Poetic Language and Religion in Greece and Rome Edited by J
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Poetic Language and Religion in Greece and Rome Edited by J. Virgilio García and Angel Ruiz This book first published 2013 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2013 by J. Virgilio García, Angel Ruiz and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-5248-1, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-5248-7 TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface ..................................................................................................... viii José Virgilio García Trabazo and Angel Ruiz Indo-European Poetic Language Gods And Vowels ....................................................................................... 2 Joshua T. Katz Some Linguistic Devices of the Greek Poetical Tradition ........................ 29 Jordi Redondo In Tenga Bithnua y la Lengua Angélica: Sus Fuentes y su Función ........ 39 Henar Velasco López Rumpelstilzchen: The Name of the Supernatural Helper and the Language of the Gods ............................................................................................... 51 Óscar M. Bernao Fariñas Religious Onomastics in Ancient Greece and Italy: Lexique, Phraseology and Indo-european Poetic Language ........................................................ 60 José L. García Ramón Two Epithets of Zeus in Laconia in the Light of Homeric Phraseology ......................................................................... 108 Ana Vegas Sansalvador Τάρταρος ................................................................................................ 118 Daniel Kölligan Religious Etymology and Poetic Syncretism at Rome ........................... 127 Colin Shelton Ancient Linguistic, Literary and Religious Elements in Kallimachos and Chrysorrhoe ..................................................................................... 136 Edwin D. Floyd vi Table of Contents Religious Language in Greek and Latin Literature Poesía y Ritual en la Grecia Antigua: Observaciones Sobre los Peanes Délficos ................................................................................. 146 Emilio Suárez de la Torre Consulting the Gods in the Odyssey ....................................................... 183 Claudia Zatta ‘Religious Register’ and Comedy: The Case of Cratinus ....................... 190 Francesco Paolo Bianchi Oracles and Riddles Ambo Fratres: Cultural (and Family) Relations Between Oracula and Aenigmata ....... 199 Simone Beta Late Antique Oracles: Samples of Ασάφεια or Σαφήνεια?..................... 207 Lucia Maddalena Tissi En Torno al Vocabulario Religioso Helenístico: Temis y dike en Euforión y su Hipotexto Hesiódico .............................. 222 Josep A. Clúa Serena Intertextuality and the Cultic Dimension in Lycophron’s Rewriting of Myth: Iphigenia and Childbirth .......................................................... 230 Giulia Biffis The Achilles’ Oath in Hom. Il. 1.236-244: Intertextuality and Survival .................................................................... 243 Manuel Pérez López Plegaria e Himno Literario: Los Dioscuros en las Inscripciones de Prote, Alceo y dos Himnos Homéricos ............................................................. 250 José B. Torres Guerra The Magicians who Sang to the Gods .................................................... 258 Miriam Blanco Thesea Devovi: Magic, Ritual and Heroes in Ovid’s Heroides .............. 266 Nathalie Sado Nisinson El Himno de Adrasto a Apolo en la Tebaida de Estacio ........................ 275 José Manuel Vélez Latorre Poetic Language and Religion in Greece and Rome vii Poetic and Religious Traditionalism in Avienus: The Prooemium of the Aratea ................................................................ 282 Amedeo Alessandro Raschieri Venus, Ceres and Ovid: Divinity, Knowledge and the Generation of Poetry in Book IV of Ovid’s Fasti ..................................................... 293 Charles Bartlett Magic as a Poetic Process: Vergil and the Carmina ............................... 301 Mathieu Minet Poetic and Religious Language in Roman Tragic Fragments Concerning Medea .................................................................................. 310 Maria Jennifer Falcone Index ....................................................................................................... 321 RELIGIOUS ONOMASTICS IN ANCIENT GREECE AND ITALY: LEXIQUE, PHRASEOLOGY AND INDO- EUROPEAN POETIC LANGUAGE* JOSÉ L. GARCÍA RAMÓN UNIVERSITY OF COLOGNE 1. The epithets used to invoke gods in a ritual context (hence the term ἐπίκλησις) attested in inscriptions or quoted in literary texts, reveal a lot of information about the respective god’s characteristics: they therefore occupy a special position within the representations of divine beings by the Greeks and Romans. The numerous cultic and literary epithets of gods, inasmuch as they are understandable ex graeco ipso, ex latino ipso or by linguistic comparison, reflect different aspects of their divine personality: in fact they can show astonishing characteristics, which are highly instructive about the respective god’s powers and the religious knowledge codified in local traditions. Divine epithets appear in epigraphical texts or are quoted in poetry or historical texts; epithets of only literary provenance, albeit sometimes based on the poet’s free imagination, often also reflect the imagery of the cultic epithets and thus basically agree in their portrayal of the god’s characteristics. Local epithets can reflect the * This paper has been written within the framework of the Research Project “Divine epithets in Ancient Greece: a linguistic and philological approach” (PPP- Programme DAAD/Vigoni: Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore / Seminario di Filologia Classica e Papirologia / Universität zi Köln, Historisch-Vergelichende Sprachwissenschaft, 2011/2012. It is a part of the Loeb Lecture “Indo-European Continuity in Greek and Latin Onomastics”, held April 17th 2012 at the Department of Classics at Harvard. It is a pleasant duty to express my gratitude to Daniel Kölligan (Köln), Daniele Maras (Roma), José Marcos Macedo (Saô Paulo / Köln), José Luis Melena (Vitoria), Paolo Poccetti (Roma), Ana Vegas Sansalvador (Köln), and M. Weiss (Cornell) for their remarks and criticism. My warm thanks also go to Karolina Gierej, Denise Hübner, and especially Lena Wolberg (Köln) for her invaluable help in the material preparation of the manuscript. José L. García Ramón 61 panhellenic divine imagery, i.e. the standard imagery of the Olympic and lesser gods without geographical distinction. But each Greek and Italic region attests in its epigraphy numerous typical, sometimes also unexpected epithets. They may be unique, or related to a god for the first time only from one source, and even appear completely strange for a specific god. The first question when dealing with epithets concerns the distinction between cultic and exclusively literary epithets, i.e. whether epithets quoted in literature are of cultic provenance or a poetic invention. That cultic epithets are usually written with majuscule, whereas literary epithets are with minuscule (except when they are directly used as the name of the god) is, of course, purely conventional. It must be noted that literary epithets can be of a cultic nature, too: the absence of a corresponding ritual context may be due to the lack of documentation. Even if an epithet was invented by the poet (thus showing perhaps an ‘occasional’ nature), it has the same function as a traditional epithet, inasmuch as it describes the god’s essence (or a part of it). Lexicographical literature, which quotes many epithets with or without indication of their regional or dialectal provenance, is often astonishingly precise in their explanation. The evaluation of divine epithets meets with different possibilities: (1) the meaning of the epithet is obscure; in this case there is n o other possibility than to associate it, as far as possible, with non-Greek or non-Italic proper names (toponyms, theonyms, ethnics), in other words, to admit that it is not Indo-European and to renounce a linguistic explanation. (2) the epithet, inasmuch as it is interpretable within Greek or Latin / Sabellic by way of comparison with other Indo-European traditions, indicates a particularity (specific or not) of the god; in this case, we are dealing with various possibilities: (a) the epithet perfectly fits into the pattern of the god’s nature. Ideally, the divine character is indicated by epithets, poetry and iconography at the same time: this is e.g. the case of Apollo ‘with the silver bow’ (ἀργυρότοξος), or Artemis ‘who holds the arrow in her hands’ (ἰοχέαιρα). (b) the epithet informs us about the god’s imagery in the region in which it appears, although iconographical support is lacking. This is e.g. the case of Χαμ ύνη of Demeter in Olympia, or that of Ἐριούνιος of Ηermes. Χαμύνη ‘who has her bed (εὐνή) on 62 Religious Onomastics the ground (χαμαί)’1 reflects ex Graeco ipso the liaison of the goddess with mortal Iasion, as transmitted since Hοmer (Od. 5.125), as shown by A. Vegas Sansalvador. For its part, Ἐριούνιος, Ἐριούνης ‘who is highly (ἐρι°) runner / helper’ conceals in