The Sack of Troy,Footnote 1 a short Greek epic of 691 lines, is the only surviving poem by the imperial poet Triphiodorus, and it was written probably in the late third/early fourth century c.e.Footnote 2 It recounts the major events at the end of the Trojan War which led to the victory of the Achaeans, in vocabulary and tone which are strongly Homeric.Footnote 3 In a poem that imitates Homer in this way, the presence of similes is to be expected—even more so if we trust the second entry of the Suda (τ 1112 Adler) on Triphiodorus, according to which he was the author of a paraphrasis of Homeric comparisons. Triphiodorus uses a total of nineteen similes in the Sack of Troy, ten long and nine short ones.Footnote 4 Out of the 691 lines of the poem, 75, namely 10.85 per cent of the text, belong either to the similes’ secondary narrative or to the related surrounding parts in the main narrative. The concentration of similes in the Sack of Troy is higher, in fact, than that in the Iliad.Footnote 5 In this, Triphiodorus seems to follow a tendency of imperial Greek poetry.Footnote 6 Inevitably, the legacy of Hellenistic poetics redefines the possible functions of similes. A simile’s purpose is no longer only to pique the listener’s imagination ‘by likening something in the narrative of the heroic past to something which is directly within [one’s] own experience’.Footnote 7 Neither is it only a leap from a partially restricted view of the world into a natural and unaffected one.Footnote 8 As a medium effectively synonymous with epic poetry and quite often drawing on stock material, a simile looks back at, and creates intertextual gateways to, the epic tradition; it thus facilitates a leap from the set boundaries of one poem into the entire world of epic poetry. This article will look at a series of case studies drawn from the Sack of Troy which showcase how and to what end Triphiodorus deploys the medium of the simile vis-à-vis his epic predecessors, and how similes can and should be seen as important entry points into the world he constructs.
FIRST SIMILES: HORSING AROUND
Triphiodorus’ Sack of Troy is a poem about the Trojan horse. A large part of the narrative is dedicated to its construction by Epeius (57–102) and to its transportation to Troy (304–57); and the entire plot unfolds either around or inside the horse. Its significance in the narrative is reflected throughout, in the persistent use of terminology relating to horse-riding and horse-racing, and particularly in the use of the horse-riding metaphor for the description of the poetic process as seen in the proem (1–5) and the epilogue (664–7), which implicate not just any horse but specifically the Trojan horse in Triphiodorus’ poetic designs. As Maciver argues, the Trojan horse becomes a symbol of the poem.Footnote 9 The fact, then, that both the first short simile and the first long simile of the poem have something to do with horses seems hardly coincidental, especially if one bears in mind Feeney’s observation that ‘first similes in epic are programmatic for the cosmos of the whole poem’.Footnote 10 The poem’s first long simile (153–6) seems conventionally epic, drawn directly from the world of Homer:
First came along godlike Neoptolemus, like a foal rushing over a dewy plain that also, revelling in its newly yoked straps, outran both the lash and the threat of his driver.
Neoptolemus hastens to enter the horse’s belly like a horse hastening over a field. A small number of select warriors have been likened to running horses in the Homeric epics: Paris, Hector and, of course, Achilles in Iliad Book 22.Footnote 11 Triphiodorus’ simile surely alludes to Il. 22.22–3, where Neoptolemus’ father is also likened to a horse (ἵππος ἀϵθλοϕόρος) that easily runs stretching himself over the plain. The Homeric τιταινόμϵνος πϵδίοιο (Il. 22.23) is recalled in Triphiodorus’ ἐπϵιγόμϵνος πϵδίοιο (154), with both phrases placed at the end of the verse after the penthemimeral caesura. Triphiodorus wishes his reader to think of Achilles—in fact, to such an extent that he also includes a footnote, as it were, right after the simile: Diomedes marvels at Neoptolemus because such was Achilles too in the past (ὅτι τοῖος ἔην καὶ πρόσθϵν Ἀχιλλϵύς, 158).
It is natural and inevitable that Neoptolemus will be compared to his father. But Triphiodorus goes the extra mile to paint the scene in the colours of a succession. Neoptolemus is on track to becoming the mission’s most important actor: he might not yet be a fully grown ἵππος, but he, described as a πῶλος, a young horse, has all the potential, it is implied, to become as great as his father and to enter the tradition of great heroes. This act of intended succession is significant for Triphiodorus, as it is difficult not to read the text in a metaliterary fashion. Hardie has discerned metapoetical symbolisms in the several acts of succession which can be traced in the narrative of the Aeneid (for example Aeneas as Hector’s successor): in such instances of succession, he argues, Virgil presents himself as taking over from (Ennius and) Homer.Footnote 12 Although Hardie’s observations concern only Latin epic, they have a clear application to Greek imperial epic as well. Maciver has argued that the figure of Neoptolemus as a re-enactment of Achilles also encapsulates Quintus’ position as a late reader of Homer.Footnote 13 Triphiodorus’ treatment of Neoptolemus can be read in the same vein: Triphiodorus is no Achilles, but he—one of Homer’s imperial Homeridae, a proud descendant of Homer’s in terms not of lineage but of cultural heritage—has every right to put himself in the position of Neoptolemus, Achilles’ successor. That Triphiodorus has an affinity for, and sees himself as, Neoptolemus can be surmised from one last point. Neoptolemus and the young horse he is likened to share an important quality with the narrator of the Sack of Troy. The horse’s movement is described with the verb ϕθάνϵιν (156), ‘to overtake, outstrip, outrun, be quick, make haste’. The common denominator in all its uses and translations is speed, a quality that Triphiodorus particularly values: in the proem of the Sack of Troy, he asks the Muse to recount the end of the Trojan War to him who is in a rush (σπϵύδοντι, 3). Neoptolemus seems perfectly in tune with Triphiodorus’ poetic programme.
Horses are also involved in the poem’s first short simile, which is used for the Trojan horse itself. It compares the horse’s loose tail (ἔκλυτος οὐρή, 82), described as trailing to the heels of the horse’s back feet weighed down with twisted tassels, to a vine (ἄμπϵλος ὥς, 83). The passage is difficult to translate as the vocabulary deployed is rather ambiguous and the simile has no precedent in epic poetry. Its placement at the beginning of its line is also unusual by epic standards, as short similes in Homer are often placed at the end of the verse, after the bucolic diaeresis, suiting metrical convenience.Footnote 14 Triphiodorus himself seems to abide by this ‘rule’, as he deploys all other short similes in the poem at the end of the verse.Footnote 15 The simile’s eccentricity invites further investigation. To compare a horse’s tail to a vine is somewhat surprising and begs the question whether Triphiodorus has perhaps in mind a different meaning, literal or metaphorical, of the word ἄμπϵλος. Apollodorus of Damascus (second century c.e.), for example, reports (Polierketika 141) that engines (χϵλῶναι, literally ‘tortoises’) used for the protection of besiegers were called ἄμπϵλοι. If used with that intended meaning, the simile can ‘transform’ not only the tail into a device which protects besiegers but also, by association, the Trojan horse into a siege engine; indeed, the horse will soon penetrate the Trojan walls.
ἄμπϵλος may have been picked owing to its military connotations; yet a closer look might prove even more fruitful. Seeking a potential explanation of the vine comparison as one which refers to plaited hair, Miguélez-Cavero finds no parallels but notes a possible point of contact with the word ἕλιξ which can refer to a lock of hair but also to a tendril of the vine.Footnote 16 Although the etymology of ἄμπϵλος is uncertain,Footnote 17 a suggestion made in earlier editions of LSJ (now omitted) could be illuminating; it was proposed that ἄμπϵλος might consist of the aeolic type (ἀμπί) of the preposition ἀμϕί and the stem ΕΛ which occurs in words such as ἑλίσσω and ἕλιξ.Footnote 18 In light of the above, and regardless of whether this etymological explanation is valid, an ancient etymological association (by Triphiodorus alone or others) of ἄμπϵλος and ἕλιξ, owing to their verbal similarity and semantic overlap, is within the realm of possibility. Synonyms were, besides, crucial to ancient etymologizing, since they were often used to interpret words, and ancient authors were more commonly concerned with studying a word’s range of meanings and its relation to other clusters of meaning than with tracing earlier stages in word formation.Footnote 19 If Triphiodorus also understands ἄμπϵλος as a compound word consisting of ἀμπί/ἀμϕί and ἕλιξ, then an interesting pattern emerges, since a combination of the same words appears in a characteristic word a few lines earlier (63) as well as in the epilogue (667): this is the word ἀμϕιέλισσα, a Homeric term reserved for ships. During the horse’s construction, the narrator compares the size of its belly to a curved ship (ὁπόσον νϵὸς ἀμϕιϵλίσσης, 63), specifying also that the timber for the Trojan horse came from Ida, which also provided the timber for the ships Paris used in his first journey to Troy. Ship and horse have obvious similarities as wooden constructs that lay at the beginning and at the end of this great calamity. Triphiodorus’ insistence on this aspect is clear if one looks at the narrative surrounding the vine simile: the tail weighed down is described as καθϵλκομένη (83), with καθέλκϵιν used for the launching of ships, while the adjective πρυμνοῖσιν (82), used for the horse’s feet, recalls the noun πρύμνα, the hindmost part of a ship, the stern.Footnote 20 ἄμπϵλος, then, might simply be a pun—one leading to tautology:Footnote 21 Triphiodorus employs ἄμπϵλος, a seeming cognate of ἀμϕιέλισσα, used exclusively for ships, to describe part of the horse, which he previously compared to a ship.Footnote 22 His insistence on horse as ship culminates in the poem’s epilogue, where he announces that he will drive his wavering song as if it were a horse, ἅπϵρ ἵππον (666): the song, ἀοιδή, is described as ἀμϕιέλισσα (667). Poem is like horse, horse is like ship, and now poem is like ship as well. All three elements become practically indistinguishable. Despite its short length, the pun of the vine simile (83) contributes to the unfolding of this key theme and to the significance the horse progressively acquires as symbol of the poem itself.
BLENDING REALITIES
This quasi-identification of horse and ship is not an isolated metaphor, but feeds into a broader leitmotif in the Sack of Troy. Cassandra, for example, who has no small part to play in Triphiodorus’ poetics, foresees a bloody sea rolling within the towers of Troy (391–2) rendering the motif explicit.Footnote 23 The fall of Troy will be an event of almost cosmic significance which will submerge Troy into the sea through which the Achaeans will sail. This metaphor of blending land and sea is sustained and extends to similes too. Sinon, who remains outside the Trojan horse as a guarantor of Odysseus’ plan, is likened to a hunter (222–6):
And as when hunters, having put a net around stakes, set a trap with many meshes for animals that roam in the mountains, and one alone, looking for wild beasts, separately from the others, having got himself under thick branches, lay hidden looking at the nets, so then was he, his limbs branded with stripes, planning Troy’s woeful destruction.
Hunter/hunting similes are common in the epic tradition,Footnote 24 but Triphiodorus’ vocabulary (especially λίνος, δίκτυον and πολυωπός) is unusual. Although λίνος could mean hunting net as early as Theocritus,Footnote 25 it is primarily (especially in epic) used as fishing net or fishing line.Footnote 26 Additionally, as Miguélez-Cavero observes in her discussion of net (λίνον) and stakes (σταλίκϵσσιν), Oppian shows in his Halieutica that it is fishing nets which are set in a circle (as is the case here, seen with πϵρικυκλώσαντϵς) rather than hunting nets.Footnote 27 δίκτυον is also predominantly associated with a fishing net,Footnote 28 and πολυωπός, the rarest of the three, is only used in the Odyssey (22.383–9) and the Halieutica (3.579) in reference to fishing nets. Triphiodorus seems to think in terms of fishing when describing a hunting activity on land: a blending of land and sea arises as a pattern.
This pattern becomes even clearer if one considers the passage’s primary hypotext. In describing the trap that Sinon sets for the Trojans as λόχον πολυωπόν and δίκτυα, Triphiodorus alludes to a simile in the Odyssey which features one of the two other instances of the word πολυωπός in extant literature (22.383–9). The passage compares the dead and dying suitors to fish (ὥστ᾿ ἰχθύας, 22.384) poured on a beach (ἐπὶ ψαμάθοισι κέχυνται, 22.387) that fishermen (ἁλιῆϵς, 22.384) have drawn out of the sea with a net with many meshes (δικτύῳ … πολυωπῷ, 22.386). This is an image which Triphiodorus will also paint—again in a simile—closer to the end of his poem, when the plan of the Danaans has met with success (675):Footnote 29
ἰχθύϵς ὡς ἁλίῃσιν echoes the Homeric ὥστ᾿ ἰχθύας, οὕς θ᾿ ἁλιῆϵς (22.384) and the phrase ἐπὶ ψαμάθοισι χυθέντϵς clearly alludes to Homer’s ἐπὶ ψαμάθοισι κέχυνται (22.387). Triphiodorus’ dead Trojans are not only likened to fish but also compared to Penelope’s slaughtered suitors.Footnote 30 Odysseus has, besides, a prominent role in the massacre of both the Trojans and the suitors—and the idea of disguise and subterfuge has no small part to play in either passage: Odysseus in the Odyssey and the Achaeans in the Sack of Troy remain disguised until the circumstances are right for their true identity to be revealed. Triphiodorus looks back to the epic tradition and finds an appropriate simile which not only unlocks the connection between two of his own similes but also sustains and extends an important leitmotif of the poem: that of the blending of different realities.
Triphiodorus’ proclivity towards blending realities seems in tune with the programmatic ambiguity perceptively discerned by Schomber in the Sack of Troy, which presents its readers with combinations of contrasting elements which challenge classification.Footnote 31 Such ambiguity, as noted in the similes above, is also reflected in the architecture of the poem’s longest simile (189–99):
And as when the snow, having thickened the air with the frosts of storm-footed clouds, covers the land, but when it melts it sends forth a mighty stream; and the animals, having cowered from the sound of the mountain-bred river which leaps hastily from a rock with a tumbling uproar, rushing underneath the cover of their hollow lair they stay there in silence with their flanks shivering with cold; and in bitter hunger by woeful necessity they endure and await the time the mighty water stops; so did the tireless Achaeans suffer unendurable toils after they leapt through the hollow wooden lair.
The simile is unusual, if not unique, for several reasons. First, it is initially difficult to comprehend what is being compared to what; the simile begins with the description of heavy snowfall, to which arrows, rocks or other missiles are commonly compared in epic poetry.Footnote 32 However, one quickly realizes that snow has no clear comparison point in the immediate context of the main narrative. Snow does previously feature in the narrative: Odysseus’ speech to the Achaeans is described as honey-dripping snow (μϵλισταγέος νιϕϵτοῖο, 119). As it is Odysseus’ words which convince the Achaeans to enter the hollow horse, the simile’s snowflakes—which make the animals hide in their lairs—might be extending the metaphorical imagery deployed earlier. And yet snow quickly disappears from the simile, literally and metaphorically: it melts and feeds into rivers, whose din terrifies hungry animals into seeking shelter in their hollow lairs.Footnote 33 It is not to snow, then, but to these animals that the Achaeans now timidly entering the (Trojan) horse are compared. The appearance of the Vergleichspunkt is significantly delayed; the simile’s beginning disorients those familiar with epic and its conventions. In delaying the appearance of the Vergleichspunkt, Triphiodorus reverses the Homeric standard; whereas in Homer a simile normally begins with a clear correspondence between main and secondary narrative but might occasionally ‘take a life of its own and continue in a direction which veers away from the narrative’,Footnote 34 Triphiodorus does the opposite. The world of the secondary narrative appears to have a life of its own before it eventually converges with the main narrative.Footnote 35 Second, the relationship of main and secondary narratives is not unproblematic: the Achaean warriors, who have just been fed by Athena with ambrosia to endure hunger, are compared to animals which need to endure hunger, in a contrast between subject matter of simile and subject matter of main narrative.Footnote 36 Third, Triphiodorus seems to have stitched together different types of Homeric simile. Similes referring to natural phenomena are in Homer distinct from similes referring to the animal world.Footnote 37 Triphiodorus begins his simile in lines 189–99 with a reference to a natural phenomenon before switching to the animal kingdom—almost as if the first half of his simile needs further elucidation by means of one more simile. He does not wish to keep the categories distinct but rather brings them together, challenging the strict boundaries between textual realities, just as he consistently blends realities in the Sack of Troy. The simile of lines 189–99 textually emblematizes this pattern of ambiguity.
REACHING FOR THE MOON
The simile in lines 514–21 stands out as the only simile referring to a celestial phenomenon. When Helen waves a torch to the Achaeans in Tenedos signalling that it is time to return, bathed in the light of the torch she carries, she is likened to the moon:
And as when the moon, full of gleaming fire, gilds the radiant sky with her face; not when she, sharpening the edges of her horns, rises, first-shining, in the shadowless darkness of the month, but when she, having encircled the round radiance of her eye, attracts the reflected sunrays; gleaming in this way did then the nymph of Therapne raise up her wine-red forearm, guiding the friendly fire.
Moon similes are fairly common in epic.Footnote 38 Where Triphiodorus differs is in his insistence on the fulness of the moon: the first reference to the full moon (πλήθουσα πυρὸς γλαυκοῖο σϵλήνη) seems insufficient and it is followed by an extensive negative–positive restatement to insist on the particular phase of the moon that Triphiodorus has in mind: this is an especially full moon. A look to earlier poetry might explain Triphiodorus’ insistence.
Similes in epic poetry refer to various phases of the moon. For example, in Apollonius’ Argonautica, Lynceus, when struggling to discern Heracles in the distance, is likened to a man unable to see clearly the new moon on the first day of the month (4.1479–80). The shield of the Amazon Penthesileia is also compared to a half-moon in Quintus’ Posthomerica. The phrasing is noteworthy (1.147–50):
She took up her shield, the god’s gift, which resembled the crescent moon as she rises from the deep streams of the Ocean with curved horns, half full: its radiance was beyond description.Footnote 39
Penthesileia’s shield is compared to the moon, which is half full around its curved horns. Triphiodorus seems to have Quintus’ passage in mind, wishing to emphasize the difference between his and Quintus’ moon: his πλήθουσα σϵλήνη (514) corresponds to, and outperforms, Quintus’ ἥμισυ πϵπληθυῖα [sc. μήνη] (1.149), while γλωχίνας κϵραίης (516) recalls πϵρὶ γναμπτῆσι κϵραίης (l.149). Finally, Triphiodorus’ τοίη μαρμαίρουσα (520), which connects the simile to the main narrative, recalls Quintus’ τοίη μαρμαίρϵσκϵ (l.150). The connection becomes stronger if one considers that a few lines earlier in the Posthomerica, Penthesileia herself (and not just her shield) is also likened to the moon, in only the second long simile in Quintus’ epic, thus becoming the first character in Greek epic poetry to be likened to σϵλήνη. She is described as standing out from her followers in the same way that the moon stands out from the stars (1.37–41).
In this (moon)light, it is clear that Triphiodorus associates his Helen with Quintus’ Penthesileia. But this association of the two women is already present within Quintus’ Posthomerica. It has been observed that Penthesileia in Book 1 anticipates Helen’s appearance in Book 14: there are apparent verbal links, the two women are the only characters who are compared to goddesses (in fact, to the same goddess, Aphrodite), and both receive extensive descriptions with emphasis on the effect their beauty has on men. Penthesileia and Helen are bound together and become symbolic of the inversion of the first and the last books of the Posthomerica: at the end of the poem, the reader is encouraged to look back to the beginning.Footnote 40 In deploying a simile—previously used for Penthesileia—for his Helen, Triphiodorus effectively announces that not only has he read Quintus carefully, but he has also picked up on the intended association which Quintus draws between these two female characters. Triphiodorus borrows some of Penthesileia’s qualities for his Helen: as Penthesileia’s presence in Posthomerica Book 1 signifies new hope for the Trojans, so Helen becomes a transmitter of hope to the Achaeans. Penthesileia’s inability to fulfil the hope she offered to the Trojans must be corrected, however, and the task is accomplished through an increase of the moonlight. Helen’s moon is full, and its gleam reaches the heaven, contrary to Penthesileia’s half-moon; the hope Helen brings to the Achaeans is real and will materialize into victory. At the same time, it is tempting to consider this increase in moonlight as extending into the metaliterary level: Triphiodorus is beaming that his character (and his poetry, by association?) shines brighter than Quintus’ ever did.
FINDING THE SWEET SPOT
Determining his place in the epic tradition—if not competing with his epic predecessors, as shown above—seems to be of particular concern to Triphiodorus. The use of the penultimate long simile in the Sack of Troy, which compares the Achaeans exiting the horse to bees exiting an oak, is in the same vein (533–41):
And the others poured out of the horse’s hollow belly, armed masters, like bees out of an oak, which, after they tired of weaving the sweet honeycomb lurking inside the capacious beehive, having poured out of their arched nest into the pasture, trouble passing travellers with their stings; so the Danaans, having undone the bolts of their secret ambush, leapt on the Trojans and, while they were still in bed, they covered them with bad dreams of a brazen death.
Bee similes are a sine qua non for epic poets. There is at least one in each of Homer, Apollonius and Quintus. The earliest and most important example of the first type of bee similes, the ones associated with movement/work, is from Il. 2.87–93—the poem’s first long simile, or πρώτη παραβολή, as the bT scholium highlights—where groups of Achaeans are likened to swarms of bees around flowers:Footnote 41
Like swarms of thronging bees exit a hollow rock, constantly coming afresh, and they fly in clusters upon spring flowers, and some fly here and some there; so were many tribes making their way in groups from the ships and their huts on the shallow sea beach towards the place of the assembly.
Triphiodorus imitates the Homeric passage particularly closely when it comes to the bees’ hiding places; Triphiodorus’ γλαϕυρῆς ἀπό γαστέρος (533) echoes Homer’s πέτρης ἐκ γλαϕυρῆς (2.88). It is also temping to read in Triphiodorus’ placement of his phrase at the beginning of his sentence, before the secondary narrative of the simile even commences, a sort of footnote: there may be other references to bee similes, but the Iliadic one, the first bee simile of the epic tradition, takes priority. Triphiodorus’ bees come out of the Homeric hollow rock.
There are references to other bee similes: Apollonius’ simile for the description of the Lemnian women as they surround the Argonauts upon their arrival on the island is important (1.879–82):
And as when bees buzz about beautiful lilies after they have poured out of their hive in a rock, and around them the dewy meadow rejoices, and flying they pull some sweet fruit here and some there.
Triphiodorus’ bees, originally inside the hive, ἔνδοθι σίμβλου (535), later pouring out, ἀμϕιχυθϵῖσαι (537), allude to Apollonius’ ἐκχύμϵναι σιμβληίδος (1.880). Apollonius elaborates on the Homeric simile by adding the element of the pouring out of the hive, which is fully adopted not only by Triphiodorus but also by Quintus (6.324–6):Footnote 42
In the same way that swarms of bees, a familiar sight, pour noisily out of their enclosed hives after their leaders when springtime comes.Footnote 43
Triphiodorus makes recourse both to Apollonius and to Quintus here, but he also visits Quintus on a separate occasion. In Book 1 of the Posthomerica, the Trojan women motivate each other to pour out of the walls like bees to pasture, ἐς νομόν (1.440–5), and Triphiodorus’ bees are also described as making their way to pasture with the same phrase (ἐς νομόν, 537).
All of the above similes emphasize the mass movement and action of the bees. There is, however, a subcategory of bee (or wasp) similes whose emphasis lies on the element of danger that surrounds these insects.Footnote 44 This element of danger is expressed either in the threat that bees pose to humans or in the threat that humans pose to bees when they snatch away honeycombs.Footnote 45 When Triphiodorus refers to his bees as harming wayfarers, ὁδίτας (538), he seems to have in mind two bee/wasp similes in the Iliad: in 12.167–72 Asius compares the Achaeans to bees or wasps defending their young against humans by staying put on the rugged road on which they built their nests, ὁδῷ ἔπι παιπαλοέσσῃ (12.168); in 16.259–67 the Myrmidons are compared to wasps (of the wayside, ϵἰνοδίοις, 16.260) who are tormented by youths in their nests beside the road, ὁδῷ ἔπι (16.261), and who attack a traveller, ὁδίτης (16.263), if they happen to be roused.Footnote 46 Triphiodorus’ reference to beeswax/honeycomb, κηρὸν μϵλιηδέα (536), also has precedent in one of Quintus’ similes (3.221–9) in which bees try to drive away a man who cuts out their honeycombs, κηροὺς μϵλίχροας (3.224).Footnote 47 Triphiodorus’ bees are just as dangerous and aggressive, as the Achaean attack against the Trojans will prove.
From the above, it is evident that Triphiodorus is inspired by—and acknowledges his inspiration by way of (rather explicit) allusions to—the vast majority, if not the entirety, of the epic tradition’s bee similes. In this epic pastiche he has woven together, he also seems to reserve a particular space for himself. If examined against the bee similes of the epic tradition, Triphiodorus’ simile places particular emphasis on the end product: Homer’s bees flew towards the flowers, πέτονται ἐπ᾽ ἄνθϵσιν ϵἰαρινοῖσιν (Il. 2.87–93); Apollonius’ bees collected the fruit, καρπὸν ἀμέργουσιν πϵποτημέναι (1.879–84); Quintus’ bees almost concluded their work, but the unfinished honeycomb was forcefully removed (3.221–9). Triphiodorus’ bees, then, finally complete the process of the honey production (535–6). Triphiodorus includes himself in this tradition, yet retains a special position for himself, at the last link of the chain, compatible with his poem’s well-advertised intention of singing the end of the war: τέρμα πολέμοιο (l.1). He adds the final aspect of the many bee similes explored by epic poetry: the actual production of the honey. Triphiodorus reworks epic poetry’s first-ever long simile and brings it to its natural end: similar to a bee, he has flown to the beginning of the epic tradition and collected fruit from all subsequent bee similes, in order to produce his own honey, in the form of a new bee simile—and his short and sweet epic. What is on offer is a short history of epic similes.
Triphiodorus’ bees are both like and unlike their epic ancestors. They differ not only in that they manage to produce honey but also in their motive for exiting their beehive and attacking bystanders. They do so not because they wish to defend their young (Il. 12.167–72), because they have been smoked out (Ap. Rhod. Argon. 2.130–6; Quint. Smyrn. 3.221–9) or because they have been agitated by a woodcutter (Quint. Smyrn. 13.55–9); Triphiodorus’ bees exit simply because they are weary after having laboured to produce honey (ἔκαμον ὑϕαίνουσαι, 535–6). This unprovoked attack, unheard of for epic (or, in fact, actual) bees, brings attention to the bees’ eagerness, impatience almost, to rush out of the beehive. In that, they are in tune with the poem itself and with its priorities as set out in the proem. The experience of the hard-working and weary bees (ἔκαμον) echoes the poem’s subject matter, as announced in the opening line with a cognate word: τέρμα πολυκμήτοιο πολέμοιο. Triphiodorus has been keen to sing swiftly of this belaboured war’s end. The bees are as tired as the story of the sack of Troy itself; their end product, the honey, parallels the completion of the laborious war. The bees are, besides, presented almost as poets in the production of their honey, which they ‘weave’: ὑϕαίνω is commonly used to express the devising of contrivances, but it can also be used in the sense of writing or composing.Footnote 48 In a Pindaric fragment, for example, the narrator states that he is writing a poem with the phrase ὑϕαίνω … ποικίλον ἄνδημα (fr. 179 S–M).Footnote 49 Attention is thus brought to the poetic activity/process more generally, and to the production of this particular poem. The assimilation of bee and poet at the end of the previous paragraph might not be just a turn of phrase. The bee as symbol of the poet (and of poetry as honey-sweet) is, besides, common in antiquity, and can be dated as far back as Plato’s Ion (534a7–b6). Callimachus’ subsequent variation of the image and its association of the poet with a cicada in the epilogue to the Hymn to Apollo is to blame for much of the imagery’s popularity, especially in Late Antiquity and in an epyllion with as strong a Callimachean aspect as the Sack of Troy.Footnote 50 When the bees have finally produced the honey, Triphiodorus completes one more reboot of that same story. He can only hope that he has managed to find the sweet spot in telling a story which has been told time and again with less tasteful results.
CONCLUSION
Similes are indispensable in any epic poem, long or short, which heavily relies on the Homeric epics—of that Triphiodorus is fully aware. Similes have in his time become so synonymous with the epic genre that each of them can very nearly problematize the very act of writing an epic poem. Like some of his predecessors, Triphiodorus immerses himself in the pool of epic poetry and fully exploits the epic tradition in producing his own similes, effectively drawing on all existing formulas, mechanisms and vocabulary to produce meaning. At the same time, some of these mechanisms and tools are twisted, ever so slightly, to receive Triphiodorus’ own signature. Similes can be used to humorous effect; they defy the fairly fixed system of categorization of earlier epic similes; they provide the stage for emulation, competition or outright rivalry with epic predecessors; and they can be reflective of key tenets of the poem’s (and poet’s) programme. Triphiodorus’ similes thus offer valuable insight into the process of writing Greek epic poetry in the Imperial era.
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