Scott KennedyCandidacy Exam: Later Epic Poetry

2. How do Homer and the Homeric poems inform the later poems of Nonnus and Apollonius?

As an integral part of Greek education from the moment a Greek youth entered the classroom, Homer has left a heavy and weighty influence on Greek culture and literature. When we turn to the later Greek epic poets Apollonius and Nonnus, his influence is everywhere in these poems as he was the canon for later writers to construct their epics. In this essay, I will describe this influence upon each of these poets together and separately.

One of the first aspects that needs to be addressed is the Homeric scholasticism these two authors engage in. As a product of their education in which they heavily scrutinized the text of Homer, both tend to approach Homer as scholars, wielding and playing with his vocabulary. In Apollonius, we can see this in several ways that scholars have elaborated upon over the years. For example, Glei points out that scholars have seen the prologue to Book 1 commenting upon Homeric poetry. Hunter points to Apollonius playful use of the words schetlios and nepios in his Argonautica. For example, the way that Apollonius describes the king of the Mossynoi cooped up all day giving judgments as schetlios produces an almost parodic effect of the Homeric epic. One might also point to Apollonius decision to use apax legomena in his text, for which the definition was uncertain, and define them in the Argonautica.

In Nonnus, we see a determined adherent to the Homeric poems, who tries to outdo and show his superiority to Homer, but also acknowledge his great debt to the poet. As Shorrock has commented, there is hardly a line of Nonnus that is does not employ a Homeric half line or vocabulary item. Nonnus proems to Books 1 and 25 also display his abilities to deal with Homer. For example, he employs the figure of Proteus from Book 4 of the Odyssey to demonstrate the variety that his poem will take and also to show he can keep up with this Homeric shape shifter. In Book 25, this approach is taken to the next level. Nonnus engages in a synkrisis of his subject matter with other ancient epics and accounts of wars. Like so many other historians and poets, his war is the greatest war that ever was and far surpasses previous wars including Homers petty subject matter of Achilles rage in the Iliad in comparison with Dionysus great war. But Nonnus also does acknowledge his debt to Homer. For example, he blames Thetis for making Homer write about such an inferior subject. Homer would have written about Dionysus if he could. When he proceeds to describe the war, Nonnus tells us he is going into battle with the shield and spear of Homer, thereby signifying his debt to Homer as the implements with which he constructs his epic.

The poems of Apollonius and Nonnus also make use of a number of Homeric scenes typical of epic. For example, both refashion the catalogue of ships in Book 2 of the Iliad for their own narratives. For Apollonius, this takes place in Book 1 as he describes all of the heroes who have come to join Jason and sometimes provides some background on them just like Homer does. Particular to his catalogue is the fact that he includes Orpheus first, as the artist who exercises a magical power of the natural world. Some scholars have seen this figure as Apollonius himself embarking on the vessel, but the power of the artist is a definite theme in the epic, as Apollonius includes Amphion helping build the city of Thebes in the Jasonic cloak. Perhaps this is an elaboration on the remark of Penelope to Phemius, who has been identified with Homer, on the magical qualities of the singer.

Nonnus is not without his own catalogue. In his case, it appears in Book 14 as a list of gods and demigods who have come to join his fight against the Indians. It is unique in that the divine enters the catalogue as allies and not just men. Similarly, Nonnus has his own take on the magical powers of music throughout his epic, as he draws upon Apollonius scene of Amphion building Thebes for Dionysus shield and includes in Book 1 Cadmus saving the universe from the ravages of the giant with a pipe.

Turning to the two poets ecphrastic scenes, there are a number of things that need to be said about how they refashioned their Homeric prototypes. Apollonius cloak of Jason has two Homeric models. The first is the Odyssey in which Odysseus in disguise recounts the purple, embroidered cloak Penelope gave him. The cloak is not particular rich in embroidering, as it includes a scene of a dog assaulting a fawn. For the model of the elaborate scenes on Jasons cloak, the main source is Achilles shield in the Iliad. From Achilles shield, Nonnus has even borrowed a scene of a band of shepherds fighting off raiders. Otherwise his scenes are fewer and generally very different (Zetus and Amphion building Thebes, Aphrodite with Ares shield showing her breast, the shepherd fighting). Hunter has suggested a cosmogonical interpretation for this ecphrasis, since we see the construction of the city. He also suggests it is really a list or table of contents of elements we see in the text. This suggestion has its merits, as we see the war element and love side by side in this epic, such as in the scene of Aphrodite. The cloak is the gift of Athena, so in this respect it represents something of a wondrous, divine object just like in the Iliad, where Thetis has Hephaestus make the shield.

Within Nonnus, the shield of Dionysus is most clearly modeled off the shield of Achilles and Apollonius Jasonic cloak. It is the gift of Rheia produced by Hephaestus for Dionysus. Like Achilles shield, it portrays the earth, stars, and the river Oceanus around it. As to the actual scenes, the first of Amphion and Zetus is pulled from Apollonius. The others seem to be the work of Nonnus own design. We see Ganymedes abduction by Zeus, next him serving wine to Zeus while Hera looks on jealously, next the murder of Hylus by the serpent, the murder of the serpent by the giant Damasen, and the resurrection of Hylus and the serpent. The final scene shows Cronus vomiting up the stone Rheia gave him instead of Zeus.

How we are to interpret this shield has not received a great deal of commentary until recently with Spanoudakis clever attempt to read the shield as not only a cosmogonical device as in Homer, but also as a symbol of Christian resurrection. For him, the major scene is Hylus murder and resurrection by the serpent. In Christian ideology the serpent was Satan and desire who led Hylus astray only for him to be resurrected through Christ. Spanoudakis notes Nonnus cleverness in choosing the serpent to be like a cobra because the Greek name for this snake was aspis. In this line of Christian thinking, the construction of Thebes is the creation of the world in which music played an integral part in Christian thinking. Cronus vomiting up the stone parallels the idea that Christ will cause hell to vomit up the dead in end times. It is a very clever interpretation with many parallels to create a commonality of ideas, but I am somewhat skeptical of elements of it. For example, the idea that Hera the jealous wife is angry about Ganymede, Zeus gay lover seems quite problematic with Christian ideology about homoerotic love. Indeed, the love of Dionysus and Ampelus in Book 10, to which the scene may look back, has nothing very Christian about it when Nonnus erotically describes Ampelus and Dionysus wrestling and then telling Ampelus he can be in control. Furthermore, what does it say about Christian ideology if both the serpent and Hylus are resurrected? To me, it is more appropriate to interpret the shield without added Christian ideology. To me, this scene could simply signify that the forces of good and evil will continue in the world even when they are stamped out. The serpent after all is not necessarily a positive animal in Greek mythology (e.g. Python) and in the context of the poem is an evil venomous murderer. It is also worth stating that the scenes on the shield may have a table of contents like value to Nonnus, as many of them appear later on in the text.

Another element we may talk about in the poem is the invocation of the Muses typical to the Homeric proem. Apollonius does not really seem to invoke the Muses to write his poem. He only addresses them in Book 4 when he has lost control of his text, thereby making it seem like he is a mortal man trying to go it alone only to fall back on them as an artistic source of inspiration. Part of this may be part of the fractured feeling that this poem tries to exude where the hero of the poem really should be Medea, not Jason. For Nonnus, he falls back on the Muses from the beginning of the poem, but transforms into Maenads. This is a clever device that displays the Dionysiac and transforming qualities of the epic to follow.

From some of the evidence discussed here, we can see how creatively both Nonnus and Dionysus have refashioned their poems in the Homeric tradition. They have pulled from Homer, but they are also active readers of the poet who hope bend and play with the expectations of the Homeric poems. In this, they represent the notion that the artist will often challenge his model in order to create something new and bold for the audience of his day. 4. In what ways does Ovids Met conform or innovate upon the traditional idea of an epic?

For over 100 years since Heizes account of Ovids elegiac verse, one of the most debated questions has been whether this hexameter poem is an epic or elegy poem. For Heinze, who compared a single scene as it appears in Ovids Metamorphoses and his elegiac poetry, the elegiac meter represented a more light-hearted treatment and tone, while the hexameter possessed a more serious and grave tone. This conclusion endured for about 70-80 years until the 1970s when classical scholars began to feel fed up with genre. Nevertheless, there were several attempts to argue that Ovids Metamorphoses were nothing but elegy in hexameter verse or that it represented something of a collection of epyllia. More recently, Farrell in his 1992 piece and again his 2009 article in the Blackwell Companion to Ovid has challenged the essential classification of Ovid as elegy or epic. Instead, for him the text represents a blending of genres that has produced something essentially new. After reading some of the later epics such as Apollonius that we tackled this semester a review of the question of whether Ovid was epic or not is in order.

First off, I am inclined to reject any explanation of Ovid as a series of epyllia, or as Katherine Swiller wrote about it, epic light. I say this because I reject the validity of the genre of epyllion as an artificial genre created by scholars in the 1820s to define epics such as the Hecale. There is no ancient attestation of the genre. Instead the term epyllion derives from an Aristophanes play where it is a wordlet, which has been subsequently re-appropriated to speak contemptuously of later epics such as Catullus 64, some of Theocritus idylls, and short poems such as Moschus Europa. Typical for their brevity, strong female heroines, and ekphrastic scene that takes up much of the poem, epyllia deserve to be rejected as a way to speak about Ovid. First, this make-believe genre would not have existed for Ovid and his contemporaries as something to imitate. Second, as the definition is so fluid, it is hard to identify the scenes of the Metamorphoses with anything so concrete. And if we take the working definition I have above, the poem has a much wider range of material than this definition encompasses, though there are moments that agree with this definition (for example, Ariadne and Athenas weaving competition).

Even though I reject epyllia as a genre, the genre of epic proper has some marked similarities with Ovid in its later manifestations, and especially Nonnos Dionysiaka. Obviously, the texts length and epic meter are criteria that have recommended it as epics in the past. But going beyond these superficial qualities, one might point to the episodic quality of the text, where stories may only be marginally related to one another. This is something that had become a part of epic from the time of Apollonius Argonautica. But whether or not this quality is instead just the influence of the Hellenistic poetic tradition with its tendency for episodic narratives (cf. Callimachus Aetia), is unclear. One might also point to the ecphrastic scenes the text contains such as Athena and Ariadnes tapestries. Athenas tapestry has something of a cosmogonical interpretation, as it describes the glory of the gods. This tallies nicely with the traditional ancient interpretation of the shield of Achilles in Homers Iliad as well as modern scholarly suggestions that Apollonius cloak of Jason has a similar cosmogonical meaning.

When we come to Nonnus, a number of similarities accrue, so that scholars have tried to prove that Nonnus epic was partly inspired by Ovid. Both poets have an episodic, encyclopedia feel. They also both seem to try to cover as much as possible of earlier mythic traditions within their poems, subsuming earlier epics into their narratives (Shorrocks book on Nonnus is excellent for showing Nonnus technique in this regard). On a larger level, the principle of change and transformation is crucial for both poets approach to writing. As Valla has suggested in the Ovid commentary, the opening lines in nova are programmatic of the later transformations to follow in the Metamorphoses. In Nonnus, we can see a similar program in the poets transformation of the Muses into Maenads and his emblematic use of Proteus transformations for the varying forms his poetic technique will match. Poikilia/subtleness also an important form in the poems. This is but a few of the similarities that have scholars have revealed in the two, for more see the article on Nonnus and Ovid in the 2014 companion to Nonnus.

While I have gone on at length about the similarities of Nonnus, his poetic form is later and must be given less priority to evaluating Ovids text. And in any case, Nonnus is also greatly at odds with Ovid. It is far easier to classify him alongside epic poets like Homer, Apollonius, and Vergil with whom Ovids narrative is greatly at odds. Farrell has already briefly made this point in his 1992 article. To elaborate further on it for the purposes of this essay, the episodic qualities of Ovid only go so far, as the poem lacks overall a hero like all of these poems and a unified narrative with a teleological goal. The poem also has its own ending with the apotheosis of the poem that does not jibe well with these epics that often end incompletely. There is always something more for the epic poet to tell (e.g. the Odyssey; Apollonius leaving Pelias death and Jason and Medeas subsequent adventures out).

In consequence, I am inclined to say that Ovids Metamorphoses is not an epic per se. Instead, I follow Farrell in arguing that it is a mix of genres that creates a unique and new genre. Ovid was certainly aware of how his works were playing with his genres as he reveals in a remark on his Heroides that mix epistle and elegy into one. If we turn to the Metamorphoses, this text has a wide variety of intellectual influences, such as early theories about the universe in Book 1. It is also possible to make the case for the influence of didactic poetry on the text, as some have. Certainly, it shows the influence of Hesiods Theogony and his Catalogue of Women in addition to epic. Then there is the genre of metamorphoses, which survives in the collection of metamorphoses stories assembled by Antonios Liberalis from earlier transformation poems. What these poems meter was is unclear, but they show that there was an established type of transformation poem upon which Ovid might have drawn. None of this is to even include the influence of elegy upon the poems, about which several scholars have written.

In conclusion, I would argue that Ovids poem is not epic. Instead, like the figures it portrays, it transforms itself into various genres and takes on attributes of these genres such as epic. However, it remains all the same a distinctive and original contribution to Latin poetry in the age of Augustus.