The Cypria

  Davies, Malcolm. 2019. The Cypria. Hellenic Studies Series 83. Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_DaviesM.The_Cypria.2019.


Introduction: Background

Authorship

T1 Aelian

Aelian Varia historia 9.15 (p. 106 Dilts)

λέγεται δἑ κἀκεῖνο πρὸς τούτοις, ὅτι ἄρα ἀπορῶν (scil. Ὅμηρος) ἐκδοῦναι τὴν θυγατέρα ἔδωκεν ἀυτῆι προῖκα ἔχειν τὰ ἔπη τὰ Κύπρια. καὶ ὁμολογεῖ τoῦτο Πίνδαρος (fr. 265 Sn.).

The further point is made that Homer, being at a loss as to how to give his daughter away in marriage, gave as dowry for her the epic Cypria, and Pindar is in agreement with this.

This is a very striking anecdote; but the exact significance of the story is as uncertain as the analogous case of Callinus’ supposed attribution of the Thebais to Homer (see Davies, TE, p. 28). Scholars have adopted various attitudes to the problem. The position of most extreme skepticism is that of Otto Schröder, who suggested (in his edition of Pindar [Leipzig 1900] ad loc. [p. 485]) that the reference is not to a lost poem by Pindar but to an anecdote about him, of the type exemplified by the Πινδάρου ἀποφθέγματα on pages 3–4 of Drachmann’s Pindaric scholia vol. 1 (e.g. ἐρωτηθεὶς δὲ διὰ τί οὐ τῶι εὖ πραττόντι τὴν θυγατέρα δίδωσιν, οὐ μόνον δεῖσθαί φησιν εὖ πράττοντος ἀλλὰ καὶ πράξοντος εὖ). If this were so, then, as Lloyd-Jones observes, “the story has no authority; the anecdotes may have been made up centuries after the death of Pindar” (1968–72:115). But, as the same scholar goes on to remark, there is nothing prima facie implausible in the notion that Pindar should have mentioned Homer by name: for analogous references by Greek lyrics to earlier epic poets see Davies and Finglass on Stesichorus fr. 168.

On the other hand, I am not clear as to why we should at once hurry to the opposite extreme and imagine that Pindar must also have mentioned Stasinus as Homer’s son-in-law. Several scholars have made this further assumption, among them E. Hiller, “Homer als Collectivname,” Rheinisches Museum 42 (1887): 350 and R. Merkelbach, Untersuchungen zur Odyssee 2 (Zetemata 2 [1969]) 141 and n2, both of whom then proceed to draw some very weighty conclusions from this hypothesis (e.g. that before the time of Pindar the authorship of the Cypria was already disputed as between Homer and Stasinus).

But just as the safest inference from the analogous early allusion to Homer’s authorship of the Thebais is that Callinus mentioned a detail or directly quoted a word or phrase which later writers recognized in the text of that epic [1] and attributed it to Homer, so the most reasonable interpretation of the present passage would seem to be that Pindar did something very similar as regards the text of the Cypria. The linking of this allusion to the tradition of dowry and son-in-law will then be the work of a later hand. That tradition does indeed fall within a whole circle of stories intended “to explain alternative attributions of the poems in question” (as Hiller himself saw) and to stress “chronological relationships between writers … by an account of a meeting between two leading representatives of the same genre, when one was well on in his career, and the other still young” (these quotations are taken from J. A. Fairweather, “Biographies of Ancient Writers,” Ancient Society 5 [1974]: 257n130 and 262, who gives numerous other examples of this tendency; see further M. Lefkowitz, Lives of the Ancient Poets [London 1981] 16, and Fairweather, “Traditional Narrative, Inference, and Truth in the Lives of the Greek Poets,” in Papers of the Liverpool Latin Seminar 4 [1983]: 320–321). It is true, as both Hiller and Merkelbach assert, that the story only makes sense if the son-in-law features. But since the point at issue is precisely whether Pindar makes use of the story, their argument is circular.

Lloyd-Jones ingeniously speculates that the story originated with a Cypriote family of epic poets whose “main property, a poem called, after their home, the Cypria,” they sought to enhance by exploiting the tradition of Homer’s birth in Cyprus and inventing the story that Homer had really composed the epic. Perhaps. But this hypothesis is modeled on Burkert’s interpretation of the Κρεωφύλειοι of Samos, and since that in its turn can be shown to be a rather doubtful prospect (as I shall demonstrate in my commentary on the Oechalias Halosis), the adaptation of it to fit the present case becomes less attractive. One need not even suppose that Pindar named Stasinus (Kullmann’s skepticism is praiseworthy [1960:215–216n2]). A mere attribution of the poem to Homer may be the ultimate basis of the story, which reaches its full-blown form with Aelian.

The form of Stasinus’ name has excited scholarly interest (Wilamowitz, Ilias und Homer 428n2 cites such “Cypriote” names as Στασίκυπρος and Στασάνωρ; Kullmann [1960:215–216n2] quotes other epic poets whose name terminates in -ινος). See now M. Egetmeyer, Le dialecte grec ancien de Chypre 1: Grammaire (Berlin 2014) on the name as “un hypocoristique avec l’élément lexical en Stāsi– typique de chypriote et comportant un /α̅/ qui montre bien l’appartenance à une tradition non ionienne” (370).

T8 Proclus Chrestomathia

Proclus Chrestomathia ap. Photius Bibliotheca 319 A21 (5.157 Henry)

oἱ μὲν ταῦτα εἰς Στασῖνον ἀναφέρουσι Kύπριον.

Some attribute this poem [the Cypria] to Stasinus.

In Athenaeus 334c (= F7) one must—if the text is correct—in ὁ Kυπρία ποιήσας ἔπη, εἴτε Κυπριός τις ἔστιν ἢ Στασῖνος, take Κυπρίoς τις as a proper name (so Wilamowitz, Homerische Untersuchungen 337: “ein gewisser Kyprios”; Lloyd-Jones 1968–72:115, etc.): cf. 35c ὁ δὲ Κύπριος ποιητής. But it is hard to resist the attraction of A. Hartmann’s idea (Untersuchungen über Sagen vom Tod des Odysseus [Munich 1917] 84n89) that some such original phrase as ὁ τὰ Κύπρια ποιήσας Κύπριος (cf. ὁ τοὺς Νόστους γράψας [= F1]) has been misinterpreted. Alternatively, one may conjecture Kυπρίας for Kυπρίος, with West, approved by H. Lloyd-Jones in “The Pride of Halicarnassus,” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 124 (1999): 11 = Further Academic Papers (Oxford 2005) 227. Wilamowitz suggested that Proclus’ programmatic oἱ μὲν ταῦτα εἰς Στασῖνον ἀναφέρουσι Kύπριον was speculating whether Kυπρία might not be the genitive of Kυπρίας rather than the obvious ethnic Kύπρια.

T5 Herodotus (= F11)

Herodotus II 117 (1.192 Wilson)

οὐκ Ὁμήρου τὰ Κύπρια ἔπεά ἐστι ἀλλ’ ἄλλου τινός.

The Cypria is not the work of Homer but of someone else.

Herodotus’ refusal of the poem’s authorship to Homer is probably no more than an early instance of the tradition of Stasinus’ authorship (cf. Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship from the Beginnings to the End of the Classical Age [Oxford 1968] 44–45, correcting the misstatements of Wilamowitz [especially Homerische Untersuchungen 328–330 and 352–353], who pictures Herodotus as the first representative of the “higher criticism” of Homer).

The Iliad and the Cypria

The backbone of Kullmann’s hypothesis is his very long list (1960:227–302) of passages where the Iliad allegedly reflects the scheme of events utilized by the Cypria. “Time will show,” wrote Page in his fundamental critique of Kullmann’s book (Classical Review 11 [1961]: 209), “whether I am alone in judging the subjective and speculative elements to be excessively large,” and time has decided in Page’s favor. To be more precise, Kullmann’s supposed correspondences fall into two classes: some passages undoubtedly show that the Iliad’s poet was aware of various mythical personages and events that seem to have found a place within the Cypria. But this unambitious finding does nothing to establish Kullmann’s much more specific theory that the Iliad drew on the Cypria itself for several such important details. And it transpires that the passages that at first glance do seem to provide such a specific link rest, on closer examining, almost entirely on tenuous reconstruction or speculative elaboration, and sometimes on tendentious misrepresentation.

There are indeed, some passages that are not very responsive to an interpretation either way. Thus Kullmann (1960:234) reasonably maintains the unlikelihood of the proposition that it was from such references to the gifts brought for Peleus’ wedding as Iliad XVI 140–144 or XXIII 276–278 that the Cypria “span out” its description of the marriage of that hero to Thetis. But the solution is simple: both epics draw on a common store of tradition as to this famous event. I close with a passage not adduced by Kullmann: at Iliad III 713–716 Menelaus recalls how Hera and Athena promised him that he would sack Troy and return home safely. West (2013:98) wonders whether this encounter featured in the Cypria and speculates as to how the promise was conveyed: dream vision perhaps? But the passage may just as well be Homer’s ad hoc invention, with no such background details to be filled in (on this sort of dilemma see Ø. Andersen, “The Making of the Past in the Iliad,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 93 [1990]: 25–45).

Date

More important linguistic arguments can be martialed against Kullmann’s general stance. The Cypria, like most other poems of the Epic Cycle, contains linguistic features that, following the leads of Wilamowitz and Wackernagel, one would most naturally characterise as “late” [10] (see e.g. my notes on F1 and F7). Page was right to stress the incompatibility of these philological data with Kullmann’s thesis and to restate (Classical Review 11 [1961]: 209) that “there is practically no sense of the word ‘Homer’ in which [Cypria F1] … could be called ‘pre-Homeric.’” I summed up the linguistic evidence in “The Date of the Epic Cycle,” Glotta 67 (1989): 93–94, an article which, by reasserting Wackernagel’s dating to shortly before 500, took a deliberately extreme and provocative stance in an attempt to shake people out of their complacent and widespread ignoring of the aforementioned evidence. Reasoned linguistic counterarguments were advanced by Rüdiger Schmitt (“Zur Sprache der kyklischen ‘Kypria,’ ” in Pratum Saraviense [Festschrift P. Steinmetz (Stuttgart 1990)] 11–23, which appeared too late for him to take adequate account of my article). He stresses in particular that some of the fragments, especially the first, are textually corrupt; and that many apparent “atticisms” in those quoted by Athenaeus, our main source for verbal citations, may be uniform or unintended “normalisations” (compare Richardson’s edition of The Homeric Hymn to Demeter, pp. 52–55, concluding that “there is some evidence which might suggest Attic transmission” of that poem, “but equally these may be corruptions due to generalisation in the medieval tradition”).

Schmitt’s approach is taken further in G. Parlato, “I ‘modernismi’ linguistici dei Cypria: Una diversa valutazione,” Rivista di Filologia e di Istruzione Classica 135 (2007): 5–36, which certainly does take note of my article and attempts to explain the phenomena along different lines, in the context of postulating (extremely speculatively) eighth-century Euboean linguistic influence on the poem’s development. Too often, it seems to me, she cites as parallels early epic forms which are not sufficiently similar (see e.g. F7.9n and F13.3n), and it is striking that even this indefatigable advocate of an early (seventh century!) dating is obliged to admit, for instance, that the transmitted αἰδοῖ at verse end (F7.5) would be “a sign of linguistic innovation occurring in a relatively late phase of development” (7), while similar verdicts are delivered on page 9 regarding the form Ἰλιακός (F1.5), on pages 11–12 regarding the application of πλατός to the earth’s entire surface (F1.2), and on pages 14–15 regarding the application of ἄτρυγετος to ὕδωρ (F7.6). This is a cumulatively impressive series of admissions.

There is admittedly a risk of circular argument in either of two directions: you may start from the assumption that the fragments are late, and decline to emend the relevant forms; or you may be wary in principle of late forms, and remove them by emendation. And F1, where the relevant forms are sown pretty thick in a very brief compass, may be a special case, a proem composed (much?) later than the rest of the epic in order to impose upon it a specious unity. Also, the longest stretch of verses we possess, F7, is very probably (like F6) from a speech (see page 76 below) and Jasper Griffin has shown (in “Homeric Words and Speeches,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 106 [1986]: 36) that the Iliad’s speeches display “more contemporary linguistic modes … in accordance with a feeling that they were more appropriate there” than in the narrative proper. Perhaps the same was true of the Cypria. Nevertheless, the relative proliferation of potentially late forms in so few preserved and definitely ascribed hexameters (ca. 45), and in other poems of the Epic Cycle, is so marked as to continue to convince me of their value for late dating.

The actual plot of the poem contains many folktale motifs of a probably early origin. The frequency of these is best explained by considering the strict meaning of motif—i.e. something that sets a story in motion—and the content of the Cypria sets a relatively large number of things, not least the Trojan War itself, in motion. But the closing portion as recovered from Proclus’ summary obviously set out to prepare for the Iliad’s plot. West (2013:69–57) provisionally assigns the work as we know it from fragments to 580–550, to which I would not object. It is fascinating to see how well this fits with datings arrived at by totally different (perhaps less reliable) criteria. For instance, Karl Schefold (Götter- und Heldensagen in der Spätarchaischen Kunst [Munich 1978] 172 = Gods and Heroes in Late Archaic Art 188) inferred a date sometime after 570, because Cleisthenes of Sicyon seems to have been unaware of the Cypria’s account of antipathy between Dioscuri and Apharetidae (see page 110 below) when he had depicted on the metopes of the treasury he built at Sicyon those two sets of cousins collaborating (LIMC s.v. “Dioskouroi” C 213) over a cattle raid in right friendly amity.

West points out in his discussion of “antecedent poems” that may have influenced our Cypria (2013:58–59) that earlier epics not dependent on the Iliad may have treated smaller segments of the whole story (e.g. the abduction of Helen) in a more unified manner, and this too appears likely (though note my warnings in Davies, Aethiopis, 2 regarding speculation on earlier forms of lost epics). This brings us ex opposito to the issue of the Cypria’s influence on later authors.

Influence

The interesting question of the Cypria’s influence upon later literature will be considered piecemeal in my commentary on the relevant fragments. This is the place to draw attention to F. Jouan’s general study, Euripide et les légendes des Chants Cypriens (1966).

An unexpected series of debts to the Cypria was detected in Ovid Heroides XVI by G. Wentzel in “Die Entführung der Helene: Bemerkungen zu der ovidischen Epistel des Paris” (1890). Since this rare brochure is little known and is not taken into account by West’s discussion of the Cypria’s “attestations” (2013:56), I summarize its findings here.

Some areas, it must be said, are problematic. Thus, many of the details concerning Paris’ earliest days (cf. Wentzel, pp. xxiv–xxxv), such as his initial exposure and later recognition, would seem, prima facie, to be derived from Euripides’ Alexandros (see e.g. Kenney, “Dear Helen … the Pithanotate Prophasis?” Papers of the Leeds International Latin Seminar 8 [1995]: 190–193; his commentary on the Ovidian poem [Cambridge 1996) 6–7; and my remarks below, pages 74–75). Wentzel, however (pp. xxxix–xl), prefers to suppose that the common source of Euripides and Ovid is still the Cypria. The main difficulty here is the total lack of certainty as to whether such events did in fact find a place in the Cypria (see pages 92–93 below). There is also a hard and ineradicable kernel of details (Wentzel, pp. xlii–xlv) which are definitely not to be derived from the Cypria: in particular, Paris’ relationship with Oenone. Wentzel (pp. xlv–xlix, esp. xlviii) sees that these are shared with Lucian and presumes two sources—separate or combined by the time of Heroides XVI’s composition—for the Latin poem, one emanating from the Cypria, and the other the common source of Heroides XVI and Lucian.

Wentzel (pp. xxxix–xli) is impressed by the artistic evidence for this as pre-Euripidean. Taking the description of Cassandra’s prophecy in Heroides XVI 121–125 to be derived from the Cypria, and bearing in mind the strong similarity of its contents to Hecuba’s dream in Ovid’s poem, he concludes that “gehören Traum und Prophezeiung unlösbar zusammen” and “auch Hekabes Traum und die Jugendgeschichte des Paris waren in den Kyprien erzählt” (p. xxxix). Let us leave aside unconvincing claims (pp. xl–xli) that since other Euripidean dramas exploit the Cypria’s presentation of Paris (see page 99 below) we must be particularly impressed by the Alexandros’ combination of Cassandra’s prophecy (displaced) and Hecuba’s dream: the case as a whole is still impressive, but hardly proven or provable.

Literary Quality

Our poem has been characterized without sentimentality by Lloyd-Jones: “It was not among the greatest works. Like the other poems of the epic cycle, it was important mainly for its value to later poets as a source for plot material” (p. 122). Hecker (1850:436–437) had already epitomized the Cypria as “poema magis rerum copia utile et operoso scriptoris labore commendabile … quam divite inventionis vera et poetica virtute praestans.” Stylistic analysis of the most extensive citational fragments by Jasper Griffin has confirmed this view (and, more importantly, by establishing the contrast, has confirmed the uniqueness of Homer). A few scholars have questioned this verdict, most notably Martin West, who declares that, apart from its lack of unity, “there is no reason to think it was a poor composition. The poetic quality of the surviving fragments is high” (2013:60). This I would deny (see commentary on F4–F5, F7, and F13). The longer the fragments are, the more scope they seem to offer for negative criticism (one should perhaps except F1, since it may seem unreasonable to judge an epic merely by its proem, and the adaptation of a Near Eastern motif to provide a specious unity is, at the very least, ingenious). I would, however, accept his verdict on the “romantic” flavor of some of the poem’s episodes (the encounter between Achilles and Helen; perhaps the role of Polyxena) already noted by e.g. Jouan (1966:29: “l’abondance des épisodes romanesques”).

The use of Proclus’ summary to judge the poem’s quality is particularly fraught with danger. An example of what could conceivably be suggested if we could safely (as we cannot in this context) combine the evidence of verbatim fragments with that of Proclus’ summary, has been offered by J. Marks (2002:9–10). From F1 we know that, near the start of the poem, Zeus decided to cause the Trojan War in order to lighten the burden of the earth. This decision, referred to as the Διὸς βουλή, probably had as its immediate sequel the consultation of Themis by Zeus which stands at the head of Proclus’ summary. Near the end of that summary, we read of another plan by Zeus, this time to lighten the burden on the Trojans by making Achilles abandon his Greek allies. The Greek verb used here for “lightening” is virtually the same as used in F1 of the earth’s burden. Does it ultimately derive from an expression used in the text of the Cypria, and does it perhaps indicate a sophisticated large-scale ring composition on the poet’s part in order to unify his epic? Did he begin it with one plan involving the earth and Themis, and conclude it with another plan involving the Trojans and Thetis? Perhaps. For a determined and methodical attempt to apply literary criticism to Proclus’ summaries with the aid of often considerable speculative expansion see now B. Sammons, Device and Composition in the Greek Epic Cycle (Oxford 2017).

Footnotes

[ back ] 1. See Davies, TE, pp. 28–29. This careful formulation in fact derives from Hiller himself; it is a pleasure to be able to temper that scholar’s rashness here by recourse to his own caution elsewhere.

[ back ] 2. So, for instance, Müller 1829:81–82, Wilamowitz, Ilias und Homer 428n2 (retracting an earlier attempt [Homerische Untersuchungen 337] to distinguish between “a certain Cypriot” and Stasinus).

[ back ] 3. So also Hecker 1850:435.

[ back ] 4. See Davies, TE, chapter 2 and Davies, Aethiopis, chapter 1.

[ back ] 5. Kullmann goes out of his way to stress the specificness of the relationship envisaged. Thus, for instance, “Die Ilias kennt … nicht irgendeine, sondern die spezielle Kyprienversion über das Zustandkommen der Ehe zwischen Thetis und Peleus” (1960:231; cf. 358, etc.).

[ back ] 6. On Thetis’ failure to repeat the story when actually face to face with Zeus see, for instance, M. M. Willcock 1964:143 = 2000:439.

[ back ] 7. See my commentary ad loc. (page 19 below) for the probable relationship (or rather lack of relationship) between the enclosing ἱστορία with its picture of Momus’ intervention and our actual fragment.

[ back ] 8. In fact not every one of the passages that Kullmann cites is relevant for his purpose. Thus (to give but one example) it seems a little fanciful to connect Iliad VIII 350–80 with the Judgment of Paris as Kullmann (1960:240) does.

[ back ] 9. Kullmann’s approach also involves him in some very paradoxical views, such as his denial (1960:255) of any contradiction between Iliad III 236–244 and the Cypria’s partial immortality for Castor and Polydeuces (contrast my remarks, page 118 below) or (371) any contradiction between the two poems on the identity of Achilles’ tutor (see page 199 below).

[ back ] 10. A fact not really coped with by such sophistries as “Im Hinblick auf die Ilias muss man sagen, dass diese Erscheinung zwar etwas später sein kann, aber nicht notwending etwas späteres als die Ilias zu sein braucht” (1960:378).

[ back ] 11. He used this as a criterion in favor of the poem’s Ovidian authorship (p. xli), since both the disputed (39–144) and the undisputed portions draw on the Cypria. This argument is not used by Kenney in his defense (advanced independently of Wentzel) of authenticity (“Two Disputed Passages in the Heroides,” Classical Quarterly 29 [1979]: 394–431). See further n12 below.

[ back ] 12. For a recent reassertion of the Ovidian authorship of Heroides XVI see S. J. Heyworth in Latin Literature and Its Transmission (Reeve Festschrift; Cambridge 2016) 142–170.