Redesigning Achilles: 'Recycling' the Epic Cycle in the 'Little Iliad' (Ovid, Metamorphoses 12.1-13.622)

316 Pages·2007·1.434 MB·English

by  Sophia Papaioannou

Sophia Papaioannou
Redesigning Achilles
≥
Untersuchungen zur
antiken Literatur und Geschichte
Herausgegeben von
Gustav-Adolf Lehmann, Heinz-Günther Nesselrath
und Otto Zwierlein
Band 89
Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York
Redesigning Achilles
‘Recycling’ the Epic Cycle
in the ‘Little Iliad’
−
(Ovid, Metamorphoses 12.1 13.622)
by
Sophia Papaioannou
Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York
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Preface

The book is the first critical study on the structure and the themes of Ovid’s
retelling of the Trojan Saga in Metamorphoses 12.1-13.622, and it explores the
motives and the objectives behind the selected narrative moments from the
Epic Cycle that found their way into the Ovidian version of the Trojan war.
Specifically, I claim that the key to the selection and arrangement of the par-
ticular narrative material in the compact recollection of the Trojan War in
Met. 12.1-13.622 is poetics: the Ovidian Trojan experience is meant to read as
a conflux of assorted focalizations on Achilles, wherein Achilles’ hero model
is reconstructed, and the process is reported through the eyes of other epic
characters, who represent different standpoints or ‘readings’ depending on
their particular involvement in the Trojan plot and their peculiar perspective
on the Trojan adventure. Thus, the characterization of Achilles proves a
work-in-progress, never definite and never complete, for it is never meant to
be so, because the composition principles of the epic genre are never final but
always evolving. Through the narrative outcome, an intelligent anti-epic narra-
tion, Ovid introduces the theoretical principles of innovation that mark his
transformed epic.
I assumed research for the present volume simultaneously with the composi-
tion of my earlier book, on Ovid’s reception of Vergil’s Aeneid in Met. 13.623-
14.582, but the actual writing of the manuscript began three summers ago.
The composition process lasted nearly two years, and in the course of my
labor I have accumulated many personal debts. I have greatly benefited from
the advice and incisive criticism of Philip Hardie, Helen Lovatt, Alden Smith,
Richard Tarrant and Chrysanthi Tsitsiou-Chelidoni. Ulrich Schmitzer com-
mented judiciously on an earlier version of chapter four, part of which was
originally published as an article in Gymnasium 2002. I presented segments of
my work, while still in progress, at various workshops and conferences, in-
cluding the 2006 Symposium Cumanum at Cuma in Italy and the 2006 Con-
ference on Orality and Literacy in Auckland, NZ, and I should thank the col-
leagues in the audiences for their constructive and prompt criticism. I am es-
pecially grateful to Heinz-Günther Nesselrath and Otto Zwierlein, the refe-
rees of the Untersuchungen der antiken Literatur und Geschichte Series, for reading
my arguments with their customary diligence, and offering an amplitude of
corrections, supplements and comments, that indubitably strengthened and
VI Preface
improved the flow of my arguments. I could hardly hope for more meticulous
editors. The University of Cyprus generously funded two long summer re-
search visits at Cambridge, MA (summer of 2005) and Austin, TX (summer
of 2006), and to advantage of their library resources and various other re-
search facilities. I am grateful to Richard Thomas and Michael Gagarin, the
chairs of the Classics Department, respectively, at Harvard University and the
University of Texas at Austin during my visits there, for facilitating my re-
search in every possible way; and no less, my most courteous host at Austin,
my former teacher at UT, Ingrid Edlund-Berry. At home, I was fortunate to
have at my disposal the great collection of the Blegen Library of the American
School of Classical Studies at Athens and the unfailing assistance of the staff
of the University of Cyprus Central Library. Christopher Schabel, Associate
Professor of Medieval History at the University of Cyprus, once again found
the time to proofread my manuscript despite the formidable load of his own
work and his various other pressing obligations.

The last, editorial phase of the book materialized in the early fall of 2007, at
the difficult time of transition that followed immediately after my move from
Cyprus to Athens to undertake a new position at the University of Athens,
Department of Philology. And it would be a serious omission on my part to
pass over without expressing my gratitude to my colleague at the University
of Athens, Eleni Karamalengou, Director of the Classical Philology Division
of the Department of Philology, who so generously allowed me to virtually
take possession of her office, computer and printer, during those last, crucial
weeks of laborious and intense editing and polishing up the manuscript for
publication, and compiling the indexes. Were it not for her discretion, as
much as for the courtesy of Ms Argyro Frantzi, the Classics Librarian, who
allowed me to print the final version of the CRC on her own printer, this
book would not have been finished within the deadline originally set for its
publication. Finally, on the part of the publisher it is my delight to extend my
profound appreciation to Sabine Vogt for her instant addressing all my inquir-
ies. Needless to note, responsibility for all arguments and opinions advanced,
as well as all errors remaining in the book, are wholly mine.

Athens, October 2007 S.P.
Table of Contents

Preface ........................................................................................................................ V

Table of Contents .................................................................................................. VII

Abbreviations .......................................................................................................... XI

Introduction ................................................................................................................ 1

Chapter One
Designing Epic Beginnings
1. Calchas in the ‘Iliad’ and the Iliad through Calchas (Met. 12.7-38) .............. 25
1.1 Funeral Beginnings: Aesacus’ Cenotaph ........................................... 25
1.2 Marvelous Beginnings: The Snake Prodigy ...................................... 31
1.3 Maiden Beginnings: The Sacrifice of Iphigeneia ............................. 37
2. The Fama of Epic Tradition .............................................................................. 44

Chapter Two
Epic Self-Affirmation and Epic Self-Consioucsness:
Introducing Achilles (Met. 12.64-145)
1 Protesilaus, the Proto-Achilles ........................................................................... 49
2. Cycnus, the alter Achilles .................................................................................... 50
2.1. Cycnum aut Hectora ................................................................................. 50
2.2 Do You Know Thy (Epic) Self? ......................................................... 59
2.3 The Anger of Achilles .......................................................................... 67
2.4 The Hero’s Gender ............................................................................... 72
3. Achilles’ ‘Victory’ ................................................................................................. 79
4. The Swan Poetics ................................................................................................ 83

Chapter Three
Epic Memory and Epic (De)Composition: Deconstructing Achilles
1. Introduction ......................................................................................................... 87
2. Epic Singing and Epic Tales .............................................................................. 88
3. Epic Poetics: The Master of Epic Memory .................................................... 93
4. Epic Labor: Fighting the Freaks ....................................................................... 98
4.1 The Homeric Subtext ........................................................................... 98
VIII
4.2 Epic Gender and Epic Performance ............................................... 102
4.3 The Architecture of the Epic Spectacle .......................................... 108
5. The Spectacular Politics of Immortality ........................................................ 116

Chapter Four
Facets of Elimination: Killing Achilles
1. Introduction ....................................................................................................... 125
2. Challenging Nestor: Tlepolemus Protesting ................................................. 126
3. The Fate of Periclymenus ................................................................................ 135
4. The Death of Achilles ....................................................................................... 138

Chapter Five
The ‘Judgment of the Arms’: Re-Constructing Achilles
1. Introduction ....................................................................................................... 153
2. The Poetics of Argument ................................................................................. 154
3. The Price of the Prize ....................................................................................... 155
4. ‘Writing Up’ the Contest .................................................................................. 159
5. Staging the Mênis, the Arms and the Men ..................................................... 164
6. Scripting the Mêtis and the Arms as the Man ................................................ 169
7. The Iliad vs. the ‘little Iliad’ .............................................................................. 171
8. Polemic En-listing ............................................................................................. 187
9. Daedalean Poetics ............................................................................................. 197
10. The Logic(al) Fashioning of the Epic Hero ................................................ 200
11. Epigrams, Epitaphs, and Epigraphs: Sealing the Closure ........................ 202

Chapter Six
Fe/Male Sacrifice: Performing the Poetics of Genre- and Gender-Crossing in
the ‘Fall of Troy’ (Met. 13.399-575)
1. Introduction ....................................................................................................... 207
2. The Falls of Troy ............................................................................................... 209
2.1 The Fall of Troy and the Iliad ........................................................... 209
2.2 The ‘Fall’ of Polydorus ...................................................................... 214
3. The ‘Fall of Troy’ and Hecuba ........................................................................ 222
4. The Anger of Hecuba ....................................................................................... 225
5. Staging Polyxena ................................................................................................ 228
6. Fe/Male Virtus and Sacrifice ........................................................................... 236
7. The Poetics of Lamentation ............................................................................ 244

Chapter Seven
Memnon’s Fate and Fame: Impersonating Achilles
1. Introduction ....................................................................................................... 253
2. Memnon and/as Achilles ................................................................................. 254
IX
3. The Power of Aurora ........................................................................................ 257
4. Memnon’s ‘Hectorean’ Side ............................................................................. 259
5. Avian Allusion and Illusion ............................................................................. 262
5.1 Allusion: The Birds of Meleager ....................................................... 262
5.2 Illusory Sêmata ..................................................................................... 273
5.3 Sema-ntic Nomina ................................................................................. 279

Bibliography ............................................................................................................ 285

Indexes ..................................................................................................................... 293