Studies in Colluthus' "Abduction of Helen"

333 Pages·2015·1.7 MB·English

by  Cosetta Cadau

Studies in Colluthus’ Abduction of Helen
Mnemosyne
Supplements
late antique literature
Editors
David Bright (Emory)
Scott McGill (Rice)
Joseph Pucci (Brown)
Editorial Board
Laura Miguélez-Cavero (Oxford)
Stratis Papaioannou (Brown)
Aglae Pizzone (Geneva)
Karla Pollmann (Kent)
VOLUME 380
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/mns-lal
Studies in Colluthus’
Abduction of Helen
By
Cosetta Cadau
LEIDEN | BOSTON
Cover illustration: Ivory pyxis dating from the late fifth to the early sixth century AD. © The Walters Arts
Museum, Baltimore.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cadau, Cosetta, author.
 Studies in Colluthus’ Abduction of Helen / By Cosetta Cadau.
  pages cm. — (Mnemosyne supplements: Late Antique Literature ; 380)
 Includes bibliographical references and index.
 Summary: This first monograph in English on Colluthus situates this late antique author within his
cultural context and offers a new appraisal of his hexameter poem The Abduction of Helen, the end-point
of the pagan Greek epic tradition, which was composed in the Christianised Egyptian Thebaid. The book
evaluates the poem’s connections with long-established and contemporary literary and artistic genres
and with Neoplatonic philosophy, and analyzes the poet’s re-negotiation of traditional material to suit the
expectations of a late fifth-century AD audience. It explores Colluthus’ interpretation of the contemporary
fascination with visuality, identifies new connections between Colluthus and Claudian, and shows how the
author’s engagement with the poetry of Nonnus goes much further than previously shown—Provided by
publisher.
 ISBN 978-90-04-27950-6 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-90-04-28959-8 (e-book) 1. Colluthus, of
Lycopolis. Rape of Helen. 2. Colluthus, of Lycopolis—Criticism and interpretation. I. Title.
 PA3948.C7S79 2015
 883’.01—dc23
2015005126
This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 charactersc covering
Latin, IPA, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities.
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issn 0169-8958
isbn 978-90-04-27950-6 (hardback)
isbn 978-90-04-28959-8 (e-book)
Copyright 2015 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
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Contents
Preface vii
Conventions and Abbreviations viii
Introduction 1
1 Colluthus in His Context 5
1 Colluthus’ Life 5
2 Literary Culture at the Time of Anastasius 8
3 Colluthus and the Epyllion as a Genre 21
2 Colluthus and His Models 36
1 A Bucolic Opening 37
1.1 A Poetic Manifesto 42
1.2 The Introduction of Paris 47
2 An Epic Eris 82
2.1 The Gadfly 83
2.2 Eris’ Plan of Destruction 90
3 Aphrodite’s Agon 96
3.1 Aphrodite’s Toilette 96
3.2 The Agon 106
3.3 Aphrodite’s Invective 111
3 Colluthus’ Visual Epyllion 135
1 Visuality in Literature 136
2 Colluthus’ Visual Terminology 141
3 Description of Characters’ Gestures and Appearance 150
3.1 Paris’ Visual Evolution 154
4 Visual Power and its Impact on the Characters 165
4.1 Paris’ Journey to Sparta 167
4.2 The First Encounter of Paris and Helen 176
5 Performative Αspects 205
4 Colluthus’ Polyphonic Epyllion 222
1 The Narratology of Colluthus’ Abduction of Helen 225
2 Auctorial Addresses 234
2.1 Address to Dionysus 235
2.2 Phyllis 240
vi contents
3 Characters’ Addresses 246
3.1 Hermione 246
3.2 Paris 252
4 Direct Speech, Psychology and Evaluation of Characters 254
Conclusion 263
Bibliography 277
Index Locorum 300
General Index 318
Preface
The only extant work of Colluthus, an Egyptian epic poet from the late fifth
century AD, is an epyllion in 394 hexameters entitled The Abduction of Helen.
His poem has been interpreted as a product of late-antique rhetorical affec-
tation and stagnation, lacking in vigour and originality. The objective of this
book is to situate Colluthus within his cultural, literary and philosophical con-
text and to provide a new appraisal of his work employing current interpreta-
tive perspectives. This research also identifies new models (notably Claudian)
and assesses the influence of contemporary education, genres and art forms
on the poem.
This book is the result of a research work which began in 2009 with my Ph.D.;
I have been privileged to be awarded a Postgraduate Research Grant (‘Master
and Back’) by the Region of Sardinia to complete this work.
The research for this book was conducted primarily at the Department
of Classics in Trinity College, Dublin, under the supervision of Dr Martine
Cuypers, whose expertise in Greek literature, continuous encouragement and
support has guided this project throughout its five years of gestation. I would
like to thank everyone in the Department for their academic advice, constant
interest and invaluable feedback.
I am greatly indebted to Dr Laura Miguélez-Cavero of the University of
Oxford, to Professor Gianfranco Agosti of The Sapienza University of Rome,
and to Dr Fiona Haarer of King’s College London for reading and revising
notes, preventing me from making many mistakes, for their help with late-
antique bibliography, and for their tireless guidance and support throughout
the research process. I apologise for the mistakes that I have still managed to
make: they are entirely my own.
I wish to dedicate this book to Oran, my endless source of encouragement.
Cosetta Cadau
Dublin, February 2015
Conventions and Abbreviations
1. All editions of Colluthus used in this work are listed in the bibliography.
Livrea 1968a, Orsini 1972 and Mair 1928 have been systematically consulted.
Quotations primarily follow Mair 1928 but alternative readings and conjec-
tures from other sources are noted as appropriate.
2. All translations are my own except where otherwise stated.
3. Abbreviations for classical authors follow the conventions of LSJ, but some
have been expanded (e.g. ‘Aesch.’ instead of ‘A.’, ‘Ap. Rh.’ instead of ‘A.R.’).
4. Abbreviations for journals follow the conventions of L’Année Philologique.
5. Abbreviations for collections of texts and works of reference:
LIMC H.C. Ackermann and J.R. Giseler (eds.), Lexicon Iconographicum
Mythologiae Classicae (Zürich 1981–2009).
LSJ H.G. Liddell and R. Scott, rev. by H.S. Jones and R. Mackenzie,
A Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford9 1996).
PMG D.L. Page (ed.), Poetae Melici Graeci (Oxford 1962).
RE A. Pauly and G. Wissowa (eds.), Realencyclopädie der classischen
Altertumswissenschaft (Stuttgart 1894–1980).
Introduction
Non-specialists will find little to entice them to read the Abduction of Helen,
an epyllion by the late-fifth-century-AD Egyptian poet Colluthus. The English
translation in Mair’s Loeb edition (1928), replacing the version of Sherburne
(1651, sic), is by now outdated. The Italian edition of De Lorenzi (1943 and 1946)
maintains some now untenable theories about the unoriginality of the proem,
as argued by Livrea (1968a and 1968b) and later by Orsini in his sparsely anno-
tated Budé edition (1972). More recently, Fernández-Galiano published a more
up-to-date translation in Spanish (1987), but without a commentary. The edi-
tions by Cuartero i Iborra (1992) and by Schönberger (1993) are equally limited:
the former includes a translation in Catalan and useful notes, and the latter
offers a new translation in German and comprehensive annotations,1 but nei-
ther provides a modern approach to interpretation.
Livrea’s edition offers the only full commentary on the poem to date,2 but
this is largely restricted to philological matters and makes no attempt to elu-
cidate the poem’s place in the literary tradition and its relationship with, for
example, the novel, rhetoric and the output of other late-antique hexameter
works. Orsini includes an introduction which highlights some of Colluthus’
models, but makes no serious attempt to interpret the text as a whole or to link
it to the cultural background of the late fifth century AD. A long debate3 was
spurred by the publication of Livrea’s edition, in which Giangrande (1969) first
read Colluthus’ poem through the lens of irony.4 Although Livrea (esp. 1991)
dismantled some of Giangrande’s re-evaluation of our poet as anachronistic,
the general thrust of his interpretation has unquestionably led the way to a
new reading of the Abduction.5
Studies of Colluthus’ Abduction of Helen were limited to a handful of arti-
cles until recently: scholars have been interested in Colluthus’ metre (Minniti-
Colonna 1979, Nardelli 1982), and in his re-elaboration of epic models (James
1969 and 1981, Giangrande 1975), but little effort has been made to contextualise
1  However, this edition has not been well-received (see Schenkeveld 1996).
2  Kotseleni 1990 follows Livrea and makes modest contributions to the discussion.
3  For a summary, see Magnelli 2008, 151 and Paschalis 2008, 136.
4  See Magnelli 2008, 166 and Paschalis 2008, 147.
5  Livrea 1991, 561–2 revisits the passages that Giangrande had reinterpreted in an allusive way
and re-establishes his position (already set out in his edition of 1968) that Colluthus did not
reach the poetic quality of Nonnus, whom he passively recycled. Giangrande responded
again in 1974 and 1975a, but these papers add little to the discussion.
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