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COMMENTARY Calchas on the Basis of an Omen Declares That Troy Must

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COMMENTARY Calchas on the Basis of an Omen Declares That Troy Must COMMENTARY 1-20 Calchas on the basis of an omen declares that Troy must be taken by trickery. It is easy to assert 1 that Q. has combined the traditional detail2 of Odysseus' device ofthe Horse with Sinon's claim in Virg. A. 2. 185f. that Calchas 'ordered' the Greeks to build it. Even if the detail is Virg. 's own 3, in Q. Calchas' intervention is grounded in reality, is based on a wholly dif­ ferent set of circumstances, is strategically necessary (an effective method of crushing the stiff opposition put up by the god-fearing Neoptolemos, a motif certainly not of Q. 's own devising: 66-103n. ), and must be viewed against the background of a tradition in which oracles, prophecies and portents abound4 , and in which Calchas came to assume an increasingly dominant role 5 • Q. 's Calchas indeed (for his teaming up with Odysseus cf. the n. on 360-88, § 4 (a) (ii)) is a leading light in decision making both before and after the fall of Troy6 • His Trojan counterpart Helenos, so popular elsewhere, is virtually driven out of the action: he is a fighter viii. 252f., xi. 348f.; a seer, though not explicitly so, only in the chaotic prophecy of Hera at x. 346f. Calchas is on the scene at this point in the saga in Dictys 5. 7: he predicts that Troy will fall into Greek hands on the basis of an omen involving an eagle carrying a victim's entrails. The doubly inept Triph. 172f. is worth a passing glance: the 'aged' Calchas is in the Horse, and in his capacity as a seer he is well aware ( EU Elow~) that the Greeks were at long last going to take Troy.-Triph. 's work is full of uneasy compromises: at 132f. Odysseus is made to draw an unfavourable comparison between the 'aged' Calchas (he is presumably there listening) who 'put off the capture of the city and the 'foreign seer' Helenos who was now bringing the Greeks in 1 So, e.g., Kehmptzow 68. 2 See 21-65n. 3 Noack (811) astonishingly argues that it cannot be based on a version which made Calchas actually suggest the Horse, because we are dealing with a story put into Sinon's mouth. ' Kullmann 221 f. For Q. himself see Duckworth 66, and id. 75f. on the sharpening and intensification of the theme of Troy's imminent doom from this episode on. ' Cf. I. Loffier, Die Melampodie, Meisenheim 1963, 24, 46. • See Heinze 65f. 2 COMMENTARY sight of victory. More important, I think, is Petron. lf.: the war was now ten years old, and vatis /ides Calchantis atro dubia pendebat rnetu, cum Delio pro/ante caesi vertices /doe trahuntur ..... According to Stubbe (32) Delio profante is an error prompted by a muddled recollection of Sinon's tale in Virg. A. 2. 114-:" 121, since pro Troia stabat Apollo. The gods of saga do not operate as Stubbe thinks they do. Calchas is Apollo's protege, and the skills implanted in him are operative in Q. (cf. 4) to set in motion the final stage of the war. It may well be that Delio pro­ f ante specifically is due to Virgilian influence, but it is interesting none the less that Petr., whose account diverges from Virg. 'sin a number of accep­ table ways 7, forges a direct link between Calchas and the manufacturing of the Horse; in Sinon's rigmarole the oracular response has nothing to do with the Horse, which is already built (112f.). Odysseus did not enjoy a monopoly for inventiveness. There were other contenders for this, the crowning triumph of the war: the seers Prylis (Lye. 219f. with schol., see Radke in RE 23. 1150) and Helenos (Co non F 34, Dictys 5.9, 11), the latter's claim being a natural consequence of the com­ mon statement that Helenos predicted the city's capture (II. Parv. 212, [Apollod.] 5 .10 etc.); the sequence Helenos-Neoptolemos-Palladium­ Horse is spelled out in rambling fashion by Triph. (51f. cf. 133f.). So too Calchas' prediction that Troy would fall 'in the tenth year' (B 323f., cf. vi. 61-2 and the confused viii. 475-7) was matched in the Cypria by a similar one from Anios king of Delos8 • 1-2 The long and weary struggle of the Greeks (cf. the 'tired' Greeks in Catul. 64.366 - Hor. CaTTT1. 2.4.11, [Sinon in] Virg. A. 2.109) and their inability to take Troy are disposed of in a brief preface: so, from the Trojan side of the fence, Virg. A. 2.13-4, Petr. lf. Triph., in contrast, taking as his starting-point the arrival of Helenos on the scene ( 45f.; with 6 ~8TJ µt11 8tx&"toto cf. the preface in [Apollod.] 5.8 ~8TJ 8L.8tx<Xt"toui;), exploits the familiar theme of the weariness and discomforts of war ( cf. B 134f.; A. Ag. 555f.; S. Aj. 1185f.) in highly charged and ponderous language. 7 Stubbe 32f. He naively posits as a source 'ein mythographisches Handbuch'. 8 Cf. G. L. Huxley, Greek Epic Poetry from Eume/05 to PanyaniJ, London 1969, 139. .
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