Part a the Erysichthon Story Outside Kallimachos I

PART A THE ERYSICHTHON STORY OUTSIDE KALLIMACHOS I: THE TRADITIONAL SOURCES From lines 24 to IIS of his Hymn to Demeter Kallimachos tells the story of Erysichthon, ostensibly 'so that one may avoid trans gressions' (22). The House of Triopas had not yet migrated to Knidos in Asia Minor, but lived on the Dotian plain in Thessaly. There the autochthonous Pelasgians had built a beautiful grove for Demeter; the goddess was as enamoured of it as of Eleusis, and of Triopas as much as of the nymph Enna. But an insane idea entered the head of Triopas' son, Erysichthon. With twenty young giants, his retainers, he rushed into the grove and they set about felling an enormous poplar. Demeter realized the outrage and humanely appeared to the culprit in the form of Nikippe, her aged priestess. But Erysichthon paid no attention to her restrained reproaches, and even threatened to assault the priestess. Infuriated, Demeter reassumed her divine form and towered heaven-high. Erysichthon wanted the timber to roof a banqueting hall; very well, from that day his banquets would come thick and fast. She forth with inflicted him with insatiable hunger, such that twenty waiters and twelve drink stewards could not assuage. His parents were mortified. Rather than allow him to be seen outside the palace, they invented all sorts of excuses to explain why he could not accept invitations that were offered. And all the time he ate and ate, until he was nothing but skin and bone. The whole household wept sore, Triopas tore his white hair and challenged his father Poseidon to restore the boy to health, or feed him himself. But the god vouchsafed no answer, and mules, heifer reserved for Hestia, racehorse, warcharger, even the 'mouser', all entered the victim's maw. When even they were gone it was no longer possible to conceal Erysichthon's plight: 'then the king's son sat at the crossroads, begging for crumbs and the household refuse'. Kallimachos vs. Ovid The 'superficial' treatment in H. 6, which I have summarized above, contrasts sharply with the account given in Ovid's Meta- 6 THE ERYSICHTHON STORY OUTSIDE KALLIMACHOS morphoses (8. 738-878). There Erysichthon is a constant reviler of the gods, but besides he attacked a giant oak sacred to Ceres. One of his retainers had a change of heart and tried to prevent the outrage, only to be decapitated by Erysichthon, who was prepared also to destroy the goddess if she stood in his way. When the oak was attacked it groaned, shed blood and finally fell, spelling death for the resident hamadryad, who cursed Erysichthon with her dying breath. The nymphs of the forest complained to Ceres, who summoned Hunger from Scythia to infect the villain. The old hag came to Erysichthon and breathed insatiable hunger into him as he slept. Soon Triopas' son had nothing left but his daughter(Mestra), and decided to sell her into slavery. Mestra, however, had earlier been the subject of Poseidon's affections and called upon the seagod, as her new master pursued her along the seashore. The god heard her prayer and changed her into a fisherman. When she returned home and Erysichthon discovered that his daughter had the gift of metamorphosis, he sold her again and again; thereupon she would return to him in .animal form. But this did not suffice. Finally he was driven to trying to satisfy his hunger by eating his limbs, with an inevitable result. Since all our remaining ancient evidence for the story is frag mentary or incomplete, a great amount of time has been devoted by scholars to the relationship of Ovid to Kallimachos. That the former knew the latter was unquestionable, but what construction was to be placed upon divergences of detail, above all upon the entire Mestra episode ? Although it is generally recognized that the possession of the two accounts is 'a piece of good luck' 1, the luck has been heavily weighted in Ovid's favour. Kallimachos certainly did not know the Roman, hence interest has largely centred upon the question of how much of the Ovidian account could be credited to the poet's own inventiveness. The fertile imagination of Ovid of course invited the answer: 'A good deal'; for the later argument it will be useful to recall exactly how much. Prof. Rose 2, for example, was among those who saw the death of the nymph in Ovid as a conscious improvement upon the earlier story. P. Grimal (p. 153), on the basis of the Roman approach to the depiction of landscape, finds that Ovid has transformed and modified the sacred grove: oak instead of poplar, one tree the 1 Buchner, Humanitas Romana, p. 206. 2 Handbook of Greek Mythology, p. 95. .

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