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A Note on Iliad 9.524–99: The Story of Meleager*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

S. C. R. Swain
S. C. R. Swain
Affiliation:
Wolfson College, Oxford
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Extract

The story of Meleager as it is told in Greek literature clearly reflects two discrete versions, which may be termed the epic and the non-epic. The latter, as retold by Apollodorus(Bibl. 1.8.1–3), shows the folktale elements of love and the life-token (the brand which must not be rekindled). The other version, as told by Homer(Iliad 9.524-99) followed by Apollodorus (1.8.3), is an epic story where Meleager is the great hero whose μῆνις keeps him from fighting for his native Calydon against the neighbouring Curetes of Pleuron.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 38 , Issue 2 , December 1988 , pp. 271 - 276
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1988

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References

1 Cf. Thompson, S., Motif-Index of Folk Literature2 (Copenhagen, 1956)Google Scholar, E765.1.2; Kakridis, J., Homeric Researches (Lund, 1949), pp. 127–48Google Scholar (on modern survivals in Greece and elsewhere).

2 For a basic bibliography of the question, see Bannert, H., WS 15 (1981), 69 n. 1Google Scholar.

3 For my approach, cf. esp. Rosner, J., Phoenix 30 (1976), 314–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 This is convincingly shown by Kakridis, op. cit. (n. 1), pp. 14ff.

5 The other cycles are the Theban cycle and the Troy cycle; see West, M. L., The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women. Its Nature, Structure, and Origins (Oxford, 1985), p. 137Google Scholar. For the Deucalionids, see pp. 138ff.

6 West, op. cit. (n. 5), p. 139.

7 Of the summaries of the Trojan Cycle from Proclus the Cypria and perhaps the Telegony appear to have contained enough in the way of mystery/magic together with love and travel (Castor and Polydeuces, Iphigeneia, Helen and Paris, Achilles and Deidameia; Telegonus' unknowing murder of Odysseus, Telegonus and Penelope, Telemachus and Circe) to set them apart from Homeric epic; but the other poems (Aethiopis, Little Iliad, Iliou Persis, Nostoi) appear quite close to Homer in their concern with life and death, and the monstrous or magical (Memnon, Laocoon) are perhaps exceptions. On Homer's own tendency to exclude monstrous or magical material (along with other‘unheroic’ elements), see Griffin, J., JHS 97 (1977), 39–48, esp. 45, idCrossRefGoogle Scholar.Homer on Life and Death (Oxford, 1980), pp. 165–7Google Scholar; cf. further on differences between Homer and theCycle, Munro, D. B., Homer's Odyssey. Books XIII–XXIV (Oxford, 1901), pp. 340–84Google Scholar; Severyns, A., Le cycle épique dans I'école d'Aristarque (Liege, 1928), pp. 141–9Google Scholar.

8 West, op. cit. (n. 5), pp. 164ff., suggests before 776 B.C. for the Elean–Aetolian genealogies. See also Petzold, K.-E., Historia 25 (1976)Google Scholar, 151 on Meleager's probable 8th century integration into the heroic network; beware his seductive speculation (162f.) on the epithets applied to Calydon in the Iliad – ἐραννή in the Meleager story rather than αἰπεινή and πετρήεσσα in other books reflects the pre-Homeric power and prosperity of the city and therefore Homer is incorporating earlier material: in fact all three epithets are consistent with what is known of Mycenaean Calydon (Simpson, R. Hope and Lazenby, J., The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad [Oxford, 1970], p. 109)Google Scholar.

9 See Parker, R. in Interpretations of Greek Mythology, ed. Bremmer, J. (London, 1987), pp. 187–90, 193ff.Google Scholar; West, op. cit. (n. 5), pp. 132–3 on political affiliations of Erechtheus and Pandion invented in the sixth century (cf. p. 164, ‘the Attic section [of the Eoiai] as a whole is not necessarily any more ancient’).

10 Earlier scholars, trying to identify the sources of the Eoiai, saw what is now fr. 25.13 M–W (μαρνάμενος Κουρῆσι περὶ Πλευρῶνι μακεδνῆι) as a reworking of Homer by reading μαρνάμενος Κουρῆσι ϒυναικὶ δὲ πείθετο κεδνῆι (A. Hunt, P.Oxy. 2075 fr. 1 col. i [1927]; Schwartz, J., Pseudo-Hesiodeia [Leiden, 1960], pp. 321, 404)Google Scholar; the true reading was assured by E. Lobel, P.Oxy. 2481 fr. 5 (b) col. ii (1962).

11 On the duals, see Schadewaldt, W., Iliasstudien (Leipzig, 1938), p. 136Google Scholar; Lohmann, D., Die Komposition der Reden in der I lias (Berlin, 1970), pp. 229–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thornton, A., Köhnken, A., Glotta 56 (1978), 1–4, 5–14 respectivelyGoogle Scholar.

12 On the autobiography and allegory, see Lohmann, D., op. cit. (n. 11), pp. 245–53, 267Google Scholar; Rosner, , art. cit. (n. 3), 315–22Google Scholar; Bannert, , art. cit. (n. 2), 69–82Google Scholar; Heubeck, A., Kleine Schriften zur griechischen Sprache und Literatur (Erlangen, 1984), pp. 134f.Google Scholar; Held, G., CQ 37 (1987), 247–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The parallels between Phoenix's own life, Achilles, and Meleager, are especially strong (a simple example [cf. Lohmann, p. 259] is the unifying function of the routine ἱππηλάτα used of Phoenix at 432, of Meleager's father Oeneus at 581, and of Peleus by Phoenix in loco parentis [438ff.] at 438). On links with Iliad 11, 16, 23, see Lohmann, , esp. pp. 261–71Google Scholar; Bannert, 91–3.

13 Willcock, M., CQ 14 (1964), 149–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar, finds a reference to Pleuron ‘without any warrant’; cf. similarly Rosner, , art. cit. (n. 3), 323Google Scholar. For the correct interpretation, see Lohmann, , op. cit. (n.11), pp. 254, 260, 262–3Google Scholar.

14 Griffin, , op. cit. (n. 7, 1980), pp. 95–6Google Scholar.

15 On these two paradigms, see Willcock, , art. cit. (n. 13), 141–2, 144–5Google Scholar.

16 In the Iliad itself we hear of the Χόλος of Paris (6.326ff.), and ‘the continual μῆνις’ of Aeneas (13.460).

17 Kakridis, op. cit. (n. 1), p. 24: ‘the wife, in whom Phoenix has no reason to be interested’ etc.

18 Cf. Petzold, , art. cit. (n. 8), 157Google Scholar.

19 Lohmann, , op. cit. (n. 11), pp. 255–60Google Scholar.

20 Howald, E., RhM 73 (1924), 411Google Scholar. In support of the idea: Schadewaldt, , op. cit. (n. 11), p. 140Google Scholar; Lohmann, , op. cit. (n. 11), p. 260Google Scholar; Bannert, , art. cit. (n. 2), 82Google Scholar; opposed: Kraus, W., WS 63 (1948), 17Google Scholar; Kakridis, , op. cit. (n. 1), pp. 29–30Google Scholar; Willcock, , art. cit. (n. 13), 150 n. 4Google Scholar (Howald alone thought that Patroclus was based on Cleopatra rather than vice versa). For the love of Achilles and Patroclus, see e.g. Aeschines, , in Timarchum 133, 142Google Scholar (Dover, K., Greek Homosexuality [London, 1978], p. 197Google Scholar, denies unreasonably, I think, an erotic side to their relationship). On the stress given to Cleopatra herself by her family history, see Bannert, , art. cit. (n. 2), 83–7Google Scholar.

21 Willcock, , art. cit. (n. 13), 153Google Scholar; ‘clear signs of being a paradeigma invented to fit the Iliad story’.

22 As described by Kirk, G. S., The Songs of Homer (Cambridge, 1962), pp. 164–9Google Scholar.

23 Willcock, , art. cit. (n. 13), 149Google Scholar.

24 The close association of Atalanta with Meleager was doubtless established firmly by Euripides' lost Meleager, which spanned the time from the preparations for the hunt to Meleager's death; see Webster, T., The Tragedies of Euripides (London, 1967), pp. 233–6Google Scholar. In art, interest in Atalanta, Meleager, and the boar's hide is not shown until the later fourth century B.C.(Boardman, J., in LIMC II. 1, 942 no. 27ff.)Google Scholar. However, her earliest appearances from ca. 580 B.C. are in a series of black-figure vases portraying the hunt (id., 940 no. Iff., 948f.; she is present with Meleager in nos. 2 and 11), and it is not unreasonable to suggest that her part in the origin of the war was known in Homer's time.

25 Although Pausanias (10.31.3) distinguishes between the Erinys in Homer and Apollo in the Eoiai and theMinyas as the cause of Meleager's death, in Homer himself the rôle of the Erinys is unclear and Homer does not contradict the version in which Apollo brings about the hero's death.

26 Cf. Willcock, , art. cit. (n. 13), 153Google Scholar(‘The mother's curse may have existed in a previous epic version, but we have no evidence’). In the situation evisaged by Homer Meleager has so far killed only one of Althaea's brothers before the curse; Apollodorus says he had killed τινας before and killed τοὺς λοιπούς when he returned to action (1.8.3).

27 For the parallelism, see Heubeck, , op. cit. (n. 12), p. 135Google Scholar; Bannert, , art. cit. (n. 2), 78fGoogle Scholar.

28 Un-Homeric–cf. Page, D. L., History and the Homeric Iliad (Berkeley, 1959), pp. 297, 310ff.Google Scholar; Kirk, , op. cit. (n. 22), pp. 217fGoogle Scholar.