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Imaging the Cosmos: Astronomical Ekphraseis in Euripides1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2014

Robert Hannah
Robert Hannah*
Affiliation:
University of Otago
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Extract

Ekphraseis of works of art exist at several levels. There is the physical, observable reality of an object or objects, or the potential for such. That (potential) reality may then be depicted within a work of art. A literary artist imaginatively (re-)presents that depiction, in the ekphrasis itself, and may further imbue the resultant description with a symbolic value for the story in which it is set. Not all of these layers need exist, nor need the correspondence between them be precise or even real. An ekphrasis, for example, may describe a completely fictitious object, which itself, however, reflects a possible actuality in the physical world of the senses. Or the question of symbolic value may appear irrelevant, if the purpose of the ekphrasis is instead to provide relief from the temporal drive of the narrative.

This paper seeks to elucidate the two surviving ekphraseis with astronomical content from Euripides, one from his Elektra describing a shield of Akhilleus, and the other from his Ion describing a ceiling tapestry. I take the view that if we can discern and then understand a potential reality described in an ekphrasis, then it is worth asking whether this reality helps us to understand better the literary image and hence its possible symbolism too. The need to answer such a question is the greater with regard to texts involving astronomical material, as this tends to lie outside modern readers' experience or knowledge, but lay well within the day-to-day experience of people in antiquity.

Type
Research Article
Information
Ramus , Volume 31 , supplement 1-2: The Verbal and the Visual: Cultures of Ekphrasis in Antiquity , 2002 , pp. 19 - 32
Copyright
Copyright © Aureal Publications 2002

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Footnotes

1.

This paper has had a long gestation. Some of its ideas were first trialled at the ‘Greek Drama II’ conference held at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, in 1992, and I benefited both there and over the intervening years from discussions with Kevin Lee and Douglas Kidd, to whose memories it is now dedicated. I am grateful to the audience at the First Passmore Edwards Symposium on Ekphrasis for their comments on the version delivered there, and to my wife Pat for her suggestions for, and corrections of, the final version.

References

2. Wenskus (1990), 75 and 79; see 75–82 for a discussion of these and other Euripidean astronomical references.

3. For a fuller exposition of contemporary astronomy, see Bowen and Goldstein (1988).

4. See Gregory (2000), 121. According to Simplicius, In Cael. 488.18-24, it was Plato also who set the task, which was to engage astronomers to the time of Copernicus, of ‘saving the phenomena’: (‘By what assumed uniform and ordered motions can the phenomena in relation to the motions of the planets be saved?’)—a task which stems from the apparent contradictions.

5. Phillips (1980); Edwards (1991), 211f.; Hannah (1994).

6. Edwards (1991), 208.

7. Hannah (1993a).

8. Edwards (1991), 211.

9. Amedick (1999).

10. Cast (1981).

11. On this aspect of the psychology of art, see Gombrich (1977).

12. Adopting Diggle’s emendations: Diggle (1986), 77; compare Kovacs (1998), 200.

13. Taplin(1980), 2.

14. Harrison (2001), 78–80; I am grateful to Stephen Harrison for this reference.

15. On parapegmata, see Rehm (1949); Lehoux (2000); Hannah (2001), 62–79. On Meton and Euktemon, see Bowen and Goldstein (1988); Hannah (2002).

16. Geminos begins the calendar with the summer solstice; Gregorian dates are added in square brackets to provide correspondence to modern seasonal periods.

17. Aujac (1975), 101, 102, 107.

18. Hannah (1993a); West (1978), 314 ad 619ff.

19. Cf. Kidd (1997), 248; Rose and March (1996).

20. Best known from antiquity perhaps from the representations on the celestial globe borne by the Atlas Farnese: Gundel (1992), 204 no. 8, 207 and endpapers.

21. Kidd (1997), 271; Allen (1963), 332.

22. Hipparkhos (1.6.12) disagrees as a point of fact, but this is beside the point if we are interested in popular perceptions.

23. Kidd (1997), 244.

24. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (2000), 142; Wenskus (1990), 75f.

25. E.g. Mastronarde (1975), 169 (‘All in heaven is in order, untouched by the rebellious element that thrives on Earth’); Goff (1988), 43 (‘an ordered cosmology’).

26. Zeitlin (1989), 175, believes ‘the Pleiad…makes her transit at the midpoint of her journey through the skies’, i.e. it is caught at the point and moment of culmination. On this interpretation of (stationary?) centrality are made to rest further readings of the text. This misses the import of the word at 1152, with its sense of a path through the middle of the sky, as opposed to the middle, or midpoint, of the sky, as the point of culmination on the transit is referred to in Greek astronomical vocabulary. This path is broadly equivalent to the celestial equator, which lies midway between the northern and southern tropics, as Aratos later describes both it and the constellation Aries which lies on it (Phain. 231f., 511; Kidd [1997], 65). While the vocabulary of culmination on the transit also emphasises ‘middleness’, it is of the whole sky, not of a path or constellation within it: for example, the siting of Orion at the mid-point of its circuit above the horizon occurs in Hesiod, when it is coupled with Sirius (W&D 609f.); and the sun at culmination is described as in Sophokles, Ant. 415f. Hipparkhos uses the verb to refer to culmination. The placement of the Pleiades at culmination would be very unusual, if not unique, in extant literature.

27. Cf. scholia on Il. 18.488: Erbse (1975), 532; Boll and Gundel (1937), 987; Leaf and Bayfield (1901), 455.

28. The characterisation of the Hyades as the warning to sailors would suit the Hyades’ setting either at dawn in November or in the evening in April, periods outside the normal sailing season, when they foreshadowed the onset of rainy weather, as their name was taken to suggest, rather than their rising in May, within the sailing season and bearing no forecast of bad weather.

29. Hannah (1993b).

30. Pace Goff (1988), 43.

31. As Goff (1988), 43, does recognise; Zeitlin’s perception of ‘change and flux’ in the ceiling tapestry is perhaps more accurate (Zeitlin [1989], 174).

32. Goff (1988), 43 and 47.

33. Paley (1858), 79, opted for Salamis, while Owen (1939), 147, chose Lade.

34. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (2000), 143, thought they were Greek centaurs, whereas Owen (1939), 147, went for oriental hybrids.

35. Zeitlin (1994), 147–51.

36. Zeitlin (1989), 167.

37. Syracuse 17427: Beazley (1963), 1184, 4; CVA (Syracuse 1), pl. 10.

38. On this phenomenon in the visual and dramatic arts, see Hannah (1989).

39. LIMC v. 1, 905–17, s.v. Astra, A. Nyx, B. Selene (Karusu); LIMC v. 1, 1005–34, Helios (Yalouris, Visser-Choitz). Although not strictly cyclic, the east pediment on the Parthenon is similarly framed by a rising Helios at one end and a setting Selene at the other: Brommer (1979), 52–58 (usefully using Carrey’s 1674 drawing).

40. Laird (1993) 19; see Smith (2000) for another example in the visual arts.

41. As distinct from the much earlier Egyptian practice of decorating tomb and coffin ceilings with images of the heavens: see, e.g., Schulz and Seidel (1998), 223–26.

42. Friedländer (1969).

43. Quet (1981).

44. Lehmann (1945).