2014!·!VOLUME 6!· NUMBER 2 TRENDS IN CLASSICS EDITED BY Franco Montanari, Genova Antonios Rengakos, Thessaloniki SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE Alberto Bernabé, Madrid Margarethe Billerbeck, Fribourg Claude Calame, EHESS, Paris Philip Hardie, Cambridge Stephen Harrison, Oxford Stephen Hinds, U of Washington, Seattle Richard Hunter, Cambridge Christina Kraus, Yale Giuseppe Mastromarco, Bari Gregory Nagy, Harvard Theodore D. Papanghelis, Thessaloniki Giusto Picone, Palermo Kurt Raaflaub, Brown University Bernhard Zimmermann, Freiburg Brought to you by | Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin Preussischer Kulturbesitz Authenticated Download Date | 11/7/14 11:19 PM ISSN 1866-7473 ∙ e-ISSN 1866-7481 All information regarding notes for contributors, subscriptions, Open access, back volumes and orders is available online at www.degruyter.com/tic Trends in Classics, a new journal and its accompanying series of Supplementary Volumes, will pub- lish innovative, interdisciplinary work which brings to the study of Greek and Latin texts the insights and methods of related disciplines such as narratology, intertextuality, reader-response criticism, and oral poetics. Trends in Classics will seek to publish research across the full range of classical antiquity. Submissions of manuscripts for the series and the journal are welcome to be sent directly to the editors: RESPONSIBLE EDITORS Prof. Franco Montanari, Università degli Studi di Genova, Italy. franco. [email protected], Prof. Antonios Rengakos, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. [email protected] EDITORIAL OFFICE Paola Ascheri, Stephanos Matthaios, Lara Pagani, Evina Sistakou JOURNAL MANAGER Claudia Hill, De Gruyter, Genthiner Straße 13, 10785 Berlin, Germany, Tel.: +49 (0)30 260 05 – 172, Fax: +49 (0)30 260 05 – 250, Email: [email protected] RESPONSIBLE FOR ADVERTISEMENTS Claudia Neumann, De Gruyter, Genthiner Straße 13, 10785 Berlin, Germany, Tel.: +49 (0)30 260 05-226, Fax: +49 (0)30 260 05-322, Email: [email protected] © 2014 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/München/Boston TYPESETTING Dörlemann Satz, Lemförde PRINTING Franz X. Stückle Druck und Verlag e.K., Ettenheim Printed in Germany Cover Illlustration: Signet-Entwurf für TC: Christopher Schneider, Laufen Brought to you by | Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin Preussischer Kulturbesitz Authenticated Download Date | 11/7/14 11:19 PM TC 2014 | Volume 6 | Number 2 Table of Contents Special Issue: Theban Resonances in Homeric Epic Issue Editor: Christos Tsagalis Preface | 239 PART I: Theban Epic and the Iliad Ete Barker – Joel Christensen Even Herakles Had to Die: Homeric ‘Heroism’, Mortality and the Epic Tradition | 249 Corinne Pache Theban Walls in Homeric Epic | 278 Benjamin Sammons A Tale of Tydeus: Exemplarity and Structure in two Homeric Insets | 297 Mary Ebbott Allies in Fame: Recruiting Warriors in the Theban and Trojan Epic Traditions | 319 PART II: Theban Epic and the Odyssey José Torres Teiresias, the Theban Seer | 339 Christos Tsagalis γυναίων εἵνεκα δώρων: Interformularity and Intertraditionality in Theban and Homeric Epic | 357 Justin Arft Immanent Thebes: Traditional Resonance and Narrative Trajectory in the Odyssey | 399 Brought to you by | Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin Preussischer Kulturbesitz Authenticated Download Date | 11/7/14 11:19 PM TC 2014 | Volume 6 | Number 2 Stephanie Larson Thebes in the Odyssey’s ‘Catalogue of Women’ | 412 PART III: Theban and Trojan Epic Across the Lines Malcolm Davies Oedipus and the Riddle of the Sphinx | 431 Athanassios Vergados Form and Function of Some Theban Resonances in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey | 437 Bibliography | 452 General Index | 468 List of Contributors | 470 Brought to you by | Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin Preussischer Kulturbesitz Authenticated Download Date | 11/7/14 11:19 PM TC 2014; 6(2): 239–246 Preface DOI 10.1515/tc-2014-0013 Next to Troy stands Thebes. The importance of these two cities for the way the Greeks constructed their past has been immense. This statement is equally true for the field of archaic Greek epic, since the Theban and Trojan epic traditions crystallized through poetry the mythical lore pertaining to the two chief events that, according to the early Greeks, brought the race of heroes to their end (Hes. WD 161–165). The importance of Theban and Trojan myth must have been rec- ognized at an early stage, as it can be gathered on the basis of late archaic and classical iconography on the one hand, and tragedy on the other. This does not mean that other mythical cycles did not attract the interest of the Greeks. But both quantitatively and qualitatively, Theban and Trojan myth occupied a preeminent position in Greek culture. On the level of epic poetry, the most tangible manifesta- tion of this supremacy was that the epics dealing with these two mythical tradi- tions formed the largest part of a canon of epic poetry, which seems to have been created during the 4th century BC in Athens, the so-called Epic Cycle. With the exception of a Theogony and a Titanomachy, which comprised the first part of this collection of epics, all the other poems included in it pertain to Theban and Trojan myth, in particular to the failed expedition of the Seven, the successful expedition of the Epigonoi, and its aftermath on the one hand, and the Trojan expedition and its aftermath on the other. No less than four Theban epics (Oedipodeia, Thebaid, Epigonoi, Alcmeonis) were included in this canon of epic poetry, a sure sign of the importance and status of Theban epic even towards the end of the classical era. Of these Theban epics that were composed in the archaic period only few fragments and very limited information has survived the test of time. Collected and re-edited three times in the last 25 years, they provide us with the bare bones of a thriving tradition of epic poetry, which Homeric epic undoubtedly knew, as it can be shown by its frequent reference to the ‘seven-gated Thebes’, as well as to heroes and heroines that formed part and parcel of Theban epic. Oedipus, Epi- caste, Eriphyle, Tydeus, Capaneus, Adrastus, Diomedes, Sthenelus, Thersander, Teiresias are only some of the heroes and heroines that ‘belonged’ to the core of Theban tradition and it is very likely that Homeric epic knew them basically through their rendering in oral Theban epics, which were current during the period of the shaping of the Homeric epics. Christos Tsagalis: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, E-Mail: [email protected]. Brought to you by | Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin Preussischer Kulturbesitz Authenticated Download Date | 11/7/14 11:19 PM 240 Preface The case of Heracles is a special one for a number of reasons: first, though he was born in Thebes he is only marginally tied to his home-city. Second, he plays no role in the Theban epic tradition but is connected with various exploits occur- ring in different places. He features as a sacker of cities (Oechalia, Pylos, Troy) but he is in no way marked by this role. Third, his Panhellenism is very different from that of Achilles, Odysseus or Tydeus. He has no ‘default mode’ on the level of a poetic rendering of his turbulent biography. Heracles has neither a Homer nor a genre. And yet, his marginal featuring in the Thebaid and the Homeric poems shows that the link between the Theban and Trojan epic traditions may go deeper than hitherto thought and may have also encompassed such an emblematic hero. At this stage, it is necessary to treat a methodological problem directly con- nected to the issue of the interaction between Theban and Homeric epic. A central question associated with this problem concerns our ability to know whether Theban echoes in the Iliad and the Odyssey stem from Theban myth in general or from Theban epic in particular.¹ This is, of course, a much larger topic that super- sedes by far the scope of this introduction, the more so since it is not restricted to Theban and Homeric epic but encompasses the entire body of epic tradition in the archaic period. The reader will, I hope, have a much better idea of what Hom- erists think with respect to this issue after reading this special issue. Be that as it may, I will present some pertinent observations concerning this question without restricting myself to Theban resonances in Homeric epic: 1. “The way” the Iliad “refers to subsidiary episodes of the [Theban] saga suggests knowledge of an ample epic narrative, and there are certain lines that” it “may have adapted from” its “source”:² 2.505, 563–566 [572]; 4.8, 372–399, 389–390, 401, 406, 408; 5. 125 f., 800–808; 6.222 f.; 14.114–125; 20.224, 23.346, 679. The same observation can be made with respect to resonances of episodes or figures stem- ming from the Trojan section of the Epic Cycle. The number of such resonances, the systematic pre-occupation of Homeric epic with them, and their dispersion in the entire body of the Iliad and the Odyssey indicate that this material featured in oral epics known to ‘Homer’.³ 2. The mythological paradigm on Meleager (Il. 9.524–599) and the extended digression of Nestor (Il. 11.670–762) seem to have been adapted from pre-existing epics, a *Meleagris and a *Nestoris respectively.⁴ These stories can hardly have 1 The same question concerns Heracles. 2 West (2011) 29. 3 For the Iliad, see Kullmann (1960); for the Odyssey, see Schischwani (1994). 4 On the *Nestoris, see Bölte (1934) 319–347; on the *Meleagris, see Kakridis (1944) 1–53; some new arguments are given by West (1988) 160–161. Brought to you by | Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin Preussischer Kulturbesitz Authenticated Download Date | 11/7/14 11:19 PM Preface 241 been autoschediasmata invented wholesale for the occasion.⁵ In the case of the Meleager tale, the speaker (Phoenix) signals epic citation by the use of poeto- logical terms translated into epic idiom: οὕτω καὶ τῶν πρόσθεν ἐπευθόμεθα κλέα ἀνδρῶν (Il.