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Chapter 3 - From Epinician Praise to the Poetry of Encomium on Stone:CEG 177, 819, 888–9 and the Hyssaldomus Inscription
- from Part I - Archaic and Classical Poetics
- Edited by Marco Fantuzzi, Roehampton University, London, Helen Morales, University of California, Santa Barbara, Tim Whitmarsh, University of Cambridge
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- Book:
- Reception in the Greco-Roman World
- Published online:
- 05 June 2021
- Print publication:
- 27 May 2021, pp 72-91
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Summary
This chapter explores the reception strategies of metrical inscriptions on statues and other monuments from the turn of the fifth to the fourth cent. BCE found at Xanthos in Lycia – and recently in Caria. They offer a insights into the practice of composing encomia for powerful dynasts and prominent addressees through the medium of hexameters, elegiac couplets, and trochaic tetrameters. In that respect, they call for close comparison with the lyric encomiastic poetry composed in the late archaic and early classical period by poets such as Ibycus, Pindar, and Bacchylides for powerful military and political rulers and patrons. Four of these inscriptional texts display a feature which is extremely rare in archaic poetry and is not found in all the other extant metrical inscriptions down to the 4th century BCE: the signature bearing the name of the poet. This chapter interprets the poet’s signature as a way of stressing the bond between poet and patron/addressee in a different way from the lyric practice, and stresses the new strategy of praise entailed by these inscriptions, by combining the visual power of the monuments with the power of the poet’s words.
12 - Oedipodea
- from PART II - EPICS
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- By Ettore Cingano, University of Venice “Ca' Foscari”
- Edited by Marco Fantuzzi, Columbia University, New York, Christos Tsagalis, University of Thessaloniki, Greece
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- Book:
- The Greek Epic Cycle and its Ancient Reception
- Published online:
- 05 August 2015
- Print publication:
- 06 August 2015, pp 213-225
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Summary
Being placed after a Theogony and/or a Titanomachy which dealt with cosmic forces and battles between divinities, the Oedipodea was the first poem of the epic cycle to deal with stories of heroes. In this respect, it can safely be taken as the opening poem not just of the Theban cycle, but of the entire thematic and chronological sequel which covered four generations of heroes (five, if one includes Laius), starting with Oedipus in the Theban epics, and ending with Telemachus and Telegonus, the sons of one of the main heroes in the Trojan epics, Odysseus. Three generations of heroes out of four were covered by the Theban cycle, in spite of the smaller number of poems involved in the narrative, whereas the Trojan cycle covered only two generations: in fact, the third generation was shared by both traditions, since some of the heroes who conquered Thebes in the expedition of the Epigonoi set off to Troy a few years later. In the construction of the epic cycle the wars at Thebes and at Troy took place in the span of a few years; they were welded into one sequential string of events, according to the akolouthia tōn pragmatōn (Phot. Bibl. 319a 30); the manufacture was effected probably by the Alexandrian grammarians but may have started even earlier, in pre-Hellenistic times, in the milieu of the school of Aristotle at Athens, although no piece of evidence remains to corroborate this possibility.
In spite of the great popularity enjoyed from the archaic age throughout antiquity by the myths of Oedipus and of the Seven against Thebes and the Epigonoi, the precise sequence of events and the handling of characters and episodes in the Theban epics are difficult to reconstruct. The fragments of the Oedipodea and of the Epigonoi in particular are very scanty to say the least: altogether they amount to less than ten with only three verbatim fragments totalling four lines. Besides, differently from the poems of the Trojan cycle, no prose summary has survived from the second-century AD grammarian (or fifth-century AD Neoplatonist) named Proclus – who was drawing on an older source – recalling the main episodes in each poem.
14 - Epigonoi
- from PART II - EPICS
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- By Ettore Cingano, University of Venice “Ca' Foscari”
- Edited by Marco Fantuzzi, Columbia University, New York, Christos Tsagalis, University of Thessaloniki, Greece
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- Book:
- The Greek Epic Cycle and its Ancient Reception
- Published online:
- 05 August 2015
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- 06 August 2015, pp 244-260
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Summary
The Epigonoi is the third poem of the Theban cycle centered on the family of Oedipus: it dealt with the generation of his grandsons. The title (Ἐπίγονοι = ‘The afterborn, the younger men’) and the opening line (PEG F 1 = D., W.: Νῦν αὖθ’ ὁπλοτέρων ἀνδρῶν ἀρχώμεθα, Μοῦσαι ‘and now, Muses, let us begin with the younger ones/those born after’) point to a close connection with the preceding poem, the Thebaid, which dealt with the feud between Eteocles and Polynices and with the first war of Argos against Thebes. Consequently, the Epigonoi was centered on the second expedition against Thebes waged 10 years later by the sons of the Seven. The continuity of the subject matter is matched by the equal length of the poems: according to the source which also quotes their beginnings, they both numbered 7,000 lines (Certamen Homeri et Hesiodi 15, 256–8 Allen = Epig. PEG T 1 = 2 D.). The poem presents a number of unsolved problems regarding its origin, dating, arrangement, and relation to other epic poems now lost (the Thebaid, the Alcmeonis, the Trojan epics).
Authorship
The strong narrative bond with the Thebaid may have facilitated the attribution of the Epigonoi to Homer, although some doubts regarding the Homeric autorship of the poem surface as early as the fifth century BC with Herodotus: after recalling that the Hyperboreans are mentioned by ‘Hesiod’ (cf. Hes. F 150.21 M.-W. = F 63.21 Hirsch.), he continues ‘…and so does Homer in the Epigonoi, if Homer really composed this poem’ (Herod. 4.32 = Epig. PEG F 2 = D., 5 W.). In a later period, after quoting the opening lines of the Thebaid and of the Epigonoi (see above), the compiler of the Certamen casts the same doubt on Homeric paternity by adding ‘some say that this too is the work of Homer’ (Cert. 15 (260 Allen) ϕασὶ γάρ τινες καὶ ταῦτα 'Ομήρου εἶναι).
Herodotus' quotation of the poem proves that in the classical age there circulated one poem Epigonoi distinct from the Thebaid, which was believed to be Homeric.
6 - A catalogue within a catalogue: Helen's suitors in the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women (frr. 196–204)
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- By Ettore Cingano, Professor of Greek Literature University Ca' Foscari in Venice
- Edited by Richard Hunter, University of Cambridge
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- Book:
- The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women
- Published online:
- 22 September 2009
- Print publication:
- 14 July 2005, pp 118-152
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Summary
INTRODUCTION
The Hesiodic catalogue of Helen's suitors (frr. 196–204) is of seminal importance for the whole stream of epic tradition: by narrating the events which led to the marriage of Helen and Menelaus, it serves as a prelude to – and an integration of – the facts narrated in the Cypria, which in turn provides detailed information on the events which led to the Trojan War. In spite of all the features it shares with the early stage of the Trojan epics and with the Homeric Catalogue of Ships, and although scholarly interest in the epic cycle has steadily increased in recent years, the Catalogue of Suitors has been given little attention so far; in fact, it has not been commented upon since the papyrus fragments were published by Wilamowitz about a century ago.
According to Merkelbach and West, the catalogue of Helen's suitors was located in the fifth and last book of the Hesiodic Catalogue. Because of its subject-matter, it can safely be treated as a separate section, independent of the rest of the Catalogue. Frr. 196–204 deal with the list of Helen's suitors, with the oath imposed upon them by Tyndareus that they would join in arms against anyone who might take Helen by force, and with her marriage to Menelaus and the birth of Hermione. We are then faced with an abrupt switch in the text (fr. 204.95–123), referring to the gods and to Zeus's intention to trigger the Trojan War, with the aim of destroying the generation of the demigods.