Any jubilation over the alleged light thus shed upon the details of the myths cited by Nestor would be decidedly premature as well as very circular. It is precisely these details that we are trying to elicit, and we must not automatically assume as a self-evident truth that Epicaste featured in τὰ περὶ Οἰδίπουν or that Alcmene had any obvious part to play in events περὶ τὴν Ἡρακλέους μανίαν. Of this last detail, indeed, there is no hint in the Odyssey’s brief mention of Heracles’ mother and wife. Even when the general context in which the two epics place their shared heroine is reasonably similar there can be (as Jouan [1966:377n1] observes) a significant divergence in individual detail: Odyssey xi 260 talks of Ἀντιόπην … τὴν Ἀσωποῖο θύγατρα whereas Proclus’ summary of the Cypria refers to τὴν Λύκ(ουργ)oυ θυγάτερα. (See my comments at page 124 below.) It will not do to assert (with Wilamowitz and even F. Blass, Interpolationen in Homer [Berlin 1904] 265, who otherwise disagrees with Wilamowitz’s understanding of the relationship between the two passages) that the numerous correspondences cannot be coincidental. We have no right to begin the debate over the presence or not of coincidence’s controlling hand before establishing whether the correspondences do in fact exist.

The first of Nestor’s exempla from myth is by no means impossible to relate to the particular circumstances of Menelaus, though we cannot hope for a totally clear view as to which of the many variant versions of the legend of Antiope and Epopeus was put by the Cypria into Nestor’s mouth. The mythographers retell Antiope’s story “nicht ohne Verschiedenheiten” as Welcker (2.98n12) puts it with graceful understatement. For recent summaries of the various traditions with particular reference to Euripides’ Antiope see Jouan 1966:375–377, Kannicht TrGF V 1, pp. 274–277.

An interesting specimen of the range of these variants greets us at once in connection with the name that the Cypria gave to Antiope’s father. Ancient writers had various views on this (see, for instance, Ganning in RE 13^.2 [1927]s.v. “Lycus [18],” 2396.5–18), but the Lycurgus mentioned in Proclus’ summary nowhere else occupies this position. Heyne in his editio princeps of 1786 (on which see Severyns, Texte et Apparat [Brussells 1962] 33–39) therefore emended Λυκούργου to Λύκου in order to connect Antiope with the character who elsewhere (as we shall shortly see) plays an important role in several versions of the legend. He has been followed by many, e.g. West (2013:99). But if Lycurgus would be unique as Antiope’s father, so would Lycus, who in most accounts (including those shortly to be considered) features as her uncle. Besides, it has been suggested that Lycus is merely a shorter (perhaps hypocoristic) form of the name Lycurgus (so, for instance, Robert, Heldensage 2.115 [with bibliography in n2], Jessen in Roscher s.v. “Lykos” [2184.40], or Jouan 1966:375n1 [on hypocoristic name-forms see Davies and Finglass on Stesichorus fr. 182]).

The authors I shall proceed to quote differ in various ways from each other; they also both diverge from the little we know of the Cypria’s tradition as regards the identity of Antiope’s father. But they are at one in presenting a general picture of guilty passion which brings down punishment upon the erring lovers. I cite first Pausanias II 6.1–2:

A similar narrative in Apollodorus Bibliotheca III 5.5:

A satisfying outcome for a paradigm addressed to Menelaus in his present plight.

In contrast with the immediately preceding legend, the story of Oedipus seems to have no obvious initial similarities to Menelaus’ predicament. No matter which of the early variant versions of the Oedipus legend Nestor may be thought to have retailed (on these see my TE, chapter 1), it is hard to believe that the link between paradigm and illustrandum was ever as close as in the case of Antiope’s story. Indeed, potential areas of resemblance soon dwindle to two, one general, one specific. In the realm of the specific we may observe that if (as M. Untersteiner, La Fisiologia del Mito ² [Milan 1946] 228 hazarded) Laius’ abduction of Chrysippus were available to the Cypria as an explanation of Oedipus’ sufferings, Paris’ abduction of Helen would be neatly paralleled. I do not see why Jouan (1966:378n1) should dismiss this possibility out of hand as “highly implausible”: we should be in no great hurry to condemn the rape of Chrysippus as errantly unsuitable for epic treatment (see Davies, TE, 7–8), and the different orientation of the love experienced by Laius and by Paris is irrelevant. Alternatively, the comparison may have been exceedingly general: Oedipus’ union with his mother and Paris’ with Helen were both illicit. The brute fact is, we simply do not know why the myth was cited.

F15 Athenaeus

Athenaeus 2.35^c (1.81 Kaibel)

The fragment was referred to this portion of our epic by Welcker (2.99) following Heyne’s intuition (in his 1786 editio princeps: see Severyns, Texte et apparat: Histoire et critique d’une tradition imprimée [Brussels 1962] 33–39) that the two verses belonged to a speech by Nestor, and Müller’s hypothesis (1829:90) that the “(versus …) quos Suidas narrat a Nestore dictos esse quum Menelaus apud eum commoraretur. videtur igitur Nestor Menelaum adhortatus esse, ut vino curas rerum familiarium repelleret.”

Griffin (1977:47 = 382) finds the present fragment “out of keeping” with the Iliadic attitude to wine:

Cf. his remarks in “ ‘Regalis inter mensas laticemque Lyaeum’: Wine in Virgil and Others,” in In Vino Veritas (ed. O. Murray and M. Tecuşan [London 1995] 283–284). Griffin might have recalled Odyssey iii 139, where the Atreidae call a disorderly assembly after the sack of Troy, οἱ δ’ ἢλθον οἴνωι βεβαρηότες υἷες Ἀχαιῶν, and the use of οἰνοβαρές as a term of abuse at Iliad I 225 (cf. S. Koster, Die Invektive in der griechischen und römischen Literatur [Beiträge zur Klassische Philologie 99 (1980)] 43). Other epic reflections on the utility of wine are assembled by V. J. Matthews in his commentary on Panyassis (pp. 80–81).

The idiom of “scattering” or dispelling cares established by the above parallels is so common that I cannot be impressed by Bernabé’s supposed rediscovery (following Welcker) of a further reference to our fragment in the incomplete hexameter quoted in Philodemus’ De pietate 1678–1681 Obbink οὐκ ἀπ’ ἐμοῦ σκεδάσεις ὄχλον (see Obbink’s commentary ad loc. [pp. 546–548]), even if completed from a different source with ταλαπείριε πρέσβυ (supposedly addressed to Nestor: the adjective occurs in the Odyssey, but why should Nestor be called “much suffering” at this stage of his life?). Cf. page 122 above for a different alleged scenario.

Apollodorus Epitome 3.6–7: ὄντων δὲ πολλών προθύμων στρατεύεσθαι παρα-γίνονται καὶ πρὸς Ὀδυσσέα εἰς Ἰθάκην. ὁ δὲ οὐ βουλόμενος στρατεύεσθαι προσποιεῖται μανίαν. Παλαμήδης δὲ ὁ Ναυπλίου ἤλεγξε τὴν μανίαν ψευδῆ, καὶ προσποιησαμένωι μεμηνέναι παρηκολούθει· ἁρπάσας δὲ Τηλέμαχον ἐκ τοῦ κόλπου τῆς Πηνελόπης ὡς κτενῶν ἐξιφούλκει. Ὀδυσσεὺς δὲ περὶ τοῦ παιδὸς εὐλαβηθεὶς ὡμολόγησε τὴν προσποίητον μανίαν καὶ στρατεύεται (While many were eager to participate in the war, the leaders arrived also at Odysseus’ kingdom of Ithaca. But he was unwilling to take part in the campaign and feigned madness. Palamedes, son of Nauplius, proved that his madness was put on. He followed after him as he continued his pretence and snatched up Telemachus from Penelope’s bosom and drew his sword as if to kill him. Odysseus, concerned for his son’s safety, confessed that his madness was put on, and took part in the campaign.)

This portent is recalled by Odysseus in Iliad II 303–330, together with Calchas’ reaction. Note especially 311–313 ἔνθα δ᾽ ἔσαν στρουθοῖο νεοσσοί, νήπια τέκνα,  | ὄζωι ἐπ’ ἀκροτάτωι, πετάλοις ὑποπεπτηῶτες, | ὀκτώ, ἀτὰρ μήτηρ ἐνάτη ἦν, ἣ τέκε τέκνα. According to D’Arcy Thompson (A Glossary of Greek Birds [London 1936] 269), “this is an instance when the name is used vaguely, and not specifically, since eight eggs are too many for a sparrow.” This “generic” interpretation of στρουθός has met with some strongly expressed skepticism in the past (see, in particular, Fraenkel on Aeschylus Agamemnon 146 [2.89] and Page on Sappho 1.10 [Sappho and Alcaeus, p. 8]), but is probably allowable (see Arnott, Birds in the Ancient World [London 2007] 226).

The prophecy that Troy would fall after ten years was transferred to the Delphic Oracle (addressing Achilles, Agamemnon’s envoy) by Σ Lycophron 200 (2.95 Scheer) and Dares the Phrygian. See H. W. Parke and D. E. W. Wormell, The Delphic Oracle, vol. 2: The Oracular Responses (Oxford 1956) 204; J. E. Fontenrose, The Delphic Oracle: Its Responses and Operations (Berkeley 1978) 397. As the latter observes “This is a good example of a well-known prophecy of legend, spoken by an individual seer, that in later times was sometimes said to have been spoken in Delphi.” Originally, “in the legends of the Trojan War, as they appear in the Homeric poems, seers like Calchas made the necessary predictions and revelations” (p. 118).

It is almost as otiose, indeed, to round off the present discussion by drawing attention to the complete uniqueness (not to say grotesqueness) of the notion of four hundred odd lines of the Cypria casually embedded in our texts of the Iliad, or to remind the reader how numerous are the indications that the Cypria was composed later than, and sometimes specifically modeled upon, the greater epic (see page 8 above). If this is so here too, Jacoby 1932:578 = 1961:61) may be right in suggesting that the Cypria contained no catalogue of the Greek forces precisely because its author was acquainted with the Iliad’s (contrast the Cypria’s utilization of a catalogue of Trojan allies [see page 187 below]).

The evidence of Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis need not detain us long. The strongest argument is Murray’s: “the ships are there described at Aulis; Protesilaus is alive and so is Palamedes (195–199); there is a reference to the Judgement of Paris (180); all these points would come straight from the Cypria, they would imply conscious change if the source was” Iliad II. Admirably true: but the details can have “come straight from the Cypria” without having come straight from the Cypria’s catalogue of Greek forces. As for the young Page’s claim that “if there was a Greek catalogue in the Cypria, our passage is just what an adaptation of it would have been like,” we would require all the resources of invective possessed by the mature Page for an adequate exposure of its shortcomings.