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AMPHICTYON, SON OF HELLEN? A MISUNDERSTOOD MYTHOLOGICAL REFERENCE IN DION. HAL. ANT. ROM. 4.25.3*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 July 2016
Extract
Virtually all the major scholarly reference works, as well as many more popular sources, provide two alternative versions of the ancestry of Amphictyon, the mythical founder of the Delphic-Pylaic amphictyony, as either the son or the grandson of Deucalion, that is, by implication, either the brother or the son of Hellen. Yet, a review of all relevant sources shows that they unanimously and exclusively refer to Amphictyon as the son of Deucalion.
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Footnotes
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Many thanks are due to my friends and colleagues Professor Stephen Halliwell and Dr Myles Lavan, as well as the anonymous reader for their helpful comments and suggestions.
References
1 W.H. Roscher, Lex. 1.305 (H.W. Stoll); Kl. Pauly 1.311 (H. von Geisau); BNP 1.611 (F. Graf); R.L. Fowler, Early Greek Mythography (Oxford, 2013), 2.142. Cf. further, J. Lempriere, L.L. Da Ponte and J.D. Ogilby, Bibliotheca Classica (rev. ed. New York, 1839), s.v. Amphictyon, and the works cited in n. 4. Notable exceptions are P. Grimal, The Penguin Dictionary of Classical Mythology (Engl. trans.; London, 1986), and RE 1.1904 (Wagner), s.v. Amphictyon, which give only the first (correct) alternative, but do not mention or comment on Ant. Rom. 4.25. There is no entry on Amphictyon in either OCD 4 or LIMC.
2 Roscher (n. 1) cites the most important sources: Theopomp. in Harp. Lexicon in decem oratores Atticos, ed. Dindorf (Oxford, 1853; repr. Groningen, 1969), 28 s.v. Ἀμφικτύονες; Suda α 1736 s.v. Ἀμφικτύονες; Ps.-Zonar. Lexicon α 145 s.v. Ἀμφικτύονες; IG 12.5 no. 444, line 5.8b; Paus. 10.8.1; Schol. Eur. Or. 1094. A TLG search further produces Schol. Hom. Od. 10.2; Steph. Byz. β 116 Billerbeck s.v. Βοιωτία; p. 675 Meineke s.v. Φύσκος = Arist. fr. 560 Rose = Rhianus, FGrHist 265 F 57; Ps.-Scymn. Periegesis ad Nicomedem Regem 588–9, in GGM 1.219; Ael. Herodianus, De Prosodia Catholica, in Gramm. Gr. 3.1, 184 Lentz; Syncell. Ecl. Chron., ed. Mosshammer (Leipzig, 1984), 184; Phot. Lexicon α 1340 s.v. Ἀμφικτύονες; Apostolius s.v. Ἀμφικτυονικὸν συνέδριον, in Paroemiogr. 2.281. This list is exhaustive. Many of these sources depend on each other, but their relationship is beyond the scope of this note.
3 See n. 1.
4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphictyon, accessed 9/5/2016. Before Smith this reading of the passage is found in, for example, T. Leland, The History of the Life and Reign of Philip 1 (London, 1758), xxxviii, and H. Fynes Clinton, Fasti Hellenici 1 (Oxford, 1834), 69, as well as the major Latin, French, English and German translations of the Antiquities, going as far back as the sixteenth century (see next note).
5 The Roman Antiquities of Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Loeb Classical Library) (Cambridge, MA and London, 1939), 2.352 n. 1; the expression is mistranslated already in Sylburg's (Dionysii Halicarnassei scripta quae extant omnia et historica et rhetorica [Frankfurt, 1586], 229), Emilio Porto's (Dionysii Alexandri F. Halicarn. Antiquitatum Rom. Libri XI [Geneva, 1588], 121) and Reiske's (Dionysii Halicarnassensis operum volumen secundum, Antiquitatum Romanarum libros IV, V et VI tenens [Leipzig, 1774]) Latin translations, in G.J. Schaller's (Stuttgart, 1827) German translation, as well as in various French translations of the Antiquitates (see notes 8 and 9).
6 That the entire phrase is in the genitive is probably partly responsible for the problem; see n. 11 below.
7 The Roman Antiquities of Dionysius Halicarnassensis (London, 1758), 2.197 n. 38.
8 Les Antiquités Romaines de Denys d'Halicarnasse (Paris, 1723), 1.385 n.b. Contrary to what Spelman implies, ‘M.***’/Bellanger does, in fact, translate ‘fils d'Hellen’ in the main text and considers ‘Amphictyon le Grec’ only in his note.
9 Note that shortly before ‘M.***’, Gabriel François le Jay (Les Antiquitez romaines de Denys d'Halicarnasse, vol. 1 [Paris, 1722]) had translated ‘fils d'Hellen’ without comment.
10 Cf. C. Schultze, ‘Negotiating the plupast. Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Roman self-definition’, in J. Grethlein and C.B. Krebs (edd.), Time and Narrative in Ancient Historiography. The ‘Plupast’ from Herodotus to Appian (Cambridge, 2012), 113–38, at 129–30. Schultze speaks of ‘the Greek hero Amphictyon’ (130) but without discussion.
11 The ambiguity of the expression is partly due to the genitive. If Dionysius had construed the sentence with Amphictyon as the subject, he would have written Ἀμφικτύων ὁ Ἕλλην (not Ἀμφικτύων ὁ Ἕλληνος).
12 On this well-known aspect of the Antiquitates, see, most recently, E. Gabba, Dionysius and The History of Archaic Rome (Berkeley, 1991); A. Delcourt, Lecture des Antiquités romaines de Denys d'Halicarnasse. Un historien entre deux mondes (Brussels, 2005); N. Wiater, The Ideology of Classicism. Language, History, and Identity in Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Berlin, 2011), 120–225 (all with further literature). Cf. A. Spawforth, Greece and the Augustan Cultural Revolution (Oxford, 2012), 161.