Triphiodorus, 'The Sack of Troy': A General Study and a Commentary

549 Pages·2013·14.19 MB·English

by  Laura Miguélez-Cavero

Laura Miguélez-Cavero

TRIPHIODORUS,

›THE SACK OF TROY‹

A GENERAL STUDY AND COMMENTARY

TEXTE UND KOMMENTARE
I
Laura Miguélez-Cavero
Triphiodorus,The Sack of Troy
II
TEXTE UND KOMMENTARE
Eine altertumswissenschaftliche Reihe
Herausgegeben von
Siegmar Döpp, Adolf Köhnken, Ruth Scodel
Band 45
De Gruyter
III
Triphiodorus, The Sack of Troy
A General Study and a Commentary
by
Laura Miguélez-Cavero
De Gruyter
IV
ISBN 978-3-11-028520-8
e-ISBN 978-3-11-028530-7
ISSN 0563-3087
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress
Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche
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“In a way, I suppose, I think of poems as a sort of animal. They have
their own life, like animals, by which I mean that they seem quite
separate from any person, even from their author, and nothing can be
added to them or taken away without maiming and perhaps even killing
them. And they have a certain wisdom. They know something special…
something perhaps which we are very curious to learn” (Ted Hughes,
Poetry in the Making, London 1967, 15).
Poems and dreams are birds of the same feather. “Ein Traum ist wie
ein Tier, aber ein unbekanntes, und man übersieht nicht seine Glieder.
Die Deutung ist ein Käfig, doch der Traum ist nie darin” (Elias Canetti,
Die Provinz des Menschen. Aufzeichnungen 1942–1972, München 1973,
163).

Preface VII
Preface
Critical attention to Triphiodorus in the past thirty years has taken the
shape of four editions (Livrea’s in 1982, Gerlaud’s also in 1982, Cuar-
tero’s in 1988, Dubielzig’s in 1996) and a lexicon (Campbell’s, in 1985).
Considering that the works by Gerlaud, Cuartero and Dubielzig also
offer modern translations, instructive introductions and notes, we
could even think that more time and ink has been devoted to Triphio-
dorus than he deserves. But the last full commentary on the Sack of
Troy was published by Wernicke in 1819, and even the most recent dis-
cussions of the poem tend to see it as a space where the influences of dif-
ferent authors compete for attention, a quick halt in the evolution of
epic poetry on its way to Nonnus of Panopolis.
Triphiodorus clearly does not reach significant peaks of lyrical
excellence, but he is still a poet with his own ideas about the Trojan War,
not a simple versifier who pulls together strings from other poems. It is
time now to focus on theSack of Troy on its own, which is why I have
tried to write a companion book to the poem, a study that makes it
more accessible for the reader and helps to see it in context. Each pas-
sage is analysed in the context of the poem and of the tradition of the
Trojan War, so that Triphiodorus’ choices are more evident. The initial
chapters aim to offer a general introduction to the author and the
poem. The text of theSack of Troy provided is not a new edition, only a
revision of the most recent editions. Not being a native speaker, I have
not dared to furnish it with an English translation.
I should like to thank the editors of the Texte und Kommentare
series, Siegmar Döpp, Adolf Köhnken and especially Ruth Scodel for
their acute reading notes and Benjamin Henry for revising the whole
manuscript and saving me from many mistakes. Errors remain my own.
Many thanks also to Katharina Legutke for not loosing sight of this
book at a very busy time.
This book was made possible by two successive grants of the Spanish
Ministry of Education: first a Postdoctoral Grant, supervised by the
VIII Preface
Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT) and by
Dr.Dirk Obbink (Oxford University), and then a Juan de la Cierva Fel-
lowship at the University of Salamanca. I have also benefited from sev-
eral research projects directed by Prof. José Antonio Fernández Delgado,
granted by the Spanish Ministry of Education (HUM2007–62093/
FILO, FFI2010–21125) and the local government of Castilla y León
(SA052A08).
I should like to dedicate this book to Julián and Julia, my constant
sources of love, happiness and encouragement.
Table of Contents IX
Table of Contents
I. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1. Triphiodorus: Name, Origin, Date and Lost Works . . . . 3
1.1 Name and Origin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.2 Dating . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.3 Lost Works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2. TheSack of Troy: An Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.1 General Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.2 Enigmas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.3 Characterisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.4 The Narrator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.5 Speeches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
3. Literary Universe: Triphiodorus and the Epic Tradition . 38
3.1 Triphiodorus and Homer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
3.2 Triphiodorus and the Cycle? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
3.3 Hesiod and Pindar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
3.4 Tragic Triphiodorus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
3.5 Triphiodorus’ Hellenistic Reading . . . . . . . . . . . 61
3.6 Triphiodorus and Virgil? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
3.7 Triphiodorus and Imperial Literature . . . . . . . . . 71
3.8 Triphiodorus and the Contemporary Literary Scene . 75
4. Metrics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
5. Reading theSack of Troy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
II. Greek Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
III. Commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
IV. Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479
V. Indexes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 501