberus labors as mutually complementary receptions of Gilgamesh’s voyage to Utnapishtim. This seems to presuppose a relatively developed stage in the evolution of Heracles’s mythology, given that the Cerberus labor is plausibly held to

140 141 142 143 144

Brommer 1986: 64; cf. Bär 2018: 13–14; Ogden 2021a: xxviii. Schweitzer 1922: 137n2. See, sceptically, West 1997: 469n96. Burkert 1987: 14–16 = 2003: 52–54; cf. West 1997: 467–469. López-Ruiz 2018: 269. For the orientalization of Heracles as occurring in waves, cf. West 1997: 467: “To account for these series of parallels we may suppose that on more than one occasion a complex of stories about a legendary strong man came to Greece from the Near East and was attached to the obvious Greek candidate, Heracles”.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

38

currie

have arisen sometime after the Geryoneus labor.145 The Gilgamization of Heracles mythology in that case hardly goes back to the very earliest conceptions of Heracles’s labors.

8

The Odyssean Reception of Gilgamesh’s Voyage to Utnapishtim

There is an important supporting argument to the argument made above (pp. 15–21 and pp. 21–29) that early Greek Heracles epic poetry featured a significant reception of Gilgamesh’s voyage to Utnapishtim twice over, in the labors of Geryoneus and Cerberus. This is the argument that the Odyssey also features a significant reception of Gilgamesh and Utnapishtim, likewise twice over: in Odysseus’s voyage to Teiresias in book 11 and in Menelaus’s consultation of Proteus in book 4.146 We shall consider each, briefly, in turn. 8.1 Odysseus–Circe–(Teiresias) ~ Gilgamesh–Siduri–(Utnapishtim) In SBV Gilg. tablet x, Siduri advises Gilgamesh on how to realize his goal of voyaging across the ocean to consult with Utnapishtim to find out how to come by immortality (72–91); in Odyssey book 10, Circe advises Odysseus on how to obtain his homecoming by voyaging to Hades to consult with the shade of Teiresias (480–507). Taken aback, Siduri comments to Gilgamesh on the unprecedented nature of his proposed voyage by boat to Utnapishtim (SBV Gilg. x.76–82); dismayed, Odysseus comments to Circe on the unprecedented nature of her proposed voyage by boat to Hades (Od. 10.501–507). In both cases, we are dealing with a Jenseitsfahrt: a literal one, in Odysseus’s case; a modified or transferred one, in Gilgamesh’s. Each involves a voyage by boat “across the ocean” (tâmtu: SBV Gilg. x.76, 80–82; Ὠκεανός: Od. 10.508, 11.13; similarly, Heracles voyages to Geryoneus “across the ocean”: Hes. Th. 292, 294).147 These

145

146

147

See Davies 1988: 282. The labor of the Apples of the Hesperides has also been argued to presuppose the Geryoneus labor (Jourdain-Annequin 1989: 546); however, the assumed derivation of the quest for the “apples” (μῆλα) of the Hesperides from that for the “herds” (μῆλα) of Geryoneus is problematized if we regard each of these as cognate receptions of Gilgamesh: respectively, of the jeweled orchard visited by Gilgamesh and of Gilgamesh’s voyage to Utnapishtim. Cf. West 1997: 409–410, on the former; Alden 2017: 23, on the latter. Further, Kozlowski 2018 argues that Odysseus’s journey from Ogygia to Scheria, and thence to Ithaca, parallels Gilgamesh’s journey from Mt Mashu to Dilmun, and thence to Uruk; Cook 1992: 240, 252– 253, 261–267 sees the Phaeacian episode of the Odyssey as influenced by the Utnapishtim episode of Gilgamesh (contra, Matijević 2015: 29–33, 51). Sourvinou-Inwood 1995: 60: “The notion that one can reach Hades by sea on a ship is pre-

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

heracles and gilgamesh in early greek epic

39

parallels are striking.148 They include, moreover, a notable inversion: the proposal is, in the one instance, made by Gilgamesh and deplored by Siduri, in the other instance, made by Circe and deplored by Odysseus; if we accept that the Odyssean scene involves a reception of Gilgamesh, then the inversion is perhaps interpretable as “opposition in imitation”.149 8.2 Menelaus–(Eidothea)–Proteus ~ Gilgamesh–(Siduri)–Utnapishtim This putative reception of Gilgamesh’s consultation with Utnapishtim concerns not the main story of the Odyssey, but an embedded story in which Menelaus as secondary narrator recounts his encounter with Proteus, the Old Man of the Sea (4.349–570). Proteus resembles Utnapishtim in being a divine figure who has knowledge to impart to the hero about the hero’s homecoming and his immortality; Menelaus, moreover, overcomes Proteus by force (Od. 4.454–463), as Gilgamesh first overcomes Urshanabi by force and as he contemplated but then decides against doing with Utnapishtim himself (SBV Gilg. x.92–111, xi.5–6).150 Like Utnapishtim with Gilgamesh (SBV Gilg. xi.7– 206), Proteus gives Menelaus, at the latter’s request, a lengthy account of past events of which the latter is ignorant (Od. 4.486–569). The two accounts diverge markedly in their content: Utnapishtim recounts the story of the flood (which occurred in his own, but not Gilgamesh’s lifetime); Proteus recounts the homecomings of various Achaean heroes (in Menelaus’s lifetime). However, they converge remarkably in their conclusion. On the one hand, Utnapishtim’s narration ends with the gods resolving to transport himself and his wife (and their daughter) to “the mouth of the rivers” (sc. Dilmun),151 where they currently enjoy a unique form of immortality separate from men (SBV Gilg. xi.199–

148

149 150 151

sented as a new idea, revealed to Odysseus by Circe … This notion, which was presented as new information given by the supernatural witch, may have been a poetic creation rather than the reflection of established belief … I shall be suggesting … that it was Homer who created this innovation …”; cf. 75–76. While we are surely dealing with a poetic notion rather than established belief about access to the underworld, this may be seen as a pointed allusion to Gilgamesh rather than as an outright Homeric innovation. For the comparison of the narrative sequence Odysseus–Circe–Teiresias with the narrative sequence Gilgamesh–Siduri–Utnapishtim, see West 1997: 409–410, with nn17–18; 2014: 126; cf. Clark 1979: 26–27, 32; other references in Matijević 2015: 194n145. Differently, Matijević 2018: 602–603. See below, p. 47n194. For comparison of the Old Man of the Sea figure with both Charon and Geryoneus, see Davies 1988: 284nn38–39. On Utnapishtim’s location “at the mouth of the rivers” (SBV Gilg. xi.205 ina pî nārāti), as equivalent to the Dilmun of Atrahasis-Utnapishtim in Atrahasis, cf. George 2003: i.519– 521; Horowitz 2011: 104–105.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

40

currie

206).152 On the other hand, Proteus’s narration ends with the statement that Menelaus is not to die, but will be translated by the gods to “the Elysian plain and the ends of the earth”, with his wife, Helen, where he is to enjoy an apparently unique form of immortality, separate from men (Od. 4.561–569).153 If we accept that we have here a reception of something like the Babylonian poem, then we must (again) register a striking reversal or twist: Menelaus starts out in this embedded story as a kind of Gilgamesh-figure, but ends up being cast as a kind of Utnapishtim-figure in the speech of Proteus, who is himself cast as an Utnapishtim-figure. 8.3

Implications of the Putative Odyssean Reception of Gilgamesh’s Voyage to Utnapishtim In these putative Odyssean receptions of Gilgamesh’s voyage to Utnapishtim, we may arguably see the same sensitivity to core underlying elements of the Babylonian narrative that was indicated above (pp. 29–30). First, we must posit an awareness on the part of the Odyssey-poet that Gilgamesh’s voyage to Utnapishtim is equivalent to a Jenseitsfahrt: in its reception in Odyssey book 11, it is approximated to a literal Jenseitsfahrt, Odysseus journeying to the underworld. Second, there may be awareness of the importance in the Babylonian narrative of Gilgamesh improvising a sail to reach Utnapishtim (SBV Gilg. x.179–183). Circe, in answer to Odysseus’s question how he is to find the way to Hades by boat, instructs him: “after setting the mast and spreading out the white sails, take your seat; the breath of the north wind shall bear [the ship]”, Od. 10.506– 507 ἱστὸν δὲ στήσας ἀνά θ᾽ ἱστία λευκὰ πετάσσας | ἧσθαι· τὴν δέ κέ τοι πνοιὴ βορέαο φέρῃσι).154 Odysseus’s ship, voyaging to the underworld, is to dispense with its pilot, and rely solely on the wind in its sails. This is comparable to the emphasis we have seen above (pp. 18–21) on Heracles relying on a sail (improvised, like Gilgamesh’s, out of a garment) to travel to Geryoneus in the cup-boat of the sun (naui aenea nauigauit tergo leonis uelificans, Servius on Virg. Aen. 8.299). Third, we would again see the technique of distributing complementary receptions of SBV Gilg. over two inclusionary doublets in an early Greek hexameter poem (see above, pp. 30–31).155 In this connection, it may be noted that,

152 153 154 155

Cf. also Berossus BNJ 680 F4a and F4b (15), in Armenian and Greek respectively. West 1997: 166–167, 420; Nesselrath 2020b: 174n31; cf. Matijević 2015: 54–55. The expression itself may be formulaic; cf. 9.77–78. In the event, Circe herself supplies the wind: 11.6–8. For Menelaus consulting with Proteus about his homecoming and Odysseus consulting with Teiresias about his homecoming as (inclusionary) doublets, cf. Alden 2017: 23n35; cf.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

heracles and gilgamesh in early greek epic

41

while the dialogue between Proteus and Menelaus in book 4 offers a closer approximation to that between Utnapishtim and Gilgamesh than that between Teiresias and Odysseus in book 11 (90–149), the dialogue between Circe and Odysseus in book 10 offers a closer approximation to that between Siduri and Gilgamesh than that between Eidothea and Odysseus in book 4 (363–425).156 The two receptions again appear complementary and balanced. We thus have two important putative receptions in early Greek hexameter poetry of the Gilgamesh-Utnapishtim episode: one in the Odyssey, and one in early Heracles epic poetry. The two putative receptions may be seen as mutually corroborating; acknowledgement of the one facilitates acknowledgement of the other. The question further arises whether they are independent of one another: whether the Odyssey features this reception of the GilgameshUtnapishtim episode because earlier epic poetry on Heracles had done so; or, alternatively, whether epic poetry on Heracles features this reception of the Gilgamesh-Utnapishtim episode because the Odyssey had done so. These questions will play a role below (pp. 43–48, pp. 48–52).

9

Spurious Dichotomies? Shared Typology versus Poetic Reception; Indo-European Inheritance versus Near Eastern Borrowing; Differences versus Similarities

The cumulative case for a literary dependence between early Greek Heracles epic poetry and (some version of) Gilgamesh is strong. Even though our evidence limits us to the investigation of just a handful of attested motifs, there is amply enough here to indicate that we are not dealing with a scenario of mere “parallel stories”, of “culture-heroes doing approximately similar things in different societies” (Lane Fox, cited above, pp. 14–15). Gilgamesh’s voyage to Utnapishtim may have been the subject of more than one important reception in early Greek hexameter poetry: in epic poetry on Heracles and in the Odyssey. It is important here to emphasize that we are dealing here with a poetic phenomenon. In the case of, for instance, Heracles and Melqart we are likely to be dealing primarily with syncretism (or hybridity) in cult and mythology, not with a case of different cultures’ poetic traditions influencing one another.157 However, in the case of Heracles and Gilgamesh, or of

156 157

de Jong 2001: 106, 111; cf. also de Jong 2001: 95 (on Od. 4.81–82), for Menelaus in this episode as a double of Odysseus. On Eidothea as functionally equivalent to Circe and Siduri, see Alden 2017: 23. On Heracles and Melqart, see recently Daniels 2021.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

42

currie

Odysseus and Gilgamesh, as considered above, we are dealing with a distinctly poetic, not a cultic or mythological, phenomenon: the reception of one work (originally in Akkadian, conceivably mediated by one or more other languages, e.g. Aramaic) by other poetic works (in this case, in Greek). We should return here to the supposed tension between typology and influence (see above, pp. 13–15). It seems in fact fallacious to posit an exclusive choice between two modes of explanation: either typological resemblance or influence. It is reasonable rather to think that it is precisely the circumstance that there were broad typological similarities that made Heracles particularly susceptible to specific influence from Gilgamesh.158 For similar reasons, it seems fallacious to posit an exclusive choice between the recognition of inherited Indo-European features and of features that may point to the deliberate reception of a Near Eastern poem.159 In the former category are the hero’s victory over a three-headed monster and removal of his cattle,160 and the hero’s journey to the underworld and encounter with a hound of the underworld;161 in the latter category is, in particular, Heracles’s use of the lionskin that he is wearing as an improvised sail, while on a voyage recognized as a modified Jenseitsfahrt. We may suspect that precisely the fact that the figure and the mythology of Heracles had certain already-established contours is what equipped him to be mapped onto the figure and mythology of Gilgamesh.162 It is also clear that we need an adequate way of balancing differences and similarities. Scholarly dismissals of influence of Gilgamesh on Heracles have not always adequately taken stock of the similarities between the mythology of the two figures: in particular, surprisingly little attention has been paid to perhaps the most extraordinary single convergence, the participation of each in a transferred Jenseitsfahrt (voyage to Utnapishtim, voyage to Geryoneus) involving the improvisation of a sail out of a garment or lionskin. In the second place, the common argument that “the differences are more striking than the paral-

158 159 160 161 162

Compare, in general, Clarke 2019: 31: “Generalised affinity encourages and motivates localised borrowing and cross-fertilisation”. Cf., in general, Kelly 2021: 279. See above, nn. 22, 51. See above, nn. 51, 78. Cf. López-Ruiz 2015: 378: “As with other figures discussed here, the Near Eastern features of [Heracles] are not necessarily incompatible with his roots in Indo-European lore: for instance, the Vedic figure Indra or Trita fought a three-headed monster and carried away cattle that were hidden in a cave, a striking parallel to Heracles’s capture of the cattle of the three-headed Geryon”.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

heracles and gilgamesh in early greek epic

43

lels” (Lane Fox, above, p. 15)163 is a potentially problematic one, which runs the risk of misconceiving what is involved in literary receptions or poetic intertextuality in general. The Biblical scholar Michael V. Fox has averted to “a false dichotomy between difference and similarity”, pointing out that “both features lie in any comparison, and discovery of difference is one of the rewards of the comparative approach”.164 To state the obvious, we should never expect anything like simple identity or limpid replication of source texts by target texts.165 We are sure to be able to catalogue more differences than similarities between even Virgil’s Aeneas and Homer’s Odysseus or Milton’s Satan and Lucan’s Caesar (to take two incontrovertible cases of poetic reception): what we should expect may be more like peaks of similarity within an ocean of dissimilarity than a sea of unbroken similarity.166 In any poetic reception, differences can be very great, as long as the similarities, even if they are quite localized, are sufficiently striking and significant.167

10

But Is It “Allusion”?

The similarities between early Greek Heracles epic poetry and the Babylonian Gilgamesh (investigated in pp. 15–21, pp. 21–29, and pp. 32–34 above) may qualify as striking (marked); it remains to consider whether they are also significant (meaningful), and hence interpretable as allusion.168 Given the limitations of our evidence, any answer must be both speculative and coarse grained. Still, 163 164 165 166

167 168

Cf. e.g. Matijević 2015: 213; 2018: 600, 603; Kelly 2008: e.g. 289, 290, 297n135; 2021: 276; Rutherford 2019: 235; Ballesteros 2021: 4. Fox 2017: 228. See Rollinger 2015: 13 and n16 (taking issue with Kelly 2008; cf. now also Kelly 2021: 281n20); Currie 2016: 174 and nn165–166. Cf. also, in general, Kvanvig 2011: 6–7. One difference, among many, between Gilgamesh and Heracles is that the former is engaged in an intentional quest for immortality, whereas the latter in his labors, performed at the behest of Eurystheus (Il. 8.363, etc.) is not (a difference pointed out to me viva voce by Glenn Most). But to object to a Gilgamesh-reception in early Heracles mythology on account of differences of this kind would be akin to objecting to an Odysseusreception in Virgil’s version of the Aeneas legend on the grounds that the former is returning home, whereas the latter is traveling to an alien country. In each of these cases, a “Gilgamizing” and an “Odyssizing” treatment of Heracles and Aeneas respectively would be operating on an already existing legend or body of mythology, from which numerous salient details are, entirely naturally, retained. Thus it is that an act of poetic reception (allusion, intertextuality) retains its distinctness from a simple act of translation. On “striking” and “significant”, see immediately below, n. 168. On this use of the terms “striking” and “significant” (“marked” and “meaningful”), see Currie 2016: 33–34.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

44

currie

it is possible to formulate a suggestion in terms of an allusive dialogue around ideas of heroism and immortality. This allusive dialogue must be expanded to include the Iliad and the Odyssey.169 (In the following, no particular position is necessarily assumed on the relative date of Gilgamizing Heracles epic poetry vis-à-vis the Iliad and Odyssey; see above, pp. 34–38, and also below, pp. 49– 51). Gilgamesh is engaged in an elusive quest for immortality.170 Utnapishtim’s acquisition of immortality serves as a foil for its inaccessibility to Gilgamesh.171 (Gilgamesh’s traditional status as a deity of the underworld is alluded to only briefly—proleptically and in character text—in the poem: SBV Gilg. iii.100– 106.)172 Having failed in his pursuit of both immortalization (SBV Gilg. xi.207– 246) and rejuvenation (SBV Gilg. xi.279–309), Gilgamesh returns home to Uruk, where he appears to find some consolation for his mortality in contemplation of the permanence of the city, which he has built (SBV Gilg. i.11–12, xi.321– 328).173 He also arguably attains some inner peace through his accession to a profounder understanding of the human condition and a tempering of his earlier individualistic heroic tendencies.174 Heracles is, as I assume, engaged in a successful quest for immortality. His immortalization (in the form of eternal existence on Olympus) and his marriage to Hebe (“Youth” personified) are persistent elements of his mythology in early Greek epic (Od. 11.601–604; Hes. Th. 950–955; [Hes.], Cat. fr. 25.24– 33 M-W, fr. 229.6–15 M-W; HHom. 15.7–8). The contrast between a Heracles who acquires immortality and eternal youth and the Gilgamesh who fails to acquire either is stark, and is accentuated all the more by the many similarities that are to be found otherwise in their characters and in their exploits. (There is still a significant contrast, albeit a paler one, between the conception of a Heracles who joins the ranks of the gods on Olympus and a Gilgamesh who joins the ranks of the gods in the underworld.) It is, of course, controversial how early the tradition of Heracles’s immortalization is. The

169 170 171

172

173 174

Cf. also Kozlowski 2018: 26–28. E.g. Jacobsen 2019: 197–201. For this as a distinctive feature of the Babylonian, rather than the Sumerian, Gilgamesh tradition: Chen 2019: 163–164. Chen 2019: 161–162, 178–182; Worthington 2020: 14–15. This was already the case with Ziusudra in the Sumerian poem, The Death of Bilgames M 164–169 (translation: George 2020: 157). For Gilgamesh as a deity (his name is written in cuneiform with the determinative dingir), cf. esp. Sumerian Death of Gilgamesh M80–83 (George 2020: 154), and see George 2003: i.119–135; 2020: lii–liii, 150–151; Maul 2005: 17–18. Jacobsen 2019: 189, 198; Chen 2019: 181–182. Qualified: George 2019: 232. George 2019, cf. 2003: i.526–528.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

heracles and gilgamesh in early greek epic

45

relevant passages of the Odyssey and the Theogony have often been held to be interpolations from antiquity on.175 The grounds for suspecting them are not especially strong; but, whether they are genuine or not, it is dubious to posit an early stage of Heracles’s epic mythology in which Heracles did not acquire immortality.176 The Odyssey was obliged to have some form of Heracles (conveniently, an εἴδωλον) in the underworld, if Odysseus was to converse with him there; it is accordingly more logical, perhaps, to recognize Heracles’s (quasi-)presence in the underworld as an artificial contrivance of the Odyssey-poet, necessitated by the exigencies of the Odyssean narrative,177 than to suspect the lines that make Heracles resident on Olympus and the spouse of Hebe of being an interpolation. Nor does the Iliadic Achilles’s assertion that “even Heracles died” (Il. 18.117–119) entail that a tradition of Heracles’s immortalization was unknown to and later than the Iliad.178 The Iliad insists on the non-immortalization of various heroes, notably Achilles, the Dioscuri, and Sarpedon; in all such cases (and similarly for Heracles), existing traditions of the heroes’ immortalization or heroization may be presupposed and pointedly negated or ignored.179 For Achilles in the Iliad, despite his possession of a divine mother, mortality is an unquestioned fact (1.416, 9.411, 18.95–96, 464–466, etc.). In this, he nearly resembles Gilgamesh, but for the significant fact that the latter insistently questions his mortality. (Extra-Iliadic tradition—Od. 11.485, 491—

175

176

177 178

179

See, in general, West 1966: 416–417. For Od. 11.601–604 as an interpolation (of the sixth century b.c.e.), cf. schol. Od. 11.604, and see e.g. Nesselrath 2020a: 32–36; Hsu 2020: 11, 43–44; Gee 2020: 23–37; Matijević 2015: 25–26n2, 93n159, 114. For Th. 950–955 as interpolated, see e.g. schol. Th. 943; Gee 2020: 33–34. On [Hes.] Cat. fr. 25.24–33 M-W (obelized in P.Oxy. 2075; 28–33 = fr. 229.8–13 M-W, not obelized in P.Oxy. 2493), see Hirschberger 2004: 222. For a defense of all passages, see Dräger 1997: 9–12; Debiasi 2008: 42–43; cf. Haubold 2005: 93n43. Dräger 1997: 11 “[sc. Herakles’ Verklärung zum Gott] gehört … zum Kern der griechischen Heraklessage”. Pace e.g. †West 2018: 267, 278; Doronzio 2013: esp. 265–270 (suggesting the second half of the 7th century b.c.e. as the beginning of the tradition). On the question of dating of the tradition of Heracles’s immortality, see further Shapiro 1983: esp. 10–12; Burkert 2005a: 403 = 2011: 260–261 and n6; Bär 2018: 47–48n9. Danek 1998: 247. Pace Sourvinou-Inwood 1995: 86–87; West 2011: 31n7; †West 2018: 278; Stafford 2012: 172– 174; Nesselrath 2020a: 31; Hsu 2020: 11, 41–43; cf. Rutherford 2019: 120. The Iliadic insistence on the mortality of Heracles (and of other sons of Zeus) corresponds to the Heroenbild of the Iliad, it does not permit any straightforward inference that this reflects pre-Iliadic tradition: see e.g. Schein 1984: 134; Dräger 1997: 10–11; Burgess 2009: 102–103; Coray 2016: 59–60; Currie 2016: 63–68, with nn152, 158; 2005: 41; cf. Eisenfeld 2018: 82–83. Schein 1984: 69; Currie 2005: 41, 42–44, 50–52; 2016: 64–66; pace Matijević 2015: 17 and n11.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

46

currie

apparently knows of an Achilles who is a ruler in the underworld, and thus creates a further curious parallel with Gilgamesh in Mesopotamian tradition outside SBV Gilg.) There is also a notable convergence in the fact that it is the death of a beloved comrade (Patroclus, Enkidu) that makes the hero reflect more intensively on his own mortality (Il. 18.98–100, 115–121, 21.106–110; SBV Gilg. ix.3–5, x.61–71).180 For both Achilles (Il. 9.412–413, 18.121) and Gilgamesh (SBV Gilg. i.9–12, xi.323–337), it is an important question whether fame may be an adequate surrogate immortality.181 Like Gilgamesh (see above), Achilles by the end of the epic can be said to have undergone a spiritual journey and to have attained a more enlightened understanding of the human condition, retreating from his earlier individualism and becoming more reconciled to mortality (Il. 21.103–113, 24.525–551).182 Odysseus in the Odyssey attains his homecoming, not immortality. There is here both divergence from the Iliadic Achilles (no homecoming, no immortality) and a convergence with Gilgamesh (homecoming, no immortality).183 The convergence with Gilgamesh is, however, only partial, because Gilgamesh reluctantly settles for his homecoming, having missed out on immortality and eternal youth (SBV Gilg. xi.242–246, 308–314), whereas Odysseus actively declines immortality and eternal youth when they are on offer, deliberately preferring his homecoming instead (Od. 5.135–136, 203–224, 23.333–337).184 There are other nuances in this putative allusive dialogue. Thus, Odysseus’s voyage to Teiresias is motivated by a desire to bring about Odysseus’s homecoming, not his immortality; it contrasts with Gilgamesh’s voyage to Utnapishtim, which is motivated by a desire for immortality. Further, Odysseus initially forfeits his homecoming by failing to stay awake and gets repudiated by Aeolus (Od. 10.31– 33, 68–69, 72–76); similarly, Gilgamesh forfeits immortality by failing to stay awake and gets repudiated by Utnapishtim (SBV Gilg. xi.219–246).185 Finally,

180 181 182 183

184 185

Clarke 2019: 259. On Gilgamesh, cf. Jacobsen 2019: 184–185, 197–198; Chen 2019: 164–165. See above, n. 111. Clarke 2019: 261–262. On Gilgamesh, cf. George 2003: i.446, 526–528. Cf. Chen 2019: 164, on Gilgamesh (Bilgames) in the Sumerian Bilgames and Huwawa. Schein 1984: 17; cf. Clarke 2019: 225–226. On Gilgamesh, see George 2019; see above. On Achilles, e.g. Schein 1984: 159–163. Contrast Matijević 2015: 210: “Ein Vergleich von Gilgamesch und Odysseus ist schon deshalb wenig ergiebig, weil diesen lediglich der Wunsch nach Heimkehr antreibt, während jener ewiges Leben zu erlangen sucht”. For Odysseus as a contrasting type of hero to Gilgamesh—and to Achilles and to Heracles—cf. West 1997: 402. Cf. West 1997: 412. Cf. West 1997: 415. See also George 2003: i.521–552. Compare and contrast Cook 1992: 265– 266.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

heracles and gilgamesh in early greek epic

47

Menelaus in Odyssey book 4 (in an episode where he is conceived as a double of Odysseus)186 introduces further complexities into the putative allusive dialogue. Menelaus, like Odysseus, both desires and achieves his homecoming. Yet, in contrast to Odysseus, he will also achieve immortality: he learns that he will not die, but be translated, together with his wife, to the Elysian plain. His posthumous fate closely resembles that of Utnapishtim (SBV Gilg. xi.199–206),187 whose immortality provides a foil to Gilgamesh’s mortality.188 Menelaus’s prospective immortalization serves likewise as a negative foil to Odysseus’s prospective death in old age (11.134–136, 23.281–283). But there is a twist here, too. Odysseus on returning home achieves in this life an ideal of marital felicity with Penelope that eludes Menelaus in his marriage with Helen, both in this life and, perhaps, in eternity.189 This marital felicity in broad outline conforms to the life-philosophy recommended by Siduri to Gilgamesh, in lieu of his futile pursuit of immortality (OBV Gilg. VA+BM iii.6–15).190 Siduri’s life-philosophy speech (though unattested for the Standard Babylonian Gilgamesh and appearing only in the Old Babylonian version) appears to have been an influential passage: there are arguable receptions of (something like) OBV Gilg. VA+BM iii.6–13 in Odyssey 8.248–249191 and in Ecclesiastes 9:7– 9.192 The above survey intimates the possibility of an allusive dialogue between four poems, or perhaps rather poetic traditions, with various changes being rung on the interlocking themes of immortality, homecoming (including the theme of domestic, i.e. marital, felicity), and fame. While these are in themselves very basic themes,193 there is amply enough specific detail here to suggest an allusive dialogue between specific poems, or poetic traditions, in which we may see the principle of “opposition in imitation” at work.194 A Gilgamizing early Heracles epic would very plausibly take its place in this allusive dialogue, 186 187

188 189 190 191 192

193 194

See above, n. 155. Cf. Sumerian Flood Story 256–261, where “king Ziusudra” is “elevated … to eternal life, like a god (ti dingir-gin)” and “settled in an overseas country, in the orient, in Dilmun” (Civil, in Lambert and Millard 1969: 144–145). George 2003: i.521. See Currie 2022: 22–24. See George 2003: i.279. West 1997: 414. E.g. Lambert 1995: 31–32, 41–42; Anderson 2014: 170–173; more sceptically, Carr 2017: 47– 48. Siduri’s is not simply a hedonistic creed: George 2003: i.275, cf. 522–523; cf. Clarke 2019: 112–113, 316–317. Cf. Matijević 2015: 212 “Derartige Analogien sind … auf universale menschliche Existenzfragen zurückzuführen”. Currie 2016: 27 and General Index s.v.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

48

currie

whether we situate it before or after the Homeric epics. Aemulatio by Heracles of Gilgamesh, or imitatio by early Greek Heracles epic poetry of the Babylonian Gilgamesh, could obviously be meaningful in the context of successive poetic interrogations (also engaged in by the Iliad and Odyssey) of the ideas of immortality, homecoming, and fame.

11

The Question of the Dependence of the Iliad and Odyssey on Early Greek Gilgamizing Heracles Epic Poetry

In three arguably Gilgamizing scenes of the Iliad and Odyssey, we find Heracles referenced as a mythological precedent; the task of the present section is to consider the implications of this fact. First, at the beginning of Iliad 18, Achilles coming to terms with his own mortality on the death of Patroclus has been compared with Gilgamesh coming to terms with his own mortality on the death of Enkidu.195 Achilles references Heracles as the mythological paradigm: “not even Heracles escaped death” (Il. 18.117).196 Second, in the aristeia of Diomedes, the aftermath of Diomedes’s wounding of Aphrodite (Iliad 5.367–430) has been compared with the aftermath of Gilgamesh’s insulting of Ishtar in SBV Gilg. vi.80–114.197 Dione references as the mythological paradigm Heracles’s wounding of Hades and Hera (Il. 5.392–404), in addition to Otos and Ephialtes’s imprisonment of Ares (385–391).198 Third, in the Nekyia of Odyssey 11, Odysseus’s consultation with the soul of Antikleia (Od. 11.152–224) and his learning of the fates of the dead has been compared to Gilgamesh’s consultation with the ghost of Enkidu and his learning of the fates of the dead in the twelfth tablet of Gilgamesh (Gilg. SBV xii.84–

195 196

197 198

See above, n. 180. Cf. †West 2018: 275: “It is surely significant that [Achilles] refers to Heracles as the paradigm”; hence West supposes that a (Gilgamizing) Heracles epic is the source for the Iliadic episode. Rather, we may suppose that (some version of) the Babylonian Gilgamesh is the source, but that the poet (and his character) could only reference Heracles as the closest available approximation to Gilgamesh, and as capable metonymically of putting an ideal listener in mind of Gilgamesh. See references above, p. 31n110. Nesselrath 2020a: 28 “the present passage [sc. Il. 5.392–404] evokes a ‘theomachos’ Heracles who represents some kind of model for the ‘theomachos’ Diomedes in Il. 5 …”. NB †West 2018: 272–274 (unconvincingly) for this as the model for the Iliadic episode. The mythology involving Heracles referenced in the Iliadic passage is much less close to Gilg. SBV vi than the Iliad book 5 passage involving Diomedes is.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

heracles and gilgamesh in early greek epic

49

153).199 Heracles’s εἴδωλον, speaking to Odysseus, references his own descent to fetch Cerberus as a mythological precedent for Odysseus’s descent (Od. 11.618– 619).200 The coincidence of arguable reception of Gilgamesh mythology and apparent explicit “signaling”201 of Heracles as a mythological precedent may in at least some of these cases be just coincidence. Thus, in our third case, it is likely that there are various poetic and mythological sources for Odysseus’s descent to the underworld, including both (something like) SBV Gilg. and an early Greek epic narrating Heracles’s descent; the signaling of Heracles as the mythological precedent may pertain solely to the latter, and have nothing whatever to do with the former. But our first case, at least, does not seem readily explicable in this way, and it is worth exploring possible explanations for why we may find Heracles being referenced as a mythological precedent in the context of receptions of (something like) SBV Gilg. On one explanation, the Homeric poet(s) adopted Heracles as the closest available Greek approximation to Gilgamesh. The latter could not have been referenced directly in a Greek hexameter context (least of all by a character in the poem), since the cast of characters and places of the Babylonian Gilgamesh fall so completely outside the frame of reference of Greek mythology. On the assumption that Gilgamizing poetry on Heracles antedated the Homeric poems, such poetry could be signaled as a placeholder, with the tacit understanding that the (ideal) audience would register the source that could not be signaled, but was nevertheless on the poet’s and the (ideal) audience’s mind: the Babylonian Gilgamesh, in whatever version it may have been known to them. Thus, when Achilles referenced Heracles’s mortality as a precedent for his own (Il. 18.117), in a narrative context that recalled the behavior of Gilgamesh at the death of Enkidu, the (ideal) audience could have recognized Gilgamesh as the more pertinent paradigm. It will be apparent that this explanation trades on unknowns: that Gilgamizing Heracles epic poetry anteceded the Homeric poems (see above, p. 37), and that the Babylonian Gilgamesh (in some language and medium) was known to the poet(s) of the Iliad and Odyssey and to their (ideal) audiences. On another explanation, the Homeric poets and their audiences had no direct knowledge of Gilgamesh mythology (in any version or language), but rather Gilgamesh motifs had entered the pre-Homeric epic tradition via pre-

199 200 201

West 1997: 344–345, 415–416. Danek 1998: 247. Cf. Currie 2016: 26 and n162.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

50

currie

Homeric Gilgamizing Heracles epic poetry, and were indirectly reflected in the Iliad and the Odyssey as a consequence of those poems’ direct engagement with that Heracles epic poetry. On this scenario, Heracles mythology would be signaled in the Iliad as a precedent for Diomedes’s wounding of Aphrodite and for Achilles’s coming to terms with his own mortality after the death of his closest companion without any awareness—on the part of either the Homeric poet(s) or their audiences—that the motifs in question derived ultimately from the Babylonian Gilgamesh. This approach, which has in essence been adopted by West,202 also assumes the existence of pre-Homeric Gilgamizing Heracles epic poetry. West was motivated by a desire to account for the presence in the Homeric poems of passages that seem to show the clear influence of Gilgamesh without our having to posit the existence of either a plurality of bilingual early hexameter Greek poets who would be capable of accessing Gilgamesh for themselves (whether in the original Akkadian or in putative Aramaic or Phoenician translations)203 or of an early (eighth- or seventh-century b.c.e.) Greek translation of the Babylonian Gilgamesh in hexameter verse (which must have struggled to find adequate ways of rendering into Greek culturally intransigent elements, such as the names Gilgamesh, Utnaphistim, Humbaba, Uruk, Mount Mashu, etc.).204 West’s theory, that Gilgamesh motifs were communicated to the Homeric epics via a Gilgamizing pre-Homeric Heracles epic, incurs various difficulties, however. The first of these concerns the date of the Gilgamization of early Greek Heracles epic poetry (see above, pp. 34–38): according to this theory, this must have happened wholesale at the pre-Homeric stage (to posit successive waves of Gilgamization would entail resurrecting the postulate either of a plurality of Archaic Greek bilingual poets able to access a foreign-language Gilgamesh independently of one another or of a Greek translation to which the non-bilingual poets could all recur).205 While this is possible, it is not neces-

202 203

204 205

†West 2018. For the possibility of bilingual poets, see West 1997: 629. For the possibility of translations of Gilgamesh, see Lambert 1995: 42: “It is possible that the Mesopotamian texts were translated, whether orally or in writing, into a West Semitic language in the period of the Ugaritic and Emar copies, or in the first millennium b.c.e. into Aramaic. But so far there is no hard fact to build on. The possibilities will have to be kept in mind until more evidence comes to light”. †West 2018: 266–267; cf. 2014: 31–32. West 2011: 314 seems somewhat more sympathetic to the possibility of a “Greek version” of Gilgamesh. Earlier, West assumed that Near Eastern influence on Heracles came in waves (1997: 467 “on more than one occasion”).

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

heracles and gilgamesh in early greek epic

51

sarily the most comfortable assumption; and it would commit us to the presence already in pre-Homeric Heracles epic poetry of Charon and of Heracles clothed in a lionskin. A second difficulty concerns the nature of the allusive dialogue that we can construct (see above, pp. 43–48). According to this theory, the Iliad and Odyssey can be in an allusive dialogue with Gilgamizing Heracles poetry, but not with Gilgamesh itself. Yet the cumulatively rather impressive series of “oppositions in imitation” that were sketched out above break down with Gilgamesh bracketed out of the allusive dialogue. Thus, for instance, it is not apparent how the Odyssean theme of homecoming versus immortality could have been mediated by Gilgamizing Heracles poetry, nor how the comparison-cum-contrast of Menelaus as a Gilgamesh-cum-Utnapishtim figure with Odysseus as a Gilgamesh figure could have been mediated by Gilgamizing Heracles poetry. It seems necessary for us to be able to compare Odysseus with the Gilgamesh of Gilgamesh, rather than with the Heracles of even a heavily Gilgamizing Heracles epic tradition. Third, there is a large residue of Gilgamizing details in the Homeric poems that cannot plausibly be regarded as transmitted by Gilgamizing Heracles epic poetry.206 This goes, for instance, for Thetis as divine mother of Achilles, recalling Ninsun as divine mother of Gilgamesh.207 (Heracles poetry could transmit only the theme of the hero with a divine father.) Indeed, it is hard to see how any arguable Homeric receptions of scenes with Ninsun in Gilgamesh can have come via Heracles mythology.208 It is also hard to imagine that any scene in a Gilgamizing Heracles epic can have been closer to SBV Gilg. vi.80–114 (Ishtar’s plaint in heaven, after being emotionally wounded by Gilgamesh) than Iliad 5.367–430 (Aphrodite’s plaint in heaven, after being physically wounded by Diomedes), yet that is what we are required to suppose, if a scene from a Heracles epic is to serve as an intermediary for the Iliadic scene.209 West’s theory turns out not to be the economical solution that it promised to be;210 lost pre-Homeric Heracles poetry cannot very well be “the [sic] miss-

206 207 208

209 210

Compare West 2005: 62–64 (rejecting the view that Gilgamizing details in the Odyssey were transmitted solely by earlier Gilgamizing Argonautic epic poetry). Cf. Clarke 2019: 69–70, 259. On Thetis-scenes of Iliad book 1 as receiving Ninsun-scenes of SBV Gilg., see West 1997: 338–339. On Penelope at Od. 4.759–767 and Ninsun at SBV Gilg. iii.37–45, see Burkert 1992a: 99–100, 2005b: 300–301; West 1997: 421. Pace †West 2018: 273–274. For traditions of Heracles theomachos (though not against Aphrodite), see Fowler 2013: 304. Pace †West 2018: 278 “an economical way of accounting for a great deal”.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

52

currie

ing link between Gilgāmeš and Homer”.211 It may, more generally, be the wrong track to the problem of how Greek poets could have received Babylonian poetic traditions to try to reduce the transmission to as narrow a channel as possible. Receptions of Babylonian poetry in early Greek poetry seem to be nearly everywhere (if indeed they are anywhere), and they typically appear to be independent of one another.212 In any event, the Iliad, the Odyssey, and early Greek Heracles epic poetry seem to receive Gilgamesh independently of one another. A solution to the problem of how to account for the transmission of Babylonian (or other Near Eastern) poetry to early Greece therefore continues to elude us, but this is not the subject of the present chapter.213

12

Conclusions

It was suggested at the outset that Gilgamesh-Heracles constituted an acid test for Mesopotamian–Greek relations. The position that Greek epic features significant receptions of Babylonian poetry seems to survive this particular test well: a plausible case can be made for detailed and deep acquaintance with the Babylonian Gilgamesh on the part of early hexameter poets and, if we accept the arguments for allusion, on the part of at least some of their public as well. The problem of explaining the cultural and linguistic mechanisms by which this detailed and profound acquaintance came about remains as acute as ever. It seems plausible, however, that individual poets of the eighth, seventh, or sixth centuries b.c.e. are responsible for this reception, as an act of conscious poetic choice.214 It seems likely that Heracles was considered the “Greek Gilgamesh”par excellence. This seems likely even if many other Greek heroes could also channel Gilgamesh (the Achilles of the Iliad, the Odysseus of the Odyssey, and also perhaps Perseus and Jason in early poetry and mythology),215 and even if other

211 212

213 214

215

†West 2018: 267, qualified, however, at 278. See the overview offered at Currie 2016: 217–218, plus Currie 2021: 131 and n30, 135 and n54 (Archilochus, Aesop, and Semonides may each have offered mutually independent receptions of the Babylonian Etana). See above, n. 17. Pace Kelly 2021: 276–277, advocating what he calls the “long durée” approach, also described as a “tradition-centred” approach, as opposed to a “personalized” one; similarly, Ballesteros 2021: 21, disputing “conscious borrowing”. Differently, e.g. Eisenfeld 2015: 159; Currie 2016: 160–222, esp. 217. On Gilgamesh and Perseus, see Burkert 1992a: 85–86. On Gilgamesh and Jason, see West 2005: 62–64.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

heracles and gilgamesh in early greek epic

53

Mesopotamian mythological figures than Gilgamesh (especially, Ninurta, Marduk, and Nergal) could also be channeled in Heracles. We should note in conclusion that there is also an etymological aspect to the claim that Heracles is the “Greek Gilgamesh” par excellence. The name Heracles is standardly (and anciently) given a Greek etymology: Ἡρακλῆς < Ἥρα and κλέος.216 A sticking point is the short alpha: Ἡρᾰκλῆς, but Ἥρᾱ.217 An alternative explains Ἡρακλῆς as a transliteration of Babylonian Errakal, one of the names of Nergal.218 West objected to this etymology that “the figures have too little in common”.219 The point of the objection is that Nergal’s role in mythology and cult is too little like that of Heracles; the proposed convergence in name Ἡρακλῆς-Errakal does not mirror the convergence in mythology that is discernible between Heracles and Gilgamesh or Heracles and Ninurta (but not Heracles and Nergal).220 The objection can be countered. The figures Ninurta, Gilgamesh, and Nergal were importantly conflated. Gilgamesh and Nergal were closely associated in Mesopotamia from very early on, notably, as rulers of the underworld.221 There was also conflation of Ninurta and Nergal from the second millennium on.222 The adoption of the name Ἡρακλέης as a Graecized version of Errakal would thus make excellent sense for a Greek figure whose mythology was conceived, to a significant extent, as a reception of the Babylonian mythologicaltheological complex Ninurta-Gilgamesh-Nergal/Errakal.223 The introduction of Heracles’s name into Greek poetry and mythology, and thence cult, need not be many generations older than Homer and Hesiod; we may concur with Burkert that “the name Heracles is no doubt far later than the story patterns”.224 This is admittedly, again, unscientific etymology, by the “Kling-Klang” method

216 217 218

219 220 221

222 223 224

Cf. Stafford 2012: 8–9, 19 “The name Herakles … is distinctively Greek”. Cf. Graf 2005: 156. Dunkel 1998. Kingsley 1994: 394. Cf. Burkert 1979: 82 and 179n17; 1987: 17 = 2003: 55 and n31; Dalley 20002: 321, 325. López-Ruiz 2018: 269, 470. For Errakal (and Erra) as a name of Nergal, see Wisnom 2020: 210 and n44. West 1997: 471n101. On Ninurta and Heracles, see above, p. 14n7. On Gilgamesh and Nergal, see e.g. George 2003: i.127–130. Note also the Sumerian Poem of the Mattock, in which Bilgames is “the noble hero of heaven, little brother of Nergal” (George 2003: i.107). On Ninurta and Nergal, see Lambert 2013: 385; Dalley and Reyes 1998: 101; Dalley 20002: 325. On the complex Ninurta-Nergal-Gilgamesh-Heracles, cf. Penglase 1994: 70 and n55. Burkert 1979: 96. Cf. Burkert 1979: 78: “The formula bíe Herakleeíe evidently comes from the technique of oral epic, where Heracles must have been a major character for at least some generations of singers. But there is no Greek evidence earlier than this”, “Any theory about a Greek origin of Heracles must thus remain speculative, and it will reflect the scholar’s

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

54

currie

(compare above, pp. 28–29), but the name forms are very close, and offer an additional prompt to reflect on how much the Archaic Greek Heracles may owe to Mesopotamia and, in particular, to the early Greek hexameter reception of Babylonian poetry.

Abbreviations ATU

Aarne–Thompson–Uther: Uther, H.-J. The Types of International Folktales: A Classification and Bibliography, Helsinki 2004. CAD Chicago Assyrian Dictionary, vols. i–xxi, ed. M.T. Roth, Chicago 1956– 2010. CPG Corpus paroemiographorum Graecorum, vols. i–ii, ed. E.L. von Leutsch and F.G. Schneidewin, Göttingen 1851. EGEF Early Greek Epic Fragments, vol. i, ed. C. Tsagalis, Berlin 2017. LIMC Lexicon iconographicum mythologiae classicae, vols. i–, Zurich 1981–. PEG Poetae Epici Graeci (testimonia et fragmenta), parts i–ii, ed. A. Bernabé Stuttgart, Leipzig, and Munich 1987–2007. RE Paulys Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, ed. G. Wissowa et al., i–xxiv, Stuttgart 1894–1980. TrGF Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, vols. i–v, ed. B. Snell, R. Kannicht, and S.L. Radt, Göttingen 1971–2004.

Works Cited Alden, M. 2017. Para-Narratives in the Odyssey: Stories in the Frame. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Alexiou, M. 1978. “Modern Greek Folklore and Its Relation to the Past: The Evolution of Charos in Greek Tradition.” In Vryonis, Jr., S. ed. The Past in Medieval and Modern Greek Culture (Byzantina kai Metabyzantina. Volume i). Malibu: Undena Publications. 221–236. Anderson, G. 2021. “Heracles as a Quest Hero.” In Ogden, ed. 371–385. Anderson, W.H.U. 2014. “Ecclesiastes in the Intertextual Matrix of Ancient Near Eastern

general approach to myth”. On the antiquity of the Heracles-figure, compare/contrast Lane Fox 2008: 204: “His pre-Homeric roots went back into the “Dark Ages” and probably, though no linguistic proof exists, into the previous Mycenaean period”; Fowler 2013: 261.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

heracles and gilgamesh in early greek epic

55

Literature.” In Dell, K. and Kynes, W. eds. Reading Ecclesiastes Intertextually. London: Bloomsbury Academic. 157–175. Bachvarova, M.R. 2016. From Hittite to Homer: The Ancient Anatolian Background of Ancient Greek Epic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bader, F. 1996. “Héraklès, Ogmios et les Sirènes.” In Jourdain-Annequin, C. Bonnet, C. eds. Héraclès: les femmes et le féminin. Actes du Colloque de Grenoble, Université des Sciences Sociales (Grenoble ii), 22–23 octobre 1992. Brussels and Rome: Brepols. 145– 185. Ballesteros, B. 2021. “On Gilgamesh and Homer: Ishtar, Aphrodite and the Meaning of a Parallel.” Classical Quarterly 71.1: 1–21. Bär, S. 2018. Herakles im griechischen Epos: Studien zur Narrativität und Poetizität eines Helden. Palingenesia, Band 111. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner. Barker, E.T.E. and Christensen, J.P. 2021. “Epic.” In Ogden, ed. 283–300. Barrett, W.S. 1964. Euripides’ Hippolytos. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Beekes, R. 2010. Etymological Dictionary of Greek, vols. i–ii. Leiden: Brill. Bernabé, A. 2008a. “Viajes de Orfeo.” In Bernabé, A. and Casadesús, F. eds. Orfeo y la tradición órfica: un reencuentro, vols. i–ii. Tres Cantos, Madrid: Akal. i.59–74. Bernabé, A. 2008b. “Poemas sobre el mundo, la vida, el alma, el más allá. Himnos y epigramas. Poesía mántica.” In Bernabé, A. and Casadesús, F. eds. Orfeo y la tradición órfica: un reencuentro, vols. i–ii. Tres Cantos, Madrid: Akal. i.393–422. Black, J. et al. 2004. The Literature of Ancient Sumer. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Boardman, J. 1998. “Herakles’ Monsters: Indigenous or Oriental?” In Bonnet, C., Jourdain-Annequin, C., and Pirenne-Delforge, V. eds. Le Bestiaire d’Héraclès: iiie Rencontre héracléenne: Actes du Colloque organise à l’Université de Liège et aux Facultés Universitaires Notre-Dame de la Paix de Namur, du 14 au 16 novembre 1996 = Kernos Suppl. 7. Liège: Centre international d’étude de la religion grecque antique. 27–35. Bremmer, J.N. 2002. The Rise and Fall of the Afterlife. London: Routledge. Bremmer, J.N. 2014. Initiation into the Mysteries of the Ancient World. Berlin: De Gruyter. Brize, P. 1980. Die Geryoneis des Stesichoros und die frühe griechische Kunst. Würzburg: Triltsch. Brommer, F. 1986. Heracles: The Twelve Labours of the Hero in Ancient Art and Literature. New Rochelle, NY: A.D. Caratzas. Bryce, T. 2009. The Routledge Handbook of the People and Places of Ancient Western Asia: The Near East from the Early Bronze Age to the Fall of the Persian Empire. London: Routledge. Budelmann, F. 2018. Greek Lyric: A Selection. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Burgess, J.S. 2009. The Death and Afterlife of Achilles. Baltimore, ml: Johns Hopkins University Press. Burkert, W. 1979. Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual. Berkeley: University of California Press.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

56

currie

Burkert, W. 1984. “Sacrificio-Sacrilegio: Il “trickster” fondatore.” Studi storici 25: 835–845. Reprinted in Burkert, W. 2001. Kleine Schriften i Homerica. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. 178–188. Burkert, W. 1985. Greek Religion. Trans. by K. Raffan. Oxford: Blackwell. Burkert, W. 1987. “Oriental and Greek Mythology: The Meeting of Parallels.” In Bremmer, J. ed. Interpretations of Greek Mythology. London: Routledge. 10–40. Reprinted in Burkert, W. 2003. Kleine Schriften ii Orientalia. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. 48–72. Burkert, W. 1992a. The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Burkert, W. 1992b. “Eracle e gli altri eroi culturali del Vicino Oriente.” In Bonnet, C. and Jourdain-Annequin, C. eds. Héraclès: d’une rive à l’autre de la Méditerranée: Actes de la Table Ronde de Rome, 15–16 septembre 1989. Brussels: Insitut Historique belge de Rome. 111–127. Reprinted in Burkert, W. 2003. Kleine Schriften ii Orientalia. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. 73–86. Burkert, W. 2005a. “Vergöttlichung von Menschen in der griechisch-römischen Antike.” In Stagl, J. and Reinhard, W. eds. Grenzen des Menschseins: Probleme einer Definition des Menschlichen. Vienna, Cologne, and Weimar: Böhlau Verlag. 401–419. Reprinted in Burkert, W. 2011. Kleine Schriften vi Mythica, Ritualia, Religiosa 3. Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. 259–276. Burkert, W. 2005b. “Near Eastern Connections.” In Foley, J.M. ed. A Companion to Ancient Epic. Malden, MA: Blackwell. 291–301. Burton, D.H. 1996. The Search for Immortality in Archaic Greek Myth. Diss. University College London. Cairns, D.L. 2010. Bacchylides: Five Epinician Odes (3, 5, 9, 11, 13). Cambridge: Francis Cairns. Cameron, A. 2004. Greek Mythography in the Roman World. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Carr, D.M. 2017. “Method in Determining the Dependence of Biblical on Non-Biblical Texts.” In Zevit, Z. ed. Subtle Citation, Allusion, and Translation in the Hebrew Bible. Sheffield and Bristol, CT: Equinox Publishing. 41–53. Carvalho, S. 2022. Mythical Narratives in Stesichorus. Berlin: De Gruyter. Casson, L. 1971. Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Chen, Y.S. 2019. The Primeval Flood Catastrophe. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Clark, R.J. 1979. Catabasis: Vergil and the Wisdom-Tradition. Amsterdam: Grüner. Clark, R.J. 2001. “How Vergil Expanded the Underworld in Aeneid 6.” Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 47: 103–116. Clarke, M.J. 2019. Achilles Beside Gilgamesh: Mortality and Wisdom in Early Epic Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

heracles and gilgamesh in early greek epic

57

Cohen, B. 1994. “From Bowman to Clubman: Herakles and Olympia.” Art Bulletin 76: 696–715. Collins, J.J. 2016. The Apocalyptic Imagination: An Introduction to Jewish Apocalyptic Literature. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Cook, E. 1992. “Ferrymen of Elysium and the Homeric Phaeacians.” Journal of IndoEuropean Studies 20.3/4: 239–267. Coray, M. 2016. Homers Ilias: Gesamtkommentar (Basler Kommentar). Band xi Achtzehnter Gesang (Σ). Berlin: De Gruyter. Currie, B.G.F. 2005. Pindar and the Cult of Heroes. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Currie, B.G.F. 2012. “The Iliad, Gilgamesh and Neoanalysis.” In: Montanari, F., Rengakos, A., and Tsagalis, C. eds. Homeric Contexts: Neoanalysis and the Interpretation of Oral Poetry = Trends in Classics Supplementary Volumes 12. Berlin: De Gruyter. 543– 580. Currie, B.G.F. 2016. Homer’s Allusive Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Currie, B.G.F. 2020. “The Birth of Literary Criticism (Herodotus 2.116–117) and the Roots of Homeric Neoanalysis.” In Price, J.J. and Zelnick-Abramovitz, R. eds. Text and Intertext in Greek Epic and Drama: Essays in Honor of Margalit Finkelberg. London: Routledge. 147–170. Currie, B.G.F. 2021. “Etana in Greece.” In Metcalf, C. and Kelly, A. eds. Gods and Mortals in Early Greek and Near Eastern Mythology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 126–144. Currie, B.G.F. 2022. “Recognizing Odysseus, Reading Penelope: The anagnōrisis in the Twenty-third Book of the Odyssey.” Journal of Hellenic Studies 142: 1–29. Curtis, P. 2011. Stesichoros’s Geryoneis. Leiden: Brill. D’Alessio, G.B. 2004. “Textual Fluctuations and Cosmic Streams: Ocean and Acheloios.” Journal of Hellenic Studies 124: 16–37. Dalley, S. 20002. Myths from Mesopotamia. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dalley, S. and Reyes, A.T. 1998. “Mesopotamian Contact and Influence in the Greek World.” In Dalley, S. ed. The Legacy of Mesopotamia. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 85–124. Danek, G. 1998. Epos und Zitat: Studien zu den Quellen der Odyssee. Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften. Daniels, M. 2021. “Heracles and Melqart.” In Ogden, ed. 464–488. Davies, M. 1988. “Stesichorus’ Geryoneis and Its Folk-tale Origins.” Classical Quarterly 38.2: 277–290. Davies, M. and Finglass, P.J. 2014. Stesichorus: The Poems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Debiasi, A. 2008. Esiodo e l’occidente. Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider. de Jong, I.J.F. 2001. A Narratological Commentary on the Odyssey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

58

currie

Diez de Velasco, F. and Molinero Polo, M.Á. 1994. “Hellenoaegyptiaca 1: Influences égyptiennes dans l’imaginaire grec de la mort: quelques exemples d’un emprunt supposé (Diodore 1, 92,1–4; 1, 96,4–8).” Kernos 7: 75–93. Diez de Velasco, F. 2006. “Esquisse méthodologique de mythologie comparée: Charon indo-européen?” In García Quintela, M.V., González García, F.J., and Criado Boado, F. eds. Anthropology of the Indo-European World and Material Culture: Proceedings of the 5th International Colloquium of Anthropology of the Indo-European World and Comparative Mythology. Budapest: Archaeolingua Alapítvány. 333–344. Doronzio, A. 2013. “Zu den Anfängen der Apotheose des Herakles.” In Indo-European Linguistics and Classical Philology 17: 259–271. Dover, K.J. 1993. Aristophanes: Frogs. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dräger, P. 1997. Untersuchungen zu den Frauenkatalogen Hesiods. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner. Dräger, P. 2003. “Charon.” Brill’s New Pauly. Leiden: Brill. iii: 202–203. Dunkel, G.E. 1998. “On the Short Vowel in the Name Ἡρακλῆς.”Museum Helveticum 55.2: 76–83. Eisenfeld, H. 2015. “Ishtar Rejected: Reading a Mesopotamian Goddess in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite.” Archiv für Religionsgechichte 16: 133–162. Eisenfeld, H. 2018. “Geryon the Hero, Herakles the God.” Journal of Hellenic Studies 138: 80–99. Finglass, P. 2021. “Labor x: The Cattle of Geryon and the Return from Tartessus.” In Ogden, ed. 135–148. Fontenrose, J. 1959. Python: A Study of Delphic Myth and Its Origins. Berkeley: University of California Press. Foster, B.R. 2005. Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature. 3rd edn. Bethesda, MD: CDL Press. Foster, B.R. 2019. The Epic of Gilgamesh: A New Translation, Analogues, Criticism and Response. 2nd edn. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. Fowler, R.L. 2013. Early Greek Mythography. Volume ii: Commentary. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fox, M.V. 2017. “Gauging Egyptian Influences on Biblical Literature.” In Zevit, ed. 228– 241. Frisk, H. 1973–1979. Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, vols. i–iii. Heidelberg: Winter. Gangutia Elícegui, E. 1998. “Gerioneidas: desarrollo literario griego en contacto con el Próximo Oriente.” Emerita 66: 231–256. Gantz, T. 1993. Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources, vols. i–ii. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Gee, E. 2020. Mapping the Afterlife: From Homer to Dante. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

heracles and gilgamesh in early greek epic

59

George, A.R. 2003. The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic, vols. i–ii. Oxford: Oxford University Press. George, A.R. 2019. “The Mayfly on the River: Individual and Collective Destiny in the Epic of Gilgamesh.” In Foster, ed. 225–237. First published in KASKAL: Rivista di storia, ambienti e culture del Vicino Oriente Antico 9 (2012) 227–242. George, A.R. 2020. The Epic of Gilgamesh: The Babylonian Epic Poem and Other Texts in Akkadian and Sumerian. 2nd edn. London: Penguin. Graf, F. 2005. “Herakles, i. Cult and Myth.” Brill’s New Pauly. Leiden: Brill. vi: 156–161. Graf, F. and Johnston, S.I. 2007. Ritual Texts for the Afterlife: Orpheus and the Bacchic Gold Tablets. London: Routledge. Graves, R. 1955. The Greek Myths, vols. i–ii. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Haubold, J. 2005. “Heracles in the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women.” In Hunter, R.L. ed. The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women: Constructions and Reconstructions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 85–98. Helle, S. 2021. Gilgamesh: A New Translation of the Ancient Epic. New Haven: Yale University Press. Herrero de Jáuregui, M. 2011. “Priam’s Catabasis: Traces of the Epic Journey to Hades in Iliad 24.” Transactions of the American Philological Association 141: 37–68. Hirschberger, M. 2004. Gynaikōn katalogos und Megalai ēhoiai: ein Kommentar zu den Fragmenten zweier hesiodeischer Epen. Munich: K.G. Saur. Horowitz, W. 2011. Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography. 2nd edn. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. Horsfall, N. 2013. Virgil, Aeneid 6. Volume 2: Commentary and Appendices. Berlin: De Gruyter. Hsu, K.L. 2020. The Violent Hero: Heracles in the Greek Imagination. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Huxley, G.L. 1969. Greek Epic Poetry from Eumelos to Panyassis. London: Faber and Faber. Jacobsen, T. 2019. “‘And Death the Journey’s End’: The Gilgamesh Epic.” In Foster, ed. 176–201. First published in Jacobsen, T. ed. 1976. The Treasures of Darkness: A History of Mesopotamian Religion. New Haven: Yale University Press. 195–219. Janda, M. 2000. Eleusis: Das indogermanische Erbe der Mysterien. Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Innsbruck. Janko, R. 2017. “Tithonus, Eos and the Cicada in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite and Sappho.” In Tsagalis, C. and Markantonatos, A. eds. The Winnowing Oar: New Perspectives in Homeric Studies. Berlin: De Gruyter. 267–292. Jourdain-Annequin, C. 1989. Heraclès aux portes du soir: Mythe et histoire. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Kelly, A. 2008. “The Babylonian Captivity of Homer: The Case of the Dios Apate.” Rheinisches Museum 151: 259–304. Kelly, A. 2021. “Sexing and Gendering the Succession Myth in Hesiod and the Ancient

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

60

currie

Near East.” In Metcalf, C. and Kelly, A. eds. Gods and Mortals in Early Greek and Near Eastern Mythology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 276–291. Kingsley, P. 1995. Ancient Philosophy, Mystery and Magic. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kozlowski, J.M. 2018. “Gilgamesh’s Quest for Immortality (Gilg. ix–xi) as a Narratological Pattern for Odysseus’ Nostos (Od. v,1–xiii,187).” Eirene: Studia Graeca et Latina 54: 11–31. Kvanvig, H.S. 2011. Primeval History: Babylonian, Biblical, and Enochic: An Intertextual Reading. Leiden: Brill. Lambert, W.G. 1960. Babylonian Wisdom Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lambert, W.G. 1995. “Some New Babylonian Wisdom Literature.” In Day, J. Gordon, R.P., and Williamson, H.G.M. eds. Wisdom in Ancient Israel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 30–42. Lambert, W.G. 2013. Babylonian Creation Myths. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. Lambert, W.G. and Millard, A.R. 1969. Atra-ḫasīs: The Babylonian Story of the Flood. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lane Fox, R. 2008. Travelling Heroes: Greeks and Their Myths in the Epic Age of Homer. London: Allen Lane. Lincoln, B. 1980. “The Ferryman of the Dead.” Journal of Indo-European Studies 8: 41–59. Lloyd-Jones, H. 1967. “Heracles at Eleusis: P. Oxy. 2622 and PSI 1391 [= Pindar fr. 346 S.-M.].” Maia 19: 206–229. Reprinted in Lloyd-Jones, H. 1990. Greek Epic, Lyric, and Tragedy: The Academic Chapters of Sir Hugh Lloyd-Jones. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 167–187. López-Ruiz, C. 2015. “Gods: Origins.” In Eidinow, E. and Kindt, J. eds. The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Greek Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 369–382. López-Ruiz, C. 2018. Gods, Heroes, and Monsters: A Sourcebook of Greek, Roman, and Near Eastern Myths in Translation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [1st edn. 2014.] Mallory, J.P. and Adams, D.Q. 1997. Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn. Mallory, J.P. and Adams, D.Q. 2006. The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World. New York: Oxford University Press. Matijević, K. 2015. Ursprung und Charakter der homerischen Jenseitsvorstellungen. Paderborn: Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh. Matijević, K. 2018. “Zur Beeinflussung der homerischen Epen durch das GilgameschEpos. Mit einem Exkurs zu einer neuen Datierungsthese der Ilias.” Klio 100.3: 599– 625. Maul, S.M. 2005. Das Gilgamesch-Epos: Neu übersetzt und kommentiert. Munich: C.H. Beck. McInerney, J. 2010. The Cattle of the Sun: Cows and Culture in the World of the Ancient Greeks. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

heracles and gilgamesh in early greek epic

61

Mills, S. 1997. Theseus, Tragedy, and the Athenian Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nesselrath, H.-G. 2020a. “Heracles in Homer.” In Rengakos, A. Finglass, P., and Zimmermann, B. eds. More than Homer Knew—Studies on Homer and his Ancient Commentators. Berlin: De Gruyter. 27–36. Nesselrath, H.-G. 2020b. “Zum Hades und darüber hinaus: Mythische griechische Vorstellungen zum Weg des Menschen über den Tod ins Jenseits von Homer bis Platon.” In Zgoll, A. and Zgoll, C. eds. Mythische Sphärenwechsel: Methodisch neue Zugänge zu antiken Mythen in Orient und Okzident. Berlin: De Gruyter. 161–212. Norden, E. 1957. P. Vergilius Maro: Aeneis Buch vi. 4th edn. Stuttgart: Teubner. Ogden, D. 2021a. “Introduction.” In Ogden, ed. xxi–xxxi. Ogden, D. 2021b. The Oxford Handbook of Heracles. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Penglase, R. 1994. Greek Myths and Mesopotamia. Parallels and Influence in the Homeric Hymns and Hesiod. London: Routledge. Prinz, F. 1974. “Herakles.” RE Suppl. xiv: 137–196. Rollinger, R. 2015. “Old Battles, New Horizons: The Ancient Near East and the Homeric Epics.” In Rollinger, R. and van Dongen, E. eds. Mesopotamia in the Ancient World: Impact, Continuities, Parallels: Proceedings of the Seventh Symposium of the Melammu Project Held in Obergurgl, Austria, November 4–8, 2013. Münster: UgaritVerlag. 5–32. Rutherford, R.B. 2019. Homer Iliad Book xviii. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Salapata, G. 2021. “Labor xi: The Apples of the Hesperides.” In Ogden, ed. 149–164. Schein, S.L. 1984. The Mortal Hero: An Introduction to Homer’s Iliad. Berkeley: University of California Press. Schweitzer, B. 1922. Herakles: Aufsätze zur griechischen Religions- und Sagengeschichte. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr. Shapiro, H.A. 1983. “ ‘Hērōs Theos’: The Death and Apotheosis of Herakles.” CW 77.1: 7–18. Sourvinou-Inwood, C. 1995. ‘Reading’ Greek Death: To the End of the Classical Period. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stafford, E. 2012. Herakles. Abingdon: Routledge. Thompson, S. 1955–1958. A Motif-Index of Folk-Literature, vols. i–vi. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Tsagalis, C. 2017. Early Greek Epic Fragments. Volume i: Antiquarian and Genealogical Epic. Berlin: De Gruyter. Watkins, C. 1995. How to Kill a Dragon: Aspects of Indo-European Poetics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Watkins, C. 2007. “The Golden Bowl: Thoughts on the New Sappho and its Asianic Background.” Classical Antiquity 26.2: 305–324. Weissbach, F.H. 1919. “Κάρραι.” RE x: 2009–2021. West, M.L. 1966. Hesiod Theogony. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

62

currie

West, M.L. 1983. The Orphic Poems. Oxford: Oxford University Press. West, M.L. 1997. The East Face of Helicon. West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth. Oxford: Oxford University Press. West, M.L. 2005. “Odyssey and Argonautica.” Classical Quarterly 55.1: 39–64. West, M.L. 2007. Indo-European Poetry and Myth. Oxford: Oxford University Press. West, M.L. 2009. “Iolaos.” In Dill, U. and Walde, C. eds. Antike Mythen: Medien, Transformationen und Konstruktionen. Berlin: De Gruyter. 565–575. West, M.L. 2011. “Gilgāmesh.” In Finkelberg, M. ed. The Homer Encyclopedia, vols. i–iii. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. i: 313–314. West, M.L. 2014. The Making of the Odyssey. Oxford: Oxford University Press. †West, M.L. 2018. “Gilgāmeš and Homer: The Missing Link?” In Audley-Miller, L. and Dignas, B. eds. Wandering Myths: Transcultural Uses of Myth in the Ancient World. Berlin: De Gruyter. 265–280. West, S.R. 1994. “Prometheus Orientalized.” Museum Helveticum 51.3: 129–141. Wisnom, S.L. 2020. Weapons of Words: Intertextual Competition in Babylonian Poetry: A Study of Anzû, Enūma eliš, and Erra and Išum. Leiden: Brill. Witzel, E.J.M. 2012. The Origin of the World’s Mythologies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Worthington, M. 2020. Ea’s Duplicity in the Gilgamesh Flood Story. London: Routledge. Wright, M. 2012. The Comedian as Critic: Greek Old Comedy and Poetics. London: Bristol Classical Press / Bloomsbury Academic. Wright, M. 2016. The Lost Plays of Greek Tragedy: Volume 1: Neglected Authors. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

Heracles on Cos Ruth Scodel

1

Introduction

This chapter concerns one of the minor adventures of Heracles, his visit to Cos following the capture of Troy, and how the variations in this story reflect the wider ambivalence of Heracles. This episode has received relatively little attention in recent scholarship on Heracles: Cos receives only brief mentions in the Oxford Handbook of Heracles (and does not appear in the index) and appears only once in passing in Silvio Bär’s Herakles im griechischen Epos.1 Considerable attention has been given to the origins of different traditions and their connection to the Dorian identity of Cos.2 It is worth considering from other perspectives, however: how it fits into broader narratives, and how it is shaped by the rhetorical purposes of poets who may have used stories formed by the politics of the island but were not addressing the identity of Cos. The focus here will be on the versions of the Iliad in relation to variants in the Ehoeae and in Pindar, along with later mythography.3 These traditions are, not surprisingly, influenced at once by each other and by the demands of the particular contexts in which they appear. This paper will not discuss the remoter prehistory of these stories or enter debates about the sources of the author of the Bibliotheca, but will consider primarily what the versions in the Iliad, when contrasted with others, say about the epic Heracles: the Iliad-poet presents a summary-narrative that is entirely sympathetic to Heracles, but the wider tradition was more complicated. Heracles was the violent hero, and stories about him may criticize or justify his violence.4 His adventure on Cos makes salient a further complexity in Greek views of the hero: he is not always successful on Cos. We have no evidence about whether Pisander treated Cos. Because Halicarnassus is not far from the island, Panyassis is likely to have known its local tradi-

1 Bär 2018: 106–131, Ogden 2021. Discussions of the sources of the Bibliotheca and of the Meropis cited below. 2 This is the focus of Wilamowitz 1886: 51–53, Friedländer 1907: 7–17, 95–107, and of Spanoudakis 2000: 313–334. 3 This paper will use this title for the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women and reserve “Catalogue” of the Catalogue of Ships in the Iliad. 4 For the ambiguous violence of Heracles, see Hsu 2021.

© Ruth Scodel, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004696617_004

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

64

scodel

tions, but there is no clear evidence about whether and how he included them.5 Heracles on Cos was also the subject of an epic called the Meropis, known to us from a papyrus presenting a fragment of Apollodorus of Athens—not the author of the Bibliotheca (FGrH 244 F 88).6 The “Meropes” are the aboriginal inhabitants of Cos; they appear in the catalogue of places that rejected Leto in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo (Κόως τε, πόλις Μερόπων ἀνθρώπων, 42). Whether the Meropis was Archaic or Hellenistic is uncertain—its very lack of poetic craft makes it hard to evaluate a likely date.7 The Doric τῆνος most strongly points to a late date since it is neither epic nor Coan. Even if the poem is later, however, its peculiar treatment of the myth is exceptionally interesting in comparison with what can be known of earlier treatments.

2

The Iliad: Heracles, Innocent but Ineffectual

I assume that the Iliad draws on earlier oral epic, but probably also on stories about Heracles that were transmitted outside epic performance. The Iliad’s allusions to Heracles at Troy depend on an implicit narrative sequence that could be plausibly reconstructed even if we did not have later sources: Laomedon refused to pay Poseidon and Apollo (Il. 21.442–457); Heracles fought a sea monster (Il. 20.145–148); Heracles attacked and sacked Troy because of the horses of Laomedon (Il. 5.640–642).8 The island of Cos is the opposite of prominent in Homeric epic. It appears in the Catalogue as part of a group of islands (Il. 2.676–680): Οἳ δ’ ἄρα Νίσυρόν τ’ εἶχον Κράπαθόν τε Κάσον τε καὶ Κῶν Εὐρυπύλοιο πόλιν νήσους τε Καλύδνας, τῶν αὖ Φείδιππός τε καὶ Ἄντιφος ἡγησάσθην Θεσσαλοῦ υἷε δύω Ἡρακλεΐδαο ἄνακτος· τοῖς δὲ τριήκοντα γλαφυραὶ νέες ἐστιχόωντο 5 Matthes 1974, especially 107. Similarities between the Meropis and Hellenistic poets demonstrated by Henrichs 1977: 69–75, however, invite the speculation that the Meropis depends on a Heracles-epic known to learned Alexandrians, probably Pisander of Camirus or Panyassis. 6 Ed. princeps Koenen-Merkelbach 1976. 7 It is 903A in the Supplementum Hellenisticum; a Hellenistic date is defended by SherwinWhite 1978: 48. For an Archaic dating, Kramer 1980: 23–33; Lloyd-Jones 1984: 21–29 (who had changed his mind), Henrichs 1994: 189–195. It is not included in Davies’s Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, West’s Loeb Greek Epic Fragments, Tsagalis’s EGEF i (2017), but it is in Bernabé’s Poetae Epici Graeci. 8 Lang 1983: 148–151.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

65

heracles on cos

Those who held Nisyrus and Crapathus and Casus, and Cos, the city of Eurypylus, and the Calydnian island, their leaders were Phidippus and Antiphus, the two sons of Thessalus, the lord son of Heracles. Thirty hollow ships were in their ranks. Neither Phidippus nor Antiphus ever appears again in the poem. Nireus, the following entry, is explicitly tagged as unimportant and famous only for his beauty (2.676–680). In contrast, Tlepolemus, from Rhodes, and a son of Heracles whose entry precedes that for Cos and the other islands (Il. 2.662–670), is a real character in the poem. He is the only significant representative from the Dodecanese. The exegetical scholium on 677a comments: καὶ Κῶν Εὐρυπύλοιο πόλιν; ταύτην ἑλὼν Ἡρακλῆς μίγνυται Χαλκιόπῃ τῇ Εὐρυπύλου καὶ ποιεῖ Θεσσαλόν, οὗ μέμνηται οὗτος And Cos city of Eurypylus: taking this city, Heracles has sexual relations with Chalciope the daughter of Eurypylus and begets Thessalus, whom this line mentions The other two passages that mention Cos also refer to Heracles. First Hypnos refers to a story of Heracles on Cos to explain his hesitation about helping Hera with her scheme (Il. 14.249–256): ἤδη γάρ με καὶ ἄλλο τεὴ ἐπίνυσσεν ἐφετμὴ ἤματι τῷ ὅτε κεῖνος ὑπέρθυμος Διὸς υἱὸς ἔπλεεν Ἰλιόθεν Τρώων πόλιν ἐξαλαπάξας. ἤτοι ἐγὼ μὲν ἔλεξα Διὸς νόον αἰγιόχοιο νήδυμος ἀμφιχυθείς· σὺ δέ οἱ κακὰ μήσαο θυμῷ ὄρσασ’ ἀργαλέων ἀνέμων ἐπὶ πόντον ἀήτας, καί μιν ἔπειτα Κόωνδ’ εὖ ναιομένην ἀπένεικας νόσφι φίλων πάντων For before now, your command taught me a lesson on another occasion, on the day when that daring son of Zeus was sailing from Ilium after sacking the city of the Trojans. Indeed, I laid the mind of aegis-bearing Zeus to sleep, gently diffused over him. But you planned evils in your mind, rousing blasts of harsh winds over the sea. And you carried him to populous Cos, far from all his friends.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

66

scodel

Hypnos then explains how he escaped the anger of Zeus only by taking refuge with his mother Night. In the second passage, Zeus, when he awakes to see the Achaeans successful, is furious with Hera. He threatens to punish her as he did once before when she caused trouble to Heracles, although torturing Hera did not alleviate his grief (Il. 15.24–30): ἐμὲ δ’ οὐδ’ ὧς θυμὸν ἀνίει ἀζηχὴς ὀδύνη Ἡρακλῆος θείοιο, τὸν σὺ ξὺν Βορέῃ ἀνέμῳ πεπιθοῦσα θυέλλας πέμψας ἐπ’ ἀτρύγετον πόντον κακὰ μητιόωσα, καί μιν ἔπειτα Κόωνδ’ εὖ ναιομένην ἀπένεικας. τὸν μὲν ἐγὼν ἔνθεν ῥυσάμην καὶ ἀνήγαγον αὖτις Ἄργος ἐς ἱππόβοτον καὶ πολλά περ ἀθλήσαντα. But not even so did unending pain for godlike Heracles let go of my heart, whom you, having persuaded the blasts along with the wind Boreas, sent over the barren sea with evil in mind, and then you delivered him to populous Cos. I rescued him from there and brought him back again to horse-pasturing Argos, though he had had many struggles. This story almost contradicts the Catalogue, since Heracles’s unintended visit to Cos is described as an unmitigated misery from which Zeus had to rescue him, while the Catalogue’s genealogy implies that he had sexual relations with a princess, as he so often did, and became the ancestor of a royal line. The complete absence of Phidippus and Antiphus from the Iliad’s narrative suggests that these Coans were marginal to the Trojan narrative, but that the allusion preserved within the Catalogue could be repeated by performers who themselves did not know how Heracles came to be the ancestor of these Coans or whether they were memorable in any other way. It would be easy to imagine a narrative in which Heracles was brought to Cos against his will and founded a dynasty, but the account that Zeus gives would be a peculiar adaptation of it. For a member of the audience who knew only the summaries in the Iliad, the visit of Heracles to Cos would resemble one of the adventures from the Apologos of Odysseus, in which the hero’s only goal is to achieve his nostos. The summary narrative relies on this pattern to be readily comprehensible.9 The speeches of Hypnos and Zeus fit well with each other, each adapted to its speaker and his situation. Hypnos is not especially concerned with the fate 9 Cf. Erbse 1986: 21.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

67

heracles on cos

of Heracles, while Zeus does not care about Hypnos. Hypnos is actually not essential to the story, any more than he is really essential in the Deception of Zeus; Hera’s bribery of the god, like her use of the borrowed ἱμάς of Aphrodite, shows how committed she is to making Zeus unable to oversee the battle. (She presumably hopes that with Poseidon’s help, Ajax will kill Hector, as he almost does, and the Plan of Zeus will be rendered impossible.) Hypnos has probably been introduced into this story from the main narrative of the Iliad (with some borrowing from Hephaestus), as the poet adapts traditional material to the rhetorical needs of particular speakers.10 In the account of Zeus, Hera still has an accomplice, but Boreas replaces Hypnos in this role. Zeus does not know that Hypnos was involved—he could have fallen asleep after sexual relations without the interference of Hypnos, and he is not interested so much in the process by which Hera has deceived him as in her determination to oppose his will. Boreas, who directly causes Heracles to be driven south from Troy, fits this version better than Hypnos would. The visit to Cos itself, however, must be traditional, for there is no other reason for the narrative to feature the island. The rescue by Zeus is hard to evaluate. The verbs ῥυσάμην καὶ ἀνήγαγον sound like a battlefield rescue of the type familiar from the Iliad, as if the god had scooped him out of danger and set him down in Argos (Zeus never personally intervenes in this way in the Iliad). A hero’s excellence is not diminished because he needs help from a god; Achilles recognizes the rescue of Aeneas as proof that Aeneas spoke truly when he claimed to be dear to the gods (Il. 20.347–348). Athena, in her vexation with Zeus, regrets her own help to Heracles (Il. 8.366–369): εἰ γὰρ ἐγὼ τάδε ᾔδε’ ἐνὶ φρεσὶ πευκαλίμῃσιν εὖτέ μιν εἰς Ἀΐδαο πυλάρταο προὔπεμψεν ἐξ Ἐρέβευς ἄξοντα κύνα στυγεροῦ Ἀΐδαο, οὐκ ἂν ὑπεξέφυγε Στυγὸς ὕδατος αἰπὰ ῥέεθρα. If I had known this in my intelligent mind when he [Eurystheus] sent him [Heracles] to the house of Hades who keeps his gates fastened to bring the dog of hateful Hades from Erebos, he would not have escaped the steep streams of Styx.

10

Braswell 1971: 22; more generally on such innovation Wilcock 1964: 141–154; Andersen 1990: 25–45. Friedländer (1907: 16–17) argues that depictions of Alcyoneus as sleeping (Melbourne 1730.4, Getty 84.AE.974, Munich 1784, Toledo 52.66) connect that story-element with the Iliad.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

68

scodel

The goddess claims that the hero would have died without her help, but with it he accomplishes his mission. Divine help is typically given to heroes who are acting heroically. Too much divine assistance can diminish a hero’s success, as when the dying Patroclus tells Hector that Apollo and Zeus or Fate determined Hector’s victory (and Euphorbus struck him first, Il. 16.844–850). When Zeus speaks as if his rescue were the entire story of Heracles on Cos, and Heracles achieved nothing, the audience is unlikely to find that this narrative contributes to the glory of Heracles, although Zeus as a character certainly does not intend to reduce the reputation of his son.11 The basis of this narrative is surely a Coan tradition, however, and Coans did not tell a story that brought Heracles to Cos simply in order to have him rescued by Zeus: whatever the sources of the Homeric passages, once Heracles reached the island he must have done something there, as the genealogy in the Catalogue requires.12 After the Catalogue, the Iliad says nothing about what precisely happened to Heracles or what he did on Cos, only that it was difficult and that Zeus had to rescue him.

3

The Ehoeae and the Motives of Heracles

The Hesiodic Ehoeae appends a story about Eurypylus of Cos and Heracles to that of Mestra (Hes. fr. 43a.55–64 M-W): καὶ τὴν μέν ῥ’ ἐδάμασσε Ποσειδάων ἐνοσίχθ[ων τῆλ’ ἀπὸ πατρὸς ἑοῖο φέρων ἐπὶ οἴνοπα πόν[τον ἐν̣ Κόῳ ἀ[μ]φιρύτῃ καίπερ πολύιδριν ἐοῦσα[ν· ἔνθα̣ τέ̣ κ̣ ̣ ’ Εὐρύπυλον πολέων ἡγήτορα λαῶ[ν Κω…α γείνατο παῖδα βίην ὑπέροπλον ἔ[χοντα. ̣ τοῦ δ’ υἱεῖς Χάλκων τε καὶ Ἀνταγόρης ἐγένο[ντο, τῷ δὲ καὶ ἐξ ἀρχῆς ὀλίγης Διὸς ἄλκιμος υἱὸς ἔπραθεν ἱμερόεντα πόλιν, κε[ρ]άϊξε δὲ κώμας εὐθὺ[ς ἐπ]εὶ̣ ̣ Τροίηθεν ἀνέ[πλε]ε ̣ ̣ ν̣η̣υσ[ὶ] θ̣[οῇσι ..[… …]λ̣α̣ιων ἕνε[χ’ ̣ ἵπ]πων Λαομέδοντος· ἐν Φλέγρῃ δ]ὲ Γίγαντας ὑπερφιάλους κατέπεφ[νε.

11 12

Hsu (2021: 27–28) calls Heracles “a kind of pawn”. Erbse (1986: 18–21) argues that Hypnos is a Homeric innovation, against Kullmann 1956: 30.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

heracles on cos

69

Poseidon the earth-shaker dominated her [sexually], carrying her far from her father over the dark sea, in island Cos, clever as she was. There she gave birth to Eurypylus, leader of many peoples. Co… begat a child who had arrogant might. And from him, the sons Chalcon and Antagores were born. Against him, for a slight cause, the mighty son of Zeus, sacked his lovely city, and ravaged the villages, immediately when he sailed from Troy with his swift ships … for the sake of Laomedon’s horses. And at Phlegra he slew the arrogant Giants. This story clarifies the name “Thessalus” in the Iliad. It refers to his descent not from Heracles, but from Mestra, although the Iliad does not mention the origin of Eurypylus.13 Both toponyms and proper names on Cos indicate that (southern) Thessalians were early settlers on Cos, before it became Dorian. The Iliad knows a Thessalian Eurypylus, and the name “Thessalus” is attested for Coan Asclepiadae.14 In line 59, unless we regard it as interpolated, the child with arrogant might is surely Eurypylus himself, who is also the referent of the dative at 61.15 (At Bibl. 2.7.1, the mother of Eurypylus of Cos is Astypalaea, who is a sister of Europa, but his father is still Poseidon.) The scholium on Il. 2.677 names the daughter of Eurypylus Chalciope, while the Ehoeae calls one of his sons Chalcon. In Theocritus, Id. 7.6–7, the aristocratic Phrasidemus and Antigenes claim Chalcon as an ancestor, and the poet attributes the origin of a spring on the island to him. In the Iliad narrative, Heracles is an innocent victim of the scheme of Hera, but this account is very different. He sacks the city of Eurypylus for a trivial cause. This could be something like the story in Plutarch (Plutarch Quaest. Graec. 304c–e):16 Διὰ τί παρὰ Κῴοις ὁ τοῦ Ἡρακλέους ἱερεὺς ἐν Ἀντιμαχείᾳ γυναικείαν ἐνδεδυμένος ἐσθῆτα καὶ τὴν κεφαλὴν ἀναδούμενος μίτρᾳ κατάρχεται τῆς θυσίας; Why, among the Coans, does the priest at Antimachia initiate the sacrifice after putting on women’s clothing and binding his head with a snood?

13 14 15 16

On Mestra, see Rutherford 2005: 107–109. Paton and Hicks 1981: 344–348. Casanova (1978: 202–206) argues that the corrupt opening of 59 conceals an otherwise unattested eponymous “Cos”. So Janko 1992: 19 on Il. 14.250–261. On the detail of women’s clothing in Plutarch, see Cyrino 1998: 207–241.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

70

scodel

Ἡρακλῆς ταῖς ἓξ ναυσὶν ἀπὸ Τροίας ἀναχθεὶς ἐχειμάσθη, καὶ τῶν νεῶν διαφθαρεισῶν μιᾷ μόνῃ πρὸς τὴν Κῶν ὑπὸ τοῦ πνεύματος ἐλαυνόμενος ἐξέπεσε κατὰ τὸν Λακητῆρα καλούμενον, οὐδὲν ἄλλο περισώσας ἢ τὰ ὅπλα καὶ τοὺς ἄνδρας. ἐντυχὼν δὲ προβάτοις ᾔτει κριὸν ἕνα παρὰ τοῦ νέμοντος· ὁ δ’ ἄνθρωπος ἐκαλεῖτο μὲν Ἀνταγόρας, ἀκμάζων δὲ τῇ ῥώμῃ τοῦ σώματος ἐκέλευσεν αὑτῷ διαπαλαῖσαι τὸν Ἡρακλέα, κἂν καταβάλῃ, τὸν κριὸν φέρεσθαι. καὶ συμπεσόντος αὐτῷ τοῦ Ἡρακλέους ἐς χεῖρας οἱ Μέροπες τῷ Ἀνταγόρᾳ παραβοηθοῦντες, οἱ δ’ Ἕλληνες τῷ Ἡρακλεῖ μάχην καρτερὰν συνῆψαν. ἐν ᾗ λέγεται τῷ πλήθει καταπονούμενος ὁ Ἡρακλῆς καταφυγεῖν πρὸς γυναῖκα Θρᾷτταν καὶ διαλαθεῖν ἐσθῆτι γυναικείᾳ κατακρύψας ἑαυτόν. ἐπεὶ δὲ τῶν Μερόπων αὖθις κρατήσας καὶ καθαρθεὶς ἐγάμει τὴν Χαλκιόπην, ἀνέλαβε στολὴν ἀνθίνην. διὸ θύει μὲν ὁ ἱερεὺς ὅπου τὴν μάχην συνέβη γενέσθαι, τὰς δὲ νύμφας οἱ γαμοῦντες δεξιοῦνται γυναικείαν στολὴν περιθέμενοι. Heracles was caught in a storm when he set sail from Troy with six ships, and when the other ships had been destroyed, driven to Cos by the wind with only one ship he landed at the place Laceter, having saved nothing but his gear and his men. Encountering some sheep, he asked for one ram from the man herding them. This man, whose name was Antagoras, being at the height of physical strength, commanded Heracles to wrestle with him: if Heracles could throw him down, he could carry off the ram as his prize. And when Heracles fell on him, the Meropes coming to help Antagoras, and the Hellenes Heracles, they joined in a mighty battle. It is said that Heracles, struggling with the crowd, fled to a Thracian woman and was concealed by hiding himself in woman’s clothing. But when he had afterwards conquered the Meropes and been purified, he married Chalciope and put on a brightly-colored dress. Therefore, the priest sacrifices where the battle took place, and bridegrooms wear a woman’s dress when they greet their brides. The Ehoeae, though, makes no mention of the loss of any ships. More significantly, the detail that he destroyed the villages on the island indicates that his attack is brutal as well as apparently unjustified.17 Eurypylus, however, is also negatively characterized, βίην ὑπέροπλον ἔ[χοντα. Although this could peṛ haps imply only that he thought that he could defeat Heracles, it may reflect 17

Haubold (2005: 85–98) puts this episode into the Ehoeae as a whole, arguing that Hesiod’s Theogony, because it concerns cosmogony, emphasizes Heracles as the slayer of monsters and upholder of cosmic order, while the Iliad makes him a city-sacker; the Ehoeae has elements of each.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

71

heracles on cos

a morally complex narrative, in which the destruction of Eurypylus was necessary, although Heracles did not have an entirely just cause—but that would require that the war on Cos was in accordance with the will of Zeus. There is indeed in this account no indication that Heracles faces particular suffering, or even that he came to Cos against the intentions of Zeus. If we bring together the birth of Thessalus with the narrative in the Ehoeae, another reason for the attack on Cos is possible. The messenger in Sophocles’s Trachiniae gives a fuller version of such a narrative (Soph. Tr. 359–365): ἀλλ’ ἡνίκ’ οὐκ ἔπειθε τὸν φυτοσπόρον τὴν παῖδα δοῦναι, κρύφιον ὡς ἔχοι λέχος, ἔγκλημα μικρὸν αἰτίαν θ’ ἑτοιμάσας ἐπιστρατεύει πατρίδα [τὴν ταύτης, ἐν ᾗ τὸν Εὔρυτον τόνδ’ εἶπε δεσπόζειν θρόνων, κτείνει τ’ ἄνακτα πατέρα] τῆσδε καὶ πόλιν ἔπερσε. But when he did not persuade the father to give the girl so that he could have her as a secret bedmate, preparing a minor complaint and cause, he attacks [her country, in which he said that Eurytus was the king and kills her father who was the king] this woman’s country and sacked her city. The Messenger’s (truthful) account of the sack of Oechalia provides what the Ehoeae-entry does not, a real motive behind the alleged motive. The narrative in the Ehoeae says not that Heracles had a hidden, disreputable reason, but that he simply took excessive revenge for a minor offense (perhaps a violation of hospitality), but since we know from the Iliad that Heracles had a son on Cos, it is tempting to reconstruct the Coan adventure along lines similar to the sack of Oechalia. Although we do not know how the Oechaliae Halosis treated the motives of Heracles, Ioleia was evidently important (fr. 1 PEG and T2 Davies = Callim. 55 G-P). The Ehoeae already had Heracles sack Oechalia because he desired the daughter of Eurytus (fr. 26. 31–33 M-W): τ⸤οὺς δ⸥ὲ μέθ’ ⸤ὁπλοτάτην τέκετο ξανθὴν Ἰόλειαν, τ[ῆς ἕ]νεκ’ Οἰχ[αλ]̣ ίη̣ ̣ [ν Ἀμφι]τρυωνιάδης ̣ [ And after those [sons] she bore fair-haired Ioleia, for whose sake Oechalia the son of Amphitryon

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

72

scodel

Scholia on Pindar, Nem. 4.42 provide this narrative: (42b) Ἡρακλῆς ἐπόρθησε τὴν Κῶ ἀπὸ τῆς Ἀσίας κατιὼν, καὶ Ὅμηρος μαρτυρεῖ (Ξ 255, Ο 28)· καί μιν ἔπειτα Κόωνδ’ εὖ ναιομένην ἀπένεικας. ἔλαβε δὲ καὶ Χαλκιόπην ἐξαίρετον τὴν Εὐρυπύλου τοῦ βασιλέως θυγατέρα, ἀφ’ ἧς ἔσχεν υἱὸν Θεσσαλόν, οὗ παῖδες Φείδιππος καὶ Ἄντιφος ἐν Ἰλίῳ στρατεύσαντες. Heracles sacked Cos as he returned from Asia, and Homer testifies “and then you delivered him to populous Cos.” And he took Chalicope, daughter of Eurypulus the king, as a select prize, from whom he got a son Thessalus, whose sons Pheidippus and Antiphus fought at Troy. (42c) λέγεται δὲ πεπορθηκέναι διὰ τοὺς Χαλκιόπης ἔρωτας τῆς θυγατρὸς Εὐρυπύλου τοῦ βασιλέως τὴν Κῶ. There is a tradition that he sacked Cos on account of his passion for Chalciope, the daughter of king Eurypylus. Although Trachiniae places Oechalia on Euboea, Eurytus is a past king of the Thessalian Oechalia led by Podaleirius and Machaon at Il. 2.730–733 (while Il. 2.597 seems to put Eurytus’s Oechalia in the southwestern Peloponnese). For understanding the stories about Cos, the extended ancient controversy about the site of Oechalia is not important; what matters is only that the Thessalian Oechalia was one possibility.18

4

Giants

The Ehoeae also implies that the Gigantomachy directly followed the adventures on Cos (as it does in Apollodorus’s Bibliotheca). This story contradicts the Iliad, in which Zeus brings Heracles home. In the Ehoeae, although it is not clear how Heracles came to be on Cos, his war there is a war of choice or accident. Whatever cause the poem meant to imply, the events on Cos seem to be ethically ambiguous. It is impossible to know whether the poet or his audience would have regarded “the horses of Laomedon” as a good cause for the war

18

For various locations of Oechalia, see Kirk 1985: 216 on Il. 2.594–600. Gantz (1993: 445) suggests that the scholiast’s interpretation has borrowed from the story of Iole.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

73

heracles on cos

against Troy, just as Greek tradition is ambivalent about the later Trojan War, but the battle with the Giants is unequivocally right and necessary.19 Pindar mentions the battle on Cos twice in extant epinicia, both in connection with Telamon (not surprisingly, since both are for Aeginetan victors). He is not very helpful for a reconstruction of early epic traditions, however, because he provides no explanation of motives. Here Alcyoneus becomes part of the narrative (Nem. 4.25–29): σὺν ᾧ ποτε Τροΐαν κραταιὸς Τελαμών πόρθησε καὶ Μέροπας καὶ τὸν μέγαν πολεμιστὰν ἔκπαγλον Ἀλκυονῆ, οὐ τετραορίας γε πρὶν δυώδεκα πέτρῳ ἥροάς τ’ ἐπεμβεβαῶτας ἱπποδάμους ἕλεν δὶς τόσους. with whom [Heracles] strong Telamon sacked Troy and the Meropes, and the big warrior, extraordinary Alkyoneus—but first, with a rock, he defeated twelve four-horse chariots and twice as many horse-taming heroes who were mounted on them. It is not clear whether Pindar intends his audience to imagine the fight with Alcyoneus as taking place on Cos (the scholium ad loc. locates it as the Isthmus of Corinth) but it is clearly not part of the general Gigantomachy, since there is a mortal army, and this poem seems to give Telamon the more important part in the defeat of Alcyoneus (Pindar, Isthm. 6.27–34): τὸν χαλκοχάρμαν ἐς πόλεμον ἆγε σὺν Τιρυνθίοισιν πρόφρονα σύμμαχον ἐς Τροΐαν, ἥρωσι μόχθον, Λαομεδοντιᾶν ὑπὲρ ἀμπλακιᾶν ἐν ναυσὶν Ἀλκμήνας τέκος εἷλε δὲ Περγαμίαν, πέφνεν δὲ σὺν κείνῳ Μερόπων ἔθνεα καὶ τὸν βουβόταν οὔρεϊ ἴσον Φλέγραισιν εὑρὼν Ἀλκυονῆ. 19

Vian (1985: 259) points out that the Gigantomachy is closely linked to the apotheosis (Hes. Th. 954–955, Pind. Nem. 1.67–72). He more generally argues that the Archaic literary source for the Gigantomachy was a Heracles-epic, but that our literary versions and allusions as well as the artistic representations do not derive from a single source (and some Classical versions reflect iconography).

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

74

scodel

Whom [Telamon] the son of Alcmene led in ships to war fought in bronze, along with men of Tiryns, an eager ally, to Troy, the toil for heroes, because of the wrongdoings of Laomedon. And he took Troy, and in the company of that man he killed the peoples of the Meropes and the herdsman like a mountain, Alcyoneus, finding him at Phlegrae. The location links the killing of Alcyoneus to the Gigantomachy, but again Telamon is the focus. Sch. vet. ad loc. explains (Σ Pindar Nem. 4.47a–b): Φλέγρα τῆς Θρᾴκης χωρίον. διέτριβε δὲ ὁ Ἀλκυονεὺς κατὰ τὸν Θρᾳκικὸν Ἰσθμόν. (47b) βουβόταν δὲ τὸν βουκόλον φησί, παρόσον τὰς Ἡλίου βοῦς ἀπήλασεν· ὅθεν πόλεμος θεῶν πρὸς τοὺς Γίγαντας. Phegra is a place in Thrace. Alcyoneus was spending his time near the Thracian Isthmus [the Gallipoli Peninsula]. He calls the cowherd “cowpasturer”, inasmuch as he had driven off the cows of Helius, which was the origin of the war of the gods against the Giants. Pindar gives no hint that the attack on Cos was anything but an admirable heroic action or that it was other than entirely successful. Pindar very probably refers to the battle in fr. 33a S-M: ⟨—⏑⏑– κορύναν –⟩ –⏑—]τον χερὶ τανδιεραν —⏑—]κῶν, ἐπὶ δὲ στρατὸν ἄϊσσ–⏑–⏓–⏑]ο̣ς οὔτε θαλασσ—⏑⏑–⏑⏑]μοισιν —⏑–]ε.[. ̣ –. .⏑. .⏑.]τη̣ ̣ ρ̣ The papyrus is too fragmentary to translate, but the club in the first line makes Heracles its likely subject, while Quintilian Instit. Or. 8.6.71 says that Pindar in a hymn had Heracles attack the Meropes not like fire, winds, or seas, but like the thunderbolt, and “neither sea” at 5–6 makes it very likely that this is the passage he meant. In any case, although there is no context to clarify how Pindar evaluated the action of Heracles, he is surely successful. In none of the Pindaric passages does Hera play a role in bringing the hero to Cos. The emphasis on Telamon in the epinicia is in obvious contrast to the loneliness of the Heracles of the Iliad.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

75

heracles on cos

The status of Alcyoneus as a Giant in both texts and in art, and the relationship between his slaying and the Gigantomachy, are complex.20 The relevant issue here, however, is not what Heracles did after he left Cos, but that the Coan adventure is placed in a sequence of heroic deeds instead of a thwarted nostos.

5

Later Versions and the Iliad Reconsidered

Later mythographic versions—the story Mythographus Homericus provides with a subscription to Pherecydes of Athens, and those of Apollodorus and Plutarch, all have Heracles driven to Cos by storms. Whatever their immediate sources, these suggest influence of the Iliad, as we would expect. How much of the narrative from the Mythographus Homericus was found in Pherecydes is uncertain, since the subscriptions do not mean that the narrative provided is a summary of the version in the author named.21 The summary is short (FGrH 3 fr. 78 = Sch. D Il. 14.3): Ἡρακλῆς, ἀνακομιζόμενος μετὰ τὸ πορθῆσαι Τροίαν, γενόμενός τε κατὰ τὸ Αἰγαῖον πέλαγος, βουλήσει Ἥρας, σφοδρῷ συνεσχέθη ἀνέμῳ. κατασυρθείς τε εἰς Κῶν τὴν Μεροπίδα, ἐκωλύθη ἐπιβῆναι τῆς νήσου ὑπὸ Εὐρυπύλου τοῦ Ποσειδῶνος, βασιλεύοντος αὐτῆς. βιασάμενος δὲ καὶ ὡς λῃστὴς ἐπιβάς, ἀνεῖλε τόν τε Εὐρύπυλον, καὶ τοὺς παῖδας αὐτοῦ. μιγεὶς δὲ τῇ θυγατρὶ αὐτοῦ Χαλκιόπῃ, Θεσσαλὸν ἐγέννησεν. Ἡ ἱστορία παρὰ Φερεκύδῃ. Heracles, on his way home after the sack of Troy, while he was in the Aegean, by the contrivance of Hera was constrained by a powerful storm. Being swept to Meropian Cos, he was prevented from landing on the island by Eurypylus the son of Poseidon, who was its king. Forcing his way and landing as a bandit, he killed both Eurypylus and his sons, and having sexual relations with his daughter Chalciope, he begat Thessalus.

20 21

Gantz 1993: 419–421; Vian (1952: 1) puts him in a class with gigantic beings (“En marge des Géants … qui ne sont pas toujours des Gégéneis ni des θεομάχοι”). Van der Valk 1963–1964: 305. Rossum-Steenbeek (1998: 111–112) rejects both Van der Valk’s argument that MH chose citations to make a learned impression, and Montanari (1995: 135–172) who argues (based on the scholia more than the papyri) that it was a learned work; see Pagès 2007.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

76

scodel

This version is relatively close to the Iliad’s, as we might expect in a summary adapted to explicate the Iliad itself.22 It is more favorable to Heracles than the Ehoeae, though it, too, implies excessive violence. Heracles is initially prevented from landing (violation of hospitality), but the phrase ὡς λῃστής does not suggest a proportionate response. Although the narrative is a commentary on the Iliad, there is no rescue by Zeus, and the narrative does not show an obvious place where such an intervention would be required, nor is there any sequel, whether a further adventure or a return to Argos. Apollodorus is closer to the Iliad in including help from Zeus (2.137–138): πλέοντος δὲ ἀπὸ Τροίας Ἡρακλέους Ἥρα χαλεποὺς ἔπεμψε χειμῶνας· ἐφ’ οἷς ἀγανακτήσας Ζεὺς ἐκρέμασεν αὐτὴν ἐξ Ὀλύμπου. προσέπλει δὲ Ἡρακλῆς τῇ Κῷ· καὶ νομίσαντες αὐτὸν οἱ Κῷοι λῃστρικὸν ἄγειν στόλον, βάλλοντες λίθοις προσπλεῖν ἐκώλυον. ὁ δὲ βιασάμενος αὐτὴν νυκτὸς εἷλε, καὶ τὸν βασιλέα Εὐρύπυλον, Ἀστυπαλαίας παῖδα καὶ Ποσειδῶνος, ἔκτεινεν. ἐτρώθη δὲ κατὰ τὴν μάχην Ἡρακλῆς ὑπὸ Χαλκώδοντος, καὶ Διὸς ἐξαρπάσαντος αὐτὸν οὐδὲν ἔπαθε. πορθήσας δὲ Κῶ ἧκε δι’ Ἀθηνᾶν εἰς Φλέγραν, καὶ μετὰ θεῶν κατεπολέμησε Γίγαντας. When Heracles was sailing away from Troy, Hera sent great storms. Zeus was offended at this and hung her from Olympus. But Heracles sailed to Cos, and the Coans, thinking that he was leading a plundering expedition, threw rocks and stopped him from sailing to land. But he forced his way and captured the city by night, and killed its king Eurypylus, son of Astypalaea and Poseidon. Heracles was wounded in the battle by Chalcodon, and because Zeus snatched him up he did not suffer anything. After sacking Cos, through Athena he came to Phlegra. This narrative is slightly incoherent. First, Heracles captures the city but is so severely wounded that he must be saved by Zeus. He is, however, successful. Hence, it is the likeliest sequence of events that he is rescued by Zeus after being wounded and is healed so that he can return to the battle. The night attack makes this an act of δόλος as well as force. Heracles is rescued directly by Zeus but “through Athena” reaches Phlegra, where he fights with the gods against the Giants. The Chalcodon on Cos is surely

22

The papyri of Mythographus Homericus show that the work was organized by lemmata; see Rossum-Steenbeek 1997: 85–86. Edmunds (2022: 195–213) argues that the version of the Mythographus Homericus about Heracles’s sack of Troy is not eclectic but “Iliadic”.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

heracles on cos

77

a variant name for the Chalcon who is a son of Eurypylus.23 Since the leaders of the Coans at Troy are the children of Heracles’s son Thessalus, it seems plausible that at least in some versions Heracles kills not only Eurypylus himself, but his sons. Although Chalciope and Thessalus are not mentioned in this passage, they appear in the Bibliotheca’s catalogue of children of Heracles (2.7.8). Then there is the account of Plutarch, already cited above. Plutarch’s aition does not preserve the specifics of the Catalogue but shows an obvious relationship with that version: Antagoras is one of the sons of Eurypylus, and Chalciope is his daughter. Similarly, it follows the narrative pattern that seems to be implied by Apollodorus, in which Heracles is at first defeated but emerges victorious. Much of the story is reminiscent of folkloric themes found elsewhere, although the flight of Heracles is unexplained, and it is far from obvious why the woman should be Thracian when the story takes place on Cos. It is also striking that Plutarch defines the two sides as “Meropes” and “Hellenes”: the Meropes are evidently not Hellenes, but are the Hellenes only the men from the single ship of Heracles, or are there Hellenes on Cos along with the Meropes? The narrative tries to reconcile different evaluations of Heracles and the Meropes. Antagoras may seem inhospitable in making Heracles wrestle for the sheep, but the battle itself is not intended by either party; Heracles defeats the Meropes but does not apparently annihilate them; he formally marries Chalciope. The aetiology looks like a deliberate and learned attempt to explain the local custom by combining various traditions of Heracles on Cos with some standard motifs (the wrestling match that becomes a battle, for example, resembles the way a dispute over the honors of the Calydonian boar becomes a war (Il. 9.547– 549)). All this material invites a reconsideration of the version of Zeus in the Iliad. It raises the perennial difficulty in such analyses, that it is often impossible confidently to decide that material in later versions is independent of Homeric epic or is an attempt at glossing it. The obvious interpretation of what Zeus says is that Zeus rescued Heracles from whatever threat confronted him and immediately returned him safely to Argos. In no other version, however, would such a sequence of events make sense, and even within the Iliad Heracles must impregnate the daughter of Eurypylus. Common to all other versions is a sack of Cos by Heracles. The versions of the Bibliotheca and Plutarch include a wounding or an initial defeat, allowing for an intervention of Zeus, but they do not permit this intervention to restore Heracles to Argos. Zeus perhaps means only

23

Pausanias 8.16.6 argues that the Chalcodon buried at Elis cannot be the Chalcodon killed by Amphitryon.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

78

scodel

that his intervention made it possible for Heracles to return home safely, but such a very abbreviated version of the tradition is misleading. Heracles can have two distinct motives in attacking Cos. Either desire for Chalciope is his initial motive, or he responds to being initially refused landing by the Meropes. Since the Iliad already knows that Heracles is the father of Thessalus, earlier tradition included the rape of Chalciope, whether or not she was the motive for the sack of Cos. Either Zeus or the poet has adapted the source to make Heracles an innocent victim of Hera. Furthermore, the other versions also suggest that the pathetic description of the Coan adventure is not traditional, although the role of Hera may be. However, the familiar tradition of the storm that scattered the Achaean fleet during its return from Troy could also have prompted the introduction of Hera to the story. Nowhere is she given a motive for arousing the storm beyond her general resentment of Heracles. In Pindar, at least, Heracles is accompanied by Telamon. Although Telamon cannot belong in the Gigantomachy and was probably not traditional in a fight against Alcyoneus alone, if Telamon fought with Heracles at Troy in heroic songs earlier than the Iliad—and it is difficult to imagine the expedition without him, since he takes Hesione—he could also have been at Cos. The heroes could have separated as easily after that adventure as before it. In any case, it is bizarre to describe Heracles as “far from all his friends and family”, νόσφι φίλων πάντων, if he is destroying a city, perhaps in order to obtain a woman for sexual purposes, and could have chosen to return home. That this detail is offered not by Zeus but by Hypnos, who has no emotional bond to Heracles, demonstrates that the versions in the Iliad, although their details support the rhetorical goals of the speakers, do not represent manipulations of traditional material by the speakers, but by the poet. Zeus and Hypnos are not lying.

6

The Meropis

The version of the Meropis is another variant on the same themes. Apollodorus of Athens (fr. 354) comments that he chanced upon this poem (περιεπέσομεν) which did not identify its author (so he was not familiar with it), and says that he cites it for its ἰδίωμα, its uniqueness—evidently he had never seen this version elsewhere. Apollodorus summarizes that Heracles arrived (παρα̣γ̣εν̣ ̣έσθαι) on Cos, which suggests that the poem did not narrate in full how he came to be there (Col. ii. 26–27, Kramer 1980 pp. 26–27):24

24

Text is PEG 1987–1988: 131–135.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

79

heracles on cos

(1) ἔνθ’ ὃ μὲν ἄλ[λ’] ἧ̣κ̣εν Μερόπων κατὰ νη[λέα] φ̣ῦλα νευρῇ ἔπι ψάλλων25 Then he sent another (arrow) against the pitless tribes of Meropes, making it twang on the bowstring (2) ἀλλ’ οὐκ Ἄστερον ἰὸς ἐδάμνατο· τρὶς γὰρ ἐπ’ [αὐτῷ] ἧκε διὰ νευρῆς· τ[ῷ ̣ δ’ οὐ] χρόα τῆνος ἵκανεν· ἠ̣[ύτε δ’ ἐκ σ]κληρῆς πέτρης ἔξαλτ[ο χαμᾶ]ζε δριμὺ βέλος. πικρ[ὸν δ’ ἄ]χος ἔσχεθεν Ἡ̣ρ̣α̣κλ[ῆα] [ὡς] ἴδεν̣. But the arrow did not overcome Asteros. For he shot at him three times from the bowstring, but it did not reach his skin. The sharp arrow leapt to the ground as if from a hard rock. Bitter grief took hold of Heracles when he saw. (3) κ̣[αί νύ] κεν Ἡρακλῆα κατέκτ[ανεν,] εἰ μὴ Ἀθήνη λάβρον [ἐπεβρόν]τησε διὲκ νεφέων κα[ταβᾶ]σα πληξαμένη θέν[αρι] δ’ ἁπαλὸν χρόα πρόσθ[ε φαάν]θη Ἡρακλῆος ἄνακτ[ος· ὃ δ’ εἴ]σιδεν ἄσθματι θυίω̣[ν] [γνῶ τε] θεόν. And he would have killed Heracles, if Athena had not thundered violently as she came down through the clouds; striking her tender skin with the palm of her hand she appeared in front of the lord Heracles. And he, madly racing and panting, recognized the goddess. It is not clear why Athena strikes herself. It would make more sense for her to strike Heracles, in order to get his attention, but the middle voice of the participle points to a reflexive sense. However, like the familiar gesture of striking the thigh (always followed by direct speech in early epic), it probably expresses distress at a bad situation, and that could indeed be the gesture Athena performs. Athena must be expressing her frustration with the danger confronting Heracles. The poem does not use the Homeric formula, however, and its implications are likely to be slightly different.26 The adjective ἁπαλός can mark vul25 26

ψάλλω is not found in early hexameter, but is attested at Anac. 28.3 and 19.1 PMG. Lowenstam (1981: 31–67) argues that the gesture foreshadows death. For bibliography, see Brügger 2018: 69 on Il. 16.125.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

80

scodel

nerability at the moment a warrior is struck (Il. 13.202, 17.49, 18.177, 22.327); in this context, it implicitly contrasts the permeability of skin with the protective power of armor. The gesture thereby indicates that Athena is herself at risk in the battle, and prepares for her use of the hide as a protection in future. (4) ἔνθ’ ὃ μὲν ε[ἰς πλη]θὺν Μερόπων κίεν· ἣ [δὲ δια]πρὸ αἰχμῇ στῆθος [ἔλασσεν·] ὃ δ̣’ ἐξέχυτ’· οὐ γὰρ [ὁμοῖαι] ̣ [ἀ]θάναται θνηταῖσι βολ[αὶ κατὰ] γαῖαν ἔασιν· πρηνη[–⏕]τησε· μέλας δ’ ἐπερ⟨ε⟩ί{ε}δ̣[ετο εὐ]ρὼς ὀφθαλμοῖς· Ἄιδόσ[δε δ’ ἀπή]λυθε θυμὸς ἀναιδής. Then he went among the crowd of Meropes. And she drove through his chest with the spear-point, and he collapsed. For the blow of immortals are not like those of mortals on the earth. On his face … Dark decay leaned on his eyes. His shameless spirit went off to Hades. (5) καὶ τοῦ [μὲν βού]λευσε περ̣ ̣ὶ ̣ χρόα ῥιν̣ ̣ὸ̣ν̣ [Ἀθήνη] ἕσσασθαι And Athena planned to put on his hide around her skin (6) ἔκδε[ιρεν δ’ ἄρ’] ἅπαν σκύλος ἄλκιμο̣ν̣· [αἶψα δ’ ἔ]πειτα̣ αὐάνθη· τοῦ μέν ν̣[υ θεὸς] κατέχευε φέρουσα ἀ̣[μβροσίην·] περὶ σῶμα δ’ ἑλιξα̣[⏑–⏑⏑ ἕρ]κος αὐταῖς σὺν χ̣[είρεσσι καὶ] εὐρήεσσι πεδίλοις· [ὣς ἄρα κοσ]μηθεῖσα She flayed her valorous booty. And it dried immediately. The goddess carried it and poured ambrosia over it, and wound it around herself as a bulwark, with hand and wide footwear attached. So adorned … Heracles would have been killed by an invulnerable warrior named Asterus, but Athena intervened and killed Asterus herself, and then flayed him and made his skin into armor—that is, the aigis—as in most familiar versions Heracles uses the skin of the Nemean lion, and as Athena in some versions skins the Giant or possibly Titan Pallas (Epicharmus fr. 135 PCG). There are other stories in which Heracles does not initially recognize that an opponent has abilities that make him exceptionally difficult to overcome. Alcyoneus belongs in this category in the version of Apollodorus (1.35.1–3), being immortal as long as he was in his own land. Having failed to kill him with an arrow, Heracles, at Athena’s suggestion, drags him out of Pallene and kills him. This narrative,

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

heracles on cos

81

whatever its source, fits a pattern that the Meropis violates, since Heracles there fails completely against Asterus. After Athena rescues Heracles and kills his opponent, Heracles then presumably defeats the other Meropes, and his failure against Asterus is mitigated. Still, the story seems to invert the tradition of the Gigantomachy, in which the gods cannot defeat the Giants without the mortal Heracles (Bibl. 1.6.1; Hes. Th. 954). On the other hand, if νη[λέα] is correctly supplemented, and it seems very likely, the Meropes are not victims of an aggressive Heracles. That their leader is invulnerable and perhaps a giant makes them not just formidable, but brutal, so that fighting them belongs to the civilizing aspect of the career of Heracles. Aster or Asterius is the name of a Giant killed by Athena in the mythology of the Panathenaea, though he is far less prominent than Enceladus (Aristotle fr. 637 Rose).27 At Philostratus, Her. 8.14 the vinedresser says that the Phoenician should not believe him πρὶν ἔς τε τὴν νῆσον τὴν Κῶ πλεύσῃς, ἐν ᾗ τὰ τῶν γηγενῶν ὀστᾶ ἀνάκειται, Μερόπων, φασί, τῶν πρώτων (“until you sail to the island of Cos, where, they say, the bones of the earthborn Meropes lie, the earlier inhabitants”). This connection of Cos with Giants invites speculation about other figures found in epic. Eurypylus is the son of a shape-shifter and his name, though unremarkable and used for other heroes, could evoke an epithet of the house of Hades (Il. 23.74; Od. 11.571), while his father Poseidon is the father of Polyphemus. The children of Eurypylus have names that link them with bronze. There are, again, other Chalciopes and Chalcodon/Chalcon in Greek legend who have no connections to Giants. Still, it seems possible that the Meropes were in some version monstrous or Bronze Men whose destruction was necessary. It is striking, however, that only the Meropis makes Heracles the opponent of monstrous Meropes. His ineffectiveness raises the possibility that the poet, who has so obviously adapted various narrative traditions, has brought together two different tales. One was the battle of Heracles against the Meropes, the other the slaying of Asterus by Athena. It is hard to place the rape of Chalciope in this story. Heracles certainly begets sons on the daughters of his defeated enemies (e.g. Tlepolemus), but not when the enemies are monstrous. No discussion of the Meropis has failed to observe its awkwardness of both diction and narrative style, along with the peculiarity of the story it tells. We should consider the possibility that it is intended to be funny and is to be related to divine burlesque and to the comic Heracles. That would not render it irrelevant to our understanding of Heracles. His failure against Asterus would be a reflection of his rescue by Zeus or Athena in other accounts.

27

See Shear 2021: 41.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

82 7

scodel

Conclusions: Heracles, Positive and Negative

The variant versions of the adventures of Heracles on Cos are a microcosm of the many variations in Archaic narratives about the hero. Heracles is an ambiguous figure from the earliest sources that we have, and the legends of his visit to Cos reflect this ambiguity. He is a figure of both civilization and chaos, a bringer of order and wildly uncontrolled. Since his sexual exploits were many, families of cities could insert him to their genealogy to give it luster— but the same episode that could make him a founder could also make him a rapist and frivolous warmonger. The Heracles who defends civilized order and the Heracles of excessive violence may have been created as projections from particular subgroups in the Greek world—in the case of Cos, descendants of migrants from Thessaly and Dorians—and performances for some audiences would have reflected the interests of those audiences. However, once these stories entered the repertory of epic and were performed for audiences from different communities, a performer or poet’s choice among variants depended less on their origins than on the requirements of the context. Negative treatments of the hero could take two forms. In the more familiar of these, violence could be excessive or directed at an undeserving target, making him a figure of hybris; the comic Heracles was the hybristic Heracles filtered through a narrative form that ensured that his behavior was harmless or even benign in its results. In the other, Heracles is simply not equal to the challenge that confronts him and requires an exceptionally blunt divine intervention. We could create a simple grid:

(1) Justified attack/Heracles succeeds (2) Justified attack/Heracles fails

(3) Unjustified attack/Heracles succeeds (4) Unjustified attack/Heracles fails

The Meropis seems to present (2), the Ehoeae (3). The version of (maybe) Pherecydes and that of the Bibliotheca (perhaps dependent in part on Pherecydes) seem to waver between (1) and (3).28 For a hero to be wounded and rescued does not diminish the heroic quality of his ultimate success, but the expression ὡς λῃστής is decidedly hostile, and the account of Bibliotheca, which offers a motive for the refusal of the Meropes to let Heracles land, suggests a disproportionate response to an error. (4) is not attested and probably never occurred.

28

Kylinterea 2002: 130–131; the suggestion goes back to Frazer 1921: 247.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

heracles on cos

83

We cannot know what variants of the adventure of Heracles on Cos were available to the Iliad-poet, except that Heracles’s sexual connection with the daughter of Eurypylus was already traditional. The vagueness of the Iliad about why Zeus had to rescue Heracles suggests that the version or versions known to the poet did not quite suit his needs. The narrative purposes of Zeus require that Heracles be an innocent victim of Hera and entirely sympathetic (so he cannot be responsible for an unjust or excessive war). The pathos directed at Heracles means that his adventure on Cos cannot be a heroic achievement, but Zeus would not want his son to appear as inadequate, either. The removal of Heracles to Argos is likely to be the Iliad-poet’s modification of a battle in which a divine intervention saved the hero from immediate peril (probably, however, Zeus sent Athena). If the tradition available to the Iliad-poet followed the episode on Cos with either the killing of Alcyoneus or the Gigantomachy, the effect of Hera’s mischief would be mitigated, since the visit to Cos is then part of a series of heroic exploits. Zeus’s anger at Hera would be an odd prelude to the Gigantomachy. Why does the Iliad use the Coan adventure at all? It requires only an occasion when Hera acted against the will of Zeus and so angered him. The theme does not even require Heracles, though he is an obvious source for such stories. Although we can draw an analogy between Hera’s mistreatment of Heracles and the suffering of Hector, the cases are not really very close, since Hera shows no particular animosity towards Hector personally; she hates Troy and wants the Achaeans to destroy it.29 Still, there is little need to wonder why the poet chose the Coan adventure, despite its ambiguities. The Iliad’s allusions to Heracles are not confined to his role in the earlier sack of Troy, but most cluster around it; the success of Heracles at Troy foreshadows that of the Achaeans. The adventure on Cos takes place on his return from Troy (no later variant changes this). Cos is not on the way from Troy to the Greek mainland, but it is also not an obvious stop on any other journey of Heracles. Even if in earlier song Hera was not the cause of the arrival of Heracles on Cos, her intervention was easy to add. This context may also help explain why Zeus says that he rescued Heracles, although he does not personally intervene in the Iliad and Athena is the usual helper of Heracles: in the Iliad, Athena is allied with Hera, so the exemplum cannot show her in a positive light. In any case, Zeus wants to stress his own role.

29

Lang (1983: 141–164) suggests that the antagonism of Zeus and Hera in the Iliad was derived from the Heracles-cycle, but she is motivated by the Judgment of Paris; see Reinhardt 1938: 11–38.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

84

scodel

The extreme vagueness of the narrative of Zeus in the Iliad about Cos probably indicates that a version or versions known to the poet were already not entirely favorable to Heracles: he was overaggressive, ineffectual, or both. Yet a version or versions that made the Meropes enemies of order were also inappropriate for the context in the Iliad, and the Iliad-poet, having included the liaison with the daughter of Eurypylus in the Catalogue, makes no attempt to incorporate or explain it. In the Iliad as elsewhere, Heracles on Cos is a microcosm of the complexity of the epic Heracles.

Works Cited Andersen, Ø. 1990. “The Making of the Past in the Iliad.” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 93: 25–45. Bär, S. 2018. Herakles im griechischen Epos: Studien zur Narrativität und Poetizität eines Helden. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. Bernabé, A. 1987–1988. Poetarum Epicorum Graecorum testimonia et fragmenta. Leipzig: Teubner. Brügger, C. 2018. Homers Ilias Gesamtkommentar (Basler Kommentar/BK). Band ix, 16. Gesang. Berlin: De Gruyter. Casanova, A. 1978. “Mestra e il re Cos in Esiodo.” Prometheus 4: 202–206. Cyrino, M.S. 1998. “Heroes in D(u)ress: Transvestism and Power in the Myths of Herakles and Achilles.” Arethusa 31.2: 207–241. Davies, M. 1988. Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Edmunds, L. 2022. “Heracles’ Sack of Troy in Mythographus Homericus (D schol. Il. 20.145).” In Pagès, J. and Villagra, N., eds. Myths on the Margins of Homer: Prolegomena to the Mythographus Homericus. Berlin: De Gruyter. 195–213. Erbse, H. 1986. Untersuchungen zur Funktion der Götter im homerischen Epos. Berlin: De Gruyter. Frazer, J. 1921. Apollodorus: The Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Friedländer, P. 1907. Herakles, Sagengeschichtliche Untersuchungen. Berlin: Weidmann. Gantz, T. 1993. Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Haubold, J. 2005. “Herakles in the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women.” In Hunter, R.L. ed. The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women: Constructions and Reconstructions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 85–98. Henrichs, A. 1977. “Zur Meropis: Herakles’ Lowenfell und Athenas zweite Haut.” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 27: 69–75. Henrichs, A. 1994. “The Identity of the Poet and the Crisis of the Hero.” In Bulloch, A.,

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

heracles on cos

85

Gruen, E., Long, A.A., and Stewart, A. eds. Image and Ideology: Self-Definition in the Hellenistic World. Berkeley: University of California Press. 189–195. Janko, R. 1992. The Iliad: A Commentary. Volume iv: Books 13–16. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kirk, G.S. 1985. The Iliad: A Commentary. Volume i: Books 1–4. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Koenen, L. and R. Merkelbach 1976. “Apollodoros (περὶ Θεῶν), Epichram und die Meropis.” In Hanson, A.E. ed. Collectanea Papyrologica: Texts Published in Honor of H.C. Youtie, part l. Bonn: Habelt. 3–26. Kramer, B. 1980. “Apollodor, Epicharm, Meropis.” In Kramer, B., Erler, M., Hagedorn, D., and Hübner, R. eds. Kölner Papyri iii. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. 23–33. Kullmann, W. 1956. Das Wirken der Götter in der Ilias. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Kylinterea, E. 2002. Pseudo-Apollodorus’ Bibliotheke and the Greek Mythological Tradition. Ph.D. Diss. University College London. Lang, M. 1983. “Reverberation and Mythology in the Iliad.” In Rubino, C. and Sherlmerdine, S. eds. Approaches to Homer. Austin: University of Texas Press. 141–164. Lloyd-Jones, H. and Parsons, P. 1983. Supplementum Hellenisticum. Berlin: De Gruyter. Lloyd-Jones, H. 1984. “The Meropis.” In Atti del xvii Congresso Internazionale di Papirologia. Naples: Centro internazionale per lo studio dei papiri ercolanesi 1: 141– 150. Reprinted Lloyd-Jones, H. 1990. Greek, Epic, Lyric, and Tragedy: The Academic Chapters of Sir Hugh Lloyd-Jones. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 21–29. Lowenstam, S. 1981. The Death of Patroclus: A Study in Typology. Königstein: Hain. Matthews, V.J. 1974. Panyassis of Halikarnassos: Text and Commentary. Leiden: Brill. Montanari, F. 1995. “The Mythographus Homericus.” In Abbenes, J.G., J., Slings, S.R., and Sluiter, I. eds. Greek Literary Theory after Aristotle: A Collection of Chapters in Honour of D.M. Schenkeveld. Amsterdam: VU University Press. 135–172. Ogden, D. 2021. The Oxford Handbook of Heracles. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pagès, J. 2007. Mythographus Homericus: estudi i edició comentada. Ph.D. Diss. Barcelona. Paton, W.R. and Hicks, E.L. 1891. The Inscriptions of Cos. Oxford. Reinhardt, K. 1938. Das Parisurteil. Frankfurt. Reprinted in Von Werken und Formen, Godesberg: H. Küpper. 1948. 11–36 and Tradition und Geist, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. 1960. 16–36. In English translation, “The Judgement of Paris” in Wright, G.M. and Jones, P.V. eds. and trans. 1997. Homer: German Scholarship in Translation. Oxford: Oxford University Press 1997. 170–191. Reprinted in de Jong I.F. ed. 1999. Homer: Critical Assessments. Volume iii. London: Routledge. 47–65. Rutherford, I. 2005. “Mestra in Athens: Hesiod fr. 43 and the Poetics of Panhellenism.” In Hunter, R.L. ed. The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women: Constructions and Reconstructions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 99–117. Shear, J. 2021. Serving Athena: The Festival of the Panathenaia and the Construction of Athenian Identities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. - 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

86

scodel

Sherwin-White, S.M. 1978. Ancient Cos: An Historical Study from the Dorian Settlement to the Imperial Period. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Spanoudakis, K. 2000. “Ο Ηρακλής στην Κω.” In Sifakis, G.M. et al. eds. Κτερίσματα: φιλολογικά μελετήματα αφιερωμένα στον Ιω. Σ. Καμπίτση (1938–1990). Herakleion: Panepistimiakes Ekd. Kritis. 313–334. Tsagalis, C. 2017. Early Greek Epic Fragments i: Antiquarian and Genealogical Epic. Berlin: De Gruyter. van der Valk, M. 1963–1964. Researches on the Text and Scholia of the Iliad. Volume i. Leiden: Brill. van Rossum-Steenbeek, M. 1997. Greek Readers’ Digests? Studies on a Selection of Subliterary Papyri. Leiden: Brill. Vian, F. 1952. La Guerre des géants: le mythe avant l’époque hellénistique. Études et commentaires 11. Paris: Klincksieck. Vian, F. 1985. “Nouvelles réflexions sur la Gigantomachie.” Sileno 11: 255–264. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U. von. 1886. Isyllos von Epidauros. Berlin: Weidmann. Willcock, M.M. 1964. “Mythological Paradeigma in the Iliad.” Classical Quarterly 14.2: 141–154.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

Civilizer, Killer, Glutton … Moralist? Glimpses of Heracles in Early Greek Epic Sophie Mills

1

Introduction: Many-Sided Heracles

Heracles is notorious among the Greek heroes for being imagined in a bewilderingly inconsistent number of incarnations. Admittedly, a degree of inconsistency in portrayal is not uncommon among most Greek heroes, both because they often combine excellence used to help humanity with an inhuman, often destructive side, but especially because individual writers and artists impose their own meanings on myths and characterize heroes according to their needs as narrators or artists, and those of their audiences. But with many Greek heroes, even apparently inconsistent portrayals can be found to have some common, connecting core. Odysseus can be both hero, as in the Odyssey, or villain, as in Philoctetes, but substantial common ground between the two portrayals exists, based on his essential characteristic of cunning intelligence, which he uses for good or bad ends. Any being who possesses the sheer power that is inherent in most Greek heroes will be able to use it positively and negatively: the civilizing hero whose powers are used to benefit humanity can easily slide into the hero whose powers are used to benefit his own ends exclusively because he can use them like this.1 This kind of duality is especially strong in Heracles: central to his story are the labors that remove all sorts of dangerous beings from Greece and beyond, and even offer the chance that death may be transcended, while his story also contains its mirror image in the Heracles who uses his strength to destroy, not monstrous or dangerous beings, but guests, such as Iphitus, whose mares he also steals, in a violation of Greek norms of hospitality that Homer explicitly condemns,2 or even objects of love in a mad fit, such as his wife and children.3 The story is most memorably portrayed in Euripides’s Heracles, but Heracles’s

1 Cf. Galinsky 1972: 3–4. 2 Hom. Od. 21.14–30, especially l. 28: σχέτλιος, οὐδὲ θεῶν ὄπιν ᾐδέσατ᾽ οὐδὲ τράπεζαν: “Shocking man, who respected neither the wrath of the gods nor the table”. All translations are my own except where indicated. 3 Cf. Stafford 2012: 15.

© Sophie Mills, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004696617_005

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

88

mills

madness is already mentioned in the Cypria.4 But Heracles deviates from these common heroic patterns by being characterized through a second duality. In Attic comedy and satyr play especially, he is well-attested as the greedy lover of all life’s corporeal pleasures, always eager for vast dinners, drinking bouts or sex,5 but the tradition also has room for a Heracles who is explicitly moralized, especially towards the end of the fifth century.6 Although these two attributes seem highly disparate, they share “a tendency to cast Heracles as the incarnation of either vice or virtue, taking to extremes particular elements of his character and suppressing others”.7 Heracles the monster-slayer focuses on the external world; his other incarnation focuses on internal qualities of intellect, appetite and emotion, and an original embodiment of virtue in an athletic sphere later broadens to include mental virtues.8 The mythographer Herodorus (c. 400–340 or earlier) even claims that Heracles “philosophized until death”,9 though the precise meaning of this phrase is uncertain: Herodorus probably did not mean philosophy in the standard sense of the term, but rather conceived of Heracles’s “philosophy” as steadfastness through self-discipline in the face of pleasure,10 aligning moral and intellectual engagement.11 The moralized Heracles has a particularly long life far beyond Classical Greece, and this characterization runs through his portrayal by the church fathers all the way to the Renaissance and beyond.12 The earliest explicitly moralized Heracles appears in the story of Prodicus recounted by Xenophon (Memorabilia 2.1.21–34), in which he consciously chooses a hard life of virtue rather than all the pleasures of the flesh offered to him by Vice,13 but Stafford argues that the first glimmerings of a more moralized Heracles appear at the end of the Archaic age in lyric

4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

12

13

Proclus, Chrestomathia 4 GEF: ἐν παρεκβάσει διηγεῖται … τὴν Ἡρακλέους μανίαν: “in a digression he relates … the madness of Heracles”. See Stafford 2012: 105–117. Stafford 2012: 123. Stafford 2012: 104; 121–123. Stafford 2012: 104–105. φιλοσοφήσας μέχρι θανάτου: Herodorus, FGrHist 31 F14. Moore 2017: 27–48. Already in Plato, though light-heartedly, Heracles is imagined as a role model for Socrates: Stafford 2012: 124–125. The identification of Heracles and philosophy becomes especially strong among the Cynics and Stoics (Stafford 2012: 125–130). For a concise account of Heracles’s post-Classical afterlife, see Stafford 2012: 201–244, esp. 213–215, and Galinsky 1972: 188–249. For more detailed accounts, see also Blanshard and Stafford 2020 and Mainz and Stafford 2020. Galinsky 1972: 101. In his Symposium 8.9, Xenophon claims that Heracles was more famed for his psyche than his body.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

89

civilizer, killer, glutton … moralist?

and vase painting when he is pitted against death or death’s avatars sleep and old age.14 This paper will suggest that hints of a moralized and moralizing Heracles can even be found in early epic. Although Heracles is a shadowy presence in early literature, his ubiquity in early artistic representations of myth15 and the allusive quality of many references to him in the Homeric epics and others shows that his stories were an important and extensive part of mythological narrative before the narratives of Homer and Hesiod, whose interests did not focus squarely on him and, especially in Homer’s case, centered on a later generation of heroes.16 Silvio Bär17 connects Heracles’s essential oddness precisely with his status as a hero from a prior generation, at the limit of the reader’s horizon of knowledge about the epic past and its world. The heroes of the Trojan War are magnificent and do things that ordinary men cannot, but they are still relatively “normal”, unlike Heracles, who is bigger, stronger, and more fantastical than they are. The heroic continuum between civilization and savagery is familiar enough but Heracles transcends simple duality to become a mass of apparently incompatible characterizations, more easily acquired, perhaps, because he is just beyond the horizon of normal heroism. In early Greek writing, the duality in Heracles between civilization and savagery is easy to find. In Hesiod, Heracles the civilizing monster-killer kills the “evil-minded” (λυγρὰ ἰδυῖαν) Hydra, and frees Prometheus from the eagle eating his liver “not without the will of Zeus” (οὐκ ἀέκητι Ζηνός, 529) who wanted his glory to be greater than before (Hes. Th. 530–531): ὄφρ᾽ Ἡρακλῆος Θηβαγενέος κλέος εἴη πλεῖον ἔτ᾽ ἢ τὸ πάροιθεν ἐπὶ χθόνα πουλυβότειραν.18 So that the glory of Theban-born Heracles would be greater than before on the generous earth. By contrast, in Odyssey 21.14–30 an exceptionally violent Heracles commits the appalling crime of violating xenia in killing Iphitus. More generally, he is

14 15 16 17 18

Stafford 2012: 117–120. Boardman (1975: 1) estimates that 44% of mythological scenes on vase paintings before 510 show some deed of Heracles; cf. Shapiro 1983: 8. Ogden 2021a: xxv–xxvii; Barker and Christensen 2021: 283–285, 292–293. Bär 2018; see also Most pp. 132–133 in this volume. Hydra: Hes. Th. 313–314; Prometheus: Th. 526–531. For an overview of Heracles as monsterkiller, and the extraordinary range of his exploits, see Stafford 2012: 23–78.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

90

mills

a prolific killer and sacker of cities, for example in Iliad 2.658–660, while in Il. 5.392–400,19 he is said even to have wounded Hera and Hades. But already in the tradition we can find a Heracles who can be seen to have some kind of capacity for moral engagement, and it is with this Heracles that this paper will be concerned.

2

Heracles Moralized and Moralist?

The moralized Heracles is a natural outgrowth of the persona that he comes to acquire as a civilizing hero.20 Heracles may not have been such a hero originally, since the labors were imposed on him by his enemy Eurystheus, rather than willingly undertaken,21 but as more and more deeds—perhaps originally free-floating stories whose geographical setting enabled them to be associated with one of the more famous labors—become part of his heroic “resume”,22 the association of his deeds with compulsion by Eurystheus is diminished and instead they are imagined as a service to humanity. A civilizing hero must have the physical strength to crush beings that threaten human happiness, but by definition, there must be some sort of implied “theory”, if at an initially basic level, of what human happiness is and what will improve it. As ideas of the civilizer become more sophisticated, a moralizing element may also start to be a little more prominent in the portrayal of the hero. We see this especially strongly in the portrayal of Theseus, who begins as mighty Minotauromachist, but also participates in some rather less savory episodes with Ariadne and Helen. However, despite his ambiguous nature in early stories, he ends up as the hero of Athenian civilization in drama, clearly articulating Athenian strength and wisdom to the world. Heracles never receives that treatment—he is too great a Pan-Hellenic hero to be able to be

19 20

21 22

See in this volume Currie pp. 48n198, 50; Alepidou pp. 111–113; Tsagalis p. 200n44. Most (pp. 134–140, 143, this volume) argues that even in Hesiod, Heracles is “sanitized” by only destroying monstrous creatures. “We might say that Hesiod extracts the monstrous element from the traditional Heracles himself, of whom it had always formed an essential constituent of his character, and instead projects it outside of Heracles onto separate monsters that a purified Heracles can go on to destroy”. This interesting suggestion indicates that there is some ambiguity between a traditional civilizing hero and an actively moralized or moralizing hero, and that the latter is one possible development from the former. Allusions to Eurystheus in Homer indicate that his coercion of Heracles was a wellestablished part of the tradition: Il. 8.362–363, 367–368, 19.132–133; cf. also Od.11.623–626. Cf. Shapiro 1983: 7.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

civilizer, killer, glutton … moralist?

91

confined to just one city or creed—but as an individual hero, representing essentially just himself, he is able to act on behalf of humanity and, through his actions and potentially some words, to articulate ideas of moral behavior. Heracles’s actions are outstanding as a mark of his virtue and their exceptional quality also causes him suffering: his suffering generates endurance and the need for continued courage and nobility. Such attributes may also have stimulated characterizations of a more morally focused hero.23 With the exception of the Shield of Heracles, composed in the early sixth century,24 early portrayals of Heracles in literature are fragmentary. He appears sporadically in complete texts whose main subjects are the heroes of later generations, while the Heracles epics by the seventh-century writer Pisander of Rhodes and Panyassis of Halicarnassus in the early fifth century have barely survived, even though Panyassis’s original epic was some fourteen books and 9000 verses long. Pisander’s poem was in two books and Theocritus, Epigram 22.5 (= test. 1 GEF) suggests that he focused on all of Heracles’s labors (χὤσσους, ἐξεπόνασεν … ἀέθλους.) Many of the scanty fragments we have bear this out, and he seems to have recounted Heracles’s deeds with the explicit purpose of glorifying him so that, for example, Pausanias (2.37.4 = Pisander fr. 2 GEF) claims that the Hydra only had one head, but Pisander gave it many to make it seem more frightful (φοβερώτερον) and his own poem more impressive (ἀξιόχρεως μᾶλλον). Pisander’s fragments are so scanty that very few of them offer even a trace of a moralized or moralizing Heracles, but, as in other early poetry25 and art,26 he is associated with Athena (fr. 7 GEF) who rewards his labors with hot baths,27 and Athena’s fondness for intelligent heroes with moral capacity such as Odysseus (cf. Od. 13.296–299) and Theseus is well-known.28 The most intriguing hint that Pisander might have offered an explicitly moral perspective on Heracles is given by Olympiodorus, a sixth-century c.e. Neoplatonist (on Plato Alcibiades p. 156)29 who appears to state that Pisander calls Heracles a “most just killer” (δικαιοτάτου … φονῆος) in connection with purification from

23 24 25 26 27

28 29

Bosman 2021: 332–333. Mason 2015: 2. Il. 8.362–369; Hes. Th. 314–316. For an overview, see Deacy 2021: 387–394. Pisander fr. 7 GEF (= Σ Ar. Nub. 1051a). “Some such as Pisander say that after Heracles had labored long, Athena made hot baths spring up for him around Thermopylae.” (οἳ δέ φασιν ὅτι τῷ Ἡρακλεῖ πολλὰ μογήσαντι περὶ Θερμοπύλας ἡ Ἀθηνᾶ θερμὰ λουτρὰ ἐπαφῆκεν, ὡς Πείσανδρος.) For Athena’s relationship with Heracles in early Greek epic, see also Alepidou in this volume, pp. 117–118. Tsagalis fr. dub. 4 EGEF.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

92

mills

evils (ἐπὶ καρθάρσει τῶν κακῶν). Galinsky argues that Pisander was “foreshadowing what Pindar would do on a far more grandiose scale” by claiming that some of his violent acts were justified, in order to begin to rework Heracles in line with more conventional human ethics.30 Unfortunately, given the lateness of Olympiodorus, the fact that he also cites another poet called Pisander in his work, and the fragment’s diction, we cannot be absolutely certain that it was Pisander of Camirus who called him a “most just killer”, though equally, the claim cannot be ruled out.31

3

Heracles’s Shield

The moralizing trend continues in the often maligned32 Shield of Heracles, the only extant epic poem in which Heracles is a central figure. This poem clearly aligns Heracles with Apollo, the god of harmony and civilization, as he fights Cycnus, the brutal and inarticulate son of Ares. Heracles has an explicitly moral dimension in this poem by representing human civilization against the mindless fury that Ares and his son Cycnus represent.33 Indeed, Heracles’s very first words in the poem focus on moral concerns, when he acknowledges that his mortal father Amphitryon did wrong (ἤλιτεν) in killing his father-in-law Electryon to steal his oxen (80–82). But most of the poem is, of course, devoted to Heracles’s shield and the designs upon it: this Heracles is notable for wearing a Homeric panoply rather than the traditional lionskin and club. Although the description of the shield looks rather chaotic at first, and little more than an inferior variant of the description of Achilles’s shield in Iliad 18, Fabian Horn argues that the shield represents a clear trajectory away from chaos and fights between inhuman creatures who are its representatives towards a time where human beings fight but also understand the benefits that peace brings. Thus, the shield first features personified terrors of war such as Fear, Strife and Tumult (144–160), then fighting between quintessentially warlike beasts such as lions and boars (168–177). This aspect of the shield resembles what is said of Heracles’s belt in Od. 11.609–612: “awful was the belt about his breast, a baldric

30 31 32 33

Galinsky 1972: 24. The morality of heroes certainly did concern early authors: for the sanitization of Theseus, see Mills 1997: 2–18. See Tsagalis 2022: 195–202, esp. 199; cf. Vecchiato (this volume). Cf. Mason 2015: 5–9. Cf. Galinsky 1972: 17–19 who describes him (18) as an “ethical force”. Heracles does not fight Cycnus driven by bloodlust or necessity but because “the world abounds with inhuman monsters and it must be freed from them”.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

93

civilizer, killer, glutton … moralist?

of gold, whereon wondrous things were fashioned, bears and wild boars, and lions with flashing eyes, and conflicts, and battles, and murders, and slayings of men.” After the bestial combats comes the battle of the Lapiths and the Centaurs (178–190), universally understood in Greek culture as the conflict between and eventual triumph of human civilization over nature. The weapons in this scene are symbolic: the Lapiths fight with man-made metal weapons (χρύσεια περὶ χροῒ τεύχε᾽ ἔχοντες, 183), representing human technical prowess, while the Centaurs must content themselves with torn-up pine trees (χρυσέας ἐλάτας ἐν χερσὶν ἔχοντες … ἔγχεσιν ἠδ᾽ἐλάτης ἐν χερσὶν ἔχοντες, 188–190).34 Like the Iliad, the shield also portrays two cities, but this poem reverses the order on Achilles’s shield. The city at war is placed first (237–270) so that its description is capped by that of the city at peace, with all its pleasures of marriages and festivities, fertile fields, and athletic contests, which can be seen as a kind of sanitized, civilized form of war-making that ultimately brings pleasure, rather than suffering and death. Horn further notes35 that within the broader pattern of progress from inhuman chaos to human civilization, three significant gods are inserted: Ares and his sons Phobos and Deimos (191–196), Athena (197–200), and then Apollo (201–206). These three divinities all play a part in Heracles’s combat with Cycnus later in the poem. In sum, Heracles’s shield can be seen to represent Heracles himself, standing at a crossroads between older and newer stories. Chronologically, he belongs to an older generation of heroes who defeated terrifying beings: in this poem, he will defeat one such being. However, he also points the way to later generations, who fight but also enjoy the benefits of civilization: the Heracles of the Shield is this type of nonmonstrous hero, both amenable to instruction from Athena, like more purely human heroes such as Odysseus and Theseus, and he behaves in a notably moderate manner towards his enemies. After the description of the shield, Heracles’s divine helper and mentor Athena advises him that he is allowed to kill Cycnus and wound Ares but not to take the god’s horses or armor (327–337). Her language of forethought and compromise contrasts with the complete silence of Cycnus and Ares, who are compared with inhuman entities such as fire or a storm (ἴκελοι πυρὶ ἠὲ θυέλλῃ, 345). Heracles himself uses the human power of persuasion through language, as he tries to persuade Cycnus against fighting (350–367). He appeals both to human affection—he is going on a peaceful journey to king Ceyx, who is Cycnus’s own father-in-law (353–367)36—and also rational self-interest, since he has already 34 35 36

This mode of fighting is typical of Centaurs in art. Horn 2016: 137. See also Mason 2015: 84.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

94

mills

vanquished him on a previous occasion (358–367). Twice he addresses him as πέπον (350, 357) a word that often, though admittedly not always, has connotations of warmth and affection.37 But Cycnus makes no verbal response to Heracles’s articulate speech (368–369) and eventually meets his doom (420). When Ares attacks Heracles in rage at his son’s death, Athena intervenes (443–449) to remonstrate with her fellow god: it is not right (θέμις) that he shall kill Heracles and despoil him. As so often,38 Athena positions herself clearly in the middle of competing interests to mediate between them: just as Heracles was instructed not to do more than wound Ares, so Ares too must restrain his divine powers against Heracles. Heracles obeys her commands but Ares, as incapable of articulate response to a reasoned appeal as his son was, ignores her and attacks Heracles. When Athena turns his spear aside, he launches himself on Heracles, but Heracles wounds him and sends him packing, and goes on his way. At the very end of the poem, we learn that Cycnus’s special offense was particularly heinous—preying on pilgrims coming to Apollo’s temple ([Hes.] Sc. 479–480), earning Apollo’s wrath even after death as he sends the river Anaurus to obliterate his tomb (477–478). Heracles is thus portrayed as the defender of Apollo and his cult, and of travelers more generally: one might compare Theseus’s efforts against the malefactors of the Saronic gulf who preyed similarly on travelers. So here we see a Heracles clearly aligned with civilized values, Olympian religion and even the power of human speech against brutal violence.

4

A More Temperate Heracles?

Panyassis’s long epic must have gone far beyond Pisander’s in what it had space to include,39 but again, clear indications of Heracles’s characterization are mostly lacking in the few fragments which have survived. However, fragments 19–22 are decidedly intriguing. Fragment 19 reads: ξεῖν᾿, ἄγε δὴ καὶ πῖν᾿· ἀρετή νύ τίς ἐστι καὶ αὕτη, ὅς κ᾿ ἀνδρῶν πολὺ πλεῖστον ἐν εἰλαπίνῃ μέθυ πίνῃ εὖ καὶ ἐπισταμένως, ἅμα τ᾿ ἄλλον φῶτα κελεύῃ. ἶσον δ᾿ ὅς τ᾿ ἐν δαιτὶ καὶ ἐν πολέμῳ θοὸς ἀνήρ,

37 38 39

πέπον as friendly, cf. ὦ πέπον, Hom. Il. 6.55, 9.252; Hes. Th. 544, 560; as unfriendly, see Il. 2.235: ὦ πέπονες, κάκ᾽ ἐλέγχε᾽, Ἀχαιΐδες, οὐκέτ᾽ Ἀχαιοί (cf. Il. 13.120). Compare, for example, her mediation between Apollo’s protégé Orestes and Orestes’s pursuers, the Erinyes in Aeschylus’s Eumenides. See Tsagalis’s discussion of its probable narrative contours in this volume, pp. 210–216.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

95

civilizer, killer, glutton … moralist? 5

10

15

ὑσμίνας διέπων ταλαπενθέας, ἔνθά τε παῦροι θαρσαλέοι τελέθουσι μένουσί τε θοῦρον ἄρηα. τοῦ κεν ἐγὼ θείμην ἶσον κλέος, ὅς τ᾿ ἐνὶ δαιτί τέρπηται παρεὼν ἅμα τ᾿ ἄλλον λαὸν ἀνώγῃ. οὐ γάρ μοι ζώειν γε δοκεῖ βροτὸς οὐδὲ βιῶναι ἀνθρώποιο βίον ταλασίφρονος, ὅστις ἀπ᾿ οἴνου θυμὸν ἐρητύσας μείνῃ πότον, ἀλλ᾿ ἐνεόφρων. οἶνος γὰρ πυρὶ ἶσον ἐπιχθονίοισιν ὄνειαρ, ἐσθλὸν ἀλεξίκακον, πάσης συνοπηδὸν ἀοιδῆς. ἐν μὲν γὰρ θαλίης ἐρατὸν μέρος ἀγλαΐης τε, ἐν δὲ χοροιτυπίης, ἐν δ᾿ ἱμερτῆς φιλότητος, ἐν δέ τε μενθήρης καὶ δυσφροσύνης ἀλεωρή. τώ σε χρὴ παρὰ δαιτὶ δεδεγμένον εὔφρονι θυμῷ πίνειν, μηδὲ βορῆς κεκορημένον ἠΰτε γῦπα ἧσθαι πλημύροντα, λελασμένον εὐφροσυνάων. Come on, friend, drink! This too is a virtue, to drink the most wine at the banquet in expert fashion, and to encourage your fellow. It’s just as good to be sharp in the feast as in battle, busy amid the grievous slaughter, where few men are brave and withstand the furious fight. I should count his glory equal, who enjoys being at the feast, and encourages other folk to as well. A man doesn’t seem to me to be really alive, or to live the life of a hardy mortal, if he sits out the party restraining his appetite for the wine: he’s an idiot. Wine is as much of a blessing as fire for us on earth: a good shield against harm, accompaniment to every song, for it has in it a delightful element of the festive, of luxury, of dancing, of entrancing love, and a refuge from care and depression. So you must take the toasts at the feast and drink merrily, and not sit costive like a vulture after you have fed your face, oblivious of good cheer.40

Although the identity of the speaker is unknown, certain clues suggest that Heracles has some part in it and may be the addressee. Lines 10–11 contrast the drinker “who lives the life of a hardy mortal” with the “idiot” teetotaler: the first epithet is Homeric and highly suitable for Heracles, while the latter is a new mock-Homeric formation, and the claim (13) that wine is “a good shield against harm” is a clear allusion to Heracles, one of whose most popular epithets is ἀλε-

40

All translations of Panyassis are by West 2003.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

96

mills

ξίκακος.41 Evidence for the identity of the speaker is lacking, but if the speaker is encouraging Heracles to live up to his traditional epithets by drinking wine, the speech may be interpreted as a neat and even witty play on traditions surrounding him. Thus, Martin West attractively argues that the speaker of this fragment is Eurytus at Oechalia, encouraging his guest Heracles to drink and live up to his reputation.42 The unidentified speaker of fragment 20.1–943 agrees that wine is thoroughly enjoyable but only up to a point. The Graces, Aphrodite and Dionysus attend anyone who drinks in moderation (εἴ τις μέ⟨τρα⟩ πίοι), and if a person does not go beyond that point, all will be well with him. ἀλλ᾿ ὅτε τις μοίρης τριτάτης πρὸς μέτρον ἐλαύνοι πίνων ἀβλεμέως, τότε δ᾿ Ὕβριος αἶσα καὶ Ἄτης γίνεται ἀργαλέη, κακὰ δ᾿ ἀνθρώποισιν ὀπάζει (7–9). But when someone drinks heavily and presses to the limit of the third round, then Hybris and Ate take their unlovely turn, which brings trouble. After these general principles, the speaker of fr. 20.10–15 addresses an individual. 10

15

ἀλλὰ πέπον, μέτρον γὰρ ἔχεις γλυκεροῖο ποτοῖο, στεῖχε παρὰ μνηστὴν ἄλοχον, κοίμιζε δ᾿ἑταίρους· δείδια γὰρ τριτάτης μοίρης μελιηδέος οἴνου πινομένης, μή σ᾿ Ὕβρις ἐνὶ φρεσὶ θυμὸν ἀέρσῃ, ἐσθλοῖς δὲ ξενίοισι κακὴν ἐπιθῆσι τελευτήν. ἀλλὰ πιθοῦ καὶ παῦε πολὺν πότον. Now, pal, (ἀλλὰ πέπον),44 you’ve had your ration of the sweet liquor, so go and join your wedded wife, and send your comrades to bed. With the third round of the honey-sweet wine being drunk, I’m afraid of Hybris stirring up your spirits and bringing your good hospitality to a bad end. So do as I say, and stop the excess drinking.

41 42 43 44

Galinsky 1972: 24–25. West 2003: 207. For Barker and Christensen 2021: 287, the speaker may possibly be Heracles, but they admit that the attribution is uncertain. The much shorter fragments 20 and 21 say much the same thing. Compare the way Heracles addresses Cycnus, above. West’s Heracles seems rather abrupt with his interlocutor, calling him “pal”, rather than “friend”, which would be another translation for πέπον.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

97

civilizer, killer, glutton … moralist?

If these are Heracles’s words, as West suggests, then we have a clearer indication that Panyassis’s Heracles was the moralizing and moralized hero imagined by later writers such as Prodicus. The speaker urges someone to stop drinking, send his comrades to bed and return to his wedded wife so that “good hospitality” does not come to a bad end. These instructions make less sense coming from a host in his own marital home than from a guest, who is unlikely to be told to go to his wife’s bed. Thus, if this passage does come from part of the narrative recalling Heracles’s visit to Eurytus, then these words are likely to be an admonition from Heracles to his host Eurytus, reminding him that he is coming close to the dangers of drinking that fr. 20 outlined. An exchange in which Heracles behaves with such self-restraint has an added advantage of characterizing his enemy Eurytus unfavorably.

5

The Judgements of Heracles in Hades

We also know that Panyassis included Heracles’s journey to Hades, a frightening place where he saw Sisyphus under the Waters of Shuddering (fr. 18 GEF) and also Theseus and Peirithous (fr. 17 GEF = Paus.10.29.9). “On their chairs they did not give the appearance of being bound there, but that instead of bonds the rock had grown onto their flesh.”45 This story occurs several times in early fragmentary epic and has an inescapably moral dimension in which Heracles is implicated. Theseus and Peirithous both decided that they should have daughters of Zeus as wives, and neither acted creditably. Theseus abducted Helen, causing an attack on Athens by the Dioscuri, which was recorded in the Cyclic epics, possibly the Cypria (fr. 12 GEF = Σ (D) Hom. Il. 3.242). This is one of the stories that later Athenians either ignored or retold in such a way as to minimize Theseus’s guilt,46 by putting the blame for the whole incident on Peirithous, whose decision to go down to the underworld and abduct Persephone proved particularly disastrous. Theseus went with him (simply out of loyalty to a friend in several Athenian versions) and they were both tricked into sitting down, whereupon they were imprisoned by being attached to chairs in the underworld. In some versions, as in that of Panyassis, the rock of the chair melds with their flesh, while other versions, such as Apollod. Epit.1.24, have them bound to the chair by snakes. Pausanias’s description at 10.29.9 of the early fifth-century 45

46

Πανύασσις δὲ ἐποίησεν ὡς Θησεὺς καὶ Πειρίθους ἐπὶ τῶν θρόνων παράσχοιντο σχῆμα οὐ κατὰ δεσμώτας, προσφυῆ δὲ ἀπὸ τοῦ χρωτὸς ἀντὶ δεσμῶν σφισιν ἔφη τὴν πέτραν. Cf. Apollod. Epit. 1.24. Mills 1997: 7–10.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

98

mills

painting by Polygnotus in the Lesche of the Cnidians at Delphi also mentions Theseus and Peirithous sitting on chairs. Theseus is holding two swords in his hand while Peirithous stares at them in anger that they have been useless. Tradition is clear that Heracles meets the pair in the underworld and that he rescues one or both of them from divine punishment. Although Theseus’s abduction of Helen is morally problematic and causes him to be punished, the general consensus among narrators is that Peirithous’s attempt to abduct the queen of the underworld is much worse: his crime against the queen of the underworld recalls his father Ixion’s attempted rape of Hera (cf. Pind. Pyth. 2.21–41), and most narratives state that whereas Theseus ultimately escaped the underworld, Peirithous was forced to stay there.47 In no narrative is Peirithous released, leaving Theseus in Hades. If fragments 17 and 18 came quite close to one another in Panyassis, then the pair would be on a level with the notorious evil-doer Sisyphus. Other early epics also mention Theseus and Peirithous in the underworld. The poem called the Minyas seems to have featured many malefactors who were punished in the underworld48 and Pausanias (10.28.2) mentions the descent of Theseus and Peirithous in that poem, where they doubtless faced punishment. Pausanias (9.31.5) also mentions a supposedly Hesiodic descent to Hades of Theseus and Peirithous, which may or may not be the same as the Minyas. A papyrus fragment known as the Ibscher Papyrus has been identified as coming either from the Minyas (as fr. 7),49 or from a Descent of Peirithous (as [Hes.] 280 M-W) and features a conversation in the underworld between Meleager—whose sister Deianeira will eventually marry Heracles50—and Theseus about Peirithous. In a rather fragmentary text, Meleager asks Theseus what he is doing in Hades, alive and with Peirithous, who is described as his trusty friend (π̣ισ̣ ̣ [τὸς] ἑ[ταῖρος) (5). Theseus explains that (if the supplement is right) Peirithous has been greatly misled by the Erinys (Πειρίθοον μεγαλ᾽ἆσε θ]εὰ δασπλῆτις Ἐρ̣ινύς, ̣ l. 9) and has come to seek Persephone as his bride, claiming that the marriage has been sanctioned by Zeus (φὰς ̣ ν[εῦσ]αι Δ[ία] τερπικέραυ̣νον, l. 13). Meleager “shudders”51 (κατέστυγε, l. 24) at what he says and addresses him in return with soothing words (μειλιχίοισιν, l. 25).

47 48 49 50 51

Diod. Sic. 4.63.4, 26.1, 63.4; Apollod. Epit. 1.23–24; Plut. Thes. 35.1. Paus.10.28.7, 4.33.7. West 2003: 34–35. Cf. Bacchyl. 5.172–175: the meeting is also imagined by Pindar fr. 346 Snell–Maehler; LloydJones 1967. The Greek has “shuddered”, but the aorist would be stylistically awkward with the rest of the description in present sequence (editor’s note).

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

99

civilizer, killer, glutton … moralist?

Θησεῦ Ἀθην]α̣ίων ̣ βουληφόρε θωρηκ̣τάων, ̣ ἦ ῥ᾽οὐχ Ἱππο]δάμεια περίφρων ἦν παρ̣ά̣κοιτι̣ ς̣ ̣ μ]εγαθύμου Πειριθόοιο; Theseus], counsellor (βουληφόρε) of the warrior Athe[nians, was not prudent [Hippo]dameia the wife […] of great-spirited Peirithous? … Several elements in this exchange are worth noting for their potential bearing on the characterization of Heracles in early epic. Most important is a clear distinction between Theseus and Peirithous. Peirithous is silent, letting Theseus speak for him, and Theseus seems to try to put the best possible interpretation on his actions, even though he apparently disapproves of them, if the supplement of l. 9, “[Peirithous has been greatly misled by] the grim goddess Erinys”, is correct. Peirithous is described as Theseus’s loyal companion, and the loyalty of Theseus to Peirithous becomes legendary in later Athenian thought.52 Moreover, Meleager also appears to distinguish between the two men: he “shudders”53 at Theseus’s explanation of why he and Peirithous are in the underworld, but then addresses him in an apparently positive and respectful manner as “counsellor of the warrior Athenians”. This is a story that, right from its earliest form, invites moral judgement and distinction between the two men, necessitating some kind of dialogue between Theseus and/or Peirithous and an interlocutor. Euripides’s or Critias’s tragedy Peirithous preserved in P.Oxy. 2078 includes a similar conversation where again a clear moral distinction is made between Theseus and Peirithous. Theseus appears to say something about betraying a loyal man and a friend (πιστὸν γὰρ ἄνδρα καὶ φίλον … προ̣δοῦναι δυσμενῶς εἰλημμένον (6–7)), presumably that he will not do so. Heracles responds with warm praise of Theseus and his city for always being allies of those in distress (8–11): σαυτῷ τε,] Θησεῦ, τῇ τ᾽ Ἀθηναίων πό[λει πρέποντ᾽ ἔλεξας· τοῖσι δυσ[τυ]χοῦσι γὰρ ἀεί πότ᾽ εἶ σὺ σύμμαχος … Theseus, you have spoken fittingly both for yourself and the city of the Athenians. For you are always the ally of the unfortunate.

52 53

See, for example, Soph. OC 1593–1594; cf. Diod. Sic. 4.63.4. See n. 51.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

100

mills

P.Oxy. 3531, in which Heracles addresses Peirithous (“son of Ixion”), may also come from this conversation. Ἰξίονος πα̣[ῖ, πο]λ̣λ̣ὰ̣ δ[ ̣ εἶδον λόγῳ τ᾿ ἤ̣κουσα [ οὐδ᾿ ἐγγὺς οὐδέν᾿ ᾐ[σθόμην τῇ σῇ πελάζο̣ντ᾿ ἀλ[λδυσπραξίᾳ τοὺς π[ σκῆψιν τίν᾿ ἢ τίν᾿ [ ἄτης ἀπρούπτως .[ Son of Ixion, many … have I seen and heard told … (but? I have learned) of no one (ever) closely approaching your (misfortune); but in harshness of outcome (you far surpass) those … what excuse of what … (for?) ruin unforeseeably.54 Like our supplemented l. 9 of the Minyas, this fragmentary text mentions ἄτη (l. 13), though also δυσπραξία (“misfortune”, l. 11). Peirithous may be seen either as deserving punishment for his crime or pity for his misfortune, and it is Heracles who must ultimately choose to save or condemn him. I suggest that Heracles’s choice was included in the earlier epic stories about Heracles and Peirithous in the underworld. Panyassis’s account of Heracles ran to some 9000 verses, and such an expansive poem would have offered plenty of room for some sort of conversation between Theseus and Heracles of a similar kind. Heracles had a choice of rescuing neither man,55 both,56 or, as in the most common version of the story, Theseus but not Peirithous.57 But whichever course of action Heracles chose, he must have used some moral judgement to decide who, if either, deserved rescue from eternal punishment. A dialogue between Heracles and Theseus or Peirithous could have made his judgement explicitly clear. We know from the extremely fragmentary Theseus epic of the late sixth century that Heracles and Theseus were friends and that Heracles helped Theseus kill the Amazons when they attacked Athens (Plut. Thes. 28.1): the Cerynian hind also seemed to have featured both in Pisander and the Theseis (Pisander, fr. 3 GEF = Σ Pind. Ol. 3.50b), so it is entirely plausible that Panyassis’s Heracles could have saved Theseus out of friendship and respect for a man he 54 55 56 57

Trans. Collard and Cropp 2008. As in Diod. Sic.4.63.4; Virg. Aen. 6.601–617. Hyg. Fab.79. Diod. Sic. 4.63.4, 26.1, 63.4; Apollod. Epit. 1.23–24; Plut. Thes. 35.1.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

civilizer, killer, glutton … moralist?

101

considered his friend, and quite plausible that he declined to save Peirithous. But in any case, here we would clearly see a Heracles who had to make some kind of explicit moral judgment. One last version of the meeting between Heracles, Theseus and Peirithous remains to be mentioned. Heracles’s greatest deed of visiting the underworld was almost certainly celebrated in a now lost epic poem, the Catabasis of Heracles, perhaps dating from the mid-sixth century. In his 1903 commentary on Aeneid 6, Eduard Norden first suggested that this poem lies behind the narrative of Apollodorus Bibl. 2.5.12, and scholars such as Hugh Lloyd-Jones58 have endorsed his suggestion. In Apollodorus’s account, Heracles meets with Theseus and Peirithous, who stretch out their hands to him. Heracles is amenable to rescuing both men, but after he successfully rescues Theseus and reaches out to Peirithous, the earth quakes and he has to let go. Evidently, Peirithous’s crime was considered so severe by the gods that Heracles’s good will to Theseus was not enough to save him, but even here, we see a Heracles making moral choices, even if he is then overruled by higher powers, and he is characterized as more than just a mighty hero with superhuman strength.

6

Conclusion

An active sense of moral propriety is not usually one of the first attributes we ascribe to the Heracles of early epic, although, as mentioned earlier in the paper, his life of labors is turned into an example of self-sacrifice on behalf of humanity and a moral example to that humanity. And yet I do believe that there is both value and validity in the search to find the moral Heracles even in early epic, given his greatness and the way that the Greeks tended to characterize their heroes as they developed. Heracles is a unique hero in many ways, especially because he is of the generation prior to the familiar heroes of Homer and the Trojan War. No one disputes that he is simply the greatest of all the heroes, and though he appears only sporadically in most extant early epic, his exploits are multiple and broadly known. The Greeks valued Heracles’s kind of physical prowess that could save humanity from all the dangers that beset it, but at least from Homer on, they also valued physical power joined to intellect. The classic expression of this is Iliad 9.343, where a heroic ideal of being both a doer of deeds and a speaker of words is expressed. If Heracles is the greatest of all the heroes, then it seems reasonable to imagine that he too, at least in some incar-

58

Lloyd-Jones 1967; cf. Robertson 1980.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

102

mills

nations, would be given the opportunity to have some degree of intellectual prowess as well, even if that prowess tends to be overshadowed by his spectacular physical power, as represented by the phrase commonly used to describe him in epic, the “Heraclean force” (βίη Ἡρακληείη).59 A sense of morality is not the characteristic of Heracles that is immediately to the fore when his character is assessed, but this is not to say that it was an element absent from his portrayal, even in early poetry.

Works Cited Bär, S. 2018. “A Gluttonous Strongman and Irascible Stoic: Heracles in Greek Epic from Homer to Nonnus.” Chapter given at The Norwegian Institute at Athens, 01.11.2018. Barker, E. and Christensen, J. 2021. “Epic.” In Ogden, ed. 283–300. Blanshard, A. and Stafford, E. 2020. The Modern Hercules: Images of the Hero from the Nineteenth to the Early Twenty-First Century. Leiden: Brill. Boardman, J. 1975. “Herakles, Peisistratos and Eleusis.” Journal of Hellenic Studies 95: 1–12. Bosman, P. 2021. “The Philosophical Tradition.” In Ogden, ed. 332–344. Collard, C. and Cropp, M. 2008. Euripides Fragments: Oedipus-Chrysippus; Other Fragments. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Deacy, S. 2021. “Heracles between Hera and Athena.” In Ogden, ed. 387–394. Galinsky, G.K. 1972. The Herakles Theme: The Adaptations of the Hero in Literature from Homer to the Twentieth Century. Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield. Horn, F. 2016. “‘Order from Chaos’: Ecphrasis and Meaning in Context in the PseudoHesiodic Shield of Heracles.” Hermes 144: 124–137. Lloyd-Jones, H. 1967. “Heracles at Eleusis.” Maia 19: 206–229. Reprinted in LloydJones, H. 1990. Greek Epic, Lyric and Tragedy: The Academic Chapters of Sir Hugh Lloyd-Jones. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 167–187. Mainz, V. and Stafford, E. eds. 2020. The Exemplary Hercules: From the Renaissance to the Enlightenment and Beyond (Metaforms: Studies in the Reception of Classical Antiquity 20). Leiden: Brill. Mason, H. 2015. The Hesiodic Aspis Introduction and Commentary on vv. 139–237. DPhil. Thesis. University of Oxford. Mills, S. 1997. Theseus, Tragedy, and the Athenian Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Moore, C. 2017. “Heracles the Philosopher (Herodorus fr. 14).” Classical Quarterly 67: 27–48. 59

Cf. Barker and Christensen 2021: 293n26.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

civilizer, killer, glutton … moralist?

103

Ogden, D. 2021a. “Introduction.” In Ogden, ed. xxi–xxxi. Ogden, D. ed. 2021b. The Oxford Handbook of Heracles. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Robertson, N. 1980. “Heracles’ Catabasis” Hermes 108: 274–299. Shapiro, H.A. 1983. “‘Hêrôs Theos’: The Death and Apotheosis of Herakles.” Classical World 77.1: 7–18. Stafford, E. 2012. Herakles. London: Routledge. Tsagalis, C. 2022. Early Greek Epic Fragments ii. Epics on Herakles: Kreophylos and Peisandros. (Trends in Classics Supplementary Volume 129.) Berlin: De Gruyter. Abbreviated as EGEF ii. West, M. 1966. Hesiod: Theogony (Edited with Prolegomena and Commentary). Oxford: Clarendon Press. West, M. 2003. Greek Epic Fragments. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

part 2 Heracles in Homer and Hesiod

∵

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

Heracles in Homer and Hesiod: Shared ID, Distinct Perspectives Apostolia Alepidou

1

Introduction*

Heracles’s presence in Homeric and Hesiodic poetry has received significant critical attention since antiquity, often as a remedy against the hero’s underrepresentation in Archaic epic.1 Until recently, however, scholarly discussion has been monopolized by questions pertaining to origin and originality: this started as a “which passages on Heracles are genuine and which later additions” debate in the commentaries of Alexandrian scholiasts and evolved into a search for the possible contents of pre-Homeric epics in twentieth-century neoanalytical thought.2 While the topic is still attractive to scholars,3 philological focus has in the last few years shifted towards an interpretative approach, elucidating the hero’s modus operandi in Archaic epic. Among such studies, the contributions of Bär4 and Barker/Christensen5 should be singled out for their detailed and fruitful analyses. Both sides, however, focus on Heracles’s selective treatment in each epic,6 downplaying the fact that as a secondary

* I am grateful to the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation for funding my research, conducted within the frame of the broader project that led to the completion of this volume, and to Christos Tsagalis, the director of the project. I am also grateful to Ineke Sluiter, the participants of the conference, and the anonymous referee of Brill for their instructive criticism. On matters of language, Ruth Scodel’s assistance is truly appreciated. 1 Apart from the Hesiodic Shield and a few fragments from the often collectively termed “Heracles epics” no opus magnum on the life and deeds of the Greek hero par excellence survives. 2 See Currie (this volume) pp. 34–38. 3 Lipka 2018: 211–212; Nesselrath 2020: 25–35; Nelson 2023: 187–189. 4 Bär (2018) studies the diachronic representation of Heracles in Greek epic from a narratological standpoint, examining among other issues his portrayal in the Iliad (33–44), Odyssey (45–52), and Theogony (53–62). 5 Barker and Christensen have primarily focused on Heracles’s depiction in the Homeric epics (2014: 249–277; 2020), through the lenses of interformularity and intertraditionality (2014: 250–251), while in their latest publication (2021) they attempt to reconstruct the hero’s fabula by collecting all references to him in Archaic epic. 6 Regrettably, without engaging in dialogue: Bär (2018) does not take into account the 2014 article of Barker and Christensen, who again do not respond to Bär in their subsequent publications (2020; 2021).

© Apostolia Alepidou, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004696617_006

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

108

alepidou

figure, a character “submerged”7 in Homeric and Hesiodic epic, Heracles displays a relatively high degree of uniformity. In this chapter, I argue that all three complete, non-Heracles Archaic epics that occasionally engage with the hero,8 that is the Iliad, Odyssey, and Theogony, provide answers to a common set of questions, employing the same collection of themes to create his heroic persona. These are: the labors and other heroic exploits; Hera’s hatred in contrast to Zeus’s love; Heracles’s helpers; his divine and mortal parentage; his association with Thebes; and his posthumous destiny. This approach differs from earlier attempts to reconstruct a Faktenkanon (as proposed by Kullmann) or fabula (as proposed by Barker and Christensen), as these require the consultation of other, often late sources.9 What Heracles’s pervasive presence in the three epics allows us to observe is, I propose, the shaping of his epic ID. Similar to a document of identification, this set of features attributed to Heracles in Homeric and Hesiodic poetry operates as his unique imprint, differentiating him from all other—past, present, or future—heroes. Some clarifications are required: this does not mean that individually each theme/component of Heracles’s epic ID exclusively applies to the epic genre; not surprisingly, all are deep-rooted in Heracles’s myth, and thus timeless, though certainly complemented by other components, as we move forward through time and genres.10 Nor does it mean that all three epics characterize the hero in the same way, negating his selective manipulation within each context; paradoxically, this one-by-one examination of how each theme operates within each poem will further elucidate such subtle nuances. Yet it reveals a striking urge not only to deal with a hero who does not organically belong to each poem’s individual ‘world’, but also to engage with particular aspects of his persona, as if it were a topic that could not be overlooked. In the following 7

8

9

10

I borrow the term “submerged” from Lulli (2014: 76–89), where it is used to denote the references to Heracles in the non-Heracles epics, without, however, adopting the implications on local/epichoric origins that she suggests. Although a non-Heracles epic, the Catalogue of Women has been excluded from my study both due to its not being a genuine work of Hesiod and to its fragmentary state, the latter issue unavoidably misguiding our perception of its engagement with Heracles. For Heracles in the Catalogue of Women, see Haubold 2005: 85–99 and Koning 2017: 99–114. For its attribution to Hesiod, see West 1985: 125–137; cf. Strauss Clay 2005: 25–34. Kullmann turns to Apollodorus to line up the Heracles-passages in the Iliad chronologically (1956: 25–35), while Barker and Christensen (2014: 253n18; 2021: 284–285) adopt Burgess’s method (for the reconstruction of Achilles’s fabula, 2009), which again presupposes the chronological arrangement of often vaguely reported episodes. For the evolution of Heracles’s figure in literature from Homer to modern times, see Galinsky 1972.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

heracles in homer and hesiod: shared id, distinct perspectives

109

pages I will examine how each theme—an indispensable part of the hero’s epic ID—operates within its contexts, comparatively exploring the tropes of redeployment of Heracles in the three epics.11 In the conclusion, I will offer some possible explanations for the underlying reasons behind such a homogeneous choice of themes.

2

The Labors and Other Heroic Exploits

In the Theogony,12 Heracles’s labors are mostly presented as single episodes in connection with individual creatures killed by the hero, enlisted in the catalogue of Phorcys’s and Ceto’s monstrous progeny.13 The first episode, Heracles’s confrontation with Geryoneus, is in fact mentioned twice, once in the context of the aforementioned catalogue (287–294) and then again in the concluding part of the poem (979–983), forming a ring around Heracles’s representation (Bär 2018: 61–62).14 In the first passage, the monstrous nature of Geryoneus (τρικέφαλον Γηρυονῆα, “three-headed Geryoneus”,15 287), as well as the emphatic mentions of Oceanus as a boundary crossed, with its otherworldly connotations (διαβὰς πόρον Ὠκεανοῖο, “after he passed over the strait of Oceanus”, 292; πέρην κλυτοῦ Ὠκεανοῖo, “beyond renowned Oceanus”, 294) highlight the heroic aspect of the endeavor. While Heracles’s motive is explicitly said to be Geryoneus’s cattle in both contexts, Eurystheus, the ultimate reason behind the 11 12

13

14

15

I use the terms “mention”, “reference”, and “appearance” interchangeably, identifying as such passages in which Heracles is explicitly mentioned through name or patronymic. Although I accept Janko’s proposed sequence Iliad–Odyssey–Theogony as far as the epics’ relative chronology is concerned (1982: 188–199), I begin my analysis of each theme-trait of Heracles’s epic ID from the Theogony, followed by the Iliad and the Odyssey, because the references to Heracles in this epic generally point to well-known stories with which the reader is well-acquainted. According to Gantz 1993: 381, only six labors were formed before 500 b.c.e., gradually complemented by the rest until, eventually, the fixed series of twelve became canonical. Pisander of Camirus, however, may have dealt with all known twelve labors in his Heracleia, a 7th century epic composition of which only a few fragments survive (see Tsagalis 2022, this volume p. 204, and test. 2 EGEF). Note, however, that this part of the Theogony is often considered a later addition, presumably composed by the author of the Catalogue of Women. It is however unclear where one composition ends and the other begins. West has argued that the original poem must have been concluded before line 900 (1966: 398–399) and has in fact regarded the repetition of the Geryoneus-episode as proof of the Catalogue’s different authorship (1966: 425). This, however, does not mean that its author (or the compiler who brought the two compositions together) could not have deliberately created such a link. All translations are mine.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

110

alepidou

enterprise, lurks only in the background, in a mention of Tiryns as the cattle’s final destination (292). Almost right after the entry pertaining to Geryoneus, Heracles is mentioned again, this time in connection with the Lernaean Hydra (313–318). Here, too, emphasis is put on the monstrosity of the beast, while Eurystheus’s role as the labor’s instigator is completely silenced. That the story was, however, intended to be perceived as part of a whole series of exploits becomes evident from its context: between Geryoneus and Hydra, two more monstrous creatures, Orthus and Cerberus, are presented, traditionally associated with Heracles and his labors.16 This contextual arrangement, together with the killing of the Nemean Lion mentioned a few lines later (326–332), complements the single collective reference to the hero’s labors in the poem (τελέσας στονόεντας ἀέθλους, “having performed his toilsome labors”, 951),17 evoking the traditional idea of the hero’s performance of many tasks. From all these instances, as the emphasis for the hero’s motive is transferred from his compulsory service to Eurystheus to the monstrosity of the creatures he kills, Heracles emerges as a benefactor of mankind.18 This is evidently seen in the entry pertaining to the Nemean Lion, where the animal is explicitly said to be causing harm to the local people (πῆμ’ ἀνθρώποις, “a calamity to men”, 329),19 but also lurks behind the hero’s role in Prometheus’s narrative (521–534).20 While this time benefiting an individual, Heracles’s aid acquires a universal impact as an extension of its context: he becomes the savior of the one who favors mankind.21 From this vantage point, Bär is right to observe that 16

17

18 19

20

21

Nelson highlights the use of φασί, “they say that”, in 306 and discusses its indexical capacity together with the Typhaon simile in Il. 2.780–785 (2023: 80–83), submitting that both passages hint at traditional narratives on Zeus’s battle with Typhaon. The noun ἄεθλος, the standard term denoting Heracles’s labors, is not in the Theogony reserved for Heracles: the same phrase occurs again in the poem, in connection with Jason’s exploits (994), but see (this chapter) p. 109n14. See Mills (this volume) pp. 89–90. Strauss Clay notes how the lion (κοιρανέων, “ruling over”, 331) overturns the natural order of man’s dominion over animals (2003: 157–159). By killing it Heracles not only exterminates a pest, but also restores the cosmos. Heracles’s encounter with Prometheus is connected with his quest for the Apples of the Hesperides, also described in 333–336. Heracles is not mentioned there, but the fact that these lines are preceded by the Nemean Lion, concluding the list of Phorcys’s and Ceto’s genus, creates a strong ‘Heraclean’ context, see Philips 1978: 437. In the Theogony Prometheus’s aid to the human race is summarized in the Mecone story (535–561) and the theft of fire that follows (562–570). Heracles’s involvement has been, however, suspected as an interpolation, on the grounds that in 615–616 Prometheus is clearly depicted as still bound. To solve this problem, West proposed that Heracles’s intervention is here restricted to the killing of the eagle and does not include Prometheus’s unbinding, as in later literature (1966: 173). I suggest, however, that the verb ἐλύσατο, used

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

heracles in homer and hesiod: shared id, distinct perspectives

111

in the Theogony Heracles is a reflection of Zeus, a projection of the god into the future, bringing stability to the unstable cosmos (Bär 2018: 59–62).22 It is thus not coincidental that for Hesiod Heracles’s heroic career concludes right after the completion of his labors. The poem is not engaged with any of the so-called parerga. As these are generally related to martial expeditions, they pertain to a Homeric aspect of heroism, oriented toward human experience, and thus incompatible with the cosmic dimension and divine output of the Theogony. Contrary to the Theogony, the Iliadic presentation of Heracles as warrior and city-sacker outweighs the references to his labors, a theme which, apart from a single mention of the fetching of Cerberus (8.357–380), arises only allusively in scattered mentions of Eurystheus23 and the occasional employment of ἀθλέω vocabulary.24 References to martial exploits of the hero are pervasive in the poem: the first description of Heracles as a sacker of cities (πέρσας ἄστεα πολλά, “having conquered many cities”, 2.660) comes in the catalogue of ships, where the troops of Tlepolemus, Heracles’s son, are presented (2.653–670), followed by those of his grandchildren from Thessalus (2.676–680). In these two cases, the theme of city-sacking is combined with the establishment of Heracleid dynasties as a result of the hero’s wanderings. Most common, however, are the mentions of Heracles’s sack of Troy during the kingship of Laomedon,25 a story parallel to the Iliadic plot, which becomes a leitmotif,26 frequently evoked as it

22

23

24

25 26

metaphorically in 528 with the noun δυσφροσυνάων, (“unbound him from his troubles”) strongly hints at the act of unbinding through its original meaning “to unbind, loosen”. Bär reads this as an inversion of Heracles’s negative representation in the Odyssey (2018: 57). Based on the one-on-one thematic comparison, however, I believe that what we observe here is thematic manipulation, permitted by the already multiform persona of the hero. Eurystheus’s name comes up twice, once mentioned by the narrator, when he describes Periphetes’s killing by Hector (15.629–644), occasioned by the fact that the victim was the son of Eurystheus’s messenger to Heracles, and then again in character speech, when Agamemnon narrates the birth of Heracles in his Ate parable (19.90–133). On the use of this diction in the speeches of Zeus and Athena, see Il. 15.30 (καὶ πολλά περ ἀθλήσαντα, “and having gone through many struggles/ having performed many labors”) and Il. 8.362 (τειρόμενον σώεσκον ὑπ’ Εὐρυσθῆος ἀέθλων, “I have repeatedly saved him as he suffered while struggling/performing his labors under Eurystheus’s command”) respectively. For the semantics of ἄεθλος/ἀθλέω in Homeric poetry, see Finkelberg 1995: 1–14. See Porter 2014 for all the references to Laomedon’s kingship in the Iliad and their relation to an alleged Olympiomachia, possibly alluded to elsewhere in the poem, too. Bär (2018: 40–43) is right to underscore that the exceptional use of the verb ἐξαλαπάζω in 14.251 and in 5.642 in reference to Heracles’s sack of Troy, elsewhere reserved for the forthcoming sack of the city by the Achaeans, creates a verbal bond between the two events.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

112

alepidou

is in the main narrative27 as well as in character speech.28 This episode is complemented by two other relevant stories, Heracles’s attacks on Cos and Pylos, both of which are vaguely reported in the poem: Hypnos (14.242–262) and Zeus (15.14–31) hint at the hero’s adventures on Cos, without specifying what exactly he did there. Nevertheless, the association of the island with Heracles must have triggered the story in the audience’s minds.29 In the case of Pylos, violence is more evident; according to Nestor, Heracles had “brought harm” (ἐκάκωσε, 11.690) to his land killing its best men, among whom his eleven brothers (11.689– 693). Pylos is again linked to Heracles—though this time elusively—in Dione’s consolatory speech to Aphrodite (5.395–397): the hero is said to have wounded Hades with an arrow there, on an unspecified occasion. The fact that this is done “among corpses” (ἐν Πύλῳ ἐν νεκύεσσι, 5.397) betrays a battle context,30 though the exact circumstances remain unclear.31 The preference for these aspects of Heracles’s persona in the Iliad is easily justified: the poet brings forth the hero’s dexterity in war, his savage heroism, his search for booty and κλέος, his ruinous reaction to his prize-deprivation, his testing of boundaries when challenging the gods, all major themes of his epic, embodied as they are by Achilles (and other heroes; see below). Heracles’s sack

27

28

29 30

31

Il. 20.144–152, where the narrator recounts the building of a wall on the Trojan coast as a means of protection for the hero, back when he rescued Hesione, Laomedon’s daughter, from a sea beast. On the wall as a literary device linking Troy’s past and present, see Eisenfeld (this volume) pp. 164–187. Il. 5.628–654, in the context of the duel between Tlepolemus and Sarpedon (Kelly 2010: 259–276 discusses this interesting vignette in detail, emphasizing the rhetorical failure of its protagonists and its metapoetic ramifications); Il. 14.242–268 and 15.14–33, within the speeches of Hypnos and Zeus in the broad context of the apate episode, both referring to Heracles’s triumphant departure from Troy. Heracles’s adventure on Cos is the main subject of the fragmentary epic Meropis, see frs. 1–6 PEG. On Heracles on Cos in the Iliad and beyond, see Scodel (this volume) pp. 63–86. Note that, without specifying whether these two happened on the same occasion, in the previous lines (Il. 5.393–394) Dione also describes Hera’s wounding by Heracles in battle terms (Il. 5.393): the phrase κατὰ μαζὸν ὀϊστῷ (“on the breast with an arrow”) echoes κατὰ μηρὸν ὀϊστῷ (“on the thigh with an arrow”), a formula employed in Iliadic battle scenes (Il. 11.662; 810; 16.27). Ancient critics were divided: the D scholium on Il. 11.689 reads the passage as an allusion to Heracles’s war against the Pylians, while Aristarchus interprets ἐν Πύλῳ not as a placename, but as a reference to the gates of Hades; see the bT scholium on Il. 5.395. Modern critics are equally perplexed: Willcock 1964: 141–154 has argued that this story was invented by the poet to fit Dione’s paradigmatic purposes. However, Heracles’s wounding of Hades is attested in other sources, too, see Sekita 2018: 1–9; Stamatopoulou 2017: 927n21. See also †West 2018: 275–278, who detects Near Eastern parallels for Heracles’s assault against the god of Death.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

heracles in homer and hesiod: shared id, distinct perspectives

113

of Troy provides an excellent opportunity for these attributes to be displayed, but the peripheral cases from which Heracles emerges as an exceptional citysacker are also analogous to the Iliadic depiction of Achilles: the hero brags of having sacked twenty-three cities in his career (9.328–329), among them Andromache’s homeland (6.414–424), and Scyros (9.668), where—in Heraclean style—he has left male offspring (19.326; 332). In fact, scholars have long noticed that Heracles’s representation in the Iliad is molded through Achilles, for whom Heracles functions as a model, but the opposite practice, Achilles’s acquisition of Heraclean traits, is also open to interpretation.32 Nagy, for example, has persuasively shown how Heracles, the Greek proto-hero, evolved into two distinct heroic types, embodied by Achilles and Odysseus (2005: esp. 78–79 and 86–89).33 In any case, the fact that Heracles is textually intertwined with other characters, too, renders him the go-to hero for parallelisms and comparisons. Tlepolemus does this in full consciousness, using his father’s name as proof of his own value; the poet has Dione assimilate Diomedes to Heracles, recalling the latter’s assaults against immortals after the former engages in the same activity; and Nestor subtly measures his youthful exploits against Heracles’s, drawing a picture of an idealized and exaggerated heroism. As a result, the web of associations is more complex than the formulation “Heracles versus Achilles” implies. For example, Nestor, who reserves Heracles’s level of prowess for himself, also links the hero with Achilles: by commemorating his eleven brothers slaughtered by Heracles at the sack of Pylos, he alludes to Achilles’s murder of Andromache’s seven brothers during his raid against their hometown (6.421–422). The Odyssey, following the Iliadic practice, expands Heracles’s accomplishments beyond his labors, without, however, dwelling on his warlike exploits. The poem does not recognize any other πτολίπορθος, “city-sacker”, apart from Odysseus,34 praising Heracles for other achievements: his labors, as well as his excellence in archery and hunting. To begin with the labors, the notion of Heracles as a suffering hero, arising from the labors-theme, is in the Odyssey directly associated with the epic’s protagonist. In the Nekyia, Heracles’s eidolon 32 33

34

On Achilles’s identification with Heracles in the Iliad, see Barker and Christensen 2014: 269–276. It is interesting that the epithet θυμολέων, “lion-hearted”, which may have originally been a typical epithet of Heracles (Heubeck and Hoekstra 1990: 93 on Od. 11.267b), is used to link the hero with Achilles in the Iliad (Heracles 5.639; Achilles 7.228) and Odysseus in the Odyssey (Heracles 11.267; Odysseus 4.724, 814); see Menkes 1978: 5. On the lion-like connotations bestowed on Achilles and Odysseus through Heracles, see Wilson 2002: 233–234. The epithet is reserved for Odysseus (Od. 8.3; 9.504; 9.530; 14.447; 16.442; 18.356; 22.283; 24.119).

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

114

alepidou

recalls with indignation the time he was performing tasks commanded by a lesser man (χαλεποὺς ἐπετέλλετ’ ἀέθλους, “commanded me to perform difficult tasks/labors”, 11.622), and, singling out the fetching of Cerberus from the underworld, links his wretched past to Odysseus’s present situation (σὺ κακὸν μόρον ἡγηλάζεις, | ὅν περ ἐγὼν ὀχέεσκον ὑπ᾽ αὐγὰς ἠελίοιο, “you are suffering a cruel destiny, like the one I suffered beneath the light of the sun”, 11.618–619). Though Odysseus remains silent, as if modestly accepting Heracles’s analogies with his own fate, the fact that he is actually the one quoting the hero gives away his intention to be equated with him (Karanika 2011: 2–6). As a matter of fact, the terms ἄεθλοι and ἀθλέω are in the Odyssey appropriated by Odysseus (Finkelberg 1995: 7–10): when his prowess is questioned on Scheria, the hero resorts to ἀθλέω vocabulary to describe his athletic talent, evoking Heracles, who is in fact mentioned a few lines later (8.214–233). Similarly to the labors, the themes of archery and hunting are employed again in relation to Odysseus, particularly recalling the mnesterophonia episode: as Karanika has noted, the horrendous gaze of Heracles’s eidolon (δεινὸν παπταίνων, “dreadfully looking about”, 11.608), as he enters the scene in Hades with a full archery apparatus, matches that of the epic’s protagonist when killing his opponents, in 24.179 (2011: 11–12).35 But not only Odysseus resembles Heracles: the havoc among the dead souls roaming around the hero’s eidolon (11.605–606) resembles the situation at Odysseus’s palace after his unexpected attack against the suitors (24.184–186). Heracles’s link to boar hunting, as it arises again in the Nekyia, in the description of his baldric (ἄρκτοι τ᾽ ἀγρότεροί τε σύες χαροποί τε λέοντες, “wild bears, fierce boars, and lions”, 11.611) recalls Odysseus’s engagement with the same activity in the famous Parnassus digression (19.393–466). This common link to boar hunting, a sport reserved only for a few,36 elevates Odysseus to Heracles’s level, guaranteeing the successful outcome of the mnesterophonia, to which Odysseus’s hunting narrative alludes.37 Allusions to the same episode also abound in the digression on Odysseus’s bow (21.11–41), another context in which Heracles appears. While there is no direct association of the hero with archery there, he is said to have 35

36

37

See also Ready 2010: 133–157, who associates Heracles’s portrayal in the underworld with a reference to how Odysseus roamed Ithaca with his own bow, acquired by Iphitus (Od. 21.41: φόρει δέ μιν ἧς ἐπὶ γαίης, “he used to carry it on his own land”). The only other case of boar hunting described in the Homeric epics is Meleager’s killing of the Calydonian boar in Il. 9.529–599. The theme, however, does often occur in similes, see Lonsdale 1990: 74; Ready 2011: 252–253. The killing of the boar in Od. 19.452–453 alludes to Odysseus’s shot against Antinous in Od. 22.15–16, as these are the only passages in the poem in which the ἀκωκή (“the point of the weapon”) penetrates and emerges from the victim’s body.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

heracles in homer and hesiod: shared id, distinct perspectives

115

brutally killed Iphitus, son of the famous archer Eurytus and former owner of Odysseus’s bow, eventually used as the murder weapon against the suitors.38 It is, however, interesting to note that, as the belt’s ekphrasis goes on, the scales are tipped in favor of Odysseus. The engraving of battle scenes and murders (ὑσμῖναί τε μάχαι τε φόνοι τ’ ἀνδροκτασίαι τε, “fights and battles, murders and slaughters”, 11.612), other fields in which Heracles excels, appalls Odysseus, who wishes that no such item would be fashioned again (μὴ τεχνησάμενος μηδ’ ἄλλο τι τεχνήσαιτο | ὃς κεῖνον τελαμῶνα ἑῇ ἐγκάτθετο τέχνῃ, “if only he hadn’t made it and wouldn’t make anything like this again, the man who artfully fashioned that baldric”, 11.613–614). Odysseus’s disapproval carries strong metapoetic connotations; Odysseus’s epic violence expressed in Heraclean or Achillean39 terms is rejected and replaced by the concept of successful nostos (Barker and Christensen 2014: 277).40 From this vantage point, Odysseus’s earlier unwillingness to compare himself to Heracles and by extension to men of old (ἀνδράσι δὲ προτέροισιν ἐριζέμεν οὐκ ἐθελήσω, “I do not wish to compete against men of older generations”, 8.223) proves to be a specious claim. In reality, a well-concealed sense of Odysseus’s superiority underlies all references to Heracles in the poem.

3

Hated by Hera, Loved by Zeus

One of the most common themes shaping Heracles’s identity is Hera’s enmity towards him, in contrast to Zeus’s care and support. In the Theogony, the two opposing but complementary aspects of this relationship occur separately, in different contexts. Hera’s hatred is stated twice, in connection to the Lernaean Hydra (ἣν θρέψε θεὰ λευκώλενος Ἥρη | ἄπλητον κοτέουσα βίῃ Ἡρακλείῃ, “nurtured by the white-armed goddess Hera, who deeply hated Heracles”, 314–315) and the Nemean Lion (τόν ῥ’ Ἥρη θρέψασα, “this, nurtured by Hera”, 328), both of which are said to have been raised by the goddess against the hero. Zeus’s support is manifest in the story of Prometheus. Zeus, who is responsible for Prometheus’s punishment (535–570), permits Heracles’s intervention, not out of pity for the distressed Titan, but in order to increase his son’s glory among men (ὄφρ’ Ἡρα-

38

39 40

On this proleptic function of Odysseus’s bow, see Andersen 2012: 148–149. On the Odyssean references to Iphitus/Eurytus and the fragmentary epic Oechalias Halosis, see (this chapter) p. 118n48. The relationship between this passage and the ekphrasis on Achilles’s shield in Iliad 18 has long been noticed; see Heubeck and Hoekstra 1990: 115 on Od. 11.609–614. Cf. Alden 2017: 62–63, for whom Odysseus’s abhorrence pertains to Heracles’s eidolon as a fictional character within the context of the Odyssey.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

116

alepidou

κλῆος Θηβαγενέος κλέος εἴη | πλεῖον ἔτ’ ἢ πάροιθεν ἐπὶ χθόνα πολυβότειραν, “so that the fame of Heracles, sprung from Thebes, would become greater than it was on all-nourishing Earth”, 530–531). By not bringing the gods in direct opposition, Hesiod keeps Hera’s assaults against Heracles on a lower scale, never actually affecting the already established reign of Zeus. In the Iliad, Hera’s enmity and Zeus’s affection for Heracles form a thematic pair, a single point comprised of two contradictory parts, evoked almost exclusively in the context of the apate episode41 and in Agamemnon’s Ate parable (19.90–133). By disclosing Zeus’s and Hera’s clashing feelings through their own words, the poet of the Iliad straightforwardly presents the topic, while by emphasizing their continuous interventions in the hero’s life, he sets a precedent for the regulating acts of Iliadic gods in general. Outside this group, the “hated by Hera—loved by Zeus” theme appears only once in the Iliad, in a speech by Achilles, where it acquires a rather personal tone. Even Heracles, says Achilles, most loved by Zeus (φίλτατος ἔσκε Διὶ Κρονίωνι ἄνακτι, “he was dearest to lord Zeus, son of Cronus”, 18.118), could not escape death; his doom was decreed by destiny and realized by Hera (ἀλλά ἑ μοῖρα δάμασσε καὶ ἀργαλέος χόλος Ἥρης, “but he succumbed to his fate and to the painful wiles of Hera”, 18.119). Right before reentering the battle, Achilles not only associates himself with the paramount hero but also foreshadows the role that an instigator-god, namely Apollo, will play in his own death. Though this lies outside the dramatic time of the poem, the parallelism is corroborated by the similar words Patroclus, Achilles’s alter ego, utters before meeting his death (ἀλλά με μοῖρ’ ὀλοὴ καὶ Λητοῦς ἔκτανεν υἱός, “my deadly fate and Leto’s son killed me”, 16.849).42 While in the Iliad Heracles’s death is an outcome of Hera’s enmity, in the Odyssey his presence in the underworld is disassociated from the goddess (Dova 2012: 73). Heracles’s eidolon speaks of his hardship during his service to Eurystheus but does not seize the opportunity to hold Hera responsible for his troubles and pains. In fact, this silence becomes all the more interesting considering the fact that the epic builds on an analogous theme in regard to its protagonist, the “prosecuted by Poseidon–supported by Athena” theme. What could have afforded a common point between the conversing figures in Hades

41 42

In the dialogue between Hypnos and Hera before the seduction scene (Il. 14.242–262; 14.263–268) and in Zeus’s speech to his wife right after (Il. 15.27–29). Although he does not associate the two Iliadic passages directly with each other, †West (2018: 274–275) reads Achilles’s comment on Heracles’s death as a motif transferred to the Iliad from the Gilgamesh epic, through an unattested epic on Heracles. Behind Achilles’s words, he reconstructs a similar lament of Heracles for Iolaus, going back to that of Gilgamesh’s for Enkidu.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

heracles in homer and hesiod: shared id, distinct perspectives

117

is silenced to Odysseus’s advantage: by suppressing the tests Hera put Heracles through, Odysseus’s adventures caused by Poseidon are rendered unparalleled and thus all the more challenging, adding to the hero’s value.

4

Heracles’s Helpers

Athena’s patronage is another standard element of Heracles’s identity. In the Theogony, the hero is said to have slain the Lernaean Hydra under her guidance (βουλῇσιν Ἀθηναίης, “by the plans of Athena”, 318), assisted also by his nephew, Iolaus (σὺν ἀρηιφίλῳ Ἰολάῳ, “with Iolaus, dear to Ares”, 317). This is the only reference to Iolaus in the three epics, though he was an integral part of Heracles’s mythology.43 In fact, line 317 where Iolaus is mentioned stands out for another reason: it begins with the hapax legomenon Ἀμφιτρυωνιάδης, “son of Amphitryon”, which again is the only place in the Theogony where Amphitryon is mentioned. Through this double mention of Iolaus and Amphitryon, Hesiod condenses Heracles’s kinship with mortal men into a single line, acknowledging the human side of the hero without further elaborating on it, contrary as it is to the scope of his poem. In the Iliad, Athena’s constant support of Heracles is declared by the goddess herself. In a speech to Hera, she claims that not only did she rescue the hero multiple times (πολλάκις … σώεσκον, “I have saved him many times”, 8.362– 363) when in despair (κλαίεσκε πρὸς οὐρανόν, “he repeatedly cried for help to the sky”, 8.364), but also accompanied him during his most dangerous endeavor, his katabasis to Hades, from where he would not have been able to return safely without her help (οὐκ ἂν ὑπεξέφυγε Στυγὸς ὕδατος αἰπὰ ῥέεθρα, “he wouldn’t have escaped the steep-dripping waters of Styx”, 8.369). Elsewhere the narrator affirms her crucial agency, attributing to her the initiative to construct a protective barrier on the Trojan coast to ward off the κῆτος (20.144–152). In the Iliad, Athena’s relationship with Heracles complies with the poem’s concept of divine patronage; naturally expanded to his later exploits on Troy, more relevant as they are to the poem, the “Athena helps Heracles” theme alludes to the various interventions of the goddess in favor of her Achaean protégés (Achilles, Diomedes, Odysseus). Yet for the Iliadic Heracles, his harmonious bond with Athena does not define his relationship with gods in general. Dione discloses that Hera and 43

Probably of great antiquity, too, see †West 2018: 270. Barker and Christensen read Iolaus’s absence from the Homeric epics as a deliberate strategy to depict Heracles as a loner (2014: 276n119).

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

118

alepidou

Hades were wounded by the hero’s arrows at some point in the past (5.392– 397), commenting that this was typical of him (αἴσυλα ῥέζων, “doing evil deeds”, 5.403):44 described as a “wretched wrongdoer” (σχέτλιος ὀβριμοεργός, 5.403), Heracles is said to have generally “brought distress to gods with his bow” (τόξοισιν ἔκηδε θεούς, 5.404). Placed right after Diomedes’s transgression against the gods, Dione’s exemplum calls the poem’s audience to envisage the hero’s aristeia as a Heraclean feat.45 Through it, the goddess equates Aphrodite’s assaulter with Heracles,46 once more revealing the poem’s manipulation of the hero as a momentary model for its protagonists. Athena is mentioned as Heracles’s helper in the Odyssey, too, although this time accompanied by Hermes. As the eidolon of the hero states, the two gods helped him with his katabasis and the fetching of Cerberus (11.601–629). While the story is attested in the Iliad, too (8.366–369), Hermes is an addition of the Odyssey, perhaps hinting at a different version of the story. In any case, the choice of the poet to refer to both gods lessens the difficulty of Heracles’s endeavor compared to Odysseus’s, who not only ventured to the world of the dead unaided (Danek 1998: 249–250) but also secured a safe return to earth, unlike Heracles’s eidolon, destined to stay in Hades (Gazis 2018: 216).47 As for Heracles’s antagonistic relationship with several gods in the Iliad, this only lurks in the background when Odysseus mentions that Heracles did not hesitate to compete against them (οἵ ῥα καὶ ἀθανάτοισιν ἐρίζεσκον περὶ τόξων, “they [sc. Heracles and Eurytus] competed even against gods in archery”, 8.225).48 44

45 46 47

48

The same phrase is employed in Achilles’s battle with Scamander. Fighting against a rivergod was a heroic act attributed to Heracles, too (see Nagy 2005: 83), though none of the three epics refer to this topic. Barker and Christensen detect a consistent practice of mentioning Heracles in reference to violence and cruelty in character speech in the Iliad (2014: 263). The association of Heracles with Diomedes is taken up in the Hesiodic Shield; see Stamatopoulou 2017: 920–938. Although Odysseus’s underworld experience is not a katabasis stricto sensu, the whole episode is conceived as such, see Heubeck and Hoekstra 1990: 75–76. This particularly applies to 11.565–627, where the hero’s view is widened as if he is not only gazing into Hades from a trench. These lines were deemed an interpolation in antiquity, but modern scholars have also interpreted them as an indication of an actual switch in Odysseus’s location; see Heubeck and Hoekstra 1990: 111; Gazis 2018: 81n12. It is difficult to determine whether this is an actual reference to an event “recorded” in myth or a general expression for Heracles’s mastery as an archer. The ancient scholia accept Eurytus’s offense against Apollo in the following lines (see Pontani on Od. 8.224b), but this story is not attested elsewhere. In the fragmentary epic Oechalias Halosis attributed to Creophylus of Samos, as well as in later literary and artistic accounts, Eurytus and Heracles are linked to archery, but compete against each other, not some god, for the hand of Iole, Eurytus’s daughter; see Tsagalis 2022: 39. It is not clear if and how the

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

heracles in homer and hesiod: shared id, distinct perspectives

119

The true targets of Heracles’s violence in the Odyssey are mortals: Iphitus suffers an undeserved death at the hand of the hero, who defied the laws of hospitality and murdered his guest (21.11–41). This is again not without relevance to Odysseus’s own characterization: Heracles’s killing of Iphitus mirrors the violent death of Penelope’s suitors, entertained as they are at Odysseus’s palace, yet the negative depiction of Heracles as a wrongdoer stands in contrast with Odysseus’s just cause.49

5

Divine and Mortal Parentage

In the Theogony, Amphitryon’s paternity of Heracles is suppressed, expressed only once through the hapax legomenon Ἀμφιτρυωνιάδης (317). This is not a mere coincidence: in the poem that exalts Zeus and presents the different stages leading to the establishment of his reign, it would be inappropriate to recall his erotic antagonists, all the more so when referring to Heracles, whose exploits are presented from a cosmic/divine perspective. On the other hand, Alcmene’s maternity is rather emphasized (526, 943–944, 950). While defining a hero through his mother’s name is a rare practice in epic, applied almost exclusively to heroes fathered by Zeus (West 1966: 315, 431), the wordplay between Ἀλκμήνη and ἄλκιμος in the formula Ἀλκμήνης καλλισφύρου ἄλκιμος υἱός, “the powerful son of beautiful-ankled Alcmene”, employed twice, in 526 and 950, promotes the hero’s identification with his mother (Joyal 1991: 185). Equally frequent are the mentions of Zeus as the hero’s father, firstly in 316 where the much common formula Διὸς υἱός “son of Zeus”, reserved for Heracles and Apollo in epic (West 1966: 431), occurs, and then again in 528–532 and 943–944, where the father-son relationship is periphrastically declared. This

49

Odyssean passage, as well as the story about Iphitus in 21.22–30, resonate with this narrative (Tsagalis recognizes a Thessalian version of the Oechalian tale behind these passages, 2022: 40–42); Crissy underscores that Creophylus’s archery contest evokes the bow-test set for Penelope’s hand (1997: 47–49). In Odysseus’s rhetoric, however, I find Andersen’s suggestion that the names of Eurytus and Heracles are used to impress his Phaeacian audience and, by extension, the poem’s audience, more plausible (2012: 143–146). As for a link between this passage and Dione’s exempla (Il. 5.381–416), in which Heracles is said to have attacked Hera and Hades, this seems again improbable due to thematic incompatibility (ἐρίζω does not necessarily hint at a battle context). On these grounds, Strauss Clay describes Heracles’s relationship with Odysseus as parallel and antagonistic (1983: 92–95); Crissy discusses the moral implications of this parallelism for Odysseus (1997: 53), though Bär rejects this interpretation (2018: 50–51).

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

120

alepidou

balance between mortal and divine genes inherited by Heracles on one hand fits well into the notion of hybridism defining a large group of creatures— among which demigods—and on the other hand underscores the close relationship between gods and men in bygone times, both fundamental for the Theogony. In the Iliad Heracles’s divine parentage outweighs his mortal parents. References to him as the son of Zeus are ubiquitous in the poem, found in the narrative50 as well as in character speech.51 Amphitryon is mentioned only once (πάϊς Ἀμφιτρύωνος, “son of Amphitryon”, 5.392), in Dione’s consolatory speech to Aphrodite. In this context, as already discussed, the hero is depicted negatively, as one who lacks piety. Thus Dione’s rhetorical choice to disassociate him from his divine legacy seems rather pointed. As for Alcmene, she is mentioned twice, by Zeus in the catalogue of his lovers (14.312–328), and by Agamemnon in his Ate story (19.90–133). Both passages deal with Heracles’s birth, and therefore the reference to his mother is expected, although her juxtaposition with Hera (she is Zeus’s interlocutor in both contexts) makes things more complex. Bringing the two women in direct opposition stresses Hera’s hatred towards Alcmene and, by extension, her illegitimate son, while echoing her Iliadic role as the main obstacle Zeus must overcome to achieve his plans in the here and now of the epic. In the Odyssey Heracles’s divine and mortal parentage are in balance, though at certain points emphasis is put on one of the two. Both are recalled when Odysseus sees Alcmene and Megara in the underworld: Alcmene, although introduced as Amphitryon’s wife, is said to have borne Heracles to Zeus (11.266– 268), while in Megara’s description, Amphitryon takes the place of Zeus as the hero’s father.52 In the same environment, Heracles’s talking eidolon is selfdefined as Zeus’s son (11.620), creating an antithesis between his genealogy and his present condition. Outside the Nekyia, the prime narrator also evokes Heracles’s origin from Zeus, in the unflattering context of Iphitus’s story (21.11– 41); when seen as committed by Zeus’s own son, Heracles’s nefarious murder becomes all the more loathsome and impious, adding to the hero’s unflattering depiction.

50 51 52

Before Tlepolemus’s and Sarpedon’s duel in Il. 5.631. In the words of Athena (8.357–380); Hypnos (14.242–262); Hera (14.263–268); Zeus himself (14.312–328; 15.4–31); and Agamemnon quoting Hera-Zeus (19.90–133). This disassociation from Zeus, especially in this subterrestrial contest, may serve as an indication of Megara’s murder by Heracles. On a similar idea, see Alden 2017: 106.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

heracles in homer and hesiod: shared id, distinct perspectives

6

121

Theban Origin, Theban Setting

In the Theogony Heracles’s vagrant aspect is manifest in his peregrinations from Tiryns and Lerna to Nemea, and from Tartarus to Oceanus. While the hero wanders amidst human and non-human territories, Thebes is the only option Hesiod, himself a Boeotian, offers regarding his ethnicity.53 The epithet Θηβαγενής (530), a hapax legomenon applied to the hero, though his only explicit association with Thebes in the poem, is an imposing manifestation of his origin. Elsewhere, when it comes to Heracles, we find Thebes lurking in the background: lines 306–332, where the hero features prominently as the slayer of dreadful creatures, are taken up by the destruction brought to the people of Thebes by the Sphinx (Καδμείοισιν ὄλεθρον, “destruction to the Cadmeans”, 326). Then again in 934–944 Heracles’s birth follows that of Dionysus, whose Theban origin is recalled in his mother’s patronymic (Καδμηίς, “daughter of Cadmus”, 940).54 In catalogic poetry, where much depends on contextual arrangement, Hesiod aptly hides these Theban resonances beneath their context, as he does also with some of the labors (Cerberus, Orthus, the Apples of the Hesperides), only indirectly associated with Heracles through their poignant positioning. In the Iliad, Heracles is again a vagrant, traveling from city to city (some of them well-known, such as Cos, Pylos, Troy, others more obscure, like Ephyra), reaching even places beyond the earthly borders (the underworld). As for his origin, the poem attributes Theban ethnicity to the hero,55 but also reveals his special bond with Mycenae: although not himself presented as an Argive, the fact that, according to Agamemnon’s Ate story, Eurystheus becomes king of Mycenae in Heracles’s place (19.124) reveals the hero’s close relation with the city. This geographical association is also evoked in Periphetes’s story (15.629– 644), located as it is again in Mycenae. That is certainly not without relevance to the wider context of the poem: the Argive leader of the Trojan expedition and his troops are directly associated with the paramount hero who in the past managed to sack the city, a connection that both parallels and adumbrates the auspicious outcome of their endeavor. 53

54 55

Cf. Kirk, who claims that the hero was always considered an Argive because of his parents’ descent, although he was born at Thebes (1975: 183). Expressing a similar opinion, Tsagalis is right to underscore that Heracles has no role in the Theban Cycle (2014: 240). It should be noted, however, that Heracles is mentioned in the Thebaid (fr. 7–8 PEG = 6 EGF = 11 GEF), though this must have been done in a digression or en passant. Heracles’s immortalization and marriage to Hebe is also preceded by Ariadne’s immortalization and marriage to Dionysus in Hes. Th. 947–953; see Bär 2018: 61. See the references to Heracles’s birth in Thebes in Il. 14.323–324 (followed as in the Theogony by the birth of Dionysus from Semele, again in Thebes) and Il. 19.98–99.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

122

alepidou

In the Odyssey, Heracles is only loosely attached to geographical locations.56 While his bond with Mycenae is implied in this epic, too, when the hero’s eidolon recalls his submission to Eurystheus (11.621–622), the Odyssey does not explicitly associate Thebes with Heracles; his appearance in the Nekyia, however, strongly resonates with his Theban identity. First, before his eidolon comes into the limelight, Heracles is mentioned twice in the catalogue of heroines, in a special context devoted to the Theban saga (11.260–280).57 In this vein, there may be a hint at Heracles’s connection with Thebes veiled under the presence of another Theban figure who plays an important part in the same context, namely Teiresias. Although the role of the seer in the Nekyia has been a controversial topic58 the fact that he is a character of the Theban tradition, imported into the Odyssey while absent from the rest of the Trojan Cycle,59 has not received enough critical attention. Teiresias features only in this episode in the epic, he bears no relation to Odysseus, and even if we try to justify his presence as a pretext for the whole necromanteia/katabasis test that Odysseus undergoes, his choice remains puzzling.60 If we now pay heed to the special position the figure of Heracles occupies among those who Odysseus sees and converses with in the Nekyia,61 along with the possible existence of a poem dealing with the hero’s own katabasis,62 then it becomes plausible that Teiresias is a figure that the saga of Heracles’s katabasis has bestowed on the Odyssey. Heracles, though himself unrelated to the Theban cycle, shares in fact a common link with the seer besides their origin. According to Pindar (Nem. 1.33–72), Teiresias 56

57 58

59 60 61 62

The location of Iphitus’s murder is unspecified (21.11–41), though generally understood as Tiryns, since Heracles is depicted as Iphitus’s host. As for his visit of Oechalia, this may be latent in the ethnic name Οἰχαλιεύς, employed for Eurytus in Od. 8.224, although it is debatable whether a single or two different cases of competing against gods are implied for Heracles and Eurytus in this context. Within this catalogue Penelope is also subtly evaluated against female heroines of other traditions; see Alden 2017: 103–112. The main problem lies in the fact that Teiresias does not inform Odysseus about his nostos, as he was asked, but about the adventures he will experience after his return to Ithaca; see the relevant discussion in Danek 1998: 214–220. Cf. Dova 2012: 44–45. Teiresias’s death is mentioned in Proclus’s summary of the Nostoi, yet the seer must have been confused with Calchas, whom we find in Apollodorus’s text; see West 2003: 154–155. Torres (2014: 339–356) addresses these problems and concludes that Teiresias must have been imported into the Odyssey from dactylic shamanic poetry. On the special features of Heracles’s speech see Karanika 2011: 8, in comparison with Santamaria Álvarez 2011: 25–44. See Robertson 1980; Danek 1998: 247–248; Gee 2020: 31–32. Dova argues that the meeting of Odysseus with Heracles originates from catalogue poetry on heroic katabaseis, where the two were naturally brought together, along with Theseus and Perithous, mentioned in the Nekyia, too (2012: 75–76).

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

heracles in homer and hesiod: shared id, distinct perspectives

123

was a neighbor of Amphitryon and, when Heracles strangled the serpents sent by Hera to his cradle, he was summoned to the palace and foretold what the future had in store for the hero, including his apotheosis. This is the first source that links the two figures, but it possibly reflects some earlier, local account, as the phrase ἀρχαῖον λόγον (“ancient story”, 34) and Pindar’s own Boeotian background suggest (Braswell 1992: 54–57). While the scarce information we have on Heracles’s katabasis does not allow us to move further, the consultation of a seer is a standard theme of heroic katabaseis in Near Eastern tradition.63 Along these lines, Heracles’s speech that concludes the episode would come as the poet’s allusion to his source.64

7

Deification and Mortality

Heracles’s deification is a salient marker of difference for the three epics. In the Theogony, Heracles gains immortality and joins the pantheon on Olympus after successfully completing his toilsome labors. He is there reconciled with Hera, marries her daughter Hebe, and spends his days by her side, “free from sorrow and ageless” (ἀπήμαντος καὶ ἀγήραος, 955). This “happy ending” comes in the final part of the poem and, although athetized already in antiquity,65 fits well into its context: Heracles’s ascent to Olympus verifies the establishment of Zeus’s authority, as does his marriage to Hera’s daughter, symbolizing his own—and his father’s—triumph over his rival (Bär 2018: 57–62). Another important observation is that the Theogony, adopting a god-oriented perspective, provides no information on how Heracles was uplifted to the heavens. The

63

64 65

Especially relevant is the role of Utnapishtim in the Gilgamesh epic; see López Ruiz, Karahashi, and Ziemann 2018. West 2018: 265–280, however, in his reconstruction of the hypothetical Heracles epic as the missing link between the epic of Gilgamesh and the Homeric epics does not dwell on this parallel; see also Currie (this volume) pp. 38–39. See Gee 2020: 32: “The presence of Herakles might be one ‘clue’ that signifies that the katabasis story originally belonged to a Herakles epic”. Apart from the Odyssey and the Theogony, the concept of Heracles as a god is also shared by the Catalogue of Women, where it comes up at least twice (fr. 25.26–33; 229.6–13 MW), though all three accounts were athetized by ancient critics. It is noteworthy that also the contexts in which Heracles’s apotheosis arises in these texts (the last part of the Theogony and the whole Nekyia), were also deemed to be later additions. Textual evidence and ancient testimonies thus converge to the lateness of Heracles’s deification, see West 1966: 417. The exact temporal point at which Heracles started being worshipped as a god is, however, uncertain, some postulating that this may have happened well before the sixth century; see Philips 1978: 437–439. On Heracles’s apotheosis in lost or fragmentary epics, see Holt 1992: 41–46.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

124

alepidou

poem, which generally suppresses Heracles’s mortal nature (his relationship with Amphitryon, his submission to Eurystheus) and its derogatory connotations, deems the medium of his deification, namely death, inappropriate and unfitting for the hero. The Hesiodic depiction of Heracles as a god is contradicted by the Iliad, which emphatically points to the hero’s mortality. The point is raised by Achilles, right before he resumes fighting: trying to console his mother for his swift-approaching death, Achilles recalls Heracles, for whom death was inescapable, too (18.98–126). Though Achilles’s reference to Heracles’s death fits his rhetoric, this discrepancy between Heracles’s post mortem destiny in the Iliad and other Archaic accounts has been often ascribed to the poem’s chronological precedence, placing its composition at a time before the inclusion of the hero’s apotheosis in his mythology. Others, however, see no essential disagreement: the fact that Heracles in the Iliad experiences death does not mean that he was deprived of immortalization. Nagy has extensively dwelt upon this notional difference (2005: 83–87), corroborating his approach with Sarpedon as an internal parallel: he, too, is a son of Zeus who meets death, but his immortalization is variously alluded to within the epic (1992: 138–140). In order to address this problem, we need to focus on Achilles. The Iliad does not credit its protagonist with an afterlife, although, as Burgess has shown, that was not necessarily the communis opinio at the time of its composition (2009: 98–110). Granting Heracles an afterlife would set an unwanted precedent for Achilles’s own posthumous destiny, weakening the dramatic effect of his swiftly approaching death.66 The emphasis on the inescapable mortality of Achilles, Sarpedon, and Heracles is in fact suspicious: if it was unanimously accepted at the time the poem was composed, then there would be no need for constant repetition.67 The text of the Odyssey as we have it promotes a dual concept on Heracles’s afterlife: the “real” (αὐτός, 11.602) Heracles lives happily ever after by the side of Hebe, while a projection of his is stranded in Hades. Regardless of their emendation history,68 lines 11.601–604 reveal an effort to compromise two essentially irreconcilable ideas, mortality and immortality.69 Chronology has 66 67

68 69

Cf. Dova 2012: 74, who claims that it is appropriate for Achilles to suppress Heracles’s “release from mortality”. There is also a metapoetic aspect to it: Heracles as a representative of a different genre is deprived of immortalization, destined to fade away together with this antagonistic tradition; see Barker and Christensen 2014: 273. The ancient scholia attribute the passage to a later poet, named Onomacritus; see Dindorf on Od. 11.602. While Nagy (2005: 83–85) mitigates the contradiction by proposing that Hades was

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

heracles in homer and hesiod: shared id, distinct perspectives

125

again been called to the rescue: together with his mortal nature in the Iliad, Heracles’s presence in the underworld indicates the hero’s mortality is the earlier tradition, only later complemented by the concept of his apotheosis due to its increasing popularity.70 This approach is, however, not fully satisfactory: iconographical evidence depicting Heracles on Olympus as Hebe’s husband can be traced back to the seventh century, turning in this case his eidolon into the poet’s invention, a literary device to make him part of Odysseus’s underworld experience without contradicting his deification (Dova 2012: 75). Leaving this debate aside, it is interesting to observe how this duality works in the context of the Odyssey, against the backdrop of the Theogony and the Iliad. When read against the Theogony, which exclusively dwells on Heracles’s afterlife on Olympus, the image of a deified Heracles enjoying married life is not irrelevant to Odysseus, who not only will soon be reunited with his wife and enjoy his “happy ending” (Andersen 2012: 150 and n40), but has also previously declined a “Heraclean afterlife” by rejecting Calypso. When read against the Iliad, it becomes significant that, while Achilles equates his own mortal fate with the hero (οὐδὲ γὰρ οὐδὲ βίη Ἡρακλῆος φύγε κῆρα, “not even Heracles escaped his deadly fate”, 18.117), Heracles’s parallelism with Odysseus—expressed through the latter’s mouth—pertains to their lot in life (καὶ σὺ κακὸν μόρον ἡγηλάζεις, “you are suffering a cruel destiny, too”, Od. 11.618). Once more, the poet of the Odyssey challenges the concept of death on the battlefield as the ultimate expression of heroism, using this time Heracles as a medium.

8

Conclusions

Similarly to artists who use the same raw material or color palettes, yet produce unique masterpieces through different mannerisms and combinations of colors, each poem projects a distinctive image of Heracles, fashioned through a common thematic agenda. In the Theogony, Heracles is the slayer of monsters, the offspring of almighty Zeus, who not only helps his father with the continuation of his reign, but also benefits mankind with his heroic exploits; in the

70

a transitional stage during the hero’s immortalization process, Verbanck-Piérard (2018: 169) points to the lack of material evidence in which Heracles is depicted as dead in Hades. Gee (2020: 31) submits that these lines are the result of an imposition of Orphic beliefs about the afterlife onto the Homeric epic.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

126

alepidou

Iliad, he is the alter ego of Achilles, though other heroes are also momentarily equated with him (Nestor, Diomedes, Agamemnon). He is also the object of dissent between Zeus and Hera, whose relevant conversations parallel their current conflict about the events at Troy. In the Odyssey, Heracles is subtly used as a figure for comparison with Odysseus, whose superiority over the greatest hero of all time is cleverly highlighted through carefully designed rhetorical and narrative techniques. This variation is important for the composition of Archaic epic, as it allows us to glimpse how multiformity could be achieved through the employment of a finite number of themes. In fact, Heracles affords an excellent example of this process, as he is an outsider, a “featured guest” who repeatedly appears in all three poems. As for the reasons behind the preference for these themes among Heracles’s all-encompassing mythology, the following observations can be made: a) as already acknowledged, all are core elements of Heracles’s mythical personality, and all pertain to key topics of heroic/theogonic narratives; b) some aspects of Heracles’s literary persona, such as his dimension as an ethical hero (indispensable later),71 are generally perceived as later evolutions. These may be absent because they had not been fully formed by the time the epics were composed; c) others, such as his gluttony and drunkenness, though definitely Archaic, are by definition excluded due to generic conventions. But there are still traits of his character and elements of his saga lying outside this standard set of themes, although they comply with the criteria of relevance, chronology, and “seriousness”. For example, his death caused by Deianeira would have worked well in the Odyssey, where Agamemnon and Clytemnestra are mentioned in similar terms, while his loss of Iole, won as a prize, could have paralleled Achilles’s loss of Briseis in the Iliad; even though the tales must have been available, they were not literarily exploited. Conversely, it is striking that all three epics provide their answers to a fixed set of questions regarding Heracles. Although the problem is destined to remain unresolved, the following remarks—and an assumption—can be made: a) this preoccupation with Heracles reveals his undeniable popularity at the time the epics were composed; b) this popularity must have been both the cause and the consequence of circulating narratives about Heracles; c) the standard themes comprising Heracles’s epic ID were important topics in those narratives, whether these should be perceived as tales, songs, or fully-fledged epics; and presumably d) the competition among those narratives and their poets, an element deeply rooted in oral epic, affected the Iliad, Odyssey and

71

See Mills (this volume) pp. 87–103.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

heracles in homer and hesiod: shared id, distinct perspectives

127

Theogony, which were in a sense “dragged into” a debate on “the most accurate” representation of Heracles. To conclude with a ring composition style épique, when dealing with Archaic epic, interpretative approaches will inevitably lead to questions of origin and originality.

Works Cited Alden, M. 2017. Para-Narratives in the Odyssey: Stories in the Frame. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Andersen, Ø. 2012. “Older Heroes and Earlier Poems: The Case of Heracles in the Odyssey.” In Andersen, Ø. and Haugh, D.T.T. eds. Relative Chronology in Early Greek Epic Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 138–151. Bär, S. 2018. Herakles im griechischen Epos. Studien zur Narrativität und Poetizität eines Helden. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. Barker, E. and Christensen, J. 2014. “Even Heracles Had to Die: Homeric ‘Heroism’, Mortality, and the Epic Tradition.” In Tsagalis, C. ed. 2014. Theban Resonances in Homeric Epic. Berlin: De Gruyter. 249–277. Barker, E. and Christensen, J. 2020. Homer’s Thebes: Epic Rivalries and the Appropriation of Mythical Pasts. Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies. Barker, E. and Christensen, J. 2021. “Epic.” In Ogden, D. ed. The Oxford Handbook of Heracles. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 284–300. Bernabé, A. 1996–2007. Poetae Epici Graeci: Testimonia et fragmenta.2 2 vols. [1st edn. of vol. i 1987]. Stuttgart: De Gruyter. Abbreviated as PEG. Braswell, B.K. 1992. A Commentary on Pindar Nemean One. Fribourg: Fribourg University Press. Burgess, J.S. 2009. The Death and Afterlife of Achilles. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Crissy, K. 1997. “Herakles, Odysseus, and the Bow. Odyssey 21.11–41.” The Classical Journal 93: 41–53. Danek, G. 1998. Epos und Zitat. Studien zu den Quellen der Odyssee. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Davies, M. 1988. Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Abbreviated as EGF. Dindorf, W. 1885. Scholia Graeca in Homeri Odysseam: ex codicibus aucta et emendata. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Dova, S. 2012. Greek Heroes in and out of Hades. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Finkelberg, M. 1995. “Odysseus and the Genus ‘Hero’.” Greece and Rome 42: 1–14. Galinsky, G.K. 1972. The Herakles Theme: The Adaptations of the Hero in Literature from Homer to the Twentieth Century. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

128

alepidou

Gantz, T. 1993. Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Gazis, G.A. 2018. Homer and the Poetics of Hades. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gee, E. 2020. Mapping the Afterlife: From Homer to Dante. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Haubold, J. 2005. “Heracles in the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women.” In Hunter, R. ed. The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women: Constructions and Reconstructions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 85–99. Heubeck, A. and Hoekstra, A. 1990. A Commentary on Homer’s Odyssey. Volume ii: Books ix–xvi. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Holt, P. 1992. “Herakles’ Apotheosis in Lost Greek Literature and Art.” L’Antiquité Classique 61: 38–59. Janko, R. 1982. Homer, Hesiod and the Hymns. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Joyal, M.A. 1991. “Hesiod’s Heracles. Theogony 526, 950.” Glotta 69: 184–186. Karanika, A. 2011. “The End of the Nekyia: Odysseus, Heracles, and the Gorgon in the Underworld.” Arethusa 44: 1–27. Kelly, A. 2010. “Hypertexting with Homer: Tlepolemus and Sarpedon on Heracles (Il. 5.628–698).” Trends in Classics 2: 259–276. Kirk, G.S. 1975. The Nature of Greek Myths. Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press. Koning, H. 2017. “Helen, Herakles, and the End of the Heroes.” In Tsagalis, C. ed. Poetry in Fragments: Studies on the Hesiodic Corpus and its Afterlife. Berlin: De Gruyter. 99– 114. Kullmann, W. 1956. Das Wirken der Götter in der Ilias: Untersuchungen zur Frage der Entstehung des homerischen “Götterapparats.” Berlin: Akademie-Verlag. Lipka, M. 2018. “Aretalogical Poetry: A Forgotten Genre of Greek Literature. Heracleids and Theseids.” Philologus 162: 208–231. Lonsdale, S. 1990. Creatures of Speech: Lion, Herding, and Hunting Similes in the Iliad. Stuttgart: Teubner. López Ruiz, C., Karahashi, F., and Ziemann, M. 2018. “They Who Saw the Deep: Achilles, Gilgamesh and the Underworld.” Kaskal 15: 85–108. Lulli, L. 2014. “Local Epics and Epic Cycles: The Anomalous Case of a Submerged Genre.” In Colesanti, G. and Giordano, M. eds. Submerged Literature in Ancient Greek Culture: An Introduction, Berlin: De Gruyter. 76–89. Menkes, M.S. 1978. Herakles in the Homeric Epics. Ph.D. Diss. The Johns Hopkins University. Merkelbach, R. and West, M.L. 1967. Fragmenta Hesiodia. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Abbreviated as M-W. Nagy, G. 1992. Greek Mythology and Poetics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Nagy, G. 2005. “The Epic Hero.” In Foley, J.M. ed. A Companion to Ancient Epic. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. 71–89.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

heracles in homer and hesiod: shared id, distinct perspectives

129

Nelson, T.J. 2023. Markers of Allusion in Archaic Greek Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nesselrath, H.G. 2020. “Heracles in Homer.” In Rengakos, A., Finglass P.J., and Zimmermann B. eds. More than Homer Knew—Studies on Homer and His Ancient Commentators. Berlin: De Gruyter. 25–35. Philips, E.C. 1978. “Heracles.” The Classical World 71: 431–440. Pontani, F. (2007–). Scholia Graeca in Odysseam. 4 vols. Up to date (i: scholia ad libros α–β [2007]; ii: scholia ad libros γ–δ [2010]; iιι: scholia ad libros ε–ζ [2015]; iv: scholia ad libros η–θ [2020]). Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura. Porter, A. 2014. “Reconstructing Laomedon’s Reign in Homer: Olympiomachia, Poseidon’s Wall, and the Earlier Trojan War.” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 54: 507–526. Ready, J.L. 2010. “Why Odysseus Strings his Bow.” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 50: 133–157. Ready, J.L. 2011. Character, Narrator, and Simile in the Iliad. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Robertson, N. 1980. “Heracles’ ‘Catabasis’.” Hermes 108: 274–300. Santamaria Álvarez, M.A. 2011. “Diálogos entre vivos y muertos en los poemas homéricos (Ilíada xxiii 65–107 y Odisea xi).” In Hernández, R.M. and Torallas Tovar, S. eds. Conversaciones con la Muerte: Diálogos del hombre con el Más Allá desde la Antigüedad hasta la Edad Media. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas. 23–48. Sekita, K. 2018. “Hades and Heracles at Pylos: Dione’s Tale Dismantled.” The Classical Quarterly 68: 1–9. Stamatopoulou, Z. 2017. “Wounding the Gods: The Mortal Theomachos in the Iliad and the Hesiodic Aspis.” Mnemosyne 70: 920–938. Strauss Clay, J. 1983. The Wrath of Athena: Gods and Men in the Odyssey. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Strauss Clay, J. 2003. Hesiod’s Cosmos. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Strauss Clay, J. 2005. “The Beginning and End of the Catalogue of Women and Its Relation to Hesiod.” In Hunter, ed. 25–34. Tsagalis, C. 2022. Early Greek Epic Fragments ii. Epics on Herakles: Kreophylos and Peisandros. Berlin: De Gruyter. Abbreviated as EGEF ii. Torres, J. 2014. “Teiresias, The Theban Seer.” In Tsagalis, C. ed. 2014. Theban Resonances in Homeric Epic. Berlin: De Gruyter. 339–356. Verbanck-Piérard, A. 2018. “Round Trip to Hades: Herakles’ Advice and Directions.” In Ekroth, G. and Nilsson, I. eds. Round Trip to Hades in the Eastern Mediterranean Tradition. Leiden: Brill. 163–193. West, M.L. 1966. Hesiod, Theogony: Edited with Prolegomena and Commentary. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

130

alepidou

West, M.L. 1985. The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women: Its Nature, Structure, and Origins. Oxford: Clarendon Press. West, M.L. 2003. Greek Epic Fragments. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Abbreviated as GEF. †West. M.L. 2018. “Gilgāmeš and Homer: The Missing Link?” In Audley–Miller, L.G. and Dignas, B. eds. Wandering Myths: Transcultural Uses of Myth in the Ancient World. Berlin: De Gruyter. 265–280. Willcock, M.M. 1964. “Mythological Paradeigma in the Iliad.” The Classical Quarterly 14: 141–154. Wilson, D.F. 2002. “Lion Kings: Heroes in the Epic Mirror.” Colby Quarterly 38: 231–254.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

Heracles in Hesiod Glenn W. Most

1

Introduction

In order to understand Heracles in Hesiod, we must begin with Heracles in Homer.1 This is not only because the available evidence seems to indicate clearly that the Homeric epics were formulated more or less in their transmitted written form rather earlier than the Hesiodic ones were.2 For the relation between Hesiod and Homer is not merely chronological. Instead, the two poetic traditions which culminated in the four extant epics from Archaic Greece were manifestly aware of one another and were closely intertwined with one another for a long period. The Homeric tradition, to be sure, tends to suppress the cosmogonic and theogonic elements of the Hesiodic one, though it occasionally allows itself unmistakable allusions to them (for example in the tales associated with Thetis and Ocean); and it usually avoids or reinvents the lengthy catalogues that are so prominent in Hesiod (and so, since Zenodotus, the catalogue of Nereids at Il. 18.39–49 has often been considered an interpolation). Hesiod, by contrast, does not bother to conceal his—partly polemical—dependence upon the Homeric tradition:3 for example, he explicitly includes the heroes of Homeric and similar epics as part of his panorama of human history in the Works and Days, locating them in the generation just before his own and subjecting them to a thoroughly moralistic interpretation,4 and his account in the Theogony of the wars in heaven is clearly modeled in its general structure and in crucial details upon the Trojan War.5 Thus it was not only for later Greek culture that Hesiod became “the other poet” (to adopt the telling formulation of Koning),6 understood always as secondary and in his difference from the central and primary Homer: already Hesiod himself positions himself decisively with reference to Homer and creates his own meaning in a systematic play of intertextuality with the Homeric tradition.

1 2 3 4 5 6

See Alepidou, pp. 107–130 (this volume). Janko (1982) remains fundamental on this question. Neitzel (1975) must be used with caution. Most 1997: 104–127. Most 2018: 1.xxxi. 2010.

© Glenn W. Most, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004696617_007

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

132

most

Hence we may interpret in general those points in which Hesiod differs from Homer, whether by explicit statement or by tacit omission, as being matters not of chance but of Hesiod’s intention. And this applies in particular to the contrasting depictions both poems provide of the central Greek hero, Heracles.

2

Heracles in Homer

We might think of Homer’s heroes as being ordinary Greeks on steroids: they are equipped with all the familiar passions and desires, virtues and defects of real everyday ancient Greek men (though doubtless to a somewhat higher degree), but they are also possessed of a hyperbolically enhanced capacity for attempting to fulfill their ambitions, and thereby they manage to bring far greater success and far greater disaster not only upon other people but also upon themselves. If so, then we might think of Heracles in Homer as being the Homeric hero on steroids. He is just like the heroes of the Iliad in his qualities, but he is far greater than even the greatest of them is in his quantities. He represents the horizon of the imaginable possibilities of the Homeric warrior, his furthest conceivable limits of action, both for good and for evil.7 Heracles belongs to an earlier generation of men than the warriors of the Homeric epics do: he is the father or grandfather of the Iliadic generation of heroes (Il. 2.653–660, 676–680, 5.628); in the Nekyia he is portrayed as being older than Odysseus (Od. 11.601–626). As such, it is considered to be self-evident that he is greater than men are nowadays. For Homer, the men of his own times, οἱ νῦν βροτοί (“the men of now”) are far weaker in physical strength than are the heroes of whose exploits he tells. But the Homeric heroes themselves look back to an earlier age of even greater heroes. Nestor, who by reason of his longevity represents a direct link with that earlier age, repeatedly reminisces about how much greater the men of those times were. The huge Greek expedition celebrated by the Iliad has spent ten years trying in vain to conquer Troy—but Heracles managed to do so with only six vessels at his command (Il. 5.638–642). Odysseus acknowledges that he would not dare to compete in archery with Heracles or Eurytus (Od. 8.222–228). In the Nekyia, Odysseus is terrified by the apparition of the phantom of Heracles when it appears before

7 On Heracles in Homer, see Bär 2018 and 2019: 106–131, Barker and Christensen 2014: 249–277 and 2021: 284–300, Menkes 1979, and now especially Nesselrath 2020: 25–35.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

133

heracles in hesiod

him (Od. 11.601–626).8 The Iliad refers a number of times to Heracles’s successful sacking of the Trojan city in his earlier expedition (Il. 5.638–642, 648–654; 14.250–251). But it also tells how he sacked the Greek city of Pylos, killing many men; Nestor recounts how Heracles slew all eleven of his brothers, leaving only himself alive (Il. 11.689–693). Like certain of the other Greek heroes at Troy, Heracles is the object of fierce contention between some of the Olympian gods; but unlike them, the strife of which he is the object is even more bitter and it occurs between two of the very greatest gods, Zeus who protects him and Hera who loathes him (Il. 14.250–266, 324; 15.18–25; 18.117–119; 19.95– 133; Od. 11.266–268). Finally, he is notable not only for his excessive valor but also for his excessive impiety. Diomedes’s wounding of Aphrodite and Ares in the Iliad has comic elements, as these two deities are far from being the most serious gods in the Homeric pantheon; but Heracles, unlike any other Greek hero, dared to wage combat against two of the most powerful gods of all, Hera and Hades (Il. 5.392–404). And his impiety was directed not only against the gods themselves: he is notorious for having slain his host Iphitus and thereby violating one of the most sacred of all human laws, the one that protects the host and the guest from suffering harm at each other’s hands (Od. 21.24– 38). One further point that is noteworthy about all the Homeric episodes involving Heracles is that they focus almost exclusively upon his relations to other human beings, and occasionally also to the gods. By contrast, there are references in Homer to only two stories of Heracles’s struggles with monstrous beasts, and both of these take the form of brief and passing allusions: there are only two short references to Heracles’s capture of Cerberus (Il. 8.362–369, Od. 11.622–626) and one to his combat with the Trojan sea monster Cetus (Il. 20.144–148). The latter episode, which involves Hesione and Laomedon, is a crucial element in Heracles’s relations with Troy and in the history of the Greek wars against that city; and yet Homer’s single reference to it is brief and elliptical, and serves only to indicate a particular spatial location, not to recount the story. Homer evidently presupposes knowledge of such legends among his listeners, but he seems to take considerable care to make it difficult or impossible for them to direct their attention towards them. As always, Homer does what he can to exclude divine and natural monsters as far as possible from his epic: his focus is unremittingly upon the human.9

8 On this scene, see Hooker 1980: 139–146 and Karanika 2011: 11–27. 9 See now Zanon 2019: 235–252.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

134 3

most

Heracles in Hesiod

In his Theogony, Hesiod recounts in some detail four episodes from the legends of Heracles.10 The first is his slaying of Geryoneus, Orthus, and Eurytion.11 Hesiod tells this story for the first time at lines 287–294, when in the course of his genealogical account he comes to the Gorgons, one of whom, Medusa, is made pregnant by Poseidon and becomes the mother of Chrysaor (and also of the horse Pegasus); Chrysaor goes on to have intercourse with Callirhoe and she bears Geryoneus (Th. 287–294):12 Χρυσάωρ δ᾿ ἔτεκε τρικέφαλον Γηρυονῆα μιχθεὶς Καλλιρόῃ κούρῃ κλυτοῦ Ὠκεανοῖο· τὸν μὲν ἄρ᾿ ἐξενάριξε βίη Ἡρακληείη 290 βουσὶ πάρ᾿ εἰλιπόδεσσι περιρρύτῳ εἰν Ἐρυθείῃ ἤματι τῷ, ὅτε περ βοῦς ἤλασεν εὐρυμετώπους Τίρυνθ᾿ εἰς ἱερήν, διαβὰς πόρον Ὠκεανοῖο, Ὄρθόν τε κτείνας καὶ βουκόλον Εὐρυτίωνα 294 σταθμῷ ἐν ἠερόεντι πέρην κλυτοῦ Ὠκεανοῖο. 287

And Chrysaor, mingling in love with Callirhoe, glorious Ocean’s daughter, begot three-headed Geryoneus, who was slain by Heracles’s force beside his rolling-footed cattle in sea-girt Erytheia on the day when he drove the broad-browed cattle to holy Tiryns, after he crossed over the strait of Ocean and killed Orthus and the cowherd Eurytion in the murky stable beyond glorious Ocean.13 The three Gorgons go back ultimately to their primal ancestor Earth, who bore Phorcys and Ceto to Pontus; and then from Phorcys and Ceto were born the Graiai and the Gorgons. The whole lineage is notable for its female origin in Earth, the ultimate female principle in Hesiod’s world and the direct or indirect source of so much trouble for its male gods, and for the various monstrous females who are its members; by killing its very last descendant, the threeheaded male Geryoneus, the male Heracles succeeds in bringing this whole ghastly line of descent to a definitive end. It is noteworthy that he is brought 10 11 12 13

See Alepidou, pp. 109–111 (this volume). On this myth, see now Finglass 2021 (pp. 135–136 on Hesiod). On this passage, see also Alepidou, pp. 109–110 (this volume). All texts and translations from Hesiod are taken from Most 2018.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

135

heracles in hesiod

in to intervene in this way not at the time of the generation of the Graiai and Gorgons themselves (who are female and, with the exception of Medusa, immortal) and not in the following generation either, when the female Medusa gives birth to the male figures Chrysaor and Pegasus, but in the generation of Medusa’s grandchildren, when Chrysaor and Callirhoe generate Geryoneus. What exactly is the threat that Geryoneus poses, and why does Heracles kill him together with Orthus and Eurytion? Hesiod does not provide us with information sufficient to allow us to give satisfactory answers to these questions. His whole account of Geryoneus is highly elliptical and seems to presuppose oral legends that he does not need to tell us because his listeners, unlike us, could be presumed to be familiar with them. Three-headed Geryoneus is obviously monstrous in shape, but much else is left quite unclear: for example, it remains entirely obscure what role is played in the story by the cattle, to which reference is made twice. As for why Geryoneus’s dog and cowherd are slain too, we can speculate that Orthus is unlikely to have been especially sweet-natured, and the cowherd Eurytion is in any case a very shadowy figure, so we can suppose that perhaps it was simply impossible for Heracles to kill Geryoneus without getting rid of these other two as well (but Hesiod himself does not take the trouble to make this clear). Yet these local obscurities do not seem to affect the basic point: female divinities can be deadly; but it is only such mortal male progeny as Geryoneus and his accomplices that pose a menace so grave, and yet at the same time so remediable, that Heracles must and can enter the scene in order to destroy them. Hesiod returns briefly to this same story at the end of the Theogony, in the context of his catalogue of goddesses who had intercourse with mortal men and gave birth to children (Th. 979–983): κούρη δ’ Ὠκεανοῦ Χρυσάορι καρτεροθύμῳ μιχθεῖσ’ ἐν φιλότητι πολυχρύσου Ἀφροδίτης Καλλιρόη τέκε παῖδα βροτῶν κάρτιστον ἁπάντων, Γηρυονέα, τὸν κτεῖνε βίη Ἡρακληείη 983 βοῶν ἕνεκ’ εἰλιπόδων ἀμφιρρύτῳ εἰν Ἐρυθείῃ. 979 980

Callirhoe, Ocean’s daughter, mingling in golden Aphrodite’s love with strong-spirited Chrysaor, bore a son, the strongest of all mortals, Geryoneus, whom Heracles’s force killed on account of rolling-footed cattle in sea-girt Erytheia. Because this passage repeats some of the information from the earlier one, it has occasionally been suspected of being an interpolation, unjustly on the view

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

136

most

of most scholars (including myself). Here the dog and cowherd have been omitted, as the focus is entirely upon Geryoneus, the son of the immortal Callirhoe and the mortal Chrysaor. But we learn something new here, namely that Geryoneus’s cattle, which had been merely mentioned twice in the earlier passage as apparently only attendant circumstances for Heracles’s slaying of their owner, were in fact the reason for Heracles’s act (ἕνεκ[α] 984). But the specificity of that reason is not clarified here. Was Heracles simply an overblown cattle-rustler? Or might his theft of the cattle have been part of a larger divine plot designed to rid the world of their monstrous owner? Hesiod does not tell us. The second episode of Heracles’s adventures recounted by Hesiod appears only nineteen lines later than the first mention of this first one and is intimately connected with it genealogically. This is his slaying of the Hydra of Lerna (Th. 313–318): 313 315

318

τὸ τρίτον Ὕδρην αὖτις ἐγείνατο λύγρ’ εἰδυῖαν Λερναίην, ἣν θρέψε θεὰ λευκώλενος Ἥρη ἄπλητον κοτέουσα βίῃ Ἡρακληείῃ. καὶ τὴν μὲν Διὸς υἱὸς ἐνήρατο νηλέι χαλκῷ Ἀμφιτρυωνιάδης σὺν ἀρηιφίλῳ Ἰολάῳ Ἡρακλέης βουλῇσιν Ἀθηναίης ἀγελείης. third, she then gave birth to the evil-minded Hydra of Lerna, which the goddess, white-armed Hera, raised, immense, wrathful against Heracles’s force. But Zeus’s son, the scion of Amphitryon, Heracles, slew it with the pitiless bronze, together with warlike Iolaus, by the plans of Athena, leader of the war-host.

The referent of ἡ (“she”) in line 295 is not completely certain but it is probably best to take it as Ceto, whose children with Phorcys were recounted in the preceding lines.14 If so, then the same Ceto who was the mother of the Gorgon Medusa is also the mother of the monstrous Echidna, who, together with Typho, produces three children: the dog Orthus, which we have already met in the story of Geryoneus; Cerberus; and the Hydra of Lerna. So Echidna is a sister of Medusa, and Echidna’s offspring Orthus turns out to be an uncle of Medusa’s grandchild Geryoneus. Hesiod’s account of the Hydra of Lerna fills in a number of motivational details for this story that were left missing in his tale of Geryoneus. We now

14

So e.g. West 1966: 249 ad loc.; Lemke 1968: 48–49.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

137

heracles in hesiod

learn that the Hydra was evil-minded and that she was raised by Hera against Heracles; and that Zeus’s son Heracles slew her with the aid of Iolaus and by the counsels of Athena. By killing the Hydra and Orthus, Heracles destroys two of the three offspring of Echidna and Typho; the only surviving one is Cerberus, and, while Hesiod does not mention this here, all his readers will surely have remembered that it was in order to capture Cerberus that Heracles went down to the underworld. So Heracles has effectively ended two whole monstrous lineages that arose from Ceto. Hesiod adds a third episode drawn from the adventures of Heracles only a few lines later. This is his slaying of the lion of Nemea (Th. 326–332): ἡ δ’ ἄρα Φῖκ’ ὀλοὴν τέκε Καδμείοισιν ὄλεθρον, Ὄρθῳ ὑποδμηθεῖσα, Νεμειαῖόν τε λέοντα, τόν ῥ’ Ἥρη θρέψασα Διὸς κυδρὴ παράκοιτις γουνοῖσιν κατένασσε Νεμείης, πῆμ’ ἀνθρώποις. 330 ἔνθ’ ἄρ’ ὅ γ’ οἰκείων ἐλεφαίρετο φῦλ’ ἀνθρώπων, κοιρανέων Τρητοῖο Νεμείης ἠδ’ Ἀπέσαντος· 332 ἀλλά ἑ ἲς ἐδάμασσε βίης Ἡρακληείης. 326

She bore the deadly Sphinx, destruction for the Cadmeans, and the Nemean lion, which Hera, Zeus’ illustrious consort, raised and settled among the hills of Nemea, a woe for human beings. For dwelling there it destroyed the tribes of human beings and lorded over Tretus in Nemea and Apesas; but the strength of Heracles’ force overpowered it. Once again a section of the Theogony contains feminine pronouns, this time two of them, whose referents are unclear: ἡ (“she”) in lines 319 and 326— perhaps it is something about female monsters that makes it particularly difficult for Hesiod to determine their identity.15 In any case, I take the pronoun in line 319 to refer to Echidna and the one in 326 to refer to Chimera, for otherwise Echidna ends up mating with her own offspring Orthus—though perhaps in this extremely peculiar family even that aberration is not impossible. If these identifications are correct, then Echidna gave birth to Chimera (killed by Bellerophon and her relative Pegasus), while Chimera, mating with the dog Orthus, gave birth to the Sphinx and the Nemean lion. All three of these offspring are described in the most dreadful terms and they figure as a climactic fanfare for this whole set of monsters: the Chimera is deadly and multiform; the

15

See on this problem especially Clay 2003: 159–161.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

138

most

Sphinx is destructive for the Thebans; and the lion of Nemea is a cause of woe for human beings. Once again we find Hera acting as a maleficent female force, but this time it is human beings who are said to bear the brunt of her malice, and once again it is male heroes who put an end to her evil designs and to the whole lineage that resulted in these monsters. But this time Heracles has help: he destroys the Nemean lion, but it is Oedipus who kills the Theban Sphinx and Bellerophon who slays the Chimera. These three episodes are all closely linked with one another by genealogical connections and by textual proximity. The final episode of Heracles’s exploits which Hesiod recounts in the Theogony is found much later. This is his slaying of the eagle of Prometheus (Th. 562–532): τὸν μὲν ἄρ’ Ἀλκμήνης καλλισφύρου ἄλκιμος υἱὸς Ἡρακλέης ἔκτεινε, κακὴν δ’ ἀπὸ νοῦσον ἄλαλκεν Ἰαπετιονίδῃ καὶ ἐλύσατο δυσφροσυνάων, οὐκ ἀέκητι Ζηνὸς Ὀλυμπίου ὕψι μέδοντος, 530 ὄφρ’ Ἡρακλῆος Θηβαγενέος κλέος εἴη πλεῖον ἔτ’ ἢ τὸ πάροιθεν ἐπὶ χθόνα πουλυβότειραν. 532 ταῦτ’ ἄρα ἁζόμενος τίμα ἀριδείκετον υἱόν· 526

It was killed by Heracles, the strong son of beautiful-ankled Alcmene, who warded off the evil plague from Iapetus’s son and released him from distress—not against the will of Olympian Zeus, who rules on high, so that the glory of Theban-born Heracles would become even greater than before upon the bounteous earth. With this in mind, he honored his eminent son. This passage occurs in Hesiod’s account of the four sons of Iapetus by Clymene. Atlas, the first, is punished by Zeus, who forces him to hold up the sky; Menoetius, the second, is punished by Zeus, who casts him into Erebus for his wickedness and defiance; and Prometheus, the third, is punished by Zeus, who binds him with fetters to a pillar and sets an eagle to devour his liver. The fourth Iapetid, Epimetheus, is not punished otherwise than by his congenital stupidity and by his consequent acceptance of Pandora (in Hesiod’s eyes these may have been considered ample punishment). Heracles is reported here to have killed the eagle that Zeus set as a punishment on Prometheus. What is strange about this is that elsewhere Hesiod always says that Heracles is acting in order to fulfill the plans of Zeus, but here he is shown apparently opposing this plan by destroying the punishment that Zeus himself has devised. So Hesiod must invent an ad hoc explanation for Her-

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

heracles in hesiod

139

acles’s exploit: namely, that in this way Zeus was able to secure more glory for his son Heracles. The litotes οὐκ ἀέκητι Ζηνός (“not against the will of Zeus”) in line 529 seems slightly awkward and the whole explanation is not fully satisfactory: was not Heracles already quite glorious, and could not Zeus have devised some other way to increase his glory? Perhaps we might suspect that there is a deeper explanation for this oddity, one that lies in the ambiguous status of Prometheus himself, who figures crucially in Hesiod’s poems not only as a rebel against Zeus but also at the same time as a savior of human beings. Might the ambiguity of Prometheus’s and of Heracles’s roles in this narrative be a reflection of the complexity of Zeus’s own complicated attitudes towards human beings, whom he wants both to protect and to dominate within his regime of cosmic justice? Besides these four episodes that Hesiod briefly recounts, there are two further references to Heracles in the Theogony: a passage towards the end of the poem naming him as Zeus’s son (943–944) and another shortly afterwards in which he is said to have married Hebe and to have attained immortality (950– 955). We may summarize Hesiod’s account of Heracles in the Theogony in the following terms: Heracles’s achievement is above all that he destroys monstrous non-human creatures. He is not the only hero who performs this function (he is helped by Iolaus and is paralleled by Bellerophon and Oedipus), but he certainly seems to be the most important one—he is after all the only one who does this more than once. In so doing, he prepares for Zeus’s climactic battle, in which the king of the Olympian gods will end up slaying Typhoeus, the last of the monsters produced by Earth. It is remarkable that Heracles never fights against human beings in Hesiod; of course, human beings hardly appear in that poem, and the prominence of Heracles and the absence of humans may well be thought of as being complementary features of it. In his exploits, Heracles helps his father Zeus to consolidate his power against the female threats posed by such figures as Earth and Hera and their various monstrous female progeny.16 In the course of helping his father Zeus, Heracles also ends up helping the human beings who were suffering terrible distress—though it is not explicitly stated that this was part of his purpose, or of Zeus’. In the end, and doubtless as a direct reward for his accomplishments, he attains immortality and achieves eternal youth by marrying Hebe.

16

On Heracles’s ambiguous and complex relations to the categories of the masculine and feminine, see the classic study by Loraux 1990: 21–52. On Hesiod’s notorious misogyny, see Loraux 1993: 72–78 and now especially Lye 2018: 17–89.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

140

most

It is noteworthy that Heracles is nowhere mentioned in Hesiod’s Works and Days, not even in the account of the age of heroes that forms part of the myth of the races in that poem. This must be because, in the current world described in that poem, his task has already been accomplished. He no longer needs to intervene into our world once Zeus’s power over it has been securely established. He can forever enjoy his immortality and dally with his Hebe.

4

Heracles in Pseudo-Hesiod and in Early Post-Homeric Epic

In the accounts of Heracles in the fragmentarily transmitted poems that in antiquity were largely attributed to Hesiod but that have been assigned by modern scholarship to later poets, the emphasis is placed almost entirely on his relations with other human beings and with gods. In this regard, the Catalogue of Women and other later poems diverge strikingly from Hesiod’s own emphasis in their depiction of Heracles.17 In one passage the Catalogue of Women recounts Heracles’s marriage with Deianeira, names four of their children, and then recounts in some detail how he comes to die at her hands (fr. 22.18, 20–25 Most = fr. 25 M-W); the passage goes on to tell of his immortality and eternal bliss with Hebe on Olympus in eight lines (fr. 22.26–33) that were obelized in the papyrus (P.Oxy. 2075), apparently because they were considered to be interpolated.18 In another passage that tells the story of the heroine Mestra on the island of Cos, the poet notes that Heracles ravaged the city of Cos, which belonged to Eurypylus and his descendants, while he was sailing back from Troy after having sacked that city on account of Laomedon’s horses (fr. 69.85–88 Most = fr. 43a M-W); after this there follows an enigmatic single-line reference to Heracles’s having slain the Giants in Phlegra (fr. 69.89 Most = fr. 43a M-W). And like the Theogony, the Catalogue of Women tells of Heracles’s immortalization and of his marriage to Hebe (fr. 140.6–20 Most = fr. 229 M-W). The same pattern is found in other pseudo-Hesiodic poems. A testimonium from the pseudo-Hesiodic Wedding of Ceyx reports that Heracles disembarked from the Argo when it stopped for water and that he was left behind by the Argonauts as they proceeded on their voyage towards Colchis (fr. 202 Most = fr. 263 M-W). And in the Shield of Heracles, this pseudo-Hesiodic poet narrates at great length Heracles’s combat with the human warrior Cycnus and the god of war Ares (cf. fr. 203 Most = fr. 264* M-W). 17 18

On Heracles in the Catalogue of Women, see especially Haubold 2005: 85–99. The corresponding lines in the Nekyia provide an obvious parallel and perhaps also a precedent for this critical operation.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

heracles in hesiod

141

There is only one passage in the surviving fragments of the pseudo-Hesiodic poems in which Heracles encounters a monster. This occurs in the Catalogue of Women, in an account of his battle with Neleus’s son, the shapeshifter Periclymenus (frs. 31.13–36, 32, 33.1–3 Most = frs. 33a, 33b, 35 M-W): Heracles is frustrated by Periclymenus’s continuous metamorphoses, but he manages finally to slay him when Athena shows him that he has turned into a bee. Afterwards, Heracles reverts to his typical pseudo-Hesiodic activity of encounters with ordinary human beings, sacking the city of Pylus and killing all of Neleus’s sons except for Nestor (fr. 33.4–9 Most = fr. 35 M-W). The story of how Heracles slew Nestor’s eleven brothers is familiar from the Iliad, as we saw earlier; and it is in general remarkable to what degree the pseudo-Hesiodic poems all return to the Homeric vision of Heracles in terms of his relations with humans and gods and ignore his encounters with monsters, which were of such importance for Hesiod’s genuine Theogony. That is precisely why he must be discarded from the voyage of the Argonauts: from the point of view of the chronology of heroic legend, he belongs to the same generation as Jason and so people might well expect him to have been part of this celebrated expedition (what other hero could possibly have been stronger than he was and therefore more worthy of joining this mission?); but evidently, in terms of his character, he has no business dealing with the monsters that the Argonauts will have to face when they arrive at their destination, so he must be abandoned by them before they get there. Even Periclymenus is not a monstrous beast of the sort Heracles repeatedly destroyed in the Theogony, but a human being, albeit one endowed with rather unusual talents. In comparison with the depictions of Heracles in pseudo-Hesiodic poetry, Heracles’s role in early post-Homeric heroic epic is less uniform.19 The earliest attestations come from the Oechalias Halosis, which is attributed to Creophylus: here Heracles is involved brutally, passionately, and impiously with other human beings, in his dealings with the king Eurytus and his son Iphitus and daughter Iole (frs. 1, 2). Later epics focus instead on what was to become the catalogue of Heracles’s labors, in which he destroyed monsters of various kinds: so Pisander, whose Heraclea told of the lion of Nemea (fr. 1), the Hydra (fr. 2), the Cerynian hind (fr. 3), the Stymphalian birds (fr. 4), Antaeus (fr. 6), and the Centaurs (fr. 6), but also included the sacking of Troy (fr. 10); so too Panyassis, whose Heraclea recounted the lion of Nemea (frs. 6, 7), the Hydra (fr. 8), the serpent of

19

On these fragments, see now Tsagalis 2022. The references to post-Homeric Archaic Greek epic fragments are to West 2003.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

142

most

the Hesperides (fr. 15), and Cerberus (frs. 17, 18), but also mentioned Heracles’s combats against the gods Hades and Hera (fr. 26); and so too the Theseis, which told the tale of the Cerynian hind (fr. 2). In general, the Oechalias Halosis seems to continue the Homeric portrayal of Heracles as the impious slayer of men; the later Archaic epics of Heracles emphasize, like Hesiod, the celebrated labors in which he slew monsters, but, inevitably, they also occasionally include some material derived from the Homeric tradition. These later epics, which may have been composed during the sixth century b.c.e., all seem to attest to the growth of a tradition cataloguing Heracles’s canonical twelve labors, the so-called dodecathlon. This tradition certainly post-dates Hesiod’s Theogony, though it is an open question how much it may have been influenced by that poem. So too, artistic representations of the labors of Heracles, either singly or in groups, seem to start appearing occasionally around the middle of the sixth century b.c.e.: in particular, the chest of Cypselus at Olympia,20 the limestone metopes on the “Treasury” of Hera at Paestum,21 and the clay metopes on Temple B of Himera,22 which are all dated to about this time. Such images then go on to be attested more and more frequently starting in the fifth century b.c.e., for example in a red-figure volute crater at the Getty Museum23 and in the marble metopes on the Athenian treasury at Delphi,24 both from the early fifth century b.c.e. In Hesiod’s Theogony, Heracles’s repeated victories over monsters implicitly but clearly form part of Zeus’s providential design for the world, helping him to create a realm of justice for the benefit of human beings and himself. To what extent the early formalization of Heracles’s twelve labors is derived from the same general view of Heracles, or indeed might be indebted directly to Hesiod’s poem, is unknown.

5

Conclusion

The vast oral corpus of legends involving Heracles included above all on the one hand stories of his dealings with human beings and on the other hand stories of his dealings with monstrous beasts. Every poet was free to choose from that archive those materials that seemed to him to fit best with the fun-

20 21 22 23 24

LIMC v s.v. Herakles 1697. LIMC v s.v. Herakles 1698. LIMC v s.v. Herakles 1699. LIMC v s.v. Herakles 1702. LIMC v s.v. Herakles 1703.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

143

heracles in hesiod

damental conceptions to which his compositions were dedicated. Within the very earliest productions of Greek poetry that have survived, Hesiod’s Heracles is unique: Hesiod shapes a Heracles who forms an integral part of his narrative of the victory of Zeus over monstrous enemies and the imposition of justice and order over injustice and disorder. Hesiod thereby entirely ignores the many legends that told of Heracles as a terrible and sometimes impious warrior, and as a serial murderer and rapist, in order to present instead a bowdlerized, indeed a thoroughly sanitized Heracles who destroys nothing whatsoever except monstrous creatures. We might say that Hesiod extracts the monstrous element from the traditional Heracles himself, of whom it had always formed an essential constituent of his character, and instead projects it outside of Heracles onto separate monsters that a purified Heracles can go on to destroy. In this sense, Hesiod performs a kind of cathartic therapy upon Heracles. Hesiod’s version of Heracles may have been unique within the terms of the earliest stages of Greek epic. But his vision of Heracles seems to have recurred, whether directly or indirectly, in the legends of the hero’s labors which, starting in the sixth century b.c.e., went on to assume a prominent place in so much of the literature and art of ancient Greece and Rome. In particular, the Stoics seem to have systematically developed a philosophical interpretation of Heracles’s labors along these lines.25 Cleanthes referred all twelve of Heracles’s labors to the god (SVF 1.115.16–116.3). Then Chrysippus explained them as having been undertaken for the benefit of the life shared by all beings (SVF 2.300.33), allegorized Heracles himself as being the striking and dividing force of the fundamental pneuma (319.31), and explained that Heracles, like Dionysus, had sought to help preserve the human race (3.84.6). For the Stoics, Heracles was an expression of the rational principle that rules and directs the world. It is tempting to consider this view to be a philosophical interpretation of Hesiod’s Heracles. But is it derived directly from Hesiod’s poetry? This is not entirely impossible: after all, Cleanthes and Chrysippus are both attested to have composed allegorical interpretations of Hesiod (test. 119b; fr. 268 Most = fr. 317 M-W). But there is not yet any trace of the dodecathlon in Hesiod himself. So it is doubtless safer to suppose that this is simply a Stoic allegoresis of the traditional catalogue of twelve labors, one that was perhaps influenced by Hesiod to some degree, but that was not derived directly from sustained engagement with his poetry.

25

For Hesiod among the Stoics, see Wolfsdorf 2018: 352–358.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

144

most

Works Cited Bär, S. 2018. Herakles im griechischen Epos: Studien zur Narrativität und Poetizität eines Helden. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. Bär, S. 2019. “Heracles in Homer and Apollonius: Narratological Character Analysis in a Diachronic Perspective.” Symbolae Osloenses 93: 106–131. Barker, E. and Christensen, J. 2014. “Even Heracles Had to Die: Homeric ‘Heroism’, Mortality, and the Epic Tradition.” In Tsagalis, C. ed. Theban Resonances in Homeric Epic. Berlin: De Gruyter. 249–277. Barker, E. and Christensen, J. 2021. “Genres and Media: Epic.” In Ogden, D. ed. The Oxford Handbook of Heracles. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 284–300. Clay, J.S. 2003. Hesiod’s Cosmos. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Finglass, P.J. 2021. “Labor x: The Cattle of Geryon and the Return from Tartessus.” In Ogden, D. ed. The Oxford Handbook of Heracles. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 135–148. Haubold, J. 2005. “Heracles in the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women.” In Hunter, R.L. ed. The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women: Constructions and Reconstructions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 85–99. Hooker, J.T. 1980. “The Apparition of Heracles in the Odyssey.” Liverpool Classical Monthly 5: 139–146. Janko, R. 1982. Homer, Hesiod, and the Hymns: Diachronic Development in Epic Diction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Karanika, A. 2011. “The End of the Nekyia: Odysseus, Heracles and the Gorgon in the Underworld.” Arethusa 44: 1–27. Koning, H. 2010. The Other Poet: Ancient Reception of a Cultural Icon. Leiden: Brill. Lemke, D. 1968. “Sprachliche und strukturelle Beobachtungen zum Ungeheuerkatalog in der Theogonie Hesiods.” Glotta 46: 47–53. LIMC = Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae. 1990. v.1. Zurich: Artemis Verlag. Loraux, N. 1990. “Herakles: The Super-Male and the Feminine.” In Halperin, D.M., Winkler, J.J., and Zeitlin, F.I. eds. Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. 21–52. Loraux, N. 1993. The Children of Athena: Athenian Ideas about Citizenship and the Division Between the Sexes. Trans. by C. Levine. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Lye, S. 2018. “Gender in Hesiod: A Poetics of the Powerless.” In Loney, A.C. and Scully, S. eds. The Oxford Handbook of Hesiod. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 175–189. Menkes, M.S. 1978. Herakles in the Homeric Epics. Ph.D. Diss. The Johns Hopkins University. Most, G.W. 1997. “Hesiod’s Myth of the Five (or Three or Four) Races.”Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 43: 104–127.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

heracles in hesiod

145

Most, G.W. 2018. Hesiod. Loeb Classical Library, rev. edn. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Neitzel, H. 1975. Homer-Rezeption bei Hesiod. Interpretation ausgewählter Passagen. Bonn: Bouvier Verlag Herbert Grundmann. Nesselrath, H.G. 2020. “Heracles in Homer.” In Rengakos, A., Finglass P.J., and Zimmermann B. eds. More than Homer Knew—Studies on Homer and His Ancient Commentators. Berlin: De Gruyter. 25–35. SVF = von Arnim, J. ed. 1903–1924. Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, Leipzig: Teubner. Tsagalis, C. 2022. Early Greek Epic Fragments ii. Epics on Herakles: Kreophylos and Peisandros. Berlin: De Gruyter. West, M.L. ed. 1966. Hesiod: Theogony. Oxford: Clarendon Press. West, M.L. ed. 2003. Greek Epic Fragments from the Seventh to the Fifth Centuries bc. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wolfsdorf, D.C. 2018. “Hesiod from Aristotle to Posidonius.” In Loney, A.C. and Scully, S. eds. The Oxford Handbook of Hesiod. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 343–361. Zanon, C. 2019. “Fantastic Creatures and Where to Find Them in the Iliad.” Classica 32.2: 235–252.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

Heracles and Hesione in the Iliad Silvio Bär

1

Introduction: A Paradox and a Hermeneutic Problem

In his well-known monograph The Gods in Epic, Feeney uses the term “Heraclean paradoxes” to refer to the different types of “Heraclesses” that existed in the ancient world, such as the Hercules epicus, the Hercules tragicus/furens, the Hercules comicus, the Hercules philosophicus/Stoicus, and to the fact that, for the Greeks and the Romans, it seems not to have been a problem that one and the same mythological figure should assume so many different—and in parts conflicting—roles simultaneously.1 A comparable sense of paradoxicality can be observed when we look at the appearance of Heracles in Archaic Greek epic. To put it simply, Archaic epics that are extant today (those by Homer and Hesiod) restrict Heracles’s role to that of a minor character, whereas those epics that put Heracles at the center of the action (such as Creophylus’s Oechalias Halosis, Pisander’s Heracleia, and Panyassis of Halicarnassus’s Heracleia) have been lost except for a few scarce fragments and testimonia.2 And indeed, that such epics existed is made clear not only by the tantalizing titles and fragments that have survived, but equally by Aristotle’s verdict that “all those poets who have composed a Heracleis, a Theseis, and poems of that sort appear to have missed the mark” (πάντες ἐοίκασιν ἁμαρτάνειν ὅσοι τῶν ποιητῶν Ἡρακληίδα καὶ Θησηίδα καὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα ποιήματα πεποιήκασιν) because unity of action, imperative for good dramatic progress and coherence, is not achieved by the sum of the events in a hero’s lifetime (Poet. 1451a16–22).3 Is it not an enticing thought that we might one day be in a position to decide whether we agree with Aristotle’s verdict, if only we could recover one of those full-fledged Heracles

1 Feeney 1991: 95n134. In my narratological analysis of Heracles in Greek epic, I connect this phenomenon to the general observation that mythology qua mythology is able to contradict itself, a phenomenon I call “die Widerspruchsfähigkeit des Mythos” (Bär 2018: 19–22). For more on the different types of “Heraclesses”, see also Galinsky 1972: 1–39 and Burkert 20112: 319–324. 2 Many chapters in this volume deal with Heracles in Homer, Hesiod, or the lost epics; see especially those by Glenn Most, Hanne Eisenfeld, Apostolia Alepidou, Sophie Mills, Christos Tsagalis, Laura Lulli, and Stefano Vecchiato. Older global surveys of Heracles in Archaic Greek epic that are still useful today are Huxley 1969: 99–112 and Galinsky 1972: 9–22. See also Bär 2018: 33–72 and Lu Hsu 2020: 19–67. 3 See also Tsagalis (this volume) pp. 196–197.

© Silvio Bär, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004696617_008

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

147

heracles and hesione in the iliad

epics? In all likelihood, this is never going to happen, but at least we know that these epics existed and that they must have enjoyed a relatively high degree of popularity (otherwise Aristotle would not have used them as a negative counterexample to make his point about the unity of action). In this chapter, I examine an adventure of Heracles’s that is mentioned and alluded to repeatedly in the Iliad and that gives expression to a hermeneutic problem typically encountered in examinations of the role of Heracles in early Greek epic, a problem that is due to the above-mentioned paradoxicality of the sources. In the Iliad, multiple references to the first destruction of Troy by Heracles are made, fulfilling what amounts to a paradigmatic function whereby this incident foreshadows the second, and final, destruction of the city. The rescue of the Trojan princess Hesione from a sea monster by Heracles is part of this story complex, but only as it appears in later sources. I intend to demonstrate that the commonly held idea that, despite her Iliadic absence, Hesione must have been part of the horizon of expectation of Homer’s audience can—and should—be challenged. Furthermore, according to early vase painting, Hesione was regarded not exclusively as a damsel in distress, but also as Heracles’s collaborator—a fact that I would argue has implications for the offstage role Hesione may have played in the Iliad: if a claim can be made for Hesione as an unseen character in the Iliad, then her Iliadic nature may potentially have been ambivalent, going beyond the damsel-in-distress stereotype with which we typically associate her story.

2

The Laomedon Story Complex in the Iliad

The Heracles-and-Hesione story is part of a larger story complex, the main protagonist of which is Laomedon, king of Troy and father of Priam (in what follows, I call this the Laomedon story complex). The full story complex can be summarized, with the necessary brevity, as follows: Laomedon was the proud possessor of immortal horses that he had inherited from his grandfather Tros, who, in turn, had received them from Zeus in exchange for the abduction of Tros’s beautiful son Ganymedes. These horses, and Laomedon’s attachment to—and obsession with—them, lie at the heart of two connected episodes of deceit. First, Apollo and Poseidon had agreed to build a wall around the city of Troy in exchange for the horses, but after the two gods had fulfilled their side of the agreement, Laomedon denied them payment. This angered them, and Poseidon sent a sea monster to plague Troy. Consequently, on the advice of an oracle, Laomedon was going to feed his daughter Hesione to the monster in order to divert it from Troy. At the same time, he offered his horses to who-

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

148

bär

ever could kill the monster. Tempted by this prize, Heracles sailed to Troy, killed the monster, and rescued Hesione—but then he was also denied his reward. Therefore, Heracles too became angry and returned to Troy in order to sack the city—which led to the first destruction of Troy (making the Trojan War the second destruction of the city).4 This is the basic storyline of the Laomedon story complex as it is first recorded by Hellanicus in the fifth century b.c.e., and as it is later renarrated— with numerous variations and additions—by authors such as Lycophron, Diodorus, Ovid, Valerius Flaccus, Hyginus, Apollodorus, and Philostratus.5 However, the first references to elements of the story can be found as early as the Iliad. In book 5, Diomedes, in a speech to Sthenelus, mentions the immortal horses given to Tros by Zeus (Il. 5.265–267): τῆς γάρ τοι γενεῆς, ἧς Τρωί περ εὐρύοπα Ζεὺς δῶχ᾽ υἷος ποινὴν Γανυμήδεος, οὕνεκ᾽ ἄριστοι ἵππων, ὅσσοι ἔασιν ὑπ᾽ ἠῶ τ᾽ ἠέλιόν τε. For they are of that stock of which far-seeing Zeus once gave to Tros as recompense for his son Ganymedes, which is why [they are] the best of horses, as many as there are under the dawn and the sun.6 Thereafter, still in book 5, the destruction of Troy by Heracles as retaliation for Laomedon’s failure to keep his side of the agreement is used as a rhetorical trope when Tlepolemus, one of Heracles’s sons, flytes with his opponent Sarpedon by boasting of his father (Il. 5.638–642): ἀλλ’ οἷόν τινά φασι βίην Ἡρακληείην εἶναι, ἐμὸν πατέρα θρασυμέμνονα θυμολέοντα, ὅς ποτε δεῦρ’ ἐλθὼν ἕνεχ’ ἵππων Λαομέδοντος ἓξ οἴῃς σὺν νηυσὶ καὶ ἀνδράσι παυροτέροισιν Ἰλίου ἐξαλάπαξε πόλιν, χήρωσε δ’ ἀγυιάς.

4 A detailed synopsis of the entire story complex is provided by Wickkiser 2021: 209–210. See also Chuvin 1992: 298–301; Gantz 1993: 400–402; Stafford 2012: 70–72; Ogden 2013: 118–123; and Edmunds 2022 passim. For an overview of the textual and material sources about the story complex, see Oakley 1997: 623; Ogden 2013: 119n15; and Wickkiser 2021: 210n1. 5 A discussion of these post-Iliadic sources can be found in Wickkiser 2021: 212–221. 6 The edition of the Iliad used is van Thiel’s 1991; translations are mine (occasionally inspired by Lattimore 1951).

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

149

heracles and hesione in the iliad

But what a kind, they say, the violent Heracles was, my own father, bold-spirited and lion-hearted, who once, coming hither because of the horses of Laomedon with only six ships and fairly few men, destroyed the city of Ilium and widowed its streets! Sarpedon then reacts to Tlepolemus’s attack before he kills him with a thrust of his lance (Il. 5.648–651): Τληπόλεμ’, ἤτοι κεῖνος ἀπώλεσεν Ἴλιον ἱρὴν ἀνέρος ἀφραδίῃσιν ἀγαυοῦ Λαομέδοντος, ὅς ῥά μιν εὖ ἕρξαντα κακῷ ἠνίπαπε μύθῳ οὐδ’ ἀπέδωχ’ ἵππους, ὧν εἵνεκα τηλόθεν ἦλθε. Tlepolemus! Indeed, that one destroyed the holy [city of] Ilium because of the recklessness of a man, the noble Laomedon, who, after he had [only] done him good, scolded him with evil words and did not hand over the horses, for the sake of which he had come from afar. Several scholars have argued, emphasizing different points and coming to slightly different conclusions, that the encounter between Tlepolemus and Sarpedon and their respective references to the Laomedon story complex serve a paradigmatic function.7 One point that I consider to be important is that the passage as a whole serves to establish Heracles as belonging to an earlier generation of heroes—a generation whose standards not even a son of Heracles is able to reach. Furthermore, by focusing on the shameful behavior of Laomedon, Sarpedon also makes an indirect statement about the Trojans; in Alden’s words, “the Trojans always were cheats, and they still are: … Laomedon did not honour his promise to Heracles and Priam is not honouring his oath to return Helen when Paris is defeated” (2000: 161). It may be objected that such an interpretation does not tally with the fact that Sarpedon, a Lycian, fights on the side of the Trojans—why should a Trojan ally make a negative statement about the Trojans? In rebutting this objection, we come to the third important point here: Sarpedon is being exclusively negative. Not only does he spell out the recklessness of Laomedon, he also reframes Tlepolemus’s praise of his father Heracles

7 See Alden 2000: 157–161; Kelly 2010: 259–276; Barker and Christensen 2014: 263–268; Bär 2018: 38–39; Lu Hsu 2020: 38–39; and Eisenfeld (this volume) p. 168.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

150

bär

negatively by condescendingly calling him κεῖνος (“that one”, line 648).8 It is therefore, in my opinion, the paradigmatic nature of the incident as such, and not so much the convictions of either side, that is spotlighted through Sarpedon’s phrasing. It is illuminating, and surely no coincidence, that the beginning and ending of the Laomedon story complex as a whole are narrated in book 5 in relatively quick succession. Homer apparently wishes to establish the full Laomedon story complex as a narrative background to his own narrative, and the audience is meant to have the first destruction of Troy and its cause and context in the back of their mind when being told of its second, and final, destruction. Accordingly, later in the Iliad, multiple narrative elements from the same story complex are interspersed. In book 14, Hypnos, the personified God of Sleep, mentions Heracles’s departure from Troy after its destruction, when he, following Hera’s instructions, had put Zeus to sleep so that Heracles could be diverted to the isle of Cos (Il. 14.249–256, spoken to Hera): ἤδη γάρ με καὶ ἄλλο τεὴ ἐπίνυσσεν ἐφετμή, ἤματι τῷ ὅτε κεῖνος ὑπέρθυμος Διὸς υἱὸς ἔπλεεν Ἰλιόθεν, Τρώων πόλιν ἐξαλαπάξας. ἤτοι ἐγὼ μὲν ἔλεξα Διὸς νόον αἰγιόχοιο νήδυμος ἀμφιχυθείς· σὺ δέ οἱ κακὰ μήσαο θυμῷ ὄρσασ’ ἀργαλέων ἀνέμων ἐπὶ πόντον ἀήτας, καί μιν ἔπειτα Κόωνδ’ εὖ ναιομένην ἀπένεικας νόσφι φίλων πάντων. … For already before this, another behest of yours has pricked me on, on the day when that famous, high-minded son of Zeus sailed off from Ilium, having destroyed the city of the Trojans. Indeed, I lulled the mind of aegis-bearing Zeus, enfolding him in sweetness; but you had thought up evil for him in your mind, having stirred up blasts of painful winds above the sea, and then you took him away to Cos, the well-inhabited [island], far away from all his dear friends. …9

8 See Barker and Christensen 2014: 265–266 on the derogatory character of the deictic pronoun κεῖνος, especially in combination with the particle ἤτοι. At the same time, by calling Heracles “that man”, Sarpedon of course also alludes to the hero’s status as a celebrity from the epic plupast (on the term “epic plupast”, see note 11 below). 9 On Heracles on Cos, see Scodel (this volume) pp. 63–86.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

151

heracles and hesione in the iliad

Later, in books 7 and 21, Poseidon refers to Laomedon’s deceit twice (Il. 7.451– 453 and 21.441–457): τοῦ δ᾽ ἤτοι κλέος ἔσται, ὅσον τ᾽ ἐπικίδναται ἠώς· τοῦ δ᾽ ἐπιλήσονται, τὸ ἐγὼ καὶ Φοῖβος Ἀπόλλων ἥρῳ Λαομέδοντι πολίσσαμεν ἀθλήσαντε. And indeed, this [new wall] will be famed as far as the dawn is scattered over; but that one they will forget, the one that I and Phoebus Apollo built for the warrior Laomedon, toiling. νηπύτι, ὡς ἄνοον κραδίην ἔχες· οὐδέ νυ τῶν περ μέμνηαι, ὅσα δὴ πάθομεν κακὰ Ἴλιον ἀμφὶ μοῦνοι νῶι θεῶν, ὅτ᾽ ἀγήνορι Λαομέδοντι πὰρ Διὸς ἐλθόντες θητεύσαμεν εἰς ἐνιαυτὸν μισθῷ ἔπι ῥητῷ· ὃ δὲ σημαίνων ἐπέτελλεν. ἤτοι ἐγὼ Τρώεσσι πόλιν πέρι τεῖχος ἔδειμα εὐρύ τε καὶ μάλα καλόν, ἵν᾽ ἄρρηκτος πόλις εἴη· Φοῖβε, σὺ δ᾽ εἰλίποδας ἕλικας βοῦς βουκολέεσκες Ἴδης ἐν κνημοῖσι πολυπτύχου ὑληέσσης. ἀλλ᾽ ὅτε δὴ μισθοῖο τέλος πολυγηθέες ὧραι ἐξέφερον, τότε νῶï βιήσατο μισθὸν ἅπαντα Λαομέδων ἔκπαγλος, ἀπειλήσας δ᾽ ἀπέπεμπε. σὺν μὲν ὅ γ᾽ ἠπείλησε πόδας καὶ χεῖρας ὕπερθε δήσειν, καὶ περάαν νήσων ἔπι τηλεδαπάων· στεῦτο δ᾽ ὅ γ᾽ ἀμφοτέρων ἀπολεψέμεν οὔατα χαλκῷ. νῶϊ δέ τ᾿ ἄψορροι κίομεν κεκοτηότι θυμῷ, μισθοῦ χωόμενοι, τὸν ὑποστὰς οὐκ ἐτέλεσσε. You fool! What a mindless heart you have! And not even this you remember, which evils we suffered around Ilium, the two of us alone among the gods, when we served headstrong Laomedon, coming from Zeus, for a year on an agreed wage—and he, being in charge, gave us orders. So then I built a wall for the Trojans around their city, A wide and very beautiful one, so that it would be unbreakable. But you, Phoebus, tended the cattle with their rolling gait and curved horns in the valleys of rich-clefted, woody [Mount] Ida.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

152

bär

But when finally the joyful seasons brought forth the making of payment, then he robbed us both of our whole payment, Laomedon, the rowdy, and sent us away with threats. And yes, he threatened to tie together our feet and our hands and to sell us [as slaves] to far-off islands; and he announced that he was going to slice off the ears of us both with iron. But we went back again with a furious mind, angry because of the payment that, having promised, he had not made. Strikingly, Poseidon refers to the same story for two different rhetorical purposes.10 In book 7, he shares with Zeus his concerns that the wall he and Apollo once built will soon be forgotten, that is, that it will become subject to a damnatio memoriae. In contrast, in book 21 the wall functions as a lieu de mémoire that Poseidon uses (albeit unsuccessfully) as an argument to persuade Apollo to join the battle. What seems clear, in either case, is that this incident from the epic plupast11 still irks Poseidon; consequently, he remembers it as clearly and vividly as the audience of the Iliad is meant to remember it. But time has no meaning for Poseidon as an immortal—his memory of the Laomedon story complex, along with his predictions about the future, thus serves as a hinge between “then”, “now”, and “later”. Only one passage, however, refers explicitly to Heracles and his fight against the sea monster. It is a passage in book 20, spoken by the primary narrator, who states (Il. 20.144–148): ὣς ἄρα φωνήσας ἡγήσατο κυανοχαίτης τεῖχος ἐς ἀμφίχυτον Ἡρακλῆος θείοιο ὑψηλόν, τό ῥά οἱ Τρῶες καὶ Παλλὰς Ἀθήνη ποίεον, ὄφρα τὸ κῆτος ὑπεκπροφυγὼν ἀλέαιτο, ὁππότε μιν σεύαιτο ἀπ’ ἠιόνος πεδίονδε. 10

11

The two passages contradict each other insofar as Poseidon first claims to have built the wall together with Apollo, but then takes all the credit for himself in the second passage. For possible explanations of this contradiction, see the commentaries by Richardson 1993: 91 on Il. 21.441–457 and Wesselmann 2020: 198–199 on Il. 7.451–453. See also Edmunds 2022: 196–201. The term “epic plupast” is borrowed from Grethlein 2012: 15: “Both the narrator and the characters frequently refer to what we could call the ‘epic plupast’, the past that preceded the main action of the song. The ‘epic plupast’ can be read as a mise en abyme, that is to say the embedded past of the heroes figures as a mirror to the heroic past presented in epic poetry.” Narratologically, such references are external analepses, that is, analepses referring back to a past that exists before the narrated time of the Iliad.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

153

heracles and hesione in the iliad

After he had spoken thus, he went ahead, the black-maned, to the wall, heaped up on both sides, of the divine Heracles, the high one that the Trojans and Pallas Athene had made for him so that he could take shelter when fleeing from that sea monster whenever it chased him away from the seashore to the plain. There are two aspects that need to be emphasized here: first, it is once again Poseidon who takes the lead, taking the other pro-Achaean gods to the place that was initially built for Heracles to retreat to in his battle with the monster and that now serves as a platform from which the deities can watch the battle. Thus, Poseidon once again features as an intermediary between the past, the present, and the future. Secondly, the use of the deictic article τό for the monster (τὸ κῆτος, “that sea monster”, line 147) indicates a reference to a known story.12 Through this, the epic memory not only of the innerfictional characters—that is, the gods who already witnessed what happened in the epic plupast—but also of the extrafictional audience is activated. The metapoetic function of this reference ties in with the paradigmatic nature of the Laomedon story complex as a whole in the Iliad; at the same time, a positive side effect for the Homeric scholar is that the phrase τὸ κῆτος reconfirms the traditionality of the story complex. What Homer—or whoever it was—here alludes to is a story that he could expect his audience to know because it was, bluntly put, old.13

3

In Search of an Iliadic Hesione

Surprisingly, Hesione goes completely unmentioned in all these Iliadic passages, including the passage in book 20, which explicitly refers to the sea monster that Heracles fought. Moreover, try as one might to find a trace of her, she is not even alluded to in any of these passages and hence does not even qualify as an unseen character.14 The easiest way to explain this lacuna would 12

13

14

See Leaf 19022: 359 on Il. 20.147: “this use of the article to denote ‘well known’ is very rare in H., except with a very few nouns.” See also Monro 18912: 230–231 (§ 61.3) and Eisenfeld (this volume) p. 167. There is no reason to believe, as older Homeric scholarship did, that the passage was a later addition (see, for example, Leaf 19022: 359 on Il. 20.147 for this assumption). For example, as early as 1939, Scheibner (103–104) demonstrated how the external analepsis is embedded in the context of the entire scene (the battle of the gods). See also Eisenfeld (this volume), especially pp. 169–172. In order to qualify as an unseen character in a text or a play, recognizable references or allusions must be made to that character. Famous examples are Laius in Sophocles’s Oedipus

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

154

bär

be to assume that Hesione, though unmentioned, was nonetheless part of the Laomedon story complex as early as the time of the composition of the Iliad and thus was known to Homer’s audience; in other words, that all the references to the Laomedon story complex would have brought Hesione to mind despite her exclusion from the narrative. Along these lines, Gantz claims that “Homer clearly alludes to pieces of a story that he expects his audience to know, and although Hesione is never mentioned there seems no reason to doubt that this story involves her rescue and slaying of the sea monster by Heracles in return for the horses of Laomedon” (1993: 400). However, such an assumption leads to a dangerous hermeneutic pitfall: we assume that Hesione must have been part of the Iliadic narrative despite her absence in that narrative because we know the entire story complex, including her, from later sources; cognitively, we are almost unable to imagine the Laomedon story complex without Hesione, and therefore we make corresponding inferences about its nature in relation to an earlier text that, in actual fact, reports only bits and pieces of it.15 Technically, the Laomedon story complex makes perfect sense without Hesione; the sea monster may be imagined as tormenting Troy just as the Erymanthian Boar ravaged Arcadia, for example. If we did not know anything about Hesione’s involvement from later sources, we would be able to piece together a coherent story based on the scattered Iliadic passages that did not involve her character at all. Indeed, the first written source that testifies to Hesione’s involvement in the Laomedon story complex is Hellanicus (fr. 26b Fowler = sch. vet. Il. 20.145), who is commonly dated to the second half of the fifth century b.c.e.16 This means there was an interval of approximately two to three hundred years between Homer and Hellanicus. Furthermore, the story of Heracles and Hesione bears an obvious resemblance to the story of Perseus and Andromeda, another instance of the universal, fairytale-like story-pattern of the damsel in distress: in both cases, a hero rescues a young woman who is in imminent danger. Scholars tend to assume that, because of the Iliadic references, the Heracles-and-Hesione story must be older than the Perseus-and-Andromeda story and that the former may even have served as a model for the latter, but that later, the Perseus-and-Andromeda story became more popular than

15 16

the King or Columbo’s wife in the TV series Columbo. I wish to thank Andriana Domouzi for drawing my attention to this important concept and discussing it with me. I must admit that I have myself fallen into this trap in my previous research; see Bär 2018: 34–36 and 2019: 113. See the commentary by Fowler 2013: 311–313 and the brief discussion by Wickkiser 2021: 215. Furthermore, see Edmunds 2022, who discusses the attribution of the scholion to Hellanicus and who argues that the summary offered by this scholion represents a specifically Iliadic version of the Laomedon story complex.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

heracles and hesione in the iliad

155

the Heracles-and-Hesione story because it was more attractive, particularly in terms of eroticism.17 And indeed, it is true that there are no surviving texts in which Heracles feels erotic attraction to Hesione, whereas the attraction between Perseus and Andromeda is, of course, an integral part of their story. According to later sources, beginning with Lycophron (Alex. 468–469), Heracles gave Hesione to his fellow warrior Telamon as a reward for having breached the walls of Troy,18 which makes it very probable that he had absolutely no erotic (and/or emotional) interest in her. This is in accordance with Heracles’s typical behavior towards women on other occasions too; despite his multiple marriages, the hero is typically not interested in extramarital adventures with women. A striking example of this attitude is his complete lack of interest in women—and his homoerotic obsession with his ἐρώμενος Hylas—in Apollonius of Rhodes’s Argonautica. Moreover, the Argonautic Heracles shows no sympathy for other men who are interested in women either, as his invective against Jason and the Argonauts having sex with the women of Lemnos (Arg. 1.872–878) clearly demonstrates. Therefore, the question ultimately arises as to why the Heracles-andHesione story necessarily should have been older than, or even have served as a model for, the Perseus-and-Andromeda story. I would like to suggest that the opposite be considered: Hesione may not yet have been part of the Laomedon story complex when the Iliad was composed, and may have been introduced into it only later under the influence of the Perseus-and-Andromeda story. This order of influence is supported by the fact that the Laomedon story complex works perfectly well without Hesione19 and that Hesione’s rescue by Hera-

17

18 19

See Ogden 2013: 119 and Wickkiser 2021: 214–215. Wickkiser 2021: 215 notes that the “Perseus-Andromeda myth quickly outstripped Heracles-Hesione in popularity …, appearing frequently in Greek and Roman literature and visual media, a phenomenon due in part, almost certainly, to its erotic aspects”. The earliest iconographic evidence for Perseus rescuing Andromeda from the sea monster can be found on a Corinthian black-figure amphora from c. 575–550b.c.e. (see LIMC s.v. “Andromeda” i 1) and is hence more or less contemporary with the first iconographic depiction of Heracles, Hesione, and the κῆτος (on which see below). However, the earliest texts are considerably later, stemming from Classical tragedy (Soph. Andr. fr. 126–136 TrGF; Eur. Andr. fr. 114–156 TrGF; see Schauenburg 1981: 774–775; Klimek-Winter 1993: 1–4 et passim; Ogden 2008: 67–99; and Ogden 2013: 123–129, with 123–124n30 for further references). Telamon’s participation in the first destruction of Troy is first mentioned by Pisander (fr. 10 GEF). See also Edmunds 2022: 205–206. The anonymous reviewer points out that there is no sacrifice by Laomedon in the story if we assume that Hesione was not part of the Laomedon story complex when the Iliad was composed. Maybe the post-Iliadic introduction of Hesione was indeed stimulated by a desire to introduce a sacrificial element into the story complex.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

156

bär

cles does not lead to any further emotional attachment or erotic encounter, whereas the Perseus-and-Andromeda story would obviously fall apart without Andromeda’s involvement. However, my point here is not to explicitly argue either for or against Hesione’s “offstage” presence (or absence) in the Iliad. Rather, my point is to demonstrate that arguments can be made in both directions and that the idea of Hesione having been part of the horizon of expectation of Homer’s intended audience can be neither proven nor disproven. The Iliadic silence on Hesione is a silence that we as modern readers perceive; for us, Hesione’s absence constitutes a textual gap (a Leerstelle, following Iser’s terminology), and a cognitive dissonance therefore arises between the Iliadic silence and our expectations (expectations based on knowledge from post-Iliadic sources) that incites us to fill this gap with our knowledge about the Heracles-and-Hesione story, using pieces of information from later, fuller accounts of the entire story complex. However, strictly speaking, we cannot know when the character of Hesione came into play—or was “invented”, for that matter—and whether Homer’s audience felt the same textual gap as we do.20

4

Different “Hesiones” in Early Greek Iconography

Heracles, Hesione, and the monster do in fact appear before Hellanicus—yet not in texts, but in vase painting. There are two vases dated to a period earlier than Hellanicus that depict the incident.21 The first one is a Corinthian column-crater dated to approximately 560b.c.e. (see Figure 1), showing Heracles shooting the monster while Hesione stands in front of it with some objects in her hand and a pile of those objects next to her. The second vase is an Attic black-figure cup dated to c. 540 b.c.e. (see Figure 2); on it, Heracles is displayed as being about to clutch and/or cut the monster’s tongue while Hesione sits behind him.

20

21

All the scattered Iliadic references to the Laomedon story complex have served as potent inspiration for neoanalytical approaches, leading to hypotheses regarding lost epics about a First Trojan War (see Porter 2014) or a Heracles Cycle (see, for example, Kullmann 1956: 25–35, with 25n2 for older references; Willcock 1964: 145–146; Danek 1998: 247–250; West 2003: 19–24; and West 2011: 30–31), but such theories must ultimately remain in the realm of speculation; see, for example, Barker and Christensen 2014: 250 for criticism. See Oakley 1997: 624; Mayor 2000: 157–191; Ogden 2013: 119–122; and Wickkiser 2021: 212– 213. See also the brief discussion by Eisenfeld (this volume) p. 170.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

157

heracles and hesione in the iliad

figure 1

Corinthian column-crater, c. 560b.c.e. (LIMC s.v. “Hesione” 3) museum of fine arts boston, 63.420; https://collections.mfa.org/​ objects/259823 (last accessed on november 17, 2022)

figure 2

Attic black-figure cup, c. 540b.c.e. (LIMC s.v. “Hesione” 4) museo archeologico nazionale di taranto, 10.3.1949; papadopoulos and ruscillo 2002: 217

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

158

bär

The differences between the two depictions are conspicuous. Not only does Heracles use different methods of killing the monster (shooting it vs. clutching/cutting its tongue),22 the role of Hesione in particular could not be more different. On the Attic black-figure cup, she is sitting behind Heracles, her head bowed. Unfortunately, the vase is partially damaged here, but it nonetheless appears clear that what is depicted is a passive Hesione, who thus conforms to the damsel-in-distress stereotype with which we associate her story. In contrast, on the Corinthian column-crater, the oldest visual depiction we have, she assumes a considerably more active role: she stands directly in front of the monster with Heracles behind her, holding some round objects in her hands, with a pile of the same type of objects in front of her.23 It has been suggested that Hesione may be handing stones to Heracles to throw at the monster, or that she may be throwing stones herself. However, both interpretations are problematic.24 As for the first interpretation, Heracles is busy shooting the monster, so has no hand free for throwing stones, and Hesione is not looking towards Heracles, but rather facing the monster. As for the second, the position of Hesione’s hands does not suggest that she is throwing something, but rather that she is presenting something—perhaps some sort of bait—to the monster. If this interpretation is correct, then the two are teaming up: she is luring the monster on so that he can shoot it, just as Medea puts the guardian snake to sleep so that Jason can kill it and/or steal the Golden Fleece.25 What is, in any case, essential is the active role that Hesione assumes: instead of being a passive bystander, she assists Heracles in overcoming the monster. To summarize, we are faced with the following situation: the accidents of preservation have provided us with two completely different visual versions of the same story. Consequently, it could be claimed that the two versions testify to the popularity and wide dissemination of the story as early as the mid-sixth

22

23 24 25

Heracles cutting the monster’s tongue has been interpreted as an attempt to secure proof of his deed in order to avoid being denied his promised award; see Milne 1956 and Lesky 1967. I wish to thank Glenn Most for his inspiring thoughts on the interpretation of this depiction. See Oakley 1997: 624; Ogden 2013: 119; and Wickkiser 2021: 212–213. An interesting parallel can be found on the fragment of a sarcophagus from the second half of the second century c.e. that shows Medea luring the snake with what is clearly recognizable as an apple while Jason seizes the Golden Fleece (see LIMC s.v. “Iason” 44). It appears that, in older versions of the story, the serpent was normally killed, whereas in later versions it would typically only be put to sleep (on the latter, see especially Ap. Rh. 4.145–166 and Apollod. Bibl. 1.9.23). On the different versions of the story, see Ogden 2013: 58–63 and Hunter 2015: 101.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

159

heracles and hesione in the iliad

century b.c.e.: the more popular a story is, the more likely it is to undergo changes, adaptations, and alterations. However, we may also take the two different versions as evidence that justifies casting doubt on the canonicity of the story at that time. If we are prepared to accept the presupposition that there was probably no canonical version of the Heracles-and-Hesione story in the mid-sixth century b.c.e., then this has a bearing on our doubts regarding the question of Hesione’s “offstage” presence in the Iliad, as discussed above: even if we wish to uphold the claim that Hesione must have been part of the horizon of expectation of Homer’s intended audience—and that she may therefore indeed have constituted some sort of unseen character for the Homeric audience—we cannot be sure which type of Hesione this may have been. Was it the damsel-in-distress Hesione as we typically know her, or might it instead have been the fierce, self-confident Hesione who fights the monster in collaboration with Heracles? We might even speculate that there already existed two “Hesiones”—a weak one and a strong one, as it were—when the Iliad was composed, and that the Homeric narrator therefore deliberately left this textual gap open so that his audience would be compelled to reflect upon how to fill the lacuna.

5

Conclusion: From Hesione to Helen—and Back to the Hermeneutic Problem

I have suggested elsewhere that the first destruction of Troy, focalized through Heracles, be interpreted as a prolepsis to the impending second destruction of the city, and that consequently, Heracles and Achilles—the latter being a key player in the capture of Troy—be viewed as parallel figures, with Heracles serving as a mythical example from the epic plupast.26 To build on this interpretation, the paradigmatic nature of the Laomedon story complex as demonstrated above—interspersed throughout the Iliad, and with a focus on Poseidon acting as an intermediary between the past, the present, and the future—must also be understood: Laomedon is a mythical forerunner of the Trojans who do not return Helen. Structurally speaking, Helen may be seen as corresponding to Laomedon’s horses (the former having been abducted from, and not returned to, her husband, and the latter having been promised to Apollo, Poseidon, and Heracles as a reward, but then withheld).27 In a somewhat different vein, Hes26 27

See Bär 2018: 40–44 and 2019: 113–114. On the parallel between Heracles and Achilles, see also Menkes 1978: 73–117. See Bär 2018: 41.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

160

bär

ione could be regarded as a parallel figure to, and mythical prefiguration of, Helen, insofar as both women are the object of rescue missions by heroes who destroy the city of Troy (Heracles) or contribute to its capture (Achilles). However, this parallel begs the question of what kind of character the Iliadic Helen actually is. Unlike later authors (beginning with Alc. fr. 42 Voigt) who make her an embodiment of evil and place all the blame for the Trojan War on her, the Homeric narrator is quite sympathetic towards Helen. As Blondell aptly puts it, “despite the transgressive origin of her marriage”, she is “a modest woman and proper wife” who is “properly incorporated into the Trojan family” (2013: 58). In other words, the Iliadic Helen is, if not a straightforwardly positive character, then at least an ambivalent one.28 Thus, a potentially ambivalent Hesione as we find her in early Greek iconography would constitute a surprisingly good parallel for Helen. To conclude, it can be stated that the way scholars typically look at, and treat, the Heracles-and-Hesione story in the Iliad is symptomatic of a major hermeneutic problem connected to Heracles in early Greek epic. Supplementing our fragmentary knowledge about Heracles in early Greek epic with later sources is tempting, but it comes with certain risks. Claiming that the Iliadic references to the Laomedon story complex must necessarily have included Hesione, even though Hesione is neither mentioned nor alluded to in the Iliad, is certainly an easy way out, but it is methodologically unsound. Taking a step back and acknowledging the lack of certainty surrounding what we actually know about Hesione in the Iliad may be frustrating—because an honest answer must be that we do not, in fact, know anything—but it also reveals new ideas and potentially new insights.

Works Cited Alden, M. 2000. Homer Beside Himself: Para-Narratives in the Iliad. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Austin, N. 1994. Helen of Troy and her Shameless Phantom. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Bär, S. 2018. Herakles im griechischen Epos: Studien zur Narrativität und Poetizität eines Helden. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner. Bär, S. 2019. “Heracles in Homer and Apollonius: Narratological Character Analysis in a Diachronic Perspective.” Symbolae Osloenses 93: 106–131. 28

On Helen in the Iliad, see, for example, Reckford 1964; Lindsay 1974: 13–38; Clader 1976: 5–23; Austin 1994: 23–50; Ebbott 1999; Blondell 2013: 53–72.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

heracles and hesione in the iliad

161

Barker, E. and Christensen, J. 2014. “Even Heracles Had to Die: Homeric ‘Heroism’, Mortality and the Epic Tradition.” Trends in Classics 6: 249–277. Blondell, R. 2013. Helen of Troy: Beauty, Myth, Devastation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Burkert, W. 2011. Griechische Religion der archaischen und klassischen Epoche. 2nd rev. edn. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. Chuvin, P. 1992. La mythologie grecque: Du premier homme à l’apothéose d’Héraclès. Paris: Fayard. Clader, L.L. 1976. Helen: The Evolution from Divine to Heroic in Greek Epic Tradition. Leiden: Brill. Danek, G. 1998. Epos und Zitat: Studien zu den Quellen der Odyssee. Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Ebbott, M. 1999. “The Wrath of Helen: Self-Blame and Nemesis in the Iliad.” In Carlisle, M. and Levaniouk, O. eds. Nine Essays on Homer. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. 3–20. Edmunds, L. 2022. “Heracles’ Sack of Troy in Mythographus Homericus (D schol. Il. 20.145).” In Pagès, J. and Villagra, N., eds. Myths on the Margins of Homer: Prolegomena to the Mythographus Homericus. Berlin: De Gruyter. 195–213. Feeney, D. 1991. The Gods in Epic: Poets and Critics of the Classical Tradition. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Fowler, R.L. 2000, 2013. Early Greek Mythography. 2 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Galinsky, G.K. 1972. The Herakles Theme: The Adaptations of the Hero in Literature from Homer to the Twentieth Century. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Gantz, T. 1993. Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Grethlein, J. 2012. “Homer and Heroic History.” In Marincola, J., Llewellyn-Jones, L., and Maciver, C. eds. Greek Notions of the Past in the Archaic and Classical Eras: History without Historians. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 14–36. Hunter, R. 2015. Apollonius of Rhodes: Argonautica Book iv. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Huxley, G.L. 1969. Greek Epic Poetry from Eumelos to Panyassis. London: Faber and Faber. Kelly, A. 2010. “Hypertexting with Homer: Tlepolemus and Sarpedon on Heracles (Il. 5.628–698).” Trends in Classics 2: 259–276. Klimek-Winter, R. 1993. Andromedatragödien: Sophokles, Euripides, Livius Andronikos, Ennius, Accius. Text, Einleitung und Kommentar. Stuttgart: Teubner. Kullmann, W. 1956. Das Wirken der Götter in der Ilias: Untersuchungen zur Frage der Entstehung des homerischen “Götterapparats.” Berlin: Akademie-Verlag. Lattimore, R. 1951. The Iliad of Homer: Translated with an Introduction. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

162

bär

Leaf, W. 1902. The Iliad: Edited, with Apparatus Criticus, Prolegomena, Notes, and Appendices. 2 vols. 2nd rev. ed. London: Macmillan & Co. Lesky, A. 1967. “Herakles und das Ketos.” Anzeiger der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil.-hist. Klasse 104: 1–6. Lindsay, J. 1974. Helen of Troy: Woman and Goddess. London: Constable. Lu Hsu, K. 2020. The Violent Hero: Heracles in Greek Imagination. London: Bloomsbury. Mayor, A. 2000. The First Fossil Hunters: Dinosaurs, Mammoths, and Myth in Greek and Roman Times. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Menkes, M.S. 1978. Herakles in the Homeric Epics. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University (unpublished Ph.D. Diss.). Milne, M.J. 1956. American Journal of Archaeology 60: 300–302: Review of Brommer, F. 1955. Die Königstochter und das Ungeheuer. Marburg: Verlag des Kunstgeschichtlichen Seminars. Monro, D.B. 1891. A Grammar of the Homeric Dialect. 2nd rev. ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Oakley, J.H. 1997. “Hesione.” Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae viii.1: 623– 629. Ogden, D. 2008. Perseus. London: Routledge. Ogden, D. 2013. Drakōn: Dragon Myth and Serpent Cult in the Greek and Roman Worlds. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Papadopoulos, J.K. and Ruscillo, D. 2002. “A Ketos in Early Athens: An Archaeology of Whales and Sea Monsters in the Greek World.” American Journal of Archaeology 106: 187–227. Porter, A. 2014. “Reconstructing Laomedon’s Reign in Homer: Olympiomachia, Poseidon’s Wall, and the Earlier Trojan War.” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 54: 507–526. Reckford, K.J. 1964. “Helen in the Iliad.” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 5: 5–20. Richardson, N. 1993. The Iliad: A Commentary. Volume vi: Books 21–24. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schauenburg, K. 1981. “Andromeda i.”Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae i.1: 774–790. Scheibner, G. 1939. Der Aufbau des 20. und 21. Buches der Ilias. Borna-Leipzig: Robert Noske. Stafford, E. 2012. Herakles. London: Routledge. Van Thiel, H., ed. 1996. Homeri Ilias. Hildesheim: Georg Olms. Wesselmann, K. 2020. Homers Ilias: Gesamtkommentar. Volume vii.2: Siebter Gesang (Η). Kommentar. Berlin: De Gruyter. West, M.L., ed. 2003. Greek Epic Fragments: From the Seventh to the Fifth Centuries bc. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Abbreviated as GEF.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

heracles and hesione in the iliad

163

West, M.L. 2011. The Making of the Iliad: Disquisition and Analytical Commentary. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wickkiser, B. 2021. “Laomedon, Hesione, and the Sea-Monster.” In Ogden, D. ed. The Oxford Handbook of Heracles. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 209–223. Willcock, M.M. 1964. “Mythological Paradeigma in the Iliad.” The Classical Quarterly 14: 141–154.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

Of Walls and Monsters: Heracles and Epic Time in Iliad 20 Hanne Eisenfeld

1

A Wall and a Monster

In Iliad 20 Heracles fights a sea monster. Or, more accurately, Heracles runs away from a sea monster, taking shelter behind a wall constructed for the purpose by Athena and the Trojans. This lively series of events from the Trojan past appears in a brief three-line narrative, introduced by Heracles’s wall on the present Trojan plain (Il. 20.144–152):1

145

150

145

150

ὣς ἄρα φωνήσας ἡγήσατο κυανοχαίτης τεῖχος ἐς ἀμφίχυτον Ἡρακλῆος θείοιο, ὑψηλόν, τό ῥά οἱ Τρῶες καὶ Παλλὰς Ἀθήνη ποίεον, ὄφρα τὸ κῆτος ὑπεκπροφυγὼν ἀλέαιτο, ὁππότε μιν σεύαιτο ἀπ᾽ ἠϊόνος πεδίονδε. ἔνθα Ποσειδάων κατ᾽ ἄρ᾽ ἕζετο καὶ θεοὶ ἄλλοι, ἀμφὶ δ᾽ ἄρ᾽ ἄρρηκτον νεφέλην ὤμοισιν ἕσαντο· οἱ δ᾽ ἑτέρωσε καθῖζον ἐπ᾽ ὀφρύσι Καλλικολώνης ἀμφὶ σέ, ἤϊε Φοῖβε, καὶ Ἄρηα πτολίπορθον. Thus the blue-maned god spoke and led the way to the heaped up wall of godly Heracles, lofty, which the Trojans and Pallas Athena made for him, so that he might flee away and keep clear of the sea monster whenever it drove him from the shore to the plain. There Poseidon sat down, and the other gods as well, and they clothed their shoulders in indestructible clouds. And they sat on the other side on the brows of Callicolone Around you, lord Phoebus, and city-sacking Ares.

This passage is a moment of calm in the midst of an increasingly combustible situation. At the opening of book 20, seeing Achilles newly equipped with the 1 I follow the edition of Monro and Allen; all translations are my own.

© Hanne Eisenfeld, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004696617_009

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

of walls and monsters: heracles and epic time in iliad 20

165

divine armor from Hephaestus and fearing that he might bring down the walls of Troy before their fated time, Zeus lifts his ban on direct divine intervention in the battle and sends the gods forth to do their worst (20.23–30). Battle is barely joined, however, before an odd series of deferrals sets in. First Apollo leaves the battle lines to have a word with Aeneas; then Poseidon thinks better of the impending divine conflict and urges restraint so successfully that the gods withdraw and become spectators—the moment we see in the passage above. Holmes has described the world of Iliad 20 and 21 as “topsy-turvy … where fate might be breached and the gods are deliberately left to their own devices by the hegemonic mind of the poem”.2 I argue in this chapter that the disoriented quality she observes is a carefully-crafted feature of the poetic narrator’s elaborate play with epic time. Graziosi has identified an “internal chronology” of early Greek epic, that is, a progression from the origins of the cosmos down through the time of the Trojan War and, ultimately, to the era of the poem’s audiences.3 Critically, these epic epochs are distinguished from each other in large part by the relationships between gods and humans which, over time, move from intimacy to distance.4 This is a program nicely articulated by Barker and Christensen: … the Iliad and its heroes represent a world further on from the world of the Theogony. In fact, through its appropriation of Heracles, as well as other means, the Iliad both represents and reproduces the separation of the race of heroes from the Olympian gods and establishes a world of men in its wake.5 For audiences expecting the rules of this chronological progression to be followed, the opening of Iliad 20, I propose, comes unstuck in time. The models of divine and human engagement are temporarily scrambled, and with them the models of heroic achievement that inform battlefield decisions and define the stakes of the present contest. Into the midst of this confusion come Heracles and his sea monster. As Bär has argued, Heracles’s identity in the Iliad is one of present absence: stories about him and remembrances of him weave through the work, but he always belongs to an era before that of the narrated time of the epic.6 Concep-

2 3 4 5 6

Holmes 2015: 37. Graziosi 2016: 40. Haubold 2005 explores Heracles’s place(s) in this chronology. Slatkin 1986, esp. 267; Clay 1989: 15, 279; cf. Clay 1983: 174–176. Barker and Christensen 2014: 277. Bär 2018: 38–39.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

166

eisenfeld

tualizing the past that Heracles represents, however, is no simple task, because he embodies so many different modes of heroic activity, from world-shaping and monster-slaying to city-sacking and marrying badly. This range of expertise highlights how Heracles’s supersized CV establishes him in multiple epochs of the epic past. The great monster battles evoke theogonic landscapes full of primordial beings—an earlier epic epoch in which order is still being established in the world—while political and social squabbles defined by human communities evoke a more recent epic past, reaching down to the generations just before the Trojan War. The Homeric narrator, I argue, leverages Heracles’s ability to evoke multiple eras of the epic past in order to highlight and comment on book 20’s play with epic chronology. Within the three lines of the sea monster episode, Heracles’s orientation within the epic past is destabilized as monsters and humans come together in unprecedented constellations. The narration of the episode at precisely the moment in book 20 when the separation between gods and humans is (at least temporarily) reestablished, underscores the distance between that disoriented past and the Iliadic present. Heracles and his sea monster thus provide a lens for interpreting the narrative play with epic chronology as a commentary on the meaning of heroism on the Trojan field and the human stakes of the conflict.

2

Trojan Fabula and Epic Time

This claim may strike one as a lot of responsibility to place on three lines of allusive Heraclean narrative, but I propose that the nature of those three lines and their complex orientation to broader Heraclean traditions invite interpretative attention out of proportion to their brevity. The passage intervenes directly in the thematization of epic chronology developed in book 20. Of Heracles’s many and complex appearances in the Iliad, our passage in book 20 is one of only four spoken by the poetic narrator.7 In contrast to Heraclean references by Iliadic characters, each of whom has their own angle on Heracles and can be seen using him, more and less capably, to advance their own narratives and goals,8 the narrator’s Heraclean myths lack such context or

7 The other three are sparked by humans alive and active at Troy: the sons and grandsons of Heracles in the Catalogue of Ships (Tlepolemus 2.653–670; Pheidippus and Antiphus 2.676–680) and Periphetes, the son of Copreus, the messenger who carried communications between Heracles and Eurystheus (15.638–841). 8 Thus Kelly 2010: 259–276.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

of walls and monsters: heracles and epic time in iliad 20

167

readily-observable motivation. The narratorial intervention in book 20 is even more striking because it is sparked by a physical feature—Heracles’s wall— that appears nowhere else in the Iliad, nor in other extant sources aside from those commenting directly on this passage.9 For all its brevity, then, this passage invites Homeric audiences to pause on the Heraclean episode and consider the meaning of Heracles, his wall, and his sea monster for the events unfolding on the Trojan plain. The Heraclean passage in Iliad 20 presents itself as referring to a narrative that was sufficiently familiar to its audiences that it did not need to be recounted in full. This move allows the poetic narrator to highlight certain aspects of the encounter in order to comment on the surrounding Iliadic action.10 In what follows, I will refer to the Heraclean passage in book 20 as an analepsis. I use this term to highlight the narrator’s interjection of a past event into the present Iliadic narrative and to designate the specific framing, with all its gaps and ambiguities, that the poetic narrator provides. The analepsis works in conversation with a broader Trojan fabula, by which I mean a series of related events recognized as such by an audience which can be drawn on and alluded to by individual narrators for their own purposes.11 The Trojan fabula in question revolves around events occurring at Troy during the reign of King Laomedon.12 A narrative account of this tradition appears as a historia in a scholium to Iliad 20.145 where it is attributed to Hellanicus.13 It begins with Poseidon and Apollo having been sent by Zeus to serve Laomedon and building for him, for a wage, the walls of Troy. Laomedon declines to pay their fee and sends them away, whereupon Poseidon sends a ketos which promptly ravages land and territory until Laomedon, at the advice of an oracle, offers his daughter Hesione as its victim. At the same time, Laomedon announces that he is offering his divine horses as a prize for anyone who can kill the serpent; Heracles arrives and dispatches it but is given mortal rather than immortal horses as a reward. The trick uncovered, he returns, sacks the city, and takes the horses.

9 10 11 12 13

It appears in a fragment of Hellanicus as paraphrased in an Iliadic scholium to these lines (FGrH 4F26b); for discussion, see Fowler 2013: 311–312. Edwards (1991: 307 on Il. 20.145–148) points to the definite article (τὸ κῆτος) as a grammatical indication of assumed familiarity. Cf. de Jong 2014, 38. For a discussion of such a fabula as an object of allusion (in contrast to other ways of conceptualizing allusion in early Greek epic), see Currie 2016: 12. For an overview, see Gantz 1993: 400–402, 442–445; Fowler 2013: 311–313 (vol. ii); Wickkiser 2021: 209–223. See (this chapter) p. 169n19.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

168

eisenfeld

The events of the Trojan fabula can be read as a sort of microcosm of epic chronology, echoing in miniature the cosmic progression from a time of close human and divine interaction to an era of separate purposes and perspectives. In the Iliad, Poseidon twice evokes his labor at Troy, the divine construction of its walls, and the ill treatment he experienced after building them, all features of an era of closer interaction between humans and gods.14 The fabula may look even farther back into epic time to an era of intra-divine conflict, if Poseidon’s and Apollo’s labor at Troy was understood as punishment for their role in a divine uprising.15 Whether or not that narrative strand is in play, Poseidon’s and Apollo’s activities at Troy focalize the early stages of the fabula through the perspective of the gods and define the city as the recipient of divine intervention.16 The sea monster itself belongs to an earlier era as well, a supernatural creature fully at home in Heraclean narratives of monster-slaying but alien to the intra-human conflicts of the Iliad.17 The post-sea-monster material of the fabula, in contrast, is framed in human disagreements and the human solution of military force, a potential foreshadowing of the Homeric Trojan War. The tradition preserved in the scholium, that Laomedon cheated Heracles of the promised prize for dispatching the monster, is referred to by Sarpedon in his conversation with Tlepolemus (Il. 5.651). In Tlepolemus’s framing, Heracles is a recognizable—if more impressive— analogue for the contemporary Achaean expedition, an aggressor who came to Troy with ships and men. As Kelly has demonstrated, Sarpedon agrees with Tlepolemus’s framing while challenging the paradigmatic value of the sack.18 Sarpedon emphasizes that Heracles’s destruction of Troy was the result of nothing more than Laomedon’s human folly in attempting the deception. While the exchange is motivated by Tlepolemus’s effort to elevate his own Heraclean heritage and diminish Sarpedon’s status as son of Zeus, neither hero is concerned with the gods as immediate and present actors, nor even with the sea monster, which neither of them mentions. Instead, they are interested in the human actors and their motivations. The scholium reflects this shift, closing with Laomedon’s trickery and Heracles’s military response and not commenting further on monsters or gods. 14 15

16 17 18

Poseidon’s recollections: Il. 7.453; 21.441–447. This is the angle taken by a scholiast (Σ Il. 21.444d) and may be alluded to in the Iliad itself when Poseidon describes himself and Apollo as having come to Troy from Zeus (πὰρ Διός: 21.444): cf. Porter 2014: 520–525. Scully (1990: 36) notes that Iliadic heroes almost never mention the Trojan Wall’s divine origins. On other monster appearances in the Iliad, see Zanon 2019: 235–252. Kelly 2010: 259–276.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

of walls and monsters: heracles and epic time in iliad 20

169

There is no reason to think that all of the details from the scholium were known to every Iliadic audience, but a Trojan fabula along these general lines glimmers throughout the Iliad, with divine and human speakers alike recalling bits and pieces of the events.19 Repeated references are made to the divine construction of the Trojan Wall, Heracles’s travels, and Heracles’s sack of Troy. But nobody at any point talks about the sea monster—until the analepsis in book 20.20 In the next section I argue that as a result of that analepsis, the microcosm of epic eras within the fabula is at once brought into focus and simultaneously destabilized in order to highlight the narrator’s own chronological play.

3

Heraclean Analepsis: Back to Which Past?

Heracles’s encounter with the sea monster is a sort of middle point within the Trojan fabula, succeeding the withdrawal of the gods, preceding the human military conflict, and narratively inextricable from both. The analepsis of book 20 emphasizes this intermediate position by destabilizing expectations about the mythical era to which he belongs and the corresponding modes of heroic achievement that should frame the encounter. Ultimately this passage will serve to throw into relief the heroic ethos—and heroic stakes—of the Iliadic present, but this effect depends on the ambiguities of the analepsis itself. The first source of disorientation within epic time is the construction of the protective wall through the apparently cooperative action of Athena and the Trojans (20.146). Even aside from the jarring—and poignant—effect of recalling a time when Athena worked for the protection of the Trojan citadel, a role she had vehemently rejected earlier in the Iliad in response to Hecuba’s prayers (6.311), the cooperation of the goddess with the human community fits uncertainly within the events surrounding the sea monster’s attack.21 Athena’s intervention squares neatly with her constant patronage of Heracles in his monster-slaying endeavors, but the assistance of the affected human community is not part of that same monster-slaying playbook. The construction of a wall by a goddess as a means of support for her human favorite also resonates

19

20 21

Thus Gantz 1993: 400. Lang (1983: 141–164) provides one reconstruction of this fabula, but the hesitations expressed by Scodel (2002: 149) are well taken. Edmunds (2022: 195–213) argues that the events of the scholium represent a particularly Iliadic version. Divine construction of the Trojan Wall: 7.453; 21.441–447; Heracles’s travels to Cos: 14.249– 256, 15.18–30; Heracles’s sack of Troy: 5.628–651. Cf. Scully 1990: 32–33.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

170

eisenfeld

oddly against the forced labor required of Poseidon (and sometimes Apollo) to construct Troy’s walls in the first place. Heracles’s own activities in these lines play up and against both ensuing Trojan sacks. The movement of the monster from the shore to the plain evokes the press of human armies, while Heracles’s strategy of fleeing and escaping (20.147–148) represents actions that are the subject of endless critique and debate in the Iliad as self-evidently beneficial. Through these incongruous components, the orientation of the narrative within the chronology of Greek epic is destabilized, and with it, the frameworks required to anticipate and evaluate Heracles’s heroics. The analepsis provokes further disorientation by declining to depict the ketos itself or the climactic clash between the two antagonists. Instead, it invites audiences to supply their own conceptions of the monster. An overview of sea monsters within and beyond the Homeric epics suggests that this invitation would have produced some conflicting ideas about the nature and meaning of the ketos which would further advance the problem of orienting Heracles’s encounter within epic chronology and heroic modes. Visual depictions of sea monsters from the sixth century represent giant, fear-inducing creatures. On one Attic Black-Figure cup, Heracles, identified by his lion skin, threatens a giant monster with a harpe while grasping its tongue.22 On a late Corinthian krater, a male figure fights with an arrow while a female figure assists by throwing stones, and a Caeretan hydria shows a male figure fighting with a harpe and a rock.23 These latter two depictions do not identify themselves as representations of Heracles, leaving open the possibility that they depict Perseus and Andromeda or even some other episode.24 In any case, these images give us a sense of a recurring visual dynamic that emphasizes the confrontation between hero and creature and offers an audience the chance to appreciate, at a safe remove, the ketos’s marked monstrosity: sometimes huge and sinuous, sometimes gigantic and scaly, sometimes an otherworldly, bony skull emerging from a cave. While the sea monster appears as a more-than-worthy opponent in these visual traditions, the non-Heraclean reference to ketea in the Iliad takes some of the oomph out of Heracles’s achievement, emphasizing the extent to which monster-slaying is distanced from the modes of achievement valorized in the epic narrative. In book 13, ketea appear as something like dolphins, gamboling around Poseidon’s chariot as it sweeps over the waves to Troy (13.27–28). These 22 23 24

Cup: Taranto Museo Nazionale Inv. 52155. Krater: Boston 63.420; Caeretan hydria (private collection) published by Isler 1983: 15–56. Boardman (1987: 80) interprets the figure on the Caeretan hydria as Heracles; Isler (1983: 15–56) proposed Perseus; see also Bär (this volume) pp. 156–158.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

of walls and monsters: heracles and epic time in iliad 20

171

ketea do not sound like the singular town-ravaging monstrosity from which Heracles prepares to flee; more like quasi-domesticated sea-pets who belong to an idealized divine landscape. If we look to the Odyssey, the diminishment of the idea of a ketos goes even further, several times referring simply to seals— stinky, but not particularly threatening.25 Ketea are deflated and decentered from the heroic achievement valorized by the Iliad, but we might expect them to play a greater role in the Theogony, whose events unfold across epic eras more suited to monsters. In fact, the Theogony itself is devoid of ketea, but its genealogies do include a primordial female figure, Ceto (Κητώ), who is the matriarch of multiple generations of monsters/heroic opponents.26 Moreover, in the case of three of these— Geryoneus (and his dog), the Hydra, and the Nemean Lion—the text repeatedly zooms ahead to include their deaths at Heracles’s hands.27 This quasiteleological maneuvering occurs throughout the Theogony, signaling the inexorable movement of the cosmos toward Zeus’s order and the world-ordering efforts of his heroic offspring.28 If we can play with the possible evocation of Ceto as the ancestor of monsters, the invocation of a ketos in the Iliad may provoke a further time warp. While the Theogony passage effects a sort of telescoping from the primordial past to the (then-future) heroic age, the irruption of a Heraclean monster encounter in the midst of the Iliad teases a reverse effect: looking back to a bygone era when this sort of encounter was Heracles’s stock in trade. The possibility of reading the analepsis as a simple backward glance to that previous Heraclean time, however, is challenged both by the elision of the actual hero/monster encounter from the Iliadic analepsis and by the place of that encounter within the Trojan fabula: this encounter did not occur at the edge of the world or in the impossibly distant past, but on the very site of the contemporary Trojan siege and within a single generation of the current conflict. In the ketos analepsis, then, Heracles’s heroic identity and achievements are muddied by information included and omitted: a monster is anticipated but does not appear, Heracles appears simultaneously as a monster-fighter and

25

26 27 28

Ketea as seals in Menelaus’s story about encountering the Old Man of the Sea: 4.430–453. A ketos also appears in the Odyssey as something more alarming but not particularly unique: 5.421, 12.96–97. Hes. Th. 270–336. Hes. Th. 289–295, 316–318, 332. Haubold 2005: 85–98.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

172

eisenfeld

city-defender (specifically, a defender of its princess), gods and humans work together to support his efforts. As a result, the analepsis evokes an ambiguous time and mode of action that throws the contours of the Iliadic present, marked by the widening gap between human and divine stakes, into high relief. The encounter also highlights a more extensive play on epic time and heroic ethos that shapes the opening of book 20.

4

Epic Time Travel

4.1 Earlier Eras As book 20 begins, Achilles’s return to battle does more than turn the tide of the war: it catalyzes an epochal tour of epic milieux within which the stakes of the war are renegotiated and ultimately rearticulated. In this section, I first analyze the early stages of this tour on its own terms and then return to the analepsis, arguing that it introduces Heracles and his destabilized era as a way of calling attention to the narrator’s chronological play. I then demonstrate that the placement of the analepsis, marking the moment when gods separate once more from humans at the end of this epochal tour, restabilizes the narrative landscape in the Iliadic present by placing Heracles firmly in the epic past and bringing the stakes of the present conflict back into focus. The first stop that Iliad 20 makes in its epochal tour is a clash between gods with more than a whiff of cosmogonic narrative about it—a very early stage in epic chronology, preceding any era to which Heracles might belong. Observing Achilles’s onslaught and fearing that Troy will fall before its fated time, Zeus first summons the gods to council and then orders them to battle. The scope and scale of that conflict are highlighted by the partial deployment of a motif that Mondi has dubbed “scenes of Cosmic Disturbance”, which depicts the disruption of four elements of the cosmos: sea, sky, earth, and underworld.29 In Hesiod’s Theogony three climactic moments, each with worldshaping stakes, include these features, one in the Titanomachy and two in the Typhonomachy.30 A partial echo of this motif in book 20 temporarily redefines the Iliadic action as an all-out battle among the gods and, in so doing, looks back to those early mythical eras when intra-divine conflict took center stage. The epochal slippage is not complete, however, and the continued relevance of the Tro-

29 30

Mondi 1986: 43. Titanomachy: Hes. Th. 678–683; Typhonomachy: Hes. Th. 839–841, 847–852.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

of walls and monsters: heracles and epic time in iliad 20

173

jan landscape within the passage highlights the power of this epochal play to underscore the distinct stakes of human and divine engagement in the conflict (Il. 20.54–66):

55

60

65

55

60

65

ὣς τοὺς ἀμφοτέρους μάκαρες θεοὶ ὀτρύνοντες σύμβαλον, ἐν δ᾽ αὐτοῖς ἔριδα ῥήγνυντο βαρεῖαν· δεινὸν δὲ βρόντησε πατὴρ ἀνδρῶν τε θεῶν τε ὑψόθεν· αὐτὰρ νέρθε Ποσειδάων ἐτίναξε γαῖαν ἀπειρεσίην ὀρέων τ᾽ αἰπεινὰ κάρηνα. πάντες δ᾽ ἐσσείοντο πόδες πολυπίδακος Ἴδης καὶ κορυφαί, Τρώων τε πόλις καὶ νῆες Ἀχαιῶν. ἔδεισεν δ᾽ ὑπένερθεν ἄναξ ἐνέρων Ἀϊδωνεύς, δείσας δ᾽ ἐκ θρόνου ἆλτο καὶ ἴαχε, μή οἱ ὕπερθε γαῖαν ἀναρρήξειε Ποσειδάων ἐνοσίχθων, οἰκία δὲ θνητοῖσι καὶ ἀθανάτοισι φανείη σμερδαλέ᾽ εὐρώεντα, τά τε στυγέουσι θεοί περ· τόσσος ἄρα κτύπος ὦρτο θεῶν ἔριδι ξυνιόντων. Thus the blessed gods, urging each side on, clashed together, and among them they let break heavy strife and the father of men and gods thundered terribly above, but below Poseidon shook the limitless earth and the lofty peaks of the mountains. And all the foothills of Ida with its many springs were shaken and its highest points, and the city of the Trojans and the ships of the Achaeans. And down below the lord of those beneath the earth, Hades, feared, and having taken fright he leapt up from his throne and shouted, lest Poseidon break the earth up above, the earthshaker, and reveal his homes to mortals and immortals terrible and wide, which indeed the gods hate. So great a crash rose up in the strife of the gods in conflict.

While the Hesiodic examples each contain the disruption of sky, sea, earth, and underworld, the Iliadic passage leaves out the sea and focuses on the disruption of the Trojan landscape within these universalizing motifs: “all the foothills of Ida with its many springs were shaken and its highest points, and the city of the Trojans and the ships of the Achaeans”. The play on epic time literally destabilizes the defining fixed points of the years of human conflict at Troy

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

174

eisenfeld

and challenges their significance: are they elevated to equivalence with the sky and sea that appear in the theogonic passages or is their (relatively) very small scale emphasized, highlighting the comparatively limited scope of the human contest? Moreover, in contrast to the theogonic passages, the gods of the Iliad are, in fact, fighting over the same conflict as the humans are, but with wildly varied understanding of the stakes. Even as the gods pair off in battle postures, the scene shifts, moving back to the human battlefield and forward in epic time. The focus is still not on intrahuman interactions, but on a conversation between Apollo and Aeneas. In structure and content, the encounter foregrounds Apollo’s divine perspective and his emphasis on the importance of divine parentage and divine allegiance for heroic achievement. This framing flirts with conceptions of heroic identity at home in the eras before the Trojan War, a time when, in terms of epic chronology, the events of both the Homeric Hymns and the Hesiodic Catalogue occur.31 This is also the era, broadly speaking, of Heracles’s exploits. The epic tour, then, is making another stop, lingering in the age before the present Trojan conflict and exploring modes of heroism operative in that landscape. Apollo, appearing to Aeneas in the guise of Priam’s son, Lycaon, urges him to face the rampaging Achilles (20.83–85). As Louden has demonstrated, the scene closely echoes the other major appearance of Aeneas in the epic: the aristeia of Diomedes in book 5.32 There, however, no gods participate in the conversation which draws, instead, on voices from both the Trojan and Achaean camps: Aeneas and Pandarus discuss the wisdom of facing Diomedes and Pandarus complains about the immortal assistance that Diomedes is clearly receiving; on the other side, Diomedes and Sthenelus discuss the lineage of their opponents (5.166–273). In book 20, in contrast, the conversation is exclusively between Aeneas and the disguised Apollo, and Apollo’s perspective dominates. In response to Aeneas’s deep misgivings about the possibility of fighting Achilles, Apollo offers Achilles’s and Aeneas’s respective parentage as an (apparently sufficient) basis for Aeneas to feel confident about the outcome of the duel (Il. 20.104–107):

105

31 32

ἥρως ἀλλ᾽ ἄγε καὶ σὺ θεοῖς αἰειγενέτῃσιν εὔχεο· καὶ δὲ σέ φασι Διὸς κούρης Ἀφροδίτης ἐκγεγάμεν, κεῖνος δὲ χερείονος ἐκ θεοῦ ἐστίν· ἡ μὲν γὰρ Διός ἐσθ᾽, ἡ δ᾽ ἐξ ἁλίοιο γέροντος.

Cf. Clay 1989: 15, 168. Louden 2006: 19–25.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

of walls and monsters: heracles and epic time in iliad 20

105

175

But come, hero, and pray to the always-existing gods. Indeed they say that you were born from Aphrodite, daughter of Zeus. But he is of a lesser goddess. For your mother is of Zeus, but his is the offspring of the old man of the sea.

Apollo’s take on the stakes of the contest foregrounds a hero’s personal proximity to the gods, preferably in terms of direct descent, as an unmixed good and indicator of heroic achievement. His dilation on Aeneas’s birth from Aphrodite as a guarantee of his success stands in sharp contrast to the discussion between Diomedes and Sthenelus on the same subject in book 5. There Sthenelus emphasizes mortal legacy as much as—or more than—divine parentage: Aeneas, he says, is the son of blameless Anchises, and his mother is Aphrodite (5.247–248). In book 20, after the Heraclean analepsis, Aeneas echoes this account of his parentage almost verbatim; he refers to Aphrodite with no designation other than “mother” (20.209), with none of Apollo’s emphasis on her status as Zeus’s daughter. That emphasis in Apollo’s utterance, at this preTrojan-War stop on the tour of epic eras, evokes the complex landscape of the tradition preserved in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, which tells the story of Aeneas’s conception. The Hymn takes place in a world where squabbles among the gods lead to divine presence in the human world—in this case, a disguised Aphrodite coming to Mount Ida to seduce Anchises, Aeneas’s father-to-be. The hymnic narrative foregrounds the divine power plays which ultimately put Aphrodite in her place, but it also celebrates the glorious divine heritage of Aeneas and his offspring as a consequence of those intrigues.33 Heroic status and glory here are intimately—and I do mean intimately—bound up with divine involvement in the hero’s life and family line. The prominence of direct divine intervention comes once more to the fore in book 20 as the encounter between Aeneas and Achilles—and, indeed, any sort of fighting—is deferred in favor of further divine deliberations. Catching sight of Apollo’s maneuvering, Hera exhorts her allies, Athena and Poseidon, that they should either turn Aeneas back themselves or go down and lend power to Achilles’s onslaught. The intervention of gods on the battlefield occurs throughout the epic, but Hera seems to envision the impending melee as an indiscriminate scrimmage of divine and human fighters, evocative of epic eras in which Heracles is at home (Il. 20.129–131):

33

See Currie 2016: 156–157, for hexameter poetry predating the Iliad that deals with the union of Aphrodite and Anchises.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

176

eisenfeld

130

εἰ δ᾽ Ἀχιλεὺς οὐ ταῦτα θεῶν ἐκ πεύσεται ὀμφῆς, δείσετ᾽ ἔπειθ᾽, ὅτε κέν τις ἐναντίβιον θεὸς ἔλθῃ ἐν πολέμῳ· χαλεποὶ δὲ θεοὶ φαίνεσθαι ἐναργεῖς.

130

But if Achilles will not learn these things from the voice of the gods he will take fright at that time, when some god opposes him with force in war—gods made manifest are hard to handle.

The anticipation of intermingled human and divine combatants and intermingled divine and human stakes draws the impending battle closer to the model of earlier Heraclean conflicts, as when Heracles fought on behalf of the gods in the war against the Giants or the—admittedly highly perplexing—allusions to his wounding of Hades at Pylos.34 These conflicts belong, as Bär argues, to “a time gone by, when mortals still could (and would) take more liberties with the gods”.35 4.2 Analepsis Redux: Enacting Separation The impending scene of all-out divine battle on the Trojan field fails to materialize as Poseidon thinks better of the gods becoming so invested in the human war and urges divine withdrawal from the field. This withdrawal catalyzes the analepsis as the pro-Achaean gods take their seats on the wall of Heracles, and the narrator provides our three-line backstory. More than a simple explanation of the physical feature, the analepsis functions as a reorienting conclusion to the journey through the epic past. By depicting Heracles, in all his ambiguity, in a narrative that explicitly looks to the past as a sort of gloss on the present, the analepsis underscores Heracles’s anteriority and affirms the changes in the nature of the world that separate him and all earlier generations from the current fighters at Troy. The reorientation begins with Poseidon’s de-escalation of Hera’s proposed all-out war, framed in terms which radically diminish the importance of human conflicts for the gods. Poseidon advises Hera not to get worked up beyond good sense (παρὲκ νόον, 133) and indicates his disinclination to bring the gods together in strife. The rejection of the idea that ἔρις should occur among the gods for the sake of humans echoes a related de-escalation in the programmatic concluding scene of Iliad 1 when incipient strife between Hera and Zeus 34

35

War with the giants: Pind. Nem. 1.67–72, Apollod. Bib. 2.7.1. On the tradition of the battle at Pylos and its difficulties, see Sekita 2018: 1–9; cf. Scodel 2002: 146–147. Cf. Hes. Cat. fr. 33 M-W. Bär 2019: 112.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

of walls and monsters: heracles and epic time in iliad 20

177

is resolved over a drink, at Hephaestus’s urging: “these deeds will be deadly and no longer bearable if for the sake of mortals (ἕνεκα θνητῶν) you two quarrel (ἐριδαίνετον) in this way (1.573–574)”. That conclusion to book 1 sets the tragic tone of the Iliad as a whole by establishing the insurmountable chasm between divine and human stakes in the conflict. Poseidon’s moderating intervention in book 20 acts as a first corrective to the blurring of those stakes and roles achieved by the book’s opening scenes, beginning the process of reorienting the conflict to its own epic era. That correction continues when Poseidon concludes with a metapoetic exhortation that reestablishes the gods as viewers of the human spectacle (for now): “let us go and sit at the look-out place, out of the way, and war will be a concern for men” (20.136–137). And with that they are off to Heracles’s wall. As I argued above, the Heraclean analepsis plays with Heracles’s own polyvalent and malleable place within the heroic modes of early epic, flirting with his status as monster-slaying hero and wiper-up of the last bits of cosmic disorder as well as his more muddied history with human communities, including Troy itself. Even as the passage invites these complexities, it also orients them firmly within the past, a move that marks and comments on the moment when the gods withdraw from battle and when the heroic ethos of the Iliadic present, with its unflinching recognition of the division between humans and gods, is reestablished. If we revisit that analepsis in light of the opening of book 20, the complexities surrounding Heracles’s sea monster encounter stand out even more clearly. As noted, Athena’s intervention in Heracles’s sea monster maneuverings inevitably evokes her constant assistance across his many toils. But, in an Iliadic context, it may also recall an earlier moment in the epic when Athena retroactively revalues that assistance in a bitter complaint to Hera, and, in so doing, situates Heracles more firmly in the past (Il. 8.362–369): οὐδέ τι τῶν μέμνηται, ὅ οἱ μάλα πολλάκις υἱὸν τειρόμενον σώεσκον ὑπ᾽ Εὐρυσθῆος ἀέθλων. ἤτοι ὃ μὲν κλαίεσκε πρὸς οὐρανόν, αὐτὰρ ἐμὲ Ζεὺς 365 τῷ ἐπαλεξήσουσαν ἀπ᾽ οὐρανόθεν προΐαλλεν. εἰ γὰρ ἐγὼ τάδε ᾔδε᾽ ἐνὶ φρεσὶ πευκαλίμῃσιν, εὖτέ μιν εἰς Ἀΐδαο πυλάρταο προὔπεμψεν ἐξ Ἐρέβευς ἄξοντα κύνα στυγεροῦ Ἀΐδαο, οὐκ ἂν ὑπεξέφυγε Στυγὸς ὕδατος αἰπὰ ῥέεθρα. He does not remember at all, that very often for him his son, pressed hard by the labors from Eurystheus, I saved.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

178

365

eisenfeld

Indeed he would lament to heaven, but Zeus would send me to him from heaven to ward off trouble. For if I had known these things in my wise mind, when he sent him to the home of Hades the gatekeeper to bring the dog of hated Hades from Erebus, he would not have escaped the high-banked streams of Stygian water.

As Lu Hsu argues, “the heroic victories of Heracles are reduced to the means by which Athena and Hera establish common cause, illustrating his relevance to defining alliances across Olympos and Troy”.36 The extraordinary help that Heracles once received and which was a source of ongoing strife between Zeus and Hera—one of the most prominent strands across his Iliadic appearances37— is now devalued though its remembrance, updated to accord with the divine values of the Iliadic present, even as Heracles himself is more firmly relegated to the epic past. From the perspective of human action, too, Heracles’s experiences within the analepsis challenge the defining features of the current field of play. At the moment within the Trojan fabula depicted by the analepsis, Heracles is aligned with the Trojans against a threat from Poseidon, not marching against them as a proto-representative of Achaean force. Moreover, he is not, at this point, marching at all, but apparently engaged in some kind of confusing catand-mouse maneuver with the sea monster. This approach is a far cry from the encounters between Iliadic heroes whose long and humanizing speeches interwoven with their duels elevate the stakes of the conflict as they see it, the dismissive perspective of the gods notwithstanding. This ambiguous Heraclean heroism stands out more clearly against the encounter between Aeneas and Achilles—the first all-human exchange of book 20—which occurs immediately after the analepsis. 4.3 Return to the Present As pro-Trojan and pro-Achaean gods alike settle onto their respective seats and survey the field, the narrative turns to a scene that foregrounds the human stakes of the Iliadic present: the meeting between Aeneas and Achilles that Apollo had so enthusiastically sought. The meeting begins as though framed in the vision of the spectating gods, moving from an overview of the massing armies to a focus on the two opponents (Il. 20.156–160):

36 37

Lu Hsu 2020: 26. Cf. Lang 1983: 141–164.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

of walls and monsters: heracles and epic time in iliad 20

160

179

τῶν δ᾽ ἅπαν ἐπλήσθη πεδίον καὶ λάμπετο χαλκῷ, ἀνδρῶν ἠδ᾽ ἵππων· κάρκαιρε δὲ γαῖα πόδεσσιν ὀρνυμένων ἄμυδις. δύο δ᾽ ἀνέρες ἔξοχ᾽ ἄριστοι ἐς μέσον ἀμφοτέρων συνίτην μεμαῶτε μάχεσθαι, Αἰνείας τ᾽ Ἀγχισιάδης καὶ δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς. The whole plain was filled with men and horses and shone with their bronze; and the earth shook under their feet as they rushed all at once. But two men outstanding in their excellence came together between the two armies, raging to fight, Aeneas, son of Anchises, and godlike Achilles.

The possibility that divine inheritance will be decisive for this clash, the interpretive position championed earlier by Apollo, flickers and weakens here as the narrator reintroduces Aeneas as the son of Anchises (no mention of Aphrodite). Even Achilles, for all his multivalent characterization, first as godlike (δῖος) and then as beastly through a long simile (164–173) that compares him to a wounded and slavering lion concerns himself with matters of human scope when the two men draw near enough for conversation. The long exchange between Aeneas and Achilles plays up the human stakes of the conflict by emphasizing considerations of property, social position, and family heritage, considerations contextualized in human experience in which the gods are peripheral or secondary. Achilles questions Aeneas’s motivations for wanting to duel with him, charging that Aeneas (wrongly) thinks that victory over Achilles will earn him the kingship of Troy (181–183)—or at least a choice bit of land (184–186). Against these distinctly mundane considerations, the subsequent jab in which Achilles recalls Aeneas’s previous retreat before his attack surprisingly remixes the action of the sea monster episode (Il. 20.188–191):

190

ἦ οὐ μέμνῃ ὅτε πέρ σε βοῶν ἄπο μοῦνον ἐόντα σεῦα κατ᾽ Ἰδαίων ὀρέων ταχέεσσι πόδεσσι καρπαλίμως; τότε δ᾽ οὔ τι μετατροπαλίζεο φεύγων. ἔνθεν δ᾽ ἐς Λυρνησσὸν ὑπέκφυγες· Do you not remember indeed when you were alone, and away from the cows I drove you down the Idaian mountains, swift on your feet, speedy? At that time you did not turn back at all in flight and from there you fled clean away to Lyrnessos.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

180

eisenfeld

While the language echoes that of the analepsis, with Achilles apparently playing the role of the sea monster and Aeneas the role of Heracles, the analogy entirely fails when confronted with the heroic ethos of the Iliadic battlefield. Aeneas’s decision to escape from a rampaging opponent, reasonable as it may have been, provides Achilles with the ammunition to question his claim to martial excellence and his status as a worthy opponent. The ambiguities that are part of Heracles’s narrative have no place in Aeneas’s. There may be further meta-narrative play if the allusion to Aeneas’s associations with Mt. Ida recalls the Aphrodite episode already invoked by Apollo only to actively ignore it: the concern here is not with Aeneas’s divine family, but with his human achievements and his human aspirations. Aeneas rejects Achilles’s mockery but operates within the same frameworks of human aspiration and human family in his retort. He first subtly rejects Apollo’s earlier proposal that disparate divine parentage will be decisive in their impending duel and instead establishes an odd parity between his and Achilles’s parents, including the divinity of the respective mothers but not emphasizing it as a source of assistance or advantage. Instead, the divine mothers are drawn into human experience with his assertion that “one or the other of these [sets of parents] will mourn their son today” (210–211). He then offers Achilles a rather extended account of his own family’s long and storied history and its centrality to the history of Troy, notably leaving out the Aphrodite episode. Like Achilles’s boast, Aeneas’s speech flirts with the analepsis, this time in overlapping narrative context rather than shared diction. In describing the wealth of Dardanus’s son, Erichthonius, Aeneas describes the history of the famed horses that Laomedon would eventually deny to Heracles, thereby provoking Heracles’s sack of the city. With the horses’s origins described but their narrative importance not further expanded, the genealogy continues across two more generations, Erichthonius’s son, Tros, and his sons, Ilus, Assaracus, and Ganymedes, before arriving at Ilus’s son, Laomedon. No mention is made of Laomedon’s involvement with the gods or Heracles. The catalogue continues down through the next generations, including Aeneas’s grandfather, Capys, and father, Anchises, down to Aeneas himself. The genealogy serves to more specifically orient Heracles’s sea monster episode (and impending sack) in a particular generation of the past—the fabula ensures that Laomedon’s name evokes Heraclean resonances for the audience, especially so soon after the analepsis. But, critically, Aeneas’s recitation simultaneously denies that the business with Heracles and the sea monster is a relevant narrative at all. Aeneas’s concern is with the fight that lies before him and (by implication and allusion to the Homeric Hymn and to Poseidon’s impending prophesy at 20.307–308)

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

of walls and monsters: heracles and epic time in iliad 20

181

with his own place as a link in that continuing line, not with the long-ago interventions of outsize gods and heroes. Even as book 20 plays with the immediate presence and involvement of the gods and the latent potential for the patterns of support and conflict from earlier eras of the epic past to reassert themselves on the Trojan plain, the Heraclean episode throws the “pastness” of those modes of action into relief. Punctuating the division enacted by the withdrawal of the gods from the field and achieving a narratorial re-focus on the human duel, Heracles’s deeply disoriented achievement underscores the distinctions between the worlds of past epochs and the Iliadic present, foregrounding the human stakes that define the heroism of the Trojan conflict.

5

The Wall(s) of Troy

While Heracles and the ketos alike belong firmly to a pre-Iliadic past, Heracles’s wall—the catalyst for the analepsis—stands in the Iliadic present, a monumental structure on the Trojan plain.38 I propose in closing, as a complement to the diachronic reading of the epic past that I have developed so far, a synchronic analysis of the meaning of Heracles’s wall in the contemporary Trojan landscape. Looking to the coexistence of Heracles’s wall with two other walls that mark the Trojan plain—the wall of Troy and the Achaean wall—Jonas Grethlein has argued that The memories evoked by the walls amount to a history of Troy. The first wall calls to mind Poseidon’s and Apollon’s servitude to Laomedon. The memory of the revenge of the gods is preserved by the wall from which Heracles fought the sea-monster. Finally, the Achaeans’ wall documents the Trojan War.39 While Grethlein highlights one important facet of Heracles’s wall, I suggest here that it offers more than a memory of revenge. Heracles’s wall represents a physical site whose original purpose is clear but whose signifying value in the Iliadic present is highly undetermined, so much so that it casts into relief the starkly opposed significances attributed by characters within the epic to the other two walls. 38 39

Cf. Wickkiser 2021: 211. Grethlein 2008: 34.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

182

eisenfeld

Just as the allusive Heraclean narrative marked a stark punctuation between the narrative play on the epic past and the reestablishment of the Iliadic present in book 20, so too does Heracles’s wall enter into conversation with the other walls that mark the Trojan plain in order to define the stakes, and the tragedy, of the current conflict. In book 7, surveying the fallen, Nestor calls a halt to battle and makes a proposal that inextricably combines funerary observance and war effort (Il. 7.336– 338): τύμβον δ᾽ ἀμφὶ πυρὴν ἕνα χεύομεν ἐξαγαγόντες ἄκριτον ἐκ πεδίου· ποτὶ δ᾽ αὐτὸν δείμομεν ὦκα πύργους ὑψηλοὺς, εἶλαρ νηῶν τε καὶ αὐτῶν. Around the pyre let us heap up a tomb, mounding it up common to all from the plain. On it let us build swiftly lofty towers, a defense of the ships and of ourselves. The structure Nestor proposes is an embodiment of the human stakes of the conflict. The intimate reality of death and the imperative to commemorate the fallen are powerful enough to pause the battle, but not to end the war. Instead, the same structure that serves as a marker of the fallen also becomes the basis for the defense of the living. Nestor uses the phrase ἀμφὶ χέω to describe the desired wall building. The verbal construction is partially echoed in the description of Heracles’s wall in book 20 as ἀμφίχυτον (145): “poured around” or, less literally, “heaped up”. This adjective appears in the Iliad only with reference to Heracles’s wall, suggesting that this is not simply a matter of a convenient or conventional descriptor. The verbal action of pouring is commonly associated with the construction of mounded objects, especially funeral mounds, a usage that appears repeatedly in the Homeric epics, including in the final lines of book 24 with reference to Hector’s tomb (Il. 24.801). That valence is clearly relevant to Nestor’s suggestion: the Achaean wall is rooted in the human community and its need for both commemoration and protection. Despite the invitation of the verbal echo of ἀμφίχυτον, Heracles’s wall, like Heracles himself, fits uncomfortably within these Iliadic contexts. In contrast to the elaborate structures of the Achaean wall with its towers, gates, and trench, Heracles’s wall, as depicted in the analepsis, lacks explicit features, location, or scale. Its function as a seat for the pro-Achaean gods, parallel to the function of the Callicolone Hill for the Trojan partisans, suggests that it is as readily comparable to features of the natural landscape as to other built ele-

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

of walls and monsters: heracles and epic time in iliad 20

183

ments of the Trojan plain. On this angle, the wall partially fits within the “earthworks” section of Heracles’s CV. Large-scale interventions into the landscape, whether wrought by him or undertaken on his behalf, as when Athena creates hot springs for him to bathe in after his labors, evoke the conception of Heracles as an earlier-era world-shaper who tames the oikoumene for human use and establishes its contours.40 At the same time, its co-construction by Trojans and association with the events of Laomedon’s reign draw it into the sphere of cooperative human achievement and fix its genesis shortly before the current conflict. In contrast to the hyper-commemorative capabilities of the Achaean wall, Heracles’s wall vacillates between landscape feature and human construction, a partial echo of an unclear past. The ambiguities of Heracles’s wall foreground the tensions between the Trojan and Achaean walls and, in so doing, highlight the divergence between human and divine perspective that frames the heroic ethos and human tragedies of the Iliadic conflict. The tension between these two constructions is articulated—or, arguably, generated—by Poseidon as soon as the Achaean wall goes up.41 He complains first that the undertaking is completed without sacrifice to the gods (7.450) but emphasizes more strongly the contest that he sees this new construction inaugurating between the fame associated with his own creation and the fame of the Achaean wall (Il. 7.451–453): τοῦ δ᾽ ἤτοι κλέος ἔσται ὅσον τ᾽ ἐπικίδναται ἠώς· τοῦ δ᾽ ἐπιλήσονται τὸ ἐγὼ καὶ Φοῖβος Ἀπόλλων ἥρῳ Λαομέδοντι πολίσσαμεν ἀθλήσαντε. Indeed its fame will exist as far as the dawn scatters its light and they will forget that one, which I and Phoibos Apollo constructed for the city, laboring for the hero Laomedon. The objection articulates the sort of shift that I have identified in the action of book 20, as divine perspective and narrative framing gave way to human concerns and human action in the encounter between Aeneas and Achilles. Zeus’s subsequent dismissal of Poseidon’s concern accentuates the different stakes that shape divine and human perspectives on the Iliadic present. He promises Poseidon that he can destroy the Achaean wall once the Achaeans have gone home, using language that undoes the act of building: the wall will

40 41

Cf. Luce 2006: 25–39. Porter 2011: 15.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

184

eisenfeld

be leveled (literally, “poured out” (καταχεῦαι, 461)) and scattered into the sea, its site covered with sand. As Lather has observed, the same stark differentiation of human and divine stakes occurs when Apollo physically attacks the Achaean Wall at Il. 15.361–366, making way for the Trojan army:42 ἔρειπε δὲ τεῖχος Ἀχαιῶν ῥεῖα μάλ᾽, ὡς ὅτε τις ψάμαθον πάϊς ἄγχι θαλάσσης, ὅς τ᾽ ἐπεὶ οὖν ποιήσῃ ἀθύρματα νηπιέῃσιν, ἂψ αὖτις συνέχευε ποσὶν καὶ χερσὶν ἀθύρων. 365 ὥς ῥα σύ, ἤϊε Φοῖβε, πολὺν κάματον καὶ ὀϊζὺν σύγχεας Ἀργείων, αὐτοῖσι δὲ φύζαν ἐνῶρσας. He threw down the wall of the Achaeans with complete ease, like a child near the sea who, when he has made some playthings in his foolishness, confounds the sand again playing with his feet and hands. 365 Thus, then, you, o Phoibos, after confounding the extreme toil and sorrow of the Argives, raised up a rout for them. Once more a word derived from χέω attends a wall’s biography, this time in the sense of pouring together in confusion or confounding what once was ordered. It points to the divine freedom to destroy with childlike unconcern what has been constructed at such profound human cost. The verb appears twice (συνέχευε, 364, σύγχεας, 366) and the line between its two appearances recalls again the human meaning of the Achaean wall: κάματον evokes the effort of its construction and defense, ὀϊζύν the mourning and loss it commemorates. As Pache has argued, the destruction of the Achaean wall and the monumentalization of that future destruction within the epic is itself the site of the construction of meaning: the wall is an articulation of human destructibility and the survival of human memory.43 The Trojan wall, meanwhile, while it eventually yields to the Achaean trick, articulates the memory of divine power and the presence of the gods within the human world. Together, the two walls and their fates evoke the stakes of the Iliadic conflict: divine intervention inevitably shapes human life, but does not determine human achievement or its memory. The warriors on Homer’s Trojan plain contend at all times with this impos-

42 43

Lather 2020: 269–270. Pache 2014: 278–296.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

of walls and monsters: heracles and epic time in iliad 20

185

sible premise. Heracles’s wall, in contrast, neither falls nor stands: it is there in book 20 and then never again. It is the product of both divine and human labor in the service of a multivalent figure from an undefined earlier time. Like Heracles himself, from the perspective of the Iliad, it is an element of the past that sometimes projects into the present, deforming and redefining the gap between then and now, between human and divine.

6

Conclusion

I have argued that Heracles’s brief and allusive appearance in Iliad 20 constitutes a densely metapoetic invitation to appreciate the narrator’s play on epic time—and an interpretative lens for doing so. Read against the events of the Trojan fabula that unfolded in Laomedon’s reign, the Homeric narrator’s framing of Heracles’s sea monster encounter plays up the possibilities of Heracles’s multivalent heroism in order to destabilize Heracles’s place within the epic past. The analepsis appears in book 20 at the moment when a sort of tour of epic chronologies, moving from the distant cosmogonic past to the generations just before Trojan War, gives way to the present with the gods taking up their place as spectators and a human duel reclaiming the narrative foreground. The analepsis punctuates this boundary by locating whatever past(s) Heracles belongs to in a time that is not the present moment, and whose ethos is no longer decisive for the present conflict. The catalyst of the analepsis, the one-time appearance of Heracles’s wall on the Trojan plain in book 20, contributes to a synchronic discourse of walls which further develops the divergence between divine and human purposes and the tragic Iliadic glory defined by that disjunction. In some former era, Athena still stood with the Trojans, gods punished whole cities with monstrous visitations, and flight and ambush were just as viable as standing your ground on the field. But that time is not the time of the Iliad and Heracles’s capacious identities and superhuman achievements are not the ethos of the Iliadic conflict. Heracles’s heroic multivalence, conjured by an intermittent wall and an underdetermined sea monster, evokes a destabilized epic past in order to define the stakes of the Iliadic present.

Works Cited Bär, S. 2018. Herakles im griechischen Epos: Studien zur Narrativität und Poetizität eines Helden. Stuttgart: Steiner.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

186

eisenfeld

Bär, S. 2019. “Heracles in Homer and Apollonius: Narratological Character Analysis in Diachronic Perspective.” Symbolae Osloenses 93.1: 106–131. Barker, E. and Christensen, J. 2014. “Even Herakles Had to Die: Homeric ‘Heroism,’ Mortality, and the Epic Tradition.” Trends in Classics 6: 249–277. Boardman, J. 1987. “‘Very Like a Whale’: Classical Sea Monsters.” In Farkas, A., Harper, P., and Harrison, E. eds. Monsters and Demons in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds, Mainz on Rhein: P. von Zabern. 73–84. Clay, J.S. 1983. The Wrath of Athena: Gods and Men in the Odyssey. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Clay, J.S. 1998. The Politics of Olympos: Form and Meaning in the Major Homeric Hymns. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Currie, B. 2016. Homer’s Allusive Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press. de Jong, I.J.F. 2014. Narratology and Classics: A Practical Guide. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Edmunds, L. 2022. “Heracles’ Sack of Troy in Mythographus Homericus (D schol. Il. 20.145).” In Myths on the Margins of Homer: Prolegomena to the Mythographus Homericus. Pagès, J. and Villagra, N. eds. Berlin: De Gruyter. 195–213. Edwards, M. 1991. The Iliad: A Commentary. Volume v: Books 17–20. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fowler, R. 2013. Early Greek Mythography. Volume 2: Commentary. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gantz, T. 1993. Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Graziosi, B. 2016. “Theologies of the Family in Homer and Hesiod.” In Theologies of Ancient Greek Religion, Eidinow, Esther; Kindt, Julia; Osborne, Robin, eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Grethlein, J. 2008. “Memory and Material Objects in the Iliad and the Odyssey.” JHS 128: 27–51. Haubold, J. 2005. “Heracles in the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women.” In Hunter, R. ed. The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women: Constructions and Reconstructions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 85–98. Holmes, B. 2015. “Situating Scamander: ‘Natureculture’ in the Iliad.” Ramus 44.1–2: 29– 51. Isler, H. 1983. “Drei neue Gefässe aus der Werkstatt der Caeretaner Hydrien.” JdI 98: 15– 56. Kelly, A. 2010. “Hypertexting with Homer: Tlepolemus and Sarpedon on Heracles (Il. 5.628–698).” Trends in Classics 2: 259–276. Lang, M. 1983. “Reverberation and Mythology in the Iliad.” In Rubino, C. and Shelmerdine, S. eds. Approaches to Homer. Austin: University of Texas Press. 141–164. Lather, A. 2020. “Epic Matter: Iliadic Dust, Sand, and the Limits of the Human.” TAPA 150.2: 163–186. - 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

of walls and monsters: heracles and epic time in iliad 20

187

Louden, B. 2006. The Iliad: Structure, Myth and Meaning. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Luce, J.V. 2006. “Heracles and Hydraulics.” Hermathena 181: 25–39. Lu Hsu, K. 2020. The Violent Hero: Heracles in the Greek Imagination. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. Mondi, R. 1986. “Tradition and Innovation in the Hesiodic Titanomachy.” TAPA 116: 25– 48. Monro, D.B. and Allen, T.W. Homeri Opera, vols. i–ii. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Pache, C. 2014. “Theban Walls in Homeric Epic.” Trends in Classics 6: 278–296. Porter, J. 2011. “Making and Unmaking: The Achaean Wall and the Limits of Fictionality in Homeric Criticism.” TAPA 141.1: 1–36. Porter, A. 2014. “Reconstructing Laomedon’s Reign in Homer: Olympiomachia, Poseidon’s Wall, and the Earlier Trojan War.” GRBS 54: 507–526. Scodel, R. 2002. Listening to Homer: Tradition, Narrative, and Audience. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Scully, S. 1990. Homer and the Sacred City. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Sekita, K. 2018. “Hades and Heracles at Pylos: Dione’s Tale Dismantled.” Classical Quarterly 68.1: 1–9. Slatkin, L. 1986. “Genre and Generation in the Odyssey.” MÉTIS 1: 259–268. Wicckiser, B. 2021. “Laomedon, Hesione, and the Sea-Monster.” In Ogden, D. ed. The Oxford Handbook of Heracles. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 209–223. Zanon, C. 2019. “Fantastic Creatures and Where to Find Them in the Iliad.” Classica 32.2: 235–252.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

part 3 Heracles in Fragmentary Greek Epic

∵

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

Narrative and Stylistic Artistry in Early Greek Epic: Creophylus, Pisander, Panyassis Christos Tsagalis

Studies on Heracles in Greek epic usually focus on his role in the plot and the features of his rich mythical armature that each poet explores. Less often, scholars are concerned with the narrative aspects of his presentation1 and its impact on the poem’s content and, even less often, genre. This unbalanced interest is partly explained by the fact that there is no surviving Greek epic in which Heracles is the protagonist.2 This is a pity, especially since Heracles had attracted considerable attention from epic poets such as Creophylus of Samos who composed the Oechalias Halosis, and Pisander of Camirus and Panyassis of Halicarnassus who each wrote a Heracleia. Their mythological narratives offer a unique opportunity to examine their poetic technique and trace similarities and differences. They also allow us to assess the way these three epic poets dealt with the challenge of composing epic poetry about Heracles, a hero with a remarkably diverse mythical tradition, and evaluate the emerging picture for shorter or longer epic narratives.3 However, this type of endeavor is impeded by the fragmentary condition of the surviving evidence, which leads, unavoidably, to a certain degree of conjecture. It is, therefore, even more important to adopt a methodology that allows us to keep speculation to a minimum. The approach that is followed in this chapter is based on balance, analogy, and conformity with the overall picture of each epic. These three methodological principles require some elucidation. By balance I mean the avoidance of suggestions based on extreme assumptions. If a fragment refers to an event that makes sense as part of a well-known episode of Heracles’s saga, it is fair to assume that this episode would have featured in this epic. I am, therefore, avoiding both the over-cautious view that this is a random reference which may be embedded in a different context and the over-

1 A welcome exception is Haubold (2005: 85–98), who has studied the presentation of Heracles in the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women and what this means for the generic outlook of this type of epic. 2 See Currie (this volume) p. 13. 3 For the testimonies and fragments of Creophylus and Pisander I am using the numeration of EGEF; for Panyassis I am following GEF.

© Christos Tsagalis, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004696617_010

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

192

tsagalis

confident assumption that the epic includes a fully-fledged version of the entire episode. By analogy I refer to the assessment of an assumption on the basis of other, fully verifiable, surviving material relating to a similar situation and genre. The contextual and generic factors play a decisive role in this case, since they strengthen the plausibility of the particular assumption. By conformity I designate the general idea that we have of an epic’s plot. One must always keep in mind the larger picture related to the content of the poem and assess each assumption in terms of its agreement with the epic’s design and scope. Each of these three principles is not employed independently from the other two. This means that when one of them runs against another or both other principles, it should not be applied. In the light of these methodological considerations, the aim of this chapter is to examine the narrative of the epics of Creophylus, Pisander, and Panyassis on Heracles and assess the results of this analysis for the development of early Greek epic. I will treat each author separately by examining the following four aspects of their poetic technique: (a) scope; (b) presentation; (c) characterization; (d) narrative style.

1

Creophylus’s Oechalias Halosis

Creophylus and/or his epic are cited by eleven testimonia that are given by sixteen sources, while the three extant fragments are reported by four sources. As regards Creophylus, the earliest source is Plato, whereas with respect to the Oechalias Halosis it is Callimachus who refers for the first time to the epic’s main theme.4 1.1 Scope Creophylus’s epic featured a single episode of Heracles’s troubled life, the sack of the city of Oechalia in Euboea. This heroic exploit stands apart not only from other accomplishments by Heracles but also from the thematically linked stories of his capture of Troy and Pylos. The story of Heracles’s sack of Oechalia is the only one associated with a bride contest, the only one not involving any supernatural elements,5 and the only one that has serious repercussions for the victor, since it will ultimately lead to his death. By selecting this episode alone

4 Callimachus also refers to Creophylus as the epic’s author; see Tsagalis 2022: 43–44, and pp. 201–202. (this volume). 5 See p. 200 (this volume).

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

narrative and stylistic artistry in early greek epic

193

for the plot of an entire epic, Creophylus must have been aware of the challenges set by its subject matter. He must have been alert to the fact that he was dealing with a martial exploit of heroic tinge and tragic overtones.6 Although the dearth of the extant fragments both in terms of number and of available information makes it impossible to reconstruct in detail the plot of the Oechalias Halosis, we can safely assume that the epic would have contained several episodes which are essential for narrating this story and recur in all sources referring to this mythical adventure. Heracles visits the palace of Eurytus, king of Oechalia in Euboea. He takes part in an archery contest, in which the prize was Eurytus’s daughter Iole or Ioleia (test. 2 EGEF), and defeats Eurytus, but is denied his prize. Heracles leaves Oechalia, gathers an army and returns to claim his trophy. He sacks the city, kills Eurytus and one of his sons (fr. 3 EGEF),7 and takes Iole away. The main thrust of the story concerns the theme of “winning a bride”, which has a rich Indo-European representation.8 It refers to a contest-type of story, which in Creophylus’s epic involves a single contestant (Heracles). Another well-known example is the story of Hippodameia, Pelops, and Oenomaus. It would, therefore, be interesting to know more about the content of the tale of Iole, so that we can see how the use of the same type of story had been employed in its details. Did Iole help Heracles in the actual contest, like Hippodameia, who assisted Pelops so that he could defeat Oenomaus in the chariotrace? Or did she assist him before the siege of Oechalia in a manner like that used by Helen, who helped Odysseus and Diomedes steal the Palladium from Troy, or by Medea, who assisted Jason in stealing the Golden Fleece? Analogies can be helpful, especially when we are dealing with motifs widely used in early Greek myth and poetry, but they can also be tricky. 6 See Easterling 1982: 16. Creophylus may have arrived at this conclusion by comparison with other related episodes of Heracles’s life. 7 According to Σ Soph. Tr. 266, in the Oechalias Halosis Eurytus had two sons, whose names may have been Deion and Iphitus; see Burkert 1972: 81 = 2001: 145–146; Tsagalis 2022: 44–45. 8 See West (2007: 432–436), who analyses the contest-type of story and the self-choice (svayaṃvara) as regards the theme “winning a bride”. The former involves a contest either between several contestants or between a contestant and the bride’s father. The contest may take the form of (i) foot-racing (Danaus, Antaeus, Icarius), (ii) chariot-racing (Oenomaus), or (iii) archery contest (Eurytus). The contest for Penelope in the Odyssey is a complex case based on (iii). Regarding the self-choice variant of the “bride-winning” theme, the bride chooses the husband of her liking among a group of contestants. The self-choice may be expressed either by (i) a garland or flowers placed by the bride on the garment (Damayantī), head (Katāyun), or hat (German May-Day) of the contestant she chooses for her husband, or by a goblet or a cup of mixed wine offered by the bride to her husband-to-be (Scythian Odatis, Celtic myths); see Tsagalis 2022: 55n174.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

194

tsagalis

Equally speculative are the various alternatives suggested as regards the thematic range of Creophylus’s epic. The sack of Oechalia belongs to a Sagenkreis,9 which records the fight between Heracles and the river Achelous for the hand of Deianeira, the Eurytus story and the sack of Oechalia, the deception of Deianeria by Nessus, the poisoned robe, and the death of Heracles.10 Some scholars have claimed that this standard series of successive mythical episodes, some of which11 are prerequisites for Deianeira’s jealousy and revenge12 that led to Heracles’s death, were included in Creophylus’s epic. Welcker13 argued that this line of thought is supported by the analogy with the Aethiopis and the Telegony, which record the death and immortalization of Achilles and Odysseus, respectively. Wilamowitz14 maintained that it was Creophylus who linked the siege of Oechalia with a series of events leading to Heracles’s death. However, other arguments that are also based on analogy speak against this assumption. If the Oechalias Halosis is compared to the Iliou Persis, which is a more suitable comparison since they are both named after the sack of a city, then the fact that Agamemnon’s return to Mycenae after the sack of Troy and his ensuing death at the hands of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus are not narrated in the poem may indicate that Creophylus did not include Heracles’s death in the Oechalias Halosis. According to another alternative that is based on the analogy of the Iliad (that foreshadows Achilles’s death) and Stesichorus’s Iliou Persis (that prefigures Aeneas’s journey to Hesperia),15 the Oechalias Halosis may have also foreshadowed, but not narrated, Heracles’s death. These are all conjectural lines of argument that are mentioned here only to suggest putative reconstructions of the epic’s plot. We will never be sure with respect either to the details of the plot or the thematic range covered by Creophylus’s epic. However, we can safely assume that the poem’s core would be organized around the bride-contest for Iole, Heracles’s deception by Eurytus, and the sack of Oechalia. In this vein, the Oechalias Halosis is a rare example of an early Greek epic focusing on a single episode with a single protagonist. This important narrative choice made by Creophylus will be examined in the next section.

9 10 11 12 13 14 15

Designated by Schefold (1962: 131) as Dichtung von Deianeira. See Easterling 1982: 17. Heracles’s love for Iole, the sack of Oechalia, and her carrying off. See Preller and Robert ii 584, 3; Burkert 1972: 84 = 2001: 148; Davies 1984: 483. 18652: 218. 18952: 70–81. Fr. 105 Finglass; see also Davies and Finglass 2014: 428–436.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

narrative and stylistic artistry in early greek epic

195

1.2 Presentation The discussion of Creophylus’s presentation of his material is a thorny issue because of the paucity of the extant fragments. However, it is possible to make some observations if (a) we focus on the epic’s title and the analogy it shares with other early Greek epics, and (b) we evaluate the notion of a unified plot which the Oechalias Halosis shares with Homeric epic. As regards (a) I will use as a reference point the Iliad, the Titanomachy, and the Iliou Persis. Each of these epic poems revolves around a single theme: Achilles’s wrath, Zeus’s defeat of the Titans, and the sack of Troy, respectively. The Iliad is built on the wrath of Achilles. Its plot refers to an advanced stage of the Trojan saga (the tenth and final year of the war). It includes various retardations and a major change of narrative course (the death of Patroclus), which brings to a halt the initial plotline, giving way to a new one that culminates in Achilles’s revenge and the death of Hector. It also contains flashbacks and flashforwards to previous and future mythical events respectively that are channeled in the plot to give perspective on the entire war. The Cyclic Titanomachy by Eumelus of Corinth16 has a single protagonist (Zeus), seems to have followed a linear narrative development, and may have included flashbacks to Ouranus’s reign, Cronus’s usurpation of divine rule, and his subsequent ascendancy to the celestial throne. The Iliou Persis revolves around a single theme (the sack of Troy), refers to an advanced point of the Trojan saga (the tenth year of the war), and contains flashbacks (like the construction of the Wooden Horse)17 and flashforwards (such as the τέρας18 that appears to Laocoon19 and the sufferings of several Achaeans on their return to Greece as a punishment for the crimes they committed during the sack of Troy).20 The Oechalias Halosis refers to a single theme (the sack of Oechalia by Heracles), belongs to an advanced point of the Heracles saga (after the completion of the labors), and may well have had a basically linear unraveling of the plot with brief flashbacks to previous events of Heracles’s lifetime (the poet may have referred to the hero’s acquisition of unprecedented fame because of the successful accomplishment of the labors). If the epic ended with the sack of Oechalia and the taking of Iole,

16 17 18 19 20

See Tsagalis 2017: 42–82. According to the summary of the Iliou Persis by Proclus (arg. ll. 241–245 Severyns); see West 2013: 227–228. “Sign”. Il. Pers. arg. ll. 248–249 Severyns; see Rengakos 2015: 159. See e.g. the killing of Priam of Neoptolemus at the altar of Zeus Herceius (Il. Pers. arg. ll. 257–258 Severyns), the violation of Cassandra by Ajax Oileus (Il. Pers. arg. ll. 261–265 Severyns), and Odysseus’s killing of Astyanax (Il. Pers. arg. l. 267 Severyns).

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

196

tsagalis

it is possible that there would have been a flashforward to Heracles’s future death, especially since Iole is related to Deianeira’s jealousy and the story of Nessus.21 With respect to (b), the Oechalias Halosis shares with Homeric epic the notion of a unified plot. As the Iliad focuses on the theme of Achilles’s wrath and narrates neither the story of the entire Trojan War nor the complete involvement of any single hero in the war, and as the Odyssey is about the whole action pertaining to Odysseus’s return to Ithaca and is neither concerned with the returns of other Greek heroes nor with the entire life of Odysseus, so the Oechalias Halosis focuses on a single, yet complete, episode of Heracles’s life.22 Aristotle’s remarks with respect to a unified plot are worth citing (Poet. 1451a16– 35):23 μῦθος δ᾽ ἐστὶν εἷς, οὐχ ὥσπερ τινὲς οἴονται, ἐὰν περὶ ἕνα ᾖ· πολλὰ γὰρ καὶ ἄπειρα τῷ ἑνὶ συμβαίνει, ἐξ ὧν ἐνίων οὐδέν ἐστιν ἕν· οὕτως δὲ καὶ πράξεις ἑνὸς πολλαί εἰσιν, ἐξ ὧν μία οὐδεμία γίνεται πρᾶξις. διὸ πάντες ἐοίκασιν ἁμαρτάνειν ὅσοι τῶν ποιητῶν Ἡρακληίδα Θησηίδα καὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα ποιήματα πεποιήκασιν· οἴονται γάρ, ἐπεὶ εἷς ἦν ὁ Ἡρακλῆς, ἕνα καὶ τὸν μῦθον εἶναι προσήκειν. ὁ δ᾽ Ὅμηρος ὥσπερ καὶ τὰ ἄλλα διαφέρει καὶ τοῦτ᾽ ἔοικεν καλῶς ἰδεῖν, ἤτοι διὰ τέχνην ἢ διὰ φύσιν· Ὀδύσσειαν γὰρ ποιῶν οὐκ ἐποίησεν ἅπαντα ὅσα αὐτῷ συνέβη, οἷον πληγῆναι μὲν ἐν τῷ Παρνασσῷ, μανῆναι δὲ προσποιήσασθαι ἐν τῷ ἀγερμῷ, ὧν οὐδὲν θατέρου γενομένου ἀναγκαῖον ἦν ἢ εἰκὸς θάτερον γενέσθαι, ἀλλὰ περὶ μίαν πρᾶξιν οἵαν λέγομεν τὴν Ὀδύσσειαν συνέστησαν, ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ τὴν Ἰλιάδα. χρὴ οὖν, καθάπερ καὶ ἐν ταῖς ἄλλαις μιμητικαῖς ἡ μία μίμησις ἑνός ἐστιν, οὕτω καὶ τὸν μῦθον, ἐπεὶ πράξεως μίμησίς ἐστι, μιᾶς τε εἶναι καὶ ταύτης ὅλης, καὶ τὰ μέρη συνεστάναι τῶν πραγμάτων οὕτως ὥστε μετατιθεμένου τινὸς μέρους ἢ ἀφαιρουμένου διαφέρεσθαι καὶ κινεῖσθαι τὸ ὅλον· ὃ γὰρ προσὸν ἢ μὴ προσὸν μηδὲν ποιεῖ ἐπίδηλον, οὐδὲν μόριον τοῦ ὅλου ἐστίν. The plot is not unified, as some think, if built round an individual. Any entity has innumerable features, not all of which cohere into a unity; likewise, an individual performs many actions which yield no unitary action. So all those poets are clearly at fault who have composed a Heracleid, a Theseid, and similar poems: they think that, since Heracles was an individual, the plot too must be unitary. But Homer, in keeping with his general 21 22 23

Allusions to impending negative developments lying outside the limits of the plot tend to increase towards the end of a poem that does not coincide with the completion of a saga. Burkert 1972: 83 = 2001: 147. See Bär (this volume) pp. 146–147.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

narrative and stylistic artistry in early greek epic

197

superiority, evidently grasped well, whether by art or nature, this point too: for though composing the Odyssey, he did not include every feature of the hero’s life (e.g. his wounding on Parnassus, or his feigned madness in the call to arms), where events lacked necessary or probable connections; but he structured the Odyssey round a unitary action of the kind I mean, and likewise with the Iliad. Just as, therefore, in the other mimetic arts a unitary mimesis has a unitary object, so too the plot, since it is mimesis of an action, should be of a unitary and indeed whole action; and the component events should be so structured that if any is displaced or removed, the sense of the whole is disturbed and dislocated: since that whose presence or absence has no clear significance is not an integral part of the whole.24 Aristotle criticized the authors of poems on Heracles and Theseus, underscoring the importance of unitary plot for the achievement of cohesion and coherence.25 He may have had in mind Pisander, Panyassis, and the author of the Theseis. The fact that Aristotle neither mentions nor applies this judgment to the Oechalias Halosis does not suggest that he was unaware of the existence of this poem. He may have considered it to revolve around the μία καὶ αὕτη ὅλη πρᾶξις which he associated with a unified plot.26 By inference, Creophylus’s epic exemplified the unity of plot, which Aristotle found in Homeric epic. The preceding observations suggest that the Oechalias Halosis is an epic of the dramatic type,27 since it covers a short amount of time, has a single theme that contributes to the unity of its plot, and involves anachronies (flashbacks and foreshadowings). It, therefore, shares some of these features with the Homeric epics and others with Cyclic epics such as the Titanomachy and the Iliou Persis. 1.3 Characterization The scant remains of the Oechalias Halosis present an obstacle to the examination of Creophylus’s character-drawing. However, the fact that the mythical material regarding this episode of Heracles’s life is remarkably standard in the 24 25 26

27

Translation by Halliwell 1995: 57–58. Poet. 1451a 28–30. Aristotle’s silence in his Poetics about the Oechalias Halosis is not due to his ignorance of Creophylus’s epic but to his aim, which is to draw the line between Homer and other early poets who wrote epics on Heracles and Theseus and associated the unity of the plot with the action of a single protagonist. On the distinction between dramatic and chronographic epic, see Welcker 18822: 235–236; J. Kakridis 1949: 91; Notopoulos 1964: 35, 40–41; Burgess 2001: 145; Rengakos 2015: 157, 162.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

198

tsagalis

tradition makes it possible to lay in broad strokes some observations pertaining to characterization. To this end, comparison with Homeric and early Greek epic is essential. Creophylus must have found in Homer, and especially in the Odyssey, much that allowed him to shape several of his characters. After all, both epics involved a bow contest for a bride and the punishment of the wrongdoers. Creophylus may have described Heracles as a confident hero, who had triumphed against unprecedented odds while carrying out the twelve labors. His confidence gave him the certainty that he would win the bride contest. Anger is likely to have played a major role in the second part of the epic that involved Heracles’s mustering of an army and return to Oechalia to sack the city. In contrast to the Iliad, in which Achilles’s wrath results in his withdrawal from battle, in Creophylus’s epic Heracles’s anger becomes the driving force for his revenge. In this vein, Heracles resembles Odysseus, who returns to Ithaca, defeats the wrongdoing suitors, and reclaims Penelope. Heracles’s host, Eurytus, is not an unimportant figure. He is an excellent archer, having learned his skill from Apollo himself.28 The archery contest between him and Heracles would bring into the limelight two self-confident characters.29 The analogy with the story of Hippodameia, Pelops, and Oenomaus is worth noting. Oenomaus too was confident to the point of arrogance that nobody would be able to defeat him in the chariot race. Was Eurytus so arrogant too? Did the two heroes exchange self-aggrandizing speeches, emphasizing each other’s skill because of their divine connections, Heracles being the son of Zeus, Eurytus having received his bow from Apollo? The case of the encounter between Sarpedon and Tlepolemus and Aeneas and Achilles in Iliad 5 and 20 respectively offers an interesting analogy. In the former duel, a son of Zeus (Sarpedon) is facing a grandson of Zeus (Heracles being the father of Tlepolemus);30 in the latter, the son of Aphrodite (Aeneas) is fighting against the son of Thetis (Achilles).31 In both cases, genealogy is employed to support status and heroic skills. On the assumption that Apollodorus’s narrative, which displays a striking correspondence with the Eurytius krater depicting Heracles, Eurytus, his sons (Clytius, Toxeus, Deion, Iphitus), and his daughter Iole in the context of a ban-

28 29

30 31

See p. 201 (this chapter). See Σ Il. 1.72, where it is implied that those who have received a gift from the gods (like Eurytus who has acquired his bow from Apollo) are confident about themselves; see also Calchas in Il. 1.72. Fowler (EGM ii, §8.6, 329n227) is useful. Il. 5.635–642. Il. 20.203–209.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

narrative and stylistic artistry in early greek epic

199

quet at Oechalia,32 reflects the core of the plot of the Oechalias Halosis, Iphitus may have been a noteworthy character, the more so since he may have suggested that Heracles be given Iole.33 Comparison with Antenor, who also suggested that Helen be given to Menelaus, reveals a certain similarity but also a telling difference. For while the Achaeans spare Antenor during the sack of Troy, frenzy-driven Heracles kills Iphitus before the sack of Oechalia.34 In contrast to Trojan myth where Antenor emerges as the wise figure, in the story of Oechalia it is Eurytus (and one or more of his sons)35 who is right in fearing Heracles’s unstable nature and darker side. As for Iole, she appeared at least in a dialogue scene with Heracles, since in fr. 1 EGEF Heracles addresses her, showing something that she can see with her own eyes. Love attraction between the two may have been highlighted when Heracles first met her, as happened in the encounter between Paris and Helen in Sparta. In both cases, a visitor falls in love with a woman of high status and takes her away from her home. In both cases someone is disrespectful to a law (of hospitality: Paris) or a promise/agreement (Eurytus), although in the Trojan myth the transgressor is the visitor (Paris), whereas in the Oechalias Halosis the offender is the host (Eurytus). In both cases this behavior results in war. 1.4 Narrative Style One of the most characteristic features of Creophylus’s narrative style is realism. In this respect, the Oechalias Halosis stands apart from other epic narratives focusing on similar accomplishments by Heracles. In the story of the sack of Troy,36 Heracles had saved Hesione,37 king Laomedon’s daughter, from a sea beast sent by angry Poseidon because Laomedon failed to pay the wage which he had promised him for building the walls of Troy.38 Following Laome32 33 34 35 36 37

38

See Tsagalis 2022: 58–59 and 257 (Plate 1a). According to Creoph. fr. 3 EGEF (see also this chapter p. 193n7), Eurytus had two sons. See Apollod. Bibl. 2.6.2. Depending on the version followed; in Creophylus it would have to be only one son, provided that Iphitus wanted to give Iole to Heracles. Earliest full account by Hellanicus, fr. 26b EGM (see also frs. 26d and 108). The value of this argument is neither affected nor does it depend on the inclusion of Hesione in poetic versions of this story that are earlier than Creophylus. See Bär’s chapter (pp. 146–162, this volume); however, see the reference to Teucer as the bastard son of Telamon in Il. 8.283–284 (πατρί τε σῷ Τελαμῶνι, ὅ σ᾽ ἔτρεφε τυτθὸν ἐόντα, | καί σε νόθον περ ἐόντα κομίσσατο ᾧ ἐνὶ οἴκῳ; see also Il. 12.371); Kullmann (1956: 29 with n. 2, 1960: 131) argues that this passage points to the myth of Telamon’s sack of Troy, when Hesione was given to him as a reward by Heracles for his excellence in the siege of the city. Galinsky (1972: 143 and 145) claims that by sacking Troy and Oechalia Heracles was carrying out a civilizing act because he was responding to the failure of their respective kings,

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

200

tsagalis

don’s refusal to reward Heracles with his [sc. Laomedon’s] immortal horses for killing the beast, Heracles left but threatened Laomedon that he would avenge this insult. He came back later with a small army and sacked Troy.39 The difference from the sack of Oechalia is evident: both the fight against the sea monster and the immortal horses of Laomedon testify to the importance of the supernatural, which is completely absent from the story of Iole and Eurytus. As regards the capture of Pylos, Heracles kills Neleus and eleven of his twelve sons,40 among whom was Periclymenus, who changed shapes during the battle.41 Nothing similar happens in Creophylus’s epic, in which metamorphosis is completely absent. This brings Creophylus close to Homeric epic, where metamorphosis either concerns the gods or is caused by them.42 As regards the role of the gods, the Oechalias Halosis strikes a special chord. Unlike the episode of the sack of Pylos, where the gods fight either against Heracles (Poseidon, Hera, and Hades)43 or in support of him (Zeus and Athena), and the Iliad, in which Diomedes fights against the pro-Trojan gods,44 Achilles struggles against the river-god Scamander,45 and different groups of gods participate, some helping the Achaeans, some the Trojans, in the Oechalias Halosis Heracles is not involved in a fight with a god. Of course, this impression may be due to the paucity of the available material with respect to Creophy-

39 40 41 42 43

44

45

Laomedon and Eurytus, to give him what they had promised. Heiden (1987: 667) shows that ancient authors commented on the inequity between cause and revenge; for Troy, see D. Chr. 11.56 (διὰ μικρὰν πρόφασιν, “because of a small pretext”); for Oechalia, see Soph. Tr. 361 (ἔγκλημα μικρόν, “small crime”). Il. 5.638–642, 14.250–251, 20.144–148; Apollod. Bibl. 2.5.9, 2.6.4. Il. 11.690–693. [Hes.] Cat. fr. 33(a).12–26 M-W; Apollod. Bibl. 2.7.3: Περικλύμενον κτείνει, ὃς μεταβάλλων τὰς μορφὰς ἐμάχετο (“he kills Periclymenus, who was changing shapes as he was fighting”). See p. 215 (this chapter). [Hes.] Asp. 359–367; Pind. Ol. 9.29–35; Pan. Her. fr. 3 GEF; Seneca HF 560–565; Apollod. Bibl. 2.7.3, and Paus. 6.25.3. Since it is peripheral to my argument, the story of Hippolyte’s Belt deserves a brief comment. Although it consists in a combat between Heracles and the Amazons and amounts to a rationalistically evaluated military feat that is deprived of a miraculous aspect, it mirrors the “otherness” of the world of the Amazons. Other mythical adventures such as the Calydonian boar-hunt and the Argonautic expedition are irrelevant to my argument, since Heracles plays in both a secondary role. See Il. 5.392–402; West (2011: 160 on Il. 5.395–397) argues that the wounding of the gods by Heracles was the model for Diomedes’s fighting against them in Iliad 5. On the wounding of Hades, see Sekita 2018: 1–9; Stamatopoulou 2017: 927n21; Alepidou (this volume) p. 118 with n48. See Il. 21.211–271, 305–327.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

narrative and stylistic artistry in early greek epic

201

lus’s epic. However, the narrative skeleton of the plot that is based on the mythographical information we possess does not display any traces of active divine involvement in the fighting. Eurytus’s excellence in archery may be due to Apollo46 but this does not in any way mean that Heracles fought against this god.47 Nor is there any hint that Athena was involved in the sack of the city. If so, Creophylus’s version would be even more realistic than the Homeric Iliad. Creophylus’s epic is a stark example among an entire host of episodes of Heracles’s life that is tuned to a Homeric note. This observation is reinforced by Callimachus who strongly attests to the influence of Homer by stating this affiliation in forceful tones (6 Pf. = 55 Gow–Page): τοῦ Σαμίου πόνος εἰμὶ δόμῳ ποτὲ θεῖον ἀοιδόν δεξαμένου, κλείω δ᾽ Εὔρυτον ὅσσ᾽ ἔπαθεν, καὶ ξανθὴν Ἰόλειαν, Ὁμήρειον δὲ καλεῦμαι γράμμα. Κρεωφύλῳ, Ζεῦ φίλε, τοῦτο μέγα. I am the work of the Samian who once received the divine singer in his house, and I celebrate Eurytus’s sufferings and fair-haired Iole. I am called the writing of Homer. This is, dear Zeus, a great compliment to Creophylus. In this epigram the Oechalias Halosis acknowledges its composer,48 who had been the host of a famous guest who is nobody else than Homer, designated as the “divine singer”.49 Homer’s presence is also manifested by and translated into the use of Homeric diction and style, by means of the verb κλείω with the names of Eurytus (Εὔρυτον) and Iole (ξανθὴν Ἰόλειαν) in the accusative case, thus reflecting the programmatic phraseology of Homeric or Homerizing50 proems:

46 47

48 49 50

This piece of information is given by Σ Il. 1.72 and Ap. Rh. 1.88, but could be early. The version offered by the Odyssey (8.223–228), in which Heracles and Eurytus rival the gods in archery, is not known from any other source. It is possible that it is an autoschediasma that suits the plot of the epic. Odysseus states that he is unwilling to compete against men of previous generations like Heracles and Eurytus who challenged the gods; see Alden 2017: 176–180. On ad hoc inventions (autoschediasmata) in Homer, see Willcock 1964: 141–154. τοῦ Σαμίου πόνος εἰμί. δόμῳ ποτὲ θεῖον ἀοιδόν | δεξαμένου. The Thebais was also considered to be a work of Homer; see Paus. 9.9.5; [Herod.] Vita Homeri 9; Certamen Homeri et Hesiodi 15.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

202

tsagalis

Il. 1.1: Μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεά (“Sing, goddess, the wrath”) Od. 1.1: Ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, Μοῦσα (“Tell me, Muse, of the man”) Thebais fr. 1.1 GEF: Ἄργος ἄειδε, θεά, πολυδίψιον (“Sing, goddess, of Argos the much-thirsty”) Furthermore, the expression ὅσσ᾽ ἔπαθεν designating Eurytus’s misfortunes amounts to an emblematic allusion to the Odyssey through the celebrated language of the Odyssean proem, πολλὰ δ᾽ ὅ γ᾽ ἐν πόντῳ πάθεν ἄλγεα (“and he suffered at sea many sorrows”, Od. 1.4) referring to Odysseus’s sufferings, and the epic song of the entire Trojan War saga (Ἀχαιῶν οἶτον ἀείδεις, | ὅσσ’ ἔρξαν τ’ ἔπαθόν τε καὶ ὅσσ’ ἐμόγησαν Ἀχαιοί, “you sing the fate of the Achaeans, all that they did and suffered, and what the Achaeans went through”, Od. 8.489–490). However, this effective acknowledgement of Creophylus’s debt to Homer is paired with the stress on the sufferings of Eurytus, not of Heracles, who is the undisputed protagonist of the Oechalias Halosis. Apart from the similarities between Creophylus’s and Homer’s epic poetry through their common dictional, stylistic, and thematic features, Callimachus goes one step further and directly recognizes the “Homeric” nature of the Oechalias Halosis by making the poem call itself “the writing of Homer, a great compliment to Creophylus” (Ὁμήρειον … | γράμμα. Κρεωφύλῳ … τοῦτο μέγα). The Homeric style of Creophylus’s epic is also manifested in several other episodes, which may have formed part of the Oechalias Halosis. If Apollodorus’s account is pressed,51 the mustering of an army at Trachis, the creation of an alliance (with Arcadians, Melians, and Locrians), and the burial of Heracles’s comrades, among whom feature Hippasus (the son of Ceyx who had offered Heracles hospitality in Trachis) and Argeius and Licymnius (two close relatives), seem analogous to the mustering of the army in Aulis, the formation of the Achaean alliance, and the burial of Patroclus, respectively. Burkert52 suggested that the phrasing θάψας τῶν σὺν αὐτῷ στρατευσαμένων τοὺς ἀποθανόντας used by Apollodorus (“after burying those who had fallen while taking part in the expedition with him”, Bibl. 2.7.7) may be echoing a lament scene, in which Heracles grieved for the loss of some of his companions. If so, though this is

51 52

Bibl. 2.7.7. 1972: 84 = 2001: 148.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

narrative and stylistic artistry in early greek epic

203

a big if,53 there would be a further analogy between Creophylus’s epic and the burials of Patroclus and Hector, and especially with the proper laments (γόοι) for these two heroes.54 Apart from Homeric debts and analogies, the Oechalias Halosis displays characteristics which belong to the creation of a stylistic koine for Heracles, a hero of Pan-Hellenic status and undisputed authority. The (sub)motif of initial retreat or expulsion and return at a later stage to defeat an enemy, sometimes with a bigger force,55 seems to have been closely associated with Heracles.56 It may have featured in an oral epic tradition pertaining to the Laomedon story and the sack of Troy by Heracles (a tale known to the Iliad).57 It was employed by Stesichorus in his Cycnus,58 in which Heracles withdraws after being unable to defeat Cycnus (who was protected by his father Ares) and returns victoriously being assisted by Athena. The same is the case with the war against the Meropes on Cos.59 Heracles initially fails to defeat the large force of the enemy but at a later stage he is able to overcome them.60

2

Pisander’s Heracleia

As regards Pisander and his epic we have six testimonia, which include twelve references (test. 1A–C, 2–5, 6A–E EGEF) and pertain to ten sources. There are ten genuine fragments, which contain eighteen references, and are given by eleven sources, and nine dubious fragments reported by five sources. The earliest source is Theocritus (test. 2 EGEF).61 53 54 55

56

57 58 59 60

61

I have deliberately omitted this episode from the preceding discussion of the epic’s scope. See Tsagalis 2004: 120–136, 139–143, 149–151, 151–165. Alden (2017: 178–179) argues that this is an epic motif which does not appear in vase painting with respect to the sack of Oechalia; see a late sixth-century b.c.e. amphora (Madrid, Museo Arqueologico Nacional 10916 = LIMC 1.1: 861 and 1.2: pl. 687) by the Sappho Painter, where the banquet at Eurytus’s palace and the fight against Eurytus and his sons are depicted on the two sides of the vase. However, it is certainly not restricted to him, as can be seen from the story of the Cicones and the Egyptian adventure of Odysseus’s false tale to Eumaeus in Od. 9.51–52 and 14.266– 268, respectively; see Tsagalis 2012: 337 with n86. Il. 5.638–642, 648–651; Apollod. Bibl. 2.5.9, 26.4; see Finglass 2011: 266–267 on Soph. Aj. 434–446; West 2011: 36–38. Finglass 2015: 85–86. See Scodel (this volume) pp. 77–78, 80–81. Plut. Quaest. Gr. 304de; see Finglass 2015: 86n12, who suggests that the lateness of the source does not point to the lateness of the relevant version and considers the story to be as early as the Archaic period, perhaps “pre-Stesichorean”. See Tsagalis 2022: 123–124.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

204

tsagalis

2.1 Scope Unlike Creophylus’s Oechalias Halosis, which narrated a single episode of Heracles’s life, Pisander’s Heracleia presents a panorama of the hero’s achievements including the entire Dodekathlos,62 as well as several other exploits like the episode with Antaeus,63 the making of hot springs by Athena at Thermopylae so that the hero can cleanse himself,64 and the sack of Troy.65 There are also good reasons supporting the assumption that Pisander’s Heracleia included more post-labors episodes of Heracles’s life, since the three aforementioned adventures do not form part of a series of episodes, which makes it likely that there were also other exploits by Heracles that were included in Pisander’s epic.66 This poem is the earliest example of a Greek epic following a systematic “encyclopedic” approach with respect to the deeds of a single hero. Its comprehensiveness stands out.67 We cannot determine whether Pisander was innovating by adopting an “encyclopedic” approach to Heracles’s mythical lore.68 However, we may explain his viewpoint by the fact that he aimed at advertising the great Dorian hero Heracles. The inclusion of as many achievements as possible in a single epic would clearly promote such an agenda, the more so since Pisander was himself a Rhodian Greek of Doric identity (being a citizen of the city of Camirus).69

62 63 64 65 66

67 68

69

See test. 2 EGEF (Theocr. AP 9.598 = epigr. 22 Gow = 16 HE). Fr. 7 EGEF. This episode is a parergon that may have been appended either to the labor of Geryoneus’s Cattle or to that of the Apples of the Hesperides. Fr. 8 EGEF. See e.g. fr. 9 EGEF. It is unlikely that Pisander narrated immediately after the labors the sack of Troy. There are two considerations supporting this argument: first, the sack of Troy is placed later in the post-labors adventures of Heracles; second, it is improbable that Pisander decided to narrate only the sack of Troy and ignore Heracles’s capture of other cities, such as Pylos. Even the Odyssey is less “encyclopedic”, since it includes Odysseus’s nostos, not his preTrojan, Trojan, and post-Odyssean adventures. According to Theocritus (22 Gow = test. 2 EGEF), Pisander was the first poet who recorded all of Heracles’s labors. Although this may mean that Pisander was the first who offered an “encyclopedic” presentation of the labors, I am reluctant to press this conclusion, since an earlier oral epic or epics on Heracles may have also followed an “encyclopedic” account of some of the labors together with other deeds accomplished by this famous hero; see Burgess 2001: 145, who argues, with respect the tradition of the Trojan War, for the coexistence of songs offering an overview of the war and songs focusing on individual episodes. See also p. 207 (this chapter).

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

narrative and stylistic artistry in early greek epic

205

2.2 Presentation The content of the epic speaks for an episodic structure that is reminiscent of Cyclic poetry.70 This is of course an assumption that is based on the fundamental decision made by all modern editors of Pisander’s poetry to determine the order of fragments by adopting the standard sequence of the labors given by Apollodorus. Before raising too many eyebrows, I should hasten to say that the alternative, an Odyssean flashback in which Heracles would have narrated all his labors to somebody else, is highly unlikely. An example from analogy is helpful. Although the mythographical treatises of Apollodorus71 and Hyginus72 present Odysseus’s adventures in chronological order,73 we know of Odysseus’s flashback narrative in Odyssey 9–12 independently from Homeric epic. Plato (Resp. 614b), Aristotle (Rh. 1417a13, Poet. 1455a2), and Aelian (VH 13–14)74 designate Odysseus’s narrative to Alcinous by the expression Ἀλκίνου ἀπόλογος. Irrespective of the Odyssey, we can infer that this was an extended flashback since the Phaeacians represent Odysseus’s last adventure before he returns to Ithaca. This means that even if Homer’s epic had not survived, we would have been informed about Odysseus’s famous flashback narrative in the Odyssean Apologos. Conversely, there is no trace in Greek literature of the use of an analogous flashback narrative regarding Heracles’s labors. The Heracleia offers a highly condensed presentation of its subject matter.75 This argument is based on the fact that the poem included only two books76 and on the assumption of an average length of each book between 400 and 900 verses, using the length of Iliadic and Odyssean books as our guide. But would the Heracleia’s two books be of equal size? The question is crucial because it is the basis for exploring the issue of direct speech. We know that Heracles performed his tenth labor in book 2, when he crossed the Ocean with Helios’s cup to reach Erytheia and steal the Cattle of Gery-

70 71 72 73

74 75 76

Tsagalis 2011: 216–217. Epit. 7.2–25. Fab. 125. The same is the case in Od. 23.310–341, when the narrator presents Odysseus recounting to Penelope all his adventures, beginning with his departure from Troy and ending with his arrival at Ithaca; see Burgess 2001: 146, who claims that this is one case of many in which patches of the Homeric poems are “characterized by a quickening of pace and a focus on action”. Aelian uses the plural (Ἀλκίνου ἀπολόγους). The references to Plato, Aristotle, and Aelian are exempli gratia. West 2003: 22. Fr. 6 EGEF.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

206

tsagalis

oneus. Unfortunately, we are unaware of the exact placement of this labor within book 2, which means that we do not know how many episodes were included in each book or even if the two books were of equal size. Still, we can make some progress. First, let us assume that both books were of equal size and that each of them had a maximum length of 900 verses (on the basis of the longest Homeric books). In that case, since the Heracleia included at least fourteen episodes (the twelve labors, the baths of Heracles, and the sack of Troy) each episode would have extended to about 125 lines (leaving out the beginning and end of the epic). Therefore, even in this extreme scenario in which the Heracleia included only these fourteen episodes, there would have been very limited room for direct speech in every episode. However, since it is unlikely that our meager fragments represent the totality of episodes included in this epic, we may assume (and this is a fair assumption) that in a Heracleia with at least a few other episodes, direct speech would have been limited to the minimum. But how likely is this conclusion? Conversely, it is more probable that the Heracleia was composed of episodes of varying length, as we know too well both from Odysseus’s Apologos and from Cyclic epic. In the case of the Odyssey, size is determined by the relevance of a given episode to the plot. The story of the Cyclops, Circe, and Thrinacia, all placed at last position in books 9, 10, and 12, respectively, are key to the continuation of the plot. The Cyclops episode is about Poseidon’s wrath against Odysseus that will delay his return to Ithaca, Circe is the “bridge” to the unique adventure of the underworld, which is narrated at great length in book 11, and Thrinacia creates the conditions for Odysseus’s continuation of his journey of return on his own. Likewise, in Cyclic epic, I count at least twenty episodes in eleven books of the Cypria, two episodes (Penthesileia and Memnon) in five books of the Aethiopis, twelve episodes in four books of the Ilias parva, three–four episodes in two books of the Iliou persis, eight–nine episodes in five books of the Nostoi, and three episodes (Elis, Thesprotia, and Ithaca) in two books of the Telegony.77 In this light, it is probable that Pisander’s Heracleia followed a basically linear narrative and was composed of episodes of unequal length. Direct speech should have been used more frequently78 in the longer episodes.

77 78

On causal and thematic links between episodes in Cyclic epic, see Burgess 2001: 144–145. I stress the words “more frequently”. In the Odyssey, direct speech is occasionally employed in short episodes of Odysseus’s adventures (Aeolus, Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis); contrast the brief episodes of the Cicones, the Lotus-Eaters, and the Laestrygonians that do not include direct speech.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

narrative and stylistic artistry in early greek epic

207

2.3 Characterization Since we know very few details pertaining to each episode of Pisander’s Heracleia, we can only make some general observations regarding Heracles’s characterization. First, Pisander may have preserved direct speech for certain episodes which he wanted to highlight or thought suitable for narrative exploitation. Would we be far from the truth to assume, for example, that the episodes of the Nemean Lion (fr. 1A–B–2A–D EGEF) and the Stymphalian Birds (fr. 5 EGEF) were unsuitable for the use of direct speech, while those of the Hydra, in which Heracles was assisted by Iolaus (fr. 3 EGEF), Pholus, in which Heracles engaged in dialogue with this Centaur about wine-drinking and which formed part of the labor of the Erymanthian Boar (fr. dub. 2 EGEF),79 and Geryoneus, in which Heracles acquired Helios’s cup to reach Erytheia (fr. 6 EGEF), were fitting for the exchange of speeches?80 Second, unlike Cyclic epic, it is possible that speeches were at times used as the main arena for conflict between certain figures or for important developments in the plot.81 In the labor of the Erymanthian Boar, the clash between Heracles and the Centaurs was attached to the theme of wine-drinking, which was presented by means of an exchange of speeches between Heracles and Pholus. Likewise, an exchange of speeches between Heracles and the Ocean, who acted as an intermediary and gave Heracles Helios’s cup, probably because Helios was unwilling to give it in the first place, determined the course of the action, since it would be by means of this cup that Heracles would arrive at Erytheia and steal Geryoneus’s Cattle. As regards the epic’s protagonist, Pisander underscored Heracles’s heroism by either making several of the hero’s traditional feats more demanding than they already were or by emphasizing the hero’s Doric identity, a feature that would have appealed to Pisander himself as a Dorian and perhaps to his local audience on Rhodes.82 Thus, Pisander may have been the first to present Heracles with a club,83 to stress his remarkable physical strength by making him wrestle and throttle the Nemean Lion, to have him fight a manyheaded Hydra,84 and to scare off the Stymphalian Birds with the noise of clappers instead of killing them.85 In this last episode, Pisander probably aimed at 79 80

81 82 83 84 85

Vecchiato decisively argues that this is a genuine fragment; see pp. 238–256 (this volume). Finglass (2021: 139–141) has argued that a poet like Stesichorus could exploit in the case of Geryoneus a new approach, in which Heracles engaged in dialogue with Geryoneus who was anything but a monster. On Cyclic epic, see Tsagalis 2011: 216. See p. 204 (this chapter). Fr. 1A–B EGEF. Fr. 3 EGEF. Fr. 5 EGEF.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

208

tsagalis

depriving Heracles of his bow and arrows, since these weapons were associated with less heroic figures who fought from a distance. These narrative choices reflected on Pisander’s presentation of Heracles as a sheer force of nature. 2.4 Narrative Style Pisander’s decision to focus on a hero like Heracles, whose mythical lore was remarkably rich and diverse, posed a serious challenge for the type of epic he wanted to write. The well-known labors and other mythical episodes in which Heracles was the protagonist needed a new approach, if Pisander aspired to produce an epic of some caliber that would be marked by his own imprint. The same is the case with the “encyclopedic” and linear presentation of the material that he adopted. Pisander’s epic displays a predilection for the fantastic, which should be interpreted as a deliberate effort on the part of the poet to emphasize the otherworldly aspects of certain labors, and a penchant for the exotic, which increases the distance separating the world of the audience from that in which Heracles operates. The impenetrability of the Nemean Lion’s skin to metallic weapons,86 which explains why Pisander was the first to have Heracles throttle it,87 underscores the beast’s monstrous nature; the multiple heads of the Hydra contribute to her dreadful aspect, thus “making his poetry more noteworthy”;88 the inclusion of the story of Antaeus, an enemy endowed with the ability to regain his strength from contact with the earth, in one of Heracles’s last labors stresses the unhuman aspect of this particular opponent, thus making Heracles’s victory more striking and Pisander’s account more appealing. In similar vein, the description of the Cerynian Hind as female and golden-horned,89 would highlight the unrealistic features of the world in which Heracles operates in the labors, thus enhancing a feeling of amazement on the part of the audience as regards the remarkable accomplishments of this great hero. At the same time, such unexpected additions would grant Pisander the kind of poetic authority he was aiming at, especially since he was able to innovate within the set framework of a highly standardized myth.

86 87 88 89

The Iliad (20.265) probably knows but suppresses a story according to which Achilles had impenetrable armor; see P. Kakridis 1961: 288–297; Griffin 1977: 40. Fr. 2A EGEF. Paus. 2.37.4. Fr. 4 EGEF = Σ Pind. Ol. 3.50b. The same presentation was employed by the author of the Theseis (fr. 2 GEF). However, we are in no position to tell whether Pisander influenced the poet of the Theseis or vice versa.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

narrative and stylistic artistry in early greek epic

209

From a narrative perspective, the concatenated structure of Pisander’s Heracleia would set major challenges when the poet had to effect a transition from the labors, which constitute a coherent group of adventures, to other exploits that could stand on their own. We would have liked to know whether Pisander included in his epic, like Panyassis in his own Heracleia, for example the sack of Oechalia. If he did, we would have a helpful analogy with the sack of Troy that was narrated either as part of an epic (the Ilias parva) with an extended episodic organization (like Pisander’s Heracleia but with several protagonists) or an autonomous epic (the Iliou Persis) that is, in this sense, analogous to Creophylus’s Oechalias Halosis. Several episodes, which were suitable for narrative exploitation, must have received special attention. Within the labors, the Nemean Lion, the Hydra, the Erymanthian Boar, and the final triad of labors (Geryoneus, Cerberus, Hesperides) may have been narratively “promoted” by Pisander. Despite the fact that all twelve labors were part of a series of successive episodes, those mentioned above constitute important stepping stones in the development of Heracles’s persona. The Nemean Lion establishes the hero’s unrivalled strength, emphatically symbolized in the lionskin that becomes his heroic trademark. The Hydra episode, in which Heracles fights probably the most terrifying monster he will ever face, advertises him as a friend of Iolaus. The Erymanthian Boar is not a particularly promising labor, but the fact that Pisander embedded it in the Pholus episode suggests that the poet may have tried to highlight Heracles’s struggle against the uncontrolled forces of nature, the half-man and half-horse Centaurs who symbolized an earlier stage in the evolution of the world.90 Likewise, the triad of otherworldly labors (Geryoneus, Cerberus, Hesperides) bring Heracles in contact with the “beyond” and test the limits of his unquenched heroism. If indeed Pisander had made the most of the suitability of these episodes for narrative exploitation, the narrative rhythm of his epic must have been mixed: a faster pace in the shorter labors, a slower one in the expanded ones.91 This unstable narrative speed would have created variatio, which the poet may have regarded as essential in an “encyclopedic” epic that lacked a thematic center and thus ran the risk of diffusing the audience’s attention to too many

90

91

The analogy to his father Zeus is worth exploring. As Zeus’s triumph against the Titans brings order to the cosmos, so several of Heracles’s labors epitomize his civilizing aspect; see Mills (this volume) pp. 87–103. Compare the varying narrative rhythm of the episodes included in the Apologos (Odyssey, books 9–12); see also pp. 205–206 (this chapter).

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

210

tsagalis

directions. After all, Pisander’s Heracleia was an epic about a single hero accomplishing great deeds without a final goal.92

3

Panyassis’s Heracleia

Though better preserved than the epic of Creophylus and Pisander, the thirty fragments and around sixty extant verses of Panyassis’s Heracleia (according to GEF) are only a tiny part of an epic poem of 9,000 verses in fourteen books.93 3.1 Scope The plot of Panyassis’s Heracleia may be reconstructed as follows: After killing his children in a fit of insanity (fr. 1 GEF), Heracles visits Delphi to seek purification (fr. 2 GEF). The oracle tells him to go to Tiryns and serve King Eurystheus. Disappointed that he has to serve a mortal master, Heracles is consoled by Athena, who reminds him of several mythical episodes in which the gods had to serve mortals (frs. 3–5 GEF). The epic continues with the narration of all the labors (frs. 6–18 GEF). Panyassis then passes to Heracles’s other exploits. Fragments 19–22 GEF refer to a banquet, probably in Eurytus’s palace in Oechalia. After the murder of Iphitus Heracles is self-exiled in Lydia, where he stays with Queen Omphale. He falls sick there but is cured by the river Hyllus, after whom he names his two sons (fr. 23 GEF). It is possible that Panyassis devoted some part of his epic to Heracles’s sojourn in Asia Minor, since he mentions Lycia (frs. 24–25 GEF). When he returns to Greece, he fights the gods at Pylos (fr. 26 GEF).94 With respect to the labors, Panyassis followed Pisander and adopted a linear presentation. The same must have been true for the praxeis which followed the narration of the labors. In the latter case, the sequential presentation was partly dictated by a further factor, which determined that in several cases one exploit was the prerequisite for the next. For example, Heracles’s exile to Lydia was caused by his murder of Iphitus, which means that the sack of Oechalia

92

93

94

This is because Pisander’s epic included much more than the labors, which are the only part of Heracles’s accomplishments that aim to set him free from the penalty he has to pay to Eurystheus. Interest in the study of Panyassis’s style is as old as Dionysius of Halicarnassus (p. 190 GEF) and Quintilian (p. 190 GEF) who praised the Heracleia for its Hesiodic smoothness and Antimachian vigor with respect to its diction (Dionysius), and the arrangement of its subject matter (Dionysius and Quintilian). Fragments 27–30 GEF are hard to contextualize.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

narrative and stylistic artistry in early greek epic

211

would have been presented after Heracles’s servitude to Omphale. Panyassis treated both labors and praxeis in considerable detail. This conclusion is based on the fact that the labor of Geryoneus (labor ten according to Apollodorus) was narrated in book 5.95 This means that Panyassis presented the rest of the labors not later than the end of book 6 or the beginning of 7. Since this was the middle of the fourteen-book long Heracleia,96 it is obvious that almost half of the epic was devoted to a minute account of various other events of Heracles’s life.97 For Panyassis, expansion was not seen as a defect. It was his innovative approach to the presentation of varied mythical material centered on a single protagonist. 3.2 Presentation Panyassis uses flashbacks or analepses to integrate events falling outside the scope of the Heracleia. Athena consoles Heracles by reminding him of the past sufferings of gods who had been submitted to servitude under mortal masters (frs. 3–5 GEF). The story about the birth of Dionysus is an inset narrative, tagged to the episode of Heracles and Pholus. This embedded story is a heterodiegetic analepsis (fr. 10 GEF). More heterodiegetic analepses can be safely postulated on the basis of frs. 17–18 GEF, which pertain to Heracles’s encounters with Theseus and Peirithous (17) and Sisyphus (18) in the underworld in the framework of his eleventh labor (the fetching of Cerberus). Since fr. 18 GEF reads, “after he [sc. Sisyphus] has spoken thus, the Water of Shuddering covered him over”, it is guaranteed that Sisyphus engaged in a dialogue with Heracles. What would have been the content of this exchange of direct speeches? Obviously, the reason for Sisyphus’s death and suffering in the underworld and Heracles’s visit. It is, then, likely that Sisyphus offered by means of a flashback information falling outside the scope of the Heracleia. The same must have been the case with Heracles’s encounter with Theseus and Peirithous. The analogy offered by the epic Minyas or the Hesiodic Peirithou Catabasis,98 in which the eidolon of Meleager speaks with Theseus and Peirithous in the underworld, seems decisive. The use of the flashback technique, which is well known from its magisterial use in the Odyssey and is radically different from the “reverberation” (Einspiegelungstechnik) that marks the Iliad, shows that its

95 96 97 98

Fr. 13 GEF. The striking difference in size between Pisander’s epic in two books and Panyassis’s poem in fourteen reflects part of the latter’s reaction to the problem of cohesion and coherence. See Matthews 1974: 22–23. See Min. fr. *6 EGEF with Tsagalis 2017: 331–352.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

212

tsagalis

use in Panyassis’s epic resembles, in this respect too, Cyclic poetry,99 where a highly episodic plot is combined with a more sophisticated treatment of time that involves anachronies.100 Another device that relates to the presentation of time in early Greek epic pertains to oracles and prophecies.101 The Heracleia contains two oracles given by Delphi to Heracles after the murder of his own children and Iphitus. Each oracle sets in motion either a whole series of events (the former) or a single episode (the latter). These developments take place in the context of the hero’s servitude, to Eurystheus and Omphale respectively. Oracles and prophecies abound in the Cycle, where there are at least seventeen traceable examples. The result is a strongly deterministic character.102 3.3 Characterization By offering to his audience the entire range of Heracles’s mythological lore, Panyassis was confronted with the challenge of treating the sinister aspects of the main hero’s personality. By connecting the episode of Heracles’s madness that made him kill his children to the Delphic oracle (frs. 1–2 GEF) that would determine his service to Eurystheus and the undertaking of the labors, the hero’s frenzy is pushed back and is partly replaced by its consequences for Heracles. Remorse and guilt are screened out and what is emphasized is the form of his punishment and its impact on his heroic status. The same may have been the case with the episode of Heracles’s madness that led to the killing of Iphitus. This episode may have been narrated briefly, since its main function was to furnish a reason for the hero’s exile in Lydia. In this respect, Panyassis is close to Cyclic epic, which (unlike Homer) features episodes involving human sacrifice, killing within the family, and madness.103 The sacrifice of Iphigenia was narrated in the Cypria,104 the murders of Agamemnon by Clytemnestra and Aegisthus as well as the revenge of Orestes were included in the Nostoi,105 and Ajax’s suicide because of his madness featured in the Aethiopis and the Ilias parva.106 However, if I am right that Panyassis avoided

99 100 101

102 103 104 105 106

See Rengakos 2015: 157. I am hereby referring to embedded extra-diegetic analepses that are not against the linear order in which the labors and the praxeis are presented. On oracles and prophecies in Cyclic epic, see Stockinger 1959: 90–94; Kullmann 1960: 221; Griffin 1977: 48; Davies 1989: 38, 63; Tsagalis 2011: 214–215; Rengakos 2015: 158–159; Davies 2019: 130, 144, 155. Kullmann 1960: 221–223l; Griffin 1977: 48. See Griffin 1977: 44. Cypr. arg. ll. 138–143 Severyns. Tel. arg. ll. 301–303 Severyns. Aeth. fr. 6 GEF; Il. parv. arg. ll. 209–210 Severyns.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

narrative and stylistic artistry in early greek epic

213

a vivid presentation of Heracles’s killing of his children and Iphitus because of his madness, then it is possible that he aimed at downplaying the sinister aspects of the protagonist of his epic so as to advertise even more his heroic qualities. This does not mean that Heracles was deprived of his human side. Romance was at least thrice brought to the foreground, with Deianeira (his legitimate wife), with Iole, the daughter of King Eurytus, and with Omphale, the Queen of Lydia. The same is the case with the stress on Heracles’s offspring. While Homer “is sparing in ascribing offspring to his characters”,107 Panyassis has Heracles acquire two sons by Omphale.108 The same feature is attested in Cyclic epic. In the Telegony, Odysseus had a son, Telegonus or Teledamus, from Calypso109 or Circe,110 another one, Polypoites, by the Thesprotian queen Callidice,111 and one more, Ptoliporthes/Arcesilaus from Penelope.112 Besides Heracles, Panyassis must have developed other characters in considerable detail. Two such cases are Eurytus and Omphale. The dialogue between the former and Heracles in the context of a banquet held at Oechalia (frs. 19– 22 GEF) shows how much stress Panyassis put on the theme of hybris and ate, which must have been instrumental in the unraveling of this episode. This part of the epic is important not only for the characterization of the arrogant and disrespectful King Eurytus but also, albeit indirectly, for Heracles. The theme of excessive drinking is not associated with Heracles but with Eurytus. The same observation may be applied to the Pholus episode (frs. 9–10 GEF), in which inebriation pertained to the Centaurs and not to Heracles. Omphale was one of the female figures who were suitable for character development (frs. 23–25 GEF). Heracles’s stay at her palace in Lydia and the two sons he had with her offered Panyassis ample opportunities to present her character and explore her relationship with Heracles. If she had paid the price put up by Hermes when Heracles was for sale (to cleanse himself for the death of Iphitus) and bought him,113 it is possible that she intended to keep him with her for good. In that sense, Omphale functioned like a sort of Calypso, who similarly wanted to keep Odysseus with her. However, Heracles’s endlessly adventurous spirit made him undertake a brief cycle of local labors, which were a prelude

107 108 109 110 111 112 113

Griffin 1977: 43. Huxley 1969: 181. Fr. 4 GEF. Fr. 5 GEF; see also fr. 6 GEF and Apollod. Epit. 36. Tel. arg. ll. 321–322 Severyns. Tel. frs. 3–4 GEF; Apollod. Epit. 35. Apollod. Bibl. 2.6.3.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

214

tsagalis

for his final departure from Lydia and Omphale’s palace. Seen from this vantage point, he resembles Odysseus, who finally left Calypso, though he did not marry her, as is the case with Heracles and Omphale. 3.4 Narrative Style Writing against the backdrop of Pisander’s highly condensed but comprehensive account of Heracles, Panyassis must have opted for a fully-fledged narration of both the labors and the post-labors adventures. This assumption is supported by the fact that half of the Heracleia is devoted to the postlabors exploits of Heracles.114 By means of such narrative balance Panyassis would have given his epic a steady rhythm, quite unlike the fluctuating pace of Pisander’s Heracleia, and created more opportunities for dramatic tension. To use a couple of examples, fragments 9–10 and 19–22 GEF show that Heracles’s visits to Pholus and Eurytus were dramatically exploited. By employing direct speech, Panyassis was able to expand a given scene or episode, to make the monotony of a linear plot dwindle, and to help his audience explore a complex character like Heracles through his interaction with other figures. Other aspects of Panyassis’s narrative style pertain to mythological examples, human relations, the supernatural, imagery, and special diction. Characters employ mythological examples to create an analogy with a given situation.115 Aiming to console Heracles about his servitude to Eurystheus,116 someone (perhaps Athena) resorted to the stories of gods who suffered at the hands of mortals (fr. 3 GEF; see also frs. 4–5 GEF), stressing to Heracles, whose father was Zeus, that “even gods had to serve men”.117

114 115 116

117

See pp. 210, 212 (this chapter). Mythological examples give depth to an episode, since they are used as a backdrop against which a character should evaluate the present. This is a typical consolatory technique which is observed in Greek, Old English, and Norse poetry. By referring to disasters that have befallen other people in the past and were overcome, the person who is suffering in the present may gain courage in putting up with his current misfortune; see Willcock 1978–1984: 235 on Il. 5.382–415; West 2007: 66 and 2011: 159 on Il. 5.383–404. Davies opts for a different order of the relevant fragments, since he thinks that the fragment about Heracles’s visit to Delphi to ask for an oracle pertains to the aftermath of his killing of Iphitus, and that Athena’s or somebody else’s heterodiegetic analepsis about the gods who suffered at the hands of mortals should be placed at this point, i.e. before his servitude to Omphale (frs. 15–18 EGF = 2–3 and 23–24 GEF). However, my observations concerning the use of the flashback technique, as well as the mythological example, stand irrespective of whether one follows West or Davies regarding the placement of these fragments.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

narrative and stylistic artistry in early greek epic

215

Panyassis displays a liking for the supernatural. In the context of a flashback narrative of the sufferings of gods at the hands of mortals (fr. 3 GEF), Panyassis offered an account of Asclepius’s resurrection of Tyndareus, which was the cause for a series of events (Zeus’s thunderbolting of Asclepius and Apollo’s murder of the Cyclopes as an act of revenge for the death of his son) leading to Apollo’s servitude to Admetus. Likewise, Smyrna, the daughter of king Theias, having been punished by Aphrodite by being made to conceive a passion for and sleep with her father, is pitied by the gods and is subsequently changed into a tree,118 from which Adonis was born. Metamorphosis is also attested in Homeric and Cyclic epic. In the Iliad, Athena and Apollo take the shape of vultures and sit on a tall fig-tree to watch the Achaean and Trojan armies (7.58–60). In the Odyssey, Proteus is a shape-shifter (4.417–418, 456–458) and Circe changes Odysseus’s men into swine (10.235–240). In Cyclic epic Thetis changes shape to escape from Peleus119 and Medea rejuvenates Jason’s father, Aeson, “stripping away his old skin, boiling various drugs in her golden cauldrons”.120 Another means used for elaboration is imagery. The golden apples are guarded by a snake, whose glowing scale is “sometimes like blue enamel and sometimes like flowers of copper” (fr. 14* GEF). In his speech to his host Eurytus, Heracles advises him “not to sit costive like a vulture satiate with food, having forgotten joyfulness” (fr. 19.18–19 GEF). The apparent triviality of these details is misleading. Even such glimpses at Panyassis’s descriptive ability disclose his attempt to elaborate and give more depth to an episode or scene. The exotic nature of the serpent marks it as a creature belonging to another world which Heracles has entered. As regards diction, Panyassis employs several means to create an impressionistic effect. The novel expression λελασμένον εὐφροσυνάων (“oblivious of good cheer”), which is employed for the inertia of a vulture who is satiated with food,121 is created by the transfer and adaptation of the Homeric formula λελασμένος ἱπποσυνάων to the context of the symposium. Elaboration is also attested in the use of rare names or versions, as well as in a tendency for repetition. In frs. 6–7 GEF, the Nemean lion is called “Bembinitian” after a village in the region of Nemea; in fr. 23 GEF the Nymphs are called “Achelesian” after a Lydian river; in fr. 24 GEF an entire host of rare geographical names in Lydia are accumulated in a few verses; in fr. 25 GEF the rare geographical name “Aspis” is used. In 118 119 120 121

Fr. 28 GEF. Cypr. fr. 3* GEF; see also Apollod. Bibl. 3.13.5. Nost. fr. 6 GEF; see Davies 1989: 81. Fr. 19.18–19 GEF.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

216

tsagalis

fr. 8 GEF, the Hydra is assisted by a crab who leapt out of the lake and bit Heracles in the foot.122 In fr. 10 GEF, Dionysus’s nurse Thyone is a different person from Semele.123 In fr. 12 GEF, Heracles acquires Helios’s cup through Nereus, not directly through Helios. As for systematic repetition, the triple reiteration concerning the third portion of wine that belongs to Hybris and Ate in a banquet (frs. 20.8, 13 and 22 GEF) and does not add anything semantically reminds one of the triple repetition of the word ἄνθος in Cypr. fr. 5.2, 4, 6 GEF.124 Other trite repetitions are the triple ἀλλά at verse-initial position within nine verses (fr. 20.7, 10, 15 GEF) and the inflated reprise of μέτρον (μέ⟨τρα⟩, πρὸς μέτρον, μέτρον, κατὰ μέτρον, ὑπὲρ μέτρον) in frs. 20.5, 7, 10, and 21.5 GEF (bis). The fact that banal repetitions are observable even within the extremely limited corpus of roughly sixty extant verses of a 9,000 verses long epic such as the Heracleia indicates that by analogy this must have been a pervasive feature of Panyassis’s narrative style.

4

Conclusion

The study of the triad of early Greek epics on Heracles helps us appreciate the different responses offered by Creophylus, Pisander, and Panyassis as regards writing epic about a renowned mythical figure. With respect to the scope of their respective poems, each of these poets responded to his immediate predecessor: distancing himself from Creophylus’s focus on a single event (the sack of Oechalia), Pisander opted for an account of all of Heracles’s labors and a few other exploits, while Panyassis went a step further and offered a fully-fledged and remarkably detailed narrative of Heracles’s life and deeds. As regards presentation, the Oechalias Halosis, which contains events that belong to an advanced stage of the Heracles saga, has a mainly linear plot with few brief flashbacks to earlier events of the hero’s life, like his completion of the labors. It also revolves around a unitary and whole action, the sack of Oechalia. The two Heracleiae by Pisander and Panyassis have an episodic structure in the manner of the Cyclic epics. However, Pisander’s poem is marked by a highly

122

123 124

This version is very early, since it is shown in two late eighth-century b.c.e. bronze bow fibulae from Thebes (British Museum 3205, London) and Boeotia (Private collection, previously in the Philadelphia University Museum, Exeter, New Hampshire); see Brommer 19743: 14; Ahlberg-Cornell 1992: 99 and 349–350 figs. 165–166; Gantz 1993: 384. Cf. e.g. Sappho (fr. 17.10 Voigt) and Pindar (Pyth. 3.99): the two figures are identical. See Griffin 1977: 50–51.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

narrative and stylistic artistry in early greek epic

217

condensed presentation in two books with episodes of varying length, while Panyassis’s Heracleia consists in an expanded synthesis in fourteen books with several analeptic accounts and a few prolepses in the manner of oracles. As far as characterization is concerned, the treatment of Heracles, the protagonist of all three epics, allows for a comparative examination. In the Oechalias Halosis, Heracles is a confident figure who has triumphed by accomplishing the twelve labors (and perhaps other deeds). He is also an avenging hero who returns after Eurytus’s failure to keep his promise and sacks Oechalia. In Pisander’s Heracleia, the stress on Heracles’s heroism takes the form of the poet’s making some of the labors more demanding, while in Panyassis’s epic the sinister aspects of the protagonist’s nature are downplayed by being replaced by a stress on their impact on the hero’s status. Moreover, Panyassis underscores Heracles’s human side by presenting his romantic affairs and referring to his multiple offspring. The comparative examination of the narrative style of these three poets allows us to draw a helpful analogy with the polarity between Homeric and Cyclic epic. While the Oechalias Halosis is one more experiment with the socalled “dramatic” epic in the fashion of the Iliad and the Odyssey, the two Heracleiae showcase comprehensive narrative accounts of multiple mythical events that are presented by means of concatenated and sequentially marshaled episodes in a “chronographic” style that is reminiscent of Cyclic epic. Although the analogy has its limitations, like the dichotomy between Cyclic and Homeric epic, for example, with respect to time, it is largely accurate. The Homerizing narrative style of the Oechalias Halosis gives way to the fluctuating narrative rhythm of Pisander’s Heracleia with episodes of varying length,125 a penchant for the exotic, and a predilection for the otherworldly aspects of certain labors. Conversely, Panyassis’s epic is marked by a steady narrative rhythm with developed episodes, rich in mythical examples, supernatural references, imagery, and rare diction with impressionistic resonances. To open the lens further, the study of these three epic poems on Heracles allows us to make a few observations with respect to early Greek epic at large. An interesting analogy is detected with respect to the relation between the Heracleia by Pisander of Camirus and the Heracleia by Panyassis of Halicarnassus on the one hand, and the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women and the Megalai Ehoeae on the other. The disparity between the condensed plot of Pisander’s epic, which included only two books, and the longer form of Panyassis’s epic, 125

See Burgess 2001: 146, who argues that Cyclic epics of a comprehensive scope, which may have covered the entire Trojan War (like an early version of the Cypria and the Ilias parva) “did not give equal attention to all periods of the war”.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

218

tsagalis

which included fourteen books, is instructive, especially when put against the backdrop of the episodic structure of both these poems. In fact, these two epics bear an attractive analogy to the Catalogue of Women and the Megalai Ehoeae. The two Heracleiae have a cyclic tone with respect to their concatenated structure,126 but they are also “Hesiodic” with respect to their ability to inflate the story of Heracles. These two pairs of catalogue- and episode-based epics are remarkably flexible, which allows them to appear in compacted or extended form, the Catalogue of Women and the Heracleia of Pisander manifesting the former type, the Megalai Ehoeae and the Heracleia of Panyassis the latter. Seen from the vantage point of the entire corpus of Archaic Greek epic poetry, the epics on Heracles are especially rewarding. They help us gain a better view of the universe of early Greek epic and avoid the danger of not seeing the forest for the trees. We may now suggest that (a) the Homeric–Cyclic dichotomy is broader than what we had hitherto imagined (as it extends to other Archaic epics that neither achieved the status of the Homeric canon nor were organized into a Cycle) and (b) that catalogue- and episode-based epic manifested itself in forms of varying length, either compressed or expanded.

Works Cited Ahlberg-Cornell, G. 1992. Myth and Epos in Early Greek Art: Representation and Interpretation. Jonsered: Paul Åström. Alden, M. 2017. Para-Narratives in the Odyssey: Stories in the Frame. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brommer, F. 19743. Herakles: Die Zwölf Taten des Helden in antiker Kunst und Literatur. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Burgess, J.S. 2001. The Tradition of the Trojan War in Homer and the Epic Cycle. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Burkert, W. 1972. “Die Leistung eines Kreophylos.” Museum Helveticum 29: 74–85. (Reprinted in Riedweg, C. et al. eds. 2001. Kleine Schriften i: Homerica. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. 138–149). Davies, M. 1984. “Lichas’ Lying Tale: Sophocles, Trachiniae 260 ff.” Classical Quarterly 34: 480–483. Davies, M. 1989. The Greek Epic Cycle. Bristol: Bristol Classical Press. Davies, M. 2019. The Cypria. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 126

See also Burgess 2011: 148, who suggests that Cyclic epic “may have achieved the charm of catalog poetry, which manages to present in allusive fashion a large amount of information, yet expand at times to present a vivid encapsulation of some episode”.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

narrative and stylistic artistry in early greek epic

219

Davies, M. and Finglass, P.J. 2014. Stesichorus: The Poems. Cambridge (Introduction and Fragments are cited by Finglass’s name). Easterling, P. 1982. Sophocles: Trachiniae. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Finglass, P.J. 2011. Sophocles: Ajax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Finglass, P.J. 2015. “Stesichorus, Master of Narrative.” In Finglass, P.J. and Kelly, A. eds. Stesichorus in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 83–97. Finglass, P.J. 2021. “Labor x: The Cattle of and the Return from Tartessus.” In Ogden, D. ed. The Oxford Handbook of Heracles. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 135–148. Fowler, R.L. 2000–2013. Early Greek Mythography. 2 vols. Oxford. Abbreviated as EGM. Galinsky, G.K. 1972. The Herakles Theme: The Adaptations of the Hero in Literature from Homer to the Twentieth Century. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Gantz, T. 1993. Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources. 2 vols. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Gow, A.S.F. and Page, D.L. 1965. The Greek Anthology: Hellenistic Epigrams. Volume. i: Introduction and Text. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Griffin, J. 1977. “The Epic Cycle and the Uniqueness of Homer.” Journal of Hellenic Studies 97: 39–53. Halliwell, S., Fyle, W.H., and Innes, D.C. 1995. Aristotle: Poetics, Longinus: On the Sublime, Demetrius: On Style. Loeb Classical Library 199. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Haubold, J. 2005. “Heracles in the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women.” In Hunter, R. ed. The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women: Constructions and Reconstructions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 85–98. Heiden, B. 1987. “Laudes Herculeae: Suppressed Savagery in the Hymn to Hercules, Verg. A. 8.285–305.” American Journal of Philology 108.4: 661–671. Huxley, G.L. 1969. Greek Epic Poetry: From Eumelos to Panyassis. London: Faber and Faber. Kakridis, J.T. 1949. Homeric Researches. Lund. Kakridis, P.J. 1961. “Achilles’ Rüstung.” Hermes 89: 288–297. Kullmann, W. 1956. Das Wirken der Götter in der Ilias: Untersuchungen zur Frage der Entstehung des homerischen “Götterapparats.” Berlin: Akademie-Verlag. Kullmann, W. 1960. Die Quellen der Ilias (Troischer Sagenkreis). Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag. Matthews, V.J. 1974. Panyassis of Halikarnassos: Text and Commentary. Leiden: Brill. Notopoulos, J.A. 1964. “Studies in Early Greek Oral Poetry.” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 68: 1–77. Preller, L. and Robert, C. 1920–19264. Die griechische Heldensage. 3 vols. (in L. Preller, Griechische Mythologie, 4th ed. revised by C. Robert; Volume i (1894): Theogonie und Götter; Volume ii.1 (19204): Landschaftliche Sagen; Volume ii.2 (19214): Die National-

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

220

tsagalis

heroen; Volume ii.3.1 (19214): Die Argonauten. Der Thebanische Kreis; Volume ii.3.2.1 (19234): Der Troische Kreis bis zu Ilions Zerstörung; Volume ii.3.2.2 (19264): Der Troische Kreis. Die Nosten). Berlin. Rengakos, A. 2015. “Narrative Techniques in the Epic Cycle.” In Fantuzzi, M. and Tsagalis, C. eds. The Greek Epic Cycle and its Ancient Reception. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 154–163. Schefold, K. 1962. “Drei archaische Dichtungen von Herakles.” Museum Helveticum 19: 130–132. Sekita, K. 2018. “Hades and Herakles at Pylos: Dione’s Tale Dismantled.” Classical Quarterly 68.1: 1–9. Severyns, A. 1938–1963. Recherches sur la Chrestomathie de Proclus. 4 vols. (i–ii: 1938; iii: 1953; iv: 1963). Paris: Les Belles Lettres. Stamatopoulou, Z. 2017. “Wounding the Gods: The Mortal Theomachos in the Iliad and the Hesiodic Aspis.” Mnemosyne 70: 920–938. Stockinger, H. 1959. Die Vorzeichen im homerischen Epos: Ihre Typik und ihre Bedeutung. St. Ottilien: Eos Verlag. Tsagalis, C. 2004. Epic Grief: Personal Laments in Homer’s Iliad. Berlin: De Gruyter. Tsagalis, C. 2011. “Towards an Oral, Intertextual Neoanalysis.” Trends in Classics 3.2: 209– 244. Tsagalis, C. 2012. “Deauthorizing the Epic Cycle: Odysseus’ False Tale to Eumaeus (Od. 14.199–359).” In Montanari, F., Rengakos A., and Tsagalis C. eds. Homeric Contexts: Neoanalysis and the Interpretation of Oral Poetry. Berlin: De Gruyter. 309– 345. Tsagalis, C. 2017. Early Greek Epic Fragments Ι: Genealogical and Antiquarian Epic. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Tsagalis, C. 2022. Early Greek Epic Fragments ιι: Κreophylos and Peisandros. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Welcker, F.G. 18652/18822. Der epische Cyclus. 2 vols. Bonn. West, M.L. 2003. Greek Epic Fragments ( from the Seventh to the Fifth Centuries bc). Loeb Classical Library 497. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Abbreviated as GEF. West, M.L. 2007. Indo-European Poetry and Myth. Oxford: Oxford University Press. West, M.L. 2011. The Making of the Iliad: Disquisition and Analytical Commentary. Oxford: Oxford University Press. West, M.L. 2013. The Epic Cycle: A Commentary on the Lost Troy Epics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U. von. 18952. Euripides: Herakles. 2 vols. Berlin. Willcock, M.M. 1964. “Mythological Paradeigma in the Iliad.” Classical Quarterly 14: 141– 154. Willcock, M.M. 1978–1984. The Iliad of Homer. 2 vols. London: St Martin’s Press.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

Traces of the Epics on Heracles in the Archaic and Classical Periods: Between Local Interests and Never-Ending Traditions Laura Lulli

1

A Hero for All Greeks? “Epic” Perspectives on Heracles

Though Heracles was a constant presence in Greek culture and in the life of the Greeks,1 the almost complete disappearance of Archaic and Classical epic poems featuring the hero has forced scholars to focus on his sporadic “appearances” in the Homeric poems or in Hesiodic poetry.2 This way of approaching

1 The massive presence of the Heraclean myth in the Greek world, beyond every geographical boundary and with an impressive chronological continuity, is perfectly described by the introductory words of Daniel Ogden to the recent synthesis on the figure of Heracles in Ogden 2021a: xxi, according to whom not only was Heracles the “quintessence of the ancient Greek hero”, but his “myth-cycle constitutes over an eighth of the totality of the literary and iconographical remains of Classical myths …. The cycle encompasses myths of all kind: quest myths; monster fights; world-foundational myths; people-, city-, and dynastyfoundational myths; aetiological myths; philosophical myths; allegorical myths; and indeed myths rationalized out of their very mythhood. It informed and is informed by every genre and variety of Classical literature”. For an overview of the widespread pervasiveness of the Heraclean myth also in the iconography and in the artistic production, see Boardman 1988– 1990. 2 On a synthetic view of the earlier epics about Heracles, see Huxley 1969: 99–112; West 2003: 19– 24. On the presence of Heracles in the Homeric poems, with reflections on the possible traces of previous Mycenaean epics about the hero’s deeds, a hypothesis firstly proposed by Nilsson (1932: 187–220) and embedded in the frame of the oral compositional techniques used by Homeric singers, see Sbardella 1994. A survey of the “heroic biography” of Heracles, through the various literary genres in which this figure has a crucial role, with a peculiar attention on the local relevance of this mythical story, is given by Bernardini 2010. A more recent attempt to define the profile of Heracles in the epic genre has been made by Barker and Christensen 2021, who started their analysis from the definition of a possible “Heracles fabula”, i.e. the main narrative details of the hero’s story according to attested evidence, thus following an approach already developed by Burgess 2009 for the figure of Achilles. However, although this perspective shows a narrative continuum of the heroic deeds, which aims to provide a coherent picture to the readers, it runs the risk of neglecting to highlight both the many “dark spots” in this narrative, especially due to the fragmentation of the textual transmission, and to properly focus on the possible differences in the various uses of the mythical subject-matter in the frame of different epic poems. A purely narratological approach to the study of the figure of Heracles in epic poetry, based on the starting point “dass Herakles in der antiken Literatur

© Laura Lulli, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004696617_011

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

222

lulli

the extant evidence has significant consequences for the interpretation of Heracles’s role in Hellenistic poetry (Apollonius Rhodius’s Argonautica and Theocritus’s Idylls 24 and 25), where the Heraclean myth is not a side element, but the main topic. Therefore, following recent reassessments of epic fragments such as those edited by Martin L. West and Christos Tsagalis,3 it is possible to suggest a reading pattern which could help to achieve a better understanding of the role that Heracles’s (lost) epics may have played in the literary system of Archaic Greek literature. In this light, it is worth trying to follow the scanty evidence of the presence of Heracles in early and Classical Greek epic; a further step can be the analysis of some of the possible reflexes of such a tradition in Hellenistic epic, especially through the learned notes and scholia that accompany Hellenistic texts and often provide a glimpse into the poetic tradition that poets tend to rework and put to novel use according to the new cultural context. To this end, it may be useful to begin with ancient criticism, whose various orientations and choices have often contributed massively to the perspective we have on the ancient literary tradition. In particular, the presence of Heracles, or rather the different ways of describing his mythical exploits and the various functions associated with them—especially in relation to the role of such accounts in the general structure of full-length epic poems—have already been discussed by ancient scholars and critics. This is clear from a very well-known and clear-cut Aristotelian statement in the Poetics (Arist. Poet. 1451a [= Theseis pp. 216–217 GEF = Theseis test. 1 PEG]):4 μῦθος δ’ ἐστὶν εἷς οὐχ ὥσπερ τινὲς οἴονται ἐὰν περὶ ἕνα ᾖ· πολλὰ γὰρ καὶ ἄπειρα τῷ ἑνὶ συμβαίνει, ἐξ ὧν ἐνίων οὐδέν ἐστιν ἕν· οὕτως δὲ καὶ πράξεις ἑνὸς πολλαί εἰσιν, ἐξ ὧν μία οὐδεμία γίνεται πρᾶξις. διὸ πάντες ἐοίκασιν ἁμαρτάνειν ὅσοι τῶν ποιητῶν Ἡρακληίδα Θησηίδα καὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα ποιήματα πεποιήκασιν· οἴονται γάρ, ἐπεὶ εἷς ἦν ὁ Ἡρακλῆς, ἕνα καὶ τὸν μῦθον εἶναι προσήκειν. ὁ δ’ Ὅμηρος ὥσπερ καὶ τὰ ἄλλα διαφέρει καὶ τοῦτ’ ἔοικεν καλῶς ἰδεῖν, ἤτοι διὰ τέχνην ἢ διὰ φύσιν· Ὀδύσσειαν γὰρ ποιῶν οὐκ ἐποίησεν ἅπαντα ὅσα αὐτῷ συνέβη, οἷον

eine hochradig transtextuelle Figur darstellt” (Bär 2018: 27), is provided by Bär 2018. For a reexamination of the use of the myth of Heracles in Homer and Hesiod, see the contributions of Alepidou, Most and Bär in this volume. 3 See the critical editions of West 2003 and Tsagalis 2022 (the latter with critical text and extensive commentary), which are devoted to the extant fragments of the Heracles epics by Creophylus and Pisander. 4 On this Aristotelian passage and its relevance for the reconstruction of the epics about Heracles, see also in this volume Bär pp. 146–147, Tsagalis pp. 196–197, and Vecchiato p. 249n44.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

traces of the epics on heracles

223

πληγῆναι μὲν ἐν τῷ Παρνασσῷ, μανῆναι δὲ προσποιήσασθαι ἐν τῷ ἀγερμῷ, ὧν οὐδὲν θατέρου γενομένου ἀναγκαῖον ἦν ἢ εἰκὸς θάτερον γενέσθαι, ἀλλὰ περὶ μίαν πρᾶξιν οἵαν λέγομεν τὴν Ὀδύσσειαν συνέστησεν, ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ τὴν Ἰλιάδα. A plot is not unified, as some think, if built round an individual. Any entity has innumerable features, not all of which cohere into a unity; likewise; an individual performs many actions which yield no unitary action. So all those poets are clearly at fault who have composed a Heracleid, a Theseid, and similar poems: they think that, since Heracles was an individual, the plot too must be unitary. But Homer, in keeping with his general superiority, evidently grasped well, whether by art of nature, this point too: for though composing an Odyssey, he did not include every feature of the hero’s life (e.g. his wounding on Parnassus, of his feigned madness in the call to arms), where events lacked necessary or probable connections; but he structured the Odyssey round a unitary action of the kind I mean, and likewise with the Iliad.5 Here Aristotle is struggling to define one of the pillars of his literary aesthetics: the idea that the unity of the mythos—the “story” or “plot”—is one of the main principles that should be followed to obtain a coherent and wellconstructed literary composition. In this broader frame—and above all in order to define the aesthetic criteria in a more articulated philosophical system—the individual (the hero) does not—in and by himself—guarantee the complete realization of a unifying narrative strategy. For this reason, all the poets who composed poems named after Heracles or Theseus were completely wrong. Although Aristotle does not mention the names of the authors he refers to here, we may infer that in his view—at least judging from the overall tone of the passage—there must have been quite a few of them. Yet, as Alberto Bernabé has pointed out,6 it is not easy to identify them or to assign them to any specific period. The extant evidence points at least to one Archaic Theseis, an Attic epic poem apparently composed around the sixth century b.c.e.,7 but besides

5 Translation by Halliwell 1995. 6 See Bernabé 1996: 136, according to whom plures Theseidas iam Aristot. cognovit. However, and despite such inference about the wide knowledge of this epic production by Aristotle, it remains uncertain whether we can identify at least some traces of these poems. 7 For this possible interpretation of the Theseis, see Robert 1920–1926: 677, and Herter 1939: 283–284, who suggested that the poem was deeply rooted in the tyrannical context of sixthcentury b.c.e. Athens.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

224

lulli

that we know several names: maybe one Diphilus,8 and then almost evanescent figures such as Pythostratus, Zopyrus and Cordus.9 Erudite interests aside, it is worth trying to understand why the poems dealing with heroes such as Theseus and Heracles failed to adequately respect the Aristotelian concept of unity. In this perspective, poems focusing on a specific character are constitutionally unfit to develop a unitary plot. In the philosopher’s view, only a genius—with the poetical prowess of Homer—could solve the problem: the Odyssey, judging from its title, should deal with Odysseus’s exploits, but the general narrative “unity” is confirmed, since the poem does not present every detail about the hero’s life—in particular, it leaves out those aspects which were considered superfluous or not properly linked with the main storyline. Therefore, leaving aside circumstantial accounts of episodes such as the wounding on Parnassus or the madness of the hero, who refuses to leave for the Trojan expedition (a fact which is not even alluded to in the Odyssey),10 both Homeric poems are perfectly successful from the point of view of Aristotelian unity. Moreover, similar negative considerations about the poets of the Heracleids and Theseids are relevant indicators of at least one of the many factors which contributed to building up a solid epic canon. The latter was essentially constructed around the characteristics of the Homeric poems, and thus provided the general conditions for the disappearance or “submersion”11 of all poems lacking these features, such as hexametrical compositions devoted to the exploits of a single hero. 8

9

10

11

The name of this poet has been attested in Σ Pind. Ol. 10.83b (i 332.10 Drachmann), where he is indicated as ὁ Θησηΐδα ποιήσας, “the poet of a Theseis”. This reference is followed by the citation of two choliambic verses. The laconic formulation of the scholium implies, according to some critics, that these verses are not from the Theseis, which should be an epic poem: see, in particular, Meineke 1839: 448–449, Herter 1939: 283, and Robert 1920–1926: 335, 677. However, West (1992: 61) considers the two choliambic verses to be part of Diphilus’s Theseis that was mentioned immediately before, which, then, would not be an epic poem, but an iambic composition (Theseis seria non potuit ante aetatem Alexandrinam choliambis componi; ludicra potuit). Bernabé (1996: 136) agrees with West’s hypothesis. For an overview of these authors, who are known only with respect to the fact that they composed poems with the title Theseis, see Herter 1939: 283, and “Theseus”, RE Suppl. xiii, col. 1046. The episode of the wounding of the hero on the occasion of the boar hunt on Parnassus is narrated in Od. 19.392–466, in the frame of the bathing by Eurycleia (Od. 19.343–507). The simulated insanity of Odysseus, who tried in this way to avoid joining the Trojan expedition, belonged to the subject-matter of the Cypria, according to Proclus (Chresth. ll. 119–121 Severyns = Cypr. arg. 5 GEF; Cypr. arg. 31–33 PEG). On this episode, see also Apollodor. Epit. 3.7; Philostr. Heroic. 33.4 de Lannoy; Soph. frs. 462–469 TrGF; Eust. on Od. 1956.18. For the meaning of such an expression, especially as a crucial concept that facilitates the

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

traces of the epics on heracles

225

Along these lines, some of the main peculiarities of the poems dedicated to a single heroic character have been effectively sketched out by Martin L. West, according to whom these compositions can be described as “Einzellieder”: various songs about the deeds of Heracles, though perhaps [there was] no comprehensive Heracleia covering his whole career. … They did not have to be recited or heard together or in a particular order. But they could be said to have constituted a Heracles cycle … a set of poems attached to a particular figure, but not (as far as we know) intended to be taken in a particular order or perceived as forming a larger whole.12 However, among ancient critics, the epics centered on a specific character, such as Heracles, and the “canonical” epic poems could be paralleled and analyzed not only in terms of the structure of the plot, but also in terms of the way in which a main character was portrayed. We catch a glimpse of this in a cursory reference by a collector of literary reflections much later than Aristotle, namely Plutarch, who provides some evidence of the circulation and the deep-rooted presence of Heracles in many literary genres. In a section of his treatise On the malice of Herodotus, Plutarch bluntly blames the historian for his ‘inventions’ regarding the hero’s “ethnicity” (Plut. de Herodot. malign. 857f. [= Pisander fr. 12 GEF = Pisander test. 6 PEG]):

12

understanding of the mechanisms of an intermittent and unstable presence in the complex paths of the textual transmission, see the definition by L.E. Rossi 2020: 127–128 (= L.E. Rossi 2000: 170), with an English translation in Ercolani 2014: 7 “by ‘submerged’ literature I mean … texts which were mistreated from the very beginning of their transmission, and even texts which were not transmitted at all. These texts benefited of neither control nor protection, either because no community had any interest in their preservation, or because it was in the interest of a community that they be concealed, and even suppressed (as in the instance of everything that had to do with the mysteries). It is the case, however, that while a good deal of these texts has engaged us in a game of hide-andseek, their part in shaping Greek culture as we know it was in fact considerable: there would be a great deal to gain if we could bring them back to light, although only parts of the whole may be recovered”. For a complete discussion of the definition of “Greek submerged literature”, see Ercolani 2014. Moreover, the critical lens of the “submerged literature” can be particularly useful for the interpretation of the almost complete shipwreck of Archaic and Classical epic poetry; see Lulli 2014: 76–89 and Sbardella and Lulli 2021: 57– 73. See West 2013: 17.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

226

lulli

καίτοι τῶν παλαιῶν καὶ λογίων ἀνδρῶν οὐχ Ὅμηρος οὐχ Ἡσίοδος οὐκ Ἀρχίλοχος οὐ Πείσανδρος οὐ Στησίχορος οὐκ Ἀλκμὰν οὐ Πίνδαρος Αἰγυπτίου λόγον ἔσχον Ἡρακλέους ἢ Φοίνικος, ἀλλ’ ἕνα τοῦτον ἴσασι πάντες Ἡρακλέα τὸν Βοιώτιον ὁμοῦ καὶ Ἀργεῖον. Yet of the ancient men of letters neither Homer nor Hesiod, Archilochus, Pisander, Stesichorus, Alcman, or Pindar took note of an Egyptian or Phoenician Heracles: all of them know only this one Heracles, the Boeotian and Argive one.13 In order to criticize Herodotus’s representation of a “barbarian” Heracles, of either Egyptian or Phoenician origin, Plutarch mostly relies on the authority of Archaic poetry, especially epic poetry, as is clear from the references to Homer, Hesiod, and Pisander; and it is interesting that for these poets Plutarch employs the adjective λόγιοι, which becomes commonly used for chroniclers or prose writers in general, but here refers to the skills shown by these poets in myth and storytelling.14 However, what is even more remarkable is the ambiguity concerning the hero’s origins, especially given the date of the authors cited by Plutarch. The most ancient poems known to him—including epic poems— firmly placed Heracles’s homeland in Greece, but they disagreed as to which part of Greece it was. In this respect, however, the presence of the hero in many poems belonging to different literary genres is quite peculiar and provides some evidence of his popularity across different Greek regions, as well as of an established trend among the various Greek poleis and regions to claim the hero as their own, thereby making him part of their ancestral history.15 In any case, it is worth further investigating the evidence regarding an ancient debate about the narrative structures of the mythical stories on Heracles and the ways in which they were dealt with, especially in epic poetry.

13 14

15

Translation by West 2003. For the use of λόγιοι indicating chroniclers in opposition to poets cf. e.g. Herod. 1.1, 2.3,4, and 46, as well as later attestations in Polyb. 6.45.1, 38.6.1, Diod. 2.4, Dion. Hal. 5.17. However, the coupling of λόγιος with a second term linked to the realm of poetry is already consolidated in early poetry, as it is evident in Pindar (Pyth. 1.94, Nem. 6.45) and Ion of Chios (fr. 1.2 Gentili-Prato = 89.2 Leurini), who use λόγιος to indicate narrative ability without a precise distinction between poetry and prose. For an overview of this issue, see Cingano 2000: 361–362, with further bibliography. An outline of the multifarious aspects of Heracles as ancestor, with stress on the peculiar political functions of his mythical deeds, is provided by Patterson 2021: 418–431. See also Stafford 2012: 137–163 for an effective overview of the role of Heracles both as ancestor and as founder.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

227

traces of the epics on heracles

Along with this evidence, we should also explore the parallel—explicit or more indirect—discussions about a dialectic between a regional, epichoric focus and a more Pan-Hellenic use of the saga, in all its varied and multifaceted details.

2

Possible “Epichoric Perspective” of Heracles in the Epic Cycle and in the Epic Poetry of the Classical Period

An insight into the regional nuances of the myth of Heracles in the Theban saga is provided by a scholium on Il. 23.345–347, a passage in which Nestor, speaking to his son Antilochus and offering him some wise advice about horses, remembers the paradigmatic value of the noble Arion (Il. 23.345–347): 345

οὐκ ἔσθ’ ὅς κέ σ’ ἕλῃσι μετάλμενος οὐδὲ παρέλθῃ, οὐδ’ εἴ κεν μετόπισθεν Ἀρίονα δῖον ἐλαύνοι, Ἀδρήστου ταχὺν ἵππον, ὃς ἐκ θεόφιν γένος ἦεν there is no man that shall catch thee by a burst of speed, neither pass thee by, nay, not though in pursuit he were driving goodly Arion, the swift horse of Adrastus, that was of heavenly stock.16

This cursory yet effective mention of Arion and his helpful services to Adrastus in the frame of the Theban saga, with a clear exemplary significance in the economy of Nestor’s discourse, must have been part of a larger narrative section in the Theban cycle, at least according to a scholium which provides more detailed information, attributing this tale to the Cyclic poets (Theb. fr. 11 GEF = fr. 8 PEG [= Σ. D Il. P. 588 van Thiel]):17 Ποσειδῶν ἐρασθεὶς Ἐρινύος καὶ μεταβαλὼν τὴν αὑτοῦ φύσιν εἰς ἵππον ἐμίγη κατὰ Βοιωτίαν παρὰ τῇ Τιλφούσῃ κρήνῃ· ἡ δὲ ἔγκυος γενομένη ἵππον ἐγέννησεν, ὃς διὰ τὸ κρατιστεύειν Ἀρίων ἐκλήθη. Κοπρεὺς Ἁλιάρτου βασιλεύων πόλεως Βοιωτίας, ἔλαβεν δῶρον αὐτὸν παρὰ Ποσειδῶνος· οὗτος δὲ αὐτὸν Ἡρακλεῖ ἐχαρίσατο γενομένῳ παρ᾽ αὐτῷ. τούτῳ δὲ διαγωνισάμενος ὁ Ἡρακλῆς πρὸς Κύκνον τὸν Ἄρεως υἱὸν καθ᾽ ἱπποδρομίαν ἐνίκησεν ἐν τῷ τοῦ Παγασαίου

16 17

Translation by Murray 20032. For an account of the myth in the Theban saga, with details about the various genealogical origins of Arion, see also Σ Il. 23.347 (v 424 Erbse); Apollod. Bibl. 3.6.8; Eust. on Il. 1304.58.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

228

lulli

Ἀπόλλωνος ἱερῷ, ὅ ἐστιν πρὸς † Τροιζῆνι. εἶθ᾽ ὕστερον αὖθις ὁ Ἡρακλῆς Ἀδράστῳ τὸν πῶλον παρέσχεν· ὑφ᾽ οὗ μόνος ὁ Ἄδραστος ἐκ τοῦ Θηβαϊκοῦ πολέμου διεσώθη, τῶν ἄλλων ἀπολομένων. ἡ ἱστορία παρὰ τοῖς Κυκλικοῖς. Poseidon fell in love with Erinys, and changing his form into a horse he had intercourse with her by the fountain Tilphousa in Boeotia. She conceived and gave birth to a horse, which was called Arion because of its supremacy. Copreus, who was king at Haliartus, a town in Boeotia, received him from Poseidon as a gift. He gave him to Heracles when the latter stayed with him. Heracles used him to compete against Ares’s son Cycnus in a horse race at the shrine of Pagasaean Apollo, which is near Troezen, and won. Then Heracles gave the foal in turn to Adrastus, and thanks to him Adrastus alone was saved from the Theban war when all the others perished. The story is in the Cyclic poets.18 Let us leave aside the overall interpretation provided by the scholium, particularly as regards its geographical references to specific regions and cities, as well as the possibility of associating the tale with the Theban cycle, which has also been debated.19 What is worth noting here is Heracles’s involvement in the dynamics of the Theban saga. The scholium refers to two different episodes: the meeting with the king Copreus and the encounter with Adrastus. The only trait d’union between the two appears to be the horse Arion, which first allowed Heracles to win a horse race and then helped Adrastus, with the result that he was the only one to save himself in the Theban war.20 However, given the succinctness of the scholiastic account, it is difficult to evaluate the real structure of the narrative (whether the scholiast is just juxtaposing two different episodes or whether there was a connection between them). Despite the complexity of precisely defining the extent of the episodes dealing with Heracles in the narrative economy of the Thebais, it is possible to suggest that the presence of the hero in such a saga acquired “politi18 19

20

Translation by West 2003. For the controversial interpretations of the scholium, which has been variously considered reliable evidence from the Thebais or a completely unreliable source, due to possible confusions and ambiguities in the narration, see the overview by Janko 1986: 51–55, according to whom, in any case, the story told in the scholium could be part of the Epic Cycle, but not necessarily of the Thebais. On this detail of the story, with a specific attention to Arion’s descent from Demeter and Poseidon, see also Paus. 8.25.7–10 who cites Il. 23.346–347, Thebais fr. 11 GEF (= fr. 7 PEG), and Antimachus (frs. 31–32 Matthews = 32–33 Wyss). For an overall analysis of the presence of Arion in the Thebais, see Davies 2014: 85–89, with previous bibliography.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

traces of the epics on heracles

229

cal” value, as he actively contributed to resolving a crucial situation by saving Adrastus (and him alone) in war. The “political” function of Heracles’s interventions also characterizes later mythographic sources, which maintain some relationship with previous poetic sketches of the hero’s life, such as his involvement in the restoration of Tyndareus’s rule in Sparta, recalled by Pausanias, Apollodorus, and Diodorus,21 but already described by an unknown mythographic text transmitted by P.Lond.Lit. 190 (= P.Petr. ii 49 f), an early thirdcentury b.c.e. papyrus.22 In this vein, the episodes briefly described in the scholium reflect a feature which appears to be common to the first poetical “biographies” of the hero, and which we have already come across in Plutarch: the local roots of a Pan-Hellenic hero. This epichoric dimension can also be found in another, more famous episode, which was a crucial subject matter for both literary works and the figurative arts: the hero’s madness.23 One of the most ancient literary descriptions of such a tragic moment in Heracles’s life was provided by the Cypria. As in the above-mentioned case of Il. 23.345–347,24 it was introduced once more by the wise words of Nestor, who, advising Menelaus about the development of the Trojan expedition, provided four mythical exempla: the stories of Epopeus, Oedipus, Theseus and Ariadne, and, finally, Heracles’s madness. Unfortunately, only a few details of this narrative section survive in the summary offered by Proclus’s Chrestomathia (Cypr. arg. [= Procl. Chrest. ll. 110–117 Severyns]): καὶ μετὰ ταῦτα Ἶρις ἀγγέλλει τῷ Μενελάῳ τὰ γεγονότα κατὰ τὸν οἶκον. ὁ δὲ παραγενόμενος περὶ τῆς ἐπ᾽ Ἴλιον στρατείας βουλεύεται μετὰ τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ, καὶ πρὸς Νέστορα παραγίνεται Μενέλαος. Νέστωρ δὲ ἐν παρεκβάσει διηγεῖται αὐτῷ ὡς Ἐπωπεὺς φθείρας τὴν Λυκούργου θυγατέρα ἐξεπορθήθη, καὶ τὰ περὶ Οἰδίπουν, καὶ τὴν Ἡρακλέους μανίαν, καὶ τὰ περὶ Θησέα καὶ Ἀριάδνην.

21

22

23

24

For a synthesis of the main evidence about the presence of Heracles in the Peloponnese, and especially of his involvement in the political affairs of Tyndareus in Sparta, see Del Corso and Lulli 2016: 158–166. For a new edition of P.Lond.Lit. 190 (= P.Petr. ii 49 f), with a commentary on the possible interests of the mythographical account in the remote origins of Sparta, see Del Corso and Lulli 2016: 129–180. On the episode of Heracles’s madness, see Diod. 4.2.1; Σ Lycophr. 38; Σ Pind. Isthm. 4.104a– b, e; Eur. Her. 930–940; Apollod. Bibl. 2.4.11–12; Hyg. Fab. 32.2; Tzetz. Chil. 2.229; Herodor. FGrHist 31 F 32; Pediasimus de Herculis laboribus 1. A brief overview of this subject-matter is given by Lu Hsu 2021: 13–25. See also Stafford 2012: 88–97 with a synthetic presentation of the hero’s madness, especially in Euripidean tragedy. See above, p. 227.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

230

lulli

After this, Iris brings Menelaus the news of what has happened back home. He goes and confers with his brother about the expedition against Ilion. And Menelaus goes to Nestor, and Nestor in a digression relates to him how Epopeus seduced the daughter of Lycurgus and had his city sacked; also the story of Oedipus, and the madness of Heracles, and the story of Theseus and Ariadne.25 The condensed prose of the Chrestomathia does not highlight all the details of the various mythical frames mentioned by Nestor in his discourse to Menelaus, so it is not easy to interpret the actual function of each exemplum mythicum in the broader narrative context of the poem, although it is possible that such paradigmatic cases were essentially related both to the wretched situation that Menelaus found himself in with Helen in his homeland and to the subsequent developments of the Trojan expedition.26 Moreover, in the Cypria the tale of Heracles’s madness must have preceded, on one hand, the moment of the insanity of Odysseus, who at first refused to be part of the army raised for the Trojan war, and, on the other, the larger section of the epic poem devoted to the stories of Heracles’s son, Telephus, and the Achaean expedition to the Mysia. Taking these details into account, then, the episode of the madness should probably not be far from the indications provided by Pausanias, who described a memorial to Heracles’s children (Panyassis fr. 1 GEF = fr. 1 PEG [= Paus. 9.11.2]): ἐπιδεικνύουσι δὲ (οἱ Θηβαῖοι) Ἡρακλέους τῶν παίδων τῶν ἐκ Μεγάρας μνῆμα, οὐδέν τι ἀλλοίως τὰ ἐς τὸν θάνατον λέγοντες ἢ Στησίχορος ὁ Ἱμεραῖος καὶ Πανύασσις ἐν τοῖς ἔπεσιν ἐποίησαν. The Thebans also display a memorial to Heracles’s children by Megara, telling no different story about their death from what Stesichorus and Panyassis related in their verses.27 According to Pausanias, the intricate situation of Heracles’s mania, which was probably hinted at in the Cypria, was also presented in the epic poetry

25 26

27

Translation by West 2003 (with modifications). West (2013: 98–100) arrived at an open conclusion about the possible function of the exempla told by Nestor. Regarding the sequence of exempla and their accumulation in the possible rhetorical structure of Nestor’s account, Davies (1989: 41) notes that such a phenomenon “is certainly without parallel in Homer”. Translation by West 2003.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

traces of the epics on heracles

231

of Panyassis, who devoted an entire poem to the hero and probably also provided a full description of his redemption and purification at Delphi just after the killing of his children and before the account of his labors.28 Moreover, the same story was also narrated by Stesichorus (fr. 230 PMGF = 53 PMG = 283 Finglass). This is further evidence of its “intertextual spreading”. In this perspective, we can safely assume that the scene, which was already assigned paradigmatic value in the cyclic Cypria (as it was used in this way by Nestor), was of great importance also in Panyassis’s Heracleia; but we might argue that in the latter the episode underwent further development and reflected the importance of the heroic cult of Heracles and his children in the Theban region.29 The μνῆμα that is briefly described by Pausanias was not the only Theban monument connected to the myth. Recent excavations have revealed the existence of an extensive sacred precinct (temenos) dedicated to the cult of Heracles, his ancestors and his descendants, and located close to the Electran Gates, one of the main entrances to the city.30 Over the centuries this area was specifically used for the celebration and commemoration of “local heroes”, especially citizens fallen to defend the city: this is confirmed by a list of casualties found there, IG vii 2427 (before 350 b.c.e.),31 and by the presence of a πολυάνδριον erected for citizens who fell fighting against Alexander and the Macedonians in 335 b.c.e.32 Following the path traced by this evidence, what emerges is a sort of constant ideological project pursued by the polis of Thebes to present citizens who had fallen in war as heroes, who could even be compared with Heracles and his offspring. The relevance of the myth of Heracles for local audiences is further confirmed by the existence of an annual festival celebrated in his honor, the Heracleia, which included the celebration of heroic sacrifices and funeral games.33 In particular, according to the hints at this festival provided by Pindar at the end of the fourth Isthmian, the celebrations took place over the course of two 28

29 30 31 32 33

Cf. Panyassis fr. 2 GEF (= fr. 2 Gentili-Prato [= Paus. 10.8.9]). For the suggestion of the possible placement of this episode in the narrative sequence of the Heracleia, see Matthews 1974: 88–90. See below, p. 232. See Aravantinos 2014: 149–210. For this epigraphic evidence and the heroization of the war dead at Thebes in the fifth century b.c.e., see Currie 2005: 210–211, with further bibliography. Cf. Paus. 9.10.1; also Paus. 6.5–7.1. Cf. Pind. Isth. 4.67–74; Σ Pind. Isth. 4.104a–c; cf. also Σ Pind. Isth. 1.11c; Σ Pind. Ol. 7. 153d–e = Polemon of Ilium fr. 26 FHG.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

232

lulli

days: the first was devoted to sacrifices, with a feast and offerings burning on a pyre all night, the second to games.34 Since Pausanias establishes a clear connection between the crucial function of the myth of Heracles’s children for the Theban monument and the narration of this mythical episode in the poem by Panyassis, who had probably adopted an analogous mythical pattern with a similar overall tone—at least, this is what the expression οὐδέν τι ἀλλοίως in Pausanias’s passage seems to suggest—, it is not unreasonable to entertain the possibility that his lost Heracleia presented an epichoric perspective, which means that it may have displayed a peculiar attention to the local functions of Heraclean mythical accounts in the Thebes area. However, we cannot tell whether the poet introduced any innovations (especially for a crucial part of the story, which is neglected in the extant evidence: the purification of the hero and his flight to Delphi). Despite the meagre surviving fragments of the poem, then, all these details provide a set of elements that point to the possible epichoric perspective of the poem and/or its circulation in local contexts deeply influenced by peculiar regional interests.

3

Memories of the Heraclean Visions of Archaic and Classical Epic Poetry in the Hellenistic Period

The traces of an epichoric and often aetiological function of the Heracles myth in Archaic and Classical epic poetry—beyond the mainstream of the Homeric poems—probably also had an impact on Hellenistic poetic genres. These tended to embrace the legacy of the previous tradition by developing new poetical patterns, both in epic and in the new ‘epic form’ of the idyll. However, the almost complete loss of most of the evidence of such literary production forces us to assess the possible impact of this phenomenon almost exclusively on the basis of the marginal reflections and notes by ancient scholars, who were

34

Cf. Pind. Isthm. 4.61–69: τῷ μὲν Ἀλεκτρᾶν ὕπερθεν δαῖτα πορσύνοντες ἀστοί | καὶ νεόδματα στεφανώματα βωμῶν αὔξομεν | ἔμπυρα χαλκοαρᾶν ὀκτὼ θανόντων, | τοὺς Μεγάρα τέκε οἱ Κρεοντὶς υἱούς· | τοῖσιν ἐν δυθμαῖσιν αὐγᾶν | φλὸξ ἀνατελλομένα συνεχὲς παννυχίζει, | αἰθέρα κνισάεντι λακτίζοισα καπνῷ, | καὶ δεύτερον ἆμαρ ἐτείων τέρμ᾽ ἀέθλων | γίνεται, ἰσχύος ἔργον (“in his honor, above the Electran Gates we citizens prepare a feast and a newly built circle of altars and multiply burnt offerings for the eight bronze-clad men who died, the sons that Megara, Creon’s daughter, bore to him. For them at sunset the flame rises and burns all night long, kicking heaven with its savor of smoke. And on the second day is the conclusion of the annual games, the labor of strength.” Translation by Race 1997).

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

traces of the epics on heracles

233

mainly interested in collecting and interpreting the antecedent literary tradition as well as the new genres and texts. One example of this complex process can be seen in Panyassis fr. 23 GEF = 20 PEG (reported by Σ Il. 24.616b [v 623 Erbse]: νυμφάων, αἵ τ᾽ ἀμφ᾽ Ἀχελώϊον ἐρρώσαντο [“of the nymphs that range swiftly in the dance about Achelous”]): αἵ τ᾽ ἀμφ᾽ Ἀχελώϊον] τινὲς “αἵ ἀμφ᾽ Ἀχελήσιον”· ποταμὸς δὲ Λυδίας, ἐξ οὗ πληροῦται ὁ Ὕλλος· καὶ Ἡρακλέα νοσήσαντα ἐπὶ τῶν τόπων, ἀναδόντων αὐτῷ θερμὰ λουτρὰ τῶν ποταμῶν, τοὺς παῖδας Ὕλλον καλέσαι καὶ τὸν ἐξ Ὀμφάλης Ἀχέλητα, ὃς Λυδῶν ἐβασίλευσεν. εἰσὶ δὲ καὶ νύμφαι Ἀχελήτιδες, ὥς φησι Πανύασσις. Some read “about the Achelesius”: this is a river in Lydia, a tributary of the Hyllus, and (they say) that after Heracles fell sick in these parts, and the rivers provided him with warm bathing, he named his sons Hyllus, and the one born to Omphale Acheles—he became king of Lydia. There are also Achelesian nymphs, as Panyassis says.35 Instead of the lectio Ἀχελώϊον, the scholiast of Il. 24.616b provides the variant reading Ἀχελήσιον, a river in Lydia, whose tributary, the river Hyllus, helped Heracles when he fell sick after arriving in the region. To express his gratitude to the tributary river, the hero made the meaningful gesture of naming his son after it, whereas the name of the main river was given to another child, who later became the king of Lydia.36 Apparently, these stories were told in the Heracleia by Panyassis, with the addition of further information about the Achelesian nymphs, who were linked with the Achelesius river. This scholiastic note highlights two peculiar elements in Panyassis’s treatment of the Heraclean myth: the hero’s strong rootedness in the region of Lydia, where the event of his healing by the river took place and, consequently, the sealing of his bond with the river and with the entire region through the naming of his sons after the two rivers. Moreover, especially in the case of Heracles’s son Acheles, the mythical narration condensed in the scholium also underlines the aetiology of concrete political power in the region, since Acheles himself assumed the kingship of Lydia. Similar evidence regarding the story appears in a scholium to Apollonius Rhodius (4.1449–1450, p. 308.3 Wendel = Panyassis fr. 23 GEF = fr. 20 PEG): 35 36

Translation by West 2003. For an overview of the presence of Heracles and his offspring in Lydia, also with political roots, see Matthews 1974: 98–99.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

234

lulli

Πανύασις δέ φησιν ἐν Λυδίᾳ τὸν Ἡρακλέα νοσήσαντα τυχεῖν ἰάσεως ὑπὸ Ὕλλου τοῦ ποταμοῦ, ὅς ἐστι τῆς Λυδίας· διὸ καὶ τοὺς δύο υἱοὺς αὐτοῦ Ὕλλους ὀνομασθῆναι. Panyassis says that Heracles fell sick in Lydia; and this is why his two sons were both named Hyllus.37 The passage commented upon comes from the fourth book of the Argonautica; it centers on the preparations for Jason and Medea’s wedding and provides details about the genealogy of the nymphs involved. The scholiast explains the expression αἱ μέν τ᾽ Αἰγαίου, “the daughters of Aegaeon”; moreover, he specifies that, in this case, the Aegeon is a river around Corcyra and that his daughter, Melites, conceived a son from Heracles, Hyllus, when the hero arrived in Phaeacia; finally, the scholiast notes that such a story of Heracles—presented in a detailed narrative in Arg. 4.537–551—differs from Panyassis’s account about the other son of Heracles named after the river Hyllus in Lydia. Such erudite annotations represent a clear example of the complex interrelations between the Argonautic saga narrated by Apollonius and the previous literary tradition: indeed, the author of the Argonautica preferred to refer to Hyllus, the son of Heracles, who maintained strong links with the Western regions visited by the hero, and who could play an important role in the dynamics of the Argonautic story, characterized by well-known and complex connections with the context of West Greekness.38 However, at the same time, the scholiast’s remarks reflect knowledge of the different shades of the myth and an awareness of the importance that these can have in the economy of the narrative. In this perspective, the hints at some specific aspects of the Heraclean saga dealt with by Panyassis are probably not merely erudite references to another version or further episode of the myth, but—more specifically— a means to draw an effective distinction between two different moments in the story of Heracles’s offspring, considering that the two episodes can acquire a specific function according to their deep relationship, respectively, with a region in the West or in the East of the Greek world. Therefore, the functional value of the Heraclean myth, due to its multifarious connections with specific epichoric and regional contexts and affairs, appears to be one of the peculiar characteristics of this saga within the context of Greek epic poems dated to the Archaic and Classical periods. As shown by 37 38

Translation by West 2003. For a reassessment of the value of the Western part of the Greek world in the Argonautic story see, at least, the survey of Debiasi 2008.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

traces of the epics on heracles

235

the above-mentioned brief example concerning the Argonautica, these epics probably continued to serve as crucial reference points for the further development of this fundamental mythical subject matter in the Hellenistic period. The centrality of this epic production for the shaping and re-shaping of the stories about Heracles must have been perceived to the highest degree even in Hellenistic Rhodes, at least according to the well-known epigram 22 Gow– Page attributed to Theocritus (A.P. 9.598). This was written for a bronze statue of Pisander, the Archaic epic poet from Camirus, who composed a Heracleia in two books (Pisander test. p. 177 GEF [= test. 2 PEG = Theocr. Epigr. 22 = A.P. 9.598]):39

5

τὸν τῶ Ζανὸς ὅδ’ ὗμιν υἱὸν ὡνήρ, τὸν λειοντομάχαν, τὸν ὀξύχειρα, πρᾶτος τῶν ἐπάνωθε μουσοποιῶν Πείσανδρος συνέγραψεν οὑκ Καμίρου, χὤσσους ἐξεπόνασεν εἶπ’ ἀέθλους· τοῦτον δ’ αὐτὸν ὁ δᾶμος, ὡς σάφ’ εἰδῇς, ἔστασ’ ἐνθάδε χάλκεον ποήσας πολλοῖς μησὶν ὄπισθε κἠνιαυτοῖς. This man, Pisander of Camirus, was the first of the poets of old to record for you the son of Zeus, the lion-slayer prompt of hand, and all the Labors he accomplished. And now, that you may know the poet himself, the people, many a month and year later, have made his likeness in bronze and set it here.40

In Hellenistic Rhodes, Pisander was celebrated as the first poet to offer a complete and well-structured account of Heracles’s deeds. He was explicitly honored through the erection of a bronze statue in the city of Camirus. Leaving aside the debated attribution of the epigram (in Phalaecian hendecasyllables) to Theocritus,41 it is worth underlining the strategic value of the commemoration of Pisander in Rhodes. Indeed, it was the Rhodians who bestowed the title of Soter on Ptolemy i, as hinted at in Theocr. Id. 17.125 (ἵδρυται πάντεσσιν ἐπιχθονίοισιν ἀρωγούς, “he has set them to succour all mankind”).42 As a result, this

39 40 41 42

On a new edition of Pisander’s testimonia and fragments, see Tsagalis 2022: 75–218. Translation by Gow 19522 (with slight spelling modifications). See L. Rossi 2001: 91–102, 330–334. The importance of the Rhodians in the attribution of the title Soter to Ptolemy i is confirmed also by Paus. 1.8.6, and Diod. 20.100.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

236

lulli

rule came to be worshiped with divine honors by the Cycladic confederation.43 Moreover, the Ptolemies claimed to be the direct descendants of Heracles, and they shared this reputation with Alexander himself, as is clearly highlighted in the encomium of Ptolemy Philadelphus by Theocritus: Id. 17.26–27: ἄμφω γὰρ πρόγονός σφιν ὁ καρτερὸς Ἡρακλείδας, | ἀμφότεροι δ’ ἀριθμεῦνται ἐς ἔσχατον Ἡρακλῆα, “for to both of these the mighty son of Heracles was forbear, and both in the end trace back their birth to Heracles”.44 The origins of Ptolemaic interest in the figure of Heracles—a crucial element in their development of a self-celebratory process, within the broader frame of a complex political and cultural hegemonic project—can be traced back to the local context of Rhodes, where the hero’s deeds first began to acquire a well-defined shape. A similar process must also have been fostered by the efforts of Pisander, whose epic production acquired a new function by further building upon the mythical material in the new Hellenistic context. The erudite picture painted by such scattered surviving evidence seems to point to a paradox. Pisander’s poem was almost completely lost for many reasons, but especially because it was too anchored in local aspects of the myth of Heracles, something that was even reflected by the “aberrant” presence of peculiar epichoric characteristics in its diction.45 Nevertheless, in the Hellenistic period the same epichoric elements, namely the focus on the Rhodian connections of the saga, became a starting point for the successful re-evaluation of the epic, which turned into a key factor for the building of a new cultural memory, shaped according to the intentions of a new political power. For the pursuit of this cultural and political project, firmly grounded in an ambitious recovery of previous literary traditions, epic poetry was one of the best instruments available, and the most suitable for recasting local stories from a Pan-Hellenic perspective. The tales of Heracles, a Pan-Hellenic hero who had extensively traveled the Greek world, were a perfect candidate for the ambitions of a new ruling dynasty, which needed to display its alleged ancestral origins.

43 44 45

Cf. Ditt. Syll.3 390.26. On this aspect, see Gow 19522: 331. For an analysis of the epichoric components of the epic diction used by Pisander, considered in the larger frame of the post-Homeric epic production, see Lulli 2007: 227–229, 2009: 185. For a different interpretation of the possible epichoric aspects of Pisander’s diction, see Tsagalis 2022: 183–185.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

traces of the epics on heracles

4

237

Conclusions

The attempt to recover the traces of the story of Heracles in the epic poetry of the Archaic and Classical periods, even beyond the boundaries of Homeric and Hesiodic poetry, is marred by the survival of only the scant remains of what was once a blossoming literary tradition. Be that as it may, we are able to trace a predilection for specific local nuances and peculiar epichoric interests. Furthermore, the influence of Archaic and Classical epic on the treatment of the myth of Heracles in Hellenistic poetry, especially in epic, is often revealed by the comments of erudite scholars and scholiasts, who attest to, on the one hand, a remarkable continuity of a local perspective in the narratives of the Heracles story and, on the other hand, a decisively innovative approach to it within the new political context of Hellenistic monarchies, in which at least some of the hero’s deeds acquire an increasingly eulogistic function. Attempting to grasp all this is a matter of picking up details and scattered allusions. In doing so, however, there is a real possibility of recovering at least some parts of an epic tradition that, in the cultural experience of the Greeks, went far beyond the limits of the Homeric poems.

Works Cited Aravantinos, V.L. 2014. “The Inscriptions from the Sanctuary of Herakles at Thebes: An Overview.” In Papazarkadas, N. ed. The Epigraphy and History of Boeotia: New Finds, New Prospects. Leiden: Brill. 149–210. Bär, S. 2018. Herakles im griechischen Epos: Studien zur Narrativität und Poetizität eines Helden. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. Barker, E. and Christensen, J. 2021. “Epic.” In Ogden, ed. 283–300. Bernabé, A. 19962. Poetarum epicorum graecorum testimonia et fragmenta. Pars i. Cum appendice iconographica a R. Olmos confecta. Stuttgart: Teubner. Bernardini, P.A. 2010. “Eracle: una biografia eroica tra epos arcaico, poesia lirica e tradizioni locali.” In Cingano, E. ed. Tra panellenismo e tradizioni locali: generi poetici e storiografia. Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso. 385–410. Boardman, J. 1988–1990. “Herakles.” In LIMC, iv.1: 728–838, v.1: 1–92. Burgess, J.S. 2009. The Death and Afterlife of Achilles. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Cingano, E. 20003. In Pindaro. Le Pitiche. Introduction, critical text and translation by B. Gentili; commentary by Bernardini, P.A. et al. Rome: Fondazione Lorenzo Valla. Arnoldo Mondadori Editore. Currie, B. 2005. Pindar and the Cult of Heroes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

238

lulli

Davies, M. 1989. The Greek Epic Cycle. Bristol: Bristol Classical Press. Davies, M. 2014. The Theban Epics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Debiasi, A. 2008. Esiodo e l’Occidente. Rome: “L’Erma” di Bretschneider. Del Corso, L. and Lulli, L. 2016. “Le avventure di Eracle in un papiro tolemaico: per una riedizione di P. Lond. Lit. 190.” Analecta Papyrologica 28: 129–180. Ercolani, A. 2014. “Defining the Indefinable: Greek Submerged Literature and Some Problems of Terminology.” In Colesanti, G. and Giordano, M. eds. Submerged Literature in Ancient Greek Culture: An Introduction. Berlin: De Gruyter. 7–18. Finglass, P.J. 2014. Stesichorus: The Poems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gow, A.S.F. 19522. Theocritus. i–ii. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Halliwell, S. 1995. Aristotle: Poetics. In Aristotle: Poetics, ed. and trans. by S. Halliwell. Longinus: On the Sublime, trans. by W.H. Fyfe, rev. by D. Russell. Demetrius: On Style, ed. and trans. by D.C. Innes, based on W. Rhys Roberts. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Herter, H. 1939. “Theseus der Athener.” Rheinisches Museum 88.3: 244–286. Huxley, G.L. 1969. Greek Epic Poetry from Eumelos to Panyassis. London: Faber and Faber. Janko, R. 1986. “The Shield of Heracles and the Legend of Cycnus.” The Classical Quarterly 36.1: 38–59. LIMC = Lexicon iconographicum mythologiae classicae, vols. i–, Zurich 1981–. Lu Hsu, K. 2021. “The Madness and the Labors.” In Ogden, D. ed. 13–25. Lulli, L. 2007. “‘Anomalie’ linguistiche e performances poetiche. Osservazioni sui tratti linguistici epicorici nell’epica greca postomerica e nell’elegia arcaica storiconarrativa.” In Seminari Romani di Cultura Greca 10: 223–248. Lulli, L. 2009. “Osservazioni sulla dizione epica da Omero a Isillo di Epidauro.” In Seminari Romani di Cultura Greca 12: 175–192. Lulli, L. 2014. “Local Epics and Epic Cycles: The Anomalous Case of a Submerged Genre.” In Colesanti, G. and Giordano, M. eds. Submerged Literature in Ancient Greek Culture: An Introduction, Berlin: De Gruyter. 76–89. Matthews, V.J. 1974. Panyassis of Halikarnassos: Text and Commentary. Leiden: Brill. Meineke, A. 1839. Fragmenta comicorum Graecorum. Volume i. Berlin: G. Reimeri. Murray, A.T., and Wyatt, W.F. 20032. Homer: Iliad. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Nilsson, M.P. 1932. The Mycenaean Origin of Greek Mythology. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ogden, D. 2021a. “Introduction.” In Ogden, ed. xxi–xxxi. Ogden, D. 2021b. The Oxford Handbook of Heracles. New York: Oxford University Press. Patterson, L.E. 2021. “Heracles as Ancestor.” In Ogden, ed. 418–431. Race, W.H. 1997. Pindar. Volume ii: Nemean Odes; Isthmian Odes; Fragments. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Robert, C. 1920–1926. Die griechische Heldensage. Berlin: Weidmann.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

traces of the epics on heracles

239

Rossi, L. 2001. The Epigrams Ascribed to Theocritus: A Method of Approach. Leuven: Peeters. Rossi, L.E. 2020. “L’autore e il controllo del testo nel mondo antico.” In Rossi, L.E. Κηληθμῷ δ᾽ ἔσχοντο. Scritti editi e inediti. 3: Critica letteraria e storia degli studi. Colesanti, G. and Nicolai, R. eds. Berlin: Walter De Gruyter. 122–140 (= Rossi, L.E. 2000. “L’autore e il controllo del testo nel mondo antico.” Seminari romani di cultura greca 3: 165–181). Sbardella, L. 1994. “Tracce di un epos di Eracle nei poemi omerici.” Studi micenei ed egeoanatolici 33: 145–162. Sbardella, L. and Lulli, L. 2021. “L’epica tra grandi poleis e tradizioni locali. Casi di studio e problemi aperti.” In Ercolani, A. ed. La letteratura sommersa nella Grecia antica. Nuove prospettive storico-letterarie. Rome: Carocci editore. 57–73. Stafford, E. 2012. Herakles. London: Routledge. Tsagalis, C. 2022. Early Greek Epic Fragments ii. Epics on Herakles: Kreophylos and Peisandros. Berlin: De Gruyter. van Thiel, H. 2014. Scholia D in Iliadem (proecdosis aucta et correctior secundum codices manu scriptos). Cologne: Universitäts- und Stadt Bibliothek. West., M.L. 19922. Iambi et elegi Graeci ante Alexandrum cantati. ii. Oxford: Oxford University Press. West., M.L. 2003. Greek Epic Fragments: From the Seventh to the Fifth Centuries bc. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. West, M.L. 2013. The Epic Cycle: A Commentary on the Lost Troy Epics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

Reassessing Pisander of Camirus, fr. dub. 2 EGEF Stefano Vecchiato

Time has not been kind to Pisander of Camirus,* the first known author of a hexameter poem on Heracles1 (Heracleia, in two books),2 whose floruit can be placed in the middle of the seventh century b.c.e.3 Despite being recognized since the Hellenistic period as one of the most renowned epic poets of antiquity—as a dedicatory epigram composed by no less than Theocritus testifies4—, and his inclusion in the so-called ancient “Canon” of the five most illustrious epic poets alongside the likes of Homer and Hesiod,5 very little of his oeuvre has survived. We have no direct tradition, and, as far as indirect tradition is concerned, in addition to a handful of paraphrase fragments we possess

* I wish to thank the following friends and scholars who, at various stages, have read and improved this chapter: Alberto Bernabé, Andrea Debiasi, Fausto Montana, Glenn W. Most, Enrico Emanuele Prodi, Renzo Tosi, Giuseppe Ucciardello, Christos Tsagalis, and Stefano Valente. I also wish to thank Tom Coward for kindly revising my English. The responsibility for any remaining infelicities is mine alone. All translations are mine unless otherwise stated. 1 The claim of Clement of Alexandria (Strom. 6.25.1 = Pisand. Cam. test. 4 EGEF) that Pisander plagiarized the Heracleia of an otherwise unknown Pisinus of Lindos (who would thus predate Pisander in the composition of a Heracleia) is with all probability false: see West 2003: 20–21 (“this [sc. Pisinus’s name] may have been no more than a variant attribution found in some copies”); Tsagalis 2022: 121. 2 See Sud. π 1465 Adler = Pisand. Cam. test. 1A EGEF: ποιήματα δὲ αὐτοῦ Ἡράκλεια ἐν βιβλίοις βʹ· ἔστι δὲ τὰ Ἡρακλέους ἔργα, “his poetry consists of the Heraclea in two books on Heracles’s deeds” (transl. C. Tsagalis, adapted). 3 There is no reason to doubt the dating to the 33rd Olympiad (648/645b.c.e.) given by Sud. π 1465 Adler, as did Wilamowitz (18952: 66–67n121, followed for instance by Keydell 1937a: 144, and West 2003: 22), who proposed to lower the dating of Pisander’s floruit to the mid-6th cent. b.c.e., but with no cogent arguments at all: see Dübner 1841: 5; Huxley 1969: 102–103; Davies and Finglass 2014: 231n6; Vecchiato 2017: 56n1; Tsagalis 2022: 102–108. See also the “chronological” list furnished by Plut. de Herod. malign. 14 (= Pisand. Cam. test. 3 EGEF), which places Pisander after Homer, Hesiod, and Archilochus: on this, cf. Vecchiato 2013: 14n30, followed with further arguments by Tsagalis 2022: 107. 4 See Theocr. AP 9.598 = 22 Gow, Bucolici Graeci = 16 Gow–Page, HE 3446–3453 = 16 Page, EG 1836–1843 = Pisand. Cam. test. 3 EGEF. The epigram was composed for a statue (probably in Camirus, or elsewhere on the island of Rhodes) in honor of Pisander of Camirus: see Gow– Page 1965: 533. 5 See Pisand. Cam. test. 6A–E EGEF; on the “canon” of ancient epic poets, which probably dates back to the circle of Aristarchus, see Radermacher 1919: 1875; Severyns 1938: 84–85 (though his claim that Pisander was not included in the “canon” is not acceptable, since it rests on weak hypotheses).

© Stefano Vecchiato, 2024 | doi:10.1163/9789004696617_012

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

reassessing pisander of camirus, fr. dub. 2 egef

241

just a meagre corpus of verbatim fragments that can be attributed to him with certainty, that is two complete hexameters6 and four words.7 In this chapter, I will try to show that we can confidently add to these scanty remains a complete hemistich, included so far amongst the fragmenta dubia of Pisander by the majority of modern editors.

1

The Fragment and Its Source(s)

I quote the text of the fragment I am going to discuss according to Latte’s edition of Hesychius’s Lexicon recently revised by Cunningham (2020); the numbering of Pisander’s fragment is that of Tsagalis’s recent edition8 (Hesych. ν 683, iib 895 Cunningham = Pisand. Cam. fr. dub. 2 EGEF). νοῦς οὐ παρὰ Κενταύροισι· παροιμιῶδες. ἔστι δὲ Πεισάνδρου κομμάτιον, ἐπὶ τῶν ἀδυνάτων ταττόμενον.9 Πισσάνδρου H : corr. Valesius 6 Pisand. Cam. fr. 8 EGEF = Σ Aristoph. Nub. 1051 (III/1.200.9–18 Holwerda). 7 The nouns δέπας, “bowl” (Pisand. Cam. fr. 6 EGEF = Athen. 11.469c–d) and ἄλεισον, “goblet” (Pisand. Cam. fr. 9 EGEF = Athen. 11.783c), the proper noun Ἀλκηΐς (“Alceis”), daughter of Antaios (Pisand. Cam. fr. 7 EGEF = Σ Pi. P. 9.185a, 2.238.1–5 Dr.), and the adverb ἀέ, “always” (Pisand. Cam. fr. 10 EGEF = Ep. Hom. α 52B Dyck). It is possible that Pisander is lurking behind a formula related to the Cerynean Hind employed by Pindar in a dactylo-epitrite context at Ol. 3.29, χρυσόκερων ἔλαφον θήλειαν, “a female deer with golden horns”: see Σ Pind. Ol. 3.50b (1.119.19–22 Drachmann). I will return to this in a forthcoming publication. 8 2022. 9 The proverb νοῦς οὐ παρὰ Κενταύροισι has enjoyed a wide circulation in other erudite works, albeit with slight modifications in both its text and its interpretamentum, and with the omission of Pisander’s name (the latter modification is not surprising: the nomen auctoris of a quotation in the “original” source is among the elements most likely to be omitted by ancient scholars during the progressive compilation of their lexicographical works: see Tosi 1988: 115). It found its way into the paroemiographical collection falsely attributed to Diogenianus (not to be confused with Diogenianus of Heraclea, on which see below; see Cohn 1903: 783– 785; Bühler 1987: 188n2; Tosi 2006; on the Byzantine collection attributed to Diogenianus see ‘Diogen.’ CPG i, 177–180; Bühler 1987: 188n2), Cent. 6. 84 (CPG i 282): νοῦς οὐ παρὰ Κενταύροις· ἐπὶ τῶν ἐπιλησμόνων καὶ πλεονεκτῶν. παρόσον ὑπὸ πλεονεξίας ἀπώλοντο, “there is no sense among the Centaurs: (a proverb used) for forgetful and arrogant people, for (the Centaurs) were killed because of their arrogance” (reprised verbatim by Apostol. 12.12, CPG ii 545; cf. Macar. 6.12, CPG ii 190), and into the tradition of the Συναγωγή, as demonstrated by the coincidence between Photius ν 265 Theodoridis and Sud. ν 525 Adler νοῦς οὐκ ἔνι Κενταύροισ(ι)· παροιμία ἐπὶ τῶν ἀδυνάτων (καὶ ἀνοήτων add. Sud.) ταττομένη, “there is no sense among the Centaurs: a proverb used for impossible circumstances”. On the Συναγωγή as main source both of Photius’s Lexicon and of the Suda, see Cunningham 2003: 20–21. Finally, Ucciardello

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

242

vecchiato

There is no sense with the Centaurs: A proverbial expression. It is part of a verse10 of Peisandros, used for impossible circumstances.11 The first scholar that proposed to identify the Pisander quoted in Hesychius’s gloss with the Archaic epic poet who authored the Heracleia was Meineke, without furnishing particular reasons.12 Indeed, the nineteenth-century editors unanimously followed Meineke’s suggestion in considering this fragment as coming from Pisander’s Heracleia: in fact, this is the choice made both by Dübner13 and by Kinkel14 in their editions (fr. 9 in both). This consensus vanished in more recent times: while Bernabé15 still places this fragment amid Pisander of Camirus’s certa (fr. 9 PEG), Davies,16 West,17 and Tsagalis18 opt for a collocation within the fragmenta dubia of the poet. The grounds for this different placement rest ultimately on the following line of reasoning: the name “Pisander”, devoid of any further attribute, is not necessarily a reference to the Archaic epic poet from Camirus; as a matter of fact, we know of another Pisander, author of a monumental hexametric poem in sixty books, entitled Ἡρωϊκαὶ Θεογαμίαι. This Pisander came from Laranda and flourished during the reign of Alexander Severus (222–235c.e.), as we can gather from the Suda.19 None of the fragments certainly attributed to Pisander

10

11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

(per litteras) kindly points out to me two further attestations of the proverb in two mss. of the still unpublished Byzantine Lexicon of [Eudemus] (on which see Ucciardello 2021): Par. gr. 2635 (mid-15th cent.), f. 155v νοῦς οὐκ ἔνι Κενταύροισι· παροιμία ἐπὶ τῶν ἀδυνάτων, “there is no sense among the Centaurs: a proverb (used) for impossible circumstances”; Laur. plut. 59.38 (end of the 15th cent.), f. 117v νοῦς οὐκ ἔνι Κενταύροισι· παροιμία ἐπὶ τῶν ⟨οὐ⟩ (suppleverim) δυναμένων συνιέναι, “there is no sense among the Centaurs: a proverb (used) for people unable to understand each other”. It is possible that also [Eudemus] drew upon the tradition of the Συναγωγή. For this meaning of the word κομμάτιον, see for instance Plut. de fort. Alex. 334b: Τιμόθεος (PMG 801) ᾄδων ἐνεσήμαινε πολλάκις τουτὶ τὸ κομμάτιον· “σὺ δὲ τὸν γηγενέταν ἄργυρον αἰνεῖς”, “Timotheus used to indicate it by often singing this part of a verse: ‘over the earth silverborn you rave’ ”. Translation by Tsagalis 2022: 91–92 (slightly modified). See Meineke 1839: 162n91: “quae ex Heraclea Pisandri Camirensis derivata existimo”. Dübner 1841. Kinkel 1877. Bernabé 1987. Davies 1988 = fr. dub. 2 EGF. West 2003 = fr. 9* GEF. Tsagalis 2022 = fr. dub. 2 EGEF. See Sud. π 1466 Adler: Πείσανδρος, Νέστορος τοῦ ποιητοῦ υἱός, Λαρανδεὺς ἢ Λυκα⟨ό⟩νιος, γεγονὼς ἐπὶ Ἀλεξάνδρου βασιλέως, τοῦ Μαμαίας παιδός, ἐποποιὸς καὶ αὐτός. ἔγραψεν ἱστορίαν ποικίλην δι’ ἐπῶν, ἣν ἐπιγράφει Ἡρωϊκῶν (Eudoc.: Ἡραϊκῶν codd.) Θεογαμιῶν ἐν βιβλίοις ξʹ·

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

reassessing pisander of camirus, fr. dub. 2 egef

243

of Laranda refers to Heracles, but given the breadth of his poem and the fact that its nature was surely a genealogical catalogue, as the title suggests (Marriages between gods and heroes), it is very likely that the figure of Heracles might have featured in it—one may think, for instance, of the massive presence of Heracles in the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women.20 As a consequence, since (a) the source of our fragment, Hesychius’s Lexicon, is dated between the fifth and sixth century c.e.,21 which postdates both Pisanders; (b) Hesychius does not report the ethnonym of the Pisander he is quoting; and (c) both Pisanders composed in hexameters and the sentence is clearly dactylic, it follows that it is impossible to decide whether to attribute it to Pisander of Camirus or to Pisander of Laranda. Hence, the collocation of the fragment among the dubia both in various editions of Pisander of Camirus22 and in the one of Pisander of Laranda (S 6 fr. dub. 19 Heitsch). While this is a sensible, if very cautious, way of dealing with this material, it is possible to take a step further. As we read in the interpretamentum of the gloss, the lemmatized sentence is defined as παροιμιῶδες, “a proverbial saying”.23 Therefore, we shall investigate what were the sources used by Hesychius for paroemiographical material. Scholars have identified two main types of sources: (1) The so-called Proverbiorum syllogae. These compilations of proverbs were probably assembled during the early Imperial period and drawn basically on the same material used by the great paroemiographer Zenobius (fl. 117–

20 21 22 23

καὶ ἄλλα καταλογάδην (“Pisander, son of the poet Nestor; a Larandian or Lycaonian. He lived in the time of emperor Alexander [222–235c.e.] the son of Mamaea. He, too, [was] an epic poet. He wrote an elaborate history in epic verse which he labeled Marriages between gods and heroes in 60 books, and other works in prose”). On Pisander of Laranda and his poem (the longest Greek ancient poem known to us: of this massive work, only scanty remains in the indirect tradition have survived), see Keydell 1935b; Keydell 1937; Tsagalis 2022: 109– 120. His fragments are collected in Heitsch, GDRK S 6, 1–20. On the presence of Heracles in the Hesiodic Catalogue, see Haubold 2005: 85–98; Bär 2018: 62–68. For a survey on Hesychius’s date, see Latte 1953: vii-viii; Dickey 2007: 88; Cunningham 2018: ix; Valente 2018. See above for the full references. This word (“(sentence) of a proverbial nature”) has to be considered basically a synonym of παροιμία (“proverb”); see for instance Hesych. ε 3989 C. ἔξω Γλαῦκε· τοὺς χειμαζομένους ἐν θαλάσσῃ φασὶ λέγειν. παροιμιῶδες δέ· ἐπεὶ δοκεῖ ὁ Γλαῦκος φανεὶς χειμῶνα σημαίνειν (“Come out, Glaucus: they say that sailors hit by a storm in the sea shout [this expression]. It is a proverbial saying, since it seems that the appearance of Glaucus signals a storm”) and Phot. ε 1283 Th. ἔξω Γλαῦκε· παροιμία· χειμῶνα γὰρ σημαίνει ὁ θαλάττιος (“Come out, Glaucus: a proverb: [the god] of the sea signals a storm”).

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

244

vecchiato

138 c.e.).24 Zenobius’s work, still extant in an abridged form,25 was originally composed in three books and drew upon the Περὶ παροιμιῶν of Didymus of Alexandria (1st cent. b.c.e.) and Lucillus Tarrhaeus (1st cent. c.e.).26 It is generally assumed that, if a paroemiographical gloss in Hesychius does not appear in Zenobius, then that gloss does not come from the Proverbiorum syllogae. (2) Diogenianus of Heraclea, active during the reign of Hadrian (117– 138 c.e.).27 Diogenianus was a pivotal figure in the field of lexicographical studies during the early Imperial period: his main work, as the Suda (δ 1140 Adler) states, was the Λέξις παντοδαπὴ κατὰ στοιχεῖον in five books, basically a huge epitome of the massive lexicographical work of two important lexicographers, namely Pamphilus of Alexandria (second half of the 1st cent. c.e.) and the shadowy Zopyrion.28 According to the Suda (π 142 Adler), Pamphilus and Zopyrion collaborated in producing an immense lexicographical collection in ninety-five books, entitled Περὶ γλωσσῶν καὶ ὀνομάτων, and arranged it in alphabetical order; Zopyrion edited the section α–δ, while Pamphilus the remaining part, that is ε–ω.29 Their goal was “to encompass and explain in a single work the vocabulary from all areas of nature and human life as well as from various linguistic, dialectal and literary levels”; in order to do this, they “took the various sources of Hellenistic and early Imperial philological exegesis and lexicography into account” (mainly Didymus, a real ‘collecting-pool’ of the philological and lexicographical works produced during the Hellenistic era), and inserted them into their work.30 It goes without saying that such a 24 25 26 27 28

29

30

On Zenobius’s dating and his tradition, see Bühler 1987: 33–37. See Zenob. CPG i, 1–176, with Bühler 1987. See Suda ζ 73 Adler. On the whole issue, see Schmidt 1864: cxvi–cxxiv; Latte 1953: ix–x. On Diogenianus’s dating, see Montana 2003 with further bibliography. See Suda δ 1140 Adler: Διογενειανός, Ἡρακλείας ἑτέρας, οὐ τῆς Πόντου, γραμματικός, γεγονὼς καὶ αὐτὸς ἐπὶ Ἀδριανοῦ βασιλέως. … ἔστι δὲ αὐτοῦ βιβλία ταῦτα· λέξις παντοδαπὴ κατὰ στοιχεῖον ἐν βιβλίοις εʹ· ἐπιτομὴ δέ ἐστι τῶν Παμφίλου λέξεων βιβλίων εʹ καὶ τετρακοσίων καὶ τῶν Ζωπυρίωνος (“Diogenianus, of another Heraclea, not the one in Pontus, a grammarian. He too lived under the emperor Hadrian. … His books are as follows: Miscellaneous Lexicon, alphabetically arranged, in five books—this is an epitome of Pamphilus’s Lexicon in 405 books and of Zopyrion’s”). On Pamphilus, see Matthaios 2015: 227 and n179; 288–290; on Zopyrion, see Meliadò 2019. See Suda π 142 Adler: Πάμφιλος, Ἀλεξανδρεύς, γραμματικὸς Ἀριστάρχειος. ἔγραψε Λειμῶνα· ἔστι δὲ ποικίλων περιοχή, Περὶ γλωσσῶν ἤτοι λέξεων βιβλία ϟεʹ· ἔστι δὲ ἀπὸ τοῦ ε στοιχείου ἕως τοῦ ω· τὰ γὰρ ἀπὸ τοῦ α μέχρι τοῦ δ Ζωπυρίων ἐπεποιήκει (“Pamphilus, of Alexandria, a grammarian of the school of Aristarchus. He wrote Meadow (a summary of miscellaneous topics); On Rare Words, i.e. a glossary in ninety-five books: it runs from epsilon to omega, since Zopyrion had done the letters from alpha to delta”). See Matthaios 2015: 288–289, from where I draw the quotations. For Didymus of Alexandria’s role in the transmission of Hellenistic erudition, see for instance Pfeiffer 1968: 274–

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

reassessing pisander of camirus, fr. dub. 2 egef

245

huge work was bound to be epitomized, since its size made it scarcely accessible for obvious practical reasons; the above-mentioned epitome by Diogenianus served precisely this purpose. In turn, Diogenianus’s epitome too was soon abridged, and began circulating under the alternative title Περιεργοπένητες (“[Lexicon] for poor people”).31 The Περιεργοπένητες were the principal source of Hesychius’s Lexicon, as the lexicographer himself states in the prefatory Epistle addressed to his friend Eulogius (Epist. ad Eul., pp. 1–2.1–17, 32–36 Cunningham): Πολλοὶ μὲν καὶ ἄλλοι τῶν παλαιῶν τὰς κατὰ στοιχεῖον συντεθείκασι λέξεις, ὦ πάντων ἐμοὶ προσφιλέστατε Εὐλόγιε. … Διογενιανὸς δέ τις μετὰ τούτους γεγονὼς ἀνὴρ σπουδαῖος καὶ φιλόκαλος, τά τε προειρημένα βιβλία καὶ πάσας τὰς σποράδην παρὰ πᾶσι κειμένας λέξεις συναγαγών, ὁμοῦ πάσας καθ’ ἕκαστον στοιχεῖον συντέθεικε· λέγω δὴ τάς τε Ὁμηρικὰς καὶ κωμικὰς καὶ τραγικάς, τάς τε παρὰ τοῖς λυρικοῖς καὶ παρὰ τοῖς ῥήτορσι κειμένας, οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ ⟨τὰς⟩ παρὰ τοῖς ἰατροῖς τάς τε παρὰ τοῖς ἱστοριογράφοις. συλλήβδην δὲ {ὁμοῦ} οὐδεμίαν λέξιν ἔσθ’ ἣν παρέλιπεν. … καὶ πρὸς τούτοις ὅσας οἷός τε ἦν παροιμίας εὑρεῖν, οὐδὲ ταύτας παρέλιπεν, ἐπιγράψας τὰ βιβλία Περιεργοπένητας. … οὐ γὰρ ὀκνήσω μετὰ παῤῥησίας εἰπεῖν ὅτι τῶν Ἀριστάρχου καὶ Ἀππίωνος καὶ Ἡλιοδώρου λέξεων εὐπορήσας, καὶ τὰ βιβλία προσθεὶς Διογενιανοῦ, ὃ πρῶτον καὶ μέγιστον ὑπάρχει πλεονέκτημα δαιτός, ἰδίᾳ χειρὶ γράφων ἐγώ …32 Many other ancient writers have compiled alphabetical glossaries, my dearest Eulogius. … One Diogenianus, born after them, a zealous man and a lover of beauty, gathered all the books I mentioned and the words found here and there in all the authors, and arranged all of them in one place by each letter of the alphabet: I mean the words from Homer and tragedy and comedy, and those found in the lyricists and in the orators, and also those in the physicians and in the historians besides; in brief, he did not fail to include a single word. … Moreover, whatever proverbs he was able to find, he did not neglect those, either. He titled his work (Books) that take care of poor people. … I shall not hesitate to say frankly that I have drawn on the glossaries of Aristarchus, Appion and Heliodorus, and Diogenianus

31 32

279; Montana 2015: 172–178 (with bibliography). For Didymus’s works and activities in general, see the recent assessment by Coward and Prodi 2020: 1–7. On this work, see Montana 2003; Schironi 2009: 47–52; Matthaios 2010: 175–176; on the title and its proper meaning, see Bossi 2000. On the Periergopenetes as Hesychius’s basic source, see Matthaios 2015: 289–290, with n584 for further bibliography.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

246

vecchiato

besides—who is the first and greatest serving in that banquet—and I have written (my glossary) in my own hand. What is of interest in this passage for the purpose of the present chapter is Hesychius’s unambiguous assertion that Diogenianus collected in his work also proverbs (ὅσας οἷός τε ἦν παροιμίας εὑρεῖν, οὐδὲ ταύτας παρέλιπεν).33 Hesychius’s gloss containing Pisander’s fragment, as noticed by Latte and Cunningham,34 derives most probably from Diogenianus’s Περιεργοπένητες. It is far less likely that it derives from the Proverbiorum syllogae, since the proverb is missing from Zenobius’s collection of proverbs as has been handed down to us but, even if it does, this would not affect the chronological argument I am about to state.35 Since Diogenianus was active in the second century c.e., it follows that the Pisander quoted by Diogenianus/Hesychius cannot be anyone other than Pisander of Camirus, for obvious chronological reasons: Pisander of Laranda, as stated above, lived a century later than Diogenianus, and therefore could not possibly have been known to him. One may object that this reconstruction is perhaps too mechanical, and that identifying the particular source (especially Diogenianus, since his work is now lost) of a Hesychian gloss is not an exact science.36 Furthermore, one may hypothesize that Hesychius found the expression in Pisander of Laranda and added the reference suo Marte: after all, it is Hesychius himself that states that he often supplemented the ὑποθέσεις (explanations) missing in a number of Diogenianean paroemiographical glosses.37 All this cannot be a priori denied; nonetheless, as far as the paroemiographical material is concerned, one may reply with a datum neglected so far. In Hesychius, when a poet or a prose author is quoted in the interpretamentum of a paroemiographical gloss for the use or ‘paternity’ of the lemmatized παροιμία, this poet or prose author

33 34 35 36

37

On this, see now Cunningham 2018: ix; Valente 2018. Latte 1966: 717; Cunningham 2020: 895. The Proverbiorum syllogae were probably assembled during the early Imperial period; see above. See the (albeit optimistic) caveat expressed by Latte 1953: xxxviii: “Diogenianeis [sc. glossis] quoque D [sc. siglum] appinxi lectoribus consulens, sed invitus, cum sic fallax quaedam certi imago in eis evadat quae magnam partem in coniectura posita sunt. … Constat tamen, quidquid boni inest in Hesychio, haustum esse e vastis saec. i/ii. thesauris, in quibus priorum doctrina collecta in dies magis coartabatur”. See Hesych. Epist. ad Eul. pp. 1.24–26, 2.40–41 Cunningham: ἐβουλόμην δὲ αὐτὸν [sc. τὸν Διογενιανόν] μήτε τὰς πλείους τῶν παροιμιῶν ψιλῶς καὶ ἄνευ τῶν ὑποθέσεων τεθεικέναι. … ταῖς παροιμίαις ἀποδέδωκα τὰς ὑποθέσεις, “I wish that he [Diogenianus] had not left most of the proverbs ‘bare’ and without explanations. … I restored the explanations to the proverbs”.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

reassessing pisander of camirus, fr. dub. 2 egef

247

never postdates the second century b.c.e.38 This is clear-cut evidence that the sources used by Hesychius’s main sources with respect to paroemiographical material exploited lore of a Hellenistic origin; it is possible, as already suggested above, that Didymus (especially his work Περὶ παροιμιῶν)39 played a major role in this process, though we cannot be certain. In addition, this datum shifts the burden of the proof to those willing to attribute the fragment to Pisander of Laranda and not to Pisander of Camirus, for this gloss would be the only one of a paroemiographical nature citing an author active after the second century b.c.e.: attributing the fragment to Pisander of Laranda would therefore be a non-economical decision. Finally, one should note that various comic poets active during the fifth century b.c.e. are clearly reminiscent of the proverbial saying νοῦς οὐ παρὰ Κενταύροισι: (1) Pl. Com. Phaon fr. 188.3–4 K.-A. ὑμῖν γὰρ οὐδέν, καθάπερ ἡ παροιμία, | ἐν τῷ καπήλῳ νοῦς ἐνεῖναί μοι δοκεῖ (“because your mind doesn’t look to me to be | in the wineshop, as the saying goes”, transl. S.D. Olson); (2) Aristoph. Eq. 1121–1122 νοῦς οὐκ ἔνι ταῖς κόμαις | ὑμῶν (“your mind is absent from your heads”); (3) Telecl. inc. fab. fr. 49 K.-A. τῶν δυνατῶν τι κέλευ᾽· οὐ γὰρ παρὰ Κενταύροισιν (“command something that is feasible: for [there is no sense] among the Centaurs”).40 Whether or not these occurrences should be taken as “parodies” stricto sensu, referring therefore to a precise hypo-text (broadly speaking), they clearly reused a proverb that predated them. In this light, it is important to recall two factors that apply in all cultures, as far as 38

39

40

Hesychian glosses of a paroemiographical nature from Prov(erbiorum syllogae): α 837 (author quoted: Sophron), α 5602 (authors quoted: Aeschylus and Euripides), α 6518 (authors quoted: Aristophanes and Eupolis), α 8407 (author quoted: Plato), γ 908 (author quoted: Apollodorus of Athens), δ 1928 (author quoted: Pindar), ε 3156 (author quoted: Eupolis), η 878 (author quoted: Anacreon), ι 312 (author quoted: Aristophanes), π 390 (author quoted: Aristarchus), π 1831 (authors quoted: Anacreon and Diphilus), π 4415 (author quoted: Plato), τ 1148 (author quoted: Plato), χ 41 (author quoted: Solon). Hesychian glosses of a paroemiographical nature from D(iogenianus): α 8771 (author quoted: Hesiod), β 969 (author quoted: Cratinus), ε 5413 (author quoted: Aristophanes) ε 6418 (author quoted: Aristophanes), λ 1045 (authors quoted: Thucydides and Aristophanes), ο 1541 (author quoted: Aristophanes), ο 1658 (author quoted: Cratinus), ο 1764 (author quoted: Strattis), ο 1920 (author quoted: Hermippus). See also κ 859 (uncertain whether it comes from Prov or D; author quoted: Archilochus). On dealing with quotations in paroemiographical material, see the excellent survey by Tosi 1988: 197–220. See Did. xl, frs. 350–360 Coward–Prodi. Didymus’s Περὶ παροιμιῶν drew on and augmented the collection of proverbs compiled by Aristophanes of Byzantium (3rd–2nd cent. b.c.e.; see Aristoph. Byz. frs. 354–362 Slater); see Pfeiffer 1968: 279n2. According to Montana (2015: 177), Didymus’s paroemiographical work “was destined to become the primary source of the whole of the later Greek paroemiographic tradition”. For an in-depth analysis of these passages in relation with Pisander’s fragment, see now Tsagalis 2022: 188–190, with bibliography.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

248

vecchiato

proverbs are concerned: (1) it is difficult to distinguish between ‘literary’ gnomai which shortly after became tout court proverbial, and oral/folkloric lore; actually, quite often the two categories merge;41 (2) by definition, a proverb “must be venerable; it must bear the sign of antiquity, and … it should be attested in different places at different times”.42 It should therefore be ‘traditional’. If we combine these observations with the fact that one of the sources for this saying mentions Pisander as the person who used it, it becomes immediately clear that it is almost certain that the ‘ancient’ Pisander is meant: what is more ‘traditional’, in ancient Greek culture, than an Archaic epic poet? His antiquity gives the saying the ‘traditional’ and ‘ancient’ character which is necessary for a proverb to exist, be recognized, and circulate. Furthermore, the tendency, in ancient as well as in modern paroemiography, is to quote the most ancient recognizable source that exploited a given proverb or was considered its ‘proper’ author. An example above all is Zenob. Cent. 5.80 (CPG i 152): πάλαι ποτ’ ἦσαν ἄλκιμοι Μιλήσιοι· φασὶ τοὺς Κᾶρας πολεμουμένους ὑπὸ Δαρείου τοῦ Πέρσου, κατά τινα παλαιὰν μαντείαν εἰρημένην αὐτοῖς τοὺς ἀλκιμωτάτους προσθέσθαι συμμάχους, ἐλθεῖν εἰς Βραγχίδας, καὶ τὸν ἐκεῖ θεὸν ἐρωτῆσαι, εἰ Μιλησίους πρόσθοιντο συμμάχους· τὸν δὲ ἀποκρίνασθαι “πάλαι ποτ’ ἦσαν ἄλκιμοι Μιλήσιοι”. οὗτος δὲ ὁ στίχος εἴρηται τὸ πρότερον παρὰ Ἀνακρέοντι (PMG 426), ὃς ἤκμασε μάλιστα κατὰ Κῦρον τὸν Πέρσην.43

41

42 43

On this point see Tosi 1988: 197–198, with further references. On phrases from Archaic epic poetry which later acquired a proverbial status, see for instance [Hes.] fr. 264* M-W = 203 Most: αὐτόματοι δ’ ἀγαθοὶ ἀγαθῶν ἐπὶ δαῖτας ἵενται (“of their own accord, good men hasten to the banquets of good men”, transl. G.W. Most, with Merkelbach–West 1965: 302–303) and cf. Bacchyl. fr. 22+4.23–25 Sn.–M.: αὐτόματοι δ’ ἀγαθῶν | ⟨ἐς⟩ δαῖτας εὐόχθους ἐπέρχονται δίκαιοι / φῶτες (“of their own accord just men come to the rich meals of good men”, transl. S.D. Olson), Crat. fr. 182 K.-A.: οἱ δ’ αὖθ’ ἡμεῖς, ὡς ὁ παλαιὸς | λόγος, αὐτομάτους ἀγαθοὺς ἰέναι / κομψῶν ἐπὶ δαῖτα θεατῶν (“here we are, again, as the old saying goes, good men go automatically to the feast of the clever spectators”, transl. D.J. Jacobson), Eup. fr. 315 K.A.: αὐτόματοι δ’ ἀγαθοὶ δειλῶν ἐπὶ δαῖτας ἴασιν (“the brave come uninvited to the banquets of the cowardly”), Plat. Symp. 174b: ἕπου τοίνυν, ἔφη, ἵνα καὶ τὴν παροιμίαν διαφθείρωμεν μεταβαλόντες, ὡς ἄρα καὶ Ἀγάθων’ ἐπὶ δαῖτας ἴασιν αὐτόματοι ἀγαθοί (“ ‘come along then,’ he said; ‘let us corrupt the proverb with a new version: what if they go of their own accord, the good men to our Goodman’s [i.e. Agathon’s] board?’ ”, transl. H.N. Fowler, adapted). Whiting 1934: 302; see also Mieder 2004: 2–4, with respect to the traditional and ancient character a proverb must possess in order to be recognized as such. See Bernsdorff 2020: 738–739, for further references of the occurrence of the saying, for ‘parodies’ of it in Ar. Vesp. 1060–1063 and Plut. 1002, and for the problems this Anacreontic fragment poses.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

reassessing pisander of camirus, fr. dub. 2 egef

249

Once the Milesians were brave: they say that the Carians, when they were at war with Darius the Persian, following an old oracle which told them to take the bravest men as allies, came to the Branchidae and asked the god there whether they should take the Milesians as allies, and the god replied: ‘Once the Milesians were brave’. But this line has been said earlier by Anacreon, who flourished about the time of Cyrus the Persian (transl. H. Bernsdorff). By analogy, it is easier to assume that the Archaic Pisander of Camirus and not the late Larandeus is the poeta classicus referred to in the Hesychian gloss. The three comic poets had clearly in mind the gnome that was used also by Pisander of Camirus: whether or not they purportedly parodied Pisander, it is impossible to tell, and I leave this question open.44 To conclude on these points, in the light of the cumulative weight of the evidence presented so far, the attribution of the sentence νοῦς οὐ παρὰ Κενταύροισι, transmitted by Hesychius, to Pisander of Camirus and not to Pisander of Laranda, already probable per se and considered plausible also by Tsagalis,45 attains now the rank of certainty, and allows us to add to the quotation fragments of his Heracleia a complete hemistich—small progress indeed, but better than nothing.

2

Content and Placement of the Fragment within Pisander’s Heracleia

As already suggested for instance by Huxley and Tsagalis, the best possible context for this fragment within the Heracleia is the encounter between Heracles

44

45

If they did, this would open up an interesting perspective on the circulation and reception of Pisander’s Heracleia in fifth-century Athens. It is impossible to demonstrate whether this poem actually circulated in Athens: we have no firm evidence. Nonetheless, it is possible that Aristotle (Poet. 1451a1 19–22), when he criticizes “all the poets who composed Heracleis and Theseis” (ὅσοι τῶν ποιητῶν Ἡρακληίδα καὶ Θησηίδα … πεποιήκασιν), had also Pisander’s Heracleia in mind (see also Tsagalis 2022, 121–122). If so, he must either have read it or have heard a public recitation of the poem (perhaps in a rhapsodic agon at the Panathenaia?) or both, obviously in Athens. Therefore, if Aristotle knew of Pisander’s Heracleia through the performance of a rhapsode, there would be no reason to doubt that, about a century before, also the aforementioned comic poets did the same. However, all this, I have to be clear, is pure speculation. See Tsagalis 2022: 190.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

250

vecchiato

and the Centaur Pholus.46 In the accounts by Apollodorus47 and Diodorus Siculus,48 the episode is inserted within the fourth (according to Apollodorus) / third (according to Diodorus Siculus) labor of Heracles, that is the capture of the Erymanthian Boar that was set on Mt Erymanthos in Arcadia.49 On his way, Heracles stopped by Mt Pholoe, where he was hosted by the Centaur Pholus in his cave. After dinner, Heracles asked for wine; at first, Pholus refused to open the jar containing the wine he had in common50 with the other Centaurs in fear of their reaction, but finally, reassured by Heracles, he decided to offer the wine to his guest. However, Pholus’s fear was immediately confirmed: the other Centaurs smelled the delicious scent of wine and rushed into the cave, attacking both. Heracles reacted and killed or chased off the monsters.51 It is possible that the fragment comes from a direct speech of Pholus, after Heracles’s first request.52 The sense may have been something like: “I respect you, mighty Heracles: ask me everything except wine. I keep it hidden in a jar; I am sure that the other Centaurs will smell the odor and attack us if I open it. There is no sense with Centaurs: they go mad when they smell wine!”.53 This sce-

46

47 48 49 50 51

52 53

See Huxley 1969: 104; Tsagalis 2022: 190. Another, less likely, alternative, would be the fight between Heracles and Nessus to rescue Deianeira: see Gantz 1993: 431–434 for an in-depth analysis of the relevant sources on the episode. Bibl. 2.5.4. Bibl. Hist. 4.12. On this labor, see Ogden 2021a: 71–79. According to Diod. Sic. Bibl. Hist. 4.12.3, this wine was an ancient gift from the god Dionysus. Apollodorus does not mention this detail. For a full-scale account of the episode in various artistic and literary sources, see Gantz 1993: 390–392; Tsagalis 2022: 188, 190–191. Caution is required (see Tsagalis 2022: 190–191) with respect to the antiquity of the episode’s aftermath (the remaining Centaurs seek refuge in Mt Malea, where the Centaur Chiron lives; Heracles chases and kills them, but accidentally wounds Chiron with a poisonous arrow; Heracles tries to heal him, but Chiron can neither be healed nor die, since he is immortal; Prometheus intervenes and allows Chiron to die by exchanging his immortality with Heracles’s mortality; see Apollod. Bibl. 2.5.4). If the encounter between Heracles and Chiron was ancient (the brief mention in Soph. Trach. 714–715 seems to imply an earlier tradition) and featured in Pisander’s Heracleia, it is worth mentioning a possibility pointed out to me by Debiasi (per litteras): the hemistich would fittingly be attributed to Chiron over the course of a dialogue with Heracles. From this perspective, the wise Centaur par excellence (see for instance Eum. fr. 14 EGEF) would thus be complaining, in stark contrast with him, about the folly of his fellow Centaurs, whose insane behavior will ultimately cost him his life. Thus Huxley 1969: 104. Other options are, of course, equally possible. For instance, Montana (per litteras), relying on the opposition dynata / adynata implied in the interpretamentum of the Hesychian gloss, suggests a sequence such as the following: Heracles asks for wine, but Pholus hesitates > Heracles uses dynata-arguments in order to convince him that it is a feasible thing:

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

reassessing pisander of camirus, fr. dub. 2 egef

251

nario would explain why the sentence, when it became proverbial, was used for impossible circumstances, as the Hesychian interpretamentum puts it: Heracles would be making, from Pholus’s perspective, an impossible request. Compare also the above-mentioned fragment of Teleclides (fr. 49 K-A), which clearly has the expression employed by Pisander in mind: τῶν δυνατῶν τι κέλευ᾽· οὐ γὰρ παρὰ Κενταύροισιν, “vοn möglichen Dingen befiehl etwas: denn nicht bei den Kentauren”.54 We cannot be certain as to the exact placement of the Pholus episode within Pisander’s poem. The episode was ancient, for it was depicted on some vases already since the seventh century b.c.e.,55 and, according to Pausanias, was represented on the Throne at Amyclae and the Chest of Cypselus (both dated to the 6th cent. b.c.e.).56 However, it is not clear whether it was originally an independent task or not:57 the association between the Centauromachy and the capture of the Erymanthian Boar is late, since it is not attested before Apollodorus’s account. It may be that it was first a parergon, and that it was later attached to an athlon. The presence of the meeting between Pholus and Heracles in Stesichorus’s Geryoneis (fr. 22a–b Finglass) seems to confirm this, since in this case the association, albeit obscure for us,58 would be with the ‘canon-

54

55 56

57 58

the other Centaurs will understand because the arguments are sensible > Pholus replies that it is impossible that the other Centaurs will understand: they cannot catch dynataarguments, since they do not possess the νοῦς. Teleclides’s fragment (fr. 49 K-A) seems to support this logical dynamic. I take the translation from Bagordo 2013: 242; see also 243–244 for a discussion of the fragment (perhaps from the play Ἡσίοδοι; on this, and the popularity of Centaurs in comic plays, deriving perhaps from Hesiodic poems, see also Tsagalis 2022: 189–190). If Teleclides actually had Pisander’s verse in mind, it may seem quite likely, as Most (personal communication) points out, that, since the meter of Telecl. fr. 49 K-A is the same as that of Pisander’s poem and the sentence οὐ παρὰ Κενταύροισι appears both in Pisander’s fragment and in Teleclides’s, the general sense of the first half of Pisander’s verse was basically the same as the one we find in Telecl. fr. 49 K-A. I suggest purely exempli gratia something like Ἀλλ’ εὔπρηκτ’ αἴτει· νόος οὐ παρὰ Κενταύροισι, “but ask for feasible things: there is no sense among the Centaurs” (for νόος instead of νοῦς, see below pp. 254–255). See Gantz 1993: 390–391, and esp. the thorough survey of artistic evidence by Tsagalis 2022: 192–193. See respectively Paus. 3.18.10: ἐπείργασται δὲ … Ἡρακλέους … καὶ ἡ παρὰ Φόλῳ τῶν Κενταύρων μάχη (“there are also reliefs … [of] the battle of the Centaurs and [of] Heracles at the cave of Pholus”, transl. H.A. Ormerod, adapted) and Paus. 5.19.9: τοξεύοντα δὲ ἄνδρα Κενταύρους, τοὺς δὲ καὶ ἀπεκτονότα ἐξ αὐτῶν, δῆλα Ἡρακλέα τε τὸν τοξεύοντα καὶ Ἡρακλέους εἶναι τὸ ἔργον (“the man shooting at Centaurs, some of which he has killed, is plainly Heracles, and the exploit is one of his”, transl. W.H.S. Jones). Thus Gantz 1993: 390. See Davies and Finglass 2014: 238–239, 242; see further Gantz 1993: 390.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

252

vecchiato

ical’ tenth labor, that is the capture of Geryoneus’s Cattle, and not with the fourth, that is the capture of the Erymanthian Boar. We have no data in order to decide whether this is Stesichorus’s innovation or whether Stesichorus followed an earlier version (Pisander?).59 Probably relying on some lines of an epigram of Theocritus (Ep. 22.3–5, πρᾶτος τῶν ἐπάνωθε μουσοποιῶν | Πείσανδρος … οὑκ Καμίρου | χὤσσους ἐξεπόνασεν εἶπ´ ἀέθλους, “this man first of the poets of old, Pisander of Camirus, … told of all the labors he [sc. Heracles] worked his way through”, transl. M.L. West), Burkert surmised that Pisander of Camirus was the first to establish a ‘fixed’ cycle of twelve labors;60 this is probable, but obviously it does not mean that already in Pisander’s time the order of Heracles’s cycle was the same one we conventionally regard as canonical, that is the one transmitted by Apollodorus. In fact, we have no clue as to the internal organization of the poem and the placement of the various episodes: we only know that Pisander’s Heracleia was in two books,61 that the Geryoneus episode featured in the second book62 (probably, therefore, it was one of the last athla already in Pisander’s ‘canon’), and that it included not only athla but also parerga: the fight between Heracles and Antaeus (fr. 7 EGEF) and the expedition with Telamon against Troy (fr. 9 EGEF). Modern editors of Pisander’s Heracleia have arranged the order of the fragments on the basis of the sequence of Heracles’s adventures as they appear in Apollodorus’s ‘canon’, for the reader’s convenience. Understandably, there is no attempt on their part to conjecture the actual framework of the poem, given that, as said above, our information on Pisander’s own ‘canon’ of Heracles’s deeds and consequently on the structure of the Heracleia is close to zero. Accordingly, since we have demonstrated the genuineness of Pisand. Cam. fr.

59 60

61 62

On Pisander’s possible influence on Stesichorus, see the cautious remarks by Davies and Finglass 2014: 242. See Burkert 1985: 209. For a useful survey on literary and artistic evidence on the formation of a cycle of Heracles’s adventures, see now Ogden 2021b: xxv–xxviii, with his final remark at p. xxviii: “the key pivot-point in this [sc. the cycle of Heracles’s deeds] tradition is the construction of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia. There may have been canons of twelve Labors before this … but it is from the point of the construction of this understandably influential temple that the identity of the twelve deeds classified as Labors begins to become fixed (even if their actual order never fully settles down)”. “Quite a compact work” according to West (2003: 22); on the structure of Pisander’s Heracleia, see also Tsagalis (this volume) pp. 205–206. See Athen. 11.469c–d = Pisand. Cam. fr. 6 EGEF: Πείσανδρος ἐν δευτέρῳ Ἡρακλείας τὸ δέπας ἐν ᾧ διέπλευσεν ὁ Ἡρακλῆς τὸν ὠκεανὸν εἶναι μέν φησιν Ἡλίου, λαβεῖν δ᾽ αὐτὸ παρ᾽ Ὠκεανοῦ ⟨τὸν⟩ Ἡρακλέα, (“Pisander in Book 2 of the Heracleia says that the cup in which Heracles sailed across the Ocean belonged to the Sun god, but that Heracles got it from Oceanus”, transl. M.L. West, adapted) with Tsagalis 2022: 160–166.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

reassessing pisander of camirus, fr. dub. 2 egef

253

dub. 2 EGEF, and since we do not know for certain whether this fragment was attached to a determinate athlon or was treated separately (in truth, we cannot say with certainty even if it is to be actually referred to the Pholus episode: after all we have no internal clue and it is just a plausible hypothesis), I suggest this fragment be placed after the last parergon we know found place in the poem (sack of Troy = fr. 9 EGEF) and before the ἀέ fragment (fr. 10 EGEF).

3

Philological Notes on the Text of the Fragment

I conclude this chapter with two brief remarks on the text of the fragment. (1) As noted above,63 two lexicographical sources later than Hesychius report the saying, without Pisander’s name, as follows: Ph. ν 265 Th. ~ Sud. ν 525 Adler: νοῦς οὐκ ἔνι Κενταύροισ(ι).64 Thus, we find ἔνι = ἔνεστι instead of Hesychius’s παρά; ἔνι seems to be supported also by the reprises of the saying in the following comic passages, already quoted and discussed above: Pl. Com. fr. 188.3–4 K.-A.: ὑμῖν γὰρ οὐδέν … | ἐν τῷ καπήλῳ νοῦς ἐνεῖναί μοι δοκεῖ (“because your mind doesn’t look to me to be | in the wineshop, as the saying goes”, transl. S.D. Olson) and Aristoph. Eq. 1121–1122 νοῦς οὐκ ἔνι ταῖς κόμαις | ὑμῶν (“your mind is absent from your heads”), while παρά seems to be supported by Telecl. fr. 49 K-A. We must ask ourselves what is more likely to be the original text in this point. A definitive answer is not possible, but, to my view, ἔνι looks like a sort of ‘banalization’ (possibly born when Pisander’s verse has already become proverbial), that is an attempt to insert an appropriate verb compatible with meter and meaning in order to make explicit the implied predicate of the original. Ellipsis of the predicate (esp. of εἰμί and compounds) governing a noun in the nominative is well attested in ancient Greek epic and beyond: see for instance Hom. Il. 3.156–157: οὐ νέμεσις Τρῶας καὶ ἐϋκνήμιδας Ἀχαιοὺς | τοιῇδ’ ἀμφὶ γυναικὶ πολὺν χρόνον ἄλγεα πάσχειν (“small blame that Trojans and well-greaved Achaeans should for such a woman long time suffer woes”, transl. A.T. Murray), Hom. Od. 1.350: τούτῳ δ’ οὐ νέμεσις Δαναῶν κακὸν οἶτον ἀείδειν (“with this man no one can be wroth if he sings of the evil doom of the Danaans”, transl. A.T. Murray; both lines come from direct speeches), and, for similar sense and structure, Semon. fr. 1.3 W.2: νοῦς δ’ οὐκ ἐπ’ ἀνθρώποισιν (“men have no cognizance”). In light of these considerations, 63 64

See pp. 241–242n9 (this chapter). The saying appears in this form also in the unpublished Byzantine Lexicon of [Eudemus], teste Ucciardello: see above, pp. 241–242n9.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

254

vecchiato

I prefer to retain the text transmitted by Hesychius; however, the apparent ‘variant’ ἔνι deserves perhaps more consideration than it did before, since the construction ἔνι + dative (“there is x in y”) is well attested in Archaic epic:65 it is not impossible, therefore, that ἔνι derives from ancient oral tradition. (2) The scansion of the Pisandrean fragment is as follows: – – ⏑ ⏑ – – – ⏑ . This, in theory, can be accommodated in three positions within the hexameter: (1) the part beginning with the contracted biceps of the first foot up to the fourth-foot trochee; (2) the part beginning with the triemimeral caesura and ending in the fifth-foot trochee; (3) the second part of a dactylic hexameter, from the penthemimeral caesura to verse-end. The only viable options are (2) and (3), for these are the only ones that would allow the hexameter to have a principal caesura (penthemimeral):66 (2) – ⏑ ⏑ – νοῦς οὐ | παρὰ Κενταύροισι ⏑ – ×;67 (3) – ⏑ ⏑ – ⏑ ⏑ – | νοῦς οὐ παρὰ Κενταύροισι.68 It is difficult to decide whether (2) or (3) is more likely: both are perfectly sound from a rhythmical and a metrical point of view. I have a slight preference for (3), since in this case the entire second half of the hexameter would be occupied by a meaningful phrase, while in the case of (2) there would be an annoying pause between the negation and the prepositional construction it denies; after all, also the hexametric fragment by Teleclides (fr. 49 K-A), which, as we saw, is clearly reminiscent of this maxim, collocates the structure ‘negation + prepositional construction’ after the penthemimeral caesura: τῶν δυνατῶν τι κέλευ᾽· | οὐ γὰρ παρὰ Κενταύροισιν (“command something that is feasible: for [there is no sense] among the Centaurs”). If (3) is correct, it is interesting to note that, according to van Raalte, “in the case of a penthemimeral caesura … there appears to be a tendency to start the second colon in a double-short

65

66 67

68

Cf. Il. 14.141: ἐπεὶ οὔ οἱ ἔνι φρένες οὐδ’ ἠβαιαί (“seeing he has no understanding, no, not a whit”, transl. A.T. Murray, adapted); 18.53: εἴδετ’ ἀκούουσαι ὅσ’ ἐμῷ ἔνι κήδεα θυμῷ (“one and all you may hear and know all the sorrows that are in my heart”, transl. A.T. Murray, adapted); Od. 18.355: ἐπεὶ οὔ οἱ ἔνι τρίχες οὐδ’ ἠβαιαί (“for there is no hair on it, no, not a trace”, transl. A.T. Murray, adapted); 21.288: ἔνι τοι φρένες οὐδ’ ἠβαιαί (“you have no wit, no, not a trace”, transl. A.T. Murray, adapted). A hexameter without a principal caesura is very rare already in the Archaic hexameter; see the data in West 1982: 36. For penthemimeral caesura after monosyllabic οὐ, see for instance Il. 1.132: κλέπτε νόῳ, ἐπεὶ οὐ παρελεύσεαι οὐδέ με πείσεις; Od. 2.240: ἧσθ’ ἄνεω, ἀτὰρ οὔ τι καθαπτόμενοι ἐπέεσσι; Hes. Th. 182: ἐξοπίσω. τὰ μὲν οὔ τι ἐτώσια ἔκφυγε χειρός. In this case, the fifth foot would be spondaic, which is comparatively rare in the hexameter: see the figures in van Raalte 1986: 40.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

reassessing pisander of camirus, fr. dub. 2 egef

255

manner”, that is, there is a preference (64.19% as far as Archaic hexameter is concerned) for the rhythm | ⏑ ⏑ instead of | – .69 In the case of Pisander’s fragment, the second colon would start with a long syllable realized by the contracted form νοῦς. In addition (and this applies regardless of the collocation of the fragment within the hexameter), contracted νοῦς (“sense”, “mind”) appears only two times in extant Archaic epic, and in both occurrences the contraction is guaranteed by meter, because the contracted form always occupies the first longum of a foot.70 Pisander’s νοῦς, instead, occupies the biceps (obviously realized as longum), and this is an unicum, a (perhaps suspicious) exception to the main tendency. Therefore, one would be tempted to restore also in Pisander the uncontracted form νόος; a perfect parallel for this emendation would be Nostoi fr. 8 PEG = 7 GEF (= Clem. Alex. Strom. 6.12.7): δῶρα γὰρ ἀνθρώπων νόον ἤπαφεν ἠδὲ καὶ ἔργα (“for gifts delude people’s minds and [corrupt] their actions”, transl. M.L. West). Also in this case the paradosis is νοῦν, and also in this case it occurs immediately after the penthemimeral caesura. The correction νόον is by Sylburg71 and is accepted by a good number of editors of the Nostoi.72 As in Clement, thus in Hesychius (or in one of his sources) the ‘original’ νόος could have been subject to banalization (the contracted and ‘Attic’ form νοῦς is far more common than the uncontracted and ‘Ionic’ one.)73 I am aware that this is a ‘normalizing’ emendation, but perhaps it is worth consideration, since is based on metrical and rhythmical arguments and on principles of balance and analogy. Philology is not always an exact science, but in some cases it may bring us closer to the truth.

Works Cited Allen, T.W. 1912. Homeri Opera. Volume v. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Bagordo, A. 2013. Telekleides. Einleitung, Übersetzung, Kommentar. Heidelberg: Verlag Antike e.K. 69 70 71 72

73

van Raalte 1986: 76. See Od. 10.240: αὐτὰρ νοῦς ἦν ἔμπεδος ὡς τὸ πάρος περ; [Hes.] fr. 203.2 M-W = fr. 249 Most = *25 Hirschberger: νοῦν δ’ Ἀμυθαονίδαις, πλοῦτον δ’ ἔπορ’ Ἀτρεΐδῃσι. See Sylburg 1592: 264. Kinkel 1877 (= fr. 8 Kinkel), Bernabé 1987 (= fr. 8 PEG), and West 2003 (= fr. 7 GEF; cf. also West 2013: 275). Allen 1912 (= fr. 8 Allen), Bethe 1922 (= fr. 7 Bethe), and Davies 1988 (= fr. 7 EGF) retain the paradosis. According to the TLG, νοῦς = 17208 instances, while νόος = 3436.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

256

vecchiato

Bär, S. 2018. Heracles im griechischen Epos: Studien zur Narrativitat und Poetizitat eines Helden. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. Bernabé, A. 1987. Poetarum Epicorum Graecorum Testimonia et Fragmenta. Pars i. Stuttgart: Teubner. Bernsdorff, H. 2020. Anacreon of Teos: Testimonia and Fragments. Volume ii: Commentary. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bethe, E. 1922. Homer. Dichtung und Sage. Zweiter Band: Odyssee. Kyklos. Zeitbestimmung. Leipzig: Teubner. Bossi, F. 2000. “Sui Περιεργοπένητες di Diogeniano.” Eikasmós 11: 267–268. Bühler, W. 1987. Zenobii Athoi proverbia, Volumen primum Prolegomena complexum, in quibus codices describuntur. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Burkert, W. 1985. Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical. Oxford: Blackwell. Cohn, L. 1903. “Diogenianos (4).” In RE v 1: 778–783. Coward, T.R.P. and Prodi, E.E. 2020. Didymus and Graeco-Roman Learning. London: Oxford University Press. Cunningham, I.C. 2003. Synagoge. ΣΥΝΑΓΩΓΗ ΛΕΞΕΩΝ ΧΡΗΣΙΜΩΝ: Texts of the Original Version and of MS. B. Berlin: De Gruyter. Cunningham, I.C. 2018. Hesychii Alexandrini Lexicon. Volume i: Α–Δ. Berlin: De Gruyter. Cunningham, I.C. 2020. Hesychii Alexandrini Lexicon. Volume iiab: Ε–Ο. Berlin: De Gruyter. Davies, M. 1988. Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Davies, M. and Finglass, P.J. 2014. Stesichorus: The Poems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dickey, E. 2007. Ancient Greek Scholarship. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dübner, F. 1841. Asii, Pisandri, Panyasidis, Choerili et Antimachi fragmenta. Paris: A. Firmin Didot. Gow, A.S.F. and Page, D.L. 1965. The Greek Anthology: Hellenistic Epigrams. Volume ii: Commentary and Indexes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gantz, T. 1993. Early Greek Myth. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Haubold, J. 2005. “Heracles in the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women.” In Hunter, R.L. ed. The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women. Constructions and Reconstructions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 85–98. Huxley, G.L. 1969. Greek Epic Poetry from Eumelos to Panyassis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Keydell, R. 1935. “Die Dichter mit Namen Peisandros.” Hermes 70: 301–311. Keydell R. 1937a. “Peisandros (11).” In RE xix 1: 144–145. Keydell, R. 1937b. “Peisandros (12).” In RE xix 1: 145–146. Kinkel, G. 1877. Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, Leipzig: Teubner. Latte, K. 1953. Hesychii Alexandrini Lexicon. Volume i: Α–Δ. Copenaghen: Ejnar Munksgaard.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

reassessing pisander of camirus, fr. dub. 2 egef

257

Latte, K. 1966. Hesychii Alexandrini Lexicon Volume ii: Ε–Ο, Copenaghen: Ejnar Munksgaard. Matthaios, S. 2010. “Lexikographen über die Schulter geschaut. Tradition und Traditionsbruch in der griechischen Lexikographie.” In Horster, M. and Reitz, C. eds. Condensing Texts / Condensed Texts. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag. 165–207. Matthaios, S. 2015. “Greek Scholarship in the Imperial Era and Late Antiquity.” In Montanari, Matthaios and Rengakos, eds. 184–296. Meineke, A. 1839. Fragmenta Comicorum Graecorum. Volume i. Berlin: G. Reimer Verlag. Meliadò, C. 2019. “Zopyrion [1].” In Lexicon of Greek Grammarians of Antiquity (online). Merkelbach, R. and West, M.L. 1965. “The Wedding of Ceyx.” Rheinisches Museum 108: 300–317. Mieder, M. 2004. Proverbs: A Handbook. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group. Montana, F. 2003. “Diogenianus.” In Lexicon of Greek Grammarians of Antiquity (online). Montana, F. 2015. “Hellenistic Scholarship.” In Montanari, Matthaios and Rengakos, eds. 60–183. Montanari, F., Matthaios, S., and Rengakos, A. eds. 2015. Brill’s Companion to Ancient Greek Scholarship. Leiden: Brill. Ogden, D. 2021a. “Labor iv: The Erymanthian Boar (and Pholus).” In Ogden, ed. 71–79. Ogden, D. ed. 2021b. The Oxford Handbook of Heracles. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pfeiffer, R. 1968. History of Classical Scholarship from the Beginning to the End of the Hellenistic Age. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Radermarcher, L. 1919. “Kanon.” In RE x 2: 1873–1878. Schironi, F. 2009. From Alexandria to Babylon: Near Eastern Languages and Hellenistic Erudition in the Oxyrhynchus Glossary (P.Oxy. 1802 + 4812). Berlin: De Gruyter. Schmidt, M. 1864. Hesychii Alexandrini Lexicon. Volume iv/2. Jena: Friedrich Mauke Verlag. Severyns, A. 1938. Recherches sur la Chrestomathie de Proclos. Volume ii. Paris: Société d’Édition “Les Belles Lettres”. Sylburg, F. 1592. Clementis Alexandrini Opera quae exstant. Heidelberg: Hieronymus Commelin. Tosi, R. 1988. Studi sulla tradizione indiretta dei classici greci. Bologna: CLUEB. Tosi, R. 2006. “Diogenianus (2).” In Brill’s New Pauly (online). Tsagalis, C. 2022. Early Greek Epic Fragments ii. Epics on Herakles: Kreophylos and Peisandros. Berlin: De Gruyter. Ucciardello, G. 2021. “Eudemus [2].” In Lexicon of Greek Grammarians of Antiquity (online). Valente, S. 2018. “Hesychius.” In Lexicon of Greek Grammarians of Antiquity (online). van Raalte, M. 1986. Rhythm and Metre: Towards a Systematic Description of Greek Stichic Verse. Assen/Maastricht: Van Gorcum.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

258

vecchiato

Vecchiato, S. 2013. I frammenti di Pisandro di Camiro. Introduzione, testo critico, traduzione e commento. Diss. Ca’Foscari University of Venice. Vecchiato, S. 2017. “Un frammento di Pisandro di Camiro e la genealogia di Teucro.” Prometheus 43: 56–66. West, M.L. 1982. Greek Metre. Oxford: Oxford University Press. West, M.L. 2003. Greek Epic Fragments from the Seventh to the Fifth Centuries bc. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. West, M.L. 2013. The Epic Cycle: A Commentary on the Lost Troy Epics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Whiting, B.J. 1934. Chaucer’s Use of Proverbs. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U. von. 18952. Euripides: Herakles. Berlin: Weidmann.

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

General Index Achilles 3, 5, 8, 13, 31, 45–46, 48–52, 67, 92–93, 108n9, 112–113, 115n39, 116–117, 118n44, 124–126, 159–160, 164, 172, 174– 176, 178–180, 183, 194–196, 198, 200, 208n86, 221n2 Adrastus 227–229 aemulatio 28, 48 Aeneas 24n68, 27, 43, 67, 165, 174–175, 178– 180, 183, 194, 198 analepsis 6, 153n13, 167, 169–172, 175–178, 180–182, 185, 211, 214n117 Anchises 175, 179–180 Argonautic legend/Argonauts 51n206, 140– 141, 155, 200n43, 234 Arion 227–228 Aristotle 7, 81, 146–147, 196–197, 205, 223, 225, 249n44 Asterus 80–81 Athena 21, 67, 79–81, 83, 91, 93–94, 111n24, 116–118, 120n51, 136–137, 141, 164, 169, 175, 177–178, 183, 185, 200–201, 203–204, 210–211, 214–215 autoschediasma 201n47 Callicolone Hill 181 Chalciope 65, 69–70, 72, 75, 77–78, 81 Chalcodon 76, 77n, 81 Charon and Heracles: see Heracles and Charon etymology of 28–29 Circe 31, 38–41, 206, 213, 215 Cos 2, 4, 63–78, 81–84, 112, 121, 140, 150, 169n20, 203 Creophylus 2, 7–8, 118n48, 119n48, 141, 146, 191–195, 197–204, 209–210, 216, 222n3 culture hero 14–15, 41 deification: see Heracles, apotheosis of dependence: see influence Diogenianus (paroemiographer) 20, 241n9, 244–246 Diomedes 5, 31, 48, 50–51, 113, 117–118, 126, 133, 148, 174–175, 193, 200 doublets exclusionary 31n109 inclusionary 31, 40

Ehoeae: see Hesiod, Catalogue Enkidu 14, 31, 33, 46, 48–49, 116n42 epic chronology 6, 166, 168, 170, 172, 174 Epic Cycle/Cyclic epic 7–8, 97, 197, 205– 207, 212–213, 215–216, 217n125, 227, 228n19, 231 epic ID 108–109, 126 epic plupast 150n8, 152–153, 159 epic time 6, 164–166, 168–169, 172–174, 185 Erytheia 15, 17, 20, 33n122, 134–135, 205, 207 Eurypylus 65, 68–72, 75–77, 81, 83–84, 140 fabula 33, 107n5, 108, 166–169, 171, 178, 180, 185, 221n2 flashback: see analepsis Geryoneus 3, 8, 15–17, 19–21, 29–31, 33–38, 39n150, 40, 42, 109–110, 134–136, 171, 204n63, 207, 209, 211, 252 Gilgamesh 3, 4n, 8, 13–19, 20n45, 21–23, 25– 34, 37–53, 116n42, 123n63 Gilgamization/Gilgamizing 3, 4n, 16, 22, 30–31, 34, 35n126, 37–38, 43n166, 44, 47–51 Hera 4–5, 48, 65–67, 69, 74–76, 78, 83, 90, 98, 115–117, 119n48, 120, 123, 126, 133, 136–139, 142, 150, 155, 175–178, 200 Heracles and Alcmene 74, 119–120, 138 and Alcyoneus 4, 67n10, 73–75, 78, 80, 83 and Amphitryon 71, 77n, 92, 117, 119–120, 123–124, 136 and Antaeus 141, 193n8, 204, 208, 252 and Cerberus 3, 8, 15, 17, 21, 24, 29–38, 49, 110–111, 114, 118, 121, 133, 136–137, 142, 209, 211 and Cerynian Hind 100, 141–142, 206 and Charon 21, 23–26, 28–29, 35–36, 39, 51 and Chiron 250n51 and descent into the Underworld 21 and Erymanthian Boar 154, 207, 209, 250–252

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

260 and Eurystheus 36n138, 43n166, 67, 90, 109–111, 116, 121–122, 124, 166n7, 177, 210, 212, 214 and Eurytus 5, 71–72, 96–97, 115, 118, 119n48, 122n56, 132, 141, 193–194, 198– 202, 203n55, 210, 213–215, 217 and Gigantomachy 4, 72–75, 78, 81, 83 and Hades 17, 22n51, 24, 38, 40, 48, 67, 80–81, 90, 97–98, 112, 114, 116–118, 119n48, 124, 125n69, 133, 142, 173, 176, 178, 200 and Helios 17–18, 20, 205, 207, 216 and Hesperides 3, 8, 15, 32–37, 38n145, 110n20, 121, 142, 204n63, 209 and Hydra 32, 89, 91, 110, 115, 117, 136–137, 141, 171, 207–209, 216 and Hyllus 210, 233–234 and Iole/Ioleia 71, 72n, 118n48, 126, 141, 193–195, 196–199, 200–201, 213 and ketos: see Heracles and sea-monster and labors 1, 3, 7–8, 15, 19, 31–38, 43n166, 87, 90–91, 101, 108–111, 113–114, 121, 123, 141–143, 177, 183, 195, 198, 204–206, 208–212, 214–217, 231, 235, 252 and Laomedon 6, 64, 69, 72, 74, 111, 112n27, 133, 140, 147–155, 156n20, 159– 160, 167–168, 180–181, 183, 185, 199–200, 203 and Lydia 210, 212–215, 233–234 and Meleager 98–99, 114n36, 211 and Meropes 2, 8, 64, 70, 73–74, 77–82, 84, 203 and Nemean Lion 32, 80, 110, 115, 137– 138, 171, 207–209, 215 and Pholus 9, 207, 209, 211, 213–214, 250–251, 253 and Prometheus 89, 110, 115, 138–139, 250n51 and Pylos 112–113, 121, 133, 176, 192, 200, 204n66, 210 and release of Theseus and Peirithous 25, 98 and sack of Troy 2, 4, 6, 8, 75, 76n, 83, 111, 169, 194–195, 199, 203–204, 206, 209, 253 and sea-monster 168, 181 and Stymphalian Birds 141, 207 and Telamon 73–74, 78, 155, 199n37, 252

general index and Thebes 108, 116, 121–122, 216n122, 231–232 apotheosis of 34, 73n, 123–125 civilizer 87, 90 glutton/gluttony 87, 126 killer 87, 89–92 monster-slayer 5, 14, 88 moralist 6, 87, 90 using lionskin as sail 19, 20–21 Hesiod/Hesiodic Catalogue 1, 7, 63n3, 108n8, 109n14, 123n65, 140–141, 174, 191n1, 217–218, 243 Shield of Heracles 5, 8, 91–92, 140 Theogony 5, 8, 15, 30, 32, 45, 70n, 107n4, 108–109, 110n17 and n21, 111, 115, 117, 119– 121, 123, 125, 127, 131, 134–135, 137–142, 165, 171–172 Wedding of Ceyx 140 Hesione 2, 6, 78, 112n27, 133, 146–148, 153– 160, 167, 199 Homer Iliad/Iliadic 3–6, 8, 13, 21, 31, 37, 44–46, 48–52, 63–64, 66–69, 70n, 71–72, 74– 78, 83–84, 90, 92–93, 101, 107n4, 108, 109n12, 111–113, 115n39, 116–118, 120– 121, 124–126, 132–133, 141, 146–148, 150, 152–156, 159–160, 164–174, 175n, 176–178, 180–185, 194–198, 200–201, 203, 205, 208n86, 211, 215, 217, 223 Odyssey/Odyssean 3, 4n, 5, 13, 27, 31, 36n135, 38–41, 44–52, 87, 89, 107n4, 108, 109n12, 111n22, 113–114, 115n38 and n40, 116, 118–120, 122, 123n65, 124–126, 171, 193n8, 194–198, 201n47, 202, 204n67, 205–206, 209n91, 211, 214, 217, 223–224 Homeric Hymns to Aphrodite 175 to Apollo 64 Hypnos 65–67, 68n12, 78, 112, 116n41, 120n51, 150 imitatio 28, 48 immortalization: see Heracles, apotheosis of influence 3, 4n, 8, 13–15, 18n32, 25n71, 32, 42, 50, 75, 155, 201, 237, 252n59 Iolaus 14, 116n42, 117, 136–137, 139, 207, 209 Jenseitsfahrt 16–17, 29–30, 33, 38, 40, 42 justice 139, 142–143

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

general index Leerstelle: see textual gap Menelaus 31, 38–41, 47, 51, 171n25, 199, 229– 230 Meropis 4, 63n1, 64, 78, 81–82, 112n29 Neoanalytical 107, 156n20 Nestor 5, 112–113, 126, 132–133, 141, 182, 225, 227, 229–231, 243n19 Odysseus 3, 5, 8, 13, 14n8, 21, 27, 31, 38–43, 45–49, 51–52, 66, 87, 91, 93, 113–115, 117– 120, 122, 125–126, 132, 193–194, 195n20, 196, 198, 201n47, 200, 203n56, 204n67, 205–206, 213–215, 224, 230 Oechalias Halosis: see Creophylus Old Man of the Sea: see Proteus Omphale: see Heracles and Lydia opposition(s) in imitation 39, 47, 51 Panyassis Heracleia elaboration 215 scope 210–211 speeches 211 time 212 human relations 214 imagery 214–215, 217 mythological examples 214 rare diction 217 supernatural elements 192 Patroclus 31, 46, 48, 68, 116, 195, 202–203 Periclymenus 141, 200 Perseus 12, 154–156, 170 Phlegra: see Heracles and Gigantomachy Pisander of Camirus Heracleia 7–9, 15, 34, 109n13, 146, 191, 203–207, 209–210, 214, 216–218, 235, 240–242, 249, 250n51, 252 Pisander of Laranda 243, 246–247, 249 Poseidon 64, 67, 69, 75–76, 81, 116–117, 134, 147, 151–153, 159, 164–165, 167–168, 170, 173, 175–178, 180–181, 183, 199–200, 206, 228 Prometheus 89, 110, 115, 138–139, 250n51 Proteus 31, 38–41, 215 Proverbiorum syllogae 243–244, 246

261 Sarpedon 45, 112n28, 120n50, 124, 148–150, 168, 198 Siduri 16n25, 17, 31, 38–39, 41, 47 Stones Ones 18, 25 submerged literature 225n11 supernatural 39n147, 168, 192, 200, 214–215, 217 Teiresias 31, 38, 39n148, 40n155, 41, 46, 122 textual gap 156, 159 Theseis 100, 142, 146, 197, 208n89, 222–223, 224nn8–9, 249n44 Thessalus 65, 69, 71–72, 75, 77–78, 111 Tlepolemus 65, 81, 111, 112n28, 113, 120n50, 148–149, 166n7, 168, 198 typology 3, 14, 41–42 Underworld: see Heracles and Hades Urshanabi 18–19, 20n45, 21, 23, 25–26, 28– 30, 39 Utnapishtim 3, 8, 15–18, 21–23, 28n89, 30– 31, 33, 37–42, 44, 46–47, 51, 123n63 Wall(s) Achaean 181–184 of Troy 112n27, 147, 151–153, 155, 164–165, 167–170, 181–183, 199 Waters of Death 3, 16, 22–23, 26–28, 31 West Greekness 234 winning a bride by contest 193 by self-choice 193n8 Zenobius 243–244, 246 Zeus 4–6, 8, 33, 36, 45n178, 65–69, 71–72, 76–78, 81, 83–84, 89, 97–98, 108, 110n16, 111–112, 115–116, 119–120, 123–126, 133, 136–140, 142–143, 147–148, 150–152, 165, 167–168, 171–172, 175–176, 178, 183, 195, 198, 200–201, 209n90, 214–215, 235, 252n60

Rhodes 65, 91, 155, 207, 235–236, 240n4

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia

- 978-90-04-69661-7 Downloaded from Brill.com 04/20/2024 07:40:13PM via Wikimedia