{"id":48323,"date":"2022-07-01T10:15:00","date_gmt":"2022-07-01T09:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cupblog.bluefusesystems.com\/?p=48323"},"modified":"2022-07-01T09:59:15","modified_gmt":"2022-07-01T08:59:15","slug":"circes-etruscan-drugs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/2022\/07\/01\/circes-etruscan-drugs\/","title":{"rendered":"Circe\u2019s Etruscan Drugs"},"content":{"rendered":"
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When only four words of a poet\u2019s entire output in a specific genre survive to the present day, is there really anything of substance that we can say about this poetry on the basis of such slender remains? In this new blog, Jessica Lightfoot adds further context to research recently published open access in The Classical Quarterly<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is a problem faced by anyone who wishes to pursue the several tantalising testimonia concerning Aeschylus\u2019 elegiac poetry that have come down to us from antiquity. Though famed today for his tragedies alone, there is evidence that the Athenian poet was known for a broader literary oeuvre in antiquity. The only certain non-tragic Aeschylean fragment remaining to us, however, is both frustratingly terse and puzzlingly enigmatic: \u201cof Tyrrhenian descent, a drug-making nation \u2026\u201d The brevity of this fragment has deterred investigation into Aeschylus\u2019 elegies. But an examination of the broader text within which these words are buried, as well as a consideration of other scattered references to Aeschylus\u2019 non-tragic poems, reveals that there is much more that we can say about his elegies than previously realised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This Aeschylean elegiac fragment is found in Theophrastus\u2019 Historia Plantarum<\/em>, a fourth-century BCE treatise about the types and uses of plants and herbal medicines. If we examine the broader Theophrastan passage in which the fragment is embedded it becomes clear that Aeschylus\u2019 words are being used as evidence in a complex argument which connects Homer\u2019s Circe, and the powerful drugs which she uses to transform Odysseus men into swine, to Tyrrhenia in Italy, the home of the Etruscans. This connection is also found in Pliny the Elder\u2019s Natural History<\/em> in a passage which uses the same Aeschylean poem as evidence for Circe\u2019s association with Italy. Circe\u2019s homeland of Aeaea is not mapped onto a real-world Italian location in Homer\u2019s poetry, though this localisation appears later in the Greek literary tradition, most notably at the end of Hesiod\u2019s Theogony<\/em>. By carefully examining both the passages of Theophrastus and Pliny in which Aeschylus\u2019 words are mentioned, it is clear that his original elegiac poem also refers to Circe\u2019s localisation in Italy, and to her status as the supposed ancestor of the Etruscan people as the mother of Agrius, Latinus and Telegonus, three Italian sons purportedly born to Odysseus. Aeschylus\u2019 elegiac fragment is thus the earliest text we have that links Circe\u2019s drugs to Italy, and one of the very earliest extant references linking Odysseus\u2019 famous travels to the Italian mainland. As such, it presents us with crucial and hitherto unappreciated early evidence concerning interactions between Greeks and non-Greeks in the western Mediterranean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aeschylus\u2019 elegiac interest in Circe and the Etruscans is significant for one further reason. We know that Aeschylus spent time working in Sicily and produced work for the Syracusan tyrant Hieron I, a ruler famous for his patronage artistic productions which praised his political and military exploits. One such exploit was his victory over the naval forces of the Etruscans at the battle of Cumae in 474 BCE. Hieron seems to have encouraged comparisons between this military triumph and the famous victories of the Athenians in the Persian Wars, as we can see from Pindar\u2019s praise of the Syracusan\u2019s vanquishment of his Etruscan foe in Pythian <\/em>1. We know that Aeschylus also produced work which supported Hieron\u2019s cultural projection of power, most notably Women of Aitna<\/em>, a play which celebrated the Syracusan\u2019s foundation of a new Sicilian settlement. Given Aeschylus\u2019 strong connection to this Syracusan cultural context it is thus possible that the elegy from which our fragment comes was produced for Hieron, and that its mention of Circe and the Etruscans somehow relates to the tyrant\u2019s victory over this people at Cumae in 474. If this hypothesis is correct, Aeschylus\u2019 few surviving elegiac words are an even more significant piece of evidence relating to early interactions between Greeks, Sicilians and Etruscans in the western Mediterranean than has been previously recognised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Met. 09.221.17, Etruscan bronze mirror c.350\u2013300 B.C. Odysseus pursues Circe.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Met. 41.83, Terracotta calyx-krater, attributed to the Persephone Painter. Odysseus pursues Circe.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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The article CIRCE’S ETRUSCAN\u00a0PHARMAKA<\/em>: RECONSIDERING A FRAGMENT OF AESCHYLEAN ELEGY (FR. 2 WEST)<\/a> is available open access on Cambridge Core.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When only four words of a poet\u2019s entire output in a specific genre survive to the present day, is there really anything of substance that we can say about this poetry on the basis of such slender remains? In this new blog, Jessica Lightfoot adds further context to research recently published open access in The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":822,"featured_media":48780,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,6],"tags":[7088,212,7085,1897,56],"coauthors":[9929],"class_list":["post-48323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-classics","category-humanities","tag-caq","tag-classical-association","tag-classical-quarterly","tag-classical-studies","tag-classics-2"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/822"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48323"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48323\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48817,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48323\/revisions\/48817"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48323"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=48323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}