Mythical Narratives in Stesichorus

Greek Heroes on the Move

Sofia Carvalho

• Editore: De Gruyter
• Anno: 2021
• ISBN:
  9783110715880
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Literatura
• Categoria: Crítica literaria antigua y clásica

The mythical narratives of Stesichorus provide the earliest surviving examples of poetic production in the Greek West. This book illustrates how Stesichorus reshaped Greek epic to create a remarkably innovative type of lyric poetry – a literature that was particularly expressive in its handling of motifs associated with travel, such as the voyages of heroes, their returns home, and their escapes. This comprehensive survey of Stesichorus' treatment of myth discusses his engagement with Homer and Hesiod, his powerful and often moving means of characterisation, his subtle treatment of narrative, and his elaboration of emotional episodes unprecedented in archaic Greek lyric poetry.
All Greek is translated, making the book accessible to anyone with an interest in one of the great poets of archaic Greece, whose work had such an impact on the later genre of tragedy.

1 Adventure

This chapter primarily focuses on one of the travelling heroes par excellence, the challenger of boundaries: Heracles, a hero to whom Stesichorus devoted no fewer than three poems: Cycnus, Geryoneis, and Cerberus.¹ These three titles alone suggest three levels of journey: one close to home, in Thessaly; another in far off western lands, in Cadiz; and, finally, one to the Underworld.

Unfortunately, from the Cerberus only one word is preserved: ἀρύβαλλοϲ (fr. 165 F.), which is likely to refer to the recipient containing the meat to lure or poison the infernal dog Cerberus.² Not much can be said of Stesichorus’ treatment of the subject apart from noting his interest in a journey to the Underworld, which, given the abundance of travelling themes in Stesichorus’ oeuvre, is not surprising but nevertheless a lamentable loss. How would the poet have treated the journey itself? How did he describe the landscape of the Underworld?

The remaining fragments and quotations from Heracles’ other journeys offer material for us to appreciate Stesichorus’ treatment of the hero’s encounters with monsters and the poet’s approach to such episodes in comparison to other poems involving the encounter with monsters and beasts, namely the Calydonian Boar hunt, that displays a different set of motifs: the scene is set in the Greece mainland, the hero Meleager gathers an army to defeat the creature, whereas Heracles, even when facing monsters in Greek mainland, acts alone.

A particularly relevant aspect of Stesichorus’ versions of Heracles’ encounters with Geryon and Cycnus is the emphasis on the monsters’ ethos, as well as on the divine agency behind Heracles’ success. I will focus on the better-preserved poem, the Geryoneis, since it contains a fundamental aspect of the journey motif, the journey westwards, into the streams of the Ocean. Throughout the chapter, I will establish and discuss parallels with the Cycnus and the Boarhunters. These two poems differ from the Geryoneis in the use of the travelling motif, since the Geryoneis is set in far-off western lands, whereas the other two poems imply a rather shorter terrestrial journey. However, the Geryoneis provides other very relevant aspects of Stesichorus’ interaction with myth, namely in the focus that the poet casts on otherwise little explored characters, such as Callirhoe.

1.1 The Geryoneis

The publication of the Geryoneis papyrus in 1967 shed new light on several aspects of Stesichorus’ poems. I have mentioned above the importance of the discovery for the understanding of their extension. In the present chapter, the focus is rather on Stesichorus’ characterization of his poem’s personae and on its apparent innovations, particularly in terms of mythical geography.³

Stesichorus’ Geryoneis is the longest and more complete treatment of the Geryon’s story known to us from antiquity. Before his detailed and expanded account, other versions provided the general outline of the story. The earliest record of Heracles’ tenth Labour appears in Hesiod’s Theogony (287–294):

Χρυϲάωρ δ’ ἔτεκε τρικέφαλον Γηρυονῆα

μιχθεὶϲ Καλλιρόηι κούρηι κλυτοῦ Ὠκεανοῖο·

τὸν μὲν ἄρ’ ἐξενάριξε βίη Ἡρακληείη

βουϲὶ παρ’ εἰλιπόδεϲϲι περιρρύτωι εἰν Ἐρυθείηι

ἤματι τῶι, ὅτε περ βοῦϲ ἤλαϲεν εὐρυμετώπουϲ

Τίρυνθ’ εἰϲ ἱερὴν, διαβὰϲ πόρον ’Ωκεανοῖο,

Ὄρθον τε κτείναϲ καὶ βουκόλον Εὐρυτίωνα

ϲταθμῶι ἐν ἠερόεντι πέρην κλυτοῦ Ὠκεανοῖο.

Chrysaor then lay with Kallirhoe, daughter of glorious Okeanos,

and sired the three-headed Geryones

whom the might Herakles slew

beside his shambling oxen at sea-girt Erytheia

on the very day he crossed Ocean’s stream

and drove the broad-browed cattle to holy Tiryns.

There he also slew Orthos and the oxherd Eurytion

Out at the misty place, beyond glorious Ocean.⁴

According to the author of the Theogony, Geryon dwells in an island called Erytheia, located beyond the Ocean. No further detail related to its geographical location is given. The characterization of the island suggests a mysterious atmosphere, as the poet describes Erytheia as περιρρύτωι εἰν Ἐρυθείηι (290) and ἐν ἠερόεντι πέρην κλυτοῦ Ὠκεανοῖο (294), emphasising the isolation and remoteness of the island. This idea of isolation is recovered in another passage dedicated to Geryon (Th. 980–983) where the poet displays the same imagery: εἰλιπόδων ἀμφιρρύτωι εἰν Ἐρυθείηι (983).

However, here the characterization of Geryon is different from the previous one. In lines 287–294, Hesiod mentions Geryon in the context of Pontus’ genealogy, a family of dreadful creatures that inhabit the furthest regions of the world. The approach to Geryon in lines 979–983 is rather different. Mentioned here among the list of the offspring resulting from unions of goddesses and mortal men, he is referred to as the most powerful of all mortals (βροτῶν κάρτιϲτον ἁπάντων, line 981). As noted by De Sanctis, the double perspective cast upon Geryon in the Theogony opens the way to the sympathetic and more humanized treatment of the character in later accounts.⁵ In this sense, therefore, Stesichorus’ treatment of Geryon is but an extension of the portrait hinted at by Hesiod, which will, nevertheless, surpass in many levels the version of his predecessor, as we shall see.

One of the aspects that Stesichorus maintains is the difficulty of the journey to Erytheia, something that requires divine collaboration; an aspect present in an earlier account of the myth offered by Pisander of Rhodes. The Suda places Pisander’s activity in the 33th Olympiad (648–645), i.e. mid-seventh century, thus two generations before Stesichorus.⁶ According to the sam...