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The Broken Wall, the Burning Roof and Tower: Pindar, Ol. 8.31–46

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

E. Robbins
E. Robbins
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Extract

In the Eighth Olympian, for Alcimedon of Aegina, Pindar recounts a story (31–46) that, according to a notice in the scholia, is not found in earlier Greek literature. Aeacus was summoned from Aegina to Troy by Apollo and Poseidon to help in the construction of the city's fortifications. Smoke, says the poet, would one day rise from the very battlements Aeacus built. The wall newly completed, a portent appeared: three snakes tried to scale the ramparts but two fell to earth while one succeeded in entering the city. Apollo immediately interpreted this sign: Troy would be taken ‘owing to the work of Aeacus’ hand' and would, moreover, be taken ‘by the first and the fourth generations’.

If there is literary invention here, it would seem that Pindar has drawn inspiration from three passages of our Iliad: (i) 7.452–3, Apollo and Poseidon toiled to build a wall for Laomedon; (ii) 6.433–4, there was one spot in the wall of Troy that was especially vulnerable; (iii) 2.308–29, the seer Calchas declares an omen involving a snake to signify the eventual destruction of Ilium.

The general import of the passage is clear enough — descendants of Aeacus play a prominent part in the Trojan war and in the capture of the city. But the details of the portent and of the prophecy have caused much perplexity, for they cannot easily be made to correspond to the history they prefigure. It is the numbers in Pindar's account that are the chief source of confusion.

On the model of the omen interpreted by Calchas (where a snake eating nine birds represents a lapse of nine years before the sack of the city) the three snakes in the Pindaric story might reasonably be expected to represent the lapse of three generations before Aeacus' great-grandson Neoptolemus played his conspicuous part in the final agony of Troy. But this interpretation of the portent forces us to explain away the fact that Troy was also destroyed by Aeacus' son, Telamon, as Pindar repeatedly insists in his Aeginetan odes (Nem. 3.37, 4.25; Isth. 6.26–31): if the snakes are taken to represent generations, one of the unsuccessful snakes in fact represents a successful conqueror. This is a disturbing inconcinnity.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 36 , Issue 2 , December 1986 , pp. 317 - 321
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1986

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References

1 Drachmann, A. B., Scholia Vetera in Pindari Carmina, i (Leipzig, 1903) ad 41aGoogle Scholar.

2 Some commentators are unwilling to believe that Pindar's story is in any way original, despite the scholiast's claim: cf. Dissen, L., Pindari carmina quae supersunt, ii (Gotha and Erfurt, 1830), 100Google Scholar; von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U., Pindaros (Berlin, 1922), 405Google Scholar; Farnell, L. R., The Works of Pindar, i (London, 1930), 45Google Scholar.

3 So, e.g., Beattie, A. J., CR n.s. 5 (1955), 1–3Google Scholar.

4 Euripides, in the Andromache (796ff.)Google Scholar says that Peleus was with Telamon and Heracles during the first sack of Troy, but Pindar nowhere mentions Peleus in this connection.

5 E.g., in addition to Farnell (above, n. 2), Gildersleeve, B. L., Pindar: The Olympian and Pythian Odes (London, 1885), 196Google Scholar; Boeckh, A., Pindari opera quae supersunt, ii 2 (Leipzig, 1921), 182Google Scholar; Fennell, C. A. M., Pindar: The Olympian and Pythian Odes (Cambridge, 1879), 70Google Scholar. Hill, D. E., CR n.s. 13 (1963), 3Google Scholar, refers to this as ‘the traditional view’.

6 It is almost universally assumed by modern commentators that Pindar is including in the prophecy Epeius, artificer of the Trojan horse (the lineage would be Aeacus—Phocus—Panopeus— Epeius). This is not impossible: Asius, the 7th- or 6th-century author of genealogies and epicpoet, apparently made Epeius a descendant of Aeacus (cf. Pausanias 2.29.4). But it involves identifying Aeginetan Phocus, son of Aeacus (this Phocus died prematurely on Aegina, , Nem. 5.12Google Scholar), with a different Phocus (see RE 20.497–8) who along with Panopeus is an eponym in Phocis. I am not convinced that Pindar made this identification. Intent as he is on illustrating the number and glory of the descendants of Aeacus, he never mentions Epeius.

7 See Gildersleeve (above, n. 5) 196.

8 See Drachmann (above, n. 1) ad 51 (with apparatus), 52a, 53e.

9 ad 49b, 53b.

10 Dissen (above, n. 2) 100; Fernández-Galiano, M., Pindaro: Olimpicas (Madrid, 1956), 242Google Scholar. Lehnus, L., Pindaro: Olimpiche (Milan, 1981), 139Google Scholar, claims that this is the commonly accepted interpretation, but he does not refer to specific commentators. It appears to be problematic for him because he senses a necessity of reconciling the one and two of the snake-prodigy with the one and four of lines 45–6. He entertains the possibility that the two falling snakes symbolise the two times that the wall would fall (in the first generation after Aeacus and in a later generation). But what are we then to make of the successful snake? That it represents the building of the wall? This seems quite strained, and the correspondences would be inexact, for if the wall falls twice, it is also built twice (by Aeacus and the gods, and after the first sack by Heracles and Telamon).

11 Medea refers to the ‘blood’ or offspring of the fourth generation. This is the fifth generation by her reckoning though it would be the fourth by our (exclusive) reckoning, since she is in fact referring to great-great-grandsons of Argonauts (the generation of the returning Heraclids; cf. Herod. 6.52).

12 Beattie (above, n. 3) understands that Aeacus and Neoptolemus are referred to, but his interpretation is very difficult to accept: he emends ἄρξεται to ⋯⋯ξεται,which is supposed to have double meaning and to refer to ‘building’ by Aeacus and ‘sacrifice’ by Neoptolemus. His case is further weakened by his wishing to introduce Telamon and Peleus into the portent. Hill (above, n. 5) likewise correctly understands the reference to Aeacus and Neoptolemus, but his statement is marred by his acceptance of the numbers of the omen as referring to Aeacids between Aeacus and Neoptolemus (i.e. Achilles and Ajax). I cannot make sense of Bowra, C. M.'s claim (Pindar [Oxford, 1964], 299)Google Scholar that Troy ‘will be captured first by Aeacus, and later by his descendants’ (italics mine).

13 Though we might expect ἄμα (45) to be a preposition, parallel to the ἄτερ that precedes it, it is, I believe, more likely adverbial, the datives being datives of agent (cf. 30). ἄμα when accompanied by καί, is not normally a preposition: cf., e.g., Isth. 2.11, κτεάνων θ ἄμα λειɸθείς καί ɸίλων;Od. 3.111, ἄμα κρατερòς καί ⋯μύμων.The words imply close conjunction, often with a sense of simultaneity. This is what we want here, for Aeacus' contribution to the fall of Troy will be manifest at the time of Neoptolemus’ victory. If πρώτοις and τετρ⋯τοις are datives of agent, the case for a strong passive verb is made more likely. ῥάξεται was suggested independently by Gildersleeve (loc. cit., above, n. 5) and Wilamowitz (above, n. 2, 404 n. 3) and has been defended by Von der Mühll, P. (MH 21 [1964], 51–3)Google Scholar. This seems preferable to the weak ἄρξεται of the codices, for which no convincing translation has been offered (Aeacus and Neoptolemus can scarcely be said to have ‘ruled’ in Troy). It is, moreover, a satisfactory eynonym for ⋯λίσκεται (42), to which it is parallel in this passage.

14 Ahrens, L., Philologus 16 (1860), 52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 τ⋯ρτατος would be an Aeolic form of τρίτατος. But Pindar's regular word for ‘third’ is in any case τρίτος.

16 Lehnus (above, n. 10) loc. cit.

17 Merkelbach, R. and West, M. L., Fragmenta Hesiodea (Oxford, 1967)Google Scholar, fr. 60.

18 ‘Il est clair que ce mythe n'a aucun rapport avec Alcimédon personellement’, says Puech, A., Pindar: Olympiques (Paris, 1930), 104Google Scholar.

19 Drachmann (above, n. 1) 236.

20 So too Jason's education: see Phoenix 29 (1975), 205–13Google Scholar. Asclepius perverts his teaching (χρυσòς ⋯ν χερσίν ɸανείς, Pyth. 3.55); Zeus takes the matter in hand with the thunderbolt (χερσί δι' ⋯μɸοῖν,Pyth. 3.57).

21 See Farnell (above, n. 2) n (London, 1932), 287–8.

22 Sophocles twice uses the image of the garland of towers that crowns a city, at Ant. 122 and at O.C. 14–15 (reading στ⋯ɸονσιν with Wakefield and Dawe).

23 In the poem we learn that the Blepsiads (Alcimedon's family) are descended from Zeus (16). There is thus some analogy with the Zeus-descended Aeacids: both families are guided and protected by Zeus. We do not know whether Alcimedon's family was descended from Zeus through Aeacus or traced its line back to Zeus independently of Aeacus. It is interesting, however, to note that Melesias is an Aeacid. Pausanias (2.29.4) tells us that the family of Cimon and Miltiades was descended from Aeacus, Telamon, and Ajax. Wade-Gery, H. T., ‘Thucydides the Son of Melesias’, Essays in Greek History (Oxford, 1958), 246Google Scholar, has traced the descent of Melesias from Cimon. I do not wish to press this point, but I think it a sobering counter-consideration to the common belief that Melesias, as an Athenian, was persona non grata in 460 in Aegina. I find no foundation in the poem for this view; it is certainly not supported by line 55, which is perfectly intelligible as normal Pindaric preoccupation with ɸθόνος in a passage of eulogy.