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Lycophron on Io and Isis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

J. Gwyn Griffiths
J. Gwyn Griffiths
Affiliation:
University College, Swansea
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Extract

The Hellenistic poet Lycophron, who wrote tragedies and assembled the texts of comedy under Ptolemy Philadelphus for the Library at Alexandria, was probably also the author of the long poem Alexandra, which deals mainly with the theme of Troy. Recent studies by Stephanie West have appreciably advanced our understanding of this rather difficult poet. For the passages where Lycophron surprisingly presents phases of Roman history she cogently adduces a later poet, a ‘Deutero-Lycophron, …to be sought among the artists of Dionysus in southern Italy’. A theme in Graeco-Egyptian mythology is the subject of the present paper; and one of my main points is that recent Egyptological research has a clear bearing on one of the problems.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 36 , Issue 2 , December 1986 , pp. 472 - 477
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1986

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References

1 See Fraser, P. M., Ptolemaic Alexandria (Oxford, 1972), i.449–50Google Scholar; ii.1065–7 n. 331. Several matters are still debated.

2 ‘Notes on the Text of Lycophron’, CQ 33 (1983), 114–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘Lycophron Italicised’, JHS 104 (1984), 127–51Google Scholar; ‘Lycophron on Isis’, JEA 70 (1984), 151–4Google Scholar. Cf. also her remarks on ‘Io and the Dark Stranger’, CQ 34 (1984), 292–302, esp. 297CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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4 Cf. Hicks, Ruth I., in TAPA 93 (1962), 93Google Scholar.

5 Kirk, G. S. ad Il. 1.551 (Cambridge, 1985), 110fGoogle Scholar. rejects the theriomorphic suggestion, plain as it is, in favour of ‘with placid gaze, like that of a cow’ – evidently a blow in the cause of keeping the Greeks refined.

6 Ruth I. Hicks, op. cit 95.

7 Prometheus Vinctus (Cambridge, 1983), ad loc. p. 198Google Scholar. For her rare form as a bull see below n. 35.

8 P. Louvre 3079. For this and other references see my Plutarch's De Iside et Osiride (Cardiff, 1970), 353Google Scholar; after reviving the dead Osiris, Isis is seen as activating sexual procreation. In Egyptian art she is shown as a falcon on the body of the dead god, reviving his male member; see my remarks, ibid. 495 and Otto, E. (tr. Griffiths, K. B.), Egyptian Art and the Cults of Osiris and Amon (London, 1968), pls. 17–20Google Scholar.

9 Debrunner, A., Griechische Wortbildungslehre (Heidelberg, 1917), 40, §82Google Scholar.

10 Ibid. 42, §85 and 34, §67.

11 Ibid. 46, §94. The text has been queried: see Bühler, W., Die Europa des Moschos (Wiesbaden, 1960), 177–8Google Scholar, but the compound form was ably defended by Herter, Hans in Rh.M. 100 (1957), 108Google Scholar.

12 In CQ 33 (1983), 114CrossRefGoogle Scholar Dr West describes it as ‘a sustained tribute to Aeschylus’.

13 On this divine equation see Lloyd, Alan B., Herodotus Book II (Leiden, 1976; EPRO 43), ii.171–2Google Scholar.

14 Ich bin Isis (Uppsala, 1968), 251Google Scholar.

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19 Vercoutter, gives details of the Apis-burials in Lexikon der Agyptologie (1975), i.338–50Google Scholar. Cf. Smith, H. S., A Visit to Ancient Egypt (Warminster, 1974), 37–41Google Scholar; Griffiths, J. Gwyn, Apuleius of Madauros, The Isis-Book (Leiden, 1975; EPRO 39), 208 and 220Google Scholar.

20 Smith, H. S., Revue d'Égyptologie 24 (1972), 177 n. 5Google Scholar.

21 Ibid. ‘Table of Cow Obsequies’ (at end). Cf. id.A Visit to Ancient Egypt, 92: ‘burial of the Cow Taese in years 3–5 of Alexander the Great’, where the name means ‘She of Isis’.

22 Holmberg, Maj Sandman, The God Ptah (Lund, 1946), 197–8Google Scholar. Otto, E., Beiträge zur Geschichte der Stierkulte in Aegypten (Leipzig, 1938, repr. Hildesheim, 1964), 26Google Scholar, gives examples of the expression ‘Apis, living son and herald of Ptah’ from the XIXth Dynasty, but takes ‘son’ here as essentially a wrong interpretation of a determinative.

23 Vercoutter, , Textes Biographiques du Sérapéum, 110, R 4Google Scholar.

24 Bonnet, H., Reallexikon der ägyptischen Religionsgeschichte (Berlin, 1952), 47Google Scholar.

25 Sandman Holmberg, op. cit. 198.

26 See my Plutarch's De Iside et Osiride, 363–4 (on the Egyptian background) and 462–3 (on the reports by classical authors).

27 Cf. Sheppard, J. T., in CQ 5 (1911), 227–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar; A. F. Garvie, ad loc. (Cambridge, 1969), 71.

28 Much later Clement of Alexandria gives Apis as the name of an Egyptian physician who went to Greece and also of an Argive king who settled in Memphis: see Johansen, H. Friis and Whittle, E. W., Aeschylus, The Suppliants (Copenhagen, 1980), 211Google Scholar.

29 See further, ibid. 253.

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31 JEA 54 (1968), 40–4Google Scholar, quoting Coffin Texts, ii.209a ff.

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34 Ptah is also the father of Nefertem in the Memphite triad with Sakhmet as mother. But Egyptian mythology revels in confusion. Indeed there was another Memphite triad (Ptah-Tefnut-Shu): see Kákosy, L. in JEA 66 (1980), 48–53Google Scholar; here the two other deities are regarded as aspects of Ptah.

35 Simon, Erika, ‘Zeus und Io auf einer Kalpis des Eucharidesmalers’, Arch. Anz. 1985, Heft 2, 265–80Google Scholar. I am grateful to an editorial Reader for calling my attention to this work.

36 She cites Pliny, , HN 16.239Google Scholar, Io in taurum mutatam, where editors have often given either tauram or vaccam.

37 See esp. Schefold, Karl, Götter- und Heldensagen der Griechen in der spätarchaischen Kunst (Munich, 1978), 27–8Google Scholar; id.Die Göttersage in der klassischen und heltenistischen Kunst (Munich, 1981), 135–6, with allusions also to the few exceptions.

38 Freyer-Schauenburg, Brigette, ‘Io in Alexandria’, MDAIR 90 (1983), 35–49Google Scholar with Taf. 23–9. On p. 42 she compares the depictions of Io in Pompeian wall-paintings, for which see Schefold, , Pompejanische Malerei (Basel, 1952), 60ff. and 65ff. with Pl. 43Google Scholar.