Triphiodorus’ The Sack of and Colluthus’ The Rape of Helen: A Sequel and a Prequel from

Orestis Karavas

Late Antiquity is often thought of by scholars as “a world of poetry”.1 The sur- vival of many texts such as encomia in verse and Patria, histories of cities (Pamprepius of Panopolis, Paul the Silentiary, Christodorus of Coptos, Olym- piodorus of , Cyrus of Panopolis, John of Gaza, Dioscorus of Aphrodito, George of Pisidy), historical epics in Homeric style (Olympiodorus’ of Thebes Blemmyomachy, Pamprepius’ Isaurica, Triphiodorus’ Marathoniaca), didactic poems (Dionysius Periegetes, Oppian of , Oppian of , Marcel- lus of Sida, the Orphic Lithica, Manetho’s Apotelesmatica), hymns (Synesius of Cyrene, Gregory of , Proclus, Romanos the Melode, the Orphic Hymns), innumerable epigrams (Strato, Balbilla, Rufinus, Agathias, Palladas, and many anonymous epigrammatists of the Palatine and the Planudean An- thology), even iambic and lyric poems (Babrius, Helladius, Marianus, Meso- medes, Anacreontica) prove it. Nevertheless, the revival of the mythological epic poetry in Upper during the first centuries of the Byzantine era is of great importance in our study. Apart from the titles which have come down to us (Bassarika and On Ariadna by Soterichus Oasites, Heroic Theogamies by Pisander of Laranda, The Story of Hippodamea by Triphiodorus, Calydoniaca by Colluthus and by Soterichus), there are fortunately quite a few representative texts of that literary fashion: Nonnus’Dionysiaca, Quintus’ of Posthome- rica, Triphiodorus’ The Sack of Troy, Musaeus’Hero and Leander, Colluthus’ The Rape of Helen, and the Orphic Argonautica. The poets of that time sought to find a way to engrave their names on the wall of immortality through their works. One way of achieving this was by “filling the gaps” Homer left in his poems,2 or continuing through them the stories he started. The most popular kind of Homeric continuation was the Posthomerica, a superb example of which are the 9,000 verses of Quintus of Smyrna.3 In this chapter I will explore the epic imitations, inspirations and

1 Alsina (1972); Garzya (1987–1988); Miguélez Cavero (2008) 3–105; Agosti (2012) 362–370. 2 Jeffreys (2006) 132; Kim (2010) 179–181 and nn. 10–14. 3 Kim (2010) 15–16; Tomasso (2012) 396, 402.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi: 10.1163/9789004360921_005 triphiodorus’ the sack of troy & colluthus’ the rape of helen 53 continuations of two epyllia4 written in the Egyptian between the 3rd and 6th centuries ad: Triphiodorus’ The Sack of Troy and Colluthus’ The Rape of Helen. Both poets draw their inspiration not only from the Homeric poems, but also from other epic poetry of the Hellenistic and the Imperial eras. First, I will discuss their objectives behind their choice of subject and second, I will study their language and motifs, in order to understand how they discover, re-work or adapt elements from past literature. Homer was not only the sublime model for every Greek poet, but also a source of innumerable stories.5 The challenge for later epic poets lay in creating something original out of Homeric material. Triphiodorus and Colluthus seek to do precisely this, and, judging from the later appeal of their poems, we can see that they succeeded in their objective.

Triphiodorus

Triphiodorus (3rd century ad) was a contemporary of Quintus and left us a short poem of 691 hexameters, entitled The Sack of Troy (Ἅλωσις Ἰλίου). Among other poems he had composed a Lipogrammatic Odyssey—continuing the grammatical games Nestor of Laranda had started with his Lipogrammatic Iliad—and also a Paraphraseof Homer’scomparisons. Both works are now lost.6 With The Sack of Troy Triphiodorus continues the Iliad in a different way to that of classical tragedy, Virgil, and Quintus:7 he focuses on a specific episode, namely, the moment of Troy’s fall, but is uninterested in what happened to Homer’s Greek heroes. The poem begins with the key-word τέρμα—“end” of the war, just as the Iliad begins with the μῆνις—“rage” of Achilles. In the five-line proem, all the main subjects that will be dealt with in the poem are touched upon:8 the poet asks Calliope, the patron Muse of epic poetry, to assist him and tell him about

4 On ancient ἐπύλλιον see Hollis (2006); Baumbach and Bär (2012b) ix–xiii; Tomasso (2012) 378–385. 5 Kim (2010) 174: “Homer’s legacy to the Imperial world resides not in his role as cultural icon, ambassador of Hellenism, or historiographical recorder of the glorious deeds of the Greek heroic age, but in his capacity as a storyteller, a creator of fictions that have become so powerful that they possess a certain reality of their own, even though they are acknowledged as invented.” 6 For Triphiodorus’ lost works see Tomasso (2012) 404–408; Miguélez Cavero (2013) 6–8. 7 Miguélez Cavero (2013) 58–61 (Triphiodorus and Tragedy), 64–70 (Triphiodorus and Virgil); Tomasso (2012) 381–382, 395–404 (Triphiodorus and Quintus of Smyrna). 8 Montes Cala (1989); Brioso Sánchez (1996) 110–112; Tomasso (2012) 385–390.