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A Commentary on Book 4 of Valerius Flaccus' Argonautica / by Paul Murgatroyd

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A Commentary on Book 4 of Valerius Flaccus' Argonautica / by Paul Murgatroyd ACommentaryonBook4 of Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica Mnemosyne Supplements Monographs on Greek and Roman Language and Literature Editorial Board G.J. Boter A. Chaniotis K.M. Coleman I.J.F. de Jong P. H . S c h r ij v e r s VOLUME 311 A Commentary on Book 4 of Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica by Paul Murgatroyd LEIDEN • BOSTON 2009 This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Murgatroyd, Paul. A commentary on Book 4 of Valerius Flaccus' Argonautica / by Paul Murgatroyd. p. cm. – (Mnemosyne supplements : monographs on Greek and Roman language and literature ; 311) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-17561-7 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Valerius Flaccus, Gaius, 1st cent. Argonautica. Book 4. 2. Argonauts (Greek mythology) in literature. 3. Epic poetry, Latin–History and criticism. 4. Jason (Greek mythology) in literature. 5. Medea (Greek mythology) in literature. I. Title. II. Series. PA6791.V5M87 2009 873'.01–dc22 2009008452 ISSN 0169-8958 ISBN 978 9004 175617 Copyright 2009 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands OPTIMO PATRI Arthur Murgatroyd – CONTENTS Preface ............................................................... ix Introduction ......................................................... 1 SelectBibliography .................................................. 5 ArgonauticonLiberQuartus........................................ 9 Commentary......................................................... 31 Index................................................................. 361 PREFACE This book is aimed primarily at university lecturers and graduate stu- dents, but senior undergraduates should also profit from consulting it. Any commentator has to decide what kind of commentary will serve the Classical author best, i.e. what material should be included or ex- cluded and be played up or down. Valerius Flaccus (VF) has already been well served by standard philological commentaries, and I did not feel that yet another one of them was really needed (especially after Korn’s notes on the first half of IV). Valuable work has been done recently (by Feeney ff., Hardie ff., Clare in Gale ff. and especially Hershkowitz) to improve our critical appreciation of this generally neglected and under- estimated poet, and I decided that a commentary which continued this processofrevaluationbymeansofacloselookatoneparticularbook of his epic would be much more useful. So in the notes below there is textual criticism (but only where meaning and appreciation are substan- tially affected), and there is explanation of sense and references (which is obviously a vital basis for critical analysis), but there is also much liter- ary criticism (utilizing traditional approaches and also the more modern techniques of intertextuality and narratology), with the intention of alert- ing readers to important aspects of Valerius’ highly intellectual poetry, such as the wit, humour, elegance, point, ingenuity, subtlety, narrative skill and sophisticated response to forerunners, particularly Apollonius of Rhodes (AR) and Virgil. All of this takes up a lot of space, and I did not want to erect a great barrier of scholarship between the reader and the poem, so I have avoided extensive explication with long lists of ref- erences, massive notes on themes, epic topoi etc., lengthy discussion of minutiae (like the frequency of elision at s) and consideration of gram- maticalandlinguisticnorms(thepredicativedativeintheArgonautica, the use of anguis as opposed to serpens, and so on). For the same reason, as there are so many possible reminiscences of earlier writers (especially Virgil), I have restricted myself to handling only what I view as certain or probable instances of imitation. I have gratefully taken over items from earlier commentaries (espe- cially those by Langen, Korn and Spaltenstein). To avoid inordinate xpreface clutter, I have simply incorporated tralaticious material and only name particular commentators in the case of ideas and references peculiar to them alone. I did my first draft without looking at any other scholarship, and was a third of the way through the second draft before I had access to Spaltenstein’s notes on IV. Inevitably there have been some coincidences of opinion, but wherever anything has been derived from a specific pre- decessor I do acknowledge my debt. It remains for me to thank warmly two experts and good friends, Henri Wijsman and Jim McKeown, for their kind support and painstaking and perceptive scrutiny of this work. Of course, they should not be held responsible for the nature of this commentary or for any errors or infelicities in it. I would also like to thank Verlag de Gruyter for permission to base my text on the Teubner edition of W-W. Ehlers and to use his sigla. P. M . INTRODUCTION The date of book (and of the whole poem) is unclear. Quintilian remarked (about ad) at .. multum in Valerio Flacco nuper ami- simus, but this does not allow us to infer that our poet began writing his epic in the s or s ad, as some critics have done. Nuper is an elastic term, used by Quintilian at .. of Caesius Bassus (quem nuper vidimus) who died in ad, and employed by Juvenal at . (see Courtney ad loc.) of an event which took place about years earlier. And we have no way of telling how long VF worked on his poem, or in which order he composed its various parts. Other arguments for dating are even more problematical (cf. Strand ff.). As a result Valerius’ chronological relationship to Statius and Silius Italicus is unclear, and I cannot follow those scholars who assume that VF imitates those two poets in book and elsewhere in his Argonautica (cf. Feeney ). IV is an important and exciting book. In it Hercules is withdrawn from the company, early on, and the other Argonauts begin to function (and succeed) without him. Here they start to grow in stature as heroes, and for them on their own the great adventures on their quest now commence. By the end of IV they have triumphantly come through three major tests on their outward journey (Amycus, the Harpies, the Symplegades), all packed into one book for cumulative impact and to ensure that there is lots of action (and varied action) in it. This is also generally a buoyant and upbeat book (cf. Lüthje ), enlivened by much wit, humour and irony. It strongly affects the emotions, and it has intellectual appeal as well. Here, as elsewhere in the poem, VF effectively employs a wide range of narrative techniques and deftly manipulates readers (teasing and trick- ing them, involving them in the story, building anticipation, achieving suspense and so on). Typically, and importantly, this is also an extremely learned book, and the erudition is not dry and dull but stimulating and entertaining.ItisagreatpitythatwehavelostVarroAtacinus’versionof the Argonautica and Ovid’s Medea (to which VF very probably reacted in hisverse),butwecanseeconstantlyacombativeandcreativeengagement with predecessors who do survive, particularly Apollonius of Rhodes. In connection with him VF adopts and adapts, making (often major) introduction variations and (seeming) innovations, and blending in other authors too (especially Virgil), so that his imitation is lively and unpredictable. In particular our poet goes for more emotional impact (via the sentimental, the dramatic, the sensational), making the Argonauts’ opponents more formidable and the crew’s achievements more remarkable, and highlight- ing Jason more and building him up as a better leader (cf. Hershkowitz ff.). Some readers will find that this makes Valerius’ epic more stir- ring and satisfying, while others will prefer Apollonius’ more restrained, questioning and deflating attitude (I am not in the business of handing out prizes, and in the commentary below I simply point out the ways in which VF’s approach to telling the story differs from AR’s, without imply- ing that one is superior to the other). Another noteworthy aspect is the elegant and effective structure. The fourth book breaks down as follows: – end of the Hylas episode; – bridge passage; – Amycus episode; – Orpheus’ song about Io; – the Phineus episode; – the Symplegades epi- sode; – bridge passage; – start of the Lycus episode. Tran- sitions between these sections are smooth (see the sectional notes in the commentary), and the progression within them is logical and carefully ordered. All sections are marked off by internal ring composition except for the last two (see the relevant sectional notes). The first of those (– ) is only a bridge, and the absence of a ring there in any case makes for variety and avoids predictability. The final section (–) in fact recalls the opening one, so that it produces ring structure within IV as a whole: in both cases there is just part of an episode; each passage looks forward to the loss of a pair of Argonauts
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