Myths on the Margins of Homer by Joan Pags;Nereida Villagra;

Author:Joan Pags;Nereida Villagra; [Villagra;, Joan Pags;Nereida]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783110751154
Publisher: De Gruyter
Published: 2022-05-23T06:45:30+00:00

3

Commenting on the MH: purpose and readership of the historiae

Any attempt to edit a work which is fragmentary and anonymous faces, as we have seen, methodological limits. Not all the editorial decisions can be based on strictly textual criteria. Therefore, in order to break the hermeneutic circle of reconstructing a lost text, it is important to analyse the historiae as fragments of a work, analysing their place in the mythographical and also the literary tradition, contrasting the variants, contextualizing the two main moments represented by the written sources, the Imperial and the Byzantine states, and trying to understand its purpose and, more importantly, its readership.46 Let us take the example of the historiae discussed above to briefly illustrate this.

We know Melampus was an important figure in Archaic epic: besides two references in Homer,47 a poem titled Melampodia is attributed to Hesiod. Pindar also mentioned Melampus and Pherecydes dedicated him ample attention: besides our text, another MH historia cites Pherecydes (fr. 114) to tell how Melampus cured Proetus’ daughters and married Iphianassa. Apollodorus the mythographer also tells of Melampus’ deeds and includes both episodes. The episode of Tyro’s cows shows a different redaction from our texts but, in the rough outlines, it is similar to the two versions in the scholia.48

In his commentary to Pherecydes, Robert Fowler compared the historia citing Pherecydes to Apollodorus’ version, Eustathius’ commentary to the Odyssey,49 and the scholia (Z, HQ) to Od. 11.290. He concluded that the contents which are common to all these versions must reflect Pherecydes’ version, which would have been a well-established story since Archaic epic. Fowler also points out that the main difference between the two groups of texts—Pherecydes (= MH) and Eustathius on one side, and Apollodorus and the historia in V schol. Od. 11.290a on the other side—is the description of the cause of Iphiclus’ inability to sire children. According to Pherecydes (= MH) and Eustathius, Iphiclus, as a child (νεογνός Pherecyd./MH; παίς Eust.) was pursued by his father Phylacus with a knife because he did something inappropriate (αὐτὸν ἄτοπόν τι ποιοῦντα Pherecyd./MH; κατὰ τινα ὀργήν Eust.). The trauma of being pursued caused his impotency.

According to Apollodorus, Phylacus was castrating animals. V schol. Od. 11.290a is not very clear on this point, but it says that Phylacus “applied” the knife to Iphiclus when he was cutting the animals (ἣν ἐπήνεγκε Φύλακος τῷ Ἰφίκλῳ ἐπὶ τῶν ἀγρῶν ἐκτέμνοντι τὰ τετράποδα) and that Melampus made sacrifices to the gods, who were angered by the castration of the animals (θύσας τε θεοῖς τοῖς μηνίουσιν ὑπὲρ τῆς τῶν τετραπόδων εὐνουχίας). Therefore, the scholion probably refers to the same version as Apollodorus, which links animal castration to Iphiclus’ impotency.

Robert Fowler, who proposes a psychoanalytical reading of the myth,50 sees the references to Iphiclus’ bad behaviour and to the castration of the cattle (or to his own castration) as creating an equivalence between the motifs. He considers that the difference in the description of these circumstances must have been the result of voluntary omission by the copyists, whose male sensitivity was affected by the gruesome description of a castration scene.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.