View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by University of Minnesota Digital Conservancy Allusions of Grandeur: Gigantomachy, Callimachean Poetics, and Literary Filiation A Dissertation SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Christine E. Lechelt IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Advisors: Nita Krevans and Christopher Nappa January 2014 © Christine E. Lechelt 2014 Acknowledgments This dissertation owes much to many people. First, I would like to thank my family for their enormous and unfailing support and encouragement. They have been the Hercules of many seemingly giant battles. I would especially like to thank my parents, David and Mary Lechelt; there simply are not enough words to express my depp and abiding love and gratitude for all that they are and all that they do for me. Katie Lechelt has been my rock; she brought a great deal of patience and a sense of humor to this process, particularly in its late stages. I have been blessed with four grandparents who let me feel their love and pride in the most wonderful and inspiring of ways. I would be remiss if I did not also thank the one who has literally been at my side for nearly every word of this dissertation, my beloved dog Jin Jin. It has been an honor and a privilege to study in the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Studies at the University of Minnesota. I would like to thank the University for the generous fellowships I have received, especially the Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship. The department has been incredibly supportive of me in matters both practical and personal. I thank the department staff, especially Barb Lehnhoff and Kate Gallagher, for all the magic they work. I am fortunate to have been part of a group of graduate students whose intellects I admire and have benefitted from greatly, and whose friendships have sustained me. I am deeply grateful to all of them; I especially wish to single out Christy Marquis, Heather Woods, Elizabeth Warner, and Rachael Cullick. i The faculty of CNES have taught me so much and been unbelievably supportive. I especially wish to thank my committee members Philip Sellew and George Sheets. Stephen Smith deserves special mention for all the time and effort he has put into my professional and personal development. His support has meant the world to me, and I simply could not have done it without him. Finally, every word of this dissertation, every contribution I might hope to make, everything I have become and still hope to be as a scholar, has been influenced and inspired by my advisors, Nita Krevans and Christopher Nappa. My admiration and gratitude for them is without measure. ii Table of Contents Introduction . 1 Chapter 1: Fashioning Literary History: Parody Theory and Ancient Texts . 11 Chapter 2: There Were Giants Then: Hesiod’s Theogony . .31 I. The Early History of the Giants . 32 II. The Titanomachy . .36 III. The Seeds of Epic Parody . 44 IV. Typhoeus the Interloper . .46 Chapter 3: Purest Springs of Fire: Giants and Callimachean Poetics in Pythian 1 and 8 . .52 Chapter 4: Like Bees to Deo: Alexandrian Callimachus and the Callimachean Pharoah . 77 I. The Telchines in Pindar and Callimachus . 78 II. The Giants in Callimachus . 86 III. Ptolemaic Kingship and the Gigantomachy . 92 Chapter 5: Propertian Irony and the Limits of Callimacheanism . 104 I. Callimachus Romanus . 108 II. Gigantomachy and the Propertian Recusatio . 132 III. Passing Through the Gigantea ora: Poem 1.20 . .143 iii Chapter 6: Refashioning Literary History: Ovid and the Poetics of Gigantomachy . 150 I. Amores 2.1 and the Poetics of Daring . .151 II. The Metamorphoses and the Poetics of Imitation . 172 III. Tristia 2 and the Poetics of Power . 192 Epilogue: Ovid in Sicily . 207 Conclusion . .211 Bibliography . 215 iv Introduction Perhaps the most famous representation of Gigantomachy in art or literature is the Altar of Zeus at Pergamum. A massive, highly emotionally charged frieze running around the outside of the enclosure to the Altar depicts the gods and giants in their cosmic struggle. Unfortunately, the precise dating, purpose of the Altar, and interpretation of the sculptural program of this Hellenistic monument are all murky and vexed questions. We can say with certainty that the Altar was constructed sometime in the first half of the Second Century BCE.1 The Altar may have celebrated a victory over the Gauls, who are frequently depicted as Giants in Hellenistic and Italian art, but there is no way to know this for certain.2 It is also possible that it was simply a celebration of the prosperity and good fortune of the city of Pergamum. It has been suggested that it represents Stoic cosmological allegory, influenced by a lost work of Cleanthes, On the Giants (Περὶ γιγάντων),3 or that it may be based on a lost epic poem.4 Whatever the inspiration for this monument was, it is clear that, as Pollitt writes, “behind its tumultuous, writhing, theatrical surface, the frieze is a very learned, perhaps at times even academically obscure, monument.”5 There does clearly seem to be a direct connection between the Pergamene Altar and the Parthenon. We know that the Parthenon contained a depiction of Gigantomachy 1 The pottery found around the Altar provides a terminus post quem of 185-170, while the interior capitals are dated to about 160. The first securely dated dedication on its terrace was set up in 149/8, so the Altar must have been in use by then: Stewart (2000) 39. 2 Stewart (2000) 34. On the depictions of the Gauls as Giants in Hellenistic literature and art, see Barbantani (2002-3) and Vian (1952b) 10. 3 See Zanker (2004) 97, Pollitt (1986) 105-9 and Onians (1979) 88 with further references. 4 Stewart (2000) 42. 5 Pollitt (1986) 101. 1 on the eastern metopes, and that the statue of Athena had this myth on her shield.6 Furthermore, the Gigantomachy was the subject of the peplos woven for Athena during the Panathenaic festival.7 Whereas Giants had previously been depicted as fully humanoid hoplites, it seems that under the influence of the depiction on Athena’s shield, Giants start to be shown at this time wearing animal skins and heaving boulders.8 In other words, they have become barbarians, symbols of the chaos that the Athenians had recently subdued in their victory over Persia. The Pergamene Altar appears to allude to the Parthenon, styling Pergamum as the new Athens;9 as Onians remarks, “ . .the Pergamene Gigantomachy is truly a reincarnation of the art of Classical Athens to match the Attic wisdom of the Pergamene library and the Attic heroism of the Pergamene armies.”10 The Altar is certainly not a copy of the Parthenon, however; the Giants have become more extreme in their scale and monstrous appearance. This may be due in part to the influence of traditional Italian depictions of Giants.11 I suggest that it is also a capping device, a way of asserting that Pergamum has in fact surpassed the Athenians. The easiest and most traditional way to explain the Gigantomachy in general is as a political metaphor.12 In the case of the Pergamene Altar, such an interpretation is obviously available. There is something else at work here, however; in fact, the Altar is the perfect distillation of the entire aesthetic and set of artistic concerns that define the Hellenistic period. Perched in the colonnade directly above the Gigantomachy were 6 Pliny 35.54, 36.18. 7 Carpenter (1991) 75. 8 Carpenter (1991) 75. 9 Onians (1979) 81-7. 10 Onians (1979) 87. 11 See de Grummond (2000) 259-61 for an overview of the development of images of Giants in Italy. 12 The classic treatment of Gigantomachy as a political metaphor, in this case in Vergil’s Aeneid, is Hardie (1986). 2 statues of the Muses, perhaps joined by members of the Attalid imperial family.13 The presence of the Muses suggests that the Gigantomachy beneath them is a commentary on art. This is further supported by the contrasting nature of the second frieze inside the monument, the Telephus frieze. Here we find a series of panels depicting the obscure myth of Telephus, a son of Herakles who was heralded as the mythological founder of Pergamum and ancestor of the Attalid dynasty. This suggests that the entire monument, not just the Telephus frieze, is an attempt to link the city of Pergamum with the mythical past of Greece.14 The Telephus frieze has been shown to exhibit many of the qualities we associate with Hellenistic literature in the Callimachean style.15 It tells an obscure myth in a series of snapshots of key moments, leaving the viewer to fill in the details.16 It is fashioned on a different, smaller scale than the Gigantomachy frieze, and places great emphasis on details of landscape and minor characters. Furthermore, the figures are depicted in a more restrained style, with more controlled expressions and movements.17 As Onians writes, “At no stage should it be thought that the opposition between large and small, and their related stylistic traits, meant that the one excluded the other.”18 In this dissertation, I will argue that the form of aesthetics represented by the Pergamene Altar – what in the realm of literature has come to be called Callimacheanism – large and small, Gigantomachy and Telephus relief, exist in a relationship of complexity rather than competition. In literature, “large” means epic and “small” – for Callimacheanism as it 13 Stewart (2000) 41-2.