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Erysichthon ‘ Ovid's Giant?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2009

Alan H. F. Griffin
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Extract

Callimachus' sixth hymn to Demeter is of considerable importance to the student of Ovid's Metamorphoses. The reason is that it provides us with one of the very few opportunities to put an episode in the Metamorphoses alongside what was apparently its chief source. I say its chief source because Ovid's description of how Demeter punishes Erysichthon for violating her sacred grove by inflicting on him an insatiable hunger is very close to Callimachus' outline of the same story and includes a number of undoubted verbal echoes of the Greek poet. Ovid certainly knew Callimachus sixth hymn well. But, of course, there may have been other treatments of the Erysichthon legend, now lost, which Ovid also drew on to a greater or lesser extent. There is a further point to bear in mind. We seem to be dealing in Ovid with two stories, not with a single legend. The first is the story of Erysichthon's sacrilege and punishment, the second is the story of a girl with powers of selftransformation. These two stories may originally have been quite independent of each other, but we find them linked as early as the pseudo-Hesiodic Catalogue of Women. Callimachus does not use the second story about the transformations of Erysichthon's daughter.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 33 , Issue 1 , April 1986 , pp. 55 - 63
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1986

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References

Notes

1. The Erysichthon story is found at Met. 8.738–878. Verbal echoes of Callimachus occur at Met. 8.746; 835–6; 843.

2. See Hesiod, fr. 43 (Merkelbach-West).

3. Ovid as an Epic Poet (Cambridge, 2nd ed. 1970), p. 68Google Scholar.

4. ‘O Φιλλλάδελϕοςπροεμαῖος κατὰ μίμησιν τῶν’ Aθηνῶν ἒθη τινὰ ἴδρυσεν ἐν' Aλεξανδρία, ἐν οἶς καὶ τὴν τοῦ καλάθου πρόοδον· ἔθος γὰρ ἦν ἐν' Aθήναις ἐν ὡρισμένῃ ἠμέρα ἐπὶ ὀΧήματος ϕέρεσθαι κάλαθον εἰς τιμὴν τῆς Δήμητρος(Pfeiffer, , Callimachus (Oxford, 1953), Vol. 2, p. 77)Google Scholar.

5. Hellenistische Dichtung (Berlin, 1924), II. pp. 43–4Google Scholar; Cahen, E., Les Hymnes de Callimaque (Paris, 1930), p. 246Google Scholar; Ferguson, J., Callimachus (Boston, 1980), p. 130Google Scholar.

6. McKay, K. J., Erysichthon: a Callimachean Comedy (Leiden, 1962), pp. 134ffGoogle Scholar.

7. Wilkinson, L. P., Ovid Recalled (Cambridge, 1955), p. 164Google Scholar.

8. Hollis, A. S., Ovid Metamorphoses Book VIII (Oxford, 1970)Google Scholar, notes on lines 751 and 872 .

9. Fr. 43(a), 1. 4.

10. Op. cit., pp. 414 and 203.

11. Met. 8.757–8 recall the Wooden Horse at Aen. 2.50–53; Met. 8.761–1 recall the Polydorus episode at Aen. 3.27–30.

12. Amoves 2.1.11–16.

13. Met. 1.160–3.

14. The altar was begun between 180 and 170 B.C. SeeLawrence, A. W., Greek Architecture (Harmondsworth, 3rd ed. 1973), pp. 213–4Google Scholar.

15. Tristia 1.2.77—78.

16. Roscher, W. H., Ausführliches Lexikon der greichischen und römischen Mythologie, Erysichthon 1384Google Scholar; McKay, K. J., op. cit., pp. 91–98Google Scholar.

17. ἀνδρογίγαντας (Hymn 6.34).

18. Hollis prefers Heinsius' conjecture incensaque viscera at Met. 8.829, though admitting that ‘the MSS. reading “immensaque” may be right’. Bömer, Franz (Metamorphosen Buch Vlll–lX (Heidelberg, 1977), p. 260Google Scholar) argues in favour of immensa. Hollis and Bömer both accept altique … ventris at 8.843. Compare the Cyclops' ‘vast paunch’ which Ovid mentions at Ibis 387, ‘ut quos demisit vastam Polyphemus in ahum’.

19. La Guerre des Géants: le mythe avant I'epoque Hellenistique (Paris, 1952), p. 92Google Scholar.

20. Ibid., pp. 110, 142–3.

21. scires e sanguine natos (Met. 1.162).

22. non dilecta deae solum, sed et ipsa licebit/sit dea, iam tanget frondente cacumine terram (Met. 8.755–6).

23. A Handbook of Greek Mythology (London, 6th ed. 1958), p. 95Google Scholar.

24. Hollis, , op. cit., p. 129Google Scholar.

25. Theogony 184ff.

26. Cicero, , de Natura Deorum 2.67Google Scholar: Mater autem est a gerendis frugibus Ceres (tamquam Geres, casuque prima littera itidem immutata, ut a Graecis; namque ab illis quoque Δημήτηρ quasi γῆ μήτηρ nominata est).

27. Op. cit., pp. 413–4.

28. Otis, Brooks, op. cit., p. 67; pp. 414ffGoogle Scholar.

29. Virgil, Compare, Aen. 1.530Google Scholar.

30. See Met. 2.760ff.; 11.592ff.; 12.39ff.

31. Fr. 43(a) 1. 5: ἐπώνυμον εἳνεκα λιμοῦ. Compare Callimachus, Hymn 6.66–67Google Scholar; ἐμβαλε λιμὸν/ αἴθωνα κρατερόν.

32. Giants were born from the earth at Phlegra on the nearby peninsula of Pallene. The gigantomachy took place on Thessalian Olympus whose mass dominated the plain of Phlegra to the west. See Claudian, , Shorter Poems LII, Gigantomachia 66ffGoogle Scholar.

33. With the epic sounding moderator harundinis compare Aeschylus, , Persians 378–9Google Scholar: κώπης ἄναξ/ … ὄπλων ἐπιστάτης.

34. Etymologicum Magnum s.v. αἴθων ⃜ αἴθωνα λιμόν τὸν μέγαν ἤ ἑαυτὸν ϕονεύοντα.