COMMENTARY ON HEROlDES 13, TO

Synopsis qf the myth

Protesilaus is king of Phylake in Thessaly. One time suitor of Helen (Hesiod, Hyginus), he marries Laodamia, but the wedding is marred by ceremonial neg1igence on Laodamia's part: hints at her failure to perform the necessary sacrifices. Whi1e still newly-married (and after only one day of married life according to the scholia on Aristides and Lucan), Protesilaus joins the Greek expedition against . His reasons for departure are rarely made explicit: the scho• li asts on Aristides and Lucan make hirn an unwilling conscript, but in 's underworld, Aeacus accuses Protesilaus of forgetting his newly-wed wife by the time he arrivcd at Troy; and, in a fragment from Laevius, Laodamia expresses her jealous anxieties over her ab• sent husband's faithlessness. Protesilaus' military career is short-lived. When the Greek fleet finally arrives at Troy after its delay at Aulis, Protesilaus rushes ashore and is cut down by a Trojan warrior, usually . Prote• silaus thus fulfills an , aimed specifically at hirn according to aversion reported by Eustathius, that the first Greek to land at Troy would be killed: in Hyginus, his name was originally , and he earns his new name Protesilaus, 'first of the peop1e' or 'first-Ieaper', through the manner of his death. briefly and suggestively mentions the weeping wife and half-complete horne the dead man leaves behind. The two major motifs of the myth are Protesilaus' return from the dead to visit his wife, and Laodamia's devotion to an image of her husband. Protesilaus' resurrection is short (variously three hours, a few hours, one night, or one day) , but sweet (suggestions of the couple's lovemaking are found in some versions). Laodamia's rela• tionship with the image is sexually chargcd, and sometimes has Bacchic overtones. Versions of the myth vary in their inclusion and combination of these two motifs (see my note on l05-8); but in no version does Laodamia devote herself to the image while her hus• band is still alive, and in one instance (pseudo-Apollodorus) she makes LAODAMIA TO PROTESILAUS 115 the image while she falsely believes Protesilaus to be alive at Troy• a feature of the myth that 's poem exploits to good effect. Laodamia's own untimely death is a staple feature. Either she stabs herself or 'pines away' when her husband returns to the under• world (in a fragment from ' play, she appears to contem• plate hurling herself down a weH as an alternative method); or else she bums to death on the bonfire onto which her father has thrown the image in an attempt to eure her of her obsession. Wordsworth, adducing a scholarly refcrence to Pliny's Natural History in his notes, provides a poignant coda:

Yet tears to human suffering are due; And mortal hopes defeated and o'erthrown Are mourned by man, and not by man alone, As fondly he believes.~Upon the side Of Hellespont (such faith was entertained) A knot of spiny trees for ages grew From out the tomb of hirn for whom she died; And ever, when such stature they had gained That 's walls were subject to this view, The trees' tall summits wither'd at the sight; A constant interchange of growth and blight! (Wordsworth, Laodamia [revised] 164-174)

Sources

Ausonius Epigrammata 4l.5-6, Epitaph 12 Catullus 68 Cypria EGF 18 (= Pausanias 4.2.7) Ephemeris Belli Troiani 2.11 Euripides Protesilaus fr. 646a-57 Nauck Eustathius on Homer 2.700-2, 2.701, Odyss'!J 1l.521 Hesiod Catalogue 199 Homer Iliad 2.698-702 Hyginus Fabulae 103-4 Laevius Protesilaodamia FLP 13-9 Lucian Dialogi Mortuorum 28, 28, 410 Minucius Felix Octavius 11.8 Nonnus Dionysiaca 24.192-5 [a widowed Indian girl is termed a second Laodamia] Ovid Amores 2.18.38 Ars Amatoria 2.356, 3.16-7, Ex Pont. 3.1.109-10, Meta• morphoses 12.67-8, Remedia 723-4, Tristia 1.6.19-20, 5.14.39-40 Imagines 2.9.5 Pliny Natural History 16.238