Seeing Double: Intercultural Poetics in Ptolemaic Alexandria 9780520927384

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Seeing Double

HELLENISTIC CULTURE AND SOCIETY General Editors: Anthony W. Bulloch, Erich S. Gruen, A. A. Long, and Andrew F. Stewart

Seeing Double Intercultural Poetics in Ptolemaic Alexandria

Susan A. Stephens

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Berkeley . Los Angeles . London

University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 2003 by the Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Stephens, Susan A., 1945– Seeing double : intercultural poetics in Ptolemaic Alexandria / Susan A. Stephens. p. cm. — (Hellenistic culture and society ; 37) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 0-520-22973-8 (alk. paper). 1. Greek poetry, Hellenistic—Egypt—Alexandria— History and criticism. 2. Egyptian poetry—Egypt— Alexandria—History and criticism. 3. Literature, Comparative—Greek and Egyptian. 4. Literature, Comparative—Egyptian and Greek. 5. Language and culture—Egypt—Alexandria. 6. Alexandria (Egypt)—Intellectual life. 7. Ptolemaic dynasty, 305–30 b.c. 8. Poetics I. Title. II. Series. pa3081 .s74 2003 881'.09932—dc21 2002007570 Manufactured in the United States of America 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 The paper used in this publication is both acid-free and totally chlorine-free (TCF). It meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper).

To the memory of Jack Winkler

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Contents

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

List of Illustrations

ix

Preface

xi

List of Abbreviations

xv

Introduction Conceptualizing Egypt Callimachean Theogonies Theocritean Regencies Apollonian Cosmologies The Two Lands

1 20 74 122 171 238

Select Bibliography

259

Passages Cited

269

Index

277

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Illustrations

(Illustrations follow p. 146) 1. Cartouche of Ptolemy I (Tuna el-Gebel), with sedge and bee 2. Cartouche of Ptolemy V Epiphanes (Rosettana), with sedge and bee 3. Horus throttling snakes 4. Nakht spearing a snake and a pig (The Book of the Dead) 5. The solar boat being towed through a snake (The Amduat) 6. The Sun emerging from a hill at dawn (The Amduat)

ix

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Preface

I began to think about the relationship of Alexandrian writers to their contemporary Greco-Egyptian milieu at least twenty years ago, but I was unable to provide answers that satisfied myself or colleagues and students. In the interim I learned a great deal about Egypt and the construction of pharaonic kingship. Some of this material provided intriguing parallels and overlaps with what I understood of Hellenistic poetic practice. The question of whether there was a relationship between the two—which a few scholars had already articulated and others had denied, with varying degrees of vehemence or disdain—gradually evolved into conviction that one did exist, but this in turn led to other questions. Why was there a connection? How important was it? Could parallels with Egyptian culture tell us anything about the poetry that we did not already know? This study sketches an answer, in the belief that grounding a selection of poems of Callimachus and Theocritus and the epic of Apollonius in their contemporary social and political context opens up the poetry in a number of ways, not the least of which is to remove it from the ivory tower and locate it more centrally within contemporary intellectual debates and within the political life of the city. I have characterized my reading as “seeing double.” This capitalizes on what has become a standard formulation for the twin aspects of Ptolemaic culture: in 1987, for example, W. Peremans wrote about the “bicephalous” nature of Ptolemaic administration, and in 1993 L. Koenen wrote of “The Janus Head of Ptolemaic Kingship.” This is more than a xi

xii

Preface

convenient metaphor: it describes the reality of existence in a world that was essentially different from that of the classical polis. It was a world both Greek and Egyptian, in which the cultural codes of each were important and recognizable. I have been encouraged by a number of people in this endeavor, and it is a pleasure to be able to thank them. The Groningen Hellenistic workshops provided an invaluable venue for testing my ideas. I am indebted to the other participants and especially to Annette Harder, who organizes the workshops, for her support. Similarly, a series of seminars on the interaction of Greece and Egypt held at Stanford and the University of Chicago offered an opportunity to discuss various parts of my argument with an audience of classicists and Egyptologists, many of whose observations are acknowledged in my notes. A number of scholars—Mary Depew, Marco Fantuzzi, Richard Jasnow, Csaba La’da, Scott Noegel, Jay Reed, Ian Rutherford, Phiroze Vasunia, and Stephen White—have allowed me to see their work in advance of publication, and this has enabled me both to refine my own arguments and to correct errors. My colleague, Joe Manning, helped me in numerous ways with Hellenistic history, and just by being there to exchange ideas. Ludwig Koenen generously provided copious commentary and bibliography that I would otherwise have missed. Phiroze Vasunia’s advice about my opening chapter proved extremely helpful. I am indebted to Peter Bing for his thorough and insightful comments. Richard Hunter’s knowledge and occasional scepticism were equally valuable. I thank both for their willingness to read an earlier version of this manuscript. Benjamin Acosta-Hughes kindly read several versions of my manuscript and helped me structure my arguments for classical readers. Dan Selden provided endless hours of discussion and debate on the potential relationships of Egyptian and Greek material as well as his insights on poetry. While I have not agreed with each person’s comments and advice in every particular, I have unquestionably profited from their willingness to engage with these questions and to stimulate me constantly to refine my arguments. For the form in which these ideas now appear, they are not to be held responsible. I would also like to express my thanks to Erich Gruen, who solicited the manuscript, and to Kate Toll for her help in easing it through the editorial process as well as for her sensible advice on technical problems. Finally, a word about my editorial decisions. I have used Latinized Greek spellings throughout when they are in common use. For Egyptian names I have preferred the Hellenized spelling (if it exists) over con-

Preface

xiii

ventional Egyptian transliterations (e.g., Sesostris vs. Senwosret or Snws-rt), on the principle that the former will be more familiar to most readers. I include Greek text only in cases where the exact meaning of the Greek could affect the argument. In other cases, where I focus on the contour of a narrative or event, I provide translations only. Translations are my own unless otherwise noted. In footnoting Egyptian ideas I have adopted the following practice: whenever possible I provide recent, scholarly treatments easily accessible to those without a background in Egyptology. In many cases these include handbooks and general discussions, which also serve to reinforce a basic point: the ideas I discuss are pervasive in Egyptian culture. I have tried consistently to limit my Egyptian evidence to material contemporary with the production of Hellenistic poetry or the centuries immediately before. I cite later sources such as Plutarch, or earlier pharaonic material only to create a continuum of ideas from the pharaonic period to the contemporary world of the Ptolemies and beyond. Parts of chapters 2 and 4 of the present work appeared earlier in “Callimachus at Court,” Hellenistica Groningana 3 (1998) 167–85, and “Writing Epic in the Ptolemaic Court,” Hellenistica Groningana 4 (2000) 195–215, and are used here with kind permission of the series editors, M. A. Harder, R. F. Regtuit, and G. C. Wakker. Stanford University July 2001

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Abbreviations

AP

Palatine Anthology.

AR

Alexander Romance.

CA

J. U. Powell, ed. Collectanea Alexandrina. Oxford, 1925.

DIO

J. Gwyn Griffiths, ed. Plutarch: De Iside et Osiride, Edited with an Introduction, Translation and Commentary. Cardiff, 1970.

D-K

H. Diels and W. Kranz, eds. Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. 3 vols. 6th ed. Berlin, 1951–52.

EGF

M. Davies, ed. Epicorum Graecorum fragmenta. Göttingen, 1988.

FGrH

F. Jacoby, ed. Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker. Berlin and Leiden, 1923–58.

Gow

A. S. F. Gow, ed. Theocritus. 2 vols. 2d ed. Cambridge, 1952.

G-P

A. S. F. Gow and D. L. Page, eds. The Greek Anthology: Hellenistic Epigrams. 2 vols. Cambridge, 1965.

LÄ

W. Helck, E. Otto, and W. Westendorf, eds. Lexikon für Ägyptologie. 7 vols. Wiesbaden, 1975–92. xv

xvi

Abbreviations

Lasserre

F. Lasserre, ed. Die Fragmente des Eudoxos von Knidos. Berlin, 1966.

LIMC

Lexicon iconographicum mythologiae classicae. Zurich and Munich, 1981–97.

Livrea

E. Livrea, ed. Apollonii Rhodii Argonauticon, Liber quartus. Florence, 1973.

LSJ

H. G. Liddell, R. Scott, and H. S. Jones, eds. A Greek-English Lexicon, with a Revised Supplement. 9th rev. ed. Oxford, 1996.

M-W

R. Merkelbach and M. L. West, eds. Hesiodi fragmenta selecta. 3d ed. Oxford, 1990.

Pf.

R. Pfeiffer, ed. Callimachus. 2 vols. Oxford, 1949–51.

PGM

K. Preisendanz, ed. Papyri Graecae magicae. Vols. 1–2. 2d ed. Stuttgart, 1973–74.

PMG

D. Page, ed. Poetae melici Graeci. Oxford, 1962.

RE

A. Pauly, G. Wissowa, and W. Kroll, eds. Real-Encyclopädie der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft. Stuttgart, 1893–1978.

SH

H. Lloyd-Jones and P. Parsons, eds. Supplementum Hellenisticum. Berlin and New York, 1983.

Snell-Maehler

B. Snell and H. Maehler, eds. Pindari carmina cum fragmentis. Parts 1–2. Leipzig, 1971–75.

Wendel

C. Wendel, ed. Scholia in Apollonium Rhodium vetera. Berlin, 1935.

Introduction

On returning from Egypt in 1799 Napoleon introduced a sweeping heraldic reform: he replaced the enduring symbol of the old monarchy, the fleur-de-lis, with the device of a bee. The bee was ubiquitous in its use by the royal house, appearing on the coronation robes, state furniture, and occasionally even on Napoleon’s coat of arms. But Napoleon’s reason for making this change was by no means obvious, even to his contemporaries. The explanation of his choice lies outside of a symbolic repertory familiar from French culture or traditional western iconography. Napoleon borrowed his new royal insignia from Egypt. For over two thousand years, the bee had been used in hieroglyphic writing to indicate the king of Lower Egypt or the Delta region, and a bee, often elaborately carved and painted, always preceded the cartouche of the pharaoh’s name, with the result that the Egyptian word for bee (bit) came by metonymy also to mean “king” (see plates 1 and 2). Napoleon must have been aware of this, because Edmé Jomard, who was the secretary of the editorial committee for the Déscription de l’Égypte, the comprehensive survey of Egyptian monuments and natural history commissioned as part of Napoleon’s military expedition, was an ardent student of hieroglyphics, and on the title page of the first volume of the Déscription he made creative use of the bee as a marker of imperial power.1 1. In the lower left and right corners, Jomard placed the traditional Egyptian motifs of a vulture and an atef crown to flank a cartouche enclosing a star ( = divine) and a bee ( = king).

1

2

Introduction

Although the decipherment of hieroglyphics was several years in the future, European interest in a writing system that was thought to encode philosophical and theological secrets was intense,2 and at least two ancient sources, Ammianus Marcellinus and Horapollo, in which the meaning of the bee hieroglyphic was explained, were widely consulted by Jomard and others. Napoleon’s adaptation via Jomard followed Ammianus Marcellinus (17.4.11), for whom “bee” illustrated the larger principle that in hieroglyphic writing one character often stood for whole words or concepts: Ammianus says that “through the figure of a bee making honey [Egyptians] indicate a king, showing that for a ruler the sting should be tempered with benevolence.”3 Napoleon could have chosen the Egyptian royal device for its antiquity and for the metaphysical cachet that Egyptian hieroglyphs held at the beginning of the nineteenth century. But because the monarchic associations of the bee would not have been apparent to all of Napoleon’s contemporaries, a modern scholar suggests that he had a more subtle political motive for the choice of the bee symbol and its elaboration in the frontispiece to the Déscription de l’Égypte: The enigma of the two cartouches [the star and the bee] is therefore solved, and the correct interpretation of their inscriptions is ‘divus rex’ or ‘divine king’. It was therefore very wise, probably, only to intimate the meaning vaguely in the commentary [to the Déscription]. The rather fulsome flattery probably pleased the emperor, who never outgrew a legitimacy-complex, and it may have amused the Imperial augurs; but as a relapse into the terminology of the ‘Roy-Soleil’ it would probably have jarred on Jacobine ears. For the same reason the true meaning of the new heraldic emblem was never publicly disclosed, but it was obvious that Napoleon was fully aware of its significance and introduced it deliberately as a venerable monarchical symbol.4

Napoleon’s ploy was successful. Today, consulting a standard encyclopedia of French culture about the meaning of the bee device, we are

2. See Volkmann 1957. 3. “perque speciem apis mella conficientis, indicant regem, moderatori cum iucunditate aculeos quoque innasci debere . . . ostendentes” (17.4.11). For a similar linking of the king with the image of a bee, see Seneca De clementia 1.19.1 and Dio Chrysostom 4.62. The ancient writers were not consistent on the sex of bees. In his History of Animals, Aristotle, for example, records the theory that the bees had a queen (553a21–33), but in a later passage describes the hive as led by a king (623b7–627b22). 4. Iversen 1993, 133 and pl. XXIII.

Introduction

3

told that it is “because the bee is the symbol of industry that Napoleon I adopted it for his emblem.”5 Napoleon was not the first French monarch to use the bee hieroglyphic to symbolize kingship, though in his case we can be sure that contact with Egypt and its monuments provided the direct stimulus. In the Renaissance, Louis XII was said to have worn a gold-spangled robe adorned with a king bee surrounded by ordinary bees, combined with the motto “The king does not use the sting.”6 Louis XII found justification for his version of this monarchic emblem not in Ammianus, but in the Greek Horapollo, who explains the bee hieroglyph as illustrating a people obedient to their king. For alone of all other creatures the bee has a king whom the rest of the bees follow, just as men obey a king. They allegorize from the pleasure of honey and from the power of the creature’s sting that the king is both kindly and forceful in rendering judgment and in governance.7

Pope Urban VIII also entered this game of heraldic one-upmanship by displaying bees on his arms accompanied with the Latin verses Gallis mella dabunt, Hispanis spicula figent ([The bees] will provide honey for the French, they will sting the Spanish). To which the Spaniards replied: spicula si figent, emorientur apes (If they sting, the bees will die).8 These two historical anecdotes provide relatively transparent models for the Greek receptions of Egypt that are set out in this book: Louis 5. Grand dictionnaire encyclopédique Larousse (1982) s.v. abeille. Vergil’s Georgics and the figure of Aristaeus stand behind this interpretation. See below on Childéric, and note 12. 6. “Rex non utitur aculo.” Volkmann 1957, 42; Iversen 1993, 167 n. 29. 7. The Hieroglyphica is usually attributed to Horapollo the Younger, who was a member of a prominent Greco-Egyptian intellectual family of the fifth century c.e. See G. Fowden, The Egyptian Hermes: A Historical Approach to the Late Pagan Mind (Princeton, 1986) 183–86; G. Bowersock, Hellenism in Late Antiquity (Ann Arbor, 1990) 55–61. Only the Greek version survives. The work contains a curious blend of accurate information and allegorizing speculation characteristic of later European writing on the subject. Labn prbß basilAa peiuanion dhloPnteß, mAlissan zvgrafoPsi. kaB gbr manon tmn gllvn zAvn basilAa Gxei, Q tb loipbn tpn melissmn Epetai plpuoß, kaub kaB oC gnurvpoi peAuontai basileM¢ aDnAttontai dB Dk tpß toP mAlitoß Dk toß toM kAntroy toM zAoy dynamevß xrhstbn eRnai ema kaB eGtonon prbß kaB dioAkhsin (1.62 Sbordone). Neither Ammianus nor Horapollo is entirely correct in his explanation of why the Egyptians used the bee to mean king. The bee was chosen not because of its behavior but most likely because Lower Egypt or the Delta region was particularly rich in apiculture. The bee seems initially to have been a regional designation for Lower Egypt and, in combination with a reed plant that designated Upper Egypt, served in the royal titulature to indicate that the pharaoh was king of a unified Upper and Lower Egypt. See Schneider 1993, 175–81. 8. Grand dictionnaire universal du XIXe siècle (1990) s.v. abeille.

4

Introduction

XII’s cloak, like fifth- and fourth-century Greek writers, exhibits consciousness of the Egyptian origins of the material it appropriates, but that appropriation remains at some distance; Napoleon, like the Hellenistic poets, reflects an immediate experience of a contemporary Egypt, though without overt acknowledgment of the context of appropriation. In each case, what survives and is considered significant is refracted through western sensibilities, but each layer also refracts at some moment a real encounter with Egyptian behaviors and cultural artifacts. The following anecdote offers a much more complicated dynamic, however. In 1653 the tomb of Childéric, a Merovingian king who died in 481, was opened in Tournai. The burial deposit included a bull’s head adorned with a solar disk and more than three hundred gold bees that had been used to decorate his equipage.9 Subsequent excavation revealed a statuette of Isis in the same villa,10 confirming what the original publishers of the find had already surmised: Childéric was among the last devotees of Isis in early medieval Europe, and his burial objects must be understood in light of her cult, though an Isis cult that had assimilated western ideas. The bull’s head with the solar disk is Apis. But the bees are a different matter. In this context they are not obviously markers of kingship, but symbols of rebirth linked to the Apis bull through an etymology of Apis/apis. The bees reflect a belief in the spontaneous creation of bees from the carcass of a dead bull, the so-called bougonia. Whether or not bougonia stems from an authentically Egyptian tradition, it is not elsewhere attested for Isis worship, though it is very prominent in Latin sources and treated at length in Vergil’s Georgics.11 Thus it may be specific to the Roman development of Isis worship. When they were found, however, Childéric’s bees were also invested with dynastic significance: Jean-Jacques Chiflet, who published the Childéric treasure in 1655, included an illustrated account of how the royal emblem of France, the fleur-de-lis, was originally derived from the bee.12 Hence Napoleon’s bee could enjoy a double reception. The re9. Baltruˇsaitis 1985, 89–94. The treasure was stolen in 1831. 10. Baltruˇsaitis 1985, 93. 11. Antigonus of Carystus Paradoxa 19 (23) for evidence of the bougonia in Egypt; see also Vergil Georgics 4.281–314; Varro De re rustica 2.5.5; Ovid Metamorphoses 15.364–67. See A. B. Cook, “Bees in Greek Mythology,” JHS 15 (1895) 19, on Childéric’s bees. 12. Baltruˇsaitis 1985, 91–92 (with illustration). The claim is unlikely to be historically accurate, but rather an attempt to connect early local kings with the later French monarchy. I am indebted to my colleague Philippe Buc for this observation.

Introduction

5

placement of the fleur-de-lis with the bee in the early nineteenth century could be understood not as an innovation but as a restoration of the true origins of the royal insignia,13 and could be read, in terms of a western, and primarily Vergilian, tradition of bees as signifiers of industriousness and rejuvenation, as well as an Egyptian symbol of kingship. Childéric’s worship of Isis and the resulting funerary deposit indicate a thoroughly assimilated stratum of Egyptian ideas as well as ideas that may only appear Egyptian, so intricately joined it is difficult if not impossible to separate the constituent parts. Taken together, these anecdotes illustrate (1) the context-dependent nature of interpretation, (2) the intricate dynamics of cultural borrowing, (3) the significance of the visual and monumental in cultural exchange, and (4) the peculiar fascination that Egypt and its symbolic realm hold in the western imagination. Childéric, Louis XII, and Napoleon use the same signifier at different historical periods though for markedly different purposes. To the observer unfamiliar with the complicated set of historical and political circumstances behind each French monarch’s symbolic deployment of the bee, it no doubt seems whimsical or idiosyncratic. But when the context is presented, the device not only becomes explicable but assumes a broader significance within the continuum of French imperial history. To educated members of the court the emblem would have conveyed a subtle signal of monarchic ambitions or of imperial desires; to the rest the bee was no more than an artistic experiment. Without its symbolic baggage, it could not function as a dangerous reminder of the “Roy-Soleil” or as a behavioral template for the proper disposition of the monarch to his subjects. Rather it became the signifier of an anodyne “industriousness.” Napoleon’s bees provide a cautionary tale for our standard approach to Alexandrian poetry. We strive to acquaint ourselves with as much as possible of the ancient world in order to recreate a reception that we hope is similar to that of an ancient reader. Inevitably we fall short—we always know too little—and inevitably we differ, since each of us, like each ancient reader, experiences a poem or a play uniquely. Within that unique experience, however, there must be certain shared parameters or overlapping areas of understanding that allow us to agree about the meaning of texts. But what happens when elements relevant to our un-

13. So Larousse (1982); see above, note 5.

6

Introduction

derstanding of a text or historical circumstance are absent? Texts may still be legible, but some dimension will be lost. Historically in our reception of Alexandrian poetry we have read only through the filter of ancient Greek literature, occasionally adjusted by recourse to a subsequent Latin reading. What we unconsciously exclude from our approach is the possibility that the writers of Alexandria might have been fascinated by the Egyptian culture that surrounded them; that they, like Napoleon, might have deliberately incorporated Egyptian motifs and allusions into their own work. If they were to do so in a random or casual way, the noting of such occasions would perhaps be interesting, but of minimal importance for an adequate understanding of the poetry. My claim is broader. I argue in this book that the Alexandrians systematically incorporated Egyptian ideas and narrative motifs in a set of poems constructed to explore the dimensions of Ptolemaic kingship. Our inability to see an Egyptian allusion in their works results not from their failure to make such allusions, but from our own lack of familiarity with their frames of reference. To a modern classical scholar educated in the northern European tradition of Germany or England, information about Egypt contained within Greek writing is irrelevant to the study of Greek culture and Greek literature proper and has either been dismissed or categorized as generically oriental. Rarely is it studied in terms of its own, non-Greek, origins. But this is not to say that such material did not exist or that it would not have formed part of the conceptual world of Greeks themselves, particularly those Greeks who had immigrated to Egypt. From Herodotus, for example, it is obvious that Greeks living in Egypt were familiar with local versions of Egyptian stories, and to imagine that the Alexandrian poets and their educated audience were not equally so informed is illogical if we simultaneously insist upon their acquaintance with every detail of a Greek world that is both geographically and temporally remote. It is my contention in what follows that Egypt and Egyptian motifs enter the poems on various levels, as casual allusions, linguistic play, and, more pervasively, as subtexts that underlie or complement the Greek. I wish to explore the possibilty that the Alexandrians deliberately composed poems to match Egyptian narratives in their general contours by highlighting certain details, often marginal in the Greek stories, but significant in the Egyptian, and that their Alexandrian audience would have been able to appreciate this aspect of their poetry. It is possible to object to my thesis on the grounds that in their work these poets only rarely refer to Egypt, that their poems are entirely ex-

Introduction

7

plicable within Greek terms, and, therefore, to seek an Egyptian explanation for events or details is unnecessary or overly imaginative.14 But what does explicable in Greek terms really mean? Often it means no more than pointing to a string of verbal allusions to Homer or Hesiod without providing an integrated account of the dynamics of the text as a whole; hence a poetics is sometimes reduced to arbitrariness or, on occasion, banality. Even within a wholly Greek framework, much in these poets remains obscure. For example, to whom (if anyone) does Callimachus refer with his attack on the Telchines? Critics have assumed a priori that the obscurity of the reference is a result of lost context that would have been clear to his contemporaries, though perhaps not to subsequent Roman readers. Within the parameters of Greek poetry we are prepared to accept the limits of our knowledge. Why then should it be so difficult to imagine that we might also be lacking an Egyptian frame of reference? As contemporary scholars surely we have moved beyond the Hellenocentrism of our own scholarly past. Rather, it is the profound lack of familiarity with Egyptian culture that impedes us. This is not meant to deny that the Alexandrians were writing for Greeks, not Egyptians. These poets and their audience were operating within the mimetic framework of Greek generic structures, and although they experimented with the boundaries of the inherited genres, they could not have abandoned them even if they had wished to and still have expected to be understood by a Greek audience. However, the fact that they do not specifically name Egypt when, as I will argue, they are selecting a Greek myth that in its contours resembles an Egyptian story is both a function of their own reception of Egypt from previous Greek writings and a means of exerting a measure of control over an alien space. Previous cultural assimilation meant that for an Alexandrian Greek Horus was Apollo (and vice versa), just as Osiris was Dionysus and Isis was Demeter. Divinities that in other parts of the Mediterranean had distinct and separable mythologies, in Egypt were

14. See, for example, Weber (1993, 371–88, esp. 381) for criticisms of the work of Merkelbach, Koenen, and Bing. Zanker voices slightly different criticisms. He is concerned with the evidentiary habits of these scholars, who read behaviors of the later Ptolemies onto the earlier (1989, 91–99). Zanker’s own reading of the world of Alexandria, particularly the “culture shock” for immigrating Greeks (p. 91), seems to me to be largely correct. Where I differ from him is in assessing the degree of separation of Greeks from Egyptians. Recent work, particularly that of Thompson, Clarysse, and Quaegebeur, undermines much of the evidence on which the case for such a separation has been built. To identify an Egyptian stratum within Alexandrian poetry is not to argue for wholesale interpretatio graeca, as Zanker seems to think.

8

Introduction

already part of the same discursive field, so that a narrative about the one was predisposed to converge with the other. The evidence I present in the next chapter demonstrates the persistence with which writers like Herodotus insist on these identifications, even when (to us) they might seem forced. Greek names dominate or displace the native so thoroughly that at times it is difficult to identify authentic Egyptian patterns that lie beneath. Thus what we may regard as necessary clues for ourselves will not have been the same for an Alexandrian Greek audience in the third century b.c.e. This habit of renaming is symptomatic of a wider phenomenon for those who were immigrating to Egypt. As the extreme case of the barbarian, or the total inversion of all that is Greek (articulated as a binary opposition in Herodotus), Egypt presented a peculiar challenge. Its alien physical, and even more importantly its alien mental, landscape needed to be rendered explicable by and for its new occupants—in some sense to be made Greek. The Alexander Romance provides an illuminating example of the process of ideological repositioning—the author of this disingenuous text explains the ethnic mixture of the city of Alexandria as the inevitable result of its foundation by Alexander, but an Alexander who is provided with a new paternity; he is no longer the son of Philip, but of Nectanebo, the last native pharaoh, and Olympias—hence in heritage both Egyptian and Greek.15 On a more sophisticated level, the Alexandrian poets engage in similarly creative gestures that serve to domesticate or rather Hellenize Egypt. Callimachus, Theocritus, and Apollonius experiment with templates to incorporate Egyptian myths and pharaonic behavior into Greek. What begins as alien or outré, by being matched with Greek myths of a similar contour, can become familiar, acceptable, even normative. Just as Egyptian gods are renamed and syncretistic cults try to absorb the native into the religion of the new natives, these Greek poets absorb Egyptian culture in such a way as to make it barely visible and then invisible, a process that simultaneously familiarizes the viewer with the unfamiliar and makes it look Greek. An example: at the opening of Callimachus’s poem on the victory of Berenice at the Nemean games, Callimachus identifies Argos as the land of “cow-born Danaus,”16 alluding to the Greek myth of Io, who migrated to Egypt in the form of a cow and gave birth to Epaphus ( = Egyptian Apis). One of her descendants, Danaus, then returned to 15. For discussion of the AR, see below, chapter 2. 16. SH fr. 254.4 (8): DanaoP gpß dpb boygenAoß. See the editors’ remarks ad loc.

Introduction

9

Greece and gave his name to the whole people—Danaans. This unexceptionably Greek epithet is by no means value neutral—it links Greeks to Egyptians in hereditary terms. A few lines later, Callimachus describes Egyptian women as “knowing how to mourn the bull with the white marking.”17 Now the reference is to the thoroughly Egyptian cult of the Apis bull, but since we have just been reminded of the descendants of Io, Apis too begins to lose his otherness and to be incorporated into the allusive matrix of what has become an extended Greco-Egyptian mythological family. The habit of syncretism and allusion to an Egypt already embedded in Greek texts are two means by which poets create a discursive field that can serve to accommodate two different cultural logics. Within this framework a poem that nowhere explicitly names Egypt or an Egyptian idea nonetheless frequently presents a set of incidents that are entirely legible within the framework of Egyptian myth. Further, a narrative that in its selection of Greek mythological detail may appear whimsical or obscure, when read in the context of Egyptian ideas often yields not simply a coherent pattern, but a pattern complicit in the ideological construction of pharaonic kingship.18 The degree of recognition, resistance, or acceptance of these patterns that a contemporary reader would have experienced, to be sure, will have varied. Nor do these three poets themselves exhibit the same degree of interest in Egypt or construct their discursive matrices to represent Egypt or Ptolemaic kingship in the same way. Still, the cumulative effect of this poetry would have been to allow the reader to discern Egyptian cultural formations, but contained within or domesticated by its framework of Greekness. The effect is one of an optical illusion—looked at from one angle discrete elements in the narrative are Greek, from another Egyptian; both are complete and distinct without the other, yet interdependent in their final patterning. These remarks are not intended to gloss over the difficulties inherent in discussing what amounts to a series of cross-cultural readings in which one set of cultural references does not operate as a traditional literary field and, in addition to text-based lore, will necessarily include a

17. SH fr. 254.16 (30): eDdyPai falibn taPron DhlemAsai. 18. Selden (1998, 353) in discussing the Lock of Berenice puts it as follows: “The Hellenic reader, compelled to make sense of the diverse data of the poem yet unable to fall back on a figurative negation, finds himself drawn more and more into an Egyptian order of ideas. To comprehend the piece in full, he can no longer remain securely within the horizons of Hellenic culture, but must make the transposition from one discursive system to the other.”

10

Introduction

visual and dramatic component.19 But just as generic traditions within which an individual text was produced function as background white noise that inevitably leaves traces within that text, so too does the contemporary environment—the physical environment as well as the political and social milieu—in which that text is produced. Despite the constructed literariness of the Alexandrians, their often one-to-one specificity of allusion that simulates annotation or commentary on poetic predecessors, these poets devote considerable textual energy to the object, and they display a sense of the pictorial in their poetic formulation that seems to set them apart from their predecessors.20 Given their stated interests in cult formation, statutes of the gods, and attendant activities, the expectation that visual uniqueness of Egyptian artistic representation would also have come to their notice is not unwarranted. There is enough specific information in Callimachus, for example, to justify this assumption: the dedicatory epigram to Sarapis (37 Pf. = AP 13.7); another to Isis, identified as the daughter of Inachus ( = Io; 57 Pf. = AP 6.150); and, most interestingly, a one-line fragment quoted in Strabo (17.1.28 = fr. 715 Pf.) that mentions “the dromos of Anubis.” Though the context of Callimachus’s poem is missing, the fact that he knows the temple at all confirms the familiarity with Egyptian monuments that I am presupposing.21 Further, it is my assumption that coordinates of similarity or difference may operate one way within an inherited textual tradition in one political and social environment, but quite differently in another setting. Thus it is important to consider what lies behind an accretion of intertexts: often it is the topos or literary cliché that is our best source of information about commonly held ideas; however, these commonplaces may be thrown into relief or take on new meanings when relocated in a cross-cultural milieu. For example, does the familiar expression of doubt about how to hymn the god operate in the same way in the world of Zeus Ammon as it does in fifth-century Athens?22 As a further strategy of reading, a marked difference from predecessors within a traditional Greek milieu requires some account in narrative terms

19. See the next chapter for a discussion of how the Alexandrian poets and their audience would have had access to Egyptian ideas. 20. This a significant feature of their so-called realism. See Zanker 1987, 55–112. 21. The precise location of the temple is not known. Strabo may be describing the ruins at Heliopolis, but he is more likely to be describing the generic plan of the Egyptian temple. See Fraser 1972, 2: 414–15 n. 582. 22. See Hinds 1998, 34–47, for a helpful discussion of the reading of topoi.

Introduction

11

within a text. Rather than dismissing as playful or subversive what has to critics often seemed strange or eccentric, it is worthwhile to read these moments with some care. Within a different cultural formation (namely Egypt) it is now similarity that becomes significant. However, incidents, events, or narratives from two different cultures that appear to be structurally similar may be in fact folkloric; they may possess a pancultural kinship that results from the fundamental desire to organize human experience, and not necessarily be indicative of a specific selection of circumstances that invites the reader to think of Egypt.23 A unique set of circumstances in the Greek tradition that yields a narrative logic that operates more fundamentally in Egyptian culture than Greek then is what is significant. An example: within Greek poetry the rise of an island from the watery void at the moment of sunrise is an event without obvious parallel or mythological baggage. Yet in Egyptian thought it is heavily freighted: emerging islands and sunrise signal the moment of creation—new beginnings—as well as the ascension of the new pharaoh to the throne. Yet one incident of (apparently) marked similarity between the two cultural logics hardly constitutes proof. This is not the end of the argument, but the beginning. It is rather the sum of such elements throughout the course of a poem, elements that cannot be accounted for in more straightforward ways, through recourse to Greek models, by folk tradition, or even sheer chance. Even at this point, however, unless the two cultural logics add up to more than the sum of their parts, unless an Egyptian order of ideas allows a more complete comprehension and a more consistent reading, the argument cannot be persuasive. Because the purpose of this book is not merely to demonstrate the presence of allusions to Egyptian myth or to excavate an Egyptian stratum in Alexandrian poetry, I focus on Egyptian material within selected poems that not only locates them within but defines the parameters of a wider dialogue about kingship. For the Ptolemaic court to rule effectively it could not construct itself entirely in the mode of a traditional Greek kingship, but as a Macedonian Greek line occupying and ruling over pharaonic Egypt it strove necessarily to position itself in both cultures.24 The poets are similarly situated: Callimachus and Apollonius 23. For example, Fontenrose (1980) contextualizes the myth of Apollo and Python in terms of similar Near Eastern tales that include Typhon in Hesiod and the Egyptian Seth. His study demonstrates their common folkloric dimensions not their allusive interdependence. 24. Bilde 1994, 11.

12

Introduction

are natives of North Africa, of Cyrene and Alexandria respectively, and a third, Theocritus, was probably resident in Alexandria for some years. Most scholars date the earliest poems of Callimachus and Theocritus to the beginning of Philadelphus’s reign, around 284 b.c.e., or within a generation of the foundation of the city. Callimachus and Apollonius, certainly, were men with a stake in the establishment and were prominent scholars in the newly created Museum. It is my contention that far from being ivory-towered intellectuals indulging in obscurantist aesthetics as a reaction to or withdrawal from unsympathetic imperial practices, these poets were the image makers for the Ptolemaic court.25 Moreover, their poems were political in the broadest sense, serving neither to support nor to subvert the status quo, but to open up a space in which social and political values could be imaginatively recreated, examined, and critiqued. Within this space these three poets experiment by selectively adapting previous Greek mythological and historical models to articulate a novel kind of kingship, and it is within this context that their generic experiments should be understood. The inherited genres of Greek poetry came encrusted with meanings not always applicable or relevant to the new world of the Ptolemies. Refashioning these past thought worlds to signify in the present was central to their role in court—and it is essential to remember that this court was in Egypt. At the time that Ptolemy I assumed control of Egypt, he would have been dependent upon an Egyptian administrative and scribal hierarchy firmly entrenched in native priesthoods. The temples they controlled, thanks to a century of a weakened central government, owned as much as a third of the arable land and supported an elaborate ideology of kingship to enhance the status not only of a particular ruler but their own as well. Egyptian kingship, in marked contrast to Greek, was a complex theocracy in which the king symbolically linked the human and divine spheres and regularly appeared in the company of the native gods in ceremony to guarantee the continued well-being of Egypt. To neglect the rituals, to eliminate or ignore the priesthoods, to undermine native belief, would have been to court social and economic fragmentation, since the smooth operation of the country depended on these native administrative and priestly elites continuing to acquiesce in the ap-

25. Cameron 1995, 1–70.

Introduction

13

paratus of state. Hence the new rulers needed to accommodate themselves to the native ceremonials of kingship, while (presumably) resisting the temptation of complete assimilation. This was not an abstract problem. Soter began his rule in Memphis, the religious center of old Egypt, and only moved to Alexandria some years after taking power.26 The received wisdom that Alexandria was never conceived as part of Egypt proper but was always, in the words of Tacitus, considered “ad Aegyptum” is not correct. This was a Roman not a Ptolemaic formulation.27 The Egyptians themselves called the city Rhacotis. The country was initially administered in Demotic Egyptian, and only when a suitable administrative cadre of bilingual native Egyptians had been created did the transformation into a fully Greek bureaucracy take place, and this could not have happened much before the reign of Ptolemy II.28 Inscriptions from the early part of Ptolemaic rule, like the Satrap decree (311 b.c.e.), were written only in hieroglyphics—in contrast to the later bi-or trilingual decrees, like the Rosetta stone (196 b.c.e.).29 The former stele provides valuable insight into Ptolemaic practice vis-à-vis native protocols. It records that Soter, in the name of the “pharaoh” Alexander IV, restored the Egyptian temples to their former state and reversed the depredations of the previous invaders, the Persians. This statement inserts Soter into pharaonic tradition, and similar claims made by subsequent Ptolemies testify to an active collaboration with their Egyptian priesthoods in constructing a civic ideology that positioned them as continuers of the true pharaonic practice, in contrast to their predecessors, the Persians, whom they portray as little more than thieves.30 It is significant that Soter began to so position himself in Egyptian ideology even before he assumed the role of king to a Greek population.31 Simi-

26. Information in the Satrap decree indicates that the move was either in 320/19 b.c.e. or, based on the standard reading of the formulae, in 312/11. See Fraser 1972, 2: 11–12 n. 28. Egyptologists usually prefer the later date. 27. Reymond and Barns 1977, 1–33 (particularly 28 n. 24). 28. Thompson (1994, 67–87) sketches the trajectory of linguistic change from Egyptian to Greek in Ptolemaic administration. 29. The decree was found in Cairo. Bevan (1968, 28–32) provides the only translation available in English, though it is not very accurate. For the original German edition, see Sethe 1904–16, 2: 11–23. There is an excellent photograph of the stele in G. Grimm, “Verbrannte Pharaonen? Die Feuerbestattung Ptolemaios’ IV Philopator und ein gescheiterter Staatsstreich in Alexandria,” Antike Welt 28 (1997) 238. 30. Claiming to restore the temples was standard operating procedure for the new pharaoh: e.g., the claims made for Amasis and Nectanebo I (Lichtheim 1980, 35, 89). In turn, the Persians and Alexander made similar claims. For a discussion of the reality behind these claims, see Winnicki 1994. 31. I am indebted to my colleague Joe Manning for this observation.

14

Introduction

lar claims of returning the gods to Egypt were made for Ptolemy II in the Pithom stele (again only in hieroglyphics) of 264, though by the time of this later text, Ptolemy’s political interests in Syria will have dovetailed nicely with pharaonic ideology.32 Whether or not Soter and his immediate successors were actually crowned as pharaoh in Memphis,33 they certainly allowed themselves to appear as pharaoh in Egyptian inscriptions and temple reliefs and to be seen behaving no differently than their Egyptian predecessors. Soter may even initially have taken an Egyptian wife.34 Playing prominent roles during the formative period of Soter’s reign were native Egyptians like the general, Nectanebo, a member of the royal house of the last native pharaoh (Nectanebo II), the royal scribe, Wennefer, and, most important, Manetho, the Sebennytic priest, who was the first Egyptian to write a history of Egypt in Greek and for Greeks.35 Additionally, Soter availed himself of Greeks like Hecataeus of Abdera to provide him with information about Egypt. Hecataeus would have been a better informant about the country than Herodotus—his description of the Ramesseum in Thebes is notable for its accuracy36—and may well have read hieroglyphics.37 By all accounts Hecataeus’s views on Egypt were not only positive, but utopian: he seems to have projected his idealized vision of the proper education and practice of kingship onto the Egyptian pharaohs, no doubt in order to provide a paradigm for the rule of the Ptolemies themselves.38 Indeed, there is some evidence that Alexander 32. Sethe 1904–16, 2: 81–105. See Hölbl 1994, 73–83, with illustrations of the Pithom and Mendes stelae. 33. This is much debated. For the arguments against, see Burstein 1991. For arguments in favor of coronation, see Koenen 1993, 49–81. The real issue in these discussions is the degree to which Macedonian Greek rulers assimilated to native practices and how pervasive such practices would have been for their rule. Whether or not the earlier Ptolemies were crowned in the Egyptian manner, Epiphanes was crowned by Egyptian priests in Memphis and identified on the Rosetta stone (196 b.c.e.) as playing the role of Horus in the New Year’s festival. 34. On the basis of the survival of a presumably legitimate daughter named “Ptolemais, daughter of Ptolemy Kheper-ka-Re,” Tarn (“Queen Ptolemais and Apama,” CQ 23 [1929] 138–41) argues that Soter may have consolidated power at the beginning of his rule by marrying into the line of Nectanebo, the last Egyptian monarch. Given the evidence of the Alexander Romance, which seeks to position Alexander as the son of Nectanebo II, such a marriage would have made excellent political sense as part of a consolidation of power. 35. Thompson 1992b, 324. For the stele of Wennefer, see Lichtheim 1980, 54–58; for Manetho, see Dillery 1999. 36. Burstein 1992, 45–50; Peremans 1987, 327–43. 37. Fraser 1972, 1: 497. 38. Murray 1970, 157–66.

Introduction

15

and Soter, following him, were aiming to create a monarchy in which the traditional barriers between Greek and non-Greek might be softened or even eliminated. Eratosthenes, for example, is said to have praised Alexander for ignoring the advice of those who counseled him to treat Greeks alone as friends, but barbarians as enemies, rather preferring to accept men on the basis of their good or bad qualities (Strabo 1.4.9).39 An obvious example of Soter’s attempt to bridge the gap between Egyptian and Greek is the introduction of the cult of Sarapis. The Apis bull was mummified and worshipped in death as Osiris-Apis, or Osorapis by Egyptians. The Ptolemies humanized this cult by introducing statues to represent the god in human form, but they did not uncouple it from the original animal worship of the Egyptian cult. The choice of Osorapis was not random: for the Greeks, Osiris was the equivalent of Dionysus, and the sculptures that lined the dromos of the Memphite Sarapeum offer a clear-cut example of the use of dual Greek and Egyptian symbolism: they included two peacocks, each ridden by a young Dionysus as well as a falcon with the head of a bearded man and a sphinx.40 Certainly, the temple to Sarapis erected in Alexandria, while humanizing the form of the god, also included Egyptian architectural elements as well as freestanding pieces like obelisks, sphinxes, and cult statues executed in the Egyptian style and inscribed in hieroglyphics. Here, too, the thoroughly Egyptian deity, Isis, was worshipped as Sarapis’s consort,41 and, by the fourth Ptolemy, her son, Horus-the-Child, whom the Greeks called Harpocrates, joined them in cult.42 From inscriptions and archaeological evidence, it is clear that the royal family associated themselves with the Egyptian gods in cult from a very early period.43 The Mendes stele of 264, for example, commemorates the visit of Ptolemy II

39. See also Arrian’s anecdote (7.11) on the inclusion of Persians in Alexander’s army, and Tarn 1933. For a different evaluation, see E. Badian, “Alexander the Great and the Unity of Mankind,” Historia 7.4 (1958) 425–44. 40. Fraser 1972, 1: 255; Thompson 1988, 116. The most recent and thorough discussion is Borgeaud and Volukhine 2000, 37–76. 41. For a discussion of the spread of the Isis cult under the early Ptolemies, see Dunand 1973, 1: 109–61. 42. Fraser 1972, 1: 263–65. 43. Quaegebeur 1988, 41–53. Yves Empereur’s discoveries from the underwater site of the Alexandrian harbor have revealed colossal statues in the pharaonic style. In his television documentary (though not in the written publication) Empereur suggested that the statues belong to the reign of Philadelphus and are of Philadelphus as pharaoh and and his queen as Isis.

16

Introduction

to the shrine of the newly enthroned ram of Mendes (Banebdjed) to venerate the god and oversee the progress of work on his temples.44 Scholarly consensus holds that in the later part of his reign, Soter, followed by Philadelphus and Euergetes, retreated from a position that tended to engage with or include elements of both Egyptian and Greek cultures to one of isolationism and of relative cultural purity for Greeks.45 It is wise to be cautious here, since a now fully bilingual bureaucracy would serve to mask the degree of participation by assimilated Egyptians. However, even if the early Ptolemies did retreat from attempts at cultural integration, their rule continued to be dual— basileus to the Greek population, pharaoh to the Egyptian. And even if the necessary pharaonic practices were performed by royal surrogates at the periphery of an Alexandrian Greek’s consciousness, the dynamic interplay of the two competing styles of kingship could not have been ignored, especially in light of the fact that over time the Egyptianization of the Ptolemies certainly continued. Brother-sister marriage, after all, appears as early as Philadelphus, and these early monarchs carried on major building programs of Egyptian monuments, many of which were erected in Alexandria itself, and within which certain deities, particularly Horus and Isis, and their attendant iconographies were especially favored.46 Over time, the Greek population of both Alexandria and the rest of Egypt grew more assimiliated, coming to resemble the Hellenomemphites of an earlier period, with frequent intermarriage, dual Greek-Egyptian names, and burial practices that included mummification and use of the distinctively Egyptian iconography. In this environment, total assimilation to or complete rejection of Egypt would have been extreme responses. For most of Mediterranean Greek heritage who lived in Ptolemaic Alexandria daily accommodation in some form to the reality of Egypt—climate, monuments, religious practices, language and writing systems, court ceremonies—was inevitable. It is not within the context of a Greek culture, separate from and ignorant of Egyptian culture, that Alexandrian poetry should be positioned, but as part of the cultural dynamic in which these two distinct and at times diametrically opposed modes of cultural behavior were bound to interact and out of which a successful political style needed to evolve.

44. Sethe 1904–16, 2: 28–54. This too was written only in hieroglyphics; see Hölbl 1994, 77, for an illustration, and 94–95 for its cultic significance. 45. See, for example, Murray 1970, 142; Bing 1988, 134–35 n. 82. 46. On early Ptolemaic temple construction, see Arnold 1999.

Introduction

17

The primary focus of this book is poetry, and specifically poetry that, I will argue, operates to imagine a new form of kingship, operating in two worlds, Greek and Egyptian. In order to see it in its contemporary context, I have begun with a chapter that sets out earlier Greek writings on Egypt and what we can learn about the various Egypts that Greeks constructed for themselves. In particular I consider the fourth-century writers in prose who were near contemporaries of the Alexandrian poets, Hecataeus of Abdera, Euhemerus, and (somewhat later) Dionysus Scytobrachion, all of whom were familiar with Egypt. Although their writings have not survived intact, the epitomes to be found in Diodorus Siculus and other sources provide enough detail that it is possible to draw useful conclusions about the general intellectual trends of such works. The second part of the chapter provides a summary of the ideological underpinnings of pharaonic theocracy and the central myths that encode it. The final section offers a reading of the Alexander Romance as an example of the way in which one of the principal legitimating myths of pharaonic kingship, that of divine paternity, was refashioned in Alexandrian Greek writing. The next three chapters treat Callimachus, Theocritus, and Apollonius, respectively. In treating Callimachus and Theocritus, I have selected four poems—Callimachus’s Hymn to Zeus and the Hymn to Delos and Theocritus’s Heracliscus (Idyll 24) and the Encomium on Ptolemy (Idyll 17)—because of the interconnectedness of their themes and the likelihood of their being written within the first decades of Ptolemy II’s reign and within a few years of each other. The Zeus hymn and the Heracliscus date in all probability from the opening of his reign, the Delos hymn and the Encomium from the 270s. The first two poems experiment with finding appropriate models for Ptolemaic kingship by focusing on childhood: Callimachus on the divine birth of Zeus, Theocritus on an early incident in the mythology of Heracles. The second pair of poems continues to play out ideas of kingship in divine (Apollo) or human terms (Ptolemy), the birth of Apollo on Delos in Callimachus seeming to find its logical fulfillment in Ptolemy’s birth on Cos. Regardless of their compositional order, these latter poems maintain the fiction of order and both operate within the same discursive field. The cosmic disorder that is transformed at the birth of Apollo into harmony in Callimachus is continued in the Encomium, as if the promise of Ptolemy in the one is fulfilled in the other. While Callimachus remains within the framework of archaic Greek poetry to construct (or imagine) an ideal of kingship, Theocritus moves to the con-

18

Introduction

temporary world of “real” political and philosophical debate as evidenced in Hecataeus of Abdera. The approachs of these two chapters differ: in the first I provide a rather long and detailed reading of the Zeus hymn to demonstrate as clearly as possible the ways in which the reader is led from an ostensibly Greek mythological milieu into a conflated Greco-Egyptian universe that converges in the person of the human king, Ptolemy. This is followed by a shorter, thematic discussion of the Delos hymn. Theocritus’s two poems are read in more general terms, against Callimachus and against each other. In both of these chapters I try to extend the allusive matrix of Greek material that would have been available to an Alexandrian audience beyond the canonical texts of Greek poetry. Because of its length the treatment of Apollonius’s epic is commensurately different. I first situate the poem in its Ptolemaic context on the basis of Greek material, then I adapt a model from postcolonial discourse to establish the narrative framework for a series of Egyptian themes. The final section of the chapter reads Apollonius’s fourth book as a journey though the Egyptian underworld. In the last chapter I contextualize the various readings of the earlier chapters in terms of the political and social redefinition of Egypt as “Two Lands,” no longer the lands of Upper and Lower Egypt, but of Greek and Egyptian culture, locating aetiology as a necessary habit of the poetic mind in redefining Egypt as Greek. Fundamentally, this book is about reading—my own, that of other scholars, and that of ancient poets themselves, though not necessarily in that order. As a scholar trained within the western classical tradition I bring to my reading of Alexandrian poetry the same familiarity with the standard works of archaic and classical Greece that critics of this material normally possess. But to my act of reading in this book I bring a specific type of knowledge that classical critics only rarely have access to—that of the Egyptian literary and cultural environment contemporary with the poets whom I am discussing. To know these things is to read differently—to see double. Inevitably as I read this poetry, I read it through dual lenses—Greek and Egyptian.47 I cannot do otherwise; my particular construction of the ancient world will not allow it. Initially my way of reading will seem alien to readers familar with only Greek literature; therefore, I conceive it my task to present my audience with

47. My perspective is not entirely solipsistic: R. Merkelbach, L. Koenen, P. Bing, and most recently (and extensively) D. Selden have all read Alexandrian poetry through dual lenses, and in what follows I am much indebted to their earlier observations.

Introduction

19

the kind of material that allows them to repeat my experience as a reader, and to come closer to what I believe would have been the experience of the original audiences of these poets. The ultimate goal is to remove Alexandrian poetry from the ivory tower and locate it more centrally in the social and political life of the city.

chapter 1

Conceptualizing Egypt

Greek immigration to Ptolemaic Egypt entailed not only physical relocation to a foreign landscape, but encounter with a culture produced by alien habits of mind. However, immigration was preceded by a process of domestication of this alien world that had begun at least as early as the sixth century b.c.e.,1 with Greek writers alternately demonizing or romanticizing Egypt and its cultural institutions, inventorying, and finally appropriating them. Therefore, before turning to a consideration of what the poets of Alexandria could have known about purely Egyptian systems of thought in the third century b.c.e., we need to take cognizance not only of the contents of previous Greek writings on Egypt but also of the intellectual Tendenz of earlier writers like Herodotus who interpret or refract Egyptian culture for Greeks, because much that is central to this study is already visible in earlier Greek writers, though considerably altered in form. The significance of this earlier material should not be underestimated. For Greek scholars the identification of Apollo with Egyptian Horus is of no particular importance in understanding the role of Apollo in Greek religion during the archaic and classical periods, nor is it relevant for Egyptologists in understanding the role of Horus in Egyptian cult. But for Greeks newly imported into 1. Contact between Greece and Egypt certainly took place from the Mycenean period, but what residue it left in archaic and classical Greece is disputed and unimportant for this argument. I am concerned only with material that could have directly shaped the Hellenistic experience.

20

Conceptualizing Egypt

21

Egypt, the fact that many Egyptian divinities could already be imagined as virtually equivalent to Greek gods would have served to make the pantheon and other aspects of Egyptian religion progressively more familiar than they in fact were by authorizing a thought process that focused on similarities rather than differences. Although this will necessarily have led to misunderstandings of purely native Egyptian religious beliefs, it will also have functioned as a very potent tool that aided in mapping an otherwise unfamiliar mental landscape. Although Greek writing about Egypt frequently had very little to do with actual Egyptian beliefs and practices, belonging rather to the construction of a Greek intellectual and political reality, within this general construct elements of genuine Egyptian culture are often visible. Consideration of the various available materials and how they were appropriated, then, will allow us to reconstruct the outlines of the Egypt imagined by Greeks before and during the early Ptolemaic period, as well as the categories of discourse in which Egypt will have figured. What follows is not a systematic review of all previous Greek writers’ views of Egypt. Christian Froidefond’s 1971 study, Le mirage égyptien dans la littérature grecque d’ Homère à Aristote, already provides this. Rather, I wish to focus on specific themes found in earlier writing on Egypt that are central, through frequently ignored, in reconstructing the intellectual milieu of Alexandria. I omit Homer and Hesiod because Egypt receives no sustained treatment in their poetry and is embedded in the myths of certain families, which I do discuss. Or one finds nothing more than a residue of story patterns—not even identified as Egyptian—doubtless filtered through other Near Eastern cultures, like the contest of Zeus and Typhon in Hesiod’s Theogony.2 The portrait of Egyptians found in two surviving Greek tragedies, Aeschylus’s Suppliants and Euripides’ Helen, has been recently examined by Phiroze Vasunia in The Gift of the Nile, a sustained study of how Greek writers of the fifth and fourth centuries imagined Egypt. Rather than repeat his arguments here, I have included references to his study, where relevant, in footnotes. I do, however, expand on his formulation of Helen. Vasunia also has substantial chapters on Herodotus, Plato, and Isocrates. I treat Herodotus here in several ways: as part of the discussion of Tendenz, as a litmus with which to test how Greek immigrants to Egypt would have encountered Egyptian ideas, and through occasional analy2. E.g., Fontenrose 1980, 249–51, 391–93; West 1966, 379–83, esp. notes on lines 820–80. This incident will be discussed in more detail in chapter 2.

22

Conceptualizing Egypt

sis of specific passages. I discuss Plato and Isocrates more briefly, and in a restricted context.3 What emerges from all of these studies is that there is not one simple model of Egypt that all Greek writers adhered to, but that Egypt served as a catalyst for the expression of often conflicting ideas about what it meant to be Greek. This is a useful frame of reference for what follows, but it is also limited, since as Greeks took up residence in Egypt itself, what could be contained as separate social and cultural spaces began to collapse. Vasunia’s insight that Alexander’s views of Egypt must have been determined by this earlier Greek reception of Egypt is surely correct, but my arguments necessarily begin from the point where reception cushioned by temporal and spatial remoteness ends and interaction begins. Therefore, the trajectory of this chapter is to move from fourth- and third-century Greek constructs of Egypt through native ideologies to end with a consideration of how these two worlds intersect in the Alexander Romance.

greek views of egypt Greeks had a long connection with Egypt from at least the Bronze Age, though it was the continuous contact with the Delta region of Lower Egypt from the archaic period that conditioned Greek writing on the subject, in part because the long-term stability of the Saite government during this period will have provided a more favorable climate for economic and political exchange as well as for tourists such as Hecataeus of Miletus and Herodotus.4 Certainly, there is ample evidence for Egyptian influence on archaic Greek art, from the kouros to vase painting.5 Greek mercenaries served in Psammetichus I’s armies in the seventh century b.c.e., and, even earlier, a trading colony that housed a population of Greek merchants was founded at Naucratis.6 Greeks had settled in other parts of Egypt as well, and our information about these 3. Plato’s construction of Egypt, especially in terms of writing and the stability of its institutions, has been treated recently by a number of scholars: see, for example, M. Detienne, L’écriture d’ Orphée (Paris, 1989) 167–86; D. Steiner, The Tyrant’s Writ: Myths and Images of Writing in Ancient Greece (Princeton, 1994); Vasunia 2001, 136–76. 4. Lloyd (1976, 13–60) provides an extensive discussion of the categories of exchange. For travelers, see Y. Volokhine, “Les déplacements pieux en Égypte pharonique,” in Frankfurter 1998, 83. 5. Braun (1982) provides a very useful survey with a number of illustrations. See also J. Boardman, The Greeks Overseas (London, 1980) 111–45, with illustrations. 6. On the site of Naucratis, see W. D. E. Coulson and A. Leonard, Jr., eds., Ancient Naukratis: Excavations at a Greek Emporium in Egypt, vols. 1–2.1, American Schools of Oriental Research (Cambridge, Mass., 1997).

Conceptualizing Egypt

23

pre-Ptolemaic populations continues to grow. For example, in 575 b.c.e. a petition written in Demotic mentions a local official named Ariston, who prima facie would have been bilingual. Also, a typically Egyptian form of dedicatory art, the block statue, which was found in Priene in Turkey, commemorates one Pedon, the son of Amphinoos, who claims to have served Psammetichus I.7 These circumstances suggest a certain amount of mobility among the military and administrative classes that would have created opportunities for cross-cultural exchange. In Egypt itself, from at least the fifth century the so-called Hellenomemphites were identifiable as an assimilated Greek population resident in Memphis.8 Herodotus explicitly mentions at least one group of Greco-Egyptians, the Chemmitae of Upper Egypt.9 Several other regions like Buto in the Delta must have had similarly intermixed populations.10 A visual example of assimilation is provided by the tomb of Siamun from the Siwah oasis dating from the late Saite period. A painting within the tomb features a seated man in an Egyptian pose and in Egyptian costume, but with a Greek hairstyle and beard. Facing him is a child wearing a chlamys and looking no different from any Attic representation of a Greek boy.11 Whether or not Greeks in Egypt assimilated, the population in some areas even in Herodotus’s day was large enough to constitute a visible economic group. Herodotus remarks, for example, that Egyptians did not eat the heads of sacrificial animals, but when they could, sold them to the local Greek traders (2.39.1–2). Sustained expressions of interest in Egypt culture began to appear in Greek literature as early as the Ionian logographer Hecataeus of Miletus, an interest that is familiar to us in the fifth century from Herodotus’s Histories and probably reached its peak in the fourth with writers like Eudoxus of Cnidus (who actually lived among Egyptian priests), Plato, and Isocrates. Two general trends shape their writings—

7. On the former, see El Hussein Omar M. Zaghloul, Frühdemotische Urkunden aus Hermupolis, Bulletin of the Center for Papyrological Studies 2 (Cairo, 1985) 23–31. On the latter, see O. Masson and J. Yoyotte, “Une inscription ionienne mentionnant Psammétique Ier,” Epigraphica Anatolica 11 (1988) 171–79. I am indebted to Stanley Burstein for these references. 8. Thompson 1988, 83–84, 95–97; Borgeaud and Volokhine 2000, 65–69. 9. There are two Egyptian towns known to the Greeks as Chemmis, both of which I discuss in this chapter. One is this city of Achmim in Upper Egypt (Herodotus 2.91); the other is in the Delta (Herodotus 2.156). 10. See, for example, D. Redford, “Notes on the History of Ancient Buto,” Bulletin of the Egyptological Seminar 5 (1983) 67–101; Lloyd 1976, 114–20. 11. A. Fakhry, The Egyptian Deserts: Siwa Oasis (Cairo, 1944) 132–39; Braun 1982, 48, with illustration; and Koenen 1983, 144–45.

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Conceptualizing Egypt

the question of priority or who came first, the Egyptians or the Greeks, and matters of polity or good government, where Egyptian state organization and particularly its forms of kingship are contrasted, either positively or negatively, with a Greek, usually democratic, practice. Greek writing on origins in general tended to organize the various cultures of the Mediterranean world into tidy lines of descent from the heroes of Greek saga. That is to say, the family trees of various figures of Greek mythology—the Inachids, the Argonauts, Heracles—were pressed into the service of constructing the history of prehistoric Hellenic and non-Hellenic peoples.12 With respect to Egypt, Hecataeus of Miletus may have begun the process: for him Egyptian cultural attainments were the result of an infusion of Greek talent via the descendants of Argive Io. He also may have begun the process of identifying Greek divinities with Egyptian. In contrast, Herodotus asserted the temporal priority of Egyptian over Greek culture, particularly in matters of religion, claiming that Greeks derived certain religious practices, like the worship of Dionysus, from Egypt. Even so, Herodotus’s Egypt appears as a readily detachable ethnographic study eccentric to the historical trajectory of his work as a whole.13 Plato, too, connects the two cultures in hereditary terms, but reverses the direction of the influence14—it is the Saite priest in the Timaeus who informs Greeks about their ancestors—and he firmly maintained that it was the Athenian Greeks themselves in their now unremembered past who established the Egyptian city of Sais. In other words, the ostensibly older Egyptian culture was always already Greek. Whatever we may think of these claims, and allowing for the ever-present irony of the Platonic text, it is significant that virtually all of the Greek writers whom we know to have dealt with Egypt in some detail found it necessary to express their own cultural achievements as having a familial and generational relationship with Egypt, either as originary or dependent. At the very least this signals the importance of Egypt in Greek minds and allows the possibility (though it does not guarantee) that Greeks knew more about the specific details of Egyptian culture than they are normally credited with. At any rate,

12. E. Bickerman, “Origines Gentium,” CP 47 (1952) 65–82; see also the summary in Lloyd 1975, 120–40. Hall (1996, 40–41) notes that one of the most common characteristics of ethnic groups is a “common myth of descent.” 13. Burstein 1996, 591–97; Vasunia 2001, 112–21. 14. Herodotus’s chronology was reversed also in Eudoxus of Cnidus, who was a contemporary of Plato. For the extent to which Plato may have been influenced by Eudoxus’s work, see Froidefond 1971, 316, 318–22.

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the habit of mind that connects Greece and Egypt does not disappear in Alexandrian writing; rather, as we should expect, it is intensified. And not only in the prose writers. Among our extant sources, the generational relationship of the two cultures lies at the heart of the Greek myth of the family of Danaus, which is best known from Aeschylus’s extant plays, The Suppliants and Prometheus Bound, but seems to have figured earlier in Hesiod’s now fragmentary Catalogue of Women. The kernel of the tale is a double migration: the Greek Io wanders to Egypt where she becomes the ancestor of Libya, Danaus, Aegyptus, and Phoenix. In a later generation Danaus, with his daughters, returns to Argos. To this a third migration could sometimes be attached: Danaus’s great granddaughter was Danae, who, like her ancester Io, attracted Zeus’s attention and, impregnated by a shower of gold, bore Perseus, who eventually returned to Egypt and Ethiopia. The Danaid family tree is conveniently multivalent; it may function as an organizational template for the origins of various Mediterranean peoples—Io’s descendants are the eponymous ancestors of Libya, Greece, Egypt, and Phoenicia. Greek Io may be figured as the ancestor of Egypt, and in turn, her descendant Danaus may be figured as Egyptian as he returns to Greece with his daughters. However it plays out, the family genealogy was inextricably intertwined with Egypt.15 Io herself, who is both woman and cow, bears a sufficiently strong resemblance to Hathor and Isis that she was easily identified with both as early as Herodotus, if not before.16 For Hesiod Danaus or his daughters are the bringers of water to a thirsty Argos (dAcion 6rgo%).17 There is more than one version of how the water is discovered, but the fact that immigrants from Egypt are responsible for alleviating the aridity of a dry land looks like a pointed attempt to link Argive irrigation with the behavior of the Nile. Somewhat further along in the family tree, Herodotus claims that one of Danaus’s descendants, Perseus, was wor15. Vasunia 2001, 33–58. 16. 2.41.2: “For the image of Isis is female with cow’s horns, as indeed the Greeks represent Io (kata per ·Ellhne% tbn \IoPn grafoysi.” According to the Suda, Callimachus wrote a poem called The Arrival of Io, and in Epigrammata 57.1 Pf. ( = AP 6.150) he identifies Isis as the daughter of Inachus ( = Io). 17. Fr. 128 M-W. The drought resulted from an earlier contretemps between Hera and Poseidon. When Inachus, the son of Ocean and Tethys, the earliest king of Argos and its eponymous river, decided in favor of Hera as the local deity, Poseidon retaliated by drying up the rivers in the region (Apollodorus 2.1.4). A common epithet of Argos seems to have been “thirsty,” presumably an allusion to this story; cf. Davies, EGF Thebais, fr. 1 = Kinkel fr. 1. Herodotus (2.171) increases Greek indebtedness to this line by claiming that it was the Danaids who brought the Eleusinian mysteries from Egypt.

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shipped as a god in Chemmis (ancient Achmim) in Upper Egypt. Details in Herodotus suggest that the local Greek population, his source for the information, identified Perseus with Horus because of his winged sandals,18 but they also cited his lineage as the reason for his importance there. The locals say that Danaus and Lyncaeus, who were Chemmites, sailed away to Greece. . . . [Subsequently, Perseus] came to Egypt . . . in order to bring the Gorgon head from Libya, and they say he came among them and acknowledged all his kinsmen . . . and he knew the name of Chemmis, having learned it from his mother. He arrived in Egypt, and he instructed them to celebrate games in his honor. (2.91.5–6)

The identification of Perseus with Horus may have depended on more than a sandal—Zeus’s impregnation of Danae by miraculous means, when she was locked within her chamber, as well as his impregnation of Io by a touch, are conceptual doublets, and virtually identical to the myth of divine insemination that leads to the birth of the pharaoh. Given the similarities, upon hearing about the Egyptian theogamy Greeks could easily have mistaken it for or assimilated it to their own stories about Io or Danae. This anecdote also reveals the dynamics of cultural interaction that seem to have taken place already by the fifth century. The Chemmitae celebrate games, which are presumably a Greek cultural practice, but the games are held in honor of what must be an Egyptian god.19 Greeks have Hellenized this god by assimilating him on the basis of iconography and previous association with Egypt to Perseus, a heroic figure from their own mythic past. Significantly, the Danaid legend as early as Aeschylus is bound up with questions of kingship. The arrogant and tyrannical behavior of the sons of Aegyptus is consistently opposed to the democratic monarchy of Pelasgus, who is, not coincidentally, an autochthonous king of Argos.20 This association of Egypt with tyranny begins with the figure of Busiris, who serves as a foil for Heracles in Greek art from at least the sixth century. Busiris, like Thoas in Euripides’ Iphigenia in Tauris,

18. See below for the contending between Horus and Seth, and pages 166–67 on footprints of the gods. 19. So Lloyd 1969, 84–89; 1976, 367–69. 20. Both Vasunia (2001, 40–58) and F. I. Zeitlin (“The Politics of Eros in the Danaid Trilogy of Aeschylus,” in Playing the Other: Gender and Society in Classical Greek Literature [Chicago, 1996] 123–71) focus on the ways in which Egypt is figured within codes of sexuality and gender. A number of scholars have also identified persistent associations of Egypt with death in these plays; see Vasunia, pp. 64–69 and notes.

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was reputed to have sacrificed all foreigners who came into his territory to Zeus and, according to some versions, even ate his victims.21 By the later fifth century, Busiris seems both in vase painting and in Athenian comedy to have occupied a secure place as the stereotypical barbarian tyrant, a king who behaves as an autocrat and whose modus vivendi is antithetical to the benign rule of democratic Athens.22 Herodotus expresses doubt about this construction of Busiris, claiming that it is unlikely that Egyptians sacrificed humans when they had prohibitions against most types of animal sacrifice (2.45), and Isocrates continues this recuperative trend. But the tragedians, whose writings are more self-consciously democratic than the philosophers’, continue to imagine Egypt as a land of despotism. Not surprisingly, these portrayals disappear along with the democracy. Both Herodotus and Euripides include portraits of Egyptian kings in their treatment of Helen. The figure of Helen herself, like the Danaid line, provided an early mythological link between Greece and Egypt. In the Iliad she was constructed entirely within Greek terms, as the unfaithful wife of Menelaus who is seduced by Paris and carried off to Troy, thus precipitating the war. From later testimony we learn that Stesichorus wrote another version of Helen’s story.23 It was not Helen herself, but her image that the gods dispatched to Troy, while the “real” Helen remained in Egypt, at the court of the Egyptian king, Proteus, to be later recovered by her husband on his return from the Trojan War.24 Herodotus devotes several chapters (2.112–20) of analysis to her story. In his version Thonis is a pious Egyptian priest of the Delta who refuses to allow Alexander (Paris), when blown off course for Troy, to continue his voyage with another man’s wife. He insists on bringing Alexander to Proteus for judgment. Proteus immediately proclaims that (however tempting) it is impious to kill strangers, so he dispatches Alexander unharmed to Troy but retains Helen until her husband can claim her. Proteus’s behavior is the reverse of contemporary portraits of barbarian kings like Busiris. Proteus’s virtue is underscored by the act assigned to Menelaus: after he has reclaimed Helen, finding himself unable to leave Egypt and sail home because of contrary winds, it is Menelaus who behaves like the barbarian by sacrificing two native children. Elsewhere, 21. Lloyd 1976, 212–13; Vasunia 2001, 185–93; see also the discussion below. 22. Vasunia 2001, 207–15. 23. PMG frr. 192–93. 24. Herodotus 2.116. He detects evidence of Egyptian Helen in Homer’s Iliad (6.289–92) and in the Odyssey (4.227–30 and 4.351–92).

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Herodotus does not find unalloyed virtue in Egyptian kings but in his narrative of their succession rather evenly distributes praise and blame. That he should figure Proteus and Menelaus as opposites conforms to his overall strategy of presenting the two cultures as diametrically opposed, while the pious actions of Thonis and Proteus suit his notions about the deeply religious nature of Egyptian society. Helen’s sojourn in Egypt at the time of the (for Greeks) historically significant Trojan War reinforces the marginality of Egypt to the broader course of Greek history. Proteus seemingly cannot affect the war’s outcome by, for example, simply sending informants to the Greeks at Troy; he remains the passive guardian of the woman until another unplanned action can bring Menelaus to reclaim her. In contrast to Herodotus, Euripides’ late fifth-century tragedy on Helen dramatized Egyptian kingship in quite negative terms: the two Egyptian characters in the play, Theonoe and Theoclymenos, are children of Proteus. The prophetess, Theonoe, acts out an excess of religious devotion, while her brother, Theoclymenos, is a typical barbarian despot, who refuses to honor Helen’s faithfulness to her marriage vows and would kill any strangers who were luckless enough to happen upon his shore. Egypt is constructed as a world of darkness and death, a Hades-like place of mythological stasis for Helen, who cannot effect or participate in events until once again the Greeks are blown off course and her husband arrives. Egypt is an accidental encounter, a location that Greeks do not plan to visit, and one filled with the unpredictable or the paradoxical—a Helen who did not go to Troy. Within Euripides’ play, Helen exemplifies the kind of mythological bi- or ambi-valence that often seems to occur in Hellenistic poetry. Her story is legible in two entirely different ways: she is a good wife (in Egypt) or a bad wife (in Troy); she is a figure whose self-indulgence was “a scourge to ships, men, and cities” (as in Aeschylus’s Agamemnon 689–90) or a concerned mother and daughter and wife who would sacrifice herself for the good of her kin (in Euripides). Staging his play at the moment when Menelaus returns from Troy to find the wife over whom he fought a war for ten years resident in Egypt, Euripides’ Helen necessarily sets up a context where truths compete. At the heart of the play is the question, Which Helen is real—the Egyptian or the Greek? In the fourth century, both Isocrates and Plato turn to Egypt in their discussions of good government. In his Busiris Isocrates apparently inverts what had become the popular view of Busiris and sets out deliberately to refashion or sanitize his reputation. Isocrates specifically makes

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him a nomothete, or lawgiver, and connects his accomplishments with those of Solon in Athens or Lycurgus in Sparta. Busiris, we are told, moved his Egyptians out of the realm of nature and into culture by giving them laws, religious institutions, and an exemplary political system.25 A similar valuation of Egyptian political systems was also a component of Plato’s writing. When discussing the proper musical education in the Laws (656c–657b), the Athenian stranger praises the Egyptians as a society that had, with respect to its musical arts, determined what constituted the “natural correctness” (657b) and had guaranteed its unity and stability through law in order to prevent degenerating innovation. Plato’s discussion of Egyptian canonicity in the Laws was not restricted to music in its application. He goes on to claim that “democracy” in musical arts is but a precursor to “refusal to be subject to rulers,” “to be submissive to parents and elders,” and finally to “disregard of the city’s laws” (700a–701b). This same argument occurs at Republic 424b2–c6 in a slightly altered form. There Socrates says: To sum up then: those in charge of the city must cling to this idea and stay above all alert to keep corruption from creeping in and to prevent innovation in gymnastics and in poetry, contrary to the established order. . . . Ways of song are nowhere disturbed without disturbing the most fundamental ways of the state.

The solution that Socrates proposes to guarantee order and stability is of course a rigid class system and the philosopher-king, whose own proper understanding of the nature of reality both assures his own moral behavior and makes him the fittest to govern. This same class system appears again in the Timaeus, where it is now that of Egyptian Sais. While the connection between Egypt and kingship is admittedly less direct in Plato than in Isocrates’ Busiris, both would seem to be writing against an earlier identification of Egyptian political forms with tyranny and barbarism and investing them with positive qualities. A remark of Isocrates suggests that he and Plato may not be alone in doing so—at Busiris 17–18 he comments: “With respect to political institutions in general, the Egyptians have been so successful that philosophers who undertake to discuss such topics and who are highly esteemed pre-

25. Busiris 13–23. See Froidefond 1971, 259–63. In this regard, Sparta and the Spartan form of government is often viewed as utopian and linked with Egypt. See, for example, Isocrates Busiris 18. On the Egyptian ancestry of the Dorians via Perseus, see Herodotus 6.53–55.

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fer the Egyptian form of government.”26 In other words, Egyptian political forms appear to have become a literary and philosophical topos in the fifth and fourth centuries, which was capable of being enlisted on either side in the debate about democratic political institutions.27 The writings of Eudoxus of Cnidus are mostly lost to us, so his position and influence in the Greek construction of Egypt is not entirely clear, though it was likely to have been substantial.28 From his brief biography Diogenes Laertius gives us a glimpse of the circumstances in which philosophy, kingship, and Egypt tended to converge within the Greek imagination, if not in reality (8.86–91). Eudoxus was said to have been a geometer, astronomer, doctor, and legislator. He may have been a pupil of Plato, or connected at least tangentially with the Academy. He was said to have traveled to Egypt accompanied by the doctor Chrysippus and armed with letters of introduction from Agesilaus, the Spartan king, to Nectanebo, the last native pharaoh of Egypt. Whether or not the story was literally true, the details convey a world in which intellectual exchange between Greece and Egypt was not only possible, but facilitated by the ruling classes themselves. Eudoxus’s particular interests—geometry, astronomy, and medicine—are subjects in which the Egyptians supposedly excelled, hence they serve both as a motive for the journey, and subsequently as a confirmation of his learning, after it had been suitably enhanced by an Egyptian sojourn.29 The second book of Eudoxus’s geographical work, the Periodos Ges, was entirely devoted to Egypt, and from its fragments it seems that he reversed Herodotus’s chronological priority of Egypt over Greece. Further, he seems to have been the first to treat Egyptian priests as the repository of

26. The Busiris, which is usually dated to the early fourth century b.c.e., was likely to have been written before the Republic, and the philosophers to whom Isocrates refers are a matter of speculation. See Froidefond 1971, 237–48; N. Livingstone, A Commentary on Isocrates’ Busiris (Leiden, 2001) 44–56; and Vasunia 2001, 226–36. A. Cameron points out that Plato’s views might have circulated well before the Republic appeared, however (“Crantor and Posidonius on Atlantis,” CQ 33 [1983] 83 n. 10). 27. For more detailed discussions, see Vasunia 2001, 216–47; A. Nightingale, “Plato’s Law Code in Context: Rule by Written Laws in Athens and Magnesia,” CQ 49 (1999) 100–23. 28. The fragments are collected by Lasserre 1966 with extensive commentary. See also F. Gisinger, Die Erdbeschreibung des Eudoxos von Knidos (Berlin, 1920), particularly 35–58, for discussion of the Egyptian material. 29. For his influence on Plato and Aristotle, see Froidefond 1971, 316, 318–22. Eudoxus’s work on astronomy was used by Aratus in his Phaenomena, and two papyrus treatises based on his work and written in the early Ptolemaic period have been found in Egypt. Eudoxus is also cited by Callimachus in the grammatical fragments (frr. 407, 410 Pf.).

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philosophical and religious wisdom instead of merely sources for the historical data that they are in Herodotus.30 It is clear from the way in which Plutarch cites him, for example, that he recounted a version of the myth of Osiris, Isis, and Horus but framed it in terms of Greek natural philosophy.31 Plato may have taken his cue from Eudoxus in his own location of wisdom within the Saite priesthood. In addition to his other accomplishments, Diogenes Laertius claims that Eudoxus became famous as a legislator throughout Greece, writing on the divine, the cosmos, and heavenly phenomena. Diogenes even provides some evidence that Eudoxus knew Egyptian: Eratosthenes . . . says that he [Eudoxus] composed (synuePnai) the “Dialogues of the Dogs” (Kynpn dialogoi); others say that Egyptians wrote them in their own language and that he translated and published them for the Greeks (meuermhneAsanta DkdoPnai toP% ·Ellhsi). (8.89)32

In other words, Eudoxus is represented as not having restricted his attainment of alien wisdom to the natural sciences, but to have then disseminated what he learned from the priests in the form of laws for Greeks. Again, whatever evaluation we choose to make of the accuracy of this biography, its significance is the trajectory of Eudoxus’s career as an instrument for the translation of Egyptian wisdom and knowledge into Greek political realities. This particular cluster—theogonic or cosmogonic speculation combined with an interest in human conduct—marks virtually all Greek philosophical inquiry from Democritus to Aristotle. Nor is this inquiry confined to the theoretical. Isocrates, Plato, and Aristotle were all actively involved in offering advice—usually in the form of philosophical education—to real kings.33 Since in the fourth century Plato and Aristotle were scarcely exempt from intruding their ideas into contemporary politics, it should hardly be surprising to find subsequent practitioners of the philosophical arts attempting to propose models for Alexander’s successors. After Alexander, philosophers turned even

30. Burstein 1996, 594. 31. Frr. 290–97 F. Lasserre. 32. Fr. 374 Lasserre ( = Diogenes Laertius 8.89). Gwyn Griffiths (“A Translation from the Egyptian by Eudoxus,” CQ 59 [1965] 75–78) thinks this may have been a text of Egyptian wisdom literature. Lasserre (1966, 268–69) discusses the other suggestions that have been made. 33. Isocrates’ Evagoras and Nicocles are instructions on how to govern for the young king of Cypriot Salamis; Plato’s Letter 7 defends his participation in Sicilian politics; and Aristotle was the tutor of Alexander.

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greater attention to the question of kingship, and the court of every epigonid housed occasional or permanent guests who had written or were writing on the question. From one perspective court philosophers could be considered royal propagandists, but from another their intellectual activities were the logical extension of inquiries begun in earlier periods, though with perhaps more immediate consequence. The Hellenistic monarchies were not simply the old Macedonian monarchies in new locations, they were in many respects new experiments in kingship, combining as they did Greek cultural models with elements inherited from their non-Greek resident populations. As the editors of a recent study describe it, every king and dynasty had to legitimate their claim to monarchy according to specific local needs and traditions. Therefore, no single formula existed for a Hellenistic king. Basileus had different connotations in the various parts of the ancient world and the clever ruler knew how to accommodate himself to the specific traditions of his territory.34

Hellenistic monarchies must have provided fertile ground for uniting theoretical and practical ideas about kingship, while the habits of native monarchies lent themselves as evidence to confirm Greek practice or to justify innovation.

hecataeus, euhemerus, and dionysius scytobrachion Since Egyptian kingship had already figured in Greek theorizing about forms of government, it should not be surprising to find writings on this subject within Alexandria itself. For our purposes the most important of them was by Hecataeus of Abdera, who worked within the Skeptic intellectual tradition of Democritus.35 Hecataeus wrote an Aegyptiaca at the court of Soter that was probably completed by 305 b.c.e.36 In

34. Bilde 1994, 11. 35. Hecataeus’s fragments are to be found in FGrH 264. Virtually all that remains comes from book 1 of Diodorus Siculus, though Hecataeus is explicitly mentioned as a source only once (1.47–49). As a consequence, there has been considerable debate about how much of the book is directly or indirectly dependent on Hecataeus. In general, I am following Jacoby and Murray. Spoerri (1959) takes a very skeptical position, which has failed to convince the majority; while A. Burton in her commentary (1972) follows him, she accepts more material than he as genuinely Hecataean. 36. For a discussion of the chronology see Jacoby, RE 7, 2750–69; Murray 1970; Fraser 1972, 1: 496–505; and M. Stern and O. Murray, “Hecataeus of Abdera and Theophrastus on Jews and Egyptians,” JEA 59 (1973) 159–68. For a general appraisal of

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previous Greek historical writing Egypt was always marginal to the central dynamic of world history, which figured the Greeks as successors to the Persians. Egypt was of interest for its antiquity and its marvels, and for its conspicuous religiosity (as in Herodotus). In contrast, Hecataeus made Egypt a central player in world history by claiming that in fact civilization began in Egypt and was subsequently transmitted to Greece and other parts of North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean through the familiar instruments of military campaigns and colonization. The Danaid line is pressed into service here. We are told that Egyptian Danaus “settled what is nearly the oldest of Greek cities, Argos”; that Colchis was founded by Egyptian colonists (oDkAsai tinb% crmhuAnta% par› Caytpn = Egyptians); and that Athenians are colonists from Sais.37 Hecataeus also made Egypt the educator of Greece by virtue of the sojourns of various Greek wise men.38 Thus, his writing falls within the earlier discourse on the nature of polities that Plato and Isocrates engage in, though it differs in important ways: while the basic patterns of thought are obviously Greek, his work is Egyptocentric. The origins of culture and idealized kingship are now presented as authentically Egyptian and connected in a causal way: it is the behavior of the originary king and lawgiver, Osiris, who acts as a model for earthly Egyptian kings, who are held accountable for their unjust acts: First of all, their kings led a life that was not at all like others who have monarchic powers and the opportunities to do anything that they want with impunity, but everything is regulated by rules of law, not only business affairs, but also daily behavior and diet. With respect to their attendants, for example, none of them was a purchased or a house-born slave, but all were sons of the most distinguished priests, at least twenty years old, best educated of their fellow countrymen, in order that the king, provided with body servants and attendants both day and night, might indulge in no bad behavior, since no ruler proceeds very far in wickedness if he does not have those who will pander to his desires. The hours of day and night were arranged, in accordance with which it was absolutely stipulated that the king do what was enjoined upon him, not what he de-

Hecataeus, see Burstein 1992, 45–49; 1996, 597–600. J. Dillery (“Hecataeus of Abdera: Hyperboreans, Egypt, and the Interpretatio Graeca,” Historia 47.3 [1998] 255–75) argues that even Hecataeus’s work “On the Hyperboreans” was modeled on Egypt. 37. Diodorus Siculus 1.28.2–4 ( = FGrH 264 F 25). See Vasunia 2001, 229–36. 38. Burstein 1996, 599. Vasunia (2001, 230–32) points out that Hecataeus reversed Plato’s chronology, making Athens a colony of Egypt (Diodorus Siculus 1.28 = FGrH 264 T25).

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Conceptualizing Egypt cided for himself. At dawn, for example, it was necessary for him upon waking to take up first of all the letters that had been sent from every direction, so that he might be able to execute and accomplish everything properly, knowing exactly each thing that was accomplished in the kingdom. . . . It was not possible [for Egyptian kings] to make a legal decision or transact any business randomly, nor to punish anyone hubristically or in anger or for some other unjust reason, but only in accordance with the laws prescribed for each offence. . . . Because the kings employed such just behavior with their subjects, . . . during most of the time for which kings are recorded in memory, they maintained a functioning polity, and spent their lives most happily, as long as the system of laws that was previously described remained in force, and in addition they conquered more countries and acquired the greatest wealth and adorned their lands with unsurpassed works and monuments and their cities with costly dedications of every sort.39

This insistence that the ruler govern in accordance with strict laws to which he himself was held accountable, as well as the connection between just royal behavior and the prosperity of Egypt, is not presented as a Platonic ideal, but a historicized reality. This link commences with Osiris, the divine first king, who with his wife, Isis, introduces civilized behavior, the arts and learning, as well as agriculture. Hecataeus also presents his readers with a historical model of the ideal king—Sesoösis. Herodotus treats this same king at considerable length in book 2, where he appears as a world conqueror whose deeds rival the Persian dynasts, Darius and Cyrus. Sesoösis (or Sesostris, as Herodotus calls him) was not one pharaoh but a composite of several.40 The name is probably a Hellenized form of the Egyptian Senwosret, a throne-name born by several pharaohs of the Twelfth Dynasty, but there are obvious accretions from the empire-building style of Ramesses II as well.41 Scholars tend to date the initial synthesis of the Sesostris legend to the time of the Persian conquest of Egypt, although it continued to be em39. Diodorus Siculus 1.70.1–4, 1.71.1 and 4–5 = FGrH 264 F25.70.1–4, 71.1, 71.4–5. 40. See the discussion in Burton 1972, 163–82; and A. B. Lloyd, “Nationalist Propaganda in Ptolemaic Egypt,” Historia 31 (1982) 37–40. Sesostris (as Sesonchosis) also finds his way into Greek romance; see Martin Braun, History and Romance in GraecoOriental Literature (Oxford, 1938) 13–25; and Stephens and Winkler 1995, 246–66. Two Demotic fragments may indicate the presence of this pharaoh or at least an Egyptian narrative context from which the Sesostris legend grew: M. Chauvaeu, “Montouhotep et les Babyloniens,” BIFAO 91 (1991) 147–53, and an unpublished text in Copenhagen about Amenemhet and his son Sesostris leading a campaign against Arabia. (I am indebted to R. Jasnow for these references.) 41. J. Baines, “Kingship, Definition of Culture, and Legitimation,” in O’Connor and Silverman 1995, 22.

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bellished well into the Hellenistic period. Like so much else about Egypt that comes to us through a Greek filter, the figure of a world conqueror was probably the production of the native Egyptian priesthoods, who sought deliberately to promote stories about several historical kingships in order to create native rivals to the Persian Darius (in the fifth century) and the Greek Alexander (in the fourth), both of whom conquered and hence humiliated Egypt. Certainly such a figure would have been congenial to Greek writers and in the process of moving into a Greek narrative would have taken on attributes that brought him even closer to models already familiar in Greek minds. Sesoösis, therefore, already had the profile of a world-conquering dynast, which Hecataeus both strengthened by conforming his activities to those of Alexander42 and modified by providing him with an idealized princely education: When Sesoösis was born his father did something befitting a great man and a king. To the boys born on the same day from the whole of Egypt he assigned nurses and custodians and prescribed the same training and education for them all, thinking that those who had been reared most closely and had experienced the same common freedoms would be the most loyal and the best comrades in war. Providing for their every need he trained the boys in continual exercises and hardships. No one of them was allowed to eat before he first ran 180 stades. Therefore upon reaching manhood they were all athletes with robust bodies and in character suited for leadership and endurance by virtue of their training in the most excellent pursuits.43

Moreover, the reason for this distinctive education was a dream in which Hephaestus (that is, Egyptian Ptah) appeared to Sesoösis’s father and prophesied that his son was destined to rule the world.44 In this, Hecataeus seems to be adapting a peculiar feature of Egyptian kingship, a prophecy about the greatness of a new king, which was packaged— after the fact—as a dream at the time of conception, birth, or ascension to the throne.45 Sesoösis lived up to his prenatal billing, going on to conquer more of the known world than anyone except Alexander,46 but returned to rule wisely and well. On the domestic front, he granted amnesty, enriched the temples, improved the irrigation system, and

42. See, for example, F. Pfister, “Studien zur Alexanderroman,” Würzburger Jahrbücher für die Altertumswissenschaft 1 (1946) 56–58. 43. Diodorus Siculus 1.53.2–4 = FGrH 264 F25.53.2–4. 44. Diodorus Siculus 1.53.9 = FGrH 264 F25.53.9. 45. See below and chapter 3. 46. Strabo 15.686; Arrian Indica 5.4.

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built great monuments. His foreign policy included building a navy, strengthening Egypt’s defenses against her enemies, treating the conquered with respect, and settling his veterans on plots of land. In the majority of these undertakings as well as in the peculiar mode of education with a cohort of his peers, Sesoösis is following known Egyptian practice, but a practice, at least in matters of policy, that both Alexander and the Ptolemies continue, for example, granting amnesty, enriching the temples, and settling veterans.47 To so construct the past as an exemplum for the future was very much in keeping with an Egyptian ideal of kingship in which each king—insofar as he was a good king—acted not only to replicate but to exceed the distinguished behavior and moral excellence of his precedessors. Thus, by employing the past as a model for current and future rulers, Hecataeus may have been following an Egyptian habit of mind rather than writing as an apologist for or in defense of kingship as an institution.48 By drawing upon an historicized Egypt as a model for ethical and moral behavior, Hecataeus elevates Egyptian culture to equal (or superior) status with Greek and sets it up as a paradigm for aspiring Greek kings. If, in this latter aspect, he hoped to influence the Ptolemies, his paradigms ran counter to prevailing Greek notions of the powers and behavioral limits of kings. As O. Murray points out, the paradoxical fact that Egyptian kingship does not conform to the usual Greek definition of basileAa as dnypeAuyno% drxa, is made to produce an example for the Greek debate, whether the king is or should be above or below the laws. Here is one point where Hecataeus may have intended his description to be directly relevant to contemporary Ptolemaic Egypt.49

Hecataeus’s work cannot be dismissed as marginal: it had considerable impact, not only on contemporary Greek philosophical writers like Theophrastus and Crantor and other Hellenistic historians like Berossus and Megasthenes, but within the circle of the Alexandrian poets themselves.50 One writer who seems to have been especially influenced by Hecataeus was his contemporary, Euhemerus of Messene, who was famous (or infamous) for generating an alternative explanation to 47. Koenen 1993, 66–69; and W. Clarysse, “The Ptolemaic Apomoira,” Studia Hellenistica 34 (1995) 5–37, for a discussion of revenues for Egyptian temples. 48. So, for example, Fraser 1972, 1: 497: “As seems very likely, he intended these various elements to serve a further purpose, the glorification of Ptolemy and his kingdom.” See also F. Walbank, CAH, 2d ed., 7.1: 77–78. 49. Murray 1972, 159. 50. Murray 1972, 168; and see below, especially chapter 3.

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the myths dealing with the origins of the Olympian deities. Indeed, M. L. West describes his work as “the last true Greek theogony, though it is without gods.”51 Euhemerus wrote the Sacred Register (Hiera Anagraphe) in which he recorded a series of journeys undertaken, so he claims, in the service of the Macedonian king Cassander, who died in 298 b.c.e. Since this reference to Cassander would have had a decidedly limited value as a fiction after his lifetime, it very likely reflects Euhemerus’s historical situation, and thus allows him to be located within the last quarter of the fourth century b.c.e. Like Hecataeus’s, his work, in the main, has survived in epitome in Diodorus (5. 41–47, 6.1–5) and in Lactantius’s quotations and paraphrases of Ennius, who translated the Sacred Register into Latin.52 A consistent picture of Euhemerus’s work emerges from their summaries. In the Sacred Register Euhemerus claims to have traveled to Panchaea, a myrrh-producing island in the Indian Ocean, which is modeled to some extent on Plato’s imaginary state, but also on contemporary Egypt. The physical layout of temples, in particular, is strikingly Egyptian, as is its central waterway, the “Water of the Sun,” with its magnificent stone quays. The class structure—priests, farmers, military (and herdsmen)—could be intended to recall Egypt, and more or less the same breakdown can be found in Plato as well as Isocrates’ Busiris. The denizens of Panchaea worshipped Zeus as the founder of their culture, but this Zeus was a human being who came from Crete and acceded to divine honors only after his death. In Panchaea he erected a golden stele in the temple, on which he recorded the deeds of his grandfather, Uranus, himself, Apollo, Artemis, and Hermes, which were said to have been written in a Cretan language but using Egyptian hieroglyphics. In Euhemerus, the gods were divided into ouranioi, the primal or elemental gods, and epigeioi, originally human beings who were subsequently divinized for their distinguished services to mankind. This division into elemental deities and divinized human rulers is certainly Egyptian and can be found also in Hecataeus of Abdera, but it is by no means unfamilar in earlier Greek thought,53 though Euhemerus carries his model to extremes by counting the Olympian gods in the ranks of the epigeioi. His Zeus behaves as typical 51. West 1966, 13. 52. His fragments have most recently been collected by Winiarczyk (1991) with extensive bibliography. 53. For the relationship of Euhemerus to Hecataeus and Democritus, see Cole 1990, 153–63. See also Rusten’s discussion of this division in relationship to Prodicus (1982, 102–6).

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culture hero—one might compare Minos of Plato’s Laws, Isocrates’ Busiris, or Hecataeus’s Osiris—who eventually returns to Crete, where he dies. His tomb is located there according to Lactantius: Then Jupiter [sc. Zeus], after he had gone around the earth five times and had divided authority among all his friends and relatives and bequeathed laws and customs to men and provided corn and devised many other goods, having attained immortal glory and renown, left everlasting monuments to his friends. When he was sunk in old age he departed from life in Crete and went to the gods, and the Curetes, his sons, cared for him and adorned him (in death) and his tomb is said to be in Crete in the town of Cnossus . . . and on his tomb is inscribed in ancient Greek letters ZAN KRONOU; that is in Latin: Jupiter, son of Saturn.54

It is difficult to gauge the tone of Euhemerus’s work,55 but the fact that kingship and divinity coalesce in his writing suggests that allusion to or appropriation of Euhemerus by subsequent writers like Callimachus could not have been value-neutral. Callimachus’s reference to Euhemerus in the opening of the first Iambus,56 while ostensibly negative, does employ the Aristophanic language used of Socrates in the Clouds, thus conveying an impression, at least implicitly, of a writer both serious and ironic.57 Peter Fraser supposes that Euhemerus’s rationalization of Olympian religion—reducing gods to culture heros, who were apotheosized at death and worshipped in cult because of their services to mankind—provided a rationale for the introduction of ruler cult by the Ptolemies.58 Ruler cult, however, is a more complex phenomenon, with antecedents in the treatment of Alexander on the Greek side as well as clear models of divinized kingship in the newly conquered countries like Babylon and Egypt, and Euhemerus is more likely to have been rationalizing Greek myth in the context of such na-

54. 1.11.44–48 = fr. 69A Winiarczyk. 55. It may have been intended ironically or as a parody, or, more likely, it was a utopian fantasy with serious philosophical intent; in the event, it seems often to have been misunderstood. Strabo, for example, stigmatizes his work as “falsehoods,” placing him in the same category as Pytheas of Marseilles and Antiphanes of Berga and remarking: “But we pardon them just as we do conjurors, since falsehoods are their stock-in-trade” (2.3.5 = C 102). 56. Fr. 191 Pf. Tarn (1933, 165) thinks this refers not to Euhemerus himself but to his statue. This is unlikely, however, given the context of the allusion within the Iambi; see the discussion below, in chapter 2. 57. C. Meillier, Callimaque et son temps: Recherches sur la carrière et la condition d’un écrivain à l’époque des primiers Lagides (Lille, 1979) 202–4. 58. 1972, 1: 294

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tive traditions than to have been constructing new organizational templates for the Ptolemies. If his work was seriously conceived to address the phenomenon of divinized kingship, its intent was more likely to have been, as was Hecataeus’s work, to identify proper kingly behavior and to construct models of beneficence to which current rulers should aspire if they wished to achieve “divinity.” An intriguing figure to add to this mix is the mythographer Dionysius of Miletus (so-called Scytobrachion), whose work may now be located with some security in the period between 270 and 220 b.c.e. An allusion to the cult of the Theoi adelphoi, which must have been established about 270, provides a terminus post quem, while the later terminus depends upon a papyrus fragment of Dionysius’s work datable from handwriting and from the context of the find to about 250–220 b.c.e.59 What, if any, relationship Dionysius had with the Alexandrian court is moot,60 but it is clear that he was a rationalizing mythographer in the tradition of Euhemerus, and his subject matter—Dionysus, the Amazons (both of whom he located in Libya), and the Argonauts—in topic and treatment bears close resemblance to that of the Hellenistic prose writers we have been discussing. Whether these mythological subjects fell into one, two, or three separate works is not important for our purposes, but rather the way in which Dionysius conceptualizes his material.61 Hence for convenience I have retained Rusten’s division into an Argonautica and Libyan Stories. In his Argonautica,62 Dionysius consistently rationalizes the inherited tales of myth and magic. For example, the fire-breathing bulls (tauroi) become Taurian guards (Tauroi), and the golden fleece is the skin of an

59. Jeffrey Rusten has reedited the fragments, which come, in the main, from Diodorus, the scholia to Apollonius of Rhodes, and three papyri. See Rusten 1982, 65–76, for a discussion of Dionysius’s ethnic, and pp. 85–92 for the dating. For the establishment of the cult, see Koenen 1993, 51 n. 61. 60. Scytobrachion has been generally regarded as an Alexandrian on the basis of Suetonius De grammaticis 7 ( = T3 Rusten); however, Rusten questions the reliability of this remark on other grounds. See also L. Lehnus (“I due Dionisii [PSI 1219 fr. 1, 3–4],” ZPE 97 [1993] 25–28), who would identify one of the two Dionysii whom the Florentine scholiast on the Aetia claims are Telchines with Scytobrachion. 61. Rusten (1982, 76–84) argues for two—an Argonautica and a separate work that included the Amazons and Dionysus. Jacoby (see commentary on FGrH 32 F4) thought that there was only one work and regarded the Dionysus and Amazons material as digressions within the framework of the Argonautica. 62. Diodorus Siculus 4.40–55; and Rusten 1982, 144–68, F14–F38.

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earlier Greek visitor named Krios ( = Ram) who is flayed and subsequently gilded.63 Medea is not a witch but a practicing herbalist who comes to be deeply troubled by her father Aeetes’ barbarian ways and helps the Argonauts because she finds them kindred spirits in their unfailingly civilized behavior. A pervasive theme of Dionysius’s story is that of the civilized Greeks confronting barbarian cruelty: for example, Diodorus describes the area around Colchis as follows: “The Pontus, because at that time it was settled by barbarian and wholly uncivilized (dgrAvn) tribes, was called Axenos (6zenon), because the natives were used to killing strangers who sailed to their shores” (Diodorus Siculus 4.40.4 = F14 Rusten). In contrast, the Argonauts are led by Heracles, with Jason apparently playing a supporting role, and Heracles’ behavior, particularly at the end of the expedition, is quite obviously meant to recall the world-conquering exploits of Alexander: “Admired for his courage and military skills he gathered a very powerful army and visited the whole world (ppsan . . . tbn oDkoymAnhn) acting as benefactor (eDergetoPnta) to the race of men” (Diodorus Siculus 4.53.7 = F37 Rusten). The Argonauts apparently return to Iolcus by their original route (that is, without the detour to Libya, as in Apollonius), and the story continues to include the subsequent death of Pelias at Medea’s hands, though she participates in the plan with some reluctance and achieves Pelias’s destruction not through magic but by playing upon his gullibility and that of his daughters. The exact relationship of Dionysius’s tale to that of Apollonius is uncertain, but it is difficult to imagine that two completely independent renderings of this story were written within (probably) the first half of the third century.64 Whatever the actual date of Dionysius’s work, the overt Greek versus barbarian cast of his tale matches well with Apollonius’s narrative, and the fact that Dionysius conformed much of the behavior of the Argonauts to Alexander should serve notice to us that such elements were part of the Greek mental landscape and, even vestigially, are likely to have been present also in Apollonius.65 63. See Rusten 1982, 94, and addendum, p. 182, where he remarks that “the fate of Krios was perhaps influenced by the story of Pherecydes (Plut. Pelop. 21)—or Epimenides according to Diog. Laert. 1.115 = FGrHist 595 (Sosibius) F15—whose skin was preserved by the Spartans.” This is not unlikely, since Epimenides’ peculiar brand of Orphic writings seems to have been popular in Alexandria. Epimenides is “quoted” in Callimachus Hymn to Zeus 7–8. 64. D. Nelis (“Iphias: Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 1.311–16,” CQ 41 [1991] 96–105) argues the priority of Dionysius for this scene in Apollonius (p. 104). 65. See Green 1997, 59–62, for a discussion of Scytobrachion and Apollonius.

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Dionysius’s treatment of the Amazons and Dionysus repeats the pattern of world conquest and benefaction that we have already seen. There are apparently three layers to his Libyan material as it is epitomized in Diodorus: the Amazons, whose home is located near Lake Tritonis in Libya, first conquer the local regions and then move out to conquer the known world. Upon reaching Egypt, the Amazon queen signs a treaty with Horus, the son of Isis, who is king of that land, before pressing on to further conquests. The Amazons push as far north as the Taurus region, where they are ultimately held in check, then return to Libya after founding many cities (Diodorus Siculus 3.52–55). (Thus their path of conquest is similar to that of Sesoösis.) When their power wanes, that of their neighbors, the Atlantioi, begins (Diodorus Siculus 3.56–57 = F6 Rusten). These people are ruled by Uranus, who like his counterpart in Euhemerus is both culture hero and lawgiver who receives divine honors after his death. Uranus and his wife, Titaea, produce the Titans, as well as two daughters, Rhea and Basileia. Basileia subsequently marries one of her brothers, Hyperion, and bears two children, Helios (sun) and Selene (moon). However, Hyperion and Helios are killed by their jealous kin, and in grief the brother-loving (philadelphos) Selene commits suicide. Both—as their names indicate— subsequently become celestial phenomena. Basileia in her grief lapses into madness and wanders throughout the world; she is subsequently worshipped as Cybele or the Great Mother. Rhea, meanwhile, has married Ammon, a local Libyan king, who was less than faithful. In an incident reiminiscent of Apollo’s encounter with the nymph Cyrene,66 Ammon was smitten by a beautiful girl named Amaltheia, had intercourse with her, and fathered a marvelous child, Dionysus. Ammon hid the child away from Rhea’s jealousy in Nysa, which is located on an island in Lake Tritonis, and has him raised by Aristaeus, his daughter, Nysa, and Athena, who was herself born by the waters of the river Triton. Rhea subsequently leaves Ammon to marry her brother, Cronus, who had received the eastern parts of Libya as his kingdom on the death of his father Uranus. Their brothers, the Titans, are stirred up by Rhea to take vengeance on Dionysus. They attack Ammon, who flees to Crete, then mount an attack against Nysa. At this point Dionysus gathers an army that includes the Amazons, Sileni (who are a local people), and Athena. He successfully fights off the Titans and then goes on, like

66. See, for example, Pindar Pythian 9.

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Alexander, to conquer the known world, moving from Egypt to India. Like the exemplary kings in Hecataeus, Dionysus is a model of clemency: he educates Rhea and Cronus’s son, Zeus, and makes him king of Egypt, “while still a youth,”67 then establishes the shrine at the Siwah oasis in honor of his own father, Ammon. Dionysius’s rationalizing impulse thus served to link Ammon and Horus to traditional Greek myths and Olympian genealogy. In doing so he incorporates North Africa into the old mythology, where Dionysus and the Amazons now find themselves at home in contrast to their former haunts of Thrace and South Russia. While the story is rather convoluted, its Euhemeristic flavor is obvious, and its ideals of kingship conform closely to Hecataean norms. But Dionysius goes even further than these earlier writers. He refigures members of the divine pantheon—Zeus, Dionysus—as originally human and elevated to divinity because they functioned as culture heroes. For example, because Zeus punished the wicked and supported the masses (eDergesAan dB tpn gxlvn) men “named him Ze¯ n because he was the reason for men living well” (dnomasupnai mBn Zpna dib tb dokePn toP kalp% zpn aGtion genAsuai toP% dnurapoisin).68 Further, he alters this earlier pattern by modeling the activities of his divinities (Dionysus, Zeus) and mythological subjects (Amazons) rather transparently on the human figure of Alexander.69 Then, to address the double tradition about Zeus he simply postulates two. One was the son of Rhea and Cronus; the other, as in Euhemerus, was a Cretan king who engenders the Curetes; it is this Zeus who is buried in the famous “tomb of Zeus” on Crete. In addition, there are obvious points of contact with Egyptian mythology. Rusten in his discussion of the Libyan stories suggests that the names of Basileia’s children, Helios and Selene, might be equated with Horus and Isis, who may “already have been identified with the Ptolemaic royal pair in the third century B.C.”70 The deaths of Hyperion and Helios as well as the conflict between Dionysus and the Titans bear a close resemblance to the Egyptian succession myth—to the sibling murder (Seth killing Osiris) and later the contest 67. paPda tbn clikAan gnta (Diodorus Siculus 3.3.4 = F12 Rusten). The “youth” of the Egyptian king derived from his identification with Horus-in-Chemmis; see below and chapter 4. 68. Diodorus Siculus 3.61. 5–6 = F13 Rusten. 69. While it is possible, even likely, that Alexander served as a model in part for Euhemerus’s tale, this is by no means as obvious from Diodorus’s epitome as it is for Scytobrachion. See Fraser 1972, 2: 455 n. 834. 70. 1982, 109; and see D. B. Thompson, Ptolemaic Oinochoai (Oxford, 1973) 65.

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between uncle and nephew (Seth-Horus) for legitimate succession. Dionysus making the youthful Zeus king of Egypt parallels the succession of the young Horus from Osiris. The prominence of the two sisters, Rhea and Basileia, recalls the closeness of Isis and her sister, Nephthys, both of whom rear the Horus child. Finally, the overlap between material in Scytobrachion and two major Alexandrian poets—Callimachus and Apollonius—cannot be fortuitous. Both Scytobrachion and Apollonius treat the adventures of the Argonauts, and much that appears in Scytobrachion is to be found also in Apollonius’s fourth book, where his Argonauts traverse the Libyan desert. While Callimachus probably produced his hymn before Scytobrachion, the hiding and rearing of Dionysus on the island of Nysa coincides is some detail with Callimachus’s Hymn to Zeus. All of this indicates rather more intimacy between themes found in the poets and prose writers than is usually supposed. It also suggests that attitudes towards the traditional Olympic pantheon might differ considerably from those of the archaic and classical periods. These connections will be explored in subsequent chapters. To summarize: so far we have been looking at the ways in which Greeks from the fifth to the early third century b.c.e. chose to write about Egypt, and have identified two trends—genealogical and political. Egypt could be figured either as ancestor or descendant of Greece, and usually the dynamic of this genealogy was connected to views about the nature of kingship, with Egypt—as constructed by Greeks—serving as either a good or a bad model. We have also seen how increasingly in the fourth century the ideal king was characterized in the philosophers as a lawgiver and bearer of civilization, a trend that culminated in early Hellenistic writers like Hecataeus and Euhemerus who tended to blur or collapse the distinction between divine and human behavior, since in their writing they portray gods as well as human kings similarly acting out this idealized kingship. While certainly these latter writers were Greek and writing for Greek audiences, and their language of benefaction (eDergesAa) is inherited from Greek tradition, the views of kingship they articulate consciously or otherwise come very close to the pharaonic ideal as manifested in Egyptian writing and art. Moreover, they often appear familiar with and even seem to appropriate elements from Egyptian myth, which they recast as or assimilate to Greek. At this point, therefore, I would like to reverse perspectives to sketch out the fundamental elements of this pharaonic ideal and to consider the

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ways in which they would have been available to Greeks within Alexandria, either directly or filtered through earlier Greek writing.

what herodotus knew What earlier Greek observers like Herodotus and Hecataeus of Abdera reported seeing or hearing in Egypt can serve as a useful touchstone to understand how Greeks in the third century would have been able to absorb their new Egyptian environment. Herodotus was able to observe a variety of monuments firsthand, and, significantly for the themes in this book, he saw a number of religious events. He was able to get information from local priests, especially those in Heliopolis, and to find informants among contemporary Greeks and non-Egyptians resident in Egypt and elsewhere. As we will see, these four broad categories correspond to sources Greeks actually resident in the country could have availed themselves of without necessarily having access to Egyptian writing.71 1. Herodotus seems to have visited the Pyramids and the complex in the Fayum, which he identifies as the Labyrinth, as well as a number of temples. To judge from the graffiti, Egyptian monuments were popular sights for Greeks—whether independent travelers like Herodotus or soldiers stationed in the country—for several centuries before as well as throughout the period of Ptolemaic rule. While the inner courts of temple precincts would have been off-limits, André Bernand’s map indicating the distribution of Greek inscriptions at Philae is good evidence that other parts of the temple complex—perimeter walls, forecourts, portions of adjunct temples like mammisi, statuary lining the dromos— would have been accessible to the public.72 Hecataeus of Abdera gives us an account of what he saw when visiting the Ramesseum in Thebes: he lists reliefs of the king attacking an enemy city, portraits of captives, the king performing sacrifices, and celebrating a victory, the king offering to the gods.73 These were standards of the iconographic repertory, and similar reliefs could be seen at numerous locations throughout the

71. Herodotus also depended on previous Greek writing on various subjects, but preHerodotean material by the third century had either been absorbed by later writers or would have been marginal to an experience of the country itself. 72. A. Bernand, Les inscriptions grecques de Philae, vol. 1, Époque ptolémaïque (Paris, 1969) plates on pp. 240–46. 73. Diodorus Siculus 1.47.1–6 = F˚GrH 264 F25.47.1–6; and Burstein 1992, 45–49.

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country. There was widespread building of Egyptian temples under the early Ptolemies that inserted the Ptolemies into this same iconographic framework. Although the Delta temples, which would have been closest to Alexandria, are now almost completely destroyed, Philae in southern Egypt suggests the kind of complex that visitors might have seen.74 At Philae, the Ptolemies, beginning with Philadelphus, were portrayed in cult worship along with members of the Egyptian pantheon. Here, the cult of the Theoi adelphoi was introduced by Euergetes, and it was thoroughly Egyptian in its visual representation. Add to this the temples of Isis and of Sarapis in Alexandria as well as the Egyptian monuments that appear to have been moved into the city from elsewhere,75 with their consistent representation of kingship, and it is obvious that Greeks resident in Alexandria and the Delta would have had abundant opportunities to become familiar with these ideas. 2. Although Egyptian daily temple rituals were conducted within the sanctuary of the temple and only priests could be present, Egyptians celebrated a wide variety of religious festivals throughout the year that took place in public spaces. Many texts have survived that provide evidence of the foundational or cosmogonic myths that underpin the temple’s ritual purpose and activities. The most important of these is from the temple at Edfu, a late Hellenistic construction whose wall friezes contain a detailed dramatic reenactment of the significant events in the mythology of Horus, the divine king of Egypt, events that were crucial in the rituals of kingship.76 Although later than the period we are considering, this material is scarcely innovative, and it allows us a glimpse of the complex annual ceremonials that a Ptolemy would be expected to participate in either personally or (more likely) through a priestly surrogate.77 The other important celebrations of kingship, the festivals of Opet and of the Valley,78 as well as New Year festivals and the Heb Sed, or Jubilee, continued under the Ptolemies. In addition to the enactment of the rituals of divine kingship, a large number of festivals staged

74. Arnold (1999, 320–21) lists the monuments built or added to by the first three Ptolemies. For a map showing the locations of Ptolemaic temples built in the Delta, see p. 20. 75. Arnold 1999, 157. 76. R. B. Finnestad, Image of the World and Symbol of the Creator: On the Cosmological and Iconological Values of the Temple of Edfu (Wiesbaden, 1985). 77. Finnestad 1997, 185–237. 78. Finnestad 1997, 220–26. UPZ II, p. 85 (second century b.c.e.) mentions an annual festival of Amun in Thebes.

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events in the story of Osiris, Isis, and Horus, and dramatic texts like the “Lamentations of Isis and Nephthys”79 give an indication of what such performances may have been like.80 The festivals that Herodotus reports seeing in Bubastis, Sais, and Papremis would have been of this latter type.81 3. Herodotus mentions the priests as a source of information. Obviously any such exchange would have involved either bilingual priests or translators, both of whose populations must have increased considerably by the third century in Alexandria, because of the demand for a bilingual bureaucracy. The Egyptian priest Manetho, who was active in the court of Ptolemy I, is the best example of such exchange within Alexandrian circles. Although better known for his history of Egypt, in which he corrected Herodotus’s chronology of the pharaohs,82 Manetho also wrote several books on Egyptian religion. From the few remaining testimonia to these works it is clear that he provided accounts of Isis, Osiris, Apis, Serapis, and other Egyptian gods, including Seth, whom he apparently called by his Greek name, Typhon. Like Hecataeus of Abdera, Manetho appears to have made an attempt to align various elements of Egyptian religious thought with a Greek natural philosophy; for example, one fragment links the divine pantheon with the principles of air, earth, fire, and water (fr. 83 Waddell). He also seems to have provided an account of animal worship. Although nothing survives, it is impossible to imagine that Manetho could have written such a work without discussing the central rituals of kingship, such as those that appear at Edfu or in the Philae hymns, and their attendant mythologies, which are outlined below. Manetho’s writings seem very close in concept to those of Hecataeus of Abdera and Euhemerus;83 hence they are likely to reflect the ethos of the court. For the literate circles of Alexandria, Manetho’s writings on religion in tandem with those of Hecataeus of Abdera would have provided a baseline for understanding, serving as a Baedeker for Greeks who either wished or needed to explore their new symbolic environment. 79. Lichtheim 1980, 116–24. 80. Dunand 1973, 207–44. 81. 2.59–63; and see Lloyd 1976, 267–87. F. Perpillou-Thomas (Fêtes d’ Égypte ptolémaïque et romaine d’après la documentation papyrologique grecque, Studia Hellenistica 31 [Louvain, 1993]) provides an up-to-date list of known festivals. 82. Burstein 1992; Dillery 1999. 83. Burstein 1996, 600. See Fraser 1972, 1: 521, for other writers about Egypt.

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4. Much of what Herodotus actually learned in Egypt must have come from Greek populations already resident there. Greek merchants and soldiers had been located in Egypt for centuries, and over time many, like the Hellenomemphites, had adopted Egyptian customs. Herodotus mentions one such group, the Chemmitae, and his source of information on the Buto temple of Artemis is equally likely to have been an assimilated Greek population. Wherever these groups were found, they would have served as sources of general information for newcomers. For example, Herodotus provides a lengthy and more or less accurate description of the process of mummification (2.86–90). The practice was characteristically Egyptian, and although he gives no source for his information, it must have come from the Egyptians themselves, either priests or local residents. Hecataeus of Abdera included similar information on burial practice but added further details about a judgment of kings,84 much of which is repeated in a later section on the judgment of the individual after death.85 Diodorus mentions forty-two judges. These are kin of the dead person who catalogue his just behavior during life and call out to the gods of the underworld to receive the dead as justified. Although presented as occurring in real time, the events described are known today only from the Book of the Dead, which was a collection of magic spells designed to facilitate the entrance of the dead person into the afterlife. Each individual who could afford it could have a standard or customized copy, often lavishly illustrated, of one or more series of spells prepared to be placed in the tomb.86 The period we are concerned with, the fourth and third centuries b.c.e., not only saw a revival in the use of these funerary papyri, but also considerable standardization in the sequence of incidents and incantations that occurred.87 Thus the hundreds of such texts that have survived allow scholars to reconstruct the operative mythologies about the afterlife, its geography, and its relationship to the Egyptian pantheon. The vignette recounted in Diodorus may have confused the textual event with real life, but it is also possible that it reflects elements of 84. Diodorus Siculus 1.72 = FGrH 264 F25.72. 85. Diodorus Siculus 1.91–92 = FGrH 264 F25.91–92. 86. Greeks were certainly familiar with this practice; there has even been speculation that the occasional burial of Greek papyri along with the dead owner was intended to replicate Egyptian behavior. See E. G. Turner, Greek Papyri: An Introduction, 2d ed. (Oxford, 1980) 76–77. The most famous such text is Timotheus’s Persae, which had been buried in a fourth-century Hellenomemphite tomb. 87. Quirke 1992, 150–70; Hornung 1999, 13–22.

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actual practice. The most important feature of the Book of the Dead— spell 125, the so-called negative confession—was a comprehensive denial of any wrongdoing, recited at the moment of judgment before Osiris. Elements of it, however, were employed as part of yearly temple rituals for the living king88 and also occurred in priestly oaths, some of which now exist in both Demotic and Greek.89 At the very least, the passages in Diodorus indicate familiarity with these very common tomb writings (however they may have been conveyed to our Greek sources). It is possible to ask to what extent Greeks would have been able to read Egyptian, but the question may not be particularly meaningful in the ancient context. Few Egyptians read hieroglyphics, and even fewer hieratic, but that did not mean that Egyptians were ignorant of their own myths or of the ideologies of kingship. Moreover, those trained in the reading of Egyptian texts (like Manetho) were precisely the Egyptians that Greeks connected with the Ptolemaic court were most likely to have encountered. Although the majority of Alexandrian Greeks would not have been able to read Egyptian texts, it is certainly possible that some did learn to read the stylized and formulaic hieroglyphics found on royal monuments.90 These texts are visually arresting, and the glyphs themselves stimulate the hermeneutic impulse, as Herodotus’s interest in the stele supposedly erected by Sesostris in Syria demonstrates. It is unclear what Herodotus actually saw, but he was interested enough to learn from some source that on it Sesostris had used signs for female genitalia to humiliate the conquered enemy.91 Whether or not female genitalia occur on the inscription Herodotus mentions, it seems he may have been correct about the general principle. On the Semna stele of Sesostris III, “the phallus is mutilated . . . as a mark of dishonor char-

88. See Zˇ abkar 1988, 125–26, on the negative confession (Spell 125). See also Merkelbach 1993, 71–84; he makes the intriguing suggestion that Diodorus is correctly recording events and that elements that appear in funerary books may have been staged as part of the funeral process. 89. See J. F. Quack, “Das Buch vom Tempel und verwandte Texte—Ein Vorbericht,” Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 2.1 (2000) 1–20. (I am grateful to L. Koenen for providing me with a copy of this article.) 90. Both Eudoxus of Cnidus and Hecataeus offer the possibility of Greeks who read some form of Egyptian. 91. Herodotus 2.102 and 106. C. Obsomer (Les campagnes de Sésostris dans Hérodote [Brussels, 1989] 115–24) discusses the traditional identification of the stele with that of Nahr el-Kelb and suggests a better candidate, a Ramessid stele from BethChan. See 68–79 on the Semna stele of Sesostris III.

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acterizing the Nubians.”92 One final point: neither ancient Greek nor Egyptian culture was as dependent on literacy as we are today. Even the literate employed scribes who read aloud to them and to whom they would dictate their words. In this milieu, the most likely scenario for the transmission of Egyptian written texts to interested Greeks was via a trained, bilingual scribe who would be able to read a text in Egyptian script and translate it into Greek. Even without the ability to read texts, the consistency of visual representation from region to region as well as from one medium to another combined with the considerable degree of overlap between the written and visual guaranteed that a core of Egyptian symbolic material must have been familiar to anyone living in the country, just as it is for the tourist who visits Egypt today.

the ideology of egyptian kingship A difficulty for any discussion about the interrelatedness of Greek and Egyptian myths within the Alexandrian context stems from the lack of systematization of belief systems by the Egyptians themselves. Although a series of prose narratives (anachronistically labeled “short stories”) survive, and provide the first extended narratives of Egyptian myths,93 the Egyptians had no tradition of mythography. There are no handbooks or epitomes to which we can turn, no rationalizing historians and philosophers. Rather, the situation is analogous to that of the archaic or classical period in Greece, where a variety of sources—poems, plays, ceramics, friezes—allow us to reconstruct the story of Heracles or Jason and the Argonauts, but always with inconsistencies and caveats. Commentators remind us that Homer, for example, reflects a “different” tradition about the daughter of Agamemnon (Iphianassa) than Euripides.94 Even within the same time period, there are alternatives: in Euripides’ lost version of an Oedipus play, for example, Oedipus continues to rule Thebes after the discovery of his incestuous mar-

92. T. Hare, ReMembering Osiris: Number, Gender, and the Word in Ancient Egyptian Representational Systems (Stanford, 1999) 109–10; and Vasunia 2001, 143. 93. These include “The Contendings of Horus and Seth,” “The Memphite Theology,” and “The Story of Tefnut,” or “The Myth of the Sun’s Eye.” Much Demotic material is still unpublished. For the Inaros and Petubastis cycles of stories, see J. Tait’s discussion in Greek Fiction: The Greek Novel in Context, ed. J. Morgan and R. Stoneman (London, 1994) 203–22. 94. See, for example, Leaf and Bayfield’s commentary on Iliad 9.145.

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riage, rather than wandering off blind and in exile.95 The case with Egyptian religious stories is similar. Disparate sources have allowed scholars to reconstruct major themes and motifs, and there is ample evidence in Egypt’s long written tradition for continuity as well as change within these traditions, but no one source provides a clear, chronological account of any particular tale.96 Moreover, as Egyptologists are now beginning to realize, Egyptian thinking about the divine does not follow the logical constraints we are familiar with from Greek systemizations of Egyptian myths. Gods and their functions resist neat description and containment: the process is one of pleonasm and combination, of both . . . and rather than either . . . or. Erik Hornung decribes it thus: The order established by the creator god is characterized by “two things” and thus by differentiation or diversity; this idea is incorporated in the teaching that Egypt is the “Two Lands” and in a mass of other pairs that can form a totality only if taken together. The greatest totality conceivable is “the existent and the non-existent,” and in these dualistic terms the divine is evidently both one and many. Oppositions such as these are real, but the pairs do not cancel each other out; they complement each other. A given x can be both a and nota. . . . The Egyptian script, in which individual signs had always been able to be both picture and letter, illustrates how ancient this principle is. I should emphasize that they “were able to be,” because we should not exclude the possibility that the Egyptians had special cases in which a particular given x was always a. For the Egyptians two times two is always four, never anything else. But the sky is a number of things—cow, baldachin, water, woman—it is the goddess Nut and the goddess Hathor, and in syncretism a deity a is at the same time another, not-a.97

For example, the sun-god, Re, can be linked in cult and iconography with the ram-headed patron deity of Thebes, Amon, and designated Amon-re; simultaneously he can be linked with the crocodile god of the Fayum, Sobek, to produce Sobk-re, or even with the lord of the underworld, Osiris. Ptah, the patron god of Memphis, identified by the Greeks with Hephaestus, may in turn be conflated with either Amon or Re or both. Isis, the wife and sister of Osiris and mother of Horus, is frequently joined with Hathor, the mother of Re, both of whom can be

95. C. Austin, Euripidis Fragmenta Nova (Berlin, 1968) 59–65 = POxy. 27.2455. 96. Manetho may have attempted to do this, since he was writing for a Greek audience; so Blum 1991, 103. 97. Hornung 1982, 240–41. Hornung’s formulation of this view of Egyptian thinking seems to have gained wide acceptance among Egyptologists. See especially his chapter “The Problem of Logic,” pp. 237–43.

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represented with cow’s horns. Neith, whom the Greeks identify with Athena, is easily assimilated to both Isis and Hathor. While at first glance Horus and his archenemy, Seth, may appear to generate a consistent set of structural oppositions—Horus-Seth, order-chaos, black land (inundation)-red land (desert), water-destructive heat—these do not hold in every case. Occasionally Horus and Seth, who is sometimes his brother, more often his uncle, unite to destroy a common enemy. Or Seth enacts a positive role in place of Horus.98 Cosmogonic writing behaves similarly. The originary moment of creation can be described as an act of divine masturbation or as the product of divine thought and speech—what the creator conceived in his mind he gave substance to by the act of speaking.99 These are not progressive phases in the development of Egyptian thought, as earlier Egyptologists claimed them to be, but formulations of two discrete ways of imagining creation—as a physical act/as an intellectual act—which may be deployed simultaneously in poetry and religious art. If the mythography of the divine has generated a cluster of affective symbols that may be combined—for western readers—in paradoxical and often unpredictable ways, Egyptian iconography surrounding kingship is much more stable. Temples and stelae regularly incorporate a consistent and repetitive series of pharaonic motifs (such as the “smiting of the foe”), motifs that became so familiar that Egyptian decorative artists at all periods incorporate or even parody these elements in other media. Royal representation aimed at symbolic sameness—each pharaoh behaving exactly like his predecessor in the performance of a series of ritualized acts that guaranteed maintainance of the cosmic and social order. The explanation for this phenomenon is to be found in Egyptian thinking about the cosmos and the king’s relationship to it. Hornung recently described the central governing principle of Egyptian life, called maat, as follows: Maat may be interpreted as truth, justice, authenticity, correctness, order, and straightness. It is the norm that should govern all actions, the standard by which all deeds should be measured or judged. . . . The universal sense of the term maat has no precise equivalent in any other language. . . . Contemporary translations have consistently yielded lengthier, more detailed definitions. H. Bonnet, for example, understands maat 98. Some early kings were even identifed by Seth-names rather than Horus-names. See, for example, Kemp 1989, 51–52. For an extended discussion of the role of Seth in Egyptian thought, see Te Velde 1967. 99. See the so-called Memphite Theology; Lichtheim 1973, 54.

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Conceptualizing Egypt as “correctness” in the sense of an immanent lawfulness not only in the natural and social order, but also in the sacred order, since the . . . motif epitomizes all worship activities. . . . R. Anthes writes about maat . . . “Maat holds this small world together and makes it into a constitutive part of world order. She [maat] is the bringing home of the harvest; she is human integrity in thought, word, and deed; she is the loyal leadership of government; she is the prayer and offering of the king to the god. Maat encompasses all creation, human beings, the king, the god; she permeates the economy, the administration, religious services, the law. All flows together in a single point of convergence: the king. He lives in Maat and passes her on, not only to the sun god above, but also to his subjects below.”100

Like Plato’s notion of justice in the Republic, maat is an activity that extends from the individual to the social: only through proper behavior and active engagement of the individual can a harmonious cosmic order be achieved. Although learning how to act in accordance with maat was the responsibility of every Egyptian, whatever his or her class, the king, at the top of the social and political hierarchy, bore the heaviest obligation to maintain maat. Gods too participated in this ordering principle; the universe was constructed according to its guidelines. The opposite of maat or cosmic order was disorder or chaos, and the two never achieved a harmonious balance but continually vied with each other for dominion. Egyptian religious material—both written and pictorial—consists of the mythological exploration of this central theme of cosmic harmony, and fundamental to the system was the role of the king. The Egyptian state at the time of the Ptolemaic takeover was a theocracy, highly elaborated over two millennia, in which the king as intermediary between the divine and human realms was essential to create, maintain, and advance the elements of order over chaos and as an instantiation of one or more of the gods themselves. Moreover, the role of kingship had come to be reified; it was the office itself not the person who occupied it that art and ceremony commemorated. Thus, while any particular pharaoh was certainly recognized as mortal and the product of human procreation by his attendant court and religious advisors, nevertheless in ceremony and civic ideology he would be portrayed as the equal of the gods, a product of divine conception, or, more accurately, as one in a line of human instantiations of a specific

100. Hornung 1992, 136–38.

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divine conception. In earlier dynastic times, the king was identified as the “Son of the Sun, Re,” and continued to mark himself in this way with a specific name, taken at the time of coronation.101 But by the time of the Ptolemies the pharaoh was also identified with Horus, the divine “first” king of Egypt. Over time his identification with both deities, Re and Horus, in fact led to a conceptual trinity in Egyptian mythmaking—Re the god in heaven, Horus the king and the instantiation of the god on earth, and finally Osiris the dead king, now lord of the underworld, or night world.102 The fact that all three of these deities may be thought of as one yet simultaneously existing in discrete places and with differentiated functions points to an essential difference between Greek and Egyptian modes of religious thought. For Greeks, Zeus, Apollo, and Hades are conceptually separate in identity as well as in function, and kinship lines are clearly drawn—Zeus and Hades are brothers; Apollo is the son of Zeus, never Hades, who is always and only his uncle. The identification of the king with the sun-god, Re, as well as with Horus, the first divine king of Egypt, generated a series of myths that proved fundamental within the religious imaginary—creation, royal succession, and the maintainance of maat, that is, the triumph of order over chaos. While each of these three is conceptually distinct and could be treated in this way, more often their iconographic and mythic formulations come to function in all three realms simultaneously, so that the successful passing of rule from one king to another could be seen also as an act of creation or of order triumphing over the threat of chaos or both. The centrality of the pharaoh’s relationship to the divine order was thus often perceived as one of kinship, a kinship that over time came to be elaborated in a myth of the insemination of the mother of the pharaoh by a god, not by his human father. In the New Kingdom the god in question was Amun-Re, the chief deity and patron of the capital city, Thebes, who generally takes on the appearance of the human father (though the visual representations are discrete about the actual coupling). The best-preserved example is that of Hatshepsut, a women who chose to rule not as regent, but as pharaoh in the Eighteenth Dynasty. In the Hathor chapel of her mortuary temple at Deir-el-Bahari,

101. Beckerath 1999, 21–26. 102. The similarity to the Christian concept of Trinity has not gone unnoticed. See, for instance, S. Morenz, Egyptian Religion, trans. Ann Keep (1973; reprint, Ithaca, N.Y., 1992) 255–57.

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Hatshepsut’s mother is shown being led into the presence of the god Amun-Re. He delicately extends to her the ankh or symbol of life so that she conceives Hatshepsut, who is thus divinely sanctioned to rule. Subsequently from the temple wall at Luxor comes a narrative of the encounter of Amun-Re and Mutemwia, when she conceives Amenhotep III, expressed both pictorially and with attendant text. As the god entered her sleeping chamber, she woke on account of the divine fragrance and turned towards His Majesty. He went straightway to her, he was aroused by her. He allowed her to see him in his divine form, after he had come before her, so that she rejoiced at seeing his perfection. His love, it entered her body. [After this Amun declares] Amenhetep, prince of Thebes, is the name of this child which I have placed in your womb.103

This narrative of divine insemination was probably used by every pharaoh, though the majority of extant examples are from monarchs whose accession is irregular.104 For Hatshepsut, obviously, as a woman undertaking the particularly male role of pharaoh, or Amenhotep III, who was the son, not of the pharaoh’s principal wife, but of a concubine, the narrative functioned to identify each as the specially chosen (though perhaps not obvious) new leader. Such birth stories could only have been produced with the support of the priesthoods who controlled the apparatus of ceremonial display. For Egyptians, any new ruler, whether the legitimate son of the previous pharaoh or a usurper who succeeded in maintaining power, would as a matter of course appear as the son of Amun-Re in art and ritual, as the divinely conceived product of a union between Amun and the pharaoh’s actual mother. In the cosmic context in which Egyptian religious and political rituals operate, every pharaoh functioned in symbolic sameness, as a guarantor of the order and stability of the world. On those occasions where a usurper succeeded in retaining power, over time he too would be absorbed into the life of the society and represented with the traditional iconography. If he chose to accept the role and act as pharaoh, as conquerors were in103. Kemp 1989, 198–200, with an excellent illustration. 104. For a discussion of the birth myth, see H. Brunner, Die Geburt des Gottkönigs: Studien zur Überlieferung eines altägyptischen Mythos, Ägyptologische Abhandlungen 10 (Wiesbaden, 1964); and J. Assman, “Die Zeugung des Sohnes: Bild, Erzählung und das Problem des ägyptischen Mythos,” in Funktion und Leistungen des Mythos: Drei altorientalische Beispiele, ed. J. Assman et al., Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 48 (Göttingen, 1982) 13–61. For a recent discussion, see O’Connor and Silverman 1995, 71–73.

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clined to do, he would ultimately become indistinguishable from his predecessors. Barry Kemp describes the process in this way: The merging of the king with the god Amun and all his pageants had the important consequence of drawing a line between politics and myth. The royal succession could go badly wrong, some could even plot to kill the king and replace him with another. . . . But behind visible reality lay an immensely weighty edifice of myth, festival, and grand architectural setting that could absorb the petty vagaries of history and smooth out the irregularities. It guaranteed the continuity of proper rule that was so important an element in the Egyptians’ thinking. In particular it could convert usurpers (or new blood, depending on one’s point of reference) into models of legitimacy and tradition.105

The pharaoh himself, at the time of the Ptolemaic takeover, was linked in cult not only to the sun-god, Re, but to Horus-in-Chemmis (or Horus-the-Child), who is, mythologically speaking, the first king of Egypt, and whose defining act of kingship in mythological time was to unite “the Two Lands,” the term that Egyptians used to designate the north (or Lower Egypt) and the south (or Upper Egypt). Horus also has a dual iconography and conflated mythology. Originally he appears to have been a sky-god and was represented as either a falcon or a winged disk. By the Late Period and especially in the Ptolemaic period, he is merged with a “younger” Horus, the son of Isis and Osiris. One of the few myths that has survived in the form of an extended narrative similar to Greek myth accounts for the struggle between order and chaos in anthropomorphic terms, that is, as a struggle between Horus and Seth. Allusions to this struggle and its cosmic ramifications are as old as the Pyramid Texts of the Old Kingdom, but a Ramessid papyrus provides a series of episodes in which the two wound, mutilate, and trick each other until their rivalry is finally settled by the gods who sit in judgment. The tone often appears to be satirical; there is one homosexual interlude, for example, which might have lost Horus the kingdom, but his mother Isis intervenes to save the day.106 The story of Horus is best known to Greek scholars from Plutarch’s On Isis and Osiris, which was written some five centuries after the period of our attention and has almost certainly been shaped into a coherent (in western terms) narrative by Plutarch and his numerous Greek sources (among whom are

105. Kemp 1989, 208. 106. Gwyn Griffiths 1960, 41–46.

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Hecataeus of Abdera and Eudoxus). The discrete particulars of the tale, however, can be seen in far older Egyptian material, like the “Lamentations of Isis,”107 the friezes in the Edfu temple, or the hymns from the Philae temple, as well as the “mysteries” celebrated at Papremis that Herodotus mentions so discretely (2.59–63). The story is as follows: Isis and Osiris—like Zeus and Hera—were siblings as well as husband and wife. Their brother, Seth, in jealousy, cut up Osiris’s body into several pieces and hid the parts in separate locations from the Delta to Byblos. Isis sailed through these regions and patiently reassembled the body parts, binding them with linen wrappings that produced Osiris’s characteristic mummylike shape. Isis conceived Horus after Osiris’s death by means of Osiris’s reanimated male member, gave birth to Horus in secret, hid him in a papyrus thicket in the area of Chemmis,108 an island in the Delta populated only by poisonous snakes and insects, by means of which Seth bites and nearly kills the infant god. Horus is often represented being nursed by the goddess Hathor in the form of a cow. Details of Isis’s birth often stress her “lamentations” when Horus is attacked, attendant goddesses who protect the newborn, and the loud noises that they make to distract anyone intent on harm. In later versions of the myth, Horus is explicitly the son of Osiris, who recognizes him and prepares him to fight his uncle, Seth, to avenge his father’s death. There are many episodes to the struggle— in one, Seth steals Horus’s eye; in another, Horus hunts and kills Seth, who has turned himself into a hippopotamus, and then makes a pair of sandals from his hide.109 After a number of encounters, Horus is finally recognized as the legitimate heir of his father, and the kingdom is given into his keeping by the Ogdoad, or older cosmic deities. At maturity Horus becomes the first king of Egypt and the avenger of his father.110 We saw in the New Kingdom that a theogamy of the sun-god (as Amun-Re) with the pharaoh’s queen was sometimes represented on temple walls. By the Late Period, this divine birth story was celebrated in separate shrines built within larger temple complexes, called mam107. Lichtheim 1980, 116–24. 108. In some versions Horus is born in Chemmis; in others he is brought there after birth to be hidden. Elements of the story can be traced as far back as the Old Kingdom. See A. H. Gardiner, “Horus the Beh.detite,” JEA 40 (1944) 23–60; Goyon 1988, 29–40, for its prominence in the Ptolemaic period. 109. This incident takes place near Achmim in Upper Egypt and is probably why sandals led the Chemmitae to identify Perseus with Horus. See Lloyd 1976, 368–69; 1969, 79–86. 110. Gwyn Griffiths 1960, 7–10.

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misi. Friezes depicting the marriage of the goddess and the birth of the divine child/pharaoh adorned the temple’s walls, and mystery plays were staged that enacted these events of cosmogonic as well as political significance.111 Birth shrines proliferated in the Ptolemaic period as the focus of a royal cult in which the pharoah (as a young child) was associated with the divine son of a variety of local divinities, though the IsisOsiris-Horus myth was the most prominent. These shrines were built well into the Roman period, during which the emperors asssociated themselves with the divine child. The Ptolemies built mammisi at Dendera, Edfu, and Philae; others were built in the Delta, though they have not survived.112 One such shrine is known to have been erected in the precincts of the Serapeum in Memphis at least by the time of the fourth Ptolemy, if not earlier.113 From the number of private inscriptions dedicated in the mammisi at Philae, it is possible that these temples were open to the general public.114 Even if access was restricted, they remained a prominent feature of the Ptolemaic religious landscape and a central location for the enactment of the rituals of divine kingship. The birth story of Horus was so well-known that both Hecataeus of Miletus and Herodotus record a version of it. A fragment of Hecataeus mentions that “in Buto by the shrine of Leto is an island, Chembis by name, sacred to Apollo, and the island is afloat and sails around and moves upon the water.”115 Herodotus provides more detail: he tells us that Chemmis was a floating island located in a lake near an oracular temple dedicated to Leto. On the island was a temple to Apollo. Herodotus did not himself actually see the island float, but provides what he claims is the native explanation: The Egyptians give this account of how the island came to float: before it began to float Leto, one of the eight primal gods, lived in the city of Buto,

111. See Goyon 1988, 34–36, with a series of illustrations of the divine birth and the nursing of the child by a series of goddesses. The basic studies are Daumas 1958; E. Chassinat, Les mammisi des temples égyptiens (Paris, 1958); and J. Junker and E. Winter, Das Geburtshaus des Tempels der Isis in Phila (Vienna, 1961). See also A. Badawy, “The Architectural Symbolism of the Mammisi-Chapels in Egypt,” C d’E 38 (1963) 78–90. 112. Arnold 1999; see pp. 6–19 for his plans of temple layouts and for the positions of mammisi in relation to the central complex, and p. 20 for a map of Ptolemaic temples built in the Delta. 113. Arnold 1999, 163. 114. See Rutherford 1998, 250–53. 115. FGrH 1.305: Dn BoAtoi% perB tb Cerbn tp% LhtoP% Gsti npso% XAmbi% gnoma, Arb toP \Apallvno%, Gsti dB a npso% metarsAh kaB peripleP kaB kinAetai DpD toP Edato%. Chembis is a more accurate rendering of the Egyptian than Herodotus’s Chemmis, but the spelling Chemmis is used in virtually all the scholarly literature, so I have retained it.

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Conceptualizing Egypt where her oracle now is, and having received Apollo, the son of Osiris, as a sacred trust from Isis, she kept him safe by hiding him on the island that at this point was said to float (Dn tu nPn plvtu legomAnu nasi), when Typhon came there searching everywhere for the son of Osiris. Apollo and Artemis, they say, are the children of Isis and Dionysus, and Leto was their nurse and savior. In Egyptian, Apollo is Horus, Demeter is Isis, Artemis is Bubastis. (2.156)

Equally important as the occurrence of a myth central to pharaonic kingship in Greek material is what it reveals about the process of reception, namely, the ways in which Greek and Egyptian myths were undergoing a degree of interpenetration. Gwyn Griffiths’s commentary on this passage is instructive: he observes that a floating island specifically associated with the concealing of Horus is unknown in extant Egyptian texts and suspects that what Herodotus reports was really the Egyptian story of the birth of Horus-in-Chemmis contaminated with the Greek legend of Apollo born on the island of Delos. He remarks that Ionian Greek settlers of the fifth century in Naucratis and Daphne, which is near the supposed location of the island, were sure to have been familiar with both legends, and in all likelihood they served up this conflated version for Herodotus.116 Indeed, it is possible that the proliferation of Horus temples in the Delta region under the Ptolemies was the direct result of the Ptolemies capitalizing on the fact that Greeks could easily identify this Egyptian legend with one of their own. For Egyptians creation was imagined in terms of the inundating waters of the Nile as they receded each year to reveal hillocks of mud that quickly teemed with life under a tropical sun. The moment when existence differentiated itself from nonexistence was termed the “first time” and was represented as a mound or hill emerging from the watery void. On this hill the creator first manifested himself—an event that could be represented iconographically as a child emerging from an egg or from an opening bud of a lotus flower, or as a bird perched upon the mound—then he created the world as well as the divine pantheon. The place where creation began was given various names—“primeval hill,” “sacred mound,” “place of coming forth,”—and its symbolism was potent and ubiquitous in Egyptian writing as well as in artistic representa116. Gwyn Griffiths (1960, 93–96) is dependent on W. A. Heidel (Hecataeus and the Egyptian Priests in Herodotus, Book II, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Memoirs 18.2 [Boston, 1935] 100); and Lloyd (1988, 139–46) on them both. S. West (“Herodotus’ Portrait of Hecataeus,” JHS 111 [1991] 158 n. 2) expresses doubt at this explanation, though she gives no reasons.

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tion. Every temple was supposedly erected upon a primeval hill,117 and to that end an artificial lake was often included in the precinct to replicate the primeval waters (this is what Herodotus saw in Chemmis). The pyramid was intended to reproduce not only the shape of the primeval hill, but also its ability to rejuvenate.118 The hill was early fetishized as a conical stone, called bn-bn. It was housed in a precinct known as the “Mansion of the Bn-bn” in one of the oldest cities in Egypt, which the Greeks named Heliopolis (“Sun City”) because it was sacred to the sun-god. Via a series of verbal and iconic similarities the bn-bn could be associated with the sun-god: wbn means “to shine,” and the stone emerging from the waters resembled the sun rising on the eastern horizon.119 The sun-god, too, could be portrayed as emerging from an egg that sat upon this hill, or as the bnw-bird (probably a heron) perched upon the bn-bn. It is this bnw-bird that stands behind the Greek story of the phoenix as related by Herodotus.120 He tells us that in rare intervals of five hundred years or so, upon the death of its parent, the phoenix carries its father in a hollowed-out ball of myrrh shaped like an egg to the temple of the Sun in Heliopolis (= the Mansion of the Bn-bn). Again this is revelatory of the process of reception: the bird, the egg, and Heliopolis (or elements from the creation myth) have been combined with the traditional act that precedes succession—the son (the new pharaoh) presiding over the mummification of his father (the dead pharaoh). The birthplace of Horus, the first king of Egypt and the prototype for the pharaoh, was also imagined as the primeval hill, hence Horus too was a type of the creator, and his birth the “first time.” This event could be conveyed by the image of Horus as a child or again by the Horus-falcon within a papyrus swamp, and both of these images are deployed in the birth shrines of the Late Period. In Herodotus the two are merged as bird and son. Just as Horus presides over the burial of his father, Osiris, whom he succeeds, so the Horus-falcon is represented with the ball of myrrh in which his dead father/predecessor has been immured. Moreover, he conveys the dead parent to Heliopolis where the original bn-bn or primeval hill is located. The hill substitutes for both the tomb and 117. See, for example, Shafer 1997, 1–8. 118. See, for instance, Frankfort 1978, 151–54; Lloyd 1976, 318–19. 119. See Kemp 1989, 85–88, for a discussion of the function of wordplay in the creation of religious ideology. 120. 2.73. Hecataeus of Miletus, too, apparently mentioned the phoenix; see FGrH 1 F324. See also Lloyd’s very full discussion of Herodotus 2.73 (1976, 317–23).

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the primeval hill on which rebirth takes place. The powers of resurrection that are often attributed to the phoenix—to rise from his own ashes—stem from this rejuvenative quality of the primeval hill and by association the tomb.121 As we have seen with other sets of representations, for Egyptians the tomb, the bn-bn, and the primeval hill on the one hand and the Horus child, the falcon, and the bnw-bird on the other are not only symbols of but identical with each other. To enter into the symbolic realm of any one part of the set activates all possible meanings. For a Greek, however, the story of the phoenix demonstrates the need to impose a linear narrative to which distinct and separable meanings may be attached. Just as they were linked with creation myths, Re and Horus are also central in another significant cluster of representations—the theme of order versus chaos. In Egyptian iconography the struggle between the two is linked with both the daily cycle of the sun and the original moment of creation. The sun-god, Re, is often represented as sailing through the night world in a celestial boat, where now, the enemy, imagined as a giant serpent, threatens Re’s destruction, and with the loss of the sun, the end of creation or nonexistence would ensue. Various gods sail with the sun to ward off destruction, and solar hymns from the New Kingdom and the Books of the Dead from the Late Period contain ritual spells to be recited to aid Re in defeating his enemy. Daily the sun repeats his struggles, and daily his enemy is defeated by spells, represented iconographically by the serpent bound with ropes or cut into pieces with knives. But, the victory over Apophis [the serpent] is less a manifestation of strength than of law and order, i.e., Maat. . . . The struggle takes on the nature of a judgement that has been enforced, the confrontation between the sun god and the enemy is like an act of jurisdiction. Re travels through the sky “justified.” Apophis therefore not only embodies cosmic opposition to light and movement, but also the principle of evil.122

The serpent then, who is called Apep or Apop (Apophis in Greek), comes to represent chaos, darkness, the absence of light, and nonbeing. While defeated daily by the sun and his retinue, he also renews his threats and must continue to be defeated for the natural, social, and

121. For the identification of the deceased with the bnw-bird, see Book of the Dead, ˇ Spells 8 and 84; and Zabkar 1988, 94, for the identification of the phoenix with Osiris and the pharaoh. 122. Assman 1995, 53.

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moral order to continue to exist and flourish. The relationship of chaos to order, of being to nonbeing, is occasionally represented by the ourobouros or a snake with its tail in its mouth surrounding a small child, the symbol of birth or the newness of creation. From this it is an easy step to the story of Horus the child in Chemmis. When Horus is threatened by poisonous serpents, he either throttles or tramples on the snakes. This event becomes, however, not simply the narrative of a childish act, nor even of the triumph over Seth, who is responsible for the attack of the serpents, but another instantiation of the victory of order over chaos, or being over nonbeing. The oldest and most enduring formula for representing the king’s relationship to maat in graphic art in Egypt is that known as “smiting the foe.” The pharaoh, always larger than his surrounding attendants or the enemy, strides forward, with one hand grasping the enemy by the hair and with a club raised in the other as if to beat him upon the head. The image is first found in the predynastic period on the so-called Narmer Palette and is ubiquitous throughout the dynastic period: pylons in Theban temples depict this event on a large scale, while jewelry makers have even adopted the theme in small scale for royal pectorals. The motif is so quintessentially Egyptian that the Nubian kings borrow it and employ it on their own monuments well into the common era. Within the symbolic realm, the iconography, of course, functions as more than a reminder of the pharaoh’s prowess in war or even the dominance of Egypt over its enemies. It marks rather the pharaoh as the bringer of cosmic order out of chaos. Each individual pharaoh’s triumph over a particular enemy replicates similar ordering acts in the past and prefigures those of the future, and thus the repetitiveness of the iconography throughout history results not from lack of imagination or cultural stasis but is a deliberate attempt to express the belief that each separate event partakes of a cosmic sameness, in a continuing effort to maintain cosmic balance or maat.123 A more explicit variation of this theme portrays the pharaoh accompanied by tidy ranks of Egyptian soldiers while the enemy ranks are represented as broken and fleeing, often trampled under the feet of the striding king. This orderchaos theme, like the smiting of the foe, achieves the status of a cliché in Egyptian art—hence as early as the Eighteenth Dynasty, a golden fan base adapts the motif to a royal ostrich hunt, where the pharaoh now

123. See Ritner’s discussion of symbolic reenactments (1993, 119–42).

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strides forth with his faithful hunting dogs against a chaotic band of ostriches, who subsequently end up as feathers in the fan.124 Greeks were certainly familiar with these standard representations of the pharaoh. In the sixth century a black-figure vase depicting Heracles and Busiris, the Egyptian king who was notorious for sacrificing foreigners on his altars, took advantage of this stock motif and inverted it. On this vase, Heracles attacks the king and his followers in precisely the manner of royal Egyptian depictions of the pharaoh routing the foe.125 To replace the pharaoh with Heracles on this vase appears to be not so much parody, but a desire on the part of the vase painter to appropriate for Heracles the properties of the pharaoh as the bearer of order and civilized community.126 Diodorus, in a passage that is very likely from Hecataeus of Abdera, decodes the Busiris story in the following way: in ancient times red-haired men were sacrificed at the tomb of Osiris, because red was the color associated with Seth/Typhon, who was the enemy of Osiris. Since very few Egyptians are red-haired, most of those sacrificed were foreigners. Greeks misunderstood the circumstances and imagined that Busiris was the king who did the sacrificing, when in fact Busiris was not a person but a place-name meaning “tomb of Osiris.”127 Thus Diodorus (Hecataeus?) understands an event that to Greeks marks barbarian behavior (namely, sacrificing foreigners) as a ritual of conflict between Osiris and Seth, that is, the forces of order and chaos. In this scheme, killing Seth/Typhon surrogates is to be equated with conquering the enemy and restoring order. An earlier passage in Diodorus that has not been regarded as Hecataean also seems to describe the foe-smiting scene: Moreover, the Egyptians tell the tale that in the time of Isis there had been certain multibodied creatures (polysvmatoy%), who were named “Giants” by the Greeks, but . . . by themselves,128 who were displayed in

124. For an illustration, see, for instance, The Treasures of Tutankhamun (New York, 1976) no. 18. 125. See LIMC 3.1, s.v. Bousiris; and 3.2, pls. 10, 11, 19, 23, and esp. 28. See also J.L. Durand and F. Lissarague, “Mourir à l’autel: Remarques sur l’ imagerie du sacrifice humain dans la céramique antique,” Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 1 (1999) 33–106. 126. Heracles may have been depicted in Egyptian-inspired scenes elsewhere; see Jourdain-Annequin 1992, 74, pl. XIVa. In both Herodotus and Hecataeus (Diodorus) he had Egyptian affiliations or analogues. See also the discussion below, chapter 3. 127. Diodorus Siculus 1.88.5 ( = FGrH 264 F25.88.5). Much of this information is also in Manetho (fr. 86 Waddell). 128. F. Vogel conjectured a lacuna in the text where he assumed the Egyptian name for the multiform creatures would have been written. Burton (1972, 110–11) rejects this, arguing that diakosmoymAnoy% teratvdb% corresponds with dnomazomAnoy%. The mean-

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monstrous form (diakosmoymAnoy% teratvdb%) on their temples and were being beaten (typtomAnoy%) by Osiris. Now some say that they were earth-born (ghgeneP%) when the genesis of life from the earth was new, while others say that they were superior by virtue of their physical strength and had accomplished many deeds, and from this circumstance legend described them as many-bodied (polysvmatvn). But it is generally agreed that when they made war against Zeus and Osiris they were all destroyed.129

The phrase “beaten by Osiris” is the key to understanding the passage, as B. G. Gunn saw. In a verbal communication to J. Gwyn Griffiths,130 Gunn suggested that Diodorus was referring to “delineations of the King in a form like Osiris smiting a group of enemies . . . who are so closely packed together as to appear as monstrous multicorpores.” This has the ring of truth about it. On the great pylons of the Ramesseum in Thebes and at Medinet Habu the enemy are superimposed upon each other in such a way that they appear with only one body, but with multiple arms and legs. At Medinet Habu and other later temples, the king wears the white crown of Upper Egypt, which is also worn by the mummiform Osiris and hence may have led to the identification of the king with Osiris. The Greek writer—whether Diodorus or one of his sources—in a sense reads the monument correctly by ignoring its historical particularity and reproducing its underlying meaning, namely, that the act depicted represents the cosmic struggle of Osiris (and/or Horus) against Seth. Whatever the exact nature of these multiform, earth-born creatures, in a process similar to that of Herodotus’s interpretation of the Horus-in-the-Delta myth, Diodorus assimilates the Egyptian motif to a Greek story, and one that occupies an analogous place in Greek art and writing. The defeat of the Giants first appears in a frieze on the temple of Apollo at Delphi131 and was the required subject for the peplos of

ing would then be “named giants by the Greeks, represented as monsters by the Egyptians.” The textual problem does not affect my argument. The point is that for Diodorus or his Greek source there is an equivalence between the Egyptian polysamatoi and Greek “Giants.” See LIMC 4.1.191–93, s.v. Gigantes. Note that the giants are described as “bicorpores” by Naevius (W. Strzelecki, Belli Punici carminis quae supersunt [Leipzig, 1964] fr. 4). 129. Diodorus Siculus 1.26.6. 130. Noted in Gwyn Griffiths 1960, 102. His own suggestion that these might be Sethian creatures in animal form is implausible, since the verb would need to mean “spear” or “trample.” But tAptv does not mean “spear” and rarely means “trample” without further qualification. 131. It is described in Euripides Ion 206–7.

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Athena for the festival of the Panathenaea.132 It became very popular in the Hellenistic period and was a notable element on the Pergamene Altar. The defeat of the Giants, like the defeat of the Amazons, signaled iconographically the civilizing influence of the Greek city-states and their individual or collective defeat of the irrational, uncivilized worlds that preceded them. In myth too, the defeat of the Giants by Zeus and his siblings signaled the coming of the orderly rule of the Ouranids. Thus Greek and Egyptian symbolic realms intersect in this passage of Diodorus, and whether or not it comes originally from Hecataeus or some other Greco-Egyptian source, Diodorus’s reading of the Egyptian monument operates, I believe, in a manner analogous to that of the court poets of the Ptolemies in matching Greek concept to Egyptian within the framework of pharaonic kingship.

the alexander romance So far we have been considering various ways in which the Egyptian motifs of kingship might have been available to Greeks in Egypt and how Greeks assimilated what they saw or heard. At this juncture, however, I would like to consider the ways in which the Egyptian succession myth was explicitly appropriated and how it functioned within a Greek symbolic system in the Alexander Romance. No author’s name survives. The Alexander Romance seems to have been assembled from a variety of narrative sources ranging from historical biography to a cycle of letters allegedly from (among others) Alexander to Olympias and Aristotle, to a series of romantic and marvelous adventures.133 The Greek text has come down to us in several recensions, the earliest of which is now from the third century c.e. The most important and complete of these are known as A and B.134 Given its current low literary status the Alexander Romance might seem to be a frail vehicle on which to base a

132. See Euripides Hecuba 465–74; the scholiast claims ad loc. that the scene was of either Titans or Giants. See E. Pfuhl, De Atheniensium pompis sacris (Berlin, 1900) 6–14. 133. See Merkelbach 1977 for a discussion of the various components of the AR; see pp. 77–83 for a detailed discussion of the Nectanebo episode, including the Egyptian parallels (esp. pp. 79–81). More recently see Fraser (1996, 205 n. 1), who remarks that Merkelbach and Trumpf “expound a comprehensive, though to my mind only partially successful, explanation of the origin of the whole work.” 134. The AR was extremely popular and survives in a number of other languages as well. For a discussion of the stemma, see D. J. A. Ross, Alexander Historiatus (Warburg, 1968).

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serious argument, but it does have one virtue that all scholars acknowledge: it provides us with the earliest surviving literary material about the foundation of the city of Alexandria, material that must come from the generation after Alexander himself.135 For our purposes, it is immaterial whether this Alexandrian story can be attached with any degree of confidence to the work of a particular Alexander historian, like Cleitarchus, or whether it was cobbled together from a variety of Alexandrian sources. What is significant is the curious nature of Alexander’s paternity, found in both A and B versions of the story, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say Alexander’s competing paternities. The Alexander Romance opens with Nectanebo II, the last native king of Egypt. When he learns from his magic arts that there is no hope for further Egyptian resistance to the Persians, he considers discretion (not to mention survival) to be the better part of valor and flees from Egypt via Pelusium to find himself at the court of Philip II of Macedon. There he sets up shop as a magician and astrologer and quickly enjoys the patronage of no less a person than Olympias, Philip’s wife. While Philip is away on campaign, Olympias consults the astrologer about her fears that Philip may be intending to divorce her. Nectanebo, who has taken a fancy to the queen, flatters her by telling her that she is destined to be joined to the great god Ammon who will impregnate her with a son. Nectanebo continues his seduction by telling her that she will dream of having intercourse with the god that very night, and he takes measures to insure that indeed she does so. Then when his prediction is fulfilled, Nectanebo advises her that the god wishes to embrace her in the flesh, as it were, not simply via a dream. Placing himself in a nearby chamber in the palace, he assists the queen in her preparations for the god’s epiphany. (These details come now from the B recension). She should expect, he tells her, to see a snake gliding towards her in her chamber. This is the sign for her to dismiss her servants, climb into her 135. See Fraser 1996, 205–26, particularly pp. 211–13, for the latest analysis of the various components of the AR and their relative dates. For what follows I am using only the oldest material, the Nectanebo story (1–17), the visit to the Siwah oasis (30), and Alexander in Memphis (34). Fraser would date the details of the description of Alexandria to the imperial period (212–14 b.c.e.), but I am interested in the foundation story only in its broadest outlines, and this will have been part of the oldest stratum of the text. See also R. Stoneman’s introduction in The Greek Alexander Romance (London, 1991). He concludes that “the main outlines of the narrative could have been fully formed as early as 50–100 years after Alexander’s death” (p. 14).

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bed, and cover her face, so as not to look directly at the god. On the night, Nectanebo, garbed in a ram’s fleece and horns and carrying an ebony scepter, enters the chamber and has intercourse with the queen. She, of course, steals a look at the “god” as he enters the chamber, but does not find his form particularly alarming because he looks as he did in her dream. As Nectanebo rises from their bed after the lovemaking he announces that she is pregnant with a male child. On the morrow, when he—as Nectanebo—enters the queen’s chamber, ostensibly to discover what happened, she expresses her delight and asks: “Will the god be returning to me again, seeing as I had such pleasure from him?” In this manner, Nectanebo and Olympias continue a clandestine liaison until Philip’s return. Nectanebo, meanwhile, thoughtfully sends a falcon as a dream messenger to apprise Philip of Olympias’s impending motherhood and of the divinity of the father.136 Philip, at first, is not unnaturally annoyed, but after a few more magic tricks by Nectanebo—during a palace gathering, he turns himself into a large serpent137 that curls up at Olympias’s feet and then flies off as an eagle— Philip is convinced that a god is truly the father of Olympias’s child, or at least that he would be wise to accept the status quo. The narrative includes further incidents from Alexander’s youth, including his education at the hands of distinguished philosophers and scientists138 and his military training under Philip. After this he succeeds to his father’s kingdom and quickly subdues the known world.139 Alexander then proceeds to the Siwah oasis in order to learn the truth of his paternity. At Siwah was located an oracular temple to the Egyptian god Amun-Re, regarded by Greeks as among the most prestigious oracles in the ancient world. Here, Ammon acknowledges Alexander as his son and instructs him in a prophecy to establish the city of Alexandria. Obediently, Alexander hastens to lay out the perimeters of the new city, before marching on to Memphis where he is proclaimed pharaoh. In Memphis he sees a statue of Nectanebo with an inscription pro136. The falcon is not a randomly selected messenger: Nectanebo was worshipped in Ptolemaic Memphis as a falcon-god, possibly connected with Horus. See H. de Meulenaere, “Les monuments du culte des rois Nectanébo,” C d’E 35 (1960) 92–107. 137. The snake too is probably a manifestation of Amun. His aspect as a creator god was “Hiddenness,” which could be represented by the serpent; see LÄ 1: 237–48. 138. 1.13: Leucippus (music), Melemnus (geometry), Anaximenes of Lampsacus (rhetoric), and Aristotle (philosophy). 139. 1.27–29 B. The speed with which these events are narrated and the relative lack of detail tend to confirm the Alexandrian bias of the piece.

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claiming: “This king who has fled will come again to Egypt | not in age but in youth, and our enemy the Persians | He will subject to us” (1.34 A and B). Alexander embraces the statue, proclaims his lineage publicly to the gathered crowd, and offers this explanation of these events: Egypt and the peoples not blest with its natural economic advantages were destined to be united, and the money the Egyptians were used to paying to the Persians in tribute they could now give to Alexander, “not that I may collect it for my own treasury, but rather so that I may spend it on your city, the Egyptian Alexandria, capital of the world.” Thus Alexandria is deliberately cast as both Greek and Egyptian, though a cynic might doubt that parity between those contributing the money (Egyptians) and those spending it (Greeks) was ever intended. In this incident, the description of the encounter of Nectanebo with Olympias disguised as the ram-god matches rather closely Egyptian descriptions of the sacred encounter of the wife of a pharaoh with the god Amun-Re, discussed above. The Alexander Romance follows in detail the myth of the divine birth of the pharaoh, with one element transposed or reversed—the god normally assumes the form of the queen’s human husband, while here the human lover assumes the form of the god. We have what looks like an inversion of a tale that would have been serious in its purpose and quite familiar to Egyptians. The transmission of the Alexander Romance is so complex that it is impossible— and probably irrelevant—to determine whether the story in its current form was the work of a native Greek writer or whether it betrays an Egyptian origin.140 The satirical element certainly fits an Egyptian milieu—Egyptian literature is full of tales like the “Contendings of Horus and Seth” or “Cheops and the Magicians” that seem to mock or undermine the high seriousness of official ritual and state-oriented myths.141

140. R. Jasnow (“The Greek Alexander Romance and Demotic Egyptian Literature,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 56.2 [1997] 101) suggests that the verb synklonasaß is a mistranslation of Demotic phr, which can mean “enchant” (the correct meaning for the passage) as well as “jumble up”; Jasnow observes: “It was presumably a Greek or a Hellenized Egyptian who translated the text, since it is improbable, in my opinion, that an educated Demotic scribe well versed in this tradition would have committed such an error.” Interestingly Jasnow’s argument assumes that a Greek might read Demotic Egyptian, and that the transmission was written not oral. 141. There are a number of surviving satirical sketches of animals whose activities ape humans’, the most famous of which is in Turin. A portion of this papyrus also contains sexually explicit scenes. See J. A. Omlin (Der Papyrus 55001 und seine satirisch-erotischen Zeichnungen und Inschriften [Turin, 1973]), who draws a number of parallels between these scenes and religious rituals.

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On the other hand, satire is not unknown in Greek literature. This story has usually been viewed as propaganda deliberately circulated by the Egyptian priesthood to legitimate Alexander’s claim to the throne of Egypt for Egyptians.142 But this is to misunderstand the birth story, the purpose of which is to locate Alexander within the continuum of Egyptian kingship. The connection of Alexander with Nectanebo could only have been made during the formative stages of Macedonian-Greek rule in Egypt, when there was a desire—if not a need—to stress the continuity of the new rule and its integral connection with the past, not several centuries later when memories of Nectanebo (apart from his cult as falcon-god) will necessarily have been dim among both Egyptians and Greeks.143 The story itself functions not in the mythical realm of the divine birth, nor in that of apocalyptic visions, but in the world of possibility, of political reality. Nectanebo apparently did disappear from Egypt at the time of the second Persian conquest.144 Presumably he could have fled to Macedon, and he could have fathered Alexander. Which is not to say that he did. The story we now have appears not in Egyptian, but in Greek. While some Egyptians in the early Hellenistic period would have been bilingual, the sheer quantity of Demotic writing that survives from this period suggests that Egyptians were still partaking of a rich traditional literary culture and would not have needed or depended on Greek versions of their own tales. Moreover, Egyptian literary protocols, even in the more recently discovered Demotic material, differ considerably from the arrangement of detail in a story for a Greek audience. No versions of this story in Demotic Egyptian have been found. The fact that the story circulated so widely in Greek makes it reasonable to assume that a Greek audience found some value in a doubly determined fathering of Alexander. That audience would have consisted, in the main, of Greek natives and their descendants but could have included Egyptian readers of Greek, who were to be found among the 142. See, for example, Fraser 1972, 1: 680–81; and Huss 1994, 129–33, with bibliography, n. 366. 143. There is other evidence for early exchange of stories about Nectanebo between Greeks and Egyptians. The so-called Dream of Nectanebo, from the Sarapaeum in Memphis and dated to the early second century b.c.e., is a Greek version of an obviously Egyptian tale. See now K. Ryholt’s edition of a Demotic fragment of the story in ZPE 122 (1998) 197–200. For a full-scale treatment of the Greek text, see L. Koenen, BASP 22 (1985) 171–94. See also Huss 1994, 133–37 and n. 397 for bibliography. 144. See N. Grimal, A History of Ancient Egypt (Oxford, 1992) 375–81.

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upper strata of the bureaucratic elite.145 The purpose or intent of the Nectanebo story must therefore be bound up with this circumstance. Elements of this story appear also in later Greek sources that are generally taken to be more reputable than the Alexander Romance, which suggests that the Egyptian story was at an early period rather closely linked to Alexander. Plutarch, in his Life of Alexander, mentions that Alexander is descended from Heracles on his father’s side and Aeacus on his mother’s, but he also slips in the detail that Olympias’s habit of being found in the company of serpents cooled Philip’s ardor towards his wife: “Whether he feared her as an enchantress or thought she had commerce with some god, and so looked upon himself as excluded, he was ever after less fond of her company.”146 Further, Plutarch tells us that when Philip consulted the Delphic oracle about the paternity of his child (about whom he had some doubts), he was informed “henceforth to pay particular honor, above all other gods, to Ammon; and was told he should one day lose the eye with which he had presumed to peep through that chink in the door, when he saw the god, under the form of a serpent, sleeping with (syneynazamenon) his wife.”147 Although Arrian is more restrained in book 3 of the Anabasis of Alexander, he, too, mentions that Alexander traces his lineage from Perseus and Heracles on the Greek side, and also Ammon.148 In Greek terms the problem with the fatherhood of Alexander as it is portrayed in the Alexander Romance, unlike the versions found in Plutarch or Arrian, is that it is overdetermined. To have a divine as well as a human father has some precedent—one thinks of the examples of Helen or Heracles; to have a human father who is not your mother’s husband has also been known to occur; but to have a human father who is not your mother’s husband, pretending to be the god who then acknowledges you as truly his son risks undermining the very edifice it seems to be erecting. Certainly it is possible to explain away this plethora of fathers by attributing them to imperfections in the stitching together of the Alexander Romance from its constituent parts, but this 145. The most obvious group would have been the priesthoods, which formed an important economic class. The priests were also the most likely to have become bilingual. See Thompson 1990; Clarysse 1979. 146. Plutarch Alexander 2.6. 147. Plutarch Alexander 3.1–2. 148. Arrian Anabasis of Alexander 3.3.2. See A. B. Bosworth, Commentary on Arrian’s History of Alexander (Oxford, 1980) 1: 269–73, for Alexander’s divine and heroic ancestors.

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begs the question. If Alexander is the son of Ammon, he does not need another human father; Plutarch, after all, delicately suggests that the agency was a snake. But if he has a human father, his claim to divinity is somewhat weakened: the two competing claims, both connecting his paternity with Egypt, would seem to cancel each other out. But in Egyptian terms they fit into the traditional claims for the paternity of the pharaoh. In fact, two separate elements appear to have been deliberately stitched together, in such a way as to leave their seams quite visible.149 One element is the myth of the divine birth of the pharaoh, which must be Egyptian in origin and intended not so much to justify but to signal the transition from one invader’s reign (the Persians’) to another’s (Alexander’s); the other is Nectanebo’s fathering of Alexander, an event no doubt suggested by an Egyptian prophecy of Nectanebo’s return. Within the framework of Egyptian thought the doubling makes excellent sense. Egyptians were quite aware that their pharaohs were mortal and had human fathers, but the two fathers serve different purposes—the one conveys legitimacy to Alexander’s conquest in political terms, while the other inserts the foreign pharaoh into the native theology. While for Egyptians the account of Alexander’s birth from Ammon links him to his pharaonic predecessors as yet another manifestation of the god on earth, the living Horus, the account of Alexander’s divine birth functions separately but similarly for the Greek audience, to make him no longer mere mortal, but akin to the heroes of their mythic past. By replacing his human father with the Egyptian god Ammon, Alexander is elevated—in a way he cannot have been though the agency of Greek myth—to the stature of Heracles and Perseus, the two heroes from whom he claimed descent, and to an equal footing with Dionysus, whose course through the East Alexander traced in his conquests. The employment of the Egyptian tale provides a neat complement to Alexander’s Greek lineage. Like Perseus and Heracles, Alexander now has a mortal father (Philip) on the books, with a mother who has captured the fancy of a god. This divine parentage accounts, in mythic terms, for Alexander’s uniqueness and for the astonishing nature of his accomplishments.150 In Perseus and Heracles he also has ancestors who had been previously linked to Egypt via Greek myth. The A recension of

149. Merkelbach (1977, 81) accounts for this in terms of ritual performance and masking. 150. See pages 155–56 for the Egyptian idea of the divine image.

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the Alexander Romance takes this double origin to its logical extremes, informing us that on the night in question Nectanebo tells Olympias: “This god, when he comes to you, will first become a serpent, crawling along the ground and hissing, then he will change into horned Ammon, then into peerless Heracles, then into thyrsos-bearing Dionysus, then when he has intercourse with you in human form, the god will reveal himself in my image.”151 Inevitably the question is asked whether stories like this were circulated with the serious intent of convincing the denizens of Hellenistic Egypt about Alexander’s ancestry. Recognizing their inherent improbability, scholars have been inclined to regard such tales as serious or as propaganda only for naive Egyptians, while relegating them to the realm of fantastical or romantic fiction for Greeks. But to pose the question in terms of believability or seriousness of intent may overlook a more significant point. It is not important whether Greeks would have believed the Nectanebo tale, if by belief we mean that it was accepted as veridically true. What is important is the fact that was told. The act of producing this narrative of Alexander’s double descent carries its own implicit significance beyond the message of Greco-Egyptian cultural interaction that it makes explicit. The style and tone of the Alexander Romance may predispose us to regard it as satire or parody, and therefore of little consequence, but even this feature of the story is legible within the two different cultures. There is a salacious quality to the seduction of Olympias that is reminiscent of a Milesian tale, and there are unmistakably Greek chauvinistic tendencies at work in the portrayal of Nectanebo as a magician. However, the tale also possesses a satirical element not unfamiliar in Egyptian literature and art, where status reversal and what appears to be outrageous irreverence abound.152 It is very possible that the story in its current form accurately reflects the original; that it deliberately sets out to undercut the pretentiousness of its own message. In other words, that its mocking quality served to mitigate the extravagance of the claim either of divine birth or of Alexander’s Egyptian paternity, while nevertheless reinforcing this very message. The serious intent comes from the story’s novelty of vision, the 151. eRta synelubn dnurvpoeidb% ueb% DmfanAzetai toB% DmoB% tApoy% Gxvn (A 1.6.3). 152. O’Connor and Silverman (1995, 57) discuss a sexually explicit graffito from the Eighteenth Dynasty that depicts Queen Hatshepsut in less than complimentary circumstances. See their chapter as a whole, pp. 49–87, for various attitudes towards kingship; and see above, note 141.

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binocularity of which allows readers to see one event simultaneously through two different cultural lenses. To sum up the significance of Alexander’s overdetermined paternity: both Nectanebo and Ammon are essential to the story. Separately each father contributes a necessary piece to Alexander’s complex mythology—by virtue of the one father (Nectanebo) Alexander is really Egyptian, or Greco-Egyptian, on the human and political level; by virtue of the other (Ammon), he is really divine on the mythical and ceremonial level. Moreover, the tale of Alexander’s fathers would seem to occupy a central and originary place in the forming of the city of Alexandria itself. It is as the “son of Nectanebo” that Alexander addresses the Memphites, and it is by Ammon, who proclaims him his son, that he is instructed to found the new city. In fact, the Nectanebo story bears an uncanny resemblance to that staple of Alexandrian literary production, the aition, or foundation myth. A significant aspect of the aition in the context of new foundations or earlier Greek colonization was the ways in which such stories functioned as an epistemological category that reconfigured foreign places imaginatively in Greek terms. The logic of the aition is to connect the new place with Greek myth, in a way that serves to efface the native and give the intruding Greek population (or colonizers) continuous claim to the place, to create the illusion in other words not of intrusion, but of return.153 As the son of Nectanebo, then, Alexander claims Egypt as legitimate heir, his is not a conquest, but a return. But if the story functions as an aition for the new city, it suggests an agenda that has ramifications in the political or cultural sphere. By combining Egyptian sources with a Greek tale—Alexander’s foundation of the city—the author of the Nectanebo story has devised a potent instrument that operates on multiple levels, human and divine, political and mythical, historical and romantic, comic and serious, and has produced a narrative that Egyptians and Greeks could recognize as possessing features not only of their own culture but of both cultures. This act of narration is not simply a literary tour de force, but a space created in which the two separate cultures are given a shared prominence and value. Hence the resulting act of foundation is presented as avoiding the hierarchies of dominance and submission, conqueror and conquered; the enterprise is cast as a cooperative cultural activity. What it

153. See Dougherty 1991; and especially chapter 4 below.

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claims is a fiction projected by the dominant class (Greeks), but in its very proclamation is a tacit admission of the existence of a heterogeneous culture, and this goes some way towards constructing the space in which greater cultural exchange might take place. It is in this world that the Alexandrian poets found themselves, and it is its potential for symbolic reciprocity that, I believe, they chose to exploit.

chapter 2

Callimachean Theogonies

Callimachus wrote for and about the Ptolemies on more than one occasion, yet our modern anti-imperial bias diminishes our ability to appreciate the dynamics of this poetry. Either we reject it as sycophantic or rescue it by reading it as subversive or not really about its chosen subject—the Ptolemies or the gods—but fundamentally about poetry. The extreme view is that Callimachus is a poet who is engaged in “art for art’s sake” and who has retreated into formalism and a preoccupation with style over substance either as a reaction against the necessity of writing for an uncongenial imperial court or because of his belatedness within the Greek poetic tradition.1 To maintain this position for ancient poetry verges on the reductionist. All poetry is about poetry in some sense—or at least about the poet’s ability to create realms of the imagination—but it is also about something else, and it is that something else—the poet’s chosen topic—in and through which an individual poetics comes to be expressed. We acknowledge that Pindar wrote praise poetry for pay, and have come to understand the complexities of his technique, with its sober reminders for the victor and his community of the dangers of hubris, as the means by which he articulated his views of art. However, Pindar’s style differs significantly from that of Callimachus, for whom humor and “realism” are important components.

1. The best example of this reading is Schwinge 1986, 76.

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These elements do not affect Callimachus’s ability to write imperial poetry, but because we require sincerity of tone from praise poetry, we imagine that his use of humor must be intended to undercut its apparent subject. Humor, however, is more complex than this, and Callimachus’s humor, in particular, seems intended less to debunk imperial pretensions than to foreground the improbabilities of the inherited mythologies, unless we are to assume that the exigencies of Rhea’s afterbirth or the genial if somewhat malodorous Athena of the fifth hymn, disdaining a bath until she has curried her horses, encode a subtle put-down of Ptolemaic queens. The creative role that humor can play in the context of imperial poetry is almost always ignored. For example, humor can be the medium for expressing outrageous or dangerous ideas—that the king is a god—because humor serves to deflect or undercut potentially destabilizing messages while simultanously creating the narrative space in which such ideas are permitted to exist and in which their parameters may be explored.2 In the previous chapter, I tried to demonstrate that the early Ptolemaic court, that of Soter and Philadelphus, was a world in which debates about the nature of kingship were a significant feature of the intellectual climate, and that more than one writer within contemporary philosophical and historical discourse experimented with idealizing models, often based on or elaborating on the career of Alexander. Callimachus was certainly aware of this intellectual climate, and it is my contention that however artificial or “literary” his mode of expression, he was an active participant in these ongoing debates, and his poetry was a locus for the interplay of inherited as well experimental notions of kingship and their attendant mythologies. In this chapter, in order to test this hypothesis, I would like to consider two of Callimachus’s hymns: the first, addressed to Zeus, and the fourth, addressed to Delos, the birthplace of Apollo. Callimachus wrote six hymns addressed to the traditional Olympian deities Zeus, Apollo, Artemis, Athena, and Demeter. If—as most scholars believe3—the transmitted manuscript order of the hymns reflects the author’s own arrangement, we should expect, with an author as conscious of a poetic agenda as Callimachus obviously was, that the placement of the Zeus hymn was not random and that it will have assumed some program-

2. See, for example, Selden’s formulation (1998, 411). 3. See, for example, Bornmann 1988, 113; Bulloch 1985, 77–78; Hopkinson 1984a, 147–48.

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matic importance. The shortest of the six and deceptively simple in form, this hymn has received relatively little critical attention. In fact, its potential as a programmatic piece has been almost entirely neglected. For these reasons, I have undertaken to examine it in considerable detail, while confining myself to more general observations about the structure of the Delos hymn. My analysis proceeds from the assumption that Callimachus’s poetics is by design a complex intertextual dialogue with his predecessors, which he signals by lexical distinctiveness and striking detail.4 This may seem uncontroversial or to be stating the obvious, but the implications cannot be overemphasized. While many critics pay lip service to this principle, in practice they often confine themselves to scrutinizing the surface of the narrative, treating allusion as ornament or as scholarly display, not as an element that has the potential to alter the apparent meanings of the text. But if the context of Callimachus’s evocation of a poetic predecessor cannot be neglected, this has implications for our reading. The loss of many of the works that he would have known frustrates our attempts to interpret and tempts us to overstate his engagement with those texts that have survived, particularly Homer and Hesiod, in order to maintain a semblance of critical control. Reading Callimachus then requires us to assimilate the narrative and rhetorical levels of his intertexts to Callimachus’s own, while conceding the limitations in our own current ability to access them fully.5 With this in mind, my reading is intended to open up the intertextual field to include or emphasize contemporary writings that are often overlooked in reading Callimachus and to reread the familiar intertexts in order to situate their cultural frames of reference more precisely in third-century Alexandria. In addition, Callimachus’s poetic style exploits sometimes radical shifts between past and

4. G. B. Conte (Rhetoric of Imitation [Ithaca, N.Y., 1986] 27) cautions against the “common philological trap of seeing all textual resemblances as produced by the intentionality of a literary subject.” But conscious allusion to one’s predecessors does happen; not all referentiality is genre-driven “white noise,” for Alexandrian poets in particular, whose relationship with traditional genres and what they encode is problematic and a focus of poetic attention. The fact that they spend a great deal of time telling the same seemingly obscure stories or borrowing rare words from each other or from Homer suggests a greater degree of intentionality at work than we might wish to impute to echoes of Vergil to be found in Silver Latin epic. That said, I think it likely that much of what seems intentional precisely because of its rarity might, if we had the bulk of fourth-century and early Hellenistic writing, look much more generically driven. For discussions of intertextuality in classics, see the 1997 issue of Materiali e discussioni per l’analisi dei testi classici, which is devoted to this subject, and Hinds 1998. 5. See Haslam’s remarks (1993, 111).

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present or future, the geographically near and distant, traditional mythological topics and eccentric detail.6 These shifts often rupture the narrative fabric or collapse discrete or opposed elements and hence have generated a descriptive language—“disconcerting,” “piquant,” “playful,” “pedantic,” “realistic”—that offers little in the way of a coherent strategy of reading, though it does capture our own critical aporia. I wish to look closely at these many moments of rupture, since it is my contention that such moments often indicate an event that is legible within two discrete discursive systems and that Egypt and Egyptian motifs behave as subtexts that coexist with and complement the Greek.

the hymn to zeus The Hymn to Zeus can be divided formally into an invocation to Zeus (1–3), the birth ( ganh) of the god (4–54), his accomplishments (dretaA) (55–90), and the concluding prayer (91–96). The vivid language of the opening creates the impression of a specific occasion:7 Zhnb% Goi tA ken gllo parb spondusin deAdein laion h uebn aDtan, deA mAgan, aDBn gnakta, Phlaganvn Dlatpra, dikaspalon ODranAdisi; Zeus—could there be anything better at the pouring of libations to sing of than the god himself, always great, always lord, Smiter of the Mudborn, Lawgiver to the Ouranians?

It is generally agreed that the poem belongs early in the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphus, who began his rule as coregent with his father Soter in 285/4 b.c.e. and continued as sole ruler from 283/2 until his death in 246, because lines 58–59, which allude to the amicable accession of Zeus over his older brothers, look like a pointed reference to

6. See Selden 1998 for a discussion of the phenomenon of displacement in Callimachus’s poetry. Selden’s discussion of the Lock of Berenice and the Hymn to Apollo includes a lengthy consideration of the Egyptian intertexts. 7. parb spondusin would seem to indicate a symposium, since the first and third toasts at a symposium were apparently addressed to Zeus (see E. Maass, Commentariorum in Aratum reliquiae [Berlin, 1898; reprint, 1958] 81, lines 26–29), although it does not guarantee it. See Depew 1993 for the ways in which Callimachus creates the fiction of performance in his hymns through the use of his models. Clauss (1986, 159 n. 13) lists the various conjectures that have been made about the circumstances of performance of this hymn. Cameron (1995, 63–70) has recently restated the case for the symposium as a viable social occasion for Hellenistic poets to perform their works, emphasizing that the erudition of their pieces did not necessarily restrict them to transmission exclusively in written form.

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Philadelphus’s position as the youngest of Soter’s sons, and amicable relations among the half brothers scarcely survived Soter’s death. The most cogent suggestion of a more specific occasion was first made by O. Richter8 and strengthened by J. J. Clauss,9 who argues that the poem was written for Philadelphus at the time he became coregent with his father, Soter, an event that coincided with the celebration of Philadelphus’s birthday as well as the festival of Zeus Basileus. The details are as follows: (1) an inscription published in 1977 provides evidence that Philadelphus celebrated his birthday to coincide with the Basileia, a festival of Zeus Basileus that took place each year;10 (2) it is likely that Philadelphus was crowned as coregent with his father on the occasion of this joint celebration in 284 b.c.e.,11 though after he became sole ruler in 282 b.c.e. the anniversary of his coronation was celebrated some two weeks later than the Basileia.12 If the poem was written for the combined celebration of the Basileia and the royal birthday, either at the time of the coronation or shortly before, then the topics Zeus, his birth, and his accession to the throne would have been especially suitable. If scholars approach consensus on an early date, debate about the real subject of the poem—Zeus or Ptolemy or both—continues.13 Callimachus’s introduction of the example of “our king” (cmetAri medAonti) in line 85, in language that echoes the accomplishments of Zeus a few lines before, has provoked questions about the exact nature of the poem: is it a hymn produced for a cultic occasion or an encomium or an example of Wilhelm Kroll’s generic Kreuzung? Answers have run a predictable gamut: Peter Fraser, at one extreme, claimed that “the hymns of Callimachus have . . . a significant religious content which corresponds to a genuine religious feeling of the author.”14 At the other extreme, scholars like A. Rostagni and B. Gentili15 saw an implicit identification of Zeus and Ptolemy and thought the poem, like Theocritus’s Idyll 17, was in

8. 1871, 1–4. 9. 1986, 155–70. 10. Koenen 1977, 4–7, 29–32, 47–49; and see the discussion below, chapter 5. 11. Koenen 1977, 62–63; 1993, 78–79. 12. Koenen 1977, 58–62; 1993, 73 n. 114. 13. Clauss (1986, 156–57 nn. 3–5) summarizes previous scholarly positions on this subject. See G.-B. D’Alessio (Callimaco: Inni, Epigrammi, Ecale, vol. 1 [Milan, 1996] 72–73 n. 18), who expresses doubts about the identification of Zeus and Ptolemy, though without further argument. 14. 1972, 1: 665–66. 15. A. Rostagni, Poeti alessandrini (Turin, 1963) 59; B. Gentili, Poetry and Its Public in Ancient Greece: From Homer to the Fifth Century, trans. T. Cole (Baltimore and London, 1988) 171.

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reality an encomium of the current ruler. A. Bulloch typifies the the middle ground: “But next to the Childhood of Zeus the King the poet places, by means of an apparent ‘example’, Ptolemy Philadelphus, and the poem turns into a hymn to the poet’s own patron, subtly constructed to please without suggesting any actual identification of the god and Ptolemy (though a Ptolemy eager for flattery may have assumed this to be implied).”16 Many readers may be inclined to dismiss these debates as modern scruples irrelevant to actual ancient practice, considering the recently published Simonides fragment in which a hymnic proemium begins a narrative elegy on the battle of Plataea.17 But Callimachus’s poem is not as clearly delimited as Simonides’ elegy, perhaps deliberately so. Callimachus’s inclusion or intrusion of “our king” as an exemplum within the hymnic framework is surrounded by repeated remarks about poetic doubt, about truth-telling and lying. As a result, the poet himself seems to have induced the reader’s aporia by setting up an imaginative field in which fiction, Zeus, Ptolemy, and kingship are effectively intertwined.18 “ My Heart Is in Doubt” Callimachus continues: 5

pp% kaA nin, DiktaPon deAsomen dB LykaPon Dn doiu mala uyma%, DpeB gAno% dmfariston. ZeP, sB mBn \IdaAoisin Dn oGresA fasi genAsuai, ZeP, sB d' Dn 0rkadAi· pateroi, pater, DceAsanto; “Krpte% deB cePstai”· How shall we hymn him—as Dictaean or Lycaean? My heart is in doubt, for your birth is debated. Zeus, on the one hand, they say that you were born in the hills of Ida; Zeus, on the other, that you were born in Arcadia. Which of them lied, Father? “Cretans are always liars.”

His quandary is, prima facie, a choice between two Greek myths about the birth of Zeus, one of which (the Cretan) is very familiar or at least seems so from what now survives, the other (the Arcadian) rather more obscure, and first attested in this poem. The main differences in

16. 1985, 552. 17. POxy. 59.3965 + 22.2327; and “The New Simonides,” Arethusa 29.2 (Spring 1996), devoted to the new Simonides fragment. See Cameron (1995, 313–15) for the significance of this fragment for Callimachus’s poetry. 18. See Haslam 1993, 116.

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the two birth stories are the following: in Arcadia Zeus is born on a mountain, not in a cave (as in the Cretan myth), and Zeus’s birth is the immediate cause of Arcadian rivers beginning to flow. At this point two intertexts, both of which are now fragmentary, will be helpful in understanding Callimachus’s strategy—a Hymn to Eros by Antagoras of Rhodes and the first Homeric Hymn to Dionysus. Seven lines survive from the opening of Antagoras’s hymn:19

5

Dn doiu moi uyma%, e toi gAno% dmfAbohton, g se uepn tbn prpton deigenAvn, fiErv%, eGpv, tpn essoy% ÈEreba% te palai basAleia te paPda% geAnato NBj pelagessin Cp' eDrAo% \VkeanoPo¢ h sA ge KAprido% yQa perAfrono%, dA se GaAh%, h \AnAmvn¢ toPo% sB kakb fronAvn dlalhsai dnurapoi% dd' Dsula¢ tb kaB sAo spma dAfyion. My heart is in doubt, in that your birth is celebrated everywhere.20 Am I to say that you are the first of the eternal gods, Eros, many of which children Erebos and Queen Night once bred under the waves of broad Ocean? Or that you are the son of nimble-witted Cypris or of Earth or of the Winds? You are such as to wander about devising ill or good for men. Even your body is double in nature.

Callimachus replaces Antagoras’s dmfAbohton (“widely celebrated”) with dmfariston, a rare word that occurs only twice, both times in Iliad 23. In Iliad 23.382 we find a situation similar to the one Callimachus presents at the opening of the poem: two competitors in a chariot race would have finished dmfariston (“in a dead heat”) had it not been for the intervention of Apollo, who decided matters by causing one of the drivers to lose. Here, it seems, the two locations with competing claims to be the birthplace of Zeus are also “in a dead heat,” when an external voice (the god?) exclaiming Krpte% deB cePstai resolves the issue. The terms of the contested birth in Antagoras are worth considering more closely. Antagoras feigns doubt about whether Eros was the first of the primordial deities whose births are specifically located in the wa19. For Antagoras, see P. von der Mühll, “Zu den Gedichten des Antagoras von Rhodos,” Mus. Helv. 19 (1962) 28–32. Antagoras’s poem is taken to be prior; see, for instance, Wilamowitz, Antigonos von Karystos (Berlin, 1881) 69. The text of Antagoras is that of CA, incorporating the corrections of R. Renehan, “The Collectanea Alexandrina: Selected Passages,” HSCP 69 (1964) 379–81. 20. Although parallels confirm “widely celebrated” as the usual meaning of dmfAbohton, given its constituent parts, it is also possible to take it as a virtual synonym for Callimachus’s dmfariston (see von der Mühll, Mus. Helv. 19 [1962] 31 n. 11).

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ters of Ocean or one of a later generation of divinities, the winged child of Aphrodite—in other words, whether Eros is to be identified with the originary generative force of the universe or as a literary or mythological trope. There is nothing novel about this. In Plato’s Symposium, for example, Phaedrus claims that Eros is the oldest of gods, and Agathon, that he is the youngest—an opposition that is well attested.21 A babyish Eros, often depicted with wings, is a common motif in Hellenistic vase painting, while Eros as an elemental force occurs in Hesiod’s Theogony (120) and in cosmogonic poetry like that of Pherecydes of Syrus, for example, as well as in Orphic texts. Antagoras’s choice of language (spma dAfyion) alludes to the bisexual Eros that came to occupy a distinctive position in Orphic theology.22 H. Schibli explains: Chronos fashions an egg of aDuar from which the first-born (prvtageno%), bi-sexual god Phanes springs forth; Phanes is identical with Eros. Phanes-Eros enters with a burst of creative activity that includes planets, gods, and men. Phanes is thereupon swallowed by Zeus who, having thus assimilated the nature of Eros, in turn creates all things anew. In this way Orphic theology accounts for the status of Zeus as both creator and ruler of the world.23

Orphic material circulated freely in the Hellenistic period, so there can be no question that either Antagoras or Callimachus was unaware of the ramifications of these competing mythologies of Eros.24 In fact, a more or less contemporary epigram of Simias of Rhodes externalizes the issue by depicting Eros as a bearded child, the offspring of Aether and Chaos, as against the son of Aphrodite and Ares.25 Prima facie, the imitation of Antagoras is appropriate for Callimachus’s dilemma because Arcadia is often regarded as the originary Greek landscape occupied by autochthonous peoples before the rest of Greece. The depiction of Zeus’s birth in a primeval landscape where waters originate is akin to the birth of Eros “under the waves of broad Ocean,” and the juxtaposition of an address to “Father Zeus” in the 21. See, for example, Menander Rhetor 343.17–20 Russell and Wilson; Longus Daphnis and Chloe 2.5–6; “Metiochus and Parthenope” in Stephens and Winkler 1995, 86–87, 91–92. 22. See, for example, Orphic Argonautica 14: difyb perivpAa kydrbn “ˆErvta. 23. 1990, 60. 24. West (1983, 131–33) even argues that the account found in Callimachus of Zeus’s nurture on Crete was Orphic in origin. 25. The poem was supposedly written to replicate the shape of wings. Cameron (1995, 31–33) suggests that it was inscribed on the wings of a statue and was intended to account for the statue’s peculiar double iconography.

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context of the god’s own infancy story may—like Simias’s bearded child—be an ironic enactment of the dilemma of the age of Eros. A moment later Callimachus situates his own hymn within cosmogonic and theogonic discourse with his quotation of Epimenides of Crete in line 8. In this context Zeus is a divinity whose ancestry is very similar to Eros’s. Within Pherecydes and the Orphic theogonies (as Schibli’s remarks above make clear) he is not only king of the gods but assimilated to the divine creator as well. Eros’s disputed parentage may have been one of the oldest clichés of the hymnic repertory, but it also encapsulated a religious and philosophical debate about the nature of divinity that was not exclusive to Eros. In the Hellenistic period it surfaces for many gods, and particularly Zeus. An excellent contemporary example is Cleanthes’ Hymn to Zeus, in which Zeus is praised as the Stoic first cause of nature. Cleanthes’ hymn is usually opposed to Callimachus’s, the former regarded as having adapted traditional hymnic features to philosophical discourse, the latter for “a self-consciously literary effect.”26 But however artificial Callimachus’s poem, it could not have been written in ignorance of the various notions of divinity being expressed in contemporary intellectual circles.27 If Antagoras’s hymn presented Callimachus with a choice of two different theogonic chronologies (however overworked), the Homeric Hymn to Dionysus displays two features in common with Callimachus’s hymn: the newborn (or in Dionysus’s case the almost born) child is transported from one location to another—Zeus conveys the embryonic Dionysus snatched from Semele’s ruined body sewn up in his own thigh to act as a surrogate womb. The poem’s language—eDrafipta and Gtikte used of Zeus—conveys this mythological information. The second feature of the hymnic tradition is various geographic options available to the poet: oC mBn gbr Drakani s, oC d’ \Ikari dnemoAssi fas’, oC d’ Dn Naji dPon gAno% eDrafipta. oC dA s' Dp' \AlfePi potamu bauydinaenti

26. See, for example, Hopkinson 1989, 132. 27. Another contemporary poet, Aratus, in the opening of his Phaenomena also assimilates Zeus to the all-pervasive creator. In addition to similarities between Eros and Zeus, Plutarch (DIO 57) finds that the Hesiodic Eros “calls to mind” (proskalePtai) Osiris, and likens the Eros of Socrates’ narrative in the Symposium to Horus, who is forever young. This is not to suggest that Plutarch is describing views held by Callimachus or Antagoras so much as to illustrate the ease with which analogies between Eros and Egyptian deities could be made once a context had been established. By the Roman period, the identification of Eros with Horus-the-Child is well attested. See R. Merkelbach, Isis Regina-Zeus Sarapis (Stuttgart, 1995), 87–93 and pls. 122–24 (pp. 595–97).

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kysamAnhn SemAlhn tekAein DiB terpikeraAni, glloi d' Dn Qabisin gnaj se lAgoysi genAsuai ceydamenoi¢28 sB d' Gtikte patbr dndrpn te uepn te pollbn dp' dnurapvn krAptvn leykalenon ˜Hrhn. Gsti dA ti% NAsh Epaton gro% dnuAon Eli thloP FoinAkh% sxedbn ADgAptoio r\ oavn. . . . Some say at Dracanum, some say at windy Icarus, and some say in Naxos, divinely born Insewn, and some say by Alpheus, deep-eddying river, pregnant Semele bore you to thunder-loving Zeus. But others say you were born in Thebes, Lord—they are mistaken; for the father of men and gods bore you far from men, hidden from white-armed Hera. There is a certain Nysa, lofty mountain, luxuriously wooded, far away in Phoenicia, near to the streams of the Aegyptus. . . .

Here, after an opening with a list of four local claims to be the birthplace of the god (three islands, one river), the poet shifts his attention to two new claims—those who say the god was born in Thebes, and they—he tells us with the emphatic placement of ceydamenoi—are wrong, and those who locate Dionysus’s birth in Nysa, near the streams of the Aegyptus, that is, the Nile.29 The choice then is a Theban or Greek birthplace, or a Nysan or Near Eastern birthplace, for the god, and the Greek site is explicitly labeled “false.” In selecting Nysa as the birthplace of Dionysus, the poet exploits a folk etymology of the god’s name that links Dionysus and Zeus,30 and he chooses a place that is geographically fluid. Stephen of Byzantium lists ten Nysas, several of which were in the Near East or North Africa.31 This multiplicity of Nysas is complicit in the generation of isomorphic tales about Dionysus that could be attached to different locations in the spread of the Dionysiac cult. Both the etymology of Diony28. ceAdomai) ranges in meaning from “being mistaken” to “being a liar.” Without the rest of the poem it is difficult to know which translation is more accurate. Similarly, Krpte% deB cePstai (below) is usually translated as “Cretans are always liars,” and that is certainly the meaning that Paul intends when he quotes the line in the Epistle to Titus, but in its original context the meaning of the verb may have been closer to “don’t know how to speak the truth,” marking a capacity rather than a deliberate choice. Callimachus, needless to say, plays with the full semantic range of ceAdomai. See also Detienne 1996, 85–86; and the full-scale treatment in Pratt 1993. 29. Herodotus locates the Nysa of Dionysus’s birth in Ethiopia (2.146; 3.97), and Antimachus in the area between the Nile and the Arabian Gulf (fr. 162 Matthews = 127 Wyss). 30. As Diodorus says, “from his father and the place” (1.15.5). This etymology is discussed in Cook 1965, 271–89. 31. Note also that Nysa was prominent enough for a female automaton so-identified to be featured in the Grand Procession of Ptolemy Philadephus (Athenaeus 5.198e), on which see Rice 1983, 62–68.

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sus and the potential for geographic conflation resemble two of Callimachus’s own compositional strategies—geographical markers that exist in more than one location and etymologies that link the god with multilocal place-names. Moreover, Diodorus Siculus, in a passage that may have come originally from Hecataeus of Abdera, not only records the popular etymology of Dionysus’s name, quoting this same Homeric hymn as evidence, but explicitly links Nysan Dionysus with Egyptian Osiris, or one dying god with another: [They say that Osiris] was reared in Nysa, a city of Arabia Felix, near Egypt, being a child of Zeus, and among the Greeks he is named Dionysus, a name derived from his father and the place. And the poet mentions Nysa in his hymns, namely, that it was near Egypt, when he says: “There is a certain Nysa, and so on.”32

We saw in Dionysius Scytobrachion the phenomenon of relocating mythological events connected with Dionysus, Athena, and the Amazons from northern regions (Thrace and Scythia) to southern, to Libya and the northeastern coast of Africa, a phenomenon also to be found in Apollonius’s Argonautica. The Homeric Hymn to Dionysus appears to make the same poetic gesture, and it raises a question about Callimachus’s constructed aporia. Is the choice between Arcadia and Crete meant to resemble the choice between Thebes and Nysa, near to the Aegyptus? Although the identification of Nysan Dionysus with Osiris was common enough in the Hellenistic period, and Zeus himself already had a Libyan/Egyptian avatar, Zeus Ammon, at this juncture we can only raise an inquiring eyebrow about the relevance of Zeus’s potential alter egos to Callimachus’s poem.33 32. tbn ÈOsirin, kaB trafpnai mBn tp% eDdaAmono% \ArabAa% Dn NAsi plhsAon ADgAptoy, Dib% gnta paPda, kaB tbn proshgorAan Gxein parb toP% ·Ellhsin dpa te toP patrb% kaB toP tapoy Dianyson dnomasuAnta. memnpsuai dB tp% NAsh% kaB tbn poihtbn Dn toP% Emnoi%, eti perB tbn AGgypton gAgonen, oQ% lAgei, ktl. Jacoby (Diodorus Siculus 1.15.6–7 = FGrH 264 F 25.15.6–7) considers the identification of Osiris and Dionysus authentically Hecataean but the etymologizing to be Diodorus’s own comment. However, the fact that the etymology is embedded within the longer indirect statement suggests that it may well belong to the original source. See also Diodorus Siculus 3.65.7. Herodotus also identifies Dionysus and Osiris (2.42). 33. An epigram assigned to Antipater of Thessalonica (AP 7.369) imitates the opening of Callimachus’s hymn specifically as a choice between Greek and Egyptian, which the poet resolves by linking the two by heredity. \Antipatroy rhtpro% Dgb tafo%, clAka d\ Gpnei \ Grga Panellanvn peAueo martyrAh%.

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Callimachus then resolves his hitherto rather predictable poetic dilemma: in response to his question “which of them lied, Father?” a voice returns the answer ‘Cretans are always liars’ (Krpte% deB cePstai). This is a famous line attributed to Epimenides, a Cretan priest or seer who was credited with a gift for oracular revelation. By Callimachus’s time he had acquired almost mythical status and was occasionally included among the Seven Sages.34 Recently, a number of scholars have turned a critical eye to the ambiguity of voice that this quotation creates—is it Callimachus himself, “Father” Zeus, or Epimenides who answers?—and the consequence for our understanding of the poem as a whole.35 Let us examine more carefully the context of the remark. The complete line from Epimenides is Krpte% deB cePstai, kakb uhrAa, gastAre% drgaA (“Cretans, ever liars, evil beasts, idle bellies”),36 which in its turn would seem to have been adapted from the speech of the Muses in the proem of Hesiod’s Theogony:

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aG nA pou’ ÈHsAodon kalbn DdAdajan doidan, grna% poimaAnonu’ 8likpno% Epo zauAoio. tande dA me pratista ueaB prb% mPuon Geipon, MoPsai \Olympiade%, koPrai Dib% aDgiaxoio¢ “poimAne% ggrayloi, kak’ DlAgxea, gastAre% oRon Gdmen feAdea pollb lAgein DtAmoisin dmoPa, Gdmen d’ eRt’ DuAlvmen dlhuAa ghrAsasuai.” Now they once taught Hesiod fair song, when he was shepherding lambs at the foot of sacred Helicon. The goddesses first addressed me thus, Olympian Muses, daughters of aegis-bearing Zeus: “Shepherds of the field, evil reproachs, all belly, we know how to say many false things that can pass for true, we also know how, when we wish, to utter the truth.”

kePtai d\ dmfaristo%, \Auhnauen eGt\ dpb NeAloy rn gAno%, dpeArvn d\ gjio% dmfotArvn. gstea kaB d\ gllv% Cnb% aEmato%, c% lago% ·Ellhn, klarvi d\ c mBn deB Pallado%, c dB Dia%. I am the tomb of the rhetor Antipater. How great was his inspiration, you may ask all Greeks as witness. He lies disputed, whether his race was from Athens or from the Nile, but worthy of both continents. Besides, the lands are of one blood, as a Greek story has it, the one Pallas’s by lot, the other Zeus’s. 34. See R. P. Martin, “The Seven Sages as Performers of Wisdom,” in Cultural Poetics in Archaic Greece; Cult, Performance, Politics, ed. C. Dougherty and L. Kurke (Cambridge, 1993) 122; West 1983, 45–53; and Detienne 1996, 55, 131–35. Callimachus in his own tally of the Seven in the Iambi does not include Epimenides. 35. Hopkinson 1984a, 140–44; Clauss 1986, 158; Goldhill 1986, 127–29; and Bing 1988, 76–77 n. 42. 36. Fr. 2 Kinkel = B1 D-K. The line is quoted in Paul’s Epistle to Titus.

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From this early period of Greek poetry we see that the relationship of the Muses, the goddesses who inspire and regulate poetic utterance, to truth, and in turn the poet’s relationship to truth, is marked as less than straightforward. Truth (dlhuAa) and the appearance of truth (ceAdea pollb . . . DtAmoisin cmoPa) would seem to be indistinguishable to the average mortal, though the Muses, and presumably their clients, the poets, know the difference. The Muses breathe a divine voice into Hesiod that enables him to celebrate the future and the past, and they order him to sing about the brood of the eternal gods (30–34). He then begins his song by paraphrasing the song of the Muses, who themselves are represented as singing theogonies. Much has been made of this Hesiodic passage and what it implies about the writing of Greek poetry in general.37 For our purposes, it is worth considering what effect the indeterminacy of truth has for writing about cosmic origins and divine hierarchies, subjects that by their very nature are unknowable, and then to what extent the plurality of available versions, and what is at stake in preferring one account over another, might have been central to Callimachus’s project. M. Detienne’s observations about the relationship of the poet to the construction of cosmic order and kingship in the Theogony are illuminating: The ordering of the world in the Greek cosmogonies and theogonies was inseparable from myths of sovereignity. Furthermore, the myths of emergence, while recounting the story of successive generations of the gods, foregrounded the determining role of a divine king who, after many struggles, triumphed over his enemies and once and for all established order in the cosmos. Hesiod’s poem . . . does appear to provide the final remaining example of sung speech praising the figure of the king, in a society centered on the type of sovereignity seemingly exemplified by Mycenean civilization. In Hesiod’s case, the royal figure is simply represented by Zeus. At this level the poet’s function was above all to “serve sovereignity”: by reciting the myth of emergence, he collaborated directly in setting the world in order.38

To state it more crudely, cosmogony reflects political reality: the emergence of the “just” Zeus in the Theogony provides the necessary or logical divine counterpart to the “just” king who rules over the human condition in the Works and Days. The one guarantees the other. 37. On this passage, see especially Detienne 1996, 21–25, 30–33; P. Pucci, Hesiod and the Language of Poetry (Baltimore, 1977); G. B. Walsh, The Varieties of Enchantment (Chapel Hill and London, 1984) 22–36; and Pratt 1993, 106–13. See ReinschWerner 1976, 26–27, for Callimachus and Hesiod. 38. Detienne 1996, 44–45 (italics mine).

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Hesiod’s proem stands first in a long line of encounters between the aspiring poet and the Muses. But Callimachus, who is himself responsible for the subsequent spate of imitations (Ennius, Vergil, Propertius), at the opening of the Zeus hymn recreates the Hesiodic moment only indirectly, by refracting the event through Epimenides. In contrast, in the fragmentary Somnium39 at the beginning of the Aetia, a poem that is also about origins, Callimachus directly recreates the context of the initiation: poimAni mpla nAmonti par' Gxnion djAoß Eppoy \Hsiadi MoysAvn Csmbß et' dntAasen m]Bn oC Xaeoß genes.[ To the shepherd tending his flock by the track of the swift horse, Hesiod, when a swarm of Muses met him, . . . to him about the birth of Chaos. (fr. 2 Pf.)

In this passage Callimachus contextualizes the appearance of the Muses to Hesiod in terms of theogonies—Xaeo% genes.[—not simply the birth of the gods, but particularly of Chaos, that is to say, that originary moment when creation began. As the Aetia progresses, Callimachus’s solution to the problem of poetic truth or nontruth is to interrogate the Muses and record their replies. However, the relationship of the poet to his subject and his consciously invoked antecedents is markedly more ambiguous in the Zeus hymn. The introduction of a line of Epimenides indirectly alludes to the problematic of Hesiod’s encounter with the Muses while distancing the audience from the authoritative voice of inspiration that the Muses provided in the Hesiod passage and in the Aetia. In contrast to these two, the opening of the Zeus hymn is overdetermined: the line itself suggests that it is Epimenides who speaks; the Homeric parallel, signaled by dmfariston, points to Father Zeus as the speaker; while Callimachus, by going on to gloss the line, would seem to be appropriating it to his own voice. But let us consider further what Epimenides’ intrusion into the poem effects. To judge from the meager remains of his corpus, Epimenides com39. Cameron (1995, 119–32) rejects the widely held view that the Dream was the original opening of the Aetia, and the current opening, or Prologue, was appended as a new introduction for the second publication. Rather, he takes the Prologue and Dream to be two parts of the orginal introduction, with no conceptual break between. If he is correct, it would bring the opening of the Aetia and the Hymn to Zeus into an even closer alignment. See pp. 362–73 in Cameron for his discussion of Callimachus’s relationship to Hesiod.

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posed a poem called “Oracles” that packaged theogonic material as oracular responses.40 His cosmology was similar to Orphic writing in that he began with Aer and Night, who produced Tartarus, who in turn produced two Titans, who produced an egg from which another genesis came forth.41 Further, two of the testimonia suggest that Epimenides’ perceptions about oracular truth tended towards the skeptical: Aristotle tells us that Epimenides asserted that he never prophesied about the future, only about what had already happened, but was obscure;42 in other words, he decoded past events. Plutarch in The Obsolescence of Oracles records the following anecdote: upon consulting the god about whether Delphi was the center of the earth and receiving a vague reply, Epimenides said: “There is no center of the earth or the sea, but if there is, it is known to the gods, but hidden from mortals.”43 Most significantly for our purposes, Epimenides seems actively to have been using Hesiod’s encounter with the Muses as the driving force for his own poetry, and the words “Cretans, ever liars, evil beasts, idle bellies” are plausibly located in the proem of this work, in which Truth and Justice appear to Epimenides in the cave of Zeus on Crete:44 Once a Cretan man named Epimenides came to Athens bringing a tale that, as he tells it, is hard to believe: namely, that at day when he had lain in a deep sleep for many years in the cave of Dictaian Zeus he said that in a dream he encountered the goddesses and the words of the goddesses, Truth and Dike.45

Diodorus claims Epimenides as one of his sources on Cretan divinities (5.80 = fr. 20 D-K), and Diogenes Laertius tells us he wrote about the Couretes and Corybantes.46 From even this limited evidence, we may 40. M. L. West (1983, 47–53) expresses some doubt that all of the poetry atttributed to him was really written by the historical Epimenides. The correctness of attribution is irrelevant to the following argument, since the material was composed and circulated under the name of Epimenides well before Callimachus. 41. Fr. B5 D-K; and West 1983, 48. 42. Fr. B4 D-K: perB tpn gegonatvn mBn ddalvn dA. 43. 1 (409E = B11 D-K): oGte gbr rn gaAh% mAso% dmfalb% oDdB ualassh%¢ | eD dA tA% Gsti, ueoP% dplo% unhtoPsi d› gfanto%. 44. Maass 1892, 344–46. West (1983, 47–53) follows Maass; see also Detienne’s remarks (1996, 15, 55, 65). 45. dfAketa pote \Auanaze dnbr Krb% gnoma \EpimenAdh% komAzvn lagon oCtvsB r\huAnta pisteAesuai xalepan¢ cmAra% Dn DiktaAoy Dib% tpi gntrvi keAmeno% Epnvi baueP Gth syxnb gnar Gfh DntyxePn aDtb% ueoP% kaB uepn lagoi% kaB \AlhueAai kaB DAkhi. = A1.16–21 D-K, where the source is Maximus of Tyre. See Maass’s discussion (1892, 345). 46. 1.111 = A1 D-K. Diels and Kranz, following Maass (1892, 343), take lines 30–36 of Aratus’s Phaenomena to be based on Epimenides. Kidd (1997, 185) seems to agree;

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conclude that Epimenides situates himself in a theogonic tradition in which truth is marked as problematic, and if indeed Truth and Justice inform him that “Cretans are ever liars,” then we may suspect that this exchange will have led to the goddesses or Epimenides “explaining’ ” or debunking some prominent Cretan theogonic narrative; stories attached to Cretan Zeus and the Couretes readily suggest themselves. Callimachus, in turn, locates himself within the mainstream of theogonic writing (Hesiod via Epimenides) but deliberately complicates the issues of truth or lying in connection with poetic utterance. And he inserts himself not in general terms, but into a particular discussion—that on the tomb of Zeus. Callimachus elaborates Epimenides’ response by rejecting Crete as the birthplace of Zeus on the grounds that the Cretan account is scarcely credible, singling out one specific detail: kaB gbr tafon, r gna, sePo Krpte% Dtektananto¢ sB d’ oD uane%, DssB gbr aDeA. For the Cretans built a tomb for you, Lord, but you have not died, you are forever. (8–9)

The tomb of Zeus on Crete was well known in the Hellenistic age, though we have no certain information before that period. The Cretan deity connected with this tomb is generally taken to be kin to Near Eastern dying gods. According to M. L. West, the Cretan divinity was originally not the Hellenic Zeus but a pre-Hellenic vegetation or yearspirit of the same general type as the Semitic Adonis or the Egyptian Osiris. He was represented as a beardless youth; he was reborn every year; he also died. This god was identified by the Greeks with their Zeus long before Hesiod. But he retained his individuality, and his worship in Crete preserved many of its peculiar features.47

This aspect of Cretan Zeus would have been familiar to Callimachus and his contemporaries. It appears in a now fragmentary chorus of Euripides’ Cretans, where Idaean Zeus is linked with Dionysus Zagreus

Martin (1998, 2: 164) is more skeptical. Aratus’s subject is the Dictaian Couretes, and the language is clearly reminiscent of the Zeus hymn, lines 51–54. He may simply be dependent on Callimachus, but it is equally possible that both Callimachus and Aratus are recalling an earlier treatment by Epimenides. See further Wilamowitz’s remarks (1924, 2.3–4, n. 1). 47. 1985: 154–55.

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and the Couretes in the context of seasonal and initiatory rites.48 It is a reasonable guess that the tomb of Zeus figured in Epimenides’ writing. But the existence of the tomb seems to have posed an intellectual stumbling block to the conventional wisdom that Zeus was an immortal. The scholiast on the Zeus hymn, for example, provides not one but two rationalizing explanations: in addition to explaining that the tomb was a construction to deceive Cronus he suggests that the tomb was really that of Minos, the son of Zeus, and was inscribed MAnvo% toP Dib% tafo% but over time lost its initial letters and came to read only Dib% tafo%. Callimachus’s introduction of the tomb of Zeus, then, does not provide a resolution to the problem of Zeus’s birth so much as introduce another complication—is Zeus a dying god, a Dionysus or Osiris analogue, or is the tomb to be explained in some other way? Callimachus’s introduction of the tomb at least implicitly marks Cretan Zeus as an oriental deity,49 and this brings his choice of Arcadia or Crete in line with the choice of Theban or Nysan Dionysus. He then explicitly rejects this orientalizing option—“you have not died, you are forever.” But the tomb of Zeus on Crete was notorious and carried with it considerable intertextual baggage. Its affect within the poem cannot be limited to one line or so easily dismissed. The most radical solution to the problem posed by the tomb of Zeus on Crete was that proposed by Callimachus’s older contemporary, Euhemerus. Euhemerus was labeled an atheist because he demoted the traditional Olympian gods to the status of culture heroes who achieved immortal status through their benefactions to humankind. For Euhemerus, Zeus was a human who came from Crete, acted as a lawgiver, and eventually returned to Crete, where he died and was buried. Euhemerus’s writing, like that of his contemporary, Hecataeus of Abdera, belonged to an intellectual world in which the line between human king and divinity may have been easily crossed, but which also exacted a price—stipulated in terms of a moral education and righteous behavior—for royals wishing to undertake the journey. Callimachus certainly knew Euhemerus’s writings, since he refers to them in his first Iambus.50 48. C. Austin, Nova fragmenta Euripidea in papyris reperta (Berlin, 1968) fr. 79. See also West 1983, 153: Burkert 1985, 127, 262 and notes. 49. M. P. Nilssen, Geschichte der griechischen Religion (1941) 1: 321. On the tomb of Zeus, see Cook 1965, 940–43. 50. Iambus 12.15–17 (fr. 202 Pf.) on the empty Cretan tomb may also refer to Euhemerus (as A. Kerkhecker’s rather cryptic remarks would seem to imply.) He apparently suggests further connections that, given the extremely fragmentary texts, are scarcely tenable (Callimachus’ Book of Iambi [Oxford, 1999], 24–25, esp. n. 79).

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Whether he approved or disapproved of Euhemerus, it is fair to say his ideas were common intellectual currency within Callimachus’s Alexandran circle, and referring to the tomb of Cretan Zeus was bound to have reminded his audience of Euhemerus’s notorious solution to the problem.

Arcadia and Crete In these opening nine lines, then, Callimachus has introduced his topic—the birth of Zeus—and situated it within the context of the earlier theogonic discourses of Hesiod, Epimenides, and Orphic and rationalist traditions. Around the birth of Zeus are clustered several different, though ultimately converging, choices, the significance of which Callimachus has enlarged by his allusive recourse to a variety of discursive styles—poetic, prophetic, Orphic, rationalist—is the god young or old, a cosmic and originary force for creation or a mythological construct of the poets and vase painters? Is he a king/culture hero or a dying vegetation spirit? Moreover, as the poet painstakingly makes us aware, this is a context in which is it easy to speak falsely and it is one that will increase exponentially in complexity as the question of precisely who this Zeus is, whether a Greek or a Near Eastern god, becomes linked with “our king” (85). Callimachus’s ostensible solution to his carefully constructed poetic dilemma is to reject Crete and locate Zeus’s birth in Arcadia. This is the way he tells the story: In Parrhasia, Rhea bore you, where there was a hill quite sheltered with bushes. Afterwards the place was sacred, and no crawling thing requiring Eileithyia nor any woman draws near it; but the Apidanians call it Rhea’s primeval place of giving birth. There, when your mother laid you down from her great womb, immediately she looked for a stream of water in which she might cleanse herself of the stains of birth and in which she might wash your body. But mighty Ladon did not yet flow, nor did Erymanthus, the clearest of rivers; as yet all Azania was uninundated, but it was to be called “well-watered” from the point when Rhea loosened her cincture; indeed liquid Iaon bore many oaks above it, Melas carried many wagons, and many poisonous creatures had their lairs above Carneion, wet though it was, and a man on foot might walk upon Krathis and stony Metope, thirsty, while abundant water lay beneath his feet. In her distress, Lady Rhea said: “Dear Earth, give birth also; your birth pangs are easy.” She spoke and, raising up her great arm, struck the hill with her staff; it was torn wide apart for her and poured forth a great flood.

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Next, she gave the newborn to the nymph Neda to bring into “a Cretan covert” (34: keyumbn Gyv krhtaPon). When Zeus arrived in Crete, he was deposited in a golden cradle and rocked by the nymph Adrasteia, nourished by the she-goat Amaltheia, and fed upon honeycomb. Around him the Couretes danced and beat their armor in order to prevent Cronus from hearing his cries. Here he quickly grew to manhood, whereupon, we learn, he did not attain his kingship by lot but was chosen to rule by the older generation of deities because of his deeds of prowess. If we examine the details of this narrative, it is obvious that Callimachus only partially rejects the Cretan tradition. Although he locates the actual birth of Zeus in Arcadia, within minutes of birth he narrates the child’s transference to the land of liars. Many Cretan elements—the child is hidden, nursed, and reared in Crete—form an essential part of his narrative.51 Callimachus devotes twenty-three lines to Arcadia, thirteen to Crete. Both parts of the story open with a geographical description that yields an aition: lines 10–14 provide an account of the “primeval childbed of Rhea,” while lines 41–45 tell us about the “Plain of the Navel.” Between the two are eight lines devoted to the lineage and activities of the nymph Neda, who is instrumental in the transfer from one place to the other. In treating the local geographies of Arcadia and Crete the poet creates a series of deliberate slips between signifier and signified that obscure rather than clarify the different locations. Instead of maintaining the separateness of these two regions, as the hymnic opening would seem to demand, Callimachus occasionally merges them by using geographical markers that are attested for both locations at points in the narrative when Zeus is supposedly transported from one place to the other. The geographical misprisions begin even earlier with his first formulation of the problem: in line 4 Callimachus asks whether he should hymn the god as Dictaean or Lycaean in what we take to be a synecdochic substitution of the names of local mountains in Crete and Arcadia for the regions themselves. In lines 6–7 he appears to vary these terms with an unbalanced pair—“in the Idaean mountains” or “in Arcadia.” But the phrase “in the Idaean mountains” (\IdaAoisin Dn oGresi) in Homer and other poets refers not to Mt. Ida in Crete but to Mt. Ida in the Troad, which was yet another location that claimed to be the birthplace of Zeus. There was apparently no tradition that Zeus was 51. This is usually seen as Callimachus cleverly reconciling the two inherited versions of the myth, though why he should do so is not obvious within the terms of the text.

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born on Mt. Ida in Crete, but rather in a cave located on its slopes.52 G. R. McLennan, capping a trend found in earlier commentaries, remarks on this phrase: “Such variation is typical of Callimachus; in this case he may have achieved it at the expense of mythological accuracy.”53 However, we might take leave to doubt this. Again, at line 34, we are informed that the newborn was given to Neda to “bring into a Cretan covert.” At first we imagine that we have somehow missed the shift to Crete, but a few lines later we find ourselves apparently still in Arcadia. According to Pausanias, Cretea (KrhtAa) was not Crete after all, but an area located on Mt. Lycaeon in Arcadia.54 Then, in lines 42–43, Callimachus mentions Thenae. In fact, there were two Thenaes—one in Arcadia (where we thought we were), the other in Crete.55 The poet calls attention to the geographic doublet with an aside: Thenae—the one near Cnosos.56

45

eRte Qenb% dpAleipen DpB KnvsoPo fAroysa, ZeP pater, c NAmfh se (QenaB d’ Gsan DggAui KnvsoP) toytaki toi pAse, daPmon, dp’ dmfala%¢ Gnuen DkePno \Omfalion metApeita pAdon kalAoysi KAdvne%. When the Nymph left Thenae, carrying you towards Cnosos, Father Zeus (for Thenae is near Cnosos), then did your navel fall away, Daimon: hence the Cydonians call that place the Plain of the Navel.

In addition he selects the ethnic designation of “Cydones” as a metonym for Cretans, but Pausanias tells us that “all the surviving sons of [the Arcadian] Tegeates, namely, Cydon, Archedius, and Gortys, migrated of their own free will to Crete, and after them were named the cities Cydonia, Gortyna, and Catreus. But the Cretans disagree with this.”57 In other words, the ethnic Cydones is contested—it may signify either Arcadian or Cretan origin. The potential for ambiguity is not resolved but compounded by the sentence itself. Not only were there several locations throughout Greece purporting to be the “omphalos,” or center, but at least one—Delphi—was far more prominent. And in this

52. Cook 1965, pt. 1, pp. 932–33; and West 1983, 131–32. 53. McLennan 1977, 33. 54. Pausanias 8.38.2; see also McLennan 1977, 66, with his bibliography on this point. 55. McLennan 1977, 74–75; and Hopkinson 1984a: 143. 56. These lines are so contorted in word order, and the transition between Arcadia and Crete so sudden, that Meineke suspected a textual problem, as did Schneider (1870, 14–18), though Kuiper (1896, 21) provided the answer above. 57. 8.53.4. Kuiper 1896, 21–22.

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context we might also recall the remark of Epimenides noted above that if, indeed, there was an “omphalos,” it was “clear to the gods but hidden to mortals.” The sentence, therefore, records a contested group designating a contested location for something that may or may not exist.58 It is possible, with McLennan, to attribute one or even two of these double locations to “inaccuracies” of the poet. But Callimachus, according to the Suda, wrote a monograph on Arcadia, and probably was as familiar with its mythic traditions as Pausanias was. Rather, we are experiencing a geographical hoax: the misprisions serve to confuse, then momentarily collapse the mythological landscape. These successive superimpositions of the Cretan landscape on Arcadia or the Arcadian landscape on Crete disorient the reader and undermine Callimachus’s original disjunction—Arcadia or Crete. We might suspect that the purpose of all this geographical legerdemain is to absorb the Cretan geography into the Arcadian, an erudite leg-pull that demonstrates that Zeus was born in Arcadia by constructing a narrative in which all socalled Cretan locations are really in Arcadia. A leg-pull for which there is some authority, since Pausanias records a local Arcadian tradition that Zeus was reared on Mt. Lycaeon: “There is a place there called Cretea, . . . and the Arcadians claim that Crete, where the Cretan story has it that Zeus was reared, is this place, not the island.”59 However, Callimachus does not abandon his baby Zeus in Cretea, leaving the rest in silence. He rather perversely goes on to include characters like the Couretes who are apparently not collocated in Arcadia. Nor he does confine his geographical duplicity to Arcadia and Crete: the conflation of the two Mt. Idas—that in Crete and the other in the Troad—is proleptic of the introduction of later figures like Adrasteia, who was originally connected with the Trojan birth story of Zeus, into the Cretan story.60 Within the context of theogonic discourse this geographical instability serves a wider purpose than mere cleverness. It highlights the competing nature of traditional myths and, by deliberately confusing or conflating elements from competing regional claims to locate the birth of the god on the hometown mountain, Callimachus paradoxically creates a kind of Ur-myth. He shows us a pattern that emerges for every mountain, which in its ubiquity and capacity for literary transpositions

58. See Selden 1998, 321, on the “eccentric center.” 59. 8.38.2. See also 8.36.2; and Verbruggen 1981, 32–37, for the Cretan elements also claimed for mainland Greece. 60. West 1983, 132.

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elevates Zeus from a parochial into a universal deity. Moreover, this pattern provides a template of sorts into which he can insert another set of claims about the birth of a god. The Arcadian portion of the story opens with a five-line section devoted to describing the particularities of the birth spot, capped by an aition, followed by an eighteen-line section on the cleansing of Rhea, which as a consequence causes the previously subterranean rivers of Arcadia to flow and the previously arid land to be irrigated. It begins as follows: 10

Dn dA se ParrasAi ^ReAh tAken, rxi malista Gsxen gro% uamnoisi periskepA%¢ Gnuen c xpro% Cera%, oDdA tA min kexrhmAnon EDleiuyAh% Crpetbn oDdB gynb DpimAsgetai, dlla C ^ReAh% dgAgion kalAoysi lexaion \Apidanpe%. In Parrhasia, Rhea bore you, where there was a hill quite sheltered with bushes. Afterwards the place was sacred, and no crawling thing requiring Eileithyia nor woman draws near it; but the Apidanians call it Rhea’s primeval place of giving birth.

This section shares its language and thought with two archaic sources.61 The first is from Homer’s Odyssey: 245

›VgygAh ti% npso%62 dpaprouen eDn clB kePtai, Gnua mBn 6tlanto% uygathr, dolaessa Kalyca, naAei DJlakamo%, deinb uea%¢ oDdA ti% aDtu mAsgetai oGte uepn oGte unhtpn dnurapvn.63 A primeval island lies far away in the salt sea; there the daughter of Atlas, artful Calypso, dwells, the fair-haired, dire goddess. Nor yet did anyone approach her, neither god nor mortal man.

The second source is Hesiod’s Theogony: eDnaete% dB uepn dpameAretai aDBn Dantvn, oydA pot’ D% boylbn DpimAsgetai oDd’ DpB daPta% DnnAa pant’ Gtea¢ dekati d’ DpimAsgetai aRti% +eDrAa%64 duanatvn oF \OlAmpia damat’ Gxoysi.

61. See the discussion in Reinsch-Werner 1976, 32–36. 62. \VgygAh is normally treated as a noun, but it might as easily be an adjective here; so West 1966, 378 ad 806. 63. Odyssey 7.244–47. 64. For details of the textual problem, see West 1966, 377 ad 804. It is not relevant to the current discussion.

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Callimachean Theogonies toPon gr’ erkon Guento ueoB Stygb% gfuiton Gdvr, dgAgion ¢ tb d’ Ehsi katastryfAloy dib xaroy.65 For nine years [a god who forswears his oath] is cut off from the eternal gods nor yet does he approach the council or the feasts, for nine full years. But then he approachs in the tenth year . . . of the immortals who dwell in the houses of Olympus. So serious an oath the gods make the imperishable waters of the Styx, primeval, which pours from a rugged place.

The elements common to these passages emphasize the remoteness and the great antiquity of Zeus’s birthplace. Neither gods nor mortals approach Calypso’s island, and her very name means “Hidden,” while in the Hesiodic passage divinities who have broken their oaths may not approach Mt. Olympus for nine years. Callimachus imitates the unusual language—oDdA . . . (Dpi)mAsgetai—but alters the two excluded categories—gods and men—to a more restricted pairing to which we will return below. In the Homeric passage it is Calypso’s island that is “primeval” (dgygAh); in the Hesiodic, it is the waters of the Styx. Together the two provide vivid images of an ancient place—an island surrounded by a vast expanse of water combined with waters not simply flowing, but gushing forth, both of which Callimachus exploits. In his account, Rhea causes the first waters to burst from the rocks of the sacred hill where Zeus is born. Further, the Hesiod passage serves as a geographical marker: the Styx is often located in Arcadia, near Mt. Lycaeon, and in mythological terms, Styx was not only the sister of Neda, but the most famous river in Arcadia and notable in its absence from Callimachus’s account. Since Callimachus only a few lines later makes a considerable point about the relationship of Styx and Neda, he highlights not only his divergence from the Hesiodic account but also the new prominence he has given to the hitherto obscure Neda and her role as Zeus’s nurse. Water for Argos The most remarkable feature of the second part of the Arcadia story is the connection between the birth of the divinity and sudden emergence of rivers to irrigate a previously arid land. In both language and narrative Callimachus forges a causal link between water, life, and the birth of the god. The rare form for the genitive of Zeus (Zhna%) that opens

65. Hesiod Theogony 801–6.

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the poem exploits a folk etymology that as early as Plato’s Cratylus linked Zeus as the source of life to the verb zpn, “to live.”66 The mother of Zeus is ^ReAi, whose name is connected with rAv, \ ‘flow.”67 The two proper names that Callimachus chooses for Arcadia—„zhnA% and „pidanpe%—have ancient etymologies that link them with aridity: „zhnA% with gza (“dryness”) and „pidanpe% with d-pAnein (“without drink”).68 About the former, McLennan remarks: “It is . . . possible that Callimachus is thinking of d-Zan (“without Zeus”). The god has certainly not yet been born; and Callimachus may be hinting at the god’s role as Zeus CAtio%.”69 F. Bornmann points to the spontaneous behavior of the waters citing a passage from Herodotus that describes the Nile (2.14).70 J. K. Newman goes even further: “The birth of baby Zeus signalled abundance of water for Arcadia. Could not the birth of Ptolemy signal the same for Egypt?”71 All three scholars are attempting to account for Callimachus’s absorption by the peculiar hydraulics of Arcadia. Arcadia was notoriously a dry land, much more dependent on springs than rivers for local irrigation. Pausanias reports about underground water sources as well as rivers opened by earthquakes. He also notes a Messenian tradition that Zeus was reared among the Messenians, and his nurses were Ithome (a mountain) and Neda, the river in which he was bathed.72 Being born on a mountain and bathed in a spring were commonplace mythological activities for Greek gods, but no extant source connects Rhea’s parturition or Zeus’s birth with the phenomena described in this poem. In fact, the various ancient sources inevitably cited (such as Pausanias) are striking for their divergence from Callimachus’s story. For his Alexandrian audience, however, there was an obvious parallel to the behavior of Arcadian waters—the spontaneous and life-bringing moisture occasioned by the rise of the Nile in an oth66. Plato Cratylus 396a–c, where Socrates comments on the doubleness of Zeus, as exemplified in the double name—Zeus, Dios. See also Hopkinson 1984b, 176; Bornmann 1988, 117–18; Depew 1993, 75–76. Note that Scytobrachion provides an explanation for the name that connects it with the beneficence of kingship (Diodorus Siculus 3.61.6 = F13 Rusten); see above. 67. Plato Cratylus 402b. Hopkinson 1984b, 176. 68. Hopkinson 1984a, 141. The original suggestion about \Apidanpe% was made by F. von Jan in his dissertation, “De Callimacho Homeri interprete” (Strassburg, 1893), on the basis of Eustathius’s commentary on Dionysius the Periegete ad 415. Kuiper (1896, 10–11) expresses doubts. 69. 1977, 50. 70. Bornmann (1988, 121) argues that the spontaneity of nature is intended to locate Arcadia in a primordial time before civilization. 71. 1985, 184–85. 72. Pausanias 8.20.1; cf. Strabo 8.4.4, 4.33.1.

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erwise desiccated landscape, which coincided with the birth of the god Horus, the divine prototype of the pharaoh. The centrality of the inundation for all who resided in Egypt, whatever their ethnic origins, and the extensive mythology and ritual that surrounded the annual event were bound to be more familiar to residents of Alexandria than an Arcadian tradition that its rivers became fully functional only at the time of Zeus’s birth, if in fact such a tradition existed at all outside of Callimachus’s poetic imagination. If Callimachus connects the “birth of baby Zeus” in a causal way to the irrigation of hitherto dry lands, a number of other elements of Callimachus’s description reinforce an impression that the reader is being relocated in an “Egyptian” space. Lines 19–21 provide an example: Gti d’ gbroxo% ren epasa \AzhnA%¢ mAllen dB mal’ eGydro% kalAesuai aRti%¢ DpeB thmasde, ^RAh ete lAsato mAtrhn. As yet all Azania was uninundated, but it was to be called “well-watered” from the point when Rhea loosed her cincture.

Callimachus introduces gbroxo%, a word that is rare in Greek before the Hellenistic period, though it may not be irrelevant that in Euripides’ Helen the Libyan desert is styled gbroxa pedAa.73 However, gbroxo% appears frequently in Greco-Roman documents from the third century b.c.e. on as a technical term.74 The entire economy of Egypt was based on the flooding of the Nile, which leaves a rich silt deposit that fertilizes the land it covers. Since the height of the inundation differed from year to year, it was of some importance that accurate records be kept in order to estimate crop yield. Each year land could be declared to be inundated by the Nile (bebregmAnh gp) or uninundated (gbroxo%). If for most Greeks gbroxo% meant “unwatered” in a nonspecific way, for a Greek living in a country so dependent upon a unique ecological circumstance, gbroxo% inserts the behavior of Arcadian rivers into a standard frame of reference for the Nile. Further, the phrase itself, Gti d’ gbroxo% ren epasa | \AzhnA%¢ mAllen dB mal’ eGydro%, appears to have

73. Line 1485. The words occur in a choral passage (1478–94) describing the passage of cranes from Egypt to Greece, a reversal of direction from the famous simile in Homer Iliad 3.3–6. Callimachus Aetia fr. 1. 13–14 Pf. makes use of the same reversal of direction. (I am indebted to Benjamin Acosta-Hughes for this observation.) 74. The earliest dated example I have found is PHibeh I 85.25, a loan of 261 b.c.e., referring to land that has been declared as uninundated. Wilamowitz (1924, 6 n. 3), Erler (1987, 31 n. 113), and Bing (1988, 137 n. 90) also note the significance of this term.

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been modeled on a line from Hesiod’s now fragmentary Catalogue of Women. Two versions of the line survive: 6rgo% gnydron Dbn DanaaB uAsan 6rgo% Gnydron75 and 6rgo% gnydron Dbn Danab% poAhsen eGydron.76 Whichever is the correct text, the shape of both versions and Callimachus’s phrase coincide, locating “unwatered” at the beginning, transforming it to “well-watered” at the end, with both adjectives predicated of a single place-name (Argos, Azanis). The fragment belongs to a well-documented legend about Argos: when Hera had dried up the rivers in anger, Danaus’s daughters either dug or discovered the location of underground wells.77 Callimachus includes the account of the Argive fountains in the Aetia.78 Argos is not Arcadia, but the Argive subtext provides a reminder of the complicated interrelationship of Egypt and Greece. Not only are Danaus and his daughters immigrants from Egypt, but despite the dissimilar ecologies they would appear to have been long since associated in the Greek imagination with discovering or introducing irrigation. Callimachus’s selection of detail in describing the aridity of Arcadia before Zeus’s birth (18–27) also seems calculated to recall the Nile: But mighty Ladon did not yet flow, nor did Erymanthus, the clearest of rivers; as yet all Arcadia was uninundated. . . . Indeed liquid Iaon bore many oaks above it, Melas carried many wagons, and many poisonous creatures had their lairs above Carneion, wet though it was, and a man on foot might walk upon Krathis and stony Metope, thirsty, while abundant water lay beneath his feet.

Compare the Victory of Sosibius, in which Callimachus introduces the Nile as a speaker. He expresses his delight at Sosibius’s victory in this way: Mighty though I am, whose source no mortal man knows, in this one thing at least I was less significant than those rivers that the white ankles of women cross without difficulty and a child on foot without wetting his knees (dbrAkti goAnati). (fr. 384.31–34 Pf.)

The Nile’s speech is ironic: he categorizes lesser rivers by a trope found frequently in Egyptian literature to describe a low Nile. The following passage, for example, comes from the “Prophecy of Neferti”: “Dry is 75. Strabo 8.6.8 cited in fr. 128 M–W. 76. Eustathius on Homer Iliad 4.171, p. 461.2 cited in fr. 128 M–W. See also ReinschWerner’s remarks (1976, 36–37). 77. Apollodorus 2.1.4; Pausanias 2.37.1. 78. Fr. 66 Pf. See also Hymn to Athena 48.

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the river of Egypt | One crosses the water on foot; | One seeks water for ships to sail on, | Its course having been turned into shoreland.”79 Within the context of Egyptian literature this kind of description usually belongs to texts that connect the prosperity of the land with the rule of a good king, and this order was often inverted to tell of all the disasters that befall the land when the good ruler is absent. A central feature of such “national distress” literature was the failed flood or the drying up of the Nile, a theme that was regularly attached to the post eventum prophecy of a king’s reign.80 Within an Egyptian context the god’s birth, like a new pharaoh, imposes order (maat) on the universe, beginning with the natural and extending through the social order. The trajectory of Callimachus’s hymn is precisely that: to move from Zeus’s birth, signaled by the life-giving natural phenomenon of water, to his maturity when he assumes kingship of the gods. The description of Zeus’s birth at lines 10–14 (translated above) is also described in terms that parallel Egyptian myth: Dn dA se ParrasAi ^ReAh tAken, qxi malista Gsxen gro% uamnoisi periskepA%¢ Gnuen c xpro% Cera%, oDdA tA min kexrhmAnon EDleiuyAh% Crpetbn oDdB gynb DpimAsgetai, dlla C ^ReAh% dgAgion kalAoysi lexaion \Apidanpe%.

Callimachus’s aition emphasizes the following: (1) Rhea gives birth on a hill or mountain (gro%); (2) the place is now sacred (c xpro% Cera%); (3) pregnant women and crawling things (Crpetbn) may not approach; (4) hence it is called the “primeval place of giving birth.” A mountain location for birth is not unique to the mythology of Zeus, but it differs conspiciously from the cave usually associated with the Cretan birth.81 However, these details do coincide with Egyptian cosmogony, as set out in the previous chapter: Egyptians conceived life as having initially appeared on a mound or hill that emerged from the watery void, and the place was associated with the birth of divinities. Horus’s birth, like that of Zeus, was claimed for many locations throughout Egypt, each of

79. Lichtheim 1973, 141. The text is from the Middle Kingdom (ca. 1990 b.c.e.), but the theme of the dry Nile was not unusual. Compare the “Tale of the Eloquent Peasant”: “Is crossing the river in sandals a good crossing? No!” (Lichtheim 1973, 177). See also my discussion in “Egyptian Callimachus.” 80. See M. Lichtheim, “Didactic Literature,” in Loprieno 1996, 243–62 (esp. p. 243, where she outlines the components of Egyptian didactic, and pp. 248–51 for a discussion of the “Prophecy of Neferti”). 81. See Burkert 1985, 262; West 1966, 297–98.

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which might be identified as the primeval hill, and the moment of his divine birth was imagined as an instantiation of that first act of creation.82 That act was repeated each year when the Nile rose to flood the land, hence the reason that the beginning of the inundation also marked the New Year. By insisting that Zeus was born on the hill and describing that hill as a primeval place from which waters will begin to flow, again Callimachus’s narrative conforms to Egyptian ideology. In fact, a much closer parallel to Callimachus’s text than traditional Greek sources is found in an Egyptian hymn from the great temple of Isis at Philae, which was constructed under Philadelphus: Isis, Horus’s mother, is invoked as “Isis, giver of life, residing in the sacred mound, . . . she is the one who pours out the Inundation.”83 Within this description Callimachus notes that “no crawling thing requiring Eileithyia nor woman draws near it” (oDdA tA min kexrhmAnon EDleiuyAh% | Drpetbn oDdB gynb DpimAsgetai). For the “gods and men” of his models, Callimachus has “crawling thing” and “woman.” The need for Eileithyia is a deliberate anachronism. In this time of cosmic origins, the goddess had not been born, for tradition makes her a daughter of Zeus and Hera. But Eileithyia is also specifically identified with Crete where she is associated with chthonic cult;84 therefore, an appearance in this Arcadian birth story would be de trop. Why then does Callimachus introduce this detail? The usual explanation is that giving birth was prohibited within Greek sanctuaries.85 But the prohibition did not seem to extend to pregnant animals. We might take this to be ironic— the “ancient childbed” is now so sacred not even animals may give birth there. However, Crpetan is an unusual choice of terms. It is a relatively rare word applied to things that crawl as opposed to things that fly or swim, and in the Hellenistic period it commonly meant “serpent.” Callimachus is said here to be imitating the usage of the Homeric unicum (Crpeta) at Odyssey 4.418.86 If he is, that passage would also insert us into the discursive field of Egypt, for it describes the ability of “Egyptian Pro-

82. Frankfort 1978, 151–54; Lloyd 1988, 143. 83. Zˇabkar 1988, 51. 84. Burkert 1985, 24–26. 85. McLennan 1977, 42–43. See R. Parker, Miasma: Pollution and Purification in Early Greek Religion (Oxford, 1983) 32–37. How widespread these prohibitions were is a matter of debate. Parker offers very little documentary support, and the Zeus hymn is suspiciously prominent as corroboration for actual cult practices, which may have varied widely. Pausanias (8.36.3), for example, mentions “Rhea’s cave” on Mt. Lycaeon, which no one could enter except the holy women of the goddess. 86. See McLennan 1977, 42.

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teus” to turn into all manner of different creatures. In Pindar Pythian 1.25 kePno . . . Crpetan is the Giant Typhoeus, whom the Greeks generally equated with Horus’s traditional opponent, Seth. In line 25 Callimachus introduces another rare word that means “venomous beast”: kinapeta. Although these creatures are extraneous to the story of Zeus’s birth, they are quite significant in the mythology of Horus. Seth’s unleashing of serpents and poisonous creatures like scorpions against the newborn was an integral part of the Horus saga, and plaques with the image of the infant Horus throttling snakes were in wide circulation in Hellenistic Egypt as protective devices. In this context it may also be relevant that in the Heracliscus Theocritus chooses this same word, Crpeta, to designate the snakes sent by Hera to attack the infant Heracles (24.57). Heracles’ close connection with the Ptolemies, and Theocritus’s insistence that the infant was born at the very time of Ptolemy II’s birth, led Ludwig Koenen to make the attractive suggestion that Theocritus’s poem was composed for the accession of Philadelphus as coregent.87 The ramifications of this will be explored in the next chapter. Here it is sufficient to emphasize that Callimachus includes details in his mythic narrative that are both jarring and slightly peculiar, as well as language— Crpetan, kinapeta—that is not easily accounted for in Greek myth. But these eccentricities do belong to a coherent narrative within the framework of Egyptian culture—the saga of Horus-the-Child. Hesiodic Callimachus Lines 28–45 narrate a series of events heavily dependent on Theogony 467–506.88 In Hesiod a pregnant Rhea begs her parents (469) to devise a plan to keep Cronus from swallowing (as usual) her expected child. Their solution is to send her to Luktos in Crete when she is ready to deliver (477). When the baby is born, her mother, Gaia, receives the newborn to raise: 480

tbn mAn oC DdAjato GaAa pelarh Krati Dn eDreAi trefAmen dtitallAmenaA te. Gnua min Qkto fAroysa uobn dib nAkta mAlainan, prathn D% LAkton¢ krAcen dA C xersB laboPsa gntri Dn dlibati, zauAh% Cpb keAuesi gaAh%.

87. 1977, 79–86; see his further remarks in 1993, 44; also Cameron 1995, 54–55. 88. Haslam 1993, 120–21.

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Vast Earth received him from her [Rhea] to cherish and rear in broad Crete. From thence, carrying him through the black night, she came swiftly first to Luktos, and, taking him in her arms, she hid him in a deep cave under the secret places of holy earth.

The passage concludes with an aition of the omphalos (491–500). In the Theogony it is a great stone swaddled and given to Cronus in place of baby Zeus. When Zeus comes to adulthood he forces Cronus to regurgitate it. Zeus himself places the stone in Delphi as a marvel for mortals (500), and presumably an index of his power. In Callimachus’s sequence, Rhea calls upon her mother, Gaia (29), who never appears. Callimachus provides homely details about the event: after Rhea strikes the hill with her staff to cause a mighty flood (32), she bathes the newborn, swaddles him (33), and then hands him over to the nymph Neda, who carries him to Crete. In Callimachus, Gaia is invoked only to have her role as a surrogate preempted by the hitherto obscure Neda, while Cronus’s hostile behavior—the reason to hide the baby—is never directly mentioned. The suture between the Arcadian and the Cretan birth story occurs in line 42 when the nymph leaves Thenae for Crete, and where Callimachus calls attention to the transfer with an aside about Thenae. Earlier, I suggested that the aside effected a momentary collapse of the Arcadian and Cretan landscapes. Hesiod’s lines quoted above behave similarly to Callimachus’s in that Gaia is already in Luktos when she receives the baby in line 479, to which—apparently—she then returns (482). As a result scholars have questioned the text and proposed various solutions to eliminate the perceived difficulty.89 Callimachus seems to be repeating the inconcinnity of the earlier text by matching two Luktoses with two Thenaes— but in his case the doublet indicates his divergence from Hesiod. Luktos, twice mentioned, is the same place in Crete, while Thenae marked simultaneously two different locations, thus underscoring the substitution of Neda for Gaia and the moment of transition from Callimachus’s version of Zeus’s birth in Arcadia into the realm of Hesiod’s, or Crete.90 Finally, in the process of the transfer from Arcadia to Crete, Zeus’s umbilical cord drops onto the earth, occasioning a brief aition

89. See West 1966, 299 (lines 481ff.); and Reinsch-Werner’s discussion (1976, 41 n. 1). 90. See T. Fuhrer’s discussion (Die Auseinandersetzung mit den Chorlyrikern in den Epinikien des Kallimachos, Schweizerische Beiträge zur Altertumswissenschaft 23 [Basel,

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(44–45). The omphalos has shed its earlier mythological improbability—a stone ingested by Cronus and retained for decades. It is now an ordinary umbilical cord. This last divergence from the Theogony, in combination with the bathing and swaddling, reinforces Zeus’s status as a baby and humanizes him as he is transferred from one location to another.91 Further, the location of the omphalos, or center of the world, now shifts from Hesiod’s Delphi, a Hellenocentric center, to Crete, a southern Mediterranean location, that is now (almost) midway between the mainland of old Greece and the new Greek world of Egypt and North Africa. Callimachus’s insistence on the differences between his version and Hesiod’s again implicates us in the realm of Egyptian ideas, specifically the hiding of Horus in Chemmis. As we saw in the previous chapter, the story is told in Herodotus (2. 146): after Isis hands her newborn child Apollo ( = Horus) to Leto to hide from his uncle Typhon ( = Seth), who was intent on harming him, Leto hides the child on an island that begins to float, presumably to deceive Typhon. Thus it is not in Greek myth but in Egyptian that we find correspondences with the discrete elements that Callimachus has chosen to emphasize in his birth narrative. The pharaoh himself, at the time of the Ptolemaic takeover, was specifically linked in cult to Horus-the-Child, a connection that the Ptolemies fostered. Callimachus’s poem exploits this identification. The foregrounding of the new figure of the nurse and the conveyance to an island (although not floating) to protect the child is a striking innovation in the Greek story; in combination with emphasis on the relationship between the birth of the god and the coming of waters to a dry land, Callimachus’s narrative can be understood within an Egyptian imaginative framework. Even when we factor out the many elements that are folkloric—evil relative, precocious childhood—the specific details and their arrangement in Callimachus’s story and Egyptian myth coincide: both divine children are born on sacred hills, they are handed off to nurses to be hidden and reared on an island, venomous creatures appear in both stories (somewhat gratuitously, we might think, in Callimachus), both children are in danger from their male relatives (Seth, Cronus), and their births are causally linked to bringing

1992] 51–52) of Hymn to Zeus 13–14 as a comment on a textual crux in Pindar (Nemean 9.40–42). What she argues is similar to what is happening here. 91. Haslam 1993, 121 n. 19: “Callimachus rejects the stone and normalizes the sequence.”

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moisture to a dry land. At the beginning of the hymn this larger pattern is not discernable, though the particular ways in which Callimachus calls his audience’s attention to the Egyptian dimension of the tale may be becoming apparent. After this considerable excursus on the cleansing of Rhea, Callimachus concludes the birth section of the hymn in Crete:

50

ZeP, sB dB Kyrbantvn Ctarai prosephxAnanto DiktaPai MelAai, sB d’ DkoAmisen \Adrasteia lAkni DnB xrysAi, sB d’ Duasao pAona mazan aDgb% \AmalueAh%, DpB dB glykB khrAon Gbrv%. gAnto gbr DfapinaPa PanakrAdo% Grga melAssh% \IdaAoi% Dn gressi, ta te kleAoysi Panakra. oRla dB KoArhtA% se perB prAlin drxasanto teAxea peplagonte%, Gna Krano% oGasin dxan dspAdo% eDsaAoi kaB mb sAo koyrAzonto%. Zeus, the companions of the Curbantes, the Dictaian Ash-Nymphs, cradled you in their arms, Adrasteia put you to sleep in your golden cradle, you suckled at the fat teat of the goat Amaltheia, and fed upon the honeycomb. (For suddenly the work of the Panacrian bee appeared in the Idaean hills, which they call Panacra.) The Couretes danced a war dance around you, clashing their armor, so that Cronus would hear in his ears the sound of the shield, and not your infant wails.

Here the tempo speeds up, and the crowded mythological inventory presents a marked contrast to the leisurely treatment of Arcadian waterways. This rapid tempo continues into the opening of the aretai section, where Zeus’s growth to manhood is compressed into three lines (55–58): Fairly you grew, and fairly were you nurtured, Ouranian Zeus; swiftly you grew up, and down came swiftly to your cheeks, but still a child you devised all things that were accomplished.

In these eleven lines Callimachus seems to be referring to a well-known story, the details of which he is determined to mention, but upon which he has little time to dwell. This is a careful contrivance for multiple effects. The breathless pace of the narrative is mimetic of Zeus’s own rapid growth to maturity. The infant Greek god is now inserted into the discursive field of a Cretan Zeus with his Near Eastern analogues, and Callimachus realigns the inherited tradition and figures Zeus as a human baby by downplaying or eliminating the supernatural, in preparation for the identification of Zeus with “our king” as the poem continues.

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There is no extant story of Zeus’s birth on Crete either before or after Callimachus that includes all of Callimachus’s details, and indeed, he seems to have intermingled elements from a variety of sources (if he has not actually invented them). The Dictaean Meliae, for example, are not elsewhere attested in connection with Zeus. They appear in Hesiod’s Theogony (187), having sprung from the blood gushing from Uranus’s genitals after his son Cronus castrates him. Other elements are not found in Homer or Hesiod, but in the Orphic cosmologies.92 Here, also, Callimachus alludes to material that we earlier located in Epimenides and Euhemerus. By returning the god to Crete, he inevitably recalls the rejected birth story and the tomb. As we saw above, Cretan Zeus was in origin a dying god, whose worship was conducted in caves and through fertility rites, but who at a later date was assimilated at least partially to Olympian Zeus. Many of the details Callimachus includes in this section belong to the Cretan vegetation spirit, rather than the Olympian god: for example, Adrasteia and the Corybantes were originally associated with the worship of the Great Mother in Phrygian Ida, but their cult was connected with Cretan Zeus at least as early as the fourth century b.c.e.93 Moreover, the poet appears here to be rationalizing or “Euhemerizing” his material: as the section opens (42–45) we find that the omphalos is now the divine umbilical cord; Amaltheia is now a goat, not a nymph; the bees are simply bees; and the Couretes (KoArhte%), who in the Palaikastro hymn are the attendants of the Great Kouros (Zeus) and derive their name from being his companions, are here, like the Corybantes, downgraded to the status of babysitters, with their name linked etymologically with Zeus’s infantile behavior, that is, koyrAzonto%. The Meliae conform to this euhemerizing pattern: in Hesiod the by-products of a brutal myth, here they are punningly linked to nurture. melAa was a manna ash that secreted a gum (mAli); glykB karion (49) functions both as a gloss and as a transition from one kind of mAli to another—Grga melAssh%.94 Finally, Callimachus’s insistence upon the rapidity with which Zeus grew a beard may be intended to call our attention to the fact that Cretan Zeus, like 92. West 1983, 127–33. It is impossible to know to what extent Callimachus and his contemporaries actively used other Orphic sources in addition to Epimenides, though the material circulated freely enough for them to have had multiple sources, which we are no longer able to identify. 93. See, for example, West 1983, 133, 167. 94. See McLennan ad loc., and Haslam 1993, 121.

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Dionysus, was always represented as a beardless youth, while rejecting that very tradition. Callimachus is the earliest poet we have who connects bees with the baby Zeus, though Euhemerus may also have done so.95 A variant, now known only from a late source,96 makes Melissa, along with Amalthea, daughter of one Melisseus, a king of Crete, who introduced the cult of the Great Mother97 and was said to have made his daughter a priestess of the Melissae, or Bee Maidens. Like Adrasteia and the Corybantes, this tale belongs to the tradition of Zeus as a Near Eastern deity. On the surface, Callimachus rejects this mythological option; his bees suddenly appear in the region: “For suddenly the work of the Panacrian bee appeared in the Idaean hills, which they call Panacra” (49–50). The presence of bees in the region where Zeus is hidden particularly strengthens the connection with the Egyptian story. Horus’s hiding place in the Delta was Chemmis, which is usually taken to mean “place of bees” in Egyptian. Moreover, as we saw in the introduction, in Egyptian royal titulature the bee is the hieroglyphic symbol for the king of Lower Egypt or the Delta region; hence Chemmis is sometimes called the “Home of the Bee King.”98 In this context consider the odd word Callimachus uses of Zeus—Csspna (66)—in a passage where Grga dB xeirpn echoes an earlier Grga melAssh% (50).99 Before Callimachus, Csspn occurs only as a title of the priests of Artemis at Ephesus in a usage that is presumably analogous to the title Melissai for the priestesses at Delphi (see LSJ s.v.). It is glossed by the scholiast on this passage as “properly the king of bees,” though here, and again in the Aetia (fr. 178.23 Pf.), it is used of a human king. Both ancient and modern commentators have puzzled over the word to little avail,100 but given the 95. Fr. 24 Winiarczyk ( = Columella 9.2.3): Euhemerus apparently claimed that bees were a natural phenomenon—sprung from hornets and the sun—and then tended by nymphs who subsequently became the nurses of Zeus. The evidence is not unimpeachable, but if Euhemerus did write about bees in connection with Zeus, Callimachus’s Panacra may be intended to recall Euhemerus’s imaginary land of Panchaea and its chief city, Panara. (Panacra is nowhere independently attested apart from Callimachus; Stephanus Byzantius cites this passage s.v.) 96. Didymus, according to Lactantius, in a context discussing Euhemerus. See M. Schmidt, Didymi Chalcenteri grammatici Alexandrini fragmenta (Amsterdam, 1964), 220–21. 97. West 1983, 133. 98. LÄ, s.v. Biene. Apiculture was very visible in the agricultural life of the Delta region, and bees were connected with more than one Egyptian god: for example, Neith’s temple in Sais was known as the “House of the Bee.” 99. So McLennan 1977, 103. 100. See, for instance, McLennan 1977, 103; Roussel 1928, 38–39.

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fact that bees are so closely connected with both gods’ birthplaces and that a hieroglyphic of the bee marks the Egyptian pharaoh, it is worth considering whether Csspna is an attempt to translate an Egyptian term by its admittedly rare Greek analogue.101 To sum up: Arcadia provides a primordial Greek landscape for Zeus’s birth, the contours of which are made to resemble Egypt, in that the arid land comes to be watered at the time of the birth of the divine child. The Cretan landscape has associations with Near Eastern dying gods on the one hand, but also the Euhemerist tradition that demotes the Olympic pantheon to culture heroes, because the divine child is successively humanized as we move from the Arcadian (or Greek) to the Cretan (or Egyptian) landscape in preparation for the implicit linkage of Zeus and “our king.” Let us turn now to the second half of the hymn (54–91), which details Zeus’s rapid growth to maturity and his attainment of royal prerogatives. The argument is very carefully structured to interweave Zeus, poetry, and “our king”; and the description of Zeus in lines 56–59 is echoed by the appearance of Ptolemy in lines 85–88: 56

djB d’ dnabhsa%, taxinoB dA toi rluon Goyloi, dll’ Gti paidnb% Dbn Dfrassao panta tAleia¢ tu toi kaB gnvtoB proterhgenAe% per Dante% oDranbn oDk DmAghran Gxein DpidaAsion oRkon. Swiftly you grew up, and down came swiftly to your cheeks, but still a child you devised all things that were accomplished; therefore your kin, though being older, did not begrudge that you hold heaven as your allotment.

These lines are conceptually and verbally linked with lines 85–88: 85

Goike dB tekmarasuai cmetAri medAonti¢ periprb gbr eDrB bAbhken. AspArio% kePna% ge teleP td ken rri noash¢ CspArio% tb mAgista, tb meAona d’, eRte noasi. It is reasonable to judge by our king; for he has far exceeded the rest. At evening he accomplishes what he thinks of in the morning. At evening the greatest things, the lesser as soon as he thinks of them.

101. In Pythian 4.60–65, Pindar links the Delphic prophecy to the Battiads with bees. According to the scholium on the passage, “Battis” was not a proper noun but what the Cyreneans called their rulers—that is, it meant “king” (so also Herodotus 4.155). The suggestion that Battus and bit are cognates has been made by more than one scholar; see Schneider (1993, 174–75) for details, though he remains skeptical.

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Note how djB d’ dnabhsa% is echoed by eDrB bAbhken, tAleia by teleP, and Dfrassao by noasi. In both, conception and accomplishment are joined, and there is emphasis as well on the swiftness with which goals are attained. Moreover, in lines 58–59, the historical fact of Ptolemy II’s succession to the throne over his older brothers serves as the subtext for the mythological “fact” of Zeus ruling over his.102 In this section and what follows, ostensibly a Greek hymnic presentation of divine aretai, Callimachus shows a marked preference for allusion to Hesiod, whom he actually quotes at line 79. It is via this intense reliance on Hesiod that Callimachus has inserted himself into the theogonic tradition and by means of which he now adumbrates the ideological essentials of Egyptian kingship: the link between the king and the god, the victory over chaos personified as a cosmic enemy, and the maintainance of cosmic harmony or justice. Not surprisingly, Hesiod’s texts exhibit demonstrable links with the ancient Near East, and particular patterns of kingship.103 Callimachus begins this section by allying himself with a Hesiodic view of the relationship of power, hierarchy, and order. He critiques the standard version of Zeus’s ascension to the throne of the high gods, namely, that he and his brothers cast lots for the heavens, the ocean, and the underworld, respectively, and that Zeus won. Rather, Callimachus tells us: “Casting lots did not make you king of the gods, but the strength of your hands” (oG se uepn Csspna paloi uAsan, Grga dB xeirpn, 66). He thus appears to reject Homer (Iliad 15.186–93), where this well-known story occurs, evidently preferring Hesiod’s account from the Theogony (881–85) in which the gods themselves urge Zeus to become their king. Zeus’s “deeds of strength” are a leitmotif of the Theogony: they include freeing his brothers (496) and then the Cyclopes (501–5), who gave him the thunderbolt, and defeating the Titans (685–819) and Typhoeus (820–80). In the Theogony itself, the narrative immediately preceding Zeus’s selection recounts at some length Zeus’s struggle with and victory over Typhoeus. Typhoeus was a son of Gaia, one of the ghgeneP%, or Earth-Born, and (in a manner of speaking) Zeus’s uncle. He is characterized by fierce heat and, at least in Hesiod’s story, is presented as the sole—and serious—competitor to Zeus for sovereignity. The battle with Typhoeus in Hesiod is clearly a doublet of the war against the Titans, though it serves a different narrative func102. See the discussion on the dating of the poem, pages 77–79 above. 103. See Erler 1987.

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tion. If the defeat of the Titans, or the Ouranids, brings the Olympian regime to power, Typhoeus presents the first, and hence prototypical, challenge to Zeus’s rule. Defeating Typhoeus then is the signal that Zeus is capable of maintaining the position he has been given, and it serves as a portent of the future stability and order of the rule. While the conflict of Zeus and Typhoeus appears to have been marginal in much Greek poetry that has survived, their struggle occupied a more central position in the theogonic and cosmogonic texts.104 Certainly it figured in Epimenides’ writing, whose Cretan Zeus apparently killed Typhoeus by a thunderbolt when he attempted to attack him.105 The Zeus-Typhoeus struggle in these texts provides a close parallel to the story of Horus, who became the first divine king of Egypt and ultimately the chief god of the country. The similarity is not surprising: wherever Hesiod and the cosmogonic writers may have gotten it, the origin of the material is clearly Near Eastern and formed an integral part of Egyptian mythology from a very early period.106 Since Greek writers, well before Callimachus, were used to identifying Typhoeus with Egyptian Seth,107 a Greek audience actually within Egypt, if they knew their Hesiod, would be likely to make such an obvious connection. Further, Callimachus’s choice of the rare proterhgenAe%,108 which elsewhere means “of an earlier generation,” to describe the kin who assented to Zeus’s kingship, while inappropriate for Zeus’s brothers, fits very well the situation in the Theogony (881–85) and by extension the Egyptian story. Horus’s rights were validated by an older order of deities (the so-called Ennead, or nine primal forces, which include earth, air, darkness, and watery chaos), and because of the justice of his claims and his behavior he became the chief god of the country.109 As the hymn draws to a close, Callimachus moves from the Hesiodic 104. For example, a central feature of Pherecydes of Syrus’s theogony was a battle between Zeus and Ophioneus, a serpentlike divinity. See Schibli 1990, 81–88. 105. B8 D-K = Philodemus De pietate 61b1, p. 46G. 106. West 1966, 379–83; 1997, 300–304; Fontenrose 1980, 70–76, for “Zeus and Typhon.” The transmission of this material seems to me parallel to Childéric’s bees—in origin it must be Egyptian, but this would not have been apparent to Callimachus. Only the fact of its obvious similarity to a known Egyptian story would have been relevant for him. 107. West 1966, 379–83. 108. The word is very rare in Greek. Antimachus uses it of the Titans (see Matthews 1996, 164), and Apollonius chooses it to describe the Egyptians (mathr AGgypto% proterhgenAvn aDzhpn, 4.268), who were apparently coeval with the Apidanians, Greece’s aboriginal men (4.263). The scholiast on Aratus Phaenomena 16 takes protArh genea to be contemporaries of Ophion and Eurynome and Ouranos and Kronos. 109. Gwyn Griffiths 1960, 7–10, 85–93.

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realm of divine origins to the world of men by actually quoting first the Theogony, then adopting language from the Works and Days. Simultaneously the poem shifts from Zeus to Ptolemy, who is formally introduced in lines 85–88 (see above): 80

‘‘Dk dB Dib% basilpe%’, DpeB Dib% oDdBn dnaktvn ueiateron¢ tu kaA sfe tebn DkrAnao lajin. dpka% dB ptolAeura fylassAmen, Ezeo d’ aDta% gkris’ Dn polAessen, Dpacio% oE te dAkisi labn Cpb skolips’ oE t’ Gmpalin DuAnoysin¢ Dn dB ryhfenAhn GbalA% sfisin, Dn d’ eli% glbon¢ \ From Zeus come kings; nothing is more divine than the lords of Zeus. And so you chose them as your own portion. You gave them cities to guard, and you seat yourself in the high point of cities, overseer of those who rule their people with crooked judgments, and those who rule otherwise. You have given flowing wealth to them and abundant prosperity.

In terms of the Hesiodic model the defeat of Typhoeus is the decisive act that confirms Zeus’s right to divine kingship and legitimates his patronage of earthly kings. Callimachus insists that Zeus’s Grga xeirpn enable him to rule and that his choice of kings is a natural consequence of this power, since all other skills and arts come under the sway of the ruler.110 Thus hierarchy and ordering are the prerogatives of the king, and the task of maintaining that order falls first to Zeus, and then to earthly kings whose judgments he watches over. Just kings are rewarded with prosperity, for which Callimachus coins the word ryhfe\ nAh, “flowing wealth,” from a Homeric phrase describing the wealth of a king of Sidon.111 “Flowing wealth” is the mot juste for the king of the Nile, who is introduced in the very next lines. The interrelationship of prosperity of the land and just rule is not unfamiliar to Greeks;112 indeed it is to be found in Hesiod’s Works and Days in the very passage that Callimachus’s linguistic borrowings foreground. But it was by no means as central or as dominant in Greek thought patterns as it was in Near Eastern.113 Although the language of this passage is thoroughly Hesiodic, the rhetorical impact is not. Dk dB Dib% basilpe% belongs to the opening of 110. See Bing 1988, 76–83, for an excellent discussion of lines 68–78. 111. r\ ydbn dfneioPo, Odyssey 15.426. 112. Erler (1987) treats the subject at length; see p. 30 for the Zeus hymn. 113. M. L. West (Hesiod, Works and Days [Oxford, 1978] 213) provides Semitic as well as Greek parallels for this section of Hesiod.

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the Theogony, from the song of the Muses, while the language of crooked judgments comes from Works and Days 218–63, a passage emphasizing the punishment and rewards that the god metes out for just and unjust behavior, punishment that even kings will be unable to escape unscathed if they behave badly. The strongly minatory affect of the Hesiodic context is certainly present and important here, but Callimachus emphasizes reward, not punishment, and highlights a causal link between Zeus, the divine king, the earthly king who is his surrogate, and the flowing prosperity of the kingdom. Callimachus’s introduction of “our king” is a necessary component of the chain. In Egyptian thought, it is the just behavior of the king that guarantees the prosperity of the kingdom and simultaneously validates him as the surrogate Horus. Indeed, the language that Callimachus chooses to describe the behavior of “our king”—“for he has far exceeded the rest. At evening he accomplishes what he thinks of in the morning. At evening the greatest things, the lesser as soon as he thinks of them”—is a formula found in Egyptian hymns and royal inscriptions to describe the extraordinary power of a god, and by extension the pharaoh.114 But it is also language reminiscent of the Zeus of lines 56–59 and his accomplishments, namely, the link between thought and actuality (frassao panta tAleia). The quotation from Hesiod (Dk dB Dib% basilpe%)115 returns us directly to the context of the earlier quotation of Epimenides. Here, as in that earlier passage, which was on the surface about the tomb of Zeus but led us to Hesiod’s proem on the nature of poetic speech, surface musings about kings lead us again to poetry. The Hesiodic line continues: “Happy is he whom the Muses love; sweet song flows from his mouth” (f d’ glbio%, fn tina MoPsai | fAlvntai¢ glykera oC dpb stamato% rAei aDda, 96–97). If that earlier passage was characterized by \ confusion over the narrative voice, confusion over where Zeus was born, here Callimachus speaks securely in his own poetic persona and

114. F. Wassermann (“Ägyptisches bei Kallimachos,” PhW 45 [1925]: 1277) compares a New Kingdom text of Ramesses II: “There is no land that you have not trodden over” and “If you dream something in the night, by daybreak it is quickly accomplished.” To cite a more contemporary example, an Isis hymn in the Philae temple states: “What(ever) comes forth from her mouth is accomplished immediately”: and an Isis hymn at Kyme: “What I decree, that is also accomplished” (Zˇabkar 1988, 69, 150–51). Cf. Koenen 1977, 60 n. 123. Of course, a Greek parallel (Homeric Hymn to Hermes 17–19) can also be found for lines 87–88 (Clauss 1986, 161); this is discussed also by Reinsch-Werner 1976, 53 n. 1. 115. See Reinsch-Werner 1976, 61–63 and 61 n. 1.

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ostensibly expresses no doubts about the relationship between Zeus and “our king.” If the old poets (dhnaioB . . . doidoB) are mistaken or tell stories about Zeus and theogonies that are untrue, Callimachus deliberately positions himself against them and asks that he may tell—not true stories—but more persuasive fictions (65: ceydoAmhn, dAonto% e ken pepAuoien dkoyan). He presents himself as devising fictions, as experimenting with a variety of inherited traditions in order to construct a lineation for the king of the Nile, who is neither Greek nor Egyptian, but both. Callimachus is writing for a Greek-speaking audience, obviously, but an audience that lived in Egypt and could not have been unaware of the mythology of Egyptian kingship and its attendant ideology, an ideology that explicitly connects the birth of the king with the birth of the god Horus as well as with the beginning of the cosmos and the flow of water. Callimachus experiments with constructing a parallel cosmology for his Greek-Egyptian king in which ostensibly he sets out to move from a primordial Greek landscape (Arcadia) via traditional Greek theogonic material to arrive in Egypt and the court of a human king. But the trajectory is not linear. Callimachus locates Zeus’s birth in an originary Greek landscape that betrays an uncanny resemblance to the Nile, but as the newborn approaches Egypt via Crete, he becomes progressively more human until, at the end of the poem, elements of his discrete identity pass over to Ptolemy. Several recent analyses of this hymn have focused on the relationship of truth-telling and lying. J. Clauss, for example, observes that the hymn is structured around the poetic resolution of two lies: one about the birth of Zeus (7–8: DceAsanto . . . cePstai) and the other about Zeus’s accession to the throne (60: oD pampan dlhuAe%; 65: ceydoAmhn).116 Now both of these markers of fictionality or lying precede sections of the text that, I have been arguing, are meant to signify within both Greek and Egyptian narrative spheres. If this is so, what constitutes “truth” or “lies” may differ fundamentally with one’s cultural perspective; a Greek “lie” may well contain an Egyptian “truth,” and vice versa. For example, Cretans are said to be liars because they built a tomb to Zeus, who, for Greeks, “is forever” (DssB gbr aDeA), but, in contrast, the Egyptians venerated Osiris precisely because he died, and his many tombs throughout Egypt were a notable feature of the landscape. If Callimachus deliberately constructed his poetry to explore

116. 1986, 158.

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the existence of competing truths—that Ptolemy is mortal, that Ptolemy is a god—if the central tension in the poem is not a contrived “doubt” concerning whether Zeus was born in Arcadia or Crete, but whether Ptolemy and his kingship are to be regarded as Greek or Egyptian or both, then the pervasive ambiguity about the relationship of poetry to truth and of the poet’s ability to utter it that many critics see in Callimachus’s poetry becomes more explicable. It is not the pose of a cynic nor the result of belatedness in respect to the achievement of earlier Greek poetry; rather, it may stem from the complexity of the task that the poet has set himself, namely, to explore the potential for cultural interactions for which there was not, as yet, a corresponding reality. Like Hesiod before him, then, Callimachus—to modify Detienne’s formulation quoted above—is creating “a myth of emergence” suitable for the new royal line of the Ptolemies and by means of his poetic voice not only articulating but actively collaborating “in setting this new world in order.”

the hymn to delos We have seen how the narrative details of the Hymn to Zeus conform to the Egyptian tale of Horus-in-Chemmis. We have also seen that a version of this story was recounted in Herodotus, where Horus was identified not with Zeus, but with Apollo. In Herodotus’s version, Leto was the nurse of the newborn who was hidden on a floating island to escape Typhon. In Callimachus’s fourth hymn, addressed to Delos, these same elements are combined to produce another theogony with narrative ties to the Egyptian. A number of scholars have already identified the Egyptian patterns of thought to be found in this hymn.117 My intention is not to duplicate their work but to examine the Delos hymn in light of the Zeus hymn, which despite differences of length and emphases displays at its core a similar theogonic narrative. The Delos hymn must have been composed at least a decade after the Zeus hymn: lines 162–95 refer to the historical circumstances of 275 b.c.e, a mutiny

117. In his analysis of this poem, Bing (1988, 138–39) discusses the connection between the Delos hymn and the Herodotus passage as well as the significance of Apollo’s prophecy (pp. 139–43). Many of the observations I shall be making were also made by him, though with different emphases. Koenen focuses on rather different aspects (1983, 174–90; those arguments are reprised in 1993, 48–80, with a discussion of Delos in particular at pp. 81–84). Mineur’s commentary (1984, esp. 13) also identifies a series of Egyptian motifs in the Delos hymn; see also Weber’s comments (1993, 377 n. 1).

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of Ptolemy II’s Gaulish mercenaries, and provide a clear terminus post quem. The relative unimportance of the Gaulish mutiny, however, limits the efficacy of the topical reference to within at most a few years after the event, and most scholars suggest the range 275–270 b.c.e. At any rate, the prominence of Cos in the poem indicates that it was written before the end of the Chremonidean War, when Ptolemy lost effective control of the island; this provides an extreme lower terminus of about 260 b.c.e. No specific occasion suggests itself, though the theme of Apollo’s birth lends credence to W. H. Mineur’s supposition that it was written as a genethliakon, or birthday hymn, for Ptolemy II. Mineur points to the habit of composing and performing birthday poems for those who were founders of philosophical schools, suggesting that such a practice may also have taken place in the Museum.118 Although it is tempting to accept this argument, since it would provide a further connection with the Zeus hymn, Minuer’s evidence is suggestive rather than conclusive. Callimachus’s hymn was modeled on the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, which falls into two parts—Delian Apollo and Pythian Apollo119—and, as Peter Bing has demonstrated, several of Pindar’s odes—the fragmentary Hymn to Zeus, which stood at the opening of the ancient edition, and the fifth and seventh Paeans.120 The story in broad outline is as follows: (1) Asteria, a nymph who shunned Zeus’s bed, jumped into the sea and became an island—a floating island—wandering around the Mediterranean; (2) Leto, who did not shun Zeus, found herself pregnant with Apollo (Apollo’s twin sister, Artemis, is notably absent in this hymn); (3) Hera, Zeus’s wife, is a fearsome opponent and persecutes her rival, who flees throughout the Aegean looking for a place to give birth; in her jealousy Hera prevents her as long as she can; (4) Leto arrives at the island of Cos, but Apollo—from her womb—prophesies that Ptolemy II Philadelphus is destined to be born at Cos and urges Leto to seek out another island; (5) finally, Leto arrives at Asteria (which only after Apollo’s birth is called Delos), where the island welcomes her, and she gives birth as the river, Inopus, swells as a result of its subterranean connection to the Nile (205–8); Hera is reconciled; the island immediately becomes fixed 118. 1984, 10–11. 119. For the relationship of the two parts as well as the dating, see R. Janko, Homer, Hesiod, and the Hymns (Oxford, 1982) 114–32. On the Pythian section, see M. L. West, “Cynaethus’ Hymn to Apollo,”CQ 25 (1975) 161–70. 120. 1988, 96–110. See also I. Rutherford, “Pindar on the Birth of Apollo,” CQ 38.1 (1988) 65–75.

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in the sea with golden foundations, its lake flows with gold, its olive tree blooms with gold foliage (260–65). The island herself (i.e., the nymph Asteria) takes up the newborn and becomes his nurse, devising a series of games to amuse him that then become part of the island’s cultic ritual. If we place the Zeus and Delos hymns side by side, we see the following similarities: there are two divine children, Zeus and Apollo, either born or hidden on islands; each has a nurse—Neda and Asteria— a detail that is apparently new to the inherited mythic tradition; the previously submerged Arcadian rivers burst forth after Zeus’s birth just as the Inopus is swollen from the subterranean Nile flood at the time of Apollo’s birth. Further, Cos, the future site of Ptolemy’s birth, is said to be a “primeval island”—dgygAhn . . . npson—which inserts the human king into the same mythological field as Zeus and Horus. Callimachus’s Delos hymn is, of course, based on the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, but there are notable differences. There is a considerable expansion of Leto’s wandering and her persecution by Hera. Callimachus also conflates the nymph Asteria with the island,121 deliberately blurring the distinctions between the natural world and the anthromorphized realm of the minor deities like nymphs.122 In the Homeric hymn, for example, Delos is not the newborn’s nurse. Finally, Callimachus inserts the long prophecy of Apollo, delivered from the womb, about the birth of Ptolemy II on Cos at some point in the distant future. All three of these changes serve to bring the Greek narrative into alignment with Egyptian myth. The birth of Horus is always preceded by the wanderings of his mother, Isis, around the southern Mediterranean, either to search for the body parts of her husband, Osiris, whom Seth had killed, or, in some versions, in flight from her brother, Seth himself, who wished to destroy her and her unborn child. For this reason she came to bear the child in a secret location in the Delta, sometimes identified as Chemmis, which afterward the Egyptians venerated as a holy place. There is no single Egyptian analogue for Neda/Asteria, since the newborn Horus had many different nurses. For example, Gywn Griffiths in his discussion of the Egyptian myth,123

121. He seems to be playing with and reversing the normal elements of a katasterism. Here an undistinguished star falls from the heavens, where she performs a signal service to the gods by becoming the site of the birth as well as the nurse of Apollo. In contrast, Aratus’s bears (30–33) or Olenian goat (163–64) are translated to the heavens and become constellations as a result of nursing Zeus. 122. See Bing 1988, 117–19. 123. 1960, 94.

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thought that in Herodotus’s version of the birth of Horus-in-Chemmis, the nurse, Leto, should be identified with Wedjoyet, the goddess of Buto, who was sometimes associated with Isis. It is also possible that Herodotus’s source has in mind one of the four protecting goddesses who can figure in the story, or Hathor, usually depicted as a cowheaded deity, who is sometimes Horus’s nurse, sometimes his mother. But whatever variant of the birth of Horus stands behind Herodotus’s version we should note that although a nurse for Apollo/divine newborn is absent in the earlier Greek versions, the figure is a significant actor in Herodotus’s Egyptian tale as well as in both of Callimachus’s poems. The third element—Apollo’s prophecy—provides a different sort of parallel: between the god Apollo and the future king. It also provides the place in which Apollo’s future accomplishments (in Greek hymnic terms, his aretai) are sketched: the defeat of Pytho, the “great serpent,” whom Apollo slays in order to establish his most authoritative prophetic seat at Delphi; and the killing of the children of Niobe, who would appear to have been hereditary enemies of Apollo and Artemis. Apollo then prophesies about Ptolemy’s birth on Cos, coupling it with his victory over a group of Gaulish mercenaries who had rebeled against him and threatened to take over Egypt. This third element interweaves Greek mythology, contemporary history, and motifs from the ideology of Egyptian kingship. The poem is set up rather obviously to move from chaos to order. Initially, nature is in deep disarray as Asteria, an untethered island, wanders the Aegean and as hostile divine forces threaten cosmic upheaval in Hera’s attempt to impede Leto’s giving birth. Initially, we find a narrative sequence similar to that of the Zeus hymn, though now attributed specifically to divine malevolence.124 Rivers are blocked and threatened with aridity (125–35), a correlative in nature to Leto’s blocked parturition. But the birth itself marks the change to order, peace, and stability at the very moment when the Nile inundation begins to flow (205–8). The island is fixed in the sea and is finally able to harbor seafarers, but it also becomes a cultic center sacred to the god who was born there, at whose shrines joyful worshippers are imagined proleptically. The fearful dance of natural phenomena (136–40), terrified by the din of Ares’ shield, is

124. The aridity of the Argolid was, according to myth, the result of Poseidon’s anger against Inachos for preferring Hera to him as the local divinity. While not directly mentioned in the Zeus hymn, the Hesiodic catalogue that serves as an intertext had related the story.

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transformed into the celebratory choir of islands and dancing maidens at the end of the poem (300–306). The island’s new status is marked by a transition from adelos, or obscurity and darkness, to delos, or clarity and light, symbolized by a profusion of gold. At the center of the transition and indeed its cause is the birth of Apollo, on the divine level, and the birth of Ptolemy, on the human. Apollo’s prophecies function to link past, present, and future, and his birth with Ptolemy’s. Initially Apollo prophesies his own defeat of Pytho and the children of Niobe (90–97);125 later he foretells the birth of Philadelphus and his victory over “latterday Titans” (162–95). He begins with his own future killing of Pytho, a primeval serpent. Not coincidentally. The defeat of Pytho is the central feature of the Pythian section of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo. In this hymn Pytho has a peculiar history. Hera, furious about Zeus’s philanderings—specifically the occasion that results in the birth of Athena—decides to get pregnant without his assistance. She prays to Earth and Heaven and the Titans to bear an offspring who will be stronger than Zeus by as much as Zeus is stronger than Cronus (339–40). In a scene reminiscent of Rhea striking the rock in the Zeus hymn, Hera then strikes Earth with her hand, and her prayer is answered. When her time came, she gave birth to Typhaon,126 and entrusted him to Pytho to rear. Typhaon’s fate is not recorded in the Homeric hymn, but Pytho clearly functions as a Typhaon-surrogate in dealing death to all who enter her vicinity in Delphi. Structurally Typhaon and his nurse Pytho are doublets of Apollo and his nurse Delos, or rather their cosmic inversion—Delos is light, order, clarity, and song, while Pytho is darkness, disorder, and chaos. To defeat Pytho, at least in the terms of the Homeric hymn, is to bring order and prophetic light

125. Bing (1988, 117) suggests that “for Callimachus, the Niobe myth has a special point, since it counterposes quantity (Niobe’s many children) to quality (Leto’s two).” It is also possible that “slanderous woman” was an allusion to Arsinoe I, who was exiled to the Thebaid between 279 and 276 b.c.e., or shortly before the writing of the Delos hymn (see Mineur 1984, 128 ad 96). In spite of being younger than his brothers Zeus becomes king of the gods, and Apollo is the more beloved of Zeus’s sons, though Ares is older (58); this preference for younger sons would seem to connect Olympian and human behavior, because Ptolemy II was the youngest of Soter’s sons. Could the Niobe reference be to Soter’s earlier wife, Eurydice, and her six children, in contrast to Berenice I, who was the mother of Philadelphus and his sister-wife Arsinoe II? See Koenen 1983, 178 n. 96, for a different explanation. 126. Typhaon is a variant of Typhoeus, which occurs at line 367 in this poem. See Allen, Halliday, and Sikes 1963, 244–47, on the various identifications of Pytho with Tityos and Typhoeus. Lucian (Dialogues of the Dead 10.2) records that Apollo and Artemis slay the serpent for harassing their mother, Leto, and preventing their birth. The context of this story in Lucian suggests Pindar’s now fragmentary ode on Delos.

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into the hitherto oppressed region of terror and doom. In an analogous fashion, the defeat of the forces of chaos by order in Egyptian cosmology is often represented as the defeat of the serpent, Apophis, by Horus.127 Indeed, we have seen in an earlier chapter that Seth, like Apopis, was identified as disorder and chaos and was locked in an eternal struggle with Horus and his surrogate, the pharaoh. Further, Seth was identified with death-bearing serpents and often with Apopis himself. Just as the infant Horus destroyed the serpents sent against him, or as the adult Horus continually wards off Apophis, so the pharaoh in routing or killing the enemies of Egypt symbolically replicates the victory of order over chaos, or of Horus over Seth and Apophis. If in the Zeus hymn the aretai of the god and by extension the king were expressed in terms of characteristic and potential, and the slaying of the enemy took place offstage in the Hesiodic subtext, in the Delos hymn that action is stage center. Apollo not only predicts his own contest with and defeat of Pytho, he also foretells the birth of Ptolemy and his defeat of the Gauls. The two events are linked: Ptolemy’s actions symbolically replicate those of the god, just as Ptolemy’s island birth symbolically replicates that of Apollo. The victory over the Gauls, however historically insignificant, is mythologically an ideal exemplum. The Gauls are external enemies of Egypt, whose duty it was historically for the pharaoh to repulse. All such enemies were synonymous with Seth/disorder/chaos. Callimachus signals this by labeling them “latterday Titans” (dcAgonoi Titpne%, 174), defeat of whom in the Hesiodic Theogony brings about the orderly rule of the Ouranids. Moreover, the Gauls had previously attacked Delphi and been repulsed; hence Ptolemy’s struggle against them in Egypt can be understood as an extension of that earlier battle, a battle that, like the defeat of the Pytho, which takes place in mythological time, is but one moment in the continual struggle of elements of disruption against those of order and light. Similarly, Theseus, who arrives at the end of the poem after his escape from the “son of Pasiphae” (that is, the Minotaur) and the “coiled seat of the crooked labyrinth” (311), provides an example of this same activity from the realm of heroes or demigods. The monstrous beast, half man, half bull, who resembles Pytho as he threatens death from the center of his coiled lair, is defeated by Theseus in heroic time, and the event is celebrated by choral song, repeated annually on Delos.

127. Bing 1988, 130 n. 69.

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Apollo speaks twice from the womb. On one level, this rather baroque behavior can be understood as stretching the limits of the hymnic tradition, which already includes the precocious behavior of infant deities. If Hermes can invent the lyre and steal the cattle of Apollo on his first day of birth, Callimachus’s Apollo goes one better: he begins his prophetic activities even before he is born. Greek mythological precocity, however, coincides with Egyptian ideology. Gods—and by extension the king—were often active in the womb. Two contemporary examples will suffice: a hymn from the Philae temple addresses Osiris as follows: [He] who created light in the body of his mother, | When he illuminated his brothers in the womb | . . . Gleaming child, he is inundating water, | Being born at the First of the Year. | Come truly great, joyful and rejoicing, | Be gracious to the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Ptolemy, | He is Horus, | Repel all evil from him.128

Another, from Napata in the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty, hymns Piye: Hear what I did, exceeding the ancestors, | I, the King, image of god, | Living likeness of Atum! | Who left the womb marked as ruler, | Feared by those greater than he! | His father knew, his mother perceived: | He would be ruler from the egg.129

Moreover, Apollo’s precocious utterances take the form of post eventum prophecy, a device that was consistently exploited in Egyptian ideology to position the new king as a creator and renewer of both cosmic and political order.130 E. Hornung explains in terms that could easily describe the dynamic of the Delos hymn: Each new government signaled a new beginning for the world, and before its commencement primeval chaos reigned, as documented in Egyptian texts that report anarchy at the death of the ruler. Injustice and disorder would rule until a new king could ascend the throne and reintroduce maat as the basis of all order. Laughter and rejoicing would then take the place of sorrow, and the lawless of anarchy would give way to a spirit of peace and reconciliation in which a person might even “embrace the man who killed his father.”131

Apollo’s prophecies order not only in this cosmic sense, but also poetically. As we have seen, it is the particular linking of the divine realm

128. 129. 130. 131.

ˇ abkar 1988, 34–35. Z Lichtheim 1980, 68. Compare the discussion of Sesoösis in Hecataeus of Abdera in chapter 2. 1992, 163.

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with the human event that transforms the significance of them both, that moves them from the mythologically quaint or historically mundane into the symbolic realm of cosmic ordering. Within the framework of the poem, Apollo creates the order by making the link. Thus he is an analogue of the poet, whose vision creates the entire symbolic realm of the poem, ordering its parts in ways that permit the connections of subtext and context to yield meaning. Like the Zeus hymn, the Delos hymn too is a theogony, but again a theogony that orders a particular universe—that of the king of Egypt. Apollo and Ptolemy are overtly linked in the Delos poem as Zeus and Ptolemy are implicitly linked in the earlier hymn; but both links exist and are efficacious by virtue of the imagination of the poet. He is self-consciously constructing poetic fictions, and he never allows his audience to lose sight of this. As Callimachus expresses it in the Hymn to Zeus, his is the ability to create more persuasive fictions. His is the ability to create new theogonies that not only showcase the old but insert many elements of the new as a fitting tribute to the new king of the Nile.

chapter 3

Theocritean Regencies

For the most part Theocritus’s poetry exists in a timeless and apolitical setting, the exact physical location of which is not identifiable. The cultivated simplicity of style, vivid ecphrases, and dialogue combine to make him more immediately accessible to a modern reader than either Callimachus or Apollonius, with the result that his poetry has also received a more favorable critical reception. But Theocritus also produced court poetry that has been less favorably received by his critics and is usually judged to be of inferior poetic value.1 He wrote two poems addressed to living monarchs, Hiero of Syracuse (Idyll 16) and Ptolemy Philadelphus (Idyll 17); the Alexandrian court figures significantly in two others—Idylls 14 (Aeschinas and Thyonicus) and 15 (Adoniazusae); and a number of other poems are generally understood to belong to the world of the Alexandrian court because they focus on mythological themes that were closely connected to the Ptolemies— Idyll 18 on Helen, Idyll 22 on the Dioscuri, Idyll 24 on Heracles, and Idyll 26 on the Bacchae. If these last poems are in some sense about the Ptolemies,2 in Theocritus’s handling of myth we can see how the images of the royal figures were being invented, elaborated, or modified. Indeed, the poems have been studied as a group, and their function as court poems has been elucidated by F. Griffiths in Theocritus at Court. 1. See, for example, Griffiths 1979, 71, for typical assessments of Idyll 17. 2. Griffiths 1959, 52, though not all would agree: e.g., Schwinge 1986, 66.

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Griffiths’s study remains fundamental for this chapter, though what follows differs considerably from his work in emphasis. Griffiths articulates well the relationship between poet and patron within the environment of an imperial court, though, like other commentators on these poems, he reads exclusively within the framework of Greek myth and of Greek poetic antecedents. My focus, in contrast, is how Theocritus’s poems situate Ptolemaic kingship not only in a Greek context but also within an Egyptian milieu, and in particular the ways in which Egyptian imperial motives are played out within the context of traditional Greek poetry, and the ways in which these competing modes of royal behavior create the opportunity for discourse on the nature of kingship. I have chosen to concentrate on only two texts, the Heracliscus (Idyll 24), for the way it treats a Ptolemaic ancestor, and the Encomium to Ptolemy (Idyll 17), which is indisputably about the king. Together the two texts stand in a self-conscious relationship with the Zeus and Delos hymns, the two poems of Callimachus discussed in the previous chapter. A. S. F. Gow, for example, remarks in his commentary that the composition of the Heracliscus might be located at the time of coronation of Philadelphus, and on the Ptolemy he observes: “[It] resembles the Hymns of Callimachus . . . , and with two of these, that to Zeus (H. 1) and that to Delos (H. 4), it has resemblances that cannot be wholly accidental.”3 Thus, Theocritus’s two poems can provide an alternative set of insights into the experiments with genre and mythmaking that were taking place within court circles, experiments that were necessary for the symbolic encoding of the new rulers, as well as for the poets’ construction of their own relationship to their patron.

the heracliscus Heracles and Ptolemy The Heracliscus is a relatively short narrative poem in hexameters that takes as its subject the infant Heracles. The surviving text divides easily into three discrete sections: (1) Heracles throttling the snakes that are sent by Hera to kill him in his cradle (1–63); (2) Teiresias’s prophecy of Heracles’ future greatness and eventual immortality (64–102); and (3) the detailing of Heracles’ education in the arts as well as warfare

3. Gow 2: 325 (Idyll 17) and 2: 418–19 (Idyll 24). Gow’s text of Theocritus is used throughout. The translations are his, though with some modifications.

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(103–40). Unfortunately, the poem has lost about forty lines from its ending, although a fragmentary portion has been preserved in a fifthcentury papryrus codex.4 Generically, the Heracliscus has been claimed for the nebulous category of “epyllion,”5 though more than one scholar has raised doubts about the viability of the category for Hellenistic poetry, particularly for so early as specimen as the Heracliscus.6 Given that hexameters tended to replace lyric meters in the Hellenistic period and that in this poem Theocritus’s closest generic affinities are to the hymn and encomium, it seems to me more reasonable to assume that the poet is experimenting within the parameters of well-established generic models rather than conforming to another that may or may not have actually existed.7 In the first two sections of the poem Theocritus follows rather closely Pindar’s narrative of the infant Heracles in Nemean 1, addressed to Chromius of Aetna for his victory in the horse race, and he also incorporates elements from a fragmentary paean or hymn of Pindar on the same theme.8 Further, in these earlier sections he shows considerable dependence on the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, and while the Heracliscus now shares little beyond the opening name (ˆHraklAa) with the very brief Homeric Hymn to Heracles, both may end with a prayer.9 The third section, on the education of Heracles, has no known poetic antecedents. From a scholium written against the right margin of the final fragmentary column of the papyrus, it appears that Theocritus ended his poem with a request to Heracles for victory.10 This, taken with the fact that in Idyll 17 the poet alludes to winning a prize in an earlier competition, provides grounds for speculation that the Heracliscus was performed. On its own the prayer to Heracles could indicate nothing more certain than the mimesis of performance,11 but Theocritus’s remark in Idyll 17 that “no one has come for the sacred contests of

4. POxy. 2064, the so-called Antinoe Theocritus. See A. Hunt and J. Johnson, Two Theocritus Papyri (London, 1930). 5. See Gutzwiller 1981, 10–18. 6. See most recently the discussion in Cameron 1995, 446–53. 7. Gutzwiller herself remarks that “in the over-all structure of his poem Theocritus has imitated the archaic narrative hymn” (1981, 12). 8. POxy. 26.2442 fr. 32 = Paean 20 Snell-Maehler. See Hunter’s comments on this poem (1996a, 12–13) and on Theocritus’s use of Pindar in general (pp. 82–90). 9. To judge from the fragmentary papyrus text, Theocritus does not appear to have used dAdoy d› dretan te kaB glbon, the ending of the hymn to Heracles, to conclude his own poem, though Callimachus does use this line to end his Zeus hymn. On this, see Schlatter 1941, 28–30. 10. k(aB) tbn poih(tbn) pant(a%) nikpsai. 11. So Griffiths 1979, 94–96, and Hunter 1996a, 13.

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Dionysus who, if he knows how to raise up a clear-voiced song, fails to receive the gift suitable to his art” (112–14) suggests actual experience rather more than mere literary imitation of such events. Although the poet need not have been referring to the Heracliscus, or even his own victory, the comment does allow the possibility that he had written for competitive performance in the past. Since Idylls 24 and 17 are linked by similar treatments of Heracles, allusion to the earlier in the later poem would have been entirely appropriate. Although the Ptolemies are nowhere mentioned in the Heracliscus, there are excellent reasons not only to include the poem within Theocritus’s court poetry, but to date it to the beginning of Philadelphus’s reign. Theocritus locates the poetic event very specifically: he insists that Heracles is ten months old—as against the Pindaric version in which the snakes attack the newborn—and that the time is “midnight when the Bear sets opposite Orion himself, who shows his great shoulder” (11–12: rmo% dA strAfetai mesonAktion D% dAsin 6rkto% | \VrAvna kat’ aDtan, f d’ dmfaAnei mAgan rmon). Gow construed the specifics about Orion to refer to the relatively narrow time period in which the only star in the constellation visible was Betelgeuse (high up in the shoulder), which set at midnight in mid-February and rose at midnight in late August in 300 b.c.e.12 He preferred the February date because when Orion rose, more than a shoulder would have become visible.13 By Gow’s reckoning, Heracles’ birth date would have fallen in late April, a circumstance that led him to link the performance of the Heracliscus with the celebration of the coronation of Philadelphus as coregent in Dystros in 285 b.c.e., since Dystros in that year was thought to have fallen in April. Ludwig Koenen’s recalculation of the Ptolemiac calender places Dystros of the year in question not in April but in the previous December,14 though in an appendix to his edition of the inscription in which the relevant information occurs, he too maintained that the Heracliscus was performed during the celebration of the Basileia and Genethlia in 285/4,15 suggesting that the August date for the astronomical indicators might be a better possibility. There is an12. 1950, 2: 419. 13. He rose on his side with “shoulder, belt, and foot . . . more or less together” (Gow 2: 417 ad 11f.). 14. 1977, 85–86. He further revised this (1993, 74), with schematic and attendant discussion. Weber (1993, 172–73) follows Grzybek (1990, 97), in whose own dating scheme the Basileia and the coronation no longer coincide, but see Koenen’s criticisms of Grzybek (1993, 73 n. 6). 15. 1977, 86.

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other option, however. In her 1979 commentary on the poem, H. White, independent of Koenen and without trying to connect composition to a specific occasion, nonetheless argued on the basis of literary parallels that Theocritus’s phrase referred to the time during which the Bear set at midnight opposite a rising Orion. White linked Odyssey 5. 272–74 (“[Odysseus] kept his eye on the Pleiades and late-setting Boötes, and the Bear whom men call the Wagon, who turns about and looks at Orion,” strAfetai kaA t’ \VrAvna dokeAei) to Aratus, Phaenomena 581–88. Aratus locates the midnight setting of Boötes precisely at the time when Orion rises, a phenomenon scholars agree occurs “between the end of September and the end of October.”16 The Odyssey passage may also be thematically relevant: Odysseus has just begun his journey away from Calypso’s island in a small raft when he is attacked by the malevolence of Poseidon. The infant Heracles, who has been put to bed in his father’s shield is about to be attacked by malevolence of Hera. However, Theocritus inverts the passage: while Odysseus cries out in fear a wish to have died at Troy (305–6), the doughty infant laughs and easily dispatches his tormenters (56–58). Theocritus’s echo of the astronomical description (strAfetai . . . \VrAvna) would seem prima facie to indicate that the events of Heracliscus took place at the same time of year as Odysseus’s departure from Calypso’s island.17 With a late September-early October dating, Heracles’ birth date would indeed fall in the last half of December, and Gow’s original inference about the poem can stand. It is possible to object to such an early dating by pointing to Heracles’ marriage to Hebe (84). But the inclusion of this detail from Heracles’ biography does not necessarily require the poem to have been written after the marriage of Philadelphus to his sister, Arsinoe II, which occurred between 279 and 274 b.c.e. The marriage, after all, was a very familiar part of Heracles’ mythology,18 and 16. Mnemosyne series 4, 30 (1977) 139 and 1979: 19. On Aratus, see Kidd 1997, 382–84. Gow also notes this parallel, though he does not explore its implications for dating the poem. 17. We saw in chapter 2 that Calypso’s island was called \VgygAh ti% npso% (Odyssey 5.244) and noted the relevance of the “primeval island” to the birth of the young god. It may not be fanciful to see in Theocritus’s allusion to this passage of the Odyssey a similar recollection of Horus on the island, for it is there that the baby is attacked by serpents. Further, Theocritus’s insistence on Orion and the Bear has resonance in Egyptian astronomy, where they are identified respectively as Osiris and Seth (see Te Velde 1967, 86; also Selden’s discussion of that section of the night sky in connection with the transported lock of Berenice [1998, 344]). 18. Pindar mentions it in Nemean 1.70–71.

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since Hebe and Heracles were only half siblings, the parallel would not have been particularly apt. More likely the marriage to Hebe functions not as a topical reference but to reinforce Heracles’ newly acquired status of divinity by demonstrating that he succeeded even in marrying into Olympus’s most distinguished family. In the preceding chapter I set out arguments that Callimachus’s Hymn to Zeus was also a birthday poem for Philadelphus, written at the time of his ascension to the coregency. Though absolute corroboration is lacking, on balance, the likelihood of Theocritus’s and Callimachus’s poems being contemporary is very high,19 and they provide us with a unique opportunity to examine the contrasting ways in which the two poets attempt to construct images of kingship at the beginning of Philadelphus’s reign and to position themselves vis-à-vis their poetry within the new court. There are a number of similarities between the two poems that make them suitable for the inception of Philadelphus’s reign: (1) both select for their topic the precocity of the newborn hero or god—though Callimachus does this more than once, Theocritus does so only with this poem;20 (2) the infancy is coupled with a miraculous event that can be linked to Egypt—the prodigious killing of snakes, the coming of water to an arid land; (3) the child is threatened by divine hostility, which is muted (in Callimachus) or easily overcome (in Theocritus); (4) the mother is more prominent than the father; (5) the adulthood of their subjects is all but ignored—the labors of the adult Heracles are confined to Teiresias’s prophecy, and the deeds of the adult Zeus are only hinted at in the link drawn between thought and accomplishment; (6) both babies are predicted to achieve greatness; and (7) both poems play with a set of Egyptian themes that are particularly relevant to kingship, as we shall see below. There are also substantial divergences, the most significant of which is that Callimachus chooses a divine model, Zeus, and appropriates the language of Hesiod and theogonic writing; Theocritus, on the other hand, chooses a heroic model, Heracles, and works within the framework of an earlier Greek hymnic tradition. This is a consistent pattern throughout their writings: Callimachus looks to the Olympians—Zeus and Apollo—to construct his paradigms of the imperial court, while Theocritus favors the second

19. Clauss (1986, 180 n. 15) also notes this possibility, and Cameron (1995, 58) follows him. 20. In Idyll 17, however, Theocritus does treat Ptolemy II’s birth on Cos (56–65).

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rank of divinities, those with immortal fathers (Zeus) but human mothers—Heracles in particular, but also Polydeuces, Helen, and Dionysus.21 This is not a mark of restraint or a decorous avoidance of the excesses of flattery on Theocritus’s part; rather, the selection of a different mythological model carries both generic and narrative implications, which I will explore in the rest of the chapter. The poem opens with a gesture in the direction of the hymn by naming its subject—Heracles—but the usual hymnic posturings about precisely how to treat the subject are absent. Instead Theocritus creates a vivid scene of maternal domesticity: \HraklAa dekamhnon Danta pox› c Midepti% \Alkmana kaB nyktB neateron \Ifiklpa, dmfotAroy% loAsasa kaB Dmplasasa galakto%, xalkeAan katAuhken D% dspAda, tbn Pterelaoy \AmfitrAvn kalbn eplon dpeskAleyse pesanto%. Once upon a time when Heracles was ten months old, the Midean lady, Alcmena, bathed him with Iphicles, who was younger by a night, gave them both their fill of milk and laid them down in a bronze shield, the fair implement that Amphitryon stripped from Pterelaus when he fell in battle. (1–5)

Domesticating elements from heroic poetry is standard operating procedure for Theocritus—one might compare the cup (kissybion) in the first Idyll.22 But the shield is more than a humorous domesticating touch; detailing the circumstances of its acquisition must be meant to recall Heracles’ conception. It was while Amphitryon, Alcmena’s husband, was beseiging Pterelaus’s city that Zeus lay with her and begot Heracles. He did this by assuming the appearance of her husband. In Greek myth, the assumption of the appearance of a human male is just one of the many transformations Zeus uses to gain access to human females. Such a physical alteration is analogous to appearing as a shower of gold, the method Zeus chose to reach Danae, the mother of Perseus, or as a swan, the form he chose to inseminate Leda, the mother of Helen and the Dioscuri. But unlike many of Zeus’s other metamorphoses this one preserves the virtue of the lady in question from even a hint of impropriety—in her union with Zeus she was unsuspecting, be-

21. See Fantuzzi 2001b. 22. See, for example, Halperin’s detailed discussion (1983, 161–83). This feature of Theocritus’s poetry has been discussed by a number of critics; see Hunter 1996a, 27 n. 105, for a recent bibliography.

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having as a proper wife in accommodating her lawful spouse. While the ruse allows the mother of one of Ptolemy’s ancestors her unblemished virtue—and the virtue of the Ptolemies’ women is a theme in Idyll 17— it does create a certain ambiguity about Heracles’ actual paternity, upon which the poem capitalizes. In a number of ways it corresponds to the ambiguity about the birthplace of Zeus exploited by Callimachus. If Callimachus expressed doubt whether his Zeus was Arcadian or Cretan, or by extension, as I have suggested, whether he is to be figured as a Greek or an Egyptian monarch, Theocritus’s recollection of the circumstances of Heracles’ conception produced the same effect. In terms of Greek myth, the story allows the Ptolemies, who claim descent from Heracles, at least one divine ancestor,23 and it is possible that Theocritus chose this particular image—the child in the shield—to implicitly remind his audience of Ptolemy I. The following anecdote is preserved in the Suda and attributed to Aelian;24 [Lagus] married Arsinoe, the mother of Ptolemy Soter. And being unrelated to him (oDdBn oQ prosakonta), Lagus then exposed this Ptolemy in a bronze shield (DjAuhken Dp’ dspAdo% xalkp%). And a tale comes from Macedon that says an eagle came near and extended its wings and rose up to protect him from the direct rays of the sun and the downpour when it rained. And besides, it put to flight ordinary birds, but rent asunder quails and fed the blood to him as milk.

If this image stands behind the opening of the Heracliscus, by retrojecting it into the past, Theocritus constructs family history as a series of repeating events: Soter exposed in the shield is now repeating the behavior of his divine ancestor, just as in the Ptolemy, the language of aDxmhtb PtolemaPe, | aDxmhtu PtolemaAi (56–57) for father and son conveys an unbroken chain from one generation to another.25 Generational sameness is a significant feature of pharaonic succession,26 and it is possible that Theocritus may be alluding to that aspect of Ptolemaic kingship in the opening of the Heracliscus and in the Ptolemy. In any case, the ambiguity over Heracles’ fathering provides another doublet

23. See, for instance, Zanker 1987, 180–81. 24. Fr. 285 Herscher. A number of scholars have noted the connection: e.g., Gow 2: 416 n. 4; Koenen 1993, 44–45; Weber 1993, 311 and n. 3; Hunter 1996a, 27. 25. The anecdote may be connected with the report in Pausanius (1.6.2) and Curtius (9.8.22) that Soter was really the son of Philip II, though this is generally taken to be of a later date. See Herz 1992, 72–73, for details. The story as it stands implies no more than signal divine favor for Soter. 26. See Koenen 1983, 163–64.

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of sorts—Alexander. His competing paternities—Zeus Ammon (on the divine level), Philip II (on the human)—correlated to historical circumstance in which Alexander as king of both Greeks and Egyptians was required to operate on two different ideological levels. As a Macedonian Greek he was a human king and a participant in Greek culture, but as an Egyptian pharaoh he was required to be a god. This double vision extends also to Heracles. Alcmena’s divine insemination has a very particular analogue in Egyptian myth. The theogamy, or union of the god with the wife of the pharaoh, in the guise of her husband, was a staple of royal ideology, and we saw earlier how it was Hellenized in the Alexander Romance. The parallel with the Heracles story is probably not coincidental. Walter Burkert, and M. L. West following him, argues that the two stories are actively interconnected and that the Egyptian birth myth was attached to the Greek Heracles in the course of the growth of his legend (not that Theocritus would have known this).27 Whatever the merit of Burkert’s or West’s observations, it is obvious that they were stimulated by the structural parallels between the two stories, parallels that were equally available to the Ptolemies and Theocritus and must have been a salient factor in the selection of Heracles as an ancestor for the royal house. On some levels, Heracles was a far more obvious mythological model for kings intending to rule both Greeks and Egyptians than Callimachus’s Zeus, because the idea of a Greek as well as a Near Eastern or Egyptian Heracles was a staple in Greek writing about these regions (Egypt, Libya, and Phoenicia) by the fourth century. Even a century earlier Herodotus elaborates upon the idea of two Heracleses in his Egypt book, telling us: I heard this story about Heracles, namely, that he was one of the twelve [Egyptian] gods. . . . It was not the Egyptians who took the name Heracles from Greeks. But rather the Greeks took it from the Egyptians—

27. See W. Burkert, “Demaratos, Astrabakos und Herakles: Königsmythos und Politik zur Zeit der Perserkriege (Herodot 6, 67–69),” MH 22 (1965) 168–69, esp. nn. 5–7 and 24; Burkert 1979, 82–83; and West 1997, 458–59. In addition, Burkert points to the fact that the pharaoh was traditionally connected with Egyptian Thebes, while Heracles was born in Greek Thebes. West links the story that Heracles was suckled by Hera (which is not present in Theocritus’s poem) to “Egyptian reliefs [that] show the royal child being suckled by a goddess” (1979, 459). Although West rarely draws parallels between Greek and Egyptian material in his East Face of Helicon, he does so most extensively in his discussion of Heracles (pp. 548–72).

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those Greeks I mean who gave the name to the son of Amphitryon. There is much evidence to prove the truth of this, especially that both the parents of Heracles—Amphitryon and Alcmene—were of Egyptian origin.28

Herodotus further concludes that the Egyptian Heracles was to be equated with a Tyrian deity, who in turn was identified with the Phoenician god Melqart.29 He also marks out a unique characteristic of Heracles’ persona that permitted some flexibility in the way he might be conceptualized. He could be regarded as a divinity, a demigod, or a hero: The result of these researches make it quite clear that Heracles is a very ancient divinity; and I think that the most correct approach is taken by those Greeks who maintain a double cult of this deity, in one of which they worship him as divine and called Olympian, and in the other they honor him as a hero.30

Nor are Heracles’ Near Eastern connections confined to historical writing. Heracles killing the Egyptian king Busiris, who regularly sacrificed strangers, was a popular theme in fifth-century vase painting. In many renditions of the myth, Heracles is depicted in poses that seem to imitate or appropriate pharaonic behavior: on the Caeretian hydra, for example, Heracles “tramples” Busiris’s slaves underfoot, and on a number of other vases he strides forward and wields an Egyptian like a club, as if “smiting the foe.”31 In another Greek myth, Heracles crosses the sea in a golden bowl borrowed from the sun-god Helios to journey to the far west in search of the cattle of Geryon. The folkloric elements of this tale are well documented, and more than one scholar has pointed out the similarity of Heracles’ behavior to Egyptian myth.32 The Egyptian sun-god, Re, nightly in his sun bark, accompanied by the souls of the dead (called “the cattle of Re”), traveled from west to east

28. 2.43.1–2; presumably because they were both descended from Perseus (who was descended from Danaus), whom Herodotus regards as Egyptian (2.91). See Lloyd 1976, 200–205. 29. See Lloyd 1976, 205–12. 30. 2.44.5. 31. A. F. Laurens, LIMC 3 (1986) s.v. Bousiris, 147–52 and illustrations, particularly nos. 11, 19, 23, and 28. What relationship if any the Idalian cup with a pharaonic figure in its center and Heracles (?) in the frieze has to the figure of Busiris is unclear. See Jourdain-Annequin 1992. 32. See Burkert 1979, 83–85; M. Davies, “Stesichorus’ Geryoneis and Its Folk-Tale Origins,” CQ 38.2 (1988) 277–80; and now West 1997, 463–64.

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along the circuit of Ocean to rise again in the morning sky. Heracles in the bowl was a popular subject for vase painters in the fifth century,33 and the story received full-scale treatment in Stesichorus’s lyric poem Geryoneis. Theocritus, who was a fellow Sicilian, seems actively to have been influenced by Stesichorus in a number of places, in his use of Doric dialect and the palinode on Helen,34 and possibly in the construction of Daphnis in Idyll 1.35 Thus Heracles lying in the rocking shield at the beginning of his career of killing monsters, snaky or otherwise, may have been intended to recall a labor from the end of the career of the adult Heracles, who rests in another unconventional object. Within this context of an already complex cross-fertilization or cultural contamination, Heracles with his Greek as well his Near Eastern heritage was an ideal ancestor for the Ptolemies and would have provided Theocritus an opportunity to exploit multiple elements already present in narratives about Heracles and in his iconography. Even an obvious drawback to Heracles as a king figure—the fact that he consistently operated on the margins of the civilized world—as we will see shortly, had already been refashioned by Hecataeus of Abdera to fit into a GrecoEgyptian model of idealized kingship. Throttling Snakes The Heracliscus continues with a description of the nocturnal attack of the snakes and Heracles’ dispatching of them (11–33). The narrative closely follows Pindar, though Theocritus’s account is considerably more elaborate in its detail. The Greek audience would already have been familiar with the image of Heracles grappling with the snakes, at least in a general way,36 but Theocritus imbues it with a concreteness and specificity of detail that runs slightly counter to usual representations. The children rest peacefully in their unorthodox cradle, lulled to sleep by a doting mother: cptomAna dB gynb kefalp% myuasato paAdvn¢ \eEdet›, Dmb brAfea, glykerbn kaB DgArsimon Epnon¢ eEdet›, Dmb cyxa, dA’ ddelfeoA, AGsoa tAkna¢ 33. P. Brize, Die Geryoneis des Stesichoros und die frühe griechische Kunst, Beiträge zur Archäologie 12 (Würzburg, 1980) 51–52, and for a list of illustrations, pp. 145–46. 34. See, for example, Hunter 1996a, 150–51. 35. Halperin 1983, 79–80. 36. See Woodford 1983, 121–29.

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glbioi eDnazoisue kaB glbioi dp Ekoisue.’ f% famAna dAnhse sako% mAga¢ toB% d’ Elen Epno%. Touching the boys’ heads, the woman soothed them: “Sleep, my children, a sweet sleep from which you awake; sleep safe, children, two brothers, my souls, may your rest be blest, and blest may you come to the dawn.” Speaking in this way, she rocked the great shield. And sleep overtook them. (6–10)

Previous scholars have noted the verbal and contextual similarities between the opening of the Heracliscus and a fragment of Simonides in which Danae sings a lullaby to her infant son, Perseus, as they float upon the sea, locked up in a chest: eQde brAfo%, eCdAtv dB panto%, eCdAtv d’ gmetron kakan (“Sleep, baby, sleep; may the sea sleep; may my measureless evil sleep”).37 The Simonidean intertext introduces Perseus, who, as a descendant of Danaus and an ancestor of Heracles, forms a link in the chain that joins Greece to Egypt by blood. Within the Greek tradition Perseus had a long association with Libya and Ethiopia as a slayer of the snake-haired Gorgon and the sea monster who attacked Andromeda. His passage over Libya with the Gorgon head, dripping gore, was the source of the poisonous serpents in that region.38 Thus Perseus is not merely a forefather, but a model for his descendant’s signal exploits. Moreover, according to Herodotus (2.91), Egyptians in Achmim venerated Perseus and celebrated games in his honor, and while the details do not permit certainty, on balance he seems to have been identified with Horus.39 Perseus, therefore, provides the Ptolemies with a Greco-Egyptian pedigree parallel to that which Nectanebo provided for Alexander in the Alexander Romance, but constructed entirely within the framework of Greek myth. The Ptolemies, by virtue of their descent from Heracles and Perseus, were already Egyptian, and these solidly Greek ancestors (seemingly) were already revered in Egyptian cult. Heracles’ infant exploit is well suited for this parallel universe. After Alcmena has tucked her children into their shield-cradle two monstrous (pAlvra) snakes, spitting poisonous venom (barBn d’ DjAptyon Dan) and undulating on their rippling coils, (frAssonta% Cpb speAraisi), enter the room (13–19). Iphicles cowers in terror, but Heracles grips

37. PMG 543.21–22. See Gutzwiller 1981, 11; Hunter 1996a, 26–27. 38. AR 4.1513–17. 39. PMG 543.21–22. Lloyd (1969, 79–86) makes a strong case for it being Horus. See above, chapter 1.

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them by their throats in his bare hands (28–29). Indeed, he still holds them in this fashion when Amphitryon appears, and he proudly displays the now dead creatures to his father (56–57: f d’ Dß patAr \AmfitrAvna | Crpetb deikanaasken) and lays them at his father’s feet. As we saw in the previous chapter, the rather rare word Crpeta occurs in the Hymn to Zeus, where—I have argued—it alludes to Seth’s attempt to kill the newborn Horus by sending snakes and poisonous insects to bite him. In this passage, Theocritus creates a scene that resembles in many ways the attack on the infant god, and chooses to describe the snakes with the same word—one that has a semantic and allusive field that includes Typhoeus (Pindar Pythian 1.25) as well as poisonous creatures that creep. In order to protect against this threat of snakebite (an all-too-common phenomenon in Egypt) Egyptians routinely employed an apotropaic plaque (now called a cippus; see plate 3). On it the childgod, Horus, is represented standing on a crocodile and holding scorpions and snakes in each hand as he faces front.40 The cippi reached all levels of society: they might be large enough to erect as freestanding stelae or small enough to carry or wear in order to ward off danger. They were erected in temple complexes as well as in private gardens (rather like the Greek herm). Cippi first appeared in the New Kingdom but were extremely popular in the Ptolemaic period; they have been found exported throughout the Mediterranean from Iraq to Rome,41 and in Alexandria these amulets were probably as familiar to the Greeks resident there as coins or vases on which the scene of Heracles grappling with the snakes was represented.42 Further, they came with an inscribed narrative that detailed Horus’s magic revival from poisonous snakebites. Ritual use required some part of the cippus to be submerged in or come in contact with water, thereby being suffused with its magic healing properties. Thus even those who could not read the inscription

40. The cippi are so common that Egyptologists refer to them as “Horus on the crocs.” 41. Ritner 1989, 106. 42. Woodford (1983, 128) raises the possibility that the motif of Heracles throttling the snakes in Greek art and literature was inspired by “figurines of Egyptian dwarf-gods collectively known under the name of ‘Bes’ [that] were widely diffused and in some of their modifications might provide just the sort of image that was necessary.” Ritner (1989, 105) points out that the “earlier iconography [of Bes] was the inspiration for the posture of Horus” on the cippus. In other words, these Egyptian statues of Bes throttling snakes might have been the ancestor of both the Egyptian cippus of Horus and the Greek representations of the infant Heracles (see plates 3 and 4).

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were likely to have been familiar with the story of Horus’s recovery, since it is a vital element in the ritual use of the charm. I suggest that Theocritus may have constructed the opening scene of the Heracliscus to allow his audience to see double by deliberately relating a familiar Greek story to provoke (if fleetingly) recollection of this familiar Egyptian icon and the story that underpins it. Elements suggestive of the context of the icon include the following: (1) when Alcmena sings a lullaby to her children, she expresses a wish for their safety in the night with two rare words, DgArsimon (a sleep from which one will wake) and eGsoa (be safe), both of which suit an amuletic context; (2) the statement that he “gripped them by the throat where the dread venom of dire snakes reside, which is hateful even to the gods” (28–30) resembles the narrative that accompanies the cippus where, according to the tradition, Horus throttles the potentially destructive creatures to “seal their mouths; against biting”;43 (3) the hostility of the gods to the serpents and their venom, for which Gow can find no parallels,44 makes sense in Egyptian myth, particularly for Isis and her sister, since serpents actually attack the infant god, and in a more general sense can represent the forces of chaos; (4) Theocritus makes much of Heracles’ presenting the dead snakes to Amphitryon (which is not in Pindar), and this resembles the scene of the cippi in which the figure is facing front and holding out snakes and scorpions, more than the Greek, in which the child is regularly shown entwined with the snakes, rather like Laocoön.45 To sum up: many elements in this opening vignette, beginning with the subject himself, are capable of being understood within two different mythologies, and for an audience that de facto inhabited two cultural spaces—Greek and Egyptian—the intertextual matrix would have included the visual as well as the written. Reading the opening against Pindar’s treatment of the same story, which certainly does not lend itself to the double vision that I have been suggesting for Theocritus, we find slight variations in Theocritus’s version that provisionally allow at least four potential intertexts, any one of which could have evoked an Egyptian context. The most obvious is the mention of Amphritryon’s shield, which foregrounds Heracles’ paternity, but there is also the hymn of Simonides, which suggests Perseus, the linguistic overlap with Calli-

43. Ritner 1989, 105. 44. Gow 2: 420 nn. 28–29. 45. See plates in Woodford 1983.

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machus (Crpeta, and the similarity between Heracles in the shield and Heracles in the golden bowl of the sun. Additionally, there is the visual similarity of the Horus cippus to the baby Heracles throttling snakes. At this stage, however, it is well to be cautious—we may be seeing double or merely a mirage. We must look at subsequent elements of the poem to clarify our vision. If Theocritus, like Callimachus in the Zeus hymn, constructs his opening to reflect both Greek and Egyptian mythologies, his approach differs. Unlike Callimachus, who only occasionally inserts the “human” king in his hymns to the gods, Theocritus’s narrative operates on two planes—the divine and human. The divine events, marked by the phenomenon of light at midnight, test the child Heracles, demonstrate his divinity, and foreshadow his future labors. In contrast to these events are the domesticity of the marital bedchamber, Almena’s maternal concern, and Amphitryon’s (misplaced?) paternal pride. Within this scene Amphitryon is presented as a standard epic hero—his shield, obtained during a city sack; his sword, with its ornate scabbard, hung above the bed. His character and heroic activity are pointedly otiose; he begins the scene with a vain attempt at epic valor and ends it as a weary parent tucking in his baby son. It is not just that the hero’s shield has been coopted for domestic duty; the hero himself and the values he represents in both social and literary terms are rendered marginal or irrelevant. Amphitryon’s heroic shield with its Homeric sidebar detailing its acquisition serves as a reminder of his cuckolding. Neither his swordplay nor his heroic assistance is useful in dispatching the snakes; his infant son has already accomplished that deed by the time he enters the scene. Further, the supernatural light, which confers heroic status by marking the presence of the divine among specially chosen mortals, is extinguished as Amphitryon enters his sons’ presence; and he must call out to servants to furnish some natural illumination. In the Odyssey, in contrast, Athena lights the chamber for Odysseus and Telemachus (19.37). Although Demeter’s revelation of herself in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter (189, 280) is not benign, she is visible in her divinity to the heroic queen Metaneira. In a similar way, Zeus apparently furnishes a light to reveal the presence of Hera’s instruments of divine destruction, but far from manifesting the heroic proportion of her power and wrath, as it does with Demeter, it only illuminates her feebleness as Heracles in childish glee exhibits the snakes as if they were new toys. In the poem, epic events and epic values are not so much transformed into the mun-

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dane as they are submerged or obviated. Theocritus clears the deck, as it were, for new modes of action as Heracles, along with his loving parents, is reconstructed as the prototype for royal behavior in the Hellenistic age. After Heracles’ feat, Alcmena summons the prophet Teiresias, who reveals the future and prescribes a course of purification for the present. In Pindar the prophet’s relatively brief remarks (ten lines) focus on Heracles’ labors, the most significant of which is his participation with the gods in their battle against the Giants (68–69) and who “shall win calm for his mighty labors” to reside in the halls of the blessed with Hebe for a bride (70–71). In contrast, Theocritus’s Teiresias first praises Alcmena and prophesies her fame as mother of Heracles (73–78) and then briefly mentions Heracles’ twelve labors, his death and funeral pyre at Trachis, his fate to be called the “son of the immortals,” and his marriage on Olympus (79–85). He concludes with a long instruction (88–100) about disposing of the snakes (88–96), purging the house, and performing appropriate sacrifices (96–99) so that “you may always be conquerors of your enemies” (100: dysmenAvn aDeB kauypArteroi c% telAuoite). The details that Theocritus chooses to emphasize in this section can be related to contemporary circumstance. The foregrounding of Alcmena in summoning the prophet and in her son’s subsequent education suggests a complimentary allusion to Berenice, the mother of Philadelphus. If the poem was composed around the time of Philadelphus’s ascension to the throne, the stress on Alcmena, as well as the reference to Heracles as “late-born” (dcAgonon, 31), is fitting for the circumstances of Philadelphus’s succession. Berenice was Soter’s second wife, and it is a fair assumption that her force of character was instrumental in Philadelphus becoming his father’s heir, since Philadelphus was younger than the sons of Soter and Eurydice. The detailed purificatory rites are less easy to explain in Greek terms. Fumigation and the sacrifice of a piglet to Zeus are familiar enough in Greek practice, as Gow’s parallels demonstrate,46 but Theocritus includes an elaborate burning ritual for the dead snakes and connects the whole to “being conquerors of the enemy.” The snakes must then function as stand-ins or ritual substitutes for the enemy.47 We

46. 2: 430–31. 47. 2: 430 ad 91: “The treatment prescribed resembled that meted out (according to Tzetz. Chil. 5.735) to farmakoA.” A good guess, though the accuracy of Tzetzes’ knowledge of earlier Greek cult practice is open to question.

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have seen above that in Egyptian mythology snakes were associated with Seth/Typhon, the divine enemy of the god-king, Horus, and that throttling the snakes took on complex symbolism—killing snakes was simultaneously to defeat the forces of chaos, personified by Seth, and to demonstrate one’s right to rule. We have also seen that conquering the enemy was, in Egyptian terms, a ritual equivalent of defeating the forces of chaos, and that the pharaoh (and only the pharaoh) was consistently portrayed enacting this event, and to do so was both to manifest his royal status and to mark his legitimacy as a ruler who works to maintain the moral order (or maat). Manetho provides us with a good parallel for the behavior prescribed by Teiresias, claiming that Egyptians “used to burn men alive in Eileithyiaspolis (El Kab), calling them ‘Typhonians,’ ” and “they scattered and winnowed their ashes until they disappeared.”48 Of course, scholars dispute whether Egyptians were actually performing human sacrifice,49 but the accuracy of the statement is not important; what is significant is that a near contemporary writing about Egyptian customs and located within Alexandrian court circles had described—in Greek—a sacrificial rite in which Seth surrogates were burned and their ashes scattered. The likelihood that Theocritus is inserting Heracles and his descendants into a pharaonic space is increased by the next lines. As Koenen has pointed out, Theocritus’s expression at line 100— dysmenAvn . . . kauypArteroi—bears a close resemblance to the phrase employed on the Rosetta stone to render in Greek the third of the five traditional names of the pharaoh—dntipalvn CpArtero%.50 Four of the five names were assigned when the new pharaoh ascended the throne and were employed by the Ptolemies in official decrees, whether or not they were actually crowned as pharaoh.51 This third name was called in Egyptian H‘r nbw or Golden Horus in the Dynastic period, but apparently in the Ptolemiac period it was reinterpreted to refer to the age-old victory of Horus over Seth, and the symbols used in writing the title, a falcon standing upon a golden collar, were taken to mean

48. Fr. 86 Waddell = DIO 73. For the ritual burning of the enemy or symbolic surrogates, see Ritner 1993, 157–58, 208–10, esp. 210, where Ritner discusses the burning of a wax figure of Seth on a fire of bryony. 49. See the discussion in Ritner 1993, 147–48, with bibliography; and Vasunia 2001, 185–93. 50. 1977, 66 and n. 135. See also his discussion in 1993, 48–50. 51. Burstein 1991, 142–44. For pharaonic titulature of the Ptolemies and a discussion of the meaning of the title in Ptolemaic texts, see Beckerath 1999, 234–47.

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Horus on top of the Ombite ( = a title of Seth).52 Thus dntipalvn CpArtero% renders the idea that is visually implicit in the hieroglyphic representation of the Horus of Gold name and is, in effect, a verbal equivalent of the ubiquitous representation of the pharaoh who dominates his enemy by trampling him underfoot or smiting him with a club.53 In the Hymn to Delos Callimachus applies the same term, dysmenAvn, to the Gaulish mercenaries, who, as we have already found, are functioning as hereditary enemies, or Seth-surrogates—that is, as prototypical foes to be destroyed.54 Moreover, Callimachus’s description of the Gauls collapses the temporal framework: in Apollo’s prophecy of the future the foe are imagined as both menacing and already captive. Lines 181–82—“But already they might behold by the temple the ranks of the foe” (dll› gdh parb nhbn dpaygazointo falagga% | dysmenAvn)—conjure up not only the enemy as they advance, but the ranks of the defeated enemy as they would be traditionally represented along the temple walls after the victory.55 Further, the unusual expression phlaganvn Dlatpra in the Hymn to Zeus (2) may be conceptually related to dysmenAvn kauypArteroi and dntipalvn CpArtero%. “Mud-born” is a virtual equivalent of ghgeneP%, a term that is often applied to Typhon, as well as to the Giants, who occupy the same symbolic space in Greek myth56 as Seth does in Egyptian cosmology,57 while Dlatar can

52. Thissen (1966, 33) renders the hieroglyphic as meaning H’r nbtj in the Ptolemaic period and translates as “der zu Nb ( = Ombos) gehörige,” in place of the traditional H’r nbw. 53. Koenen 1993, 48–50, and n. 56 with bibliography. See Ritner 1993, 132, with the extended discussion of “trampling the foe.” Selden (1998, 387) notes the Ptolemies’ continuous identification with Horus. He observes that the term “his majesty” in hieroglyphics is “written as an upright club placed beside Horus the Falcon sitting on his perch.” 54. G. Zanker (1989, 98 n. 89) objects that “even if the phrase dysmenAvn . . . kauypArteroi at Id. 24.100 reminded Philadelphus’ contemporaries of his Hornub title, dntipalvn CpArtero% . . . we are still not obliged to postulate . . . an Egyptian reference behind Teiresias’ words.” If the name in question were entirely irrelevant to the events in the rest of Teiresias’s prophecy, the argument would be cogent, but since the phrase comes as a necessary consequence of a series of acts that form a coherent pattern in Egyptian terms as the reenactment of triumphing over foes, while in Greek they appear to be rituals elaborated for no particular purpose beyond the adding of realistic detail, his argument is substantially weakened. 55. Koenen (1983, 180) would see in the burning of the Gauls an allusion to this practice of the burning of Typhonians. If correct, it suggests that what was represented in the mythological realm in the Heracliscus is treated historically in the later poem of Callimachus. 56. See above, chapter 1. 57. West 1966, 337–38.

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mean “striker” as well as “driver away.” Hence Callimachus’s phrase could well have been intended to render the Egyptian expression “smiter of the foe,” or the equivalent of “on top of the foe.” The conjunction of these expressions raises a question: although the first surviving appearance of the phrase dntipalvn CpArtero% dates from Philopator, the Ptolemies are using the pharaonic titulary from a much earlier period. Are the poets in these early poems merely reflecting Greek linguistic protocols for Egyptian concepts that had already been put into place, or were they actively interpreting Egyptian images and imputing meanings to them, as Horapollo did in a later period? Were they experimenting with the language of imperial selfpresentation that later came to be preferred in official writing? Scholars normally separate the world of the court and its literary production from that of higher administration, particularly under Philadelphus, if not Soter, but it seems to me that this is open to debate. The world of those capable of reading Greek in Alexandria and its environs would have been very small, especially in this early period (ca. 284–282 b.c.e.), and a sizable segment of it would have been the administrative class. Such men would have provided an obvious audience for the court poets as their works came to circulate in written form. Certainly, the famous example from a later period of the GrecoEgyptian who not only read Callimachus but employed his rare word for “mousetrap” in a tax return, thus creating a bogus entry (rather like a modern employee of the IRS entering Mouse, Mickey), should alert us to the possibility that poetic image making may not have been an activity entirely divorced from practical consequence.58 Although Theocritus follows Pindar’s narrative of the attack of the snakes and its aftermath, where he does diverge he seems to depend on an episode in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter.59 Demophoön, like Heracles, is the late-born (dcAgono%, 165, 219) child. When Demeter is in the process of making the infant Demophoön immortal by burying him like a brand in banked hearth fires, she is interrupted at midnight by the baby’s (justifiably) hysterical mother, Metaneira. Demeter in her anger rejects the child and announces what her intentions had been had the mother’s interruption now not condemned him to mere human exis58. See H. C. Youtie, “Callimachus in the Tax-Rolls,” in Scriptiunculae (Amsterdam, 1973) 2: 1039–41. 59. The similarities have been noticed by White (1979, 40) and Gutzwiller (1981,16) and elaborated by Hunter (1996a, 10).

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tence. She reveals herself in her divinity, filling the room with light, then abandons the halls. Demophoön’s sisters, upon hearing the commotion, enter the now darkened room, pick up the child up and console him, light a fire, and rouse their mother. At dawn the men are informed of the events (242–95). Alcmena and Amphitryon with their servants behave like the sisters of the hymn: they arrive too late to affect events and can only tidy up the domestic space. While Demeter instructs Metaneira to build a temple in expiation, in the Heracliscus it is for Teiresias to clarify the will of the gods. This divergence serves to convey a sense of human helplessness and confusion at the workings of the divine order. Just as Demophoön’s failure to become immortal emphasizes the vast division between human and divine and, in terms of the hymn, accounts for the need for the institution of the Eleusinian mysteries,60 Theocritus’s evocation of the Demeter hymn in his own narrative displaces Heracles’ potentially divine parentage and foregrounds his humanity, requiring us to locate the immortality he attains as something distinctly other than that which the gods possess. This is reinforced by the specific terms of Teiresias’s prophecy: dadeka oC telAsanti peprvmAnon Dn Dib% oDkePn maxuoy%, unhtb dB panta pyrb TraxAnio% Ejei· Twelve labors will be accomplished by him, fated to dwell in the house of Zeus, but a funeral pyre at Trachis will have all that is mortal. (82–83)

Unlike real gods, Heracles must die, and, in whatever fashion he enters the house of Zeus, it is only after the death and dissolution of his physical body. This insistence on humanity in a context that includes allusions to an Egyptian mythology of divine kingship is doubly pointed: Heracles is not only subject to the laws of nature within the framework of Greek models; we are also reminded of the reality that lies not very far beneath the surface of the Egyptian ideology—the pharaoh, too, for all the identification and interaction with the divine pantheon, is subject to death, and the myth of divine birth carries no protection against the forces of nature. Indeed, the elaborate process of tomb building that commenced with each new pharaoh must have been a constant reminder of the mortal dimension of every divine king and a further demonstration of the dualism of Egyptian thought. The Hymn to Demeter provided an aition for the establishment of

60. See Foley 1994, 51, 191–97.

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the Eleusinian mysteries in Athens, and we know that Heracles as early as the fifth century was represented as a prominent initiate of the cult.61 Therefore, allusions drawn from the hymn that locate him, like his parents, among those who have need of divine assistance in the form of established religious rite serve to further reinforce his humanity. But they might also introduce the idea of alternate routes to “immortality” through the implicit example of initiation into a mystery cult, and in another way as well. Koenen raised the possibility that Teiresias’s instruction to sacrifice the piglet alluded specifically to the Eleusinian mysteries.62 Satyrus’s On the Demes of Alexandria mentions that the Alexandrian deme of Eleusis was named for its Attic counterpart and annually hosted a musical contest. Whether there was an attempt to institute the Eleusinian mysteries in Alexandria is moot; similar rites, however, could have been associated with the Sarapis or Isis cult, since Tacitus mentions that it was Timotheus, from the family of the Eumolpids, the hereditary priests in charge of the Eleusinia, who was instrumental in setting up the Sarapis cult in Alexandria.63 Whatever the contemporary historical circumstances, a reminder of the Eleusinian mysteries might well serve proleptically to provide a model of the kind of activity that warrants the conferral of divine honors upon humans— the establishment of cults of the gods. The model would only gain in efficacy if it alluded to an accomplishment of Ptolemy’s own father, who by the time of Idyll 17 was to be seen enjoying the kind of immortality that was available to Heracles, fraternizing with the Olympians. The Education of Princes With the departure of Teiresias (101–2) Theocritus abandons his archaic poetic models and turns to a description of the education of the boy Heracles, who according to one commentator “has become the perfect gentleman. He has, in fact, proved himself in just those activi61. Foley 1994, 49, 51, 68 n. 11. 62. 1977, 81–82. Koenen also connects the pig with Seth. (p. 83 and n. 174). In support of his thesis, see Te Velde (1967, 22, 47), who points out that Seth is often represented as a black pig. See also Gwyn Griffiths 1960, 31–33, and plate 4, an intriguing illustration (B.M. 10471/14) from a Book of the Dead, showing its owner, Nakht, in an apotropaic ritual spearing a snake and a pig. 63. Historiae 4.83. But see Borgeaud and Volokhine 2000 on the Sarapis cult. See also Weber 1993, 173–74; Fraser (1972, 1: 200) argues that the importation of Demeter cults into Alexandria may well have been spurred by the fact that Greek writers like Herodotus and Hecataeus had claimed an Egyptian ancestry for the Thesmophoria and the Eleusinian mysteries.

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ties—love, sport, music, and a little bit of warfare—that we know to have been closest to the heart of Philadelphus himself.”64 Undoubtedly this is so, and indeed it has been on the basis of this section that claims for the Heracliscus as court poetry have rested. But the section may have other parallels. We have seen in chapter 1 that Hecataeus of Abdera incorporated a history of Sesoösis in his work as a model of the Egyptian ideal of kingship and that the education of the young prince by his father provided the fundamentals for his model rule.65 In the Alexander Romance, too, Philip, though not Alexander’s father, treats him like a true son and undertakes his education with some care.66 The elements of that education—letters (grammata), music, geometry, rhetoric, and philosophy—are close to Theocritus’s catalogue, though he omits the advanced education of rhetoric and philosophy, which would only serve to further strain credulity in Heracles’ case. In addition to the manly arts of archery, boxing, and chariot racing, Heracles is taught the principles of modern warfare: how to arrange the phalanx, assess the enemy, and command the cavalry, skills that are not particularly applicable to his later life, but that coincide with the lessons in warfare that Sesoösis and Alexander receive.67 Moreover, the education of Sesoösis stresses the endurance of hardship and abstemiousness,68 which also appears in the Heracliscus (138–40). As we saw in chapter 1, this type of education was not provided to turn these princes into “the perfect gentlemen.” It was tied to an expectation that the prince would become a proper king, not simply by leading armies, but by instituting a rule of law by which he himself abided. Additionally, the most characteristic feature of Hecataeus’s ideal king was, in Oswyn Murray’s words, “eDergesAa, which is indeed elevated until it becomes the ultimate justification of monarchy itself. . . . Thus in Hecataeus the notion of the basileB% eDergAth% usurps the position often given in other Greek writers to the gristo% dnar, the rule of the best man, or to the filanurvpAa of the ruler.”69 In stressing the king as eDergAth%

64. Griffiths 1979, 92. 65. Diodorus Siculus 1.53.7= FGrH 264 F25.53.7. 66. AR 1.13. The date of this section is generally taken to be early; see page 65. 67. Diodorus Siculus 1.53.1–6; AR 1.13–14. These specific skills are not listed, but Sesoösis and Alexander get on-the-job training in warfare at an early age. 68. The incongruity of this quality for Heracles has not gone unnoticed. Most recently, see Hunter 1996a, 11–12. Once again, Theocritus juxtaposes the conceptual baggage of his models. Can a modern education overcome mythological determinism and turn the traditionally gluttonous Heracles into a model prince? 69. Murray 1970, 159–60.

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Hecataeus domesticates Egyptian pharaonic practice by subsuming it under the familiar Greek idea.70 Though, as Murray’s comment makes clear, for Hecataeus, eDergesAa was less a matter of imperial potlatch (as it often seems to be in Greek writing)71 than a fundamental behavioral pattern that manifested itself through building projects, the establishment of cults of the gods, and imperial generosity to one’s subjects. These are the very features of Ptolemaic kingship that Theocritus elaborates in Idyll 17. The trajectory of the Heracliscus follows Hecataeus also in that a prophecy, in the form of a dream, preceded the description of Sesoösis’s education and indeed precipitated it. Sesoösis’s greatness and future accomplishments, which paralleled those of the divine Osiris, were foretold by the god Ptah ( = Hephaestus) to Sesoösis’s father at his birth, who therefore designed his education to prepare him to achieve the greatness predicted for him.72 Though probably later than the Heracliscus, Callimachus in the Delos hymn places a prophecy about Ptolemy II and Cos in the mouth of the embryonic Apollo, and this conforms to Egyptian patterns of figuring the king as the recipient of special post eventum prophecy.73 In Theocritus, Alcmena after hearing Teiresias’s prophecy takes Heracles’ education in hand; he is likened to “a young sapling in an orchard” (nAon fytbn c% Dn dlvu | DtrAfet’)—that is, the twig to be encouraged in the right direction and thus prepared for his destiny. This is an odd detail for the traditional picture of Heracles, who seems a product of nature rather more than of culture, but essential for a model ruler. Theocritus certainly knew Hecataeus’s work, as we will see in our discussion of Idyll 17,74 and by constructing Heracles in accordance with an idealizing model, Theocritus not only compliments the court by enhancing the status of one of its primary mytho-

70. See, for example, the Satrap decree from 311 b.c.e., translated in Bevan 1968, 29–32. 71. See K. Bringmann, “The King as Benefactor: Some Remarks on Ideal Kingship in the Age of Hellenism,” in Bulloch et al. 1993, 7–25; and F. Walbank’s response to it (pp. 116–20). 72. Diodorus Siculus 1.53.9–10 = FGrH 264 F25.53.9–10. 73. A. Herrmann coined the term Königsnovelle to describe what he considered a literary genre featuring prophecies and dreams directed at the king and the events that they precipitated (Die ägyptische Königsnovelle, Leipziger ägyptologische Studien 10 ;[Glückstadt, Hamburg, and New York, 1938]). See now A. Loprieno, “The ‘King’s Novel,’ ” in Loprieno 1996, 277–95; Loprieno argues that these elements occur within a much broader spectrum of Egyptian as well as other Near Eastern writings. 74. Murray 1970, 168.

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logical progenitors; he also sets out a paradigm for the future behavior of the newly crowned king. It is by benefiting his people in material as well as spiritual terms that the young Ptolemy can, like his forebear, hope to attain to divine honors. Heracles, admittedly, is not a Sesoösis or an Alexander: his natural habitat would seem to be the untamed, precivilized world in which he can destroy monsters with his club or his bare hands. Lines 79–81, in which Teiresias describes the man who will achieve immortality, call that Heracles to mind: toPo% dnbr ede mAllei D% oDranbn gstra fAronta dmbaAnein teb% yCa%, dpb stArnvn platB% grv%, oQ kaB uhrAa panta kaB dnAre% essone% glloi. So great a man will ascend to the star-laden heaven, your son, a hero broad in chest, stronger than all beasts and men.

While ostensibly a poor, if not ludicrous, match for the refined court of the second Ptolemy, in fact even this Heracles had been adapted to Hecataeus’s scheme. Heracles’ prehistoric conquest of monsters created the possibility for civilized community and hence is a clear example of the sort of benefaction that merited immortality. Euhemerus makes the point very clearly: With respect to the gods, then, men of old have handed down to later generations two conceptual categories (dittb% . . . DnnoAa%): they say that some of the gods are everlasting and imperishable (didAoy% kaB dfuartoy%). . . . Others, they say, were of the earth (DpigeAoy%) and attained immortal honor and fame (timp% te kaB dajh%), like Heracles, Dionysus, Aristaeus, and others like them.75

Since Euhemerus wrote within the same intellectual framework as Hecataeus, it is intrinsically likely that Hecataeus included Heracles within his scheme of culture heroes. In a section that is only doubtfully attributed to Hecataeus (1.24.5) Diodorus asserts that “the Greeks have preserved a tradition that Heracles cleared the earth of wild beasts.” He adds: “Indeed it is reasonable to suppose that . . . after he had cleared the land of wild beasts, he presented it to the peasants [of Egypt] and for this benefaction was accorded divine honors” (1.24.7).76 Dionysus Scytobrachion similarly constructs his Heracles as a military 75. Diodorus Siculus 6.1.1–2 = fr. 25 Winiarzyk. 76. Although Jacoby and Murray reject this passage as Hecataean, it does coincide with a view of Greek prehistory that Cole (1990, 44–45, 153–55) locates within the in-

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leader and a founder of games, for which he receives immortality.77 What is overtly set out in these accounts is also implicit in Theocritus— divine honors were accorded to Heracles not for random acts of violence, but for efforts that brought about civilization. Heracles in Herodotus and, perhaps, in Hecataeus is already both Greek and Egyptian. In the Heracliscus I suggest that Theocritus is consciously playing with the various traditions of Heracles, Egyptian and Greek, divine or heroic, comic glutton or proper Hellenistic princeling. In the interplay of traditions is the point; this one mythological figure offers the newly crowned king a variety of behavioral models, some of which are useful to emulate, some to avoid, some of which, the poet suggests, are impossible, like the heroic or divine, but others of which, like the laboring Heracles or the young prince, can lead to the only kind of divinity that is available to mortals, a divinity acquired by actions that benefit one’s fellow humans. Theocritus’s conformation of Heracles to a Hecataean model of kingship stands in contrast to Callimachus’s use of Hesiod in the Hymn to Zeus. In that poem the proper behavior of kings was implicit and distanced, located in the mythological past. Callimachus in his poetic persona projected “doubt” about truth and by implication the outcome of Ptolemy’s historic kingship, while the Hesiodic passages established a connection between the just behavior of kings and wealth; Theocritus, by using contemporary idealizing models of kingship analogous to those found in Hecataeus, who had already established a baseline behavior for good kings, shifts his emphasis from wealth as an index of divine favor to the proper use of wealth as the index of a good king. Thus the poet is not a passive encomiast but like Pindar before him asserts himself as a critical arbiter of royal behavior. The wealth of kings, if it is to bestow a lasting distinction, must become a means of conferring benefits on humanity in general and one’s own people in particular. Theocritus’s recollections of the Hymn to Demeter serve as a reminder of one kind of beneficium, the institution of religious cults like the Eleusinian mysteries. Hence poetry functions to monitor the king’s progress as well as articulate its significance to the wider audience.

tellectual tradition of Democritus, tracing its development in Euhemerus and later writers. Therefore, it is a fair assumption that Diodorus had some passage of Hecataeus in mind here, whether or not it follows the actual order of Hecataeus’s books. 77. See Rusten 1982, 96–97.

Plate 1. Cartouche of Ptolemy I (Tuna el-Gebel), preceded by a sedge and bee designating the King of Upper and Lower Egypt. Courtesy of the Römer- und Pelizaeus Museum, Hildesheim, Germany.

Plate 2. Cartouche of Ptolemy V Epiphanes (Rosettana), preceded by a sedge and bee. Courtesy of the British Museum.

Plate 3. Horus throttling snakes. “Metternich Stelae.” Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Plate 4. Nakht spearing a snake and a pig (from The Book of the Dead). Courtesy of the British Museum.

Plate 5. The solar boat being towed through a snake (from The Amduat). Courtesy of the British Museum.

Plate 6. The Sun emerging from a hill at dawn (from The Amduat). Courtesy of the British Museum.

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encomium for ptolemy Heracles makes another appearance in Idyll 17, which must have been written in the 270s b.c.e. The date of composition is fixed by the fact that Philadelphus is married to his full sister Arsinoe. That marriage took place between 279 and 274 b.c.e. and lasted until her death in either 270 or 268.78 The catalogue of Ptolemaic possessions detailed in lines 80–94 must reflect some kind of political reality; whether it points to complete Ptolemaic control or only spheres of influence for these regions cannot be determined with any degree of confidence,79 though consensus favors the latter half of the decade. Thus the poem will have been written after the Heracliscus and Callimachus’s Zeus hymn and would have been a near contemporary of Callimachus’s Delos hymn, which probably falls between 274 and 268. Whether the Delos hymn predates the Ptolemy is moot, and plausible arguments to support the priority of one or the other are easily devised.80 Whichever is prior, the linguistic and thematic similarities guarantee that the two poems stand in a self-conscious relationship to each other and again allow us to see the different ways in which the two poets construct the image of the living king. In form,81 the Ptolemy has affinities to traditional hymns to the gods and earlier praise poetry, while it also displays a number of features of the prose encomium, a genre that Isocrates claims to have initiated with his Evagoras (8–11). It proliferated in the fourth century, and by Theocritus’s time had received considerable treatment in the rhetorical theorists and was a well-mined staple of rhetorical education.82 Like its prose relative, the hymn of praise exhibited familiar and 78. For evidence of the marriage, see Fraser 1972, 2: 367 n. 228. On the death of Arsinoe, see Grzybek (1990, 103–12), who would place it in 268, and H. Cadell (“À quelle date Arsinoe II Philadelphe est-elle décèdée?” in Le culte du souverain dans l’Égypte ptolémaïque au IIIe siècle avant notre ère, ed. H. Malaerts [Leuven, 1998] 1–3), who dates it to 270 b.c.e. The two-year difference results from whether Ptolemy II’s rule is counted as beginning at the death of his father (282) or at the beginning of his coregency (285). See Grzybek 1990, 107–12; Koenen 1993, 51 n. 61; Cameron 1995, 160–61. 79. See Gow (2: 326), who would restrict it to around 273/2 b.c.e., and Fraser’s arguments (1972, 2: 933–34) for a wider window, ca. 276/70. Lines 34–52 refer to the deification of Ptolemy II’s mother, Berenice, but neither the date of her death nor the date of the institution of her cult is known. 80. See, for example, Meincke 1965, 116–24; Weber 1993, 213 n. 3; and Funaioli 1993, 212 n. 3. 81. The form of this poem has been much analyzed. See Meincke 1965, 85–164, which is the most comprehensive discussion; see also Schwinge 1986, 60 n. 32, and Weber 1993, 217–43, for a discussion of topoi and bibliography. 82. Of course, as R. Hunter observes, “the later rhetorical tradition [of the prose encomium] is itself a descendant of the hymnic tradition” (1996a, 79 n. 13). See, for in-

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predictable features,83 so at least one factor in Theocritus’s choice to engage in encomium must have been deliberately to set out upon a welltrodden path.84 The central difference between the poetic and prose versions of encomia, at least according to Isocrates, was that poets could represent the gods as associating with their subjects and aiding whomever they wished in battle (9), while those writers confined to prose were also confined to the facts (10). In his movement between the two—the mythological options familiar from hymns and the relatively more fact-based realm of prose encomium—Theocritus seems to engage in an intentional generic mixing that plays with these two distinct styles in ways that often display the limitations of the mythic hymn. Further, the Ptolemy writes itself quite obviously against Callimachus’s earlier Zeus hymn. If Callimachus expresses doubts about how to hymn the god and by extension the king, doubts about poetic models, and doubts about precisely who the king is or will become—a king of Greeks or Egyptians or both—then Theocritus’s overt choice of Ptolemy for his subject, as opposed to Zeus or Heracles, will provide an answer to these Callimachean questions. Zeus and Ptolemy Callimachus opens the Hymn to Zeus with a pattern of doublets85 that begin as coordinates—Zhnb% and uebn aDtan, deB mAgan and aDBn gnakta, Phlaganvn Dlatpra and dikaspalon ODranAdisi—but slide into disjunction—DiktaPon or LykaPon, \IdaAoisin Dn oGresD or Dn \ArkadAh. These become the external correlatives of his internal mental state (Dn doiu mala uyma%). This pattern is visible also in his conclusion: xaPre mAga, KronAdh panypArtate, dptor Davn, dptor dphmonAh%. teb d› Grgmata tA% ken deAdoi; oD gAnet› oDk Gstai, tA% ken Dib% deAsei;

stance, W. H. Race’s treatment in “Pindaric Encomium and Isokrates’ Evagoras,” TAPA 117 (1987) 131–55. See also his remarks about the distinction between the mythic hymn and encomium. Nightingale (1995, 93–132) sets the relationship of the poetry of praise and blame in a philosophical context. 83. See, for example, Plato’s remarks in Lysis 205b-d. 84. Although it is one of the few surviving examples from this early period, the hymn of praise probably flourished in Hellenistic courts. In fact, Cameron (1995, 268–73) has recently argued that much of what has been identified as Hellenistic epic is more likely to be encomium. 85. I am indebted to Benjamin Acosta-Hughes for this observation.

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xaPre, pater xaPr’ aRui¢ dAdon d’ dretan t’ gfena% te. oGt’ dretp% gter glbo% DpAstatai gndra% dAjein oGt’ dretb dfAnoio¢ dAdoy d’ dretan te kaB glbon. A hearty farewell, most high son of Cronus, grantor of wealth, grantor of security. Of your works who could sing? There has not been, there will not be, someone who would sing your deeds. Father, farewell again. Grant virtue and prosperity. Without virtue prosperity knows not how to profit men, nor virtue without wealth; grant us virtue and prosperity.

Theocritus answers the doubt, both explicit and implicit in Callimachus’s ordering, by beginning with a pair—Dk Dib%, D% DAa—that is really the same:

5

Dk Dib% drxamesua kaB D% DAa lagete MoPsai, duanatvn tbn griston, Bpbn †deAdvmen doidaP%¢ dndrpn d’ aR PtolemaPo% DnB pratoisi legAsuv kaB pAmato% kaB mAsso%¢ f gbr proferAstato% dndrpn. erve%, toB prasuen df’ cmiuAvn DgAnonto, r\Ajante% kalb Grga sofpn DkArhsan doidpn¢ aDtbr Dgb PtolemaPon Dpistameno% kalb eDpePn Cmnasaim’¢ Emnoi dB kaB duanatvn gAra% aAtpn. From Zeus let us begin, and at Zeus, best of the immortals, let us cease, Muses, whenever we hold forth in song [?]; but of men let Ptolemy be spoken of first and last and in between, for he is the most distinguished of men. Heroes, who of old came from demigods, when they accomplished fair deeds hit upon skilled songsters, but I know how to praise and would sing of Ptolemy. Hymns are the privilege even of the immortals themselves.

Here the hierarchies are preserved: Zeus is divine, Ptolemy mortal. Each in his class is the best and worthy of praise, and the categories are not permeable (or are they?). These extremes are mediated by heroes and demigods who earn their poetry by virtue of their deeds, not by right of divinity, and it is to this latter group that Theocritus will seem to attach Ptolemy. To Callimachus’s doubts about how to hymn Zeus, Theocritus replies firmly—“I know how to praise and would sing of Ptolemy”—an assertion with generic consequence. What Callimachus avoided in his experiment with the hymn form, Theocritus embraces. To what purpose? Encomium as a genre is ostensibly less subtle, less supple. What Callimachus can hint at through Hesiodic allusion to kings, namely, proper moral behavior and prosperity, values which Theocritus similarly hinted at in the Heracliscus, are stated much more

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openly within a form whose parameters should hold few surprises. However, the Ptolemy is not unadulterated encomium; Theocritus consistently moves between the allusive indirection of the mythic hymn and the (apparently) bald expression of admiration that the encomium (prose or verse) demanded. Perhaps, in this lies the reason for Theocritus’s choice. The poem is suspended between the mythical and the contemporary in its subjects and arrangements, but by juxtaposing or interweaving the two different approaches to praise the poem as a whole takes on the character of a exploration of the nature and potential of encomiastic writing. In the concluding lines Theocritus indulges in a similar rewriting of Callimachus: xaPre, gnaj PtolemaPe¢ sAuen d’ Dgb Rsa kaB gllvn mnasomai cmiuAvn, dokAv d’ Gpo% oDk dpablhton fuAgjomai DssomAnoi%¢ dretan ge mBn Dk Dib% aDteP. Farewell, Lord Ptolemy. I will be equally mindful of you and other demigods, and I think I shall utter a word that will not be disgarded by those to come. As for excellence, seek it from Zeus. (135–37)

Theocritus ends with Zeus (as he promised in his opening line), but Callimachus’s doublets of prosperity and virtue are reordered. Theocritus uncouples excellence—this is the only occurrence of the word dreta in the poem—from prosperity and assigns the dispensation of the former to the divine, the latter to Ptolemy. In fact, the poem is a meditation on prosperity—that Ptolemy possesses it, how he disposes it, and how he should dispose it for the future—while excellence (dreta) is relegated to the last line of the poem, in which Theocritus seems to dismiss heroic values.86 But “As for excellence, seek it from Zeus” could equally well be a sly reference to Callimachus’s Zeus hymn, in which, in spite of its formal hymnic closing, arete is not much present. Further, Callimachus ends with a disingenuous self-referentiality: he asserts that “there has not been, there shall not be” a poet to praise the works of Zeus, and we readily understand Callimachus himself to occupy that 86. For various interpretations of this line, see Wilamowitz, Textgeschichte der griechische Bukoliker (Berlin, 1906) 54–55; Schlatter 1941, 28–30 and note; Griffiths 1979, 75, as well as Schwinge’s comments (1986, 75–77). While it is certainly true that the cultural values implicit in arete had undergone a transformation since the Homeric period and included much more than excellence in battle, arete is a very prominent feature of encomiastic writing, and, therefore, its almost total absence in the Ptolemy is the more striking.

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omitted temporal category—the present. But Theocritus decides to take the assertion at face value. To Callimachus’s opening gambit of poetic aporia, he counters: “I know how to praise and would sing of Ptolemy”; and to Callimachus’s concluding omission of the present, he asserts: “I think I shall utter a word that will not be disgarded by those to come.” After the proem Theocritus turns to the subject of Ptolemy’s parents, both of whom are now dead. He leads off with what seems almost a paraphrase of the sentiments Callimachus had applied to both Zeus and Ptolemy II,87 now predicated of Soter:88 Dk patArvn oQo% mAn Ghn telAsai mAga Grgon LageAda% PtolemaPo%, ete fresBn Dgkatauoito boylan, fn oDk gllo% dnbr oQa% te nopsai. In lineage such a man to accomplish a great deed was Ptolemy, son of Lagus, when he stored up in his heart a plan that no other man could have devised. (13–15)

Moreover, he rewrites Callimachus in Homeric language borrowed from Odyssey 2.270–72, where Athena, disguised as Mentor, tells Telemachus that if he is truly the son of his father—“such a man he was for accomplishing both word and deed” (2.271–72: eD da toi soP patrb% DnAstaktai mAno% dJÓ , | oQo% kePno% Ghn telAsai Grgon te Gpo% te)—he will succeed with his plans. She further remarks that few children turn out to be the equal of their fathers, though there is some hope for Telemachus (274–80). Theocritus thus creates a link between Zeus, Soter, and Philadelphus in such a way that Soter is simultaneously model and reflection (an idea expressed again in lines 56–57: aDxmhtb PtolemaPe, | aDxmhtu PtolemaAi). Behavior already attached to Philadelphus by Callimachus is now reassigned to his father, and the Hesiodic and Egyptian allusions are recast as Homeric. The result is that the link between thought and accomplishment is now a distinguishing characteristic of the royal line, not simply the mark of divine or precocious children. The ensuing narratives of the divine parents are constructed to provide both the Greek heroic and the Egyptian pharaonic context in which Ptolemy has been formed.

87. See above, page 108. 88. See Griffiths 1979, 76 n. 58; and Schwinge’s remarks (1986, 73).

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Fathers and Sons First, Soter is presented as dweller on Olympus in the company of Alexander, and both are attendants of their mutual ancestor Heracles. The scene owes much to the opening of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, where Leto greets her son, Apollo, as he enters his father’s halls, taking his bow and quiver to hang up, then seating him in the presence of the gods (5–13). She rejoices to have such a mighty son, just as Heracles rejoices “exceedingly in the sons of his sons, because the son of Cronus has taken age from their limbs, and his offspring are called immortal” (23–25). But the gods tremble at the entrance of Apollo (Homeric Hymn to Apollo 2), while Theocritus’s language suggests that Soter and Alexander are not full participants as their ancestor “keeps festival with the other Ouranids” (22: Gnua sBn glloisin ualAa% Gxei ODranAdisi; note the singular verb). When Heracles is ready to leave the celestial dining room, Soter and Alexander, like Leto, relieve him of his bow and quiver and club, and attend him to his wife Hebe’s chamber. The price of divinity is very high. Not only are arguably the two greatest military leaders that the Hellenistic world had known reduced to the status of page boys, they are, at least allusively, rendered feminine, performing Leto’s task in the Hymn to Apollo. This is the more jarring because we were invited to reflect on Alexander’s military prowess only a few lines before, where he is called “bane of the Persians.”89 Ancestors who are “descended from Zeus” or who “dine with Heracles” were among the most frequently employed clichés of the hymnic repertory,90 though Theocritus’s humorous treatment rescues the compliment from complete banality. However, in contrast to Berenice, Soter’s divinity renders him, in effect, impotent.91 He may survive in his Greek mythological immortality as a vivid image, but on his efficacy for the living Theocritus has no comment. Theocritus’s presentation of Berenice I, in contrast, was shaped by contemporary Alexandria. The queen mother achieves an immortality

89. Given the prominence of the anecdote in both Herodotus and Hecataeus, I wonder whether in this context Theocritus may wish us to recall the behavior of Sesoösis the archetypal warrior king, for whom to be female was the mark of the coward or weakling. See Herodotus 2.106; Diodorus Siculus 1. 55.7–9. See Weber 1993, 215, on the representation of Soter as a “Quasi-Diener.” Heracles plays a similarly feminized role vis-à-vis Artemis in Callimachus Hymn to Artemis 142–51. 90. See Hippothales’ remarks in Lysis 205c-d. 91. Though presumably not within the parameters of Soter’s other cultic manifestations, one of which—that of the Theoi Soteres—is mentioned at line 123.

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of her own, not by joining the divine households of Olympus, but by being snatched away from the grim ferryman as she was being transported to the realms of the dead to inhabit Aphrodite’s temple, where she has a share in “her divine honors” (46–50). There is no contemporary information about Berenice’s deification, and later evidence testifies only to the cult she shared with Soter, alluded to by Theocritus in line 123, not a separate co-templing with either Greek or Egyptian divinities.92 Nevertheless, it is difficult to imagine that Theocritus would have embroidered the truth and promoted Berenice to a co-templed goddess, if she did not in fact enjoy that status.93 Berenice apparently deified and linked to Aphrodite is found again in Idyll 15,94 where Arsinoe has instituted the festival of Adonis in honor of her deceased mother: KApri DivnaAa, tB mBn duanatan dpb unatp%, dnurapvn c% mPuo%, DpoAhsa% BerenAkan, dmbrosAan D% stpuo% dpostajasa gynaika%· Lady of Cyprus, Dione’s child, you, as men say, changed Berenice from mortal to immortal, dripping ambrosia onto her woman’s breast. (15.106–9)

Compare: tu mBn KApron Gxoisa Diana% patnia koAra kalpon D% eDadh r\adinb% Dsemajato xePra%. On her the Queen of Cyprus, Dione’s august daughter, laid her delicate hands, pressing them upon her fragrant breast. (Idyll 17.34–35)

What is novel in this presentation depends upon an interweaving of a series of Greek and Egyptian ideas. In both accounts, Aphrodite acts to immortalize Berenice by “pressing her hands” or “dripping am-

92. Quaegebeur 1978, 247–49, with illustrations. 93. There is extensive evidence for the inclusion of Arsinoe II in both Egyptian and Greek cult, as a “co-templed divinity” (sAnnao% uea%). For example, she was installed after her death in the ram cult of Mendes and is shown on the Mendes stele, along with the ram-god and his consort, receiving offerings from her husband, Ptolemy II. In the Greek world she was associated with Aphrodite at Cape Zephyrium and a variety of other locations. Though if Theocritus rightly represents the situation, Berenice I would have preceded her in this respect. See Quaegebeur 1978, 249–54, with a good illustration of the Mendes stele, and J. Tondriau, “Princesses ptolémaïques comparées ou identifiées à déesses (IIIe—Ier siècles avant J. C.),” Bulletin de la Société Royale d’ Archéologie-Alexandrie 37 (1948) 15–21. Selden (1998, 339–40) discusses the identification of Arsinoe and Isis. 94. In a fragment (fr. 3) Theocritus mentions Berenice receiving an offering of fish. See Weber 1993, 253–54, for possible interpretations. Not enough remains for fruitful speculation.

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brosia” upon her breast. Thetis preserving the body of Patroclus by pouring ambrosia into his nostrils is usually adduced as the closest Greek parallel to Idyll 15,95 though explanations of the relevance of this particular heroic corpse are somewhat forced. What the Iliad passage and Theocritus have in common is an underlying familiarity with Egyptian rituals of embalming.96 But where Thetis (in keeping with Greek cultural norms) can merely preserve the body, Aphrodite revitalizes her (48–50). Aphrodite seems to enact elements of the embalming ritual in which fragrant oils are rubbed over the body of the deceased, often by the god of the ritual—Anubis—who is portrayed as leaning over the body and touching its breast (or the location of the heart), not ˇ abkar explains the simply to preserve but to reanimate the dead.97 L. Z essential connection of rebirth and aromatic oils: The role that myrrh, incense, unguents, and various aromatic substances played in cult and ritual [was m]uch more than just creating a pleasant atmosphere for gods and men, such substances had the effect of propitiating the deities, of purifying them, of repelling evil influences from them, and of bestowing new vitality upon them. . . . These beneficient effects extended also to the deceased, “who live on myrrh and incense on which the gods live.”98

Ambrosia, therefore, is an effective parallel, since it served to maintain and occasionally even induce immortality. But in Theocritus, Berenice’s fragrant breast is further linked to the desire she inspired in her husband. For Egyptians fragrance does triple duty in that it indicates the presence of divinity, it is instrumental in revitalizing the dead, and it arouses erotic desire; thus it was an ideal symbol for Aphrodite and her co-templed companion.99 These three aspects of fragrance are joined also in Callimachus’s Lock of Berenice, for example, where the anointing of the lock of the newly married Berenice II with a fragrant oil is both a symbol of the lock’s divine status and proleptic of Berenice’s 95. See Griffiths 1979, 22; also Hunter (1996b, 161–63), who suggests it might have resonance with the contemporary burial practices of the Ptolemies. 96. M. Edwards (The Iliad: A Commentary, vol. 5, Books 17–20 [Cambridge, 1991] 238) remarks on Iliad 19.38: “Here ambrosia and nectar are dripped into the nostrils, which suggests a reminiscence of an embalming technique, cf. Herodotus 2.86.3.” 97. For Anubis touching the dead person, Coffin Text I 223f–g; making the dead smell sweet, Coffin Text I 195g. 98. Zˇabkar 1988, 44–45, where the text quoted is Coffin Text VI 284r. 99. These ideas could be used of men as well. In Osorkon’s victory stele from the eighth century b.c.e., Osorkon is said to be “sweet-scented amongst the courtiers like the large lotus bud which is at the nose of every god . . . as a worthy youth, sweet of love even as Horus coming forth from Chemmis” (Caminos 1958, 260).

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own subsequent apotheosis, as well a sign of the mutual desire of husband and wife. In Idyll 17, Aphrodite is fashioned not as the goddess of sex, but of the erotic reciprocity of marriage that breeds true sons, and Berenice is her human reflection. In Idyll 15, Theocritus’s presentation of the Adonia also repositions Aphrodite by portraying Adonis as her “bridegroom” and the bed of the tableau as the nuptial couch. The novelty of Theocritus’s Aphrodite in her dimension as a protector of marriage100 is likely to be related to her identification with Isis. In Egypt the cult of Isis-Aphrodite was extremely popular and was either the reason for or the result of the queens of the imperial household identifying themselves with Aphrodite.101 The link with Isis as both wife and sister of Osiris is illustrated in the epithet “brother-loving,” which was first attached to Arsinoe as a cult name.102 In her status as a co-templed goddess, Berenice I, like Aphrodite and Isis, continues to confer the benefits of appropriately directed desires, and her son Ptolemy II serves as the best example of the true sons that result when the love of husband for wife is mutual (38–40). The love of Soter and Berenice thus guaranteed Ptolemy II’s legitimacy, expressed by his likeness to his father, an idea that appears again in lines 56–57 and 63–64. In Greek texts, a positive erotic relationship between husband and wife is not easy to document, though Penelope as the good wife and Arete and Alcinous as a loving couple are familiar from Homer’s Odyssey, and Gow recalls both when commenting on this passage.103 But Egyptian ideas also come into play. Isis was the paradigmatic good wife, whose devotion to her husband led to the recovery and protection of his body as well as to the conception of Horus, who was born to be the image and avenger of his father. The mythology spilled over into the ideology of kingship, where in the absence of a tradition of primogeniture the concept of the pharaoh’s “likeness” to one’s divine father, whether Re, Osiris, or Amun—established after the fact— played a central role in claims of legitimacy.104 Claims of “likeness” to a god became a familiar element in royal titulary. For example, the hieroglyphic shm-’nh-n-Jmn occurs as a throne name for Euergetes, Phil100. Cerfaux and Tondiau 1957, 196–200. 101. Dunand 1973, 80–85. 102. Koenen 1993, 61–63. 103. 2: 335–36. 104. For a discussion of the development of this idea of “divine like,” see O’Connor and Silverman 1995, 61–63.

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opator, and Epiphanes. (In the trilingual Rosetta stone this phrase is translated as eDkanoß zpshß toP Diaß, or “living likeness of Zeus.”)105 “Likeness” to one’s divine father necessarily entailed a commensurate likeness to one’s human father, who in his turn equally resembled the god, but there were also practical consequences of the resemblance. In a boundary stele of Sesostris III, for example, the true son establishes his claims to his status by replicating his father’s deeds. The inscription is typically Egyptian in that it plays with a multiple senses of “image” of the king: the king’s actual deeds are inscribed, the stele also bears his physical likeness, and finally it serves notice of how to identify his true image, or son: Now, as for any son of mine who shall make firm this boundary my Person made, he is my son, born of my Person; the son who vindicates his father is a model, making firm the boundary of his begetter. Now as for him who shall neglect it, shall not fight for it— no son of mine, not born to me! Now my Person has caused an image of my Person to be made, upon this boundary which my Person made, so that you shall be firm for it, so that you will fight for it.106

In the eighth century, Osorkon is identified as “the legitimate egg and image of the King of Upper and Lower Egypt.”107 Birth temples (mammisi) of the late Ptolemaic period exhibit the logical development of this idea, as the pharaoh is associated with the divine child in cult and described as “he who truly resembles his father.”108 This age-old Egyptian motif is ideal for Theocritus because Ptolemy by virtue of his becoming pharaoh de facto exhibits “likeness” to his father (i.e., his legitimacy); equally it implies a level of excellence in behavior to which the encomiast can implicitly hold the king. The contrast between the presentation of Ptolemy II’s deceased father and that of his mother in many respects corresponds to the contrast between Amphitryon and Alcmena in the Heracliscus. Soter (and Alexander) cool their heels on Olympus as they wait for Heracles to fin-

105. See Thissen 1966, 40, and Beckerath 1999, 236. Soter and Philadelphus use the variant mrj-Jmn ( = “beloved of Amun”). 106. R. B. Parkinson, Voices from Ancient Egypt (Norman, Okla., 1991) 46: cf. Lichtheim 1973, 119–20. 107. Caminos 1958, 260. 108. Daumas 1958, 306–8; the passage is discussed in Koenen 1983, 163.

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ish drinking, while Berenice is united in death with the divine and caregiving aspects of Aphrodite and continues to bring benefits to mortals. Similarly, Amphitryon, rushes from his chamber with sword and baldric, like the epic hero he was, only to fade from the picture while Alcmena takes action that decides Heracles’ future. In each case Theocritus presents the fathers of his subject within the terms of heroic Greek myth that seems to be inert, while the women (and as the poems progress, their sons) are located specifically in a dynamic and evolving contemporary world. In the Ptolemy, this has been taken to imply Ptolemy II’s failure to live up to the military achievements of his father, but of course that cannot be said of Heracles in the Heracliscus. There we identified Theocritus’s poetic behavior as (in M. Fantuzzi’s words) “demythologizing” the heroic past.109 In this poem do the two divergent representations of divinity presuppose some qualitative or generic difference? How are we to rank the divinity of Soter, who interacts with Heracles and Alexander, in comparison to the cult of cohabitation with one of the Olympians that is Berenice’s fate? Are they equal, or is one inherently superior? Having determined that Ptolemy is not a god in the same sense as Zeus, Theocritus reveals himself less certain about just what form his immortality is destined to take—will he be elevated to the heights of Olympus like his father or deified in cult like his mother? Or is the point to leave him suspended between the two—each of which provides a template of sorts for imperial achievement? Theocritus finally reaches his subject, Ptolemy II, via another formulaic device—the priamelic allusion to two epic heroes, Diomedes and Achilles (53–57). The progress is from Diomedes to the more famous Achilles, with Philadephus filling out the triad. Theocritus plays again with the similarity of fathers to sons: both heroes exceed the fame of their fathers, which holds out the promise that Philadelphus will also exceed his father’s fame, while the symmetry of the phrases aDxmhtb PtolemaPe, | aDxmhtu PtolemaAi guarantees at least that he begins life as the mirror image of his father.110 The allusions have usually been read less than positively. Commentators point out that Philadelphus was hardly the military equal of his father, Soter, and owed his success in the Syrian war to his wife, Arsinoe II.111 But perhaps the limitations and

109. 2001b, 135. 110. See Koenen 1983, 157–68. 111. See, for example, Gow 2: 335; Griffiths 1979, 75–77; and Schwinge 1986, 62 n. 43. S. Burstein, “Arsinoe II Philadelphos: A Revisionist View,” in Philip II, Alexander the

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ambivalences in the application of the heroic model to a “modern” king are the point? Unlike Ptolemy II, neither Diomedes nor Achilles demonstrated the skills required for governing a modern state, but then suitable parallels for this new kingship in the heroic tradition are not easy to find—apart from Zeus, who had some experience in ruling over the fractious society of Olympus., though he might not always be an appropriate model for other reasons. Operating within the symbolic repertory of mythic hymns might work well for those few kings who are also successful militarists, but there is little room for negotiation for kings like Philadelphus, whose worth can be measured by only one mythological standard—prowess in battle—whatever their real achievements in governing. As Theocritus recounts the birth of Philadelphus on Cos, he is again following the Homeric Hymn to Apollo in giving a speaking part to the island. And in the apparent parallel—Delos is to Cos as Apollo is to Ptolemy—there is another hint that Ptolemy is destined to surpass mere mortals. But if in Callimachus Leto was in labor nine days and nine nights, wracked with birth pains as she awaited Eileithyia (91–101), Berenice’s labor is mercifully brief: “For there the daughter of Antigone, heavy with her birth pangs, called for Eileithyia who looses the girdle, and she stood by to give her aid and poured surcease from pain upon every limb” (60–63). This harmony with the divine continues as the eagle of Zeus appears: “This I suppose (poy) was a sign from Zeus; for Zeus, the son of Cronus, takes care of compassionate kings, and he is first whom he [Zeus] loves from his very birth” (73–75). The language and sentiment is borrowed from Hesiod’s Theogony 79–85 and is used by Callimachus in the Zeus hymn, as we saw earlier.112 The eagle as a symbol had early been adopted by the Ptolemaic royal house, as the anecdote about Soter, discussed in the context of Heracles in the shield, makes clear. In that vignette the eagle appears with outstretched wings to protect the exposed infant. Gow’s comment on the anecdote’s relationship to this passage is instructive: The eagle, besides being the bird of Zeus, seems to have been in some sense an emblem of the Ptolemies. An eagle on a thunderbolt commonly

Great and the Macedonian Heritage, ed. E. Borza and W. L. Adams (Washington, D.C., 1982) 197–212, provides a more realistic assessment. 112. See Hunter’s remarks on Theocritus’s use of Hesiod (1996a, 81–82) and Bing on Callimachus’s use (1988, 76–83).

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appears on their coins, and confronted gilt eagles fifteen cubits high surmounted the skhna in which Ptol. Philadelphus held his symposium (Ath. 5. 197A). This symbol is more likely to explain than to be explained by the story (Aelian fr. 285) that Ptol. Soter, when exposed in infancy, was protected by an eagle.113

The eagle, the bird of Zeus and marker of his royal power, and, by extension, kings, has a long pedigree in Greek art and literature. Both Theocritus and Callimachus allude to Hesiod on the subject. But Zeus’s eagle has an equally potent Egyptian kin. The Horus falcon was not simply an indicator of divine protection in pharaonic art and symbol of kingship; in the Late Period, it sometimes took precedence over the pharaoh as the icon of divine kingship.114 Old Kingdom pharaohs are often shown being embraced by the wings of the Horus falcon, and two millennia later in the second century b.c.e., a major Ptolemiac construction was dedicated to the Horus falcon at Edfu. Outstretched falcon wings were used as a common framing device for lunate commemorative stelae or as a protective device on temple walls and were particularly associated with the king.115 Thus a fondness for eagles served to situate the Ptolemies within two separate cultural frames of reference and facilitate their movement from one to another. If Greeks saw the bird of Zeus, and Egyptians saw a Horus falcon, both saw a familiar accoutrement of royal power. Euergesia The speaking island does not so much predict Ptolemy’s success as take it for granted. Theocritus echoes Callimachus in his quotation of Hesiod—the proper or reverent (aidoios) king is a prosperous one, and this is exemplified by the wealth of Philadelphus. But where Callimachus limits his characterization of Ptolemy’s wealth to r\yhfenAa, a coinage that calls to mind the richness of the Nile, Theocritus embroiders the theme of wealth (glbo%) and the good king for twenty lines. He contrasts the rest of the world with the fecund plains of Egypt “when the Nile overflows and breaks up the soil” where “three hundred cities 113. 2: 337–38, note on line 72. 114. See, for example, the statue of Chephren or representations of Ramesses II with the Horus falcon. See the discussion in Shafer 1997, 68–70. 115. For Ptolemaic use of this device, see Selden’s discussion (1998, 388) with illustrations.

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have been built therein, and three thousand and thrice ten thousand, and twice three and three times nine”—to a total of 33,333. The number is undoubtedly constructed for its symbolic or mystic perfection,116 but it is also close to the figure used by ancient writers. Diodorus, who will have gotten his figure from Hecataeus, gives the number of villages in Egypt at the time of Ptolemy, son of Lagus, as “more than thirty thousand,”117 and a scholium to the Iliad places the number around 33,000.118 Theocritus has taken more than the number from Hecataeus. Compare his description of Ptolemy’s behavior with that of Sesoösis as a good king in Diodorus.119 Theocritus insists that Ptolemy would outweigh other kings in wealth, so much comes daily into his wealthy halls from every quarter. And his people go about their work in peace. For no enemy crosses the teeming Nile on foot to raise the cry of battle in villages not his own; none springs from his swift ship upon the shore, harrying with armed violence the herds of Egypt. So great a man is enthroned on those broad plains, yellow-haired Ptolemy, who knows how to shake a spear, to whom it is a care to guard his ancestral heritage. As a good king, he increases them himself, and the gold does not lie useless in the wealthy house, like the wealth that the ever-toiling ants pile up. But much the glorious temples of the gods receive, much is given to mighty kings, much to cities, and to his good companions. (95–110)

Similarly Sesoösis provides peace, wealth, and security that manifest themselves in monuments: Sesoösis relieved his people of the labors of war; to the comrades who had fought bravely with him he provided ease and enjoyment of the good things which they had attained, while he himself, being desirous of glory and eager for a memory that lasted forever, constructed great and marvelous works in conception as well as in their lavishness, winning for himself immortal glory and for the Egyptians security with leisure for all time.120

116. See Gow 2: 339 ad 82ff. 117. pleAoy% tpn trismyrAvn (1.31.7) = FGrH 264 F19. See also Murray 1970, 168 n. 10. 118. See Gow’s discussion (2: 338–39 ad 82ff.). 119. 1.56–57. So Murray: “How much of the rest of the poem is inspired by Hecataeus can only be guessed at, but compare ll. 95–101 with Hecataeus’ emphasis in the geographical section on the defensibility of Egypt” (1970, 168 n. 10). 120. Diodorus Siculus 1.56.1.

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And a little later: He made the country secure and difficult of access for enemy incursions, since hitherto almost all the best part of Egypt had been suitable for horses and accessible for chariots, from that time on because of the number of canals from the river it became very difficult for an enemy to invade.121

Just as he appropriated the model of the young Sesoösis as a parallel for the young Heracles of the Heracliscus and as a tribute to the newly crowned Ptolemy, here the accomplishments of the mature Sesoösis serve as a template for the mature king. Wealth, which the king possesses now by virtue of his deeds both in the Syrian war and on the home front, is a mark of his favor from Zeus, but it also obliges him to behave, as Sesoösis, as a just king and to extend his generosity to his subjects. Though the conferral of benefits on one’s subjects is a feature of Greek kingship from Homer on, the particular form in which these virtues are articulated in this passage closely approximates Egyptian kingship. The emphasis on control of the eastern, western, and southern borders to guarantee peace (86–87) in order for the country to prosper, combined with wealth and its disposition, was a feature of pharaonic kingship that apparently Ptolemy continued. The Israel stele of Merneptah, set up after the king’s victory over the Libyans, for example, proclaims: “One walks free-striding in the road, for there is no fear in people’s hearts; fortresses are left to themselves . . . , the cattle are left to roam, no herdsman crosses the river’s flood; . . . towns are settled once again . . . all who roamed have been subdued by the King of Upper and Lower Egypt.”122 R. Hunter provides a more contemporary hieroglyphic parallel for this passage: “Good things, all good things abound in his reign . . . his granaries reach to heaven . . . his soldiers outnumber the sands . . . all the sanctuaries celebrate . . .” He observes: “Theocritus does not merely combine the Greek poetic tradition with a native language of praise, but finds in the former the authorizing pattern of the latter.”123 Or vice versa.

121. Diodorus Siculus 1.57.4. 122. Lichtheim 1976, 77. The theme of cattle not being able to roam freely is a common feature of admonition or lamentation literature, and its inverse, the restoration of free ranges to cattle, marks the good king. 123. Hunter 1996a, 89. The Egyptian text he translates from French is in S. Sauneron, “Un document égyptien relatif à divinisation de la reine Arsinoe II,” BIFAO 60 (1960) 83–109.

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Theocritus’s praise is not unalloyed, however. Consider the brief speech of the island of Cos at Ptolemy’s birth: the island asks the newborn for a favor, namely, “In the same honor [as Apollo held Delos] establish the Triopian hill, granting an honor equal to the Dorians who live nearby” (68–69). Whatever the exact identification of the Triopian hill,124 it would seem to have been a region of potential Ptolemaic expansion. To be cynical, Ptolemy can “favor” the region by acquiring it, and thus complete his own expansionist policies—one example of how he might increase what he has inherited from his father. It is of course possible to read this as a compliment to Ptolemy,125 but it is also an exposure of the complicated nature of imperial wealth and generosity. Theocritus caps the whole section with a final example of Ptolemaic largesse in lines 112–16, by noting the beneficium that presumably he had already received for success in an earlier poetic context. This example from the past is intended to serve as a reminder (if not an outright plea) to Ptolemy for the future reward that should accrue to Theocritus himself for this fine piece of encomiastic writing. But it also calls attention to the power of the encomiast. His example is self-consciously manipulative, and instructive when juxtaposed with Cos’s request vis-àvis the Triopian hill. For the Triopian hill, whatever the actual desires of the inhabitants, the attentions of Ptolemy are to be considered a beneficium—that is, Theocritus has constructed them as such within the context of the poem. Similarly, the attentions that Ptolemy receives from the poet are marked in advance as worthy of beneficium, regardless of the views of the subject himself. Theocritus’s poem concludes with Ptolemy’s establishment of the cult of the Theoi Soteres, “a shrine to his dear mother and father” (123), immediately followed by a recollection of the marriage of Ptolemy to his full sister Arsinoe II, for which he provides the mythological parallel of “the immortals whom Queen Rhea bore to be rulers of Olympus,” Zeus and Hera (132–33). The phrase oF% tAketo . . . \RAa occurs in Homer in a passage that Callimachus recalls in the Hymn to Zeus when he rejects the “ancient poets who did not speak truly when they said that lot assigned their three dwellings to the sons of Cronus” (61–62). In the Homeric passage Poseidon claims:

124. On which, see H. White, “Theocritus, Ptolemy Philadelphus and Colonus,” CL 1 (1981) 14–58, and Rossi 1989, 118–19. 125. So Rossi (1989, 118), who sees it as “felicitous and appropriate.”

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We three are brothers whom Rhea bore to Cronus, Zeus and I, and Hades lord of the dead is the third. Into three parts was everything divided, and each of us had his share.126

Callimachus’s rejection of Homer was in part tied to historical circumstance. Preference for the Hesiodic version of Zeus’s elevation by consensual agreement of the other gods based on his clear superiority has been taken to suggest fraternal accord at the elevation of Ptolemy II, the youngest of Soter’s sons, over his brothers. But by the time of the Ptolemy circumstances had changed, and this Homeric allusion is now ironically apt. The wider context of Poseidon’s statement is Zeus forbidding his brother Poseidon to continue to support the Trojan cause, and Poseidon complaining that Zeus is too autocratic and that Olympus was given to all. Hera in this rare instance is supporting her husband’s decision, though in the past she had sided with Poseidon. Consider the parallels: Arsinoe II is now married to Philadelphus, though she had been married to his older brother (and her half brother) Keraunus until his death. Keraunus, if not lord of the dead, could certainly be said to be inhabiting that realm. In returning his audience to this pivotal moment in the Hymn to Zeus, Theocritus does more than cap allusions. Callimachus’s preference for Hesiod over Homer was a deliberate choice of a certain poetic model, one that gave him access to the tradition of theogonic writing as a means of imagining the new world of Ptolemy’s court, while it also located the poet as a particularly privileged speaker—as the writer of theogonies. Theocritus confronts the same fundamental issue—how to deploy the poetic repertory from the past in serving the present—and his use of Homer here is not pointing to his “solution” so much as underscoring the difficulties encountered in the process. While the passage in question may now seem more appropriate than it would have earlier, still there are inconcinnities with any allusion from the mythic past, as we saw with the heroic priamel of Diomedes, Achilles, Ptolemy. Further, the orthography Theocritus uses here, \RAa, is not common in hexameter, and it returns us to the Zeus hymn in another way. Callimachus has used this spelling once in his hymn at line 21,127 when after

126. Iliad 15.187–89. 127. No doubt because of the pun; see the discussion above, chapter 2.

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Rhea’s parturition water begins to flow in thirsty Argos, thus, as we have seen, calling to mind the Nile. Theocritus “reading” of Callimachus’s Zeus hymn has now come full course with his allusion to the birth of Zeus and Hera, as opposed to merely that of Zeus. If he began by claiming to know how to speak of both Zeus and Ptolemy and by seeming to draw firm distinctions between them, he concludes with an equation of human and divine, not in relation to immortality but to marriage. Further, he hints that the process by which Ptolemy and his wife will, like their parents, achieve an immortality differs from the course of the traditional Homeric hero. Finally, the ending symmetry of the brother-sister pair mirrors the concord not only of the parent divinities memorialized by their pious children in cult but recreates the accord of Alexander and Soter on Olympus. In many respects the theme of this poem is concord and harmony—of heaven and earth as human and divine cohabit in Olympus, and of Zeus, the patron of kings, with Ptolemy, his protégé; of ruler and ruled as Ptolemy fitly displays his euergesia; of parent and child in the image of Ptolemy, the beloved and true son of Soter and Berenice who most resembles his father; and finally, of brother and sister, husband and wife. This homonoia128 is actively constructed against other poetic parallels, most obviously Callimachus’s and his “doubt” or double-mindedness about how to praise, but also against the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, in which Leto and the birth of Apollo are opposed by Hera, and finally against the heroic tradition, as the mention of Achilles and Diomedes suggests. Both men eclipse their fathers; both are examples of violent warriors who possess the arete of heroic poetry in abundance, but whose efficacy is limited to the context of heroic battle, against which the “spearman” Ptolemy is positioned, who leads a nation-state in prosperous peace. As such Theocritus’s poem stands in contrast to another of Callimachus’s poems, the Hymn to Delos. As I noted earlier, the two are roughly contemporary, and which is prior cannot be determined with any degree of conviction. Whether Callimachus rewrote Theocritean harmony or whether Theocritus positions his poem against the turbulent cosmos of the Delos hymn, the two clearly construct themselves against each other. What is interesting about these poems is this literary behavior: how, regardless of their compositional order, the fiction of order and the relationship of subject 128. Homonoia was a concept connected with Alexander’s grand plan for his kingdom. See Tarn 1933, 123–48.

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to the same mythological repertory is kept in play. Delos and Cos exist in a temporal relationship to each other: Delos, whatever its date of composition, must be poetically prior, while Cos serves to fulfill Apollo’s prophecy and continue the poetic chain of speaking islands from Homer through Callimachus to Theocritus, thereby linking Ptolemy and his birth to hymnic as well as encomiastic modes of expression. The cosmic disorder that is transformed into harmony at the birth of Apollo is continued in the encomium, as if the promise of Ptolemy in the one is fulfilled in the other. If in the Delos hymn the forces of chaos—Pytho and the Gauls—will need to be defeated in the future, the encomium paints a picture of the results of these events and the ensuing cosmic accord, or what happens when the foe is routed. Both poets use Egyptian models, but while Callimachus focuses on the myths of divine birth once again as the moment when cosmic harmony begins, Theocritus focuses on the adult behavior of the king as the living instantiation of harmony, in the form of prosperity, and on the king’s role in facilitating culture. The encomium must also be read in relationship to the Heracliscus. The general shape of the two is similar, and the presence of Heracles in both as a model for his descendant, Ptolemy, is significant. The Heracliscus, like the Zeus hymn, began by seeming to construct a dual Greek and Egyptian mythology for its subject—Heracles—and by the selection and treatment of the incident of Heracles throttling snakes to reflect in many particulars the myth of Horus. But in Callimachus the double construction of plot continues throughout the poem to leave the late appearance of Ptolemy in the poem suspended between the two narratives as Callimachus’s “doubts” never resolve themselves but are externalized as “plausible fictions.” In contrast, Theocritus’s double narrative unites in Teiresias’s prophecy, as Theocritus moves from the mythical models of earlier Greek poetry to a historical model similar to that found in Hecataeus. The prophecy not only brings to closure the incident of defeating serpents, or triumphing over enemies, it also provides the stimulus for the education of Heracles as a young prince, just as Sesoösis’s father was stimulated by a dream of his son’s future accomplishments. The similarity of the Hecataean narrative about Sesoösis suggests that Theocritus is working within the same conceptual framework as Callimachus, but while Callimachus remains within the parameters of archaic Greek poetry to construct an ideal of kingship, Theocritus moves to contemporary political and philosophical debate. Sesoösis serves as a concrete example for a newly crowned king who

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rules over both Greeks and Egyptians, because Sesoösis is a “real” historical Egyptian king whose behavior has been conformed to an idealized Greek model. While Callimachus’s Hesiodic basileus with straight judgments can function as a parallel for or allusion to the Egyptian king who governs by maat, Theocritus borrows a figure in whom Egyptian ideals of maat have already been translated into Greek concepts and just judgment has been expressed by euergesia, or generosity on an imperial scale.129 Moreover, in both of Theocritus’s poems the narratives progress from openings that seem to search for behavioral models within the framework of the archaic or heroic world to conclude with behaviors that conform to modern ideals of kingship. As we saw in Hecataeus, prosperity (olbia) and ultimately immortality were granted to those rulers who had conferred benefactions upon mankind (euergesia). What is also at stake is a realignment of immortality. Theocritus clearly separates the realms of human and divine, most obviously in the Heracliscus, as we saw above, but also in the Ptolemy, where he maintains a distinction between Zeus and Aphrodite, on the one hand, and the demigods, like Heracles, who sup with the immortals but are subject to the normal events of human life—birth, maturation, and death. For this secondary rank, immortality is to be gained by good works: as Isis and Osiris and the other early Egyptian kings in Hecataeus are deified for their signal benefits to humankind, so in an analogous way might others be elevated. One means of benefaction in Hecataeus is the introduction of the cults of the gods. Already in the Heracliscus Theocritus may have intended his audience to understand the allusions to the Eleusinian mysteries in this context, either as a past example of benefits conferred or, if Soter had indeed introduced something similar in Alexandria, a current one. It is in this context that ruler cult seems to function in the Ptolemy. We are told: Alone this one of those men who formerly or still warm the dust with the imprint of their feet as they go has established shrines to his dear mother and father, in which, splendid in gold and ivory, he has placed them to assist all mankind. (121–25)

129. The Egyptian pharaoh acted as a creator who renewed and expanded maat through buildings and other monuments (Hornung 1992, 156). For the way in which this pharaonic motif of building plays out in Callimachus’s Hymn to Apollo, see Selden 1998, 384–408.

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Soter and Berenice continue their benefactions, then, even in death, and in marked contrast to the heroes of mythic hymns Ptolemy alone has instituted cult not only as an act of filial piety but also as a benefaction in turn for mankind. At this point we should recall that other contemporary writer, Euhemerus, who, like Hecataeus, organized divinity into two categories—ouranioi and epigeioi. For him even Zeus was an example of this latter category, since among his other services to humans he instituted cults to his parents. Theocritus proleptically locates Ptolemy II in this same company of such divinized humans with the image of footprints in the dust. There was a well-documented Egyptian belief that the imprint of the foot of a divinity or of the king personified the divine force and was an index of the beneficient effect of the divine presence. Plaques with the imprint of feet have often been found among temple dedications.130 Thus Ptolemy’s footprint not only places him in the exclusive company of those gods and kings important enough to leave footprints but elevates him above the rest. It serves as the tangible manifestation of the qualities that will in the fullness of time lead to his own deification, as well as the benefits that his current activities confer on his subjects. Theocritus, as we have seen, has ample precedent for the dynamic of his narrative, but his originality lies in the poetic attempt to conform or adapt these prose models specifically to Ptolemy as well as in the dynamic interplay of the two different mythological frames of reference that he chose to employ. A similar dynamic appears to have been at work in Idyll 15, the Adoniazusae. In that poem the chaos and disorder of the streets of Alexandria, with their babble of competing regional accents and threats of trampling horses, are transformed into the beauty and harmony of the royal palace. Theocritus is surely playing with the Egyptian constructs of order and chaos in two ways: he inverts the normal relationship between Egyptian and other when he attributes (at least partially) the disorder of the streets to Egyptian pickpockets and order to Ptolemy for cleaning up the street crime. But by attributing the bringing of order to Ptolemy, Theocritus simultaneously marks him as pharaoh, albeit a pharaoh triumphing over petty theft not Gaulish hoards. The poem itself celebrates the beneficium of the Adonis festival, which the queen, Arsinoe, instituted for the citizens of Alexandria. And

130. Castiglione1967, 251.

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however one interprets the event, the quality of the Adonis song, and Theocritus’s intentions (ironical or otherwise), the pleasure of the two ladies, Gorgo and Praxinoa, is represented as genuine, and their praise of the singer—panolbAa (146)—could equally serve as an epithet for the Ptolemaic city itself.131 It is within the context of a dual Greek-Egyptian kingship that has moved out of the realm of the mythological—or potential, where Callimachus seems to have left it—and into the contemporary—or actual— that brother-sister marriage comes to play a role.132 This is a real pharaonic practice with ample precedent in national myth; not only are Isis and Osiris brother and sister as well as man and wife, their siblings, Seth and Nephthys, are also a pair. But, apart from the obvious parallels with Zeus and Hera, the two couples have very little in common. Isis is an entirely loyal wife and sister as well as mother, and the Egyptian pair are given to good works that benefit their son as well as mortals in general, rather than to complaints and philandering. Their sexual relationship is focused on and culminates in the production of the son and legitimate heir, Horus, and in many versions of the story Isis conceives Horus posthumously. In contrast, Zeus, in the context of myth (as opposed to philosophy), seems to have fathered half of the heroes in Greek legend,133 while Hera is often quarrelsome and vindictive. Theocritus’s decision to end the Ptolemy by mentioning the marriage of Ptolemy and Arsinoe II is explicable in terms of Egyptian kingship—the loving family pair is a fit finale to his portrait of political, social, and cosmic harmony, but in terms of Greek myth we find the same inconcinnity as in the heroic priamel. However, within the contemporary prose writings of Hecataeus and Euhemerus, it seems that Zeus and Hera were constructed rather differently. According to Hecataeus, there were other gods, who were terrestrial (DpigeAoy%), they say, who had once been mortal, but who because of their intelligence and their

131. For the relationship between the Adonia and Osirid festivals, see Reed 2000, 319–51. 132. Brother-sister marriage was a notorious feature of Greco-Roman Egypt. For the most recent study, see W. Scheidel, “Brother-Sister and Parent-Child Marriage Outside Royal Families in Ancient Egypt and Iran: A Challenge to the Sociobiological View of Incest Avoidance?” Ethnology and Sociobiology 17 (1996) 319–40. 133. There are obvious political implications in stories that position one or another family in a direct line from Zeus, and the power structure of Egypt, with its dominant centralized monarchy, will not have needed to generate the same set of myths, but still the differences between the divine brother-sister pairs are remarkable. See Hall 1996, 88–89, on the function of theogeniture.

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good offices (eDergesAan) to all attained immortality, some of them even had been kings in Egypt. When translated, the names of some are homonyms of the celestial gods (oDranAoi%), but others retain their distinctive name, Helios and Cronus, and Rhea, and the Zeus whom some call Ammon, and also Hera. . . . Then Cronus ruled and, having married Rhea, fathered Zeus and Hera, who became rulers of the entire cosmos because of their excellence (dI dretbn basilePsai toP sAmpanto% kasmoy). From them were born five gods . . . Osiris and Isis, and Typhon and Apollo and Aphrodite; and Osiris is translated as Dionysus, and Isis is nearest to Demeter. When Osiris married her and succeeded to the kingship he did many things for the benefit of the life of all people (pollb prpjai prb% eDergesAan toP koinoP bAoy).134

Theocritus, then, was not alone in finding Zeus and Hera positive models for kingship. While this may not have alleviated the difficulty of packaging brother-sister marriage for Greek consumption, it does provide a more nuanced context for the analogy. In philosophical and historical discourse the construction of divinity was at odds with the mythological apparatus of the inherited hymnic tradition. In more general terms this points to the genuine conceptual difficulties poets of this new age faced in writing for a court. The poetic traditions of the past, produced as often as not in different political environments, could be only a partial fit for hymning the Ptolemies. The inconcinnities in the perceptions that Theocritus’s allusions or intertextualities actually generate in the reader (ancient or modern) and what his surface text seems to say create a problem in reading: how are we to respond to these court poems? Are they deliberately ironic? Or are they subversive in response to the necessity to write poetry in a distasteful environment? Are they simply failures of poetic judgment—either on the poet’s part, who ineptly chose his exempla, or on the part of readers who can now no longer appreciate the intricate gavotte of court poetry? The problem is the same for Callimachus, though the particulars are different. Callimachus’s decision to locate his poems for the most part within the mythological past of archaic poetry has often obscured their political nature, and when he does specifically mention a Ptolemy modern readers have easily bracketed this off from the text.135 134. Diodorus Siculus 1.13.4–5 = FGrH 264 F25.13.4–5. I have omitted the portion of 1.13.4 that Jacoby rejects. 135. Note, for instance, how much is written about the end of Callimachus’s Hymn to Apollo and how little about the poem as a whole. In contrast, see Selden 1998, 384–405.

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In contrast, Theocritus’s obvious application of that same mythological realm to the contemporary world of the court creates greater strains for reception; the gap between the poetic press and perceived reality seems larger. Both poets are experimenting with image making, and humor sustains many of their experiments; some are intrinsically humorous, like Heracles, the boy prince, or potentially humorous, like Soter and Alexander in heaven, or potentially disastrous, like Hera and Zeus as the ideal couple. But there is in both also the constructed persona of the poet, which we can watch as he creates his poems. The poets’ habit of distancing themselves from the surface of the text should allow us to read the poems in a more nuanced way. If Callimachus constructs his images of the court in terms of Zeus and Apollo, while Theocritus employs Heracles, neither is constructing a literal equivalent so much as a vehicle for expressing the emerging ideologies of the Ptolemaic court and for devising imaginatively viable myth not simply for what are the new realities, but for its desires and potential. The available mythologies—Homeric, hymnic, encomiastic, theogonic, Hecataean—allow each poet to foreground different elements of the relationship of the court to the constituent elements of its world—cult, relations with other parts of the Hellenistic world, with those within and without Greek-speaking Alexandria, its Greek heritage. But the variant mythologies have their limits. They come with a generic encoding and preset parameters within which they functioned in the past and within which the poet was obliged to work. If Hera and Zeus are poor paradigms for Isis and Osiris, or at least for the model behavior that that divine brother-sister marriage would have encoded for Egyptians, by choosing to write on the subject Theocritus may well be underscoring the difficulty, namely, that better models do not exist within the Greek mythological repertory. This is perhaps why Callimachus treats the subject not at all or (more likely) employs the nonsexual pairing of Apollo-Artemis as his Olympian analogues for the Ptolemaic consanguineous couple. But however successful or otherwise we may, at this distance, deem these symbolic maneuverings, they are constitutive of the poetic discourse that is taking place within the court and between those poets who choose to participate. And it is far more likely that the poets themselves determine the parameters of this discourse than that it is the result of imperial dictation.

chapter 4

Apollonian Cosmologies

In choosing to write epic Apollonius distanced himself from Callimachus’s and Theocritus’s poetry about the court so successfully that R. Hunter could write in 1993: “Very little attention has . . . been paid to the Ptolemaic context of Apollonius’ epic, to the question of why the Head of the Library should write on this subject rather than any other.”1 The question has been ignored because the Homeric epic, unlike the Aeneid, is constructed as a closed generic form that resists connection with the present; rather, its action is located in a remote past of national beginnings and first times. The genre itself erects a barrier between past and present, and, in respect to the present, the past maintains a moral hegemony. Events located or narrated within this mythic past are inherently worthy of memorialization, while contemporary events, because they have not withstood the test of time and the verdict of future generations upon their significance, must always be found wanting in comparison.2 Critical attempts to link events of the Arg1. 1993, 3. See Hunter’s assessment at pp. 152–69, and in 1989b and 1995. In contrast, Weber rarely mentions the Argonautica in his treatment of Hellenistic “court”poetry (1993), and Green (1997) reads it as a throwback to the archaic worldview of an earlier age. Even Pietsch’s study of the unity of the Argonautica (1999) discusses its “theology” entirely in terms of Homer and classical models, without any attention to Hellenistic philosophical discourse. 2. Bakhtin 1981, 15. While it is fashionable to critique Bakhtin’s formulations as applicable only to the earliest, perhaps only oral epic, in fact his observations about the temporal relationship of past and present are true even for Vergil: Vergil constructs an epic

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onautica to the Ptolemaic court, therefore, would seem to breach the temporal authority of epic and both result in an aesthetic diminution of the poem and sharply underscore the necessarily reduced status of contemporary events in comparison with an epic past. If Callimachus and Theocritus consciously eschewed the epic model, it is easy to imagine that they did so because of the intransigence of this valorized past and its impermeable temporal boundaries. Which is not to say that these poets did not invoke the mythic past. The genres of epinician and encomium implicate their subjects in that past as a means of valorizing the present, but it is precisely the relationship of past and present that both Callimachus and Theocritus were struggling to articulate (as is Vergil in Roman epic), and as we saw in earlier chapters their modern critical reception reflects the difficulty in moving from mythologies encoded in the received genres of classical culture to current events.3 With epic, however, the relationship of past and present is characterized by rupture, and Apollonius by virtue of choosing to write within the linguistic and mythological framework of Homeric epic inscribes his text within the value system inherent in that genre, distancing it from the indeterminacy of contemporary events. I would like, therefore, to consider to what extent the absolute valorized past of the poem is not just a concomitant for Apollonius, but a central feature. What he chooses to include enters this privileged state, and even seemingly incompatible elements belong to the system—a closed temporal system removed from and inherently superior to the present. What is excluded is the present. This is not to say that Apollonius’s epic past was not related to his contemporary world—to have meaning, all writing of the past must be framed in reference to the present and will necessarily reflect the cultural values and experiences of its author—but the connection need not be logical, linear, or even obvious. Epic functions not so much to privilege any one particular relationship of present and past, but to enhance the significance of the present by endowing it with an epic heroic past in light of which the meaning of all subsequent events is elevated and against which all subsequent events may be read.4

past for the Augustan age precisely because that period comes invested with heightened cultural significance. 3. Goldhill (1991: 284–333), for example, explores the relationship of past and present in Apollonius entirely in terms of the literary. 4. The disagreement among modern scholars about whether or not the Aeneid was intended as pro- or anti-Augustan suggests that even this epic, despite it proclamations of the manifest destiny of Rome, cannot be read as a simple validation of Augustus’s reign.

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Events of the epic past do not valorize the present nor necessarily account for it causally, nor do they serve as model for “modern” action. Rather, epic confers a particular kind of existence upon events, and by locating events of the narrative within an epic framework the poet valorizes them within a preordained and culturally accessible symbolic system. It is by fashioning a past to partake of or participate in epic meaning that Apollonius’s epic functioned in the Ptolemaic present—a present without access to a past or cultural heritage distinct from that of the Panhellenic or polis world of the Greek city-states. But the uniqueness of Alexandria, with its bicultural formation, the ethnic diversity of its Greek population, its lack of autochthonous heroes, as well as the historical circumstance of its very recent foundation, made it sufficiently unlike earlier Greek cities that the Homeric epics with their heroic values and their focus on the defining moment of the Trojan War were an uneasy fit for the emerging apparatus of the Ptolemaic state. Thus neither Jason nor Heracles is meant to be Ptolemy any more than Aeneas is meant to be Augustus—though individual readers may be able to draw parallels of behavior or circumstance. Rather, the activities of a hero operating within the temporal framework of epic, which stand in some relationship (originary or otherwise) to the present, confer status and stability—a mythic historicity—that parvenu cultures like that of Alexandria were manifestly lacking.

an epic for the ptolemies What kind of past, then, did Apollonius seek to create for the Ptolemies? The story of Jason and the Argonauts is a quest myth—a staple of folktale and romance as well as epic. The subject was treated frequently in previous epic, and elements of the tale were known to Homer,5 though no particular version achieved the dominance that the Homeric material did for the Trojan War. In outline, Jason, a Greek hero, and his companions proceed to the eastern edge of the known world, the land of Colchis, to recover a magic fleece, where he is helped by the king’s daughter, whom he subsequently marries and brings back to Greece. The tale has two distinct motifs—the quest for a valuable object and

5. Meuli 1925 discusses elements of the Argo myth embedded in the Odyssey. Dräger 1993 and Moreau 1994 provide full-scale treatments of earlier and later versions of the myth. Hunter 1989a, 12–21, and Braund 1994, 11–39, have useful summaries.

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the encounter of Greek and non-Greek, barbarian, the other, and the resulting cooperation and ultimate union of the two. The union can be read in various ways: as a reciprocal union of Greek and non-Greek, as the triumph of civilizing Greece over barbarian culture, as the traducing of Greek innocence and values by barbarian treachery and magic practice, as an uneasy cultural liaison, or as one doomed to failure. By locating the event in the past all potentialities are possible; no particular future is preordained. Equally, there is no autonomous narrative of the events Apollonius relates, only a series of earlier myths and legends, each embedded within a specific generic context. Collectively this material formed the intertextual matrix for Apollonius’s own composition, but it does not seem to have been prescriptive or necessarily limiting of his own narrative voice.6 While we do not have earlier epic treatments of the voyage of the Argonauts to compare with Apollonius’s, previous versions of the tale formed part of the Greek literary heritage, in both poetry and prose. Herodotus, for example, in the opening of his Histories organizes a series of disparate legends into a coherent chronology for the war with Persia. For him the conflict between Greece and Persia originates in a series of “woman-stealings” on both sides (1.2–2.3). First, Phoenician merchantmen snatched away Greek Io from the port of Argos; later, some Greeks (probably Cretan, Herodotus remarks at 2.1) stole Europa, the daughter of the local king, from Tyre. About fifty years later, armed Greek merchantmen in Colchis abducted the king’s daughter, and all this culminated in Paris taking Helen. The resulting enmity between Greek and barbarian—for his rhetorical purposes, Herodotus lumps Phoenician, Colchian, and Trojan together and implicitly identifies them with Persian—led to the Persian wars, which he and fifth-century Greeks in general mythologized as the triumph of Greek cultural values over barbarian despotism. But equally implicit in Herodotus’s scheme is the mythologically entangled, quasi-familial relationship of Greek and Egyptian cultures, for Io, as a Greek, became the ancestor of Egypt and Libya, while the Phoenician Europa became the eponymous mother of 6. There is a tendency to regard tragic sources as the authoritative versions of the myth (Euripides’ Medea and the now lost Colchian Women of Sophocles), but the Douris vase, from 490–470 b.c.e. (Vatican no. 16545, Beazley ARV, p. 286), on which Jason has been swallowed by the dragon, and Dionysius Scytobrachion’s Hellenistic version, in which Heracles and Jason codirect the expedition, suggest that there was considerable room for creativity within the parameters of the received tale.

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western Europe.7 Also, Dionysius Scytobrachion’s euhemerizing account of the Argonauts, which must have fallen within the early Hellenistic period (between ca. 270–220 b.c.e.), provides evidence of how the story could have been fashioned for contemporary audiences. Several elements from Scytobrachion’s work are particularly relevant to Apollonius: a prominent feature of both the Argonautica and the Libyan tales was the opposition of the civilized behavior of Greek conquerors to the behavior of the barbarians they confronted. In the Libyan tales Scytobrachion locates the activities of Dionysus and the Amazons not in Thrace but in North Africa and Libya, and his narrative action moves from west to east along the southern Mediterranean from Libya to the Taurus region (the Amazons) and from Egypt to India (Dionysus). Two of his characters—Heracles and Dionysus—are Alexander equivalents; and he incorporates both Ammon and Horus into the more familiar Olympic pantheon. Thus Scytobrachion produced a set of stories that conform traditional Greek myths to the historical particularities of the early Hellenistic period, and integrated Libya and Egypt into his picture. In its general contour, then, Apollonius has chosen a story in which the encounter of Greek with a non-Greek world is paramount, as opposed to heroic battles or homecoming. But Colchis is not simply another instance of the barbarian. In the Argonautica, it is particularized as Egyptian.8 Initially, an Egyptian connection is suggested by Apollonius’s appropriation of one of Herodotus’s most distinctive narrative strategies. For Herodotus the inversion of Greek cultural norms is a central and defining feature of Egyptian behavior (2.35.2), and in the Argonautica, as the Argonauts approach the land of Colchis, they experience a rapid escalation of such inversions expressed in terms already familiar from Herodotus. The Argonauts encounter the Timbarini (2.1010–14), who practice the couvade, and the Mossynoeci, who do openly out of doors what others do inside.9

7. These trends are also visible in Apollonius’s contemporary Lycophron, who uses the same Herodotean scheme—Io, Europa, and Medea (1291–1321)—but recounts the expedition of the Argonauts only in allusive details (1209–21). 8. The link between Colchis and Libya and Egypt is well attested in ancient writing (Braund 1994, 9, 17–18), but it is not a prominent feature in most accounts of the voyage of the Argo. Other Hellenistic writers also note the connection: Callimachus in the opening of the fragmentary “Victoria Berenices” (SH fr. 254 + fr. 383 Pf.) links Colchis and the Nile in respect to weaving, while Lycophron in his tale of the Argonauts (1312) identifies Colchis as Libyan: eD% KAtaian tbn Libystikan. 9. 2.1015–25, and compare Herodotus 2.35.

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In book 3, the local burial customs invert a “natural” order by exposing the bodies of men in the air instead of burying them underground (3.200–209).10 Thus Apollonius constructs a narrative trajectory of increasingly more alien peoples and behaviors, which peak as the Argonauts reach Colchis. In Colchis itself they find the king, Aeetes, who is literally the son of Helios. Egyptians from as early as the fifth dynasty identified the pharaoh as the “son of the Sun (Re)” and incorporated the phrase into the imperial titulary. The practice was continued by the Ptolemies, and the Egyptian title was translated into Greek as yCb% toP \HlAoy.11 More explicitly, in book 4, although he does not name him, Apollonius identifies Colchis as a foundation of Sesostris, the legendary Egyptian conqueror whose exploits were recorded both in Herodotus and in Apollonius’s near contemporary, Hecataeus of Abdera: ˆEnuen da tina fasi pArij dib ppsan cdePsai EDraphn \AsAhn te, bAi kaB karteJ lapn sfvitArvn uarsei te pepoiuata¢ myrAa d’ gsth nassat’ Dpoixameno%, tb mBn g poui naietaoysin dB kaB oG¢ poylB% gbr gdhn Dpenanouen aDan, ARa ge mbn Gti nPn mAnei Gmpedon yCvnoA te tpnd’ dndrpn oF% e% ge kauAssato naiAmen ARan¢ oE da toi graptP% patArvn Euen eDrAontai. From here [Egypt] they say someone (tina) traveled throughout all Europe and Asia, trusting in the might and strength and courage of his troops; and he established thousands of cities when he passed through; some are still inhabited, some are not; for many an age has passed since then. But Aia [the land of Aeetes] continues even now, and the descendants of those men whom he settled to dwell in Aia. They preserve the writings of their forefathers.12

Herodotus’s narrative stands behind many of these details: Dk tp% \AsAh% D% tbn EDraphn diabb%. . . . DpeAte DgAneto DpB Fasi potamu, oDk Gxv tb DnuePten dtrekAv% eDpePn eGte aDtb% c basileB%

10. See, for example, Fusillo 1985, 159–67. 11. See Beckerath 1999, 25–26. Hieroglyphic versions of this title are used by the early Ptolemies; yCb% toP ^HlAoy first occurs in the trilingual Rosettana (196 b.c.e.). See Koenen 1993, 48–49, 61–62. 12. 4.272–79. The stability of its institutions (Gti nPn mAnei Gmpedon) and its use of writing (graptP%) were defining characteristics of Egypt, most obviously exploited by Plato in the opening of the Phaedrus (274c5–75b1) and in the Timaeus (21e–24) and the Laws (700a–701b).

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SAsvstri% dpodasameno% tp% CvytoP stratip% marion eson db aDtoP katAlipe tp% xarh% oDkatora%, eGte tpn tine% strativtAvn tu plani aDtoP dxuesuAnte% perB Fpsin potambn katAmeinan. faAnontai mBn gbr Dante% oC Kalxoi ADgAptioi¢ noasa% dB prateron aDtb% h dkoAsa% gllvn lAgv. c% dA moi Dn frontAdi DgAneto, eDramhn dmfotAroy%, kaB mpllon oC Kalxoi DmemnAato tpn ADgyptAvn h oC ADgAptioi tpn Kalxvn.

[Sesostris] . . . crossed from Asia into Europe. . . . Then he came to the river Phasis; I cannot say for sure whether King Sesostris himself detached a body of troops from his army and left them to settle, or whether some of his men were sick of their travels and remained by the Phasis. For the Colchians appear to be Egyptians. I say this having noticed it myself before hearing it from others, and when it occurred to me I asked some questions of both parties and found that the Colchians remembered the Egyptians more distinctly than the Egyptians remembered them.13

Apollonius is likely also to have been alluding to a contemporary portrayal of Sesoösis found in Hecataeus of Abdera when he describes the king as “trusting in . . . his troops” and with his portrait of the world conqueror as simultaneously a founder of cities. Hecataeus explains that before beginning his campaign of world conquest, Sesoösis first courted the goodwill of all of the Egyptians by generosity and benefactions and by these means acquired soldiers who were prepared to die for their leaders.14 Although the figure of Sesostris is unmistakable, Apollonius does not name the Egyptian pharaoh but refers to him only with the indefinite tina. In this way the entire passage conveys a sense of the distance of the past, as well as the vagueness and conjecture reminiscent of the style of earlier logographers.15 Also, Apollonius’s indefinite allows an initial impression that he is referring to the more recent exploits of Alexander, in whose eponymous foundation the Argonautica was probably composed. For contemporary readers Hecataeus of Abdera had already drawn

13. Herodotus 2.103.1–104.1 (with omissions). 14. Diodorus Siculus 1.54.1 ( = FGrH 264 F 25.54.1), and see Murray 1970, 168 n. 9. 15. Pearson 1938, 455–56. By Apollonius’s time the Egyptian name had been Hellenized as “Sesostris” by Herodotus, “Sesoösis” by Hecataeus of Abdera, and “Sesonchosis” in the Alexander Romance. For a discussion of the variants of the name, see Murray 1970, 162 n. 1.

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an explicit parallel between Sesoösis and Alexander,16 and in the Alexander Romance as well Alexander is packaged as the “new Sesonchosis” (1.34.2 Kroll). Indeed it would have been difficult for a contemporary audience not to have regarded Alexander’s conquests as a template of sorts for the Argonautica. Alexander had gone to the edges of the known world, to India, before turning back, and he had notoriously effected the marriage of his satraps to foreign princesses as part of his foundation of a new world order in which the boundaries of Greek and non-Greek were to be softened or blurred. Vignettes like the foundation of the temple of Concord (homonoia) in 2. 714–19 were surely designed to recall what seemed to have emerged, at least in historical and philosophical treatments, as a salient characteristic of Alexander’s regime.17 But Jason would have been a poor parallel for Alexander, and although Heracles figured in the mythology of the court, particularly in Theocritus’s poetry, he is excluded from Apollonius’s adventure in any direct role as leader. As a monster-slayer, however, he is often present in the Argonautica as an offstage counterpoint to the action of the young heroes—a circumstance that suggests that despite the occasional similarities the acts of the Argonauts were not consistently modeled on those of the great world conquerors. Jason and his crew pass through alien lands without conquest or founding cities; rather, it is through the building of altars or the institution of rituals that they leave an impression on these regions. Further, the text is marked by a divine reciprocity. No divinity opposes the voyage, and it is particularly favored by Hera and Apollo. Apollo is addressed in the opening line (drxameno% sAo, FoPbe), and his benficient appearance marks the end of the adventure in book 4, with the result that he seems to be the patron deity of the whole poem. When Jason murders Apsyrtus, the intertextual framework of murder and expiation casts the event in terms of the Oresteia, which allows it to be understood, like Orestes’ murder of his mother, as part of the process that moves from the chthonic and primordial world of Helios’s son, Aeetes, into a civilized Olympian order.18 A consideration of Pindar’s fourth Pythian allows us to expand this 16. Diodorus Siculus 1.55.2–3 ( = FGrH 264 F 25.55.2–3), and see Fusillo’s discussion (1985, 52–54). 17. On homonoia, see Tarn 1933, 123–48. For a discussion of this scene in Apollonius, see Feeney 1991, 75–77, and Hunter 1995, 18–24. 18. The role of the Greek gods within this poem has been treated elsewhere and is not central to this study. See Feeney 1991; Hunter 1993, 75–100. Pietsch (1999) has argued for a unifying “theology” throughout the Argonautica, in which Zeus’s anger and his justice are overarching.

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picture. Pindar’s ode is a layered narrative in which the Argonauts’ expedition serves as the point of departure for events central to the praising of the Cyrenean victor Arcesilas IV. Located at the beginning of the poem, when the Argonauts have broken their journey on Thera, is a prophecy placed in the mouth of Medea about the founding of the royal house of Cyrene. She tells Euphemus, one of the Argonauts, that the clod of earth that had been previously given to him near the Tritonian lake in Libya as a gift of hospitality by Triton (who had assumed mortal shape) was destined when washed into the sea to come to rest upon the island of Thera. Through its instrumentality Euphemus was destined to become the ancestor of the Cyrenean royal house: after seventeen generations, his descendants would migrate from Lemnos to Sparta to Thera and thence to Libya—the land of Zeus Ammon. Thus the broader context of Greek civilizing barbarian is particularized in the Battiad line, who, as Greeks, lay claim to the fertile fields of barbarian North Africa: KAklyte, paPde% CperuAmvn te fvtpn kaB uepn¢ famA gbr tpsd’ Dj cliplaktoy potB gp% \Epafoio karan dstAvn r\Azan fyteAsesuai melhsimbratvn Dib% Dn 6mmvno% uemAuloi%. Hear, sons of high-hearted men and gods. For I say that out of this seabeaten land [sc. Thera] the daughter of Epaphus shall be planted with a root of famous cities, amid the foundations of Zeus Ammon.19

The clod of Libyan earth given as a gift that comes to rest on Thera—that is, Greek soil—confers by its migration a kind of autochthonous claim to Libya, which subsequently becomes Greek by manifest destiny or divine plan.20 In Pindar, the marriage of Medea and Jason is proleptic of the destined union of Libya and Greece, and the usual structural hierarchies are fully operative: male over female, Greek over barbarian, and culture over nature.21 The recovery of the fleece, 19. Pythian 4.13–15. The text and translation are adapted from Braswell 1988, 41 and notes on 15 (a)–(b) on pp. 81–83. 20. Virtually the same trajectory is found in Lycophron’s compression of the tale of the Argo (891–894), though he connects possession of Libya not with the clod/island, but with possession of the tripod that the Argonauts give to Triton (cf. Argonautica 4.1547–49 and Herodotus 4.179). 21. See Calame 1990, 275–341, for an analysis of the Cyrenean foundation myths in Pindar Pythians 4, 5, and 9, Callimachus, and Apollonius. I am following Calame’s reading of Pythian 4, but my argument about Apollonius is entirely different from his (see esp. his pp. 284–85).

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which was already Greek, is a narrative isomorph of the recovery of Libya. It comes as no surprise that Apollonius would adapt these Pindaric elements for a poem written in Ptolemaic North Africa, though it can hardly have been his purpose (as it was Pindar’s) to celebrate the Battiad line of Cyrene.22 As we might anticipate, Apollonius makes no overt reference to the Battiad connection of Euphemus and does not mention Cyrene at all.23 Rather, he seems to have cast Euphemus and his line as mythological analogues for the Greeks in general who were destined to colonize Libya. He fashions the last book of his poem to begin with a recollection of the Egyptian conqueror and colonizer, Sesostris, who in Hellenistic writing has come to be the precursor of Alexander. Much of the action in the last book takes place in Libya, and it comes to an end not with the prophecy of Greek migration to Cyrene, but with the birth of an island from Libyan soil that will become a home for Euphemus’s descendants—that inchoate moment when all future realities are possible: Balaka gbr teAjoysi ueoB panton dB balanti npson, Cn’ cplateroi paAdvn sAuen Dnnassontai paPde%, DpeB TrAtvn jenaion Dggyalije tande toi cpeAroio LibystAdo%. For the clod, when you toss it into the sea, the gods will make into an island, where sons of your sons in latter days will dwell, since Triton has pledged a gift of friendship, this piece of the Libyan continent. (4.1750–53)

Apollonius further changes the Pindaric version: the clod is not washed overboard, nor is the prophecy forgotten by the Argonauts, rather Euphemus, instructed by Jason, deliberately casts it into the sea (4.1750–61) to activate the chain of events that guaranteed the subsequent Greek return to North Africa. What is accidental in Pindar becomes a deliberate action to accomplish divine will. The Argonautica was most likely to have been written between 270 and 240 b.c.e., or within a generation or two of the foundation of the

22. Callimachus praises the Battiad line because he is related to it, but the Battiads had not controlled the Cyrenaica for over a century. During the period in which Apollonius is likely to have written the Argonautica, it was ruled either by Ptolemy II’s half brother Magas or by the Ptolemies themselves (Laronde 1987, 379–454). See Braswell’s comment (1988, 130 n. 49 [b]). 23. However, see below, note 29.

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city of Alexandria.24 For Apollonius’s audience, many of whom would have been among the first or second generation of Alexandrian settlers, the end of the Argonautica, with its alteration of Pindar’s narrative order,25 exhibited a number of elements found also in the hybrid GrecoEgyptian myth of their own origins: a dangerous trek across the Libyan desert, a prophetic appearance of a North African divinity, an island, and a promise of land from African soil where Greeks were destined to dwell. According to the Alexander Romance (1.30.6–7), Alexander crossed the desert to the shrine of Zeus Ammon at the Siwah oasis in Libya, where the god in the form of an old man with ram horns appeared to him in a dream and instructed him to establish his new city opposite the island of Pharos.26 Since the most familiar aspect of the Egyptian coastline for Greeks was the island of Proteus (Pharos), the story of which is related in detail by Menelaus in the Odyssey (4.354–592), it is not surprising that a Greek account of the foundation of Alexandria would include an element already present in Homeric mythology, but the earliest accounts also include distinctively Egyptian features like the prophecy sent by Ammon. Apollonius does not explicitly recount the foundation of Alexandria, but the Pindaric narrative that he refashions in epic time might easily serve as a template not only for Greek colonization of Cyrene, but for Ptolemaic Egypt as well. His language at 4. 1753—dpeAroio LibystAdo%—is not necessarily a synonym for the Cyrenaica; it might equally refer to the whole of North Africa. In writers ranging from Herodotus to Eratosthenes “Libya” was not only the country to the west of Egypt but was considered to be a continent separate from Europe and Asia, including all of North Africa from the Pillars of Heracles in the West at least as far as the west bank of the Nile and sometimes even to the Red Sea. Alexandria itself could be located in Libya in this sense, as an epigram of Poseidippus on the temple of Arsinoe-Aphrodite Zephyritis at Zephyrion to the east of Alexandria makes clear. The site is described as “midway between the 24. For details of chronology, see Hunter 1989a, 1–7, and Cameron 1995, 261–62, 264–65. 25. Apollonius moves the prophecy of Medea from the beginning of Pythian 4 to the end of his own fourth book, and Pindar’s phrase diamonAh bplaj (Pythian 4.33) appears at Argonautica 4.1734. 26. Q. Curtius Rufus tells a related story, adding that Alexander originally intended to build on the island itself but found it too small (4.8.1–2). Plutarch also knows this tale, which he attributes to Alexandrian sources, though in his version the apparition is not Ammon, but Homer (Alexander 26.3–7).

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shore of Pharos and the mouth of Canopus, among the encompassing waves . . . this wind-swept breakwater of well-flocked Libya.”27 If “Libya” could refer to the coastline of Egypt for Poseidippus, it could also serve as a recognizable synecdoche for (at the very least) Alexandrian Egypt in Apollonius.28 This flexible geography permits Apollonius to fashion a past that could provide the mythological paradigm for all Greek presence in Libya, broadly defined, onto which more than one set of historical particulars could be retrojected. For these reasons it seems unlikely to me that Apollonius’s narrative was constructed to reflect historical events or to take any particular position on the issue of who controlled the Cyrenaica—Magas or one of the Ptolemies— though it could accommodate either.29 We have then the beginnings of an answer to our question, What kind of past did Apollonius create for the Ptolemies? It is a past in which Greece encounters Egypt, recovers from it a most valuable possession (the fleece), which is already Greek, by virtue of a divinely inspired collaboration of Medea with the enemy, and effects a return, during which, again by divine favor, one of the Argonauts is singled out as the ancestor of those Greeks who are destined to inherit North Africa. Just as the defeat of Troy in the Homeric poems served as the paradigmatic triumph of Greece over Asia, reenacted in historical times by the Persian wars, or the historical hostility of Carthage and Rome as well as the more recent enmity with Alexandria is given a mythological raison d’ être by Vergil in the encounter of Dido and Aeneas, the Argonautica may be read as a mythological account of the inevitability of Ptolemaic rule over alien North Africa. But this is not the end of the story. Apollonius experiments with many of the traditional pharaonic themes throughout his text both independently of their use in Callimachus or Theocritus or dialogically with these poets. Egyptian elements are not

27. G-P lines 3110–19. On the location of the temple, see Strabo 17.800. The epigram is generally placed before Arsinoe’s death in 270 or 268 b.c.e. See Fraser 1972, 1: 239, 2: 389 n. 393. See also fr. 228.51 Pf., where Callimachus uses Libya for North Africa in general (including Egypt). 28. In pharaonic terms, Libya was one of the traditional enemies of Egypt. On the translation of this traditional conflict into Hellenistic poetry, see Selden 1998, 326–37. 29. It is possible to regard the Argo’s reentry into the Mediterranean from Lake Tritonis in the vicinity of modern Benghazi as an allusion to Ptolemaic control of the area (so Livrea 1991; Hunter 1993, 152–53). In ancient times the town of Euhesperides (Benghazi) was renamed for Berenice, the daughter of Magas who became the wife of Ptolemy III. On the renaming of Euhesperides, see Laronde 1987, 382–83.

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confined to only one area or stratum of his narrative, however; they permeate the entire text. Therefore, before considering where and why they occur, I should like to suggest a strategy for organizing Apollonius’s text to place in perspective his evocations of Egypt. In his narrative of the journey from old Greece to these new African beginnings, neither “Greek” nor “barbarian” was a simple category. Apollonius wrote in a world in which the historically potent ethnic categories of Argive, Ionian, Athenian, and Peloponnesian were giving way to the aggregated “Hellene,” for which the markers of identity were as yet open to negotiation.30 The category of barbarian was similarly labile. It included the many non-Greeks to be found in the Greek epic past as well as the rather more one-dimensional “barbarian” found in tragedy and in philosophy of the classical period. By the third century, Alexander’s conquest and his vision of an empire that included both Greek and non-Greek had left their intellectual residue, with the result that writers like Hecataeus of Abdera even elevated barbarian Egyptian culture over Greek, thus calling into question previous essentialist distinctions.31 For Apollonius there could have been no single template for “barbarian,” and it is not surprising that the Argonauts encounter many varieties of “other” who may differ widely or scarcely at all from themselves. Most significantly, Egypt, which for earlier Greek writers occupied the position of the paradigmatic “other,” the culture farthest in its behavior and beliefs from Greek norms, as Herodotus asserts in his Egypt book,32 had now become Greek by right of conquest, a circumstance that required new accommodations to alien modes of thought, including structures of government and religious belief.

encountering the “other” In creating his epic world Apollonius adapts a variety of narrative strategies, combining folklore, romance, tragedy, magic, and scientific (especially geographical) observation in unpredictable ways, often shifts his narrative perspective,33 and in the course of narrating an event hints at untold alternatives.34 “Meaning” quickly dissolves into “mean30. Fraser 1972, 1: 38–55, and see chapter 5. 31. Murray 1970, 157–61. 32. 2.35.2: “In almost every respect [the Egyptians] in their behavior and customs are the opposite of other men.” 33. See, for instance, the full-length treatment of Fusillo 1985. 34. Hunter 1993, 1–7.

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ings,” since Apollonius’s text is constructed with competing centers of authority. What on the surface may appear to be eccentric compositional behavior I believe can be better understood if considered as an attempt to construct an epic past to provide a behavioral model different from that of Panhellenic epic for the culturally multidimensional world of the eastern Mediterranean. Apollonius’s narrative can be conveniently segmented into three distinct types: (1) a quest for a golden fleece with its attendant voyage into a realm of magic and monsters; (2) “objective” observation that includes scientific information as well as aetiological explanations; and, finally, (3) the erotic encounter of Jason and Medea, which appears on the surface to be stylistically and conceptually at variance with the rest of the text. I believe it is not coincidental that these three types are also found in the travel writing produced by Europeans who wrote about Africa or Latin America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In writing about this literature M. L. Pratt, for example, distinguishes the following narrative patterns. Initially during the period of conquest, travelers experienced the regions as populated by monsters, as lands in which they had a series of fantastic and dangerous adventures, usually confined to the periphery or coastline. This was followed by a period of scientific exploration of the interior, in which explorers and botanists, like Adam and Eve in Eden, renamed the alien landscapes and organized their geography and ecology into categories suitable for their European conquerors. The final phase Pratt characterized as one of romantic encounter, usually between European male and a native woman, who often betrays her own culture to aid or even “marry” the foreigner.35 What make Pratt’s study relevant for understanding the Argonautica is her insight that each of these three patterns results from a different type of epistemological or cognitive response to alien peoples and places, as the European travelers’ interactions with them become progressively more extended and intimate. In turn, these cognitive responses generate their own rhetorical and narrative strategies. Moreover, at least one of them, that of roman35. Pratt’s travel tales are for the most part related in the first person and are most closely comparable to fanciful Greek travel narratives like that of Pytheas of Marseilles or to the work of the geographers of the Hellenistic period. My point is not that Apollonius’s poetic goals were necessarily the same as this seventeenth- and eighteenth-century sentimental fiction, but that the relationship of certain types of cognitive experience to narrative may well have been similar. Indeed, the categories into which Braund (1994, 10–11) organizes myths about ancient Georgia—achievement and evaluation, geography, kinship—are similar to Pratt’s, though they lack her analysis of the relationship of perceptual categories to narrative styles.

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tic encounter, was directly dependent on classical models like the Odyssey or the Aeneid,36 so the application of Pratt’s categories to Apollonius is not the importation of an alien model, but of a linear descendant. In her analysis, however, these three were not usually in play at once but succeeded each other in time, because they represented normative changes in European perception of African and Latin American peoples. By using Pratt’s work as a lens through which to view Apollonius’s poem, we will find that he employs similar cognitive modes as a means of expressing in epic form the Greek experience of the eastern Mediterranean. We can also account more easily for the variety of his temporal structures if we realize that his narrative encodes discrete and changing conceptions of the “other” (akin to Pratt’s) not successively, but simultaneously. In other words, Apollonius deploys elements derived from different levels of experience of the non-Greek Mediterranean—myth, geographic exploration, psychological realism—as interlaced narratives.37 His technique becomes clearer if we examine each type individually. Apollonius’s frame tale—the voyage of the Argonauts to repossess the golden fleece—is an early Greek myth that corresponds to Pratt’s initial category of cultural interaction, an encounter with an alien region that was experienced as populated by monsters or creatures existing in an uncivilized state. In this world Heracles, the slayer of all manner of mythical beasts, is entirely appropriate. Yet a tension quickly develops between the precivilized, pre-polis world that Heracles inhabits and what is figured as the “real” world of Jason, a tension that plays itself out for the reader in a series of narrative doublets. Initially Jason encounters the Lemnian women, who are “real” analogues of the mythical Amazons. Heracles in a brief and hostile encounter takes the girdle of Hippolyte, the Amazon queen (an event alluded to as having happened in the past as the Argo passes by Themiscura on the way to

36. Pratt 1992, 96. 37. Tension between two different modes of narrative reality is an important feature of the Odyssey. The fantastic world of Odysseus’s return, with its Laestrygonians and Cyclopes, is blocked as a separate narrative from the “real” world of Ithaca. This allows Odysseus to create and edit his own narrative history whenever he chooses to retell it, and his fantastic adventures stand in contrast to the opening and closing books in such a way that subsequent critics like Lucian can claim that Odysseus is a liar who gulls the Phaeacians with tall tales and that the events never “really” happened (True Histories 1.3.8–12). Apollonius, in contrast, interweaves disparate modes of experiencing reality in such a way that for the reader the hierarchies are blurred, a circumstance that contributes to the difficulty in understanding the character of Jason.

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Colchis, 2.966–1001). Jason and his men in a more nuanced incident leave Lemnos with Hypsipyle’s cloak freely given, after having inseminated the Lemnian women with sons whose descendants are destined to be the inheritors of North Africa. Again, the events with the Doliones are constructed as double.38 Heracles slays the Earth-born men (1.989–1011) while Jason and his men in a fatal case of mistaken identity unwittingly kill their former hosts, the Doliones (1. 1012–78). The swiftness and necessity with which Heracles responds to the attack of the monsters and clears them from the landscape so they no longer pose a threat to the civilized communities around them is a poignant counterpoint to the needless deaths of the hapless Doliones. Even when Heracles has ostensibly disappeared from the narrative, some of the Argonauts dwell on how much more effectively he would have dispatched Amycus than Polydeuces did (2.145–53), and at the end of book 4 Heracles’ encounter with the Hesperides is constructed to contrast with that of the Argonauts’. Heracles does not, I would argue, represent the loss of the heroic in contrast to the feebleness of an all-toohuman Jason as leader so much as a figure who belongs to another conceptual frame, a frame in which the Mediterranean is populated by monsters who need to be removed before the course of civilization can proceed. And it is for this activity that Heracles ultimately is elevated to Olympus, “to dwell with the immortals” (1.1319). For Heracles the distinction between self and other, between Greek and non-Greek, and Olympian and chthonic is clear-cut, and his mythological niche is to remove these dangerous creatures from the landscape so that the civilizing process of Greek culture may begin. The figure of Heracles operates in a world free from the moral ambiguity of deciding who or what was an enemy; the monstrous or the unnatural are easily discerned.39 But this is not so for Jason and his crew, for whom many of the peoples they encounter, like the Doliones, are mirror images of themselves. One of the final episodes in book 4 illustrates this quite clearly. After the Argonauts have carried their ship for twelve days over the sands of Libya, desperate for water, they catch sight of the Hesperides, as if a mirage. The nymphs at first disappear from sight, “immediately becoming dust and earth” (4.1408), but upon entreaty show themselves to the exhausted crew as trees in an oasis. Here on the edge of daylight,

38. See Clauss’s extensive discussion of this passage (1993, 148–75). 39. Hence his inability to cope with the loss of Hylas, since it introduces the ambivalences of the erotic.

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the nymphs have been mourning the death of their guardian serpent, Ladon, at Heracles’ hands, when he came in quest of the apples of the Hesperides. Heracles, who had taken the apples only the day before, killed the beast with arrows dipped in poison from the Lernaean hydra, whom he had defeated in an earlier struggle. But this episode is told from the perspective of the nymphs themselves, and to them, Heracles, the traditional bearer of a more civilized order, who clears the lands of monsters, is himself the monster: He came yesterday, a man most dire in insolence and aspect; his eyes flamed out from under his lowering brow, ruthlessly. And around him was the hide of a monstrous lion, raw, untanned. (4.1436–39)

The serpent rotting in the sun, now gpnoo%, who guarded the golden apples, of course, was an analogue of the unsleeping (gypno%) serpent guarding the golden fleece. And what from the perspective of the literate Greek audience was another example of the laboring Heracles performing necessary and admirable tasks, from the viewpoint of the indigenous nymphs was wanton robbery and destruction. Thus a narrative trajectory that appeared to convey the conventional Greek message of civilization triumphing over barbarism is deflected by an attack of cultural relativism. The moral issues are complex, however: whatever the nymphs’ perception of Heracles his presence was a gain for the Argonauts because his brutalization of the landscape created a necessary spring that “saved his companions, overcome with thirst” (4.1459). If the response of Heracles to his environment is to rid it of the uncivilized, the response of Jason and his men in their journey from “old” Greece to new beginnings would seem to serve as the bearers of their own version of civilized community. In the outward journey they mark the landscape with new foundations, that is, with their own religious cults and interpretations of or explanations for what they meet along the way. The telling of an explanatory story, an aition, had considerable vogue in Hellenistic poetry. Callimachus’s now fragmentary Aetia is the best example, and Apollonius himself is known to have written considerable material of this type.40 The prominence of foundation stories re-

40. Dougherty (1994, 35–46) suggested that an autonomous genre of foundation poetry did not actually exist in the archaic period but was invented in Alexandria. N. Krevans, in “On the Margins of Epic: Foundation Poems of Apollonius,” Hellenistica Groningana 4: 69–84, extends Dougherty’s questions about a ktisis-genre to Alexandria itself and asks whether Apollonius’s ktiseis were discrete poems or rather subsections of larger works.

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sults from the colonizing dimension of Ptolemiac rule. Like those Greeks who settled in the eastern Mediterranean and in Sicily and South Italy in an earlier age, the Ptolemies were claiming new territories, and there was need, subconsciously or otherwise, to reconfigure them imaginatively in Greek terms. Aition is the epistemological category that accomplishes this, but in specific ways: the logic of the aition is to connect the new place with Greek myth, in a way that serves to efface the native and give the intruding Greek population (or colonizers) continuous claim to the place, to create the illusion in other words not of intrusion, but of return.41 Consider, for example, the establishment of the cult of the Great Mother on Mt. Dindymon and Apollonius’s account of the use of tambourines and drums in her worship: With many prayers, the son of Aeson implored her [the Mother] to deflect the storm blasts as he poured out libations onto the blazing sacrifice; all together the young men at Orpheus’s command marked the dance, performing in full armor, and beat upon their shields with their swords so that the ill-omened cry [of the Doliones] might be dissipated in the air— the lament that the people were still making in grief for their king. From that time forward the Phrygians worship Rhea with tambourine and drum. (1.1132–39)

In this manner, the foundation of the cult itself and one of its most distinctively foreign features can be traced to prior Greek activity, while subsequently the non-Greek peoples of the region, the Phrygians, are stripped of cultural autonomy and assigned the role of mere imitators.42 The relationship of the Greeks in the Hellenistic period to these regions, however, was distinctively different from that of the archaic period. By Apollonius’s time the landscape into which he launches his Argonauts had already been the site of colonial activity by Greeks for several centuries. It was impossible for Apollonius merely to reassert old stories (as found in Pindar, for example) in order to link the Ptolemaic world to previous claims for Greekness; the Ptolemies were not always competing with barbarians for these locations, but with other Macedonian-Greek princelings—the descendants of Alexander’s generals, who had parceled out for themselves the eastern Mediterranean. In these lands many peoples were already Greek, and many foundations, like Mt. Dindymon (1.1110–52), already part of a Hellenized landscape. In this brief vignette, for example, Apollonius acknowledges 41. Dougherty 1991, 119–32. 42. For the essential foreignness of the Meter cult, see Burkert 1985, 177–79.

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competing claim and counterclaim to places, rites, and foundations. At the death of Idmon, the Argonauts erect a barrow over their dead comrade on which a wild olive tree begins to grow: And if I must under instruction from the Muses tell this story bluntly, Phoebus directly instructed the Boeotians and Nisaeans to worship [Idmon] as guardian of the city, and around the trunk of the old olive to lay their city’s foundations. But they, instead of the god-fearing son of Aeolus, Idmon, even now honor Agamestor. (2.844–50)

This vacillation reaches its logical conclusion in book 4 when the very act of establishing colonies is given a different perspective: From here [Egypt] they say someone traveled throughout all Europe and Asia, trusting in the might and strength and courage of his troops; and he established thousands of cities when he passed through; some are still inhabited, some are not; for many an age has passed since then. (4.272–75)

This king was not a Greek, but the Egyptian Sesostris, and his behavior, which is shaped to recall the recent expedition of Alexander, undermines the authority of the Greek presence by suggesting an even earlier Egyptian one, as well as the transitory, or recurring, nature of such cultural occupations. Indeed, the very language and construction of this passage in the Argonautica borrows its strategies from aition but now locates Egypt as prior. ˆEstin gbr plao% gllo%, fn duanatvn Cerpe% pAfradon, oF Qabh% TritvnAdo% Dkgegaasin. OG pv teArea panta, ta t’ oCranu eClAssontai. oDdA tA pv Danapn Cerbn gAno% ren dkoPsai peyuomAnoi%¢ oRoi d’ Gsan \Arkade% \Apidanpe%, \Arkade%, oF kaB prasue selhnaAh% CdAontai zaein, fhgbn Gdonte% Dn oGresin¢ oDdB PelasgB% xubn tate kydalAmoisin dnasseto DeykalAdisin, rmo% et’ \HerAh polylaio% Dklaisto, mathr AGgypto% proterhgenAvn aDzhpn, kaB potamb% TrAtvn eDrArroo%, Q Epo ppsa grdetai \HerAh. For there is another course, which the priests of the immortals who have sprung from Tritonian Thebes43 have made known. Not yet did all the constellations move in the heaven, nor yet could one hear of the sacred 43. Vian (1981, 157 n. 260) points out that DkgAgaa indicates parentage, not origin; hence the meaning is “from Thebe, the daughter of Triton.” If so, it will be a metonymy for Thebes. The sense must be priests from the city, not priests who trace their descent from the nymph. Unlike Greeks, in Egypt only the king could have divine ancestors.

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Apollonius specifically locates Sesostris’s city-founding in a primeval time, before the constellations, before the moon. While the Egyptians are engaged in the task of civilizing, the only Greeks who as yet exist, the Arcadians, live in a precivilized state, eating acorns (the raw, not the cooked). “The sacred race of the Danaans” reminds us of a foundation myth that moves counter to the usual pattern, not from Greece to the Near East, but in the opposite direction: Danaus was supposed to have migrated from Egypt to Argos, where he became king and thus lent his name to a whole people.45 But this is presented as an event in the future. Moreover, in this passage Apollonius uses a number of geographical markers that belong to both Greece and Egypt: Thebes, Triton ( = Nile), and, most surprisingly, \HerAh polylaio%. A name and defining characteristic of Egypt here, the term was applied to the Pelasgian land in 1.580: derAh polylaio% aRa Pelasgpn. Such doublets are a feature of aetiological writing, the Greek marking of a foreign place with familiar Greek names, a practice that—whatever its conscious or expressed intention—implicitly encodes privilege and hierarchy as the speaker, the namer, exerts control over his new environment by displacing the local name in favor of one that signifies for him. But if both Thessaly and Egypt are called by the same name \HerAh polylaio%, and implicit in this is the practice of one cultural group renaming, hence dominating, another, this passage hints at an earlier trajectory of conquest that moved from Egypt to Greece, thus setting the scene for the GrecoEgyptian world of the Ptolemies. Or is the ambivalence about the priority of these names that Apollonius’s text creates a deliberate reflection of what we saw in earlier Greek writers, where the cultural trajectory from Greece to Egypt or from Egypt to Greece did not represent historical realities and could be reversed in service of specific philosophical and political agendas? 44. Apidanians were Peloponnesians; see sch. on AR 4.263–65 Wendel: Apidanpa% dB toB% Peloponnasoy% dpb 6pido% toP ForvnAv%. Hence “Arcadians” should qualify “Apidanians,” not the reverse, as if Apollonius were saying “Arcadian Peloponnesians.” 45. Herodotus 2.91, and see chapter 1 above.

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The third narrative type that Apollonius employs is the erotic encounter of Jason and Medea, one that develops logically from earlier modes of contact. This event represents the most intimate interaction between Greek and other, and potentially the most threatening, because of the risk it presents to bloodlines and family stock. It also provides the most extended and obvious space in which transculturation— the adaptation of either Greek or non-Greek to the behavioral patterns and values of the other—is likely to take place. The erotic response of a foreign woman to the arrival of the adventuring male is legible as a projection of colonial discourse that functions to legitimate the intruder (and his desires for acquisition) within this alien territory. As Pratt puts it, “romantic love rather than filial servitude or force guarantees the wilful submission of the colonized.”46 These encounters seem to possess a common set of characteristics, whether they are located in eighteenth-century Latin America or Vergil’s Aeneid: the women are of high status and in their generosity and sympathy are often perceived as more like the intruder than inhabitants of their own less civilized world. But “while the lovers challenge colonial hierarchies, in the end they acquiesce to them. Reciprocity is irrelevant.”47 Often the lovers enter into a marriage of sorts, but the local women are ultimately abandoned in favor of a legitimate wife from the man’s own ethnic group. Finally, in their very unreality . . . these idealized half-European subalterns do embody another thoroughly real dimension of the late eighteenth century Caribbean society. By that time, in both the Caribbean and much of Spanish America, populations of non-enslaved people of mixed ancestry had everywhere come to equal or outnumber whites in both the Caribbean and much of Spanish America.48

The situation will have been similar for the eastern Mediterranean in the reign of the Ptolemies. Colonization over a three-century period meant that Greek men in these environments consistently married native women and that local populations, however they identified themselves, Greek or otherwise, were likely to be descendants of ethnically mixed arrangements.49 Such a condition could pose problems for family 46. 1992, 97. 47. 1992, 98. 48. Pratt 1992, 101. 49. The Cyrenean constitution is a case in point: it permitted the intermarriage of Cyrenean male citizens with Libyan women. Fraser (1972, 2: 787), however, remarks that “it would . . . be wrong to suppose that the practice of racial intermarriage penetrated the

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loyalties. We find even in the remote region of Colchis these mixed marriages with their potential for divisiveness: when the Greek Phrixus reached Colchis, he was given one of Aeetes’ daughters, Chalciope, in marriage. The four sons who resulted from this union are first cousins of Medea as well as more distant kin of Jason, a circumstance that destabilizes the tidy opposition of Greek/barbarian. The Argonauts encounter these young men on their way to Orchomenus to claim their Greek father’s heritage (2.1141–56). Subsequently they play a crucial role in gaining Jason an introduction to Aeetes’ court as well as in persuading their Colchian mother to aid the Argonauts. The episode of Jason and Medea also has an aetiological dimension. The conquest of and marriage with Medea, who is the daughter of the king of Colchis and granddaughter of Helios, can operate as an analogue of the many divine couplings between gods and local nymphs that populate Greek colonization myths, and in a structural sense could stand for the conquest of Egypt by Greece, paralleling the way in which the marriage functions in Pythian 4. It might also call to mind more recent examples of the marriages arranged by Alexander between his Macedonian generals and local princesses. But Apollonius complicates this reading by introducing allusions from the Odyssey as well as an alternative foundation myth. In the Odyssey, the hero’s sexual adventures are no more than interludes, only one of which, that with Nausicaa in book 6, even hints at the possibility of legitimate marriage. Odysseus’s adventures occur away from Ithaca, the place of legitimate marriage and the son who will continue the line. Jason’s meeting with Medea is marked by many Homeric allusions that suggest it will be a similar transitory encounter, but Jason does not abandon the foreign girl; he “marries” her in that same Odyssean Phaeacia from which Odysseus returned home to his legitmate (that is, Greek) family. This marriage was later put aside in favor of a Greek wife.50 It is not the marriage with Medea that would seem to guarantee Greek claims to Egypt, and it is not Jason and Medea’s line that will inherit it. Rather, it is the clod (daimonAh bplaj, 4.1734), the gift to Euphemus, and his descendants, the product of an earlier adventure with foreign women (the Lemnians) upper strata of society, or that Cyrene became a city of ‘mixed-Greeks’ (mijAllhne%),” citing the epigraphic evidence of mainly Dorian names. However, names are not a particularly accurate gauge of ethnicity, and laws are not usually passed in a vacuum. 50. For readers who do not recall their Euripides, at this point in his narrative Apollonius thoughtfully provides the cautionary tale of another of Medea’s cousins, Cretan Ariadne and her fateful interlude with the Greek Theseus (4.433–34).

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that proceeded along more typical lines of erotic encounter without marriage. We can read these divergent scenarios against historical circumstance and conclude that they serve as a cautionary tale against fraternization with conquered peoples, as a not very covert warning to the Ptolemies about becoming too closely allied with the natives. But more important both aitia—one of marriage, the other of sexual liaison with offspring—partake of the same strategies: they redefine conquest in terms of intrafamilial relationships of marriage and lineal descent. Within the poem the romantic encounter provides the space in which what are set out as two distinct behavioral patterns begin to coalesce. Unlike her father, whose rage and cruelty mark him as a “typical” barbarian, Medea is cast as sympathetic to their goals and takes pity on the strangers, eventually joining her fate to theirs. The attempt to “save” Jason from her father’s brutality is a sign of Medea’s enlightened character.51 Still, the dangers of this type of liaison are easily identified. With Medea’s help—not wholesome Greek skills like those of Heracles, but foreign magic—Jason quickly becomes the “other.” He replicates the acts of Aeetes in yoking the bulls, sowing the dragon’s teeth, and killing the Earth-born men, acts of strength of which he would ordinarily have been incapable, but which Aeetes performed as a demonstration of his power to the Colchians (4.406–18). When the two flee, Jason’s murder of Apsyrtus in front of a temple continues the transformation. He strikes him down “like a butcher felling a bull” (4.468–69). When Jason first appeals to Aeetes to give him the fleece, the king responds with a clichéd exhibition of “barbarian” cruelty, threatening the Argonauts with mutilation, to cut off their hands and cut out their tongues (3.378). But it is Jason who later mutilates his enemy by cutting off of Apsyrtus’s extremities (4.478).52 We find that when Jason and Medea link fates the boundaries between Greek and other, barbarian and non-barbarian, begin to collapse, and the number of moments in which cultural behaviors overlap climaxes in book 4. Circe, for example, is explicitly identified as a sister of Aeetes, hence a foreigner (she and Medea speak their native tongue together at 4.730–31), but the rites of expiation she performs for Jason and Medea are thoroughly Greek: she kills a piglet and drips 51. Medea’s essential Hellenism is a central theme in Scytobrachion’s account (Diodorus Siculus 4.46 and 52). 52. See Hunter’s remarks (1993, 21) on the various interpretative layers possible with this passage; also Pietsch 1999, 152–58. After the murder Jason performs the expiatory elements of the maschalismos, but this does not make the event any easier for the reader.

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its blood over them in a scene consciously reminiscent of Orestes at Delphi (4.705–14). As we saw above in the characterization of Heracles by the Hesperides as a “monster,” the earlier trajectory of Greek civilizing barbarian is reversed, and in one of the last similes of the book the two are conflated as the Argo itself becomes the quintessential signifier of a chthonic, precivilized world, a serpent: ˆV% dB drakvn skolibn eDligmAno% Grxetai oRmon, eRtA min djAtaton ualpei sAla% delAoio, r\oAzi d’ Gnua kaB Gnua karh strAfei, Dn dA oC gsse spinuarAgessi pyrb% DnalAgkia maimaonti lampetai, gfra myxbn dB dib r\vxmoPo dBhtai¢ e% „rgb lAmnh% stama naAporon DjerAoysa dmfepalei dhnaibn DpB xranon. As a serpent writhes along its crooked path when the sun’s hottest rays inflame it, and with a hiss it turns its head from side to side, and in fury its eyes blaze in fury like sparks of fire until it goes down into its lair through a fissure in the rock, so too the Argo wandered for a long time as it sought an outlet from the lake. (4.1541–47)

Even divinities partake of this ambivalence of signification: as the ship is rescued by Triton, the god first appears to them as a youth to offer them the gift of a clod of earth but ultimately reveals himself in his “real” form (oQa% per Dtatymo% ren DdAsuai)—from head to belly like the “blessed ones” but with the sides and spiky tail of a sea monster (4.1602–16). This merging of man and monster brings the reader to the final moments of the poem in which a “new” (and I have argued Ptolemaic) beginning is marked by the birth of an island. As a prelude to this moment the narrative provides us with a series of opposing ways of seeing—empty desert sand or oasis of the Hesperid nymphs, good snake and bad snake, dragon slayer and slain—that converge in the simile of the Argo, the boatload of once and future dragon-slayers who have now become their prey. Similarly, divinity no longer has only its Olympian aspect but is hybrid, a man-monster, close kin to the chthonic serpents that populated the text before the advent of the heroes, or to hybrid gods like the ram-horned Ammon who appeared to Alexander. Moreover, these images are not static. They shape-shift like the Hesperides and Triton. In this way the narrative itself effects a virtual collapse into symbolic chaos that presages the dawn of a new order in which two distinctive cultures—Greek and North African—will necessarily be joined.

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Up to this point I have been reading the Argonautica against the world of Ptolemiac Alexandria in order to consider the question of how and why the poet shaped his narrative as he did. Unlike Vergil, who wrote after several centuries of collective Roman self-definition (however novel the Augustan age), the reign of the Ptolemies was just beginning. Images and ideologies were in the process of evolving but could not as yet have worked themselves very deeply into the collective unconscious of Ptolemy’s subjects or other contemporary Greek populations. The poems of Homer and Hesiod may have provided a synthesis of values and beliefs that created a “Panhellenic” paradigm for archaic and classical Greek culture,53 but the inherited belief system of these poems was of only limited value for an imperial court located in and ruling over non-Greek Egypt. Apollonius’s epic sets out to provide a new template. He does not create a Homeric Egypt, populating his poem with figures like Odysseus, Menelaus, and Helen; rather, he adapts Pindar’s account of Greek claims to North Africa. But he also creates from various nonHomeric articulations of Greekness a world that adumbrates his own: at times Greek and non-Greek are conventionally opposed; at times they seem to converge. On one level the poem celebrates the civilizing role of Greek culture; on another this culture appears reprehensible; at still other moments the poem expresses nostalgia for worlds or ways of seeing and behaving lost in the civilizing process. I have borrowed a set of observations from Pratt’s work on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century colonial literature to focus my argument. She provides one final insight important for what follows in this chapter: all colonial literature is inherently hierarchical in that it is the dominant culture that narrates the “other,” but it is also reciprocal: within the space of encounter, which Pratt calls a “contact zone,” one finds “copresence, interaction, interlocking understandings and practices.”54 I suggest that for Apollonius the Ptolemaic age was such a moment of “copresence,” not just of various ethnicities but of the symbolic worlds that encoded them, and that he experiments with a variety of styles to create a narrative reflective of this circumstance. In contrast to Homer’s heroic Greek past, Apollonius’s past is characterized by a cultural heterogeneity that at the close of his poem is overtaken by the promise of new beginnings and marked by the birth of an island. Mainland Greece and its achieve53. See G. Nagy, Greek Mythology and Poetics (Ithaca, N.Y., 1990), 36–82. 54. Pratt 1992, 7.

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ments are marginalized in this new epic space, while North Africa is positioned to assume a central role.

copresence So far we have been considering how Apollonius constructed the literary space of Egypt and North Africa from the perspective of Greek myth and history, particularly through Pindaric allusion and the “historical” accounts of Sesostris found in Herodotus and Hecataeus of Abdera. I now wish to alter the focus and to turn to what I believe are reflections of the Egyptian symbolic world, particularly the themes of order and chaos, theogony and kingship, and their attendant symbols. Identifiably Egyptian elements occur throughout the poem, I shall suggest, as discrete and sometimes fleeting images, through a series of intertextualities with the work of contemporaries, and more pervasively in the controlling cosmogonic framework of the poem as a whole, that is, in the emergence of light from darkness or order from chaos to culminate in the birth of an island. Moreover, I suggest that Apollonius adapts Egyptian elements in such a way that they escape their individual cultural formations: they may be found sometimes in connection with the Colchians, who are linked in Apollonius’s text with Egypt, but also sometimes with the Greeks themselves—as represented by the Argonauts. In the remainder of the chapter I shall examine a series of incidents that illustrate how this cultural interweaving of Egyptian with Greek plays out in Apollonius’s text. At the opening of the tale Apollonius introduces his cast and sets the tone for the ensuing voyage. Its hero, Jason, arrives suddenly, wearing only one sandal (8–11).55 His semishod state (7: oDopAdilon) is a persistent feature of the Argo myth56 and is specifically connected to a prophecy foretelling Pelias’s death, a death that results from Medea’s magic, as many readers will know. The wearing of only one sandal was a widespread motif in Greek culture that marked liminality and a connection with danger and/or death,57 and the sandal wearer was fre-

55. Apollonius describes him as having lost the sandal crossing the river Anaurus, and again at 3.64–75. Whether Apollonius alludes to different incidents or versions of the story is disputed. See Hunter 1989a, 105. 56. Also found in Pherecydes of Athens (FGrH 3 F105) and Pindar (Pythian 4.75). See Vian 1974, 239 n. 17, with useful bibliography. 57. Moreau 1994, 132–36 and 140–41 (n. 81). Moreau and others connect the liminality of the wearer of one sandal with ephebic activities, that is, with young men about

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quently found able to access chthonic powers or engaged in magic practice.58 Moreover, Jason’s home was Thessaly, the proverbial home of witchcraft. Also, as others have already observed, many of the crew of the Argo have chthonic connections as well as magic skills: Lynceus could see beneath the earth, Periclymenus could alter his shape, Euphemus could run on water, and Boreas and Zetes had wings.59 A. Moreau points out that a homonym of the pilot Tiphys was the Greek Typhon and that he and his successors in all versions of the tale had chthonic associations.60 The quest itself—for the golden fleece of a talking ram and in a ship with a talking beam—seems more suited to folklore and to the fanstastic than to the usual battle world of Hellenic heroes. Apollonius seems to take pains to begin his narrative with already breached categories in order to show that magic was not the sole property of foreign Medea in far-off Colchis, but already in various ways an essential component of the Greek story as well as its protagonists. Apollonius launches his heroes into a world with a distinctive cosmology, articulated by Orpheus at 1.496–511: He sang how earth and heaven and sea, at first mixed together in one form, out of dire strife (neAkeo% Dj dlooPo) were separated from each other; and how the stars and the paths of the moon and sun always keep their fixed place (Gmpedon aDBn . . . tAkmar) in the sky. And how mountains arose and how rivers sounded with their attendant nymphs, and all crawling things came to be. He sang how first Ophion and Eurynome, Ocean’s child, held power on snowy Olympus; how by force and might the one yielded his honors to Cronus, the other to Rhea, and they fell into the waves of the Ocean. But the others then ruled the blessed Titan gods, while Zeus, still a child, still thinking the thoughts of a child (gfra ZeB% Gti koPro%, Gti fresB napia eDda%), dwelt in his Dictaian cave. For the Earth-born Cyclopes had not yet armed him with the thunderbolt, with thunder and lightning, for these things provide glory for Zeus.

In creating Orpheus’s song Apollonius availed himself of more than one source for Greek cosmogonic material: lines 496–98 conform to Empedocles’ idea that creation resulted from the oppositions of neikos and philia, or repulsion and attraction,61 while lines 503–6 depend on

to undergo initiatory rites, and they read the Argonautica as a chronicling of such experiences. 58. See Kingsley 1995, 238–39, esp. n. 21, and pp. 289–316. 59. Meuli 1925; Fontenrose 1980, 477–87; Moreau 1994, 129–36. 60. 1994, 128–29. 61. See Fusillo 1985, 61–64. Hunter (1993, 163 n. 41) remarks that “Gmpedon aDAn in 1. 499 may, as David Sider points out, be an echo of Empedocles’ punning on his own

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Pherecydes of Syrus intermixed with Hesiod (Theogony 505–11). The passage is not consistently Empedoclean, but its formulation does reflect Empedocles’ basic idea that the created universe was subject to an alternation of complete fragmentation and complete harmony—a world that came into existence but was not eternal. This idea closely approximated the Egyptian cosmogonic struggle between order and chaos. What survives of Empedocles had much in common with earlier pre-Socratics, but he was also linked with Pythagoreanism, an intellectual tradition that Greeks themselves often identified with Egyptian modes of thinking.62 Also, in his later biographical tradition, Empedocles was said to have worn one bronze sandal, a circumstance that P. Kingsley in a recent study connects with the practice of alchemy and magic.63 This is by no means to suggest that Jason’s wearing of one sandal was meant to remind the reader of Empedocles, but rather that Apollonius may have selected a “Greek” cosmology that was already suffused with alien ideas and behaviors in Greek minds. Orpheus’s song also borrows language and concept from the Hymn to Zeus.64 The verbal reminiscences are specific to a passage in which I have argued Callimachus has constructed his narrative of the birth of Zeus (in Greek terms) to mirror that of Horus (in Egyptian). Apollonius’s introduction of elements from that poem into an Empedoclean cosmology may not be fortuitous, and it permits us to ask whether Apollonius too is locating his epic in a hybrid cosmogonic landscape that blends Greek and Egyptian. I do not claim that Orpheus’s song is consistently Egyptian, but rather that elements of it do resemble Egyptian cosmogonic thought in

name, cf. frr. 17.11 ( = 26.10), 77.1 DK.” Changelessness or durability was also in Greek minds characteristic of Egypt (see above, note 12). 62. See, for example, Herodotus 2.81. 63. Kingsley 1995, 238–39, esp. n. 21. He points to PGM IV 2292–94 (toPto gar soy sAmbolon tb sandalan son Gkryca, kaB klePda kratp. gnoija tartaroAxoy klePura KerbAroy . . . ) and 2333–34 (eRta kdga soi shmaPon Drp¢ xalkeon tb sandalon tp% tartaroAxoy, stAmma, kleA% . . . ), in which the possession of one bronze sandal is explicitly connected with Hecate. 64. If the Hymn to Zeus was written in 285/4 (or even early in Ptolemy II’s reign, as most scholars believe), it must have been prior to the Argonautica. Apollonius is generally regarded as slightly younger than Callimachus and Theocritus. It is clear that their writings show considerable artistic interdependence, and much has been written about the literary relationships of the three poets; see, for example, Hunter 1989a, 7 and n. 29, and Cameron 1995, 264. Although the issue of priority of Callimachus’s Zeus hymn is relevant for this argument, with respect to coincidences with his other poetry, I am using a model of dialogue rather than of origin or derivation.

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several ways.65 Most strikingly, the Egyptian cosmos begins by separating from the undifferentiated void, characterized by a watery darkness or hiddenness, and is always conceived as a struggle between maat, through which the differentiated universe is maintained, and the undifferentiated state, or chaos, into which inevitably it will return. Next, Apollonius introduces Ophion, a figure from the cosmogonic writings of the sixth-century Pherecydes of Syrus.66 In Pherecydes’ theomachy Ophioneus was, like Egyptian Apophis, a snake-limbed equivalent of Typhoeus.67 As the personification of disorder, Apophis lived in the primeval waters before creation and had to be driven from the ordered world of existence.68 Similarly, after his defeat by Chronos,69 Ophioneus is plunged into the primeval waters of Ocean that surround the world.70 The forceable separation of Earth and Sky and the fixed location of the constellations resemble the Egyptian deities Geb and Nut (Earth and Sky), who must be physically separated by their father, Shu ( = Air).71 Stars and the courses of the sun and moon are thought of as fixed and are often represented pictorially upon the semicircular body of Nut as she rises above Geb. The succession of sexed pairs—Ophion and Eurynome, Cronus and Rhea—culminates in Zeus, who is present without his siblings and described as still a child. It is possible to read the focus on Zeus alone as an early indication of the centrality of Zeus’s will and his divine justice in the poem. But the omission of the other Olympians 65. See Hunter’s remarks (1993, 163). 66. See West 1971, 1–75, and Schibli 1990, 140–75, for the fragments. 67. So Schibli 1990, 83–84 and 93–96. Ophion’s significance in Greek cosmogonic thought has come down to us from the writings of Pherecydes of Syrus. See sch. ad loc. (Wendel) and also West 1983, 127–28, for a discussion of this passage and its relationship to various cosmologies. Ophion seems to have been quite familiar to the Hellenistic poets. Lycophron, for instance, refers to Zeus as “the lord of Ophion’s throne” (1192: dnakti tpn \OfAvno% uranvn), and Callimachus in a fragment from the Victory of Berenice in the Aetia remarks that the sun, when it has set, “shines upon the sons of Ophion” in the underworld (SH fr. 259 = 177 Pf.: b% kePno% \OfionAdisi faeAn[ei). However, the context is lost. 68. Hornung 1971, 158–59. 69. In Pherecydes, Chronos or Time “began everything by generating progeny from his own seed,” another idea that has closer analogues in Near Eastern than in Greek thinking. 70. M. L. West remarks that when Pherecydes describes the fate of Ophioneus “we cannot fail to think of Egyptian . . . cosmography” (1971, 47). 71. Diodorus Siculus 1.7.1 has a similar description of the separation of earth and sky, which Cole (1990, 174–92) assigns to Diodorus’s account of the origins of life in Egypt (1.10 = FGrH 264 F10), a passage most scholars derive from Hecataeus of Abdera’s Aegyptiaca. However, there are dissenters, most notably Spoerri (1959, 34–38). See also Burton 1972, 46.

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from the creation story is another detail that aligns it with Egyptian cosmology, in which Geb and Nut produce Isis and Osiris, who produce the child Horus, the end and fulfillment of the cycle of cosmic generation, and the necessary link to human political formations. The song ends with a conspicuous reference to the thunderbolts of Zeus, by which means he subdued his cosmic opponents (the Titans, Typhoeus) to establish a rule of law. Zeus, however, has not yet assumed that role. With the sequence of mountains (oGrea), rivers with their nymphs (potamoB . . . aDtusin nAmfisi), and crawling things (Crpeta) we have entered another primeval landscape, Callimachus’s Arcadia before the birth of Zeus and the creation of rivers by Rhea. There is also a close correspondence in language between 1.508 (gfra ZeB% Gti koPro%, Gti fresB napia eDda%) and Hymn to Zeus 57 (dll’ Dti paidnb% Dan Dfrassao panta tAleia). Apollonius’s Zeus, while a child, thinks like a child, in contrast to the preternaturally accomplished Zeus of Callimachus for whom thought and action were simultaneous (and characteristically Egyptian). If Callimachus’s poem aimed at providing a suitable theogonic narrative for a new kind of kingship—a kingship that Callimachus, at least mythologically, marked out for prodigious accomplishment—Apollonius recalls this narrative by incorporating many of its elements and distinctive language but recasts it as first times, as beginnings, when the world and his epic protagonists—even the gods— were young. Kingship with the attendant ideologies that we encountered in Theocritus and Callimachus is either muted or absent, and Egyptian motifs (if they are present) are not yet political, but confined to the cosmic stage. And even in that context they appear as latent or vestigial, as if the two—Greek and Egyptian—had not yet differentiated themselves. The Empedoclean thought world continues, according to the scholiast on the passage, in the description of the cloak that Jason wore when he appeared before Hypsipyle (1.721–68). On the cloak the contest of philia and neikos moves from the realm of nature to culture. The scholiast tells us that the cloak is an allegory for the cosmic and human order. Divine justice is represented by the first scene, the Cyclopes just completing a thunderbolt for Zeus. The second scene, the building of Thebes by Amphion and Zethis, marks the establishment of cities. What takes place in human settlements, love and strife, is the subject of the next two vignettes—Aphrodite peering into the shield of Ares and the raid of the Taphian pirates. Contests and marriages are represented by Pelops fleeing in his chariot with Hippodamia, while

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her father pursues; crime and punishment is limned by Apollo slaying Tityos for attempting to rape his mother, Leto; plotting and accusation, then safety by the talking ram, Phrixus. The fact that the cloak was a gift of Athena indicates that the cosmos was created through divine purpose (franhsi%). Whatever man does without this franhsi% is done wrongly.72 What lends credibility to the scholiast’s allegorical interpretation is the fact the first scene on the cloak takes up where Orpheus’s song left off. In the former the Cyclopes are just completing the thunderbolt, with which, in the latter, “the Earth-born Cyclopes had not yet armed Zeus.” Also, Pherecydes’ cosmogony may link the two passages. In Pherecydes, when Zas ( = Zeus) defeated Ophioneus he immediately married Chthonie, bestowing upon her as a marriage gift a robe upon which he had embroidered the earth and sea. The gift of the robe delineated the world as her sphere of influence, and her name is simultaneously changed from Chthonie to Ge to reflect her new role.73 Finally, there are close correspondences with Pindar’s initial description of Jason. He first appears with two spears and wearing “double dress” (Pythian 4.79: Dsub% . . . dmfotAra), which consists of native Magnesian clothing (Magnatvn Dpixario%) over which he wears a leopard skin. This is garb that would seem to locate him midway between the natural world, with his upbringing by Chiron, and the civilized world of the patrimony that he is intent upon reclaiming. As part of that initial description, Jason is likened to Ares, the pasi% of Aphrodite, and the section ends with a reference to Artemis slaying Tityos with her arrows. In Apollonius, Jason wears a cloak that is dAplaka porfyrAhn and carries one spear. His cloak contains seven scenes, two of which may gesture towards Pindar: the second, in which Aphrodite looks at her reflection in Ares’ bronze shield, and the sixth, in which Apollo, though a child, slays Tityos for attempting to rape his mother, Leto.74 But in contrast to Pindar’s Jason, whose garments position him between nature and culture, Apollonius’s Jason is situated more completely in culture. For Jason to be distinguished by a cloak and not a shield or other implement of war has been taken as a sign of his ambivalent status in 72. Wendel 67.1–15. 73. Pherecydes B1–2 D-K, and Schibli 1990, 165–67, frr. 68–69. 74. The reason that both Pindar and Apollonius contain this reference is that Tityus’s daughter was the mother of Euphemus, who is destined to receive the gift of Libyan soil from the gods.

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the poem,75 but parallels suggest a somewhat different reading. In contrast to the bronze-clad warrior world of the Iliad or the skin-wearing world of Heracles, Jason appears as an inhabitant of the civilized world, characterized by the arts and the institution of cult. Jason’s role in the poem is commensurately less a warrior in the Iliadic mode than an originator of or participant in cult, where his behavior is significant or efficacious because of the ritual he enacts, not the presence or absence of heroic qualities in the man himself. Aetiological events and rituals in the narrative take on greater significance for the overall meaning of the poem than the character or inherent heroic status of any individual. Even in the Iliad, however, the shield of Achilles was not simply a weapon of war but carried on its surface a message of cosmic and political ordering.76 Jason’s cloak carries a similar message.77 By putting on the cloak, Jason, like Aeneas when he accepts the shield from his mother, may be inscius of the broad implications of his raiment, unconscious of its import or his future role, but he is necessarily complicit in implementing its overall intent. Jason’s role in this poem is to facilitate the triumph of—in Empedoclean terms—philia over neikos or—in Egyptian terms—order over chaos. Therefore, it is significant that Jason first wears this gift of Athena in Lemnos, the place from which the Argonauts set in motion the process that after many generations ultimately allows Greeks to (re)claim North Africa. Pindar states it thus: [Euphemus] will find in the beds of alien [Lemnian] women a choice race, who by favor of the gods will . . . beget a man [Battus] to be master of the dark-clouded plains [Libya]. He it is whom Phoebus . . . will admonish in his oracle to lead many men in ships to the rich precinct of the son of Cronus by the Nile.78

In the final scenes of the poem it is Jason who correctly interprets events and understands the significance of the gift of the clod of earth. It is he who instructs Euphemus to throw it into the sea to activate the sequence that will guarantee the Greek return to North Africa. In retrojecting such a role for Jason into his epic time of the world’s beginnings Apollonius seems to be delimiting a model of kingship similiar to what

75. See Clauss 1993, 123 n. 28, for an annotated bibliography. 76. P. R. Hardie, “Imago Mundi: Cosmological and Ideological Aspects of the Shield of Achilles,” JHS 105 (1985) 11–31. 77. See Hunter 1993, 52–59, for its relationship to the shield of Achilles, and Pietsch 1999, 192–94. 78. Pythian 4.50–56. The translation is that of Braswell (1988, 42–43).

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we saw in Hecataeus of Abdera and in Theocritus’s court poetry, where kingship was a matter of behavior rather than birth and expressed by actions that benefited the ruled, particularly through largesse and by the institution of cult. This becomes clearer in Apollonius’s narration of the establishment of the cult of the Great Mother. After the slaughter of the Doliones we are given an extended aition in which the Argonauts ascend Dindymon to erect a cult statue to the Great Mother, Rhea, on its peak (1.1117–52). Here too Callimachean elements surface—the Cretan cave, the dance in armor, and bringing forth water in an hitherto arid location—so that we are once again reminded of the Greco-Egyptian milieu of the Zeus hymn, but where in the one these elements were connected with kingship and Callimachus’s facade of doubt about how to hymn the new royal order, Apollonius recombines Callimachus’s material into an externally narrated tale of cultic origins. In Callimachus the pouring forth of water in the dry land was connected with Egypt and the birth of Zeus. But Apollonius rewrites these events and locates them in a landscape in which Zeus and his potency are marginalized, or female takes preeminence over male. Rhea is the “mother of all the blessed gods” to whom even Zeus yields.79 At her will beasts fawn upon the Argonauts, and plant life blooms. The final sign of her power, the coming of water, is connected not to Zeus, but to Jason and the establishment of a cult: “beforehand water had not flowed on Dindymon, but for them at once a stream poured forth from the thirsty peak, and the men who lived around there in subsequent ages called that water Jason’s spring.”80 Jason and his companions complete the rite by dancing in armor to drown the illomened cry of the mourning Doliones, in contrast to Callimachus’s “explanation” of the armored dance as an amusement, with only a fleeting allusion to drowning out the newborn’s cries so that they would not come to Cronus’s ears. They enact for the first time a dance that will come to have deep roots in classical culture—the pyrrhiche— and one appropriate for their ephebic status.81 Apollonius’s version also provides an account of the distinctive rites of the Great Mother, which he repositions as fundamentally Greek. In his version of Zeus in Crete, 79. 1.1101: ZeB% aDtb% KronAdh% Cpoxazetai. The Greek verb does not convey simply filial respect but fear. It is borrowed from a unique passage in the Iliad (4.497) in which the Trojans recede in the face of Odysseus’s battle mania. 80. 1.1147–49: dnAbraxe dicado% aGtv% | Dk koryfp% gllhkton. \IhsonAhn d’ DnApoysin | kePno potbn kranhn perinaiAtai gndre% dpAssv. 81. See Hunter 1988, 150–51.

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I suggested that Callimachus rationalized the mythological elements as part of an overall strategy of refiguring Zeus as a human child as a prelude to his merger with “my king” or Ptolemy. Apollonius refashions elements found also in Callimachus into an explanation for cult behavior that is in turn made efficacious not by Zeus or divine activity, but by Jason’s careful implementation of Mopsus’s instructions. Jason’s reward for his compliance in divine will is a peculiar affect of culture. The precivilized world of nature is tamed by cult and now named: the local spring that commemorates the establishment of the cult will be named after Jason. There is also a significant difference in temporal perspective: “Zeus” in Callimachus’s hymn belongs to a world in which kings rule by law, epitomized in the poem by Ptolemy. The events described here by Apollonius belong to an earlier and more unstable time in which the forces of divinity are elemental rather than legislative and where human behavior is portrayed in activities that effect the transition.82 The Egyptian spaces within the Argonautica—Colchis and Circe’s island—display a nature that is still primordial, a condition that in philosophical writers was characterized by the ability to produce creatures spontaneously from the earth. When the Argonauts encounter Aeetes’ sister, Circe, she is accompanied by an entourage of abnormal creatures. These are not the men who have been transformed into beasts that accompany her in the Odyssey, but untimely products of Earth’s spontaneous creation: Beasts not like wild beasts, nor like men in body, but with limbs of various kinds mingled, they crowded together, as sheep from the fold following the shepherd, such creatures even from the primordial ooze (protArh% Dj DlAo%) Earth herself brought forth, fitted with various limbs, when she had not yet compacted beneath a thirsty sky nor yet from the rays of the scorching sun had she received many drops of moisture. But

82. Clauss 1993, 167–75. At pp. 169–71 Clauss discusses several “points of contact” between Apollonius and Callimachus, including two geographic correspondences: “Zeus was reared in a cave on Mount Dicte (cf. H. 1.34,47) = the Dactyls were born in a cave on Mount Dicte (Argo. 1.1130); . . . Callimachus calls the Arcadians the grandsons of the Lycaonian Bear (LykaonAh% grtoio, 41) = the Argonauts initiate the rites in honor of Rhea on Bear Mountain (OGresin 6rtkvn, 1150)” (p. 170). Like Clauss, I would read this as an acknowledgment on Apollonius’s part of Callimachus’s geographic gamesmanship, but I would also connect it to the phenomenon of bilocal geographies I discuss below.

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the course of time ordered in correct combination.83 Thus they followed her, shapeless in form. (4.672–81)

The description is apparently indebted to Empedocles’ conception of meigma, or the stuff from which life originally emerged. This passage conveys the impression of an unstable space in which neikos still holds sway, of a world that is at some evolutionary distance from the already abnormal Argonauts, with their enhanced abilities to see below the earth or fly through the air with winged feet. The terms of Apollonius’s description—primordial ooze, compaction from the sun—are suggestive of the language of spontaneous generation that Diodorus uses of Egypt in the passage quoted below. Apollonius inserts Colchis, too, into this primordial world with the details he choses to emphasize in the episode of the testing of Jason. Apollonius tells us that Aeetes has been given half of the dragon’s teeth that Athena gave to Cadmus, and that he was in the habit of sowing them from time to time in the soil of Colchis and mowing down the men who sprang up from the teeth in order to demonstrate his powers (3.409–18). Aeetes sets this same task for Jason. The sowing of dragon’s teeth is not in Pindar; it is first preserved in a fragment of the historian Pherecydes of Athens.84 When Jason cuts down these monstrous shoots, they are said to have been emerging from the soil: “many half-risen into the air as far as their belly and sides, and some as far as the shoulders—and some just standing upright” (3.1382–84). The description matches a passage in Diodorus, usually attributed to Hecataeus of Abdera’s “Theologoumena,” the preface to his Aegyptiaca. There the generation of life from Egyptian soil is twice described in the same terms and coincides with an earlier description of the emerging cosmos in Diodorus: Indeed, even in our day during the inundations of Egypt the generation of forms of animal life can clearly be seen taking place, . . . for whenever the river has begun to recede and the sun has thoroughly dried the surface of

83. See Livrea, pp. 205–9. Also see Hunter’s remarks about the “fracturing of time” in this episode (1993, 165–66). 84. Sch. on AR 3.1179 Wendel = FGrH 3 F 22. Aeetes’ use of the seeds is apparently repeated, and none of the Earth-born men survive; Cadmus sows them once, and a few survive as regional ancestors.

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“Egypt” in Hecataeus and Aeaea, both west and east, in Apollonius occupy the same imaginative space. Otherness is extended beyond cultural behavior and into the very physical environment, in which nature seems to be suspended in a stage of experiment that has elsewhere disappeared. Apollonius uses another device that draws Greece itself in this precivilized world. He describes the dragon’s teeth as the dire teeth of the Aonian dragon, the guardian of Ares’ spring, whom Cadmus killed in Ogygian Thebes, when he came seeking Europa. There too he settled, guided by the cow (boa%) whom Apollo in a prophecy gave him as a conductor of his journey. But the [teeth] the Tritonian goddess ripped from its jaws and gave as a gift likewise to Aeetes and the slayer himself [sc. Cadmus]. (3.1177–83)

The two Thebeses were often conflated mythologically to form isomorphic stories, as in part they are here. The teeth are divided between Phoenician/Greek Cadmus and Colchian/Egyptian Aeetes, both of whom sow the teeth and reap a harvest of “Earth-born” men who are then cut down. The epithets of Thebes (Ogygian) and of Athena (Tritonian) in this passage are not so much ambiguous as bilocal in their conventional application, a circumstance that Apollonius exploits here and and elsewhere. Tzetzes cites a line of Dionysius the Periegete to demonstrate that in the Hellenistic period the rare word “ogygian,” which is taken as the equivalent of “primeval,”86 might be applied to both Egyptian and Boeotian Thebes. He claims that Ogygos was the king of Egyptian Thebes and, when Cadmus came from there into Greece, he founded the seven-gated city and named it “ogygian” to conform everything to the name of Egyptian Thebes.87 Others, he maintains, call the seven-gated city Thebes, from the cow Cadmus slaughtered, whose name according to Syrus was Thebe. Just as the attributes

85. 1.10.6–7 = FGrH 264 F 25. Diodorus states the idea earlier in 1.10.2–3 with respect to mice. For a discussion of the relationship of the three passages (1.7, 1.10.2–3 and 6–7), see Cole 1990, 182–95. On Egypt as the oldest place and the site of spontaneous generation, see sch. on AR 4.257–62c Wendel. 86. See above, pages 96, 100–101, for Callimachus’s use of “ogygian.” 87. Sch. on Lycophron 1206 (ed. R. Foerster [Berlin, 1958] 347.25–348.7). Tzetzes cites the the following passage of Dionysius the Periegete as evidence: Qabhn dgygAhn, Ckatampylon. Gnua gegvna% | MAmnvn dnetAlloysan Dbn dspazetai \Hp (lines 249–50).

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of Boeotian and Egyptian Thebes could apparently be conflated, in Apollonius Athena Tritonis is sometimes associated with Boeotia, as in the passage above, and sometimes with Libya. At 4.1311, for example, Libyan nymphs came upon Athena after she had sprung from her father Zeus’s head, and “bathed her in the waters of Triton” (TrAtvno% Df’ Gdasi xytlasanto); the unusual verb occurs also in Callimachus’s hymn in the expression of Rhea’s desire to wash the newborn Zeus.88 So Athena is connected with Libya, if not Egypt, and for the rest of book 4 Triton and Tritonian waters are consistently located in North Africa, not Boeotia.89 In Callimachus we saw conflation of two distinct geographic locations deliberately employed to collapse at least momentarily two separate landscapes. Apollonius also exploits geographical doublets but in a markedly different way. Apollonius never indulges in narrative deception, as Callimachus appears to; rather, he applies the same set of features in different places in his narrative to two separate places or customs. His location of Sesostris’s city-founding in a primeval time is one example (4.259–69): For there is another course, which the priests of the immortals who have sprung from Tritonian Thebes have made known. Not yet did all the constellations move in the heaven, nor yet could one hear of the sacred race of the Danaans, if one should make inquiry. Alone were the Arcadian Apidanians, Arcadians, who are said to have lived even before the moon, eating acorns in the hills. At that time the Pelasgian land was not ruled by the glorious sons of Deucalion; Egypt was then called fertile Aeria (\HerAh polylaio%), mother of men of an older generation, and the broad-flowing river by which all Aeria was watered was called Triton.90

Earlier I suggested that the habit of double naming was a feature of aetiological writing, a practice of the colonizing group, who replaced the unfamiliar with familiar names. Apollonius exploits these geographical doublets for another reason as well. In this passage Egypt is said to be “mother” of an earlier generation of men (mathr AGgypto% proterhge-

88. Hymn to Zeus 15: xytlasaito. In Dionysius Scytobrachion, Athena was born by Lake Triton, hence her epithet. Callimachus similarly locates her birth in North Africa; see fr. 37 Pf. On Tritonian Athena, see Calame 1990, 290 and n. 29. 89. The scholiast on this passage (4.1311 Wendel) helpfully remarks that “Triton was a river in Libya and was also a river in Boeotia. Athena was born by one of them.” I discussed the similar conflation of geographic locations in connection with the Homeric Hymn to Dionysus above. 90. The passage is also discussed above, page 189, where the Greek is provided. On this passage, see Vian 1981, 157–59, nn. 267–80, and Livrea, pp. 84–96, notes ad loc.

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nAvn aDzhpn). Apollonius selects the very rare word proterhgenAvn, which also appears in the Hymn to Zeus, where, I have argued, it conformed to Callimachus’s two versions of Zeus’s succession to Hesiodic and Egyptian myth. Not only does Apollonius attach the word to Egypt, but he does so in a passage where, like Callimachus, he is creating a verbal link between Greek and Egyptian landscapes. \HerAh polylaio%, here a name and defining characteristic of Egypt, was applied to the Pelasgian land in 1.580. Egyptian Thebes (or the eponymous nymph, Thebe) is called “Tritonian” in this passage, while Boeotian Thebes was called “Ogygian” and connected with the Tritonian goddess about five hundred lines earlier. Thus “primeval” Thebes was apparently younger than “Tritonian” Thebes, and the epithet “Tritonian” for Athena at 3.1182 (ueb TritonA%) might as easily derive from a connection to the Tritonian waters of North Africa as from Boeotia. To complicate matters, Egyptian Aeria in the passage above is watered by the river Triton, which must be the Nile,91 named presumably for Triton, the biform divinity, who gives Euphemus the clod. As in Callimachus this geographical pleonasm is not simply an exercise in recherché allusion; it serves to effect a liaison between Greek and Egyptian worlds and to relocate or collocate divinities and places in both mainland Greece and North Africa.92 In contrast to Callimachus, who seems to have employed stable geographies that allowed Greek models of kingship to be mapped onto Egyptian (or vice versa), Apollonius seems rather more to operate in the realm of cosmic origins, in which cultural formation as well as geographical markers are still in a state of flux. This geographic duplicity concludes in the double birth of islands with which the poem ends.

the new order Apollonius relocates at the end of the Argonautica a prophecy, borrowed from Pindar, that a clod of earth taken from Libya was destined to wash up on the island of Thera. In Pindar the prophecy had marked the Cyrenaica as well as the Aegean islands as always already Greek. 91. Livrea suggests at 4.269 that Apollonius might have made a mistake: “forse erroneamente allude identificandola con il Nilo.” Triton = Nile also in Lycophron 119 and 576. 92. Dionysius Scytobrachion engages in a similar relocating, but the respective chronologies of the two are uncertain, and it is impossible to say if this is a trend or an imitation.

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Richard Hunter, in his 1993 study, read the sequence of these events at the end of the book, and indeed the entire dynamic of the poem, as the creation of a new order: Whereas the conquest of Talos apparently removed the last vestiges of violent brutalism, and rescue from the chaos proved the gracious power of Apollo, as representative of the “new” Olympian order, so the story of the clod projects the Argonauts themselves into the future through their descendants, while placing them at the mythic scene of the creation of the Aegean islands. Euphemos’ dream shows clearly that philia has replaced neikos as the creative impulse.93

In this context it is important that Apollonius altered Pindar: the clod does not wash up on Thera but became Thera. This is a trivial change with considerable consequence. I discussed above the narrative similarities between this event and the foundation of Alexandria. But there is another similarity. By altering Pindar, Apollonius brings the ending of his epic into harmony with Egyptian cosmogony. An island emerging from watery chaos—the primeval hill or place of coming forth, an island that is a holy nurse (1758: Cerb trofa%), an image that Callimachus exploited in both Zeus and Delos hymns—signaled the beginning of the Egyptian universe. As it is placed here at the end of the book, I submit that its purpose is to suggest a new order in which both Greek and Egyptian are present and in which the ancestors of the Argonauts are expanded to include not simply the kings of Cyrene but the new Ptolemaic pharaohs of Egypt. Final events do not imply a fusion of mythologies, however, so much as bilocated mythic sensibilities: one island encapsulates the Greek tale as one of particularity—Thera, Euphemus, and Libya—while the other, Anaphe, hints at the Egyptian island rising from the void, an event of recurrence, and in the context of the earlier cosmogonic themes suggests a form half-risen, incomplete, potential. The trajectory of the end of the book is the creation of order from chaos, particularly through the instrumentality of Apollo. But if for Apollo we substitute his Egyptian alter ego, Horus, then this formulation could serve equally as an accurate description of Egyptian myth. For Egyptians, the emergence of order from chaos marks the beginning of the created universe, and it could be magically reenacted by a series of ritual or symbolic acts—killing snakes, trampling, smiting or other-

93. 1993, 168.

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wise destroying the enemy, who is imagined as the primeval serpent, Apophis, and who was regularly conflated with Seth/Typhon. Equally, the conflict of chthonic and Olympian forces or of Greek civilization and barbarian “other” had been represented in a variety of ways in previous Greek writings, at least one of which was also the killing of snaky monsters, particularly by Heracles. Within the Argonautica not every confrontation of chthonic and Olympian takes on Egyptian resonances. However, there are a few places in the poem where the individual details of Apollonius’s narrative seem to converge in an event or activity that is particularly associated with Egyptian cosmogonic or royal ideology. In doing this Apollonius both reinforces the overall narrative trajectory as a movement from primeval or originary chaos to the order of civilized society and complicates this picture. As in Callimachus, Apollonius exploits the potential for two symbolic realms to be simultaneously active, but while the two disparate mental landscapes in Callimachus seemed to converge in the institution of Ptolemaic kingship, in Apollonius they never quite align, and we are left with two parallel or even potentially competing universes. The motif of killing serpents first occurs at 2.700–709, and fittingly the slayer is Apollo, whom the Argonauts first glimpse in the moments between the end of night and full day.94 They immediately build an altar to him as \Apallvn \Eaio% and enact a ritual that associates him with the Delphic Apollo, while Orpheus sings Delphi’s foundation story, the slaying of the local guardian snake: e% pote petraAh Cpb deiradi ParnhsoPo DelfAnhn tajoisi pelarion Djenarije, koPro% Dbn Gti gymna%, Gti plokamoisi geghua%— Clakoi%¢ When once under the rocky ridge of Parnassus Apollo slew the monster Delphyne with his bow, while Apollo was still a naked child and took pleasure still in long locks.95

The language and sequence of detail is remarkably close to Callimachus’s Hymn to Apollo (97–104). Both sections are introduced by

94. 2.687–89. The appearance of Apollo at dawn foreshadows his final appearance at 4.1713–16, on which see below. 95. 2.705–8. See also 1.507 (gfra ZeB% Gti koPro%, Gti fresB napia eDda%) and Callimachus Hymn to Zeus 57 (dll\ Dti paidna% Dan), discussed above.

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the ritual cry Dhpaiaona.96 In both the slaying of the snake/dire monster by arrows is immediately followed by mention of Apollo’s mother, Leto, which serves to underscore the god’s youth.97 In Callimachus’s hymns to Apollo and Delos the significance of Apollo’s behavior in Egyptian terms has already been discussed by other scholars,98 and the unusual detail of 2.707 (koPro% Dbn Gti gymna%) suggests that Apollonius too might be operating within this Apollo/Horus matrix.99 Only in Egyptian myth does a naked child-god kill snakes.100 Although long hair was a standard feature of Apollo, as Apollonius emphasizes in the lines that immediately follow, the phrase Gti plokamoisi geghua% suggests that it was a temporary condition. It is the Egyptian child, Horus, for whom this language is most appropriate, since it would describe the forelock of immaturity worn by all Egyptian youths, as is seen on the Horus cippus, but cut at the time of adulthood.101 The inclusion of Leto may point in the same direction: Leto is not important in the Homeric hymn at this juncture, but Isis and Horus are closely joined in Horus’s youthful exploits, especially in repelling the various manifestations of Seth. In the Argonautica the youthful Apollo/Horus in his triumph over

96. 2.702. Callimachus writes Cb paipon to conform the cry to his etymology: “Hurl, child, an arrow.” 97. Callimachus employed the Delphi story in at least two other places: the Hymn to Delos, which was discussed in chapter 2, and the end of the Aetia (fr. 88 Pf.), where the serpent is called Delphyne. For further parallels between Callimachus and Apollonius, see Hunter 1986, 58–59. On Delphyne, see Vian 1974, 276. The order of composition of these four texts (one of Apollonius, three of Callimachus) is in doubt, but irrelevant for this argument. What may be relevant is the fact that Apollonius’s story is also framed as a hymn, and while Callimachus’s Apollo hymn ends with the discord of Phthonos and Momus, Apollonius’s culminates in the establishment of a temple to Concord (Homonoia) (2.718–19). 98. See Selden 1998 on the Hymn to Apollo; Koenen 1983 and Bing 1988 on the Hymn to Delos. Selden (pp. 390–405) provides a particularly detailed discussion of the correspondences between the events of the Apollo hymn and Egyptian rituals described in the Edfu temple. 99. See the remarks of commentators on the passage who try to emend or otherwise account for gymna%: e.g., Hunter 1986, 56–57. 100. It is possible to invoke Heracles as a naked child killing serpents as a parallel for Apollo’s activities, but we have already seen that representations of Heracles throttling snakes in a Greek context are themselves likely to be indebted to Egyptian analogues. 101. In this context consider the depiction of Apollo slaying Tityos, another Earthborn creature, who is depicted on Jason’s cloak at 1.759–62. Apollo is said to be boApai% oGpv polla% (760). The rare boApai% is a comic word, which very obviously has connections with the cow, namely, “cow-child.” The passage already seems to play on the derivation of Apollo from polA%, so Apollonius might have included a punning allusion to the Egyptian cow-headed deity (Isis/Io), who is the mother of Horus. Cf. Callimachus’s “cowborn” Danaus fr. 383 Pf. and SH 254.4.

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the serpent would seem to provide the template for subsequent occurrences of overcoming serpents, particularly in books 3 and 4. This impression is further reinforced by the narrative sequence itself. The simile immediately before Apollo kills Delphyne compares the heroes plying the oars of the Argo to oxen plowing (2.662–68). Earlier the young Jason as he sets out on his adventure is compared to Apollo (1.306–10). At the climax of the quest he must confront a terrible serpent to accomplish his task, so that the fleeting sequence of images here—oxen plowing, appearance of Apollo, confrontation with guardian serpent—appears to be proleptic of Jason’s actions in Colchis. If Jason and Apollo seem to resemble each other, and if one aspect of Jason’s behavior, namely, establishing cults and bringing civilized community, can be read as conforming to patterns of kingship found also in Hecataeus, many other aspects of his character have posed problems for all commentators.102 Although Jason frequently acts in the manner of a Homeric warrior, he does not do so consistently but vacillates between boldness and timidity. He is not a clearly dominant leader of the expedition— the presence of Heracles initially threatens his position of authority. Even more troubling is the importance of his good looks and his amiability in motivating the action, particularly when it is directed towards women. Moreover, Jason can complete the tasks set by Aeetes only with the aid of magic, and a woman’s magic at that, which distances him from the world of the Homeric hero and might seem to disallow any claims for him as a viable model for kingship.103 Yet the very qualities that are disturbing when viewed within a Greek context form part of a consistent picture within an Egyptian framework. Jason’s prehistory, like that of Horus, who was raised in secret in Chemmis, is somewhat obscure; we first see him as the half-shod youth at the beginning of the poem, in an entrance that appears to allude to Pindar.104 In contrast to Greek heroic models of behavior, many of Jason’s seemingly unheroic characteristics are not only acceptable but delineate significant aspects of Horus as divine king. Among Horus’s attributes are his youth and his beauty, which encompass both 102. The literature is extensive. See Hunter 1993, 11: “Scholars have often differed only about whether poetic design or incompetence is responsible for this apparent travesty of an epic hero”; see also Hunter’s notes ad loc. 103. Thetis’s magic enhancement of Achilles is a parallel of sorts, but it plays no part in the dynamics of the Iliad. 104. In Pindar, Jason was raised in secret by the centaur Chiron; Apollonius may allude to this at several points in the Argonautica (e.g., 1.33, 554), though he nowhere states it explicitly.

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generosity and affection but cross over into the erotic energy associated with procreation and the regeneration of life.105 In a victory stele of Osorkon, for example, the king can be addressed as: sweet-scented amongst the couriers like a large lotus bud . . . a worthy youth, sweet of love, even as Horus coming forth from Chemmis. . . . One looks at his body [when he flings himself] upon the war chariot like a star darting up, [even] the matutine Horus in the starry firmament.106

This theme is found even in the Book of the Dead: “Everyone adores his beauty. How sweet is his love for us: his kindliness has converted our hearts. Great is his love for everybody when they have drawn near to the son of Isis.”107 In Greek myth Zeus’s youth and lineage are relatively unimportant in his attainment of kingship, and he is represented as a mature, bearded male. It is his son Apollo who retains the iconographic attributes of young manhood. Despite the entourage of Olympians, Zeus, like a Homeric hero, defeats Typhon alone, and his strength can even be personified as Kratos and Bia, who execute his divine will and sit alongside his throne.108 Horus, the child of Isis, in contrast, is consistently identified as young, and his mythological role is always that of good son, or avenger of his father. He is regularly supported by Egyptian divinities, sometimes as their equal, sometimes as their subordinate. In the Naucratis stele of Nectanebo I, for example, erected in the fourth century b.c.e., the following qualities are singled out in an encomium of the king (as a Horus surrogate). His puissance in battle is commended with the address “powerful one with active arm, | Sword master who attacks a host”; his beauty is noted: “all eyes are dazzled by seeing him, | Like Re when he rises in lightland, | Love of him greens each body”; his acquiescence to advice and counsel is mentioned: “whom the gods acclaim, . . . who wakes to seek what serves their shrines . . . who acts according to their words, and is not deaf to their advice”; and, finally, his role in cult is described: “who builds their mansions, founds their walls, supplies the altar, . . . provides oblations of all kinds.”109 105. These attributes of Horus derive from his father, Osiris, the god of regeneration, who can be praised as follows: “Thy phallus is within the maidens” (Book of the Dead, Spell 162 [Allen 1974, 158]). 106. Caminos 1958, 48, 114. 107. Book of the Dead, Spell 185 A S4 (Allen 1974, 204). 108. They are even characters in Prometheus Bound. 109. Lichtheim 1980, 87–88. Compare also the Mendes stele, where Philadelphus is praised as appearing on the horizon with four aspects: “who lightens the heaven and

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A striking difference between Greek and Egyptian models for divine and/or royal behavior is the ubiquitous presence of female divinities, who far more than in Greek poetry act to protect and support the king/Horus. Horus is accompanied by his mother and other powerful goddesses, all of whom work their magic in his behalf. Although Horus and Seth engage in a series of trials by strength, Horus’s ultimate triumph depends more on Isis’s tricking of Seth than his own powers.110 The Naucratis stele, which commemorates a gift to the temple of the goddess Neith, portrays the relationship of the goddess and the king as one of complete dependence: [Neith] raised his majesty above millions. | Appointed him ruler of the Two Lands; | . . . Captured for him the nobles’ hearts. | She enslaved for him the people’s hearts. | And destroyed all his enemies.111

Further, magic plays a central and positive role in Egyptian thought. According to R. Ritner, magic, personified as the god Heka, is the “hypostasis of the creator’s own power which begets the natural order,” an event that must be reenacted daily through the aid of Heka, who during the night becomes a protective power, by destroying the enemy.112 Thus magic functioned as a potent and legitimate means of maintaining one’s powers and harming one’s enemies. In the temples of the Ptolemaic period, Heka appears before the temple’s divinity, escorted by the king.113 A whole range of divinities, including the goddesses Isis, Hathor, and Sekmet, derive their own magic powers from Heka, which they use constantly to protect Osiris/Horus/the king. If Jason’s behavior conforms to a template of Egyptian kingship, his position as a “Greek” Horus marks him imaginatively as a precursor to the Ptolemies, who will rule as both Greek king and Egyptian pharaoh. In this context, it is possible to read his actions in books 3–4 as a supplanting of Aeetes. We have already seen that Colchis was an Egyptian colony founded by Sesostris, and Aeetes as its king was fitly said to be the son of the Sun (in which Helios is the equivalent of Re). The acts that Aeetes requires Jason to perform are tasks that he himself is able to do, as he maintains at 3.407–8: “the test of strength and courage will

earth with his rays, who comes as the Nile, and when he nears the Two Lands, he is the air to all the people” (Roeder 1959, 177). 110. Gwyn Griffiths 1960, 41–46; Lichtheim 1976, 217–18. 111. Lichtheim 1980, 87. 112. 1993, 17–19. 113. Ritner 1993, 24.

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be a contest that I myself am able to be superior in, however dire.” One of these acts, the yoking of the fire-breathing bulls, does have a good analogue in the rites of Egyptian kingship. The pharaoh in his renewal festival (Heb Sed) drove asses or oxen around the city walls four times.114 And although the evidence for it is very late, even the Ptolemies may have engaged in a similar act as part of their coronation rites. It is said that they yoked the Apis bull and led him through the city.115 Aeetes imagines, correctly or not, that the Argonauts’ arrival presages his own downfall, that they might “drive him from his honor and his throne” (3.596–97). Within the terms of the narrative, Jason obviously does not become king of Colchis, but he does perform acts that configure him as Aeetes’ successor.116 By successfully yoking the bulls and sowing the dragon’s teeth, he signals his fitness to assume the mantle of authority in Aeetes’ place, and thus marks his succession as legitimate. Aeetes himself fades as a character after Jason takes the fleece, and Apsyrtus only briefly and disastrously assumes the role of his father’s surrogate. Within the text, when Aeetes arrives to watch the plowing contest, he is described as wearing a helmet that gleamed like the sun, when he first rose from Ocean (3.1229–30). A little later the solar image is transferred to the fleece, which is like a cloud that grows red from the rays of the rising sun (4.124–26).117 When Jason takes possession of the fleece, he too begins to shine with a red glow on his cheeks like a flame (4.172–74), but when he swathes himself in the fleece and strides forward among his men at dawn, the fleece now shines like Zeus’s lightning (4.185). This instrument of Zeus’s authority was being fashioned as the first vignette on Jason’s cloak, which the scholiast allegorized as the first step in the transition from nature to culture. As Jason now steps forward in the fleece, Apollonius refigures the imagery of cosmic light as now Greek (Zeus), no longer Colchian/Egyptian (Helios). Next, Jason kills the legitimate son, Apsyrtus, and cuts off his extremities—a standard treatment Egyptians accorded their conquered enemies.118 This action deprived the Colchians of their leader, with the 114. Bleeker 1967, 103. 115. Thompson 1988, 146–47. The late source is Nigidius Figulus. 116. For the fleece as a talisman of imperial power, see L. Gernet, “Value in Greek Myth,” in Gordon 1981, 131–40. 117. When Jason appears before Hypsipyle (1.721–26) he is described rather similarly. His cloak is so bright that “it would be easier to look at the rays of the rising sun.” 118. For example, the funerary temple of Ramesses III in Medinet Habu displays the right hands of the conquered piled up in one scene and their penises in another. The tak-

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result that they do not return to their homeland but scatter and settle elsewhere. Jason kills Apsyrtus in part because as his father’s surrogate he was demanding the return of Medea, whom Aeetes in his last appearance in book 4 seems to require even more than the fleece (4.231). Jason’s theft of and marriage to the king’s daughter completes the sequence: by trial, by conquest, and by marriage it would seem that Colchis, and by extension Egypt, might be claimed by a Greek. Jason’s actions at the end of book 3 and the opening of book 4, however, are not unidirectional: Jason began as a Greek hero, who with his comrades set out upon an ostensibly Greek encounter with barbarians, but here he takes on the role of the other for himself, and for the remainder of the poem the two worlds will become increasingly intermingled. In light of these observations I would like to juxtapose Jason’s encounter with the guardian of the fleece in book 4 with a vignette found in the Egyptian underworld books. Earlier in book 2 the Colchian serpent was explicitly identified as an offspring of Typhaon ( = Typhon), who was an emblem of chaos and a Seth-equivalent: Such a serpent (gfi%) is on guard around and about [the fleece], immortal and unsleeping, whom Earth herself brought forth on the flanks of the Caucasus, where the Typhaonian rock is, there they say Typhaon was struck by a thunderbolt of Zeus, when he reached out his mighty hands against him, and warm gore dripped from his head.119

The serpent, sprung from Typhaon’s gore, recalls the moment when Zeus defeated Typhaon and also looks forward to the serpents sprung from the Gorgon’s head, who populate the Libyan desert. Book 4 opens with Jason and Medea approaching the golden fleece just before dawn. When they (and the reader) first see it, the day is still dark, but the fleece is “like a cloud grown red from the rays of the rising sun” (4.124–25: nefAli DnalAgkion, et’ dnianto%, delAoy flogerusin AreAuetai dk-

ing of these body parts served to tally the number of dead, and soldiers were regularly given rewards on the basis of numbers of hands. See, for example, Lichtheim 1976, 12–15 and 15 n. 9. The mutilation of Apsyrtus serves a number of other narrative purposes as well, on which see below. 119. 2.1208–13. The only other place in the Argonautica where Typhon is mentioned is also in book 2, where Amycus is likened to Typhoeus, and Polydeuces to a star (2.38–42). The chthonic-Ouranian opposition of Amycus and Polydeuces might be intended to function within both cultural realms, but it is not as clearly marked as the Apollo-Pytho scene. (See Hunter’s assessment [1993, 160–61].) Egyptian gods often appeared as stars (particularly Horus, who was the morning star) in their nightly battle with Apophis. (The passage from Osorkon’s stele on page 213 above provides an example of this.)

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tAnessin). Their path to the fleece is impeded by an immortal dragon. As Jason approaches this serpent, we are prepared for youthful Apollo encountering a Delphyne,120 but the scene plays out rather differently. At their appearance, the monster fills the grove with his hissing, terrifying those who live nearby (4.129–30). Jason does not confront the monster but rather approaches fearfully (149: pefobhmAno%) with only the foreign woman and her magic as his ally. A simile a few lines earlier of mothers protecting their children who are frightened at the serpent’s roar suggests prima facie that Medea’s protection for “fearful” Jason is similarly maternal.121 In the event, Jason does not kill the serpent, though he does so in most earlier versions.122 Instead, it is overwhelmed by Medea’s potent magic. He raised his terrible head aloft eager to enclose them in his dire jaws. But [Medea] . . . sprinkled powerful drugs on his eyes while she chanted her song; all around the overpowering scent of the charm spread sleep; and on the very spot he let his jaw sink down; and far behind . . . his countless coils were stretched out. (4.153–61)

What is untypical in Apollonius’s passage—Jason’s fear, maternal protectiveness, the neutralizing of the snake in place of its death, and Medea’s role taking precedence over Jason’s—conforms to a wellknown vignette found in Egyptian underworld books. E. Hornung describes the point at which Horus and his retinue confront Apophis, who blocks their path as follows: The serpentine body of Apophis blocks the path of the solar bark and his withering glance . . . [and] brings the journey to a halt. . . . The darkness is only broken by the odd fire-breathing serpent, and the roar of Apophis, whose “thunderous voice” echoes through the Netherworld, terrifying the sun god and his entourage. . . . Before the stranded vessel is taken by the enemy, Isis at the boat’s prow reaches out and throws the most powerful weapon known to god and man at the monster—magic. . . . The “radiant” magic strikes his head. He is neither destroyed nor killed, merely disabled, deprived of strength and his sense of orientation.123 120. The Homeric term dosshtar (“aider” or “assistant”), which Apollonius employs as an epithet of Sleep (4.146), Callimachus uses of Apollo (Hymn to Apollo 104). 121. R. Hunter, “Medea’s Flight: The Fourth Book of the Argonautica,” CQ 37 (1987) 132–33. 122. According to the scholiast at 4.156–61, Apollonius is following Antimachus in the details of putting the dragon to sleep. In Pindar, Pherecydes of Athens (FGrH 3 F31), and in Herodorus (FGrH 31 F52) the dragon is killed by Jason. (Hunter [1993, 183] suggests that the snake might have died here too.) 123. Hornung 1992, 105–6. The passage to which Hornung 1992 refers may be found in Hornung 1971, 133–34. See further the discussion of Talos below.

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Isis’s magic allows the solar boat to pass just as Medea’s magic allows Jason to take the fleece (shining like the sun) and and begin his return to Greece. If this were the only scene with close correspondences, it would be easy to dismiss, but as book 4 continues, the number of coincidences of Greek text with Egyptian myth increases to suggest a specific pattern.

the night voyage of the sun The fact that the voyage of the Argo often takes place in a landscape populated with chthonic creatures and figures imagined or hallucinated, in which both narrative and protagonists seem to have lost direction, until at last they emerge from the Stygian darkness into the light of dawn, has prompted a number of interpreters, both ancient and modern, to understand the story as in part a katabasis.124 Underworld associations occur throughout the tale and are concentrated in book 4, particularly as the adventurers traverse the murky and confusing Libyan wasteland. But why Apollonius might choose to so configure his text is not entirely clear. The adventures serve as a test for the heroes, whose ephebic (hence liminal) status is well known, and it is from these adventures that they emerge to fulfill their roles as founders of the new order,125 though Apollonius seems less interested in describing their process of maturation than their manifest destiny. Equally, Jason and his crew have been forced to experience the terrors of the Libyan desert to atone for the murder of Apsyrtus, though Apollonius does not dwell on the punitive aspects of the journey. It is also possible to attribute many of the individual elements of the book to Apollonius’s literary precursors, and, if we are so inclined, to his generally dark or anti-epic vision. All of these explanations have some degree of cogency, but neither separately nor in the aggregate can they account for the actual succession of events in book 4. At this juncture, I wish to propose an explanation for these events that is meant to complement, not substitute for, other analyses, namely, that the author has not only deliberately constructed his narrative to evoke a vaguely Greek poetic katabasis but conformed his text in strategic locations to mirror one of the most prominent (and idiosyncratic) features of Egyptian cosmology, the voyage of the Sun

124. The idea is an old one; see, for example, Meuli 1925; Fontenrose 1980, 477–87; Hunter 1993, 182–88; Moreau 1994, 117–38. Livrea (1991) sees it as a metaphor of death and rebirth. 125. So Moreau 1994, 117–38.

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through the realms of the night. I would further propose that this underworld experience is organically linked to the symbolic collapse that occurs at the end of the book, to the replacing of neikos with philia, to the emergence of islands from the void, and, most importantly, to the promise of a new Greco-Egyptian cultural order. The essential details of the Sun’s journey are as follows: the Sun, Re, was accompanied by a variety of divinities, who were sometimes thought of as the stars. The most important of these were Hu, Sia, and Heka—Authoritative Speech, Intelligence, and Magic—who aided Re in overcoming the many obstacles he encountered on his journey. The chief obstacle was the serpent of originary chaos, Apophis, who tried to impede the Sun’s progress or swallow it. Storms and eclipses were signs that Apophis had temporarily at least hindered or blocked the course of the solar boat. The stages of the day could be mapped onto the stages of a human life—the Sun was newborn in his morning appearance, a fierce, warlike adult god at midday, and an old man near death at evening. In Egyptian religion each had a particular name and set of divine attributes, and they accompanied the Sun in the underworld.126 The journey through the night world was much more terrifying than the daily journey, because it traversed a space where time had collapsed, and past met future,127 where regeneration and rebirth coexisted with putrefaction and death. It was imagined as a return to darkness and the primeval waters from which all creation originally sprang, hence each new day was not simply analogous to but actually was a new creation. During the twelve hours of night, each of which might be imagined as filling a much longer period, since the “time” of the day world did not operate, the solar boat encountered lakes of fire, caverns, and shoals. The journey itself is imagined not as a straight course from the place of the sun’s setting in the west to its rising in the east, but convoluted and folded back upon itself. Because no wind blew in the underworld, the boat needed to be towed through its realms. Spells and magic were crucial here to defeat the various manifestations of Apophis, usually in the form of serpents, who threatened to destroy the boat. But the power of serpents could also be enlisted for use against Apophis. The fact that 126. The similarity of the three stages of the sun’s daily life to Oedipus’s solution to the riddle of the sphinx is not fortuitous. The Egyptian sphinx was a form of the sun-god and ancestor of the Greek monster. See Paul Jordan, Riddles of the Sphinx (New York, 1998) 206–7. 127. See Hunter’s remarks on the fracturing of time in the Argonautica (1993, 165–66).

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snakes shed their skins made them symbols of regeneration. Time itself could be imagined as a serpent with its tail in its mouth (the ouroboros), so when the solar boat reached the final hour and drew near to the gate to the upper world, it was depicted as having taken the form of serpent or of passing through the body of a serpent (that is, passing through time) in order to emerge from the darkness to rise again in the eastern sky.128 According to Hornung, our sources of information about the sun’s descent and ascent date back to Old Kingdom Pyramid texts and include writings from as late as the Greco-Roman Period. In a collection of New Kingdom religious texts, the Egyptians seem increasingly systematic in their exploration of the sun’s voyage. Known as the Books of the Netherworld, these texts used to be characterized as “guides to the Beyond.” They include the Amduat, the Book of Gates, the Book of Caverns, and the Book of Earth. Their ancient generic designation “books about what is in dat” indicates their aim: to provide information usually from the standpoint of the sun god and his companions about the underworld, dat, its inhabitants, and its topography in both written and pictorial form.129

Underworld books were initially restricted to royal use, but increasingly they are found in and on coffins and tombs of the well-to-do and continue in use well into the Ptolemaic and Roman periods. These texts consisted of annotated illustrations and spells, from which, nevertheless, a consistent pattern of events can be extracted, as the solar boat moves through the underworld from sunset to the new sunrise. In addition, the papyrus Books of the Dead, which are written not from the “standpoint of the sun god and his companions” but from the standpoint of the individual dead person who wished to gain entrance to and survive in the underworld, exhibit knowledge of the same critical events of the Sun’s journey that occur in the underworld books.130 Although a considerable number of written and visual representations of the solar journey survive, Apollonius need not have gained his information about them from written media. Given the ubiquity of

128. Hornung 1992, 49–51, 63–64. 129. Hornung 1992, 96. 130. Hornung (1999) discusses content and context for each type of underworld text, the chronological range of its use, and useful bibliographies, including a list of translations into English for each type. For further bibliography, see T. Wilfong’s review of Hornung, BMCR 4.25 (2000).

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such ideas in Egyptian culture it is inconceivable that Apollonius and his Alexandrian audience could have been unaware of them, any more than modern residents of Christian nations, whatever their actual religious practices, can escape familiarity with the Christ story—birth in a manger, the visit of the three wise men, the slaughter of the innocents, trial before Pontius Pilate, crucifixion, death, resurrection. These were deeply held beliefs at all levels of society, forming the orthodox view of the Egyptian realm of the dead, and were manifested in burial practice, elements of which the Greek population in Egypt seems early to have assimilated.131 Even the moves in a popular Egyptian board game, Senet, appear to have been allegorized as the underworld journey of the soul.132 Moreover, Egyptian ideas of the afterlife had by this period filtered into Greek culture through writers like Eudoxus and Hecataeus of Abdera, if not much earlier.133 M. L. West, for example, suggests that the Sun’s struggles through the twelve hours of the dat may have been the origin for the twelve labors of Heracles, many of which involve the slaying of snaky monsters,134 and Heracles’ voyage in the bowl of the sun had obvious Egyptian analogues.135 Also, the very story that Apollonius chose to relate is easily accommodated to Egyptian solar myth, and the celestial elements in the Argonaut legend were well established.136 The Argo itself was identified as a constellation from at least

131. The Hellenomemphites, for instance, were adopting elements of Egyptian burial practice in the fourth century b.c.e. 132. A. Piankoff, The Wandering of the Soul: Texts Translated with Commentary, completed and prepared for publication by H. Jacquet-Gordon, Bollingen Series 40.6 (Princeton, 1974), 117–20. Piankoff observes that in one such game “the draughtsmen used by Horus and Seth while playing the game were considered to be the teeth of Mehen [a serpent inhabiting the underworld]” (p. 117). These ideas may have had currency in Demotic literature of the Greco-Roman period; see P. Piccione, “The Gaming Episode in the Tale of Setna Khamwas as a Religious Metaphor,” in For His Ka: Essays in Memory of Klaus Baer, ed. D. Silverman, Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 55 (Chicago, 1994) 197–204. 133. Hecataeus must have been familiar with Egyptian underworld lore; see Diodorus Siculus 1.72 and 1.92 (FGrH 264 F 25.72 and 92), discussed in chapter 1. 134. West 1996, 470–77. He points to the adventure in the golden bowl of Helios and the fetching of Cerberus from Hades. 135. See the discussion above, pages 131–32. 136. In her 1977 University of Illinois dissertation, “Astronomy in the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius,” P. Bogue presents the most thorough demonstration and documentation of the celestial references, which, she argues, map to a solar year of about 354 days for the voyage from beginning to end. See Bogue, pp. 25–31, for the astral associations of the heroes of the Argonautica. Cf. Vian, who in his edition of book 4 posits a voyage of six months (1981, 12–13). S. Noegel, in an unpublished paper, also discusses the “solar journey” of the Argo.

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the Hellenistic period,137 and Plutarch, though obviously much later than Apollonius, claims that it was the boat of Osiris, that is, the night bark of the sun.138 Aeetes and his clan were the offspring of Helios, and in previous Greek writing Colchis was identified with the night region of the sun. Mimnermus, for example, in the Nanno describes Aeetes’ city as a place “where the rays of the swift sun lie in a golden chamber at the lips of Ocean, to which godlike Jason came.”139 That the Sun traversed the underworld during the night seems to have been a familiar idea to some Greeks.140 Earlier in the chapter we noted the chthonic and magic attributes of the Argonauts themselves. Apollonius then does not invent so much as select a complementary Greek tale and exploit its latencies in ways that developed its potential as an underworld journey, just as he conforms events in his own narrative to that of Homer’s Odyssey or Pindar’s fourth Pythian. Book 4 begins with the removal of the golden fleece from its guardian dragon, immediately after which the Argonauts flee Colchis to begin their return to Greece, not by the route taken on their outward journey, but by an alternate path the knowledge of which the Colchians have preserved from their Aeaean (Egyptian) forebears. Pursued by the Colchians, Jason kills and mutilates Aeetes’ son Apsyrtus in the land of the Brygi and buries his body on the spot. The Argonauts continue their journey, passing a lake of flames into which Phaethon fell (4.599–603), to reach “the portals and mansions of Night” (4.630), and when they are about to fall off the edge of the earth Hera saves them. At this point they enter an Odyssean geography, visiting first Circe in the far west, then Phaeacia. On Circe’s island, called Aeaea, we are reminded of Colchis. Circe is, of course, Aeetes’ sister, who has the look of a child of Helios, and she and Medea speak Colchian, which if not identical with 137. LIMC 2.1.924 for the Argo as a constellation with illustration (2.2.681). The constellation was well attested in the Hellenistic period; see Kidd 1997, 311 (on Aratus 342–54). 138. DIO 22; and see Gwyn Griffiths’s discussion (1960, 377–78). See also F. Boll, Sphaera: Neue griechische Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der Sternbilder (Leipzig, 1903) 169–81. Boll rightly rejects the suggestion that the Argo was made a constellation in conformity with Egyptian astronomic lore (though Kidd accepts the identification [1997, 311]). For Egyptians the ship of Osiris could not have been a constellation, since it traverses the underworld, not the night sky. It is much more likely that the identification of this boat with the Argo is a Greek idea. 139. Fr. 11a in M. L. West, Iambi et elegi graeci ante Alexandrum cantati, vol 2 (Oxford, 1972). Mimnermus’s fragment is cited in Strabo 1.2.40. 140. See Pindar: toPsi lampei mBn mAno% delAoy tbn Dnuade nAkta katv (fr. 129 Snell-Maehler), and surely that is the sense of Callimachus’s remark that the sun, when it has set, shines upon the sons of Ophion (fr. 177 Pf. = fr. 259 SH): \OfionAdusi faeAn[ei).

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Egyptian must be closely related.141 Then, the Argonauts are aided by Hera and the Nereids as they pass by Scylla and the clashing rocks to get to Phaeacia where Jason and Medea consummate their marriage in the cave of Dionysus. Here ends the Odyssean adventure, but, unlike Odysseus, the Argonauts do not return home immediately from Phaeacia but must endure “even to the boundaries of Libya” (4.1237). Their journey across the Libyan desert requires them to carry their ship over the sands for twelve days, during which time they encounter a number of serpents; Euphemus receives the clod of earth from Triton, and as they turn homewards they encounter one final obstacle, the warder of Crete, the brazen giant Talos, who is destroyed by Medea’s magic and drained of his vital fluids. After defeating Talos the Argonauts enter into an impenetrable darkness, which is finally dispelled by the appearance of Apollo. The book ends with the dream of Euphemus, the casting of the clod into the depths, from which another island in time will emerge—Kalliste, that is, Thera. A few lines later the weary crew disembark at Pagasae, and the poem ends on a line of joyful homecoming adapted from Odyssey 23.296. By listing these events in detail it is possible to identify what is familiar and explicable within a Greek context (whether Homeric or otherwise), what modern readers have perceived as odd, those areas where Apollonius has altered his sources, and, finally, how this sequence conforms to the Egyptian underworld books. The first point to consider is the fact that the return voyage differs substantially from the way out. A number of reasons for varying the route may be adduced, the desire to conform the poem to the nostos of the Odyssey and to Pythian 4 being the most obvious. We saw earlier in this chapter that dependence upon Pindar underscores Greek claims to North Africa and is proleptic of the establishment of the new foundation of Alexandria. But why does Apollonius call specific attention to the return route of the Argonauts as laid out in the writing of the Colchian ancestors and enlarge upon the Libyan adventure, particularly the sequence of encounters with snakes and other local phenomena that do not occur in Pindar? Hecataeus of Miletus included the Nile in the Argonauts’ return route, but in spite of the fact that Apollonius used Hecataean geography elsewhere, he does not incorporate this detail, though it would seem prima facie a better fit for an Alexandrian poem than the Libyan sands. What seems in 141. On the basis of 4.278–81 the “language of the ancestors” must have been Egyptian.

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Hecataeus, Pindar, and Antimachus to have been a return course from Ocean to the Nile with south-north portage from the Nile across Libya142 to the Mediterranean has been altered to a west-east direction from the Syrtes to Lake Tritonis. Why does Apollonius construct his Homeric episode with the marriage in a cave? Why end the poem where he does?143 Why spend so much time on cosmic beginnings, with homecoming relegated to a one-line allusion? Why end with not one island but two? What function can the emergence of Anaphe serve that is distinct from the promise of Thera? In Callimachus’s Hymn to Delos we saw the interplay of Greek and Egyptian ideas in the special role of islands and through the linking of the birth of Apollo to the emergence of order from chaos. The conclusion to Apollonius’s book 4 plays out this same set of themes. If we place the events of book 4 alongside of the Egyptian account of the night voyage of the sun, we will find a remarkable number of correspondences between the ostensibly Greek narrative and Egyptian myth, correspondences not on the order of two or three vague similarities, but of overall narrative patterning. Events at the beginning and the end of the solar journey as well as during its course bear a striking resemblance to incidents in Apollonius; moreover, they occur in roughly the same narrative order. To guard against the possibility that what I think I see results from a pathological condition rather than a deliberately constructed optional illusion, I considered other extant accounts of the Argo’s return journey. I found, however, that neither Pythian 4 nor Dionysius Scytobrachion nor even the epitome of Apollodorus (who borrows much from Apollonius) exhibits anything like the same number of parallels. These other versions are sufficiently varied in detail that any argument for similarity to Egyptian myth is untenable.144 In what follows I have enumerated the correspondences between the Argo’s return voyage and the night voyage of the sun for clarity and easy reference.

142. See Braswell’s discussion (1988, 345–48) and sch. on AR 4. 257–62b Wendel. 143. If Cameron’s argument that books 1–2 of the Aetia preceded the composition of the Argonautica is correct, is the fact that in the Aetia Callimachus began his account of the Argonauts’ adventure with an aition on Anaphe a sufficient reason for its prominence at the end of Apollonius’s poem? See Cameron 1995, 25–62, and esp. 261–62, for his proposed chronology of the works of the two poets. 144. For example, Apollodorus reverses the order of the encounter with Talos and the appearance of the island of Anaphe (1.9.26).

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1. To begin with, the most significant permanent members of the Argo’s crew are Orpheus and Jason, whose particular skills are exemplified by song and intelligence, while Medea, who joins the crew in book 4, is a magician whose spells are often efficacious for the journey, particularly at the very beginning when she subdues the dragon and and at the close of book 4 when she destroys Talos. As we saw above, the most important members of the Sun’s crew were Intelligence (Sia), Effective Utterance (Hu), and Magic (Heka). Further, the pilot Tiphys is a homonym of the Greek Typhon.145 Just as the destructive power of snakes could be used apotropaically, Seth (who was called Typhon in Greek), the archenemy of Horus, often joined him as the helmsman of the solar boat and used his destructive magic to repel the cosmic threat of Apophis.146 While it is true that Tiphys dies early in the outgoing voyage (2.854), I am by no means suggesting that Apollonius slavishly reproduced an Egyptian underworld tale in all of its particulars (any more than he so reproduced the Odyssey), but rather that by a judicious selection of details in his Greek narrative he creates the opportunity for his audience to see his ostensibly Greek events as simultaneously Egyptian. 2. Book 4 opens with a passage analyzed earlier in which Jason and Medea approach the golden fleece just before dawn. Their path to the fleece is impeded by a serpent whom Apollonius describes as immortal (2.1209). In Egyptian mythology Apophis could never be permanently defeated, but only temporarily incapacitated, since he too was immortal by virtue of being originary chaos.147 Jason then cloaks himself in the fleece and strides forward to join his crew, who are lost in admiration at his dazzling appearance. For the purposes of his underworld journey, the Egyptian sun-god was usually depicted as Amon-Re, the ram-god of Thebes, and when he begins his night journey he is represented pictorially as either a ram-headed man or a man-headed ram.148 Phrixus’s ram with its golden fleece would have provided an obvious analogue to Amon-Re, and Jason draped in the fleece would seem to take on these 145. Moreau 1994, 128–29, and see his notes. 146. Te Velde 1967, 99–108. 147. Hornung 1982, 107. 148. Herodotus 2.42 describes a Theban festival in which a ram was killed, flayed, and and its skin used to drape around a statue of Zeus (i.e., Amon). Lloyd (1976, 195) thinks this might be part of the celebration of the festival of Opet, a central rite of divine kingship that was still celebrated in the Ptolemaic period.

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solar associations.149 The shining fleece is immediately covered with a cloak and not seen again until it is used as a coverlet for the marriage bed in Dionysus’s cave. Similarly the sun-god “is obligated to conceal his radiant eye in order to protect it,” and the nether journey takes place in darkness.150 3. As they flee Colchis the Argonauts take a route home that differs from their outgoing journey. Argus, the son of Phrixus, tells them about an alternate course known to the Colchians from the writings of their ancestors: oF da toi graptPß patArvn Euen eDrAontai, kArbia% oQ% Gni ppsai cdoB kaB peArat’ Gasin Crgp% te traferp% te pArij DpinissomAnoisin. They preserve writings of their ancestors, kurbiai, on which are all the paths and boundaries of the sea and land for those going around. (4.278–81)

These “ancestors” only a few lines before were identified as Egyptian, by virtue of Sesostris’s colonizing activities in primeval time, so prima facie their graptP% must be hieroglyphics.151 Further, the medium on which they are incribed are kurbiai, a term used for the square-based pyramidal columns on which the Athenians kept their laws. The exact contents of the Aeaean kurbiai are not clear, and the language of the passage is ambiguous, but from the reference to the Ister that immediately follows (4.284), the kurbiai would seem to hold a description or map of watercourses. Yet Egyptian learning was not distinguished for cartography, so at this point it seems fair to ask to what purpose is this poetic space figured as Egyptian, and to observe that Egyptian maps of the underworld placed on tomb walls, sarcophagi, and papyri have survived in far greater number than maps of real geographies.152 4. The murder of Apsyrtus may be the single most troubling episode in the Argonautica, an understanding of which (like Aeneas’s killing of

149. Noegel, in an unpublished paper, remarks about the golden fleece that “it would have been difficult for a reader of the Argonautika living in Egypt not to think also of the god Amon-Re.” 150. Hornung 1982, 105. 151. graptP% is rare, but the phrase graptP% dnurapvn does occur in a small fragment of Eratosthenes’ Hermes (SH fr. 397.ii.2), where the editors suggest the context might be the invention of writing by Hermes-Thoth. 152. See, for example, Hornung 1999, 10, for an illustration of one such map from the Book of Two Ways.

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Turnus) must affect our reading of the text as a whole. The murder is brutal and treacherous, yet allusively framed both to undermine and to reinforce this impression. The murder has been understood as part of Jason’s ephebic transition into full manhood,153 or as a mark of his amechania154 or his generally nonheroic character. A number of scholars have pointed out the sacrificial aspects of the scene. Jason’s murderous act is explicitly likened to a butcher striking a bull, and the deed is done in the forecourt of a temple (4.468–70).155 Jason then mutilates his victim by cutting off his extremities and thrice licking his blood, thrice spitting the pollution from his mouth (4.477–78). This mutilation of the corpse enacts the ritual of the maschalismos, which Orestes also performs after killing his mother and Aegisthus.156 Prima facie this suggests that the murder and its expiation are part of the inexorable movement from the precivilized chthonic world towards the “justice of Zeus,” and this is reinforced by the “judgment” of Circe, who cleanses the murderers of their blood guilt in the same way that Orestes was purified at Delphi.157 Alternatively, the killing in the realm of the Brygi in the forecourt of a temple pulls the action into the world of the Iphigenia in Taurus with the sacrifice of strangers to Artemis; an allusive matrix would position Jason as a Thoas figure and a barbarian. The confusion is unlikely to have been accidental: Apollonius seems to have altered his sources in a number of particulars in recounting the death: sometimes Apsyrtus was an infant or a child, scarcely old enough to command a fleet; often it was Medea who killed him,158 not Jason, and in one memorable version the infant Apsyrtus is hacked to pieces and strewn upon the waters to distract a pursuing Aeetes.159 If we alter the frame of reference to Egyptian myth, the events are more coherent. Three elements of the scene are important: Apsytrus is a 153. See especially Hunter 1988, 450–51. 154. See Pietsch 1999, 152–58. 155. J. Porter, “Tiptoeing through the Corpses: Euripides’ Electra, Apollonius, and the Bouphonia,” GRBS 31 (1990) 255–80; Hunter (1993, 61) links it with Agamemnon’s sacrifice of Iphigenia; Goldhill (1991, 332) connects it with the subsequent death of Pelias. 156. Presumably these actions conform to rituals to avoid the consequences of the treacherous murder. See E. Rohde’s discussion in Psyche: Seelencult und Unsterblichkeitsglaube der Griechen, 2d ed. (Tübingen, 1925) 322–26, and Livrea’s notes ad. loc. 157. See F. Griffiths, “Murder, Purification, and Cultural Formation in Aeschylus and Apollonius Rhodius,” Helios 17 (1990) 25–39, for a nuanced discussion of this reading of the murder. 158. According to the scholiast on Euripides Medea 1334, Medea murdered Apsyrtus Dp’ oGkoy Dn tu patrAdi, c% KallAmaxo%. 159. Moreau 1994, 71–72 n. 66; Livrea, note on 4.481.

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surrogate for Aeetes, whose behavior seemed to place him outside of the boundaries of civilized community; he and his men are impeding the course of Jason and the fleece; and his corpse is mutilated. As with the Gaulish enemy in Callimachus’s Hymn to Delos, every mundane example of an enemy of the pharoah (Ptolemy) in “real” time assumes the ideological baggage of the cosmic enemy, whether Seth or Apophis. The ritual mutilation of the one (as with enemies on the field of battle) is, therefore, an apotropaic reenactment in “real” time of an event that occurs nightly in symbolic time, namely, the mutilation or destruction of Apophis as he attempts to hinder passage of the solar bark. Consider, for example, this spell from the Book of the Dead, which addresses Apophis: Decapitated and with face cut off (art thou) who passest on the roadsides. Hacked off is thy head, (thou) who art in thy earth; crushed are thy bones. Dismembered art thou (by Isis); (she) consigns thee to , (O) Apophis, enemy of Re.160

The killing of Apsyrtus fits this pattern. He is cast as the “real” time enemy of Jason and Medea but acts as a Seth/Apophis figure in hindering passage of the Argo. He is butchered like a sacrifical animal in the forecourt of a temple. Seth was frequently identified as a bull, and in Egyptian temple practice, by the Ptolemaic period, the slaughter of a bull was allegorized as the killing and mutilation of Seth as a retaliation for his murder of his brother. Moreover, this event was commemorated in the night sky, where the “foreleg of Seth” was the Egyptian constellation that Greeks subsequently identified with the Bear, while Osiris was equated with the star of Orion.161 The “foreleg of Seth” was located in that quadrant of the sky to which Berenice’s lock was transported,162 and thus could have been known to those Hellenistic Greeks who took an interest in astronomical lore. In addition to the link between killing Seth and the ritual slaughter of a bull, H. Te Velde points out that daily temple service at this period required the making of a figure of Seth in red wax or wood, binding it, treading on it with the left foot, thrusting a spear into it, and cutting it into pieces, thus sympathetically reenacting Horus’s triumph over his enemy and guaranteeing

160. Spell 39 (Allen 1974, 46). 161. Te Velde 1967, 86. 162. The relative dates of the Argonautica and the Lock of Berenice are not known. See Selden’s discussion (1998, 344), where he remarks that the lock was “the most recent addition to the celestial corps which daily helps Isis to keep the incursions of Seth at bay.”

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that Seth was kept at bay.163 This ritual event necessarily had its analogue in the underworld, where repelling “Seth and his gang” was essential for the successful voyage of the solar boat. Repelling Seth was accomplished by the reciting of spells in which spitting was a significant component, for example: “I have warded off Seth for you. I have spat on his confederacy for you.”164 These parallels may not make the overall scene less troubling to a modern reader, but it does align the Egyptian signification with the Greek in the following sense: killing and mutilating Seth or one’s enemy reenacted the triumph of order over chaos, just as allusion to the murders committed by Orestes conforms Jason to a trajectory that leads from the chthonic tyranny of the Furies to the enlightened world of Zeus and Apollo. 5. Another familiar aspect of the Egyptian underworld landscape was the Lake of Fire: compare Hornung’s translation from an early vignette in the Book of Gates— “This lake is full of grain | The water of the lake is fiery | Birds fly away | When they see its water | They sense the stench of what is in it”165—with Apollonius’s text: And [the Argo] hastened on under sail and entered into the furthest eddies of the Eridanus, where Phaethon, once struck on his chest by a flaming thunderbolt and half-consumed, fell from the chariot of Helios into the streams of the deep lake. Even now it belches up heavy vapor from the smoldering wound. And no bird can cross over that water by stretching out its light wings, but in midcourse plunges into the flames. . . . [The Argonauts] were afflicted all day, weighed down by the dreadful stench. (4.594–602, 620–22)

6. The fleece, once placed in the Argo proceeds on a course from east to west until the Argonauts reach the “portals and mansions of Night” (4.630) and the western ocean. About to meet with calamity and fall into Ocean, the crew is saved by Hera and their course directed

163. Te Velde 1967: 150–51. See also Hornung 1982, 107. 164. See Ritner 1993, 86, and his chapter on the significance of spitting and licking in Egyptian magic, pp. 82–102. The mutilation of Osiris by Seth does not really fit as a paradigm for this scene, since Osiris’s mutilation was a type of sparagmos. His body parts intentionally were strewn over much of Lower Egypt. However, since Jason and Apsytrus are in many ways mirror images of each other and near brothers-in-law, the one inflicting gross bodily harm upon the other does play out elements of the “Contendings of Horus and Seth.” 165. Hornung 1990, 157; 1971, 211. Encounter with a fiery lake or sulfurous pit happened more than once in the night voyage. On the appearance of ideas related to the lake of flames in later Greco-Egyptian material, see L. Koenen, “Prophezeiungen des ‘Töpfers,’ ” ZPE 2.3 (1968) 184–86.

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to Circe’s island, called Aeaea, the extreme western analogue of Aeetes’ Colchis, and another reminder of the Egyptian dimension of the poem. From there, the Argonauts proceed to Phaeacia, where Jason and Medea are married. Apollonius insists upon the chthonic and vegetative aspects of this scene.166 The island is called Drepane, or “Sickle,” and two origins for the name are given: either it commemorates the knife that Demeter gave to the Titans to harvest grain or the knife used for the castration of Uranos by Zeus (4.984–92). The marriage takes place within a “holy cave” in which the nurse of the baby Dionysus dwelt, a detail known from no other source.167 Moreover, it is only here that the fleece reappears, to serve as a coverlet upon the nuptial couch, and in its appearance shines out in the darkness: “from its golden tufts it gleamed like flame and kindled in their eyes sweet desire” (4.1146–47). For Greek readers the evocation of this particular set of details would no doubt have recalled the gift of Dionysus’s robe to Apsyrtus, and his subsequent murder and mutilation, thus creating a macabre and ominous undercurrent for the nuptials. In Egyptian myth, however, the sequence of castration, divinities of vegetation, caves, and Dionysus (Osiris) has a different logic. After Osiris was killed, dismembered, and castrated by his brother Seth, he retreated to the underworld to rule as Lord of the Dead. On his nightly journey, Re (the alter ego of Osiris) united with him deep within the recesses of the dat, and for one moment the god was reawakened. Vignettes portray the sun disk above the mummified Osiris from whom corn sprouts, emblematic of his role as god of vegetation.168 I submit that the evocation not just of Dionysus, but of Dionysus in the context of vegetation in combination with the chthonic and hidden location of a cave, and the reappearance of the fleece is not fortuitous, but by a judicious selection of details Apollonius intentionally constructed a narrative that imitates a critical moment of the solar journey—the union of the Sun with Osiris. This event in the solar journey is one of the greatest peril, when the boat is surrounded by its enemies, who threaten annihilation; similarly in Apollonius, the impetus for the 166. In Hecataeus of Abdera, Osiris/Dionysus is presented as the god who brings the civilizing arts, including agriculture (Diodorus Siculus 1.15). 167. The scholiast (4.1153–54 Wendel) tells us that while Timaeus located the marriage in Corcyra, Dionysus the Milesian placed it in Byzantium, and Antimachus, in his Lyde, by the banks of the river in Colchis. At 4.1141 the scholiast mentions that Philitas says the pair were married in the house of Alcinous (fr. 9 Kuchenmüller). 168. Scene 46 from the Book of Gates proclaims: “Thriving are the fields of the Netherworld, | As Re shines over the body of Osiris. | At your rising the plants appear” (Hornung 1990, 118, and see the illustration on p. 119).

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marriage is the impending arrival of Colchians intent on retrieving the fleece as well as Medea. In many versions, this momentary union of the solar and chthonic—of Re and Osiris—is also a time of sexual potency, when Isis couples with Osiris.169 7. After leaving Phaeacia the Argonauts are blown off course to Libya, where they then move from west to northeast. Fom the perspective of the Egyptians who lived to the east of this region, the area of the western desert was the land of the dead. Burial sites were regularly placed on the western side of the Nile. This was where the sun set and began its perilous journey in the underworld, which especially towards the end of the sun’s course resembled arid desert. As the Argonauts cross Libya they encounter a series of serpents. The crossing of Libya requires the Argonauts to carry their boat for twelve days and nights (4.1389)—the number of hours of darkness in the dat.170 The final stages of the Egyptian underworld journey provide a close parallel: the waterways become a desert, and the solar boat must be carried or dragged before it can emerge again into the light. It may even become a serpent in order to glide along the sand (see plate 5). Hornung describes this as follows: The fourth and fifth hours of the Amduat take the sun into a peculiar landscape. The realm of the god Sokar is a pure desert guarded by hoards of serpents. . . . In order for them to move on without the necessary waterway, the sun bark turns itself into a snake, to glide over the hot sand more easily. Both the bow and stern are snake-headed, and the text describes how they spew bright fire before them.171

Compare the final simile that Apollonius chooses for the Argo: As a serpent writhes along its crooked path when the sun’s hottest rays inflame it, and with a hiss turns its head from side to side, and in fury its eyes blaze in fury like sparks of fire until it goes down into its lair through a fissure in the rock, so too the Argo wandered for a long time as it sought an outlet from the lake.172

169. Hornung 1990, 116–17. 170. This detail is in Pindar (Pythian 4.25–6), so on its own it could not convey an Egyptian context. 171. Hornung 1982, 77. Compare “This great God drives them along in this way.| The flames in the mouth of his bark are what guide him on these secret paths” (Hornung 1971, 98). 172. 4.1540–47 (for the Greek text, see above, page 194). The passage was discussed earlier in the context of transculturation and the collapse of a consistent symbolic matrix.

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8. As the adventure nears its end, the Argo encounters one final obstacle, Talos, who is said to have been the last of the men of bronze created in an earlier age, and left to guard the island of Crete. Talos is the final vestige of the chthonic and world, and with his defeat the Argonauts are at last able to complete their journey. The scene with Talos has features that make it almost a doublet of the encounter with the guardian of the fleece. In neither do Jason or his men effect the removal of the dangerous creature, but Medea does it for them, thus opening and closing book 4 with potent demonstrations of the efficacy of her magic. Just as she called upon Sleep in the earlier scene, she summons fellow creatures of Hades, the heart-devouring Spirits of Death (4.1665–66), with her charms to aid in her task. She bewitches Talos by her glance (4.1670), causing him to stumble and pierce the vulnerable vein on his ankle. Once the ankle has been opened the ichor drains from his body, and he collapses, and with him the last impediment to the return to Orchomenos. These details are unique to Apollonius.173 In the Egyptian netherworld, in the eleventh hour before sunrise, Apophis has swallowed up the waters on which the sun bark floats. He must be pierced with knives to disgorge the waters in order for the boat to proceed, and his menacing presence is further repelled by magic, either of Isis174 or of Seth. Compare Spell 108 from the Book of the Dead: As for that mountain of Bakhu, on which the sky rests, it is in the east of the sky; it is three hundred rods long and one hundred and fifty broad. . . . A serpent is on the top of that mountain; it is thirty cubits long; eight cubits of its foreparts are of flint, and its teeth gleam. . . . Now after a while he will turn his eyes against Re, and a stoppage will occur in the Sacred Bark . . . or he will swallow up seven cubits of great waters; Seth will project a lance of iron against him and will make him vomit up all that he has swallowed. Seth . . . will say to him with magic power: “. . . I stand before you navigating aright and seeing afar. Cover your face, for I ferry across, get back because of me . . . , I am the great magician . . . and power against you has been granted to me.”175

9. Immediately after the demise of Talos, the Argonauts enter a darkness that is chthonic, Hades-like, and chaotic: 173. In a lost play of Sophocles, Talos died when the pin in his ankle that held in the ichor was removed (sch. on AR 4.1646–48 Wendel). Elsewhere he was made by Hephaestus for Minos. See LIMC 7.1.834–37, s.v. Talos; and Cook 1964, 719–30. 174. Hornung 1982, 106. This incident occurs in the eleventh hour of the Book of Gates. 175. Wasserman 1994, 113. (This is a slightly less cumbersome translation of the spell than in Allen 1974, 85–86.)

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Night terrified them, night, which they call enshrouding;176 the stars did not break through that deadly night, nor did the beams of the moon. From heaven descended black chaos (mAlan xao%), or perhaps another darkness came rising from the lowest depths (drarei skotAh myxatvn dntioPsa berAurvn). But whether they were drifting in Hades or on the waters they knew not at all. (4.1695–1700)

This terrifying darkness is dispelled by the appearance of Apollo, whose gleaming bow presages the sunrise: LhtoLdh, tAnh dA kat› oDranoP Ekeo pAtra% r\Amfa MelanteAoy% driakoo%, aE t› DnB panti qntai¢ doiavn dB mip% DfAperuen droAsa%, dejiteru xrAseion dnAsxeue% Ccaui tajon¢ marmarAhn d› dpAlamce bib% perB pantouen aGglhn. ToPsi dA ti% Sporadvn baib dpb tafra faanuh npso% DdePn, dlAgh% ˆIppoyrAdo% dgxaui nasoy, Gnu› eDnb% Dbalonto kai Gsxeuon¢ ADtAka d› db% fAggen dnerxomAnh¢ toB d› dglabn \Apallvni glsei DnB skieru tAmeno% stiaenta te bvmbn poAeon, ADglathn mBn eDskapoy eEneken aGglh% FoPbon keklamenoi¢ \Anafhn dA te lissada npson Gskon, f db FoPbo% min dtyzomAnoi% dnAfhne. Son of Leto, when you heard you came swiftly from heaven to the Melantian rocks, which lie in the sea. Leaping onto one of the twin peaks, in your right hand you held aloft your golden bow. And the bow flashed a bright gleam in every direction. A tiny island of the Sporades appeared to them to see, near to the small island of Hippuris, and there they cast their anchor and moored. And immediately dawn rose up and lighted the sky. And for Apollo they made a gleaming sanctuary in a shady grove and an altar of stones, calling Phoebus “ ‘Gleamer” because of rays that were seen from afar, and the bare island they call “Appearance,” since Phoebus made it appear to them in their confusion.177

Sunrise is the moment when the sun bark emerges from its netherworld journey. It is the central moment of Egyptian religious and cosmogonic speculation in which creation, the birth of gods, and the new day con-

176. See Livrea, p. 465 n. 1695, on the rare word (katoylada) used in this passage. 177. 4.1706–18. Apollonius’s language for Anaphe in line 1712 (dlAgh% . . . nasoy) echoes that of Callimachus for Calypso’s island (dlAghn nhsPda KalycoP%, fr. 470b Pf.). In describing the Arcadian hill upon which Zeus was born, Callimachus borrows the language of Odyssey 7.244 (dgygAh ti% npso%, i.e., Calypso’s island). If Apollonius’s choice is deliberate, the Hidden (Calypso’s island) becoming the island of Appearance (Anaphe) well suits Egyptian cosmogony.

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verge (see plate 6). Hornung describes the final events of the underworld journey in this way: All the other gods and blessed dead are lifted from the dark depths of water and earth along with the sun god, and the sleeping likewise emerge from the world of dreams . . . and return to the sensible light of consciousness. The world is young as at Creation, when everything was first allowed to rise out of the dark watery abyss. . . . The Egyptian was thoroughly convinced that the creation could be repeated, that the “first time”—as he called the emergence of time—was in fact repeated every morning with the dawn, which returned youthful freshness to the world.178

This moment was an object of religious awe and venerated in hymn. In his analysis of solar hymns J. Assmann identifies the aspects of sunrise that hymns consistently celebrate: the birth of the sun-god in the morning, the appearance of the god, and the illuminating of the earth.179 A typical hymn praises the god as “he rises in the eastern sky, and illuminates the Two Lands [Egypt] with gold.”180 Another begins: “I am Ra in his first appearances, when he shines forth from the horizon.”181 Moreover, the verb that expresses sunrise also signifies the appearance of the pharaoh on his throne and “is written with the hieroglyph . . . that depicts the sun rising over the Primeval Hill.”182 Thus creation, sunrise, and pharaonic presence are implicated in a web of significations any one of which triggers the whole chain. In contrast to these Egyptian hymnic formulations of morning, in which cosmic, religious, and political ideologies are causally linked, Greek epic personifies the encroaching light as mere episodic transition, as the female figure of Dawn, most familiar from the Homeric and Hesiodic formula rmo% d› drigAneia fanh r\ododaktylo% \Ha% (“when early-born rosy-fingered Dawn appears”). In Apollonius’s careful description of the emergence from profound darkness epic dawn’s appearance (aDtAka d› dbß fAggen dnerxomAnh) is enclosed in a larger vignette that first reports the events—the sudden arrival of Apollo whose golden bow gleams in all directions, followed by the appearance of an island—and then transforms them 178. Hornung 1992, 92. Spell 15 (Allen 1974, 12), for example, proclaims: “How beautiful is thy rising from the horizon, when thou illuminatest the Two Lands with your rays. . . . My body becomes new at beholding thy beauty.” Cf. also Spell 162 (Allen, pp. 158–59). 179. Assmann 1995, 44–49. 180. Assmann 1995, 46. 181. Quirke 1992, 23. 182. Frankfort 1978, 150–51.

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into an aition.183 Thus we are presented not simply with another epic daybreak, but one significant enough to stimulate the foundation of a cult and be remembered in the name of an island. In its selection of detail—the name of the island (“Appearance”) and the title of Apollo (the “Gleamer”)— this daybreak is so close to Egyptian hymnic formulations that it could even be translating them. Taken individually, no one or even several of these incidents ought necessarily to evoke an Egyptian context, but so many in combination, occurring in a text that overtly identifies Colchis as an Egyptian colony and Aeetes and Medea as descendants of the sun-god, Helios, a text in which astral and cosmogonic phenomena are prominent and which was written in a land where solar events play a role in royal legitimation, cannot be the result of chance. But what effect if any would allusions to this particular set of Egyptian myths have on the narrative as a whole? Certainly I have not meant to suggest that this is an encrypted text, that we are meant to read hidden meanings in Egyptian symbols. Rather, Apollonius’s compositional technique throughout the Argonautica, as a number of scholars have demonstrated, has been to include a variety of time frames, to shift from homodiegetic to heterodiegetic narrative and back, to combine folklore, romance, tragedy, and scientific observation in unpredictable ways, so that in the course of narrating an event or aition the reader might catch a glimpse of untold alternatives. In this way the “meaning” of the poem very quickly dissolves into “meanings,” since Apollonius has set up competing centers of authority in his text. Any message of Greek cultural supremacy or of the transforming quality of Greek values is rendered moot. Just as readers catch occasional glimpses of Heracles throughout the narrative, often in ways that seem to undermine or call into question actions of Jason or the Argonauts, I would argue that Apollonius provides for us glimpses of the Egyptian other against which and often through which Greek action is to be viewed. But the Egypt Apollonius permits us to see is also constructed on more than one conceptual level: through the allusion to the settlements of Sesostris’s veterans we meet the Egypt of an earlier Greek history; through a series of intertextualities with the works of Calli183. Goldhill (1991, 326) regards these aetiologies as “exploring the possibilities of (causal) connection, both in its telling of the sequence of events and in the implication of such events in a continuing history of the terrain mapped by the narrative’s journey.” While essentially a formulation embedded in language and text, the relevance to politics and history cannot be overlooked.

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machus and Hecataeus in which he experiments with Egyptian ideas and models we meet a contemporary Egypt being refashioned for the Ptolemies; but in the cosmogonic realm, in the sustained evocation of the solar journey, we meet an older, pre-Greek Egypt to match our older pre-Homeric adventure. The Argonautica begins with an invocation to Apollo—drxameno% sAo, FoPbe—and throughout the adventure Apollo appears at critical times to support the Argonauts. Cults to Apollo, usually connected with phenomena of light, established by the Argonauts as they pass through the eastern Mediterranean, are defining moments in the text. Moreover, Apollonius’s Apollo, an Olympian, a youth, and connected with the enterprises of civilization, is counterpoised to Helios, the older Greek sun-god, whose offspring, like Aeetes, Circe, or Pasiphae, seem to belong to a separate race,184 inclined towards destructiveness and magic practice. In Egypt, Apollo was equated with Horus, the youthful son of Isis and Osiris, or Horus-the-Child, who was the prototype of pharaonic kingship. On the Greek level Apollo triumphs over Helios; on the Egyptian the new sunrise marks the birth of Horus-the-Child, the newborn Sun, whose mythology seems to have been actively appropriated by the early Ptolemies.185 The Greek island—“Appearance”— has a name that is meaningful in two cultural spheres and stands proleptically for the island that is destined to rise up from the clod of earth given to Euphemus. The clod and the island it becomes link Greece and Egypt in political and hereditary terms, as ruler and ruled. In contrast, Anaphe in this earlier time is empty,186 and as yet unmarked hierarchically. But Apollonius’s formulation of the island’s appearance and the gleaming of Apollo are surely meant to herald the emergence of a Greek Horus, instantiated in the Ptolemies. Under Ptolemiac rule, the kingdom of Egypt was undergoing a transformation from a culture completely Egyptian—the land of the solar journey—to a land of shared culture—Greek language and political dominance on the one hand and Egyptian language, religious beliefs, and economic practices on the 184. 4.728: “The race of Helios was plain to see, since they shot in front of them a gleam of gold from their far-flashing eyes.” 185. See Selden 1998, 389, on Ptolemy II’s use of the Horus title, especially the innovative “Child Triumphant,” where he is referring to the Pithom stele (Sethe 1904–16, 2: 84). 186. The bareness of Anaphe is so complete that only water is available to perform a ritual, and the slave women accompanying Medea ridicule the inadequacy of the ritual event. Callimachus tells a similar story about Anaphe at the opening of the Aetia (fr. 7 Pf.), but not enough remains to compare treatments.

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other. By constructing the events in book 4 in such a way that they are coherent in both Greek and Egyptian narrative terms, Apollonius has in fact written a poem of and for the new hybrid political state, by retrojecting into the epic past elements of both worlds and by creating an epic template for new beginnngs that partakes of both. This accounts for the final doublet—the two islands that close the text—Anaphe and Thera of the future. By ending with two islands, Apollonius focuses the reader’s attention on Egypt of a new order. This is not the older order of Egyptian solar cosmogony or of Greek conquest, but potentially at least a new symbolic realm, signified by the appearance of Apollo and the promise of a new Greco-Egyptian reign of Horus-the-Child. The dawn of this new order requires new symbols and new narratives, the uniqueness of which Apollonius and his contemporaries collectively have striven to articulate.

chapter 5

The Two Lands

Throughout its recorded history, Egyptians conceptualized their country as dual, as “the Two Lands”: Upper Egypt, or the valley of the Nile proper from Memphis to the first cataract in the south, and Lower Egypt, the fertile alluvial plain of the Delta in the north. The historical beginning of Egypt was imagined as a specific event: the “Unification of the Two Lands.” Pharaonic titulature emphasized the role of the king as unifier;1 and the two regions came to have a separate set of iconographies—crowns, plants, animals, divinities. This dichotomy was so central that throughout the course of Egyptian history ceremonies of kingship and of royal renewal (the so-called Sed festival) stipulated that the king perform rituals twice, once as king of the North and again as king of the South.2 Whether or not unification was actually the formative moment in Egyptian history—and Egyptologists are in some doubt3—it did reflect a certain political and ecological reality. Upper Egypt (called by Herodotus Egypt proper) was very dry and entirely dependent upon the Nile for its irrigation, cultivation extending in some places less than a mile on either side of the river. Its cereal crops were a significant part 1. The second and fourth throne names were respectively the “Two Ladies,” referring to the red crown of Lower Egypt and the white crown of Upper Egypt, and the Nswbity, or “he of the sedge (nsw) and the bee (bit),” King of Upper (sedge) Egypt and Lower (bee) Egypt (Beckerath 1999, 10–16 and 21–25). On the Ptolemies’ use of pharaonic titulature, see Koenen 1993, 58–59. 2. Bleeker 1967, 105. 3. Kemp 1989, 27–31; O’Connor and Silverman 1995, 100–105.

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of the Egyptian economy, and it also contained the gold-producing regions. Upper Egypt looked south to Ethiopia and the Sudan, from which in the Late Period it was invaded and ruled by Nubian dynasts. The Delta, in contrast, was swampier and more difficult to negotiate; its agriculture consisted of papyrus, herding, and fisheries. Continuously subject to encroachment by nomadic pastoralists, as well as to invasion by foreign armies from the west and east, the Delta was the most familiar part of Egypt to surrounding Mediterranean countries.4 From the time of the late New Kingdom, imperial power gradually moved north to establish capital cities in the eastern Delta (PiRamesse, Tanis), then the central Delta (Bubastis, Sais), and finally the western Delta (Alexandria). The building of Alexandria made excellent sense within the Greek world because it secured a port city in a location that could control Mediterranean traffic, while it also followed the pattern of Late Period history as another attempt to curtail foreign invasions from the east and west. For Late Period pharaohs and for the Ptolemies themselves control over the whole of Egypt was never secure, and building Alexandria distanced them even further from the economically potent south, which was always threatening to break away.5 Under the Ptolemies the Delta especially, where their court was located, became progressively more Hellenized, while Memphis remained the center for Egyptian cult, thus guaranteeing that the mythic and historical oppositions of the Two Lands continued to operate, but now at the level of ethnicity and culture as well as geography.6 Unlike the Persians or the Romans, for whom Egypt was one of many (and rather distant) provinces in a vast empire, the Ptolemies had no political or economic base outside of Egypt. The Ptolemies did not rule Egypt by satrapal or prefectual surrogates; they were resident kings. While their military activities in the Mediterranean would have resulted from a desire to develop an external power base, holding Egypt and maintaining its prosperity were essential for any dynastic pretensions. Thus how to transform what was a military occupation confined 4. Herodotus spends considerably more time in the Delta than in Upper Egypt, and his knowledge of this latter region is quite limited. See Lloyd 1975, 72–76. 5. Ptolemaic control over the South became even more precarious after the battle of Raphia (217 b.c.e.), when a series of native revolts substantially altered the relationship between the center and the periphery (see, for example, Fraser 1972, 1: 60). For a snapshot of the major events of Ptolemaic history, see the appendix in Hölbl 1994, 343–77. 6. See Koenen 1993, 25–29, with plate facing p. 86, for a discussion of the way this dual kingship played out in crowns and coinage. Koenen’s evidence dates from the midsecond century b.c.e.

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to the periphery into a kingship that effectively controlled the Two Lands was the paramount concern of the early Ptolemies. In order to rule the whole of Egypt, accommodation to native religious and court ceremonial was essential. Soter began his rule in Memphis, the religious capital of Egypt, which sat (not coincidentally) at the apex of the Delta or at the point where the Two Lands joined, and consolidation of his Egyptian power base began there.7 It is significant that in the Alexander Romance it was also in Memphis that Alexander proclaimed himself as the legitimate heir to Egypt and where he announced that the new capital would be relocated to Alexandria, with the proviso that it be a city of and for Egyptians as well as Greeks.8 Although we should question the accuracy of this rhetorically charged claim, the city Alexandria was a cultural amalgam. It occupied the place of an earlier Egyptian settlement or more likely border fortress (Rhacotis), but its raison d’être was to position Egypt in the Meriterranean, to give the Ptolemies a powerful port city that dominated the trade routes. For this purpose (if not for military and/or chauvinistic reasons) a population of Greeks drawn from neighboring regions was essential. The Ptolemies used their wealth and patronage to attract a Greek-speaking population, especially to Alexandria,9 but even with large numbers of Greek immigrants the city was always ethnically mixed; its population would have included Jews, Persians, Syrians, and other Greek-speaking groups like Lycians and Cretans, in addition to Egyptians. In this mix the imported Macedonian Greek population was well below a majority. Even the appearance of Alexandria, with structures like an Isis temple with its pylon gate, colossi, and obelisks, some of which (in true pharaonic fashion) seem to have been transplanted from other Egyptian locations, must have conveyed an impression of cultural mixing.10 How then were 7. For example, Soter used Egyptian troops in the battle of Gaza (312 b.c.e.) when he was beginning to gain control of Egypt, but they were not used again apparently until the battle of Raphia (217 b.c.e.). See Bevan 1968, 165–66, and J. K. Winnicki, “Militäroperationen von Ptolemaios I. und Seleukos I. in Syrien in den Jahren 312–11 v. Chr.,” Ancient Society 20 (1989) 55–92 (part 1), and 22 (1991) 147–227 (part 2). Egyptian marines may have been used in the Chremonidean War; see E. Van’t Dack and H. Hauben, “L’apport égyptien à l’armée navale Lagide,” in Maehler and Strocka 1978, 59–94. Koenen 1993, 32 n. 20, provides an overview with extensive bibliography. 8. Borgeaud and Volokhine 2000, 65–71; and above, chapter 2. 9. For example in Idyll 14 Alexandria is singled out for its potential for material advancement: Ptolemy is described as “the best paymaster for a free man” (14.59); Herodas 1.26–35 claims that everything can be found in Egypt. 10. Arnold 1999, 138 (for Isis temple), 149–50, and 157. Yves Empereur’s excavation of the harbor makes it clear that pharaonic monuments as well as Egyptianizing monuments of the Ptolemies were present. While these latter are currently impossible to

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the Ptolemies to rule these reconceptualized “Two Lands”—lands with two different economic power bases and two different ethnic and religious identities? Traditional histories emphasize the separateness of the Egyptian and Greek populations,11 assuming that Greek culture not only took precedence over Egyptian for Greeks (as must have been the case), but that it isolated Greeks from significant contact with native populations. Yet this is open to question and dependent upon the materials one consults. Greek ideas after all are bound to dominate in material written in Greek. But Egyptians were more numerous, and at the time of conquest they alone possessed the necessary skills to maintain the extensive bureaucracy. Early in their reign the Ptolemies apparently used incentives to create a cadre of bilingual Egyptians capable of administering the country.12 Egyptians possessed an older, richer material culture, a culture that earlier Greeks had found fascinating if not admirable. What is more, their political, religious, and artistic practices were thoroughly integrated and distinctive, adapted over millennia to a unique ecosystem. In contrast, the small population of Macedonian soldiers and Greeks drawn from diverse regions of the Mediterranean who arrived in the new city would have lacked a unifying sense of identity, because their familiar gods and civic structures were notably absent.13 Over time, assimilation, which had happened to earlier Greek populations like the Hellenomemphites, was inevitable,14 and it is by no means clear that Ptolemaic policies were designed to prevent this. Even structures like the gymnasium, which later appear to have been isolated pockets of supposed ethnic purity, may have initially included assimilated Egyptians. Dorothy Thompson, for example, has recently argued, on the basis of “third century BC census lists drawn up in both Greek and de-

date, to judge from similar representations of the Ptolemies in Egyptian style in the chora, there is no a priori reason to date the material late, only a modern scholarly reservation that attributes Egyptianization to the later and hence more degenerate of the Ptolemies. 11. Peter Bing points out that this formulation is in great part a response to J. G. Droysen, who characterized the period as one of Mischkultur. 12. Thompson 1992a and b and 1994. 13. Koenen 1993, 43–44. 14. Clarysse (1992, 51–56) provides evidence for Alexandrian Greek and Egyptian intermarriage as early as the mid-third century b.c.e. He remarks: “Perhaps the scarcity of mixed marriages in our third century documentation is for a large part due to the types of documents on which modern surveyance is based (in the Zenon archive for instance “irregular” filiations are totally absent from the 1700 Greek documents, but two are found in the twenty-odd Demotic texts)” (p. 52).

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motic” that the term “Hellene” may not have been a straightforward designation for the ethnic Greek, but that Hellenes were defined in terms not of origin but rather of either their education or a post in the administration. These were men required to run the complex written administration in process of development. As members of the gymnasium, these new Hellenes would play an important role in the Ptolemaic adminstration.15

In other words some “Hellenes” might be Egyptian. Ptolemy’s world may have been Greek-speaking and essentially Greek in its relations with the northern Mediterranean, but its location in Egypt required an accommodation to its native population, the need for which increased at times of political unrest.16 Soter and Philadelphus needed to achieve a balance between Greek and Egyptian in their administrative and royal behavior, in a context where overtly Egyptian practice, like brother-sister marriage, may have incurred hostility from the Greeks, while neglecting the Egyptian religious customs was likely to provoke political unrest among the native population. In contrast to the Egyptians, for whom place, language, and religious traditions were culturally unifying, the Greek population of Alexandria (and Egypt in general) came from a wide variety of poleis and ethne, often with long histories of fractiousness, and were accustomed to think of themselves 15. 1994, 75. Although questions of ethnic identity and the privileges and/or degree of separateness accorded to various ethnic groups under the early Ptolemies continue to be the subject of considerable scholarly interest, it is not possible to draw very firm conclusions from what is now available. The problems are multiple. First, recent work of scholars like Clarysse, Thompson, and La’da underscores the difficulties in any discussion of the ethnicity of early Ptolemiac Egypt. There is very little documentation at all from the third century, nothing survived from Alexandria itself, and the Demotic texts are underpublished in comparision to Greek. Next, terms such as “Persian of the Epigone” or even “Hellene,” which no doubt originally marked real ethnic identities, evolved to indicate something else—occupation or financial status. (See Csaba La’da, “Ethnic Designations in Ptolemaic Egypt” [Ph.D. diss., Cambridge University, 1996], chap. 4; I am grateful to him for providing me with a copy.) Third, names are not adequate indicators of ethnicity, since even within ethnically Greek families, a Greco-Egyptian double name could occur (Clarysse 1992, 54). Fourth, the bulk of the evidence adduced from later periods, without independent corroboration, is not applicable to the early Hellenistic period. The Roman administration of Egypt, in particular, significantly altered the relationship of Greeks and Egyptians, by subordinating both to Romans. Finally, there is also the bias of interpreters. Ritner (1992, 290–91) points out that two distinguished and competent scholars come to opposite conclusions about the differential rates of assessment of the salt tax in the early Ptolemaic period. (This tax was lower for “Hellenes” and disappeared after some years.) For one scholar this signals discrimination and apartheid; for another the lower tax rate was an inducement to Egyptians to learn Greek. 16. See, for example, Thompson 1990, 97–100, 114–16.

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as Cyrenean or Coan or Athenian or Macedonian rather than Greek in an aggregate sense, as the exchange between Praxinoa and the stranger in Theocritus 15.87–93 makes abundantly clear. His complaint about her broad vowels (88: plateiasdoisai) is met with a fierce retort detailing her lineage and asserting her right to speak as she pleases, and she pleases to speak not Greek, but Peloponnesian (92–93: PeloponnasistB lalePme%). This is a telling anecdote that sheds light on the world of Alexandria: we see a fragmented Greek population achieving a fragile equipoise between the Egyptians (who are characterized as petty thieves) on the one hand (48–49) and Ptolemy as sole ruler on the other (94–95). For Theocritus, at least, the Hellenism of Alexandria seems to have been artificially constructed through contrast or opposition to other groups and dependent on the crown for its nurturing. While the Greek citizens were organized along the lines of a traditional polis with a boule or governing body,17 Alexandria is unusual in that Alexandrian citizenship did not confer a unique status.18 In fact, in the formative period of the city very few Greeks seem to have availed themselves of citizenship but to have retained allegiance to their native towns without discernable loss of status or privilege.19 The reason for this is possibly, as P. Fraser suggests, the Ptolemies’ dedication to true meritocracy, but equally the failure to create a strong polis structure that fostered civic identity increased dependency on the crown and its preferment and eliminated a potentially competing source for power or status. During this period the Ptolemies equally fostered the Egyptian population: there was a rapid escalation in temple building, and many monuments constructed and dedicated by native clergy appear.20 The legal system created under Ptolemy II, which provided a frame17. The history of the Alexandrian boule is problematic; see Fraser 1972, 1: 94–96. 18. According to Josephus (Bellum Judaicum 2.495) the Jews also had their own politeuma, and politeumata of other groups like the Idumaeans were known in the cities of the chora (e.g., Thompson 1988, 101–2). (L. Koenen points out in a private communication that unpublished papyri in Cologne attest to Jewish politeumata in Herakleopolis.) 19. This pattern was followed also in hiring practices. Relatively few designating themselves as Alexandrian are found among the Ptolemaic bureaucracy; rather, Coans, Samians, Cyreneans, Athenians, Syrians, and Persians appear in greater numbers. 20. Huss 1994. See also Johnson 1986; J. Quaegebeur, “Documents égyptiens et rôle économique de clergé en Égypte hellénistique,” 707–29; and W. Clarysse 1979, “Egyptian Estate Holders in the Ptolemaic Period,” 731–43; the articles by Quaegebeur and Clarysse appear in State and Temple Economy in the Ancient Near East, vol. 2, Proceedings of the International Conference Organized by the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven from the 10th to the 14th of April 1978, ed. E. Lipinski, Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 6 (Louvain, 1979).

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work for nearly the whole of the period, allowed Greeks, Egyptians, and Jews each to operate autonomously.21 This ethnic division of the judicial system has been taken to indicate that the Ptolemies promulgated a separate but equal status for these constituent groups, but at least by 118 b.c.e., it was the language of the legal instrument that determined which court would adjudicate, not the ethnicity of the contracting parties.22 For Egyptians or Jews, for whom ethnic and legal boundaries were coextensive, Ptolemaic codes can be construed as a gesture of civic tolerance if not privilege. But for Greeks in the city the legal code must have functioned somewhat differently—Greeks normally operated within the laws of their specific ethnic communities or poleis. While Greeks as a whole were the dominant (though not the most numerous) ethnic group in the city, in Alexandria a legal code that was not specific for any Greek ethnos but common to all23 must have undermined the traditional sense of cultural identity as Coan or Athenian, and while it would have contributed to the sense of a common Hellenic identity, Greeks would not have experienced this identity as unique, but as one of many, defined by opposition to Egyptians or Persians or Jews. Moreover, if Thompson’s supposition about the category “Hellene” is correct, then there may never have been a category at all in Alexandria for ethnic Greeks as a whole as opposed to assimilated ethnicities who now spoke and wrote Greek. To put this differently, in classical Greece, “Greek” was the unmarked or default category, against which all others must be measured, as we see in the traditional Greek-barbarian destinctions in tragedy or in Herodotus’s discussion of the component peoples of the Persian empire. But in Ptolemiac Egypt, and even in Alexandria, this would not have been the case. If there was an “unmarked” category from which all other ethnicities needed to distinguish themselves, it was Egyptian.24 A significant factor in reinforcing community for this diverse group of Greek speakers was the importation and creation of festivals and cults. These provided a counterweight to Egyptian religious life with its temples and lavish imperial displays (which the crown also supported) 21. See J. Méléze-Modrzejewski, “Droit et justice dans le monde hellénistique au IIIe siècle avant notre ère: expérience lagide,” in MNHMH Georges A. Petropoulos, ed. A. Biscardi, J. Modrzejewski, and H. J. Wolff (Athens, 1984) 1: 55–77. 22. PTeb. 1.5.207–20 ( = C. Ord. Ptol. 53). Koenen (1993, 40, esp. nn. 38–39) summarizes the positions and provides relevant bibliography. 23. See Fraser 1972, 1: 110–12. 24. Idyll 15 bears this out. ADgyptistA is used generically, while Greeks are shown at pains to stress their unique ethnicities.

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on the one hand and substituted for polis-specific events like the Athenian Panathenaia familiar to Mediterranean Greeks on the other. But the trend towards cultural synthesis is nowhere more apparent than in these events. Festivals like the Basileia blended elements from a festival of Zeus Basileus with Egyptian elements by celebrating the royal coronation and the birthday as simultaneous events (as in pharaonic practice), while incorporating traditional Greek contests. It is even possible that this festival originated during the initial stage of Greek conquest. According to Arrian, Alexander entered Memphis and sacrificed to “the other gods and to Apis and held music and gymnastic contests” (3.1.4). He then set out for the Siwah oasis, where he was proclaimed son of Zeus Ammon, and when he returned to Memphis somewhat later, Arrian tells us, he sacrificed to Zeus Basileus, accompanied by a procession of his armed soldiers, and celebrated with music and gymnastic events (3.5.2). This description certainly suggests, if not coronation, a display of power tantamount to a declaration of kingship. If the sacrifice to Apis and to Zeus Basileus are to be linked,25 then Alexander established the pattern for assimilation of Greek and Egyptian deities, which the Ptolemies subsequently followed. Ptolemy I’s early residence in Memphis before moving to Alexandria meant that the court would have been in very close contact with traditional Egyptian religious forms. In a recent study P. Borgeaud and Y. Volokhine argue persuasively that the Sarapis cult later introduced into Alexandria owed its formation primarily to the Apis cults of Memphis, and that Tacitus’s account of its inception was a later, Hellenized interpretation of events.26 A further example of such blending may be seen in the Ptolemaia. This was a massive display of wealth and power first staged about 276 b.c.e. by Ptolemy II in honor of his father. It would have rivaled traditional Egyptian festivals such as Opet, which annually celebrated Amon-Re and the divine birth of the pharaoh.27 In the Ptolemaia, as in Opet, the mythology promulgated to enhance Ptolemaic claims to the throne—the link between the Ptolemies, Alexander, and Dionysus— seems to have been central. The importance of Dionysus to this festival did not result simply from the desire to promote a divine ancestor for the Ptolemies, but from Dionysus’s status as the functional equivalent

25. See Koenen 1977, 29–30. 26. 2000, 69–72. 27. Kemp 1989, 203–9.

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of Osiris, who was preeminent in Egyptian cult. The canopy and tent erected for the celebration may have have been in the Egyptian style,28 and various other features described in Athenaeus29 appear to be a blend of Greek and Egyptian elements. For example, the festival begins with personified temporal markers—Eniautos and the Horai in the company of a woman named Penteteris carrying a crown of persea and a palm branch (Athenaeus 198b). In Egyptian royal reliefs the goddess Seshet, who measured time, was prominent in the Sed or renewal festival, carrying persea leaves inscribed with the royal titulary and the number of years in the pharaoh’s reign and the date palm branch, which served as a hieroglyphic for the year.30 While the procession of cities “subdued by the Persians” (Athenaeus 201d-e) has definite Greek antecedents, it suggests also the Egyptian habit of displaying the wealth of temple estates as females in procession on temple friezes.31 The Adonis festival described by Theocritus in Idyll 15 also falls into this pattern. This was a Syrian cult that had been imported into the Greek world as early as the seventh century b.c.e. and had been celebrated in Athens from at least the fifth century; both Aristophanes and Menander mention it.32 The cult in Athens was celebrated exclusively by women, but the Ptolemies make it a central feature of palace life, though sponsored by the queen in honor of her mother. At this “Greek” festival, however, the lamentations for Adonis33 were remarkably like the lamentations for Osiris, celebrated by Egyptians annually,34 a circumstance that must have influenced their preference. Idyll 15 allows a

28. Athenaeus 5.196–97. See G. Haeny, Basilikale Anlagen in der ägyptischen Baukunst des Neuen Reiches (Wiesbaden, 1970) 76, fig. 29a. 29. Athenaeus takes his description from Callixeinus’s On Alexandria, written sometime after the accession of Ptolemy IV. See Rice 1983, 134–50. 30. I am indebted to Professor Robert Ritner of the Oriental Institute in Chicago for this observation. See, for example, LÄ 1: 655–60, s.v. Baum, heiliger. See also Callimachus fr. 655 Pf. on Perseus as the bringer of the persea tree to Egypt. 31. See, for example, A. Stewart, “Nuggets: Mining the Texts Again,” AJA 102 (1998) 281, for the Greek parallels; Kemp 1989, 116, fig. 40, for the Egyptian. 32. See, for example, J. Winkler, “The Laughter of the Oppressed: Demeter and the Gardens of Adonis,” in Constraints of Desire: The Anthropology of Sex and Gender in Ancient Greece (New York, 1990) 189–93 and 235 n. 1; and Reed 2000 for the Adonia and its function within the Ptolemaic court. 33. See Burkert 1985, 176–77; Fraser 1972, 1: 198. 34. Although Burkert disallows the organic connection that Sir James Frazer made between similar dying god cults throughout the Mediterranean, the point here is not that the two were the same or even hereditarily linked (though they might have been), so much as that the similarity of one to the other provided a stimulus for privileging it within the city. See Reed 2000 for the parallels with contemporary Egyptian festivals of Osiris.

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glimpse of how at least one contemporary poet saw such events. The Adonia attracted a large and heterogeneous crowd (43: “ants, uncountable and unmeasurable”) whose unruly behavior is tamed by the palace spectacle. Despite the crush, the festival is presented as a source of great delight for the two “average” Greek ladies who attend. The dynamic of the narrative is to move the reader from the confusion of an ethnically heterogeneous populace into the tranquillity and opulence of the palace, ruled over by the one king—Ptolemy.35 He wins the ladies’ admiration not only for the splendid tableau but, earlier in the poem, for the more prosaic reason that under his authority the mean streets of Alexandria have been made safer.36 Similarly, the importation of traditional Greek cults connected to Demeter37 and the designing of the cult of Sarapis as well as the numerous cults linked to the royal family38 served to provide an emotional focus for the populace while emphasizing the central role played by the court. Once again syncretism seems to have been at work, most obviously in the Sarapis cult, but also in the Eleusinian mysteries. Fraser remarks: Though we may reject the notion that the Alexandrian festival produced the Eleusinian Mysteries, it is quite likely that the festival contained recitations, perhaps even dramatic scenes, concerning the Eleusinian story. Egyptian traditions preserved by Greek writers, which derived important elements of the Attic worship of Demeter from Egypt, may have played a significant role here. Not only did Herodotus record that the Thesmophoria were introduced into Attica by the daughters of Danaus [2.171]; more significantly for our immediate context, Hecataeus of Abdera . . . reported ‘the Egyptians’ as claiming that the Athenians derived most of the major items of Athenian life from Egypt, including the Eleusinian Mysteries [Diodorus Siculus 1.29]; and, in particular, that the Eumolpidae were of Egyptian priestly origin. The circulation of such the-

35. 15.94–95: mb fAh . . . f% cmpn karterb% eGh | plbn Cna%, “May there not be anyone more powerful over us than one.” 36. The anti-Egyptian sentiment of Idyll 15 does not affect the argument. Negative or otherwise it reveals Greek awareness of Egyptian presence. 37. Whether or not the Mysteries were actually imported into Egypt, Demeter cults were among the most prominent, doubtless because of their connection with Isis. See Fraser 1972, 1: 199–201, and below. See also D. Thompson, “Demeter in Graeco-Roman Egypt,” in Egyptian Religion: The Last Thousand Years, Studies Dedicated to the Memory of Jan Quaegebeur, pt. 1, ed. W. Clarysse, A. Schoors, and H. Willems (Leuven, 1998) 699–708. 38. The Ptolemies operated within two different cultic frameworks: the dynastic cult was developed primarily for Greeks, while a divinized ruler cult was introduced into Egyptian temples. See, for example, Thompson 1990, 110–12.

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The establishment of cult was not value-neutral, however; in fourthcentury prose writers, this was a function of the culture hero, that special human subsequently worthy of elevation to divinity. Figures like Zeus, Heracles, and Dionysus in Greek myth and Isis and Osiris in Egyptian are such divinized heroes (epigeioi in the language of Euhemerus), many of whom are credited with founding cults of their parents or other deities. To posit a causal relationship between the ideas of these writers and the actual behavior of the Ptolemies is not necessary. Rather, the intersection of theoretical and practical reflects the world of the early epigonids, who had limited options to display their power outside of earlier, familiar structures and whose audience now included Greeks as well as non-Greeks, many of whom already operated in a world in which the king kept company with the gods. But if the connection between what fourth-and early third-century writers are saying and the actual behavior of the Ptolemies cannot be reduced to cause-effect, the real impact of writing in this period should not be underestimated. The Ptolemies ruled in the immediate moment by military force, but how their men and the surrounding Greeks viewed their actions over the long term was not a trivial issue. Obviously they themselves participated in creating the image of civic benefaction that the festivals and cult celebrations foster. In this regard public contests that featured poetic competition within these very events sponsored by the crown would have had considerable potential to influence public opinion. The Ptolemies were sufficiently cultured to appreciate the role that literature had consistently played for Greeks in shaping public opinion and historical memory.40 Arrian’s anecdote about Alexander crowning the tomb of Achilles because Achilles had possessed a Homer to hymn his praises is not without force.41 Traditional Greek performative genres—epic, lyric, tragedy—served to perpetuate the memory of individuals as well as to contribute to the greater glory of a state or a reign.

39. Fraser 1972, 1: 201 (footnotes omitted). See above, page 142. 40. Soter wrote a history of Alexander and had his son educated by leading intellectuals Zenodotus, Philitas, and Strato. Royal tutors were always distinguished literary figures; their ranks include Philitas, Apollonius, and Eratosthenes. Ptolemy II and Euergetes were responsible for building the Library. 41. Anabasis 1.12.1. See Vasunia 2001, 253–55.

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While Athens had no epic poets to commemorate it, its dramatic productions and its philosophers had been courted by Macedon as well as by other imperial regimes. Therefore, the Ptolemies were behaving no differently than previous Greek kings and tyrants by importing literati and subventing the arts, and poets attracted to the court inevitably participated in constructing the image of the new monarchy. Since poetry belongs to the realm of the imagination, the creation of the image of a king who conforms to Greek as well as non-Greek imperial behaviors may operate subliminally to facilitate acceptance of what might otherwise be unacceptable or idiosyncratic. Through poetry the choice of suitable mythological parallels and allusions can create a context in which the foreign and the familiar seem to coalesce, with the result that what a Ptolemy does as an Egyptian pharaoh may appear as no different from the actions of various Greek gods and heroes, and conversely what appears exotic or outré in the Egyptian can, by alignment with familiar Greek mythological behaviors, be regularized. I would emphasize that in the early Ptolemaic court this poetry was not written as conscious propaganda to justify or celebrate imperial behavior, but as a series of thought experiments that configured the emerging monarchy in various ways and that may or may not have intersected with reality. In addition to acquiring poets the Ptolemies also set out to acquire previous Greek literature, the repository of the memory of the past, and to provide for its analysis, cataloguing, and storage for themselves and future generations.42 This decision to acquire had far-reaching consequences. The act of accumulation and organization has the de facto effect of canonization, of reifying the literary production of the past and creating a psychological gulf between it and the contemporary or living literary event. Texts became objects for study, to be catalogued and labeled, the vagaries of their particular circumstances of creation subsumed under the generic (hymn, epinician, epic), their status guaranteed, enhanced, or demoted by being attached to an “author” (Homer, Hesiod, Pindar). In this way Greek literature was now on display, available in the aggregate for admiration and adulation; to control and order it conferred status. But if we can believe the sources, the Ptolemies did not limit their acquisitions to Greek literature. It looks as if theirs was a more heterogeneous scheme, mirroring their inclusion of

42. Whatever the precursors to the Library or whatever the extent of Peripatetic influence on collecting, the scale and the aggressive acquisition of the Alexandrian Library was unprecedented. See Blum 1991, 95–123.

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non-Greek groups within their empire. Egyptian, Persian, and Jewish texts seem also to have been solicited, at least in translation.43 Whatever the actual scale of collection of non-Greek material and the relative proportion of the various literatures to each other, the very fact of imperial inclusion of these other texts provided an instant cachet to those non-Greek writings (as the Letter to Aristeas demonstrates), but it also underscored what was observable in law and political life, namely, that Greek writings now coexisted in a world of alternative languages and literatures. Greek literary models must still have formed the cultural imagination, but on the periphery other styles of expression were growing increasingly more visible. The Greek-speaking poets who were invited by the Ptolemies to participate in some fashion in the court were necessarily aware of the collective (and collected) Greek literary past as other than or separate from themselves. A. Cameron in his magisterial discussion of Callimachus emphasizes the living literary and performative traditions in which Callimachus and his contemporaries would have participated, in contrast to an entirely bookish tradition.44 However, the fact of the Library did alter the relationship of past to present. Whatever was embedded in collected texts was available for imitation and appropriation, but it now occupied a space that was temporally and physically separate—like epic, distanced from the present and from the literary events in which these poets participated. Whatever the living performance practices of the Ptolemaic world—and these must have been extensive—they must have been experienced as cognitively different from the repository of literary remembrance gathered in the Library. Or to put it somewhat differently, however scholarly and recondite we may perceive the Alexandrian poets to be, from their own perspective their poetry would have been the live experience. The poetry of the past was texts, to be collated, disputed, emended; texts, moreover, that were imbued with an image of Greekness—of who or what Greeks were or had been— against which modern Alexandrians might measure themselves. In this way the Library would have intensified the sense of collective Greek

43. No single source exists, but Manetho and other less familiar writings on Egypt must have been included (see Fraser 1972, 1: 505–10, 521). Hermippus mentions Zoroasterian writings (Fraser 1: 280), and the Letter to Aristeas claims that Ptolemy commissioned a group of Jewish scholars to translate the Septuagint into Greek. The probable date of the letter is 100 b.c.e., but it presents itself as a document contemporary with Ptolemy II (Fraser 1: 696–704). 44. Cameron 1995, 63–103.

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identity, but it also intensified the break between the old world of the collected literature and contemporary events. Who Greeks now were was open to negotiation, just as who the Ptolemies were—Macedonian kings or Egyptian pharaohs—was not yet very clear. One thing was clear: contemporary Greeks were not heroes in the mold of Achilles or Diomedes, nor was their nascent state predicated on the elevation of the virtues of the citizen-soldier or the statesman, as was so much of the inherited literary past. The task then would have been not to succumb to ineluctible nostalgia for their loss (as so many modern scholars do when writing about the Hellenistic world), but to find ways of redeploying that past to express the values and cultural experience of the present. This is not a novel poetic task. It is what Greek tragedians did with Homer: they retrofitted him for the city-state.45 But for the Alexandrians it would have been a more difficult task. Homer and fifth-century Athens were still connected by a viable Panhellenism emanating from mainland Greece and its colonies, in which worth could be measured in terms of valor in warfare, athletics, and politics. The conquest of Alexander made this world obsolete. Soldiers were now mercenaries,46 and mercantile skills were more useful to the crown than public speaking was. These men were now struggling to be Greek in quintessentially non-Greek worlds, in Babylon, Jerusalem, or Memphis, the values of which were alien and pervasive. Callimachus, Theocritus, Apollonius, and their contemporaries helped to form as well as portray this new world for Greeks. But, as I have been arguing throughout, theirs was not the monocularity (or, in Bakhtinian terms, the monoglossia) of the classical past, but a world in which it was not possible either for the poets themselves or for their audiences to catch a glimpse of “Greek” without simultaneously taking in an impression of “non-Greek.” The two were bound together, and extricating one from another would have become more difficult over time. What made Hellenistic life in cities like Alexandria qualitatively different from the experience of the “other” in the classical Greek past was living in an alien culture, surrounded by alien people, without the defining structures of Greek civic identity. New foci for that identity were necessary, hence the interest in cultic formations and in cultic behavior (central in both Callimachus

45. See, for example, Goldhill’s remarks (1991, 315–16). 46. The rise of mercenaries in the fourth century was already perceived by Demosthenes as contributing to the erosion of civic virtues.

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and Apollonius), but also the interest in reshaping the past. On one level these new Alexandrian Greeks must have experienced the past as coherent and whole—certainly as represented in the assembled literature of the Library—in contrast to the fragmented cultural experience of the present.47 But equally this (seemingly) definitive break with the past, the new multicultural reality, and an emerging monarchy still defining itself would have provided a rare opportunity for experiment and creativity. In writing poetry for these Two Lands, the Alexandrian poets had to define their own work in some fashion vis-à-vis their poetic predecessors, to effect a liaison between past and present. In writing about kings, Callimachus and Theocritus turn to Hesiod and Pindar and the hymnic tradition, and even Apollonius frames his epic by beginning and ending it with elements patently borrowed from Pythian 4. This should come as no surprise. The encomiastic and theogonic traditions provide the best paradigms for writing for royals, offering as they do not simply models for praising, but models for positioning the poets themselves as responsible and necessary interpreters of the cultural norms that monitor and identify imperial excellence. But Homer presented a different challenge. Homer, particularly the Iliad, provided the template not simply for heroic behavior, but for the values of bravery, competitiveness, and physical excellence (arete) essential for the world of the citizen-soldier. Moreover, Homer was the basic text in primary education, and everyone who read would have been exposed to it even if they had not assimilated its value system.48 The extent to which this aspect of Homer dominated literary production can be seen even in the remains of two of the Alexander historians: Callisthenes conforms many of the details in Alexander’s campaigns to events and locations in the Iliad, while Nearchus’s account of Alexander’s return from the east seems to have favored images from the Odyssey.49 Homer could not be dismissed as a text shrouded in the mists of antiquity but was experienced directly when even a near contemporary figure like Alexander was made to behave like a Homeric hero. But as scholars have been quick to point out, what may have worked for Alexander would have 47. The best recent discussion of this sense of cultural fragmentation is Selden 1998 (his article is restricted to Callimachus). 48. See Thompson 1992a, 49–50, on Egyptian education. 49. See Pearson’s discussion in The Lost Histories of Alexander the Great, American Philological Association Monographs (New York, 1960) 40–46, 131–39.

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been fatal not only for the Ptolemies, but for their contemporary world in general. Even if kings could be imagined as Homeric warriors, Homeric values were of increasingly limited application in the new civic environment. Hence all three poets go to some length to circumvent the Iliadic baggage of Homer. Callimachus and Theocritus do this by privileging Hesiod in their referentiality, at least in the poems attached to royalty, or by focusing on the ordinary in Homer and making it central, Apollonius by deliberately avoiding the Trojan War and its heroes. This results not from debates about how to write epic, but from the shift from the value system of the classical city-state to the system of cultural plurality of Alexandrian Egypt. Which is not to say that Homer was not present in their writing or their culture. But Homer is not present in situational or narrative terms familiar from classical writers so much as in the peripheral, or in linguistic and trace elements. Homeric intertextuality operates differently in all three poets, but what can be extrapolated from all is the distancing from the epic values inscribed in Homer. Apollonius’s epic is situated in the pre-Iliadic world of Heracles and the Argonauts, but also in the post-Iliadic world of the Odyssey. Even there he avoids the return to the heroic world of Ithaca in his allusiveness, borrowing rather from the fantastical books of Odysseus’s adventures. When Iliadic battles occur, like the encounter with the Doliones, they are often indecisive or failures. (In this incident, the Argonauts slaughter guest-friends in a case of mistaken identity.) Theocritus too self-consciously distances himself from a Homeric system of values. He begins the first Idyll provocatively with an ecphrasis of an object that occurs in the Odyssey. The rare word kissybion describes a cup used by Eumaeus, a pedestrian, non-heroic item that is promoted to programmatic status and located at the opening of the poem.50 Theocritus’s gesture imitates that of the Homeric shield of Achilles, a weapon of war that depicts on its surface the macrocosm of which war is only a subset. For a brief moment in the Iliad, the shield reorients the reader to a world in which love, laughter, fecundity, and governance take precedence over battle and arete. Theocritus inverts this relationship of text to artifact—the cup is enlarged to fill the whole field of vision, crowding out epic behavior. (The two men quarreling over a woman provide a mundane equivalent of the conflict over Helen.) Like Theocritus, Callimachus selects the or-

50. See Halperin 1983, 161–83.

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dinary world in Homer as a reference point for the Hecale: in narrating the adventures of the ostensibly heroic Theseus, he chooses for emphasis (at least in what we have extant) the values of hospitality and guest friendship displayed in Homer’s most humble character, the swineherd, Eumaeus, values that continue to be viable and that are easily portable from the older culture to his own. The Alexandrians are not trying to erase Homer in their poetry so much as recreate him for a new world and conform him to their own distinctive poetic agendas.51 Equally, appropriations of Homer call attention to the creative activities of the contemporary poet for whom the writers of the past exist no longer as living poets but as texts to be cannibalized. Each of these poets responds to the challenge of this new world by imagining and depicting it in different ways: Callimachus and Apollonius devise origin myths to fit a new political reality, Callimachus and Theocritus experiment with fashioning models of kingship from previous literary paradigms. Of the three, Callimachus most obviously situates himself as a self-conscious ego writing against the past. His archaic poets of preference are Hesiod and Hipponax; his Aetia begins by reproducing the moment of Hesiod’s poetic initiation and continues with a pastiche of narratives that seem never to intersect with the Homeric. His poetry also implicates itself in the world of the court: he writes epinicia for royals or members of imperial circles and introduces the “king” into his ostensibly Olympian hymns. In at least four of Callimachus’s complete poems—the Zeus, Apollo, and Delos hymns and the Lock of Berenice—I (in earlier chapters) and other scholars before me have made a case for locating a double symbolic matrix, in which the narrative is constructed to be legible within two different cultural codes—Greek and Egyptian. In each of them Callimachus seems to craft Greek myths to focalize often trivial events connected with the royal house, which in the context of Egyptian royal ideology take on a much deeper significance. The defeat of the Gauls in the Hymn to Delos and the translation of Berenice’s lock of hair into a constellation are cases in point.52 Callimachus also positions himself so that as we experience the conceptual duplicity of the poems we are in no doubt about 51. This has been discussed by a number of scholars, who attribute the phenomenon to a range of things from antiquarianism to realism. See Cameron 1995, 441–45, though I would disagree with Cameron that the purpose of all this is “to write a new sort of epic, antiquarian rather than heroic” (p. 445). 52. See Bing 1988, 129–33, for the former; Selden 1998, 326–54, for the latter. See also Koenen 1993, 81–84 (Hymn to Delos) and 89–113 (Lock of Berenice).

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the role of the poet in creating the optical illusion. He turns to the Hesiodic world of good kings and bad kings and, like Hesiod, constructs origin myths to suit his new world order, all the while presenting himself as the creator of these more plausible fictions. Theocritus’s relationship to the new Alexandrian environment is commensurately different. In Idyll 15 and to a lesser extent in Idyll 14, he brings the diverse Greek population of contemporary Alexandria alive; in Idyll 17 he experiments with royal encomium and treats the emerging myths of the royal house in several others: Idylls 18 (Helen), 22 (Dioscuri), 24 (Heracles) and 26 (Bacchae).53 While Theocritus, particularly in the Heraclisus and the Ptolemy, experiments with Egyptian themes, he does so far less consistently than do Callimachus and Apollonius. Rather, his poems filter Egyptian ideology through the models of good governance and its attendant rewards that appear to have been already articulated in writers like Hecataeus of Abdera. Theocritus, too, favors Hesiod when he wants to talk about kings, not one suspects because of an undue fondness for the querulous old Boeotian, but because Hesiod alone of the poets of the past addresses the question of kingly behavior. The most distinctive feature of Theocritus’s court poetry, in contrast to Callimachus’s, is his choice of the heroic figures from myth—Heracles, Helen, the Dioscuri—to correspond to Ptolemaic behavior, rather than the divine figures of kingship—Zeus and Apollo— favored by Callimachus. Even though Apollonius appears to avoid the issue of imperial mythology by writing epic, he may be the most ambitious of the three by constructing an entirely new thought world for the Ptolemies to enter. Apollonius situates his narrative in the pre-Homeric world of magic and monsters, when the created order was young, and the forces of civilization struggling to emerge. He employs Greek cosmogonic material that corresponds to Egyptian to fashion a world situated in two discrete cultural spheres: in Greek philosophical terms his text has been read as the transformation of neikos into philia,54 terms that almost literally translate into the dominant paradigm of Egyptian thought, the emergence of order (maat) from chaos. As we saw, his poem ends with the double birth of islands—Apollo the Gleamer’s island of appearance (Anaphe) and Euphemus’s Thera. Thus his text ends with two images.

53. Although the court poetry is usually treated as marginal in Theocritean scholarship, it does account for a substantial portion of his poetic output. 54. So Hunter 1993, 163–59, and see the discussion in chapter 4 above.

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In the first we find the most potent symbols of Egyptian ideology, the illumination of the land by the sun-god at dawn, which is the harbinger of new creation as well as a symbol of pharaonic kingship. In the other is the gift of a clod of Libyan earth to Euphemus, which adumbrates Greece’s subsequent hereditary entitlement to North Africa. The Ptolemies wait offstage: it is through their presence in Egypt that the two independent myths of kingship and cultural interaction will finally be drawn together in one king for the Two Lands. If heroic warfare and its attendant values are characteristics of Homeric poetry, in the Hellenistic period, as we have seen, this poetry needed to be refashioned. The poets of Alexandria, therefore, select and reorder their inherited mythologies to accommodate the new world of the Ptolemies. One important way in which they do this is by exploiting foundational or origin stories (aetia). In fact, Alexandrians seem to engage in aetiological explanations to a greater degree than their literary predecessors, and Callimachus even went so far as to write a long noncontinuous poem entitled Aetia. But, as S. Goldhill puts it, “although aetiology is inherently a way of articulating a relation between past and present, the precise nature of this articulation has prompted considerable discussion by modern critics.”55 What characterizes all the discussions Goldhill reprises is their location of aetia within a strictly textual or literary milieu, if not divorced from contemporary culture, at least sufficiently removed that texts seem to be isolated from it.56 The persistent argument of this book, however, has been to locate the production of Hellenistic poetry more precisely within its contemporary environment, with the result that at several points throughout the earlier chapters I have characterized the use of aetia as a cognitive process of cultural redefinition. However, in the process of reconceptualizing Egypt, of rethinking it as a land of Greek behaviors and practices, it is equally possible to see the poets deploying aetia at a metatextual level. As T. M. Greene puts it, “when an allusion . . . begins to sketch a miniature myth about its own past, or rather its emergence from that 55. 1991, 321. Not the least is Goldhill, who concludes that “aetiology may offer a paradigm of how the past may be seen in the present—but it is a paradigm that is subject to Apollonius’ ceaseless irony and constant testing of the connections between events in a narrative” (p. 333). 56. The exception is Zanker, for whom “realism” pervades both texts and the society that produced them.

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past, . . . it tends to become aetiological.”57 The writer, in orienting his work to his poetic predecessors, necessarily constructs a literary history of that past into which he inserts himself as its inevitable fulfillment. In the Hymn to Zeus, for example, Callimachus’s deliberately ambiguous presentation of Zeus’s birth as Arcadian or Cretan climaxes in an allusion that seemingly replaces Homer with Hesiod. But in reality Callimachus replaces them both with himself—the poet of “more plausible fictions”—as deftly as he substitutes Ptolemy for Zeus. In an analogous way, Theocritus picks his way though the inherited debris of poetic and prose encomia, with their tropes of supping with the immortals and figures from heroic battle, only to move out from the shadow of the Homeric past to position himself against his contemporary, Callimachus. Theocritus describes himself as “one who knows how to praise” in response to the latter’s coy dubiety (Dn doip mala uAmo%). Both poets write themselves into new literary places via a series of allusions that often need substantial refashioning to suit their new context, thus calling attention to their altered circumstances (like the child Heracles of the Heracliscus and Callimachus’s baby Zeus). Apollonius’s intertextual behavior is more complex because of the genre and the length of his text. But one of its most noticeable features is his narrative trajectory from a pre-Homeric past to an almost overdetermined future signified by the gift of Libyan soil to Euphemus. Apollonius provides no defining Homeric battles for his heroes, but an allusive return to the homeland in his last line,58 combined with an expectation that the future home of his heroes will be not Greece but North Africa. We can see each of these three constructing a poetic itinerary that begins with earlier writers but always ends in the present with the poet himself. Each begins by establishing a conceptual link with the past (via Homer, Hesiod, or Pindar) only to differentiate himself and his poetic achievement from the procession of texts now being encased in the library.59 In their poetic imaginary the literary past is not only transformed to embrace new beginnings but to create an impression of their own uniqueness for contemporary and future readers. 57. The Light in Troy: Imitation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry (New Haven, 1982) 17–18. 58. Odyssey 23.296, on which see Livrea ad loc. 59. A number of scholars have discussed this feature with respect to Callimachus; see, for example, Bing 1988, 56–71; Hunter 1997, 57; and Selden 1998, 407–8.

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Index of Passages Cited

Aelian fr. 285

129, 159

Aeschylus Agamemnon 689–90 Alexander Romance 1.1–17, 30 1.6.3 1.13 1.27–29 1.30.6–7 1.34 1.34.2

28 65n135 71 66, 143 66 181 67 178

Ammianus Marcellinus 17.4.11

2

Antagoras of Rhodes (from CA) 1.1–7 Antigonus of Carystus Paradoxa 19 (23)

80–81

4n11

Antimachus (from Matthews) fr. 162

83n28

Antipater of Thessalonica AP 7.369

84n33

Apollodorus 1.9.26 2.1.4

224 25n17, 99n77

Apollonius of Rhodes 1.7 1.8–11 1.33 1.306–10 1.496–511 1.507 1.554 1.580 1.721–26 1.721–68 1.759–62 1.1012–78 1.1101 1.1110–52 1.1117–52 1.1130 1.1132–39 1.1146–49 1.1150 1.1319 2.145–53 2.662–68 2.687–89 2.700–9 2.705–8 2.714–19 2.718–19 2.844–50 2.854 2.966–1001 2.1010–14 2.1015–25 2.1141–56

196 196 212n104 212 197–200 210n95 212n104 190, 208 215n117 200 211n101 186 203 188 203 204n82 188 203 204n82 186 186 212 210n94 210 210–11 177 211n97 189 225 186 175 175 192

269

270 Apollonius of Rhodes (continued) 2.1209 225 3.64–75 196n55 3.200–9 176 3.407–8 214–15 3.409–18 205 3.596–97 215 3.1177–83 206 3.1182 208 3.1229–30 215 3.1382–84 205 4.124–26 215 4.129–30 217 4.146 217n120 4.153–61 217 4.172–74 215 4.185 215 4.259–69 189–90, 207–8 4.263 110n108 4.263–65 190n44 4.269 208n91 4.272–75 189 4.272–79 176 4.278–81 223n141, 226 4.284 226 4.406–18 193 4.433–34 192 4.468–69 193, 227 4.478 193, 227 4.594–602 229 4.599–603 222 4.620–22 229 4.630 222, 229 4.672–81 204–5 4.705–14 194 4.728 236n184 4.730–31 193 4.984–92 230 4.1146–47 230 4.1237 223 4.1311 207 4.1389 231 4.1408 186 4.1436–39 187 4.1459 187 4.1513–17 133n38 4.1541–7 194, 231 4.1547–49 179n20 4.1602–16 194 4.1665–66 232 4.1670 232 4.1695–1700 233 4.1706–18 233 4.1734 181n25, 192 4.1750–61 180 4.1753 181 4.1758 209

Index of Passages Cited sch. on 3.1179 sch. on 4.156 sch. on 4.257–62c sch. on 4.268 sch. on 4.1153–54 sch. on 4.1646–48 Aratus Phaenomena 30–33 163–64 311 581–88 sch. on 16 Aristotle History of Animals 553a21–33 623b7–627b22 Arrian Anabasis 1.12.1 3.1.4 3.3.2 3.5.2 7.11 Indica 5.4 Athenaeus 5.196–97 5.197a 5.198b 5.198e 5.201d-e

205n84 217n122 206n85, 224n142 110n108 230n167 232n173

116n121 116n121 222n137 126 110n108

2n3 2n3

458 245 69 245 15 35 246n28 159 246 83n31 246

Callimachus Aetia (fragments from Pf. unless noted) 1.13–14 98n73 2.1–3 87 7 236n186 37 207n88 66 99n78 88 211n97 178.23 107 254.4(8) SH 8 254 + 283 SH 175n8 254.16 (30) SH 9 259 SH + 177Pf. 199n67, 222n139 Epigrams 37Pf. = AP 13.7 10 57Pf. = AP 6.150 10, 25n17 Hymns, Zeus 1–3 77

Index of Passages Cited 2 4–8 6–7 7–8 10–14 10–32 13–14 15 18–27 19–21 25 28–45 29, 32, 33 34 41 41–45 42–43 42–45 46–54 47 49 49–50 54–91 56–59 57 58–59 60 61–62 65 66 68–78 79 79–84 85 85–88 91–96 96–97 Apollo 104 Artemis 142–51 Delos 90–97 91–101 125–35 136–40 162–95 174 181–82 205–8 260–65 300–306 311 Athena 48 Iambi fr. 191Pf.

271

139 79 92–93, 89–91 40n63, 113 92, 95, 100–102 91 103n90 207 99 98–99 102 102 103 92, 93, 204n82 204n82 92, 93 93, 103 106 105 204n82 106 107 108 105, 108, 112 200, 210 109 113 162 113 107, 109 111n110 109 111 78 108–9, 111 148–9 112 217n120 152n89 118 158 117 117 118 119 139 115, 117 116 118 119 99n78 38, 38n56

fr.202Pf. Fragments 228.51Pf. 384.31–34Pf. 407, 410 Pf. 470bPf. 715 Pf. 655Pf.

90n50 182n27 99 30n29 233n177 10 246n30

Columella 9.2.3

107n95

Curtius Rufus, Quintus 4.8.1–2 9.8.22

181n26 129n25

Dio Chrysostom 4.62 Diodorus Siculus 1.7 1.7.1 1.10 1.10.2–3 1.10.6–7 1.13.4–5 1.15 1.15.6–7 1.24.5 1.24.7 1.26.6 1.28.2–4 1.29 1.31.7 1.47.1–6 1.47–49 1.53.2–4 1.53.7 1.53.9 1.54.1 1.55.2–3 1.55.7–9 1.56–57 1.70.1–4 1.71.1, 4–5 1.72 1.88.5 1.91–92 3.3.4 3.52–55 3.56–57 3.61.5–6 3.65.7 4.40.4 4.40–55

2n3 206n85 199n71 199n71 206n85 205–6 168–69 230n166 84 145 145 62–63 33 247 160 44 32 35 143 35, 144 177 178n16 152n89 160–61 33–34 33–34 47, 221n133 62 47, 221n133 42 41 41 42, 97n66 84n32 40 39

272 Diodorus Siculus (continued) 4.46 4.52 4.53.7 5.41–47 5.80 6.1.1–2 6.1–5 Diogenes Laertius 1.111 1.115 8.86–91 8.89 Dionysius the Periegete 249–50 sch. on 415 EGF Thebais fr.1

Index of Passages Cited

193n51 193n51 40 37 88 145 37 88 40n63 30 31 206n87 97n68 25n17

Empedocles (from D-K) B26.10 B77.1

197n61 197n61

Epimenides (from D-K) A1.16–21 B1 B4 B5 B8

88 85 88 88 110n105

Eratosthenes (from SH) 397.ii.2 Euripides Cretans fr. 79 (Austin) Hecuba 465–74 Helen 1485 Ion 206–7 sch. on Medea 1334

226n151

89–90 66n132 98 63n131 227n158

Hecataeus of Miletus (from FGrH) 1F305 57 1F324 59n120 Herodas 1.26–35 Herodorus (from FGrH) 31F52

240n9 217n122

Herodotus 1.2.-2.3 2.1 2.35 2.35.2 2.39.1–2 2.41.2 2.42 2.43.1–2 2.44.5 2.45 2.59–63 2.73 2.81 2.86–90 2.86.3 2.91 2.91.5–6 2.103.1–104.1 2.106 2.112–20 2.146 2.156 2.171 2.102, 106 3.97 4.155 4.197 6.53–55

174 174 175n9 175, 183n32 23 25 84n32, 225n148 130–31 131 27 56 59 198n62 47 154n96 23n9, 131n28, 133, 190 26 177 152n89 27 83n29, 104 23n9, 57–58 25n17, 247 48–49 83n29 108n101 179n20 29n25

Hesiod Theogony 22–28 79–85 96 120 187 467–506 479–83 491–500 496 501–5 505–11 685–819 801–6 820–80 881–85 Works and Days 218–63 Fragments (from M-W) 128 Homer Iliad 3.3–6 4.497

85 158 112 81 106 102 102–3 103 109 109 198 109 95–6 109 109–10 112 25n17, 99

9n73 203n80

Index of Passages Cited 6.289–92 15.186–93 15.157–59 19.38 23.382 Odyssey 2.270–72 2.274–80 4.227–30 4.351–92 4.418 5.244 5.244–47 5.272–74 5.305–6 7.244–47 15.426 19.37 23.296 Homeric Hymns Apollo 2 5–13 22 23–25 339–40 367 Demeter 165 189 219 242–95 280 Dionysus 1–9 Hermes 17–19 Horapollo (from Sbordone) 1.62 Isocrates Busiris 17–18 13–23 Evagoras 8–11 Josephus Bellum Judaicum 2.95 Lactantius Divinae institutiones 1.11.44–48

273 27n24 109 163 154 80 151 151 27n24 27n24 101 126 95 126 126 95, 233n177 111 136 223, 257

152 152 152 152 118 118n126 140 136 140 141 136 82–84 112n114

3

29 29n25 147–8

243n18

38

Longus Daphnis and Chloe 2.5–6 Lucian Dialogues of the Dead 10.2 True Histories 1.3.8–12

81n21

118n126 185n37

Lycophron 119, 576 891–894 1192 1209–21 1291–1321 1312

208n91 179n20 199n67 175n7 175n7 175n8

Manetho (from Waddell) fr. 83 fr. 86

46 138n48

Menander Rhetor 343.17–20 Mimnermus (from West) fr. 11a Orphic Argonautica 14 Ovid Metamorphoses 15.364–7

81n21 222n138 81

4n11

Pausanias 1.6.2 2.37.1 8.20.1 8.32.2 8.38.2 8.53.4

129n25 99n77 97 93 94 93

PGM IV 2292–94 IV 2333–34

198n63 198n63

Pherecydes of Athens (from FGrH) 3F31 217n122 3F105 196n56 Pherecydes of Syrus (from D-K) B1–B2 PHibeh I 85.25

201 98n74

274

Index of Passages Cited

Pindar (fragments from Snell-Maehler) Nemean 1 68–69 137 70–71 126n18, 137 Nemean 9, 40–42 103n90 Paean 20 124n8 Pythian 1.25 102, 134 Pythian 4 13–15 179 25–26 231n170 33 181n25 50–56 202 60–65 108n101 75 186n56 79 201 fr. 129 222n139 Plato Cratylus 396a-c 402b Laws 656c-657b 700a-701b Lysis 205c-d Phaedrus 274c5–75b1 Republic 424b2–c6 Timaeus 21e-24 Plutarch Alexander 2.6 3.1–2 26.3–7 DIO 22 57 Obsolescence of Oracles 1 Pelopidas 21 Poseidippus G-P 3110–19

97 97 29 29, 176n12 152n89 176n12 29 176n12

69 69 181n26 222n138 82n27 88 40n63 182

POxy 2064

124n4

POxy 22.2327+ 59.3965

79n 17

POxy 27.2455

49–50

PTeb 1.5.207–20

244

Seneca De clementia 1.19.1

2n3

Simonides (from PMG) 343.21–22:133n37 Stesichorus (from PMG) 192–3 Strabo 1.4.9 2.3.5 4.33.1 8.4.4 17.128 17.800 Suetonius De grammaticis 7 Tacitus Historiae 4.83 Theocritus Idyll 14.59 Idyll 15 43 48–49 87–93 94–95 106–9 146 Idyll 17 (Ptolemy) 1–8 13–15 34–35 38–40 48–50 53–57 56–65 56–57 60–63 63–64 68–69 73–75 80–84

27n23 15 38n55 97n72 97n72 10 182n27

39n60

142n63

240n9 247 243 243 243n35, 247 153 168 149–50 151 153 155 154 157 127n20 129, 151, 155 158 155 162 158 147

Index of Passages Cited 86–87 95–110 112–16 121–25 123 132–22 135–37 Idyll 24 (Heracliscus) 1–5 1–63 6–10 11–12 11–33 13–19 28–29 28–30 31 56–57 56–58 57 64–102 73–78 79–81 79–85 82–83 84 88–96 96–99 100 101–2 103–4 103–40 112–14 138–40 fr. 3 Varro De re rustica 2.5.5 Vergil Georgics 4.281–31

275 161 160 162 166 153, 162 162 150 128 123 132–33 125 132 133 134 135 137 134 126 102 123 137 145 137 141 126 137 137 137–38, 139n54 142 144 123–4 125 143 153n94

4n11

egyptian texts Book of the Dead Sp. 8 Sp. 15 Sp. 39 Sp. 84 Sp. 108 Sp. 125 Sp. 162 Sp. 185 A S4 Book of Gates Scene 46 Coffin Texts I 195g I 223f-g VI 284r “The Eloquent Peasant” Hymns, Philae Hymn 2 Hymn 4 Hymn 5 to Piye Inscriptions “Israel” Stele, Mereneptah Kubban Stele, Ramesses II Mendes Stele, Ptolemy II Naucratis Stele, Nectanebo I Osorkon’s Victory Stele Pithom stele, Ptolemy II Rosettana, Ptolemy V Semna stele, Sesostris III “Prophecy of Neferti”

4n11

60n121 234n178 228 60n121 232 48 213, 234n178 213 230n168 154n97 154n97 154n98 100n80 120 101 112n114 120 161 112n114 213n109 213–14 154n98, 156, 213, 216n119 236n185 138, 156, 176n11 156 100–101 27

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Index

Abrochos (uninundated), Arcadia as, 98–99 Achilles: in Encomium for Ptolemy, 157, 158, 164; shield of, 253; tomb of, 248 Achmim (Chemmis, Upper Egypt), 23n9, 56n109; Perseus worship at, 26, 133. See also Chemmis (Delta) Adonis: Alexandrian festival of, 153, 155, 167–68, 246–47; Semitic, 89 Adrasteia, 94, 106 Aeetes (Argonautica), 176, 193, 205, 206, 228; ancestry of, 235; testing of Jason, 214–15 Aegyptus, sons of, 26 Aeneas: killing of Turnus, 226–27; shield of, 202 Aeschylus: Danaids in, 25; Prometheus Bound, 213n108 Aetiology: in Argonautica, 184, 189, 190, 192, 193, 203, 235; in cultural assimilation, 18, 72. See also Aition; Callimachus, Aetia Afterlife, Egyptian, 47; burial practices and, 221. See also Underworld, Egyptian Aition: Apollonius’s, 235; cultural redefinition through, 256–57; for Eleusinian mysteries, 141–42; foreign places in, 72; in foundation stories, 188; of Hellenistic poets, 187 Alcmena: Egyptian affiliations of, 131; in

Heracliscus, 128–29, 130, 133, 135, 137, 141, 144, 156, 157 Alexander Romance, 8, 22, 64–73; audience of, 68–69; intent of, 71–72; Nectanebo II in, 64n133, 65–68, 71; Olympias in 64, 65, 66, 67; Philip of Macedon in, 65, 66, 69, 143; popularity of, 64n134; Sesoösis in, 177n15; sources of, 64, 65; succession in, 64; theogamy in, 130; transmission of, 67 Alexander the Great, 35; ancestry of, 69, 70–71; Aristotle and, 31n32; in Dionysius Scytobrachion, 42; divinity of, 70, 72, 130, 152, 155, 157; education of, 66, 143; in Encomium for Ptolemy, 152, 156, 157, 164; in foundation myths, 8; as Homeric hero, 252; at Memphis, 65n135, 66, 245; paternity myths of, 8, 65–66, 68–71, 72, 130; restoration of temples, 13n30; and Sesoösis, 178, 180; at Siwah, 65n135, 66, 181; temples of, 45; at tomb of Achilles, 248; view of kingship, 14–15 Alexandria: bilingual government in, 46, 241; bureaucracy of, 13, 46, 234n19; civic identity in, 243, 244, 251; cults in, 142, 244; Egyptian architecture of, 240; ethnic diversity of, 173, 240; festivals of, 153, 155, 167–68, 246–48; foundation myths of, 8, 181; foundation of, 65, 67,

277

278 Alexandria (continued) 72; foundation poetry of, 187n40; geographic importance of, 239; Greek-speaking population of, 240, 242–43; harbor of, 15n43, 240n10; Hellenism of, 243; heterogeneity of, 73, 242–45, 249–50; intellectual milieu of, 21; Jews of, 243n18, 244; Library, 249–51, 257; material advancement in, 240n9; Museum, 12; site of, 181–82. See also Greeks, Alexandrian Amasis (pharaoh), 13n30 Amazons, 185n37; in Dionysius Scytobrachion, 41, 175 Ambrosia, 154 Amenhotep III (pharaoh), 54 Ammianus Marcellinus, 2, 3 Ammon (Greek): in Alexander Romance, 65, 72; in Dionysius Scytobrachion, 41, 42, 175; snake manifestation of, 66n137, 71. See also Amun (Egyptian); Zeus Ammon Amun (Egyptian), 50; as divine father, 53–54, 56; festival of, 45n78; temple at Siwah, 66. See also Re Amphitryon: Egyptian affiliations of, 131; in Heracliscus, 128, 134, 135, 141, 156, 157 Amycus (Argonautica), 216n119 Anaphe (island), 209, 224, 233n177, 236, 237, 255 Animal sacrifice, 27 Animal worship, 15; Manetho on, 46 Antagoras of Rhodes, Hymn to Eros, 80, 81, 82 Antigonus of Carystus, 4n11 Antimachus, 110n108, 217n122, 224 Antinoe papyrus (of Theocritus), 124n4 Antipater of Thessalonica, 84n33 Antiphanes of Berga, 38n55 Anubis (god), 154 Aphrodite: in Argonautica, 200, 201; association with Arsinoe, 181; cotempling with Berenice, 153–54 Apiculture, Egyptian, 3n7, 107n98 Apidanians, 110n108; in Argonautica, 190 Apis (god), 4; Alexander’s sacrifice to, 245; as Epaphus, 8–9 Apollo: aretai of, 117; in Argonautica, 210, 211–12, 216n119, 233–35; birth of, 17, 57–58, 114; cults to, 237; defeat of Pytho, 11n23, 117, 118, 119; and Helios, 237; identification with Horus, 7, 20, 104, 114, 209, 236, 237; slaying of Tityos, 211n101; youth of, 213, 237

Index Apollodorus, 224 Apollonius of Rhodes: audience of, 181; compositional technique of, 235; as court poet, 171–72; and Dionysius Scytobrachion, 40; ktiseis of, 187n40; literary precursors of, 218; role in Museum, 12; as royal tutor, 248n40. Works: Argonautica: —, Aeetes in, 176, 193, 205, 206, 214–15, 228; —, aetiology in, 184, 189, 190, 192, 193, 203, 235; —, as anti-epic, 218; Aphrodite in, 200, 201; —, Apollo in, 210, 211–12, 216n119, 233–35; —, barbarians in, 175–76, 179; —, celestial references in, 221n136; chthonic powers in, 197, 210, 218, 222, 232; —, Circe in, 193–94, 204, 222, 227; —, composition of, 62n1, 180, 198n64, 228; —, cosmology in, 197–99, 208, 218–19; —, crime and punishment in, 201; —, —, cult in, 251–52; —, cultural heterogeneity in, 11-12, 195–96; —, cultural relativism of, 187; —, Cyclopes in, 200; —, dawn in, 234–35, 256; —, description of Egyptians in, 110n108; —, dragons’ teeth in, 205, 206, 215; —, Egyptian cosmogony in, 209–10, 236; Egyptian themes of, 8, 182–83, 204; —, foundation stories in, 188–89, 190; —, geographic exploration in, 185, 222; —, geographic markers in, 204–8; —, golden fleece in, 185, 215, 216, 218, 222, 225–26; —, Greco-Egyptian culture in, 196–208, 219; —, Greek cosmogony in, 197, 198, 255; —, Greek gods in, 178n18; —, Heracles in, 178, 185, 186–87, 195, 235; —, Hera in, 229; —, Hesperides in, 186–87, 194, 218; —, homonoia in, 211n97; —, Hypsipyle in, 186, 215n117; —, —, as katabasis, 218; —, kingship in, 202–3; —, Libyan earth in, 179, 180, 192, 194, 202, 208, 209, 223; —, magic in, 197, 205, 212, 217, 218, 222, 225; marriages in, 200, 224; —, narrative strategies of, 183, 185n37, 224, 235, 257; —, new order in, 208–18; —, origin myths in, 254; —, Orpheus in, 197–99, 201, 210; —, Phrygians in, 188; —, primeval hills in, 209; —, primordial nature in, 204–6; —, psychological realism in, 185; —, Ptolemaic context of, 18, 171, 173–83, 195; —,

Index quest in, 183–237; —, romantic encounters in, 184, 191, 192–93; —, serpents in, 187, 194, 210–12, 216–17, 225, 231; —, Sesoösis in, 177, 189–90, 207; —, socio-political context of, xi, 237; —, sources of, 220, 223, 227; —, time in, 228; —, transculturation in, 191, 231n172; —, Triton in, 194, 207, 208; —, Typhon in, 216; —, unity of, 171n1; —, use of Hecataeus of Miletus in, 223; —, use of Hymn to Zeus in, 198, 204n82; —, use of myth in, 185; —, use of Pherecydes of Syrus in, 198, 199, 201; —, use of Pindar in, 178–80, 181, 195, 208, 223, 224; —, use of underworld books in, 223, 225; —, Zeus in, 178n18, 200. See also Apsyrtus (Argonautica); Argo; Argonauts; Jason (Argonautica); Medea (Argonautica) Apophis (serpent), 60–61, 199, 210; battle with Horus, 216n119, 217; as chaos, 225; defeat by Horus, 119; mutilation of, 228; and voyage of Re, 219, 232 Apotheosis, 37, 38 Apsyrtus (Argonautica): murder of, 215–16, 218, 222, 226–29, 230; mutilation of, 193, 216n118, 229 Aratus, 82n27, 88n46, 110n108; constellations in, 126; use of Eudoxus, 30n29 Arcadia: as birthplace of Zeus, 79, 80, 81, 84, 91–96, 103, 108, 200, 257; irrigation of, 91, 95–98, 116, 164, 203; as primordial place, 81, 108, 113 Arcadians (Argonautica), 190 Architecture, Egyptian, 15. See also Monuments, Egyptian Ares, 118n125 Arete: of Apollo, 117; cultural values of, 150n86; Homeric, 253; in Hymn to Zeus, 109; of Ptolemy II, 150 Argo: as constellation, 221–22; solar journey of, 221n136 Argo (Argonautica): on Lake of Fire, 229, 231; night voyage of, 229, 233–34; return voyage of, 182n29, 224–37; serpent imagery of, 194, 231 Argonauts: Dionysius Scytobrachion on, 40, 174n6, 175; early accounts of, 174; in Pindar, 179 Argonauts (Argonautica): ancestors of, 209; as civilizers, 187; ephebic status

279 of, 218; Libyan journey of, 186, 223, 231; magic skills of, 197, 205, 222, 225 Argos: aridity of, 117n124; connection with Egypt, 8–9; irrigation of, 25, 96–102 Ariadne, 192n50 Aristaeus, 3n5 Aristotle: advice to kings, 31; on Epimenides, 88; influence of Eudoxus on, 30n29 Arrian, 15n39, 248; on Alexander’s ancestry, 69 Arsinoe (mother of Ptolemy I), 129 Arsinoe I (wife of Ptolemy I), 118n125 Arsinoe II (wife of Ptolemy II), 118n125, 126, 162, 168; death of, 147, 182n27; divinity of, 153n93; identification with Isis, 153n93, 155; previous marriage of, 163; temple at Zephyrion, 181 Assmann, J., 234 Asteria (island), 115–16, 117–18 Athena: in Callimachus, 75; in Dionysius Scytobrachion, 41, 207n88; identification with Neith, 51; Tritonian, 206, 207, 208 Athenaeus, 246 Athens: drama of, 249, 251; Egyptian influence in, 247 Azania, 98, 99 Bakhtin, M. M., 171n2 Barbarians: in Argonautica, 175–76, 179; identity of, 183. See also NonGreeks Barbarism: association with Egypt, 29; Greek triumph over, 174–75, 187 Basileia (festival), 78, 125 Basileia (goddess), 41, 42, 43 Battiads, 108n101, 179, 180 Bees: and baby Zeus, 107; on cartouches, plates 1-2; Euhemerus on, 107n95; in hieroglyphic writing, 1–3; in Pindar, 108n101; royal symbolism of, 1–4, 107–8; spontaneous creation of, 4; as symbol of rebirth, 4, 5 Berenice I (wife of Ptolemy I), 118n125, 137; benefactions of, 167; cotempling with Aphrodite, 153–54; cult of, 147n79; deification of, 153–55, 157; in Encomium for Ptolemy, 152–53; marriage of, 155; offerings to, 153n95 Berenice II (wife of Ptolemy III), 182n29 Berenice’s Lock (constellation), 228 Bes (dwarf god), 134n42

280 Bevan, E. R., 13n29 Bing, Peter, 7n14, 241n11; on Hymn to Delos, 114n117, 115; on inundation, 98n74; on Niobe myth, 118n125 Birth shrines, 56–57, 156 Bn-bn (hill), 59, 60 Bnw-bird, 59, 60 Book of the Dead, 47, plate 4; Horus in, 213; mutilation in, 228; negative confession of, 48; night voyage of Re in, 232; solar hymns in, 60. See also Underworld books, Egyptian Book of Two Ways, 226n151 Boötes (constellation), 126 Burkert, Walter G., 130, 246n34 Burton, A., 32n35, 62n128 Busiris, 26–27; Isocrates on, 28–30, 38; murder of, 131; in vase painting, 62 Cadmus, 205, 206 Calame, C., 179n21 Callimachus: allusions of, 76; aporia of, 84; audience of, 113; on Battiads, 180n22; chronology of, 12, 76–77; court poetry of, 74, 75, 127, 170, 171; cult in, 251; cultural codes in, 254; dedicatory epigrams of, 10; displacement in, 77n6; Egyptian themes of, 8, 104–5, 114, 127; on Euhemerus, 38; geographical markers of, 84, 92–95, 204n82, 207, 208; humor of, 74–75; intertexts of, 76; on kingship, 75–76, 254; modern readers of, 169; on night realm of sun, 222n140; origin myths of, 254, 255; performative traditions in, 77n7, 250; political context of, 169; predecessors of, 76; preference for Hesiod, 163; realism of, 74; theogonies of, 163; use of Eudoxus, 30n29; use of Euhemerus, 90–91, 106; use of Hipponax, 254; use of Io myth, 8–9; use of Works and Days, 111. Works: Aetia, 187; —, Anaphe in, 237n186; —, Argos in, 99; —, chaos in, 87; —, composition of, 224n143; —, scholia on, 39n60; —, use of Hesiod, 254; Hecale, 254; Hymn to Apollo, 169n135, 210–11; Hymn to Delos, 75, 114–21; —, as birthday hymn, 115, 127; —, chaos in, 164, 165, 224; —, composition of, 114, 115n118, 147, 164, 198n64; —, Egyptian motifs in, 114, 211; —, and Encomium for Ptolemy, 147, 164–65; —, Hera in, 116; —, and

Index Homeric Hymn to Apollo, 115, 116; —, and Hymn to Zeus, 116; —, kingship in, 117, 147; —, mutiny of Gauls in, 114–15, 117, 119, 139, 165, 228, 254; —, Niobe myth in, 118; —, prophecy of Apollo in, 116, 117, 118, 119–21, 139, 144; —, Ptolemy II in, 116, 118, 119, 121; —, serpents in, 118; —, structure of, 76; —, as theogony, 121; —, use of Herodotus in, 114; Hymn to Zeus, 43, 75–76, 77–114; —, Apollonius’s use of, 198, 204n82; —, Arcadia in, 79, 81, 85, 91–96, 103, 108, 200, 257; —, aretai in, 109; —, bees in, 107; —, birth of Zeus in, 77, 79–108, 113; —, chronology of, 77–78, 127; —, concluding prayer of, 77; —, Crete in, 79, 89, 91–94, 100, 103, 257; —, Egyptian myth in, 104–5; —, and Encomium for Ptolemy, 148; —, Gaia in, 103; —, growth to manhood in, 105, 106, 108; —, and Hymn to Delos, 116; —, invocation of, 77, 87; —, kingship in, 17, 18, 79, 92, 109, 127, 200; —, omphalos in, 103–4, 106; —, prosperity in, 150; —, Ptolemy II in, 78, 79, 105, 108, 112–14, 148–51, 204; —, Rhea in, 91–92, 95, 96, 97, 105, 163–64; —, scholia on, 90; —, self-referentiality of, 150; —, serpents in, 134; —, use of Homer in, 95; —, use of Theogony in, 76, 85–87, 89, 95, 102–14, 127, 146, 149, 158, 208, 252, 253; Lock of Berenice, 9n18, 154, 228n162, 254; Victory of Sosibius, 99 Callisthenes, use of Homer, 95, 233n177, 252, 253–54 Callixeinus, On Alexandria, 246n29 Calypso, island of, 96, 126, 233n177 Cameron, A., 77n7, 87n39, 250 Cassander (king of Macedon), 37 Chaos: in Adoniazusae, 167; Apophis as, 225; Callimachus on, 87; defeat by rulers, 120, 138; in Egyptian cosmogony, 51, 198–99, 209; in Hymn to Delos, 164, 165, 224; Pytho as, 118; Seth as, 51, 119; struggle with maat, 199, 255 Chemmis (Delta), 23n9, 56, 116; Herodotus on, 57–58; as place of bees, 107. See also Achmim (Chemmis, Upper Egypt) Chemmitae, 23; games of, 26; Herodotus on, 47; Perseus worship of, 56n109

Index Chephren (pharaoh), 159n114 Childéric (Merovingian king), 4, 5, 110n106 Chiron (centaur), 212n103 Chremonidean War, 115 Chronos, 199 Chrysippus (doctor), 30 Cippi (apotropaic plaques), 134–35, 136 Circe, in Argonautica, 193–94, 204, 222, 227 Clarysse, W., 7n14, 241n14, 242n15 Clauss, J. J., 77n7, 78, 113, 127n19, 204n82 Cleanthes, Hymn to Zeus, 82 Cleitarchus, 65 Colchis: as Egyptian colony, 33, 175, 177, 204, 214, 222–23, 226, 235; as foundation of Sesostris, 176, 214; mixed marriages in, 192; as night region of sun, 222 Colonization: civilizing process in, 195; Greek, 191 Conception, divine, 52–54, 128, 130 Concord, temple of, 178 Constellations, 228; Argo as, 221-22; in Heracliscus, 126 Conte, G. B. 76n4 Copresence, in Ptolemaic culture, 195, 196–208 Corybantes, 88, 89, 106 Cos: in Encomium for Ptolemy, 158, 159, 162; as primeval island, 116; Ptolemy II’s birth on, 17, 97, 114, 116, 119, 127, 158, 165; relationship to Delos, 165 Cosmogony, Egyptian, 11, 58–59; in Argonautica, 209–10; chaos in, 51, 198–99, 209; and Hymn to Zeus, 100; primeval hill in, 100–101; sunrise in, 233–34, plate 6; syncretism in, 51; voyage of Re in, 218–22 Cosmogony, Greek, 81; Apollonius’s use of, 197, 198, 255; of Diodorus Siculus, 199n71; and kingship, 86 Cosmology, Egyptian, 200; in Argonautica, 197–99, 208, 218–19; chaos in, 119, 202; night voyage of the sun in, 218–37; Seth in, 139 Cosmology, Greek: Empedoclean, 197–98, 200; of Pherecydes, 199–200, 201 Couretes, 88, 89, 90, 92, 105, 106 Court poetry, Alexandrian: audience of, 140; emerging monarchy in, 249; Greek models for, 250; Heracliscus as, 125, 143; humor in, 75, 170

281 Courts, Hellenistic: encomia in, 148n84; poetry of, 171n1 Creation myths. See Cosmogony Cretans, as liars, 83n28, 85, 88, 89, 92, 113 Crete, as birthplace of Zeus, 79, 80, 84, 89, 91–94, 100, 103, 257 Cronus, 41, 90; in Theogony, 102 Cults: in Alexandria, 142, 244; of Apis, 245; to Apollo, 237; chthonic, 101; of Demeter, 142n63, 247; Dionysiac, 83; of dying gods, 246n34; of Great Mother, 107, 188, 203–4; of Greek Alexandrians, 244; of Isis, 4, 15n41, 142; at Memphis, 239; Ptolemaic, 15–16, 38, 45, 152n91, 162, 247; role in Greek identity, 251–52; ruler, 38; of Sarapis, 15–16, 142, 247; syncretistic, 8, 247; of Theoi adelphoi, 39; of Theoi Soteres, 152n91, 162 Cultural assimilation: aetiology in, 18, 72; by Alexandrian Greeks, 7–8, 21; of Herodotus, 8; by Ptolemies, 16 Culture: barbarian, 174; classical, 172; dynamics of borrowing in, 5; folkloric similarities in, 11; priority in, 24, 33, 183, 241 Culture, Egyptian: fragrance in, 154–55; Hecataeus’s elevation of, 36; Herodotus on, 27–28; individuals in, 52; influence on Alexandrian writers, xi, 6–7; literacy in, 49; magic in, 214; solar journey in, 221 Culture, Greek: civilizing role of, 195; liminality in, 196; literacy in, 49; and North African culture, 194, 257; triumph over barbarism, 174–75, 187 Culture heroes, 37n53, 38; establishment of cults by, 248; Heracles as, 145; Olympians as, 90; Uranus as, 41; Zeus as, 42, 91 Curtius Rufus, Quintus: on Alexandria, 181n26; on Ptolemy I, 129n25 Cyrenaica: Greek control of, 182; prophecy on, 208–18 Cyrene: foundation myths in, 179n21; Greek colonization of, 180, 181; intermarriage in, 191n49 Danae, myth of, 25, 26, 128; in Simonides, 133 Danaids: Hecataeus on, 33; irrigation of Argos, 99; kingship legends and, 26 Danaus, myth of, 8–9, 25 Dat, 230; twelve hours of, 221, 231. See also Underworld, Egyptian

282 Delos: as light, 118; relationship to Cos, 165. See also Callimachus, Hymn to Delos; Homeric Hymn to Apollo Delphi: foundation story of, 210; as omphalos, 93, 104; temple of Apollo at, 63 Delphyne (serpent), 211n97, 212, 217 Demeter: cults of, 142n63, 247; in Homeric Hymn to Demeter, 126, 140–41; identification with Isis, 7 Democritus, 32, 146n76; relationship to Euhemerus, 37n53 Demophoön, 140–41 Demosthenes, 251n46 Demotic language: as administrative language, 13; documents in, 241–42; in Greco-Roman period, 221n132; literary protocols of, 68; priestly oaths in, 48 Dendera, temples at, 57 Detienne, M., 86, 114 Diodorus Siculus, 17, 146n76; on the afterlife, 47; on Busiris, 62; cosmogony of, 199n71; on Dionysus, 84; on Epimenides, 88; epitome of Euhemerus, 37; epitome of Hecataeus, 32n35; “foe smiting” in, 62–63; on Giants, 63–64; on Sesoösis, 160–61; on spontaneous generation, 205–6 Diogenes Laertius: on Epimenides, 88; on Eudoxus of Cnidus, 30, 31 Diomedes, in Encomium for Ptolemy, 157, 158 Dionysius Scytobrachion, 17, 39–43; on Amazons, 175; Argonautica, 39–40, 175, 224; on Athena, 41, 207n88; Dionysus in, 39, 41–42, 43, 175; on Egyptian deities, 175; on Heracles, 145–46, 175; on Jason, 174n6; on kingship, 42; Libyan stories, 39, 41–42, 175; on Medea, 40, 193n51; rationalizing by, 39, 42, 175; relocation of divinities, 208n92; on Zeus, 97n66 Dionysus: birth of, 82–83, 84; conflict with Titans, 42; as culture hero, 248; Dionysius Scytobrachion on, 39, 41–42, 43; Homeric Hymn to Dionysus,82–84; identification with Osiris, 7, 15, 84, 230, 245–46; in Ptolemaia festival, 245; Zagreus, 89 Divinity: of Alexander the Great, 70, 72, 130, 152, 155, 157; in Argonautica, 194; of Arsinoe II, 153n93; in Egyptian thought, 50; Euhemerus on, 167; Hecataeus of Abdera on,

Index 168–69; of Heracles, 131, 136; in hymnic tradition, 169 Doliones (Argonautica), 186, 203 Dorians, Egyptian ancestry of, 29n25 Dougherty, C., 187n40 Douris vase, 174n6 Dragons’ teeth, sewing of, 205, 206, 215 Dream of Nectanebo, 68n143 Drepane (island), 230 Edfu temple, 46, 57; description of rituals at, 211n98; friezes of, 56 Education: of Heracles, 123, 137, 142–45, 165; of princes, 35, 142–45, 165 Egypt: and archaic Greece, 21; association with barbarism, 29; association with tyranny, 26; capitals of, 239; cereal crops of, 238–39; in Euripides, 28; foundation myths of, 45; Greek immigration to, 8, 20–23, 240, 241; Greek population of, 16, 23, 47; Greek receptions of, 3; Greek views of, 21–32; Hecataeus’s account of, 32–36; Hellenization of, 8, 183; influence on Western culture, 5; power structure of, 168n33; as primordial mother, 207–8; priority over Greece, 24, 30, 33, 43, 183, 189–90; religious festivals of, 45–46; shared culture of, 236–37; spontaneous generation in, 205–6; stability of institutions, 176n12, 198n61; as “Two Lands,” 18, 50, 55, 238–41. See also Cosmogony, Egyptian; Cosmology, Egyptian; Kingship, pharaonic; Pharaohs Egypt, Greco-Roman: administration of, 242n15; brother-sister marriage in, 168n32 Egypt, Lower: bee symbolism of, 3n7, 107; geography of, 238, 239; under Ptolemies, 239 Egypt, Ptolemaic: ethnicity of, 242n15; priesthood under, 12–13; temples of, 16, 45, 57; underworld books in, 220 Egypt, Upper: geography of, 238–39 Egyptians: bilingual, 46, 241; knowledge of hieroglyphics, 48; religiosity of, 33 Eileithyia (goddess), 91, 101, 158 Eleusinian mysteries, 146, 166, 247; Danaids and, 25n17; establishment of, 141–42 Embalming, Greeks’ familiarity with, 154 Emergence, myths of, 86, 114. See also

Index Cosmogony, Egyptian; Islands, emerging Empedocles, 197–98, 200; conception of meigma, 205 Empereur, Yves, 15n43, 240n10 Encomia: in Hellenistic courts, 148n84; and mythic hymns, 148n82; prose, 147, 148 Enemies, ritual burning of, 138n48 Ennead (primal forces), 110 Epic: Hellenistic, 148n84; Homeric, 171; Roman, 171, 172; temporal framework of, 172–73 Epigeioi (divinized humans), 37 Epigonids: marriages of, 192; philosophers’ advice to, 32 Epimenides of Crete, 40n63, 82, 87–90, 106n92, 112; attributions to, 88n40 Eratosthenes, 15, 226n151; as royal tutor, 248n40 Eros: as bearded child, 81, 82; birth of, 80–81; as generative force, 81; in Hesiod, 82n27 Ethnicity: of Alexandria, 173, 240, 242n15 Eudoxus of Cnidus, 23, 30–31, 48n90; chronology of, 24n14; underworld in, 221 Euergesia, 159–70 Euhemerus of Messene, 17; on bees, 107n95; Callimachus’s use of, 90–91; on divinity, 167; on Heracles, 145; on kingship, 43; rationalizations of, 36–39; Sacred Register, 37; on Zeus, 37, 90, 107 Euhesperides, renaming of, 182n29 Eumolpidae, 247 Euphemus, gift of clod to, 180, 192, 194, 201n74, 202, 208, 209, 223, 255, 256 Euripides: Helen, 27, 28; Iphigenia in Tauris, 26 Europa, abduction of, 174 Eurydice (wife of Ptolemy I), 118n125, 137 Eustathius, commentary on Dionysius the Periegete, 97n68 Festivals: Alexandrian, 153, 155, 167–68, 244–48; of Ammon, 45n78; effect on public opinion, 248; Genethlia, 125; of Opet, 225n148, 245; of Osiris, 246n34; Panathanaea, 64; pharaonic, 45–46, 215, 238; Ptolemaia, 245–46; Sed, 215, 238, 246; Thesmophoria, 142n63, 247; of Zeus Basileus, 78

283 Fleur-de-lis, derivation of, 4–5 Folklore, pancultural, 11 Fontenrose, J., 11n23 Footprints, royal, 167 Fragrance, in Egyptian culture, 154–55 Fraser, Peter, 38, 191n49, 243; on hymns of Callimachus, 78 Froidefond, Christian, 21 Gaia: in Hymn to Zeus, 103; in Theogony, 102–3 Gauls, mutiny against Ptolemy II, 114–15, 117, 119, 139, 165, 228, 254 Genealogy, Greco-Egyptian, 24–26 Genethlia (festival), 125 Genres: encomia, 149, 172; epic, 148n84, 171, 172–73; epinician, 172; performative, 248; sociopolitical milieu of, 7, 10 Geographers, Hellenistic, 184n35 Giants (Greek myth), 62; Diodorus on, 63–64; epithets of, 139 Gods: in Dionysius Scytobrachion, 41–42, 43; dying, 89, 90, 106, 246n34; in Pherecydes, 199; prenatal activity of, 120; statutes of, 10 Gods, Egyptian: analogies with Eros, 82n27; in cosmic order, 52; dwarf, 134n42; identification with Greek gods, 7, 8, 20–21; Manetho on, 46; syncretism of, 50; trinity among, 53 Gods, Greek: in Argonautica, 178n18; Euhemerus on, 37–38; identification with Egyptian gods, 7, 8, 20–21; kinship among, 53 Golden fleece: in Argonautica, 185, 215, 216, 218, 222, 225–26 Goldhill, S., 172n3, 235n183, 256 Gorgon, 133 Government: Egyptian, 28, 29; Isocrates on, 28; Socrates on, 29 Gow, A. F. S., 123, 125, 126, 135; on Encomium for Ptolemy, 147n79, 158–59; on purification, 137 Great Mother: cult of, 107, 188, 203–4; in Dionysius Scytobrachion, 41; in Phrygia, 106. See also Rhea Greece: city-states of, 64, 173, 243, 244; priority over Egypt, 24, 30, 33, 43, 241 Greeks: colonization of Mediterranean, 191; in Egyptian population, 16, 23, 47; immigration to Egypt, 8, 20–23, 240, 241; intermarriage with nonGreeks, 191–92, 241n14; knowledge of Demotic, 48; knowledge of Egypt-

284 Greeks (continued) ian religion, 21; as successors to Persians, 33; unions with barbarians, 174; views of Egypt, 21–32 Greeks, Alexandrian: accommodation by, 16; collective identity of, 251–52; cultural assimilation by, 7–8, 21; festivals of, 244–45; heterogeneity of, 242–45; under legal system, 244 Greene, T. M., 256–57 Griffiths, F., 122–23, 227n157 Griffiths, J. Gwyn, 58, 116–17; on Eudoxus, 31n32; on floating islands, 58 Hands, severed, 215n118 Hathor: as Io, 25; as Isis, 50, 56; as nurse of Horus, 117 Hatshepsut (pharaoh), 53–54, 71n152 Hebe, marriage to Heracles, 126–27, 137 Hecataeus of Abdera, 14, 17, 90; Aegyptiaca, 32–36, 199n71, 205; on the afterlife, 47; on benefactions, 166; Dionysus in, 84, 230n166; on divinity, 168–69; on Egyptian religion, 46; gods in, 37; on Heracles, 145, 146; on kingship, 33–34, 39, 43, 143–44, 146, 203; on knowledge of Egyptian, 48n90; on Osiris, 38; political debate in, 18; purpose of, 36; relationship to Euhemerus, 37n53; on Sesoösis, 35–36, 120n130, 176, 177–78, 196; Theocritus’s use of, 144; underworld in, 221; visit to Ramesseum, 44 Hecataeus of Miletus, 22, 23; Apollonius’s use of, 223; originary myths of, 24–26; phoenix in, 59n120 Heka (god), 214, 219, 225 Helen of Troy: in Egypt, 27–28; paternity of, 69 Heliopolis, 10n20, 59; Herodotus’s knowledge of, 44 Helios: and Apollo, 237; in Dionysius Scytobrachion, 41; identification with Horus, 42; as Re, 214 Hellenes, identity of, 183, 242, 244 Hellenism: of Alexandria, 243; in Alexandrian poetry, 251 Hellenocentrism, 7 Hellenomemphites, 23, 47, 241; burial practices of, 221n131 Hephaestus, identification with Ptah, 35, 50, 144 Hera: in Argonautica, 229; birth of, 164; in Danaus myth, 99; in Homeric Hymn to Apollo, 118; in Hymn to Delos, 116; marriage to Zeus, 162, 164, 168, 169

Index Heracles: as ancestor of Alexander, 70; as ancestor of Ptolemies, 102, 129, 132, 133, 152; ancestry of, 133; in Argonautica, 178, 185, 186–87, 195, 212, 235; birth date of, 125; and Busiris, 26, 131; as civilizer, 62, 145; as culture hero, 145, 248; death of, 141; in Dionysius Scytobrachion, 40, 145–46, 175; divinity of, 131, 136; Egyptian affiliations of, 62n126, 130–31, 146; in Eleusinian mysteries, 142; Euhemerus on, 145; and golden bowl, 131, 132, 136, 221; Hecataeus on, 145, 146; humanity of, 141, 142; immortality of, 141, 142, 145, 146, 166, 186; labors of, 137, 141, 221; marriage to Hebe, 126–27, 137; as model prince, 130, 143n68, 144, 146; as monster-slayer, 178, 185, 186, 187, 210; Near Eastern affiliations of, 130, 131; paternity of, 69, 129–30, 135, 141; “smiting the foe,” 62, 131, 138 Hermes, 120 Hermes-Thoth, 226n151 Hermippus, 250n43 Herodotus: on birth of Apollo, 114; on Busiris, 27; Callimachus’s use of, 114; on Chemmis, 57–58, 59; chronology of, 24n14; cultural assimilations of, 8, 21; on cultural priority, 24, 30; on Dionysus, 83n28; on Egyptian culture, 20; on Egyptian kings, 27–28; on festivals, 46; on Helen, 27; on Heracles, 130–31; on Horus, 59; knowledge of Egypt, 6, 44–48; knowledge of monuments, 48; knowledge of priesthood, 44, 46; on the Nile, 97; on Perseus, 25–26; on Persian war, 174; on Sesostris, 34, 176–77, 196; sources of, 44n71; visit to Egypt, 21, 239n4 Hesiod: Alexandrian poets’ use of, 252; Eros in, 81, 82n27; imitators of, 87; kingship in, 255. Works: Catalogue of Women, 25, 99; Theogony: —, Callimachus’s use of, 76, 85–87, 89, 95, 102–14, 127, 146, 149, 158, 208, 252, 253; —, contest with Typhon in, 21; —, kingship in, 86; —, Muses in, 85, 87, 88, 112; —, Near Eastern elements in, 109; —, omphalos in, 103; —, proem of, 85; —, Theocritus’s use of, 158, 159, 253; —, Typhoeus in, 109–10, 111; —, Zeus in, 86; Works and Days, 111

Index Hesperides (Argonautica), 186–87, 194 Hieroglyphic writing, 176n12; bees in, 1–3; Egyptians’ knowledge of, 48; European interest in, 2; Ptolemies’ use of, 13, 14 Hill, primeval, 58; in Argonautica, 209; in Egyptian cosmogony, 100–101; in Hymn to Zeus, 91, 100; pyramids as, 58; sunrise on, 234 Hipponax, 254 Homer: Alexandrian poets’ use of, 256; Callimachus’s use of, 76, 95, 252, 253–54; heroic behavior in, 252; Theocritus’s use of, 163; tragedians’ use of, 251; Works: Iliad, 80, 252; Odyssey: Argonauts in, 173n5; —, Callimachus’s use of, 95, 233n177; —, marriage in, 155; —, narrative reality of, 185n37; —, romantic encounters in, 185, 192; —, supernatural light in, 136; —, Theocritus’s use of, 151 Homeric Hymn to Apollo: and Hymn to Delos, 115, 116; Pytho in, 118, 165; Theocritus’s use of, 152, 158, 164 Homeric Hymn to Demeter, 136; Eleusinian mysteries in, 141–42; use in Heracliscus, 124, 127, 140–41, 146 Homeric Hymn to Dionysus, 80, 82–84 Homonoia, 164, 178; in Argonautica, 211n97 Horapollo, 2, 3, 3n7, 140 Hornung, Eric: on Apophis, 217; on maat, 51–52, 120; on pleonasm, 50; on voyage of Re, 220, 234 Horus: and the Amazons, 41; attack of serpents on, 126n17; beauty of, 212–13; birth of, 98; birthplace of, 59, 100; in Book of the Dead, 213; on cippi, 134, 136; defeat of Apophis, 119; defeat of serpents, 119, 126n17, 165, 211, plate 3; in Dionysius Scytobrachion, 42, 175; Eudoxus on, 31; festivals of, 46; Golden, 138–39; as good son, 213; Herodotus on, 59; iconography of, 55; identification with Apollo, 7, 20, 104, 114, 209, 236, 237; identification with Helios, 42; identification with Perseus, 26, 56n109; as morning star, 216n119; nurses of, 116; as order, 51; pharaohs as, 53; revival of, 134–35; struggle with Seth, 55, 56; succession of, 42 Horus falcon, 159 Horus-in-Chemmis, 107; and Apollo, 58, 104, 114; birth of, 117

285 Horus-the-Child: birth of, 237; and birth of Zeus, 104–5; Callimachus’s familiarity with, 102; and Eros, 82n27; as Harpocrates, 15; pharaohs as, 55, 104, 156, 236; Ptolemies’ use of, 237 H’r nbw (Golden Horus), 138 Hu (god), 219, 225 Human life, stages of, 219 Human sacrifice, 27, 62, 138, 227 Humor, in court poetry, 75, 170 Hunter, Richard, 140n49, 147n82, 154n95, 161, 173n5; on new order, 209 Hymns: and encomia, 148n82; from Napata, 120; of Philae, 46, 56, 101, 112n114, 120; solar, 60, 234 Hypsipyle (Argonautica), 186, 215n117 Inachus, myth of, 25n17 Insemination, divine, 26, 128 Intermarriage: with non-Greeks, 191–92; in Cyrene, 191n49; Greek and Egyptian, 241n11 Io: identification with Isis, 25, 211n101; myth of, 8–9, 25, 26, 174 Iphicles, 133 Irrigation: of Arcadia, 91, 95–98, 116, 164, 200, 203; in Argonautica, 203; of Argos, 25, 96–102; introduction of, 99 Isis: as consort of Sarapis, 15; cults of, 4, 15n41; and Delos myth, 116; Eudoxus on, 31; festivals of, 46; in flooding of Nile, 101; identification with Arsinoe II, 153n93, 155; identification with Demeter, 7; identification with Hathor, 50, 56; identification with Io, 25, 211n101; identification with Selene, 42; magic of, 218; and Osiris, 56, 57, 155, 168; temples of, 45; tricking of Seth, 214 Islands: Calypso’s, 96, 126, 233n177; Circe’s, 204, 222, 230; emerging, 209, 219, 223, 224, 234–35, 237, 255; floating, 57–58, 115–16, 117–18; primeval, 126n17; speaking, 165. See also Anaphe; Asteria; Cos; Thera Isocrates, 21, 22, 23, 27; advice to kings, 31; Busiris, 28–30, 38; encomia of, 147, 148; Evagoras, 31n32; Nicocles, 31n32 Jason (Argonautica), 184, 191; as civilizer, 212; cloak of, 200–202,

286 Jason (Argonautia) (continued) 211n101, 215n117; encounter with serpent, 216–17, 225; as ephebe, 227; as Horus, 212; and Lemnian women, 185, 186; marriage to Medea, 192, 224, 230, 231; as model for kingship, 212, 214–15; murder of Apsyrtus, 215–16, 218, 222, 226–29, 230; mutilation of Apsyrtus, 193, 216n118, 229; as other, 193, 216, 227; in Pindar, 179, 201, 212n104; as product of culture, 201–2; sandal of, 196–97, 198; sewing of dragons’ teeth, 205, 206, 215; on vase painting, 174n6 Jews, Alexandrian, 243n18, 244 Jomard, Edmé: Déscription de l’Égypte, 1, 2 Katasterism, 116n121 Kemp, Barry, 55 Keraunus (son of Ptolemy I), 163 Kingship: Alexander’s view of, 14–15; in Alexandrian poetry, 11, 12, 16; Dionysius Scytobrachion on, 42; in Encomium for Ptolemy, 17–18, 123, 129, 144–45, 160–61, 165; Euhemerus on, 43; Hecataeus on, 33–34, 39, 43, 143–44, 146, 203; Hellenistic, 32; in Heracliscus, 17, 18, 123, 127, 129; in Hymn to Delos, 117, 147; in Hymn to Zeus, 17, 18, 79, 92, 127, 200; just, 111–12; Ptolemies’ view of, 15; role of goddesses in, 214; Theocritus on, 123, 127, 200 Kingship, divine: in Alexander Romance, 67; in Alexandrian poetry, 12; Euhemerus on, 38–39; falcon symbolism of, 159; rituals of, 45, 57, 225n148 Kingship, Greek: conferral of benefits in, 161; and cosmogony, 86; and Danaid myth, 26; Egyptian model for, 43; in Hesiod, 86, 255; limits of, 36; philosophers on, 31–32 Kingship, pharaonic: ceremonies of, 52; in Encomium for Ptolemy, 161; in Euripides, 28; falcon symbolism of, 159; festivals of, 45–46; Greek assimilation of, 64; Hecataeus on, 33–34, 39; iconography of, 51; ideology of, 9, 36, 49–64, 109, 113; Jason as type of, 214–15; legitimacy in, 17, 54–55, 155–56; as model for Greeks, 43; priesthood’s promotion of, 35; prophecies concerning, 35; prosperity under, 100, 161; relation-

Index ship to cosmos, 51; renewal festivals of, 215, 238, 246; succession in, 129; sunrise in, 256; symbolism of, 1, 2; theocracy in, 12. See also Pharaohs Kingship, Ptolemaic, xi; continuity with past, 68; in Encomium for Ptolemy, 160–61; ideological construction of, 9; legitimacy of, 11; prosperity under, 159; Theocritus on, 123, 127, 144–45, 166 Koenen, Ludwig, xi, 7n14, 139n55, 239n6; on Heracliscus, 102, 125, 138, 142; on Hymn to Delos, 114n117 Lactantius, 37 “Lamentations of Isis,” 56 Lemnian women, 185, 186, 192 Leto: in Herodotus, 114, 117; in Hymn to Delos, 115; identification with Wedjoyet, 117 Letter to Aristeas, 250 Libya: Argonauts in, 186, 223, 231; clod of earth from, 180, 192, 194, 202, 208, 209, 223; connection with Colchis, 175n8; as enemy of Egypt, 182n28; Greek idea of, 181–82; in Pindar, 179–80 Light, supernatural, 136, 141 Literature, Egyptian: satirical elements in, 67 Literature, Greek: discourse on Egypt in, 21; satire in, 68. See also Genres Lloyd, A. B., 22n4, 58n116 Louis XII (king of France), bee symbolism of, 3–4, 5 Maat, 51–52; in defeat of Apophis, 60; maintenance of, 53; pharaohs’ maintenance of, 61, 100, 138, 166; struggle with chaos, 199, 255 Magas (brother of Ptolemy II), 180n22, 182 Magic: barbarian, 174; in Egyptian thought, 214; Medea’s, 197, 217, 218, 225; of Thetis, 212n103 Mammisi (temples). See Birth shrines Manetho (priest), 14, 46; Greek audience of, 50n96; on human sacrifice, 138; inclusion in Library, 250n43 Marriage: in Argonautica, 200; brothersister, 16, 155, 168, 169, 170, 242; erotic reciprocity in, 155; between Greeks and non-Greeks, 191–92, 241n99 Maschalismos, ritual of, 227

Index Medea: Dionysius Scytobrachion on, 40, 193n51; murder of Apsyrtus, 227; in Pindar, 179 Medea (Argonautica), 184, 191; ancestry of, 235; as barbarian, 193–94; defeat of Talos, 232; magic of, 197, 217, 218, 225, 228; marriage to Jason, 192, 224, 230, 231; prophecy of, 181 Medinet Habu, 63 Meigma, 205 Meliae, Dictaean, 106 Melissae (bee maidens), 107 Melqart (god), 131 Memphis: Alexander the Great at, 65n135, 66, 245; Apis cults of, 245; as center of cult, 239; Ptolemy I at, 13, 240, 245 Memphite Theology, 51n99 Mendes, ram cult of, 153n93 Mendes stele, 15–16, 213n109 Menelaus, 27, 28 Mercenaries, 251 Merkelbach, R., 7n14, 48n88, 70n149 Merneptah, Israel stele of, 161 Metaneira, 136, 140, 141 Metternich Stelae, plate 3 Milesian tales, 71 Mineur, W. H., 114n117, 115 Minos, 38; tomb of, 90 Minotaur, 119 Monarchs, French: use of bee symbolism, 3–4, 5 Monuments, Egyptian: Greek visitors to, 44–45; hieroglyphics on, 48; maat and, 166n129; of the Ptolemies, 16, 45, 57, 240n10, 243 Moreau, A., 173n5, 196n57, 197 Mossynoeci (Argonautica), 175 Mt. Ida (Crete), 92–93, 94 Mt. Lycaeon (Arcadia), 93, 94 Mummification, Herodotus on, 47 Murray, O., 36, 143, 145n76, 160n119 Muses: knowledge of truth, 86; in Theogony, 85, 87, 88, 112 Museum, Alexandrian, 12 Mutilation, ritual, 228–29 Myths: foundation, 8, 45, 179n21; quest, 173; reception of, 58, 59; Theocritus’s handling of, 122 Myths, Egyptian: belief systems in, 49; foundation, 45; Greeks’ use of, 43, 50; serpents in, 134–35, 210; succession in, 64. See also Cosmogony, Egyptian Myths, Greek: assimilation of Apis into, 8–9; of emergence, 86, 114; origi-

287 nary, 24–26, 209; resemblance to Egyptian myths, 7; variants in, 49–50. See also Aition; Cosmogony, Greek Napoleon, royal insignia of, 1, 2–3, 4, 5 Narmer Palette, 61 Natural philosophy, Greek, 46 Naucratis, Egyptian trade at, 21 Naucratis stele, of Nectanebo I, 213, 214 Nectanebo (general), 14 Nectanebo I (pharaoh), 13n30; Naucratis stele of, 213, 214 Nectanebo II (pharaoh): in Alexander Romance, 64n133, 65–68, 71; and Eudoxus, 30; exile of, 68; as falcongod, 65, 66n136; as father of Alexander, 8, 14n34; as magician, 66, 71 Neda (nymph), 92, 93, 96, 103 Neikos, and philia, 197, 200, 202, 205, 209, 219, 255 Neith (goddess), 214; identification with Athena, 51; temple of, 107n98 New Kingdom: capitals of, 239; religious texts of, 220 Nigidius Figulus, 215n115 Nile: Herodotus on, 97; inundation of, 25, 97–98, 100, 116, 117, 159 Niobe, children of, 117, 118 Non-Greeks: cognitive response to, 184; Greek encounters with, 183–237; intermarriage with Greeks, 191–92; sacrifice of, 62, 227. See also Barbarians North Africa, Greek colonization of, 182, 202, 223 Nysa, as birthplace of Dionysus, 83, 84 Obsomer, C., 48n90 Oedipus, 49–50; and sphinx’s riddle, 219n126 Ogdoad (cosmic deities), 56 Old Kingdom, Pyramid Texts of, 55, 220 Olympias, in Alexander Romance, 64, 65, 66, 67 Omphaloi, geographic, 93–94; in Hymn to Zeus, 103–4, 106; in Theogony, 103 Opet, festival of, 225n148, 245 Ophion, 199; Callimachus on, 199n67 Ophioneus, 110n104, 199, 201 Orestes, 227 Orion (constellation), 126 Orpheus (Argonautica), 197–99, 201, 210 Orphic theology, 81, 106

288 Osiris: boat of, 222; as dying god, 89; Eudoxus on, 31; festivals of, 46, 246n34; as god of regeneration, 213n105; identification of Dionysus with, 7, 15, 84, 230, 245–46; and Isis, 56, 57, 168; judgment before, 48; as Lord of the Dead, 230; as model of kingship, 33, 34; murder of, 42; mutilation of, 229n164; sacrifices to, 62; struggle with Seth, 63; tombs of, 113; union of sun with, 230 Osorkon, 156; victory stele of, 154n99, 213, 216n119 Ouranids, defeat of, 109–10 Ouranioi (primal gods), 37, 54, 169 Panathenaea (festival), 64 Panchaea (imaginary island), 37, 107n95 Papremis, mysteries at, 56 Paul, Epistle to Titus, 83n28 Pausanius, 93, 94, 97; on Ptolemy I, 129n25; on Rhea’s cave, 101n85 Pelagus (king), 26 Perseus, 25; ancestor of Alexander, 70; conception of, 128; identification with Horus, 26, 56n109; as precursor of Heracles, 133; in Simonides, 133, 135; veneration in Achmim, 26, 133 Persians: in Alexander’s army, 15n39; Greeks as successors to, 33; restoration of temples by, 13n30; war with, 174 Pharaohs: accountability of, 33, 34; as antipalon huperteros, 138–39; birth stories of, 53–54, 56–57, 67, 130, 141; as bringers of order, 61, 62, 120–21, 138; divine conception of, 52–54, 70; as divine intermediaries, 52–53; falcon symbolism of, 159; footprint of, 167; as Horus-theChild, 55, 104, 156; iconography of, 61–62; likeness to divine father, 155–56; maintenance of maat, 61, 100, 138, 166; monuments of, 166; renewal festivals of, 215, 238, 246; as son of Re, 176; tomb building by, 141; as unifiers, 238. See also Kingship, pharaonic Pharos (island), 181 Pherecydes of Athens, 205 Pherecydes of Syrus, 40n63, 81, 82; Apollonius’s use of, 198, 199; Chronos in, 199n69; theogony of, 110n104, 199–200, 201 Philae: Greek inscriptions at, 44; Greek

Index visitors to, 45; hymns of, 46, 56, 101, 112n114, 120 Philia, and neikos, 197, 200, 202, 205, 209, 219, 255 Philip of Macedon, in Alexander Romance, 65, 66, 69, 130, 143 Philitas, 230n167, 248n40 Philosophers, court, 31–32 Phoenix, myth of, 59–60 Pietch, C., 171n1, 178n18 Pindar: Alexandrian poets’ use of, 252; Apollonius’s use of, 178–80, 181, 195, 208, 223, 224; bees in, 108n101; Callimachus’s use of, 115; encomia of, 74; on infant Heracles, 124, 132, 140; Jason in, 179, 201, 212n104; Libya in, 179–80; on marriage of Heracles, 126n18; Medea in, 179; Theocritus’s use of, 124; on Typhoeus, 102, 134 Pithom stele, 14, 236n185 Plato: advice to kings, 31; construction of Egypt, 21, 22, 23, 176n12; on cultural priority, 24, 33n38; on Egypt government, 28, 29; on Eros, 81; idea of justice, 52; influence of Eudoxus on, 24n14, 30n29, 31; philosopherkings of, 29; on Zeus, 97 Pleonasm, in Egyptian myth, 50 Plutarch: on Alexandria, 181n26; on Eros, 82n27; On Isis and Osiris, 55–56; Life of Alexander, 69, 70; The Obsolescence of Oracles, 88; on Osiris, 222; use of Eudoxus, 31 Poetry, Alexandrian: cross-cultural readings in, 9–12; kingship in, 11, 12, 17; modern reception of, 5–6; past and present in, 252, 256, 257; performative traditions of, 250; sociopolitical aspects of, 19 Poetry, Hellenistic: aition in, 88, 187; encomia, 148n84; at symposia, 77n7 Poets, Alexandrian: access to Egyptian ideas, 10n19; audience of, 140; depiction of Hellenic world, 251; discursive matrices of, 9; establishment of cultural norms, 252; humor of, 170; as image makers, 12, 123, 140, 170, 249; knowledge of Egypt, 20; realism of, 10n20, 256n56; referentiality of, 76n4; use of Homer, 256 Polydeuces (Argonautica), 216n119 Poseidippus, 181–82 Poseidon, 162–63; anger at Inachos, 117n124 Postcolonial discourse, 18. See also Copresence

Index Pratt, M. L., 184, 191, 195 Priesthood, Egyptian: Eudoxos on, 30–31; Herodotus’s knowledge of, 44, 46; knowledge of Greek, 69n145; promotion of kingship, 35; under Ptolemies, 12–13; Saite, 31 Priority, cultural, 24, 33, 183, 241 “Prophecy of Neferti,” 99–100 Prosperity: under just rulers, 111–12; under pharaohs, 100, 161 Proteus, 27, 28, 101–2, 181 Psammetichus I (pharaoh), 23 Ptah, identification with Hephaestus, 35, 50, 144 Ptolemaia (festival), 245–46 Ptolemais (daughter of Ptolemy), 14n34 Ptolemies: accommodation to Egyptian forms, 13–14, 240, 242; assimilation of Egyptian culture, 16; brothersister marriages of, 170, 242; building programs of, 16; burial practices of, 154n95; creativity under, 252; cults of, 15–16, 38, 45, 152n91, 162, 247; deployment of past, 251; divine ancestry of, 129, 132, 133, 152; dual role of, 16; eagle symbolism of, 129, 158–59; Egyptians under, 244; ethnic identity under, 242n15; fictive past for, 173, 182, 257; heterogeneity under, 73, 242–45, 249–50; Homeric values under, 253; identification with Horus, 58, 104, 139n53, 237; legal system of, 243–44; literary patronage by, 249; Lower Egypt under, 239; meritocracy under, 243; patronage by, 123, 249; religious ceremonies of, 45; restoration of temples, 13; royal titles of, 138, 140, 238n1; temple building by, 16, 45, 57, 243; tutors of, 248n40; use of foundation stories, 188; use of hieroglyphs, 13, 14 Ptolemy I Soter: administrative structure of, 12, 13, 14; benefactions of, 167; cartouche of, plate 1; cult of Sarapis under, 15; cult of Theoi Soteres, 152n91; divine protection for, 129, 158; Egyptian troops of, 240n7; in Encomium for Ptolemy, 151, 152, 156, 157, 164; history of Alexander, 248; immortality of, 156, 157, 170; kingship under, 75; in Memphis, 13, 240, 245; paternity of, 129n25; view of kingship, 15 Ptolemy II Philadelphus: arete of, 150; birth on Cos, 17, 97, 114, 116, 119,

289 127, 158, 165; coregency of, 77, 78, 102, 125, 127; in Encomium for Ptolemy, 157–63; expansionist policies of, 162; festivals of, 245; Hornub title of, 138–40; in Hymn to Zeus, 78, 79, 105, 108, 111–14, 148–51, 204; immortality of, 114, 157, 167; kingship under, 75; legitimacy of, 156; marriage to Arsinoe, 126, 147, 162, 163, 168; on Mendes stele, 213n109; military success of, 157–58; mutiny of Gauls against, 114–15, 117, 119, 139, 165, 228, 254; parents of, 151, 155; pharaonic ideology of, 14; Sarapis cult under, 15–16; succession to throne, 109, 163; Theoi Soteres cult of, 162; use of Horus title, 236n185; wealth of, 159, 161 Ptolemy III Euergetes: cult of Theoi adelphoi, 45; throne names of, 155 Ptolemy IV Philopator, 140, 155–56 Ptolemy V Epiphanes, 14n33, 156; cartouche of, plate 2 Pyramids: Herodotus’s visit to, 44; as primeval hills, 59 Pyramid Texts, 55, 220 Pyrrhiche (dance), 203 Pytheas of Marseilles, 38n55, 184n35 Pytho: Apollo’s defeat of, 117, 118, 119; as chaos, 118, 165; as Typhoeus, 118n125 Ramesses II, 34; Horus falcon of, 159n114 Ramesses III, funerary temple of, 215n118 Ramesseum, 63; Hecateus’s visit to, 44 Raphia, battle of, 239n5, 240n7 Re: and Ammon, 50; and Apophis, 219; birth of, 234; cattle of, 131; celestial boat of, 60, plate 5; Helios as, 214; hieroglyphs of, 59; night voyage of, 131, 218–37. See also Amun (Egyptian) Red hair, in Egyptian myth, 62 Religion, Egyptian: cosmos in, 51–52; and Greek natural philosophy, 46; Greeks’ familiarity with, 21. See also Cosmology, Egyptian Rhacotis (Alexandria), 13 Rhea: cave of, 101n85; in Dionysius Scytobrachion, 41, 43; in Encomium for Ptolemy, 162, 163; in Hymn to Zeus, 75, 91–92, 95, 96, 97, 103, 105, 163–64; in Theogony, 102. See also Great Mother

290 Rhuephenie (flowing wealth), 111 Ritner, R., 138n48, 214, 229n164 Romance, in travel literature, 184–85 Rosetta stone, 14n33 Rusten, Jeffrey S., 39; on Argonauts, 40n63; on Dionysius Scytobrachion, 42 Sais (Egypt), 24 Sanctuaries, birth in, 100, 101 Sarapis: cult of, 15–16, 142, 247; temples of, 45 Satire, in Greek literature, 68 Satrap decree (311 b.c.e.), 13, 144n70 Sed (festival), 215, 238, 246 Selden, D., 9n18; on Arsinoe II, 153n93; on Callimachus, 77n6; on constellations, 126n17; on Horus, 139n53 Semele, 82, 83 Septuagint, in Library, 250n43 Serpents: in Argonautica, 187, 194, 210–12, 216–17, 225, 231; Colchian, 216–17; in Egyptian myth, 134–35; Heracles’ throttling of, 123, 127, 132–42, 165, 210, 211n100; Horus’s defeat of, 119, 126n17, 165, 211; in Hymn to Delos, 118; in Hymn to Zeus, 134; and Seth, 102, 134, 138, 210; as symbols of regeneration, 220; as time, 220. See also Apophis; Pytho Sesoösis, 34–36; and Alexander, 178, 180; in Argonautica, 177, 189–90, 207; city-founding by, 190, 207, 214, 226; education of, 143, 144; generosity of, 177; Hecataeus on, 35–36, 120n130, 176, 177–78, 196; Herodotus on, 34, 176–77, 196; as model of kingship, 160–61; prophecies concerning, 144; Syrian stele of, 48; veteran settlements of, 235. See also Sesostris III (pharaoh) Sesostris III (pharaoh), 156; Semna stele of, 48–49 Seth: and Apollo, 11n23; association with Typhon, 62, 104, 138, 210; as bull, 228; as chaos, 51, 119; foreleg of, 228; identification with Typhoeus, 110; Isis’s tricking of, 214; murder of Osiris, 42; and night voyage of Re, 228–29; ritual mutilation of, 228–29; serpents of, 102, 134, 138, 210; struggle with Horus, 55, 56; titles of, 139 Sia (god), 219, 225 Simias of Rhodes, 81 Simonides, 79; on Perseus, 133, 135

Index Skeptics, 32 “Smiting the foe,” 61, 139–40; in Diodorus, 62–63; by Heracles, 131, 138; iconography of, 63 Snakebite, 134, 135 Solar hymns, 60, 234 Soldiers, Greek, 47; in Alexandria, 251 Sophocles, 232n173; Colchian Women, 174n6 Sphinx, riddle of, 219n126 Spontaneous generation, 205–6 Statues, Egyptian, 23. See also Monuments, Egyptian Stelae: inscriptions on, 48; Mendes, 15–16, 213n109; of Merneptah, 161; Metternich, plate 3; of Nectanebo I, 213, 214; of Osorkon, 154n99, 213, 216n119; Pithom, 14, 236n185; of Sesoösis, 48; of Sesostris III, 48–49 Stesichorus, Geryoneis, 131 Strabo: on Euhemerus, 38n55; on Heliopolis, 10n20 Styx (river), 96 Sun god. See Ammon-Re; Re Syncretism: in cults, 8, 247; in Egyptian cosmogony, 51 Tacitus, 142 “Tale of the Eloquent Peasant,” 100n79 Talos (bronze giant), 217n123, 223, 224n144; as chthonic creature, 232; destruction of, 225; in Sophocles, 232n173 Tegeates (Arcadians), 93 Teiresias, in Heracliscus, 123, 127, 137, 139n54, 144, 165 Temples, Egyptian: Greek visitors to, 44–45; Ptolemaic, 16, 45, 57, 243, 247n38; restoration of, 13; revenue for, 36n47; rituals of, 45–46; wealth of, 246 Thebes (Egypt): aition of, 189n43, 190; epithets of, 206–7, 208 Thebes (Greece): as birth place of Dionysus, 83; building of, 200; epithets of, 206–7, 208 Thenae (Arcadia and Crete), 93, 103 Theocracy, pharaonic, 12, 52; ideology of, 17 Theocritus: court poetry of, 122, 125, 127, 170, 171, 255; Egyptian themes of, 8, 127, 255; as encomiast, 257; handling of myth, 122; heroic figures of, 255; intertextual elements of, 135, 169; kissybion of, 128, 253; Ptolemaic kingship in, 123, 127, 166; royal ben-

Index eficium for, 162; settings of, 122; socio-political context of, xi, 169–70, 255. Works: Adoniazusae, 167–68; Encomium for Ptolemy, 147–70, 255; —, Achilles in, 157, 158, 164; —, Alexander in, 152, 156, 157, 164; —, Berenice I in, 152–53; —, composition of, 123, 147, 164; —, Cos in, 158, 159, 162; —, Diomedes in, 157, 158; —, form of, 147; —, Homeric language of, 151; —, and Hymn to Delos, 147, 164–65; —, and Hymn to Zeus, 148; —, kingship in, 17–18, 123, 129, 144–45, 160–61, 165; —, marriage of Zeus and Hera in, 162, 168–69; —, mythic elements in, 150; —, political debate in, 18, 165; —, Ptolemy I in, 151, 152, 156, 157, 164; —, Ptolemy II in, 157–63; —, Rhea in, 162, 163; —, ruler cult in, 166; —, use of Hecataeus in, 144; —, use of Homeric Hymn to Apollo in, 152, 158, 164; —, use of Homer in, 163; —, use of Theogony in, 158, 159, 253; —, Zeus in, 148–51; Heracliscus, 122, 123–46, 257; —, Alcmena in, 128–29, 130, 133, 135, 137, 141, 144, 156, 157; —, Amphitryon in, 128, 134, 135, 141, 156, 157; —, composition of, 123, 125–27; —, constellations in, 126; —, as court poetry, 125, 143; —, domestic elements in, 128; —, education of Heracles in, 123, 137, 142–45, 165; —, and Encomium for Ptolemy, 165; —, ending of, 124; —, kingship in, 17, 18, 123, 127, 129; —, performance of, 124–25; —, Ptolemy II in, 123–32; —, purification in, 137; —, supernatural light in, 136; —, Teiresias’s prophecy in, 123, 127, 137, 139n54, 144, 145, 165; —, throttling of snakes in, 102, 123, 127, 132–42, 165; —, use of Homeric Hymn to Demeter in, 124, 127, 140, 146; —, use of Pindar in, 124, 132, 140; Idyll 15, 243, 246–47, 255; Idyll 17, 78–79 Theogamy, Egyptian, 56–57, 130 Theogeniture, 168n33 Theogony, Greek: of Epimenides, 88–89; of Euhemerus, 37; and kingship, 86; Orphic, 82 Theoi adelphoi cult, 39; introduction of, 45 Theoi Soteres cult, 152n91, 162 Thera (island), 209-10, 223, 255

291 Theseus, 119; and Ariadne, 192n50 Thesmophoria (festival), 142n63, 247 Thetis, 154; magic of, 212n103 Thompson, Dorothy, 7n14, 13n28, 241–42, 244 Thonis (priest), 27, 28 Timaeus, 230n167 Timbarini (Argonautica), 175 Timotheus, 47n86, 142 Titans: defeat of, 109–10, 119; in Dionysius Scytobrachion, 41 Tityos, Apollo’s slaying of, 211n101 Travel writing, 184–85 Triton, in Argonautica, 194, 207, 208 Triton (river), 208 Trojan War, 27–28, 182 Truth-telling, and lying, 85–86, 113–14 Typhaon: in Homeric Hymn to Apollo, 118; Zeus’s defeat of, 216. See also Typhoeus; Typhon Typhoeus: identification with Seth, 110; Pindar on, 102, 134; Pytho as, 118n125; Zeus’s defeat of, 109–10, 111 Typhon: association with Seth, 62, 104, 138, 210, 216; epithets of, 139; in Hesiod, 11n23 Typhonians, burning of, 139n55 Tyranny, association of Egypt with, 26, 29 Underworld, Egyptian, 18; Greek knowledge of, 221; Lake of Fire in, 229, 231; maps of, 226 Underworld books, Egyptian, 216, 217; Apollonius’s use of, 223, 225; voyage of Re in, 220. See also Book of the Dead Uranus: castration of, 106; in Dionysius Scytobrachion, 41 Urban VIII (pope), use of bee symbolism, 3 Ursa Major (constellation), 126, 228 Vase painting: Busiris in, 27; Eros in, 81; Heracles on, 62, 131, 132; Jason on, 174n6 Vasunia, P., 21, 26n20 Vergil: bee symbolism of, 3n5, 4; on Carthage, 182; epic form of, 171, 172; romantic encounters in, 185, 191 Wennefer (scribe), 14 West, M. L., 37, 111n113, 130; on Cretan Zeus, 89; on Epimenides, 88n40; on solar journey, 221

292 Wisdom literature, Egyptian, 31n32 Witchcraft, in Thessaly, 197 Zephyrion, temple of Arsinoe at, 181 Zeus: accession to throne, 113, 163; in Argonautica, 178n18, 200; birthplace of, 79, 80, 81, 84, 91–96, 103, 108; contest with Typhon (Typhoeus), 21, 110; as culture hero, 91, 248; defeat of Titans, 109–10; in Dionysius Scytobrachion, 42, 97n66; as dying god, 90, 91, 106; eagle of, 158–59; in Encomium for Ptolemy, 148–51; essena, 107, 108; Euhemerus on, 37, 90, 107; folk etymology of, 97; growth to manhood, 105, 106, 108; and Horus-

Index the-Child, 104–5; humanity of, 105; Idaean, 89; immortality of, 90; kingship of, 17, 18, 79, 92, 110, 111, 127, 200, 213; in Lycophron, 199n67; marriage to Hera, 162, 164, 168, 169; Near Eastern analogues of, 105, 107; and Ophioneus, 110n104; in Pherecydes, 199; progeny of, 168; as Ptolemy II, 105; in Theogony, 86; tomb of, 89, 90, 91, 112; universality of, 95; as vegetation spirit, 91, 106. See also Callimachus, Hymn to Zeus Zeus Ammon, 84, 181; as father of Alexander the Great, 130 Zeus Basileus, festival of, 78

HELLENISTIC CULTURE AND SOCIETY General Editors: Anthony W. Bulloch, Erich S. Gruen, A. A. Long, and Andrew F. Stewart I.

Alexander to Actium: The Historical Evolution of the Hellenistic Age, by Peter Green

II.

Hellenism in the East: The Interaction of Greek and NonGreek Civilizations from Syria to Central Asia after Alexander, edited by Am{ea}lie Kuhrt and Susan SherwinWhite

III.

The Question of “Eclecticism”: Studies in Later Greek Philosophy, edited by J. M. Dillon and A. A. Long

IV.

Antigonos the One-Eyed and the Creation of the Hellenistic State, by Richard A. Billows

V.

A History of Macedonia, by R. Malcolm Errington, translated by Catherine Errington

VI.

Attic Letter-Cutters of 229 to 86 b.c., by Stephen V. Tracy

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The Vanished Library: A Wonder of the Ancient World, by Luciano Canfora

VIII. IX.

Hellenistic Philosophy of Mind, by Julia Annas Hellenistic History and Culture, edited by Peter Green

X.

The Best of the Argonauts: The Redefinition of the Epic Hero in Book One of Apollonius’ Argonautica, by James J. Clauss

XI.

Faces of Power: Alexander’s Image and Hellenistic Politics, by Andrew Stewart

XII.

Images and Ideologies: Self-definition in the Hellenistic World, edited by A. W. Bulloch, E. S. Gruen, A. A. Long, and A. Stewart

XIII.

From Samarkhand to Sardis: A New Approach to the Seleucid Empire, by Susan Sherwin-White and Amélie Kuhrt

XIV.

Regionalism and Change in the Economy of Independent Delos, 314-167 b.c., by Gary Reger

XV.

XVI. XVII. XVIII.

Hegemony to Empire: The Development of the Roman Imperium in the East from 148 to 62 b.c., by Robert KalletMarx Moral Vision in The Histories of Polybius, by Arthur M. Eckstein The Hellenistic Settlements in Europe, the Islands, and Asia Minor, by Getzel M. Cohen Interstate Arbitrations in the Greek World, 337–90 b.c., by Sheila L. Ager

XIX.

Theocritus’s Urban Mimes: Mobility, Gender, and Patronage, by Joan B. Burton

XX.

Athenian Democracy in Transition: Attic Letter-Cutters of 340 to 290 b.c., by Stephen V. Tracy

XXI.

Pseudo-Hecataeus, “On the Jews”: Legitimizing the Jewish Diaspora, by Bezalel Bar-Kochva

XXII.

Asylia: Territorial Inviolability in the Hellenistic World, by Kent J. Rigsby

XXIII.

The Cynics: The Cynic Movement in Antiquity and Its Legacy, edited by R. Bracht Branham and Marie-Odile Goulet-Cazé

XXIV.

The Politics of Plunder: Aitolians and Their Koinon in the Early Hellenistic Era, 279–217 b.c., by Joseph B. Scholten

XXV.

The Argonautika, by Apollonios Rhodios, translated, with introduction, commentary, and glossary, by Peter Green

XXVI.

Hellenistic Constructs: Essays in Culture, History, and Historiography, edited by Paul Cartledge, Peter Garnsey, and Erich Gruen

XXVII.

Josephus’s Interpretation of the Bible, by Louis H. Feldman

XXVIII. XXIX. XXX. XXXI. XXXII.

Poetic Garlands: Hellenistic Epigrams in Context, by Kathryn J. Gutzwiller Religion in Hellenistic Athens, by Jon D. Mikalson Heritage and Hellenism: The Reinvention of Jewish Tradition, by Erich S. Gruen The Beginnings of Jewishness, by Shaye D. Cohen Thundering Zeus: The Making of Hellenistic Bactria, by Frank L. Holt

XXXIII.

Jews in the Mediterranean Diaspora from Alexander to Trajan (323 bce–117 ce), by John M. G. Barclay

XXXIV.

From Pergamon to Sperlonga: Sculpture and Context, edited by Nancy T. de Grummond and Brunilde Sismondo Ridgway

XXXV. XXXVI.

Polyeideia: The Iambi of Callimachus and the Archaic Iambic Tradition, by Benjamin Acosta-Hughes Stoic Studies, by A. A. Long

XXXVII.

Seeing Double: Intercultural Poetics in Ptolemaic Alexandria, by Susan A. Stephens

XXXVIII.

Encomium of Ptolemy Philadelphus, by Theocritus, translated with an introduction and commentary by Richard Hunter

XXXIX.

XL.

The Making of Fornication: Eros, Ethics, and Political Reform in Greek Philosophy and Early Christianity, by Kathy L. Gaca Cultural Politics in Polybius’ Histories, by Craige Champion